Ep. 452 - The Media Misses Trump's Point, Episode 98,618,012
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, President Trump yesterday compared the coronavirus to car accidents. He’s been mocked and derided for this comparison, but I think people are missing the very important ethical point that Trump was trying to make. We’ll take a deep dive into it today. Also, Five Headlines, including Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden both babbling nonsensically during TV interviews about the virus. And today we’ll cancel a feminist lawmaker who thinks the coronavirus is a weapon of the patriarchy.
Check out The Cold War: What We Saw, a new podcast written and presented by Bill Whittle at https://www.dailywire.com/coldwar. In Part 1 we peel back the layers of mystery cloaking the Terror state run by the Kremlin, and watch as America takes its first small steps onto the stage of world leadership.
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Today on the Matt Waltz Show, President Trump yesterday compared the coronavirus to car accidents, and he's been mocked and derided for this comparison.
But I think people are missing the very important ethical point that Trump was trying to raise, the media especially missing the point, as they usually do with President Trump, intentionally, of course.
So we're going to take a deep dive into this ethical point that Trump was raising, because I think it's important, and we'll talk about that today.
Also, five headlines, including Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden, both in separate TV interviews about the virus, babbling nonsensically.
At least to me, it seems to be.
It seems like they're just babbling nonsensically, but I'll play the clips, and you tell me if you can make heads or tails of it.
And today, we'll cancel a feminist lawmaker who thinks that the coronavirus is essentially a weapon of the patriarchy.
Because, of course, with feminists, everything is about them, including the coronavirus.
And that is obviously stupid for a number of reasons, and we'll get into all of that today.
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All right.
President Trump, as I said, getting a lot of grief for a point he made during a virtual town hall on Fox News
in answering a question about his contention that the shutdown should come to an end relatively soon.
Trump returned to an analogy that he's certainly not the first person to raise this, so it's somewhat familiar, but I think it's important, so listen to this.
I brought some numbers here.
We lose thousands and thousands of people a year to the flu.
We never turn the country off.
I mean, every year.
Now, when I heard the number, you know, we average 37,000 people a year.
Can you believe that?
And actually, this year, we're having a bad flu season.
But we lose thousands of people a year to the flu.
We never turn the country off.
We lose much more than that to automobile accidents.
We didn't call up the automobile companies and say, stop making cars.
We don't want any cars anymore.
We have to get back to work.
And then comes the screaming headlines and the outraged tweets and everything else, as we have come to expect.
An editorial in the Washington Post takes Trump to task for this analogy, a bad analogy, the Washington Post says, and the article argues that car accidents and the coronavirus are not the same because diseases are transmissible, whereas car accidents are not, and their death rates can grow exponentially where you don't find that with car accidents.
And this seems to be the standard response to this analogy, where we're told we cannot make these kinds of comparisons because two very different things cannot be compared in this way.
Well, first of all, not to focus too much on the semantics of this, but comparisons are in fact only valid when they are made between two different things.
Comparing the coronavirus to the coronavirus would be rather redundant and probably unhelpful.
And I blame the, I think I've complained about this before, the apples and oranges phrase.
I blame that for people don't understand what a comparison is.
And so when someone wants to say that a comparison is invalid, they say, oh, it's like comparing apples and oranges.
What are you talking about?
You can compare apples and oranges in a million different ways.
That's a perfectly valid comparison between apples and oranges.
The fact that they're different is what makes you able to compare them.
Now, it's true that nothing that is not the coronavirus is exactly like the coronavirus, but we could still pull from our experience dealing with other deadly problems in order to inform our efforts in dealing with this one.
But more to the point, the response from the Washington Post and others misses That's the basic point that the analogy seems to be trying to make.
Trump was not suggesting that we handle the coronavirus like we handle car accidents, or that the two things are similar in any sort of practical way.
This, rather, I think is a point about the ethical dilemma at work here.
So, about 35,000 people die in car accidents every year in this country.
Many more are maimed and crippled.
I don't know what that number is, but we know that it's many times more than 35,000.
And that works out to, just looking at the fatality rate, that's about 100 people dead per day.
Half of them under the age of 50.
So this is a problem that affects especially the young.
Globally, the yearly death toll is a million.
More than a million.
So an immense amount of pain, misery, destruction, and death is absolutely guaranteed every year that we allow cars to be on the road.
And we can take safety precautions like we do.
We can minimize the problem as much as possible, but we know, we absolutely know, just ask the car insurance companies.
We know that there will be around 30 to 35,000 fatal car accidents every single year.
Now, Even though, we all know this, nobody ever suggests that all cars be banned.
And for the purposes of this conversation, I'm going to put aside the extremist environmentalists who advocate for banning cars on the basis that they're, you know, going to kill the entire world in 11 years.
Those people do, but for an entirely different reason.
Nobody that I've ever heard advocates Banning cars in order to stop all these car accident deaths.
Even something like raising the driving age to 30.
That's a move that would save thousands of young lives.
And it's not nearly as extreme as getting rid of all cars.
But that's not seriously suggested or considered.
Even something like a mandatory federal minimum speed limit of 40 miles an hour.
For the most part, nobody advocates that.
So nobody advocates getting rid of cars, nobody advocates even less stringent measures like raising the driving age to 30, lowering the speed limit significantly.
Why is that?
Well, though nobody would ever put it like this, It's because we've decided that 35,000 dead people is a cost worth paying in order to keep our cars.
All of that death, all that pain, all of those countless lives destroyed, it's all worth it, we say, so that we can get from point A to point B quicker.
Again, nobody would ever phrase it like this.
And we don't like to think of it like this.
But this is the calculation.
There's no way around it.
If you think that we should keep cars on the road and we should keep driving around, then you are saying, you are absolutely saying that those 35,000 dead people who are guaranteed, the 30 to 35,000 dead people that are guaranteed next year, in the coming year, are worth the cost.
That is what you are saying.
Anybody who really disagrees, I mean really disagrees, and actually thinks that that's not a cost worth paying, would be calling for the prohibition of all motor vehicles.
Yet, nobody is.
Now, you might argue that cars save more lives than they take.
Well, and I could see how you would try to argue that.
How would a person in a medical emergency get to the hospital as quickly as they need to if we don't have ambulances?
But it's at a minimum debatable whether ambulances save more people than car accidents kill.
I'm not sure if that's true or not.
And besides, a very easy solution is available there.
We could ban all cars except emergency vehicles.
And this would save even more lives because now the fire trucks and police cars and ambulances can get around and they don't have to worry about congested highways and cluttered streets and everything else.
Yet, once again, nobody argues for that.
We've decided that the infringement on our lifestyles and our liberties that a motor vehicle ban would entail is not worth the lives it would save.
You look all across society, and we find these sorts of calculations being made.
Even though we make them implicitly, we make them without thinking much about them, we are still making them.
In fact, I have a personal story related to this that I want to relay in just one second.
But first, let's check in with Rock Auto.
In keeping with the theme here, if something goes wrong with your car, and you need to get it fixed, and you still need your cars to work, well, what are you going to do?
If you don't want to go to the store, maybe you can't, depending on the situation in your state.
That's why you want to be able to order online.
And because there's so many different types of cars, it's impossible to keep them all stocked.
Even if you do go into an auto parts store, that's, once again, why you need rockauto.com.
And you have it, fortunately, at your desk.
You carry it around in your pocket.
It's as easy as that.
rockauto.com has everything from engine control modules and brake parts to tail lamps, motor oil, even new carpet.
Whether it's for your classic or daily driver, get everything you need in a few easy clicks delivered directly to your door.
rockauto.com always offers the lowest prices possible.
Rather than changing prices based on what the market will bear, Like a lot of industries do.
That's not happening here.
It's the same price for everyone.
Why would you choose to spend 30%, 50%, 100% more for the exact same item that you can get online?
Why would you go into a store to pay more, spend more time and everything else?
Now, rockauto.com, also I should mention, is a family business serving auto parts customers online for 20 years, and I think especially these days, we should all want to support small businesses, family businesses, and that's just yet another reason to go check out rockauto.com.
Go to rockauto.com right now, see all the parts available for your car or truck, write Walsh in there, how did you hear about us, Box, so that they know that we sent you.
So, we make these calculations all the time about risk versus reward.
A few days ago, I was inside and I had to run outside suddenly and rescue my son who had been, he had been outside maybe for three minutes.
But if you know, if you have kids, you know that it doesn't take them long to get themselves into trouble.
So in the span of three minutes, he had got himself stuck about 20 feet up in a tree perched on a precariously thin branch.
And so I went up, and even though the branches were even thinner for me, of course I was fortunately able to get up and bring him down.
Now, had I not gotten there in time, or had his sister not had the wherewithal and the presence of mind to come and get me, like she did, he might have fallen.
And who knows what happens when a kid falls 20 feet out of a tree.
If he were to fall on his head, break his neck, he would have died.
Does that mean that I'll never let my son play outside in our yard unattended ever again?
No.
It would certainly make him safer if I kept him locked inside, under our watchful eyes at all times.
But we as parents have decided that the risk, not a substantial risk, but also not entirely unsubstantial, is a price worth paying in order to give our children a little bit of freedom and a chance to have some fun and be normal children.
Every time you open your front door and you tell your kids, go play, there's a risk.
And what you're saying, even if you don't say it out loud, hopefully you don't, is that the risk of bodily injury or death that is inherent in them going outside to play is worth it for the benefit of them simply being children and having some fun.
God forbid.
If my son did tumble off that branch, I'm sure I would have wished that I had kept him chained to me at all times.
And if a family member ever dies in a car accident, I would wish that all cars had vanished from the earth before that happened.
And if my parents were to die of the coronavirus, I would probably wish that the entire economy had been burned to the ground and millions had been made destitute to save them.
In fact, someone said to me yesterday, well, how would you feel if this was your child who had coronavirus?
And what if your child died of coronavirus?
Well, if this was my child, yeah, I would send the entire world into a Great Depression.
I would make you homeless and all your kids homeless, probably, to save my own child.
That's what I would do.
For my own child.
But, in my grief and my longing, would I be looking at these issues more rationally and ethically or less?
The question is, should I approach life at all times with the mentality of a grief-stricken man, desperate to preserve his loved one's lives at any and all costs, no matter what?
Is that how I should always approach things?
Is that how we should approach things?
Or should we allow for certain risks?
Even risks that we know we'd probably regret if tragedy were to strike.
Now, the coronavirus itself is not like car accidents.
It's not like a boy stuck in a tree.
But the ethical question is essentially the same.
And this is what the point I think Trump was trying to make.
Our cars and the positive impact they have on our lives, we say, even if we don't say it, we still say, are worth the 10 million people who will die in them or because of them across the globe over the next decade.
10 million.
Our children's fun and freedom is worth the risk to their physical health that must inevitably accompany it.
Now the balance could tip the other way.
Obviously there are many fun things that my kids want to do that I don't let them do because the risk is too much.
And maybe if enough people died in cars, I don't know, maybe if, say, 5 million were perishing on our highways just in this country alone every single year, maybe we really would consider banning them, I don't know.
There is a line somewhere, I don't know where exactly, I don't think you do either, but apparently, when it comes to cars, wherever that line is, it is comfortably above the 35,000 dead body threshold.
That's not enough to make us even consider banning cars.
So how many people have to die before we even talk about it?
100,000?
A million?
I don't know.
So then what about the coronavirus?
If our cars are worth 35,000 dead, what is our economy worth?
What is our way of life worth?
If the benefit of having heavy chunks of metal flying around at terrifying speeds outweighs the substantial downside, how do we weigh our entire economy against the risk of an out-of-control viral outbreak?
What if I were to say right now, That I think 35,000 dead people from the coronavirus is a price worth paying to save our economy.
What if I were to say, let's open the economy up and where's my line?
I think as long as we keep the death toll around 35,000, I'm okay with that.
Now, yes, it may kill many more than that.
It may kill fewer.
That's not the point right now.
I'm saying if I were to say that, you would probably call me a monster.
You would say, you're willing to have 35,000 people die just for the economy?
Yet, while calling me a monster, you have already signed on to that price just for the minivan in your driveway.
You have already made that calculation and said, yes, that is a price I think we should pay.
35,000 dead people on our highways, fine.
Now, could the minivan really be worth more by itself than the minivan combined with your house, your job, your food, your retirement savings, everything else that would be put on the line during an economic crash if these shutdowns were to last for months on end, as some government officials seem to indicate they will?
Clearly not.
We, in fact, it turns out, despite what people like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are saying, We should not destroy the economy and embrace destitution just to save one life.
We won't even commit to riding our bikes to work for that.
So what would the economy's destruction be worth?
Would its destruction be worth it to save 50,000 lives?
100,000?
A million?
I don't know the answer.
But this is the question we're asking.
And the conversation we have to have, as unsavory as it seems.
And once again, I don't know the answer.
I've struggled with this, as you know, over these weeks.
But it should be noted, as President Trump already did, that the people appalled by this conversation, the people say, how dare you even think in these terms?
They are participating in the conversation whether they like it or not.
Every time they drive to the grocery store, they take part in the dialogue.
Even if they don't give their answers out loud.
And that is the question.
We are facing, as I've been saying, two potential worst-case scenarios on one side or the other.
We've got the worst case scenario of the coronavirus killing many thousands or even millions of people, depending on who you listen to.
Worst case on the other end of the spectrum, if these shutdowns go on too long, and there are some who say maybe they've already gone on too long, as far as the economy is concerned, maybe the damage is already irrevocable, I don't know.
But on the other end of the spectrum, Worst-case scenario is a economic crash unlike anything we have ever seen.
A Great Depression that dwarfs the last one.
Millions destitute, looting, rioting, and everything else.
That is, I'm not saying that's going to happen.
It could happen.
It is a worst-case scenario.
And what we're doing is we're balancing these two worst-case scenarios.
And we're saying, okay, if we try to avoid this worst-case scenario over here of the economic crash, Yes, that means we get back to work and we take certain precautions, but still there's a risk of more people dying from the coronavirus.
Well, how many dead makes it worth it to stave off the economic crash?
That's the question.
The thing is, if you say, no, no, no, we can't do that, let's just stay locked down as long as we need to, well then, you're saying that this worst case scenario of the economic crash is a price you're willing to pay.
And so I could ask you, how many destitute families are you willing to accept?
How many would make it worth it to you?
Or how many would make it so that it's not worth it anymore?
Are you willing to have 50 million destitute families out on the street not able to feed their kids in order to keep these lockdowns going?
Is that too much?
Okay, well then, 10 million?
I mean, where's your line?
I don't think we can hide from this question.
And I think that's what President Trump was trying to say.
All right, let's go to your news headlines before we do.
If you haven't had a chance yet to see some of our new content called All Access Live, you should head over to dailywire.com, check it out.
Jeremy Boring and Ben Shapiro kicked it off last week, and then we all did live streams each day over at dailywire.com, and we will continue all of this week at 8 p.m., 5 p.m.
Pacific.
All Access Live is a lot more relaxed than a normal programming, the normal shows and
stuff that we do.
It's less focused on bringing you news and information.
It's more of a conversation.
We're sitting there talking to you.
And we've been getting a lot of amazing messages from our Daily Wire community during these
trying times.
And we can see they're coming from a positive and heartfelt place.
And I think that this live stream then is not only good for the viewers, but it's good
It's therapeutic for us as well to be able to have these conversations.
So this is a show intended for our All Access members.
But during this national emergency and time of isolation, we've opened it up to all of our members and in doing so accelerated the launch.
So please let us know what you think of it.
And if you're around at 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific tonight, then tune in.
I believe it'll be me tonight doing the All Access So, last time, last week, I did conclude our all-access show by playing a musical number on my banjo.
Who knows what will happen today?
I might have to even bust out the kazoo, because I am a kazoo expert.
All right, let's go to your headlines.
Number one, the Senate and White House have agreed to a $2 trillion stimulus package.
There's a lot in the bill, obviously, but focusing on what I think is the most important thing, Here's a reminder, reading from CNN, of how the checks to individual Americans will work under this plan.
It says, under the plan, as it was being negotiated, individuals who earned $75,000 in adjusted gross income or less would get direct payments of $1,200 each, with married couples earning up to $150,000 receiving $2,400 and an additional $500 per each child.
receiving $2,400 and an additional $500 per each child.
The payment would scale down by income, phasing out entirely at $99,000 for singles
and $198,000 for couples without children.
So that's the plan, at least on the individual checks piece of it.
This, to me, I'm sorry, is a joke.
$2 trillion spent, and you're giving $1,200 to some Americans, which for most will not even be enough to come close to covering the bills, and you're excluding millions of American families because they made, according to the government, too much money two years ago.
What if they make less money now?
Well, they're out of luck.
And what if they earn over the threshold now, but their family business has been destroyed?
Or they live in a high cost of living area, and so even with that income level, they're still basically living paycheck to paycheck.
What if a thousand other scenarios?
Doesn't matter.
No help for you.
That's what the government says.
By the way, here's a question.
Is this money going to be taxed?
I don't know.
I don't know the answer to that question.
I suspect that it will.
be counted as income and so it will be taxed.
So in that case, they're gonna send you back your own money, which is what these stimulus checks are, it's your money,
they're giving it back to you, and then they're gonna tax you on it.
So they give you the check, and then at tax time next year, they come back around and they say,
hey, did you happen to get any checks sent to you in addition to your regular paychecks?
I mean, I don't know.
Did you get anything else?
Because... Oh, yeah, I did.
I got a stimulus check.
Oh, cool.
Well, we're just going to need a chunk of that.
We're going to need just a little chunk of that.
But you gave it to me in the first place.
Oh, did we?
I forgot all about that.
Anyway, so about that chunk.
Just a little chunk is what we're going to need.
Meanwhile, the White House is now telling us that the total stimulus effort The total thing, including this bill and other measures, will total $6 trillion.
$6 trillion.
Just to give you an idea of how much money that is.
If you were to stack it in $1 bills, it would reach over 400,000 miles into the sky.
Enough to hit the moon.
You'd have so much that you could hit the moon, and then you'd have so much left over on the moon, you could build another stack going back to Earth.
Which is good, because then you're not stuck on the moon.
You could climb that stack back.
As far as the physics and everything, I'm not sure how much that would work.
But still, that's the amount of money we're dealing with.
It is a lot of money, to put it mildly.
I wonder, are we getting to the point Where you might as well just give everybody a million dollars.
Spend 327 trillion dollars, give everybody a million bucks.
Because at what point does it not matter anymore?
Six trillion dollars is already more money than actually exists on Earth as it is.
So when you get to the point where you're spending more money than exists on planet Earth, what, why, why even, what's the difference?
Might as well make it 300 trillion, a quadrillion, you know, whatever.
I don't, I think, I'm in favor of the stimulus checks to Americans, I actually think it should be more.
But at the same time, with these shutdowns continuing now, for many more weeks it seems like, so we're closing up businesses, decimating the economy, the government's spending six trillion dollars Passing that bill off on future generations.
We've got a recipe here for something that is not good.
Economically.
Number two, Joe Biden has basically disappeared over the last week, rather than getting out there, maybe not out there, he can't do that, but at least on TV, being seen, making his case, trying to show how he would lead in a situation like this, he's been like locked in a basement somewhere, they're keeping him out of sight, until the last couple of days, and now he's finally showing up again, we're seeing him on TV, and I think based on his appearances, We're starting to see why they were hiding him in the first place.
So let's watch this.
Here's just one example.
Watch this.
In Hot Topics, we talked about Trump saying the government would reassess the recommended period for keeping businesses shut and people at home.
Are you at all concerned, as Trump said, that we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself?
We have to take care of the cure.
That will make the problem worse no matter what.
We have to take care of the cure.
That will make the problem worse no matter what.
Take care of the cure.
Taking care of the cure will make the problem worse no matter what.
What does taking care of the cure mean?
It sounds Good.
It sounds like you want to, okay, I'm taking care of the cure.
Hey, I'm taking care of that cure.
Like if somebody's saying that, what they mean is they're going to cure it, right?
Whatever the problem is.
And so you're saying that's going to make the problem worse.
Curing the problem will make it worse.
I don't get it.
I'm, I'm not even trying to be funny.
I really don't even understand.
I don't understand what he's even driving at.
This isn't just stumbling over your words.
This is a apparently totally nonsensical statement.
And then Nancy Pelosi yesterday also had her own Joe Biden moment.
Listen to this.
Well, I do think that there is a whole concern in our country that if we're giving tens of billions of dollars to the airlines, that we could at least have a shared value about what happens to the environment.
But that is an excuse, not a reason for Senator McConnell to go forward.
Some of the other issues like not fully extending family medical leave, not funding food stamps,
I hope that will all change in the next few hours.
But there are issues that are central to the well-being of Americans.
There is a whole concern in our country that if we're giving tens of billions of dollars
to the airlines, that we could at least have a shared value about what happens to the environment.
it.
Have a shared value about what happens to the environment.
We have a shared value.
I don't understand what that means either.
I don't understand it.
I don't know what these people are talking about, but the best and brightest right here, we have the best and brightest leading the way.
That makes me feel better.
In these times, dealing with one of the great crises that we've ever faced as a nation, and by that I mean also the economic devastation that they're causing right now, the whole thing, right?
It's just good to know that these are the people who are making decisions.
All right, number three, interesting report in the Daily Wire right now by Amanda Prestigiacomo.
She writes, government policy and guidance crafted in an effort to flatten the curve of coronavirus-related deaths has largely been based upon an Imperial College London model headed by Professor Neil Ferguson.
The terrifying model shows that as many as 2.2 million Americans could perish from the virus if no action is taken peaking in June.
However, that model is likely highly flawed, Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta writes.
Professor Gupta led a team of researchers at Oxford University in a modeling study which suggests that the virus has been invisibly spreading for at least a month earlier than suspected, concluding that as many as half of the people in the UK have already been infected by COVID-19.
If this is the case, fewer than 1 in 1,000 who have been infected with COVID-19 become sick enough to need hospitalization, leaving the vast majority with mild cases or free of symptoms.
With so many in the UK and potentially United States presumably infected, so-called herd immunity could kick into effect, dramatically limiting the number of deaths modeled by Ferguson and company.
The Financial Times explains, the Oxford study is based on what is known as a susceptibility-infected recovery model.
That old canard of COVID-19 built up from case and death reports from the UK and Italy.
The researchers made what they argue as the most plausible assumptions about the behavior of the virus.
The report continues, the modeling that brings back into focus herd immunity, the idea that the virus will stop spreading when enough people have become resistant to it because they've already become infected.
Okay, that's your positive side of things.
Interesting perspective there.
Number four, we'll try to keep a balance here, right?
So we've got the positive, we'll go to the negative.
Nice balance between comforting and terrifying.
Reading from the Daily Mail, it says, an intensive care specialist has described how one person with coronavirus could infect up to 59,000 others as the virus is more than twice as infectious as the flu.
And we're not just talking about people on spring break here.
This is Dr. Hugh Montgomery, a professor of intensive care medicine at University College London, explained how the virus could be passed from one person to thousands as he calls on Britons to heed advice on social distancing.
He says, Normal flu, if I get that, I'm going to infect on average about 1.3 or 1.4 people if there was such a division.
If those 1.3 or 1.4 people give it to the next lot, that's the second time it gets passed on.
By the time that's happened 10 times, I've been responsible for about 14 cases of the flu.
Dr. Montgomery went on to illustrate how coronavirus is far more infectious than the common flu, with one person potentially infecting 59,000 others under the same circumstances, just based on the exponential way that these things are passed on.
So that's, there's the negative side of it as well.
Two perspectives.
I'm not going to tell you which one to believe, because I have no idea.
Number five, an interesting notice on the website for Planned Parenthood Keystone.
So that's Planned Parenthood of Pennsylvania, essentially.
And if you go to the website, this is the notice that is posted there right now.
It says, to ensure the health and safety of our patients, staff, and community, Planned Parenthood Keystone has temporarily closed all of its health centers, quote unquote, I'm adding the scare quotes, for family planning visits effective March 23rd, 2020.
At this time, Planned Parenthood Keystone is serving patients in Allentown, Wilkes-Barre, Warminster, Redding, York, and Harrisburg for abortion services only.
Birth control starts and renewals, depot shots, emergency contraception, UTI treatments, vaginitis, rash, or legion and STI treatments will be available via telehealth very soon.
Okay.
That's interesting, I think, because We're told that abortion is only, what do they say?
They say it's 3% of what a Planned Parenthood does.
They tell us, especially when we're talking about the funding of Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood gets $500 million a year in tax funding, in welfare checks basically from sugar daddy government.
But we're told that's okay because Planned Parenthood, they hardly do any abortions.
It's only 3% of what they do.
Right?
Yeah, it adds up to 330,000 abortions, which means 330,000 dead children every single year, but it's only 3%.
It's basically nothing.
They hardly do any abortions.
That's the argument, the spin, the propaganda that we're told, but yet here we are.
And they're shutting everything down.
And supposedly, this is a facility that is a health facility.
And you would think that's pretty essential.
And they do all kinds of really important, essential, health-related things.
And yet, at least in their physical facilities, they're not offering any of that but abortions.
If it's only 3% of what they do, And it's not even that important to their overall business model, as we're told, then why would they stop doing everything but that?
I mean, if you're a business and you've got to cut things back, would you narrow things down to only 3% of your business, the 3% that's so much less important than everything else you do?
I mean, if anything, shouldn't they stop doing abortions and continue all of the other allegedly essential healthcare practices that they perform?
The services they provide?
No, but it said they stopped doing all of that and they only do the abortions.
It would seem like, call me crazy, but it would seem like the reason they're only doing the abortions is because actually that's really all they basically do or that is, at a minimum, that is actually the point of their organization and everything else is peripheral.
Everything else is just an add-on that they tack on at the end.
And so they can stop doing all of that, but they're still going to do the abortions.
They keep the money coming in and their business is still alive and humming and going right along.
That's how it would seem to me.
All right, let's go to your daily cancellation.
Today we're canceling Marine Faruqi, who is a feminist lawmaker in Australia.
Now you knew, you just knew the feminists would try to make coronavirus about themselves.
You knew they would because everything is about them.
They can't help it.
And here we are.
Let us not forget that COVID-19 is a gendered crisis.
Nurses, nurse aides, teachers, child carers and early childhood educators, aged care workers and cleaners are mostly women.
They are on the front line of this public health crisis and carry a disproportionate risk of being exposed to the virus.
Let's also not forget that not all homes are safe places.
Quarantine or self-isolation at home will put women and children at risk.
Women's advocates and domestic violence experts are warning us that domestic abuse increases during times of crisis.
And I'm terribly worried that these warnings have not been heeded by this government that has long resisted adequate funding for the needed resources and refuges.
A gendered crisis, she says, because everything is gendered in the addled brain of a feminist, even as they say that gender is essentially a social fiction.
Like I said, addled brain.
But notice a few things here.
First, she says nurses, nurse aides, etc., are mostly women.
You notice who she left out?
Doctors, surgeons.
They also, I would argue, are on the front lines of this thing, but what about them?
Well, they're not mentioned because they don't count because they're mostly men, so we're going to forget about them.
But secondly, if the coronavirus is picking on one gender especially more than the other, it's definitely men who are the primary victim.
The vast majority of deaths from the virus are male.
Some figures suggest that it's around 70%.
That the death rate is 70% male.
At least that's the case in Italy.
And across the board, it's certainly a majority of cases, of the most severe cases, the fatal cases, are male.
Yet she's trying to make it into a thing that's victimizing women the most.
This just shows you how feminism works.
This feminist was able to take a disease that mostly kills men and turn it into a crisis that mostly affects women.
I mean, it's extraordinary.
Next thing you know, she's going to be telling us that prostate cancer is mainly a crisis affecting women.
This is the way it goes, though.
When you buy into a victim narrative, and that's the way you look at life, and the narrative is that women are victims and men are not, well, then every situation has to be seen through that lens, which leads to manifest absurdities like this.
So, Ms.
Farooqui, you are cancelled for that reason.
Now, let's go to e-mails.
We have a couple e-mails here I wanted to get through as we wrap the show up.
If you become a Daily Wire member, you can send e-mails to the mailbag.
This is from James.
It says, Dear Matt, Thank you for your coverage of the Chinese virus over the last few days.
I'm tired of seeing the world brought to its knees over a cold.
You seem like you were panicked a few days ago, but have settled down.
That's great.
Keep it up.
See, this is exactly the wrong way of looking at this, James.
I hate to disappoint you.
The virus is not just a cold.
It's a very serious disease.
Highly contagious.
High levels of hospitalization.
Deadlier than the flu.
These are all facts.
Right?
So, and, well, I guess I should amend that.
We talk about the levels of hospitalization.
I mean, as I just read during the headlines, we actually, we don't know exactly what the actual rate is when you compare hospitalization rate to the number of affected, because we don't know how many people are affected.
But we do know that lots of people are going to the hospital.
We can just put it that way, okay?
And you can look at what's happening in New York right now.
We see what's happening in other countries.
Now, so those are facts.
Does that mean that we should shut the economy down indefinitely?
No, I don't think so, as I've argued.
Because, and I'm trying to make this very clear, I'm not saying that we shouldn't shut the economy down or that we should get the economy going again soon because the virus isn't a big deal.
That's not my argument.
That has never been my argument.
What I'm saying is I'm afraid that the cost is too great to bear and it might not even achieve much anyway when it comes to stopping or slowing the virus.
What if the virus continues as it seems to be doing in places like New York?
It continues to spread rapidly and we stay locked down, we destroy the economy.
So now we have a destroyed economy and we've still got the virus to deal with.
And if we're not staying locked down until there's a vaccine a year from now, presumably even the most extreme people in favor of a lockdown would agree that eventually we have to start back up again.
And what if we start back up again and the virus comes back with a vengeance?
Now we've got a destroyed economy and the virus and we're less capable of dealing with all of these things.
For me, come to bear in analyzing this, and I'm saying that destroying the economy is a mistake and it won't be worth it because of the human cost.
So I believe sooner rather than later, we need to get people back to work so they can feed their families while taking a number of precautions, instituting measures that I've outlined over the last few days.
And these are not measures that I came up with.
I'm not the first one to think of these, but there are a number of things we could do.
We could open the economy while still taking a number of measures.
Including, if you're in favor of more draconian measures by the government, there are draconian things you could do even while getting the economy going, such as, for example, mandatory mask laws for everybody that goes out in public.
Now, I'm not saying I'd be in favor of that.
I don't know how you need to produce a hell of a lot more masks in order to do it.
I think we could do that.
I don't know how you would enforce it.
Would people actually follow it?
These are all questions.
But then you have the same problem with a shutdown.
How do you enforce that, especially as weeks go by and people are sick of it?
How do you enforce it?
Are people going to follow it?
I think at a certain point they won't anymore, so you still have that issue.
But you could do, you know, that's it.
Now, as far as masks go, I would be more in favor of being more targeted, where maybe certain industries it's required that you have masks, at least for a time.
But then there are many other things that you do, too.
You quarantine the nursing homes, people that are especially vulnerable, you keep them home, quarantine the elderly.
And anyone who's in that category but needs a paycheck to survive, well, we can continue to support them.
And we could be more targeted in our approach that way.
So what I'm suggesting is just a more targeted approach at the virus while trying to keep the economy going as much as possible to stave off a depression and the destitution and suffering that will come from that.
The point is we cannot take the extreme of, let's keep everything locked down for six months.
We can't go with that extreme, but we also can't go to the other extreme that you're at and say, this is just a cold because that's not the case either.
So, you know, I don't know the solution.
Nobody does.
I don't want thousands of people to die from this virus.
I also don't want our economy to be destroyed and families to be destitute.
There's got to be a path that navigates those extremes.
Or maybe there isn't.
I say there has to be, there's gotta be, but there doesn't have to be.
It's possible that there is no path.
There is no good answer.
But maybe there is.
And we have to look for it.
Right now we've bought in totally to shut everything down, Great Depression be damned.
I'm saying let's not do that.
Let's actually look at all of our options and try to be a little bit more creative in the way we deal with this.
All right, let's go to Anna says, hi Matt.
Thought I'd change the discussion from the coronavirus to something else.
Thank God.
What is your take on soulmates?
Is your wife your soulmate?
Do we all have one person out there who is made for us?
It's a good question.
And Anna, I do believe in soulmates.
Soulmates would be two people who meet on a foot fetish website.
Pausing for laughter.
So I apologize for that, but it is a pretty good pun.
You have to admit.
That's a good pun.
Anyway, the answer is no, I don't believe in soulmates.
At least not in the case of one individual who's out there in the world who's the right person for you and is waiting for you to find them.
I don't believe in that.
Is my wife my soulmate?
Yes.
Because we're married and we chose to become soulmates.
That was a choice we made.
Which to me makes it even more meaningful.
It wasn't like this was written in the stars and so I had to end up with my wife and we're sort of slaves of destiny or whatever.
That's not how I see it.
I see it as...
We both started our lives in different states, hundreds of miles apart.
And we lived our lives and made choices and went this way and that.
And there were a million different choices we could have made that would have taken us in different directions.
We could have made those choices, we didn't.
There were other people we could have ended up with, but we didn't make that choice either.
And then we met each other, we made a choice to be together.
And because of that choice and that free choice, I think it makes it so much more meaningful.
And once you make the choice, now you're committed.
You've made an oath before God, and now you are soulmates.
So I wasn't my wife's soulmate when I met her.
I was her soulmate when I said I do, and when she said I do.
I think there's another thing, though, about this soulmate thing.
I think there's a great danger in this mentality, actually, and we see it play out in society over and over again.
I'll tell you what the danger is.
If you believe that there are soulmates, there's someone out there that's made for you ahead of time, and all you have to do is go find them.
First of all, with all these quarantines, that's gonna be very difficult to do.
But, more importantly, well, what if you meet somebody, and you think they're your soulmate, and you marry them, and then you discover that, oh, you know, I don't think they are my soulmate.
And then you go to your job, and you have a co-worker, and you say, oh, I think this is my soulmate.
And that's how marriages are destroyed.
And invariably what happens is the person who says that, oh, you know, I made the wrong choice.
I just met the right person.
I'm going to leave my spouse in the dust.
Even if I have kids, I'm going to leave them in the dust too.
I'm going to go with my real soulmate.
Invariably, what do they find out?
They find out that, oh, no, no, that person's not my soulmate either.
I'll have to keep looking.
Five marriages later, you know, destroyed families, destroyed lives.
That's where the soulmate thing takes you, I think.
If it's true that there are soulmates and that there is one person out there who's made for you, destined for you, then it is true that you could end up with the wrong person, and then you could meet some other person who's the right person, and by this way of thinking, then if you had some way of knowing that this other person is your soulmate, then it would, I guess, be right to leave your spouse for this other person, because this person was made for you.
This is who God or the universe or whoever intended for you.
But that can't be the case.
It can't be that we're destined to leave a person who we made an undying vow and commitment to.
It just can't be.
And I don't think that's the case.
Your soulmate is the person who you choose to be your soulmate.
As long as they choose you as well.
But thank you for that question.
That was a nice little break from from the coronavirus madness, which we will get back to tomorrow, I'm sure.
And thanks everybody for watching.
Stay safe out there.
Godspeed.
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