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March 12, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

59:52

Trump Gets Serious About Coronavirus | Ep. 970

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	Trump bans nearly all travel to and from Europe, the NBA suspends its season, and Tom Hanks comes down with coronavirus.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	Spiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN, my savvy fans.
	Secure their internet.
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	Alrighty, so last night, President Trump basically said to coronavirus, I'm in control here.
	And coronavirus said, do you feel in control?
	So, things are not going great out there with the coronavirus.
	The big problem, of course, continued lack of information.
	The testing kits are not widely available.
	We just don't know how many people in the United States actually have coronavirus.
	We don't even know how many people abroad have coronavirus.
	What we do know is that there are certain measures that have been taken.
	The harsher the measures, it seems, the faster the coronavirus is brought under control.
	This is true.
	In Wuhan, it was true.
	In South Korea, where you've seen a significant bending of the curve, that is what people are calling it, the curve being the number of people who are infected and then the number of people who are dying.
	This obviously means that people are now getting increasingly serious and cautious about going to wide-scale public events.
	Not that if you're young and you go to a big public event, you're gonna die, but that if you go to a public event, you may become a carrier or transmitter to somebody who is more vulnerable, somebody with a preexisting condition, somebody who doesn't have a strong immune system, cancer patients, leukemia patients.
	People who are older, right?
	All of this is deeply frightening.
	I mean, there's no other way to put it.
	You look at the news, it's hard not to be scared.
	And the reason it's hard not to be scared is when you see Italy shutting down every public space, like all public spaces, except for grocery stores and pharmacies.
	No church services going on in Italy.
	No stores open in Italy.
	When you see Israel shutting down not only all travel, but all public events, over 100 people.
	When you see people trying to shut down public events in Washington State.
	Obviously, all of this is predicated on the notion that coronavirus is easily transmitted, which, as far as we know, is true, and also that coronavirus is a lot more deadly than the flu, which, as far as we know, is also true, but it does differ based on age bracket.
	It is irresponsible reporting to suggest that every person who gets coronavirus is equally likely to die of it or experience significant ramifications from coronavirus.
	The younger you are, the better chance you have of recovering from this.
	And even if you're older, the majority of the people who are getting it are indeed recovering.
	The death rates, even for people above 80, yes, it's like 15%, which is unbelievably high, really frightening.
	But that means that 85% of the people getting it above the age of 80 are recovering from coronavirus.
	But it is lack of information that, of course, is scaring the living hell out of everyone.
	And this means that President Trump stepping into the fray and presenting some sort of plan here was absolutely necessary.
	President Trump did that last night.
	He got some mixed reviews.
	Let's put it that way.
	But first, let's get to the actual news.
	So yesterday, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic of coronavirus disease, COVID-19.
	According to the Washington Post, the WHO declared coronavirus a pandemic, reflecting alarm that countries aren't working quickly and aggressively enough to fight the disease it causes, COVID-19.
	We are deeply concerned by both the alarming levels of spread and severity, and at the alarming levels of inaction, said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
	For weeks now, the WHO has hesitated to make a pandemic declaration for fear of inciting panic or prompting some countries to flag in their efforts, even though many epidemiologists believe the coronavirus had already spread to pandemic levels.
	On Wednesday, Tedros noted the widespread scale of the outbreak.
	He said there are now more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries.
	Over 4,000 people, 4,291 at that count, have lost their lives.
	In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of coronavirus cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher.
	Tedros said that the word pandemic is not a word to be used lightly or carelessly.
	It's a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death.
	The WHO's announcement does not trigger any new funding protocols or regulations.
	It basically just scares the living hell out of everyone, is what you get from that.
	It's not that anybody then gets a release of funding thanks to, like, if you declare a national emergency in the United States, that gives additional powers to the government.
	That's not the same thing for the WHO.
	When they declare a pandemic, it basically has the same effect as Michael Scott going to the center of the office and shouting, I declare bankruptcy.
	Like, okay, thanks.
	Super helpful.
	Okay, with that said, the NBA has now put its season on hold after one player tested positive for coronavirus.
	We're now finding out That a second player has tested positive for coronavirus.
	According to the LA Times, the NBA on Wednesday indefinitely suspended the 2019-2020 season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19.
	Just a couple of days ago, Gobert, who apparently was coughing in the locker room, he jokingly went around the press room and started touching everything.
	Like, it's a joke.
	He started touching all the microphones.
	He started touching all the reporters' stuff.
	Well, turns out, dude had coronavirus.
	And now it turns out that another player has come down with coronavirus as well.
	According to The League, the test result was reported shortly prior to the tip-off of tonight's game between the Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder at Chesapeake Energy Arena.
	At that time, tonight's game was canceled.
	The affected player was not in the arena.
	The NBA is suspending gameplay following the conclusion of tonight's schedule of games until further notice.
	So we're now living inside Space Jam.
	If you remember the plot of Space Jam, all the players refuse to play because they are afraid that they're going to be infected with the alien virus inside the locker room.
	The NBA will use this hiatus to determine next steps for moving forward in regard to the coronavirus pandemic.
	Mark Cuban, who's the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, he came out yesterday.
	He said that he's going to try and find a way to continue paying his hourly employees, which is a really cool thing to do, obviously.
	The Lakers and Clippers were considered favorites for the championship.
	The Lakers landed in China for exhibition games after an international incident.
	This was just the end of last year.
	Lakers employees are being advised to work from home for the foreseeable future.
	The Clippers will not practice on Thursday.
	Meanwhile, we are now finding out that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson have tested positive for coronavirus, which is always good news.
	And by good news, I mean just ridiculous and horrifying.
	So even celebrities.
	Coronavirus falls on the blessed and the unblessed alike.
	As first reported by Deadline, the Academy Award winner and his wife were on location in Australia for pre-production of a film on Elvis Presley when they began experiencing symptoms.
	Hanks wrote in a statement first published by Deadline and later shared to Twitter, we felt a bit tired like we had colds, we had some body aches, Rita had some chills that came and went, slight fevers too.
	To plate things right as is needed in the world right now, we are tested for coronavirus and were found to be positive.
	Hanks went on to say that he and Wilson will be tested, observed, and isolated for as long as public health and safety require.
	And meanwhile, as I mentioned, we now have a breaking piece of news that jazz star Donovan Mitchell has tested positive for coronavirus as well.
	Jazz players privately say that Rudy Gobert had been careless in the locker room, touching other players and their belongings as well.
	So, that's scary stuff.
	Reuters is reporting that President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is being tested for coronavirus.
	We know the health minister of Great Britain has coronavirus.
	So, this thing is widespread.
	It is hitting a lot of people.
	It would not be surprising to me that if universal testing were available in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people would have coronavirus already.
	That would not be shocking at all.
	The Brazilian government spokesman, who met with President Trump last weekend and was pictured standing next to him, has now tested positive for coronavirus as well.
	So you would hope that the President of the United States has been tested for coronavirus.
	The Brazilian President, as I mentioned, is now being monitored for coronavirus.
	His schedule for the week was cancelled.
	Both were with Donald Trump and Mike Pence last Saturday at Mar-a-Lago as well.
	So, all of this is, um, all of this is deeply disturbing.
	We're going to get to more of this in just one second, and President Trump's response, which, as I say, is receiving, at best, mixed reviews, and frankly, those mixed reviews are well-deserved.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	The View taped yesterday without an audience, which basically mirrors reality.
	But in any case, the Hollywood Reporter is now saying that the Late Show with Colbert, Tonight Show with Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, all will be proceeding without audiences.
	Also, Fox News has confirmed that the Greg Gutfeld Show is dropping into audience as well, so everybody is cutting down on the audiences.
	The NCAA Tournament is now going to be played without fans.
	In a statement posted on Wednesday afternoon, the NCAA President Mark Emmert announced that upcoming championship events, including the men's and women's basketball tournaments, will be played in front of only essential staff and limited family as well.
	Emmert wrote, while I understand how disappointing this is for all the fans of our sports, my decision is based on the current understanding of how COVID-19 is progressing in the United States.
	This decision is in the best interest of public health, including that of coaches, administrators, fans, and most importantly, our student-athletes.
	The men's final floor was slated to take place before a sellout crowd of probably 70,000 people at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta as well.
	Meanwhile, New York City has canceled the St.
	Patrick's Day parade.
	That is no shock at all.
	I predicted that a little bit earlier this week.
	Although Bill de Blasio said on Monday there were no plans to cancel the parade, the parade has now been canceled.
	There are now 53 known cases of COVID-19 in New York City.
	The answer is probably a lot, lot higher.
	Parent-teacher conferences at public schools have been canceled.
	And Andrew Cuomo announced on Wednesday that all of the SUNY and CUNY schools will switch to remote learning.
	Now, one of the big controversies right now is whether there should be widespread school shutdowns.
	The case in favor of widespread school shutdowns is that the kids are basically germ factories.
	They're going to be passing this stuff to each other, then they go home and they bring it to mom and dad who bring it to grandparents.
	That is the case for shutting down the schools.
	Schools are germ factories.
	The case for not shutting down the schools is kids are germ factories.
	You bring them home from school, what exactly do you do with them all day?
	And a lot of people don't have childcare.
	If you send them to a daycare, it's the same thing as sending them to a school.
	If they're home, they're more likely in touch with other members of their family.
	So it's not really a cure-all.
	It is unclear whether school shutdowns are the best idea at this point for schools that do not actually have any incidence of coronavirus.
	But again, because testing of coronavirus is so scanty.
	It's difficult to tell who the hell even has coronavirus at this point.
	Okay, so with all of this said, Angela Merkel in Germany is telling the German people that 70% of the population could come in contact with coronavirus.
	She said the consensus among experts is that 60 to 70% of the population will be infected as long as this remains the situation.
	She says that we have to basically shut down all social meetings.
	No more handshakes.
	We really have to change our lives in significant ways in order to prevent this sort of widespread spread of coronavirus.
	And that makes perfect sense.
	I mean, remember, right now we're just buying time.
	That's what this is about.
	This is not that coronavirus will disappear if we all take two weeks off.
	The idea here is that you're buying time, you're slowing the spread, that every day that you add to that curve means a day that researchers are able to develop a vaccine.
	It's a day that brings us closer to summer.
	There's a lot of speculation that during warm weather seasons, the flu tends to die out.
	And so if we can get into summer and warm weather in the northern hemisphere, that that will help curb the spread of coronavirus in general.
	We can all pray and hope for that.
	Bottom line is that everybody is rightly at this point worried about coronavirus because we do not have enough information.
	And a lot of that has to do with lack of testing.
	That is the fault of the federal government.
	It is the fault of state governments.
	We talked yesterday about the fact that even local testing in Seattle was shut down by the FDA and the CDC.
	All of this has resulted in the Dow Jones Industrial Average absolutely collapsing.
	Yesterday, the Dow ended its 11-year bull market as coronavirus defied economic remedies.
	All this talk about how we're going to solve this thing by pumping the economy full of money?
	That's not right.
	People are not spending.
	People are not going out in public places.
	They shouldn't be spending.
	They shouldn't be going out and hanging out in public places.
	So, of course, you're going to see an economic contraction.
	When everybody stays home, there's an economic contraction.
	That is not a great shock.
	What you would expect is that once coronavirus is under control, no matter what, you would see a V-shaped recovery because the underlying economic fundamentals are not really the problem.
	The problem right now is that...
	Is that nobody knows what is coming and that uncertainty is being priced into the market.
	Suffice it to say that Dow Jones Industrial Average is taking an absolute beating.
	It took a beating yesterday.
	It was down 1400 points yesterday.
	It opened this morning down 2000 points.
	So it has dropped down well below 22,000.
	It is headed toward 21,000 right now.
	And just remember, folks, that when Barack Obama left office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was in the neighborhood of About $20,000.
	It was about $19,800.
	We are now at $21,000.
	$21,500.
	So we are approaching the point where all stock market gains under President Trump have been lost thanks to coronavirus alone, which is an amazing, amazing statement about globalization and the costs of globalization.
	The benefits of globalization are there for everybody to see.
	The costs of globalization are, if you have a black swan event like this one, it can completely shut down supply lines all over the globe.
	And Dow Jones' collapse today does demonstrate that President Trump's attempts last night to tamp this thing down were a failure, at least in the public mind.
	There is no sense of confidence that is emanating from the federal government.
	This does not mean that the federal government could, at this point, do anything that would tamp down the markets.
	Bottom line is that even if Trump had done a stellar job last night, which he did not, Even if Trump had done a stellar job last night, it is unlikely that the markets wouldn't have dropped this morning because, again, he can't provide assurances that everything is under control because everything isn't under control.
	We don't know exactly what the hell is happening right now.
	I mean, the fact is that Italy has shut down all life there and the deaths continue to rise in Italy.
	So we're going to bring you more of this in just one second.
	We'll get to President Trump's response yesterday.
	Which was marred by a bunch of screw-ups, unfortunately.
	We'll get to that momentarily.
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	So President Trump.
	Spoke last night on coronavirus.
	Whoever greenlit this bleep show should be fired.
	I mean, seriously.
	It's not entirely Trump's fault because, again, he has speechwriters who did this thing for him.
	Let's put it this way.
	This thing started with Donald Trump on C-SPAN saying the F-word because he had an ink stain on his shirt.
	That is never a good way to start this thing.
	Hey, do not make the cameras live, you morons, until the president is ready to speak.
	Then President Trump got on air and he spoke about coronavirus.
	It did not steady the markets.
	It didn't make people feel a lot more secure.
	He was getting serious about it.
	It was a lot better than President Trump going out in public and suggesting there were 15 cases and it was moving down to zero, as he did a couple of weeks ago, which was obviously untrue.
	But with that said, here was the president of the United States last night announcing, we are marshalling the full force of the American government.
	Today the World Health Organization officially announced that this is a global pandemic.
	We have been in frequent contact with our allies and we are marshalling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people.
	This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.
	Okay, well, there's only one problem, which is that he didn't actually get to the key points of the speech.
	So here's what he announced.
	He announced that we're suspending all travel from Europe to the United States.
	There's one problem with that.
	We are not, in fact, suspending all travel from Europe to the United States.
	You can still get in if you are coming in from the UK.
	Also, it turns out that if you're an American citizen overseas, if you're a soldier overseas, you can come home.
	He didn't make that clear.
	So a lot of people overseas were rushing to buy plane tickets, hoping to sneak in under the deadline.
	Sort of shades of the original travel ban that President Trump issued when he first came into office that was a debacle in the way that it was originally instituted.
	If you're going to give a speech like this, you have to have everything locked down.
	You're trying to provide a sense of solidity.
	You're trying to provide a sense that you know what you're doing, that the federal government has thought these policies out.
	Fully.
	And that they are providing detailed guidance to people.
	Look, President Trump was serious about coronavirus, which again is a good thing.
	But, when you give a speech like this, you gotta make sure that everything is locked down.
	It was not locked down.
	Here's President Trump suggesting that all travel from Europe is going to be suspended.
	To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days.
	The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight.
	These restrictions will be adjusted subject to conditions on the ground.
	There will be exemptions for Americans who have undergone appropriate screenings, and these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, But various other things as we get approval.
	Anything coming from Europe to the United States is what we are discussing.
	Okay, so that is not true.
	Okay, so that is mistake number two.
	Okay, mistake number two is that he announced that there would be basically bans on the importation of European goods, which would shut down the entire global economy.
	And the stock market was like, what the F is this?
	And it turns out, of course, that his executive order does no such thing.
	It doesn't apply to trade and goods.
	It applies to humans.
	Because if you buy something from Europe, it is not as though the virus is coming over on your food thing from Europe.
	So, announcing apparently accident- I mean, it's in the teleprompter, so I'm not sure how that's an accident.
	Whoever put that in the teleprompter needs to be fired forthwith.
	That the prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trading cargo, but various other things as we get approval.
	The White House then had to clarify, saying that the ban only applies to human beings, not goods or cargo.
	The people transporting goods will not be admitted into the country, but the goods will.
	And then President Trump had to go on Twitter and correct himself.
	He said, please remember, very important for all countries and businesses to know, trade will in no way be affected by the 30-day restriction on travel from Europe.
	The restriction stops people, not goods.
	Also important to note, when he says 30-day restriction, the executive order does not have a 30-day timeline, so it could be extended beyond 30 days.
	Also, Trump didn't mention that the ban would not apply to American residents, citizens, or generally citizens, immediate family members, and the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, had to issue a statement making that clear.
	Okay, then President Trump announced that health insurance providers had agreed to waive customer payments for coronavirus treatment.
	He said earlier this week, I met with the leaders of health insurance industry who have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise at medical billing.
	But that's not true.
	They met with Trump and they said, we'll make the coronavirus testing free.
	That is a very different thing from coronavirus treatment.
	If you get double pneumonia as a result of coronavirus, insurance companies can't make that free.
	Exactly how are they going to survive that without some sort of federal government bailout?
	A White House official confirmed to CNN that insurers had only agreed to waive co-payments on testing, not the actual cost of the treatment itself.
	Then President Trump attacked the European Union, saying that large numbers of clusters in the U.S.
	had been seeded by European travelers.
	I mean, some of that is true, but the fact is that we are not even sure whether banning travel from Europe at this point is going to be incredibly effective, considering that we now have community infection in the United States.
	So, while it may be a good idea to prevent further travel generally, because travel is basically people in small, enclosed spaces with lots of other people, with that said, the idea that a travel shutdown at this point is gonna be completely effective, It was effective originally.
	Now that the virus is widespread, it's difficult to imagine how that's going to be completely effective in the United States.
	We can't even trace where the cases are coming from right now.
	We have community infections.
	President Trump did announce that the Small Business Administration will be providing $50 billion in small business loans.
	One of the problems with this particular policy Is that how do you determine which small businesses ought to get the loans in the first place?
	Once the government becomes the lender of last resort to businesses, you're picking and choosing winners in a way that other policies would not.
	A payroll tax holiday would not pick and choose winners.
	If the federal government were frankly to just give everybody $1,000, Andrew Yang style, that would not be picking and choosing winners, but instead to use the SBA to sort of prop up particular businesses, but not other businesses.
	Unless it's universal, it's very difficult to see how this is going to work.
	Here's President Trump talking about the Small Business Administration.
	I am instructing the Small Business Administration to exercise available authority to provide capital and liquidity to firms affected by the coronavirus.
	Effective immediately, the SBA will begin providing economic loans in affected states and territories.
	These low-interest loans will help small businesses overcome temporary economic disruptions caused by the virus.
	To this end, I am asking Congress to increase funding for this program by an additional $50 billion.
	Okay, so we'll see whether that is effective or not.
	Bottom line is that there's gonna have to be some government response to the fact that there are gonna be a lot of short-term layoffs, people being furloughed from work thanks to all of this.
	It would not be surprising for the federal government to step in.
	Okay, we're gonna get to the media's response to Trump because Trump's speech had serious problems.
	He did not look good doing it.
	He made some real mistakes in the middle of the speech, but the media's response is overwhelmingly stupid, like incredibly and overwhelmingly stupid, and we're gonna get to that in just one moment.
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	Okay, so President Trump's speech, as I mentioned, has some serious problems with the, you know, in general.
	With that said, it's good that the president is now taking this seriously because his prior response has been insufficient.
	And I've pointed this out.
	The president has been giving very mixed messages on Twitter in public about the nature of coronavirus, about how much of a threat it is.
	OK, so he is getting more serious about all of this without question.
	And it is true that the administration's response, put Trump aside, the administration's response has been quite serious.
	The fact is that Stephen Redd, who is one of the Trump key officials on all of this, Stephen Redd suggested yesterday that the coronavirus response is significantly larger than the American response to H1N1, which was a major epidemic that happened in 2009.
	It's a much larger response than we had for H1N1.
	I think there are more sectors of government involved.
	We didn't do a lot of the things that we're doing now because they weren't appropriate.
	The border issues, we had cases here.
	The pandemic was first recognized in the United States, so that's a totally different situation.
	Okay, so that obviously is true.
	Red is, by the way, the Assistant Surgeon General.
	He also mentioned that President Trump's original Chinese travel restrictions were very useful, and this happens to be true.
	Here is Stephen Red explaining that China's travel restrictions were correct.
	I think that that was a period of time when we were, there's not really anything we would have done differently.
	We were working on a diagnostic test.
	We were sending materials that started the ball rolling on vaccine production.
	We, you know, as you know, within weeks of identifying the outbreak, Really, the restriction of travel from China, reduced travel by 90%.
	I think that was a very helpful move to prevent more cases from China coming into the United States.
	Okay, with all of that said, Dr. Anthony Fauci is the head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases.
	He says we have to crack down on large crowds.
	This is the next chief measure.
	Again, the administration is on top of this to the extent that any federal administration is on top of it.
	The problem has been the disconnect for Trump.
	So Trump getting serious last night was a good thing, even if the speech was a bit of a screw-up.
	Here's Anthony Fauci yesterday saying, no large crowds would be a good start.
	We would recommend that there not be large crowds.
	If that means not having any people in the audience when the NBA plays, so be it.
	But as a public health official, anything that has large crowds is something that would give a risk to spread.
	Now, there is some good news.
	Fauci said we are reaching a stage one vaccine faster than anyone has ever reached a stage one vaccine.
	So there's a bit of good news for you.
	With regard to vaccines, as I've mentioned publicly many times, we were able to very quickly go from an understanding of what this virus was to what the genetic sequence was to actually developing a vaccine.
	But there's a lot of confusion about developing a vaccine.
	In the next, I would say, four weeks or so, we will go into what is called a Phase I clinical trial.
	Getting it into Phase I in a matter of months is the quickest that anyone has ever done literally in the history of axonology.
	Members of the government are also pointing out that while we are ramping up for widespread testing, it's gonna take another two weeks for widespread testing, which that, of course, is bad news.
	That means more informational deficits at this point, all of which is bad news.
	Now, as I say, the media's response to all of this has been absolutely egregious.
	I don't just mean criticism of Trump.
	All of that is fair.
	If President Trump has to handle this better, his speech was not good.
	He said in his Oval Office speech, the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low.
	Not the risk of actually getting it, the risk of dying.
	I mean, that particularly is true.
	With all of that said, the president also is getting criticized.
	And here's where the media have really gone off the rails.
	President Trump last night said that this is a major government response to a foreign virus.
	It's the largest foreign, major response to a foreign virus.
	And this immediately led people in the media to whine about the fact that Trump had said that the Wuhan virus is in fact a foreign virus.
	Okay, I have a question.
	Why is that a big deal?
	It is a foreign virus.
	Why is that a problem?
	Is that an element of xenophobia?
	Like seriously?
	This is what you're focused on?
	You're focused on the fact that Trump points out that another major virus comes from China?
	And that maybe this might have some implications for American policy?
	And your initial takeaway is that that's Trump being a racist against Chinese people?
	That's really where you're going with this?
	I'm sorry, I'm not going to consider you a serious person if you think it's a major problem for the President of the United States to point out that a foreign virus is indeed a foreign virus.
	Literally the entire media two months ago was calling us the Wuhan virus.
	Anyway, here is the brothers Cuomo, Chris and Andrew.
	Chris interviewing Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, about all of this, and Governor Cuomo very angry that Trump called the virus foreign.
	This is not about a foreign virus, whatever that means.
	It's here.
	It's community spread.
	It's much more prevalent than we know.
	The testing does not reflect what it is.
	These are not random sample tests.
	It's because we have no testing capacity.
	That's why the numbers are low.
	If you actually had testing capacity, you would see how high the numbers are already.
	Okay, so it is true that we need better testing capacity, but if you're really bitching at this point about calling it a foreign virus, your priorities are completely and utterly misplaced.
	I mean, that is a disaster.
	And you've seen additional media stupidity.
	Don Lemon on CNN today, or last night, is on John Kasich.
	Kasich is no friend of President Trump.
	I mean, John Kasich hates President Trump.
	And John Kasich was on, and he said, like, I thought that the president did okay.
	Like, it was fine.
	His speech was fine.
	And Don Lemon lost his mind.
	Lost his mind.
	This is your media.
	This is your very objective media.
	Here's Don Lemon going after John Kasich.
	The governors can't make choices.
	There are no test kits.
	If the test kits that the federal government has promised aren't out there, then those governors can't make choices.
	And you said the president should stick to the script.
	I don't know if he stuck to the script or not.
	that whatever script he read was wrong because they've had to clarify it several times.
	And I just got to say, if the president came out to calm people's fears, he didn't do a good job of it because they've had to come back and clarify it several times.
	And this has been going on long enough for them to get it straight.
	We need straight, accurate information from this president and this administration, and And I don't understand why you are tiptoeing around it.
	He came out, gave an address that usually happens very rarely, and he doesn't get it right?
	I'm going to tell you.
	First of all, he read it, and somebody that wrote this.
	Look, I don't want to get into that.
	Why not?
	That's why you're here, to talk about the president's address.
	He says, can I finish?
	And Don Lemon says, no, you can't finish.
	Because Don Lemon has an agenda here, and the agenda is to paint Trump as obviously incompetent and terrible at everything.
	Again, there are real problems with the speech, but let's be real about this.
	The speech is not the problem.
	The problem is lack of information.
	What the president says makes a difference but the markets were not going to respond well anyway to the fact that we have a tremendous lack of information.
	The president is obviously on a personal level taking everything a lot more seriously.
	The president is meeting with a prime minister today and they agreed not to shake hands and Trump said it's a strange feeling for politicians because handshaking is routine.
	Again, the media have an agenda here.
	Their agenda is to paint Trump as... Several things can be true at once.
	One, Trump is not doing the world's best job of handling this thing on a personal level.
	Two, the Trump administration is doing everything that it can, and they're doing just as much as any other administration would.
	Anthony Fauci has served in several different administrations.
	And governors like Gavin Newsom from California are saying they're getting what they need from the federal government.
	Three, nobody has this thing under control.
	And four, the media wants to see Trump fall flat on his face and they are eager to paint Trump as unable to handle this whole thing.
	So all of those things can be true at once.
	And in fact, all of those things are true at once.
	In just a second, we're gonna get to more media malfeasance, the media really, really trying to play up the idea that the federal government's response is not only insufficient, but uniquely insufficient because Trump, because everything is Trump.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	All righty.
	So President Trump obviously getting rigged over the coal.
	Mike Pence did a segment with Alison Camerota in which she was going after him really hard.
	The role of the media is to ask very difficult questions of the Trump administration in the most unfair possible ways, and also to play on the gap between Trump's personal thin-skinnedness and the members of his administration.
	This is something that the media have learned to play and play this game really well.
	And that is, if you're a member of the Trump administration and Trump says something dumb, You're not allowed to go on TV and just say, yeah, the president shouldn't have said that.
	Or, yeah, the president didn't mean that.
	You're not allowed to do that because then Trump gets mad at you.
	And so what the media have decided to do is basically hold every member of the Trump administration to account for anything dumb the president says.
	Well, this is what Allison Camerota was doing today with Mike Pence, and it got pretty ugly.
	President Trump's speech last night, after he talked about the travel ban from Europe, or travel restrictions, I guess I should say, from Europe, and the handling of cargo shipments, two clarifications basically had to be issued within the space of an hour.
	One from DHS saying the travel restrictions do not apply to all travel, and then the president himself tweeted he didn't mean cargo.
	So why the confusion?
	I don't think there was confusion.
	The president took another historic step, just like he did in January with China, to suspend all travel from Europe, Alison, for the next 30 days because we've recognized, our health experts tracking global data, that the epicenter of the coronavirus has shifted from China and South Korea to Europe.
	Okay, so again, this is being trotted around the media as evidence that Pence won't talk up to Trump.
	Okay, look, we all know the situation here.
	The situation here is that the president has personal character flaws when it comes to being thin-skinned.
	He doesn't want anybody in his administration contradicting him.
	And Trump isn't the guy who wrote the speech or loaded the teleprompter.
	Listen, the buck stops with the president.
	With that said...
	Again, whoever put that crap in the teleprompter needs to be fired, like, forthwith, really.
	You put an error-ridden speech in the middle of a global pandemic in the president's teleprompter, you ought to be fired.
	Like, seriously, there's some heads that need to roll.
	Now, we should be in the business not of looking for a head rolling at this point, but we should be in the business of seeing what the response ought to look like.
	And right now, the answer is nobody knows what the hell the response ought to look like.
	What we do know is that pumping is not going to be the solution.
	President Trump has been fixated to this point on the stock market, and he continues to be fixated on the stock market.
	Today he was talking about how the stock market is going to be just fine.
	Maybe it will, but only in response to an underlying ease in terms of what we know about coronavirus.
	Right now, people are blaming this on Trump, right?
	Trump's response to coronavirus.
	That's why the stock market is dropping.
	No.
	The reality is what people were looking for from the president last night was a reassurance everything was under control.
	Trump can't give that reassurance because no one can.
	The Prime Minister of Italy can't do it.
	The Prime Minister of Israel can't do it.
	The Prime Minister of Ireland can't do it.
	The head of the WHO can't do it.
	What would Trump have said last night that really would have calmed markets?
	Seriously.
	The answer is nothing.
	If Trump had said, OK, you know what we're going to do tomorrow?
	We're shutting down all public gatherings across the nation.
	We're going to request nobody go to an event with more than 100 people.
	What do you think the stock market would have done this morning?
	It would have dumped.
	It was gonna dump anyway.
	There's not enough information out there.
	So that's not Trump's fault.
	With that said, President Trump's bizarre notion that if the Fed just eases money, that somehow the stock market's gonna be propped up, that if we go to negative interest rates, that we're somehow gonna prop up the market.
	No one is spending.
	No one is going out.
	You have a serious underlying problem.
	If no one is consuming, then there's nobody who's actually going to be hiring.
	And if nobody is hiring, there's going to be a lack of people who are capable of buying things.
	We're entering recession territory.
	We are.
	Now, there are certain things that can be done to stopgap this thing, right?
	We can have, as we mentioned, a payroll tax holiday.
	There have been conservatives urging the federal government to basically sign unemployment checks for people who are unemployed for the period that coronavirus requires you to stay home.
	We've had talk about paid sick leave.
	There's fairly wide bipartisan support for a lot of these proposals, at least in the short term, because an emergency is an emergency.
	But with that said, all of the blame being cast on Trump, it's too much.
	It's too much.
	Trump certainly could have handled this better.
	He continues to need to handle this better.
	But the suggestion that Trump is not taking this seriously right now is ridiculous.
	Jim Acosta tried this yesterday.
	Jim Acosta from CNN asked Trump specifically if he was taking this seriously enough, and Trump ended him.
	Mr. President, what do you say to Americans who are concerned that you're not taking this seriously enough and that some of your statements don't match what your health experts are saying?
	That's CNN fake news.
	Go ahead.
	Thank you very much.
	Okay, so there he is ending Jim Acosta.
	Meanwhile, the media trying to prop up Joe Biden as the alternative.
	Remember, there are always political ramifications for all of this.
	A month ago, President Trump was on a solid path to re-election.
	He was running against an old croned socialist by the name of Bernie Sanders.
	The stock market was at 29,000.
	And President Trump was leading in all the swing states.
	Now the stock market is at 21,000.
	Bernie Sanders is out of the race.
	And President Trump is tweeting things.
	Okay, so things change fast in politics.
	According to the New York Times, Joe Biden, seeking a contrast with Trump, will speak today on coronavirus.
	So he's going to take to the microphones to try and show why he would be a better president than the president.
	And presumably he will get all sorts of rich, rewarding media coverage.
	Even if he can't actually say the word coronavirus properly because he is malfunctioning.
	A day after President Trump addressed the nation about coronavirus amid criticism, he has minimized the threat of the pandemic.
	According to The New York Times, Joe Biden plans to give his own remarks on the virus, seeking to project steadiness and resolve from his purchase frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.
	His campaign announced its plans for the speech on Tuesday before Trump's Oval Office address.
	A Biden official described the upcoming remarks as offering a view into how Biden will lead in times of crisis as president.
	This is why President Trump botching that speech last night was not only bad for the country, it was bad politically.
	On Wednesday, his campaign announced the formation of a public health advisory committee.
	So he's going to run a shadow government to prove that he will be more competent than the president of the United States.
	Members include Vivek Murthy, a former Surgeon General, Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of Obamacare, and Lisa Monaco, who served as Homeland Security and counterterrorism advisor That is the opening, right?
	You know that if this thing deepens, then all of the old comments that President Trump made about the flu, those are just going to be campaign ads.
	Those are just going to be campaign ads.
	has said he would insist on transparency from China and has expressed shock and frustration with Trump's past skeptical remarks.
	That is the opening, right?
	You know that if this thing deepens, then all of the old comments that President Trump made about the flu, those are just going to be campaign ads.
	Those are just going to be campaign ads.
	So Trump getting serious about this is not only necessary, it is worthwhile.
	Again, with all of that said, it is pretty clear that Joe Biden is seeking to make hay.
	The media are seeking to make hay.
	I've said for a long time, President Trump needs to run a discipline campaign if he wishes to win.
	The discipline extends to his actual presidency.
	And as worries grow, as celebrities get this thing, as politicians get this thing, as it seems as though we have no data, Then calming presidential leadership is necessary at a time like this.
	Calming is not a thing that President Trump tends to do.
	Now, meanwhile, there still is a threat from inside the Democratic House.
	So the best case scenario for President Trump is there's a V-shaped recovery.
	In a month, month and a half, this thing calms down a little bit.
	The social distancing measures take effect.
	We have vaccines well on their way.
	Summer hits and coronavirus diagnoses go down.
	The death rate is not as high as we thought it was.
	And then people buy up the stock market.
	I mean, the fact is that people like me, if you're young, You have any sort of cash flow?
	Continuing to buy into the stock market is a smart move because eventually, whether it's now or six months from now or a year from now, the stock market is not only going to recover, it's going to start zooming again, okay?
	And you're going to make a lot of money.
	Buying low and selling high is the name of the game in the stock market.
	We haven't hit bottom yet.
	Goldman Sachs is suggesting that we may drop another 15% on the stock market, which would put President Trump's stock market below where it was when President Trump took office.
	Again, if you look at the chart, it's frightening.
	I mean, the chart basically looks like Continue to arithmetic growth in the stock market and then boom, right off a cliff, thanks to Wuhan virus.
	But the good news is that that does not reveal systemic failures of the American government.
	What that does, or great underlying weaknesses like in the crash of 2007-2008, it just reveals a major global pandemic disruption of the system.
	It's not the system itself.
	So that means that when the pandemic is over, or at least when it wanes, or at least when we think it's waning, then you're going to see presumably A V-shaped or U-shaped recovery.
	The question is whether that comes in time to help President Trump.
	If, if it does, then maybe this thing is over by the time of the election.
	Remember, things change really quickly in politics.
	If we get to June and things have waned on coronavirus, and President Trump takes significant action, which is what he should be doing right now, then he'll be in fairly good shape.
	He'll be able to say, listen, we did everything we could, we stopped coronavirus in its tracks, and it won't be an issue by the time we hit October, November.
	That's best case scenario for President Trump.
	Okay, but that requires some pretty solid leadership.
	Meanwhile, inside the Democratic Party, the conflict continues to play out between the Bernie Sanders wing and the Joe Biden wing.
	Yesterday, Bernie Sanders got up and he said, I am not dropping out of this race.
	No matter what, I'm going to stick around.
	He suggested we are winning the debate, but we're not winning the electability debate, which is a very weird argument.
	Here is Bernie Sanders yesterday announcing that he is going to stay in the race despite the fact that he has no shot at winning the nomination.
	While our campaign has won the ideological debate, We are losing the debate over electability.
	I cannot tell you how many people our campaign has spoken to who have said, and I quote, I like what your campaign stands for.
	I agree with what your campaign stands for.
	But I'm going to vote for Joe Biden because I think Joe is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump.
	End of quote.
	We have heard that statement all over this country.
	Needless to say, I strongly disagree with that assertion.
	Okay, so Bernie Sanders is not dropping out.
	He says he looks forward to debating Joe Biden on Sunday.
	Like, what is his strategy?
	He has no way of winning the nomination.
	Maybe his strategy is to stand in the shadows, and then as Joe Biden walks past, he just jumps out of the shadows and goes, boom!
	And then...
	Something bad happens to Joe Biden, that incapacitate.
	I don't know what Bernie Sanders' strategy is for winning the nomination.
	It clearly is not winning votes because he ain't going to win any votes.
	Nonetheless, Sanders says he's staying in.
	He looks forward to debating Biden.
	That's a divide in the Democratic Party if there is a recovery from coronavirus, which, of course, is top priority for everybody.
	If the country, if the world economy recovers.
	The divide between Sanders and Biden is going to take on a lot larger status as the election approaches.
	Here's Sanders saying he looks forward to debating Joe Biden for no apparent reason.
	On Sunday, I very much look forward to the debate in Arizona with my friend Joe Biden.
	Donald Trump must be defeated, and I will do everything in my power to make that happen.
	On Sunday night, in the first one-on-one debate of this campaign, the American people will have the opportunity to see which candidate is best positioned to accomplish that goal.
	Okay, so that is where we currently stand.
	Basically, everything is on hold in serious terms because of coronavirus.
	But if we move past coronavirus, then all of the political stuff is back on the table.
	And obviously, it is true that coronavirus is being politicized by people who are looking for a political advantage.
	President Trump ought not hand people a club with which to hit him politically.
	Plus, I mean, he is, putting aside politics for a second, he's the leader of the free world.
	He's the leader of the most powerful country on the planet.
	He's the leader of the country in which you live.
	Competence is necessary.
	Calming is necessary.
	Exactitude is necessary.
	Stop with the Twitter crap.
	Stop with downplaying the virus.
	Stop with suggesting that the market is going to be just fine.
	Bottom line is, what we need right now is solid, concerted leadership from the President of the United States and his administration.
	No slipshod crap.
	Enough.
	Okay?
	You live in the country.
	I live in the country.
	We all want to see this thing end.
	Also, we all want to look out for each other.
	What we need right now is a level of seriousness that I think Trump started to evidence last night.
	It needs to continue forward, and he needs to not get caught up in all the political back and forth with Democrats.
	People are not up for this anyway.
	If the Democrats decide to over-politicize this thing, it will backfire on them, and Trump should know that.
	Trump's job right now is to lead.
	He's the president of the United States, and he's been absolved from a lot of the responsibilities of leadership by the fact that we've already baked into the cake that the man's going to tweet a lot.
	But when you're in the middle of a serious national or international crisis like this, there is no substitute for leadership.
	It's time for the president to step up and get it done.
	Okay, time for a couple of things I like and then a thing that I hate.
	So, as long as you're gonna be self-quarantining, I just restarted Better Call Saul.
	So, Better Call Saul is a spinoff from Breaking Bad.
	If you've never seen Breaking Bad, go stream it.
	That'll take you a couple of weeks.
	And then, they made a spinoff called Better Call Saul, which is about...
	which was about the lawyer character in Breaking Bad.
	I watched the first season.
	I thought it was fairly good.
	I started the second season recently because I had heard that it got better.
	And it is indeed a fantastically well-written show.
	Vince Gilligan, who's behind the show, is a tremendously talented dude.
	So check out Better Call Saul.
	Here's the trailer for season one.
	You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Hamlin, and I won't have it.
	What can we do for you, Jimmy?
	What Chuck did for this firm, one third of this place belongs to him.
	If Chuck can call this an extended sabbatical, then so can we.
	You know I'm going to beat this.
	It's time to do right by him and cash him out.
	Hamlin's making you a chump!
	I'm going to get better!
	Chuck, I'm going under.
	Whose side are you on?
	Okay, so as long as you're staying home, the streaming services are gonna do great.
	By the way, go subscribe to Daily Wire.
	We're gonna have lots of content during this self-quarantine period.
	But Better Call Saul is definitely worth the watch.
	You can go check that out today.
	Okay, time for a couple of things that I hate.
	Alrighty, so a couple of things.
	First, Farhad Manjoo has a really dumb column today.
	It's called the Republicans want Medicare for all, but just for this one disease.
	Everyone's a socialist in a pandemic.
	Okay, let's just be clear about something.
	Even libertarians, when it comes to policing externalities, when it comes to collective action and the necessity of fighting a collective threat, are not libertarians.
	Everyone knows this.
	Libertarian principles do not apply in wartime.
	There are not a lot of libertarians who think that we should disband the U.S.
	Army.
	There are not a lot of libertarians who believe that in a time of pandemic, we shouldn't collectively mobilize and use the resources at our disposal to prevent externalities.
	Okay, two, the idiocy is trying to equate a pandemic situation with you have a non-communicable disease or you have a disease that's not going to kill anybody else.
	And when you're talking about a pandemic, I've been saying this for years, okay?
	I'm pretty libertarian when it comes to vaccinations.
	I do believe in regulations at the school level that you shouldn't be able to come to school unless you are vaccinated.
	Why?
	Because those have externalities.
	That is not anti-libertarian.
	Only morons think that a pandemic situation is the same thing as you have cancer coverage through your health insurance.
	It's not Medicare for all, it's called shutting down externalities.
	The people at Reason Magazine wouldn't even argue with this.
	Charles W. Cook, C.W.
	Cook, over at National Review, a libertarian, is fully on board with the idea of government action in times of crisis like this, when there is a collective threat to the collective, because you can't avoid the threat.
	Okay, the idiocy of people on the left suggesting that every situation is a crisis situation and therefore Medicare for All is the same thing as taking care of the population during a pandemic, that's nonsense.
	Not only is it nonsense, it's idiotic nonsense.
	So Farhad Manjoo, who is replete with idiotic nonsense, he has a piece today where he says, all it took was a pandemic of potentially unprecedented scale and severity and suddenly it's like we're turning into Denmark over here.
	In the last few days, a parade of American companies that had long resisted providing humane and necessary benefits to their workers abruptly changed their minds, announcing plans to pay and protect even their lowest rung employees harmed by the ravages of coronavirus.
	Okay, first of all, that would not be the government.
	So where's the socialism?
	If Mark Cuban, the head of the Dallas Mavericks, the owner, if he suggests that he's going to come out of pocket and make sure that furloughed workers get paid, What does that have to do with the government?
	The answer is nothing.
	So how is that Denmarkian?
	Uber and Lyft, which are currently fighting state efforts to force them to pay benefits to drivers and other gig workers, announced that actually a form of paid sick leave wasn't such a bad idea overall.
	Again, these are private companies.
	Drivers who contract the new virus or who are placed in quarantine will get paid for up to two weeks, said Uber.
	Why are they doing that?
	Because they don't want the responsibility of a driver going out there and then getting the passenger sick and then Uber's on the hook.
	Trader Joe's says it will cover for time off for the virus.
	Again, all of these are private companies.
	What the hell does that have to do with government intervention?
	He's such an idiot, he's not even citing instances of government intervention, of which there are plenty.
	It wasn't just sick leave.
	Overnight, workplaces around the country were transformed into Scandinavian Edens of flexibility.
	Can't make it to the office because your kid has to unexpectedly stay home from school?
	Last week, it sucked to be you.
	This week, what are you even doing asking?
	Go home.
	Be with your kid.
	Again, voluntary action by private... He's proving the exact opposite of what he thinks he's proving.
	Private industry is acting responsibly in many ways in order to minimize the risk of the spread of this virus.
	More responsibly than the damned government, which has been lax in nearly every respect on this thing, lagged a month behind, and didn't get the testing kits out anywhere.
	So, I mean, if anything, this column is proving that private industry is doing the crap that government has been unable to do thus far.
	It doesn't mean that government is unnecessary.
	Government is very necessary when it comes to providing the testing kits.
	Although private labs, by the way, are the ones that are going to have to ramp up production in order to make sure that those testing kits are available.
	But it's just amazing that you can conflate private voluntary action with government action and then call it Denmark.
	Pretty amazing.
	Then, here's where Farhad Manjoo finally gets to government programs.
	The Trump administration, last seen proposing to slash a pay raise for federal workers and endorsing a family leave policy that doesn't actually pay for family leave, is now singing the praises of universal sick pay.
	When we tell people if you're sick, stay home, the president has tasked the team with developing economic policies that will make it very, very clear we're going to stand by those hardworking Americans.
	Vice President Pence said on Monday, offering the sort of rhetoric that wouldn't be out of places on the page of Jacobin.
	Okay, the difference is you're talking about a widespread pandemic.
	It is very difficult to determine whether people are truly sick or whether they are truly not if you're talking about government provide paid sick leave.
	Okay, this has been a serious problem in terms of American disability.
	A huge number of Americans who are on disability are not actually disabled.
	They are people who claim disability, and then they are on disability because they say they have back pain or something.
	Disability fraud's a serious problem.
	Now, in a pandemic, the answer is, okay, well, the risk of people coming into work is a lot higher than the risk of people defrauding the system.
	You gotta keep people home, even if it means that you're paying some people to fraudulently stay home.
	But that's because the risk factors changed, you idiot.
	Representative Ted Yoho, Republican from Florida, said, you can look at it as socialized medicine, but in the face of an outbreak of pandemic, what's your options?
	As I said, it's almost funny.
	Everyone's a socialist to pandemic.
	Yes, and everyone is more of a socialist in wartime.
	Collective reactions are necessary for collective threats, but medicine is not a collective threat.
	You having an individual case of a particular disease that is not communicable is not a matter of everybody's interest financially.
	That doesn't mean there aren't All sorts of things that we can do as a society and as communities to make sure that people get health insurance, we can.
	But to pretend that all situations are equal is the idiocy of the simple-minded.
	To pretend that pandemic situations are equivalent to non-pandemic situations, it's ridiculous.
	It's ridiculous on its face.
	But that's what Farhad Manjoo does for a living.
	Okay, one more thing that I hate.
	So, Mara Gay, who is one of the leading forces behind the 1619 Project, and who was a leading factor in the myriad mistakes of the 1619 Project.
	The other week, we were making fun of her, but really making fun of Brian Williams, because Brian Williams brought up a tweet on MSNBC.
	And the tweet on MSNBC suggested that Michael Bloomberg could have paid everybody a million dollars.
	And still had money left over.
	He could have paid everybody in the United States a million dollars for as much money as he spent on the campaign.
	That, of course, is not true.
	Okay, Mara Gay was there.
	She laughed along.
	He sort of laughed at her a little bit, but I said on the show, that's not Mara Gay's fault.
	Like, I feel kind of bad for her, honestly, because the fact is that she's just a guest.
	What, you're going to fact check Brian Williams in real time?
	Okay, but because people were making fun of her, now we get a full column from Mara Gay in the New York Times talking about how it's racist To make fun of her for screwing things up.
	Okay, as somebody who has been made fun of for screwing things up before, let me just say that, um, that's just called life.
	That's called life.
	But Mara Gay literally wrote a piece for the New York Times called, When you're a black woman in America with a public voice, a trivial math error can lead to a deluge of hate.
	Spare me.
	Spare me the hysterics, Mara Gay.
	You're a member of the editorial board of the New York Times.
	You were on national TV.
	You screwed up.
	It wasn't a big deal.
	People kind of made fun of it.
	That was it.
	And yes, there are always idiots who are going to send you nasty hate mail.
	I've gotten more nasty hate mail, I would bet, by scores than anybody at the New York Times editorial board.
	But The idea that my people have been through worse than a... Yes, I'm fairly well aware that black people in America have been through a lot worse, like slavery and Jim Crow, than you taking a little bit of heat for making a dumb mistake on MSNBC.
	But to suggest that, like, this is anywhere on par, or that this is racist, it's such a New York Times... It's such a New York Times... Like, Brian Williams got hit for this, too.
	He's white.
	But Mara Gay says, On MSNBC's The 11th Hour with Brian Williams, the night before, we mentioned a tweet written by someone else about the enormous amount of money Michael Bloomberg had spent on his failed presidential run, about $500 million.
	Here's what I said.
	Somebody tweeted recently that actually with the money he spent, he could have given every American a million dollars.
	The math, as a few people have pointed out, was wrong.
	Overnight, I'd become an online sensation and not in a good way.
	The video had gone viral, first shared by the right wing and then by seemingly everyone else too.
	Some people seemed surprised I couldn't fact check arithmetic on live TV.
	Let me assure you, my high school math teachers were not among those people.
	Given my history with math, I thought the flub was pretty funny.
	I tried to laugh it off.
	Buying a calculator, I wrote on Twitter on Friday.
	Be right back.
	In a normal time, that would have been the end of it, but the country has lost its mind, so instead, it was only the beginning.
	Okay, well, no, it kind of wasn't.
	like she says across social media right-wing trolls celebrated the next time they make a mistake i hope people are nicer to them than they were to me how did this end up on tv one of them helpfully wrote sharing the video unfortunately quite a few americans can tell you what it's like to be the target of a twitter mob over a gaff migrates in was trivial harmless and silly what's it like when people are trying to cancel you for a math mistake weird and maddening and painful okay nobody nobody was there a single person who suggested margay should be fired over the math mistake Like anyone?
	The answer is no.
	But she says, of course.
	In my case, it wasn't really about math, as anyone who read through my mentions on Twitter or saw my inbox would know.
	You're a great example of why we need to end affirmative action.
	Someone named Jim B. wrote me in an email this weekend, get a job scrubbing floors.
	It's the only thing you're good for.
	Okay, so now she's just gonna go through her mailbox and find all the racists in her mailbox.
	This is the easiest game in the world.
	If I found you all the anti-Semites in my mailbox, I could do full shows just reading the anti-Semitism in my mailbox.
	Guess what?
	Who cares?
	But the sort of self-sacrificial, woe is me, I'm a heroine of the movement because I'm a black person on TV, and therefore any criticism of me is criticism of blackness as opposed to me making a dumb math mistake.
	Again, I thought the reaction was overwhelmingly stupid to Maragay's dumb mistake, but to suggest that it's because of overwhelming American racism, it's ridiculous.
	She says, many of those Americans She says, when I appeared on that TV program last week, I'd been working for many days interviewing black voters in the South who were determined to defeat Donald Trump, whom they see as the nightmare embodiment of the old hatreds many of them fought to overcome.
	Many of those Americans had survived far worse under the racial terror of Jim Crow than anything I can imagine.
	I thought about the black man I met at the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, who had been beaten bloody by the police there half a century ago.
	I thought about the older black woman who approached me in a Selma coffee shop.
	I thought about my father, who grew up enduring the daily indignities of segregated South Carolina and Detroit.
	I'm here because of them, and there's nothing the haters can do about it.
	Okay, was anybody arguing with that?
	Like, seriously, who's arguing with that?
	And why are you comparing yourself to that?
	It's not the same thing at all.
	The self-pitying of, oh, I made a mistake on TV, people made fun of me, it must be because of my race.
	You can always find idiots to say things.
	You can always find idiots to say things.
	Seriously, not hard.
	Alrighty, well, we'll be back later today with two additional hours, if my voice holds up.
	If not, then we'll be back here tomorrow.
	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.
	President Trump addresses the coronavirus epidemic from the Oval Office.
	We will examine how we're all gonna die.
	Then, Bernie refuses to drop out of the race.
	A mathematically-challenged New York Times editorial board member cries racism when people correct her.
	And AOC says it's racist not to eat lo mein.
	All that, plus the mailbag.

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