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May 15, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:01:42
The Great Reopening Begins | Ep. 1012
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States across America move toward reopening, Democrats reveal big plans for America's reshaping, and Joe Biden tries to talk to a recording.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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Alrighty.
So the big discussion that seems to be happening nationwide about how to reopen, it is now moving state to state and a lot of blue states are moving toward reopening.
So all the talk about how if you want to reopen, it's just because you don't care about saving human life.
It turns out that was all a bunch of bull crap and that everybody is going to have to reopen at some point or other, and everybody is going to do so in some fashion or other.
Some places are going to lock down longer, some places are going to lock down shorter.
And then we're going to have a fair number of case studies as to who was right and who was wrong.
One thing is becoming eminently clear, and that is the economy simply cannot stay shut down this way.
There is just no way for the economy to stay shut down.
And the reason that the economy cannot stay shut down this way is because in the end, as President Trump originally suggested, the fact is that we will end up losing more years of life if the economy is shut down for a prolonged period of time than we would through coronavirus itself.
That, by the way, comes courtesy of a study that's being quoted in The Week over at the UK.
They have an article there called why the economic crash could cost more lives than coronavirus.
The idea there being, of course, that as people lose their lives due to health conditions brought on by poverty, as people kill themselves, as people engage in opioid overdoses, That all of these things factored in means that people are losing significant years of their lives.
And so when you actually measure lives lost, it is not just enough to measure lives lost.
I've said this before and people have gotten very upset with me.
The reality is that when you make actuarial tables and when you decide how to set policy, There are a couple of stats that are necessary.
One is how many lives on just a pure simple level are lost.
But the second is how many quality adjusted life years are lost.
Meaning that if you have one policy that kills a certain number of 30 year olds, and one policy that is likely to raise the risk for a certain number of 81 year olds, You have to take into account the difference in quality adjusted life years for people who are 30 and people who are 81.
In fact, if somebody dies at 30, they have lost more life years than somebody who dies at 81.
That does not mean that we should not mitigate risk for people who are 81.
It does mean that when you make a risk calculation about generalized policy, you do have to take that into account.
Well, how bad is this thing getting?
The Federal Reserve Bank on Thursday reported that nearly 40% of those with a household income below $40,000 reported a job loss in March.
That now becomes effectively a permanent underclass.
I mean, that's an insane number.
40% of people with a household income below $40,000 reported a job loss in March alone.
4 out of 10.
At the same time, for the majority of adults, their income and ability to pay current bills appeared to remain generally stable during the initial weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, Also essentially unchanged was the percentage of people who reported they could pay off an unexpected $400 emergency expense entirely using cash, savings, or a credit card at the next statement.
And that is because the government has been floating everybody checks.
The findings back up other reports that show that lower-income Americans, as well as Black and Hispanic people, are bearing the brunt of the outbreak's financial fallout.
They're more likely to work in sectors that are laying off or furloughing workers, such as food services.
More than one in five Americans have filed initial jobless claims since the pandemic began, according to the Federal Reserve.
CNN reporting from the start of March through April 2020.
19% of adults said they lost a job, were furloughed, or had their hours reduced.
Some 64% of adults who reported a job loss or reduction in hours expected to be able to pay all their bills in full in April, compared to 85% of those without an employment disruption.
But 9 in 10 people who lost a job reported their employer indicated they would return to work, though their bosses did not say when that would occur.
Now, one of the big problems is that the Paycheck Protection Act has created a bit of a catch-22 for a lot of businesses.
You're supposed to retain 90% of your payroll.
However, you're only supposed to remain 25 or 50% open for the duration.
So, if you take the loan, the only way that that loan gets forgiven is if you make your business utterly unsustainable by paying employees not to work, effectively speaking.
Meanwhile, the Paycheck Protection Act and the CARES Act The CARES Act has made it so that a huge number of American workers actually make more money off of the unemployment benefits being paid by the federal government than they would back in the regular jobs.
And that is a problem as we move out of the pandemic, as we start to open up again.
How many people are just going to say, OK, well, you know what?
Sure, I'm young and healthy.
Sure, my chances of dying from this are extraordinarily small.
But you know what?
I'm getting paid more to be on unemployment.
This is something Republicans pointed out at the time, and they were completely right.
And the media mocked them for it.
According to FiveThirtyEight.com, The estimated percentage of earnings replaced by unemployment benefits for the median unemployed worker in 10 common occupational fields is above 100% for, this is the median payment, is above 100% that you will make from unemployment for the following services.
Food service, janitorial, medical assistance, sales and retail, transportation, construction, and teachers.
The only people who are earning less from unemployment than they would from their normal jobs are people who are nurses and therapists, managers, and people in information technology.
So in other words, if you are not on the low-income scale, then you will make more by going back to work.
But if you are on the low-income scale, then we're going to pay you not to work according to these bills.
Now, in the short term, that at least makes some sense in the sense that if you can't go back to work, then paying you not to work makes some sense.
We don't want people rushing back to work willy-nilly.
But as states start to open up, we have started to see, I've talked to people who are employers who are saying, I offered my workers to stay at their jobs and they don't want to come back because they're getting paid more by the government not to come back.
Now, at the same time, this has become a class issue because the people who are most likely to tell you that they want the government to remain the payer for all of this, the people most likely to tell you that they would like these lockdowns to remain in place forever are people in the mainstream media who are not losing their jobs.
Fareed Zachariah, actually, has pointed this out over at the Washington Post.
Fareed has a very good piece over there.
I'll talk to you about it in just one second.
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Okay, so Fareed Zachariah has a good piece on the class differences between the people who are calling for lockdown and the people who are saying that we need to get back to work.
And I will say that there is one other distinction.
There are a lot of people who are business owners who are saying we need to get back to work even if they're high income earners.
So a lot of high income earners who are just sitting at home and the pandemic is basically as comedian Patton Oswalt suggested, wow it's so tough you're watching Netflix all day.
Turns out there are a lot of people who are not watching Netflix all day.
Turns out there are a lot of people who are struggling to put food on the table.
Turns out there are tons of people who own businesses who are struggling to figure out how to pay their employees and how to keep their businesses afloat and how to keep their life savings from being drained away.
Fareed Zachariah has a good piece on this over at the Washington Post.
He says, Many people are wondering why partisanship has become so strong in the United States that people will not listen to experts, even at the risk of their own health.
But there's a broader distrust we need to understand.
As I recognized it while reading a book that is not about COVID-19 at all, but sheds strong light on the situation.
Explaining why so many people across the West have rejected the government establishment, Michael Lind writes, The issue is not the issue.
The issue is power.
Social power exists in three realms, government, the economy, and the culture.
Each of these three realms of social power is the site of class conflict.
Now, he attributes this to economic conflict.
It's really more cultural.
Lin's new book, The New Class War, argues that the best way to understand America today is through the lens of class conflict, which has been sharpened by the rise of an overclass that dominates the three spheres he mentioned.
In all three, leaders tend to be urban, college-educated professionals, often with a postgraduate degree.
That makes them quite distinct from the rest of the country.
Only 36% of Americans have a bachelor's degree, only 13% have a master's or more, and yet the top echelons everywhere are filled with this credentialed overclass.
So when he says it's a class distinction, he doesn't actually mean an economic class distinction.
He means that it is a class distinction as far as people who have gone to university, people who are generally secular, people who have a particular worldview about the role of government, And who happen to be in charge of a lot of major industries, a lot of cultural totems.
And this is something that's not new to Michael Lynn.
Charles Murray was talking about this in his book, Coming Apart, 15 years ago.
But says Fareed Zachariah, for many non-college educated people, especially those living in rural areas, there's a deep alienation from this new elite.
They see the overclass as enacting policies presented as good for the whole country, but really mostly benefit people from the ruling class whose lives have gotten better over the past few decades, while the rest are left behind.
In this view, trade and immigration help college-educated professionals who work for multinational corporations but hurt blue-collar workers.
So when they hear from experts about the inevitability of globalization and technological change and the need to accept it, they resist because it does not resonate with their lived experience.
He says, let's look at the COVID-19 crisis through this prism.
Imagine you're an American who works with his hands and you just lost your job because of the lockdowns as of more than 36 million people.
You turn on the TV and you hear medical experts, academics, technocrats, and journalists explain, we have to keep the economy closed because public health is important.
In other words, keep you unemployed.
All these people making the case have jobs, have maintained their standards of living, in fact, are now in greater demand.
They feel as though they are doing important work.
You, on the other hand, have lost your job.
You feel a sense of worthlessness.
You're terrified about your family's day-to-day survival.
Is it so hard to understand why people like this might be skeptical of the experts?
This is correct.
Fareed Zachariah really hits the nail on the head right here.
And you can see that the media do not get it.
The people in the media do not understand this.
And they have no reason to understand this because people in the media, again, get to do what I do.
Thank God.
I have a good life.
I can do my show from the safety of my home.
I still get my paycheck.
But I understand that there are tens of millions of Americans who do not.
And that is why I think it is imperative that they be allowed to make their own choices.
They can make their own individual risk assessments than some jackass on CNN.
Or better than I can.
I'm not saying that I should make the risk assessment for you.
I'm saying you should make the risk assessment for you.
And it is the job of the so-called experts to provide you information so you can make your own independent risk assessment.
And this is why it is so utterly unhelpful when the media refuse to report to you actual information, instead just giving you anecdotes.
So, for example, there's a piece in the New York Times yesterday by Mara Gay, who's the head of the 1619 Project and very well-respected columnist at the New York Times.
By the left, hey, Mara Gay got COVID-19.
And she got very, very sick from it.
And so she has an entire piece about how sick she got from it.
And the entire premise of the piece is young people are getting seriously ill from COVID-19.
Nowhere in the entire piece does she cite a statistic saying how many young people are getting sick from COVID-19.
Now it's important to know for people what COVID-19 is like.
That is important.
And I'm extremely happy that Maragay is feeling better.
God forbid anybody should get sick and die with COVID-19.
But it is very important that if you are running the world's most quote-unquote respected newspaper, that you actually at some point in an article like that give me the numbers so I can assess my own risk.
I understand that if somebody gets hit side-on in a car crash, that that's going to be really bad.
And that the recovery time is going to be really bad.
I need to know when I go out the door in the morning, what are my odds of being hit side-long in a car crash?
Because I'm making my own risk assessment.
All media information should be geared toward giving Americans enough information that they can make their own risk assessment.
And most media information is not geared toward that.
Most media information is geared toward a certain level of alarmism and a level of distrust with the American public.
And ironically, what ends up happening is that people respond to the media By then saying, okay, the entire thing is BS.
Now I'm hearing from some conservatives this about, for example, face mask wearing.
People suggesting on the conservative side, there are a few people on the conservative side, I would say, who say, you know what?
I don't want to wear a face mask because the experts have been wrong all the time and they just want to control my liberty.
And I've said, no, face mask wearing is probably a good idea.
It prevents other people from getting it.
It's not to protect you.
It's to protect everybody who is around you.
And if the goal is to slow the spread enough that we don't spike over the healthcare system's capacity, and if the goal is to go back to work in fast-moving action, then wearing face masks is a great way of preventing all this, right?
In many countries, it is mandatory.
And it is not you signing away your liberty to say that you're going to wear a face mask.
It is you saying that you care about your neighbors, that you're going to wear the face mask until some better therapeutic is found or until we tranche populations such that herd immunity is pursuable.
But you have to understand that for a lot of people, they look at the experts who are telling them that the best option is for them to stay inside forever.
And those same experts are yelling at people not wearing face masks.
And so you get exactly the sort of political polarization we've seen in the country, which is people responding to each other, not responding to information.
And when the media make themselves a character in this story, When the media's entire narrative is, we stand up for lockdowns because we care about your life, and then they provide you no information.
Then people are going to say, well, I care about my life more than you care about my life, and I care about my freedom more than you care about my freedom, so I'm just going to discount whatever you say.
And so there is that natural reaction, because the media do have this disconnect with the American people at this point.
They are not trying to bring Americans the information.
They instead are trying to push an agenda.
You can see that most clearly when it comes to the state-by-state lockdown attitudes of the media.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Okay, so the media simply don't get this.
They simply don't understand why people are angry at them.
So yesterday, there's a clip going around by a guy named Kevin Vesey, and it has, you know, six million hits on Twitter.
And this video basically shows this person walking around a rally where people are rallying for opening, and people are yelling at the media.
They're saying, you guys don't understand what we're going through.
You guys are attempting to portray us as kooks and nuts for wanting to reopen and going back to our work.
You're suggesting that we want to get people killed.
Yep.
Go screw off.
Take a long walk off a short pier.
Here's what that video sounds like.
You stopped airing the Trump briefings and you keep airing Cuomo briefings.
Go home, you fake news!
You fake news!
You're destroying something in my life!
You are the enemy of the people!
You are fake news!
You are the enemy!
We all know it!
You are fake news!
We know about your liberal agenda.
We know you want to keep your job.
We get it.
You're not getting advertising dollars right now.
You're not going to answer?
So you're just going to go live?
Yes, I am getting a paycheck.
I'm very happy.
But other people are not getting paychecks.
That's why we're here.
You used to be a good channel at one time.
I don't know what happened to you.
Tell the truth, Kevin!
Come on!
Most of these people, by the way, are wearing face masks.
Most of them are socially distancing.
They're holding signs saying things like coronavirus is not going away, but our jobs are.
That is a fair argument right there.
And by the way, Rick Bright, who is the doctor who was supposedly fired from the Trump administration yesterday, he literally said about vaccines, you guys are being too optimistic about vaccines.
You're saying 12 to 18 months, it could be two years.
It could be three years.
That's the guy the media were trotting out yesterday.
Don't they understand that undermines their argument for locking down forever?
Because that is completely impossible and implausible.
The media do not understand why people are so angry at them.
Again, it's because you stopped providing us information and you started providing us your opinion on the information.
And that's okay, right?
I'm an opinion show.
I try to provide you the information first, but I am very clear about my opinion.
And I try to state what my agenda is up front.
And then you can make your own decision.
But what you are seeing from the media is not that.
You're seeing they're quote-unquote objective journalists who are very angry that people can see their bias and are recognizing that the media are not actually providing us information.
So last night, for example, Anderson Cooper on CNN He was very, very angry.
He was very angry at Donald Trump Jr.
Why?
Because people were making fun of CNN for hosting Greta Thunberg on a CNN town hall about coronavirus.
Because people were like, what the hell does Greta Thunberg know about coronavirus?
And why is Greta Thunberg on?
What level of expertise can she provide?
And so apparently she was there to talk about the fact that she had donated $100,000 from her fund for coronavirus funding or something.
Okay, well then why don't you have on, you know, first of all, I know personally many people who have given more money than that to the coronavirus fight and are spending more of their own money out of their own pocket in order to try and do something about this.
And those people happen to know more than a 17-year-old girl most famous for shouting at adults.
But Anderson Cooper was very upset with you.
Very upset with Don Jr.
Very upset with anybody who would question CNN's bona fides in bringing on a 17-year-old girl most famous for shouting at adults in a Swedish accent.
A blue check on Twitter saw the initial ad and was outraged and claimed that we had booked Greta Thunberg to be an expert on a coronavirus panel with other health experts.
Then, of course, Donnie Trump Jr. jumped into this, which is weird because I thought he was allegedly running whatever remains of the Trump organization.
I mean, shouldn't that be like a really busy job since it's, you know, allegedly such a great big company?
Anyway, once DJ TJ started typing, then other people with blue checks on Twitter also started doing their thing because everyone has to produce content these days.
That's what it's all about.
It's like a tween on TikTok.
A tween on TikTok?
That would pretty much describe a lot of CNN coverage.
A tween on TikTok would describe Chris Cuomo walking out of his basement on camera, as though that's providing us any useful information other than the reality TV drama of the whole thing.
Okay, so again, that's why the people are angry at the media, and it's also why there's new information that Americans are increasingly just not paying attention to a lot of the information that the so-called experts are providing.
And when I say so-called experts, I don't mean Fauci.
I mean people like Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon and the rest.
The fact is, by the way, that there is a new poll out showing that social distancing is dropping dramatically.
And as I've said, this is going to be led from the bottom up.
People are just going to say, I'm not doing this anymore.
58% right now of Americans say they are completely or mostly self-isolating.
That is down from 75%.
The decline is in states both with and without stay-at-home orders.
So it is not just Florida.
It is not just Georgia.
The media are trying to blame certain states, but not other states.
And it is amazing to watch this because they don't actually seem to be looking at the results of states that are reopening.
They don't seem to be looking at differential results.
Instead, they have the agenda and the agenda is driving the media coverage.
So here is a couple perfect examples.
Politico finally is paying attention to the fact that Ron DeSantis did not blow it in Florida.
So Politico has an entire article titled, Florida man beats COVID, for now.
The implication being that maybe Ron DeSantis still did the wrong thing.
But finally, they're actually admitting this.
They say, first, let's just come out and say it.
DeSantis looks more right than those who criticize the Sunshine State's coronavirus response.
You know, you can always tell immediately what the angle is.
I guess we have to admit it, right?
Mark Caputo and Renuka Raiyassam over at Politico.
First, let's just come out and say it.
I guess we'll have to admit it.
You wouldn't have to admit it if you just covered this thing fairly in the first place.
If you just recognized what DeSantis did was perfectly in line with pandemic response over time.
Namely, treat areas differentially.
Recognize that large outdoor areas where people are not congregated are not the place where this thing is spreading.
According to Politico, According to the latest Florida figures, fewer than 2,000 have died.
Around 43,000 have been infected.
That's a fraction of the dire predictions made for Florida when spring breakers swarmed the beaches.
And those numbers are dwarfed by similarly sized New York, which has seen 12 times more deaths and nearly eight times more infections.
More people reportedly died in New York nursing homes than in all of Florida.
They say good evening and greetings from Florida, where we feel the need to inform you.
It's not a post-apocalyptic hellscape of coronavirus infection and cadavers stacked like cordwood.
That is, Florida just doesn't look nearly as bad as the national news media and sky-falling critics have been predicting for about two months now.
But then, the national news media is mostly based in New York and loves to love its Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, about as much as it loves to hate on Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
Correct.
Correct.
And then you wonder why we don't trust the media, because they're not providing us information, they're just providing us angles.
This is why DeSantis is polling worse than Cuomo in his home state, which is insane.
Florida handled this right, and New York is a garbage heap.
Cuomo is the worst governor in America.
Politico says part of that is style.
Cuomo has a smooth delivery, a deep and calming voice, and an attitude that projects he can answer any question.
Well, that certainly makes up for the fact that he was shoving old people with COVID-19 back into nursing homes.
I can certainly see why the media fell for that gag.
It truly is incredible.
Politico does acknowledge there is media bias.
Cuomo also has something else DeSantis doesn't, a press that defers to him, one that preferred to cover quote-unquote Florida morons at the beach, where it's relatively hard to get infected, over New Yorkers riding cramped subway cars where it's easy to get infected.
In fact, people can still ride the subways most hours of the day in New York, but Miami Beach of Sands remained closed.
Maybe things would be different if DeSantis had a brother who worked in cable news and interviewed him for a sweet moment in prime time.
Correct!
It just took you, what, two months to figure this out?
And then you wonder why people don't trust the media?
Let's be real about this.
The entire narrative here, which is that President Trump blew it, and Democrats are doing it right, and those who push lockdown are winning, and those who push opening up are losing, and want to sacrifice people like Georgia's human sacrifice experiment.
That was all a bunch of crap, and I'm not going to trust anybody who tells me that sort of stuff.
I didn't trust them then, I'm not going to trust them now.
Instead, I'm going to assess my own risk based on the information that is provided to me, and I think most Americans feel the same way.
We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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Okay, so here is the dirty little secret.
The dirty little secret is that every state is reopening to a certain extent.
While there are states and places like LA that are insisting that nobody reopen, I've been out here on the roads, people are going to work.
There is traffic on the roads.
And this happens to be true across the United States.
And the more the authorities shout at people, and the more they promote stupid policy, the more that policy will get ignored.
If you actually want people to pay attention to your policy, you have to explain to them why you're doing what you're doing and why it makes any sense.
This is true with children when you're teaching children.
You actually have to explain to them the rationale for the rules.
Saying, because I said so, only works for kids who are about three.
Once they hit about five or six, they actually want to know why you are doing what you are doing.
When you get to be full-grown adult, you don't just pay attention to rules because you are told to do so, unless you are a SOP.
Unless you are a sap or a sop.
I mean, really, there is no reason for you to pay attention to rules unless those rules are designed to do a thing.
Or as I said yesterday, unless you're being bribed to follow the rules or you're being threatened to follow the rules.
And both of those last two rationales are just not sufficient.
Because over time, unless that bribe is pretty steep, you're not going to want to follow it.
And unless that punishment is rigidly enforced, you're just going to ignore it.
Most people are not going to put on masks at the beach ten feet away from each other and never sit on the sand because our stupid Governor Gavin Newsom said so here in California.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, for example, they're saying now that masks are mandatory when you go outside for anyone above the age of two.
I have a four-year-old son.
Guess what he's not going to be doing?
Wearing a mask.
And knowing that, I'm not going to put him near an old person because I am a responsible human being.
Knowing that, I'm not going to put him near anybody who's outside of my family, right?
We're going to continue social distancing.
But the stricter you set the rules, the fewer people are going to obey the rules, and the more the rules get broken.
And then, the institution that promulgated the rules loses its legitimacy.
An easy way for an institution to lose its legitimacy is to have people basically ignore it.
This is true whether you're the media or whether you are the government.
But the media have this narrative and they continue to push the narrative despite the fact that, again, places all over America are opening up, Democrat and Republican.
They're doing so step-by-step and they're all following the Florida model.
They're doing so in gradual fashion.
They're doing so with levels of social distancing and a fairly heavy level of mask wearing.
But the way the media portray this is that Republicans want to willy-nilly let everybody out of the box so that they can just go have kissing parties and kill each other.
That's not true.
The media are pushing this and this is why people are ignoring them.
Tony Evers, who is the governor of Wisconsin, right?
Democratic governor of Wisconsin.
The Supreme Court of Wisconsin said that the government of Wisconsin does not have authority for the kind of lockdowns that they have been doing.
Certainly not without legislative approval.
So, after the Supreme Court decision, a lot of mayors came in with their own local rules, and those rules are basically being obeyed.
But if you listen to Tony Evers, the governor of Wisconsin, the mere suggestion that he does not get to willy-nilly lock down anything he wants in any fashion he wants Means that Wisconsin has turned into the Wild West.
It has not turned into the Wild West.
Remember there was all that talk about how the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that suggested that people had to vote in person, that you couldn't just decide on the spur of the moment that all voting was going to be mail-in?
That was going to kill massive numbers of Americans.
The grand total number of Americans who went out and voted that day who got COVID-19, out of the tens and maybe I think it was over 100,000 people who voted in Wisconsin that day, the grand total number of people who got a COVID-19 infection, and it's not even obvious that it came from the voting booths, 52.
We were told it was going to kill tens of thousands of people.
Right.
That if you go out to the voting booth and you socially distance, everybody's going to die.
It turns out.
No.
Here's Governor Tony Evers, though, pushing the narrative accompanied by Chris Cuomo, who couldn't even who couldn't even follow his own rules when it came to socially distancing.
But he expects all the rest of you to the Republicans convinced force for Supreme Court justices that a facts don't matter.
B, the law doesn't matter.
And C, the precedents don't matter.
It was a horrible decision.
Not unexpected.
Not unexpected because clearly there were four justices that were looking for any way they could to concur with the Republican majority in the legislature.
So it happened and now we have the Wild West.
Now we have the Wild West.
It's not the Wild West!
What the hell are you talking about?
There's an article in the New York Times about various states reopening today.
And it talks about the reopening deepening political divides.
They say, in Wisconsin, residents woke up to a state of confusion on Thursday after the conservative majority on the state Supreme Court sided with the Republican majority in the legislature on Wednesday night, overturning a statewide stay-at-home order by Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat.
In Michigan, hundreds of protesters, many of them armed, turned out at the state capitol in a drenching rainstorm.
In Pennsylvania, some Republican lawmakers urged defiance of the Democratic governor's orders to keep non-essential businesses closed.
And President Trump flew to Allentown for a politically charged visit to a medical supply facility.
Okay, I have a question.
to the coronavirus in these three states, which determines the 2016 presidential election and could strongly influence the one in November, is becoming a confused and agitated blend of health guidance, protest, and partisan politics, leaving residents to fend for themselves.
Okay, I have a question.
When we say leaving residents to fend for themselves, isn't that generally what you call freedom?
Okay, I don't mean that people shouldn't be taken care of if they are forced not to work by the government, that the government didn't drive a Ford F-150 through the front wall of your house, and now the government has to pay.
But, you know what we used to call being left alone?
Freedom.
Okay, that's not, again, not to suggest that people should go out willy-nilly and start kissing each other in the streets.
That is to suggest that you are best capable of determining your own risk level, you do it every damn day, and because the baseline risk level has risen, and because depending on your population trench, it may have risen more for you, you get to decide what is the most risky.
You get to decide whether you believe that the members of your community are being responsible and whether you are going to go out today.
This is just something, it's your decision, basically.
Across Wisconsin, the court ruling left some residents in a festive mood, heading directly to one of the state's many taverns to celebrate.
Others were determined to stay home, worried it was too soon to return to crowded restaurants and shops, says the New York Times.
But here's the reality.
Despite all of this, most Americans are continuing to be responsible.
Most Americans are continuing to make risk-averse decisions if they can do so.
But the notion again is this partisan divide is so deep that basically it's one or the other.
Either you want to lock down and cower in fear or you want to go out there without a mask and you want to infect as many people as humanly possible and you don't care what happens next.
And that is just not the way most Americans are responding.
And by the way, that is not the way that even blue states are responding.
New Jersey is about to open its beaches.
Jersey Shore is going to be open now, according to NewJersey.com.
Under Governor Murphy's executive order, beaches and lakefronts must limit the number of visitors given access so people can properly socially distance.
Families and households are allowed to cluster together.
Otherwise, people need to be six feet apart.
The opening goes into effect May 22nd, the beginning of Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial start of the summer season.
Murphy said, the Jersey Shore, after all, is where memories are made.
The last thing any of us wanted was for a summertime down the shore to be a memory.
But I thought that, according to Governor Phil Murphy, just like Andrew Cuomo, any attempt to open anything was going to end inevitably in more death.
Notice, everybody's following the same policies.
Democrats, Republicans.
Kentucky is now lifting its travel ban.
Governor Andy Beshear over there, who's a Democrat, is now lifting the travel ban in Kentucky.
So blue states are doing this too.
Here's Andy Beshear yesterday.
May 22nd is also when we're going to let the travel ban expire.
The travel ban has been very important to where we are and to flattening the curve.
And we still need to be very careful about where we travel to.
If you are thinking about going to the beach right now, it is still very dangerous.
And remember, there are hundreds of cases in western Kentucky related to a trip to the beach.
But if you have family that lives close by that's coming in for Memorial Day, again, you can socially distance.
They don't fall into the vulnerable categories.
That's at a place that we're now at, and we're seeing a number of these travel bans expiring.
Okay, so even the Democrats are saying, you know what, this is just not workable and we are starting to reopen.
And by the way, the longer you tighten people down, the more people are going to move from areas that are unreasonable to areas that are reasonable, in fact.
And you're starting to see that trend.
That trend is very real.
You're going to see, I'm predicting, within the next year and a half, you'll see a rush from places like New York and Los Angeles out to other places.
The places that lock down the tightest are the places that are going to squeeze the air out of the balloon.
People are going to leave.
I've talked to so many friends in the past week alone who have talked about moving out of LA.
I'm talking about prominent people in the Los Angeles area who have said, this is ridiculous.
They're letting criminals out of jail.
They won't let me go out of my house without a mask.
And then if my house gets robbed, the police show up and tell me they can't do anything.
So, no.
And then we're going to get charged twice in taxes because they're going to have to fill in whatever payroll gap they created because of their crappy fiscal policies.
We're going to get to that in just one second.
First, let's talk about the fact that right now is not a great time to go to the post office, but lots of people sending lots of packages right now.
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All righty.
Well, we're going to get to more of this in just one second.
It is amazing to watch as the entire informational story put out by the media turns out to Turns out to have been a complete lie.
This lie that there is a harsh division between lockdown states and non-lockdown states and that lockdown states were going to benefit, non-lockdown states were all going to die.
It turns out all of that was crap.
It was not informationally driven, which does lead you to question why there are so many politicians who continue to push it.
And the answer, of course, is partisanship.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, got to tell you that it is that time of the week, that special time of the week, when we feature one of our listeners, one of our fans with the Daily Wire Tumblr, the famed leftist-tears Tumblr today.
We feature Tsipora on Twitter, keeping excellent company during these lockdown days in this picture.
An adorable, happy little baby boy is nestled in his rocker, smiling for the camera while holding the world's greatest beverage vessel.
The caption reads, he can't wait to be on the podcast with Uncle Ben.
He's never actually met any family members anyway, so we figured we could include Ben Shapiro.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
We're all family now.
Welcome to the family.
Don't give your mom any trouble.
And now that I'm your uncle, don't give your uncle any trouble either.
Thanks for the pic.
Stay safe up there in New York.
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I can tell you All Access Live gets bizarre.
There were some Chris Matthews Singing Queen last night.
I'll just say that's a thing that happened on All Access Live.
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This week's Sunday Special features Douglas Murray, the great columnist and author from Great Britain, who tells us about how coronavirus is going over in Europe and European perceptions of President Trump.
Here's a little bit of that.
These unbelievable race baiters who pretend they're anti-racist, who pretend that people can find meaning in their life because of their skin pigmentation.
Find meaning in your life, definitely.
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It's a really fun Sunday special.
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So as I say, the media's narrative here, which is that Andrew Cuomo did a great job and Ron DeSantis was a disaster.
And lockdown was a great idea, but not locking down is a terrible idea.
And Sweden is horrible, but states that locked down are doing an amazing, amazing job.
As time progresses, it becomes perfectly obvious that all of this narrative was just bullcrap.
And the fact that there's so many people who are willing to maintain the narrative in the face of different information is astonishing.
And good for Politico for even recognizing that Ron DeSantis has basically been screwed over by the media.
I love the Washington Post editorial today.
Picture of Andrew Cuomo.
It says, You think?
You think?
coronavirus toll in nursing homes justifies extreme measures.
You think?
You think?
Some of us have been saying this since the middle of March.
That guess what?
A vastly disproportionate number of people are dying in nursing homes because this is a disease that targets elderly people with compromised immune systems and people who have pre-existing conditions.
Only now are you beginning to realize, hey wait a second, Andrew Cuomo's a crappy governor and all of his little cute stories with Chris Cuomo don't solve for the problem?
That his state has lost more people than any other state by probably a factor of three at this point?
According to the Washington Post editorial board, residents and staff of nursing homes and other long-term care facilities account for roughly half of one percent of the U.S.
population and more than a third of the COVID-19 deaths.
That justifies extreme measures by federal officials and states.
So far, both have blocked, so they're going to try and blame the feds for the fact that Andrew Cuomo didn't shut down his own nursing homes.
Incredible.
Dr. Deborah Birx said, we really believe that all one million nursing home residents need to be tested within the next two weeks, as well as the staff.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who has ordered twice-weekly testing for nursing home staff in his state, is leading the way.
This is like, what?
What?
How bad is the Washington Post editorial board?
They're portraying Andrew Cuomo, who blew this thing worse than any governor in America, as the hero of the nursing home story.
Yes, I certainly trust these people to make decisions for you and for me.
And more than that, I trust them to provide us unbiased information so that we can make our own decisions.
The frustration is reaching breaking point here.
Dave Portnoy over at Barstool Sports, he put out a video yesterday that got 6 million views.
And I gotta tell you, what he says here is absolutely correct.
Here's Dave Portnoy.
We've done what you've asked us to do.
If you're that scared still of corona, stay inside.
The beds are open.
It doesn't kill everybody.
I get it.
It's not a great option.
There are no great options.
But you can't just decimate the entire economy.
How the f*** is that going to work?
We're staying inside until there's a cure?
When did that become the game?
Who said we're getting a cure?
That's not a guarantee.
So we're just done as humans?
Get the hell out of here.
There's risk.
We're Americans.
You have to take risk.
Okay, this is correct, and he's being ripped up and down by the left yesterday for this.
Explain to me what's inaccurate about this.
Joe Rogan yesterday says, listen, I may have to leave California because this is unlivable.
I can't tell you how many friends I've taken calls from in the last week or two who have said exactly the same thing.
And you know who can afford to leave California?
The people who can afford to leave California.
The people who are getting absolutely jacked are the people who are losing their jobs.
And no matter how many times Eric Garcetti promises you there will be money to fill in your bank account, when all the people who can afford to leave do, ain't gonna be nobody paying those bills.
Here's Joe Rogan.
If California continues to be this restrictive, I don't know if this is a good place to live.
First of all, it's extremely expensive.
The taxes here are ridiculous.
And if they really say that we can't do stand-up until 2022 or something like that, I might jet.
Yeah?
I'm not kidding.
Yeah?
I'm not kidding.
This is silly.
I don't need to be here.
The only reason why I'm here is that I'm close to people like you.
Right.
A lot of my friends live here.
Yeah.
The store is here.
But if they won't let us do the store, but we could do stand-up other places, why would we stay here?
And this is correct.
You are going to see population movements.
People are going to walk with their feet.
That's what's going to happen.
You're going to see a big swell in population in states that treated this thing the way it should be treated, namely in localized fashion, allowing individuals to exercise their freedom.
Isn't that what freedom is?
Recognizing your own risk-reward ratios and then going out and acting on them?
And that doesn't mean that those risk-reward ratios can't, like, there are certain areas where enforcement would be necessary.
So, for example, I don't think that it is out of the realm of possibility in the middle of this pandemic without any real solution if the goal is to slow the spread such that you don't want to spike over the healthcare system for local officials to say, if you are in a place where you're going to be within six feet of others, you should be wearing a face mask.
But I think most people are doing that anyway.
That's my policy.
My policy has been every time I go to the grocery store, I put on a face mask.
Every time I go inside a restaurant to pick up food, I put on a face mask.
Every time I'm in my car by myself, no face mask.
When I'm walking around with my kids on the street, no face mask.
Because why the hell would I wear a face mask when there's nobody within 100 feet of me?
When I'm at the park with my kids, no face mask.
But that's called people making individual risk-reward calculations.
And that's important.
But here's the real agenda here for a lot of people.
And this is where the failures of the media to just provide you information that allow you to make decisions cross streams with the partisan agenda.
And that is when you see Democrats who in open fashion are talking about using the pandemic to radically reshift how American life is going to work for the long haul.
Then it starts to feel like, okay, you guys, it's not even that you're just ignorant and stupid in making these policies that have nothing to do with data.
That you shouting science at me while telling me I need to wear a mask alone in my car, or I need to mask up my four-year-old son when we're out on the street a hundred feet from somebody else.
That's not just you being ignorant or terrible at your job.
It's actually an agenda-driven thing, is when you start saying the agenda out loud.
So AOC always says the quiet part out loud, AOC.
It's one thing that I love about AOC.
People have said, if you could snap your fingers and she wouldn't be on the political scene, would you make AOC go away?
No!
AOC's fantastic.
AOC always says the quiet part out loud, which is really important, because then it reveals the agenda.
So, be illustrious.
Incomparable.
AOC.
The fresh face.
So fresh.
So face.
So mask-y.
AOC, she said yesterday that we need to pay illegal immigrants to stay away from work because, obviously, we should be using taxpayer dollars to support illegal immigrants.
And then she added on, because undocumented workers pay billions more than many corporations do, which is just insane.
Okay, she doesn't know what the hell she's talking about.
She doesn't know how corporate taxes work.
She doesn't understand that when Jeff Bezos When Amazon pays Jeff Bezos, but Jeff Bezos pays money on his income, she doesn't understand how corporate structures work.
So she thinks that corporations, ironically enough, the same people who say corporations are not people for purposes of free speech, treat corporations like people for purposes of taxation.
It doesn't matter to them that if you and your friend organize an LLC and then the profits flow through to you and you pay an income tax, you have now paid tax on the money that flows through the corporation.
She thinks the corporation's like a separate person that goes out for a burger or something.
Here's AOC saying dumb crap about illegal immigrants and why we should pay them.
By the way, they pay taxes.
I say this all the time because people don't know they pay more taxes, more billions of dollars in taxes than many corporations do.
So it just makes sense.
But long term, we need to address health care, housing, wages, and we need to make sure that we do it in a way that's not means tested, where there's all these Swiss holes that people fall through and their problems aren't addressed.
OK, but AOC went even further than this.
She says, listen, not only do we need universal health care, that's just the first step, guys.
Now that we've seen what a pandemic can do, let's just pay everybody.
And not only is everybody a socialist during a pandemic, says AOC, everybody should be a socialist forever.
Now, who's going to pay for this?
She never explains.
If you radically restructure the United States, why would anybody buy our bonds long term?
She never explains.
But here is AOC explaining that she wants to radically reshift how America works.
We are long past the time to guarantee healthcare in the United States.
That's level one.
Because when we get to a point where we're struggling to afford a meal or when we're struggling to feel economic security or material security, it's because all of these things are chipping away at us.
It's healthcare, it's student loans, it's rent, it's the high cost of housing and the high cost of living, and all of that.
It's immigration status.
And so all of this is systemic.
It's all systemic.
Everything is systemic.
It's not that we just got hit by the worst black swan in modern history.
It's all systemic.
And therefore we need to completely overthrow the system.
And then you think I'm going to listen to her about lockdowns?
Or maybe am I going to think that there's another agenda here?
Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley did the same thing yesterday.
They said it's time to cancel student loan debt.
Why the hell is it time to cancel student loan debt?
That's long-term debt you took out.
Why is it time for me to pay for your student loan bills?
Why should I?
Like, why?
I was responsible enough to pay not only my bills, but pay my wife's student loan bills.
I was wise enough to put my kids funds that I can put in a Utah account, right?
So that I'm saving for their college education.
But bottom line, every crisis is an opportunity for folks in the Democratic Party.
And so you're not giving me information.
You're telling me that I can't make an individual decision, but that I'm going to have these dolts making decisions for me.
I think not.
We're about economic recovery.
19, you should care about inflation.
Many folks who still are in the process of getting their unemployment benefits, people who are graduating without any foresight on to what their future looks like.
We need relief bills that put the people first.
And this is a way to put the people first.
By eliminating the debt, by eliminating the worry, and putting money back in their pockets.
Oh, so magically.
Magically, it's just going to appear.
Yeah, these people should definitely set policy.
This is Trump's campaign, by the way.
Trump's campaign, as these lockdowns end, as more Americans recognize that they're going to have to make their own individual risk calculations, Trump's campaign here is actually a fairly strong one.
Now, the Democrats are going to try and campaign on Trump botched this thing.
He did such a terrible job.
But Trump being able to campaign against people who obviously want to restrict your ability to make your own decisions is going to be a strong one.
Here's Trump yesterday saying people would like their freedom back, please.
Great time in Pennsylvania.
It's a tremendous state.
They ought to start thinking about opening it up.
You have a lot of people want their freedom and they'll get their freedom very soon.
And this is right.
If this campaign comes down to Democrats basically saying, you don't get any of the freedom.
We're going to tell you to lock down forever, but we'll sign you a check.
And President Trump saying, you know what?
Most Americans would like to have their freedom back.
And we're talking November.
Guys, it's been fun.
It's the middle of May.
Try this again in six months.
Six months.
You think people are gonna lock down?
People aren't gonna lock down for six more weeks.
It's not going to happen.
So, people in government better get with the program and start recommending policies that are justifiable.
You want people to do responsible things?
Recommend to them justifiable data-driven policy.
Don't recommend to them that they're just out there to strangle grandma.
Because it ain't true.
And the people who are saying it don't have to worry about feeding their kids.
The people who are saying it don't have to worry about losing their life savings in their business.
The people who are saying that are not the ones who are suffering right now.
The people who are most pro-lockdown seem to be the ones who are suffering the least right now.
And that is an eminently ugly way of promoting a lockdown.
Again, most Americans, if they are told right now that their neighbors are going to take care and their neighbors are going to be responsible, I think that the polls would show that most Americans are ready to get back to work and they're ready to get back to work in a responsible fashion.
I don't want to hear any more polls about lockdown versus complete opening.
Nobody's talking about that.
No one.
Not in Texas.
Not in Florida.
Not in South Dakota.
Nowhere.
Alrighty.
Let's get to some things that I hate.
So the entire Democratic candidacy for 2020, the entire Joe Biden candidacy is reliant on the notion that President Trump blew the COVID-19 response.
And this is leading to some rather extraordinary Rather extraordinary messaging from the left.
Okay, so ActBlue, which is a Democratic super PAC, they have an account called BidenWarRoom, just like Trump has TrumpWarRoom, and it's a super PAC outside of the Trump campaign.
Their BidenWarRoom is a super PAC outside of the Biden campaign, and they put out a tweet today that really is full-scale disgusting.
Truly awful.
Okay, it says, nothing would make COVID-19 happier than a vote for Trump.
First of all, COVID-19 does not have an attitude.
COVID-19 is a deadly disease.
Really?
Because I'm pretty sure that he was the one who was trying to shut down travel.
You know who else did that?
And then it says, breaking news, COVID-19 endorses Trump for a second term, provided a sanctuary country for the virus to spread.
Really?
Because I'm pretty sure that he was the one who was trying to shut down travel, created new hotspots by encouraging large gatherings.
You know who else did that?
Andrew Cuomo, Nancy Pelosi, helped virus grow by calling it a hoax when he knew it wasn't.
He never called the virus a hoax.
He said the media coverage was a hoax.
He never said the virus was a hoax.
That is a lie.
It's a four Pinocchio lie from the Washington Post.
My Biden war room is basically saying that the virus endorses President Trump.
That's pretty disgusting.
So your entire campaign, apparently, is going to be that Trump is screwing up the COVID-19 response.
In fact, today, trending on Twitter, was this hashtag, Trump has no plan.
Okay, well, what's your plan?
No one is actually presenting a plan.
All I'm hearing from you is screaming at Trump.
And every time Trump presents a plan, you just yell at him.
By the way, the CDC released a set of guidelines for going back to work.
The guidelines are too restrictive.
The guidelines are too restrictive.
There are guidelines today that say that should you consider opening, will you be consistent with applicable state and local orders?
Are you ready to protect employees at higher risk for severe illness?
If any of those are no, then do not open.
Are the recommended health and safety actions in place?
Encouraging social distancing and enhancing spacing between employees, including physical barriers, changing layout of workspaces, encouraging telework, considering modifying travel and commuting practices.
If the answer to any of these are no, then you have to meet the safeguard first.
And then you have to have an ongoing monitoring system in place.
Developing and implementing procedures to check for signs and symptoms of employees daily upon arrival as feasible.
What the hell does that even mean?
That's not going to work.
They couldn't even do it at the White House.
But, are they putting forth plans?
They're putting forth plans.
It's just that there is no good plan for a pandemic.
There's no good plan for a pandemic.
But that is the idea here from Team Biden.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden literally cannot string a sentence together.
So if I'm supposed to believe that Joe Biden is going to provide the steady, strong leadership that Donald Trump has failed to provide, you're going to need to do better than Joe Biden talking to pre-recorded messages.
He did an interview yesterday where the interviewer played him, it was on MSNBC, with Lawrence O'Donnell.
Lawrence O'Donnell played him a tape of a question.
And because Joe Biden is not with us, He passed away, it seems, several years ago.
Joe Biden tries to answer the caller as though the caller is live on air.
Because he's not with us anymore.
I mean, this is the steady, durable leadership you're looking for.
This guy writes an op-ed every so often going, COVID-19 is bad.
And we're like, oh, he said it's bad.
Wow, amazing.
And then he gets on TV, and the dude doesn't even know when he's talking to a live human being, because he hasn't been one for a while.
Here's Joe Biden.
I want to open it up to our town hall component and get a question from a voter.
This first question, Mr. Vice President, is from a voter in California.
Let's listen to this.
Okay.
Hi, Vice President Biden.
My name is Navid.
I am from San Mateo, California, and thank you so much for allowing me to participate in this town hall with you.
I'm actually thinking about that quote from the famed Irish poet Kierkegaard that you always recite.
Good times, good times.
By the way, yesterday, Biden confused the Paycheck Protection Act with personal protective equipment as well.
I mean, the man is gaffing, like, every few seconds.
It's pretty amazing.
In the meantime, it's going to matter, Lawrence, whether or not between now and then, this president has used his powers and used the organizational ability that the White House has, that the president has, to make sure we have enough PPP, those protective gear, for this second wave.
So if there's going to be that second wave, which is predictable.
And the good news for Joe Biden is that the media will protect him no matter what.
It doesn't matter that he can't string a sentence together.
It doesn't matter that his record has been fairly abysmal.
None of that matters because Joe Biden has the media on his side.
So, for example, Joe Biden yesterday, he was asked specifically about Michael Flynn because it turns out that Joe Biden was one of the people who requested the unmasking of Michael Flynn.
Now, it's not illegal to request the unmasking of somebody if you are in the executive branch.
It is, however, a pretty good indicator that you were involved in the decision-making regarding Michael Flynn.
Here was Joe Biden dodging questions on it yesterday.
Mr. Vice President, what was your involvement in the investigation of Michael Flynn and the FBI investigation of Michael Flynn?
I was never a part or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into Flynn while I was in office, period.
Not one single time.
Okay, nobody said that you had knowledge of the criminal investigation, although it is weird that you were talking with Barack Obama about Flynn's conversation before the DOJ even knew about it, courtesy of the FBI.
Okay, but the good news is, again, the media will carry water for Biden no matter what.
There's a piece in the Daily Beast titled, The New CBS Reporter Driving Democrats and Some of Her Own Colleagues Crazy.
And it's all about the evils of Catherine Herridge.
Because Catherine Herridge, of course, is a reporter for CBS who used to work at Fox News.
And so now there's an entire piece about how she is pushing GOP talking points.
Why?
Because that's exactly what the Biden campaign said yesterday.
It's incredible to watch as a message is created inside the Biden campaign, and then promptly repeated by members of the mainstream media.
Even if it's a message about how other members of the media are bad.
Here's another example.
New York Times has a piece today by Nick Corisanti and Maggie Haberman.
And here's what it says.
The first wave of long-promised negative ads from the Trump campaign began this week in caustic form, flooding Facebook pages and television screens in swing states with harsh messages that make unfounded inferences about Joseph Biden's mental state.
I don't think you have to make an unfounded inference about his mental state.
All you got to do is watch the man for more than six minutes and paint the presumptive Democratic nominee as too friendly to the Chinese government.
In May alone, the Trump campaign has spent or reserved about $7 million on television airtime in local markets.
Fueling negative ads that repeat xenophobic tropes regarding the Chinese origin of the coronavirus.
He's actually just blatantly labeling Trump a racist on the basis that he points out that this virus came from China.
Just pick up that water and carry it, man.
This is Jack and Joe go up the hill carrying water for Joe Biden.
That is impressive stuff.
Impressive stuff from the New York Times.
I definitely trust these people.
Definitely, definitely trust these people.
The Biden campaign needs all the help it can get, because this campaign is a disaster area.
And it's going to be even more of a disaster area if Joe Biden continues to message that the country is supposed to stay shut down until the end of time.
Okay, time for one more quick thing that I hate.
So, remember that time when the ACLU stood for the idea that you have civil rights no matter your political perspective?
Remember that time when they stood for the idea that people had a right to due process and a right to free speech?
Not anymore.
I'm old enough to remember when the ACLU was sort of the de facto organization for, I may disagree with what you say, but you have every right to say it.
Now, the ACLU's message is, if we don't like you, then we are going to sue you.
So they've just become like every other left-wing legal agitprop association.
Here's the latest indicator.
According to NBC News, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's revised federal guidelines on how sexual assault allegations should be handled on college and K-12 campuses are the target of a federal lawsuit filed Thursday, claiming that the changes would inflict significant harm on victims and dramatically undermine their civil rights.
The suit, filed on behalf of four advocacy groups for people who have been sexually assaulted, is the first that seeks to block the Education Department's new provisions before they go into effect on August 14th.
The rules championed by DeVos effectively bolster the rights of due process for those accused of sexual assault and harassment, allowing for live hearings and cross-examinations.
It's what agency officials say was lacking during the Obama administration to protect all students under Title IX.
And by the way, federal courts have said the same.
Federal courts have said that the Obama-era rules on Title IX, they basically said if you're accused, you can't confront your accuser, you can't cross-examine your accuser, you have to take the allegations as factually true.
That those rules did not meet with the requirements of due process.
So Betsy DeVos changed the rules to meet with the requirements of due process.
Now, the ACLU is filing a lawsuit against due process.
The suit, filed in the U.S.
District Court in Maryland by the ACLU and Strook Strook & Levin, LLP, says this new federal effort to weaken Title IX makes it more difficult for victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault to continue their educations and needlessly comes amid a global pandemic.
So the ACLU has now completely shifted its perspective.
The suit, according to Rhea Tabakomar, director of the ACLU Women's Rights Project, challenges Title IX regulations that will redefine sexual misconduct in narrower terms, as misconduct so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies a person equal access to the school's education program or activity.
Tabakomar argued it created a double standard for how schools must treat sexual discrimination complaints compared to how they handle allegations of racial, national origin, and disability discrimination.
Well actually no, that's just what sexual harassment law has always been.
Severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.
It can't just be, you perceived something as bad and now we ban students.
But the key here is not even the argument, because the argument's bad.
The key here is that the ACLU is pursuing this argument, which just demonstrates how the left's perspective on rights themselves has shifted.
It used to be that the left in America relied on the framework of rights in order to make its arguments.
So the ACLU used to say, listen, we may not like Nazis marching through Skokie, but American rights mean that sometimes you have to just Suck it up and understand that people who suck have the same rights that you do, and they will exercise them in ways you don't like.
But so long as they're not punching you in the face, that is not a violation of your rights.
The ACLU used to stand up for the proposition that rights were non-discriminatory.
That rights themselves were a good that everybody had.
Inalienable rights.
The ACLU agreed with the right on this.
And with libertarians on this.
Now the ACLU has bought into the left-wing trope that rights are inherently unequal.
That the right to free speech is unequal and bad.
Why?
Because the right to free speech might offend some people.
Because there are more powerful people and less powerful people, and so if everyone has the right to free speech, the people who are most likely to benefit from the right to free speech are the people who are the most powerful.
And so now the ACLU has bought into what Professor Erbarmar-Cuse once suggested was an idea of repressive tolerance.
In order for true free speech to flourish, we have to silence the most powerful members of society so that everybody else gets a chance to talk.
It's this bizarre version of rights that you see sort of imitated.
By crazy people like Sarai Rao when she will have white privilege sessions at people's dining room tables and tell the white people to shut up and people will pay her for this privilege.
Because she'll say, well, you don't get to talk because of your privilege.
This is what you see on college campuses a lot.
This idea that any right that is equally applied can never actually be equal.
It is actually an application of inequality and a deepening of inequality.
Same thing with economic rights.
If we say you have property rights, that only helps people who are more rich.
That only helps people with property.
True property rights would be removing rights to property for people who are more powerful and richer, and giving them to people who have less power and are poorer.
Now understand that's no longer a right.
That is now a redistributive Coercive tactic.
But that's what the ACLU is now standing for.
They're basically saying due process should be redistributed.
Due process, which used to be a right for everybody.
Whether you were rich or poor, you got due process.
Whether you were black or white, you got due process.
This is what the ACLU used to stand for.
Male or female, due process.
Now the ACLU says, if we have due process, it could hurt women who have to confront their accuser.
And therefore, we need to have no due process for men, but yes, due process for women.
This is the end of any semblance of an American polity.
You cannot have a country where the rights do not equally apply.
You cannot have a country where we decide how the law applies based on race, sex, or class.
If you do that, it's no longer law.
Now it is just an arbitrary metric of which groups are in power politically.
By the way, it was really bad when people used to apply law unequally.
I think we were all in agreement on that, correct?
Jim Crow was evil.
Law is applied unequally to men and women.
Evil.
And yet now you have the ACLU openly stumping for that.
It's pretty incredible.
And it demonstrates the mentality shift that has happened in this country.
I talk about all this at length in my new book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps, that's going to be coming out in the end of July.
But it is, again, indicative of a mindset shift that is incredibly dangerous for the future of the country.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with two additional hours of content.
Otherwise, we'll see you here Monday.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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