The Ben Shapiro Show - We Are Under Attack | Ep. 1160

00:00:00.000 A massive suspected Russian cyber hack hits a load of American agencies, Democrats insist on retribution while pushing for wins in Georgia, and stimulus talks continue to drag out.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

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00:00:24.000 We'll get to all the news in just one moment.

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00:01:27.000 Pure Talk is simply All right, so in one of the least noticed stories that is actually an enormous story in recent memory, there's an enormous Russian mega-hack, apparently, suspected Russian mega-hack against a bevy of top American agencies and top American companies.

00:01:49.000 According to the Associated Press, U.S.

00:01:50.000 Government agencies and private companies rushed Monday to secure their computer networks following the disclosure of a sophisticated and long-running cyber espionage intrusion suspected of being carried out by Russian hackers.

00:02:00.000 The full extent of the damage is not yet clear.

00:02:02.000 The potential threat was significant enough that the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity Unit directed all federal agencies to remove compromised network management software and thousands of companies were expected to do the same.

00:02:13.000 By the way, there are certain sources saying it's not going to be sufficient to remove the software.

00:02:16.000 You're actually going to have to unplug the actual hardware, get rid of it, and replace it, which is crazy.

00:02:21.000 That's how infected these systems have become.

00:02:24.000 According to the AP, what was striking about the operation was its potential scope, as well as the manner in which the perpetrators managed to pierce cyber defenses and gain access to email and internal files at the Treasury and Commerce Department and potentially elsewhere.

00:02:37.000 The intrusion was stark evidence of the vulnerability of even supposedly secure government networks, even after well-known previous attacks.

00:02:44.000 It's still not clear who exactly did this, although U.S.

00:02:47.000 officials are suggesting it is probably Russian hackers.

00:02:50.000 The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, says the attack was carried out by Russian government hackers who go by the nicknames APT29 or Cozy Bear, which sounds cuter than it is, and are part of that nation's foreign intelligence service.

00:03:02.000 The intrusion came to light after a prominent cybersecurity firm, FireEye, determined it had been breached and alerted that foreign governments and major corporations were also compromised.

00:03:12.000 So how significant is this breach?

00:03:14.000 It's significant enough that, for example, The Bush cyber czar, Richard Clark, said this is the largest espionage attack in history, in American history.

00:03:23.000 This is the largest espionage attack in history.

00:03:27.000 This is as though the Russians got a passkey, a skeleton key, for about half the locks in the country. 0.88

00:03:35.000 Think about it that way.

00:03:37.000 Yeah, it's 18,000 companies and government institutions scattered around the U.S.

00:03:42.000 and the world.

00:03:44.000 This is an espionage attack.

00:03:45.000 As far as we know, the reason they got in was to steal information from the U.S.

00:03:49.000 U.S. government.

00:04:09.000 For those targets, the hackers will have long ago moved past their entry point, covered their tracks, and gained what experts call persistent access, meaning the ability to infiltrate and control networks in a way that is hard to detect or remove.

00:04:19.000 While the Russians didn't have time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them. 0.82

00:04:24.000 It'll take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy. 0.77

00:04:29.000 So, how did they gain access?

00:04:30.000 According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, they said in an unusual directive, the widely used network software SolarWinds had been compromised and should be removed from any system using it.

00:04:40.000 The problem is that once the system has used it, the Russians are already inside the system in all probability. 1.00

00:04:45.000 National cybersecurity agencies of Britain and Ireland also issued similar alerts, so this isn't a purely American problem.

00:04:50.000 SolarWinds is used by hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world, including most Fortune 500 companies, multiple US federal agencies.

00:04:57.000 The perpetrators were able to embed malware in a security update issued by the company based in Austin, Texas.

00:05:02.000 So basically, it wasn't that, you know, somebody clicked on a phishing link or something.

00:05:05.000 It wasn't like when John Podesta got hacked by the WikiLeaks guys simply by clicking on a phishing link.

00:05:10.000 Instead, what happened here is that SolarWinds, which again is a major company, issued a sort of software update.

00:05:16.000 And people just hit, sure, update my software.

00:05:18.000 And with that software came the malware.

00:05:20.000 Though SolarWinds estimated 18,000 customers were infected, most of the malware was not activated.

00:05:25.000 When it was, hackers could impersonate system administrators and have total access to the infected networks.

00:05:31.000 Carmichael said that the highly disciplined hackers only chose targets with highly coveted information because every time they activate the tool remotely, the likelihood of detection increases.

00:05:39.000 Ben Johnson, former NSA cyber engineer, who is now chief technology officer of software security from Obsidian said, quite honestly, my heart sank when I saw some of the details, just the amount of information they could potentially have if they are reading everyone's emails and they are accessing sensitive files within places like Treasury or Commerce.

00:05:55.000 SolarWinds has customers including in the Pentagon, the State Department, NASA, the NSA, the Department of Justice, and the White House.

00:06:02.000 So this is a full-on disaster area.

00:06:05.000 And we don't know just how deep this hack goes.

00:06:07.000 We have no idea what sort of information they have access to.

00:06:09.000 And again, they sort of now have a backdoor, which means that they can consistently be gathering information.

00:06:14.000 This is really, really scary stuff.

00:06:17.000 So, according to Politico, the Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S.

00:06:24.000 nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies.

00:06:33.000 They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

00:06:37.000 Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation, the Richland Field Office of the Department of Energy, the hackers have been able to do more damage at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission than other agencies, the officials said.

00:06:51.000 This is the clearest sign yet that the hackers were able to access networks belonging to a core part of the U.S.

00:06:56.000 national security enterprise.

00:06:58.000 So it's a full-on disaster area.

00:07:01.000 And again, that persistent access means that they can basically get in whenever they want, and it's going to be very, very difficult to detect.

00:07:08.000 It's also unclear exactly who is behind it.

00:07:11.000 Again, the Russians say they are not, but that cannot be trusted. 1.00

00:07:15.000 So what exactly should be done here?

00:07:18.000 I mean, this is basically an act of cyber war, right?

00:07:21.000 I mean, this is cyber war.

00:07:22.000 Senator Romney of Utah, he said, the cyber hack is like Russian bombers have been flying undetected over our entire country, alarming U.S.

00:07:29.000 vulnerability, apparent cyber warfare weakness, glaring inadequate cyber defenses, inexcusable silence, and inaction from the White House.

00:07:36.000 So, something has to be done, obviously.

00:07:38.000 Apparently, they found more than one doorway into U.S.

00:07:40.000 systems as well.

00:07:41.000 The Department of Homeland Security said in a bulletin on Thursday, the spies had used other techniques besides corrupting updates of network management software by SolarWinds, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies.

00:07:50.000 Apparently, the SolarWinds-Orion supply chain compromise is not the only initial infection vector this APT actor leveraged, according to the DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

00:08:01.000 Okay, so this is obviously scary stuff.

00:08:03.000 It doesn't mean, by the way, that they breached any of our seriously classified systems, but it is unclear what we know.

00:08:09.000 I mean, it's possible that they did.

00:08:11.000 And even if they didn't, the real possibility is that there's a lot of information that is not exactly classified that can be leveraged against people.

00:08:18.000 Right?

00:08:19.000 Especially because the Russians love to sow confusion in the U.S. 1.00

00:08:21.000 body politic.

00:08:22.000 If they have this much access to all of our corporate information, if they have this much access to insider government information, how much chaos can they sow over the coming years?

00:08:31.000 This is really scary stuff.

00:08:32.000 And the Trump administration, which is still in office, needs to take harsh action against the Russians. 0.96

00:08:39.000 And we are talking about more than individual sanctions on top Russian officers.

00:08:43.000 I mean, we have to be talking about something much more serious here, because this, again, is the largest act of cyber espionage probably in the history of the world, from what we can gather at this point.

00:08:52.000 That does not mean that we are moving toward open warfare with the Russians or anything like that.

00:08:56.000 But if we don't take harsh action right now and cut this off at the knees, it's only gonna get worse.

00:09:00.000 And again, apparently, a lot of these agencies, they're being told that the software is so compromised, they have to pretty much do what Hillary Clinton did to her hard drive.

00:09:07.000 Like, take this stuff out of the wall, take it out to a field somewhere, and take a baseball bat to it, like it's a printer in an office space.

00:09:13.000 I mean, that's how bad this is.

00:09:15.000 We'll get to more of this in just one second.

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00:10:48.000 Okay, so obviously this particular hack is incredibly scary.

00:10:52.000 It demonstrates that we have been really remiss in a lot of our cyber security and we have not been taking seriously the threat from foreign countries, including Russia, but also including China.

00:11:01.000 The fact is that we have talked very little in the United States about what ought to be done to fight back against the Chinese efforts to develop 5G.

00:11:09.000 And when we talk about using government resources in order to boost particular industries, it seems like the industry that needs to be boosted the most actually is the industry that people in America think needs to be boosted the least, namely the internet industry.

00:11:21.000 the internet industry.

00:11:23.000 The Chinese are threatening the security of the web around the world by installation of 5G that allows them back doors to other information and lots of countries are taking that up. 1.00

00:11:32.000 If the United States does not out-develop the Chinese in that space, then pretty soon a lot of governments, a lot of companies are gonna be in hock to the Chinese. 0.89

00:11:40.000 That could be a full-scale disaster area.

00:11:42.000 That is not something that anybody wants at this point.

00:11:45.000 Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, he says, do?

00:11:47.000 and state-sponsored hackers successfully snuck malware-riddled software into scores of federal government systems, our country has suffered a massive national security failure that could have ramifications for years to come.

00:11:58.000 So what exactly could the US do?

00:12:00.000 Well, theoretically, we could expel diplomats, we could impose sanctions, we could file criminal charges for cyber espionage.

00:12:06.000 Washington, DC and the EU have done that against Russia in the past, but that has not stopped the Russians.

00:12:12.000 So something radical has to change and it has to change in short order because this stuff is extremely, extremely dangerous.

00:12:18.000 Okay, meanwhile...

00:12:20.000 The wave of COVID that is hitting the country continues to be extraordinarily grave.

00:12:25.000 The California update is really ugly right now.

00:12:28.000 So California has been locked down tight.

00:12:30.000 The idea from the left and from the press and from so many of our government officials is that lockdowns always work.

00:12:36.000 That the best thing you can do is lockdown.

00:12:37.000 Here's the problem.

00:12:38.000 California really never stopped the lockdown.

00:12:40.000 And people, after a certain point, they stop obeying the lockdowns.

00:12:44.000 And as it turns out, if you shut down outdoor activities that are safe and you force people back into their homes, they're more likely to infect members of their household.

00:12:51.000 As we know from the contact tracing in New York, the vast majority of people who are obtaining COVID-19 are doing so inside their own households.

00:12:58.000 So here is the story from Southern California today, according to KABC in Southern California, one of our affiliates.

00:13:05.000 The ICU capacity in the 11-county Southern California region has now dropped to zero percent amid a dramatic surge in coronavirus cases, officials said on Thursday.

00:13:14.000 California hospitals are required to report the total number of all available staffed ICU beds each day.

00:13:18.000 Regional ICU capacity is calculated by subtracting neonatal and pediatric intensive care beds from the number of adult beds.

00:13:25.000 News of the diminished ICU capacity came as the state announced the deaths of 379 Californians, marking the highest number of fatalities in one day since the pandemic began, surpassing the previous record set the previous day.

00:13:36.000 We are talking now in the United States about more than 3,400 deaths a day.

00:13:40.000 If California were a country right now, California itself would rank number three in the world in the number of COVID diagnoses.

00:13:48.000 County COVID death toll has been rising.

00:13:48.000 The L.A.

00:13:51.000 County, about two people are dying every hour on average from the virus.

00:13:51.000 In L.A.

00:13:54.000 Something the county's public health officer called an explosive and very deadly surge.

00:13:59.000 Meanwhile, the vaccines are rolling out, and that is very good news. 1.00

00:14:03.000 But here has been one of the big problems with so much of what is going on right now.

00:14:07.000 We require tremendous trust in our public health agencies, and yet our public health agencies are very often pursuing policies that are anti-scientific.

00:14:15.000 I'm talking about the fact that public health agencies in Southern California shut down outdoor dining without any evidence that outdoor dining was a chief factor of transmission.

00:14:22.000 I'm talking about the fact that you have governors and mayors all over the country who have shut down education, even though Young people, particularly children, are not chief transmission vectors of the virus and are not dying from the virus.

00:14:36.000 The problem is that if you set unrealistic standards, it's very difficult for people to trust the standards that you are setting.

00:14:41.000 This doesn't mean you shouldn't be taking precautions.

00:14:43.000 We should be taking precautions.

00:14:45.000 If we are in a situation where ICU beds are at zero, you are going to have to engage in larger scale shutdowns of, you know, things like restaurants.

00:14:53.000 You're going to have to go from 50 to 25 percent, for example, if that is what the science backs.

00:14:57.000 The problem is people were doing stuff that the science did not back, and then people stopped paying attention to the scientists.

00:15:03.000 One of the big questions that the scientific establishment is going to have to ask itself when it comes to COVID and nearly everything else is why is it that so many people don't believe what we are saying to them?

00:15:11.000 Because if we are talking about the most, one of the most valuable things that has ever happened in human history, it's the renewed belief in the scientific method that began in the Enlightenment period and has developed You have progress and technology.

00:15:27.000 If you look at the prosperity of human society, life expectancy, all of this has jumped radically because of belief in the scientific method.

00:15:34.000 But one of the problems is that over the past 50 years, particularly, the scientific method has been increasingly made secondary to politically correct perceptions of what the scientific method should conclude.

00:15:45.000 We now have scientists who have decided that the conclusion is more important than the actual method itself.

00:15:50.000 And people can see that.

00:15:51.000 People can see that.

00:15:52.000 See, science is great when science sticks to its lane.

00:15:55.000 Science is not great when science does not stick to its lane.

00:15:58.000 Science's lane is not about the meaning of life, it is not about the meaning of the universe, and it is certainly not about politics.

00:16:03.000 Science's lane was supposed to be about trial and error, scientific method, hypothesis that is falsified or not falsified.

00:16:10.000 Right?

00:16:10.000 That is what the scientific method was.

00:16:12.000 But scientism decided that science was the solution for everything.

00:16:15.000 And not only that, you could merge leftist politics with science.

00:16:19.000 And people at a certain point said, well, I'm not sure what to believe anymore because you are now outside your lane.

00:16:24.000 You are engaging in what we would call ultracrepidarianism. 0.98

00:16:26.000 You are now operating outside your chosen field of specialty.

00:16:30.000 When the COVID sources told us for months that anti-lockdown gatherings were very scary, but also gatherings for George Floyd were very good, because racism is a public health problem, that undermines your credibility.

00:16:41.000 And the undermining of scientific credibility is an ongoing thing.

00:16:45.000 It is happening nearly every day in areas large and small in American life.

00:16:50.000 To take a non-COVID example, The New England Journal of Medicine, which is probably the most prestigious journal of medicine in the United States, put out an article today that is so absurd and so anti-scientific, it beggars imagination.

00:17:03.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

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00:18:00.000 Drive with confidence.

00:18:00.000 knowing that if anything happens, you are protected. Get coverage today. See why CarShield cars go farther. Visit carshield.com. Use code Ben to save 10%. Again, that's carshield.com, code Ben to save 10%. A deductible may apply. Okay, so when I say that the scientific establishment has really undermined its own credibility, and this is particularly frightening at a time when science has been at its most necessary.

00:18:23.000 I mean, the fact is that science is now going to, in historic measure, solve the COVID crisis through the creation of a vaccine in record time.

00:18:32.000 It's an incredible thing.

00:18:33.000 It really is.

00:18:34.000 And yet the scientific community continues to lose credibility among the public at large because they continue, at the same time that they are pushing actual science, to push nonsense.

00:18:43.000 Here's an example.

00:18:44.000 The New England Journal of Medicine put out an article today.

00:18:47.000 Again, this is a prestigious medical journal.

00:18:49.000 It is titled, Failed Assignments, Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates.

00:18:53.000 It is by Vadim Stahler, MD, Jessica Clark, JD.

00:18:58.000 Which is just a lawyer.

00:18:59.000 So we are now supposed to change.

00:19:00.000 We're supposed to change birth certificates for babies. 0.94

00:19:04.000 clinical utility and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people. Moving such designations below the line of demarcation wouldn't compromise the birth certificates public health function but could avoid harm. So we are now supposed to change, we're supposed to change birth certificates for babies because the lie is that sex is assigned at birth. First of all the notion that sex designations don't offer clinical utility on birth certificates is insane.

00:19:28.000 Obviously they do.

00:19:30.000 Doctors immediately start taking care of girl babies and boy babies a little bit differently because they have different systems.

00:19:34.000 They are not the same.

00:19:35.000 They have different growth charts, to take one example.

00:19:38.000 The basic idea

00:19:39.000 Here, from the New England Journal of Medicine, is that so as not to offend the possibility that an adult transgender person is going to be offended by their own birth certificate, we are now going to retroactively remove the sex designation line on birth certificates, or move it lower on the birth certificate, so that people who are transgender and care about their birth certificate, meaning they're like 30, and now they're looking back at their birth certificate and want to change their birth certificate, which, by the way, not only violates the laws of biology, but also the time-space continuum, because when you were born, you were actually a member of the sex to which you are still a member.

00:20:10.000 Okay, but now the New England Journal of Medicine is greenlighting this kind of crap. 0.72

00:20:14.000 And then people wonder why the scientific establishment is being undermined? 0.96

00:20:17.000 I mean, we had full-scale articles in science magazines talking about how racial justice was a public health issue, therefore it was fine to go out and protest in the middle of a COVID pandemic. 0.91

00:20:28.000 Another example.

00:20:29.000 Okay, so today, a University of Pittsburgh cardiologist who faced backlash over an opinion piece he wrote criticizing affirmative action is now suing his employers, the American Heart Association, and the company that published and then retracted his article, arguing that he was demoted and defamed because his views were unpopular.

00:20:44.000 Dr. Norman Wang, who is a faculty member in Pitt's School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, and a doctor with University of Pittsburgh Physicians, was removed from his position as director of UPMC's Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship program in August, days after his article was noticed by other cardiologists on Twitter.

00:21:01.000 The greatest of all places.

00:21:01.000 Ah, Twitter.

00:21:04.000 What's remarkable about this is that he was not punished for an inappropriate joke or an intemperate remark in the classroom, but for publishing a thoroughly researched article in a peer-reviewed journal, said Terry Pell, the president of the Center for Individual Rights, representing Wang in his suit.

00:21:17.000 This should concern anybody concerned about academics and free speech, regardless of whether it challenges conventional thinking.

00:21:22.000 I mean, it's pretty amazing.

00:21:26.000 The University of Pittsburgh basically demoted the guy because he wrote an article titled Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, Evolution of Race and Ethnicity Considerations for the Cardiology Workforce in the United States of America from 1969 to 2019.

00:21:36.000 It was published by the Journal of the American Heart Association in March.

00:21:41.000 The article traced the history of the use of race and ethnicity relative to admission into medical school, residency programs, and fellowships.

00:21:47.000 Wang said in the article the use of racial preferences in bringing minorities into medical schools can put them at disadvantage in the long term and concluded it hasn't worked to diversify the medical professional.

00:21:56.000 He said none of that is controversial.

00:21:57.000 It's based on data that's been written about before.

00:22:00.000 Well, at a July 31st meeting, apparently Wang was said that the School of Medicine's selection process violated federal law.

00:22:08.000 That's what he said, because of the preferences used for selecting and favoring some applicants.

00:22:11.000 At that point, Wang was removed from his role as director of the Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship Program.

00:22:18.000 So in other words, he crossed the politically woke, and he lost.

00:22:22.000 Because this is the way that science is supposed to work right now.

00:22:25.000 And this does have ramifications for things up to and including COVID policy.

00:22:29.000 Once you start making politically correct decisions and you infuse science with those politically correct decisions, it has actual impact.

00:22:36.000 So here is a perfect example.

00:22:38.000 So right now we are deciding who the vaccine goes to, right?

00:22:41.000 Who the COVID vaccine goes to first.

00:22:43.000 And this is a pretty contentious issue.

00:22:45.000 You've heard members of the Biden team suggest that when we talk about health issues, we should certainly be talking first and foremost about racial inequity and racial inequality, which they equate, right?

00:22:56.000 Inequity means unfairness.

00:22:58.000 Inequality is not unfair.

00:22:59.000 It's just inequality.

00:23:01.000 They say the two are exactly the same. 0.91

00:23:02.000 So in other words, if more black people than white people on average are dying of COVID, this demonstrates the racial animus of the United States, which of course is silliness.

00:23:09.000 You actually have to rule out the confounds.

00:23:11.000 You have to point out that people of color and white people are not dying at the same rates of COVID literally anywhere in the West.

00:23:18.000 But we ignore all of that in order to reach this conclusion.

00:23:21.000 So when it comes to walking out the COVID vaccine, There are a few ways we could tranche this thing out.

00:23:26.000 There's only one way that makes sense.

00:23:28.000 Truly, there's only one way.

00:23:29.000 The way that makes sense is to tranche this thing out by health condition, right?

00:23:32.000 I mean, it's a health condition, is COVID.

00:23:35.000 If you have one dose of COVID vaccine, and you have two patients, one of whom is a young nurse of color, and the other of whom is an 85-year-old white person living in a nursing home.

00:23:44.000 It's pretty obvious to whom this COVID vaccine should go.

00:23:48.000 But here's the thing, to the woke and to the quote-unquote scientific community that is affected by the woke, it is not at all obvious, which is why you saw a member of Biden's team openly saying, That when it comes to treatments for COVID, we should be looking at the treatments for COVID through a racial lens, which is wild stuff and does have real ramifications for society.

00:24:06.000 We'll talk about those ramifications in just one second because this actually is now a matter of practicality as we roll out a limited number of vaccines to a very large population.

00:24:15.000 There is not enough vaccine to go around at the moment.

00:24:18.000 We'll get to this in just one second.

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00:25:28.000 Okay, so, as I say, when it comes to wokeness in science, it has predictable effects.

00:25:33.000 One, a lot of people are gonna say, I don't believe you because it seems like your political priorities are now taking precedence over your scientific priorities.

00:25:39.000 And in many areas of American life, this is obviously true.

00:25:42.000 When you are talking about an entire medical establishment that is bought into gender ideology nonsense that has nothing to do with science, I understand why people have lost faith.

00:25:50.000 When you have a bunch of scientists who declare not just that climate change is happening, and not just that human activity contributes largely to climate change, but that the solution to that is invariably to crush the American economy, that is now politics, that is no longer science.

00:26:04.000 You have moved out of the realm in which you are experts into a realm in which you are not experts.

00:26:09.000 But when it comes to COVID, more than anything else, it has real ramifications because now we're talking about life and death issues.

00:26:14.000 So, go back to December 6th.

00:26:17.000 If you go back to December 6th, there is an article in the New York Times titled, The CDC will soon decide which group to recommend next.

00:26:27.000 The debate over trade-offs is growing heated.

00:26:29.000 Ultimately, states will determine who to include.

00:26:32.000 Okay, so...

00:26:34.000 What is the debate here?

00:26:35.000 It's pretty obvious that the answer here should be the elderly, right? 1.00

00:26:37.000 I mean, if you are an essential worker, and you are 40 years old, and you are healthy, your chances of dying from this thing are literally, in many cases, a hundred times lower than your chances of dying of this thing if you happen to be 85 and you have a pre-existing condition.

00:26:50.000 I mean, we're talking about a death rate of like 0.05, I think it's 0.5% for people who are You know, below the age of 65.

00:27:01.000 And once you are over the age of 75, the death rates on this thing rise to like 4 or 5%.

00:27:05.000 So you're talking about a... In some cases, somewhere between a 10 and a 100-fold difference in exactly how deadly this thing is.

00:27:15.000 Right, so I mean, that's a pretty significant difference, is it not?

00:27:17.000 Okay, you're talking about the difference between 5 deaths in 1,000 versus 5 deaths in 100.

00:27:22.000 And yet, we are now being told that this should be an open debate.

00:27:25.000 Okay, so the New York Times covered it this way.

00:27:28.000 This is pretty amazing.

00:27:29.000 Harold Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities.

00:27:39.000 Okay, you ready for this line?

00:27:40.000 This is an amazing line!

00:27:42.000 Remember, he's an expert in ethics and health policy.

00:27:44.000 Nothing says ethics quite like, you should dye based on the color of your skin. 1.00

00:27:48.000 Here's what Dr. Schmidt says, older populations are whiter.

00:27:52.000 Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer.

00:27:55.000 Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who have already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.

00:28:01.000 Okay, I'm gonna need to examine that a little more slowly.

00:28:04.000 What he is actually saying is that elderly people, people who are 85 and in nursing homes, are disproportionately white.

00:28:09.000 So even though they are also at radically disproportionate risk of dying of COVID-19, we should allow them to die so that a person of color who's an essential worker and has a tenfold or a hundredfold lower risk of death, right? 1.00

00:28:20.000 A 20-year-old who is working in an essential industry, Should get that vaccine because they're black, while an 85-year-old woman, who happens to be white, should die in a nursing home. 1.00

00:28:29.000 Because after all, society is structured so that there are more 85-year-old white people in nursing homes than 85-year-old black people in nursing homes, proportionally speaking. 0.98

00:28:35.000 You know how insane that is? 0.53

00:28:37.000 You know how wild that is?

00:28:40.000 To protect older people more at risk, Dr. Schmidt called on the CDC committee to also integrate the agency's own Social Vulnerability Index.

00:28:48.000 The index includes 15 measures derived from the census, such as overcrowded housing, lack of vehicle access, and poverty, to determine how urgently a community needs health support, with the goal of reducing inequities.

00:28:59.000 Not the goal of reducing overall death, mind you.

00:29:01.000 The goal of reducing inequities.

00:29:03.000 Now, the first rule when it comes to medicine is do no harm.

00:29:06.000 You're obviously doing harm if you're tranching out the vaccine to people who are less vulnerable rather than to people who are more vulnerable because you are basically saying more white people should die because white people are historically advantaged in the United States.

00:29:19.000 I mean, this is wild stuff.

00:29:23.000 To suggest that we are to rate as more important factors Racial constituency or socioeconomic status, rather than your risk factor of dying of COVID, is a demonstration that science takes a backseat to politics.

00:29:36.000 It just does.

00:29:37.000 There's a good article about this by a doctor named Buzz Hollander over at Real Clear Science today, talking about the attempts to tranche this thing out.

00:29:48.000 Right now, the strategy is to roll this thing out to people in nursing homes, but also to roll it out to people who are essential workers in medicine.

00:29:59.000 But as he says, here's the problem.

00:30:01.000 If you're talking about essential workers in medicine, they are not among the people most likely to die.

00:30:05.000 If you have to decide between giving it to my wife, who is a 33-year-old family medicine doctor, and giving it to an 85-year-old woman in a nursing home, you should absolutely give it to the 85-year-old woman in the nursing home. 0.59

00:30:15.000 No question.

00:30:17.000 This is what Dr. Hollander says.

00:30:18.000 says, he says, here's my greatest beef with the current plan as endorsed by the CDC.

00:30:22.000 We might only have 19 million doses in our first round.

00:30:24.000 I will not quibble with allocating two million to care for home to home to care home residents as they have been responsible for roughly 40 percent of deaths in the United States. I also won't argue with administering to roughly another two million staff for those homes because we can't be sure that nursing home residents will mount an effective immune response to the vaccines.

00:30:40.000 So you have to protect the people around the members of the nursing home.

00:30:43.000 However, giving the next 15 million doses to healthcare workers does not compute by any calculus valuing lives saved.

00:30:49.000 I know the arguments.

00:30:50.000 They put themselves at risk.

00:30:51.000 They are needed, healthy for hospitals to function smoothly.

00:30:55.000 They tend to roll up their sleeves more willingly than average Americans. 0.86

00:30:58.000 The problem is they don't die very often.

00:31:00.000 The math doesn't work out.

00:31:02.000 Approximately 0.5% of U.S.

00:31:03.000 deaths from COVID have been healthcare workers.

00:31:05.000 Approximately 80% of U.S.

00:31:07.000 deaths from COVID-19 have been from those over the age of 65.

00:31:12.000 80% versus 0.5%.

00:31:13.000 How is this even a question?

00:31:15.000 There are a bunch of doctors who have been writing this recently.

00:31:19.000 He says, this is just simple ethics.

00:31:21.000 Is it really right for me, as a 51-year-old, healthy, immensely privileged white guy, to be given a vaccine in two weeks, while my 87-year-old father, living in a multi-generational household, might wait another two to three months?

00:31:32.000 We know first do no harm, but what about first do not steal?

00:31:35.000 Here's the pragmatics.

00:31:36.000 If we agree my father is on the order of 160 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than me, does it make sense to give me the vaccine first?

00:31:44.000 But the answer, for a lot of folks, is yes, because wokeness takes precedence.

00:31:50.000 Hey, here are some other things that we are not doing that we should be doing.

00:31:52.000 Because we have decided that we are not going to tell people that once you have actually had this thing, you are basically immune, which most science suggests you are, the chances of reinfection are exorbitantly low.

00:32:02.000 Then, one of the things that we are not doing that we absolutely should be doing is we should be antibody testing people before we give them the vaccine, correct?

00:32:09.000 I mean, this is a pretty easy answer.

00:32:10.000 You should be antibody testing people.

00:32:12.000 Make sure they're not already immune before you give them a dose of the vaccine.

00:32:14.000 Remember, this is a limited number of vaccine doses.

00:32:17.000 Why would you dose somebody with a vaccine who's already immune to the virus?

00:32:23.000 Like, the fact that everybody seems to not want to talk about antibody tests is kind of insane.

00:32:30.000 As Dr. Hollander says, best estimates would hold that the 16 million identified cases of COVID-19 in the U.S.

00:32:35.000 probably amount to more like 60 million or even 100 million actual cases.

00:32:38.000 Let's say there are 80 million total cases.

00:32:40.000 Of the 64 million, without a history of PCR positive tests, if we estimate a rapid antibody test to spike proteins correctly identifies 80% of these, we have 51 million more Americans with probable immunity.

00:32:50.000 So you can exclude 20% of people from the first waves of vaccination with very low life-saving cost.

00:32:56.000 Also, Why aren't we tranching the vaccines to places where people are most likely to die?

00:33:02.000 We should be sending more vaccine right now, for example, to LA County than to San Francisco, because San Francisco is not getting hit as hard.

00:33:10.000 Also, we should be rolling this stuff out as fast as humanly possible.

00:33:15.000 So, according to this doctor, he says, trying to keep the vaccines in storage for three to four weeks to maintain perfect allocation for a booster shot adds to the challenge.

00:33:21.000 It cuts in half the number of vaccine doses available right now.

00:33:24.000 government recommends this practice, perhaps to avoid any appearance of legitimizing a one-dose regimen, but we should be on appearances at this point.

00:33:24.000 The U.S.

00:33:31.000 Former FDA head Scott Gottlieb is not a fan of holding back doses.

00:33:34.000 He says, I don't think we should be holding onto supply right now, anticipating something goes wrong that's going to cause a lot of other challenges.

00:33:39.000 We should be taking some risk.

00:33:41.000 What he means is, right now, for every dose that we are putting out there, there's another dose that we are holding back for a month, basically, so that we can give it to you in a month.

00:33:49.000 But we know that more doses are going to come online in a month.

00:33:51.000 So why not tranche the early immunity out as fast as humanly possible?

00:33:56.000 Right?

00:33:56.000 Let's trust that people are going to actually produce where they are supposed to produce.

00:34:01.000 So moving forward, these are all practical things, but they've all become politicized.

00:34:06.000 They've all become politicized.

00:34:08.000 And the fact that they've become politicized is a disaster for the United States, and it's a disaster for the scientific institutions of the country.

00:34:15.000 The fact that our political leaders are being treated as celebrities, and our scientific leaders are being treated as celebrities, and none of them seem to be able to hold a consistent standard with regard to science is pretty astonishing.

00:34:25.000 Remember, never forget, the same media that has decided that they know best about COVID has also decided that Andrew Cuomo is the greatest of all governors.

00:34:32.000 By the way, speaking of Governor Andrew Cuomo, some late-breaking news from Andrew Cuomo.

00:34:35.000 If you're a restaurant owner, you should be overjoyed that he shut down your restaurant.

00:34:37.000 Here was Governor Cuomo from New York yesterday.

00:34:40.000 Of all sorts of people who are concerned, well, you went down to 25% indoor dining, you cancelled indoor dining, you're requesting more testing for people in salons, lower capacity in gyms.

00:34:56.000 Yes, to all of that.

00:34:58.000 That is not the real problem.

00:35:00.000 We're trying to change the trajectory.

00:35:03.000 Well, I'm upset that you're trying to change the trajectory.

00:35:05.000 You should be happy!

00:35:08.000 Because if we don't change the trajectory, we're going to go to shutdown, and then your business is going to close.

00:35:15.000 And that, my friends, is a real problem.

00:35:18.000 Well, no, actually, a real problem has been that you have not followed the data pretty much anywhere here along the way, Andrew Cuomo.

00:35:23.000 I mean, you shut down the schools when they didn't need to be shut down.

00:35:25.000 You were shutting down the restaurants when they didn't need to be shut down, or at least putting in place restrictions that were not sensical.

00:35:31.000 You were going out there and leaving the nursing homes wide open to COVID.

00:35:35.000 And yet, this is the guy that the media have been trotting out there.

00:35:38.000 Systemic distrust is a real problem.

00:35:39.000 It really is.

00:35:40.000 And just because somebody has an MD by their name, or they have a PhD by their name, or just because they're an elected official, does not mean that what they are saying is logical.

00:35:49.000 Okay?

00:35:49.000 What's logical is logical, and what is scientific is scientific, and what is not is not.

00:35:53.000 It is that simple.

00:35:53.000 And I think the American people have enough common sense to know that, or at least I hope they do.

00:35:57.000 I think one of the big problems here is that people tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

00:36:01.000 They look at the fact that they've been lied to by public officials, and that health officials can't seem to get their act together on a regular basis, or that they infuse science with politics, and then they say, okay, well, I'm just throwing out the whole thing.

00:36:11.000 And that is probably the worst problem of all.

00:36:13.000 When you undermine the credibility of your own institution, people just don't take your institution seriously.

00:36:17.000 And when you're talking about an institution as serious as the scientific establishment of the United States, that is a serious, serious issue.

00:36:24.000 All righty, coming up, we're gonna get into Joe Biden, who continues to maintain that Hunter Biden is the cap of all innocents.

00:36:33.000 He's also the most brilliant person Joe Biden knows, which is not, that's a pretty damning indictment of his friendship circle.

00:36:39.000 In any case, we'll get to more in one second.

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00:36:46.000 Did you hear that part where I said that the Russians have hacked every single institution in the United States and around the globe? 0.53

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00:37:48.000 All right, we're gonna get to more of the news in just one moment.

00:37:51.000 First, on Monday, December 21st, which is coming up real fast right here, I mean, we are talking about this Monday, the historical docuseries, Apollo 11, What We Saw, will be available exclusively at DailyWire.com.

00:38:01.000 Originally released as an audio podcast for Apple and Spotify, What We Saw will be available to watch as well as listen to on the DailyWire Apple TV or Roku app or at DailyWire.com.

00:38:12.000 The docuseries takes a detailed look at the Apollo 11 mission to land a man on the moon.

00:38:15.000 Perhaps one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind.

00:38:17.000 It was the culmination of the Cold War and our Cold War rivalry.

00:38:21.000 It's a dramatically inspiring story.

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00:38:33.000 When you become an insider or above member over at dailywire.com slash subscribe and make sure to download our apple tv or roku app to get all of our content on your big screen including our podcasts and special live streams that is dailywire.com slash subscribe to get 20 off your membership with code watch and access to all of our new Also, by the way, make sure to tune into Daily Wire's Backstage.

00:38:53.000 That is happening this Monday, the 21st, 8 p.m.

00:38:56.000 Eastern, 5 p.m.

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00:38:59.000 We will all be together again, socially distanced, of course, but we'll be sharing the Christmas spirit with you.

00:39:06.000 I know some weird things are going to happen during that show.

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00:39:17.000 Today you are listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.

00:39:21.000 So a quick further note on COVID, the stimulus talks that should have been held months ago are still going on.

00:39:32.000 Apparently, this is going to drag into the weekend.

00:39:33.000 According to the Washington Post, White House officials and congressional leaders are trying to address a number of lingering policy disagreements as they race to finalize an approximately $900 billion coronavirus relief package.

00:39:43.000 With growing signs, the talks will drag into the weekend.

00:39:46.000 Negotiators were hoping to resolve all of their differences and pass matching bills in the House and Senate by Friday night.

00:39:50.000 That appeared to slip away late on Thursday.

00:39:53.000 Lawmakers first have to pass a stopgap spending bill by Friday night to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday.

00:39:58.000 Then they will continue to negotiate through the weekend.

00:40:01.000 It turns out that the best negotiator in the building, once again, is Senator Mitch McConnell, who has basically traded No state and local aid in favor of no liability.

00:40:10.000 He says we'll hold all that stuff out for a future bill.

00:40:14.000 So all the talk about how he was being forced into concessions by the Democrats, turns out not really so true.

00:40:19.000 This has, of course, ticked off the members of the Progressive Caucus and Democrats in the Senate are like, guys, we still have to make a deal here.

00:40:25.000 Mark Warner chided Bernie Sanders, Nohan Omar, because I'm not sure why we're going to them for advice on how to cut a COVID deal.

00:40:31.000 They've never cut a deal in their entire lives.

00:40:33.000 These are folks who've never negotiated any deal that I think has ever been successful.

00:40:38.000 I mean, we're dealing with a Senate that is still, unfortunately, controlled by the Republicans.

00:40:43.000 We still have Donald Trump as president controlling two-thirds, in a sense, of the federal government, the executive and the Senate.

00:40:50.000 And the alternative would have been to have people Get kicked off of unemployment, get kicked out of their apartments, not get the kind of food assistance that's needed.

00:41:01.000 Okay, so he happens to be right, but the fact is that the radicals in the Democratic Party base will continue to push for more and more and more and more.

00:41:08.000 By the way, some of the things the Democrats wanted here was basically unlimited authority for the federal government to lend to anybody as long as they declare an emergency.

00:41:15.000 It's pretty incredible stuff.

00:41:17.000 Okay, meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to run around suggesting that his son Hunter is being victimized in some way.

00:41:24.000 He was on Stephen Colbert's show.

00:41:26.000 The fact that the hard-hitting questions come from Stephen Colbert demonstrates that your media is absolutely 100% corrupt.

00:41:33.000 CBS Evening News with Norah O'Donnell quoted the late show with Stephen Colbert to interview Biden.

00:41:38.000 That's how insane this is.

00:41:40.000 Nora O'Donnell didn't actually do an interview with Joe Biden and ask him serious questions about Hunter.

00:41:44.000 No, Joe Biden, very serious guy, right?

00:41:48.000 Now we're beyond the age of entertainment politics.

00:41:51.000 You remember those bad old days of Trump with the entertainment politics?

00:41:55.000 We never had an entertainment president before except for Barack Obama who did interviews with GloZell and Pimp with a Limp.

00:42:00.000 But now we have Joe Biden, very serious, serious, like super serious guy, so serious that he won't do sit down interviews with anybody who's actually serious, but he will sit down with faux comic Stephen Colbert to basically do propaganda.

00:42:12.000 So Stephen Colbert said, you know, Mr. Mr. President-elect, you know, let me just ask you, you know, people are being so mean to Hunter.

00:42:19.000 They're being so mean to Hunter.

00:42:21.000 Like, are you upset that they're being so mean to Hunter?

00:42:23.000 And here's Joe Biden saying, yes, indeed.

00:42:26.000 We have great confidence in our son.

00:42:29.000 I'm not concerned about any accusations that have been made against him.

00:42:34.000 It's used to get to me.

00:42:36.000 I think it's kind of foul play.

00:42:38.000 But look, it is what it is.

00:42:40.000 And he's a grown man.

00:42:42.000 He is the smartest man I know.

00:42:44.000 I mean, in pure intellectual capacity.

00:42:48.000 And as long as he's good, we're good.

00:42:53.000 The smartest man he knows, hmm?

00:42:55.000 Well, might need to know some more smart people. 0.82

00:42:57.000 Because Hunter Biden is a dum-dum. 0.97

00:43:01.000 Sorry. 0.98

00:43:02.000 Running around to foreign countries and picking up bags of cash because your last name is Biden does not make you smart. 0.86

00:43:07.000 Other things that don't make you smart would include apparently dropping off your broken laptop with pictures of you doing drugs with like hookers on a computer in Delaware and just leaving it there.

00:43:19.000 Those are things that do not actually make you smart.

00:43:22.000 Well, when Joe Biden suggests that Hunter Biden is smart, and not only that, that it's a corrupt, it's foul play.

00:43:27.000 It's foul play.

00:43:28.000 Question.

00:43:28.000 It's out to get him.

00:43:30.000 Why is it foul play?

00:43:30.000 Apparently this investigation's been ongoing since 2019.

00:43:32.000 So where exactly is the foul play right here?

00:43:35.000 The answer is, there is no foul play.

00:43:36.000 This is one of the reasons why the Attorney General, who is still William Barr until next week, should appoint a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation.

00:43:43.000 Because there's very little doubt that Joe Biden would come in and immediately quash that thing, right?

00:43:48.000 Joe Biden would probably come in, he would kill that investigation dead, and then the media would just cheer.

00:43:51.000 Because after all, the media didn't even want to cover this stuff before the election.

00:43:55.000 Meanwhile, with regard to sort of breaking news here, Hunter Biden's former business partners apparently said explicitly they wanted to get Joe involved without Joe knowing.

00:44:06.000 Ms.

00:44:06.000 Hot Air.

00:44:07.000 Fox News published a story today highlighting some text messages between Hunter Biden's former business associates, James Gilliar and Tony Bobulinski.

00:44:14.000 The messages from 2017 involve a plan to set up a business deal with a Chinese energy company.

00:44:18.000 The pair were eager to get Joe Biden involved, but also warned about mentioning he would be involved, except in face-to-face communications.

00:44:24.000 In April of 2017, Bobulinski asked Gilliar why Jim Biden was part of the discussion when they already had Hunter on board.

00:44:30.000 Gilear said, with H's demons, could be good to have a backup.

00:44:33.000 He strengthens our USP to Chinese, as it looks like a truly family business, and I like the dude.

00:44:40.000 Apparently that would be the unique selling proposition.

00:44:42.000 Whatever the case, the point is clearly that having two Bidens involved adds to the suggestion the entire family is involved.

00:44:47.000 In early May, the same two were discussing a meeting with the chairman of the Chinese company and the need for an A-lister to be at the meeting.

00:44:53.000 Gilear then texted Bobulinski with the hope that Joe may come Sunday.

00:44:56.000 He added, I'm hoping.

00:44:57.000 Bobulinski called that a no-brainer.

00:44:59.000 Biden apparently didn't attend that meeting.

00:45:01.000 On May 11th, Bobulinski texted Gilear again saying, Okay, but don't worry.

00:45:11.000 Everything is pure as the driven snow.

00:45:13.000 Everything is absolutely wonderful.

00:45:15.000 And Hunter is the smartest person everybody knows.

00:45:18.000 Except for how his business partners are like, God, we can't go to the Chinese with this tool bag. 1.00

00:45:22.000 We gotta have something better than this.

00:45:23.000 How about like Jim?

00:45:24.000 Let's get Jim. 0.84

00:45:25.000 Maybe we'll get Joe.

00:45:26.000 Like somebody who's not Hunter.

00:45:28.000 Goodness gracious.

00:45:29.000 Don't worry, guys.

00:45:30.000 This Biden administration is going to be pure as the... His only scandal, presumably, will also be some odd-colored suit.

00:45:37.000 Obama's only scandal is his hand suit.

00:45:39.000 He's going to wear like a mauve suit or something, and that'll be his big scandal.

00:45:42.000 It'll look like Joe Pesci and my cousin Vinny one day at a press conference, and that'll be his big scandal.

00:45:47.000 That'll just be mainly because he doesn't know what to dress in because somebody else has to dress him every day.

00:45:51.000 In any case, The election 2020 doubts continue apace.

00:45:56.000 People have been trotting out a couple of pieces of video.

00:45:59.000 They're both trending on Twitter overnight, and I think it is worthy of pointing out that these pieces of video are really not particularly convincing.

00:46:07.000 One is a video of Arizona State Senator Eddie Farnsworth, this was going viral last night, suggesting that in the Texas case, the Supreme Court justices went into a room and started yelling at each other about why they should not go along with the Texas case.

00:46:21.000 Here is this clip.

00:46:22.000 This clip had millions of views over the last 24 hours.

00:46:25.000 There's only one pretty large problem with it.

00:46:28.000 Here was this Arizona State Senator.

00:46:30.000 When a Texas case was brought up, he said he heard screaming through the walls as Justice Roberts and the other liberal justices were insisting that this case not be taken up.

00:46:47.000 And the reason, the words that were heard through the wall when Justice Thomas and Justice Alito were citing Bush v. Gore from John Roberts were, I don't give a about that case.

00:47:03.000 I don't want to hear about it.

00:47:05.000 At that time, we didn't have riots.

00:47:08.000 Okay, um, I have a question.

00:47:11.000 The Supreme Court Justice, they're not meeting in person.

00:47:14.000 So, obviously that is not true.

00:47:16.000 Other things that are not true, apparently Lin Wood is now tweeting out that John Roberts called Trump an MF-er. 0.97

00:47:22.000 I don't know where Linwood is getting any of this crap.

00:47:23.000 There's no evidence that this is the case at all. 0.94

00:47:26.000 Bottom line is that if all this does is just undermine people's willingness to vote in the Georgia Senate races, it is a huge error.

00:47:30.000 the MFR would never be reelected.

00:47:32.000 Roberts engaged in phone conversation with Justice Stephen Breyer discussing how to work to get Trump voted out. 0.99

00:47:36.000 Like, I don't know where Linwood is getting any of this crap. 0.93

00:47:38.000 There's no evidence that this is the case at all. 0.91

00:47:41.000 Bottom line is that if all this does is just undermine people's willingness to vote in the Georgia Senate races, it is a huge error.

00:47:47.000 It's a huge error.

00:47:50.000 This is not just me saying this.

00:47:51.000 That's why we're going to keep right on fight.

00:47:52.000 who was vaccinated this morning.

00:47:55.000 You do want the top levels of government presumably vaccinated.

00:47:57.000 And how old is Mike Pence?

00:47:58.000 He's about 60 probably.

00:48:00.000 Mike Pence says he was vaccinated this morning.

00:48:03.000 There was tape of him doing it.

00:48:04.000 But on the Georgia stuff, he said, if you don't vote, they win.

00:48:07.000 Now I know we've all got doubts about the last election.

00:48:11.000 That's why we're gonna keep right on fighting.

00:48:15.000 But I gotta tell you, and I hear some people saying down here in Georgia, if you're frustrated about the last election, just don't vote.

00:48:28.000 We're moving on.

00:48:31.000 My fellow Americans, I say from my heart, you gotta remember, if you don't vote, they win.

00:48:37.000 Okay, that is exactly right.

00:48:38.000 You know who else knows that, by the way?

00:48:39.000 Joe Biden.

00:48:40.000 Right?

00:48:41.000 Joe Biden came out, he says, moderate Joe, he says, I need Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.

00:48:45.000 I need them.

00:48:46.000 Give them to me.

00:48:47.000 Don't give them to him, guys.

00:48:49.000 My administration is preparing to beat COVID-19 and get economic relief to the American people.

00:48:55.000 On day one as your president, I'm prepared to sign a COVID relief package that fully funds the public health response needed, led by Georgia's own CDC.

00:49:04.000 It will ensure free testing and vaccination for every American, and will get small businesses the assistance they need right now.

00:49:13.000 Let me be clear.

00:49:15.000 I need Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff in the United States Senate to get this done.

00:49:20.000 No, you really don't.

00:49:22.000 Like, a lot of those things are going to happen anyway.

00:49:24.000 And also, there is no one who is too radical for Joe Biden to endorse, apparently.

00:49:28.000 Also, kudos to the guy who's playing the soft synthesizer music in the background.

00:49:33.000 That really is, it's like from a yoga retreat in the background.

00:49:36.000 Because if Biden wasn't putting you to sleep right there on his own, they had to have synthesizer guy in the background playing the soft music as the waterfalls tinkle in the background.

00:49:44.000 Okay, meanwhile, The same Democratic Party that suggests that it's time for unity.

00:49:50.000 The media that suggests the election is over.

00:49:52.000 It's time for unity.

00:49:52.000 Let's all get together and have happy times together.

00:49:55.000 Meanwhile, the Democrats just keep saying awful things about Republicans because this is the way that it works, guys.

00:50:01.000 Don't you understand?

00:50:01.000 It's time for unity, by which they mean surrender.

00:50:04.000 It's time for you.

00:50:05.000 And they don't just mean surrender in the election in 2020.

00:50:06.000 The Electoral College has already voted.

00:50:09.000 They mean surrender forever.

00:50:11.000 Surrender your priorities.

00:50:12.000 Just let the Democrats have their way with the country.

00:50:15.000 That is what they mean.

00:50:16.000 So, Barack Obama, Captain Unity, right?

00:50:18.000 He's doing his book tour.

00:50:20.000 He's such a unifying figure.

00:50:21.000 Remember, according to the media, this guy was the most unifying figure in modern American politics.

00:50:26.000 He really just brought people together.

00:50:27.000 That's all Barack Obama did.

00:50:28.000 He was unbelievably divisive.

00:50:30.000 The rise of the intersectional coalition, the rise of intersectionality as a philosophy.

00:50:34.000 It really occurred under his watch.

00:50:36.000 And it was a political move by Obama that he really started to treat separate segments of the American population as voting blocs that he could appeal to and then cobble together a coalition against the quote-unquote system that really did break apart.

00:50:47.000 I think that if the country is irrevocably broken, a lot of people on the left are going to attribute that to election 2016.

00:50:54.000 No way.

00:50:55.000 No way.

00:50:55.000 The country got broken in 2012.

00:50:57.000 That's when the country got broken.

00:50:58.000 In 2008, Barack Obama ran as a traditional unifying political figure, right?

00:51:03.000 No red states, no blue states, the United States.

00:51:05.000 By 2012, he had basically decided that he was going to abandon pushing a message that was acceptable and palatable and interesting for a majority of Americans.

00:51:13.000 He was instead going to go to each intersectional group, tell them he was going to prioritize their needs, cobble them together, and then direct them at the overarching system.

00:51:20.000 The Republican Party is the minority party in this country.

00:51:22.000 The only reason that it doesn't look like they're the minority party is because of structures like the U.S. 0.90

00:51:25.000 Anyway, here's the schmuck saying that the GOP is the minority party and then saying that the Senate basically shouldn't exist anymore. 0.89

00:51:32.000 So that's exciting. 0.97

00:51:33.000 He attacks the Senate and the Electoral College.

00:51:35.000 But don't worry, unity is on its way, guys.

00:51:37.000 The era of good feelings is here.

00:51:39.000 The Republican Party is the minority party in this country.

00:51:43.000 The only reason that it doesn't look like they're the minority party is because of structures like the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College.

00:51:53.000 that don't render them the majority party.

00:51:55.000 So they have certain built-in advantages around power, given their population distribution and how our government works.

00:52:04.000 But the truth of the matter is that 60% of the people are occupying what I would consider a more reality-based universe.

00:52:15.000 Okay, by the way, isn't this hilarious stuff?

00:52:17.000 He's saying that to Trevor Noah on Comedy Central.

00:52:20.000 I mean, that's comedying right there.

00:52:21.000 And Trevor Noah just sitting there.

00:52:23.000 So here is your very serious Democratic Party.

00:52:25.000 Joe Biden being interviewed by Stephen Colbert and Barack Obama being interviewed by Trevor Noah.

00:52:29.000 Slow clap for the anti-entertainment crew, the very serious political crew.

00:52:33.000 How did they get Trump?

00:52:34.000 I can't imagine.

00:52:35.000 By the way, he happens to be wrong about this.

00:52:36.000 When he says that the Democrats are the majority party, he is right on a federal level right now in terms of the House and in terms of the presidential vote.

00:52:44.000 He is certainly wrong on the state level.

00:52:46.000 On the state level, right now, The state-level chambers, Republicans control about 3,900 seats in state legislative houses, and the Democrats control about 3,400 seats in state legislative houses.

00:53:03.000 When it comes to state senates, Republicans control 32 state senates.

00:53:07.000 Democrats control 18.

00:53:10.000 So, no, that is not correct.

00:53:14.000 It turns out we do have a series.

00:53:15.000 The reason he hates the Senate, of course, is because he dislikes the fact that there are institutional obstacles to cramming down his pure mob rule majoritarian ideas on everybody else.

00:53:24.000 That's really what he wants to do.

00:53:26.000 And then people wonder why Republicans and conservatives feel threatened.

00:53:29.000 We understand that you guys want to get rid of all the militating institutions that preserve individual rights.

00:53:34.000 We get it.

00:53:35.000 We understand that you just want a bare majority to force itself on the bare minority.

00:53:39.000 That you don't want any of those rights protected so long as the communal interests cut the other way.

00:53:46.000 And it's not just Obama, obviously.

00:53:49.000 It's people like this Biden inaugural official.

00:53:53.000 So there's a Biden inaugural official named Stephanie Cutter, right?

00:53:56.000 She was also a member of the Team Hillary. 0.55

00:54:00.000 And a member of the Obama team as well.

00:54:02.000 So Stephanie Cutter tweeted out in the wake of the statement by Jen O'Malley Dillon, who is one of Biden's deputy chiefs of staff.

00:54:12.000 She suggested that Republicans were effers.

00:54:15.000 So now Stephanie Cutter Jen just had the guts to say it.

00:54:18.000 Will Republicans prove her wrong?

00:54:19.000 said quote, the story is based on one anonymous donor.

00:54:21.000 Really?

00:54:22.000 And does anyone really disagree with the sentiment?

00:54:24.000 This is because Axios ran a piece saying that some Biden aides were worried that O'Malley Dillon had called the GOP effers.

00:54:29.000 So Stephanie Cutter said the story is based on one anonymous donor.

00:54:31.000 Really?

00:54:32.000 Does anyone really disagree with the sentiment?

00:54:34.000 Jen just had the guts to say it.

00:54:35.000 Will Republicans prove her wrong?

00:54:36.000 Doubt it.

00:54:37.000 Okay, well, so in other words, she's right.

00:54:40.000 You have a top Obama official and a top Biden official both saying that Republicans are effers.

00:54:45.000 But don't worry, guys.

00:54:46.000 It's time for unity.

00:54:47.000 It's time to get together.

00:54:48.000 Why won't Republicans just give it up? 0.95

00:54:49.000 Why don't Republicans just, you know, sit down and shut up?

00:54:53.000 Meanwhile, you have MSNBC host Mehdi Hassan suggesting that Donald Trump should be overtly prosecuted for COVID deaths.

00:55:00.000 Yes, the era of good feelings is here, guys.

00:55:01.000 There will be no recriminations.

00:55:02.000 It's not gonna be about punishing the other side.

00:55:05.000 It's not about viciousness or cruelty.

00:55:07.000 It is simply about bringing back a time of unity and togetherness.

00:55:12.000 That's why we're now calling for the prosecution of the sitting president of the United States for the effects of a global pandemic that have killed millions of people all over the planet.

00:55:20.000 Donald Trump killed hundreds of thousands of people or presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, preventable deaths, here at home in the United States of America.

00:55:28.000 And that, for me, you know, you talk about morally abominable. 0.96

00:55:31.000 It's sociopathic.

00:55:32.000 And I think people should be held to account.

00:55:33.000 I think they should be prosecuted.

00:55:35.000 The people behind these preventable deaths should be prosecuted when they leave office on January 20th.

00:55:40.000 So this is where things stand in our culture right now, is that people must be punished.

00:55:45.000 People must be punished.

00:55:47.000 Charles Bull has another terrible column in the New York Times.

00:55:49.000 I mean, it's another week, so of course he has another terrible column saying just the same thing.

00:55:54.000 Joe Biden, as he has always said, is seeking to be a unifying president, to be the president of the people who didn't vote for him, as well as the ones who did.

00:56:00.000 I want to have that same optimistic spirit, but I admit my attempts at it may falter.

00:56:04.000 I don't want to be the person who holds a grudge, but I also don't want to be the person who ignores a lesson.

00:56:09.000 The act of remembering that so many Americans were willing to continue the harm to me and others and to the country itself isn't spiteful, but wise.

00:56:17.000 So in other words, remember that so many people voted for Trump.

00:56:19.000 They are the enemy.

00:56:21.000 They are the enemy.

00:56:22.000 Anybody who voted for Trump is the enemy.

00:56:25.000 Meanwhile, you got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar openly suggesting that we have to go after Hollywood stars who do not go along with the prevailing political norms, right?

00:56:36.000 Here's how it feels to be, for those who are not conservative who listen to the show, understand how it feels to be a conservative in America, okay?

00:56:42.000 And facts don't care about your feelings, but the facts happen to back up these particular feelings, okay?

00:56:45.000 There is a tsunami of institutional hatred against people who think differently than the left.

00:56:50.000 The left is in control of the scientific establishment.

00:56:53.000 The left is in control of the university establishment.

00:56:54.000 They're in control of the media establishment.

00:56:56.000 They're in control of the entertainment establishment.

00:56:58.000 They're in control of the sports establishment.

00:57:00.000 They're in control of the government establishment as well, particularly in the administrative state.

00:57:07.000 It feels as though everywhere you turn, there are people who are sneering at you.

00:57:10.000 Now, there are people on the hardcore left who say, good, that's the way it should be.

00:57:13.000 But if you are a good-hearted liberal and you wish to have open conversations with people, what you're going to have to decide is whether you wish to make common cause with the sneerers or whether you wish to make common cause with people who still believe in individual rights. 0.85

00:57:24.000 Because here's the thing, there's a high correlation between the people who sneer at people who think differently and the people who wish to shut those people down and violate individual rights in the process.

00:57:35.000 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a piece in the Hollywood Reporter, I mean it's the perfect confluence of celebrity, saying that celebrities deserve legacy-killing backlash when they spread ignorance.

00:57:45.000 He says, the only thing people enjoy more than watching a celebrity's rocketing ascent to international fame is watching an aging celebrity's flaming plummet to the hard, cold ground of disgrace and obscurity. It is both a warning against hubris, believing you're too famous to fall, and a reminder that the same people who made you popular can turn on you. Some, like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, committed heinous acts to obliterate their achievements. But social media has provided a weapon for others to commit instantaneous career suicide and destroy any good faith legacy they spent a lifetime building, like Howard Hughes, whose contributions to aviation

00:58:15.000 and filmmaking were overshadowed by such eccentricities as collecting his own nail clippings These figures are obscuring their own careers.

00:58:24.000 So he talks about Rudy Giuliani.

00:58:26.000 And then he talks about J.K.

00:58:27.000 Rowling.

00:58:28.000 Right?

00:58:28.000 J.K.

00:58:28.000 Rowling is super bad.

00:58:29.000 Terrible, terrible, terrible.

00:58:30.000 Because J.K.

00:58:31.000 Rowling says that boys and girls exist. 0.63

00:58:33.000 Says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, she deserves the hatred. 1.00

00:58:35.000 He says, her anti-trans tweets may not only damage the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises, they could up tainting her entire literary legacy.

00:58:43.000 Even the stars of the movies, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Eddie Redmayne, have spoken out against her position.

00:58:49.000 Well, you know, if Eddie Redmayne says a thing, woohoo!

00:58:52.000 Well then, hold the fort!

00:58:56.000 John Cleese's tone-deaf defense of Rowling left many fans bitterly disappointed, tarnishing his reputation.

00:59:02.000 Yes, yes, it can, can't it?

00:59:03.000 It does, it's true.

00:59:05.000 There are a lot of people who think that because they're famous, they know things.

00:59:08.000 Isn't that interesting?

00:59:10.000 Many Americans imbue stars with political and social intelligence they just don't have.

00:59:14.000 Great success in one field can lead to the delusion that all your thoughts are great, says the former basketball center who is now writing in the Hollywood Reporter about politics.

00:59:23.000 Yes, yes, it can, can't it?

00:59:26.000 It does, it's true.

00:59:27.000 There are a lot of people who think that because they're famous, they know things.

00:59:30.000 Isn't that interesting?

00:59:31.000 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

00:59:32.000 The irresponsibility of tweeting irrational and harmful opinions to millions, regardless of the damaging consequences to their country where people's lives proves these stars deserve Again, we are back in the mode of all that matters here is the effect that it has on leftist feelings.

00:59:49.000 That's all that matters.

00:59:52.000 There will be a backlash to all this.

00:59:53.000 There will.

00:59:54.000 And it's gonna be ugly when it comes.

00:59:56.000 Okay, so we've reached the end of the week.

00:59:57.000 I'm gonna give you a quick biblical note before we hit the weekend because I like to end the week on a bit of uplift.

01:00:03.000 So, this week the Jews read the Torah portion that has to do with Joseph.

01:00:08.000 Joseph is now down in Egypt.

01:00:10.000 He has become the vizier to the Pharaoh.

01:00:14.000 And his brothers, who put him in a pit and thought he was going to die, right?

01:00:18.000 They sold him to a caravan of roaming nomads.

01:00:22.000 His brothers arrived down in Egypt and they have no idea who he is.

01:00:24.000 And so we get this whole interplay between Joseph and his brothers in which finally, next week in the Bible, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers.

01:00:32.000 He reveals himself to his father.

01:00:34.000 He's been long estranged from all of them.

01:00:35.000 It's very moving.

01:00:37.000 But there's something else in this week's Torah portion, in this week's portion of the Bible that I find really interesting.

01:00:43.000 There's some real socioeconomic stuff in this week's Torah portion.

01:00:46.000 So, after Joseph becomes the chief advisor to Pharaoh, Well, right before, he makes this proposition to Pharaoh.

01:00:53.000 So, Pharaoh has a dream.

01:00:54.000 Pharaoh's dream is essentially, as interpreted by Joseph, that there are going to be seven fat years and then seven skinny years.

01:01:01.000 There are going to be seven years of real productivity and then there are going to be seven years of famine.

01:01:06.000 And then, Joseph goes beyond the analysis of Pharaoh's dream.

01:01:09.000 He says, Let Pharaoh do this and appoint officials over the land and prepare the land of Egypt during the seven years of plenty.

01:01:18.000 Let them collect all the food of those coming good years and let them gather the grain under Pharaoh's hand, food in the cities, and keep it.

01:01:24.000 Thus, the food will remain as a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine, which will be in the land of Egypt, so the land will not be destroyed by the famine.

01:01:31.000 Okay, so Pharaoh says, good idea.

01:01:32.000 So what we're going to do is it's going to be a time of prosperity as prophesied.

01:01:37.000 And so what we're going to do is we're going to centralize all the grain.

01:01:40.000 Okay, and we're going to do this to protect the citizenry.

01:01:43.000 The next thing that happens is that Pharaoh appoints Joseph over the entire land of Egypt.

01:01:48.000 Pharaoh gives his ring to Joseph.

01:01:50.000 He puts on him a raiment of fine linen.

01:01:52.000 He puts a golden chain around his neck.

01:01:54.000 He has him ride the chariot.

01:01:56.000 And then Pharaoh says to Joseph, I am Pharaoh.

01:01:58.000 Besides you, no one may lift his hand or foot in the entire land of Egypt. 0.94

01:02:01.000 Joseph gets married.

01:02:02.000 Joseph has a couple of kids.

01:02:03.000 And here is what happens.

01:02:04.000 In the seven years of plenty, the inhabitants of the land gathered food by handfuls.

01:02:08.000 And he collected all the food of the seven years that was in the land of Egypt.

01:02:10.000 He placed the food in the cities, the food of the fields surrounding the city, he put within it.

01:02:14.000 Joseph gathered grain like the sea of the sand in great abundance until one stopped counting because there was no number.

01:02:19.000 Okay, and here is what happens next, because here's where things get a little dicey.

01:02:23.000 The seven years of famine began. As Joseph had said, there was famine in all the lands, but throughout the land of Egypt there was bread. When the entire land of Egypt hungered, the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread, but Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, go to Joseph. What he tells you, do. Now the famine spread out all over the face of the land.

01:02:38.000 Joseph opened all the storehouses in which there was grain.

01:02:40.000 He sold it to the Egyptians, and the famine intensified in the land of Egypt.

01:02:44.000 All of the inhabitants of the land came to Joseph to purpose, for the famine had intensified in the entire land.

01:02:52.000 Okay, because what actually happened is that when people came to Joseph and said, give us the grain, instead, what Joseph did is he said, you're going to have to sell me your land.

01:03:02.000 Okay, we're taking control over all of the land and we're going to give you back the grain.

01:03:05.000 In other words, when you centralize power in a centralized command, very often that centralized command that is going to give you benefits, right?

01:03:12.000 It's going to help you later on.

01:03:13.000 There's always a cost to that.

01:03:15.000 And the cost of that is often very grave.

01:03:17.000 Now, the great irony of this is that after having reduced the entire Egyptian population to essentially vassalry, because the Pharaoh has now taken complete ownership, according to the Bible, of all of the land. 0.87

01:03:30.000 After all of that happens, you now have a subject population, subject to the whims of Pharaoh.

01:03:34.000 He's essentially their feudal lord.

01:03:38.000 And their next move is, well, you know, the Jews are coming in. 1.00

01:03:40.000 The Jews are given sort of a choice spot by Joseph, right? 0.99

01:03:43.000 Joseph gives his family a choice spot over in the land of Goshen.

01:03:47.000 And Pharaoh says, well, a new Pharaoh arises in the next book of the Bible.

01:03:52.000 And he says, they're becoming kind of powerful over there.

01:03:54.000 What if we just enslave them?

01:03:55.000 And the rest of the population of Egypt goes, yeah, that sounds good. 0.99

01:03:57.000 Because it seems like this Joseph character, you know, the one we all sold our land to, seems like his family is doing okay.

01:04:02.000 What if we just make them slaves? 0.96

01:04:03.000 They're becoming too powerful.

01:04:05.000 So in other words, there are actual costs.

01:04:08.000 Once you reduce a population to vassalry, once you remove the independent spirit, once you tell them they can't own the land, they are dependent on the government, it is much easier for them to think of not only dispensing with their own freedoms, but the freedoms of others.

01:04:20.000 I don't think the Bible is being... I don't think that the Bible is being complimentary of Joseph's strategy here.

01:04:25.000 I think that the Bible is pointing out that Joseph, in becoming sort of the chief agent of Pharaoh's seizing centralized power, is paving the way for that centralized power to be used exactly against Joseph's family.

01:04:34.000 That should be a lesson to everybody who calls for a grand centralization of power such that it can be used for your own benefit.

01:04:40.000 Because sooner rather than later, it probably will not be used to your benefit.

01:04:43.000 It will be used to your detriment.

01:04:45.000 Okay, we'll be back here next week with much, much more.

01:04:47.000 Also, later today, we'll be here for two additional hours of content.

01:04:50.000 While you wait, head on over to Michael Moll's show right now.

01:04:52.000 He is also talking about the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar story, attacking conservatives and anti-woke celebrities.

01:04:56.000 In the meantime, if we don't see you, have a wonderful weekend.

01:04:59.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:04:59.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:05:01.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

01:05:05.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

01:05:08.000 Executive Producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:05:10.000 Our Supervising Producers are Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

01:05:13.000 Production Manager, Paweł Lajdowski.

01:05:15.000 Our Associate Producers are Rebecca Doyle and Savannah Dominguez.

01:05:18.000 The show is edited by Adam Sajewicz.

01:05:20.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

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01:05:30.000 You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.

01:05:34.000 I think there are enough of those already out there.

01:05:36.000 We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.

01:05:40.000 So my main focuses are life, family, faith.

01:05:45.000 Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 18, 2020

We Are Under Attack | Ep. 1160

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