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Dec. 18, 2020 - The Ben Shapiro Show

01:05:48

We Are Under Attack | Ep. 1160

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	A massive suspected Russian cyber hack hits a load of American agencies, Democrats insist on retribution while pushing for wins in Georgia, and stimulus talks continue to drag out.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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	We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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	Pure Talk is simply All right, so in one of the least noticed stories that is actually an enormous story in recent memory, there's an enormous Russian mega-hack, apparently, suspected Russian mega-hack against a bevy of top American agencies and top American companies.
	According to the Associated Press, U.S.
	Government agencies and private companies rushed Monday to secure their computer networks following the disclosure of a sophisticated and long-running cyber espionage intrusion suspected of being carried out by Russian hackers.
	The full extent of the damage is not yet clear.
	The potential threat was significant enough that the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity Unit directed all federal agencies to remove compromised network management software and thousands of companies were expected to do the same.
	By the way, there are certain sources saying it's not going to be sufficient to remove the software.
	You're actually going to have to unplug the actual hardware, get rid of it, and replace it, which is crazy.
	That's how infected these systems have become.
	According to the AP, what was striking about the operation was its potential scope, as well as the manner in which the perpetrators managed to pierce cyber defenses and gain access to email and internal files at the Treasury and Commerce Department and potentially elsewhere.
	The intrusion was stark evidence of the vulnerability of even supposedly secure government networks, even after well-known previous attacks.
	It's still not clear who exactly did this, although U.S.
	officials are suggesting it is probably Russian hackers.
	The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources, says the attack was carried out by Russian government hackers who go by the nicknames APT29 or Cozy Bear, which sounds cuter than it is, and are part of that nation's foreign intelligence service.
	The intrusion came to light after a prominent cybersecurity firm, FireEye, determined it had been breached and alerted that foreign governments and major corporations were also compromised.
	So how significant is this breach?
	It's significant enough that, for example, The Bush cyber czar, Richard Clark, said this is the largest espionage attack in history, in American history.
	This is the largest espionage attack in history.
	This is as though the Russians got a passkey, a skeleton key, for about half the locks in the country.
	Think about it that way.
	Yeah, it's 18,000 companies and government institutions scattered around the U.S.
	and the world.
	This is an espionage attack.
	As far as we know, the reason they got in was to steal information from the U.S.
	U.S. government.
	For those targets, the hackers will have long ago moved past their entry point, covered their tracks, and gained what experts call persistent access, meaning the ability to infiltrate and control networks in a way that is hard to detect or remove.
	While the Russians didn't have time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them.
	It'll take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy.
	So, how did they gain access?
	According to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, they said in an unusual directive, the widely used network software SolarWinds had been compromised and should be removed from any system using it.
	The problem is that once the system has used it, the Russians are already inside the system in all probability.
	National cybersecurity agencies of Britain and Ireland also issued similar alerts, so this isn't a purely American problem.
	SolarWinds is used by hundreds of thousands of organizations around the world, including most Fortune 500 companies, multiple US federal agencies.
	The perpetrators were able to embed malware in a security update issued by the company based in Austin, Texas.
	So basically, it wasn't that, you know, somebody clicked on a phishing link or something.
	It wasn't like when John Podesta got hacked by the WikiLeaks guys simply by clicking on a phishing link.
	Instead, what happened here is that SolarWinds, which again is a major company, issued a sort of software update.
	And people just hit, sure, update my software.
	And with that software came the malware.
	Though SolarWinds estimated 18,000 customers were infected, most of the malware was not activated.
	When it was, hackers could impersonate system administrators and have total access to the infected networks.
	Carmichael said that the highly disciplined hackers only chose targets with highly coveted information because every time they activate the tool remotely, the likelihood of detection increases.
	Ben Johnson, former NSA cyber engineer, who is now chief technology officer of software security from Obsidian said, quite honestly, my heart sank when I saw some of the details, just the amount of information they could potentially have if they are reading everyone's emails and they are accessing sensitive files within places like Treasury or Commerce.
	SolarWinds has customers including in the Pentagon, the State Department, NASA, the NSA, the Department of Justice, and the White House.
	So this is a full-on disaster area.
	And we don't know just how deep this hack goes.
	We have no idea what sort of information they have access to.
	And again, they sort of now have a backdoor, which means that they can consistently be gathering information.
	This is really, really scary stuff.
	So, according to Politico, the Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S.
	nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies.
	They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
	Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation, the Richland Field Office of the Department of Energy, the hackers have been able to do more damage at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission than other agencies, the officials said.
	This is the clearest sign yet that the hackers were able to access networks belonging to a core part of the U.S.
	national security enterprise.
	So it's a full-on disaster area.
	And again, that persistent access means that they can basically get in whenever they want, and it's going to be very, very difficult to detect.
	It's also unclear exactly who is behind it.
	Again, the Russians say they are not, but that cannot be trusted.
	So what exactly should be done here?
	I mean, this is basically an act of cyber war, right?
	I mean, this is cyber war.
	Senator Romney of Utah, he said, the cyber hack is like Russian bombers have been flying undetected over our entire country, alarming U.S.
	vulnerability, apparent cyber warfare weakness, glaring inadequate cyber defenses, inexcusable silence, and inaction from the White House.
	So, something has to be done, obviously.
	Apparently, they found more than one doorway into U.S.
	systems as well.
	The Department of Homeland Security said in a bulletin on Thursday, the spies had used other techniques besides corrupting updates of network management software by SolarWinds, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies.
	Apparently, the SolarWinds-Orion supply chain compromise is not the only initial infection vector this APT actor leveraged, according to the DHS's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
	Okay, so this is obviously scary stuff.
	It doesn't mean, by the way, that they breached any of our seriously classified systems, but it is unclear what we know.
	I mean, it's possible that they did.
	And even if they didn't, the real possibility is that there's a lot of information that is not exactly classified that can be leveraged against people.
	Right?
	Especially because the Russians love to sow confusion in the U.S.
	body politic.
	If they have this much access to all of our corporate information, if they have this much access to insider government information, how much chaos can they sow over the coming years?
	This is really scary stuff.
	And the Trump administration, which is still in office, needs to take harsh action against the Russians.
	And we are talking about more than individual sanctions on top Russian officers.
	I mean, we have to be talking about something much more serious here, because this, again, is the largest act of cyber espionage probably in the history of the world, from what we can gather at this point.
	That does not mean that we are moving toward open warfare with the Russians or anything like that.
	But if we don't take harsh action right now and cut this off at the knees, it's only gonna get worse.
	And again, apparently, a lot of these agencies, they're being told that the software is so compromised, they have to pretty much do what Hillary Clinton did to her hard drive.
	Like, take this stuff out of the wall, take it out to a field somewhere, and take a baseball bat to it, like it's a printer in an office space.
	I mean, that's how bad this is.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
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	Okay, so obviously this particular hack is incredibly scary.
	It demonstrates that we have been really remiss in a lot of our cyber security and we have not been taking seriously the threat from foreign countries, including Russia, but also including China.
	The fact is that we have talked very little in the United States about what ought to be done to fight back against the Chinese efforts to develop 5G.
	And when we talk about using government resources in order to boost particular industries, it seems like the industry that needs to be boosted the most actually is the industry that people in America think needs to be boosted the least, namely the internet industry.
	the internet industry.
	The Chinese are threatening the security of the web around the world by installation of 5G that allows them back doors to other information and lots of countries are taking that up.
	If the United States does not out-develop the Chinese in that space, then pretty soon a lot of governments, a lot of companies are gonna be in hock to the Chinese.
	That could be a full-scale disaster area.
	That is not something that anybody wants at this point.
	Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, he says, do?
	and state-sponsored hackers successfully snuck malware-riddled software into scores of federal government systems, our country has suffered a massive national security failure that could have ramifications for years to come.
	So what exactly could the US do?
	Well, theoretically, we could expel diplomats, we could impose sanctions, we could file criminal charges for cyber espionage.
	Washington, DC and the EU have done that against Russia in the past, but that has not stopped the Russians.
	So something radical has to change and it has to change in short order because this stuff is extremely, extremely dangerous.
	Okay, meanwhile...
	The wave of COVID that is hitting the country continues to be extraordinarily grave.
	The California update is really ugly right now.
	So California has been locked down tight.
	The idea from the left and from the press and from so many of our government officials is that lockdowns always work.
	That the best thing you can do is lockdown.
	Here's the problem.
	California really never stopped the lockdown.
	And people, after a certain point, they stop obeying the lockdowns.
	And as it turns out, if you shut down outdoor activities that are safe and you force people back into their homes, they're more likely to infect members of their household.
	As we know from the contact tracing in New York, the vast majority of people who are obtaining COVID-19 are doing so inside their own households.
	So here is the story from Southern California today, according to KABC in Southern California, one of our affiliates.
	The ICU capacity in the 11-county Southern California region has now dropped to zero percent amid a dramatic surge in coronavirus cases, officials said on Thursday.
	California hospitals are required to report the total number of all available staffed ICU beds each day.
	Regional ICU capacity is calculated by subtracting neonatal and pediatric intensive care beds from the number of adult beds.
	News of the diminished ICU capacity came as the state announced the deaths of 379 Californians, marking the highest number of fatalities in one day since the pandemic began, surpassing the previous record set the previous day.
	We are talking now in the United States about more than 3,400 deaths a day.
	If California were a country right now, California itself would rank number three in the world in the number of COVID diagnoses.
	The L.A.
	County COVID death toll has been rising.
	In L.A.
	County, about two people are dying every hour on average from the virus.
	Something the county's public health officer called an explosive and very deadly surge.
	Meanwhile, the vaccines are rolling out, and that is very good news.
	But here has been one of the big problems with so much of what is going on right now.
	We require tremendous trust in our public health agencies, and yet our public health agencies are very often pursuing policies that are anti-scientific.
	I'm talking about the fact that public health agencies in Southern California shut down outdoor dining without any evidence that outdoor dining was a chief factor of transmission.
	I'm talking about the fact that you have governors and mayors all over the country who have shut down education, even though Young people, particularly children, are not chief transmission vectors of the virus and are not dying from the virus.
	The problem is that if you set unrealistic standards, it's very difficult for people to trust the standards that you are setting.
	This doesn't mean you shouldn't be taking precautions.
	We should be taking precautions.
	If we are in a situation where ICU beds are at zero, you are going to have to engage in larger scale shutdowns of, you know, things like restaurants.
	You're going to have to go from 50 to 25 percent, for example, if that is what the science backs.
	The problem is people were doing stuff that the science did not back, and then people stopped paying attention to the scientists.
	One of the big questions that the scientific establishment is going to have to ask itself when it comes to COVID and nearly everything else is why is it that so many people don't believe what we are saying to them?
	Because if we are talking about the most, one of the most valuable things that has ever happened in human history, it's the renewed belief in the scientific method that began in the Enlightenment period and has developed You have progress and technology.
	If you look at the prosperity of human society, life expectancy, all of this has jumped radically because of belief in the scientific method.
	But one of the problems is that over the past 50 years, particularly, the scientific method has been increasingly made secondary to politically correct perceptions of what the scientific method should conclude.
	We now have scientists who have decided that the conclusion is more important than the actual method itself.
	And people can see that.
	People can see that.
	See, science is great when science sticks to its lane.
	Science is not great when science does not stick to its lane.
	Science's lane is not about the meaning of life, it is not about the meaning of the universe, and it is certainly not about politics.
	Science's lane was supposed to be about trial and error, scientific method, hypothesis that is falsified or not falsified.
	Right?
	That is what the scientific method was.
	But scientism decided that science was the solution for everything.
	And not only that, you could merge leftist politics with science.
	And people at a certain point said, well, I'm not sure what to believe anymore because you are now outside your lane.
	You are engaging in what we would call ultracrepidarianism.
	You are now operating outside your chosen field of specialty.
	When the COVID sources told us for months that anti-lockdown gatherings were very scary, but also gatherings for George Floyd were very good, because racism is a public health problem, that undermines your credibility.
	And the undermining of scientific credibility is an ongoing thing.
	It is happening nearly every day in areas large and small in American life.
	To take a non-COVID example, The New England Journal of Medicine, which is probably the most prestigious journal of medicine in the United States, put out an article today that is so absurd and so anti-scientific, it beggars imagination.
	We'll get to that in just one second.
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	knowing that if anything happens, you are protected. Get coverage today. See why CarShield cars go farther. Visit carshield.com. Use code Ben to save 10%. Again, that's carshield.com, code Ben to save 10%. A deductible may apply. Okay, so when I say that the scientific establishment has really undermined its own credibility, and this is particularly frightening at a time when science has been at its most necessary.
	I mean, the fact is that science is now going to, in historic measure, solve the COVID crisis through the creation of a vaccine in record time.
	It's an incredible thing.
	It really is.
	And yet the scientific community continues to lose credibility among the public at large because they continue, at the same time that they are pushing actual science, to push nonsense.
	Here's an example.
	The New England Journal of Medicine put out an article today.
	Again, this is a prestigious medical journal.
	It is titled, Failed Assignments, Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates.
	It is by Vadim Stahler, MD, Jessica Clark, JD.
	Which is just a lawyer.
	So we are now supposed to change.
	We're supposed to change birth certificates for babies.
	clinical utility and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people. Moving such designations below the line of demarcation wouldn't compromise the birth certificates public health function but could avoid harm. So we are now supposed to change, we're supposed to change birth certificates for babies because the lie is that sex is assigned at birth. First of all the notion that sex designations don't offer clinical utility on birth certificates is insane.
	Obviously they do.
	Doctors immediately start taking care of girl babies and boy babies a little bit differently because they have different systems.
	They are not the same.
	They have different growth charts, to take one example.
	The basic idea
	Here, from the New England Journal of Medicine, is that so as not to offend the possibility that an adult transgender person is going to be offended by their own birth certificate, we are now going to retroactively remove the sex designation line on birth certificates, or move it lower on the birth certificate, so that people who are transgender and care about their birth certificate, meaning they're like 30, and now they're looking back at their birth certificate and want to change their birth certificate, which, by the way, not only violates the laws of biology, but also the time-space continuum, because when you were born, you were actually a member of the sex to which you are still a member.
	Okay, but now the New England Journal of Medicine is greenlighting this kind of crap.
	And then people wonder why the scientific establishment is being undermined?
	I mean, we had full-scale articles in science magazines talking about how racial justice was a public health issue, therefore it was fine to go out and protest in the middle of a COVID pandemic.
	Another example.
	Okay, so today, a University of Pittsburgh cardiologist who faced backlash over an opinion piece he wrote criticizing affirmative action is now suing his employers, the American Heart Association, and the company that published and then retracted his article, arguing that he was demoted and defamed because his views were unpopular.
	Dr. Norman Wang, who is a faculty member in Pitt's School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, and a doctor with University of Pittsburgh Physicians, was removed from his position as director of UPMC's Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship program in August, days after his article was noticed by other cardiologists on Twitter.
	Ah, Twitter.
	The greatest of all places.
	What's remarkable about this is that he was not punished for an inappropriate joke or an intemperate remark in the classroom, but for publishing a thoroughly researched article in a peer-reviewed journal, said Terry Pell, the president of the Center for Individual Rights, representing Wang in his suit.
	This should concern anybody concerned about academics and free speech, regardless of whether it challenges conventional thinking.
	I mean, it's pretty amazing.
	The University of Pittsburgh basically demoted the guy because he wrote an article titled Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity, Evolution of Race and Ethnicity Considerations for the Cardiology Workforce in the United States of America from 1969 to 2019.
	It was published by the Journal of the American Heart Association in March.
	The article traced the history of the use of race and ethnicity relative to admission into medical school, residency programs, and fellowships.
	Wang said in the article the use of racial preferences in bringing minorities into medical schools can put them at disadvantage in the long term and concluded it hasn't worked to diversify the medical professional.
	He said none of that is controversial.
	It's based on data that's been written about before.
	Well, at a July 31st meeting, apparently Wang was said that the School of Medicine's selection process violated federal law.
	That's what he said, because of the preferences used for selecting and favoring some applicants.
	At that point, Wang was removed from his role as director of the Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology Fellowship Program.
	So in other words, he crossed the politically woke, and he lost.
	Because this is the way that science is supposed to work right now.
	And this does have ramifications for things up to and including COVID policy.
	Once you start making politically correct decisions and you infuse science with those politically correct decisions, it has actual impact.
	So here is a perfect example.
	So right now we are deciding who the vaccine goes to, right?
	Who the COVID vaccine goes to first.
	And this is a pretty contentious issue.
	You've heard members of the Biden team suggest that when we talk about health issues, we should certainly be talking first and foremost about racial inequity and racial inequality, which they equate, right?
	Inequity means unfairness.
	Inequality is not unfair.
	It's just inequality.
	They say the two are exactly the same.
	So in other words, if more black people than white people on average are dying of COVID, this demonstrates the racial animus of the United States, which of course is silliness.
	You actually have to rule out the confounds.
	You have to point out that people of color and white people are not dying at the same rates of COVID literally anywhere in the West.
	But we ignore all of that in order to reach this conclusion.
	So when it comes to walking out the COVID vaccine, There are a few ways we could tranche this thing out.
	There's only one way that makes sense.
	Truly, there's only one way.
	The way that makes sense is to tranche this thing out by health condition, right?
	I mean, it's a health condition, is COVID.
	If you have one dose of COVID vaccine, and you have two patients, one of whom is a young nurse of color, and the other of whom is an 85-year-old white person living in a nursing home.
	It's pretty obvious to whom this COVID vaccine should go.
	But here's the thing, to the woke and to the quote-unquote scientific community that is affected by the woke, it is not at all obvious, which is why you saw a member of Biden's team openly saying, That when it comes to treatments for COVID, we should be looking at the treatments for COVID through a racial lens, which is wild stuff and does have real ramifications for society.
	We'll talk about those ramifications in just one second because this actually is now a matter of practicality as we roll out a limited number of vaccines to a very large population.
	There is not enough vaccine to go around at the moment.
	We'll get to this in just one second.
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	Okay, so, as I say, when it comes to wokeness in science, it has predictable effects.
	One, a lot of people are gonna say, I don't believe you because it seems like your political priorities are now taking precedence over your scientific priorities.
	And in many areas of American life, this is obviously true.
	When you are talking about an entire medical establishment that is bought into gender ideology nonsense that has nothing to do with science, I understand why people have lost faith.
	When you have a bunch of scientists who declare not just that climate change is happening, and not just that human activity contributes largely to climate change, but that the solution to that is invariably to crush the American economy, that is now politics, that is no longer science.
	You have moved out of the realm in which you are experts into a realm in which you are not experts.
	But when it comes to COVID, more than anything else, it has real ramifications because now we're talking about life and death issues.
	So, go back to December 6th.
	If you go back to December 6th, there is an article in the New York Times titled, The CDC will soon decide which group to recommend next.
	The debate over trade-offs is growing heated.
	Ultimately, states will determine who to include.
	Okay, so...
	What is the debate here?
	It's pretty obvious that the answer here should be the elderly, right?
	I mean, if you are an essential worker, and you are 40 years old, and you are healthy, your chances of dying from this thing are literally, in many cases, a hundred times lower than your chances of dying of this thing if you happen to be 85 and you have a pre-existing condition.
	I mean, we're talking about a death rate of like 0.05, I think it's 0.5% for people who are You know, below the age of 65.
	And once you are over the age of 75, the death rates on this thing rise to like 4 or 5%.
	So you're talking about a... In some cases, somewhere between a 10 and a 100-fold difference in exactly how deadly this thing is.
	Right, so I mean, that's a pretty significant difference, is it not?
	Okay, you're talking about the difference between 5 deaths in 1,000 versus 5 deaths in 100.
	And yet, we are now being told that this should be an open debate.
	Okay, so the New York Times covered it this way.
	This is pretty amazing.
	Harold Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities.
	Okay, you ready for this line?
	This is an amazing line!
	Remember, he's an expert in ethics and health policy.
	Nothing says ethics quite like, you should dye based on the color of your skin.
	Here's what Dr. Schmidt says, older populations are whiter.
	Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer.
	Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who have already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.
	Okay, I'm gonna need to examine that a little more slowly.
	What he is actually saying is that elderly people, people who are 85 and in nursing homes, are disproportionately white.
	So even though they are also at radically disproportionate risk of dying of COVID-19, we should allow them to die so that a person of color who's an essential worker and has a tenfold or a hundredfold lower risk of death, right?
	A 20-year-old who is working in an essential industry, Should get that vaccine because they're black, while an 85-year-old woman, who happens to be white, should die in a nursing home.
	Because after all, society is structured so that there are more 85-year-old white people in nursing homes than 85-year-old black people in nursing homes, proportionally speaking.
	You know how insane that is?
	You know how wild that is?
	To protect older people more at risk, Dr. Schmidt called on the CDC committee to also integrate the agency's own Social Vulnerability Index.
	The index includes 15 measures derived from the census, such as overcrowded housing, lack of vehicle access, and poverty, to determine how urgently a community needs health support, with the goal of reducing inequities.
	Not the goal of reducing overall death, mind you.
	The goal of reducing inequities.
	Now, the first rule when it comes to medicine is do no harm.
	You're obviously doing harm if you're tranching out the vaccine to people who are less vulnerable rather than to people who are more vulnerable because you are basically saying more white people should die because white people are historically advantaged in the United States.
	I mean, this is wild stuff.
	To suggest that we are to rate as more important factors Racial constituency or socioeconomic status, rather than your risk factor of dying of COVID, is a demonstration that science takes a backseat to politics.
	It just does.
	There's a good article about this by a doctor named Buzz Hollander over at Real Clear Science today, talking about the attempts to tranche this thing out.
	Right now, the strategy is to roll this thing out to people in nursing homes, but also to roll it out to people who are essential workers in medicine.
	But as he says, here's the problem.
	If you're talking about essential workers in medicine, they are not among the people most likely to die.
	If you have to decide between giving it to my wife, who is a 33-year-old family medicine doctor, and giving it to an 85-year-old woman in a nursing home, you should absolutely give it to the 85-year-old woman in the nursing home.
	No question.
	This is what Dr. Hollander says.
	says, he says, here's my greatest beef with the current plan as endorsed by the CDC.
	We might only have 19 million doses in our first round.
	I will not quibble with allocating two million to care for home to home to care home residents as they have been responsible for roughly 40 percent of deaths in the United States. I also won't argue with administering to roughly another two million staff for those homes because we can't be sure that nursing home residents will mount an effective immune response to the vaccines.
	So you have to protect the people around the members of the nursing home.
	However, giving the next 15 million doses to healthcare workers does not compute by any calculus valuing lives saved.
	I know the arguments.
	They put themselves at risk.
	They are needed, healthy for hospitals to function smoothly.
	They tend to roll up their sleeves more willingly than average Americans.
	The problem is they don't die very often.
	The math doesn't work out.
	Approximately 0.5% of U.S.
	deaths from COVID have been healthcare workers.
	Approximately 80% of U.S.
	deaths from COVID-19 have been from those over the age of 65.
	80% versus 0.5%.
	How is this even a question?
	There are a bunch of doctors who have been writing this recently.
	He says, this is just simple ethics.
	Is it really right for me, as a 51-year-old, healthy, immensely privileged white guy, to be given a vaccine in two weeks, while my 87-year-old father, living in a multi-generational household, might wait another two to three months?
	We know first do no harm, but what about first do not steal?
	Here's the pragmatics.
	If we agree my father is on the order of 160 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than me, does it make sense to give me the vaccine first?
	But the answer, for a lot of folks, is yes, because wokeness takes precedence.
	Hey, here are some other things that we are not doing that we should be doing.
	Because we have decided that we are not going to tell people that once you have actually had this thing, you are basically immune, which most science suggests you are, the chances of reinfection are exorbitantly low.
	Then, one of the things that we are not doing that we absolutely should be doing is we should be antibody testing people before we give them the vaccine, correct?
	I mean, this is a pretty easy answer.
	You should be antibody testing people.
	Make sure they're not already immune before you give them a dose of the vaccine.
	Remember, this is a limited number of vaccine doses.
	Why would you dose somebody with a vaccine who's already immune to the virus?
	Like, the fact that everybody seems to not want to talk about antibody tests is kind of insane.
	As Dr. Hollander says, best estimates would hold that the 16 million identified cases of COVID-19 in the U.S.
	probably amount to more like 60 million or even 100 million actual cases.
	Let's say there are 80 million total cases.
	Of the 64 million, without a history of PCR positive tests, if we estimate a rapid antibody test to spike proteins correctly identifies 80% of these, we have 51 million more Americans with probable immunity.
	So you can exclude 20% of people from the first waves of vaccination with very low life-saving cost.
	Also, Why aren't we tranching the vaccines to places where people are most likely to die?
	We should be sending more vaccine right now, for example, to LA County than to San Francisco, because San Francisco is not getting hit as hard.
	Also, we should be rolling this stuff out as fast as humanly possible.
	So, according to this doctor, he says, trying to keep the vaccines in storage for three to four weeks to maintain perfect allocation for a booster shot adds to the challenge.
	It cuts in half the number of vaccine doses available right now.
	The U.S.
	government recommends this practice, perhaps to avoid any appearance of legitimizing a one-dose regimen, but we should be on appearances at this point.
	Former FDA head Scott Gottlieb is not a fan of holding back doses.
	He says, I don't think we should be holding onto supply right now, anticipating something goes wrong that's going to cause a lot of other challenges.
	We should be taking some risk.
	What he means is, right now, for every dose that we are putting out there, there's another dose that we are holding back for a month, basically, so that we can give it to you in a month.
	But we know that more doses are going to come online in a month.
	So why not tranche the early immunity out as fast as humanly possible?
	Right?
	Let's trust that people are going to actually produce where they are supposed to produce.
	So moving forward, these are all practical things, but they've all become politicized.
	They've all become politicized.
	And the fact that they've become politicized is a disaster for the United States, and it's a disaster for the scientific institutions of the country.
	The fact that our political leaders are being treated as celebrities, and our scientific leaders are being treated as celebrities, and none of them seem to be able to hold a consistent standard with regard to science is pretty astonishing.
	Remember, never forget, the same media that has decided that they know best about COVID has also decided that Andrew Cuomo is the greatest of all governors.
	By the way, speaking of Governor Andrew Cuomo, some late-breaking news from Andrew Cuomo.
	If you're a restaurant owner, you should be overjoyed that he shut down your restaurant.
	Here was Governor Cuomo from New York yesterday.
	Of all sorts of people who are concerned, well, you went down to 25% indoor dining, you cancelled indoor dining, you're requesting more testing for people in salons, lower capacity in gyms.
	Yes, to all of that.
	That is not the real problem.
	We're trying to change the trajectory.
	Well, I'm upset that you're trying to change the trajectory.
	You should be happy!
	Because if we don't change the trajectory, we're going to go to shutdown, and then your business is going to close.
	And that, my friends, is a real problem.
	Well, no, actually, a real problem has been that you have not followed the data pretty much anywhere here along the way, Andrew Cuomo.
	I mean, you shut down the schools when they didn't need to be shut down.
	You were shutting down the restaurants when they didn't need to be shut down, or at least putting in place restrictions that were not sensical.
	You were going out there and leaving the nursing homes wide open to COVID.
	And yet, this is the guy that the media have been trotting out there.
	Systemic distrust is a real problem.
	It really is.
	And just because somebody has an MD by their name, or they have a PhD by their name, or just because they're an elected official, does not mean that what they are saying is logical.
	Okay?
	What's logical is logical, and what is scientific is scientific, and what is not is not.
	It is that simple.
	And I think the American people have enough common sense to know that, or at least I hope they do.
	I think one of the big problems here is that people tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
	They look at the fact that they've been lied to by public officials, and that health officials can't seem to get their act together on a regular basis, or that they infuse science with politics, and then they say, okay, well, I'm just throwing out the whole thing.
	And that is probably the worst problem of all.
	When you undermine the credibility of your own institution, people just don't take your institution seriously.
	And when you're talking about an institution as serious as the scientific establishment of the United States, that is a serious, serious issue.
	All righty, coming up, we're gonna get into Joe Biden, who continues to maintain that Hunter Biden is the cap of all innocents.
	He's also the most brilliant person Joe Biden knows, which is not, that's a pretty damning indictment of his friendship circle.
	In any case, we'll get to more in one second.
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	All right, we're gonna get to more of the news in just one moment.
	First, on Monday, December 21st, which is coming up real fast right here, I mean, we are talking about this Monday, the historical docuseries, Apollo 11, What We Saw, will be available exclusively at DailyWire.com.
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	So a quick further note on COVID, the stimulus talks that should have been held months ago are still going on.
	Apparently, this is going to drag into the weekend.
	According to the Washington Post, White House officials and congressional leaders are trying to address a number of lingering policy disagreements as they race to finalize an approximately $900 billion coronavirus relief package.
	With growing signs, the talks will drag into the weekend.
	Negotiators were hoping to resolve all of their differences and pass matching bills in the House and Senate by Friday night.
	That appeared to slip away late on Thursday.
	Lawmakers first have to pass a stopgap spending bill by Friday night to avoid a government shutdown on Saturday.
	Then they will continue to negotiate through the weekend.
	It turns out that the best negotiator in the building, once again, is Senator Mitch McConnell, who has basically traded No state and local aid in favor of no liability.
	He says we'll hold all that stuff out for a future bill.
	So all the talk about how he was being forced into concessions by the Democrats, turns out not really so true.
	This has, of course, ticked off the members of the Progressive Caucus and Democrats in the Senate are like, guys, we still have to make a deal here.
	Mark Warner chided Bernie Sanders, Nohan Omar, because I'm not sure why we're going to them for advice on how to cut a COVID deal.
	They've never cut a deal in their entire lives.
	These are folks who've never negotiated any deal that I think has ever been successful.
	I mean, we're dealing with a Senate that is still, unfortunately, controlled by the Republicans.
	We still have Donald Trump as president controlling two-thirds, in a sense, of the federal government, the executive and the Senate.
	And the alternative would have been to have people Get kicked off of unemployment, get kicked out of their apartments, not get the kind of food assistance that's needed.
	Okay, so he happens to be right, but the fact is that the radicals in the Democratic Party base will continue to push for more and more and more and more.
	By the way, some of the things the Democrats wanted here was basically unlimited authority for the federal government to lend to anybody as long as they declare an emergency.
	It's pretty incredible stuff.
	Okay, meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to run around suggesting that his son Hunter is being victimized in some way.
	He was on Stephen Colbert's show.
	The fact that the hard-hitting questions come from Stephen Colbert demonstrates that your media is absolutely 100% corrupt.
	CBS Evening News with Norah O'Donnell quoted the late show with Stephen Colbert to interview Biden.
	That's how insane this is.
	Nora O'Donnell didn't actually do an interview with Joe Biden and ask him serious questions about Hunter.
	No, Joe Biden, very serious guy, right?
	Now we're beyond the age of entertainment politics.
	You remember those bad old days of Trump with the entertainment politics?
	We never had an entertainment president before except for Barack Obama who did interviews with GloZell and Pimp with a Limp.
	But now we have Joe Biden, very serious, serious, like super serious guy, so serious that he won't do sit down interviews with anybody who's actually serious, but he will sit down with faux comic Stephen Colbert to basically do propaganda.
	So Stephen Colbert said, you know, Mr. Mr. President-elect, you know, let me just ask you, you know, people are being so mean to Hunter.
	They're being so mean to Hunter.
	Like, are you upset that they're being so mean to Hunter?
	And here's Joe Biden saying, yes, indeed.
	We have great confidence in our son.
	I'm not concerned about any accusations that have been made against him.
	It's used to get to me.
	I think it's kind of foul play.
	But look, it is what it is.
	And he's a grown man.
	He is the smartest man I know.
	I mean, in pure intellectual capacity.
	And as long as he's good, we're good.
	The smartest man he knows, hmm?
	Well, might need to know some more smart people.
	Because Hunter Biden is a dum-dum.
	Sorry.
	Running around to foreign countries and picking up bags of cash because your last name is Biden does not make you smart.
	Other things that don't make you smart would include apparently dropping off your broken laptop with pictures of you doing drugs with like hookers on a computer in Delaware and just leaving it there.
	Those are things that do not actually make you smart.
	Well, when Joe Biden suggests that Hunter Biden is smart, and not only that, that it's a corrupt, it's foul play.
	It's foul play.
	It's out to get him.
	Question.
	Why is it foul play?
	Apparently this investigation's been ongoing since 2019.
	So where exactly is the foul play right here?
	The answer is, there is no foul play.
	This is one of the reasons why the Attorney General, who is still William Barr until next week, should appoint a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation.
	Because there's very little doubt that Joe Biden would come in and immediately quash that thing, right?
	Joe Biden would probably come in, he would kill that investigation dead, and then the media would just cheer.
	Because after all, the media didn't even want to cover this stuff before the election.
	Meanwhile, with regard to sort of breaking news here, Hunter Biden's former business partners apparently said explicitly they wanted to get Joe involved without Joe knowing.
	Ms.
	Hot Air.
	Fox News published a story today highlighting some text messages between Hunter Biden's former business associates, James Gilliar and Tony Bobulinski.
	The messages from 2017 involve a plan to set up a business deal with a Chinese energy company.
	The pair were eager to get Joe Biden involved, but also warned about mentioning he would be involved, except in face-to-face communications.
	In April of 2017, Bobulinski asked Gilliar why Jim Biden was part of the discussion when they already had Hunter on board.
	Gilear said, with H's demons, could be good to have a backup.
	He strengthens our USP to Chinese, as it looks like a truly family business, and I like the dude.
	Apparently that would be the unique selling proposition.
	Whatever the case, the point is clearly that having two Bidens involved adds to the suggestion the entire family is involved.
	In early May, the same two were discussing a meeting with the chairman of the Chinese company and the need for an A-lister to be at the meeting.
	Gilear then texted Bobulinski with the hope that Joe may come Sunday.
	He added, I'm hoping.
	Bobulinski called that a no-brainer.
	Biden apparently didn't attend that meeting.
	On May 11th, Bobulinski texted Gilear again saying, Okay, but don't worry.
	Everything is pure as the driven snow.
	Everything is absolutely wonderful.
	And Hunter is the smartest person everybody knows.
	Except for how his business partners are like, God, we can't go to the Chinese with this tool bag.
	We gotta have something better than this.
	How about like Jim?
	Let's get Jim.
	Maybe we'll get Joe.
	Like somebody who's not Hunter.
	Goodness gracious.
	Don't worry, guys.
	This Biden administration is going to be pure as the... His only scandal, presumably, will also be some odd-colored suit.
	Obama's only scandal is his hand suit.
	He's going to wear like a mauve suit or something, and that'll be his big scandal.
	It'll look like Joe Pesci and my cousin Vinny one day at a press conference, and that'll be his big scandal.
	That'll just be mainly because he doesn't know what to dress in because somebody else has to dress him every day.
	In any case, The election 2020 doubts continue apace.
	People have been trotting out a couple of pieces of video.
	They're both trending on Twitter overnight, and I think it is worthy of pointing out that these pieces of video are really not particularly convincing.
	One is a video of Arizona State Senator Eddie Farnsworth, this was going viral last night, suggesting that in the Texas case, the Supreme Court justices went into a room and started yelling at each other about why they should not go along with the Texas case.
	Here is this clip.
	This clip had millions of views over the last 24 hours.
	There's only one pretty large problem with it.
	Here was this Arizona State Senator.
	When a Texas case was brought up, he said he heard screaming through the walls as Justice Roberts and the other liberal justices were insisting that this case not be taken up.
	And the reason, the words that were heard through the wall when Justice Thomas and Justice Alito were citing Bush v. Gore from John Roberts were, I don't give a about that case.
	I don't want to hear about it.
	At that time, we didn't have riots.
	Okay, um, I have a question.
	The Supreme Court Justice, they're not meeting in person.
	So, obviously that is not true.
	Other things that are not true, apparently Lin Wood is now tweeting out that John Roberts called Trump an MF-er.
	I don't know where Linwood is getting any of this crap.
	There's no evidence that this is the case at all.
	Bottom line is that if all this does is just undermine people's willingness to vote in the Georgia Senate races, it is a huge error.
	the MFR would never be reelected.
	Roberts engaged in phone conversation with Justice Stephen Breyer discussing how to work to get Trump voted out.
	Like, I don't know where Linwood is getting any of this crap.
	There's no evidence that this is the case at all.
	Bottom line is that if all this does is just undermine people's willingness to vote in the Georgia Senate races, it is a huge error.
	It's a huge error.
	This is not just me saying this.
	That's why we're going to keep right on fight.
	who was vaccinated this morning.
	You do want the top levels of government presumably vaccinated.
	And how old is Mike Pence?
	He's about 60 probably.
	Mike Pence says he was vaccinated this morning.
	There was tape of him doing it.
	But on the Georgia stuff, he said, if you don't vote, they win.
	Now I know we've all got doubts about the last election.
	That's why we're gonna keep right on fighting.
	But I gotta tell you, and I hear some people saying down here in Georgia, if you're frustrated about the last election, just don't vote.
	We're moving on.
	My fellow Americans, I say from my heart, you gotta remember, if you don't vote, they win.
	Okay, that is exactly right.
	You know who else knows that, by the way?
	Joe Biden.
	Right?
	Joe Biden came out, he says, moderate Joe, he says, I need Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
	I need them.
	Give them to me.
	Don't give them to him, guys.
	My administration is preparing to beat COVID-19 and get economic relief to the American people.
	On day one as your president, I'm prepared to sign a COVID relief package that fully funds the public health response needed, led by Georgia's own CDC.
	It will ensure free testing and vaccination for every American, and will get small businesses the assistance they need right now.
	Let me be clear.
	I need Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff in the United States Senate to get this done.
	No, you really don't.
	Like, a lot of those things are going to happen anyway.
	And also, there is no one who is too radical for Joe Biden to endorse, apparently.
	Also, kudos to the guy who's playing the soft synthesizer music in the background.
	That really is, it's like from a yoga retreat in the background.
	Because if Biden wasn't putting you to sleep right there on his own, they had to have synthesizer guy in the background playing the soft music as the waterfalls tinkle in the background.
	Okay, meanwhile, The same Democratic Party that suggests that it's time for unity.
	The media that suggests the election is over.
	It's time for unity.
	Let's all get together and have happy times together.
	Meanwhile, the Democrats just keep saying awful things about Republicans because this is the way that it works, guys.
	Don't you understand?
	It's time for unity, by which they mean surrender.
	It's time for you.
	And they don't just mean surrender in the election in 2020.
	The Electoral College has already voted.
	They mean surrender forever.
	Surrender your priorities.
	Just let the Democrats have their way with the country.
	That is what they mean.
	So, Barack Obama, Captain Unity, right?
	He's doing his book tour.
	He's such a unifying figure.
	Remember, according to the media, this guy was the most unifying figure in modern American politics.
	He really just brought people together.
	That's all Barack Obama did.
	He was unbelievably divisive.
	The rise of the intersectional coalition, the rise of intersectionality as a philosophy.
	It really occurred under his watch.
	And it was a political move by Obama that he really started to treat separate segments of the American population as voting blocs that he could appeal to and then cobble together a coalition against the quote-unquote system that really did break apart.
	I think that if the country is irrevocably broken, a lot of people on the left are going to attribute that to election 2016.
	No way.
	No way.
	The country got broken in 2012.
	That's when the country got broken.
	In 2008, Barack Obama ran as a traditional unifying political figure, right?
	No red states, no blue states, the United States.
	By 2012, he had basically decided that he was going to abandon pushing a message that was acceptable and palatable and interesting for a majority of Americans.
	He was instead going to go to each intersectional group, tell them he was going to prioritize their needs, cobble them together, and then direct them at the overarching system.
	The Republican Party is the minority party in this country.
	The only reason that it doesn't look like they're the minority party is because of structures like the U.S.
	Anyway, here's the schmuck saying that the GOP is the minority party and then saying that the Senate basically shouldn't exist anymore.
	So that's exciting.
	He attacks the Senate and the Electoral College.
	But don't worry, unity is on its way, guys.
	The era of good feelings is here.
	The Republican Party is the minority party in this country.
	The only reason that it doesn't look like they're the minority party is because of structures like the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College.
	that don't render them the majority party.
	So they have certain built-in advantages around power, given their population distribution and how our government works.
	But the truth of the matter is that 60% of the people are occupying what I would consider a more reality-based universe.
	Okay, by the way, isn't this hilarious stuff?
	He's saying that to Trevor Noah on Comedy Central.
	I mean, that's comedying right there.
	And Trevor Noah just sitting there.
	So here is your very serious Democratic Party.
	Joe Biden being interviewed by Stephen Colbert and Barack Obama being interviewed by Trevor Noah.
	Slow clap for the anti-entertainment crew, the very serious political crew.
	How did they get Trump?
	I can't imagine.
	By the way, he happens to be wrong about this.
	When he says that the Democrats are the majority party, he is right on a federal level right now in terms of the House and in terms of the presidential vote.
	He is certainly wrong on the state level.
	On the state level, right now, The state-level chambers, Republicans control about 3,900 seats in state legislative houses, and the Democrats control about 3,400 seats in state legislative houses.
	When it comes to state senates, Republicans control 32 state senates.
	Democrats control 18.
	So, no, that is not correct.
	It turns out we do have a series.
	The reason he hates the Senate, of course, is because he dislikes the fact that there are institutional obstacles to cramming down his pure mob rule majoritarian ideas on everybody else.
	That's really what he wants to do.
	And then people wonder why Republicans and conservatives feel threatened.
	We understand that you guys want to get rid of all the militating institutions that preserve individual rights.
	We get it.
	We understand that you just want a bare majority to force itself on the bare minority.
	That you don't want any of those rights protected so long as the communal interests cut the other way.
	And it's not just Obama, obviously.
	It's people like this Biden inaugural official.
	So there's a Biden inaugural official named Stephanie Cutter, right?
	She was also a member of the Team Hillary.
	And a member of the Obama team as well.
	So Stephanie Cutter tweeted out in the wake of the statement by Jen O'Malley Dillon, who is one of Biden's deputy chiefs of staff.
	She suggested that Republicans were effers.
	So now Stephanie Cutter Jen just had the guts to say it.
	Will Republicans prove her wrong?
	said quote, the story is based on one anonymous donor.
	Really?
	And does anyone really disagree with the sentiment?
	This is because Axios ran a piece saying that some Biden aides were worried that O'Malley Dillon had called the GOP effers.
	So Stephanie Cutter said the story is based on one anonymous donor.
	Really?
	Does anyone really disagree with the sentiment?
	Jen just had the guts to say it.
	Will Republicans prove her wrong?
	Doubt it.
	Okay, well, so in other words, she's right.
	You have a top Obama official and a top Biden official both saying that Republicans are effers.
	But don't worry, guys.
	It's time for unity.
	It's time to get together.
	Why won't Republicans just give it up?
	Why don't Republicans just, you know, sit down and shut up?
	Meanwhile, you have MSNBC host Mehdi Hassan suggesting that Donald Trump should be overtly prosecuted for COVID deaths.
	Yes, the era of good feelings is here, guys.
	There will be no recriminations.
	It's not gonna be about punishing the other side.
	It's not about viciousness or cruelty.
	It is simply about bringing back a time of unity and togetherness.
	That's why we're now calling for the prosecution of the sitting president of the United States for the effects of a global pandemic that have killed millions of people all over the planet.
	Donald Trump killed hundreds of thousands of people or presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, preventable deaths, here at home in the United States of America.
	And that, for me, you know, you talk about morally abominable.
	It's sociopathic.
	And I think people should be held to account.
	I think they should be prosecuted.
	The people behind these preventable deaths should be prosecuted when they leave office on January 20th.
	So this is where things stand in our culture right now, is that people must be punished.
	People must be punished.
	Charles Bull has another terrible column in the New York Times.
	I mean, it's another week, so of course he has another terrible column saying just the same thing.
	Joe Biden, as he has always said, is seeking to be a unifying president, to be the president of the people who didn't vote for him, as well as the ones who did.
	I want to have that same optimistic spirit, but I admit my attempts at it may falter.
	I don't want to be the person who holds a grudge, but I also don't want to be the person who ignores a lesson.
	The act of remembering that so many Americans were willing to continue the harm to me and others and to the country itself isn't spiteful, but wise.
	So in other words, remember that so many people voted for Trump.
	They are the enemy.
	They are the enemy.
	Anybody who voted for Trump is the enemy.
	Meanwhile, you got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar openly suggesting that we have to go after Hollywood stars who do not go along with the prevailing political norms, right?
	Here's how it feels to be, for those who are not conservative who listen to the show, understand how it feels to be a conservative in America, okay?
	And facts don't care about your feelings, but the facts happen to back up these particular feelings, okay?
	There is a tsunami of institutional hatred against people who think differently than the left.
	The left is in control of the scientific establishment.
	The left is in control of the university establishment.
	They're in control of the media establishment.
	They're in control of the entertainment establishment.
	They're in control of the sports establishment.
	They're in control of the government establishment as well, particularly in the administrative state.
	It feels as though everywhere you turn, there are people who are sneering at you.
	Now, there are people on the hardcore left who say, good, that's the way it should be.
	But if you are a good-hearted liberal and you wish to have open conversations with people, what you're going to have to decide is whether you wish to make common cause with the sneerers or whether you wish to make common cause with people who still believe in individual rights.
	Because here's the thing, there's a high correlation between the people who sneer at people who think differently and the people who wish to shut those people down and violate individual rights in the process.
	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has a piece in the Hollywood Reporter, I mean it's the perfect confluence of celebrity, saying that celebrities deserve legacy-killing backlash when they spread ignorance.
	He says, the only thing people enjoy more than watching a celebrity's rocketing ascent to international fame is watching an aging celebrity's flaming plummet to the hard, cold ground of disgrace and obscurity. It is both a warning against hubris, believing you're too famous to fall, and a reminder that the same people who made you popular can turn on you. Some, like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, committed heinous acts to obliterate their achievements. But social media has provided a weapon for others to commit instantaneous career suicide and destroy any good faith legacy they spent a lifetime building, like Howard Hughes, whose contributions to aviation
	and filmmaking were overshadowed by such eccentricities as collecting his own nail clippings These figures are obscuring their own careers.
	So he talks about Rudy Giuliani.
	And then he talks about J.K.
	Rowling.
	Right?
	J.K.
	Rowling is super bad.
	Terrible, terrible, terrible.
	Because J.K.
	Rowling says that boys and girls exist.
	Says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, she deserves the hatred.
	He says, her anti-trans tweets may not only damage the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises, they could up tainting her entire literary legacy.
	Even the stars of the movies, Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Eddie Redmayne, have spoken out against her position.
	Well, you know, if Eddie Redmayne says a thing, woohoo!
	Well then, hold the fort!
	John Cleese's tone-deaf defense of Rowling left many fans bitterly disappointed, tarnishing his reputation.
	Yes, yes, it can, can't it?
	It does, it's true.
	There are a lot of people who think that because they're famous, they know things.
	Isn't that interesting?
	Many Americans imbue stars with political and social intelligence they just don't have.
	Great success in one field can lead to the delusion that all your thoughts are great, says the former basketball center who is now writing in the Hollywood Reporter about politics.
	Yes, yes, it can, can't it?
	It does, it's true.
	There are a lot of people who think that because they're famous, they know things.
	Isn't that interesting?
	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
	The irresponsibility of tweeting irrational and harmful opinions to millions, regardless of the damaging consequences to their country where people's lives proves these stars deserve Again, we are back in the mode of all that matters here is the effect that it has on leftist feelings.
	That's all that matters.
	There will be a backlash to all this.
	There will.
	And it's gonna be ugly when it comes.
	Okay, so we've reached the end of the week.
	I'm gonna give you a quick biblical note before we hit the weekend because I like to end the week on a bit of uplift.
	So, this week the Jews read the Torah portion that has to do with Joseph.
	Joseph is now down in Egypt.
	He has become the vizier to the Pharaoh.
	And his brothers, who put him in a pit and thought he was going to die, right?
	They sold him to a caravan of roaming nomads.
	His brothers arrived down in Egypt and they have no idea who he is.
	And so we get this whole interplay between Joseph and his brothers in which finally, next week in the Bible, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers.
	He reveals himself to his father.
	He's been long estranged from all of them.
	It's very moving.
	But there's something else in this week's Torah portion, in this week's portion of the Bible that I find really interesting.
	There's some real socioeconomic stuff in this week's Torah portion.
	So, after Joseph becomes the chief advisor to Pharaoh, Well, right before, he makes this proposition to Pharaoh.
	So, Pharaoh has a dream.
	Pharaoh's dream is essentially, as interpreted by Joseph, that there are going to be seven fat years and then seven skinny years.
	There are going to be seven years of real productivity and then there are going to be seven years of famine.
	And then, Joseph goes beyond the analysis of Pharaoh's dream.
	He says, Let Pharaoh do this and appoint officials over the land and prepare the land of Egypt during the seven years of plenty.
	Let them collect all the food of those coming good years and let them gather the grain under Pharaoh's hand, food in the cities, and keep it.
	Thus, the food will remain as a reserve for the land for the seven years of famine, which will be in the land of Egypt, so the land will not be destroyed by the famine.
	Okay, so Pharaoh says, good idea.
	So what we're going to do is it's going to be a time of prosperity as prophesied.
	And so what we're going to do is we're going to centralize all the grain.
	Okay, and we're going to do this to protect the citizenry.
	The next thing that happens is that Pharaoh appoints Joseph over the entire land of Egypt.
	Pharaoh gives his ring to Joseph.
	He puts on him a raiment of fine linen.
	He puts a golden chain around his neck.
	He has him ride the chariot.
	And then Pharaoh says to Joseph, I am Pharaoh.
	Besides you, no one may lift his hand or foot in the entire land of Egypt.
	Joseph gets married.
	Joseph has a couple of kids.
	And here is what happens.
	In the seven years of plenty, the inhabitants of the land gathered food by handfuls.
	And he collected all the food of the seven years that was in the land of Egypt.
	He placed the food in the cities, the food of the fields surrounding the city, he put within it.
	Joseph gathered grain like the sea of the sand in great abundance until one stopped counting because there was no number.
	Okay, and here is what happens next, because here's where things get a little dicey.
	The seven years of famine began. As Joseph had said, there was famine in all the lands, but throughout the land of Egypt there was bread. When the entire land of Egypt hungered, the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread, but Pharaoh said to all the Egyptians, go to Joseph. What he tells you, do. Now the famine spread out all over the face of the land.
	Joseph opened all the storehouses in which there was grain.
	He sold it to the Egyptians, and the famine intensified in the land of Egypt.
	All of the inhabitants of the land came to Joseph to purpose, for the famine had intensified in the entire land.
	Okay, because what actually happened is that when people came to Joseph and said, give us the grain, instead, what Joseph did is he said, you're going to have to sell me your land.
	Okay, we're taking control over all of the land and we're going to give you back the grain.
	In other words, when you centralize power in a centralized command, very often that centralized command that is going to give you benefits, right?
	It's going to help you later on.
	There's always a cost to that.
	And the cost of that is often very grave.
	Now, the great irony of this is that after having reduced the entire Egyptian population to essentially vassalry, because the Pharaoh has now taken complete ownership, according to the Bible, of all of the land.
	After all of that happens, you now have a subject population, subject to the whims of Pharaoh.
	He's essentially their feudal lord.
	And their next move is, well, you know, the Jews are coming in.
	The Jews are given sort of a choice spot by Joseph, right?
	Joseph gives his family a choice spot over in the land of Goshen.
	And Pharaoh says, well, a new Pharaoh arises in the next book of the Bible.
	And he says, they're becoming kind of powerful over there.
	What if we just enslave them?
	And the rest of the population of Egypt goes, yeah, that sounds good.
	Because it seems like this Joseph character, you know, the one we all sold our land to, seems like his family is doing okay.
	What if we just make them slaves?
	They're becoming too powerful.
	So in other words, there are actual costs.
	Once you reduce a population to vassalry, once you remove the independent spirit, once you tell them they can't own the land, they are dependent on the government, it is much easier for them to think of not only dispensing with their own freedoms, but the freedoms of others.
	I don't think the Bible is being... I don't think that the Bible is being complimentary of Joseph's strategy here.
	I think that the Bible is pointing out that Joseph, in becoming sort of the chief agent of Pharaoh's seizing centralized power, is paving the way for that centralized power to be used exactly against Joseph's family.
	That should be a lesson to everybody who calls for a grand centralization of power such that it can be used for your own benefit.
	Because sooner rather than later, it probably will not be used to your benefit.
	It will be used to your detriment.
	Okay, we'll be back here next week with much, much more.
	Also, later today, we'll be here for two additional hours of content.
	While you wait, head on over to Michael Moll's show right now.
	He is also talking about the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar story, attacking conservatives and anti-woke celebrities.
	In the meantime, if we don't see you, have a wonderful weekend.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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	The Ben Shapiro Show is a Daily Wire production, copyright 2020.
	You know, the Matt Wall Show, it's not just another show about politics.
	I think there are enough of those already out there.
	We talk about culture, because culture drives politics, and it drives everything else.
	So my main focuses are life, family, faith.
	Those are fundamental, and that's what this show is about.

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