The Ben Shapiro Show - The Woodward Tapes | Ep. 1092

00:00:00.000 Bob Woodward releases a bombshell tape of President Trump talking about downplaying COVID.

00:00:04.000 Democrats ignore their own records to leap on Trump's failures.

00:00:07.000 And politics continue to dominate facts when it comes to COVID.

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

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:25.000 Slash Ben will get to all of the breaking news in just one moment.

00:00:27.000 First, let's talk about the fact there's a lot of uncertainty in the market right now.

00:00:30.000 You may have noticed the stock market moving up and down like a yo-yo.

00:00:34.000 And that is not unexpected.

00:00:35.000 I mean, what we are watching right now is a lot of new data being priced into the system, but times of great volatility, times of Not knowing what to expect.

00:00:42.000 Those are times when you might want to diversify at least a little bit into precious metals.

00:00:44.000 I've been telling you since 2016 to invest at least a little bit of your money in gold.

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00:00:51.000 That was back when gold was $1,300 an ounce.

00:00:53.000 Now it is hovering around historic highs.

00:00:55.000 And look what's coming around the corner.

00:00:56.000 A presidential election.

00:00:57.000 There could be urban unrest.

00:00:59.000 There could be rural unrest.

00:01:00.000 There could be multiple contentious seats in the Senate that could flip. 0.97

00:01:03.000 If Biden loses the election, do you really think the Democrats are going to let it go?

00:01:06.000 If Trump loses the election and it's a narrow, do you think that things are going to go really, really great?

00:01:09.000 Well, now would be a good time to think about that portfolio.

00:01:12.000 If you haven't reached out to Birch Gold, diversify part of your IRA or 401k into a precious metals IRA, or just purchase a little bit of.

00:01:18.000 Okay, so big news of yesterday and into today are the Woodward tapes.

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00:01:37.000 Okay, so big news of yesterday and into today are the Woodward tapes.

00:01:41.000 Bob Woodward has tapes of talking with President Trump.

00:01:43.000 Now, first question.

00:01:45.000 Who in the hell thought it was a good idea for Trump to talk to Bob Woodward?

00:01:49.000 Who in the hell thought that it was a good idea for Trump to ever talk to members of the press?

00:01:52.000 See, Trump has this very bizarre relationship with the press where he really hates them because they mistreat him and because they lie about him, but also he loves them.

00:01:59.000 I mean, really loves them and wants to talk to them all the time.

00:02:03.000 And so this means that the White House press office is basically Woody in Toy Story 4 trying to prevent Forky from throwing himself in the trash.

00:02:10.000 That is every day for the White House press office, because they're out there just trying to message, just trying to get on message about Joe Biden and riots in Kenosha and unrest and the economy teetering. 0.93

00:02:23.000 And there's Trump out there just doing his thing, trying to throw himself in the trash. 0.99

00:02:27.000 Trash! 0.99

00:02:28.000 And just jumping into the trash like Forky from Toy Story 4. 0.98

00:02:30.000 And if you're the White House press office, the comms office, you have to be incredibly frustrated at this point, especially because we are now two months out from an election, and you've got Donald Trump, as it turns out, doing 18 hours, 18 hours of on-the-record interviews with Bob Woodward.

00:02:44.000 Now, I sort of understand the logic, I guess.

00:02:47.000 I guess.

00:02:48.000 In that, Bob Woodward is a pseudo-journalist.

00:02:51.000 When I say pseudo-journalist, I mean that the last several books he's written have come under serious question for decontextualizing comments and then recontextualizing them improperly.

00:02:59.000 And he'll report rumors.

00:03:01.000 He doesn't footnote his stuff.

00:03:03.000 He's sort of famous for this.

00:03:04.000 The Bob Woodward's books are, you know, seen as sort of inside stories of what's going on inside various administrations.

00:03:10.000 But as Matthew Walter put it over at The Week, the problem is that he'll just print rumor when he can't get the fact.

00:03:16.000 He will print second-hand stories.

00:03:17.000 And this is something Bob Woodward is famous for.

00:03:19.000 So that means that if you want to stop him from doing that, you give him first-hand sourcing.

00:03:22.000 Well, there's only one problem with that, which is that it doesn't dissuade him from violating things like on-the-record or off-the-record or on-background versus on-the-record.

00:03:30.000 He'll just do whatever he wants to do.

00:03:32.000 And letting the fox into the hen house is a really bad idea, particularly with President Trump, who is fond of overstating things and fond of saying silly things. 0.60

00:03:40.000 He is a real estate magnate with a gift for puffery.

00:03:43.000 In the real estate business, you're constantly puffing up the real estate.

00:03:45.000 Isn't this the most beautiful island kitchen?

00:03:48.000 Look at the open floor plan.

00:03:49.000 My God, I've never seen anything... Puffery is the nature of real estate, and Donald Trump is the nature of puffery.

00:03:54.000 So, Donald Trump has a couple of personality flaws that come out in nearly every interview.

00:04:00.000 And they can make for a very toxic combination.

00:04:02.000 Personality flaw number one, the man has never admitted he was wrong ever.

00:04:06.000 He is never wrong.

00:04:07.000 According to Donald Trump, he has never had reason to repent before God.

00:04:09.000 According to Donald Trump, he has never done a thing in his entire career that is wrong.

00:04:13.000 And personality flaw number two, he engages in puffery.

00:04:16.000 So everything is superlative.

00:04:17.000 Is it the worst or the best?

00:04:19.000 Is it spectacular or unbelievable or garbage? 0.99

00:04:23.000 There is no in-between for President Trump. 0.97

00:04:25.000 When you combine those two personality flaws, one, he's never done anything wrong, with two, his penchant for puffery, you end up with some very unfortunate quotes about COVID.

00:04:33.000 And that is what happened here with regard to Bob Woodward's book.

00:04:37.000 So there are two allegations that put together make for some toxic politics for Trump.

00:04:42.000 Allegation number one is one that Woodward puts in the book.

00:04:45.000 Apparently, he spoke with Trump on February 7th.

00:04:48.000 His new book is titled Rage, of course.

00:04:50.000 Apparently, Trump said to Woodward about COVID, quote, This is deadly stuff.

00:04:55.000 In a series of interviews with Woodward, said CNN, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known.

00:05:02.000 Pretty amazing, Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus is maybe five times more deadly than the flu.

00:05:08.000 Apparently, he also suggested that the virus was airborne at the time.

00:05:13.000 Now, here is the thing about all the stuff that Trump was saying on February 7th.

00:05:18.000 If Trump had come out publicly and said that the virus was airborne on February 7th, everybody rightly would have said that this was not actually supremely telling.

00:05:29.000 Because Donald Trump has said a lot of things about COVID, many of which are inaccurate.

00:05:33.000 Okay, it turns out that the WHO did not declare that the virus was airborne until July.

00:05:37.000 So if Trump had come out in February, like the beginning of February, and he said, okay, we need to shut down all of American society, the virus is airborne.

00:05:43.000 How many people do you think would have gone along with that?

00:05:45.000 The answer, pretty obviously, is zero, since about one week prior, the Democratic Party had opposed Trump even shutting down some travel from China.

00:05:53.000 When you hear Democrats proclaim they would have done something very, very differently in February, the answer is no, you wouldn't have.

00:05:57.000 Nancy Pelosi was out in Chinatown encouraging people to come on down February 24th.

00:06:01.000 So we'll get to the Democratic response to all this in just one second.

00:06:04.000 OK, so he is on tape with Woodward on February 7th, where he said that the virus is dangerous and that it is airborne and that it could kill a lot of people.

00:06:15.000 Now, again, How much of that is Trump conveying what he actually knew and how much of that is Trump misconveying what he had heard?

00:06:23.000 We've seen enough of his press conferences to know that he was constantly giving either best case or worst case scenario and nothing in between.

00:06:28.000 There was never any moderate rhetoric coming from Trump about the virus.

00:06:33.000 But he did on February 7th apparently say that it was airborne and Woodward says this was a damning missed opportunity for Trump to reset the leadership clock after he was told this was a once in a lifetime health emergency.

00:06:44.000 During a pre-Super Bowl interview on Fox News February 2nd, Trump said we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.

00:06:49.000 And two days later during the State of the Union, Trump made only a passing reference to the virus.

00:06:52.000 He promised, quote, my administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.

00:06:58.000 Okay, and then there is another tape that emerged a little bit later on.

00:07:02.000 This would be March 19th.

00:07:04.000 And in this later tape, Trump was asked by Woodward what changed between, you know, February and March where he really started to ramp up the rhetoric.

00:07:10.000 Now, the normal answer here is the information changed.

00:07:13.000 That is the normal answer.

00:07:13.000 Right?

00:07:14.000 Back in February, we had basically zero deaths.

00:07:16.000 Not basically.

00:07:17.000 We had zero identified deaths from COVID in the United States in February at that point.

00:07:21.000 It's only later we realized that we may have had some deaths from COVID that we hadn't properly identified.

00:07:25.000 But there were double-digit cases in the United States as of February.

00:07:29.000 There were very low double-digit deaths as of early March.

00:07:31.000 All Trump had to say here is, we got new information, and therefore I changed my feelings about the virus.

00:07:38.000 But again, go back to those two personality flaws.

00:07:40.000 Trump has never been wrong, according to Trump.

00:07:42.000 And two, everything is either the worst or the best.

00:07:44.000 Well, that means that what you're about to hear him say fits well within his personality foibles.

00:07:48.000 One, he has never been wrong at any point in time.

00:07:50.000 He is omniscient and therefore knew from the very beginning how deadly this virus was, which leads him to have to now explain, OK, if you knew it was that deadly, then why exactly didn't you talk about it?

00:07:58.000 Which leads him to say, well, the reason I didn't talk about it is because I didn't want to panic everybody, which is a pretty weak excuse.

00:08:03.000 I mean, honestly, if you knew that things were super duper bad back in February, you should have said so, because Americans ought to be trusted with information.

00:08:10.000 I don't care if you're a Democrat president or Republican president.

00:08:13.000 If you know really bad information that affects Americans, you have a responsibility to pass that along to Americans.

00:08:18.000 It is not your job to tell us whether or not to panic.

00:08:21.000 It is your job to tell us exactly what we are needing to know so we can make our own risk assessments.

00:08:27.000 That's why if you look at the actual charts on human movements in the United States, you'll see that people started to shut down their own travel plans before all of the government lockdowns took place.

00:08:27.000 Right?

00:08:36.000 Okay, so anyway, those two personality foibles combined to give you this tape, which will be used by Democrats in every attack ad from now until the election.

00:08:45.000 Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob.

00:08:47.000 Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out.

00:08:51.000 It's not just old people.

00:08:54.000 It's plenty of young people.

00:08:56.000 So give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci or somebody who kind of It caused a pivot in your mind because it's clear just from what's on the public record that you went through a pivot on this to, oh my God, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.

00:09:25.000 Well, I think, Bob, really, to be honest with you, I wanted to Uh, I wanted to always play it down.

00:09:33.000 I still like playing it down.

00:09:34.000 Yes, sir.

00:09:35.000 Because I don't want to create a panic.

00:09:38.000 Right.

00:09:38.000 Okay, so that is the last quote, right?

00:09:40.000 I always want to play it down.

00:09:41.000 I still like playing it down.

00:09:42.000 That is going to be the poll quote.

00:09:43.000 They'll ignore the last part where he justifies it by saying that he didn't want to create a panic.

00:09:46.000 By the way, that sort of rationale has been used also by Dr. Anthony Fauci when he said that people shouldn't mask because he didn't want to create a run on the masks.

00:09:53.000 That logic was also used by Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, as we will see.

00:09:57.000 Suffice it to say that the combo of those two factors, one, Trump saying to Woodward in early February that he had talked to Xi Jinping, and quote, it goes through the air.

00:10:05.000 It's always tougher than the touch.

00:10:06.000 You don't have to touch things, right?

00:10:07.000 But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed.

00:10:09.000 And so that's a very tricky one.

00:10:10.000 That's a delicate one.

00:10:11.000 It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.

00:10:14.000 Right, that combined with the March 19th statement that he had purposely downplayed the virus is going to lead the Democrats to say Trump knew and he didn't do anything about it and he was lying to us about this whole thing the entire time and now he's admitted that he was downplaying the virus.

00:10:27.000 Okay, so I think a couple things can be true.

00:10:29.000 One, if Trump had come out in early February and said this thing is airborne, there was not the scientific proof to back that up.

00:10:33.000 Again, the WHO only declared this thing airborne in July.

00:10:35.000 Okay, so it would have been crazy for Trump to say that in early February and it is crazy, frankly, for him to say it to Bob Woodward.

00:10:41.000 He shouldn't have made on the phone to Bob Woodward.

00:10:43.000 My God, what do people even do at the White House? 1.00

00:10:46.000 Seriously, just disconnect the damn phone. 1.00

00:10:48.000 Just take the phone and smash it with a hammer and then bleach bit it like Hillary Clinton. 1.00

00:10:52.000 Okay, so that is number one. 0.96

00:10:53.000 Number two, it is also true that the president should not have downplayed the virus.

00:10:56.000 It was a major mistake for the president to have done that in February and March.

00:10:59.000 A serious mistake.

00:11:01.000 A political mistake.

00:11:02.000 And in fact, a human mistake, because you shouldn't be telling people to downplay particular threats when those threats actually threaten their lives, right?

00:11:09.000 You shouldn't do that.

00:11:11.000 Now, here's the thing.

00:11:12.000 Is this actually a revelation?

00:11:14.000 Two answers.

00:11:15.000 One, if it's a revelation, and the real revelation is not what he said on March 19th, right, that he wanted to downplay it to stop panic.

00:11:20.000 He actually said that publicly like a week later in a press conference.

00:11:24.000 If the actual revelation is the February 7th conversation that he knew early on that it was airborne, then the question becomes why Bob Woodward did not release the tapes or report it.

00:11:32.000 This is a question being asked by left, right, and center.

00:11:35.000 Why exactly, if Bob Woodward knew this thing was airborne early February, didn't he come out and say, the president knows it's airborne, he's lying to you?

00:11:41.000 And the answer is because Bob Woodward didn't know whether to take any serious measure of what Trump was saying.

00:11:46.000 Because again, Trump engages in puffery.

00:11:49.000 Because Trump says a lot of stuff.

00:11:51.000 A lot of stuff comes out of that face.

00:11:52.000 And because a lot of stuff comes out of that face, if you're Bob Woodward, what are you going to do?

00:11:56.000 Go run to the press and say, Trump says it's airborne?

00:11:58.000 And the press will go, yeah, but there's no information it's airborne. 0.95

00:12:00.000 It's just Trump being crazy again.

00:12:03.000 The bottom line is nobody knew what was going on, including Trump at the time. 0.88

00:12:07.000 In early February, Trump did not know what was going on.

00:12:09.000 Again, he said that he got information from Xi Jinping, who's a very untrustworthy source.

00:12:12.000 There was a lot of differential speculation by various members of the various political parties on exactly how serious COVID was going to be and how bad the outbreak was going to be.

00:12:20.000 Dr. Fauci was playing it down as of February as well because he, again, did not know that this thing was going to be a massive outbreak because nobody knew that it was going to break across the United States exactly this way.

00:12:29.000 When you hear Democrats say, Well, you know, we applied for additional funding.

00:12:32.000 Now, you applied for, like, a tiny bit of additional funding.

00:12:35.000 You applied for, like, a little bit of additional funding.

00:12:37.000 Funding that was so insufficient that actually the Republicans came back in early March and upped the amount of funding that they appropriated for COVID-fighting above what Democrats requested in February.

00:12:48.000 Okay, so those are the tapes that are breaking across the media, and the media are going nuts over them, of course, because this is finally the tape that brings down Trump.

00:12:55.000 This is the tape that brings down Trump.

00:12:56.000 Now, a couple of things.

00:12:57.000 One, everybody, I think, already baked in that Trump botched his rhetorical handling of the virus.

00:13:03.000 Everybody, I think, has already baked that in.

00:13:05.000 Does that mean that this isn't going to damage Trump?

00:13:06.000 No, it is going to damage Trump.

00:13:08.000 And again, the phone call is coming from inside the house.

00:13:10.000 If you're the White House comms office, you're just that babysitter from the horror movie who gets the call from the police that the call is coming from within the house.

00:13:18.000 You're just down the office from Trump.

00:13:19.000 You're like, where are these leaks coming from?

00:13:20.000 Then you look down the office and there's Trump on the phone.

00:13:23.000 It's inexcusable.

00:13:24.000 It is political malpractice. 1.00

00:13:25.000 It is stupidity of the highest order. 1.00

00:13:27.000 And I frankly don't care that Senator Lindsey Graham supposedly told Trump to talk to Woodward. 1.00

00:13:31.000 Trump is a grown man.

00:13:32.000 He's the president of the United States and he's in his 70s.

00:13:34.000 At a certain point, you got to take responsibility for your own decision to speak with reporters.

00:13:38.000 My goodness. 1.00

00:13:40.000 Okay, so that obviously is high-level stupidity. 1.00

00:13:42.000 But will this come back to hurt Trump? 1.00

00:13:45.000 Well, it hurts him in debate.

00:13:47.000 Realistically speaking.

00:13:47.000 It hurts him in ads.

00:13:49.000 Just assessing the politics of the situation, it hurts him in debate and it hurts him in ads.

00:13:53.000 It hurts him in debate because if Joe Biden is sentient, then now Joe Biden has a real line of attack against Trump.

00:13:58.000 He says, you botched COVID.

00:13:59.000 And Trump says, you wouldn't have done anything differently.

00:14:02.000 And he said, well, I certainly wouldn't have downplayed it for a month.

00:14:04.000 You admitted to Bob Woodward that you downplayed it for a month because you didn't want people to panic.

00:14:09.000 And in downplaying it, you didn't convey the actual threat level to the American people who you should trust, right?

00:14:13.000 That's a pretty good line.

00:14:14.000 So you'll see Biden use it.

00:14:15.000 You'll also see this in every attack ad from now until the election, as I say.

00:14:19.000 But is there really any content to it?

00:14:21.000 We're going to assess whether there is anything that really adds here.

00:14:24.000 Whether this is in fact a bombshell or whether it's a restatement from Trump's own mouth of a case that actually he has already made fairly publicly.

00:14:31.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:15:45.000 So right now, basically, I think we are now participating in a multiplayer game of gaslighting.

00:15:51.000 Every single person who's involved in the story is gaslighting.

00:15:53.000 Bob Woodward did not know early February the thing was airborne.

00:15:56.000 He didn't believe Trump that this thing was that serious.

00:15:58.000 Otherwise, he would have revealed the story, right?

00:16:00.000 He has even said that he didn't come forward with the story at this point because he literally did not know that it was a big story at that point.

00:16:08.000 So Woodward has answered these particular questions.

00:16:13.000 And Woodward's answer, he said, he did not have any signed agreement or formal embargo arrangement with Trump or the White House to hold back their conversations.

00:16:19.000 He said, I told him it was for the book, but as far as promising it not to publish in real time, I didn't do that.

00:16:24.000 He said his aim was to provide a fuller context than could occur in a news story.

00:16:27.000 I knew I could tell the second draft of history and I could tell it before the election.

00:16:32.000 Also, he said that there were two problems with what he heard from Trump in February that kept him from putting it in the newspaper at the time.

00:16:37.000 One, he didn't know what the source of Trump's information was.

00:16:39.000 It wasn't until months later, in May, that Woodward learned it came from a high-level intelligence briefing in January that was also described in Wednesday's reporting about the book.

00:16:46.000 Now, note, Democrats had the same high-level briefing in mid-February.

00:16:50.000 So top Democrats knew everything Trump knew by mid-February.

00:16:53.000 In February, what Trump told Woodward seemed hard to make sense of, the author said.

00:16:56.000 Back then, there was no panic over the virus.

00:16:58.000 Even toward the final days of that month, Fauci was publicly assuring Americans there was no need to change their daily habits.

00:17:04.000 And, he says, the biggest problem is I didn't know if it was true.

00:17:07.000 Well, that's right!

00:17:08.000 Okay, that is correct.

00:17:09.000 So Woodward is basically acknowledging that Trump didn't know what he was talking about because Trump very rarely knows what he is talking about when it comes to statements of fact.

00:17:16.000 This is one of the reasons why his press conferences, as soon as he got off script, devolved into kind of utter chaos and a bizarre sort of weird Benny Hill routine.

00:17:28.000 That's because, again, Trump is not the greatest conveyor or purveyor of fact.

00:17:34.000 This has not stopped anybody from jumping to the conclusion they wish to jump to, which is that Trump knew full well how bad things were in early February, and then he lied about it.

00:17:42.000 Okay, that is not correct.

00:17:44.000 Let's go through, first of all, what Trump's comments look like, and then we'll parallel them with what exactly Andrew Cuomo's comments look like, because as you will see, They're kind of parallel.

00:17:54.000 Everybody was kind of figuring this out at the same time.

00:17:56.000 So the basic story here, which is that Trump knew in February, early February, everyone was going to die from the virus, and then he lied about it.

00:18:03.000 To what end exactly?

00:18:04.000 Nobody knows.

00:18:05.000 What exactly was the end of it?

00:18:07.000 I've yet to hear an excuse for why this would happen.

00:18:08.000 It's sort of like when the left claimed that Bush lied to lie America into war in Iraq.

00:18:12.000 Why?

00:18:13.000 To what end?

00:18:14.000 So we could get involved in a quagmire war for a decade?

00:18:18.000 What exactly was the purpose?

00:18:19.000 If Trump was lying about the virus, knowing, right?

00:18:21.000 Not that he made a mistake.

00:18:23.000 Not that he botched it by downplaying it, right?

00:18:25.000 All of that is fair game.

00:18:26.000 That he lied about it.

00:18:27.000 That Trump lied in order to do what?

00:18:30.000 Seriously, in order to do what?

00:18:31.000 So he knew early February that COVID was going to kill everybody.

00:18:34.000 And then he was just like, I'm going to downplay it for fun.

00:18:36.000 Like why?

00:18:37.000 To increase the stock market?

00:18:39.000 But as soon as the news broke, the stock market was going to crash.

00:18:42.000 Why?

00:18:42.000 To uphold his electoral possibilities?

00:18:45.000 As soon as COVID hit, it was going to be obvious that Trump had misstated the case.

00:18:49.000 And that was going to hurt him politically.

00:18:50.000 So what would be the purpose of the lie? 0.98

00:18:51.000 Again, I think we ought to distinguish between people saying dumb crap, which again is a hallmark of this administration, and lying outright that he is not, he was not lying about COVID. 0.97

00:19:01.000 Okay. 0.99

00:19:01.000 And by the way, you know who says he was not lying about COVID? 0.99

00:19:03.000 I'm not the one saying he was not lying about COVID.

00:19:05.000 Dr. Anthony Fauci says he was not lying about COVID.

00:19:08.000 So here was Dr. Anthony Fauci last night saying there wasn't any discrepancy between what we told Trump and what he told the press.

00:19:16.000 I may not be tuned in to the right thing that they're talking about, but I didn't really see any discrepancies between what he told us and what we told him and what he ultimately came out publicly and said.

00:19:27.000 I didn't get any sense that he was distorting anything.

00:19:29.000 I mean, in my discussions with him, they were always straightforward about the concerns that we had.

00:19:35.000 We related that to him.

00:19:37.000 And when he would go out, I'd hear him discussing the same sort of things.

00:19:42.000 Okay, so there's Fauci basically downplaying the accusations by Woodward.

00:19:46.000 Fauci was specifically asked, do you think that Trump conveyed bad information to the public?

00:19:50.000 And Fauci's like, no.

00:19:52.000 And not only that, Fauci says, when I told Trump to shut it down, he did shut it down.

00:19:55.000 He listened to me.

00:19:56.000 Here's Fauci.

00:19:58.000 The first and only time that Dr. Birx and I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a, quote, shutdown in the sense of not really shutdown, but to really have strong mitigation.

00:20:15.000 We discussed it.

00:20:16.000 Obviously, there would be concern by some that, in fact, that might have some negative consequences.

00:20:22.000 Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation.

00:20:26.000 And went to the mitigation.

00:20:28.000 Okay, so Fauci himself has already kind of debunked Woodward's story, but let's go through the actual timeline here, because the case Democrats are making is that they would have handled it differently, and they handled it right, and it was all Trump botching it.

00:20:39.000 So let's begin with Trump's comments, and we'll see how his comments evolved over time.

00:20:43.000 And there's no question that he did in fact downplay the virus all the way until basically mid-March.

00:20:49.000 Here was President Trump, January 22nd, saying that we have this under control.

00:20:54.000 Have you been briefed by the CDC?

00:20:56.000 I have.

00:20:56.000 Are there words about a pandemic at this point?

00:20:58.000 No, not at all.

00:21:00.000 We have it totally under control.

00:21:02.000 It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. 1.00

00:21:07.000 It's going to be just fine.

00:21:09.000 On February 7th, President Trump tweeted that the Chinese government had it under control.

00:21:14.000 He tweeted, just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China.

00:21:18.000 He is strong, sharp, powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on coronavirus.

00:21:21.000 He feels they're doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days.

00:21:26.000 Not only that, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm and the virus hopefully becomes weaker and then gone.

00:21:31.000 Great discipline is taking place in China as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation.

00:21:35.000 We're working closely with China to help, right?

00:21:37.000 This is the same day that Woodward said that Trump called him up and started talking about how the thing was airborne and how it was going to kill everybody and it was super dangerous.

00:21:43.000 OK, those two, those two messages are not in conflict, by the way.

00:21:46.000 Trump could have thought all that and also thought that the Chinese government was actually going to be successful in shutting it down.

00:21:51.000 February 10th, Trump went on record.

00:21:52.000 He said, when the weather gets warmer, it's going to go away.

00:21:55.000 It was from February 10th at a rally.

00:21:58.000 By the way, the virus, they're working hard.

00:22:03.000 Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.

00:22:08.000 Hope that's true.

00:22:09.000 Okay.

00:22:10.000 Then, February 26th, President Trump reiterated, he said, we're very ready for this and the risk is low.

00:22:16.000 The number one priority from our standpoint is the health and safety of the American people.

00:22:21.000 And that's the way I viewed it when I made that decision.

00:22:24.000 Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low.

00:22:30.000 But we're very, very ready for this, for anything, whether it's going to be a breakout of larger proportions or whether or not we're at that very low level.

00:22:42.000 Okay, February 29th, President Trump said, please don't incite panic, right?

00:22:46.000 So this is the first time you've heard this sort of language from Trump, where he says, listen, we're taking it seriously, but please don't incite panic, which exactly is what he said.

00:22:53.000 I mean, like, again, he said what he said to Woodward out loud, like, prior to that.

00:22:56.000 Here he was on February 29th saying it.

00:23:00.000 I'd like to just ask and caution that the media, we would respectfully ask the media and politicians and everybody else involved not to do anything to incite panic because there's no reason to panic at all.

00:23:16.000 This is something that is being handled professionally.

00:23:19.000 March 9th, Trump tweeted out comparing it to the flu again.

00:23:23.000 Right, so he tweeted out, last year, 37,000 Americans died from the common flu.

00:23:26.000 It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year.

00:23:29.000 Nothing is shut down.

00:23:30.000 Life and the economy go on.

00:23:31.000 At this moment, there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 22 deaths.

00:23:35.000 Think about that.

00:23:36.000 And then finally, on March 30th, President Trump was asked again about this in an interview on Fox News, broadcast on Fox News, and he was asked about exactly why he had Sort of not spoken with tremendous seriousness about coronavirus early on.

00:23:50.000 And he said, I didn't want anybody to panic.

00:23:51.000 So basically all of the revelations in Woodward's book were out there in public view.

00:23:54.000 So this isn't really a revelation.

00:23:55.000 Here was Trump.

00:23:56.000 This would have been March 30th.

00:23:59.000 The statements I made are, I want to keep the country calm.

00:24:02.000 I don't want panic in the country.

00:24:04.000 I could cause panic much better than even you.

00:24:06.000 I could do much... I would make you look like a minor league player.

00:24:10.000 But you know what?

00:24:10.000 I don't want to do that.

00:24:12.000 I want to have our country be calm and strong and fight and win.

00:24:16.000 And it will go away.

00:24:18.000 Okay, so again, that was Trump on March 30th.

00:24:20.000 So, all that sounds like downplaying, downplaying, downplaying.

00:24:23.000 Don't panic, don't panic.

00:24:24.000 And now I'm taking it seriously, right?

00:24:26.000 Again, everything that he said to Woodward behind the scenes, he was also saying out loud in front of the scenes, because this is also typical Trump, right?

00:24:32.000 Third rule of Trump.

00:24:33.000 Anything you say behind the scenes will eventually be let out in public by Trump.

00:24:37.000 In a second, we're going to see that the Democrats mirrored this exact pattern.

00:24:41.000 Okay?

00:24:41.000 This is not just Trump.

00:24:42.000 The Democrats mirrored this exact pattern.

00:24:43.000 For all the talk about they were on top of this, and Trump's response was criminal, and he was lying.

00:24:48.000 The Democrats were doing the exact same thing.

00:24:50.000 Again, this doesn't mean anybody handled it right.

00:24:52.000 It just means everybody handled it wrong.

00:24:53.000 We're going to get to this in one second.

00:24:54.000 First, you know how strongly I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility.

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00:26:16.000 Naturally, the Democrats have responded and the media have responded to the news of President Trump's revelation here with shock and awe.

00:26:22.000 They can't believe it.

00:26:23.000 Carl Bernstein, who literally just walks around saying that everything is worse than Watergate, says, wait for it, wait for it.

00:26:30.000 This is worse than Watergate.

00:26:31.000 Here's Bernstein explaining this is worse than Watergate.

00:26:35.000 It's going to be very hard to see.

00:26:38.000 Uh, this cannot be addressed by Republicans in particular and their candidate for president of the United States.

00:26:46.000 The last time this happened, uh, during Nixon's, the end of Nixon's presidency, the Republican leadership, including Barry Goldwater, the 1964 nominee of his party for president, went to the White House and told Nixon he had to resign.

00:27:01.000 And the facts here are even graver than in Watergate.

00:27:04.000 OK, all Bernstein has done for his entire life is just say Watergate over and over because it's his big accomplishment.

00:27:09.000 But at a certain point, the high school quarterback is going to have to get a new career.

00:27:13.000 I mean, seriously, like you just said, it's worse than Watergate.

00:27:15.000 It's not worse than Watergate. 0.78

00:27:16.000 It's not worse than Watergate. 0.78

00:27:17.000 As we will see, every Democrat downplayed this thing.

00:27:20.000 And they did.

00:27:21.000 And nobody knew how bad this was going to be.

00:27:23.000 And again, I don't even understand the implication.

00:27:26.000 The implication is supposedly that Trump lied about this, that he outright lied.

00:27:29.000 The implication is that, again, not that he botched it, not that he made a mistake, not that he has a congenital habit of downplaying bad news and upplaying good news, which he does, but that he actively lied about COVID, that he knew it was going to kill tons of people, and then he lied to the American public so that, what, more people would die and the economy would get worse and he would lose all faith in the presidency?

00:27:47.000 Like, it makes no sense at all to suggest, you know, first-degree lying here, purposeful lying.

00:27:51.000 In any case, CNN went nuts on this as well.

00:27:54.000 So CNN's Brianna Keillor cut off Kayleigh McEnany because Kayleigh McEnany suggested that in fact the president had not downplayed the virus, which of course is not true.

00:28:03.000 The president has now admitted on tape to downplaying the virus.

00:28:06.000 Here was Kayleigh McEnany and being cut off by CNN. 0.98

00:28:10.000 We didn't want there to be a huge crash and panic.

00:28:13.000 He expressed calmness from this podium, but he has always taken it seriously.

00:28:16.000 And the response, an unprecedented response, really reflects that.

00:28:20.000 Yes.

00:28:22.000 Thanks, Kayleigh.

00:28:23.000 I wanted to ask you about the AstraZeneca trial.

00:28:26.000 So does that throw a spanner in the works that they've halted those trials in terms of getting a vaccine?

00:28:32.000 All right.

00:28:33.000 That was a press secretary at the White House lying.

00:28:37.000 Well, there's some solid media coverage right there, because it's not the job of the press secretary to spin.

00:28:41.000 Apparently, press secretaries never spin, except for the ones who work for Trump. 0.88

00:28:45.000 Other than that, they are absolute truth-tellers.

00:28:47.000 Unvarnished, unglossed truth from press secretaries, ranging from Jake Harney to Robert Gibbs, all the way back to Ari Fleischer.

00:28:54.000 CNN's Pamela Brown then grilled Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, asking how he could be okay with this.

00:29:01.000 Here's how this went.

00:29:03.000 Let me say a word about this infatuation in Washington with who said what to whom.

00:29:11.000 I learned pretty quickly up here.

00:29:13.000 Senator, I'm sorry.

00:29:14.000 I'm not going to let you do this.

00:29:15.000 OK, this is I understand there's so much politics right now.

00:29:19.000 We're two months away from an election, but this is life and death.

00:29:22.000 You had 5000 people that have died in in Louisiana from coronavirus.

00:29:27.000 Republicans are reluctant, as you are now, to ever criticize this president.

00:29:32.000 But as a human being, how can you be OK with this?

00:29:36.000 OK, again, what is it that people are supposedly OK with?

00:29:40.000 I mean, it's pretty obvious that Trump should have said more serious things about the virus early.

00:29:45.000 But aside from that, is there?

00:29:47.000 And that's the thing.

00:29:47.000 I mean, it is.

00:29:48.000 OK, but aside from that, are we going to pretend that the Democrats had any response to this?

00:29:53.000 Because they did not.

00:29:54.000 They did, in fact, oppose the Chinese travel ban.

00:29:57.000 The amount of spending they proposed to spend on this thing was like a billion dollars.

00:30:00.000 One billion.

00:30:02.000 Okay, we ended up spending $7 trillion on it.

00:30:04.000 Minimum.

00:30:05.000 Okay, they proposed originally $1 billion for like some studies and a little bit of PPE.

00:30:10.000 When they say that if Trump had taken it more seriously, everybody would have masked up in February, nonsense.

00:30:14.000 The CDC was legitimately telling everybody not to mask up in February.

00:30:18.000 So what exactly would have changed here?

00:30:20.000 So I've heard a couple of recommendations as to what would have changed.

00:30:22.000 We should have done better with the PPE.

00:30:24.000 We should have ramped up PPE production.

00:30:26.000 Okay, there's only one problem.

00:30:27.000 China had a monopoly on PPE production and they seized all of it.

00:30:31.000 So that's problem number one.

00:30:33.000 Number two, if Trump had taken it more seriously, maybe people would have started sheltering in place a little bit earlier.

00:30:38.000 But Democratic mayors and governors didn't tell anybody to shelter in place earlier either.

00:30:43.000 And in fact, Democratic legislators who knew full well what was going on because they were getting the same intelligence briefings on this stuff that Trump was, they were spending most of February downplaying the thing as well.

00:30:51.000 I mean, Dr. Fauci was downplaying it in the late February.

00:30:53.000 Like, don't let people rewrite the history here, such that Trump was fully in the know about how bad this was going to be February 7th, as opposed to just engaging in puffery with Woodward, which is exactly what he was doing in early February.

00:31:04.000 We've all watched Trump.

00:31:05.000 We all know what he's doing.

00:31:06.000 That doesn't matter.

00:31:07.000 The Democrats have responded by basically suggesting that Trump is a criminal.

00:31:10.000 Here is Joe Biden suggesting that Trump's response was criminal, even though, again, Joe Biden has yet to explain what he would have done differently.

00:31:16.000 It's amazing.

00:31:16.000 There's never a follow-up question.

00:31:17.000 What would you have done differently, Joe Biden?

00:31:20.000 And he just refers back to an editorial he wrote in January, like January 27th, where he said coronavirus is bad.

00:31:20.000 Ever.

00:31:27.000 That's the entire editorial.

00:31:28.000 There's nothing in there about what he would actually do.

00:31:31.000 It was just coronavirus is a bad thing.

00:31:32.000 Thanks, Joe.

00:31:33.000 Okay, but here was Joe Biden with Jake Tapper saying that Trump's response was criminal.

00:31:38.000 And again, this is gonna be the pattern from now until the election.

00:31:40.000 Some allegation will be made about Trump and Biden will be asked about Trump.

00:31:43.000 Biden will never be asked about Biden, ever.

00:31:45.000 Right now, you would expect a journalist at some point to ask Joe Biden, what would you do differently?

00:31:49.000 What would your plans look like?

00:31:50.000 What exactly, if you were president, what would you have changed?

00:31:53.000 But nobody will ever ask him that because he's a Democrat.

00:31:55.000 So instead, it's gonna be, here's a revelation about Trump.

00:31:57.000 What do you think about that revelation, Joe?

00:31:59.000 Here was Joe Biden going off on Trump.

00:32:02.000 It was all about making sure the stock market didn't come down, that his wealthy friends didn't lose any money, and that he could say that, in fact, anything that happened had nothing to do with him.

00:32:13.000 He waved a white flag.

00:32:15.000 He walked away. 0.92

00:32:16.000 He didn't do a damn thing. 0.87

00:32:17.000 Think about it.

00:32:18.000 Think about what he did not do.

00:32:21.000 And it's almost criminal.

00:32:22.000 Okay, what he did not do?

00:32:24.000 He gave the governors the ventilators they need.

00:32:26.000 He did ramp up PPE production.

00:32:28.000 It was the CDC that botched the testing regimen.

00:32:30.000 Okay, those are career staffers at the CDC.

00:32:32.000 When he says that he did this to, what, uphold the market for his rich friends?

00:32:36.000 What are you talking about?

00:32:37.000 Seriously, what are you talking about?

00:32:38.000 The market crashed.

00:32:40.000 The market tanked in March.

00:32:42.000 Absolutely blew out.

00:32:44.000 What?

00:32:45.000 That doesn't even make any sense.

00:32:48.000 And when Joe Biden sits there and he suggests that Donald Trump did this for his rich friends, I mean, that is a form of slander.

00:32:53.000 It really is.

00:32:54.000 Because there is no evidence to suggest that that is the case whatsoever.

00:32:57.000 By the way, who is holding rallies into early March, like big rallies into early March?

00:33:02.000 Captain, I'm taking it seriously over here.

00:33:04.000 Oh, yeah, that was right.

00:33:04.000 Who is holding big rallies?

00:33:05.000 It was Joe Biden who was holding rallies in March before he passed away and was wheeled around as a corpse.

00:33:10.000 He was doing public rallies in March.

00:33:12.000 Nancy Pelosi also did this routine yesterday. 1.00

00:33:14.000 She said Trump downplayed the threat.

00:33:15.000 He's now admitted to downplaying the threat.

00:33:17.000 She tweeted out, Trump and Republicans downplayed the deadly threat of the coronavirus.

00:33:20.000 Moscow Mitch, now we're all just Twitter trolls, decided to take a pause rather than help the American people with a strategic plan.

00:33:26.000 Don't be misled.

00:33:27.000 Their failure and denial are costing lives.

00:33:29.000 I have a question.

00:33:29.000 Wasn't she Speaker of the House at the time?

00:33:31.000 What did she do? 0.80

00:33:32.000 I'll tell you what she did.

00:33:33.000 On February 24th, she went down to Chinatown and she told everybody to join her down in Chinatown in San Francisco as the pandemic began.

00:33:40.000 Here's Nancy Pelosi circa February 24th.

00:33:45.000 Speaker Nancy Pelosi told me she came here to Chinatown to combat fear. 0.80

00:33:49.000 That's what we're trying to do today is to say everything is fine here.

00:33:53.000 She understands people are concerned about China.

00:33:55.000 But that shouldn't be carried over to Chinatown in San Francisco.

00:34:00.000 I hope that it's not that, but all I can say is I'm here.

00:34:05.000 We feel safe and sound, so many of us coming here.

00:34:07.000 Okay, so, again, the notion that Democrats were really on top of this or would have been on top of this if they had the information from it is just nonsense.

00:34:15.000 It's just nonsense. 0.99

00:34:16.000 This is, once again, Trump's mouth coming back to bite him on the ass, but that's pretty much all you got here. 1.00

00:34:21.000 And all the implications you're drawing, that he was lying to uphold his rich friends, that is ridiculous. 1.00

00:34:25.000 Ridiculous, and frankly, slanderous. 0.94

00:34:27.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second, because we'll show you how America's best governor, Andrew Cuomo, we've been informed by those who know that he's an incredible governor, that Andrew Cuomo really captained on top of this thing. 0.92

00:34:40.000 He wasn't on top of this thing.

00:34:41.000 I'll show you.

00:34:42.000 Again, this is just an indicator of where everybody was because I can't blame people for not being super serious about this in February.

00:34:47.000 I wasn't super serious about this in February because nobody was super serious about this in February.

00:34:51.000 They were not.

00:34:52.000 Don't let people rewrite history.

00:34:53.000 It was early March when people started to get worried, like truly worried, including Fauci.

00:34:58.000 The people who are now buying votive candles of Fauci.

00:35:01.000 But back in February, he wasn't taking it super seriously either.

00:35:04.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:36:25.000 We'll get to a reminder as to what the Democratic response was throughout the COVID pandemic, and then we'll get to the continued politicization of COVID, because it's insipid.

00:36:35.000 We'll continue this in one second.

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00:37:24.000 Also, You have not yet seen the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.

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00:37:29.000 Last week, we had Candace Owens. 1.00

00:37:30.000 You may have seen that went viral when she went after Cardi B this Sunday.

00:37:33.000 We're featuring Dan Bongino.

00:37:34.000 It's a great conversation.

00:37:35.000 Make sure to keep an ear out for it this Sunday.

00:37:37.000 You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:37:41.000 Alrighty, so how do Democrats respond to this?

00:37:48.000 Again, this is the big question.

00:37:50.000 If Trump supposedly blew this, right, if Trump knew all the way back when, that in order for Democrats to claim that Trump did something super wrong here, he didn't just blow it, they have to claim two things.

00:37:59.000 One, either that they knew and they would have handled it better, which they can't claim, or two, that Trump knew and he lied.

00:38:06.000 Trump knew and he lied is what they're going for with this Woodward revelation, but again, the evidence ain't there.

00:38:10.000 That Trump knew it was airborne, that Trump knew it was super dangerous.

00:38:13.000 Just because he said to Woodward what he had heard from Xi Jinping February 7th, that's called Trump mouthing off. 0.99

00:38:17.000 He does that crap all the time. 0.94

00:38:19.000 This is the same guy who went out in the middle of a press conference and he was like, Okay, you're just saying stuff now. 1.00

00:38:23.000 that it kills things. What if we could find a way to get inside the body?

00:38:26.000 Okay, you're just saying stuff now. It's amazing to me how many people will take Trump absolutely, literally and seriously.

00:38:34.000 And again, I get this all the time.

00:38:35.000 You talk about Obama literally.

00:38:37.000 Yes, because Obama was a literal serious person.

00:38:39.000 I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'm not going to treat Donald Trump the same way that I treat Barack Obama because they don't think the same.

00:38:44.000 They don't act the same.

00:38:45.000 That is like saying I'm going to treat my wife the same way I treat my baby.

00:38:47.000 That is not the same thing.

00:38:49.000 OK, and you may say that soft bigotry of low expectations.

00:38:51.000 Fine, call it whatever you want.

00:38:52.000 I have very low expectations for Trump's rhetorical prowess when it comes to spitting out solid fact or how seriously he takes his own rhetoric.

00:39:00.000 And I think that the record will back me on this.

00:39:03.000 It doesn't mean that Trump is a bad president.

00:39:05.000 It doesn't mean that Trump hasn't done a great many things that I like as President of the United States.

00:39:09.000 It doesn't even mean that I don't plan on voting for him.

00:39:11.000 It does mean that if you're asking me to take his comments with tremendous seriousness, I don't know what world you're living in.

00:39:17.000 Why?

00:39:18.000 Why would I?

00:39:19.000 What evidence do I have?

00:39:20.000 This is a man who today tweeted out that Kim Jong-un, I hope he's feeling better.

00:39:26.000 He's a real fighter.

00:39:27.000 What in the world is going on?

00:39:29.000 Trump tweeted out moments ago, Kim Jong-un is in good health.

00:39:32.000 Never underestimate him.

00:39:34.000 Never underestimate Kim Jong-un.

00:39:36.000 Like, that's the guy I'm supposed to take super— Like, how do you— How do you muster the outrage on a day-after-day basis?

00:39:41.000 How?

00:39:42.000 Like, I understand mustering outrage at somebody who actually has the capacity for intent, but how do you muster outrage at Donald Trump, who just says things, who suffers from tremendous, tremendously serious logorrhea?

00:39:54.000 How do you— How do— Okay.

00:39:55.000 In any case, The other case the Democrats could make is that they would have treated this better or they didn't treat this better, and that's just a lie.

00:40:02.000 So let's track the rhetoric of Andrew Cuomo, the greatest of all governors.

00:40:05.000 We've already said that Nancy Pelosi is saying, well, we were taking it very seriously.

00:40:09.000 Late February, Nancy, you were out in Chinatown.

00:40:12.000 You've already heard Joe Biden saying that he was taking it super seriously early March.

00:40:15.000 He was out doing rallies until the actual shutdowns.

00:40:19.000 So let's trace Andrew Cuomo.

00:40:20.000 How did he do, rhetorically speaking?

00:40:21.000 Well, here is Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, on February 2nd, explaining there is no reason to panic.

00:40:27.000 We've been through situations like this before.

00:40:30.000 We're very proactive.

00:40:32.000 I don't take anything for granted.

00:40:35.000 Precaution is always the best practice.

00:40:39.000 Preparedness is always the best practice.

00:40:41.000 And that's what we do here in New York.

00:40:43.000 At the same time, we have to keep this in perspective.

00:40:46.000 There is no reason to panic.

00:40:48.000 There's no reason to have an inordinate amount of fear about this situation.

00:40:56.000 Okay, fast forward a month.

00:40:56.000 Has much changed?

00:40:57.000 The answer is no.

00:40:58.000 Here is Andrew Cuomo on March 2nd.

00:41:00.000 Remember, this is when Democrats are saying that we're taking it super seriously and Republicans are not.

00:41:04.000 Here's Andrew Cuomo, March 2nd, saying we have a great healthcare system.

00:41:06.000 It's not going to be that bad here.

00:41:07.000 And don't worry, we'll take care of the nursing homes.

00:41:09.000 How has this comment now come back to haunt Andrew Cuomo?

00:41:11.000 Considering 11,000 people died in nursing homes because he was shipping elderly COVID-ridden patients back into nursing homes.

00:41:17.000 Here's Andrew Cuomo circa March 2nd.

00:41:20.000 We think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York.

00:41:28.000 So when you're saying what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don't even think it's going to be as bad as it was in other countries.

00:41:38.000 We are fully coordinated.

00:41:39.000 We are fully mobilized.

00:41:41.000 This is all about mobilization of a public health system that is going to be primarily senior citizens.

00:41:49.000 People who are debilitated and we're going to have a special effort for our nursing homes, etc.

00:41:56.000 OK, then the next day he says, by the way, we can't contain the spread, but we shouldn't be too concerned about the fact that we can't contain the spread.

00:42:02.000 Again, this is March 3rd.

00:42:04.000 This is not February 7th.

00:42:05.000 This is not January.

00:42:05.000 This is March 3rd.

00:42:08.000 You cannot contain the spread.

00:42:11.000 You can slow it, you can limit it, but you can't contain it.

00:42:16.000 That isn't a cause for anxiety either, because, well, what happens when a large number of people get infected?

00:42:24.000 Which, you're going to see a spread.

00:42:26.000 By the way, I said two weeks ago, it's just a matter of time before we see our first case, then we saw our first case.

00:42:34.000 I said yesterday, you will see a case of community spread.

00:42:38.000 Here we are today.

00:42:39.000 There's a case of community spread.

00:42:41.000 Okay, so again, it took another week and a half for him to start taking it seriously, and it took him another three weeks to fully shut down the state of New York.

00:42:50.000 So many things can be true simultaneously.

00:42:51.000 Trump botched the rhetoric.

00:42:53.000 Trump shouldn't have taken it lightly in terms of how he spoke about this publicly.

00:42:56.000 Democrats had no plan, they presented no plan, and nothing really fundamentally would have changed if a Democrat had been president.

00:43:01.000 Democratic governors botched this thing royally, including Andrew Cuomo.

00:43:05.000 Is it a bombshell or is this just another revelation of stuff that we already knew?

00:43:07.000 The answer is the latter.

00:43:08.000 It is not, in fact, a bombshell.

00:43:09.000 And I did that at length because I think it is important for people to recognize how the media spin up what is a thing we already knew, namely Trump says stuff and that he was saying silly stuff about COVID and he should have taken this more seriously in February and March.

00:43:23.000 Okay, how they spin that up into a new scandal just two months before the election at the behest, presumably, of the Biden campaign, and then allow Biden to get away with public statements like Trump did this in order to increase the stock market, which is just conspiratorial nonsense of the highest order.

00:43:37.000 Now, this is also relevant because the politicization of COVID continues.

00:43:41.000 We are continuing to watch the politicization of COVID.

00:43:45.000 And some people are making this perfectly obvious.

00:43:47.000 So Barbara Farrar is the L.A. 0.99

00:43:48.000 County health official who's been in charge of COVID policy.

00:43:51.000 She was caught on a phone call explaining full out that the schools would not be open until after the election, which sounds just a little political, does it not?

00:44:00.000 So we don't realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either Tier 2 or to reopening K-12 schools, at least until after the election, after, you know, in early November.

00:44:16.000 Like, when we just look at the timing of everything, it seems to us a more realistic approach to this would be to think that we're going to be where we are now until we are done with the election.

00:44:31.000 Okay, so, I mean, this is very political.

00:44:33.000 And the media coverage of COVID is very political.

00:44:35.000 So, for example, there's a story from the Associated Press called, This is from the Associated Press.

00:44:48.000 Now, you might gather from that headline that basically a bunch of teachers went back to school and kids infected them, and then they died.

00:44:59.000 There's only one problem.

00:45:00.000 The stories that are cited by the AP are cases where the teachers obtained the virus from places that are not children.

00:45:07.000 In Oxford, Mississippi, 42-year-old Nakoma James taught in a middle school and helped coach high school football.

00:45:12.000 He died August 6th, during the first week of classes, but was self-quarantining when teachers and students returned to the classroom.

00:45:17.000 So he already had it.

00:45:18.000 The cases didn't come from the kids, apparently.

00:45:25.000 Another Mississippi teacher died on Sunday.

00:45:27.000 History teacher Tom Slade recently posted on Facebook about his battle with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus.

00:45:33.000 Slade was teaching in person when the academic year started, August 16th, but began quarantining after he had contact with someone who was positive at a church meeting.

00:45:40.000 So it was not, in fact, at school.

00:45:43.000 In South Carolina, Demetria Demi Bannister, 28, died three days after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

00:45:49.000 The district, Bannister was at Windsor Elementary School.

00:45:53.000 They said that she was at the elementary school August 28th for a teacher workday before classes resumed.

00:45:58.000 Before classes was resumed.

00:46:01.000 In-person classes started August 24th, but she was already hospitalized by then.

00:46:06.000 So the suggestion is that school's opening is going to be the big vector of transmission?

00:46:12.000 That's three cases cited by the AP of teachers dying, none of whom obtained this thing at school, apparently.

00:46:17.000 Or if they did, it was from adults.

00:46:19.000 Okay, that is biased media coverage in the extreme.

00:46:21.000 In the extreme.

00:46:23.000 And meanwhile, speaking of biased media coverage in the extreme, the media are making hay out of the fact that the AstraZeneca trial has been put on hold.

00:46:29.000 They are suggesting this is because of an unexplained side effect.

00:46:32.000 That is not what happened here.

00:46:33.000 What happened is that somebody who was in the control group, well, somebody who was taking the vaccine, not in the control group, somebody who was taking the vaccine in the vaccine group, came down with something.

00:46:42.000 They don't know whether it was linked to the vaccine yet or not.

00:46:45.000 But the scare tactic is, well, maybe they've identified a grave side effect that causes them to cancel the trial.

00:46:49.000 That is not the way this works.

00:46:52.000 They called it a routine action.

00:46:53.000 Quote, Ms.

00:46:54.000 Frances Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health.

00:46:56.000 The announcement yesterday about the AstraZeneca vaccine is a concrete example of how even a single case of an unexpected illness is sufficient to require a clinical hold for the trial in multiple counties.

00:47:07.000 But the media played this as though this was an unexplained side effect.

00:47:12.000 In fact, AstraZeneca spokesman Brendan McEvoy said the event is being investigated by an independent committee.

00:47:17.000 It is too early to conclude any specific diagnosis.

00:47:21.000 So it is unclear whether this is even linked to the vaccine at this point, but the media ran with that anyway to suggest that the vaccines are not going to work.

00:47:29.000 We have also seen We've also seen the media continue to trot out this ridiculous Sturgis study, suggesting that there were 267,000 COVID cases and $12.2 billion in public health costs attached to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota.

00:47:45.000 It's nonsense. 0.95

00:47:46.000 I mean, it's ridiculous. 0.83

00:47:46.000 The Washington Post reported like a week ago that there were 260 confirmed cases connected to Sturgis. 0.83

00:47:52.000 According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, many in the media and various health stages warned that the motorcycle rally represented a worst case scenario for a super spreading event. It would be surprising if the rally didn't lead to at least some new COVID cases. It's impossible to know how many because there's no data on how many attendees or their close contacts later tested positive.

00:48:08.000 But don't worry, the modelers showed up. So what exactly did they do? Well, they analyzed the anonymous cell phone data of attendees, and then they compared case trends in counties with high, moderate and low numbers of attendees.

00:48:19.000 They found that cases increased by 3.6 to 3.9 percent, 3.6 to 3.9, sorry, per 1,000 in South Dakota in the three weeks after the rally, translating to between 3,185 and 3,441 more cases statewide.

00:48:34.000 To put this number in perspective, New York State has recorded as many cases in the last week, even with its stringent public health rules.

00:48:41.000 South Dakota still has among the lowest per capita death rates in America.

00:48:45.000 COVID patients currently occupy 3% of the state hospital beds and 6% of ICU beds.

00:48:50.000 The study really jumps off the rails by linking all relative increase in virus cases in counties with attendees compared to those without rally participants.

00:48:59.000 Many high inflow counties like Los Angeles, Maricopa, Clark, and El Paso had already been experiencing flare-ups.

00:49:04.000 So basically, the modeler said, if LA experienced a flare-up after surges, then it was probably surges.

00:49:09.000 That's crazy!

00:49:10.000 LA's been experiencing a flare-up for weeks, for months at this point.

00:49:14.000 These counties may have shared other characteristics like high population density, says the Wall Street Journal, that contributed to the increases.

00:49:19.000 There could also be other endogenous variables.

00:49:21.000 For example, counties with more people who attended the motorcycle rally may also have had populations less observant of social distancing.

00:49:27.000 Doesn't matter.

00:49:28.000 They also then assigned a cost of $46,000 per person identified with the case to get to $12.2 billion, which is crazy.

00:49:36.000 The vast majority of people who get COVID get mild or asymptomatic cases.

00:49:40.000 So what in the hell?

00:49:42.000 But this study was trotted out as the gold standard for showing that it was red states that were responsible for everything evil happening in the country right now. 0.98

00:49:50.000 This is all highly political.

00:49:52.000 How highly political is it?

00:49:53.000 LA County tried to ban trick-or-treating.

00:49:57.000 Okay, it's currently September 10th.

00:50:00.000 Last I checked, Halloween has not been changed from its original date of October 31st.

00:50:03.000 Which means that they are banning trick-or-treating seven weeks out.

00:50:07.000 Seven weeks out!

00:50:08.000 And by the way, trick-or-treating does not convey the virus.

00:50:10.000 You're outdoors, you're socially distanced.

00:50:11.000 What the hell are you talking about?

00:50:14.000 They had to walk it back.

00:50:15.000 Instead, they said the activity is quote-unquote, not recommended.

00:50:19.000 Door-to-door trick-or-treating is not recommended because it can be very difficult to maintain proper social distancing on porches and at front doors.

00:50:25.000 Ensure that everyone answering or coming to the door is appropriately masked to prevent disease and because sharing food is risky.

00:50:30.000 First of all, you're generally sharing packaged candy.

00:50:34.000 We're not Halloween celebrators in the Shapiro family, but we do leave out a bucket of candy for the kids.

00:50:40.000 Everybody can do that.

00:50:40.000 This is not that difficult.

00:50:43.000 The county's also advising against trunk-or-treating, that is going to a car-to-car to receive candy.

00:50:49.000 So they tried to cancel this, and then the cops were like, you know what, we're not enforcing this, and then they had to walk it back.

00:50:53.000 So really, really well done.

00:50:55.000 Everybody is doing a great job with all of this.

00:50:59.000 And meanwhile, it is worth noting that there are some other takeaways from the Woodward book that have been making some news.

00:51:06.000 Some of the takeaways from the Woodward book that have been making some news.

00:51:09.000 Well, there's some revelations about things that people supposedly said that they've now denied.

00:51:14.000 So they suggest that Dr. Fauci said that Trump has no attention span, which, by the way, Trump has no attention span.

00:51:19.000 I mean, I'll just say it straight out.

00:51:20.000 I don't get the impression Trump has a very long attention span, do you?

00:51:23.000 Not from his Twitter account.

00:51:25.000 Apparently, Fauci also suggested that Trump didn't really follow the data all that well, which, again, we kind of knew, considering that we already knew that he has, like, shrunk his intelligence briefings down to a single page.

00:51:38.000 In any case, Fauci was asked about this on Fox News, and he said, I didn't say any of that.

00:51:43.000 According to the Washington Post, Fauci at one point tells others that the president, quote, is on a separate channel and unfocused in meetings with, quote, rudderless leadership, according to Woodward.

00:51:54.000 His, quote, his attention span is like a minus number, Fauci said, according to Woodward.

00:51:58.000 His sole purpose is to get reelected.

00:52:01.000 Is that correct?

00:52:03.000 You know, if you notice, it was others have said that.

00:52:07.000 So, you know, you should ask others.

00:52:09.000 I don't recall that at all.

00:52:11.000 OK, so there's Fauci debunking that claim.

00:52:13.000 Then there's the claim that Jim Mattis called Trump dangerous and unfit, which, again, is not a great shot, considering that he quit over Syria policy and wrote a letter to that effect.

00:52:21.000 And Dan Coats, the former director of national intelligence, apparently at some point he said that Trump's gentle approach to Russia reflected something more sinister, perhaps that Moscow had something.

00:52:31.000 OK, so that was speculation from Dan Coats.

00:52:33.000 This is all gossipy behind closed doors kind of stuff.

00:52:36.000 Apparently Trump repeatedly denigrated senior American military officials to his trade advisory so they care more about alliances than they do about trade deals.

00:52:44.000 In a discussion with Woodward, Trump called the U.S.

00:52:46.000 military suckers for paying extensive costs to protect South Korea.

00:52:50.000 Woodward wrote he was stunned when the president said of South Korea, we're defending you. 0.82

00:52:53.000 We're allowing you to exist.

00:52:55.000 Okay, again, Trump has said all of this publicly.

00:52:56.000 That is not a revelation.

00:52:58.000 My favorite supposed revelation from the Woodward book is one that actually makes Trump look a lot better.

00:53:02.000 And that is where Bob Woodward pointed out that he and Trump were, quote, white and privileged.

00:53:06.000 And asked if Trump was working to understand the pain, anger, and particularly black people feel in this country.

00:53:10.000 And Trump said, no.

00:53:12.000 And then he said, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you?

00:53:13.000 Listen to you, wow!

00:53:14.000 Now I don't feel that at all.

00:53:16.000 Honestly, good for Trump.

00:53:17.000 The fact that he spent 18 hours on the phone with this credulous dupe, Woodward, is pretty astonishing to me in the first place.

00:53:25.000 But if you're gonna do that conversation, then at the very least, you can point out the nonsense when it comes up.

00:53:31.000 Woodward also apparently gained insight into Trump's relationships with North Korea.

00:53:37.000 In describing his chemistry with Kim, Trump said, quote, You meet a woman.

00:53:41.000 In one second, you know whether or not it's going to happen.

00:53:45.000 That's not good.

00:53:47.000 And also weird.

00:53:48.000 Also, he complained about the Russia investigations.

00:53:51.000 He said, Putin said to me in a meeting, it's a shame because I know it's very hard for you to make a deal with us.

00:53:54.000 I said, you're right.

00:53:55.000 Again, that is not really a revelation.

00:53:57.000 So not a lot of revelations happening from the Woodward book.

00:54:00.000 Certainly not in the way that the media seem to be covering it.

00:54:04.000 Meanwhile, Adam Schiff is trying to revive his allegations that somehow Trump is impeachable.

00:54:09.000 So remember, he tried last time, and he failed.

00:54:12.000 Well, he's back again, is Adam Schiff, or as the president calls him, Schifty Schiff.

00:54:15.000 He is back again.

00:54:16.000 Now he has announced that as part of its ongoing investigation into the DHS and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the committee received a whistleblower reprisal complaint alleging serious wrongdoing by officials at the department and reprisal against former INA Acting Undersecretary Brian Murphy for making protected disclosures.

00:54:32.000 After receiving the complaint, Schiff sent a letter requesting Murphy appear for a deposition.

00:54:36.000 Schiff released a statement.

00:54:37.000 The whistleblower retaliation complaint filed by former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis Brian Murphy outlines grave and disturbing allegations that senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials improperly sought to politicize, manipulate, and censor intelligence in order to benefit President Trump politically.

00:54:53.000 This puts our nation and its security at grave risk.

00:54:55.000 Murphy's allegations are serious.

00:54:56.000 From senior officials suppressing intelligence reports on Russia's election interference, and making false statements to Congress about terrorism threats at our southern border, to modifying intelligence assessments to match the president's rhetoric on Antifa, and minimizing the threat posed by white supremacists, we've requested Murphy's testimony.

00:55:11.000 So, in other words, this is just a guy who's a career staffer who disagrees with how the intelligence community was creating its assessments, and now is claiming that Trump intimidated them, presumably without any evidence of any of this.

00:55:23.000 So good, we can have another full investigation of this.

00:55:25.000 Maybe we can try to impeach again, because that worked out so well last time.

00:55:31.000 Suffice to say, Democrats are drawing near the bottom of the well at this point.

00:55:37.000 Does that mean that Trump is going to win?

00:55:38.000 No.

00:55:39.000 It doesn't mean that Trump is going to win.

00:55:40.000 It doesn't mean that it won't be effective enough for Biden to carry himself over the finish line.

00:55:46.000 It does mean that when you're going back to the well with Adam Schiff and looking for impeachable offenses, you're really, really digging near the bottom.

00:55:54.000 All right.

00:55:54.000 We'll be back here a little bit later today with much more additional content, so stick around for that.

00:55:58.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.

00:55:59.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:55:59.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:56:05.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

00:56:07.000 Our Technical Director is Austin Stevens.

00:56:09.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:56:11.000 Our Supervising Producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:56:14.000 Assistant Director, Paweł Wajdowski.

00:56:16.000 Our Associate Producer is Nick Sheehan.

00:56:18.000 The show is edited by Adam Sajewicz.

00:56:20.000 Audio Mix by Mike Karomina.

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00:56:23.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:56:25.000 Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:56:28.000 Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.

00:56:31.000 You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.

00:56:37.000 But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.

The Ben Shapiro Show - September 10, 2020

The Woodward Tapes | Ep. 1092

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