Joe Manchin Ends Joe Biden’s Presidency | Ep. 1399
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Senator Joe Manchin announces he is done with Build Back Better, the radical left goes insane over it, and Omicron panic continues despite non-scary numbers.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
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We'll get to all the news in just one moment, and much news there is first.
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Alrighty, so over the weekend, Joe Biden's dreams died.
So you have to get the world's tiniest violin out for the world's most feeble president.
The president of the United States had been hoping that he would be able to follow the Bernie Sanders path toward glory.
And it was always politically bewildering.
He didn't have the support for this.
There are 50 votes in the Senate from the right.
There are 50 votes in the Senate that are Democratic.
And there are at least two of those votes that are not really of the hard left.
Because Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona is in a very purple state.
She barely won her last race.
And Joe Manchin is from a state that is redder than red, a state that Donald Trump won by a 40 point margin.
And so the notion that Joe Biden was going to be able to, with that sort of majority, like 50 plus Kamala Harris as the tiebreaker, ram through a Bernie Sanders agenda was completely delusional.
And it is absolutely bewildering as to why Joe Biden ever thought that this was going to happen.
This is the part that's totally crazy to me.
I do not understand for the life of me.
Why Joe Biden thought that he could shift from the quote-unquote moderate he was supposed to be into an FDR LBJ type and nobody would notice and that all of the people in the center would just go right along with it.
You know, how far did Joe Biden shift?
He went from being the guy who defeated Bernie Sanders because the entire Democratic Party base mobilized against Bernie Sanders to the guy mirroring Bernie Sanders' priorities.
You know, I just noticed the other day.
So the Time 100 had Joe Biden on it, right?
You know who wrote Joe Biden's piece for the Time 100?
Bernie!
It was Bernie who's writing Joe Biden's piece, which is amazing.
I mean, it really is.
It's the George W. Bush had been elected and then the most right wing senator in the United States had written a piece about how George W. Bush was mirroring all of his priorities.
Bernie Sanders is a radical kook.
Bernie Sanders is a socialistic idiot.
Bernie Sanders is a full-scale commie, okay?
And Bernie Sanders, despite his protestations that he likes Scandinavia, not the USSR, Bernie Sanders is the guy pushing the most radical agenda in the Senate, and he's the one writing Joe Biden's Time 100 profile this year.
And here is what Bernie Sanders wrote, quote, Biden's bold American Rescue Plan created a strong vaccine program that will save tens of thousands of lives, alleviate hunger and homelessness, reduce the child poverty rate by more than half, help revitalize the economy.
Now, through two unprecedented pieces of legislation, the infrastructure bill and the budget resolution, he's leading the effort to create millions of good-paying jobs, etc., etc.
I look forward to working with President Biden on these transformative efforts.
But here's the thing.
No one was going to do this.
Particularly not Joe Manchin.
And Joe Manchin was never hiding the ball.
He was never hiding the ball.
Back in July, Joe Manchin made Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, sign a letter.
That letter listed his actual priorities.
Okay, he was not hiding the ball.
He said that any revenue exceeding $1.5 trillion would be used for deficit reduction.
The corporate tax rate would not rise above 25%.
The corporate domestic minimum tax would be 15%.
He said that the only bill that he would sign onto would be a $1.5 trillion top-line bill without budget gimmicks.
He said that there would be spending on innovation, not elimination with regard to climate change.
That is not what Joe Biden was proposing.
He suggested there would be targeted spending caps on existing programs, no additional handouts or transfer payments.
So there's tons of stuff that he forced Chuck Schumer to sign on to.
And then everybody in the media acts surprised that Joe Manchin sucked by the deal that he signed with Chuck Schumer.
So over the weekend, Joe Manchin announced to much fanfare that he was a no on this thing.
It was on Fox News, and of course he was a no.
He's been a no for months on this thing.
He has no political incentive to sign on with a president who's currently riding at 41% in the approval ratings.
And in Joe Manchin's home state, Joe Biden is running in the negatives.
I mean, like, there are people who have not yet been born in West Virginia who say they don't like Joe Biden at this point.
So here is Joe Manchin saying what anybody who watched politics knew for a while, which is that this bill was never going anywhere.
When you have these things coming at you the way they are right now, I've always said this, Brett.
If I can't go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can't vote for it.
And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation.
I just can't.
I've tried everything humanly possible.
I can't get there.
You're done.
This is a no.
OK, and and the entire media are just bewildered.
How could this have happened?
It must have been that there was some sort of break in the relationship between Joe Manchin and Joe Biden.
No, there was no break in the relationship.
The relationship never really existed.
Is your problem, guys.
So Joe Manchin put out a full statement explaining his position.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Alrighty, here is the statement.
For five and a half months, I have worked as diligently as possible meeting with President Biden, Majority Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, and my colleagues on every end of the political spectrum to determine the best path forward despite my serious reservations.
I've made my concerns clear through public statements, op-eds, and private conversations.
My concerns have only increased as the pandemic surges on, inflation rises, and geopolitical uncertainty increases around the world.
I've always said, if I can't go back home and explain it, I can't vote for it.
Despite my best efforts, I cannot explain Build Back Better in West Virginia.
I cannot vote to move forward on this mammoth piece of legislation.
Joe Manchin continues, my Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face. I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gas pump, grocery store, and utility bills with no end in sight. The American people deserve transparency on the true cost of the Build Back Better Act.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined the cost is upwards of $4.5 trillion, which is more than double what the bill's ardent supporters have claimed.
They continue to camouflage the real cost of the intent behind this bill.
As the Omicron variant spreads throughout communities across the country, we are seeing COVID-19 cases rise at rates we have not seen since the height of the pandemic.
We're also facing increasing geopolitical uncertainty as tensions rise with both Russia and China, says Senator Manchin.
Our ability to quickly and effectively respond to these pending threats would be drastically hindered by our rising debt.
If enacted, the bill would also risk the reliability of our electric grid and increase our dependence on foreign supply chains.
The energy transition my colleagues seek is already well underway in the United States of America.
In the last two years, as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and with bipartisan support, we've invested billions of dollars into clean energy technologies so we can continue to lead the world in reducing emissions through innovation.
But to do so at a rate that is faster than technology or the markets allow will have catastrophic consequences for the American people like we have seen in both Texas and California in the last two years.
I will never forget the warning from then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, that he delivered during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing during my first year in the Senate.
He testified the greatest threat facing our nation was our national debt, and since that time our debt has doubled.
I will continue working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address the needs of all Americans, and do so in a way that does not risk our nation's independence, security, and way of life.
Right?
That is the statement put out by Joe Manchin.
So, inflation.
And national debt and misplaced priorities.
And really, bottom line, the fact that if he votes for this thing, he's toast and he knows he's toast.
If he sides with Joe Biden in West Virginia, he does not have a Senate seat anymore in four years.
Everyone knows this.
He knows this.
But the media are trying to make this out to be a personality issue between Joe Manchin and Joe Biden.
It's not a personality issue.
The incentive structure was completely wrong and Joe Biden was delusional.
And the progressives were delusional if they thought they were going to get Joe Biden on board.
By the way, Kyrsten Sinema apparently is going around telling people that she and Manchin are stand-ins for half a dozen other Democratic senators who are in purple states and who are looking around going, man, I'm glad that I didn't have to vote on that piece of crap.
According to Politico last night, less than 30 minutes before he killed the Democratic Party's most important piece of legislation, an aide was dispatched by Senator Joe Manchin to give the White House and Congressional leadership a heads up.
The senator himself was about to go live and was prepping for his interview with Brett Barron Fox News Sunday.
Who's out of town with family and doing the hit via satellite, says Politico.
He wore a red tie and pinstripe suit.
His hair looked perfect.
It would probably be one of the most viral video clips of his long career.
At the White House, there was panic and disbelief.
He sent an aide to tell the President of the United States he was about to go on Fox News and put a bullet in Bill Beckbetter.
Well, yeah, I mean, guys, because you've been completely ignoring what he's been saying the whole time.
He said it from day one.
And then you guys pretended, because you live in your own heads, that Joe Manchin was just going to do what you wanted him to do.
This is why Nancy Pelosi kept scheduling votes on this thing and then having to cancel votes on this thing.
It's why Chuck Schumer kept saying, we're going to do it by X date.
Nope.
Well, actually, we'll do it by this date.
Nope.
Well, actually, we'll just... They're going to keep doing this.
Top White House officials scrambled to call Senator Manchin and talk him out of what he was about to do.
We tried to head him off, a senior White House official told Playbook.
Manchin refused to take a call from the White House staff.
At Fox News' Washington studio, Baer was hosting his first episode of Fox News Sunday since Chris Wallace abruptly decamped.
The show's staff knew how much attention would be on them and how important it was in the ongoing war between news and opinion to prove the news side could still drive a conversation.
Manchin did not give Baer a heads up about the news he was about to break.
Okay, so then they quote Manchin.
Bottom line is that the entire White House is very upset.
So Jen Psaki came out and slammed Senator Manchin, accusing Joe Manchin of betrayal.
The White House put out a statement saying, On Tuesday of this week, Senator Manchin came to the White House and submitted to the President in person directly a written outline for a Build Back Better bill that was the same size and scope as the President's framework and covered many of the same priorities. While that framework was missing key priorities, we believed it could lead to a compromise acceptable to all. Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead and to work with us to reach that common
If his comments on Fox and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator's colleagues in the House and Senate.
By the way, this signals that the White House knows it's over.
Because if the White House really thought there was a path forward for negotiation, here's what you don't do.
Set Joe Manchin on fire.
If you're Joe Biden and you want to negotiate with that guy, you cannot douse him in gasoline and light a match.
And yet that's what the White House is doing, right there.
The White House puts out a statement saying that it's a betrayal, a sudden and inexplicable reversal, and that's not true.
You guys just refused to sense the reality.
Everyone knew what was going to happen here.
You guys are just crazy.
I will point out here that there is a belief among some Senate Republicans that this justifies the infrastructure plan.
The reason is because Joe Manchin got the infrastructure bill.
He wanted the infrastructure bill.
Mitt Romney, Rob Portman, the deal that they made essentially with Manchin and Sinema is we will do the infrastructure bill with you, but you will not do Build Back Better, a giant boondoggle spending bill where all of the priorities that were cut out of the infrastructure bill then get stuffed into the Build Back Better Act.
And there are worries about trust, right?
That Manchin and Sinema would cave, and that they would then vote for Build Back Better, as well as the infrastructure bill, and the Democrats would get all their spending.
So, we will have to point out here that the strategic move made by some of these guys in the Senate to put forward the infrastructure bill as sort of a stop to Manchin and Sinema, to keep them from restructuring the entire American economy, was not necessarily the worst strategic move.
Now, it's possible that if they'd not passed the infrastructure bill, they still wouldn't have gotten Build Back Better, because the incentives would be no different.
It would still have been a hard slog to get Build Back Better approved by the voters of West Virginia.
That said, the baseline notion that you could get Manchin and Sinema to kill Build Back Better if you gave them infrastructure, that turned out at least to be true in the sense that Build Back Better is now dead.
Senior White House official is ripping on Manchin, says, look, with Manchin, you never know.
I've never seen anything like this.
The guy shook hands with the president.
He made us a written offer on Tuesday that had holes but was doable.
If he flipped away from that so quickly, maybe he can flip back.
Yeah, I think not.
I really, really think not.
And we'll get to more of this in just one second.
And what does this mean?
It means two things.
One, Joe Biden is not going to be the president he wanted to be.
And two, counterintuitively, Joe Manchin might have just saved Joe Biden's presidency.
I'll explain in just a second.
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Alrighty.
Joe Manchin essentially just ended Joe Biden's giant dreams.
But here's the thing.
That may save Joe Biden in the long run.
Because if Joe Biden actually got billed back better, and inflation continued to spiral out of control, and the economy continued to stagnate, it just would not renounce Joe Biden's benefit.
Now, I still think that the Democrats get shellacked in 2022 because they're going to have to own whatever comes next.
And nothing great is happening for the next year or so.
Inflation is going to last well into next year.
At this point, that is being conceded by the Federal Reserve.
The economy is not growing the way it is supposed to grow.
The Democrats have created a box of their own making.
They cannot get out of it with regard to COVID.
The COVID panic mentality that they relied upon for world-breaking change has actually broken their world.
But adding on top of that, a $5 trillion package would not have redounded to Joe Biden's benefit.
So Manchin killing it might counterintuitively be actually quite good for Joe Biden.
See, it took Bill Clinton the 1994 election before he realized that Hillary care and giant capital gains tax increases, that these things were very unpopular with the American people.
The way the American people sounded off was by giving Republicans their first congressional majority in three decades.
Well, Joe Biden, he's getting the wake up call early, but he's not getting it from a congressional election.
He's getting it from a member of his own party in the form of Joe Manchin.
Nonetheless, the Democrats are really, really angry over all of this, naturally, as you would expect them to be.
Because again, the idea was that now that Joe Biden was in control, they were going to get the Bernie Sanders presidency.
They were gonna get exactly what they had always wanted.
Well, no.
No, that's not going to happen anymore.
So, Bernie Sanders is now slamming Joe Manchin.
Here is the socialist old coot from Vermont, who's now the thought leader of the Democratic Party, who's been defeated by, as it turns out, a majority of the American population.
Let's not pretend that it's Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema alone who are standing against this bill, because that's not true.
52 senators stand against this bill.
A majority of the Senate.
This is not a matter of minority controlling.
This is a matter of a majority controlling.
Here's Bernie Sanders, though, who is lamenting this as he thinks fondly of Stalin.
I think he's going to have a lot of explaining to do to the people of West Virginia.
To tell them why he doesn't have the guts to take on the drug companies and lower the cost of prescription drugs.
Why he is not prepared to expand home health care.
West Virginia is one of the poorest states in this country.
You got elderly people and disabled people who would like to stay at home or forced into nursing homes.
He's going to have to tell the people of West Virginia why he doesn't want to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and eyeglasses.
I've been to West Virginia a number of times and it's a great state, beautiful people, but it is a state that is struggling.
Okay, so I would just like to point out here that Bernie Sanders would not be elected dog catcher in West Virginia.
So Bernie Sanders giving...
Advice to Joe Manchin, who's been elected as a blue senator in a very red state repeatedly, is laughable.
If Bernie Sanders believes that his agenda is so popular, why wasn't he the nominee in the first place?
And again, I will never get over the fact that Joe Biden is such a fool that he was elected as a moderate, and then he swung to the Bernie Sanders side of the aisle.
It's totally crazy to me.
Okay, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez is also jumping into the fray.
So she tweeted out, when a handful of us in the house warned this would happen, if Democratic leaders gave Manchin everything he wanted first, by moving the infrastructure plan before Build Back Better, instead of passing it together, many ridiculed our position.
Maybe they'll believe us next time, or maybe people will just keep calling us naive.
Either way, we cannot accept no for an answer.
Democratic leadership, including but not limited to the president himself and House Democratic leadership, wrote a massive check on their credibility the night of the BIF vote in order to secure the votes they needed, promising passage of Build Back Better to every member who brought up Manchin.
They personally promised they had a solution and Build Back Better would pass.
It is simply not an option for Democratic leaders to walk away from Build Back Better, voting rights, etc.
They must find a way, just as they promised they would when we raised this inevitability.
Some of us don't have the luxury of giving up.
We serve working, middle class, and poor people.
We serve everyday workers getting ripped off, and immigrants, and black communities, and queer kids needing shelter.
We will not walk away from them.
And leadership can't walk away from them either.
People can be mad at Manchin all they want.
But we knew he would do this months ago.
Where we need answers are the leaders who promised a path on Build Back Better if BIF passed.
Biden and Democratic leaders.
They chose to move BIF alone instead of with Build Back Better, not Manchin.
So they need to fix it.
We, as always, says AOC, are here to fight for this agenda.
What matters most to us is that it gets done.
But we cannot just shrug our shoulders and accept this as some Charlie Brown moment.
Our entire democracy is on the line, so we need to get back in there and get this bleep done.
Period.
So, Slay Queen.
Yeah, go for it.
Seriously, go for it.
The entire progressive wing of the party is super mad that they even got billed the infrastructure plan.
So it seems that AOC is still committed to the idea that if the progressives had voted no on infrastructure, and they'd held together, Build Back Better and infrastructure, that Manchin would have voted for that.
No, he wouldn't have.
Literally the only thing that Joe Manchin would have voted for is the infrastructure plan.
He was not going to vote for both.
The only way possibly he might have voted for both is if Republicans were the ones obstructing the infrastructure plan, right?
That was the Romney logic.
But Joe Manchin was not going to vote for a $7 trillion package because AOC and Ilhan Omar wanted it.
These people are out of their minds.
They truly do seem to think that small boroughs in New York govern the entire country.
And that senators are not answerable to their home states.
Ilhan Omar joined the crew.
She slammed Manchin as well.
Here is the horrible congresswoman from Minnesota.
We all knew that Senator Manchin couldn't be trusted.
You know, the excuses that he just made I think are complete bulls**t. It is really disheartening to hear him say that he has been trying to get there for the people of West Virginia because that's a complete lie.
There are just so many things that, you know, the people of West Virginia desperately need.
And we know that he is not working on behalf of their interests.
And I really am just completely disappointed and disgusted by his reasoning.
Well, I mean, if the people of West Virginia don't love Ilhan Omar, I mean, wow.
I mean, when she speaks, the people of West Virginia listen.
That is definitely a state, West Virginia, where Ilhan Omar, I'm sure, is wildly popular.
Her perspectives are super popular in West Virginia.
Again, the delusional nature of progressives who think they have a national program, as opposed to the reality of politics, which is you're always cobbling together a coalition to do incremental things.
That is most of politics.
And that it turns out Joe Biden did not have a mandate for anything remotely like this.
It's amazing.
And they will continue diluting themselves along these lines, the progressives, which means that Joe Biden should get with the program, right?
If he had any brains at all, if he didn't have mush for brains at this point, which I mean, physically mush for brains, then he would probably be pushing for a piecemeal approach to a lot of this legislation.
But I don't know if he can do it.
I don't know if Joe Biden can get there.
He's so afraid of the progressive wing because they're the most motivated wing, even though they represent a tiny percentage of his party.
And he's going to continue pushing this.
It's utterly insane.
In a second, we'll talk about Joe Biden and the wild progressive wing that has they're in the ascendance in the Democratic Party, but they're not getting anything done.
We'll get to that in just a moment.
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Okay.
The progressives continue to preach an agenda that is just completely at odds with the rest of the American public.
And again, I don't find that shocking.
AOC is from the bluest part of blue state America.
She was recruited by the Justice Democrats to be like the bluest of the blue.
AOC is not the shock.
The shock is Joe Biden.
I mean, AOC is constantly spouting stuff that is completely disconnected from reality.
For example, she said over the weekend that student loan debt is immoral.
In what way?
If I take a loan to spend money on a thing and then I have to repay the money, that is not immoral.
You know what's immoral?
What's immoral is Welshing on your deal.
Right?
That's immoral.
It's immoral to walk back a loan and try to get out of it.
That's immoral.
But here is AOC claiming that apparently it's moral to steal money from people.
I mean, of course she thinks this.
She's a socialist.
There is also the case of just millions of people in the United States that already went to college and they were saddled with a lot of unethical and immorally kind of created student loan debt.
And so this is a bucket of folks where if we lower the price of college, they are still stuck with huge amounts of student loan debt.
Did someone put a gun to their heads when they took out that debt to study lesbian dance theory at Wellesley?
This is the agenda.
By the way, AOC says that we should abolish the Senate.
Her solution to Joe Manchin is that we should just get rid of the Senate of the United States.
Don't worry, they're not radicals.
They're not radicals.
They're just progressives who like to think in a different way.
There are certain institutions since the founding of the United States that are fundamentally undemocratic.
The United States Senate is one such example.
Now, we elect our senators by popular vote.
That is a democratic part.
That is a democratic function.
There are some states, like for example in Georgia and in Texas, where the right to vote is under attack.
And that is fundamentally undemocratic.
But what makes the Senate, but that affects everybody and all seats, but what makes the Senate fundamentally undemocratic is that it gives small groups of people the same amount of power as massive groups of people.
And that is not democratic at all.
Okay, so?
So?
Our system was structured for gridlock.
This is the whole point.
Progressives hate our system because progressives believe that our system should be ripped down in favor of a left-wing dictatorship.
I mean, that's essentially what they believe.
That as long as they can command a majority of 50 plus one, they should be able to ram down on Americans whatever rights-violating policy they feel is necessary that day.
Again, AOC is the thought leader, guys.
By the way, I think that there's a serious shot that if Joe Biden plots this before 2024, or if he just doesn't run, Bernie's gonna need an heir.
You really think that she wouldn't run some sort of quixotic presidential campaign?
She absolutely would.
She'd raise more money than anybody else on the left.
She's the new Bernie.
Here's AOC pushing CRT as well, Critical Race Theory.
I think one of the things that has been almost difficult for me personally in working in Congress is seeing how Different.
You know, not only the rest of the country is, because that diversity is great.
It's not that it's different, but it's how accepting of racism a lot of other communities are.
There was recently this debate in Virginia, for example, that people don't want their kids really learning about racism or the history of racism in the United States.
They call this critical race theory.
No, of course, you're completely misconstruing it.
I'm sorry.
No matter how large her glasses get, she's still going to be an idiot.
Our glasses seem to increase exponentially each time she's on a screen.
Like, they started off as spectacles, and now they are just giant Hubble telescopes.
But in any case... In any case, the whole thing is very... Okay, but here's the thing.
We can make fun of AOC all we want, but Joe Biden decided to take his cues from the swing of the party.
That's the part I'll never get over.
Why?
Why?
Okay, he's still doing this.
Over the weekend, Joe Biden, slurring his way through yet another Discombobulated speech.
Suggested that black people don't have lawyers.
I don't know what he's talking about.
I'm very well aware of black people who not only have lawyers, but are lawyers.
Turns out lots of black people have lawyers.
What is he even talking about?
I think he's living still like in 1911 or something.
Here we go.
We learned there's no difference between a black entrepreneur and a white entrepreneur in success.
Except the black entrepreneur usually doesn't have a lawyer.
Usually doesn't have someone who is going to be there, an accountant, to get it all set up.
Their idea is as profound.
But the help is missing.
His random anger is very strange.
He'll do speeches and then he just, like, DIA!
It's like, what are you, whoa!
Dude!
Yeah, I have a joke here I won't say.
In any case, Joe Biden, and then of course he continues along the AOT lines that there's sinister voter suppression going on.
Remember this guy is the Great Uniter?
He's speaking at a historically black college and university.
Commencement, here.
And he is talking about sinister voter suppression.
This is the same guy who said that Mitt Romney wanted to put black people back in chains.
So Captain Uniting over here is not very uniting, I noticed.
This new sinister combination of voter suppression and election subversion, it's un-American.
It's undemocratic.
And sadly, it is unprecedented since Reconstruction.
Vice President Harris is leading the efforts for us.
But on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, I directed every single federal agency in the United States government to promote access to voting, and each agency is heading and heeding the call.
Okay, so it's the worst situation on voting in the United States since Reconstruction?
There was like a hundred year period after the Civil War in which there was overt prevention of black people from voting in the United States.
Like overt, not covert, overt.
Legal segregation was a regime that dominated about half the United States for a century.
But again, he's embraced the full-scale left-wing radical agenda.
And so Joe Manchin, you know, it was a dose of reality.
And here's the thing.
I think Democrats are about to be hit by reality on virtually every front.
I think they're getting hit by reality on COVID as well.
I think Omicron is about to demonstrate some reality up close and personal.
You can start to see reality dawning on them.
It's a very awkward feeling for them.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
Let's talk about the fact that you, as a responsible person, need life insurance.
I mean, let's say that you're responsible each and every year for delivering literally hundreds of millions of presents around the globe.
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You look down at him for just a second, you lose your footing, you start sliding down the roof.
Well, as you fall off the gutter, It occurs to you, man, I really should have gotten some life insurance before Tim Allen becomes Santa Claus and replaces me.
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Alrighty, before we get to the latest on COVID, where panic has broken out everywhere for no apparent reason, first, Let me tell you about a brand new show we've got out right now.
It's called The Search.
And the reason it's called The Search is it really is about a search for truth and meaning.
It is, I sit down basically with my most interesting friends, because thank God, I live a pretty awesome life where I get to talk with interesting people who are my friends almost every day.
And we sit down for coffee.
We just hang out.
And I decided I want to let you in on some of those conversations.
So if you want to see a fly on the wall conversation between me and Jordan Peterson, we just went to a coffee shop and we just talked about what was on our minds.
It's pretty spectacular.
It's really great stuff.
It's a way that you haven't seen Jordan or me before.
The first episode is available right now at dailywire.com.
It's called The Search.
We're gonna be doing more with Jordan in the future.
I'm really excited about it.
Head on over right now to dailywire.com and subscribe to get access to The Search.
It's one of our most trafficked pieces of content ever and there's a reason why.
Also, Candace Owens doesn't hold back.
That's why The Daily Wire sent her to Mar-a-Lago to interview one of the most censored people in America, of course, President Trump.
No question was off the table.
They discuss everything from the potential for another presidential run in 2024 to why Donald Trump did not pardon whistleblowers, and also what he really thinks about Alec Baldwin, who, of course, played him on SNL.
The interview is fascinating.
It streams tomorrow, 9 p.m.
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Okay, so meanwhile, the Democrats have boxed themselves in.
They boxed themselves in on policy because they started following the AOC, progressive policy agenda, the Bernie Sanders agenda, and they didn't have the support for it.
And they really boxed themselves in on COVID because their take on COVID is what is destroying the economy.
Their take on COVID is leading to more opioid deaths.
Their take on COVID is leading to depression across broad swaths of the American population because their take on COVID is completely disconnected from reality.
The reality was always, was always, that elderly people, people in nursing homes, people with pre-existing conditions, were highly vulnerable to COVID, and that everybody else was maybe a little tiny bit vulnerable to COVID, and if you were really young, you weren't vulnerable to COVID nearly at all.
That was always logic.
Always.
And now, as we have a new variant that is way more transmissible than Delta, and apparently way less deadly than Delta, they can't let go of the idea That they promulgated that COVID was a thing government could handle and government could get rid of.
And so, even to acknowledge that COVID has become endemic, it's almost a blind spot for them.
They can never acknowledge it.
Instead, they've sunk into an endless malaise.
And so, Chris Chaliza, right, has a piece over at CNN, and it is so insanely delusional.
It really is.
Listen to this.
Okay, it's called, Why My COVID Anxiety Is Spiking Now All These Months Later.
The answer is because you refuse to understand basic realities about life.
I mean, that's the real answer.
But there's been an embedded sense of panic and doom that Democrats have promulgated as the essence of virtue.
They're essentially the same as people who are walking around in the 13th century chanting that the end was near, repent.
But what you're supposed to repent to is basically the dominance of government.
It is a religious perspective at this point.
I've talked before about fear of God, the idea of Yirat Shemayim in Hebrew.
These people's belief that if they fear COVID enough, it will leave them alone is totally crazy.
Here's Chris Chaliza.
I remember the moment distinctly.
It was Thanksgiving.
We, my wife, kids, and mom, were at my college friend's house with his family.
Everyone was vaccinated.
We had all taken rapid tests that morning to make sure it was safe to celebrate together.
So first of all, You were vaccinated, so why were you even taking the rapid test?
Who cares?
Who cares?
Even if you gave it to each other, you were gonna be fine.
Because the vaccinations are super effective, and you can't do anything about it anyway, because welcome to life.
But, here's what he says.
That was the last day I felt relatively unworried about COVID-19.
Since the word Omicron entered our lexicon, every day has been filled with varying levels of stress.
Really?
Has it?
That seems like a you problem to me.
I'll be honest with you.
If you're vaxxed, and you're sitting around, panicked about Omicron, I think that what you actually need is not a vaccine.
You need another type of medication.
You need an antidepressant, or maybe an anti-anxiety medication.
But, if you're sitting around like panicked about this stuff, and you're vaxxed, I don't know what's wrong with you.
I can't, I've got nothing for you.
Except a psychiatrist number.
Christian Lisa says, there's the near daily note from the boys school about students testing positive and the measures being put in place to contain it.
Okay, and?
And?
So what?
Your kids will be fine.
Kids are not getting seriously ill from COVID.
The numbers on children who have died from COVID, I'm not going to stop repeating it because it remains true.
The number of kids who have died, who were healthy before COVID, who died of COVID in the United States under the age of 18 is still below 20.
There's a parade of headlines that suggest, says Chris Chillesa, Omicron is on the march in Europe and that a surge is inevitable in the United States.
Right, but it's a surge of cases.
So who cares?
Who cares?
There's a surge of cases every year around this time in the cold, in the common cold.
Do we care?
I don't even have any idea.
How many people every year are diagnosed with the common cold?
You don't even go to the doctor.
No one goes to the doctor for the common cold because it's so common.
That is literally why it is called the common cold.
But Chris Chalise is panicked.
He says there are invites to Christmas parties and for the kids to attend sleepovers and playdates and holiday trips and a million and one other things that require my wife and me to play the role of public health experts.
Hyperventilation, get him a paper bag.
Here's the problem, says Chris Chilesa, I'm not a public health expert or anything close to it.
In fact, because of a long battle with health anxiety and compulsive behavior, I'm a terrible person to be tasked with making these daily calls.
He is begging to be ruled.
And this is so many people now.
They have put all their faith in a government that cannot solve the problem, but they require a ruler.
They want a ruler.
I can't be, I can't be, I can't handle these particular conversations or these decisions.
Okay, just because you can't doesn't mean that I can't.
I am perfectly happy to make these decisions with my family.
So are the vast majority of Americans, by the way.
I can make this decision with my parents, with my kids, with my wife.
I can make all these decisions myself.
I don't need the great god of Dr. Anthony Fauci descending from on high to explain what's going on with everything with COVID and Omicron.
The hell is wrong with you people?
Get a grip.
Chris Chilesa says more than 20 months into this nightmare, more than a year after the first vaccine was administered, more than 800,000 deaths later, it seems there is no end in sight.
Really?
Because the end was in sight literally the day that I got my second dose.
Once I got my second dose and once it had kicked in, the end was not only in sight, it was over for me.
I have not worried for one iota of one moment since that day.
You know why?
Because I actually follow the data.
That's why.
But, says Chrysalisa, I feel emotionally raw.
Everything from anger to exhaustion to resignation sits heavier on me now than it did at that Thanksgiving dinner a few weeks ago.
I'm exhausted from the constant not knowing.
Each new day feels like it brings a darkening prediction of what the future holds and I'm tired.
He's citing Deuteronomy now.
It's like every night you go to bed thinking that you wish it were the morning and then every morning you wish it were the prior night because things just get worse and worse.
I'm a creature of habit, says Chrysalisa.
I love knowing what the next day will bring.
With the pandemic, it feels like the situation is changing.
By the hour, I'm resigned to the fact none of this is going away soon.
The idea that COVID will be in the rearview mirror by March feels, at this point, quaint.
I've watched the goalposts for the end of the pandemic moved so many times, I can't even remember where they were a month ago.
So what leftist politicians and what the media have done is they've turned everybody into the rats in the experiment.
So there's a very famous rat experiment where rats were fed pellets every time they hit a button.
And then rats were electroshocked sometimes when they hit the button.
Well, it was only like every fourth time, but what the rats started to do, they wouldn't learn the pattern.
They would just stay away from the button until they starved.
That is what you have done with these people.
This is what government and the media have done.
You've scared people so crapless that they are afraid of doing anything, even when the risk is incredibly low.
You've enervated them.
You've turned them into pathetic, mewling specimens.
Says Chris Chilesa.
This has always been one of my favorite times of the year.
Now it's filled with dread and foreboding.
All I know is it's been a long December and I need to find reasons to believe that next year is something I can look forward to.
So what?
You're just gonna wait on Anthony Pachi to tell you?
Okay, so the reason that I'm so scornful of all of this is because I look at the stats.
So, let me show you some statistics.
Here are some statistics.
These are statistics from the United Kingdom.
Okay, these are the case stats.
So as of July, there were very, very few cases in the United Kingdom of COVID-19 as of this, as of this June, July.
And then it spiked in July.
So there were almost 50,000 cases, right?
That was the Delta wave.
And then it sank back down below 30,000 cases a day as of like August.
That sort of gradually rose kind of some ups and some downs.
And then In about November, huge spike.
Huge spike in cases.
Higher than it's ever been.
A spike in cases from maybe 35,000 cases a day, all the way up to well over 70,000 cases a day.
This is a seven-day rolling average, not the day-to-day number, right?
The seven-day rolling average.
So, it more than doubled over the course of the last month.
So, we are now a month out.
What you would expect is that the deaths would start to increase, right?
Here are the death stats from the UK.
Notice something?
Complete disconnect.
Go back to the last chart for a second.
Okay, what you'll see in the last chart is that there was a big spike in November, particularly, right, November of 2020.
Right, in November of 2020, around the end of November, there's a big spike in cases, all the way up to about 60,000 cases a day.
Now go to the other chart for a second.
If you go to the other chart, what you'll see is that about two weeks later, right, two to four weeks later, huge spike in deaths, because that's what you expect.
When COVID hits, there's a huge increase in cases, and then, there is a huge spike in hospitalizations and deaths.
Thanks to the vaccines, because the UK was heavily vaccinated, there is no such spike in June-July.
Right?
What you see is like a slight increase.
You know, it increases from zero a day in early June, all the way- Go back one.
It increases from zero a day in early June, to a little under 200 a day, and it kind of stays there.
All the way throughout the pandemic because of the vaccines.
Now you have this huge, vast, mass spike Any increase in deaths?
No.
Deaths right now in the United Kingdom, seven-day rolling average is actually lower now than it was about a week ago.
Okay, so is that only the UK where they've seen a massive spike?
No, it turns out it's not only the UK.
Here's South Africa.
So South Africa has had three very clear waves.
This is the fourth very clear wave.
Okay, and this wave is enormous.
They went from basically zero cases a day in Mid-November to essentially 30,000 cases a day as of today.
And that started solidly a month ago.
Started three weeks to a month ago.
Here are the death stats from South Africa.
Oh look, there's no spike in death.
At all.
Right?
It's the same.
Super low rate.
Where's the spike?
If you think it's just over in South Africa where this thing started, or in the UK, I bring New York.
So here's New York.
New York has seen a massive spike.
Again, mask mandates, vaccines, massive spike in cases.
They're all the way down, well below 5,000 cases a day at the beginning of November, and then it started to spike.
And now, they're up to almost 15,000 cases a day in the seven-day rolling average.
This is the New York Times numbers.
Here's their deaths.
This is New York.
New York State.
Notice something?
This is the citywide deaths in New York.
Same rate.
Almost none.
You know why?
Because Omicron is not nearly as deadly as Delta.
This is evidenced by South Africa.
The last wave in South Africa, about three weeks out from that wave, 19% hospitalization rate.
This time, 1.7% hospitalization rate.
Lab studies are showing that Omicron is residing in the upper airways.
It is not going down to the lungs, which means no lung damage, which means people aren't dying.
And yet, we are told that we must panic.
This is why Chris Chalise is panicking like a little baby.
He's crying like a small baby.
So, Democrats are faced with a problem here.
The problem is that they've told you that you were supposed to panic over every variant.
The variants were the reason why we needed this spending.
The variants were the reason why you had to trust the government.
And instead of recognizing the reality, which is that the virus kind of solved itself, okay?
Omicron kind of solves everything.
Because if Omicron is super contagious and super not deadly, and it provides essentially a level of immunity to a lot of people who have not had it yet, if you're an unvaxxed person, you want Omicron way worse than you want Delta.
You don't want Delta, you want Omicron if you're going to get infected.
But this gives Democrats the heebie-jeebies because they have no control over it.
They have no control over the common cold.
And so this scares the hell out of them.
And so they're now completely bifurcated, right?
They're of two minds, and they can't handle the cognitive dissonance.
On the one hand, lock everything down.
Omicron's going to kill us all.
The government's the only thing that can save us.
It's all this stupid on vax and all that.
And on the other hand, they're like, well, I mean, people really do want their schools open.
So a bunch of people on the left are now getting diagnosed with COVID, which is fine if you've got a breakthrough case because you were vaxed or because you had natural immunity.
And it turns out you have a cold?
Who cares?
No one.
But Democrats are panicking about this anyway.
So on the one hand, they're panicking about it because, oh my God, oh my God, everyone's going to die.
It's going to be terrible.
This is why you have to give us control.
Give us controls.
And on the other hand, when they get COVID, they kind of don't want to do all the things they've been telling everybody else to do.
So suddenly, Brian Stelter at CNN has flipped 180 degrees, and he's talking about the evils of shutting down schools when there are COVID outbreaks.
Yeah, Brian, someone's been saying this all along, dude.
We collectively took action to protect the elderly in 2020.
Now, shouldn't we be doing more to protect children by letting them live normal lives?
Are we really going to let the kids suffer even more?
Welcome to the club, Brian Stelter.
I mean, like, seriously, I'm glad you're here.
But I'm noticing that most of the people on the left are only getting in line with the fact that life has to get back to some semblance of normal once it's starting affected them.
When it was all red states, then they're like all those evil red states and their upticks.
Then New York gets hit.
Vermont gets hit.
All these heavily vaccinated states are getting hit.
Because guess what?
When people go inside, they pass COVID.
Duh.
And now, all of a sudden, they say, well, maybe we've gone too far here, guys.
Maybe we've gone too far.
But they can't let it go.
And so they're ping-ponging between, we can never let this go, grip it harder, grip it harder, kill the bird!
And on the other hand, we must let the bird live, release the dove.
They can't get over it.
And so you've got this bizarre ping-pong effect for the Democratic Party.
Should we panic?
Should we not panic?
What do we do?
And they have no clue.
At the same time, you've got Brian Stelter saying that kids should be in school.
CNN is shutting it to offices.
Because of the COVID-19 spike.
It's totally insane.
So this sort of bifurcation is not going to end.
The bifurcation for the Democratic Party is not going to end, despite the fact that, again, Omicron should not be freaking everybody out.
It should not.
Even the articles that are headlined in a panic-driven way, when you read down into the data, they're not that scary.
For example, there's a piece in the Wall Street Journal that says hospitals are strained even before Omicron hits.
Intensive care units in many cities are at or close to full capacity due to patients with serious non-COVID diseases.
So wait, you're telling me I'm supposed to worry about Omicron because there are a lot of people with other diseases that have nothing to do with COVID?
According to the Wall Street Journal article buried down in this article, excess deaths are a measure of how many people lost their lives above an average from prior years.
Hospital strain could be one reason for results.
Researchers not involved in the study said another factor may be people who put off care seeking care during the pandemic out of fear of inaction.
So in other words, one of the reasons you're seeing an ICU strain right now is because everybody didn't go to the hospital and then they thought it was safe to go to the hospital.
So everybody went to the hospital at the same time.
That ain't about Omicron.
That ain't even about Delta.
That's about the lockdowns.
But we're supposed to panic.
It's very important that we panic.
By the way, here are the actual stats from the Wall Street Journal.
60% of adult ICU patients in cities with ICUs, at least 90% full, do not have COVID infections.
Do not.
So it's not about COVID.
It's about everything else.
It's about you delayed everybody's care for a year and then everybody showed up at the same time.
But Democrats can't get, like, they're all over the place on this.
It's amazing to watch.
They truly are all over the place on this.
Take, for example, New York City.
So in New York City, Bill de Blasio has put down a mandate that is supposed to take effect about four days before he leaves office.
And that mandate is that everyone in the city has to be vaxxed or you're not allowed to work in the city.
I know business owners in New York are freaking out over this because guess what?
There's a labor shortage right now and now you're asking people to fire their workers or fine them like $1,000 per incident.
What is Eric Adams going to do, the incoming mayor of New York?
Now, we were told that Eric Adams was going to be a moderate.
He was going to come in.
He was going to repudiate a lot of the de Blasio legacy.
He doesn't sound like much of a moderate with regard to COVID, does he?
Sure he was on CNN over the weekend.
We're doing an amazing job.
We're looking at those areas where we have large outbreaks.
We are temporarily shutting down the schools in those areas.
I think it's smart.
It's a great way to go, and we're going to continue to do that.
This is a moving target, and we need to be clear on that.
By the way, I have some doubts about the new mayor of New York, considering that he literally has said to the New York Times that the number one skill he looks for in his administration is, wait for it, wait for it, emotional intelligence.
Man oh man if the people like you know it's a thing that I don't look for as like a high as a high resume item here at the Daily Wire emotional intelligence because there's no way to quantify that like you want people can get along with other people but if that's your number one criteria Yeah, good luck with that emotional intelligence.
Anyway, the complete gap in how Democrats are thinking about this thing is leading to all sorts of bizarre shifts in messaging.
So over the weekend, CNN announced that the Biden administration would be eyeing a potentially stark shift in messaging around ending the pandemic.
Quote, sitting at the head of a long conference table surrounded by top members of his COVID response team, Biden listened intently as the officials laid out the contours of a looming COVID surge.
So Biden is trying to scare the unvaxxed into vaxxing.
and send the country into another bleak winter.
Yet Biden's team also came to the evergreen Bidekt Roosevelt room with potentially more positive news.
Many of those cases will remain mild or even asymptomatic in vaccinated people, particularly those who've gotten booster shots.
So Biden is trying to scare the un-vaxxed into vaxing, and they're trying to shift into focusing on severity rather than focusing on case numbers, which is what some of us have been urging the entire damned time.
No one cares about case numbers.
Severity is the only thing that matters.
But by the way, if you mentioned that, let me just point this out.
If you mentioned that anywhere during the pandemic, we should focus on severity, hospitalization and death, not case counts.
This administration actively tried to smear people who said this, actively.
Over the weekend, the Daily Mail ...reported on emails between Anthony Fauci and the head of the NIH, Francis Collins.
You know, the idiot who plays guitar and warbles about, some day after the pandemic?
That idiot.
Apparently, these idiots were writing each other emails, talking about the Great Barrington Declaration.
The Great Barrington Declaration is a declaration by a bunch of epidemiologists, including Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford.
Who suggested that we shield the vulnerable and allow everybody else to live their lives.
Apparently, Fauci and the head of the NIH colluded on a way to discredit that alternative plan to deal with COVID.
In an October 8th email from Collins to Fauci, the head of the NIH called the Great Barrington Declaration the work of three fringe epidemiologists that seemed to be getting a lot of attention.
Collins added, quote, there needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises.
I don't see anything like that online yet.
Is it underway?
Later in the day, Fauci sent Collins a wired op-ed that refuted the notion of herd immunity stopping the pandemic.
Collins then sent Fauci an op-ed in The Nation also trashing the Great Barrington Declaration.
A few days later, Collins emailed Fauci a Washington Post op-ed he was quoted in.
The headline, Proposal to Hasten Herd Immunity to the Coronavirus, grabs White House attention but appalls top scientists.
Collins said, my quotes are accurate but will not be appreciated in the Trump White House.
Fauci responded, they are too busy with other things to worry about this.
What you said was entirely correct.
So they basically conspired in order to attack the Great Barrington Declaration.
At no point did they actually explain why the Great Barrington Declaration was wrong.
The Great Barrington Declaration did not suggest that, quote unquote, herd immunity was the solution.
They suggested that herd immunity is the only thing ever.
That generates the end of widespread pandemics, right?
The herd immunity either comes via vaccines or it comes via natural immunity.
And they suggested that if you let young, healthy people work, it was not going to be the end of the world and you should shield the vulnerable.
But Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci spent their time trying to destroy the authors of this declaration.
Now they're, of course, embracing its exact same premises.
Well, you know, if you get a case and it ain't that bad, it's not that bad.
Yeah, we know, guys, but you tried to destroy everybody who said this a year ago.
Here is Francis Collins, who is, when he's not playing guitar, is appearing on Bret Baier, trying to explain that hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we'd listened to the Great Barrington Declaration.
I hate to break it to you, sir.
More people have died under Joe Biden than died under Donald Trump.
What was being proposed there was basically saying, let's not worry about mitigation.
Let's just let this virus rip.
This is, of course, before we had vaccines.
And basically these, I will call them fringe epidemiologists, who really did not have the credentials to be making such a grand sweeping statement, were saying, just let the virus run through the population and eventually then everybody will have had it and we'll be okay.
Hundreds of thousands of people would have died if we had followed that strategy.
Well, hundreds of thousands of people have died following your strategy, and tens of thousands more young people have died of opioid overdoses because of your strategy.
But again, they have to maintain the fact that they were not wrong this whole time.
They were wrong the whole time.
This is why they are attached to the idea they can still crush Omicron.
They can't.
Omicron is 70 times as transmissible.
It's a common cold.
We're all going to get it.
It doesn't matter.
I'm vaxxed.
I'm gonna get it.
Okay, I'm just working under that assumption.
And for nearly everyone, it is going to be a mild cold, and everyone knows it.
But they can't let go of it.
So now they're struggling for a new message.
So what is their new message?
So one of the new messages, pushed by Jeff Zients, who's one of their COVID advisors, is the unvaccinated are all going to die, and everyone else is going to be okay.
So if you just listen to us, you'll be fine.
Now, here's the thing.
That was more true of Delta than it is of Omicron.
Sorry to break it to you, Omicron is way less deadly than Delta by all available data.
Which suggests that if you are unvaxxed for Delta, and you weren't worried about Delta, you should be about one-tenth as worried about Omicron.
And yet they're still trying to scare the crap out of people.
Here is Jeff Zients.
basically trying to scare the living hell out of the un-vaxxed and suggest also, of course, that they're morally insufficient in some way, which is, which is odd, considering that, again, the vaxxed can pass this too. So really, the danger is to you. If you decide to get not vaxxed at all, you're the one who's decided to undergo that danger. That's kind of your business. But here's Jeff Zients trying to, this is pretty despicable stuff here.
We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. You've done the right thing and we will get through this.
For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death.
For yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.
Um, wow.
So, so, just to get this straight, they're gonna make sure that you're safe and good if you're vaccinated.
If you're unvaccinated, prepare to die.
You killed my father, prepare to die.
Anthony Fauci is doing the same thing.
And it's unclear exactly what he's promoting at this point because they don't have any plan.
Their only plan is to scare the living daylights out of you while pretending they know what they're doing.
So here's Anthony Fauci saying seven different things a bunch of different ways, running around like Hermit the Frog with his hands flailing in the air while on Jake Tapper.
Here he was saying, we're going to see, unfortunately, we'll see record levels of positives.
Question, why is it unfortunate if somebody gets a cold and now has immunity to other forms of the virus?
Why is that?
I'm confused.
Here's Anthony Fauci.
Where is the pandemic headed right now?
Do you expect new record high numbers for cases?
And what about hospitalizations and deaths?
Well, unfortunately, Jake, I think that that is going to happen.
We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination, which is one of the reasons why we continue to stress the importance of getting those unvaccinated people vaccinated.
Ken, I'm very much in favor of the vaccines, but Omicron is not going to act like Delta.
I don't know why he won't talk about this.
Then Fauci's like, by the way, vaccines aren't the answer to everything.
But you just said they kind of were.
I mean, I've been told by Jeff Zients that my life will be fully back to normal if I get vaccinated, except that you keep shutting down cities where everyone is vaccinated.
Here's Anthony Fauci explaining to you what you need to do, which is triple mask, quadruple mask, octuple mask.
Your entire head should be covered in masks.
You should have masks far beyond your death.
You should be masking unborn children.
And just to prevent them, From getting COVID before they're aborted, you should definitely mask the unborn children.
Also the dead.
Disinter your relatives.
Bring them up from the ground.
And please, mask them.
Because they might die from the COVID after being dead for 20 years.
Here we go.
People think that vaccine is the answer to everything.
We can't do it without vaccines, Jake, but we can do a lot more with other things.
And testing, for example, both yourself and your family when you're getting ready to do something, go out into the community, or when you're going to have people over your own house.
And that's the reason why we're stressing, and part of the president's winter plan is expanding greatly the availability of testing for people.
Testing?
Truly?
Testing?
That's gonna do it.
You know how many people who are asymptomatic are testing?
In fact, it's so bad that the NFL just suspended testing the asymptomatic because they're not idiots and they don't want to shut down their entire league.
Asymptomatic testing is the dumbest thing in the world.
By the way, you can't even get tests right now because this administration's done a crappy job with the testing.
You gotta test your way out of the common cold.
But Fauci continues with it.
Then he's like, okay, so vaccines are not the answer.
Maybe testing is the answer.
But testing's not the answer.
Maybe boosters are the answers.
What's behind door number three, Dr. Fauci?
The booster that I spoke about at the press conference today really does bring up the level of the protection to a quite high level and that's the reason why we are really encouraging very strongly that when you're eligible for a boost to get boosted because the data I showed indicated that particularly with Omicron that the level of protection goes really rather low in a range that may not be as protective as we'd like but yet when you get that boost It goes right up there.
Yeah.
Okay, well, that's actually now what the data shows.
What the data shows is that boosters, particularly for the elderly, are worthwhile with regard to Delta because you want your antibody levels high again.
But all the boosters do is increase your antibody level.
Your B cell and T cell immunity still exist.
Again, he doesn't even bother with B cell and T cell immunity.
He doesn't even explain, when you explain, when he talks about vaccine protection, is he talking about infection or is he talking about hospitalization and death?
He doesn't make clear what the hell he's talking about.
What he's really talking about there is infection.
He's not talking about hospitalization and death because the two-dose vaccine is still, for nearly everyone under the age of 65, highly protective against hospitalization and death.
But now, so now just to get this straight, yesterday he suggested vaccines are the answer.
Vaccines are not the answer to everything. We need boosters.
Also, we need to mask forever.
He literally said yesterday we're going to mask forever on airplanes. For the rest of time, we're going to mask on airplanes. For the rest of time.
Are we going to get to the point where we won't have to wear masks on airplanes?
I don't think so.
I think when you're dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step when you have people.
You know, you get a flight from Washington to San Francisco, it's a well over a five hour flight.
Even though you have a good filtration system, I still believe that masks are a prudent thing to do and we should be doing it.
Okay, this is New York.
Okay, you know what New York has?
Vax mandates, mask mandates.
You noticing something about that case count right there?
You notice that?
Weird.
It looks exactly like case counts everywhere else.
But Anthony Fauci has a solution.
Okay, so here is the deal.
If you guys wish to live in this paranoia of your own making, where you worry every day like Chris Chilesa does, of CNN, you just sit around worrying, fine, live that way.
But you don't get to dictate to the rest of us that our lives ought to be miserable.
I'm not going to listen to you, because I don't think that you have any relationships with the data.
I don't think you care about the data.
I think you've created a reality in your head where you guys are morally superior for having listened to the government, even though the governmental actors were not providing you good data and were mainly lying to you.
So if you want to live that way, fine, live that way.
But guess what?
We'll just take everyone who earns from your state.
We'll take them down here in Florida.
We'll take them in Georgia.
We'll take them in Texas.
We'll take them in Kentucky.
We'll take them in Tennessee.
We'll take them everywhere.
You want to send all of your productive, risk-seeking, or at least non-crazily risk-averse people, and send them down here?
Fine.
We'll take all of them.
Because this is what you've created for yourselves.
You've created a bunch of people who cower in fear every time one of you makes a moronic anti-data statement.
Eventually what's going to happen, of course, is that they'll let up.
Eventually they'll let up and they'll realize they're miserable.
And then they'll be like, oh, well, the pandemic is over.
Great job us, we ended it.
But not yet.
Not yet.
Because they can't bring themselves to do it just quite yet.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
By the way, as I've been talking about, we should not be complying with all of this crap, right?
All this stuff is crap.
You shouldn't be complying.
If you wish to fight back, go to dailywire.com slash do not comply.
We're very, very close to a million signatures.
That is our goal.
We want to get there by Christmas.
We're only a few thousand signatures away, so head on over to dailywire.com slash do not comply.
In the meantime, we'll be back with an additional hour of content later today.
Also, check out our newest podcast, Morning Wire, on today's episode.
They report closing arguments in the Ghislaine Maxwell case and Google's strict VAX mandates.
That episode is available right now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Make sure to tune in.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
Shapiro, this is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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On today's episode, Senator Manchin kills Biden's Build Back Better Act, closing arguments in the Ghislaine-Maxwell trial begin, and Google imposes strict vaccine mandates.