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March 23, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

58:35

Desperate Times | Ep. 977

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	The coronavirus situation continues to degrade abroad as America prepares at home and Nancy Pelosi blows up a bipartisan stimulus bill.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN, my savvy fans.
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	Join them at expressvpn.com.
	Okay, so I hope you had a wonderful and non-relaxing weekend.
	I hope you had a relaxing weekend, but let's be frank about it.
	None of this is relaxing.
	All of this is guaranteed to lead to anxiety.
	Even I, your placid host, I normally have fairly low blood pressure.
	Well, my wife took my blood pressure recently.
	Let's just say it was way above normal.
	And that is, I think, fairly normal for everybody at this point.
	We're all in this together, right?
	I mean, I've got my Churchill poster up behind me, the We're In It Together poster.
	The reality is that this is a crisis of proportions that we have not seen in my lifetime, I think in virtually anybody's lifetime, certainly since World War II.
	And the extent of the crisis is not yet known, and that's what makes this so difficult.
	Is that when it comes to trying to figure out exactly where the data lead us, we are short on data at this point.
	And so, on the one hand, I'm hearing calls from some people saying, you're taking this whole thing too seriously.
	Not that many people have died yet.
	And on the other hand, I'm hearing people say, you're taking this way too seriously.
	You're not taking this seriously enough.
	You're suggesting that we should keep an eye on the economy.
	And really, at this point, we should just be protecting life.
	Here's the deal.
	Here's where I am right at this moment.
	I think I am where a lot of people are right at this moment.
	I am perfectly willing to put everything on hold until we know what exactly the projections look like, because we have not yet seen the curve bend down in any Western country other than South Korea.
	South Korea would be the only outlier.
	We have a couple of Asian countries, Singapore, Hong Kong, that presumably the curve has bent down.
	We cannot trust the statistics from probably either Hong Kong or China, considering they're directed by the Chinese Communist Party, which lied about this thing in the first place.
	But because we have not seen enough statistics yet, nobody knows exactly where we stand.
	So right now, what we are gambling is potential future economic loss from which we could recover against a certainty of loss of life.
	And we don't know exactly how much loss of life there's going to be.
	My prediction is that by the end of this week, especially looking at the European countries, not even looking at the United States, looking at Italy, looking at Spain, that by the end of this week, we're going to have a much better idea of where exactly things stand.
	And that's true in both terms of the economy and the guaranteed damage to the economy that happens when you shut down the entire world economy, forcibly, the way we have done at the government level, and in terms of loss of life.
	Because what we've seen in Italy is mild optimism at this hour, because while tons of people are dying, particularly in northern Italy from coronavirus, some 650, 700 a day, it seems like that may be evening off and leveling out.
	Now, one of the things that you should be aware of when you look at the charts is that the chart that really matters is the day-on-day growth, not the cumulative stats.
	The cumulative stats don't matter very much because, again, if you're going to look at cumulative stats, they're always going to continue to grow because none of the cases ever really come off the board or very few cases tend to come off the board because there's like a two to three week lag time before somebody actually comes off the board.
	What you really want to see is whether the number of new diagnosed cases and new deaths is leveling off day by day Hopefully, the rate of growth levels to zero.
	And at that point, then you can declare the pandemic is basically over.
	Although again, you may get a second wave pandemic.
	So we don't have that much information yet.
	We just don't know.
	And because we don't know, in the absence of information, governments are acting because what other choice do they have?
	If this thing goes worst case scenario, then 2 million people die.
	And if this thing is best case scenario, presumably we'll know that over the next couple of weeks.
	That's why President Trump was getting all sorts of flack this morning.
	Because he was watching Steve Hilton's show on Fox, pretty obviously.
	And Steve Hilton is a good dude.
	He did a monologue about the potential of an economic catastrophe and how many lives that would cost, what kind of damage that was going to do.
	And he got all sorts of flack for this because we live in this weird internet world where you are not supposed to even think about, at this point, the trade-offs of government policy.
	Now, there's no question there are trade-offs to government policy.
	Millions of Americans are going to lose their jobs right now.
	And that is, in fact, a trade-off.
	Now, we can say that that trade-off is certainly worth it when we don't know the extent of the possible loss of human life.
	We can say that right now.
	But to say to people they are not even allowed to consider the trade-offs of government policy?
	That as we gather information, we're not allowed to better calibrate government policy?
	Because if we save one life, then that is worth everything?
	That obviously is not true.
	I mean, that obviously is not true throughout American policy.
	Forever and always, we are going to calculate the extent of public policy losses on the one side versus public policy gains on the other side.
	Right now, the big problem is, I keep saying over and over, is lack of data.
	And so I'm not going to be sucked into the game where I say, I know that things are going to level off.
	I don't know things are going to level off.
	And I'm also not going to be sucked into the game where I say, I know that things are going to go exponential growth, because I don't know they're going to go exponential growth.
	And neither do you, and neither do any of the experts.
	If the experts really knew all this stuff, they would be presenting that data to the public.
	And if the experts on the so-called other side knew that this thing were going to level off, then they would be presenting all of their findings and then we could decide.
	But the fact is, at this point, all we really have is an enormous amount of speculation.
	And so in the absence of hard data, I'm going to say, hold on.
	Just hold on.
	What we're doing right now seems like a smart policy in terms of the lockdowns.
	That can't last forever, as I said last Friday.
	I don't see a plan to end this in any near-term fashion.
	I don't see any sort of projections from the government as to what they hope to achieve over the next two or three weeks, or the next two months for that matter, that is going to lock this thing down, increase our medical capacity, prevent us from moving over that line of medical capacity.
	I don't see what the government is, like, what are their projections at this point?
	We just don't have enough information.
	The government's not presenting us information.
	So I'm going to give you, so President Trump said yesterday, after watching Steve Hilton, he tweeted out, we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.
	And he said that at the end of the 15 day shutdown period, we'll make a decision as to which way we want to go.
	And he got all sorts of flack for this.
	How dare he say this sort of thing?
	Is he just watching Fox News and making policy based on Fox News?
	First of all, I really don't think that that is unreasonable.
	I think on a day-to-day level, the federal government should be considering exactly what policies we are putting in place.
	State governments should be doing that too.
	He's not saying at the end of 15 days, he's going to go, everybody out there, enjoy your life.
	He's just saying at the end of 15 days, as we gather more data, we're going to have to figure out whether our policy is best calibrated toward doing.
	What it seeks to do, which is save lives.
	And yes, also to save the economy.
	Because again, we could have upward of 30% unemployment.
	That's going to have some pretty significant life ramifications for literally hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone and billions of people around the globe.
	So all of this is extraordinarily complicated.
	There are no easy answers.
	And to pretend that re-evaluating in 15 days is like the end of the world.
	I don't understand.
	Are we supposed to not re-evaluate in 15 days?
	What would be stupid is to evaluate wrongly in 15 days and then let everybody out off lockdown if, in fact, we're still undergoing exponential growth in death and infection rates in the United States.
	That would be idiotic policy.
	But Trump isn't saying that's exactly what he's going to do.
	He's just saying we have to re-evaluate.
	Look, we should be re-evaluating on an ongoing basis.
	And we also do have to weigh all of the various complications here.
	Because what you're going to hear from the health community is exactly right.
	That in their best of all possible worlds, we lock down for like nine months until there's a vaccine.
	Or 12 or 18 months until there's a vaccine.
	But health policy wonks are also not economic wonks.
	And economic wonks are not health policy wonks.
	And there are very few people who bridge the gap between health policy wonk and economic wonk.
	If you're a doctor right now, they're telling you stay home.
	And if you're an economist, they're saying go to work, right?
	Because the fact is that these two priorities are directly opposed to one another.
	So the question becomes, when does the balance tip away from we're all going to die in the pandemic, or a huge number of people, particularly the elderly, are going to die in the pandemic, and toward a bunch of people are going to have their lives ruined by the economic shutdown?
	When does this balance tip?
	And we don't know the answer to that.
	I keep saying we don't know.
	It's okay to say we don't know.
	It really is okay.
	And if you hear people out there expressing with certainty that they know, it's because they're lying to you.
	Nobody knows yet.
	Nobody knows.
	Okay, we're gonna get to more of this in just a second.
	We're gonna get to the two sides of the coin that are being presented.
	One thing is certain, this week is gonna get a lot worse in terms of the number of infections and deaths in the United States, because that has happened in Spain, it has happened in Italy.
	Also, we're doing inordinate amounts of testing, like huge amounts of testing, finally.
	Late.
	We're finally doing that in the United States.
	We're gonna see prominent people get this thing.
	I assume there will be prominent people who probably die of this thing over the next two or three weeks because, again, it is infecting presumably hundreds of thousands of people in the United States.
	We'll get to all of that in just one second.
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	Okay, so.
	As I have said, this week is going to be bad.
	It's going to be bad in terms of the stats.
	It's going to be bad in terms of the deaths.
	We know that because finally we're testing and finally people are starting to go into the hospital who have this thing.
	So this is the week when the rubber hits the road and the pedal hits the metal, as they say.
	Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams warned on Monday the coronavirus outbreak will worsen this week.
	He said people across the country are not taking the threat seriously enough.
	Now, he's saying what he's supposed to say.
	Because the fact is that if you're not locked in your house and staying away from other people, then according to the doctors, you're basically doing it wrong.
	And that is right.
	I mean, that is why you're seeing cities across the United States, like here in LA.
	Yesterday, my family, we wanted to get out of the house.
	So we drove by Griffith Park.
	It was packed.
	We drove away.
	We didn't even get out of the car.
	We just kept driving.
	Because everybody wants to get out right now because the sunshine does make you feel better.
	I have advised people you need to take a walk a day.
	It's all true.
	Also, stay away from the other humans.
	So Adam said, I want Americans to understand this is going to get bad.
	He said the disease is spreading because many people, especially young people, are not abiding by guidance to stay home and practice social distancing.
	We are seeing young people who are coming down with this.
	It is not nearly the rates of elderly people or people with pre-existing conditions.
	There's a 12-year-old girl in Georgia who came down with this, is in critical condition.
	There was an 18-year-old, I believe, in Italy who just died.
	So there are young people who are coming down with this, and even young people coming down with this, you can sustain fairly significant lung damage according to some of the studies.
	Adam says right now there are not enough people out there who are taking this seriously.
	Adam said that young people were flocking to the beaches in California.
	People were still headed to the National Mall in Washington to view the cherry blossom trees that bloom each year.
	He warned that young people need to understand they can contract COVID-19 and they can be hospitalized and potentially die from it.
	Now, it is also true that your chances of that happening, not contracting it but dying from it, are extremely low if you are young.
	Not lower than if you contract the flu if you're young, but lower than old people or people who have some sort of pre-existing condition.
	But Adam says everyone needs to act as if they have the virus right now.
	So test or no test.
	We need you to understand you could be spreading it to someone else or you could be getting it from someone else.
	Stay at home.
	And he was also answering questions about the supply chains.
	He said the supply chains are indeed opening.
	Okay, so on the one hand you have everybody, every expert saying That you need to stay home right now to flatten the curve.
	On the other hand, Michael Leavitt, Nobel laureate Stanford biophysicist, began analyzing the number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in January.
	Correctly calculated that China would get through the worst of its coronavirus outbreak long before many health experts had predicted, according to Yahoo News.
	Now he foresees a similar outcome in the United States and the rest of the world.
	He says what we need to do is control the panic.
	We're going to be fine.
	He says absolutely people need to stay home.
	But he says the rate of increase in the number of deaths will slow even more over the next week.
	Now again, the rate of increase does not mean the number of deaths is going to slow.
	It means the rate of increase in the number of deaths.
	So, what that means is, Italy had 750 deaths or so on Sunday.
	They had 650, or Saturday, they had 650 deaths or so on Sunday.
	All that is terrible.
	All that is awful.
	Every one of those deaths is a tragedy.
	But, 650 is less than 750.
	He's saying, okay, and if tomorrow you have 550, 450, 350, 250, then pretty soon this thing levels off where you're having very few deaths, and that's what you've seen in China.
	So, his hope is that we're going to see this thing starting to level off.
	Right now, we have 354,000 total confirmed cases of coronavirus all across the globe, with about 15,000 deaths thus far.
	Italy has seen a huge number because, again, their health system got overwhelmed.
	That's what we are trying to prevent here.
	Italy has seen 59,138 cases as of this hour, with almost 5,500 total deaths.
	They're experiencing hundreds of deaths a day, and that is because their system is completely overwhelmed.
	You're seeing the United States, we have 35,300 confirmed cases.
	That is going up fairly significantly.
	473 deaths.
	Now, what you're seeing in some of these countries is a wild difference in the death rate, right?
	If I read you those stats again, what you'll see is that in Italy, you're seeing almost a 10% death rate, basically.
	You're seeing a 9% death rate from people who are confirmed to people who have died.
	In the United States, the death rate is still like 1.2, 1.3%.
	And as we test more and more, it seems like those rates are going down, not up.
	In Spain, Again, the health system has been overwhelmed and you're starting to see the rates rise.
	You have 33,000 confirmed cases, 2,200 deaths.
	Things are getting bad over there.
	But Germany has 27,000 confirmed cases and only 115 deaths.
	And that is because, supposedly, they've really locked everything down pretty tight.
	Angela Merkel locked everything down.
	Angela Merkel, in fact, just went into self-quarantine herself.
	Germany has now banned groups of more than two to stop coronavirus.
	Angela Merkel has self-quarantined after she came into contact Her doctor had tested positive for coronavirus and she said she would isolate herself at home effective immediately.
	We are seeing prominent people are coming down with this thing.
	We have seen the husband of Amy Klobuchar apparently came down with this.
	He was apparently coughing up blood, and he is now on oxygen.
	He's not on a ventilator yet.
	Hopefully that remains the case.
	Senator Rand Paul came down with this thing as well over the weekend.
	That, of course, was very big news.
	He tested positive for the coronavirus.
	His office announced in a statement on Sunday, he's the first senator, third member of Congress to test positive.
	One member of Congress from Utah has already been hospitalized for this thing.
	Paul was asymptomatic, tested out of an abundance of caution due to his extensive travel and events, according to his office.
	He has self-quarantined since, but he went to the gym.
	So that's wonderful.
	He went to the gym, like, the day that he was found to have coronavirus.
	So that brought him some pretty significant criticism from his fellows, as frankly, it should.
	I mean, Nobody should be going to the gym right now.
	I criticized Bill de Blasio for it last week, so Rand Paul is not exempt from that.
	Mike Lee and Mitt Romney said they would be self-quarantining.
	They cited Paul's diagnosis and the advice of the attending physician of the U.S.
	Congress.
	President Trump was batted about a little bit yesterday because President Trump seemed to make a reference to Mitt Romney, who's asked about Romney self-quarantining, and here's what President Trump had to say about it.
	On top of Senator Paul, now four senators are in isolation.
	And the rules say that in order to vote, they have to get there.
	Who are they?
	Romney, Senator Lee, Senator Gardner, and Senator Rick Scott.
	Also, two of them were in contact with Rick.
	With the critical stimulus package vote expected.
	Romney's in isolation?
	Yes.
	Gee, that's too bad.
	Go ahead.
	Did that have sarcasm there?
	No.
	Okay, so everybody in the room is like, wait, are you making fun of Mitt Romney for being in isolation now?
	He has the plausible deniability, does Trump, of being able to say, no, he was just being perfectly genuine, except that he singled out Romney there.
	Okay, you can read that one however you want.
	Is that just Trump being remarkably callous about a coronavirus self-isolation, or is that Trump actually expressing sympathy?
	Read that however you like.
	I have a feeling that people who love Trump are going to say, no, he was being perfectly generous of spirit in referencing Romney there.
	And people who don't like Trump are going to be like, yeah, When he says, gee, that doesn't sound exactly like somebody who is experiencing tremendous amounts of sympathy for somebody who is now self-quarantining.
	Put that aside.
	Two other members of Congress, Representative Mario Diaz-Ballart, Republican of Florida, and Representative Ben McAdams, have also tested positive for the virus.
	Over a dozen others have since self-isolated after coming into contact with them or other individuals who had tested positive for COVID-19.
	So as this thing continues to develop, obviously you're going to see more and more prominent people get it.
	Some of the prominent people who are getting it have been recovering.
	Daniel Dae Kim from the series Lost, which was one of my favorite series when it was on TV.
	He played Jin, I believe was the name of his character.
	And Daniel Dae Kim came down with coronavirus.
	He said he had a bit of a rough time, but the new drug cocktail that is now Here's what I consider to be the secret weapon.
	hydroxychloroquine, as well as azithromycin.
	He said that that really helped him recover.
	Here's what he had to say about it.
	Here's what I consider to be the secret weapon, hydroxychloroquine.
	This is a common antimalarial drug that has been used with great success in Korea in their fight against the coronavirus.
	virus.
	And yes, this is the drug that the president mentioned the other day.
	It is also the drug that Dr. Anthony Fauci cautioned us about.
	He said that evidence that the drug was promising is anecdotal.
	And that is correct.
	It means it wasn't studied and it's only based on personal accounts.
	We'll add my name to those personal accounts because I am feeling better.
	Okay, so that is true that Fauci did caution people because President Trump had gone out at a presser and he had talked about this drug cocktail.
	And then Fauci went out and he sort of hesitated.
	He said, listen, President Trump is trying to bring hope to people.
	And we'll get to Dr. Fauci in just a second and his relationship with Trump because obviously Fauci is using whatever capacity he has to try and convince Trump to say things he wants him to say, and he's not having complete success at that.
	We'll get to that in a little bit.
	But here was Fauci hesitating on the drug cocktail last week, saying, you know, we don't want to overblow this thing before we have clinical trials in on it.
	The president has heard, as we all have heard, what I call anecdotal reports that certain drugs work.
	So what he was trying to do and express was the hope that if they might work, let's try and push their usage.
	I on the other side have said, I'm not disagreeing with the fact anecdotally they might work, but my job is to prove definitively from a scientific standpoint that they do work.
	So I was taking a purely medical scientific standpoint and the president was trying to bring hope to the people.
	Okay, and there's truth to that.
	It is also true, by the way, that it's not like you can go to your doctor and ask for a prescription on this thing.
	The doctor is going to have to recommend it.
	They have put out notices to virtually every hospital in the United States that if you recommend this without there being a proper reason to recommend it, that you're depleting the supply.
	Okay, we're going to get to more of all of this in one second, plus the giant legislative battle that has broken out over the coronavirus federal financial response, because we are now in uncharted financial territory.
	We'll get to the kind of policy we should be pursuing.
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	So as I keep saying...
	Everything right now is geared toward not becoming Italy.
	The horror stories from Italy are really frightening, obviously.
	And again, raise questions as to, on the one hand, we got to not be Italy.
	On the other hand, what if there's a second wave even after we tamp this thing down and let people out again?
	So on the first hand, you know, when we talk about tamping this thing down to the point where we're not Italy, there's an Israeli medical doctor named Guy Peleg.
	He just told Israeli television that in northern Italy, the orders are not to allow anybody over 60 access to respiratory machines.
	So you come in, and you're over 60 in Northern Italy, and you can't breathe, and they're basically, well, you're on your own.
	Which is just insane, because they're trying to save younger people who have a better shot at life.
	They're rationing care.
	By the way, Italy does have a single-payer system, so anybody who suggests to you that a single-payer healthcare system is a cure-all to the problems that ail the American healthcare system, yeah, not so much.
	Not so much.
	Meanwhile, in Asia, on the other hand, there are second waves that are apparently breaking out in various different countries.
	From Australia's Bondi Beach, according to Yahoo News, to the streets of New Delhi, authorities across Asia have ramped up efforts to stem the spread of coronavirus amid fears of a second wave of infection in places where outbreaks had appeared under control.
	Outside China, South Korea is the hardest hit country in Asia with more than 8,500 cases.
	While the number of infections in China is supposedly falling, other countries are seeing the toll gather pace from spread of the highly contagious virus.
	Cases rose by roughly a third in Thailand overnight to nearly 600, fueling skepticism about claims in Myanmar and Laos of zero infections.
	One of the big problems here is that democratic countries tend to be honest and transparent about the number of infections and deaths they have seen, which is what you're seeing in Italy.
	According to Russia, everything's hunky dory.
	But that's because Russia is a dictatorship.
	This is why we can't trust China either.
	China's like, yeah, we're fine.
	We've seen sporadic reports out of China that they're not even doing testing anymore specifically so that they can keep the numbers down of the number of infected and the number of dead.
	Meanwhile, there are serious concerns that there will be a second wave the minute you let people out.
	Singapore is banning all short-term visitors to the densely populated city-state after a surge of imported cases took its total to 445, including its first two deaths on Saturday.
	In Hong Kong, the number of cases nearly doubled in the past week as more and more people were flying back to the financial hub, which does raise the question, as I raised on Friday, okay, well, how long can you keep everybody locked down?
	How long can you keep everybody locked down?
	If you let everybody back out in three weeks and you have not radically increased the medical capacity available, and then there's a second wave and it overwhelms the system, what exactly have you prevented?
	And you're not going to reach anything remotely approaching herd immunity until 60% of the population has had coronavirus and moved on.
	So, where we go from here is, of course, the big question.
	Meanwhile, the federal response continues to be, I would say, at the very least, chaotic.
	Some good things are happening, some very chaotic things are happening as well.
	In good news, the FDA is finally relaxing restrictions on ventilators, which again, isn't it demonstrative of how giant bureaucracies are not wonderful?
	When the FDA finally, like on Sunday, is now releasing restrictions on ventilators.
	We don't have to go through the FDA process to get these things approved.
	I mean, people are literally going to die in hospitals if they don't get the ventilators, and it took until Sunday for the FDA to be like, oh yeah, maybe we'll waive some of these ridiculous requirements on how the ventilators are supposed to work.
	The FDA said on Sunday, hospitals and healthcare professionals may now repurpose ventilators that were originally intended for other environments.
	I'm glad they finally got on the game.
	For example, the agency said hospitals could adapt ventilators that are now used in ambulances for use on patients who are being treated inside their facilities.
	In addition, the agency said that manufacturers that would normally need FDA clearance to modify a ventilator could now do it without an agency review.
	The FDA said this would help companies speed up their manufacturing by obtaining ventilator parts from automobile manufacturers or other companies that don't currently make medical devices.
	Which of course, this should have been relieved weeks ago, obviously.
	And when people talk about the wonders of the federal government, just recognize that the wonders of the federal government put these restrictions in place in the first place, which is obviously not good news.
	So, what exactly can the government do at this point to stop all of this?
	Long article over at the New York Times discussing what exactly the measures are that could help alleviate this situation.
	The answer is, A lot of lockdowns.
	I mean, basically, avoid contact.
	There's some aspects here that have not really been tested.
	Like, you know, when we shut down all the schools, it was not great social science that led to the shutdown in the schools.
	And the New York Times is reporting as much.
	That's not right-wing or Ben Shapiro.
	That's the left-wing New York Times suggesting that maybe these giant school lockdowns and sending kids home has actually increased the chances of kids giving the infection to their grandparents because, while they may not get sick, they become carriers to the grandparents.
	But basically, everything has to be locked down for the moment.
	The problem is that that has extraordinary consequences for the economy.
	So we're going to get to the economy in just one second because this is the...
	This is the countervailing interest here.
	The longer this goes on, the more we're going to have to determine what exactly is the balance between that which we hope to forestall on the public health level and that which we hope to forestall on the financial level.
	We'll get to that in just one second first.
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	Alright, so, as I say, the big question when it comes to the economic response is how many deaths are we forestalling by shutting down the entire economy, and how many deaths are we causing, and how many jobs are we causing to be lost by shutting down the entire economy.
	And to pretend that we can't do these actuarial investigations at all is idiotic.
	Obviously we have to be doing those sorts of considerations.
	We make those sorts of considerations every single day.
	Those sorts of considerations are the basis of government policy.
	Now that doesn't mean that we come down on the side of open everything up, go out and enjoy your life.
	Again, we don't have enough data yet to suggest this thing isn't going to go completely exponential and wipe out 2 million people from the United States population.
	But as these statistics begin to accrue, there are going to be some interesting arguments over when exactly people should be able to get back to work and go out again and get this economy moving again.
	Right now, as we say, the members of the government are talking about how bad this is going to be.
	We'll find out.
	Andrew Cuomo of New York, he said yesterday that 80% of people are going to get the virus and it could last nine months.
	Which does, again, raise that question.
	Okay, so what's going to change in the next three that allows us to get back to work?
	Because if you think that people are going to stay home for nine months, nine months, You're crazy.
	I mean, we've been doing this for like nine days and people are chafing.
	You want to know why the parks are full?
	You want to know why the beaches are full?
	Because human beings are social creatures.
	Now that doesn't mean this is what you should be doing, but realistically speaking, the harsher the government response in terms of stay home, the less long this can last.
	So when Governor Cuomo says 80% of people are going to get the virus, people can be like, okay, well, If you're not upping your game in terms of preventing death, and 80% of people are going to get it, then are we better off getting it now or are we better off getting it later?
	Italy says we're better off getting it later because we're going to get completely overwhelmed.
	The question is, what can we do to prevent the overwhelm now so that when 80% of the people get it, a huge number of people don't die?
	Here was Andrew Cuomo yesterday, governor of New York, saying 80% of people are going to get the virus.
	It could last nine months.
	The context on the numbers is important.
	We're talking 10,000, etc.
	You look at any World Health Organization or the NIH or whatever any of the other countries are saying, you have to expect that at the end of the day, 40% to 80% of the population is going to be infected.
	So, the only question is, how fast is the rate to that 40%, 80% and can you slow that rate so your hospital system can deal with it?
	Okay, and what he's saying there is absolutely correct.
	How much do we have to slow the rate so the hospital system can deal with it?
	And we've heard no estimates so far from anybody on how fast we can get the hospital system ramped up to deal with all of this.
	Cuomo also went out and slammed city residents for going out, which again, in the midst of a pandemic, you really should be listening to the government at this time and you should stay home.
	Going out is an irresponsible thing to do.
	Here's Andrew Cuomo.
	There is a density level in New York City That is wholly inappropriate.
	You would think there was nothing going on in parts of New York City.
	You would think it was just a bright, sunny Saturday.
	This is just a mistake!
	It's a mistake!
	It's insensitive.
	It's arrogant.
	It's self-destructive.
	It's disrespectful to other people.
	And it has to stop, and it has to stop now!
	Okay, well, again, I'm not going to disagree with any of this, right?
	Right now, we've got to give it our best shot.
	Right now, we've got to give it our best shot to lock this thing down.
	But we better start getting some data pretty soon.
	Because it does appear that right now, this thing is going to go political very quickly.
	And this is what a lot of people are afraid of.
	What a lot of people are afraid of is that this thing gets political very quickly.
	That the worse the government response is to this, the more we are locked down, the faster politicians start to politicize.
	And that is happening in real time.
	I mean, we're watching it happen in real time.
	And that's very scary, too.
	Because again, when we're talking about various competing interests, you've got the economy, which is a massive competing interest.
	You've got the health of the United States, which, of course, is the greatest interest.
	And then you have the policies of the United States that could, in fact, change radically over the next year, such that the very nature of the United States itself is changed.
	And there are politicians who are trying to take advantage of this stuff.
	There really are.
	Okay, Rahm Emanuel once said, never let a good crisis go to waste.
	Well, this is the greatest crisis in the history of the United States, except for possibly the Civil War.
	I mean, it is a greater crisis than World War II, because the U.S.
	population was actually less threatened in World War II than it is right now by this pandemic.
	And the government response has been significantly broader even than World War II, which is incredible.
	I mean, you've got literally hundreds and half the population of the United States locked down, state after state now declaring lockdowns.
	This has some pretty significant ramifications for our freedom.
	So what I'm saying is, everybody better tread pretty lightly and be ready to reevaluate on a moment's notice as more data comes in.
	And the greater the crisis, the more government intervention is necessary.
	And then there are people who want to make that government interventionism permanent as a matter of politics and have wanted to for a very long time.
	So as we watch sector after sector that hits the chopping block, the question becomes, okay, what should our response be on all of this?
	I mean, billionaire real estate investor Tom Barak said that the U.S.
	commercial mortgage market is now on the brink of collapse.
	He predicted a domino effect of catastrophic economic consequences if banks and governments don't take prompt action to keep borrowers from defaulting.
	Because he's saying that there could be a chain reaction of margin calls, mass foreclosures, evictions, and potentially bank failures due to the coronavirus pandemic.
	He says, to keep people employed, you have to support the employers.
	The biggest part of the employer expense is rent.
	When commerce stops, and they can't pay rent, and they can't pay interest on the debt, then the banks and intermediaries cannot pay their investors, and then it all collapses.
	Right?
	So this thing better get shored up in short order.
	And yet, and yet, the politics playing did not stop yesterday on a variety of scores.
	So you saw, for example, Andrew Cuomo, who again, I think is not doing a bad job in terms of letting his population know you got to lock this thing down.
	At the same time, Cuomo turned to the Trump administration and said, I want you to nationalize the entire factory system, basically.
	I want you to nationalize the entire chain of medical device production.
	Which is completely unnecessary.
	Okay, it really is.
	His suggestion is you're going to get states bidding against each other to get these masks and get these medical devices.
	Okay, question.
	Why do you think that the federal government is going to be better at producing things than the private industry is?
	Just the way the market works.
	If states are competing to pay top dollar for this stuff, don't you think that every business owner, mainly business owners who are in industries that are completely defunct right now because they've been shut down, are going to shift their production over as fast as humanly possible to making the ventilators, making the masks?
	This is happening in real time.
	Nonetheless, Andrew Cuomo says, let's nationalize the factories.
	And you get the feeling this is somebody who's been interested in nationalizing resources for quite a while.
	I think the federal government should order factories to manufacture masks, gowns, ventilators, the essential medical equipment that's going to make the difference between life and death.
	It's not hard to make a mask or PPE equipment or a gown.
	But you need companies to do it.
	We have apparel companies that can make clothing.
	Well, then you can make a surgical gown and you can make a mask.
	But they have to be ordered to do it.
	Okay.
	Again, that is unnecessary.
	You know who says that's unnecessary?
	Dr. Anthony Fauci, who everybody sort of trusts on this stuff.
	He says, we don't need to nationalize anything.
	Everybody's ramping up.
	Who do you think has been providing the tests?
	It's Quest.
	Who do you think has been providing all of the supply chains that have allowed you to continue going to the supermarket?
	That's private industry.
	Here's Fauci saying, no, we don't need nationalization.
	What the president was saying is that these companies are coming forth on their own, and I think that's an extraordinary spirit of the American spirit of not needing to be coaxed.
	They're stepping forward.
	They're making not only masks, but PPEs and now ventilators.
	So what we're going to be seeing, and we're seeing it already, in the beginning, obviously, there was an issue with testing.
	The testing now A large number of tests are available now out there because the private companies have gotten involved.
	That's 100% true.
	And again, private companies are better at this than the federal bureaucracy.
	They just are.
	By the way, this is what happened during World War II also.
	The government did not nationalize all the industries.
	They went to private industry and they said, we need your help and we are going to make orders from you.
	And Ford suddenly turned into a plane manufacturing company.
	I mean, this is the way private industry in the United States responds.
	This is why the sleeping giant of American industry has been awakened, and it is responding, as opposed to FEMA.
	I mean, you should have heard the FEMA chief yesterday.
	He was asked direct questions on medical supply distribution.
	He was like, I don't know.
	Because the government never knows.
	Okay, here's the FEMA chief who didn't know the answers on basic medical supply distribution at this point.
	Do you have any specific numbers on how many masks the federal government has been able to acquire and how many have gone out the door to hospitals?
	It is a dynamic and fluid operation.
	Do you have even a rough number?
	I can't give you a rough number.
	I can tell you that it's happening every day.
	And my mission is operational coordination of all of these things.
	And that's my focus.
	Again, the government is just not as good at any of this stuff as private industry is.
	The only thing that you need from the government is the resources to pay for all of this stuff, to make sure that everybody gets what they need.
	But what you need private industry to do is what private industry does best, which is produce things at low cost and fast, right?
	That is what capitalism does.
	And meanwhile, as you say, I said, everybody is playing politics with this stuff.
	It's not just about nationalization.
	Obviously, the big story of the day is the Democrats killing this massive $2 trillion stimulus package from the Republican Congress.
	This thing was already pre-negotiated.
	And let's be real about this.
	I mean, we are at the brink.
	We are at the financial brink at this point.
	We're so much at the financial brink that the Federal Reserve has basically become the central policymaker in the United States.
	The Federal Reserve announced today asset purchases with no limit to support the markets.
	So the Federal Reserve, which once was designed to simply prevent runs on banks, is now the single greatest investor in American industry.
	They're going to be buying up corporate bonds.
	Basically, the only thing they won't buy is basic stock.
	They're not going to buy into the stock market.
	They're not going to buy equities.
	But they are going to be buying up corporate bonds just to make sure that these businesses don't go under.
	Why?
	Because Congress can't act and they can't get their stupid act together because they're terrible at this.
	Because some people are busy grandstanding over all of this.
	The Federal Reserve said on Monday it's going to launch a barrage of programs aimed at helping markets function more efficiently amid the coronavirus crisis.
	Among the initiatives is a commitment to continue its asset purchasing program in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy to broader financial conditions in the economy.
	That's a long way of saying the Federal Reserve is going to pump, and pump, and pump, and pump, and buy, and buy, and buy, and buy.
	There's only one problem with that.
	Where does that money come from?
	Either you've got to inflate it, or you've got to sell bonds.
	The bond yields are going up, which means demand is going down.
	Nobody trusts that this money is ever going to get repaid.
	It's why the Trump administration floated last week 25- to 50-year bonds.
	The bottom line is, at a certain point, the restrictions are going to have to come off industry.
	That's why I say we've got to keep assessing this on a moment-by-moment basis as more data comes in.
	And we should, because if, indeed, this results in the catastrophic destruction of American business...
	Then we got a problem.
	And the job of the federal government right now in terms of compensating these businesses is basically provide zero interest loans to all of the companies that are hurting right now to pay back over time or grants to these companies to pay back or not pay back over time, because most of these will end up being forgiven.
	Float the companies the cash right now.
	And yes, float the companies the cash.
	And this turns out to be the major sticking point with the Democrats.
	So over the weekend, it appeared that the Republican bill that was being pushed by Mitch McConnell, which had some fairly significant flaws in it, but was certainly better than nothing.
	And it was an emergency measure.
	It had to be pushed now.
	That over the weekend, that Republican bill appeared to have gone bipartisan, and people basically approved of it.
	In fact, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he said on Saturday night, there's been a lot of bipartisan cooperation.
	Yes, it was pledged by the Republicans, but it seems like we're all coming together around this thing.
	You think it'll be wrapped up by Monday?
	Well, I hope it is.
	We're having good bipartisan agreements.
	The initial bill Leader McConnell put in didn't have any Democratic input, and we were worried they would just try to put it on the floor and not consult Speaker Pelosi, because the House still has to pass this.
	But actually, to my delight and surprise, there has been a great deal of bipartisan cooperation thus far.
	Okay, and it looked as though this thing was going to get done like yesterday.
	And then Nancy Pelosi walked through the door, threw a bomb on the table and said, no, we're not going to do any of this.
	We're going back to the drawing board.
	We're not doing any of this.
	She said, we'll introduce our own bill.
	Hopefully it'll be compatible with what they discussed on the Senate side.
	And then she said, I don't know about Monday.
	We're still talking.
	That's on the Senate side now.
	That's their deadline for a vote.
	So she's now holding this thing up.
	She is, she's holding it up.
	And why is she holding it up?
	Because what are the major differences in the policy?
	What is the big sticking point?
	The Democrats think that the Republican bill is too pro-business.
	Their proposal, I'm not kidding you, their proposal is basically unending unemployment insurance, like for four to six months, and paid sick leave.
	That's their proposal.
	Okay, there's only one problem with that.
	Number one, how do you propose to pay for that when the economy doesn't restart?
	And two, even if the economy does restart, what happens when all of those jobs are gone?
	Now these people are direct employees of the federal government.
	Because the fact is, what you really need is when the clamps come off, all these businesses to go back to work and continue paying their employees.
	You think people are going to, like, what do you think people are going to have the ability to do with unemployment money that goes four to six months?
	Eventually, this will morph into universal basic income, but at a very high level, right?
	Not at a thousand dollars a month like Andrew Yang says, but at several thousand dollars a month.
	You'll get wards of the state.
	In fact, you saw Tim Ryan, the former Very, very former presidential candidate in the Democratic Party from Ohio.
	He said he wanted to bring Andrew Yang in to talk about permanent UBI.
	Okay, that's a political priority.
	That is not a financial priority at this point.
	Okay, again, there are holes in this bill, in the Republican bill.
	The Heritage Foundation has criticized the bill.
	They say it provides over $200 billion in special assistance to specific industries in a way that will likely encourage political abuse.
	What really should happen here is that private banks should be giving out the loans, and then the federal government should be backing those loans, giving zero-interest loans to the bank to pass out loans to these companies so that the banks can do their own actuarial investigations and decide what is a good loan and what is not a good loan.
	That would be the way to do this.
	But instead, the federal government wants to micromanage the process, or the Democrats do, What the Democrats want to do is they only want to give loans to companies that vowed to keep a certain number of their people employed for a certain amount of time, which of course doesn't look to the future when those industries are going to change.
	But more importantly, what they really want to do is not give very much assistance to business at all.
	Instead, what they want to do is go direct to consumers.
	So Chuck Schumer laid this out over the weekend, the Democratic plan.
	We're gonna go through the Democratic plan right here and he can explain it.
	Basically, Chuck Schumer says that there are five basic points here.
	I'm not even gonna play it, I'm just gonna read it to you.
	So, Chuck Schumer says there are five basic things.
	He says, first, we beef up unemployment insurance in a huge way that's never been done before.
	You can call it unemployment on steroids or employment insurance.
	You lose your job because of this crisis or any other reason.
	Any other reason.
	The federal government will pay you your full salary for four to six months.
	So we're not going to compensate business to pay you to do work.
	We're going to compensate you directly for not doing work.
	So what happens to the businesses?
	Well, presumably they go bankrupt and then they don't exist to continue paying you.
	Second, the massive amount of money for health care.
	Everybody's on board with that.
	That was in the Republican bill in the first place.
	And then he says, any money that goes to big industries has to go to workers.
	We're going to demand of the airlines.
	You can't lay off a single worker.
	You can't cut the benefits.
	You can't cut the salary.
	You can't cut any of this for any worker at all.
	OK, well, what about the fact that when businesses come out the other side?
	Like, are there restrictions on that?
	So you're bailing out the company?
	Is that forever?
	How exactly is that going to work?
	If you're an airline company, and you're going to be destroyed for the next two years, because you are.
	I mean, people are just not going to fly in the way that they were flying before for two years.
	Now you can't lay off anybody?
	So you want it both ways.
	You want full unemployment, four to six months, and if you're gonna give a loan, then everybody has to be kept employed forever.
	Businesses cannot make solid business decisions on the basis of the possibility of a future environment.
	You can't furlough anybody.
	You just have to keep incurring cost.
	Okay, the reality is, if you're trying to shore up your company so that it is still working at a certain point, you're going to need to actually have some flexibility in how you run your business.
	We'll get to more of the Democratic plans and how this whole thing fell apart yesterday.
	We'll do that in just one second.
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	Okay, so as I say, the Chuck Schumer plan basically involves unending amounts of money to people who are unemployed, which really, again, it should last as long as the lockdowns.
	When the lockdown ends, everybody needs to go back to work.
	Incentivizing people not to go back to work would be the problem.
	And if you think that those programs are not going to be permanent, you're wrong.
	Four to six months of unemployment insurance, Democrats are not going to Stick to four to six months of unemployment insurance, because the fallout from this thing is going to be broader than that.
	And instead of incentivizing people to get back in the workforce, they're going to incentivize people not to be back in the workforce.
	It's one thing to compensate people for the forced government shutdown.
	It is another thing to pay people beyond the forced government shutdown to stay out of work.
	They say that they want not only paid sick leave, but paid family leave for months at a time, that they want to forgive student loans.
	Like, what in hell does any of this have to do with actually shoring up the economy at this point.
	The Democrats apparently have significant reservations about helping American business.
	This thing is just too pro-business for them.
	That's the big problem.
	Mitch McConnell last night, he slammed Nancy Pelosi for holding up the show.
	The Senate Majority Leader said, we had a deal here, and then Nancy Pelosi decided to walk it back for political reasons.
	Here's McConnell.
	We had a high level of bipartisanship in five different working groups over the last 48 hours, where members who were participating were reaching agreement.
	Yeah.
	And then all of a sudden, the Democratic leader and the Speaker of the House shows up.
	And we're back to square one.
	So we're fiddling here.
	Fiddling with the emotions of the American people.
	Fiddling with the markets.
	Fiddling with our health care.
	The American people expect us to act tomorrow.
	Well, that is all true, and that's why the market's tanked at the open.
	They're down, again, significantly at the open, down like 18,000.
	So the market is down about 40% from its highs of just about a month ago, which is totally insane.
	We've never seen anything like it before.
	Meanwhile, again, what exactly were the Democratic objections here?
	Their big objection, the one that they are talking about, supposedly, is that there's a big slush fund that is going to be handed out to states and localities and businesses run by the Treasury Secretary.
	And their talking point is that Trump is going to bail out his own businesses.
	Okay, a couple of quick things about that.
	One, if he does exclusively bail out his own businesses, he's not going to win re-election.
	I mean, that's perfectly obvious.
	If the president does do that, if he were giving a disproportionate share of the bailout money to his own businesses, not only is he not going to win re-election, he'd probably be in violation of the Emoluments Clause.
	Two, Trump's business is very large.
	It has many, many employees.
	Is it the idea that because Trump's name is on the organization, all those people deserve to be unemployed because of a vast government shutdown?
	So Trump shouldn't get the same sort of consideration.
	Trump hotels shouldn't get the same sort of consideration as Marriott hotels.
	By the way, Marriott just furloughed Something like two-thirds of its employees.
	The furlough includes two-thirds of its 4,000 employees at their headquarters and two-thirds of their 174,000 employees around the world.
	And Democrats are holding this thing up?
	Now, if you ever want to see something incredible about media bias, the evolving New York Times headline on this thing is just unbelievable.
	So the New York Times had several headlines on this thing.
	It started off with an accurate headline, then quickly moved to a non-accurate headline.
	It said, Democrats Block Action on $1.8 Trillion Stimulus.
	Within a few minutes, they had changed the headline.
	It was Sunday evening.
	They had changed the headline to, Democrats Block Action on Stimulus Plan Seeking Worker Protections.
	So now the headline is justifying all of this, because otherwise the workers would not be protected.
	And then there was a third headline.
	And then it said, partisan divide threatens deal on rescue bill.
	So now it wasn't even Democrats blocking it.
	It was just that people couldn't come to an agreement.
	You see how the New York Times just, I mean, that is the evolution of journalism in real time.
	Pretty amazing.
	So again, what exactly were they upset about?
	Well, according to the New York Times, which of course is not biased in any way at all, Democrats risked a political backlash if they're seen as obstructing progress.
	They argued the vote on Sunday was premature, giving their remaining reservations about the measures.
	Negotiations continued.
	McConnell wanted to hold another vote at 9.45 a.m.
	on Monday morning, 15 minutes after markets opened, to demonstrate to Democrats that their votes actually mattered to the markets.
	Democrats instead pushed it back to noon at the earliest on Monday.
	The mood on Capitol Hill was grim because Dow futures fell immediately upon news that this thing started to fall apart.
	Democrats denounced the package as a corporate giveaway that favored big business over workers and failed to ensure that bailed out companies would not enrich themselves after receiving government aid.
	So they're going to micromanage these companies that they have now shut down.
	They were particularly incensed at the inclusion of a provision that would give the Federal Reserve access to $425 billion that could be leveraged for loans to broad groups of flailing companies, leaving Congress with little or no say in which businesses could receive assistance or how it could be used.
	They want to now micromanage all these businesses.
	They were looking to leverage their way into businesses that were profitable until five minutes ago when the government forcibly shut down all these businesses all across the country.
	And they're saying the business heads don't know how to run their businesses anymore.
	We know how to run their businesses anymore.
	So instead of just floating loans to these companies along the basis of how they run, And by the way, if you think that like, okay, I run a business.
	If you think that if we got a loan from the government right now, we wouldn't use that to keep our people employed, that instead we would just sort of pocket the cash for no apparent reason, you don't understand how businesses work.
	You really don't.
	Because in order for us to be operational on the other side of this, we have to maintain as much of our core employee base as humanly possible.
	Employers are constantly deciding who to hire and who to fire on the basis of efficiencies.
	And the fact is that when we come out the other side of this, people are going to need those employers.
	There will be a hiring boom on the other side of this when the market recovers.
	But saying to companies that you're going to micromanage them and you're going to dictate that they continue to have a certain number of employees, for example, like who the hell is Chuck Schumer to tell a company exactly how many employees they should be paying to stay there?
	There should be unemployment insurance that should be extended for people who are laid off.
	But also, the companies need to continue to exist.
	Because if they don't continue to exist, these are not mutually exclusive.
	If the companies don't continue to exist, none of this is going to matter.
	And by the way, five seconds after this thing ends, the companies are going to have to fire a bunch of people because guess what?
	Let's say that the federal government floats you a loan and says you have to keep 80% of your workforce employed.
	Or you gotta keep 100% of your workforce employed or we are not going to give you the money.
	What do you think happens on the other side of this when we come out of lockdown and the market is still not there?
	Because it's gonna take a little while for the market to recover.
	All those people are gonna get laid off anyway.
	So what exactly are you talking about?
	And the business is gonna take a major hit.
	Businesses know how best to run their businesses.
	And yes, we should be tiding people over.
	Yes, we should be ensuring that they are furloughed rather than fired.
	Yes, we should be ensuring that those small businesses continue to exist.
	I don't love the Republican bill, but I like the Democratic proposals even less.
	Unending unemployment insurance.
	No loans to basically cut down all the loans so that Chuck Schumer can decide which businesses ought to get the loans and they can control exactly how these businesses run.
	Pretty wild stuff.
	And it does smack of a political agenda.
	And if that becomes permanent, if Democrats think that they get to run all of these businesses from the top down because the government declared that they were going to shut down all these businesses in the first place, it's the greatest seizure of private property in the history of the United States, if that's the case.
	If what you have here, I mean, other than slavery, obviously.
	And I don't mean the end of slavery.
	I mean the seizure of private property, meaning like you own your own labor.
	If somebody enslaves you, then obviously that's a seizure of you and your property.
	Okay, but Other than the evil enslavement of human beings.
	This is the greatest destruction of private property in the history of the United States if you're talking about shutting down vast swaths of companies and then saying to them that in return for the loan we now get to run your company basically forever without an endpoint because the Democrats are not proposing any endpoint here.
	Democrats say they're concerned about how the government would go about bailing out distressed companies, complaining the measure would give too much discretion to Mnuchin to decide who received funds, would allow too much time before he'd have to disclose the recipients, because the measure gives the Treasury Secretary six months to reveal all of this stuff.
	The draft bill would provide a total of $500 billion in loans and other support for distressed cities, states, and industries, including $50 billion for passenger airlines, $8 billion for cargo carriers.
	Again, I don't love any of this, but it's not exactly a bailout when you're forcing these things to shut down in the first place.
	Under the Republicans' draft bill, the federal government would be allowed to take stock shares or other equity in any business that accepts loans under the program.
	That's a provision the administration had floated publicly.
	I don't even like that provision.
	But with that said, shutting this thing down over Democratic priorities at this point is pretty astonishing at the last minute.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I like and then a quick thing that I hate.
	Things that I like today.
	So I've been sitting home with the kids and that means that it's time to catch up on the movies because let me just tell you when you have a six-year-old and you have a three-year-old you can do as much homeschooling as possible and then everybody needs a break.
	So there's a fun movie that didn't get tons of attention when it came out but it is kind of a kick called Spies in Disguise with Will Smith and Tom Holland.
	The basic premise of the film is incredibly silly and also funny, which is that Will Smith is a secret agent.
	Tom Holland is sort of the Q character, except that the Q character only makes very, very odd devices that are sort of directed at non-violent.
	And it's in about 30 minutes into the film, the Q character, in order to allow Will Smith to hide from the authorities, transforms Will Smith into a pigeon.
	And so he's a pigeon for like half the film.
	And the movie's actually quite funny and quite charming.
	Spies in disguise.
	Here's a little bit of the trailer.
	Imagine if I could make you disappear.
	Hey, lads, look at me.
	Look at you?
	I can see my butt and your face at the same time!
	That is so cool!
	Being a pigeon can make you an even better spy.
	Pigeons are everywhere and nobody notices them.
	In fact, pigeons can see in slow motion.
	That was tight.
	Did anyone else see a pigeon?
	Okay, so this movie's actually pretty funny.
	It's a good kids' movie.
	It's worthy of checking out.
	A little bit scary for the very, very young crowd, but if they're over seven, maybe over six, I watched it with my six and three-year-old, so I'm irresponsible, but let's be real, we're all in quarantine.
	My daughter loved it.
	She thought it was hilarious.
	She's a little mature for her age in terms of what she watches, however.
	Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.
	Alrighty, so...
	Celebrities are really bored.
	And I think that what this quarantine has shown more than anything else, what this whole lockdown has shown more than anything else, is that celebrities desire attention more than anything in the world, right?
	This is why they're releasing videos of themselves singing Imagine, and why they're on Instagram talking about how life is really difficult at their palatial estates and everything.
	Like, listen, celebrities We don't care.
	Here's the thing about celebrities that many of them don't really understand.
	We don't care that much about you when you are not reading a line.
	And when you're not reading a line, you're just not all that interesting.
	What makes you interesting is the lines you're reading, you're good at acting, right?
	Off screen, when I'm not doing politics, I gotta say my life is fairly boring.
	Okay, I think that most celebrities don't understand this since they think they have very important things to say, even when they're doing bizarre things.
	So, Madonna, in a video that you cannot unsee, did a video yesterday from her bathtub about how coronavirus is the greatest equalizer in the world.
	She said from her bathtub that has rose petals in it.
	Just like everybody else who's like normal, right?
	Like I know that when I give my child a bath, I have rose petals in there because like that's the way I run.
	Here is Madonna explaining to all of us about the equality of coronavirus from her presumably multi-million dollar estate in a bathtub filled with rose petals like any normal human being.
	COVID-19, it doesn't care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, where you live, how old you are, what amazing stories you can tell.
	It's the great equalizer.
	Um, and then they pan over and there's just some random dude playing the piano in her bathroom while she's naked in her bathtub filled with rose petals.
	Okay, celebrities.
	They need our attention.
	Don't give it to them.
	I just defeated my own rule.
	Giving attention to Madonna, who is so desperate for attention.
	Also, yes, that's true of COVID-19.
	It's also just called death.
	Like death generally tends to be a pretty great equalizer.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I think that maybe it's time to dump our celebrity culture.
	Is that fair?
	Can we be done with this?
	All right.
	All right.
	We'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
	Plus 5 p.m.
	today, I'm going to show up.
	We're going to hang out together.
	I'm going to take time out of my very non-busy schedule, other than dealing with my screaming children, to come hang out with you.
	So join up over at Daily Wire.
	All of our members get access.
	It's not just an all-access thing right now because we all want to hang out together.
	Showing up over at dailywire.com.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here later or 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.
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	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	Nearly 700,000 people filed for unemployment last week.
	More unemployment claims than we saw at the peak of the 2009 recession.
	We will examine the promising signs for a cure to coronavirus, and perhaps more importantly, the promising signs that President Trump is ready to free us from the dictatorship of public health experts.
	Then, mainstream media journalists humiliate themselves, because today is a day ending in Y. And New York City government publishes a helpful guide on how to have sanitary group sodomy during the pandemic.

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