The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 517 - Finally, Some Good News!

00:00:00.000 The market jumps 2,000 points. Scientific studies show coronavirus hope on the horizon.

00:00:05.880 A new drug is helping patients. And President Trump is calling for America to reopen by Easter

00:00:11.420 Sunday. We will examine all the excellent news after weeks of apocalyptic headlines.

00:00:16.540 Then the Trump administration announces the largest stimulus package in American history.

00:00:21.720 We'll break down conservatives' conflicting emotions on massive government spending.

00:00:26.460 And finally, Bernie Sanders refuses to drop out of the race. And Sleepy Joe somehow manages to

00:00:32.620 deteriorate even further on national television. All that and more. I'm Michael Knowles and this is

00:00:37.540 The Michael Knowles Show. What a good day it was yesterday. You know, it's so funny. There was such

00:00:51.780 great news that came out on the scientific front, on the political front from President Trump.

00:00:56.460 There's a real irony here, which is that when California went on lockdown, LA went on lockdown

00:01:01.600 a little bit earlier. At the Daily Wire, they decided, okay, they're going to turn my apartment

00:01:05.520 into a studio so that we can comply with this lockdown. But my internet was so bad that they

00:01:10.280 had to wait a little bit, you know, and we were just going to the studio. I'm not exactly afraid

00:01:14.860 of this thing. So they are fixing up my apartment and everything. They finally get it ready to go.

00:01:19.760 And then we get this great news. President Trump says he wants to reopen America

00:01:24.500 by Easter. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. President Trump gave a town hall yesterday on Fox

00:01:30.460 News. The thing was great. He's really shined in these press conferences. That's, I mean, as we know,

00:01:38.060 President Trump is basically his own press secretary. This is his superpower. You know, I mean,

00:01:43.900 he's a reality TV star. He just knows how to work the cameras. And so he did this town hall

00:01:48.980 yesterday. It really calmed a lot of fears. The market responded during the town hall.

00:01:52.860 And he said, we are almost ready to reopen America.

00:01:56.800 You know, the allotted two weeks, but we'll stay a little bit longer than that. But we want to get

00:02:00.940 open very soon. I think that was a big reason it's gone up. I also think that the fact that the

00:02:05.940 Senate and the House, we seem to be getting along as much as you can get along. We seem to be getting

00:02:11.980 along now on a on a bill. I think that maybe had even less of an impact than the fact that

00:02:17.640 we're opening up this incredible country because we have to do that. I'd love to have it open by

00:02:23.360 Easter. OK, I would love to have it open by Easter. I will. I will tell you that right now. I would love

00:02:29.380 to have that. It's such an important day for other reasons, but I'll make it an important day for this

00:02:35.000 to I would love to have the country opened up and just raring to go by Easter.

00:02:42.340 This was an absolutely brilliant announcement for a few different reasons. First reason is the

00:02:50.220 science. OK, increasingly, the evidence is showing that this virus, this pandemic, this epidemic,

00:02:56.180 whatever you want to call it, has been hyped by the media. Increasingly, science is showing that

00:03:02.020 actually the mortality rates might be significantly lower than we think they are. We'll get into why.

00:03:07.920 I mean, these are not just crackpot theories. These are coming out of the top research institutions

00:03:12.120 in the country. So that's one reason is as the evidence is increasingly in favor of let's get

00:03:18.560 closer to normal. Let's let's start bringing things back. President Trump is is able to bring that to

00:03:24.240 the American people. You know, he played this pretty cautiously for the last couple of weeks. Now,

00:03:29.120 however, he's got pretty solid footing to start to get the economy going again. Second reason this was

00:03:35.320 brilliant is it made news. You can hear it there. Bill Hemmer and Harris Faulkner are shocked. They're

00:03:40.480 the ones interviewing Trump. And they said, what? Hold on. You're saying this is about to reopen at

00:03:44.740 Easter? And they actually kept going back to that that talking point throughout the town hall. And

00:03:49.780 then later on, Trump was on Bill Hemmer's show. They kept going back to that. That was obviously the news

00:03:54.800 of the day. Trump had that in his pocket. So he knew that was going to be the big story.

00:03:58.080 But the third reason this is so smart to get this out here is the symbolism of it. We will get to

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00:05:38.640 So, President Trump announces he wants America to reopen at Easter. Smart on the science, smart

00:05:44.500 on the news, but the other reason he's really smart is the symbolism of this, okay? Trump is a

00:05:49.360 guy who understands the power of symbols. He understands the power of visuals. The guy is a

00:05:54.980 TV star. He's been a pop culture icon for 40 years at this point, okay? If President Trump had done this

00:06:02.660 interview and Bill Hemmer says, okay, when do you think you're going to try to get things going

00:06:08.680 again? He goes, well, I think maybe by April 12th, we'll start to get America back on the right track.

00:06:14.660 No one would have paid any attention. Now, Easter is April 12th, but that date, it's just like, okay,

00:06:21.560 well, all right, so a couple weeks from nephew, more than a couple weeks, and then we'll start to ramp up.

00:06:26.720 Well, but Easter has significance, right? Easter carries so much more meaning. Easter is a day

00:06:33.520 associated with joy. You know, the nice holiday you spend with your family. Easter is a day

00:06:40.760 associated with spring. Springtime is here, certainly by mid-April. That's happier time. We're coming out

00:06:47.280 of winter now. And most importantly, Easter is the day associated with resurrection. And right now,

00:06:54.520 we've ground our economy. We've ground our whole country to a halt. We're locked in our apartments

00:06:59.560 doing nothing. And to have that image, that day of Easter is the day that we are going to break free.

00:07:06.600 We are going to come back to life. That is so significant. There is a strange coincidence here,

00:07:12.740 or providence maybe, that this epidemic has taken place during Lent. It pretty much began on Ash Wednesday,

00:07:18.340 the beginning of this penitential season of Lent. And now, as some of us had predicted,

00:07:23.380 it looks as though President Trump wants to end it, wants to bring us back to some sense of the

00:07:30.640 normal by Easter, which would be the end of Lent. Makes a whole lot of sense. For it to end on Easter

00:07:37.220 would be poetic, and it's really, really smart for Trump to bring it out that way. So that part of the

00:07:43.080 conference went very well. Why? Why does President Trump think that we'll be able to do this?

00:07:48.360 Part of it is our testing has gotten a whole lot better. And so it's not only that our knowledge

00:07:54.400 of the virus has gotten better, but our testing has gotten better, too. Dr. Birx, who's one of the

00:07:59.460 health experts on the Trump coronavirus team, also broke this news during the town hall.

00:08:05.660 I just want to speak to the Americans for just a second, though. We have to ensure that we still

00:08:10.180 are testing, even though probably by today we will have done more tests than South Korea did in eight

00:08:15.580 weeks in the last eight days. In the last eight days, we've done more testing than South Korea. 0.77

00:08:22.100 But we did that because we transformed the testing process as the president spoke to.

00:08:27.480 I didn't even know, I just heard the number for the first time from Deborah, that in a short period

00:08:33.600 of time, we've done more testing than South Korea. Now, you're not going to read that in the newspapers

00:08:37.460 because they don't like to write things like that. But I'd love you to say that one more time,

00:08:42.460 because that's a big number. We've done more than South Korea in a short period of time. We're

00:08:47.880 doing more now than South Korea by a lot. That's right. We're doing more than South Korea

00:08:52.560 right now in the last eight days. Trump just knows the medium, right? It's the same principle as to why

00:08:58.180 he announces that he wants to end this all on Easter. He says the newspapers aren't going to

00:09:02.980 report on this, but that's a big number. We are doing so much. So we're getting maybe a little bit

00:09:09.200 conflicting signals, right? I actually don't think they're conflicting, but the mainstream press thinks

00:09:13.580 that they are. On the one hand, Trump is saying we're taking this super duper seriously. We're

00:09:17.260 doing so much testing, more testing than South Korea. We're sending ventilators to everybody. 0.92

00:09:21.580 We're taking this as seriously as possible. Also, we're going to end this thing by Easter.

00:09:26.180 Are those conflicting? I don't really think so. We'll get into why in just a moment. This is all

00:09:31.440 great news. Question is, are we celebrating too soon, right? We've been told for weeks now that

00:09:37.140 millions of Americans are going to die if we don't completely shut down the country. Now we're

00:09:42.380 being told, not as big a deal. A couple more weeks and we'll get this thing going again. Which is it?

00:09:48.900 Well, you've heard on CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times from every health expert who says that

00:09:55.360 we're all going to die. Now some health experts are pushing back on that claim. One huge heavyweight

00:10:03.560 in particular is weighing in. This would be the 2013 Nobel laureate Michael Levitt. Michael Levitt

00:10:10.140 is a Stanford biology professor, a celebrated scientist. He is saying that his models for the

00:10:18.200 coronavirus do not support predictions that the virus will wreak months or even years of social

00:10:26.920 disruption or cause millions of deaths. He said, quote, what we need is to control the panic.

00:10:35.160 We are going to be fine. Okay. Very helpful. Does he have credibility here? Yes. Michael Levitt

00:10:44.000 accurately predicted what was going on in China. So his report on China said the country would peak

00:10:50.920 in 80,000 cases and 3,250 deaths. What happened in reality? China reported 81,588 cases with 3,281

00:11:01.880 deaths. It gives you a lot of credibility here. He's saying we're going to be fine. We don't need

00:11:08.080 to panic. Is it just him? No. Two other professors of medicine coincidentally also at Stanford are coming

00:11:14.840 out and saying basically the same thing. So there's an amazing op-ed right now in the Wall Street Journal.

00:11:19.620 The headline is, is the coronavirus as deadly as they say? This is by Aaron Ben David and Jay

00:11:26.340 Bhattacharya. From the top of the headline, it's true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions

00:11:33.640 without shelter in place orders and quarantines. Then the extraordinary measures being carried out

00:11:38.800 in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there is a little evidence to

00:11:45.720 confirm that premise and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too

00:11:52.320 high. So right, if the predictions that we're getting are true, then yeah, of course we should

00:11:57.820 lock down and shut down the country. But are the prediction models true? They have a lot of evidence

00:12:01.980 to say that they're not. Fear of COVID-19 is based on high estimates of its case fatality rate.

00:12:07.220 2% to 4% of people with confirmed COVID-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization

00:12:12.120 and others. So if 100 million Americans get the disease, 2 million to 4 million could die. Remember,

00:12:19.020 that's what we were told at the beginning of all of this. You want to see 2 million Americans dead?

00:12:22.580 You want to see more than 2 million Americans dead? Well, if not, you got to shut down the country. 0.75

00:12:27.700 We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected

00:12:34.300 who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases. So the point they're making is,

00:12:39.320 a point that we've started to hear a little bit more in the UK and elsewhere, which is that,

00:12:45.240 hmm, maybe the number of people who have this virus is a lot higher than we think it is. Because

00:12:51.600 we're just looking at the percentage of people who get sick and they're so sick that they go to the

00:12:56.080 doctor and then they get diagnosed and then either they recover or they don't recover. But what about

00:13:03.300 people who just, you know, have mild symptoms, like a lot of young people, and don't even get

00:13:07.740 diagnosed with the virus? How many people have you spoken to who said, you know, I think I had that

00:13:11.880 virus about a month and a half ago? I think I told you that. I think I had the virus about a month and

00:13:16.780 a half ago. I don't think that right now it's possible to test for antibodies. Otherwise, I would

00:13:21.160 to see if I had it in the past. But if I did have it, I certainly didn't get diagnosed with it. So I

00:13:26.920 would not be counted among the people who were infected. And therefore, if a lot of people who were

00:13:33.480 infected aren't counted, then the mortality rate is going to be much higher in the reports than it

00:13:38.600 actually is. It says, it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that

00:13:46.420 kills 2 million, of course. I mean, if you don't, it just depends how many people are in the

00:13:50.680 denominator, right? So the authors here, the Stanford scientists, use the example of this

00:13:56.640 northeastern Italian town of Vo near the provincial capital of Padua. So on March 6th, every person

00:14:04.880 in Vo was tested, 3,300 people. They tested the entire population. 90 were positive, which means

00:14:10.780 2.7% of the population was positive. If you apply that prevalence to the entire population of the

00:14:18.960 province, population there is 955,000, and they had 198 reported cases, that suggests that actually

00:14:28.060 it wasn't 198 cases total. It was closer to 26,000 infections at the time, which is 130-fold more than

00:14:37.560 the actual cases reported. Now, Italy's fatality rate is 8% among those who have been diagnosed with

00:14:45.780 the virus. But if you, if you factor in this possibly much higher percentage of people who

00:14:53.560 were infected, the fatality rate could be closer to 0.06%, which is what people were suggesting in

00:15:01.900 the beginning when they were making comparisons to the flu. Really pleased to see op-eds like this

00:15:08.380 coming out from people who have some expertise in this field, because so far, I think a lot of public

00:15:14.060 health experts who have disagreed with the prevailing alarmist consensus have kept their

00:15:19.240 mouth shut. Because we've been told that if you even suggest that the virus is not as bad as people

00:15:25.700 say it is, that you're going to be responsible for deaths and encouraging people to go out and for

00:15:30.180 killing people. But now you've got the Wall Street Journal, two major scientists saying it. You had the

00:15:34.660 Yale scientist come out in the New York Times just the other day, say basically the same thing. You have

00:15:40.040 this Nobel laureate Michael Levitt come out saying basically the same thing. So you're getting a lot

00:15:45.200 of dissenters on the scientific side. A lot of people saying, calm down. And it's not just here in

00:15:52.180 the US. The best scientific news recently is actually out of the UK. So initially, the UK, when they were

00:16:01.020 reacting to coronavirus, followed the more conservative model. Conservative model being herd immunity. You take the

00:16:08.740 people who are very at risk, immune compromised, pre-existing conditions, over 70, and you just 0.99

00:16:14.580 say, stay at home and don't talk to your grandkids and just quarantine yourself. The rest of us will go

00:16:20.500 out. We will be in the population. We'll be doing things. And some people will get the virus. The vast,

00:16:28.120 vast, vast majority, a very small, vast majority will be fine. A very, very tiny minority of people

00:16:34.300 will have complications from this and be hospitalized. But then people will be immune.

00:16:39.420 It will be much harder to pass this virus along. And this is what we've done for a lot of other

00:16:44.400 public health issues. That was what they were doing initially. Then they changed their mind

00:16:48.720 based on a study out of the UK's Imperial College. Now it turns out that study might be deeply flawed.

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00:18:04.320 So the UK's free gap was based on what looks to be a possibly very flawed study from Imperial College.

00:18:13.580 The Imperial College study predicted many thousands of deaths, even among young people.

00:18:22.020 So you had the Boris Johnson conservative Tory government pursuing this herd immunity model

00:18:28.180 where you're not going to shut down the entire economy. You're just going to quarantine the people 0.95

00:18:31.920 who are at risk. Then this study comes out and says, actually, even the people that you think are

00:18:38.160 healthy are not going to be healthy. They're going to be in serious trouble. Many thousands of young

00:18:42.680 people are going to die. So Boris Johnson does the only thing he can do. He switches strategy into

00:18:47.780 the shutdown strategy that we've got here in the United States. Now, there's a new study out of

00:18:54.600 Oxford, which says, much like these other ones, that the death projections are way off because the

00:19:02.020 same reason. They're significantly underestimating the number of people in the UK who already have the

00:19:08.020 virus. This is from the new study. Professor Gupta is the one who is writing this. She writes,

00:19:17.300 if the results are confirmed, they imply that fewer than one in 1,000 of those infected with COVID-19

00:19:25.780 will become ill enough to need hospital treatment. She's a professor of theoretical epidemiology at

00:19:34.100 Oxford. She led the study. The vast majority develop very mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.

00:19:43.080 So there's a chance you're walking around with this thing you don't even know. Actually, speaking of the

00:19:46.280 UK, it turns out Prince Charles has been diagnosed with coronavirus. And you think of this as like,

00:19:53.040 oh my gosh, he's in the at-risk age group. The guy's going to die. The monarchy's in question.

00:19:57.620 The palace reports he has mild symptoms. He's self-quarantining. Now, some people face serious

00:20:03.860 symptoms, but a lot of people do not. Gupta said, I'm surprised that there has been such an unqualified

00:20:12.320 acceptance of the imperial model. And that's not just imperial college's fault. That's the fault of

00:20:19.080 all of us, and especially political activists and especially the mainstream media, who have looked

00:20:26.820 consistently to the most alarming predictions and accepted those as gospel truth, rather than

00:20:33.940 trying to take a more balanced look. I mean, President Trump said at this town hall the other

00:20:37.480 day, or yesterday, he said, we've never done this before. We've never shut down the country

00:20:44.140 over a public health question. We've never shut down the world economy. Think about how many people

00:20:52.600 died from H1N1 flu before we really did very much of anything about it. But we've reacted much more

00:21:00.500 strongly to this coronavirus. Maybe the science doesn't back that up. Actually, there's even more

00:21:06.960 good news, which is that the virus is apparently not mutating very much. Now, if the virus mutates,

00:21:12.920 that means that drugs you develop to fight the virus are not going to be as effective at fighting

00:21:16.380 the virus. Also, if the virus mutates, it means that if you've already gotten it and you're immune,

00:21:21.060 that you might not be immune forever because you'll have a significantly different virus to

00:21:25.580 fight off in the future. Luckily, this virus is not mutating very much, which means that the drugs

00:21:30.620 might work and the immunity might hold. So that's the scientific front. What does this mean for Trump

00:21:35.800 politically, both the virus and the apparently new response to the virus? Some experts are saying

00:21:41.480 Trump is, experts, I put in quotes, are saying that Trump is totally destroying his political goodwill

00:21:47.300 here. I think it's exactly the opposite. We'll get to that in one second. First, I got to thank our

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00:22:57.660 coming out saying that maybe we've overreacted, Trump has pivoted back. And this is confusing

00:23:02.220 pundits who think that this is politically unproductive or counterproductive for Trump. So

00:23:07.840 initially, right, Trump says, hey, let's not overreact to this thing. Let's remain calm. Let's

00:23:14.020 see what the science says. He had a decent approval rating on the virus, but then the approval rating

00:23:20.020 started to fall as all of the stories about the virus killing millions of people started to come

00:23:26.300 out. The virus didn't really kill millions of people, but the stories said that the virus would

00:23:30.320 kill millions of people. So his approval rating drops. People thought he wasn't taking it seriously

00:23:34.220 enough. And then he starts taking it more seriously and the approval rating goes up again.

00:23:40.160 Well, okay, that's good. But now President Trump is saying maybe we'll be back open for business by

00:23:45.800 Easter. And his poll numbers are still doing very well. How do you make sense of this? Gallup is

00:23:52.360 showing his approval rating surging. 60% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of combating

00:23:59.200 coronavirus. 60%. Now that's Gallup. You know, Gallup isn't always the friendliest poll to Trump.

00:24:08.200 49% overall approve of his job performance. That includes 94% of Republicans. 27% of Democrats. That's

00:24:15.960 too bad. And 60% of independents. That's good. But what's important here is the movement. So among

00:24:21.240 Democrats, his approval rating has gone up six points during coronavirus. Among independents, his

00:24:26.680 approval rating has gone up eight points during coronavirus. How is that? How is this happening?

00:24:35.320 People want a president to take it seriously, but we don't want to shut down the entire economy.

00:24:39.700 And I think Trump is thinking about one week ahead here. So one week ahead, this whole thing really

00:24:47.040 stops being fun. You had last week, massive unemployment claims, more unemployment claims than we saw at the

00:24:52.780 peak of the 2009 financial crisis. We are going to see that increase. I mean, just the other day,

00:24:59.340 Marriott laid off another many, many thousands of people. So many businesses are laying off people,

00:25:04.880 if not going out of business altogether. So Trump is looking ahead. People might have wanted him to

00:25:11.420 take this virus super duper as seriously as humanly possible a week ago. Is that going to be true a week

00:25:17.440 from now? Probably not. Especially if the new scientific information that's coming out all over

00:25:22.580 the globe is accurate. They're not going to want to shut down the global economy if the mortality rate

00:25:28.920 is as low as 0.06%. I mean, we don't do that for any other threat to our lives or safety or health,

00:25:36.920 do we? We don't do that for the flu. We don't do that for car accidents. This in particular,

00:25:42.840 for some reason, the mainstream media are pushing this. We'll get to why in just a moment.

00:25:46.040 The other way you know that the tide is turning on coronavirus is that even some celebrities now

00:25:52.340 are making fun of the reaction to coronavirus. So Ryan Reynolds, very funny Hollywood star,

00:25:58.780 he's come out and he is mocking all of these self-obsessed slacktivists who are creating the

00:26:04.000 hysteria. Well, thank you, Prime Minister Trudeau. We need to work together to flatten the curve and

00:26:10.360 fight off COVID-19. Um, I think in times of crisis, I think we all know that it's, it's the,

00:26:16.660 it's the celebrities that we count on most. They're the ones who are going to get us through this.

00:26:22.580 Right after healthcare workers, of course, uh, first responders, people who work in essential

00:26:28.700 services, uh, ping pong players, uh, mannequins. They're great. Um, childhood imaginary friends.

00:26:37.460 Sure. Like 400 other types of people. Look, stay at home, uh, practice social distancing,

00:26:43.980 wash your hands. We are going to get through this thing. We're going to get through this thing

00:26:47.640 together. Um, and I'd like to nominate these three great Canadians to spread the word. Mr. Stephen Page,

00:26:52.380 uh, Constable Terry Reynolds of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Mr. Seth Rogen of the

00:26:58.940 Point Grey Rogans. All right. So this stands in stark contrast to the Imagine video the other day

00:27:09.160 of all those celebrities, some of whom I've never even seen before singing Imagine. It's really

00:27:14.540 sentimental and touchy feely and come on guys. And Ryan Reynolds comes out. He goes, yeah,

00:27:21.280 celebrities should shut up and wash your hands. Okay. Like we'll be fine. All right. Calm down. 0.98

00:27:26.040 This is all very promising news. Even if we start winding things down by Easter though,

00:27:29.880 that's still over two weeks away. Analysts right now are predicting 20% unemployment. Huge losses are

00:27:35.840 happening right now. The market rebounded a lot yesterday though. Right now it's unclear how the

00:27:41.260 market's reacting. So what are we going to do in the meantime? We're going to pass the largest

00:27:45.980 economic stimulus package in history. Hmm. How should conservatives feel about that? We tend

00:27:51.160 not to love economic stimulus packages. Should we get behind this one, which is truly the largest

00:27:55.800 in history. We will break down what's going on. Then we'll get a little bit into the 2020 race.

00:28:00.240 You remember the 2020 race? Me neither. It's been completely out of the news for a few weeks. And

00:28:04.700 that's been very helpful to the democratic 2020 contenders because the more you see of them,

00:28:08.980 the less you like them. Maybe, maybe that's their strategy. We'll get to all of that. But first

00:28:13.660 got to head on over to dailywire.com. You know, we have launched this new show,

00:28:18.000 All Access Live. And I say it's a show. I mean, we turn on a webcam. That's what the show is.

00:28:23.280 But this is for our All Access members. And during quarantine, we've been making this available

00:28:28.220 to all of our members because we know, you know, you're kind of locked in your apartments and we

00:28:31.780 want to hang out. We're locked in our apartments. You can see, welcome to my humble abode, Shea Knowles.

00:28:36.580 So it's been a lot of fun. Ben and Jeremy kicked it off. I did one last night. We're going to bring

00:28:41.080 these to you constantly throughout the coronavirus quarantine. And even afterward, we're going to

00:28:46.700 bring it, but we're only going to give it then to All Access members. So head on over to dailywire.com

00:28:52.340 slash subscribe. Do that right now. And by the way, while you're there,

00:28:56.520 get your mailbag questions in. We'll be doing that tomorrow. We'll be right back in just a moment.

00:29:00.940 We've got the largest stimulus package ever in United States history being passed by a

00:29:18.780 Republican president and Republican Senate. That's unusual. That doesn't usually happen,

00:29:25.640 does it? Here is President Trump's top economist, Larry Kudlow, announcing the package yesterday.

00:29:31.920 This package will be the single largest main street assistance program in the history of the

00:29:38.740 United States. The single largest main street assistance program in the history of the United

00:29:43.880 States. Phase two, delivered the sick leave for individuals, hourly workers, families, and so forth.

00:29:50.720 Phase three, a significant package for small businesses. Loan guarantees will be included.

00:29:58.460 We're going to take out expenses and lost revenues. As the president said, eligibility requires

00:30:04.540 worker retention. We will maintain the people eligible will maintain their payrolls during this

00:30:11.800 crisis period. And on top of that, we will have direct deposit checks of roughly $3,000

00:30:20.720 for a family of four. And that will bridge to enhanced, plussed up unemployment insurance benefits

00:30:28.120 that will essentially take those up to full wages.

00:30:32.540 You know, there's a Yiddish expression, which I can't pronounce because I don't speak Yiddish,

00:30:36.780 but I can give you the English translation. The expression is, if you're going to eat pork,

00:30:42.100 eat it till your mouth drips. If you're going to eat pork, enjoy it. And I think that's what's going

00:30:47.500 on with this stimulus package. Republicans don't love stimulus packages, okay? We don't want to be

00:30:52.740 in the position where we've got to pass stimulus packages. We like the economy to hum along. Until

00:30:57.260 three weeks ago, we had the best economy in the history of the world. Now Republicans are forced

00:31:01.960 into this position where we have to put a stimulus package out there because of totally bizarre

00:31:08.500 circumstances. And so there are two ways to do it. Either you can do a tepid stimulus that's very small,

00:31:13.680 and you do it kind of reluctantly, or you can pass the biggest stimulus package in history,

00:31:18.980 make sure it has some impact. And if you're going to eat pork, you're going to enjoy it.

00:31:23.800 This thing is massive, okay? It includes $2 trillion in direct assistance. It includes another

00:31:29.780 $4 trillion in Federal Reserve lending power. So the overall effect of the stimulus package is about

00:31:36.160 $6 trillion. Now, I guess the silver lining here is that $4.5 trillion of this stimulus package

00:31:44.820 isn't lending. It's not in just direct payouts. So I guess that's a good thing. Still, what should

00:31:51.020 conservatives think about this? Remember when we hammered Barack Obama over his stimulus package

00:31:55.800 in 2009? Remember when we hammered him on that for like 10 years? Now we're passing a much larger

00:32:01.400 stimulus package. Still, these are different situations. Conservatives should always be

00:32:07.600 skeptical of these massive government interventions. Conservatives should always be skeptical of direct

00:32:14.420 checks from the government to the people. But this is fundamentally different from the 2009 financial

00:32:22.120 crisis. Okay, in the 2009 financial crisis, the financial institutions that got bailed out were very

00:32:30.720 often responsible for the crisis in the first place. So not all the time. In some cases, the government

00:32:38.480 was responsible for putting financial institutions in a position where they had to make decisions that

00:32:44.900 were not very wise. But in other cases, these big financial institutions just knew that they would get

00:32:50.800 bailed out. So it was not a fair market. It wasn't a fair gamble. It's like going to a casino and saying

00:32:59.200 you're going to play. And then if you win money, then you're going to take the money out of the casino.

00:33:03.140 And if you lose money, the casino has got to pay. Right? That's what these financial institutions

00:33:07.640 were doing. And so the bailout really irritated a lot of people. This is different here. The people

00:33:14.260 who are getting bailed out are not to blame at all for what's going on right now. Coronavirus is to

00:33:21.720 blame. China is to blame. But not the individuals who are going to get bailouts and not the businesses

00:33:26.560 who are going to get bailouts. These businesses and individuals were doing just fine and dandy.

00:33:30.460 We had the best economy ever in the history of the world. And then this damned virus comes out of 0.99

00:33:35.840 communist China. And China covered it up for so many weeks that it's spread throughout the entire 1.00

00:33:40.140 world. And all of a sudden, the government comes in and says, you've got to shut down your business.

00:33:44.240 You can't make any more money. You can't leave your apartment. That's not their fault. I mean,

00:33:48.540 if the government is going to come in and do that and force the economy to shut down,

00:33:51.660 then the government has some responsibility to make up the difference here. People got to eat.

00:33:56.840 You know, people got to live. How are we going to do that? So one possibility for how to recover from

00:34:04.520 this total shutdown is to force basically waiters and bartenders and people who are a little more

00:34:16.540 vulnerable in the economy than big bankers to foot the entire bill, right? The alternative, I mean,

00:34:23.020 retail workers, right? These are the people who are being laid off. These are people who are being

00:34:26.200 most hurt by the crisis to say nothing of the restaurants and the retail stores. So you can

00:34:31.320 either force them to pick up the whole brunt of it, or we can all pick up some of the brunt of it.

00:34:37.120 And we can all pick it up through our duly elected representatives who we put into office

00:34:41.520 who are passing this bailout package. Kudlow explains this theory here in pretty simple terms.

00:34:47.480 Strong workforce requires strong business. You can't have a job without a business to work for.

00:34:51.900 And the hope here is that the companies that were operating very well at the beginning of the year,

00:34:57.220 when the economy was in good shape, we will help them and their employees get through this tough

00:35:03.200 period. So they will come out the other side, let's say this later this spring or summer,

00:35:08.880 and we'll continue their operations. That's the key point.

00:35:12.720 All right. I really like Larry Kudlow, and I really like what he's saying here.

00:35:17.540 Unlike the Democrat bailouts in 2009, there's no class warfare here.

00:35:24.520 Democrat bailouts any of the time, right? Even as the Democrats are passing this big bailout,

00:35:28.160 they're talking about the 1% and how evil the rich people are and the financial people.

00:35:34.080 Larry Kudlow is not doing that. He's not vilifying the business owners

00:35:37.540 on the one hand. He's not vilifying the low-wage workers on the other hand. Remember Mitt Romney's

00:35:43.860 47%? Mitt Romney said 47% of Americans are basically leeches. And that was filmed and 0.97

00:35:50.880 probably cost him the presidency. Certainly didn't help his campaign.

00:35:55.460 Larry Kudlow is not doing either of those. He's saying, hey guys, this thing happened,

00:36:01.320 totally unexpected, came out of nowhere. We got to help the workers. If we're going to help the

00:36:06.840 workers, we also have to help the businesses because you can't be a worker if you don't have

00:36:10.140 a business that you can work for. He's just calling it like it is. Now, there's a lot of

00:36:14.620 other stuff in this bailout as well. There are tax deferrals for corporations and individuals. I

00:36:20.200 really like that. They're pushing the tax deadline. There's student loan deferrals. That's probably a

00:36:25.520 smart idea, especially now if students aren't able to even go to class for the next six months or

00:36:31.180 something. A lot of schools have shut down for the rest of the year. They're not coming back until the

00:36:35.220 fall. So it makes sense, I think, to defer those student loans. Do we need the bailout?

00:36:41.780 Probably. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, we ground the entire national economy to a halt

00:36:47.820 artificially. And we can't just let all of those businesses collapse. If this had been a normal,

00:36:55.800 regular part of the economic cycle, then there's a very strong argument to let things play out as

00:37:01.340 they will. But this was not normal at all. There's nothing normal about coronavirus.

00:37:06.620 The most important takeaway, I think, from all of this is we need to recognize that coronavirus has

00:37:12.040 a cost. Okay, the days that you've gotten off from work, those have a cost. Those don't just come

00:37:19.240 from nowhere. Not dealing tougher with China in the past, allowing ourselves to get hooked on cheap 0.99

00:37:25.900 Chinese goods and allowing China to manufacture our medicine for the past however many years.

00:37:31.000 That has a cost. Okay, open borders has a cost. We are now paying for that cost. And the question

00:37:39.640 is, who's going to bear it? Is it going to be these waiters and bartenders? Or are we all going to bear

00:37:47.120 it? Probably we're all going to bear it. So overall, this was a great day yesterday for President Trump.

00:37:52.500 Great day for the markets. I think it was the single largest market gain ever. Market rose over

00:37:57.560 2,000 points. It was just a great day for America. So now we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

00:38:04.200 We need to turn our attention to that other minor political matter. Perhaps you've forgotten about it.

00:38:09.740 The 2020 presidential election. I'm sure you've forgotten about it because it's been completely

00:38:13.880 out of the news during coronavirus. Joe Biden mostly has this election locked up, doesn't he?

00:38:20.320 And yet Bernie Sanders is going to remain in the race. Bernie could have dropped out weeks ago,

00:38:25.860 but he chose not to. And I told you that he wouldn't drop out. He wouldn't drop out because

00:38:29.720 he's an ideological candidate. This is his last serious shot at it. He could try to run again

00:38:34.980 when he's 82. No one will take him seriously. Now they actually are taking him seriously.

00:38:42.060 The other reason is Joe Biden is just physically collapsing. I mean, the guy is falling apart.

00:38:47.360 So Bernie yesterday, well, did my voice just crack? Maybe I have coronavirus. Bernie yesterday,

00:38:52.520 I get so excited about 2020. He holds his own town hall while President Trump holds his town hall.

00:38:59.240 But Bernie Sanders is not the president. Bernie Sanders is never going to be the president.

00:39:02.900 So Trump's town hall, energetic, on point, focused, made some news, funny. It was a really good

00:39:12.080 performance. Bernie Sanders' town hall was not quite like that. Here's a quick peek at Bernie's

00:39:18.760 town hall. I struggled with biology in college, so that's going to manifest itself now. But

00:39:23.640 I can understand that somebody who has the virus sneezes in the face of somebody else,

00:39:30.300 you cough in somebody's face, the virus is transmitted. How is it transmitted if I'm simply

00:39:36.640 in a room? Somebody has the virus but is not coughing, is not sneezing? How could it be

00:39:42.940 transmitted in that situation? Oh, man, give me the virus. Put me out of my misery with this

00:39:50.540 town hall. It was very boring. It was rambling. It seemed a little bit fearful. He didn't seem in

00:39:58.580 command of the room. It was not a good performance. And yet Bernie's going to remain in the race because

00:40:03.680 Joe Biden is doing somehow even worse. Joe Biden was on ABC. He was on The Political View,

00:40:09.980 broadcasting, I take it, from his home because I think he's quarantining himself

00:40:12.980 because Joe Biden is very much at the at-risk age group. He is asked about the cure and he forms a

00:40:21.100 sentence that made it seem like he doesn't want a cure for coronavirus, like it'd be better not to

00:40:26.160 cure coronavirus. But really, I don't think you could even decipher what he meant because it wasn't

00:40:31.120 anything resembling proper English. Hot topics. We talked about Trump saying the government would

00:40:36.220 reassess the recommended period for keeping businesses shut and people at home. Are you

00:40:42.020 at all concerned, as Trump said, that we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself?

00:40:47.580 We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what.

00:40:53.920 We have to take care of the cure. That will make the problem worse no matter what. Yeah,

00:40:58.620 that's the guy I want in charge during a global pandemic. Yeah, oh man, it'd be so much better.

00:41:04.380 We'd be handling this so much better if that guy were in charge. In Joe's defense, he probably woke

00:41:10.140 up five minutes before this interview. He does not, this does not look like a guy who is running for

00:41:16.960 president. This does not look like a guy who's running for mayor. This looks like a guy who's been

00:41:21.040 retired from politics for a very long time and barely knows where he is. And it isn't just this

00:41:27.640 one club. It isn't just the millions of clubs we saw before. He kept it up. Same topic, same time

00:41:34.420 period, same living room that he's broadcasting from. He goes on MSNBC. I almost crawled out of my

00:41:41.140 skin from how awkward the interview was. And now all of a sudden he is being tough on China. He's

00:41:47.360 making sure. And now he's being soft on his xenophobia in the past. So I just can't figure the guy.

00:41:55.120 It's like, I don't know, it's like watching a yo-yo. I shouldn't have said it that way. It's

00:42:00.500 like watching. It feels that way. I want to ask. I want. It's okay.

00:42:08.620 Oh my God. And the girl at MSNBC is obviously in the tank for Biden. So she's, she's trying to make 0.99

00:42:17.840 this nice and normal. She's like, oh, Joe. Yeah, no, you're right. He's like a yo-yo or what? And

00:42:24.340 Joe knows that that's not a particularly effective talking point. So he stops himself. No, no, I

00:42:29.460 shouldn't have said that. What was I, what did I mean to say? What, what, what channel am I on?

00:42:33.940 Where's my, where am I? Where am I? He has this other problem in his campaign, which obviously he just

00:42:43.760 seems very old, but that puts him in the position of only reacting to Trump. So his whole campaign

00:42:50.500 from the very beginning was started on this lie that Donald Trump called Nazis, very fine people

00:42:55.540 at Charlottesville. Never happened. Go to the tape. But he started on that lie and he started it in just

00:43:00.980 pure opposition to Trump. There's no argument to vote for Joe Biden. There's only an argument to vote

00:43:05.780 against Donald Trump, but the politics of opposition doesn't usually work very well. You know,

00:43:11.520 in every presidential election in recent memory, the more charismatic, charismatic candidate

00:43:17.380 has won, has beaten the less charismatic candidate. Trump beat Hillary, right? Obama beat Romney.

00:43:27.080 Obama beat John McCain. George W. Bush beat John Kerry. George W. Bush beat Al Gore. Bill Clinton beat Bob

00:43:35.400 Dole. Bill Clinton beat George Bush the first. So Joe Biden, if he's just nothing, if he's just the

00:43:43.760 absence of Trump, he's not going to fare very well. He even says it in this interview. He says,

00:43:49.740 I just, I don't know, I can't figure the guy. He's got, I can't, right. If you're in the position of

00:43:55.120 trying to figure or not figure the guy, then that makes you a political pundit. That does not make you

00:43:59.940 the person who is going to defeat the guy in a presidential election. Joe can't even cough,

00:44:05.760 right? He's not even coughing, right? And he was doing an interview on CNN and he coughed,

00:44:11.420 hacked up a lung into his hand and CNN's Jake Tapper, no conservative, but Jake Tapper of all

00:44:17.020 people actually called him out for it. I've not talked to any individual. Excuse me. You know,

00:44:22.420 you're supposed to cough into your elbow. I don't know, sir. I learned that actually covering your

00:44:26.580 White House. No, actually, actually that's true. But fortunately I'm alone in my home,

00:44:31.500 but that's okay. All right. I agree. You're right. You should just, it's just, it's kind of old school

00:44:35.900 to do it with your hand, do it into the elbow. You're supposed to do it. Jake Tapper won't even

00:44:40.200 let it go. This actually, it seems like a minor point. This is actually a pretty telling comparison

00:44:45.340 here between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. So Joe Biden coughing into his hand on TV is very similar

00:44:50.900 to Trump at the press conference on public health, shaking everybody's hand. Remember that he said,

00:44:55.520 don't shake hands. Then he shakes everybody's hand. Both of them got called out for it. And in Trump's

00:44:59.900 case, he owned up to it. He said, oh yeah, it's a hard habit to break. You're a politician. You shake

00:45:04.280 people's hands, but I shouldn't do it. We're all learning not to do it. Cool. Fair enough.

00:45:09.660 Joe Biden gets called out for coughing into his hand. He goes, well, actually it's fine. Actually,

00:45:13.060 it's really good that I coughed into my hand. Actually, I'm smart and I'm doing what I should be

00:45:17.200 doing. Just say like, dude, just say it's, it's force of habit and you didn't mean to do it.

00:45:21.480 Biden's making excuses. Total lib move. So of course, Bernie Sanders is not getting out of the

00:45:27.880 race. This is the guy he's running against. And there's a fair chance that Joe just doesn't have

00:45:33.140 the stamina to make it to the nomination. The left is furious right now because they've got this awful

00:45:37.980 candidate for president who somehow even amidst a serious economic crisis and a global pandemic

00:45:44.880 still almost certainly can't beat Donald Trump. So they're furious about all the good news.

00:45:49.380 It now seems like it is an active effort to prolong the coronavirus epidemic. You know,

00:45:57.620 the Nevada governor, Steve Sisolak, is now banning hydroxychloroquine, which is the only drug,

00:46:03.760 apparently, that has shown any promise of treating coronavirus. He's now banned it for coronavirus

00:46:09.180 patients. Anecdotally, it hasn't gone through clinical trials, but anecdotally it's helped

00:46:13.640 coronavirus patients. But he's banned it based on a bogus excuse that a guy died from taking the drug.

00:46:21.600 But the guy didn't die from taking the drug. A guy died from taking fish tank cleaner that happens to

00:46:26.760 have part of the drug in it along with a lot of other poisons. Total nonsense. But they're banning it,

00:46:32.540 I think, because they want to drag this thing out. Democratic governors are now calling for weeks and

00:46:38.360 months and months more shutdowns, even if that is not necessary, even in the opinion of the public

00:46:43.960 health experts. Why? Because they want to keep this economy shut down through November so it helps

00:46:48.920 them politically. Nancy Pelosi did her damned best to stop relief for the coronavirus. She did as best 1.00

00:46:59.060 she could to torpedo the stimulus bill. Why? Democrats love stimulus bills. They love government spending. 1.00

00:47:04.580 They love direct checks to Americans, right? It doesn't matter because she knows it's going to

00:47:09.540 help. And so she wants to prolong the misery. Okay, that's fine. They can try to get that political

00:47:15.880 advantage. Unfortunately for them, the good news is apparently right around the corner. We've already

00:47:21.260 gotten a little bit of it and it looks like the future is promising. So let's bring it on and let's

00:47:25.980 hope that it continues all the way until Easter. Get your mailbag questions in. I'll see you tomorrow.

00:47:30.300 I'm Michael Knowles. This is The Michael Knowles Show.

00:47:34.580 If you enjoyed this episode, and frankly, even if you didn't, don't forget to subscribe.

00:47:43.160 And if you want to help spread the word, please give us a five-star review and tell your friends

00:47:47.560 to subscribe. We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

00:47:53.560 Also, be sure to check out the other Daily Wire podcasts, including The Ben Shapiro Show,

00:47:58.200 The Andrew Klavan Show, and The Matt Walsh Show.

00:48:00.680 The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Ben Davies and directed by Mike Joyner.

00:48:06.080 Executive producer, Jeremy Boren. Supervising producers, Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.

00:48:11.780 Technical producer, Austin Stevens. Assistant director, Pavel Widowski. Editor and associate

00:48:17.440 producer, Danny D'Amico. Audio mixer, Robin Fenderson. Hair and makeup, Nika Geneva. Production

00:48:24.500 assistant, Ryan Love. The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2020.

00:48:30.680 Hey everyone, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show. The press now wants to censor

00:48:36.240 Donald Trump's press conferences because they're making him too popular. But if they want to replace

00:48:40.540 orange man bad with white man stupid, the one they should really censor is rambling Joe. 1.00

00:48:45.480 We'll take a look at it on The Andrew Klavan Show. I'm Andrew Klavan. 1.00

The Michael Knowles Show - March 25, 2020

Ep. 517 - Finally, Some Good News!

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