The Ben Shapiro Show - The New Private Space Race Is Awesome | Ep. 1301

00:00:00.000 Jeff Bezos travels to space, and redistributionists are fighting mad about it.

00:00:04.000 Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci go to war, and lockdown advocates are eager to stymie freedom thanks to the Delta variant.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:16.000 Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:19.000 Don't let Big Tech track what you do.

00:00:20.000 Anonymize your web browsing at expressvpn.com slash Ben.

00:00:23.000 Speaking of which, the last thing you want is other people monitoring what you do.

00:00:28.000 Let's say that you're a proud gun owner and you want to talk on social media about the right to bear arms.

00:00:31.000 Well, chances are that your post will probably be flagged by a content moderator and that could end up being funneled over to the government.

00:00:37.000 To fight back against having your voice censored by both Big Tech and Big Government, I recommend ExpressVPN.

00:00:42.000 See the problem with Big Tech?

00:00:43.000 Not only do they attempt to censor you, they also track what you do online, what you're searching for, the videos you watch, everything you click.

00:00:48.000 They can then match your activity to your true identity using your device's unique IP address.

00:00:53.000 When I use ExpressVPN, they can't see my IP address at all.

00:00:56.000 My identity is anonymized by a secure VPN server.

00:00:58.000 Plus, ExpressVPN encrypts 100% of my internet data for protection from hackers and eavesdroppers.

00:01:04.000 ExpressVPN is by far the best VPN I have tried.

00:01:06.000 It is the Number one, VPN.

00:01:09.000 As rated by CNET and WIRED and countless other tech publications, what I love most about ExpressVPN, it couldn't be easier to use.

00:01:14.000 The app has one button, you tap it, and now you are protected.

00:01:16.000 It is indeed that simple.

00:01:18.000 So, stop letting big tech and big government censor and track you.

00:01:21.000 Defend your rights.

00:01:22.000 Protect yourself at expressvpn.com slash ben.

00:01:25.000 That's EXPRESSVPN.COM to get three months for free.

00:01:29.000 EXPRESSVPN.COM to learn more.

00:01:32.000 Alrighty, so yesterday, something very cool happened to Jeff Bezos, who of course is the owner of Amazon, founder of Amazon.

00:01:39.000 He went up into space.

00:01:40.000 It's a very, very cool thing, right?

00:01:42.000 This is a unique moment in human history when we have moved beyond simple governments taking human beings to space.

00:01:49.000 We now have two separate billionaires in the past two weeks who have gone into either very, very low space or into slightly higher space.

00:01:56.000 And Elon Musk is planning to go into full orbit.

00:01:59.000 And the idea here is to eventually privatize space travel, which would be super duper cool.

00:02:03.000 I mean, that's a really neat thing.

00:02:04.000 Here's a little bit of the video of Blue Origin.

00:02:07.000 This is the Jeff Bezos rocket firing him and a couple of friends into space.

00:02:14.000 Check the plates out.

00:02:19.000 You can see the Dr. Evil-style phallic rocket flying directly up into space. 0.62

00:02:24.000 It would have been good aesthetically if they had made some changes, but there it is.

00:02:28.000 It's flying into space.

00:02:29.000 And that is pretty cool.

00:02:30.000 I mean, that is a human being who has a lot of money at stake, as well as his life, going into space as a civilian.

00:02:38.000 And the idea here is going to be to lower the price of space travel down dramatically.

00:02:43.000 And that actually is what is likely to happen here.

00:02:46.000 According to Reason.com, there's every reason to believe the democratization of space travel is upon us.

00:02:51.000 Bezos, Branson, Elon Musk have already delivered on that promise in other sectors, unless the government manages to screw things up.

00:02:57.000 Following the pattern of commercial air travel in the 20th century, a novelty for billionaires today may well be accessible to the ordinary rich and then to the middle class soon enough.

00:03:04.000 Also, the billionaires say they are taking a long-term view.

00:03:07.000 One day, the capacity to get off the planet cheaply and at scale could be humanity's salvation.

00:03:11.000 But It's not just what they want or what they envision that matters.

00:03:14.000 We'll figure out, as the market evolves, exactly what is important about all of this.

00:03:19.000 I know that people from SpaceX are openly talking about the idea of building a moon base to mine the moon for resources by the end of the decade, which is really super cool stuff.

00:03:27.000 By the way, they've already driven down the cost of getting a kilogram into low Earth orbit by 44-fold because they're building a competitive industry.

00:03:34.000 Where companies are actually competing to lower the cost on getting things into space.

00:03:38.000 And that does matter for even things as convenient as your cell phone coverage, satellite coverage.

00:03:42.000 If you can get satellites into space more cheaply, this is going to bring down prices for a lot of technologies here on Earth.

00:03:48.000 One thing that Bezos was suggesting was the ability to essentially fire pollution off Earth.

00:03:53.000 Right?

00:03:53.000 If there are heavy industries that produce, for example, nuclear waste, and you have no place to put that, could you actually just throw that off into space?

00:04:01.000 It doesn't really matter, in other words, who gets to space first.

00:04:04.000 What does matter is that we are creating a very cool, competitive industry here, and we are doing it with private dollars, which really does matter.

00:04:12.000 Now, this doesn't mean that the left isn't mad about all this.

00:04:14.000 The left is super mad about all of this, because according to the left, all wealth is collectively owned.

00:04:19.000 So you have Bernie Sanders, for example, tweeting out about this.

00:04:24.000 He tweeted, quote, Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck.

00:04:29.000 People are struggling to feed themselves, struggling to see a doctor.

00:04:32.000 But hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space.

00:04:35.000 Yes, it's time to tax the millionaires.

00:04:37.000 Okay, so first of all, all net taxes in the United States, all net taxes in the United States after transfer of government benefits come from people who are very wealthy.

00:04:48.000 All of them.

00:04:49.000 Not some of them.

00:04:50.000 All of them.

00:04:51.000 The notion that people at the top end of the income bracket are not paying their quote-unquote fair share is just a lie. 0.92

00:04:56.000 It is an overt and silly lie.

00:04:57.000 And the reality is that if Bernie Sanders really wanted to pay for his vast blowout social programs, he would have to tax people at the same rates that they tax people in the Scandinavian countries he so loves, which means radically increasing taxes on the middle class.

00:05:09.000 Which, by the way, Bernie Sanders is not averse to doing.

00:05:11.000 But, Jeff Bezos pays a lot of taxes, he spends a lot of money paying a lot of taxes, and him using his wealth in order to foster a brand new industry is actually really cool.

00:05:20.000 Because here is the alternative.

00:05:22.000 We could, as a country, spend vastly more money than Jeff Bezos just spent in order to do the exact same kind of stuff by siphoning away your taxpayer dollars.

00:05:30.000 How much money did it cost you to send Jeff Bezos to space?

00:05:34.000 The answer is, it cost you no money.

00:05:36.000 You bought products from Amazon.

00:05:38.000 You subscribed to Amazon Prime.

00:05:39.000 In return, you got value.

00:05:41.000 Then, he used the profit that he derived from that to do something cool.

00:05:44.000 That's number one, none of your business.

00:05:46.000 But number two, something that actually does benefit humanity.

00:05:48.000 I've said this over and over and over.

00:05:49.000 Bill Gates has the Bill Gates Foundation.

00:05:51.000 He gives away hundreds of millions of dollars.

00:05:53.000 Jeff Bezos, yesterday, gave away like $200 million.

00:05:57.000 He has done more good for the world in building Amazon than in any of the charity that he just gave.

00:06:02.000 The reality is that in a free functioning marketplace, the stuff that we do together, namely the transactions that we engage in consensually, those are much more beneficial to us and to the world at large than people simply signing checks, which is something the left simply can't fathom.

00:06:17.000 There was Jeff Bezos yesterday saying this in maybe the most awkward possible way.

00:06:21.000 He sort of suggested that everybody else was paying for his flight to space.

00:06:24.000 In one sense, this is right.

00:06:25.000 In one sense, this is just a complete misspeak.

00:06:29.000 I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon.

00:06:34.000 Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this.

00:06:38.000 So seriously, for every Amazon customer out there, and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart, very much.

00:06:47.000 It's very appreciated.

00:06:48.000 Okay, in reality, did they actually pay for him to go to space?

00:06:50.000 Only in the sense that when you buy something at the grocery store, you paid for the grocery store owner's car.

00:06:55.000 Right?

00:06:56.000 They didn't pay for him to go to space.

00:06:57.000 It wasn't like he just seized their cash and then used it to go to space.

00:07:00.000 He actually paid them a salary.

00:07:02.000 The money from the Amazon employees only came from the extra productivity that they create because he is taking the risk of paying them.

00:07:09.000 But because people don't understand economics, this means that for some odd reason they have a tendency to trust the federal government when they should not.

00:07:16.000 The reality is that we should be trusting private industry to do all the things that make life better because historically it is private industry that has made life better, not really government.

00:07:24.000 Governments have existed since time immemorial.

00:07:27.000 Governments all over planet Earth have existed forever.

00:07:30.000 The question is not whether government exists or whether government decides to throw bread at the people as they did in ancient Rome.

00:07:35.000 The question is really whether there are industries that develop an economy strong enough to actually make products and services that are better.

00:07:43.000 One of the great ironies of people like Bernie Sanders complaining about very rich people spending their money to go to space is that Bernie Sanders is very much in favor of the fact that the federal government has now seized and siphoned away $22 trillion in wealth over the course of the last 50 years in order to reduce the poverty rate in the United States by about zero.

00:08:00.000 That doesn't bother him at all, because of course it is the high-minded use of the money that Bernie Sanders cares about.

00:08:05.000 More importantly, it's people like Bernie Sanders controlling the flow of the money that Bernie Sanders cares about.

00:08:09.000 But the ancillary benefits of market transactions that make the world better?

00:08:13.000 That's the stuff we should be focusing on.

00:08:15.000 We should want more of this, not less of this.

00:08:18.000 If you ever want to be able to travel to space, it ain't gonna be because the federal government makes that possible.

00:08:23.000 It is truly incredible that the same people who are complaining about Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos spending their own money to go to space, and Elon Musk building a space industry, those same people are like, you know what we should do technologically?

00:08:34.000 If I had your money, you know what I'd do?

00:08:35.000 I'd build a high-speed rail!

00:08:37.000 Mm-hmm!

00:08:38.000 Monorail!

00:08:39.000 Okay, so who do I trust?

00:08:40.000 The monorail gang over here?

00:08:41.000 The people who love Amtrak and just want to spend more money on higher-speed Amtrak because we must have high-speed rail?

00:08:47.000 A full-on 19th century technology?

00:08:49.000 You know, from 250 years ago, or should we, you know, maybe focus in on the new technologies, and more importantly, allow people to spend their own private wealth on that?

00:09:00.000 I mean, it's the coolest thing ever.

00:09:01.000 It is excellent the private industry has decided to advance science and advance the possibilities of humankind this way, and that you don't have to pay for it.

00:09:11.000 That's pretty damned awesome.

00:09:14.000 Again, people who value government over private industry simply don't understand either government or private industry.

00:09:18.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

00:09:19.000 First, let's talk about your sleep quality.

00:09:21.000 So, if you want a good sleep at night, it is not just your mattress, it's not just the temperature in your room, it is your sheet quality.

00:09:27.000 So, I know that you probably just went down to your local store and you picked up whatever is the highest thread count.

00:09:32.000 Very bad way of shopping for sheets.

00:09:33.000 The reality is what you need are bull and branch sheets.

00:09:36.000 Experience uncompromising comfort with the best-selling 100% organic cotton signature hemmed sheets.

00:09:42.000 The Cloudweight Super Soft Satine Weave gets softer with every single wash, actually gets better over time.

00:09:47.000 It's crafted to the highest standards and attention to detail from sourcing to packaging.

00:09:50.000 It's the perfect balance of weight and breathability to pamper warm or cool sleepers through any season.

00:09:55.000 Give your bed the White House treatment with sheets that three presidents have fallen in love with.

00:09:58.000 I love them as well.

00:10:00.000 In fact, I like Bull & Branch sheets so much, it's pretty much all I sleep on.

00:10:03.000 Bull & Branch is dedicated to quality at every single step.

00:10:05.000 Sheets are designed and manufactured for maximum comfort and durability, no cutting corners, no middlemen between you and Bull & Branch, so you get luxury quality for the very fairest price.

00:10:14.000 To experience an entirely new standard of comfort, visit bullandbranch.com.

00:10:17.000 Get 15% off your first set of sheets with promo code SHAPIRO.

00:10:20.000 That is B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H dot com, promo code SHAPIRO, bullandbranch.com, promo code SHAPIRO.

00:10:26.000 So one of the great things about private industry handling space travel is that you don't end up with the guns versus butter discussions that you have to have at the governmental level.

00:10:34.000 After the United States sent a man to the moon in 1969, we basically started cutting the space program right after that because there were a bunch of people on the left who said, you know what?

00:10:43.000 We don't need to go to the moon anymore.

00:10:44.000 There's no purpose.

00:10:45.000 What do we care about space?

00:10:46.000 We have enough problems here at home.

00:10:48.000 Well, when you have one taxpayer dollar to spend and you have to decide whether to buy off constituents or whether to advance science via NASA, usually it's a pretty easy call for members of the political class.

00:10:58.000 But the nice thing about private industry is you don't control it.

00:11:00.000 So if they decide to go do something uber cool with regard to technology, whether it is developing cell phones, forwarding the internet, or going to space, that is a zero cost to you thing.

00:11:11.000 It is a value add.

00:11:12.000 And the fact that people fail to understand this is beyond me.

00:11:15.000 Understand that taxes are a way of siphoning away from people who are not harming you and are in fact helping you with their developments of technology toward people who simply want to buy votes with your cash.

00:11:27.000 This should be your first suspicion when you hear people like Bernie Sanders shout about taxing the billionaires.

00:11:31.000 Who spends the money better, Jeff Bezos or Bernie Sanders who's never run a popsicle stand?

00:11:36.000 Who do you think is going to be forwarding the interests of better products and better services?

00:11:41.000 Jeff Bezos, who literally has provided millions of jobs across the globe and provided a better life for hundreds of millions of people.

00:11:48.000 I mean, I use Amazon every day.

00:11:50.000 I'm sure so do you.

00:11:51.000 Who do you think is going to better your life more?

00:11:53.000 Jeff Bezos with money or Bernie Sanders with money?

00:11:57.000 Whose entire history of spending money comes down to buying lake houses with your taxpayer dollars.

00:12:02.000 Who do you think? 0.99

00:12:04.000 Honestly, I'm constantly shocked at the fact that all these people who yell at billionaires and millionaires, they think that the people who are best positioned to control the money are a bunch of morons who have never run a business. 1.00

00:12:16.000 It's beyond me. 0.99

00:12:17.000 I wouldn't even trust a businessman to run a business where he has no level of expertise.

00:12:22.000 So you're trusting people who have never run a business at all to handle your money and determine where that money is going to go.

00:12:29.000 When you siphon money away from the private sector and into the public sector, it becomes less efficient.

00:12:33.000 When you take money away from people who are entrepreneurial and you put it in the hands of people whose sole job it is to buy off constituents and to create particular dependent classes...

00:12:43.000 The money is just gone.

00:12:45.000 This is why we have seen slow growth in the United States, historically speaking.

00:12:48.000 When you regulate business, when you take money away from business, this is why we are going to see after all of this inflationary growth, after we see Joe Biden blow out trillions of dollars, after we see the regulatory schemes he wants to put in place, this is why even Joe Biden is predicting the United States for the next decade is going to grow at below a 2% GDP rate.

00:13:07.000 And yet, Joe Biden's solution to that, take more money out of the private sector.

00:13:11.000 They support asking the wealthiest 1% of Americans, of corporate America, not to pay more than it should.

00:13:17.000 Just begin to pay their fair share.

00:13:18.000 Just step up a little bit.

00:13:20.000 The idea that 50 of the largest corporations in America pay no tax?

00:13:26.000 I think people should be able to be millionaires and billionaires if they have the ideas, but Lord's sake, the idea, let's start paying your fair share.

00:13:36.000 Again, it's just a lie that they're not paying their fair share.

00:13:38.000 And number two, it's not about who's paying.

00:13:40.000 It just demonstrates, really, that in the end, democratic policy is not, it really is not about forwarding any sort of collective good.

00:13:48.000 It is about punishing people who earn well.

00:13:49.000 I mean, Barack Obama made this perfectly clear in 2008.

00:13:51.000 He was running for president.

00:13:53.000 He was specifically asked, if raising the capital gains tax rate lowers the amount of government revenue that is brought in because people invest less, are you still for it?

00:14:02.000 And he said, yes, for purposes of fairness.

00:14:05.000 It is a childish mentality when it comes to economics.

00:14:08.000 It's a childish mentality when it comes to life.

00:14:10.000 People who have more money than you are not worse people than you, and you are not entitled to their money.

00:14:15.000 Most of us, in fact, will spend our lives in different income brackets.

00:14:19.000 Most of us will spend our lives in the bottom income bracket and then the middle income bracket, maybe the top income bracket, maybe back to the middle income bracket.

00:14:24.000 Year on year, our incomes differ pretty radically.

00:14:27.000 In fact, if you want to look at the factor that plays most into wealth aggregation, it's age.

00:14:33.000 People get wealthier as they get older because they have more asset bases.

00:14:36.000 They've spent more years in the workforce.

00:14:38.000 And yet the notion seems to be from the left that when billionaires spend monies in ways that you don't like, you should have control over that.

00:14:45.000 If Matthew Miller, who is an MSNBC analyst, Saying, quote, watching NASA takeoffs when I was a kid was such a moment of national pride and unity, having them replaced by billionaire vanity flights is one of the more depressing touchstones of this era. 0.99

00:14:57.000 This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

00:15:00.000 So you're more proud when the government spends a bunch of your money to send people to space than when you get to watch an American who built an American company, and in the process built literally hundreds of thousands of American jobs, use that money in order to do the same thing that NASA did except cheaper. 1.00

00:15:14.000 This is what pisses you off.

00:15:16.000 Truly amazing stuff.

00:15:18.000 Because honestly, I think in the end, what so many people want is government control.

00:15:23.000 It's the government control is the excuse.

00:15:24.000 It is not that they want government control because they want a better life.

00:15:27.000 It is not that they want government control because they feel that billionaires are doing something nefarious with their wealth.

00:15:32.000 There's nothing nefarious about going to space.

00:15:34.000 They want government control because they believe that the government will club the people they want clubbed.

00:15:40.000 They believe that the government will give them the things that they want.

00:15:44.000 The government will do their bidding.

00:15:47.000 It's pretty insane.

00:15:48.000 It really is.

00:15:50.000 And this is why you're seeing a widespread celebration, for example, of more and more government dependency.

00:15:56.000 You're seeing a new perspective on the left these days.

00:15:57.000 The new perspective on the left is that inflation of the economy is good.

00:16:01.000 That labor shortages are actually good.

00:16:04.000 Because it's good that we're paying people to stay home.

00:16:07.000 After all, why should people have to work?

00:16:10.000 After all, why shouldn't corporations be punished by the government for no apparent reason?

00:16:15.000 Lowering productivity, increasing prices.

00:16:18.000 Why would that be bad?

00:16:20.000 You know, it's good that we're inflating the currency because actually, it's now creating the incentive for people to work less.

00:16:28.000 There was an old bumper sticker that used to be on a lot of cars back in the 1980s.

00:16:30.000 It said, work harder.

00:16:31.000 Millions on welfare depend on you.

00:16:34.000 That sort of moved beyond being a cynical bumper sticker and now has become almost a democratic left wing slogan.

00:16:40.000 Bryce Covert, who is an independent journalist, who has a piece of the New York Times titled, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is not working for us.

00:16:49.000 This doesn't mean we should work until we can afford not to work, it means the government should pay us not to work.

00:16:55.000 In truth, the debate over the return to the office is fraught.

00:16:57.000 Employers are used to being able to dictate when and where employees work, but we have now discovered a lot of work can be done at odd hours, between remote school lessons and from home offices, or even the comfort of one's bed.

00:17:07.000 So now, there's a tense push and pull over when and how much work people should start commuting, and how much power over the question employees can exert.

00:17:14.000 Everyone is focused on how we will make work work after such a severe shock to the system for how things used to get done.

00:17:19.000 But the ultimate answer won't be found in hybrid remote and in-person offices or even in letting employees shift around their hours.

00:17:26.000 The way to make work work is to cut it back.

00:17:29.000 So your solution in the middle of a labor shortage is people should work less.

00:17:35.000 Yes, this is going to make life better for everybody.

00:17:37.000 When a country becomes rich enough, there's a simple tendency for a lot of people to say, OK, you know what?

00:17:41.000 We're all rich enough.

00:17:41.000 Let's start redistributing the wealth.

00:17:44.000 We're rich enough.

00:17:44.000 We don't need any more growth.

00:17:45.000 We don't need better products.

00:17:46.000 We don't need better services.

00:17:47.000 You know, we'll just stagnate the economy and we'll just pass the money around.

00:17:50.000 The problem is you're either moving forward or you're moving backward when it comes to an economy.

00:17:54.000 Economies that stagnate fall back because there are competitors in the world and those competitors are not worried about working 40 hours a week.

00:18:01.000 Those competitors have their people working 50 hours a week.

00:18:04.000 It turns out that in a globally competitive economy, you will not continue to earn the same pay for your job, working 36 hours a week as you would working 40 hours a week, obviously.

00:18:15.000 But the notion is that the government should really continue to push people to work less.

00:18:19.000 Again, this is what's amazing.

00:18:21.000 They're siphoning money away.

00:18:22.000 They're taking control away from people in the private sector engaging in involuntary transactions.

00:18:28.000 And they're moving it over to government.

00:18:30.000 That is the goal.

00:18:30.000 And they'll do it indirectly by inflating the currency and paying people to stay home.

00:18:35.000 Says the New York Times columnist, there's a class divide in overwork in the United States.

00:18:39.000 The demand to spend 60 hours in an office is one that depletes the lives of professional, higher-paid workers.

00:18:44.000 What would appear to be an opposite problem plagues those at the lower end of the wage scale.

00:18:48.000 In 2016, about one-tenth of American workers were working part-time but trying to get more hours.

00:18:52.000 Despite current hand-wringing that these workers are refusing to come back to the job thanks to lucrative unemployment benefits, the problem is typically the opposite.

00:18:58.000 People who work in retail or fast food often struggle to get enough hours to qualify for benefits and pay their bills just to survive.

00:19:04.000 You know, one of the reasons for that is because people are being paid to stay home.

00:19:08.000 People are being paid a myriad of benefits.

00:19:11.000 And you know what corporations do when they see that you're being paid a bunch of benefits?

00:19:14.000 They lower their wages because you're getting paid from another source.

00:19:17.000 This is not hard stuff, economically speaking.

00:19:20.000 It is not difficult to understand.

00:19:22.000 If everyone worked less, says this New York Times columnist, it would be easier to spread the work out evenly to more people.

00:19:28.000 If white-collar professionals were no longer expected or required to log 60 hours a week but 30, that would be a whole extra job for someone else.

00:19:36.000 No, it wouldn't.

00:19:37.000 Because you know why that company can afford to pay other workers?

00:19:41.000 Because somebody's working 60 hours a week and generating productivity.

00:19:45.000 Also, jobs are not fungible.

00:19:46.000 Some people are better at them and some people are worse at them. 0.99

00:19:49.000 But this is what happens when you have bureaucratically minded idiots attempting to determine who should work and who should not. 0.98

00:19:55.000 And the predictable end result of that is that you have less efficiency in the economy, less cool stuff. 0.98

00:20:02.000 Really, people need to understand, here's the way the basic economics works.

00:20:06.000 People who create new innovation, people who take risks, people who spend their own money taking those risks to produce new goods and services in ways people have not thought of it before, those are the people who forward economies.

00:20:17.000 If it were up to government, all you would get is slightly better versions, maybe, maybe, over time, of an old crappy mousetrap.

00:20:25.000 Henry Ford famously said that if it had been up to other people, most people, when he really invented mass production of automobiles in the United States, he said, you know, the difference between what I did and what a lot of other people did is, if it had been up to other people, they would have produced a more efficient horse and buggy.

00:20:43.000 It takes a difference in kind.

00:20:44.000 It takes a different kind of mind to invent things.

00:20:46.000 We used to have respect for inventors.

00:20:48.000 We used to think that what they were doing was actually amazing and cool.

00:20:51.000 We used to idolize those people.

00:20:52.000 Now it seems that the people we idolize are the people who seize wealth from those people and punish those people and treat those people as though they are somehow expropriating wealth rather than creating it.

00:21:03.000 Which is totally insane and counterproductive and obviously makes life worse for millions of people the world over.

00:21:09.000 So, frankly, I think we should be celebrating the fact that Jeff Bezos went to space yesterday.

00:21:13.000 I think we should be celebrating the fact that Richard Branson went to space.

00:21:16.000 I'd love to fly to space at some point, and the only way that's going to happen is not by some government program.

00:21:20.000 The only way that's going to happen is if these three people continue to compete at high levels and continue to bring the price down on this sort of stuff.

00:21:28.000 That's when you're going to have the opportunity to fly to space.

00:21:31.000 Which, by the way, could actually wildly reduce the time that you have to travel, for example, across the planet.

00:21:37.000 It could wildly reduce the prices that you have on other products.

00:21:41.000 Space is a resource.

00:21:43.000 The fact that Americans are typically leading that resource race is a very, very good thing. 0.94

00:21:48.000 And the fact that you don't have to spend money on it is an unabashedly good thing.

00:21:52.000 So I'm, if you couldn't tell, I'm pretty enthusiastic about all of this and I think that everyone should be enthusiastic as well.

00:21:58.000 It's a story of American exceptionalism that we are able to produce so much wealth in this country via products and services that people voluntarily want to buy that somebody can then take that and then do something as cool as going to space and reopening an entire industry that was basically moribund for the last couple of decades.

00:22:14.000 Pretty impressive stuff.

00:22:17.000 Yesterday, there was this big exchange between Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci.

00:22:22.000 The left has declared that Anthony Fauci won this exchange, and the right has declared that Rand Paul won this exchange.

00:22:29.000 The entire exchange is over the question of whether the National Institutes of Health funded research in Wuhan that could have led to the creation of the COVID-19 virus.

00:22:41.000 It is unclear at this point whether that is true or not.

00:22:45.000 What is true is that the United States, via the NIH, funded a place called EcoHealth Alliance, which then gave a grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:22:55.000 They were supposed to pledge not to engage in gain-of-function research, but the question is, what is gain-of-function research?

00:23:01.000 So there are a couple of different definitions of gain-of-function research that have been utilized.

00:23:05.000 One particular definition suggests that gain-of-function research is a gain-of-function within viruses that already apply to humans.

00:23:11.000 Another definition of gain-of-function research is a gain-of-function for an animal virus that now is made transmissible to humans.

00:23:20.000 That's what this really comes down to, is a little bit of semantic wordplay here.

00:23:24.000 Now, we still don't know that this came from a lab leak.

00:23:27.000 It is very likely at this point that it came from a lab leak, but we still don't know, and we don't know exactly how that virus was developed, so a lot of this is speculative.

00:23:35.000 However, it is certainly worth questioning whether the United States scientific community should have been paying the Wuhan Institute of Virology at all, considering that we have no way of actually seeing what it is that they are doing.

00:23:47.000 So here's Rand Paul and Anthony Fauci going at it yesterday.

00:23:51.000 Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress.

00:23:55.000 Section 1001 of the U.S.

00:23:57.000 Criminal Code creates a felony and a five-year penalty for lying to Congress.

00:24:03.000 On your last trip to our committee on May 11th, you stated that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:24:14.000 And yet, Gain-of-function research was done entirely in the Wuhan Institute by Dr. Xi and was funded by the NIH.

00:24:23.000 I'd like to ask unanimous consent to insert into the record the Wuhan virology paper entitled, Discovery of a Rich Gene Pool of Bat-SARS-Related Coronaviruses.

00:24:33.000 Please deliver a copy of the journal article to Dr. Fauci.

00:24:37.000 In this paper, Dr. Xi credits the NIH and lists the actual number of the grant that she was given by the NIH.

00:24:46.000 In this paper, she took two bat coronavirus genes, spike genes, and combined them with a SARS-related backbone to create new viruses that are not found in nature.

00:24:59.000 These lab-created viruses were then shown to replicate in humans.

00:25:04.000 These experiments combine genetic information from different coronaviruses that infect animals but not humans to create novel artificial viruses able to infect human cells.

00:25:17.000 Viruses that in nature only infect animals were manipulated in the Wuhan lab to gain the function of infecting humans.

00:25:26.000 This research fits the definition of the research that the NIH said was subject to the pause in 2014 to 2017, a pause in funding on gain-of-function.

00:25:38.000 But the NIH failed to recognize this, defines it away, and it never came under any scrutiny.

00:25:46.000 Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist from Rutgers, described this research in Wuhan as, the Wuhan lab used NIH funding to construct novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses Able to infect human cells and laboratory animals.

00:26:04.000 This is high-risk research that creates new potential pandemic pathogens.

00:26:10.000 Potential pandemic pathogens that exist only in the lab, not in nature.

00:26:16.000 This research matches, these are Dr. Ebright's words, this research matches, indeed epitomizes, the definition of gain-of-function research, done entirely in Wuhan.

00:26:28.000 for which there was supposed to be a federal pause.

00:26:31.000 Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan?

00:26:43.000 Senator Paul, I have never lied.

00:26:48.000 The question is pretty simple right there.

00:26:51.000 Okay, so the question is, it's pretty obvious that we did actually fund the Wuhan Institute of Virology, that we said don't engage in gain-of-function research, but that we gamed our own definition of gain-of-function research.

00:27:01.000 And so what you're about to hear Fauci respond is sort of the Bill Clinton, it depends on the definition of the word is, defense.

00:27:08.000 Now, from a legal perspective, He may be right.

00:27:10.000 It may be why he is going to avoid any sort of criminal liability, for example.

00:27:14.000 Because gain-of-function research can be defined in a couple of different ways.

00:27:18.000 On the one hand, you can define gain-of-function research as taking animal viruses and mixing them with other viruses in order to create human pathogens.

00:27:26.000 But there's a definition of gain-of-function research that says really only human viruses that are made more deadly or more transmissible, only that is gain-of-function research.

00:27:34.000 So that's the game that we're now going to play.

00:27:35.000 It's a semantic game, but the underlying facts are really not in dispute.

00:27:38.000 Josh Rogin, who is a columnist for the Washington Post, says Rand Paul is right.

00:27:43.000 The NIH was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, but the NIH pretended it didn't meet their gain-of-function definition to avoid their own oversight mechanism.

00:27:50.000 So here you're going to hear Fauci get very angry and play word games.

00:27:54.000 Here he goes.

00:27:58.000 Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement.

00:28:05.000 This paper that you're referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function.

00:28:17.000 Let me finish.

00:28:17.000 You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans, you're saying that's not gain of function?

00:28:23.000 That is correct.

00:28:24.000 And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly.

00:28:29.000 And I want to say that officially.

00:28:31.000 You do not know what you are talking about.

00:28:34.000 Let's read from the NIH definition of gain of function.

00:28:39.000 This is your definition that you guys wrote.

00:28:42.000 It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain of function.

00:28:50.000 They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increased their transmissibility to humans.

00:28:57.000 How you can say that is not gain of function?

00:28:59.000 It is not.

00:29:00.000 It's a dance and you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic.

00:29:10.000 Well, now you're getting into something.

00:29:12.000 If the point that you are making is that the grant that was funded as a sub-award from EcoHealth to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2, that's where you are getting.

00:29:26.000 Let me finish.

00:29:26.000 We don't know.

00:29:27.000 We don't know if it did come from the lab, but all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab, and there will be responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself.

00:29:37.000 This committee will allow the witness to respond.

00:29:39.000 I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator, because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments, that were given in the annual reports, that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible No one's saying those viruses caused it.

00:30:02.000 No one is alleging that those viruses caused the pandemic.

00:30:05.000 What we're alleging is that gain-of-function research was going on in that lab and NIH funded it.

00:30:10.000 Get away from it.

00:30:12.000 It meets your definition and you are obfuscating the truth.

00:30:15.000 I'm not obfuscating the truth.

00:30:17.000 You are the one.

00:30:19.000 Let me just finish.

00:30:21.000 I want everyone to understand that if you look at those viruses, and that's judged by qualified virologists and evolutionary biologists, Those viruses are molecularly impossible to result in SARS-CoV-2.

00:30:34.000 No one's saying they are.

00:30:35.000 No one's saying those viruses caused the pandemic.

00:30:38.000 We're saying they are gain-of-function viruses because they were animal viruses that became more transmissible in humans, and you funded it.

00:30:45.000 I'll admit the truth.

00:30:47.000 Senator Paul, your time has expired, and I will allow witnesses who come before this committee to respond.

00:30:53.000 And you are implying...

00:30:56.000 That what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals?

00:31:00.000 I totally resent that.

00:31:02.000 And if anybody is lying here, Senator, it is you!

00:31:08.000 Okay, so what are they actually fighting about?

00:31:10.000 What they're actually fighting about is definitions and fungibility of money.

00:31:13.000 So what is gain-of-function research?

00:31:14.000 Rand Paul is saying gain-of-function research is, you take an animal virus, you make it transmissible to humans, that's gain-of-function.

00:31:20.000 Fauci is saying, legally speaking, really it's only if you take a human virus and make it more transmissible or more deadly, that's gain-of-function. 0.98

00:31:26.000 That's a stupid semantic game. 0.77

00:31:28.000 What we care about is whether the United States was in fact funding development of viruses from animals to humans that could have been transmissible and deadly to other humans, right? 0.98

00:31:37.000 Whether you call that gain of function, whether you don't call that gain of function, that is a bad thing for the United States to be doing, especially at an institute where there had been repeated reports of lab leaks, at an institute where the safety concerns were serious, and under the auspices of a government that is fascistic and communist in nature.

00:31:53.000 Okay, that's question number one.

00:31:54.000 Question number two is that the paper that Rand Paul is citing, if you talk about how they've been using animal viruses in order to make them transmissible to humans, that paper uses a specific subset of viruses that it's investigating.

00:32:05.000 And Fauci is saying those viruses in that paper are not COVID-19.

00:32:11.000 The viruses in that paper are molecularly impossible to be COVID-19.

00:32:14.000 And Paul is saying, I'm not saying that the ones in this paper are COVID-19.

00:32:18.000 I am saying this type of research could have created COVID-19, and that could have leaked, and we shouldn't have been funding this institute in the first place.

00:32:27.000 Paul has the better of this argument.

00:32:29.000 That doesn't mean that legal liability is going to be attaching to Anthony Fauci, or that Anthony Fauci is guilty of some sort of perjury, because perjury requires an intent to lie, and it also requires that you be legally untrue.

00:32:29.000 He does.

00:32:41.000 And that's arguable.

00:32:43.000 But again, Fauci's sort of living in this gray space here.

00:32:46.000 What it does mean is that the United States' complicity in working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology could create a significant level of moral culpability for the U.S.

00:32:56.000 government.

00:32:57.000 We should not be working with scientific institutions that run under the auspices of terroristic governments.

00:33:04.000 And I'm sorry, the Chinese government is a terroristic government. 1.00

00:33:07.000 It just took over Hong Kong and is currently arresting editorial members of Apple Daily right now.

00:33:13.000 It is threatening Taiwan. 0.80

00:33:16.000 It is threatening the globe in a wide variety of ways, ranging from internet surveillance, to belt and road connections, to funding of infiltrating groups in the West.

00:33:30.000 This is where Rand Paul is exactly right.

00:33:34.000 And the fact that we aren't willing to look this in the face is pretty ugly.

00:33:38.000 And what this really comes down to in the end is how we see China.

00:33:41.000 And until the United States starts recognizing that China is an enemy, the Chinese government is an enemy, not the Chinese people.

00:33:46.000 The Chinese people have been subjected to tyranny since the rise of Mao.

00:33:50.000 The Chinese government is an enemy to the United States, and funding that enemy and interacting with the enemy of this governmental entity is an insane abdication of responsibility, and that is a bipartisan abdication of responsibility. 0.57

00:34:03.000 It does not live in one party.

00:34:06.000 Okay, meanwhile, The left continues to push a narrative that whatever happens with the rest of this pandemic is now on the right.

00:34:12.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

00:34:13.000 First, how much equity do you have in your home?

00:34:16.000 50 grand?

00:34:16.000 100 grand?

00:34:17.000 More?

00:34:17.000 Cybercrime experts are alerting homeowners.

00:34:19.000 The more equity you have, the greater the chance foreign and domestic criminals will come after you.

00:34:23.000 Home title theft is one of the fastest growing crimes.

00:34:25.000 In fact, Home Title Lock, America's leader in home title protection, is alerting homeowners they could already be a victim and not know it.

00:34:31.000 Here's how it goes down.

00:34:32.000 First, cyber thieves search hundreds of public databases for high equity homes.

00:34:36.000 Next, they pull your home's online title, forge your signature stating you sold your home, and take out loans using your equity.

00:34:41.000 You're not covered by insurance, your bank, or common identity theft programs.

00:34:45.000 You need to protect your most valuable assets.

00:34:47.000 Why would you not protect your home title?

00:34:49.000 I mean, that really is your most valuable asset.

00:34:51.000 Protect your most valuable asset today.

00:34:52.000 Register your address now.

00:34:53.000 See if you're already a victim.

00:34:54.000 Receive a complete title history of your home, a $100 value, free.

00:34:58.000 Go to hometitlelock.com.

00:35:00.000 Again, that is hometitlelock.com.

00:35:03.000 It's something that you don't think about until it happens to you and God forbid somebody's accessing all of the asset value of your home title against you.

00:35:11.000 Don't let that happen.

00:35:12.000 Instead, head on over to HomeTitleLock.com right now and register your address to see if you're already a victim.

00:35:17.000 Get a complete title history of your home for free right now.

00:35:20.000 Alrighty, when it comes to freedom, America is the world's last hope.

00:35:24.000 With lockdown protests getting increasingly violent in London, citizens and business owners facing prison time for disobeying vaccine passport laws in France, it's becoming increasingly clear we have to fight to keep the last free country free.

00:35:35.000 That means standing up to the Biden administration's new call for censorship across all platforms for misinformation.

00:35:40.000 All of this perfectly illustrates what I predicted in my new book, The Authoritarian Moment.

00:35:44.000 It's a really important book.

00:35:46.000 It hits shelves this Tuesday, July 27th.

00:35:49.000 There's a lot happening right now that I predicted.

00:35:51.000 The perversion of science and the use of science as a baton against the American people.

00:35:56.000 The perversion of the educational institutions via things like critical race theory.

00:35:59.000 I talk about all of this in The Authoritarian Moment.

00:36:02.000 How institution by institution, from your company to your kid's school, all of these institutions have been weaponized and militarized against people who dissent.

00:36:10.000 And more importantly, how we stop all of this.

00:36:12.000 Go to dailywire.com slash ben.

00:36:13.000 Order your signed copy today at dailywire.com slash ben.

00:36:17.000 I will be doing a live streamed book signing event next Tuesday.

00:36:20.000 The 27th.

00:36:21.000 Pre-order your signed copy now.

00:36:22.000 When you do, you'll be asked to type in a question at Checkout Ben.

00:36:25.000 Catch Tuesday's live signing.

00:36:26.000 See if I answer your question.

00:36:27.000 Watch me sign your book.

00:36:29.000 Get your copy at dailywire.com slash ben right now.

00:36:33.000 Also, despite NPR's latest hit piece on Daily Wire, where they covered nothing but their own anger and our success as a news organization, the Daily Wire is still going strong.

00:36:42.000 By the way, speaking of which, if you want a 25% discount off your subscription right now at Daily Wire, use code UMAD.

00:36:47.000 Like literally, U-M-A-D.

00:36:49.000 Because the NPR, they are so mad at us.

00:36:51.000 They're mad at us that we exist and that we're successful.

00:36:53.000 They literally wrote a piece trying to quash our traffic on Facebook because they admit, we tell the truth, and we tell you that we're conservative, and they said that's why we should be quashed.

00:37:01.000 Well, the NPR Samira campaign broke the same day we released our brand new podcast Morning Wire.

00:37:06.000 It is already ranked at the top of Apple charts.

00:37:08.000 Our listeners know Morning Wire is a morning podcast that values their time and the truth.

00:37:12.000 Brought to you by Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley and co-host Georgia Howe, Morning Wire will wake you up with the latest developments in politics, sports, culture, and education, all with a heavy emphasis On the facts, it gives you everything you need to know that's going on in the world in like 15 minutes.

00:37:25.000 It's available right now.

00:37:26.000 Subscribe to Morning Wire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and everywhere you listen to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.

00:37:30.000 If you like what you hear, leave a five-star review.

00:37:32.000 Help us keep delivering the news you need to know.

00:37:35.000 You are listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:37:38.000 Meanwhile, the statistics show that we are nearing the end of this pandemic.

00:37:48.000 Okay, realistically speaking, we are nearing the end of this pandemic because the stat that matters is deaths.

00:37:52.000 The stat that does not matter is number of diagnoses.

00:37:55.000 No one cares how many people in the United States, for example, every year are diagnosed with a cold.

00:37:59.000 You only care how many people die from a particular disease.

00:38:02.000 Yesterday in Los Angeles, which is now requiring everybody to mask up indoors, it's a county of 10 million people.

00:38:09.000 10 million.

00:38:09.000 The number of people who died yesterday in Los Angeles or recorded deaths via COVID was four.

00:38:15.000 Four.

00:38:16.000 And this is true, day on day.

00:38:18.000 The average in L.A.

00:38:19.000 county right now is somewhere between two and six deaths.

00:38:23.000 Every day.

00:38:24.000 In a county of 10 million people.

00:38:26.000 There's a solid case that you're probably more likely to get shot in L.A.

00:38:29.000 than you are to die of COVID at this point.

00:38:32.000 Okay, this is madness.

00:38:35.000 And it is just insane.

00:38:36.000 I mean, I talked yesterday about the stats on this thing.

00:38:39.000 The notion that the Delta variant in high vaccination countries is going to shut everything down again. 0.82

00:38:47.000 All that is is a political ploy.

00:38:49.000 And you're seeing people, there are certain people who just love the government being in control.

00:38:52.000 There are certain people who are desperate for the government to be in control.

00:38:57.000 And it's not just in the United States, by the way.

00:38:58.000 There's a piece by a woman named Tanya Gold, a British journalist, writing for the New York Times.

00:39:04.000 England is free and in total chaos.

00:39:08.000 Okay, so says Tanya Gold, quote, England is free.

00:39:10.000 We are told on Monday, the government lifted the country's remaining COVID restrictions on social distancing, on face masks, on numbers for gatherings, the lot, effectively leaving protection from the coronavirus to vaccinations and the goddess of chance.

00:39:21.000 The timing was immaculate.

00:39:22.000 Over the previous week, 332,000 people tested positive for COVID, the most since January, as the Delta variant courses across the country.

00:39:29.000 New COVID-19 cases are expected to rise, perhaps reaching the dizzying figure of 100,000 a day later in the summer.

00:39:35.000 The number of hospitalized much lower than in previous waves of infections because of the vaccination program is steadily increasing.

00:39:41.000 Deaths are creeping up.

00:39:43.000 Okay, now I am looking right now at the number of UK COVID deaths.

00:39:48.000 And you can look at the chart.

00:39:50.000 According to the New York Times, according actually to John Hopkins University, their latest COVID data, July 19th, 2021, the number of deaths recorded in all of the United Kingdom was 19.

00:40:05.000 19.

00:40:06.000 At the height of the pandemic, they were losing somewhere on the order of 1,600 people a day.

00:40:13.000 How?

00:40:14.000 What?

00:40:16.000 1,700 people a day.

00:40:18.000 So we're now losing, in the UK, somewhere between 50 and 100 people a day, it seems like, on average, according to JHU.

00:40:18.000 What?

00:40:28.000 And this is requiring the entire government, like, this means Boris Johnson is bad?

00:40:33.000 Here's the thing.

00:40:35.000 What the elites want you to think the people want is not what the people actually want.

00:40:40.000 Tanya Gold is a perfect example of this. 0.73

00:40:41.000 She says, confined to his countryside residence, Johnson emitted the cracked-upon-hummy, the halting obfuscation that is his trademark because Johnson has to self-isolate because even though he has already had COVID and already he was vaccinated, He was in close contact with his health minister who was double vaccinated and tested positive for COVID on Saturday.

00:41:01.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:41:02.000 If you are double vaccinated and you get COVID, chances are you're not going to get seriously ill and you're not going to die.

00:41:06.000 These vaccines were not designed only to stop you from getting the thing.

00:41:10.000 They're designed to prevent you from getting seriously ill and dying, which is what I care about.

00:41:14.000 If I'm asymptomatic, what the hell do I care whether I'm diagnosed positive with COVID?

00:41:18.000 But, says this columnist, the Act, Johnson's Act, successful for a season is wearing thin.

00:41:23.000 In the first week of July, more than half a million people were contacted by the country's tracking service and told to self-isolate for 10 days, creating chaos for businesses and individuals alike.

00:41:32.000 Mr. Johnson's response was to eerily excuse some key workers from self-isolating.

00:41:37.000 Nevertheless, he said, we do need to stick to the system as is.

00:41:40.000 In Johnson's England, after all, yesterday is a lifetime ago.

00:41:44.000 But, this is the part that's hilarious.

00:41:47.000 Okay, this columnist is really angry at Johnson, saying that Johnson's botching this, there'll be mass death in the streets.

00:41:52.000 The Conservative Party, led by Boris Johnson, now enjoys a massive lead over its opponents.

00:41:59.000 The Conservative lead over the Labour Party in Britain is nine percentage points.

00:42:03.000 Says Tanya Gold, whatever the hair means, Johnson's hair, it's terrifying to think we still do not know.

00:42:08.000 We're likely to have a few more years to scrutinize it.

00:42:11.000 But no matter what Mr. Johnson says, nothing can dispel the sense we are a country in decline, segwaying to crisis.

00:42:17.000 And then it turns into all of these reasons why the government needs to be bigger.

00:42:20.000 And COVID is just an excuse for why the government needs to be bigger.

00:42:22.000 Or maybe, or maybe the vaccines are a medical miracle.

00:42:26.000 And the fact that so many people who are vulnerable have already been vaccinated is good.

00:42:30.000 But it's the feeling of perpetual crisis.

00:42:33.000 On behalf of political polarization that is driving both lack of vaccination and our political polarization.

00:42:39.000 So, for example, you have Jay Inslee as the governor of Washington State.

00:42:43.000 He is not a very good governor.

00:42:45.000 And he says that Trump voters are the bioreactor facility spreading COVID in Washington.

00:42:49.000 Now, here's the question.

00:42:50.000 If you actually wanted to convince Trump voters who are unvaccinated to get vaccinated, what you probably wouldn't do is insult them. 1.00

00:42:57.000 What you wouldn't do is say, you are a rube and a moron. 1.00

00:43:01.000 Get vaccinated. 1.00

00:43:02.000 That is a tactic that never works, ever.

00:43:04.000 As Ross Douthat points out, there are some people who have already had COVID and they actually need some sort of explanation of why they need to have a vaccine.

00:43:13.000 Maybe there are people out there who have serious doubts about the long-term testability, especially given the fact that the FDA still is operating under emergency use authorization for these vaccines.

00:43:23.000 Maybe acknowledging people's fears while suggesting that maybe in your particular case you ought to ask a doctor about your underlying factors and your risk for COVID and then make a rational decision that allows you to advance.

00:43:34.000 Maybe that is the way to approach all this.

00:43:36.000 But no, this isn't about getting people vaccinated.

00:43:38.000 For Democrats, this is no longer about getting people vaccinated.

00:43:40.000 For Democrats, this has turned into a way of, once again, clubbing people who they don't like politically.

00:43:46.000 Because again, you know what the stats show? 0.93

00:43:48.000 You see, Democrats are not yelling at black Americans for not getting vaccinated.

00:43:51.000 The racial group in America least likely to be vaccinated is coincidentally the same racial group in the United States that is most likely to vote Democrat. 0.75

00:43:58.000 Black Americans.

00:44:00.000 You don't see Democrats ripping on them. 0.79

00:44:01.000 So this isn't about whether people are good or bad for vaccinating.

00:44:05.000 It's about whether you're good or bad for liking Trump and not vaccinating.

00:44:09.000 The vaccination is an excuse not to like Republicans.

00:44:11.000 It's not that they don't like Republicans because Republicans won't vaccinate.

00:44:14.000 Here's Jay Inslee doing this routine.

00:44:17.000 You're making a risk for everybody around you when you don't get vaccinated.

00:44:21.000 You're a risk for your spouse, you're a risk for your kids, your grandkids, your parents, your coworkers, because you are a bioreactor facility generating virus and spreading it around, including to kids who can't get vaccinated.

00:44:35.000 I want to reiterate that.

00:44:36.000 If you're a 50 year old man who, you know, voted for Donald Trump and didn't think COVID was a problem and you don't get vaccinated right now, you're a risk to every kid in your city.

00:44:48.000 How are you a risk to every kid in your city?

00:44:50.000 The number of kids total in the United States who have died from COVID is under 340.

00:44:54.000 The number of kids over the past year who have died of pneumonia is over 800.

00:44:59.000 No adult is a risk to every kid in their city.

00:45:01.000 I don't care if you're spewing COVID.

00:45:03.000 The reality is that kids are generally not harmed by the virus on a statistical level.

00:45:08.000 Doesn't mean they can't be on an individual level.

00:45:10.000 But on a statistical level, kids are very unlikely to suffer grave harm from the virus.

00:45:16.000 Which, by the way, is the reason why only 45% of Democrats with kids under 12 intend to vaccinate them as soon as a vaccine is available.

00:45:23.000 45% of Democrats!

00:45:25.000 Because they're not that worried about the kids.

00:45:27.000 Meanwhile, again, you can see the vast disconnect between how Democrats are treated with regard to spreading COVID.

00:45:34.000 And taking the vaccine and how Republicans are treated by the media.

00:45:37.000 Here's Jen Psaki yesterday who refuses to call the Texas delegation, which is now apparently infused with COVID, like everyone on that plane from Texas, the Texas Democrats who fled, they all got COVID apparently.

00:45:47.000 Here's Jen Psaki saying that's not a super spreader event.

00:45:49.000 It's only super spreader when Republicans do it. 0.97

00:45:52.000 More than 10% of the traveling party with these Texas Democrats now claim to have a breakthrough case.

00:45:58.000 Is there any concern that this trip that was intended to advocate for voting rights is now a super spreader event in Washington?

00:46:05.000 Well, I would say that's not a characterization we're making from here.

00:46:09.000 We certainly understand there will be breakthrough cases.

00:46:11.000 Even vaccines that are incredibly effective are not foolproof.

00:46:15.000 They're not 100% effective.

00:46:17.000 We've seen that.

00:46:20.000 Well, it's not a super spreader event, unless they're Republicans.

00:46:24.000 Is this likely to get more people vaccinated, or is this just a political tool for power and fun at this point?

00:46:29.000 Pretty obvious.

00:46:30.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.

00:46:32.000 In the meantime, go check out The Michael Knowles Show.

00:46:34.000 Today, he discusses Twitter suspending Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:46:37.000 You can hear more details about that story over on Michael's show that's available right now.

00:46:41.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:46:41.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:46:42.000 The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:46:43.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Elliot Feld.

00:46:50.000 Executive Producer Jeremy Boring.

00:46:52.000 Our Supervising Producer is Mathis Glover.

00:46:54.000 Production Manager Pavel Lydowsky.

00:46:56.000 Associate Producer Bradford Carrington.

00:46:58.000 Host Producer Justin Barber.

00:47:00.000 The show is edited by Adam Sievitz.

00:47:02.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

00:47:04.000 Hair and Makeup is by Fabiola Cristina.

00:47:06.000 Production Assistant Jessica Kranz.

00:47:08.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:47:10.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2021.

00:47:13.000 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos goes to outer space, Texas Democrats spread the Wu Flu on their private jet booze cruise, and a supermarket magnate warns of 10-14% increases in the cost of groceries by October.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 21, 2021

The New Private Space Race Is Awesome | Ep. 1301

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript