We live in a time when the smartest people in the world don't make tradeoffs. They don't even make metrics of success. We're not allowed to make risk-reward calculations, and we're apparently not supposed to discuss how public policy is actually made. We don't need the stupidest among us actually making the decisions, we need the people who make the decisions on the basis of competing values and competing interests. And the only thing that we ought to be worried about at this point is the sheer numbers of lives lost in the short term, not in the long term. And we're supposed to pretend, by the way, that there are no countervailing interests, for purposes of public policy. We need to make decisions based on competing values, not on competing metrics, and that those who make those decisions are bad for taking into account various values. We'll get to that in just a little bit because we live in an extraordinarily stupid timeline, where we don't have to take into account values, we're just supposed to make serious decisions about how public policies are made. And that's why we need to shut down schools and hospitals, and why we should be grateful that our parents are with us to keep our kids safe and well-being at home. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Don't like the government spying on you? Well, well, visit expressvpnpn.co/BenShapiroShow and use code "ELISSA" for 20% off your first month of shipping and handling of your packages. Ben Shapiro is a big fan of ExpressVPN, and he'll send you a discount promo code "ExpressVPN" and you'll get 10% off the entire year of your purchase when you sign up for a year of a year and a half of your choice! Ben's Freebie Code: "Ben Shapiro's Show" is a freebie from ExpressVPN! Subscribe to the show Ben Shapiro's Unfiltered. Subscribe here. Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review, rate, and subscribe to Ben's Unsplash and review the show on Apple Podcasts, Podcharts, and more! at apple.me/Twaint, and become a supporter of the show? using the promo code: Ben Shapiro Unveiled on the show and Ben Shapiro will be giving you a chance to win a FREE shipping discount of $10,000!
00:00:00.000The economy contracts in record fashion as the media slam Republican governors, the FBI is in real trouble over Michael Flynn, and momentum builds against Joe Biden's response to a sexual assault allegation.
00:00:27.000Like all the things, they are all stupid because we're not allowed to make risk reward calculations and we're apparently not supposed to discuss how public policy is actually made.
00:00:35.000We're just supposed to pretend that public policy has no trade-offs and that the smartest people in the world don't make trade-offs at all.
00:00:41.000In fact, there's good and there's evil in politics and there's nothing in between.
00:00:44.000There is no Sort of attempt to create metrics of success.
00:00:48.000All of this just doesn't exist is at least according to many in our media.
00:00:52.000We'll get to that in just a little bit because truthfully this is we live in an extraordinarily stupid timeline and in a time when people need to make serious decisions about how public policy is made.
00:01:02.000We don't need the stupidest among us actually making those decisions and or shouting at the moon that those who make the decisions on the basis of competing values and competing interests and competing metrics, that those people are very bad for taking into account various values.
00:01:14.000We'll get to that in just a little bit.
00:01:21.000Scientists on Wednesday announced the first effective treatment against coronavirus, an experimental drug that can speed the recovery of COVID-19 patients.
00:01:28.000It's a major medical advance that came as the economic gloom caused by the scourge deepened in the United States and Europe.
00:01:33.000This is according to the Associated Press.
00:01:34.000The US government said it is working to make the antiviral medication remdesivir available to patients as quickly as possible.
00:01:40.000Dr. Anthony Fauci suggested that this will be the standard of care.
00:01:45.000Here was Dr. Fauci yesterday talking up remdesivir.
00:01:48.000The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery.
00:01:59.000This is really quite important for a number of reasons.
00:02:02.000Although a 31% improvement doesn't seem like a knockout 100%, it is a very important proof of concept.
00:02:11.000Because what it has proven is that a drug can block this virus.
00:02:18.000The stock market continued to rise on that basis.
00:02:21.000Now, in the meantime, the economic data that came out yesterday was absolutely terrible.
00:02:24.000The economy shrank at an annual rate of 4.8% in the January to March period, but that's really even before the shutdowns are taken into account.
00:02:31.000Everybody's expecting that the actual annualized rate of GDP shrinkage In the second quarter is going to be about 40%, which is going to be by far the largest shrinkage in the history of the United States in economic terms.
00:02:42.000We're supposed to pretend, by the way, that those countervailing interests don't exist for purposes of many in public policy.
00:02:46.000We're supposed to pretend that there are no... that really the only thing that we ought to be worried about at this point is the sheer numbers of lives lost in the short term, not even in the long term.
00:02:54.000We're just supposed to pretend that if we lock down forever, everything is going to be fine.
00:02:57.000And we're not supposed to take into account the 30 million people who are unemployed today.
00:03:36.000We're going and getting them groceries.
00:03:37.000My parents are in their mid-60s, which means that they are in the higher zone of danger for COVID-19.
00:03:43.000And so one of my assumptions has been that we should lock down with them and that when my kids go back to school, I'm basically going to have to tell my parents that they need to shelter at home instead of being over at our house all the time.
00:03:52.000Right now, thank God my parents are spectacular human beings, and they're here morning till night.
00:03:57.000so that I can come do the show, and then they leave at 7 p.m.
00:04:00.000So they can help provide childcare all day long.
00:04:02.000Well, my assumption has been that when my kids go back to school, I'm going to have to send my parents home and tell them that they can't come over until there's some sort of vaccine developed effectively in order to protect them.
00:04:12.000Well, this new report would really change the game on that.
00:04:15.000According to Bloomberg, children contract the coronavirus less often and with less severity than the general population.
00:04:20.000There's limited evidence so far that children pass the disease to others in significant numbers, according to a new report.
00:04:25.000Many infected children may stay asymptomatic.
00:04:28.000Cases of them becoming critically ill with COVID-19 remain rare, according to an analysis of global virus studies compiled by Don't Forget the Bubble's Pediatric Blog among these studies' findings.
00:04:38.000are that a China World Health Organization joint commission couldn't find a single case of a child passing the virus to an adult.
00:04:51.000If it turns out that kids cannot pass this to adults, then why exactly should we not be allowing kids to congregate with one another?
00:04:58.000And speaking as a parent, let me just tell you, I'm happy to have my kids home.
00:05:03.000I'm happy to participate in the homeschooling movement, as we are all forced to do right now.
00:05:07.000But I know parents out there who have kids who have conditions.
00:05:13.000Parents who have kids who suffer from, for example, They're on the autism spectrum, and they've seen tremendous regressions in terms of the kids' behavior simply because when you radically shift childhood environment, then it tends to radically shift childhood behavior.
00:05:26.000There are serious consequences to sending kids home from school on the kids, on the parents, on the economy, on everything else.
00:05:33.000According to this Bloomberg report, low case rates among children maybe do more to higher numbers remaining asymptomatic rather than a lower infection rate.
00:05:53.000To date, only a handful of coronavirus deaths have been reported in children.
00:05:57.000Very few newborns or infants contract COVID-19.
00:05:59.000Generally, they do very well in overcoming the virus.
00:06:01.000The big change there, we know all that before, the big change there is that they couldn't find a single case of a child passing the virus to an adult.
00:06:07.000Which, frankly, would come as a major relief to me.
00:06:10.000It means that I may have to continue socially distancing from other adults, which I was planning on doing anyway.
00:06:15.000But it would mean that I can send my kids back to school and I don't have to send my parents home at the same time.
00:06:18.000So that would be, on a personal level, a big relief to me.
00:06:22.000Meanwhile, the search for a vaccine continues and has been radically accelerated by the Trump administration.
00:07:48.000The Trump administration has launched what they call Operation Warp Speed, aiming to rush forward with a coronavirus vaccine.
00:07:54.000We've already seen from Oxford University some promising new studies suggesting that they may have created a vaccine that could be effective against COVID-19.
00:08:02.000And theoretically, if they rush this thing forward, they could have millions of doses available in September, which of course would be a radical game changer.
00:08:08.000If that happened, then pretty much all of the restrictions go away.
00:08:11.000I mean, at that point, you've done as much as you can do.
00:08:13.000Once you've either reached herd immunity, or you've vaccinated enough people that you have herd immunity, then You can't do any more than that.
00:08:20.000Whoever's gonna get infected at that point is gonna get infected.
00:08:22.000Whoever's gonna die of this is going to die of this because you literally cannot do any better than that.
00:08:27.000Unless you come up with some better therapeutic treatments also, but I mean, that's just true of any disease.
00:08:31.000The Trump administration, according to Bloomberg, is organizing a Manhattan Project-style effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine with the goal of making enough doses for most Americans by year-end.
00:08:41.000Called Operation Warp Speed, the program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and the military Good.
00:08:47.000cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months, according to two people familiar with the matter.
00:08:52.000As part of the arrangement, taxpayers will shoulder much of the financial risk that vaccine candidates may fail instead of drug companies.
00:08:58.000So what they're trying to do is relieve liability on vaccine companies and pharmaceutical companies for developing the vaccine in order so they can move forward faster.
00:09:07.000I mean, good, really, because if you're talking about comparative costs taxpayers have to shoulder, $7 trillion is a very large comparative I can guarantee you, whatever liability arises from the attempts to develop a vaccine, they ain't gonna compare to the $7 trillion we shoveled out the door in the last five weeks alone.
00:09:24.000So yes, we should be covering the liability in order to ensure that both people who are hurt get compensated, and also to ensure that we can get this vaccine available so that people can actually get back to work, go back to ballgames, we can all go back to our normal daily lives.
00:09:38.000Last month, Trump directed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to speed development of a vaccine.
00:09:42.000Administration officials have been meeting on the effort for three to four weeks, according to one of the people involved.
00:09:47.000A meeting on the project was scheduled at the White House on Wednesday.
00:09:51.000This does not come without criticism, naturally.
00:09:54.000There are quote-unquote experts who are very upset about this, apparently, suggesting that the rush to a vaccine is risky.
00:10:02.000According to these experts, the New York Times suggests, they warn that rushing the process could undermine the treatment's effectiveness and even lead to sickness or death.
00:11:00.000Every single decision that we make about this thing is going to have risks, it's going to have trade-offs, it's going to have downsides, and it's going to have upsides.
00:11:07.000And what we have to do is calculate which risks we as a society are willing to undertake.
00:11:12.000And that means calculating in, yes, actuarial fashion, what exactly we are willing to undertake as a society and what we are not willing to undertake as a society.
00:11:29.000Okay, let me take an example that has nothing to do with COVID-19.
00:11:33.000So, speed limits in the United States.
00:11:35.000Speed limits in the United States, in most states, about 65 miles an hour is the speed limit on the freeways.
00:11:40.000In some states it's higher, it's like 75 miles an hour.
00:11:44.000If you look at the age of drivers and the rate of death for drivers in the United States, according to AAA, what you'll see is that the rate per 100 million miles driven for people who are aged 16 to 17 is you'll have 3.75 fatal crashes per 100 million miles driven for people aged 16 to 17.
00:12:04.000This is according to the AAA Foundation, rates of involvement in all police-reported crashes, injury crashes, and fatal crashes per 100 million miles driven in relation to driver age.
00:12:15.000So if you're 16 or 17, you are at the highest risk for young people in getting in a fatal crash.
00:12:23.000So theoretically, we could lower the speed limit in order to take care of those people.
00:12:27.000That wouldn't actually change the thing, because the reason that young people get into car crashes is because young people tend to be more risk-seeking, because young people tend to drive in a more dangerous fashion.
00:12:36.000You could lower the speed limit, young people would then violate the speed limit, and then they would get in car crashes.
00:12:40.000The reason they are dying is because they are more reckless.
00:12:43.000We are all more reckless when we are 16 or 17 years old.
00:12:45.000Your amygdala is overdeveloped, which is the emotional center of your brain, as opposed to your prefrontal cortex, which allows you the facility of rational thought.
00:12:53.000Okay, then the numbers steadily decline until you hit ages 40 to 49, and then they start to climb again.
00:13:00.000Okay, the actual subgroup that is most likely to die in a car crash are people who are 80 and up.
00:13:07.000If you're 80 and up, you're most likely to die in a car crash in the United States.
00:13:10.000The rate is 3.85 people dying in car crashes per 100 million miles driven.
00:13:14.000So, when we make a risk-reward calculation about speed limits, this is an area where, theoretically, if you lowered the speed limit to 35 miles an hour, you'd probably save a bunch of older people.
00:13:28.000Because when the speed limit is lower, that means you need less reaction time.
00:13:32.000Older people have slower reaction times.
00:13:34.000So, if you were to lower the speed limit from 65 miles per hour to 35 miles per hour, Yes, you would probably shut down the economy in huge and significant ways.
00:13:43.000Yes, you would make it nearly impossible for people to get to work on time.
00:13:46.000Yes, you would basically shut down the freeways.
00:13:48.000But you would make it less risky for old people to be on the roads.
00:13:53.000We do not do that as a society because we have made the calculation that we are willing to undertake a little bit of additional risk for seniors, and that seniors are willing to undertake that additional risk if they choose to go on the freeway that day.
00:14:43.000And every so often, you'll come across people who are honest enough to admit this.
00:14:47.000So John Harris has a column And then he suggests in the pandemic everyone is a moral relativist.
00:14:59.000Now, this is a misunderstanding of moral relativism.
00:15:01.000Moral relativism is not... Moral relativism is not in any given situation there is a moral right and a moral wrong, or a moral better and a moral worse.
00:15:09.000That's actually moral... That's moral absolutism, is that there is a right answer and there is a wrong answer.
00:15:14.000Moral relativism suggests there is no right answer.
00:15:31.000The point is that when it comes to public policy, everyone is making trade-offs and people who are not- who refuse to admit they're making trade-offs are just lying to you.
00:15:42.000We'll get to more of this in just one second because you'll see how the media are promoting this binary view of the world in which lockdown policy, they keep moving the goalposts because of this.
00:15:53.000Lockdown policy has no costs and opening up has no benefits, right?
00:15:57.000This is the logic they are pushing now, many in the media, that lockdown policy has no cost because you're saving lives and even if we opened it up, even if we opened it up, people wouldn't go back to work because everybody is scared.
00:16:15.000To pretend you don't know this, to get all upset about it, to pretend that you are not increasing risk for certain populations when you reopen, is to lie.
00:16:23.000And I understand some people like being lied to.
00:16:25.000That's not what we do on this program.
00:16:26.000That's not what we should do in public life.
00:16:27.000We should demand honesty from our leaders.
00:16:29.000We'll get to more of this in just one second.
00:16:31.000First, Mother's Day is coming up, and that's a great time to buy moms something fantastic.
00:16:47.000Because the Pearl Source cuts out the middleman by eliminating traditional five times markups by jewelry stores and selling directly to you, the consumer.
00:16:54.000By the way, your local jewelry store is probably closed.
00:16:57.000Shop safely and securely from the comfort of your home at the Pearl Source.
00:17:26.000If your mom's been quarantining safely at home for the past month away from you, this is a great way to show her that you're still thinking about her.
00:18:30.000By the way, hilarious that Jared Polis somehow escaped scrutiny for doing exactly the same stuff that Greg Abbott in Texas is doing and Ron DeSantis in Florida is doing.
00:18:38.000And Kristi Noem in South Dakota is doing.
00:18:40.000But Jared Palos is a Democrat, so we have to pretend he doesn't exist for purposes of the media narrative here.
00:18:44.000But here is Dr. Fauci saying, yes, there will be a second wave.
00:18:48.000Of course there will be a second wave.
00:18:49.000This is why everybody who's screaming at Sweden, you guys are risking people's lives by being out there.
00:18:54.000Sweden ain't going to have a second wave.
00:19:01.000Who's been saying this since the beginning?
00:19:02.000I have, because I've been honest with you about the fact that there are rewards and there are costs to the lockdown.
00:19:08.000By the way, speaking of Sweden, I should just note, we'll play Dr. Fauci and then I'll get to Sweden.
00:19:11.000I should just note, the World Health Organization, which was taking the position that Chinese-style lockdowns were the best available policy, is now saying, you know who actually is doing this kind of right?
00:19:23.000It's not gonna disappear from the planet, which means as we get into next season, in my mind, it's inevitable that we will have a return of the virus, or maybe it never even went away.
00:19:38.000When it does, how we handle it will determine our fate.
00:19:45.000If by that time, We have put into place all of the countermeasures that you need to address this.
00:19:57.000If we don't do that successfully, we could be in for a bad fall and a bad winter.
00:20:03.000Right, so reasonably well, we're all going to do our best, and also there are risks.
00:20:06.000There are additional risks to American life.
00:20:08.000Now, when you make public policy, it is also important to understand that there is a difference between taking risks in public policy and mandating.
00:20:16.000And mandating, for example, rationing.
00:20:17.000Okay, so when we decide that we are going to open up our economy again, and that this comes along with additional risks.
00:20:22.000So when we decide that the speed limit is going to be 65, and this comes along with additional risks to people with slower reaction times on the freeways, which is the same basic argument.
00:20:31.000I'm not comparing driving to a communicable disease for purposes of morons out there.
00:20:36.000What I'm saying is all public policy is made in effectively the same way, which is you balance risk and you balance rewards.
00:20:40.000And when you're talking about additional risks to populations, this is also not the same thing.
00:20:45.000When you say there's an additional risk to the population in reopening, and that additional risk is going to fall disproportionately on elderly people.
00:20:52.000And that is not the same thing as if the disproportionate risk fell disproportionately on five-year-olds.
00:21:06.000There's a reason why we allow 81-year-olds who are capable of crossing the street by themselves.
00:21:11.000But yes, it is riskier for them than it would be for a 30-year-old to walk across the street by themselves.
00:21:14.000We don't mandate they have to hold the hand of a 30-year-old.
00:21:16.000But if I'm with my 5-year-old daughter, I'm going to mandate that she hold my hand when we cross the street.
00:21:21.000Whenever we make decisions, we take into account all of the factors.
00:21:24.000And if you don't take into account all of the factors, you're either lying or you're stupid.
00:21:27.000So the reason that we are talking about all of this and the risks and the rewards is because increasing risk to certain populations in public policymaking is just the way public policy is done.
00:21:41.000That is not the same thing as mandating that certain people die.
00:21:45.000Okay, so I've seen people suggest that if you say there are risks and rewards to public policy and reopening and ending lockdowns, that this isn't safe.
00:21:52.000You were against death panels back in 2014.
00:21:54.000Right, because that's the government mandating that you cannot receive care if you are over a certain age or have a certain condition.
00:21:59.000I do not think that the government should mandate you can't get COVID-19 treatment if you're 81.
00:22:04.000I think you should be able to get any treatment that you are capable of getting.
00:22:07.000I think that you should get all of the treatments.
00:22:09.000I also think that as a society, when we perform risk-reward functions and come up with public policy, risks go up, risks go down.
00:22:15.000That is not the same thing as the government mandating that certain people do not get care or that certain people do get care.
00:22:22.000Other things this is not comparable to for people who are complete morons.
00:22:27.000Abortion policy is about the willful killing of a human life.
00:22:32.000When you say that if we open up that there will be additional risks to people in nursing homes, which is true, when you say that, that is not the same thing as saying, also, it's totally fine if you drive over to the nursing home and shoot grandma in the forehead.
00:22:44.000Okay, that abortion policy is you drove over to a clinic and you shot the baby in the forehead.
00:22:50.000When we are talking about how to make public policy, could we at least be somewhat intellectually consistent and somewhat intellectually honest?
00:22:57.000Or do we have to pretend to be complete morons and just walk around spouting bumper sticker crap like Andrew Cuomo while lying about it?
00:23:04.000We're going to walk around and say, well, if we even save one life.
00:23:07.000Also, by the way, we're opening businesses in Rochester tomorrow.
00:23:10.000Well, then didn't you just increase the risk to old people in Rochester?
00:23:28.000It is not a human sacrifice to say that we are going to gradually reopen business and this comes along with additional risks for tranches of the population.
00:24:38.000People are not going in for chemo treatments.
00:24:39.000People are not going in with heart disease.
00:24:41.000People are not going in with various medical conditions.
00:24:44.000But we have one side of the aisle who want the lockdowns to continue pretending there are no costs to the lockdown, which is just dishonesty of the highest order.
00:24:53.000First, let's talk about the fact that right now, especially during economic turmoil with new legislation on the books that you may not know, you really need to be on top of your HR issues.
00:26:12.000Okay, so when we talk about exactly how we figure out, you know, what are the risks and the rewards, we need to talk about the various risks that exist.
00:26:23.000So the WHO has now determined that, by the way, Sweden looks pretty good.
00:26:27.000Weird, because it seemed like people were rooting real hard on the American political left, particularly for Sweden to fail.
00:26:32.000There's a lot of rooting for Sweden to fail.
00:26:34.000Sweden did not lock down the entire country.
00:26:36.000They said, if you are aged, if you have a pre-existing condition, we are going to try to protect you.
00:26:42.000They said that their biggest failure was not protecting the nursing homes.
00:26:45.000By the way, you know who else's biggest failure was not protecting the nursing homes?
00:26:48.000Andrew Cuomo in New York, right, who is allowing people with COVID-19 back into nursing homes, actually forcing them back into nursing homes.
00:26:53.000But That was their big failure in Sweden.
00:26:56.000The rest of their policy was basically, go out, about your business, socially distance at restaurants, no events over 50 people, and that's pretty much it.
00:27:09.000is saying, and they're the gold standard according to YouTube, W.H.O.
00:27:12.000is saying, hey, maybe Sweden got it right.
00:27:15.000Dr. Mike Ryan, W.H.O.' 's top emergencies expert, said Wednesday, there are lessons to be learned from the Scandinavian nation, which has largely relied on citizens to self-regulate.
00:27:23.000Ryan said, I think there's a perception out that Sweden has not put in control measures and has just allowed the disease to spread.
00:27:28.000Nothing can be further from the truth.
00:27:30.000Ryan noted that instead of lockdowns, the country put in place a very strong public policy around social distancing, around caring and protecting people in long-term care facilities.
00:27:38.000What it has done differently is it has very much relied on its relationship with its citizenry and the ability and willingness of its citizens to implement self-distancing and self-regulate.
00:27:45.000In that sense, they've implemented public policy through the partnership with the population.
00:27:50.000He said they also had adequate capacity in hospitals, which, by the way, we have in the United States also.
00:27:54.000We have not seen the curve spike above the medical capacity in the United States.
00:27:59.000You know what Sweden assumed all along?
00:28:02.000And the Swedish public officials say this publicly and openly.
00:28:05.000They assumed a lot of people were going to get this and some people were going to die.
00:28:08.000Because that's what happens with communicable diseases.
00:28:10.000And they also assumed that the cost of shutting down their economy would not be worthwhile.
00:28:14.000And they also assumed that lockdowns would not necessarily save lives in the long term because you would end up coming out of lockdown and then you would end up where Germany is.
00:28:20.000Germany, according to the UK Sun, is now facing the prospect of returning to a stricter lockdown after a surge in coronavirus infections and death.
00:28:28.000So Germany got a lot of praise because there were 75 deaths per 1 million population in Germany.
00:28:34.000But that's also because they locked everybody down.
00:28:36.000Well, there's only one problem, which is then they ended the lockdown.
00:28:45.000There are trade-offs to public policy, folks.
00:28:47.000There are trade-offs to the policies that you choose.
00:28:50.000And the stupidity of running an article like Georgia's experiment in human sacrifice to suggest that one sort of policy is about human sacrifice, whereas the other humane and wonderful policy is just to lock down forever.
00:29:02.000What do the lockdown advocates hope to achieve?
00:29:04.000Like they still have not answered this question.
00:29:06.000What exactly are they hoping to achieve that is so contrary to the interests of people who are hoping to reopen in measured and reasonable fashion?
00:29:14.000I'm not aware of any single policy advocate who's advocating at this point for a full-on open up the stadiums, open up the sports games, open up everything, no masks, hug each other in public.
00:30:07.000The issue is there are a lot of people who are losing their dreams, their livelihood, and their freedoms.
00:30:11.000And those are actual countervailing concerns.
00:30:14.000If I sound a little angry today, it's because I am.
00:30:16.000I'm very angry that there are people who supposedly are responsible journalists, people who are supposedly responsible politicians, who fail to even acknowledge that public policy is difficult and that it involves competing interests and values.
00:30:31.000And that's just, I don't like when people lie to you.
00:30:39.000So Elon Musk is getting dragged over the coals, raked over the coals today because he was pointing out that the coronavirus shelter-in-place orders are a problem.
00:30:48.000And this apparently is very bad because Elon Musk is very wealthy.
00:31:26.000He is right that many of the public policies that are now being pursued are being done without rationale and are being done in irresponsible fashion and without recognizing that there are costs to these lockdowns.
00:31:36.000By the way, some of the costs of the lockdowns?
00:31:37.000The complete destruction of the American food chain.
00:31:40.000The American food supply chains have been completely destroyed because they are just-in-time supply chains.
00:31:45.000And that means that when there is a disruption, it disrupts the entire food supply chain.
00:31:49.000So this is all fun and games until people can't get what they want at the grocery store.
00:32:21.000It's so transparent, so dishonest, so stupid.
00:32:25.000We all understand that there are going to be trade-offs except for politicians who lie to you and media members who make bank off of pretending there are no trade-offs so they can draw a black and white moral spectrum in an area where there happen to be no incredibly easy answers.
00:32:39.000We're going to get to more of this and California's incredibly stupid policy in just one second.
00:32:44.000Let's talk about the fact that this is your chance to become your mother's favorite child.
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00:34:10.000First, being locked inside right now, and with all of the leftist tears that are falling over the demise of Bernie Sanders' candidacy, you need two of these.
00:34:20.000I mean, you were sitting around thinking, I have two mouths, why would I not need two leftist tears tumblers?
00:34:24.000Daily Wire members, get the leftist tears tumblers, two of them.
00:34:27.000And they get many amazing benefits, including the magnificent, irreplaceable, singular Leftist Tears Tumblr.
00:34:32.000You also get an ad-free website experience, access to all of our live broadcasts and show library, the full three hours of The Ben Shapiro Show, access to the mailbag, and now exclusive election insight op-eds from me.
00:34:42.000Daily Wire members also get to ask us questions during backstage, and you get to participate in All Access Live.
00:34:47.000That is our brand new interactive programming featuring one of us Daily Wire hosts as we hang out with you every night, 8 p.m.
00:34:53.000This, by the way, is the final week where you can have access to All Access Live at any level of membership, but starting next week, you have to be an All Access member in order to get access to the All Access Live, which really is one of the most fun things that we do.
00:35:44.000At a certain point, people are going to be let out of their houses, and they're going to have to be responsible.
00:35:48.000So, I'm not sure what makes you think, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, that people will be more responsible three weeks from now, or two months from now, than they will be today.
00:35:56.000All that's going to happen is people are just going to disobey you.
00:35:58.000There's going to be an awful lot of civil disobedience this weekend.
00:36:00.000It's really nice outside here in Southern California.
00:36:03.000If you think that Californians are just going to stay inside because you're Gavin Newsom and you say so, you got another thing coming.
00:36:08.000So Gavin Newsom is very angry, of course, because what happened last weekend is it was super nice outside.
00:36:42.000So Gavin Newsom is going to announce the closure of all beaches and state parks effective May 1st in response to the recent beach crowds in the OC.
00:36:49.000By the way, in China, there is a study.
00:36:52.000You know how many cases it found of human-to-human transmission in open public areas?
00:36:58.000Not inside rooms, like in open public outdoors.
00:37:09.000Unless they're having like a rave at the park, that is not what is going on.
00:37:13.000Gavin Newsom, and here's the part of this that's so stupid.
00:37:16.000So, think of the public areas of California like a hot air balloon, or any balloon for that matter.
00:37:23.000If you squeeze the balloon, all you are doing is removing the air from a particular area of the balloon, and then you're redistributing that air to other areas of the balloon.
00:37:50.000They got in their car, they went elsewhere.
00:37:52.000There are still city parks that are open.
00:37:54.000All that's gonna happen is now you are forcing crowding in areas!
00:37:57.000Instead of giving you a broader spectrum of areas to choose from, which would diffuse the population over a broader raw area, instead you're shutting down certain areas, which means everybody's still going to go out, but now they're in half the area, which is the opposite of social distancing, you dolt.
00:38:59.000We need to be protecting people who are old and vulnerable, and we need to be tranching populations that are healthy and young back into the population.
00:39:05.000I'm about to give you the actual mortality rates.
00:39:07.000It's based on antibody tests in New York City and the death numbers in New York City.
00:39:11.000Here are the actual case fatality rates in New York City by age group.
00:39:15.000Okay, if you are 18 to 24, your chances of death are one in 2,500.
00:39:22.000If you are 25 to 34, your chances of death are 1 in 2,500.
00:39:26.000This is according to the antibody test that Andrew Cuomo has been citing in New York.
00:39:31.000If you are 35 to 44, your chances of death from COVID-19 are 1 out of every 1,000.
00:39:35.000This is actually if you get it, right?
00:39:37.000If you don't get it, your chances of COVID-19 death are 0.
00:39:42.000So 1 out of every 2,500 people who acquires it and is aged 18 to 34 will die.
00:39:46.000Okay, so 2,499 of those people will not die.
00:39:52.000If you are 35 to 44, 999 out of every 1,000 people will not die.
00:39:54.000If you are 45 to 54, 997 out of every 1,000 people will not die.
00:39:57.000If you are 55 to 64, 993 out of every 1,000 people who get it will not die.
00:40:00.000997 out of every 1,000 people will not die.
00:40:02.000If you are 55 to 64, 993 out of every 1,000 people who get it will not die.
00:40:08.000If you are 65 to 74, then 9,000, sorry, yes, 979 out of every 1,000 people will not die.
00:40:19.000So 21 out of every 1,000 people will die.
00:40:22.000If you are 75 plus, right, this is the high-risk group.
00:40:24.000If you are 75 plus, then 40 out of every 1,000 people will die, right?
00:40:29.000It's about a 4% death rate for true infection fatality rate.
00:40:32.000What that suggests is that we should be trenching populations.
00:40:35.000And we should be deciding public policy by finding the most vulnerable and protecting them.
00:40:39.000And also, we should be recognizing that the risk is not equivalently spread across the population.
00:40:44.000And when we figure out public policy, If there is an additional marginal risk to populations that are more vulnerable, but it also means that we can increase the actual economic output of the United States by leaps and bounds.
00:40:55.000We can get back to a place where we don't have tens of millions of people unemployed and hundreds of thousands of businesses shutting down and people who are gliding up at food banks in the thousands.
00:41:05.000If we could do that, and there's a marginal risk increase because we have already created lockdown strategies for the nursing homes, which is where a huge disproportionate number of these deaths are taking place, then what the hell are you talking about, shutting down beaches?
00:41:19.000We've moved beyond the point of sanity here.
00:42:06.000Because the costs are obvious when you restart, and the benefits are obvious but also diffuse.
00:42:14.000It's easier for the media to run a headline, and you'll start to see these in the next couple weeks, right?
00:42:18.000Two weeks from now, somebody in Georgia will die of COVID-19.
00:42:20.000And they'll say, the day after the lockdowns ended, this person went to the barber shop and got COVID-19.
00:42:27.000Then the media will run with that story.
00:42:29.000And we won't look at what the competing interests are.
00:42:32.000All you'll get is that anecdotal case, and then it'll be, look how bad it was to end the lockdown in the first place.
00:42:37.000Now, as soon as the Democrats start doing it, as soon as Andrew Cuomo starts doing it in New York, then it'll be the bravery of Andrew Cuomo making the hard choices, guys, making the hard choices.
00:43:07.000And four separate witnesses suggesting that Tara Reade had told them that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her, and told them back at the time that it happened.
00:43:16.000Only now are people starting on the left to say, hey, wait a second, you know, we kind of look hypocritical here if we just sort of blow this thing off.
00:43:22.000Now, there are some people who are blowing it off.
00:43:23.000Nancy Pelosi, for example, is continuing to blow this thing off.
00:43:26.000She says that she believes that Joe Biden's account is good.
00:43:39.000Meanwhile, the Biden campaign was putting out this New York Times story that came out a few weeks ago that kind of went into the details of Tara Reade's shifting story.
00:43:51.000Just like I had very real doubts about Christine Blasey Ford's story.
00:43:54.000The double standard, however, is that the media have completely undermined their own objective stance when they went all out for Christine Blasey Ford and were basically selling Christine Blasey Ford votive candles.
00:44:06.000And then when it comes to Tara Reade, it's like, well, you know, we gotta be, we gotta show some, let's follow the chain of evidence, guys.
00:44:11.000Suddenly they're, suddenly they're Lenny from law and order when it comes to, when it comes to tracking down actual facts, if a Democrat is involved.
00:44:18.000When it's a Republican, it's like, oh, there's an allegation.
00:44:22.000In any case, the New York Times ran down the story in mid-April.
00:44:26.000It did not suggest that Tara Reade was actually—it didn't debunk Tara Reade's whole story.
00:44:30.000It asked serious questions about Tara Reade's story.
00:44:32.000The Biden campaign then put it out there that the New York Times had debunked Tara Reade's story, and the New York Times was forced to come out and issue a statement saying, oh, no, we didn't.
00:44:41.000According to the Times Vice President of Communications, Danielle Rodes Ha, she said in a statement, Our investigation made no conclusion either way.
00:44:47.000points being circulated by the Biden campaign that inaccurately suggest a New York Times investigation found that Tara Reid's allegation did not happen.
00:44:54.000Our investigation made no conclusion either way.
00:44:56.000As BuzzFeed correctly reported, our story found three former Senate aides whom Reid said she complained to contemporaneously, all of whom either did not remember the incident or said it did not happen.
00:45:05.000So the Rhodes-Haven said that reporters described a significant amount of evidence supporting She said, The Times also spoke to a friend who said Reid told her the details of the allegation at the time.
00:45:16.000So the New York Times being forced to rebut Biden campaign talking points based on the New York Times story is pretty solid stuff.
00:46:04.000Because he had the gall to mention that perhaps Joe Biden should say something about the allegations.
00:46:08.000Part of the difficult lesson of the MeToo era is not that every accusation is true and everything should be believed on its face, but that you do have to fight yourself when you feel that impulse.
00:46:19.000You have to do that in order to take seriously what is being alleged and what the evidence is and to evaluate it.
00:46:25.000And that is the case with the accusation by a woman named Tara Reid against Joe Biden.
00:46:30.000Reid briefly worked as a Senate aide in Biden's office in the early 90s.
00:46:33.000Last year, she told a California newspaper that in 1993, Joe Biden, quote, touched her several times, making her feel uncomfortable.
00:46:41.000Okay, so the fact that Chris Hayes even covered it meant that he was trending last night.
00:46:44.000People were literally trending, fire Chris Hayes, which demonstrates the same people who are tweeting, hashtag MeToo, hashtag BelieveAllWomen, were tweeting last night, hashtag fire Chris Hayes.
00:46:54.000But there is a groundswell of upset over the Tara Reid allegations.
00:46:57.000A New York writer named Rebecca Traister was on national TV last night, suggesting that Biden actually needs to answer questions.
00:47:03.000He doesn't just get to ignore all of this.
00:47:06.000What this is creating is a kind of perfect storm where the women who are being asked to support his opponent are now also being asked to answer for these charges in part because of the vacuum created by Joe Biden, who is not yet really directly answering these questions and certainly not doing what I wish he would, which is to say, please direct your questions about these allegations to me and not the women that are out there offering their support to my candidacy.
00:47:35.000I mean, basically all of these women who are trying to audition for vice president for Joe Biden are out there answering questions about Joe Biden and what he did in 1993 or did not do.
00:47:43.000And Joe Biden has been hiding in his basement talking with Hillary Clinton and occasionally fainting because he is not really all that alive at this point.
00:47:50.000There is a groundswell building against Joe Biden on this, and he's going to have to address it.
00:47:53.000Now, once he addresses it, then the media will just dismiss it.
00:47:56.000As soon as he says, listen, I think that all women should have a right to tell their story, but this didn't happen, and I don't remember Tara Reid.
00:48:03.000I've had many interns over the years, but I certainly would have remembered doing something.
00:48:06.000Then the media will basically just let it go.
00:48:08.000But Biden is going to have to speak about it, and this is going to hover around Biden.
00:48:12.000For people who suggest, by the way, that Trump is not going to be able to use this because Biden will just point out Trump's own wild history with regard to women.
00:48:21.000The stuff about Biden is more damaging to Biden because it cuts against the grain of what Biden is campaigning on.
00:48:26.000Trump never really campaigned on, I am Chris, I am absolutely clean with women.
00:48:30.000He never campaigned on that, like ever.
00:48:33.000That is what Biden campaigns on, so it will be damaging to Biden.
00:48:35.000Now, meanwhile, the polls for President Trump don't look great right now.
00:48:39.000If the economy recovers, Trump has a shot at victory.
00:48:41.000If the economy continues to suck, Trump is in real trouble.
00:48:44.000That is also true with regard to the volatility of his commentary.
00:48:48.000According to the Associated Press, President Trump erupted at top political advisors last week when they presented him with worrisome polling data that showed his support eroding in a series of battleground states as his response to coronavirus comes under criticism.
00:49:00.000While Trump saw some of his best approval ratings of his presidency during the early weeks of the crisis, aides highlighted the growing political cost of the crisis and the unforced errors by Trump in his freewheeling press briefings.
00:49:12.000He said, I'm not effing losing to Joe Biden.
00:49:15.000This is according to five people with knowledge of the conversations.
00:49:18.000Trump was being told that he was trailing in a lot of the battleground states.
00:49:23.000The president should take the advice of his advisors on this one.
00:49:25.000The fact is that if the president continues to be volatile in his approach to this thing at a time when people are looking for solidity, that is going to continue to be a problem for him.
00:49:37.000An insane, insane story involving Michael Flynn.
00:49:40.000It seems like the case against Michael Flynn not only is falling apart, it looks like, frankly, a railroad job by the FBI.
00:49:57.000He's got a series, a three-part series on Cato, sorry, on Cicero, rather, the famous Roman philosopher and politician who is involved in many of the chief events surrounding the rise of Julius Caesar.
00:50:12.000The first of these books is called Imperium.
00:50:16.000Robert Harris was a reporter I believe for the BBC and now he writes historical novels.
00:50:19.000He also wrote a book that I'm in the middle of right now called An Officer and a Spy.
00:50:24.000And this one has been made into a movie by Roman Polanski.
00:50:27.000But because we live in an era in which if a director did something evil, horrible, criminal, We're not going to release his movie anymore.
00:50:34.000Nobody can actually get a hold of the film.
00:50:35.000So the same people in Hollywood who are giving Roman Polanski a standing ovation for winning Best Director at the Oscars for The Pianist now will not give distribution to a film about the Dreyfus Affair in France because Roman Polanski is a criminal, is a convicted criminal, a convicted rapist in the United States.
00:50:50.000Now, here's my view of Roman Polanski.
00:50:56.000If the standard is going to be that you only get to view the art of people who are morally good, you can kiss goodbye to art because it turns out artists are notoriously crappy human beings.
00:51:05.000But this has little to do with Robert Harris.
00:51:07.000His book Imperium is really a fun read.
00:51:09.000If you like sort of the Hilary Mantel style, Novels about historical figures and trying to get in their heads and follow the politics of the era is a really well-researched He also has written a couple of other books one is called fatherland It's an alternative history in which the Nazis won World War two kind of man-in-the-high-castle style But more detailed and check out his work Robert Harris is really really good and Imperium is definitely worth the read Okay time for a thing that I hate
00:51:36.000So yesterday, some documents came out that absolutely make James Comey and the FBI look disastrously corrupt.
00:51:44.000Like, crusading FBI agents, crusading in order to railroad people in the Trump administration early on because they were so convinced, they convinced themselves, that Trump was actually a Russian's cat's paw, and they were going to do anything they needed in order to flip people.
00:51:57.000They're going to do anything they needed in order to prosecute people surrounding Trump so that they could come up with the evidence that surely must be around the next corner.
00:52:04.000So according to Jerry Dunleavy writing at the Washington Examiner, top FBI officials discussed the possibility of prosecuting retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russians as agents planned how to conduct their interview of the Trump National Security Advisor, newly unsealed notes show.
00:52:21.000Unsealed through a consent agreement by Flynn's lawyers and the Justice Department show an email from then-FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker with advice for then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for his call with Flynn on January 24, 2017.
00:52:35.000That is the same day that Flynn was interviewed by Strzok and another FBI agent believed to be Joseph Piedenska.
00:52:41.000The documents also include an email from the day before that then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page sent to Strzok and a member of the FBI's Office of General Counsel whose name is redacted about the federal statute against false statements.
00:52:53.000Additionally, a page of handwritten notes from an FBI official whose identity has not been disclosed to the public was released dated the day of Flynn's FBI interview.
00:53:00.000Now remember, A lot of these people have had serious honesty problems.
00:53:04.000Andrew McCabe was fired for having lied to the FBI about contacts with outside media outlets.
00:53:10.000Peter Strzok was involved in this affair with Lisa Page, and they're writing each other emails about how exactly to question Michael Flynn.
00:53:17.000He is the person, Peter Strzok, who's telling Lisa Page back during the election that they had insurance against Trump winning.
00:53:24.000The author of the notes was previously speculated to be Baker, but on Wednesday it was reported the notes belonged to the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, who led the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
00:53:33.000The notes show the FBI official wondering whether the goal of the Flynn interview was to get Flynn to tell the truth, or to catch him in a lie so he could be charged with a crime or removed from his position.
00:54:43.000Flynn right now is fighting to dismiss the government's case against him.
00:54:45.000He pled guilty in December 2017 to lying to investigators about conversations with Russian diplomat Sergei Kislyak about sanctions on Russia and a UN resolution on Israel.
00:54:54.000The FBI had intercepted Flynn's discussions with the Russian and then grilled him on the contents of the conversation.
00:54:59.000Now again, the FBI should have to explain, really, why exactly they were intercepting those conversations.
00:55:06.000Now they can say we were monitoring the Russians, but again, there's nothing wrong with Michael Flynn talking with the Russians when he's the incoming NSA.
00:55:13.000In January, he told the court he was innocent of this crime.
00:55:16.000He filed to withdraw his guilty plea after the DOJ asked the judge to sentence Flynn to up to six months in prison, though afterward the department said probation would be appropriate.
00:55:24.000Flynn tweeted out a short video showing an American flag flapping in the wind after all of this came out.
00:55:29.000The FBI official wrote, we have a case with Flynn and Russians, and our goal is to determine if Mike Flynn is going to tell the truth about his relationship with the Russians.
00:55:38.000Beneath another column labeled afterwards, the FBI official lists a number of thoughts about the impending Flynn interview that day.
00:55:43.000I agreed yesterday, he wrote, that we shouldn't show Flynn redacted if he didn't admit it.
00:55:47.000When I thought about it last night, I believe we should rethink this.
00:55:55.000The FBI official stated we regularly show subjects evidence with the goal of getting them to admit their wrongdoing.
00:55:59.000I don't see how getting someone to admit their wrongdoing is going easy on him.
00:56:02.000The FBI official also suggested if we get him to admit to breaking the Logan Act, which he did not break, give facts to DOJ and have them decide, or if initially lies, we present him blank and he admits it, documents for DOJ, and let them decide how to address it.
00:56:16.000The FBI said if we're seen as playing games, White House will be furious.
00:56:21.000The list ended with a bullet point that said, protect our institution by not playing games.
00:56:25.000Isn't it the definition of playing a game when the person did not commit an underlying crime or make it or tell a lie that is, or told a lie that is irrelevant to an actual underlying crime, and then you try to prosecute him so you can get him to flip on Trump and people surrounding Trump?
00:56:43.000The newly public email from Page to the FBI General Counsel's office in Destruct had the subject line question regarding 1001.
00:56:49.000That's a reference to 18 U.S. Code 1001, the U.S. federal statute against making false statements to which federal law enforcement officers later used to get Flynn to plead guilty.
00:57:28.000Andrew McCarthy, the conservative commentator, former federal prosecutor from National Review, wrote earlier this week there was no good faith basis for an investigation into General Flynn because under federal law, a false statement made to investigators is not actionable unless it is material.
00:57:42.000Judge Emmett Sullivan, the federal judge presiding over retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn's case, issued an order on Tuesday telling the former National Security Advisor's previous attorneys to re-execute a search of every document and communication pertaining to the firm's representation of Mr. Flynn after it was revealed they failed to turn over thousands of documents to Flynn's new defense team.
00:58:00.000They just lost a bunch of documents to the federal government and didn't turn it over to Flynn's defense team.
00:58:04.000All of this looks deeply, deeply suspicious.
00:58:07.000Flynn's defense lawyers also said on Friday they found further evidence of misconduct by a former Robert Mueller prosecutor, Brandon Van Graak, claiming he made baseless threats to incite Flynn.
00:58:17.000Apparently, what actually happened here is that at a certain point, Flynn was not prosecuted, remember, for a little while after this, and Flynn I mean, ugly.
00:58:26.000brought to to heal by robert muller's team apparently robert muller's team went to him and said if we do not if you do not plead guilty to this or if you do not testify or give us information we're going to prosecute your kid i mean ugly ugly stuff ugly ugly stuff But, you know, the fact that the FBI was engaged in this sort of thing, not good news for James Comey, a man of rectitude above all questions about the law.
00:58:53.000Lindsey Graham says, the senator from South Carolina, Flynn was obviously the victim of an out-of-control DOJ here.
00:58:59.000It's pretty apparent to me that General Flynn was a victim of an out-of-control Department of Justice.
00:59:53.000What's hilarious is that the same people who have ripped into the FBI over and over and over and over for being beyond their capacity are now defending the FBI, engaging in this sort of game-playing as soon as it is directed against somebody who supposedly was going to turn on President Trump.
01:00:09.000It is a good reminder that when you give the government the power of compulsion, People are very likely to misuse it or be corrupt in the ways that they use that sort of power.
01:00:16.000So, it's a libertarian moment for everybody regarding the FBI.
01:00:21.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two hours of additional content.
01:00:24.000Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
01:00:56.000Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
01:00:59.000You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
01:01:06.000But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.