The Ben Shapiro Show - Blue States Reverse Themselves On Mask Mandates | Ep. 1429

00:00:00.000 California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Oregon all announced they are reconsidering mask mandates a year too late.

00:00:06.000 Accusations of racism continue to be the left's favorite weapon for institutional change.

00:00:10.000 And Andrew Yang throws Joe Rogan under the bus.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:13.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:20.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:29.000 We'll get to all the news in just one moment.

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00:01:35.000 The Biden administration has been steadily moving toward the idea that we need to move beyond the pandemic.

00:01:41.000 And the reason that they are doing this is they must just be getting crushed in their internal pollings.

00:01:46.000 This must be true for all Democrats across the country.

00:01:49.000 They're looking at their internal polls and it is showing that they are just getting absolutely wrecked because the data did not change.

00:01:55.000 The data did not change, but now they are changing their policies, which demonstrates once more, it was never about what was best.

00:02:02.000 It was always about what was politically useful for them.

00:02:05.000 It was always about ideology.

00:02:06.000 It was never about the best available policy, because when you've got the best available policy, you don't have any problems discussing that policy and discussing the data and showing your work.

00:02:15.000 But nobody was ever willing to show their work.

00:02:17.000 All it was, for literally a year and a half, was, if you disagree with us, it's because you hate toscience, TM.

00:02:24.000 It's because you deny the science.

00:02:26.000 It's because you want the virus to win, et cetera, et cetera.

00:02:29.000 But the fact of the matter is this.

00:02:30.000 If you are that confident in your science, you know what scientists do?

00:02:33.000 They typically spend a lot of time showing data to one another in order to verify that the measures that they are prescribing are the ones that are proper.

00:02:40.000 For a year and a half, we've been told that to show your work means showing lack of faith.

00:02:44.000 It was a matter of faith and heresy for the left-wing community.

00:02:47.000 So what has changed? 0.99

00:02:48.000 The answer is that people are done with this crap, and they've been done with this crap for quite a while. 0.99

00:02:52.000 The economic data prove it, by the way. 0.98

00:02:54.000 You'll recall that just about four days ago, the Biden administration was preparing us all for a really, really bad jobs report in January.

00:03:00.000 Why?

00:03:01.000 Because they said that Omicron was going to shellack the economy.

00:03:03.000 It turns out Omicron did not shellack the economy.

00:03:05.000 You know why?

00:03:06.000 Because most people just went to work.

00:03:08.000 Most people did not care.

00:03:09.000 Most people were done.

00:03:11.000 And the great irony of the booming economy of January Is that it came in spite of the fact that according to Joe Biden, it should have been really bad, not just because of Omicron, but because of the failure to pass Build Back Better.

00:03:22.000 Remember, he suggested that the revitalized American economy was reliant on us spending trillions of dollars in Build Back Better.

00:03:29.000 Then Joe Manchin murdered Build Back Better with an axe and buried it in Iowa cornfield in late December.

00:03:36.000 And it didn't pass, and then the economy boomed.

00:03:39.000 So the two things that Joe Biden has been focused on, quote-unquote pandemic response and build back better, both of those things failed and the economy boomed.

00:03:46.000 In other words, every time Joe Biden fails to get what he wants, life gets better for everyone is the basic synopsis here.

00:03:52.000 And so now they're attempting to move off of this because if they get stuck in full pandemic restriction mode forever, they're toast.

00:04:00.000 Joe Biden has to know this.

00:04:01.000 We got three weeks until Joe Biden gives his much ballyhooed State of the Union.

00:04:05.000 I promise you, by the time we hit the State of the Union address, it's not going to be Nancy Pelosi saying that there are only 25 people in the Capitol Rotunda.

00:04:11.000 Instead, she's going to be saying that there are tons of people who are available for the joint session of Congress.

00:04:15.000 Everybody can come.

00:04:16.000 Everybody who's vaxed gets to be unmasked.

00:04:17.000 If you're vaxed, if you're unvaxed, then we're going to tell you not to come so that she can create controversy about the evil unvaxed Republicans. 0.99

00:04:23.000 But that is going to be her move.

00:04:26.000 And at that State of the Union address, Joe Biden will be declaring that the pandemic is basically over.

00:04:30.000 He's going to say that we now have the tools to fight issues if they crop up again.

00:04:34.000 We know how to manufacture RNA vaccines.

00:04:37.000 We know how to get you masks.

00:04:38.000 We know how to do all the things we need to do.

00:04:39.000 And so I'm happy to tell you I have defeated COVID.

00:04:42.000 That will be Joe Biden's line.

00:04:44.000 No, it won't be true.

00:04:46.000 COVID defeated COVID.

00:04:48.000 I mean, Omicron defeated COVID because the more deadly strain, Delta, was killed off basically because Omicron out-competed it because it's 70 times more transmissible than Delta.

00:04:56.000 So that means it moved way faster through the population.

00:04:58.000 It gave a huge percentage of the population natural immunity, including, by the way, people who already had vax immunity.

00:05:03.000 So for me, I had vax immunity, and now I also have natural immunity, I think.

00:05:07.000 And what that means is that I am good to go.

00:05:09.000 I am golden.

00:05:10.000 But listen, I've been golden since I got the vax last year, and I really haven't cared about what happened post that.

00:05:15.000 Alrighty, coming up.

00:05:16.000 The Democrats are all shifting their position with regard to Omicron and masking.

00:05:21.000 What changed?

00:05:22.000 Maybe it's that they got caught with their mask in the cookie jar.

00:05:24.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

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00:06:34.000 In the last week, the Democrats realized that they are on the wrong side of the American people.

00:06:39.000 Because they're a series of really, really bad photo ops for Democrats.

00:06:43.000 It began at one of the big NFL games with the LA Rams when Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, appeared next to Magic Johnson.

00:06:52.000 Unmasked.

00:06:53.000 Magic Johnson is a 62-year-old overweight black man who has HIV.

00:06:58.000 Okay, so he is immunocompromised, in the classic sense of being immunocompromised.

00:07:02.000 That is what HIV does.

00:07:04.000 And Gavin Newsom was right next to him, unmasked.

00:07:07.000 And Gavin Newsom tried to make excuses for it, and he said he had his mask on his hand as though his hand was transmitting COVID or something.

00:07:12.000 But everybody understood that for the specials, the rules do not apply.

00:07:16.000 So it looked really bad for Gavin Newsom.

00:07:18.000 And then he wasn't the only one.

00:07:20.000 Right, then we also had Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, who was unmasked, standing directly next to Magic Johnson.

00:07:27.000 Cause everybody apparently in the stadium had to get a photo unmasked with Magic Johnson.

00:07:30.000 So Eric Garcetti took a photo with Magic Johnson.

00:07:32.000 He got shellacked. 0.97

00:07:33.000 And then he said, well, I was holding my breath and everybody laughed at him because that's ridiculous. 0.97

00:07:37.000 What are you going to do? 0.82

00:07:37.000 Hold your breath for like three hours at one of these LA Rams games? 0.82

00:07:40.000 Is that the idea here?

00:07:42.000 And then Stacey Abrams made the gigantic, enormous Terry McAuliffe-like political boo-boo of appearing in front of a classroom filled with small children, all of whom are masked, and she is sitting there grinning her ass off, sitting in front of the kids, no mask on her.

00:08:00.000 I mean, this photo is going to be in every campaign ad that is run by whichever Republican wins the primary in Georgia from now until Election Day.

00:08:05.000 This will be the most famous photo in America.

00:08:07.000 And it should be, because it's everything.

00:08:09.000 The children always come last.

00:08:10.000 In fact, in her excuse making for why this happened, Stacey Abrams, she explained the reason this happened is because she insisted that if she was going to unmask, everybody else be masked.

00:08:20.000 So it was at her behest that everybody was masked in that classroom.

00:08:23.000 And it wasn't just her.

00:08:25.000 There's a representative named Elise Slotkin from New York, and she also appeared in a public setting, and you can see kids behind her, see adults behind her, they're all wearing N95s, and there she is, completely unmasked.

00:08:35.000 So everybody knows this is ridiculous, and the blowback has been intense.

00:08:38.000 Stacey Abrams got hit so hard that by the next day, after releasing that photo, and then deleting the photo, by the way, by the next day she was looking for a new online director.

00:08:47.000 She said she'd done nothing wrong, but a good indicator that you've done something wrong is when you start firing the people who did it.

00:08:52.000 So all of this was really bad.

00:08:54.000 And the polling for the Biden administration has been really bad.

00:08:56.000 There are polls showing more than half of Americans believe that America is moving in the wrong direction.

00:09:00.000 And the reason for that is because a huge percentage of Americans believe that their government officials are out of touch with them and what they need and what the realities are of the situation on the ground.

00:09:10.000 And so now you've started to see the Biden administration move, and not just the Biden administration, states across the country.

00:09:17.000 So the Biden administration has been caught flat-footed on this.

00:09:19.000 They're giving mixed messages.

00:09:20.000 So Jen Psaki, for example, at the White House yesterday, she was saying it's still our position that kids should be masked.

00:09:24.000 She could not explain why.

00:09:26.000 On the mask mandate question in New Jersey and other states, the CDC is still recommending universal masking in schools.

00:09:33.000 That's correct, and that still remains our recommendation.

00:09:35.000 So are you pleased with and fine with the New Jersey governor's decision?

00:09:40.000 Again, our advice to every school district is to abide by public health guidelines.

00:09:44.000 It continues to be at this point that the CDC is advising that masks can delay, reduce transmission.

00:09:51.000 There are also a number of other mitigation measures that we've put in place, but that continues to be CDC guidance.

00:09:58.000 Okay, but by today, this will shift.

00:10:00.000 By the end of the day, the White House will have already started to shift its tune on this.

00:10:00.000 I promise.

00:10:04.000 Already, coming up, Democrats are now saying they want to remove mask mandates like two years too late.

00:10:08.000 Well done, guys.

00:10:09.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

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00:11:24.000 And so you've got, I mean, too little too late, but I'm glad they're doing it now.

00:11:28.000 Now you've got, for example, New Jersey announcing that they want to end school masking.

00:11:32.000 Now remember, right now in Virginia, you got the left yelling at Glenn Youngkin for doing the exact same thing.

00:11:37.000 Glenn Youngkin was like, listen, I ran on, we're unmasking the kids, we're unmasking the kids.

00:11:41.000 And then you have Glenn Youngkin going into stores where there is no mask mandate for adults and getting yelled at by random people.

00:11:47.000 But when Phil Murphy in New Jersey says that this makes him good, even though he's doing it five minutes after Glenn Youngkin did it.

00:11:54.000 Phil Murphy, by the way, the real reason that Phil Murphy in New Jersey is doing this, he's been an awful governor.

00:11:58.000 He has one of the worst death rates from COVID of any governor in America.

00:12:02.000 He has apparently, according to Statista, the third worst death rate from COVID of any state in the Union, New Jersey, despite his massive restrictions.

00:12:12.000 Governor Phil Murphy. 0.98

00:12:13.000 But he almost got his ass blown out of office by a no-name whose name I can't even say. 0.97

00:12:17.000 I don't even know who is running against him. 0.98

00:12:19.000 And he nearly got kicked out of office as governor of New Jersey because of the pandemic restrictions.

00:12:22.000 So now he's like, you know what?

00:12:23.000 I can't do this anymore.

00:12:24.000 We're getting rid of the mask mandates for kids in schools.

00:12:27.000 And he was asked, OK, so what was the evidence for mask mandates in the first place?

00:12:30.000 He's got nothing.

00:12:32.000 So don't tell me the data changed.

00:12:33.000 The data did not change.

00:12:34.000 You guys changed because you were lying for months that you had data to back it.

00:12:37.000 You never had data to back this.

00:12:39.000 This is all about trust us, give us the power, and we will protect you.

00:12:43.000 And then you didn't.

00:12:44.000 You made everybody's life worse.

00:12:46.000 You set kids back a year.

00:12:48.000 You made businesses shut down.

00:12:50.000 You drove people out of their minds.

00:12:52.000 You made them into paranoid freaks about COVID.

00:12:55.000 And now you're like, the data changed.

00:12:56.000 The data did not change.

00:12:58.000 You just got wise to the fact that Americans are sick of this nonsense, even in most blue states.

00:13:02.000 Here's Phil Murphy, unable to answer any basic questions on why mask mandates ought to apply.

00:13:08.000 Have you seen data that definitively proves that these mask mandates have worked?

00:13:15.000 I mean, the numbers you just presented are impressive, but are they different from the numbers in states where they didn't have mask mandates?

00:13:23.000 Yeah, again, I know Jersey Jake the best, but I'm highly confident and I'm sure our health officials could say it definitively.

00:13:32.000 There's no question they've worked.

00:13:36.000 No, there is question that they've worked.

00:13:38.000 I love that he has no data.

00:13:39.000 I'm just going to cite the authorities.

00:13:41.000 Not one shred of data that the mask mandates worked in schools.

00:13:45.000 The data does not exist, which is why Europe was never masking kids.

00:13:48.000 Europe was not masking kids.

00:13:51.000 Anyway, Bill Murphy has now decided to reverse himself.

00:13:54.000 So according to the New York Times, he says that he's going to stop forcing masks on kids in school.

00:14:00.000 He said, quote, this is not a declaration of victory as much as an acknowledgement that we can responsibly live with this thing.

00:14:06.000 The new policy will take effect the second week of March, two years after New York and New Jersey became the early epicenters of a virus that has since mutated and resurged, killing more than 900,000 people nationwide.

00:14:15.000 Now, just a quick note.

00:14:17.000 Why is he doing it second week of March?

00:14:19.000 What's so great about second week of March?

00:14:21.000 Okay, the reason that he is doing it the second week of March is that Joe Biden is giving his State of the Union address the first week of March.

00:14:28.000 That's why he's doing it the second week of March.

00:14:30.000 Joe Biden is going to announce that we are done basically with pandemic measures and the next week magically all the blue states will reopen and the sun will shine and the clouds will clear and all the rest of us who have been saying for literally a year and a half that you ought to be following the data.

00:14:45.000 All of a sudden, we will be the bad guys again.

00:14:48.000 Because what they will say is, you know, we were the ones who were always, we just wanted a real reopening with following the data.

00:14:54.000 And eventually we got there, guys.

00:14:56.000 It just, it took some time.

00:14:57.000 Don't believe the propaganda that they're about to pour onto your head.

00:15:01.000 They are the ones who made this pandemic last longer than it had to in terms of public policy.

00:15:07.000 They are the ones who masked kids for a year with no purpose.

00:15:10.000 Two years with no purpose.

00:15:12.000 And now, the polls cut against them, and suddenly we're supposed to believe that they were good faith actors all along, despite the fact that they never showed the data, ever.

00:15:20.000 Murphy's move follows a decision last month by the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, to rescind his state's school mask mandate.

00:15:27.000 And then, Democratic leaders in Connecticut, Delaware, and Oregon also announced they would end their state's in-school mask mandates.

00:15:33.000 Connecticut will permit students and staff members to stop wearing masks by no later than February 28th.

00:15:37.000 Delaware and Oregon will end their mandates by March 31st.

00:15:41.000 Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom in California, he announced that the indoor mask mandate will end next week, but only for the vaccinated.

00:15:46.000 Because of course, we have to keep pretending that the unvaccinated are somehow killing everybody while the vaccinated are not killing anyone.

00:15:54.000 So Gavin Newsom's gonna pretend that it's because Omicron is waning.

00:15:56.000 He says, citing a 65% drop in COVID-19 cases since the peak of the Omicron surge, California will end its statewide indoor mask mandate for vaccinated individuals next week, nearly two years after it was first implemented, according to Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday.

00:16:10.000 This is CNN reporting, quote.

00:16:13.000 On February 15th, California's statewide indoor mask requirement will expire.

00:16:17.000 Unvaccinated people must still wear masks in indoor public settings. 0.72

00:16:22.000 Notice how this basically justifies him taking a photo next to Magic Johnson with no mask on, right?

00:16:28.000 Because he's vaxxed, so it's okay now.

00:16:31.000 So the attempt by the left to now move into the rational category after spending two years being completely irrational about this entire thing is pretty astonishing.

00:16:41.000 Same thing is happening in New York, by the way.

00:16:43.000 Governor Kathy Hochul apparently is hinting that she may soon end the COVID-19 pandemic-related statewide mask mandate for public indoor spaces.

00:16:50.000 But she says it may not come for another month, which again would put you, wait for it, right at the beginning of March, a week after Joe Biden does his State of the Union address in which he declares that he has ended the pandemic.

00:17:00.000 Again, it is amazing to watch all of these people who've prolonged crappy public policy measures and have completely sunk the future of the American economy based on a $30 trillion national debt declare that they have created victory.

00:17:13.000 It's quite galling.

00:17:14.000 I mean, just a couple of days ago, Joe Biden was out there in public suggesting That we cut the COVID crisis in half is clip eight.

00:17:21.000 Here's Joe Biden, like a couple of days ago, trying to take credit for the ending of COVID in the United States, which, honest to God, I've never seen somebody find parades to jump in front of faster than Joe Biden.

00:17:32.000 He's great at this.

00:17:34.000 There's a natural upswing in the economy.

00:17:35.000 He jumps in front of the parade and he says, I'm the one who made this happen.

00:17:39.000 COVID went up and then it went down and he had nothing to do with any of that.

00:17:43.000 And now he's jumping in front of it and pretending he had something to do with that stuff.

00:17:46.000 I mean, it's just crazy.

00:17:48.000 The COVID crisis has been cut in half, down in half in just three weeks.

00:17:54.000 Still too many cases, still we have to be on the alert.

00:17:59.000 But to be clear, this is a dramatic decline.

00:18:05.000 I mean, look at the magic of Joe Biden standing there and not doing anything.

00:18:09.000 It's like he fixed COVID just by not even doing anything.

00:18:14.000 Honestly, if he had not done anything, the economy would be in much better shape right now.

00:18:17.000 We wouldn't have had a wildly inflated economy last year in which our wage gains are being eaten up by the rates of inflation because he decided to blow money into the economy for no apparent reason.

00:18:25.000 Again, America only succeeds when Joe Biden's policies fail.

00:18:29.000 When he doesn't get what he wants, America does great.

00:18:31.000 When he gets what he wants, America just gets blown up.

00:18:34.000 That is the Biden way.

00:18:35.000 Don't pay attention to the man trying to jump in front of a moving parade and pretend that he's leading the thing.

00:18:40.000 Don't believe the Democratic governors who are doing it either.

00:18:42.000 They had to.

00:18:43.000 They had no choice.

00:18:44.000 The American people aren't with it.

00:18:46.000 Now, what's fun to watch is as all of the quote-unquote misinformation of the past couple of years becomes the new good information.

00:18:53.000 That's fun.

00:18:54.000 So, for example, the Biden administration is amazing.

00:18:56.000 According to Politico, they're now trying to recalculate COVID-19 hospitalizations.

00:19:00.000 So, for two years, it was considered a conspiracy theory to suggest that the stats that were being kept by hospitals were not very good when it came to hospitalizations and COVID.

00:19:09.000 There are a lot of people who are saying there's a difference between being hospitalized of COVID and hospitalized with COVID.

00:19:14.000 If you break your leg and then you test positive for Delta, you're not hospitalized because of COVID.

00:19:19.000 You're hospitalized with COVID.

00:19:21.000 And the same thing is true for a lot of people who are elderly who are dying.

00:19:24.000 Did they die of COVID or did they die of a bunch of complicating factors, which means that if they got anything, they were going to die.

00:19:30.000 This disease killed disproportionately very elderly people with multiple underlying conditions.

00:19:35.000 And if you said that, this was considered wild conspiracy theory insanity.

00:19:39.000 Now, the Biden administration, which is being hit by the case rates of Omicron, because people on the left are like, wait a second, you want to relieve the pandemic restrictions?

00:19:47.000 We still have a lot of cases of Omicron.

00:19:49.000 So what is the Biden administration trying to do?

00:19:51.000 Now they're trying to recalibrate how hospitals count the stats.

00:19:55.000 According to Politico, the Biden administration is working on recalculating the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the United States, according to two senior officials familiar with the matter.

00:20:04.000 A task force comprised of scientists and data specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working with hospitals nationwide to improve COVID-19 reporting.

00:20:13.000 You know when this would have been useful? 1.00

00:20:15.000 In the middle of the pandemic, not two years later, you idiots! 0.99

00:20:19.000 The group is asking hospitals to report numbers of patients who go to the facility because they have COVID, separate from those individuals who go in for other reasons and test positive after being admitted, the two officials said. 0.98

00:20:30.000 The administration's goal is to get a more accurate sense of COVID-19's impact across the country and whether the virus is causing severe disease.

00:20:37.000 Senior Biden health officials have increasingly relied on hospitalization numbers rather than case counts to determine how to respond to the virus, as well as the efficacy of the vaccines.

00:20:45.000 Lower hospitalization rates could inform the administration's thinking on public health measures such as masking.

00:20:50.000 There it is.

00:20:52.000 So now we are going to go back and ask the questions that many of us were asking at the very beginning.

00:20:55.000 How many people are actually in the hospital of COVID versus with COVID?

00:20:59.000 And now they're going to do it.

00:21:00.000 Two years later. 0.98

00:21:02.000 I'd just like to note here that our public health establishment is just hot garbage. 0.99

00:21:05.000 They're just terrible with their jobs. 0.96

00:21:07.000 There are a few questions that we needed to know, like, right up front.

00:21:09.000 Like, for example, the number one question, what is the infection fatality rate of this disease based on age and pre-existing health condition?

00:21:17.000 That is the number one question of this pandemic.

00:21:19.000 And you still cannot get a straight answer.

00:21:20.000 You know why?

00:21:21.000 Because the CDC and the NIH did not do a widespread study on transmission of the disease outside of diagnosis.

00:21:28.000 They never did any sort of serotological study looking at antibodies in the blood of people to determine whether they'd already had COVID.

00:21:35.000 It was left to private industry to try and figure out how many people had actually had COVID without receiving a formal diagnosis.

00:21:40.000 Well, you can't calculate the infection fatality rate of the disease until you actually know how many people have had it.

00:21:47.000 You know what the CDC and the NIH never bothered to calculate?

00:21:50.000 That.

00:21:50.000 And that's why they kept lying about natural immunity.

00:21:53.000 I mean, openly lying about natural immunity.

00:21:55.000 We've known about natural immunity, by the way.

00:21:57.000 on planet Earth for hundreds and hundreds of years.

00:22:01.000 This is not a new thing.

00:22:02.000 The new thing was the scientific establishment trying to suggest that natural immunity didn't exist.

00:22:07.000 Right?

00:22:08.000 That was just, you want to talk about science denial, suggesting that there's no natural immunity after you get the disease, that's science denial.

00:22:14.000 And half of our public policy was rooted in that science denial.

00:22:16.000 And they would do no studies at all in order to verify their own position.

00:22:21.000 In fact, they would suppress anybody who said something different.

00:22:26.000 The amount of public health establishment suppression of good information.

00:22:31.000 It's truly amazing, which is why I don't trust them when they say that they just want Joe Rogan off the air because of misinformation, or they just want to have big tech shut down misinformation.

00:22:38.000 It's a lie.

00:22:39.000 The biggest promoters of bad information throughout this entire pandemic are the people in the public health establishment.

00:22:44.000 When I say the biggest promoters, I mean the people who affected the most people.

00:22:47.000 Because yes, of course, there are people who just said silly things like COVID is not a threat at all, and no one's going to die, or it's just like the flu, or that kind of stuff, or the vaccines are completely ineffective.

00:22:56.000 That stuff is ridiculous, and it is silly, and people who took that advice were taking bad data.

00:23:01.000 The public health establishment are the people you're supposed to trust, and they never provided the data for what they were talking about in any serious way, and they never did the studies to even find the data for the stuff that they were talking about this whole way. 0.96

00:23:13.000 And so when they say now the data have shifted, that's a lie.

00:23:15.000 The data have not shifted.

00:23:17.000 All that's shifted is the politics.

00:23:20.000 And finally, David Leonhardt at the New York Times.

00:23:23.000 He has a piece over at the New York Times called The Mask Debate.

00:23:25.000 More Democratic governors are saying that masks can come off in schools.

00:23:29.000 He says, at a recent high school sports event in my community, I ran into a teenager I've known for years.

00:23:33.000 We gave each other enthusiastic hellos and started to have a conversation.

00:23:36.000 But it was impossible.

00:23:37.000 There was some background noise in the gym.

00:23:39.000 He has a disability that affects how he communicates.

00:23:41.000 Usually it doesn't keep us from talking at length.

00:23:43.000 This time, with both of us masked, neither of us could follow what the other was saying.

00:23:46.000 We smiled and gave up.

00:23:48.000 It was not a big deal, but it reminded me that masks have both benefits and costs.

00:23:51.000 They can slow the transmission of COVID-19, especially medical-grade masks worn properly.

00:23:55.000 See, this is the part nobody ever wanted to talk about, is the fact that if you wear a mask improperly, it does not do its job.

00:24:01.000 The masking study is typically done where they would put a mask fitted properly over a mannequin, and then they would fire particles at the mask.

00:24:08.000 That is not how anyone in the United States has been wearing a mask for two years.

00:24:11.000 What you've actually been doing with masks is putting it in your pocket, taking it off, putting it back on, fussing around with it, adjusting your face, pulling it down to eat, pulling it back up to drink.

00:24:18.000 You know, like all of this stuff means that you are not using PPE properly.

00:24:22.000 I know this because, again, my wife is a doctor who went through medical training at a hospital.

00:24:26.000 This is not how you wear PPE.

00:24:28.000 In any case.

00:24:30.000 David Leonhardt is pointing out that the national debate over mask mandates in schools is picking up again.

00:24:35.000 Yesterday, Democratic governors in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey and Oregon all announced the end of their statewide mandates to take effect in coming weeks.

00:24:41.000 It's a sign that more Americans, not just Republicans, are ready to move to a new phase of the pandemic.

00:24:47.000 Polls found that many Democrats, especially younger Democrats, seem to be overstating their personal risk from COVID.

00:24:52.000 This is correct.

00:24:55.000 In response, some readers argued that exaggerating individual risk is good.

00:24:58.000 It leads to more support for COVID mitigation measures.

00:25:01.000 The real problem is that the United States has done too little to protect people from COVID.

00:25:05.000 There's some logic to this thinking, but the arguments depend on the assumption that almost all COVID restrictions improve public health.

00:25:11.000 That is not necessarily true.

00:25:13.000 Nearly every restriction has both benefits and costs.

00:25:15.000 The question is, when do the benefits outweigh the costs?

00:25:18.000 With vaccines and boosters, the answer is clear.

00:25:20.000 The benefits are really big.

00:25:21.000 Masks, however, have benefits and costs that have to be traded off against one another.

00:25:26.000 So all of this is highly irritating, mainly because we're now going to be sold a bill of goods about how this is all done in good faith.

00:25:32.000 The public health experts were right all along.

00:25:34.000 They followed the data.

00:25:35.000 They did not follow the data.

00:25:36.000 They followed the politics.

00:25:37.000 When it became convenient for Democrats to ditch all of this, or rather inconvenient for them not to ditch all of this, then they started talking about the rights of free American citizens.

00:25:46.000 Until that point, they had nothing to say.

00:25:48.000 In fact, reverse.

00:25:49.000 They wanted to maintain these restrictions.

00:25:52.000 And make no mistake, the kind of restrictionist mentality you see from the left, it applies across the board.

00:25:56.000 It is not just with regard to COVID.

00:25:58.000 It will declare emergencies from here till the end of time.

00:26:01.000 And then they will use those emergencies as the predicate for measures that invade your personal liberty and your personal autonomy.

00:26:06.000 This is what they want to do.

00:26:08.000 This is their goal.

00:26:11.000 Meanwhile, those in the media will declare that the public health establishment, they're all, it's all well-intentioned.

00:26:16.000 They were just following the data.

00:26:18.000 But here's the thing, the members of the media are even less trustworthy than the people in the public health establishment.

00:26:24.000 A great story out of the Wall Street Journal.

00:26:25.000 Apparently, the folks at CNN are still ticked off that CNN president Jeff Zucker had to resign.

00:26:31.000 Now you'll recall that Jeff Zucker's great crime is that he was schtuping his top associate, the CNN chief marketing officer, Allison Golas.

00:26:38.000 So apparently he's been schtuping, according to Rolling Stone, since 1996.

00:26:41.000 And then he's been elevating her throughout her career to the point where she was actually slated to take over CNN as a whole, as a network, based on the fact that she was nailing Jeff Zucker, right, for 25 years, since I was 12 years old. 0.61

00:26:55.000 So she was about to take over the network.

00:26:56.000 He was going to get elevated up in Discovery.

00:26:58.000 And then it turns out that both of them were hanging out with Andrew Cuomo and basically giving him political advice.

00:27:02.000 And this came out in the Chris Cuomo investigation.

00:27:04.000 And Chris Cuomo wanted all sorts of documents related to this, so Jeff Zucker was forced to resign.

00:27:09.000 So are the CNN anchors upset about Jeff Zucker being corrupt and awful?

00:27:14.000 No.

00:27:15.000 The CNN anchors are actually really, really upset that Jeff Zucker is gone, according to the Wall Street Journal.

00:27:21.000 Some of CNN's biggest on-air hosts during a meeting Monday pressed WarnerMedia chief executive Jason Killar for details regarding CNN president Jeff Zucker's resignation.

00:27:29.000 Zucker resigned last week, citing his failure to disclose a consensual relationship with a close colleague.

00:27:34.000 New York-based anchors including Don Lemon, Brian Stelter, Richard Quest, and Alison Camerota asked Mr. Killar a range of questions relating to Zucker's departure and its aftermath, including what to tell network viewers and employees about the executive shuffle.

00:27:46.000 Killar appeared in the meeting through a video connection.

00:27:49.000 Mr. Quest, the anchor of CNN's Quest Means Business, asked Mr. Killar during the question-and-answer session whether he considered alternate decisions that would have allowed Zucker to stay on.

00:27:58.000 Quest said, there was the possibility of a more imaginative result that would have allowed you to keep the captain instead of throwing the captain overboard while the ship is about to go through iceberg.

00:28:05.000 Oliver Darcy, a reporter who covers media at CNN, asked Kilar whether CNN would pay former Cuomo primetime host Chris Cuomo a severance package.

00:28:13.000 Zucker had previously said CNN would not pay Chris Cuomo severance.

00:28:17.000 Lemon followed up on Darcy's question, asking whether Killar had weighed the signals he might be sending by compensating individuals who break with company standards.

00:28:25.000 Lemon said he was asking on behalf of people who posed that question to him.

00:28:28.000 He said, did you think about what message it sends to the journalists in the company and also to the larger public?

00:28:33.000 Someone can be found to break with journalistic standards and then get paid handsomely for it.

00:28:36.000 I noticed that you're asking this about Chris Cuomo, but you are not asking this about Don Lemon, I noticed.

00:28:40.000 Interesting.

00:28:42.000 Killar said those are all theoreticals.

00:28:44.000 He declined to comment on whether CNN would pay Kris Cuomo severance.

00:28:47.000 In fact, they will end up settling out of court.

00:28:49.000 Apparently, Stelter also is trying to push Killar.

00:28:52.000 And then, Erin Burnett said the network's journalists needed more information.

00:28:56.000 She said, we are grieving.

00:28:58.000 Moving on will require answers to these questions.

00:29:00.000 They're grieving.

00:29:02.000 These are the people who are supposed to be our trustworthy sources of information.

00:29:07.000 Alrighty, coming up, the media, they've been defending the public health establishment and Jeff Zucker, but they are really, really mad at one guy, Joe Rogan.

00:29:14.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

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00:30:29.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

00:30:34.000 If you haven't yet marked your calendar for this Thursday, you need to.

00:30:37.000 We could not be more excited to be making good on our promise of bringing you real entertainment.

00:30:41.000 We want to compete with Hollywood.

00:30:42.000 We don't want Hollywood to have a monopoly on the film and TV they show you.

00:30:46.000 You don't need to get sucker punched every time you watch a film.

00:30:49.000 We seriously hope you tune in for the world premiere of the Dailyware's first original film, Shut In.

00:30:54.000 Shut In is a tale of redemption.

00:30:55.000 It's an intense, suspenseful thriller.

00:30:57.000 It delivers riveting action without missing a beat.

00:30:58.000 Check out the trailer.

00:31:00.000 Thanks for watching!

00:31:06.000 BONUS CLIP We are never alone Whose heart is aching For breaking

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00:32:09.000 You had your way I'm scared

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00:32:44.000 It definitely freaked her out.

00:32:45.000 It also is a film that has some good underlying values.

00:32:48.000 The film premieres this Thursday, February 10th at 9 p.m.

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00:33:13.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:33:17.000 Meanwhile, while our media have been defending the public health establishment and defending Jeff Zucker, they are very, very angry at Joe Rogan because they want their competition And Joe Rogan's very bad because he has been providing misinformation about COVID by interviewing a wide variety of people ranging from Sanjay Gupta to Robert Malone.

00:33:38.000 How dare he do such things?

00:33:41.000 And now, of course, there's this concerted hit job on Joe Rogan to try and take him down from Spotify based on a compendium of him saying the N-word over the course of the last 20 years.

00:33:51.000 Quoting rap lyrics.

00:33:52.000 By the way, it's worth noting here that Joe stopped saying the N-word in rap lyrics like a few years ago and actually explained why on the air.

00:33:57.000 But none of that matters because none of this is done in good faith.

00:34:00.000 So Brian Stelter, who's supposed to be the reliable source.

00:34:03.000 Again, there is no more ironically named show in America than reliable sources.

00:34:06.000 Here is Brian Stelter explaining that Spotify does not have to do a deal with Rogan.

00:34:11.000 And if Rogan gets thrown off of Spotify, this puts freedom of speech in no danger at all.

00:34:15.000 It is highly amusing to watch journalists suddenly determine that there's no threat to freedom of speech unless it comes directly from government.

00:34:22.000 Like, these are the people who are supposed to be the broadest advocates for freedom of speech.

00:34:26.000 Now, they just want anyone who is not them shut down.

00:34:30.000 Daniel Akko last night in his memo, the CEO of Spotify, he said, well, we don't want to silence Rogan.

00:34:34.000 So we're going to do more.

00:34:35.000 We're going to consult.

00:34:36.000 We're going to hold meetings.

00:34:37.000 We're going to give money to other people, but we don't want to silence him.

00:34:40.000 That's the wrong frame for this.

00:34:41.000 It's not about silencing.

00:34:42.000 This isn't about censoring him.

00:34:44.000 Spotify has an exclusive deal with him.

00:34:46.000 If he wanted to just put up his podcast on Spotify, just like I do, he could go right ahead and do that.

00:34:50.000 But Spotify pays him tens of millions of dollars to be promoted exclusively on Spotify.

00:34:55.000 This is really a media relationship between Spotify and Rogan that has gone sideways, and that's Okay, this is hilarious.

00:35:03.000 So, Brian Stelter is just jealous that his crappy podcast gets put up on Spotify for free, and they're willing to pay Joe Rogan an inordinate amount of money so that they have the exclusive license to his show.

00:35:14.000 But of course, Spotify has exclusive license to a bunch of shows, with a variety of different viewpoints, and to a bunch of music, with a variety of different artists.

00:35:22.000 So the media are trying to bully Rogan off of Spotify, is the basic idea here.

00:35:27.000 And they're using their all-purpose tool now.

00:35:29.000 Because for the left, there is one tool that they always go back to no matter what, and that is racism.

00:35:34.000 So this is why the N-word tape came out.

00:35:36.000 It's not because anybody on the left actually thinks Rogan's a racist.

00:35:38.000 They don't think Rogan's a racist.

00:35:40.000 They just know that if they call Rogan a racist, they can maybe get a little bit of leverage.

00:35:44.000 This is what they do constantly.

00:35:47.000 All the time, they call people racist without proper evidence in order to gain leverage over that person.

00:35:52.000 And frankly, I think Joe made a mistake in apologizing for any of this stuff.

00:35:55.000 He should have just said, I'm not a racist.

00:35:57.000 No one actually thinks I'm a racist.

00:35:58.000 You just want me off the air because I don't fit your priors about what I should be saying politically.

00:36:04.000 But again, this is the goal.

00:36:05.000 If you just shout racism a lot, then the media can tsunami you into silence.

00:36:09.000 So here is Karen Attia from the Washington Post suggesting that Joe Rogan is demonizing people.

00:36:14.000 He's literally a comedian.

00:36:15.000 That is what he does for a living.

00:36:18.000 I've handled this, I mean, as any brand that still wants to be able to say that they can profit off of

00:36:28.000 A podcast that not only frequently has dehumanized Black people and other groups, women, but, you know, it's Black History Month, and I feel like these sort of brands are the types that will be like all, you know, hashtag Black Lives Matter one minute and curate Black History Month's Spotify playlist for us one minute and then say that, well,

00:36:52.000 We aren't going to do anything about Joe Rogan and this podcast because we want to promote quote-unquote open debate.

00:37:02.000 Okay, so open debate is of no consequence, because after all, if he says things that we don't like, he has to go away, which I thought was sort of the purpose of open debate.

00:37:11.000 Now the goal here is twofold.

00:37:12.000 One is to get rid of Rogan, because Rogan actually is the tip of the spear for people hearing a bunch of voices they wouldn't otherwise hear in the mainstream media.

00:37:19.000 Okay, so that is one thing that's happening.

00:37:20.000 The other thing is bully all of Rogan's friends into silence, and by proxy, the rest of America.

00:37:25.000 Side with us. 0.97

00:37:27.000 Or shut up. 0.99

00:37:27.000 Those are the two choices. 0.99

00:37:28.000 If you speak up, if you raise your head above the water level, we will bang you on the head so hard you'll have a headache for a month. 0.73

00:37:35.000 That is the idea here.

00:37:36.000 And the person who got hit hard over the course of the last couple of days is Andrew Yang.

00:37:39.000 And frankly, I'm super disappointed in Andrew Yang, who I've always thought is a super nice guy, right?

00:37:43.000 He came on my Sunday special.

00:37:44.000 He's been a guest with Rogan as well, as far as I'm aware, I think a couple of times.

00:37:48.000 And he had started his own party and all of this.

00:37:50.000 Well, Andrew Yang, I mean, I'm disappointed in him just as a human, because here's what happened with Andrew Yang.

00:37:55.000 Apparently, according to Yahoo, he had put up a tweet defending Joe Rogan and saying that Joe Rogan isn't racist.

00:38:02.000 And then he was forced to delete the tweet.

00:38:04.000 According to Yahoo, former Democratic presidential hopeful Andrew Yang has now apologized for saying that podcast host Joe Rogan isn't racist because he works with black people.

00:38:12.000 Yang, who has since deleted the tweet, stepped into the furor surrounding the embattled Spotify host over the weekend when Rogan and the company were compelled to address a compilation video showing Rogan repeatedly using the N-word on the Joe Rogan experience.

00:38:23.000 The politician defended Rogan Sunday by tweeting, I don't think Joe Rogan is a racist.

00:38:26.000 The man interacts with and works with black people literally all the time.

00:38:31.000 Yang then added, do I know black friends of Joe's who would swear by him?

00:38:33.000 Yes, I do.

00:38:34.000 But the backlash came quickly, and Yang's reasoning was called out by many, including the DNC chairman, Jamie Harrison.

00:38:40.000 Yang then backtracked with a new thread.

00:38:42.000 I like to believe the best of people, especially if I've met and spent time with that person.

00:38:45.000 Sometimes it makes me miss something.

00:38:47.000 I think we should have the capacity to forgive people, whether a podcaster or a mayor, if they mess up.

00:38:51.000 Maybe it's because I mess up too.

00:38:53.000 He admitted that racism is real, deep, corrosive, even lethal.

00:38:56.000 Admitting, I made a mistake in an earlier tweet tonight that downplayed these realities.

00:39:00.000 And he said he deleted the tweet because it was wrong-headed.

00:39:02.000 And then he added, it also hurt people, which is never my intent.

00:39:05.000 I'm sorry.

00:39:06.000 I'm learning.

00:39:07.000 And I appreciate those who reached out to express their feelings.

00:39:10.000 Okay, but that's not what this is about.

00:39:12.000 He didn't like the criticism.

00:39:15.000 The dirty secret of politics is that if you've never gone through the fire, you are likely to be burned by it and do exactly what the arsonists want.

00:39:22.000 You wonder why so many public figures do this?

00:39:24.000 It's because they've never expected it.

00:39:25.000 Okay, there are people like me who've been under constant media attack for 20 years.

00:39:29.000 I've been doing this for a very, very long time.

00:39:31.000 And we literally built a company in order to shield ourselves from the predations of the left.

00:39:36.000 Daily Wire is an independent company.

00:39:38.000 I wouldn't sell our company to Spotify specifically because of this kind of thing because I don't trust the people at Spotify to back our play.

00:39:44.000 And we hope to set up new wings of the free speech movement where people of a lot of different perspectives can say what they want to say safely and without fear that they are going to be deplatformed or that the left is going to be able to cow them into silence.

00:39:56.000 But if you're Andrew Yang, then you've never been hit.

00:40:00.000 You've never had to deal with this.

00:40:01.000 And so the typical instinct for people is to turtle.

00:40:05.000 Well, that's the goal of the left is to force everyone to turtle. 0.93

00:40:08.000 That is the goal.

00:40:10.000 And so you're going to see this happen over and over and over again.

00:40:11.000 It's not just going to be with regard to Spotify.

00:40:13.000 It's not just going to be with regard to Rogan.

00:40:15.000 It's going to be with regard to a wide variety of other companies.

00:40:19.000 If you claim racism, then the people at the head of these companies have an ugly tendency to want to immediately cave.

00:40:26.000 They want to flagellate themselves and suggest that you're so right.

00:40:30.000 I just didn't understand racism.

00:40:32.000 Maybe they'll leave me alone.

00:40:33.000 Maybe you'll just leave me alone.

00:40:35.000 If I say I didn't understand, will you leave me alone?

00:40:37.000 Please, please will you leave me alone?

00:40:38.000 And the answer is they might leave you alone if you become part of the mob.

00:40:41.000 Are you useful to them?

00:40:41.000 It depends.

00:40:42.000 Can you be useful to them?

00:40:44.000 If you can't be useful to them, your apologies have no consequence. 0.86

00:40:47.000 And then, you're just Ned Stark, and they're Joffrey, and you've offered your fealty, and they chop off your head.

00:40:53.000 If you can still be of use, then they turn you into Reek, and they castrate you, and then, they have you trot around the castle, doing their little spying errands for them. 0.98

00:41:02.000 So, these are your options, if you surrender to the left.

00:41:05.000 You can either be Ned Stark, or you can be Reek.

00:41:07.000 These are the two choices, in this particular universe.

00:41:10.000 So, look at some other companies that are now being attacked this way.

00:41:14.000 So, Tesla.

00:41:15.000 So, Elon Musk is now a target of the left.

00:41:17.000 Again, like Rogan, he's a target of the left because he refuses to abide by the strictures of political correctness. 1.00

00:41:23.000 He says, for example, that capitalism is good, and that his company, its growth is good, and that Elizabeth Warren is an idiot, right? 0.99

00:41:29.000 He says all of these things publicly. 0.98

00:41:31.000 And so, it was only a matter of time before the media tried to find an employee to accuse the company of racism, and now this is what they have done.

00:41:38.000 According to the Daily Beast, Last week, former Tesla employee Kailyn Barker filed a lawsuit against the electric car maker for allegedly disregarding her complaints of racial discrimination, saying that being black worker at Tesla's renowned California factory is to be forced to step back in time and suffer painful abuses reminiscent of the Jim Crow era.

00:41:56.000 Okay, so first of all, that ain't true.

00:41:57.000 And I'll tell you why that ain't true.

00:41:58.000 Because in the Jim Crow era, you wouldn't have been working at the Tesla factory. 0.99

00:42:02.000 It is hilarious to me that people don't seem to understand what Jim Crow was in the first place.

00:42:06.000 The 25-year-old, who is black and gay, claims a white co-worker at the company's Lathrop plant called her the N-word and assaulted her with a hot grinding tool.

00:42:14.000 After Barker complained to Human Resources, Tesla allegedly retaliated by withholding her wages. 0.99

00:42:18.000 I do not believe this.

00:42:20.000 I straight up don't believe this.

00:42:21.000 The reason I don't believe this is because if someone assaults you with a hot grinding tool, you know what you do?

00:42:24.000 You go to the cops.

00:42:26.000 You don't go to HR, you go to the cops.

00:42:28.000 If someone assaults you with a hot grinding tool, if someone calls you the N-word, you think any HR department in America doesn't fire that person and do a full investigation?

00:42:37.000 Any HR department in America, this is literally their job.

00:42:40.000 And Tesla is a company worth billions and billions and billions.

00:42:44.000 It's the most valuable car maker on planet Earth.

00:42:46.000 You think their HR department is going to blow off a claim that someone called you the N-word at work?

00:42:51.000 Are you kidding me?

00:42:52.000 I don't believe this for half a second.

00:42:55.000 Barker's civil suit is one of multiple cases in recent months to paint a disturbing picture of a hostile work environment for women and people of color at the clean energy giant's factories.

00:43:03.000 And it comes a mere four months after the jury awarded another former employee, Owen Diaz, nearly $137 million over racism he encountered in the workplace, which included co-workers hurling racial epithets and telling him to go back to Africa.

00:43:16.000 Now Tesla is facing a civil rights complaint from California regulators over employees' accusations of pervasive racial discrimination.

00:43:22.000 Last month, the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment issued a Notice of Cause Finding and Mandatory Dispute Resolution following an investigation into undisclosed allegations of race discrimination and harassment at unspecified Tesla locations.

00:43:36.000 So, question.

00:43:37.000 This Notice of Cause Finding and Mandatory Dispute Resolution?

00:43:40.000 Includes, just to get this straight, undisclosed allegations of race discrimination.

00:43:44.000 So they've not been disclosed.

00:43:45.000 We have no idea what the allegations are.

00:43:47.000 At an unspecified Tesla location.

00:43:49.000 So what we now know is something bad allegedly happened at a time in a place.

00:43:54.000 We don't know what the thing is, where it happened, or when.

00:43:57.000 Let's open a government investigation.

00:44:00.000 The agency gave notice that based upon the evidence collected, it believes it has grounds to file a civil complaint against Tesla.

00:44:06.000 As for Diaz's multi-million dollar case, Tesla's report said the company does not believe the facts in law justify the verdict and that it has requested a retrial or reduction in the jury's award.

00:44:17.000 Tesla's report also noted it received an SEC subpoena last November requesting information on how billionaire CEO Elon Musk was complying with a 2018 settlement with the securities watchdog that required his tweets to be vetted by a company lawyer.

00:44:30.000 So you now have the government cracking down on Elon Musk's tweets.

00:44:35.000 Yes, clearly this is not a power game.

00:44:36.000 This is really just about preventing racial discrimination.

00:44:38.000 It's not a power game in which you find a company you don't like, and then you target it with racial discrimination, and then the media whips everybody into a frenzy, and then government regulators of the left decide to come in and crack down on the company.

00:44:50.000 I mean, this is truly frightening stuff.

00:44:52.000 Now, good for Musk for not surrendering to it.

00:44:52.000 It really is.

00:44:55.000 But if you want to see somebody surrender to it, all you have to do is take a look at the NFL.

00:44:58.000 And here's the thing.

00:44:59.000 The philosophy seems to be, if I admit that I am racist, then maybe they will leave me alone.

00:45:05.000 And this is exactly what Roger Goodell, a horrible NFL commissioner, has been doing at the NFL.

00:45:09.000 So, former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit this week in Manhattan federal court.

00:45:13.000 We've discussed at length the Brian Flores lawsuit. 0.98

00:45:15.000 It's garbage. 1.00

00:45:16.000 It's a terrible lawsuit. 1.00

00:45:17.000 It looks like it was written in crayon by a seven-year-old.

00:45:20.000 As a lawyer, I can firmly guarantee you there's not even an allegation of a violation of lawbreaking.

00:45:26.000 There isn't.

00:45:27.000 All of the statutes that are cited are not justified.

00:45:30.000 There's no class action because the plaintiffs are not similarly situated.

00:45:35.000 Brian Flores himself has said on Open TV that he has no justification for suggesting that any specific incident involving him was motivated by race rather than maybe by the fact that he hasn't developed the Miami Dolphins quarterback and that his record with the Dolphins kind of sucks.

00:45:49.000 He's not that good a coach.

00:45:51.000 Instead, he sued the NFL, and the NFL, because they believe that the publicity is bad, started doing what all these companies, except for Musk, do, and he started self-flagellating.

00:46:00.000 That's exactly what Goodell did.

00:46:01.000 So he issued a memo on Saturday morning to all 32 teams, in which he said we must, quote, acknowledge that the results of their efforts to promote diversity with respect to head coaches have been unacceptable.

00:46:11.000 Ah, the efforts have been unacceptable because there aren't enough black coaches. 1.00

00:46:13.000 70% of the players are black. 0.73

00:46:15.000 Seems like it's acceptable with regard to the players.

00:46:17.000 And by the way, since when is the player pool the coach pool?

00:46:21.000 I mean, really, this is two separate pools.

00:46:23.000 If you take a look at college coaches, how many of those college coaches were wildly successful players?

00:46:29.000 Many of them are just people who coached high school, and then they coached Division 3, and then coached Division 1.

00:46:35.000 But no matter, Goodell has to pretend obeisance to this ridiculous lawsuit.

00:46:41.000 So Goodell's memo is his first reported comment since former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed that lawsuit.

00:46:46.000 In the memo, Goodell says the league will re-evaluate all policies, guidelines, and initiatives relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion, including as they relate to gender.

00:46:53.000 The league will also retain outside experts to assist in this review.

00:46:57.000 He says racism and any form of discrimination is contrary to the NFL's values.

00:47:01.000 We have made significant efforts to promote diversity and adopted numerous policies and programs, which have produced positive change in many areas.

00:47:07.000 However, we must acknowledge that, particularly with respect to head coaches, the results have been unacceptable.

00:47:12.000 So not unacceptable with result with regard to special teams coaches or offensive line coaches or D-line coaches, but with results of head coaches, all you have to do is see that there are not enough black head coaches.

00:47:24.000 Now, they're gauging that by percentage of the NFL that is black.

00:47:28.000 Well, why not gauge it by percentage of the American population that's black?

00:47:32.000 Because that looks more proportional.

00:47:34.000 Why aren't there 3% of head coaches who are Asian?

00:47:39.000 Why aren't there 0.5%, 0.3% of the NFL's players who are Jewish?

00:47:42.000 Why not?

00:47:46.000 Anyway, Goodell says, we will reevaluate and examine all policies.

00:47:48.000 We are retaining outside experts.

00:47:50.000 Our goal is simple.

00:47:51.000 Make our efforts and those of the clubs more effective so the real and tangible results will be achieved.

00:47:56.000 Now, here is the hilarious thing.

00:47:58.000 Bye.

00:48:00.000 The folks who are using charges of racism as a tool of power, they're giving away the game now.

00:48:06.000 I mean, they're really, really giving away the game, and it's pretty hysterically funny.

00:48:09.000 So, for example, Stephen A. Smith is very pissed.

00:48:12.000 Why is Stephen A. Smith pissed?

00:48:14.000 Well, I mean, first of all, today ending in Y, so Stephen A. Smith is pissed.

00:48:16.000 But Stephen A. Smith is also pissed because after Brian Flores was fired, the Dolphins hired to replace him the San Francisco 49ers offensive coordinator, Mike McDaniel.

00:48:27.000 So Mike McDaniel is multiracial.

00:48:30.000 Mike McDaniel is the league's fourth minority head coach.

00:48:33.000 This is not good enough for Stephen A. Smith.

00:48:34.000 And Mike McDaniel is multiracial.

00:48:36.000 So here he was explaining that, no, no, no, no.

00:48:38.000 You see, when we accuse the NFL and the Dolphins of racism, what we mean is only racism against my friends.

00:48:45.000 So here's Stephen A. Smith.

00:48:48.000 When we look at Mike McDaniels, we wish him nothing but the best.

00:48:51.000 When you say he's mixed, is that what you said, Molly?

00:48:54.000 Multiracial is how he identifies.

00:48:56.000 That's how he identifies as a multiracial?

00:48:58.000 Yeah, multiracial.

00:48:59.000 No problem.

00:48:59.000 OK, fine.

00:49:01.000 This was a conversation last week about black men.

00:49:04.000 What I'm saying is the conversation last week pertaining to the Brian Flores situation is the scarcity of black men who have been given opportunities to be head coaches in the National Football League.

00:49:18.000 His father is of black descent, by the way.

00:49:21.000 So, um, what?

00:49:23.000 But again, it's only about the black people that Stephen A. Smith says it's about.

00:49:26.000 By the way, you want to know the real proof in the pudding?

00:49:28.000 This is the best one.

00:49:29.000 Okay, so the Houston Texans hired Lovey Smith. 0.94

00:49:32.000 First of all, crappy hire. 0.83

00:49:33.000 Lovey Smith was not a good football coach. 0.97

00:49:35.000 Just gonna put it out there, as a Bears fan, Lovie Smith was not a good football coach.

00:49:39.000 And by the way, in his last couple of years in the NFL, which is in terms of as a head coach, his actual stats were garbaggio.

00:49:47.000 He has a career 92-90 record, which is not a stellar record in the NFL.

00:49:51.000 He used to lose in the playoffs pretty much Every year, he had two good seasons early on.

00:49:58.000 In 2004, he went 5-11 with the Bears.

00:50:00.000 And then in 2005, he went to the NFC Divisional game.

00:50:03.000 That's when Brian Urlacher was on the team.

00:50:05.000 They went 11-5.

00:50:06.000 Then they went 13-3 and went to the Super Bowl and lost with Rex Grossman as quarterback.

00:50:10.000 You can't put that on Levy Smith.

00:50:11.000 Rex Grossman was not a very good quarterback.

00:50:12.000 But then, He basically was terrible the rest of his Bears career.

00:50:18.000 They were mediocre every single year.

00:50:19.000 He couldn't develop a quarterback no matter what he did.

00:50:21.000 And then he went to Tampa Bay in 2014-2015.

00:50:24.000 And his record with Tampa Bay was a whopping 8-24.

00:50:28.000 And now, lest you think that that is a good record, that means that he won 8 times and lost 24 times for a winning percentage of 250.

00:50:35.000 So Lovey Smith is not like some great shakes as a head coach.

00:50:38.000 But the Houston Texans decided to promote Lovey Smith to their head coaching role.

00:50:44.000 Apparently, they decided that they were going to interview three candidates twice.

00:50:48.000 Josh McCown, the Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator, Jonathan Gannon, and Brian Flores.

00:50:54.000 Okay, so they actually interviewed Flores.

00:50:57.000 Herein lies the problem, and this is the really funny part.

00:51:00.000 So after they hired Lovey Smith, Brian Flores then said, so Brian Flores put out a statement about Lovey Smith, and this is my favorite thing.

00:51:09.000 Okay, because supposedly this is just about empowering black men, right?

00:51:13.000 This is the only reason why he filed the lawsuit was to empower black men.

00:51:16.000 Well, actually, Brian Flores is upset that Lovey Smith got hired.

00:51:20.000 Quote is from his his lawyer's statement.

00:51:23.000 Mr. Flores is happy to hear that the Texans have hired a black head coach, Lovey Smith, as Mr. Flores.

00:51:27.000 His goal in bringing his case is to provide real opportunities for black and minority candidates to be considered for coaching and executive positions within the NFL.

00:51:35.000 However, We would be remiss not to mention that Mr. Flores was one of three finalists for the Texans head coach position.

00:51:41.000 And after a great interview and mutual interest, it is obvious the only reason Flores was not selected was his decision to stand up against racial inequality across the NFL.

00:51:50.000 So they hired a black guy, Lovey Smith, and Brian Flores is like, you're still racist because you didn't hire me.

00:51:55.000 Yeah, we know. 0.80

00:51:56.000 We know.

00:51:56.000 We know what the agenda here is.

00:51:59.000 Come on.

00:52:00.000 And this is always the agenda from the left.

00:52:02.000 It's just this shtick. 0.99

00:52:03.000 It's a ridiculous shtick. 0.96

00:52:04.000 The Washington Post has a piece in the opinion section today. 0.99

00:52:07.000 Same kind of shtick.

00:52:08.000 Quote, I used to work on the Hill.

00:52:10.000 The Dear White Staffers Instagram account is a long overdue reckoning.

00:52:13.000 It's by a woman named Melissa Sullivan.

00:52:15.000 And she talks about how she landed an internship on Capitol Hill and people were abusing her because she was a first generation Latina American.

00:52:21.000 And then there is this new Instagram account by a bunch of people of color.

00:52:27.000 called Dear White Staffers on Instagram, that is supposed to be ripping into the treatment of people of minority status in the legislative offices.

00:52:37.000 And so she says she's very happy about all of this.

00:52:41.000 She says, in response to that launch, hundreds of current and former Hill staffers began submitting anonymous stories about their bosses, pay inequity, sexual harassment, racism, and the harmful consequences of working on Capitol Hill.

00:52:52.000 Drug use, depression, and anxiety.

00:52:54.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:52:55.000 If you actually have been sexually harassed in a congressional office, that's a lawsuit, is it not?

00:52:58.000 Where are the lawsuits?

00:53:00.000 People are pretty litigious in this country.

00:53:02.000 If actually you've been experiencing real pay inequity in violation of civil rights law, where are the lawsuits?

00:53:10.000 Especially because it sounds like this is a really bipartisan or maybe a Democrat issue.

00:53:15.000 Where are the lawsuits?

00:53:17.000 If you're accusing people of racism, you have a lawsuit on your hands.

00:53:22.000 So where's the lawsuit?

00:53:23.000 And the answer is there is no lawsuit.

00:53:25.000 What is the end goal according to this piece?

00:53:28.000 Quote, the survey has spurred an unprecedented conversation about salary disparities and how staff can institute more workplace protections.

00:53:34.000 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a handful of other members now openly say they support unionization efforts for Hill staff.

00:53:41.000 Yeah, there it is.

00:53:42.000 Yeah, the Democratic Party.

00:53:44.000 Buying off all of their own racism and supposed sexism and all of this by saying it's time to unionize, which is precisely what they wanted to do in the first place.

00:53:52.000 Charges of racism as just another tool in the portfolio toward the pursuit of power, as always, as always.

00:53:59.000 It's never about the data.

00:54:00.000 It's never about the actual on the ground situation, because when people are sexually harassed, we all agree, bad, punishable.

00:54:06.000 When people are hit with actual racism, we all agree, very bad.

00:54:11.000 In some cases, punishable, depending on the kind of Racism you're receiving.

00:54:16.000 Under law.

00:54:17.000 But that's not what they want.

00:54:18.000 That's not what the left wants.

00:54:19.000 What the left just wants is to throw out accusations of things that they can't verify and then get you to kowtow to them and give them enormous power.

00:54:26.000 That's what they want.

00:54:27.000 On every subject.

00:54:29.000 From COVID to race. 0.82

00:54:30.000 On all of them.

00:54:31.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.

00:54:34.000 In the meantime, go check out The Michael Molls Show.

00:54:36.000 That's available right now.

00:54:37.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:54:37.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:54:55.000 Editing is by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Fabiola Christina, production assistant Jessica Crand.

00:55:02.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire Production. Copyright Daily Wire 2022.

00:55:06.000 Sorry.

00:55:26.000 now sorry breaking Jessica I can smell the weakness from here

00:55:51.000 Oh Wow owes me money Let me out, please Good is this doing now You

00:56:20.000 Far away...

00:56:22.000 Oh I'm scared.

The Ben Shapiro Show - February 08, 2022

Blue States Reverse Themselves On Mask Mandates | Ep. 1429

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