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March 24, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:00:54
The Un-Askable Question | Ep. 978
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President Trump considers reopening the economy as epidemiologists protest.
The media tried to blame Trump for some dude actually eating fish tank cleaner.
And Democrats continue to play politics with an economic rescue bill.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Okay, so we begin as always with your latest updates on the news before we get to the politics.
So, the coronavirus map today.
is showing a vast increase in the number of deaths in the United States.
There were over 100 deaths yesterday in the United States.
We're up to 591 total deaths at this hour in the United States from coronavirus.
46,485 cases diagnosed so far.
Now, we are expecting these numbers to rise, obviously.
That is not a great shock.
Again, we are testing.
Once we start testing, you're going to start finding things that you are testing for, as opposed to what China, there's rumors that China is actually continuing to see coronavirus cases and they stopped testing.
And that's why they're not seeing an increase in the number of cases that are out there.
Now, one of the big problems here is that China's path is one of the great hopes for the world, because if China's been able to tamp this thing down, it makes everybody feel like, okay, well maybe we can tamp this thing down too.
That's why more people are putting faith at this point in South Korea, which has seen 9,000 total cases and 120 deaths, and has not completely shut down their economy to do so.
The difference being, South Korea had massive testing regimes already in place Thanks to H1N1 and their response to SARS in the past.
Because of all of that, they had been pretty well prepared for all of this.
The United States simply was not and we were late on the game.
Because we were late on the game, the entire ballgame here has been how do we shift from Chinese lockdown strategies, everybody stay home, into South Korean social distancing, everybody wear a mask, strategies where most of us can go back to work.
If you're sick, you stay home.
If you're elderly or you're vulnerable, you stay home, right?
Everybody keeps saying, I hear this from a lot of people on the right side of the aisle, why don't the old people and the vulnerable people, why don't they just stay home and everybody else goes back to work?
And the problem is right now there's too much social mixing.
You don't know who has it and who does not.
There's no way to tamp down the people who actually are sick.
And so because we have not yet gotten this thing under control, you can't go to South Korean type measures.
The question is how fast we can get there.
Meanwhile, in Italy, The situation continues to be incredibly grim.
Italy has about 64,000 cases at this hour with approximately 6,000 total deaths.
Their death rate is significantly higher than that of the United States.
Again, we have what we are gaining on them in terms of total number of cases, but we have fewer, well under 1,000 deaths at this point.
Just about 600 deaths.
Italy has 64,000 cases and 6,000 deaths.
That is because their healthcare system is being overwhelmed.
And that is why so many people in the United States right now are worried about the overwhelming of our healthcare system at this time.
That is why people are also worried about a bed shortage looming in California.
According to the New York Times, Governor Gavin Newsom estimates California will be short about 17,000 hospital beds.
Although the state is frantically trying to source thousands more of them, the pace of testing remains stubbornly slow in California.
I've been hearing from hospitals in the area that they are indeed inundated with people who are coming in for coronavirus, although we have heard no stories about ventilator shortages at this point in time.
Elon Musk actually came up with a thousand ventilators yesterday.
We are quickly ramping up production across the country of ventilators, of masks, of personal protective equipment.
That's those PPEs you hear everybody talking about.
And the fact is that it takes a little while for the U.S.
economy to get going on this sort of stuff, but once industry kicks in, we are fantastic.
at producing what it is we actually need to produce.
New York state has conducted twice as many tests as California for the virus.
As of Monday, New York had tested almost 80,000 people, including 33,000 in New York City.
California had conducted 26,400 tests by Sunday.
That was the most recent data available.
Officials in California have rushed to reopen hospitals that had been shuttered by motels to house the state's more than 150,000 homeless people and retrofit college dormitories to serve as hospital wards.
Again, the homeless problem in California continues to rear its ugly head because the fact is that Los Angeles homeless people are not exactly socially distancing.
All of the fun and games with regard to letting people live on the streets and declaring they have a right to live on the streets and be a health threat.
It turns out that has some pretty serious consequences.
There's some video of LA homeless folks, not exactly people who are concerned about cleanliness and social distancing at this point.
I mean, you can drive around Los Angeles right now and you can see there's nobody anywhere, but you'll see large congregations of homeless people in downtown LA under overpasses by the LA River.
None of that speaks well of the possibility of tamping down the coronavirus epidemic.
Gavin Newsom said the state is chartering flights to China to procure protective equipment.
China has been hoarding all of that protective equipment.
Oh, those wonderful folks in the Chinese government.
This is some video that we were talking about of the situation with the homeless in Los Angeles.
That looked like a place that is thriving and ready for health to you.
This is in downtown LA.
Across California, the promise of widespread access to testing for the virus has not yet materialized.
Doctors say they were alarmed about shortages of protective equipment.
One of the other big problems is that the states are handling this sort of differently.
And so while California has locked down and New York has locked down, Texas and Florida have not yet completely locked down.
And this is leading epidemiologists to believe that there could be hotspots in some of the states that have not yet locked down that are not yet measurable.
Meaning the testing is not happening in Texas and Florida the same way it's not happening in California.
But lockdowns have not really gone into place in Texas, in Florida, the same way they've gone into place in California either.
In New York City, the attack rate, meaning the amount of transmission, the number of people who have this thing, in the general population in New York is much, much higher than anywhere across the rest of the country so far, as we can tell.
New York is actually testing.
But in California, which is also starting to test, the rates are nowhere near as huge.
And that is because, of course, New York is an extraordinarily populated area.
When you have that many people living right on top of each other, the possibility of pandemic transmission becomes much, much higher.
This has been true literally forever.
This is why when you read old books about the plague hits London, and all the rich people immediately jump in their carriages and head off to the country cottage, there's a reason for that.
People are trying to do that in New York right now.
They're trying to flee to Florida, and Florida's saying, no, you guys don't get in.
Stay home.
You're not bringing your coronavirus with you here.
Dr. Deborah Birx pointed this out at a press conference with President Trump yesterday.
She said, yes, there's an alarming attack rate in New York City.
Here's Dr. Deborah Birx.
The New York metro area of New Jersey, New York City, and parts of Long Island have an attack rate close to one in a thousand.
This is five times what the other areas are seeing.
Through the high-throughput lab investigations, we're finding that 28% of the submitted specimens are positive from that area, where it's less than 8% in the rest of the country.
So to all of my friends and colleagues in New York, this is the group that needs to absolutely social distance and self-isolate at this time.
Yeah, all of that obviously is true.
Intensity is really an enemy in a situation like this, says Dr. Steven Goodman, an epidemiologist at Stanford University.
With large population centers, where people are interacting with more people all the time, that's where it is going to spread the fastest.
We'll get to more coronavirus updates, particularly economic updates, because we're starting to ask the unaskable question here.
And that is the question that we should have been asking all along.
How do you balance all the policy considerations?
And I know that that's considered bad taste.
We're not supposed to say things like, how exactly do we generate a policy that is most likely to save the economy and also save lives?
We're instead supposed to say that everything shuts down until every life is saved.
And that, of course, is not plausible.
I mean, the fact is that we at some point are going to have to unlock the economy.
The question is how we do that in the safest possible way.
That doesn't mean that we all go back to work tomorrow without any protective measures.
It also doesn't mean that we keep the economy locked down interminably and forever, because that is not It's not going to happen either.
People, I've seen a lot of folks who are protesting that President Trump and people who are talking about the economy, you're overlooking human life.
How could you overlook human life?
It's not that you're overlooking human life.
It's that every public policy consideration is a balancing of various outcomes that you are weighing.
And if the suggestion is that we do everything we can in the United States to save even one human life, well then we should all be walking around in bubbles.
Forget about a pandemic.
Like all the time, we should be walking around in bubbles.
We should go back to horse and buggies.
The fact is there are lots of things we could do in the United States to quote-unquote save lives.
They also happen to destroy the economy, which would have its own horrific side effects.
So all of this is public policy balancing, and that should not be an unaskable question.
In fact, it's the only question that is worth asking at this point when you are talking about government policy, when you're talking about what exactly the federal government and state governments ought to do.
We're gonna get to more of this in just one second.
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Okay, so the reason that people are starting to go nuts about even mild considerations of public policy is because they are afraid that we are going to jump one way or the other, that we're going to jump precipitously back into a vast amount of social life with no social distancing and everybody going back to work and then millions of people die Or, alternatively, the economy is going to be shut down forever.
And those are not the only two approaches.
They better not be the only two approaches, because if those are the only two approaches, then neither one of those is worth choosing.
But to pretend that there are no economic effects of this, that we can do this interminably, is of course idiotic.
Nelson Schwartz at the New York Times writes, The American economy is facing a plunge into uncharted waters.
Economists say there is little doubt that the nation is headed into recession because of the coronavirus pandemic.
With businesses shutting down and Americans being shut in, it's harder to foresee the bottom, how long it will take to climb back.
Greg Daco, Chief U.S.
Economist at Oxford Economics, says the economy is assured of a recession.
Output will fall 0.4% in first quarter, 12% in the second.
Goldman Sachs says they expect a 24% drop in the second quarter.
And Morgan Stanley is saying that it might be up to 30% in the second quarter, which would be the greatest economic retraction in the history of the United States by a long margin.
On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that initial jobless claims jumped 30% the previous week, in one week, to 281,000, the highest level since the aftermath of a hurricane In 2017, but Goldman Sachs foresees that this week, this week, 2.25 million unemployment failings this week.
Okay, so this cannot continue forever.
And so when President Trump talks about how we need to stop this at some point, that of course is true.
And that doesn't mean that Trump is downplaying this thing.
He is not downplaying this thing, right?
Here's President Trump yesterday, did a press conference.
He said, yeah, things are going to get real bad this week.
You're going to see the numbers go up.
By the way, the numbers will continue to go up next week.
Everything lags.
And as far as the deaths, that lags too because people are lingering for a week or two at the hospital sometimes before they die.
Here's President Trump yesterday saying, yeah, things are going to be pretty bad this week.
It's going to be bad and we have A lot of people dying from the flu, as you know.
We have a very bad flu season on top of everything else.
It's very bad.
It looks like it could be over 50,000.
And certainly, this is going to be bad.
And we're trying to make it so that it's much, much less bad.
And that's what we're doing.
I think we're doing a very good job of it.
The president did announce some new measures that were being taken by the federal government yesterday.
He said that FEMA is distributing millions of critical supplies.
And it is true they are activating in terms of getting N95 masks out to as many medical workers as possible, ramping out the distribution of personal protective equipment.
Everybody is indeed mobilizing.
You know, in a crisis, the crisis doesn't stop just because people are mobilizing.
The question is how long it takes to alleviate the crisis.
Here's President Trump announcing that FEMA is getting directly involved.
FEMA is distributing 8 million N95 respirator masks and 13.3 million surgical masks across the country right now, focusing on the areas with the greatest need.
We have shipped 73 pallets of personal protective equipment to New York City and 36 pallets to the state of Washington.
In the past 96 hours, FEMA has also received donations of approximately 6.5 million masks.
We're having millions and millions of masks made as we speak.
Okay, so that is good news.
President Trump also says that we are pursuing coronavirus treatments in record time.
They're developing a vaccine, pushing it as fast as they possibly can.
Here's the president on coronavirus treatments.
And my direction, the federal government is working to help obtain large quantities of chloroquine.
And you can look from any standpoint tomorrow in New York.
We think tomorrow pretty early.
The hydroxy chloroquine And the Z-Pack, I think, is a combination.
Probably is looking very, very good, and it's going to be distributed.
We have 10,000 units going, and it'll be distributed tomorrow.
It'll be available.
Got approved in record-setting time.
There's never been anything even close to it.
President Trump has been pushing this hydroxychloroquine solution.
It is not clear at this point.
There are no tested trials as far as hydroxychloroquine in any mass numbers to see whether this thing is incredibly effective across the board.
Trump did pump hydroxychloroquine again yesterday at his press conference.
He's been pushing this thing pretty hard.
There have been a lot of stories of people who say they feel better after using hydroxychloroquine in coordination with azithromycin as well as zinc.
So we'll see if that plays out.
It is amazing the lengths to which the media will go in order to try and portray Trump mentioning this thing as a grave, grave evil.
So yesterday, I mean, honestly, I was astonished.
I'm not sure I've ever seen Trump derangement syndrome as strong as I saw it in the media yesterday.
This is an unbelievable story.
Okay, so Heidi Prisbilla over at NBC News Tweeted out this tweet yesterday.
She tweeted out, let me find it here.
Oh my god.
Don't take anything.
Don't believe anything.
Don't believe anything the president says and his people because they don't know what they're talking about.
And don't take anything.
Be so careful and call your doctor.
This is a heartache I'll never get over.
What exactly is she talking about here?
She's talking about a story in which a woman suggested that she and her husband had taken hydroxychloroquine in order to fend off coronavirus, even though they'd not been diagnosed with it.
And then her husband died and she ended up in the ICU.
And Heidi Prisbilla tweeted, her husband is dead and she's in the ICU after ingesting chloroquine.
We saw Trump on TV, every channel, all of his buddies.
And this was safe, she said.
Trump kept basically saying it was pretty much a cure.
She implored Vaughn Hilliard of NBC News, educate the people.
According to Heidi Przybyla, the couple did not have coronavirus symptoms, but took the chloroquine phosphate as a preventative measure.
They feared contracting coronavirus.
The couple each mixed one tablespoon of chloroquine, a phosphate, with soda.
Within 20 minutes, they began experiencing severe sickness and called 911.
I was in the pantry stacking dog food, and I saw it sitting in the back shelf, and I thought, hey, isn't that the stuff they were talking about on TV?
And it was.
Hilliard interviewed her from the hospital bed over the phone.
This is the most horrible day of my life, and it feels like my heart is broken.
It'll never mend.
It's just broke.
Dead.
Like my husband.
I'm 61.
My husband is 68.
We're healthy.
No, no underlying, no diabetes or lung issues.
Nothing.
Okay, Von Hilliard has this, has this audio.
With this crazy lady talking about how it was Trump's fault.
Talking about the woman in the ICU.
Trump kept saying it was pretty much basically a cure.
Do we have that audio of this woman talking to Vaughn Hilliard at NBC?
This supposedly national news here about Trump killing somebody because he told them to take hydroxychloroquine?
You know, they kept saying that it was approved for other things and, you know, Trump kept saying it was, you know, basically pretty much a cure.
What would be your message to the American public?
Oh my God, don't take anything.
Don't believe anything.
Don't believe anything the President says.
And his people.
Because they don't know what they're talking about.
I was in the pantry, stacking, eating dog food, and I just saw it sitting in the back shelf.
So hey, isn't that that stuff they're talking about on TV?
Yeah, it was.
Okay, so according to the media, it sounds like President Trump has been pushing chloroquine phosphate, and that some lady took his advice, gave it to herself and her husband, and then he died, and she's in the ICU.
Wait until you hear the punchline of this story, which demonstrates that the media are full-scale insane.
Insane!
I mean, this is, really, this is the most insane case of Trump Derangement Syndrome I have ever heard of, and there's a lot of Trump Derangement Syndrome out there, but the mainstream media have picked up on this story.
The punchline here is unreal.
Seriously, wait for it.
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Okay, so what is the punchline to this story where Trump supposedly killed some dude and then put his wife in the ICU after recommending inappropriate substances?
It turns out they didn't actually have hydroxychloroquine phosphate in like, you know, the medicinal form.
They had fish tank cleaner in the back of their closet.
And fish tank cleaner has an at chloroquine phosphate.
And these morons went in the back.
Advisedly, I am saying this.
If you take fish tank cleaner and put it in your body because you heard on the TVs that chloroquine phosphate is good for you.
And it literally says on the package, not for human consumption.
And you then down it with some soda.
That's on you.
Okay?
That's not on Trump.
That's on you.
Because you're stupid.
Okay?
And I feel bad for you that you're stupid.
But, you're stupid.
Like, there's no two ways about that.
I'm sorry.
Here's the actual story.
So, if I just told you what NBC told you, you would think that Trump said, take this pill, the person took the pill, and the person died.
Right?
That would be the story.
But that is not the story.
Here's the story from Fox 29 in Arizona.
Medical experts with Banner Health are warning the public against using inappropriate medication and household products to prevent or treat coronavirus.
The warning by Banner Health comes after an Arizona man in his 60s died from taking a substance used to clean fish tanks at aquariums in order to prevent contracting COVID-19.
In a statement released on Monday, experts emphasized that chloroquine, which is a medication used for malaria, should not be taken to treat or prevent COVID-19.
Banner Health officials say the man who died, along with his wife, both took chloroquine phosphate.
The man's wife, also in her 60s, is currently under critical care.
Officials say both were taken to a Banner Health hospital for immediate treatment after they experienced immediate effects within 30 minutes of taking the substance.
Most patients who become infected with COVID-19 will only require symptomatic care and self-isolation to prevent the risk of infecting others, read a portion of the statement.
The routine use of specific treatments, including medications described as anti-COVID-19, is not recommended for non-hospitalized patients.
The FDA has reiterated in a statement there are no FDA-approved therapeutics or drugs to treat, cure, or prevent COVID-19.
Chloroquine has been used to treat malaria since the 1930s.
Hydroxychloroquine came along a decade later and has fewer side effects.
The latter is sold in generic form under the brand name Plaquenil for use against several diseases.
The drugs can cause heart problems, severely low blood pressure, and muscle or nerve damage.
Plaquenil's label warns of possible damage to the retina, especially when used at higher doses.
But, beyond this, this is not the same thing as, you know, fish tank cleaner.
As fish tank cleaner.
That is not the same thing.
Okay, that is like Trump saying that, you know, there have been some studies that show the beneficial medicinal effects of a glass of wine at dinner.
So you're like, oh, well that means alcohol is good for me.
So you go in your bathroom, you take two bottles of isopropyl rubbing alcohol, and you proceed to down them.
And if you do that, that one's on you.
That one's not on Trump because you're stupid.
But the media tried to blame Trump for this.
It's unbelievable.
I mean, truly, it's absolutely ridiculous.
The amount that the media are trying to turn this into a Trump bleep show, as opposed to we're all in the midst of a pandemic and nobody knows anything, which is really the story of this thing.
And then we are all sort of muddling through.
It's pretty incredible.
I don't know how you blame Trump for that one.
But meanwhile, the media have been trying to foster Debate between Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Now at this time, if you're rooting for the country, you may not like everything Trump is saying from the podium.
You may think that he exaggerates.
You may think that he prevaricates.
You may think that President Trump says things that are not true.
That he straight out says things that are not true.
So who do you want in the administration making sure that the response is handled as correctly as possible?
Probably one of those people would be Dr. Anthony Fauci, right?
Wouldn't that be the person who you are actually counting on to keep Trump on the straight and narrow?
Yet every question coming out of the media right now directed at Anthony Fauci is, why won't you rip on Trump some more?
Why don't you go rip on Trump some more?
Like, please, go rip on Trump some more.
So the New York Times has an entire piece today dedicated to the proposition that President Trump hates Fauci.
Because if there's one thing that is guaranteed to ensure conflict, it is media coverage.
According to the New York Times, the president has become increasingly concerned as Dr. Anthony Fauci has grown bolder in correcting his falsehoods about the spread of coronavirus.
Dr. Fauci, the director of the NIAID, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, since 1984, has grown bolder in correcting the president's falsehoods and overly rosy statements about the spread of coronavirus in the past two weeks, and he has become a hero to the president's critics because of it.
And now, Mr. Trump's patience has started to wear thin.
So is the patience of some White House advisors who see Dr. Fauci is taking shots at the president in some of his interviews with print reporters.
Well, offering extensive praise for Trump in television interviews with conservative hosts.
Trump knows that Fauci, who has advised every president since Reagan, is seen as credible with a large section of the public and with journalists, and so he has given the doctor more leeway to contradict him, according to multiple advisors to the president.
When Trump knows he has more to gain than lose by keeping an advisor, he has resisted impulses to fight back against apparent criticisms, sometimes for months-long interludes.
So far, the president appears to be making the same calculation with Fauci.
But the president has resisted portraying the virus as the kind of threat described by Fauci and the media are trying to play up.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
The media are trying to play up conflict between Fauci and Trump at a critical point where it's pretty important that Trump be having open conversations with Fauci.
By the way, Trump in his press conference has been unendingly and unstintingly praiseworthy of of fauci i mean talking extensively about how he thinks fauci is doing an excellent job trump yesterday in his press conference despite all of the talk about how much he hates fauci and he's losing patience with fauci and questions being asked about to fauci about trump being a liar and why don't you stand up to trump by the way if you ever get fauci in interview dumbest question you can ask at this point is what's your relationship with trump like who cares for Who cares?
As long as Trump is listening to him, that's all that matters.
And why would you try to undermine that trust if you actually believe that Fauci has something to offer here?
By the way, again, Trump is mouthing openly his willingness to listen to both Fauci and Deborah Bix, the person who's heading his efforts here.
We'll get to President Trump praising Fauci.
Even as the media try to undermine that relationship in just one second.
And then we'll get to the big controversy of the day, which is Trump suggesting that at some point we're going to have to reopen the economy.
Which again, I have a hard time finding it, how this is in any way remotely controversial.
If he opens the economy on Friday, that's controversial.
But saying we're going to reconsider this thing every step of the way?
That's just called like being a president.
That's called being a politician, considering public policy.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so as I say, the media have been trying to foster some conflict between Trump and Fauci, but Trump publicly has been saying he's listening to Fauci.
Here's Trump yesterday.
He's very important to me, and I will be listening to him.
I'll be listening to Debra, who you just spoke to.
I'll be listening to other experts.
We have a lot of people that are very good at this.
And ultimately, it's a balancing act.
But, you know, the expression, we can do two things at one time.
And we've got an incredible country.
We have to keep it that way.
And that includes not just economics.
That also includes life and death.
Okay, so again, he is not going after Fauci.
He's actually, you know, he's actually praising Fauci there.
Also, Trump says that Fauci has not agreed to him.
So now we get into the big issue of the day.
And that is, how do we balance the needs of the vast majority of people who are not going to die of coronavirus and the needs of the people who are going to suffer from coronavirus?
How exactly do we balance the needs of the health system and the needs of our economy?
These are not separate issues.
Okay, so President Trump, Was raked over the coals by large swaths of the media yesterday for saying he is not looking at a months-long shutdown.
Now again, I don't know how this is remotely controversial.
Okay, if the US economy were to shut for literally three or four months, that would not be something the United States could recover from.
Truly.
Because right now we're pumping and nobody's buying the bonds.
The only way to do this would be to inflate the currency tremendously.
You can only have the government backing every bit of commercial business Commercial bonds for so long.
The Fed pumping yesterday did not help the market.
I'll tell you what did help the market this morning was the open conversation that is now happening about when this thing comes to an end.
And that's a conversation that needs to be had.
Now I've been urging people at the White House, I've been saying for a long time on the show that what we need here is a metric of when it is possible for people to go back to work.
That does not mean that the metric is hit on Friday.
It does not mean it's time to go back to work on Monday.
What it does mean is that we have to start considering at which point that line of medical supplies rises above the flattened curve.
Right?
That is what we are talking about.
Because so far we've heard no metric from Andrew Cuomo in New York, no metric from Gavin Newsom, no metric from the federal government as to when we can expect that the resources that are necessary will be available such that when we all go back out to work and there's a second wave of infections, which is what you're starting to see in Asia right now, that there'll be enough ventilators and beds on hand to take care of that so we can all go back to work When are the tests going to be available?
When are tests going to be widespread and available such that we can use 75,000 tests a day, 100,000 tests a day, and we can all get back to work?
We can start to use social distancing and masks in order to allow us to go back to our daily life and back to our jobs gradually as we move toward a vaccine.
What do we have to do in order so that we can up the amount of resources necessary so we can Cordon off the vulnerable populations from the non-vulnerable populations and contact trace all of the people who have actually had coronavirus, which is exactly what's happening in South Korea.
So when President Trump says, we're not looking at months here, that's good because if you were just watching the headlines right now, if you're the market and you're just watching the headlines, the market is just the aggregate of human knowledge about the economy, and you're watching the headlines.
And on the one hand, you have Andrew Cuomo saying this thing could last nine months.
And on the other hand, you have Fauci saying this thing could last 12 weeks.
And you have Mnuchin saying it could last eight weeks.
And then you have President Trump coming out and saying, look, I'm not looking at months.
This is not going to last for months.
People start to breathe a sigh of relief because they think, OK, my business cannot last another three months with no income.
My business cannot last another three months on the basis of small business loans provided by the federal government or grants provided by the federal government.
How can my business remain open?
Eventually, this thing has to open back up.
Otherwise, I'm not going to invest in my business.
I'm just going to sit home, and I'll take the unemployment insurance instead.
Turns out that running a business is a very risky enterprise, very stressful.
You know what's easier is if they are sending you a check in the amount of how much money you were making before, and you don't have to run the business, then that is less stressful and easier, especially if you don't know what's going to come out on the other end of all of that, right?
There's a lot of uncertainty in the economy right now, and Trump trying to provide some sort of timeline here is actually quite necessary.
So yesterday, Trump says, I'm not looking at months, and people went nuts.
Here was Trump yesterday.
I'm not looking at months, I can tell you right now.
We're going to be opening up our country, and we're going to be watching certain areas, and we're going to be practicing everything that Deborah's referring to right here.
We're going to be watching this very closely, but you can't keep it closed for the next, you know, for years, okay?
This is going away.
We're going to win the battle.
Okay.
And then Trump came out.
He said, listen, we don't say no more driving of cars.
Like we're, we're going to have to have some sort of public policy discussion about what level of risk is attendant on reopening the economy.
People went nuts over this.
How could he equate this to car accidents?
How could he equate this to the flu?
It's not an equation, it's an analogy, you idiots.
Okay?
Every public policy decision comes with risks, and it comes with benefits.
This does not mean, I've said this 1,000 times during the show, this does not mean, go out, enjoy yourself, spring break party time.
No one is saying that.
And, I am not saying, for one, that we should reopen the economy on Friday, because I don't think that that would be beneficial.
Frankly, I think that if the risks are still as great as they are right now with coronavirus, and we are still as low in terms of data as we are right now, Then the economy being reopened is actually not going to help the economy.
Nobody's going to go back to restaurants at this point.
Nobody's going to go out to theme parks.
Nobody is going to go back to work if they can afford to stay home at this point, right?
So just saying, quote unquote, the economy is reopened tomorrow does not mean the economy is going to just zoom and take off and everybody's going to start going and spending tons of money.
A lot of people are risk averse and are going to stay home.
So until this thing is actually tamped down to the extent that we feel some level of confidence that huge swaths of humanity are not going to die, the economy is not going to recover.
But, when Trump says, we don't say no more driving of cars, this of course is accurate.
And people who are going nuts over this are being deliberately dishonest about this.
We have a very active flu season.
More active than most.
It's looking like it's heading to 50,000 or more deaths.
Deaths, not cases.
50,000 deaths.
Uh, which is, uh, that's a lot.
And you look at automobile accidents, which are far greater than any numbers we're talking about.
That doesn't mean we're going to tell everybody no more driving of cars.
So we have to do things to get our country open.
And again, all of that is true.
And he's not saying, I'm going to reopen the economy on Friday.
I think the media are trying to play this up specifically so that they can play up the clicks, the conflict between him and Fauci, the clicks about people ingesting fish tank cleaner, the clicks about Trump is going to buck all the advisors and simply say, go back to work on Monday.
There's no evidence that that's what's going to happen on Friday.
Okay, but considering these things is not out of the realm of possibility.
Even the most ardent shut-it-down people like Andrew Cuomo in New York, even he's admitting this is not a science and it's not even an art.
We're just kind of blindly groping around in the dark until we get further data, which is to suggest that as we get further data, we're going to have to figure out how to get out of this.
Here was Andrew Cuomo saying there was no art to what we did in New York.
We may have even taken the wrong measures in shutting down schools.
There is an art form here which is overlaying a public health strategy and an economic strategy.
In other words, what we did is we just closed everything down as quickly as we could.
Just shut all the doors, border all the windows.
There was no art to what we did.
There was no nuance.
Is there a public health strategy that says, look, You can start to bring young people back to work.
You can start to test and find out who had the virus and who resolved from the virus, and they can start to go back to work.
And that's how we'll restart the economy with a smart public health strategy.
Okay, and he's saying the same thing as Trump is.
He's just saying it in more nuanced form, right?
He's saying, at a certain point, we're going to have to reopen this thing up, and that cannot be forever, okay?
And that means that we're going to have to talk tough risks.
We're going to have to talk about what is the level of risk, because there is no world where there are no more deaths from coronavirus over the course of the rest of the year, particularly in a second wave that's going to happen in fall, as most epidemiologists are predicting at this point.
So to pretend that we're not going to have these discussions is really, really ridiculous.
Now, that doesn't mean the discussion has to be had in the dumbest possible way, but I think everybody is looking to be outraged because that's sort of our usual mode.
The usual mode is looking for rationales to be outraged.
In the world of politics, this is how people make a buck, is to be outraged all the time.
Let's all just acknowledge We're all groping blindly.
There is no grand strategy at this point.
Until there's more data, we don't know what to do.
But these are conversations that must be ongoing as we add data to this matrix.
We can figure out, maybe, what is the best thing to do.
And people are going to articulate this in brusque ways.
They're going to articulate these problems in awkward ways.
And that doesn't mean that they're saying some... They're not looking for old people to die on the one hand, or for the economy to be completely killed on the other.
Nobody has a good answer here.
So, last night, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was raked over the coals because he was suggesting that at some point we're going to have to reopen the economy, and when that happens, then older people are going to be at more risk.
Which, by the way, is 100% true, right?
I mean, that part is true.
He phrased it in a very awkward way, but it happens to be 100% true.
I mean, my own parents have said to me, listen, if this meant that we'd have to basically stay in the House for the next 18 months so that the economy could be revived, then we would do it.
Right.
The problem is right now that that won't work.
But in the near future, that may be something that that has to be considered.
I mean, that's what they're doing in South Korea, effectively speaking.
Here is Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who's ripped up and down for this last night.
No one reached out to me and said as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?
And if that's the exchange, I'm all in.
And that doesn't make me noble or brave or anything like that.
I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children.
Okay, so, you know, what he is saying may not be relevant at this moment, right, where he is saying, okay, open it right back up.
He seems to be saying, open it right back up and I'll take the risk.
Okay, that's not his risk to take.
I mean, there are a lot of elderly people in the country.
He's not the only one, but in the near future, these are conversations we are going to have to have.
And when I see headlines like this one from a guy I like, Matt Lewis, Over at the Daily Beast.
I mean, this is a ridiculous headline.
I'm sorry.
The Party of Life Embraces Trump's Death Cult?
We've skipped over any nuanced discussion of economic considerations straight to the part where Republicans rationalize letting a million or so people die to fix the economy.
Nobody is talking about letting a million people die to fix the economy.
Okay, first of all, we don't know a million people are going to die anyway.
These are all estimates.
We don't know the answers to this stuff because we don't have enough data.
If you asked epidemiologists, what level of certainty do you have that a million people are going to die in the United States?
My guess is that most epidemiologists would suggest not a 100% level of certainty, probably not even a 70% level of certainty.
We are all guessing.
Now, epidemiologists may have better models than we do, and they may have better models as to how the system gets overwhelmed and how many people die, but there is no level of certainty given the fact that all of this is fluid and we are taking measures on the ground as we speak.
These are conversations that we are going to have to have, and we're gonna have to have them sooner rather than later, because there had best be a plan.
And the reason, again, that the economy is jumping again today, well, not the economy, the stock market is jumping again today, is because people are starting to say, okay, at least we're having rational conversations.
Because if the conversation is we shut this whole thing down until coronavirus is off the face of the earth, we're talking about not an economic depression, we're talking about an economic asteroid hitting the earth and wiping out all forms of economic life.
Because you're talking 12 to 18 months until there is a vaccine.
And again, the data that's coming in, we just don't know how reliable any of this data is.
So, you know, I'm saying the most annoying thing that is possible to say in this circumstance, which is I don't know the answer.
You don't know the answer either.
Trump doesn't know the answer.
Fauci doesn't know the answer.
Nobody knows the answer.
All we have is a formula with a bunch of variables.
And as those variables get filled in, then hopefully we can start figuring out what that equals sign looks like on the other side of the ledger.
Right, we don't know anything yet.
So right now this is all a data gathering exercise.
In the meantime, we are gonna have to have a discussion about when exactly that equals sign is low enough in terms of death rate that we can all start to move back into working.
So the reason I bring this up is because there are a couple of different theories about how exactly we should go back to work.
One comes courtesy of Scott Gottlieb, who's the former FDA director for President Trump.
He's been a very critical voice in terms of everything should shut down.
We need enormous amounts of testing.
And then there's Ezekiel Emanuel, who is also suggesting lockdowns.
We'll bring you their opinions right now.
Ezekiel Emanuel's kind of an Obama guy, and Gottlieb is sort of a Trump guy.
But even that, listen, I think this is a necessary conversation.
I think it's a good conversation to have.
People are treating it as unaskable.
I don't think it's unaskable.
I think it's very much askable and necessary to ask.
And that is, when do people go back to work and what is the metric for when people go back to work?
We're going to get to that in just one second.
But if you haven't had a chance to see some of our new content called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com and go check it out right now.
Jeremy Boring and I kicked it off last week.
All of the other hosted live streams over at dailywire.com as well.
We're going to continue all this week at 5 p.m.
Pacific.
All Access Live, it's pretty chill.
I mean, so chill that I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt yesterday.
I know.
Unthinkable.
But you could have hung out with me.
I was literally just playing classical music off of my cell phone so that you could hear some of the pieces that I like and answering questions about apparently their fan clubs devoted to how good-looking I am.
I mean, I know because I'm the only member, but apparently I find these things out during things like All Access Live.
The show is intended for our All Access members, but during this pandemic shutdown, We are all going to hang out together.
So as long as you are a member of any sort, you get to access All Access Live.
Please let us know what you think of it.
I think people are enjoying it.
We had like thousands and thousands and thousands of questions that were input yesterday.
Join us on All Access Live over at dailywire.com.
Come hang out with us.
I'm trying to, who's going tonight?
Do we know who's doing tonight?
Knowles is doing it tonight.
Okay, so Knowles is doing an All Access Live tonight.
I am back on Friday is the plan, barring some sort of exigent circumstances.
So You know, stick around for all of that.
We have all sorts of material.
We're all going to hang out together.
We'll last this thing out.
And as I said, I think that this is going to be weeks, not months, before we start to figure out a transition plan.
But stick with us while we do that over at Daily Wire.
You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
So Trump getting ripped up and down for the suggestion that we may have to reopen the economy in weeks, not months.
But it's opened the conversation.
I think that's actually a very, very good thing.
By the way, again, the markets think that's a very good thing too, because finally somebody is taking seriously that side of the concern, right?
The market was up 8% in early trading, like over 1,600 points in early trading.
And that is because people are starting to say, okay, well, this won't last forever.
Okay, we don't know what the date certain is when we get off the bench and get back in the game, but it is not going to last forever.
Scott Gottlieb has an optimistic piece over the Wall Street Journal.
He says, soon the United States will be able to do 75,000 tests a day that will make changes in strategy possible.
He says, first, the bad news.
America's coronavirus epidemic is only beginning.
The suffering will become more searing over the next two weeks.
Hospitals in New York may soon be overwhelmed.
New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle may not be far behind.
It will soon be clear why COVID-19 cannot be allowed to rage through the country untamed.
Intense restrictions are necessary, but so is a path back to a more normal life.
Here's what the priorities should be in the coming weeks.
Containment is no longer realistic in some areas of the United States.
In other places, it may be possible.
As public health authorities learn more about infection rates in different parts of the country, governments can tailor strategies to the facts on the ground.
There's a trade-off between mitigation strategies, which target large populations like sheltering in place, and interventions that try to isolate people who are infected or who might have been exposed.
Population tactics are blunt instruments necessary for isolating hotspots like New York and Seattle.
Other places may be able to rely more on individual interventions, Which do cause less disruption and economic damage.
Every state should be taking steps such as encouraging social distancing, preparing to expand hospital capacity.
Some have been too slow to respond, but for any of this to work, the United States needs widespread testing to know where and to what extent the virus is spreading.
Testing capacity, says Scott Gottlieb, has increased significantly in the past few weeks thanks to relentless efforts from public academic private labs such as Quest and LabCorp.
A good reminder that nationalization of industry is a dumb idea, generally speaking.
A new test developed by Cepheid can be deployed in a doctor's office.
There are people who are talking about Being able to get test results within a couple of hours or at home tests being available too.
By the end of next week, the US will have the capacity in place to screen more than 75,000 people a day.
South Korea tested 1 in 160 of its people and deployed technology to identify people who are infected and trace content.
The US should do the same.
Another step!
Serological surveillance, which means blood tests to detect antibodies developed to fight the novel coronavirus, which means that if you've got those antibodies, you're already immune.
These antibodies confirm immunity, can reveal whether a person has been exposed.
If a sizable portion of a local community has some protection, authorities can be more confident in relying on less invasive measures.
One of the problems with lack of testing and lack of serological content is, again, we don't know who's had it and who's already immune.
It may be literally hundreds of thousands of people in the United States.
More important is developing a therapy to treat COVID-19 or perhaps prevent people from contracting it.
America is home to a vast dynamic life science industry.
This is its moment.
One strategy would be to infuse convalescent plasma antibodies from the blood of patients who have recovered from COVID-19.
This could help boost the immune response in those recently infected.
Arturo Casadevall of Johns Hopkins outlined such an approach in these pages last month.
Perhaps the most promising option is antibody drugs engineered by biotech companies, a strategy that was used with success against Ebola.
Also, regulators need to leverage master protocols which allow providers to test multiple promising therapies in the same large trials.
He says, with the right mix of controlling transmission, expanding testing, and deploying promising drugs, American ingenuity can beat back this pathogen.
So, that is the conversation that needs to start.
Okay, let's do all this stuff, and how fast can we do all this stuff?
Ezekiel Emanuel is saying we have 14 days to defeat coronavirus.
He says America's losing the war right now against COVID-19, but we can win it with decisive and extraordinary actions right now.
By the way, again, I admire the tenacity of people who say that it is very, very bad to discuss public health trade-offs.
While quoting Ezekiel Emanuel, the Obamacare advisor who once suggested that we ought to minimize treatment for people over age 80 in order to save medical resources for people who are under age 80.
Okay, I'm not making that up.
He wrote that for The Atlantic talking about why he wouldn't mind dying at 80.
Okay, so now the same people who had no problem having these discussions about trade-offs with regard to nationalized healthcare are very unhappy to discuss any sort of trade-offs whatsoever with regard to American economic response to pandemics.
Ezekiel Emanuel says that the economy can't be fixed without solving the pandemic, which, as I mentioned before, is true.
But if you just open the economy right now, people aren't going to go back to work and not socially distance.
We're all freaked out.
He says the window to win the war is about 7 to 14 days.
If the United States intervenes immediately on the scale China did, our death toll could be under 100,000.
Within 3 to 4 months, we might be able to begin to return to more normal lives.
Now again, that seems like a pretty steep estimate.
Under 100,000 when we have less than 600 deaths in the United States total.
At this point, but again, that's how exponential growth works, presumably.
Ezekiel Emanuel says affected states have led the way by closing schools, bars, restaurants, non-essential businesses, by issuing shelter-in-place orders.
This isn't uniform across the country, but it needs to be, at least for the moment.
And there needs to be social pressure for local governments to wield to enforce physical distancing strictly, but compassionately.
And mayors should close streets to vehicular traffic to make them pedestrian spaces so people can be at a safe distance.
Also, the president must be honest with the American people that the CDC, FDA, other agencies did not roll out testing quickly enough.
That's true.
But we also need to ramp that stuff up very quickly.
We have to conduct random samplings of people to determine the percentage of population with coronavirus and the percentage of people with the virus who die.
With those stats, we have better data.
We need better equipment production, says Ezekiel Emanuel.
We need hospitals to up their capacity.
We need visitors to be banned at these hospitals.
We need businesses to retain workers and keep up their facilities so they can rapidly return to operation when COVID-19 is under control.
So everybody's now having the right conversations, okay?
So this is the optimistic side of me.
Everybody is now having the correct conversations.
And yes, Trump is having that right conversation too.
It is not an unaskable question.
It is not a bad question to say, when does the economy reopen?
In fact, that is the exact question that is going to lead to the ramping up of resources necessary for the economy to reopen.
If you care about the economy reopening, then you really have no choice but to discuss what are the costs of the economy reopening?
How do we make the economy robust when it does reopen?
How do we get all the resources necessary so the economy can reopen?
Trump is right to think in these terms.
He is correct to think in these terms.
I am glad that President Trump is a business person and he is not a nationalize everything, lockdown everything until further notice guy.
Because that's not what the government should be doing.
This is the greatest work stoppage in the history of America.
It is not close.
It really is not.
And if we are not thinking already about what is the path to get out of this thing, then we are not doing enough.
That does not mean we reopen it tomorrow.
And despite the media, again, trying to foster divisions between Trump and Fauci, and despite people suggesting, let's just open this, like, I have really not seen, I think there's a bit of strawmanning going on.
I've not seen a ton of people saying, reopen this thing up today.
Like, reopen it completely today.
I think everybody understands that we don't have enough data to do that.
But the people on the other side who say that conversation is verboten.
You can't even have that conversation?
That's a ridiculous strawmanning too.
Because, like, come on.
Come on.
Of course we have to have that conversation.
We're talking about the greatest public policy, either failure or success, in the history of the world right now.
Of course we have to have conversations about what metrics we can use in terms of what risks are we willing to take as a society.
I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but obviously it's not a dead horse because everybody is too busy going nuts over President Trump and his supposed gall in suggesting that we ought to take into consideration the economy in having these discussions.
It is not a bad thing to ask that question.
It is a very good thing to ask that question.
The only bad thing would be if we get the wrong answer to a very, very obvious question.
Okay, meanwhile...
The United States Senate continues to have this ridiculous debate over a Senate bill.
Now there are problems with the Republican Senate bill that was proposed by Mitch McConnell.
The bipartisan bill that was pushed at the end of last week that Chuck Schumer declared bipartisan and then immediately reversed because apparently Nancy Pelosi had his balls in her handbag.
She showed up from vacation.
Chuck Schumer was ready to sign this thing.
She shows up and she's like, I want a bunch of random bullcrap.
And he's like, Okay.
Okay, sure.
We'll do random bullcrap now.
And so, Pelosi just rejected the Republican bill out of hand, even though it had been worked on by members of both parties.
And then, Schumer had basically become her minion, shutting down people from having discussions of this Republican bill, filibustering the bill in, I believe, three separate votes yesterday.
And it's absurd.
Because Nancy Pelosi's bill is just a pork barrel bag of garbage.
It really is.
Now listen, you can have a reasonable conversation about the oversight provisions on the loans to be provided by the Treasury Department.
Honestly, my preference is zero interest loans given to the banks that are already handing out those loans.
I mean, I think that right now the banks are in best position to determine which businesses are going to survive and which businesses are not on the other end of this.
And backing the loans that the banks are giving, such that they don't call those in immediately, would be the best available move.
I don't like politicians who have no expertise on the economy whatsoever, no expertise in running businesses,
I don't want them deciding how this money gets handed out, neither do I really want the Treasury Secretary determining how the money gets sent out, which is why I sort of support the idea of the government, yes, creating a slush fund that is basically a backstop for the banks, because they're the ones who have undertaken the risk, and the risks they undertake are likely to be smarter than the risks undertaken by either Treasury Secretary Mnuchin or the morons in Congress who can't tie their shoes.
But, with that said, that was not the debate the Democrats were having.
The debate the Democrats were having was a completely different debate.
So, this truly is incredible.
What were some of the things that Nancy Pelosi wanted in this new bill?
What were some of those things?
Here are some of the new things that Nancy Pelosi wanted in the bill.
She wanted $33,200,000 for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association.
That's what she wanted.
She wanted $33 million in this, and we have to hold up American aid so that we can fund global warming research.
She wanted $100 million for NASA in this bill and $100 million for construction and environmental compliance.
What does this have to do with shoring up the economy for purposes of preventing a coronavirus-induced economic meltdown?
She wants $278 million for the IRS.
$300 million in this bill for the IRS and Nancy Pelosi's version of this bill.
She wanted $35 million for the JFK Performing Arts Center in this bill.
She's going to shut down and hold up the American economy so that we can fund the JFK Performing Arts Center.
Deeply vital stuff for people who are lacking ventilators right now and for small businesses that are on the verge of shutting down and going bankrupt and never reopening their doors.
She wanted $90 million for an HIV program in a coronavirus bill.
She wanted $36 million for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.
What the hell is the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences?
What?
She wanted $7 million for a specific DC charter school like Gallaudet University.
Howard University, she wants $23 million for them.
By the way, Howard University has an endowment of $647 million.
She wanted $300 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
We definitely need to make sure that Big Bird survives coronavirus here.
Very, very important stuff from Nancy Pelosi.
And $500 million for the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
By the way, kudos to a Twitter account called Oilfield Rando who has gone through all of this stuff.
A million dollars for the sergeant-at-arms and doorkeeper of the Senate.
Very vital, very vital stuff.
$300 million for migration and refugee assistance.
Because we definitely need to worry about migration and refugee assistance as we close every border we could possibly have.
And also, we need to use more minority banks.
Expansion of the use of minority banks and minority credit unions is mandated in Pelosi's bill.
We need corporate boards to have diversity quotas if they are to receive loans.
So that's exciting stuff.
The government is going to force people onto your corporate board if you take a loan that you have to take because the government shut down your business.
If federal agencies use any banks owned by white people, they have to explain themselves.
Seriously.
The feds are going to buy $300 million worth of food and then redistribute it.
I can't imagine that they're going to be great at that.
Also, there's going to be another committee, the Coronavirus Accountability and Transparency Committee.
Also, we need E-rate support for Wi-Fi hotspot and connected devices.
I mean, this is just, I'm sorry, this is ridiculous.
Also, we need federal election oversight.
Very important to have in a coronavirus bill.
Okay, so all of this led the Senate to absolutely explode last night.
Ben Sasse, Senator from Nebraska, he says, Nancy Pelosi is basically taking hostages here.
I mean, all she is doing here is holding up the business of the American people.
After a directed government shutdown in order to get her policy priorities.
By the way, they're not hiding this, right?
Representative Jim Clyburn from South Carolina.
He openly said this.
He said that we can use this to push our priorities.
Here's Ben Sasse saying Pelosi's taking hostages.
We got families that are suffering.
We got small businesses that are closing literally by the hour.
We have doctors fighting to prevent their hospitals from being over surged and overwhelmed.
And what is Speaker Pelosi trying to do?
She's trying to take hostages about her dream legislation, all sorts of dream legislative provisions that have nothing to do with this moment, and say the American public can't get access to the public health piece of legislation or the economic relief pieces of legislation unless she gets hostages that are entirely unrelated to this moment.
We're better than that.
Okay, that of course is true.
Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, he said, I mean, he was more blunt.
He said, listen, some of my colleagues here, they're just acting like a-holes.
I mean, frankly, they're just holding this thing up for political purposes.
And it is amazing the media coverage, what the media will do to defend Democrats.
Here was Senator Kennedy yesterday going off on the Democrats.
People are losing their jobs.
They're losing their savings.
They're losing the 401k.
We think we know how to get the economy back on its feet over the next 60 to 90 days until we can get control of the virus.
And some of my colleagues, they're acting like a-holes.
I'm sorry, I'm not saying they mean to, but nonetheless, they're killing it.
I mean, obviously that's true.
Senator Lindsey Graham, who again is a fairly moderate senator, he says Democrats are obviously trying to prioritize things that do not involve the saving of the United States economy at this point.
Look.
You drive a car through my living room wall.
You then have to reimburse me for the cost of driving through my living room wall.
And that is the first priority.
And I don't want to hear from you how I damaged your paint job.
I don't want to hear from you your alternative priorities.
Here's Lindsey Graham going off.
I mean, again, when you've pissed off Lindsey Graham and Susan Collins, it's hard to find a more sort of wishy-washy contingent than that on this in general, in terms of fighting Democrats hand to hand.
Here's Lindsey Graham saying Democrats have other priorities, not saving the American people at this point.
You see this as an opportunity to do things you couldn't do otherwise.
Republicans see this as an opportunity to do things that have to be done now to save lives.
I have never been more disgusted since Kavanaugh.
You tried to destroy a good man's life just to keep the seat open.
And close friends of mine in the House have publicly said this is an opportunity to reshape the country in our image.
It's not going to happen.
Susan Collins was shut down on the floor of the Senate yesterday, right?
She's as moderate as it comes and Susan Collins was shut down.
She just wanted to say something and Schumer prevented her from saying anything about the Republican bill that was being proposed.
The Democratic leader objected to my even being able to speak this morning?
Is that what we've come to?
The Democratic leader objected to our convening at 9 o'clock this morning so that we could begin working in earnest?
How can that possibly be controversial?
How can any of us want to see millions of Americans lose their paychecks, their health insurance, their contributions to their retirement plans?
This led also to a great debate between Mitch McConnell and Joe Manchin.
Joe Manchin, of course, the senator from West Virginia.
And Manchin was saying, well, of course we're going to filibuster this thing because then you might pass the bill.
And McConnell was like, we're not even talking about a vote on the bill yet.
We're talking about a vote to hold a debate on the bill.
And you guys are filibustering that.
Here was Mitch McConnell getting very feisty with Joe Manchin.
Things were very hot in the Senate yesterday.
There's still 30 more hours.
We know that.
30 hours.
So in what way, I would ask my friend from West Virginia, would Your side be disadvantaged by that.
The American people are waiting for that today.
The House has laid it out very clearly, as she always does.
We don't have time for this.
We don't have time for it.
Let me ask you a question.
Answer my question.
In what way would the Democratic minority be disadvantaged?
Go ahead, Senator from West Virginia.
Okay, so again, it got very feisty yesterday.
Naturally, the New York Times blamed, you guessed it, the Republicans.
They blamed Mitch McConnell, the editorial board of the New York Times.
They said, Senator Mitch McConnell failed to do his job this weekend.
As the economy spiraled downward, McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, said he'd produce a bipartisan bailout bill authorizing an infusion of desperately needed aid.
Instead, McConnell emerged on Sunday evening with a bill that would provide a lot of help for corporate executives and shareholders and not nearly enough for American workers.
Except that Chuck Schumer basically endorsed the damn thing on Saturday night.
Okay, the fact of the matter is that right now is not the time to wait on this stuff.
Right now, we need the help, we need the backstop of the economy, and we need the open conversation about when the economy reopens.
The fact that Democrats are putting on the table a pork-laden, three times as long bill that nobody has read, laden with crap like money for the JFK Center for Arts or whatever, it demonstrates the utter unseriousness of the people in Congress.
It's why the Federal Reserve has become basically the economic resort that everybody uses as a first resort, not a last resort.
Bottom line is this.
This is why you can't trust government to fix all your problems.
And when government imposes the problems, the question becomes, how fast can we get out of this alternative universe in which the government runs everything?
Because this really blows.
And I understand that the answer is not today.
When the answer is not tomorrow, the answer is probably not the end of this week or even the end of next week.
But it better be faster rather than slower.
Because if you think I want these dolts running the economy and the national healthcare response over the course of any long scale period of time, you have to have another thing coming.
This is insanity.
All right.
We'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow for the latest updates.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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