The Ben Shapiro Show - Lockdown Mayhem | Ep. 976

00:00:00.000 As coronavirus numbers spike across America, California announces an across-the-board shelter-in-place order, the Republican Congress pursues a bizarre bailout policy, and senators fall under scrutiny for some rather conveniently timed stock sales.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 Shapiro, this is the Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:14.000 All righty, so as you can tell, we are now broadcasting from the Shapiro Hostel.

00:00:26.000 I mean, it is, it is, what a beautiful, beautiful place.

00:00:29.000 We now have a shelter-in-order place here in California.

00:00:31.000 That means that people are working from home as much as possible, and so we have transferred this show to the bunker.

00:00:35.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:37.000 My savvy fans secure their internet.

00:00:39.000 Join them at expressvpn.com.

00:00:42.000 Slash Ben, we are here to provide you with all of your coronavirus updates, Where everything stands, as we say, we'll get to the California lockdown in just a second.

00:00:50.000 It is a statewide lockdown.

00:00:52.000 It is enforceable by law, so people presumably will be pulled over and asked where they are going if they're not going to the grocery store, or if they're not going to the pharmacy, then presumably they'll be given some sort of ticket.

00:01:01.000 It is hard to imagine exactly how that's enforced on 40 million citizens across the state of California.

00:01:05.000 We'll get to that in just a second.

00:01:06.000 First, we begin with your updated numbers as of this morning.

00:01:09.000 Right now, there are 14,250 diagnosed cases of coronavirus across America.

00:01:14.000 Suffice to say, those numbers are way too low.

00:01:16.000 The reason they are way too low is because tests are still not available.

00:01:19.000 It takes a while for the tests to finally come back, anywhere from 24 to 72 hours.

00:01:23.000 And lack of testing is making everybody's life miserable.

00:01:26.000 It is.

00:01:26.000 This stuff matters.

00:01:27.000 Why?

00:01:27.000 Well, if you're single, And let's say that you have the symptoms for COVID-19.

00:01:32.000 And they say, okay, go home, go home, just go home.

00:01:35.000 The answer is, okay, I could do that.

00:01:36.000 But let's say that you're a member of a family.

00:01:38.000 Let's say that you have, as I do, three children.

00:01:41.000 And let's say that maybe you think that somebody has the symptoms for COVID-19 in your house.

00:01:46.000 And let's say that you have childcare helping out because you have a newborn, for example.

00:01:49.000 And let's say that you want to go get a test, and it is impossible to get a test.

00:01:52.000 Well, it's easy for them to say, shelter in place, and don't go out of the house, and don't have any childcare.

00:01:57.000 But what if you still have to work?

00:01:59.000 And what if you have to keep your children separated from one another?

00:02:01.000 And what if now your childcare is basically out the window because you don't know if it's COVID-19 or whether it's the flu?

00:02:06.000 If it's just the flu, Then you can still have your parents over.

00:02:08.000 If it's the flu, you can still have your nanny over.

00:02:10.000 But if it's not, then everybody is out, and suddenly you're on your own.

00:02:13.000 Okay, well, that would be my situation if somebody here came down with the symptoms.

00:02:17.000 Those situations are happening all over the United States.

00:02:19.000 People having an inability, like do you go to work?

00:02:22.000 Do you not go to work?

00:02:23.000 Do you stay home?

00:02:24.000 How exactly do you separate off members of your family?

00:02:26.000 How about what if your parents want to visit?

00:02:28.000 How do you deal with all of this?

00:02:29.000 The bottom line is lack of testing means tremendous lack of clarity, and that has incredible ripple effects across the entire system.

00:02:37.000 Okay, so all of this is being undertaken.

00:02:39.000 Presumably.

00:02:41.000 As I've mentioned 1,000 times before, presumably all of this is being undertaken so that we can flatten the curve.

00:02:45.000 And so I'm going to show you this chart one more time.

00:02:47.000 I'm going to draw it by hand.

00:02:48.000 Okay, here is the chart that we are supposedly pursuing right now.

00:02:53.000 Okay, this... Okay, so... Here is the supposed curve.

00:02:59.000 of cases.

00:03:00.000 The high curve is the curve of supposed cases in the possibility that we don't do anything to flatten the curve.

00:03:05.000 Everybody just goes out and they do what they want to do.

00:03:07.000 The line is medical capacity.

00:03:09.000 So that would be the beds, that'd be the tests, that'd be the ventilators, that'd be the ICU beds, right?

00:03:13.000 All the things that you possibly, the masks, right?

00:03:15.000 That'd be the medical capacity.

00:03:16.000 And then this flattened curve is supposedly what is going to happen if we stay home and if we all lock down and if we all involve ourselves in social distancing, right?

00:03:26.000 This is sort of the been presented to you by the media as well as by the Trump administration.

00:03:31.000 So across the board, this is the chart that is being used.

00:03:33.000 The problem is that there are two questions about this chart that people have yet to answer.

00:03:37.000 Question number one, is the line actually here or is the line down here?

00:03:42.000 Because if the line of medical capacity is not actually over that shallow curve, if, as it turns out, you could flatten the curve and the medical capacity line is still all the way down here at the dotted line, it ain't going to matter.

00:03:54.000 It ain't gonna matter.

00:03:55.000 You can flatten the curve and just as many people are gonna die.

00:03:57.000 And so you will have shut down the economy to no effect, which is why what I've been saying is the entire purpose of what we are doing right now is to raise the line from this dotted line to this top line, is to raise medical capacity.

00:04:07.000 So what exactly are the plans to do that, guys?

00:04:09.000 And floating hospital ships ain't gonna do it. 0.99

00:04:11.000 Adding a thousand beds by floating a Navy ship off the coast isn't going to cover it.

00:04:15.000 Adding a few thousand ventilators is not going to cover it.

00:04:18.000 If what we are being told is true, that this thing is super transmissible and super deadly, and all of that is true, we need a radical escalation in the number of beds.

00:04:25.000 Well, those are the sorts of estimates that the government should be giving us right now.

00:04:28.000 Have you heard anything from the federal government or from the state governments in terms of their prospectus in terms of increasing capacity?

00:04:35.000 You've heard some numbers floating around.

00:04:36.000 You've heard that there are more masks floating around, but you're not seeing that on the ground.

00:04:39.000 You have heard that there are more ventilators floating around, but you are not actually seeing that in the hospitals, so far as I am aware.

00:04:45.000 You've heard that more ICU beds are being built, but so far I've yet to see any evidence that massive new numbers of ICU beds are being built.

00:04:50.000 So if we are not increasing this dotted line to this top line, it will not matter whether or not you flatten the curve.

00:04:55.000 Okay, then there is the second problem.

00:04:57.000 The second problem is that, as you see, this chart conveniently ends at the right side of this piece of paper.

00:05:03.000 For you, the right side of this piece of paper.

00:05:07.000 The chart conveniently ends there.

00:05:08.000 What if, however, this chart does not end there?

00:05:11.000 What I mean by that is, let's say that you release the lockdown procedures.

00:05:15.000 And so now we are going to draw a version of this chart that has a longer timeline.

00:05:18.000 So you have the original curve, you have the line, and then you have the flattened curve, and then everybody is let out.

00:05:26.000 what if the chart instead looks like this?

00:05:31.000 Okay, so, in this chart, for those who cannot see, you still have that same big spike.

00:05:35.000 It rises above the medical capacity.

00:05:37.000 Then you have the chart that we've been shown, which typically is said to end somewhere around here, right, where my pen is, right?

00:05:44.000 This is where the chart always ends, when you see it in the media, and when you see it in the media, and when you see it from the White House, right?

00:05:48.000 The chart always ends at the pen.

00:05:50.000 If there's going to be a lower curve, it's going to somehow be below the level of medical capacity, and therefore, everybody is going to live.

00:05:57.000 What happens if that's not what happens?

00:06:00.000 What I mean by this is that what happens if, in fact, you let everybody out of confinement and instead of everything petering out the way it did on chart number one, right on the right side of this chart, it peters out at the very end.

00:06:12.000 Everybody lives along.

00:06:13.000 Happiness abounds.

00:06:15.000 Everything is great.

00:06:16.000 Prince Charming goes home with Snow White.

00:06:18.000 Everything's fantastic.

00:06:19.000 What if instead of that, you end up with everybody comes out of confinement and boom, secondary spike, which is exactly what you are currently seeing in Singapore.

00:06:27.000 You're starting to see it in Hong Kong.

00:06:28.000 You're starting to see it in Taiwan.

00:06:29.000 What if when you release the lockdown measures it turns out people go out and infect each other anyway?

00:06:34.000 And so you end up with a secondary spike that actually is close to as high as the first spike except there's still not herd immunity and you've not really raised your medical capacity.

00:06:42.000 So what that means is that what we really need to be looking at is how do we raise our medical capacity Seriously, that is the big question.

00:06:48.000 If we do not have a plan.

00:06:49.000 medical capacity up from what is the current, even if you think current is sustainable, to the upper dotted line.

00:06:54.000 So question for the government, what is your plan?

00:06:57.000 What is your plan?

00:06:58.000 And if you don't have a plan, why are we doing any of this?

00:07:01.000 Seriously, that is the big question.

00:07:02.000 If we do not have a plan, I said this yesterday, I am fine with locking things down so long as there is a plan to raise the level of medical capacity, so long as there is a plan for applying treatment, so long as we know that when we are let out of confinement, that we are actually going to live in a world in which if you come down with COVID-19, you don't end up in a non-ICU bed that we are actually going to live in a world in which if You end up dying on your couch, right?

00:07:23.000 As long as that is the case, as long as they are increasing capacity, then we can take a two-week break.

00:07:28.000 Yes, it'll be brutal.

00:07:30.000 Yes, it will be terrible.

00:07:31.000 But, and it can't be interminable, right?

00:07:33.000 We can't do this for a month.

00:07:34.000 We can't do this for two months.

00:07:35.000 That's not a thing that can happen.

00:07:37.000 But the key right now is we are not hearing anything, like word one, from anyone in the government about how they plan.

00:07:42.000 What do those numbers look like?

00:07:43.000 We keep hearing estimates, top-level estimates.

00:07:45.000 A million point one die if we let everybody out of confinement.

00:07:48.000 Okay, do you have a plan for 500,000 ICU beds?

00:07:51.000 Like, what exactly is your plan here?

00:07:54.000 By the way, that's the one factor that the government supposedly can control.

00:07:57.000 The government can't actually control the rate of transmission.

00:08:00.000 The government can do that for a temporary period of time, but people are going to leave their houses.

00:08:03.000 People are going to go back to work.

00:08:05.000 It's all fun and games until you lose your job.

00:08:07.000 Because as much as the government says they're going to float these small businesses loans and all of this, small businesses cannot survive simply paying employees to be sick without any stream of income and knowing that there's going to be a recovery on the other side of this.

00:08:19.000 Because the government doesn't just The economy doesn't just snap back in place immediately upon the end of this thing.

00:08:25.000 People are going to have to go out again.

00:08:26.000 All those restaurants that have been shut down, you think their clientele is going to come back day one?

00:08:29.000 Or do you think that people are more likely to order takeout for another year before a vaccine is developed?

00:08:34.000 All of these entertainment areas where people are getting together in crowds, do you think people are going to go to MLB ballgames?

00:08:39.000 They're going to go to the NCAA?

00:08:40.000 Do you think that people are going to go out into major crowds?

00:08:43.000 Like Disneyland will take a hit for two years following this, minimum.

00:08:46.000 Right.

00:08:47.000 Do you think that all of that revenue is going to simply reappear or are companies going to have to lay people off because of all this?

00:08:53.000 So you can say you're going to fill everybody's pocket with 500 bucks or a thousand bucks, but guess what?

00:08:56.000 That's going to pay for like a month.

00:08:58.000 Like one month.

00:09:00.000 And if you extend it for two months, maybe two months.

00:09:02.000 And so with this government lockdown comes the possibility, and this is what freedom-minded Americans should be thinking about too, with that possibility comes the possibility of permanent, huge-scale government in our lives, not going away.

00:09:13.000 Because if the government causes the crisis, and the government becomes the solution to the crisis, and the crisis does not abate, then the government just becomes a permanent feature of our life, and the economy doesn't go back to normal.

00:09:22.000 Now, again, all of this is an argument worth having, If, and only if, there is a plan to save lives.

00:09:29.000 But if the plan to save lives does not kick in, if all that's happening here is the government marking time until they let us all out of confinement, we infect each other anyway, and all the old people die, then what exactly are we doing here? 0.98

00:09:40.000 So how about some clarity?

00:09:41.000 The only clarity we've seen so far is the government demonstrating that it can control our lives.

00:09:45.000 Well, we knew that already.

00:09:46.000 We've seen no clarity on how the government plans to actually lower the death rates.

00:09:51.000 Okay, yes, again, we can flatten that curve, but there are two real problems with the flatten-the-curve scenario.

00:09:57.000 One is, if our medical capacity is actually not where the chart says it is, it is all the way down here, if our medical capacity is way lower than they say it is, then people are still going to die, and all we've done is wreck the economy to no avail.

00:10:07.000 Or, possibility number two, there's a secondary spike, which is what most doctors are saying there's going to be in the fall anyway.

00:10:13.000 In which case, if you have not raised capacity by then, then we're screwed anyway, right?

00:10:17.000 And all you've done is shut down the world economy to achieve pretty much absolutely nothing.

00:10:21.000 Okay, so what does that mean?

00:10:23.000 That means that we need plans from the government.

00:10:25.000 How are you going to maximize the ICU beds?

00:10:28.000 How are you going to maximize the masks?

00:10:29.000 How are you going to maximize the ventilators?

00:10:30.000 What are you going to do to bring this to an end?

00:10:33.000 If you have no plan to end it, then you delaying things and marking time and buying time is not buying time to any effect.

00:10:39.000 Right?

00:10:39.000 Then you're in the situation that we were.

00:10:40.000 Yes, President Trump shut down travel from China.

00:10:42.000 That was a good move.

00:10:43.000 I am very happy that President Trump shut down travel from China.

00:10:45.000 That was designed to buy us what?

00:10:47.000 A month or two?

00:10:48.000 And in that month or two, how'd we do?

00:10:50.000 Did we increase the number of ICU beds?

00:10:51.000 No.

00:10:52.000 Did we increase the number of ventilators?

00:10:53.000 No.

00:10:54.000 Did we increase the amount of testing?

00:10:55.000 No.

00:10:56.000 So, what good was it?

00:10:58.000 It was some good.

00:10:59.000 It slowed it.

00:10:59.000 But the slowing of it is only good if you don't end up with the spike that we are now attempting to forestall.

00:11:04.000 We're going to get to more of this in just one second.

00:11:06.000 We're going to talk some worst case scenarios, some best case scenarios.

00:11:08.000 We're going to talk about the government shutting down the entire economy and whether that is sustainable or not.

00:11:13.000 Plus, we're going to get to at least several senators involved in what looks like insider trading. 0.71

00:11:20.000 On the back, I mean, just horrible, horrible stuff.

00:11:23.000 You want to destroy faith in capitalism and faith in government at the same time?

00:11:26.000 This is pretty much how you do it.

00:11:27.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:11:28.000 First, you know, right now would be a great time to change some of your habits, right?

00:11:32.000 You're at home anyway.

00:11:34.000 You're trying to live out this economy.

00:11:35.000 Now would be an excellent time to change how it is that you work, how it is that you live, and how do you live more healthy, right?

00:11:41.000 You're worried about your health right now?

00:11:41.000 Right?

00:11:43.000 Because this disease is coming for people with pre-existing conditions?

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00:12:48.000 Okay, so what are the best case scenarios and the worst case scenarios here?

00:12:51.000 So Nicholas Kristof, believe it or not, has a pretty good column at the New York Times talking about this.

00:12:55.000 Best case scenario is the possibility that the virus mutates and actually dies out.

00:13:00.000 Dr. Larry Brilliant, I hope aptly named.

00:13:04.000 An epidemiologist who as a young doctor was part of the fight to eradicate smallpox explained that only in movies do viruses seem to become worse over time.

00:13:11.000 SARS and MERS both petered out.

00:13:13.000 That is possible here.

00:13:14.000 COVID-19 will not survive as my hopes, said Dr. Charles Prober, a professor at Stanford Medical School.

00:13:20.000 China is reporting not a single new case of domestic transmission.

00:13:22.000 Now there's serious doubts about whether China is lying or not.

00:13:25.000 If ever in doubt, China is lying. 0.88

00:13:27.000 China lied to the WHO and the WHO believed them.

00:13:29.000 This is why when you hear prescriptions from the WHO or their takes on life, the WHO, you should really take that with a major grain of salt.

00:13:36.000 With that said, according to Nicholas Kristof, Singapore would be the best case scenario where everything is sort of shut down for a while and then you go back to a more open society.

00:13:45.000 Tom Inglesby, expert on pandemics at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said the fact that Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and China and to some extent Japan have all flattened their curves despite having the initial onslaught of cases should give us some hope we can sort out what they're doing well and emulate it.

00:13:58.000 Washington state seems to have been stabilizing.

00:14:01.000 The weather may also help us because some respiratory viruses decline in summer from a combination of higher temperatures and people not being huddled together.

00:14:07.000 So it's possible that northern hemisphere nations enjoy a summer break before a second wave in the fall.

00:14:12.000 Okay, that is the second wave is what I'm worried about.

00:14:15.000 And I think most epidemiologists are worried about is what happens when you release people from confinement.

00:14:18.000 Even if this thing goes away during the summer, if it comes back with a vengeance during the fall, it can be super damaging.

00:14:23.000 The Spanish influenza, which by the way, you know how ridiculous it is in our political world?

00:14:27.000 Somebody went on Wikipedia and just changed it to the 1918 flu because they wanted to forestall Trump's argument that you can say Spanish flu so you can say Chinese virus.

00:14:37.000 Anyway.

00:14:38.000 The goal would be that maybe this thing dies out, it loses sort of its fire and its flair.

00:14:43.000 Also, the death rates, I've been saying this for weeks and I've been criticized for it, the death rates that were being put out there by the WHO were just not real.

00:14:48.000 In South Korea and in China, outside Hubei province, about 0.8% of those known to be infected died.

00:14:53.000 That rate was 0.6% on a cruise ship.

00:14:55.000 I talked about all of this weeks ago.

00:14:58.000 That's not to suggest the virus isn't dangerous.

00:14:59.000 It's very dangerous.

00:15:00.000 It's significantly more dangerous than the flu.

00:15:02.000 It is to suggest that people who are suggesting that 4% of the people who get it are going to die, that was not true.

00:15:08.000 About four out of five people known to have had the virus had only mild symptoms.

00:15:11.000 Even among those older than 90 in Italy, 78% survived.

00:15:14.000 Two-thirds of those who died in Italy had pre-existing medical conditions and were elderly, and 99% had pre-existing conditions.

00:15:21.000 Dr. Tara Smith, epidemiologist at Kent State, said, I think this can work.

00:15:25.000 She said it will take eight weeks of social distancing to have a chance to slow the virus.

00:15:28.000 Success will depend on people changing behaviors and on hospitals not being overrun.

00:15:32.000 And that's what I've been saying about increasing that medical capacity.

00:15:34.000 Now, there's the worst case scenario.

00:15:36.000 Dr. Neil Ferguson, a British epidemiologist, he produced a sophisticated model that showed a worst case of 2.2 million deaths in the United States.

00:15:43.000 His best case scenario, according to Nicholas Kristof, is 1.1 million deaths, which is obviously frightening as all hell.

00:15:51.000 The hope that the U.S.

00:15:52.000 can emulate Singapore or South Korea could be a leap because South Korea took the epidemic really seriously.

00:15:58.000 They have tremendously effective testing.

00:16:00.000 It's very widespread.

00:16:01.000 We are still, as I mentioned, way behind in testing, so far behind that you end up with situations like Peggy Noonan.

00:16:07.000 So Peggy Noonan from the Wall Street Journal was sick with two weeks, 101 fever, coughs, and chills, and she had to lie in order to get a COVID test.

00:16:14.000 Because right now the CDC still has restrictions that suggest you can only get a COVID test even if you are in the most risky age demographic and you have all the symptoms.

00:16:25.000 You can only get a COVID test if number one, you have been traveling to China or number two, you know somebody who has been diagnosed with coronavirus.

00:16:32.000 Which of course is ridiculous since we've now had community transmission in the United States for weeks on end.

00:16:38.000 Which demonstrates the dramatic lack of testing.

00:16:40.000 And that is the fault, as we will talk about, of the CDC.

00:16:44.000 And at the highest level of the Trump administration, because in the end, the buck does stop with the president.

00:16:48.000 That doesn't mean the president isn't doing the right things now to fix it.

00:16:51.000 But it does mean that those two months where the CDC was blowing it, heads need to roll over there.

00:16:51.000 He is.

00:16:56.000 Nicholas Kristof says that there is an interactive model of the virus that suggests that up to 366,000 ICU beds might be needed in the U.S.

00:17:04.000 for coronavirus patients at one time, which is more than 10 times the number available.

00:17:09.000 There's a Harvard study that has said the same.

00:17:12.000 How quickly can we roll those things out?

00:17:14.000 That is the big question.

00:17:15.000 And we've heard no, no estimates as to how fast all of that is going to be rolled out.

00:17:20.000 And that does raise the question of how long are we going to have to do this?

00:17:23.000 How long exactly is this going to last?

00:17:25.000 And as I say, you know, even this is a suggestion that there won't be a massive second wave that takes out an enormous number of people.

00:17:32.000 The fact is that in China, which is now claiming they've tamped this thing down, there are serious questions about whether they are lying about tamping it down in the first place.

00:17:41.000 In California, the governor has now announced that we are in a state of lockdown.

00:17:46.000 Gavin Newsom on Thursday night ordered 40 million residents to stay home except for essential trips, extending similar restrictions statewide barrier counties have previously enacted.

00:17:55.000 One of the serious questions about this, particularly, is number one, whether it's effective.

00:17:59.000 Number two, whether it is designed to achieve the goals that they say it's designed to achieve.

00:18:03.000 Meaning, how can you lock people down this long?

00:18:05.000 And the answer is, it's going to be very, very difficult to lock people down this long.

00:18:08.000 The stricter the lockdown, the less time it can last.

00:18:10.000 It's one thing to tell people, as I said yesterday about diets.

00:18:13.000 It's one thing to tell people, for the foreseeable future, no cookies.

00:18:16.000 It's another thing to tell people, for the foreseeable future, no food.

00:18:19.000 That's just not something that people are going to be able to outlast for a very long time.

00:18:23.000 Here's Gavin Newsom, our Kendall of a governor, announcing that it's time to shelter in place in the state of California.

00:18:30.000 Number of days ago, there were six Bay Area counties that led with stay-at-home orders.

00:18:36.000 Now, as I speak, some 21.3 million Californians reside in a community, in a city and or county that have similar orders.

00:18:47.000 A state as large as ours, a nation-state, is many parts, but at the end of the day, we're one body.

00:18:54.000 There's a mutuality, and there's a recognition of our interdependence that requires of this moment that we direct a statewide order for people to stay at home.

00:19:05.000 That directive goes into force and effect this evening, and we were confident, we are confident, that the people of the state of California will abide by it.

00:19:17.000 Okay, so, we will see how long people abide by it, because you cannot tell people interminably to stay in their homes again, especially as the economy dies, and these jobs do not come back.

00:19:24.000 It's very easy for the government to say, we're going to freeze everything in place, none of these jobs will die.

00:19:28.000 That is just not true.

00:19:29.000 These are major systemic changes taking place throughout our economy, and they have significant, significant ramifications.

00:19:36.000 Newsom said, this is not a permanent state, it's a moment in time.

00:19:38.000 Okay, well, then we need to know how long the moment's gonna last, or what your estimate of the moment is going to be.

00:19:43.000 I was talking to panicked friends last night who have businesses in the state of California, and now those businesses simply will not run because nobody can go into the office.

00:19:51.000 And this order, by the way, from Newsom is supposed to last until April 19th.

00:19:55.000 Okay, a full month.

00:19:56.000 How long do you think this is actually going to last?

00:20:01.000 We're now in the Star Wars scenario.

00:20:03.000 As Princess Leia says, the more you tighten your grip, Vader, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

00:20:10.000 This is where we are.

00:20:11.000 The more the government tightens its grip, the more there's going to be pushback against all of that, particularly as these losses mount.

00:20:17.000 We're hearing.

00:20:18.000 That we may lose this week over 2 million jobs in the American economy.

00:20:23.000 We are hearing estimates that the economy may contract up to 20% in Q2.

00:20:28.000 One-fifth of the American economy, poof, disappears at the behest of the American government.

00:20:32.000 So as they say, you want to make the case that we ought to do that?

00:20:35.000 I need to hear a very strong case as to how this is going to prevent deaths.

00:20:38.000 It is not enough to say that we're doing it to prevent deaths.

00:20:40.000 I want to see the plan for preventing the deaths.

00:20:43.000 I want to know how many beds you're creating, how many ventilators you're creating. 0.97

00:20:46.000 I want to know how you plan to stop the slow of this virus when we all go back outside after a month and when half of us don't have jobs.

00:20:54.000 Really, I mean, and by the way, all of the Republican relief efforts or Democratic relief efforts are not going to fix this problem.

00:20:59.000 They're not.

00:21:00.000 The best you can do at this point is provide floating loans to the banks to not call in their bridge loans to businesses.

00:21:07.000 Back the commercial paper window, for example.

00:21:09.000 But at a certain point, people are not going to buy American bonds.

00:21:11.000 And number two, what makes everybody think there's going to be a V-shaped recovery?

00:21:15.000 The longer these businesses are out, the less a chance there is that these businesses ever go back in.

00:21:19.000 If you spent your life savings to purchase a rib joint, And now you've been running that rib joint for 10 years, and the government just shut it down, and shut down every restaurant across the country, effectively.

00:21:28.000 Do you think that's coming back anytime soon, and that $1,000 a month check is going to suffice?

00:21:33.000 It is not.

00:21:34.000 And by the way, economics is real life.

00:21:35.000 When people say, well, you're choosing the economy over real life, no.

00:21:39.000 Economics is real life.

00:21:40.000 It is people's jobs.

00:21:41.000 It is people's livelihoods.

00:21:42.000 It is how people live.

00:21:44.000 It is the suicidality rate.

00:21:46.000 It is the sense of community.

00:21:49.000 This is not to argue that we should be weighing the economy against human life.

00:21:51.000 This is arguing that we should always take the tack that is most likely to preserve human life, and that would also include human quality of life.

00:21:59.000 This is not an argument we should let everybody out right now.

00:22:01.000 I've not made that argument anywhere in here.

00:22:03.000 Instead, the argument I'm making is, if you are going to do the most restrictive thing any American government has ever done in the history of the United States to the American people, right?

00:22:12.000 We're not in wartime here, right?

00:22:14.000 There's a virus.

00:22:15.000 If you're going to do this unbelievably restrictive thing, you better damn well have a plan for how we come out of this and that it saved lives.

00:22:23.000 Because if you just destroyed 20% of the American economy and sent the unemployment rate up to 15 or 20% and you saved zero lives in the process, Or, there's a net loss of life because it turns out that poor people are more likely to get involved in the opioid epidemic, and people who have just lost their jobs are more likely to feel despair, and families are more likely to break apart, and all of this.

00:22:44.000 And so you're going to put the net loss of life after all of this?

00:22:46.000 Then people are going to be asking some serious questions about whether this was in fact a smart move, or whether this was not in fact a smart move.

00:22:51.000 So you better damn well have a plan to increase medical capacity above all of the possible curves.

00:22:57.000 Because if you don't, then Americans are not going to stand by this.

00:23:00.000 They're just not going to stand by this.

00:23:02.000 And we're going to get to more of all of this in just one second.

00:23:06.000 First, let us talk about how you can fix that car.

00:23:09.000 It's sitting in your driveway right now.

00:23:10.000 You're probably not driving too much right now.

00:23:12.000 Now would be a good time to fix up that car.

00:23:14.000 You got a problem with the part in your car.

00:23:15.000 You can't exactly drive over to the auto parts shop.

00:23:17.000 It's not open.

00:23:18.000 Now would be an excellent time for you to go to rockauto.com, get the part and replace it yourself.

00:23:23.000 Thank God for the interwebs.

00:23:25.000 Order your car parts online.

00:23:26.000 You can limit contact instead of someone sitting in your car handling your wheel after doing the same for multiple other cars and coughing into their elbow.

00:23:32.000 RockAuto.com is so much easier than walking into a store and demanding quick answers to things like, is your Odyssey an LX or an EX?

00:23:38.000 And then they have to order the part online anyway.

00:23:42.000 RockAuto.com.

00:23:43.000 Their catalog is unique, remarkably easy to navigate.

00:23:45.000 RockAuto.com has everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil, even new carpet.

00:23:50.000 Whether it's for your classic or your daily driver, get everything you need in a few easy clicks delivered directly to your door.

00:23:55.000 RockAuto.com always offers the lowest possible prices, rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear like airlines do.

00:24:01.000 I spend up to twice as much for the same exact parts.

00:24:03.000 rockauto.com is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years.

00:24:07.000 Go to rockauto.com right now.

00:24:09.000 See the parts available for your car or truck.

00:24:11.000 Ray Shapiro in there.

00:24:12.000 How did you hear about us, Fox?

00:24:13.000 So they know that we sent you.

00:24:14.000 That is rockauto.com.

00:24:16.000 Go check them out right now.

00:24:17.000 Okay, so as I say, I am skeptical as to the capacity of the government to actually do the things necessary to raise the line.

00:24:25.000 So prove me wrong, government.

00:24:27.000 Prove to me that you can fix this problem.

00:24:29.000 The government failed.

00:24:31.000 At ensuring that people could get the test.

00:24:32.000 And as I say, that's having real-world ramifications right now.

00:24:35.000 If you can't get a coronavirus test, and they're telling you to shelter in place, your life just got appreciably worse.

00:24:40.000 Appreciably worse.

00:24:41.000 Because you don't even know whether you can transmit this to other people.

00:24:43.000 And that may be, as I say, a lot easier if you're single and living alone.

00:24:46.000 But let's say that you're single and you're living with roommates.

00:24:47.000 What are your roommates supposed to do? 1.00

00:24:50.000 That's a lot of people in the United States.

00:24:52.000 What are you supposed to do for groceries?

00:24:54.000 You're supposed to not go out?

00:24:55.000 I mean, like, you need to go to the pharmacy.

00:24:58.000 So now you have to have a friend go to the pharmacy.

00:25:00.000 But we've also been told that germs pass so easily that if I hand you a plastic bag, maybe it's living on the plastic bag.

00:25:07.000 Like, if no one can test, then no one knows who the hell's a carrier.

00:25:11.000 Okay, and that is exactly why you have these social distancing measures put in place by the government.

00:25:15.000 But the only way to alleviate that would be widespread testing in the mode of South Korea. 0.55

00:25:18.000 As I've been saying for a week now, the goal here is to move from the Chinese model, lock everything down, to the South Korean model. 0.96

00:25:24.000 And even that South Korean model is going to assume that there's no second wave, which may or may not be true.

00:25:28.000 Hey, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that when cases of the new coronavirus began emerging several weeks ago in California, Washington State, and other pockets of the country, U.S.

00:25:36.000 public health officials worried this might be the big one, according to emails and interviews.

00:25:39.000 The testing program they rolled out to combat it was a small one.

00:25:42.000 Limited testing has blinded Americans to the scale of the outbreak so far, impeding the nation's ability to fight the virus through isolating the sick and their contacts.

00:25:50.000 And that is why you're seeing these massive numbers rack up.

00:25:52.000 We should actually be encouraged by the fact that massive numbers are racking up, because that means that testing actually is taking place.

00:25:57.000 As I say, In the last week alone, in the last couple of days, we've seen a doubling of the number of diagnosed cases in the United States, and that is simply because of the number of tests taking place, not because a bunch of people just got the disease.

00:26:09.000 But as I say, the government policy that is currently being pursued is not well calibrated, at least in the absence of information as to what exactly they plan to do.

00:26:19.000 I mean, a good sign of this is that the Trump administration is now asking states to suppress specific unemployment claim data.

00:26:27.000 The Trump administration is now apparently asking state labor officials to delay releasing the precise number of unemployment claims they're fielding, an indication of how uneasy policymakers are about further roiling a stock market already plunging in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

00:26:40.000 Okay, if you're asking people to hide information and you're the federal government, that means things are really bad, like a lot worse than people are telling you.

00:26:45.000 This is not a minor shock to the economy.

00:26:47.000 This is the biggest shock to the economy we have ever seen.

00:26:49.000 Okay, including the Great Depression, because the Great Depression was an inflation-caused, on the one hand, or liquidity-crunch-caused problem.

00:26:57.000 It was not an external caused problem by a giant pandemic virus that has not been alleviated in any way.

00:27:02.000 And it was not the government forcibly shutting down every business in the United States.

00:27:07.000 It is never a good sign when the Department of Labor is telling people not to report unemployment statistics.

00:27:12.000 That should scare the living hell out of everyone.

00:27:14.000 And as far as the plans to alleviate this crisis, I'm sorry, but spending a trillion dollars this month and a trillion dollars next month and a trillion dollars the month after that is not going to be a solution.

00:27:23.000 And certainly what is not going to be a solution is making these programs permanent over time.

00:27:26.000 Let me take a quick example.

00:27:28.000 So apparently the bill that President Trump signed into law this week that was designed to get immediate relief to people included a paid sick leave provision.

00:27:36.000 According to the HR specialist that I have talked to, that paid sick leave provision not only mandates that businesses have to pay 14 days of paid sick leave when they have no money on hand because they have no income on hand, it also mandates that if you have a sick family member and you say that you can't come into work, that you are supposed to, you basically have maternity leave, 12 weeks of 60% salary from your company.

00:27:58.000 How many companies do you think are going to abide by that?

00:28:01.000 And what happens if the company just says, listen, I'm not going to do any of that.

00:28:03.000 I'm just going to fire you.

00:28:04.000 Why do you think unemployment rates are skyrocketing?

00:28:06.000 Why do you think companies preemptively fired everyone before Trump signed that bill or went into effect?

00:28:11.000 Okay, the government action here to mandate that private business cover the losses incurred by the government and increased by the government is insane.

00:28:18.000 It's why this isn't a bailout, what the government is doing right now.

00:28:20.000 This is the government paying you back for what the government is taking away from you, but the government is not capable of paying you back for what it's taking away from you, because it's not just taking away from you the next month of business.

00:28:30.000 It may be taking away from you the capacity for your business to even operate at all after a month is over, because we don't know what the hell is going on beyond this.

00:28:38.000 So Senate Majority Leader McConnell released a massive economic stimulus bill on Thursday to fight coronavirus's fallout.

00:28:45.000 And the suggestion is direct cash payments to many Americans.

00:28:50.000 The problem is it's means-tested based on your 2018 income, which makes no sense whatsoever.

00:28:54.000 Because guess what?

00:28:55.000 Your 2018 income has nothing to do with what you made this year.

00:28:58.000 Also, by the way, let's say that you made $200,000 in 2018, when the economy was a hell of a lot stronger.

00:29:05.000 And let's say that today your business just went bankrupt.

00:29:09.000 So, you made $200,000 in 2018, so you do not get any money from the government, but now your business is bankrupt, and so you are bankrupt, and so you have no money.

00:29:18.000 Why are we means-testing based on 2018 income?

00:29:21.000 Even means-testing based on today's income is probably a mistake, given the fact that you have bills.

00:29:27.000 The means-testing, by the way, kicks out at like $100,000.

00:29:30.000 Those people have bills, too?

00:29:31.000 They still have mortgages to pay, so the government solution is, okay, well, we'll freeze the mortgages.

00:29:35.000 We'll freeze the evictions.

00:29:36.000 For how long are you going to do that?

00:29:38.000 And when that business is no longer there, do you think that the evictions, when they are unfrozen, are going to take stock of the fact that your business no longer exists?

00:29:46.000 Senator Lindsey Graham is among several GOP senators voicing concern or outright opposition to the idea of direct payments, even as McConnell unveiled the trillion-dollar stimulus plan that would be the starting point for negotiations with Democrats.

00:29:58.000 McConnell called for the talks to begin today.

00:30:00.000 A number of economists have predicted the U.S.

00:30:02.000 economy is plunging into recession.

00:30:03.000 The unemployment rate could soar because Americans are staying home out of fear of catching the virus.

00:30:08.000 The centerpiece of the Senate GOP plan would be hundreds of billions of dollars sent to Americans in the form of checks as a way to flood the country with money in an effort to blunt the dramatic pullback of spending.

00:30:16.000 That ain't gonna work.

00:30:17.000 People are still at home.

00:30:19.000 Okay, if you're freezing the mortgages or if you are freezing the evictions, the best thing that you can do right now is float actual no-interest loans to small businesses via the banks that are already providing those loans.

00:30:30.000 That is the best thing that you can do right now because the biggest problem here is banks calling in loans on small businesses that are operating on a day-to-day basis.

00:30:38.000 These small checks are simply, like, are they going to help some people?

00:30:42.000 Sure.

00:30:42.000 But one of the problems here is that one of the other factors in this legislation, apparently, is that if you haven't paid federal income tax, then you also don't receive a check back.

00:30:49.000 Okay, that's a lot of poor people, gang.

00:30:51.000 That's a lot of people who may not be receiving the money.

00:30:54.000 The size of the checks would diminish for those earning more than $75,000 and phase out completely for those earning more than $99,000.

00:31:00.000 The poorest families would see smaller benefits.

00:31:02.000 The minimum would be set at $600.

00:31:03.000 Yeah, good luck in not breaking the economy based on this.

00:31:09.000 The vast majority of middle class people would receive a cash payment.

00:31:12.000 The percentage doing so falls dramatically toward the bottom of the income spectrum.

00:31:16.000 And none of this makes any sense.

00:31:18.000 The democratic clans make even less sense because they are looking for permanent plans that would basically turn an enormous swath of human beings into wards of the state even after this crisis ends.

00:31:28.000 This is one of the problems.

00:31:28.000 Every crisis amounts to a dramatic growth in American government involvement in the economy.

00:31:34.000 If you're talking about the biggest crisis in the history of the American economy, presumably that would also, according to Democrats, mean the most American government economic involvement in history, and they're trying to make it permanent.

00:31:45.000 House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer have slammed the stimulus proposal.

00:31:49.000 They said it tilted too much toward helping business, even though the vast majority of this is directed at direct cash payments to individuals.

00:31:55.000 Pelosi and Schumer said, we're beginning to review Senator McConnell's proposal, and on first reading, it's not pro-worker.

00:32:00.000 It puts corporations way ahead of workers.

00:32:02.000 By the way, if those corporations go under, who is around to pay people their salaries when this thing ends?

00:32:08.000 It's the jobs disappearing that is the problem.

00:32:10.000 Yes, the money disappearing for the next two months is a major problem.

00:32:13.000 The jobs disappearing is a forever problem.

00:32:15.000 If those businesses go under, who exactly is going to hire the workers?

00:32:19.000 This is how you get to Bernie Sanders' federal jobs guarantee.

00:32:21.000 And the government made this happen all by simply declaring that the economy was shut down.

00:32:25.000 Now again, you want to say it's temporary?

00:32:26.000 You want to say you got a plan to fix this thing?

00:32:28.000 Then show me how it's temporary and the plan to fix this thing is actually going to be effectuated.

00:32:32.000 Otherwise, we seriously need to be considering what the measures we are taking here are.

00:32:37.000 The Wall Street Journal editorial board has a good piece on this today, titled, Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown.

00:32:43.000 They say financial markets paused their slide on Thursday, but no one should think this rolling economic calamity is over.

00:32:48.000 If this government-in-order shutdown continues for much more than another week or two, the human cost of job losses and bankruptcies will exceed what most Americans imagine.

00:32:55.000 This will not be popular in some quarters, but federal and state officials need to start adjusting their antivirus strategy now to avoid an economic recession that will dwarf the harm from 2008-2009.

00:33:05.000 The vast social distancing project of the last 10 days or so has been necessary and has done much good.

00:33:09.000 Warnings about large gatherings of more than 10 people and limiting access to nursing homes will save lives.

00:33:13.000 The public has received a crucial education in hygiene and disease prevention.

00:33:16.000 Even young people may get the message.

00:33:19.000 With any luck, the behavior change will reduce coronavirus spread so that we're not overwhelmed.

00:33:22.000 But the costs of the national shutdown are growing by the hour, and we don't mean federal spending.

00:33:26.000 We mean a tsunami of economic destruction that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs as commerce and production simply cease.

00:33:32.000 Many large companies can withstand a few weeks without revenue, but that isn't true of millions of small and mid-sized firms.

00:33:37.000 Even cash-rich businesses operate on thin margins and can bleed through reserves in a month.

00:33:41.000 100% true.

00:33:43.000 If you're a profitable business, that means that you had enough to pay your workers this month, and then you have a little bit left over.

00:33:49.000 You have a multiple of your entire company budget lying in a bank somewhere.

00:33:53.000 That's not the way this works.

00:33:55.000 First, they'll lay off employees, and then out of necessity, they'll shut down.

00:33:58.000 Another month like this week, the layoffs will be measured in millions of people.

00:34:01.000 The deadweight loss in production will be profound, says the Wall Street Journal, and take years to rebuild.

00:34:05.000 In a normal recession, the U.S.

00:34:06.000 loses about 5% of national output over the course of a year or two.

00:34:09.000 In this case, we may lose that much, or twice as much, this month alone.

00:34:14.000 Wall Street economist Ed Hyman on Thursday adjusted his estimate for the second quarter to an annual rate loss in GDP minus 20%.

00:34:22.000 That is the entire economy of the United States losing one-fifth of its production.

00:34:28.000 If GDP seems abstract, consider the human cost.

00:34:30.000 Think about the entrepreneur who has invested his life in the Memphis ribs joint, I mentioned this earlier, only to see his customers vanish in a week.

00:34:36.000 Or the retail chain with 30 stores that employs hundreds but sees no sales and has to shut its doors.

00:34:40.000 Or the recent graduate with 20 grand in student loan debt who finds herself laid off from her first job.

00:34:44.000 Maybe she can live at home, but what if mom and dad don't have a job?

00:34:47.000 Or, alternatively, what if she is 20 and her parents are 65?

00:34:51.000 Some of the media who don't understand American business say that China managed a comparable shock.

00:34:55.000 Yeah, the difference is that China is a communist country.

00:34:56.000 They don't care if a bunch of people are out of work or die.

00:34:59.000 If they cared about that, they wouldn't be a communist country.

00:35:02.000 The politicians in Washington, says the journal, are telling Americans, as they always do, they're riding to the rescue by writing checks to individuals.

00:35:07.000 But there's no amount of money that can make up for losses in the magnitude we are facing if this extends for several more weeks.

00:35:13.000 After the first trillion this month, are we going to spend another trillion in April and another in June?

00:35:17.000 And you can see this in the bond yields.

00:35:19.000 Who the hell is going to buy this stuff?

00:35:22.000 Who the hell is going to buy any of this stuff?

00:35:24.000 By the way, the market is off again today.

00:35:26.000 The market immediately, upon opening, dropped something like 500 points.

00:35:32.000 The market continues to drop fairly dramatically, and that is because nobody feels secure here.

00:35:38.000 Nobody is going to buy up debt they feel is never going to be repaid.

00:35:42.000 By the time the Treasury Small Business Lending Program runs through the bureaucratic hoops, complete with ordering owners they can't lay off anyone as a price for getting the loan, which of course is not going to be a thing.

00:35:51.000 Millions of businesses will be bankrupt.

00:35:52.000 Tens of millions will be jobless.

00:35:53.000 That's of course true.

00:35:55.000 Because you're not even allowed to lay anybody off in the knowledge that the next couple of years are going to be super rough.

00:36:01.000 So are you going to take that loan only to not be able to pay anyone anyway and go bankrupt two months from now?

00:36:06.000 Perhaps we'll be lucky, says the Wall Street Journal, the human and capitalist genius for innovation.

00:36:09.000 We'll produce a vaccine faster than expected, or at least treatments that reduce COVID-19 symptoms.

00:36:14.000 Barring that, our leaders in our society will very soon need to shift their virus-fighting strategy to something sustainable.

00:36:19.000 Dr. Fauci has explained this severe lockdown policy is lasting 14 days in its initial term.

00:36:23.000 The national guidance would then be reconsidered, depending on the spread of the disease.

00:36:26.000 That should be the moment to offer new guidance on what might be called Phase 2 of the coronavirus pandemic campaign.

00:36:33.000 And that will surely include strict measures to isolate and protect the most vulnerable, our elderly, those with underlying medical problems.

00:36:39.000 There shouldn't be a debate over how many lives to sacrifice against how many lost jobs we can tolerate.

00:36:43.000 Substantial social distancing, other measures will have to continue in some form for some time, but no society can safeguard public health for long at the cost of the entire economy's health.

00:36:53.000 Even America's resources to fight a viral plague aren't limitless and they'll become more limited by the day when no one has a job.

00:36:59.000 When no one is able to go out of the house.

00:37:02.000 Meanwhile, the White House is trying to float 50 and 25-year bonds to finance the stimulus packages.

00:37:07.000 Who the hell is gonna buy that?

00:37:08.000 Like seriously, why would you buy a 50-year bond?

00:37:12.000 Because either you believe that the economy is going to rise, in which case you wouldn't buy a 50-year bond, you'd buy stock, or you believe the economy is going to decline, in which case, why in the living hell would you trust the American government to pay you back 50 years from now?

00:37:23.000 I can't trust the American government to pay me back 5 minutes from now!

00:37:25.000 Forget 50 years from now.

00:37:27.000 The bond yields, again, are up.

00:37:29.000 Bond yields move in inverse proportion to demand.

00:37:32.000 When demand for bonds is down, the yields go up.

00:37:35.000 The bond yields are up.

00:37:36.000 People don't want to buy bonds.

00:37:37.000 They don't trust the government right now.

00:37:39.000 Now speaking of lack of trust in government, you want to talk about dramatically undermining and continuing to undermine trust in government?

00:37:46.000 This story from the Daily Beast is devastating.

00:37:49.000 Senator Kelly Loeffler apparently dumped millions in stock after a coronavirus briefing.

00:37:54.000 She's the second senator who got rid of her holdings right as the stock market went bad. 0.84

00:37:57.000 It turns out there are four such senators who got rid of their stocks as the stock market went bad.

00:38:02.000 Now some of these, I want to be accurate in the reporting here.

00:38:05.000 People are listing, for example, Senator Dianne Feinstein among the senators who got rid of stock.

00:38:10.000 The pattern of her selling stock does not appear to be the same as some of the more egregious apparent abuses of the system.

00:38:18.000 Feinstein serves as a ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and her husband sold between $1.5 million and $6 million in stock in California biotech company Allogene Therapeutics between January 31st and February 18th, according to the New York Times.

00:38:30.000 Feinstein apparently was not directly involved in the sale.

00:38:32.000 Her assets are in a blind trust, according to her spokesperson.

00:38:35.000 She has no involvement in her husband's financial decisions.

00:38:39.000 Reports identified three other senators, James Inhofe, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, and Richard Burr of North Carolina, as people who are selling vast amounts of stock.

00:38:46.000 Feinstein's doesn't appear to match the pattern simply because she didn't actually make a lot of money on the stock sale.

00:38:53.000 As opposed to, and the same thing is true of Inhofe, Loeffler and Richard Burr are a bit of a different story.

00:38:58.000 Burr apparently, who's the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, used more than 30 transactions to dump between $630,000 and $1.72 million on February 13th, according to ProPublica.

00:39:09.000 That report said the transactions involved a significant percentage of the senator's holdings and took place about a week before the impact of the virus outbreak sent stock prices plunging to the point where gains made during President Trump's term in office were largely erased.

00:39:21.000 A Burr spokesperson said, Senator Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S.

00:39:27.000 financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak.

00:39:31.000 As the situation continues to evolve daily, he's been deeply concerned by the steep and sudden toll this pandemic is taking on our economy.

00:39:38.000 On Friday, the Senator tweeted an updated statement saying he relied only on public news reports to guide his decision on the sale.

00:39:44.000 He's asking for a Senate Ethics Committee review of his actions.

00:39:49.000 Burr was an author of the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act, a law that helps determine the federal response to situations like coronavirus outbreak.

00:39:56.000 Burr's office would not comment on what kind of information Burr received about coronavirus prior to his stock sales.

00:40:02.000 Apparently, Burr made ominous comments about coronavirus behind closed doors last month.

00:40:08.000 He said at a February 27th meeting of business leaders in Washington, quote, There's one thing I can tell you about this.

00:40:12.000 It's much more aggressive in its transmission than anything we've seen in recent history.

00:40:15.000 It's probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.

00:40:19.000 So supposedly, Richard Burr was getting inside information, because he's a member of the Intelligence Committee, about the extent of the pandemic.

00:40:28.000 He was telling people about it in particular speeches.

00:40:31.000 He was not speaking super publicly about it, and he was dumping his stock at insane rates.

00:40:35.000 He was not the only one.

00:40:37.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

00:40:38.000 First, if you haven't had a chance to see some of the new content we started this week called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com and you should check it out.

00:40:45.000 Jeremy Boring and I kicked off Monday evening.

00:40:47.000 Jeremy and Michael Molls followed up on Tuesday night.

00:40:48.000 Matt Walsh and Andrew Klavan did live streams the last two nights.

00:40:51.000 I am planning another stream tonight, exigent circumstances notwithstanding.

00:40:55.000 We'll continue all of next week at 8 p.m.

00:40:56.000 Eastern and 5 p.m.

00:40:57.000 Pacific.

00:40:58.000 If you're wondering what All Access Live is about, it's a lot more relaxed than our normal programming.

00:41:02.000 Basically, we're just hanging out with you because we understand this is crisis time.

00:41:04.000 It is very difficult for everybody.

00:41:06.000 Now we're all locked indoors, basically.

00:41:08.000 So, let's hang out together.

00:41:09.000 Let's have a good time.

00:41:10.000 These are live streams with our audience.

00:41:11.000 They help bring us together, even if it's just through a computer.

00:41:14.000 The show is intended for our All Access members.

00:41:17.000 During this national emergency and time of isolation, we've opened it up to all our members, and in doing so, accelerated the launch.

00:41:21.000 So, please let us know what you think of it.

00:41:23.000 If you're around at 8 p.m.

00:41:24.000 Eastern, 5 p.m.

00:41:25.000 Pacific tonight, join us on All Access Live over at dailywire.com.

00:41:29.000 Also, Sunday Special is back.

00:41:31.000 It is back, and better than ever.

00:41:33.000 This Sunday, I have the great pleasure of sitting down with Hollywood mogul Jason Blum, who's made some of my favorite movies, including Whiplash.

00:41:38.000 He's also producer of the horror series, Paranormal Activity and The Purge.

00:41:41.000 We discussed his latest movie, The Hunt, which is now available video on demand.

00:41:44.000 A thrill with some unexpected political commentary.

00:41:46.000 That's this Sunday, March 22nd.

00:41:49.000 Hollywood created a certain way information is consumed.

00:41:55.000 One of the reasons President Trump was elected was because the way that we consume information has been changed by the media industry across Hollywood and New York.

00:42:07.000 So don't miss it.

00:42:14.000 We are the largest, fastest-growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:42:17.000 Now, meanwhile, according to the Daily Beast, it's not just Richard Burr who's in hot water over allegations of insider trading.

00:42:30.000 It is also Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia.

00:42:34.000 Apparently, she sold off seven figures worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private all-senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that subsequently hammered U.S.

00:42:41.000 equities.

00:42:42.000 Lafleur reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on January 24th, the very same day her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private all-senators briefing from administration officials including CDC Director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on Coronavirus.

00:42:59.000 She tweeted, appreciate today's briefing from the president's top health officials on the novel coronavirus outbreak.

00:43:04.000 The first transaction was the sale of stock in the company Resideo Technologies, valued between $50,000 and $100,000.

00:43:09.000 The company's stock has fallen by half since then.

00:43:12.000 It was the first of 29 stock transactions Loeffler and her husband made through mid-February, all but two of which were sales.

00:43:18.000 One of Loeffler's two purchases was stock worth between $100,000 and $250,000 in Citrix, a technology company that offers teleworking software and which has seen a small bump in its stock price since Loeffler bought in as a result of coronavirus-induced market turmoil.

00:43:32.000 Loffler's office did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast on the transactions and whether they are prompted or informed by information shared at that late January briefing.

00:43:39.000 It's illegal for members of Congress to trade on non-public information gleaned through their official duties.

00:43:44.000 That's the reason, presumably, why Richard Burr is saying, yeah, I was just trading based on public reports.

00:43:48.000 And the question is, is that true or is that not?

00:43:50.000 And how do you prove that it's not true if it is not true?

00:43:54.000 Late Thursday night, she offered a statement.

00:43:55.000 She tweeted, this is a ridiculous and baseless attack.

00:43:58.000 I do not make investment decisions for my portfolio.

00:44:00.000 Investment decisions are made by multiple third party advisors without my or my husband's knowledge or involvement.

00:44:05.000 As confirmed in the periodic transaction report to Senate Ethics, I was informed of these purchases and sales on February 16th, 2020, three weeks after they were made.

00:44:14.000 Now, one of the big problems here is that that statement does not say that she was not communicating with her husband or with her investment advisors.

00:44:21.000 Like, I don't actually handle my own investments either.

00:44:24.000 But if I went to my investment advisor and said, guys, I have some pretty good information that this coronavirus thing is going to be an absolute bleep show and the economy is probably going to tank.

00:44:32.000 Do with that what you will.

00:44:33.000 And then three weeks later, they were like, oh yeah, by the way, we got rid of all your stock that week.

00:44:38.000 That's still insider trading.

00:44:39.000 Okay, that is still a violation of law.

00:44:42.000 So we're gonna have to find out what exactly the communications chains were here.

00:44:45.000 At the very least, it looks very suspicious.

00:44:48.000 In the week after her spate of stock trades, Loeffler sought to downplay the public health and financial threats posed by coronavirus.

00:44:54.000 She tweeted on February 28th, Democrats have dangerously and intentionally misled the American people on coronavirus readiness.

00:44:59.000 Here's the truth, Donald Trump and his administration are doing a great job working to keep Americans healthy and safe.

00:45:05.000 And she tweeted on March 10th, concerned about coronavirus.

00:45:07.000 Remember this, the consumer is strong, the economy is strong, jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle COVID-19 and keep Americans safe.

00:45:14.000 Here's the bottom line.

00:45:15.000 Anybody in Congress.

00:45:17.000 who is using insider information to profit off of coronavirus should not only be ousted from their job, impeached if they are guilty of this.

00:45:26.000 Again, everyone should have the opportunity to provide the evidence.

00:45:28.000 There should be Senate ethics investigations on every senator who involved in this.

00:45:32.000 That does include Senator Feinstein, even if she appears to be more innocent than some of these other transactions, which facially appear to be pretty corrupt.

00:45:39.000 Everybody should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

00:45:42.000 Okay, and nothing undermines faith in both the private market and in government, like the sort of crony garbage that these allegations involve.

00:45:50.000 The sort of crony capitalism that is involved in senators trading on private information, which by the way, the author Peter Schweitzer has been writing about for a very long time.

00:45:58.000 That sort of activity undermines not only faith in government, but in private markets.

00:46:03.000 That is what that does.

00:46:04.000 It's hard to think of a scandal more geared to undermine public trust than a scandal like this, particularly at this time.

00:46:10.000 So, Tucker Carlson last night said that Senator Burr should resign.

00:46:13.000 Here's what I say.

00:46:14.000 Senator Burr should have that ethics committee check him out.

00:46:18.000 You know, we have to have due process in this country.

00:46:20.000 We do have to have people provide their side of the story.

00:46:22.000 And if it turns out that he can provide no evidence, On his behalf and that there is evidence on the other side that he was calling up his stockbrokers or that he was in or that he was talking openly with his financial people about the implications of coronavirus while publicly downplaying it and selling stock at the same time.

00:46:38.000 Not only should he be impeached, not only should he be thrown out of the Senate, he should get whatever the law can give to him in terms of a prison sentence.

00:46:44.000 The same thing holds true of lawful or it holds true for anybody.

00:46:47.000 If guilty, if guilty, the allegations on their own are devastating.

00:46:51.000 I mean, really, really damaging.

00:46:54.000 So this is all of this stuff.

00:46:56.000 There's no good news today.

00:46:57.000 I wish I could bring you good news.

00:46:58.000 The only good news today is that the testing does appear to be ramping up generally across the United States.

00:47:03.000 We can hope that the government is actually taking measures that are designed to alleviate the problem in the near term.

00:47:09.000 But if we are looking at the leviathan growth of government, because here's the problem, the longer this thing lasts, the more damage is done, the more damage is done, the more permanent damage is done, the more permanent damage is done, the more permanent government programs are going to be seen as the solution.

00:47:21.000 If you throw 20 million Americans out of work.

00:47:24.000 Unemployment benefits are going to be made permanent.

00:47:27.000 I mean, they just will.

00:47:29.000 If you throw 20 million Americans out of work, there will be... The Bernie Sanders agenda starts to look a lot more popular after the government forcibly destroys the economy.

00:47:39.000 When the economy is booming, it's easy to say to people who want to nationalize large swaths of industry, guys, you really want to destroy the economy?

00:47:45.000 When the economy is already destroyed, even if government did it in the first place, it becomes a lot easier sell to replace the private economy with something resembling a command and control economy.

00:47:55.000 So got to be very careful.

00:47:56.000 All this stuff must be temporary.

00:47:58.000 And that means the shutdown must be temporary.

00:48:00.000 And that means the government better get its ass in gear.

00:48:03.000 Because if this all happened, if we shut this whole thing down, To no avail?

00:48:07.000 To not increase our capacity?

00:48:09.000 To not lower the death rate?

00:48:11.000 Then not only has this been the biggest cluster F in the history of American economics, it has been a meticulous attempt by incompetent people to destroy the fundamentals of the most powerful economy on the face of the planet.

00:48:27.000 And that is devastating.

00:48:29.000 Again, I'll go along with this program.

00:48:32.000 I think everyone should go along with this program.

00:48:34.000 For a period of time, but not without assurances that the government is doing what it's supposed to do.

00:48:40.000 We're all doing what we're supposed to do.

00:48:41.000 I'm doing this from my house, right?

00:48:44.000 I'm doing this show from my house.

00:48:45.000 We are all doing what we are supposed to do.

00:48:47.000 We are all social distancing.

00:48:49.000 We're all staying at home.

00:48:50.000 We're all staying six feet away from each other.

00:48:51.000 We're all doing it.

00:48:53.000 I am asking one simple thing, for the government to do its effing job.

00:48:57.000 And if the government does not do its job, Then not only is this thing going to get worse, and I'm not talking about the virus, it is going to result in a completely different America.

00:49:08.000 And that was not the promise.

00:49:10.000 The government forcibly shutting down the economy to take control of the economy would be the worst thing to happen in the history of American government outside of slavery and Jim Crow and overt rights abuses like that.

00:49:26.000 Watch carefully.

00:49:27.000 The government better come up with a plan.

00:49:28.000 They better come up with a damn plan.

00:49:30.000 Because staying in place until further notice is not a plan.

00:49:33.000 It is just not a plan.

00:49:35.000 Alrighty, time for a quick thing that I hate here.

00:49:39.000 So.

00:49:41.000 Let us point out that everybody in the media is still focused on President Trump calling this the Chinese virus.

00:49:46.000 Just stop.

00:49:46.000 Like, stop.

00:49:47.000 It's so unbelievably stupid.

00:49:50.000 If you think the American people are sitting around and just angry at President Trump for calling it the Chinese virus when the Chinese government released this virus, they did.

00:49:50.000 Seriously.

00:50:00.000 They let 5 million people from Wuhan walk around knowing full well there was human-to-human transmission.

00:50:04.000 Like, come on.

00:50:05.000 So yesterday, somebody took a picture of the president's speech that he was giving from the podium, and he had crossed out the word coronavirus and he had written above it Chinese.

00:50:13.000 Oh, it shows how evil it is.

00:50:15.000 Oh, it shows how it was meticulous and how he's doing it deliberately.

00:50:17.000 Well, yeah, no bleep, he's doing it deliberately.

00:50:19.000 Of course he's doing it deliberately.

00:50:20.000 He should be doing it deliberately.

00:50:20.000 And guess what?

00:50:22.000 The fact is, everyone needs to know that Chinese communism resulted in the widespread of this virus. 0.94

00:50:27.000 That is what happened here.

00:50:29.000 Every step of the way from allowing these wet markets to continue being open for years on end after the release of SARS, after multiple diseases have been unleashed from these wet markets.

00:50:40.000 Not only that, they then censored anybody who talked about this thing.

00:50:43.000 They shut down internet usage.

00:50:45.000 They tried to prosecute people who talked about it openly.

00:50:48.000 They lied to the WHO.

00:50:49.000 They're probably lying right now.

00:50:51.000 When they say that the economy is back on track in China and that this thing is not spreading in China, They certainly could be lying.

00:50:57.000 I have a very hard time believing that the Chinese government that was lying about this thing back in December is suddenly telling the blatant overt truth about it.

00:51:04.000 They've locked it down, man.

00:51:05.000 They've really locked it down.

00:51:06.000 And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

00:51:09.000 But meanwhile, there are a bunch of people In the Democratic Party, who are focused laser-like on labeling this the Chinese virus.

00:51:15.000 How could Trump do this thing?

00:51:16.000 Susan Rice, who busily lied on American television about how the Benghazi terror attacks were not in fact terror attacks, they were a response to a YouTube video.

00:51:16.000 How?

00:51:23.000 Susan Rice yesterday said, it's such a racist description by Trump.

00:51:26.000 Racist.

00:51:27.000 Racist?

00:51:28.000 It's directed at the Chinese government.

00:51:28.000 Truly?

00:51:30.000 Anybody who thinks this is directed at Chinese people is an idiot.

00:51:33.000 It has nothing to do with Chinese people.

00:51:35.000 It has to do with the Chinese government not doing the only thing that it should be doing.

00:51:39.000 Shutting down these vectors of... I mean, we're a free government here in the United States.

00:51:43.000 We have an elected government here in the United States.

00:51:44.000 We have a non-authoritarian government.

00:51:46.000 And somehow everybody is going along with the lockdown of the American way of life.

00:51:50.000 China is an authoritarian state.

00:51:51.000 They couldn't even do this?

00:51:52.000 It's unbelievable.

00:51:53.000 But apparently if you say Chinese virus, it's very bad according to Susan Rice, pathological liar.

00:51:59.000 Certainly China is not behaving well in trying to blame this on the United States.

00:52:05.000 But the flip side of it is we are not behaving well when we talk about, as the president does every day, the Chinese virus, the Wuhan flu, and all of these racist descriptions.

00:52:16.000 The fact of the matter is that viruses don't know borders.

00:52:20.000 They don't Okay, really?

00:52:22.000 Like, so we have to work with the Chinese government?

00:52:25.000 Blaming people for where viruses arise, which can arise anywhere on the planet, and get into the business of working together to defeat them.

00:52:33.000 Okay, really?

00:52:35.000 So we have to work with the Chinese government.

00:52:37.000 If we only work with the Chinese, yeah, like they've been working with us the whole time.

00:52:40.000 Right now, they are actively disseminating propaganda information, blaming the United States government for the release of coronavirus.

00:52:46.000 So spare me.

00:52:47.000 Spare me.

00:52:48.000 It's not just Susan Rice.

00:52:49.000 Obviously, it's Tim Kaine, the former vice presidential candidate, the most forgettable vice presidential candidate maybe in the history of the United States.

00:52:54.000 Remember that guy?

00:52:55.000 He ran with Hillary Clinton.

00:52:57.000 You don't remember him?

00:52:58.000 Yeah, I don't either.

00:52:58.000 Tim Kaine, senator from Virginia.

00:53:00.000 He says, we have to stop all of this China bashing.

00:53:03.000 Really?

00:53:03.000 They are attempting to propaganda.

00:53:04.000 I mean, it's unbelievable.

00:53:05.000 Here he goes.

00:53:06.000 Quit the inflammatory China bashing.

00:53:11.000 Did this virus originate in China?

00:53:14.000 Yes.

00:53:16.000 But Mr. President, that does not excuse your weeks and weeks of tweeting lies and misinformation about the virus, while the leaders of other nations were taking steps to make sure their populations could be safe.

00:53:28.000 The President's decision to call this China virus or Wuhan virus or other epithets that he and members of his team use are a crass effort to deflect blame away from the acceptance of responsibility that a president should do.

00:53:45.000 The buck stops with you, Mr. President.

00:53:48.000 Okay, but the thing started with China.

00:53:50.000 Yes, the buck stops with Trump.

00:53:52.000 The buck started with China. 0.96

00:53:52.000 But guess what? 0.96

00:53:54.000 So that makes a rather large-scale difference.

00:53:56.000 It does make a rather large difference.

00:53:58.000 By the way, there are polls out today from ABC News about the president's handling of the coronavirus situation.

00:54:03.000 He's at about 55% approval rating on the coronavirus situation, which frankly is kind of astonishing given the slow response of the federal government at the outset.

00:54:10.000 The response has been significantly better, as I said, over the last week and a half.

00:54:13.000 It's been significantly better lately.

00:54:14.000 The federal government better get its ass in gear because those approval ratings ain't going to last.

00:54:19.000 If we're two months into this thing, everybody's still at home and we haven't increased capacity enough to get ready to go back to work and every small business in the country is under.

00:54:27.000 Okay, so move fast, move in concerted fashion because the current status cannot continue to be the new normal.

00:54:36.000 And when I say it can't, I'm not talking about two months from now.

00:54:36.000 It can't.

00:54:39.000 I'm talking about a month from now.

00:54:40.000 I'm talking about three weeks from now.

00:54:43.000 This is not going to be the new normal.

00:54:44.000 Americans will not take it, nor frankly, if they don't see the prospect of lowering death rates by a significant amount, should they take it.

00:54:51.000 All righty, well, we will be back here a little bit later today, we hope, with two additional hours of content.

00:54:56.000 Also, later today, I am planning to stop by to hang out with you, like 5 p.m.

00:55:00.000 today, Pacific time.

00:55:00.000 We'll hang out, maybe talk a little bit of Bible, maybe talk a little bit of entertainment, sports, yeah, something.

00:55:05.000 We'll figure out something to talk about.

00:55:07.000 So we'll check you out then.

00:55:08.000 Otherwise, we will see you here on Monday for all of the updates.

00:55:11.000 Stay safe in there, not out there.

00:55:12.000 Stay safe in there, and let's all pray for each other and take care of each other because this is a rough time.

00:55:17.000 We'll get through it together, apart.

00:55:18.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:55:19.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:55:24.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

00:55:26.000 Directed by Mike Joyner.

00:55:28.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:55:29.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:55:32.000 Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.

00:55:34.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

00:55:36.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

00:55:38.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

00:55:40.000 Edited by Adam Sajovic.

00:55:42.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:55:43.000 Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

00:55:45.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:55:47.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:55:49.000 You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.

00:55:53.000 I think there are enough of those already out there.

00:55:55.000 We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.

00:56:00.000 So my main focuses are life, family, faith.

00:56:04.000 Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 20, 2020

Lockdown Mayhem | Ep. 976

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