The Ben Shapiro Show - Coronapanic | Ep. 967

00:00:00.000 Coronavirus spreads as the stock market tanks, the Trump administration calls for calm as panic accelerates, and Bernie Sanders struggles to stop Joe Biden's momentum.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:09.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:10.000 This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN's Stop putting your online data at risk.

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00:00:25.000 Well, you may have noticed this morning that the stock market took an absolute beating, an absolute pounding.

00:00:30.000 It's been taking a pounding for the last week over coronavirus, over Saudi oil war.

00:00:34.000 We'll get to all of that in a second.

00:00:35.000 But this might be a good time to think about, hey, maybe I should invest in something solid, something real, maybe something like precious metals.

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00:00:43.000 Yeah, I've been noticing the market too, just like every other person in the United States.

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00:01:46.000 All right.

00:01:47.000 So, feeling the panic?

00:01:49.000 Are you?

00:01:50.000 Everybody is feeling a little bit panicked after the last week and a half.

00:01:54.000 And it is important to note that what is happening right now is based on shortage of information.

00:01:59.000 That's really all that's happening.

00:02:00.000 We don't know death rates.

00:02:01.000 We don't know infection rates when it comes to coronavirus.

00:02:03.000 And this is leading people I think reasonably to be very afraid.

00:02:08.000 Now, I think that panic and doing things that make no sense, like stocking up on vast quantities of toilet paper or going out and buying medical masks, like stuff that's ineffective, going out and buying water bottles.

00:02:19.000 Guys, there's not going to be a cutoff in your water supply.

00:02:20.000 You're going to be able to turn on your tap.

00:02:22.000 Water is going to come out. 0.98

00:02:23.000 You know, that kind of stuff is very silly.

00:02:25.000 With that said, a discombobulated global response and a patchwork response from various local communities.

00:02:32.000 had an L.A.

00:02:32.000 I mean, L.A.

00:02:33.000 Marathon yesterday.

00:02:34.000 At the same time, you're seeing Democrats in the United States claim that President Trump is botching the response and he should be doing more.

00:02:39.000 You have Democrat cities like Seattle.

00:02:41.000 Seattle had Comic-Con, like, last weekend with 100,000 people in an outbreak center.

00:02:46.000 The L.A.

00:02:47.000 Marathon took place yesterday in Los Angeles with, like, tens of thousands of people running around together.

00:02:52.000 Okay, so there's been no coordinated response.

00:02:55.000 People don't know what the rules of the road are.

00:02:57.000 People don't know how dangerous coronavirus actually is.

00:02:59.000 We don't know how many people are dying.

00:03:01.000 I've suggested that we can kind of look at the stats and determine that it's not a grave threat to people, particularly who are very young.

00:03:07.000 There have been no reported deaths of kids under the age of nine.

00:03:10.000 The death rates tend to go up fairly precipitously once you hit the age of 60.

00:03:14.000 Once you hit the age of 80, they go up really precipitously.

00:03:16.000 If you have a secondary health condition or if you are elderly, Then coronavirus is a real threat.

00:03:20.000 This is particularly true if you're in a nursing home where it's very easy to transmit coronavirus and where, again, you have a very vulnerable patient population.

00:03:28.000 But because we are watching these very outsized responses, which may or may not be a good idea in places like Italy, in places like China, in places like Israel.

00:03:37.000 We look at other countries and we see that they're taking these very outsized responses.

00:03:42.000 It's difficult to make the claim that a global panic Over coronavirus is driven by President Trump.

00:03:47.000 So the media today are trying to blame President Trump for everything that is going on.

00:03:50.000 President Trump is not helping the situation by being not a supremely, I would say, placid leader.

00:03:56.000 You know, in these times, having the President of the United States online tweeting about media coverage of coronavirus is really not useful.

00:04:03.000 You want a calming presence in the Oval Office, somebody who feels like there's a plan, somebody who feels like they're in control.

00:04:07.000 And honestly, on a political level, The president is making a fairly large mistake politically in not overreacting.

00:04:14.000 What I mean by that is when people are feeling a real threat, going out there and being like, everything's fine.

00:04:18.000 Our response is perfect.

00:04:19.000 The vaccine's in development.

00:04:20.000 Everything's good.

00:04:21.000 Our testing procedures were great.

00:04:24.000 Our testing procedures were not great in the initial stages.

00:04:27.000 The tests failed.

00:04:28.000 One of the reasons we have a panic on our hands in the United States is because people don't have any access to information.

00:04:34.000 The fact is that because a lot of the early coronavirus testing gets failed, we don't know who has coronavirus and who does not in the United States, which is why we've ended up with this sort of bizarre, miasmatic feeling that anybody could have it, when in reality, very few people in the United States have actually been diagnosed with coronavirus.

00:04:51.000 With all that said, this would be a time, as we're going to discuss in a little while, for the President of the United States and Congress to seriously consider measures like trying to coordinate a federal, state, and local response in terms of event planning.

00:05:04.000 What size of events should go forward?

00:05:06.000 What should the state not allow to go forward in terms of size of event?

00:05:10.000 And you're seeing a lot of local communities taking the lead in all of this.

00:05:14.000 I'm most aware of my local Jewish community.

00:05:16.000 I know that major Purim events, right?

00:05:18.000 Tonight is Purim, which is a major Jewish gathering, big parties happening all over the world.

00:05:23.000 I know that in the Jewish community in Los Angeles, major events are being canceled, like Purim carnivals are being canceled.

00:05:29.000 I know that at schools, local Jewish schools, they're now testing kids who are walking in the door.

00:05:34.000 They're giving them temperature tests, and if they are above a certain temperature, they're sending them home for whatever good that is.

00:05:39.000 So people on the local level across the country are taking voluntary steps to try and mitigate the effects of this virus.

00:05:46.000 Obviously, best advice is still best advice.

00:05:49.000 If you gotta cough, cough into your sleeve, cough into a napkin.

00:05:52.000 If you gotta touch your face, try not to touch your eyes, try not to touch your mouth, try not to touch your nose.

00:05:55.000 I know it's difficult.

00:05:56.000 If you're gonna, you should be washing your hands as much as possible, especially after you go to the restroom.

00:06:01.000 You should do that anyway.

00:06:02.000 But when you go to a new place, when you go to work, first thing you should do, you should go wash your hands.

00:06:05.000 You should sing yourself happy birthday twice.

00:06:07.000 Not the Stevie Wonder version.

00:06:08.000 That'll take you like 14 minutes.

00:06:09.000 Like the actual short version of happy birthday.

00:06:12.000 You sing the ABC song to yourself.

00:06:13.000 These are all the pieces of advice that everybody is giving and they are good pieces of advice.

00:06:17.000 Social distancing is something that people are taking into account at this point, which frankly I'm comfortable with. 0.99

00:06:22.000 I don't like being within a certain, Within a certain distance of other human beings so you know being within try to be without outside of like two and a half feet three feet of somebody handshaking apparently is bad because you can transmit germs that way instead go for like a fist bump or an elbow bump or something if you're gonna greet sorry these are all the steps that we can take but in the absence of information it's hard not to feel panic because the normal human response to lack of information is obviously going to be fear and protection right the amygdala the fear center of your brain is gonna respond and when the media coverage is so blanket this way

00:06:52.000 It is very difficult not to feel caught up in it.

00:06:54.000 And that's what you're seeing in the markets today.

00:06:56.000 If the media during flu season covered flu wall-to-wall, if all you got during flu season was flu outbreak here, flu outbreak there, here's how many people in the United States are dying today, here's how many people worldwide are dying, we would be panicked every year about the flu.

00:07:09.000 Now, by all available information, coronavirus is more deadly than the flu.

00:07:13.000 The question is by what multiple?

00:07:14.000 So is it a multiple of 10?

00:07:16.000 Is it a multiple of 20?

00:07:17.000 Is it a multiple of 4?

00:07:18.000 We don't really know at this point, but suffice it to say that the media attention combined with lack of information and repetition of the same Conflicting information over and over is making people feel very uneasy.

00:07:29.000 This is being reflected in the market.

00:07:30.000 So this morning, the stock futures had already dumped over the weekend, and finally that materialized.

00:07:36.000 The early morning trading, the S&P 500 sank 7% shortly after opening.

00:07:41.000 The Dow Jones Industrial Average crated as much as 2,000 points before it clawed back a little bit.

00:07:47.000 The Dow actually had to be shut down.

00:07:49.000 I mean, they shut down the Dow for 15 minutes.

00:07:51.000 They shut down the stock market for 15 minutes to allow people to sort of regain their bearings with reality.

00:07:57.000 The stock market has basically stayed the same since then.

00:08:00.000 It dropped briefly.

00:08:01.000 The early morning trading, over the weekend, the Dow Jones Industrial Average About basically 25,000.

00:08:06.000 It was at 24,992.36.

00:08:08.000 It dumped immediately, like in the opening minutes, all the way down to below 24,000.

00:08:13.000 So it dumped 2,000 points in the opening minutes of the stock market.

00:08:18.000 It paused for 15 minutes, it dumped a little bit more, and then there was sort of a slight recovery.

00:08:22.000 It would not be a shock if by the end of the day there was another dump, because the bottom line is that people who are investing in short-term trading are not looking at this market and feeling that the market is being quieted.

00:08:32.000 According to the Washington Post, the forced freeze was a sign of unprecedented volatility for Wall Street.

00:08:36.000 Amid the most turbulent trading in recent memory, another 15-minute halt will be triggered if the S&P 500's losses hit the 13% threshold.

00:08:43.000 In the event of a 20% decline, markets would actually shut down for the entire day.

00:08:47.000 Now that is speculative, that the markets would dump that much, that there'd be that much of a dump.

00:08:51.000 Now listen, here's the reality.

00:08:53.000 If you are investing over the long haul, that's actually a fantastic time to buy.

00:08:56.000 But over the long haul, not over the short haul, not for the next year, not for the next six months.

00:09:00.000 If you're investing over the next 30 years, now's a great time to buy, right?

00:09:03.000 You got a little bit of a market discount.

00:09:05.000 But if you are investing over the next two years or five years, anybody who tells you they know what's going to happen over the next year is lying to you.

00:09:11.000 Nobody knows what's going to happen over the next year because nobody has enough information about coronavirus, the disruption of global supply lines, whether this thing is actually being mitigated in China or the reports are just going down, whether there are secondary infections available.

00:09:22.000 Now there are rumors.

00:09:23.000 That COVID-19 actually has two strains, and that one strain is less deadly, and there's a second strain that's more deadly, and you can be reinfected.

00:09:29.000 We just don't know enough at this point, which is what you are seeing in the markets, and the fact that there is no credible, globally-coordinated response to this thing, and all you see are headlines about 15 million Italians being quarantined.

00:09:41.000 That sort of stuff is going to make people pretty damned uneasy.

00:09:44.000 Greg McBride, the chief financial analyst at Bankrate, said the bull market's 11-year birthday is today, but investors are not in a celebratory mood, with trading halted shortly after the open as markets plunged.

00:09:53.000 The uncertain economic impact of coronavirus continues to grip markets, with stocks, commodities, and interest rates all dropping sharply.

00:09:58.000 Markets hate uncertainty.

00:09:59.000 There's a ton of it currently in play.

00:10:01.000 That, of course, is exactly right.

00:10:03.000 I mean, the fact is that airlines, I got two emails from separate airlines this morning.

00:10:07.000 I'm sure all the airlines sent emails this morning about what they are doing about coronavirus, pledging to bleach the entire insides of planes, basically.

00:10:14.000 They've used the bleach typically overnight in the lavatories, but now they're talking about bleaching entire planes.

00:10:20.000 They talk about the sort of air recirculation they've been using on planes, the filters they've been using on planes to get coronavirus out of the air, if God forbid somebody on the planes has coronavirus, the sort of testing protocols they have in place.

00:10:30.000 for fever and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:10:33.000 The travel industry is taking a bath, just taking an absolute bath, right?

00:10:37.000 The US government has already recommended that nobody go on a cruise.

00:10:39.000 So that means that the cruise industry is basically shut down.

00:10:42.000 The airline industry is basically going to shut down over the next several weeks.

00:10:46.000 You're going to see people canceling trips en masse.

00:10:48.000 I would be very surprised if over the next few months, you don't see the cancellation of, maybe over the next couple of weeks, of major sporting events because of local concerns about the spread of coronavirus.

00:10:59.000 The economy is going to grind to a halt.

00:11:01.000 And the question is going to be how long the economy grinds to a halt for.

00:11:06.000 Which sectors of the economy are hardest hit?

00:11:07.000 Now, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 dumping, part of that also has to do With a major oil war that is going on between the Saudis and the Russians.

00:11:17.000 So the commodities market is taking a dump.

00:11:19.000 People are rushing to treasuries, but the problem is that as you rush to treasuries and the interest rates go down, that is not actually spurring people to borrow money from the government.

00:11:27.000 The government, the Fed, has been lowering its rate, lowering its rate, lowering its rate.

00:11:30.000 Who wants to expand their business in the middle of what could be a prolonged recession?

00:11:35.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

00:11:37.000 Again, none of this is to spread panic because I keep saying, Like, we just don't know enough to panic at this point, but it is to say that there is justifiable concern today, and unless we see more information emerge relatively soon from the state, local, and federal government, unless we start seeing some real answers as to these rates, This uncertainty is going to prevail.

00:11:59.000 It's not unreasonable for uncertainty to prevail.

00:11:59.000 And that's not unreasonable.

00:12:01.000 Again, this doesn't mean go panic buy everything off the shelves at Costco.

00:12:05.000 It doesn't mean that everyone around you is going to get coronavirus.

00:12:08.000 Your risk is still relatively low.

00:12:09.000 But to not take this seriously would be tomfoolery.

00:12:11.000 And by the way, for all those Democrats who are saying that Republicans were calling this a hoax, that is not true.

00:12:15.000 What Republicans were saying was a hoax is blaming this on Trump.

00:12:18.000 This is not Trump's fault.

00:12:19.000 It is hard to see how, given the resources at his disposal, the reaction could have been appreciably different from the federal government.

00:12:26.000 Trump's rhetoric could have been appreciably different.

00:12:27.000 That would have been helpful.

00:12:28.000 But in terms of what the federal government has done and continues to do, the federal government just approved over $8 billion in coronavirus spending over the weekend.

00:12:36.000 So I'm hard-pressed to see what Trump should be doing that he is not doing at this point, other than shut up.

00:12:43.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

00:12:45.000 First, you know, now would be a good time to buy some life insurance.

00:12:48.000 Man, this is a dark show today.

00:12:50.000 Really, really dark.

00:12:51.000 But here is the reality.

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00:12:54.000 If you've got a family, you should have life insurance.

00:12:56.000 You never know what's going to be around the corner.

00:12:58.000 Is it a car or is it coronavirus?

00:12:59.000 Who the hell knows?

00:13:00.000 But what you do know is that at some point, Something bad could happen.

00:13:03.000 This is why you ought to have life insurance so your family is taken care of in case, God forbid, something happens to you.

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00:13:49.000 Again, PolicyGenius.com.

00:13:50.000 Now, the reason that I'm not speculating too much on where I think this is gonna go is because I don't think speculation is supremely useful.

00:13:55.000 If I were to speculate, I do not think that hundreds of thousands of people in the United States have died from coronavirus.

00:14:00.000 I do not think that you're going to see, you know, the stand.

00:14:03.000 I don't think that's best available information.

00:14:05.000 That's speculating on the best available information.

00:14:07.000 But again, taking those sort of safe procedures makes some sense.

00:14:12.000 What's happening right now is also coronavirus is having some systemic impact.

00:14:16.000 It's basically a trigger mechanism for what Is happening in the stock market, underlying the stock market anyway.

00:14:22.000 The European economy has been weak for years.

00:14:24.000 The Chinese economy has been overblown for years.

00:14:27.000 And now that supply chains are being disrupted and demand is going down, you're starting to see the economy tumble into a recession that honestly is not completely unpredictable.

00:14:35.000 Like literally every 8 to 10 years, the United States goes into some sort of recession.

00:14:39.000 This one is not Trump's fault.

00:14:40.000 It really is not.

00:14:42.000 The Fed is not going to relieve this.

00:14:43.000 Anybody who thinks that the Federal Reserve is going to fix all of this is not telling you the truth.

00:14:47.000 The Federal Reserve lowering interest rates is not going to jog the economy.

00:14:50.000 People are not spending because there is too much uncertainty, because supply lines have been disrupted, because demand is going down.

00:14:56.000 If you actually want to jog the economy right now, there are only a couple of things you can do.

00:14:59.000 Stimulus packages, by the way, are also not going to work.

00:15:01.000 Government spending is not going to work.

00:15:02.000 The only thing that can be done, really, is you gotta solve the underlying issues.

00:15:05.000 And that means get more information about coronavirus as soon as humanly possible.

00:15:10.000 Once that happens, then things can go back to a level of stasis.

00:15:13.000 And people in the media are saying, throw money at it.

00:15:15.000 Stimulus packages will solve this thing.

00:15:17.000 Stimulus packages did not solve the global recession of 2007 and 2008.

00:15:21.000 What solved the global recession of 2007 and 2008 was basically time.

00:15:28.000 Some of the bailouts helped, for sure, in terms of short-term recovery.

00:15:32.000 But the stimulus package, in my opinion, did not have a markedly appreciable effect on the increase in the economy.

00:15:38.000 In fact, government spending and increased taxation probably slowed the recovery, which is why you ended up with the most prolonged recovery in American history, because it was very slow and steady all the way till basically this point.

00:15:51.000 But meanwhile, things are being complicated because oil prices are tumbling.

00:15:54.000 So normally, again, when the stock market starts to tumble, people rush to invest in commodities like oil.

00:15:59.000 But oil prices are also tumbling because the Saudis went to the Russians and they said, guys, we need to pump a little bit more.

00:16:06.000 We need to do that in order to ease global economic tensions, global economic fears.

00:16:10.000 We need to make it cheaper for people to go to work, cheaper for people to travel.

00:16:14.000 And the Russians said no. 0.96

00:16:15.000 And the Saudis said, well, fine, screw you. 0.99

00:16:17.000 We'll just out pump you. 0.99

00:16:18.000 And so the Saudis have been undercutting the Russian prices in terms of oil.

00:16:22.000 Oil prices tumbled into the $30 range after Saudi Arabia and Russia deadlocked overproduction.

00:16:26.000 The Saudis had been pushing for a cut in output to prop up prices, rather.

00:16:29.000 Sorry, I got that wrong.

00:16:30.000 The Saudis wanted to prop up the prices a little bit to prop up the oil industry, but did a reversal when Russia balked and decided instead to flood the market with hundreds of thousands of additional barrels per day at a steep discount.

00:16:40.000 The Russians were attempting to undercut the American fracking industry, at least in part.

00:16:44.000 And the Saudis were like, okay, you want to play this game? 0.99

00:16:45.000 We'll play this game.

00:16:46.000 And the Saudis decided to lower the oil prices fairly dramatically.

00:16:50.000 Cheap oil is one thing, super cheap oil is another, said John Kilduff of Again Capital.

00:16:53.000 The stock market is looking at the oil price plunge as a canary in the coal mine of a disinflationary one-two punch, driven partly by cratering demand for transportation fuels and a wanton price war among the major oil producers that could result in big losses for oil producers across the planet.

00:17:09.000 So you are seeing a radical reduction in demand at the same time that in terms of oil, you're seeing a radical increase in supply.

00:17:16.000 As I say, the energy industry is about to take a major hit.

00:17:20.000 The travel industry is going to take a bath.

00:17:22.000 Public events are going to take a major bath.

00:17:24.000 So we're looking at some very serious issues.

00:17:27.000 And not all of those are driven by coronavirus.

00:17:29.000 Part of that is driven by excessive government spending in the West that has been really debt-related.

00:17:35.000 I mean, it's easy to say that the United States should just take out debt, but who exactly is going to be buying up that debt?

00:17:41.000 Is there tons of appetite for American debt given the slowing of the American economy?

00:17:44.000 There's more appetite for the debt right now than there is for stock market pricing, but you really have to incentivize people to take the debt, which is why I would not be surprised to see President Trump start to push negative interest rates.

00:17:55.000 The idea that we are going to start actually paying people to borrow from the U.S.

00:17:59.000 government.

00:18:00.000 And meanwhile, confusion spreads in Italy as Italy is trying to lock down 16 million people.

00:18:05.000 This is why I say it's not about Trump.

00:18:06.000 It is not about the United States per se.

00:18:08.000 This is...

00:18:09.000 A global worry issue.

00:18:11.000 According to the Washington Post, Italy on Sunday launched a complicated and urgent plan to restrict the movement of roughly 16 million people, a measure that unleashed confusion about how it could be enforced and whether it would be enough to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

00:18:23.000 The plan to lock down large swaths of the North was the first major attempt by a democracy during the coronavirus crisis to radically halt the routines of daily life, an effort that will have significant impact on civil liberties.

00:18:33.000 But in the hours before and after the measure became law, people continued to stream out of the northern hubs of Milan and Venice on trains and planes for southern Italy or elsewhere in Europe.

00:18:41.000 Sunday provided the first glimpse of a coronavirus lockdown European style, a test of how the open border spirit of the continent might change as countries grapple with the scale and risk of the disease.

00:18:51.000 Italy is not trying to completely lockdown.

00:18:54.000 Movement like China did. 1.00

00:18:56.000 But even limited movement risks further spreading the virus.

00:19:00.000 Also, countries in Europe are trying to shut their borders to one another.

00:19:03.000 They are very much afraid that human migration is going to spread this thing.

00:19:07.000 Now, here's a piece of good news.

00:19:08.000 A piece of good news that the virus's spread in China is apparently slowing.

00:19:11.000 China on Sunday announced only 40 new cases of coronavirus and 22 additional cases of deaths.

00:19:16.000 The problem is you can never really trust the Chinese government to be honest with you about this.

00:19:19.000 China's propaganda arm, the media in China, they've been trying to suggest that Xi Jinping did a wonderful job with this whole coronavirus thing.

00:19:26.000 Oh yeah, you mean except for the first six weeks where you were like imprisoning everybody talking about it and preventing everybody from effectuating effective travel bans?

00:19:33.000 Like would that be the part where you did a great job or was the part where you're welding people inside their houses?

00:19:37.000 Daily new infections in China had dropped into double digits Friday, again according to the Washington Post, for the first time since figures began coming out in January.

00:19:44.000 As usual, the toll in China was concentrated in Hubei province, the outbreak's epicenter.

00:19:49.000 21 of the reported deaths were in Hubei.

00:19:51.000 36 of the new cases were in its capital city of Wuhan.

00:19:54.000 But even in Wuhan, Chinese officials have been signaling optimism.

00:19:56.000 The Communist Party boss said there on Friday he would begin a citywide thankfulness education campaign to encourage people to show their appreciation for the leadership.

00:20:04.000 Because in a commie country, you can just force people to clap, even if those leaders were responsible for the spread of death inside your country. 0.86

00:20:11.000 China's infections total about 81,000, more than 3,100 deaths inside the country.

00:20:16.000 There's still almost 20,000 coronavirus patients remaining in the hospital.

00:20:19.000 5,000 of them have been deemed critical.

00:20:21.000 So, it could be that that death toll raises dramatically, right?

00:20:24.000 If 5,000 people are critical, let's say half of those people end up dying, God forbid, then you end up with an initial 2,500 deaths on your hands, which is a pretty massive increase in the death rate, even in Wuhan.

00:20:36.000 Yeah, Europe is trying to figure out what to do.

00:20:37.000 There's a lot of talk about closing borders.

00:20:40.000 Meanwhile, the government in the United States is stepping up its coronavirus response as the U.S.

00:20:44.000 cases top 500.

00:20:45.000 According to the Post, governments intensified their efforts on Sunday to combat the global spread of the novel coronavirus.

00:20:50.000 Uncertainty continued to permeate the response effort amid muddled directives from the Trump administration and reports of some patients unable to access testing.

00:20:57.000 It is true that the testing in the United States has been incredibly lackluster.

00:21:00.000 It has been late.

00:21:01.000 And that's a real problem because we don't have information on the levels of spread based on the lack of testing.

00:21:07.000 A virus-stricken cruise ship made its way to California to dock, only for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to decline to discuss the details of the federal response plan during a national television interview.

00:21:18.000 We're going to get to the Trump administration response in just one second.

00:21:22.000 Also, of course, we're going to get to the fact that Ted Cruz has self-quarantined.

00:21:26.000 We've also seen Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona self-quarantine, which, by the way, is the responsible thing to do.

00:21:30.000 If you think that you've been exposed to coronavirus, then you shouldn't show up to the office, Michael Moulse.

00:21:34.000 You should probably instead stay home that day.

00:21:37.000 In any case, we will get to more of this in just one second.

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00:22:52.000 Okay, so the Trump administration response.

00:22:54.000 Originally, the Trump administration was criticized for trying to run all this through Pence's office.

00:22:59.000 Now, the fact of the matter is that the Trump administration does need to be very coordinated in its response because the markets are reacting to the Trump administration, the media are reacting to the Trump administration, and again, it is the blanket media coverage that is driving a lot of this.

00:23:14.000 As I say, if there were blanket media coverage about the flu every year, there would be, if not a similar level of panic, because the flu ain't quite as dangerous as coronavirus by all available indicators, there would still be a significantly higher level of concern about the flu if we covered flu the same way that we cover coronavirus.

00:23:27.000 With that said, Coronavirus did break out at CPAC.

00:23:32.000 According to the Washington Post, a growing sense of concern and uncertainty about the reach of the novel coronavirus has begun to take hold in the White House after an attendee at a recent political conference where President Trump spoke tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

00:23:44.000 Trump was photographed shaking hands with Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union.

00:23:48.000 He confirmed he had been in direct contact with the infected man during CPAC.

00:23:52.000 He also says that he feels fine.

00:23:53.000 Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz apparently met the person who was affected By coronavirus at CPAC as well and released a statement saying that he briefly interacted with this person.

00:24:03.000 He said he consulted with medical authorities from Houston Health Department, the Harris County Public Health Department, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services.

00:24:10.000 And he also spoke with Vice President Pence, Leader McConnell and Mark Meadows, the new chief of staff to the president.

00:24:17.000 He says, I'm not experiencing any symptoms.

00:24:18.000 I feel fine and healthy.

00:24:19.000 Given the interaction was 10 days ago that the average incubation period is five to six days.

00:24:23.000 The interaction was less than a minute, and I have no current symptoms.

00:24:25.000 Medical authorities have advised me that the odds of transmission were extremely low.

00:24:29.000 But, out of an abundance of caution, because of how frequently I interact with constituents as part of my job, and to give everyone peace of mind, I've decided to remain at my home in Texas this week until a full 14 days have passed since the CPAC interaction.

00:24:42.000 That is the smart thing to do.

00:24:43.000 That is sort of the responsible thing to do. 0.96

00:24:44.000 And the fact that Cruz is being criticized for that is ridiculous.

00:24:47.000 People who are saying, well, you know, Cruz and the rest of the Republicans, they were saying that this is a hoax.

00:24:51.000 Again, the part that everyone was saying was a hoax.

00:24:51.000 No.

00:24:53.000 That's the part that was a hoax.

00:24:54.000 itself.

00:24:54.000 What everybody was saying was a hoax was the media coverage focused on Trump as though Trump were responsible for coronavirus as opposed to the Chinese government, that the Trump administration was responsible for the stock market drop as opposed to, you know, the global economy coming to a screeching halt.

00:25:08.000 That's the part that was a hoax.

00:25:10.000 No, I'm not aware of anybody who suggested the coronavirus itself was a hoax.

00:25:15.000 And again, I think everybody is, if not, you know, the panic I think is too much, but overt concern is not too much.

00:25:25.000 And the fact is that we do have to spend more money on converting medical ICU beds, on preparing for the possibility of serious outbreak here in the United States.

00:25:34.000 Now, with all of this said, there are experts who are sort of giving conflicting messages, and this is why it's hard to tell exactly what's going on.

00:25:39.000 Dr. Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins University, he runs their public health department over there.

00:25:44.000 He says, listen, we're actually fairly well prepared for a coronavirus outbreak here in the United States.

00:25:47.000 We have good public health facilities.

00:25:49.000 I was surprised to see that report.

00:25:52.000 I didn't know it was coming.

00:25:53.000 And it is true that the U.S., when you measure capabilities up and down in public health, health care, surveillance, the U.S.

00:26:01.000 is better prepared than any other country.

00:26:04.000 Okay, so that is a good thing to keep in mind.

00:26:06.000 It is also a good thing to keep in mind.

00:26:07.000 The U.S.

00:26:08.000 Surgeon General says, listen, the average age of people who are dying is 80 plus.

00:26:11.000 So yes, this is mostly dangerous to people in nursing homes.

00:26:13.000 So if you're going to have contact with somebody in a nursing home, don't go to a public event and then go to a nursing home, right?

00:26:18.000 Don't be a person who has a grandmother who's 90 and you talk with her every week and she comes over to your house and then you like out in public all the time.

00:26:25.000 That's what the Surgeon General was saying and this is correct. 1.00

00:26:27.000 We know that the average age of people who are dying from coronavirus is 80 plus.

00:26:32.000 We know that the average age of people who are needing medical care and advanced medical care is 60 plus.

00:26:36.000 And so what we're telling folks is that if you're in an at-risk group, meaning you're elderly and or you have comorbidities, heart disease, lung disease, you're immunosuppressed for whatever reason, that you should be taking extra precautions not to put yourself in a situation where you may be exposed.

00:26:52.000 And that, of course, is the responsible thing to do.

00:26:54.000 Democrats and Republicans are basically saying that the public reaction is overblown.

00:26:58.000 Concern is warranted.

00:26:59.000 Panic is not.

00:27:00.000 Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, is saying the same thing that Trump is saying.

00:27:02.000 It's just that he's not getting blamed the same way that Trump is getting blamed.

00:27:05.000 But just let's pause for a moment on how serious it is, because I'm afraid that the fear is actually outpacing the facts.

00:27:13.000 And we're fighting the virus, but we're also fighting this anxiety.

00:27:18.000 And people have to take a step back, a deep breath, and actually understand what we're looking at.

00:27:24.000 Okay, now with that said, again, everybody is taking safety precautions.

00:27:27.000 Princeton University in the last couple of hours issued a notice to students that people should be encouraged to stay home after spring break.

00:27:32.000 They shouldn't even come back after spring break.

00:27:34.000 That they should just stay home and they're gonna make sure that students can still fulfill their class requirements.

00:27:39.000 Maybe the upside of all of this is everybody goes to online education, which wouldn't be the world's worst thing.

00:27:44.000 I mean, not gonna make up for, obviously, the cost of all of this.

00:27:47.000 Again, one of the problems here is that when the Trump administration responds, when President Trump responds, Because he speaks in superlatives.

00:27:54.000 And now would be a time for measured response.

00:27:57.000 Superlatives are not a good idea.

00:27:58.000 So President Trump tweeted out, We have a perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned plan at the White House for our attack on coronavirus.

00:28:03.000 We moved very early to close borders to certain areas, which was a godsend.

00:28:07.000 VP is doing a great job.

00:28:08.000 The fake news media is doing everything possible to make us look bad.

00:28:11.000 Sad.

00:28:11.000 Okay, two things can be true at once.

00:28:13.000 The media will jump on anything they perceive Trump as doing wrong.

00:28:16.000 They did the same thing to George W. Bush over Hurricane Katrina.

00:28:18.000 That is 100% true.

00:28:19.000 It is also true that suggesting that the plan is perfectly coordinated and fine-tuned in the middle of people feeling like we can't even get testing done, that is not smart politics.

00:28:29.000 The President of the United States should convene a massive conference, video conference, so people aren't coughing on each other, all the governors, The President of the United States, the heads of HHS and Homeland Security, and they should lay out some procedures for what exactly the federal government would like to see done in terms of public events, in terms of public gatherings, in terms of testing procedures and protocols, in terms of advice to give to the public.

00:28:53.000 The administration and states at this point should be speaking with one voice in how they deal with all of this.

00:28:58.000 That's not just me saying this.

00:29:00.000 Okay, that is experts on this stuff who are saying this sort of stuff.

00:29:05.000 Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner under President Trump.

00:29:08.000 Right.

00:29:09.000 He's taking this stuff very seriously.

00:29:10.000 He says, listen, we're going to have to take some really serious measures here, like serious, serious measures.

00:29:14.000 And we're going to see economic slowdown.

00:29:15.000 We're going to see public events shut.

00:29:17.000 Here is Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner.

00:29:19.000 By the way, nobody that doesn't mean that huge numbers of people are going to die.

00:29:22.000 The whole point here is to mitigate the effect.

00:29:25.000 Here is Dr. Gottlieb.

00:29:26.000 Well, I think no state and no city wants to be the first to basically shut down their economy.

00:29:30.000 But that's what's going to need to happen.

00:29:31.000 States and cities are going to have to act in the interest of the national interest right now to prevent a broader epidemic.

00:29:37.000 Shut down their economy?

00:29:38.000 You mean?

00:29:38.000 Close businesses, close large gatherings, close theaters, cancel events.

00:29:42.000 I think we need to think about how do we provide assistance to the people of these cities who are going to be hit by hardship, as well as the localities themselves, to try to give them an incentive to do this.

00:29:51.000 And again, this Scott Gottlieb should be called in by the president.

00:29:55.000 He should help coordinate this thing.

00:29:56.000 Right now, when we say we have to have a coordinated response, that coordinated response has to be made public because the problem is, like, Ben Carson shouldn't be on TV being asked these questions.

00:30:05.000 So Ben Carson, who's the head of the Housing and Urban Development Department, why is he being asked about America's response, about the federal government's response to a cruise ship on which coronavirus has appeared off the coast of California?

00:30:17.000 Ben Carson is heading the Housing Department.

00:30:19.000 What the hell does he have to say about coronavirus outbreaks?

00:30:21.000 Here's Ben Carson.

00:30:22.000 The president met with the CEOs of the major cruise ship companies yesterday.

00:30:28.000 And they are coming up with a plan within 72 hours of that meeting.

00:30:33.000 The ship's docking tomorrow.

00:30:37.000 The plan will be in place by that time.

00:30:40.000 But I don't want to preview the plan right now.

00:30:46.000 Shouldn't you be able to do that?

00:30:49.000 I think it needs to all come from a solitary source.

00:30:53.000 We shouldn't have 16 people saying what the plan is.

00:30:58.000 Okay, he is correct.

00:30:59.000 We shouldn't have 16 people saying what the plan is.

00:31:01.000 So why is Dr. Carson being booked on this week?

00:31:04.000 You know he's going to be asked about this stuff.

00:31:06.000 I mean, and then the media go with, well, they don't have a plan.

00:31:08.000 Well, maybe they do have a plan, but Ben Carson isn't the one speaking to it.

00:31:11.000 He's the head of the Housing and Urban Development Department.

00:31:13.000 It's like asking Betsy DeVos what the plans are for cruise ships.

00:31:16.000 She's the head of the Education Department. 0.92

00:31:17.000 Like, the media expect there to be a great answer here?

00:31:20.000 There's no great answer here.

00:31:22.000 Now again, I don't think that the Trump administration is botching this thing.

00:31:24.000 I just think that the messaging is pretty screwed up.

00:31:27.000 And I think that we actually need a coordinated response with an actual plan.

00:31:30.000 And governors and states are not doing a great job either.

00:31:32.000 Again, the city of Seattle, right?

00:31:34.000 Jay Inslee is the governor of Washington State.

00:31:37.000 Why exactly did Governor Inslee not shut down Comic-Con in the state of Washington, in Seattle?

00:31:43.000 Why did the LA Marathon proceed apace in Los Angeles?

00:31:45.000 Why are big local leaders have capacity to hear and they're not doing any of this?

00:31:51.000 The Democrats, by the way, are also doing this routine.

00:31:54.000 The Democrats are suggesting that President Trump is violating all norms, that there's no plan here.

00:31:58.000 Bernie Sanders says he's going to keep going ahead with his rallies.

00:32:01.000 Bernie Sanders has said that he's not going to stop his rallies.

00:32:03.000 Trump says he's going to go ahead with his rallies.

00:32:05.000 Meanwhile, universities are saying, we don't want liability of all of this.

00:32:10.000 So with all of this mixed up information that is emerging, how do you expect people to feel super secure?

00:32:16.000 And the person who's going to bear the brunt of that is President Trump.

00:32:19.000 He is.

00:32:20.000 He is the president of the United States.

00:32:21.000 The president of the United States bears the brunt of all of this, fairly or unfairly.

00:32:25.000 I don't think that the Trump administration has botched this in any serious way, but I do think that now it's time to up the ante.

00:32:32.000 The president is being politically irresponsible if he does not come up with a coordinated and extremely public plan that doesn't involve him tweeting things like this within the last few hours.

00:32:40.000 So last year, 37,000 Americans died from the common flu.

00:32:44.000 It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year.

00:32:47.000 Nothing is shut down.

00:32:48.000 Life and the economy go on.

00:32:49.000 At this moment, there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 22 deaths.

00:32:53.000 Think about that.

00:32:55.000 Okay, why?

00:32:59.000 Why?

00:32:59.000 Is that part of your coordinated response?

00:33:02.000 Is that part of the coordinated response to go on Twitter and say this kind of stuff?

00:33:07.000 You literally handed messaging over to Mike Pence, and now you're seizing messaging back in order to militate against me.

00:33:13.000 Look, Trump is a counterpuncher.

00:33:14.000 We all know this.

00:33:15.000 This means that the media jabbing at Trump is going to elicit counterpunches from Trump, but that's not going to help Trump.

00:33:21.000 It's not going to help people feel more secure.

00:33:22.000 It's not going to help people feel more calm in all of this.

00:33:26.000 Let Anthony Fauci speak about it, right?

00:33:28.000 Dr. Fauci from the National Institute of Health.

00:33:30.000 Like he's at least being honest about all of this stuff and he knows what he's talking about.

00:33:34.000 First of all, he is happy to debunk media falsehoods.

00:33:36.000 So they were saying that Dr. Fauci had been muzzled by the Trump administration.

00:33:39.000 Dr. Fauci said, of course I'm not muzzled.

00:33:40.000 I'm right here talking to you on CBS.

00:33:42.000 What are you talking about?

00:33:43.000 I think a lot of people are very interested in the relationship between the scientists and the administration.

00:33:48.000 Right.

00:33:49.000 And specifically, if President Trump says something at the beginning of February like, we think we have it under control, you're in the room.

00:33:55.000 Were you able to- I pushed back, of course.

00:33:57.000 Some people have been worried that you've been muzzled.

00:33:59.000 I'm not muzzled because I'm talking to you.

00:34:01.000 Exactly, you're right here.

00:34:02.000 Okay.

00:34:03.000 Okay, and that's true.

00:34:05.000 Also, Fauci's honest enough to say, yeah, there were some early missteps in the testing.

00:34:08.000 We don't have enough information at this point to make solid calls.

00:34:10.000 Here's Fauci explaining.

00:34:12.000 Can anybody who needs a test get a test now?

00:34:16.000 The fact is the tests are out there.

00:34:18.000 There was a misstep early on with regard to the test, namely a technical difficulty.

00:34:23.000 But right now, about 1.1 million tests are out there now.

00:34:31.000 Okay, so now he's saying we're getting this on track.

00:34:34.000 Let Fauci talk.

00:34:35.000 Let Fauci help set the policy.

00:34:37.000 Let your experts set the policy.

00:34:39.000 Trump is not reassuring anybody.

00:34:40.000 No national address is going to do anything.

00:34:42.000 Last time he gave a national press conference on coronavirus, the stock market tanked.

00:34:45.000 The president needs to step aside right now.

00:34:47.000 He needs to let Pence lead the effort.

00:34:48.000 If Pence wants to kick it to Fauci, he should let Fauci do this.

00:34:51.000 If he wants to kick it to Scott Gottlieb, Dr. Gottlieb, and bring him back in, let him do this. 0.97

00:34:56.000 The dumbest thing that Trump could do right now is try and seize control of this messaging. 0.98

00:35:01.000 It is not going to bode well for him. 0.99

00:35:06.000 In fact, politically speaking, it's almost a perfect storm for Joe Biden.

00:35:09.000 The reason it's almost a perfect storm for Joe Biden is a tanking economy is horrible for the incumbent president.

00:35:14.000 Presidents do not win during a tanking economy.

00:35:16.000 And two, If you are looking for reassurance, and the president doesn't provide it, and then Joe Biden, whose entire pitch is, back to normal, I'm gonna put together back the Obama team, you know me, I've been here for a long time, I'm your reassuring old uncle, right?

00:35:30.000 That's actually a really good pitch for Joe Biden in the face of all of this.

00:35:33.000 So Trump's vulnerabilities are being exposed by his response to the coronavirus.

00:35:37.000 That doesn't mean that Trump loses the election.

00:35:40.000 It does mean that a coordinated, serious response with coordinated, serious people is necessary.

00:35:46.000 And by the way, there's a significant possibility that three months from now, We have more information, the fears have abated a little bit, the economy picks back up, and Trump is fine. 1.00

00:35:54.000 But the current response from the Trump administration, and not even the administration, from Trump himself, is insufficient and very, very politically stupid. 1.00

00:36:02.000 Very politically stupid. 1.00

00:36:03.000 Now again, that doesn't alleviate the media from their responsibility of jumping with both feet on Trump even before he had done anything wrong. 1.00

00:36:08.000 They were going to do that in any case. 0.97

00:36:10.000 But just because somebody is shooting at you doesn't mean that you should put a gun to your own head and blow your face off.

00:36:13.000 Like, that's just not a smart political strategy, as it turns out. 0.51

00:36:17.000 Okay, we're gonna get to the 2020 race in just one second.

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00:37:46.000 Okay, so again, as I said, this is a perfect storm for Joe Biden.

00:37:55.000 Joe Biden was just on Lawrence O'Donnell moments ago about Trump and coronavirus fallout.

00:37:59.000 He said, I wish he'd just be quiet.

00:38:01.000 I really mean it.

00:38:02.000 That's an awful thing to say about a president, but I wish he'd be quiet.

00:38:04.000 Just let the experts speak.

00:38:07.000 I hate to say when Joe Biden is right, Joe Biden is correct.

00:38:10.000 The president is not making, like, honestly, do you feel calmer when Trump speaks about coronavirus?

00:38:17.000 I don't feel calmer.

00:38:18.000 Do you feel calmer?

00:38:19.000 I feel calmer when I hear Fauci.

00:38:21.000 I hear calmer when I hear Gottlieb.

00:38:22.000 When I hear people who I think know what they are talking about, I feel calmer.

00:38:25.000 When I hear President Trump mouth off about this stuff, I don't feel calmer.

00:38:29.000 What that means is that anyone who pledges to calm fears is going to be in a politically advantageous position.

00:38:34.000 And if it's chaos all the way down, if there's a feeling of chaos leading into the election, like Trump's biggest asset was that as chaotic as he is as a human being, the feeling leading up to the election was not one that the United States was in chaos.

00:38:46.000 Based on the stock market, based on coronavirus, based on the election itself.

00:38:51.000 I mean, what happens if coronavirus is still affecting the population and we got a vote in November?

00:38:55.000 Are we all just going to vote absentee?

00:38:56.000 Like, how's exactly that going to work?

00:38:58.000 If the feeling is generalized chaos and Trump is an agent of chaos, that is not going to benefit him politically, which is why it behooves him to run a smart campaign and to be a smart president and to simply back off and shut up.

00:39:09.000 This is a time when your Twitter account is not helping things.

00:39:11.000 I know this ain't going to be popular with a lot of my conservative listeners who love Trump's Twitter.

00:39:16.000 And who may feel, may feel correctly that coronavirus is overblown.

00:39:19.000 I've written two pieces in the last week about how I think that the risks of coronavirus are not nearly as great as the media have been making them out to be.

00:39:26.000 But with that said, reassurance is the name of the game politically and also in terms of public policy.

00:39:31.000 If people feel reassured, then they are going to be more responsible in their handling of this stuff.

00:39:35.000 They aren't going to panic, buy medical masks from Amazon for a hundred bucks a pop.

00:39:39.000 Right? 0.97

00:39:39.000 They're not going to be looking for reams of toilet paper as though nobody's ever going to wipe their butt again. 0.97

00:39:45.000 Reassurance is the name of the game here. 0.64

00:39:47.000 And that is why, you know, that is why this is, it's a, it's a boon to Biden.

00:39:52.000 Meanwhile, speaking of that 2020 Democratic presidential race, Bernie is basically out of this thing, right?

00:39:57.000 Bernie has, there's an election coming up in Michigan, the Michigan primaries are coming up very soon, and Bernie is really trailing heavily in the Michigan primaries, which has led Bernie to attack Joe Biden.

00:40:07.000 Bernie says, listen, I'm not dropping out no matter what.

00:40:09.000 I'm sticking around.

00:40:10.000 Even if I lose Michigan, I'm sticking around.

00:40:11.000 That's a problem for the Democratic Party because there may be a lot of Biden supporters, I mean, Bernie supporters who don't show up in the election if Biden acts all ticked off all the way to the convention.

00:40:21.000 How serious is that?

00:40:23.000 How damaging?

00:40:23.000 And would you consider dropping out?

00:40:26.000 Well, no, I certainly would not consider dropping out.

00:40:28.000 You know, Chris, media asks you, is this state or that state life or death?

00:40:35.000 I was asked that in Iowa.

00:40:36.000 I was asked that in New Hampshire.

00:40:38.000 We won California, the largest state in this country.

00:40:41.000 We are winning among Latino voters big time.

00:40:45.000 We are winning among young people.

00:40:49.000 Okay, and Bernie is also winding over Super Tuesday.

00:40:51.000 This is bad news for the Democratic Party.

00:40:53.000 Internally, the Democratic Party is still rift over the Biden versus Bernie split, and the consolidation behind Biden is not alleviating the concerns of the Bernie people who feel like he got job, like he was about to get the nomination, and then the entire party establishment swiveled behind Bernie.

00:41:08.000 Here is Bernie winding over Super Tuesday.

00:41:11.000 The establishment put a great deal of pressure on Pete Buttigieg, on Amy Klobuchar, who ran really aggressive campaigns.

00:41:19.000 I know both of them.

00:41:20.000 They work really, really hard.

00:41:21.000 But suddenly, right before Super Tuesday, they announced their withdrawal.

00:41:24.000 If they had not withdrawn from the race before Super Tuesday, which is kind of a surprise to a lot of people, I suspect we would have won in Minnesota, we would have won in Maine, we would have won in Massachusetts.

00:41:35.000 The turnout may have been a little bit different.

00:41:38.000 The ongoing consolidation behind Biden continues as well.

00:41:41.000 Kamala Harris has now endorsed Joe Biden.

00:41:43.000 She says that she believes in Joe, which is weird since he tried to prevent her, I heard, from taking a bus to her integrated public school.

00:41:49.000 If it had not been for the rest of the government, then Joe Biden would have stopped Kamala Harris from being a senator, apparently. 1.00

00:41:54.000 But now she's a big fan of Joe Biden.

00:41:56.000 Weird how times change that quickly.

00:41:59.000 I have decided that I am with great enthusiasm going to endorse Joe Biden for President of the United States.

00:42:07.000 I believe in Joe.

00:42:08.000 I really believe in him and I have known him for a long time.

00:42:12.000 One of the things that we need right now is we need a leader who really does care about the people and who can therefore unify the people.

00:42:21.000 And I believe Joe can do that.

00:42:22.000 Okay, well that's weird because I'm old enough to remember when Kamala Harris had this to say.

00:42:27.000 I was actually very, it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.

00:42:43.000 And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.

00:42:49.000 Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is still sounding off about Bernie Sanders, like slamming him over and over and over, ripping Bernie over lack of 2016 support. 0.95

00:42:58.000 That's an ongoing threat to the Democratic Party because the fact is that the Bernie bros could simply not show up for Joe Biden either.

00:43:03.000 His failure and the behavior of a lot of his top aides, and certainly many of his supporters, up to the convention, at the convention, and even up to election day, was not helpful.

00:43:19.000 I had thought we would unify.

00:43:20.000 That's what we'd always done before, and that's what I expected.

00:43:24.000 Okay, so again, the split inside the Democratic Party is not going to be alleviated anytime soon.

00:43:28.000 The question in the 2020 election going forward is going to be about whether it's a referendum on Trump.

00:43:34.000 I've been saying this for years.

00:43:36.000 If the election is a referendum on Trump, he's in trouble.

00:43:38.000 If the election is a referendum on the Democrats, the Democrats lose.

00:43:41.000 Trump's assumption was that it would be a referendum on the Democrats.

00:43:43.000 He'd go in with a solid economy.

00:43:45.000 People would feel good about the country.

00:43:46.000 Polls were showing this just a month ago.

00:43:49.000 The assumption was that if it were Bernie Sanders, he could make it pretty easily a referendum on Bernie Sanders, and that's true.

00:43:54.000 If Joe Biden is the nominee, if the economy is still in trouble, if Trump continues to demonstrate chaotic leadership in the face of something like coronavirus, it will be a referendum on Trump.

00:44:03.000 It will not go well.

00:44:05.000 Watch for the polls in the next week and a half to reflect this.

00:44:07.000 And now, again, we are super early.

00:44:10.000 It is March.

00:44:11.000 There's a lot of time until November.

00:44:13.000 I would not be surprised if the polling in the next week between Biden and Trump shows Biden up with very, very large numbers.

00:44:21.000 Now, again, I think a lot of that will alleviate as time goes on, as coronavirus alleviates, as we get more information.

00:44:26.000 But now is a time, I've been saying for a while, Republicans cannot be sanguine about President Trump winning re-election on the back of his chaotic campaigning.

00:44:34.000 He has to run a disciplined campaign.

00:44:36.000 And people have been like, well, you know, he didn't run a disciplined campaign last time.

00:44:39.000 It worked out fine.

00:44:40.000 Right.

00:44:41.000 And doing it once does not mean that it is duplicable.

00:44:44.000 Lots of things happen once.

00:44:45.000 The question is whether lightning strikes twice.

00:44:47.000 Don't make luck your business strategy if you're the Trump campaign.

00:44:50.000 Discipline.

00:44:51.000 Discipline.

00:44:52.000 Somebody needs to get in the presidency right now and tell them to stop tweeting about flu.

00:44:56.000 Let your people do their jobs.

00:44:58.000 When you let your people do their jobs, people feel secure, and they're more willing to overlook all of the other sillinesses that have happened.

00:45:05.000 But right now would be a time for discipline, particularly message discipline, when people are so deeply worried.

00:45:10.000 And again, I think that some of the, I think the panic is overblown, but I think worry is appropriate in the face of a complete lack of information and the amount of chaos that is going on, not domestically in America, right?

00:45:20.000 Not just driven by the US media, going on globally.

00:45:23.000 We are seeing panic that is happening all across Europe, in Asia.

00:45:26.000 Okay, that has nothing to do with Trump, it has nothing to do with the US media.

00:45:29.000 Okay, time for some things I like, and then some things that I hate.

00:45:32.000 So...

00:45:33.000 Things that I like today, over the weekend reading some sci-fi, I've been sort of on a sci-fi kick.

00:45:38.000 There's a fun series from a guy named Pierce Brown.

00:45:41.000 The first book in this series is called Red Rising.

00:45:44.000 And it basically, the basic premise of the book, it's sort of like a cross between Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, which is a fairly good recommendation.

00:45:55.000 The basic premise of the book is that on Mars, there's a group of people who are kept in slavery in order to mine and provide the resources necessary in order to power a society they don't even know exists above them.

00:46:09.000 And finally, one of these people escapes the kind of slave society and elevates in rank.

00:46:14.000 The whole book is supposed to be based on Greek notions of – or Spartan notions, rather, of sort of divisions of society, that they're the people who are best tasked to lead, they're the people who are best tasked to follow, and why that is anti-democracy.

00:46:30.000 The book is fun, and it's easy to read, and it's kind of a kick.

00:46:33.000 Check out Red Rising if you're into sort of dystopian sci-fi.

00:46:36.000 And again, it's kind of a cross between The Hunger Games and a little bit Game of Thrones, and it's fun.

00:46:41.000 Check it out.

00:46:41.000 Red Rising by Pierce Brown.

00:46:43.000 Other things that I like.

00:46:44.000 So one of the things that I love most is the fact that socialists in the United States are happy to live off the benefits of capitalism. 0.99

00:46:50.000 Carlos Maza, who's just a garbage heap. 0.97

00:46:53.000 Carlos Maza, you'll remember, is the person who tried to get Steven Crowder kicked off of YouTube for using terms for gay people that I would not use. 0.93

00:47:00.000 Okay, and Carlos Maza was being made fun of by a comedian and decided he didn't like what the comedian said, and so he led a national campaign to get Steven Crowder kicked off of YouTube, leading the leadership of his then-publication Vox Media to try and kick Steven Crowder off of YouTube while claiming that they weren't actually in favor of censorship, despite the fact that Steven didn't actually violate any of YouTube's policies.

00:47:18.000 And YouTube instead demonetized Crowder on the basis of not violating any of their policies.

00:47:22.000 Okay, well now it turns out that Carlos Maza, he launched his own channel.

00:47:26.000 It is a communist channel.

00:47:28.000 It's about how he is a commie.

00:47:29.000 There's only one problem.

00:47:32.000 He is extremely, extremely rich.

00:47:35.000 If Maza wants to start eating the rich reports of the New York Post, he may have to begin with his own family.

00:47:40.000 Through his clan, the millennial firebrand is connected to multiple Florida mega mansions, a $7.1 million pad on the Upper West Side purchased under an LLC, and a yacht by luxury boatmaker Donzie.

00:47:51.000 As it turns out, the most ardent socialists in American society are very often the people who have never had to experience socialism because mommy and daddy made lots of money.

00:47:58.000 So mommy and daddy will just let them live off the trust fund while they talk about revolution.

00:48:03.000 Mazza's mother, Vivian Mazza, was one of the first employees at Ultimate Software, a Florida-based behemoth that now employs more than 5,000 people.

00:48:10.000 Starting in 1990 as an office manager, she ultimately rose to become the group's chief people officer in 2004.

00:48:15.000 In addition to her day job, Vivian Mazza also developed a very close personal relationship with the company's founder, Scott Sher, so close that an independent assessment of the company in 2016 cited the relationship as a corporate governance concern.

00:48:27.000 The report said the pair were believed to be more than just co-workers and had a familial relationship.

00:48:31.000 Hmm.

00:48:32.000 The two later became engaged.

00:48:33.000 The couple has lived together for years.

00:48:35.000 Sher is a de facto stepfather to Carlos, according to the New York Post.

00:48:38.000 Public records show that Vivian, Scott, Carlos, and Sister Isabel all registered to vote in a five-bedroom, eight-bathroom waterfront palace in Boca Raton.

00:48:46.000 The property sold in 2018 for $11 million.

00:48:50.000 $11 million.

00:48:51.000 But socialism, guys.

00:48:53.000 He's an ardent commie.

00:48:54.000 He's an ardent commie.

00:48:55.000 Sure, his mother and stepfather presumably would be the first Kulaks to go, but he is an ardent communist.

00:49:02.000 Vivian currently resides, full-time, in a $4.4 million two-bedroom, three-bath luxury condo in Fort Lauderdale.

00:49:08.000 The same LLC purchased a $7.1 million condo on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in November 2017.

00:49:14.000 While serving as CEO of Ultimate Software, Schur was one of the most handsomely compensated CEOs in the country.

00:49:20.000 In 2015, he took home $38.3 million.

00:49:24.000 Weird, I don't see Carlos Maza going to his stepdad, who presumably has provided him a basis of support and being like, you know, it seems to me that you aren't living the principles of Marx, sir.

00:49:34.000 It's not clear how much Vivian and Shir actively support Maz's lifestyle, but evidence suggests the family has been happy to pitch in to help spread his socialist message.

00:49:41.000 Both Shir and Vivian Mazza are listed as comrades at the end of Carlos's most recent YouTube video.

00:49:46.000 Basically, he sounds like the kind of child that they don't really want to deal with, and so they're like, okay, we'll just give him a little bit of money and he can go play commie over here on YouTube.

00:49:54.000 He's a trust fund commie. 0.54

00:49:57.000 Mazza didn't respond to multiple inquiries from the post, but then, because of the inquiries, he posted a statement on Twitter He said, my mom and her fiance are very wealthy thanks to a software company they started together when I was a kid.

00:50:07.000 As a result, I've gotten to live a life of tremendous privilege.

00:50:10.000 He said he acknowledged that he always had a safety net should his career to go south, but insisted nobody was bankrolling his effort.

00:50:16.000 Okay, well, if you have a safety net of, you know, tens of millions of dollars, then you can afford to spend your life making useless YouTube videos about how communism is the greatest way of life of all.

00:50:25.000 So again, I love that we live in a country so wealthy that the children of our wealthiest people can be communists.

00:50:30.000 That's really, really exciting stuff.

00:50:31.000 Normally when they say the proletariat are gonna rise, workers of the world unite, you have to be a worker. 0.99

00:50:35.000 You know, not a lazy bum who relies on his parents' money for years on end and then gets a job writing garbage at Vox Media while trying to oust other YouTube stars and then makes stupid communist videos. 0.98

00:50:47.000 Well, apparently taking money from mommy and daddy. 0.99

00:50:49.000 So that I find fairly delicious.

00:50:52.000 Well done, Carlos Maza.

00:50:55.000 Speaking, by the way, of socialists who are apparently happy to take advantage of the benefits of capitalism, Elizabeth Warren appeared on SNL over the weekend. 0.97

00:51:01.000 I don't know if you saw this one.

00:51:02.000 So Elizabeth Warren has been worshipped by members of the media, if by nobody else.

00:51:07.000 And she showed up on SNL with Kate McKinnon, and it was extremely, extremely awkward.

00:51:15.000 But not only did I not accept money from billionaires, I got to give one a swirly on live TV!

00:51:24.000 I want to put on my favorite outfit to thank you for all that you've done in your lifetime.

00:51:31.000 I'm not dead.

00:51:32.000 I'm just in the Senate.

00:51:34.000 Remember when they did this for Ted Cruz?

00:51:38.000 I remember.

00:51:38.000 Remember when SNL?

00:51:40.000 Don't worry, SNL is just comedy, guys.

00:51:42.000 They're just comedy.

00:51:42.000 They are not just a propaganda outlet on behalf of the Democratic Party.

00:51:46.000 I do.

00:51:46.000 Well, the reason that's in Things I Like, honestly, is because I do like it when they expose, number one, how unfunny they are.

00:51:51.000 And number two, how politically motivated they are.

00:51:53.000 So Elizabeth Warren, it's amazing.

00:51:56.000 She just gets skunked. 1.00

00:51:57.000 How do you appear on, by the way, how do you appear on SNL and no one makes fun of the fact that the funniest thing in American politics is about you, that you pretended to be Native American for decades? 0.93

00:52:05.000 How is that not even a joke?

00:52:06.000 How is that possible?

00:52:08.000 Okay, so that brings us to the end of things I like.

00:52:11.000 We'll skip some things I hate today because listen, there's too much worry.

00:52:13.000 So let's end on an up note.

00:52:15.000 I hope that you come back later today with two additional hours because there'll be plenty of updates, I promise you.

00:52:19.000 Otherwise, we will see you here tomorrow.

00:52:21.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:52:21.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:52:27.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

00:52:29.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:52:31.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:52:32.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:52:35.000 Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.

00:52:37.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

00:52:39.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

00:52:41.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

00:52:43.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:52:44.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:52:46.000 Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

00:52:48.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:52:50.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:52:53.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:52:56.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

00:53:02.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 09, 2020

Coronapanic | Ep. 967

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