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Jan. 26, 2021 - The Ben Shapiro Show

59:52

Does Biden Actually Have A Covid Strategy? | Ep. 1181

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	Teachers unions across America resist school openings.
	Democrats prepare for Trump's Senate impeachment trial.
	And 100 Politico staffers whines their publisher that Politico printed a column by me.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
	Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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	Right now, COVID continues to spread across the country.
	If you look at the latest statistics, actually, COVID seems to be a little bit on the wane.
	That is true both in terms of infections and in terms of deaths.
	The high number of detected infections in the United States came around the first week of January.
	According to Worldometers, January 8th we had about 308,000 diagnosed cases of COVID in the United States.
	Today, we are down to about half that, about 152,000 diagnosed cases of COVID in the United States.
	The same thing seems to be true of deaths.
	The high in deaths was, again, right around that middle of January.
	January 12th, January 11th.
	January 8th, you're talking about 4,000 deaths a day.
	Now, we are dropping slightly, not hugely, but slightly down to about 3,500, 3,400 deaths a day.
	The real worry right now when it comes to COVID is the possibility of new variants.
	There are a bunch of variants that apparently are already present in the United States.
	We are trying to shut down travel from South Africa, for example, that's something Joe Biden has done, President Biden.
	He's also attempting to shut down travel from places like Brazil.
	The reality is these variants are probably already in the United States because the United States is so open to travel.
	We are not New Zealand.
	We didn't shut off our travel because we are, in fact, the largest economy on the face of the earth with lots and lots of international travel.
	We are not a tiny island in the middle of nowhere with about seven citizens and some sheep.
	So anybody who tries to compare how New Zealand handled the pandemic with how the United States handled the pandemic is really fooling themselves.
	And again, just as a general rule, when we talk about which countries have handled the pandemic worst versus which countries have handled the pandemic the best, when people say the United States has handled the pandemic worse than any other country, that is just not true.
	In terms of deaths per million population, the United States is not, in fact, at the top of the list.
	The United States currently ranks about 11th on that list behind countries like Belgium, and Slovenia, and Czechia, and the UK, and Italy.
	The United States ranks just above places like Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, and Peru, right?
	So we will see how things progress because Mexico is also getting hit really hard.
	They are rising on the list pretty quickly.
	Okay, all of which is to say, that nobody has a wonderful handle on COVID and nobody is going to have a wonderful handle on COVID until the vaccinations become prevalent enough that they are able to overtake the virus.
	And that is the problem with these variants. So what we are finding is that the vaccines apparently are still effective on the various COVID variants, but those variants are also significantly more transmissible, even more transmissible than the original virus itself.
	And that, of course, was the real danger of the virus.
	The virus was more deadly than the flu.
	We're still figuring out whether it was three times more deadly than the flu or five times more deadly than the flu, and it really did vary widely by age.
	But when it comes to the transmissibility, that was the major difference between COVID and the flu, right?
	Even greater than the problem of the deadliness of the disease was the fact that it was spreading so fast amongst a huge percentage of the population.
	Well, scientists are now worried that these variants are even more transmissible.
	Caitlin Rivers, epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health said, We're definitely on a downward slope.
	I'm worried the new variants will throw us a curveball in late February or March, which is why it is very, very important that we ramp up the vaccine distribution as soon as humanly possible, like as in right now.
	Nationwide, according to the New York Times a couple days ago, new coronavirus cases have fallen 21% in the last two weeks, according to a New York Times database.
	Some experts have suggested this could mark the start of a shifting course after nearly four months of ever-worsening case totals.
	This week, the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which puts out a predictive model that is widely used for planning, including by some government agencies, released a projection saying new cases in the United States would decline steadily from now on.
	And so we have seen the worst of this thing, according to them.
	But with new viral variants, Surging in places like Britain, Ireland, South Africa and Northern Brazil.
	Some people are suggesting that maybe we're seeing a lull before there is another wave of the virus, which again, tranche out those vaccines as fast as humanly possible would be the goal here.
	Now, there is a conflicting message that has been coming out from the Biden administration.
	That conflicting message is that the United States has handled this horribly and we need to centralize all power in the federal government.
	And two is we really don't know what the hell we're doing, right?
	This is the difficulty with actually running the government as opposed to sitting outside the government and complaining about the government.
	If you are Joe Biden and you spent the last year and a half I'm really here talking about how terrible the Trump administration is doing handling this virus.
	If you spent the last several months talking about how Trump is solely responsible for the vast spread across the land, he did say that during the campaign, right?
	Every death is on Donald Trump in all of this.
	Well, when you enter office, you better have a plan.
	There's only one problem.
	Your plan is not very good.
	It also happens to be the case that the media's reliance on Dr. Anthony Fauci as the font of all wisdom is wrongheaded.
	It was wrongheaded from the start.
	Fauci has made a bunch of mistakes along the way.
	Again, I don't think that Fauci is a badly motivated human being or anything.
	I do think that Anthony Fauci has gotten high on his own fumes a little bit, and this is a person who definitely believes his own press in a major way.
	By the way, the...
	The guy is pretty well rewarded.
	He is the highest paid employee in the entire United States federal government, apparently, according to Adam Andrzejewski over at Forbes.com.
	Apparently, he made $417,000 in 2019.
	That is the latest year for which federal salaries are available.
	That made him the highest paid out of all four million federal employees in the United States, which is pretty astonishing, actually.
	By the way, he has complained before about people saying that he is a rich guy and he makes too much money.
	He's like, no, no, no, I'm a public employee.
	Yeah, a public employee who's making an excess of what the president of the United States makes.
	I mean, there is that as well.
	In any case, Anthony Fauci was speaking to Davos, right?
	Davos is this international gathering of the Hoi Polloi.
	And here was Anthony Fauci explaining that America's big problem is that its response was politicized and that was destructive to a unified approach.
	Now, here's the problem with that.
	Again, Pretends that all of the United States has handled coronavirus similarly is just a lie.
	And when you say that the U.S.
	would have been better off with this giant, top-down, unified approach, I'm wondering what your evidence of that is.
	What would it look like, a top-down, unified approach?
	Would it look like California, which is getting absolutely shellacked day after day today in terms of number of deaths?
	Per day, California is far outpacing the rest of the United States.
	It is not close.
	Right now, California is experiencing in excess of 400 deaths a day, compared to second, by the way, is New York, right?
	New York, you remember, got hit in the first wave.
	Well, now New York is having a second wave.
	They had 217 deaths yesterday, according to Worldometers.
	Florida, which has the same population as New York, but a lot more old people, is down to 153.
	Texas is right after that.
	So here's the bottom line.
	When you say that you want a centralized, unified approach, what you're ignoring is the fact that the sort of non-centralized approach of the United States has allowed for a bunch of states to handle this better than other states.
	People did not handle this all the same.
	And considering how poorly places like New York and California apparently have handled it...
	That's not a bad thing.
	Here is Fauci, though, talking about how we need more government centralization.
	By the way, if you think the government has done, like, an unbelievable job here, let me just point out, the government, essentially, had a couple of jobs.
	One was to prevent the spread.
	They did not actually do that despite all of the lockdowns.
	Two was that they were going to tranche out the vaccines.
	Okay, they've been really slow on that.
	For all the talk about Operation Warp Speed, it was the private industry, it was private industry that developed the vaccine, not the United States federal government.
	In any case, here is Anthony Fauci talking about how we need more centralization of control.
	When public health issues become politically charged, like wearing a mask or not becomes a political statement, you cannot imagine how destructive that is to any unified public health message.
	You know what's really amazing about all the masking talk and it's all about Trump and people didn't take masking seriously enough?
	The rates of mask usage in the United States are extraordinarily high and much higher than parts of Europe.
	If you ask people to self-report whether they wear a mask most of the time or all of the time, in excess of 80% of Americans say they wear a mask most or all of the time when they are in crowded spaces.
	The problem here is not mask compliance.
	L.A.
	had mask mandates in place for months.
	I mean, literally starting about a month and a half after the beginning of the pandemic, when Fauci shifted on his original lines, I don't know, you should wear masks.
	Everybody in L.A.
	was wearing masks, and L.A.
	is just getting absolutely decimated right now.
	The big lie here, which is that if you had just listened to the public health experts, and now if you listen more to the public health experts, and you listen even more to the public health experts, we'll just keep doubling down on this, that would have fixed everything.
	If we had listened to Anthony Fauci, nobody would have worn a mask at the beginning.
	And if we had listened to Anthony Fauci, then we never would have opened the schools.
	And if we had listened to Anthony Fauci, we would have thought herd immunity was kicking in at 70%.
	I mean, I'm sorry, but the idea that everybody's wrong for not listening to me is such a... It's true on all sides of the aisle when it comes to politics, but it's ugly.
	And the reality is, people aren't going to listen to you.
	And you're just gonna have to deal with that.
	Because in a free country, that is how things work.
	The kind of bizarre longing for a top-down dictatorial mindset when it comes to this stuff is really weird.
	It's, I think, what underlies so much of the media's hatred of Florida.
	I'm looking at the statistics right now in terms of deaths per million in the United States.
	Deaths per million by state.
	Where do you think Florida ranks?
	If you looked at just the media coverage, where would you think that Florida ranks in terms of deaths per million population in the United States?
	You'd probably think that it ranks in the top two Maybe the top 10?
	Maybe the top 20?
	Maybe the top 25?
	Florida ranks 26th in America in terms of deaths per million.
	But if you actually look at how the media covers this, that's because DeSantis has taken a decentralized approach.
	So it seems almost as though when it comes to how so many members of the public health establishment and Democrats tend to think of public health, they think of public health in the same way they think of government generally, which is government is always the solution.
	Centralized government is always the solution.
	And if it fails, it's because we need to centralize to centralize harder.
	That is the only way that we are going to be able to overcome the pandemic.
	Okay, we'll get to why this is such nonsense, errant nonsense, in just one second.
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	Okay, so our public health officials, they just keep saying, why don't you listen to us?
	Why don't you listen to us more?
	Why don't you listen to us more?
	Maybe because you've been wrong a thousand times.
	Speaking of public health officials who have been wrong a thousand times, here's Anthony Fauci.
	Walking back his original assessment, which is that 100 million people were going to be vaccinated in the first 100 days of the Biden administration.
	Here he was on Sunday, walking that back and going, no, what I actually meant is that we will be tranching out 100 million vaccine shots.
	Remember, it takes two to fully vaccinate somebody.
	So there's a rather large, I mean, he was off by a factor of 50% on his original estimate here.
	Here is the world's greatest doctor, Anthony Fauci.
	Let me clarify that because there was a little bit of a misunderstanding.
	What we're talking about is a hundred million shots in individuals.
	So a shot, as in other words, when you get down to, let's say, a certain part of the hundred days, at the end of a hundred days, you're going to have some people who will have gotten both shots and some will still be on their first shots.
	But the president is saying a hundred million shots in the arms of people within a hundred days.
	It's weird because like a week ago, Joe Biden was saying it was going to be 100 million people vaccinated within 100 days.
	Okay, so really, well done, everybody.
	Everybody's done an amazing job here.
	And meanwhile, it turns out that that centralized government policy has been the greatest driver of poverty in half a century.
	According to Bloomberg, the end of 2020 brought the sharpest rise in U.S.
	poverty rate since the 1960s.
	Economist Bruce Meyer from the University of Chicago and James Sullivan from the University of Notre Dame found that the poverty rate increased by 2.4 percentage points during the latter half of 2020 as the U.S.
	continued to suffer the economic impacts from COVID-19.
	That percentage point rise has nearly doubled the largest annual increase in poverty since the 1960s.
	This means an additional 8 million people nationwide are now considered poor.
	Moreover, the poverty rate for black Americans is estimated to have jumped by 5.4 percentage points or by 2.4 million individuals.
	The scholars' findings put the rate at 11.8% in December.
	While poverty is down from readings of more than 15% a decade earlier, the new estimates suggest the annual Census Bureau tally due in September will be higher than the last official pre-pandemic level of 10.5% in 2019.
	So the poverty rate has absolutely skyrocketed.
	We have also seen a massive, massive amount of drug overdose increases, a massive increase in suicide, The number of young Americans who are going to die of causes other than COVID-19 during this period may, at the end of the day, actually outpace the number of young Americans, meaning Americans under the age of 40, who actually die from COVID.
	The overdose figures are really, really brutal.
	So there's that.
	So our experts basically locked down the entire economy, created the sharpest rise in the poverty rate in 50 years, made the death rate for young Americans much higher than it otherwise would have been, Instead of simply saying, okay, everybody who's the age of 65, we need to protect those people and everybody else needs to go out and get back to work as soon as humanly possible with the protections that are available, which was always the best policy.
	But anybody who pursued that policy was ripped up and down because we need, of course, more centralized control.
	The best governor in America, supposedly, was Gavin Newsom in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York, Phil Murphy in New Jersey, everybody who locked down the hardest.
	Everyone who locked down super-duper-duper hard, these were the best governors in the world, and we need more centralized control just like that.
	That is definitely going to fix what ails the United States of America.
	Really, I mean, this is what they are calling for, which is frankly kind of astonishing.
	Speaking of which, Joe Biden has now shifted his tune on all of this.
	It turns out that, again, when you sit outside the government and you're campaigning, it is very easy to talk about how what we need is more centralized government control as soon as Joe Biden is actually in charge, as soon as he's president.
	Then it's like, you know what?
	I'm going to run headlong from responsibility for any of this.
	I'm just going to stand over here and... Remember that time I told you guys that this was going to be really rough and really bad?
	Now give me credit for being honest with you.
	Okay, except for how you blamed every COVID death on Donald Trump.
	If you blame every COVID death on Donald Trump, that suggests the person who's the President of the United States is now responsible for what happened with COVID, once they become the head of the executive branch.
	Here's Joe Biden running headlong from that responsibility, saying, oh, you know what?
	What I actually meant, it's gonna take a lot of time for us to crush the pandemic.
	Oh, that's what I meant.
	Well, I'm going to shut down the virus, but I never said I'd do it in two months.
	I said it took a long time to get here.
	It's going to take a long time to beat it.
	And so we have millions of people out there who have the virus.
	We're just, for the first day, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I've been doing other things this morning, speaking with foreign leaders, but one of the things, I think this is one of the first days that the numbers actually come down, the number of deaths, and the number on a daily basis, and the number of hospitalizations, et cetera.
	It's going to take time.
	It's going to take a heck of a lot of time.
	Oh, well, I mean, why don't you set those expectations below the floor?
	I also love how he's taking credit for the numbers coming down.
	He's been in office for, it is now January 26th.
	He's been in office for six days.
	So he wants it both ways.
	On the one hand, I'm not responsible for anything that is happening.
	On the other hand, I'm responsible for all the deaths coming down.
	And we'll see how this works out for him.
	Meanwhile, Biden has revised his estimate.
	Remember, he kept saying that he wanted to do a million shots a day.
	It turns out that at the time, We're doing 1.1 million shots a day.
	So he's actually talking about reducing the number of shots every day.
	And he's like, look how brave I am.
	Look, I have a plan.
	Come on, man.
	Come on.
	And if you asked about it, come on, man.
	Well, now he's revised once again.
	And he says, actually, we're going to be ramping this thing up to 1.5 million shots a day.
	Now, frankly, that shouldn't be particularly difficult.
	The reality is we are currently doing 1.3 million shots a day.
	In any case, here was Joe Biden now revising his estimate up.
	I promise that we would get at least a 100 million vaccinations.
	That's not people because sometimes you need more than one shot in the vaccination, but 100,000, 100 million shots in people's arms of the vaccine.
	I think with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbor and the crick not rising, as the old saying goes, I think we may be able to get that to 150.
	1.5 million a day, rather than 1 million a day.
	But we have to meet that goal of a million a day.
	Okay, again, he keeps saying a million a day.
	We're already doing a million a day, dude.
	Already.
	We were before he took office.
	And then Biden says he's asked, okay, so when is everyone who wants a vaccine going to be able to get a vaccine?
	And he's like, well, how about like sometime this spring?
	Oh, that's helpful.
	Okay, so honestly, I have a fairly large personal stake in this particular question.
	I have two parents who are both right about to turn 65.
	So they are just under the age cutoff.
	I am desperate to get them the vaccine.
	I would love to get them the vaccine.
	They are concerned about COVID.
	They should be concerned about COVID.
	They're not in the highest risk bracket.
	And again, for people who are otherwise healthy and are 64 years old, the risk of COVID is not 100 out of 1,000 are going to die.
	It's more like 4 out of 1,000, 3 out of 1,000 are going to die.
	But those are not stats you want to take anyway.
	So I would love to get my parents the vaccine, like as soon as humanly possible.
	So I actually have a personal stake like millions and millions and millions of Americans do in making sure that we can get the vaccine as soon as possible.
	So he has asked, okay, so when will anyone who wants the vaccine be able to get the vaccine?
	And he's like, well, sometime, you know, sometime.
	Appreciate it.
	Well, I feel the confidence rising.
	Well, I feel so much better about things now.
	Here is Joe Biden taking control.
	I think it'll be this spring.
	I think we'll be able to do that this spring.
	But it's going to be a logistical challenge that exceeds anything we've ever tried in this country.
	But I think we can do that.
	I feel confident that by summer, we're going to be well on our way to heading toward herd immunity and increasing the access for people who aren't on the first on the list, all the way going down to Meanwhile, the captains of science, first of all, if you have young kids, there's a really good case to be made, especially if we have tranched out the vaccines to adults.
	If you have very young kids, there's a very solid case to be made.
	You shouldn't really bother getting your kid a vaccine.
	And that's not an anti-vaccination point.
	That is just a point of fact, because children are not being gravely affected by this disease.
	I'm talking about young children, not teenagers.
	OK, so the idea that we're going to start, by the way, this is what the teachers unions I can get to that in a second.
	There are a lot of teachers' unions right now who are actually pushing that every child, like my four-year-old, would have to get a vaccine shot for COVID.
	My four-year-old is at zero risk, statistically speaking.
	When I say zero, I mean so close to zero that it effectively is zero of, God forbid, dying from COVID.
	And the teachers' unions never want to reopen.
	And that is the main point.
	When it comes to the politics of COVID, the notion that it's just being driven by the science, it's just nonsense.
	It's just nonsense.
	I'm sorry.
	All over the country, there are people who are taking differential approaches to COVID.
	All over the world, people are taking differential approaches to COVID.
	The notion that you can just point at science to justify whatever your dumb agenda item is of the day is just not the case.
	We'll get to more of this in just one second.
	First, let us talk about the fact that there are a lot of people who are dropping off packages at your front door these days.
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	I mean, I've got my kids who are trying to run out the front door because they want to play in the front yard.
	There's all sorts of stuff happening in my house.
	I need Ring devices on my house.
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	Okay, speaking of the idea that is promoted by folks on the left, just follow the science.
	So Gavin Newsom has now canceled California's stay-at-home orders across the state.
	So that will allow restaurants and businesses in some counties to reopen outdoor dining and other services.
	Now, there was never any scientific data to back the closing of outdoor dining in the first place.
	There's zero data that suggests that outdoor dining is a chief vector of COVID transmission.
	But now, magically, the week after Joe Biden takes office, Gavin Newsom is now going to redo all of the regulations in California surrounding COVID.
	How strange.
	How strange.
	I mean, like, wow.
	Must be that the science is dictating that, right?
	There's only one problem.
	The science is absolutely not dictating that.
	He lifted California's emergency stay.
	This is according to Yanon Weiss, who's been following this stuff closely.
	He lifted California's emergency stay at home orders with 50% less, 50% fewer ICU beds available now than the day he implemented it.
	Okay, so literally the day he implemented it, there were a certain number of ICU beds available.
	Pretty high number of ICU beds available.
	And he implemented the curfew and indoor dining and all the rest of it.
	We now have, like, a much, much higher percentage of California's ICUs filled by COVID-positive cases.
	And now he's like, you know what?
	Gonna reopen.
	Almost as though the science isn't dictating this.
	The politics is dictating this.
	But that's always the case.
	When it comes to COVID policy, so much of it is driven by politics.
	So much of it.
	And the most obvious example of this, of course, is the teachers' unions.
	So teachers' unions are basically now saying they just don't want to teach ever again.
	Now, for my money, I'm fine with that.
	Seriously.
	I hope everybody homeschools.
	I hope everybody pulls their kids out of schools, puts them in parochial schools, puts them in private schools.
	Like, take the money out of the public school system.
	Take these teachers' unions at their words.
	They don't want to teach?
	Fine.
	I don't want you teaching my kids because I think that you guys are basically garbage at it generally anyway.
	I think that the teachers' unions protect the worst teachers at the expense of the best teachers.
	I think that you value seniority over quality in your teachers.
	I think that you create ridiculous educational missions that have very little to do with the education of the American public school child.
	So, you guys don't want to come into school?
	Good news.
	Millions and millions of Americans have realized over the past year that they're not sure they want you teaching their kids.
	But if you are a member of the Democratic Party and your big push is that public education done by teachers' unions is one of the jewels of the American system, then wouldn't you stand up to the teachers' unions at this point and say, you know, guys, you really should go back to work?
	There's a new study out.
	That new study suggests that there really is no elevated risk for teachers above the general population.
	That, of course, is not a shock at all.
	We've known this for quite a while, that there really is no elevated public risk in terms of teachers over the general population.
	In fact, you would imagine they're probably at less risk generally, especially if they are teaching young kids.
	Young kids are not transmitting this disease in the same way that older children are.
	It also happens to be the case that younger teachers, right, if you're a 22-year-old teacher, for second graders, your level of risk is really, really minimal.
	It's much lower than you going to a bar that same night.
	But in a bunch of different states, we've got bars that are open and schools that are closed, which is madness.
	According to The Hill, the Chicago's Teachers Union voted to defy Chicago Public Schools reopening plans for teachers and staff due to coronavirus concerns, the union announced on Sunday.
	The Teachers Union, the nation's third largest school district, decided to allow all educators to conduct work remotely starting on Monday, the day kindergarten through eighth grade staff were expected to return in person.
	So these are specifically teachers for young kids.
	The CTU reported 86% of its 25,000 members participated in the electronic vote on Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
	71% of voting members decided to deny the district's current plan to come back to in-person learning.
	A CTU release said it means the overwhelming majority of you have chosen safety.
	CPS did everything possible to divide us by instilling fear through threats of retaliation.
	You still chose unity, solidarity, and to collectively act as one.
	By the way, this just demonstrates, once again, public sector unions are a blight on the American political system.
	Public sector unions would bargain collectively against the taxpayer.
	and pay off the politicians to bargain on their own behalf.
	It's one of the most corrupt deals in all of American politics.
	Maybe the most corrupt deal.
	Essentially, you now have unions that pay to get politicians elected.
	They then negotiate with the politicians against the taxpayer, and the politicians use the union money in order to get reelected.
	It's truly impressive legal grift.
	The Chicago Sun-Times labeled the vote unusually close for CTU labor actions because 94% of voting members usually decide when to strike.
	The Chicago district's official sent a letter to families on Sunday saying the return date for teachers will be delayed until Wednesday to allow for more time for negotiations and to avoid risking disruption to student learning.
	Now again, there's no science to back this.
	The science to suggest that these teachers are at risk and that they can't come back until X, Y, or Z, it's just nonsense.
	It's not true.
	In fact, there are serious questions as to whether this particular teacher strike is legal under the regulations.
	But it's not just Chicago's teachers unions.
	It's in Ohio as well.
	According to WTOL, the largest teachers unions in the state are responding after Governor Mike DeWine announced 96% of public school districts in Ohio have signed a form committing to in-person learning by March 1st.
	The unions, including the Toledo Federation of Teachers, say in a joint statement that Governor DeWine is using vaccines as a bargaining chip to open schools by March 1st.
	The statement says teachers, students, families and cities will face dire consequences if schools are pressured to reopen before it is safe to do so.
	Okay, it's just a lie.
	It's not true.
	Okay, so they're pushing that.
	New Jersey teachers, they say that they don't want to come back until every single student in these schools is tested.
	Again, that is nuts.
	First of all, the false positive rate on the tests alone would probably make it impossible to open the schools.
	But beyond that, are you insane?
	Okay, the children are not the chief vector of the transmission.
	There's more danger of you hanging out in the teachers' union with the other teachers than of you teaching the kids.
	Perhaps the greatest example of this insanity is members of the Washington Teachers Union claiming that reopening schools for in-person learning is an example of white supremacy, and saying that if we value the mental health of students, that is a form of white privilege.
	According to the Daily Wire, echoing comments made by the Chicago Teachers Union months ago that reopening schools for in-person instruction is both racist and sexist, the president of the Pasco Association of Educators, Scott Wilson, made a series of unhinged, controversial remarks during a Pasco School Board meeting, according to our friend Jason Rantz over at KTTH.
	The comments were captured on video as the Board of Education conducts its meetings on Zoom amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
	This particular Teachers Union head compared the effort to reopen schools to the riot at the U.S.
	Capitol Wilson said, there are decisions to be made.
	You stand on the lawn of the US Capitol as people break down barriers and head to the doors.
	Do you follow?
	You stand at the governor's mansion, the crowd breaks down barriers to enter the grounds.
	Do you follow or do you choose a different way?
	We must not ignore the culture of white supremacy and white privilege.
	He said, we speak of equity.
	We speak of the care of students, yet we listen in intensive voices saying, reopen everything.
	I'm free to breathe, supporting white privilege.
	Okay, in reality, the people who are the most harmed by all of these stay-at-home orders have been children who are black and Hispanic.
	Because disproportionately, kids who are black and Hispanic go to public schools.
	And particularly their parents need them in the public schools so they can go work.
	Because in single-parent households, which are disproportionately in black and Hispanic families, If you can't drop your kid at school, how exactly are you gonna go to work that day?
	And this is madness.
	So Joe Biden was asked about all of this, right?
	So Joe Biden gets asked about the teachers' unions and whether they should return to schools.
	And Joe Biden sidesteps the question.
	Because again, it's amazing.
	You hear all the time about the corruption of money in politics.
	You heard this from the Bernie Sanders group.
	Well, there's so much money in politics, it's so terrible.
	Also, I would love to receive a $100 million investment from the teachers' unions to go and doorknock for me.
	I mean, it's just, it's incredible.
	They're explicitly bargaining against the interests of their own students.
	And then, Joe Biden is out there defending them.
	It is a high-level form of corruption, right in plain sight.
	The fact that labor unions have this much power with our federal and state governments is nuts.
	It's nuts.
	And the fact that the National Labor Relations Act is so biased in favor of collective bargaining that would be considered collusion if it were done by employers.
	But as soon as it is done by employees, it is now considered not collusion, but something magical.
	The NLRA is a terrible piece of legislation.
	But put that aside, the very existence of public sector unions is in most cases a blight on the Republic.
	But here is Joe Biden, this is just an example, refusing to condemn teachers' unions that are cutting directly.
	Here's Captain Science here.
	As kids are being put out of school all across the nation, again, even though we're reopening outdoor dining and we're reopening indoor dining, here's Joe Biden.
	Do you believe, sir, that teachers should return to schools now?
	I believe we should make school classrooms safe and secure for the students, for the teachers, and for the help that's in those schools maintaining the facilities.
	We need new ventilation systems in those schools.
	We need testing for people coming in and out of the classes.
	Okay, so basically I'm just going to avoid all of this.
	By the way, my kids have been in school since the beginning of the year.
	to know that in fact the circumstance in the school is safe and secure for everyone.
	Okay, so basically I'm just going to avoid all of this.
	By the way, my kids have been in school since the beginning of the year, no problem.
	And my kids are, two of them under the age of seven are in school and there's been no problem.
	They've taken precautions like masking.
	They put up a little plexiglass on the tables.
	The teachers are there.
	The teachers have not been infected.
	But apparently it's the end of the world.
	Again, the willingness of the media to overlook the insane corruption of keeping millions and millions, tens of millions of school kids at home so teachers' unions can sit at home and get rich.
	I mean, really, the unions are getting rich, not the people who are members of the unions, the unions themselves.
	It's super corrupt.
	How tied in is the Biden administration to these unions?
	So tied in that Randi Weingarten was originally considered a possibility for Secretary of Education, the head of the American Federation of Teachers.
	But here she was this week saying that she stands behind teachers who are refusing to go back to school.
	Of course, we stand 100 percent behind the Chicago Union.
	But, you know, the issue really is, you know, just like we said last summer, When we said we would support these safety strikes, the issue is we know that in-school learning is really important and vital for children.
	And so we are trying to take the steps in different places to make that happen.
	Okay, so yeah, those teachers unions.
	They're all for the students though.
	They're all for the students.
	Okay, in a second we're gonna get to everything impeachment related because that is now moving forward.
	First, let us talk about how you can get in better shape this year.
	So a lot of folks have not been able to go to the gym.
	Gyms have been closed around the nation.
	And a lot of folks have been starting to do all sorts of wonderful exercise programs at home.
	Let me tell you about one that is just fantastic.
	It's gonna get you in shape and it's not gonna cost you an arm and a leg.
	I am talking About Echelon.
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	No matter what your favorite fitness activity, Echelon will give you a fun, challenging workout from the comfort of your home.
	The EX7S.
	That's Echelon's latest state-of-the-art innovation.
	It takes cycling to the next level.
	The EX7S Connected Bike.
	It's built with performance, flexibility, and durability in mind.
	It is the bike for competitors at heart.
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	They're going to motivate you with thousands of daily live and on-demand studio-level classes always available when you need them.
	And unlike their competitors, Echelon is affordable for everyone.
	One membership will let up to five family members all work out at the same exact time.
	You may have noticed they're competitors.
	Peloton, an arm and a leg, just a fortune.
	Not with Echelon.
	You are getting amazing quality for a lot less money.
	Right now, you can try any Echelon fitness equipment at home for 30 days.
	I've been using Echelon.
	I want to get back in shape.
	My wife learned to bake and it's been a problem for me.
	I definitely am going to jump on the Echelon bike as soon as I get home.
	Go to echelonfit.com slash ben.
	That is E-C-H-E-L-O-N-fit.com slash ben.
	Echelonfit.com slash ben.
	Okay, we're going to get to everything impeachment related in just one second.
	First, you may have noticed that Daily Wire has made the jump back into the culture.
	The Right constantly complains about not being in the culture.
	Well, that means we have to jump in.
	Earlier this month, we released our first film, Run Hyde Fight, exclusively for DailyWire members.
	You can catch it over at DailyWire.com, on our mobile app, on our streaming apps at Apple TV and Roku.
	If you are not a DailyWire member yet, use promo code RHF to get 25% off.
	That is RHF for 25% off.
	Now, you may have noticed that the critical reviews on Rotten Tomato are negative.
	Well, that's not a shock.
	We here at Daily Wire, we are interested in making stuff that you love, even if the critics hate it.
	And that is Run Hyde Fight, a story of heroism, a story about courage, and yeah, a story about how...
	Sometimes you need a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.
	You can catch it over at dailywire.com, on our mobile app, or on our streaming apps at Apple TV and Roku.
	If you are not a Daily Wire member yet, use promo code RHF to get 25% off.
	That is RHF, Ron Hyde Fight for 25%.
	Off you're listening to the largest, fastest growing conservative podcast and radio show in the nation.
	♪♪ Meanwhile, the House impeachment managers have decided to deliver the articles to the Senate.
	They walked these things, the articles, solemnly over to the Senate chamber.
	Apparently only about three Republicans were there.
	And then the Democrats were very angry that more Republicans didn't show up to receive the articles of impeachment.
	Why aren't they taking this seriously?
	Why aren't they taking this seriously?
	Well...
	I mean, there are a couple of reasons.
	One is that pretty much everybody can see what this mostly is.
	It isn't to say there isn't a case for convicting Trump in the Senate.
	Liz Cheney, I think, has made that case.
	What it is to say is that it is pretty obviously by Democrats a political ploy.
	Most of what is going on right here is a political ploy.
	So here is the logic.
	Everybody knows, including the Democrats, that Trump isn't actually going to get convicted here.
	He isn't going to get convicted because the articles of impeachment are not specific.
	They do not even allege a real crime.
	When they say that he incited violence, he literally said at that rally that he wanted people to peacefully protest.
	Now, does that mean it was good what he did?
	No!
	Many things can be not good.
	Presidents do not good things.
	I would say 80% of the time, they're doing not good things.
	But does that mean that every single thing that they do is impeachable conduct?
	Now, impeachment, again, is a political tool, so you can impeach for anything.
	But typically, if you're going to allege a crime like incitement, you'd actually have to bring the goods.
	The problem is, what is the neutral standard that is going to be used here for impeachment?
	If the neutral standard is going to be...
	A person who is an office holder is not allowed to challenge or doubt the results of an election.
	That neutral standard obviously doesn't hold because we saw several years here of Democrats suggesting the 2016 election was rigged by the Russians.
	If the neutral standard is you are not allowed to use inflammatory language such that some bad people could get it in their heads to go to a bad thing, that also is not going to hold because, as we have seen many times this has happened on a wide variety of political perspectives.
	Anybody who has a large enough crowd is going to have some nuts in the crowd.
	Now again, none of that is to say that Trump's rhetoric was good or that Trump saying what he said about the election was somehow true.
	None of it was.
	Putting all of that aside, the impeachable conduct here, there's really not a solid neutral standard of conduct here that is going to apply.
	And what I've seen is that the results of Trump's conduct were so egregious that he requires impeachment on just a moral level.
	I guess you can make that case.
	OK, but then you would have to make the case that literally anybody who uses inflammatory language in American political life and then somebody goes and does something bad, even if they didn't call for that person to do something bad, ought to be thrown out of American public life.
	And you can see that there are folks who are extending the logic here.
	So, for example, Joe Scarborough immediately extended the logic to Josh Hawley.
	So Josh Hawley did something I thought was incredibly cynical, right?
	I said it at the time.
	I thought it was a very cynical move by Josh Hawley to suggest that he could challenge electors or overthrow the results of the election by simply suggesting that there was some sort of vague voter irregularity or fraud.
	In fact, when asked directly whether there was voter fraud or irregularity sufficient to overthrow the electors themselves, Hawley demurred on that particular question.
	So it's pretty obvious that what he was doing was cynical.
	Cynical action by politicians is not, in fact, impeachable action by politicians, nor is it typically linked to violence.
	That's not what Joe Scarborough had to say.
	He says that Josh Hawley incited the violence, right?
	It's not just Trump.
	Hawley incited the violence.
	Presumably Ted Cruz incited the violence.
	Presumably every single one of the Republican legislators who voted to challenge the election incited the violence.
	All of them are responsible for inciting the violence.
	Now, again, those things could be bad and also not inciting of violence.
	And understand that this is part of a broader rubric from the left that anything that they don't like is quote-unquote incitement to violence.
	You'll notice that the left never holds that standard with regard to a Bernie Sanders supporter shooting up members of a congressional baseball game.
	You'll never hear the argument that Barack Obama's language with regard to police is responsible for a Black Lives Matter supporter shooting dead six police officers in Dallas in 2016.
	You won't hear that Nearly ever.
	You're not going to hear that it was Democratic views of policing and race in America that incited $1 to $2 billion worth of property damage and violence over the summer, right?
	That's not a standard that is going to be held here.
	The idea here is just that it's only conservatives and Republicans who are to be held to this particular standard.
	Now, again, I can think that we all ought to bring down the temperature and that's fine, right?
	That's fine.
	Does that mean that people ought to be cast out of public life for using inflammatory language?
	If so, it's going to be difficult to do politics in the future.
	In any case, here is Joe Scarborough basically suggesting it's not just Trump that must go, it's every single person who supported Trump on any level since the election.
	I mean, he's a seditionist.
	He led an insurrection.
	He's responsible for cops being murdered.
	He's responsible for everything that we saw.
	He was at the forefront of it.
	He should be kicked out of the United States Senate.
	And here's the thing.
	Democrats know this is going nowhere.
	So here is Joe Biden yesterday saying, you know what, impeachment, it has to happen.
	CNN reports that Biden says impeachment has to happen, even though there's not going to be a conviction.
	He told me, Aaron, quote, just a few minutes ago, I think it has to happen.
	He said that he did understand the effect that it could have, of course, given that it will basically be all-consuming for the Senate, given however long it could last.
	But, Aaron, he said he thinks the effect if that trial for President Trump, former President Trump, didn't happen would have a worse effect if it did not go forward.
	We talked about this.
	Of course, Joe Biden is someone who served in the Senate for a very long time.
	I asked him if he thinks that Donald Trump would be acquitted for a second time.
	He said that he does not believe 17 Republican senators would vote to convict him.
	Okay, so if the conviction is not a real likelihood, then what is the real goal here?
	So the real goal here is twofold, obviously.
	Well, maybe threefold.
	One is to castigate Republicans as lacking moral principle if they don't vote to convict Trump after he's already out of office.
	And again, I think that as this thing drags on, more and more Americans are gonna be like, why are we bothering with this?
	Because Americans just don't have a taste for this sort of stuff after the person is out of office.
	Okay, but there are two other goals here as well.
	Okay, goal number, it's a win-win for Democrats, obviously.
	Again, the analysis I'm about to do here is a pure political analysis.
	It is not about the morality of actually Holding Trump to conviction here.
	Holding Trump to conviction, I think that reasonable minds can differ on whether what Trump did constitutes quote-unquote impeachable conduct.
	Because again, I have a real tough time suggesting that just because somebody uses inflammatory language without actually inciting violence, they're then responsible for what happens next.
	I just think that's an unsustainable standard in American political life.
	And again, I've been consistent on that left to right, but putting that aside, the actual politics here, what are Democrats actually doing here?
	Do I think that this is all about principle for Democrats?
	No, I really don't think this is all about principle for Democrats, like at all.
	I think for the vast majority of elected Democrats, this is about a win-win scenario.
	Scenario number one.
	Trump goes up for conviction in the Senate.
	It is voted down.
	And Trump then claims, look, they tried to get me again.
	And then he runs in 2024, which is what Democrats would like, right?
	Democrats want Trump to run in 2024.
	They think he's eminently beatable.
	Last election shows that that is not a malformed thought.
	They believe that Trump in a Republican primary would still garner 25, 30% of the vote.
	There's every likelihood that that would happen.
	And so for them, they're like, OK, so scenario number one is Republicans vote down the conviction.
	We then get to castigate the entire Republican Party as amoral and immoral.
	And to boot, Trump will then run again.
	So it'll really finish them for years to come.
	Then there's possibility number two, which is that you somehow get enough Republicans to vote to convict and Trump is barred from holding future office.
	Okay, well, then all that would happen, presumably, is that Trump would start a third party, he'd prop up some other figure as the head of that third party, and he would just break the Republican Party right down the middle, right?
	He's already talked about starting a Patriot Party, right?
	He's already talked, which, by the way, according to some polls, is polling higher than the Republican Presidential Party would be in 2024.
	Now, again, we're four years out.
	But for Democrats, the goal here is chaos.
	I don't actually believe that this is about holding people to account for most of the elected Democrats.
	These elected Democrats, they don't hold anybody to account.
	They wouldn't even pass a resolution censoring Ilhan Omar for being an anti-Semite.
	I don't buy it.
	My opinion of politicians is so low.
	I think most of them are politically motivated.
	I think most of them are cynical.
	I think most of them are ambitious.
	I don't think that they are standing on some sort of higher principle here.
	In any case, here was Chuck Schumer pretending that he stands on higher principle.
	We still can look back.
	And we have to.
	You can't sweep some of these egregious things under the rug.
	Plain and simple.
	Trump was... You know, his act on the 6th was the most despicable thing any president has ever done.
	And he is the worst president ever.
	And you cannot just... Let's move on.
	You gotta look back.
	Okay, so first of all, the reason that they keep saying they want to look back is, of course, so then they can look at Trump and they can keep saying how wonderful Biden is.
	And that's the goal.
	Keep Trump as the specter.
	And then you just say, well, by contrast, look how normal things are now.
	Look how amazing things are now.
	Also, the idea that this is the worst thing any president has ever done is make a speech on the Washington Mall in which you encourage people to peacefully protest while using inflammatory language.
	Like, of all the things presidents have done, no, I actually don't think that, put aside what the supporters did, what the supporters did is one of the worst things in American history, right?
	Breaching the actual Capitol building, looking for blood.
	That's one of the worst things in American history.
	What Trump actually did that day, is that the worst, like, the worst thing?
	The president, like, frankly, I think that it's worse what he did by calling Brad Raffensperger.
	I think that it's worse what he did by simply suggesting over and over and over that the election was stolen from Montana.
	I think that was worse.
	One of the worst things, the worst thing a president has ever done?
	We've had presidents who interned hundreds of thousands of Japanese people.
	We've had presidents who screened Birth of a Nation in the White House.
	We had presidents who held slaves.
	Like, no?
	No on that one?
	But, with that said, the political manipulation here is quite clear.
	Quick note.
	John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, normally would preside over an impeachment trial.
	He has demurred.
	He says, I'm not going to do that.
	So it's going to be a Democrat presiding over the impeachment trial, which just makes the thing even more of a circus than it otherwise would be.
	Okay, meanwhile, the censorship in the media continues apace.
	So I would be remiss if I did not mention a story that has continued to play out for the last couple of weeks.
	And it is kind of astonishing because the absolute insanity and immaturity of some members of the left, it's beyond the pale.
	I have three kids under the age of seven.
	They're not the most mature children.
	They're mature for their ages.
	But when I say mature for their ages, they are almost seven, four, and less than one.
	So not all that mature, just in sort of general human standards.
	They have significantly more maturity than the entire combined staff of Politico, apparently.
	So Politico, you remember a couple of weeks ago, vast grief and rage broke out because Politico's playbook had asked me to write the playbook one day.
	Now that followed on Chris Hayes writing the playbook, Yamiche Alcindor from PBS, who's a far left liberal, She had written the playbook.
	Don Lemon wrote the playbook after I did.
	Kara Swisher, who's a censorious, awful leftist columnist for the New York Times, she wrote the playbook.
	So I wrote the playbook because they wanted somebody on the right.
	So I wrote the playbook, and the basic point I made in Politico's playbook was the entire goal of the left seems to be to lump in everybody on the right with the Capitol rioters so they can then say everybody on the right is dangerous and ban them.
	That was my entire point.
	That was the entire piece.
	People at Politico went nuts.
	They had a staff phone call with 225 members of the staff, most of them from the newsroom because these are newsmakers.
	These are people who cover your journalism and crew.
	They got very angry and they shouted at the editors, but that didn't work.
	Cause the editors were like, you know what?
	We're going to have a lot of people from a lot of different sides of the political aisle.
	And you citing battle tweets from 2012 that Shapiro's already explained multiple times.
	That's not going to do it.
	So what did they do?
	A hundred staffers decided to go over the heads of the editors and directly to the publisher of Politico and whine about this.
	Amazing, amazing people.
	According to the Daily Beast, Maxwell Tani, who's again one of these censorious types, would love to see nothing better than all of the folks on the right deplatformed ASAP.
	That always gets the scoop when far leftists decide that it's time to try to get somebody canceled.
	So here's what the Daily Beast reports.
	More than 100 Politico staffers signed onto a letter sent to publisher Robert Albritton, expressing disgust with allowing right-wing firebrand Ben Shapiro to guest author one day's edition of the playbook, and with the outlet's subsequent handling of the fallout.
	One day, I wrote a piece for Politico.
	A piece.
	And 100 people at Politico were like, how dare you?
	Now listen, they can't cancel me over at Politico.
	I don't work for Politico.
	I don't care.
	I didn't write for Politico because I needed Politico's money.
	And so they can't cancel me.
	That's not what this is about.
	What this is about is pressuring editors into never having anybody who's remotely right-wing write for their publications.
	That is what this is truly about.
	And I'm not even talking about me.
	Okay, first of all, the attempt to castigate me, as Politico staffers apparently have been doing, as a white supremacist, are patently insane.
	I mean, totally crazy, as anybody who has ever listened to this show knows, as anybody who's listened to my speeches knows.
	I've given, like, full-length, 45-minute dissertations in front of thousands of people about how terrible white supremacy is.
	I did one at Stanford, I think it was, last year.
	Okay, so, like, this is not a thing.
	Okay, but it's not just me.
	I happen to know columnists who are really, really anti-Trump.
	Like, so anti-Trump that they piss off mainstream conservatives on a regular basis.
	One comes to mind.
	I won't mention his name.
	He was asked to be a columnist for the Washington Post.
	And then, members of the Washington Post staff realized that he believes that biological men and women exist.
	He was immediately canceled.
	Nope, we're not gonna allow him to write for the Washington Post anymore.
	By the way, there are columnists for the Washington Post like Eric Wemple, who are like, you know, big publications don't need to give Shapiro a platform.
	He has a place where you can hear him.
	I will just note to Eric Wemple of the Washington Post, I wrote for the Washington Post in 2016.
	I wrote a piece for them in 2016.
	So you might want to talk to your editors over there, dude.
	In any case, the Daily Beast staffers were so mad.
	We sent them a bunch of Leftist Tears tumblers.
	They're on back order because we have so many people who want them.
	We sent them some Leftist Tears tumblers.
	I wouldn't want them to get their tears all over their laptops where they are busy journalisming all over the place.
	According to the Daily Beast, Earlier this month, the Beltway News Outlet handed over the keys to its signature news product to Shapiro, a talk radio host and pundit who has long been one of the most controversial voices in right-wing media, thanks in part to his incendiary comments about the LGBT community, Muslim, Black Americans, and Jews who support Democratic politicians.
	The guest appearance, part of a series of guest appearances by political media figures, including Chris Hayes and Chuck Todd.
	They're not controversial, by the way.
	Chris Hayes, not controversial at all.
	I love how I'm a right-wing firebrand.
	Chris Hayes, he's just a guy.
	He's just a media figure.
	Wow, unsatisfactory to the employees?
	Wow, terrible!
	By the way, you know what we call unsatisfactory to the employees here at The Daily Wire?
	own newsroom. But the resulting response from Politico Brass was unsatisfactory to a number of employees. Wow, unsatisfactory to the employees? Wow, terrible. By the way, you know what we call unsatisfactory to the employees here at the Daily Wire?
	A job. That's what we call Because you're getting paid to do things that are unsatisfactory to you nearly every single day.
	It's called employment, gang.
	According to multiple political insiders familiar with the situation, the letter to Albritton criticized the decision to publish Shapiro, claiming it had demoralized a substantial portion of the newsroom.
	Oh, it demoralized you?
	That's sad.
	What happened?
	What happened?
	You couldn't report on how wonderful Joe Biden's dog is today because you were so depressed that I wrote a piece for you two weeks ago?
	You fragile little babies.
	Seriously.
	My goodness.
	I'm so demoralized.
	Oh my god.
	I can't even- Every time I start to write- Every time I start to do my job, I think of the fact that Shapiro's name appeared in Politico and I just- I can't!
	I can't- I- Wha- I- I need my- I need the wambulance.
	During a combative meeting on January 14th, the day of Shapiro's publication, the top editor defended the editorial decision to irate staffers by claiming mischief-making has always been part of Politico's secret sauce.
	The staff letter sent 10 days ago to Albritton maintained that Matt Kaminsky, who's the editor, had not appropriately apologized for his responses, additionally referencing an email he sent to staff on January 15th, obtained and reviewed by the Daily Beast.
	By the way, Leaking internal memos to the Daily Beast should be a fireable offense.
	Should it not over a political?
	Maybe you guys ought to get on that.
	In the email, the top editor expressed regret for his initial response about making mischief, but reiterated that publishing Shapiro was part of his hopes to experiment and mix things up in order to keep political vital and vibrant to its readers.
	In response, the letter's signees asked all Britain how Shapiro's extensive record of bigotry can be considered vibrant or vital, because that's the way this works.
	Okay, the way that it works is if you've ever said anything that you regret, or if you've ever said anything that people can interpret wrongly, As terrible and horrible and no good and very bad.
	This means that you must never be allowed to speak ever again, ever in history.
	I'm glad Politico staffers are so pure.
	Man, the woke mob.
	You either join it or they come after you.
	That's the way that it works over there.
	Elsewhere in the notes to their publisher, the Politico staffers called for a commitment to clarify and improve the outlet's editorial standards.
	An increase in newsroom diversity.
	Ah, so it's just a demand letter.
	It's just that these guys are gonna hold hostage Politico's image so they can get a bunch of crap that Politico doesn't wanna do.
	A commitment to clarify and improve the outlet's editorial standards, which means we want a veto on what gets printed, just like the New York Times has basically handed over veto power to the pseudo-journalist and fictionalized historian, Nikole Hannah-Jones.
	An increase in newsroom diversity, so they want hiring based on race.
	An editor's note on Shapiro's edition of Playbook, so they want like a little note at the bottom saying, Shapiro's a bigot, but we published him anyway.
	We're really sad about that, but we're not pulling it.
	And an internal apology for the management response to staff criticism of publishing Shapiro.
	Despite the 100-plus signatures to the note, some Politico staffers stressed to the Daily Beast it did not represent the overall mood at the publication.
	Several of the company's 300 editorial employees said they hadn't even heard about the effort or weren't asked to sign the letter.
	Others said they were encouraged that Kaminsky and other top editors had been meeting over the past several days with newsroom employees in attempts to avoid blow-ups like the Shapiro saga.
	Well, I mean, I'm so glad that they've been meeting with the whiniest among them to avoid the blow-ups.
	Okay, all of this speaks to a broader problem, not just in media, but also in social media.
	So, Twitter is now launching a new program in which community members are going to be able to warn Twitter about other people saying the bads.
	Twitter on Monday, according to Fox News, has unveiled a new community-driven approach to misleading information on its platform, allowing users to add notes to tweets they believe are false in an attempt to, quote-unquote, add context for other users.
	Oh, good.
	This can't be misused in any way.
	We're going to crowdsource fact-checking over Twitter.
	Wonderful idea.
	No way that this goes wrong in any way.
	It's called Birdwatch.
	On Birdwatch, no account and no tweet is exempt from annotation, meaning users can add context to tweets posted by news outlets, reporters, and elected officials.
	Birdwatch will allow users to identify information in tweets they believe are misleading or false, and write notes or notations to those tweets in a way they feel is providing informative context.
	Participants will be able to annotate any tweet once.
	They will have the option to cite source material in their annotation, including from news outlets, meaning users can annotate one news outlet's tweets by citing other news outlet's tweets.
	Oh, oh good.
	Sounds great.
	So it's a community-driven approach.
	Okay, so here's the thing.
	When you have a majoritarian-driven approach to denying particular arguments as anti-factual, that is the precise opposite of free speech.
	Okay, free speech is about protecting voices that require protection, namely minority voices generally.
	Twitter instead is gonna be like, what if the mob gets you?
	Okay, that already exists.
	It's just called Twitter, that's all.
	It's just called Twitter.
	Twitter explained to Fox News the company is not doing a fact check with Birdwatch, and that it is not a true or false tool, but instead a way to quote-unquote add context.
	And this is the way the fact checkers do it at these major companies.
	They no longer just rate whether your statement is true or false.
	Instead, they say they are going to add context.
	Except when they are trying to not add context.
	When they are trying to not add context, then they just don't add the context.
	Then they just rate the statement on the pure true and false of the statement.
	It's pretty incredible how they do all of this.
	For those of us in media, there's a real challenge to confront.
	who is of course coming under fire because Fox News has become the focal point of the left's attempts to silence them.
	That's not a shock in any way, shape or form, of course, because the left has been attempting to silence Fox News literally since inception.
	So Rupert Murdoch gave a speech the other day in which he condemned the awful woke orthodoxy.
	Good for him.
	For those of us in media, there's a real challenge to confront, a wave of censorship that seeks to silence conversation, to stifle debate and ultimately stop individuals and societies from realising their potential.
	Bye!
	This rigidly enforced conformity, aided and abetted by so-called social media, is a straitjacket on sensibility.
	Too many people have fought too hard in too many places for freedom of speech to be suppressed by this awful woke orthodoxy.
	He happens to be correct about this.
	The goal then is to shut down Fox News.
	You have Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post columnist, literally tweeting out media matters links to Fox News advertisers.
	And people on the right, by the way, going along with some of this stuff because they're so angry over what happened on January 6th that they are willing to go along with the left's version of everything that the right says is dangerous and so we must ban it.
	The most recent example I saw, so last night, Media Matters did what they do, which is they took somebody out of context.
	They went on Tucker Carlson's show.
	Tucker was making a First Amendment defense.
	And he was saying, okay, even the dumbest theories that people have, even the stuff that people say, that is like the dumbest stuff, you still have a right to think that stuff in the United States of America.
	And then he played a montage of members of the media basically saying that people who are associated with the idiotic and conspiratorial QAnon idea, that those people ought to be silenced.
	And Tucker was making the broader argument, not about the veracity of, again, the idiotic, dangerous, and ridiculous conspiracy theory of QAnon.
	I mean, it's ridiculous on its face.
	It's stupid.
	It's inflammatory and just dumb in every possible way.
	That was not Tucker's point.
	Tucker's point was, you still have a right to think dumb things in the United States, which used to be sort of the baseline of freedom, right?
	Media Matters took that clip.
	They said he was defending QAnon, which he absolutely was not.
	And members of the right started tweeting out the clip.
	Members of the right were like, oh, you know what?
	Yeah, maybe they have a point here.
	Tucker's bad.
	Okay, again, guys, you're losing the thread.
	You are losing the thread.
	If you're tweeting out Media Matters clips, there's a good shot that you have lost the thread here.
	It was always a matter of, for the left, it's all about weaponizing.
	It is all about, not for good-hearted liberals.
	Again, there are good-hearted liberals who I think differ with people like me on impeachment.
	That's fair, that's fine.
	But I think there are a lot of people who are not liberal, who are just leftists, and they're using every opportunity they can to quash people who they disagree with on every single side.
	And it's disgusting, and it's gross, and it's terrible for the country.
	Alrighty, we're going to be back here later today with an additional hour of The Ben Shapiro Show.
	In the meantime, head on over to The Michael Moles Show.
	Disney Plus is now censoring classic films for children under seven.
	I don't know if you knew this.
	They're like taking down Peter Pan and Dumbo so my kids can't watch them because they are supposedly racially insensitive.
	Michael will get into that news in today's show.
	That is available right now.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
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	President Biden extends the pandemic timeline as 15 days to slow the spread closes in on a year.
	Disney censors Peter Pan for political incorrectness.
	And lazy teachers justify their refusal to work by whining about white supremacy.

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