The Ben Shapiro Show - Fighting About Dumb Crap | Ep. 1014

00:00:00.000 President Trump announces he's been taking hydroxychloroquine, cities lack the courage of their lockdown convictions, and a columnist for the New York Times decides Believe All Women was a right-wing plot all along.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:10.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN's Stand up for your digital rights.

00:00:22.000 Take action at expressvpn.com slash Ben.

00:00:25.000 So if you live on Twitter, what you will notice that there is a vast disconnect between the crap that people care about on Twitter and the stuff that happens in real life, like in real life.

00:00:25.000 Okay.

00:00:34.000 We're all worried about jobs and we're all worried about the stock market and our economy and dying of COVID.

00:00:39.000 There are actual things to worry about in real life.

00:00:42.000 And the good news is there's a bunch of good news with regard to the real things happening in real life.

00:00:46.000 And I want to bring you that good news because frankly, I think it's much more important than what is happening on Twitter.

00:00:50.000 But the disconnect on Twitter is truly astonishing.

00:00:52.000 There are a bunch of important stories happening today.

00:00:54.000 And then there's a bunch of random crap happening that Twitter thinks is super important.

00:00:58.000 And we'll get to all of those things.

00:00:59.000 Let's begin with the actual important news.

00:01:02.000 So, actual important news.

00:01:04.000 It now appears that vaccines could be on the way.

00:01:07.000 That doesn't mean that they will be available for public consumption by the end of the year, but it does mean that probably sometime early next year, we are looking at public consumption of a vaccine for COVID that drastically reduces the death rate.

00:01:17.000 And this has resulted in a skyrocketing stock market, according to the Associated Press, Asian shares rose Tuesday on optimism about a potential vaccine for coronavirus after hopes for a U.S.

00:01:25.000 economic recovery in the second half of the year sent Wall Street into a rebound.

00:01:29.000 Japan's benchmark Nikkei 2.25 added 1.9% in morning trading.

00:01:34.000 Australia's S&P jumped 2%.

00:01:36.000 South Korea's KOSPI was up almost 2%.

00:01:39.000 The mood is assertively risk-on, with sentiment having been tipped over by fresh hope sparked for a COVID-19 vaccine, says Jingyi Pan, a market strategist for IG.

00:01:48.000 Massachusetts-based Moderna saw its stock jump 20% in New York trading on Monday.

00:01:52.000 The S&P 500 climbed 3.2%.

00:01:52.000 That was its best day Since early April, the gains raised all the losses from last week when the index posted its worst showing since late March and its third weekly loss in the last four.

00:02:02.000 Bond yields rose broadly and in other signs that investors were becoming more optimistic.

00:02:05.000 Bond yields rise inversely proportional to demand.

00:02:08.000 That means that demand for bonds drop.

00:02:10.000 People are looking to invest in the stock market as opposed to relying on bonds.

00:02:13.000 Investors were also encouraged by remarks over the weekend from Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Pell.

00:02:17.000 He expressed optimism.

00:02:19.000 That is some very good news.

00:02:20.000 begin to recover in the second half of the year.

00:02:22.000 Once the outbreak has been contained, he said the economy should be able to rebound substantially.

00:02:26.000 And so you saw the S&P 500 gaining 90 points and the benchmark index is still down from about 13 percent from its all time high.

00:02:32.000 But that is not 30 or 40 percent.

00:02:34.000 The Dow Jones Industrial surged almost 4 percent as well.

00:02:38.000 So that is some very good news.

00:02:40.000 And other very good news.

00:02:41.000 It now turns out that covid patients who are testing positive after recovery are not actually infectious, according to a new study.

00:02:49.000 So there was some speculation that you might still be positive for COVID-19 and able to pass it to other people once you had recovered from COVID-19.

00:02:55.000 That apparently is not true.

00:02:56.000 According to Bloomberg, there's a report of a study that says that people are only shedding dead virus.

00:03:01.000 So they're testing positive for the dead virus, but they are not actually shutting into the public stream, which means that people are not actually going to die after meeting someone who has recovered from COVID-19, which is really, really good news.

00:03:11.000 Based on those results, according to Atul Gawande, who's a very well-respected healthcare researcher, he says the Korean CDC is lifting requirements to have a negative test for return to work or school after a COVID-19 infection.

00:03:22.000 Under the new protocols, no additional tests are required for cases that have been discharged from isolation.

00:03:27.000 So that is very good news as well.

00:03:30.000 In other news, the president of the United States is now taking a hammer to the WHO, which is a...

00:03:37.000 The president issued a letter to the WHO basically saying, you guys need to stop being lackeys of the Chinese government, or we are simply not going to participate in that which you seek.

00:03:37.000 which is a good thing.

00:03:47.000 He wrote, Dear Dr. Tedros, On April 14, 2020, I suspended U.S. contributions to the World Health Organization pending an investigation by my administration of the organization's failed response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

00:03:58.000 This review has confirmed many of the serious concerns I raised last month and identified others that the WHO should have addressed, especially the World Health Organization's alarming lack of independence from the People's Republic of China.

00:04:08.000 Based on this review, we now know the following.

00:04:11.000 The WHO consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet Medical Journal.

00:04:20.000 The WHO failed to independently investigate credible reports that conflicted directly with the Chinese government's official accounts, even those that came from sources within Wuhan itself.

00:04:29.000 I know later than December 30th, the World Health Organization in Beijing knew there was a major public health concern in Wuhan.

00:04:35.000 Between December 26th and December 30th, China's media highlighted evidence of a new virus emerging from Wuhan.

00:04:40.000 By the next day, Taiwanese authorities had communicated information to the WHO, which they ignored.

00:04:45.000 Internal health regulations require countries to report the risk of a health emergency within 24 hours.

00:04:49.000 China did not inform the WHO of Wuhan's cases of pneumonia of unknown origin until December 31st, even though it likely had knowledge of these cases days or weeks earlier.

00:04:58.000 According to Dr. Zhang Yongzhen of the Shanghai Public Health Clinic Center, he told Chinese authorities on January 5th he had sequenced the genome of the virus.

00:05:06.000 There was no publication of this information until six days later when Dr. Zhang self-posted it online.

00:05:11.000 The next day, the Chinese authorities closed his lab for rectification.

00:05:14.000 As even the WHO acknowledged, Dr. Zhang's posting was a great act of transparency, but the WHO has been conspicuously silent with respect to both the closure of Zhang's lab and his assertion that he notified Chinese authorities of his breakthrough six days earlier.

00:05:28.000 The WHO has also made claims about coronavirus that were either grossly inaccurate or misleading.

00:05:33.000 On January 14th, they suggested no human-to-human transmission.

00:05:35.000 On January 21st, President Xi Jinping of China reportedly pressured the WHO not to declare the coronavirus outbreak an emergency.

00:05:43.000 And on January 22nd, the WHO said that this was not a public health emergency of international concern.

00:05:48.000 On January 28th, after meeting with President Xi in Beijing, Dr. Tedros praised the Chinese government for its transparency.

00:05:55.000 Even after the WHO belatedly declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern, January 30th, they didn't press China for the timely admittance of a WHO team of international medical experts.

00:06:05.000 And so that team didn't even arrive until February 16th.

00:06:07.000 Even then, the team was not allowed to visit Wuhan until the final days of their visit.

00:06:11.000 Also, the WHO strongly praised China's strict domestic travel restrictions, but were inexplicably against the closing of the U.S.

00:06:18.000 border or the ban with respect to people coming from China.

00:06:22.000 And the list goes on and on and on of WHO failures.

00:06:24.000 And so the president concludes, until you stop becoming basically a lackey of the Chinese government, we're cutting off your funding.

00:06:30.000 He says, my administration has already started discussions with you on how to reform the organization, but action is needed quickly.

00:06:35.000 We don't have time to waste.

00:06:36.000 That is why it is my duty as President of the United States to inform you that if the WHO does not commit to major substantive improvements within the next 30 days, I will make my temporary freeze of U.S.

00:06:45.000 funding to the WHO permanent and reconsider our membership in the organization.

00:06:48.000 Okay, so that's big news, and that is good news.

00:06:50.000 That's something good that President Trump is doing.

00:06:52.000 We'll get to more of the actual news, and then we'll get to all of the news that people apparently care about on Twitter in just one second.

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00:07:07.000 It is, it is way over demand.

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00:07:12.000 Your cell phone bill is still sky high.

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00:08:30.000 Okay so In other news, that is good.

00:08:33.000 There are a variety of states that are now opening up for sports or thinking about opening up for sports.

00:08:41.000 That is a very good thing.

00:08:44.000 According to the Washington Post, the prospects for the nation's professional sports leagues to resume operations were boosted Monday when the governors of New York, California, and Texas announced their support for pro sports returning in their states.

00:08:55.000 New York State is ready and willing to partner with major sports teams that are interested in playing games safely without fans.

00:08:59.000 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wrote on Twitter, The announcements from the states, which are home to more than two dozen franchises across the NFL, NBA, NHL, and Major League Baseball, Don't provide certainty as to how or when this is going to happen, but leagues are making tentative plans to return.

00:09:16.000 MLB is discussing a return to play proposal with its players union, has an eye on a possible resumption of training next month and a season beginning in early July, perhaps with teams playing in their home cities and stadiums being grouped geographically for scheduling purposes to limit travel as well.

00:09:30.000 The NFL is not scheduled to begin until September.

00:09:32.000 That gives them some time to figure all of this out.

00:09:35.000 So all of this is very good.

00:09:37.000 In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has already announced professional sports can resume May 31st without any spectators.

00:09:43.000 The pronouncements don't resolve the league's return to play issues, but they bolster hopes that sports can return on a more widespread basis in the coming weeks and months.

00:09:51.000 So, the fact is that Americans are ready for this shutdown to be over.

00:09:55.000 They are.

00:09:55.000 And they are acting as such.

00:09:57.000 I'm hopeful that people are going to act responsibly here.

00:10:01.000 I think it's very important that people act responsibly here.

00:10:03.000 In fact, we already have some evidence that things are not going to be as bad in terms of the outbreak as people originally suspected.

00:10:11.000 The Atlanta mayor, Who is very, very critical of the Georgia governor.

00:10:14.000 She says, listen, this thing, I thought it was going to be really terrible.

00:10:16.000 I'm not so sure it's going to be so terrible anymore.

00:10:19.000 It's not as bad as I thought that it would be, so I am pleased about that, but I still think it's too soon to say.

00:10:26.000 The reason being, whereas initially we were seeing increases between deaths and people testing positive, rising anywhere from 25 to 30 percent over a seven-day period, right now we're somewhere between 12 and 15 percent, and so it's better than it was, but it's still not great.

00:10:45.000 Okay, well, again, better than it was, but still not great.

00:10:48.000 It's never gonna be great until this thing is totally over, but the fact that the Atlanta mayor is now having to walk back the Brian Kemp is going to kill everybody routine is pretty astonishing. 0.52

00:10:57.000 Because remember, Brian Kemp was evil. 0.97

00:10:59.000 He wanted to kill Grandma. 0.95

00:11:02.000 So that is a positive thing.

00:11:05.000 In sort of negative stuff, there's police footage showing a massive block party in Florida yesterday.

00:11:11.000 People apparently were just going out willy-nilly and then engaging on a massive level.

00:11:17.000 And this does not look like a socially distanced party, frankly.

00:11:20.000 If you take a look at this footage, you can see The helicopter is flashing.

00:11:24.000 This is Pensacola police that released this footage.

00:11:26.000 People associating in mass numbers.

00:11:29.000 Listen, people still have to be careful if you don't want to get COVID-19.

00:11:32.000 If you're young and you don't care about getting COVID-19, I suppose that's on you.

00:11:35.000 Try not to infect somebody who is older.

00:11:37.000 That would be the thing that we are most focused on.

00:11:39.000 One of the big problems here is that the lockdown was so severe and so strict that now that people are being let out of jail, basically they're saying, I'm going to do what I want willy-nilly.

00:11:48.000 Now, it is important to recognize that, by the way, in Sweden, that actually is sort of what happened, right?

00:11:53.000 In Sweden, there was this notion that everybody was mask wearing and socially distancing.

00:11:56.000 No, some people were, but the level of compliance was not actually supremely high, even in places like Sweden.

00:12:02.000 The level of compliance is actually kind of low in places like Sweden.

00:12:05.000 It was like 60% of the public was complying.

00:12:07.000 Now, you don't actually need 100% of the public complying in order to lower what they call the R naught, which is the replication rate of the virus, right?

00:12:14.000 All you need is maybe 60, 70, 80% of people who are complying by the rules.

00:12:19.000 However, you do have a bit of a collective action problem in that it is more fun to not socially distance than to socially distance.

00:12:25.000 And what this means is that the people who are most calling for social distancing and who are strictest when it comes to these lockdowns, they better have the courage of their convictions.

00:12:32.000 Well, as it turns out, they do not, in fact, have the courage of their convictions.

00:12:34.000 I'll give you an example.

00:12:35.000 So, Bill de Blasio yesterday, he said, listen, we're just going to pull you right out of the water.

00:12:39.000 Like, if you go down to the beach and then you get in the water, you take one foot and you put it in the water on Memorial Day, we'll pull you out of the water.

00:12:44.000 First of all, let's just note something.

00:12:46.000 Memorial Day, the Atlantic Ocean, It's like 50 degrees.

00:12:49.000 It's not like people are willy-nilly jumping into the Atlantic Ocean on Memorial Day.

00:12:52.000 If you've ever been in New York at this time of year, it don't work that way.

00:12:56.000 But here was Bill de Blasio anyway trying to suggest that he was going to personally go and muscle people out of the water.

00:13:02.000 Fencing will be there, but it won't be implemented at first.

00:13:05.000 We're hoping everyone just listens to the rules, follows the rules.

00:13:07.000 No swimming.

00:13:09.000 No sports.

00:13:10.000 No gatherings.

00:13:11.000 No parties.

00:13:13.000 You know, just common sense.

00:13:15.000 Observe social distancing.

00:13:17.000 If you walk on the beach, remember, don't go in the water.

00:13:20.000 You're not supposed to go in the water.

00:13:22.000 It's a dangerous situation to ever go in the water when there's not lifeguards present, so there'll be a constant reminder of that.

00:13:28.000 If anyone tries to get in the water, they'll be taken right out of the water.

00:13:33.000 Okay, so he sounds like he's going to be very strict as far as how he actually makes this happen, right?

00:13:39.000 Well, in reality, he's not going to be that strict.

00:13:40.000 And I'll tell you why he's not going to be that strict.

00:13:42.000 Because it turns out that if he's arresting people, it is disproportionately people of color.

00:13:46.000 And this is upsetting folks. 0.71

00:13:47.000 So the New York Times editorial board, which was, if you go out without a mask, you're going to kill people.

00:13:51.000 If you go out and you don't social distance, everybody is going to die.

00:13:54.000 Now the New York Times is like, you know what?

00:13:56.000 Maybe we shouldn't use the police for this thing.

00:13:57.000 Okay, good luck then.

00:13:59.000 Good luck!

00:13:59.000 Because the reality is that if you actually want to enforce this thing, then you are going to have to, you know, promulgate it by use of law enforcement.

00:14:07.000 So this creates a bit of a catch-22.

00:14:08.000 The stricter you are in that which you call for, the less people are going to obey it.

00:14:12.000 And the more you're going to have to use law enforcement.

00:14:15.000 Which means that you better be pretty obvious and open about why people need to socially distance.

00:14:20.000 You better explain yourself.

00:14:21.000 Unfortunately, authorities don't feel the need to explain themselves.

00:14:24.000 Instead, they just say things like, we'll come and we'll arrest you if you violate the rules.

00:14:29.000 Well, as we'll see, these folks do not have the courage of their convictions.

00:14:31.000 They're not actually going to arrest you if you violate the rules.

00:14:34.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:15:53.000 And so, in an attempt to drive the idea that people need to socially distance, the media are going overboard.

00:15:59.000 Again, being fully transparent with people is probably the best way to do all of this.

00:16:03.000 I feel like that's what I try to do on the show.

00:16:04.000 I try to give you as much information as possible, then you make your own decisions.

00:16:07.000 Because I trust you as an individual human being to make responsible decisions.

00:16:10.000 So I've encouraged you, when you're in a populated area, particularly an area where you believe there are going to be older and vulnerable people, you should wear a mask. 1.00

00:16:17.000 I know there are a lot of conservatives who are very not on board with masks.

00:16:20.000 I don't fully understand that.

00:16:21.000 I don't like wearing a mask either.

00:16:22.000 It's annoying.

00:16:23.000 It's irritating. 1.00

00:16:24.000 When I'm out on the streets with my kids walking around away from people, I'm not wearing a mask because that's stupid. 0.99

00:16:28.000 When I'm in my car alone, I'm not wearing a mask. 0.94

00:16:30.000 If I go into a place that is populated and enclosed, I am wearing a mask.

00:16:34.000 Mainly because I don't want other people around me to be infected with COVID-19.

00:16:37.000 Even if I don't have COVID-19, I don't know because maybe I have it and I'm asymptomatic.

00:16:40.000 You just don't know.

00:16:41.000 So it seems like a good, caring thing to do.

00:16:43.000 But the media are being deeply irresponsible in how they are reporting this sort of stuff.

00:16:48.000 So let me give you an example.

00:16:50.000 There's an article from the UK Guardian.

00:16:51.000 It says, US lockdown protests may have spread virus widely.

00:16:54.000 Cell phone data suggests.

00:16:55.000 Okay, so you would imagine that if the data were suggesting that the protests have spread this widely, here's what you would expect.

00:17:01.000 You would expect An outbreak at a protest, and then that that outbreak was brought home by a bunch of people, and outbreaks where people brought the virus home, right?

00:17:08.000 That's not what the article says.

00:17:11.000 All the article shows is that people came from different places to the protest and then went back to different places.

00:17:16.000 At no point does it show an outbreak in any of those places.

00:17:18.000 At no point does this article suggest that there was an outbreak at the protest.

00:17:22.000 Instead, all the article says is, cell phone location data suggests that demonstrators at anti-lockdown protests, some of which had been connected with COVID-19 cases, are often traveling hundreds of miles to events, returning to all parts of their states and even crossing into neighboring ones.

00:17:35.000 The data provided to The Guardian by the progressive campaign group, the Committee to Protect Medicare, shocker, raises the prospect that protests will play a role in spreading coronavirus epidemics to areas which have so far experienced relatively few infections.

00:17:46.000 Okay, so at no point do they actually demonstrate this has happened.

00:17:49.000 Instead, they just say people are traveling.

00:17:51.000 And that's supposedly enough for us to determine these protests are spreading the disease far and wide.

00:17:55.000 Now listen, I may think that it increased the risk of the spread of the disease, but that is not the same thing as may have spread the disease far and wide.

00:18:02.000 If you're gonna say that that happened, you actually have to provide some data to support it.

00:18:07.000 Also, here's another great example of the media panicking to try and suggest that things are bad where there's no evidence that they're actually bad.

00:18:13.000 So Florida has been a real black mark for the media.

00:18:16.000 The media really botched Florida because the media treated it as though Ron DeSantis in Florida was a bad, bad, very evil man who wanted to kill grandma, and Florida was going to get absolutely shellacked by COVID-19.

00:18:25.000 And it turns out that Florida, with a population basically the same as New York State, has experienced about one-fifteenth, one-twentieth of the deaths of New York State.

00:18:34.000 It has not been hit anywhere near the same as New York State.

00:18:39.000 So, the new report that the media are trying to push out there is that a researcher, a data chief for Florida, was fired.

00:18:46.000 And she claimed, without evidence, without presenting any evidence, that she was fired because the Florida government was trying to cover up bad evidence of COVID-19.

00:18:54.000 And this is what everybody ran with.

00:18:56.000 This was the headline that everybody on Twitter ran with.

00:18:58.000 On Twitter, right now, trending, architect and manager of Florida's COVID-19 dashboard says her removal was not voluntary.

00:19:05.000 And then people start tweeting out that DeSantis is covering up the data.

00:19:07.000 He's covering up the data.

00:19:08.000 Ooh, he's covering up the data.

00:19:10.000 Except that's not what the article says.

00:19:11.000 When you actually read the article, what it says is that this woman claims that maybe she was fired For some data reason, she can't quite discern.

00:19:19.000 Here's what the article says.

00:19:20.000 She warned, she does not know what the new team's intention are for data access, including what data they're now restricting.

00:19:25.000 So she doesn't even claim that the data were covered up in the aftermath of her firing.

00:19:29.000 In her original note, which she posted on Facebook, she said, as a word of caution, I would not expect the new team to continue the same level of accessibility and transparency I made central to the process during the first month.

00:19:38.000 After all, my commitment to both is largely, arguably entirely, the reason I'm no longer managing it.

00:19:43.000 Okay, well that's a pretty big allegation.

00:19:52.000 So, if she's going to make that accusation, what you would imagine is that the data would then go missing, right?

00:19:57.000 You wouldn't be able to access it.

00:19:58.000 Only one problem, you can still access all the data.

00:20:00.000 Also, she's provided no evidence of her allegations.

00:20:02.000 Also, she won't respond to media requests.

00:20:04.000 And then, the article basically quotes a bunch of experts saying it would be really bad if Florida hid the data.

00:20:09.000 So the article does not substantiate the allegation in any way.

00:20:12.000 All it does is say, would it be bad, to a bunch of quote-unquote experts, would it be bad if they hid the data?

00:20:16.000 Yes, it would be very, very bad.

00:20:18.000 And this turns into Ron DeSantis is firing people to cover up the evidence on COVID-19.

00:20:23.000 Again, the evidence is not there that that's happening.

00:20:25.000 Also, don't you think the media would be all over it, all over it, if Florida were experiencing a massive uptick right now?

00:20:32.000 Another example, there's a big story out of Georgia.

00:20:34.000 The story out of Georgia is that in a public presentation of a chart, the Georgia government put together a bizarre chart in which they sort of cited random dates in which there was a downturn in cases to demonstrate a clear charted downturn in cases.

00:20:49.000 So instead of showing you a trend line drawn through various dates that were consistent, instead they sort of picked and chose dates that made the trend line look clearer.

00:20:58.000 So instead of showing every day what the trends line were in terms of cases and diagnoses and deaths, instead they picked the highest dates and then the lowest dates.

00:21:07.000 And the media went crazy.

00:21:08.000 Oh, Kemp is trying to hide the data.

00:21:10.000 There's only one problem with the he's-trying-to-hide-the-data argument.

00:21:14.000 The actual data demonstrate that there's been about a 6% reduction in the number of infections in Georgia.

00:21:19.000 So he didn't have to hide the data.

00:21:21.000 That's just bad data management by somebody on his comms team.

00:21:24.000 But that is not him hiding a massive uptick in Georgia because the massive uptick in Georgia does not exist.

00:21:29.000 So again, if you want to push social distancing, if you want to push mask wearing, then how about this?

00:21:34.000 How about we are accurate about that which we are trying to push?

00:21:36.000 How about you're transparent with the American public?

00:21:38.000 Because here's the reality.

00:21:40.000 As I've said before, I think it was, was it Dan McLaughlin on Twitter?

00:21:45.000 I always wanted to credit people, but I'm forgetting the name.

00:21:47.000 There are only three reasons Why people obey the law.

00:21:50.000 One, because they think the law is good.

00:21:52.000 Two, because they're being threatened.

00:21:53.000 Three, because they're being bribed.

00:21:55.000 The problem is you can't bribe people to stay in their houses forever because people don't actually like staying in their houses.

00:21:59.000 This has been pretty terrible.

00:22:01.000 And as for justifying to people your policies, our politicians don't even feel the need to do that, which leaves you with coercion.

00:22:07.000 And now, as it turns out, for all the talk about from Lori Lightfoot in Chicago and the governor of New Jersey, Phil Murphy, when it comes to coercion, The authorities don't actually want to utilize coercion because the disproportionate impact of coercion is going to fall on poor and minority communities apparently, and this is true in New York City. 0.62

00:22:28.000 And then they will be accused of racism.

00:22:30.000 So it turns out that the coercion ain't gonna work anyway.

00:22:32.000 I'll explain in just one second.

00:22:33.000 It's hilarious.

00:22:34.000 The New York Times, which has been stumping for lockdown, lockdown, lockdown, lockdown, when they realize that that means the NYPD is going to be issuing citations largely to black and Hispanic people, then they're like, well, I guess we're not so hot on the lockdown anymore, are we?

00:22:45.000 Weird, weird.

00:22:46.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:23:59.000 Okay, so as I say, If there are three reasons to obey law, one is that it makes sense.

00:24:04.000 Second is you can be bribed.

00:24:06.000 And third is coercion.

00:24:07.000 The first two have already been taken off the table.

00:24:09.000 Because bribery ain't gonna work to keep people home forever.

00:24:11.000 People don't want to be home forever.

00:24:12.000 They want to hang out with each other.

00:24:14.000 Second, does the law make any sense?

00:24:16.000 I'm not going to follow Bill de Blasio's prescriptions because he's blown all of his credibility.

00:24:20.000 This is why it was so important from the beginning for our leaders to explain their decision-making process.

00:24:24.000 And because they refused to do so, and because they were not doing so in transparent or even factual manner, that led to a widespread distrust of the authorities when it comes to this stuff.

00:24:34.000 And so this means radical transparency.

00:24:37.000 This means that we need to be very clear about why it is that you are wearing a mask.

00:24:40.000 The reason that you are wearing a mask today, folks, is not to protect yourselves.

00:24:44.000 The masks, unless it's N95, are not filtering out particles at the rate necessary to prevent you from getting COVID-19.

00:24:50.000 Masks are meant to protect other people.

00:24:52.000 So, if you're in a place where you think there will be people who are vulnerable, then you should wear a mask.

00:24:57.000 If you're in a place where there are no people who are vulnerable, then there's a case that maybe wearing a mask isn't so important.

00:25:03.000 Okay, seriously, if you're around a bunch of 17-year-olds, like, we were out the other day on a Sunday, and there were a bunch of teenage girls hanging out together.

00:25:09.000 Did I think to myself— They weren't wearing masks.

00:25:11.000 Did I think to myself, oh my god, danger to the republic?

00:25:14.000 Not really.

00:25:14.000 I thought to myself, okay, well, they're young people.

00:25:17.000 If they get COVID-19, they're going to be fine because they're 17.

00:25:20.000 The risk factors to people who are 17 is extraordinarily low.

00:25:24.000 That's a choice.

00:25:24.000 Is it a choice that I think is a great choice?

00:25:26.000 Not necessarily, but it's a choice they're going to have to make and their parents are going to have to help them make as well.

00:25:31.000 I mean, I assume their parents know that they're hanging out together and not wearing masks for the most part.

00:25:36.000 But with that said, we have not justified our policies, and we have tried to bribe people, and that's not working.

00:25:42.000 So we are now down to coercion.

00:25:43.000 And as it turns out, coercion tends to fall on people who are not paying attention to the rules.

00:25:48.000 And so I need to point something out, and this is how this has been treated in New York City.

00:25:52.000 So Bill de Blasio tweeted yesterday, Earlier today, the NYPD shut down a yeshiva, conducting classes with as many as 70 children.

00:25:59.000 I can't stress how dangerous this is for our young people.

00:26:01.000 We're issuing a cease and desist order, and we'll make sure we keep our communities and our kids safe.

00:26:05.000 So first of all, if it's yeshiva for, like, people who are 10, there's very little evidence that schools are dangerous for kids.

00:26:13.000 Denmark never shut down its schools.

00:26:14.000 Sweden never shut down its schools.

00:26:15.000 Much of Europe never shut down its schools.

00:26:17.000 Why?

00:26:17.000 Because kids are not really being damaged by coronavirus in mass numbers.

00:26:21.000 Or even in mild numbers, as it turns out.

00:26:23.000 There are statistical outliers, but they are real statistical outliers.

00:26:26.000 But beyond that, notice how de Blasio, every tweet he sends about a group is always about the Jews.

00:26:31.000 Every single one.

00:26:32.000 These Jews gathering in Williamsburg. 1.00

00:26:34.000 Those are bad Jews. 1.00

00:26:36.000 We need to get the police out there and break up the Jews. 1.00

00:26:39.000 Oh man, we had to break up a wedding the other day because of those Jews. 1.00

00:26:42.000 And now, as I've said, if you are Jewish, and I have a lot of Jewish listeners, obviously I'm an Orthodox Jew myself, Don't hold big weddings without social distancing. 0.74

00:26:51.000 It's a great way to spread it to people who are vulnerable.

00:26:53.000 Just don't do it.

00:26:54.000 Right?

00:26:55.000 If you're going to engage in events, socially distance.

00:26:58.000 Like, I've been encouraging this for a while, okay?

00:27:00.000 So I've been consistent on this.

00:27:01.000 But, Bill de Blasio only talks about Jews, ever.

00:27:04.000 But who's he arresting?

00:27:05.000 Is Bill de Blasio arresting Jews?

00:27:08.000 Disproportionately, Bill de Blasio is not arresting Jews. 0.98

00:27:10.000 Disproportionately, Bill de Blasio's NYPD are arresting people who are Black and Hispanic. 0.69

00:27:14.000 Now, this has led people on the left to suggest this is because the NYPD is racist.

00:27:18.000 Is it possible, maybe, that Bill de Blasio is picking on the Jews, but the reality is that people of various groups are not socially distancing at the same rate?

00:27:26.000 Is that possible?

00:27:28.000 I know, that would cut against all of the narratives about how disparate healthcare outcomes when it comes to COVID-19 are entirely the result of American racism.

00:27:36.000 But is it possible that the disproportionate hit that the Orthodox Jewish community took in terms of COVID-19, and the Orthodox Jewish community did take a disproportionate hit, particularly in New York, in terms of COVID-19.

00:27:46.000 I know three separate people, all in the Orthodox community in New York, who died of COVID-19.

00:27:50.000 Okay, so the Jewish community did take a disproportionate hit.

00:27:52.000 Was that because of the racism and anti-Semitism of the healthcare system in New York?

00:27:56.000 Or is it because a lot of Jews got together right around Purim, March 10th, and they hung out together and then they infected each other? 1.00

00:28:03.000 And is it possible that the same thing is true in minority communities that are being hard hit?

00:28:07.000 That in order to actually chart whether racism is to blame for America's healthcare system disparities, We actually have to determine whether people are paying attention to the social distancing or not.

00:28:18.000 Because as it turns out, in New York, according to the New York Times, of the 125 people arrested over offenses that law enforcement officials described as related to the coronavirus pandemic, 113 were black or Hispanic.

00:28:29.000 Are you getting that?

00:28:31.000 Of the 125 people arrested, 113 were Black or Hispanic in New York City.

00:28:35.000 So, does that mean that Bill de Blasio is a racist?

00:28:37.000 That's 90% of people who have been arrested in New York City for not obeying the law on COVID-19 are Black or Hispanic.

00:28:44.000 Of the 374 summonses from March 16th to May 5th, 300 were given to Black and Hispanic New Yorkers.

00:28:50.000 That's 80%.

00:28:52.000 Videos of some of the arrests are hard to watch.

00:28:54.000 In one posted to Facebook last week, a group of some six police officers are seen tackling a black woman in a subway station as her young child looks on.

00:29:01.000 She's got a baby with her, a bystander shouts.

00:29:02.000 Police officials told the Daily News the woman had refused to comply when officers directed her to put the mask she was wearing over her nose and mouth.

00:29:09.000 Contrast that with photographs across social media showing crowds of sunseekers packed into parks in wealthy, whiter areas of the city, lounging undisturbed as police officers hand out masks.

00:29:18.000 So it is obvious the city needs a different approach to enforcing public health measures during the pandemic.

00:29:22.000 Mayor Bill de Blasio seems to understand this.

00:29:24.000 He's promised to hire 2,300 people to serve as social distancing ambassadors.

00:29:28.000 Good luck with this.

00:29:30.000 So their new idea is they're going to go around warning people.

00:29:32.000 They're going to build a public health corps to enforce social distancing measures.

00:29:36.000 They don't have the power to punish or fine or anything.

00:29:38.000 They have the power to walk up to you and scold you.

00:29:41.000 Yes, I'm sure scolding is going to go incredibly well in New York City, home to the vast majority of the United States a-holes.

00:29:48.000 Have you met New Yorkers?

00:29:50.000 That is not a criticism of New Yorkers.

00:29:51.000 They're wonderful a-holes, but let's be real about New Yorkers, okay? 0.99

00:29:55.000 I've spent an awful lot of time in New York.

00:29:56.000 New Yorkers are not known for being tactful and polite.

00:29:59.000 That is not their thing.

00:30:00.000 New Yorkers are brash. 0.80

00:30:02.000 It is their a-holeness that makes them uniquely American. 0.87

00:30:04.000 You think that walking around saying to New Yorkers, You know, you really should socially distance.

00:30:10.000 Hey! 0.99

00:30:11.000 F you! 1.00

00:30:11.000 Get out of here! 1.00

00:30:16.000 Good luck to this.

00:30:17.000 Good luck to this.

00:30:18.000 In this approach...

00:30:20.000 Especially trained civilians could fan out across neighborhoods and parks, helping with pedestrian traffic control and politely encouraging New Yorkers entering parks to protect one another by wearing masks and keeping their distance.

00:30:30.000 Police department school safety agents who are not armed could help.

00:30:33.000 Such a program could also provide much needed employment for young people.

00:30:36.000 So that's the real purpose is we're going to hire a bunch of scolds to go around telling people to socially distance. 1.00

00:30:40.000 The police department, according to the New York Times, would play only a minimal role in this approach, stepping in to help with crowd control, for example, something it does extremely well.

00:30:47.000 Without a significant course correction, the department's role in the pandemic may look more like stop and frisk, the policing tactic that led to the harassment of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, most of them black and Hispanic, while rarely touching white New Yorkers.

00:30:57.000 So again, it's hilarious.

00:30:59.000 The New York Times was fine when de Blasio was screaming at the Jews.

00:31:02.000 But the minute that it turns out that the people who are being arrested are largely black and Hispanic, just like, by the way, most of the criminal arrests in New York City, then all of a sudden it turns into the NYPD is racist and the only way that we can really do this is to recommend the course of action.

00:31:17.000 The New York Times' double standard with regard to which groups are worthy of criticism is really something to behold.

00:31:23.000 And the same thing is true of Bill de Blasio.

00:31:24.000 But it does underscore the basic truth here that libertarians have been speaking for a very long time.

00:31:29.000 If you are not willing to enforce a law, do not put the law on the books.

00:31:33.000 And if you're going to inform people as to why they ought to pursue certain action on a voluntary basis, you need to be more transparent about how you are making those decisions.

00:31:42.000 Otherwise, people have no incentive to do this.

00:31:44.000 And again, I cannot think of something more ready for late night TV than a bunch of schoolmarm hall monitors walking around the streets of Crown Heights telling people they need to socially distance. 0.50

00:31:56.000 Good freaking luck. 0.81

00:31:58.000 Good luck.

00:31:59.000 Okay, in just a second.

00:32:00.000 So this is all the news that actually matters because this is how we're going to reopen.

00:32:03.000 It's about whether we're going to be responsible when we reopen.

00:32:05.000 It's about the consequences politically for people on the left who actually want lockdowns, right?

00:32:09.000 It's all about the health data.

00:32:11.000 Now we're going to get to the stuff that the media decided that was very important to cover over the last 24 hours.

00:32:16.000 Suffice it to say, it is not important things.

00:32:19.000 We will get to that momentarily.

00:32:20.000 First, let us talk about the fact that right now, you don't want to be going to the auto parts store, right?

00:32:24.000 Do you really want to be waiting in line at the auto parts store?

00:32:26.000 If you're going to wait in line, is that really the place you want to be?

00:32:28.000 To spend too much money for the wrong part?

00:32:31.000 Or then just get to the front of the line and the person's like, well, I can put that on order for you.

00:32:34.000 Yeah, I know.

00:32:35.000 Or you could just order it yourself at rockauto.com.

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00:33:15.000 Head on over to rockauto.com right now, no reason to spend too much money.

00:33:17.000 Go to rockauto.com right now, see all the parts available for your car or truck, write Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box, So they know that we sent you, again, that is rockauto.com.

00:33:25.000 Go check them out right now.

00:33:26.000 Don't spend too much money on your auto parts.

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00:33:29.000 And write Shapiro in there, how did you hear about us box?

00:33:32.000 Okay, first, in exciting news, my new book is now available for presale, guys.

00:33:35.000 Like really, go out and buy my new book.

00:33:37.000 As you are well aware, Americans are now more divided than ever, and they are looking to get more divided.

00:33:41.000 Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that Joe Biden wants to completely undermine many of America's institutions.

00:33:46.000 We've seen Barack Obama out there suggesting we need fundamental transformative change in the United States.

00:33:51.000 Nothing could be more divisive than this in a time of coronavirus pandemic.

00:33:54.000 We're seeing serious divisions over issues that should be unifying.

00:33:58.000 Take, for example, the fact that the 1619 project by the New York Times about the dark roots of slavery as part of our country's history was actually about how America is rooted in slavery and based on slavery.

00:34:08.000 And this has become the rote talking point for large swaths of the Democratic Party.

00:34:12.000 This was rewarded with a Pulitzer earlier this month.

00:34:14.000 I'd devote a huge section of my book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, that's the name of the book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, to examining its intent as well as its content.

00:34:23.000 If you don't have a copy yet, you can pre-order one at dailywire.com or you can find it at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

00:34:29.000 It's available for pre-order right now.

00:34:32.000 Right now in America, there are fundamentally two different visions for the country on the table.

00:34:36.000 One is unifying.

00:34:37.000 It finds our unity, what keeps us together in a shared philosophy, culture, and history.

00:34:42.000 The other disintegrates our country and sees us all as various interest groups that are basically bashing each other about the skull for control of the government.

00:34:48.000 That is an image that the left wants to push.

00:34:51.000 And that push is destroying the country from within.

00:34:54.000 And this election, this 2020 election is very much about that.

00:34:57.000 So oddly enough has the pandemic response, it has become a referendum on how you view the country and whether the country requires fundamental change.

00:35:04.000 Every time you see Democrats out there suggesting that COVID has really exposed the deep roots of American injustice.

00:35:10.000 We need to remake the system.

00:35:12.000 That is what we're talking about.

00:35:12.000 That is a step toward the destruction of the country.

00:35:14.000 My new book is called How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.

00:35:17.000 It talks about what should bring Americans together and how those who want disintegration are tearing the country apart.

00:35:21.000 Again, head on over to dailywire.com slash ben and order your copy today.

00:35:25.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:35:29.000 All righty, so let's talk about now what the media want you to talk about today.

00:35:39.000 They don't want you to talk about the vaccines.

00:35:40.000 They don't want you to talk about the stock market.

00:35:42.000 They don't want you to talk about the reopening of the states and whether the data are supporting a downturn.

00:35:48.000 They don't want you to talk about any of that stuff.

00:35:49.000 They don't want to talk about Trump going after the WHO.

00:35:51.000 They want to talk about one thing and one thing only.

00:35:53.000 Yesterday, President Trump announced he was taking hydroxychloroquine.

00:35:58.000 Okay, so here's my view on this.

00:35:58.000 Oh no.

00:36:00.000 I'm not a doctor.

00:36:00.000 I don't know.

00:36:02.000 Are you a doctor?

00:36:03.000 Do you know?

00:36:04.000 Here's what we know about hydroxychloroquine.

00:36:07.000 In several studies, hydroxychloroquine alone has not been shown to have any power to cure this COVID-19.

00:36:14.000 There was a study that came out from NYU, and it showed that hydroxychloroquine in combination with azithromycin, Azipak, and zinc improved coronavirus patients' chances of being discharged and cut the death risk by almost 50%.

00:36:26.000 Researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine looked at 932 coronavirus patients hospitalized between March 2nd and April 5th.

00:36:33.000 Half were given a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc sulfate.

00:36:37.000 The other half didn't get zinc.

00:36:38.000 Patients receiving the triple drug combination were 1.5 times more likely to recover, enough to be discharged, and 44% less likely to die.

00:36:46.000 If you took just hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin and no zinc, then basically there was no impact on your health outcome.

00:36:55.000 So President Trump didn't just say he was taking hydroxychloroquine, he also said he was taking zinc and Z-packs.

00:36:59.000 Now, should you be taking that preemptively before you have COVID-19?

00:37:04.000 I haven't seen any studies on people who are taking this stuff preemptively.

00:37:07.000 I haven't.

00:37:09.000 And I'm not sure any studies have actually been done about that.

00:37:11.000 But Trump's doctor, who presumably doesn't want the President of the United States to drop dead of a heart attack on his watch, said that President Trump can take it.

00:37:20.000 So I assume Trump isn't going in the back and drinking the fish tank cleaner.

00:37:23.000 I assume that the President of the United States is actually following his doctor's advice.

00:37:27.000 Now, is it possible the doctor wouldn't have advised this in the first place?

00:37:29.000 Sure.

00:37:30.000 Is it also possible that Trump went to him and said, listen, I keep hearing this stuff about hydroxychloroquine, and I hear about zinc and azithromycin.

00:37:36.000 The people are telling me.

00:37:37.000 I've heard many people, many expert people.

00:37:39.000 And the doctor's like, listen, there's some studies.

00:37:41.000 It shows that it's kind of effective.

00:37:43.000 I don't think you have a high health risk because you have a pretty good heart.

00:37:45.000 We do like a physical on you every year.

00:37:47.000 You don't have a history of heart difficulty.

00:37:49.000 So sure.

00:37:50.000 I mean, it can't really hurt.

00:37:52.000 And then Trump took it?

00:37:53.000 That seems to me the most likely thing.

00:37:55.000 Again, do you really think that Trump's doctors, the doctors for the President of the United States, are like, Mr. President, if you want to take that fish tank cleaner, you just go right ahead and down it.

00:38:02.000 And if you die, it'll be my fault.

00:38:03.000 Like, who thinks the doctors are thinking that way?

00:38:05.000 It's not like Trump is just disobeying his doctors and then buying opioids off the streets and shooting them into his veins. 0.86

00:38:10.000 Like, what the hell are you talking?

00:38:11.000 Okay, so here was President Trump yesterday saying he was taking hydroxychloroquine, and then the world ends because Dr. Pelosi arrives to talk about it, and Dr. Cuomo arrives to talk about it.

00:38:20.000 There are many doctors who say you should not take hydroxychloroquine to fight this thing.

00:38:24.000 And you shouldn't take it alone.

00:38:25.000 There's literally no evidence that if you take hydroxychloroquine alone, that that is going to help you in any way.

00:38:30.000 Or even if you take hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin, that'll help you in any way.

00:38:33.000 There's some evidence from that NYU study, again, I'm studying the study, okay, from NYU School of Medicine, that if you take the 3-pack, right, the Z-pack and the zinc and hydroxychloroquine, the reason this matters is because hydroxychloroquine apparently sort of opens the ability of cells to absorb zinc, which is good for fighting COVID-19.

00:38:51.000 If you do that after you have COVID-19, there's some evidence that this is effective in treatment.

00:38:55.000 Okay, that's all we know.

00:38:56.000 I've given you all the things we know.

00:38:58.000 But here was Trump yesterday announcing that he's taking hydroxychloroquine, everybody going nuts.

00:39:02.000 And you'd be surprised at how many people are taking it, especially the frontline workers, before you catch it.

00:39:08.000 The frontline workers, many, many are taking it.

00:39:12.000 I happen to be taking it.

00:39:14.000 I happen to be taking it.

00:39:16.000 Hydroxychloroquine?

00:39:17.000 I'm taking it.

00:39:18.000 Hydroxychloroquine.

00:39:20.000 Right now, yeah.

00:39:21.000 A couple of weeks ago, I started taking it.

00:39:25.000 Because I think it's good.

00:39:25.000 I've heard a lot of good stories.

00:39:27.000 And if it's not good, I'll tell you right.

00:39:30.000 I'm not going to get hurt by it.

00:39:32.000 Okay, so everybody's like, you're not a doctor, Mr. President.

00:39:35.000 Right, but you're also not his doctor.

00:39:36.000 And again, do you really imagine the President of the United States is just downing the fish tank cleaner in the back room without the doctor overseeing it?

00:39:42.000 Okay, so Neil Cavuto on Fox, he says, okay, you should not take azithro, you should not take hydroxy because you will die.

00:39:48.000 So don't, don't go ahead and do that.

00:39:50.000 Again, there's a difference between the President saying, I'm taking it and everybody else should take it.

00:39:55.000 You should go to your doctor and ask about things before you take drugs.

00:39:59.000 As husband of a doctor, you know what's the thing I do before I take anything?

00:40:02.000 I ask my wife.

00:40:03.000 Because she is a doctor.

00:40:05.000 You should always ask your doctor before you start taking drugs.

00:40:08.000 Of any sort.

00:40:09.000 I assume that President Trump has done that.

00:40:11.000 Because again, the White House doctor does not want to be on the table when the president dies of a heart attack.

00:40:17.000 That is not a good look.

00:40:18.000 Here is Neil Cavuto, though, informing the American people, don't take it or you're gonna die.

00:40:24.000 The VA study, to which the President alluded, wasn't a loaded political one.

00:40:29.000 It was a test on patients there, and those who took it, in a vulnerable population, including those with respiratory or other conditions, they died.

00:40:37.000 I want to stress again, they died.

00:40:40.000 If you are in a risky population here, and you are taking this as a preventative treatment to ward off the virus, Or in a worst case scenario, you are dealing with the virus and you are in this vulnerable population.

00:40:54.000 It will kill you.

00:40:55.000 I cannot stress enough. 1.00

00:40:56.000 This will kill you. 1.00

00:40:58.000 Okay, this will kill you if you take it back. 0.99

00:41:02.000 Again, it may not kill you.

00:41:04.000 It does raise the risk of heart attack.

00:41:06.000 Okay, like that's what the studies show.

00:41:07.000 It does raise a risk.

00:41:08.000 It's not just ineffective.

00:41:09.000 If you take it without the zinc, without the azitromycin, without COVID-19, it could absolutely raise your risk of dying of heart attack, right?

00:41:15.000 That's what the study shows.

00:41:16.000 So Cavuto is not wrong that you could die from it.

00:41:19.000 He doesn't say it won't inevitably kill you, okay?

00:41:22.000 It's not like you take the hydroxy and then you absolutely die, but there's no benefit and there is increased risk.

00:41:27.000 That is the more proper way of putting this.

00:41:29.000 Then you have Chris Cuomo going off.

00:41:30.000 Now, Chris Cuomo has zero credibility on this.

00:41:32.000 When we talk about people who have no credibility, talk about health solutions to COVID-19, his wife literally was bathing in bleach.

00:41:38.000 I'm not kidding you.

00:41:39.000 His wife put out a statement.

00:41:41.000 She had COVID-19, he had COVID-19.

00:41:43.000 She put out like a giant statement, we talked about it on the show, about all the weird crap she's doing that she apparently got from like Gwyneth Paltrow's goop or something, where she's like, well, you know, I took some bleach and I poured it in, I took some Clorox, I put it in the bathtub and then I bathed in the Clorox.

00:41:56.000 Okay, Chris, sit down, dude.

00:41:57.000 Like really, sit down.

00:41:59.000 He didn't even pay attention to his own quarantine.

00:42:01.000 He was going out, going to his second house.

00:42:03.000 Here's Chris Cuomo going off on how could the president be this non-health conscious?

00:42:09.000 Again, you're basically like waving dream catchers in the air and doing rain dances to stop COVID-19, dude.

00:42:14.000 You don't get to talk on this.

00:42:16.000 He wins this argument.

00:42:17.000 Why?

00:42:18.000 Because he believes.

00:42:20.000 Because he's taken a chance.

00:42:23.000 Because he's strong.

00:42:24.000 He's not the party of no.

00:42:26.000 He's not the Democrats.

00:42:28.000 No, don't take the hydroxychloroquine just in case.

00:42:31.000 You stay home.

00:42:33.000 You can't go out.

00:42:34.000 You can't work.

00:42:35.000 You can't eat.

00:42:36.000 You can't live.

00:42:38.000 That's where he's put the Democrats.

00:42:40.000 Some of it's messaging.

00:42:41.000 But some of it's more than that. 1.00

00:42:44.000 Okay, he's such an idiot. 1.00

00:42:45.000 My God. 1.00

00:42:46.000 This man.

00:42:47.000 What adult?

00:42:48.000 Seriously, what adult?

00:42:49.000 It's pretty amazing that Mario Cuomo's name alone could make his son governor and Chris Cuomo gets a job on CNN. 1.00

00:42:54.000 What idiocy. 0.99

00:42:55.000 Okay, the best comment, of course, was reserved for Nancy Pelosi, who gets on TV and then tells Anderson Cooper, this is real news right here, that President Trump shouldn't be taking hydroxychloroquine, says Dr. Pelosi, because he's morbidly obese. 1.00

00:43:06.000 Now, let me just ask a question in the aftermath of this.

00:43:10.000 When is it now okay to fat sham people?

00:43:12.000 Because I was informed this is very bad. 0.95

00:43:13.000 Here's Nancy Pelosi saying the president, he's just so fat. 1.00

00:43:16.000 He's super fat, fat, fatty, fat, McFat, fat. 1.00

00:43:18.000 Look at him, he's fat. 1.00

00:43:19.000 So fat. 0.99

00:43:20.000 Very fat. 0.98

00:43:22.000 Fat.

00:43:23.000 As far as the president is concerned, he's our president and I would rather he not be taking something that has not been approved by the scientists, especially in his age group and in his, shall we say, weight group.

00:43:40.000 What is morbidly obese, they say.

00:43:43.000 So, I think it's not a good idea.

00:43:50.000 So she calls him morbidly obese.

00:43:51.000 And then it was like, Slay Queen on Twitter, right?

00:43:53.000 This is the stuff people care about.

00:43:55.000 Not the vaccine.

00:43:56.000 Not the stock market.

00:43:57.000 Not how we're reopening.

00:43:58.000 Not the impact of any of that.

00:43:59.000 Not the president of the United States going after the WHO.

00:44:02.000 Not the fact that we now have more tests available in most states than people to take the tests.

00:44:05.000 Not the fact that we now have a surplus of ventilators.

00:44:07.000 None of that is newsworthy. 0.58

00:44:08.000 And the newsworthy thing is that Pelosi called Trump a fatty McFat. 0.93

00:44:11.000 Fat McFatter. 0.97

00:44:12.000 Fataroo. 0.99

00:44:14.000 He's ginormously fat. 0.99

00:44:16.000 President Plump was trending on Twitter. 0.99

00:44:18.000 Cause Trump plump. 1.00

00:44:19.000 Plump plump.

00:44:21.000 So, a few questions.

00:44:23.000 One, does this mean that we now get to point out when politicians are morbidly obese?

00:44:27.000 Can we point that out now?

00:44:28.000 Like, is that okay?

00:44:29.000 Because I've been informed reliably by the media that it's very important we point out if politicians are morbidly obese because that does make a difference in terms of their overall health quota.

00:44:38.000 So, do we get to, like, look at the weight of Stacey Abrams now or no?

00:44:41.000 Do we get to, like, again, I don't know, Chris Christie, like, are we allowed to say this sort of stuff or it only applies to Republicans? 0.86

00:44:46.000 You can say that Chris Christie's a fatty McFatFat.

00:44:48.000 But if you point out that J.B.

00:44:49.000 Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, that that dude needs to be lowered into the Illinois Statehouse by crane, that apparently is very, very bad.

00:44:58.000 You're not allowed to do that at all.

00:44:59.000 When does this apply? 0.99

00:45:00.000 I think that the rule on Twitter is that it's okay to call Trump a fatty McFat, fat McFat face fatty, big orange fat man. 0.99

00:45:07.000 You're allowed to say that? 0.99

00:45:09.000 But you are not allowed to say that anybody else is fat ever, especially celebrities, right?

00:45:15.000 If a celebrity, female particularly, is plump. 0.94

00:45:19.000 If a celebrity female is morbidly obese, like in bad health morbidly obese, you cannot point that out because that's body shaming. 0.99

00:45:25.000 So much so that if somebody who is slightly overweight or somewhat overweight but not morbidly obese, like Adele, loses a bunch of weight, then we have to yell at her about losing the weight.

00:45:33.000 We have to talk about how it's very bad.

00:45:35.000 She's undermined.

00:45:36.000 She's bought into society's standards of beauty. 0.91

00:45:39.000 Maybe Trump just didn't buy into your standards of beauty, people.

00:45:42.000 Maybe Trump believes that actual round oranges are beautiful.

00:45:45.000 How do you know?

00:45:46.000 I gotta tell you, the person who's going to enjoy this most of all is Trump.

00:45:50.000 Because now Trump just gets to talk about Nancy Pelosi's immovable face for the last 25 years. 0.97

00:45:54.000 Like Trump, he never had any problem going there in the first place, but now the media have no leg to stand on after shouting, Slay Queen at the Moon, because Nancy Pelosi was like, he's morbidly obese.

00:46:04.000 Now the president of the United States is going to be like, yeah, well, her face hasn't moved in 25 years.

00:46:10.000 I mean, look at her.

00:46:10.000 She's like a Roman statue.

00:46:13.000 There's so much Botax in there.

00:46:15.000 Her face froze in place.

00:46:16.000 Now, when I was a kid, my parents told me that if I made an ugly face, it would stay that way forever.

00:46:21.000 Nancy Pelosi, it's the reality.

00:46:22.000 You know Trump's going to go here now, right?

00:46:25.000 And very important stuff.

00:46:26.000 Very important stuff.

00:46:27.000 So we have to focus on the fact that Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine and is overweight.

00:46:32.000 Very, very important stuff.

00:46:35.000 Our media, man, focusing on the things that matter.

00:46:37.000 By the way, speaking of the media, focusing on things that matter, you want to talk about some more media malpractice?

00:46:42.000 This is a pretty great story.

00:46:43.000 So, this started trending today also.

00:46:46.000 The Daily Beast reported that Trump will not unveil Obama's White House portrait.

00:46:49.000 So normally, the current president will bring the ex-president and then unveil the White House portrait at the White House.

00:46:56.000 Trump isn't going to do that.

00:46:57.000 But here is the actual story.

00:46:59.000 Obama doesn't want him to do it.

00:47:01.000 Right, the real story is that Obama preemptively shut this thing down.

00:47:03.000 According to NBC, Obama has, quote, no interest in taking part in the tradition as long as Trump occupies the White House.

00:47:09.000 So it was actually Obama who shut it down preemptively and the media blamed Trump.

00:47:12.000 He's tactless and he's crass. 0.85

00:47:14.000 How terrible.

00:47:16.000 How terrible.

00:47:18.000 So that is another aspect of media malpractice.

00:47:23.000 But I'll tell you what the media know that we shouldn't cover.

00:47:25.000 We certainly should not cover Obamagate in any way.

00:47:28.000 No covering of the Obamagate.

00:47:29.000 Also, the media have figured out that Believe All Women is a right-wing trap. 0.98

00:47:32.000 So that's exciting stuff.

00:47:34.000 There's an entire op-ed in the New York Times yesterday suggesting that the slogan Believe All Women was made up by the right wing in order to trap the Democrats.

00:47:41.000 This is great. 0.99

00:47:42.000 From now on, the Democrats just get to claim that every stupid thing they ever say is made up by Republicans, which is super extraordinarily fun. 0.99

00:47:51.000 Apparently, from each according to his ability to each according to his needs is a right-wing slogan because it's failed every time it's tried. 0.99

00:47:56.000 So it must be that the right has somehow boxed everybody in.

00:47:59.000 Alrighty, time for some things that I hate.

00:48:01.000 The media are desperate, desperate to defend President Obama to every extent possible.

00:48:12.000 And this is why if you say a bad word about President Obama, then you will be covered as though you have committed a grave, brutal sin.

00:48:19.000 My friend Meghan McCain yesterday on The View said something perfectly obvious about Barack Obama.

00:48:23.000 I mean like 100% perfectly obvious.

00:48:25.000 And that is that Barack Obama is not innocent in the culture wars.

00:48:28.000 Barack Obama, in fact, was a progenitor of the culture wars and an eager participant in the culture wars and continues to be an eager participant in the culture wars.

00:48:36.000 That has been obviously true.

00:48:37.000 It was Barack Obama who suggested that Trayvon Martin could have been his son in the middle of a contentious legal dispute over a disputed shooting in Florida. 0.99

00:48:44.000 It was Barack Obama who suggested the Cambridge police acted stupidly. 0.61

00:48:47.000 It was Barack Obama who suggested that the Michael Brown verdict in St. 0.98

00:48:51.000 Louis In Ferguson, Missouri, was unjustified.

00:48:54.000 It was Barack Obama who suggested that big businesses ought to obey him because the pitchforks were outside.

00:49:00.000 It was Barack Obama who was ripping into Fox News at every available opportunity.

00:49:04.000 It was Barack Obama who was shining a rainbow flag on the White House after the Supreme Court baselessly decided the Constitution of the United States mandates gay marriage.

00:49:11.000 Barack Obama was an eager participant in the culture war.

00:49:13.000 He never saw a TV show he didn't want to be a part of.

00:49:17.000 He never saw a sports event he couldn't Parachute into and try and grab the attention.

00:49:22.000 Okay, so Meghan McCain points this out and then she basically says and then Trump has exacerbated those cultural conflicts But Obama started them and the media went nuts over this because Obama must be protected at all costs Obviously, everyone on the left has basically appointed President Obama as nothing short of a saint.

00:49:37.000 And obviously, I feel different, as most Republicans and conservatives do.

00:49:40.000 I will say, the culture war that I believe is real and is raging in this country, I believe was ushered in with his administration and then exacerbated in the Trump administration.

00:49:50.000 And if the election were held today, I do believe Trump would be re-elected.

00:49:54.000 And I think at a certain point, we have to start talking to each other in the middle.

00:49:59.000 Okay, this is exactly right.

00:50:01.000 How dare she say Obama and Trump in the same sentence?

00:50:03.000 We must never utter Obama's name.

00:50:05.000 It's holy.

00:50:06.000 It's like the anti-Voldemort.

00:50:08.000 You must never say Obama.

00:50:10.000 You must simply say The One. 1.00

00:50:12.000 If you ever say Obama in a bad context, it's because you're very, very evil and also racist. 0.99

00:50:17.000 And Meghan McCain is clearly evil and also racist for saying a perfectly obvious thing. 1.00

00:50:21.000 So the media's latest iteration of this stupidity. 1.00

00:50:23.000 is the unwillingness to cover so-called Obamagate. 0.99

00:50:27.000 So again, Obamagate is about the idea.

00:50:29.000 The basic theory of Obamagate is very simple, and that is that the Obama administration had convinced itself that Trump and Russia were in collusion, and that is the reason that President Trump won the election, and then they basically loosed the hounds and allowed them to bend all the rules in the attempt to demonstrate what they thought was a foregone conclusion, which is that Trump and Russia were colluding in order to shift the election, and then that in the aftermath of Trump's election, they were going to undermine America's security by working with the Russians.

00:50:54.000 That is Obamagate.

00:50:55.000 Now, does that mean criminal activity took place?

00:50:58.000 Not at the top levels.

00:50:59.000 It could have been that people at the top levels were like, you know, I'm kind of interested to see what this Flynn thing is about.

00:51:03.000 We should find out whether Flynn talked to the Russians and then they unmasked him.

00:51:07.000 That's not illegal.

00:51:08.000 It is illegal to leak it.

00:51:10.000 So not everything that is bad is illegal.

00:51:12.000 As we found out over and over and over, right?

00:51:14.000 Trump has done a bunch of stuff that I think is bad, but also that is not illegal.

00:51:17.000 Like, I don't think Trump should have gotten on the horn with the Ukraine, with the Ukrainian politicians, and been like, you know what?

00:51:22.000 It would be really great if you could go investigate Burisma and Joe Biden.

00:51:25.000 Like, I don't think that that was a smart thing to do.

00:51:27.000 I think that was a bad thing to do.

00:51:28.000 I said this many, many times.

00:51:29.000 Do I think that it was illegal the way he did it?

00:51:31.000 No, I don't.

00:51:33.000 I don't think he violated a bribery law.

00:51:34.000 I don't think that he violated an extortion law.

00:51:36.000 I don't think that he violated any law.

00:51:38.000 I don't think he should have done it anyway.

00:51:39.000 Barack Obama did many things during his tenure that were bad but not illegal.

00:51:42.000 Obamagate falls under the category of bad but not illegal except for the people who actually violated the law by leaking to the press illegally or by using FISA warrants illegally.

00:51:51.000 But the media have decided it's totally not worth covering.

00:51:53.000 So imagine an opposite situation in which Donald Trump was firmly convinced that Barack Obama was in the pocket of the Pakistani government.

00:52:01.000 And so he decided, you know what?

00:52:02.000 There was a conversation between Susan Rice and the Pakistani government.

00:52:05.000 I want to unmask Susan Rice in that conversation. 0.98

00:52:08.000 And then, you know, if somebody leaks it, they kind of leak it, whatever.

00:52:11.000 Imagine that he was like, you know what?

00:52:13.000 It's very important that we get Susan Rice's phone on tap, the former national security advisor.

00:52:16.000 We get her phone on tap and we need to tap her phone.

00:52:19.000 And if you need to bend some of the rules to do it, you just kind of go ahead and you do that.

00:52:23.000 And his people come to him and say, listen, there's no basis for the investigation.

00:52:25.000 He's like, well, it'd be good if it stayed open anyway.

00:52:27.000 Would that be a scandal?

00:52:29.000 Obviously it would be a scandal.

00:52:30.000 But according to the media, if you cover Obamagate, it's only because you're a Trump lackey.

00:52:34.000 It's only because you're a Trump lackey.

00:52:36.000 Now again, you don't have to buy into the darkest version of Obamagate, which is that Obama knew everything, was directing it like a puppeteer top-down, was telling people explicitly to violate the law and all of this.

00:52:46.000 You don't have to believe any of that to believe that bad stuff went on and that it is not good when an outgoing administration is basically loosing the hounds of war on the incoming administration on the basis of skimpy or no evidence.

00:52:58.000 That is a bad thing.

00:53:01.000 In fact, you know who believes that theory of the case, right?

00:53:03.000 The non-crazed, the non-over-the-top theory of the case is William Barr, the current Attorney General.

00:53:08.000 So William Barr was asked specifically about the Russian inquiry, whether it was an Obama ply.

00:53:13.000 He said no.

00:53:14.000 He said, are you going to prosecute Obama and Biden?

00:53:16.000 He said no.

00:53:17.000 This is Bill Barr, the supposed lackey of the Trump administration who only violates the law on behalf of the Trump administration.

00:53:23.000 The Durham investigation is trying to get to the bottom of what happened.

00:53:29.000 And it will determine whether there were any federal laws broken.

00:53:33.000 And if there were, those who broke the laws will be held to account.

00:53:40.000 But this cannot be, and it will not be, a tit-for-tat exercise.

00:53:45.000 As to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don't expect Mr. Durham's work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man.

00:54:03.000 Okay, so that is a perfectly reasonable thing for Barr to say.

00:54:07.000 People are being reasonable in how they are pursuing this at the level of the Trump administration.

00:54:11.000 But that does not mean that it is not worth looking into when you are talking about several violations of law at a minimum.

00:54:16.000 Molly Hemingway has a good piece on this over at The Federalist, talking about the media failing to report on all of this.

00:54:23.000 She says, many of our supposedly smart media elites are dinosaurs who are completely unaware of the asteroid headed right to them. 0.96

00:54:28.000 Instead, they are doing their part in an all hands on deck effort to continue pushing out Democratic talking points that got them into this mess.

00:54:34.000 This week, that meant they regurgitated the Democratic claim that the Obama administration spying and leaking was normal and that to be concerned about it is nothing more than a distraction.

00:54:42.000 Susan Glasser at The New Yorker suggested that acknowledging the Obama administration's recorded attempts to undermine a duly elected administration through spying and leaking was a form of political agitprop.

00:54:52.000 Her husband Peter Baker at the New York Times took the same line, but went with the authoritative gaslighting approach, in which he suggested it was odd that Trump would want to correct the false narrative that he was a traitor to his country, and replace it with the truth that he was a victim of a coordinated attack to spy on his campaign, criminally leak against him, and force him out of office.

00:55:07.000 Jake Tapper reported for duty to spread this partisan talking point as well.

00:55:11.000 She says, the big problem with covering the story honestly is that it might help Trump and Republicans, but they should look to left-wing journalists who are able to put aside their genuine dislike of the orange bad man and his co-partisans and retain their journalistic integrity.

00:55:22.000 Among the few journalists on the right who covered these issues well, there are many who weren't particularly fond of Trump.

00:55:28.000 She says, look, the reality is that we know that people inside the Obama administration We're firmly convinced that they were going to get Trump here and that they then basically bent the rules in order to go after Trump.

00:55:42.000 And that, again, is the story.

00:55:43.000 But if you even cover it, then you are doing the work of Trump.

00:55:46.000 And this is where the media's obvious bias comes out.

00:55:48.000 So now the media are going back to 2016 and saying, we shouldn't have covered Hillary's emails.

00:55:51.000 It was a non-entity.

00:55:52.000 It was a non-story.

00:55:53.000 We never should have covered Hillary's emails.

00:55:55.000 Again, it seems worth covering when the former Secretary of State set up her own private server so that all of her mail, including government mail, was going through her server and there would be no record of it and she could wipe it clean.

00:56:07.000 That is a very, very large story.

00:56:09.000 In fact, it is in fact a violation of law.

00:56:11.000 James Comey lied when he rewrote the law in order to avoid the implication that Hillary Clinton had violated the law.

00:56:17.000 If he didn't want to prosecute her, what he should have said is, listen, she did violate the law.

00:56:21.000 We don't prosecute everybody who violates the law because the reality is that common practice sometimes means that we sort of look the other way.

00:56:28.000 But he wasn't going to be that honest.

00:56:30.000 In fact, James Comey came out and he basically made the case for why Hillary should be prosecuted and then he was like, well, we're not going to prosecute her.

00:56:35.000 But the media are very angry at themselves because by covering the emails, they made that top line issue.

00:56:40.000 There was an entire study that came out yesterday showing sort of how many people associated various words with the various campaigns.

00:56:46.000 And the number one word associated with Hillary Clinton in 2016 was emails.

00:56:51.000 So the media regret this.

00:56:52.000 So this leads Margaret Sullivan, formerly the publisher of the New York Times, to say we should not have covered any of this.

00:56:58.000 She's over at the Washington Post.

00:57:00.000 She says it's becoming clear that journalists never reckoned with the mistakes of the 2016 campaign coverage.

00:57:04.000 We know this because they seem poised to repeat them.

00:57:07.000 As you may recall, the news media, from Fox News to the New York Times and plenty of others across the political spectrum, managed to make the relative molehill of Hillary Clinton's dicey email practices into a daily obsession roughly equal to the mountain of Donald Trump's financial and personal transgressions.

00:57:20.000 Hey, let me just note, Donald Trump was not a member of government.

00:57:23.000 Donald Trump did not violate the law.

00:57:24.000 Donald Trump violates— Donald Trump did not hand over his IRS records.

00:57:28.000 That's not a crime.

00:57:29.000 Donald Trump has been audited by the IRS several times.

00:57:33.000 If he's going to be criminally prosecuted, you would imagine somebody would have done it already.

00:57:36.000 Hillary Clinton was a member of government who violated the law as a member of government.

00:57:39.000 One of those things was very, very noteworthy.

00:57:42.000 But Margaret Sullivan says, Don't look now.

00:57:44.000 This is happening again before our eyes.

00:57:46.000 Its name this time is Obamagate.

00:57:48.000 That's a moniker that, in President Trump's outrage tweets, is rendered in all capital letters.

00:57:52.000 But let's not.

00:57:53.000 This vaporous, apparently made-up offense, according to Trump, is the political crime of the century.

00:57:57.000 And heck, last century too, because he claims it makes the 1970s Watergate scandal look like child's play.

00:58:03.000 As best as he even attempted to spell out, it supposedly involves a deep state conspiracy by the former president and his allies to undermine Trump by being informed of the identity of private citizens having covert and legally questionable discussions with the Russian ambassador, a citizen who turned out to be Trump's national security adviser-designate, Michael Flynn.

00:58:18.000 Despite the fact that this practice is legal and normal, the non-scandal around it is getting plenty of attention.

00:58:22.000 Okay, so, a couple things can be true.

00:58:24.000 One, unmasking is legal, and it is normal.

00:58:27.000 Unmasking by half the administration of an incoming national security advisor, and then the leaking of that advisor's name to the media is not normal, and the leaking is not illegal.

00:58:37.000 On Chris Wallace's Sunday morning interview show, The bottom of the screen, Kyron read, is Obamagate, an effective campaign strategy.

00:58:44.000 Trump water carrier, Karl Rove, was allowed to opine.

00:58:46.000 There were some very serious questions that need to be answered. 0.92

00:58:48.000 It does stink. 0.97

00:58:49.000 Juan Williams tried to pour water on this nonsense. 0.91

00:58:51.000 There's no Obamagate, he said bluntly, declaring Trump's blather a smoke screen to distract from his disastrous handling of coronavirus.

00:58:57.000 Still, the conversation about the non-scandal went on for almost seven minutes on this popular show at the nation's most watched cable network.

00:59:04.000 At CBS News, Catherine Herridge has been heavily hyping her updates on the non-story scoop she declared on Twitter to herald her story that acting DNI Richard Grenell had notified Congress about the Great Unmasking.

00:59:14.000 CBS's hiring of Herridge, says Margaret Sullivan, from Fox News last year was sharply criticized by liberals who recalled her persistent reporting on the Clinton email debacle and on debunked allegations that the former Secretary of State personally approved the diminishment of security at the Benghazi compound in Libya before the 2012 attack there.

00:59:31.000 So let's just say, Obamagate's getting plenty of attention across the media spectrum.

00:59:34.000 This led Sean Illing of Vox, who by the way, I like Sean.

00:59:36.000 I mean, he's a nice guy.

00:59:37.000 He and I correspond.

00:59:37.000 spot.

00:59:38.000 He said, watching the media pounce on this story like greyhounds chasing mechanical rabbits has been painful, but also deeply familiar.

00:59:43.000 And it's so horribly familiar because we have failed to learn very much, if anything, about how much attention to give exaggerated pseudo scandals Hilarious that the media that spent three years saying that undoubtedly Trump would be uncovered as a Russian cat's paw is now saying it's a pseudo-scandal to investigate whether or not members of the Obama administration were bending and breaking the rules in order to follow their hearts and the suggestion that Donald Trump was in fact a Russian cat's paw.

01:00:08.000 Amazing, amazing stuff.

01:00:10.000 And then the media are like, trust us.

01:00:11.000 Okay, here's the deal.

01:00:12.000 We don't.

01:00:13.000 And when you suggest openly that you are not going to cover a story because you do not like the political implications of that story, when you suggest that retrospectively Hillary Clinton's emails were a big nothing burger, when they in fact were not a nothing burger, All that shows is that you're upset that you were honest about Hillary Clinton, and so now you plan on being dishonest in the future.

01:00:30.000 That's the basic idea here.

01:00:31.000 Which, of course, goes to undermining media credibility evermore.

01:00:34.000 Okay, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.

01:00:37.000 Also, tonight, I am hosting All Access Live.

01:00:39.000 You should go subscribe right now at dailywire.com slash subscribe and become a member. 0.99

01:00:43.000 You can hang out with me tonight as I perform various stupid human tricks. 0.98

01:00:47.000 And wear a t-shirt. 0.99

01:00:48.000 That's basically the pitch.

01:00:50.000 Say that you're into it or you're not, but you can go subscribe right now and join the club and hang out with us in this time of pandemic.

01:00:55.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here later today or tomorrow.

01:00:57.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:00:57.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:01:03.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

01:01:05.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

01:01:06.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

01:01:08.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

01:01:11.000 Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.

01:01:13.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

01:01:15.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

01:01:17.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

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01:01:20.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

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01:01:26.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

01:01:28.000 As pro-lockdown leftists get shriller in their calls to lock everyone at home from coast to coast, everyone from cops to judges to ordinary people are wising up to the simplest way to stop them.

01:01:38.000 Call their bluff.

01:01:39.000 Just weeks after promising his own lockdown order on saving just one life, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is promising that lots of grannies are going to die. 1.00

01:01:47.000 What a difference two months and a lot of failed policies makes.

01:01:51.000 And the gaslighting Me Too movement is now pretending they never told us to believe all women.

01:01:55.000 Do they think that we don't have Google?

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 19, 2020

Fighting About Dumb Crap | Ep. 1014

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