The media continue to pump bad news, even if the news is actually kind of good. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida finally goes ape on reporters, and the Michael Flynn case gets more and more curious. But we actually have a lot of good news. The CDC has downgraded its risk assessment level from getting this thing on surfaces. They basically said that it's pretty unlikely you're going to get this from surfaces. Now listen, there's never unqualifiedly good news in the middle of a pandemic. There's always going to be more deaths. That's just the reality of life. But if you had told people several weeks ago that the curve would be flattened, that states would be beginning to reopen, and you wouldn't see massive spikes in infection and death as those states reopen, then you wouldn t see these massive spikes. Then in fact, many of the states are reopening, and many of them are seeing lower rates of infection and deaths than they were even when they were open. And that's good news, right there and then. You have a right to privacy protected by the First Amendment. You can t do what you like. You're not here to protect your privacy, you're here to serve. You have to be there to do what s best for you. You can't be everywhere, but you can be somewhere else. And you have to do something you like to be safe, and that's where you can do something that s good for you, and be safe. This is the good news that we can all benefit from. - Ben Shapiro The Ben Shapiro Show is a must be heard on the airwaves. Subscribe to the show, wherever you get it. Today's episode is the best episode of the show? Subscribe to our new show? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review and subscribe to our podcast, and tell us what you're listening to on your favorite streaming platform, wherever else you get your favorite podcast is listening to it. Thanks for listening and sharing it! If you like the show and review it, please leave us a review and share it on your thoughts and reviews on iTunes! and we'll be sure to spread the word to your friends about it on the pod. It helps us spread it around the world! Ben Shapiro is a big fan of Ben Shapiro and his other podcast, The Big Little Bird Podcast.
00:00:37.000But if you had told people several weeks ago that the curve would be flattened, that states would be beginning to be reopened, and you wouldn't see these massive spikes as those states reopen, then in fact, Many of the states reopening are seeing lower rates of infection and death than they were even when they were closed.
00:00:51.000You would think that was kind of a bit of good news, would you not?
00:00:54.000What if you found out that the virus is not as easily transmissible as it was once thought to be?
00:00:58.000Meaning that if it's going to be transmitted, it is mainly done through face-to-face contact.
00:01:02.000As I mentioned yesterday, the CDC downgraded its risk assessment level from getting this thing on surfaces.
00:01:08.000They basically said that's pretty unlikely you're going to get this from surfaces.
00:01:11.000Now, at CNN, there's a piece suggesting that staying safe isn't just about staying six feet away from others and washing your hands with soap.
00:01:18.000It's about staying away from people in closed areas for significant amounts of time.
00:01:22.000Aaron Bromage, a comparative immunologist and professor of biology at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, summed it up with a short and sweet equation, successful infection equals exposure to virus times time.
00:01:33.000Meaning that you actually have to be exposed to the virus for a long period of time, which is why you're seeing a lot of medical workers who are getting this because they are in contact with people who have this for long periods of time.
00:01:41.000A lot of nursing home workers have gotten this.
00:01:43.000But if you just walk through a room where somebody sneezed five minutes beforehand, the chances that you're going to get this are actually pretty low.
00:01:49.000Ramesh's simplified formula was part of a recent blog post explaining ways to lower your risk of catching COVID-19.
00:01:55.000The main idea is people get infected when they are exposed to a certain amount of viral particles.
00:01:58.000That viral threshold can be reached by an infected person's sneeze or cough, which releases a large number of viral particles into the air, but an infected person talking or even just breathing releases some virus into the air.
00:02:08.000Over a long period of time in an enclosed space, that means that the viral load in the area obviously increases.
00:02:14.000This is why you've seen, for example, widespread infections during choir practices.
00:02:17.000People are singing and they are projecting and they're in very close contact with one another.
00:02:20.000But if you have restaurants where people are seated fairly far apart or outside, then you don't see a lot of people who are infecting other people.
00:02:29.000And this also means that there may be some good ways to alleviate this sort of stuff.
00:02:32.000Namely, make sure that the air conditioning ventilation at particular restaurants is better.
00:02:36.000Make sure that you're sitting a little bit further apart.
00:02:39.000Make sure that you don't spend an hour at the restaurant.
00:02:42.000You know, sitting down outside for coffee or something.
00:02:45.000The bottom line is that that is good news.
00:02:47.000It means that you are probably not going to get this just from walking around.
00:02:49.000And this is what you would suspect anyway, because we've had tons of people going to grocery stores and virtually nobody is getting it at the grocery store.
00:02:55.000A few of the grocery clerks have been getting it because, again, they are experiencing lots of people directly across from them.
00:03:00.000And that is why they put up the spit guards, which is a good thing.
00:03:02.000But we've had grocery stores that are basically chock full of people.
00:03:06.000You haven't seen viral outbreaks at Walmart, for example.
00:03:32.000And yet the media seem just desperate, desperate to continue portraying all the news in the worst possible light.
00:03:38.000I'll show you a couple examples of this in just a moment.
00:03:40.000Because instead of just reporting the facts as they come in, and reporting them with any level of complexity and nuance, which is the real world, instead the media basically look for a headline that says things are bad, and then just repeats that headline even when it doesn't actually mesh with the facts.
00:03:55.000First, let's talk about the reality, which is you probably don't want to be hanging out inside an enclosed auto parts store, standing in line with people for hours at a time right now, only to get to the front and realize they only have the generic part that ain't gonna fit your car all that well, or they have to order it online.
00:04:07.000You could just order it online from home, instead of going to the auto parts store and then having to be charged the markup.
00:04:14.000Rockauto.com, they always offer the lowest possible prices, rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear, like airlines do.
00:04:20.000Well, I spend up to twice as much for the same parts.
00:04:22.000Like, say you happen to need a Delphi FG 1456 fuel pump assembly for 2005 to 2010 Honda Odyssey, and it costs like $354 at a big chain store.
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00:05:04.000Write Shapiro in their how-did-you-hear-about-us box so they know that we sent you.
00:05:10.000So as I say, it seems like a lot of the media are really intent on painting the worst case scenario as the probable scenario, even when the evidence doesn't actually support that.
00:05:20.000And so you'll see a lot of headlines about modeling these days, but the headline from the modeling is completely unrelated to reality.
00:05:26.000So for example, Matt Drudge, over at Drudge Report, has really been playing up sort of the disastrous side of the pandemic.
00:05:32.000And Matt's great at his job, but the reality is that if you watched a Drudge Report, you would be in a state of sheer panic nearly all the time about coronavirus.
00:05:39.000He's been taking this thing to the next level.
00:05:41.000Now, to be fair to Matt, he also did this with Ebola.
00:05:44.000Anytime there's a viral outbreak anywhere, Matt covers it with extreme, extreme sort of telescopic view or microscopic view rather.
00:05:51.000I mean, he puts a real spotlight on it.
00:05:53.000But he headlined today over at the Drudge Report this new model that suggests that some five million people could be infected and a quarter million people could be dead by August.
00:06:02.000It is a big headline today saying summer scary.
00:06:04.000Models predict quarter million dead by August.
00:06:09.000That model that he is citing is a model from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
00:06:14.000They predict that the COVID-19 cases could reach 5.4 million and the death toll could be 290,000 if every state in America were to fully reopen with no social distancing and no mask wearing.
00:06:26.000Has anybody talked about this like at all?
00:06:28.000There's not a single state in America where people aren't recommending social distancing and mask wearing.
00:06:32.000And by and large, Americans, like 80% of Americans, are very, very cautious in their approach to this thing.
00:06:36.00070 to 80% of Americans are very much in favor of mask wearing, particularly when you are in closed areas.
00:06:41.000And, you know, I'm one of the people who's been urging that caution.
00:06:43.000When you're outside, you're far away from people, you're not getting this thing.
00:06:46.000When you are inside, wearing a mask is just common courtesy, honestly, at this point.
00:06:52.000But this model, citing the top line of the model, is nearly useless.
00:06:56.000I mean, that is like saying that if there were no speed limits in the United States, and if everybody just decided to drive 120 miles an hour, you'd have five times as many deaths in car accidents.
00:07:04.000Okay, but your premise is completely false.
00:07:06.000There are speed limits, and nobody's driving 120 miles an hour because they wouldn't even if they could, because they'd be afraid of dying.
00:07:12.000And so there's this piece from the Daily Mail which says, the ominous forecast from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School model accounts for all states fully reopening with no social distancing measure.
00:07:22.000In comparison, the model predicts nearly 4.3 million cases and 230,000 deaths by July 24th if states reopen but individuals maintain their social distancing efforts.
00:07:32.000So you're talking about the difference between 290,000 deaths and 172,000 deaths, even according to this model.
00:07:36.000to, the model forecast 3.1 million infections and 172,000 deaths.
00:07:42.000The best case scenario, which would involve each state maintaining lockdown restrictions as of May 17th, with social distancing and measures still in place, there could be 2.8 million infections and 157,000 deaths.
00:07:51.000So you're talking about the difference between 290,000 deaths and 172,000 deaths, even according to this model.
00:07:58.000But by the way, this particular model also happens to be extraordinarily pessimistic.
00:08:02.000There's a separate model from the University of Massachusetts It's Influenza Forecasting Center.
00:08:06.000They project that deaths could surpass 113,000 by mid-June.
00:08:15.000I mean, we were originally told that if there were no social distancing measures, that on the upper end we'd be looking at 2.2 million deaths in the United States.
00:08:24.000So relying on models rather than the data as they come in seems to be not all that effective.
00:08:30.000Also worth noting, while we focus heavily in the United States on lockdown policy, there is no good correlation between the states that have locked down and the states that have not locked down.
00:08:39.000Now, it's quite possible that in high population density centers, like New York City, that a lockdown is absolutely necessary.
00:08:49.000They have kind of the same population, and they have basically the same number of deaths.
00:08:53.000This, by the way, holds true across Europe.
00:08:54.000There's a study from Bloomberg today that says with governments across Europe reopening their economies for business, it's a good moment to look back on the different paths taken to control COVID-19 outbreaks to try to see how effective they were.
00:09:05.000The chart below shows the relative severity of Europe's restrictions based on work done by the University of Oxford's Lovatnik School of Government, which tracks a range of measures and scores how stringent they've been each step of the way.
00:09:15.000For many European countries, stringency levels increased substantially after the WHO declared a pandemic, even when their caseloads were low.
00:09:23.000While not a gauge of whether the decisions taken were the right ones, nor of how strictly they were followed, the analysis gives a clear sense of each government's strategy for containing the virus.
00:09:30.000Some, like Italy and Spain, enforced prolonged and strict lockdowns after infections took off.
00:09:34.000Others, like Sweden, preferred a more relaxed approach.
00:09:37.000Portugal and Greece chose to close down while cases were relatively low.
00:09:42.000But there is little correlation between the severity of a nation's restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities, a measure that looks at the overall number of deaths compared with normal trends.
00:09:51.000So among the countries that have very high, extremely high excess mortality, you're looking at England being in that group.
00:10:01.000On the low end of the group is Berlin.
00:10:03.000Sweden is sort of somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of excess mortality.
00:10:06.000So the UK, Netherlands, and Spain had very, very high excess mortality.
00:10:10.000Sweden and Switzerland, they had excess mortality, but significantly less than the first group.
00:10:14.000And then there was Greece and Germany.
00:10:16.000So according to that Bloomberg study, the overall impression is that while restrictions on movement were seen as a necessary tool to halt the spread of the virus, when and how they were wielded was more important than their severity.
00:10:25.000Early preparation, plentiful healthcare resources were enough for several countries to avoid draconian lockdowns.
00:10:30.000So in other words, the faster you got on it, the less it mattered whether you locked down.
00:10:33.000If you got on it really fast and you were able to test really fast, you didn't have to lock down in the first place.
00:10:38.000So it was the timing and not actually the lockdown measures that mattered.
00:10:41.000Which is why Vermont, which was not hard hit, it doesn't matter whether they locked down or not because, again, they weren't hard hit.
00:10:46.000South Dakota, which was not hard hit, didn't matter whether they locked down or not because they weren't hard hit.
00:10:50.000New York, it would have mattered an awful lot if they had locked down a little bit earlier.
00:10:54.000In fact, there was a study out today suggesting that many, many fewer people would have died in New York if they had actually locked down much sooner.
00:11:03.000These modelers in the United States, again, suggest that tens of thousands of U.S.
00:11:06.000deaths could have been prevented if everybody locked down a lot earlier, but that was mostly in places like New York.
00:11:12.000They suggest that if the lockdown had happened early March, like a week earlier, then it could have prevented some 36,000 deaths.
00:11:19.000My only doubt about that is if these deaths were taking place at nursing homes, and if people with COVID-19 were being shoved back into the nursing homes, and 40, 50% of all deaths were happening in nursing homes, I'm not sure that that is exactly the case.
00:11:33.000But the media are pushing this a little bit because the idea is that if you precipitously remove lockdown, then you're going to have a second wave spike that's going to swamp the system.
00:11:41.000Again, I think that the data for that are very much up in the air.
00:11:45.000I do not think the data are very clear.
00:11:46.000Now, as I say, the media are definitely attempting to push a particular narrative here.
00:11:50.000I'll give you another example in just one second.
00:11:53.000First, let us talk about the fact that it is very important these days to know exactly who is at your door.
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00:13:37.000And here you are, pushing for precipitous reopening.
00:13:40.000And then you read the article, and here's what you find.
00:13:42.000They say California recorded 132 new coronavirus-related fatalities Tuesday, the most in a single day since the pandemic began, as counties across the state continue cementing plans to reopen their economies.
00:13:51.000First of all, note, California has 40 million people living here.
00:13:59.000Statistically speaking, that is not a massive number in the state of California.
00:14:03.000The highest number of deaths previously reported in a single day statewide was 117 in late April.
00:14:08.000So this was the highest day, but that's because California has not been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus in terms of number of deaths.
00:14:13.000But that's not even what I'm talking about here.
00:14:14.000What I'm talking about is buried in paragraph six, is while the death count continues to rise, other metrics show significant progress, enough that even some of the most cautious local health officials have agreed to begin slowly reopening businesses and public spaces.
00:14:28.000The number of newly identified coronavirus cases across California declined from the previous week.
00:14:33.000Hospitalizations have dropped more than 15% from a peak six weeks ago, according to a Times analysis.
00:14:41.000There's a trailing number of deaths because, again, there are a lot of people in the hospital who linger before, unfortunately, they pass away.
00:14:48.000Hospitalizations have dropped more than 15%.
00:14:50.000By the way, I know a bunch of people who work in hospitals in this region, in this area, they're empty.
00:14:56.000People who are going in and staffing the hospitals and literally sitting there watching Netflix all day because they do not have any patients.
00:15:01.000Patients are not showing up to the hospitals.
00:15:03.000My wife had to go in for a COVID test maybe a week and a half ago.
00:15:06.000She was literally the only person in the COVID room waiting for a test at UCLA.
00:15:13.000County, which has become the center of the coronavirus outbreak in California with more than 1,900 deaths and nearly 40,000 cases, officials have cautioned that reopening the economy will be more difficult than in other parts of the state.
00:16:05.000They say Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida's Gold Coast, the entire state of Alabama, several other places in the South that have been rapidly reopening their economies are in danger of a second wave of coronavirus infections over the next four weeks, according to a research team that uses cell phone data to track social mobility and forecast the trajectory of the pandemic.
00:16:21.000The model developed by the Policy Lab at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, updated Wednesday with new data, suggests most communities in the United States should be able to avoid a second wave spike in the near term if residents are careful to maintain social distancing even as businesses open up and restrictions are eased.
00:16:34.000But the risk for resurgence is high in some parts of the country, especially in places where cases are already rising fast, including the counties of Crawford, Iowa, Colfax, Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, and the city of Richmond.
00:16:44.000Since May 3rd, Crawford County caseload has risen by 750%.
00:16:49.000There are preliminary signs that hotspots could flare across parts of the South and Midwest.
00:16:55.000Well, because they're saying that basically they're tracking cell phone data and they're seeing people moving more.
00:17:04.000If you want to point to the counties where they're actually having hotspots, why don't you point to the counties where they're actually having hotspots?
00:17:09.000Don't point to the places where they don't have hotspots yet.
00:17:13.000Remember, the article begins by saying Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida's Gold Coast, and Alabama.
00:17:19.000And then, where are the actual counties they're citing that have had a spike?
00:17:22.000Crawford, Iowa, Colfax, Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, and the city of Richmond.
00:17:27.000Which, last I checked, were not Dallas, Houston, Southeast Florida's Gold Coast, and the entire state of Alabama.
00:17:31.000Now, maybe there is going to be a spike in those places.
00:18:28.000Because you know what they kind of figured out early?
00:18:30.000Kids are not passing this thing, at least not very easily by all available studies.
00:18:34.000There has yet to be a single study showing that kids are passing this thing at the same rate as adults.
00:18:38.000There has yet to be a single study showing there's significant risk to children.
00:18:40.000In fact, the fatality rate from COVID-19 among children is about one-third that from the flu.
00:18:45.000Okay, among older people, it's a lot more than the flu.
00:18:48.000Among younger people, like, not tranching the population when you look at the overall case fatality rate or infection fatality rate is really, really stupid.
00:18:56.000And the reality is that a study in the Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics last week found that only 48 children, 48 total, between March 14th and April 3rd were admitted to 14 pediatric ICUs in the US.
00:19:10.000That's 48 children total in like three weeks.
00:19:14.000In that same period, tens of thousands of Americans were dying.
00:19:18.000The fatality rate for kids in the ICU was 5% compared to 50 to 62% for adults.
00:19:24.000Also, kids don't seem to be carrying this thing at the same rate.
00:19:28.000There have been a bevy of studies from a variety of sources, ranging from Australia to China, showing that kids were more likely to pick up the virus from their parents than vice versa, and that they're really not passing it to adults.
00:19:38.000Australia's National Center for Immunization Research and Surveillance tracked COVID-19 cases at 15 schools from March 1st to April 16th.
00:19:44.000At the outset, 18 individuals were infected.
00:19:46.000After six weeks, two of their 863 close contacts at the school had become infected.
00:19:52.000So kids are not passing this at school, is what we have been finding in a fair number of these studies.
00:19:58.000And as for the reporting about this sort of Kawasaki disease syndrome that has been popping up, that is among a vast, vast, vast minority of kids.
00:20:11.000It was reported as top line news in every major newspaper.
00:20:14.000Now again, I think that we should all be cautious.
00:20:17.000None of this... I keep saying this over and over because people deliberately in the media will misread anything to suggest that if you are skeptical of full-scale lockdown, it's because you want everybody to just ignore all the social distancing and mask wearing requirements.
00:20:28.000There are some people who are doing that.
00:20:39.000But the media coverage here is just, it truly is astonishing because again, they will say that states that have not yet been hit hard are about to get hit hard.
00:20:46.000Meanwhile, they will just frankly cover up for governors who have done an absolute garbage job.
00:20:52.000And take for example, I mean, they're ripping governors who have never fully locked down and they are just praising governors who locked down but did a garbage job.
00:21:01.000Take, for example, the most trusted name in news over at CNN.
00:21:03.000First of all, I don't know how it's journalistically ethical to have Chris Cuomo covering his brother.
00:21:09.000I was under the misimpression that if you are actually related to the person you are covering, that generally is not good journalistic practice.
00:21:16.000Wait until you hear Chris Cuomo doing his buddy cop routine with his broheim last night on CNN.
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00:22:35.000All right, so let's talk about the media's differential coverage of states.
00:22:38.000We've talked about, sort of broadly speaking, the media trying to play up bad news everywhere that they possibly can, including basing it on the modeling, as opposed to, you know, basing it on the actual outcome in places like Georgia.
00:22:48.000Remember, by the way, when we were talking about the dire outcomes for ventilators, how ventilators were necessary?
00:22:53.000More and more ventilators, everybody's gonna die without a ventilator?
00:22:56.000Turns out that the vast majority of people who are on ventilators died.
00:23:01.000So, I mean, and that just disappeared from the news.
00:23:04.000Meanwhile, by the way, Georgia, which is supposed to be, you know, completely ripped up, only 866 ventilators are in use in Georgia.
00:23:12.000They have a supply of nearly 3,000 ventilators.
00:23:15.000But don't worry, the media are going to rely on projections that have been wrong in virtually every state here.
00:23:20.000And that's not to say that we should disregard the projections.
00:23:23.000It is to say that the projections change based on new data as it comes in.
00:23:26.000We just don't know very much about how this virus operates.
00:23:30.000Okay, so, meanwhile, the media have been covering states differentially.
00:23:33.000I will explain, you know, a perfect example.
00:23:36.000Florida, Ron DeSantis ripped up and down, up and down.
00:23:39.000We talked yesterday on the program about how Ron DeSantis is one of the few governors who actually took the proactive step of saying, we are not shipping patients with COVID-19 who are in nursing homes back into nursing homes.
00:23:48.000But meanwhile, he's being ripped for keeping the beaches open.
00:23:50.000Well, yesterday, Ron DeSantis went on a tear against the media.
00:23:53.000I mean, honestly, I've been waiting months for him to do this.
00:23:55.000Here he was yesterday, just blowing, blowing through the media.
00:24:03.000In fact, Dr. Birx has talked multiple times about how Florida has the absolute best data.
00:24:10.000So any insinuation otherwise is just typical partisan narrative trying to be spun.
00:24:17.000And part of the reason is that because you got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like New York.
00:24:26.000Wait two weeks, Florida's gonna be next.
00:24:30.000Well, hell, we're eight weeks away from that, and it hasn't happened.
00:24:33.000Not only do we have a lower death rate, well, we have way lower deaths generally, we have a lower death rate than the Acela corridor, D.C., everyone up there.
00:24:41.000We have a lower death rate than the Midwest, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio.
00:24:46.000But even in our region, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida has the lower death rate, and I was the number one landing spot from tens of thousands of people leaving the number one hot zone in the world to come to my state.
00:25:51.000Is it true that this was the swab that the nurse was actually using on you and that at first It went into your nose and disappeared so that in scale, this was the actual swab that was being used to fit up that double barrel shotgun that you have mounted on the front of your pretty face.
00:26:18.000So much newsing happening over at CNN.
00:26:20.000There's great newsing happening over at CNN.
00:26:23.000That guy is the worst governor in America.
00:26:25.000His state has experienced 30,000 deaths.
00:26:30.000I.E., 15 times more deaths than Florida, which has a similar population.
00:26:37.000And by the way, his bro, who's breaking quarantine and taking bleach baths in order to fight his own coronavirus, is your most trusted name in scientific news on CNN.
00:26:44.000And then people wonder why the right looks at CNN cross-eyed.
00:26:47.000Because you guys are terrible at your jobs.
00:26:49.000Meanwhile, how has your coverage been of Phil Murphy in New Jersey?
00:26:53.000That has been widely praised across the media.
00:27:10.000Because it turns out that the state did virtually nothing to protect people in nursing homes.
00:27:15.000NewJersey.com reports, knowing nursing home residents were at grave risk, state inspectors did not begin to make on-site inspections until April 16th, according to officials.
00:27:23.000That was 36 days after New Jersey reported its first death, not until reports surfaced that one nursing facility was storing 17 bodies in a makeshift morgue.
00:27:31.000Asked why teams were not sent earlier, state health commissioner Judith Pershelli said in mid-April they didn't have proper fitting masks.
00:27:37.000She said she later gave hospitals first dibs on PPE, and she left a short supply of ill-fitting masks for nursing home inspectors.
00:27:43.000So, for weeks, they just didn't get any PPE, which meant that some 89 people in nursing homes who worked there died.
00:27:50.000When nursing home operators urgently called for staffing help, they received little assistance.
00:27:53.000The National Guard was not deployed until May.
00:27:55.000The state health department didn't announce until earlier this month it would even conduct widespread testing of nursing home residents.
00:28:01.000Earlier this month, May, this thing broke out in March.
00:28:04.000The health department refused to publish a list of positive COVID-19 cases until three weeks after families pled with them to tell them what the hell was going on.
00:28:12.000And you've been seeing this in state after state.
00:28:15.000In Pennsylvania, which has been fairly hard hit, the state health director was taking He's a transgender woman, his own mother out of a nursing home facility, age 95, while simultaneously maintaining that nursing home facilities should take in people who had COVID-19.
00:28:31.000Have you heard any critique of the governorship of Tom Wolfe in Pennsylvania?
00:29:23.000And in fact, it's wrong to even cover it.
00:29:24.000You shouldn't cover the Michael Flynn story.
00:29:26.000You should only cover the Michael Flynn story when Michael Flynn was essentially being railroaded into pleading guilty on the basis of not committing a crime.
00:29:32.000But you shouldn't cover it when it turns out the DOJ completely drops the case because it was botched from beginning to end, because the investigation never should have been maintained after early January, and because it turns out that high-ranking members of the Obama administration were involved in oversight of the Flynn matter.
00:30:04.000He spent three years covering Trump-Russia allegations that turned out to be a bowl of crap.
00:30:09.000Why shouldn't we cover a story in which it seems that members of the Obama administration were pretty intent on bending the rules, even if they were well-intentioned and thought that there was Trump-Russia collusion.
00:30:19.000Bending the rules in order to get people?
00:30:49.000Because again, the media coverage here, it just demonstrates Democrats must have a 10-point advantage in nearly every national election simply based on the media coverage.
00:30:57.000That does not alleviate the responsibility for Republicans to be better at their jobs, but it is simply the case that Democrats have a massive built-in advantage here.
00:31:06.000We'll get to the Michael Flynn case and the 2020 election in just one second.
00:31:10.000First, Let's talk about the fact that the double tumbler is back.
00:31:20.000But it's only available for our most exclusive membership tier, All Access.
00:31:24.000The All Access membership tier is our premier level of membership.
00:31:27.000All Access members get to participate in All Access Live, our brand new interactive programming featuring one of the Daily Wire hosts as we hang out with you each night.
00:31:34.000All Access members also get to join us for real-time Q&A discussions available on both the website and the Daily Wire app.
00:31:39.000So I believe I have the All Access Live tonight.
00:31:45.000And so there will be, as I always advertise, t-shirts and much singing of show tunes in Jar Jar Binks' voice, and bizarre impersonations, and strange personal questions answered to your liking.
00:31:56.000All Access membership now includes two of those irreplaceable leftist-tier tumblers, the tumblers Are literally overflowing with tears at the thought of this offer, people.
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00:32:38.000So looking at the media coverage of the of the Flynn situation, if you really want to understand media coverage, just assume they're Democrats.
00:33:06.000That's what you call a cover your ass memo.
00:33:08.000That is a memo that is designed to say, yeah, we told, listen, we told everybody by the book.
00:33:13.000The only reason to write that is because you don't actually feel that you did something by the book.
00:33:17.000And you're now trying to cover up for the fact that you didn't go by the book in the first place.
00:33:21.000Andrew McCarthy over at National Review has a good piece on this.
00:33:26.000He says Rice, Susan Rice, has gone from claiming to have had no knowledge of Obama administration monitoring of Flynn and other Trump associates, to claiming no knowledge of any unmaskings of Trump associates, to admitting she was complicit in the unmaskings, to now a call for a recorded conversation between retired general Michael Flynn and the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak.
00:33:43.000She wants that released because it would purportedly show the Obama administration had good reason to be concerned about Flynn.
00:33:47.000By the way, if that's the case, that doesn't really explain why the, why the, People who are on Mike Flynn's side also are kind of in favor of seeing this released.
00:33:59.000Apparently Flynn's own lawyers are interested in seeing the call released simply so they can demonstrate that there is nothing there that would have justified the sort of wiretapping that went on afterward.
00:34:10.000Andrew McCarthy says, We have now learned that Rice was deeply involved in the Obama administration's Trump-Russia investigation, including its sub-investigation of Flynn.
00:34:18.000And also, Rice's previously unreported email memorializing a White House meeting on these subjects from January 20th is kind of telling.
00:34:24.000Again, why would you write a memo to file saying, we went right by the book, unless it were absolutely necessary?
00:34:30.000Maybe it's to comment on a meeting that took place January 5th that involved Rice, Obama, Biden, the administration's top political hierarchy and national security matters, along with Obama's top law enforcement and counterintelligence officials, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and FBI Director James Comey.
00:34:44.000Prior to actions already demonstrated, the meeting's central purpose was to discuss the rationale for withholding intelligence about Russia from the incoming Trump national security team.
00:34:54.000Comey would join other intelligence chiefs in briefing Trump on Russia's interference in the 2016 campaign, but they did conceal the Obama administration's investigation of the Trump campaign.
00:35:04.000The Obama administration hoped to conceal what he had done, so the FBI and Justice Department, which Comey and Yates would be staying on to lead, could continue the investigation even after Trump took office.
00:35:13.000The Bureau and DOJ renewed the FISA surveillance warrants on Carter Page, which again, were deeply flawed and based on the crap Steele dossier.
00:35:23.000Clearly, Rice, Obama, and Biden realized who would eventually become known to Trump and top advisors.
00:35:28.000That the Obama administration had investigated his campaign and had laid the groundwork to persist in investigating his administration.
00:35:34.000The patent point of Rice's last second email written to the file as she was leaving her office on January 20th, memorializing a meeting that occurred two weeks earlier, was to shift responsibility from Obama to Comey for the pursuit of the Trump-Russia probe, right?
00:35:45.000It says, Obama says that we should do this thing by the book and James Comey's gonna do what James Comey's going to do.
00:35:51.000That's essentially what the letter was supposed to do.
00:35:53.000The newly unredacted paragraph from Rice's email relates that Comey reported to Obama, Biden, and Rice on the FBI's investigation of Flynn.
00:35:59.000The FBI director is said to have framed it as both a law enforcement matter, the theory that Flynn committed a crime by violating the Logan Act, which was nonsense, and a national security matter, the suggestion that the bureau had some sort of damning information on Flynn that should prevent him from being part of the apparatus.
00:36:14.000According to Rice, Comey was noncommittal when asked whether Russian intelligence should be withheld from Flynn.
00:36:20.000Rice claims Obama left the matter of concealing information from the Trump team unresolved.
00:36:24.000Now again, this memo was written two weeks after the original Trump meeting.
00:36:29.000So all of this is deeply suspicious and curious, but the media suggests that none of it is worth covering.
00:36:36.000And the reason it isn't worth covering is because obviously, if we were to cover it, then that would be suggesting that the Obama administration was not pure as the driven snow, and was indeed driven by ulterior motives, even if they thought those motives were good, like Trump is in bed with the Russians.
00:36:49.000It turns out that bending the law in order to get there, and then railroading someone into essentially a confession of a crime he didn't commit is a bad thing.
00:36:59.000But we're not supposed to cover all that, according to the media.
00:37:01.000What we are supposed to cover is President Trump firing inspectors general.
00:37:06.000So there have been a couple inspectors general who have been fired.
00:37:10.000Credit to producer Nick for correcting me on inspector generals.
00:37:38.000And so here is Chuck Schumer yesterday saying, it's a dictatorship, dictatorship!
00:37:42.000The Inspector General should have been allowed to pursue these cases on his own, without interference from either the Secretary of State, and certainly without being fired by the President.
00:38:20.000The guy was on the chopping block for a year, and he had sent memos to people saying that he was glad that they were expediting the hydroxychloroquine clearance for doctors.
00:38:28.000So we've seen in the last month a bevy of stories about Trump randomly firing people and how it has to be nefarious and it has to be really bad.
00:38:36.000But if you ever mentioned, by the way, that the Obama administration actually fired people under some pretty curious circumstances, we shouldn't talk about that.
00:38:43.000Very bad that the State Department IG got fired.
00:38:46.000Very non-worthy of coverage, that back during the Obama administration, the Inspector General Gerald Walpin was fired for trying to protect taxpayer dollars, basically because Walpin was going after the mayor of Sacramento, a guy named Kevin Johnson, who happened to be an extraordinarily close political ally of Barack Obama.
00:39:03.000I talk about this in my book, The People vs. Barack Obama.
00:39:05.000But it wasn't covered as a major scandal for Obama.
00:39:09.000Anytime Trump does something, it's covered as a major scandal.
00:39:12.000For this reason among others, President Trump is now trailing Joe Biden by significant points.
00:39:16.000Now listen, I'm not going to put that all in the media.
00:39:18.000The media coverage of Trump has been consistently bad, obviously.
00:40:23.000Trump has about a 40% approval rating.
00:40:26.000By a 16 point margin, 55 to 39 voters think that Biden would do a better job than Trump handling the response to the coronavirus.
00:40:33.000And that would be the big one right now.
00:40:36.000That's the thing that is really changing fairly significantly, is people's reactions to Trump and coronavirus.
00:40:40.000And again, a lot of that is driven by the media.
00:40:43.000And some of that is driven by the fact that Trump keeps getting caught in his own silliness when he talks about this sort of stuff.
00:40:49.000But the reality is that if the media covered any of this stuff in even-handed fashion, the gap would be smaller.
00:40:53.000Not because they would be portraying Trump any more credibly, but because they would be pointing out that the Democrats are absolutely awful at this.
00:41:00.000For example, Joe Biden, who is now, you know, right now, if the election were held today, he would probably win.
00:41:04.000Joe Biden literally cannot get through six sentences without stumbling.
00:42:55.000And never has that been better accentuated than by the fact that Kamala Harris, who may be the frontrunner to get the VP nomination from Joe Biden, for no reason at all, she won nine votes.
00:43:03.000Like, seriously, no votes in any of the primaries.
00:43:06.000For some reason, people think that she would strengthen Joe Biden's ticket, which makes no sense at all.
00:43:11.000She doesn't bring anybody home to Joe Biden.
00:43:13.000Joe Biden blew her out with black voters.
00:43:15.000Nobody likes Kamala Harris, yet she is perceived as some sort of important voice to be added to the ticket.
00:43:22.000What's she been doing for the past couple of weeks?
00:43:24.000She has filed for a resolution condemning all forms of anti-Asian sentiment related to COVID-19, including the use of the terms Chinese virus or Wuhan virus, or Kung flu.
00:43:36.000She has introduced Senate Resolution 580, which is co-sponsored by Elizabeth Warren and Maisie Hirono of Hawaii, who has taken Barbara Boxer's slot as dumbest U.S.
00:44:30.000Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are the authoritarians here.
00:44:33.000I've been saying for a long time, the pandemic is one of the times when I'm most grateful that Trump is president, because if a Democrat were president, can you imagine the kinds of federal control they would be attempting to leverage over every aspect of American life right now?
00:44:44.000Instead of trying to get the economy to reopen, they would be talking about the sort of transformational change that Joe Biden has gotten very familiar with talking about.
00:44:52.000So, the media will do their best to obscure that, but that's what the election really should be about.
00:44:57.000What the election should be about is who wants to control your life more in the aftermath of the greatest single crackdown on American freedom in certainly my lifetime, certainly my parents' lifetime.
00:45:29.000Their racist behavior should be condemned.
00:45:31.000We should all be unified in condemning that behavior.
00:45:33.000But what we see in the way that the media cover things and the way that people respond to things online is that every small possibility of racism, anything that can be read as racism, is read to the broadest possible extent and then imputed to American society as a whole.
00:45:46.000So, there just is not enough of a supply of racism in America to meet the demand.
00:45:51.000There's a high demand for racism because people want to declare that America is deeply brutal, racist, homophobic, hierarchical, vicious.
00:46:10.000They require examples of American viciousness in order to justify tearing down the system from the inside, in order to justify eviscerating the system, right?
00:46:19.000So what that means is that people will seize specifically on controversial examples of maybe racism, maybe not, in order so that when somebody says, wait, I don't actually see the evidence here, they go, ah, because you're a racist too, right?
00:46:32.000This is why, you will see, the media did not cover the Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina in the same way that they are covering the Arbery shooting in Georgia.
00:46:50.000And then he went to jail for 20 years.
00:46:51.000And everybody was like, all right, good.
00:46:54.000The Arbery shooting, There's not tons of evidence of racism inherent in the case yet.
00:46:59.000Maybe it will materialize, but it seems like right now most of the case is vigilante-based.
00:47:05.000People who were told that a crime was going on and decided, we're going to get our guns, we're going to stop this guy, and then they went out there and it ended in a bad shooting.
00:47:13.000And they will probably end up going to jail for at the very least manslaughter.
00:47:16.000But if you say, I'm not seeing all the evidence of racism yet, then the implication is, you don't see the evidence of racism because you're blind to racism generally.
00:48:03.000This became the basis for the number one hashtag on planet Earth last night, Boycott FedEx.
00:48:09.000Here, I'll play the tape, then I'll explain the account, and then I'll show you how, in the absence of any actual evidence, people immediately leapt to the conclusion that FedEx is a brutal, racist company.
00:49:25.000The white guy isn't shouting slurs at the black guy.
00:49:28.000Right, in fact, he barely says anything.
00:49:30.000He says, I thought you were gonna, pretty much the only thing he says is, I thought you were gonna wait for the cops.
00:49:34.000That's pretty much the only thing he says in the entire video.
00:49:36.000Okay, so, this fellow tweets out the backstory.
00:49:38.000He says, he says, update, FedEx called and told me to take down this video and fired both of us today.
00:49:43.000I'm reposting this video because people like him, doesn't matter white or any race, should never disrespect essential workers putting their lives in jeopardy, especially with this COVID-19.
00:49:51.000Now again, I'm not seeing tremendous disrespect in that video, per se.
00:49:54.000It looks like two people who are kind of having a fight and one is filming it.
00:49:57.000In fact, two people were filming it, right?
00:49:58.000Because this FedEx driver's friend inside the truck was also filming it.
00:50:20.000Because if somebody runs out of the house after a FedEx guy drops off a package, and says he's gonna whoop your black ass, then pretty sure that's racist, and pretty sure that guy is in a hell of a lot of media trouble.
00:52:02.000The idea was boycott FedEx because FedEx was to blame.
00:52:06.000Now again, we don't know anything about this story other than the guy's account, which we have no verification of and the tape doesn't show anything of.
00:52:12.000This was the number one trend in America.
00:52:16.000Again, the supply of racism is outstripped by the demand in dramatic fashion.
00:52:21.000People had a virtue signal to demonstrate that they took the story at face value, because if you don't take the story at face value, it means you're a racist, is the way this works now.
00:52:28.000Online, the way that this works is an accusation is tantamount to guilt, no matter what, so long as the person who is making the accusation is part of the hierarchy of groups who have been oppressed in America before.
00:52:52.000According to the columnist, David Kaufman, he says, the company wants to be hashtag woke.
00:52:58.000But if I hear one more all white 1980s playlist while a white coach uses black vernacular to encourage riders, I'll scream.
00:53:04.000So Peloton is racist because people are using 80s music, which very often is wise, like Huey Lewis in the news, and sometimes uses black vernacular when they talk?
00:53:28.000But the more I use my Peloton bicycle, the more I don't feel so good about the company behind it.
00:53:32.000Because just as their now infamous holiday season ad last year convinced many people the company had an unacknowledged gender problem.
00:53:38.000This is the dumbass controversy over an ad in which a husband gives his wife a Peloton bike and then she's real happy about it, which is bad.
00:53:44.000You're never supposed to give your wife an exercise piece of equipment that she's unhappy, that she's happy about.
00:53:50.000Because it means that you're body shaming her, gentlemen.
00:53:53.000Now, this comment says, It's not that Peloton the company is actively racist or has even failed at being woke.
00:54:04.000A quick spin through Peloton's app or blog reveals the brand is intentionally including racially conscious content throughout their marketing materials.
00:54:11.000Subtle is code for it doesn't exist, but I'm just going to make a big deal out of it so that I can get some press.
00:54:16.000With each bike priced at over $2,200 plus $39 per month more for streaming classes, Peloton users are typically demi-one percenters with cash to spare and homes spacious enough to house those speedy racers.
00:54:27.000And in fact, Peloton CEO and co-founder John Foley said those users were his target demographic.
00:54:32.000Those users must now find free hours to actually ride their bikes and run on their treadmills in between other lockdown demands, whether work conferences or Zoom classes for the kids.
00:54:41.000The upper middle class whiteness informs everything I've experienced about Peloton's almost cultish community.
00:54:49.000That community mostly connects during Peloton rides or runs, which are streamed into folks' homes on screens mounted on the front of their equipment.
00:54:55.000They'll have cutesy names that indicate effort level and music genre.
00:54:57.000Think 30-minute pop ride or 45-minute hit and hills ride, a pun playing off the acronym for high-intensity interval training and the fact that you'll be hearing whatever is atop the billboard charts at the moment.
00:55:07.000This is where the race issue becomes most apparent because black instructors offer rides filled with typically black music, rap, Caribbean, or hip-hop, while white instructors offer ones with mostly white music, rock, pop, and heavy metal.
00:55:18.000Though the thought that white people don't work out to rap or hip-hop music and black people don't use rock or pop music to fuel their sessions in 2020 is laughable.
00:55:49.000He says, the deliberateness of those choices becomes more apparent in the playlists of the rides with musical themes from a specific decade, whether the 70s, 80s, or 90s.
00:55:58.000Also taught by mostly white instructors, such rides feature popular era hits, but from predominantly white bands.
00:56:04.000So the 70s focused rides are all classic rock and a bit of country, the 80s rides are full of new wave, and the 90s classes are big on grunge and Dave Matthews.
00:56:11.000It's as if black music, let alone disco or Tejano, simply didn't happen during those years.
00:56:16.000And when black music does appear outside of hip-hop or rap, it's often part of a more specialized class category such as Groove Ride.
00:56:55.000Because she put out a letter today pointing out that she's been criticized for not being feminist enough in her music.
00:57:01.000And then she says, why is it that everybody else gets to do their version of feminism, which could include cheating or stripping or being terrible, but my version of feminism, which involves me exposing my own vulnerabilities in my music, is considered very bad.
00:57:17.000She says, now that Doha Cat, Ariana, Camila, Cardi B, Kehlani, and Nicki Minaj and Beyonce have had number ones with songs about being sexy, wearing no clothes, effing, cheating, etc.
00:57:25.000Can I please go back to singing about being embodied, feeling beautiful by being in love, even if the relationship is not perfect, or dancing for money, or whatever I want, without being crucified or saying that I'm glamorizing abuse?
00:57:35.000I'm fed up with female writers and alt-singers saying I glamorize abuse when in reality I'm just a glamorous person singing about the realities of what we are all now seeing are very prevalent emotionally abusive relationships all over the world.
00:57:46.000With all of the topics women are finally allowed to explore, I just want to say over the last 10 years, I think it's pathetic that my minor lyrical exploration detailing my sometimes submissive or passive roles in my relationships has often made people say I've set women back hundreds of years.
00:57:58.000Let's be clear, I'm not a feminist, but there has to be a kind of place in feminism for women who look and act like me.
00:58:04.000And she talks about, you know, some of the music that she has written, and she was ripped up and down for this because she mentioned women of color.
00:58:21.000Again, this all comes down to people are looking for a rationale for being racist.
00:58:25.000People are looking for a rationale for suggesting that racism is rife in American society so that they can claim that the society itself is to blame for the racism.
00:58:33.000Okay, time for a very, very quick thing I like.
00:58:35.000There's a great book that I referred to on my All Access Live a couple of days ago called Crisis of the House Divided by Harry Jaffa.
00:58:41.000When we talk about divisions in America, It is important to remember this is not the most divided time in American history.
00:58:46.000There was a time when half the country actually held slaves, the greatest evil in American history by a long shot.
00:58:52.000Harry Jaffa has a great book about the debates between Lincoln and Douglas and the reading of the Declaration of Independence into the Constitution, the second American founding that happened during the Civil War.
00:59:03.000Those second American founders would include people like Frederick Douglass and include people like Abraham Lincoln, obviously.
00:59:08.000It is not particularly an easy read, but Harry Jaffa is one of the great American thinkers about American philosophy and particularly the Civil War.
00:59:15.000He has a couple of fantastic books on this.
00:59:16.000Crisis of the House Divided is an absolute classic.
01:00:17.000The case for coronavirus hysteria collapses even further as the CDC changes its guidelines and admits the virus does not spread easily, if at all, through contaminated surfaces.
01:00:28.000In other words, the masks and gloves are basically useless.
01:00:31.000Republican Governor Ron DeSantis takes a victory lap, the alarmist mayor of Atlanta makes excuses, and MSNBC's Mika Scarborough has an on-air meltdown.
01:00:40.000Then, leaked audio surfaces of Joe Biden discussing with former Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko The decision to fire that prosecutor looking into Joe's son in exchange for a billion dollar loan guarantee.
01:00:51.000That's just the beginning of Joe's troubles.