Donald Trump WARNED Us About China And He Was Right, China GLOATS That Can Take Away Our Medicine
Donald Trump WARNED Us About China And He Was Right, America Facing SERIOUS Medicine Shortages. Amid the growing crisis around the world we are faced with two realities one of which is terrifying.American is facing a serious shortage of medical supplies and medicines as most of it is made in China. Not only are we dependent but now China is gloating that they could cut us off and we would be helpeless.Regardless of your opinion on Trump's reactions he has been warning us since before he even got elected that we needed to stop the dependence on China. In September Donald Trump ordered US firms to leave China and many did, days later US officials warned that our dependence on Chinese medical supplies would be a serious vulnerability.Now amidst a growing crisis we realized it was all true.Democrats mocked Trump, resistance media types and far leftists dragged him over his tariffs. But he was right the whole time.
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Even before he was elected, Donald Trump was warning us about the threat that China posed, and not just militaristically, but economically.
For decades, we've been giving away our manufacturing base to a foreign country that we are now pretty much dependent upon for some seriously needed supplies, like medicines.
The labor costs were so cheap that many companies found it easier to send their factories overseas or just contract Chinese factories to make their products for them, ship it back to the United States, and sell it at a major markup.
This was a very serious mistake.
And now that we're facing a global pandemic, we're actually looking at a potential decline, a shortage, in much-needed medical supplies.
There was one instance where American masks that were made in China were on their way here.
In the face of a global pandemic, they said, we get the supplies first.
And because we were having our medicine and medical supplies made in their country, they had no reason to give it away when they decided to protect their country before anyone else.
The left has routinely railed on Trump over his stance on China.
They said the tariffs were a bad idea and that the trade war was going to hurt everybody.
But what's the alternative?
Continue to allow these American companies send our manufacturing overseas?
The left was wrong.
The people who wanted stronger national border controls, who wanted factories in our own countries, they were right.
And this is true for the UK and the United States.
Back in 2016, Michael Moore gave a speech, which was heavily promoted by Donald Trump, where he said that Trump went to these auto manufacturers and said, I'm going to tax your car 35% if you make it overseas and no one will buy it.
He said voting for Trump would be the biggest F.U.
in the history of the world.
And he was right.
However, he went on to say that just like Brexit, these people in the UK didn't realize if they voted for Brexit, they'd actually have to leave Europe, and now they regret it, Michael Moore said.
Cue three years later, when people in the UK voted overwhelmingly a second time for a hard Brexit.
They wanted to leave the European Union.
They wanted to control their trade and control their borders.
And we can see now why that was 100% correct.
The first story I want to show you.
Coronavirus could cause global medicine shortages as China's factory closure hits supply chains.
I mean, that's a good enough reason, right?
But the next thing I'm going to show you is going to infuriate you.
In September, Donald Trump warned that U.S.
companies need to get out of China.
And of course, we saw the routine orange man bad, that Trump is a threat to international trade and relations, that the trade war would be bad for America, would hurt the economy.
And now look where we are.
Interestingly, in September, firms were warning that we were dependent upon China for much-needed medicine.
In September.
And now here we are facing down a global pandemic, and if they just listened, if they took it seriously, Maybe we could have avoided much of this.
Now, Donald Trump is not perfect.
In fact, I would argue that in many ways, he hasn't done a good job on many things.
The economy has done very, very well over the past several years.
He deserves credit for that.
But I don't care if the question is whether or not he's doing it right or doing it poorly.
The issue is, when faced with the alternatives, he was the only one saying he was going to take on China and the threat it posed.
So when you're given the option to take a guy who might not do a good job, or a guy who is saying he's not going to do the job at all, who do you pick?
So sure, we can complain about Trump's response to the global pandemic.
By all means, I think it's fair to do so.
But what would we have had in the alternative?
These other candidates were not talking about dealing with China the way Trump was.
Would they have done even half as much as he did?
And again, I'm not saying he actually completed the work or did a good job of it, but he was the only one talking about actually doing it.
And now we can see just how bad it's really gonna be because we are dependent upon foreign countries and they have no obligation to help us as this pandemic gets worse.
Let's take a deep dive into exactly what happened, why it happened, and boy, you're gonna get mad at this one.
In September, they said we were dependent upon China for medicine, months before this virus broke out.
We could have solved this problem a long time ago.
Now, before we get started, head over to TimCast.com slash donate if you'd like to support my work.
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Look, I know a lot of people don't want to hear what I have to say because they just want to hate the president no matter what, and I think it is absolutely fair to criticize the man, and for a lot of things.
But you gotta admit, on this one, he was right.
Plain and simple.
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And a certain word that is a guaranteed suppression on YouTube, though this may change soon, we're talking about the global pandemic.
Make sure you subscribe, hit the notification bell, because it's possible in the future YouTube censors me, as they have in the past, and you will not even see these videos.
The first story from March 4th.
South China Morning Post.
Of all sources, I find this one funny.
They say factory activity in China.
The top producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients hit all-time low in February after measures to halt outbreak.
U.S.
and Europe monitoring short-term delay to supplies with antibiotics, diabetes medications, HIV drugs, and ibuprofen among those heavily reliant on China.
I gotta say, this infuriates me.
But let me show you just how bad it gets.
China hints at denying Americans life-saving coronavirus drugs.
And there it is.
Not only are they shutting down factories because of the outbreak in their country, which shouldn't have affected us initially, they're now saying straight up, you know what?
If we wanted to, we could take it all away from you and there is nothing you can do to stop it.
Fox News reports.
Now that the number of new people infected with coronavirus in China is slowing down, the country's Communist Party is ratcheting up threats against the West, with a particularly nasty warning about access to life-saving drugs aimed at the United States.
In an article in Xinhua, the state-run media agency that's largely considered the mouthpiece of the party, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in the city of Wuhan, and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more.
The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls, which would plunge America into, quote, the mighty sea of coronavirus.
The disturbing threats made during a global pandemic, as well as the scary consequences if that threat becomes real, highlight just how tight China's grip is on the global supply chain.
Already, the Food and Drug Administration has announced the first drug shortage related to the coronavirus.
Though it did not disclose which drug was in short supply, the FDA did say it could not access enough raw components needed because they are made in China.
That doesn't come as a surprise to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who told Fox News on Thursday that America is dangerously reliant on China for the production of critical goods, including parts for technologies needed to fight COVID-19.
Look, I am not too happy with Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus outbreak.
He kept saying that it was like the flu, and I am not happy with it.
I think he made a mistake.
But I'm also not going to hold him responsible for the fact that an epidemic or a pandemic is occurring.
I mean, that's nature.
You can't do anything about it.
And not only that, even if he did a bad job, at least he was in front of the threats to come.
When he came out in September saying that we needed to get our firms out of China, if we had listened to him then, we wouldn't necessarily be in this mess with a shortage of medical supplies.
This is a story from September 1st, 2019.
President Trump ordered U.S.
firms to ditch China, but many already have, and more are on the way.
Many already have.
I think Trump's responsible for this.
It's the tariffs, man.
You gotta look at what Michael Moore, that story he told about Donald Trump.
We'll come back to the medicine.
But let me show you how infuriating this really is.
In this story, this is back on September 12th, U.S.
officials worried about Chinese control of American drug supply.
Basically, we've outsourced our entire industry to China, retired Brigadier General John Adams told NBC News.
That is a strategic vulnerability.
Here we are, months later, in the midst of shortages on medical supplies, and they knew We knew.
And what was done about it?
Well, there was some stuff done.
That's fair to say.
But now, we realized we didn't do it soon enough.
And maybe, Donald Trump, if we were able to move forward much more quickly on this, something could have been done.
All I can really say is this.
Perhaps there was never enough that could have been done.
Perhaps Trump came in too late.
Even though he came in and said China over and over again, perhaps it was too late.
But there were people who were obstructing him, standing in his way.
And that was a huge mistake.
Maybe we could not have moved fast enough, but at least we moved as fast as we did, and Trump deserves credit for that.
In the story, they say, Antibiotics, which turn life-threatening infections into minor nuisances, are considered the single biggest advance in modern medicine.
But imagine if the supply of antibiotics to the United States was suddenly cut off.
American national security officials are worrying about that scenario as they come to grips with this little understood fact.
The vast majority of key ingredients for drugs that many Americans rely on are manufactured abroad, mostly in China.
Absolutely incredible.
As the U.S.
defense establishment grows increasingly concerned about China's potentially hostile ambitions, the pharmaceutical supply chain is receiving new scrutiny.
Quote, if China shut the door on exports of medicines and their key ingredients and raw materials, U.S.
hospitals and military hospitals and clinics would cease to function within months, if not days, said Rosemary Gibson, author of a book on the subject, China Rx.
Or, Gibson told NBC News, China could potentially weaponize our medicines.
They can sell us medicines without any medicine in them.
They can sell medicines that have lethal contaminants.
Other generic drugs whose key ingredients are manufactured in China include medicines for blood pressure, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy, and depression.
We can't make penicillin anymore, said Gibson.
The last penicillin plant in the United States closed in 2004.
A Chinese manipulation of drug ingredients or supply may seem like a fairly remote possibility.
Oh, I love it!
Hindsight is 20-20.
A state-run Chinese paper said this week that there's little chance the government would deliberately harm Americans by cutting off the flow of antibiotics.
Well, well, well.
Here we are.
This story is from last September.
How soon we learned the folly of our ways.
But I will mention, it doesn't need to be deliberate.
When China knew the outbreak hit them, they actually turned around a ship full of N95 masks.
Why?
We need them more.
They're in our country, we control it, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
Meanwhile, over in America, we are facing a shortage of masks.
We don't have enough.
What an absurdly ridiculous thing this country has done, America, over the past several decades.
Because individuals more concerned with profit did not care that they were selling out the American people and our ability to sustain ourselves.
And this is the politicians and the corporations.
Well, good on Trump for calling it out.
But let's take a step into another area of economics.
Auto manufacturing and general manufacturing.
And I want to show you something from Michael Moore.
Many of you may have seen, but I think is absolutely incredible.
This is a quote from a presentation Michael Moore did.
This was posted by Democracy Now, a left-wing media outlet.
Michael Moore said, Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor Executives and said, quote, if you close these factories as you're planning to do in Detroit and build them in Mexico, I'm going to put a 35% tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody is going to buy them.
It was an amazing thing to see.
No politician, Republican or Democrat, had ever said anything like that to these executives.
And it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Brexit states.
If you live here in Ohio, you know what I'm talking about.
Whether Trump means it or not is kind of irrelevant because he's saying the things to people who are hurting.
And it's why every beaten down nameless forgotten working stiff who used to be part of what was called the middle class loves Trump.
He is the human Molotov cocktail that they've been waiting for.
The human hand grenade that they can legally throw into the system that stole their lives from them.
And on November 8th, election day, although they've lost their jobs, although they've been foreclosed on by the bank, next came the divorce and now the wife and kids are gone, the car has been repoed, they haven't had a real vacation in years, they're stuck in the Obamacare bronze plan where you can't even get a Percocet, they've essentially lost everything they had except one thing, the one thing that doesn't cost them a cent and is guaranteed to them by the American Constitution, the right to vote.
They might be penniless, They might be homeless.
They might be F'd over and F'd up.
It doesn't matter.
Because it's equalized on that day.
A millionaire has the same number of votes as the person without a job.
One.
And there's more of the former middle class than there are in the millionaire class.
He then goes on to say, this would be the biggest F you in history.
And he was right.
But Michael Moore made a serious and critical mistake in his assessment.
He went on to say that they would regret it.
He said it would feel good.
Here's what he said.
He said that Trump's election is going to be the biggest FU ever recorded in human history.
And it will feel good.
For a day, yeah.
Maybe a week.
Possibly a month.
And then, like the Brits, who wanted to send a message, so they voted to leave Europe.
Only to find out, if you vote to leave Europe, you actually have to leave Europe, and now they regret it.
All the Ohioans, Pennsylvanians, Michiganders, and Wisconsinites of Middle England, right?
They all voted to leave, and now they regret it.
And over 4 million of them have signed a petition to have a do-over.
They want another election.
It ain't gonna happen.
Because you used the ballots as an anger management tool.
And now you're effed.
And the rest of Europe, the rest of Europe, they're like, bye, Felicia.
You see, Michael Moore was right in his early assessment.
These people were angry, their factories were being given away, and Donald Trump stood up and said, I will tax you, and no one will buy your cars.
For all of the faults that you can point to, for all the criticism you can give to him, Michael Moore was wrong.
He said they would regret it.
Yet for the past several years, we here in America have enjoyed a smashing record economy.
Unemployment has been incredible.
It's down, down, down.
Jobs are up, up, up.
People are making more money now.
I hear it personally from people all throughout my area.
They made more money last year than they ever did in any year before that.
And now the economy is taking a major hit because of the coronavirus.
I'm not going to blame Trump for the virus and the economic panic.
That's not necessarily his fault.
They argued that Trump wasn't doing enough.
And I admit, I agree.
Early on, he was saying it was like the flu, that was a mistake, and so did many other, many conservatives were actually calling this out as well.
Then Donald Trump announced there were going to be travel restrictions on Europe, and then they blamed him for sparking the panic.
You know what, man?
Here's what I said earlier.
I don't know what the right thing to do is.
I don't know if it could have been done better or worse.
All I know is he was the one talking about the threat of China from the beginning.
Now I want to show you something truly remarkable.
Michael Moore said these people would regret it.
They said it would feel good for a day, maybe a month.
A month?
For years, people enjoyed this booming economy.
And now because of the coronavirus and panic, there's a real threat to it.
Trump isn't forcing us to stay in our homes.
People are doing it because we have to.
That's not his fault.
But what about Brexit?
Michael Moore said they would regret Brexit.
They did not regret Brexit, and three years later, on December 13th, 2019, they sent another message.
The worst defeat in the history of the La- I'm sorry, the worst defeat the Labour Party faced in a hundred years.
This from the BBC.
General election 2019.
Worst night for Labour since 1935.
The Labour Party is essentially their left-wing party.
There were some places that hadn't voted Conservative in nearly 100 years that flipped.
They did not regret it.
They demanded it in another referendum on Brexit, saying, we want this.
They never regretted it.
Michael Moore was wrong.
And the people who supported Trump also, for the most part, didn't regret it.
And I'll admit, I'm not going to pretend like everything's absolute and everyone loves the president.
A lot of people probably grew to regret their decision to vote for him.
But according to the New York Times, Trump's base is bigger than ever.
Following impeachment, congressional Republicans have a higher approval rating than Democrats for the first time in 15 years, reversing a major trend.
People are happy with their decision.
And although we're facing the coronavirus, it is not necessarily Trump's fault.
The economy is taking a hit.
I think people will know that.
Of course, in the media, they want to pretend like this is extremely bad news for Trump.
It's his fault.
They're saying he created the problem.
And now we see something absolutely insane.
The weaponization of the coronavirus against the president.
This is from MRCTV.
35 times the media said Wuhan or Chinese coronavirus, but they blame the GOP.
Since the beginning of this crisis, the media has said the Wuhan virus, China's coronavirus, China's virus.
Yet for some reason now that Trump is saying it, they're claiming it's racist to do so.
They're saying it's bigoted to tie the virus to China and it is shockingly insane.
The virus started there.
I don't get it.
But I think we can see the people in media have no idea what's going on.
They really don't.
They're just saying whatever their tribe needs to say.
But I'm willing to bet, first, Trump's approval rating has gone down in the wake of the coronavirus.
Absolutely.
But I'm also willing to bet there are many people, especially his base, that accept a pandemic is outside of your control for the most part.
We can mitigate it.
We can do a good job of it.
And Trump may not be doing the best job.
But think about our medicine shortage.
That's not Trump's fault.
Trump's been actively trying to reverse that problem.
Like I showed you in September when he ordered firms to get out.
And what do we see?
It's one of the craziest stories I find truly hilarious.
Check this out.
How does that make sense?
the wool over our eyes. Workers blame Trump for moving jobs overseas. How does that make sense?
They found a few people that don't understand what Trump's been doing. Check this out.
Promises to save U.S.
manufacturing and prevent American jobs moving abroad were a key part of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
But since Trump took office in January 2017, nearly 200,000 jobs have been moved overseas based on Trade Adjustment Assistance Certified petitions.
Is it Trump's fault that some jobs are still going overseas?
Or is he actively trying to bring them back and just not doing a perfect job of it?
Look, I'm going to look at it like this.
If even Michael Moore is willing to admit that Trump was saying these things to these executives, it stands to reason it would have been a lot worse were it not for Trump trying to actually prevent this.
But I'll show you this now, man.
Auto make, so, I'm sorry, this is the wrong story.
Ford cancels plan for Mexico plant as Donald Trump threatens to tax GM three years ago.
Ford pledges $900 million and 1,500 new jobs to Avon Lake assembly plant.
Yeah, I think Trump's demands these companies come back has actually, it's happened.
It's worked.
I mean, these companies are reopening plants.
They're closing down foreign plants.
Now, the other story I was going to show you, automakers resume or prepare to restart car production in China amid coronavirus outbreak.
It's not perfect.
Donald Trump is not perfect.
I actually think he's a lot less than perfect.
But I can give him credit where it matters, particularly on the threat we're faced now with wet medicine shortages and manufacturing shortages.
Trump has been calling that out for the get-go.
He was absolutely correct.
Now, where are we today?
You know, we're faced with a very real threat that we're not going to have the supplies we need.
We're not going to have the medicines we need.
Perhaps now we'll start bringing these things back.
And that's what we're seeing in the New York Times.
Coronavirus spurs U.S.
efforts to end China's chokehold on drugs.
The Trump administration says the U.S.
is too dependent on China for vital drugs, but it's unclear how much Washington can do to alter global supply chains.
We can incentivize the production of medicines in our country.
We can offer up tax incentives and grants to those who would start producing again in our country.
We should never be faced with this threat.
It's a utopianist idea that we can say, China, you handle all the production and we just think you'll do right by us.
But we've been facing military threats from China.
Right now, numerous stories have been popping up about academics being arrested and charged for not disclosing their funding from China.
China is buying out researchers and taking not just our ability to produce the medicine, but to even discover it.
Academics are taking money from China because the short-term gains are just too good to give up.
Now here's my problem with the laissez-faire capitalism, the just do-as-you-will free hand, you know, invisible hand of the market.
Sorry, not free hand, invisible hand.
When given the opportunity, these firms will give away our self-reliance.
When given the opportunity, these academics will sell out to China because the money for them is good.
We must have a sense of community.
Otherwise, we will be left high and dry.
China is saying, yeah, if we want to, we can cut off your medicine.
And there ain't nothing you can do to stop it.
Because they got a military too.
They got a massive standing army.
They got warships.
We might have technological superiority.
We might make great weapons here, but not medicine.
And if you don't have humans, you can't man any of that technology.
I guess technically we have drones, right?
So for the time being, I think people need to get off the Orange Man bad narrative.
Now is not the time to screech about Trump, and whether or not he's doing it, he's doing well enough.
Give him credit for calling this out early, and if we had reacted more harshly back then, we wouldn't be so worried today, would we?
You can be angry that the man didn't do it fast enough, fine.
You can be angry that he was comparing it to the flu, and I certainly think he's deserving of criticism for that.
But if we had reacted years ago off of what he was saying much more quickly, we wouldn't care.
We'd have secure borders.
We'd have more controls on who's coming in and when they are.
And even though Trump didn't react fast enough, we'd have all the medicine we'd need, all the medical supplies we'd need, or at least enough or more.
We don't.
And that's our fault.
So, I don't know what to tell you, man.
I'll leave it with this.
I'm sick and tired of people saying Trump's response, orange man bad.
The reaction should be Trump's response, how can we do better?
And we can look at what he's been saying, for one.
And we can focus on helping save lives and getting supplies to people, instead of just using it as an opportunity to smear the president and screech orange man bad.
They want to win an election.
I get it.
Now is not the time.
Already, a Democratic primary, Louisiana, has been postponed.
That's a good idea.
Now is not the time.
I'll leave it there.
I'm not even going to drag any of the Democrats individually.
Many of them, I think, have done a good job compromising and negotiating on the coronavirus bill, providing us with information.
I am not going to play these partisan games.
I will leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews, and I will see you all then.
It would seem that we finally have an answer as to why so many people are raiding the toilet paper aisle, and you'll... I want to say you're not going to believe it, but nah, I think most of us have lost faith in humanity, at least to a certain degree, and we're absolutely going to believe this story.
CBS4 undercover video shows coronavirus gouging.
Scalpers upcharging toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
That's it.
You know, I have had no contact with anybody who is even remotely suspected of having coronavirus.
I have not traveled.
In fact, I have barely left my home.
But I have decided, because of this, I will be self-quarantining indefinitely.
No longer do I want to be around human beings, period.
Can you believe this?
People are rushing to stores, snatching up all the toilet paper, and then popping open, like, the trunks of their car, and scalping the stuff.
And there are photos people are posting on Twitter, eBay, I think eBay, people are upcharging toilet- Ah, you gotta be kidding me, man.
So maybe, just maybe, People don't actually need all that toilet paper they're buying.
And what's happening is, because there's this massive demand, or at least the impression of demand, scalpers are snatching it up thinking, now's my chance.
And that's because, look, when I heard toilet paper was being snatched up, it sounds arbitrary.
Like, why would you do that?
Not the beans!
You know a can of beans can last like five years?
I'm not even exaggerating.
Expiration date, five years on a can of black beans.
You can eat that, right?
And you can use the lid for something.
And you have a can and you can use it as a cup like this.
There's a bunch of stuff you can do with a can of beans.
Toilet paper!
What are you gonna do with that?
Are you gonna blow your nose?
But people started snatching it up.
And we kept joking about, you know, me and my friends on the other show, we kept joking about why people would do this.
Now we got it.
We got it right here.
Check this out.
With consumers panicking, buying toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and other personal hygiene items, CBS 4 found an underground network of scalpers and gougers reselling personal hygiene items at vastly inflated prices during the coronavirus crisis.
My son and I bought them coronavirus, said one man who was up selling toilet paper.
He had advertised the rolls of toilet paper on Craigslist, packages of four rolls that normally sell for about a dollar each in stores.
He was now selling for four to five dollars each.
You know, oh man, I gotta respect that entrepreneurial spirit.
I also have to absolutely disrespect the fact that there are people who actually need, you know, one pack of toilet paper, and you're upcharging now.
Come on, what a horrible thing.
Humans, man.
Can't, can't, oh geez.
If you want more, it'll be gone by tomorrow, said the man, as he spoke to an undercover CBS 4 Investigates crew.
He said business had been brisk, as he had sold about a hundred rolls already at inflated prices.
He met the CBS4 crew in the Cherry Creek North area, and showed off dozens of rolls of the new packages of toilet paper in his car.
There was a viral video the other day, and it's a woman with sunglasses, and she's wearing like a, you know, a coat, and the car pulls up, and she opens her coat, and there's a roll of toilet paper, and she cuts open the bag and pulls out a roll, and the guy hands her money.
It was a joke!
People thought this was funny, like, ha, isn't it funny, like, people are gonna be selling toilet paper on the street.
Dude's literally selling toilet paper on the street.
When told he was on an undercover camera, he said, I don't want to talk further to you and took off.
CBS 4 contacted and met with another man selling 2oz bottles of hand sanitizer on Craigslist.
They normally retail for $4-$5 each.
The man had marked them up to $20 each.
Did you want to do all three for $40?
Asked the man, negotiating with an undercover CBS crew.
He said that he had sold other bottles, primarily to people concerned about coronavirus.
But when he was asked about gouging for a high-demand item, the man agreed, saying, you're right about that.
I just wanted to cash in and make a few bucks.
Hey, welcome to business.
He ultimately said he didn't feel right about what he was doing, returned the money and said, sorry, I don't feel right.
We'll put them back at regular price.
I don't agree with that either.
I mean look, I'll tell you what.
If for some reason you have sanitizer, and you want to sell it, and you sell it at a marginally increased price, I really don't care.
If you raid a Walmart or a Target or something to snatch up the toilet paper so you can sell it at a marked up price, that I find kind of dirty.
But if you already had the stuff, or like a month before you bought a bunch, and you put a very light markup on it, because, you know, you're running a business, I don't think that's a big deal.
Like if you were like, hey man, I think in January, let's say in January you were concerned, and you bought a bunch of toilet paper.
And now nobody has any, so you're like, alright, you know, throw 50 cents on top and we're good.
That's not a big deal.
You're like, hey, look, man, I went out and I had to buy this stuff and people, you know, I was in front of everybody.
But charging 20 bucks, 40 bucks?
Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are littered with ads offering personal hygiene items at increased prices.
One man was selling a bottle of hand sanitizer for $100 that normally sells for $15.
Another offering a 32-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer, asking for best offer.
I love it.
Another Craigslist seller was offering to sell containers of 75 Clorox disinfecting wipes for $20 each.
They normally retail for about $5.
Cash only, wrote the seller.
No holds.
First come, first served.
While what they are doing may feel distasteful and immoral to some, it is not illegal in Colorado.
This story is from Colorado.
More than 30 states have laws against price gouging during a state of emergency or disaster.
Colorado is not one of them.
On social media, one commenter wrote of the CBS4 investigation, Another social media commenter wrote, Now let's talk about price gouging.
Let's talk about panic buying and price gouging.
I hope the state legislature and governor pass and implement serious consequences for
price gouging.
Shame on those taking advantage of a serious situation."
Another social media commenter wrote, How low can people go?
Now let's talk about price gouging.
Let's talk about panic buying and price gouging.
Check out this picture.
This dude is buying all of the toilet paper.
His car is literally just full of toilet paper.
Now, get out of here.
I get it, man.
The stores need to implement limits.
You know, it's on the store.
I remember seeing, during some disasters, they were going after people who were selling bottled water for like 40 bucks a pack.
And they normally go for like 5.
And everyone was complaining.
I got no problem with that.
Absolutely none.
You know why?
In this instance, it's different.
But there are challenges here.
I can't remember which disaster it was.
I can't remember.
But anyway, if you go and drive 50 miles to pick up a bunch of bottled water and then drive back and you want to cover the cost, that's business.
You are providing water to people in a disaster.
It's more expensive because you've got to deal with your safety risks.
You've got to deal with going and getting the water.
It's not the same as a truck coming in on a bulk shipment and saying, It was cheaper for us to distribute this because we have massive amounts.
It's you and your car saying, this place needs water, and buying water, and then upcharging because you did the work to bring it there.
Now, to an extent, there should be a limit, I guess.
Like if you take a dollar bottle of water and try and sell it for 50 bucks, and someone's desperate and they'll buy it from you, that's kind of messed up.
But what people were doing was they were selling dollar bottles of water for like 3 or 4 bucks.
That I don't care about.
It's like, what's the alternative?
Someone has no water?
Nah, if there's a hurricane or tornado damage, and people are desperate for water, so you drive through a dangerous area, go a long distance, pick up water and come back, and you say, I need to make something on top, because I'm spending my time.
That's literally what money is for.
I'll put it this way.
Gouging is bad, but it's not black and white.
This is the problem.
This is a store where people have a chance to go and buy stuff, and these people are rushing in and snatching everything up before anyone has a chance to stock up on supplies.
That should not be allowed.
Ultimately, though, I think it falls on the store, because you're gonna get a bunch of angry customers if you allow this stuff.
Stores should absolutely put a limit on this.
There's no reason this guy needs to buy- Look at these things!
They're massive!
I can't- You know what, man?
People are gross.
This guy said, we've created a society where success is having more of something than anyone else.
For the rich, it's money, cars, and houses.
For the rest of us, it's toilet paper.
Nah, dude, don't you get it?
These guys, this guy right here, I don't know if- He might actually be working there.
He's got a badge on.
I don't- I have no idea.
But we've seen many, many clips like this.
There's a clip where a lady has like five packs of toilet paper in her cart, and there's an old lady with one, and they're fighting over it.
Man...
I'm a non-violent person, but you get me riled up.
Trying to snatch the one roll from the old lady when you got five?
I have very little faith in humanity at this point.
Check this one out.
Trader Joe's in downtown Manhattan.
This is from Twitter user Tiffany Chantel.
On 6th Avenue in Spring, people have lost their goddamn minds.
I have never seen anything like this.
Check this out.
Man, I'll tell you what, dude.
I didn't want to believe we'd actually get this bad.
It was a month ago.
I told everybody to go buy supplies.
I said, buy your emergency food.
And guess what some people did?
And they're on backorder right now.
Somebody messaged me on the show the other night.
Superchat saying that they were like three weeks out from getting their supply that normally is supposed to come in two days.
So this company that I've promoted several times, I only promote it because I seriously think it was a good idea to order at the time.
Now it's like a nine or ten week delay.
I mean, I still think it's a good idea to get in line.
But some people, the people who got in early, it's supposed to take two days to get these emergency supplies.
Here's the thing, man.
People are saying, you know, you want two weeks of food, not three months, not eight months, not a year.
And that's true.
You want a buffer because you're still going to be able to go out and get stuff.
There's going to be a restocking issue in the next month.
But I really don't think we're facing the apocalypse.
We're going to see supply chain disruption and panic buying.
Take a look at these photos.
This is Trader Joe's in Manhattan.
Everything is gone.
Everything.
On this picture, there's two items, but one item looks broken open, so I don't think it's fair to consider that as a for-sale item.
The whole store is empty.
I see one jar down there of who knows what.
It's crazy.
So I'll tell you what, man.
I'm not the kind of person that's gonna laugh and mock those, but I'll tell you what.
Couple weeks ago, last month, people were posting photos of me doing the promo, of like, pick up your emergency food while you can, and they were all gloating and laughing and saying, wow, he's so dumb, he's so dumb.
I feel real bad to the people who live in Manhattan who listen to those people.
They were sitting there laughing, thinking, they were so smart, ha ha ha ha, what a dumb, what a dummy!
He's so dumb, you could've ordered that.
80 bucks, two week supply of food, would've come in the mail in a week, and you wouldn't have to go out and find this.
And that's why I was sincere when I said, I really think it's a good idea.
And I bought, I have my own emergency food.
We went out and went shopping too.
And now you're facing this.
Well, I didn't go out in panic.
This is crazy to me.
The people that are panicking, check this out.
This guy, Nick Lombardi says, Siri, show me scumbags.
Look at this.
This looks like, I don't know if this is eBay or Craigslist or whatever.
This looks like, I think it's in Canada maybe.
120 bucks.
For, for, what is it, 60, 60, what is that, 60, what does that say?
It says 60, I don't know what that means.
60 rolls, maybe?
9 plus rolls, Charmin Ultra Soft, $45.
You know what, man?
It's kind of sad because it's times like this, you really see how humans are really, really preparing for this.
And I think maybe it has to do with the fact that we function better in small tribal communities.
You know, if you were in a group, a small community of 25, 30 people, maybe even up to 100, There's a limit to how much humans actually care about other humans, and I hate to say it, but I think it's true.
If you have a household, and you have your neighbors, you know, you'll probably be like, alright, alright, alright, I'll share with you.
But when it comes to big cities, and when it comes to, you know, millions and millions of people, You end up with people saying, I don't know you, I don't care about you, and all I care about is myself, my friends, and my family.
So what ends up happening, I'm fighting a sneeze by the way, what ends up happening is you get these people who don't care about anyone else, every man for themselves, and they just show up and they fill up their shopping carts with toilet paper that they don't need.
And then many of these people go online and try and sell it because all they really care about at the end of the day is themselves.
I don't know how you solve that problem because I think it's a human problem.
Even when you look at China and how they've locked everything down, even in these grand communist countries, they don't behave like ants fighting for the greater good.
Even in North Korea, there's this utopianist idea of a communist society where everyone just loves and cherishes each other.
Nah, man.
Could you imagine what it would be like if it was, you know, we lived in a socialist or communist country and there was a major disaster?
You know what would happen?
The government, the party in control, would siphon away all the resources for them.
Just like when we saw, what's his face, Maduro eat an empanada on TV.
Do you remember this?
There's a food shortage in Venezuela.
Maduro's giving his address to the country, and then all of a sudden he pulls an empanada out of a drawer and bites it and puts it back, and people are starving, and this dude's gaining weight.
Look at North Korea, same thing.
People are starving, but you got a big fat leader.
That's the thing.
Why would I want this dude... I don't trust these people.
Why would I want this dude to have supreme authority over everyone else?
Nah.
I like decentralization to the best of our abilities.
And so when you have three branches, when you have politicians who are restricted and limited under, you know...
Accepted constitutional requirements and norms, it prevents people from pulling sheisty BS.
They still do it.
People with money still do this stuff.
But why would I want to snap my fingers and put someone like this in charge?
Because that's what you will get.
In North Korea, when I interviewed some people who had gone there, This is great communist utopia, apparently.
I'm kidding, by the way.
I'm being sarcastic.
The people there... Here's what I was told.
If they have a cow, and the cow dies, they can't touch it.
Because the cow's meat has to be distributed around the entire country for everyone.
Of course, the party members are guaranteed to be fed and be fat and happy.
And if they try and take some of that for themselves, they will be punished for it.
So now people, their growth is stunted, they're starving, they're hungry, they have famine.
And that's how the system works.
That is not how, you know, you have people, even in the society, who will lie, who will hide things because they want to live.
That's the challenge of this communist utopia.
We're not ants.
We won't walk off a cliff if it means protecting the hive.
We want to survive because we are more individualist and, you know, tribal-based and not a mass network organism like ants.
But I guess even ants fight each other.
So think about what happens then.
If you try and create this utopian ideal, this socialist BS.
I don't care who you put in charge.
When you give supreme authority to anybody, they act like this.
Absolute power, what is it?
Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.
So, what we're seeing is in no way surprising to me.
Now I'll tell you what's really scary.
It's not the shortage of toilet paper.
It's the shortage of hospital beds and ventilators.
Right now we have a bunch of people screeching, we're not getting the tests we need, it's not fair, oh the government is messing things up, we need more tests.
No.
No you don't, you hypochondriac.
I can't tell you how many posts I've seen on Facebook from people saying, whoa, man, I just realized maybe I had the coronavirus.
No, dude.
It's so annoying.
You see, this is what happens.
There are young people I'm seeing on social media claiming they think they got it.
And here we go.
And then they want to call and they want to say, I deserve to be tested.
No, dude, you're 35.
You don't need to be tested.
You need to sit down and watch TV.
And if you get really sick and it gets severe, you go to the hospital.
Testing is for people who are at risk and when they really believe there's a reason to use a test because we have finite resources.
And then these people go and say, this is proof why we need universal healthcare.
As if universal healthcare meant infinite resources for testing literally everyone.
No.
There is, in my opinion, room for public services and publicly funded healthcare.
Absolutely.
But not the complete abolishment of private insurance and private healthcare.
That's insane.
Resources are finite.
And what these people don't realize right now, as they're complaining, why aren't I getting a test?
What do you think would happen if the doors were opened to literally anyone and everyone?
then people who don't need tests would get tested and be negative and we wouldn't track anything.
We need to make sure that when we do test, we're testing people we suspect of having coronavirus,
not random people who are coughing saying, I think it's me.
If they go over the symptoms and they say this is in line and you have other risk factors like
contact with somebody, recent travel, or exposure to certain areas, or you know what I mean,
you get the point.
Then it makes sense.
But I'll tell you what, man, when it's in the worst times that we really see the worst of humanity, and it bums me out, the every-man-for-himself mentality, the snatch-up-the-toilet-paper-and-try-and-sell-it-back-to-everyone-at-gouged-up-prices, and demand that you deserve the test, I'm seeing a bunch of posts on social media where people are like, I felt like I had symptoms, and they wouldn't test me.
Maybe it's because you don't know what to look for in risk factors.
Maybe it's because you're a 27-year-old woman living in a big city, and you are not at risk for this, and they don't need to- if you go to the hospital, it's fine.
People just think they're owed everything.
And that's why they're willing to snatch up toilet paper.
And now, here's what we're really facing.
A shortage of hospital beds.
Alright, look, we can complain about toilet paper, but I'll tell you what.
What's the worst case scenario if you can't buy toilet paper?
You got a sticky butt?
You gotta take a shower?
You gotta clean yourself?
Yeah, well, too bad.
As long as the water's running, I think we'll be okay.
The real risk now, hospital beds.
And this is where it's gonna get scary.
Because in Italy, they are actually asking the question, should we turn away the elderly and leave them to die?
You know what I think, man?
I think China's still lying.
I think everyone's talking about how China's got everything under control.
You know, China was, like, isolating and arresting whistleblowers and doctors.
Why should I believe they've got anything under control?
And why should I believe their official numbers?
I don't.
In Italy, the death rate is near 5-6%.
So I'll tell you what.
When it comes to the official numbers, I'm not gonna believe it.
From China.
Now that we're looking at Italy, perhaps we're getting a better picture of how serious this really is.
More importantly, look, I think I've said what I need to say, I guess.
You know, China is trying to pass the blame onto us.
They're trying to claim there's Chinese people, you know, on Twitter saying that the U.S.
may have started this.
And of course, we've seen people bend the knee to China, NBA players, celebrities.
It's freaky.
For the longest time, news anchors said Wuhan coronavirus, Chinese coronavirus, and now all of a sudden they flipped.
Samantha Bee saying, trying to tie the coronavirus to China is racist.
I'm not going to base my decisions off of the numbers the authoritarian country is saying.
I'm going to base my decisions off the actions they're taking, locking down the entire country.
Yeah, that's freaky.
Whatever, man.
I'll leave it there.
This was a depressing segment.
I gotta tell you what, but maybe there'll be some good news coming in the future.
Maybe we'll see some, you know, a light shining above all else, which shows that there is some faith we can have in humanity, I guess.
I don't know.
I'll see you all at 1pm on this channel.
Thanks for hanging out.
We have major breaking news.
President Donald Trump is set to declare a national emergency over the coronavirus.
Everything is being shut down.
Congress is being told 150 million people might get infected by this, and the entire country is basically shutting down.
America is closed for business.
And I gotta admit, while we're seeing some major action here, The entire news world is dominated by nothing but stories about coronavirus, and they're... It doesn't matter.
A lot of these things are like, so-and-so said X, X and Y, and no one knows anything, the market's going crazy, and all I can really tell you is that it really does seem like things are breaking down.
I open up a news website, I look at all these different articles, same exact stories, nothing new, same opinion, same comments, we've been saying it for weeks, Dare I say, we might enter a period of such a dramatic economic slowdown that there's not even news to talk about.
Well, at least for now, we can talk about two major things.
Trump to declare national emergency to speed virus response, and statements made to Congress.
150 million people will be infected with the virus, Congress is warned.
Highways and airports are deserted.
DC is a ghost town and millions of people mob grocery stores to get supplies.
Let's read about the national emergency and then we'll complain about the dead news cycle.
Yahoo reports President Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency on Friday over the coronavirus outbreak, invoking the Stafford Act to open the door to more federal aid for states and municipalities, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Trump is under increasing pressure to act as governors and mayors nationwide step up actions to mitigate the spread, closing schools and canceling public events.
The president said he will hold a news conference at 3 p.m.
in Washington.
The move would allow the government to marshal additional resources to combat the virus and also marks a symbolic turning point for the president who has repeatedly compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu and insisted that his administration had the outbreak under control.
U.S.
stocks paired gains on the news, with the S&P 500 index up about 2% at 1130 a.m.
in New York.
The decree comes at the end of a week of wild swings in U.S.
equities, with Friday's advance following Thursday's worst since 1987 rout.
Senate Democrats have urged Trump to invoke the Stafford Act, and other disaster declaration requests they say would free up more than $42 billion in funding for states available in the Disaster Relief Fund.
An emergency declaration would allow a state to request a 75% federal cost share for expenses that include emergency workers, medical tests, medical supplies, vaccinations, security for medical facilities, and more, according to a letter Democrats sent to the president earlier this week.
Only a few emergency declarations for public health threats have been made since the 1960s, and only two have targeted disease outbreaks, when President Bill Clinton in 2000 declared emergencies in New York and New Jersey in response to the West Nile virus, with assistance from John Wingrove, Ryan Beeney, uh, oh, okay, so that's, that's, they're just talking about reporters.
All right, well, This is interesting because we have this op-ed from the other day from the New York Times.
It's time to declare a national emergency.
Now, it's really interesting to see Trump, you know, in sync with left-wing or mainstream press.
But here we go.
If there's one thing that I guess can sort of unify us, it's a global pandemic, I guess.
Of course, One of the things that I find just so annoying is the incessant desire to politicize this and just attack Trump over and over and over again.
I gotta say, man, I'll be honest with you.
I'm tired.
And I say it sometimes, but I really, really mean it.
I'm looking at endless news, the same stories, the same opinions, the same things said every single day.
And the reason is people aren't working right now.
There's not really news.
So the Daily Mail, for instance, just kind of writes the same thing.
Now it's true.
Congress was recently warned by their attending physician, between 70 and 150 million people in the U.S.
could eventually be infected with the virus.
These things are happening, but been there, done that.
We've talked about all this stuff.
Now, in terms of the politicking, what's mind-bending to me, it's breaking my brain.
Listen, man, even if Donald Trump is doing a bad job, shut up!
I'm sick of it!
I'm not kidding, shut up!
Stop saying, Trump is bad, therefore Trump is bad.
Say, we didn't have a good response on coronavirus, therefore let's get medical testing kits.
And many people are saying this.
My respect.
You want to criticize Trump for his language, you know, his stance, his rhetoric on the coronavirus?
Fine.
But instead of making your conclusion about how Orange Man is bad, make your conclusion about how we're going to help people in the outbreak during the pandemic, okay?
What I'm trying to say is, If someone comes out and says, Trump should have been much more serious and stern with his reaction to the coronavirus, therefore, you should follow with a therefore that says, let's ramp up production, let's bring production back to the United States, let's work together and solve this.
Instead, it's, therefore, it's time to vote him out, it's time to get rid of Trump, it's always about Trump.
No, I don't care about Trump.
I don't care if someone is saying, you know, I don't care about it.
You want to criticize anybody?
Fine.
The reason for your criticism should not be that the Orange Man is bad and that your tribe should win and your party is better.
It should be what we can do better to mitigate the disaster and the damage and the economic fallout from what's happening with this pandemic.
I'm looking at all of these stories, man, and it's like, Trump flubbed this.
He should have done this.
It's time for new leadership.
And I'm just like, aw, dude, no, it's not time for any of that.
It's time for us to take care of people who are in need.
It's time for us to talk about us.
Donald Trump is not the cause of all of your problems.
He did not make this virus.
Shut up.
You know what I'm concerned about?
Are the elderly and at-risk people who are being told not to go outside able to get supplies?
Is that Trump's fault?
Shut up.
Let's read this story from the Daily Mail.
They say Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib confirmed early reports that Congress's Dr. Brian Monahan has told lawmakers that he predicts between 70 to 150 million people in the United States could eventually be infected with the novel coronavirus.
I'm not going to sit here and poke at Rashida Tlaib.
I'm going to say thank you for confirming these numbers.
It's about time Americans work together.
We can complain about the orange man being bad once things get back to normal.
It is a luxury in this country to scream Orange Man bad, to poke fun at Rashid Tlaib and the squad.
It is a luxury for me and anyone else to complain about these politicians and the policies we don't like and their behaviors when we're dealing with a serious national emergency.
When you are looking at how China has responded, They're harsh military, the authoritarianism, the lockdown.
I don't believe a word they say.
When we look at Italy and we can see a mortality rate 5 to 6 percent, I don't care about what anyone thinks about what is going to, you know, oh, it's not going to be that bad.
Listen, man, flu's mortality is 0.1 percent.
We all know it.
I said it a million times.
Instead of sitting around on our hands saying everything's fine, we should be paying attention to how people are reacting, not the rhetoric from pundits.
I guess that includes me as well.
But I'm going to err on the side of caution, so you don't have to listen to me, fine.
But I think actions speak louder than words.
I went out and bought supplies.
I wouldn't tell someone to do so unless I was going to do it myself, and I did.
I look at Italy, their nearing capacity for their medical system, and the mortality rate is 5 to 6 percent.
That's way worse than we've seen.
And it could be possible that the only reason we think the mortality rate is around 3.4 is because China is lying.
They've been lying the entire time.
Now China's trying to accuse us.
They're going online saying, the coronavirus may have originated in the United States and the army brought it to China.
Oh, please, man.
We've seen the authoritarian crackdown from China, and if anything, if anything would make sense, it's that China is an authoritarian, polluted country, where people are in these exotic food markets.
Look, they've got serious pollution problems.
I'm not talking about Chinese people in general.
I'm talking about the country, their system of government.
Yes, they have bats.
The bats have coronavirus.
It's spread to humans.
Likely answer.
Let's read a little bit more.
The startling figures were revealed as many public spaces, airports, streets, and highways became deserted of people in cars Thursday evening and panic shoppers rushed to buy supplies.
Disney parks and Capitol Hill were among the many places closed off to the public as Broadway also went dark.
Dr. Monahan's prediction underscores how severe the outbreak could become in the U.S.
As the White House continues to downplay the severity, now full stop, as you know, before
this story from yesterday, Trump's going to declare a national emergency.
All I can say, if you've watched my videos, I have criticized the president's response.
I understand it's a rock and a hard place.
You don't want to incite panic.
So they criticize him for that.
Then when he says we're suspending travel, they accuse him of spreading panic.
Just shut up for once!
I do not care, okay?
Local governments are reacting to the best of their abilities.
The president is not the end-all be-all for how we should be dealing with this.
Shut up for once.
And look, man, I am exasperated with these people.
He originally shared the information with a closed-door meeting of Senate senior staff on Tuesday, when they were told they should prepare for the worst.
They say, uh, you know, Trump is tweeting about Sleepy Joe or whatever and he's blaming Biden for H1N1 and stuff.
I don't care about this.
I don't care about Trump.
I don't care for Trump's tweets about the flu.
I don't care for him acting like, you know, it's not a big deal, we have it under control.
None of that I care about.
I'm not gonna sit here and screech Orange Man bad.
I'm gonna talk about what's happening and what we can do and what we can expect.
Let me tell you the secret to how our government functions.
There are tens of thousands of local politicians.
They have more of an impact on your life than the president ever will.
Yet every day, all we hear about is the president.
Let's talk about preparedness.
Is your local government dealing with this properly?
Is your township, city, town, village, whatever, having discussions about what they can do to mitigate the problem in the economic fallout?
Are they discussing supply chain disruption?
Is your county?
Is your state?
Is your congressman?
Is your senator?
It is not just about one person.
It is about what you can do.
Is your school?
Are your neighbors talking about this?
Wash your hands.
Don't touch your face.
Unless you've, like... Okay, they say don't touch your face, but this is really about if you're going out, if you're touching stuff, if you're shopping, do not touch your face.
We can see here, New York City residents getting last remaining food at Costco in Queens just hours after state of emergency declared.
What's gonna be more important is how the states react to this.
And we've seen, I think, last count, 15, probably more states declaring a national emergency.
I'm sorry.
Declaring a state of emergency.
No, Trump would declare the national emergency.
To all the people in government, I don't care who you are.
Rashida Tlaib sharing these numbers?
Good, fine, I don't care.
A lot of people are saying they're just trying to make the president look bad.
I'm not playing that game with you right now.
I don't care.
I literally don't care.
Let's focus on the infection rates.
This is amazing stuff, man.
And I'm not saying amazing is good.
center is empty, Disney- what is this, Disneyland is temporarily closed, few people are seen
at San Francisco's popular Fisherman's Wharf, empty shops and passengers at Newark Airport.
This is amazing stuff, man.
And I'm not saying amazing is good, I'm saying this is like, I- I- you know, as much as I've
been- I had someone email me, and they were like, you're riling people up, calm down.
The media's, you know, you're worse than the media, the mainstream media and all that stuff.
And I'm like, yes, because the mainstream media downplayed everything.
They mocked people.
I'm not kidding.
In January and February, there were articles popping up from these digital blogs mocking people who were concerned about this.
And now look where we're at.
If they had given people adequate time, But this is people, man.
And said, while you're at it, pick up some extra groceries.
If they said that in January, we may have been able to mitigate the raids on these supermarkets and the shortage in supplies.
Instead, what they did was most of them said, who cares?
Who cares, right?
We didn't react.
Italy underreacted.
Now look where they're at.
It's getting worse.
In the United States, we also underreacted, and that's on the president as well.
You know, look, the challenge I have right now with talking about Trump and this is, for one, there are too many people trying to politicize this for brownie points.
I do not believe the coronavirus, for the most part, should reflect upon Trump in terms of economics and whether or not he's doing a good job over the past four years.
But I do think the president should have been much more stern and serious.
Maybe a little bit more heavy-handed when he came out in the first place.
But the challenge there is I understand you can't incite panic.
And now I've already heard everyone saying he's inciting panic.
There's no right answer.
But I do think he should have been more serious on this one.
That's all I can really say.
I am not going to use this.
I'm not going to pretend like this, to me, is evidence that the president shouldn't be president.
It was an unforeseen disaster that shot up in a couple months we couldn't have expected.
I will say that the opponents of the president will not stop.
They will use everything and everything to make the guy look, you know, completely awful.
And I'm like, dude, come on, man.
You know what?
I'm just so over it.
Congresswoman Tlaib questioned Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, about the prediction during a hearing of the House of Representatives with members of the President's Coronavirus Task Force on Thursday.
It could see 46% of the U.S.
population infected with the virus at the upper end of the projection, as the country braces itself for further cases.
Even at the lower projected level of infection, The estimated rates combined with the current mortality rate for the coronavirus predicts 700,000 deaths for the country's 327 million population.
This is why we are not acting like it's the regular old flu.
They are predicting very, very high numbers of infection and death.
We are hoping that we are wrong.
Look, scientists aren't always right.
In fact, they're wrong all the time.
That's how science works.
We're constantly testing ideas, we believe things, and then we correct them once we get new information.
It's entirely possible these numbers are really, really high.
I hope so!
The only way that prediction will come true is if we act as though those numbers are a guarantee.
And if we start acting as though this is what we will see and we take these things seriously, we can then mitigate the disaster.
But humans, humans are cursed to never understand how to move, like how to predict the next steps.
If it turns out that our reaction mitigates this number and brings it down, you're going to have people going, they said it was going to be 700,000 and it was only like 100,000.
I mean, that was really bad, but their numbers were so exaggerated.
So what?
That's the curse.
If we do nothing, and we say, oh, it's exaggerated, and the number will be 700,000, they'll say, if only we knew!
And when we do fight back to mitigate this and take more drastic actions, then they're gonna say, ah, it wasn't even that bad, what a mistake.
They don't get it.
They don't understand that we're not seeing these things because we take them seriously.
The same is true for incidents of terror.
People don't seem to understand, they're like, there hasn't been a major incident.
We have a government and law enforcement agents that are working to stop these things.
Are they perfect?
No.
Do things slip through?
Absolutely.
Were we able to stop this port side?
We weren't.
And it seems like it's going to grow out of control now, so let's move forward to the best of our abilities.
By comparison, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned this week that up to 70% of her country's population could get the virus.
Asked by Tlaib whether he believed the prediction was accurate, Anthony Fauci, head of NIAID, told the hearing, we really need to be careful with those kinds of predictions because that's based on a model.
He added that all models are as good as the assumptions that you put into this model and that with containment and mitigation, the upper end of the projection could be avoided.
About 80% of cases are mild, and the overall mortality rate is around 1%, according to the latest estimate provided by Fauci to Congress on Wednesday.
At the low end of the projection, this would mean about 700,000 deaths.
At the high end, it could mean 1.5 million dead.
At the high end, it could mean 1.5 million dead.
And that's a 1% mortality rate.
Now, this is what's important.
The mortality rate is going down for two reasons.
Better testing, revealing that more people have actually caught the virus and we didn't know about it, which means if you only have 100,000 people infected and 1,000 deaths, you think you've got a 1% mortality, but then if it turns out you actually had 200,000 infected you didn't know about, mortality actually goes down to about 0.5.
However, It's also due to the fact that countries are starting to crack down.
Italy has started taking heavy action, maybe they can get under control.
South Korea has.
The mortality rate in South Korea is around 0.6% and I trust South Korea.
I think they're being honest and they're testing everybody.
It may be lower than we expect, but even at 1% we're looking at potentially hundreds of thousands dead.
And here's what I want.
I want all of you to remember.
If in the future, if in a few months, you come back to this video and it was all wrong, I want you to remember good.
It is a good thing that we were wrong about this.
And it was better that we overreacted than underreacted because the number would have been worse.
I hope every single video I've done has been wrong.
Every single one.
But in the beginning, I was very much on the same... When this first broke out, there was very little coverage of it.
I said it'll probably be like SARS, not a big deal.
And then it got really bad and very quickly I changed my tune and said, all right, I was wrong about that one.
And people are still mad at me about it.
Look, man, I think I'm more rational than most of these people, especially in media.
They're late to the game.
But I think we're looking at something that's going to get worse than we really, really expect.
A national emergency is underway.
It's a rare occurrence.
The last time was 20 years ago under Bill Clinton.
This is projected to get a lot, a lot worse.
Does that mean it's guaranteed?
No.
It could all be wrong.
And you have people saying, but look how many people died of the flu, you know?
A high-end 50,000 since October.
They're talking about in June us seeing in the hundreds of thousands of deaths if we don't get this under wraps.
So look, maybe it's over hype.
Maybe it's all hype.
Some people think they're just trying to make Trump look bad.
I don't think Italy is panicking and their medical system is buckling because the orange man is bad.
I really don't see that as being the case.
I think what's happening is it's not so much about the mortality rate because as we get a hold on this, we can get people to the hospital faster and save their lives.
What people don't understand is that the hospitalization rate is extremely high.
That means we're saving people.
But if this number gets out of control and we run out of hospital beds like we're seeing in Italy now with their system buckling, the mortality rate will skyrocket.
Let me leave you with one very important fact.
Do you know why lethal crime is down?
Why violent crime that results in death is down?
It's not because people are less violent, it's because we invented cell phones.
You may be saying to yourself, how does that make sense?
It's obvious, isn't it?
Back in the day, if someone got injured, they would be on the street with no way to call for help.
With cell phones now, the ability to contact emergency services has skyrocketed with everyone, nearly everyone, being able to do it.
So when criminal events happen, and someone is a victim of a crime that seriously injures them, we can notify emergency services immediately, which means those people are less likely to die.
Which means, when it's reported, we say, instances of homicide have gone down dramatically.
That's not because we're less violent.
It's because we are saving their lives.
If somebody survives, it's not homicide.
Attempted murder, maybe.
But there are many instances where people just get injured, and we can save them.
That's what I want you to consider.
Not that there's a direct relation.
What I'm saying to you is, sometimes you have to look deeper to understand what these numbers mean.
And if the numbers go down, it may just mean we succeeded in shutting this thing down before it got bad.
Let's hope that's the case.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment will be coming up at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCast.
I will see you there.
Trouble in paradise, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez essentially quits the Bernie Sanders campaign, and it's because Bernie, he's not far left enough, I guess?
Okay, at least on some policies.
So this has to do with a few things.
After Ocasio-Cortez campaigned for Bernie and said he was vowing to break up CBP, she got a stern talking to from the Sanders camp saying it's too extreme.
Because of that, and because Bernie Sanders proudly displayed the Joe Rogan semi-endorsement, she has decided she will not campaign for Bernie Sanders anymore.
This is the story from Huffington Post.
AOC has refused to campaign more for Bernie Sanders.
We got a civil war in the Democratic Party.
The far left is coming for the establishment.
But now we have the far left fighting the far left?
I guess Bernie Sanders is not what they expected or what they wanted?
I don't know.
I guess Bernie is trying to straddle the more progressive side and the establishment side, so they're effectively abandoning him.
Well, let's read the story from Huffington Post to see exactly what's happening.
They say, Rep.
Alexander Ocasio-Cortez turned down repeated requests from Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign to appear at events promoting the Vermont senator's candidacy in recent weeks, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
After the Iowa caucuses, Sanders' campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, asked Ocasio-Cortez to stump for Sanders in New Hampshire, according to the sources.
The campaign prepared a model schedule to highlight the kind of popular support she would expect if she attended.
One of the people familiar with the talk said, Ocasio-Cortez resisted the entreaties until a few days before the primary on February 12th.
She ultimately spoke the day before the election at a Sanders rally in Durham, New Hampshire, where the rock band The Strokes performed.
It was like pulling teeth to get her to New Hampshire, said a second person who knew about the discussions.
The absence of the popular progressive lawmaker on the trail in the weeks that followed was even more notable.
In the early month that passed, in nearly a month that passed from February 11th to March 8th, two days before the Michigan primary, Ocasio-Cortez declined multiple invitations from Sanders' campaign to speak on his behalf in Nevada, South Carolina, and the 14 states that voted on Super Tuesday, the three people told Huffington Post.
During that period, Sanders rose and fell quickly, going from the uncontested frontrunner after Nevada's February 22nd contest to a heavy underdog after a blowout in South Carolina on February 29th and Super Tuesday routes on March 3rd.
I'm sure that's the reason Bernie is losing, because Ocasio-Cortez wouldn't campaign for him.
No, they're not necessarily saying that, but I really don't think that's the case.
However, I do think AOC is cutting her losses.
I think so.
AOC might not win her seat again.
Her district might be wiped out entirely.
This could be the end for her, unless she tries to primary Chuck Schumer.
I don't think she's gonna win.
I think her win was a fluke.
I think the Democratic establishment was caught off guard, and she knows it, and she's effectively cutting her losses with Sanders and bowing back.
Now, I don't know for sure, but with Bernie no longer the frontrunner, she's not supporting him, and that's a crucial time where he needs her support.
Sounds to me like she's not actually very progressive, is she?
It sounds to me like her whole thing is just saying what needs to be said to get into power.
Before she won her election, she was espousing tons of activist rhetoric.
As soon as she got elected, she started walking a ton of things back, and she got criticized for it.
Now she's walking away from Bernie.
I think this is why.
They say, as an embattled Sanders prepared to mount an unsuccessful stand against former Vice President Joe Biden in Michigan on Tuesday, the campaign again turned to Ocasio-Cortez for help.
She agreed at the last minute to deliver a speech on Sunday at a get-out-the-vote rally on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor.
Sanders campaign issued a revised media advisory about the rally the night before, informing the press that Ocasio-Cortez would be present.
Neither the Sanders campaign nor the campaign office for Ocasio-Cortez denied the essential facts of the story.
That's interesting.
Instead, in a statement of an in post on Thursday, Shakir praised Ocasio-Cortez for her work on Sanders behalf, singling out her mid-October endorsement of Sanders after his heart attack.
Sanders allies credit the endorsement for helping revive his campaign.
Sen.
Sanders and our campaign will never forget that in one of the most difficult moments for us, Rep.
Ocasio-Cortez gave us a boost with her strong endorsement, Shakir said, and she has remained a steady and consistent ally, supporter, surrogate, and advisor to the senator ever since.
In a follow-up exchange on Friday, the Sanders campaign affirmed that Ocasio-Cortez has been one of the most frequent campaign trail surrogates for Sanders.
Ocasio-Cortez's apparent decision to avoid stumping for Sanders stands out precisely because of her intense work on his behalf in the fall and early winter.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke for Sanders at 15 major rallies, beginning with a late October appearance in Queens that drew an estimated 26,000 people.
She spoke at a number of smaller Sanders events as well.
Ocasio-Cortez's help proved especially critical in January, when Sanders was stuck in Washington participating in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump over the weekend of January 24th to January 26th.
Ocasio-Cortez headlined seven rallies for Sanders in Iowa and spoke at a canvas kickoff for his campaign.
Although the Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez teams would not say whether Ocasio-Cortez's decision to avoid the trail reflected any dispute, the first source said a disagreement over Ocasio-Cortez's remarks in Iowa seemed to cool her on helping with the campaign.
At a rally in Ames on January 25th, Ocasio-Cortez delivered a speech in which she failed to mention Sanders' name.
That's really weird.
An omission that Fox News noticed and highlighted.
She also encouraged those in attendance to tip off people about the presence of immigration enforcement authorities in their communities to help undocumented immigrants evade detention.
As Vanity Fair first reported in February, Shakir apparently communicated to Ocasio-Cortez his dissatisfaction over her remarks.
about alerting the presence of immigration authorities.
While Sanders has sought to scrap and restructure the Immigration and Customs Enforcement
Agency in its current form, his campaign has been trying to avoid the impression that
it was encouraging non-cooperation with federal law as it exists, according to one source. And
here we go.
After that, Ocasio-Cortez, already annoyed with the campaign's January 23rd decision to publicize the endorsement of controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, grew less interested in helping Sanders' campaign.
I'm sorry, Huffington Post.
You don't get to call Joe Rogan controversial.
When he hosts the most popular podcast in the world, you are more controversial than Joe Rogan is.
Joe Rogan is famous and popular.
Calling him controversial is absurd.
The only controversy is the one you guys made up.
After her last event in Iowa on January 26, she did not return to the trail for Sanders until 16 days later at the New Hampshire rally featuring the Strokes.
Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for Ocasio-Cortez, denied that the congresswoman's itinerary reflected tensions with the campaign.
Oh, come on.
We've been hearing about the ongoing rift for some time.
And the first sign was that she said Sanders was going to break up CBP and not to cooperate with law enforcement.
And that's what we're hearing.
And they yelled at her for this.
So she's mad.
And apparently she's mad about Joe Rogan.
That's funny.
The plan was always that she would slow down her surrogate work in February.
Let me tell you the truth.
to focus on her reelect and congressional duties.
It's unclear whether Ocasio-Cortez's low profile affected Sanders' performance in the primaries.
Sanders continues to struggle with older voters, among whom Ocasio-Cortez has less of a following.
Her campaign trail appearance in Michigan did not prevent Sanders' double-digit loss
to Biden there.
Let me tell you the truth.
Young people don't vote.
Ocasio-Cortez is not popular, and Bernie Sanders has a serious, serious problem with surrounding
himself with crazy people.
Sean King, Linda Sarsour, Ocasio-Cortez.
I'm impressed, really, Bernie.
I'm impressed with your ability to throw all good advice out the window and surround yourself with fringe people who are disliked.
Sean King gets ripped apart on social media all day.
Ocasio-Cortez as well.
Yet because they have followings, you thought it was smart to bring them around?
Man, I tell you what.
Bernie deserves to lose.
Absolutely deserves to lose.
You know why Biden is surging?
It's because people who actually pay attention and who do vote don't want socialism.
Young people don't actually know or care.
You try and instill these weird values in them and they just don't care.
They're doing whatever the TV tells them to do and it ain't you!
So go ahead.
Choose AOC to come around.
And then when she rags on Joe Rogan, don't be surprised when you lose.
It was smart.
It's really smart of Bernie to use that Joe Rogan commentary.
Now Joe Rogan didn't really endorse Bernie.
He said he might vote for him because he thought Bernie was honest.
Smart move.
Biggest podcaster in the world.
Gave you a shout out.
All of a sudden Bernie's campaign surges.
And then the people on the left started ragging on Joe Rogan and going after him, slamming Bernie Sanders for accepting the support.
You deserve to lose.
You all do.
These young people don't vote.
They just want to be part of an elite club.
So they will kick you out in a moment's notice because they want to be in control.
Bernie embraced it.
Congratulations!
You had a mass movement in 2016.
You could have won.
I think so.
But today, we now know that white men voted for Bernie much less than they did in 2016.
Yeah, that was surprising to me.
Bernie actually lost a lot of support in key areas, and I think it's because he's embraced weirdos and strange people.
In 2016, he wasn't surrounding himself by these people.
He ran his campaign.
He did really well.
People were into it.
I'll tell you one of the reasons I don't want to vote for Bernie.
For one, he's flip-flopped on key issues like immigration and The Second Amendment, but he's also surrounding himself with people like AOC and these fringe leftist identitarians.
Sorry, you can count me out.
I'm sure a lot of people feel similarly.
So let's just read the conclusion here.
They say, while Ocasio-Cortez was staying off the campaign trail in the aftermath of Biden's victory in South Carolina, three moderate ex-presidential contenders, Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and O'Rourke, endorsed Biden, ensuring him wall-to-wall national media coverage that provided momentum going into Super Tuesday.
So yeah.
I think AOC's bowing out.
I think she knows the Bernie camp is falling, and she recently said she'd actually support Biden if he got the nomination.
Looks like she's going full-on establishment.
She doesn't want to lose her job, so I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
Actions speak louder than words.
So when these media companies say, do as I say, not as I do, ignore them.
Digital media is collapsing, ladies and gentlemen, and there's good reason.
No one trusts the press anymore.
They're operating off of borrowed time, venture capital, and now, Key players in the expansion of digital news are jumping ship, raising questions about whether or not digital media can actually survive.
You gonna ask me?
I say the answer is no.
I think media as a whole is on the verge of collapse.
And I think this is proof.
Top editors leave Huffington Post and BuzzFeed News amid growing doubts about the future of digital news.
Now, Ben Smith was the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News.
I think he's a good dude.
I think they got issues.
He's not perfect.
Nobody is.
They've done some things I'm very, very critical of.
But he jumped ship.
To become a New York Times columnist, of all things.
To me, that's kind of weird, but I guess when you have the opportunity, take it, right?
Especially when you know something you're not telling us.
Digital media is not viable.
And it's likely going to collapse, as we've seen many other companies collapse.
Strip down a skeleton cruise, it just doesn't survive.
They tried to play the woke game.
Didn't work.
Let's read this story from the Washington Post.
They say, in the span of just a few weeks, the top editors of two leading digital news outlets called it quits.
Ben Smith, who ran BuzzFeed News for eight years, took a job writing a column at the New York Times.
Lydia Polgreen is leaving Huffington Post to oversee a podcast company.
And I'm gonna have to say, smart moves.
Podcasting is through the roof!
Lots of money to be made in a podcast, and everyone and their grandma apparently now has a podcast.
The other thing, going to the New York Times?
Guaranteed job.
Hey, columnist for the Grey Lady, the paper of record?
Not a bad jump.
Only if the company is not going to survive, though.
I mean, you're running BuzzFeed News.
I can't imagine being a columnist pays more, does it?
Unless he's bowing out?
I don't know.
Two does not make a trend, but it does raise a question.
Do their departure, smack in the middle of the busiest news cycle in years, say something about the troubled state of the digital news media?
Both editors answer affirm no.
They say their decisions were personal, not an extension of some larger industry malaise.
Nevertheless, it's impossible not to notice the context.
HuffPost and BuzzFeed were once the shooting stars of the new media galaxy.
Innovators that showed legacy media organizations how news could be edited and packaged for the young and digitally savvy.
The former pioneered high-volume commentary, almost entirely liberal, and eventually coupled it with some first-class reporting, becoming one of the first digital-only news organizations to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The latter began as a purveyor of listicles, quizzes, and other clickbaity content, but under Smith developed into a newsroom that broke several important stories, but also famously flopped in its reporting about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation of President Trump.
I will let you in on a secret.
It's not actually a secret, it's the truth.
News has always been a lost leader.
The reason people have news divisions in the first place was to make catchy headlines, to tell you things that were important.
It was a marketing tool, and it was considered a public good, and they lost money on it.
They made money on ads and other products that they sold in their paper space, typically.
Well, now Google and Facebook dominate the ads market, so doing news doesn't really make sense.
This has resulted in literally BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, listicles and commentary and other garbage.
Well, now these companies aren't even viable themselves, because when they first started, they were a hybrid of these two different spaces.
You had a news organization, but also clickbait.
That was it for a long time.
Today, social media is where clickbait is born and where it lives on.
People can come watch my YouTube videos.
I pay myself, my flagship channels, TimCast and TimCast News, just me.
For the most part.
I do have help.
The TimCast IRL show has actually a bunch of employees help make that work.
But for the most part, when it comes to what makes money and what functions, a newsroom is not it.
And BuzzFeed, BuzzFeed's Ben Smith, and Lydia Palgreen probably saw this.
We're entering an era where content is free to produce.
Not everybody is smart enough to produce it, or to produce good content.
But the fact is, you don't need them anymore, and we know it.
Let me show you something funny.
35 times the media said Wuhan or Chinese coronavirus, but they blame the GOP.
I mean, this is CNN.
Media is complete trash at this point.
They just say whatever they need to say to get those views and people know it.
Now people are being given a choice.
Why go to BuzzFeed when they're gonna give you the same regurgitated garbage?
Why go to Huffington Post when they're gonna give you the same regurgitated garbage?
Here's the reality.
I talked to a bunch of these digital media companies a long time ago and I said, tell me how you compete with a grandma filming her cat and putting that video on Facebook.
That costs nothing.
And it gives Facebook all of the content for free.
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are the latest iterations of radio and newspapers.
A newsroom like BuzzFeed needs to hire people at a decent salary to live in New York to produce content.
But they're not going to make that much because what do they really sell?
Ad space?
Facebook and Google dominate ad space and we all produce content for free!
That's right.
I compete with millions of people who just take their phone and talk to themselves and upload it.
I actually kind of love it.
You know why?
The news media space has become a meritocracy.
Those who work the hardest, or make the most entertaining commentary, or, you know, let's be real, give out that confirmation bias are more likely to succeed.
But it's better, in my opinion, than these companies that are gatekeepers.
You might have a really important and good opinion, something that people should hear, and they say, no thank you, we hold the keys.
Today, all you gotta do is start working.
And people have a choice.
Now, there are a lot of problems.
Google and Facebook have monopolistic powers.
It's dangerous.
And a lot of people aren't producing news anymore.
But hey, that's the way it's been changing with or without Google.
Let's read a little bit more.
They say, these days, the sky no longer seems the limit, not just for BuzzFeed and Huffington Post, but for the entire field of digital news sites that had once seemed to be journalism's future.
Digital publishers face the same issues that have beset and decimated whole swaths of the traditional media, particularly local papers.
Digital ad rates have fallen steadily for years amid an unending supply of competitors and slow-growing demand from sponsors.
Looming over the entire business are the twin colossi, Facebook and Google, which collect about 60% of every dollar spent by digital advertisers.
Video streaming, once thought to be a savior, turned out to be a high-cost investment with mixed returns, and few digital publishers have been able to convert their visitors into regular subscribers, which seem to be a key to long-term financial stability.
Yet, here on YouTube, if you are an individual, and you build trust, and you have fans, people come back.
I want you to think back to the last Huffington Post article you read, or BuzzFeed article you read.
Maybe you're saying, I don't read BuzzFeed or Huffington Post.
Hey, that's another response.
To those of you who have, can you remember who actually wrote the article?
You can't, can you?
Which brings me to a funny point about digital media.
No editorial mission, just wanton chasing of clickbait trash.
So you'll find articles from Vice, for instance, that say something like, San Francisco is, you know, a hellhole, and then you'll find another one that says San Francisco is a paradise.
Not kidding, they actually do this.
There's no editorial mission, you don't know who's writing, and you might follow them on Twitter, but when you see a story, it's a Vice story, not a John Smith story, or a Jane Smith story.
However, On YouTube, you like listening to Steven Crowder.
You like listening to David Pakman.
Maybe you said, I don't like listening to that guy, I like that guy.
Or you like listening to Tim Pool.
We on YouTube are able to actually develop followings and have people come and want to listen and watch content.
News media can't do that because they have no cohesive voice.
They're big organizations that just do whatever.
And they're falling down because of it.
Now I think there's some challenge we're faced with, challenges we're facing, a lack of news.
Admittedly, when it comes to YouTube, people aren't sourcing the news.
You might like Pacman, Crowder, or me, but for the most part,
we just provide commentary on existing news.
Now, to give myself some credit, I actually help fund and oversee an actual news channel
over at Subverse, but they're entirely independent.
And the reason I do that is for exactly this reason.
I know that people are more interested in confirmation, bias, and commentary.
They're more likely to watch me talk about stuff than they are to go to BuzzFeed.
And that's the mistake these brands made.
They didn't have a voice.
They were just random clickbait trash.
Now, Huffington Post is just a bunch of leftists complaining about Trump and stuff like that.
Fine.
But if you watch me, I make sure to give back and make sure news is being produced to the best of my abilities, but for the most part, Subverse does its thing.
They are editorially independent from me on purpose.
I want to make sure that news doesn't just end here because these companies couldn't figure it out.
But this says something about these companies.
They produce news.
Biased news.
Because they need to make money to sustain that biased news.
It taints the whole product.
And that's why I think these companies are on the verge of collapse.
No one is going to trust them anymore.
They put out the same garbage narratives, they make up fake news, and they say, but you should trust us because we're better.
And then they fall apart.
And their key staff leave.
And what's left?
Skeleton crews?
They can't make the money if all they do is chase the narrative.
Now when it comes to an individual, I have my opinions, I have my bias.
If you come to me, you're looking at a relatively moderate individual who has pretty much a lot of disdain for Democrats over their failures in the past several years.
But for the most part, you're getting an individual's opinion that you like getting.
Be it me, Jimmy Dore, Steven Crowder, Kyle Kulinski, David Pakman, etc.
These are people that you say, I'm gonna listen to, I'm gonna get their opinions.
Let the media go.
Let them end.
Let them die.
They couldn't figure it out.
They can't make it work.
But I do think we need to be careful because we do need legit journalism.
Anyway, the reason I want to do this segment was because of the coronavirus thing.
These cable networks and these media companies are now, like Samantha Bee, saying it's racist to tie the virus to China when they were the ones who actually did it.
People don't trust these big blind organizations that have no voice.
And if you look at someone like Samantha Bee, I think she's even on the way out too.
Because she's totally fake.
Her opinions make literally no sense.
So people are going to turn to Joe Rogan, right?
Anyway.
These are interesting examples, but let's read his final conclusion.
He says... Well, he doesn't really have a conclusion.
But there's a... I'm not gonna read.
This is ridiculous.
Even the Washington Post is trash, whatever.
It's evidence, in my opinion, these organizations are falling apart.
Which is good news... to an extent.
I'll leave it there, whatever.
I wanted to highlight this.
I don't know if I was direct enough or whatever.
I'll see y'all in the next segment.
Now this is major breaking news.
The Democratic primary in Louisiana is being postponed.
There are calls to postpone the entire presidential primary system right now to even postpone the presidential campaigning as it stands.
And I gotta say, I think we might actually get there.
If they want people to come out in mass numbers to vote, but they're also issuing decrees that people can't gather in groups of 250 or more, then how do you have a primary?
In my state of New Jersey, I'm in the Philadelphia suburbs, they said no gatherings of 250 or more.
They did the same thing in Washington.
How can you even have that primary?
You're asking for everyone to show up?
You can't do it.
Louisiana was the first to say, we will postpone.
Check this out though.
Oh, as coronavirus threatens the elderly, Ohio asks for new volunteers to do patriotic duty and work at poll sites.
They're struggling to even maintain it right now.
Adam Goodman, Fox News.
The coronavirus should delay the primaries.
Now isn't the time to be voting that scary?
Check this one out from Foreign Policy.
It's time to cancel the U.S.
presidential campaign as we know it.
From party conventions to in-person voting, the coronavirus pandemic has made traditional election activities into deadly gambles.
The rhetoric is here.
I don't know how long this will last.
The coronavirus may extend well into election season.
Like, to November.
If that's the case, will we even have an election?
Now, of course, I think there's been a lot of talk that this can subside in the next coming months.
If we take proper mitigation efforts, self-isolation, self-quarantine, social distancing, we might actually just get this whole thing under control.
But there are now reports that there could be hundreds of thousands of people infected in the United States.
And if that's the case, this might get so bad that what we're hearing from these Democratic lawmakers, Rashida Tlaib notably, saying that it was testified to her, I don't know if it came from her, I think it did, up to 150 million Americans may be infected by this virus, which means we may need social distancing for some time, which could delay the Democratic primaries.
I don't know if that's good or bad for Trump or the Democrats, I have no idea, but it has begun.
So get ready.
We in for a wild ride!
The Hill reports, Louisiana is postponing its April 4th primary due to concerns over the novel coronavirus.
Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin announced Friday.
Ardoin is requesting that the governor postpone the primary to June 20th and municipal elections to July 25th.
We want to protect the health and safety of all Louisianians by doing our part to prevent the spread of this highly infectious disease.
He said that the decision was made to protect citizens and election commissioners who tend to work out of locations where elderly citizens gather, such as nursing homes.
As of Friday morning, the state had tested 94 people for the coronavirus with 33 presumptive positive results.
Quote, we're one of the few states that is supposed to have an election in early April, which we think could potentially be the height of some of this in Louisiana, said governor's office spokeswoman Christina Stevens.
Our poll workers are by large elderly, over the age of 70, and we think it is unsafe for them to be monitoring the election.
We don't think we would have enough poll workers, and we think we should be discouraging people from congregating in that way.
Now think about what happened with Ohio.
They're looking for volunteers.
They might have to postpone as well.
The Democratic primaries might get shut down.
And there's even talk now.
The Democratic debate between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden was moved from Arizona to D.C.
There's no audience.
Some people are worried they might actually cancel the debate outright because the primaries are being moved.
The move means Louisiana's 54 pledged delegates will now be awarded less than a month before the national convention in July.
The majority of polls in the state show former Vice President Joe Biden leading Senator Bernie Sanders.
It's unclear if other states hosting their primaries in the coming weeks will follow suit or what that would look like for the trajectory of the Democratic primary.
On Tuesday, four states host their primaries, Arizona, Florida, Ohio, and Illinois, and three other states are set to hold their votes the same day as Louisiana's canceled one, Alaska, Hawaii, and Wyoming.
New York and Maryland, both states whose governors have issued states of emergency, are also among the states scheduled to host primaries in April.
Both Sanders and Biden have canceled campaign events amid the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.
If voters are feeling healthy, not exhibiting symptoms, and don't believe they've been exposed to COVID-19, please vote on Tuesday, Biden's campaign said in a statement.
The first head-to-head primary debate between the two men scheduled for Sunday has been moved from Phoenix to Washington, DC, and will be held without a live audience over coronavirus concerns.
On Friday, the Iowa Democratic Party announced it is postponing its county conventions, originally scheduled for March 21st, due to fears of the spreading virus.
Oh, so is that... Okay, county conventions.
A spokesperson for the Illinois Secretary of State told CNBC that its primary election is still on for Tuesday, despite the governor issuing a state of emergency on Thursday.
The state has extended deadlines for mail-in ballots to Friday at midnight.
So I want to look at this.
This is from a couple days ago.
It's time to cancel the U.S.
campaign as we know it.
Well, we're seeing primaries be canceled.
We're also seeing people like me touch their face over and over again.
Mind you, you're not supposed to do that.
I thought it was funny, though.
But I've been in my house all day.
I wash my hands.
Don't worry about it.
But it is funny.
Anyway, jokes aside, let's read.
Let's get serious, America.
It's time to ask, during a time of plague, whether and if so, in what form, democracy can continue as usual.
The answer is likely to be disappointing.
For the first time in the country's history, the United States must contemplate canceling the Democratic and Republican national conventions and campaign rallies, and give serious consideration to arranging ways of organizing Election Day that don't require in-person voting.
Consider the apparent fallout from Super Tuesday voting on March 3rd.
Democrats voted in 14 states in their presidential primaries, with some states showing record turnouts and long voting lines.
California voting turnout was especially robust.
The following day, the state saw its first COVID-19 death, and Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency across California, as evidence surfaced of community transmission in several counties.
But the dangers of the election campaign aren't just a matter of voting.
American democracy is built one handshake at a time.
Along with selfie poses, baby kisses, and photogenic hugs, Democratic frontrunners Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are inveterate shakers and huggers, making contact with more would-be voters in an hour than most people might in a month of social encounters.
A candidate's hands can be a vector, taking the virus from one eager citizen to the next, and the next, and so on.
Now, let's hold on right there.
The Democratic National Convention.
The Republican National Convention.
Well, that's where they decide who the nominee is going to be.
Donald Trump is sweeping to a ridiculous degree, getting record voter turnout, and he's essentially unopposed.
So of course he's going to win.
The Democratic National Convention is where all of the delegates get together and will decide whether or not it will be Bernie or Biden.
They would tell you to come out and vote and come to this convention when all others are cancelled.
I think we're going to see the primaries delayed, maybe shut down.
I honestly don't know.
I don't know who's going to help or hurt.
I honestly don't know.
So I guess you could argue that it's good for Trump because it sends the Democrats into chaos.
I guess you could argue it's bad for Trump because the Democrats get a prolonged media cycle.
I honestly have no idea.
What I can say, we cannot simultaneously tell people that you can't have these conventions, you can't go to work, you have to stay distant, but then expect them to come to a major convention.
Look man, I don't know if you've ever seen the conventions, but these cities turn into major hubs of activity.
A bunch of companies show up, there are parties everywhere.
It's very much like South by Southwest.
You have CNN take over a building and call it the CNN Cafe, they do this.
How are they going to pull it off amidst a global pandemic?
I honestly have no idea.
But I will say, a lot of people are claiming that this is an attempt to derail Trump, to hurt him, or the Democrats are weaponizing it.
Listen, man.
The World Health Organization held off calling this a pandemic.
Italy is being ravaged by this right now.
Of course China.
They're liars.
But many other countries are seeing this absolutely impact their economies.
Factories being shut down.
Supply chain disruption.
This is real.
I don't know if it's the worst thing in the world.
I don't know whether or not the experts are going to be right.
But all I can tell you is, first, a primary has been postponed.
There is no reason not to expect that it's going to happen again.
We should expect more to follow suit.
Ohio is struggling to file...
Ohio is struggling to find volunteers.
Just like Louisiana.
That says to me they're going to follow suit.
And it's not just one outlet arguing for this.
Many people on both sides of the aisle are saying, maybe it's time we postpone these things.
Because people's health is at stake.
Cenk Uygur, I think it was Cenk of the Young Turks, said it would be unfair to Joe Biden to hold these primaries because the elderly will not want to come out and vote.
And he does dominate that demographic.
That's a fair point.
Bernie Sanders takes a huge advantage because only the young people would come out, as few as there really are.
Perhaps the best thing we can do is wait.
I don't know what that means, but people are going to scream and cry foul about it because no matter what happens after this, there are going to be irregularities.
Irregularities we can't predict.
If this gets worse than we imagine, if China sees another resurgence because social distancing only slows it down, and this extends well into November, what if the general election gets postponed?