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Jan. 22, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show
49:41
Biden’s Lies Have Begun, But The Media Are On Vacation | Ep. 1179
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President Joe Biden, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fib about the administration's COVID plans, but the media cover for them anyway.
Leftist commentators push for more media sycophancy and norm-breaking.
And Trump prepares for a Senate impeachment trial.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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Alrighty, so.
It is the new day.
The dawn has come.
The clouds have parted and the rays of light shine down because Joe Biden is president of the United States.
And never, ever, ever will we be lied to again.
You know, all that Donald Trump did for years on end was lied to us.
All of his press secretaries lied to us.
Kayleigh McEnany must be barred from all human contact.
We have to put Sarah Huckabee Sanders in solitary confinement.
We have to find Sean Spicer wherever he is.
We have to wrest him from the set of Dancing with the Stars and bar him from polite human society.
But now, now we have the greatest and most honest of all of the humans.
So many honest humans in the Biden administration.
It's not that Joe Biden is a corrupt old politician who's been in Washington, D.C.
since he was 30 years old.
And it's not that Jen Psaki is an actual overt liar who lied routinely for a living while she was with the Obama administration.
No, these are the adults in the room So much adulthood happening.
In fact, this is what CNN's Dana Bash has said, right?
That anyone who has a connection to reality knows the adults are back in Washington, and that means that we can all just sleep on this, right?
We can go to sleep again.
Because let's be real.
Now we can sleep securely knowing that when the call comes in the middle of the night, only the greatest, wisest, and most honest of human beings will be occupying the White House.
Here is Dana Bash journalisming all over the place about the wonderful, innate honesty and decency of all the people who are in power now.
It's just amazing!
Here's Dana Bash Objective Journalism-ing.
If you take what you just saw and heard in totality, anybody who has any connection to reality about what is going on around them should have watched that and said, the adults are back in the room.
That is what the kind of vibe was that President Biden was clearly trying to get out there.
And it made it easier because he has a plan.
That would be Breonna Keillor who is sitting there going, hmm, yes, hmm, wow, hmm, yes.
So much journalism happening on CNN.
They're the objective journalists.
And you know what?
The White House, this White House, the Biden White House, they hold themselves to that higher standard.
In fact, Jen Psaki.
Again, a person who lied routinely to the media while she was at the State Department under Barack Obama.
Now she says, we're bringing transparency back.
It's like Justin Timberlake, but with politics.
Here she is explaining how wonderful transparency will be under the Biden administration.
And it's also being straight and transparent, straightforward and transparent.
And, you know, there's no better example than that, than COVID-19 and our efforts to get the pandemic under control.
There are going to be days where people are not going to be hearing what they want to hear, where the data is going to be concerning and troubling.
But we want to bring transparency back.
And so we're just going to try to deliver on that in the briefing room.
But really, the job, the back and forth is the job.
Wow, the back and forth is the job.
Brooke Baldwin saying, hmm, yes, hmm, all the way through.
Very solid stuff there.
Okay, so just how honest and transparent were they on the first day?
The very first day, were they super honest?
Were they super transparent?
Were they just absolutely clear with the American public?
Well, let's take it from the top.
So Joe Biden has a plan to stop COVID.
In fact, he tweeted out that he wasn't gonna stop the economy.
He wasn't gonna stop your life.
He was going to stop the virus.
His plan for stopping virus.
Wait for it.
Wait for it now.
Wait for it.
Wear a mask.
Boom!
Done.
Amazing!
Not as though mask wearing has been tried all over Europe and has generally not stopped the spread of the virus.
Not as though there's been a mask mandate in place in L.A., like this whole time in L.A.
is just getting walloped right now.
If Joe Biden says wear a mask, you know the virus will just die.
That's what will happen.
Not only did Joe Biden say that he has a solution, which is to wear a mask, he actually signed an executive order that anyone who enters federal property Right, if you use cross-border transportation, if you move between states, anything that the federal government has a hand in, you must wear a mask, and this, this will solve COVID.
Again, I'm not an anti-mask guy, right?
I wear a mask.
People in my office wear masks.
I think it's a good idea, but this is not a solution.
Here's Joe Biden saying, though, no, but I'm not allowed to say that.
Here he is, wear a mask, guys, just wear a mask.
One of our 100-day challenges is asking the American people to mask up for the first 100 days, the next 99 days.
The masks have become a partisan issue, unfortunately.
But it's a patriotic act.
But for a few months to wear a mask, no vaccines, the fact is that they're the single best thing we can do.
They're even more important than the vaccines because they take time to work.
And that's true.
I mean, we should be wearing masks and we should be socially distancing until we can get people the vaccines that they need.
There's only one problem, which is that Joe Biden immediately, upon being inaugurated, started walking around federal property without a mask.
He wasn't wearing a mask.
To a normal journalist, that might seem like a question, but we know that asking those sorts of questions are completely unnecessary now, because this is the most honest and transparent administration we have ever seen.
We knew this from the moment they were ushered into power.
So, Peter Doocy of Fox News has the temerity, the temerity, that bastard, to ask Jen Psaki this question.
You know, Joe Biden says that he wants masks for everybody.
In fact, he put into law an actual mask mandate on federal property.
But Joe Biden wasn't wearing a mask on federal property yesterday.
Isn't that sort of weird?
Here is Peter Doocy asking the question, and Jen Psaki is like, well, here's that vaunted transparency, openness, honesty, and just that straight talk that we can look forward to for four years.
I think he was celebrating an evening of a historic day in our country.
Yesterday was a historic moment in our history.
He was inaugurated as President of the United States.
He was surrounded by his family.
We take a number of precautions, but I think we have bigger issues to worry about at this moment in time.
Okay, can you imagine for just one second if Kayleigh McEnany gave that same exact answer?
It was a historic day.
He was celebrating with his family.
Do you think that would wash for one iota of one second?
Okay, all we heard throughout the Trump administration was that if Donald Trump was in a room with a bunch of other people who had been tested, if he was out there with his family and he wasn't wearing a mask, why won't he mask up?
By the way, I didn't realize that there was an exception in federal law for the federal property mask mandate for historic ceremonies.
Didn't realize that was a thing.
You know how many people have not been able to hold weddings during this pandemic because it's a pandemic?
You know how many people have not been able to hold funerals for their loved ones?
That seems, by the way, a lot more important than Joe Biden celebrating himself.
I like, just to be honest with you, you honoring your grandmother who died, you honoring a friend or family member who died by going to a funeral, that seems like on a raw level, more important, both emotionally and psychologically, than Joe Biden getting to have that triumphant walk without wearing the mask.
But Jen Psaki says it, and so it is so.
So much transparency, so much honesty.
Wow, just incredible.
That was only the beginning, by the way.
Okay, this, it gets a lot worse.
We're gonna get to this in just one second.
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I mean, like, Gavin Newsom going and eating at the French Laundry while having a restaurant mandate and violating the restaurant mandate.
Like, that was kind of a big deal.
And Joe Biden saying, like, his first thing is everybody needs to wear a mask and then immediately stripping off the mask.
And then the excuse is it was a historic ceremony.
A little bit of it.
But you know what?
In the broad scheme of things, it's really more about hypocrisy than it is about, like, a big deal with regard to lying about policy.
For example, Well, what if they also lied about policy?
So, the Biden administration has spent the first 48 hours of its existence explaining that there is no plan for distribution.
None.
That the vaccines that have been shot into the arms of several million Americans at this point, right?
We are shooting into the arms of about a million Americans a day.
We learned this morning that the Trump administration had no real plan for the production and distribution of the vaccine.
said this yesterday, Trump had no plan for distribution, none, which is incredible.
I mean, without a plan, the man was able to ramp up vaccine distribution to a million a day. My goodness, if he'd had a plan, how great would that be? Here is Nancy Pelosi spilling out this lie yesterday.
We learned this morning that the Trump administration had no real plan for the production and distribution of the vaccine, just another in a series of their terrible, ineffective approach to it.
From the start, in denial, delay, distortion, calling it a hoax.
And now we find that they didn't even have a plan.
OK, so this was the Biden line, right?
The Biden administration line, the Democratic line, is there's no plan for vaccine distribution.
It just does not exist.
And the media dutifully report this.
CNN reported it, according to Gravion, some 47 times yesterday.
47 times they mentioned the idea that there was sheer chaos in the vaccine distribution.
Now, can you make the vaccine distribution plan better?
Sure.
Why not?
But the idea that there was no plan, as it turns out, is just overtly false.
Doesn't matter.
You know, buying that transparency from Biden.
They're just going to repeat this crap, even though it's not true.
I mean, really not true.
OK, here is NBC's Kristen Welker saying they are starting from scratch.
I mean, it's just chaos over here.
What you're seeing now is this acknowledgment, you're absolutely right, by Zeinst and other top officials here who are saying, look, the Trump administration did not leave us with any working plan to roll out this vaccine.
So yes, we are starting from scratch.
But I think that what Fauci was saying, and we'll have to press him on this today when we get to ask him some questions, is that at least now we're looking in the mirror and acknowledging, OK, we need to start from scratch.
Here's what a plan will look like.
Okay, what if I told you that Anthony Fauci, the greatest of all doctors who has ever lived?
I mean, in terms of ranking doctors, it basically goes like this.
It goes like, Dr. Jonas Salk, it goes Dr. J, Dr. Strange, and then Dr. Fauci's like way above all of them.
Dr. Fauci's the greatest doctor who's ever lived.
Let me just put that out there.
The man is just an unbelievably good doctor.
Like, if anyone ever has a medical problem, call Dr. Fauci.
He's unbelievable.
Anyway, he's a godlike figure we should all light votive candles to.
I was informed of this over the course of the last year.
Well, what if I told you that Anthony Fauci said from the White House podium yesterday that they are not starting from scratch?
And yet the media repeated the lie because it sets the expectation that anything that Biden does is a success because they are just stenographers for the Biden administration.
Here's Anthony Fauci overtly contradicting the administration that he now works for.
We certainly are not starting from scratch because there is activity going on in the distribution.
But if you look at the plan that the president has put forth about the things that he is going to do, namely get community vaccine centers up, get pharmacies more involved, where appropriate, get the Defense Production Act involved, not only perhaps with getting more vaccine, but even the things you need to get a good vaccine program For example, needles and syringes that might be more useful than that.
So it's taking what's going on, but amplifying it in a big way.
Wait, so it sounds like they're not starting from scratch.
Actually, that's exactly what it sounds like.
They're not starting from scratch.
Doesn't matter.
The media reported ad nauseam yesterday.
That they were starting from scratch.
Why?
Because Jeffrey Zients, who's the Obama COVID policy advisor, said this, sorry, the Biden COVID policy advisor, said this to the press.
The press immediately just reported it as though it was fact, and then there's Fauci just completely undercutting them.
But don't worry, your press, doing an amazing job holding people's feet to the fire.
What if I told you that they were also fibbing about their goals?
So the Biden administration says, we have big plans here, big plans, 100 million vaccinations within the next 100 days.
And people who don't know anything are like, wow, that sounds unbelievable.
Unbelievable!
You mean a million shots a day?
What if I told you that we're already basically giving people a million shots a day?
And kind of were when Biden took office.
And so he's not fundamentally changing anything.
So here's Jen Psaki being super honest and super transparent by telling you that it is an enormous, enormous increase in the number of vaccinations being provided for Joe Biden to provide basically the same number of vaccinations we're already providing on a daily basis.
Here's Jen Psaki, super honest, super transparent, amazing stuff here.
The Trump administration was given 36 million doses when they were in office for 38 days.
They administered a total of about 17 million shots.
That's about less than 500,000 shots a day.
What we are proposing is to double that.
about 1 million shots per day.
And we have outlined this goal and objective in coordination and consultation with our health and medical experts.
So it is ambitious.
It's something that we feel is bold and was called that certainly at the time.
Oh, it was called bold at the time.
Yeah, by members of your stenographer media.
Okay, this is how you lie with stats.
Okay, what she's doing there is lying with statistics.
Here is how it works.
What she says is that the Trump administration was providing about, on average, on average, over the past 40 days, about half a million shots a day.
Now, you say to yourself, well, that probably means that they were, like, every day putting out half a million shots, right?
No, that is not what that means.
It means that they ramped up the vaccine distribution.
Okay, you can't take the average and then suggest that that's actually what's happening on a daily basis.
That is like saying that Bill Gates, for the first 20 years of his life, earned zero money.
And then Bill Gates, over the next 20 years of his life, Let's say that he made $100 million over the next 20 years of his life.
That means that over the first 40 years of his life, he averaged half that.
That means that when he was 12 years old, he was probably making, you know, like 10 million bucks a year or 5 million bucks a year.
No, that is not how that works.
When you average numbers, but there's an escalating number that is actually the year-on-year or day-on-day number, what you want to look at in terms of are you ramping it up is the last day before you took office.
You don't get to do the, well, you know, on average, here's what it was.
That doesn't make any sense at all.
It makes zero sense.
Okay, but she just throws that out there, like, oh, well, so they were doing half a million, now we're doing a million.
We're doubling it.
No, you're not doubling it.
The day before you took office, there were almost a million shots administered.
You're taking office and you're promising to administer a million shots, which means you are escalating it by, like, close to zero.
Everybody recognizes this.
This is not in dispute.
So instead, what you have to do is you have to lie to the press, and the press will dutifully just report that out.
In fact, when a reporter asked Biden about this, when a reporter said, by the way, we're already doing like a million vaccinations a day, Biden just snapped at the reporter, because how dare he?
I've been told that if you snap at the press, if you get mad at the press, if you treat the press badly, this is a fundamental assault on our most basic institutions.
Impeach!
How will our press survive?
Jim Acosta is under assault!
Quick, get Jim into the safe room!
Because the reporter asked Biden a good question.
Biden didn't want to answer the question, and he got mad at the reporter.
So much transparency.
It's a new day in Washington, gang.
Here's Joe Biden getting mad at a reporter for asking a perfectly obvious question.
Mr. President, you said you set the goal of 100 days.
Is that high enough?
Can you set far higher than basically where the U.S.
is right now?
When I announced it, you all said it's not possible.
Come on, give me a break, man.
That's a good start.
100 million.
Nope.
No one said it was not possible when you announced it.
Literally zero people who knew anything said it was not possible when you announced it.
In fact, virtually everybody who knew anything said when you said 100 million vaccinations in 100 days, they said, uh, shouldn't it be higher than that?
Like, that's not ramping anything up.
But again, we all have to pretend along.
So transparent.
So honest.
So much media-ing.
Every time they ask a tough question, Within the first 48 hours.
Every time a tough question is asked, they just dodge it or lie about it.
And then the media are like, but they're so honest and they're so transparent and they're so amazing.
Oh my God.
Just unbelievable.
By the way, another example.
The very first night, the very first night of the Biden White House, Jen Psaki did a presser.
And she was asked about Joe Biden's policy with regard to the Hyde Amendment.
The Hyde Amendment is a federal amendment that says that you are not allowed to use federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortion.
And she said, we have no position on that, but Joe Biden is a good Catholic.
And as we know, Catholics are pro-life.
Okay, within 24 hours, Anthony Fauci had announced the return of the Mexico City policy, which uses federal taxpayer dollars in order to sponsor abortion overseas.
So, was that dishonest?
Was that avoiding the question?
No, no, it's Transparency and Honesty Guide to New Day.
The adults are back in charge.
No, the reality is it's not about the adults being back in charge or any realistic standard of honesty and decency.
What this is is that there is a complete simpatico between the journalists and the people they're covering right now.
It is just confirmation bias.
They like the people they are covering.
They didn't used to like the people they are covering.
They don't care if the people they're covering right now lie to them and fib to them and put out propaganda talking points.
That is fine with them because they like those propaganda talking points.
This is not about them holding any consistent standard.
This is about them holding a wildly inconsistent standard.
It's not.
Listen, they would be saying the adults are back in the room if it had been Marco Rubio who was president.
It has nothing to do with the adults being back in the room.
All this has to do with is they agree with the people who are lying to them, and so they're going to just cover for them.
They did this all throughout the Obama administration.
Members of the Obama administration overtly admitted to lying to the press, and the press kept licking their feet.
It was unbelievable.
And now it will just be more of the same.
It'll just be more of the same.
In a second, I'm gonna get to some more terrible, terrible COVID policy, because there are a couple of policies that are now being trotted out that are pretty amazing.
Plus, a story that should receive more media attention, but likely will not.
We'll explain in a second.
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Okay, so there's another story that has been making the rounds and the media are like, I can't believe this is happening, but who is to blame?
So here's the story.
Remember how 15,000 American troops were sent to Washington, D.C.
to protect against the possibility of another January 6th, and then no one showed up?
In fact, all across the country, the only violence that was done was done by Antifa in Portland and Seattle, who were attacking, again, government buildings.
Or it didn't happen because Antifa is an ideology.
I forget which.
I mean, according to Joe Biden, Antifa doesn't exist.
Okay, in any case, what happened to the National Guardsmen?
According to Politico, thousands of National Guardsmen were allowed back into the Capitol on Thursday night, hours after U.S.
Capitol Police officials ordered them to vacate the facility, sending them outdoors or to nearby parking garages after two weeks pulling security duty after the deadly riot on January 6th.
One unit, which had been resting in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, was abruptly told to vacate the facility on Thursday, according to one Guardsman.
The group was forced to rest in a nearby parking garage without internet reception, with just one electrical outlet and one bathroom with two stalls for 5,000 troops, the person said.
Temperatures in Washington were in the low 40s by nightfall.
The guardsman said, yesterday, dozens of senators and congressmen walked down our lines, taking photos, shaking our hands, thanking us for our service.
Within 24 hours, they had no further use for us and banished us to the corner of the parking garage.
We feel incredibly betrayed.
All of the National Guard troops were told to vacate the Capitol and nearby congressional buildings on Thursday, and to set up mobile command centers outside or in nearby hospitals, another guardsman confirmed.
They were told to take their rest breaks during 12-hour shifts outside and in parking garages, the person said.
Top lawmakers from both parties took to Twitter to decry the decision and call for answers after Politico first reported the news.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted, if this is true, it's outrageous.
I will get to the bottom of this.
Senator Tom Cotton noted the Capitol complex remains closed to members of the public, so there is plenty of room for troops to take a break in them.
A guard source confirmed late Thursday all the troops in the parking garages were ordered to return to the Capitol.
Brigadier General Jeanine Burkhead, the guard's inauguration task force commander, confirmed in a statement to Politico a little after midnight the troops are out of the garage and now back in the Capitol building, and they will take their breaks in Emancipation Hall going forward.
In a statement, Capitol Police spokesperson Eva Malecki said the department recently asked the truce shifts be reduced from 12 hours to eight in order to allow for additional rest hours away from the Capitol complex.
It did not explain why guardsmen were forced into parking garages.
Now, you'll notice that nowhere in this piece does it explain who exactly is in charge here.
Well, let me give you a hint.
Who is in charge here?
The president of the United States is currently named Joe Biden, not Donald Trump.
The Senate Majority Leader is currently named Chuck Schumer, not Mitch McConnell.
The House Speaker is named Nancy Pelosi, not Kevin McCarthy.
So...
Who is to blame?
You know what the headlines would be if Trump were still president, don't you?
Donald Trump forces, forces troops to sleep in parking garage in 40 degree weather, sharing but one toilet for 5,000 people.
You know that would be the headline.
But here it's like, oh, how did this happen?
How?
I don't understand.
What could have happened here?
Amazing how as soon as something bad happened under the Trump administration, it was like every Republican we see in like a four mile radius is to blame for this.
When Democrats are in charge and something bad happens, like, How could such a bad thing happen in America?
How?
Who?
What?
I'm not even gonna speculate as to who is in charge.
Amazing.
By the way, speaking of bad COVID policy, so...
My favorite thing is when Democrats claim that they are driven by the science.
Okay, so here is D.C.' 's new standard.
So, Washington, D.C.
has set a new standard for vaccinations.
Now, this should be very easy.
The standard for vaccinations should be, if you are 65, you get one.
Right?
We do it by age.
That's how you should do it.
If you are a doctor who is working routinely with COVID patients, you should probably also get one.
We should not be vaccinating people who work in grocery stores or people who are delivering packages at the same rates that we are vaccinating people who are 65 and older.
It should be an age-based decision.
End of story.
So, what is Washington, D.C.
doing being driven by the science?
Entirely democratic area.
How are they actually tranching out the vaccines?
According to the Washington Post, the district plans to give priority for coronavirus vaccines to the broadest possible swath of people with pre-existing health conditions.
A decision that will make hundreds of thousands eligible for scarce doses of the vaccine and that some public health experts say might not make medical sense.
Might not make medical sense?
Here's what they're actually proposing.
Okay, you ready for this?
The plan would offer vaccines to people whose wait and medical history would not qualify them for early access to the vaccine in almost any state in the country.
Apparently, D.C.
Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt told members of the D.C.
Council last week she decided to open up vaccine access possibly as soon as February to such a large group in the hopes of quickly vaccinating anyone.
So what exactly is the cutoff?
The cutoff is you just have to testify that you have any pre-existing condition at all, right?
You just put it on your form.
You just say that you're a smoker or you've had cancer or heart failure or diabetes or Down syndrome.
Okay, these are all chronic conditions.
Or, or, you have to have a body mass index over 25.
Okay, just to be clear, a body mass index over 25 is like everyone.
Okay, unless you're in pretty good shape, you do not have a body mass index under 25.
Okay, that just means overweight.
Overweight is 25.
Obesity is 30.
I'm in pretty good shape.
I work out pretty much every day.
My body mass index is like 22.
Okay, so the bizarre notion that you're going to tranche out hundreds of thousands of vaccines to anyone who is slightly overweight, as opposed to, you know, the people who are elderly and at risk, total craziness.
But of course, the goal here is racial equity above all, right?
That is the goal here.
Experts like David Kass, a Johns Hopkins cardiology professor, said some of the conditions the district is including have not been proved to put people at higher risk of complications from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
In terms of body weight, some recommended prioritizing people with BMIs over 40, rather than anyone whose weight is above a level considered healthy.
I mean, BMI over 40 is severe obesity?
BMI over 30 is some risk?
There's no evidence that BMI of 25 is gonna kill you.
Okay, but again, bad policy doesn't matter.
All that matters is the wokeness.
The wokeness is what matters above all.
Okay, well, you may be looking at the state of modern American politics, and you may be saying to yourself, you know what?
These media, I hope they finally get the message that they actually need to be watchdogs, right?
That was their job, the objective media.
They need to be watchdogs.
They can't just be lapdogs.
They need to be watchdogs, right?
And the American people actually get it.
There's a poll out from Edelman that shows that the American trust in the media is at an all-time low.
As well, it should be.
It was shared with Axios.
Here's what the poll found.
Apparently, the trust in traditional media, 46% of Americans say they trust traditional media.
Presumably they are all Democrats.
Among Republicans, those numbers are abysmal.
Only 18% of Republicans say they believe journalists after the 2020 election, which, I mean, hard to argue with that.
Not sure why you would.
The vast majority of members of the American public believe that journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead them, And 58% think news organizations are more interested in ideology than facts.
57% of Democrats trust the media.
Shocker.
Shocker.
I can't believe it.
You mean you trust the media because they tell you exactly what you want to hear all the time?
But don't worry, there's no leftist bias in the media.
Apparently, Republican trust in traditional media plunged following the 2020 election.
But the truth is that that plunge should have happened much earlier.
The Republican belief in the veracity of the media, it found a 15-point drop in media trust among Trump supporters.
Apparently, about 33% of Republicans used to trust the media.
Now it's only about 18%.
I'm not sure why anyone trusts the media to simply be objective.
They simply are not.
They are not objective in any way, shape, or form.
And the proof is in the pudding.
I mean, every single day I show you clips of members of your esteemed journalistic media who are basically just doing dirty work for the Biden administration or for the Democrats or for the Biden campaign during the campaign.
So, for example, here is CNN's Alison Camerota literally asking members of the Biden administration if they will retaliate against news networks if they lie.
So here's CNN asking if the Biden administration is going to target Newsmax, OANN, and Fox News.
Yeah, definitely.
I trust CNN.
Absolutely objective people.
No interest here.
They are just truth tellers.
By the way, that is unconstitutional.
The Biden administration has no power to involve itself in these particular debates.
Here's Alison Camerota pushing it anyway.
I heard that as a direct shot at some of the media companies that lied about the election results.
We know who they are.
I mean, they're right-wing companies.
Some are more fringe than others at this point, or more, I guess, extreme than others.
And so if they continue to engage in lies, something that he is trying to combat, what is your communication strategy?
Will you deny those networks any interviews?
I mean, what happens if they Revert to form immediately.
So will you punish?
Will you revert to form?
Will you tell people that you won't interview with them because CNN doesn't like them?
Please?
Will you do that?
I mean, we are the truth tellers here at CNN.
Everybody else on the other side, those are not truth tellers at all.
CNN is the place you come for your news and also for your Kool-Aid from the left side of the aisle.
Okay, so the funniest example of this over the past 24 hours.
I thought this was hilarious.
So there's a piece.
Here's the title of the piece.
It's by Margaret Sullivan.
Margaret Sullivan is the media columnist for the Washington Post.
And she has a piece that is titled, I kid you not, the media can be glad for the Biden White House's return to normalcy, but let's not be lulled.
Okay, now if I just read you the title, you would think, presumably, that the piece is going to say to the media, yes, this is more of a return to normalcy, it's not quite as wild and crazy as the Trump years, it's not all about the tweets, but you still have to be watchdogs, right?
Wouldn't you think that's what, I mean, that's the title of the piece, right?
The media can be glad for the Biden White House's return to normalcy, but let's not be lulled.
Wrong!
Margaret Sullivan says, let's not be lulled, let's not be lulled into covering them with a harsh glare.
Right?
I have to read it to you because it is just so indicative of the mindset of the media.
The media believe they were too hard on Obama, too hard on Hillary.
That's why they got Trump.
And the lesson of the Trump years is not that you should be aggressive with the White House in power.
The lesson of the Trump years is that you should only be aggressive with people you disagree with politically.
That is what Margaret Sullivan, the media columnist for the Washington Post, writes.
Here's her take on it.
You ready?
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was prepared.
She was professional.
She was non-combative.
And she didn't peddle a whopper of the lie the way Sean Spicer did on day one four years ago with his alternative fact about the supposedly record-breaking size of the inaugural crowd.
The first official words by President Biden's spokeswoman included truth and transparency.
Rebuilding trust with the American people will be central to our focus, the former State Department spokeswoman told a small group of socially distanced reporters as she promised to return to daily briefings.
In fact, Wednesday night's session with reporters, the first of the Biden administration, was so normal, so weirdly normal, that you could be forgiven for thinking you had mistakenly put on an old episode of the West Wing.
My favorite thing about that is that she's touting the West Wing as like the way politics should work.
It was a fantasy show written by Aaron Sorkin on behalf of Democrats.
Yes, I'm sure you do.
But that's the way the reality, I wish the reality were just the West Wing.
Yes, I'm sure you do.
I'm sure you do.
The return to norms is wonderfully welcome after the horrors of the past four years.
It's like running into a friend you haven't seen in four years, wrote Columbia University journalism professor William Gruskin.
Okay, so here's where you think Because here's what she says, it's also potentially dangerous.
Okay, now here's where you think it's gonna make the turn.
Here's where you think she's gonna say, yes, it's a return to normal, but we can't be lulled into a false sense of security.
We still have to hold people in power accountable.
Nope, nope, that is not what she is going to say.
She's going to say the opposite.
Here we go.
The national press, battered by four years of abuse by the president and by the incompetence and falsehoods of his spokespeople, is in a precarious position.
We run the risk of being seduced by an administration that, in many cases, closely reflects our values.
Multiculturalism, a belief in the principles of liberal democracy, a kind of wonky idealism.
So she's openly admitting, by the way, that the media and Biden are the same, right?
And she says, the commentary from TV broadcasters across the board all day long was at times embarrassingly complimentary.
Maybe that's fine for a day or two while everyone takes a few sighs of relief that democracy has survived its stress test.
But soon, I'd guess another normal return.
The desire to appear combative and to blow things out of proportion to demonstrate toughness.
She's chiding the media before they do it with being too combative with Biden after they basically provided him sexual favors on the day of the inauguration.
.
That's what Margaret Sullivan is doing here.
She says, you know what, you guys, we spent the last 48 hours celebrating with Biden and treating Biden with kid gloves.
And, you know, we have to be really careful here not to stop treating him with kid gloves.
Because journalists pride themselves, says Margaret Sullivan, media columnist for the Washington Post, on being tough and objective, they like to take an adversarial-seeming approach, especially to the party in power or the candidate with whom they most identify.
And of course, actually holding power to account is the most important job journalists have.
It's what we're here for.
But there's a difference between truly holding power to account and grandstanding.
It's the latter that gave rise to ridiculous dust-ups like the one over President Barack Obama's wearing of a tan suit, not to mention the vast and shameful overplaying of the Hillary Clinton email scandal during the 2016 campaign.
The national media, says Margaret Sullivan, should show toughness, but of a different sort.
If they've learned the lessons of the past four years, and I confess I have my doubts, they'll do things differently.
They will resist false equivalency.
For example, they'll think twice before they put a reality-denying senator like Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley on the air.
They will clearly call out lies.
They will identify racism or white supremacy by using plain language instead of euphemism.
It's just, it's amazing.
It's just amazing.
So the media have gone into full-blown, full-blown best little whorehouse in Texas mode.
And Margaret Sullivan is like, yes, but, but could we add some services on top of that to really make sure that we are doing our job here?
You know, the last thing we need is for you to even pretend to do your job.
The real problem here is that you're probably going to start going soft on Republicans.
That's probably the big problem here.
So let's go harder on Republicans and let's not cover any of the things that Biden, I mean, like, do you know how in the bubble you have to be to believe this?
These folks have decided beforehand, in preordained fashion, the Biden administration is transparent, wonderful, factual, and the biggest risk is that you will create a false equivalency between people who disagree with Biden and Biden because, of course, we all know on an objective level that Biden is wonderful and amazing and truly spectacular.
They're just fanboys.
They should just write fanzines.
Everything the media write these days, and I think, honestly, since the Obama era, everything that they write is essentially just In Touch magazine about these folks.
It's incredible.
It's incredible.
And meanwhile, I look forward to a return of non-comedy.
We'll get to that in just one second.
Remember that time that comedians were funny?
Yeah, and me neither.
It's been a while.
We'll get to more of that in just one second.
First, let us talk about the fact that if your sleep quality has been lacking, that is because you have a mattress you bought at a store, didn't you?
I know what you did.
You went to the store, you lay down on a mattress, And now you've been lying on that lumpy mattress for the last 10 years.
You need a mattress that is made for you.
This is why you need a Helix Sleep mattress.
Helix Sleep has a quiz.
It takes just two minutes to complete, matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you.
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They have several different mattress models to choose from.
They have soft, medium, and firm mattresses.
Mattress is great for cooling you down if you sleep hot.
Even a Helix Plus mattress for plus-sized folks.
It's been awesome getting all these unboxing videos from so many of you who also found the Helix mattress of your dreams.
So, if you're looking for a mattress, you take the quiz, you order the mattress you're matched to, the mattress comes right to your door, shipped for free.
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Helix was awarded the number one best overall mattress pick of 2020 by both GQ and Wired Magazine.
Just head on over to helixsleep.com slash Ben.
Take their two-minute sleep quiz.
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That's an amazing deal.
Again, check them out at helixsleep.com to get the kind of mattress I sleep on, namely one that is made just for you.
Alrighty, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Dailyware member.
Today, it is John Galt on Twitter.
We finally found out who he is.
He values good entertainment in the pic.
The world's greatest beverage vessel is in a cozy living room with our own Daily Wire God King up on the flat screen.
The caption reads, The only way to watch the real Daily Wire premiere of Run, Hide, Fight is curled up with my pup, munching on Skinny Pop, washing it down with the thirst-quenching tears of Hollywood.
Hashtag leftist Sears Tumblr.
Hashtag take back the culture.
Awesome.
Run, Hide, Fight is a great movie.
We hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks for the pick.
Thanks for being a Daily Wire member.
If you haven't heard about it yet, of course, Daily Wire is now in the entertainment game.
Last week, we released our first film, Run, Hide, Fight, exclusively for DailyWire members.
You can catch it over at DailyWire.com, on the mobile app, on our streaming apps at Apple TV and Roku.
And if you're not a DailyWire member yet, use promo code RHF, that's Run, Hide, Fight, RHF, to get 25% off to watch it.
The critics' score is currently at 30%.
The audience score is now at 93%.
That's the kind of entertainment we're gonna make, the stuff that you guys love and the critics probably hate.
Reviewers are very angry at the movie.
Reviewers are very, very upset at the movie.
Well, who cares?
The audience loves it.
It was made for you.
Again, the movie is a great thriller.
It follows Zoe Hall, a high school student trying to get through the last few weeks of her senior year when her high school is attacked by school shooters.
Using her wits and survival skills, Zoe fights back to save her fellow students.
We are excited to bring you amazing stories Hollywood refuses to tell.
We hope you'll join us and become a member today over at dailywire.com.
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You are listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
Alrighty, so, obviously, we are hoping for a return to comedy at some point in the future.
Here's the problem.
It really wasn't Trump that killed comedy.
It really was Obama who killed comedy.
As soon as Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and took office in 2009, the media declared that he was off-limits.
Our comedy specialists decided that comedying was over.
I mean, you literally couldn't make fun of him.
There was nothing funny about Barack Obama.
On a purely objective level, that is just not true.
Barack Obama was HILARIOUS.
He was HILARIOUS.
I mean, the man thought that he was just a messianic figure descended from the heavens to teach all of us about what it meant to be the best kind of human.
And the media agreed with him.
It was really funny.
Like, on an objective level, Barack Obama, godlike figure going 0 for 22 on the basketball court?
Kind of funny.
Barack Obama jetting off in the middle of crisis to go hang out with celebrities?
Kind of funny.
There was a lot that was funny that was going on during the Obama administration, but not to comedians because they were too busy worshiping and you can't make fun of things that you worship, right?
It's very difficult for people to do that.
Religious people tend not to mock They're gods, okay?
And these folks are religious.
Well, then it became, okay, well, we won't actually mock Trump.
We're just going to yell at him.
They were so angry at Trump that they couldn't even be funny about Trump.
It was mostly just, he's a very bad man.
It was like a sputtering rage that came from the comedians.
Well, now we're going to revert back to the Obama years.
Except it's gonna be Joe Biden.
So Joe Biden, who is legitimately one of the funniest people to ever be president of the United States, not because he means to be funny, but because he cannot spew four sentences without mixing himself up and walking into a wall.
Like, that's funny!
Okay, they were able to make fun of Gerald Ford, one of the most athletic presidents in American history, for being kind of doddering.
But Joe Biden, who's 78 years old, cannot string together a coherent thought.
That's not funny at all.
It's not funny at all.
In fact, what we need from our comedians most of all is to be the priests of the new woke religion.
And that is what they do.
So here we have Stephen Colbert, Stephen Colbert explaining.
This is what comedians do now.
They explain to us how much they cry.
Comedy's over, gang.
It's dead.
It ain't coming back.
Not under these conditions.
There is no such thing as a comedy routine that exists in the world of wokeness because everything is just too Puritan.
Here is Stephen Colbert being hilarious by explaining how much he cried when Joe Biden won the presidency.
By the way, Stephen Colbert's life was so rough under Donald Trump.
I mean, all he did was leap to the top of the ratings despite being utterly unfunny.
And making a bajillion dollars?
What a rough life he had under Trump.
I mean, every day he was under threat of making more money.
It was really, really difficult for Stephen Colbert.
But now, Stephen Colbert, he's weeping tears of joy.
Weeping tears of joy.
Listen, when Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton, I didn't weep tears of joy.
I laughed my ass off.
It was really funny.
Okay?
There's tape of me doing it.
It has several million views of me just laughing hysterically because that's really, really funny.
Okay, Stephen Colbert hasn't laughed in several years and it shows.
Instead, we must cry along with him.
He is, by the way, he's on the cover of like Vanity Fair holding a dove or something this month.
Our comedy specialists are no longer in the business of comedy.
Here's a non-comedian, an ex-comedian.
The inauguration was a joyful occasion.
Like I do at most happy things, I cried a lot.
It's true.
It was extremely emotional.
And not entirely in the way that I expected, because I have to tell you, I have zero gloat in me.
There is no end zone dance here.
What I feel is enormous relief.
Watching the inauguration today, I recognize just how worried I've been for my country.
Wow.
Oh no, he wasn't being funny?
I honestly can't tell the difference.
I cannot tell the difference in when he is trying to be funny and when he's not trying to be funny.
Also, another person who used to be funny but now is just a woke pope, Jimmy Kimmel.
He emerged wearing his black non-turtleneck, his long sleeve black shirt here, to explain to all of us that, you know, it's like a magical, magical day.
Now this is actually supposed to be a funny line, but I'm wondering how, like where is the, where, how?
Okay, here's Jimmy Kimmel, explain the humor.
Joseph Rapunzel Biden is our 46th president.
It feels like, I have to imagine this is what it feels like when the oncologist calls and tells you the tumor is benign.
You know, I remember going back to the day Trump was inaugurated, such a terrible day, and wondering, can our country even survive four years of this?
And now we know the answer.
Not really.
Just barely.
But we made it.
Mar-a-Lardo left town bright and early this morning.
So, oh my god, wow.
The quality of that writing.
I mean, those are the kind of jokes that are only surpassed by the jokes that you find on the handle of the Popsicle stick.
That's pretty much it.
Well done.
I will say that the last 12 years have killed comedy, they have killed objective journalism, There's not a lot left in terms of our institutions and our fun, and everything seems like sort of a bland gray going on from here, does it not?
It is just boredom and annoyance stamping on the American face forever.
That is the future of the country.
Oh yeah, and also bad policy.
So Ezra Klein has now moved over to the New York Times after turning Vox into a place that ostracizes everybody of dissenting views so bad that Matthew Iglesias had to leave and found his own substack.
Now Ezra Klein has been rewarded with a slot over at the New York Times where he has a podcast and also he has an opinion piece because the New York Times, like, no one Who's voted for Trump will ever be allowed to write for the New York Times.
Like ever, ever, ever again.
It's not going to happen.
The most right-wing person at the New York Times right now is Ross Douthat.
And that's because he's sort of iconoclastic and because he is not super Trumpy, but he's also kind of in favor of... I like Ross's column, but Ross is not easy to pin down in sort of traditional conservative ways.
The other columnists are, like the most right-wing columnist after that is Brett Stevens, who hates Trump with a fiery passion of a thousand suns, right?
So you've got Ezra Klein over at the New York Times.
Here is his pitch for what Democrats should do next.
Remember, this is the era of unity.
It's the time of good feelings, right?
So Ezra Klein's pitch is, let's kill the filibuster and just ram through a bunch of crap.
Let's do it.
Let's do it.
Ezra Klein says that what we need is we need a massive spending bill.
We need a $1.9 trillion rescue plan that Biden is pushing.
We need a For the People Act, which is a wild rewriting of how voting is done in the United States.
We need a revision of immigration, but, says Ezra Klein, none of these bills will pass a Senate in which the filibuster forces 60 vote majorities on routine legislation.
That clarifies the real question Democrats face.
They have plenty of ideas that could improve people's lives and strengthen democracy, but they have repeatedly proven themselves more committed to preserving the status quo of the political system than fulfilling their promises to voters.
Wait, hold up a second.
Let me just read that, let me read that sentence one more time.
Because if you think that it's just authoritarians on the right who are the threat, let me read that sentence to you one more time.
Remember, we were told that the threat of authoritarians is people who care more about outcome than they do about the norms.
Care more about outcome than they do about the institutions of our democracy, right?
That was the entire pitch.
Here is Ezra Klein in the pages of the New York Times.
Remember, well-intentioned, good-hearted, liberal Ezra Klein.
Here it is.
I'm gonna read it slowly so you understand what he's saying.
Democrats have repeatedly proven themselves more committed to preserving the status quo of the political system than fulfilling their promises to voters.
They have preferred the false piece of decorum to the true progress of democracy.
There it is.
Our institutions must be raised and Democrats must push forward all the things Ezra Klein likes.
Otherwise, you know, they might lose elections and we wouldn't want that to happen.
If they choose that path again, they will lose their majority in 2022 and they will deserve it.
Break all of the institutions of democracy in order to save democracy, guys.
I mean, where have I heard that before?
Where have I heard that before?
Oh yeah, from every authoritarian ever.
All we have to do is just overrun all the institutions and we can do all the things you want us to do.
Very, very exciting stuff.
That perspective is how we got to this idiotic form of government that we currently experience, in which basically all that government is, is Congress as a vestigial organ that occasionally passes omnibus packages worth trillions of dollars, and mostly government is just presidents ping-ponging back and forth executive orders.
Obama does a bunch of executive orders, then Trump undoes the executive orders, then Biden redoes the executive orders, then whoever comes next undoes those executive orders.
But Ezra Klein wants to break the wheel of history.
The way we're going to break the wheel is not by returning power to the legislature in its current form and minimizing the power of the executive.
Instead, what it's going to be is we're going to kill the filibuster.
We're going to ram through things on a bare majority basis.
And then everybody's going to be better.
We'll maximize power in the federal government.
Probably that will bring everybody together.
Oh, goody gumdrops.
Yes, the era of unity has begun.
You feeling unified?
Are ya?
Yeah, didn't think so.
Okay, we'll be back here later today with one additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.
In the meantime, go check out The Michael Knowles Show.
That is available right now.
Apparently, a Republican congressperson has filed articles of impeachment against Biden on the first day in office.
Michael will tell you all about it on today's show.
In the meantime, have a great weekend.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.
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