Ep. 528 - Flatten The Narrative
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
176.17397
Summary
Trump's White House press conference is a grand strategy for his 2020 re-election campaign. And it's not just entertaining, it's a strategy that will set him up for victory in 2020. Today's episode of The Michael Knowles Show examines the strategy behind the White House Press Briefing, and how it lays the foundation for Trump's campaign.
Transcript
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Now that the United States has flattened the curve, President Trump is flattening the narrative
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at a White House briefing that not only brutalized the press, but also prepared the way for a
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reopening of our country. We will examine the grand strategy behind owning the libs. Then,
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a new study out of Israel suggests the global economic shutdown was completely pointless.
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Bernie Sanders endorses Joe Biden, and Joe's lead in the polls evaporates.
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All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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The Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
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I want to point out about yesterday's White House press conference, which President Trump
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has been doing every single day. They've almost all been extraordinarily entertaining, just
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really excellent TV. But one thing I want to point out about yesterday's, which was the
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most entertaining of all of them, is that the entertainment value was not just there to make
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us laugh. I think that President Trump structured this press conference to achieve a grand strategy
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for his reelection campaign in 2020. And it also happened to be absolutely freaking hilarious.
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So President Trump gives the usual introduction, then he answers some questions. And rather, before he
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gets to the questions, he tees up a video. He's got the media all in the room. He says, you know,
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I want to tee up this little video just to give you an overview of the past few weeks. And he tees up
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the video. The video is of the media getting the coronavirus totally wrong.
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In February, Nancy Pelosi said we should come to Chinatown. This is late February. Come to
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Chinatown. We think it's very safe. Come here. Let's all have the big parade, Chinatown parade,
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probably referring to San Francisco. And that's it. But I took this action early. And
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so the story in the New York Times was a total fake. It's a fake newspaper. And they write fake
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stories. And someday, hopefully in five years when I'm not here, those papers are all going out of
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business because nobody's going to want to read them. But now they like them because they write
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about me. Now, with that, I have a couple of interesting. We have a few clips that we're just
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going to put up. We could turn the lights a little bit lower. I think you'll find them interesting.
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Okay. That's the setting the stage, right? He's saying, I think you're going to like this. You're
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going to enjoy it. So you already know, given the way he's introducing this video, that this is going
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to be pretty savage, right? He's making fun of Nancy Pelosi for telling people in the early days of the
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pandemic to come to Chinatown. He's going straight after the New York Times. Trump has changed his tone
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day by day in the press briefing. Some days, very staid, very presidential, very bipartisan,
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saying nice thing about Democrats, saying nice things even about the media.
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That wasn't yesterday. Yesterday was a major tonal shift. He comes out, he goes,
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the New York Times is a fake piece of trash newspaper. Nancy Pelosi is completely wrong.
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She's a joke. She imperiled lives. And hey, check out my video. So he tees it up.
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People should be more concerned right now with the flu in this country.
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A lot of people are concerned about the coronavirus because they're hearing a lot of news about it right
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now. But the reality is comparing it to the flu, for example, it's not even close to being
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It goes on and on on the media. But I think you get the gist. Look at how he's flipping
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this because what the media are accusing Trump of doing is not taking the coronavirus seriously
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of comparing it to the flu, for instance, which, by the way, might be a fair comparison.
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We'll get to that a little bit later in the show.
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But regardless of whether or not it is a fair comparison, that's not what Trump cares about
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here. What Trump cares about here is showing that the media were very recently doing the
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exact same thing that they are accusing him of doing. This is what he manages to do all
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the time. He did this all throughout 2016. It's not even that he would defend himself
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against the attacks from his opponents in the Republican primary or in the media.
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He didn't have to do that. All he would have to do is show that his opponents and his critics
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are no better than he is. So you remember this very clearly with Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush accuses
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Donald Trump of being immature in 2016, of being childish, of not being composed, of not
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being an adult. And then Donald Trump on the debate stage gets, he triggers Jeb Bush.
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Jeb Bush starts getting all angry and he gets really fired up. And he goes, how was that,
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Donald? Was that high energy enough? And Donald goes, yeah, that was high energy.
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And he puts his hand out for a low five. And then Jeb, like the kid on the playground who
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finally got the attention of the bully and, you know, the bully didn't give him a swirly.
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Jeb got so excited that he kind of jumps up a little bit and smacks Trump's hand, totally
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destroys Jeb Bush's argument that Jeb is the mature person. Jeb is going to behave like the
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adult in the room because he was behaving in just as giddy and childish a way as Donald
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Trump. That's what he's doing here to the media. He's done this again and again. I mean,
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do you remember when Hillary Clinton was saying that if you contest the results of the 2016
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election, you're a threat to democracy? What does Trump get her to do? Contest the results
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of the 2016 election. So that's what's happening here. The press are just watching themselves.
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He says, look at this video. And it's just a mirror, basically, up in the front of the room
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to show the press who they are. Then the video moves on to its second stage,
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which is no longer going after the press with their own words.
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It's showing how Trump took the virus seriously.
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Well, we've asked them to accelerate whatever they're doing in terms of a vaccine.
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We will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.
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To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort today, I am officially declaring a
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So you see here what Trump is doing. He's saying, you're accusing me of not taking it seriously.
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Look at all the clips of me taking it seriously. Now, to be fair, were there also clips of President
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Trump saying that the media were being alarmist early on? Yes. Again, that doesn't matter.
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The media has this very narrow narrative that they have been constructing, which totally ignores their
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own behavior, their own hypocrisy. So President Trump is constructing a parallel narrative. So he
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hits the media. He then hits how great a job he's doing. And then he goes on to the governors praising
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Trump. And the brilliance of this three-part video strategy is not even in the video. We've all seen
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these clips before. It's that he knew exactly how it would trigger the media. And it turned out he was
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right. We'll get to that in a second. First, I have got to thank all of our sponsors who are sticking
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Raycon wireless earbuds. Buyraycon.com slash Knowles. All right. He tees it up, shows the media
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their own words. Then he shows the media his own words. And the third part, the piece de resistance
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is he shows the media, the democratic governors who are praising him. So the New York Times can't
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say anything nice about him. CNN can't say anything nice about him. The supposedly objective
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journalists, but Trump's own political adversaries are going to be more fair to him than the allegedly
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objective press. Here's the third part. His team is on it. They've been responsive late at night,
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early in the morning. And they've thus far been doing everything that they can do. And I want to
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say thank you. And I want to say that I appreciate it. He returns calls. He reaches out. He's been
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proactive. We got that mercy ship down here in Los Angeles. That was directly because he sent it down
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here. Okay. This I think is unprecedented in the history of press briefings. First of all,
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the fact that president Trump holds his own press briefings every single day is also unprecedented.
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I mean, the guy is obviously playing to his strengths because he's so good on camera. He's so
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good at communicating. But to be this brazen, to be this bold is, there's obviously something going on
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underneath this strategy. It's not merely a troll. And we'll get to what that is in a second.
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But president Trump gives you this ice cream sundae, right? This three part ice cream sundae.
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Just in case that wasn't going to send the media into a tizzy, he gives them a little cherry on top
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of the sundae. And that little, that little cherry on top is that he quotes one of their own reporters,
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not just any reporter, perhaps one of the most partisan reporters, Maggie Haberman. Hillary Clinton
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said that Maggie Haberman's her favorite reporter because she would always cover Hillary in a positive
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light. Trump adds this little bit of Maggie Haberman having to admit that Trump is doing a good job.
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So now you've got an actual member of the press, a far left one, contradicting the press coverage that
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we've been seeing for the past two weeks on president Trump. And that was the straw that broke the camel's
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back. As there were more cases and it was clear that it was spreading out of China where it originated,
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the president took this move that he was widely criticized for by Democrats and even some
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Republicans at the time, which was he halted a number of flights from China into the U.S.
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The idea was to halt the spread of the disease, keep transmissions to a minimum.
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He was accused of xenophobia. He was accused of making a racist move.
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At the end of the day, it was probably effective.
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It was probably effective. Maggie Haberman at the New York Times, they could not believe it.
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It was so brazen. It was so brutal. They tried their best to flip it on him,
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but they were so defeated. They were so taken, taken aback by this that they couldn't do it.
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The best move to try to flip this on Trump came from John Carl over at ABC,
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who Trump has been humiliating in these press conferences. And John Carl took the one angle
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he could see, which is he said that it looked like a campaign ad. And he wanted to find out
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who made the ad because maybe Trump was using White House resources inappropriately for campaign
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activities because that was a campaign ad that he just forced all of the mainstream media to play for
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him for free on their networks. And Trump, like he was waiting for it. He was waiting for that little
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toss up, knocks it out of the park. And he says, wait a second. You think that me playing your own
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ridiculous words is a campaign ad? What does that say about you?
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I've never seen a video like that played in this room. It looks a bit like a campaign ad. Who produced
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That was done by a group in the office and it was done just by, we just put some clips together.
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I could give you, I'll bet you I have over a hundred more clips, even better than them. They
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were just pieced together over the last two hours. That was just, oh, we have far better than that.
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Yeah, this was done by Dan and a group of people and they just put it together in a period of probably
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Because we're getting fake news and I like to have it corrected.
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How did John Carl not notice the flaw in his own question? He's so, he goes, why did you feel the
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need to do that? To do what, John? What did he do? He just played your own words back to you.
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Why did you feel the need to, to show our reporting? As if he is now admitting their reporting is so bad,
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so unfair, so humiliating for them that merely playing it back on a television is an attack
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on the media. Quoting the media is now an attack on the media. And I agree it is because the media
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have humiliated themselves. And that was the trap that Trump set and it totally worked. It wasn't
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just him. It wasn't just him. The former New York Times editor, Howell Raines fell for exactly the
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same thing. Here's Howell Raines talking on MSNBC about it.
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I think this is one of the most astonishing acts of disinformation we've seen from a White House
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since the Vietnam era and the five o'clock follies of Lyndon Johnson's administration.
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The news today, and this is one of those days as a journalist, when you have to put on your
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analytical hat and hack your way through what's really happening. What really happened today is that
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some smart, serious governors, Governor Newsom on the West coast, Governor Cuomo and Governor
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O'Meara on the East coast took action to prevent the president from making a thunderous blunder
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that would further endanger the health of the American people.
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This was dangerous disinformation. What happened today, what matters is not what we saw at the press
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briefing. It's not our own words. It's this other stuff that happened about the governors.
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So if the, the Trump press briefing was dangerous disinformation, and if the centerpiece of the
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Trump press briefing was just playing the reporter's own words back to them, it would seem to follow
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that the mainstream media reporting is dangerous disinformation. He falls into it too. Not just him.
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Okay. The question is who melted down here? The, the, the narrative right now that the media are
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trying to spin is that Trump had a meltdown. And seriously, this was trending on Twitter. They say
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Trump had a meltdown. You just saw it. Does he look like he had a meltdown? No, he just played a video
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of these people speaking. And then the press had a meltdown because the left is always projecting.
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We'll get to that in just one second. But first I got to thank our friends over at LifeLock.
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to save 25%. Who really melted down? That's the question. Now, the media are reporting this as a
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Trump meltdown. Here's Jim Acosta, Jim Acosta-ing all over this story. I have to tell you, that is the
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biggest meltdown I have ever seen from a president of the United States in my career. I don't think
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a reasonable person could watch what we just saw over the last hour and conclude that the
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president is in control. He sounds like he is out of control. He sounds like he's totally out of
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control because he played our own words back to us. Okay. You saw, you saw how Trump reacted.
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Compare that to John Carl, who looked like he was going to cry. He looked so crestfallen and upset.
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And Jim Acosta obviously seems pretty upset on that clip. Trump didn't just shred the reporters
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with their own words. He pointedly, when they were trying, they were just kept trying to attack
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him from different angles. He just doesn't care anymore. Okay. There's, there's no more veneer.
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There's no more pretend that he's going to play nicely with them. He's not doing it. Here is Trump
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ripping apart a CBS reporter. All I'm saying is this. How do you close down the greatest economy in the
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history of the world? When on January 17th, you have no cases and no death. When on January 21st,
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you have one case and no death. One case. Think of that. Now we're supposed to close down the country,
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but here's what happened. When on January 31st, I instituted the ban, Joe Biden went crazy. He said,
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you don't need the ban. He didn't go crazy. Like he just, he didn't even know what the hell the ban
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was, but he, so he didn't go crazy. But he did say, he did call me xenophobic. Wait a minute.
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He called me xenophobic. He called me a racist because he has since apologized. And he said,
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I did the right thing. So when you say, why didn't you this? Every Democrat thought I made a mistake
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when I did it, I saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives by a minute.
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That you bought. The argument is that you bought yourself some time and you didn't use it to
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prepare hospitals. You didn't use it to ramp up testing. Right now, you're so, you're so
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disgraceful. It's so disgraceful the way you say that. So disgraceful. Absolutely. Who could
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disagree with that? The media, it was just an all out brawl. Okay. The media were getting their
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hits in. Trump was getting his hits in. CNN ran four crazy chyrons in five minutes. One said angry
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Trump turns briefing into propaganda session. Next one, Trump refuses to acknowledge any mistakes.
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Next one, Trump uses task force briefing to try and rewrite history and coronavirus response.
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Next one, Trump melts down an angry response to reports he ignored virus warnings.
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What's this all about? What's this about? This is not just about Trump trying to move on from the
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coronavirus news cycle. It's not just him signaling that he wants to move on. This is how Trump moves
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on from the coronavirus news cycle. We got reports yesterday that Trump, he wants to try to start
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reopening by May 1st, which he should. He should frankly do it sooner if he can. He's not going to
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win if he keeps defending himself. He's done an excellent job on the coronavirus response. The media
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are dishonest hacks and they're going to attack him for, as we just saw, opposite reasons because
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he didn't do enough or because he did too much. They're going to go after him either way. It's
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going to be unfair. That's not a battle he can win. So he's got to move on now. And the way that
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he's going to move on is not by asking nicely to move on. The way he's going to move on is by playing
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what is essentially a campaign ad during the White House briefing, even though the campaign ad is just
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the mainstream media's own words. He's going to force their hand. That's what he did yesterday. And he's
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forcing them to get back to 2020 coverage. And you know what? Credit where credit's due. You don't need
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to just take my word for it here. The jackals over at Media Matters finally caught on to how much this
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foolish press is helping President Trump. So my friend over there, Jason Campbell, who is, you know, Media
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Matters is this left-wing operative group. But unlike other left-wing operative groups, instead of trying to
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get politicians fired, they try to get media people fired. And there's no version of this on the right.
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It's only on the left because they hate that conservatives can communicate. They can't refute
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the arguments that we're making, so they just try to silence us. And so anyway, the one guy who's
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assigned to me and some of the other Daily Wire people, Jason Campbell, who I actually sort of get
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a kick out of, he recognized the strategy here, right? So he tweets out, not that networks should ever
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have been broadcasting these Trump rallies, clothed as press briefings. But if they're now going to run
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campaign ads for free on their airtime, they clearly have learned nothing from 2016.
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That's true, right? Trump is always using the media to get free publicity. I think he got something like
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$2 billion worth of free press in 2016. Campbell sent out another tweet. He was responding to someone who
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said, they can keep putting all the sassy chyrons on screen they want. It doesn't matter. What matters
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is when the networks stop airing the briefing and start covering it. And Campbell responded to that
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over at Media Matters. And he said, this is just dawning on the networks now. They had to air a
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campaign ad for free to realize these are propaganda sessions. So I give Campbell and Media Matters credit
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for recognizing how Trump is manipulating the press's own hackery to work against them. There is a little
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irony here though, because Media Matters watches my show every single day and then takes out some of
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the best clips from my show and posts them themselves with little snarky comments. And they
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think that the little snarky comments are going to matter more than the exposure that Media Matters is
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giving to my show and the other shows here at the Daily Wire, but that they are doing exactly what
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they're criticizing the media of doing for Trump. So anyway, I just want to thank Media Matters for doing
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that. You're astute in your observation. You're definitely helping us to spread our show. So
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thank you very much and keep up the good work. It was not just Trump who was owning the press
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yesterday and having a good time doing it. Okay. Everyone was getting in on this. It's not just a
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single zinger, right? This was clearly a well thought out strategy. This is what you're going to
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see moving into the future. Even Dr. Fauci got in on the fun. Dr. Fauci is a pretty buttoned up guy,
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but even he went after the press because the press have been trying to sow division and get Dr.
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Fauci fired and get Trump pitted against Fauci. So Fauci was asked basically, please, Dr. Fauci,
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please disagree with President Trump and Trump wouldn't, or Fauci rather wouldn't do it. He
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ended up backing the president. We had been talking before any meetings that we had about the pros and
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cons, the effectiveness or not of strong mitigations. So discussions were going on mostly among the
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medical people about what that would mean. The first and only time that Dr. Birx and I went in
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and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a, quote, shutdown in the sense of
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not really shutdown, but to really have strong mitigation. We discussed it. Obviously, there
00:24:16.900
would be concern by some that in fact that might have some negative consequences. Nonetheless,
00:24:24.060
the president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation. The next second time that I
00:24:31.900
went with Dr. Birx into the president and said, 15 days are not enough. We need to go 30 days.
00:24:39.500
Obviously, there were people who had a problem with that because of the potential secondary effects.
00:24:46.480
Nonetheless, at that time, the president went with the health recommendations and we extended it
00:24:52.840
another 30 days. So Fauci is saying Trump did what we asked him to do. Trump listened to the advice of
00:24:59.160
the medical professionals. I got no problem with Trump. Stop trying to sow discord. The press wouldn't
00:25:05.520
leave it at that though. The press actually asked Dr. Fauci if he was being honest or if Trump had
00:25:12.920
just bullied him into backing him. They asked him, Dr. Fauci, are you voluntarily saying all of these
00:25:18.860
things? And the disgust with which Dr. Fauci regards the media became so clear because what an
00:25:25.640
offensive question. Say, yeah, but are you telling the truth? Yeah, but are you lying? Yeah, but are you
00:25:30.000
being bullied? Yeah, but are you weak? He looks at them. He goes, excuse me, everything I do, I do
00:25:35.860
voluntarily. Are you doing this voluntarily? No, I'm doing it. Everything I do is voluntarily. Please
00:25:43.040
don't even imply that. Please don't even imply that. What an offensive way. By the way, if the
00:25:48.380
press are trying to ingratiate themselves to Dr. Fauci and turn Fauci against Trump, not doing a good job
00:25:52.880
of it. This was one of the most glorious press conferences in American history. However, it was
00:25:59.020
not without its flaws. There was one bit in here that Trump got an aspect of our governmental system
00:26:06.080
factually incorrect. He seemed in the clip to misunderstand federalism and he said it's not
00:26:11.420
up to the states on whether or not they want to reopen. Actually, the president has total control.
00:26:16.940
Just to clarify your understanding of your authority vis-a-vis governors, just be very specific. For
00:26:24.400
instance, if a governor issued a state home, when you say my authority, the president's authority, not mine,
00:26:30.580
because it's not me. This is when somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total
00:26:36.960
and that's the way it's got to be. Your authority is total. It's total. It's total. And the governors know
00:26:42.220
that. The governors know that. No, you have a couple of bans of, excuse me, excuse me. You have
00:26:47.380
a couple. Could you rescind that order? You have a couple of bans of, of Democrat governors, but they
00:26:53.760
will agree to it. They will agree to it. But the authority of the president of the United States
00:26:58.820
having to do with the subject we're talking about is total. Now that last bit is important. He's not
00:27:04.440
saying the president has total power, like he's a dictator. He's saying that on this subject, the
00:27:10.380
president has total power, which is also not true by the way, the, the states do have a considerable
00:27:16.040
authority on how to reopen. Federal government has a little bit of authority there too, but sure. Okay.
00:27:21.220
President Trump is misrepresenting federalism here. Everybody, everybody and their mother pounced on
00:27:27.540
Trump for this. You know, you heard the, the same chorus that you always hear from the squishy
00:27:34.160
Republican crowd. They said, what would you have said if Barack Obama had said this? Let's be fair
00:27:42.120
here because Donald Trump said this and you're going to mostly give him a pass. You'll maybe say
00:27:46.640
he was wrong, but then not harp on it too much. But if Trump had said this, you would have, or if
00:27:51.140
Obama rather had said this, you would have harped on it a lot. They think this is some sort of profound
00:27:54.900
question. This, this profound insight that we treat radical leftists differently than we treat
00:28:02.320
conservatives. They think this exposes some kind of hypocrisy. It's actually quite simple. We would
00:28:09.140
have reacted differently to Barack Obama because Barack Obama was Barack Obama and Donald Trump is
00:28:14.540
Donald Trump. Why do we think that ideology doesn't matter here? Okay. If we've got a president who's
00:28:22.320
done a very good job, who's got a good track record, who we can rely on at least to a considerable degree
00:28:27.960
to advance conservative priorities and steward the government in a good way.
00:28:34.220
What maniac would not give him a little bit more grace than the guy who's a radical leftist, who
00:28:39.380
has an apparent antipathy for the country, who says he wants to fundamentally transform the country,
00:28:45.200
who lies through his teeth when it comes to matters of public policy. Like if you can,
00:28:49.340
if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, who regards half of his countrymen as bitter clingers,
00:28:54.160
who he holds in contempt. Yeah, of course we're going to treat Trump a little bit better than that.
00:29:00.400
That's perfectly natural and it's perfectly reasonable to do that. So did Trump get the
00:29:04.560
point on federalism a little bit off? Yeah, sure he did. Is it going to spoil my day? No.
00:29:10.400
I'm glad that he knows now that, you know, he's, the states have a little bit more authority, but okay,
00:29:14.500
whatever, move on. Other than that, it was an excellent press conference and it achieved the goal
00:29:21.060
of moving past coronavirus. And there are a lot of reasons I think that we should probably move past
00:29:26.780
coronavirus in the near future. One of those is given by a legendary conservative figure, Bill
00:29:32.060
Bennett. Bill Bennett was the education secretary under Ronald Reagan. He's been a long time on the
00:29:37.520
conservative scene. Bill Bennett is now bringing back this argument that perhaps the coronavirus is
00:29:45.920
not like Ebola so much as it's like the seasonal flu. Maybe it's not going to kill 2 million people
00:29:53.200
like we were told initially. Maybe it's actually going to kill closer to maybe 60,000 people is the
00:29:57.700
current estimate. Now, what's funny about this is this is the argument that the press was making in
00:30:03.040
the early days of the pandemic, that now they're criticizing Trump for making in the early days of
00:30:06.860
the pandemic, that now President Trump is not making, but increasingly looks plausible. How do we make
00:30:11.540
sense of all of that? We'll get to Bill Bennett. We'll get to a new study out of Israel, which is
00:30:15.480
backing up what Bill Bennett is saying, at least about reopening the economy. Then we'll get to the
00:30:19.480
big endorsement, Bernie Sanders' caves, like he always does, because Bernie is a loser. We'll get to
00:30:25.480
that. We'll get to Biden's evaporated lead. But first, oh, do I have a deal for you? I love this deal.
00:30:32.660
This maybe is my favorite deal we've ever run. So when you become a Daily Wire, Insider Plus,
00:30:37.880
or All Access member, usually you get one Leftist Tears Tumblr. That's pretty good,
00:30:42.320
right? That's a good deal. Well, the reason I like this deal more is because you don't just get
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one Tumblr. You get two Tumblrs. I like how straightforward it is. Sometimes deals, promos,
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they're kind of complicated. You get this and that. No, this is very simple. You like one,
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one is good. Well, guess what? Two is better. It's going to be great. By the way, we've got a
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00:31:34.540
So Bill Bennett, Ronald Reagan's education secretary, legendary conservative figure.
00:31:44.400
He's going back to the initial comparison for this coronavirus, which was to the seasonal flu.
00:31:51.460
Obviously that comparison would not have made a lot of sense if we were talking about 2 million
00:31:54.860
Americans dead or 4 million or 6 million Americans dead or however many they said it was going to be.
00:31:59.140
Wouldn't have made sense if we were talking about 250,000 Americans dead, but the current models are
00:32:03.060
now projecting about 60,000. And so that is within the range of the seasonal flu. Here's Bill Bennett.
00:32:09.300
What are we missing about this virus? We see the numbers, 22,000 dead, how many cases,
00:32:15.820
but you took a step back and what did you find? Yeah, let's take a step back. The estimates now from
00:32:21.440
the University of Washington, which is the model everybody's been going on, even though it's been
00:32:25.300
wrong most of the time by a lot overstating it is now they say 60,000 people will die.
00:32:31.680
61,000 is what we lost to the flu in 2017 and 2018. The flu. Now we all regret the loss of 61,000
00:32:41.260
people. If that's what it turns out to be, I'm going to tell you, I think it's going to be less
00:32:44.940
and salute all those who are working on the front lines on this, the hospital workers, the nurses,
00:32:49.780
the doctors, et cetera, and the generosity of the American people. But if you look at those numbers
00:32:55.080
and see the comparable, we're going to have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu. For this,
00:33:01.820
we scared the hell out of the American people. We lost 17 million jobs. We put a major dent in the
00:33:07.920
economy. We closed down the schools. You heard Dr. Oz say we probably didn't have to do that.
00:33:12.780
Shut down the churches and so on. You know, this was not and is not a pandemic,
00:33:18.720
but we do have panic and pandemonium as a result of the hype of this. And it's really unfortunate.
00:33:25.220
Look at the facts. I love that Bill Bennett has the courage to say this because increasingly this
00:33:31.400
comparison looks tenable. Now, is this the flu? No, it's different. It's more contagious.
00:33:36.320
It's new, right? We don't know about this. It just came out of China.
00:33:40.920
It was covered up by the Chinese government, so it became more virulent and was able to spread more
00:33:45.420
without us taking precautions. So sure, it's a little bit different. But if you look at the
00:33:49.000
current projected deaths, it's very similar. But you're not allowed to make that comparison
00:33:52.600
anymore because the left is using the tactic that it always uses when it can't win the argument
00:33:57.140
is it just browbeats you. It emotionally manipulates you into not making the obvious argument.
00:34:05.460
So it goes a little bit something like this. You say, huh, 60,000 deaths. Well, that's,
00:34:10.940
that's kind of like the flu. I guess the coronavirus is, is a little bit similar to the flu.
00:34:14.300
And yet we reacted to it so much differently. And then the left will do this. They'll say,
00:34:19.080
are you comparing this to the flu? Are you, are you seriously, do you have the gall, the temerity,
00:34:25.600
the stupidity to compare this to the flu? And by the time they're done intimidating you,
00:34:31.040
you think, oh gosh, maybe I shouldn't have done that. Am I wrong? Yeah, no, no, I'm not. I'm not
00:34:35.140
doing that. I'm not. But wait a second. Yeah. Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I? Because the
00:34:39.520
comparison wouldn't make sense if your alarmist numbers turned out to be correct.
00:34:45.380
But they didn't turn out to be correct. Actually, the numbers that we suspected were true the whole
00:34:51.600
time from the very beginning that you screamed and yelled at us for, those numbers are turning
00:34:55.980
out to be correct. So yes, I am making that comparison. Thank you very much. And it would,
00:35:02.160
it would appear that that comparison, while imperfect, because all comparisons are imperfect,
00:35:05.840
that comparison seems to carry a lot of weight. Now, there's one argument that the left puts
00:35:10.840
forward to shut this down. They say, you can't compare it to the flu because the only reason
00:35:19.240
the numbers are so low, the current projected death numbers, is because we shut down the global economy.
00:35:26.520
So it's crazy. If we'd listened to you, we would have gotten 2 million people dead. But because we
00:35:31.080
listen to me, now the numbers are going down. And ironically, you think this vindicates your stupid
00:35:36.980
idea. But really, it vindicates us, the alarmists, who shut down without precedent the global economy
00:35:44.080
over a virus that we knew very little about. That argument does not hold up. It doesn't hold up
00:35:51.200
for a couple reasons. One, because at least in the recent models, which were projecting 100,000,
00:35:58.540
200,000 deaths, at least in those recent models, they were already factoring in social distancing.
00:36:05.040
They were already factoring in shutting down the economy. They were factoring on all the things that
00:36:09.580
we were doing and they're still wrong. But even beyond that, there is evidence coming out more day
00:36:16.180
by day that the lockdown didn't do anything. Most recently, we're seeing this from Israel,
00:36:24.340
not just Israel the country, Israel the person. The Israeli professor and public intellectual,
00:36:30.420
Isaac Ben Israel, has just looked at some studies on this. He has concluded that in countries where
00:36:38.660
they took closure steps, shutdown steps like Italy, and in countries that have not taken closure steps
00:36:45.080
like Taiwan or Singapore, the trend of the disease is almost exactly the same. What he found is
00:36:51.700
there is an increase, in some cases a significant increase in the number of cases, until the fourth
00:36:57.200
to sixth week. And then immediately after that, there is moderation for a couple weeks or a few weeks
00:37:03.360
until the eighth week. And then it declines and disappears. What's different about what this Israeli
00:37:11.560
intellectual, Professor Isaac Ben Israel, is looking at and the models that we based our policy on
00:37:17.460
is that Isaac Ben Israel is looking at the real hard data, not just the prediction models.
00:37:24.120
And the real hard data are showing that perhaps the lockdowns didn't achieve very much at all. He says,
00:37:31.400
this is happening both in countries that have closed down like us and in those that have not closed down
00:37:35.960
until today like Sweden. Every country, no matter its response, the decline and rise occur according to
00:37:42.140
the same timeline. It's clear to us how the epidemic is starting and what is causing the increase.
00:37:47.960
What is causing the moderation is unclear, which means there is a world, and I'm not saying this is
00:37:54.140
certainly the case, but there is evidence that we shut down this global economy. We threw 16 million
00:38:01.700
Americans out of work for three weeks, just in three weeks, not for three weeks. They're going to be out of work
00:38:06.060
a lot longer than that. And when we get the unemployment numbers this Thursday, there are
00:38:11.440
going to be a lot more people unemployed, a lot of lives ruined, a lot of people going back to drug
00:38:16.900
addiction, a lot of people who will commit suicide because that always happens in economic downturns.
00:38:22.420
There'll be a lot of negative consequences from this, possibly for nothing based on no evidence.
00:38:31.800
The mainstream media and the leftist politicians who did this are going to have a lot to answer
00:38:35.960
for. And I think President Trump is recognizing this now. And I think that's why he is signaling
00:38:40.480
that we've got to move on past this. We've got to get out and get the economy going as fast as
00:38:48.460
possible. Because by the way, we're running out of time. Every day this drags on, it's going to be
00:38:52.480
that much harder to restart the economy. And that could cost Trump the election in November. And maybe
00:38:57.760
the media and the left had that in their mind the whole damn time. Speaking of the election in
00:39:03.680
November, we now have a presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden. And Bernie
00:39:08.860
Sanders, loser as he ever was, is admitting defeat. And for all his purported radicalism
00:39:17.020
is endorsing the establishment nominee, Joe Biden.
00:39:21.200
Today, I am asking all Americans, I'm asking every Democrat, I'm asking every independent,
00:39:27.640
I'm asking a lot of Republicans to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy,
00:39:35.820
Hold on. What was that sound that just came out of Joe? Did you hear that? And I'm asking them
00:39:43.820
What was that sound? Was that supposed to express surprise? What is he surprised about?
00:39:50.200
Surely he's not surprised that Bernie is endorsing his campaign. That's the whole reason they were on
00:39:55.020
that live stream. That's what they've been negotiating for weeks. That couldn't have been
00:39:58.840
the surprise. Maybe for Joe Biden, the surprise was that he's running for president at all.
00:40:03.320
It's got to be an unpleasant surprise. Oh, I got to do that still. Oh no, that's terrible. I just want
00:40:09.300
to, I just want to sit and watch my stories on the television. Bernie then finishes his endorsement.
00:40:15.180
To make certain that we defeat somebody who I believe, and I'm speaking just for myself now,
00:40:23.380
is the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country.
00:40:28.180
Okay. You get it. You get it. Bernie is going to endorse him. We knew this was going to happen.
00:40:33.980
Bernie always rolls over. Bernie doesn't want to be a leader. Bernie doesn't want to be the nominee.
00:40:39.660
Bernie doesn't want to be a front runner. Bernie doesn't want to be the president.
00:40:41.740
That would require doing something. And Bernie has never effected very much public policy at all.
00:40:48.960
Bernie has never led anything in particular other than a protest movement. That's why when he was a
00:40:56.000
young man, he was always part of these fringe political parties. He didn't seem to have much
00:41:00.140
interest in really winning. He just wanted to be a gadfly. And then he's been a gadfly his whole
00:41:04.420
career. And now he's endorsing Joe Biden. The only reason I mentioned this is because of one
00:41:09.100
particular irony, which is that Bernie Sanders has endorsed Joe Biden for president before Barack
00:41:15.860
Obama has. Bernie Sanders, the radical socialist who ran against Joe Biden, has endorsed him before
00:41:22.440
Joe Biden's old boss, who he served under faithfully as vice president for two terms. Barack Obama.
00:41:29.540
Obama just, I don't know, he just might not believe in Joe. Who would? That Bernie endorsement might not
00:41:35.180
mean very much because Bernie's own spokesman will not endorse Joe Biden. The idea is that if Bernie
00:41:41.600
endorses Biden, then all the Bernie bros are going to come over and the party's going to unify and
00:41:46.200
that'll be all well and good. Maybe not because if Bernie can't get his own spokesman to come over,
00:41:53.820
how's he going to get all those other crazy Bernie bros? His spokesman, Brianna Joy Gray says,
00:41:59.180
with the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who's an incredible human being and genuine inspiration,
00:42:03.340
I don't endorse Joe Biden. I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like Medicare
00:42:08.780
for all, canceling all student debt and a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those.
00:42:16.280
Ouch. Ouch. Pretty sad. Bernie Sanders likely already has regrets, okay? Because I think probably
00:42:25.100
Bernie doesn't want to endorse him, but he doesn't want to be blamed for losing. And what does he really
00:42:28.420
care? He's just going to go back to the Senate. You could see in the endorsement video, Joe Biden
00:42:34.440
starts running off on tangents that don't make any sense. And you can look, if you look deeply in
00:42:40.240
Bernie's eyes, you say, oh gosh, what have I done? At one point in this endorsement, Joe Biden says,
00:42:46.520
it's so imperative that he wins because he needs to create a path to citizenship for citizens.
00:42:52.100
We're going to finally achieve comprehensive immigration reform as well. Put millions of
00:42:57.100
citizens on a pathway to citizenship, including so many who are on the front lines right now.
00:43:03.020
You can see Bernie Sanders just, yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. Oh, what did he say?
00:43:07.940
Oh, well, we're in it now. Okay. And he plasters a smile on his face. Very sad situation for the
00:43:15.040
Democratic Party because they don't think that Joe is going to win. And the polls are showing that too.
00:43:18.620
So right now there's a Fox News poll out of registered voters showed that Joe Biden's lead
00:43:24.380
over Trump is gone. Joe Biden just a week ago had an almost 10 point lead over President Trump
00:43:32.600
nationally. Now that's gone. Okay. Now they are tied. They both have 42% support and another 16%
00:43:42.020
say they would vote for a third party candidate or are undecided. What changed in that
00:43:48.540
time? Trump has shown leadership on the coronavirus. It didn't have the effect
00:43:54.360
that Democrats were hoping, right? What Democrats were hoping was that the coronavirus would destroy
00:43:59.660
the economy, throw people out of work. I mean, Bill Maher talked about this openly. He said,
00:44:03.840
we need a recession because a recession will kick Trump out of office and it'd be better for millions
00:44:08.920
of people to lose their jobs than for Trump to get reelected. So Democrats were openly campaigning
00:44:13.360
for this or the media were openly campaigning for this. They finally got it, but it didn't have the
00:44:17.860
effect that they wanted because President Trump took control of the narrative. If he had just
00:44:22.560
stayed in the Oval Office, closed off from everybody and the media were running rampant,
00:44:26.800
then it might've had that effect, but he's not. Trump is holding his own press conferences.
00:44:31.300
Now he's not just holding the press conferences, answering questions about coronavirus. He's dictating
00:44:36.120
the news of the day every single day. He's showing leadership. I think the leadership thing helped
00:44:42.360
on those polls. He also is showing that he's ready to turn this around. Okay. And a down economy
00:44:50.040
four or five months before the election is not a huge deal if he can get that economy going again
00:44:58.700
in time for November. And I think that's what he's signaling. I think Joe Biden knows that. I think
00:45:03.680
nobody wants Joe Biden to lead in a crisis and they're seeing that moment slip from Joe, just like
00:45:08.700
so many things are slipping from Joe these days. That is one way to pummel the narrative. Now what,
00:45:14.540
what we all have to make sure happens is now that we're pummeling that mainstream media,
00:45:20.260
that leftist narrative, now that it's into oblivion, we've got to move forward. That's
00:45:24.080
what President Trump's got to see. He's making some signals that he's going to do that, but a lot
00:45:29.320
is going to matter in the next two weeks. We'll see if they can turn it around. We don't have any more
00:45:34.060
time today, but we will get back into it tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
00:46:07.160
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies and directed by Mike Joyner.
00:46:12.620
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
00:46:18.340
Technical producer, Austin Stevens. Assistant director, Pavel Widowski. Editor and associate
00:46:23.980
producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer, Robin Fenderson. Hair and makeup, Nika Geneva. Production
00:46:31.060
assistant, Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
00:46:37.160
Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. Donald Trump set fire
00:46:42.140
to the news media. Ooh, they burn so good. We'll enjoy it on The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan.