Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the government is now arresting pastors who try to hold church services. Meanwhile, abortion clinics are “essential” and still open for business. This is what America has become. Also, Five Headlines including more mayors and governors around the country going insane with power. And today we’ll cancel the Mayor of Houston who tried to solve crime by asking criminals nicely to stop committing them.
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 Wall Show, the government is now arresting pastors who try to hold church services.
Meanwhile, abortion clinics have been deemed essential by state governments across the country, and also a federal judge, multiple federal judges have said that's essential, so they stay open.
This is what America has become.
Close the churches down, keep the abortion clinics open.
We'll talk about all this.
Also, five headlines, including more mayors and governors around the country, are going insane with power.
And it's like they're trying to one-up each other with just how insane they get.
And today we'll cancel, speaking of which, the mayor of Houston, who tried to solve crime by asking criminals nicely to stay home and not commit crime. So all of that coming up
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Okay, by the way, I do want to mention this before we get into all the churches being closed down and everything.
You know, you've probably seen these headlines in the last couple of days.
Here's one from Vox.
Now, these headlines are all over the place, all the big media companies have them.
It says, the coronavirus has now killed more Americans than the 9-11 terror attacks.
This is interesting to me, that you see these headlines.
Because we've been told over and over again, we've been screamed at, really, actually, that it's illegitimate and wrong and misguided to compare coronavirus deaths to flu deaths.
So the flu kills 60 to 80,000 Americans a year, sometimes more, sometimes less.
And we've been told, no, you can't do that.
Can't compare it.
Can't make that comparison.
They're totally different.
They're so different that any comparison just could not possibly be helpful.
But then the same media that tells us that we can't make those comparisons, they turn around and compare the coronavirus to 9-11.
Now, wait a second.
Hang on.
Hang on.
Isn't a terrorist attack more different from the coronavirus than the flu is from the coronavirus?
However different the coronavirus and the flu are, aren't they closer?
Aren't they more similar, at least, than 9-11?
Which comparison is closer?
Which is more legitimate?
Which is more illuminating?
Which of these two things are more similar?
A terrorist attack where people fly planes into buildings and a virus, or a virus and a virus?
Which of those groups have more similarities?
So why is it that the less similar group, the more strained comparison ends up in the headlines, while the more legitimate comparison is anathema?
And really, you're not allowed to, I mean, up until this 9-11 thing, if you haven't noticed, you're not, up until now, you haven't been allowed to make any comparisons between the coronavirus and any other disease, anything.
If you try to compare it to anything else, the swine flu, polio, I mean, any kind of attempt of comparison you try to make, the Spanish flu, right?
No, you can't compare it to that, can't compare it to that, no, no, totally different, totally different.
Oh, but 9-11, yeah, well, now those two things, yeah, now we can really make that comparison, put it in the headlines.
Well, why is one allowed, the other not?
Well, we know why.
Because the 9-11 comparison makes the coronavirus seem scarier, and therefore it's okay.
But any comparison that has the effect of making the coronavirus seem a little bit less scary is not okay.
Okay.
Now, moving on.
So it's come to this.
A pastor has been arrested for holding a church service in the United States of America.
Okay, it's not a headline from China.
This is happening right now in America.
Let me read from the Christian Post.
It says, Pastor Rodney Howard Brown, leader of Revival International Ministries and the River at Tampa Bay Church in Tampa, Florida, was arrested Monday for what officials say was the violation of a safer-at-home order, which prohibits large worship services during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said that when he saw images of a crowded Sunday service at the church, he was furious.
And he's angry and he's the sheriff so he can just arrest you because he's mad, right?
We received an anonymous tip that Dr. Rodney Howard Brown refused a request to temporarily stop holding large gatherings at his church, he said, and instead he was encouraging his large congregation to meet at his church.
Um, Hillsborough County issued a safer at home order effective March 27th.
The order mandates non-essential businesses to abide by the CDC social distancing guidelines.
Um, if they're unable to do that, they have to shut down.
Howard and churches are non-essential.
It's been determined across the country in one fell swoop.
We're just saying churches, not essential.
Howard Brown argued that his church is an essential business and that the order violates his first amendment rights.
Seems like he'd have a case.
Um, The pastor's arrest order shows that he was charged with unlawful assembly and violation of public health emergency rules, which are both second-degree misdemeanors punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a maximum fine of $500.
Chronister says, our goal is not to stop people from worshiping, but the safety and well-being of our community must always come first.
It's a shame that someone has taken advantage of this for whatever reason.
I just don't understand it.
The only reason I can see is it's a reckless reason to put your parishioners in jeopardy.
Chronister says, I believe there's nothing more important than faith in a time like this, and as a sheriff's office, we would never impede someone's ability to lean on their religious beliefs, but practicing those beliefs has to be done safely.
Practicing those beliefs has to be done safely.
You can have your First Amendment rights, you can practice your religion, the most sacred right, the right that's right there, given pride of place, First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, you can have it, But only if it's safe.
If it's deemed unsafe, then it's the First Amendment out the window, everything's out the window, and the government will make an example of you.
Before we talk more about this, I want to throw something else onto the pile.
Something else to consider.
Reading this from Politico, it says, Federal judges on Monday lifted restrictions Texas, Ohio, and Alabama imposed on abortion during the coronavirus pandemic and decisions that could have repercussions for several more Republican-led states that have deemed the procedure non-essential during the crisis.
Then it goes on from there, Texas, Ohio, Alabama, different district judges have said that, no, this is essential, you're not allowed to close down the abortion clinics.
And there are many other states that have already, that are led by Democratic governors, that have already said from the beginning, abortion clinics can stay open.
So, abortion clinics are essential, they stay open.
Meanwhile, churches across the country have been deemed non-essential and are closed at gunpoint.
And if you gather for worship, you could be arrested.
Abortion clinic's essential.
Worship, non-essential.
One closed, the other open.
I mean, how can we tolerate this?
How can this be justified?
And I see plenty of so-called conservatives who seem to be basically okay with this.
It's... If anyone had told you six months ago that we would be here right now, where pastors are being arrested for holding church services in America, and that the government has essentially all at once circumvented the First Amendment simply by declaring churches non-essential, and not only that would be happening, but that many conservatives would say, well, okay, it's all to keep us safe.
You wouldn't believe it.
Well, maybe the second part of that you would believe.
Conservatives being cowardly and dumb enough to go along with this kind of thing without question.
That part you'd probably believe if you've been around the conservative movement for any length of time.
But the rest of it... It is almost unbelievable, but it's really happening.
We'll talk more about this in just a second.
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All right.
Now, one other thing about the abortion clinics.
So, the abortion clinics are allowed to stay open.
How does an abortionist practice social distancing from a mother while he's killing her child?
Can he stay six feet away while doing that?
I mean, I've never been in the room for an abortion, but I don't... How does the abortion abortionist stay six feet away from the mother while doing that?
But it doesn't matter because It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
It might not make sense to you.
It doesn't have to make sense to us.
We have entered a point where the government can make whatever rules they want, regardless of the Constitution, and they can enforce those rules at gunpoint.
And that's what we're seeing happening across the country.
These government officials, at every level, governors, mayors, we talked yesterday about the board of commissioners in a county in, what, Indiana?
Making up rules?
All of these different levels of government, they can just make whatever rule they want.
It doesn't have to comply with the Constitution.
It doesn't have to make sense.
It doesn't have to be something that could demonstrably actually succeed in slowing the spread of the virus.
If they decide that, hey, we don't want this, then they're going to say, we don't want it, you can't do it.
Now this is almost beside the point, but I want to show you this screenshot from the live stream of the church service that got this pastor arrested there in Florida.
Here's the screenshot.
Here's the worship service last Sunday.
Are those congregants six feet apart?
No.
Okay, but he did say he had them grouped according to family members and, you know, families coming in, of course, they're going to be together, but there's going to be space in between each group of families that come in.
Now, the pastor also says that he was giving out hand sanitizer and that the staff that was dealing directly with the congregants, they were all wearing gloves.
I, you know, I don't, I can't vouch for the truth of that.
But we can see that there is some spacing there in the building.
Here's my point.
Those groups of people are separated more than they would be in the checkout line at the grocery store.
Yet I can still go into the grocery store for a bag of chips and wait in line with 20 other people six inches apart.
I can do that.
The government says that's essential.
If I want to go to a grocery store six times a day, For whatever I want, I can do that.
Buying chips at the grocery store, that's essential.
Going to church is not.
I happen to disagree.
I think church is a whole lot more essential than a bag of chips.
Government officials, though, have decided, based on their own priorities, based on their own preferences, their own opinions, that attending church could not ever be more essential than whatever reason a person might have to go to a grocery store.
And they can impose that subjective viewpoint on the population at gunpoint.
As all this is happening, I keep thinking about that Benjamin Franklin quote that is so popular, right?
Normally, it's quite popular.
And the quote, you know, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The interesting thing about that quote is it's so popular and you see it everywhere during normal times.
But when it comes time for that mentality and that philosophy to actually be put into action, all of a sudden it's out the window.
Now we rip those bumper stickers off of our cars and hide them under the bed, stuff them in the closet.
And then, so that we can proceed to give up our liberty for safety, and then once the threat goes away, we take the bumper stickers out, we slap them on the bumper again, and we say, uh, give me liberty or give me death!
I, I just... If that... If this principle, if this philosophy, that we as Americans pretend to live by, pretend to believe in, If that doesn't apply to this situation, then when would it ever apply?
See, the thing is, you might say, well, this is an exception.
But the people who are giving up liberty for safety, they always think it's an exception.
They're always going to say that.
Now I feel like I have to keep stipulating and keep saying over and over again, and there's no point in even saying it because people who want to misinterpret me, if they're, if you are determined to misinterpret me, then you're going to go ahead and do that.
I know it doesn't matter what I say, but I am not suggesting that this virus is a hoax or that it's not serious or that people aren't dying from it or that we shouldn't take it seriously.
I am not saying that.
What I am saying though, is that it is madness.
To intentionally plunge into a Great Depression and make millions of people destitute for the sake of this.
And the Constitution still exists.
And we can't just put it on hold.
And we can't give government officials the power and the authority to make up whatever rules they want for as long as they want, imposing their preferences and priorities and opinions on us at gunpoint.
We can't do that.
So that's my basic position.
We should still retain our essential human liberties, and we should do whatever we can to avoid a Great Depression, which will result in the destitution of millions and suffering and misery, unlike anything we can conceive right now.
Those two things, while also taking the virus seriously.
And that is all possible.
That is actually possible.
There are basic things we could do.
As I've been saying a million times, I'll say it again, you keep the nursing homes quarantined.
Elderly and sick people, you keep them quarantined, right?
You allow people to go back to work, but maybe you encourage, or hell, if you want to mandate gloves, fine.
In certain industries, masks, okay?
Something like barbershops.
Okay, maybe you mandate for a period of time that if you're going to a barbershop, or if you work at a barbershop, or a hair salon, you wear a mask.
Now, I know you're gonna tell me, well, that doesn't guarantee you could still spread the virus.
I know you could still spread it, but let me ask you this.
If two people, if you had a barber and someone going to a barbershop, both of them don't have any symptoms, and don't tell me, well, they could still have the virus without symptoms.
I know that.
Okay, but we're talking probability here.
You got a barber, you got a person, neither of them have symptoms.
They're both wearing masks.
The guy's getting a haircut.
Takes 15 minutes or whatever, however long it takes.
What is the chance that a virus will be transmitted during the course of that interaction?
Both masks, neither have symptoms.
You don't have to tell me it's possible it could still happen.
I know it's possible.
What's the chance, though?
What is the probability?
What is the statistical likelihood of that happening?
And is it high enough to justify putting thousands of barbershops out of business forever, which is what we're doing right now?
I'm just using barbershops as one example.
That's a question.
It's a fair question we should be asking.
And I don't want to hear a response of, you're going to kill your grandma, all the grandmas.
Shut up with that.
I don't want to hear the emotional, please, this is too serious for that.
I'm asking basic questions, fair questions.
About things like statistical probability and weighing risk and reward.
That's what I'm interested in.
I'm not interested in your emotional appeals.
Because there's a lot at stake right now.
And putting millions of businesses out of business forever.
And having 40 million people unemployed in the span of a month, that is a serious consequence.
And if you think that you, whoever you are watching this, if you think that you are going to fly through this and you're not going to feel it, you will.
As I said yesterday, there are a few people, maybe, who can go through something like an economic crash or a Great Depression and feel unaffected by it, or maybe even profit off of it, but you almost certainly are not one of those people.
And so you are going to suffer too.
And your family will.
And your loved ones.
Question I've been asking all along.
Risk reward calculation.
What we're doing right now.
Is it worth the price that everybody is going to pay?
Is there another way of doing this?
A way that would mitigate, at least to some significant extent, the risk of transmitting the virus while also, hopefully, staving off a Great Depression.
I think there are other ways.
We're not even considering those ways.
And that, to me, is insanity.
That is lunacy.
It is... I feel like I'm surrounded by lunatics more and more each day.
There are a few of us out here screaming this.
All right, let's move on to headlines.
Well, more states, of course, have jumped into the shelter-at-home pool.
And just yesterday, in fact, there were a bunch of other states.
Virginia led the charge.
Virginia's governor, Blackface Ralph, has instructed residents of the state to stay home until June 10th.
He explained, I want to be clear, do not go out unless you need to go out.
This is very different than wanting to go out.
So if you just want to go out, Blackface Ralph says, you can't go out.
You better have an approved reason to exit your domicile.
Northam has also made it clear that if you need more shoe polish, though, for your face, then that, of course, is a very good reason to go out.
So that will be approved.
Meanwhile, the state of Maryland, where I was born and raised, my beloved Maryland, has gone into a full shutdown also, telling people to stay home.
Governor Hogan said, we are no longer asking or suggesting that Marylanders stay home.
We are directing them to do so.
Now here's a question to ponder.
How many businesses can survive for two months, two and a half months, all said and done, with zero revenue?
Blackface Ralph wants to keep everybody in their homes cowering in a corner until June 10th.
What will they be walking out into when they emerge from their homes?
What kind of economy will be left for them?
How many of those people who are sheltering in their homes, how many of them, when they leave their homes, are going to have a job to go to?
Are going to have a way to feed their families?
How many?
Does that not matter?
Apparently it doesn't matter.
We're not even thinking about that.
Eh, we'll worry about that later.
Again, total madness, collective insanity.
We are doing something as a nation that we have never done before.
We have never shut down the country before like this, ever, for anything.
Does the threat justify it?
This is the most dramatic response we've ever had to anything.
Is it the worst threat we've ever faced?
Is it even the worst virus?
The worst disease we've ever faced?
The absolute worst?
If not, why is it getting the strongest reaction?
There's another question.
If this is not the worst threat we've ever faced as a nation, and it's not, then why are we reacting in a way unlike we've ever reacted before to anything?
Number two, yesterday the Empire State Building's official Twitter account, which by the way, of all the buildings, I think the Empire State Building has the best Okay, so sounds inspiring, right?
great memes, Empire State Building posts.
Actually, I don't know that, I don't follow, but.
They posted a tweet, the building posted a tweet.
The building said, we'll never stop shining for you.
Starting tonight through the COVID-19 battle, our signature white lights will be replaced
by the heartbeat of America, with a white and red, with a white and red siren in the mast
for heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight.
Okay, so sounds inspiring, right?
Well, let's take a look at what this actually looked like.
Here it is.
Here's the siren on top of the Empire State Building.
Remember, they're not trying to scare you.
None of this is about scaring you.
You see that right there?
It's literally something out of a dystopian young adult novel.
What you're seeing right there.
And I'm constantly seeing this.
I saw this online.
Someone posted it, and my first reaction was, that's a joke.
No way, they're not really doing that, are they?
They didn't really convert the Empire State Building into a giant siren lighting up the night sky in this terrifying way in a city that's already petrified.
They didn't really do that, no way.
And then I go and check, oh yeah, no, they really did it.
That really happened.
Number three, let's focus on something positive, though.
Kate Winslet is, well, she played an epidemiologist in a movie once.
So naturally, Sky News, they went to ask her for medical advice.
And Winslet was more than happy to oblige.
This is what she had to say.
In the movie Contagion, I played an epidemiologist trying to stop the spread of a hypothetical virus.
To prepare for the role, I spent time with some of the best public health professionals in the world.
And what was one of the most important things they taught me?
Wash your hands like your life depends on it.
Because right now, in particular, It just might.
Or the life of someone you love.
Or even the life of someone you might not know, but is still deserving of your consideration.
Like the people on the front lines of this fight right now.
The doctors and the healthcare providers.
The people who are still working in the grocery stores.
Or delivering food to your homes, which is where you should be right now.
But wait a second.
Didn't Winslet's character die in that movie?
See, my thing is we should be listening to the characters who lived, shouldn't we?
Or is this a, you know, I learned a lesson the hard way so you don't have to?
Is it that kind of thing?
I don't know.
Either way, it's good that she's mining all of her vast fake experience to give us advice.
And on that note, I just wanted to mention that when I was five years old, I drew a picture of myself in a rocket ship.
And so for that reason, tomorrow I'll be delivering a 90-minute lecture on astronomy and cosmology.
So look out for that.
Number four.
I'm going to show you something, and then I'll give you the context.
But first I want to show it to you.
So here it is.
See all those many cars, traffic jam, stretching miles, it looks like.
What do you think those cars are doing?
Where could they all be going during these quarantines?
Well, this is in Pittsburgh.
And those cars are waiting in line at a food bank.
Okay?
That's after two weeks.
That's after two weeks of a shutdown.
And you've got a line of cars stretching to the horizon of people who don't have food and need to go to a food bank.
What do you think it looks like another week from now?
Two weeks?
Three weeks?
Two months?
How long is that line of cars?
And how many people get fed up waiting for 10 hours in line for food?
And then resort to other means to get it.
Number five.
And the D.C.
mayor, Mayor Bowser, has seen all these other mayors playing dictator and decided that she doesn't want to be left out in the cold anymore.
So she has decided that anyone found outside their home could go to jail for 90 days.
Found outside your home?
You could go to jail.
But the magnanimous Bowser, dear leader Bowser, she will allow you, in her wisdom, in her generosity, to exit your place of residence for a few specified reasons.
And here she is explaining what those reasons are.
As I've said before, the only reasons you should be leaving your home are to buy groceries, pick up medicine, or to exercise with your own family, or because you have been advised to seek medical attention, or because you are performing an essential job.
Personally, I'm overcome with gratitude that she would allow people to leave their house for something like exercise.
Truly, her mercy knows no bounds.
Thank you.
Thank you, oh great Bowser.
Thank you, oh queen, oh just, oh merciful.
Oh beautiful Bowser, we praise you.
We praise you.
We praise you with all the choirs of angels.
Yes, you're telling us who we're allowed to exercise with, which, I mean, obviously is not something that you have any authority whatsoever to control.
But we're not going to question that.
We're not going to question that.
We will comply.
Because if we were to not comply, if we were to question your wisdom and your authority, then we would be personally responsible for killing thousands of people.
Because this is not the land of the free anymore.
Freedom is scary.
It's a very scary thing.
We prefer to run into the warm embrace of tyranny. We run to tyranny's bosom and we clutch so
tightly to it.
Now let's go to your daily cancellation. In fact, before we do that, I want to mention to you again,
if you haven't had a chance to check out All Access Live, then I want to encourage you to do that.
You can go tonight, 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific.
This is the more casual sort of, I don't even really want to call it a show,
but it's something we're doing where it's just a conversation.
You know, and if you're a Daily Wire member, originally the plan was to open it up to all Access members.
And this wasn't, this was something we were gonna do months down the road or weeks down the road,
but we've moved up the timeline.
We've opened it up to anyone who's a Daily Wire member, and it's just a conversation.
You know, it's a sort of a back and forth, very casual.
And it's a way of us sort of having a little bit of companionship.
I suppose, in the middle of all the isolation.
So, if you're around tonight and you're looking for something to do, which we all are, 8 p.m.
Eastern, 5 p.m.
Pacific, tune in.
Join us on the all-access live show over at dailywire.com.
And now for your daily cancellation, staying on the theme of mayors, we're going to be canceling the mayor of Houston.
He held a press conference yesterday, and during the course of that press conference, he had a message that, I don't know, I'm somewhat skeptical that this will have the result he's hoping for, but this is what he had to say.
Then let me just make my plea.
Until the coronavirus is resolved, criminals take a break.
Okay?
Stay home.
Okay?
Stay home.
And don't commit any crimes.
And that way, they'll stay safe and out of jail.
And police officers will stay safe and can go home to their families.
Okay?
So everybody chill.
Crooks, criminals, you chill.
Wait till the coronavirus is over.
Okay.
I can just imagine, right, a crook at home watching this and then his crook friend calls him and says, hey, uh, did you want to go out and commit some crimes tonight?
You want to do a little crime?
I was thinking we could do some crime.
What do you think?
And then the other one says, you know what?
I mean, look, listen, I know we're criminals and everything.
It's what we do, but I was just watching the mayor and he had this really great suggestion.
So he said, maybe we shouldn't commit any crimes, at least for the time being.
Maybe we should just chill and not do crimes.
And then his friend says, wait, so you want to not do crimes?
You're saying you don't want to do crimes?
Yeah, let's just chill.
Let's relax.
Let's not do any crimes for now.
Hey, listen, there will always be crimes we can do later on.
Let's wait for the coronavirus thing to pass and just be cool about it.
Actually, now that I think about it, I really can't imagine that conversation or anything like it actually happening.
So it seems, and I know that many cities around the country are trying to get around this, but it seems like you're really going to have to actually enforce the law.
And when I say that, I mean the real laws, the important laws.
Not the laws prohibiting people from jogging too much or jogging with the wrong person.
Not even really the laws prohibiting people from gathering for worship.
I think those are the less important ones that you just came up with out of nowhere in the last few days.
But crimes like, you know, crimes against stealing, assault, that sort of thing?
I think you're still gonna have to enforce those.
Yeah.
So, the mayor of Houston, therefore, is cancelled.
Now let's move on to emails.
And we've got a Why I'm Wrong email.
This one is from Eric.
And this...
I mean, my inbox and my messages every day, I've got an email almost, it's like they're following a script.
It's this exact thing over and over and over and over again.
To the point where it almost seems as if it's the same person sending it, but it's not.
Because we live in a nation of parrots who will just repeat whatever they're told to say.
So this is Eric.
He says, Matt, I understand you want to go to the movies and restaurants again, but is that worth your grandma's life?
I've been very saddened by the direction you've taken on this.
You were always a champion for the pro-life cause.
Now you would have people die just for the economy.
Lives are more important than money, Matt.
Okay, Eric.
I was asking somebody this yesterday.
I couldn't get a response.
Maybe you could help me out with this.
Please explain to me.
You say, is going to the movies worth my grandma's life?
The answer is no.
I wouldn't kill my grandma to go to the movies.
Like if my grandma was trying to prevent me from going to the movies, I wouldn't kill her to go.
I wouldn't do that.
But here's what I want you to explain, Eric.
If I go to the movies, see under my proposal, under my plan that no one cares about, but anyway, my idea here is that as I have been saying and I've already said again on this show, we open up the business and let people who are young and healthy go to work, keep the nursing home quarantined, keep the elderly quarantined, If you have pre-existing conditions, you know, you stay away for now.
And then, of course, it'd be much easier then to provide you with assistance.
If we don't have to give everybody assistance, we can just give it.
We can be more targeted in that way.
So, if we do that, and people who have the illness, we do aggressively testing.
People who have test positive, okay, they're going to be isolated for several weeks.
If we do that, And my grandma is quarantined in a nursing home, which is where she is right now.
How does me going to the movies kill her?
Can you explain?
Give me the step-by-step process.
I go to the movies.
My grandma's hundreds of miles away in a nursing home, quarantined, and still in quarantine, which I think that that's how it should remain.
How does me being at the movies kill my grandma?
Please explain the connection between those two things.
Give me a step.
We got step one, I go to the movies, and then down here, like step five, my grandma dies.
Give me two, three, four.
Fill in the blanks there.
Because it seems to me that what you have here is not an argument.
This is not rational thought that you're sharing with me.
This is emotional manipulation, emotional blackmail.
It's just emotion.
These are just your emotions that you're spewing out onto the page without even thinking about it.
And you have been convinced that the only way, the only way to keep all of our grandmas alive is if we all stay locked in our house indefinitely for as long as the government says.
You've been convinced of that because that's what you were told.
It doesn't have to be that way.
And you say I want people to die just for the economy.
Okay, once again, Eric, what do you think the economy is?
What is the economy to you?
How would you define it?
Because, as I understand the economy, it is not some separate, detached organism or entity that's just hanging out there.
Like a thing that we come and we pay homage to.
Oh, the economy!
The economy!
No, the economy is people.
When we talk about the economy, we mean people's jobs, their livelihood, the way they feed their families, their kids, okay?
That's what the economy is.
And so, it's not the money that I'm worried about.
What I'm worried about is the man who can't make any money now and therefore can't feed his kids.
It's not his money.
I'm not worried about... No, his money is an inanimate object.
Not even that, probably.
It's just a number in his bank account.
A number that's now down to zero.
I'm not worried about that.
I'm worried about him and his kids and how they survive.
You see that?
Do you understand that?
Do you really not understand it?
I don't know how else to explain it.
I'm not worried about my money.
I'm still making money, okay?
I'm in the media.
Now, media relies on advertisers, so we are by no means exempt.
But as it stands right now, anyway, we're doing okay.
I'm still making an income, and that's fine.
So no, I'm not worried about—this is not about me and my money.
Believe it or not, I actually am concerned about the millions of people, the millions upon millions upon millions of people who are right now either destitute or on the verge of becoming it.
Did you see the line of cars after two weeks in Pittsburgh waiting in line for hours at a food bank?
I'm worried about those people.
Are you not?
What about them?
Do you care about them?
Another question I have for you, the arguments you're giving me here, what you seem to be saying is, shut down the economy because somehow the economy is different from people, it's two different things, and you can shut down the economy without affecting people, that's what you seem to think.
And we should do this because lives are more important than money.
So what you're giving me here are a series of, first of all, misunderstandings, emotional appeals, and cliches, like lives are more important than money.
And straw men, because I never said that lives aren't more important than money.
So that's a straw man argument.
That's what you're giving me.
But here's my question to you.
The swine flu.
Ten years ago, back in 2009, swine flu hit.
There was, I think, off the top of my head, you can check me on this, Google, but I think it was about 60 million cases of swine flu, 200,000 or so hospitalizations, and 12,000 people died.
Did you, at the time, call for the shutting down of the entire economy to save those 12,000?
Did you?
Now, I don't know, Eric, but I guess I can't assume this about you because I have no idea, but I'm going to assume that you didn't.
And the reason I assume you didn't is because, from what I could tell, nobody did.
In fact, most people, until this happened, most people didn't even realize that the swine flu, they remembered a swine flu, most people didn't even realize that it killed 12,000 people.
I didn't even realize that.
When I first heard a month ago about the swine flu killed 12,000 in America, I said, what, 10 years ago?
No, it didn't.
And I looked it up.
Sure enough, it did.
See, when that hit, we just, what did we do?
We did nothing.
We did basically nothing.
We just continued living our lives, and it killed 12,000 people, and we just kept on living.
Now, don't tell me that this is worse than swine flu.
It's different.
It's not the same.
I understand that.
It's not my point.
Now, actually, it's not worse than the swine flu yet.
Right now, it's not.
But you might say it's going to be worse than the swine flu.
Okay, that's a projection.
That's an assumption.
You could be right.
Probably you are.
I'll grant you that.
This is going to be worse than the swine flu.
Fine.
That's not my point.
Those 12,000 people, they were human beings.
And it's 12,000 people.
And they died.
So, were their lives not worth saving?
I mean, why didn't you Even if 12,000 is lower than the ultimate death toll we're gonna see with the coronavirus, let's say the coronavirus, let's go with the worst case scenarios that we're now being told.
Originally, the worst case scenario was like 2 million in America.
Now we're being told the worst case scenario is 200,000.
Okay, let's just say, worst case scenario, coronavirus kills 200,000 people.
12,000 is less than that.
But still, those are human beings, those are lives, a lot of them.
Why didn't you call for the economy to be shut down for their sake?
Are they not worth it to you?
Do you not care about them?
Do you not care about those lives?
What's going on?
Eric, explain it to me.
Whatever your answer is to that, think about that question.
Why didn't you call for the shutting down of the entire economy to save 12,000 people from the swine flu?
Whatever your answer is to that question, I'm sure the answer is not, I don't care about those people, those people are worth less than money.
I'm sure that's not your answer.
I'm sure you'll have some other answer, don't you?
So think about that.
And as you come to understand your own motivations as to why you didn't call for the shutting down of the economy to save 12,000 people, you might start to understand where I'm coming from on the coronavirus.
Just something to think about.
And we'll leave it there.
Thanks, everybody, for watching and listening.
Stay safe.
God bless.
Godspeed.
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