The Ben Shapiro Show - WHO’s On First | Ep. 1015

00:00:00.000 Defenders of the WHO emerge after President Trump calls out the organization.

00:00:04.000 Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is owed an apology by the media.

00:00:07.000 And Elizabeth Warren would love to dictate how businesses operate in exchange for keeping them alive. 1.00

00:00:11.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:12.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:13.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.com.

00:00:21.000 Protect your data from prying eyes at expressvpn.com.

00:00:25.000 Alrighty, well, let's begin with the continuing big news of the last week and a half.

00:00:31.000 States are following Georgia and Florida's lead, and the reason for this is because you're not seeing massive upticks and massive spikes in cases and deaths in Florida and Georgia.

00:00:38.000 You're seeing a downtick in cases and deaths in Florida and Georgia, particularly the positives as a percentage of the greater number of tests that are currently being taken.

00:00:47.000 And this is why all 50 states have reopened it to some degree.

00:00:50.000 According to the New York Times, Connecticut was among the last states to take a plunge back to business on Wednesday.

00:00:55.000 Its stay-at-home order lifted, and stores, museums, and offices were allowed to reopen.

00:00:58.000 Not far away in New Jersey, the reopening has been more limited, with only curbside pickup at retail stores and allowances for certain industries.

00:01:04.000 The contrast illustrates a dynamic playing out across the country as governors grapple with how to handle a pandemic when it comes with no political playbook.

00:01:11.000 States in the Northeast and on the West Coast, as well as Democratic-led states in the Midwest, have moved the slowest toward reopening, several governors taking a county-by-county approach.

00:01:19.000 By contrast, several states in the South opened earlier and more fully.

00:01:22.000 Those social distancing requirements were put in place.

00:01:24.000 Restaurants, salons, gyms, and other businesses have been open in Georgia for several weeks.

00:01:28.000 There has not been the predicted spike.

00:01:29.000 We keep hearing next week will be the spike in Georgia.

00:01:31.000 It has now been a month since Georgia moved toward reopening in a very significant way.

00:01:35.000 There has not yet been the spike that was predicted.

00:01:38.000 Now, you would see, presumably, an uptick in positive numbers of cases because people are associating once again, but it has not been this overwhelming wave that we were supposedly going to hear about.

00:01:47.000 We've seen isolated cases where churches, for example, have had to shut down.

00:01:50.000 There was one in Texas, I believe there was one in Georgia, both of which shut down after people got too close to one another and a couple of people died.

00:01:57.000 But that is not particularly shocking.

00:01:58.000 Again, once you let people out of lockdown and they are associating with one another, then you are likely to see a little bit more transmission of the virus.

00:02:05.000 That does not mean you are overwhelming the healthcare system, which of course was the goal of lockdown in the first place, was to prevent the overwhelming.

00:02:11.000 Alaska has now announced it will go even further.

00:02:13.000 On Tuesday, Governor Mike Dunleavy said he would lift restrictions on businesses by the end of the week, allowing restaurants, bars, gyms, and others to return to full capacity.

00:02:20.000 That's because Alaska has not been hard hit in any way.

00:02:22.000 Sports and recreational activities will also be allowed.

00:02:25.000 Dunleavy said it will all be open just like it was prior to the virus.

00:02:28.000 He said social distancing strategies would be recommended but not required.

00:02:31.000 Even as it announced plans to ease restrictions on residents, Alaska said it was maintaining its requirement for travelers arriving in the state to stay quarantined for 14 days and keeping visitor restrictions at senior centers and prisons, all of which makes perfect sense, right?

00:02:43.000 Once your state has lowered the curve, then preventing people who have this thing from entering your state makes perfect sense. 0.90

00:02:48.000 This is happening all over the world.

00:02:50.000 Also, protecting your senior citizens and protecting your jails and places where people are in close proximity makes perfect sense as well.

00:02:56.000 Again, the people who are being hardest hit by all of this are the seniors.

00:03:00.000 And we now have some statistics that bear out exactly who is being hit.

00:03:04.000 So Avik Roy over at FreeOp, which is an organization dedicated to free market economics, the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, Avik Roy has now put out a thread about the risk factors by population, like how much more deadly is the flu than COVID for various age groups.

00:03:22.000 And it turns out that if you're looking at young people, the flu is way more deadly.

00:03:27.000 And when I talk about young people, I'm talking about people who are under the age of 25.

00:03:29.000 If you're under age 25, the flu is significantly more deadly to you than COVID-19.

00:03:34.000 In fact, it is 17 times more deadly to you than COVID-19.

00:03:38.000 If you assume 150,000 deaths will occur from COVID-19 over the course of the season, then what you're looking at is the flu being about 17 times more deadly than the coronavirus for people who are under a year for babies.

00:03:51.000 It's about 20 times more deadly if you're under four.

00:03:53.000 It is about seven times more deadly if you're between five and 14.

00:03:57.000 And it's about 1.3 times more deadly if you're between 15 and 24.

00:04:00.000 Now, once you hit 25, then COVID starts to be more deadly than the flu.

00:04:05.000 Once you hit 25, then COVID is about two times more deadly than the flu if you're under Again, this takes into account everybody.

00:04:13.000 This is pre-existing conditions too.

00:04:15.000 So if you're healthy, then obviously your risk factors are lower.

00:04:18.000 So COVID is about twice as deadly as the flu for people who are between 25 and 34.

00:04:22.000 It's about three times as deadly as the flu for people between 35 and 44.

00:04:25.000 It is about 3.6 times as deadly if you are between 45 and 54.

00:04:26.000 It is about 3.6 times as deadly if you are between 45 and 54.

00:04:30.000 It is about 3.85 times more deadly.

00:04:33.000 It's about four times as deadly as the flu between 55 and 64.

00:04:36.000 And then 3.5 for 65 to 74.

00:04:38.000 And then, shockingly, it's only about 2.6 times more deadly than the flu for people between 75 and 84.

00:04:43.000 Why?

00:04:44.000 Because it turns out that those people die at extraordinarily high rates anyway.

00:04:48.000 I mean, again, one of the things that we are recognizing here is that as we start to study the underlying statistics, people in nursing homes died in extraordinary rates anyway.

00:04:56.000 They represent about 0.5% of the American population.

00:04:58.000 They represent nearly 20% of all deaths in a given year in the American population.

00:05:02.000 So an uptick in nursing homes is not exactly a shocker.

00:05:05.000 That is, the most vulnerable group in our population always has been.

00:05:08.000 If you're over 85, by the way, it's only about 1.7 times more deadly than the flu, COVID-19, according to Avik Roy over at FREOP.

00:05:16.000 He says, here's another way to think about the very low risk to children.

00:05:18.000 Sweden never closed its schools.

00:05:20.000 Sweden has one of the lowest pediatric infection rates in the industrialized world and exactly one pediatric death from COVID-19.

00:05:25.000 So when you hear politicians saying we can't reopen the schools, well, unless you have people going to the schools and then immediately like being dropped off at the nursing home, probably you don't have to worry about this so much.

00:05:34.000 Children are really not the disease vector for this thing.

00:05:38.000 Not only that, we have some very good news in terms of the way this thing spreads.

00:05:43.000 I'm shocked, frankly, that this is not the top story in the country, considering how much people have been worried about cleaning off surfaces, for example.

00:05:50.000 We'll get to that in just one second.

00:05:52.000 First, let's talk about now being an excellent time to take care of your mind and body.

00:05:55.000 You want to be as healthy as humanly possible.

00:05:57.000 For a variety of reasons, and you wanna be healthy in mind as well.

00:06:00.000 Lockdown, it ain't good for the soul.

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00:07:12.000 Okay, so here is a good piece of news.

00:07:13.000 According to The Blaze, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has updated its guidance on COVID-19 to say the disease does not spread easily on contaminated surfaces.

00:07:22.000 The disease has always been thought to spread mainly through person-to-person contact by respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks.

00:07:29.000 Up until recently, the CDC was maintaining the virus could also spread through contact with contaminated surfaces.

00:07:34.000 Now, the CDC says, the virus does not spread easily in other ways.

00:07:38.000 In other words, if somebody doesn't sneeze on you or cough on you or talk real close to you for a prolonged period of time, you're probably not getting this thing.

00:07:44.000 Right?

00:07:44.000 If you just go to the park and you touch a surface, unless someone sneezed on that surface like half a second before, the chances are extraordinarily low that you're going to end up with COVID-19.

00:07:53.000 The CDC guidance now says it may be possible for COVID-19 to spread in other ways.

00:07:56.000 These are not thought to be the main ways the virus spreads.

00:07:59.000 According to Yahoo News, the guidance used to simply say that the spread in other ways may be possible without the added disclaimer.

00:08:04.000 But that is a fairly significant development.

00:08:09.000 Much of the thinking on the virus's spread through contaminated surfaces stemmed from a New England Journal of Medicine study in March that found the virus could survive in the air for hours and on certain surfaces for days.

00:08:17.000 In April, when the FDA announced customers don't need to worry about contracting the virus from grocery packaging, the CDC guidance expressed caution, citing the study.

00:08:24.000 But now, it turns out, based on the epidemiology, according to a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins' Center for Health Security, Dr. Amish Adalja, based on the epidemiology, we know that the main way this virus is infecting people is from direct contact with other infected people.

00:08:36.000 Contaminated surfaces play some role.

00:08:38.000 It is likely much smaller.

00:08:39.000 This is a respiratory virus.

00:08:41.000 Respiratory virus is largely spread through breathing in infected respiratory droplets.

00:08:45.000 So in other words, wash your hands a lot.

00:08:46.000 Don't wipe your face immediately after touching surfaces.

00:08:49.000 But if you pick up an Amazon package at the front door, the chances are extraordinarily high you're not getting COVID-19 from the Amazon package over at the front door.

00:08:56.000 And this is why you're starting to see many states now considering reopening schools and camps.

00:09:00.000 The Wall Street Journal has a piece today talking about how various countries have decided to deal with all of this.

00:09:07.000 They talk about the fact that there have been a few cases of a new condition that is similar to Kawasaki disease, but it's very rare.

00:09:16.000 In fact, it's rare enough that it likely won't affect most decisions to reopen camps and schools, according to health and policy experts.

00:09:22.000 Many experts said parents should be reassured that this affects an extremely small percentage of children, has caused very few deaths.

00:09:28.000 Stephen Kearney, the Chief of Pediatric Critical Care of Medicine at New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital in Columbia says, it's probably hundreds of thousands of kids in the New York area who've been exposed to the virus.

00:09:37.000 It seems like a really small number of people are getting this.

00:09:39.000 The hospital has had about 40 children with this particular syndrome.

00:09:43.000 They're treated with steroids and they usually recover in three to four days and then follow up with a cardiologist.

00:09:49.000 So camps are now considering whether they're going to reopen for the summer.

00:09:54.000 And again, this is all good news.

00:09:56.000 It's funny because, listen, we're all nervous.

00:09:58.000 You know, it's hard.

00:09:59.000 People get used to the situation they are in.

00:10:01.000 Once the government tells you that you are only safe if you lock down, it's nerve wracking when people say you can open back up again.

00:10:07.000 But pretty much a lot of the news has been very, very good.

00:10:10.000 And this is true in Europe as well.

00:10:12.000 According to Bloomberg, Officials in continental Europe's major economies are closely monitoring coronavirus data for signs of resurgence and infections as restrictions on daily life are phased out.

00:10:22.000 Countries must focus on more than daily case numbers and death tolls because those are lagging indicators.

00:10:26.000 A better guide might come from the length of lines outside the doctor's office or surveys conducted at random.

00:10:31.000 However, Europe's coronavirus spread seems to be in check even as the lockdowns are loosened over in Europe.

00:10:37.000 And again, in America, people are picking this back up.

00:10:39.000 In Europe, by the way, in Denmark.

00:10:41.000 Danish bars and cafes are completely back in business.

00:10:44.000 Social distancing has now been scaled back to one meter, which is a little over three feet.

00:10:49.000 It means more customers can now be seated at restaurants because it turns out it's very difficult to fill a restaurant when everybody is seated six feet apart.

00:10:55.000 The two meters was a big issue.

00:10:56.000 It didn't allow us to have enough revenue, said Jacob Niebuhr, the chairman of Denmark's Restaurant and Cafe Association.

00:11:00.000 He thinks most restaurants will be ready to open this week.

00:11:04.000 Face masks aren't compulsory.

00:11:05.000 They're already a rare sight in Denmark.

00:11:07.000 Groups of up to 10 friends can already sit together.

00:11:09.000 For pubs, there will be no more customers propping up at the bar.

00:11:12.000 They aren't allowed to face staff for more than 15 minutes, mainly because they don't want people breathing on the staff on a continuous level.

00:11:18.000 But we are starting to see, you know, countries all over the world open up.

00:11:21.000 So when people on the left in the United States suggest that it's crazy that southern states are opening up, just recommend and just point out that Europe is doing exactly the same thing and they're not seeing an uptick in cases.

00:11:30.000 Meanwhile, over in Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine has lifted Ohio's safe-at-home order.

00:11:34.000 According to Cleveland.com, more of Ohio's mandatory restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus will be cut short, according to Governor DeWine.

00:11:41.000 Some key social distancing rules, including a ban on most mass gatherings, restrictions on bars and restaurants, will still remain mandatory.

00:11:47.000 The language of the new advisory order was not immediately available.

00:11:50.000 The document had not yet been signed, but DeWine says the state will continue to enforce a number of mandatory rules, most notably requirements that patrons at bars and restaurants must remain seated while eating and drinking and stay at least six feet away from others.

00:12:01.000 Also, Ohio's ban on most gatherings of 10 or more people will remain in place.

00:12:06.000 But obviously, everybody is moving toward reopening, and this is obvious across the country.

00:12:11.000 And so here's the question.

00:12:13.000 When does Ron DeSantis get his apology?

00:12:15.000 The Florida governor.

00:12:16.000 Now, it's amazing to see the lengths to which the media will go to try and portray Florida as a giant failure, despite the fact that Florida has nearly the same population as New York, almost identical populations to New York, in terms of the number of people.

00:12:26.000 And they've experienced, what, one-tenth, one-twelfth the number of deaths.

00:12:29.000 There's not been a major outbreak in Florida.

00:12:31.000 There were some cases.

00:12:33.000 There were not tremendous numbers of deaths in Florida.

00:12:35.000 Their deaths per million people are about the same as California, for example, where we've had no major outbreaks in California.

00:12:41.000 And yet, the media have been all over DeSantis from day one, suggesting DeSantis didn't know what he was doing.

00:12:45.000 It turns out DeSantis got it right. 0.92

00:12:47.000 The latest attempt, by the way, by the media to get DeSantis was so obviously stupid that I pointed this out yesterday, and then it turns out, of course, the story fell apart. 0.61

00:12:54.000 I talked about this yesterday on the program. 0.83

00:12:56.000 There was a story from Miami Herald yesterday suggesting that Florida's data analysts had been fired because she was attempting to bring the truth to the people, and DeSantis stepped in and Bigfooted her to prevent her from bringing the actual news about coronavirus to the people.

00:13:09.000 Now it turns out she was fired for insubordination.

00:13:12.000 According to the Post-Gazette.com, facing an explosive — from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida — facing an explosive charge that his administration is manipulating coronavirus data to help make the case for reopening Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis played down the controversy Tuesday as a non-issue.

00:13:25.000 Health experts say that the milestone in Florida—they topped 2,000 deaths—should serve as a sobering reminder to exercise caution as the state reopens.

00:13:33.000 DeSantis has presented his reopening plan as safe and step-by-step, but the accusations leveled by Rebecca Jones were undermining that push, except for the fact that Jones apparently was not telling the truth.

00:13:44.000 She suggested that there was going to be a cover-up of data.

00:13:46.000 The article itself—the original article itself—said there had been no cover-up of the data.

00:13:50.000 DeSantis said Tuesday Joan sent an email to her supervisor saying that her comments were being misinterpreted.

00:13:56.000 DeSantis said, I don't know who she is.

00:13:57.000 They gave me an email she sent to her supervisor said that, uh-oh, I may have said something that was misinterpreted.

00:14:02.000 I said they've got a team working on it now.

00:14:03.000 What I meant is I don't expect the same level of accessibility is that they are busy and can't answer every single email they get right away.

00:14:09.000 And that it was ridiculous that I managed to do it in the first place and that I was tired and needed a break from working two months straight.

00:14:14.000 Okay, that is not what she said in her original public letter.

00:14:15.000 What she said in her original public letter is that the accessibility would be limited because of a cover-up.

00:14:20.000 And now she's backtracking on it.

00:14:21.000 DeSantis said that the state's COVID-19 dashboard is a heck of a tool.

00:14:24.000 He said, I'm proud of the folks who work on it.

00:14:27.000 Jones told Florida Today she was fired on Monday.

00:14:29.000 And then she said that she faced blowback because she manually refused to change data to drum up support for the plan to reopen.

00:14:34.000 The governor's office then released a statement saying, Joan's was terminated, quote, after a repeated course of insubordination, including her unilateral decisions to modify the department's COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.

00:14:48.000 He said accuracy and transparency are always indispensable, especially during an unprecedented public health emergency like COVID-19.

00:14:53.000 Having someone disruptive cannot be tolerated during this pandemic, which led the department to determine it was best to terminate her employment.

00:15:01.000 I mean, that's amazing.

00:15:02.000 Okay, so basically, the media ran with this bullcrap story because they wanted to get to Santa's.

00:15:06.000 Meanwhile, by the way, just a quick note, the states that are actually changing their data now are Democratic states.

00:15:12.000 Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, she announced that Michigan would now quietly uptick the number of deaths that they estimate are due to COVID-19 in the state.

00:15:26.000 According to Lynn Sutphin, a state health spokesperson, the state this week will start reporting probable cases.

00:15:33.000 She said, that would be a death where the death certificate lists COVID-19 disease as a cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death without a positive COVID-19 confirmed lab results.

00:15:41.000 In other words, most states have been reporting probable COVID-19 deaths as COVID-19 deaths.

00:15:45.000 Michigan has not so far.

00:15:47.000 So that means that they've under-accounted the number of deaths by probably thousands in Michigan.

00:15:53.000 In Colorado, a state representative called for an investigation after the state acknowledged that it was counting as COVID-19 deaths cases in which the disease was not listed as the cause of death, but they had tested positive for coronavirus.

00:16:03.000 So you're starting to see Colorado reversing course.

00:16:06.000 In April, New York City began counting probable deaths in which COVID-19 was listed as a cause of death, but there wasn't a positive test.

00:16:12.000 So it's just a mess out there.

00:16:15.000 Meanwhile, again, Ron DeSantis, he didn't handle things wrong in Florida, right?

00:16:18.000 He's been raked over the coals.

00:16:19.000 Whitmer has been propped up as a heroine, even though she's been awful.

00:16:22.000 She's been far too restrictive on counties in Michigan.

00:16:26.000 Like, far too restrictive.

00:16:26.000 Like, you can't buy seeds.

00:16:28.000 You can't buy car seats at the local Target.

00:16:30.000 You can't put a motorboat on the lake, but you can put a rowboat on the lake. 1.00

00:16:34.000 Like, idiotic stuff like that. 1.00

00:16:36.000 She's a hero. 1.00

00:16:36.000 Andrew Cuomo's a hero. 1.00

00:16:37.000 Ron DeSantis, apparently, is the bad guy.

00:16:39.000 We'll get to Ron DeSantis in just one second.

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00:17:53.000 So where does Ron DeSantis go to?

00:17:55.000 I get his apology.

00:17:56.000 The answer is the media will not be apologizing at any time in the near future.

00:18:00.000 Rich Lowry has a good piece in interview with Ron DeSantis.

00:18:03.000 He says, Florida went out of its way to get COVID-19 positive people out of nursing homes, while New York went out of its way to get them in, a policy now widely acknowledged to have been a debacle.

00:18:10.000 as a hero, even though DeSantis' approach to nursing homes was obviously superior to that of Cuomo.

00:18:14.000 Florida went out of its way to get COVID-19 positive people out of nursing homes, while New York went out of its way to get them in, a policy now widely acknowledged to have been a debacle.

00:18:23.000 The media didn't have their eyes on the ball.

00:18:24.000 The day the media had their first big freakout about Florida was March 15th, says DeSantis, which was, there were people on Clearwater Beach and it was this big deal.

00:18:31.000 That same day, we signed the executive order to one, ban visitation in nursing homes, and two, ban the reintroduction of a COVID-positive patient back into a nursing home.

00:18:39.000 DeSantis has been mused by the obsession with Florida's beaches.

00:18:42.000 When they reopened in Jacksonville, it was a big national story, usually relayed with a dire tone.

00:18:46.000 Jacksonville has almost no COVID activity outside of a nursing home context, he said.

00:18:49.000 Their hospitalizations are down.

00:18:51.000 ICU is down since the beaches opened a month ago.

00:18:53.000 But nobody talks about it.

00:18:54.000 It's like, okay, we just move on to the next target.

00:18:57.000 Perhaps more understandably, the villages, the iconic senior community, was a focus of media worries.

00:19:01.000 According to DeSantis, as of last weekend, there had not been a single resident of the villages in the hospital for COVID-19 for about a week.

00:19:08.000 At one point, the infection rate in the villages was so low, state officials were worried they were missing something.

00:19:13.000 So he says, I got the University of Florida to do a study.

00:19:15.000 They did 1,200 asymptomatic seniors at the villages.

00:19:19.000 Not one came back positive, which was really incredible.

00:19:22.000 So what exactly did DeSantis do?

00:19:23.000 Well, first, he looked at South Korea.

00:19:25.000 He said it was pretty dramatic the extent to which this was concentrated in older age groups.

00:19:29.000 I think the first real fresh set of South Korea numbers I looked at, they had no fatalities under 30.

00:19:33.000 80% of them were 70 or above.

00:19:35.000 It was really dramatic.

00:19:35.000 Then there was Italy.

00:19:37.000 He says, I think a lot of policymakers in the U.S.

00:19:38.000 acted like Italy would happen in the U.S.

00:19:40.000 When you looked under the hood in Italy, there were huge differences.

00:19:42.000 There were reasons why that part of Italy fared as poorly as it did.

00:19:45.000 I think the median age of fatality was like 82 in those areas of northern Italy.

00:19:49.000 So we looked at that.

00:19:50.000 That really helped inform the strategy to focus most of our efforts on the at-risk groups.

00:19:53.000 He was hesitant about sweeping lockdowns because there wasn't a lot of precedent for them.

00:19:58.000 Also, they didn't put much stock in dire predictions.

00:19:59.000 He says, we kind of lost confidence early on in the models.

00:20:02.000 We looked at them closely.

00:20:03.000 But how can you rely on something when it says you're peaking in a week and the next day you've already peaked?

00:20:07.000 Florida was also able to handle this better because they've dealt with natural disasters many times, and Florida protected the nursing homes because they have a disproportionate number of nursing home residents in Florida.

00:20:16.000 Mary Mayhew, who heads the nursing home effort, says it was clear to me there were much higher standards related to infection control being outlined by the federal CDC that well exceeded what our nursing homes traditionally have been expected to adhere to, so we never had false expectations.

00:20:30.000 Inspectors and assessment teams visited nursing homes.

00:20:32.000 The state homed in on facilities where, Mayhew said, we had historically cited around infection control.

00:20:36.000 We used that to prioritize our visits to those facilities, understanding that the guidance from the CDC was changing quickly.

00:20:42.000 Florida required all staff and any worker that entered to be screened for COVID illness temperature checks.

00:20:46.000 Anyone symptomatic would simply not be allowed to go in. 1.00

00:20:49.000 And they required staff to wear PPE.

00:20:51.000 He says we recognize these facilities were not prepared to deal with something like this.

00:20:54.000 So he sent a total of 10 million masks just to our long-term care facilities, a million gloves, half a million face shields.

00:21:00.000 Okay, so DeSantis handled this exactly the way he was supposed to.

00:21:04.000 By the way, Mary Mayhew, who again was in charge of the suffrage, said she had calls with hospitals every day.

00:21:09.000 She said, I would hear the same comments and questions around, we need to get individuals returned back to nursing homes.

00:21:13.000 We drew a hard line early on.

00:21:14.000 I said repeatedly to the hospital, to the CEOs, to the discharge planners, to the medical officers, I understand for 20 years it's been ingrained, especially because of Medicare reimbursement, to get individuals in and out.

00:21:23.000 That is not our focus.

00:21:24.000 I'm not sending anyone back to a nursing home who has the slightest risk of being positive.

00:21:29.000 She said, we said, let's not have two cases become 20 or five become 50.

00:21:32.000 If you don't manage the individuals, you return them back, you'll have far more being transferred back to the hospital.

00:21:37.000 Make it was unmovable on the question.

00:21:40.000 Okay, so Florida handled this exactly right, and Florida was blamed, because the media had an agenda from beginning to end here, and that agenda continues to be carried out, despite the fact that the facts no longer support the agenda.

00:21:51.000 You could at least make the argument that this was good-hearted at the beginning, because everybody was risk-averse.

00:21:55.000 But what happens when it turns out that New York's a freaking disaster area, and that Florida is fine, because Florida handled it the way you're supposed to, and the way that I've been talking about for literally months.

00:22:04.000 Protect the elderly, protect the nursing homes, recognize differential risk assessments, But instead, Florida was the bad guy here.

00:22:12.000 Truly, truly incredible.

00:22:15.000 In just a second, we're going to get to more agenda-driven politics, this time on China.

00:22:19.000 We'll get there in just one second.

00:22:20.000 First, let's talk about the fact that you are at home right now.

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00:23:26.000 So what exactly is the downside?

00:23:27.000 All right.

00:23:28.000 Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pointing out that, oh yeah, by the way, The W.H.O. 0.99

00:23:33.000 is a garbage heap. 0.94

00:23:34.000 So yesterday, President Trump issued a letter to the W.H.O. 0.97

00:23:36.000 saying we need systemic change inside the W.H.O.

00:23:39.000 because you guys didn't just blow this, you blew this royally. 0.56

00:23:41.000 You're taking all of your advice from the Chinese government.

00:23:44.000 And let's just be real about this. 1.00

00:23:46.000 The Chinese government is a flaming trash heap. 1.00

00:23:48.000 The Chinese government is an evil government. 1.00

00:23:50.000 Ronald Reagan suggested that the Soviet government was the evil empire. 0.96

00:23:53.000 The Chinese government is in fact an evil empire. 1.00

00:23:55.000 It is an evil government. 1.00

00:23:57.000 It is a government that jails a million Uyghurs for the crime of being Muslim. 1.00

00:24:00.000 It is a government that keeps a billion people in repression. 0.99

00:24:04.000 It is a government that will Maybe, we'll certainly jail you and maybe kill you if you cross them.

00:24:10.000 It is a government that is trying to claw back all of its treaty obligations to Hong Kong.

00:24:15.000 It is a government that would love nothing better than to take over Taiwan, a free and independent Taiwan.

00:24:20.000 It is a government that lies routinely to the world population.

00:24:23.000 It is a government that, it is a full-on dictatorship.

00:24:26.000 The fact that anybody treats China as a legitimate world power, as opposed to an illegitimate government that is a world power, is beyond me. 0.97

00:24:33.000 China is an evil empire. 1.00

00:24:34.000 It has been an evil empire for a very long time. 0.99

00:24:36.000 They were involved in the forced abortion of literally millions and millions of children.

00:24:41.000 They were involved in the forced sterilization of hundreds of thousands of women.

00:24:46.000 This is a government that their one child policy spanned from like 1970 to 2015. 0.95

00:24:52.000 This is an evil, evil government. 0.96

00:24:54.000 It's an evil government. 0.91

00:24:55.000 And the fact that people are defending that government because they hate Trump so much is truly astonishing to me.

00:24:59.000 So how evil is this government?

00:25:00.000 So Mike Pompeo gave a congratulations to the Taiwanese president on her second term.

00:25:06.000 She sent a message to President Tsai Ing-wen on her inauguration.

00:25:10.000 He was the first U.S.

00:25:11.000 Secretary of State to applaud a Taiwanese president on their election, according to the Chinese government, which demonstrates, by the way, how pathetic the American government has been on this issue for a very long time.

00:25:20.000 Taiwan ought to be free and independent.

00:25:22.000 One of the great tragedies of history is that Mao Tse-tung won the battle against Chiang Kai-shek.

00:25:27.000 Would that all of China were governed by the same people who govern Taiwan, not the other way around.

00:25:33.000 Okay, so the U.S.

00:25:34.000 issued a congratulations to Taiwan, which by the way, we have a defense obligation to.

00:25:39.000 And the Chinese government immediately said that Pompeo's, Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, his statement seriously violated the one China principle.

00:25:45.000 F the one China principle. 1.00

00:25:47.000 The one China principle is a bunch of crap. 1.00

00:25:49.000 They say that it's one nation, It's one China, two countries. 1.00

00:25:54.000 Taiwan is not China.

00:25:56.000 It's not governed the same way as China.

00:25:58.000 Hong Kong is not China, which is why you're seeing tens of thousands of people out in the streets.

00:26:01.000 By the way, undercover of this coronavirus pandemic, China is cracking down on all dissent inside Hong Kong.

00:26:05.000 Everybody's ignoring that.

00:26:06.000 Remember right before the coronavirus pandemic back in January, there was a lot of talk about repression in Hong Kong.

00:26:11.000 China is now taking advantage of the pandemic to crack down and arrest all of the leaders of that effort against China.

00:26:19.000 China took exception to Pompeo referring to Tsai as president.

00:26:21.000 Pompeo said in his statement, China immediately got angry because China immediately got angry because they said that it's very bad that we pointed out that someone was elected in Taiwan.

00:26:43.000 Better that the leader should be selected by the Politburo and there should be no elections apparently.

00:26:47.000 The Ministry, the Foreign Ministry of China said, China urges the U.S.

00:26:50.000 side to immediately correct its mistakes.

00:26:52.000 The Chinese side will take necessary countermeasures to respond to the above-mentioned erroneous actions by the U.S.

00:26:57.000 side should bear the consequences arising therefrom.

00:26:57.000 side.

00:26:57.000 The U.S.

00:27:00.000 Consequences arising therefrom?

00:27:01.000 How about you bear some consequences for unleashing a pandemic that's going to kill probably a million people on planet Earth?

00:27:06.000 And destroy the entire world economy for a year.

00:27:08.000 Maybe you should bear the consequences of that.

00:27:11.000 How about you?

00:27:12.000 You should bear the consequences of taking control of the W.H.O.

00:27:16.000 By the way, there's some pretty incestuous ties between the Chinese government and the W.H.O., including high-ranking members of the W.H.O.

00:27:21.000 being married to members of the Chinese government.

00:27:24.000 But according to the New York Times, President Trump's angry demands for punitive action against the WHO were rebuffed on Tuesday by the organization's other members, who decided to conduct an impartial independent examination of the WHO's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

00:27:37.000 And a four-page later, late Monday night, Trump threatened to permanently cut off U.S.

00:27:41.000 funding to the WHO unless it committed to major substantive improvements within 30 days.

00:27:45.000 That was a significant escalation of his repeated attempts to blame the WHO in China for the spread of the virus and deflect responsibility for his own handling of a crisis that has killed more than 90,000 people in the United States.

00:27:55.000 Let me just point out how disgusting the New York Times coverage is here.

00:27:58.000 Trump points out the WHO is a disaster area. 0.68

00:28:01.000 They are a disaster area.

00:28:02.000 They lied to the public for weeks about human-to-human transmission.

00:28:05.000 They suggested that China was handling this thing better than anybody else, that China was being fully transparent.

00:28:10.000 Dr. Tedros is a disaster area at the WHO.

00:28:12.000 He's not even a medical doctor, by the way.

00:28:14.000 Okay, the fact is, That criticizing the WHO and China is not a deflecting tactic.

00:28:19.000 It is a reality of life.

00:28:20.000 But the way that the New York Times covers that, that's an editorial decision, right?

00:28:25.000 They say that when Trump rips on China and the WHO, it's to quote, deflect responsibility for his own handling of the crisis.

00:28:31.000 Or alternatively, it is to criticize China for unleashing this pandemic around the world, knowing full damn well that there was human to human transmission and allowing 5 million citizens to leave the Wuhan area while they knew that this disease was spreading widely. 0.84

00:28:44.000 Representatives of the organization's member nations rallied around the WHO. 0.98

00:28:47.000 There's a damn shock. 0.96

00:28:48.000 You mean that Russia and China resisted the United States? 0.97

00:28:52.000 The European Union chided Trump's heated rhetoric even as they acknowledged the need to review the WHO's response as the virus spread from China to the rest of the world.

00:28:58.000 That's because the EU is filled with a bunch of pansies who are afraid to stand up to the Chinese government because the Chinese government does a lot of business with them. 1.00

00:29:05.000 Same deal as the EU refusing to stand up to Iran when the United States, under President Trump, was the only country willing to stand up to Iran.

00:29:12.000 Public health experts noted Trump's threats to withdraw from the organization and permanently halt funding ignored the reality that any such moves would require the consent of Congress.

00:29:19.000 But the president's continued attacks on the WHO said experts.

00:29:22.000 Oh, experts said.

00:29:23.000 Wow.

00:29:23.000 You know, unnamed experts saying things.

00:29:25.000 Woo! 0.99

00:29:26.000 Color me really concerned.

00:29:27.000 Threatened to hobble the organization and seriously damage international efforts to combat the virus.

00:29:32.000 Which was more damaging, Trump threatening to cut off funding unless they get their act together or the WHO never having their act together in the first place?

00:29:38.000 Yesterday, President Trump said the WHO has to clean up their act.

00:29:41.000 He's not talking about the rock musical Tommy.

00:29:45.000 Here's President Trump going after the WHO.

00:29:47.000 What reforms do they need to do?

00:29:49.000 Well, it says so in the letters.

00:29:50.000 I don't want to go through it.

00:29:51.000 The letter is a very detailed, long letter.

00:29:54.000 But basically, they have to clean up their act.

00:29:56.000 They have to do a better job.

00:29:58.000 They have to be much more fair to other countries, including the United States.

00:30:02.000 So we're not going to be involved with them anymore.

00:30:04.000 We'll do it a separate way.

00:30:07.000 Okay, so he is exactly right about all of this.

00:30:09.000 And what's amazing about this is Trump is such a polarizing figure for the media that the media immediately leaped to defend China.

00:30:16.000 The only reason to blame China, the only reason to blame the Chinese government, which again is evil, the only reason to blame them is because Trump is very bad at his job.

00:30:23.000 Now again, should we point out at this point that the deaths per million in the United States stands below most European nations outside of Germany?

00:30:31.000 Is it okay to point out that the vast botchery of this thing mainly happened in New York?

00:30:36.000 That somehow Florida handled it okay, Texas handled it okay, even California handled it okay.

00:30:40.000 Washington state had an early outbreak and then got it under control.

00:30:44.000 Is it okay to point out that Trump got the ventilators where they need to go?

00:30:47.000 And that right now we have more testing capacity than people looking to be tested?

00:30:51.000 Are we allowed to point any of that out or is it just all Trump bad all the time?

00:30:54.000 So Susan Rice, the garbage National Security Advisor who lied to the American public repeatedly about the Benghazi attacks, which I know we're not supposed to talk about, the scandal of the Benghazi attacks in which the State Department routinely turned down requests for additional security in Libya and then tried to pretend that the attack was spontaneous and not planned and was in fact driven by a YouTube video. 0.85

00:31:15.000 I know we're supposed to pretend that was not a big deal at all. 0.94

00:31:17.000 And you know, big deal.

00:31:18.000 Benghazi.

00:31:19.000 And then you put it in a tweet and you put it with letters vertically.

00:31:22.000 We're supposed to pretend that was not a big deal.

00:31:24.000 Susan Rice went on national TV and lied about it like a thousand times. 1.00

00:31:26.000 Now she is considered a possible presidential vice presidential pick for Joe Biden.

00:31:31.000 And we're going to get to Susan Rice on China.

00:31:33.000 By the way, if this is a battle that Trump has to fight, this is like the best election battle ever for Trump.

00:31:38.000 If this election comes down to Trump pointing out that China is a garbage heap and the Democrats suggesting that Trump is just a meanie for targeting China, that is a battle Trump wins every time.

00:31:45.000 We're going to get to more of this in just one second.

00:31:47.000 First, let's talk about the fact that now is a fantastic time to save money.

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00:33:00.000 We're going to get more into the democratic defense of China.

00:33:02.000 Like, what are they thinking?

00:33:03.000 We're going to get to that in just a second.

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00:34:14.000 So one of the funny things is watching the New York Times editorial side decide the New York Times objective media coverage So the objective media coverage, so much objectivity, so much media-izing, and so much journalism.

00:34:31.000 I mean, just incredible levels of objective journalism happening over at the New York Times.

00:34:35.000 So they'll actually headline things like, deflecting from his own incompetence, Trump blames China, and that'll be their objective news story.

00:34:41.000 And then you head on over to the op-ed page, and why there's Susan Rice just writing the same thing.

00:34:45.000 So Susan Rice says, there's a long history of American presidential candidates using China as a campaign cudgel.

00:34:50.000 From Bill Clinton blasting President George H.W.

00:34:52.000 Bush in 1992 for dealing with a Chinese premier known as the Butcher of Beijing, to Donald Trump's 2016 attack that the Obama administration had allowed China to rape the United States while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.

00:35:02.000 This election year, China bashing will reach a new level as Mr. Trump seeks to capitalize on high voter disapproval of China, Beijing's failure to contain the coronavirus, and persistent bilateral tensions between our countries.

00:35:12.000 Well, it seems like those are all relevant factors.

00:35:14.000 Like the fact that, again, China is an evil, evil government that has released a virus and then tried to blame the United States for the release of the virus. 0.96

00:35:23.000 And also that they're a repressive, horrifying regime. 0.99

00:35:26.000 But according to Susan Rice, Trump is just a meanie.

00:35:28.000 Desperate to obscure the reality of more than 90,000 American deaths and 36 million unemployed amid Mr. Trump's utterly incompetent handling of the pandemic, Republicans have no better strategy than to play the China card.

00:35:38.000 The Republicans are executing a 57-page campaign memo that recommends branding opponents soft on China and reveals their rationale for repeated refrains of China virus and Wuhan lab.

00:35:48.000 Again, this was released from Wuhan.

00:35:52.000 We don't know if it happened from a Wuhan lab.

00:35:54.000 We don't believe that it was released intentionally or that it was created in the Wuhan lab.

00:35:58.000 That is not the suggestion.

00:36:00.000 But China won't allow any investigation and in fact has threatened sanctions against places like Australia for suggesting some sort of independent investigation.

00:36:06.000 But Susan Rice is really mad about this. 1.00

00:36:09.000 She says that we cannot be so mean to China.

00:36:12.000 First, she tries to claim that Biden is really harsh on China, which is hilarious.

00:36:18.000 I mean, truly hilarious.

00:36:19.000 Joe Biden flew to China with his son, and then his son received a billion-dollar investment in a fund that he was running while Biden was vice president.

00:36:27.000 They flew on Air Force Two to China.

00:36:29.000 He and Hunter did.

00:36:30.000 And Hunter picked up bags of cash.

00:36:31.000 This is something that Hunter frequently did, obviously.

00:36:34.000 But, says Susan Rice, Mr. Trump will run his standard play, trying to deflect responsibility for his monumental failings by dishonestly projecting onto Mr. Biden his own weakness on China.

00:36:43.000 Trump seemingly will do anything to win in November.

00:36:45.000 His China gambit may be the least of it.

00:36:47.000 Still, campaigning on China, while a well-worn strategy, is particularly dangerous in these tense times, when it fuels Asian hostility at home and anti-American sentiment abroad.

00:36:56.000 Okay, so this is gonna be the other angle that is run by the media, is that every time Trump mentions China, it's because he wants Chinese-Americans targeted, which is absurd. 1.00

00:37:03.000 Trump has repeatedly talked about how stupid that is, and it is indeed stupid. 0.99

00:37:08.000 But it is amazing to watch how the objective journalism side takes its cues directly from the op-ed page over at the New York Times. 1.00

00:37:14.000 By the way, talking about soft on China, never forget that it was Joe Biden who suggested that a travel ban on citizens coming from Wuhan in China, that that was actually xenophobic hysteria.

00:37:26.000 Here was Joe Biden doing just that back in January.

00:37:28.000 A national emergency, you know, worldwide alerts.

00:37:32.000 The American people need to have a president who they can trust what he says about it, that he is going to act rationally about it.

00:37:41.000 In moments like this, this is where the credibility of a president is most needed, as he explains what we should and should not do.

00:37:51.000 This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysteria xenophobia, hysterical xenophobia.

00:38:00.000 No, it's time for Joe Biden to go back to sleep.

00:38:03.000 He needs his nap, or he gets a little tired in the middle of these events.

00:38:06.000 Rachel Maddow, by the way, over at MSNBC, doing the same routine.

00:38:08.000 She was full-on defending the WHO.

00:38:10.000 This is where we are.

00:38:11.000 And what is her basis for defense?

00:38:13.000 Her basis for defense is in a four-page letter.

00:38:15.000 There is one error.

00:38:16.000 They cite the Lancet Medical Journal to the notion that this thing may have been spreading since November or December.

00:38:22.000 There was, in fact, a report that this thing may have been spreading from November or December.

00:38:25.000 Lancet came out and said, we don't want to be used as a tool against the WHO because all of these medical organizations rely on the WHO and work with the WHO.

00:38:32.000 Rachel Maddow went on a rant last night about how we have to stop being mean to the WHO.

00:38:37.000 And Trump is just terrible for being mean to the WHO.

00:38:39.000 Honestly, if you want to make this your campaign, that you're going to defend the WHO in China for their behavior during this pandemic, go for it, guys.

00:38:44.000 I mean, really own it.

00:38:45.000 Just like own it.

00:38:46.000 Here's Rachel Maddow owning it. 0.98

00:38:48.000 President's letter said, quote, "We know the following: the WHO consistently ignored credible reports of the virus spreading in Wuhan in early December 2019 or even earlier, including reports from the Lancet Medical Journal." Well, the Lancet Medical Journal wrote to the White House today to say, "Oh my God, what are you talking about?" I'm paraphrasing that, but that's basically what they said.

00:39:14.000 I mean, here's what they actually said.

00:39:15.000 said, I can quote it.

00:39:15.000 Well, this statement is factually incorrect.

00:39:18.000 The Lancet published no report in December 2019 referring to a virus or outbreak in Wuhan or anywhere else in China.

00:39:25.000 Okay, that is true.

00:39:28.000 It is also true that The Lancet did report later that it is possible that there was some sort of outbreak that took place earlier than December.

00:39:39.000 They say the first reports the journal published were on January 24, 2020.

00:39:42.000 In a paper by Chao and Huang and colleagues, the first 41 patients from Wuhan with COVID-19 were described.

00:39:47.000 The scientists and physicians who led the study were all from Chinese institutions.

00:39:50.000 They worked with us quickly to make information about the new epidemic outbreak and disease it caused fully and freely available to an international audience.

00:39:58.000 That's not what Trump was referring to, but okay, fine.

00:40:01.000 So let's assume that was just a blatant error.

00:40:03.000 Does that invalidate any of the other four pages of problems that are cited with the WHO?

00:40:10.000 So go for it, guys.

00:40:10.000 Of course not.

00:40:11.000 I mean, really go for it.

00:40:12.000 Now, that would be, you know, Trump going after China is in fact a smart play. 1.00

00:40:18.000 It is also the morally correct play.

00:40:21.000 I'll tell you what is not particularly a smart play is the continued focus on hydroxychloroquine.

00:40:25.000 President Trump continues to jump on the hydroxychloroquine thing.

00:40:29.000 I'm not sure exactly why.

00:40:31.000 Doctors are going to recommend what doctors are going to recommend.

00:40:35.000 In his own Come on!

00:40:36.000 to his doctor.

00:40:36.000 His doctor said, if you take hydroxychloroquine with zinc and you take it with azithromycin, then there may be some good results.

00:40:41.000 And Trump said that he started taking it after there was possible exposure at the White House.

00:40:45.000 Then somebody said to him, you know, there was a study that suggested that hydroxychloroquine is not particularly effective.

00:40:50.000 So Trump being Trump, he immediately said that the hydroxychloroquine study was a Trump enemy statement, which it is not.

00:40:56.000 It is just a study.

00:40:57.000 Come on.

00:40:58.000 How is this useful?

00:40:59.000 I've worked with doctors.

00:41:01.000 And if you look at the one survey, the only bad survey, They were giving it to people that were in very bad shape.

00:41:07.000 They were very old, almost dead.

00:41:10.000 It was a Trump enemy statement.

00:41:13.000 Now, if you look at some of the reports that came out from Italy, that came out from France, that came out from other — a lot of our frontline workers take it because it possibly — and I think it does, but, you know, people are going to have to make up their own mind.

00:41:27.000 Plus, it doesn't hurt people.

00:41:30.000 Okay, so when he says that this thing is a Trump enemy statement, that is not useful.

00:41:35.000 I'll tell you what is amazing, though, is how the media and the Democrats are fully willing to say anything, including things that are inaccurate, in order to rebut President Trump.

00:41:44.000 So Joe Biden, for example, he says no doctor has said to use hydroxychloroquine.

00:41:47.000 No doctor has said to use it?

00:41:49.000 Truly?

00:41:49.000 None?

00:41:50.000 Because there are some... I am aware of thousands of people who are taking hydroxychloroquine in combination with azithromycin and zinc.

00:41:58.000 Like, really, that is a reality.

00:42:00.000 There are lots of doses that have been prescribed across the country for a variety of reasons by many doctors.

00:42:05.000 Joe Biden, medical Joe Biden, here we are.

00:42:07.000 This is absolutely irresponsible.

00:42:11.000 There's no serious medical personnel out there saying to use that drug.

00:42:16.000 It's counterproductive.

00:42:17.000 It's not going to help.

00:42:21.000 OK, again, the willingness of anybody to say anything because they oppose Trump is truly incredible.

00:42:26.000 Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi and Trump are in a teenage school fight.

00:42:29.000 So Nancy Pelosi suggested the other day that Trump was morbidly obese.

00:42:32.000 So we live in a world where it's OK to call Trump morbidly obese, but call Stacey Abrams a supermodel, which is exciting stuff.

00:42:38.000 Nancy Pelosi then came out after Trump. 1.00

00:42:40.000 So Trump ripped into her. 1.00

00:42:41.000 He said Pelosi has a lot of mental problems. 1.00

00:42:44.000 All right. 1.00

00:42:45.000 Fair, I guess.

00:42:47.000 Fair.

00:42:48.000 But why are we governed?

00:42:49.000 Seriously, this is what you chose, America.

00:42:51.000 Why are we governed by a bunch of people who appear to have stopped their brain development in sixth grade?

00:42:57.000 Serious question. 0.99

00:42:58.000 Here's President Trump pointing out that Pelosi has mental problems. 0.63

00:43:00.000 Then we'll get to Pelosi responding, and then they say, nanner, nanner, neener, neener. 0.94

00:43:04.000 And then they slap each other like characters from The Three Stooges and walk away.

00:43:08.000 Here's President Trump. 1.00

00:43:09.000 These people are sick. 1.00

00:43:11.000 Pelosi is a sick woman. 1.00

00:43:12.000 She's got a lot of problems, a lot of mental problems. 1.00

00:43:15.000 We're dealing with people that have to get their act together for the good of the country. 0.85

00:43:21.000 Okay, and then Nancy Pelosi responded, well, I guess he's offended.

00:43:24.000 I guess he's triggered.

00:43:25.000 I guess he's triggered, President Trump.

00:43:26.000 Here's Nancy Pelosi.

00:43:29.000 Very shiny Nancy Pelosi talking about this.

00:43:32.000 I didn't know that he would be so sensitive.

00:43:34.000 He's always talking about other people's voix de voix, their weight, their pounds.

00:43:41.000 I don't even want to spend any more time on his distraction, because as you see in the last couple of days, so much of the time has been spent on what he said.

00:43:52.000 Rather than that, I think you should recognize that his words weigh a ton.

00:43:57.000 His words weigh a ton.

00:43:59.000 And then, oh, a ton.

00:44:00.000 Because he's heavy.

00:44:00.000 You get it?

00:44:01.000 He's a fatty McFat, fat McFat, fat, fat face. 0.99

00:44:03.000 Okay, then Andrew Cuomo, whose great activities in New York have led to the deaths of presumably tens of thousands of elderly people. 0.99

00:44:10.000 Andrew Cuomo was like, Trump can't tweet his way through this picking up on Joe Biden.

00:44:13.000 You know what Joe Biden has termed Trump?

00:44:15.000 I will say, Trump is gifted at giving nicknames.

00:44:17.000 The man is gifted.

00:44:18.000 For a sixth grader, he's gifted at it.

00:44:20.000 Like, he's amazing at it.

00:44:21.000 His nicknames are catchy.

00:44:22.000 They are to the point, right?

00:44:23.000 Sleepy Joe still works.

00:44:26.000 I think he called him Nasty Nancy and he's got like all of these various nicknames and they're very good.

00:44:32.000 Joe Biden came up with President Tweety for Trump.

00:44:35.000 President Tweety, like the bird.

00:44:37.000 That doesn't, what?

00:44:39.000 Seriously?

00:44:39.000 Okay, so here's Andrew Cuomo doing his best.

00:44:42.000 He says to Trump, you're not tweeting your way through this.

00:44:45.000 Andrew Cuomo was asked yesterday about nursing home deaths and he was like, it's just because the media keep focusing on nursing home deaths that I'm getting all this flack.

00:44:53.000 Here's Andrew Cuomo, the world's worst governor, talking about how Trump can't tweet his way through this.

00:44:57.000 But he can just talk his way through this. 1.00

00:44:58.000 The media will continue to kiss his ass. 1.00

00:45:02.000 Today, government's going to be held to a different standard. 1.00

00:45:05.000 And it has to be fundamentally different.

00:45:07.000 It has to be smarter than it was.

00:45:11.000 It matters now what happens.

00:45:13.000 You have to know what you're doing now.

00:45:16.000 Not just look like you know what you're doing.

00:45:17.000 Not just sound like you know what you're doing.

00:45:20.000 You have to be smart.

00:45:23.000 You're not going to tweet your way through this.

00:45:27.000 You have to be smart.

00:45:29.000 You have to be competent at what you do.

00:45:32.000 There's something called government.

00:45:36.000 Okay, Andrew Cuomo lecturing us all on being smart and competent and the thing called government.

00:45:41.000 I'm sorry, no.

00:45:42.000 I'm gonna go no on that, Andrew Cuomo.

00:45:44.000 My goodness.

00:45:46.000 We're run by a bunch of children.

00:45:47.000 This is why, honestly, like allowing individuals to make their own decisions and allowing individuals to mitigate their own risk and allowing individuals to actually be informed of the information and then actually decide for their own lives what is most valuable.

00:45:47.000 It's incredible.

00:46:00.000 I trust them more than any of these people.

00:46:01.000 Any of these people.

00:46:02.000 Who of these people are you like, oh man, his word is his bond.

00:46:06.000 Her word is her bond.

00:46:06.000 These are mature adults taking care of us.

00:46:10.000 Absolute insanity.

00:46:11.000 Alright, time for some things that I hate.

00:46:14.000 Many, many things that I hate today.

00:46:20.000 So let's talk about the economic response to coronavirus.

00:46:23.000 So the federal government has been shoving money out the door.

00:46:25.000 I mean, they took a fire hose.

00:46:26.000 They put money in one end.

00:46:28.000 The fire hose is just spraying money out to Americans at an extraordinary rate, like far faster than any time in history.

00:46:35.000 But now Democrats are saying, we need to know where the money is going.

00:46:39.000 Democrats have never cared for one iota of time, where the money is going.

00:46:42.000 Now they're very concerned.

00:46:43.000 Why?

00:46:43.000 Because there are two tranches of money.

00:46:45.000 One went out to individual American citizens.

00:46:48.000 68% of Americans are currently being paid more than they were being paid to be employed, to be unemployed.

00:46:53.000 Okay, now in the short term, that's fine, right?

00:46:56.000 I mean, you're not employed right now, right?

00:46:58.000 So that's okay.

00:46:58.000 You don't have a job.

00:47:00.000 And that's because the government shut everything down.

00:47:02.000 But as we move back into a functional economy, it is not good to pay people more than they were making at their job to sit at home on their couch.

00:47:09.000 That is not sustainable.

00:47:10.000 That is not good.

00:47:11.000 It does lead to a longer and slower economic increase.

00:47:16.000 That is a reality.

00:47:17.000 Democrats are not worried about any of that.

00:47:19.000 They want this unemployment policy continued ad infinitum, really forever.

00:47:24.000 So when President Trump says, we don't want to extend unemployment benefits all the way out to January because people are getting back to work, Democrats are responding by saying, no, no, no, we need to do it forever, forever.

00:47:33.000 House Democrats have proposed extending the aid through January 2021.

00:47:36.000 Congressional Republicans say they're concerned some workers are making more money on unemployment insurance than if they were on a payroll, and they have less incentive to return to work or find a new job.

00:47:44.000 Lindsey Graham said, you can extend some assistance.

00:47:46.000 You don't want to pay people more unemployed than they'd make working.

00:47:48.000 You should never make more than your actual wages.

00:47:51.000 Graham said that Trump agrees that it is hurting the economic recovery.

00:47:55.000 And then, of course, the Washington Post goes to, many economists fear cutting off the benefit extension could hamper the economic recovery.

00:48:00.000 You're right.

00:48:01.000 Paying people not to work will hamper the economic recovery.

00:48:04.000 Again, I'm all in favor of filling in the gap that was created by government forcibly shutting down the entire economy and being put into a coma.

00:48:12.000 But now that we are coming out of the coma, now would be the time where you stop giving people the anesthetic.

00:48:16.000 At the lunch, Trump had a lunch with Senate Republicans.

00:48:19.000 He implored Senate Republicans to take their time on the next phase of coronavirus legislation to get it right, which makes sense, because we've just been rushing these bills out the door, and the bills kind of suck. 0.92

00:48:29.000 I mean, they're the best you can do when you're in a giant rush, but they kind of suck.

00:48:33.000 Meanwhile, Harry Reid, who was responsible, along with Nancy Pelosi, for holding up the first two tranches of coronavirus response, is now saying, why don't we have a plan to get 36 million people back to work?

00:48:43.000 We do have a plan, you just don't like that plan because your plan is to not have them go back to work.

00:48:46.000 Your plan is to pay them to stay unemployed forever.

00:48:49.000 Mr. President, why haven't you announced a plan to get 36 million unemployed Americans back to work?

00:48:55.000 You're overseeing historic economic despair.

00:48:58.000 What's the delay?

00:48:58.000 Where's the plan?

00:48:59.000 I think we've announced a plan.

00:49:01.000 We're opening up our country. 0.94

00:49:02.000 Just a rude person you are.

00:49:04.000 We're opening up our country.

00:49:06.000 We're opening it up very fast.

00:49:09.000 The plan is that each state is opening, and it's opening up very effectively.

00:49:13.000 And when you see the numbers, I think Even you will be impressed, which is pretty hard to impress you.

00:49:21.000 Good for Trump.

00:49:22.000 Honestly, good for Trump. 0.99

00:49:23.000 It is a ridiculous question. 0.97

00:49:24.000 That is not a question. 0.52

00:49:25.000 Why don't you have a plan for X?

00:49:27.000 That's not a question.

00:49:28.000 That's an accusation.

00:49:30.000 Okay, when Trump says, no, our plan for the restored economy is to reopen, that is obviously true.

00:49:35.000 Guess whose plan that is?

00:49:36.000 Everybody on Earth.

00:49:37.000 Everybody on Earth's plan, except apparently for members of the media, whose plan for recovery is shovel money out the door.

00:49:43.000 continuously and forever.

00:49:44.000 Meanwhile, it's funny because again, Democrats are of two minds about the shoveling money out the door.

00:49:49.000 On the one hand, they want to shovel money out the door sufficient that people never have to go back to work.

00:49:53.000 On the other hand, they want to not shovel money out the door to businesses so those businesses can continue to function.

00:49:58.000 So the Heroes Act that Democrats have been proposing basically puts vast restrictions on businesses that take business loans.

00:50:07.000 The Wall Street Journal editorial board talks about the first round of the bill which allowed the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department to give forgivable loans to small businesses.

00:50:20.000 Senate Democrats on Tuesday lashed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for not doing enough to help businesses and workers, while warning them not to bail out companies.

00:50:28.000 If you want a prescription for a slow economic recovery, that would be it.

00:50:32.000 Congress has appropriated $500 billion to backstop Federal Reserve lending facilities for mid-sized and large companies, as well as local governments, plus $670 billion for Paycheck Protection Program loans to small businesses.

00:50:42.000 These funds were needed to keep businesses liquid amid government-ordered lockdowns so workers have jobs to return to once the pandemic recedes.

00:50:49.000 One problem is Mnuchin has been too willing to bend to Democrats who want to use the business relief to attack the Trump administration.

00:50:55.000 Chief among the requirements Democrats are focusing in on is a requirement that businesses use 75% of loans for payroll in order to qualify for loan forgiveness.

00:51:03.000 Treasury says this mandate fulfills Congress's apparent intent that loans be used to retain workers, but it has deterred many small businesses and especially restaurants with high overhead costs from applying.

00:51:11.000 So Elizabeth Warren went after Mnuchin on this basis yesterday. 0.93

00:51:13.000 So here is Senator Elizabeth Warren, who again, would love to completely remake all businesses in America according to a model that she apparently likes, even though she's never run a successful business. 1.00

00:51:22.000 Here's Elizabeth Warren talking about, we have to force businesses to keep people employed. 1.00

00:51:27.000 So we're going to sign businesses a check so that they can keep people employed when they have no market to actually cater to.

00:51:33.000 Which of course is not how businesses work.

00:51:34.000 I pointed out this flaw when these bills were first passed.

00:51:38.000 That if you are giving a loan to a small business, but the mandate on small businesses, you have to keep 90% of your people employed.

00:51:45.000 What exactly?

00:51:46.000 Just pay the people to be on unemployment.

00:51:48.000 Seriously, because what you're actually doing is you are forcing the business to not pay its bills, right?

00:51:53.000 You're not, they can't pay the landlord.

00:51:55.000 They can't pay for the fixed costs.

00:51:56.000 You have to force them to pay employees who literally are, you're banning them from working. 0.90

00:52:00.000 So you're having the employers pay employees not to work.

00:52:05.000 Well, that's not sustainable because guess what's going to happen the very first moment that the businesses open their doors?

00:52:09.000 They have to fire all those employees instead of put people on unemployment if they cannot work right now and then businesses can rehire them as needed.

00:52:18.000 That creates fluidity in the market that allows you to actually decide what the wages should be as the market starts to come back.

00:52:22.000 Because again, the market when it comes back is not going to be what it was when it originally went down.

00:52:27.000 But according to the Democrats, they want every business that takes a loan to have to use the vast majority of the money it gets to pay employees who are not working.

00:52:36.000 Then what the hell is the unemployment insurance for, exactly?

00:52:39.000 Here's Elizabeth Warren going after Steve Mnuchin. 1.00

00:52:42.000 What I want to know is are you going to require companies that receive money from this half a trillion dollar slush fund to have to keep people on payroll?

00:52:52.000 It's a simple question.

00:52:53.000 Yes or no, are you going to require that?

00:52:56.000 First, let me say that our number one objective is keeping people employed.

00:53:02.000 I take it your answer to my question that whether or not you're going to require, as part of the terms of the loan, that people be kept on payroll is no?

00:53:15.000 Is that right, Secretary Mnuchin?

00:53:17.000 That was discussed with people on both sides of the aisle.

00:53:22.000 Okay, so he's saying, listen, what's in the bill is in the bill.

00:53:25.000 And she's saying, well, we need to force you to force businesses to keep people employed. 0.84

00:53:29.000 But again, if you're a business and you're thinking, okay, what's going to come next?

00:53:32.000 I have some fixed costs.

00:53:33.000 I can maybe survive another two months, but what I can't do is take a loan from the government that I then have to repay.

00:53:38.000 And now I'm in hot to the government, a bunch of money.

00:53:41.000 And I've also lost my ability to fire employees or furlough employees, because if you fire furlough employees, then the loans are not forgivable.

00:53:47.000 So what's the point of me taking out the loan?

00:53:49.000 I'd rather just lay off the employees, and then they can go get them unemployment, and then they can come back when the time is right.

00:53:55.000 But according to the Democrats, they don't want to give businesses loans to keep them alive unless those businesses use the loans to do stuff that Democrats want, which is not how business works.

00:54:04.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, Treasury says that this mandate, about 75% of loans being used for payroll, fulfills Congress's apparent intent loans be used to retain workers, but it has deterred many small businesses, especially restaurants, with high overhead costs from applying.

00:54:17.000 But Mnuchin has refused to relax the requirement, which our sources say is because he doesn't want to get hammered by Democrats for letting businesses prioritize paying landlords over workers.

00:54:25.000 But again, the goal of the business is to pay its bills and to make one more dollar than it expends.

00:54:31.000 The goal of businesses is not to create jobs.

00:54:33.000 This is a full failure to understand how economics works.

00:54:36.000 Businesses create jobs.

00:54:37.000 They are byproducts of catering to markets.

00:54:39.000 Businesses do not create jobs for fun.

00:54:42.000 And they do not do it out of the goodness of their heart.

00:54:44.000 And they do not pay workers out of the goodness of their heart.

00:54:46.000 That would be a welfare program or a charity program.

00:54:49.000 Treasury and the Fed keep fiddling with the rules for the Main Street lending facilities, including the stake that banks are required to retain in loans they issue, as well as leverage limits for borrowers.

00:54:58.000 Mnuchin said last month, I think it's pretty clear if Congress wanted me to lose all the money, that money would have been designated as subsidies and grants as opposed to credit support.

00:55:04.000 He clarified during Tuesday's hearing that Treasury is willing to take losses in certain scenarios, such as.

00:55:09.000 And Mr. Powell says the Fed expects to have the Main Street facility up and running by the first week of June, but businesses needed the cash weeks ago.

00:55:17.000 Even now, many will be reluctant to borrow because the Fed has restrictions on dividends and executive compensation, and those continue for a year after the loan is repaid.

00:55:24.000 So you repay the loan and the government's still going to control how you run your business.

00:55:27.000 By the way, all these bans on stock buybacks, if you like the stock market actually having some semblance of recovery, If a company feels that its stock is being undervalued, a stock buyback is actually good policy.

00:55:38.000 Everybody rips on stock buybacks because they don't understand that as a company just investing in itself and recognizing that the market is undervaluing its future prospects.

00:55:46.000 So again, this is... The economic recovery is dependent on markets.

00:55:50.000 Democrats are looking to undermine markets because Democrats don't like the markets.

00:55:54.000 And they are blaming the markets for a government-insured and government-created crisis in the first place.

00:55:58.000 Okay, other things that I hate today.

00:56:00.000 So Elon Musk is now being raked over the coals.

00:56:04.000 There's an incredible article at the New York Times by Nellie Bowles, who's just an awful reporter. 0.87

00:56:07.000 I mean, she's just truly terrible. 0.88

00:56:09.000 She wrote one of the worst profiles I've ever seen on my friend Jordan Peterson, in which she accused Jordan Peterson of basically wanting to force single women into marriage and all sorts of crap like this. 0.98

00:56:17.000 This is an awful, awful piece. 0.51

00:56:19.000 So Nellie Bowles is an awful journalist, and she has a piece today titled, Tesla Owners Try to Make Sense of Elon Musk's Red Pill Moment. 0.54

00:56:26.000 A liberal status symbol now has a founder who's moving to the right.

00:56:29.000 Oh no!

00:56:30.000 Wait until Ford owners find out that Henry Ford both liked the free market, but also was kind of a Nazi.

00:56:39.000 Wait until they find out that Henry Ford was publishing full-on anti-Semitic propaganda and was given an award by the Nazi government in 1938.

00:56:45.000 Wait until people find out that Volkswagen And BMW were complicit in the Nazi regime.

00:56:50.000 Like, wait until people find out that a lot of Japanese automobile companies were involved with the Japanese imperialist government during World War II.

00:56:58.000 You mean the people buy products, and they like the products, but they don't care all that much what the founders have to say about things?

00:57:04.000 Unbelievable!

00:57:05.000 No, it's not true.

00:57:05.000 It's not true.

00:57:06.000 Now, everybody who owns a Tesla is reconsidering owning a Tesla because of Elon Musk.

00:57:12.000 Now, I just have a question.

00:57:14.000 Who?

00:57:15.000 Who are these people?

00:57:16.000 I know a bevy of people who own Teslas.

00:57:17.000 I don't know a single one.

00:57:18.000 By the way, many of them right-wing.

00:57:19.000 I don't know a single one of them who is reconsidering their Tesla purchase because Elon Musk has been tweeting, cancel, cancel, cancel culture on Twitter.

00:57:27.000 Or take the red pill on Twitter.

00:57:30.000 But according to Nellie Bowles, owning a Tesla, a luxurious electric car is a major liberal status symbol.

00:57:34.000 It signals nothing more than good taste, the perfect balance of wealth with care for fossil fuels.

00:57:38.000 But the man behind the brand, Really?

00:57:40.000 Because it seems like most of his fans were kind of libertarian-ish?

00:57:42.000 It may now prove to be a challenge for his fans.

00:57:44.000 Really?

00:57:45.000 Because it seems like most of his fans were kind of libertarian-ish?

00:57:48.000 And people who had a wild side?

00:57:50.000 Elon Musk, the bombastic head of Tesla and SpaceX, exhorted his 34 million Twitter followers on Sunday to take the red pill.

00:57:55.000 The comment was quickly embraced by his followers, including Ivanka Trump, President Trump's elder daughter, who announced she had taken the pill already.

00:58:01.000 The exchange referred to a scene from The Matrix, the 1999 science fiction action film.

00:58:06.000 But the meaning of red pill and the idea of taking it have since percolated into online forums and become a deeply political metaphor.

00:58:12.000 So Tesla owners are having to grapple with a car that carries a few new connotations.

00:58:16.000 Marcos Melitzus, author of The Resistance Handbook, 45 Ways to Fight Trump, says, Why are you quoting Marcos Melitzus?

00:58:21.000 Why are you quoting Marcos Malitzis?

00:58:30.000 The guy was like the founder of Daily Kos.

00:58:31.000 Why are you quoting Marcos Malitzis as though he is representative of Tesla owners everywhere?

00:58:38.000 The guy is a rabid leftist, Marcos Melitzus.

00:58:40.000 He has been for like his entire career.

00:58:43.000 That's like saying that you found out that Alex Jones owns a Prius and now he's really pissed to find out that the Prius is an environmentalist symbol.

00:58:51.000 And what are you talking about?

00:58:53.000 Nelly Bulls is just office.

00:58:54.000 In the Matrix, the movie's hero, Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, is given the option to take a pill that lets him see the truth.

00:58:59.000 The world he thinks is real turns out to be an entertaining lie.

00:59:02.000 His body is actually trapped in a farm where people are being used as human batteries.

00:59:05.000 Taking the blue pill would let him return to living in the ignorant but blissful lie, while taking the red pill would launch him into the arduous journey through a brutal but fulfilling reality.

00:59:13.000 The idea of taking the red pill later grew to mean waking up to society's grand lies.

00:59:17.000 It was embraced by the right, especially by members of its youngest cohort, who organized and spent their time in online forums like Reddit and 4chan.

00:59:24.000 The truth to be woken up to varied, but it ended up being usually about gender.

00:59:27.000 To be red pill meant that you discovered feminism was a scam that ruined the lives of boys and girls. 1.00

00:59:31.000 In this view, for a male to refuse the red pill was to be weak.

00:59:34.000 Red pill forums were often filled with deeply misogynistic and often racist diatribes.

00:59:38.000 Okay, so now we're going to play the game where because Elon Musk said take the red pill, he is actually an incel.

00:59:44.000 Elon Musk by saying take the red pill, what he doesn't mean is we need to reopen the economy in a responsible fashion and get back to work.

00:59:50.000 Instead, Elon Musk is hanging out on 4chan and being a Nazi according to Nellie Bowles.

00:59:54.000 What is her evidence for this?

00:59:55.000 That the term red pill is sometimes used by people on 4chan boards.

00:59:59.000 Unbelievable.

01:00:01.000 As these conversations seeped into the mainstream, pulled along by a host of other internet language from message boards to establishment Republican conversations on sites like Breitbart, the meaning broadened and got watered down.

01:00:10.000 To be redpilled can now mean broadly skeptical of experts, to be distrustful of the mainstream press, or to see hypocrisy in social liberalism.

01:00:16.000 Okay, why don't you just say that?

01:00:17.000 Why do you have to go through the etymology of redpill?

01:00:21.000 The reason you go through the etymology of redpill is because what you're attempting to do is, of course, link Elon Musk to the most radical aspects of these.

01:00:28.000 And so Nellie Bowles goes on for hundreds more words talking about the evils of Elon Musk.

01:00:34.000 And then she quotes Lily Wachowski, a Matrix co-creator, who told Mr. Musk and Ms. 0.94

01:00:38.000 Trump in colorful language on Twitter they could take a hike.

01:00:42.000 And then I like this.

01:00:42.000 Is red pill a Silicon Valley thing?

01:00:44.000 To some extent.

01:00:45.000 There's long been a strain of men's right activism in Silicon Valley.

01:00:47.000 I mean, this is a long, ridiculous piece about the history of red pilling because Musk used the term red pill.

01:00:55.000 And what is this really?

01:00:56.000 This is, we have to shame Elon Musk the same way that we shamed Mozilla Firefox into firing Brendan Eich, the same way that we are now going after Catherine Herridge.

01:01:03.000 Anybody who is in a perceived liberal occupation and who has betrayed, betrayed the particular set of elites, they must be cast out like a leper. 0.97

01:01:13.000 Elon Musk's sin, he didn't sin, like Nellie Bowles had nothing to say about this when Elon Musk was on Joe Rogan's Smoke and Dope.

01:01:18.000 Right, like that, he had nothing to say about that.

01:01:20.000 Which by the way, there was like a temporary drop in the stock price and then it spiked again.

01:01:24.000 But she has lots to say about the fact that Elon Musk may politically disagree with Nellie Bowles.

01:01:29.000 And whoa, whoa, we can't have that.

01:01:31.000 You mean a head of a major company disagreeing with Nellie Bowles?

01:01:34.000 That means you gotta sell your Tesla, gang.

01:01:36.000 You gotta sell it.

01:01:37.000 The same way that we had to boycott SoulCycle when it turned out that one of the owners of SoulCycle was a Trump fan.

01:01:42.000 Oh, man.

01:01:43.000 Now, again, this sort of censorious bullcrap From the same people who proclaim that they are for free speech and open debate.

01:01:49.000 It's truly astonishing.

01:01:51.000 And they do it to members of the media, too.

01:01:53.000 All the talk about Trump undermining the media.

01:01:55.000 Today, there are multiple articles out about the evils of Catherine Herridge.

01:01:58.000 What is Catherine Herridge's great sin? 1.00

01:02:00.000 Catherine Herridge's great sin is she once worked at Fox News and she was reported on the Michael Flynn story. 1.00

01:02:05.000 And so, we have seen people in the media smearing Catherine Herridge.

01:02:10.000 According to Jonathan Tobin over at the New York Post, and this is exactly correct, journalists are pack animals.

01:02:14.000 That's especially true in Washington.

01:02:16.000 That's what makes CBS's Catherine Herridge so exceptional.

01:02:18.000 In an era when too many network journalists slant their reporting to serve establishment opinion, Herridge sticks to the facts.

01:02:23.000 Her sterling quality and integrity have also put a target on her back.

01:02:26.000 When it came to the collusion hoax, she dared to let the truth guide her, likewise with her reporting into the government misconduct in the prosecution of President Trump's first National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn.

01:02:35.000 Most of her colleagues reveled in collusion falsehoods and ignored FBI wrongdoing.

01:02:39.000 She did the opposite.

01:02:40.000 But there is a price to refusing to conform.

01:02:43.000 A Biden flak named Andrew Bates called her a partisan right-wing hack. 0.99

01:02:46.000 A scurrilous story appeared in the Daily Beast in which various CBS journalists, speaking anonymously, voiced their disgust with her for not sharing their partisan prejudices.

01:02:54.000 This has also happened to journalists like Sheryl Atkinson, who was basically cast out of mainstream media for the great crime of reporting things that the media didn't like them reporting.

01:03:03.000 Meanwhile, people like Ronan Farrow, who, as it turns out, is a journalist who is driven more by ideology than by good journalistic practices, he is hailed as a hero because, of course, he reinforces all the things the media want to be true in the world.

01:03:15.000 So Katherine Harrods, very bad for putting out actual news. 1.00

01:03:18.000 Ronan Farrow, very good because he targeted Matt Lauer and because he targeted Harvey Weinstein.

01:03:22.000 So the target mattered more than the journalistic practices.

01:03:24.000 By the way, worth noting today, Matt Lauer being raked over the coals for writing a piece for Mediaite, pointing out all the flaws of reporting in Ronan Farrow.

01:03:32.000 Okay, now, you don't have to like Matt Lauer.

01:03:34.000 You can think Matt Lauer's a scuzzbag. 0.84

01:03:35.000 Sounds to me like Matt Lauer's a scuzzbag.

01:03:37.000 But he points out that Ronan Farrow, his reporting on Matt Lauer, quote, consistently failed to confirm stories told to him by his main sources, failed to provide evidence of important communications he alleged took place between accusers and me.

01:03:50.000 He says, in most cases, Ronan doesn't even claim to have personally seen evidence of those communications, used misleading language to manipulate readers into believing things that could easily be false or at least unprovable.

01:03:59.000 In some cases, he undeniably withheld information from the reader that would call the credibility of sources into question.

01:04:04.000 And according to Matt Lauer, he routinely presented stories in a way that would suit his activist goals as opposed to any kind of journalistic standard, specifically.

01:04:11.000 Specifically, Lauer is upset with the way that Ronan Farrow covered the rape allegation by Brooke Nevels.

01:04:17.000 Okay, and he points out like a thousand flaws with Ronan Farrow's reporting that are legitimate flaws. 0.92

01:04:22.000 You don't have to like, you can think Matt Lauer is a scuzzbag who sexually harassed the help.

01:04:26.000 A rape allegation is a pretty damn serious thing, and if you're gonna make that allegation, then you'd best do your research beforehand. 0.62

01:04:33.000 According to, according to Matt Lauer, that never happened.

01:04:37.000 According, he quotes Ronan Farrow in his book Catch and Kill, says Neville's told a million people about Lauer.

01:04:42.000 She told her inner circle of friends.

01:04:43.000 She told colleagues and superiors at NBC.

01:04:45.000 She was never inconsistent.

01:04:46.000 She made the seriousness of what happened clear.

01:04:49.000 Lauer says, does Ronan offer any proof of this claim?

01:04:51.000 Does he say he confirmed the story with any of the friends or colleagues she claims to have told about the seriousness of what she alleges happened?

01:04:57.000 Does he include a single comment or quote from a corroborating source for these claims?

01:05:00.000 He does not.

01:05:01.000 Did he try to track down the superior at NBC that she talked to?

01:05:04.000 Did he include a quote or comment from that superior?

01:05:07.000 Did he find out if the superior had been told about the seriousness of what Brooke claims?

01:05:11.000 He did not.

01:05:11.000 How do I know, says Matt Lauer?

01:05:13.000 Because I did.

01:05:14.000 It took me 15 minutes to find out who the boss was that Nevels had supposedly reported to.

01:05:19.000 He says, I contacted Sharon Scott.

01:05:21.000 Sharon, concerned she might not have been aware of a serious situation involving a member of her staff, contacted Brooke's direct superior and they spoke at length.

01:05:27.000 That new boss told Sharon Scott that one night, Brooke simply stated talking, started talking about having an affair with me. 1.00

01:05:32.000 She said, most importantly, Brooke never said a single word about this being anything but a consensual affair.

01:05:36.000 She said, Brooke in no way conveyed the seriousness of what she now claims.

01:05:40.000 The superior says Ronan Farrow never reached out to her to confirm the story that referenced her in the book.

01:05:44.000 Like Matt Lauer or hate Matt Lauer?

01:05:46.000 Believe Matt Lauer or don't believe Matt Lauer?

01:05:47.000 The reality is that because Ronan Farrow targeted the right people and Matt Lauer is a bad guy, Ronan Farrow was able to get away with bad journalistic practices.

01:05:55.000 By the way, Ronan Farrow's response to Matt Lauer was incredibly dismissive.

01:05:59.000 He didn't bother to actually respond to the immediate allegations made by Matt Lauer.

01:06:03.000 He basically just said Matt Lauer is a meanie.

01:06:05.000 That was his essential response.

01:06:09.000 So, you know, that again, here's his only tweet.

01:06:12.000 All I'll say on this is that Matt Lauer is just wrong.

01:06:14.000 Catch and Kill was thoroughly reported in fact checks, including with Matt Lauer himself.

01:06:18.000 OK, how about some responses to specific allegations made by Matt Lauer?

01:06:22.000 He makes some pretty specific allegations there.

01:06:23.000 How about bringing forth your sources?

01:06:25.000 Those are pretty specific allegations.

01:06:27.000 But, of course, people celebrated Ronan Farrow owning Matt Lauer, because he didn't even respond to the allegations.

01:06:32.000 Again, this is not to say that Matt Lauer is innocent of the charges made against him.

01:06:36.000 It is to say, it is not a response to say, I don't like Matt Lauer, he's mean, and I stand by my reporting.

01:06:40.000 If someone makes a specific allegation that you didn't call somebody, you need to bring forward the person you talked to.

01:06:44.000 That would be the normal journalistic practice.

01:06:47.000 But, this is the way it works in the media.

01:06:48.000 You confirm people's belief systems, and you get away with it.

01:06:51.000 You cross them, and you become Katherine Harridge or Sheryl Atkinson.

01:06:54.000 Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.

01:06:58.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.

01:06:59.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:06:59.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

01:07:04.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.

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01:07:08.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

01:07:10.000 Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

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01:07:14.000 Technical producer Austin Stevens.

01:07:16.000 Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.

01:07:18.000 Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.

01:07:20.000 Edited by Adam Siovitz.

01:07:22.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.

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01:07:30.000 You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.

01:07:33.000 I think there are enough of those already out there.

01:07:35.000 We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.

01:07:40.000 So my main focuses are life, family, faith.

01:07:45.000 Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

The Ben Shapiro Show - May 20, 2020

WHO’s On First | Ep. 1015

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