The government is still shut down, and protesters are demanding that it be re-opened. Ben Shapiro explains why we need to use critical thinking to reopen the government, and why we should learn from the success of the European Union in re-opening their economy. He also suggests a new strategy for dealing with the situation, and offers advice on how to wear a "mask" in order to avoid being accused of being a kook in the midst of a crisis. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Your data is your business, and your business is protected at ExpressVpn.com/BenShapiroShow. Ben Shapiro is the host of the popular conservative podcast "The Weekly Standard" and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS, and other media outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, and has been featured on CNN, NPR, and NPR. His new book, "The Dark Side of Politics," is out now, and is available for pre-order on Amazon Prime and Vimeo worldwide. Click here to get a free copy of The Dark Side Of Politics: The Inside Story, wherever you get your copy of the book. If you don't already have a copy, you can get it here. You can also get it for free on Audible, iTunes, Podcoin, and Podcoin. Subscribe to The Huffington Post, wherever else you re listening to podcasts, and subscribe to the show. It's newest podcast, The Daily Mail, The Atlantic, and The Daily Beast. The Atlantic. Learn more about Ben Shapiro's newest book is available on all of these links can be found here: bit.ly/theBen Shapiro Show, and much more! Thanks for listening to the Ben Shapiro Podcast? Subscribe to Ben Shapiro s latest podcast? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts? Subscribe on Podcoin? Subscribe at bit.ee/Ben Shapiro's latest book is and other links are mentioned in this episode of The Daily Grail podcast on my podcast is also on The FiveThirtyEight. on Six Feet Six feet on my social media account on my profile? on Medium, on Instapod, and on PODCASTLE. and I hope you'll leave a review on Instaculous on iTunes on Podchronicity, and I'll be listening to Ben's podcast on Insta?
00:00:25.000Well, I hope that you had a somewhat relaxing weekend as we all continue to undergo this incredibly Painful and difficult process.
00:00:34.000Obviously, some people in the United States are suffering gravely, not just in terms of health, but tons and tons of people have lost their jobs.
00:00:39.000I mean, this is a crisis that is roiling.
00:00:42.000And in the middle of a roiling crisis, the last thing you need are people taking political advantage of the roiling crisis in order to enact their agenda.
00:00:49.000And this is why it's really important to look to Europe and see how they are reopening and look to the various strategies on reopening.
00:00:53.000It's why it's really important to use critical thinking when we talk about exactly what sort of steps need to be taken for reopening, because there is a data-based idea That we can reopen if we hit certain milestones.
00:01:04.000And then there are certain data-free ideas like we can never reopen at any point.
00:01:56.000I'm even willing to go along with you on maybe this is a serious problem over the course of the next century that is gradually building, but I'm not willing to go along with something that seems as though it is a pretext for you to do all the things you have already wanted to do.
00:02:07.000And that is what it is starting to feel like in the United States as politicians lock down beyond what is necessary, as they take more and more petty authoritarian stances, as you see people attempting to shut down protests, not on the basis of public health alone.
00:02:20.000By the way, if you are protesting, if you're out there protesting today or yesterday, Okay, I made this recommendation last week.
00:02:26.000If you want to protest to reopen the government, I'm actually fine with that.
00:02:30.000Not only that, I sort of agree with you that we need to be taking more exped... Not sort of, I largely agree with you.
00:02:35.000We need to be taking more expedited steps to reopen America's economy because I believe that the American people are responsible.
00:02:42.000I believe the American people are capable of wearing a mask when they are going to be within six feet of others.
00:02:47.000That the American people are capable of social distancing.
00:02:49.000That we are a free people who are responsible and don't want to infect our neighbors.
00:02:53.000That being said, if you're gonna go out and protest, why don't you do that?
00:02:55.000Wear a mask, socially distance, takes a bullet away from the media that wish to paint you as a bunch of kooks.
00:03:01.000Now there are some kooks out there protesting, but there are plenty of kooks on the other side suggesting that we must shelter in place until kingdom come, no matter what the economic consequences are.
00:03:08.000Okay, so we're gonna get into all of this.
00:03:09.000Let's begin with what is happening over in Europe.
00:03:12.000So in Europe, they are beginning to slowly re-emerge.
00:03:15.000From their lockdown, according to the Wall Street Journal Bookstores, almost nothing else among again, open again along desolate canals of Venice, restaurants and hotels remain shut, cafes once packed with tourists sit empty.
00:03:24.000But for two days a week, customers can browse for books so long as they wear a mask, disinfect their hands before shopping and stay more than six feet apart.
00:03:31.000To comply, the city's Marco Polo bookstore has asked customers to answer one at a time in the morning or schedule a half hour appointment for the afternoon.
00:03:38.000For a look at how hard it is to press play on a Western economy still battling coronavirus, turn to Europe and to Italy, which is painstakingly freeing its shops and small businesses in stages, easing a continent-wide lockdown that has kept nearly half a billion people at home.
00:03:49.000Nation by nation, and in some cases storefront by storefront, health authorities in the European Union are selecting when and where commercial life can breathe again in tiny gasps.
00:03:57.000Each new category of retail allowed to function presents a real-time experiment for what coming weeks could look like as parts of the U.S.
00:04:26.000It's going to be hard to get back online, but countries are taking sort of different tacks on this sort of thing.
00:04:31.000Germany is reopening its stores, according to Bloomberg News.
00:04:36.000Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is now allowing smaller stores to reopen after a shutdown that deprived German retailers about 33 billion bucks in sales and pushed many shops to the brink of bankruptcy.
00:04:45.000Germany is among the first nations in Europe taking cautious steps toward normalcy as the pandemic continues to shutter factories, restaurants and shops from Madrid to Prague.
00:04:53.000Retail spaces of less than 800 square meters, which is less than about 8,500 square feet, will be reopening along with car dealerships, bike shops, bookstores, bar restaurants, gyms, larger stores are going to remain closed.
00:05:03.000The government is urgently recommending that everyone continue to wear face masks.
00:05:08.000So Germany is already beginning to reopen.
00:05:10.000And Sweden, which never really shut, they're now saying that they've been successful in their attempts to flatten the curve.
00:05:16.000Now remember, The whole situation with Sweden, and people on the left really love to hate Sweden, which is weird because the government there is actually a center-left government, but the bizarre notion that Sweden has blown this thing because they had a spiking death rate over the last couple of weeks and then flattened out again?
00:05:31.000This is like saying that if you are overweight and then you go to exercise and then you're vomiting into a trash can because you exercised really hard and then someone points you say look look at what that guy did to himself he's vomiting in the trash can right the point for Sweden is that you're supposed to take the long the you're supposed to trade the short-term hit of vomiting in the trash can for the long-term gain of getting back in shape if you just sit on your couch all day you're actually not doing yourself any favors because you will be out of shape forever
00:05:54.000Okay, so Sweden sort of took a different tack, which is, we'll take the early hit, we'll make sure that our systems aren't overrun, and now Sweden is beginning to say, listen, our strategy is working, and we'll see how all you all are doing when you reemerge and you embrace our strategy anyway, and then presumably have to reinfect each other, because that is something that is going to happen.
00:06:11.000People completely misinterpreted what flatten the curve meant.
00:06:13.000Okay, I explained it 1,000 times on the show, so it ain't my fault, but flatten the curve simply meant that we were going to spread out the rate of infection over time, Such that we would not overwhelm our medical system.
00:06:22.000People took it to mean that if we somehow flatten the curve that you would never get COVID.
00:06:27.000You probably will get COVID at some point in the future, barring some exigent circumstance.
00:06:31.000Our only hope is that the treatments are better and that a vaccine is developed sooner rather than later.
00:06:36.000But flattening the curve never meant that a huge percentage of the population was going to avoid COVID.
00:06:40.000It just meant that there were going to be medical resources at your disposal when you actually did get COVID.
00:06:44.000In any case, we'll get to Sweden in just one second.
00:06:46.000First, Let us talk about how you can make your car better right from your house.
00:06:51.000With the ever-increasing number of makes and models, it is now impossible to stock all the parts you need in a traditional chain storefront.
00:06:57.000Plus, do you actually really want to be going to the auto parts store right now?
00:07:43.000It's also remarkably easy to navigate.
00:07:45.000You can quickly see all the parts available for your vehicle.
00:07:47.000You can choose brand, specifications, prices.
00:07:49.000You prefer great selection, reliably low prices, and you're shopping online, so you're saving yourself time and money and not having to go to the store all masked and gloved up.
00:08:08.000So as I say, Sweden was much more accurate in how they have been informing the public that this thing is going to go forward.
00:08:13.000So they never shut down all of their restaurants or their gyms or their bars or anything.
00:08:16.000They basically just said to their citizenry, guys be responsible, right?
00:08:19.000If you're old, if you have a preexisting condition, stay home, don't go out and socialize, but otherwise you'll go out there, wear a mask, socially distance, don't congregate in large throngs, and that's about it.
00:08:34.000Anders Tegnell is the architect behind Sweden's relatively relaxed response to COVID.
00:08:37.000He told local media the latest figures on infection rates and fatalities indicate that the situation is starting to stabilize.
00:08:43.000Tegnell told Swedish News we're around sort of a plateau.
00:08:46.000Sweden has left its schools, gyms, cafes, bars, and restaurants open throughout the spread of the pandemic.
00:08:50.000The government has urged citizens to act responsibly and follow social distancing guidelines.
00:08:53.000So there are high levels of trust, social trust, in places like Sweden, and that makes it a lot easier for people to rely on their neighbors to obey the rules.
00:09:01.000With that said, I believe that the American citizen is generally a responsible human being who is capable of going back to work and wearing a mask and staying six feet away from people and not breathing all over each other.
00:09:12.000And frankly, I am bewildered and somewhat terrified by the response of local authorities who are doing the dumbest crap I've ever seen on the local level in order to prevent people from supposedly reinfecting each other.
00:10:06.000The hope is that when they go to the hospital, a ventilator will be available, an ICU bed will be available.
00:10:10.000Hopefully you'll have some of the new drugs available.
00:10:12.000And that over time, as we hit September, we get back into the school year, the treatments, the toolkit, as Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, put it to me on the Sunday special, the toolkit will have improved such that the care for you will be better by September.
00:10:25.000The vaccine ain't coming until next year.
00:10:27.000So, acknowledge the baseline risk in American society has gone up.
00:10:31.000COVID has raised the baseline risk, and depending on your age and your pre-existing condition, it has raised your baseline risk rather substantially, for sure.
00:10:39.000When people compare this to the flu, this is not like the flu.
00:10:42.000It is much more transmissible than the flu, and it is significantly more deadly than the flu for every age range except for kids who are under the age of maybe 15 years old.
00:10:49.000Okay, with all of that said, we have to know the limits of testing.
00:10:53.000What is the testing actually designed to do?
00:10:55.000Because we've heard these sort of magic words that get bandied about in the media and then completely reinterpreted.
00:10:59.000So as I say, flatten the curve was taken by many Americans to mean that since we flattened the curve, you're going to go back to work and you're not going to get it.
00:11:14.000That testing is designed to identify people after they already have it, and then to lock down the levels of contacts, sort of web of contacts that they have, and tell those people to self-quarantine, to kind of kill out hotspots before they spread exponentially.
00:11:33.000It's probably accomplishable if you have a baseline level of testing that is somewhat higher than the level of testing we have now.
00:11:39.000Doesn't mean that we are going to stamp out the virus, that the only way for us to get back to work is to run tens of millions of tests every day.
00:11:48.000And part of the reason it's not realistic is because tons of people, presumably, particularly in metro hotspots, have already had this thing.
00:11:55.000So I've been talking about the fact that while this is a lot more deadly than the flu and a lot more transmissible than the flu, it is a lot less deadly than the WHO rate that's been put out there for the case fatality rate.
00:12:03.000The infection fatality rate is the rate you actually need to know.
00:12:06.000The infection fatality rate is what I'm always talking about.
00:12:08.000That is the number of people who have actually obtained this virus.
00:12:13.000is much higher than the number of people who have been tested for the virus.
00:12:33.000The goal of the testing is not to prevent everyone in the population from getting it or to prevent a low level of baseline people infecting each other from continuing.
00:12:43.000Okay, so let's be realistic about what we can accomplish and what we can't.
00:12:45.000I think people are being utterly, completely unrealistic about this.
00:12:49.000And I think some people are doing that for political purposes.
00:12:52.000One, because they want to imply that the Trump administration is capable of doing a thing it can't do.
00:12:56.000And the government is capable of doing a thing it can't do.
00:12:59.000And they want to suggest that people need to stay home indefinitely.
00:13:03.000And this is where I think that Americans are right to begin getting suspicious.
00:13:06.000There are some people in positions of authority who are obviously enjoying the shutdown a little too much, who are going out of their way to shut down activities that seriously have no relation to data or reality.
00:13:19.000And there's some people in positions of authority who are seeing this opportunity as an opportunity to restructure all of American society.
00:13:25.000And I'm not implying, I'm not making an accusation without evidence.
00:13:28.000Bernie Sanders wrote that directly in the New York Times today.
00:13:31.000So we'll get to that in just one second.
00:13:33.000Let us talk about the fact that every penny that you can save right now is extremely important, including on that credit card balance.
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00:14:53.000So as I say, this thing is very widespread.
00:15:06.000And that study showed that the baseline level of infection in Santa Clara County could be 50 to 85 times as high as the number of actual tested cases.
00:15:16.000We've seen that in Denmark, for example.
00:15:19.000The percentage, or the Netherlands rather, the percentage of people in the Netherlands who had this antibody, who had the antibody, this thing is like 3% of the population, which means that their infection fatality rate is off by at least an order of magnitude, probably by a factor of 20.
00:15:34.000Okay, well now we are seeing there's a study in Massachusetts in which they tested people literally off the street.
00:15:40.000The Massachusetts General Study took samples from 200 residents on the streets in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
00:15:46.00064 of the participants tested positive.
00:15:48.000So like one third of the people just on the street tested positive for the antibody, which means two things.
00:15:52.000One, it's a lot more widespread than possible, which means testing for it's going to be very difficult.
00:15:56.000But two, it also means the thing is a lot less deadly than you have been led to believe, even if it is significantly more deadly than the flu.
00:16:03.000What all of this is doing is it means that there is a lot of uncertainty in the modeling.
00:16:07.000It means that people have less faith in the scientists.
00:16:09.000I will tell you another thing that is going to lead people to have less faith in the scientists is all the conflicting messages.
00:16:14.000So let's talk about testing because this is what you keep hearing now, right?
00:16:16.000You keep hearing from the politicians, everything is about testing.
00:16:32.000Today, ABC News reports that there is a report titled, Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience, released on Monday morning.
00:16:39.000A blue ribbon panel of thought leaders across the political spectrum called COVID-19 a profound threat to our democracy comparable to the Great Depression and World War II.
00:16:47.000Danielle Allen, lead author of the report, a professor at Harvard University's Edmund J. Safra Center on Ethics, told ABC News, it's a moment for a can-to America to really show up and put itself to work.
00:16:57.000We need a massively scale of testing, tracing, and supported isolation system that is the alternative.
00:17:03.000They say test producers will need to deliver 5 million tests per day by early June to safely open even parts of the economy by late July.
00:17:12.000To fully remobilize the economy, the country will need to see testing grow to 20 million a day.
00:17:17.000And we acknowledge that even this number may not be high enough.
00:17:22.000Paul Romer, the Nobel laureate economist, who didn't assist in the report, but has a similar approach according to ABC News, says the country may need more than 30 million tests per day.
00:18:05.000First of all, let's just put this on the table.
00:18:08.000People keep saying, we'll wait for the vaccine, we'll wait for the vaccine.
00:18:10.000There's no guarantee there even will be a vaccine.
00:18:13.000According to David Nabarro, Professor of Global Health at Imperial College and an envoy for the WHO, he says that there's no guarantee a vaccine can even be successfully developed.
00:18:23.000So everybody is sitting around going, oh, there'll be a vaccine in 12 to 18 months.
00:18:36.000If the tests have a really high rate of false positive or false negative, not super helpful.
00:18:41.000According to Live Science, and this is just a few, a couple of weeks ago, conventional diagnostic tests for the novel coronavirus may give a false negative result about 30% of the time.
00:18:58.000And these are the RT-PCR tests everybody is talking about, right?
00:19:01.000These are the ones that take a bit of RNA from a viral swab from your nose, from your mouth, and they replicate the RNA, and they match it up to the genetic sequencing of the virus to see if you have the virus in the first place.
00:19:13.000Those things are significantly inadequate in many cases.
00:19:18.000If the tests come back positive, it's almost certain you have the infection, but if the tests give a negative, then it is not certain that you're actually negative.
00:19:24.000So they're giving a false negative a lot of the time.
00:19:27.000Because that means that we would have to repeat test you.
00:19:29.000And how many times do you have to repeat test before you determine that somebody is actually clean?
00:19:34.000Also, is everybody going to have an RNA test, like, on the premises?
00:19:37.000What's the delay between the time you take the PCR test and the time you receive the result?
00:19:45.000One of the big problems here is that you only take the test when you're symptomatic.
00:19:49.000Unless you are taking it preventatively, in which case you still have to wait for two to three days, in which case you're still infecting everybody.
00:19:54.000So, depending on the level of infection in society at large, I don't know what level of contact tracing you think is going to be available for 330 million people, but it's going to have to be pretty extraordinary.
00:20:10.000First of all, there are serious problems with the antibody test right now.
00:20:12.000According to the New York Times today, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies, but for all their promise, the tests are already raising alarms.
00:20:21.000Officials fear the effort may prove as problematic as the earlier launch of diagnostic tests that failed to monitor which Americans and how many had been infected or developed the disease the virus causes.
00:20:32.000The FDA has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting, saying the pandemic warrants an urgent response.
00:20:38.000The agency has since warned that some of these businesses are making false claims about their product.
00:20:42.000And so many of the tests going around don't have any level of validity at all.
00:20:58.000They're good for if you and a bunch of your friends start to get sick, then we can contact trace you after two or three days of you being sick and try and back trace you for like nine days.
00:21:06.000But it'd have to be you and a bunch of your friends to justify the contact tracing that would take place in that hotspot.
00:21:14.000So that that means that a low level of infection is probably going to maintain throughout society.
00:21:19.000Now, one of the things that is happening is because people are focusing so much on the testing and the things that we have to get done before we can supposedly go back to work.
00:21:27.000One of the things that is happening is that people are sort of waiting for somebody to give them the all clear.
00:21:33.000And I don't know that the all clear is going to be all clear.
00:21:36.000Because again, I think politicians are lying to you.
00:21:39.000I think right now the testing has turned into a bit of a political football.
00:21:42.000So we'll get to the political football of the testing in just one second.
00:21:47.000First, let's talk about how right now, like more than any time in human history, you need to have good reading resources for your kids at home.
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00:23:12.000There's been a lot of talk about what people need to do in order to have a testing level sufficient that you can go back to work.
00:23:17.000I talked last week about the fact that temperature tests at the front door, that's kind of like a third priority because you're only gonna get a temperature a week after you have this thing.
00:23:27.000Antibody tests are only gonna give you the antibodies a week after you have this thing.
00:23:30.000You're probably only gonna take a PCR test depending on how many Tests are available two, three days after you have this thing, and then the results may not come back for two or three days.
00:23:39.000And all of these tests have fairly significant high false negative rates.
00:23:43.000So, in other words, we can't wait for this thing to be perfect, is what I'm telling you.
00:23:47.000And all of the focus on this thing has to be perfect before anybody goes back to work is not accurate, and it's just a way, politically, for people to blame the federal government for failures here.
00:25:24.000We believe the testing that we have today, Chris, across the country, once we activate all of the labs that can do coronavirus testing, is sufficient for any state in America to move into phase one.
00:25:38.000We're doing about 150,000 tests a day, and you remember a month ago we had done 80,000 tests total.
00:26:09.000So, you know, when the federal government says that we are ready to go back, that's not accurate.
00:26:13.000The administration, I think, is trying to ramp up testing.
00:26:17.000They are doing some things with respect to private labs, but to try to push this off to say that the governors have plenty of testing and they should just get to work on testing, somehow we aren't doing our job, is just absolutely false.
00:26:32.000Every governor in America has been pushing And fighting and clawing to get more tests, not only from the federal government, but from every private lab in America and from all across the world.
00:26:54.000Then the cure-all is going to be lots and lots of tests, except that it's not going to be a cure-all.
00:26:59.000It turns out that unless the real cure-all is people Making responsible decisions, truthfully.
00:27:07.000The real cure-all is going to, aside from any vaccine, which again is perspective, the real cure-all is going to be if you are at risk, if you are elderly, if you have a pre-existing condition, seeing if there is a way for you to distance yourself from other human beings, and if you are not, then making sure that you are responsible in the way that you deal with other human beings.
00:27:24.000Now, All of this has led to a belief by most Americans that they can't lift the stay-at-home orders.
00:27:30.000But that is because even the conditions laid out by the White House are now being politicized to the extent that what was a fairly broad and easy criteria to meet, meaning that you've had 14 days on a consistent level of downslope in terms of diagnosed cases or diagnosed cases as a percentage of cases taken, and they can start to reopen the economy.
00:28:13.000The full number of Americans who have died under the age of 45, with or without pre-existing conditions in the United States from this thing, exceedingly low.
00:28:20.000So everybody's going to end up in Sweden.
00:28:22.000Everybody's going to end up doing the Swedish thing.
00:28:24.000The only question is how long you wait to do the Swedish thing.
00:28:26.000Right now, this is turning into a partisan issue as well.
00:30:34.000First, let's talk about the fact that you're at home right now.
00:30:37.000You may as well emerge from that cocoon as a butterfly.
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00:31:43.000Okay, we're going to get into the petty tyranny of local officials and the burgeoning sense that some politicians are using this crisis as an opportunity.
00:31:53.000Americans are not going to stand for that bullcrap and they shouldn't stand for that bullcrap.
00:31:57.000First, This Wednesday, April 22nd, we're going to be having a socially distanced backstage live.
00:32:03.000So Andrew Klavan is going to be at home.
00:32:05.000I think we're all going to be doing it from home, but that's because we are being responsible at this thing.
00:32:09.000We are responsible citizens here at DailyWire, so we'll be hanging out with you in DailyWire backstage.
00:32:13.000Plus, our all-access live continues each and every day.
00:32:16.000If you are a member of any level right now, then you are able to access our all-access live and ask me questions, ask Klavan questions, and Noel's questions, and Jeremy Boren questions.
00:32:59.000I have a sister in New Jersey, which is a hotspot right now.
00:33:04.000I would love all these things in place, but if you think that we can wait until we have 20 million tests a day, As these non-epidemiologists, by the way, are recommending, you're out of your mind.
00:33:14.000But what the media are now setting up is a political binary wherein if you suggest that we need to consciously, cautiously, responsibly get people back to work, particularly in the least vulnerable populations, then you are a bad person who is risking human life.
00:33:27.000And I'm sorry, that's a bunch of crap.
00:33:28.000Thomas Friedman has a column today along these lines, says, Trump is asking us to play Russian roulette with our lives.
00:33:35.000This is what Trump was saying with his liberate Virginia, liberate Minnesota, liberate Michigan tweets, right?
00:33:39.000Trump tweeted all this last week without any sort of clarifying message.
00:33:42.000He said, everybody just go back to work.
00:33:44.000From now on, each of us individually and our society collectively is going to play Russian roulettes, says Thomas Friedman.
00:33:48.000We're going to bet we can spin through our daily lives, work, shopping, school, travel, without coronavirus landing on us.
00:33:53.000And if it does, we'll also bet it won't kill us.
00:33:55.000More specifically, as a society, we'll be betting that as large numbers of people stop sheltering in place, the number of people who will get infected with COVID-19 and require hospitalization will be less than the number of hospital beds, ICU respirators, doctors, nurses, and protective gear needed to take care of them.
00:34:10.000Because it's clear that millions of Americans are going to stop sheltering in place before we have proper testing, tracking, and tracing system let up.
00:34:17.000Until we have a vaccine, that kind of system is the only path to dramatically lowering the risk of infection while partially opening society, as Germany has demonstrated.
00:34:25.000As individuals, every person will be playing Russian Roulette every minute of the day.
00:34:29.000What will be so cruel about this American version of Russian Roulette is how unfair it will be.
00:34:33.000And then he turns it into class warfare.
00:34:35.000If you're more poor, then you're going to be forced to make choices.
00:34:38.000Listen, I think that everybody is going to be forced to make choices in their daily life.
00:34:43.000And those risks are going to change, obviously, based on where you live and what sort of job you have.
00:34:48.000Like, seriously, is Thomas Friedman suggesting that we're all supposed to shelter in place till July?
00:34:52.000Thomas Friedman has his cush salary paid by the New York Times while he gets to sit in his apartment and write garbage for the pages of the op-ed.
00:34:59.000Like, it's pretty easy for him to say this stuff.
00:35:01.000I know people who are losing small businesses.
00:35:05.00022 million people have lost their job in the last three weeks.
00:35:10.000So Thomas Friedman suggests it may work out for some places and people.
00:35:19.000First, this is the bet Trump is urging you to make in his liberate tweets when he should be ordering the National Guard and mobilizing American industry to get testing everywhere.
00:35:27.000Second, this bet will fall very unfairly and unevenly in our society when so little testing and tracing is in place.
00:35:33.000Even if the testing and tracing were available, every death is going to be blamed on Trump because the media have an interest in blaming the deaths on Trump.
00:35:39.000I'm amazed at how the media have been able, so have Democrats, been able to turn this into a referendum on Trump.
00:35:44.000America has responded in the middle of the pack in Europe better than a lot of countries in Europe.
00:35:49.000And I'm not seeing this sort of criticism levied against the Italian government or the Spanish government by many of the same people.
00:35:55.000It's all about Trump, Trump all the time.
00:35:58.000And then, Friedman says, By the way, I have a question.
00:36:04.000Isn't that what it means to be a free human being?
00:36:08.000That you're on your own to make certain decisions?
00:36:10.000Like, isn't that one of the things that makes you a member of a free society?
00:36:15.000I'm not saying that there aren't government mandates that are necessary.
00:36:18.000I'm not saying that there aren't shutdown orders that are going to sometimes be necessary.
00:36:21.000Or that there are quarantines that aren't going to be necessary.
00:36:24.000But, once we have established whatever is the lowest risk we can establish, practically speaking, in forthright, timely manner, yes, that's called living a free life.
00:36:32.000It's called understanding what the risks are and being responsible.
00:37:09.000We're seeing the sort of petty tyranny being crammed down on Americans at an increasingly rapid rate.
00:37:15.000So Bill de Blasio is a perfect example of this, the idiot mayor of New York.
00:37:18.000Who, by the way, I love that he was ripping the federal government and Trump while he was telling people they should go out and celebrate their lives in New York.
00:37:24.000Didn't order a shutdown order in New York until nearly the end of March.
00:37:28.000And then says we shouldn't look backward.
00:37:29.000Now Bill de Blasio is telling you to inform on your parents, Stasi style, if they are not socially distancing.
00:38:05.000When you see a crowd, when you see a line that's not distanced, when you see a supermarket that's too crowded, anything, you can report it right away so we can get help there to fix the problem.
00:38:15.000And now it's as simple as taking a photo.
00:38:18.000All you gotta do is take the photo, and put the location with it, and bang!
00:38:24.000Send a photo like this, and we will make sure that enforcement comes right away.
00:38:35.000You think the stores have an interest in people not socially distancing?
00:38:39.000And if you see somebody who's talking with somebody and you call the cops on them, you think that the cop, like how many cops are there in New York City?
00:38:45.000Half the force is out because they've got coronavirus.
00:38:53.000So I was driving around as I want to do with my children because as a normal human being, I like to put my children in the car and show them there is a broader world than just the roof of our house.
00:39:01.000So we get in our car and we drive over to a city that's not insane, Burbank.
00:39:05.000Okay, Burbank is a city that does not have the L.A.
00:39:24.000Most people are responsible enough to handle freedom.
00:39:26.000By the way, if you don't believe people are responsible enough to generally, in situations where freedom can be exercised, exercise freedom.
00:39:35.000I don't know why you're living in a free country.
00:39:47.000had deployed workers to go to the turnoffs on Mulholland Drive, which are no bigger than this studio.
00:39:54.000Okay, the turnoffs on Mulholland Drive are like seven square feet.
00:39:57.000They had deployed people there to put yellow ribbon across the turnouts as though there were going to be masses of people gathering at these little turnouts on Mulholland Drive to spit on each other and give each other COVID.
00:40:09.000OK, that wasn't even the dumbest thing.
00:41:27.000She's apparently got a T-shirt maker who helps make T-shirts for her so that when she appears on Stephen Colbert, she can have her customized T-shirt just for Stephen Colbert.
00:41:35.000But she's willing to shut down everybody's life over in Michigan.
00:41:38.000Here she was on Meet the Press defending her policies.
00:41:40.000Do you have any regrets on any of the restrictions that you have put into place?
00:41:49.000You know, Michigan right now has the third highest number of deaths from COVID-19, and yet we're the 10th largest state.
00:41:56.000We have a disproportionate problem in the state of Michigan, and so we could take the same kinds of actions other states have, but it doesn't rise to the challenge we're confronting, and that's precisely why we have to take a more aggressive stand.
00:42:10.000We are seeing the curve start to flatten.
00:42:13.000By the way, there is not tremendous evidence, by the way, that states that have locked down are doing significantly better than states that have not locked down, because there are different states in the country.
00:42:20.000There are people who are tweeting out statistics on the rise in COVID diagnoses in states like Texas and Florida.
00:42:25.000Texas and Florida have basically flattened the curve, and neither one of them did a statewide lockdown the way that Gretchen Whitmer is doing a statewide lockdown.
00:42:30.000Certainly, they're not preventing people from being in their gardens and gardening and buying seeds, or buying car seats, the way that Gretchen Whitmer was.
00:42:37.000And then Gretchen Whitmer, she's just awful.
00:42:39.000Gretchen Whitmer told Rachel Maddow there's a protest at Michigan's Capitol.
00:42:43.000She said that that is the kind of irresponsible action that puts us in a situation where we might have to actually think about extending stay-at-home orders, which is supposedly what they are protesting.
00:42:52.000So, in other words, if you protest, little kids, we are going to force you to stay in your houses even longer.
00:42:58.000Do you get the feeling that some of these local officials are enjoying this power a little bit too much?
00:43:01.000The petty authoritarians like to be petty authoritarians.
00:43:06.000So that is a problem because if you want people to trust the experts who stay home, you have to have the feeling they don't have an ulterior motive, which is to run for vice president in the case of Gretchen Whitmer and become a political hot button.
00:43:17.000You also have to have the belief that the government is not maximizing its own presence in American lives because this is what government does and there are people who want to make it permanent.
00:43:26.000And unfortunately, that suspicion is being justified each and every day by folks on the radical left as well.
00:43:32.000Now, the new narrative is that government is everywhere now and we're all used to it.
00:43:35.000Dan Balz has a piece over at the Washington Post.
00:43:38.000He says Americans are experiencing the biggest expansion of government authority in generations as elected leaders take unprecedented action to fight the deadly coronavirus pandemic.
00:43:46.000The role of government has changed overnight.
00:43:48.000Despite a broad consensus behind this emergency surge in government spending and power, a huge debate over what government does and should do lies ahead.
00:43:55.000That battle will be waged on terms that could be far different from those that existed before the pandemic, terms that have held sway since President Reagan arrived in Washington four decades ago, determined to put advocates of a vigorous government on the defensive for the first time since the New Deal.
00:44:07.000The pandemic, says Dan Balz, has exposed crippling weaknesses in the federal government, Troubling vulnerabilities in society that will be more difficult to ignore when the crisis begins to ease.
00:44:16.000For the first time, many Americans are looking to government for their very economic survival.
00:44:19.000In time, that could make them look at government differently.
00:44:22.000Well, I mean, can you hear Dan Balz praying for this to happen?
00:44:30.000I've been willing to go along with the measures that I think are scientifically justified.
00:44:35.000I am not going to go along with the lockdown mentality that suggests that we need to fundamentally restructure American society because a virus hit us.
00:44:44.000That this is now an excuse to fundamentally remake everything.
00:44:49.000He says, The effects of hollowed out federal agencies, persistent underinvestment in public health, enormous gaps in coverage, disparities in care have been on daily display as the coronavirus spread rapidly this winter and spring.
00:45:00.000So too have the effects of an economy whose benefits are distributed unequally.
00:46:11.000So I mentioned earlier, reading with your kids.
00:46:13.000So one book that I've been reading with my kids, and it's kind of astonishing, my three-year-old even likes it, is Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
00:46:19.000Basically, if you want to learn how to build a house out of logs, this is the way to do it.
00:46:23.000It has detailed descriptions of essentially how you build a house in the middle of nowhere.
00:46:29.000It has now been labeled wrong-think by the politically correct, because there are descriptions of Native Americans that are not entirely flattering, because it was written from the perspective of a settler in Indian territory.
00:46:42.000You can explain all that stuff to your kids.
00:46:43.000There's a way to explain to your kids that there was legitimate conflict over this land.
00:46:46.000I did this actually with my kids as we were talking about this.
00:47:11.000was a clip of him having a conversation with Representative Dan Crenshaw, my friend Dan Crenshaw.
00:47:16.000And he is basically questioning Trump's coronavirus response, suggesting that it was really late and really bad.
00:47:21.000And Dan really sort of re-educates him on the timeline and points out that you can certainly criticize President Trump, but let's be real about this.
00:47:29.000Bill de Blasio was walking around in early March saying everything was fine.
00:47:34.000Marathon and saying he was right to do so on March 8th.
00:47:37.000Foreign countries, many of them didn't lock down until mid-March.
00:47:40.000So that clip has gone viral for good reason.
00:47:42.000Dan does an excellent job of explaining all of this to Bill Markle.
00:47:44.000I think when it comes to his coverage of the Trump administration has been taken in by the media narrative, which is that everything Trump does is wrong and everything his opponents do is right.
00:47:55.000Now, Trump can do things wrong and his opponents can also suck.
00:48:01.000This is one of the most bizarre things about the call for radical revision of the nature of American government and its relationship with the citizens.
00:48:08.000One of the things that's so bizarre and weird about it, frankly, is that the government has really blown this.
00:48:15.000And your response is that in non-crisis times, that the government should run everything.
00:48:19.000Anyway, so Bill Maher and Dan Crenshaw, that's a clip worth watching.
00:48:22.000But the one I want to focus on is Bill Maher actually doing something right.
00:48:24.000So Bill Maher, He went after the media over the weekend and he said that the members of the media are really enjoying this sort of panic porn.
00:49:59.000I mean, I don't consider myself world's best interviewer.
00:50:01.000I've asked better questions on public policy to every major official involved in the decision-making process than nearly anybody who's at these press conferences at the White House because they are so busy focusing on, Mr. President, you tweeted this today and wasn't that very bad of you?
00:50:14.000How about your actions back in February?
00:50:18.000All the focus has been on Trump, because Trump is this black hole of attention that sucks in the media, and Trump enjoys it, because he likes the back and forth with the media.
00:50:25.000He did a press conference yesterday where he was just going back and forth with NPR and CNN and the New York Times, and the American people are sitting there going, okay, so I'm not really fond of how Trump is treating the members of the media, but do I care?
00:50:37.000Am I spending my days worrying about that?
00:50:39.000But the members of the media are spending their days doing two things, talking up how dangerous this thing is, And not leading with the facts, not leading with the stats, not leading with the responsible coverage of what Americans can and cannot do.
00:50:51.000I mean, if you read the media and all you read were the headlines, you would think that if you go outside, you will get this thing.
00:50:56.000And that if you get this thing, you will die.
00:50:58.000If you go outside, if you touch a thing, anything, doesn't matter what it is, you will die.
00:51:02.000If you walk outside your house without a mask, You're going to die.
00:51:05.000It doesn't matter if there's a person for a hundred miles around, you will die.
00:51:08.000That is the nature of the media coverage that has been pushed to this point.
00:51:12.000And Maher's right, that is going to benefit Trump.
00:51:13.000Because if it turns out that all of the insane overwrought coverage by the media, if that overwrought coverage results in Trump saying, listen, it's going to be bad, we're going to make it through this thing, and then we make it through this thing, they're going to be hard pressed to explain why.
00:52:05.000Then it quickly moved into the reason, the reason that George W. Bush mishandled Katrina is because it affected And because George W. Bush didn't like black people.
00:52:14.000So I predicted a couple of weeks ago, this was the direction the narrative was going to move.
00:52:17.000Was that the Trump administration blew the response, and the reason they blew the response is because they didn't care enough about minorities.
00:52:22.000So the New York Times has been running with headlines nearly every day that are almost exactly the parodic headline once suggested about the New York Times.
00:52:31.000There's a very famous joke back in the 60s and 70s, the New York Times is going to run a headline saying, Asteroid to Destroy Earth Tomorrow, Women and Minorities Hardest Hit.
00:52:39.000And that's basically the coverage they're running now.
00:52:41.000The coverage they are running is coronavirus to destroy all of America and world society, women and minorities hardest hit.
00:52:47.000Although in this case, it would be men and minorities because women are actually being less hard hit than men are.
00:53:11.000Because it's not like the virus is killing black people versus white people.
00:53:15.000The virus is killing people who have diabetes versus people who don't have diabetes.
00:53:19.000The virus does not prey on people as a matter of race.
00:53:21.000It preys on people as a matter of pre-existing health condition and as a matter of age.
00:53:25.000Scientifically speaking, your melanin level has nothing to do whatsoever with how the virus affects you.
00:53:30.000Now, there may be a higher correlation of pre-existing health conditions and age, and poverty which leads to pre-existing health conditions, with particular races.
00:53:41.000But that does not mean that the virus is racist, and it also does not mean that if you are black, and if you are overweight, and if you have diabetes, that the reason that you are dying of coronavirus is because American society is racist.
00:53:55.000There are a lot of decisions, a whole chain of decisions that go into how people eat, how people live.
00:54:01.000Maybe it's partially the legacy of racism.
00:54:03.000Maybe it's partially the legacy of what you do on a daily basis.
00:54:06.000But what we are starting to see is a shift in the media and in the coverage toward America is racist and that's why more black people are dying.
00:54:12.000Right, which is the same as America is racist and that's why more black people are poor.
00:54:16.000Okay, not America was racist and therefore there are lingering effects of racism in American society.
00:54:23.000America continues to be racist and that's why we have to fundamentally restructure American society now.
00:54:27.000It's inarguable that there are always aftereffects of history for everyone at every time.
00:54:32.000And then the question is whether the stuff that is happening right now is the impact of systems that are in place right now.
00:54:37.000And the left suggestion is that America Is that the racial inequalities that we see right now are a reflection of a current inequity in America that must be rectified by completely remaking the American system.
00:55:09.000But the idea is that on a plain level, if more black people as a percentage are dying than white people, that means that the system itself is racist.
00:55:16.000Not that the system was racist 20, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
00:55:20.000That segregation was a bad thing that has impact in terms of wealth ownership and that may have impact in terms of your ability to buy care because you don't have as much historic wealth.
00:55:31.000But that's not the argument she's making.
00:55:32.000She's making the argument that today all of our systems are racist because of that inequality.
00:55:36.000All inequality is inequity in today's system.
00:55:38.000So here's Ilhan Omar making that argument.
00:55:41.000The virus isn't racist, but the systems we have in place are racist.
00:55:48.000If we do not ...holistically address the kind of injustices that have existed within our systems, then we will not be able to fight this virus in the way that we need to, and we will not be prepared for other pandemics to come.
00:56:07.000So, socialism is the solution to the virus.
00:56:14.000Which, of course, is absolute nonsense.
00:56:15.000Because this refuses to even do the analysis necessary to demonstrate that higher rates of obesity in the black community are due to segregation in 1964.
00:56:23.000You actually have to show the relationship.
00:56:26.000And, more than that, you have to show that if you sign everybody a check, that's going to fix everything.
00:56:30.000Which, of course, it is not going to fix.
00:56:33.000We've been trying to sign checks to people who are impoverished in this country for going on 40, 50 years, really since the New Deal, but certainly since the Great Society.
00:56:40.000It has not alleviated the inequalities among communities of color.
00:56:54.000The reason people are protesting is because they are deeply suspicious, and correctly so, that people like Bernie Sanders are reveling in this crisis as an opportunity to fundamentally reshape American society, divide us along racial lines, and then claim that if we want to go back to work, or if we disagree with his restructuring of American society, it's because we hate black people.
00:57:11.000That is the next step in the media's narrative, is that if you want to go back to work, if you think that we have to Acknowledge the risks to American society and also acknowledge that, by the way, the people who are losing their jobs are disproportionately black and Hispanic and low income.
00:57:31.000But the idea is that if you acknowledge this sort of stuff and you don't call instead for a government top-down reparations program that levels all of America's economic wealth, it's because you're a racist.
00:57:42.000So Bernie Sanders has this piece in the New York Times.
00:57:44.000He says, we are the richest country in the history of the world, but at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, that reality means little to half of our people who live paycheck to paycheck, the 40 million living in poverty, the 87 million who are uninsured or underinsured, the half million who are homeless.
00:58:00.000In the midst of the twin crises that we face, coronavirus pandemic, and the meltdown of our economy, it is imperative we re-examine some of the foundations of American society, understand why they are failing us, and fight for a fairer and more just nation.
00:58:13.000And then he talks about Medicare for all.
00:58:15.000And then he suggests that we have a Byzantine network of medical institutions dominated by profit-making interests of insurance and drug companies.
00:58:23.000By the way, the hospitals are all losing money during this.
00:58:25.000And the hospitals are having to shut down because they're not doing surgery on demand.
00:58:32.000Right, but then Bernie gets to his main point.
00:58:36.000He says it's true that poor and working class people are suffering higher rates of sickness, are dying at much higher rates than wealthy people, which by the way has been true for all of human history, is that poor people are less healthy generally than wealthy people, and have less access to resources than wealthy people because they're not wealthy.
00:58:51.000And that does not mean that the system is racist, but he says it is because the system is racist.
00:58:56.000He talks about how we should, while doctors and governors and mayors tell us we should isolate ourselves and stay at home, and rich people head to their second homes in less populated states, working class people don't have these options.
00:59:06.000So what we really need is, he says, many in our country are now beginning to rethink the basic assumptions underlying the American value system.
00:59:13.000He says, should we really continue along the path of greed and unfettered capitalism?
00:59:17.000Or should we go forward in a very new direction?
00:59:20.000He says we should follow the path of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who knew that economic rights must be considered human rights.
00:59:26.000So we're going to use the back of this pandemic in order to completely reshift how Americans interact with their government and what government is supposed to do.
00:59:33.000He says, the new America must fight to end starvation, wages, and guarantee a decent paying job to those who are able to work.
00:59:39.000By the way, you know what just happened?
00:59:41.00022 million people lost their decent paying jobs, thanks to the government.
00:59:46.000He says that we have to undertake massive construction programs that end homelessness.
00:59:52.000Turns out a lot of people would prefer to live on the streets.
00:59:54.000Some people are, it's very difficult to keep them in housing because many of them are drug addicts and schizophrenics.
00:59:59.000Like this is a, it's a deeper thing than you just build a house and a homeless person has a house now.
01:00:02.000That's not the way, I wish it were that easy.
01:00:04.000If it were that easy, we'd all be on board.
01:00:07.000He says, I get very tired of the politicians and pundits who tell us how difficult it is to bring about fundamental changes in our society.
01:00:12.000It always seems impossible until it is done.
01:00:15.000Nelson Mandela is widely reported to have said, let's get to work and get it done.
01:00:18.000Yeah, quoting Nelson Mandela definitely is going to fill in for a plan you don't have.
01:00:25.000And this is why people are protesting.
01:00:26.000People are saying, We can see you using this for your political point-making, for your political point-scoring.
01:00:33.000The New York Times has a piece today titled, How the Coronavirus Became a New Frontier in the Fight for Civil Rights.
01:00:38.000Collectively, the goals are targeted legislation, financial investment, government and corporate accountability.
01:00:43.000Jesse Jackson is calling for the creation of a new Kerner Commission to document the racism and discrimination built into public policies that make the pandemic measurably worse for some African Americans.
01:00:54.000So we're going to divide the country in a time when it needs to be unified in order to score political points.
01:01:00.000And then when people protest and say, listen, I think that you're using this for ancillary purposes.
01:01:05.000I think that you are using this crisis for ancillary purposes.
01:01:08.000For many politicians like Gavin Newsom to fill in your state budget with federal dollars.
01:01:12.000For politicians like Bernie Sanders to fundamentally reshift the nature of American free markets.
01:01:17.000For race-baiting politicians to divide us along the lines of race and suggest that America continues to be, not was, continues to be fundamentally racist at its core.
01:01:24.000The Beto O'Rourke view of America and its history.
01:01:28.000And then Americans say, well, you know what?
01:01:41.000The Huffington Post has a piece today Says the president's enabling response of right-wing protesters echoed his handling of the 2017 violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.