Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 22, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:02:52

You Ain't Black If You Don't Vote Biden? | Ep. 1017

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	An American company announces the possibility of millions of doses of vaccine by October.
	Stupid controversies break out when President Trump visits Michigan.
	And Joe Biden tells black voters that they aren't actually black unless they vote for Joe Biden.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
	You have a right to privacy protected at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
	Well, before we get into the controversies of the day, and there are many controversies of the day.
	First, I want to just give a quick shout out to our advertisers.
	They keep the show going.
	We really appreciate them.
	One of our brand new advertisers is a group that helps you invest in ways that you might not have thought that you could invest.
	It is a way that a lot of people have gotten very well.
	That is investing in companies at the startup phase.
	It's a company called Our Crowd, and they help you invest in the important work that Startup companies are doing.
	They've made it so that in creditor investors can join with them at our crowd and help crowdsource investing for a lot of different people.
	So our crowd has a crowdsource investing platform.
	They give accredited investors access to early stage funding rounds in some of the most promising companies in the world.
	They help you invest before the companies go public.
	So you're really getting in on the ground floor with a lot of this stuff.
	Our Crowd companies have been bought by Nike, Oracle, Uber, Comcast, Intel, Snap, and more.
	You can set up an Our Crowd account for free and invest in pre-IPO companies, which is a great way to get started in investing alongside professional venture capitalists.
	One of the companies, for example, that Our Crowd is now representing is a company called Migvax.
	Migvax has shared that they were uniquely poised to develop a COVID-19 vaccine because they spent the last four years developing similar and successful avian vaccines.
	When coronavirus surfaced, MigVax quickly pivoted to developing a COVID-19 vaccine.
	They're now in preclinical trials and working quickly to produce an effective vaccine.
	The vaccine is oral and doesn't include the virus itself, so it should be easier to administer and safer to produce.
	And MigVax is developing more than a single vaccine.
	It's designed to be a vaccine platform, so it allows for fast adaptation of new vaccines in the future.
	So OurCrowd is the company that is helping to bring the possibility of crowdsourced investment in pre-IPO companies like MigVax.
	You should go check them out right now.
	By the way, the folks who run it are people who I know really well.
	Like I've known since I was a child, so I really do trust them.
	Learn more about investing in companies like MigVax at ourcrowd.com slash Shapiro.
	Setting up your account is free.
	Get started right now at ourcrowd.com slash Shapiro.
	That's O-U-R-C-R-O-W-D, rcrowd.com slash Shapiro.
	And get into investing on the ground floor in promising new companies, rcrowd.com slash Shapiro.
	Go check them out right now.
	Okay, so we're going to get to the big controversy of the day in just a moment.
	That controversy of the day being Joe Biden deciding that basically he's just going to let it all hang out.
	He's now going to say that you're not a black American unless you vote for Joe Biden, which is a pretty incredible pitch.
	Only a Democrat, theoretically, could get away with that.
	But first, let's talk about a couple of things that actually really matter.
	So right now, the polls are showing some pretty significant movement in the direction of reopening.
	So just a couple of weeks ago, the overwhelming majority of the American public was not in favor of reopening.
	And that was largely due to media coverage of COVID-19, the suggestion that reopening would inevitably lead to extraordinary levels of death and doom that simply would not occur if we just continued to lock down, presumably, until forever.
	And the problem was, of course, that that conflicted with the original flatten the curve message, which was, we are going to lock you down until we have made it so that the system will not be overwhelmed, and then we'll let you out again.
	Well, right now, nearly 46% of Americans, according to a new poll by Politico and the Harvard T.H.
	Chan School of Public Health, Nearly half of Americans believe their state's governor should allow non-essential businesses to be open in their state in the next month to reduce financial difficulties for businesses and people.
	About half think non-essential businesses in their state, 51%, should be closed until the spread of COVID-19 has been contained.
	But again, that is very vague because who the hell knows what that means?
	The spread of COVID-19 has been contained.
	I mean, by the way, those two things are not in conflict.
	Containment is a pretty malleable term right there.
	61% of Republicans believe their state's governors should allow non-essential businesses to be open.
	More than two-thirds of Democrats, 69%, think such businesses should be closed until the spread of the virus is contained.
	6 in 10 owners and managers of small or medium-sized businesses, 60%.
	favor non-essential businesses being open in their state.
	In addition, of those whose households have experienced forms of employment loss since the start of COVID-19 outbreak, 52% favor businesses being open in the next month.
	In contrast, a majority of those whose households have not experienced employment loss favor non-essential businesses remaining closed.
	So in other words, the people who want to reopen are people who own businesses and people who work at businesses that are closed right now.
	Those are the numbers.
	So it is not a bunch of elites sitting there and being like, we just want people who are poorer to die.
	That is not a thing.
	Instead, what is happening is pretty obviously something different, which is if you're unable to work, if you've lost your job, you would like to get back to work.
	And the opinions are changing because what we have seen is that some states are reopening and they are not experiencing wild upticks in the number of deaths or infections in their states.
	In fact, one of the things that we have seen is across the country a flattening when it comes to the number of positive tests compared to the number of tests being taken.
	The percentage of positive tests is actually continuing to go down.
	The daily deaths, by the way, are also continuing to go down in the United States.
	We have actually declined rather markedly since we were in the middle of April.
	So that is good news.
	By the way, hospital resource use has been in significant decline and never hit the high numbers.
	By the way, it is also worth noting that there is now a lot of retrospective study of the Imperial College model.
	And it turns out that the data were simply a mess, that the coding was an absolute mess.
	And that was used as the basis for locking down entire countries, essentially.
	The UK Telegraph reported just a few weeks ago, well, actually a few days ago, that COVID-19 modeling that sent Britain into lockdown, shutting the economy and leaving millions unemployed, has been slammed by a series of experts.
	Professor Neil Ferguson's computer coding was derided as, quote, totally unreliable by leading figures, who warned it was something you wouldn't stake your life on.
	The model, credited with forcing the government to make a U-turn and introduce a nationwide lockdown, is, quote, a buggy mess that looks more like a bowl of angel hair pasta than a finely tuned piece of programming, said David Richards, co-founder of British data technology company WANdisco.
	He said, in our commercial reality, we would fire anyone for developing code like this, and any business that relied on it to produce software for sale would likely go bust.
	So that was the model that people were using to shut down entire countries.
	So well done everybody.
	Now that doesn't mean that there isn't going to be an uptick in cases, maybe an uptick in deaths.
	It also doesn't mean that the summer is necessarily going to kill this off.
	What we have seen is that it is unclear whether this is heat dependent, right?
	India is seeing a fairly large uptick in cases.
	Brazil obviously is a warm place and they've seen tremendous levels of caseload and death.
	What is clear is that as people are going out, it's not spreading as fast as people thought it would.
	And a large part of that is because when you are out and about and you're not in enclosed spaces, you're not in enclosed spaces.
	And that's really how this thing passes.
	You're right up next to somebody for 10, 15 minutes.
	You're talking with them.
	There's not a lot of air circulation.
	If you're outside, the chances of you getting this are really, really low.
	In fact, there was that early study from China that showed that of a thousand cases in China, like two had come from people talking outside and they were in really close proximity to one another.
	So all of that is good news.
	Can we be cautiously optimistic?
	Are we allowed to do that?
	Or are we supposed to be just downbeat all the time?
	If you watch the media, obviously, as we discussed yesterday, they're urging you to be downbeat nearly all the time.
	But that is not a good idea.
	I mean, we should be upbeat when the evidence warrants being upbeat.
	And the evidence is warranting us being at least cautiously optimistic so long as we continue to engage in the responsible activities of social distancing, I'm not one of the people who says you should run out willy-nilly in the streets and not wear a mask if you're indoors with other people and make them feel uncomfortable, mostly, because that is what happens, or if you're around people who are vulnerable.
	However, I'm also not a person who's going to say you can't associate with other people.
	My wife and I, the other day, we went over to a couple's house that we know.
	We sat in their backyard.
	We socially distanced from them.
	It was delightful.
	You can actually see other human beings.
	It's alright.
	You can do it.
	Meanwhile, in other good news, the New York Times is reporting that the U.S.
	says it will provide up to $1.2 billion to a drug company to develop a vaccine from an Oxford lab.
	The U.S.
	Department of Health and Human Services said on Thursday it would provide up to $1.2 billion to the drug company AstraZeneca.
	to develop a potential coronavirus vaccine from a laboratory at Oxford.
	The deal with AstraZeneca is the fourth vaccine research agreement the department has disclosed, by far the largest.
	The money will pay for a clinical trial of the potential vaccine in the United States this summer with about 30,000 volunteers.
	We're going to have some information really, really fast on whether this thing works.
	The HHS statement said the agency and AstraZeneca are, quote, collaborating to make available at least 300 million doses and projected the first doses could be available as early as October, which would be extraordinary.
	Extraordinary.
	I mean, from the time of the development of vaccine to distribution of the vaccine inside of six months, that'd be absolutely incredible.
	It would be a miracle of science.
	It really would be.
	And being able to reopen the economy by October because vaccinations are available will be an unbelievable thing.
	Most public health experts and scientists think a viable vaccine would probably not be available until sometime next year at the earliest.
	But AstraZeneca is saying, no, we're actually moving toward millions of doses by October.
	Assuming that the vaccine shows safety and to a certain extent efficacy, we will start large clinical trials in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world over the summer period in June, July.
	Equally, as we speak, we're beefing up our manufacturing capabilities and we are confident that we will be able to deliver 100 million doses in October.
	Assuming of course that the vaccine is working.
	Okay, that would be excellent news.
	All of this would be excellent news.
	So, it's time for some cautious optimism.
	This is a very, very good thing.
	In some bad news, we'll tell you, it's so funny, there are all these people who are out there saying, you're a science denier.
	Science denier!
	If you believe that we should end lockdowns and that we should go back in cautious fashion, you're a science denier.
	You just want to kill people.
	Wait until I tell you about a poll of Americans on what they will do if President Trump touts a vaccine.
	Because you want to talk about science denial?
	I'll tell you about that in just one second.
	First, let's talk about something amazing.
	So I've been talking about my Helix Sleep Mattress for a really long time, but Helix has now gone beyond the boudoir and they started making sofas.
	They just launched a brand new company.
	It's called Allform.
	They are making premium customizable sofas and chairs shipped directly to your door.
	So we all love our sofa, right?
	We all love our couch.
	We spend an enormous amount of time on our sofa and our couch.
	Why would you not get a fantastic sofa or couch shipped directly to your door?
	And these things are great.
	My wife and I just ordered one.
	We cannot wait to sit on it.
	So what makes an all-form sofa really cool?
	For starters, it is the easiest way you can customize a sofa using premium materials at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores.
	You can pick your fabric, the sofa color, the color of the legs, the sofa size, the shape, to make sure it's perfect for you and your home.
	They've got armchairs and loveseats, all the way up to an eight-seat sectional.
	So there's something for everyone.
	And you can always start small and then buy more seats later on if you want your Allform sofa to grow and change when you move.
	So it really is customizable.
	It's like you kind of bolt on more, more sofa.
	It's awesome.
	Allform sofas are also delivered directly to your home with fast, free shipping.
	In the past, if you wanted to order a sofa, it could take weeks or months to arrive.
	Allform takes three to seven days to arrive in the mail.
	You can assemble it yourself in just a few minutes with no tools, which is fantastic because that is my least favorite thing is you go to one of these big box stores and then it takes you three hours to assemble the sofa that you just bought.
	Honestly, it's so easy to do this.
	I have an all-form sofa chair.
	I picked out a three-seat sofa with the chaise and the sand color with the expresso legs.
	It looks great.
	And I'll be honest, I didn't pick it.
	My wife did because she does all the furniture picking in her house.
	She was super impressed with the entire process.
	It really is easy.
	They also have a forever warranty, like literally forever.
	I mean, right now, have you ever appreciated your couch more?
	Well, you're definitely going to appreciate it when you use Allform.com slash Ben.
	Find your perfect sofa today.
	Check out Allform.com slash Ben.
	Allform is offering 20% off all orders for our listeners at Allform.com slash Ben.
	And that's Allform.com slash Ben.
	You're going to love it.
	It really is fantastic.
	I cannot wait to sit on my Allform sofa.
	Allform.com slash Ben, and you get 20% off all orders right now.
	That is a solid, solid deal.
	Okay, so meanwhile, when we talk about science denial, when we talk about people who are undermining the science, there's a new poll from Reuters Ipsos, and it found that 36% of Americans say they will be less likely to take an eventual coronavirus vaccine if President Trump vouches for its safety.
	So, if Fauci gets up there and says, this thing's safe, and then Trump gets up there and says, it is, it's unbelievably safe, people are like, I'm not taking it anymore.
	I don't know what to tell you.
	If you are making your medical decisions based on what President Trump says, either for or against, this is because you are being a dum-dum.
	You should listen to your doctor.
	And if your doctor tells you that a vaccine is safe, then you should listen to your doctor.
	The survey found less than two-thirds of Americans overall said they were very or somewhat interested in a vaccine for COVID-19, which Reuters points out falls well short of the 70% of Americans who would need to be immune through a vaccine or prior infection in order to achieve herd immunity.
	Nearly one in five Republicans said they have no interest in a vaccine.
	That's more than twice the proportion of Democrats who said the same because there are a lot of anti-vaccine activists inside the Republican community because they don't like government centralization or because they don't trust scientists.
	Whatever it is, that's idiotic.
	Vaccines are useful.
	Obviously, you want to wait to find out whether the thing is safe.
	You want to wait to see who attests to the safety of the vaccine.
	We have had instances in American history, like in the 1970s with Gerald Ford pushing out a vaccine that actually was not perfectly safe.
	You want to make sure the thing is safe because we are rushing forward with it.
	And also, you want to calculate whether your chances as a young person are better or worse if you get the vaccine than if you actually get COVID-19.
	But, in reality, we do need lots and lots of people to take this vaccine.
	Will I be taking the vaccine?
	You bet your ass I'll be taking the vaccine.
	If the thing is safe, of course I'll take the vaccine.
	I'm a big proponent of vaccinations.
	But it is hilarious to me that so many Democrats are going to base their opinion of a vaccine on whether President Trump likes it or not.
	This suggests that you're doing life wrong.
	Hey, meanwhile, speaking of doing life wrong, the continued conversation over the economy, it continues to be unbelievably stupid.
	Because many members of the media have this narrative and they just will not let go of it.
	Paul Krugman, who will just hang on to a narrative like a dog with a bone.
	It's truly incredible.
	This is a man who has the capacity for nuanced thinking.
	I'm just gonna read you the last two titles of his last two columns, Paul Krugman, over at the New York Times.
	One is, we should help workers, not kill them.
	I feel like there's a third choice where we help them and also don't kill them.
	On the one hand, I would love to help workers.
	On the other hand, I don't want to kill them.
	So I'm confused by your binary.
	Were those the two choices?
	Helping workers and killing them?
	I feel like there's a third way where we're helping them and also not killing them by letting them go back to work safely and securely.
	That was title one.
	Today's nuanced column from Paul Krugman is how many will die for the Dow?
	Because now he's just suggesting that if you want to go back to work... By the way, again, that poll from Politico shows that 52% of people who have lost a job want to go back to work.
	And by the way, as the checks start to run out from the federal government, more people are going to want to go back to work.
	And as the prices start to dive in certain areas and rise in others, people are going to want to go back to work.
	But now, according to Paul Krugman, if you want people to gradually and safely go back to work, it's because you want to kill people.
	This narrative, they just will not let go of it.
	It's incredible.
	It's incredible.
	The evidence does not bear out the narrative.
	It doesn't matter.
	Paul Krugman is going to hang on to this sucker.
	He is a terrier in a pant legger.
	It's unbelievable.
	He says, Trump has abandoned his original strategy.
	They won't say this explicitly, and they're throwing up various disingenuous explanations for what they're doing, but their basic position is that thousands of Americans must die for the Dow.
	Really, why is that my strategy?
	That thousands of Americans must die for the Dow?
	Am I telling anybody they have to go back to work?
	Am I telling everybody that they need to leave their homes?
	Have I not stated on this program repeatedly that if you have a pre-existing condition, or if you are vulnerable, That is not saying that people should die.
	That is saying that we all make risk calculations in public policy.
	Paul Krugman still clings to this notion that you never have to make a risk calculation in public policy.
	Instead, you can just pay people to stay home forever.
	He's doing this because he's pushing against the idea that we should pay people's unemployment for more than their salary is worth through the end of the year.
	He says, don't worry about incurring debt.
	He says, that's fine.
	He says, no, this isn't like a real scientific thing.
	Weird, because all of Europe is also reopening.
	So is he yelling at the Europeans for wanting to raise the Dow Jones Industrial Average, or is he just a liar?
	This stuff is so irritating and so unbelievably stupid.
	And when people say that they are worried about blowing out the spending, that it leads to waste and fraud, listen, we all understand it's an emergency situation.
	We're all embracing policies that we didn't like five minutes ago.
	We get it.
	But to pretend there are no costs and benefits in analyzing risk portfolios and profiles is idiotic.
	We'll get to all this in just one second.
	And then we'll get to the Trump-Biden race, which is beginning to heat up.
	The media really putting their thumb on the scale naturally, naturally.
	You knew this was coming.
	We'll get to that momentarily.
	First, let us talk about the fact that life is incredibly risky.
	And right now, you know, life is throwing people a lot of unexpected curveballs.
	The good news is that you can insure against unexpected curveballs.
	And this is why you ought to go check out Policy Genius right now.
	Policy Genius is an insurance marketplace.
	There's a giant demand for life insurance right now.
	So if you're looking to get life insurance, here's how they can help.
	PolicyGenius will compare quotes from the top life insurance companies all in one place.
	It takes just a few minutes to compare quotes from the top insurers and find your best price.
	This doesn't just save a lot of legwork.
	You could save $1,500 or more per year by using PolicyGenius to compare life insurance policies.
	Once you apply, the PolicyGenius team will handle all the paperwork and the red tape for free.
	They're in contact with the life insurance companies every day, monitoring developments, helping customers navigate every step.
	There really is no reason to wait when it comes to life insurance.
	You just get it taken care of now, you don't have to think about it anymore, and you've done the responsible thing for your family and for yourself.
	So, if you're one of many people looking to buy life insurance, go check out PolicyGenius.
	They also do disability and auto and home insurance, all sorts of insurance over at PolicyGenius.
	PolicyGenius will find you the best rate, handle the process from soup to nuts.
	You can stop worrying about life insurance and get back to your daily life.
	Go check out PolicyGenius.com right now.
	That's PolicyGenius.
	So contrast the perspective of Paul Krugman with the perspective of Alex Azar, who is the US Secretary of Health and Human Services.
	And he points out, the sacrifices Americans have made through social distancing have helped slow down the spread of the virus and save lives.
	Moving forward, we need to confront the misconception that going back to normal life just means balancing the health risks of reopening against the economic costs of aggressive social distancing.
	Returning to normal isn't about balancing health versus the economy.
	It's about balancing health versus health.
	The health risks of COVID-19, balanced against the health, social, and economic costs of keeping main streets across the United States closed for business.
	Getting this balance right isn't simple.
	It will look different for every state, business, and family.
	The Trump administration is committed to helping each state and all Americans have the information and tools they need to safely reopen.
	And he is correct about this.
	Again, this is obviously a more nuanced position than, you want to reopen?
	It's because you want grandma to die.
	Idiots like Paul Krugman are going to have to explain why it is then that Gavin Newsom is reopening, why it is then that Andrew Cuomo is reopening.
	Alex Azar says, The economic crisis brought on by the virus is a silent killer.
	Estimates suggest that each 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate translates into a 1% increase in suicide deaths and a more than 3% increase in opioid deaths, which means this virus-induced recession will likely cause tens of thousands of excess deaths.
	One study of the 1982 recession found that Americans who faced higher unemployment suffered approximately 40,000 excess deaths by age 65, as well as more divorces and having fewer children.
	Shortening this economic crisis through a safe reopening could save thousands of lives.
	Meanwhile, at a time of social stress, states are seeing a decline in reports of child maltreatment, which is likely going unreported because children are isolated from teachers and others who keep an eye on the vulnerable.
	The COVID-19 response has also restricted access to health care.
	Data suggests the number of Americans receiving important preventative services are down significantly.
	Mammograms are down 87%.
	Colonoscopies are down 90%.
	More than 1.7 million new cancer cases are diagnosed per year in the United States.
	If we see an 80% drop in cancer cases identified approximately, we could already have 200,000 or more undiagnosed cancer cases as a result.
	Breast cancer surgeries are down approximately two-thirds since January.
	Vaccine administrations were down 60% from early January to mid-March, which means you could see a measles outbreak in the fall.
	All of this stuff is really, really bad.
	And you have to balance all of this.
	These are needs you have to balance.
	There are reports from California that there are California doctors who are now saying that in their areas they are seeing more deaths by suicide than they are from COVID-19.
	Dr. Michael DuBois-Blanc of John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, said that the numbers are unprecedented.
	He said he's seen his year worth of suicides in the last four weeks alone.
	He says, I think this was originally put in place to flatten the curve and make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients.
	We have resources to do that.
	Our other community health is suffering.
	Again, I talk to people in the medical industry literally every day.
	They're sitting at their desks doing nothing because people are not coming into the hospitals for the care that they need because they were told that they weren't supposed to come and stay home if you can.
	Well, now it turns out that hospitals are firing people in the middle of a pandemic.
	It's incredible.
	Meanwhile, it turns out that over in Washington State, a fraud network siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars off of the unemployment funds.
	So you can do this for a little while.
	You can do the pour money into the hose for a little while.
	But pretty quickly, it turns into a fraud program.
	Pretty quickly, it becomes obvious how much money is being wasted.
	And pretty quickly, it becomes obvious that government is not a substitute for having a job and trusting your neighbors to be responsible citizens.
	Officials confirmed this fraud on the same day the federal government reported another 2.4 million American workers filing for jobless benefits this week.
	The total is a staggering 38.6 million people have filed for jobless benefits in the last nine weeks alone, which is totally insane.
	Unprecedented in American history.
	The Labor Department has found that a large majority of laid-off workers, according to the New York Times, expect their joblessness to be temporary, but there's growing concern among economists that many jobs will never come back.
	Nicholas Bloom, economist at Stanford, he said, I hate to say it, this is going to take longer and look grimmer than we thought.
	This is why it's actually important to reopen the economy as fast as possible.
	One of the reasons it's really important to do that as fast as possible is specifically because you need to let the market iron out all of the inefficiencies in the market.
	As we move into a new world, we are going to have to figure out exactly how restaurants cope.
	Restaurants, for example, the market does help create a feedback loop of what is needed.
	So right now, commercial real estate is getting devastated, obviously, because why would you rent commercial real estate when you can't go into the office?
	But let's say that you're a restaurant.
	You might actually need more commercial real estate.
	One of the reasons you might need more commercial real estate is you knock down the wall between your little storefront and the storefront next to you, and suddenly you can actually fit the number of people you need to fit in there with the social distancing.
	In other words, getting back to the real world and letting people make decisions about their own economic livelihood is going to be necessary in order to see an uptick in the economy.
	Centralized government bureaucracy and pouring money into the economy at the same time you're telling companies whether they can and cannot open is a recipe for disaster.
	More and more Americans are realizing this.
	And that's a good thing.
	I mean, I think that that is good.
	It means that Americans are zealous about their freedoms.
	They should be zealous about their freedoms.
	It's a very, very important thing.
	By the way, this is President Trump's pitch.
	So, President Trump was in Michigan yesterday, and he said, listen, Americans want to go back to work.
	He is correct about this.
	By the polling data, we're about evenly split, but among Americans who have a job and just lost one, a majority do want to go back to work, and that's going to increase over time.
	It is not going to decrease over time.
	The momentum for reopening is obvious.
	It is clear.
	We are moving toward reopening, and that's a good thing.
	Here was President Trump yesterday at the Ford factory in Michigan.
	There's a tremendous pent-up demand, and that includes for your cars.
	Americans who need and want to return to work should not be vilified.
	They should be supported.
	Unlike many politicians and journalists, for those who earn a living with their own two hands, working remotely is just not an option.
	You don't have the option of doing that.
	Okay, so he is right about that.
	He's correct.
	I mean, the people who are being disproportionately hit by this thing are blue-collar, low-income workers.
	Those are the people whose jobs are disappearing.
	And a government check is not a substitute for a job.
	It is not a substitute for being involved in the creation of products and services for other people to consume.
	It's just not.
	Jobs actually do provide a level of meaning that a government check does not.
	This is one of the things that universal basic income will never solve.
	Universal basic income?
	The idea is that if we give you a universal basic income, you won't have to take a job you don't want to, and you'll be able to sit there and create art all day.
	Question, how much art have people been creating during quarantine?
	Really?
	Or how much have people actually been engaging and just sitting around watching TV?
	I think these stats are pretty telling, actually.
	Okay, meanwhile, we're gonna get to the Trump controversies in Michigan, and then we'll get to the controversy that really should be, okay, the big controversy of the day.
	And that is Joe Biden.
	And the 2020 election, the question is, is it a referendum on Biden or is it a referendum on Trump?
	So far, it's been a referendum on Trump, but it could easily turn into a referendum on Joe Biden.
	We'll get to that in just one moment.
	First, let's talk about the fact that as we transition back into an economy that is free and open, as we move into a new world of different demand and supply curves, well, people are going to need jobs and people are going to need employees.
	Thank God there's a company like ZipRecruiter out there helping you find the job that you need and helping you find the employees that you need if you are an employer.
	If you're looking for a job, ZipRecruiter is working with you to find the right job faster.
	They are dedicated to helping you get hired.
	From caretaking, to delivering food and goods, to building medical facilities, supplying protective equipment, and so much more.
	In fact, ZipRecruiter's app will send you up-to-date job openings so you can be one of the first to apply.
	If you're actively hiring, ZipRecruiter will invite candidates to apply to your most urgent roles, making it faster and easier to reach the people you need.
	By connecting people who need jobs and companies that need people, ZipRecruiter is working with all of us so we can just keep moving forward.
	That is what is important right now.
	ZipRecruiter is making it happen for you.
	They're also making it possible for me to get rid of my useless employees and get new employees.
	Never has there been a better time to shop if you are an employer.
	Right now, let's all work together at ZipRecruiter.com slash work together.
	That is ZipRecruiter.com slash work together.
	Go check them out right now.
	They're doing really important work and more importantly, they're helping you find really important work.
	Okay, so President Trump was in Michigan yesterday and this created the opportunity for the media to go nuts on President Trump in a series of really, really dumb controversies.
	Like a bunch of really dumb controversies.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden was literally saying this morning in an interview that you're not black if you don't vote for him.
	And the media will gloss over that, like, immediately.
	The differential way in which controversies are treated by the media is an incredible thing.
	And I spend a lot of time criticizing the media.
	That is because the media are the filter through which you see information.
	One of the things we do on this show is provide a different filter through which you see information.
	I'm not going to say there's no filter.
	There is.
	I'm the filter.
	But I at least try to bring to attention things that the media are going to downplay as opposed to the things that they play up.
	So here's a perfect example.
	Last night, President Trump, he spoke in Michigan.
	In the middle of his speech, he started talking about the Ford family.
	And he started talking about the fact that the board of Ford still has people who are from the Ford family sitting on it.
	And he praises the, quote-unquote, Ford bloodlines.
	And what he's pointing out is that the Ford company was founded by Henry Ford, who is one of the most iconic American industrial figures in human history.
	One of the most iconic industrial figures in history.
	Literally, the Ford production process became the basis for a certain philosophy of business.
	It became the basis, both good and bad, for a certain philosophy of how human beings should interact.
	None of that is to say that Henry Ford himself was a wonderful, wonderful dude.
	In terms of his antisemitism, he brutally was not.
	I've talked about this on the show, like four days ago I referred to this on the show before this controversy blew up, right?
	I mean, I talked about the fact that Henry Ford was actually a vicious antisemite who published Do you think that's what Trump is referring to when he talks about the Ford bloodline here?
	newspapers from like 1920 to 1927, was sued for libel and had to shut down the newspaper, then received an award from the Nazi government in 1938.
	So Henry Ford was a vicious, horrible anti-Semite.
	He hated Jews.
	He thought the Jews formed a world conspiracy against him and all the rest.
	Do you think that's what Trump is referring to when he talks about the Ford bloodline here?
	So Trump says this about the Ford family, and everybody immediately jumps to, he's endorsing Ford's anti-Semitism and genetic eugenic views.
	Come on.
	This is so silly.
	Here is Trump yesterday.
	The company founded by a man named Henry Ford.
	Good bloodlines.
	Good bloodlines.
	If you believe in that stuff, you got good blood.
	They teamed up with the company founded by Thomas Edison.
	That's General Electric.
	It's good stuff.
	That's good stuff.
	And you put it all together.
	They're all looking down right now and they'd be very proud of what they see.
	This is, well, I mean, okay, so, is that a smart thing to say?
	Well, if you had historical awareness, it wouldn't be a particularly smart thing to say.
	But when he's talking about, like, the bloodlines of the company, or the bloodlines of your family, if it turns out that your grandfather was present, you say, the Roosevelt family, that's a hell of a bloodline right there.
	If you say the Kennedy family, that's a hell of a bloodline.
	And then somebody goes, oh, you mean Joseph Kennedy, that vicious anti-Semite?
	He was a vicious anti-Semite, Joseph Kennedy.
	Right?
	Then people would be like, that's not what he's talking about.
	Do you really think that he's referring to Henry Ford's antisemitism there?
	That he's dog whistling to the alt-right when he refers to the Ford bloodlines?
	Of course not.
	This blew up on social media last night, obviously because Trump's a racist and we have to impute racism rather than ignorance to him.
	Again, there's a very simple solution to Trump saying dumb things.
	And that is, the man says dumb things.
	He doesn't know anything about history.
	I have friends who have been to events where Trump has literally said, I've written more books than I have read.
	Donald Trump is not a master of American history.
	He is not fluent in American history.
	He doesn't know things.
	Okay, so the imputation of anti-Semitism to him, first of all, based on he's the most pro-Israel president in American history, he's the most pro-Jewish president probably in American history, given the fact that he has promulgated executive orders that have tried to protect Jews on campus, he's been outspoken against anti-Semitism repeatedly, For all of the talk about his associations with the alt-right in 2016, I was one of the people who talked extensively about it.
	He forcibly disassociated himself from them in mid-2017 and beyond.
	None of that was good.
	But to pretend that Donald Trump is like a vicious anti-Semite when his grandkids are Jewish is insane.
	It's not correct.
	It's just not correct.
	Okay, so, Trump...
	That was dumb controversy number one.
	Then there was dumb controversy number two, which is President Trump saying silly things.
	So yesterday, President Trump mentioned that he is tested daily for coronavirus.
	And he does like a full-on South Park routine here about being positive on a test versus negative on a test.
	This has been like a longtime comedy bit for a very long time.
	It's a pretty old chestnut.
	Here's President Trump doing it unintentionally.
	I had a two-week regimen of hydroxychloroquine, and I've taken it, I think, just about two weeks.
	I think it's another day.
	And I'm still here.
	I'm still here.
	And I tested very positively in another sense.
	So, this morning, yeah, I tested positively toward negative, right?
	So, no, I tested perfectly this morning, meaning I tested negative.
	He kind of realizes in the middle of that that this became a trend too.
	Because, oh my gosh, Trump said positively, negatively, negatively, positively.
	And then there was the stupid controversy over whether he wore a mask in Michigan.
	So there are all sorts of news reports.
	He didn't wear a mask when he was in Michigan.
	First of all, he's not positive for COVID-19.
	He would be in isolation if he were positive for COVID-19.
	The man's tested literally every day.
	Every single day.
	He's the most protected person in America from COVID-19.
	And as it turns out, he actually was wearing a mask, right?
	There was a picture that emerged that behind closed doors, he was wearing a mask.
	In other words, when he was in close proximity to other people, he was wearing a mask.
	And then when he spoke, he was not wearing a mask.
	Which, by the way, is also what reporters have been doing in the White House Rose Garden.
	So yesterday, Trump explained, I don't want to give the media the pleasure of seeing me with a mask on.
	Now listen, I think this is dumb.
	I do.
	I think it's really stupid.
	I think that the president, when he is out in public, should be wearing a mask.
	Not because I think that he is making other people unsafe, but because he sets a good example to a lot of Trump followers that if you are in public with other people, you should be wearing a mask.
	I think that's a good thing.
	I do.
	I mean, Mike Pence has been wearing a mask.
	So I think that that's a good thing.
	Here was President Trump yesterday, though, saying, I'm never gonna give the satisfaction to the media.
	And listen, this is how Trump rules.
	But is this a major, like, did Trump cough on people and give them corona yesterday?
	He did not.
	And if he were wearing a mask, would he be protecting himself from corona?
	No, he would not.
	So on a practical level, Trump endangered no one by wearing, by not wearing a mask.
	Just as if you don't have COVID-19, you're not endangering anybody by not wearing a mask.
	That said, it's asymptomatic.
	You may not know.
	So you should wear a mask.
	Listen, I think that Trump should do it.
	I do.
	I think he should put on a mask when he is in public.
	But do I think that it's like a major controversy of the day?
	Of course not.
	Did it turn into the major controversy of the day?
	Of course it did, because we live in the stupidest possible timeline.
	Here's President Trump yesterday.
	Take us through your thought process of why he decided not to wear a mask.
	Well, I did wear... I had one on before.
	I wore one in this back area.
	But I didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it.
	But no, where I had it, in the back area, I did put a mask on.
	Did you have the goggles on too, as well, sir?
	I did.
	I had goggles.
	Goggles and a mask, I put.
	But why would you not be wearing... And here's another one.
	Why would you not be wearing...
	Because in this area- Why would you not be wearing it here, sir?
	Not necessary here.
	Everybody's been tested and I've been tested.
	In fact, I was tested this morning.
	Okay, so again, is this like a major controversy?
	No.
	Did that bring the Michigan Attorney General to national TV to say maybe we'll prosecute Ford for not making Trump wear a mask?
	Trump is no longer welcome in our state.
	I wonder, maybe she's a Democrat.
	It occurs to me that maybe the Michigan AG is a Democrat for saying something as dumb as this on national TV.
	Is the president no longer welcome in Michigan?
	Well, I will say speaking on behalf of my department and my office, that's right.
	The president is like a petulant child who refuses to follow the rules.
	And I have to say, this is no joke.
	I think that we're going to have to have a very serious conversation with Ford in the event that they permitted the president to be in publicly enclosed places in violation of the order.
	They knew exactly what the order was.
	I mean, come on.
	Come on.
	They're going to go after Ford.
	Trump is banned from the state.
	What are you going to do, arrest him when he comes there because he didn't wear a mask?
	On what legal grounds would you do this?
	And what are the damages that you can prove?
	This is very, very silly stuff.
	Okay, so then we'll get to controversies that are not silly.
	Because it turns out that there are some controversies in America that are not silly.
	And Joe Biden is making himself the issue.
	It's amazing.
	For Joe Biden to win, basically all he has to do, this is like the perfect situation for Biden, all he has to do is lie in his casket all day in his basement and he will be the president.
	That's all he has to do.
	Just almost literally be dead.
	Just eat and drink and say nothing for six months and he will likely be president, according to the polling numbers.
	And he can't do it.
	Because Joe Biden, it turns out, is a terrible, terrible candidate.
	And he says terrible things.
	And his ideology about race is awful as well.
	We'll get to that momentarily.
	First, let's talk about the fact that we are home more than usual these days.
	That doesn't mean you don't have to keep track of your property.
	It means you have to keep track of your property even more than usual these days.
	You want to know who's walking up on your front step.
	I've had a couple friends robbed in the last couple of weeks alone.
	And thanks to Ring, they at least had that on tape and were able to hand that tape over to the police and they were alerted to people who were at their front door, which is really important since actually one of them was home at the time.
	Ring gives you the protection that you need.
	I've been using Ring devices for years at my property.
	Ring video doorbells let you answer the door and check in on your home anytime.
	Keep an eye on your doorstep.
	Speak to delivery people when you can't come to the door.
	With outdoor security cameras, you can check in on every part of your house and never miss a moment.
	Smart lighting brightens up blind spots and makes you always come home to a bright, brightly lit house, which is really important.
	Also, they've got the full home security system so you can protect your family and your pets and your property.
	And one of the big things for me is knowing where my kids are on my property at all times, even if I don't have an eye on them.
	Get a special offer on the Ring Welcome Kit when you go to ring.com slash ben.
	That welcome kit does include the Ring Video Doorbell 3 and the Chime Pro.
	That's all you need to start building custom security for your home today.
	Just go to ring.com slash Ben.
	Again, that is ring.com slash Ben.
	It's going to make you and your family safer.
	Ring.com slash Ben.
	We're going to get into Slow Joe.
	And his vicious racism.
	I mean, really, this is actual racism.
	The media will brush it off because he's a Democrat, but it's pretty damned racist.
	We'll get to that in one second.
	First, let us talk about several things.
	First of all, you should subscribe to Daily Wire.
	Why?
	Well, many reasons.
	First, we actually have a Sunday special this week that I think is a blast.
	All about science fiction literature.
	I'm a big sci-fi fan.
	Orson Scott Card, the author of Ender's Game, is on the Sunday special this week.
	You're really going to enjoy it.
	It's a kick.
	It's something completely different.
	We talk about writing style and strategy, how you outline for a story.
	Really fun stuff from one of the all-time great science fiction writers.
	Here's a little bit of a taste.
	My lawyer calls me and he says, well, Scott, here's the good news.
	They're going to take your script to pilot so it has a chance to go on air, but you're fired.
	They don't want you to show up on set.
	And I just laughed.
	Okay, so it is a blast.
	You're going to enjoy it.
	Also, we have a backstage next Wednesday, May 27th at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
	So you'll get to watch all of us from our various Heidi Holes in Southern California.
	Talk to one another.
	We'll see if Clavin is still alive.
	We'll check in on him and see if he has actually turned into a skeleton.
	He's no longer Skeletor.
	He's actually turned into a skeleton.
	We'll check in on Clavin.
	Unfortunately, Knowles will probably be there as well.
	So that'll be unfortunate.
	But if you enjoy that sort of thing, then head on over to Daily Wire.
	Also, it is that time of the week when we have...
	When we reward one of our daily wire subscribers.
	Today it is Cataract Cowboy on Twitter who understands the importance of picking the right mate.
	In this picture, a woman in a patriotic gymnastics outfit gracefully hangs upside down from a rope with the world's most elite beverage vessel resting close by.
	This is very graceful stuff.
	That is pretty spectacular stuff right there.
	I mean, that's wild.
	tears tumbler nutrient dense leftist tears simultaneously provide the energy to do socially distance aerial sports nourish the growing body of our unborn child and boost immune response to protect from covid that is pretty spectacular stuff right there i mean that's that's wild so i'm gonna assume she's professional at this because she's eight months pregnant and she is hanging from ribbons but that's pretty spectacular stuff right there Thanks for the pic.
	Congrats on the growing family.
	That is awesome stuff.
	If you would like to be featured in our Daily Wire Tumblr section every Friday, all you have to do is be a subscriber, have the Daily Wire Tumblr, take a creative picture, and then make sure that you hashtag us and add us, and you may end up featured on The Ben Shapiro Show next week.
	So go check that out.
	You're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	Okay, so this is pretty astonishing stuff.
	So Joe Biden is running against Donald Trump, or shall we say sleeping against Donald Trump.
	And he is, all he has to do is just avoid controversy.
	That's all he has to do.
	Well, today, he's on a show called Breakfast Club, which is a popular podcast.
	And he decided at the end of the interview that he was going to tell a black man that black people have to, this host, who is black, is saying, you know, when you have a chance, you should come up to New York.
	Many of us who are black have questions for you about your policies.
	Which, by the way, you don't have to not vote for Joe Biden.
	You could still vote for Joe Biden and have questions about his policies.
	This is called American politics.
	You can even demand things from candidates in exchange for your vote in terms of policy.
	Not in terms of bribery, but in terms of policy.
	You can do those things.
	But Joe Biden literally says out loud the quiet part, which is the Democrats believe that you're not actually black if you won't vote for Joe Biden.
	So Joe Biden actually says this, which is a hell of a thing to say coming from Joe Biden.
	I mean, it is pure.
	Like, imagine any Republican saying this about about black folks in America and the blowback.
	It doesn't matter at any level.
	Every Republican in America would be asked about it.
	Every single one, let alone the presidential candidate.
	It's incredible.
	So here is Joe Biden being blatantly racist.
	I mean, this is blatantly racist.
	Listen, you gotta come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden.
	I will.
	It's a long way until November.
	We got more questions.
	You got more questions.
	I tell you, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black.
	That is insane.
	That's an insane thing to say.
	Even some folks on the left are upset by this.
	Not all of them.
	You got people like Dave Weigel, the reporter over at the Washington Post trying to make excuses for Joe Biden.
	Dave Weigel actually tweeted this out.
	He's covering politics for the Washington Post.
	He used to be over at Slate.
	He says, the U.N.
	black thing is a combustion of two pretty well-known factors.
	CTG rattles people with direct questions.
	That's the host.
	Charlemagne the God, that's who that is.
	And Joe Biden gets set off if he thinks someone is questioning his record.
	Oh, so that's what happened.
	He didn't just say that black people aren't black if they don't vote for him.
	Oh, really, he was just a little rattled.
	Weigl says, I've seen it when Biden got challenged by climate activists or someone had a question about guns.
	Cue for a 60-second stem winder about how the questioner should check the facts and I'm the only one who's beaten the NRA, etc.
	You might ask, why doesn't he pivot to a better topic?
	He doesn't pivot.
	If you doubt he's got the best positions and experience, he'll tell you you're wrong and you should vote for someone else.
	So far, this has gotten him the nomination and a poll lead.
	Well, question.
	It's one thing to say I have the best record on guns, so if you don't like it, don't vote for me.
	To say, if you don't vote for me, you are not black, is an insane thing to say.
	Joe Biden is not the decider as to who is black and who is not.
	In fact, it turns out, you know who's the decider on who is black and who is not?
	It turns out that your race is the decider on who is black and who is not.
	It is objectively determinable who is black and who is not, right?
	We know this because Rachel Dolezal tried to claim she was black and she was not black.
	Right, so Joe Biden does not get to be the decider on whether you are black, and certainly you don't get to decide whether somebody is black based on ideology.
	It turns out that race and ideology are completely non-congruent.
	There are plenty of white liberals and plenty of white conservatives.
	You don't decide somebody's politics based on their race.
	And if you do, you are doing racism.
	This would be open acknowledgement of racism.
	But he puts that out there, and watch, it'll blow over within five minutes.
	Now, what it may have done, happiest person in America take Kamala Harris.
	Because Kamala Harris chided Joe Biden as a racist during the primaries, and now she's being actively considered as his VP.
	So Amy Klobuchar, hardest hit.
	Yesterday it was announced that Joe Biden might pick Amy Klobuchar.
	And the woke crowd on Twitter was like, you can't pick a white woman.
	It has to be a black woman.
	Well, now Joe Biden basically just set himself on fire here.
	So he's going to have to pick a black woman, just to prove that he is not a racist.
	He's going to have to pick a black woman.
	And then the black person can come out and say, can make the judgment as to who is legitimately black and who is legitimately not or something.
	That will be the tactic that Joe takes.
	So Kamala Harris is the happiest candidate in America today.
	She is so happy.
	Stacey Abrams is now like, Stacey Abrams is festooning her house with VP colors.
	It's like she's getting all of her bunting out.
	It's very, Joe Biden, it's an unbelievable thing.
	Like, why would that even occur to him?
	You're not legitimately Black.
	Now, the answer to that not occurring to him is because there's a narrative that has taken place in Democratic circles that you are only, that Black people should only vote for Democrats because only Democrats care about Black people.
	And they are attempting to push this narrative, Democrats are, and members of the media, by suggesting that Trump's handling of coronavirus is racial, that Republicans' belief in reopening is racial.
	We saw this by Hurricane Katrina, by the way.
	I predicted this, I think, three months ago.
	I think fully three months ago, I predicted that the Democrats were going to turn the coronavirus pandemic into a racial issue.
	That it was not going to remain a national crisis.
	They were immediately going to attempt to try and racialize this thing such that they could claim that the Trump administration was botching this because they don't care enough about black and brown people.
	And that's exactly what Democrats are attempting to do right now.
	And that's why you're hearing Biden say stuff like that, right?
	The tacit assumption that Biden is making is that Donald Trump hates it and doesn't care about black people.
	And thus, if you are black, you should vote for Joe Biden.
	You don't actually care about or believe in black people if you don't agree with Joe Biden on the issues because Joe Biden is pro-black and the tacit assumption there is that Donald Trump is a vicious racist.
	That is the tacit assumption.
	Making that tacit assumption explicit is a piece today in the Washington Post by Michelle Morris.
	It's called, The Us and Them Pandemic Shows America is Still Impervious to Black Pain.
	So I gotta be honest with you.
	I have not thought once about The notion that we should skimp on medical resources based on race in a pandemic.
	That's an insane contention.
	But she suggests that basically, if you're pro-lockdown, it's because you don't care about Black and Hispanic people enough.
	How does she come to this bizarre conclusion?
	She quotes a political scientist named Evan Lieberman.
	He's an MIT professor who has studied the public response to AIDS and HIV based on ethnic and racial factors.
	He suspected that collecting disaggregated racial data on COVID-19 could have unintended consequences.
	Yes, it would help identify areas of vulnerability or need.
	But when that vulnerability was then attached to a specific racial or ethnic category, he feared, it could harm the very group the data collection was supposed to help.
	He wrote, it's not difficult to imagine that if COVID-19 comes to be understood as a black epidemic, this will create false impressions for many white Americans.
	In the United States is racially polarized and effectively segregated society, which we are not.
	But the virus is, quote, not our problem, leading to decreased demand for and compliance with public health directives.
	Michelle Norris says not our problem is an undercurrent in the largely white reopening America protests popping up daily around the country.
	So now we're going to racialize this thing.
	If you want to reopen, it's because you're racist and you don't care about black and brown people.
	She says not our problem is the undercurrent when people refuse to wear masks in public.
	And not our problem is the conclusion one cannot help but draw when one studies the calendar and sees that the protests commenced around the same time that the data on racial disparities became a central storyline in COVID-19 news coverage.
	Well, I can help draw that conclusion because that conclusion does not follow.
	Okay, first of all, the subsets on racial disparities were coming out fairly early in all of this, when lockdown was still incredibly popular.
	The end of the lockdown talk started once the curve was flattened.
	That's what actually drove all this, was people saying, okay, we're not gonna die if we go back to work, so can we go back to work now?
	I love this.
	this.
	This is what Michelle Norris says.
	Some will no doubt argue that the not our problem is a coincidence of timing.
	Perhaps it is fueled by disassociation.
	If the viral load is concentrated in nursing homes, meatpacking plants, prisons, and black communities, then those who don't have connections to any of those places are going to feel less threatened and boldly venture out into the world as stay-at-home orders are relaxed.
	Well, that would make more sense, right?
	I mean, it would make sense.
	I don't make a decision on lockdown based on the race of the people acquiring this.
	I do make a decision based on where I'm going to go today, based on the heaviness of the viral load.
	I would not travel today into New York City.
	I would travel today into Florida or Texas.
	Does that have to do with the racial constituency of New York, or does it have to do with the risk factors in New York?
	But she says, she says, I doubt it.
	Post reporter Stephanie McCrummon recently visited a wealthy area of shops and restaurants in Alpharetta, Georgia, where crowds of unworried and unmasked people were eating, drinking, touching, and throwing caution to the wind.
	She spoke with two men on the sprawling plaza, sipping beer on a sunny day.
	When you start seeing where the cases are coming from in the demographics, I'm not worried, one of the men said.
	His friend chimed in.
	I know what people are going to say.
	Those selfish idiots are killing our old people.
	And then the friend noted he wasn't worried because of, well, you know, the demographics served up the final punctuation.
	How do you give up a day like this?
	Really, how?
	The two men were enjoying that beautiful spring day in Georgia, a state where black people make up 83% of the coronavirus hospital patients, even though they constitute one-third of the population.
	Well, hold up.
	So now, because he said that the demographics don't threaten him, meaning that he is young.
	That's what people are generally talking about when they talk about the demographics.
	And when we talk about what is threatening people, they're talking pre-existing conditions, age.
	Those are the two main factors.
	Those are the factors everybody is analyzing.
	Because, by the way, those are the factors that matter.
	If you are black and you are young and you don't have pre-existing conditions, there is no evidence you're going to die at a higher rate than if you are white and young and have no pre-existing conditions.
	This is not a racialized issue, it's just that there are other cross-cutting currents that may disproportionately fall in one community or another.
	So, to try and turn this into a racial narrative is of course a political move.
	And the political move...
	is that the suggestion is that the American population is calling for lockdown because secretly they are racist.
	Michelle Norris says we can use words such as demographics and comorbidities to dance around the subject of race, but we cannot skirt the fact that what is a nuisance for one person is another person's plague.
	Not my problem is not the right response.
	So somehow this got racialized, but everything gets racialized.
	This is the narrative.
	So the narrative in democratic circles is that everything at root is racial.
	And because everything at root is racial, you aren't really black if you vote for Republicans.
	Because of course, everything Republicans do is motivated by brutal racism.
	Now what this does necessitate for Democrats is neglecting cases that do not fit into this neat and easy narrative of Republicans are the vicious racists in society and the great victimization is happening by white Americans against black Americans disproportionately.
	And so that dictates which events are going to be covered and how those events are going to be covered.
	So the media, for example, will put heavy focus on the Arbery shooting in Georgia.
	That's totally fine, by the way.
	That was a complete botch.
	Like, that should be the focus of media coverage.
	It was an awful shoot by the evidence.
	There are now three people have been arrested.
	Correctly by the police for murder including this is now including the person who's taping this thing from behind.
	That is a very very good thing.
	That's the process working.
	We have not yet seen evidence that the people who were involved in the shooting were doing so because our Barry was black.
	We're gonna find that out.
	We do have evidence of corruption inside the DA's office because they let this go because they were friendly with some of those people.
	Okay, that receives inordinate coverage.
	Good!
	But there was a case yesterday that received no coverage.
	Okay, virtually no national coverage.
	This was a case which you would assume is kind of relevant given all the issues we've been having in nursing homes.
	There's a tape that was going around.
	The Detroit Police Department said in a statement they arrested a 20-year-old male in connection to the assault and battery of an elderly male inside the Westwood Nursing Center on the northwest side of the city, according to the Detroit News.
	And tape emerged.
	It's a 20-year-old black man, and he's beating the living hell out of an elderly nursing home patient.
	He appears to be wiping the blood from an elderly male in an attempt to hide the wounds.
	Both were apparently patients at the nursing home, according to the Detroit News.
	It's not clear why the 20-year-old suspect was being treated there.
	Additional unconfirmed videos of the suspect assaulting other elderly individuals have surfaced across social media.
	chief James Craig.
	We're still investigating that aspect of the case.
	We do have a suspect in custody.
	Additional unconfirmed videos of the suspect assaulting other elderly individuals have surfaced across social media.
	It appears the assault was racially motivated.
	So that is the police talking that the assault was racially motivated.
	Now, does this mean that black people are willy-nilly going around beating up old people?
	Of course not!
	Of course not!
	You cannot form a referendum on the basis of anecdotal evidence.
	But the media are very fond of drawing referenda on the basis of anecdotal evidence, even if the evidence doesn't completely support it.
	Why?
	Because again, it backs a narrative.
	So here's the reality.
	We should cover all crimes.
	We should make sure that all crimes get covered.
	And we should base our trend lines on actual data, not on anecdotal evidence.
	But because the media have a narrative in mind, that is why, in the end, Joe Biden will be fined for saying that black people are not black unless they vote for Joe Biden.
	Because that falls right in line with the easy media narrative, which is that everything is about racist Republicans demeaning black people, and everything Democrats do is in defense of black people against those racist Republicans.
	It dictates the media coverage.
	It dictates which stories get covered.
	It dictates how presidential candidates are covered.
	Because, again, you don't cover Democrats like Republicans because Republicans are evil and Democrats are good.
	That's the bottom line here.
	And you won't cover the story in Detroit the same way that you will cover other stories.
	If the races were reversed, by the way, if that were a white man in a nursing home beating up elderly black people, It's going to be the front page of every newspaper in America because one supports the generalized narrative that America is a vicious, racist country, and the other does not support that narrative.
	The other supports a different narrative, which is that there are, in fact, racists in many different communities, including in the black community.
	Right?
	That is not a narrative that anybody wants to draw, particularly not in the press.
	So this will go completely uncovered.
	It will disappear from the news.
	And of course, I'm not equating the Arbery shooting, somebody died in that case, to this.
	I'm just talking about the media coverage of the two stories, which has been completely disparate.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	Well, it's good to know that many Democrats are now rallying around Joe Biden, no matter what he does.
	A columnist for The Nation named Ketha Pollitt claimed on Wednesday she would vote for Joe Biden, quote, if he boiled babies and ate them.
	Makes sense.
	Pollitt shrugged off Senate staffer Tara Reid's sexual assault allegation against Biden, declaring, quote, I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them.
	He wasn't my candidate, but taking back the White House is that important.
	She says, I cannot believe that a rational person can grasp the disaster that is Donald Trump and withhold their support from Biden because of Tara Reid.
	I would say this even if I had no problems with Reade's account.
	I take women's accusations very seriously, but there have always been reasons to be skeptical about this one.
	To believe Reade, you have to believe that Biden put her up against a wall and penetrated her with her fingers on the spur of the moment in a hallway in a Capitol complex Where she says she was looking for him to give him his gym bag.
	This corridor is a public space.
	To believe Reid, you have to believe Biden would take that risk.
	Whether or not you believe Reid, you should vote for Joe Biden if he's the nominee.
	We don't have the luxury of sitting out the election to feel morally pure or send a message about sexual assault and believe women.
	That will not help women at all or anyone else.
	So that is pretty deranged, insane stuff, obviously.
	And I'm glad to see that some Democrats are just embracing their inner id.
	That's exciting stuff.
	Meanwhile, James Carville, who stumped very hard for Joe Biden against Bernie Sanders, he was out there saying that Trump is going to get his, quote, fat-ass beat, which is typical James Carville.
	He's going to get his fat beat.
	That's what's going on.
	He's going to get his fat beat.
	We can get 295 electoral votes and we'll change nothing.
	If we go and take it to him and talk about what a massive fat failure he is, then we can run away with this thing.
	And you can defeat... The idea is not just to defeat Trump.
	You have to defeat Trumpism.
	Okay, so there's James Carville going off.
	And again, the fact that so many people are willing to back Joe Biden no matter what, this does shine a spotlight on the criticism of people who in 2016 said, I'll vote for Trump just to defeat Hillary.
	So now they're all, we'll vote for Joe Biden just to defeat Trump.
	The same guy who was telling people, we want to put you all back in chains to black people, that Mitt Romney is going to put them all back in chains is now saying you're not a legit black person unless you vote for Joe Biden.
	By the way, Joe Biden gaffes more than any candidate I have ever seen.
	Remember when the media were shouting at Mitt Romney, what about your gaffes?
	Remember that?
	Joe Biden gassed more than any candidate in history.
	Yesterday, Joe Biden suggested that Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin has, quote, a great deal of lift and heft.
	I don't think that that means what you think it means, Joe.
	Let me ask you about Wisconsin's other senator, Democrat Tammy Baldwin.
	Is she on your list?
	Is she being vetted as a potential vice presidential pick?
	What I don't want to do, and I'm not going to do, is list the people who are being considered.
	But Tammy is an incredibly competent United States Senator, with a great deal of heft and lift to her, what she's able to do.
	And she's capable of doing almost anything.
	I can pick her up with one hand.
	I've been exercising.
	If you'd like to have a push-up contest right now, I will have a push-up, and then I will bench-press Stacey Abrams.
	I've been working out, so I've moved up from bench-pressing Kamala to bench-pressing Stacey and Tammy Baldwin.
	I can tell you that you can really, a man can really get a chest workout by bench-pressing Senator Baldwin.
	How is this the person that you guys, I get that you decided on this instead of the old socialist.
	I was quite happy about it.
	I'm just going to point out that there's still plenty of time before this election.
	This is, like, really, there's a lot of talk about the various polling data showing that Joe Biden is up in a lot of these states.
	Well, he's going to have to rely on a couple of things.
	One, converting undecideds to vote for Joe Biden.
	And two, he's going to have to convert, he's going to have to get a lot of black people who stayed home for Hillary Clinton to come out for Joe Biden.
	On the second one, There are some doubts.
	There are some doubts.
	This is not Captain Popularity among Black Americans.
	The only reason he's popular among Black Americans is because of the halo of Obama that still glows around him.
	If it were not for Barack Obama, Black Americans would not be particularly friendly to Joe Biden.
	The man was a sponsor of the 1994 crime bill.
	He talked extensively about it.
	He was, as Kamala Harris says, against forced busing, which again was – both these things, by the way, are policies with which I agree.
	Forced busing is bad policy, and the crime bill was good policy.
	But that's not exactly going to kind of layer over the racialized narrative the Democrats want to tell.
	Again, I have to play this clip again because Joe Biden literally saying to black people they're not black unless they vote for him is an incredible pitch.
	Figuring out whether you're for me or Trump and you ain't black.
	unbelievable Unbelievable.
	Un-be-lievable.
	Really incredible stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, China is heightening its grip on Hong Kong.
	So while we all fight about stupidity over here, while we all fight about whether Trump is wearing a mask at a Michigan car plant or whatever, There are actual things happening in the world that are incredibly dangerous.
	China, which, again, we're not supposed to say Wuhan virus, apparently.
	Very, very racist.
	Kamala Harris put forward a resolution this week that said if you say Wuhan virus or Chinese virus, it's because you're racist against Chinese Americans, which is insane.
	Because last I checked, Wuhan is not in America.
	Chinese Americans are American.
	And one thing has nothing to do with the other.
	But the same people who are out there saying Trump is being too mean to China, China, meanwhile, is now Trying to basically overrun Hong Kong.
	I mean, they're just taking advantage of the pandemic to destroy all opposition in what was supposed to be a free state.
	When Hong Kong, which is a peninsula on the coast of what used to be China, when Hong Kong was abandoned by the British in what was one of the worst deals in human history, the guarantee was supposed to be that Hong Kong had its own independent government, even if it interacted with the Chinese government on a fairly solid level.
	It was the idea that they were the same country, but they were basically two different territories governed differently.
	Hong Kong was supposed to be able to retain fundamental freedoms.
	China just decided they were going to carve away at that.
	The latest from the New York Times, China's top leaders on Friday made a show of strength to confront defiance in Hong Kong and the economic damage wrought by the coronavirus outbreak, even as they acknowledged that both had dealt a blow to the ruling Communist Party's agenda.
	On Hong Kong, the leadership struck a hard line at the annual meeting of China's legislature, unveiling a plan to impose sweeping new security laws that would place the territory more firmly under Beijing's thumb.
	Well, not if Democrats have anything to do with it, or the NBA, right?
	But the move is likely to incite more unrest and outrage in the semi-autonomous territory, as well as criticism from abroad.
	Well, not if Democrats have anything to do with it or the NBA, right?
	If the NBA criticizes it, then China just cuts them off at the knees.
	On the economy, the premier, addressing the opening of the National People's Congress, declared the government had achieved a decisive victory against the coronavirus outbreak and that the country had shown great resilience.
	But in a break with tradition, China abandoned setting an annual growth target for 2020, recognizing the difficulties in restarting its economy amid a pandemic.
	Premier Li Kequeng, who is the second ranked in the Communist Party hierarchy behind Xi, made his speech to nearly 3,000 Congress delegates who wore masks as they sat in neat rows in the ornate Great Hall of the People.
	He pledged he'll blunt the impact of the slowdown with goals to limit inflation and unemployment.
	He said, China will face challenges like never before.
	However, we have unique political and institutional strengths, a strong economic foundation, enormous market potential, and hundreds of millions of intelligent and hardworking people.
	The horizons for China's development are full of promise.
	The Congress outlined the party's plans, disclosed in a surprise move Thursday night, for new laws in Hong Kong to prevent and punish secession, subversion, and foreign infiltration that it has blamed for fueling unrest in the city.
	The legislation would also allow the mainland's feared security agencies to set up their operations publicly in Hong Kong for the first time.
	So now, the Chinese Politburo will be running Hong Kong security, which means basically they're now going to imprison or kill anybody who opposes Chinese rule in Hong Kong.
	So while the rest of the world is deeply disturbed by the power grab happening in Viktor Orban's Hungary, It seems that people are willing to ignore what is going on in China.
	And to pretend that China's control of the WHO is no big deal.
	Rachel Maddow has some very strong words about President Trump saying that he is going to defund the WHO unless they stop being a Chinese cat's paw.
	When was the last time Rachel Maddow spoke out?
	I don't watch her shows.
	Maybe it was yesterday, but I doubt it.
	When was the last time she spoke out about Chinese authoritarianism overtaking the free state of Hong Kong?
	In a speech detailing the plan, Wang Chen, a Politburo member and first vice chairman of the Congress, pointed to the protesters in Hong Kong who defaced the national flag and surrounded Beijing's offices in the city as posing a threat to China's sovereignty.
	He also cited long-held suspicions by Beijing that foreign governments had incited the recent protests in Hong Kong, even though evidence to support this is limited.
	Wang declared, law-based and forceful measures must be taken to prevent, stop, and punish such activities.
	This, of course, drew immediate alarm in Hong Kong.
	The Hong Kong stock market slumped more than 5% on Friday.
	The unusual arrangements for Congress meeting this year reflect continued worries that China has not actually totally contained the outbreak and that they continue to lie to the world.
	One of the reasons that Hong Kong wasn't that hard hit is because the government of Hong Kong simply did not believe the Chinese government when they said there was no human-to-human transmission.
	But using the cover of coronavirus in order to destroy the freedom of Hong Kong is an amazingly powerful move.
	And you're seeing the Chinese do this with the WHO with regard to Taiwan, trying to cut off Taiwan at the knees.
	China is an evil empire.
	China is a vicious, vicious, evil government.
	And to pretend that they are just a responsible actor on the world stage is utterly insane.
	They are a geopolitical threat to the United States.
	They are a geopolitical threat to their neighbors.
	And they are using this opportunity in order to strengthen their grip on a variety of countries in their immediate sphere.
	If you think that Joe Biden is going to be harsh on the Chinese, you got another thing coming.
	I have yet to see any evidence that Joe Biden is going to be harsh on China at all.
	And in fact, it seems like he is spending more time ripping on President Trump for being harsh on China than being harsh on China himself.
	This should remain a focus of American activity, and if it is not, we are definitely missing the boat when it comes to a geopolitical crisis that is going to be fomented over the course of the coming decade.
	Alrighty, we'll be back here a little bit later today with two additional hours of content.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here next week.
	I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, a meaningful Memorial Day weekend, as we remember Americans we've lost in battle, as we remember the people who have fought for our freedoms.
	So let's keep that in mind, obviously, as we celebrate a long weekend, and we'll see you here next week.
	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 Siovitz.
	Audio is mixed by Mike Koromina.
	Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.
	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production.

▲