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Oct. 3, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
20:14
TRUMP COVID SHOCKER!
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Good evening, everybody. This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
I know I'm off politics, but this to me is more around COVID, which I'm still on.
And I guess in the immense hurly-burly of 2020, we may in fact all remember where we were when we found out this news.
It's kind of a funny thing. So because I'm not traveling as much anymore...
I'm able to get on more of a regular schedule.
So I've been trying to sort of get to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time.
But anyway, last night, switching around my schedule, last night I couldn't sleep and I never checked my phone at night really anymore.
But I did last night and just saw the boom, you know, Trump and Melania tested positive for coronavirus, for COVID-19.
And... I mean, it's quite a mix of pluses and minuses, like everything about 2020.
It's ambivalent. It's complex.
It's a pendulum.
It's a to-and-fro. So I wanted to just share a couple of thoughts.
I have a call-in show starting in a little while, so it's going to be just a little bit of a dip in.
But I wanted to share a couple of thoughts, get your guys' thoughts on it as well.
And I'll keep this really, really brief, and maybe we can do a longer one on the weekend if you guys are interested.
A couple of things that I think are important.
One is, fundamentally, why was Trump more at risk for COVID than, say, Joe Biden?
Well, the answer to that is because Joe Biden doesn't have to do much campaigning because the media and academia and Hollywood and TV and newspapers and magazines and you name it, they're all doing the work Joe Biden doesn't actually have to go out and do much.
And he hasn't really. He hasn't taken many press conferences.
He hasn't done any real rallies.
I think six people showed up to see his wife speak or whatever.
So because... The media is doing the political work that Joe Biden would otherwise be doing.
Joe Biden can look in the basement while Trump goes out to these big rallies and so on.
So that's one aspect of things that I think is important.
The infection seems to have, I think this is fairly sure, though I don't believe, finally confirmed.
There's a young woman, which is 14 years out of high school.
Hope Hicks, her name is.
She's 31 years old. She's a formal model.
And a senior advisor to Trump, and she was on Air Force One a couple of times.
And she's known to be pretty not social distancing kind of person, right?
Kiss the babies, shake hands, hug, that kind of stuff.
That's, of course, not ideal when you're running up to an election.
And of course, it is just a month or so away.
So that's kind of...
Kind of important, because Trump, of course, has pursued this strategy, and the strategy is that he is not going to use a mask too, too often.
When he's at the rallies, he's pretty far away from people, of course, and he gets everyone around him tested on a regular basis, and Hope Hicks was feeling unwell, a little bit unwell, very mild symptoms, and then she kind of quarantined in the airplane, in Air Force One, I think it was, And then she got tested.
And then, of course, Trump got tested.
And both Trump and Melania have tested positive.
And right now, he is being helicoptered tonight to a military hospital.
They say, of course, just as a precaution, it is most likely that it's going to be seven to ten days before people find out whether or not he's got it bad or not.
Because he's got three risk categories, right?
So he's 74 years old.
He's over 240 pounds, which puts him just north of 30 on the BMI index a little bit on the obese side, like I guess 42, 43% of Americans as a whole.
So he's 74. I would call him overweight.
I wouldn't call him obese, but 74.
Overweight and male, right?
These are the three big things.
Now, he is white, and that, of course, helps for a variety of reasons we can talk about another time.
But he's in these three fairly high-risk categories where the risk of death, depending on which demographics you look at, can be anywhere from a couple of percent all the way up to 10%.
On the other hand, of course, he doesn't have, I think he takes some cholesterol control medication, but he doesn't have any other, he's pretty tight-lipped about his health, but he doesn't take any other medicines for, doesn't have any other underlying conditions, which is kind of important when it comes to COVID. COVID is one of these things where if you don't have any underlying conditions and you're not like 85 or older, you're much more likely to make it.
Now, of course, The death versus the what are called the long haulers, like the people who have these symptoms that just go on and on.
That's a very, very big issue.
So now, of course, it's almost not even worth mentioning.
You can go look at it if you want to hold your nose and strap your balls into a lead containment hazmat suit that can keep Jupiter at bay.
But of course, a lot of the people on the left are...
Crowing, and there's this kind of Old Testament, you know, like he kind of got you, because people say, ah, well, Trump has downplayed the danger of this disease, and now he's got it.
He said, you don't really need to wear a mask, although he changed his mind on that to some degree.
Now he's got it, and there's this kind of weird vengeance-y thing that's going on, which I can...
I mean, it's the left, right?
So, I mean, anybody who thinks that they're just going to stop with Trump or whoever they label a white supremacist, well, you've got another thing coming, right?
Anybody who votes for this sort of stuff now is kind of manifesting some kind of death wish at the moment.
But there is a sense of schadenfreude, right?
Like that he deserves it because he downplayed the disease.
And of course, people on the left think he handled the disease perfectly.
Very badly. And this, of course, is a time when the World Health Organization has finally basically admitted that back in the beginning of the pandemic, they told countries to keep their borders open for political reasons and for economic reasons, not based upon science facts or evidence, which is a really, truly astounding admission that, to me, makes them guilty of a crime against humanity of just about the highest order in that we talk in...
North of 7 million infections and a million deaths.
And again, I know there's lots of comorbidities and so on, but the fact that the World Health Organization would say that it was political, we didn't want stigma against the Chinese.
They had made a mistake in the past with India that cost $3 billion worth of economic damage with a lockdown that didn't really do much to affect things.
So yeah, it was around keeping the economic activity going and it was around avoiding stigma against Chinese people.
The word racism, of course, now is...
Like a death with a million scythes stalking the world.
And that is the reality of where things are.
And of course, they are still perfectly present on social media.
Get your tax money whether you like it or not.
Although they have basically said, yeah, we told everyone to keep their borders open for political reasons of political correctness and economic reasons.
Just appalling. Just appalling.
So what I think is going to happen...
I mean, there's no way to know, for sure.
Obviously, that's a statement that you're smart enough to kind of get.
But I think he's going to be fine.
And that is going to kind of redoubt back to him.
So my first sort of thoughts about this was, my God, I mean, there's a month to the election, and he's going to be knocked out for two weeks.
Now he can do his video conferencing, and he can do all of that kind of stuff, and that's fine.
But unfortunately...
There's a whole lot of irrationality.
This has sort of been my big education over the last 40 years that, you know, don't mistake the world for yourself.
If you're a rational person, don't imagine that the world is rational too, otherwise you'll be exploited and heated around like a wiffle ball.
So people need to feel a sense of strength from their leaders.
So what's interesting to me is that the timing of this is quite powerful.
And by timing, I don't mean that anyone plotted or planned this or anything like that, but I mean, I know there's series floating around that perhaps Hope was infected by some leftists and then they knew she'd be on the plane with Trump and I don't know, that's all untestable hype and conjecture.
If this had happened closer to the election, he would be knocked out right up to the election.
And this October surprise, there's always one before a presidential election in the US, and maybe there'll be one still to come, although it'll be pretty tough to pull out some more sexual abuse, harassment, assault victims, quote victims, if Trump's staring down the Grim Reaper in the form of the China virus.
But The October surprise of this one, it happens early enough that Trump can show his recovery, if he recovers, as I believe that he will.
Trump can show his recovery in time to face down the election.
You know, he's got a debate coming up, another one, with Biden, of course, on the 15th, and, you know, might make it, might make it.
And so America has been really terrified of this virus.
The fear is in many ways, in my view, larger than the actual virus.
As you know, the survival rate is quite high.
And if you knock off pre-existing conditions and comorbidities, 12,000, 13,000 Americans have died from it, according to the CDC. So there are issues around long-term damage to kidneys, to heart.
There is the long haulers and so on.
But as far as morbidity goes, like actual death goes, it's not too bad relative to, say, SARS or MERS or stuff like that.
So, I mean, it's actually, I just, I went in to go and get a haircut.
I was just to walk in to go and get a haircut.
And I just poked my head in to see if there were any barbers available.
And the woman was like, put a mask on!
Like, you know, me just putting my head around the door when my sort of pink tadpole head is going to do something to bring down the West.
So people are really, really scared.
Now, when you are looking for strength in a leader, to me, what's interesting is a leader is not defined by...
Avoiding danger, but by surviving danger.
I mean, a general is not considered a good general.
If he just avoids war all the time, that would be more the job of a good diplomat.
But if there is a war and the general rides in, this is what Napoleon was famous for, was riding at the head of his troops after the famous whiff of grapeshot to scatter protesters.
And so Trump getting this virus, being older, being overweight, being male, How he handles this, of course, and he seems to be very positive, you know, we'll get through this together and so on.
And I have very little anxiety for Melania.
I mean, she's in her early 50s and healthy and not underweight, but slim, obviously.
So, people are going to see a very high-profile person deal with, a high-profile family, really, and Mike Pence and his wife have tested negative.
A high-profile person, you know, stare down coronavirus, and everyone's going to follow this whole progress.
And if, as I believe he will, he shrugs it off like a lion shrugging off a baby zebra that's pretending to attack him, and then kind of stands up and stands firm and stands tall, Well, then, of course, Americans can either vote for Joe Biden, who remains ridiculously vulnerable to this illness, especially given his even more advanced age, or they can vote for Trump, who has antibodies to COVID, having just recovered from it.
And if he does recover like a lion, then some of his statements about don't be too scared of this virus come true in a very tangible way.
Now, of course, you know, the left and others will say, oh, well, it's because he's got all this great free health care and he's white and he's privileged and blah, blah, blah.
I get all of that.
But nonetheless, if he says it's not as bad as you think it is, he gets it and he kind of flourishes through it, then he's kind of right in a way.
And again, I'm not talking about statistics.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
I'm not talking about statistics. I'm talking about just people's perception of how leadership works in the world, right?
So people through Trump are going to fall on that knife edge of, is it really dangerous?
Should we shut down society? Or is it something that we're going to have to just accept as part of the general matrix of human existence going forward?
And we're going to have to just tamp it down because this whole start-stop stuff is really quite insane.
It's happening right now in Ontario.
Ontario is way north of 700 new cases a day, although there's a big backlog.
How can there still be a big backlog when you've had eight months to ramp up?
Well, because it's the government. And so all of this, we're open, we're closed, we're open, we're closed.
This doesn't work.
I mean, but it's not designed to work.
It's designed to minimize criticism and so on.
And it's designed to manage people's anxiety rather than just deal with something for real.
And of course, they're hoping to just stagger through until some magic vaccine comes along.
But people are going to get to confront their own fears about this illness by looking at such a public figure.
Now, As I'm sure you know, I think the chairwoman of the RNC just got it.
A bunch of Bolsonaro has got it.
Boris Johnson got it and so on.
But no world leader has died of it.
The worst affected, to my knowledge, was Boris Johnson, who spent three days in the ICU. But there were also particular remediations and medicines that weren't available or weren't tested that are now available.
And Trump is being tested – well, not tested, but they're giving him a more experimental treatment to – Hopefully prevent all of this from getting too bad.
But no world leader has died of this ailment as yet.
And so, yeah, people are going to be looking for strength, you know, deep down in the place where the devils of tribal anti-rationality, or at least irrationality, lurk.
People are just going to look for strength.
And they're also going to get a view of how the left deals with misfortune on the part of others.
Because the left is always like, well, you can't blame the victim.
You can't blame a woman for getting assaulted because she's wearing a short skirt and so on.
It's like, okay, well... Trump took a particular approach to COVID, part of which was dictated, as I mentioned, The aggression of the media in defending Biden and attacking Trump.
And yeah, he got the ailment and they got the illness.
And if he flourishes through it, he will to some degree be vindicated and the terror of the virus that is being used as an excuse to lock down society.
And as I'm sure you're aware, 10 times the number of people are dying from lack of access to health care, from suicide, from addiction and so on, then have died from the virus, even at its worst count.
And so there will be something empowering, not just for America, but for the West, in seeing a guy in the unholy trinity of risk factors, 74, obese, a male, if he stares down and beats this virus, that is going to give people a little bit of strength.
It's that women, as a whole, he's trailing, I think, women 30 points behind Biden, right?
Women don't like Trump at all, and that's a topic for another time.
But women also have a soft spot for those who are...
I mean, this was the case with my own mother, not to get too scientific on his personal anecdote, but things that I've seen over my life that, you know, my mom was a harridan, but when I got sick, she was fantastic.
And women are, in a sense, natural nurses on the whole, on average, maybe not some women, but...
So, because he's unwell, there is going to be a certain amount of sympathy, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out in the female vote as a whole.
So, it is a complex situation.
My first thought was like, oh man, I mean, that's it, he's over, right?
And I was like, well, good thing I didn't get involved in politics since coronavirus took down the Trump campaign anyway.
But, after I saw the news a little after one o'clock this morning, I slept on it, I mulled it over, I thought about it quite a bit today.
And I think that there could be a significant upside to this, if he flourishes, if he does well.
Now, of course, that's to do with a lot of chance, that's to do with a lot of genetics, but also what encourages me as well is that Hope Hicks, from what I've heard, did not have very significant symptoms of coronavirus.
And what that means is that the viral load is probably quite low.
So, A lot of whether you do well or badly under COVID, again, I'm not a doctor, this is just what I've read, right?
But a lot of whether you do well or badly under COVID has to do with the viral load, like how much did you get?
And the masks, you know, don't touch your face and don't spread it.
But it also, if there is a viral load around, if you kind of, you know, suck it in like a, I guess, a lady of the night around Hugh Grant, then, you know, you get a big sort of buckshot to the face, so to speak.
Cheney style of the virus, whereas if you just get a little bit here and there, if someone doesn't have much of it, if Hope Hicks didn't get a lot of viral load, then maybe she didn't spread a lot of viral load, in which case it functions to a ridiculous and obviously abstract and amateur degree like a little bit Of a vaccine, right? Because you get not enough to make you sick, but you certainly develop the antibodies.
And the cytokine storm, which is where the body can't figure out exactly where the virus is and goes into overdrive and starts attacking healthy cells, as far as I understand it, that's less likely if you have a smaller viral load.
All of that speaks somewhat positively.
And for America to go through a COVID transition, since, of course, a lot of people don't know anyone who has gotten it, for America to go through a COVID journey with somebody in a very high-risk group or a set of groups, it's going to be absolutely fascinating to see how it plays out.
All right. Let me just...
See if I've got another show to get to, so I just wanted to drop past here, but I just wanted to see if there were any particular comments that...
I was reading The Art of the Argument right as I got the notification to this stream.
Yeah, it is artoftheargument.com.
You should check it out.
It's a great book. Stefan, one of the best reasons to head to DLive.
Thank you. Hello, I am Russia.
Do you see that in debate?
Biden saying, well, I am the Democrat Party.
And then, well, have you called any Democrat leaders to say maybe...
Start disavowing violence.
Well, I don't have any power.
I'm not in public office. Anyway. All right.
Steph, Trump will make COVID look like a joke.
Great strategy, but it's a false positive case, too.
I got to think that they're going to do it twice, right?
I got to think. And his symptoms are very mild at the moment.
And again, we shall see.
We shall see. And yeah, in a sort of long distance, long way, China did end up getting him.
All right. Okay, so I just wanted to drop by and say hi to you guys and thank you very much for your support.
If you would like to help out the show, don't forget to check out my free books.
Almost and FDRURL.com forward slash TGOA for the God of Atheists.
I think you will enjoy the books and it's something that I'm really, really enjoying working on while I am not mad deep in the political sphere.
But yeah, keep your eye on this.
I think it could play out a little bit differently than some of the worst case scenarios.
Imagine. And we will see how it plays out.
But this is Tevan Molyneux from Free Domain.
Thank you so much for listening and for watching.
FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
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