With his presidency flailing, Joe Biden tries to pivot.
But is it too late?
Plus, Jeff Zucker was reportedly stooping his top deputy for 25 years and directly helping out Andrew Cuomo.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
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We'll get to all the news in just one moment.
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Okay, so, I'm gonna begin today with some new revelations about Jeff Zucker.
So, Zucker is out at CNN.
And hilariously, the entire CNN host coterie is very upset about this.
They say they are shocked.
They are stunned.
He was such a good, but why is he being ousted?
Just because he was having a consensual, loving relationship with his top deputy, Allison Golas.
What?
Why?
Why would this happen?
Well, the answer to why this would happen, as it turns out, is because Jeff Zucker has apparently been knocking boots with this lady since the mid-90s and then elevating to every job she ever held afterward.
According to Rolling Stone, in relationships, timing is everything.
And the timeline on Jeff Zucker and Allison Golis' coupledom is not only off by more than two decades, say sources who have worked with the pair, the CNN power couple also repeatedly lied about their relationship to their corporate bosses.
According to CNN President Zucker's February 2nd resignation memo to staff, the romantic relationship, which marks a flagrant violation of corporate policy given that Gallus, the network's top communications executive, was a direct report to Zucker for most of her nine-year tenure there, began sometime in the past two years.
Thales said in the same memo, Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years.
Recently, our relationship changed during COVID.
I regret we didn't disclose it at the right time.
Zucker said the relationship evolved in recent years.
Zucker noted in his memo that WarnerMedia's ongoing investigation into Chris Cuomo, who was fired in December for a breach of ethics after it was discovered he'd been advising his brother, former New York Gov, Andrew Cuomo, while the latter faced accusations of sexual harassment, brought the affair to light and prompted his resignation.
It seems the probe, which is being overseen by the law firm of Crabath, Swain & Moore, again, one of the most tony law firms in all of America, is unearthing plenty of embarrassing details about the goings-on at CNN.
The scope of the investigation has now expanded to include Zucker and Gallus' relationship with Andrew Cuomo, too, according to a Warner Media source.
But sources who worked closely with Zucker and Gallus, dating back to their days at the Today Show in the mid-90s, dispute their statements in the memo.
In reality, these sources tell Rolling Stone, Zucker became romantically entangled with Gallus back in 1996.
25 years ago, when she was trainee in NBC's corporate communications group, and he was the married executive producer of the Today Show.
It was the worst-kept secret, but Jeff was seen as untouchable, says one insider, and their statements in the memo are total BS.
In fact, the pair have skirted the issue multiple times in the past.
At least one investigation into their relationship had been carried out by WarnerMedia well before COVID.
But Zucker and Gallus denied the romance over and over again, says a knowledgeable source, nothing changed in the corporate hierarchy's reporting structure.
A WarnerMedia spokesperson denied that any such investigation had ever been launched, but acknowledged that both parties had been asked about the nature of their relationship multiple times, including after a New York Post gossip item hinted at a romance when they were spotted arguing at a Hollywood Reporter party in 2017.
The pair repeatedly denied any impropriety.
A representative for Zucker said, Jeff resigned due to an undisclosed personal relationship.
A representative for Gallus did not respond to Rolling Stone's request for comment.
Well, here is the backstory.
On May 1st, 2020, this is according to Rolling Stone, Jason Killar took the reins as CEO of WarnerMedia and immediately set about overhauling the sprawling entertainment and media conglomerate owned by AT&T.
In the process, Zucker, who also served as chairman of WarnerMedia's news and sports division, lost oversight of CNN's finances and human resources, as well as corporate communications, the division run by top executive Gollist.
Sources say Killar was aware of rumors that Zucker was in a long-term relationship with Gallus, who is also the network's chief marketing officer, and that Zucker, given just 24 hours' notice of the move, was livid.
He's very angry that suddenly his lover is not working for him any longer.
His lover is now working for Killar.
Killar's sudden restructuring prompted several journalists to begin chasing the story of Zucker and Gallus' unorthodox union.
Back in September 2020, this reporter placed calls to WarnerMedia and specifically asked if Killar's decision to move Gollust out from under Zucker was a result of learning about their relationship, which was in violation of the company's code of conduct.
At the time, a WarnerMedia spokesperson declined to answer and referred the matter to Gollust herself.
Still, a behind-the-scenes executive showdown ensued, and Zucker appeared to have prevailed.
After the May 2021 announcement that AT&T would be spinning off WarnerMedia and merging it with Discovery, Killar, reportedly blindsided by the news, began negotiating his own exit.
Zucker was rumored to be getting a bigger role in the new entity because he was very close with the Discovery CEO, David Zasloff.
Dallas, in turn, was supposed to become the head of CNN, so Zucker was going to fail upward.
Killar, who was trying to clean house, was going to be ousted.
And Gallist was going to take Zucker's place as the head of CNN.
So corrupt.
So terrible.
But those well-laid plans came crashing down when the investigation into Chris Cuomo began sweeping up embarrassing details concerning Zucker and Gallist, including emails and other evidence that painted an undeniable picture of the duo's romantic relationship.
The evidence only surfaced in recent days, say two sources, and Killar basically used this as an excuse to chop off Zucker's head.
Facing termination, Zucker resigned and is not poised to receive any severance.
Sources say Zaslav was not involved in the decision to cut ties with Zucker.
But this isn't the only problem.
It turns out that apparently, Katherine Forrest, a former U.S.
district judge who's actually overseeing the legal investigation into all of this, Forrest is apparently investigating not just Chris Cuomo's alleged help in helping his brother Andrew, but also Zucker and Gallus' help.
The source says the investigation suggests Zucker and Gallus were advising Andrew Cuomo at the beginning of the COVID pandemic in ways not dissimilar to what led to Chris Cuomo's dismissal.
As Andrew sparred on a daily basis with then-President Trump over COVID messaging, the couple provided the governor with talking points on how to respond to the president's criticism of the New York crisis.
They booked the governor directly to appear on the network exclusively, which became a ratings boon for CNN, with Chris Cuomo doing the interviewing.
Cuomo and Gallus' conduct, too, would appear to mark an ethical breach for executives acting on behalf of an impartial news organization.
And again, Rolling Stone says over the past three decades, the Zucker-Gallus relationship was no secret inside the newsrooms of NBC or CNN, Within a year of Zucker and Gallist commencing the affair, according to multiple sources, Gallist leapfrogged from trainee to the role of senior publicist for The Today Show, and Zucker became her boss, a paradigm that continued for years to come with only two brief interruptions.
Through a series of promotion, her purview expanded.
She added oversight duties for NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, and Weather Channel, as well as NBC Nightly News, Dateline, and Meet the Press.
So Zucker was nailing this intern basically and she kept moving upward with him.
He just kept elevating her in stature to the point where eventually he was going to move up at Discovery and she was going to end up as the head of CNN.
Meanwhile, both of them at CNN were calling up Andrew Cuomo to advise him on how to handle the pandemic and comms with Donald Trump, which makes perfect sense considering that Jeff Zucker knew Cuomo and Gallus had once been a senior comms director for Cuomo.
In 2000, Zucker became president of NBC Entertainment and quickly pulled off a series of splashy deals, including signing Donald Trump to host The Apprentice and Joe Rogan to host Fear Factor.
Oh, the irony.
In 2009, Gallus was named executive VP of corporate communications at NBCUniversal, becoming the chief spokesperson for Zucker.
But then in June 2010, Zucker was ousted as Comcast was about to complete its 51% acquisition of NBCUniversal.
He was paid $30 million to $40 million to leave.
And then five months later, Gallus resigned.
And then as Zucker was plotting his media world comeback, both he and Gallus became intertwined with the Cuomo brothers.
In 2012, Gallus took a post as comms director for Andrew Cuomo.
Not long after Zucker joined CNN, one of his first hires was Chris Cuomo.
Very quickly after that, Gallus resigned and joined Zucker at CNN, where she was named senior vice president of communications for CNN worldwide.
Unbelievable.
Gallist says she now plans to stay with the network, even if any Ascension plans have evaporated.
Well, that makes sense.
I mean, who's going to hire her?
Who's going to look at Alison Gallist as anything but a hire by a guy who was having sex with her, allegedly, for 25 years?
By the way, they were both married for a large portion of this time.
So these are just the delightful people who are running the most trusted name in news.
And the CNN staffers are angry.
But they're not angry at Jeff Zucker or Alison Gallist.
They're angry at Chris Cuomo.
Now listen, Chris Cuomo is a douchebag, but Chris Cuomo is not responsible for this.
Chris Cuomo is just pointing out what everybody apparently at CNN knew, which is that Zucker and Gallus were doing exactly what Chris Cuomo was doing, except they were also knocking boots at the time.
It's all absurd.
It's all absurd.
It's an incestuous little pathetic circle.
It's really, really funny.
Apparently, CNN employees are really, really mad at Cuomo.
According to reports from Politico, everyone here is heartbroken and shocked.
People are blaming us on Chris.
Not a lot of love between CNN and Chris Cuomo.
For a while.
Well, I mean, listen, I like a lot of what Jake does, but all of these people are the bad guy.
I'm not aware that Chris Cuomo is not the bad guy, but Jeff Zucker is the good guy.
with terrorists and Chris blew the place up.
How do we get past the perception that this is the bad guy winning?
Well, I mean, listen, I like a lot of what Jake does, but all of these people are the bad guy.
I'm not aware that Chris Cuomo is not the bad guy, but Jeff Zucker is the good guy.
He and Allison Gallist were overtly, apparently, advising Andrew Cuomo in the middle of the pandemic while running the most trusted name in news.
I mean, this is a corrupt yick.
Yich.
But this is how it works.
The rules didn't apply to these people until it became convenient for the rules to apply to these people.
Like, WarnerMedia had to know that these two were lovers for years.
I mean, apparently everybody in town knew.
Megyn Kelly says everybody in town knew.
Like, everybody.
And they just kept failing upward.
Because let's face it, Jeff Zucker has done nothing successful since he ran the Today Show.
He blew up what was the best nightly lineup.
I mean really, the best comedy lineup probably in the history of TV.
Like this massively successful nightly primetime lineup at NBC.
And Jeff Zucker came in and just destroyed it.
And then he somehow failed upward into the position at CNN and he was about to fail upward again into a position at Discovery.
That's how all this works.
So what really happened here is that Killar, it sounds like, took his revenge by initiating this investigation on the basis of Chris Cuomo's lawsuit and then used that as a way of getting Zucker out.
Which suggests, once again, the rules only apply when the powerful want them to apply.
It's really not that there's a set of rules that Zucker and Gallus violated.
They've been violating this set of rules for 25 years.
Every HR violation in the world sounds like it happens right here.
I mean, she was his direct inferior at a company.
That is like a blatant HR violation.
And then beyond that, they were coordinating with outside politicians that they were supposed to be covering on an objective news level?
It's amazing stuff.
But that's how it always works.
Always and forever.
Mercy for my friends, the law for my enemies.
Which is why, by the way, Don Lemon, who is the chief of the Cancel Culture Brigade.
I mean, Don Lemon just spends all day long trying to get people cancelled he does not like.
Anybody he doesn't like shouldn't be on TV, shouldn't be hell out of platform.
Now he's out there defending Whoopi Goldberg.
Of course, of course.
Lemon says, in this environment, we have to be allies to each other.
Sometimes your allies say stupid things.
Sometimes they say dumb things.
But guess what?
They're your allies.
They're at least on your side.
And they're trying to learn.
We have to stop trying to cancel people and shouting down our allies.
Notice the repeated use here by Don Lemon of the word allies.
Right?
The consistent attempts to suggest that there is a double standard here.
That if they are your friends, then of course, we have to stop trying to cancel people.
But, if they're not your friends, then you can destroy them.
I love that Lemon says, Name all the ways that Whoopi Goldberg is a massive ally to the Jewish community.
She was retweeting anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian nonsense just a few years ago.
I'm not aware that Whoopi Goldberg is an extraordinary exponent Of anti-anti-semitism.
Of fighting anti-semitism.
But according to Don Lemon, who's an expert on this sort of stuff, Whoopi is an ally to the Jewish community.
Yeah, tell me about it, Don.
Please, tell me about how much of an ally Whoopi Goldberg is to the Jewish community.
The guy wearing the yarmulke.
Tell it to me.
Right to my face.
He said she is.
She said something she shouldn't have said.
Okay, fine.
But don't put her in a corner and marginalize her.
Use her to the best of your ability to get the conversation and your points across about what's wrong about that kind of thinking.
Because she's not the only one who thinks it.
Okay, now, here is my rule.
My rule is, Don Lemon is generally correct.
We should have conversations with people, and the conversations can...
Be enriching and we can all learn from one another.
Unless you hold by the cancel culture standard.
If you are a member of the mob, you do not get to claim immunity from the mob.
Then the mob should eat you.
You made the rules and you should abide by those rules.
You made the bed and now you get to lie in it.
Whoopi Goldberg is very fond of getting people cancelled.
I'm fine with Whoopi Goldberg getting cancelled.
Same thing with Don Lemon.
Same thing with Jeff Zucker.
Same thing with Allison Gallist.
I mean, Jeff Zucker and Allison Gallist actually violated some basic professional rules.
They should be fired no matter what.
But when it comes to the generalized attitude of the left toward when the rules apply, they only apply to quote-unquote allies who just demonstrate there are no rules for the left.
There is just pure power.
Okay, in just one second, we're going to get to Joe Biden, who's desperately attempting to swivel.
Finally, he's attempting to pivot.
It may be too late.
We'll get to that in just one moment.
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Okay, so, meanwhile, Joe Biden is poised to hit the economic skids.
Tech stocks took a massive dump yesterday.
That is largely thanks to Meta, which is the former Facebook company.
Just getting trashed.
They lost like 26% on their stock value because they actually had a reduction in the absolute number of users who were using Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg, for his part, blamed TikTok and the rise of TikTok, which again, goes to show you that in the tech world, there really is no such thing as a long lasting monopoly because eventually, Everybody gets overtaken.
Eventually, there's always somebody with a better algorithm.
And the TikTok algorithm is astonishingly good.
The TikTok algorithm, designed by the Chinese, what makes it good is that very often on platforms, you can sort of promote your content into virality.
On TikTok, they have an ability to identify potential viral content without the marketing dollars.
And so you get a bunch of stuff in your feed that is more viral and it's a very, very sophisticated algorithm.
In any case, Facebook took a complete trashing yesterday.
They gave a disappointing financial forecast, helping the major indices snap a four-session winning streak, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 3.7 percent.
That was the worst day since September of 2020.
The S&P 500 fell 2.4 percent.
PayPal and Spotify also took a massive hit.
Spotify was down 17 percent.
Over recent days, the payments giant lowered its 2022 profit outlook.
The streaming company elected not to provide annual guidance.
Both companies suffered sharp drops in their stock prices.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the setbacks reflect the increased scrutiny companies are under as major U.S.
stock indices remain near record highs and the Federal Reserve is preparing to raise interest rates for the first time since 2018.
So people are shedding their high performing stocks that don't actually have solid profits underlying them.
Rising rates tend to reduce the multiples investors are willing to pay for a share of company profits, a trend that stands to mean pain for stocks already trading at lofty valuations.
So if there are stocks that are overvalued, they're likely to recede back to the norm.
The level of forgiveness has gone down, said Daniel Genter, chief executive and chief investment officer at RNC Genter Capital Management.
When boards come to their shareholders to confess their sins, they're just not going to be pardoned with one Hail Mary.
The Facebook parent company surprised investors with deeper than expected declines in profit and a downbeat outlook.
The company said it expects revenue growth to slow and shared that it lost about 1 million daily users globally.
Shares declined 26 percent.
That is the worst daily performance since Facebook even opened in 2012.
One of the new problems here is that the company's challenges include a new ad privacy policy from Apple that Meta expects to cost more than $10 billion in lost sales for 2022.
That requirement that apps ask users whether they want to be tracked limited the ability to gather data used to track digital ads, driving advertisers to change their spending.
Meanwhile, by the way, companies like Amazon just made bank on advertising.
So Facebook, which again is free because basically they gather data on you and then they use that data to market to advertisers.
Apple's new policy was basically designed to cut Facebook off at the knees and it succeeded in that.
Meta's $232 billion drop in market value exceeds the record Apple set in September 2020, when the iPhone maker lost about $182 billion in a single day.
Now, when we say that they lost this much money, we don't mean that they have like cash and the cash just went away.
What we mean is that the stock is trading at a lower value.
So when you say that Facebook lost a couple hundred billion dollars, it doesn't mean that Mark Zuckerberg actually had his bank account strained.
It just means that his stock is not as marketable.
Some strategists said the recent slide in shares of speculative tech companies should serve to remind investors a robust market rally relies on advances by a variety of stocks.
They warn they expect more big stock swings ahead of any hint of slowing growth.
Jung Yoo Ma, Chief Investment Strategist at BMO Wealth Management said, In other words, you need actual innovation that drives actual goods and services that people wish to consume.
Not just goods and services that people engage in for free.
There have to be actual profit models.
And again, it's not just Facebook.
Spotify took a massive hit.
PayPal took a massive hit.
And we're about to head into a deflationary cycle with the with the Federal Reserve cutting back on its own inflationary policies.
So Joe Biden has a world of hurt heading for him, and his own economic policies make that world of hurt worse.
So for example, yesterday, Joe Biden signed an executive order boosting construction workers.
Federal construction workers now have to be unionized, is the basic idea here.
Every federal construction project over $35 million will now require project labor agreements, which means that unions get paid, so the taxpayer gets to foot that bill too.
So Joe Biden's economy is likely to slow.
It's likely to grind to a bit of a halt here because with the failure of loose money and with the failure of this administration to move on from COVID, they have a real problem on their hands.
And that continuation of the COVID panic is tanking the stock market.
I mean, it's giving people a very hang dog look about the economy for sure.
Meanwhile, by the way, all over the world, people are opening up again.
It's only Joe Biden and the Blue States that are refusing to really open up.
The WHO, for its part, the World Health Organization, on Thursday, offered Europe hope of a long period of tranquility, even enduring peace, in the war on coronavirus, with a growing list of nations lifting almost all COVID curbs, according to the Agence France-Presse.
WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge spoke of a ceasefire that could bring us enduring peace, with high vaccination rates, the milder Omicron variants, and the end to winter in sight.
This context leaves us with the possibility for a long period of tranquility, he said.
He said, even with a more virulent variant than Omicron, it's possible to respond to new variants that will inevitably emerge without reinstalling the kinds of disruptive measures we needed before.
So all over the world, people are realizing that this is stupid and that it's time to end it.
The problem for Joe Biden is that he's been stuck in I will end COVID mode, and he's now created an entirely paranoid set of American citizens who believe the minute you take off a mask, you'll be struck by the wrath of God.
That is not a recipe for economic success here.
Again, he's got tech stocks that are tumbling.
He's got the Fed, which is set to taper and is set to raise its interest rates.
And he's got to get out of this somehow.
So the Biden pivot has now begun.
We'll get to that in just one second.
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Alrighty, so Joe Biden has to pivot.
He knows he has to pivot.
And so Politico is now reporting that the White House is thinking about pivoting.
Quote, the White House is preparing to move on from Omicron.
Emboldened by falling case counts, the Biden administration is plotting a new phase of the pandemic response aimed at containing the coronavirus and conditioning Americans to live with it.
The preparations are designed to capitalize on a break in the months-long COVID-19 surge, with officials anticipating a spring lull that could boost the nation's mood and lift President Joe Biden's approval ratings at a critical moment for his party.
Biden and his top health officials have already begun hinting at an impending new normal and a conscious messaging shift meant to get people comfortable with a scenario where the virus remains widespread, yet at more manageable levels.
So here is the problem.
The big problem for the White House is that they are not capable of doing this.
The reason they're not capable of doing this is because the minute they say you have to live with this, everybody goes, so why have you been doing this the whole time?
See, here's the thing.
Places like Florida, where I've been living since October of 2020.
Places like Florida.
I've been living completely normally with this virus since at least March of 2021.
So for almost a year, we've been living completely normally.
Since the vaccines were tranched out, everybody got vaxxed, wanted to get vaxxed, everybody didn't want to get vaxxed, didn't get vaxxed, and then everybody went back to work.
Everybody started going out to parties.
Everybody started hanging out with friends.
Everybody started going to ballgames.
All this was happening for a year.
You know why?
Because the approach in Florida was always, calculate your risk, and then mitigate your risk as you see fit.
And then, when the absolute level of risk goes down, you will live normally.
Because that was the approach from the beginning.
The approach even in 2020, like the middle of 2020, right after the pandemic ensued, the approach was, let's shield the elderly, but then you get to make decisions about how you wish to live your life.
And a lot of people, like me, We're very cautious.
I was cautious up until the vaccines were available.
Because I was in touch with my parents.
My parents were 64.
So that meant that I wanted to be careful.
I didn't want to give COVID to them.
I didn't want them getting very sick from COVID.
Then they got vaxxed.
And I got vaxxed.
And my wife got vaxxed.
And then we were done.
Because at that point, we had mitigated our risk enough to feel safe.
This is what happens when you give people freedom.
When you give people freedom, they will inevitably move toward exercising that freedom.
It's just one of the things about freedom.
Once you tell people they can make their own risk assessments, and that they are capable, rational beings, they start to make risk assessments.
You may not like how they assess that risk, but once you give people the power to do that, they then get to assess that risk.
And you don't do it anymore, so it's not on your head anymore.
The problem for Joe Biden is he said, I have to assess the risk for all of you, and my risk assessment rules all of you.
And now he's stuck between a rock and a hard place because he played up the risk throughout the pandemic that people would die of every age despite the fact that this thing is wildly age-striated and that if you were a young person, your chances of dying from any form of Delta were about 1,000 times less than if you were an elderly person.
He never mentioned that.
The public health establishment didn't mention that.
And so he boxed himself in.
And so even if he should snap his fingers today and say, boom, the risk is gone.
How many people do you think are going to take that seriously?
I have serious doubts that people in blue states are going to take that seriously.
Instead, they're likely to say what is true, which is Joe Biden is only saying that for political purposes.
Because he has trained them to be very afraid at all times from COVID.
He said, you have to delegate all of your decision-making responsibility.
All of your risk assessment will be delegated out to the quote-unquote experts.
You're not the expert.
You can't decide your own risk.
I will decide your risk.
Fauci will decide your risk.
Zeke Emanuel will decide your risk.
And the problem is, the public health establishment is geared toward one thing and one thing only, and that is mitigating any risk.
Which is why you have members of the public health establishment simply lying about the risks of this stuff.
Because the minute that they actually admit it's over, they go away in your lives.
They no longer have any power.
Those of us who haven't been listening to Fauci for quite a while here don't care about what Fauci has to say.
But those who've been trained that everything Anthony Fauci says is what matters most in life, He can't just say, I, Joe Biden, assess this risk to no longer be a risk.
And then you've got Anthony Fauci and Zeke Emanuel saying differently.
Who do you think people are going to listen to?
I mean, Zeke Emanuel literally went on MSNBC last night and he purveyed misinformation.
And the entire left, which accuses Joe Rogan of purveying misinformation on COVID, what he's about to say right here is just not true.
Parents have to be more willing.
I think they hear some of these rare side effects and I think they're very common.
If with the Omicron variant, you know, kids are either going to get the vaccine or they're likely to get a serious condition of Omicron.
Having Omicron with the vaccine is almost invariably going to be better and safer for children.
I am confused about parents' attitude.
Why are you confused about parents' attitude?
I don't know any long-term studies on how the vaccine affects children.
I know that Omicron is... My kids all had it.
They're fine.
Also, I know by the data that the natural immunity that arises from actually getting the disease is far more durable than the vaccine immunity.
And I know this because Marty McCary at Johns Hopkins University literally tweeted out the stats yesterday.
Two years after people are infected, they have better immunity than two years after they were vaccinated or a year after they were vaccinated.
So the White House is kind of stuck here.
They want to pivot because they know the more that people are worried and paranoid about COVID, the more the economy is going to continue to skid.
So according to Politico, the White House is wary of declaring victory too early only to get hit with another catastrophic variant, a half dozen administration officials and others close to the COVID response said.
Officials are also anxious that voters will be disappointed by the idea of living with an endemic virus under a president who once pledged to shut it down completely.
And they realize it will take vigilance and billions more dollars from Congress to prevent the nation from backsliding into crisis once again.
But half of that ain't true, right?
This is when your worldview is completely off.
You have two choices.
One, shift your worldview and announce that you made a mistake.
Or two, keep doubling down.
And Joe Biden has to keep doubling down because the minute he announces it was a mistake, guess who the hero of this story is?
It is no longer Joe Biden.
It is no longer Andrew Cuomo.
It's the evil, horrible, no good, very bad Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, who took the exact opposite approach.
And they can never allow that to happen.
I love this.
The White House is wary of declaring victory too soon only to get hit with another catastrophic variant.
That is a rationale for forever measures.
Because guess what?
Forever and for all time, there may be a future variant or a future pandemic or a future disease.
You don't know what's around the corner.
So we're all supposed to live like this forever because something bad could happen tomorrow.
Let's just live in our houses forever.
Officials are anxious voters will be disappointed by the idea of living with an endemic virus.
70% of Americans say they're ready to live with this thing, according to polling from last week.
They might be disappointed with Biden for having lied to them, but that's why he shouldn't have lied to them.
I'm sorry.
If he said, read my lips, I'm shutting down the virus.
And then he can't.
And he never could.
Number one, people who believed him were idiots to believe him.
And number two, Joe Biden is a liar.
But he can't let go of the lie because then he's proved to be a liar.
We are moving toward a time when COVID doesn't disrupt our daily lives, said one administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.
But in order to get people to view the pandemic differently, they have to feel differently about the pandemic.
And herein lies the problem.
Joe Biden and company, they told a group of people that if they get vaxxed 97 times, and wear masks everywhere, and mask their kids everywhere, they are the good ones.
But guess who Joe Biden is going to have to tell to relax now?
All the people who listened to him.
All the people who didn't listen to him, but living normally.
For a year.
For many people, more than a year.
Those people were never listening to Joe Biden.
Now he has to go to his most ardent supporters and say, guys, you got to live like the people who didn't do it right.
There is little talk so far about disbanding the COVID response team, though some burnt out aides have mused about leaving as soon as the spring.
As to what metrics will signal success against the virus, officials say they're still figuring that out and hope they know it when they see it.
It's something we need to answer, the senior administration official said.
If you talk to six doctors inside and outside the administration, you get six different answers.
For now, Biden's COVID team is counting on an expanding supply of vaccine and therapeutic to accelerate the transition to the next pandemic phase, allowing people to safeguard themselves against COVID-19's worst effects before and after an infection.
Okay, first of all, most of us have been doing this the whole time.
Regulators are expected to authorize the vaccine for children under five in the coming months, a major milestone in building out the country's COVID protections.
No, it's not.
Sane parents don't — Leanna Wen of CNN yesterday was like, I'm not sure that three-year-olds should be getting the vaccines.
Do we have any really good data on that?
The administration is stockpiling new treatments like antiviral pills that are shown to significantly cut the risk of severe illness.
Well, I mean, yeah, but they shouldn't have to stockpile that.
They should just put that on the shelves, like, right now.
Like, just have Pfizer produce as much as humanly possible and put it on the shelves.
After initial hesitation over the need for ramping up the availability of at-home testing, the administration now views easy access to rapid tests as core to persuading people they can safely live with the virus.
Why?
Why?
You can safely live with the virus without the test.
Easily.
It is not hard.
The White House post-Omicron planning comes even as the U.S.
is still grappling with an explosion of cases and deaths, etc., etc.
So basically, the administration wants you to change your attitude, but they don't want to change anything they're doing.
They don't want to change a single thing they're doing, but they want you to change your attitude.
How exactly do they hope that that's going to work?
I mean, listen to this.
Even as it maps out the next stage, the White House has ruled out making a splashy show or major announcement regarding a hard pivot back to normalcy.
There's a fear among aides over repeating last year's July 4th Freedom from the Virus celebration, an event that turned politically disastrous weeks later when the Delta variant fueled a swift resurgence of the pandemic.
And though it faces pressure to back off from some of its more notable and onerous public health policies, the administration is also unlikely to drop its indoor masking recommendations, which are seen as among the key tools for preventing new outbreaks.
Preventing new outbreaks?
But that's not the point!
Officials instead describe plans for a more subtle shift over the next several weeks toward touting Biden's achievement in rolling out vaccines and treatments and emphasizing the everyday things people can do again if they're vaccinated.
So again, they're just going to keep saying the same exact thing they've been saying the whole time.
But the vaccinated are the scared ones.
The vaccinated are the ones who aren't going back to work.
The vaccinated are the ones who are trying to mask up their own kids.
The vaccinated are the ones who are shutting down schools.
Again, Joe Biden has no systematic ability to say to his own base that he has been wrong and they have been wrong.
And that even if they were right at the beginning, they are wrong now.
He can't do it.
There's no way for him to do it.
And so this pivot is going to fail.
It just is going to fail.
In just a moment.
We'll get to something that went right for the Biden administration yesterday, and then quickly started to go kind of sideways, which is weird.
We'll get to that in a moment.
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Alrighty, we'll get to something that went right for the Biden administration and then quickly started to go a little bit wrong.
First, it is that glorious time of the week when I give a shout out to a Daily Wire member.
Today, it is TJ Moe on Twitter, who understands the fundamentals of great parenting.
In this picture, TJ's adorable toddler daughter is sitting on her bedroom floor, taking a big swig from the world's most elite beverage vessel.
The caption reads, Raising Our Kid Right, Stardom Young.
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That is solid dadding.
Thanks for the pic.
Thanks for being a DailyWire member.
Speaking of which, if you're a member, then you actually get to see all the magic of Shut In because next Thursday, February 10th, will be the world premiere of Shut In, DailyWire's first original film at 9 p.m.
Eastern, 8 p.m.
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I just watched this the other night.
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Actually, I'd read the script, but it was the first time I'd seen it.
I watched it with my wife, and yeah, it freaked her out.
Don't forget, Shut In is premiering next Thursday, February 10th, 9 p.m.
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All righty.
So meanwhile, Joe Biden, he actually did get a good economic report today.
So there's a jobs report that came out today.
It said payrolls were up by about $467,000, which is a large win for him because the expectations, according to one report, is that we're going to actually lose jobs in January.
The White House had been downplaying the jobs report saying it was all about Omicron, which suggests that nothing that's happening right now is about Omicron.
It's just about Whether people go back to work.
If you stay out of the way, the economy will do fine.
It's not about Omicron, it's about what people do with Omicron.
All the talk about Omicron being the deciding factor is really not real, which is why Joe Biden should just declare the thing over and be done.
And yes, slap it his own face, but he's not going to do that.
Meanwhile, there was another piece of good news for Joe Biden yesterday.
So Joe Biden yesterday announced the death of an ISIS leader in Syria and said that the guy had blown himself up, unfortunately, along with several children.
Here's what he had to say.
The United States military forces successfully moved a major terrorist threat to the world, the global leader of ISIS, known as Haji Abdullah.
Our team is still compiling the report, but we do know that as our troops approach to capture the terrorist, in a final act of desperate cowardness, He, with no regard to the lives of his own family or others in the building, he chose to blow himself up, not just to the vest, but to blow up that third floor, rather than face justice for the crimes he has committed.
So that is a big win for the United States.
Killing ISIS leaders is definitely a good thing.
Now the problem is that pretty quickly there started to be allegations that actually the guy hadn't blown himself up and apparently the U.S.
raid had been carried out in such a way that it ended up basically getting a lot of kids killed.
This was the allegation anyway.
It was an allegation that was being made by some people on the ground and it actually prompted the Pentagon to admit yesterday that it might review Syrian air raid reports.
Because, of course, they had said something similar, you'll recall, about the killing, the supposed killing of members of Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Afghanistan, and it turns out that they actually just knocked out a guy and his family.
So, this would not be the first time there'd been a screw-up in terms of whether a bunch of civilians were killed who didn't need to be killed.
Not saying that's what happened here.
Now the Pentagon's acknowledging they might need to do an actual investigation.
There's been no decision to do a review or investigation right now, Nancy.
Again, this operation is not even 24 hours old.
As the Secretary said, we certainly are willing to take a look to see if there's any possibility that anything that we did might have caused harm to innocent life.
But I have no investigation or review to speak to today.
Okay, so we are waiting on more information on that.
And of course, we'll bring you more information on that.
But, win for the United States in killing an ISIS leader.
So, that could be a good pivot for the United States.
Another good pivot for the Biden administration that would be good for the United States would be to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine.
Because if Russia invades Ukraine, presumably China will look on and then invade Taiwan.
Now, it is unlikely at this point that Russia is going to invade Ukraine while the world's eyes are focused on China.
Beijing doesn't want any attention distracted from the Olympics right now, their propaganda effort over in Beijing.
And so what they don't want is for international conflict to break out in the middle of the Olympics.
And Putin and Xi Jinping are working very closely together.
And so it is unlikely that for the next few weeks, while the Olympics are going on, that there will be an invasion of Ukraine.
That's sort of the going conventional wisdom.
In any case, yesterday, the United States, however, announced that they thought that Russia was planning to fabricate a pretext to invade Ukraine, which would not be a shock.
They tried to do this last time with regard to Crimea.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia is planning to prefabricate a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine by releasing a staged video depicting attacks by Kiev military forces, U.S.
officials said Thursday, citing newly declassified intelligence.
U.S.
officials said they went public with the information to expose Russian tactics in an attempt to avert a conflict inside Ukraine, the latest in a series of similar moves in recent weeks.
So basically they're saying, we know what you're doing, so don't do it.
The intelligence shows a Russian plan to stage a prefabricated attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence personnel against Russian sovereign territory or against Russian-speaking people to justify an incursion into Ukraine.
This is exactly what Hitler did when he invaded Poland.
Basically, the idea is that you fabricate the idea that somebody else is attacking you and then, in quote-unquote response, you attack instead.
The plan would include Moscow's use of a propaganda video that would depict graphic scenes, according to administration officials, of a staged false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners, and images of destroyed buildings and military equipment.
The equipment in the video would be made to look like it is Ukrainian or from nations belonging to NATO, according to the officials.
Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said, this is one example that we can talk about today.
We've seen this kind of activity by the Russians in the past.
We believe it's important when we see it like this, and we can, to call it out.
The video, they said, could include depictions of Turkish-made Okay, so this is what the United States said about it.
But then, when they were questioned, they couldn't actually provide any evidence of this.
So the State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, He's asked by Matt Lee, who's a pretty ballsy AP reporter, where is the information here?
Like, you keep saying that this is true, but you're not providing us any of the data that backs it.
And the administration just keeps saying over and over, well, I'm telling you.
And Matt Lee keeps saying over and over, right, but you telling me things doesn't mean that it's true.
We did WMD in Iraq.
I was there for that.
Here is the State Department spokesman.
What evidence do you have to support the idea that there is some propaganda film in the making?
Matt, this is derived from information known to the U.S.
Government, intelligence information that we have declassified.
I think you know- Okay, well, where is it?
Where is this information?
It is intelligence information that we have declassified.
Well, where is it?
Where is the declassified information?
And he doesn't have any information on that.
So there really is a lot of trust me going on.
But listen, when it comes to Ukraine, the proof is going to be in the pudding.
If Putin is deterred from invading Ukraine and no serious concessions are made to the Russians, that will be a win for Biden.
So again, this is a critical period for the Biden administration.
If they hope to pivot, the pivot has to happen right now.
And you can see Biden trying to pivot on a wide variety of topics.
Right now, there's major crime in the cities.
Major crime in LA.
There's an entire piece in Los Angeles Magazine about the spike in violent crime in Los Angeles.
Murder rates are up tremendously.
The LAPD, meanwhile, is actually considering an end to pretextual stops of motorists and pedestrians, supposedly because everything is racist.
This is according to Hot Air.
Quote, the LAPD is considering limiting pretextual stops of motorists and pedestrians by officers investigating serious crime, arguing they aren't effective and have undermined public trust in the police, particularly among Black and Latino residents who have been disproportionately targeted in the past.
Such stops involve officers citing minor traffic or code violations as a pretext for stopping motorists, bicyclists, or pedestrians who they suspect may be involved in more serious crime.
This has been used for decades.
by the LAPD, especially in South L.A.
and other areas where gun violence is particularly high.
So, you're starting to see, again, in L.A., in New York, bad police policy.
Even Eric Adams, who just took over in New York, hasn't been able to do all that much about the crime.
Because the biggest problem in New York is that Eric Adams has very little power in New York.
Eric Adams can appoint the commissioner of the NYPD.
That's all he can do.
The DA is in an elected position.
And the DA basically has decided in New York, all these Soros-funded DAs, all of these Soros-funded DAs have basically decided they will not enforce any criminal law ever again.
And so New Yorkers are looking around going, yeah, you're not, you're not helping me.
Yesterday, there was video of New Yorkers saying that Joe Biden can't do anything to stem violent crime.
Crime is becoming very an issue.
I know people won't get on the subway.
People rearrange their day around it.
Crime is out of control in New York City.
When you get too lax, these type of things happen.
I think it's a total waste.
He's going to do absolutely nothing to help New York City.
OK, so Joe Biden has some real problems because of the crime in the city.
So yesterday he visited with Eric Adams.
And while he was there, he announced that he doesn't support defund the police any longer.
The answer is not to abandon our streets.
That's not the answer.
The answer is to come together.
The police and communities building trust and making us all safer.
The answer is not to defund the police.
It's to give you the tools, the training, the funding to be partners, to be protectors and community needs you and know the community.
Okay, so this inarticulate old man babbling, he's trying to pivot.
I think it's unlikely that he is able to pivot, because again, his base will never allow him to pivot.
But the fact that he wants to pivot shows that he now knows, the Democrats now know, they are in serious trouble come 2022, come 2024.
If they don't pivot, the problem is they may be locked in by their own ideology to a place where they can't pivot.
They are now like Ross trying to get that couch up the stairs in the stairwell.
Like that pivot ain't happening.
The angle of turn is just too great.
Alrighty, we'll be back here later today with an additional hour of content.
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Okay, as said, come back here later today.
You'll get an additional hour of content first.
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Hey everybody, this is Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show.
You know, some people are depressed because the republic is collapsing, the end of days is approaching, and the moon's turned to blood.
But on The Andrew Klavan Show, that's where the fun just gets started.