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Feb. 28, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:07:40

The Black Swan | Ep. 963

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	Coronavirus tanks the stock market, Joe Biden seeks a big comeback victory, and perhaps we check the mailbag.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN Podcasts.
	Protect your data from prying eyes at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Alrighty, so the market is tanking again today.
	As of this morning, it was dropping almost a thousand points again below 25,000, which means that we've seen a significant market selloff over the course of the last five days, all the way down from about 29,000, all the way down to below 25,000.
	That is a market correction.
	Anything below 10% down, Is a market correction we have seen well below 10% down and this is leading to questions about how real this drop is.
	Is this going to last?
	Are we going to see a gradual rise again as the market improves based on the market pricing in all of the global supply chain disruptions?
	What you are seeing in the news today is people trying to make political hay out of this thing.
	There's just no question this is happening and it's really a point of irritation to watch the media who are definitely spinning people into a panic over this thing.
	Try to pretend that they are not involved in spinning people into a panic over this thing.
	Or Democrats, who continue to claim that the government response is completely lackluster, then claim, how dare President Trump responds to our claims that he is botching a pandemic response?
	I mean, the fact is that there are people out there who, without evidence, are suggesting that a pandemic is directly on the horizon, that the United States is going to be hit with a wave that it is unprepared for.
	And not only that, but that President Trump is solely responsible for this.
	You've seen Democrats out there claiming that the stock market drop is somehow reflective of President Trump's inability to quell A president said something so strange that you really have to wonder.
	He said the reason the market dropped is because of the debate the other night.
	markets.
	The markets dropped even as Trump was talking.
	A president said something so strange that you really have to wonder.
	He said the reason the market dropped is because of the debate the other night.
	Well, the market had dropped 1,800 points before the debate the other night.
	The market dropped while he was speaking yesterday in his press conference.
	So, you know, So, you know, let's not be silly about what that is.
	Okay, what that is, is global supply chains being disrupted.
	The fact is that the United States has very strong underlying economic fundamentals by every expert that I have talked to and most experts out there.
	The U.S.
	is not the problem.
	With the global economy right now.
	The global economy is in trouble, specifically because of China.
	And because when China's supply chains disrupt global supply chains, it slows down the ability of customers to buy.
	It slows down the ability of distributors to distribute.
	It slows down the ability of producers to produce.
	And this means that you have holdups.
	And that means that companies are not able to fulfill their orders.
	It means that they are not able to make money and then they're not able to pay off those debts.
	So China's mishandling of this entire thing from the very outset, It just demonstrates the dangers of investing heavy amounts of money in factories and authoritarian dictatorships that are more willing to kill their own people for speaking openly about threats like coronavirus than they are to actually crack down on coronavirus after the cat is already out of the bag, after the hen is already out of the coop.
	So the fact is this has really nothing to do with the United States.
	This has to do with China botching this thing.
	It has to do with the fact that the European economy was already on relatively shaky footing.
	Their growth rates were already incredibly low.
	We've had on Mohamed El-Erian, who's now getting all sorts of credit.
	He's the head of Alianz.
	He's getting all sorts of credit, correctly so, for forecasting a couple of days ago, don't buy into the stock market drop yet.
	Wait a little bit more, because it's really a stock market correction.
	He's been on my show pointing out that the fundamentals of the economy in the United States are fine.
	It's the fundamentals of the economy in Europe that are a real problem, because Europe has been blowing out the spending, because Europe has not actually got its debt in line with its spending, because European growth rates have been low, and because China's growth rates have been unduly inflated.
	And so he was predicting for a long time that as central banks continue to manipulate currencies in order to keep the market up, eventually they would run out of bullets in their gun and you would have to see some actual underlying fundamental economic changes in places like Europe and China in order to sustain growth.
	That's what you're seeing here.
	You're not seeing correction based on failures of American policy.
	You're seeing corrections here based on failures of European and Chinese policy specifically.
	And you're seeing what happens when vulnerable global supply lines Actually become vulnerable.
	The fact is globalization is fantastic in the sense that if you can widely distribute The factors of production across various country lines, you can make that cheaper, you can make it quicker, you can make products more easily and better.
	All of that is true.
	It also means that just as if you were playing a game of telephone, the chances are much better that the longer the line goes on, somebody is going to miss the message somewhere in the middle.
	Well, the longer the supply chain is, the better chances that there is some sort of disruption in one of those areas, and that disruption is going to affect the entire supply chain.
	So companies are constantly trying to evaluate what are the sort of downside risks here.
	This event is sort of a black swan.
	A black swan is an event that is completely unforeseen.
	It's somewhat unforeseeable.
	It's an event that is so large and out of the box that nobody has really planned for it.
	There was no real contingency plan for it.
	Now, I think it's fair to say that people should have taken into account that China was a significant area of risk for a very long time.
	I mean, the fact is, again, it's an authoritarian regime.
	That means that they can shift policy at a moment's notice.
	But more than that, There have been a series of diseases coming out of China, ranging from bird flu to SARS, right?
	And all of these diseases coming out of China, maybe that should have been more predictable that something like this would happen, but they were cropping up once every few years.
	They really did not disrupt global supply lines the way that this has disrupted global supply lines.
	So it was sort of an unforeseeable black swan.
	To blame that on Trump, or to suggest that that is reflective of underlying problems in the American economy, Is really not true, particularly since President Trump has been very harsh on China, right?
	President Trump has suggested that investments in China are actually a mistake in the first place and that we should be bringing a lot more of those investments home.
	And I think companies in the future are going to think twice about whether they want to invest in China based on the factor that you never know five years from now whether China is simply going to step in and declare that all business in the country is done, right?
	That they're just not going to operate anymore.
	We'll get into more of this in just one second, and the sort of parochial nature of Americans' view of the economy, which is that everything in the American economy is reliant on the American economy alone.
	That just is not true.
	It's never been true.
	It's why it's always very silly.
	I mean, I've said this while Trump was president.
	I think it's very silly for any one president to be credited with a stock market drop or a stock market increase, unless the president takes policies that are directly related to a stock market crash.
	Very often, global economic factors have very little to do with sort of the tinkering around the margins that presidents tend to do.
	We'll get into more of this in just one second.
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	Okay, so the New York Times reporting on the real reasons why this thing is dropping.
	And the lead is always buried.
	But the reality, again, is that the cause of the global stock market drop is not the United States.
	It is pretty much everybody else.
	The global stock market, according to the New York Times, slid for the sixth straight day on Thursday.
	Of course, it's sliding again today.
	On Friday, the S&P 500 slid 4.4% on Thursday.
	As I say again, as of early trading this morning, the stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, was down another 1,000 points.
	The downturn continued on Friday as Asian markets closed sharply lower and European stocks tumbled at the start of trading.
	The widening scope of the health crisis threatens to overwhelm global supply chains, especially in China, the world's second largest economy after the United States.
	In addition, the outbreak could crush consumer demand as people limit travel or stay home even without a government order to do so.
	And this is where the uncertainty really comes in.
	It's why China has really botched this thing.
	Because even if China had an outbreak, but they were transparent about what exactly was going on, the market could price in the information.
	That's what markets do.
	Markets are fantastic at pricing in information.
	There's a theory of the stock market that is called the efficient markets theory.
	There's sort of a strong version and a weak version.
	The strong efficient markets theory says that no single trader can ever beat the stock market in general because it is a collectivized aggregation of all knowledge on a particular topic.
	The more information is available, the more the stock market is able to price it in.
	When you see tremendous stock market drops like you've seen over the last week, what that means is tremendous uncertainty.
	It means that people are trying to figure out exactly how much uncertainty there is in the global market, exactly how much information has been made available, and the fact that China has been very stingy about the information that they've actually put out there is the rationale for this drop because investors are trying to figure out, okay, well, I'm not sure whether this thing is going to continue for a month or six months.
	I'm not sure whether we're going to see cancellations of public events.
	Already in Switzerland, they've cancelled, apparently, all public events over a thousand people.
	Not sure why a thousand people is the limit, but you could easily see something like that in the United States if this outbreak starts to worsen.
	You could see public, I mean, sporting events could be shut down, for example.
	Scott Clemens, the chief investment strategist for private bankers at Brown Brothers Harriman, said the outbreak's potential to alter American consumers' habits was at the heart of the sell-off.
	To the degree that consumers change their behavior, so they stop going out to eat, they don't take the vacation, they cancel the business trip, that consumption, that spending, personal consumption, is 68% of GDP.
	Over the past few days, companies as varied as United Airlines, MasterCard, and Pfizer have said the outbreak poses a threat to their 2020 earnings.
	Analysts at Goldman Sachs predict that companies in the S&P 500 would generate no profit growth the entire year as a result of the crisis because of a severe decline in Chinese economic activity.
	On Wednesday, President Trump tried to address the outbreak and said that the risk to the United States was low, but people aren't really confident in that because, frankly, even the United States government doesn't know enough about coronavirus.
	Again, this is the problem with China withholding all sorts of information.
	Nobody knows the death rate.
	There are two real factors, as I discussed yesterday, in deciding what the risk factors are with regard to coronavirus.
	One is the transmission rate, and the other is the death rate, and we don't have good information on either one of those.
	Because China has not been revealing the information and you're seeing widely variant reports across the globe on the impact of coronavirus.
	You are seeing that coronavirus in Iran is killing like a crapload of people, but coronavirus in Italy isn't killing that many people.
	Which is not like a major shock, considering that public health in Iran is garbage, and the government of Iran is garbage.
	A bunch of their top ministers have gotten coronavirus over in Iran, according to Farnaz Fasihi and Rick Gladstone reporting for the New York Times.
	A senior figure in Iran's government who sits just a few seats away from President Hassan Rouhani at cabinet meetings.
	That's just what's been reported.
	coronavirus, making her Iran's seventh official to test positive, including one prominent cleric who has died.
	There have been almost 300 deaths in Iran.
	That's just what's been reported.
	Vice President Masuma Ebtikar, Mr. Rouhani's deputy for women's affairs and the highest ranking woman in the government, also one of the lead revolutionaries during the Iranian revolution in which they took hostages.
	She was actually one of the hostage takers.
	So she's a delightful human being.
	She has a confirmed coronavirus infection.
	Couldn't happen to a nicer gal.
	Is quarantined at home.
	That his closure came a day after a cabinet meeting in which she was in close contact with other government leaders, including Rouhani.
	A photo posted by a BBC Persia reporter on Twitter showed she was sitting within a few yards of Rouhani.
	She was known as Mary during the Tehran hostage crisis four decades ago.
	Iran now appears to have the highest number of government officials infected by coronavirus.
	It was officially first reported in the holy Iranian city of Qom on February 19th.
	The disease is believed to have spread to the country from China, which retains close economic relations with Iran.
	They've already reported something like 26, it was 245 people infected, something like 26 deaths already.
	But health experts estimate the number of infections is far higher because the country's fatality rate of about 20% seems so high compared to other countries.
	Meanwhile, we've seen that In Italy, coronavirus is shutting down public activity, but we're not seeing tons of deaths.
	So there is a wide difference in how countries' death rates are varying and transmission rates are varying as well.
	Because we don't have enough information, the stock market is trying to price in a tremendous amount of uncertainty right now.
	So when you see that stock market dip, what you should recognize is that if as information emerges, it turns out that coronavirus is really not going to have as grave an impact on global health rates as it was originally suspected it might, then you're going to see the stock market quickly reprice and people buy back in.
	The question is where the bottom is and nobody really knows the answer.
	My guess is that we are approaching the bottom because uncertainty seems like it's at its height right now.
	I'm not recommending that people go and buy stocks.
	All I'm saying is that I would be looking in the very near future to buy stocks given the stock market dip that has taken place over the last few days.
	Whenever the stock market drops this much, that tends to be a fairly good time to buy stocks, not a great time to sell stocks.
	You don't want to sell into a dropping market.
	Buying into a dropping market's a good idea.
	And by the way, when people say my 401k is worth less, that's true.
	Your 401k is worth less, but if you're not cashing it out, it doesn't really matter.
	And Warren Buffett was once asked how much money he lost during the 2007-2008 stock market crash, and he said, I didn't lose a dime because I didn't sell a stock.
	As long as you don't realize the loss, the loss is not realized, which is something good to keep in mind when you're panicking over the value of your 401k.
	If you don't have to access your 401k right now, doesn't really matter.
	You can wait another year, the stock market goes back up, which, by the way, is the best investment strategy.
	Buy and hold is a very, very good investment strategy over time.
	Playing around with the stock market is generally not a great investment strategy.
	The outbreak of coronavirus in and around Milan is light years from the horrors of the plague.
	For now, only just over a dozen people have died.
	They were elderly or with serious underlying health conditions.
	And this seems to be the pattern.
	Even in the Chinese statistics that have been made available, the death rates are much higher for older people and people with pre-existing conditions than they are for people who are young.
	Nonetheless, people are staying home.
	People are freaked out.
	You can see the pictures from Milan.
	It's a bustling city.
	But now, basically everybody is staying home.
	On Via Alessandro Manzoni, hardly any cars or people went by, and long lines of white taxis waited for fares that didn't come.
	It led down to Piazza del Duomo, where Milan's landmark cathedral, usually crammed with tourists and people rushing to the subway, was mostly empty.
	Only a few tourists, often wearing masks, showed up and took pictures of themselves, swarmed in gray clouds of the pigeons they fed, out of their hands.
	La Scala is still shuttered.
	The shopkeepers and bars and stores stared absentmindedly out the windows or checked their phones.
	Again, none of this is a grave shock.
	Everybody is being very cautious at this point.
	Meanwhile, in the United States, There's been a lot of focus on California because there are apparently 8,400 people who are being monitored in the state of California.
	Our Ken Doll of a governor, Gavin Newsom, who has presided over one of the worst health crises in modern California history in terms of a massive homeless crisis that has spread disease in areas like downtown Los Angeles.
	Gavin Newsom came out yesterday and announced that we are monitoring 8,400 people and that 33 confirmed cases of coronavirus have cropped up in California alone.
	Thousands and thousands of other people have come in on more traditional flights through the state of California.
	Some 8,400 plus are currently being monitored with 49 local jurisdictions doing those protocols and monitoring as it relates to more traditional commercial flights that came in from points of concern and potential points of contact, particularly in Asia.
	Okay, so 8,400 people is a lot of people to monitor.
	The people they're monitoring are people who have had points of contact in China.
	We have seen the first case in California.
	This is the one that's kind of freaky.
	The first case of what they call a community infection, meaning we have no idea where the person got the coronavirus infection.
	According to the New York Times, coronavirus diagnosis in California is highlighting testing flaws.
	Doctors suspected that one person was infected with coronavirus for days, but the patient didn't fit the federal criteria because they hadn't been in contact with anyone from China, and they weren't tested for days, which means they were running around the state of California.
	Without any testing protocol in place.
	Even before the announcement on Wednesday, frustration had been mounting among health providers and medical experts that the agency was testing too few Americans, which may slow preparations for an outbreak and may obscure the scope of infections.
	Lauren Sauer, Director of Operations at Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, says, CDC officials said on Thursday they had not been made aware that doctors in California made an urgent appeal for diagnostic testing of the woman.
	By the end of the day, the agency had revised and broadened its testing criteria, adding to the number of Americans who qualify.
	Right now they're saying there is a shortage of testing kits, so all the talk about testing everybody, that apparently is not a thing that is possible right now.
	CDC is worrying that maybe the health system gets overwhelmed, but the fact is that we are going to be spending billions of dollars on this thing.
	I mean, billions of dollars.
	Okay, we're going to get into more of what the government has been doing, where the shortcomings are, in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the problems with fixing your car.
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	Your car is now more complex than ever.
	You probably can't go to the local auto parts store, get what you need, and walk out with exactly the right part for your car because parts have become so specific.
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	Go to RockAuto.com right now, see all the parts available for your car or truck, write Shapiro in their How Did You Hear About Us box so they know that we sent you again.
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	Okay, so updates from ABC News.
	The FDA is now announcing that the issue of a drug shortage is a possibility.
	Again, these drugs will be ramped up fairly quickly, you would imagine.
	Japan has reported a couple additional Diamond Princess cruise ship deaths.
	The individuals were a British man and a Japanese woman.
	They were the fifth and sixth passengers to die from coronavirus after being aboard the quarantined cruise ship.
	Of course, like 700 people were actually infected on that quarantined cruise ship.
	Not a huge surprise that that many people die, because if there were 800 people infected aboard the cruise ship and six or seven people die, that's obviously tragic and it's obviously terrible, but that means that the death rate is not 10% or 20% or even 5%.
	Right now, China still leads the way in terms of number of infections.
	Apparently, at least 2,800 people, according to the WHO.
	South Korea has the second highest national total of coronavirus cases behind China.
	Of the more than 81,000 people tested in that country, about 2,300 had tested positive for coronavirus.
	More than 30,000 others were waiting test results at this point.
	Meanwhile, a majority of the cases who were on board the Diamond Princess cruise ships, the people in the United States who were diagnosed with the disease, they were on board that Diamond Princess cruise ship that was placed under quarantine in Japanese waters.
	No American has yet died from coronavirus.
	The CDC is investigating the source of the various infections that have been seen around the country.
	The FDA said on Thursday it was not aware of any reports at this time of human illnesses that suggest the coronavirus can be transmitted by food or by food packaging.
	Meanwhile, there's the other big story today from the U.S.
	government is that a whistleblower within the U.S.
	Department of Health and Human Services had filed a complaint alleging that more than a dozen workers were sent to receive the first Americans repatriated from Wuhan, China without proper training or protective gear for coronavirus infection control.
	This was reported by the Washington Post.
	They suggest that the coronavirus basically was treated without any sort of protective gear, according to this whistleblower.
	The underlying complaint, apparently, has not been substantiated at this point.
	A spokesperson for the U.S.
	Office of Special Counsel confirmed it received the whistleblower complaint and that the case has been assigned.
	When asked for comment, U.S.
	U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Caitlin Oakley told ABC News, we take all whistleblower complaints very seriously and are providing the complainants all appropriate protections under the Whistleblower Protection Act.
	We're evaluating the complaint.
	Have nothing further to add at this time.
	ABC News has not revealed the complaint.
	Lawyers representing the whistleblower have refused to provide the complaint.
	One of the whistleblower's attorneys told ABC News that the allegations laid forth are accurate.
	He says, we are hopeful Congress and the OSC will investigate this case in a timely and comprehensive manner.
	There's no evidence, by the way, that anybody who actually met the folks coming back from Wuhan, that any of those folks were actually infected with coronavirus.
	Nonetheless, that is leading to questions about the federal handling of this entire situation.
	Now, with all of that said, there's no question that the Democrats and the media are making hay out of all this.
	Brian Stelter was saying, we may be looking at a crisis, and meanwhile, we're having a crisis in leadership.
	Okay, we're not anywhere near crisis point in the United States at this point, guys.
	We are just not.
	We're not.
	And the fact is that we have double digit numbers of actual infected in the United States.
	There's only 60 total infected in the United States.
	In a country of 330 million people, we have zero deaths so far.
	So the notion that we are like on the verge of a widespread outbreak, Now, this stuff is fluid, it could move, but there's no evidence at this point that a pandemic is in the offing in the United States, particularly since the US has done a fairly good job, it seems so far, of quarantining people.
	Meanwhile, over in Israel, There are reports that Israeli scientists are on the cusp of developing the first vaccine against the novel coronavirus, according to Science and Technology Minister Ofer Akunas.
	I look forward to Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar suggesting boycott, divestment and sanction from the coronavirus vaccine because it's produced in Israel.
	If all goes as planned, the vaccine could be ready within a few weeks and available in 90 days, according to a press release.
	Congratulations to the Galilee Research Institute on this exciting breakthrough, said the Science and Technology Minister Acunas.
	I am confident there will be further rapid progress enabling us to provide a needed response to the grave global COVID-19 threat.
	For the past four years, scientists have been developing a vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus, which causes a bronchial disease affecting poultry.
	The effectiveness of that vaccine had been proven in preclinical trials.
	So we'll see how well this coronavirus vaccine works, but at least there are some glimmers of hope on the horizon.
	But this is not stopping anybody in the media from speculating that the end of the world is upon us.
	We're going to get to that in a second, because that really is the big story in the United States.
	Right now, the big story is not the actual coronavirus outbreak, because there is no coronavirus outbreak in the United States.
	The big story in the United States is twofold.
	One, the drop in the stock market, which again, is not attributable to Trump.
	It is attributable to the weakness of the global economy and the fact that China has screwed everything up.
	And two, it is the Democrats and the media trying to spin this thing into crisis.
	And again, the evidence just ain't there for crisis at this point.
	We'll get there in just one second.
	First, let's talk about making your business more efficient.
	Now, now would be a good time to think about making your business more efficient, right?
	I mean, we may be looking at the possibility of an economic downturn.
	Goldman Sachs suggesting that S&P 500 companies are not going to have profits this year.
	If your business is a business that requires profit, One thing that you definitely need is control of your data, right?
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	Okay, so the Democrats, meanwhile, have been trying to spin this thing as a failure to the Trump administration.
	As I say, President Trump's original comments about the coronavirus were very silly.
	He He came out and then he suggested that he spelled it wrong.
	He came out and he said that we're on the verge of a vaccine in the United States.
	That wasn't true.
	And then his people had to come out and say he meant the Ebola vaccine.
	What the president should have done is what all presidents should do in case of crisis.
	Immediately turn to your experts, put your experts in charge, and then just hands off.
	My experts are in charge.
	They know epidemiology better than I do.
	A very easy solution.
	The president, however, has an unfortunate habit of running over to Twitter and then just saying things.
	And that, of course, is not smart.
	However, the president does have a right to push back against Democrats who have been claiming falsely that the end of the world is upon us.
	Even the Associated Press called out Democrats yesterday.
	The Associated Press, which is no right-wing source, reported that Democrats who keep suggesting that President Trump is defunding the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, or decreasing the National Institute for Health budget, The AP says these people are wrong.
	You say that this is just not true.
	Trump's budget's proposed cuts to public health only to be overruled by Congress, where there is strong bipartisan support for agencies like the CDC and the NIH.
	Instead, funding has increased.
	Indeed, the money that government disease detectives first tapped to fight the latest outbreak was a congressional fund created for health emergencies.
	Some public health experts say a bigger concern than White House budgets is the steady erosion of a CDC grant program for state and local public health emergency preparedness.
	But that decline was set in motion by a congressional budget measure that comes before Trump.
	The broader point about there being nobody here to coordinate the response is not true.
	The public health—I mean, this is the AP, right?
	This is not me.
	This is the AP.
	The public health system has a playbook to follow for pandemic preparation, regardless of whose president or whether specific instructions are coming from the White House.
	Those plans were put into place in anticipation of another flu pandemic, but are designed to work for any respiratory-borne disease.
	Among the health authorities overseeing the work are Dr. Anne Schuchat, CDC's principal deputy director and veteran of previous outbreaks, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH's infectious disease chief, who has advised six presidents.
	John Auerbach, president of the Nonpartisan Trust for America's Health, says the CDC's response has been excellent, as it has been in the past.
	our back says cdc's top scientific ranks have remained stable during the past three years now there may be problems going forward but that is not because of cuts that trump supposedly undertook and this is but this is not stopping the media from speculating and speculating and I mean, they are indeed trying to whip people into a frenzy over all this, which, by the way, may provide you a buying opportunity in the stock market if the stock market is responding to that ridiculous feeding frenzy.
	The Washington Post has several pieces today trying to suggest that the White House response is lackluster, despite the fact that we're like a week into the White House response.
	According to Beth Reinhart, Emma Brown, and Nina Satieja over at the Washington Post.
	The White House official charged with leading the U.S.
	response to deadly pandemics left nearly two years ago as his global health security team was disbanded.
	Federal funding for preventing and mitigating the spread of infectious disease has been repeatedly threatened since President Trump's election.
	But by the way, repeatedly threatened does not mean that it was cut.
	It was not actually cut.
	By the way, this is one area of government spending that actually makes a difference.
	If you're talking about pandemic prevention, there are a thousand other places to cut in American government.
	Pandemic prevention seems like a fairly good place to actually put some federal money.
	Despite the mounting threat of a coronavirus outbreak in the United States, Trump says he has no regrets about those actions and that expertise and resources can be quickly ramped up to meet current needs.
	But again, the cuts never took place.
	So the Washington Post is proclaiming that cuts took place that never happened.
	The Washington Post is trying to stir up a feeling of unease about the federal government's response.
	When again, there's no evidence that the CDC at the top levels is understaffed.
	There's no evidence that the CDC is underfunded at this point.
	Trump is going back to Congress for more money tomorrow.
	If we have to spend money, it's not as though the federal government is unable to spend money.
	The federal government spends $4 trillion a year.
	A few billion dollars is not going to, like, the question is where you allocate for that in future budgets to repay.
	But lest you forget, we have $22 trillion in debt here in the United States.
	in federally undertaken debt in the United States.
	So racking up a few more billion ain't gonna bankrupt the United States.
	Former federal officials and public health experts argue that an effective response to an epidemiological crisis demands sustained planning and investment, while the administration's response to coronavirus, says the Washington Post, has been criticized in recent weeks as slow and disjointed.
	People in and outside the White House have warned for years the nation is ill-prepared for a dangerous pandemic.
	Okay, let me just remind you.
	People said exactly the same thing about Ebola.
	People said exactly the same thing about bird flu.
	There has yet to be a federal response to a disaster in my lifetime in which people said, ah, the federal government really handled that thing beautifully.
	Because guess what?
	The federal government ain't God.
	They can only do what they can do.
	And the fact is, that most of the time, they're gonna botch something.
	Because that's what the federal government does.
	They're a big botchery.
	The only question is whether they are the best available resource at this given point in time.
	And right now, they basically are.
	Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security says, you build a fire department ahead of time, you don't wait for a fire.
	There's an underappreciation for the amount of time and resources required to build a prepared system.
	But again, we have a prepared system when it comes to flu.
	The question is how large the ramp up is.
	President Obama, in 2014, appointed Ronald Klain, a veteran Democratic operative, to serve as Ebola czar.
	Now, by the way, this should be noted.
	Remember that time when everybody said that it's very bad that Mike Pence was made the coronavirus czar here?
	People ripping on Mike Pence, specifically ripping on Mike Pence because when he was governor of Indiana, he didn't stand in favor of needle exchanges and so they blame him for an HIV outbreak because of needle exchanges, which is just an absurdity at the highest level.
	It is not the responsibility of the government to provide you free needles, clean needles so you can shoot up.
	Okay, that is a very controversial public policy issue.
	To blame Mike Pence for an HIV outbreak because he didn't provide government-provided free needles to people is just an insane contention.
	Nonetheless, people are ripping on Pence.
	Well, how could you appoint Pence to this thing?
	President Obama appointed Ronald Klain a Democratic operative.
	The Obama administration, according to the Washington Post, also set up a special National Security Council team to oversee epidemic preparedness on a permanent basis.
	Okay, but would we be significantly better off if that guy were employed right now?
	year in office before John Bolton dismantled the unit when he took over as NSA in 2018.
	That led to the abrupt departure of its leader, Rear Admiral Timothy Zimer, who had led the White House's anti-malaria efforts under Obama and George W. Bush.
	Okay, but would we be significantly better off if that guy were employed right now?
	Not a ton of evidence to suggest that that would be the case.
	It was a clear loss, and now we are behind the balls.
	Had a former White House official familiar with Zemer's team.
	They had the context and the relationships and knew who to talk to.
	Okay, I have a feeling that people can find phone numbers in the federal government.
	Like really, I have a feeling that this is just trying to whip people into a ridiculous level.
	a frenzy over government shortcomings that have yet to be proved in the Washington Post.
	And they ran like three pieces like this yesterday.
	They ran a bunch of pieces like this yesterday trying to suggest shortcomings in the White House.
	This is a political issue.
	I mean, the Democrats are trying to make this political and it really should not be political.
	Mike Pence yesterday came out.
	He said, listen, we have no higher priority than coronavirus.
	I mean, we are working on this thing.
	President Donald Trump has no higher priority than the health, safety and well-being of the American people.
	As the president said yesterday, we're ready.
	Thank you.
	We're ready for anything.
	Yesterday, President Trump directed me to lead a whole-of-government approach to address the coronavirus in this country.
	And I promise you, We will continue to bring the full resources of the federal government to bear to protect the American people.
	And you know what?
	That's probably true.
	I mean, and when I say that's probably true, I mean, like, what would be the upside of not bringing the full force of the federal government to bear on something that's at the tip of everybody's tongue?
	What Penn says there is the proper response.
	That is the proper response.
	Democrats, however, are trying to complain about this thing endlessly.
	I mean, it's so bad that even Democrats were storming out of a meeting with other Democrats after Democrats were complaining about the Trump response.
	We'll bring you that story in just one second.
	First, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire subscriber.
	Today, it's Daniel Stahl on Twitter, who's clearly living the dream.
	In this picture, Daniel is holding the world's most elite beverage vessel while driving his tractor through some gorgeous farm property, America.
	The caption reads, listening to Apollo 11, what we saw.
	Fantastic podcast while operating from my John Deere command module, drinking some black coffee in my real daily wear, leftist tears tumbler, hashtag leftist tears tumbler.
	That is indeed a fantastic product produced with our friend Bill Whittle.
	If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out his latest show, The Cold War, what we saw.
	It's really good stuff.
	Thanks for the pick, Daniel.
	And thank you most of all for serving our nation as a United States Marine.
	Seriously, dude, what a stud.
	Also, guess what?
	Tomorrow is Saturday, February 29th.
	That makes it Leap Day, a day that only comes once every four years.
	Will my child be born on Leap Day?
	Who the hell knows?
	Frankly, that's a good thing because we're about to offer you an amazing deal to become a Daily Wire Insider Plus member.
	The deal would literally bankrupt us if we actually tried to run it more than one day.
	So tomorrow, go to dailywire.com slash subscribe and try to bankrupt us by taking advantage of this very special offer.
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	So it's extremely time-sensitive.
	It expires at midnight Pacific time, 3 a.m.
	for those of you on the East Coast.
	Be sure to check out our website, anywhere you follow us on social media.
	I'll also be doing a leap day drop on my podcast feed, so you can hear more about the deal.
	I really can't wait to share this with you.
	So go check it out while you have the chance.
	Remember, that is dailywire.com slash subscribeyourlistening.
	to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	How irritating has the Democratic and media response It's even irritating other Democrats.
	According to Politico, several House Republicans walked out of a closed-door coronavirus meeting on Friday with Trump health officials in protest after a senior Democrat, who looks a lot like Keith Richards for some reason, blasted the Trump administration's handling of the response effort.
	Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut kicked off the briefing sharply criticizing the administration as disorganized and lacking urgency in combating the coronavirus.
	Her eight-minute speech frustrated Republicans and some Democrats.
	There's only one problem.
	Other Democrats were pissed off at DeLauro.
	They were like, what are you doing?
	Like, we're all on the same page here.
	Here's what Politico didn't put in the headline.
	You see, Republicans storm out of coronavirus briefing after Democrat rips Trump's response.
	There's only one problem.
	Other Democrats were pissed off at DeLauro.
	They were like, what are you doing?
	Like, we're all on the same page here.
	Seriously, this is where, really?
	Representative Paul Mitchell of Michigan, Republican, said if I wanted to hear the politics of it, I'd read Politico.
	DeLauro's comments were indicative of the growing political tensions around the Trump administration's handling of the coronavirus response.
	Trump, who's tried to publicly downplay the virus through misleading claims just after midnight, took to Twitter to complain that Democrats were pinning the crisis on him.
	And of course, that's true.
	I mean, the Democrats are trying to pin the crisis on him.
	Trump says, he tweeted out, So the coronavirus, which started in China and spread to various countries throughout the world, but very slowly in the U.S.
	because President Trump closed our border and ended flights very early, is now being blamed by the do-nothing Democrats to be the fault of Trump.
	And then he said that Democratic lawmakers were wasting time on other legislative priorities.
	He says the do-nothing Democrats were busy wasting time on the immigration hoax and anything else they could do to make the Republican Party look bad, while I was busy calling early border and flight closings put us way ahead in our battle with coronavirus.
	Dems called it very wrong.
	That's kind of factual.
	By the way, again, even Democrats were annoyed by this ridiculous Rosa DeLauro character grandstanding on this issue.
	Donna Shalala, who led the health department under Bill Clinton, said no one wanted to hear that, either Democrats or Republicans.
	We just wanted to hear the substance.
	DeLauro, the leading health appropriator, accused the administration of a lack of urgency and warned there were several crucial questions that remained unanswered.
	As lawmakers transferred to a bigger room, a visibly frustrated DeLauro told colleagues she didn't give a rat's ass about the reaction and that members needed answers from the administration.
	The briefing was led by the CDC director Robert Redfield and NIH infectious disease specialist Tony Fauci, who was called to update members on the state of the coronavirus' spread.
	Asked about an HHS whistleblower complaint, officials did not directly contradict the allegations, but they insisted they believed everyone was properly trained and protocols were followed.
	That was about that whistleblower complaint mentioned earlier.
	Meanwhile, CNN, trying to claim that Trump is silencing scientists.
	This is based on a New York Times piece that points out that the White House is now running all messaging through Mike Pence, which again, Makes a lot of sense, okay?
	It makes a lot of sense.
	You want to have a singular message coming out of the administration.
	If there is a cover-up, okay?
	If it turns out that the coronavirus outbreak is much more widespread, then that will damage the administration far worse than anything else.
	Radical transparency is called for, and the administration, I think, knows this.
	What they don't want is exactly what has happened.
	A bunch of low-level officials running out and saying different things, and then the media reporting chaos in the administration.
	So the media are trying to create this Catch-22.
	If you have a bunch of low-level officials, Running out there, uncoordinated, saying different things.
	Then they say, chaos in the administration!
	No one's heading this up!
	It's a complete disaster show!
	Okay, and then, if you have one person heading it, like Pence, and all the messaging is going through Pence, then it's, they've bottlenecked this thing.
	This is censorship.
	Okay, so in other words, there's nothing that Trump can do right here, right?
	And there's nothing that Pence can do right.
	Here is CNN trying yesterday to suggest that Trump was silencing scientists to prevent them from talking about coronavirus, which is absolutely absurd.
	The problem occurs when, A, you have a president who starts with very little credibility, and then, B, you have an administration that has had mixed messages.
	And what the people want is the truth.
	And the question is whether you can get the truth more from the scientists or whether you believe the politicians are the right people to get the truth.
	When scientists use the word pandemic, they don't take that lightly.
	And they say that it is a possibility, and if they are muzzled from talking about that possibility, I think that could threaten public health.
	Okay, muzzled from talking?
	No one's muzzling anybody.
	Okay, seriously, nobody is muzzling anybody.
	The problem is that there are a bunch of different stories coming out, and that is shocking the stock market, because when you are getting multiple different stories, that raises the level of uncertainty.
	That's a problem.
	If you want a coordinated response, then you want a coordinated response.
	If you want an uncoordinated, discombobulated response, then by all means, don't set up some sort of head at the head of the system.
	This is pure ridiculousness from the media.
	The RNC chair, Romney McDaniel, she came out and she said, like, this is ridiculous.
	Schumer and Pelosi are acting like political hacks.
	We should all be on the same page with this thing.
	And this, of course, is true.
	They're trying to stoke fear in the American people.
	This is a time when Americans usually come together, and they put aside their political differences, and they say, how can I help this president?
	How can I make sure we calm the fears of the American people?
	And that's precisely the opposite of what Democrats are doing.
	They're politicizing this.
	We are preparing.
	We are putting protocols in place, and we're going to be ready.
	And Democrats should be joining him and saying, Guess what?
	We're going to work together across party lines to make sure our country is safe.
	And instead, they're politicizing it, which they've done with every single issue when it comes to this president.
	And that is why they're just so shameful and they haven't helped solve many, many problems that the American people are facing.
	She's saying she speaks truth.
	She speaks truth.
	Okay, that is 100% true.
	I mean, you can see it in the Washington Post.
	The Washington Post has another piece today about how Trump is mean to bureaucrats.
	So obviously this threatens the country because Trump has ripped on the deep state.
	Throughout his more than three years as president, says the Washington Post, Trump has obsessed at times conspiratorially over what he calls the deep state.
	The thousands of career government specialists in national security, intelligence, science, and other areas whose expertise he shuns in part because he suspects they are disloyal saboteurs.
	And so with the first case of coronavirus not tied to foreign travel being announced in California on Wednesday, Trump finds himself grappling with a crisis for which his record suggests he's particularly ill-suited to respond.
	So because Trump is ripping on his intel people because they were in fact leaking a bunch of crap about him for years on end, this means he's ill-equipped to respond by letting health officers do their job?
	I mean, come on, come on.
	This is exactly what Democrats are looking for.
	This doesn't mean that Trump can't handle this better.
	I've said it right from the beginning.
	President Trump should be quiet and now let Pence handle this thing and not say a word about it.
	That's what he should do.
	And he should let his people handle it.
	But to proclaim that we are in the midst of a public relations and Trump-caused crisis is just missing the fact that the rest of the world is the source of coronavirus, is the source of the global economic risk, that the United States is actually the only solid island in a sea of chaos.
	And meanwhile, we are approaching the South Carolina primary.
	That is supposed to happen tomorrow.
	And this is Joe Biden's last gasp.
	If Joe Biden doesn't win big in South Carolina, this sucker is over, and Bernie Sanders is the nominee.
	Even if Joe Biden does win in South Carolina, there's the possibility that Bernie Sanders runs away with this thing anyway.
	We've now been treated to a bevy of new polling data.
	There are three new polls out today.
	One from Data for Progress, a Democratic firm.
	It shows that Joe Biden up 34-25 over Bernie Sanders.
	One from The Post and Courier.
	In South Carolina, which has Biden over a very narrow lead.
	Sanders, he's got 28-24 over Sanders.
	And then there's an Emerson poll which shows Biden blowing Sanders the F out, blowing him out 41-25, like really blowing him out.
	Biden needs a double-digit victory here.
	He needs at least a double-digit victory.
	If he wins narrow, Sanders takes the nomination.
	If he wins broad, then all of a sudden you might see a bump for Joe Biden.
	You're starting to see Democrats, again, sort of They're sort of splitting the baby.
	So on the one hand, they really don't want Bernie to be the nominee.
	On the other hand, they're sort of creating a backup plan where they can try to retcon Bernie's history, as I mentioned yesterday.
	Nancy Pelosi yesterday, she says, well, you know, if we have to support Bernie's agenda, I guess we will.
	I mean, don't like him so much, but I mean, I guess we'll do it.
	Whoever our nominee is, we will support.
	With respect for his or her positions, and hopefully with their respect for our positions as well.
	So we have made a decision to win.
	And as I say to the members, if you make a decision to win, you have to make every subsequent decision to win.
	No friction, no nothing.
	Just stay on the path to victory.
	Because it's so very important.
	Okay, so yes, we will get behind Bernie Sanders if we have to.
	If we have to.
	At the same press conference, she suggested that if Bernie goes into the convention with a plurality of delegates but not a majority of delegates, then she will not necessarily support Bernie Sanders.
	So, they are adjusting to the possibility of Bernie Sanders without handing over the keys to the car to Bernie Sanders at this point.
	There's a reason for that.
	Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to Barack Obama, and of course, mayor of Chicago, former mayor of Chicago, he says, listen, for all this talk about Bernie driving up turnout, In controversial areas, it ain't happening.
	He does not have the turnout numbers.
	The turnout model that he's looking at has not materialized.
	One of the things I'm concerned about right now is that while viewership in the debates are up, 2018, big turnout, 2019, big turnout for Democrats.
	Participation in our primaries is barely surpassing 2016, and that's a flashing yellow light.
	And it is indeed a flashing yellow light.
	But again, you're starting to see Democrats sort of hedge their bets here by defending every bad thing that Bernie ever does.
	So remember that time that the entire media proclaimed that the Republican Party had been hijacked by Trump and now everybody approved his worst excesses?
	Yeah, all of that's true of Bernie Sanders, like every single element of it.
	So yesterday, House Republicans tried to bring to the floor a resolution condemning Bernie Sanders for his comments over Cuba and condemning Cuba's human rights abuses.
	And Democrats voted to block the resolution.
	Here's Representative Mario Diaz-Balart from Florida, Republican, talking about it.
	But I remind Senator Sanders and the progressive movement that the Castro regime is not only a threat, a threat to the national security interests of the United States, but also to the democracies, the democracies in our hemisphere.
	I want to remind Senator Sanders of Cuba's close relationship, of the Cuban regime's close relationship with some of the world's worst thugs.
	And that, of course, is true, but it's not really gonna matter because Democrats have decided that they will defend anything and everything with regard to Bernie Sanders.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues, again, in these polls in South Carolina, to do very well.
	We're gonna know within 24 hours whether Joe Biden's candidacy is still alive.
	He may not be.
	He continues to just stumble around out there.
	Yesterday, on the campaign trail, Joe Biden randomly started talking about ladies taking off their clothes and why you're not allowed to touch them, which is a very, very weird thing to do.
	No man has a right To lay a hand on a woman for any other reason than self-defense.
	And I'm going to make the controversial statements you've always made.
	If someone in this room got up, took off all her clothes and walked out the door, no man has the right to touch her.
	Zero.
	She can be arrested for indecent exposure.
	Woo!
	Indecent exposure and no assault.
	Woo!
	Everybody's like clapping confusedly.
	What's he even talking about?
	Like what?
	What?
	What's going on now?
	So those are your choices.
	Democrats, a senile old dude with corrupt ties to his son, maybe, or at least his son is corrupt.
	Or the bat bleep loony communist who spends his entire career being a useless piece of crap.
	So, congratulations.
	This is the choice you have made for yourself.
	Meanwhile, Michael Bloomberg continues to be a weapon against Bernie Sanders.
	He released some medical information about his heart health.
	And he said that Senator Sanders ought to do the same.
	I mean, it is pretty incredible that Sanders had a heart attack on the campaign trail last year, and he has not released his complete health records, and everybody's like, oh, well, I guess no big deal.
	No biggie.
	We had a caller into our radio show yesterday who asked a question, what happens if Bernie Sanders gets nominated and then, God forbid, something happens to him?
	Who actually takes the nomination?
	The answer, by the way, is that the DNC gets to appoint the replacement for anybody who would plot before an election, but You know, that's never happened before in American history.
	In a new report from CNN, Bloomberg campaign spokesman Stu Lesser ripped Sanders for not releasing the same left ventricular ejection fraction data Bloomberg did in his own health report.
	That's a very specific report talking about the ability of the heart to continue pumping blood properly.
	Lesser said releasing the single scientific number about heart health could start to put to rest any concerns about Senator Sanders' secrecy about his recent heart attack.
	He said Mike Bloomberg's doctor shared Mike's number.
	Will Senator Sanders ask his doctor to do the same?
	Okay, the answer, of course, is no.
	Sanders says we're not going to be releasing any more health records, which is weird because earlier in the campaign he said he was going to release all of these health records.
	Suffice it to say that this Democratic field is so weak at this point that the two choices at the top, neither one of them seems to be a massive A massive victory for Democrats.
	With all of that said, again, there are these black swans that are out there.
	This coronavirus is a black swan.
	It does really upturn the entire conventional wisdom about this election.
	I mean, if the stock market were to continue to drop, if the economy were to stagnate, then everything is on the table and things get really ugly really quickly.
	So obviously we'll continue to bring you all the updates on all of this.
	Okay, time for a quick thing I like and then we'll do a couple of things that I hate.
	So, things that I like today.
	There's a great kind of sci-fi slash horror film that came out just a couple of years ago.
	It didn't get the kind of attention that it should.
	It made some money.
	The budget on it was like three to five million dollars.
	It was really Well made film.
	Really great.
	I really like it a lot.
	It's a movie called Upgrade.
	I heard about it, honestly, on a podcast done by my friend Sonny Bunch over at Rebeller Media, which you should go check out.
	Pretty cool.
	It's got all sorts of good Hollywood content.
	Anyway.
	Sonny recommended it along with some of his co-hosts.
	The movie is really first rate.
	I watched it this week.
	The basic premise of the film is that there is a guy who is attacked and left for dead basically.
	His girlfriend, his wife is killed.
	He's attacked and left for dead.
	He's made a quadriplegic in the process and he knows sort of this tech type who implants in him something called STEM and STEM Allows him to regain the use of his functions.
	But STEM also does more than that.
	STEM is infiltrating his brain and having conversations with him the whole time.
	Sort of like a user system talking to you.
	I mean, it's almost like you talking to Siri.
	Basically, it's like Siri in his head who's helping him run his limbs.
	The movie's really well made.
	It's beautifully produced.
	And it's supremely creepy because you'd think that it's basically just a revenge thriller.
	It is not just a revenge thriller.
	It really is sort of a parable about the dangers of science and tech overtaking your life.
	life, here's a little bit of the preview of Upgrade. - Permission granted! - Thank you.
	It's well acted.
	You can see actually one of the things that's kind of cool is how the actor moves.
	He acts as though he's not actually in control of his limbs, which is pretty kind of hard to do.
	So it's pretty great, actually.
	I mean, I will say that the movie moves incredibly quickly.
	It's got a good script.
	It's well-acted.
	So if you're looking for kind of... And sure, I will say I'm a big fan of movies that understand what their actual length ought to be.
	This film runs about an hour and thirty-five.
	And it should run about an hour and thirty-five.
	And it's really solid.
	It's really tight.
	Good film.
	Go check it out this weekend if you're looking for something fun and creepy to watch.
	Upgrade.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
	All right, thing that I hate, number one.
	So, there is a video that has now gone viral on TikTok.
	TikTok is one of these things for the Gen Zers and Millennials.
	Basically, you upload these little videos to TikTok.
	They're supposed to be sort of edited into, what, 10, 15 seconds or something?
	And then, basically, it acts almost like Snapchat, except they don't disappear.
	You put them out publicly, and then people view them.
	This video has been viewed A bajillion times now because it's just horrifying and disgusting.
	Basically, it's a young woman who goes with her friend to get an abortion and she is happy the whole way through.
	She goes there and she's making fun of people who are at the abortion clinic who seem to be a little bit upset about, you know, killing a baby.
	And here is a little bit of the TikTok video.
	I'll read it to you because a lot of it is done in Texas.
	Abortion time!
	Take two.
	Take two.
	It's a pregnancy test.
	And then she's laughing, nervous laugh.
	There's two abortion moods.
	People who are sad and then her partying it up.
	Her like pumping her fist and smiling while she gets an abortion.
	And then it shows the ultrasound as that baby is, as that fetus is sucked into a tube.
	So let me just point something out about the modern American left.
	I'm old enough to remember when people on the left at least acknowledged the moral quandaries involved in abortion.
	I'm old enough to remember Safe, Legal, and Rare, which was the Bill Clinton line.
	Now, it never made any logical sense, but at least it made a certain amount of emotional sense.
	It didn't make any logical sense because if you believe that it's a wrong, then it should not be legal.
	Right, but if you are at least making the moral, at least if you're making the emotional case that there is something that is worthy of consideration here, that at least is living in the realm of reality.
	Acting as though it is nothing more than getting a polyp removed to take an incipient human life and then kill it.
	And by the way, what does that mean, abortion take two?
	Is that her second abortion?
	I mean, that's all I can take away from that because I really don't know what that means.
	Her celebrating, fist pumping, as though this is women's empowerment.
	This is what our culture has done to the notion of femininity.
	It's absolutely horrifying.
	So my wife is like literally on the verge of giving birth, right, to child number three.
	Thank God, thank God, everything looks healthy.
	Thank God.
	I can tell you that from the very instant we knew she was pregnant, obviously this was now a part of our life.
	And not only was this a part of our life, this was an individual soul that was going to have a place in this world.
	And if God forbid something had happened to that child, we would have mourned for the unborn child.
	I mean, that is the way that Megan McCain wrote a beautiful column about this for the New York Times when she had a miscarriage.
	People mourn for their unborn children.
	They don't know them as well as they know their born children, obviously, but this is still a thing with moral weight.
	This is still the vision of people celebrating.
	The shout your abortion movement as though it is a mark of femininity and womanhood.
	To cast out that which most makes you a woman.
	And yes, it does, okay?
	I'm sorry.
	Pregnancy is one of the things that makes you most a woman, as distinguished from most a man.
	It's not what makes you most a human being, what reason makes you most a human being, but your capacity to have a child is one of the key features of being a woman as opposed to being a biological man.
	And to pretend that that doesn't matter.
	And to pretend that femininity is to actively cast that out.
	That female empowerment is to take that which makes you most uniquely female.
	Your superpower.
	It is a superpower.
	You're able to grow a child in your own body and then feed that child using your own body.
	That's a superpower, man.
	That is a superpower.
	And to pretend that that is something negative and bad.
	And that casting that child out.
	And that killing that unborn human being.
	That that is some sort of mark of bravery or femininity.
	That you're more of a woman for doing that than you would be if you had taken the child to term?
	That somehow it's degrading to you as a woman, right, not as a human being, as a woman, to carry a child to term and have that child?
	To exercise your superpower?
	I mean, it's the, honest to God, it's the equivalent of Superman deliberately grounding himself and then saying, I feel more like a Kryptonian today.
	Like, that's just not the way that this works.
	Your superpower is this thing.
	This is, talk to any woman who has been pregnant.
	This isn't just a me point, okay?
	This is a my wife point.
	This is any woman who's been pregnant point.
	Okay, this is an amazing, amazing gift that God has given you, or nature has given you, if you don't believe in God.
	And that gift, that amazing gift, to take that and to degrade that, to pretend that the mark of womanhood is to take that which most makes you a woman and then throw it away, is really insane.
	I mean, it truly is.
	The celebration is just, it's beyond the moral pale.
	But that is our society now.
	Our society is you celebrate the sin.
	It's not enough to just acknowledge that a sin is being committed, or to say, listen, I believe I should have the right to commit the sin, even if I think it's a sin, even if I think it's bad, I think I should have the right to commit the sin.
	It's not a good argument, but at least that's an argument.
	But to celebrate the sin is an act of evil.
	To celebrate doing something that harms another human being, And by the way, I'm not seeing any evidence in the, I mean, she took a pregnancy test.
	She doesn't look as though she was forced into the sex in this particular video.
	If that is different, then I will amend that statement.
	But I've seen no information to suggest that.
	If she had consensual sex with a person and then she got pregnant, which is a result of consensual sex in many cases, turns out these two things are interlinked.
	And then her natural response is to celebrate, presumably, both the casual sex and then also the abortion.
	How does this make anybody a better human being?
	How does this make society better?
	How does this make femininity better?
	How does this strengthen womanhood in any real way?
	If you don't watch that, if you watch that and you're not horrified, I'd say you're doing morality wrong whether you're left, right, or center.
	You gotta take this stuff with a certain level of moral seriousness for you to even be taken seriously as a moral human being.
	The other blithe attitude toward abortion is utterly astonishing.
	The Michelle Wolf, celebrate your abortion, fire off fireworks.
	This is what makes us free.
	If your freedom is the killing of an unborn human being and celebrating it and fist-pumping it while you do it and making fun of people who are depressed and upset about doing it, even if they're doing it, I mean, what utter callousness.
	Truly amazing.
	Okay, time for one more thing that I hate.
	I used to do something on the show called Deconstructing the Culture.
	We may bring it back at some point.
	But basically this is an episode of Deconstructing the Culture where we take a piece of culture that people are examining and taking a look at and we talk about how important it is and why it affects your kids and affects you.
	So, Taylor Swift, obviously, one of the most popular artists in America, and as her songs get worse, she gets more woke.
	Now, I don't know which precedes the other.
	I don't know whether her talent has abandoned her, and now she's relying on wokeness in order to force her forward, or maybe she just got woke because she had had enough of being insulted for not being woke enough, and so she decided to get overtly political, and then her songs started to be crap.
	By the way, I think there is something to this.
	I think the more overtly political artists get, I think the worse their art tends to be, because the art comes now second to the politics.
	This is true in movies.
	It's true for conservative as well as liberal films, by the way.
	If there's a conservative movie where the chief goal of the movie is to foist conservative politics on you, it's usually not a good movie.
	If the chief goal is to entertain you, And then it happens to embed conservative politics.
	It can be very good.
	The same thing is true of leftist politics.
	I've seen a lot of good movies with leftist politics, where the politics were not at the heart of the story.
	But if you have a story that is built on leftist politics, Then very often it's just not very good.
	The same thing happens to be true of Taylor Swift.
	Every song she releases now is pop star, never stop, never stopping.
	Her trying to get woke and to do it publicly for the plaudits of the Twitterati.
	Right now, it's not enough for her to be a very rich artist and very famous artist and very popular artist.
	She has to be an important artist.
	She has to use her voice, guys.
	She has to use her voice.
	And so she came out with that ridiculous song last year in which she was like, yeah, gay people!
	And it was like, okay, you're like 30 years late on this lady.
	You are really late on this.
	And gay marriage was legalized in Obergefell in 2013.
	You're like half a decade late on this.
	It was exactly the case from Popstar, Never Stop Never Stopping, where the artist trying to get woke cuts a gay marriage music video after it's been legal for several years.
	In which she also insists he's not gay.
	Okay, so Taylor Swift has been doing that.
	Well now she has a new video.
	And this new video is about feminism.
	Feminism.
	So what is feminism really about?
	It's not about female empowerment.
	It's not about things that make females unique and cool, which they are.
	It's about why women are victimized by men.
	Why men have it so great.
	And it's called The Man.
	In this video, Taylor Swift, who directed, produced, wrote, directed, produced.
	Like, this is the very end of her video.
	It's just her talking about how she did everything because she's so empowered.
	Yeah, you're worth like $200 million, lady.
	Like, I'm sure you're capable of doing a lot of these things.
	She dresses up as a man, and then the basic suggestion of this music video is that her life would be better if she were a man.
	Now let me explain a very simple truth.
	If Taylor Swift were a man, she'd be homeless and living down by the river.
	Okay, the reality is there are lots of men who write songs like Taylor Swift, and none of them are nearly as popular as Taylor Swift, because there is something to the idea of a sexy woman singing songs to you.
	This is how she made her career.
	And for those who don't believe this is the case, let me ask you why you were celebrating Jennifer Lopez strip dancing on a pole.
	It turns out that human beings like to look at pretty people, and pretty people doing things is a thing that human beings like to look at.
	So if Taylor Swift had been 400 pounds, She would not be famous.
	If Taylor Swift had looked like she does in this video, like a man, she would not be famous.
	Taylor Swift has, of course, again, this is not a rip on her.
	It's just a simple fact.
	The fact that she is a very beautiful human being obviously has to do to a large extent with her success.
	But her suggestion is that if she were a man, her life would be better in some way.
	All she has received is plaudits from the critics for her wokeness.
	All she has received for her entire career is basically unending praise.
	Show me the hardship that Taylor Swift has experienced other than some people being mean to her on Twitter, poor baby.
	But here she is cutting a video about how her life would be so much better if she were a man.
	I would be complex.
	I would be cool.
	They'd say I played the field before I found someone to commit to.
	That would be okay.
	Okay, pause it for a second.
	Okay, so this critique that she's making, that males are treated with sort of reverence for conquest and all of this, I actually sort of agree with this critique.
	Okay, this critique is actually a conservative critique of quote-unquote liberated sexual revolution America.
	I kind of agree with it.
	The problem is that her conclusion is that she should be allowed to do the same stuff that men should do, not that men should stop acting like pigs.
	This is my big critique of large parts of the feminist movement, is that they critique men for being pigs, and then they're like, and so we should also be pigs!
	It's like, well, how about, like, you should just say that men shouldn't be pigs.
	Like, I'm on board with that one.
	This is why it's so hilarious to me to watch the entire left come around to me too.
	I've been on the Me Too bandwagon since before there was a Me Too.
	Men should never treat women this way.
	Why is this suddenly a shock to you?
	Okay, so the critique here is fine.
	The problem is that the conclusion that she then proceeds to draw is that she should be able to act like a man and then be treated like a man as opposed to men should stop acting like jackasses.
	Okay, here is more of this idiotic song.
	I'd be a fearless leader.
	I'd be an alpha type.
	When everyone believes you.
	What's that like?
	Okay, she's sitting there with her legs spread.
	She's manspreading and smoking on the subway, which, by the way, is illegal in New York.
	And, um...
	Okay, let's pause it there.
	Now this is where it gets really stupid.
	Okay, this is where she leaves the realm of reality and just gets into stupid land.
	So she says, I'd be a fearless leader, I'd be an alpha type, when everyone believes ya, what's that like?
	Literally the entire media worships at the altar of Taylor Swift and calls her a fearless leader and an alpha type.
	Literally everyone, except for me apparently.
	And I'll get all sorts of crap for pointing this out, but it happens to be the truth.
	She says, I'm so sick of running as fast as I can, wondering if I'd get there quicker if I was a man.
	Okay, physically you would, because men run faster than women, just as a typical rule, on average.
	But, if we're talking about, like, figuratively, which is what you're talking about, That you're sick of running as fast as you can?
	Because you'd get there quicker if you were a man?
	If you were a man, you wouldn't be famous.
	You wouldn't be rich.
	What the hell are you talking about?
	She's behind the 8-ball guys.
	Taylor Swift has been behind the 8-ball her entire unbelievably rich and wealthy life.
	She's been behind the 8-ball guys.
	And you male songwriters out there lagging in obscurity because you're not an attractive woman who can attract cameras to you?
	Let me just tell you, you have the advantage.
	She is not privileged.
	You are privileged.
	The whiny victimhood from a woman worth hundreds of millions of dollars is just, like, it's unbelievable.
	It's just, it's incredible.
	And she'll be celebrated for this because, of course, she is intersectional in the extreme.
	And then the video is her unzipping and peeing on the wall of the 13th Street station.
	By the way, if a dude in a Wall Street business suit started peeing on the wall of a New York subway station, you know how fast that person would be arrested?
	Okay, that's just insane.
	Okay, then the lyrics continue.
	They'd say I hustled, put in the work.
	They wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve.
	What I was wearing, if I was rude.
	Could all be separated from my good ideas and power moves.
	And they would toast to me or let the players play.
	I'd be just like Leo in Saint-Tropez.
	Okay, so, again, the insane stupidity of this is just incredible.
	She says, they say I hustle, put in the work, they wouldn't shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve.
	Last I checked, there's an entire democratic race being run on the basis that if you earn a billion dollars, you didn't deserve it.
	Michael Bloomberg is being ripped as undeserving.
	Is he a lady?
	Okay, every single person who earns in this country and is not a wild, woke leftist is considered to have not earned their money by Taylor Swift and her people.
	I mean, by people like Taylor Swift of the left.
	And then in this video, it shows her as a man picking up a child, world's greatest dad, and all of this.
	You're celebrated for being a great dad.
	Yes, you should be celebrated for being a great dad.
	What is the problem with this?
	I'm confused.
	Why is that bad now?
	That women celebrate men who are great dads?
	That seems like a good thing to do.
	Again, which critique does she want?
	Because if she wants to critique men for being pigs, she can't then say that she should be treated well for being pigs.
	Which is it?
	Seriously, if you have to decide, is being a pig bad or is being a pig good?
	If being a pig is good, then what you should be complaining about is that women aren't being pigs enough and that you wish that you could be a pig more.
	Okay?
	But if the complaint is that men are pigs, then the complaint should be that men are pigs.
	What's it like to brag about raking in dollars and getting bitches and models?
	This is one of the lyrics.
	And it's all good if you're bad.
	And it's okay if you're mad.
	Again, when has she been victimized ever?
	She's a victim?
	She's a victim?
	Okay, this is one of my favorite parts of the video.
	It shows an old man marrying a young lady, who shows off like a big ring.
	And then, in this video, that woman ends up being abused by the old man.
	It's not that the woman freely consented to enter a loveless marriage for the money.
	Right?
	It is that the man has somehow taken advantage of the woman and is humiliating her.
	And that she- She volunteered in!
	Okay, she literally shows off in the video this giant ring that she got for marrying an old guy.
	But all the blame is on the guy for marrying the young woman?
	Last I checked, she had to consent to the marriage.
	The whole thing is just ridiculous.
	But guys, Taylor Swift is super empowered.
	She's super duper empowered in every way.
	And now I feel like she's woke because she's proclaimed herself a victim.
	And if she proclaims herself a victim, then she is a victim.
	And now she'll get to show the video of me talking about her stupid ass video?
	She'll get to show the video of this and claim that I'm victimizing her for criticizing her when she is worth more money than God, is more successful in the public sphere than presumably somebody like me will ever be.
	All because I'm a man.
	Guess what, Taylor, you're not a victim.
	You're not a victim.
	You are the greatest beneficiary of a free American society that treats women pretty damned well, historically speaking.
	Okay, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
	By the way, next Tuesday, March 3rd, join me, the God-King Jeremy Boring, and reclaimant of Michael Mowles on Daily Wire backstage while we watch the results From Super Tuesday roll in and in and in.
	It's going to be a very long evening, so be there to help us get through it.
	I mean, it's going to be interminable for me.
	I have to hang out with these people in person, but you can join us and watch me suffer.
	Go check us out next Tuesday on our Super Tuesday coverage.
	We have a cavalcade of comedy stars.
	It'll be it'll be great, so go check it out over at dailywire.com.
	And as I mentioned earlier, make sure to check out Daily Wire tomorrow because we have a very special super duper hooper scooper deal.
	Our special leap year deal is not going to get better than this in terms of becoming a member.
	So go check it out tomorrow at dailywire.com.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here next week.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
	Directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
	Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
	Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.
	Technical producer Austin Stevens.
	Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.
	Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.
	Edited by Adam Siovitz.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	On The Matt Wall Show, we're not just discussing politics.
	We're talking culture, faith, family, all of the things that are really important to you.

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