As data begins to trickle in about the true case fatality rate for coronavirus, governors begin to talk about reopening, President Trump goes to full-scale war with the press, and Bernie finally endorses Biden.
And by the way, so does Obama.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Okay, so we'll get to it a little bit later on in the show, but apparently Barack Obama is going to endorse Joe Biden.
All it took was everyone else to not be in the race for him to endorse Joe Biden.
That endorsement means everything right now.
Barack Obama, keeping with that leading from behind strategy that worked so well for him during his presidency.
Literally every single other person in the race had to be removed and then endorsed Joe Biden.
We'll get to that a little bit later on in the show.
First, we're going to get to everything coronavirus related.
That is true friendship.
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I mean, just what a wonderful relationship those two must have.
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First, we're going to get to everything coronavirus related.
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Okay, so the continuing question right now is when we And this has led to a pretty major conflict between President Trump and the governors.
The governors suggesting that they have the authority to reopen.
President Trump claiming he has the authority to reopen.
But the big question, of course, is when the hell are we supposed to reopen and how the hell are we supposed to reopen in the absence of data?
And I've been saying this over and over and over.
We do not have the data yet.
We are waiting for antibody tests to be rolled out.
Now, the problem is that no matter which way you go, there are obstacles, right?
Antibody tests are not perfect.
Let's say that they're 95% effective.
Well, that means they're 5% ineffective.
You could be getting a 5% false positive rate for people who are quote-unquote asymptomatic, and then you end up with the perception that the disease is significantly less deadly than it actually is.
Because you think a lot of people have tested positive who actually never had it, and none of them died because they never actually had it.
But then you're like, oh, this thing isn't so deadly, right?
So that's a possibility.
On the other hand, if you don't have any data gathered at all, then you are simply stabbing in the dark at what exactly The true case fatality rate is for COVID-19.
And one thing we do know is that all the models that have been used up to now kind of suck.
So the University of Sydney has a study out today led by an international group of data scientists and their center for translational data science found that over 70% of US states had death rates inconsistent with the IMHE predictions.
So remember that famous UW study, right?
The one that everybody was citing, the White House was citing it, saying 100,000 to 240,000 people could die.
And the IMHU study has now been updated again to say that it'll be closer to 70,000 dead by the time we hit August.
Well, the University of Sydney Center for Translational Data Science say, um, the study just sucks.
Basically, they say the study is just terrible.
Apparently, this group of statisticians from the University of Sydney, Northwestern University, and University of Texas have collaborated to fully investigate the predictive performance of the COVID-19 model developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
And what they found is that the thing stinks.
Right, 70% of US states had an actual death rate outside the 95% prediction interval for that state, casting doubt on whether the model is suitable to inform COVID-19 resource allocation at all.
The model, which provides forecasts on a state-by-state basis across the United States, has been circulated widely by the media and on social media.
It was cited by the White House directly on March 31st.
University of Sydney Statistician Director of the Center for Translational Data Science, Professor Sally Cripps, says the discrepancy between predicted deaths and the actual death rate in the United States has serious implications for the U.S.
government's future planning and provision of ventilators, PPE, and the staffing of medical professionals equipped to respond to the pandemic.
They say the thing is basically useless.
Professor Martin Tanner from Northwestern University, he says, I'm concerned that the UW-IHME model has had difficulty in predicting the next day.
How will the predictions fare over the long term?
They usually say that statisticians give a range called the prediction interval in which the actual future values are likely to lie, and that involves estimating uncertainty.
A 95% prediction interval is an interval where we would expect 95% of actual future values to lie.
So with 95% certainty, it will lie between one value on the low end and one value on the high end.
And this study is just wrong, like a lot of the time.
Only 30% of US states have actual death counts lying within the 95% prediction interval.
70% of the actual death counts lie outside the 95% prediction interval.
So in other words, the study's garbage, right?
That's what the University of Sydney is saying.
And that was used as the largest basis for all of the decision-making going on about lockdown.
That's not the only information that suggests that the information we've been using has been highly flawed.
Scott Gottlieb, the former FDA commissioner, he tweeted out a study That was quoted by the New England Journal of Medicine, and he points out, more data on the COVID-19 attack rate in New York.
Doctors screened all expectant moms at one New York hospital, and they found that out of 210 mothers, 29 were asymptomatic and positive.
Exposure in New York to COVID could be very high, given emerging data on the scope of prevalence.
This suggests that in hotspots like New York City, the level of COVID-19 exposure and rates of some immunity once serology studies are in place could be really, really high.
Not the 50-66% needed to confer herd immunity, but much more than 10% in hotspots like part of New York City.
According to the actual statistics, what it shows is that of the pregnant women who came in and they were tested across the board because they're pregnant, they want to make sure that the baby did not get COVID-19.
85% were negative.
84.6% were negative.
13.5% were positive and asymptomatic.
And 1.9% were positive and symptomatic as well.
It's a very small sample size.
But that does suggest that at least in New York City, the prevalence is extremely high.
Because again, a lot of these women were really asymptomatic.
And if those statistics were to hold, if you were to see basically for every one symptomatic person, you were to see seven or eight people who are asymptomatic, then the death rates are way, way lower for COVID-19 than anybody has suggested previously.
Because again, people keep using case fatality rate incorrectly.
People keep looking at the fact that there are about 200,000 diagnosed people in New York State and about 10,000 dead people in New York State, and they say, oh, well, that means 10,000 over 200,000, that means there's like a 5% death rate if you get this thing in New York State.
That's not true.
And let's take that stat that was being used here by the hospital.
Okay, let's say that approximately, we're doing some rough math, some rough mental math here, that for every symptomatic person, there were seven asymptomatic people.
That means that not 200,000 people had this thing in New York state, that probably it's a lot more, right?
Probably it's 1.4 million people had that.
Well, 1.4 million people, 10,000 dying out of 1.4 million is a lot less, okay?
had that.
Well, 1.4 million people, 10,000 dying out of 1.4 million is a lot less.
Okay.
Then now you're talking about, now you're talking about a death rate of 0.4 million.
point of 0.7 percent 10,000 over 1.4 million okay so if it's point if it's 0.7 percent 0.7 of 8 percent you're talking about definitely higher than the you're talking about definitely higher than the flu but it's more in line with kind of south korean values because what you've seen in south korea is 0.6 percent death rate and that is heavily located among the elderly and people who have obesity
By the way, the number one factor for coming down with a case of SARS COVID-19 that lands you in the hospital is obesity.
Obesity is the number one factor according to medical sources at this point.
And that would be clinical obesity, meaning a body mass index above 30.
So if you're overweight, that doesn't necessarily mean you're obese.
Overweight is a different classification in the body mass index than obesity is.
So that New England Journal of Medicine study tends to show that there is very, very high prevalence of this thing.
Which also means it's going to be extremely difficult to engage in any testing regimen over the course of 330 million people that locks everything down.
Instead, what you're going to have to do is probably end up with some sort of tranching scenario.
Not a scenario where you give immunity certificates again.
Even the immunity certificates are not Number one, they're not a good idea because you will end up with people faking immunity certificates just to go back to work if they're asymptomatic.
But beyond that, and not only do you have privacy concerns, beyond all of that, you could have a situation.
Where you are testing tons and tons and tons of people and they are coming up negative because you're testing them in the wrong area.
And as we just discussed, the antibody tests are 5% false positive rate or 5% false negative rate, so the same issue applies there.
So the idea that you could give somebody an immunity certificate and they're not actually immune, they've never actually had the thing before, that's a fairly significant possibility.
And those numbers look enormous when you're talking about testing 100 million people.
Which means that in the end, as I've been suggesting, we may end up with something that is just quick and dirty.
Quick and dirty to get the economy going.
And what that is, is if you are elderly, if you are in ill health, if you are obese, if you're clinically obese, if you have a clinical heart condition, if you are suffering from an immunological deficiency, if you have any of these things, then you will probably be told to self-quarantine and stay at home until a vaccine is developed.
And if you are young, and if you are healthy, you will be told to go back to work.
You'll be told that you probably shouldn't congregate in super large groups, but you should be able to go back to work and you should socially distance as much as possible.
You should wear a mask and that's how we all go back to work.
That is the most likely scenario at this point because I think that all of the talk about contact tracing, again, if the prevalence is 14% in the population, ain't no contact tracing happening there.
You're just not going to be able to contact trace.
Especially because, again, that does raise some fairly serious privacy concerns.
We discussed yesterday on the program some of the solutions being put forward, including you download an app and then you're automatically notified if somebody who came within a particular distance of you is going to, comes down with COVID-19.
That's not going to be good enough, frankly, because not everybody's going to download the app unless you make it mandatory, in which case you have serious Fourth Amendment concerns.
Now, I have a little bit more good news for you in just one second.
We'll get to the possibilities here, because again, in the absence of certainty and in the knowledge that we cannot resolve the uncertainty, we're going to have to make some decisions.
Okay, right now I've been willing to kind of hold off with the belief that the scientists are going to come up with some more data that's going to allow us to make more specific decisions.
What if the data ain't forthcoming?
At a certain point, we're going to have to say, okay, here is what we think our risk level is based on percentage of the population, based on who you are, based on your youth, based on your health conditions.
And then we're going to have to say to people, you're going to have to make best available decisions about saving your own life.
By the way, that's called living human life generally.
That's called freedom, is that you are going to have to make decisions about what is riskiest for you.
If you're a young person who is immunocompromised, you will, I think, I don't think the government has to mandate you stay home.
I think that you will be staying home.
I think that you will understand that this is a risky situation for you.
We'll get to more of this...
In just one second.
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So by the way, when I mention the prevalence of the disease in places like New York City, recognize it's going to be extraordinarily high in New York because of the population density.
New York is not like other areas of America.
And to pretend that we have to use a one-size-fits-all policy with regard to vast swaths of the United States, where population density is one one-hundredth of what population density is in New York City is idiotic.
You should not be treating a rural area of Kentucky the same way that you are treating a big city in New York.
By the way, you shouldn't be treating LA like you treat New York.
Okay, LA has had two days, something like 300 deaths total.
Like, New York has seen literally thousands of deaths.
New York City, so New York State, has seen, at this point, a little over 10,000 deaths.
The entire state of California, which is 40 million people, has seen 731 deaths total.
The city of Los Angeles has seen approximately 300 deaths.
Why?
Because the city of Los Angeles is really spread out.
I live in the suburbs.
You know why?
Because L.A.
is one giant sprawling suburb.
So for all you people in Hollywood who've been ripping on the suburbs all these years, I got some news for you.
It turns out the suburbs are saving your ass.
The fact that you're not living on top of each other in small apartments is a very good thing for you.
But the reality is that treating all of the United States as though the New York pattern is going to abide is really foolish.
It's really silly.
And treating the rest of the world like it's going to be Wuhan or like it is going to be Northern Italy is foolish as well.
You have to control for differences in population.
You have to control for differences in living patterns.
You have to control for intergenerational contact and all the rest of this stuff.
And that's very difficult to control for.
And you have to look at how other countries are handling this sort of stuff because there are differences in how other countries are handling this stuff at this time.
To pretend that every country is handling this thing with equal sort of capacity is just not true.
Again, I'm going to note that if you take a look at Sweden, everybody is ripping on Sweden.
Look how Sweden is experiencing the spike.
Again, you cannot evaluate whether Sweden did the right thing in keeping most of their country open until you have about a year of experience.
Because right now Sweden has had about a thousand deaths out of 11,000 diagnosed cases.
And if you look at other surrounding countries, You know, they're doing slightly better, but on a per million population basis, they're not really doing all that much better.
Right?
Switzerland has had about 26,000 diagnosed cases and about 1,100 deaths.
Netherlands has had about 27,000 diagnosed cases and about 3,000 deaths.
So Netherlands is not doing significantly better than Sweden is on a percentage basis.
So the notion that Sweden is just getting blown up because they decided to be a little bit more open and basically do what I've been talking about for the United States, the evidence does not suggest that yet.
Also, we have to determine whether in fact it is the lockdowns that are burning this thing out or whether there's a natural burnout period of viruses because we really have yet to see a virus that just continues to span the globe over and over and over and over until it wipes out all of human population or until everybody gets it.
We'll talk in a second about a chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and National Council for Research and Development.
He's suggesting there might be a natural kind of terminus to this thing, which would be the best news of all, obviously.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so in other news that could theoretically be good, there is a story that comes out of Israel from the Israel National News Agency.
According to analysis of international graphs and comparisons, Major General Professor Isaac Ben-Israel concludes, it is possible we are already in the final stages of the coronavirus epidemic.
Professor Ben-Israel is the chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and the National Council for Research and Development.
He's head of the security studies program at Tel Aviv University.
And he explained his position.
He points out that when you measure the rate of additional patients to existing patients, the trends can be clearly identified and adjusted in all countries.
If, at the rate of the beginning of the epidemic, the rate of hospitalization was increasing at a rapid rate, this reality has changed radically pretty much every day since.
And you've seen this consistently across countries, is a flattening of the curve.
He says the incidence of patients was greater by the day.
This was during the first four weeks after the epidemic was discovered in Israel.
As of the sixth week, the increase in the number of patients has been moderate, peaking in the sixth week at 700 patients per day.
Since then, it's been declining.
Today, there are only 300 new patients.
In two weeks, it will reach zero and there will be no more new patients.
He says this is how it is all over the world, in countries where they took closure steps like Italy, and in countries that didn't have closures like Taiwan or Singapore.
In such and such countries, there is an increase until the fourth to sixth week, and then immediately thereafter, moderation until the eighth week, it disappears.
Now, that is the most optimistic vision, of course.
It is possible there is a second wave because we just don't have the time lag information at this point.
With that said, that would be an optimistic vision.
Also, it is possible that there will be a reduction in the virus and the viral load that is carried when we all get outside during the warm weather.
See, there's this idea that warm weather kills the virus.
It's true.
Warm weather does have an effect on viruses generally, but it is also true that when you spend a lot of time outdoors and not indoors, that is actually better for you.
So let me point out that the government's policy, particularly in places like California where it's getting warm already, to keep you inside is almost full-scale idiocy.
Okay, what you really should be is socially distancing outside.
Sunlight, fresh air, distance from human beings, that is what is going to allow this thing to die out.
And the fact is that the more time you spend outside and not in, you know, a cramped, confined space with other human beings, less chance you are going to infect other human beings.
The Wall Street Journal has a piece today talking about this, asking whether warmer temperatures bring a coronavirus reprieve.
Many scientists are predicting a reduced spread in warm months, but it's hard to tell.
The good news is that the novel coronavirus comes from a family that can't take the heat.
Coronaviruses in general are enveloped in a coat of fat and protein that tends to lose its shape at high temperatures, a process likened to melting that effectively disables the virus.
They also tend to survive longest in conditions of low humidity.
If you look at the confirmed cases per one million people, it is much higher in kind of cold countries than it is in warm countries.
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 appears to behave like its siblings in this regard.
A team of researchers at University of Hong Kong who studied the virus in a lab found it was stable in cool temperatures of around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
It deteriorated over time when stored at 72 degrees Fahrenheit, which implied the virus would perish quicker on surfaces like door handles when it is hot out.
Many scientists predict reduced spread and warmer temperatures.
They cannot say by how much.
But as we move towards summer, as we move towards summer, we are going to see, we hope, some sort of die out from COVID-19.
And so the question is going to become, how long can we wait here?
That really is the question.
How long can we wait?
Is the answer forever?
Because I don't think that that is survivable.
I don't think that the American people are willing to do it.
I don't think it is practical.
And I don't think it's good for the economy.
And again, to pretend that you don't care about human life, When you're talking about the destructions of ten of mil- like, there are people who are going to food banks who never thought in their entire- hard-working human beings who never thought in their entire life they'd have to rely on a check from the government or a can from a food bank.
Literally never thought this, because they wouldn't have had to in the absence of a massive government shutdown.
And now is not the time to discuss, because we don't have the data, whether the shutdown was completely useful or whether it was a good idea or not.
The question now is how we get out of all of this.
And as I say, I think that a lot of these sort of more high-tech solutions, you know, vast testing, millions of tests, tests being run out of employers.
We're testing right now in the United States something like 130,000 people a day.
How many people would you have to test per day in the United States to ensure that nobody was out in public with COVID-19?
Instead, perhaps, we should be looking, as the summer approaches, toward keeping our scientists working hard on coming up with medication that mitigates the effects of this thing, keeping our scientists full-scale, full-bore going on a vaccine, and then letting people who are healthy go back to work understanding there's a risk factor that, if you get it, that there's a shot that something bad could happen to you.
But dividing the popu- Like, it is still amazing to me That when we discuss overall case fatality rate, we're still not being told every day by the government what the case fatality rate is for different types of people.
Not on a racial-ethnic basis, which is what everybody seems to want to know in the media, the racial-ethnic basis.
I care a lot less about the racial-ethnic basis because it doesn't identify, in cross-cutting fashion, in the strongest possible correlative fashion, with risk factor.
It may be true that it is riskier to be black and get COVID-19 than it is to be white and get COVID-19.
But I will tell you this.
It is significantly, significantly riskier to be obese and get COVID-19 than it is to be not obese.
If you're looking for correlative factors that allow us to make decisions about who should go back to work and who should not go back to work, why don't you pick the strongest possible correlations, not the cross-cutting weaker correlations?
It's just a demonstration of our PC idiocy that we won't discuss the fact that older people are more vulnerable to this thing, which is why they should take more protective measures and we should take more protective measures around them.
And people with immunocompromised systems should be taking more protective measures.
And people who are 30 and in good health, yes, is there a risk to you of...
Of course.
Is that risk any greater than you driving to work on a normal day?
Driving 10 miles to work on a normal day Probably not.
Seriously, if you're 30 years old and you're not living in New York City, the chances, and you're healthy, the chances that you're going to die from COVID-19 are, I would imagine, about the same as being killed in a car accident.
And that's not me suggesting that, by the way.
That's John Ioannidis from Stanford.
That's been his statistical Suggestion.
By the way, his statistic is even broader.
He says if you're under 65 and in good health, your chances are about the same of dying in a car accident driving over nine miles in a day as they are of dying from COVID-19.
So what exactly does reopening look like amidst all this?
Nobody has actually put forward a plan.
Some of the plans that are put forward, Morgan Stanley put forward a plan yesterday suggesting that people should only go back to work in the middle of July, which is just not sustainable.
That's not a thing that's going to happen, especially when you have lockdowns of this nature.
I mean, people are human beings.
They are living very different lives right now.
I have a friend, Bethany Mandel, and she's been tweeting consistently about what it's like for parents who have kids with some sort of Condition.
Right?
If you have kids who have ADD, or kids who have OCD, you have kids who have, who have a problem at home, the reversions that kids are experiencing because they are locked up at home, I mean, like, these are real life situations, and to pretend that suffering is binary, that either you're dead or you're alive, that there isn't a tremendous amount of suffering that goes on for people who lose their livelihoods, their jobs, who watch their kids transform by being locked inside, that's idiocy too, and it's unsympathetic idiocy as well.
Can we get to I'm reopening the states and what exactly people are talking about in doing so.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so the big debate that is broken out is how these states are going to be reopened.
It is unclear exactly what is being planned in terms of reopening.
There are a series of governors yesterday who announced that they were going to put together a plan for reopening.
Governors of Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island and Pennsylvania all suggested that they were going to create a committee of public health officials, economic development officials, and their chiefs of staff.
And on the West Coast, the governors of California, Oregon, and Washington announced a joint approach to reopening economies.
They called it a Western States Pact.
They said our states will only be effective by working together.
Governor Gavin Newsom of California said on Tuesday he would outline the California-based thinking on reopening, promised that it would be guided by facts, evidence, and science.
The city of Los Angeles has already extended stay-at-home order through May 15th.
It is hard to imagine that it can be extended much beyond that.
In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott says that he is working closely with the White House on his plan to reopen the state's business, and he's called for a staggered approach in which businesses that have a minimal impact on the spread of virus would open up first.
Okay, now all of this broke out into the open because governors, rightly so, are talking about reopening their states.
They should be talking about this.
This should be a local and state process.
Number one, because local and state governments should be, they're closest to the people, they're closest to their own areas.
I mean, frankly, I think that there's a good case to be made that mayors should be making these decisions of local towns, looking at what is the population in my area?
How dense is the population in my area?
How bad do we know the infection is in my area?
I mean, those are the people who are most concerned.
I don't see why somebody 3,000 miles away from me should be making this decision.
Frankly, I don't see why even Eric Garcetti should be making this decision for people who live in the Valley.
I just think that I think the local rule is the best rule when it comes to this sort of stuff because populations are indeed at different risks.
People live in different ways.
The associations are different.
I think aside from a few sort of basic provisos like don't gather in crowds of 50,000 and Try to socially distance and try to wear face masks so you're not infecting other people.
I think other than that, the national government really doesn't have a lot to say about any of this.
Nonetheless, President Trump bizarrely yesterday suggested that he was going to go to war with governors over their own policies on this.
I think he is in the belief that he's going to say, open the economy, and then governors are going to say, I don't want the economy open.
And then he is going to look as though he doesn't care about human life.
So he's worried about the idea that governors are going to keep the economy closed beyond when he wants to keep the economy closed.
Well, it seems to me that he has a pretty easy counter argument, which is your governor is basically keeping you in your home.
And there's not a lot of evidence that the state next door is doing poorly.
So why don't you talk to your governor about it?
It's not my fault.
Not my fault is a pretty good position to be in when you're president of the United States.
And by the way, it also happened to be true a while ago, right?
The media have been trying to blame Trump for all things coronavirus related.
The media have been trying to suggest that the Trump administration's response It was way out of line with everybody else on earth.
And that that is not really true.
OK, if you take a look, for example, at the timelines for other countries, what you see is that the United States declared a public health emergency on January 31st.
President Trump declared a national emergency on March 13th.
He announced his 15 days to slow the spread coronavirus guidance on March 16th.
It wasn't until March 14th that the Spanish government declared a two-week state of emergency and instituted a lockdown.
It was only on March 16th that the French President Macron announced mandatory home confinement for 15 days.
And it was that same day, during his daily press briefing, that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged citizens to work from home and avoid pubs and restaurants.
It wasn't until March 21st that the French National Assembly approved a legal text that would introduce a state of health emergency.
Also, the Trump administration banned travel from China on January 31st.
Italy did too.
The UK and France didn't do any of that stuff.
So the idea that the Trump administration was notoriously late on all this stuff... Yeah, they were later than they should have been.
They should have been like early March.
But they were not significantly later in major ways than a lot of other European countries.
Okay, with all of that said, I'm bewildered as to why Trump is trying to claim total authority over these governors.
He should be saying, listen, you know who screwed up in New York, truly?
Who is closest to this and who screwed up?
Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo.
So if you're going to claim I screwed up, you got to look at the people in charge in New York.
And also, they do have the authority to declare reopening.
States have all sorts of plenary authority in this area.
If they want to keep people locked down, that's on them.
I've recommended that we reopen.
They're keeping you locked down.
So if you don't like that, talk to your governor.
And conversely, if your governor reopens and you think that you should be closed, talk to your governor.
That is how federalism works.
And I'm frankly shocked.
I don't know why Trump said this.
He said, I have total authority.
I'm going to go to war with the governors.
For what purpose?
To what end?
Here's President Trump yesterday.
It was bizarre.
If a governor issued a state home order... When you say my authority, the president's authority.
Not mine, because it's not me.
This is... When somebody's the president of the United States, the authority is total.
And that's the way it's got to be.
Total.
The authority is total.
It's total.
It's total.
And the governor's know that.
The governor's know that.
Now you have a couple of bands of... Excuse me.
Excuse me.
You have a couple... Could you rescind that order?
You have a couple of bands of Democrat governors, but they will agree to it.
They will agree to it.
But the authority of the President of the United States having to do with the subject we're talking about is total.
No, it is not.
It is, in fact, not total.
Okay, this is not Emperor Palpatine absolute power.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
We have a constitution for precisely this reason.
We have states for precisely this reason.
Then, bizarrely, Trump tweeted out this morning, tell the Democrat governors that Mutiny on the Bounty was one of my all-time favorite movies.
A good old-fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the captain.
Too easy.
What does that even mean?
Like, what now?
And also, if we're gonna talk mutiny right now and you're talking like this, it sounds more like Captain Quig from the Kane mutiny than it sounds like mutiny on the bounty right here.
By the way, mutiny on the bounty was about a captain who wanted to lock his ship down tight and sailors who did not want to be locked down for a period of time.
So it is actually the opposite of the situation you're talking about.
Is the assumption of this tweet that Trump is going to leverage authority?
In order to force the states to reopen because I don't understand how he can do that or why he would do that, frankly.
And it's just it's political idiocy.
I do not understand why any of this would be the point.
Like, what is why?
Just why?
But there's so much why happening right now.
There's so many things that Trump could be doing right now to unify the country.
And this is just not one of them.
Now, that doesn't mean that he is not fighting a Continuing war with the media.
We'll get to that in just one second.
But first, let's talk about the fact is that you need to have your legal house in order right now.
Like, you run a business, you gotta have your legal house in order.
And you need to do it without going away from your house because, I mean, frankly, you cannot go away from your house.
Health and safety.
Is on the top of everybody's minds right now.
No matter what happens, you want to make sure that your loved ones are protected.
This is one of the reasons why you should set up a nice will and estate plan without leaving your home.
You need some sort of document here.
Is it a last will and testament or a living trust?
How about an advanced health care directive?
What is power of attorney?
Well, you don't have to call up a lawyer and spend tons of money on an hourly fee.
Instead, head on over to LegalZoom.
I've been using LegalZoom for years, long before they were an advertiser on the program.
LegalZoom's online resources make it easy to get started.
If you need to speak to an attorney, their independent attorney network is there to guide and advise you.
LegalZoom is not a law firm, so you won't have to worry about expensive billable hours adding up.
Take a really important step for your family.
This does protect your family, particularly if you're talking about like a living trust or will situation.
You want to make sure the government doesn't just And again, it's because Trump is a counterpuncher, and because people have been questioning him incessantly, and so he ends up going off on the press.
best will, living trust, or more.
Find out how you can speak to an attorney for advice on the right estate plan.
LegalZoom is where life meets legal.
Go check them out right now and save yourself a bundle of money not spending hourly fees.
So President Trump said that at his briefing.
And again, it's because Trump is a counterpuncher and because people have been questioning him incessantly, and so he ends up going off on the press.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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So, you know that President Trump is trying to figure out exactly how to reopen.
Everyone is trying to figure out exactly how to reopen and there is no great answer because there are certain businesses that are just going to be hard hit.
We know that big theme parks, amusement parks like Disneyland, it's going to be a while before any of that reopens.
Even in Shanghai Disney Resort in China, guests at Shanghai Resort have to wear masks at all times.
They can only remove them for eating.
Hours and capacity are limited to gain entry.
Visitors have to submit to a temperature check and present the government-controlled QR code on their phone that indicates they're virus-free.
Okay, that stuff ain't happening in the United States.
That's just not gonna happen.
Disneyland just won't reopen until there is a vaccine, presumably, or until the levels of death from COVID-19 reach incredible lows, hopefully over the summer, and then we hope that there is no second wave here.
With all of that said, airlines are going to be hard hit.
Travel is going to be hard hit.
Hotel is going to be hard hit.
Small businesses are just going to get crushed.
And one of the things that people should be talking about is how to continue to support small businesses in the absence of any sort of market.
Because right now there is no market.
And so there's a good case to be made that small businesses should continue to be floated grants from the federal government in order to maintain There are employees on a non-profit going forward basis, and then if they want to start earning profit again, then they can stop taking those grants.
Business leaders and the CDC are warning that the economic recovery is going to be slow.
According to the New York Times, the evidence suggests it's not just stay-at-home orders and other government restrictions that have chilled economic activity.
It's a behavioral response from workers and consumers scared of contracting the virus.
That, of course, is true.
One of the things that is happening here, and this is one of the reasons why I think people We need to figure out how to get out of this as soon as possible is there is a sort of mentality setting and I can feel it myself.
So I assume that I'm feeling in others, which is you feel that the safer at home orders make you feel safer at home.
And so you start to get into this rut, which is like, is it really truly that scary to go out to the mall right now?
Like if I went out to the mall with a mask and I socially distance, would I feel truly frightened?
And the answer is that when you are in the news all day long, kind of, Right, kind of.
You go to the grocery store and you feel freaked out.
Okay, the chances that you're going to acquire this thing at a grocery store if you're wearing a mask and socially distancing are basically nil.
But everybody is freaked out all of the time, and the longer this goes on, the more freaked out people are going to be, and the longer it's going to be before people engage in precisely this sort of economic activity that supports small businesses.
And so it actually is imperative, not just for, you know, plain business reasons, but for psychological reasons for people to go out and re-engage with the world, which is why, again, I'm suggesting that Quick and dirty might, in fact, be much more practical and practicable than anything that anybody else is talking about right now.
Okay.
With all of that said, as I say, Trump got in a fight with governors yesterday, and then he got in a fight with the press yesterday.
Now, let me start with this premise.
The press have been awful on this.
They've been awful from day one.
They've been focused laser-like on the suggestion that President Trump blew this.
They've been suggesting that since the first day.
And they've been focusing incessantly on failures during late January and February.
And as I've said before, when the book is written about how all of this went down, there will be failures in late January and February, particularly from the CDC and the FDA and testing authorities.
There are going to be failures inside the Trump administration.
Trump should have taken it seriously maybe two, three weeks earlier minimum.
Okay, all of that is going to be written.
But the other thing that's going to be written is that there was a series of failures for 20 years leading up to this thing.
There were failures at the state and local level.
Because that's what always happens in the lead-up to a government disaster.
Yes, there was a memo in the lead-up to 9-11.
It said Al-Qaeda determined to attack in the United States.
It was vague.
It was not clear what exactly the United States should do about that.
It said they were going to use airplanes, but it didn't say what they were going to do with the airplanes.
Yes, that was a screw-up by the Bush administration.
You know what else was a screw-up?
Letting bin Laden live for 15 years before that under the Clinton administration.
Everybody's been focused in on Trump.
And one of the things that really is most despicable that I think some members of the media are trying to do is divide off Dr. Anthony Fauci from Trump.
Now, listen, I don't think that Trump should simply be listening to everything Fauci says and then greenlighting it.
I think that he's the president of the United States.
He ought to have a variety of voices in his ear.
To come up with a good policy does mean balancing not just the epidemiological approach, but also the economic approach.
And also the public health approach beyond epidemiology.
I mean, the fact is that nobody has taken into account the mental effects on the American people of 30 million people losing their jobs and people being forced to stay in their homes.
Nobody has taken into account the public health effects of people staying home for elective surgeries.
What we're watching right now is hospitals actually going out of business in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic because the only thing they're being allowed to care for is coronavirus.
They're not allowed to go out and do all of the surgeries that actually pay the doctors and pay the nurses and keep the hospitals open.
So we're going to have to have them go back to doing those sorts of things, obviously.
OK, well, President Trump is in the middle of this thing, is being questioned about Fauci because the media are trying to divide him off from Fauci.
I don't know what the purpose is.
Maybe so they can claim that Trump is not listening to the experts or something.
And it really is gross.
So Trump the other day made a big boo-boo, right?
He retweeted a bizarre tweet suggesting that he fire Fauci.
Now, the rest of the tweet was about how Fauci had been saying in late February everything was going to be OK, which happens to be true.
And Trump probably retweeted it without reading the end of the tweet, right?
The actual answer here is that Trump doesn't read entire tweets.
He has retweeted criticism of him before without knowing it because he reads the first seven words of a tweet and then just hits retweet.
But Trump was asked about why he retweeted this thing about Fire Fauci, the media drooling, hoping to open a rift between the two of them.
Today I walk in, I hear I'm going to fire him.
I'm not firing him.
I think he's a wonderful guy.
Why did you retweet it?
Why did you retweet it?
I retweeted somebody.
I don't know.
They said fire.
It doesn't matter.
Did you notice that when you retweeted it?
Yeah, I noticed everything.
So you retweeted it even though it said time to fire?
No, no.
That's somebody's opinion.
All that is is an opinion.
And you elevated it?
No.
I was told about that.
I said, I'm not firing.
In fact, if you ask your friends in the office, in the public relations office, I was immediately called upon that.
And I said, no, I like him.
I think he's terrific.
Okay, so Fauci was asked about this, and Fauci's just so irritated by this point.
Like, Trump actually enjoys the back and forth with the media.
Like, Trump lives for this.
Trump loves being the center of attention.
The dirty little secret, the media love the media.
Trump loves Trump, and so they love it.
Trump loves it when people talk about him, and the media love it when somebody talks about them.
So the only people enjoying this whole Trump versus the media thing are Trump and the media.
Those are the people enjoying this.
Everybody else out here who's like, so am I gonna die or not?
And we're all like, what are you talking?
Like, I don't care about this.
Fauci is one of those people, right?
Fauci was asked about this and he's like, I'm not being fired.
Stop with this garbage.
This is so stupid.
You can see how irritated Fauci is here.
Somebody didn't like the way I answered it, so they hashtagged it, fire Fauci.
That's it.
That's the world we live in.
I accept it.
It doesn't bother me.
But can the president fire you?
Well, it depends on what you mean by fire me.
I'm on the task force serving at his pleasure.
He could remove me from the task force.
I was with him for quite a while today.
He has no intention of doing that.
Okay, and then Fauci was asked about whether Trump acted quickly, because remember, he was on Jake Tapper, and Tapper had said, would we have saved more lives if we did something in February?
And Fauci was like, well, I mean, sure, but if we had acted last August, we would have saved more lives, right?
Here was Fauci clarifying himself.
The first and only time that Dr. Birx and I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a, quote, shutdown in the sense of, not really shutdown, but to really have strong mitigation, we discussed it.
Obviously, there would be concern by some that, in fact, that might have some negative consequences.
Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation.
And went to the mitigation.
Okay, and then Fauci was asked if he was being put up there as a puppet by Paul O'Reid from CBS News.
And CBS was touting this as like, what great questioning.
And Fauci's like, are you serious right now?
Like you think that I'm just Trump's meat puppet?
Is that your actual suggestion?
This guy's been working in government for decades.
It's just absurd.
Here's Fauci again being tried, the media trying to manipulate it so that Fauci will say something bad about Trump so Trump will get mad and fire him.
You said there was pushback.
Where did that pushback come from?
No, it wasn't.
That was the wrong choice of words.
You know what it was?
When people discuss, not necessarily in front of the president, when people discuss, they say, well, you know, this is going to have maybe a harmful effect on this or on that.
So it was a poor choice of words.
There wasn't anybody saying, no, you shouldn't do that.
Are you doing this voluntarily?
No, I'm doing it.
Everything I do is voluntarily.
Please don't even imply that.
Okay, and good for Fauci.
So the media was doing this routine yesterday.
And so President Trump, at the presser, decided to go directly back after the media.
Now, full credit to Chris Cuomo.
So Chris Cuomo did a radio show yesterday in which he was asked specifically about his job at CNN.
And he basically said, since I've had coronavirus, I'm realizing my job is really stupid.
Yeah, honestly, like slow clap for Chris Cuomo.
Correct.
Correct.
If your entire job consists of just sitting there and bitching about Trump all day, then yes, that's a stupid job.
Here's Chris Cuomo basically admitting as much.
I don't want to spend my time doing things that I don't think are valuable enough to me personally.
Like what?
I don't like what I do, professionally, I've decided.
I like doing this show, I like talking to you guys, but I don't value indulging irrationality, hyper-partisanship.
I don't think it's worth my time.
Okay, so again, he is correct about this, but the media love it, right?
So it took a life-and-death experience for Cuomo to recognize that the media are really all about this stuff, and they really are, right?
Trump loves it because Trump loves him some Trump, and the media love it because the media love them some media.
So yesterday, President Trump went after the media.
He said, listen, here's the timeline of me doing things, right?
Here is Trump ripping into the media.
How do you close down the greatest economy in the history of the world when on January 17th, you have no cases and no death?
When on January 21st, you have one case and no death.
One case.
Think of that.
Now, we're supposed to close down the country, but here's what happened.
When on January 31st, I instituted the ban, Joe Biden went crazy.
He said, you don't need the ban.
He didn't go crazy.
He didn't even know what the hell the ban was.
Okay, and he is not wrong about this.
And then Trump went on.
He actually showed a long video of members of the media talking about him and ripping him for the China flight ban.
It's like a three minute video talking about how he was right and everybody else was wrong.
And so the media lose it yesterday.
Like they completely lose it.
So just to show you the media bias.
So here's the difference between CNN's chyrons and the other chyrons.
Okay, so CNN's chyrons yesterday were just absurd, right?
New York Times experts aid tried to warn Trump of coronavirus threat.
Okay, Fox News says Trump defends reaction to virus outbreak.
Fox News' chyron is more accurate.
Okay, that is a more accurate chyron.
Okay, and then there were more chyrons.
Right, the CNN basically says Trump used, CNN was, Trump uses task force briefing to try and rewrite history on coronavirus response.
That's an editorial!
And then Fox News says Trump wants to correct fake news.
That's an accurate headline.
So the media were treating this as like CNN did a great job with its chyrons.
CNN did a crap job with its chyrons.
You wonder why Trump is dumping all over the media?
Because you are Trump.
Trump is you.
You guys are just the Marx Brothers without the mirror there, right?
And you're just doing the hand motion silently.
And it's Groucho on one end and Harpo on the other.
And eventually you just step through the mirror and you're still mirroring each other.
Right?
That's what you guys are.
CNN had a chyron said, angry Trump turns briefing into propaganda session.
Fox News said Trump wants to keep media honest.
Again, CNN was just like all in on this thing.
And it was ridiculous.
Ridiculous.
Okay, so CNN, John King, then he gets upset.
That was propaganda.
It was just pure propaganda.
What do you think press briefings are?
Have you ever been to a press briefing?
They are giving the administration side of the story.
And is it not similarly propaganda when the members of the media sit there and ask questions they would only ask to Republicans in the same way 97 times?
Here is John King going after Trump for being mean to the media.
Oh, poor media.
Oh, I feel so bad for you.
Oh, again.
Ask as many tough questions as you want of Trump.
Do I think Trump is handling this in the smartest possible way?
No.
I think he should be saying right now, listen, you guys are focused on all the wrong things.
You know what the American people care about?
How we stop people from dying.
You know what they don't care about?
Your petty little attempts to get on television.
Right?
That's it.
I think Trump would be well within his rights to say that.
But to pretend that the media and Trump are not two sides of the same coin is absurdity.
Here is John King going, hey, he was propagandizing.
The righteous indignation and pearl clutching is just ridiculous.
That was propaganda.
That was not just a campaign video.
That was propaganda aired at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room.
And it was selective, cherry-picking information.
Again, the President has every right to be proud of imposing the travel restrictions on China.
He has every right to defend himself.
He has every right to push back.
He has every right to challenge things that are factually not true.
But to play a propaganda video at taxpayer expense in the White House briefing room You mean he's strung together clips that back his case and you don't like it?
Wow.
That sounds kind of like CNN, except like they do it to attack Trump.
And then you have Jim Acosta saying, this is the biggest meltdown I've ever seen.
Really?
Like, because I've seen Jim Acosta on TV a lot.
Here's Jim Acosta.
And ladies, find you a man who loves you like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.
Here's Jim Acosta saying, it's the biggest meltdown I've ever seen.
And I've seen tons of meltdowns because I'm Jim Acosta.
And let me tell you, every morning in the mirror, when I look in the mirror and I see Jim Acosta, let me tell you, there's a handsome man, that Jim Acosta.
Here's Jim Acosta talking about Jim Acosta having viewed meltdowns as Jim Acosta while watching a press conference being Jim Acosta.
That is the biggest meltdown I have ever seen from a President of the United States in my career.
I don't think a reasonable person could watch what we just saw over the last hour and conclude that the President is in control.
He sounds like he is out of control.
And he was ranting and raving for the better part of the last hour during that news conference.
As John King was just saying, he's claiming that he has authorities that he doesn't have.
The Constitution does not give the President of the United States Okay, again, the fact that you've got the media who are so angry at this.
They're so angry.
Here's the truth.
The media love it.
They love every single solitary second of this.
Every single moment.
president's authority as plenary or absolute.
That is not the case.
That is a fact check false.
OK, again, the fact that you've got the media who are so angry at this, they're so here's the truth.
Media love it.
They love every single solitary second of this, every single moment, because anytime they get to talk about the battle between Trump and the media, then they are happy to You wonder why Trump's approval ratings are low and why the media approval ratings are low?
Because they are mirror images of one another.
The American people don't give two craps about any of this.
I don't care about it.
I don't care about Trump attacking Acosta.
I don't care about Trump attacking CBS News reporters.
I don't care about them trying to play gotcha with Anthony Fauci.
I think it's a complete waste of time.
Nobody will ask simple, solid, straightforward questions.
Like, honestly.
Questions like, you say that we need to have contact tracing.
What is the practical plan to have contact tracing be available?
You say that we are going to need hundreds of millions of tests.
What is the practical plan to make that available and what is the timeline for the availability?
You said we needed ICU bed increases and ventilator increases to the point where the curve would not exceed the line.
When do we know that that has been?
These are very simple questions.
Why have you not done random testing across the United States in terms of antibodies or in terms of just, forget about asymptomatic cases, just cases generally?
Why have you not done general testing so that we have some idea of what the base rate is here?
Like, these are simple, easy questions that I've been asking every day on the show, and no one in the media goes to the press briefing and asks those questions.
Instead, it's all, why are you so mean to everybody, Mr. Trump?
Why are you so mean, Mr. President?
You're being mean again.
Who gives a flying crap?
I don't care.
Do you care?
We're talking about the possibility of mass death here, and they're all like, oh, well, he was mean and he was propagandizing.
Talk about beltway insider garbage is the definition of it.
All right, we'll do a quick thing I like, and then we'll get to a thing that I hate.
So things that I like today.
So as I mentioned, I'm spending an awful lot of time indoors with my children, and that means reading them books.
So there is a book recommended, I believe it might have been by Tim Carney on Twitter, called The Blue Book of Stories by Tom Longano.
And it is just highly amusing.
The whole thing is a series of stories, kind of in Lewis Sacker style, about 5th grade boys, and being 5th grade boys.
They're very funny, they're very clever, and they're really enjoyable.
It's also pretty well written.
So go check that out if you've got a 5th grade boy, or kids who are younger.
Like my daughter's in kindergarten and she loved it.
She thought it was hilarious.
The Blue Book of Stories by Tom Longano.
And spend some time reading to your kids, it really is a pleasure.
Really one of the more joyous experiences of my life at this point.
Alrighty, time for A Thing That I Hate.
Alrighty, so this shall be many things that I hate.
Many things that I hate.
So, hilariously, the last two days have seen a bunch of endorsements for Joe Biden.
All it took was for everyone else to endorse Joe Biden, for Barack Obama to endorse Joe Biden.
So this morning, Barack Obama came out and endorsed Joe Biden.
He said, I'm proud to endorse my friend Joe Biden for President of the United States.
Let's go.
Well, here we are.
I guess everybody else is out of the race.
I guess it's a year since he declared and I didn't endorse him.
I'm basically useless.
I led from behind.
Did nothing for a year.
I am a good friend.
I'm the best friend.
I'm the guy you call when every other person will not drive you to the airport and all the cabs are broken and then maybe I'll drive you to the airport and maybe not.
Maybe I'll do it after the plane's left.
That's what I do.
I'm the president.
Barack Obama.
Love you, Joe.
That's what this is.
So I love the fact that Barack Obama's endorsement is actually less impactful than Bernie Sanders' endorsement at this point because he waited so long.
Like, imagine if Barack Obama had endorsed Joe Biden before South Carolina.
Then he'd be getting all the credit.
But Obama never had any coattails.
Not for any other Democrat.
His Democratic Party got wiped out while he was president.
Wiped out in Congress.
Wiped out in the Senate.
Wiped out on the gubernatorial level.
Wiped out in the state legislatures.
And this is one of the reasons why.
Because for all the talk about how Donald Trump is an egotist, which he assuredly is, Barack Obama is a massive egotist as well.
And he was not willing to jump on the Joe Biden bandwagon, specifically because he was concerned that Joe was old and senile.
Which, by the way, Joe Biden is old and senile.
You may have noticed this.
So, that was the second most important endorsement of the last 24 hours.
The first most important endorsement was Bernie Sanders.
I have to admit, I do love the fact that Bernie Sanders just cut off Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the knees.
It is beautiful.
So yesterday morning, There's a piece by Askiat Herndon over at the New York Times called, In an interview, Ms.
Ocasio-Cortez said she intended to support the presumptive Democratic nominee, but the process of coming together should be uncomfortable for everyone involved.
And so she wanted to make demands, demands of Joe Biden so that the entire progressive wing would get behind the Joe Biden campaign.
She said that the Biden campaign had not reached out to her.
She said, there's this talk about unity as this kind of vague kumbaya kind of term.
Unity and unifying isn't a feeling, it's a process.
And what I hope does not happen is that everyone just tries to shoo it along and brush real policies.
That means the difference of life and death or affording your insulin and not affording your insulin.
Just brush them under the rug as an aesthetic difference of style.
There's also this idea that if we all just support the nominee, voters will come along as well.
I don't think this conversation about changes that need to be made is one about throwing the progressive wing of the party a couple of bones.
I think this is how we can win.
So she says that she wants the Medicare age lowered to 60.
I love this.
It's almost insulting.
I think Hillary was looking at policies that lowered it to 50.
this olive branch to the progressive left, she says, of lowering the Medicare age to 60.
It's almost insulting.
I think Hillary was looking at policies that lowered it to 50.
So we're talking about a progressive concession that is 10 years worse than the nominee we had back in 2016.
Progressives aren't like a monolith.
Like every voting bloc is in a monolith.
But I know from a Latino perspective, I think we need a real plan to be better than what happened during his service with the Obama administration.
I love she says that progressives aren't a monolith, but there is a monolithic Latino perspective.
Very interesting.
And then she says that she wants some sort of concessions.
On deportations.
She says, if we're not talking about paths to citizenship for undocumented people, if we're just talking about policy changes of 5 or 10 percent, it's not about moving to the left.
It's about who is able to find hope in your administration.
So she has this long interview with the New York Times talking about all the things that she wants from Joe Biden in order for her to endorse.
And five seconds later, Bernie Sanders gets on a live stream with Joe Biden and endorses.
Now, the great shock here is that both of them were able to work the live stream.
That is clearly the great shock here.
There must have been a grandkid nearby who was able to work the camera.
But watching Stadler and Hofstadter from the Muppets talk to each other here was really an experience.
Or Sam the Eagle and Larry David.
That was really an experience.
That's kind of what they look like here.
Have you ever seen a show this bad?
No, I've not seen a show this bad since I walked out on the Ford's Theater in 1865.
That's what this was.
It was unbelievable.
So Bernie Sanders finally endorses Joe Biden for president.
Joe Biden's doing it from his well-lit basement.
And his forehead continues to climb up his entire head.
It now constitutes the entire front portion of his cranium.
Like his forehead actually starts midway through the top of his skull and now descends all the way to his nose.
Joe Biden's forehead.
And then you've got Bernie Sanders, who's like, I know I'm irrelevant now, but I have one more shot to say a thing.
And here I am.
The best part of this is that it was a live stream where they were supposed to be casual and fun.
And Joe Biden was desperately trying to read off a teleprompter.
During the entire thing, because Joe Biden has lost all capacity for independent human thought.
It's over for him.
He has no capacity.
He's a Joe Biden bot, but like a crappy bot version 0.7.
Not the one that was supposed to be released.
He's AOL 1.0 with the dial-up connection.
So here is Bernie endorsing Biden with sufficiently more enthusiasm than Joe Biden, who is not actually an alive person.
We've got to make Trump a one-term president, and we need you in the White House.
So I will do all that I can to see that that happens, Joe.
And I know that there is an enormous responsibility on your shoulders right now.
And it's imperative that all of us work together to do what has to be done, not only in this moment, but beyond this moment, in the future of this country.
Okay, and then Biden did a bunch of stupid things.
So Biden thinks that the way that he is going to unify the party is by making all sorts of concessions to Bernie and by starting to mimic Bernie's policies.
And this is pretty much the dumbest thing you can do.
The reason that this is the dumbest thing you can do is because Biden's entire campaign, the reason he shellacked Bernie, and he shellacked Bernie way worse than Hillary shellacked Bernie in 2016, right?
Hillary narrowly beat Bernie.
Biden just killed him.
I mean, Biden whomped him.
He won 11 out of 14 Super Tuesday states.
The moment that people saw Bernie as a possible frontrunner, Bernie collapsed in on himself like the Soviet economy circa 1987.
Okay, and so why would you, at this point, attempt desperately to mimic Bernie Sanders' policies?
You just killed him.
He's dead already.
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
Like, the best move here that Joe Biden could have made was to completely joffrey Bernie Sanders, right?
Bernie bends the knee, and Biden just lops off his head and selects Amy Klobuchar as his VP or something.
Okay, but he didn't do that.
Instead, Biden had to pay homage to Bernie.
He says that Bernie is one of the most powerful voices ever.
Of course, he's reading from a teleprompter while he says this.
It means a great deal to me personally.
As I said in my statement when you suspended your campaign, I want to thank you for being the powerful voice.
And you've been the most powerful voice for a fair and more just America.
It's a voice like yours that refuses to allow us just to accept what is.
You've refused to accept that we can't change what's wrong in our nation.
You refuse to accept that health and well-being of our fellow citizens and our planet isn't the responsibility of somebody else.
It's our responsibility.
Act now.
And you don't get enough credit, Bernie.
You don't get enough credit because I've been denying you credit because I think you're a crazy old loon bag.
I am a crazy old loon bag!
Of course I'm a crazy old loon bag!
And you are going to give me all the things that... I don't need to do that.
I killed you.
No, no, no, no, no!
You are going to give... And so Biden's like, oh, okay, fine.
So then he starts saying crazy crap, which again is not going to benefit him in the election.
So here's Joe Biden saying crazy crap, right?
He says, you know what I think we should do?
We should use wartime authority to force banks to give small loans to businesses.
Wartime authority to force banks to give loans they would not otherwise give.
So we're not just going to use the government to give out bad loans like we did during the subprime crisis or like we did during CARP or something.
We are actually going to force small banks to give loans they don't want to give using wartime authority, which is just full-on economic fascism.
I mean, that is what that is.
When you seize control of the banks and force them to give loans, that is basically the definition of economic fascism.
Here is Joe Biden suggesting it openly because he doesn't know what he's talking about.
He's lost all connection with reality.
We should insist that the Trump White House and the Treasury Department move more aggressively to get those grants and loans to small businesses now, when they really need it.
And if the banks won't do it, to go back to your point, they won't process the loans for small business regardless of their size, then the federal government should use their wartime authority to compel them to do so.
Because otherwise, in six months, we're going to look back and see that this crisis has only made inequity worse in America.
So we're going to use the government for redistribution of wealth in the middle of a global pandemic.
And he says this again, right?
He says, let's do a Green New Deal.
Let's pursue progressive priorities.
Let me be clear about something.
One of the reasons you are not seeing like outright state refusal to listen to the federal government is the fact that Donald Trump is president.
If these people, the people who are insisting on full-scale federal control of every aspect of your life, were using this crisis as an excuse to take control of businesses and banks across the country, there would be, rightly, talk of disobeying the federal government.
There would be.
Like, one of the things that is keeping things on lockdown right now is the fact that Trump obviously does not want to fundamentally shift the nature of the relationship between citizen and government.
Joe Biden is scaring.
This is scary, OK?
Because this is Joe Biden being Bernie.
And this just shows that for the Democratic Party, their heart is still with Bernie, even though they're not willing to show it on the outside.
So here is Joe Biden being Bernie on progressive policies while Bernie sits there bored and staring at his fingernails.
Look, the United States has no choice but to seize this opportunity and create millions, millions of great paying jobs that your energy plan has suggested and mine as well.
An energy infrastructure of tomorrow, not going back to anything that was before, tomorrow.
And we take a backseat to no one when it comes to fighting climate change or when it comes to creating good paying jobs, middle class jobs, union jobs.
Union job.
What are you talking about?
We have 30 million people who are out of work.
Okay, we've gained 17 million people on the unemployment rolls.
You want to lose an election?
This is the way to lose an election.
Seriously.
Is to say crazy, radical things that Trump can actually pick on in the run-up to the election.
The other way to lose the election is to be a complete buffoon, and that Biden has done in spades.
He made three separate gaffes in this thing last night.
First, he named the economy twice in his working groups, which is like the full-on Rick Perry, but he doesn't get treated like Rick Perry because he's Joe Biden.
We just pretend he's old, senile Uncle Joe.
Here he is, gaffe number one.
Bernie and I have agreed to establish, as we said, we already talked about it, six policy working groups.
One on the economy, one on education, one on criminal justice.
It should be reform, not punishment.
One on immigration, climate change, and the economy.
Oh, like the economy twice.
Well, that's important.
Also, gaffe number two, then he's trying to get his aides' attention.
Remember that time that Marco Rubio swigged from a water bottle and it was a huge deal?
Here is Joe Biden trying desperately to get his aides' attention in the middle of a live stream.
With so many folks unemployed and underemployed, we've got to make sure that the government comes up with a continued set of policies that protect those workers.
And the pain all over the country is now horrific.
You have seen, as I have, these lines of cars And I mean, what is Joe Biden doing here?
He's like trying to spoon something.
What's going on?
This is song and dance at the old age home.
Finally, gaffe number three.
Biden says he's going to put millions of citizens on the pathway to citizenship, which would be weird because citizens don't need a pathway to citizenship, as the word citizenship would actually suggest.
I really think we should be thinking about having a new office, a new cabinet office on pandemics in the United States, but that's another issue.
But we're going to finally achieve comprehensive immigration reform as well, put millions of citizens on a pathway to citizenship, including so many who are on the front lines right now.
The number of undocumented who are out there now risking their lives.
What is he talking about?
Okay, so this crazy old kook.
I'm so glad that everyone is proud to endorse, including Barack Obama, who literally was left with only one option.
So good stuff there, Democrats.
Listen, Biden's a super vulnerable candidate.
He maintains that vulnerability.
But Trump is going to have to actually demonstrate some leadership.
He's going to have to forego the cheap and easy hit against the media and actually demonstrate some desire to unify the country.
Because basically this election right now is going to be a referendum on what Trump does with the worst crisis in modern American history, really since the Civil War.
Okay, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
I will not be back here tomorrow.
There are two more days of Jewish holidays.
Wednesday and Thursday.
I will be back here Friday.
I promise that's like the last of the Jewish holidays for approximately seven weeks until we hit Shavuot.
But otherwise, show up here later today and we'll spend a couple more hours with you then.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
Hey everybody, it's Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are depressed because the American Republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon has turned to blood.
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