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April 29, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:08:53

All Politics Is Local | Ep. 1000

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	New York Governor Andrew Cuomo escapes responsibility for New York's disaster as Mayor Bill de Blasio slams the Jewish community, the media gives Sweden a second look, and Hillary Clinton endorses Joe Biden.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN Utilization.
	Your online activity should not be public.
	Protect yourself at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Well, welcome to our 1000th episode.
	The only thing that's special about this episode is that I just said it's our 1000th episode.
	That is the only thing that we actually think is important about the like.
	It's all the same.
	I was going to take the day off for the 1000th episode, but I was told that that would be a bad idea.
	So let's jump right into the news.
	So there is a weird phenomenon out there where some people seem to be celebrating the failures of the United States with regard to coronavirus, championing the idea that the United States has been a gigantic failure.
	Among these people is Rachel Maddow.
	Who is seeking to blame the entire pandemic on President Trump, which is weird because it seems like the pandemic is it, you know, like everywhere.
	In fact, the United States, when it comes to our death per million population is basically middle of the pack.
	The United States ranks about 179 deaths per million population, according to Worldometers.
	By contrast, Spain is at 519 per million, Italy is at 453 per million, France is at 362 per million, the UK is at 319 per million.
	In other words, the United States ranks right now about half of all of those other places on Earth.
	Nonetheless, Rachel Maddow is out there almost celebrating the idea that the United States is number one.
	Why?
	Because this allows her to dunk on President Trump.
	Because Trump says America first, and now we are number one in the number of coronavirus cases diagnosed.
	A couple things about that.
	One, we are also number one in the number of tests we've actually done in the United States in terms of raw absolute numbers.
	We are number one in the number of tests.
	So what's very odd is you hear some people in the media suggest, we're under testing.
	We're really, really under testing.
	And then they'll say, but we're number one in cases.
	Okay.
	We're number one in cases in the aggregate, not per million population, right?
	We're number one in cases just as a, as a raw sum.
	And then when it comes to testing, we're also number one in testing in raw sum.
	But the media use two different standards.
	They'll say that on a per capita basis, the United States is not number one when it comes to testing.
	But then they won't use per capita basis when they talk about the number of cases in the United States.
	They won't do that.
	The number of deaths in the United States.
	The reality of the situation is that the United States is not close to number one in terms of the number of deaths we have suffered from coronavirus.
	The United States has actually handled this thing pretty well, except for New York.
	I'm going to talk about New York in just a few minutes here.
	But here's Rachel Maddow last night trying to suggest that the United States has engaged in widespread failure.
	Why?
	Because on the back of failure, you can change the politics of the United States.
	And this phenomenon is really ugly and really terrible.
	This is the phenomenon where folks on the left try to gin up a feeling of true disaster.
	Not that the pandemic is not a disaster, a feeling that the government response was a true, thoroughly going disaster, simply so that they can then suggest a vast change to the system.
	Here's Rachel Maddow doing just that last night.
	Downplaying the threat, ignoring the experts, refusing to prepare.
	Donald Trump is failing America.
	The way that started, the way the clip came in, you actually missed the first little bit of it which started with Donald Trump said he would put America first and now he has.
	The United States leads the world in coronavirus cases.
	That whole America first slogan not aging well obviously in this time.
	You can't hold back a smile there, can you, Rachel?
	That America, first thing is, first of all, again, America is not the worst place in the world for coronavirus.
	Statistically speaking, the United States, again, not close to the worst place in the world for coronavirus.
	In fact, the United States ranks better in terms of deaths per million population, which is the stat that you should be using.
	The United States ranks better than virtually every European country, with the exception of Germany.
	And when we talk about how the United States is doing, and we just passed one million total diagnoses of coronavirus, and again, that is a vast undercounting.
	of the number of people who actually have coronavirus.
	It may be five to 10 times that number, considering that huge number of people are asymptomatic and antibody tests are showing a multiple, a multiple of that number in terms of people who actually have acquired COVID-19 and who have not died.
	If you're looking at the fact that we have a million cases and we have a population of 330 million, you'd have to actually aggregate the number of total cases in Europe, right, which has a similar population.
	The EU, altogether, has a population that looks a lot more like the United States than any single country in Europe.
	So, suggesting that the United States has more raw cases than, for example, Italy, when Italy has approximately, at this point, 201,000 diagnosed cases, but only 60 million members of the population.
	We have 330 million people here in the United States.
	So, again, these numbers make no sense.
	If you look at how the United States has performed, with the exception of New York, which again we're going to get to in a second, the United States has performed exceptionally well.
	Exceptionally well.
	We're performing around where Canada or Germany are outside of New York.
	And New York's been a disaster area.
	And let me give you those stats on New York so that you understand that basically the United States, when it comes to the treatment of COVID-19, is two countries, New York and everywhere else.
	When it comes to New York, New York has a population of about 19 million people, New York State.
	We've had about 23,000 deaths to date.
	Right now, New York State has 1,180 deaths per million population in New York State.
	Italy, which was the hardest hit country for a while, now it's Spain, the hardest hit country in Europe was Italy.
	They had 27,000 deaths, slightly more deaths than New York State, but they have three times the population, it's 60 million, so they only have 453 deaths per million in Italy, as opposed to 1,180 deaths per million in New York State.
	In Spain, which has been devastated.
	They have 519 deaths per million.
	New York State doubles that at 1,180.
	If you take New York State out of the calculation, which again, because it is so outside the sort of normal distribution, you can make an argument for.
	If you were to do that, the rest of the United States looks like Germany or Canada.
	So the idea that this is equally devastated every part of the United States is obviously untrue.
	A national policy would be a disaster.
	Second of all, this does raise some questions about the governance in New York, where supposedly Andrew Cuomo was hero of the day.
	I remember when the media did the same thing after Hurricane Katrina, declaring that, I believe it was Kathleen Blanco was the governor of Louisiana at the time, was suddenly a wonderful governor and Mayor Ray Nagin, who's a horrible mayor of New Orleans, By calling his city a chocolate city that had been taken revenge upon by the federal government when he was telling people not to leave the city in the middle of the hurricane.
	And the media made him out to be a hero because Bush had to be the bad guy.
	It's media malpractice what has gone on in terms of how Trump has been treated and the Trump administration have been treated versus how the New York state government has been treated and the New York local government has been treated.
	It is absolute journalistic malpractice.
	If there were a Republican governor of New York, the whining would never stop.
	Anger and rage would never stop.
	The media are angrier at Brian Kemp for telling people they can reopen their barber shops than they are at Andrew Cuomo in New York who didn't shut down the state until late March and Bill de Blasio who's going out in public and telling people that they could go about their business through mid-March.
	It's absolutely incredible.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the fact that Mother's Day is approaching.
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	The United States has indeed, according to the New York Times, surpassed one million known coronavirus cases.
	The bleak milestone, according to the New York Times, is yet another sign of how the virus has upended life in America, taking lives, destroying family, spreading through meat plants and nursing homes, prisons, forcing businesses and schools to close.
	The true number of infections is much higher than one million, of course.
	Roughly one out of every 330 people in the U.S.
	has now tested positive for the virus.
	Now, there's good news here and there's bad news.
	The good news is, the bad news is this thing spreads really fast.
	Because we've been in lockdown and still we have huge numbers.
	Probably five to ten million people in the United States have already gotten coronavirus.
	The good news is that that means that we are actually getting fairly close to herd immunity in certain areas of New York, which is a good thing.
	I mean, that's what you're aiming for.
	At a certain point, you're going to have to aim for herd immunity.
	Herd immunity is basically a vaccine, right?
	It is nature's vaccine.
	Herd immunity is you reach the level at which the reproduction rate of a virus is less than one because so many people have already had the virus.
	And for all the people right now who are saying, well, there's no guarantee that antibodies confer immunity.
	If antibodies don't confer immunity, why are we spending all of our time looking for a vaccine?
	That's exactly what a vaccine is.
	A vaccine just allows you to build up your antibodies to a particular disease.
	So if you're putting all your faith in a vaccine and at the same time shouting from the rooftops that antibodies don't confer immunity, I don't know exactly what you are waiting for.
	At that point, you better just throw up your hands and go out and enjoy your life, right?
	Because...
	Then you're talking about nothing is going to stop this thing.
	It is just a matter of time before you get it.
	And then whatever happens to you happens to you.
	Now, in worse news, the U.S.
	coronavirus death toll is far higher than originally suggested, according to CDC data.
	They're looking at excess deaths over the prior five years versus the versus over this year versus the prior five years state to state.
	And they've seen a significant uptick in New York City, obviously.
	Normally, they see about You know, a thousand weekly deaths, something like that in New York City.
	They were seeing up to 6,000 weekly deaths in New York City.
	New York State, it was something similar.
	New Jersey, you've seen this huge spike.
	Michigan, you've seen a spike that's now flattening off.
	Massachusetts, there was some spike.
	Illinois has been a little bit softer in terms of the number of increased deaths.
	Maryland has basically been kind of on par, actually, and Colorado has been nearly on par.
	According to the New York Times, if you look at the provisional deaths from all causes, death counts in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maryland, and Colorado have spiked far above their normal levels for the period.
	In New York City, the home of the biggest outbreak, the number of deaths over this period is more than three times the normal number.
	Recent data suggests it could have reached six times higher than normal.
	And that means that there would be a significant undercount on the number of deaths from March 8th to April 11th.
	The gap could have been up to 2,000 people in New York City.
	It could have been up to 3,000 people in New Jersey.
	The statewide could have been another 700 people in Illinois.
	These numbers aren't enough to change the overall infection fatality rate of this thing, which is probably between 0.5 and 0.6 according to best available data, which means it is significantly deadlier than the flu, as we've been saying.
	It is also significantly more transmissible than the flu.
	It is not 3.4 or 4% as the WHO was originally suggesting.
	Now, what does this mean?
	It means that it will continue to be out there and will continue to kill people.
	Unless there's a therapeutic that comes about.
	Now, we're expecting some news from Gilead Sciences a little bit later today about that Remdesivir, which is that drug that they were purporting to put out there.
	There was some good news a couple of weeks ago, suggestions that it had been effective.
	Then there was a study that was canceled in China that was suggesting it wasn't as effective.
	We're going to find out whether there's a therapeutic on the way, which would be great.
	But one thing to keep in mind, this thing is still out there.
	It is still infectious.
	And that is what it is, right?
	That is what it is.
	We're just going to have to deal with that because as we remove the lockdown, there will indeed be a spike in cases.
	That is not a shock.
	That's the purpose of the lockdown, I thought.
	People who are surprised that there's a spike in cases after the lockdown, I honestly don't know what they were thinking.
	I've been saying for weeks that all the models were flawed because they didn't expect a second wave.
	Well, if a lockdown is designed to prevent us from going out and infecting each other, and then the lockdown ends because the original lockdown was designed not only to prevent us from infecting each other, but to stop us from infecting each other for a specific purpose, namely to not swamp the healthcare system, When we relieve the lockdown, people will be in more contact with one another, and then there will be a spike in cases.
	The question isn't whether there's a spike in cases.
	Without a vaccine, of course there will be.
	And again, the good news is, the more people get it, the better the chances that we eventually reach herd immunity.
	That's what Sweden has been thinking.
	The bad news is, the more people get it, the more people who will die.
	The question is really, what is the alternative?
	And I have not heard any alternative from people.
	Right?
	Maybe you're waiting for the vaccine.
	You don't know when that's coming.
	12 to 18 months?
	Nobody's staying home for 12 to 18 months.
	Maybe you're waiting for a therapeutic.
	Maybe the therapeutic will come.
	Maybe it won't.
	You don't know.
	All we can do is be cautious, try and spread this out over time, which is why social distancing and masks matter and all of the rest of this.
	But the notion that we are going to avoid an increase in the number of cases, like everyone knows there's going to be an increase in the number of cases.
	That's why I'm constantly shocked by the way people treat this thing online.
	What?
	Oh, my God.
	Georgia's opening up and they have a spike in cases.
	Yeah, no bleep, Sherlock.
	I mean, that's the purpose of the lockdown is to stop that.
	But the lockdown can't last forever.
	And it served its actual purpose, which was to stop the overwhelming of the health care system.
	We'll talk about Florida in just a second, because people are using this as an excuse.
	They set up an expectation that cannot be met by reality, that when people go out again, you're going to be somehow safer than you were when you went back in.
	Not much.
	I mean, only because of the masks and the social distancing, but the virus didn't magically disappear.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the fact that if you are online right now, there are bad actors online too.
	I mean, this is like heaven for hackers because everybody's spending all their time online.
	Retail shopping has all gone online.
	Everybody is shopping online.
	That means a lot of credit card information floating around.
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	Okay, so New York is already planning for all of this, as they should.
	Florida is seeing a spike in cases, according to the Miami Herald.
	Florida's Department of Health on Tuesday confirmed 708 additional cases of COVID-19, bringing the state's total of confirmed cases to 32,846.
	There were 83 new deaths announced, the highest reported on a single day.
	That brought the statewide total to just over 1,000.
	Well, that's not great, but that is not nearly the original forecast.
	There's going to be four or five thousand dead in Florida.
	So, are there going to be additional infections?
	Of course there are.
	Also, you shouldn't really look at the death numbers because the death numbers lag.
	And when you look at the death numbers, you're looking at infections from two weeks ago.
	That's when people are dying after lingering, unfortunately, for a week or two in the hospital.
	Tuesday's number of new cases in Florida is the highest the state has seen in the past three days.
	Saturday was the lowest, when the state reported a total of 306 new cases and nine deaths, which was a steep decline of new daily cases and deaths not seen since late March.
	That was likely caused by the Florida Department of Health changing its system of providing updates.
	So that was not actually a change in the underlying data.
	It's just they changed how they were providing the updates.
	But people are using this as an excuse to be like, well, if we end the lockdown, everything is going to go hog wild.
	It's going to go haywire out here.
	If you end the lockdown, people will be in contact with one another.
	There will be more infections.
	None of this was ever in doubt.
	None of this was ever in doubt.
	And that does not change the calculation here.
	New York has apparently set up a circuit breaker.
	Andrew Cuomo says that if either the hospital system in an area of the state hits 70% of capacity, or if the rate of transmission reaches 1.1, meaning for every person who has the virus, another 1.1 are infected, then that would constitute what he called a circuit breaker.
	The statewide transmission rate is about 0.8%, meaning less than one person is infected.
	He said we want to do it without infecting more people or overwhelming the hospital system.
	Well, that first one is not going to happen.
	Overwhelming the hospital system, that's the one you can stop.
	More people will be infected.
	It will continue to run through the population.
	That's what viruses do.
	Social distancing will help to lower that, but that's just the way things are going to go.
	The only thing you can really control is whether people are going to overwhelm the hospital system.
	That's where the circuit breaker should exist.
	Dr. Deborah Birx yesterday at the White House, she said, listen, we understand there's going to be Increased infections.
	And we are ready for a second wave if a second wave should occur.
	Our job right now and our job in the White House to ensure that we are ready for anything that happens in the fall.
	Whether it's testing, whether it's PPE, whether it's ventilators, whether it's a complete surveillance system that understands that we have to track for asymptomatics as well as symptomatic individuals.
	All of those pieces need to accelerate and expand to be ready for the fall.
	Okay, so she's getting ready for the fall.
	Dr. Fauci also says that everyone who needs a test will be able to get one by late May or June.
	Again, the testing doesn't really change the outcome here because once you're tested, the treatment is exactly the same whether you were tested or not.
	If you go to the hospital and you're having trouble breathing, You will get a test and then you will get treatment.
	Even if you test positive for COVID-19, that's probably not going to change anything except you're going to stay home.
	But we've already told people, if you have a cough and you have a fever, you're supposed to be staying home anyway.
	So the tests actually don't change all that much other than if you have some sort of contact tracing that can be put in place to tell people around you that they need to stay home, even if they're asymptomatic.
	That could help, again, prevent the fast spread and overwhelming the healthcare system.
	But I keep reiterating the same point.
	People are going to get it.
	People are going to die.
	That's how this works.
	Sweden has taken this into account.
	Sweden will not see a second wave because they didn't do the lockdown in the first place.
	Sweden, which it's amazing to watch, right?
	The New York Times swiveled on a dime.
	There are two separate articles in the New York Times today talking about how maybe Sweden did this right.
	After weeks of suggesting that Sweden was a disaster area, there's an article in the New York Times today talking about how Sweden may have done this right because there won't be a second wave.
	Apparently, people are going out.
	They're enjoying life.
	There are restaurants that are open.
	If they don't social distance, then they're shut down for the day, but people are not actually being prosecuted.
	Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned.
	Museums have closed.
	Sporting events have been canceled.
	At the end of March, the authorities banned visits to nursing homes, and that's pretty much it, according to the New York Times.
	There are almost no fines.
	Police officers can only ask people to oblige.
	Pedestrians wearing masks are generally stared at as if they've just landed from Mars.
	So, They are going to be okay.
	Sweden looks like they're going to be okay because nothing is going to change there because nothing changed there in the first place in terms of people locking down permanently.
	Where you are going to see the spikes are where people lock down permanently.
	We artificially suppressed the numbers and now the numbers are going to spike again.
	Maybe the artificial suppression was necessary so we didn't overwhelm the system.
	That's possible.
	But I've been saying for weeks, we were all going to become Sweden.
	It was just a matter of time as to when we did that.
	And so everybody who's ripping on Sweden, I have a question.
	What was your alternative?
	That we're going to be locked down forever?
	Okay, now, I want to turn to New York City.
	Because, as I've said, the media coverage of New York is just egregiously bad.
	Egregiously bad.
	Look at the numbers.
	Look at the numbers.
	Once more, the state death rate in New York City, deaths per million population, in New York State, 1,180 deaths per million.
	1,180 deaths per million.
	That is twice the rate of Spain.
	per million.
	100, 180 deaths, 1,180 deaths per million.
	That is twice the rate of Spain.
	That is more than twice the rate of Italy.
	Okay, so New York did something wrong here.
	Now, some of that is population density.
	Some of that is dramatic government mismanagement.
	And it is amazing to watch as the media blame President Trump and the federal government for the state completely botching it.
	Andrew Cuomo was hero of the republic for at least a month here.
	Why?
	Because he was going on TV and shouting at President Trump about how he needed more ventilators.
	But Andrew Cuomo was able to completely abdicate responsibility for his own state.
	And by the way, we shouldn't be treating every governor equivalently.
	Kristi Noem in South Dakota, the governor of South Dakota.
	She never shut down her state.
	Basically, her citizens threw a parade yesterday because she didn't shut down the state.
	Because she shouldn't have shut down the state.
	Texas never completely shut down.
	Florida never completely shut down.
	Did they get it worse than de Blasio and Cuomo did in New York?
	Of course not.
	But if you look at the media coverage, Cuomo and de Blasio are the gold standard for how you're supposed to act during a pandemic.
	And DeSantis in Florida and Abbott in Texas and Kristi Noem in South Dakota, And the governor of Alaska.
	All these guys are bad people.
	They're bad people because they opened up.
	And then the media have a rooting interest.
	And it seems that that rooting interest definitely aligns with D versus R. Because the perfect proof of this, by the way, is Jared Polis in Colorado is starting to open up.
	He's not getting anywhere near the kind of flack that other governors who have an R next to their name are getting.
	And we're going to get to New York in just a second.
	Because by the way, the deaths per million in New York state is really high.
	The deaths in New York City per million are astonishing.
	The deaths per million in New York City are absolutely crazy.
	How many deaths have there been in New York City proper from COVID-19?
	I believe there have been about 12,000 deaths in New York City to date from COVID-19.
	Yeah, to bet $12,500.
	So $12,500, and there's about $8.4 million.
	So we'll round that up for purposes of being nice to New York.
	That means that there have been 12,000.
	It means that there have been approximately, I'm trying to do the math here, $7,200.
	7,200 cases per million in New York?
	Could that possibly be right?
	Maybe.
	I mean, it's about twice the rate of New York State, right?
	Because that means that, because it's so heavily located.
	They've had 12,000 cases, so about half the number of deaths.
	It's high.
	Okay, let's put it this way.
	It's much higher than New York.
	It can't be 7,200.
	I'm doing the math wrong here.
	But the bottom line is that you are looking At a death per million rate that is extraordinarily high.
	Here it is.
	It's about 1,388.
	1,390 deaths per million in New York City.
	So in other words, almost three times the rate that you saw in Italy.
	Almost three times.
	And yet, New York State's government has been treated with kid gloves.
	No, they're doing everything right.
	Pretty much everything wrong.
	And I'll give you an example of how the media really treats the mayor and the governor with kid gloves because their activities over the last 24 hours, on a political level, would kill any Republican who attempted this kind of stuff.
	And should, by the way.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	Okay, so let's talk about New York now.
	Because somehow, the governor of New York was able to escape responsibility for the fact that his state has been a complete bleep show since the very beginning.
	He was calling for 30-40,000 ventilators.
	helps them go check out rockauto.com and get your car part for the best available price.
	Okay, so let's talk about New York now, because somehow the governor of New York was able to escape responsibility for the fact that his state has been a complete bleep show since the very beginning.
	He was calling for 30,000, 40,000 ventilators.
	They didn't end up needing one third of that.
	When Trump said that he didn't think that's what the numbers would end up being, he was ripped up How dare he say that?
	Because it was pretty obvious that they weren't actually going to need those kind of numbers.
	And you want to say that Cuomo was bargaining with Trump for the ventilators?
	Guess what?
	He was bargaining against other states for the ventilators.
	Andrew Cuomo didn't shut down the state until late March.
	For all the talk about Trump was late on the game, Trump issued his 15 days to slow the spread.
	I believe it was March 15th, March 16th.
	Cuomo didn't shut down the state until March 23rd.
	Mayor de Blasio is going around in early March telling people they should go out and celebrate their lives in New York and everything was hunky-dory.
	Somehow, these public officials escaped the censure of the media.
	Why?
	Well, because the Democratic agenda here is to blame it all on the federal government, just like Hurricane Katrina, where it's up to the state of New Orleans to control the safety of the citizens of the state of New Orleans.
	And I say this as a resident of California.
	I think Gavin Newsom's a garbage governor.
	I think he's going too far right now in a lot of his shutdown orders.
	I think that a lot of what he's saying is insane.
	But guess what didn't happen in California?
	What happened in New York?
	Now part of that has to do with population density, but you know where there's pretty heavy population density?
	In San Francisco.
	You know where else there's pretty heavy population density?
	Seattle.
	You know what didn't see New York?
	Either of those cities.
	Anyway, Nancy Pelosi has been basically, you know, issuing the challenge to the Trump administration, suggesting that they blew it.
	It's all about the Trump administration blowing it, not about New York.
	Which again, remove New York from the national statistics, and the rest of the United States looks like Germany.
	Which is supposedly the model of how you tamp this thing down.
	Here's Nancy Pelosi blaming Trump.
	What did the president know, and when did he know it?
	In addition to which, what did the scientists tell him, and when did he tell them?
	Because actually, as a matter of fact, this president has presided over the worst disaster in our country's history.
	An assault on the lives and the livelihoods of the American people.
	And he did so by neglect of information, also denial and delay in accepting the facts.
	Oh, okay, so Nancy, I remember in early March when you proposed a grand total of $8 billion for funding for the pandemic.
	That was like March 6th.
	Don't you remember Nancy Pelosi at the top of her lungs hollering for a national shutdown?
	No, I don't either, because that didn't happen.
	She was on the same timeline as President Trump, and by the way, she's the Speaker of the House.
	She was getting the same information that Trump was getting.
	This idea that Trump was getting some sort of information that was unavailable to Nancy Pelosi is just, it's fantasy.
	There's no case, there is no reality in which that is the truth.
	In late February, she was going to Chinatown in San Francisco and telling people to come on out to Chinatown.
	Meanwhile, what was going on in New York?
	In New York, they were late on the game.
	Governor Cuomo is admitting as much.
	And the media are like, oh, look at that honesty from Governor Cuomo.
	I'm confused.
	Does that mean that he did a good job now?
	Here's Governor Cuomo yesterday saying, I didn't blow the bugle on it.
	Watch as he futzes this, right?
	Even here, he futzes it.
	He says, I wish I had been blowing the bugle on this in December or January.
	Dude, you weren't blowing the bugle on this in February.
	You were not blowing the bugle on this in the first week of March.
	Don't give me January or December.
	I mean, Trump could use that same excuse.
	Where were you in February?
	Like, everything that people say about Trump, and how Trump didn't take this seriously enough, he's not the governor of the state that actually had this outbreak.
	He's the president of the United States.
	He didn't handle this well at the very beginning.
	But you know who handled it a lot worse?
	The state that actually got swamped here.
	Here's Andrew Cuomo, you know, basically lying by omission here, saying, yeah, I didn't blow the bugle in December or January.
	Yeah, you didn't do it in February.
	You didn't do it in early March either.
	Here's Andrew Cuomo.
	I wish someone stood up and blew the bugle.
	And if no one was going to blow the bugle, I would feel much better if I was a bugle blower last December and January.
	Even though no one danced to the music, I would feel better sitting here today saying, I blew the bugle about Wuhan province in January.
	I can't say that.
	Okay, that's not only true, you didn't do it again for weeks afterward.
	New York was late on the game here.
	And then Cuomo was asked about, you know, the fact that you were late on the game here, and Cuomo's like, governors don't do pandemics, that's a national issue.
	Really, is it?
	Because it seems like you have been credited with Doing a wonderful job in New York, despite the fact that you have not actually done a wonderful job in New York.
	It turns out that we have a federalist system and that not every state is similarly situated.
	So it's pretty convenient that you're able to suggest that you are in control.
	It's local control when you want it to be local control and national control when it's national control.
	Remember, I'm being perfectly even-handed on this point.
	When Trump said, this is up to the states, and then he said, no, I have national control.
	I'm the president.
	I said, no, it's up to the states.
	You got to be consistent on this.
	Well, the same thing holds true for Cuomo.
	You don't get to do, pandemics are a national issue, they're not my state's issue, when you can issue state shutdown orders, and when you suggest to President Trump, get out of the state's business.
	So here's Andrew Cuomo trying to evade responsibility.
	Governors don't do global pandemics, right?
	But there's a whole international, national health community would do that.
	Where are all the experts?
	Where was the New York Times?
	Where was the Wall Street Journal?
	Where was all the bugle blowers who should say, be careful, there's a virus in China that may be in the United States.
	That was November, December.
	We're sitting here, January, February, still debating how serious this is.
	Okay, this is unbelievable.
	What Cuomo is saying here is nearly word-for-word identical to the stuff Trump says.
	Trump says that over and over.
	And the members of the media are like, well, we wrote an editorial about this in early February saying coronavirus was a problem, and don't you remember Joe Biden writing an editorial for USA Today in late January?
	Okay, so why is it that when Cuomo says it, it's totally fine?
	And the media are like, oh, well, great, America's governor.
	And then when Trump says the exact same thing, it's, that man downplays his own responsibility for this.
	It's Cuomo's state that got hit.
	And not only that, it's Cuomo's garbage policies like, hey look, an elderly person came in with COVID-19, let's send them back to their nursing home.
	That really exacerbated the problem.
	It is Cuomo's policy of treating his entire state as a unitary body, as opposed to, hey wait a second, maybe upstate New York with a population density that doesn't even look like the population density of New York City may not be exactly like New York City.
	It's incredible.
	You want to know the double standard that is held for Andrew Cuomo versus anywhere else?
	Check out what Andrew Cuomo had to say about the homeless problem in New York City.
	Now, the homeless problem in New York City has been a problem for a long time.
	It's been a problem in LA, too.
	It's a problem in Seattle.
	It's a problem in San Francisco.
	Liberally governed areas have a serious homeless problem, not only because urban areas tend to draw homeless folks, but also because these cities have refused to crack down on the homeless, largely at the behest of Democrats, who have suggested it is a civil right to sleep on the streets.
	This has been a problem for a very long time.
	Only now are governors like Andrew Cuomo discovering that it's actually a bad thing to let mentally ill people sleep on the streets in their own filth.
	Only now are they discovering this is a bad thing.
	But listen to the language that Andrew Cuomo uses here.
	Because Andrew Cuomo uses language about the homeless people sleeping on the subways.
	If any Republican used this language, that person would be out of a job.
	Here's Andrew Cuomo today.
	That is disgusting, what is happening on those subway cars.
	It's disrespectful to the essential workers who need to ride the subway system.
	Upstate New York need to ride the buses to get to work.
	They deserve better and they will have better.
	We have to have a public transportation system that is clean, where the trains are disinfected, You have homeless people on trains.
	It's not even safe for the homeless people to be on trains.
	Okay, so I agree with him that it's actually a bad situation for homeless people to be on trains.
	In fact, I believe that it's a bad situation for homeless people to be homeless, meaning that you should not be allowed to sleep on the streets.
	You know who used to agree with me?
	The mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani.
	When New York was not turning back into a garbage heap under Bill de Blasio, by the way, so did Michael Bloomberg.
	Michael Bloomberg agreed with that also.
	But to use the word disgusting in conjunction here, is there any doubt that if a Republican had said this, the headline would have been, Republican governor.
	Homeless.
	Disgusting.
	Is there any question that would have been the coverage?
	Of course that would have been the coverage.
	The person would have had to apologize.
	Has Cuomo been asked?
	And the homeless problem is partially his fault.
	It's his state.
	de Blasio has been allowing the homelessness in New York to build for years at a time through garbage governance.
	And then like, oh, guess what?
	It's a problem that we have a homeless problem in New York City.
	Well, no No bleep, Sherlock.
	Congratulations.
	Okay, now it's not just Andrew Cuomo who has botched this one thoroughly and royally.
	It is also Mayor Bill de Blasio, the worst mayor in America.
	I mean, truly the worst mayor in America.
	And I live under a horrible mayor.
	Eric Garcetti is a horrible mayor.
	The man is fencing off the overpasses on Mulholland Drive that are four feet square.
	Because what are we going to do?
	We're going to get together and have a rave out there or something.
	But Mayor de Blasio is actually a horrible person.
	An actual, like, Sandinista communist.
	The man Not only is a hypocrite who was going to the YMCA in the middle of the pandemic while shutting down gyms and now apparently jets on over to Prospect Park in Brooklyn because he likes walking over there first.
	So he actually takes the city transport over there and then he walks around over there and doesn't socially distance according to the New York Post.
	Not only that, Bill de Blasio's take on social distancing.
	This is a man who suggests that he stands against anti-Semitism in New York.
	Wait till you see what Bill de Blasio had to say over the last 24 hours.
	No other group would be treated by Bill de Blasio the way the Jews in New York are being treated by Bill de Blasio.
	It's incredible.
	I'll show you the example in just one second.
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	Enter promo code Ben at checkout for that 20% All right, so we're going to get to Bill de Blasio, the worst mayor in America, bar none, without a doubt.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
	And again, he continues to escape the media scrutiny.
	It's pretty unbelievable.
	We'll get to that in just a moment.
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	Okay, so just in time.
	Well, in a second, we are going to get to Bill de Blasio first.
	I just have to say the stinger here.
	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	So just in time for Israeli Independence Day, Bill de Blasio has decided it's time to call out the Jews.
	... ... ... ...
	So, here's what's been going on.
	In Williamsburg, which is a very, what they call, Black Hat community.
	It's a Hasidic community, so it's even sort of a different version than Black Hat.
	There are a bunch of different striations even inside the Orthodox Jewish community.
	I, of course, am a member of Let me make this clear.
	The vast majority of the Orthodox community around the United States has shut down.
	My shul shut down before the lockdown orders in California.
	This has been true for every major shul in the Los Angeles area.
	It's also true of every major shul in the New York area.
	There's one particular area of New York, in Williamsburg, where there's Hasidic groups and they've still been gathering.
	And this is bad.
	I've mentioned this on the show.
	I've said that there are some groups, most Hasidim by the way, are shutting down.
	Like even among Hasidim, it is normal to shut down.
	Most Hasidic groups are shutting down.
	Now, there are some groups who have still been getting together.
	This is bad.
	This is bad across the board.
	I've said that Christian groups shouldn't do it.
	Jewish groups shouldn't do it.
	No group should be doing this, right?
	No group event right now.
	I have relatives who are in-laws who are going to be doing a wedding in a few months, and they're going to socially limit the wedding.
	I mean, this is just the way things work.
	Now, there was a funeral for a rabbi over in Williamsburg yesterday, and a bunch of people got together on the street.
	Now, there were parts of the crowd that were socially distanced.
	I know that I have a lot of listeners in this community.
	There were certain parts of the crowd that were, in fact, socially distanced and staying away from each other.
	There were other parts of the crowd that looked like they were not.
	There were a lot of people who showed up at this funeral, which was outdoors.
	There were no cars on the street.
	This is not good.
	You're not supposed to be doing this.
	There were members of the Orthodox community, by the way, who were going around and telling people they needed to socially distance or get off the street.
	So, all this led Bill de Blasio, who's a terrible person, to tweet this out.
	He tweeted out yesterday, my message to the Jewish community and all communities is this simple.
	The time for warnings has passed.
	I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups.
	This is about stopping this disease and saving lives, period.
	So a couple of things.
	De Blasio personally traveled over there in order to tell people to disperse.
	Because if it comes from Bill De Blasio's mouth, it's taken much more seriously than if the NYPD shows up.
	No one was arrested, by the way.
	When they were told to disperse, everybody did disperse.
	Second of all, Bill de Blasio, like, showing up personally, what's he gonna do?
	Get out on top of there with his bullhorn?
	Everyone please leave!
	Everyone please- By the way, this is the part of the rally that you're not being shown, right?
	This comes courtesy of a member of the Hasidic community in Williamsburg.
	One of the problems with photography is that if you use a particular type of lens, it makes people look closer together.
	You can see here that there was a fair amount of social distancing, even in Williamsburg.
	But with that said, obviously you don't want big crowds of any type doing this sort of thing.
	But de Blasio singled out the Jewish community.
	And he didn't just say, like, this little Hasidic subsection of Williamsburg.
	He said the Jewish community more broadly, as though, like, all the Jews on Broadway were getting together.
	in their off hours and gathering in large groups.
	Again, these are pictures from this funeral.
	You can see people socially distancing and wearing masks at parts of this rally.
	So this is not to say that there are pictures of people who are really close together, and that's really bad.
	But a lot of people were not particularly close together, and that wasn't all that bad.
	The point here is that de Blasio only singled out the Jewish community.
	Is the Jewish community the only group of people in New York who have been getting together in large groups?
	Well, let's take this one to the evidence.
	Yesterday, the Blue Angels did a flyover in New York City.
	Here are some pictures from the Blue Angels flyover in New York City.
	You can see.
	Are those rather large crowds?
	They are rather large crowds.
	Are they outside, just like the Williamsburg gathering?
	Yes, they are.
	Are people pretty close together?
	Absolutely.
	And this has been happening for a while.
	There was all sorts of video and pictures from the USNS Comfort arriving in New York City just a couple of weeks ago.
	And you remember, there were big crowds out there, not socially distancing, watching the USNS Comfort come into the harbor.
	Did Bill de Blasio call out those people?
	Did he arrive with his bullhorn and his giant monster body to tell people that they needed to disperse while strangling a groundhog?
	He did not, right?
	He singled out the Jewish community.
	And then he has the gall to suggest, well, you know, anti-Semitism in New York is never a thing.
	No, we won't tolerate anti-Semitism in New York.
	What a fool he is.
	What a fool he is.
	And let me point out that failure to abide by social distancing standards has no specific race and no specific religion because it is not tied to race or religion.
	I'll also note that Bill de Blasio is fostering a program to give out free Ramadan meals, something like 500 Ramadan meals at 30 sites.
	That's fine.
	I mean, okay.
	But he's facilitating that.
	At 30 sites, I would imagine that's going to be kind of tough in terms of the social distancing.
	Putting all of that aside, can you imagine if Bill de Blasio said, You know, we have higher rates of transmission in the black community.
	So I'm telling the black community right now in New York City, if you don't stop social, if you don't stop gathering in large crowds, we're going to send the NYPD to arrest you.
	Would Bill de Blasio ever say that about black folks in New York City?
	Of course not, because it's absurd.
	In Chicago, by the way, this is a serious problem.
	People are getting together in very large groups and it ain't Hasidim.
	There were two separate thousand-person parties in New York, in Chicago, indoors, one of them involving strippers.
	TMZ reported on it.
	Did Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, say, note to the black community, stop getting together because otherwise we'll arrest you?
	Does this look like social distancing to you, by the way?
	I mean, these are large groups of people in small areas partying it up in the middle of a pandemic, right?
	It's the Mask of the Red Death kind of stuff from Edgar Allen Poe, right?
	Everybody just getting together.
	There's another party with strippers going out, all sorts of good times over in Chicago.
	Now, is that specific to the so-called black community?
	No.
	People are idiots.
	People do idiotic things.
	Most people are not idiots.
	Thank God.
	Most people are not doing idiotic things.
	But to single out the Jewish community, again, would any mayor in the United States ever single out the black community for social gatherings like this one?
	The answer, of course, is no.
	But Bill de Blasio is perfectly willing to single out the Jewish community because Bill de Blasio can get away with it.
	He understands that the folks in Williamsburg aren't going to vote for him anyway.
	So what a wonderful mayor he is.
	What just incredible, incredible leadership we've seen from New York.
	But this is all Trump's fault in the end, right?
	In the end, we can blame all of this on Trump because Trump says dumb things at press conferences.
	Doesn't matter that the Trump team basically does the right thing in terms of action.
	The real question is that the Trump team is, they're just bad.
	And we know they're bad because they're orange and very bad and orange.
	Jim Acosta, by the way, over at CNN.
	And you know what I'm about to say.
	Ladies, find you somebody who loves you like Jim Acosta loves Jim Acosta.
	Jim Acosta, yesterday, at the White House, asked President Trump about, how did we get from your projection of zero to one million?
	Why is it that no one at CNN will grill Andrew Cuomo or Bill de Blasio?
	But we're gonna get the same question at every press conference.
	Why were you so wrong in early March?
	How about ask him, like, what he's doing right now?
	You know what he's not doing right now?
	Condemning specific racial slash religious groups.
	For not socially distancing and suggesting that cops are going to come pick them up.
	Other things he is not doing.
	He is also not sending nursing home patients with COVID-19 back to their nursing homes.
	Other things he is not doing.
	Treating the entirety of the United States as one inseparable block in terms of policy.
	Other things he is not doing.
	Undersupplying the people who are asking him for things.
	But the only questions that come from the media are about how Trump is a very bad orange man who's very bad and orange.
	Again, here's Acosta, Acosta-ing.
	Today, the U.S.
	hit a grim milestone of one million cases of the coronavirus.
	Back in late February, you predicted that the number of cases would go down to zero.
	How did we get from your prediction of zero to one million?
	Well, it will go down to zero, ultimately.
	And you have to understand, when it comes to cases, we do much more testing than anybody else.
	So we could go to some of these other countries, you know, as an example, China.
	If you test, you're going to show many more cases.
	So this is, you know, obviously the media attempting to play this game.
	They did it yesterday also with regard to Mike Pence.
	So Mike Pence went to the Mayo Clinic, and he didn't wear a mask at the Mayo Clinic.
	And everybody else was wearing a mask at the Mayo Clinic.
	And the Associated Press reported, Vice President Mike Pence chose not to wear a face mask Tuesday during a tour of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, in apparent violation of the world-renowned medical center's policy requiring them.
	Video feeds show that Pence didn't wear a mask when he met with a Mayo employee who has recovered from COVID-19 and is now donating plasma.
	He was also maskless when he visited a lab where a male conducts coronavirus tests.
	He was the only participant not to wear a mask during a roundtable discussion.
	All the other participants did, including the FDA chief, Stephen Hahn.
	Top Mayo officials, Governor Tim Walz and U.S.
	Representative Jim Hagedorn is all over in Minnesota.
	First of all, quick note, one of the costs that people have not been talking about is the Mayo Clinic, which is one of the finest medical institutions on planet Earth, had to cut tens of thousands of jobs, apparently, because people are not being allowed to do, quote-unquote, elective surgeries, which in many cases are not supremely elective, simply because of COVID-19.
	Now, people are very, very angry at Pence for not wearing the mask.
	Why did Pence say that he didn't wear the mask?
	He says, as vice president of the United States, I'm tested for coronavirus on a regular basis.
	Everyone around me is tested for coronavirus.
	Since I don't have it, I thought it'd be a good opportunity for me to be here to be able to speak to researchers.
	These incredible healthcare personnel look them in the eye and say, thank you.
	Now, the real reason that he's not wearing the mask is, of course, because he wants a picture of himself at the Mayo Clinic, right?
	I mean, this is how politicians treat the media.
	Nancy Pelosi is on the floor of the House, wiping her nose and putting it on the podium, right?
	I mean, really, there's video of her doing that.
	So why is everybody angry at Pence?
	Because he didn't abide—this is real Karen-ing here.
	Because they are— Because he didn't abide by these social restrictions.
	He's being tested every single day, I promise you, for coronavirus.
	They're taking a nasal swab of that dude every five minutes.
	Is he actually a danger to the people at the Mayo Clinic?
	He's like the least dangerous person in America to be at the Mayo Clinic maskless.
	But we're gonna create a faux outrage over all of this.
	And this is the goal of so many in the media asking these questions.
	They're just asking dumb questions.
	This happened yesterday, too.
	There's a reporter who suggested that the United States is still under testing.
	This is not true.
	The United States is not under testing.
	He went after Trump and said, you know, President Trump, you keep saying that we have the most tests in the world.
	That's very, very bad.
	And then Dr. Birx jumps in and basically smacks him down.
	And then Trump doubles down on it.
	So to our Yahoo!
	gentlemen, I just want to make it clear that South Korea's testing was 11 per Okay, well, one of the things I love most about that is that Burks is like the A student in the class, and Trump is just a D student, and he's sitting in the back like, yeah, how about you, Yahoo?
	That's why nobody knows who you are, including me.
	Go ahead.
	Just check it again.
	You ought to get your facts right before you make it.
	Well, we have had 14 companies.
	Okay, well, your facts are wrong.
	Okay, well, one of the things I love most about that is that Birx is like the A student in the class and Trump is just a D student.
	And he's sitting in the back like, yeah, how about you, Yahoo?
	You know anything, Yahoo?
	It's pretty spectacular stuff.
	But every question from the media to the Trump administration is geared at, what about your gaffes?
	What about your failures?
	If Obama were president, there would be none of this.
	Not a single iota of this.
	All you have to do is check out the questions that are generally asked to Andrew Cuomo in New York.
	That's all you really have to do.
	Okay, now let's get to some things I like and then a bevy of things that I hate.
	Things that I like today.
	So today is, in fact, Yom Ha'atzmuth, an Israeli Independence Day.
	That is a very good thing for the world because the only democracy in the Middle East is the Jewish state.
	And by the way, it's one of the great success stories in world history.
	The Jews, a people who have been persecuted for several thousand years, regaining their historic homeland in the middle of the 20th century after the destruction of European Jewry at the rate of six million people, nearly half of world Jewry, murdered in forests and shot down in gas chambers and concentration camps.
	And the state of Israel is an amazing, amazing place.
	It really is.
	If you've never visited, when all this is over, you should go visit.
	Israel's incredible.
	It's an incredible place.
	Colton, who is my producer, came with me to Israel when we went last year.
	And it doesn't matter whether you're Christian or whether you're Jewish or whether you're Muslim, Israel's an unbelievable place.
	It is an incredible, incredible place.
	All the people who hate Israel don't know a damn thing about it.
	All the people who suggest that it's very bad for there to be a Jewish state.
	There are lots of Christian states in Europe.
	The fact that there is one state that is reserved for the Jewish religion as the official religion of the state of Israel, that is a very good thing, considering the long history of persecution of the Jews.
	It's very interesting how, for 2,000 years, there was no Jewish state, and Jews were persecuted.
	Now, there's a Jewish state, and people are like, you know the reason that people hate Jews?
	It's because of that Jewish state.
	It's like, oh, well, it seems like you sort of shifted the rationale there on us real quick.
	The fact that Israel exists is the protection for Jews.
	Because you know who I will not rely upon for the protection of the Jews?
	People like Bill de Blasio.
	People like Jeremy Corbyn.
	People like Bernie Sanders.
	I'm not going to rely on their protection.
	The fact that Israel exists is the last line of defense.
	for Jews on a religious basis.
	Because in Europe, guess where Jews are fleeing as the anti-Semitism rises?
	If America stays America, America is the greatest country in the world for Jews.
	But as it stands, you know, if America moves in another direction, the final hope for the safety of Jews will always be in a Jewish state that is able to protect Jews all over the world.
	America is an amazing, amazing place.
	But do I trust that officials like Bill de Blasio are interested in protecting all of their citizens, including Jews?
	Not after tweets like the one he sent out today.
	So, good for Israel.
	They're celebrating under bad circumstances, but if you ever have the opportunity to go visit Israel, you certainly should.
	It's an amazing, incredible place and a top American ally.
	America's real only ally in the region.
	Alrighty, time for some... Well, actually, one more quick thing I like.
	So, apparently there are some new results that are breaking from Gilead about Remdesivir.
	This is according to statnews.com.
	Gilead made the announcement in a statement on Wednesday stating, we understand that the trial has met its primary endpoint.
	The company said that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will provide data at an upcoming briefing.
	The government-run studies show that the medicine is effective against COVID-19.
	So this particular study is the most important and rigorously designed test of remdesivir in COVID-19.
	The study compared remdesivir to placebo in 800 patients, with neither patients nor physicians knowing who got the drug instead of the placebo, so there shouldn't be any unconscious biases affecting the conclusions.
	The main goal of the study is the time until patients improve with different measures of improvement depending on how sick they were to begin with.
	Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, said that this should now be added to the emergency use authorization for the toolbox.
	He said remdesivir isn't a home run, but looks active and can be part of a toolbox of drugs and diagnostics that substantially lower our risk heading into the fall.
	Remdesivir, which must be given intravenously, is likely to remain a treatment for patients who are hospitalized, but it's also likely it will be the most effective in patients who have been infected more recently rather than less.
	Gilead on Wednesday did release data from its own study of remdesivir in patients with severe COVID-19.
	The study showed similar rates of clinical improvement in patients treated with a 5-day and 10-day course of remdesivir.
	So they said that it may be possible to treat patients with a 5-day treatment of remdesivir, not the 10-day course that was originally used.
	Data disclosed Thursday are from 397 patients.
	The study didn't reveal much about how well it's working, but the conclusion is that there are basically two durations of treatment and there is some level of efficacy.
	So that is some good news.
	Hopefully we'll see some new stats on all of this.
	Patients in the trial generally lived.
	8% of patients treated with 5 days of remdesivir died, compared to 11% of the patients treated for 10 days.
	Outside of Italy, where 77 patients were treated, the overall mortality rate across the entire study was 7%, which is lower than those seen in other studies which have been in the teens or 20s.
	So hopefully this will be a A drug added to the toolbox, new therapeutics, we will hope, coming out every day.
	So that is definitely good news.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	So let's look for a second at the 2020 race.
	So Justin Amash, the libertarian from Michigan, announced that he is going to run for president on a third-party ticket, which means that his immediate family and the remaining quote-unquote never-Trumpers will probably vote for him.
	That's like seven people.
	He is not actually a threat to win a severe number, a significant number of votes in this election.
	President Trump has high approval ratings among Republicans.
	The Democrats are going to be able to get out their base.
	I do not see a lot of room for a Libertarian in this election cycle.
	Libertarians blew last time around when there was widespread dissatisfaction with both candidates.
	I don't think that he's going to have much of a shot here.
	On policy, I tend to like Justin Amash.
	I like many of the things he has said, but he does not have a constituency at this point outside of his congressional district.
	And so the idea that this is going to radically change the race is very silly.
	I also do not like the idea on the right of third party candidates in this particular election.
	The reason being, it is going to create a narrative that I think is absolutely false, which is that if you do not vote for Justin Amash, it is because you embrace every aspect of President Trump.
	It's because you love all of the bad things about him.
	And that obviously is not true.
	A lot of people just think that Justin Amash ain't going to be president, and I'm going to vote for Trump against Biden.
	That is the logic, I would think, of most Republicans, including most libertarians who vote Republican.
	They're saying, why would I throw away my vote on a Justin Amash when I could be voting in a close-fought election that really is going to decide a lot about the future of our country, specifically because the pandemic has shifted the internal politics of the country fairly dramatically.
	Is Justin Amash's run a bad idea?
	I mean, not for Justin Amash.
	He can do what he wants.
	I mean, it's a free country.
	Is it something that changes the race in any real way?
	The answer, of course, is really no.
	Meanwhile, it is fun to watch.
	As the Democrats simultaneously pursue two avenues of 2020 strategy.
	Avenue number one is massive change on the back of a global catastrophe.
	And avenue number two is Joe Biden cannot be held to the same standard we hold everybody else on me too stuff.
	And that's really fun to watch because on the one hand, it really undercuts Biden on two separate levels.
	On the one hand, Biden likes to say that he is basically the status quo candidate, the status quo anti-candidate.
	We're going to go back to the great days of Obama.
	Remember how great it was?
	Wasn't that great?
	Remember how fantastic it was back in the days of Obama?
	Well, you can have that back if you just vote for Joe Biden.
	Also, we're going to radically revise the American bargain.
	So he's undercutting his own message there.
	And then on the second plane, he is, I am a return to class in the White House and decency and all men should be held accountable.
	And also Tara Reade's a damned liar.
	And we are going to ignore everything she has to say.
	And we're going to call for due process because now when it's Joe Biden, we want due process.
	Now, listen, I think that Joe Biden has every right to say this never happened.
	I think Joe Biden has every right to evidence.
	I think Joe Biden has every right to suggest that people ought to hold people to a process of evidence and Due process standards.
	I think that's all right.
	I'm just finding it kind of ironic that everybody in the Me Too movement holds that standard for Joe Biden, but for nobody else.
	So here is the first prong of this.
	Joe Biden.
	Did a little bit of an endorsement video with Hillary Clinton yesterday.
	He had her on his silly podcast from his basement, and he says he's going to go to her for advice, which is probably the worst thing you can do.
	Hillary gives very bad advice.
	She thanked him, by the way, for being able to talk with him from his basement.
	No, the last time Hillary Clinton was in a basement, it was with a wrench and Jeffrey Epstein was there.
	In any case, here was Joe Biden saying he's going to keep calling Hillary for advice, which is pretty much the worst thing you can do in a presidential election.
	I want to thank Hillary for joining us in this conversation today.
	And Hillary, I'm going to keep calling and asking for your advice.
	The coronavirus is shining a bright light on the equities in our country, and there's so much work to do.
	But I have no doubt we can meet these challenges brought on by this virus if we work together.
	If we worked together.
	By the way, he actually did seem to be falling asleep while talking to Hillary Clinton.
	That was pretty funny.
	Do we have that clip?
	It's pretty hilarious.
	Women in our country has been classified as essential.
	So this is an issue that affects all of us, young and old.
	Joe?
	Joe?
	You there, Joe?
	Joe?
	Joe?
	I assume he's just looking down at his notes or something, but it looks very much as though Joe Biden has gone comatose in the middle of this interview.
	But the first prong, again, is that he is going to propose radical solutions at the same time claiming that he is a return to status quo anti.
	Here he was yesterday with Hillary, and Hillary was saying, we can achieve health justice from this crisis.
	Basically, the Rahm Emanuel thing, right?
	It's a crisis, and if we didn't achieve health justice on the back of a pandemic, we would be blowing the opportunity.
	Pandemics are not opportunities.
	Pandemics are catastrophes.
	To treat a catastrophe as an opportunity is to be a bad person.
	Here's Hillary.
	This would be a terrible crisis to waste, as the old saying goes.
	We've learned a lot about what our absolute frailties are in our country when it comes to health justice and economic justice.
	So, you know, let's be resolved that we're going to solve those once you're elected president.
	Okay, that's amazing.
	This is why Hillary's such a bad politician, by the way.
	She just openly says this stuff.
	She says the quiet part out loud.
	We should never let a good crisis go to waste.
	You know, like 75,000 Americans dying.
	That's a great opportunity for us to completely bankrupt our private healthcare system that has been extraordinarily responsive.
	That's a great opportunity for us to do Medicare for All, which has been working perfectly in France and the UK and in Italy, all of which have nationalized healthcare systems, and all of which have a worse rate of death per million than the United States, by the way.
	So that is prong number one.
	Then there's prong number two, which is the media and Democrats completely downplaying the Me Too questions about Joe Biden.
	So again, I will say, I actually do not find Tara Reade's allegations particularly credible.
	Usually there's a pattern of conduct when people do this sort of stuff.
	Also, there are serious questions about the timeline.
	And she says she filed a Senate report.
	That Senate report seems to be missing in action.
	But we now know that Tara Reade's mom called into Larry King.
	We know that Tara Reade told a bunch of people who were around her about this allegation.
	Which is more contemporaneous evidence than Christine Blasey Ford ever provided.
	It is hilarious, hilarious to watch the Democrats pretzel themselves on this thing.
	I mean, it really is incredible.
	So let's take, for example, this feminist MeToo leader.
	The MeToo founder, her name is Tarana Burke.
	Here's what she tweeted about this.
	this.
	I took a moment away from work and movement related issues to be present where I was needed as my family was affected with COVID.
	But I know many of you are wondering about my take on the Tara Reid story.
	One out of 14.
	Nothing like a long Twitter thread.
	My stance has never wavered.
	Survivors have a right to speak their truth and be given the space to heal.
	The inconvenient truth is that this story is impacting us differently because it hits at the heart of one of the most important elections of our lifetime.
	And I hate to disappoint you, but I don't really have easy answers.
	Oh, don't you?
	Oh, don't you?
	Weird, because I have a feeling that if these allegations were made about Donald Trump, and they were, you would not be well.
	You know, this impacts the election.
	I have some serious concerns.
	Says there are no perfect survivors and no one, especially a presidential candidate, is beyond reproach.
	So where does that leave us?
	Where does that leave us?
	In a just world, we'd have a transformative approach to dealing with claims of sexual violence where a survivor's story is given fair consideration and they are made whole by a process that supports both accountability and healing.
	Well, that's a lot of words that mean nothing.
	Well done there.
	This is doubly important when outsized power dynamics are involved, but we don't have that right now.
	I thought that's what you were fighting for, though.
	Like, wouldn't now be, like, a great time for you to stand up for it?
	Which is what we have now is a zero-sum game where absolutely no one wins.
	Really?
	Does no one win?
	Because if what you stood up for was believe all women, you'd be out there on the ramparts shouting about Joe Biden being a molester.
	In part because most people weighing in at the moment don't actually care about transforming a culture of sexual violence.
	Ah, there we go.
	When your argument is bad, then the first thing you should do is impugn the motives of people who are making the counter-argument.
	When your argument is bad, definitely impugn the motives of people covering it.
	The story is not that a woman came out and accused... Can we say credibly accused?
	When did we get to use credibly accused?
	Because that was the word with Christine Blaisville.
	It was credibly accused.
	And they kept using credibly accused long after her story completely fell apart.
	Credibly accused.
	Okay, so we can't say credibly accused about Tara Reade for some reason.
	And then I love the fact that she's like, well, you know, we can't trust people who are asking questions because their motives are bad.
	Oh, because the motives of people asking about Brett Kavanaugh were absolutely great.
	The same people who were saying they wouldn't vote For Brett Kavanaugh, if their choice were voting for Brett Kavanaugh or being thrown into a flaming hot lava pit, those same people, their motives were absolutely pure in taking Christine Blasey Ford at face value.
	Tarana Burke, me too, founder.
	Many of you are only interested in this story because you are entertained by the trauma of others, or because it has the potential to be politically expedient, with no real regard for the survivor.
	Weird!
	Because if you had regard for the survivor, it seems like you'd be taking her story super seriously.
	But right now, it seems like you're kind of dismissing her story because you like Joe Biden.
	Isn't that really what's going on here?
	Isn't this just a variation of the Nina Burleigh argument that was made in 1998 during the Lewinsky scandal, in which Nina Burleigh, who was, I believe, writing for Time Magazine at the time, said that she would do what Lewinsky did to keep abortion legal.
	Tarana Burke says, on the one hand, Tara Reade has been afforded the opportunity to speak her truth through mainstream media reporting on her claims and ongoing investigative journalism.
	Has she, though?
	Because no one's had her on MSNBC.
	Nobody's had her on CNN.
	The New York Times made one report on it on April 12th, and that's it.
	Really, was that the fair shake?
	She should have been able to come forward in a process where she was treated fairly in a trusted system.
	Instead, like other public survivors before her, she had to rely on journalists in order to be heard, precisely because the system for survivors are not in place.
	You know who she should have gone to is you, Tarana Burke, and then maybe you should become a variety- You're the Me Too Lady!
	You're the Me Too Lady!
	And you're like, well, you know, this is a complicated issue.
	I find it very difficult to believe that Tarana Burke would find this quite so complicated if her political interests were not impugned here.
	She says, on the other hand, the defense of Joe Biden shouldn't rest on whether he's a good guy or our only hope.
	Instead, he could demonstrate what it looks like to be both accountable and electable.
	Oh, is that how?
	Meaning, at a minimum, acknowledging that his demonstrated learning curve around boundaries with women, at the very least, left him open.
	Left him open to all of this.
	Right.
	And then she continues.
	She continues.
	No matter what you believe, we are allowed to expect more of the person running for president of the United States.
	This is where we are.
	We don't have a guidebook for this, in part because it would take a willingness from all of us to write it.
	Survivors deserve more than being used as a political football by disinterested parties and a culture of acknowledging harm can't exist if we continue to view sexual violence as a catastrophic outlier rather than an embedded toxic element of our culture.
	So basically that is, I'm not going to condemn Joe Biden because I like Joe Biden and I want him to be the president.
	Speaking of people who want Joe Biden to be the president, Stacey Abrams.
	So Justin Amash announced he's going to run for president.
	My friend Seth Mandel had the best tweet on this.
	He said, immediately Stacey Abrams signs her application because Stacey Abrams is unemployed at the moment and she's desperate to be the vice president.
	And Joe Biden apparently is taking a look at her mainly because he has some pretty bad numbers among black Americans, shockingly.
	Donald Trump actually has cut into the black vote share.
	So Stacey Abrams told the Huffington Post in an email.
	I believe women deserve to be heard.
	I believe that has happened here.
	The allegations have been heard and looked into.
	For too many women often, that's not the case.
	The New York Times conducted a thorough investigation.
	Nothing in the Times review or any other later reports suggests anything other than what I already know about Joe Biden, that he will make women proud as the next president of the United States.
	And then she doubled down on that.
	She said, no, I don't have a double standard with Joe Biden and Brett Kavanaugh.
	No.
	No double standard whatsoever.
	So she said on CNN that there's no double standard here.
	No, no double standard at all.
	She says, not at all.
	I believe then, I believe now.
	Women deserve to be heard because too often they are not.
	And Tara Reade deserved to have her story listened to and investigated.
	What was happening to Christine Blasey Ford was there was no investigation.
	There was no investigation.
	They went and interviewed witnesses.
	There was a rush to move it forward so no investigation was conducted.
	They literally delayed the vote on Brett Kavanaugh by a full week so the FBI could conduct an investigation.
	Do you remember this?
	Jeff Flake delayed the vote for a week.
	I believe those allegations needed to be investigated.
	I believe the New York Times and subsequent reports support what the Biden campaign said.
	I believe Joe Biden.
	So maybe that has more to do with Stacey Abrams wanting to be his VP candidate.
	The best here, the best, is Kirsten Gillibrand.
	So Kirsten Gillibrand, who is just A human bag of Play-Doh, right?
	Able to take any form.
	She originally ran as a conservative Democrat in New York who was pro-gun and had questions about abortion.
	And now, she's running as—she ran for president as intersectional warrior on the ramparts of radical culture!
	Slay queen!
	So, Kirsten Gillibrand, the crap senator from New York.
	Who basically came out against Al Franken and forced him to step down over allegations that he was grabbing women's boobs while they were asleep.
	And then she also came out against Brett Kavanaugh and suggested his life should be ruined because of all this.
	And she said that if she'd been around in politics in like the late 90s, then she probably would have gone up against the Clintons and she would have told the Clintons that Bill needed to leave.
	That was after Hillary Clinton supported her and after she took all of their support.
	Now, Kristen Gillibrand's like, You know who needs due process?
	Joe Biden.
	So, Bill Clinton under the bus because he was no longer useful.
	Brett Kavanaugh can't be on the Supreme Court because there were unverified and unevidenced allegations against him.
	And also, we need to make sure that Al Franken leaves the Senate.
	But, you know who's the best?
	Joe Biden.
	Kirsten Gillibrand is just my... Has there ever been a more transparently ridiculous politician than Kirsten Gillibrand?
	I'm not sure.
	What's going on in the water in New York?
	Between Cuomo and Gillibrand and de Blasio, you folks need a better class of criminal.
	Here is Kirsten Gillibrand.
	When we say, believe women, it's for this explicit intention of making sure there's space for all women to come forward, to speak their truth, to be heard.
	And in this allegation, that is what Tara Reade has done.
	She has come forward, she has spoken, and they've done an investigation in several outlets.
	I stand by Vice President Biden.
	He's devoted his life to supporting women, and he has vehemently denied this allegation.
	Well, that is an amazing shift in position there, Kirsten Gillibrand.
	And I would be surprised by that, except that you play political twister basically every single day, which is why you got zero votes in the Democratic primaries for president.
	One of the most lovely things was watching Kirsten Gillibrand twist herself into A gender studies major to Wellesley in order to run for president and then completely fall in on herself like a dying star.
	That was pretty delicious.
	It is even more delicious to watch as she sells out her final principle, the Me Too movement, in order to back Joe Biden to maybe grab a crumb of maybe like a cabinet position.
	He'll make her Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Kirsten Gillibrand.
	Ridiculous, ridiculous stuff.
	Will any of this end up costing Biden?
	I get the feeling this is snowballing a little bit, and that the double standard is going to be bad for Joe Biden.
	Remember, people are saying, well, he can just shout Trump.
	He can just shout Trump because Trump has a really bad history with women.
	Okay, he can try it.
	There's only one problem, and this is what Hillary discovered in 2016.
	Donald Trump is a mud monster.
	The man is made of mud.
	If you throw mud at Donald Trump, you know what?
	He looks the same as he did before.
	He is still a mud monster.
	If you throw mud at a mud monster, he now just has more mud on him.
	If you throw mud at Joe Biden, and Joe Biden has been portrayed As pure as the driven snow, as clean and as white as a freshly spread bedsheet.
	That's going to show a lot more.
	And it's going to be a problem for Joe Biden.
	Changing the perception of a politician is much more dangerous than reinforcing a perception of a politician.
	So that is where things stand in 2020 with regard to Joe Biden.
	We'll be back a little bit later today with two hours of additional content.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow for much, much more.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is produced by Colton Haas.
	Directed by Mike Joyner.
	Executive producer Jeremy Boring.
	Supervising producer Mathis Glover and Robert Sterling.
	Assistant director Pavel Lydowsky.
	Technical producer Austin Stevens.
	Playback and media operated by Nick Sheehan.
	Associate producer Katie Swinnerton.
	Edited by Adam Sajovic.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	California Governor Gavin Newsom is ready to reopen shops and schools, but churches are staying closed for the foreseeable future.
	The reopen plans tell us a lot about the state of American psychosociety.
	Then, Joe Biden gets a big endorsement from the woman who spent decades smearing all of Bill Clinton's sexual victims.
	China faces new consequences for inflicting this virus on us, and a surprise candidate enters the race for president.

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