The Ben Shapiro Show - Why Did The US Get Slammed? | Ep. 1055

00:00:00.000 Civil rights hero John Lewis passes away.

00:00:02.000 The media confidently explain that the United States has failed at fighting coronavirus.

00:00:06.000 It's not quite that simple.

00:00:07.000 And the media continue to ignore Chinese genocide.

00:00:09.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

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

00:00:17.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

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00:00:24.000 Slash Ben.

00:00:24.000 We're going to get to all the news in just one second, and much news there is.

00:00:28.000 But first, I told you back in January you might want to think about diversifying into precious metals.

00:00:32.000 Was I right?

00:00:32.000 Hmm?

00:00:33.000 Was I?

00:00:34.000 I was.

00:00:34.000 Because that was back when gold was below $1,500.

00:00:37.000 Today, gold is up over $1,800.

00:00:38.000 Why?

00:00:39.000 Well, gold and silver thrive in uncertain times.

00:00:41.000 And this has been a little bit uncertain, right?

00:00:43.000 between coronavirus and the upcoming election and all of the chaos in our streets, seems like a lot more uncertainty than usual.

00:00:49.000 This would be a great time still to diversify into precious metals.

00:00:53.000 Listen, I have some gold in my portfolio.

00:00:54.000 I think you should too.

00:00:55.000 I trust Birch Gold.

00:00:56.000 They have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, countless five-star reviews.

00:00:59.000 You can talk to them, have them help you safeguard your investments.

00:01:02.000 They are knowledgeable and they wanna help you preserve your savings.

00:01:04.000 You should ask all your questions.

00:01:05.000 You should feel fully informed before you invest.

00:01:06.000 And then when you're ready to diversify into precious metals, go ahead and talk to my friends over at birchgold.com.

00:01:11.000 If you haven't reached out to Birchgold to diversify part of your IRA or 401k into a precious metals IRA or just purchase physical gold or silver from them, talk with them today.

00:01:19.000 Text Ben to 474747.

00:01:22.000 Get a free information kit on protecting your savings with gold.

00:01:25.000 Again, text Ben to 474747.

00:01:27.000 When you open an IRA in precious metals before July 31st, you get a signed copy of my last book, The Right Side of History, for free.

00:01:32.000 Again, text Ben to 474747 right now.

00:01:36.000 Okay, so the big news over the weekend is that tragically, Congressman John Lewis passed away at the age of 80.

00:01:42.000 Now, you don't have to agree with all of John Lewis's priorities as a legislator to recognize that he was indeed an American hero, that his role during the Civil Rights Movement, his last living man who spoke at the Martin Luther King March on Washington, his role in the Civil Rights Movement as an activist fighting for racial equality and for the rights of black Americans is unquestioned and good, obviously.

00:02:03.000 The late Congressman's family announced his death with inconsolable grief and enduring sadness late Friday evening, according to a statement from NBC News.

00:02:10.000 According to the statement, he was honored and respected as the conscience of the U.S.

00:02:12.000 Congress and an icon of American history, but we knew him as a loving father and brother who's a stalwart champion in the ongoing struggle to demand respect for the dignity and worth of every human being.

00:02:21.000 He dedicated his entire life to nonviolent activism and was an outspoken advocate in the struggle for equal justice in America.

00:02:27.000 The son of sharecroppers, Lewis was drawn to the civil rights movement as a teenager, participated in lunch counter sit-ins in the early 1960s.

00:02:33.000 By the way, those lunch counter sit-ins were incredibly successful because essentially they helped shame corporations into opening up their lunch counters through actually non-governmental means.

00:02:43.000 He later became the youngest member of the Big Six, the colloquial name for the group of civil rights leader, including MLK, who organized the March on Washington.

00:02:50.000 He received all sorts of bipartisan tribute.

00:02:52.000 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Lewis' civil rights work, talked about the humbling experience of joining hands with John and members of Congress in singing We Shall Overcome at a 2008 ceremony honoring his friend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

00:03:04.000 President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, put out a statement via Trump's Twitter account.

00:03:09.000 Obviously, he and Lewis were not on speaking terms.

00:03:12.000 I'm certainly not a Trump fan.

00:03:13.000 I believe he boycotted the inauguration.

00:03:15.000 But Trump put out a statement saying, saddened to hear the news of civil rights hero John Lewis passing, Melania and I send our prayers to him and his family.

00:03:21.000 Vice President Pence considered Lewis a colleague and a friend, said he was unfailingly kind and that his quote, selflessness and conviction rendered our nation into a more perfect union.

00:03:28.000 His example will inspire generations of Americans.

00:03:31.000 And President Obama said that he quote, loved this country so much he risked his life and his blood so it might live up to its promise.

00:03:37.000 And through the decades, he not only gave all of himself to the cause of freedom of justice, but inspired generations that followed to try to live up to He's part of the shared history that we all have as Americans, and the country is lesser for the loss of John Lewis.

00:03:49.000 That does bring us to a Fox News poll.

00:03:50.000 There's a Fox News poll out today, and this is not about President Trump.

00:03:54.000 This is about our shared values.

00:03:55.000 I have a book coming out tomorrow called How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.

00:03:59.000 Right now it's ranked in the top three over at Amazon.

00:04:02.000 I think the reason for that is because there are a lot of questions about whether we can hold together as a country.

00:04:06.000 In order for us to hold together as a country, we have to share some common values.

00:04:09.000 Those values are the values of the Declaration of Independence.

00:04:11.000 That all men are created equal, regardless of race.

00:04:14.000 We all have equal rights before the law.

00:04:16.000 That we have rights that pre-exist government.

00:04:18.000 That government was created in order to protect all of those rights.

00:04:21.000 What you see from the Civil Rights Movement heroes is that these are folks who are invoking the promises of the Declaration of Independence.

00:04:27.000 Who are invoking the promissory note, is the language of Martin Luther King Jr.

00:04:30.000 Invoking the promissory note is the language of Frederick Douglass.

00:04:34.000 Suggesting that those values were not only useful but eternal and universal.

00:04:38.000 And that the failure of the United States was to live up to its own values.

00:04:41.000 And the story of American history is the progress toward the fulfillment of the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

00:04:48.000 Indeed, what makes the Founders heroes rather than villains is the fact that they helped the world progress away from values that stood against those universal enlightenment values.

00:04:58.000 Those values are good.

00:05:04.000 The failure of our education system, the failure of our media, the failure of our elites to re-inculcate this message means that the country is on the verge of falling apart.

00:05:11.000 And that's what you are seeing in the streets today.

00:05:13.000 What you are seeing is a whole group of young Americans, minority Americans, who have been taught That the American dream is actually a lie.

00:05:23.000 The 1619 Project, which is a pseudo-history dedicated to the proposition that America is inherently evil.

00:05:29.000 That pseudo-history has become the mainstream history in so many of our institutions.

00:05:33.000 And you can see the gaps in terms of age and race on these questions.

00:05:36.000 I mean, listen, you can understand why if you're a black American, you looked at American history, which is replete with Jim Crow and slavery, you would look at America's founders skeptically.

00:05:45.000 But that's missing the story.

00:05:47.000 The story is that the Founding Fathers moved America away from a system of slavery and toward a system of freedom.

00:05:56.000 And it was indeed the civil rights leaders who saw in the promises of the Declaration the lever by which they could move the country forward away from the brutality of bigotry and toward tolerance.

00:06:05.000 The story of America is the story of 1776.

00:06:07.000 It is not the story of 1619.

00:06:09.000 But that's not the story that's been promulgated to America's young people.

00:06:12.000 And it's not the story that's been promulgated to Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, particularly by these poll numbers.

00:06:19.000 And that's a problem.

00:06:19.000 That's not a problem with Black Americans or Hispanic Americans or young people.

00:06:22.000 It's a problem with our system that has failed to teach people the truth about American history and about American values.

00:06:28.000 Because conservatives abandoned the institutional fight and instead went toward the political.

00:06:33.000 Because too many Americans who have a traditionally unionist view, as I call it in my book, have a traditionally unionist view, meaning we want to hold together over our history and our philosophy and our culture.

00:06:43.000 They abandoned the halls of education.

00:06:46.000 They abandoned the halls of media, the halls of Hollywood.

00:06:48.000 And instead, they focused in on winning political victories as sort of a last gasp attempt to stop the march of the cultural left.

00:06:55.000 And that's been a failure.

00:06:56.000 You can look at these numbers.

00:06:58.000 So, here is the question, according to a Fox News poll that is out today.

00:07:01.000 In general, do you believe the founders of our country are better described as villains or heroes?

00:07:06.000 Total, 15% of Americans believe that the founders were villains.

00:07:11.000 63% believe that the founders were heroes.

00:07:13.000 15% said it depends.

00:07:15.000 7% said they don't know.

00:07:17.000 That means fully, almost 4 in 10 Americans don't know or disagree that the founders were heroes.

00:07:23.000 The founders were heroes.

00:07:24.000 Were they flawed?

00:07:26.000 Absolutely.

00:07:27.000 Did they commit acts of great evil that were commonplace at the time, by the way?

00:07:31.000 Yes.

00:07:31.000 Absolutely.

00:07:32.000 Does that mean that the evil is minimized?

00:07:33.000 No.

00:07:34.000 What does it mean?

00:07:35.000 It means that when we look at the contributions of the founders, we are not looking at them as slaveholders.

00:07:39.000 We're looking at the values they espoused that led to the rise of the greatest, most free, most tolerant, most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

00:07:47.000 The story of the Founding Fathers is not truly the story of slavery or evil.

00:07:53.000 The story of the Founding Fathers is the Declaration of Independence.

00:07:56.000 Slavery and evil are part of that because that's a universal human sin.

00:07:59.000 But to look at America and see just the bad, which is the purpose of so many of the disintegrationists in our society, is to misread the history.

00:08:06.000 Yes, we should obviously look at the sins, the evils of American history, as a corrective to a completely whitewashed version of American history.

00:08:14.000 But the evil does not overcome the good.

00:08:16.000 The story of humanity, the world over, is human sin and human flaw and human evil.

00:08:22.000 The story of the American Revolution is the story of putting in place a system that would gradually, over time, vitiate those sins.

00:08:31.000 That's the story that needs to be told.

00:08:33.000 So that poll number that shows 63% of Americans think the Founders were heroes, as opposed to 37% who either don't know or don't think that they were heroes, it's a pretty devastating poll.

00:08:40.000 It means that a very close majority actually believe in the foundations of the country.

00:08:45.000 And when you look at the demographic breakdown, it's even worse.

00:08:48.000 39% of black Americans believe that the Founders were villains.

00:08:52.000 Only 31% believe that the Founders were heroes.

00:08:56.000 16% said it depends.

00:08:57.000 14% said they don't know.

00:08:59.000 If a plurality of black Americans believe that the Founders were villains, that's going to be a problem for the future of the country.

00:09:04.000 Because if the Founders were villains, then the values that they espoused are villainous values.

00:09:09.000 And this is the perspective of the Nikole Hannah-Joneses of the world.

00:09:12.000 This is the perspective of the Robin DiAngelo's of the world. 0.60

00:09:14.000 That America's system is in and of itself cruel and racist and vicious.

00:09:20.000 26% of Hispanic Americans believe the Founders were villains.

00:09:25.000 44% believe they were heroes.

00:09:28.000 21% say that it depends.

00:09:29.000 8% say they don't know.

00:09:32.000 So, Blacks and Hispanics, a plurality, at least, well actually, a pure majority, refuse to say that the Founders were heroes.

00:09:43.000 By the way, this holds true for young Americans as well.

00:09:46.000 This is not just a racial thing.

00:09:47.000 This is a failure of our educational system.

00:09:50.000 If you look at Americans who are under the age of 45, 50% say heroes, 23% say villains.

00:09:58.000 But if you look at under the age of 30, it gets worse.

00:10:01.000 Under the age of 30, only 31% of Americans under the age of 30 believe that the founders were villains.

00:10:07.000 Only 39% say the founders were heroes, which means over six in 10 young Americans under the age of 30, over six in 10 believe that the founders were not heroes.

00:10:19.000 Which is just devastating for the future of the country.

00:10:22.000 Again, if you're gonna have a country, any country, not just America, any country that holds together has to share a common set of values, they have to share a common history, they have to share a common culture.

00:10:31.000 Now the values, the history, and the culture of the United States are embedded respectively in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, in our cultural institutions, institutions like church, our education system, our media, values of entrepreneurialism, values of virtue, and in a common history.

00:10:48.000 And when we look at our history, again, we have to acknowledge all the sins, we have to acknowledge all the evils, but we have to recognize that American history is a glorious thing.

00:10:56.000 It is a glorious story of overcoming those sins of human nature.

00:11:00.000 Our inability to teach young people this, our inability to teach that the promise has been extended to minorities, and that the story of America is the flaws of human beings failing to understand the reality and the truth of the founding principle, and then the gradual realization of that principle, That failure has deep and abiding consequences, and you can see those consequences in the streets today, as violence continues, as the country overwhelmingly feels like it is falling apart.

00:11:28.000 That feels right.

00:11:29.000 It feels like a lot of people are going to blame Trump for the falling apart of the country.

00:11:32.000 That is not right.

00:11:32.000 These are long-term trends.

00:11:34.000 They've been, I'd say, catalyzed by President Trump's election because there was a feeling among members of the left that they had captured the Democratic Party and that they could gradually move the Democratic Party toward their goal, which was the dissolution of the system over time and they would never lose again.

00:11:48.000 And then when President Trump won, it was like a shock to the system.

00:11:51.000 They couldn't take it.

00:11:52.000 And so that has catalyzed so much of the opposition and so much of the rage that we are seeing right now.

00:11:56.000 So what does that mean?

00:11:57.000 It means that if Trump loses, then presumably a lot of the rage and opposition will be integrated back into the Democratic Party as opposed to being sort of outside the system more generally.

00:12:06.000 But it doesn't mean that the overall threat to the American system is gone.

00:12:08.000 It just means that it goes back underground into the halls of the Democratic Party where the battle really rages.

00:12:14.000 You saw this during the Obama administration.

00:12:16.000 When the sort of roots of the AOC squad versus the Nancy Pelosi quote-unquote traditionalist started to build, right?

00:12:24.000 That broke out into the open after Trump's election.

00:12:26.000 But you can see that it was building a lot earlier than that.

00:12:29.000 I mean, the Ferguson riots were happening during Barack Obama's presidency.

00:12:31.000 So obviously there was this outraged belief by a huge number of Americans that America was endemically wrong and bad and evil.

00:12:39.000 They may have used the Democratic Party as a vehicle for expressing those values in terms of politics, but they've been generally unsatisfied with that over time, which is why, again, there was so much, I think, resistance to Hillary Clinton as a nominee.

00:12:52.000 It's why Bernie Sanders was so successful, despite the fact that he's an octogenarian communist, or maybe because of the fact that he's an octogenarian communist.

00:12:58.000 Bottom line is this.

00:12:59.000 If we don't reinculcate our values, America is going to fail.

00:13:02.000 If we do not reinculcate the values of America's founding, America is going to fail.

00:13:06.000 And it's, there's no excuse for that.

00:13:09.000 We are the freest, most prosperous, most tolerant country in the history of the world.

00:13:12.000 The fact that that may not have been true historically, it is certainly true now. 1.00

00:13:17.000 The idea that America ought to be living on razor's edge at this point in time is patently absurd, except for the fact that we've undermined all of the values that we share.

00:13:27.000 Now, I don't mean for that to be a book pitch, but essentially it is.

00:13:29.000 You should go check out my book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.

00:13:32.000 It comes out tomorrow.

00:13:32.000 It is available over at amazon.com, as well as everywhere else that you buy books.

00:13:37.000 You can go check it out right now.

00:13:38.000 In just a second, we're gonna get to your COVID-19 updates.

00:13:41.000 First, we're home more than usual these days, but it's still hard to keep a close eye on things.

00:13:45.000 More deliveries means more boxes left unattended, more opportunities for packages to go missing.

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00:13:50.000 I have two separate friends who have had their mailboxes robbed in recent weeks.

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00:14:57.000 Okay, so on COVID-19.

00:14:59.000 COVID-19 continues to spread almost unchecked throughout the country at this point.

00:15:04.000 It is not restricted to red states.

00:15:05.000 It is happening pretty much everywhere.

00:15:07.000 You can look at the uptick in cases across the country.

00:15:10.000 There's an uptick in places like Ohio.

00:15:12.000 There's an uptick In places like Montana, there's an uptick in places like Maryland, which is a blue state with a red governor.

00:15:21.000 There's an uptick in Colorado now.

00:15:23.000 There's an uptick in Puerto Rico.

00:15:24.000 There's an uptick in Rhode Island.

00:15:25.000 You're seeing a rise in cases that is happening essentially across the country.

00:15:31.000 You're also seeing a sort of flattening out in the death rate, at least at this point.

00:15:35.000 What we have seen on a day-on-day level is that we're hovering around 1,000 deaths a day, somewhere from 800 to 1,000 deaths a day over the last few days.

00:15:41.000 None of which is good, right?

00:15:42.000 I mean, these are all bad numbers, obviously.

00:15:44.000 But what it does suggest is maybe we're starting to see a flattening out.

00:15:47.000 We're certainly starting to see a flattening out in terms of the hospitalization rate in places like Arizona and Texas.

00:15:54.000 Unclear whether that is happening in Florida, although there are early indicators that may be happening in Florida.

00:16:00.000 The real issue here, as I discussed last week, is there may not be any great answers here.

00:16:03.000 Now, I know the media want to promulgate this notion that there are basically two answers to this, and two answers only.

00:16:09.000 One is mandatory masking, and the second...

00:16:12.000 Is lockdowns.

00:16:13.000 The media loves lockdowns.

00:16:14.000 I mean, they really love lockdowns.

00:16:16.000 And the idea behind this is that if you want to prevent the spread of the disease, you have to keep people cooped up in their homes.

00:16:21.000 Now, the problem is that that's not an actual solution.

00:16:23.000 And we all know this.

00:16:24.000 This is not something that can last interminably.

00:16:26.000 The Europeans know this.

00:16:28.000 The Israelis know this.

00:16:29.000 Everyone all over the world is trying to figure out how they can reopen, and when they can reopen, and how much spread they can allow when they do reopen.

00:16:35.000 The lockdowns were never meant to crush the curve.

00:16:37.000 Now, this is a new phrase.

00:16:39.000 Remember, it was flatten the curve before.

00:16:41.000 You remember Flatten the Curve?

00:16:43.000 Flatten the Curve was all sorts of fun.

00:16:44.000 It was 15 days to stop the spread, and you had the giant spike, and then you had the lesser spike, and I'm just going to draw the quick chart for you right here.

00:16:52.000 You can see, this line here represented medical capacity, and then you saw the big, big wave over here, and this is the one you wanted to avoid.

00:16:58.000 Because everything that was in this shaded area was going to be excess death.

00:17:03.000 The medical system was not going to be able to integrate these folks and these people were going to die.

00:17:07.000 What we were looking for instead was a broader, longer curve.

00:17:11.000 The broader, longer curve, that meant there were still going to be a lot of cases, but it also meant that fewer people were going to die.

00:17:16.000 Now, what's been weird about this is now we are talking about crushing the curve.

00:17:20.000 So the idea about crushing the curve is that in order to prevent all transmission of the disease forever, we should just stay home.

00:17:26.000 Forever.

00:17:27.000 And now that has never been a solution.

00:17:29.000 That's never been a solution.

00:17:31.000 The full lockdown policy has not been a solution.

00:17:33.000 So the real question is, are we threatening the system?

00:17:36.000 And if we are threatening the system, then what you're going to have to have are sort of intermittent letting people out and putting people back in.

00:17:40.000 And this is what we're, again, this is nothing new.

00:17:43.000 This is what the quote unquote experts were saying at the very beginning.

00:17:45.000 They were saying they're going to be alternating policies of sort of quasi lockdown and half lockdown and freedom.

00:17:50.000 And we're going to have to vary it based on county.

00:17:52.000 This is what the experts were saying.

00:17:54.000 And then when that happens, the entire media suggests, oh my god, we're all gonna die.

00:17:58.000 Oh my god, we're doing it wrong.

00:17:59.000 And you know who's really doing it wrong?

00:18:00.000 Those red states.

00:18:02.000 And then you look at the numbers and what you see is that blue states are getting hit too.

00:18:05.000 Colorado's getting hit too.

00:18:06.000 California's getting smoked right now.

00:18:08.000 I live in L.A.

00:18:08.000 County.

00:18:09.000 County's looking at another lockdown right now.

00:18:09.000 L.A.

00:18:12.000 Not just another lockdown, they're looking at a full stay-at-home order.

00:18:15.000 Eric Garcetti says the coronavirus is spreading in the city to the point where a new stay-at-home order might have to be issued.

00:18:21.000 He said we're on the brink of that.

00:18:22.000 He said this on CNN.

00:18:23.000 He declined to be more specific.

00:18:24.000 He said we have to be surgical rather than a cleaver that would just shut everything down.

00:18:29.000 He said he agreed earlier restrictions had been relaxed too quickly.

00:18:32.000 He said mayors often have no control over what reopens up and what doesn't.

00:18:35.000 That's either at a state or a county level.

00:18:38.000 But he added it's not just about what's open and closed.

00:18:40.000 It's also about what we do individually.

00:18:42.000 Okay, let's be real about this.

00:18:43.000 never opened.

00:18:43.000 L.A.

00:18:44.000 Okay, I've been here.

00:18:46.000 L.A.

00:18:46.000 did not open.

00:18:47.000 There was a mild, mild reopening, and then it sort of clamped shut again.

00:18:52.000 So the notion that lockdowns are the answer to this thing in the long term or even the midterm is just not right.

00:18:58.000 Meanwhile, the sort of red-blue gap that supposedly existed, it doesn't really exist.

00:19:02.000 You're seeing an uptick in cases in places like Colorado.

00:19:05.000 You're not seeing it to the extent that you've seen it in places like Florida or Texas, but that's because it's not as hot in Colorado right now.

00:19:10.000 But you are seeing an uptick in Colorado.

00:19:12.000 That's because Colorado opened at the same time as Georgia.

00:19:15.000 One of the reasons that you've seen an uptick across the South is because the hotter it gets.

00:19:18.000 By the way, I expect that because there's been a heat wave in places like Washington, D.C., you'll see an uptick there, too.

00:19:23.000 Because of the heat, people are being driven inside to air-conditioned closed areas, and this means that you're seeing a spike in cases.

00:19:30.000 None of this should be surprising.

00:19:31.000 It's not supremely surprising.

00:19:33.000 But again, we moved from flatten the curve to avoid spiking over the healthcare capacity to crush the curve, which supposedly means that you're just supposed to stay home forever.

00:19:43.000 Well, that's not going to work.

00:19:46.000 This notion that this was ever going to be a consistent policy, that as we reopen gradually, there would be no setbacks along the way.

00:19:53.000 I don't know where this came from.

00:19:54.000 I seriously don't know where it came from.

00:19:56.000 So the NIH director yesterday, he said, well, the big problem here, this is Dr. Francis Collins, is that states jumped over the CDC recommendations.

00:20:03.000 They moved too fast here.

00:20:06.000 Or alternatively, whenever you let people out of home confinement, there's going to be a spread in cases.

00:20:10.000 I literally said this every day for months.

00:20:13.000 That the only purpose here was to allow us some time.

00:20:16.000 To buy us some time.

00:20:18.000 To allow the medical system to get better at this.

00:20:19.000 And good news!

00:20:20.000 The medical system did get better at this.

00:20:22.000 The rate of ICUs to hospitalizations is down.

00:20:25.000 The rate of deaths to ICUs is down.

00:20:27.000 Younger people are getting this.

00:20:28.000 Which, you don't want anybody getting this, but younger people getting it?

00:20:32.000 Is a lot better than older people getting it. 1.00

00:20:34.000 And even when people are getting it, we now have better treatments.

00:20:36.000 We know things we didn't know at the very beginning.

00:20:38.000 Simple things like flipping people onto their stomach can sometimes help prevent putting them on a ventilator.

00:20:42.000 But here was the NIH director saying, the big problem is that states jumped over CDC recommendations.

00:20:46.000 Listen, when you're a government actor, I understand the incentive structure.

00:20:49.000 The incentive structure is to always say people weren't cautious enough, and that's why all this happened.

00:20:53.000 Here's the reality.

00:20:55.000 What happened here was, by all indicators, fairly inevitable.

00:20:59.000 It has happened in every single state.

00:21:02.000 Every single one.

00:21:03.000 Without regard to politics.

00:21:05.000 The only states that have not seen a major uptick are states where there are no people.

00:21:08.000 Alaska has not seen an uptick because there were no people.

00:21:11.000 Maine has not seen a significant uptick because there are no people.

00:21:13.000 Wyoming has not seen a significant uptick because there are no people.

00:21:16.000 Where there are lots of people, there is lots of spread.

00:21:19.000 And when you reopen, there's going to be a little more spread.

00:21:21.000 And that was never the question.

00:21:22.000 Again, the question was not, are people going to get it?

00:21:24.000 The question was, is it going to swamp the healthcare system?

00:21:26.000 So far, we've seen no indicators that the healthcare system has been completely swamped.

00:21:30.000 In fact, as we've said, hospitalization rates are going down.

00:21:33.000 ICU rates are going down.

00:21:34.000 Death rates have been going down since their peak.

00:21:37.000 When we talk about how Texas and Florida, they're the new New York, no, they're not even close to the new New York.

00:21:42.000 New York was losing like 1,000 people a day.

00:21:44.000 Texas and Florida, as bad as they have been, are losing like 130, 140 people a day.

00:21:48.000 That's terrible.

00:21:49.000 That is not New York rates.

00:21:50.000 Anyway, here's the NIH director saying the big problem here is that people opened up too early, even though, by the way, many of these states opened up in early May, and we didn't see a spike in terms of case rate until like mid-June, like approximately two weeks after those mass protests in the streets.

00:22:03.000 You remember those?

00:22:04.000 Here's the NIH director.

00:22:07.000 We basically did a good job in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut with that terrible crisis that happened and took many lives.

00:22:15.000 And if you look to see what's happening now in those areas, they came down very close to zero.

00:22:21.000 But meanwhile, the rest of the country, perhaps imagining this was just a New York problem, kind of went about their business, didn't really pay that much attention to CDC's recommendations about the phases necessary to open up safely and jumped over some of those hoops.

00:22:37.000 And people started congregating and not wearing masks and feeling like it's over and maybe summer it'll all go away and now here we are.

00:22:44.000 Okay, I frankly cannot believe that America's public officials are talking up New York.

00:22:48.000 It is unbelievable to me.

00:22:49.000 It's like talking up Italy.

00:22:50.000 How in the world are you talking up the area of the country that got smoked?

00:22:54.000 New Jersey and New York and Connecticut got brutalized.

00:22:57.000 Approximately 37% of all deaths in the United States from COVID-19 happened in those three states alone.

00:23:02.000 They represent like 6% of the American population.

00:23:04.000 That is nuts.

00:23:05.000 To talk up those states, oh, look at what they did.

00:23:07.000 New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, they really handled their bleep.

00:23:10.000 Did they, though?

00:23:11.000 By the way, this is the exact same thing that Anthony Fauci said.

00:23:13.000 And then you ask me to trust the experts?

00:23:15.000 Listen, I'm happy to listen to the experts.

00:23:16.000 When they say blatant bull... When they say blatant bullcrap, I'm gonna have a tough time believing them. 0.91

00:23:22.000 Okay, again, the death rates per million, the states with the worst death rates per million are in order. 0.58

00:23:28.000 New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, followed by Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and District of Columbia.

00:23:34.000 All of those areas did exactly what the CDC and the NIH said they should, and they got smoked.

00:23:39.000 So, The idea that they've now conquered this thing.

00:23:43.000 No, what happened in New York and New Jersey, the reason they're not seeing an uptick right now is because everyone's dead.

00:23:47.000 OK, anyway, here's Anthony Fauci.

00:23:48.000 Again, I don't like what's going through his head that he is that he's praising New York's response to this.

00:23:52.000 I just don't get it.

00:23:55.000 We have a problem.

00:23:56.000 We need to admit it and own it.

00:23:57.000 But we've got to do the things that are very clear that we need to do to turn this around.

00:24:03.000 Remembering we can do it.

00:24:05.000 We know that when you do it properly, you bring down those cases.

00:24:09.000 We've done it.

00:24:10.000 We've done it in New York.

00:24:12.000 New York got hit worse than any place in the world.

00:24:15.000 And they did it correctly.

00:24:18.000 They did it correctly?

00:24:19.000 How did they do it correctly?

00:24:20.000 Everyone died!

00:24:22.000 What?

00:24:23.000 Okay, we're gonna get to more of this in a second.

00:24:23.000 What?

00:24:25.000 You wonder why we can't have unity?

00:24:26.000 Why we can't have nice things? 1.00

00:24:27.000 We can't have nice things because our experts are telling us stupid stuff like that. 1.00

00:24:30.000 I'm sorry, that's dumb. 1.00

00:24:31.000 That's just dumb. 0.98

00:24:32.000 Okay, I've been a Fauci defender. 0.99

00:24:34.000 I've been saying he's doing the best he can.

00:24:36.000 He's operating off the best info. 0.57

00:24:38.000 When you just spill blatant crap into the public like New York did it right, I don't know what to tell you.

00:24:42.000 Okay, that's just obviously not true. 0.91

00:24:44.000 By every available metric, that's not true.

00:24:46.000 Okay, we're going to get to more of this in just one second.

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00:26:03.000 Okay, so again, the media have come up with this narrative.

00:26:06.000 This narrative is there are two basic strategies that can be used with regard to coronavirus.

00:26:10.000 One is you lock everything down or we're going to yell at you.

00:26:12.000 And two is masking.

00:26:14.000 Again, I am put off by the fact that people who are promoting lockdowns right now are simultaneously saying, and again, that is Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute for Infectious and Allergic and Infectious Diseases, and the NIH director, both touting New York as an example of what to do.

00:26:33.000 I don't know how that's possible.

00:26:34.000 I really don't know how that's possible.

00:26:36.000 Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, he did not shut down the subways until the beginning of May.

00:26:45.000 He didn't clean them until the beginning of May.

00:26:48.000 Even overnight, he didn't clean them.

00:26:50.000 He was shipping elders with COVID back into nursing homes for months.

00:26:58.000 How?

00:26:59.000 How is that the example of what you are doing right?

00:27:02.000 Okay, so the other angle that is being used here is that masking is the be-all end-all.

00:27:06.000 Now, listen, I wear a mask.

00:27:08.000 In fact, I insist that everybody in my immediate vicinity at the office wear a mask.

00:27:12.000 I take this stuff very seriously.

00:27:14.000 The evidence on mask wearing is mixed.

00:27:17.000 Okay, let's just be frank about this.

00:27:18.000 Dr. Scott Atlas at Hoover Institute from Stanford University, he has said the evidence is mixed.

00:27:22.000 The CDC says the evidence is mixed.

00:27:24.000 The WHO says the evidence is mixed.

00:27:26.000 Now, if there's the chance that it's going to lower the rates of transmission, then out of an abundance of caution, I recommend masking.

00:27:34.000 Okay, so I've never been an opponent of masking.

00:27:36.000 I've never thought it was a grave infringement on my liberty to ask me to mask up when I go into a highly crowded area.

00:27:42.000 I've always thought, okay, seems like a cautious and well-taken step.

00:27:45.000 But the notion that masking is the be-all end-all, and this has simply become the be-all end-all because Trump refused to mask.

00:27:50.000 I mean, it really is that.

00:27:51.000 If Trump had not said anything, or if Trump had come out early and he had said, you know, it's a good idea masking, this would not be an issue.

00:27:57.000 But the media were looking for points of political polarization.

00:27:59.000 Now, here's the problem.

00:28:00.000 The data do not back the idea that tons of Americans are wildly, wildly anti-masking.

00:28:05.000 There are some Americans who are wildly anti-masking, but by and large, in the areas where there are the most cases, people are overwhelmingly masking.

00:28:12.000 I pointed this out on Twitter over the weekend.

00:28:13.000 People went nuts.

00:28:14.000 I pointed out that if you look at the areas of the country where there are highest levels of infection, those are also the areas where there are the highest levels of masking.

00:28:21.000 Now, people on the left immediately refused to read my follow-up tweets in the thread, which pointed out that I was not saying that masks don't stop the spread of disease.

00:28:29.000 I was pointing out merely that where people are seeing infections, they are masking. 0.99

00:28:35.000 So the idea that people are being overwhelmingly willy-nilly stupid and just going out where there are tons of infections, like in Miami, and not wearing masks is really dumb. 0.99

00:28:42.000 I was in Florida for a couple of weeks. 0.99

00:28:43.000 People were masked up, right?

00:28:45.000 As things were happening in Miami, everybody was wearing a mask.

00:28:48.000 In LA, everyone wears a mask.

00:28:51.000 The basic idea the media have put out there, though, is that this is just a failure of masking.

00:28:55.000 Now, there are a couple of flaws in this sort of thinking.

00:28:58.000 So here is a poll.

00:29:00.000 It was put out.

00:29:01.000 By the New York Times.

00:29:02.000 And it shows, by percentage, how often people from different places say they wear a mask when they leave the house.

00:29:08.000 And here's what it shows.

00:29:10.000 In the Philippines, 92% of people say that they always wear a mask when they leave the house.

00:29:14.000 In Mexico, which is just getting smoked right now, Mexico's numbers are awful. 0.97

00:29:14.000 Always. 0.97

00:29:18.000 One of the reasons that we're seeing a spike in border counties, and there is, there's a massive spike in border counties.

00:29:22.000 Even the New York Times has been forced to now pay attention to this.

00:29:25.000 Vulnerable border counties are now being overwhelmed with new cases.

00:29:29.000 The reason for this is because some people are crossing the border illegally and because if somebody crosses the border from highly hit Mexico into a border town, it spreads more easily.

00:29:39.000 In the Rio Grande Valley, more than a third of families, according to the New York Times, live in poverty.

00:29:42.000 Up to half the residents have no health insurance, including at least 100,000 undocumented people who often rely on under-resourced community clinics or emergency rooms for care.

00:29:51.000 Places like the southernmost wedge of Texas are seeing a punishing surge in infections.

00:29:55.000 Okay, so Mexico is actually a serious problem.

00:29:57.000 You've seen this in Arizona as well, that Texas and Arizona are getting hard hit, particularly in the border counties.

00:30:02.000 But Mexico, go back to the chart showing the masking rate. 0.86

00:30:05.000 Mexico, 85% of people in Mexico say they always wear a mask when they leave the house.

00:30:10.000 In Spain, which got devastated, 84% of people say they wear a mask when they leave the house.

00:30:14.000 So there is this basic idea out there that masking equals Really low rates of death.

00:30:22.000 And then people look at Hong Kong, which, by the way, is experiencing another surge.

00:30:25.000 Actually, the Hong Kong government just announced that they are going to mandate masks.

00:30:30.000 It's not just voluntary anymore.

00:30:31.000 They're going to mandate masks and they're going to go back into lockdown because Hong Kong has seen a surge in cases.

00:30:35.000 Now, the surge in cases in Hong Kong is like 100 cases as opposed to, you know, 70,000 in the United States.

00:30:39.000 But for Hong Kong, which never experienced a major hit, that's a pretty, like they said, basically, it's spreading out of control.

00:30:45.000 We can't contact trace it anymore is what they were saying over the weekend over in Hong Kong.

00:30:49.000 But you can see the differential.

00:30:50.000 OK, so Spain.

00:30:51.000 Their death per million rate.

00:30:53.000 The death per million rate in Spain.

00:30:56.000 Okay, so there's a pretty wild differential there.

00:30:57.000 which is significantly higher than that of the United States.

00:31:00.000 I believe we're in the mid 400s death per million rate.

00:31:03.000 84% of the population of Spain says they mask.

00:31:05.000 83% of the population of Hong Kong says they mask.

00:31:09.000 The Hong Kong death rate is two per 1 million, two, okay?

00:31:13.000 So there's a pretty wild differential there.

00:31:15.000 So if you're looking at independent variables, masking doesn't seem to be the most obvious independent variable.

00:31:21.000 Italy, right, where everybody got wiped out.

00:31:24.000 83% of the population says they mask.

00:31:26.000 Germany, where they really didn't get very hard hit.

00:31:30.000 63% of the population says that they mask.

00:31:33.000 The United States, by the way, 59% of Americans say they mask every time they go out of the house.

00:31:37.000 Now, this is all self-reported, so who knows if it's true.

00:31:39.000 Self-reporting social science data is usually the worst, but 59% of Americans say they always mask, as opposed to 14% who say they never mask.

00:31:48.000 And now let's look at some of the other countries on this list.

00:31:51.000 4% of people in Norway say they always mask.

00:31:53.000 0%!

00:31:54.000 Okay, effectively 0% in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden say they mask when they go out of the house.

00:32:01.000 9% in the Netherlands, 10% in Australia, 19% in the UK, 35% in Canada.

00:32:06.000 So I keep hearing, Canada did this right, Canada's doing it right.

00:32:08.000 Okay, but Canada's not asking.

00:32:11.000 And so, what's the deal?

00:32:13.000 France, 54% say they mask, as opposed to 59% in the United States.

00:32:17.000 And yet what we keep hearing is masking, masking, masking.

00:32:19.000 Again, this is mostly because President Trump has not been so active on the masking front.

00:32:25.000 Which again, I think out of an abundance of caution, you mask.

00:32:28.000 But the very weird notion that America is not masking, like there's not a lot of data to demonstrate this.

00:32:36.000 I'm looking at the map right now from the New York Times that shows how often do you wear a mask in public when you expect to be within six feet of another person.

00:32:43.000 In all of the hotspots, the numbers are in excess of 80% of people.

00:32:48.000 Well, certainly in excess of 75% of people say that they always wear a mask when they are with other people and nearly everyone else is frequently.

00:32:54.000 Very few people say rarely or never.

00:32:56.000 Okay, but the narrative of the media is that there are only two things that can shut this down.

00:32:59.000 Lockdown, which is never going to be a long-term solution, and masking, which most people in America are adopting.

00:33:03.000 And yet the thing is still spreading.

00:33:04.000 Why?

00:33:05.000 Well, there are a few reasons.

00:33:06.000 There are a few reasons.

00:33:07.000 One, community spread never stopped.

00:33:09.000 America is a very big country.

00:33:10.000 And because America is a very big, very populous country, it looks a lot more in urban areas, like Italy or New York, than it does like Vermont.

00:33:17.000 Okay, that's number one, or like Maine.

00:33:21.000 Number two, the strain that's hit the United States is the European strain, not the Asian strain.

00:33:25.000 So comparing what's happening in Vietnam or Hong Kong or Taiwan to what's happening in the United States is not actually accurate.

00:33:29.000 It's a different strain.

00:33:30.000 The Chinese virus went to Europe, there it mutated, it became about 10 times as transmissible, and that's what's been hitting the United States.

00:33:37.000 Now the good news is, it seems like it was a lot less deadly than the version that was hitting Asia.

00:33:41.000 The bad news is that if it's less deadly and more transmissible, you can still end up with a higher number of absolute deaths.

00:33:46.000 But the way the media are pitching this is that the United States is blowing this.

00:33:49.000 There's a long article in the Washington Post today about how the United States is blowing this.

00:33:52.000 And apparently they say we came out too early and we didn't wear masks.

00:33:55.000 Again, we are masking better than most European countries.

00:33:58.000 The European countries that are masking better than we are have a higher death rate in many cases.

00:34:02.000 And when it comes, I mean, these are just pure statistical facts.

00:34:05.000 We are testing more than any other country by a huge margin, an enormous margin.

00:34:10.000 So when we talk about the number of sheer cases being detected, President Trump would be wrong if he suggests that the tests themselves are basically the reason why we see skyrocketing cases.

00:34:21.000 We see skyrocketing cases because there are skyrocketing cases.

00:34:24.000 But he is right when he says that we are seeing numbers, like actual confirmed numbers, because we are doing more testing.

00:34:30.000 That is true, obviously.

00:34:32.000 Again, that doesn't mean that the spread is false.

00:34:34.000 It just means that we are seeing the spread more clearly than a lot of other countries.

00:34:38.000 We're doing more testing.

00:34:40.000 We opened up at the same time as a lot of European countries.

00:34:43.000 We are handling this pretty well in the hospitals and mask wearing is generally being adopted.

00:34:48.000 But the media's narrative is that we are uniquely defenseless.

00:34:50.000 We blew this in a way nobody else blew this.

00:34:53.000 Here was Chuck Todd yesterday suggesting the United States is uniquely defenseless against the virus.

00:34:57.000 Again, I'm looking at the death rates per million.

00:35:00.000 Okay, this is from Worldometers.

00:35:01.000 I'm looking at death rates per million and the death rates per million across the world.

00:35:06.000 The United States is not number one.

00:35:08.000 The United States currently ranks number 10 after Belgium, San Marino, Andorra, UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden, France, and Chile.

00:35:18.000 So the United States ranks number 10.

00:35:20.000 Brazil is close on our heels at number 12.

00:35:23.000 The Netherlands is at number 13.

00:35:26.000 Mexico is close on our heels at number 16.

00:35:29.000 The United States is not, in fact, uniquely defenseless against the spread.

00:35:32.000 The United States is struggling with it just like pretty much everyone else that had community spread without heavy testing and tracing at the very beginning, right?

00:35:40.000 I think we should actually distinguish between nations that never got hit hard, right?

00:35:43.000 They didn't have a key number of early cases and got on it early, and nations where it had already spread so widely that it was community spread before you could even do testing and tracing.

00:35:52.000 Anyway, here is Chuck Todd pushing this notion that America has handled this uniquely badly, when again, the evidence does not suggest that this is true.

00:35:58.000 How did this happen?

00:36:00.000 We are the richest country in human history, with an unmatched medical infrastructure and a literate, educated populace.

00:36:07.000 Yet today, we stand uniquely helpless among industrialized countries in the fight against COVID-19.

00:36:14.000 A world that once looked up to us to do the impossible, now averts its eyes over our failure to do the possible.

00:36:24.000 Okay, again, I'm just wondering what he thinks the possible looks like when we have lockdown virtually every part of the country for long periods of time, and most people are masking.

00:36:31.000 The national mask mandate from the Congress, I'd like to see Nancy Pelosi promote it, do it. 1.00

00:36:36.000 I mean, let's see if we can get away with this constitutionally.

00:36:41.000 Most people are adopting smart behaviors.

00:36:42.000 Just by the way, before lockdown, people locked down.

00:36:46.000 People are generally acting in self-interested fashion.

00:36:49.000 The lockdowns helped slow the spread, which is what they were supposed to do.

00:36:51.000 They were never the full-on answer.

00:36:54.000 But this is the narrative.

00:36:55.000 The narrative is that the United States has blown it in every way, except for the democratic areas, which have done incredibly well, like New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, which is just a joke.

00:37:02.000 That is not correct.

00:37:03.000 How this thing got political, as opposed to everybody is struggling with the right answers, in an unprecedented time?

00:37:07.000 I think it's pretty obvious that all we are seeing right now with COVID is just sort of the final iteration of a country's dissolution.

00:37:14.000 It seems like that is really what is happening here.

00:37:17.000 Hopefully, with the help of God, this is not, you know, the final period of the American epic.

00:37:21.000 I don't think it is.

00:37:22.000 But it certainly feels that way when we can't even get our bleep together on recognizing decent intent for most people when it comes to trying to handle a global pandemic, which, by the way, is again.

00:37:32.000 Rising in many areas that are not the United States.

00:37:34.000 Okay, in just a second, we're gonna get to President Trump.

00:37:36.000 He did an interview with Chris Wallace.

00:37:37.000 It was much ballyhooed.

00:37:38.000 We'll talk about it in just a second.

00:37:39.000 First, my new book, as I've mentioned, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.

00:37:43.000 It goes on sale tomorrow, Tuesday, July 21st, 6 p.m.

00:37:47.000 Eastern, 3 p.m.

00:37:48.000 Pacific.

00:37:48.000 We will be doing a virtual live signing event on the day of release.

00:37:51.000 With your purchase of a signed copy, you can write in a question which could be read and answered as I sign your book live on the air.

00:37:56.000 Could be lucky you.

00:37:57.000 You can pre-order your signed copy and write in your question at dailywire.com.

00:38:01.000 The book covers two fundamentally different visions of America that are now on the table.

00:38:04.000 One vision is unifying, the vision I've been talking about, the unionist vision, where we look at our shared philosophy, culture, and history, we agree on it, and we move forward together.

00:38:12.000 The other disintegrates our country in the name of fundamental change.

00:38:16.000 Narratives like Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility or the New York Times' 1619 Project.

00:38:19.000 These are classic examples of the disintegrationist.

00:38:22.000 Disintegrationists look at cancel culture as a way to club everyone in submission and to use sheer power politics to destroy the foundations upon which we stand.

00:38:30.000 How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.

00:38:31.000 It details how the disintegrationist worldview has gained so much cultural ground so quickly and offers a penetrating view of our culture and it tells us where to go from here and how we can fight back.

00:38:40.000 Again, that's dailywire.com slash Ben.

00:38:41.000 So order your signed copy today.

00:38:43.000 Join my live signing on Tuesday, July 21st.

00:38:45.000 Also, 2020 has been an unbelievably insane year.

00:38:48.000 Remember that time Trump was impeached?

00:38:50.000 That happened this year.

00:38:51.000 And the leftist media, they are not helping, obviously, when it comes to everything from COVID to racial politics.

00:38:56.000 When you can't get the real story, you have to go outside the narrative and get the facts.

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00:39:51.000 All righty, so all of this kind of chaos on COVID at 19 has led to people basically declaring themselves virtuous for saying that they're not going to go back to work.

00:40:08.000 There's a piece in the New York Times today called I Won't Return to the Classroom and You Shouldn't Ask Me To by Rebecca Martinson.

00:40:13.000 I looked up Ms. 1.00

00:40:13.000 Martinson. 1.00

00:40:14.000 She appears to be It's hard to judge people's appearances.

00:40:17.000 She appears to be in her 40s, probably.

00:40:19.000 She does not look like she's in her 60s or 70s.

00:40:21.000 Which means that she's at higher risk of COVID, but she's not at severe risk of death from COVID.

00:40:26.000 She says that she doesn't want to go back to work.

00:40:29.000 She's a public school teacher.

00:40:30.000 She says every day when I walk into work as a public school teacher, I am prepared to take a bullet to save a child.

00:40:34.000 In the age of school shootings, that's what the job requires.

00:40:36.000 But asking me to return to the classroom amid a pandemic and expose myself and my family to COVID-19 is like asking me to take that bullet home to my own family.

00:40:44.000 I won't do it, and you shouldn't want me to.

00:40:47.000 She became an educator after a career as a nurse. 0.52

00:40:48.000 I teach medical science and introduction to nursing to 11th and 12th graders at a regional skills center that serves students from 22 different high schools in 13 different school districts.

00:40:57.000 She says that her school district and school haven't ruled out asking us to return to in-person teaching in the fall.

00:41:02.000 Nothing I have heard reassures me I can safely teach in person.

00:41:04.000 So a couple of things.

00:41:05.000 One, we have essential workers, and I mean people who are like grocery stores, who've been working for months.

00:41:09.000 They never stopped working.

00:41:10.000 Are public school teachers less essential than the workers who are staffing the grocery stores?

00:41:14.000 I've been told that public education is the number one most essential business in America, which is why we should be spending oodles and oodles of cash on it.

00:41:21.000 So which is it?

00:41:22.000 Is it essential or is it non-essential?

00:41:23.000 We know the risk to kids is essentially minimal from COVID-19.

00:41:27.000 Why is it that we can't try the solution proposed by my friend Jon Podhore?

00:41:30.000 It's a commentary magazine.

00:41:31.000 Bring the kids back to school.

00:41:32.000 Have the teachers Skype in if you're so worried.

00:41:34.000 Or why not have younger teachers?

00:41:36.000 But this notion that you are essentially protected from disease when you go to school as a teacher.

00:41:44.000 Listen, life is filled with risks.

00:41:46.000 That does not mean that we shouldn't take measures to try and protect our teachers.

00:41:48.000 I know a lot of private schools looking to open.

00:41:50.000 They want to protect their teachers too.

00:41:52.000 And you know what they're doing?

00:41:53.000 They're taking measures to do exactly that.

00:41:55.000 I assume that they would do the same thing in the school district that this woman teaches at. 1.00

00:41:58.000 But it's hard to declare yourself an essential worker while saying you're less essential than the people who work at the grocery stores.

00:42:03.000 Who, by the way, have been asked to go into work.

00:42:05.000 And who are disproportionately young.

00:42:08.000 This is not about the kids.

00:42:10.000 Right, it's not.

00:42:11.000 It's just not about the kids.

00:42:11.000 And you know what's going to happen here.

00:42:12.000 There's going to be a vast increase in homeschooling as there has been over the last year or so.

00:42:17.000 She suggests distance learning.

00:42:18.000 Distance learning has been a giant fail for public schools.

00:42:20.000 I believe the statistic was in LAUSD, 40% of students never opened a computer when they got home.

00:42:25.000 The gaps that are going to emerge, the class gaps here, are going to be incredible.

00:42:29.000 People like me, I can afford to spend time at home.

00:42:33.000 My wife can spend time at home. 1.00

00:42:35.000 My kids' grandparents, my parents can spend time with my kids at home.

00:42:38.000 My daughter has thrived in this homeschooling period.

00:42:42.000 She went from being a kindergartner reading at first grade level to a kindergartner reading at third grade level during this period.

00:42:47.000 How many people is that true of who are already struggling with the finances?

00:42:50.000 You want to exacerbate class conflict?

00:42:52.000 You want to exacerbate income inequality?

00:42:54.000 Make sure that people can't go to school. 1.00

00:42:57.000 So, this narrative has some fairly significant consequences.

00:43:00.000 Also, it happens to be anti-scientific.

00:43:02.000 Europe has reopened its schools.

00:43:04.000 The schools have not been the main vector of spread, particularly for younger kids.

00:43:07.000 There's some evidence that junior high kids are spreading this thing, but that evidence is still Not as rich as you would like.

00:43:15.000 Certainly for young kids.

00:43:16.000 The idea that young kids are supposed to stay out of school is kind of crazy.

00:43:19.000 It's kind of crazy.

00:43:20.000 And meanwhile, President Trump did an interview on Fox News with Chris Wallace.

00:43:24.000 The media were all over it because Chris Wallace basically fact-checked Trump in real time.

00:43:27.000 There's only one problem.

00:43:28.000 Half the fact-checks Chris Wallace actually said were not quite correct.

00:43:31.000 Trump called him on them.

00:43:32.000 He called Trump on some of them.

00:43:33.000 I think it was particularly horrible showing by Trump, but it did show that Trump's fluency with the fact is not all that high.

00:43:40.000 It also shows some of the difficulties he's going to have with Joe Biden, mainly because he's trying to draw a two-pronged narrative against Joe Biden.

00:43:47.000 Prong number one is that Joe Biden is senile and old and doesn't have it together.

00:43:51.000 And then prong number two is that Joe Biden is a true threat to the country. 0.96

00:43:55.000 Now, the way that you could do this is you could say, Joe Biden is so senile and so crazy that his vice president is actually going to be president. 0.84

00:44:00.000 You kind of have to wait until he selects a VP.

00:44:02.000 If Joe Biden were to select a Kamala Harris, then he'd just attack Kamala Harris, right?

00:44:05.000 You see, Joe Biden is not the president.

00:44:06.000 Kamala Harris is the president.

00:44:08.000 That would be the line of attack, I think, that maybe Trump is waiting for here.

00:44:11.000 But in the meantime, you have this bizarre dual message where Joe Biden is simultaneously deeply unthreatening because he's not alive and simultaneously super-duper threatening because he's a socialist, secretly.

00:44:22.000 So here is President Trump to Chris Wallace talking about Biden doing an interview like this one.

00:44:28.000 Again, this is...

00:44:30.000 I don't know if this is going to be a particularly successful attack by the president here.

00:44:34.000 Let him come out of his basement, go around.

00:44:37.000 I'll make four or five speeches a day.

00:44:38.000 I'll be interviewed by you. 0.98

00:44:39.000 I'll be interviewed by the worst killers that hate my guts. 1.00

00:44:43.000 They hate my guts.

00:44:45.000 There's nothing they can ask me that I won't give them a proper answer to.

00:44:49.000 Some people will like it.

00:44:50.000 Some people won't like it.

00:44:51.000 I agree with that.

00:44:52.000 But look, let Biden sit through an interview like this.

00:44:56.000 He'll be on the ground crying for Mommy.

00:44:58.000 He'll say, Mommy, Mommy, please take me home.

00:45:00.000 Well, we've asked him for an interview, sir.

00:45:01.000 He can't do an interview. 0.99

00:45:02.000 He's incompetent. 0.95

00:45:04.000 Okay. 0.94

00:45:05.000 I mean, there's truth to this.

00:45:06.000 There is truth to this.

00:45:07.000 But simultaneously, that's actually not the biggest problem for Trump.

00:45:11.000 I mean, for Biden.

00:45:13.000 I mean, Biden being a not-alive person, as I've been saying for months, is actually one of his great assets.

00:45:18.000 The COVID has really hampered Trump's ability to campaign, just on a political level.

00:45:22.000 Put aside his reaction to COVID, Trump's ability to campaign has really been stifled here.

00:45:26.000 Trump's main pitch in 2016, one of them was, he's a high-energy dude.

00:45:30.000 Hillary Clinton was stumbling into vans, and Donald Trump, same age, was running around the country, taking jets to seven different places, doing these rallies, demonstrating high levels of energy.

00:45:38.000 He's boxed in, because he can't do rallies right now, and that's really hurting him in a fairly major way.

00:45:43.000 It doesn't help when the president starts talking about his own cognitive facility, or faculty.

00:45:48.000 He tells Chris Wallace he passed a cognitive test easily, and Chris Wallace is like, right, but that cognitive test is, can you identify an elephant?

00:45:55.000 It's not the hardest task.

00:45:56.000 No, but the last picture and it's an elephant.

00:45:59.000 No, no.

00:45:59.000 See, that's all misrepresentation.

00:46:01.000 Well, that's what it was on the web.

00:46:02.000 It's all misrepresentation.

00:46:04.000 Because, yes, the first few questions are easy, but I'll bet you couldn't even answer the last five questions.

00:46:09.000 I'll bet you couldn't.

00:46:09.000 They get very hard, the last five questions.

00:46:11.000 Well, one of them was count back from 100 by 7.

00:46:13.000 And let me tell you, You couldn't answer, you couldn't answer many of the questions.

00:46:20.000 I'd get you the test, I'd like to give it, but I guarantee you that Joe Biden could not answer those questions, okay?

00:46:26.000 And I answered all 35 questions correctly.

00:46:30.000 Okay, I'm sorry, that's not going anywhere.

00:46:31.000 I'm sorry, that's just not going anywhere.

00:46:33.000 This is not, it's a cognitive test, guys.

00:46:34.000 Cognitive tests are not the same thing as, like, the SAT.

00:46:37.000 This wasn't the LSAT he was taking here.

00:46:38.000 He wasn't taking the medical boards.

00:46:40.000 A cognitive test is basically does your brain function?

00:46:42.000 It is not, I mean, Chris Wallace is not wrong on this.

00:46:44.000 What Chris Wallace is wrong is there were certain times here where Wallace just repeated stuff that wasn't true.

00:46:48.000 So, for example, Wallace was confronting Trump on COVID mortality rates, and Wallace was suggesting the United States is one of the worst in the world at dealing with this, and Trump was like, no, we're not, and Trump is actually right here.

00:46:57.000 We have the seventh highest mortality rate in the world.

00:47:02.000 Our mortality rate is higher than Brazil, it's higher than Russia, and the European Union has us on a travel ban.

00:47:09.000 Yeah, I think what we'll do, well, we have them on a travel ban too, Chris.

00:47:12.000 I closed them off.

00:47:13.000 If you remember, I was the one that did the European Union very early.

00:47:17.000 But when you talk about mortality rates, I think it's the opposite.

00:47:20.000 I think we have one of the lowest Okay, and Trump is right about this.

00:47:23.000 Again, I read you the stats a little bit earlier.

00:47:24.000 So, Wallace actually had it wrong here.

00:47:26.000 So the media were treating it as though Trump got everything wrong here.

00:47:29.000 mortality rate.

00:47:30.000 I hope you show the scenario because it shows what fake news is all about.

00:47:33.000 Okay.

00:47:34.000 And Trump is right about this.

00:47:35.000 Again, I read you the stats a little bit earlier.

00:47:37.000 So Wallace actually had it wrong here.

00:47:39.000 So the media were treating it as though Trump got everything wrong here.

00:47:41.000 That is not correct.

00:47:42.000 Wallace got a bunch of things wrong here.

00:47:43.000 Another example of this.

00:47:44.000 Wallace and Trump went at it about whether Biden has threatened to defund the police.

00:47:50.000 And this really rests and it hinges on the question of what do you mean by defund the police?

00:47:53.000 So the left has played a game with defund the police.

00:47:55.000 On the one hand, you have some people who are like, defund the police means completely defund the police.

00:47:58.000 No more police.

00:47:59.000 It's true.

00:48:00.000 Biden said, I'm not defunding the police.

00:48:02.000 Then there's defund the police as in shift funding away from the cops and toward social workers.

00:48:07.000 And Biden basically embraced that. Okay, so just as a predicate, here's a flashback Joe Biden saying he supports redirecting money from police and then suggest that the police have in some cases become the enemy. Instead of sending two police officers with deadly weapons to that Wendy's drive through in Atlanta, we could have sent a wellness counselor and a tow truck and then raise hard Brooks would still be alive today.

00:48:29.000 day.

00:48:30.000 And his three daughters would still have their daddy.

00:48:33.000 Are you open to that kind of reform?

00:48:35.000 Yes.

00:48:36.000 I propose that kind of reform.

00:48:38.000 Surplus military equipment for law enforcement.

00:48:40.000 They don't need that.

00:48:41.000 The last thing you need is an up-armored Humvee coming into a neighborhood.

00:48:45.000 It's like the military invading.

00:48:47.000 They don't know anybody.

00:48:47.000 They become the enemy.

00:48:48.000 They're supposed to be protecting these people.

00:48:50.000 So, my generic point is that- Can we agree that we can redirect some of the funding?

00:48:56.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:48:58.000 Okay, we were told that that's exactly what defund the police means by the experts, right?

00:49:01.000 There were full articles in the Washington Post and New York Times suggesting that defund the police means shifting the funding, which Joe Biden embraced.

00:49:06.000 Here is Chris Wallace telling Trump, full scale, that Joe Biden does not want to defund the police.

00:49:11.000 Liberal Democrats have been running cities in this country for decades.

00:49:14.000 Plurally.

00:49:16.000 Why is it so bad right now?

00:49:18.000 They've run him poorly.

00:49:19.000 It was always bad, but now it's gotten totally out of control, and it's really because they want to defund the police, and Biden wants to defund the police.

00:49:27.000 No, sir, he does not.

00:49:28.000 Look, he signed a charter with Bernie Sanders.

00:49:32.000 I will get that one, just like I was right on the mortality rate.

00:49:36.000 Did you read the charter that he agreed to?

00:49:38.000 It says nothing about defunding the police.

00:49:39.000 Oh, really?

00:49:40.000 It says abolish.

00:49:41.000 It says... Let's go.

00:49:42.000 All right.

00:49:43.000 Give me the charter, please.

00:49:44.000 All right.

00:49:45.000 You've got to start studying for this.

00:49:47.000 Okay.

00:49:49.000 He's not right about the platform.

00:49:50.000 He is right, though, that Joe Biden has suggested before that he wants to shift funding away from police, right?

00:49:54.000 So the media are playing this as, look at Chris Wallace really grilling Trump.

00:49:57.000 Trump did okay during this interview.

00:49:59.000 He really did.

00:49:59.000 This wasn't a bad interview for Trump.

00:50:01.000 The big problem for Trump is that until Joe Biden appoints a VP, it's going to be difficult for Joe Biden to be attacked as sort of a threat to the Republic.

00:50:10.000 And the other attack that Joe Biden has kind of seen now, like we all know, man, that's not really much of an attack.

00:50:16.000 Alrighty, so we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.

00:50:19.000 In the meantime, go out and purchase a copy of my book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, surging up the bestseller charts right now.

00:50:25.000 It is out tomorrow.

00:50:26.000 Pre-order it now and be one of the first to read it.

00:50:28.000 Otherwise, we'll see you here later today or tomorrow.

00:50:30.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:50:31.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:50:36.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas, executive producer Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling, assistant director Pavel Lydowsky, technical producer Austin Stevens, playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan, associate producer Katie Swinnerton, edited by Adam Sajovic, audio is mixed by Mike Koromina, hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

00:50:56.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:51:01.000 Kanye's back in the presidential race, Trump gives conservatives a lesson on political power, and churches burn around the West.

The Ben Shapiro Show - July 20, 2020

Why Did The US Get Slammed? | Ep. 1055

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