Ben Shapiro talks about the spread of the deadly strain of the flu virus C.O.V.E. (Co-ovir encephaloviridovirus) and how the United States is doing much better than other countries when it comes to dealing with the flu pandemic. He also talks about how the government is handling the problem, and why it's not so bad compared to other countries in terms of the number of confirmed cases and deaths. Ben Shapiro is the host of the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, CBS, NPR and other media outlets. He is also a frequent contributor to The Daily Wire and the Wall Street Journal and has a regular column in The New York Post. If you haven't gotten a VPN yet, you really should get one, because if you haven t gotten one, you are missing out on a lot of great VPN options, and you should be using Express VPN to keep your data secure and private. Get 3 extra months for free on a 1-year package from Express VPN, and get access to all of the features mentioned in the show, plus a bunch of other awesome features and perks, including an ad-free version of the show called "The Best VPNs in the World" available for you to listen to wherever you get your favorite streaming service, wherever and whenever you go. Visit expressvpn.me/TheBenShapiro on the App Store or Google Play. The show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices and get 20% off your first month with the promo code: Ben Shapiro's new book "Ben Shapiro's Secret Life." Subscribe for a chance to win a FREE 7-free 7-day VIP membership offer from Amazon Prime membership and unlimited access to his newest book, "The Real Life Version of "The Biggest Secret Life of Meghan and the Real Life Story" and more! Learn more on all of that and more. Watch the video version of The Real Life Meals on the podcast on The Ben Shapiro Podcasts Podcasts on the Biggest Deal of the Week on Amazon Prime Video, wherever else you get the best deal on the world can get it? Subscribe and review the show goes live on Prime Video on the most authentic and the most personalized experience on the best of the best places in the best podcast on the web?
00:00:39.000The reality is that everybody can still link your online traffic to your actual ISP and then it is not hard to find everything out about you.
00:00:49.000Anytime you go online, your internet service provider can see every single site you are visiting. Are you confused about how ExpressVPN works? Well, ExpressVPN is an app for computers and smartphones. It encrypts your network data, reroutes it through a secure server.
00:01:00.000That means you can use the internet more anonymously without having your activity tracked.
00:01:04.000Do you think VPNs are complex only for tech experts?
00:02:46.000We didn't shut off our travel because we are, in fact, the largest economy on the face of the earth with lots and lots of international travel.
00:02:52.000We are not a tiny island in the middle of nowhere with about seven citizens and some sheep.
00:02:56.000So anybody who tries to compare how New Zealand handled the pandemic with how the United States handled the pandemic is really fooling themselves.
00:03:03.000And again, just as a general rule, when we talk about which countries have handled the pandemic worst versus which countries have handled the pandemic the best, when people say the United States has handled the pandemic worse than any other country, that is just not true.
00:03:16.000In terms of deaths per million population, the United States is not, in fact, at the top of the list.
00:03:22.000The United States currently ranks about 11th on that list behind countries like Belgium, and Slovenia, and Czechia, and the UK, and Italy.
00:03:31.000The United States ranks just above places like Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, and Peru, right?
00:03:35.000So we will see how things progress because Mexico is also getting hit really hard.
00:03:39.000They are rising on the list pretty quickly.
00:03:41.000Okay, all of which is to say, that nobody has a wonderful handle on COVID and nobody is going to have a wonderful handle on COVID until the vaccinations become prevalent enough that they are able to overtake the virus.
00:03:50.000And that is the problem with these variants. So what we are finding is that the vaccines apparently are still effective on the various COVID variants, but those variants are also significantly more transmissible, even more transmissible than the original virus itself.
00:04:03.000And that, of course, was the real danger of the virus.
00:04:05.000The virus was more deadly than the flu.
00:04:07.000We're still figuring out whether it was three times more deadly than the flu or five times more deadly than the flu, and it really did vary widely by age.
00:04:13.000But when it comes to the transmissibility, that was the major difference between COVID and the flu, right?
00:04:18.000Even greater than the problem of the deadliness of the disease was the fact that it was spreading so fast amongst a huge percentage of the population.
00:04:28.000Well, scientists are now worried that these variants are even more transmissible.
00:04:32.000Caitlin Rivers, epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health said, We're definitely on a downward slope.
00:04:37.000I'm worried the new variants will throw us a curveball in late February or March, which is why it is very, very important that we ramp up the vaccine distribution as soon as humanly possible, like as in right now.
00:04:46.000Nationwide, according to the New York Times a couple days ago, new coronavirus cases have fallen 21% in the last two weeks, according to a New York Times database.
00:04:52.000Some experts have suggested this could mark the start of a shifting course after nearly four months of ever-worsening case totals.
00:04:58.000This week, the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which puts out a predictive model that is widely used for planning, including by some government agencies, released a projection saying new cases in the United States would decline steadily from now on.
00:05:09.000And so we have seen the worst of this thing, according to them.
00:05:12.000But with new viral variants, Surging in places like Britain, Ireland, South Africa and Northern Brazil.
00:05:18.000Some people are suggesting that maybe we're seeing a lull before there is another wave of the virus, which again, tranche out those vaccines as fast as humanly possible would be the goal here.
00:05:28.000Now, there is a conflicting message that has been coming out from the Biden administration.
00:05:32.000That conflicting message is that the United States has handled this horribly and we need to centralize all power in the federal government.
00:05:37.000And two is we really don't know what the hell we're doing, right?
00:05:40.000This is the difficulty with actually running the government as opposed to sitting outside the government and complaining about the government.
00:05:46.000If you are Joe Biden and you spent the last year and a half I'm really here talking about how terrible the Trump administration is doing handling this virus.
00:05:55.000If you spent the last several months talking about how Trump is solely responsible for the vast spread across the land, he did say that during the campaign, right?
00:06:01.000Every death is on Donald Trump in all of this.
00:06:03.000Well, when you enter office, you better have a plan.
00:06:14.000Fauci has made a bunch of mistakes along the way.
00:06:16.000Again, I don't think that Fauci is a badly motivated human being or anything.
00:06:20.000I do think that Anthony Fauci has gotten high on his own fumes a little bit, and this is a person who definitely believes his own press in a major way.
00:06:30.000He is the highest paid employee in the entire United States federal government, apparently, according to Adam Andrzejewski over at Forbes.com.
00:07:03.000In any case, Anthony Fauci was speaking to Davos, right?
00:07:06.000Davos is this international gathering of the Hoi Polloi.
00:07:09.000And here was Anthony Fauci explaining that America's big problem is that its response was politicized and that was destructive to a unified approach.
00:08:02.000When you say that you want a centralized, unified approach, what you're ignoring is the fact that the sort of non-centralized approach of the United States has allowed for a bunch of states to handle this better than other states.
00:08:12.000People did not handle this all the same.
00:08:15.000And considering how poorly places like New York and California apparently have handled it...
00:08:19.000Here is Fauci, though, talking about how we need more government centralization.
00:08:22.000By the way, if you think the government has done, like, an unbelievable job here, let me just point out, the government, essentially, had a couple of jobs.
00:08:29.000They did not actually do that despite all of the lockdowns.
00:08:31.000Two was that they were going to tranche out the vaccines.
00:08:34.000Okay, they've been really slow on that.
00:08:37.000For all the talk about Operation Warp Speed, it was the private industry, it was private industry that developed the vaccine, not the United States federal government.
00:08:44.000In any case, here is Anthony Fauci talking about how we need more centralization of control.
00:08:48.000When public health issues become politically charged, like wearing a mask or not becomes a political statement, you cannot imagine how destructive that is to any unified public health message.
00:09:05.000You know what's really amazing about all the masking talk and it's all about Trump and people didn't take masking seriously enough?
00:09:11.000The rates of mask usage in the United States are extraordinarily high and much higher than parts of Europe.
00:09:16.000If you ask people to self-report whether they wear a mask most of the time or all of the time, in excess of 80% of Americans say they wear a mask most or all of the time when they are in crowded spaces.
00:09:25.000The problem here is not mask compliance.
00:09:28.000had mask mandates in place for months.
00:09:30.000I mean, literally starting about a month and a half after the beginning of the pandemic, when Fauci shifted on his original lines, I don't know, you should wear masks.
00:09:40.000is just getting absolutely decimated right now.
00:09:44.000The big lie here, which is that if you had just listened to the public health experts, and now if you listen more to the public health experts, and you listen even more to the public health experts, we'll just keep doubling down on this, that would have fixed everything.
00:09:54.000If we had listened to Anthony Fauci, nobody would have worn a mask at the beginning.
00:09:56.000And if we had listened to Anthony Fauci, then we never would have opened the schools.
00:10:00.000And if we had listened to Anthony Fauci, we would have thought herd immunity was kicking in at 70%.
00:10:05.000I mean, I'm sorry, but the idea that everybody's wrong for not listening to me is such a... It's true on all sides of the aisle when it comes to politics, but it's ugly.
00:10:13.000And the reality is, people aren't going to listen to you.
00:10:16.000And you're just gonna have to deal with that.
00:10:18.000Because in a free country, that is how things work.
00:10:21.000The kind of bizarre longing for a top-down dictatorial mindset when it comes to this stuff is really weird.
00:10:28.000It's, I think, what underlies so much of the media's hatred of Florida.
00:10:31.000I'm looking at the statistics right now in terms of deaths per million in the United States.
00:10:38.000If you looked at just the media coverage, where would you think that Florida ranks in terms of deaths per million population in the United States?
00:10:44.000You'd probably think that it ranks in the top two Maybe the top 10?
00:10:53.000Florida ranks 26th in America in terms of deaths per million.
00:10:57.000But if you actually look at how the media covers this, that's because DeSantis has taken a decentralized approach.
00:11:02.000So it seems almost as though when it comes to how so many members of the public health establishment and Democrats tend to think of public health, they think of public health in the same way they think of government generally, which is government is always the solution.
00:11:13.000Centralized government is always the solution.
00:11:14.000And if it fails, it's because we need to centralize to centralize harder.
00:11:19.000That is the only way that we are going to be able to overcome the pandemic.
00:11:23.000Okay, we'll get to why this is such nonsense, errant nonsense, in just one second.
00:11:27.000First, let's talk about the fact that it's been a long and difficult year, but now it's the beginning of a new year and you're thinking about things that are on your to-do list, things you need to get done.
00:11:36.000One of those things is getting life insurance.
00:11:37.000Well, Policy Genius can help you cross it off with ease.
00:11:39.000Policy Genius makes it easy for you to compare more than 30 top insurers all at once and save over 50% in the process.
00:11:45.000Plus, there's no hassle because their licensed experts work for you, not the insurance companies.
00:12:36.000Maybe because you've been wrong a thousand times.
00:12:37.000Speaking of public health officials who have been wrong a thousand times, here's Anthony Fauci.
00:12:41.000Walking back his original assessment, which is that 100 million people were going to be vaccinated in the first 100 days of the Biden administration.
00:12:48.000Here he was on Sunday, walking that back and going, no, what I actually meant is that we will be tranching out 100 million vaccine shots.
00:12:54.000Remember, it takes two to fully vaccinate somebody.
00:12:57.000So there's a rather large, I mean, he was off by a factor of 50% on his original estimate here.
00:13:03.000Here is the world's greatest doctor, Anthony Fauci.
00:13:06.000Let me clarify that because there was a little bit of a misunderstanding.
00:13:10.000What we're talking about is a hundred million shots in individuals.
00:13:15.000So a shot, as in other words, when you get down to, let's say, a certain part of the hundred days, at the end of a hundred days, you're going to have some people who will have gotten both shots and some will still be on their first shots.
00:13:28.000But the president is saying a hundred million shots in the arms of people within a hundred days.
00:13:35.000It's weird because like a week ago, Joe Biden was saying it was going to be 100 million people vaccinated within 100 days.
00:13:40.000Okay, so really, well done, everybody.
00:13:55.000Economist Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan from the University of Notre Dame found that the poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points during the latter half of 2020 as the U.S.
00:14:04.000continued to suffer the economic impacts from COVID-19.
00:14:07.000That percentage point rise has nearly doubled the largest annual increase in poverty since the 1960s.
00:14:11.000This means an additional 8 million people nationwide are now considered poor.
00:14:15.000Moreover, the poverty rate for black Americans is estimated to have jumped by 5.4 percentage points or by 2.4 million individuals.
00:14:22.000The scholars' findings put the rate at 11.8% in December.
00:14:26.000While poverty is down from readings of more than 15% a decade earlier, the new estimates suggest the annual Census Bureau tally due in September will be higher than the last official pre-pandemic level of 10.5% in 2019.
00:14:38.000So the poverty rate has absolutely skyrocketed.
00:14:41.000We have also seen a massive, massive amount of drug overdose increases, a massive increase in suicide, The number of young Americans who are going to die of causes other than COVID-19 during this period may, at the end of the day, actually outpace the number of young Americans, meaning Americans under the age of 40, who actually die from COVID.
00:14:59.000The overdose figures are really, really brutal.
00:15:04.000So our experts basically locked down the entire economy, created the sharpest rise in the poverty rate in 50 years, made the death rate for young Americans much higher than it otherwise would have been, Instead of simply saying, okay, everybody who's the age of 65, we need to protect those people and everybody else needs to go out and get back to work as soon as humanly possible with the protections that are available, which was always the best policy.
00:15:26.000But anybody who pursued that policy was ripped up and down because we need, of course, more centralized control.
00:15:30.000The best governor in America, supposedly, was Gavin Newsom in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York, Phil Murphy in New Jersey, everybody who locked down the hardest.
00:15:40.000Everyone who locked down super-duper-duper hard, these were the best governors in the world, and we need more centralized control just like that.
00:15:46.000That is definitely going to fix what ails the United States of America.
00:15:51.000Really, I mean, this is what they are calling for, which is frankly kind of astonishing.
00:15:57.000Speaking of which, Joe Biden has now shifted his tune on all of this.
00:16:00.000It turns out that, again, when you sit outside the government and you're campaigning, it is very easy to talk about how what we need is more centralized government control as soon as Joe Biden is actually in charge, as soon as he's president.
00:16:11.000I'm going to run headlong from responsibility for any of this.
00:16:14.000I'm just going to stand over here and... Remember that time I told you guys that this was going to be really rough and really bad?
00:16:20.000Now give me credit for being honest with you.
00:16:22.000Okay, except for how you blamed every COVID death on Donald Trump.
00:16:25.000If you blame every COVID death on Donald Trump, that suggests the person who's the President of the United States is now responsible for what happened with COVID, once they become the head of the executive branch.
00:16:36.000Here's Joe Biden running headlong from that responsibility, saying, oh, you know what?
00:16:39.000What I actually meant, it's gonna take a lot of time for us to crush the pandemic.
00:16:45.000Well, I'm going to shut down the virus, but I never said I'd do it in two months.
00:16:48.000I said it took a long time to get here.
00:16:50.000It's going to take a long time to beat it.
00:16:53.000And so we have millions of people out there who have the virus.
00:16:57.000We're just, for the first day, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I've been doing other things this morning, speaking with foreign leaders, but one of the things, I think this is one of the first days that the numbers actually come down, the number of deaths, and the number on a daily basis, and the number of hospitalizations, et cetera.
00:17:55.000And he says, actually, we're going to be ramping this thing up to 1.5 million shots a day.
00:18:00.000Now, frankly, that shouldn't be particularly difficult.
00:18:02.000The reality is we are currently doing 1.3 million shots a day.
00:18:05.000In any case, here was Joe Biden now revising his estimate up.
00:18:10.000I promise that we would get at least a 100 million vaccinations.
00:18:15.000That's not people because sometimes you need more than one shot in the vaccination, but 100,000, 100 million shots in people's arms of the vaccine.
00:18:27.000I think with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbor and the crick not rising, as the old saying goes, I think we may be able to get that to 150.
00:18:36.0001.5 million a day, rather than 1 million a day.
00:18:40.000But we have to meet that goal of a million a day.
00:18:43.000Okay, again, he keeps saying a million a day.
00:18:44.000We're already doing a million a day, dude.
00:19:13.000They're not in the highest risk bracket.
00:19:16.000And again, for people who are otherwise healthy and are 64 years old, the risk of COVID is not 100 out of 1,000 are going to die.
00:19:24.000It's more like 4 out of 1,000, 3 out of 1,000 are going to die.
00:19:27.000But those are not stats you want to take anyway.
00:19:29.000So I would love to get my parents the vaccine, like as soon as humanly possible.
00:19:32.000So I actually have a personal stake like millions and millions and millions of Americans do in making sure that we can get the vaccine as soon as possible.
00:19:38.000So he has asked, okay, so when will anyone who wants the vaccine be able to get the vaccine?
00:19:41.000And he's like, well, sometime, you know, sometime.
00:20:14.000I feel confident that by summer, we're going to be well on our way to heading toward herd immunity and increasing the access for people who aren't on the first on the list, all the way going down to Meanwhile, the captains of science, first of all, if you have young kids, there's a really good case to be made, especially if we have tranched out the vaccines to adults.
00:20:37.000If you have very young kids, there's a very solid case to be made.
00:20:39.000You shouldn't really bother getting your kid a vaccine.
00:20:41.000And that's not an anti-vaccination point.
00:20:43.000That is just a point of fact, because children are not being gravely affected by this disease.
00:20:47.000I'm talking about young children, not teenagers.
00:20:49.000OK, so the idea that we're going to start, by the way, this is what the teachers unions I can get to that in a second.
00:20:55.000There are a lot of teachers' unions right now who are actually pushing that every child, like my four-year-old, would have to get a vaccine shot for COVID.
00:21:02.000My four-year-old is at zero risk, statistically speaking.
00:21:05.000When I say zero, I mean so close to zero that it effectively is zero of, God forbid, dying from COVID.
00:21:11.000And the teachers' unions never want to reopen.
00:21:40.000In my house, we get food deliveries, and we're getting groceries, we're getting packages delivered from various companies, and then I have to keep track of my kids.
00:21:49.000I mean, I've got my kids who are trying to run out the front door because they want to play in the front yard.
00:21:53.000There's all sorts of stuff happening in my house.
00:22:42.000Okay, speaking of the idea that is promoted by folks on the left, just follow the science.
00:22:47.000So Gavin Newsom has now canceled California's stay-at-home orders across the state.
00:22:53.000So that will allow restaurants and businesses in some counties to reopen outdoor dining and other services.
00:22:57.000Now, there was never any scientific data to back the closing of outdoor dining in the first place.
00:23:01.000There's zero data that suggests that outdoor dining is a chief vector of COVID transmission.
00:23:06.000But now, magically, the week after Joe Biden takes office, Gavin Newsom is now going to redo all of the regulations in California surrounding COVID.
00:24:26.000I don't want you teaching my kids because I think that you guys are basically garbage at it generally anyway.
00:24:30.000I think that the teachers' unions protect the worst teachers at the expense of the best teachers.
00:24:34.000I think that you value seniority over quality in your teachers.
00:24:38.000I think that you create ridiculous educational missions that have very little to do with the education of the American public school child.
00:24:45.000So, you guys don't want to come into school?
00:24:48.000Millions and millions of Americans have realized over the past year that they're not sure they want you teaching their kids.
00:24:51.000But if you are a member of the Democratic Party and your big push is that public education done by teachers' unions is one of the jewels of the American system, then wouldn't you stand up to the teachers' unions at this point and say, you know, guys, you really should go back to work?
00:25:07.000That new study suggests that there really is no elevated risk for teachers above the general population.
00:25:14.000That, of course, is not a shock at all.
00:25:15.000We've known this for quite a while, that there really is no elevated public risk in terms of teachers over the general population.
00:25:22.000In fact, you would imagine they're probably at less risk generally, especially if they are teaching young kids.
00:25:27.000Young kids are not transmitting this disease in the same way that older children are.
00:25:31.000It also happens to be the case that younger teachers, right, if you're a 22-year-old teacher, for second graders, your level of risk is really, really minimal.
00:25:39.000It's much lower than you going to a bar that same night.
00:25:41.000But in a bunch of different states, we've got bars that are open and schools that are closed, which is madness.
00:25:48.000According to The Hill, the Chicago's Teachers Union voted to defy Chicago Public Schools reopening plans for teachers and staff due to coronavirus concerns, the union announced on Sunday.
00:25:55.000The Teachers Union, the nation's third largest school district, decided to allow all educators to conduct work remotely starting on Monday, the day kindergarten through eighth grade staff were expected to return in person.
00:26:05.000So these are specifically teachers for young kids.
00:26:08.000The CTU reported 86% of its 25,000 members participated in the electronic vote on Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
00:26:16.00071% of voting members decided to deny the district's current plan to come back to in-person learning.
00:26:22.000A CTU release said it means the overwhelming majority of you have chosen safety.
00:26:26.000CPS did everything possible to divide us by instilling fear through threats of retaliation.
00:26:30.000You still chose unity, solidarity, and to collectively act as one.
00:26:32.000By the way, this just demonstrates, once again, public sector unions are a blight on the American political system.
00:26:37.000Public sector unions would bargain collectively against the taxpayer.
00:26:41.000and pay off the politicians to bargain on their own behalf.
00:26:44.000It's one of the most corrupt deals in all of American politics.
00:27:02.000The Chicago Sun-Times labeled the vote unusually close for CTU labor actions because 94% of voting members usually decide when to strike.
00:27:10.000The Chicago district's official sent a letter to families on Sunday saying the return date for teachers will be delayed until Wednesday to allow for more time for negotiations and to avoid risking disruption to student learning.
00:27:20.000Now again, there's no science to back this.
00:27:22.000The science to suggest that these teachers are at risk and that they can't come back until X, Y, or Z, it's just nonsense.
00:27:39.000According to WTOL, the largest teachers unions in the state are responding after Governor Mike DeWine announced 96% of public school districts in Ohio have signed a form committing to in-person learning by March 1st.
00:27:48.000The unions, including the Toledo Federation of Teachers, say in a joint statement that Governor DeWine is using vaccines as a bargaining chip to open schools by March 1st.
00:27:56.000The statement says teachers, students, families and cities will face dire consequences if schools are pressured to reopen before it is safe to do so.
00:28:25.000Okay, the children are not the chief vector of the transmission.
00:28:28.000There's more danger of you hanging out in the teachers' union with the other teachers than of you teaching the kids.
00:28:33.000Perhaps the greatest example of this insanity is members of the Washington Teachers Union claiming that reopening schools for in-person learning is an example of white supremacy, and saying that if we value the mental health of students, that is a form of white privilege.
00:28:48.000According to the Daily Wire, echoing comments made by the Chicago Teachers Union months ago that reopening schools for in-person instruction is both racist and sexist, the president of the Pasco Association of Educators, Scott Wilson, made a series of unhinged, controversial remarks during a Pasco School Board meeting, according to our friend Jason Rantz over at KTTH.
00:29:05.000The comments were captured on video as the Board of Education conducts its meetings on Zoom amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
00:29:12.000This particular Teachers Union head compared the effort to reopen schools to the riot at the U.S.
00:29:17.000Capitol Wilson said, there are decisions to be made.
00:29:21.000You stand on the lawn of the US Capitol as people break down barriers and head to the doors.
00:29:35.000We speak of the care of students, yet we listen in intensive voices saying, reopen everything.
00:29:39.000I'm free to breathe, supporting white privilege.
00:29:42.000Okay, in reality, the people who are the most harmed by all of these stay-at-home orders have been children who are black and Hispanic.
00:29:48.000Because disproportionately, kids who are black and Hispanic go to public schools.
00:29:52.000And particularly their parents need them in the public schools so they can go work.
00:29:57.000Because in single-parent households, which are disproportionately in black and Hispanic families, If you can't drop your kid at school, how exactly are you gonna go to work that day?
00:30:50.000And the fact that the National Labor Relations Act is so biased in favor of collective bargaining that would be considered collusion if it were done by employers.
00:30:58.000But as soon as it is done by employees, it is now considered not collusion, but something magical.
00:31:02.000The NLRA is a terrible piece of legislation.
00:31:05.000But put that aside, the very existence of public sector unions is in most cases a blight on the Republic.
00:31:12.000But here is Joe Biden, this is just an example, refusing to condemn teachers' unions that are cutting directly.
00:31:20.000As kids are being put out of school all across the nation, again, even though we're reopening outdoor dining and we're reopening indoor dining, here's Joe Biden.
00:31:30.000Do you believe, sir, that teachers should return to schools now?
00:31:34.000I believe we should make school classrooms safe and secure for the students, for the teachers, and for the help that's in those schools maintaining the facilities.
00:31:51.000We need new ventilation systems in those schools.
00:31:54.000We need testing for people coming in and out of the classes.
00:31:59.000Okay, so basically I'm just going to avoid all of this.
00:32:01.000By the way, my kids have been in school since the beginning of the year.
00:32:05.000to know that in fact the circumstance in the school is safe and secure for everyone.
00:32:13.000Okay, so basically I'm just going to avoid all of this.
00:32:16.000By the way, my kids have been in school since the beginning of the year, no problem.
00:32:20.000And my kids are, two of them under the age of seven are in school and there's been no problem.
00:32:24.000They've taken precautions like masking.
00:32:25.000They put up a little plexiglass on the tables.
00:32:30.000But apparently it's the end of the world.
00:32:31.000Again, the willingness of the media to overlook the insane corruption of keeping millions and millions, tens of millions of school kids at home so teachers' unions can sit at home and get rich.
00:32:42.000I mean, really, the unions are getting rich, not the people who are members of the unions, the unions themselves.
00:32:48.000How tied in is the Biden administration to these unions?
00:32:52.000So tied in that Randi Weingarten was originally considered a possibility for Secretary of Education, the head of the American Federation of Teachers.
00:32:58.000But here she was this week saying that she stands behind teachers who are refusing to go back to school.
00:33:03.000Of course, we stand 100 percent behind the Chicago Union.
00:33:07.000But, you know, the issue really is, you know, just like we said last summer, When we said we would support these safety strikes, the issue is we know that in-school learning is really important and vital for children.
00:33:22.000And so we are trying to take the steps in different places to make that happen.
00:33:55.000Okay, Echelon offers the next generation of connected fitness bikes, fitness mirrors, rowing machines, and their Echelon Stride smart treadmill.
00:34:01.000No matter what your favorite fitness activity, Echelon will give you a fun, challenging workout from the comfort of your home.
00:36:59.000I would say 80% of the time, they're doing not good things.
00:37:02.000But does that mean that every single thing that they do is impeachable conduct?
00:37:07.000Now, impeachment, again, is a political tool, so you can impeach for anything.
00:37:11.000But typically, if you're going to allege a crime like incitement, you'd actually have to bring the goods.
00:37:15.000The problem is, what is the neutral standard that is going to be used here for impeachment?
00:37:19.000If the neutral standard is going to be...
00:37:21.000A person who is an office holder is not allowed to challenge or doubt the results of an election.
00:37:28.000That neutral standard obviously doesn't hold because we saw several years here of Democrats suggesting the 2016 election was rigged by the Russians.
00:37:34.000If the neutral standard is you are not allowed to use inflammatory language such that some bad people could get it in their heads to go to a bad thing, that also is not going to hold because, as we have seen many times this has happened on a wide variety of political perspectives.
00:37:46.000Anybody who has a large enough crowd is going to have some nuts in the crowd.
00:37:49.000Now again, none of that is to say that Trump's rhetoric was good or that Trump saying what he said about the election was somehow true.
00:37:57.000Putting all of that aside, the impeachable conduct here, there's really not a solid neutral standard of conduct here that is going to apply.
00:38:06.000And what I've seen is that the results of Trump's conduct were so egregious that he requires impeachment on just a moral level.
00:38:13.000OK, but then you would have to make the case that literally anybody who uses inflammatory language in American political life and then somebody goes and does something bad, even if they didn't call for that person to do something bad, ought to be thrown out of American public life.
00:38:24.000And you can see that there are folks who are extending the logic here.
00:38:26.000So, for example, Joe Scarborough immediately extended the logic to Josh Hawley.
00:38:31.000So Josh Hawley did something I thought was incredibly cynical, right?
00:38:34.000I thought it was a very cynical move by Josh Hawley to suggest that he could challenge electors or overthrow the results of the election by simply suggesting that there was some sort of vague voter irregularity or fraud.
00:38:43.000In fact, when asked directly whether there was voter fraud or irregularity sufficient to overthrow the electors themselves, Hawley demurred on that particular question.
00:38:52.000So it's pretty obvious that what he was doing was cynical.
00:38:54.000Cynical action by politicians is not, in fact, impeachable action by politicians, nor is it typically linked to violence.
00:39:00.000That's not what Joe Scarborough had to say.
00:39:02.000He says that Josh Hawley incited the violence, right?
00:39:06.000Presumably Ted Cruz incited the violence.
00:39:07.000Presumably every single one of the Republican legislators who voted to challenge the election incited the violence.
00:39:13.000All of them are responsible for inciting the violence.
00:39:15.000Now, again, those things could be bad and also not inciting of violence.
00:39:20.000And understand that this is part of a broader rubric from the left that anything that they don't like is quote-unquote incitement to violence.
00:39:26.000You'll notice that the left never holds that standard with regard to a Bernie Sanders supporter shooting up members of a congressional baseball game.
00:39:31.000You'll never hear the argument that Barack Obama's language with regard to police is responsible for a Black Lives Matter supporter shooting dead six police officers in Dallas in 2016.
00:39:41.000You're not going to hear that it was Democratic views of policing and race in America that incited $1 to $2 billion worth of property damage and violence over the summer, right?
00:39:50.000That's not a standard that is going to be held here.
00:39:52.000The idea here is just that it's only conservatives and Republicans who are to be held to this particular standard.
00:39:59.000Now, again, I can think that we all ought to bring down the temperature and that's fine, right?
00:40:04.000Does that mean that people ought to be cast out of public life for using inflammatory language?
00:40:07.000If so, it's going to be difficult to do politics in the future.
00:40:10.000In any case, here is Joe Scarborough basically suggesting it's not just Trump that must go, it's every single person who supported Trump on any level since the election.
00:40:35.000So here is Joe Biden yesterday saying, you know what, impeachment, it has to happen.
00:40:40.000CNN reports that Biden says impeachment has to happen, even though there's not going to be a conviction.
00:40:45.000He told me, Aaron, quote, just a few minutes ago, I think it has to happen.
00:40:49.000He said that he did understand the effect that it could have, of course, given that it will basically be all-consuming for the Senate, given however long it could last.
00:40:57.000But, Aaron, he said he thinks the effect if that trial for President Trump, former President Trump, didn't happen would have a worse effect if it did not go forward.
00:41:27.000One is to castigate Republicans as lacking moral principle if they don't vote to convict Trump after he's already out of office.
00:41:33.000And again, I think that as this thing drags on, more and more Americans are gonna be like, why are we bothering with this?
00:41:37.000Because Americans just don't have a taste for this sort of stuff after the person is out of office.
00:41:42.000Okay, but there are two other goals here as well.
00:41:44.000Okay, goal number, it's a win-win for Democrats, obviously.
00:41:47.000Again, the analysis I'm about to do here is a pure political analysis.
00:41:51.000It is not about the morality of actually Holding Trump to conviction here.
00:41:57.000Holding Trump to conviction, I think that reasonable minds can differ on whether what Trump did constitutes quote-unquote impeachable conduct.
00:42:02.000Because again, I have a real tough time suggesting that just because somebody uses inflammatory language without actually inciting violence, they're then responsible for what happens next.
00:42:11.000I just think that's an unsustainable standard in American political life.
00:42:15.000And again, I've been consistent on that left to right, but putting that aside, the actual politics here, what are Democrats actually doing here?
00:42:21.000Do I think that this is all about principle for Democrats?
00:42:22.000No, I really don't think this is all about principle for Democrats, like at all.
00:42:26.000I think for the vast majority of elected Democrats, this is about a win-win scenario.
00:42:46.000Last election shows that that is not a malformed thought.
00:42:50.000They believe that Trump in a Republican primary would still garner 25, 30% of the vote.
00:42:55.000There's every likelihood that that would happen.
00:42:58.000And so for them, they're like, OK, so scenario number one is Republicans vote down the conviction.
00:43:02.000We then get to castigate the entire Republican Party as amoral and immoral.
00:43:06.000And to boot, Trump will then run again.
00:43:09.000So it'll really finish them for years to come.
00:43:11.000Then there's possibility number two, which is that you somehow get enough Republicans to vote to convict and Trump is barred from holding future office.
00:43:19.000Okay, well, then all that would happen, presumably, is that Trump would start a third party, he'd prop up some other figure as the head of that third party, and he would just break the Republican Party right down the middle, right?
00:43:29.000He's already talked about starting a Patriot Party, right?
00:43:32.000He's already talked, which, by the way, according to some polls, is polling higher than the Republican Presidential Party would be in 2024.
00:44:33.000Okay, so first of all, the reason that they keep saying they want to look back is, of course, so then they can look at Trump and they can keep saying how wonderful Biden is.
00:44:46.000Also, the idea that this is the worst thing any president has ever done is make a speech on the Washington Mall in which you encourage people to peacefully protest while using inflammatory language.
00:44:53.000Like, of all the things presidents have done, no, I actually don't think that, put aside what the supporters did, what the supporters did is one of the worst things in American history, right?
00:45:01.000Breaching the actual Capitol building, looking for blood.
00:45:03.000That's one of the worst things in American history.
00:45:05.000What Trump actually did that day, is that the worst, like, the worst thing?
00:45:10.000The president, like, frankly, I think that it's worse what he did by calling Brad Raffensperger.
00:45:13.000I think that it's worse what he did by simply suggesting over and over and over that the election was stolen from Montana.
00:45:45.000So it's going to be a Democrat presiding over the impeachment trial, which just makes the thing even more of a circus than it otherwise would be.
00:45:51.000Okay, meanwhile, the censorship in the media continues apace.
00:45:55.000So I would be remiss if I did not mention a story that has continued to play out for the last couple of weeks.
00:46:00.000And it is kind of astonishing because the absolute insanity and immaturity of some members of the left, it's beyond the pale.
00:46:07.000I have three kids under the age of seven.
00:46:13.000But when I say mature for their ages, they are almost seven, four, and less than one.
00:46:18.000So not all that mature, just in sort of general human standards.
00:46:22.000They have significantly more maturity than the entire combined staff of Politico, apparently.
00:46:27.000So Politico, you remember a couple of weeks ago, vast grief and rage broke out because Politico's playbook had asked me to write the playbook one day.
00:46:35.000Now that followed on Chris Hayes writing the playbook, Yamiche Alcindor from PBS, who's a far left liberal, She had written the playbook.
00:46:42.000Don Lemon wrote the playbook after I did.
00:46:44.000Kara Swisher, who's a censorious, awful leftist columnist for the New York Times, she wrote the playbook.
00:46:50.000So I wrote the playbook because they wanted somebody on the right.
00:46:53.000So I wrote the playbook, and the basic point I made in Politico's playbook was the entire goal of the left seems to be to lump in everybody on the right with the Capitol rioters so they can then say everybody on the right is dangerous and ban them.
00:47:41.000According to the Daily Beast, Maxwell Tani, who's again one of these censorious types, would love to see nothing better than all of the folks on the right deplatformed ASAP.
00:47:49.000That always gets the scoop when far leftists decide that it's time to try to get somebody canceled.
00:47:54.000So here's what the Daily Beast reports.
00:47:57.000More than 100 Politico staffers signed onto a letter sent to publisher Robert Albritton, expressing disgust with allowing right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro to guest author one day's edition of the playbook, and with the outlet's subsequent handling of the fallout.
00:48:11.000One day, I wrote a piece for Politico.
00:48:41.000Okay, first of all, the attempt to castigate me, as Politico staffers apparently have been doing, as a white supremacist, are patently insane.
00:48:47.000I mean, totally crazy, as anybody who has ever listened to this show knows, as anybody who's listened to my speeches knows.
00:48:53.000I've given, like, full-length, 45-minute dissertations in front of thousands of people about how terrible white supremacy is.
00:49:00.000I did one at Stanford, I think it was, last year.
00:49:29.000Nope, we're not gonna allow him to write for the Washington Post anymore.
00:49:32.000By the way, there are columnists for the Washington Post like Eric Wemple, who are like, you know, big publications don't need to give Shapiro a platform.
00:49:37.000He has a place where you can hear him.
00:49:39.000I will just note to Eric Wemple of the Washington Post, I wrote for the Washington Post in 2016.
00:49:46.000So you might want to talk to your editors over there, dude.
00:49:49.000In any case, the Daily Beast staffers were so mad.
00:49:52.000We sent them a bunch of Leftist Tears tumblers.
00:49:55.000They're on back order because we have so many people who want them.
00:49:57.000We sent them some Leftist Tears tumblers.
00:49:59.000I wouldn't want them to get their tears all over their laptops where they are busy journalisming all over the place.
00:50:05.000According to the Daily Beast, Earlier this month, the Beltway News Outlet handed over the keys to its signature news product to Shapiro, a talk radio host and pundit who has long been one of the most controversial voices in right-wing media, thanks in part to his incendiary comments about the LGBT community, Muslim, Black Americans, and Jews who support Democratic politicians.
00:50:24.000The guest appearance, part of a series of guest appearances by political media figures, including Chris Hayes and Chuck Todd.
00:50:29.000They're not controversial, by the way.
00:50:30.000Chris Hayes, not controversial at all.
00:50:32.000I love how I'm a right-wing firebrand.
00:50:38.000By the way, you know what we call unsatisfactory to the employees here at The Daily Wire?
00:50:40.000own newsroom. But the resulting response from Politico Brass was unsatisfactory to a number of employees. Wow, unsatisfactory to the employees? Wow, terrible. By the way, you know what we call unsatisfactory to the employees here at the Daily Wire?
00:50:56.000A job. That's what we call Because you're getting paid to do things that are unsatisfactory to you nearly every single day.
00:51:05.000According to multiple political insiders familiar with the situation, the letter to Albritton criticized the decision to publish Shapiro, claiming it had demoralized a substantial portion of the newsroom.
00:51:30.000I can't even- Every time I start to write- Every time I start to do my job, I think of the fact that Shapiro's name appeared in Politico and I just- I can't!
00:51:37.000I can't- I- Wha- I- I need my- I need the wambulance.
00:51:43.000During a combative meeting on January 14th, the day of Shapiro's publication, the top editor defended the editorial decision to irate staffers by claiming mischief-making has always been part of Politico's secret sauce.
00:51:53.000The staff letter sent 10 days ago to Albritton maintained that Matt Kaminsky, who's the editor, had not appropriately apologized for his responses, additionally referencing an email he sent to staff on January 15th, obtained and reviewed by the Daily Beast.
00:52:04.000By the way, Leaking internal memos to the Daily Beast should be a fireable offense.
00:52:11.000In the email, the top editor expressed regret for his initial response about making mischief, but reiterated that publishing Shapiro was part of his hopes to experiment and mix things up in order to keep political vital and vibrant to its readers.
00:52:21.000In response, the letter's signees asked all Britain how Shapiro's extensive record of bigotry can be considered vibrant or vital, because that's the way this works.
00:52:29.000Okay, the way that it works is if you've ever said anything that you regret, or if you've ever said anything that people can interpret wrongly, As terrible and horrible and no good and very bad.
00:52:37.000This means that you must never be allowed to speak ever again, ever in history.
00:52:42.000I'm glad Politico staffers are so pure.
00:52:46.000You either join it or they come after you.
00:52:48.000That's the way that it works over there.
00:52:50.000Elsewhere in the notes to their publisher, the Politico staffers called for a commitment to clarify and improve the outlet's editorial standards.
00:52:59.000It's just that these guys are gonna hold hostage Politico's image so they can get a bunch of crap that Politico doesn't wanna do.
00:53:05.000A commitment to clarify and improve the outlet's editorial standards, which means we want a veto on what gets printed, just like the New York Times has basically handed over veto power to the pseudo-journalist and fictionalized historian, Nikole Hannah-Jones.
00:53:17.000An increase in newsroom diversity, so they want hiring based on race.
00:53:19.000An editor's note on Shapiro's edition of Playbook, so they want like a little note at the bottom saying, Shapiro's a bigot, but we published him anyway.
00:53:25.000We're really sad about that, but we're not pulling it.
00:53:27.000And an internal apology for the management response to staff criticism of publishing Shapiro.
00:53:32.000Despite the 100-plus signatures to the note, some Politico staffers stressed to the Daily Beast it did not represent the overall mood at the publication.
00:53:39.000Several of the company's 300 editorial employees said they hadn't even heard about the effort or weren't asked to sign the letter.
00:53:44.000Others said they were encouraged that Kaminsky and other top editors had been meeting over the past several days with newsroom employees in attempts to avoid blow-ups like the Shapiro saga.
00:53:51.000Well, I mean, I'm so glad that they've been meeting with the whiniest among them to avoid the blow-ups.
00:53:57.000Okay, all of this speaks to a broader problem, not just in media, but also in social media.
00:54:01.000So, Twitter is now launching a new program in which community members are going to be able to warn Twitter about other people saying the bads.
00:54:09.000Twitter on Monday, according to Fox News, has unveiled a new community-driven approach to misleading information on its platform, allowing users to add notes to tweets they believe are false in an attempt to, quote-unquote, add context for other users.
00:54:33.000On Birdwatch, no account and no tweet is exempt from annotation, meaning users can add context to tweets posted by news outlets, reporters, and elected officials.
00:54:41.000Birdwatch will allow users to identify information in tweets they believe are misleading or false, and write notes or notations to those tweets in a way they feel is providing informative context.
00:54:51.000Participants will be able to annotate any tweet once.
00:54:53.000They will have the option to cite source material in their annotation, including from news outlets, meaning users can annotate one news outlet's tweets by citing other news outlet's tweets.
00:55:30.000Twitter explained to Fox News the company is not doing a fact check with Birdwatch, and that it is not a true or false tool, but instead a way to quote-unquote add context.
00:55:36.000And this is the way the fact checkers do it at these major companies.
00:55:39.000They no longer just rate whether your statement is true or false.
00:55:42.000Instead, they say they are going to add context.
00:55:45.000Except when they are trying to not add context.
00:55:48.000When they are trying to not add context, then they just don't add the context.
00:55:51.000Then they just rate the statement on the pure true and false of the statement.
00:55:55.000It's pretty incredible how they do all of this.
00:55:58.000For those of us in media, there's a real challenge to confront.
00:56:00.000who is of course coming under fire because Fox News has become the focal point of the left's attempts to silence them.
00:56:05.000That's not a shock in any way, shape or form, of course, because the left has been attempting to silence Fox News literally since inception.
00:56:11.000So Rupert Murdoch gave a speech the other day in which he condemned the awful woke orthodoxy.
00:56:16.000For those of us in media, there's a real challenge to confront, a wave of censorship that seeks to silence conversation, to stifle debate and ultimately stop individuals and societies from realising their potential.
00:56:58.000The goal then is to shut down Fox News.
00:57:01.000You have Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post columnist, literally tweeting out media matters links to Fox News advertisers.
00:57:07.000And people on the right, by the way, going along with some of this stuff because they're so angry over what happened on January 6th that they are willing to go along with the left's version of everything that the right says is dangerous and so we must ban it.
00:57:17.000The most recent example I saw, so last night, Media Matters did what they do, which is they took somebody out of context.
00:57:24.000Tucker was making a First Amendment defense.
00:57:27.000And he was saying, okay, even the dumbest theories that people have, even the stuff that people say, that is like the dumbest stuff, you still have a right to think that stuff in the United States of America.
00:57:35.000And then he played a montage of members of the media basically saying that people who are associated with the idiotic and conspiratorial QAnon idea, that those people ought to be silenced.
00:57:44.000And Tucker was making the broader argument, not about the veracity of, again, the idiotic, dangerous, and ridiculous conspiracy theory of QAnon.
00:57:58.000Tucker's point was, you still have a right to think dumb things in the United States, which used to be sort of the baseline of freedom, right?
00:58:33.000But I think there are a lot of people who are not liberal, who are just leftists, and they're using every opportunity they can to quash people who they disagree with on every single side.
00:58:41.000And it's disgusting, and it's gross, and it's terrible for the country.
00:58:44.000Alrighty, we're going to be back here later today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.
00:58:47.000In the meantime, head on over to The Michael Moles Show.
00:58:50.000Disney Plus is now censoring classic films for children under seven.