The Matt Walsh Show - March 25, 2020


Ep. 452 - The Media Misses Trump's Point, Episode 98,618,012


Episode Stats

Length

49 minutes

Words per Minute

175.72166

Word Count

8,778

Sentence Count

559

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

13


Summary

Trump has been mocked and derided for comparing the coronavirus to car accidents. But I think people are missing the very important ethical point that Trump was trying to make. And we re going to take a deep dive into that point.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Today on The Matt Walsh Show, President Trump yesterday compared the coronavirus to car accidents,
00:00:05.320 and he's been mocked and derided for this comparison. But I think people are missing
00:00:09.840 the very important ethical point that Trump was trying to raise, the media especially missing the
00:00:14.720 point, as they usually do with President Trump, intentionally, of course. So we're going to take
00:00:20.620 a deep dive into this ethical point that Trump was raising, because I think it's important,
00:00:25.540 and we'll talk about that today. Also, five headlines, including Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden,
00:00:29.100 both in separate TV interviews about the virus babbling nonsensically. At least to me,
00:00:33.480 it seems like they're just babbling nonsensically, but I'll play the clips, and you tell me if you
00:00:38.660 can make heads or tails of it. And today, we'll cancel a feminist lawmaker who thinks that the
00:00:44.200 coronavirus is essentially a weapon of the patriarchy, because, of course, everything
00:00:47.800 with feminists, everything is about them, including the coronavirus. And that is obviously stupid for
00:00:53.500 a number of reasons, and we'll get into all of that today. But first, before we go anywhere further,
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00:02:31.640 All right. President Trump, as I said, getting a lot of grief for a point he made during a virtual
00:02:38.520 town hall on Fox News and answering a question about his contention that the shutdown should come
00:02:43.760 to an end relatively soon. Trump returned to an analogy that he's certainly not the first person to
00:02:49.880 raise this, but so it's somewhat familiar, but I think it's important. So listen to this.
00:02:54.540 I brought some numbers here. We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu.
00:02:59.300 We don't turn the country off. I mean, every year. Now, when I heard the number, you know,
00:03:04.280 we average 37,000 people a year. Can you believe that? And actually, this year, we're having a bad
00:03:10.560 flu season, but we lose thousands of people a year to the flu. We never turn the country off.
00:03:16.760 We lose much more than that to automobile accidents. We didn't call up the automobile
00:03:22.200 companies and say, stop making cars. We don't want any cars anymore. We have to get back to work.
00:03:27.880 And then comes the screaming headlines and the outraged tweets and everything else,
00:03:33.540 as we have come to expect. An editorial in the Washington Post takes Trump to task for this
00:03:40.340 analogy, a bad analogy, the Washington Post says. And the article argues that car accidents and the
00:03:47.280 coronavirus are not the same because diseases are transmissible, whereas car accidents are not.
00:03:53.000 And their death rates can grow exponentially where you don't find that with car accidents.
00:03:57.680 And this seems to be the standard response to this analogy where we're told we cannot make these
00:04:02.880 kinds of comparisons because two very different things cannot be compared in this way.
00:04:07.760 Well, first of all, not to focus too much on the semantics of this, but comparisons are,
00:04:13.440 in fact, only valid when they are made between two different things. Comparing the coronavirus to
00:04:19.620 the coronavirus would be rather redundant and probably unhelpful. And I blame the, I think I've
00:04:25.020 complained about this before, the apples and oranges phrase. I blame that for people don't understand
00:04:32.600 what a comparison is. And so when someone wants to say that a comparison is invalid, they say,
00:04:37.880 oh, it's like comparing apples and oranges. What are you talking about? You can compare apples and
00:04:41.260 oranges in a million different ways. That's a perfectly valid comparison between apples and oranges.
00:04:47.060 The fact that they're different is what makes you able to compare them.
00:04:53.180 Now, it's true that nothing that is not the coronavirus is exactly like the coronavirus,
00:05:00.600 but we can still pull from our experience dealing with other deadly problems in order to inform our
00:05:07.140 efforts in dealing with this one. But more to the point, the response from the Washington Post and
00:05:12.240 others misses the basic point that the analogy seems to be trying to make. Trump was not suggesting
00:05:19.180 that we handle the coronavirus like we handle car accidents or that the two things are similar in
00:05:26.560 any sort of practical way. This rather, I think, is a point about the ethical dilemma at work here.
00:05:34.700 So about 35,000 people die in car accidents every year in this country. Many more are maimed and
00:05:41.800 crippled. I don't know what that number is, but we know that it's many more, it's many times more than
00:05:46.400 35,000. And that works out to, just looking at the fatality rate, that's about 100 people dead per
00:05:53.020 day, half of them under the age of 50. So this is a problem that affects especially the young.
00:05:59.000 Globally, the yearly death toll is a million, more than a million. So an immense amount of pain,
00:06:05.120 misery, destruction, and death is absolutely guaranteed every year that we allow cars to be
00:06:11.480 on the road. And we can take safety precautions like we do. We can minimize the problem as much
00:06:16.940 as possible. But we know, we absolutely know, just ask the car insurance companies. We know that there
00:06:24.820 will be around 30,000 to 35,000 fatal car accidents every single year. Now, even though we all know this,
00:06:35.180 nobody ever suggests that all cars be banned. And for the purposes of this conversation, I'm going to
00:06:43.240 put aside the extremist environmentalists who advocate for banning cars on the basis that they're,
00:06:49.580 you know, going to kill the entire world in 11 years. Those people do, but for an entirely different
00:06:55.020 reason. Nobody that I've ever heard advocates banning cars in order to stop all these car accident
00:07:03.320 deaths. Even something like raising the driving age to 30, that's a move that would save thousands of
00:07:12.040 young lives. And it's not nearly as extreme as getting rid of all cars, but that's not seriously
00:07:18.540 suggested or considered. Even something like a mandatory federal minimum speed limit of 40 miles an hour.
00:07:28.100 For the most part, nobody advocates that. So nobody advocates getting rid of cars. Nobody advocates
00:07:34.780 even less stringent measures like raising the driving age to 30, lowering the speed limit
00:07:43.540 significantly. Why is that? Well, though nobody would ever put it like this,
00:07:51.700 it's because we've decided that 35,000 dead people is a cost worth paying in order to keep our cars.
00:08:03.240 All of that death, all that pain, all of those countless lives destroyed, it's all worth it, we say,
00:08:08.960 so that we can get from point A to point B quicker. Again, nobody would ever phrase it like this,
00:08:15.200 and we don't like to think of it like this, but this is the calculation. There's no way around it.
00:08:22.820 If you think that we should keep cars on the road and we should keep driving around,
00:08:27.340 then you are saying, you are absolutely saying that those 35,000 dead people who are guaranteed,
00:08:34.780 the 30 to 35,000 dead people that are guaranteed next year, in the coming year, are worth the cost.
00:08:40.180 That is what you are saying. Anybody who really disagrees, I mean really disagrees,
00:08:46.400 and actually thinks that that's not a cost worth paying, would be calling for the prohibition of
00:08:51.440 all motor vehicles. Yet nobody is. Now, you might argue that cars save more lives than they take. Well,
00:09:00.960 and I could see how you would try to argue that, how would a person in a medical emergency get to
00:09:06.420 the hospital as quickly as they need to if we don't have ambulances. But it's at a minimum
00:09:12.020 debatable whether ambulances save more people than car accidents kill. I'm not sure if that's true or
00:09:16.860 not. And besides, a very easy solution is available there. We could ban all cars except emergency
00:09:22.800 vehicles. And this would save even more lives because now the fire trucks and police cars and
00:09:28.020 ambulances can get around and they don't have to worry about congested highways and cluttered streets
00:09:31.680 and everything else. Yet, once again, nobody argues for that. We've decided that the infringement on
00:09:37.880 our lifestyles and our liberties that a motor vehicle ban would entail is not worth the lives
00:09:44.540 it would save. You look all across society and we find these sorts of calculations being made.
00:09:53.680 Even though we make them implicitly, we make them without thinking much about them,
00:09:57.860 we are still making them in our homes too. In fact, I have a personal story related to this that I want
00:10:04.140 to relay in just one second. But first, let's check in with Rock Auto. You know, in keeping with the
00:10:10.500 theme here, if something goes wrong with your car and you need to get it fixed, you still need your cars
00:10:17.900 to work, well, what are you going to do? You probably, you know, if you don't want to go to the store,
00:10:24.580 maybe you can't depending on the situation in your state. That's why you want to be able to order
00:10:28.860 online. And because there's so many different types of cars, it's impossible to keep them all
00:10:33.000 stocked. Even if you do go into a, to a, an auto parts store, that's once again, why you need
00:10:40.800 rockauto.com. And you have it fortunately at your desk, you carry it around in your pocket. It's as
00:10:46.200 easy as that. Rockauto.com is everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps,
00:10:50.420 motor oil, even new carpet, whether it's for your classic or daily driver, get everything you need
00:10:55.300 in a few easy clicks to deliver, deliver directly to your door. Rockauto.com always offers the lowest
00:11:00.020 prices possible rather than change changing prices based on what the market will bear. Like a lot of
00:11:05.860 industries do. That's not happening here. It's the same price for everyone. Why would you choose to
00:11:11.200 spend 30%, 50%, 100% more for the exact same item that you can get, you know, on online? Why would
00:11:20.560 you go into a store to pay more, spend more time and everything else? Now, rockauto.com also I should
00:11:25.760 mention is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years. And I think especially
00:11:30.920 these days we should all want to support small businesses, family businesses. And that's just,
00:11:37.460 you had another reason to go check out rockauto.com. Go to rockauto.com right now, see all the parts
00:11:42.220 available for your car or truck, write Walsh in there, how did you hear about us box so that they
00:11:46.540 know that we sent you. So we make these calculations all the time about risk versus reward. A few days ago,
00:11:56.120 I was inside and I had to run outside suddenly and rescue my son who had been, he had been outside
00:12:03.600 maybe for three minutes. But if you know, if you have kids, you know that it doesn't take them long
00:12:09.300 to get themselves into trouble. So in the span of three minutes, he had got himself stuck about 20
00:12:14.860 feet up in a tree, perched on a precariously thin branch. And as I went up and even though the
00:12:22.820 branches were pretty even thinner for me, you know, of course I was fortunately able to get up and bring
00:12:27.300 him down. Now, had I not gotten there in time or had his sister not had the wherewithal and the
00:12:34.020 presence of mind to come and get me like she did, he might've fallen. And who knows what happens when
00:12:40.100 a kid falls 20 feet out of a tree. If he were to fall on his head, break his neck, he would have died.
00:12:47.280 Does that mean that I'll never let my son play outside in our yard unattended ever again?
00:12:52.500 No. It would certainly make him safer if I kept him locked inside under our watchful eyes at all
00:12:59.800 times. But we as parents have decided that the risk, not a substantial risk, but also not entirely
00:13:07.220 unsubstantial, is a price worth paying in order to give our children a little bit of freedom and a
00:13:13.600 chance to have some fun and be normal children. Every time you open your front door and you tell your kids
00:13:18.840 go play, there's a risk. And what you're saying, even if you don't say it out loud, hopefully you
00:13:23.780 don't, is that the risk of bodily injury or death that is inherent in them going outside to play is
00:13:31.780 worth it for the benefit of them simply being children and having some fun. Now, God forbid, if my
00:13:40.940 son did tumble off that branch, I'm sure I would have wished that I had kept him chained to me at all
00:13:46.440 times. And if a family member ever dies in a car accident, I would wish that all cars had vanished
00:13:52.600 from the earth before that happened. And if my parents were to die of the coronavirus, I would probably
00:13:57.840 wish that the entire economy had been burned to the ground and millions had made had been made
00:14:02.580 destitute to save them. In fact, someone said to me yesterday, well, how would you feel if this was your
00:14:06.360 child who had coronavirus? And what if your child died of coronavirus? Well, if this is my child, I yeah, I
00:14:11.660 would send the entire world into a Great Depression. I would make you homeless and all your kids
00:14:15.200 homeless probably to save my own child. That's what I would do for my own child. But in my grief and my
00:14:22.840 longing, would I be looking at these issues more rationally and ethically or less? The question is,
00:14:30.760 should I approach life at all times with the mentality of a grief stricken man desperate to
00:14:36.660 preserve his loved one's lives at any and all costs, no matter what? Is that how I should always
00:14:44.160 approach things? Is that how we should approach things? Or should we allow for certain risks?
00:14:50.540 Even risks that we know we'd probably regret if tragedy were to strike. Now, the coronavirus itself
00:14:57.580 is not like car accidents. It's not like a boy stuck in a tree. But the ethical question is essentially
00:15:03.640 the same. And this is what the point I think Trump was trying to make. Our cars and the positive impact
00:15:10.380 they have on our lives, we say, even if we don't say it, we still say, are worth the 10 million people
00:15:18.940 who will die in them or because of them across the globe over the next decade. 10 million.
00:15:25.220 Our children's fun and freedom is worth the risk to their physical health that must inevitably
00:15:30.580 accompany it. Now, the balance could tip the other way. Obviously, there are many fun things that my
00:15:36.340 kids want to do that I don't let them do because the risk is too much. And maybe if enough people
00:15:42.780 died in cars, I don't know, maybe if, say, 5 million were perishing on our highways just in this country
00:15:48.120 alone every single year, maybe we really would consider banning them. I don't know. There is a
00:15:52.940 line somewhere. I don't know where exactly. I don't think you do either. But apparently, when it comes to
00:15:57.820 cars, wherever that line is, it is comfortably above the 35,000 dead body threshold. That's not enough to
00:16:05.240 make us even consider banning cars. So how many people have to die before we even talk about it?
00:16:11.800 100,000? A million? I don't know. So then what about the coronavirus? If our cars are worth 35,000 dead,
00:16:23.620 what is our economy worth? What is our way of life worth? If the benefit of having heavy chunks of metal
00:16:31.540 flying around at terrifying speeds outweighs the substantial downside, how do we weigh our entire
00:16:37.660 economy against the risk of an out-of-control viral outbreak? What if I were to say right now
00:16:46.240 that I think 35,000 dead people from the coronavirus is a price worth paying to save our economy? What if I
00:16:55.560 were to say, let's open the economy up? And where's my line? I think as long as we keep the death toll
00:17:02.100 around 35,000, I'm okay with that. Now, yes, it may kill many more than that. It may kill fewer. That's
00:17:08.160 not the point right now. I'm saying if I were to say that, you would probably call me a monster.
00:17:15.060 You would say, you're willing to have 35,000 people die just for the economy?
00:17:24.960 Yet, while calling me a monster, you have already signed on to that price just for the minivan in
00:17:33.880 your driveway. You have already made that calculation and said, yes, that is a price I think we should
00:17:41.120 pay. 35,000 dead people on our highways, fine. Now, could the minivan really be worth more by itself
00:17:48.640 than the minivan combined with your house, your job, your food, your retirement savings, everything else
00:17:54.300 that would be put on the line during an economic crash if these shutdowns were to last for months
00:17:59.040 on end, as some government officials seem to indicate they will? Clearly not. We, in fact, it turns out,
00:18:06.600 despite what people like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are saying, we should not destroy the economy
00:18:15.040 and embrace destitution just to save one life. We won't even commit to riding our bikes to work for
00:18:22.620 that. So what would the economy's destruction be worth? Would its destruction be worth it to save
00:18:32.180 50,000 lives? 100,000? A million? I don't know the answer. But this is the question we're asking
00:18:41.920 and the conversation we have to have, as unsavory as it seems.
00:18:50.280 And once again, I don't know the answer. I've struggled with this, as you know, over these weeks.
00:18:55.980 But it should be noted, as President Trump already did, that the people appalled by this
00:19:02.080 conversation, the people say, how dare you even think in these terms? They are participating in
00:19:08.600 the conversation, whether they like it or not. Every time they drive to the grocery store,
00:19:13.380 they take part in the dialogue, even if they don't give their answers out loud.
00:19:18.380 And that is the question. We are facing, as I've been saying, two potential worst-case scenarios
00:19:28.900 on one side or the other. We've got the worst-case scenario of the coronavirus killing many thousands
00:19:35.300 or even millions of people, depending on who you listen to. Worst case on the other end of the
00:19:40.440 spectrum, if these shutdowns go on too long. And there are some who say maybe they've already
00:19:45.420 gone on too long, as far as the economy is concerned. Maybe the damage is already irrevocable.
00:19:49.920 I don't know. But on the other end of the spectrum, worst-case scenario is an economic crash
00:19:57.920 unlike anything we have ever seen, a Great Depression that dwarfs the last one, millions destitute,
00:20:04.060 looting, rioting, and everything else. That is, I'm not saying that's going to happen.
00:20:08.300 It could happen. It is a worst-case scenario. And what we're doing is we're balancing these two
00:20:14.060 worst-case scenarios. And we're saying, OK, if we try to avoid this worst-case scenario over here
00:20:21.140 of the economic crash, yes, that means we get back to work and we take certain precautions,
00:20:27.220 but still there's a risk of more people dying from the coronavirus. Well, how many dead makes
00:20:32.620 it worth it to stave off the economic crash? That's the question. The thing is, if you say,
00:20:39.120 no, no, no, we can't do that. Let's just stay locked down as long as we need to, well, then
00:20:43.820 you're saying that this worst-case scenario of the economic crash is a price you're willing to pay.
00:20:50.860 And so I could ask you, how many destitute families are you willing to accept? How many would make it
00:20:58.400 worth it to you? Or how many would make it so that it's not worth it anymore? Are you willing to have
00:21:04.220 50 million destitute families out on the street not able to feed their kids in order to keep these
00:21:09.340 lockdowns going? Is that too much? OK, well, then 10 million? I mean, where's your line?
00:21:16.800 I don't think we can hide from this question. And I think that's what President Trump was trying to
00:21:23.880 say. All right, let's go to your news headlines before we do. If you haven't had a chance yet to
00:21:30.240 see some of our new content called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com,
00:21:34.820 check it out. Jeremy Boring and Ben Shapiro kicked it off last week, and then we all did live streams
00:21:38.960 each day over at dailywire.com. And we will continue all of this week at 8 p.m., 5 p.m. Pacific.
00:21:45.460 All Access Live is a lot more relaxed than a normal programming, you know, the normal shows and
00:21:50.600 stuff that we do. It's less focused on bringing you news and information. It's more of a conversation.
00:21:54.320 We're sitting there talking to you. And we've been getting a lot of amazing messages from our
00:21:59.460 Daily Wire community during these trying times. And we could see they're coming from a positive
00:22:03.500 and heartfelt place. And I think that this live stream then is not only good for the viewers,
00:22:08.460 but it's good for us. It's therapeutic for us as well to be able to have these conversations.
00:22:12.320 So this is a show intended for our All Access members. But during this national emergency and
00:22:17.860 time of isolation, we've opened it up to all of our members and in doing so accelerated the launch.
00:22:22.780 So please let us know what you think of it. And if you're around at 8 p.m. Eastern,
00:22:27.380 5 p.m. Pacific tonight, then tune in. I believe it'll be me tonight doing the All Access show.
00:22:34.080 So last time, last week, I did conclude our All Access show by playing a musical number on my banjo.
00:22:43.840 Who knows what will happen today? I might have to even bust out the kazoo because I am a kazoo expert.
00:22:49.740 All right, let's go to your headlines. Number one, the Senate and White House have agreed to a
00:22:53.460 $2 trillion stimulus package. There's a lot in the bill, obviously. But focusing on what I think is
00:22:58.740 the most important thing, here's a reminder, reading from CNN, of how the checks to individual
00:23:05.120 Americans will work under this plan. It says, under the plan, as it was being negotiated,
00:23:09.340 individuals who earn $75,000 in adjusted gross income or less would get direct payments of $1,200
00:23:14.380 each, with married couples earning up to $150,000, receiving $2,400 and an additional $500 per each
00:23:22.000 child. The payment would scale down by income, phasing out entirely at $99,000 for singles
00:23:26.340 and $198,000 for couples without children. So that's the plan, at least on the individual
00:23:35.020 check piece of it. This, to me, I'm sorry, is a joke. $2 trillion spent, and you're giving $1,200
00:23:43.920 to some Americans, which for most will not even be enough to come close to covering the bills,
00:23:50.100 and you're excluding millions of American families because they made, according to the government,
00:23:54.660 too much money two years ago. What if they make less money now? Well, they're out of luck.
00:24:01.380 And what if they earn over the threshold now, but their family business has been destroyed?
00:24:06.580 Or they live in a high cost of living area, and so even with that income level, they're still
00:24:12.220 basically living paycheck to paycheck. What if a thousand other scenarios? Doesn't matter. No help
00:24:17.900 for you. That's what the government says. By the way, here's a question. Is this money going to be
00:24:22.460 taxed? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. I suspect that it will be counted
00:24:28.800 as income, and so it will be taxed. So in that case, they're going to send you back your own money,
00:24:35.060 which is what these stimulus checks are. It's your money. They're giving it back to you,
00:24:38.200 and then they're going to tax you on it. So they give you the check, and then at tax time next year,
00:24:44.220 they come back around and they say, hey, did you happen to get any checks sent to you in addition
00:24:49.980 to your regular paychecks? I mean, I don't know. Did you get anything else? Because, oh yeah, I did.
00:24:55.940 I got a stimulus check. Oh, cool. Well, we're just going to need a chunk of that. We're going to need
00:24:59.340 just a little chunk of that. But you gave it to me in the first place. Oh, did we? I forgot all about
00:25:05.920 that. Anyway, so about that chunk, just a little chunk is what we're going to need. Meanwhile, the
00:25:11.700 White House is now telling us that the total stimulus effort, the total thing, including this
00:25:17.200 bill and other measures, will total six trillion dollars. Six trillion dollars. Just to give you an
00:25:25.360 idea of how much money that is. If you were to stack it in one dollar bills, it would reach over
00:25:31.620 400,000 miles into the sky. Enough to hit the moon. You could hit the moon, and then you'd have
00:25:39.280 so much left over on the moon, you could build another stack going back to Earth, which is good
00:25:44.100 because then you're not stuck on the moon. You could climb that stack. As far as the physics and
00:25:48.000 everything, I'm not sure how much that would work. But still, that's the amount of money we're
00:25:52.360 dealing with. It is a lot of money, to put it mildly. I wonder, are we getting to the point
00:25:58.160 where you might as well just give everybody a million dollars? Spend 327 trillion dollars,
00:26:05.740 give everybody a million bucks. Because at what point does it not matter anymore? Six trillion
00:26:10.740 dollars is already more money than actually exists on Earth as it is. So when you get to the point
00:26:18.440 where you're spending more money than exists on planet Earth, what, why, why even, what's the
00:26:25.140 difference? Just, you know, might as well make it 300 trillion, a quadrillion, you know, whatever.
00:26:33.240 I don't, I think, I'm in favor of the stimulus checks to America, because I actually think it
00:26:38.160 should be more. But at the same time, with these shutdowns continuing now, for many more weeks,
00:26:44.720 it seems like, so we're closing up businesses, decimating the economy, the government spending
00:26:51.200 six trillion dollars, passing that bill off on future generations. It, we've got a recipe here
00:26:59.380 for something that is not good economically. Number two, Joe Biden has basically disappeared
00:27:06.780 over the last week. Rather than, rather than getting out there, maybe not out there, you can't do that,
00:27:11.440 but at least on TV, being seen, making his case, trying to show how he would lead in a situation like
00:27:18.220 this. He's been like locked in a basement somewhere. They're keeping him out of sight
00:27:21.720 until the last couple of days. And now he's finally showing up again. We're seeing him on TV. And I
00:27:27.800 think based on his appearances, we're starting to see why they were hiding him in the first place.
00:27:35.060 So let's, let's watch this. Here's just one, one example. Watch this.
00:27:39.080 In Hot Topics, we talked about Trump saying the government would reassess the recommended period
00:27:44.240 for keeping businesses shut and people at home. Are you at all concerned, as Trump said,
00:27:49.660 that we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself?
00:27:53.660 We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what.
00:27:58.860 We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what.
00:28:04.980 Take care of the cure. Taking care of the cure will make the problem worse no matter what.
00:28:16.900 But what does taking care of the cure mean? It sounds good. It sounds like you want to,
00:28:24.440 okay, I'm taking care of the cure. Hey, I'm taking care of that cure.
00:28:28.520 Like if somebody's saying that, what they mean is they're going to cure it, right?
00:28:31.100 Whatever the problem is. And so you're saying that's going to make the problem worse.
00:28:34.800 Curing the problem will make it worse. I don't, I don't get it. I'm, I'm not even trying to be
00:28:40.100 funny. I really don't even understand. I don't understand what he's even driving at.
00:28:44.000 This isn't just stumbling over your words. This is a apparently totally nonsensical statement.
00:28:52.740 And then Nancy Pelosi yesterday also had her own Joe Biden moment. Listen to this.
00:28:57.560 Well, I do think that there is a whole concern in our country that if we're giving tens of billions
00:29:03.580 of dollars to the airlines, that we could at least have a shared value about what, what happens to
00:29:09.940 the environment. But that is a, you know, that is an excuse, not a reason for Senator McConnell to go
00:29:17.440 forward. Some of the other issues like not fully extending family medically, not funding food stamps.
00:29:24.040 So I hope that will all change in the next few hours, but there are issues that are central to
00:29:29.500 the wellbeing of America. There is a whole concern in our country that if we're giving tens of billions
00:29:34.840 of dollars to the airlines, that we could at least have a shared value about what happens to the
00:29:39.760 environment, have a shared value about what happens to the environment. We have a shared value.
00:29:49.300 I don't understand what that means either. I don't, I don't understand it. I don't know what
00:29:54.980 these people are talking about, but the best and brightest right here that we have the best and
00:29:59.000 brightest leading the way, but that makes me feel better in these, in these, in these times dealing
00:30:05.160 with one of the, one of the great crises that we've ever faced as a nation. And with that, and by that,
00:30:11.300 I mean also the economic devastation that they're causing right now, the whole thing, right?
00:30:14.940 But it's just good to know that these are the people who are making decisions. All right. Number
00:30:20.460 three, interesting report in the Daily Wire right now by Amanda Presta-Giacomo. She writes,
00:30:26.020 government policy and guidance crafted in an effort to flatten the curve of coronavirus related deaths
00:30:30.740 has largely been based upon an Imperial College London model headed by Professor Neil Ferguson.
00:30:36.140 The terrifying model shows that as many as 2.2 million Americans could perish from the virus if
00:30:40.620 no action is taken peaking in June. However, that model is likely highly flawed. Oxford
00:30:46.600 epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta writes, Professor Gupta led a team of researchers at Oxford University
00:30:53.840 in a modeling study, which suggests that the virus has been invisibly spreading for at least a month
00:30:58.340 earlier than suspected, concluding that as many as half of the people in the UK have already been
00:31:03.640 infected by COVID-19. If this is the case, fewer than one in a thousand who've been infected with
00:31:08.480 COVID-19 become sick enough to need hospitalization, leaving the vast majority with mild cases or free
00:31:14.200 of symptoms. With so many in the UK and potentially United States presumably infected, so-called herd
00:31:19.040 immunity could kick into effect, dramatically limiting the number of deaths modeled by Ferguson
00:31:23.560 and company. The Financial Times explains, the Oxford study is based on what is known as a
00:31:29.600 susceptibility infected recovery model, that old canard, of COVID-19 built up from case and death
00:31:38.420 reports from the UK and Italy. The researchers made what they argue as the most plausible assumptions
00:31:43.040 about the behavior of the virus. The report continues, the modeling that brings back into focus
00:31:47.580 herd immunity, the idea that the virus will stop spreading when enough people have become resistant
00:31:52.260 to it because they've already become infected.
00:31:53.940 Okay, that's your positive side of things. Interesting perspective there. Number four, we'll go to, we'll go
00:32:02.680 from, we'll try to keep a balance here, right? So we've got the positive, we'll go to the negative, nice balance
00:32:07.740 between comforting and terrifying. Reading from the Daily Mail, it says an intensive care specialist has described
00:32:14.500 how one person with coronavirus could infect up to 59,000 others as the virus is more than twice as infectious
00:32:21.360 as the flu. And we're not just talking about people on spring break here. This is Dr. Hugh Montgomery,
00:32:26.260 a professor of intensive care medicine at University College London, explained how the virus could be passed
00:32:31.880 from one person to thousands as he calls on Britons to heed advice on social distancing. He says,
00:32:39.920 normal flu, if I get that, I'm going to infect on average about 1.3 or 1.4 people if there was such a division.
00:32:45.480 If those 1.3 or 1.4 people give it to the next lot, that's the second time it gets passed on. By the time
00:32:51.920 that's happened 10 times, I've been responsible for about 14 cases of the flu. Dr. Montgomery went on to
00:32:58.160 illustrate how coronavirus is far more infectious than the common flu, with one person potentially
00:33:02.320 infecting 59,000 others under the same circumstances, just based on the exponential way that these things
00:33:09.420 are passed on. So there's the negative side of it as well. Two perspectives. I'm not going to tell you
00:33:16.440 which one to believe because I have no idea. Number five, an interesting notice on the website for
00:33:22.960 Planned Parenthood Keystone. So that's Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania, essentially. And if you
00:33:28.080 go to the website, this is the notice that is posted there right now. It says, to ensure the health and
00:33:34.340 safety of our patients, staff, and community, Planned Parenthood Keystone has temporarily closed all of its
00:33:38.920 health care, all of its health centers, quote unquote, I'm adding the scare quotes, for family
00:33:43.940 planning visits effective March 23rd, 2020. At this time, Planned Parenthood Keystone is serving
00:33:50.280 patients in Allentown, Wilkes-Barre, Warminster, Reading, York, and Harrisburg for abortion services only.
00:33:59.440 Birth control starts and renewals, depot shots, emergency contraception, UTI treatments,
00:34:03.840 vaginitis, rash, or legion, and STI treatments will be available via telehealth very soon.
00:34:10.020 Okay. That's interesting, I think, because we're told that abortion is only, what do they say? They
00:34:20.640 say it's 3% of what a Planned Parenthood does. They tell us, especially when we're talking about the
00:34:26.420 funding of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood gets $500 million a year in tax funding,
00:34:31.180 uh, in, uh, in, in welfare checks, basically from sugar daddy government. And, but we're told that's
00:34:38.300 okay because Planned Parenthood, they hardly do any abortions. It's only 3% of what they do,
00:34:43.260 right? No, no, but yeah, yeah. It, it, it adds up to 330,000 abortions, which means 330,000 dead
00:34:50.220 children every single year, but it's only 3%. It's basically nothing. They, they, they hardly do any
00:34:54.940 abortions. That's the argument, the spin, the propaganda that we're told. But yet here we are
00:35:02.160 and they're shutting everything down. And supposedly this is a, a facility that is a health
00:35:08.920 facility. And you would think that's pretty essential. And they do all kinds of really
00:35:14.140 important, essential health related things. And yet, at least in their physical facilities,
00:35:20.940 they're not offering any of that, but abortions. If it's only 3% of what they do, and it's not even
00:35:28.820 that important to their overall business model, as we're told, then why would they stop doing
00:35:33.740 everything but that? I mean, if you're a business and you've got to cut things back,
00:35:40.580 would you, would you narrow things down to only 3% of your business, the 3% that's so much less
00:35:46.440 important than everything else you do? I mean, if anything, shouldn't they stop doing abortions
00:35:52.060 and continue all of the other allegedly essential healthcare practices that they, that they perform?
00:35:59.040 The services they provide? No, but it said they stopped doing all of that and they only do the
00:36:04.880 abortions. It would seem like, call me crazy, but it would seem like, uh, the reason they're only doing
00:36:10.900 the abortions is because actually that's really all they basically do, or that, that is at a minimum,
00:36:16.520 that is actually the, the point of their organization and everything else is peripheral.
00:36:22.180 Everything else is just an add on that they tack on at the end. And so they can stop doing all of
00:36:27.540 that, but they're still going to do the abortions. They keep the money coming in and their business is
00:36:32.040 still alive and humming and going right along. That's how it would seem to me. All right, let's go to
00:36:37.780 your daily cancellation. Today, we're canceling Marine Faruqi, who is a feminist lawmaker in
00:36:43.580 Australia. Now you knew, you just knew the feminists would try to make coronavirus about
00:36:48.420 themselves. You knew they would because everything is about them. They can't help it. And here we are.
00:36:53.060 Let us not forget that COVID-19 is a gendered crisis. Nurses, nurse aides, teachers, child carers,
00:37:01.900 and early childhood educators, aged care workers and cleaners are mostly women. They are on the
00:37:08.180 front line of this public health crisis and carry a disproportionate risk of being exposed to the
00:37:14.040 virus. Let's also not forget that not all homes are safe places. Quarantine or self-isolation at
00:37:20.840 home will put women and children at risk. Women's advocates and domestic violence experts are warning
00:37:27.640 us that domestic abuse increases during times of crisis. And I'm terribly worried that these
00:37:33.120 warnings have not been heeded by this government that has long resisted adequate funding for the
00:37:38.500 needed resources and refugees. A gendered crisis, she says, because everything is gendered in the
00:37:44.200 adult brain of a feminist, even as they say that gender is essentially a social fiction, like I said,
00:37:49.500 adult brain. But notice a few things, a few things. First, she says nurses, nurse aides,
00:37:56.040 et cetera, are mostly women. You notice who she left out? Doctors, surgeons. They also, I would argue,
00:38:06.180 are on the front lines of this thing. But what about them? Well, they're not mentioned because
00:38:11.860 they don't count because they're mostly men. So we're going to forget about them. But secondly,
00:38:16.900 if the coronavirus is picking on one gender especially more than the other, it's definitely men
00:38:23.080 who are the primary victim. The vast majority of deaths from the virus are male. Some figures suggest
00:38:30.100 that it's around 70%, that the death rate is 70% male. At least that's the case in Italy. And
00:38:37.800 across the board, it's certainly a majority of cases, of the most severe cases, the fatal cases,
00:38:43.340 are male. Yet she's trying to make it into a thing that's victimizing women the most.
00:38:49.900 This just shows you how feminism works. This feminist was able to take a disease that mostly
00:38:55.860 kills men and turn it into a crisis that mostly affects women. I mean, it's extraordinary. Next
00:39:01.940 thing you know, she's going to be telling us that prostate cancer is mainly a crisis affecting women.
00:39:07.200 This is the way it goes, though. When you buy into a victim narrative,
00:39:11.300 and that's the way you look at life, and the narrative is that women are victims and men are not,
00:39:17.960 well, then every situation has to be seen through that lens, which leads to manifest absurdities like
00:39:23.660 this. So, Ms. Faruqi, you are canceled for that reason. Now, let's go to emails. We have a couple
00:39:31.760 emails here I wanted to get through as we wrap the show up. This, and you become a Daily Wire member,
00:39:37.300 you could send emails to the mailbag. This is from James, says, Dear Matt, thank you for your coverage
00:39:42.660 of the Chinese virus over the last few days. I'm tired of seeing the world brought to its knees
00:39:47.480 over a cold. You seem like you were panicked a few days ago, but have settled down. That's great.
00:39:54.500 Keep it up. See, this is exactly the wrong way of looking at this, James. I hate to disappoint you.
00:40:01.880 The virus is not just a cold. It's a very serious disease, highly contagious, high levels of
00:40:11.040 hospitalization, deadlier than the flu. These are all facts, right? So, and, well, I guess I should
00:40:21.000 amend that. We talk about the levels of hospitalization. As I just read during the
00:40:25.660 headlines, we actually, we don't know exactly what the actual rate is when you compare hospitalization
00:40:29.880 rate to the number of affected because we don't know how many people are affected, but we do know
00:40:33.840 that lots of people are going to the hospital. We can just put it that way, okay? And you can look
00:40:37.860 at what's happening in New York right now. We see what's happening in other countries. Now, so those
00:40:42.800 are facts. Does that mean that we should shut the economy down indefinitely? No, I don't think so,
00:40:49.280 as I've argued, because, and I'm trying to make this very clear. I'm not saying that we shouldn't
00:40:56.560 shut the economy down or that we should get the economy going again soon because the virus isn't
00:41:01.620 a big deal. That's not my argument. That has never been my argument. What I'm saying is I'm afraid
00:41:08.100 that the cost is too great to bear, and it might not even achieve much anyway when it comes to stopping
00:41:14.220 or slowing the virus. What if it, you know, what if the virus continues as it seems to be doing in
00:41:19.960 places like New York? It continues to do, continues to spread rapidly, and we stay locked down. We
00:41:27.220 destroy the economy. So now we have a destroyed economy, and we've still got the virus to deal
00:41:31.860 with. Or, and if we're not staying locked down until there's a vaccine a year from now, presumably
00:41:38.700 even the most extreme people in favor of a lockdown would agree that eventually we have to start back up
00:41:45.640 again. And what if we start back up again and the virus comes back with a vengeance? Now we've got
00:41:51.820 a destroyed economy and the virus, and we're less capable of dealing with all of these things
00:41:55.580 for me come to bear in analyzing this. And I'm saying that destroying the economy is a mistake
00:42:04.180 and it won't be worth it because of the human cost. So I believe sooner rather than later,
00:42:12.860 we need to get people back to work so they can feed their families while taking a number of
00:42:16.980 precautions, instituting measures that I've outlined over the last few days. And these are not measures
00:42:21.900 that I came up with. This is not, I'm not the first one to think of these, but there are a number
00:42:25.900 of things we could do. We could open the economy while still taking a number of measures, including if
00:42:32.900 you're in favor of more draconian measures by the government, there are draconian things you could do
00:42:37.800 even while getting the economy going, such as, for example, mandatory mask laws for everybody that
00:42:43.920 goes out in public. Now, I'm not saying I'd be in favor of that. I don't know how you need to
00:42:49.020 produce a hell of a lot more masks in order to do it. I think we could do that. I don't know how you
00:42:52.820 would enforce it. Would people actually follow it? These are all questions. But then you have the
00:42:57.140 same problem with a shutdown. How do you enforce that, especially as weeks go by and people are sick of
00:43:01.200 it? How do you enforce it? Are people going to follow it? I think at a certain point they won't
00:43:05.260 anymore, so you still have that issue. But you could do. Now, as far as masks go, I would be more
00:43:11.500 in favor of being more targeted, where maybe certain industries it's required that you have masks, at
00:43:17.080 least for a time. But then there are many other things that you do, too. You quarantine the nursing
00:43:21.660 homes. People that are especially vulnerable, you keep them home. Quarantine the elderly. And anyone
00:43:27.900 who's in that category but needs a paycheck to survive, well, we can continue to support them.
00:43:32.840 And we could be more targeted in our approach that way. So what I'm suggesting is just a more
00:43:38.160 targeted approach at the virus while trying to keep the economy going as much as possible to stave
00:43:43.980 off a depression and the destitution and suffering that will come from that.
00:43:49.460 The point is, we cannot take the extreme of let's keep everything locked down for six months.
00:43:55.380 We can't go with that extreme. But we also can't go to the other extreme that you're at and say this
00:44:00.700 is just a cold, because that's not the case either. So, you know, I don't know the solution.
00:44:07.100 Nobody does. I don't want thousands of people to die from this virus. I also don't want our economy
00:44:11.760 to be destroyed and families to be destitute. There's got to be a path that navigates those
00:44:16.980 extremes. Or maybe there isn't. I say there has to be. There's got to be. But there doesn't have to
00:44:22.340 be. It's possible that there is no path. There is no good answer. But maybe there is.
00:44:27.880 And we have to look for it. Right now, we've bought in totally to shut everything down.
00:44:34.760 Great Depression be damned. I'm saying, let's not do that. Let's actually look at all of our options
00:44:39.680 and try to be a little bit more creative in the way we deal with this.
00:44:44.880 All right. Let's go to Anna says, hi, Matt. Thought I'd change the discussion from the coronavirus to
00:44:50.660 something else. Thank God. What is your take on soulmates? Is your wife your soulmate? Do we all
00:44:56.120 have one person out there who is made for us? It's a good question. And Anna, I do believe in
00:45:01.360 soulmates. Soulmates would be two people who meet on a foot fetish website.
00:45:10.880 Pausing for laughter. So I apologize for that. But it is a pretty good pun.
00:45:15.180 You have to admit. That's a good pun. Anyway, the answer is no, I don't believe in soulmates.
00:45:20.420 At least not in the case of one individual who's out there in the world, who's the right person for
00:45:26.320 you and is waiting for you to find them. I don't believe in that. Is my wife my soulmate? Yes.
00:45:34.240 Because we're married and we chose to become soulmates. That was a choice we made.
00:45:39.980 Which to me makes it even more meaningful. It wasn't like this was written in the stars. And so I had to
00:45:46.100 end up with my wife and we're sort of slaves of destiny or whatever. That's not how I see it. I see
00:45:53.940 it as we both started our lives in different states, hundreds of miles apart. And we lived our
00:46:02.680 lives and made choices and went this way and that. And there were a million different choices we could
00:46:07.740 have made that would have taken us in different directions. We could have made those choices. We
00:46:11.180 didn't. There were other people we could have ended up with, but we didn't make that choice
00:46:15.980 either. And then we met each other. We made a choice to be together. And because of that choice
00:46:21.000 and that free choice, I think it makes it so much more meaningful. And once you make the choice,
00:46:31.120 now you're committed. You've made an oath before God and now you are soulmates. So I wasn't my wife's
00:46:39.660 soulmate when I met her. I was her soulmate when I said I do and when she said I do.
00:46:45.980 I think there's another thing, though, about this soulmate thing. I think there's a great danger
00:46:49.560 in this mentality, actually. And we see it play out in society over and over again.
00:46:54.580 I'll tell you what the danger is. If you believe that there are soulmates, there's someone out there
00:47:00.220 that's made for you ahead of time and all you have to do is go find them. First of all, with all
00:47:06.000 these quarantines, that's going to be very difficult to do. But more importantly, well, what if you meet
00:47:12.780 somebody and you think they're your soulmate and you marry them and then you discover that, oh,
00:47:20.500 you know, I don't think they are my soulmate? And then you go to your job and you have a co-worker
00:47:24.780 and you say, oh, I think this is my soulmate. And that's how marriages are destroyed.
00:47:31.280 And invariably what happens is the person who says that, oh, you know, I made the wrong choice. I just
00:47:35.500 met the right person. I'm going to leave this person, my spouse in the dust. Even if I have kids,
00:47:40.400 I'm going to leave them in the dust too. I'm going to go with my real soulmate. Invariably,
00:47:43.740 what do they find out? They find out that, oh, no, no, that person is not my soulmate either.
00:47:47.400 I'll have to keep looking. Five marriages later, you know, destroyed families, destroyed lives.
00:47:53.800 That's where the soulmate thing takes you, I think. But if it's true that there are soulmates and that
00:47:59.400 there is one person out there who's made for you, destined for you, then it is true that you could end
00:48:04.500 up with the wrong person. And then you could meet some other person who's the right person.
00:48:10.300 And by this way of thinking, then if you had some way of knowing that this other person is your soulmate,
00:48:17.140 then it would, I guess, be right to leave your spouse for this other person. Because this person
00:48:22.020 was made for you. This is who God or the universe or whoever intended for you. But that can't be the
00:48:30.180 case. You know, it can't be that we're destined to leave a person who we made an undying vow and
00:48:38.100 commitment to. It just, it can't be. And I don't think that's the case. So your soulmate is the person
00:48:47.360 who you choose to be your soulmate, as long as they choose you as well. But thank you for that
00:48:54.060 question. That was a nice little break from the coronavirus madness, which we will get back to
00:48:59.680 tomorrow, I'm sure. And thanks, everybody, for watching. Stay safe out there. Godspeed.
00:49:09.120 If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe. And if you want to help spread the
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00:49:21.680 the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show, Michael Knowles Show, and The Andrew
00:49:25.940 Klavan Show. Thanks for listening. The Matt Wall Show is produced by Sean Hampton, executive producer
00:49:31.060 Jeremy Boring, supervising producer Mathis Glover, supervising producer Robert Sterling, technical
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00:49:43.220 Daily Wire production, copyright Daily Wire 2020. If you prefer facts over feelings, aren't offended by
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00:49:53.840 The Ben Shapiro Show. We'll get a whole lot of that and much more. See you there.