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Sept. 10, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

56:40

The Woodward Tapes | Ep. 1092

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	Bob Woodward releases a bombshell tape of President Trump talking about downplaying COVID.
	Democrats ignore their own records to leap on Trump's failures.
	And politics continue to dominate facts when it comes to COVID.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	This show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	Slash Ben will get to all of the breaking news in just one moment.
	First, let's talk about the fact there's a lot of uncertainty in the market right now.
	You may have noticed the stock market moving up and down like a yo-yo.
	And that is not unexpected.
	I mean, what we are watching right now is a lot of new data being priced into the system, but times of great volatility, times of Not knowing what to expect.
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	And to invest in gold with my friends over at Birch Gold.
	That was back when gold was $1,300 an ounce.
	Now it is hovering around historic highs.
	And look what's coming around the corner.
	A presidential election.
	There could be urban unrest.
	There could be rural unrest.
	There could be multiple contentious seats in the Senate that could flip.
	If Biden loses the election, do you really think the Democrats are going to let it go?
	If Trump loses the election and it's a narrow, do you think that things are going to go really, really great?
	Well, now would be a good time to think about that portfolio.
	If you haven't reached out to Birch Gold, diversify part of your IRA or 401k into a precious metals IRA, or just purchase a little bit of.
	Okay, so big news of yesterday and into today are the Woodward tapes.
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	Okay, so big news of yesterday and into today are the Woodward tapes.
	Bob Woodward has tapes of talking with President Trump.
	Now, first question.
	Who in the hell thought it was a good idea for Trump to talk to Bob Woodward?
	Who in the hell thought that it was a good idea for Trump to ever talk to members of the press?
	See, Trump has this very bizarre relationship with the press where he really hates them because they mistreat him and because they lie about him, but also he loves them.
	I mean, really loves them and wants to talk to them all the time.
	And so this means that the White House press office is basically Woody in Toy Story 4 trying to prevent Forky from throwing himself in the trash.
	That is every day for the White House press office, because they're out there just trying to message, just trying to get on message about Joe Biden and riots in Kenosha and unrest and the economy teetering.
	And there's Trump out there just doing his thing, trying to throw himself in the trash.
	Trash!
	And just jumping into the trash like Forky from Toy Story 4.
	And if you're the White House press office, the comms office, you have to be incredibly frustrated at this point, especially because we are now two months out from an election, and you've got Donald Trump, as it turns out, doing 18 hours, 18 hours of on-the-record interviews with Bob Woodward.
	Now, I sort of understand the logic, I guess.
	I guess.
	In that, Bob Woodward is a pseudo-journalist.
	When I say pseudo-journalist, I mean that the last several books he's written have come under serious question for decontextualizing comments and then recontextualizing them improperly.
	And he'll report rumors.
	He doesn't footnote his stuff.
	He's sort of famous for this.
	The Bob Woodward's books are, you know, seen as sort of inside stories of what's going on inside various administrations.
	But as Matthew Walter put it over at The Week, the problem is that he'll just print rumor when he can't get the fact.
	He will print second-hand stories.
	And this is something Bob Woodward is famous for.
	So that means that if you want to stop him from doing that, you give him first-hand sourcing.
	Well, there's only one problem with that, which is that it doesn't dissuade him from violating things like on-the-record or off-the-record or on-background versus on-the-record.
	He'll just do whatever he wants to do.
	And letting the fox into the hen house is a really bad idea, particularly with President Trump, who is fond of overstating things and fond of saying silly things.
	He is a real estate magnate with a gift for puffery.
	In the real estate business, you're constantly puffing up the real estate.
	Isn't this the most beautiful island kitchen?
	Look at the open floor plan.
	My God, I've never seen anything... Puffery is the nature of real estate, and Donald Trump is the nature of puffery.
	So, Donald Trump has a couple of personality flaws that come out in nearly every interview.
	And they can make for a very toxic combination.
	Personality flaw number one, the man has never admitted he was wrong ever.
	He is never wrong.
	According to Donald Trump, he has never had reason to repent before God.
	According to Donald Trump, he has never done a thing in his entire career that is wrong.
	And personality flaw number two, he engages in puffery.
	So everything is superlative.
	Is it the worst or the best?
	Is it spectacular or unbelievable or garbage?
	There is no in-between for President Trump.
	When you combine those two personality flaws, one, he's never done anything wrong, with two, his penchant for puffery, you end up with some very unfortunate quotes about COVID.
	And that is what happened here with regard to Bob Woodward's book.
	So there are two allegations that put together make for some toxic politics for Trump.
	Allegation number one is one that Woodward puts in the book.
	Apparently, he spoke with Trump on February 7th.
	His new book is titled Rage, of course.
	Apparently, Trump said to Woodward about COVID, quote, This is deadly stuff.
	In a series of interviews with Woodward, said CNN, Trump revealed that he had a surprising level of detail about the threat of the virus earlier than previously known.
	Pretty amazing, Trump told Woodward, adding that the coronavirus is maybe five times more deadly than the flu.
	Apparently, he also suggested that the virus was airborne at the time.
	Now, here is the thing about all the stuff that Trump was saying on February 7th.
	If Trump had come out publicly and said that the virus was airborne on February 7th, everybody rightly would have said that this was not actually supremely telling.
	Because Donald Trump has said a lot of things about COVID, many of which are inaccurate.
	Okay, it turns out that the WHO did not declare that the virus was airborne until July.
	So if Trump had come out in February, like the beginning of February, and he said, okay, we need to shut down all of American society, the virus is airborne.
	How many people do you think would have gone along with that?
	The answer, pretty obviously, is zero, since about one week prior, the Democratic Party had opposed Trump even shutting down some travel from China.
	When you hear Democrats proclaim they would have done something very, very differently in February, the answer is no, you wouldn't have.
	Nancy Pelosi was out in Chinatown encouraging people to come on down February 24th.
	So we'll get to the Democratic response to all this in just one second.
	OK, so he is on tape with Woodward on February 7th, where he said that the virus is dangerous and that it is airborne and that it could kill a lot of people.
	Now, again, How much of that is Trump conveying what he actually knew and how much of that is Trump misconveying what he had heard?
	We've seen enough of his press conferences to know that he was constantly giving either best case or worst case scenario and nothing in between.
	There was never any moderate rhetoric coming from Trump about the virus.
	But he did on February 7th apparently say that it was airborne and Woodward says this was a damning missed opportunity for Trump to reset the leadership clock after he was told this was a once in a lifetime health emergency.
	During a pre-Super Bowl interview on Fox News February 2nd, Trump said we pretty much shut it down coming in from China.
	And two days later during the State of the Union, Trump made only a passing reference to the virus.
	He promised, quote, my administration will take all necessary steps to safeguard our citizens from this threat.
	Okay, and then there is another tape that emerged a little bit later on.
	This would be March 19th.
	And in this later tape, Trump was asked by Woodward what changed between, you know, February and March where he really started to ramp up the rhetoric.
	Now, the normal answer here is the information changed.
	Right?
	That is the normal answer.
	Back in February, we had basically zero deaths.
	Not basically.
	We had zero identified deaths from COVID in the United States in February at that point.
	It's only later we realized that we may have had some deaths from COVID that we hadn't properly identified.
	But there were double-digit cases in the United States as of February.
	There were very low double-digit deaths as of early March.
	All Trump had to say here is, we got new information, and therefore I changed my feelings about the virus.
	But again, go back to those two personality flaws.
	Trump has never been wrong, according to Trump.
	And two, everything is either the worst or the best.
	Well, that means that what you're about to hear him say fits well within his personality foibles.
	One, he has never been wrong at any point in time.
	He is omniscient and therefore knew from the very beginning how deadly this virus was, which leads him to have to now explain, OK, if you knew it was that deadly, then why exactly didn't you talk about it?
	Which leads him to say, well, the reason I didn't talk about it is because I didn't want to panic everybody, which is a pretty weak excuse.
	I mean, honestly, if you knew that things were super duper bad back in February, you should have said so, because Americans ought to be trusted with information.
	I don't care if you're a Democrat president or Republican president.
	If you know really bad information that affects Americans, you have a responsibility to pass that along to Americans.
	It is not your job to tell us whether or not to panic.
	It is your job to tell us exactly what we are needing to know so we can make our own risk assessments.
	Right?
	That's why if you look at the actual charts on human movements in the United States, you'll see that people started to shut down their own travel plans before all of the government lockdowns took place.
	Okay, so anyway, those two personality foibles combined to give you this tape, which will be used by Democrats in every attack ad from now until the election.
	Now it's turning out it's not just old people, Bob.
	Just today and yesterday some startling facts came out.
	It's not just old people.
	It's plenty of young people.
	So give me a moment of talking to somebody, going through this with Fauci or somebody who kind of It caused a pivot in your mind because it's clear just from what's on the public record that you went through a pivot on this to, oh my God, the gravity is almost inexplicable and unexplainable.
	Well, I think, Bob, really, to be honest with you, I wanted to Uh, I wanted to always play it down.
	I still like playing it down.
	Yes, sir.
	Because I don't want to create a panic.
	Right.
	Okay, so that is the last quote, right?
	I always want to play it down.
	I still like playing it down.
	That is going to be the poll quote.
	They'll ignore the last part where he justifies it by saying that he didn't want to create a panic.
	By the way, that sort of rationale has been used also by Dr. Anthony Fauci when he said that people shouldn't mask because he didn't want to create a run on the masks.
	That logic was also used by Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, as we will see.
	Suffice it to say that the combo of those two factors, one, Trump saying to Woodward in early February that he had talked to Xi Jinping, and quote, it goes through the air.
	It's always tougher than the touch.
	You don't have to touch things, right?
	But the air, you just breathe the air and that's how it's passed.
	And so that's a very tricky one.
	That's a delicate one.
	It's also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.
	Right, that combined with the March 19th statement that he had purposely downplayed the virus is going to lead the Democrats to say Trump knew and he didn't do anything about it and he was lying to us about this whole thing the entire time and now he's admitted that he was downplaying the virus.
	Okay, so I think a couple things can be true.
	One, if Trump had come out in early February and said this thing is airborne, there was not the scientific proof to back that up.
	Again, the WHO only declared this thing airborne in July.
	Okay, so it would have been crazy for Trump to say that in early February and it is crazy, frankly, for him to say it to Bob Woodward.
	He shouldn't have made on the phone to Bob Woodward.
	My God, what do people even do at the White House?
	Seriously, just disconnect the damn phone.
	Just take the phone and smash it with a hammer and then bleach bit it like Hillary Clinton.
	Okay, so that is number one.
	Number two, it is also true that the president should not have downplayed the virus.
	It was a major mistake for the president to have done that in February and March.
	A serious mistake.
	A political mistake.
	And in fact, a human mistake, because you shouldn't be telling people to downplay particular threats when those threats actually threaten their lives, right?
	You shouldn't do that.
	Now, here's the thing.
	Is this actually a revelation?
	Two answers.
	One, if it's a revelation, and the real revelation is not what he said on March 19th, right, that he wanted to downplay it to stop panic.
	He actually said that publicly like a week later in a press conference.
	If the actual revelation is the February 7th conversation that he knew early on that it was airborne, then the question becomes why Bob Woodward did not release the tapes or report it.
	This is a question being asked by left, right, and center.
	Why exactly, if Bob Woodward knew this thing was airborne early February, didn't he come out and say, the president knows it's airborne, he's lying to you?
	And the answer is because Bob Woodward didn't know whether to take any serious measure of what Trump was saying.
	Because again, Trump engages in puffery.
	Because Trump says a lot of stuff.
	A lot of stuff comes out of that face.
	And because a lot of stuff comes out of that face, if you're Bob Woodward, what are you going to do?
	Go run to the press and say, Trump says it's airborne?
	And the press will go, yeah, but there's no information it's airborne.
	It's just Trump being crazy again.
	The bottom line is nobody knew what was going on, including Trump at the time.
	In early February, Trump did not know what was going on.
	Again, he said that he got information from Xi Jinping, who's a very untrustworthy source.
	There was a lot of differential speculation by various members of the various political parties on exactly how serious COVID was going to be and how bad the outbreak was going to be.
	Dr. Fauci was playing it down as of February as well because he, again, did not know that this thing was going to be a massive outbreak because nobody knew that it was going to break across the United States exactly this way.
	When you hear Democrats say, Well, you know, we applied for additional funding.
	Now, you applied for, like, a tiny bit of additional funding.
	You applied for, like, a little bit of additional funding.
	Funding that was so insufficient that actually the Republicans came back in early March and upped the amount of funding that they appropriated for COVID-fighting above what Democrats requested in February.
	Okay, so those are the tapes that are breaking across the media, and the media are going nuts over them, of course, because this is finally the tape that brings down Trump.
	This is the tape that brings down Trump.
	Now, a couple of things.
	One, everybody, I think, already baked in that Trump botched his rhetorical handling of the virus.
	Everybody, I think, has already baked that in.
	Does that mean that this isn't going to damage Trump?
	No, it is going to damage Trump.
	And again, the phone call is coming from inside the house.
	If you're the White House comms office, you're just that babysitter from the horror movie who gets the call from the police that the call is coming from within the house.
	You're just down the office from Trump.
	You're like, where are these leaks coming from?
	Then you look down the office and there's Trump on the phone.
	It's inexcusable.
	It is political malpractice.
	It is stupidity of the highest order.
	And I frankly don't care that Senator Lindsey Graham supposedly told Trump to talk to Woodward.
	Trump is a grown man.
	He's the president of the United States and he's in his 70s.
	At a certain point, you got to take responsibility for your own decision to speak with reporters.
	My goodness.
	Okay, so that obviously is high-level stupidity.
	But will this come back to hurt Trump?
	Well, it hurts him in debate.
	It hurts him in ads.
	Realistically speaking.
	Just assessing the politics of the situation, it hurts him in debate and it hurts him in ads.
	It hurts him in debate because if Joe Biden is sentient, then now Joe Biden has a real line of attack against Trump.
	He says, you botched COVID.
	And Trump says, you wouldn't have done anything differently.
	And he said, well, I certainly wouldn't have downplayed it for a month.
	You admitted to Bob Woodward that you downplayed it for a month because you didn't want people to panic.
	And in downplaying it, you didn't convey the actual threat level to the American people who you should trust, right?
	That's a pretty good line.
	So you'll see Biden use it.
	You'll also see this in every attack ad from now until the election, as I say.
	But is there really any content to it?
	We're going to assess whether there is anything that really adds here.
	Whether this is in fact a bombshell or whether it's a restatement from Trump's own mouth of a case that actually he has already made fairly publicly.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	So right now, basically, I think we are now participating in a multiplayer game of gaslighting.
	Every single person who's involved in the story is gaslighting.
	Bob Woodward did not know early February the thing was airborne.
	He didn't believe Trump that this thing was that serious.
	Otherwise, he would have revealed the story, right?
	He has even said that he didn't come forward with the story at this point because he literally did not know that it was a big story at that point.
	So Woodward has answered these particular questions.
	And Woodward's answer, he said, he did not have any signed agreement or formal embargo arrangement with Trump or the White House to hold back their conversations.
	He said, I told him it was for the book, but as far as promising it not to publish in real time, I didn't do that.
	He said his aim was to provide a fuller context than could occur in a news story.
	I knew I could tell the second draft of history and I could tell it before the election.
	Also, he said that there were two problems with what he heard from Trump in February that kept him from putting it in the newspaper at the time.
	One, he didn't know what the source of Trump's information was.
	It wasn't until months later, in May, that Woodward learned it came from a high-level intelligence briefing in January that was also described in Wednesday's reporting about the book.
	Now, note, Democrats had the same high-level briefing in mid-February.
	So top Democrats knew everything Trump knew by mid-February.
	In February, what Trump told Woodward seemed hard to make sense of, the author said.
	Back then, there was no panic over the virus.
	Even toward the final days of that month, Fauci was publicly assuring Americans there was no need to change their daily habits.
	And, he says, the biggest problem is I didn't know if it was true.
	Well, that's right!
	Okay, that is correct.
	So Woodward is basically acknowledging that Trump didn't know what he was talking about because Trump very rarely knows what he is talking about when it comes to statements of fact.
	This is one of the reasons why his press conferences, as soon as he got off script, devolved into kind of utter chaos and a bizarre sort of weird Benny Hill routine.
	That's because, again, Trump is not the greatest conveyor or purveyor of fact.
	This has not stopped anybody from jumping to the conclusion they wish to jump to, which is that Trump knew full well how bad things were in early February, and then he lied about it.
	Okay, that is not correct.
	Let's go through, first of all, what Trump's comments look like, and then we'll parallel them with what exactly Andrew Cuomo's comments look like, because as you will see, They're kind of parallel.
	Everybody was kind of figuring this out at the same time.
	So the basic story here, which is that Trump knew in February, early February, everyone was going to die from the virus, and then he lied about it.
	To what end exactly?
	Nobody knows.
	What exactly was the end of it?
	I've yet to hear an excuse for why this would happen.
	It's sort of like when the left claimed that Bush lied to lie America into war in Iraq.
	Why?
	To what end?
	So we could get involved in a quagmire war for a decade?
	What exactly was the purpose?
	If Trump was lying about the virus, knowing, right?
	Not that he made a mistake.
	Not that he botched it by downplaying it, right?
	All of that is fair game.
	That he lied about it.
	That Trump lied in order to do what?
	Seriously, in order to do what?
	So he knew early February that COVID was going to kill everybody.
	And then he was just like, I'm going to downplay it for fun.
	Like why?
	To increase the stock market?
	But as soon as the news broke, the stock market was going to crash.
	Why?
	To uphold his electoral possibilities?
	As soon as COVID hit, it was going to be obvious that Trump had misstated the case.
	And that was going to hurt him politically.
	So what would be the purpose of the lie?
	Again, I think we ought to distinguish between people saying dumb crap, which again is a hallmark of this administration, and lying outright that he is not, he was not lying about COVID.
	Okay.
	And by the way, you know who says he was not lying about COVID?
	I'm not the one saying he was not lying about COVID.
	Dr. Anthony Fauci says he was not lying about COVID.
	So here was Dr. Anthony Fauci last night saying there wasn't any discrepancy between what we told Trump and what he told the press.
	I may not be tuned in to the right thing that they're talking about, but I didn't really see any discrepancies between what he told us and what we told him and what he ultimately came out publicly and said.
	I didn't get any sense that he was distorting anything.
	I mean, in my discussions with him, they were always straightforward about the concerns that we had.
	We related that to him.
	And when he would go out, I'd hear him discussing the same sort of things.
	Okay, so there's Fauci basically downplaying the accusations by Woodward.
	Fauci was specifically asked, do you think that Trump conveyed bad information to the public?
	And Fauci's like, no.
	And not only that, Fauci says, when I told Trump to shut it down, he did shut it down.
	He listened to me.
	Here's Fauci.
	The first and only time that Dr. Birx and I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a, quote, shutdown in the sense of not really shutdown, but to really have strong mitigation.
	We discussed it.
	Obviously, there would be concern by some that, in fact, that might have some negative consequences.
	Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation.
	And went to the mitigation.
	Okay, so Fauci himself has already kind of debunked Woodward's story, but let's go through the actual timeline here, because the case Democrats are making is that they would have handled it differently, and they handled it right, and it was all Trump botching it.
	So let's begin with Trump's comments, and we'll see how his comments evolved over time.
	And there's no question that he did in fact downplay the virus all the way until basically mid-March.
	Here was President Trump, January 22nd, saying that we have this under control.
	Have you been briefed by the CDC?
	I have.
	Are there words about a pandemic at this point?
	No, not at all.
	We have it totally under control.
	It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control.
	It's going to be just fine.
	On February 7th, President Trump tweeted that the Chinese government had it under control.
	He tweeted, just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China.
	He is strong, sharp, powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on coronavirus.
	He feels they're doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days.
	Not only that, but he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm and the virus hopefully becomes weaker and then gone.
	Great discipline is taking place in China as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation.
	We're working closely with China to help, right?
	This is the same day that Woodward said that Trump called him up and started talking about how the thing was airborne and how it was going to kill everybody and it was super dangerous.
	OK, those two, those two messages are not in conflict, by the way.
	Trump could have thought all that and also thought that the Chinese government was actually going to be successful in shutting it down.
	February 10th, Trump went on record.
	He said, when the weather gets warmer, it's going to go away.
	It was from February 10th at a rally.
	By the way, the virus, they're working hard.
	Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.
	Hope that's true.
	Okay.
	Then, February 26th, President Trump reiterated, he said, we're very ready for this and the risk is low.
	The number one priority from our standpoint is the health and safety of the American people.
	And that's the way I viewed it when I made that decision.
	Because of all we've done, the risk to the American people remains very low.
	But we're very, very ready for this, for anything, whether it's going to be a breakout of larger proportions or whether or not we're at that very low level.
	Okay, February 29th, President Trump said, please don't incite panic, right?
	So this is the first time you've heard this sort of language from Trump, where he says, listen, we're taking it seriously, but please don't incite panic, which exactly is what he said.
	I mean, like, again, he said what he said to Woodward out loud, like, prior to that.
	Here he was on February 29th saying it.
	I'd like to just ask and caution that the media, we would respectfully ask the media and politicians and everybody else involved not to do anything to incite panic because there's no reason to panic at all.
	This is something that is being handled professionally.
	March 9th, Trump tweeted out comparing it to the flu again.
	Right, so he tweeted out, last year, 37,000 Americans died from the common flu.
	It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year.
	Nothing is shut down.
	Life and the economy go on.
	At this moment, there are 546 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 22 deaths.
	Think about that.
	And then finally, on March 30th, President Trump was asked again about this in an interview on Fox News, broadcast on Fox News, and he was asked about exactly why he had Sort of not spoken with tremendous seriousness about coronavirus early on.
	And he said, I didn't want anybody to panic.
	So basically all of the revelations in Woodward's book were out there in public view.
	So this isn't really a revelation.
	Here was Trump.
	This would have been March 30th.
	The statements I made are, I want to keep the country calm.
	I don't want panic in the country.
	I could cause panic much better than even you.
	I could do much... I would make you look like a minor league player.
	But you know what?
	I don't want to do that.
	I want to have our country be calm and strong and fight and win.
	And it will go away.
	Okay, so again, that was Trump on March 30th.
	So, all that sounds like downplaying, downplaying, downplaying.
	Don't panic, don't panic.
	And now I'm taking it seriously, right?
	Again, everything that he said to Woodward behind the scenes, he was also saying out loud in front of the scenes, because this is also typical Trump, right?
	Third rule of Trump.
	Anything you say behind the scenes will eventually be let out in public by Trump.
	In a second, we're going to see that the Democrats mirrored this exact pattern.
	Okay?
	This is not just Trump.
	The Democrats mirrored this exact pattern.
	For all the talk about they were on top of this, and Trump's response was criminal, and he was lying.
	The Democrats were doing the exact same thing.
	Again, this doesn't mean anybody handled it right.
	It just means everybody handled it wrong.
	We're going to get to this in one second.
	First, you know how strongly I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility.
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	Naturally, the Democrats have responded and the media have responded to the news of President Trump's revelation here with shock and awe.
	They can't believe it.
	Carl Bernstein, who literally just walks around saying that everything is worse than Watergate, says, wait for it, wait for it.
	This is worse than Watergate.
	Here's Bernstein explaining this is worse than Watergate.
	It's going to be very hard to see.
	Uh, this cannot be addressed by Republicans in particular and their candidate for president of the United States.
	The last time this happened, uh, during Nixon's, the end of Nixon's presidency, the Republican leadership, including Barry Goldwater, the 1964 nominee of his party for president, went to the White House and told Nixon he had to resign.
	And the facts here are even graver than in Watergate.
	OK, all Bernstein has done for his entire life is just say Watergate over and over because it's his big accomplishment.
	But at a certain point, the high school quarterback is going to have to get a new career.
	I mean, seriously, like you just said, it's worse than Watergate.
	It's not worse than Watergate.
	It's not worse than Watergate.
	As we will see, every Democrat downplayed this thing.
	And they did.
	And nobody knew how bad this was going to be.
	And again, I don't even understand the implication.
	The implication is supposedly that Trump lied about this, that he outright lied.
	The implication is that, again, not that he botched it, not that he made a mistake, not that he has a congenital habit of downplaying bad news and upplaying good news, which he does, but that he actively lied about COVID, that he knew it was going to kill tons of people, and then he lied to the American public so that, what, more people would die and the economy would get worse and he would lose all faith in the presidency?
	Like, it makes no sense at all to suggest, you know, first-degree lying here, purposeful lying.
	In any case, CNN went nuts on this as well.
	So CNN's Brianna Keillor cut off Kayleigh McEnany because Kayleigh McEnany suggested that in fact the president had not downplayed the virus, which of course is not true.
	The president has now admitted on tape to downplaying the virus.
	Here was Kayleigh McEnany and being cut off by CNN.
	We didn't want there to be a huge crash and panic.
	He expressed calmness from this podium, but he has always taken it seriously.
	And the response, an unprecedented response, really reflects that.
	Yes.
	Thanks, Kayleigh.
	I wanted to ask you about the AstraZeneca trial.
	So does that throw a spanner in the works that they've halted those trials in terms of getting a vaccine?
	All right.
	That was a press secretary at the White House lying.
	Well, there's some solid media coverage right there, because it's not the job of the press secretary to spin.
	Apparently, press secretaries never spin, except for the ones who work for Trump.
	Other than that, they are absolute truth-tellers.
	Unvarnished, unglossed truth from press secretaries, ranging from Jake Harney to Robert Gibbs, all the way back to Ari Fleischer.
	CNN's Pamela Brown then grilled Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana, asking how he could be okay with this.
	Here's how this went.
	Let me say a word about this infatuation in Washington with who said what to whom.
	I learned pretty quickly up here.
	Senator, I'm sorry.
	I'm not going to let you do this.
	OK, this is I understand there's so much politics right now.
	We're two months away from an election, but this is life and death.
	You had 5000 people that have died in in Louisiana from coronavirus.
	Republicans are reluctant, as you are now, to ever criticize this president.
	But as a human being, how can you be OK with this?
	OK, again, what is it that people are supposedly OK with?
	I mean, it's pretty obvious that Trump should have said more serious things about the virus early.
	But aside from that, is there?
	And that's the thing.
	I mean, it is.
	OK, but aside from that, are we going to pretend that the Democrats had any response to this?
	Because they did not.
	They did, in fact, oppose the Chinese travel ban.
	The amount of spending they proposed to spend on this thing was like a billion dollars.
	One billion.
	Okay, we ended up spending $7 trillion on it.
	Minimum.
	Okay, they proposed originally $1 billion for like some studies and a little bit of PPE.
	When they say that if Trump had taken it more seriously, everybody would have masked up in February, nonsense.
	The CDC was legitimately telling everybody not to mask up in February.
	So what exactly would have changed here?
	So I've heard a couple of recommendations as to what would have changed.
	We should have done better with the PPE.
	We should have ramped up PPE production.
	Okay, there's only one problem.
	China had a monopoly on PPE production and they seized all of it.
	So that's problem number one.
	Number two, if Trump had taken it more seriously, maybe people would have started sheltering in place a little bit earlier.
	But Democratic mayors and governors didn't tell anybody to shelter in place earlier either.
	And in fact, Democratic legislators who knew full well what was going on because they were getting the same intelligence briefings on this stuff that Trump was, they were spending most of February downplaying the thing as well.
	I mean, Dr. Fauci was downplaying it in the late February.
	Like, don't let people rewrite the history here, such that Trump was fully in the know about how bad this was going to be February 7th, as opposed to just engaging in puffery with Woodward, which is exactly what he was doing in early February.
	We've all watched Trump.
	We all know what he's doing.
	That doesn't matter.
	The Democrats have responded by basically suggesting that Trump is a criminal.
	Here is Joe Biden suggesting that Trump's response was criminal, even though, again, Joe Biden has yet to explain what he would have done differently.
	It's amazing.
	There's never a follow-up question.
	What would you have done differently, Joe Biden?
	Ever.
	And he just refers back to an editorial he wrote in January, like January 27th, where he said coronavirus is bad.
	That's the entire editorial.
	There's nothing in there about what he would actually do.
	It was just coronavirus is a bad thing.
	Thanks, Joe.
	Okay, but here was Joe Biden with Jake Tapper saying that Trump's response was criminal.
	And again, this is gonna be the pattern from now until the election.
	Some allegation will be made about Trump and Biden will be asked about Trump.
	Biden will never be asked about Biden, ever.
	Right now, you would expect a journalist at some point to ask Joe Biden, what would you do differently?
	What would your plans look like?
	What exactly, if you were president, what would you have changed?
	But nobody will ever ask him that because he's a Democrat.
	So instead, it's gonna be, here's a revelation about Trump.
	What do you think about that revelation, Joe?
	Here was Joe Biden going off on Trump.
	It was all about making sure the stock market didn't come down, that his wealthy friends didn't lose any money, and that he could say that, in fact, anything that happened had nothing to do with him.
	He waved a white flag.
	He walked away.
	He didn't do a damn thing.
	Think about it.
	Think about what he did not do.
	And it's almost criminal.
	Okay, what he did not do?
	He gave the governors the ventilators they need.
	He did ramp up PPE production.
	It was the CDC that botched the testing regimen.
	Okay, those are career staffers at the CDC.
	When he says that he did this to, what, uphold the market for his rich friends?
	What are you talking about?
	Seriously, what are you talking about?
	The market crashed.
	The market tanked in March.
	Absolutely blew out.
	What?
	That doesn't even make any sense.
	And when Joe Biden sits there and he suggests that Donald Trump did this for his rich friends, I mean, that is a form of slander.
	It really is.
	Because there is no evidence to suggest that that is the case whatsoever.
	By the way, who is holding rallies into early March, like big rallies into early March?
	Captain, I'm taking it seriously over here.
	Who is holding big rallies?
	Oh, yeah, that was right.
	It was Joe Biden who was holding rallies in March before he passed away and was wheeled around as a corpse.
	He was doing public rallies in March.
	Nancy Pelosi also did this routine yesterday.
	She said Trump downplayed the threat.
	He's now admitted to downplaying the threat.
	She tweeted out, Trump and Republicans downplayed the deadly threat of the coronavirus.
	Moscow Mitch, now we're all just Twitter trolls, decided to take a pause rather than help the American people with a strategic plan.
	Don't be misled.
	Their failure and denial are costing lives.
	I have a question.
	Wasn't she Speaker of the House at the time?
	What did she do?
	I'll tell you what she did.
	On February 24th, she went down to Chinatown and she told everybody to join her down in Chinatown in San Francisco as the pandemic began.
	Here's Nancy Pelosi circa February 24th.
	Speaker Nancy Pelosi told me she came here to Chinatown to combat fear.
	That's what we're trying to do today is to say everything is fine here.
	She understands people are concerned about China.
	But that shouldn't be carried over to Chinatown in San Francisco.
	I hope that it's not that, but all I can say is I'm here.
	We feel safe and sound, so many of us coming here.
	Okay, so, again, the notion that Democrats were really on top of this or would have been on top of this if they had the information from it is just nonsense.
	It's just nonsense.
	This is, once again, Trump's mouth coming back to bite him on the ass, but that's pretty much all you got here.
	And all the implications you're drawing, that he was lying to uphold his rich friends, that is ridiculous.
	Ridiculous, and frankly, slanderous.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second, because we'll show you how America's best governor, Andrew Cuomo, we've been informed by those who know that he's an incredible governor, that Andrew Cuomo really captained on top of this thing.
	He wasn't on top of this thing.
	I'll show you.
	Again, this is just an indicator of where everybody was because I can't blame people for not being super serious about this in February.
	I wasn't super serious about this in February because nobody was super serious about this in February.
	They were not.
	Don't let people rewrite history.
	It was early March when people started to get worried, like truly worried, including Fauci.
	The people who are now buying votive candles of Fauci.
	But back in February, he wasn't taking it super seriously either.
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	We'll get to a reminder as to what the Democratic response was throughout the COVID pandemic, and then we'll get to the continued politicization of COVID, because it's insipid.
	We'll continue this in one second.
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	Alrighty, so how do Democrats respond to this?
	Again, this is the big question.
	If Trump supposedly blew this, right, if Trump knew all the way back when, that in order for Democrats to claim that Trump did something super wrong here, he didn't just blow it, they have to claim two things.
	One, either that they knew and they would have handled it better, which they can't claim, or two, that Trump knew and he lied.
	Trump knew and he lied is what they're going for with this Woodward revelation, but again, the evidence ain't there.
	That Trump knew it was airborne, that Trump knew it was super dangerous.
	Just because he said to Woodward what he had heard from Xi Jinping February 7th, that's called Trump mouthing off.
	He does that crap all the time.
	This is the same guy who went out in the middle of a press conference and he was like, Okay, you're just saying stuff now.
	that it kills things. What if we could find a way to get inside the body?
	Okay, you're just saying stuff now. It's amazing to me how many people will take Trump absolutely, literally and seriously.
	And again, I get this all the time.
	You talk about Obama literally.
	Yes, because Obama was a literal serious person.
	I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'm not going to treat Donald Trump the same way that I treat Barack Obama because they don't think the same.
	They don't act the same.
	That is like saying I'm going to treat my wife the same way I treat my baby.
	That is not the same thing.
	OK, and you may say that soft bigotry of low expectations.
	Fine, call it whatever you want.
	I have very low expectations for Trump's rhetorical prowess when it comes to spitting out solid fact or how seriously he takes his own rhetoric.
	And I think that the record will back me on this.
	It doesn't mean that Trump is a bad president.
	It doesn't mean that Trump hasn't done a great many things that I like as President of the United States.
	It doesn't even mean that I don't plan on voting for him.
	It does mean that if you're asking me to take his comments with tremendous seriousness, I don't know what world you're living in.
	Why?
	Why would I?
	What evidence do I have?
	This is a man who today tweeted out that Kim Jong-un, I hope he's feeling better.
	He's a real fighter.
	What in the world is going on?
	Trump tweeted out moments ago, Kim Jong-un is in good health.
	Never underestimate him.
	Never underestimate Kim Jong-un.
	Like, that's the guy I'm supposed to take super— Like, how do you— How do you muster the outrage on a day-after-day basis?
	How?
	Like, I understand mustering outrage at somebody who actually has the capacity for intent, but how do you muster outrage at Donald Trump, who just says things, who suffers from tremendous, tremendously serious logorrhea?
	How do you— How do— Okay.
	In any case, The other case the Democrats could make is that they would have treated this better or they didn't treat this better, and that's just a lie.
	So let's track the rhetoric of Andrew Cuomo, the greatest of all governors.
	We've already said that Nancy Pelosi is saying, well, we were taking it very seriously.
	Late February, Nancy, you were out in Chinatown.
	You've already heard Joe Biden saying that he was taking it super seriously early March.
	He was out doing rallies until the actual shutdowns.
	So let's trace Andrew Cuomo.
	How did he do, rhetorically speaking?
	Well, here is Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, on February 2nd, explaining there is no reason to panic.
	We've been through situations like this before.
	We're very proactive.
	I don't take anything for granted.
	Precaution is always the best practice.
	Preparedness is always the best practice.
	And that's what we do here in New York.
	At the same time, we have to keep this in perspective.
	There is no reason to panic.
	There's no reason to have an inordinate amount of fear about this situation.
	Okay, fast forward a month.
	Has much changed?
	The answer is no.
	Here is Andrew Cuomo on March 2nd.
	Remember, this is when Democrats are saying that we're taking it super seriously and Republicans are not.
	Here's Andrew Cuomo, March 2nd, saying we have a great healthcare system.
	It's not going to be that bad here.
	And don't worry, we'll take care of the nursing homes.
	How has this comment now come back to haunt Andrew Cuomo?
	Considering 11,000 people died in nursing homes because he was shipping elderly COVID-ridden patients back into nursing homes.
	Here's Andrew Cuomo circa March 2nd.
	We think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York.
	So when you're saying what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don't even think it's going to be as bad as it was in other countries.
	We are fully coordinated.
	We are fully mobilized.
	This is all about mobilization of a public health system that is going to be primarily senior citizens.
	People who are debilitated and we're going to have a special effort for our nursing homes, etc.
	OK, then the next day he says, by the way, we can't contain the spread, but we shouldn't be too concerned about the fact that we can't contain the spread.
	Again, this is March 3rd.
	This is not February 7th.
	This is not January.
	This is March 3rd.
	You cannot contain the spread.
	You can slow it, you can limit it, but you can't contain it.
	That isn't a cause for anxiety either, because, well, what happens when a large number of people get infected?
	Which, you're going to see a spread.
	By the way, I said two weeks ago, it's just a matter of time before we see our first case, then we saw our first case.
	I said yesterday, you will see a case of community spread.
	Here we are today.
	There's a case of community spread.
	Okay, so again, it took another week and a half for him to start taking it seriously, and it took him another three weeks to fully shut down the state of New York.
	So many things can be true simultaneously.
	Trump botched the rhetoric.
	Trump shouldn't have taken it lightly in terms of how he spoke about this publicly.
	Democrats had no plan, they presented no plan, and nothing really fundamentally would have changed if a Democrat had been president.
	Democratic governors botched this thing royally, including Andrew Cuomo.
	Is it a bombshell or is this just another revelation of stuff that we already knew?
	The answer is the latter.
	It is not, in fact, a bombshell.
	And I did that at length because I think it is important for people to recognize how the media spin up what is a thing we already knew, namely Trump says stuff and that he was saying silly stuff about COVID and he should have taken this more seriously in February and March.
	Okay, how they spin that up into a new scandal just two months before the election at the behest, presumably, of the Biden campaign, and then allow Biden to get away with public statements like Trump did this in order to increase the stock market, which is just conspiratorial nonsense of the highest order.
	Now, this is also relevant because the politicization of COVID continues.
	We are continuing to watch the politicization of COVID.
	And some people are making this perfectly obvious.
	So Barbara Farrar is the L.A.
	County health official who's been in charge of COVID policy.
	She was caught on a phone call explaining full out that the schools would not be open until after the election, which sounds just a little political, does it not?
	So we don't realistically anticipate that we would be moving to either Tier 2 or to reopening K-12 schools, at least until after the election, after, you know, in early November.
	Like, when we just look at the timing of everything, it seems to us a more realistic approach to this would be to think that we're going to be where we are now until we are done with the election.
	Okay, so, I mean, this is very political.
	And the media coverage of COVID is very political.
	So, for example, there's a story from the Associated Press called, This is from the Associated Press.
	Now, you might gather from that headline that basically a bunch of teachers went back to school and kids infected them, and then they died.
	There's only one problem.
	The stories that are cited by the AP are cases where the teachers obtained the virus from places that are not children.
	In Oxford, Mississippi, 42-year-old Nakoma James taught in a middle school and helped coach high school football.
	He died August 6th, during the first week of classes, but was self-quarantining when teachers and students returned to the classroom.
	So he already had it.
	The cases didn't come from the kids, apparently.
	Another Mississippi teacher died on Sunday.
	History teacher Tom Slade recently posted on Facebook about his battle with pneumonia caused by the coronavirus.
	Slade was teaching in person when the academic year started, August 16th, but began quarantining after he had contact with someone who was positive at a church meeting.
	So it was not, in fact, at school.
	In South Carolina, Demetria Demi Bannister, 28, died three days after being diagnosed with COVID-19.
	The district, Bannister was at Windsor Elementary School.
	They said that she was at the elementary school August 28th for a teacher workday before classes resumed.
	Before classes was resumed.
	In-person classes started August 24th, but she was already hospitalized by then.
	So the suggestion is that school's opening is going to be the big vector of transmission?
	That's three cases cited by the AP of teachers dying, none of whom obtained this thing at school, apparently.
	Or if they did, it was from adults.
	Okay, that is biased media coverage in the extreme.
	In the extreme.
	And meanwhile, speaking of biased media coverage in the extreme, the media are making hay out of the fact that the AstraZeneca trial has been put on hold.
	They are suggesting this is because of an unexplained side effect.
	That is not what happened here.
	What happened is that somebody who was in the control group, well, somebody who was taking the vaccine, not in the control group, somebody who was taking the vaccine in the vaccine group, came down with something.
	They don't know whether it was linked to the vaccine yet or not.
	But the scare tactic is, well, maybe they've identified a grave side effect that causes them to cancel the trial.
	That is not the way this works.
	They called it a routine action.
	Quote, Ms.
	Frances Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health.
	The announcement yesterday about the AstraZeneca vaccine is a concrete example of how even a single case of an unexpected illness is sufficient to require a clinical hold for the trial in multiple counties.
	But the media played this as though this was an unexplained side effect.
	In fact, AstraZeneca spokesman Brendan McEvoy said the event is being investigated by an independent committee.
	It is too early to conclude any specific diagnosis.
	So it is unclear whether this is even linked to the vaccine at this point, but the media ran with that anyway to suggest that the vaccines are not going to work.
	We have also seen We've also seen the media continue to trot out this ridiculous Sturgis study, suggesting that there were 267,000 COVID cases and $12.2 billion in public health costs attached to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota.
	It's nonsense.
	I mean, it's ridiculous.
	The Washington Post reported like a week ago that there were 260 confirmed cases connected to Sturgis.
	According to the Wall Street Journal editorial board, many in the media and various health stages warned that the motorcycle rally represented a worst case scenario for a super spreading event. It would be surprising if the rally didn't lead to at least some new COVID cases. It's impossible to know how many because there's no data on how many attendees or their close contacts later tested positive.
	But don't worry, the modelers showed up. So what exactly did they do? Well, they analyzed the anonymous cell phone data of attendees, and then they compared case trends in counties with high, moderate and low numbers of attendees.
	They found that cases increased by 3.6 to 3.9 percent, 3.6 to 3.9, sorry, per 1,000 in South Dakota in the three weeks after the rally, translating to between 3,185 and 3,441 more cases statewide.
	To put this number in perspective, New York State has recorded as many cases in the last week, even with its stringent public health rules.
	South Dakota still has among the lowest per capita death rates in America.
	COVID patients currently occupy 3% of the state hospital beds and 6% of ICU beds.
	The study really jumps off the rails by linking all relative increase in virus cases in counties with attendees compared to those without rally participants.
	Many high inflow counties like Los Angeles, Maricopa, Clark, and El Paso had already been experiencing flare-ups.
	So basically, the modeler said, if LA experienced a flare-up after surges, then it was probably surges.
	That's crazy!
	LA's been experiencing a flare-up for weeks, for months at this point.
	These counties may have shared other characteristics like high population density, says the Wall Street Journal, that contributed to the increases.
	There could also be other endogenous variables.
	For example, counties with more people who attended the motorcycle rally may also have had populations less observant of social distancing.
	Doesn't matter.
	They also then assigned a cost of $46,000 per person identified with the case to get to $12.2 billion, which is crazy.
	The vast majority of people who get COVID get mild or asymptomatic cases.
	So what in the hell?
	But this study was trotted out as the gold standard for showing that it was red states that were responsible for everything evil happening in the country right now.
	This is all highly political.
	How highly political is it?
	LA County tried to ban trick-or-treating.
	Okay, it's currently September 10th.
	Last I checked, Halloween has not been changed from its original date of October 31st.
	Which means that they are banning trick-or-treating seven weeks out.
	Seven weeks out!
	And by the way, trick-or-treating does not convey the virus.
	You're outdoors, you're socially distanced.
	What the hell are you talking about?
	They had to walk it back.
	Instead, they said the activity is quote-unquote, not recommended.
	Door-to-door trick-or-treating is not recommended because it can be very difficult to maintain proper social distancing on porches and at front doors.
	Ensure that everyone answering or coming to the door is appropriately masked to prevent disease and because sharing food is risky.
	First of all, you're generally sharing packaged candy.
	We're not Halloween celebrators in the Shapiro family, but we do leave out a bucket of candy for the kids.
	Everybody can do that.
	This is not that difficult.
	The county's also advising against trunk-or-treating, that is going to a car-to-car to receive candy.
	So they tried to cancel this, and then the cops were like, you know what, we're not enforcing this, and then they had to walk it back.
	So really, really well done.
	Everybody is doing a great job with all of this.
	And meanwhile, it is worth noting that there are some other takeaways from the Woodward book that have been making some news.
	Some of the takeaways from the Woodward book that have been making some news.
	Well, there's some revelations about things that people supposedly said that they've now denied.
	So they suggest that Dr. Fauci said that Trump has no attention span, which, by the way, Trump has no attention span.
	I mean, I'll just say it straight out.
	I don't get the impression Trump has a very long attention span, do you?
	Not from his Twitter account.
	Apparently, Fauci also suggested that Trump didn't really follow the data all that well, which, again, we kind of knew, considering that we already knew that he has, like, shrunk his intelligence briefings down to a single page.
	In any case, Fauci was asked about this on Fox News, and he said, I didn't say any of that.
	According to the Washington Post, Fauci at one point tells others that the president, quote, is on a separate channel and unfocused in meetings with, quote, rudderless leadership, according to Woodward.
	His, quote, his attention span is like a minus number, Fauci said, according to Woodward.
	His sole purpose is to get reelected.
	Is that correct?
	You know, if you notice, it was others have said that.
	So, you know, you should ask others.
	I don't recall that at all.
	OK, so there's Fauci debunking that claim.
	Then there's the claim that Jim Mattis called Trump dangerous and unfit, which, again, is not a great shot, considering that he quit over Syria policy and wrote a letter to that effect.
	And Dan Coats, the former director of national intelligence, apparently at some point he said that Trump's gentle approach to Russia reflected something more sinister, perhaps that Moscow had something.
	OK, so that was speculation from Dan Coats.
	This is all gossipy behind closed doors kind of stuff.
	Apparently Trump repeatedly denigrated senior American military officials to his trade advisory so they care more about alliances than they do about trade deals.
	In a discussion with Woodward, Trump called the U.S.
	military suckers for paying extensive costs to protect South Korea.
	Woodward wrote he was stunned when the president said of South Korea, we're defending you.
	We're allowing you to exist.
	Okay, again, Trump has said all of this publicly.
	That is not a revelation.
	My favorite supposed revelation from the Woodward book is one that actually makes Trump look a lot better.
	And that is where Bob Woodward pointed out that he and Trump were, quote, white and privileged.
	And asked if Trump was working to understand the pain, anger, and particularly black people feel in this country.
	And Trump said, no.
	And then he said, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you?
	Listen to you, wow!
	Now I don't feel that at all.
	Honestly, good for Trump.
	The fact that he spent 18 hours on the phone with this credulous dupe, Woodward, is pretty astonishing to me in the first place.
	But if you're gonna do that conversation, then at the very least, you can point out the nonsense when it comes up.
	Woodward also apparently gained insight into Trump's relationships with North Korea.
	In describing his chemistry with Kim, Trump said, quote, You meet a woman.
	In one second, you know whether or not it's going to happen.
	That's not good.
	And also weird.
	Also, he complained about the Russia investigations.
	He said, Putin said to me in a meeting, it's a shame because I know it's very hard for you to make a deal with us.
	I said, you're right.
	Again, that is not really a revelation.
	So not a lot of revelations happening from the Woodward book.
	Certainly not in the way that the media seem to be covering it.
	Meanwhile, Adam Schiff is trying to revive his allegations that somehow Trump is impeachable.
	So remember, he tried last time, and he failed.
	Well, he's back again, is Adam Schiff, or as the president calls him, Schifty Schiff.
	He is back again.
	Now he has announced that as part of its ongoing investigation into the DHS and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the committee received a whistleblower reprisal complaint alleging serious wrongdoing by officials at the department and reprisal against former INA Acting Undersecretary Brian Murphy for making protected disclosures.
	After receiving the complaint, Schiff sent a letter requesting Murphy appear for a deposition.
	Schiff released a statement.
	The whistleblower retaliation complaint filed by former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis Brian Murphy outlines grave and disturbing allegations that senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials improperly sought to politicize, manipulate, and censor intelligence in order to benefit President Trump politically.
	This puts our nation and its security at grave risk.
	Murphy's allegations are serious.
	From senior officials suppressing intelligence reports on Russia's election interference, and making false statements to Congress about terrorism threats at our southern border, to modifying intelligence assessments to match the president's rhetoric on Antifa, and minimizing the threat posed by white supremacists, we've requested Murphy's testimony.
	So, in other words, this is just a guy who's a career staffer who disagrees with how the intelligence community was creating its assessments, and now is claiming that Trump intimidated them, presumably without any evidence of any of this.
	So good, we can have another full investigation of this.
	Maybe we can try to impeach again, because that worked out so well last time.
	Suffice to say, Democrats are drawing near the bottom of the well at this point.
	Does that mean that Trump is going to win?
	No.
	It doesn't mean that Trump is going to win.
	It doesn't mean that it won't be effective enough for Biden to carry himself over the finish line.
	It does mean that when you're going back to the well with Adam Schiff and looking for impeachable offenses, you're really, really digging near the bottom.
	All right.
	We'll be back here a little bit later today with much more additional content, so stick around for that.
	Otherwise, we'll see you here tomorrow.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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