Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, a potentially fatal virus that affects the nervous system and affects only a very small number of people. The CDC has placed the president and first lady under quarantine pending further testing. The White House has released a letter from the CDC confirming the diagnosis and a list of the symptoms of the disease, which include diarrhea, vomiting, headaches, and difficulty swallowing. The CDC is encouraging everyone to stay alert and stay hydrated and rest up to 14 days to recover from the disease. President Trump is 74 years old and weighs over 300 pounds, which is a complicating factor that could make this disease even more deadly than it is currently considered to be, and could have a long-term impact on his political life and the country's economic well-being. Ben Shapiro reacts to the news and offers his thoughts and prayers to the Trump family and the rest of the first couple affected by the disease and the impact on their lives and their families. He also talks about the potential political fallout from this and other similar cases of SARS and other diseases that have been confirmed in the past and the potential impact on the political landscape. Hit me up at and let me know what you think! of the day! and if you have any thoughts on this or any other disease that you think needs to be quarantined or are suffering from SARS or CoV-19. -Ben Shapiro's thoughts on the President Trump's SARS diagnosis and treatment! - Ben Shapiro's gun? - tweet me to . or Ben on in a podcast you ve got a gun at . . or any kind of gun - ? or are looking for a safe place to shoot your own SARS test? or have a gun that s safe place you ll shoot it? - or just want to be safe and sound and have a good time with Ben Shapiro s thoughts on it , any of your thoughts on anything related to SARS? and/or any other good vibes on this? on this is a good thing? Ben sores welcome to Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro is here! or not? ! Thanks Ben Shapiro Thank you for listening for your support, thank you Ben Shapiro:
00:01:58.000And, you know, naturally, all the same people on Twitter with the blue check marks, you would expect, have been just about as nasty as you would expect.
00:02:08.000But the White House doctor did release a note.
00:02:12.000on this. The White House doctor acknowledging that the president has come down with COVID.
00:02:17.000Here is the letter. It says, I release the following information with the permission of President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. This evening, I received confirmation that both President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 virus.
00:02:29.000The president and first lady are both well at this time.
00:02:30.000They plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence. The White House medical team and I will maintain a I appreciate the support provided by some of our country's greatest medical professions and institutions.
00:02:40.000Rest assured, I expect the president to continue carrying out his duties without disruption while recovering.
00:02:44.000I'll keep you updated on any future developments.
00:02:47.000Now, obviously, we don't know the direction that COVID-19 is going to take.
00:03:08.000Honestly, I think from a political point of view, obviously politics comes second.
00:03:11.000So our prayers go out to the Trump family, just as they go out to any family that is suffering with COVID-19, which can in fact be a very serious disease.
00:03:20.000Politically speaking, this throws a wrench into a lot of what's going on because we have a debate that is scheduled for about two weeks from now.
00:03:27.000Presumably, if the president goes through the process and then he quarantines for 14 days, he will get out, I believe, literally the day of the debate to do that debate.
00:03:37.000It obviously throws a wrench into his campaign schedule.
00:03:39.000He's not going to be going out and doing public events for quite a while because he's supposed to, according to the CDC, quarantine for 10 to 14 days.
00:03:45.000We have to see, of course, the vector that the disease is going to take.
00:03:49.000Which direction the disease is going to take.
00:03:52.000Here, the political fallout here is pretty obvious for Trump.
00:03:56.000And the political fallout, as we'll see, is largely surrounding the severity of the disease.
00:04:01.000If Trump recovers from the disease quickly, if it turns out that this virus is something that doesn't affect him really badly, and that in four or five days, he's basically back to normal, he has a mild case, then he's gonna be able to go out and he's gonna say, listen, I know that this thing definitely affects some people truly terribly, and we have to protect those people, we have to make sure they get all the care that they could possibly need.
00:04:22.000But the truth is that the vast majority of cases tend to be rather mild.
00:04:54.000So if he recovers quickly and if he recovers easily, he's going to be able to say with a certain amount of credibility that it is important to recognize that this disease does not affect everybody equivalently, that many of these cases are mild, and it's important to keep that in mind when we are talking about recovery and the campaign probably moves on.
00:05:10.000Obviously, if it's Much more severe than we don't just have a political issue on our hands.
00:05:14.000We have like an actual human life issue on our hands.
00:05:17.000Now, it turns out a lot of people have been infected inside the White House.
00:05:20.000Apparently, this thing started with Hope Hicks is the current supposition.
00:05:25.000Hope Hicks, of course, is a top aide to the President of the United States.
00:05:28.000Other people who have tested positive at this point include Ronna McDaniel.
00:05:32.000She's a guest a little bit earlier on the show this week.
00:05:35.000Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the RNC, according to the New York Times, has tested positive for COVID and is experiencing mild symptoms, according to several people briefed on the situation.
00:05:43.000McDaniel is the latest person in frequent contact with Trump to test positive for the virus.
00:05:47.000Apparently, she received her diagnosis on Wednesday, and after a crowded donor event in March at Mar-a-Lago, the president's private club in Florida, Ms.
00:05:53.000McDaniel fell ill, but she tested negative way back then.
00:05:57.000Of course, Trump is not the first world leader to be infected.
00:05:59.000Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain had a very serious case.
00:06:03.000President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil tested positive as well.
00:06:07.000Bolsonaro's case was much milder than Johnson's case.
00:06:11.000Both of those men are significantly younger than Trump.
00:06:14.000He is older and probably at higher risk, just on a basic medical level, than either of those people.
00:06:20.000It is true that a lot of people today are pointing out Trump's personal behavior, and we'll get into that in just a second.
00:06:27.000And they're pointing out that earlier this week, he seemed lethargic and that, you know, he maybe should have taken precautions at that point while he was being tested.
00:06:33.000At that point, Mike Pence, for what it's worth, Mike Pence and the second lady, Karen Pence, have both tested negative for the virus at this point.
00:06:42.000And it is also true that A lot of people get this thing, and a lot of people recover from this thing, and a lot of people get it under different circumstances.
00:06:50.000For example, Justin Trudeau's wife had this thing.
00:06:53.000And so, there's this sort of belief out there, this talismanic belief, that if you do all of the right things, or what's even more bizarre, if you say all of the right things, that you're immune from the disease.
00:07:02.000One of the things that's very frustrating to people who watch this, and attempt to be objective in any real way about this, is that there are certain things you can do to minimize the chances that you're gonna get it.
00:07:10.000There's no guarantee you're not gonna get it, because we're all living life.
00:07:13.000You're going to run into contact with people, N95 masks may provide you a significant barrier, they may provide you real protection, but cloth masks don't provide you the same protection.
00:07:23.000The original idea of cloth masks was that mainly you're preventing other people from getting it, not that it prevents you from getting it.
00:07:29.000There was a point a month ago where Anthony Fauci was suggesting this thing is transmissible via the eyes.
00:07:34.000So he was suggesting that people actually wear goggles if they could.
00:07:37.000So there's no guarantee that you're not going to get it.
00:07:38.000There are things you can do to minimize it, and we'll talk about whether Trump has done those things.
00:07:41.000But there's this belief on the left, as we'll see, that even more than any of that, if you virtue signal about the virus, this acts as some sort of protection.
00:07:50.000So Trump's great sin here was not even his personal behavior.
00:07:54.000If Trump had just said, I'm super serious about it over and over and over, it would have been fine.
00:07:58.000Or if Trump presumably had protested it like a Black Lives Matter rally, he wouldn't have gotten it.
00:08:02.000Or if he did get it, then it would have been worth it because he would have been protesting racism.
00:08:06.000One of the big problems with this entire debacle since March is that where we should have been following the science and being measured in our language about what works and what doesn't, where we should have pointed out that risk factors vary by age, where we should have pointed out That certain types of masks are better than other types of masks.
00:08:23.000And we should have stopped this sort of virtue signaling about how if you wear a mask, but it's below your nose, that's better than not wearing a mask at all or something.
00:08:30.000Or that if you wear a neck gaiter, that's, I mean, the CDC has said, by the way, a neck gaiter is actually worse than nothing.
00:08:35.000A neck gaiter actually helps aerosolize your spit.
00:08:38.000Like if you sneeze into a neck gaiter, it actually blows it through the thing like a sieve.
00:08:42.000And then it just kind of makes it go further.
00:08:47.000Okay, so My big problem here is twofold.
00:08:50.000One, I think there's some legit criticisms to be made of how Trump has personally, in terms of his attitude and what he's conveyed to other people and his personal behavior, has handled COVID.
00:08:58.000I also think that the media have set up these bizarre standards where you are immune to the disease if you are protesting for racial justice, where if you run around and virtue signal about wearing a mask 100 feet from other people, this somehow makes you immune to the disease when it really has nothing to do with any of that.
00:09:17.000There's this sort of talismanic worship of particular modes of discussing this disease.
00:09:22.000That if you take it super seriously, then at least you're protected from the backlash or the mockery if you do get it.
00:09:28.000And again, that is completely separated from the public policy discussion.
00:09:32.000It's completely separated from a rational scientific discussion of these issues.
00:09:35.000So for example, I've said on the show many times that if you're my age, if you're 36 and you're, thank God, healthy, I'm 36 and I'm healthy, I don't have any underlying conditions, if I get this thing I'm not particularly afraid of getting this thing because I'm 36 and I have no underlying conditions.
00:09:50.000And then I said it is also possible that I could die of this thing if I get it because it is possible that anybody could die of this thing if they get it, although the chances are extremely unlikely.
00:09:58.000Now, because I've said the former part, which is that, statistically speaking, I'm extremely unlikely to die of this disease, if, God forbid, something were to happen to me, then the media would jump on that and suggest that I was taking it lightly, even though I specifically say, at the end of that sentence, that it could happen to me, it's just very unlikely that it's going to happen to me.
00:10:15.000People do not seem to understand how statistics work in any real way.
00:10:18.000So if you say things like, Trump has said before, that not very many people are dying of this thing relative to the percentage of the population at this point, depending on age, That may be statistically true.
00:10:43.000That's not an example of him not taking it seriously.
00:10:46.000And you saying that you are at high risk if you're five, as opposed to if you're 80, is actually being statistically Irresponsible with the information, but morally irresponsible, right?
00:10:55.000This is sort of the divide that has happened, is that if you discuss this thing in a statistically responsible way, then you are charged with being morally irresponsible.
00:11:04.000And if you say things that are statistically irresponsible, if you say, well, yes, it's true that older people get it, but if you're young, you definitely could die of it without any sort of examination of the base rates or of the actual death rates, the infection fatality rates, then you are considered good.
00:11:16.000And so if something happens to you, then we can say, well, at least you took it seriously, right?
00:11:21.000It's become a moral battle as much as it has been a scientific battle.
00:11:25.000We'll get to more of that in just one second.
00:11:27.000And we will trace President Trump's actions over the past few days.
00:11:30.000Members of the media are starting to go nuts because now they are saying that Kayleigh McEnany was exposed to this thing back on Wednesday.
00:11:35.000Did she know that she was exposed to this thing back on Wednesday when she did her presser?
00:11:40.000Yes, I'm sure Kayleigh McEnany walked into the press room and just deliberately blew COVID all over everybody.
00:11:45.000I'm sure that she hates the press that much, Kayleigh McEnany.
00:11:47.000I mean, we're getting a little bit over our skis here, guys.
00:12:50.000Head on over to RockAuto.com right now, see all the parts available for the car or truck, and write Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know that we sent you.
00:12:56.000Again, write my name, Shapiro, in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know that we sent you.
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00:13:22.000I assume that Joe Biden is being continuously tested, as well he should be.
00:13:24.000I mean, Joe Biden is 78 years old, and he does not look like he is in significantly wonderful health.
00:13:29.000So I'm hoping, you know, truly, that Joe Biden is being regularly tested.
00:13:33.000By the way, I hope that everybody who's suspicious that they might have symptoms is regularly tested, or that if you're going to be in contact with somebody who is vulnerable, that you're regularly tested.
00:13:43.000Yeah, I would say pretty meticulous on this sort of stuff.
00:13:46.000I think since March, I've been tested some five times, knowing that I was going to be in contact with somebody else.
00:13:54.000I believe that testing is a very, very good thing.
00:13:56.000And I'm hopeful and I'm sure that Joe Biden has been tested for this thing.
00:14:02.000But the president was in contact with Joe Biden a little bit earlier this week.
00:14:06.000Apparently, it was evident earlier this week that he was feeling poorly.
00:14:10.000Like, as of Tuesday, Wednesday, it became pretty clear that he was a little bit under the weather.
00:14:16.000According to the UK Daily Mail, fears that the president may have contracted the virus were raised after it was revealed that Hope Hicks had traveled on both Marine One, the presidential helicopter, and on Air Force One in the last seven days, which transported the president and his staff to the presidential debate on Tuesday and other campaign rallies around the country.
00:14:30.000Hicks also traveled with the president to a rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday, where she was seen maskless and clapping to the Village People's YMCA.
00:14:36.000She's also been pictured with Jared Kushner and other senior White House staff in that time.
00:14:40.000Now, Jared and Ivanka have both tested negative.
00:14:42.000for COVID. So that means the Depenses have tested negative.
00:14:45.000It means the Kushners have tested negative. Trump and his wife have tested positive. Ronald McDaniel has tested positive. That's what we know thus far. So here is sort of the timeline.
00:14:53.000September 26th, the Trump family flew to Pennsylvania where they did a bit of an event. The president did meet with Judge Amy Coney Barrett a little bit earlier this week.
00:15:08.000Again, right now, the date is October 2nd.
00:15:10.000So the chances that he conveyed it to Amy Coney Barrett are extremely, extremely low.
00:15:22.000And by the way, even if she did, that would not be a case for pushing off the confirmation so long as she is capable of Zooming into the session.
00:15:27.000I mean, they literally had James Comey testify in front of the Senate by Zoom.
00:15:31.000So Amy Coney Barrett could do exactly the same thing.
00:15:34.000On September 28th, President Trump gave an update on COVID-19 testing strategy with the VP before meeting with White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro to inspect a new electric pickup truck.
00:15:47.000Before boarding Marine One, the president was pictured waving to crowds of supporters During the debate, they stood Trump and Biden over six feet apart, but they did not wear masks, obviously.
00:15:58.000On September 30th, which is just a couple of days ago, at which point it is probable that Trump had contracted COVID, right?
00:16:04.000Because Hope Hicks was confirmed on Wednesday.
00:16:06.000Ivanka Trump shared a picture of her Instagram account with her and her dad on Air Force One.
00:16:11.000Later that day, the president traveled again with Hope Hicks to another campaign rally, this time in Duluth, Minnesota.
00:16:16.000He was seen in front of a large crowd of people, many of whom were not wearing masks.
00:16:19.000He threw a hat into the crowd on October 1st.
00:16:22.000Before Trump would later announce his positive test results, Ivanka was pictured visiting Charlotte, North Carolina, mingling with members of the public.
00:16:27.000And Trump attended a fundraiser in New Jersey where he participated in a roundtable with a bunch of supporters, apparently many of whom are now very nervous because he was in close proximity to them.
00:16:37.000All of this, of course, raises questions about the president's personal behavior in the aftermath of Hope Hicks doing this.
00:16:45.000Should he have been in close contact with people?
00:16:48.000Given the fact that he is 74 years old and, again, overweight, if I were advising the president, I would have told him a long time ago that he should be masked up in close proximity to people.
00:16:56.000I've told my own parents they should be masked up in close proximity to people, and my parents are 64, not 74.
00:17:10.000That does carry questions about the messaging that he's been pushing to the American public about being cautious.
00:17:15.000And this is what the media have been jumping on full scale.
00:17:18.000So in a second, we're going to get to some of the classy leftists and then we'll get to some of the not classy leftists.
00:17:23.000And then we'll get into the broader debate over Trump and how this affects the election and everything that has to do with Trump's promulgation of messaging on COVID.
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00:18:52.000this. She tweeted out, God bless the president and the first lady. If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery and for everyone infected everywhere. This virus is horrific and merciless. No one would wish its wrath on anyone. We must get it spread and under control enough. Okay, that is a class irresponsible.
00:19:06.000Joe Biden, for his part, sends a classy response.
00:19:09.000He tweeted out, Jill and I send our thoughts to President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump for a swift recovery.
00:19:13.000We will continue to pray for the health and safety of the President and his family.
00:19:23.000The former national spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and former Obama White House staffer, her name is Zahra Rahim, she tweeted out, literally, it's been against my moral identity to tweet this for the past four years, but I hope he dies.
00:20:03.000And it's a picture of a man flipping somebody off.
00:20:07.000Marley Rivera, a sports writer for ESPN, said, there is a God.
00:20:11.000John Fuglesang, alleged comedian and originator of the term being Fuglesang, which means somebody tells a really stupid joke about you, but then thinks they're really funny.
00:20:36.000Because the media are interested in the narrative above all.
00:20:40.000Now, again, there are a couple things that the media ought to mention at the top.
00:20:43.000One is you can take as many protective measures as you want.
00:20:46.000There's no guarantee you're not going to get COVID.
00:20:48.000That is just a reality of the situation.
00:20:50.000That doesn't mean that you should ignore those protective measures if you don't want to get COVID.
00:20:53.000It does mean that pretending that you have the all-sure knowledge of when people are going to get COVID and how they get COVID Then I guess you know more than virtually all of the medical professionals because we are still trying to figure out who the super spreaders are, how they spread, under what conditions this thing spreads.
00:21:09.000We're seven months in and we still don't know the answers to a lot of these questions, but apparently Don Lemon does.
00:21:14.000So CNN's Don Lemon, who is just the worst.
00:21:15.000I mean, he is, I was for a while wondering whether Don Lemon was the dumbest man on TV or if it was Chris Cuomo.
00:21:20.000It's pretty obviously Don Lemon at this point.
00:21:34.000Trump said that the Democratic response to the virus, which was that the White House was totally inept and all of this, he said the media playing up the White House's bad response was a hoax.
00:21:45.000Okay, and you may agree with that or you may disagree with that, but he never said the virus itself is a hoax.
00:21:49.000I mean, go back and look at the actual comments.
00:21:50.000This has been fact-checked by virtually every fact-checker.
00:21:52.000It is not true that Trump called COVID-19 a hoax, but Don Lemon, your objective journalism expert over at CNN, he says that the president, the hoax got him, the hoax got him.
00:22:04.000Is this a moment of reckoning for the president and this administration?
00:22:08.000For all of the pretending or looking the other way, and trying to convince people otherwise of the science, for whatever reason, whether it was to make sure that he was re-elected, to make sure that he had high standing with the public, or just for whatever reason, because of the economy, is this now a moment of reckoning that Yes, this is real.
00:22:41.000So again, the media's take here is that if Trump had just said the right things, if Trump had been super strict in what he said, then he wouldn't have gotten COVID.
00:22:48.000And this is part and parcel of the media's general take on COVID, which is that the only thing that you can do and receive the media's world wisdom And all of their sycophantic love is just shut everything down, right?
00:23:00.000This is part and parcel of the entire lockdown debate, because their view is that if you lock everything down, then you can be blamed for nothing.
00:23:07.000Whereas if you say that certain things should be open, or if you talk about the gradated risks of COVID, if you talk about the actual fact regarding mask wearing, which is that the evidence is somewhat mixed, given the fact that in Northern Europe they don't mask up, in Southern Europe they do mask up, and there are differential rates, that tend to benefit Northern Europe, or the fact that you actually have to have a class on how to wear a mask properly, or that different types of masks serve differently, right?
00:23:29.000If you mention any of that, then they will say that you are downplaying the effectiveness of masks because it's proven that if you wear a mask, it's better than if you don't wear a mask.
00:23:35.000Okay, well, that is true if everyone properly wears the mask, but it is not true if there are people who are improperly wearing the mask, or if they're wearing it under their nose, right?
00:23:42.000If you mention any of that stuff, they say you are downplaying mask wearing, because we have now conflated, and this is a deeper conversation, we have now conflated in American politics People saying true things and people inferring things from those true things.
00:23:54.000So if I say a fact and somebody infers something that I don't agree with from that fact, the media will hold me responsible for the inference.
00:24:02.000If I say something that is factual and somebody takes it too far, the media will then try to hold me responsible for the inference.
00:24:12.000If somebody on the right says something and it happens to be a true thing, and then somebody takes that true thing and spins it completely out of proportion and does something crazy based on it, they will hold the right responsible for it.
00:24:23.000On the left, you can say virtually anything you want, whether it's true or false, and the media will never hold you responsible for the baseline factual truth or falsity of the situation.
00:24:32.000But this is one of the things that's happened with the entire COVID discussion.
00:24:35.000So if Ron DeSantis in Florida says, here, by age and by preexisting condition, is the death rate on COVID?
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00:26:38.000Let's talk for a second about some of the stuff that Trump has said because very often Trump will say something that is Fairly factual, but said in a particular manner.
00:26:46.000And so the media focus in on the matter rather than on the fact of what he is saying.
00:27:49.000But he's sort of been on all sides of the issue.
00:27:51.000So, you know, the wishy-washiness of it is kind of a problem.
00:27:54.000But it is not true that Trump never wears masks.
00:27:57.000It's not true that Trump never promotes social distancing.
00:27:59.000As far as White House staff not wearing masks, some White House staff do wear masks.
00:28:03.000Other White House staff do not wear masks.
00:28:05.000As far as White House staff not socially distancing, some White House staff do, some White House staff do not.
00:28:09.000I know many members of the White House staff.
00:28:12.000And as far as him holding large rallies and events where no one wears masks and no one socially distances, again, the media don't really have that much of a leg to stand on here, given the fact that they have been promoting huge open-air rallies with people not masked dancing around like idiots in the streets for months at a time.
00:28:29.000So there's a bit of hypocrisy there as well.
00:28:32.000Okay, so perfect example of the difference between Trump saying something that happens to be kind of factually true and the implication taken away from it and Trump being blamed for the implication.
00:29:19.000You have to understand, if you look, I mean, I have a mask right here.
00:29:21.000I put a mask on, you know, when I think I need it.
00:29:24.000Tonight, as an example, everybody's had a test and you've had social distancing and all of the things that you have to, but I wear masks when needed.
00:30:01.000But people took that as Trump is dismissive of masks overall.
00:30:04.000And this does go to the power that I think that many members of the media and many members of the left think that political figures have over people's lives.
00:30:12.000So people on the left believe that the reason that Joe Biden should wear a mask is because he needs to model to the American public that you need to wear a mask in all circumstances.
00:30:19.000And that if he is wearing a mask 200 feet away from everybody else, then you should certainly be wearing a mask in close quarters.
00:30:24.000Whereas Trump doesn't tend to model that behavior very well.
00:30:27.000There's a lot of pictures of him not wearing a mask when he is fairly close with other people.
00:30:38.000And You know, that's the way it works.
00:30:42.000I mean, people around him are being regularly tested, presumably.
00:30:45.000Well, now that he's gotten that, that's come to bite him in the butt, for sure.
00:30:48.000But if you watch that clip, he's not saying never wear a mask.
00:30:51.000The media take that as he's saying never wear a mask.
00:30:54.000And this has become the media's talking point, is that masks are some sort of full-on guarantee.
00:30:59.000So here is Chris Cuomo, the other block of wood over at CNN, saying that Trump wouldn't have needed to quarantine if he and his staff wore masks all the time.
00:31:07.000The president may have to self-quarantine.
00:31:12.000And if she had had a mask on, and if he had had a mask on, the chance that she would be sick now... This is more about the person at the top setting the example.
00:31:22.000If the president had said, if he had made it mandatory in his meetings when he is in contact with her to wear a mask, Then we may not be in this situation.
00:31:58.000So, I'll be honest with you, I think that it will have some effectiveness.
00:32:01.000Just politically speaking, I think it will have some effectiveness.
00:32:03.000Because the American public basically breaks down into three groups.
00:32:08.000It breaks down into a group of people who say that the virus is so serious that it's going to kill everyone.
00:32:13.000There are people who are sort of panicked about the virus, to the point where a 28-year-old will say, I'm not... Like, this literally happened at a local school.
00:32:23.000A 28-year-old teacher who is in good health Send an email to the parents saying, I would come to school and I'd be willing to take a bullet for your kids at school, but I'm not willing to die by getting COVID from your kids.
00:32:50.000Like, that's also not particularly smart.
00:32:52.000And then there are a bunch of people, I think, who are in the middle, who are just kind of cautious about this, and who don't particularly love the masking.
00:33:19.000What happens to Trump personally is now fully tied up with where we go as a country on COVID, which is kind of stupid, but that's how the human brain works, unfortunately.
00:33:29.000The reason I say it's stupid is because public policy should not be attached to anecdotal evidence.
00:33:34.000Public policy should be attached to the best available data.
00:33:37.000Public policy should be about how you make the best policy for the greatest number of people.
00:33:42.000It should not be about your attitude about Trump or Trump's attitude about masks or what you take from Trump's attitude about masks.
00:33:47.000You're supposed to be an independent human being who's able to make their own analysis of the issues and of the data.
00:33:53.000That doesn't excuse people when they take things too lightly or when they take things way too seriously.
00:34:00.000It does mean that you as an individual, responsible human being, you ought to be looking at the data.
00:34:04.000And when we make public policy, we shouldn't be basing it on like, well, did Trump had a super serious case or not super serious case?
00:34:09.000But unfortunately, people are Very frequently dumb animals.
00:34:16.000And so if Trump gets this thing very seriously, then the chances of future lockdowns are gonna be much greater.
00:34:22.000People are going to skew toward the side that I think takes it so seriously they shut down economies again.
00:34:26.000And if Trump has a very mild case, he's gonna be able to come out and he's gonna say, listen, the vast majority of people who get this are gonna live.
00:34:32.000The vast majority of people who get this are fine.
00:34:34.000The vast majority of people who get this are not going to die.
00:34:40.000And maybe people will be like, oh, okay, well, you know, that's true.
00:34:45.000People tend to respond to anecdotal evidence in a way they do not to data.
00:34:48.000And that is just a flaw in the human brain.
00:34:50.000It also happens to be true that when we discuss public policy on this stuff, it is extremely political.
00:34:56.000So one of the tweets that was getting, one of the clips that was getting tweeted out a lot after it came out that Trump has COVID was this clip from earlier in the day where Trump said that the end of the pandemic is in sight.
00:35:08.000We have reduced the fatality rate by 85% since just April.
00:35:13.000We're on track to develop and distribute a vaccine before the end of the year, and maybe substantially before.
00:35:20.000And I just want to say that the end of the pandemic is in sight, and next year will be one of the greatest years in the history of our country.
00:36:00.000Again, public policy is not about whether Trump personally gets COVID.
00:36:04.000Just like the death rate on COVID has nothing to do with what personally happens to me.
00:36:10.000People's unbelievable misunderstanding of the data is really a problem.
00:36:14.000If I were to get COVID and God forbid I were to die, people would immediately go, well, it must be very, very dangerous for people my age.
00:36:19.000It is not very dangerous for people my age.
00:36:21.000I just happened to be the unlucky dude who drew the black marble out of the bag of 1,001 marbles, 1,000 of which were white.
00:36:27.000That does not mean that it's super dangerous for everybody else in my age cohort.
00:36:32.000But unfortunately, people tend to jump to that.
00:36:33.000So people ignore the public policy in favor of the personal.
00:36:38.000It also happens to be true that many Democrats do not take the masking particularly seriously.
00:36:42.000Yesterday, the Democratic Pennsylvania governor and a state rep were caught on a hot mic joking about masks being political theater, which is always a good look.
00:36:51.000By the way, it is true that when Trump has criticized some forms of mask wearing, I don't know about you.
00:37:08.000You actually have to be told how to don PPE properly.
00:37:11.000If you take a mask, a cloth mask, and you futz around with your hands with it, and then you put it in your pocket, and then when you're drinking or eating, and then you put it back on your face, and you've been eating with your hands, right?
00:37:26.000Have you actually done anything to prevent the spread of the disease?
00:37:30.000You may have actually increased the chance that you gave yourself the disease by putting your hands directly on the mask and then breathing it in, right?
00:37:34.000Like, there are serious problems with that.
00:37:36.000That does not mean that you shouldn't wear a mask.
00:37:37.000It means you should be careful in how you treat the mask.
00:37:39.000But people are conflating the ideal with the reality, and that isn't particularly true.
00:37:44.000And here's the thing, a lot of Democrats even know this, right?
00:37:46.000Here's the Pennsylvania Democratic governor joking about mask theater.
00:37:51.000So Wendy, I'm going to take my mask off when I speak.
00:38:05.000Okay, so there they are joking about, you know, I'm going to take the mask off as soon as I'm off camera, but when I'm on camera, I'm going to put the mask back on.
00:38:12.000So much of the, so people on the left will say, okay, yeah, but the virtue signaling is good because you're signaling to people that they should wear the mask.
00:38:18.000It's also possible that the virtue signaling is overwrought because it's now suggesting that people should wear masks in some of the dumbest possible ways.
00:38:24.000Speaking of virtue signaling in the dumbest possible ways, the Chicago mayor, Lori Lightfoot, she actually went to a press conference dressed as what she called the Rona Fighter.
00:39:17.000Speaking of people following the science on the left, in a second, we're gonna get to California, which has decided on standards for reopening.
00:39:25.000And the standards on reopening, shall we say, are mildly anti-scientific.
00:39:28.000When I say mildly anti-scientific, I mean wildly anti-scientific.
00:39:32.000First, let us talk about the most comfortable sheets and pillows on the market.
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00:41:13.000First, I have to mention a few things.
00:41:15.000One, we have another Sunday special coming up.
00:41:18.000You don't want to miss a great episode.
00:41:20.000This weekend, Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight comes on the show to talk about his acclaimed acting career, his journey to conservatism, and an inside look into being a conservative in Hollywood.
00:41:28.000Head on over to dailywire.com or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
00:41:33.000Here's a little bit of what it sounded like.
00:41:37.000At the end of the war, when we pulled out of Vietnam, two and a half million people were killed as people trying to cling to helicopters to hold on to their lives.
00:41:47.000And I saw that and I was shocked because they showed me what communism was.
00:42:12.000The caption reads, third fire this weekend means it's definitely fall in New England.
00:42:16.000Spent the day figuring out how to take apart the pool, winding up the weekend with black rifle coffee, hot cocoa, and my leftist seer's tumbler with a treat from Oxford Baking Company, listening to the official Ben Shapiro Sunday special.
00:42:25.000Love the civil conversations between people across the political aisle from each other.
00:42:37.000Don't miss this week's show with Jon Voight.
00:42:39.000Also, if you liked our debate coverage on Tuesday night, or even if you didn't, you should go join Daily Wire right now as an insider or All Access member.
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00:44:20.000So, according to the Los Angeles Times, California's larger counties will not be permitted to reopen their economies further unless they reduce coronavirus infections in the hardest-hit places where the poor, black people, Latinos, and Pacific Islanders live.
00:44:34.000Under a new state requirement for reopening during the pandemic, counties with more than 106,000 residents must bring infections down in these places and invest heavily there in testing, contact tracing, outreach, and providing means for infected people to isolate.
00:44:46.000LA is one county sure to be affected along with others in Southern California.
00:44:51.000The measure is designed to ensure that test positivity rates in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods do not significantly exceed a county's overall rate, a disparity that has been widespread during the pandemic.
00:44:59.000So in other words, if there is one section of the city where nobody has it, and there's a section of the city where a lot of people have it for a variety of reasons, including that poverty tends to be a sort of comorbidity with this thing.
00:45:12.000There's also significant comorbidity, racial comorbidities.
00:45:17.000And this exists, by the way, not just in the United States, it exists in Europe as well.
00:45:20.000People of color have been dying at a higher rate of this thing in Europe than they have white people in Europe.
00:45:25.000And we're still trying to discover the reasons why.
00:45:27.000Some of those reasons may include other comorbidities that are not evenly spread across the races.
00:45:31.000Like, for example, diabetes or obesity.
00:45:34.000There have been some possibilities that link this to, for example, genetic predisposition to sickle cell anemia.
00:45:40.000What this does suggest is that now they're going to take the section of the city that has no cases, and they're going to shut it down out of a misguided sense of equity, right?
00:45:52.000That now, if you have a section of the city, you have Beverly Hills, right?
00:45:56.000And then you have South Central Los Angeles, and it has many cases.
00:45:59.000You're gonna shut down both of them because it is unfair that Beverly Hills doesn't have enough cases, while South Central has too many cases.
00:46:08.000You're going to shut down the entire economy and deprive people of their livelihoods and their jobs?
00:46:11.000And by the way, the ability for people in South Central to work, because many of those people work for companies that are owned by people who live in Beverly Hills.
00:46:19.000You're going to shut down the entire system because of racial inequalities?
00:46:23.000Seriously, like the entire system you're going to shut down?
00:46:30.000According to the state's acting public health officer, Dr. Erica Pan, our entire state has come together to redouble our efforts to reduce the devastating toll COVID-19 has had on our Latino, Black, and Pacific Islander communities.
00:46:40.000Look, we should be expending resources wherever there is a problem, regardless of race and regardless of income level.
00:46:45.000We should be trying to bring down the positivity rates everywhere.
00:46:48.000But you're suggesting we now lock down perfectly healthy areas because there are other areas that are perfectly unhealthy and the healthy areas tend to be whiter and the unhealthy areas tend to be more minority.
00:46:56.000So we're going to punish the white people for not having enough COVID is basically the idea here, which is totally crazy.
00:47:03.000And if it were the reverse, I would be similarly offended because this is stupid.
00:47:08.000It's the exact same thing as saying that everybody who's 20 has to stay home because a bunch of people who are 80 might die from this thing.
00:48:36.000On a political level, the president's only hope at re-election at this point, and put aside the health level, right?
00:48:41.000We're all praying for the health of the president and his wife.
00:48:44.000If something goes wrong, it's obviously a far bigger worry than the politics of this.
00:48:48.000But we do have a presidential election coming up in a month.
00:48:50.000So, if you are President Trump, what do you do?
00:48:52.000The answer is you put a camera on you and you keep it on you basically full-time.
00:48:56.000If you are the president of the United States at this point, you should welcome the American public into the experience of COVID because people are taking it as a litmus test for how seriously we should do lockdowns.
00:49:05.000Again, people are not looking at the data.
00:49:06.000People are not looking at the science.
00:49:07.000People are just following their guts on this sort of stuff.
00:49:10.000What Trump should do is he should welcome the cameras in.
00:49:13.000He should say, here I am at my desk upstairs quarantining.
00:50:02.000It might be an actually good reminder to the American public, again, that statistically speaking, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people do not die of this thing.
00:50:12.000I keep repeating the stats because I think the stats are way more important than any anecdotal evidence you bring.
00:50:17.000Anecdotal evidence is just anecdotal evidence.
00:50:18.000Unfortunately, again, people tend to follow anecdotal evidence where they do not follow the actual evidence.
00:50:35.000I'm not suggesting that Biden is wishing COVID on Trump or anything like that.
00:50:38.000He already issued what I said earlier in the program.
00:50:40.000It was a very nice statement about President Trump and the First Lady.
00:50:42.000But if you are Joe Biden, imagine that you're 78 years old, that COVID is out there, you don't want to be out in public, and you literally just get to sit in the basement and everybody leaves you alone.
00:51:46.000He's been able to get away with suggesting that he doesn't have to answer a question about whether he means to completely destroy a brand new government.
00:51:52.000He's been able to get away with that because all the focus is on Trump.
00:51:55.000You know, maybe for the Trump campaign, this is a bit of a blessing in disguise.
00:51:58.000Maybe because he's relegated to, you know, not being on the campaign trail and not doing things.
00:52:03.000Take away his Twitter and he'll spend the next 10 days, you know, getting healthy.
00:52:07.000And everybody can actually focus in on the fact that we have another candidate for president of the United States who refuses to denounce Antifa.
00:52:13.000And who has spent the last several weeks dodging questions as to whether he plans to pack the Supreme Court.
00:52:17.000Okay, meanwhile, the media continue their mission to apparently be as crappy at their jobs as humanly possible.
00:52:24.000Remember that one time when the New York Times op-ed editor was fired for the great sin of printing an op-ed by Tom Cotton, the senator from Arkansas, suggesting that we might want to use military force to quell insurrectionists inside major cities?
00:52:35.000Remember that a bunch of woke staffers of the New York Times said, this is a threat to me.
00:52:39.000It's a threat to me as a person of color that we would print this op-ed.
00:52:45.000Well, on Thursday, the New York Times published an op-ed authored by Regina Ip, a Hong Kong official the paper once described as Beijing's enforcer, calling for Hong Kong to accept its relation with China as destiny.
00:52:58.000Ip writes in the pages of the New York Times, no amount of outcry, condemnation, or sanctions over the Chinese government's purported encroachment in Hong Kong's affairs will alter the fact that Hong Kong was part of China and that its destiny is intertwined with the mainland.
00:53:10.000She said the West tends to glorify people as defenders of Hong Kong's freedoms, but they've done great harm to the city by going against its constitutional order and stirring up chaos and disaffection toward our motherland.
00:53:20.000She is a longtime proponent, of course, of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:53:23.000Hip resigned in 2003 as Hong Kong's Secretary of Security because she was, quote, widely seen as Beijing's enforcer, sending police and immigration officers to perform sometimes politically controversial raids.
00:53:34.000So the New York Times just ran straight Chinese propaganda.
00:53:38.000I'm waiting for the woke staffers to really get on top of this.
00:53:41.000I need to hear from the woke staffers.
00:53:43.000Are they upset about the violation of the rights of Hong Kong citizens?
00:53:47.000Oh no, they have nothing to say about that?
00:53:50.000Meanwhile, however, they are definitely on top of the main narrative they want to push.
00:53:55.000So the narrative that they will not let go of is that Trump is a vicious racist.
00:53:58.000This cropped up again during the debate, when of course there was this exchange with Chris Wallace in which Chris Wallace asked him to to condemn white supremacy and right wing militias.
00:54:48.000So they took that stand back and stand by slogan and they put it on shirts.
00:54:50.000And then the media were like, If Trump had really discouraged them, would they be putting it on shirts?
00:54:56.000Sure, they'll put anything on shirts as a prank.
00:54:58.000I'm also bemused by the media's new standard, which is that if someone expresses support for a politician, the politician is now responsible for that support.
00:55:05.000So I hope that next we get to reanalyze the congressional baseball shooting in which a Bernie Sanders supporter literally attempted to assassinate Republican members of Congress over health care.
00:55:14.000Okay, but in any case, the narrative was that Trump has not condemned white supremacy, as I've been saying over and over for days now.
00:55:21.000Even in 2017, when I thought that he was being deliberately vague about the alt-right, when I criticized him very heavily for, in his original statement, saying that there were bad people on many sides on many sides without any explicit reference to white supremacy, He corrected that the next day, and he explicitly said that the good people did not include neo-Nazis and white supremacists, who I condemn totally.
00:55:41.000That is a direct quote from Donald Trump circa 2017.
00:55:43.000Okay, so, since then, he's made multiple statements condemning white supremacy, like a lot of them, and the media refused to accept the answer.
00:57:27.000I can read for you, in August 2019, in one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy.
00:57:34.000In August of 2017, racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups.
00:57:43.000I have an entire list of these quotes that I can go through with you.
00:57:46.000He has condemned white supremacy more than any president in modern history.
00:57:50.000Just to clear it up this morning, can you, naming it, make a declarative statement that you did not that the president denounces. I just did.
00:58:21.000OK, then Roberts goes on national TV and then he gets visibly angry at Trump not condemning white supremacy, even though Trump literally condemned it during the debate, condemned it the day after and has condemned it at this point, I believe, about 100 times since Charlottesville.
00:58:33.000Here is John Roberts getting visibly angry again on TV to the delight of the folks over at CNN.
00:58:39.000For all of you on Twitter who were hammering me for asking that question, I don't care!
00:58:44.000Because it's a question that needs to be asked, and clearly, the President's Republican colleagues, a mile away from here, are looking for an answer for it too.
00:58:53.000So stop deflecting, stop blaming the media.
00:59:08.000Crappy reporter from Vox, Erin Ruppar, said she's dancing around the question.
00:59:12.000There's no dancing around the question.
00:59:14.000They're so interested in ignoring what Biden is doing that they are willing to just create this narrative out of a whole cloth.
00:59:20.000And by the way, let's not pretend that this isn't a little bit pre-planned, this entire narrative.
00:59:25.000Dean Beckett, the executive editor of the New York Times, said in the aftermath of Russiagate that he was deliberately taking staff and staffing them up on the racism angle.
00:59:35.000And in shock of shocks, right before the election, we were going to get six months of racism discussion.
00:59:39.000Who could have predicted such a thing?
00:59:41.000Kayleigh McEnany yesterday rightly pointed out, you know, you guys have been paying an awful lot of attention to Trump supposedly not condemning white supremacists, which he has done, or militia groups, which Trump again did yesterday.
00:59:51.000I noticed that what you're not paying any attention to is Joe Biden legitimately and clearly refusing to condemn Antifa in any way while Antifa has conducted acts of violence in major American cities across the country for months on end.
01:00:03.000She's, of course, totally right about this.
01:00:46.000So Joe Biden, of course, went on this rant yesterday about this.
01:00:49.000Joe Biden showed off the Proud Boys logo.
01:00:51.000By the way, it was Joe Biden who brought up the Proud Boys in the first place.
01:00:54.000Well, the Proud Boys didn't think that.
01:00:55.000the Proud Boys exactly what they want, which is insane levels of publicity that they never would have gotten without Joe Biden bringing them up.
01:01:01.000Because again, the left's whole tactic here when it comes to the riots in America's major cities is to somehow swivel this. So it's the fault of the white supremacists and the right wing and all, despite the fact that it's been riots in major American cities driven predominantly by the left. So here is Joe Biden touting Proud Boys merch yesterday. This is good stuff. Well, the Proud Boys didn't think that. Go online.
01:01:45.000Okay, by the way, Joe Biden did not call him on it in the debate because Joe Biden did not actually believe that's what Trump was saying.
01:01:51.000And if we are now going to quote the trolling statements of members of the Proud Boys as though they are serious analysts of politics, then we're going to have to wonder exactly why Richard Spencer declared himself a Joe Biden supporter a little bit earlier this year.
01:02:03.000Also, I was told, by the way, that Donald Trump does not condemn white supremacists or condemn the Proud Boys.
01:02:06.000Here he was yesterday condemning the white supremacists and condemning the Proud Boys.
01:02:11.000I have to say, I've said it many times, and let me be clear again, I condemn the KKK.
01:02:58.000Now they're very excited because an ex-East Wing advisor made audio.
01:03:01.000I mean, that's true friendship, is an advisor who makes audio recordings of you, as we learned during the Monica Lewinsky days.
01:03:07.000Here is a member of, at least their shoes, making recordings of purported, you know, politically relevant activity by the President of the United States himself.
01:03:18.000In this particular case, Melania is the First Lady.
01:03:20.000And now we're getting all these leaked recordings of Melania.
01:03:22.000And they're supposed to make Melania look bad.
01:03:35.000All these kids that I met, they are here in the shelters because they were brought by it through coyotes.
01:03:45.000The people were trafficking, and that's why they put them in jail.
01:03:50.000And the kids that they go in shelters, and the way they take care of them, They even said, the kids, they say, wow, I will have my own bed, I will sleep on the bed, I will have a cabinet for my clothes.
01:04:03.000It's so sad to hear it, but they didn't have that in their own country.
01:04:11.000Okay, so that is apparently her being unsympathetic.
01:04:15.000I'm confused as to how that's her being unsympathetic.
01:04:17.000But again, the media are willing to run with any anti-Trump narrative, including anti-Trump narratives that hit Melania for some odd reason.
01:04:23.000Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
01:04:27.000Otherwise, we'll see you here on Monday for all of the latest updates.
01:04:29.000Again, have everybody who has COVID-19 in your thoughts and prayers this weekend.
01:04:35.000It was hard to imagine this news cycle could have gotten any crazier, but God apparently decided to dump out all the crazy in 2020, which means I would hope that 2021 might be slightly calmer, since maybe he's exhausted the supply.
01:04:45.000If not, well, I don't know what to tell you.