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May 14, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:02:10

Our Dying Institutions | Ep. 1011

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	As states debate lockdown policies, new information emerges about officials across the aisle engaging in corruption surrounding COVID-19, Democrats freak out over new Michael Flynn investigation revelations, and the Biden campaign staggers forward.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	Your data is your business protected at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Well, it is beginning to dawn on people that this thing might not go away all that fast.
	It's been amazing to watch as the calculations have shifted fairly dramatically about the hopes for what is going to happen next with this virus.
	So it started off with, okay, if we just slowed the spread for 15 days, we'll have this thing under control.
	And hopefully at that point, we can start to loosen things up.
	Then the media started to shift the strategy to, OK, we got to lock down until there's a vaccine.
	And then it became clear that a vaccine is really not in the offing anytime soon.
	And now you have the WHO, which we've been assured, by the way, by YouTube, that if you contradict the information coming forth from the WHO, they'll remove your videos.
	Doesn't matter that the WHO got this thing completely wrong, said there was no human-to-human transmission in the middle of January.
	Never mind that the WHO was recommending against masks at the beginning of March.
	Well, the WHO is now reporting that this thing may never go away.
	That COVID-19 may just become a permanent feature of life, just like the seasonal flu, which is honestly what was always sort of the worst case scenario suggestion here.
	And it's also the most likely scenario because the fact is it's very difficult to develop completely effective vaccines.
	Even vaccines that are somewhat effective are not completely effective.
	And the fact is that we don't have a great therapeutic for this at this point.
	There may be some therapeutics that come along that change the cases at the margin, but it's very difficult to target a disease that specifically targets the most vulnerable in the population.
	In some ways, it's easier to target a disease that targets the least vulnerable in the population because then you can bring all of the immune system at your disposal.
	But when you're 81 and you have a weak immune system and then this is killing you off, It's very difficult to figure out how to stop a disease that is killing off people mostly in old age homes.
	When I say mostly in old age homes, I'm saying that advisedly.
	40-60% of all deaths across Europe have been happening in old age homes.
	In the United States, something like 40-60% in all states outside of New York, and it's not clear in New York how many people have died in old age homes.
	have been happening in old age homes.
	The reason it's not clear in New York is because if you are elderly and you were in an old age home and then you go to a hospital and you die in the hospital, it is not clear whether New York is classifying your death as a nursing home death or whether they are classifying it as a hospital-based death.
	Well, now the WHO is saying this thing may never be wiped out entirely.
	According to Michael Ryan, the WHO's Emergencies Director, we have a new virus entering the human population for the first time.
	It's very hard to predict when we will prevail over it.
	The virus may just become another endemic virus in our communities.
	This virus may never go away.
	HIV has not gone away.
	We have come to terms with the virus.
	Worth noting, it took us 30 years to come up with excellent treatments for HIV.
	Really, it took several decades for us to come up with treatments for HIV that significantly lengthened human life.
	WHO warned there's no way to guarantee that easing restrictions will not trigger a second wave of infection.
	So now they've given us two pieces of information.
	One is, it may never go away.
	And two is, as soon as you let out of lockdown, people are going to get it.
	Well, sorry, but those two factors mean that we had best just adjust to the new reality, and that is that we are all going to be involved in some form of risk mitigation, depending on your level of vulnerability in society.
	And meanwhile, we still have open debates over what exactly the death count is from COVID-19.
	According to the Daily Beast, President Trump and members of the Coronavirus Task Force are pushing officials at the CDC to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths.
	This is not an unimportant factor, because the reality is that when we are assessing risk, we do have to determine how many people are actually dying from coronavirus and how many people are dying, quote-unquote, with coronavirus, meaning that you have pneumonia, you get coronavirus, and then you die of the pneumonia.
	You're 85 and you have several pre-existing conditions and then coronavirus hits you and then you die of one of the pre-existing conditions.
	Is that a COVID-19 death or is that not a COVID-19 death?
	They're pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported according to five administration officials working on the government's response to the pandemic.
	Though he has previously publicly attested to the accuracy of the COVID-19 death count, the president in recent weeks has privately raised suspicion about the number of fatalities in the United States, which recently eclipsed 80,000 recorded deaths.
	Now again, this is not mere semantics.
	These conversations matter.
	They matter also in other areas of health, for example.
	So in the United States, there's always this talking point that the United States has a very high infant mortality rate.
	Well, that is because we count in the infant mortality rates babies that are born prematurely.
	There are a lot of other countries that don't.
	So if a baby is born at six months and then dies, we count that as an infant death.
	That may not be counted in parts of Europe the same way, and so that actually skews the statistics.
	You have to compare apples to apples, especially when you're looking at which countries are handling this better than other countries.
	The White House has pressed the CDC to work with states to change how they count coronavirus deaths.
	Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the administration's Coronavirus Task Force, has urged CDC officials to exclude from coronavirus death count reporting some of the individuals who either do not have confirmed lab results and are presumed positive or who have the virus and may not have died as a direct result of it, according to three senior administration officials.
	We've actually seen this play out in New York City, where a bunch of people were dying inside their homes.
	And so basically, New York said, what are our excess deaths over last year at this time?
	And then based on that, we will just assume that everybody who died, died from COVID-19.
	Officials inside the CDC are pushing back against the request.
	They're claiming it could falsely skew the mortality rate when state and local governments are already struggling to ensure that every person who dies as a result of coronavirus is counted.
	So on the one hand, you have people suggesting that there is over-reporting.
	On the other hand, you have people suggesting that there is under-reporting.
	But in the end, In the end, that really only matters because this thing has become political.
	In other words, we know what we know.
	And we also know what we don't know.
	Meaning, we know now that this thing is highly deadly to the elderly and to people with pre-existing conditions.
	We know that it is significantly more deadly to those people than it is to people who are young and healthy.
	We also know that the focus on testing is somewhat overstated.
	And when I say somewhat overstated, I mean rather massively overstated by the media.
	Because the reality is the United States has radically ramped up tests.
	As we have ramped up tests, the number of positives has actually gone down.
	And not only that, the media have basically lied to the American people about what testing and tracing are designed to do.
	They're not, in fact, designed to quash the virus itself.
	They're simply designed to prevent spikes, epidemic spikes, that overwhelm the healthcare system, because that's all we can do at this point.
	We can't actually stop people from getting this over time.
	We cannot stop people from obtaining this virus over time, and then some people dying of that virus over time.
	What we can do is protect the most vulnerable in our society, and we can ensure that there aren't massive spikes, that we sort of flatten it out such that we don't overwhelm the healthcare system.
	But we have been told by the media that testing is sort of the solution, which is why it comes as disturbing news that these rapid White House tests could actually miss half of positive COVID-19 cases, according to an NYU study.
	The Abbott test, which is a company used by the White House to track COVID-19, could have missed positive coronavirus cases, according to a study done by NYU.
	The study found that Abbott's IDNow test missed at least one-third of positive tests when compared to rival tests, and up to 48% in dry nasal swabs, the test currently recommended by the White House.
	So when people talk about the level of testing and how testing is going to save us all, they're missing the fact that there's an awful lot of uncertainty about the testing.
	In other words, there are no easy solutions here.
	There are no easy solutions.
	And I'll tell you what is not a palatable solution, is the lockdown until forever solution.
	Nonetheless, that seems to be the solution that the media are pushing.
	The media would like to see lockdown until forever.
	We'll get to that in just one moment.
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	Okay, so...
	The media continue to push forward the notion that if we reopen in nearly any way, shape or form, that more people will die.
	And so we have to remain closed forever.
	And thus, the headlines that you're seeing from the media are all based on the presumption that America is in a full state of disaster.
	But the answer is that America is not actually in a full state of disaster.
	In fact, a lot of the states that are opening up are not seeing this massive spike in cases.
	People are generally being responsible.
	Meanwhile, the media are rewarding people who are speaking out as though disaster is coming.
	And this is what I talked about yesterday, a little bit on the show.
	There is a thing that happens in media and sort of in human psychology.
	We could call it the Nostradamus effect.
	So Nostradamus is very famous and everybody knows his name because every so often you can pick and choose a few sentences from Nostradamus and say, wow, isn't that amazing?
	Thousands of years ago, Nostradamus was predicting that X would happen.
	I see the same thing when people talk about the Bible codes, where they say, okay, well, if you look at the Bible, and it's lined up in a particular way, and you look at the Hebrew letters vertically, and then you look at them diagonally, and then you look at them horizontally, with a code that says that there's a volcano that's going to erupt any day.
	And then it erupted.
	Wow, look at that.
	That's amazing.
	Okay, in other words, when you predict disaster, and you're right, then you are rewarded by being given the title of prophet.
	If you predict disaster, and then disaster never arrives, nobody ever says to you, oh, you're just a doomsayer.
	Nobody ever says to you, oh, I guess you got that wrong, so I guess we're not going to pay so much attention to you next time.
	In other words, if you are in the prediction business, you should always predict disaster.
	You should always predict the unexpected.
	You should always predict the black swan.
	Because all you have to do about the black swan is be right.
	If you're the person who predicted the black swan event, then everybody rewards you for having predicted the black swan event.
	Never mind that the rest of the time you were completely, completely wrong.
	That one time you were exactly right.
	And so what the media are doing right now is they are bringing forth everyone who's predicting doom and gloom.
	Now, will they go back three weeks from now and point out when people were wrong?
	So, there are a bunch of people who three weeks ago, when Brian Kemp in Georgia was talking about opening up, they said, there's gonna be a massive spike in cases, the hospitals are gonna be overwhelmed.
	We haven't seen that in Georgia.
	Any apologies from anybody?
	Of course not.
	But, if there was somebody back in January who said, this is going to be a global pandemic, we're going to have to shut down all the businesses, that person, of course, is going to be rewarded.
	Now, maybe that person was living in the woods and was predicting this sort of stuff for 40 years, right?
	It's amazing how fast we shift from, look at those dumb preppers building their basements and stocking up on canned goods, to, man, those people sure had some foresight building their basements and stocking up on the canned goods.
	In the prediction business, nobody ever remembers that you made a black swan prediction that didn't come true.
	This is why it is of high irritation to me when the Black Swan predictions about what's going to happen next are really ramped up by the media.
	So today, the big story is that there's a guy named Dr. Rick Bright.
	So Rick Bright, we should remember, was pushed out.
	He was fired from his position over at BARDA.
	Which is one of the chief agencies that was supposed to investigate strategies on the pandemic.
	He filed a whistleblower complaint after being pushed out, suggesting the reason that he was pushed out is because he wasn't too high on hydroxychloroquine.
	And when the administration was pushing hydroxychloroquine as a possible solution, that he was in their warning, and therefore they just got rid of him.
	Well, in prepared testimony obtained by CNN, he warned, Okay, thank you for the vague prediction of doom.
	That is totally helpful.
	Also, thank you for the not-presenting-any-actual-strategy for fixing this thing.
	pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities.
	Okay, thank you for the vague prediction of doom.
	That is totally helpful.
	Also, thank you for the not presenting any actual strategy for fixing this thing.
	Nothing I like better than public health officials saying, and if we're not smart here, bad things will happen.
	Thanks.
	Here is Dr. Rick Bright, who is testifying today.
	This is getting all sorts of media attention.
	Now, again, this is all predicated on the notion that Rick Bright is a victim of the anti-science Trump administration, which has been taking the advice of Drs.
	Birx and Fauci, as well as many other doctors, into consideration.
	Bright, of course, again, claimed that he was ousted because of the hydroxychloroquine issue.
	But the truth is that, according to the HHS, this guy was in conflict with his higher-ups for literally years.
	Dr. Bright and Dr. Robert Kadlec, an assistant health secretary for preparedness and response, clashed repeatedly, according to officials, when Dr. Bright Carefully followed procedures, they said he was a polarizing figure within the Department of Health and Human Services, where concerns had circulated about a management style that was described as confrontational.
	Those officials said there had been discussions about removing Bright for many months.
	They came to a head after emails were leaked to Reuters last week detailing internal discussions about chloroquine.
	A senior administration official said Alex Azar told the Coronavirus Task Force members in their meeting on Wednesday about Bright's departure from BARDA, describing it as a promotion to the vice president.
	Officials left the meeting and learned of Bright's public statement.
	Also, by the way, according to Caitlin Oakley, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, it was Dr. Bright who requested an emergency use authorization from the FDA for donations of chloroquine that Bayer and Sandoz recently made to the Strategic National Stockpile.
	So the story the media want to tell is this whistleblower pushed out because he's secretly telling you the truth, which is everybody's going to die.
	And they're pushing him out because they don't want the bad news.
	Alternatively, this is a career health official who clashed with people inside his own department and was demoted for it, or was at least thrown off one job.
	He retains his job at the government, by the way.
	I think he still works inside the CDC.
	And now, he is getting all sorts of publicity, and so why not predict, vaguely, that doom will come upon us, unless you take unspecified action?
	There's no political risk to doing so.
	This is why, honestly, when it comes to expert analyses of the situation, experts should provide you information.
	Not predictions.
	Information.
	Information about risks.
	And then, it is your job, as an individual human being, to calculate those risks, and to be responsible, and not pass those risks on to others.
	But the idea that people up high in government are going to make rules for you, they are all political actors just like you and I are.
	They are calculating their own self-interest the way you and I are.
	They're doing so in many cases unknowingly because they are human beings.
	This notion that godlike experts sit up on high and then craft the best rules for the people is not true when it comes to how your toilet flushes and it ain't true when it comes to pandemics.
	We'll get to Rick Bright's testimony in just one second.
	First, Let's talk about the fact that the future is unpredictable.
	Who could have predicted back in February when Bernie Sanders was the likely Democratic nominee and the stock market was at $30,000 and the unemployment rate was at 3.5% that we would all be stuck in our homes right now?
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	Okay, so Dr. Rick Bright getting all sorts of attention today.
	He is testifying and he says that this could be the darkest winter in modern history.
	Well, thanks for the picker-upper there, doctor.
	Really, really appreciate it.
	You know, because none of us were thinking that this is going to be a tough time.
	With the unemployment rate approaching 25%, none of us were really thinking that this is going to be rough.
	But now that you've said it, I guess we can take it seriously that this is going to be rough.
	In other words, we know.
	Now what should we do?
	And why should we take your advice super seriously as opposed to the advice of Fauci, Birx, Dr. Martin McCary, who we've had on the program from Johns Hopkins, who has a good piece in the New York Times today.
	Here is Rick Bright, again, being given the hero's welcome because really, the reason he's being given the hero's welcome, he doesn't have anything super relevant to say.
	He's being given the hero's welcome because he doesn't like Trump.
	The media don't like Trump.
	Interests align.
	Our window of opportunity is closing.
	If we fail to improve our response now, based on science, I fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged.
	There will likely be a resurgence of COVID-19 this fall.
	It will be greatly compounded by the challenges of seasonal influenza.
	Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.
	Okay, well thanks for that.
	Winter is coming.
	That's very, very exciting news.
	Okay, what are his suggested steps?
	A national testing strategy.
	Oh, you mean like how there is one and how they're trying to roll it out and also how states are generally responsible for deciding how much testing they actually need in their states because the national government isn't good at things?
	And also he says we need a plan for equitable distribution of essential equipment and supplies.
	Oh, you mean how the federal government actually got like a hundred thousand ventilators and we now have way too many ventilators?
	Because it turns out the ventilators are actually not only ineffective but in some cases counterproductive for treatment?
	Dr. Bright, of course, is really getting all this attention, not because he has great advice to offer, but simply because he is claiming that he was silenced for his unwillingness to go along with the sanguine views of the administration.
	Which, again, the evidence for that is scanty at best.
	In another not-shock, Bright is going to air his complaints about the Trump administration pandemic in response to a House Oversight Committee Overseen by Representative Anna Eshoo, a Democrat who represents a Northern California district home to a company that received more than $110 million in awards from BARDA while Bright led the office.
	In other words, she is allied with Bright.
	Other companies with offices in Eshoo's district benefited from more than $100 million in awards from BARDA in the decade prior to Bright's leadership.
	This is according to Politico.
	Eshoo, who helped craft the 2006 legislation to create the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, that's what BARDA is, and has since worked to bolster it authorities, also has been a longtime booster of Bright.
	So basically he's testifying in front of his allies who also, not coincidentally, are going to boost his opinions of President Trump.
	So yes, this thing has become incredibly political and none of that is a giant surprise.
	And again, it doesn't have to be political.
	So we've had on our program before, Dr. Marty McCary.
	We've had on Dr. McCary repeatedly on the radio show.
	And Dr. McCary is a professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins.
	He served in both the Obama administration as well as an advisor to the Trump administration.
	He has a piece at the New York Times in which he explains what he thinks should be done.
	And guess what?
	It sounds exactly like what people like me have been saying need to be done.
	Right?
	He says that what we need is as much masking as possible when you are in a place where you could infect somebody else.
	This does not mean like Los Angeles, by the way.
	In LA, Eric Garcetti, the guy's just in, he's, he's, A posturing dolt.
	He sends out a mass text to everyone in Los Angeles last night, telling everyone that it is now mandatory that you wear a mask when you go outside.
	Not when you go into a store.
	Not when you go into a crowded area.
	Not when you can't socially distance.
	Not when there's a possibility of not socially distancing when you go outside.
	So if you're in your car by yourself, presumably you have to mask.
	If I'm in my front yard playing with my kids, supposedly I'm supposed to mask.
	If I'm out at the beach and I'm 400 feet away from everybody, I'm supposed to mask.
	All of which matches Eric Garcetti's idiotic policies with regard to the beaches out here.
	He says you're allowed to swim, you're allowed to walk, you're allowed to run on the beach, you're not actually allowed to sit on the beach and picnic.
	Doesn't matter if you're 300 feet away from everybody.
	And you have to be wearing a mask the whole time, by the way.
	So my plan this weekend, I'm gonna take my kids down to the beach, I'm going to put a mask on them, Then, I'm going to... Well, they're in the car, because we have to make sure that in the car they don't affect people in other cars.
	Then, I'm going to bring a cannon.
	I'm going to fire my children out of a cannon into the ocean.
	And along the way, like right before they get into the water, I'm going to ensure that they strip off the mask.
	Then, I'm going to dive into the water after them, put the mask back on them, take a trampoline, bounce them off the trampoline, back into the car, and we can go home.
	Like, none of... What the hell are we talking about here?
	This is all idiocy.
	By the way, you know what Marty McCary suggests?
	This is Dr. McCary from Johns Hopkins.
	He suggests that we spend more time outside.
	We were told that we shouldn't spend more time outside by the authorities who know.
	Also, we must prioritize safeguarding nursing homes.
	Why, who has been saying this for weeks on end?
	He says, through April, several studies using antibody testing found that asymptomatic infections are 10 to 20 times more common than previously observed, lowering the true case fatality rate.
	The data taught us that young, healthy Americans have a fatality rate similar to that of seasonal flu.
	Deaths among those young and healthy are rare.
	In fact, community immunity from seasonal viruses is often achieved through younger people developing antibodies.
	Why?
	It sounds almost like what I have been talking about for a very long time, which is make sure the most vulnerable are protected and then let other people go out and interact with one another with enough protections that we don't spike over the healthcare system.
	He says, protect those at high risk.
	The data show that those with preexisting medical conditions like diabetes, lung disease, or a weakened immune system are among the most vulnerable.
	Based on the degree of risk and prevalence of the virus in the region, we should advise these high-risk individuals, particularly the elderly, to avoid interactions with others until the risk of contagion is extremely low.
	So basically, McCary's plan is exactly the same as mine.
	And by the way, pretty much the same as the Trump administration's.
	But Trump is very bad.
	He's very, very bad.
	And the people we need to listen to are people who are spouting doom and gloom without any specific proposals for how to move past the doom and the gloom.
	In just a second, we're going to get to controversies over what we should do with policy, and then we'll get to the fact that the experts that we are supposed to be listening to Very often, they are self-interested because people are people.
	There's this weird idea that in a pandemic, founding ideology goes out the window because it's an emergency, dammit!
	And human nature has changed.
	The founders were right.
	Human beings are not angels.
	They're not devils.
	They're human beings, which means that we are stupid, and we are corrupt, and we are venal, and we are self-interested.
	And it also means that if you're stupid, corrupt, venal, and self-interested, probably you shouldn't be making policy for the entire country.
	And maybe I know my kids' names better than the policymakers who are saying they're going to protect my kids.
	I'll get to that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about the fact that you're spending an enormous amount of time in front of screens right now.
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	Okay, so.
	The political controversy continues to grow as it becomes clear that a lot of the policies that are being crafted are basically violating constitutional provisions in particular states.
	The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the extension of the state's stay-at-home order, siding with Republican legislators in a high-profile challenge of the emergency authority of a statewide official during the coronavirus pandemic.
	This is according to the New York Times.
	I've been suggesting this for a while.
	There will come a point when, listen, all of our constitutional freedoms have been abridged.
	There's no question about that, right?
	You don't have any freedom to associate.
	You really don't have any freedom to leave your home.
	You don't have freedom of contract.
	You don't have most of the basic freedoms that you were guaranteed as Americans.
	You're not able to effectuate in this current environment.
	And under public health systems, that is not wrong.
	But when you move beyond the data, where the data no longer support the stay-at-home orders, where the data no longer support the idea that you have any strategy, and where you're just telling people that you can abridge their constitutional rights so that you don't get the political blowback of not abridging their constitutional rights, this is when courts are going to start stepping in.
	Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, had extended the prohibition on most travel and operations of quote-unquote non-essential businesses until May 26th in a 4-3 ruling The court said that Wisconsin's top health official had not followed the proper process in setting the strict limits for residents.
	Although the opinion centered on the technical method by which the limits had been set, several conservative justices conveyed their dismay at the restrictions themselves.
	Justice Daniel Kelly wrote, This comprehensive claim to control virtually every aspect of a person's life is something we normally associate with a prison, not a free society governed by the rule of law.
	Within hours of the ruling, some taverns were making plans for reopening.
	Evers said, this turns the state to chaos.
	People will get sick.
	Republicans own the chaos.
	Or alternatively, you know what you could have done?
	You could have gone to the legislature.
	It turns out you could have gone to the legislature.
	But governors have been taking this sort of heavy-handed action.
	Mayors have been taking this heavy-handed action without actual reference to policy.
	And this is the reality.
	At a certain point, the rubber is going to hit the road when people decide that the orders that are being promulgated no longer serve the public interest.
	There are only a few reasons why you pay attention to a law.
	You, me, everybody.
	The reasons you pay attention to a law.
	One, if you don't, you'll go to jail.
	Two, because the law is well founded.
	Or three, because they pay you to do so.
	There's some sort of benefit in doing so.
	So Democrats basically In these sort of heavy-handed orders, the ones that are not well calibrated, some of the stuff you're seeing in Michigan, for example, some of the stuff that you've seen in California, some of the stuff that you're seeing in upstate New York, those orders that are not calibrated to public health, that are not calibrated to actually slowing the spread, that are overbroad, and that make distinctions between quote-unquote non-essential businesses and essential businesses, as though governors know the difference, or as though there is a clear-cut difference.
	Those orders, as I say, if there are three reasons to obey a law, and one of those reasons is because the law is smart and good and wise, and that reason is not being fulfilled, that means that you're basically left with two available options.
	One is you threaten people, and the other is you cajole people.
	So Democrats are trying both.
	They're threatening people and they're cajoling people.
	So they're threatening people by basically suggesting that they're going to use law enforcement to go after folks.
	I'm just going to say this, good luck with that.
	Seriously, good luck with that.
	Things are gonna get really ugly when it turns out that somebody is socially distancing on a beach, and then the police show up and try to arrest that person, the person says they're not doing anything wrong, and then the police tase the guy and he gets caught on tape.
	Things are gonna get quite ugly.
	In fact, this sort of happened in New York.
	There was a black person in, I believe it was the Brooklyn area, who was basically taken down by police for not socially distancing.
	And this led Mayor Bill de Blasio to then say, well, you know, it seems like we're disproportionately arresting black people for not socially distancing.
	This means we need to go up to Prospect Park and we need to tell all the white people that they're gonna be arrested.
	Okay, at a certain point, people are just gonna be like, no, you know what?
	I'm not up for this.
	The heavier the hand of government, the more people actually feel the effect of the law, which is why, as a general rule, what the founders suggested, which is that do not pass a law or regulation unless you are willing to enforce it with a gun, that is good advice.
	You can make the suggestion, and then you have to allow people to risk assess.
	You can see that this is going to get ugly.
	Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan yesterday, she said, my orders are not suggestions.
	In other words, I'm going to use law enforcement to enforce this sort of stuff.
	Well, that's all fun and games until things get ugly.
	Okay, and that is not to suggest that people should not obey the orders, that they should break the law in ways that affect other people.
	But if somebody says to Governor Whitmer, listen, I'm opening my store, and we're doing 50% of our normal business, and we're socially distancing, and people are wearing masks, and then Whitmer says, I'm coming in there guns blazing, then Whitmer is wrong, and people have the right to disobey that order.
	That is an unconstitutional order.
	Here's Governor Whitmer.
	What we need to do is continue what we have done.
	It's working.
	And for people that want to voice their frustration, that's fine.
	But I expect people to follow the law.
	These executive orders are not a suggestion.
	They're not optional.
	They're not helpful hints.
	Okay, so again, this is when things are getting ugly.
	So on the one hand, you have the threat, and on the other hand, you have the bribe.
	And the bribe is, we are going to pass a $3 trillion recovery package that is going to offer you universal basic income.
	We're going to bail out all the states.
	We're going to pay you to stay at home.
	And that sounds really nice and good until you realize that the economy cannot be sustained this way.
	So right now, the United States can take out enormous amounts of debt.
	We can.
	We can continue to take out enormous amounts of debt because we are the world's best bet in terms of an economy.
	But that only lasts as long as you have not changed the underlying fundamentals of the economy.
	The reason that the world can bet that America will pay off her bonds is because the world believes that when all this snaps back, we will snap back to being a very strong economy that is not heavily regulated and run from the top down.
	If the world started to believe that the American economy had shifted so dramatically, that American business was going to be run top down by the government, and that there was going to be heavy incentive for people never to work again, then guess what?
	It would be very difficult to sell our debt.
	In other words, it's easy to float debt when people think that when your credit is good, people are willing to float you debt.
	The minute that it becomes clear that you're using that credit card to buy Lamborghinis instead of invest in your business, people are less willing to float you the debt.
	And this is what Democrats are proposing.
	This $3 trillion package that they're pushing right now is chock full of garbage.
	And now they're pushing this idea that they want to fill in every salary in America under $90,000 until January so that they can simultaneously ban people from going to work.
	So you're incentivizing states to continue to lock down at that point.
	You're incentivizing people not to go to work at that point.
	That's being pushed by Representative Jayapal and several other Democrats in the House of Representatives.
	Meanwhile, Democrats across the country are looking for the federal government to bail out their bad pension deals.
	Rick Scott, the former governor of Florida, now senator from Florida, he said yesterday, we can't bail out these states.
	What we're basically doing right now is we're using the pandemic as an excuse to pass bad policy that undermines the future stability and growth potential of the United States economy.
	I don't want to bail out liberal states that don't want to watch their budgets.
	It's real simple to me.
	It's not fair.
	It's not fair to my taxpayers.
	People moved to my state to get away from the high taxes in New York, Illinois, and California, and now they don't want to tax their citizens, they want us to tax federal taxpayers.
	That's not right.
	Okay, Rick Scott, of course, is exactly correct about this.
	As governor of Florida, he ran a population that's the size of the population of the state of New York, and he actually basically balanced the budget.
	Okay, meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo continued to blow out the debt, and now he's turning to the federal government and begging.
	It's amazing how begging the federal government for help if you're a Democrat actually makes you popular with the press.
	It's pretty incredible.
	Okay, so as I say, there are three possibilities that Democrats can use, and anybody could use, really, to push bad policy.
	One is the threat, the Whitmer strategy.
	Two is the bribe, that's the Nancy Pelosi strategy.
	And then three is you scare the crap out of people and you tell them they're going to die if they walk outside.
	And this is why you have seen so many people in the press who are bucking up against Trump.
	So yesterday, there was a big controversy because Anthony Fauci testified before the Senate.
	And before the Senate, Anthony Fauci suggested that the schools might have to remain closed in the fall.
	President Trump responded by saying, I don't know what evidence he's basing that on.
	We should probably reopen the schools.
	Here was President Trump yesterday.
	To me, it's not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools.
	The only thing that would be acceptable, as I said, is professors, teachers, etc.
	over a certain age.
	I think they ought to take it easy for another few weeks, five weeks, four weeks, who knows, whatever it may be.
	But I think they have to be careful because this is a disease that attacks age and it attacks health.
	And if you have a heart problem, if you have diabetes, if you're a certain age, it's certainly much more dangerous.
	Okay, he's correct about all of this.
	This led to massive blowback.
	He's not paying attention to the science, President Trump.
	He's not paying attention to the science.
	Scott Gottlieb, who knows more than you.
	Okay, Scott Gottlieb knows more than you in the media.
	We've had Scott Gottlieb on this program.
	Amazing.
	CNN will have a panel of experts on coronavirus that will include a former HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who, her great public health experience before that was she was governor of Kansas.
	And they're having on the former CDC director under Barack Obama.
	So a couple of Barack Obama officials.
	And known coronavirus expert, Greta Thunberg, It's gonna be on CNN tonight to advise us all.
	You know, other people in the media have had on Dr. Birx, have had on Marty McCary, have had on Dr. Gottlieb.
	Yeah, that would all be on my show.
	Okay, so Dr. Gottlieb suggested that we might be contending with COVID going into the fall, but it might not be in September.
	It might occur later in the fall.
	We should at least make an attempt to open the schools if this is not spreading widely.
	He says, I think this is a local decision.
	It's not a national level decision at this point.
	There's also an article in Wired talking about the fact that all over the world, people are reopening their schools because kids are not particularly vulnerable to this thing.
	According to an article published in the Journal of American Medical Association, JAMA, which is sort of industry standard, just 1% of patients were under 10 years old.
	Another 1% were aged 10 to 19.
	And there were zero deaths in the youngest cohort.
	This is all in China.
	In the United States, we have seen in the United States like maybe double digit deaths for people under the age of 20.
	So the idea that we're supposed to retain school closures in this environment, that if Trump says no, that this is because Trump is very bad, it's idiotic.
	So all three of these strategies are bound to fail.
	Okay, bribery is not going to work because it is just not sustainable.
	Threats are not going to work because eventually when you use a gun against somebody who's actually doing something reasonable, people are going to rebel.
	And third, your scare strategies are not going to work unless you can continue to put out misinformation.
	You know what scares me more, honestly, than coronavirus for people my age?
	You know what scares me more?
	The probability that complete and utter morons are going to actually be controlling our policy top-down in stupid fashion while being corrupt.
	We'll get to the corruption of our public officials in just one second.
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	Okay, we're going to get to the fact that the public officials who say that you should listen to them, a lot of them are actually not the people that you would trust to babysit your children.
	Okay, we're going to get to that in just one second.
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	All right.
	So do I really want our public officials making hard and fast and broad rules about this sort of thing?
	I understand.
	As I've said before, the government's a giant lumbering idiot with a gun.
	Sometimes you need a giant lumbering idiot with a gun.
	And in the early days of the pandemic when we didn't know anything, the idea that the government was just going to step in and shut everything down, I didn't object to it.
	You'll recall.
	I said, OK, maybe this is necessary.
	Time will tell whether this is necessary.
	Maybe we have to stop our health system from being overwhelmed and getting the excess deaths that rise above the line when the curve rises above the line.
	OK, fine.
	But then it turns out that the giant lumbering idiot is Lenny, and he is strangling you when he thinks he is petting you.
	And it is a problem.
	Okay, and the giant lumber, let us never forget that the public officials who run this country are just as venal and corrupt and self-interested as anybody else, and very often they're making just as many mistakes as anybody else.
	So-called experts, they're expert on, very often they're expert on the question of statistical analysis, and they are very inexpert on the question of what policy ought to be adopted.
	So here's the question.
	Who do you trust?
	Do you trust you to make decisions about your own welfare and your own well-being?
	Do you trust your neighbors?
	Right?
	I think one of the problems here is as we've lost a sense of community that we feel like, okay, maybe my neighbor is going to be irresponsible and is going to sneeze all over me.
	So I need the government to tell my neighbor to stay away from me.
	Or do you look at your community and figure, look, everybody is basically responsible around here.
	I'm going to socially distance.
	They're going to socially distance.
	I know my neighbor.
	My neighbor doesn't want me to die.
	I don't want my neighbor to die.
	The loss of community has been a serious problem because it turns out that the attempt to use government in order to create community is a failure because government is not capable of making the sort of pinpoint decisions that are necessary to balance competing interests.
	The government can just come in and smash you.
	That's it.
	Okay?
	And the people who run the government are no better than you.
	They're no worse than you.
	And that means that you're gonna get your fair share of stupidity and corruption.
	The story that's being wildly underplayed by the media, I mean, this truly is an amazing story.
	There's a health official for overseeing nursing homes in Pennsylvania.
	70% of all state coronavirus-related deaths in Pennsylvania have occurred in nursing homes.
	The health secretary is a person named Dr. Rachel Levine.
	Okay, Dr. Rachel Levine is We had a policy.
	The policy was that during the COVID-19 outbreak, that facilities in the state continue to accept coronavirus patients who had been discharged from hospitals but were unable to return to their homes.
	So if you're 80 and you're diagnosed with COVID, you went right back into the nursing home where you promptly infected everyone and everybody died.
	This is Rachel Levine's stated policy.
	Now, Dr. Rachel Levine also had a mother.
	His mother is 95 years old.
	His mother was in a personal care home.
	And mom said, you know what?
	I'm kind of feeling unsafe here.
	Dr. Rachel Levine promptly took mom out of the old age home and took her home.
	So the same state official who was saying, don't worry, we're keeping the nursing home safe by forcing COVID-19 patients back in, was also saying, oh yeah, by the way, I'm taking my mom out of the nursing home.
	How that has received so much less attention than, for example, Kelly Loeffler, the senator from Georgia who's been accused of sort of trading on insider information about coronavirus, is beyond me.
	Like, truly, one of those decisions led to the direct deaths of nearly 3,000 people, and one of those decisions led to the personal enrichment of a senator.
	It seems to me one is much more serious than the other.
	They can both be serious, but one seems much more serious.
	By the way, there's still questions as to what Kelly Loeffler knew and whether she was, in fact, trading on the insider information.
	Also, but that doesn't undermine the general point, which is that everybody is self-interested.
	Today, FBI agents seized the cell phone data of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a ranking Republican from North Carolina, as part of an investigation into his stock sales.
	Burr and his wife sold between $600,000 and $1.7 million in stocks, over 30 transactions between late January and through mid-February.
	Before the stock market plunged and his warnings of the coronavirus pandemic became more severe.
	The bulk of stocks sales from Burr took place on February 13th, just before he made a speech predicting extreme measures would have to be taken to check the spread of the virus.
	So honestly, if he was saying that in the coming days it's going to get really bad and selling his stocks at the same time, there really is no scandal.
	If you're conveying to the public that things are getting really bad and also I'm selling my stocks, that's not a scandal.
	It's only a scandal if you're telling the public everything is fine while you're selling your stocks.
	That would be a real problem.
	A spokesperson told CBS News in March, Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S.
	and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak.
	It is illegal for members to trade stocks based on information the public doesn't have.
	Burr was among the three senators who voted against the legislation banning such trading in 2012, and he said that he relied solely on public news reports to guide his decision regarding the sale of stocks.
	Now he's under FBI investigation.
	Do you want those people making rules for you?
	How about, like, the New York City health head?
	Do you think that we should be making Oxiris Barbo?
	Do you think that we should have her making the public health rules?
	In early March, she was telling everybody everything was fine in New York City.
	Not only that, according to the New York Post, New York City's health commissioner blew off an urgent NYPD request for half a million surgical masks as the coronavirus crisis mounted, telling a high-ranking police official, quote, I don't give two rats asses about your cops.
	That was the NYC health commissioner.
	I don't give two rats asses about your cops.
	And then, of course, she's going to rely on the cops to enforce social distancing measures by tackling people.
	Oxiris Barbo made the heartless remark during a brief phone conversation in late March.
	Late March?
	Okay, not even February.
	Late March, when New York was shut down with NYPD Chief of Department Terrence Monaghan.
	Monaghan asked Barbo for 500,000 masks.
	She said she could only provide 50,000.
	She said, I don't give two rats asses about your cops.
	I need them for others.
	The conversation took place as increasing numbers of cops were calling out sick with symptoms of COVID-19, but before the department suffered its first casualties.
	The NYPD has recorded 5,490 cases of coronavirus among its 55,000 cops and civilian workers.
	Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolence Association, called for Barbeau to be fired over her despicable and unforgivable comments.
	The department appealed to City Hall.
	They arranged for the NYPD to get 250,000 surgical masks.
	These are the people who run your policy.
	You trust those people?
	Really, I mean, are these people you trust?
	And this does cross streams.
	This does cross streams in a pretty significant way with the Michael Flynn story.
	Because the Michael Flynn story also shows that people who are in charge of your policy are no better than you.
	This is why you have checks and balances in American government.
	It is why we do not want an economy run top down.
	It is why we don't actually want policy run top down.
	We want policy as localized as humanly possible.
	And the constant calls of the media, we must have a national strategy.
	We must have a coordinating figure at the top of American government in every way.
	No, that's actually the opposite of what you need.
	What you need is as decentralized a process as possible for determining risk and reward calculations.
	That's what you need.
	What you need is resources that are made available, and maybe you need a centralized clearinghouse for those resources made available, like the ventilator situation.
	So you need the resources made available.
	But let's also be clear about this.
	If the states competed to buy ventilators, you think that companies are not going to shift into ventilator production?
	The fact is that the Defense Production Act was basically invoked for public policy purposes.
	It was basically invoked, not for public policy even, for public representation purposes.
	It was for PR.
	It was basically so that the federal government could tell the media we're doing everything that we can do.
	The Defense Production Act doesn't actually mean more ventilators are made.
	It just means that the first ventilators that are made go to the federal government.
	States competing to pay for ventilators means that companies shift into ventilator production.
	ASAP.
	Like, everybody understood this.
	So, the notion that the federal government is the first stop here, or that federal policymakers are capable of doing this stuff, it's amazing.
	There are so many people these days who are saying that this demonstrates the need for expertise.
	Experts provide you information.
	What this demonstrates is that experts are not capable of making good, broad-based decisions for hundreds of millions of human beings.
	That what you actually need in the end is what the founders always talked about, which is localism first and foremost.
	That what you actually need are checks and balances on American government.
	Imagine if there had been a check and balance on the CDC when it came to... Imagine information free-flowing and checks and balances on the CDC in the early days of the pandemic.
	Imagine that the information had been flowing through much more freely from the CDC and the FDA to states and localities.
	Localities, for example, And we knew what was going on with coronavirus much earlier.
	And that information was really coming out much earlier.
	And the CDC had not been banning people from doing preliminary tests in Washington.
	The CDC literally told people, labs that were capable of doing early coronavirus testing not to do it.
	Because it violated CDC protocols.
	The experts are there to provide information.
	They're not there to provide the quote-unquote decisions that rule your life.
	You are supposed to make those decisions in coordination with your immediate neighbors.
	Because guess who's most situated to know about what you and your neighbors need?
	You and your neighbors.
	Okay, time for A Thing That I Hate.
	All right, so speaking of corruption, Mark Kelly is doing really well in this U.S.
	Senate race in Arizona, running against Martha McSally.
	Martha McSally, of course, lost a Senate race to Kristen Sinema, and then she was appointed to fill the open Senate seat that was provided when John McCain passed away.
	Well, Mark Kelly is running against her.
	He's raised oodles of money, and now he is caught up in a corruption scandal of his own, according to RealClearPolitics.
	And this thing is not receiving anything like the sort of attention it should be, because Mark Kelly's a Democrat.
	The former NASA astronaut who commanded the second-to-last space shuttle mission and spent 25 years in the Navy readily acknowledges the myriad threats China poses to the United States.
	But the reality is that he has some fairly corrupt ties with China.
	Kelly has been far more reticent about the investment by a Chinese company in a commercial space exploration venture he co-founded.
	The company, tech giant Tencent, is one of the world's largest internet enterprises and owns the Chinese social media platform WeChat.
	The tech's platform has more than a billion users and is suspected of monitoring the activity of many of them inside and outside China.
	In the fall of 2014, the CEO of Worldview Enterprises, which is the company Kelly co-founded, announced during a visit to Beijing that Tencent had invested an undisclosed sum of money in the Tucson-based space travel venture.
	In April 2016, as part of a $15 million investment round, Worldview announced it had received more funds from Tencent along with three other venture capital firms.
	Tencent was already under intense U.S.
	scrutiny before the COVID-19 world crisis.
	In addition to surveillance suspicions, Tencent sparked U.S.
	backlash for suspending its streaming of NBA games after Houston Rockets general manager praised Hong Kong democracy protests last fall.
	WeChat has been censoring keywords related to COVID-19 since at least January 1st.
	There's bipartisan approval of the idea that Tencent is dangerous and is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
	Well, Kelly served as a strategic advisor to Worldview until he launched his Senate campaign last year.
	He maintains a personal financial stake in the company between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of non-public stock, and between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock options.
	His eldest daughter works there as the company's business opportunity manager.
	Also, Kelly's campaign has accepted $5,000 from David Wallerstein, who serves as Tencent's chief exploration officer.
	So he's being funded in large part, or at least in significant part, by Tencent.
	And the increasing dependence on government contracts doesn't seem to have given Kelly Paws about 10 cents investment.
	If he has, he's not speaking up about it.
	The Kelly campaign has sidestepped questions from RealClearPolitics on whether he believes the Chinese company's investment is appropriate and whether the money should be returned.
	A Kelly campaign spokesperson told RCP, Mark's experience as a pilot and astronaut enabled him to help found WorldView in Tucson, which has worked with the Department of Defense and NASA while creating jobs and generating millions in economic impact.
	And he referred all questions about Tencent's investment to WorldView itself.
	So that seems like that is worth some investigation, does it not?
	The fact that a Senate candidate has a large stake in a company that is being funded by Tencent, which is basically a Chinese front group.
	Pretty incredible stuff.
	But apparently that does not rise to the level of requiring massive media attention.
	What we should actually focus our attention on is only Richard Burr.
	We should never focus our attention on issues like this one, which obviously is a disturbing one.
	So they're going to have to answer some questions.
	Markell is going to have to answer some questions.
	And by the way, so is Joe Biden, who had said for months and months and months that a rising China was actually good for the world.
	Joe Biden has been pretty, during his tenure, he was pretty soft on China.
	And his softness on China is going to blow back against him at some point here.
	The Trump administration has been much harsher on China than the Obama administration ever was.
	And as we move forward toward the election, there are a lot of Americans, me among them, who are very, very angry at the Chinese government.
	And Trump ought to campaign on that.
	And if Democrats decide to take the bizarre case that China is not responsible for this, or that Trump is being too mean to China, good luck with that political take.
	Okay, and other things that I hate.
	Let's talk about new revelations in the Michael Flynn case.
	So there's some new revelations in the Michael Flynn case.
	Apparently, there was a, there's a report that is out about who tried to unmask Michael Flynn's identity during the Russia probe.
	So here's the way this works.
	If there is a wiretap that happens of a foreign national, an American is caught up in that wiretap, that person's name is hidden because you are not allowed to surveil American citizens without an actual FISA warrant.
	You're not allowed to surveil American citizens without some sort of legal go-ahead.
	So that person's name is kept confidential, and it's kept private, unless there's an actual request for unmasking from inside the executive branch.
	And these are supposed to be rare.
	They are not supposed to be done unless you actually have true suspicion of criminality.
	Well, as it turns out, Susan Rice, who is the National Security Advisor to President Obama, asked for Michael Flynn to be unmasked, so she could see his name.
	And then, that was basically leaked and circulated within the Obama administration, so everybody knew that Michael Flynn had been on the phone with Sergey Kislyak.
	Now again, there's nothing illegal about Michael Flynn being on the phone with Sergey Kislyak.
	Nothing.
	There's nothing illegal about that.
	He was the incoming national security advisor on the phone with the Russian ambassador.
	That is not illegal in any way, shape, or form.
	The Obama administration decided to circulate Flynn's name specifically to generate all sorts of concern that Flynn was in thrall to the Russians.
	Well, now it turns out that a bunch of people in the Obama administration were very, very concerned with Michael Flynn.
	According to the New York Post, former Vice President Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey were among the top officials who tried to unmask Michael Flynn's identity during the Russia probe, according to a report by the Acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell.
	The bombshell letter first reported by Fox News on Wednesday afternoon was sent to Republican senators by Grinnell as they seek to investigate the origins of the FBI's malign probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
	Intelligence Chiefs John Brennan and James Clapper were also included on a list of 23 Obama-era officials who allegedly tried to reveal the identity of Flynn during the presidential transition period.
	So is Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and former U.S.
	Ambassador to the U.N.
	Samantha Power.
	Nine names were redacted for apparent national security purposes.
	Biden's name emerged in connection to the Flynn unmasking a day after he denied any knowledge of the Flynn probe.
	George Stephanopoulos had asked him, what did you know about these moves to investigate Flynn?
	Was there anything improper done?
	He said, I know nothing about these moves to investigate Michael Flynn.
	Well, weird, because not only were you in a meeting with Barack Obama and members of the DOJ and FBI, where members of the DOJ were shocked to learn that Obama actually knew about the Flynn call, And they were shocked that Obama himself was in the loop.
	Biden was at that meeting.
	Now it turns out that Biden was on the list of people asking for the unmasking of Flynn.
	And again, you're only supposed to unmask people when there's actual suspicion of criminal activity.
	And when you are trying to hide information from that person because you might suspect that person is going to be a criminal.
	Rand Paul, Senator from Kentucky, he went off on this.
	He said, listen, this is abuse of power.
	And it is abuse of power.
	Vice President Biden and more than a dozen Obama administration officials requested and received the power to unmask General Flynn during his phone call with the Russian ambassador.
	James Clapper, James Comey, John Brennan, Samantha Powers, and the President's Chief of Staff all individually asked to unmask General Flynn and to listen to his phone conversation.
	Intriguingly, a dozen more administration officials all chose to unmask General Flynn.
	Now, again, it's okay to unmask somebody for purposes of internal discussion.
	You can do that.
	What is not okay is that within days, this had been leaked to the Washington Post.
	That's illegal.
	Leaking an American citizen's name after unmasking?
	That's illegal stuff.
	And when it turns out that everybody... You have to know that the natural consequence of every single person in the Obama administration in a five-mile radius unmasking a guy, it is very likely that's going to end up with the media.
	Everybody sort of gets this.
	Quinn Hilliard has a piece over at the Washington Examiner pointing this out.
	They say that, he says, people are making too much of the unmasking itself, which could have been entirely justified, but what was almost certainly illegal was the leak to the Washington Post of the information about those unmasked calls.
	And again, should there be a presumption that somebody is going to be leaked if it turns out that everybody inside the Obama administration was requesting the unmasking?
	At a certain point, does it become a little bit predictable that this thing got leaked to the media?
	So President Trump went off on Biden.
	He says, how does Biden know nothing about the unmasking if he's one of the unmaskers?
	I mean, he literally said he knew nothing about the investigation.
	He was one of the people requesting the unmasking.
	I watched Biden yesterday on Good Morning America being interviewed by one of your colleagues, George Stephanopoulos.
	And he said he knew nothing about anything.
	He has no idea.
	He knows nothing about anything.
	Nothing at all.
	And then it gets released today that he was a big unmasker.
	So how do you know nothing if you're one of the unmaskers?
	It's one of the very big stories, and I suspect you'll have, if it's possible, even bigger stories coming out.
	Fact check, true.
	Fact check, true.
	By the way, I think that the finest moment here came from a Biden spokesperson.
	So a Biden spokesperson slammed CBS's Catherine Herridge.
	Herridge is a reporter on this beat, and she reported about the unmasking.
	So a Biden spokesperson promptly tweeted out, his name is Andrew Bates, Catherine Herridge is a partisan right-wing hack who's a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation ploys because she agrees to publicize things before contacting the target to ask for comments.
	Nothing richer than a Biden person attacking members of the media.
	It's an assault on our free press, on our free press institutions.
	It's just an assault.
	By the way, I will note that it is pretty astonishing that members of the Obama tribe and the Biden tribe, the political tribe here, that those people are very upset with the media.
	You don't get to be upset with the media, guys.
	You leaked this information to the media in the first place.
	Susan Rice, by the way, was asked for comments on all of the unmasking stories, and she declined.
	She basically ran away from the reporter.
	How do you respond to those who say you abused your power with unmasking in 2016?
	Excuse me?
	I wanted to just ask you about DOJ investigating the origins of the Russia probe.
	Do you think they'll find anything, any wrongdoing on the part of the Obama administration?
	I have no idea what DOJ is doing.
	Thanks.
	Do you have any comment on them exploring the origins of the Russia probe, investigating the investigators?
	Do you think it's a worthy cause to do that?
	I'm not commenting.
	Thank you.
	Okay, so that is the way that the Obama administration, you know, those professionals who definitely did not politicize intelligence, but were leaking everything that they could find about the Trump administration out into the public.
	Just brilliant, brilliant handling.
	The Wall Street Journal has a good editorial today about all of this.
	They say, when news stories appeared in early 2017 about Michael Flynn's conversation with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., these columns wondered how Flynn's call was so widely known.
	The names of private U.S.
	citizens caught on tape by U.S.
	intelligence are supposed to be masked so that privacy is protected.
	Well, now we know.
	GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on Wednesday released a declassified list of Obama administration officials, who in their waning days in power, unmasked the conversations of Mr. Flynn, who is set to become Trump's national security advisor.
	It seems everybody but the night janitor wanted to know who Flynn was talking to.
	A stunning 39 separate officials snooped on Flynn's conversations with foreign actors, lodging nearly 50 unmasking demands between November 30, 2016 and January 12, 2017.
	Our sources say the nearly dozen redacted names on the list are likely intelligence types who might have a legit interest.
	Most of the rest are partisan officials.
	Flynn was unmasked by at least four U.S.
	ambassadors, six Treasury officials, people connected to the Energy and Justice Departments, and NATO.
	Then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also made the list.
	The Flynn unmasking is important, they say, because it occurred amid a media frenzy over supposed Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
	There are other dots to connect.
	Documents released late last week show that former Deputy Attorney General Tally Yates first learned about the Flynn wiretapping from Barack Obama personally.
	In a January 5th, 2017 Oval Office meeting, at least one of the unmaskers must have told Obama.
	And the question there again is not the unmasking.
	The question is, why was all this being leaked out?
	And the answer is that our institutions, those same institutions that are now tasked with making decisions about you and your life and your level of freedom, Those institutions botched this one beyond botchery.
	The good news is that so long as they are targeting Trump, they always have the love of the media.
	So Adam Schiff, who spent three years lying that Trump-Russia collusion was going to reveal the seething, festering wound in the body of America's politics.
	Yesterday, he said it was Bill Barr who was politicizing the DOJ.
	It's all Bill Barr's fault for dropping the case against Flynn.
	The problem is that Bill Barr has so politicized the Justice Department, the justice system, that people can't have confidence that a decision like this to release Paul Manafort to do home imprisonment is based on the merits.
	This system stinks.
	And that's the result of Bill Barr politicizing the Justice Department.
	People have lost confidence in its neutrality, that justice is blind.
	Instead, they think that justice Bends to Donald Trump's will, and that's just a tremendous disservice and risk to the rule of law.
	I don't want to hear about risks to the rule of law from Adam the Liar Chef.
	I want to hear about risks to rule of law from this bag of tools.
	Alrighty, time for a quick thing that I like.
	So, things that I like today.
	You're looking for a classic movie?
	I'll give you THE classic movie.
	That classic movie is The Godfather.
	Every line is a classic.
	All the performances are just spectacular.
	There's Al Pacino before he went full Al Pacino.
	and actually had some subtlety to him.
	He's phenomenal.
	Marlon Brando is phenomenal.
	You forget how good this movie is until you rewatch it.
	It's one of those movies that is so well-liked that you forget that it's actually an amazing piece of filmmaking, that it is entertaining from beginning to end.
	The dialogue is fantastic.
	All the performances are just great.
	I've started on Godfather 2, which may be even better.
	It is possible the Godfather trilogy is the best trilogy of all time, even though the third one stinks.
	Just because the first two are maybe two of the five best movies ever made.
	So if you're looking for something to watch tonight, then make sure you go check out The Godfather if you haven't seen it for a while.
	Honestly, you've probably forgotten how good it is.
	I did, and I used to watch it like incessantly.
	So go check out The Godfather tonight instead of watching Like Capone, which I've heard is just trash, so check that out.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
	Also, we have an All Access Live tonight, so subscribe, become an All Access member, and I'll hang out with you an hour tonight.
	I will wear a t-shirt, that is always the promise.
	There probably will be singing and bizarre musical sort of interruptions.
	It gets weird, it gets weird, but you can be part of all the weirdness over at dailywire.com slash subscribe.
	We will see you then.
	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.
	Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.
	Copyright Daily Wire 2020.
	The unmasking of Mike Flynn in the last days of the Obama administration is the most egregious political scandal of our lifetimes, and we've just learned it goes all the way up to Joe Biden, maybe even higher.
	Meanwhile, the new masking order in L.A.
	caps off the most arbitrary political power grab of our lifetimes.
	Luckily, President Trump is starting to break with his expert doctor dictators.
	Then, another rough interview for Joe Biden, a big Republican win in California, and finally the mailbag.

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