This Is THE END of Immigration And Globalization As We Know It, Trump And The EU Shutter Borders
This Is THE END of Immigration And Globalization As We Know It, Trump And The EU Shutter Borders. The US has closed its northern border to non essential travel and now Trump has announced plans to shutter the southern border to all immigrant traffic.In Europe countries withing the EU's Schengen zone are shutting borders in a drastic measure which completely undermines the European Union's purpose.The UN and Germany have announced as suspension of all refugee resettlement programs.This crisis is not expected to end any time soon. The US has an 18 month plan in place so far and it could go even longer if we don't develop a treatment.As we face a growing crisis a few things need to be pointed out.Trump was right about China and border security.Progressives are praising his actions in response to the crisis so far.Democrats would be wise to rally together with the progressive leftists and Trump supporters.
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We are witnessing the end of immigration as we know it.
The northern border between the US and Canada has been closed to all non-essential traffic.
And according to NPR, Trump is set to announce the southern border will be closed to all migrants.
We are still seeing ICE raids, and we are still seeing immigration courts function, which means people will be leaving, but they will not be coming in.
In Europe, it's even more drastic.
The European Union has been enacting border controls between its own member states.
An area called the Schengen Zone is supposed to allow people to freely move between countries like France, Germany, Austria, etc.
But now even these countries are shutting their borders and they're ending their refugee programs, notably Germany, as well as the United Nations expressing that refugee relocation must be suspended.
Now some people feel like this is just temporary.
We've got a couple months ahead of us.
Well, we've already heard from the governor of New York that this could peak in 45 days, which means at minimum, based on these numbers, three months.
However, it's worse than that.
The U.S.
has been preparing for an 18-month plan, which means at least for the next year and a half, we will not see immigration come back in any form, for the most part.
Maybe this will change, but it doesn't seem like it will be the case.
We don't know what to expect other than whenever there's a pandemic, our culture changes dramatically.
Now we are seeing suspension of some trade.
Though many people are trying to keep their trade lines open, China has suspended some exports to the U.S., and we are seeing Donald Trump invoke the Defense Production Act, meaning much of our production will return to the United States.
Not only are we witnessing the end of immigration, but it seems like we're witnessing the end of globalization.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump seemingly in agreement on this problem.
Let's get started and take a look at exactly what's going on.
Because we have more than just immigration and globalization to worry about.
Conflicts within our own countries are going to become a serious threat as we're seeing looting and potentially some rioting in even European nations.
The last thing any of these countries is going to want to do is open up their borders when they can't even deal with their own problems.
The first story I have for you.
Immigration grinds to a halt as President Trump shuts down the borders.
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I think this information is going to be pretty important for a couple reasons.
It's going to dramatically change our country and the world.
But surprisingly, we have seen Donald Trump be praised by progressives and liberal pundits on TV.
And where are the complaints about what Trump is doing on the border?
It seems like Trump is actually getting his wishes through the emergency we're facing.
He's enacting a lot of the changes he's wanted to enact.
But let's be honest, if these changes were made before the emergency, we would all be a lot better off.
And I think that's why you're not seeing that much criticism of the president and his decision to close the borders.
Because dare I say it, he was right.
NPR reports, President Trump plans to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border to migrants under a law intended to protect the country from communicable disease, a move that comes as the U.S.
immigration system grinds to a halt in response to the growing coronavirus pandemic.
At a press conference Wednesday, Trump said the southern border would not close completely, but the move would allow the administration to quickly deport asylum seekers and other migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally without due process.
Meanwhile, The U.S.
and Canada have agreed to close their mutual border to all non-essential traffic.
Following earlier restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on travel from Europe to China, the dramatic developments on the northern and southern borders come as immigration is being curtailed in other ways too.
Immigration and Citizenship Service, the agency in charge of processing green cards and citizenship applications, as well as conducting asylum interviews, is closing its field offices to the public.
Immigrants fighting deportation are having their cases postponed, and some immigration courts are limiting dockets, and others are closing.
Refugee resettlement is temporarily suspended as well, according to the United Nations, because of the coronavirus pandemic.
There are about 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico, and about 600 in Canada, compared to nearly 8,000 in the United States.
Immigrant advocates accuse the Trump administration of exploiting the pandemic to advance its crackdown on asylum seekers, and the partial closure of the southern border, where thousands have amassed in Mexico, is sure to draw legal challenges.
Now listen.
Joe Scarborough, Dana Bash, Ilhan Omar have given praise to Trump over specific things he's done recently.
They aren't coming out for the most part and screaming about what Trump is doing on the border.
And I think it's obvious.
How do you criticize the president for doing what many other countries around the world are doing in response to a serious global threat?
At this point, people realize there's nothing you can do.
Trump is right.
The borders must be secured.
If we are telling everyone to lock down in their homes to the best of their ability, it's not mandatory.
We just want people to self-quarantine, social distancing.
If businesses are being shut down by mandate, then we absolutely need to make sure that our borders are not being, well, people aren't entering illegally in defiance of the rules we have for our own citizens.
In a quote we see, President Trump has been falsely scapegoating immigrant communities in the name of public safety since he came into office, said Michelle Brain at the Women's Refugee Commission.
This rule would unquestionably violate both domestic and international law and is an abdication of our moral responsibility to protect vulnerable people.
I find that quote detestable in the face of the United Nations saying refugee relocation would be suspended as we deal with a global crisis to pretend like Trump is doing something wrong.
I find absolutely detestable.
In addition, immigration advocates and physicians who study detention facilities are calling on U.S.
authorities to release detained immigrants who pose no threat to public safety, starting with detainees who have medical conditions that put them at high risk for severe complications from COVID-19.
So let's move on here, and I want to show you exactly why.
Well, there are, for sure, people who are critical of this.
We're seeing, potentially, well, in New York, for instance, in California, people are being released from prisons.
And the point there is that we have our own problems to worry about right now.
And it seems like everyone's panicking.
But I want to show you why this isn't temporary.
Or at least, I should say it's temporary to an extent.
A lot of people think this may only be a few months.
I don't think so.
MIT Technology Review writes, we are not going back to normal.
Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks.
It will upend our way of life in some ways forever.
I think we're going to be locked down.
We're not going to be locked down by National Guardsmen patrolling the streets or police telling you to get back in your home like we're seeing in some countries.
We're going to be locked down due to social stigma for the most part.
Everyone is saying, stay home, only go out if you need to.
Viral videos show people in New York yelling at pedestrians to go home because they could potentially spread COVID-19.
And a new report shows that young people are one of the largest groups being hospitalized.
Though they are still likely to survive, this is believed because they're responding well to ventilation.
What if we run out of ventilators?
That could change.
This is our community coming together saying, we must do what must be done.
So now we see this.
To stop coronavirus, we will need to radically change almost everything we do.
How we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of our family members.
We all want things to go back to normal quickly, but what most of us have probably not yet realized, yet will soon, is that things won't go back to normal after a few weeks or even a few months, and some things never will.
It's now widely agreed, even in Britain finally, that every country needs to flatten the curve, impose social distancing to slow the spread of the virus, so that the number of people sick at once doesn't cause the healthcare system to collapse, as it is threatening to do in Italy right now.
That means the pandemic needs to last at a low level until either enough people have had COVID-19 to leave most immune, assuming immunity lasts for years, which we don't know, or there's a vaccine.
How long would that take?
And how draconian do social restrictions need to be?
Yesterday, President Donald Trump, announcing new guidelines such as a 10-person limit on gatherings, said that, with several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly.
In China, six weeks of lockdown are beginning to ease now that the cases have fallen to a trickle.
Well, not that I believe China.
But it won't end there.
As long as someone in the world has the virus, breakouts can and will keep occurring without stringent controls to contain them.
In a report yesterday, researchers at Imperial College London proposed a way of doing this.
Impose more extreme social distancing measures every time admissions to intensive care units start to spike, and relax them each time admissions fall.
Here's how that looks in a graph.
This is extending well into November 2021.
We can see that March 20th, we're expected to see nearly 1,200 weekly ICU cases, threatening our medical system's capacity.
Then, once the cases start going down because of social distancing, we will ease these restrictions, and they will spike again in September, which will mean more restrictions.
For those that are listening, let me explain.
It's a wave.
Every few months, we must reenact these limits.
This means, through the duration of this, borders will be locked down, people will not be traveling, and they will only ease these restrictions within their communities for the most part.
We are looking at at least 18 months of full-on immigration suspension.
Now, there's probably going to be some travel and some immigration, for sure.
Nothing's absolute.
But for the time being, who's going to complain about a country saying we are facing a crisis and the borders must be locked down?
This is why it was so shocking to me to see Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders at the last debate arguing for not deporting people.
It's almost as if they're a week behind the news.
As most of us were watching what was happening on the world with borders being closed, I think it was reasonable for most people to conclude we cannot have people coming in unchecked.
And if they do, they need to be deported because we are facing extreme restrictions on what we do in the face of a global crisis.
For now, it looks like everyone is now falling into agreement.
In this story from the Hill, U.S.
plan warns coronavirus pandemic could last 18 months And now people are starting to wake up to the reality.
In coronavirus border shutdown, a reminder that national sovereignty matters from the Washington Examiner.
But it's not just this.
I did a segment the other day.
It seems that the global crisis has now proven conservatives correct on the Second Amendment and border controls.
As we see people in urban centers, which are typically Democrat strongholds, flocking to gun stores and buying out their entire stock.
Why?
Police are saying around the world they are going to be stepping back because they can't handle this.
Police in New York, some of them, have tested positive for the coronavirus and are being isolated.
This means that you are likely, in many circumstances, to be on your own.
But also there's severe uncertainty.
We just don't know what's going to happen.
On the immigration front, we're now seeing the real danger to unchecked border crossings.
If people start crossing the border and they're carrying the coronavirus, we are going to be introducing individuals who violate our laws and social norms with no regard, and then will potentially spread that virus.
Now it makes sense, doesn't it?
When there was no threat, it was easy to say, who cares, we'll be fine.
But now that we're facing the threat, we can look back and say, if only we acted sooner, before the threat.
It's the curse of, I guess, hindsight.
That often, because we think everything is fine, or because the numbers were low, we say, who cares, nothing's even happening.
And then once it does, we say, if only we did it sooner.
Yeah, Trump was right.
He was right about the border, he was right about China, and now look where we are.
Well, that's why I think we're seeing progressives praise him.
I find it to be rather shocking after all.
But check this out.
In a story from Washington Examiner, they also say that things will never go back to normal, saying, National borders can be expected to harden, where for decades they had become increasingly porous.
Nations facing contagion from abroad sealed or semi-sealed their borders.
This, I suspect, was not simply health quarantining, but animated by a turning inward, a desire or instinct for national identity.
Governments that recently fostered the idea that their citizens were Europeans rather than members of distinct nationalities drew a line around the people who knew they were indeed a people.
Italians in lockdown didn't sing the EU anthem on their balconies.
They sang patriotic songs about Italy.
For worse and for better, this pandemic will stoke suspicion of foreign peoples and lands and will give extra force to increasingly persuasive arguments that nation-states are the most effective bulwarks against arrogant encroachments on self-government.
In Europe.
They did say they were European, that that was their identity.
But did Germany lock down the borders around the EU?
Germany locked down the borders around its own country.
When push comes to shove, they said, we are Germans, and the borders are being shut.
They are now shutting out refugees, and the UN is saying the same thing.
It's easy to talk big when you are secure, but as soon as the threat looms, people immediately say, we get it.
Trump keeps immigration courts open.
Despite coronavirus risks, with 58 courts still open, the prospect of courthouses acting as incubators and disseminators of the virus remains pronounced.
Well, of course, this is the position that The Guardian will take.
But I'm not here to talk about whether they should or shouldn't remain open.
Just to point out that they are.
And like I said early on, that means migrants will be moving out, and they will not be moving in.
Like I said, this is the end of immigration and globalization as we know it.
The New York Times says locked-down Europe faces closed border, economic wounds, and dire warnings.
The continent hit a bleak milestone in the coronavirus epidemic, surpassing China in cases and deaths.
A leader who knows something about confinement pleaded for citizens to accept it for now.
The United Nations to suspend refugee resettlement abroad due to coronavirus travel restrictions.
And this is from France 24.
And it's obvious we know why.
But to see Germany do the same thing is absolutely shocking.
This story from TRT World.
Germany, of all countries, the country that was bringing in so many refugees, and many other European countries, are now saying no to everyone.
And perhaps now the people in these countries will start to realize why it was dangerous to open up their borders and make them as weak as they were.
It's a global pandemic, man.
But I want to move on from here.
I want to talk about the internal struggles that these countries are facing.
And it's actually really scary for us, too.
I hope you have all taken precautions.
You have your first aid kits.
You've bought some groceries.
You don't need to hoard and build a bunk or anything like that.
But buying supplies that'll last you for a decent amount of time makes sense.
I don't know how long.
Two weeks?
A month?
I have no idea.
Take a look at this.
In Italy, last week, Corona chaos, Italy coronavirus lockdown, medical supplies looted, and panic buyers strip shelves as whole country is quarantined.
Did you hear about the rioting and looting that took place?
The police coming out to stop people who are desperate for medical supplies?
Because it's also happening in London now.
London to get a 12-hour warning before coronavirus restrictions are put into place.
See, London, the UK, was actually a bit lax, relying on herd immunity.
If people got the virus quickly, they could get through this fast.
And now they've realized that they can't.
But we are seeing something similar.
Supermarkets are calling for police protection amid fears of rioting.
Why?
Well, because it actually happened.
Looting louts.
Thugs smash Sainsbury doors after stealing alcohol as coronavirus pressure hits supermarkets.
That's right.
Looting in the UK.
Looting in Italy.
I fear that it may happen in the US soon, but I'll tell you this.
People in the United States, they got guns everywhere, so maybe people will think twice before they do it here, but it happens.
It really, really does.
Over in the UK, Boris Johnson plans London lockdown as crisis escalates.
Now, you may think the lockdown will prevent some of this looting, but supermarkets are still desperate and they're calling for police protection.
This is a remarkable turnaround, I suppose, because just previously, yesterday, The UK was saying there will not be a lockdown.
They have resisted every step.
I understand why.
But now we are seeing it's not just about fears of some external threat.
It's that we have to secure our own oxygen mask before securing the mask of those sitting next to us.
If our own countries are facing the threat of looting, Product shortages.
Medicine shortages.
Then the last thing we can do is resettle refugees and allow migrants to come into our countries.
This is going to create a boon in nationalism, and it probably already is.
From Financial Times, they say, Boris Johnson's face bore the strain of the past three weeks during which coronavirus went from being a distant menace to one that threatened to consume Britain's economy, spread death across the country, and dominate his premiership.
The British Prime Minister has gone in a matter of days from advising people to wash their hands to planning the closure of London, followed by the rest of the country, as government officials expect the capital to be locked down as early as Friday.
New York may very well see the same thing.
Now what's particularly interesting is this kind of proves Brexit right at the best possible time.
The vote, December 13th, a resounding victory for conservatives, And now everyone's locking down.
It's rather remarkable, I would say.
Now, I don't want you to think that the US is going to be too different.
And I'm not trying... I know a lot of people are going to get mad.
They're going to say that this is fear-inducing, it's panic-inducing.
We are seeing in the UK...
The police to start graduated withdrawal of service if outbreaks worsen.
You are being warned right now, London, that the police are going to have a gradual withdrawal of service.
They won't be there if you call 9-1-1.
Certainly we've seen stories of people overreacting, calling 9-1-1 because people are cutting them in line because, you know, they're at a supermarket and they need toilet paper.
And there have been some police departments in the U.S.
that have received 9-1-1 calls because people ran out of toilet paper.
Some people, man, are just crazy.
But over in New York, NYPD unit fills in, the film unit fills in as NYPD precinct, 31 cops have called in sick.
The film unit are typically to protect film shoots.
They are now being brought in for what appears to be regular duty because so many officers are calling out sick.
We can see that New York City is beginning to release inmates amid the coronavirus outbreak.
I think it's obvious where this goes.
We're hoping everyone stays inside.
And it's possible that we're not going to need as many police because most people will be inside.
But if they're releasing inmates, hopefully these inmates go and do the right thing.
You know, I assume they're criminals, but maybe they'll understand the importance of staying home and not going out.
In the event there is crime, I'd be willing to imagine it's gonna be less, because most people will not be outside.
Less people to rob, for instance.
Less stores to go after.
But, just because a store is closed doesn't mean it can't be robbed, it may be looted.
Which brings me to the next shocking story.
Philadelphia has announced that they're going to also have a gradual withdrawal of service.
They're not going to be arresting certain people for what they call non-violent crimes.
I've talked about this on the podcast a couple days ago.
You may have seen it.
But it's actually the stupidest thing in my opinion to announce.
That you could burglarize a home and the cops won't arrest you.
You can steal a car and the cops won't arrest you.
We can talk about globalization.
We can talk about trade.
But I think there are serious problems we're facing within our own countries as well.
And this is why we are going to see immigration halted.
Bernie Sanders published an opinion piece on March 15th for CNN in which he called out specifically globalization policies saying, as a result of globalization and our disastrous trade policies, which I have opposed, We have been outsourcing millions of jobs and factories overseas that have gutted our economy.
Now we are seeing another tragic and devastating result of those policies, as we find ourselves dependent on other countries to provide the most essential things that we need to combat a pandemic and protect American lives.
Trade is a good thing, but it must protect American workers and protect our national security so that we can produce what we need in the event of a national crisis.
That means we must enact fair trade policies that bring production and manufacturing back to the United States so that we are never in this vulnerable position again.
The days ahead will be difficult and challenging.
As we take urgent short-term measures to address the immediate emergency, we must put in place these far-reaching policies to fundamentally transform our country for the better.
That is what our presidential campaign has been all about, and that is what our whole country must be about in the months ahead.
I'm rather shocked to say that at least in certain issues, the progressives and the Trump supporters, the populists, have come together.
Bernie Sanders of the populist left, Donald Trump of the populist right, in agreement on the devastation we have faced due to globalization.
This is the death knell for globalization.
Immigration will be halted.
It'll be changed.
You know, it's ending as we know it.
But that doesn't mean it's completely over.
That's why I add that caveat.
As we know it.
Immigration will still exist to a certain degree.
I imagine it'll become much more difficult.
It's interesting that in the months and the years leading up to this, Trump had been continually making immigration more difficult, and now we're seeing exactly why he was right to do so, for many reasons.
One of the big reasons being the potential for disease and pandemic.
If we can't track the people who are entering our southern borders, if we don't know who they are, Yeah, many of them are sick.
We saw this with the migrant caravans when they came to the southern border and many had tuberculosis.
Not all of them, not even the majority, but a few of them did.
Now because we know the threat, it's in front of us and it's devastating, you're seeing all these people turn around and now agree with the president on something as standard as border security.
So I'll praise Bernie Sanders for coming out now and talking about the threat of globalization.
But I will absolutely criticize him for maintaining this open borders rhetoric of decriminalizing border crossings, not deporting people, and giving illegal immigrants access to our healthcare system.
Now is not the time for political pandering.
Now is the time for practical responses to the threat we're facing.
If we're being told that we're going to lock down for the next 18 months and see a wave of social distancing to make sure that our medical system can maintain this, that also means the borders must be locked down as well.
And it means we must deport those who enter the country illegally who threaten to strain our system.
I'll leave you with one final point.
Take a look at these ICU cases spiking.
This is our own citizens becoming affected.
These are people and permanent residents becoming affected.
Add in another line showing this wave, and that's illegal immigrants entering the country.
The line will increase, and we will get dangerously close to reaching medical capacity.
This is why I think we're seeing the end of immigration as we know it, and I think for the foreseeable future, the end of globalization as well.
We need our own manufacturing plants back.
We need our own products.
And now people are finally understanding why.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at youtube.com slash timcastnews at 6 p.m.
And I will see you all then.
If Donald Trump came out in support of oxygen, the Democrats would hold their breaths.
And now we have definitive proof this joke is actually true.
You see, Donald Trump has approved the second coronavirus emergency aid package meant to
provide relief to many in this country.
And now there are plans for a $1 trillion package.
The White House wants to put cash money in your pocket, and so do many progressives.
And now As to the evidence of why the Democrats just oppose literally anything Trump says.
As many Republicans came out in favor of a cash check stimulus, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have said no.
They are rejecting it.
They are criticizing it.
And to the shock of the progressive left, dare I say, Donald Trump is to the left of the Democratic leadership on the issue of emergency stimulus.
What reality is this?
That the Democrats are coming out opposed to the relief package, supported by progressives, people like Andrew Yang and Bernie Sanders.
Trump is in agreement with them, but the Democrats just have to be opposed to it.
We couldn't have one day of bipartisan support, could we?
And it's hilarious.
You gotta see the reaction from many of these progressives when they realize they now are in agreement with Trump and not the Democrats.
But I'll tell you, it's actually really, really simple.
You know, we say this joke about whatever Trump's for, they're against, and it's true to a certain degree.
I'm being a bit facetious.
Earlier on, when I said it was, you know, true, when it was proven, I mean, it kind of is proven.
But the issue is that Trump is a populist, which means though he may be a right-wing populist, he's still going to seek relief efforts when he has to.
And the people on the left, the left-wing populist, the Bernie Sanders types, are going to agree on a populist mission to make sure Americans don't suffer from this.
But the Democratic establishment are ivory tower elites who just want the keys to the castle, and they're stomping their feet saying, this is good for Trump!
No!
That's right.
Everyone basically supports this.
I know not everyone does, but like most people support this.
Something has to be done to help protect the economy from liberal, you know, left-leaning billionaire types.
Trump supporters are definitely in favor of it.
And now you have the Bernie Sanders progressives.
In fact, Bernie Sanders said that the U.S.
government, that the White House should invoke, or that he would, if he was president, he would invoke the Defense Production Act.
And then Trump did, and then Joe Biden did the same thing.
We do have bipartisan support.
But the ivory tower, keys to the castle, elites are just angry it makes Trump look good.
So let's just go to, well, let's just go to it.
Check this out.
From Common Dreams, a left-wing activist website.
Refusal by Pelosi to consider universal cash payments in response to coronavirus pandemic maddening, say progressives.
Welcome to the party, everybody.
I'm talking about the progressives.
Welcome to the club.
When the Democrats obstruct for seemingly no reason, This is a total failure of Democratic Party leadership, Common Dream says.
Progressives erupted with frustration and anger Wednesday over days of reporting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not consider cash payments for Americans without means testing despite the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that has ground the US economy almost to a standstill.
President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have taken the opportunity to outflank Pelosi I truly don't know how to describe how maddening it is that Republicans and Trump officials are to the left of congressional Democratic leadership on this issue.
Direct cash payments would be a salve to the gaping wound left in U.S.
economy by the pandemic.
We are the wealthiest nation in human history and have the lowest borrowing cost of any major government on the planet and thus can easily afford to contain the pandemic and keep our people well provisioned simultaneously, Eric Levitz wrote Tuesday for New York Magazine.
All we need is for Congress to overcome its superstitions about deficits and supply the economy with many trillions of dollars in stimulus that even many center-right economists say we need.
I mean, Trump is in favor of this.
I mean, as far as I can tell, there's plans.
The White House is trying to get a $1 trillion...
I kid you not, this is the timeline we're in.
We are facing a global pandemic, economic standstill.
We saw 10,000 points wiped off the Dow Jones.
It is nuts.
Donald Trump comes out in agreement with the progressives.
Can't say life is boring, can you?
As the crisis deepened, the political ground on cash payments has shifted substantially with bipartisan congressional support for the proposal.
As the Washington Post reported, proposals from the White House and Pelosi both have some restrictions, though the California Democrats' plans appear more complicated.
On Tuesday, Secretary of Treasury Steve Mnuchin told congressional Republicans that the White House was putting together a package that would send out $250 billion in checks by the end of April, though they would be means-tested to some degree, meaning wealthier families wouldn't get them.
Now, looking at the actual plan, I gotta criticize it a bit.
They say that if you make more than $100,000 a year, you get nothing.
That's my understanding so far.
We'll read through the story.
And if you're a married couple making $200,000 a year more, you also get nothing.
I don't think that makes sense.
And I hate to say it, but it's not like I wanna, you know, give more money to people who are already well off.
But think about this for two seconds.
If you're someone who makes $100,000 a year and you live in New York, it's very, very different from someone who makes $100,000 a year in, you know, rural Iowa, right?
The cost of living is very, very different.
So if your rent is $1,500, $2,000 a month, $1,000 ain't gonna cut it and they're gonna give you nothing.
Look, man, I don't want to give people who make a ton of money extra money, but you gotta think about, if someone had a six-figure job, and they had budgeted to live in a high-cost-of-living city because they expected to be making money, and they didn't expect the economy to just shut down, I mean, they're gonna need support, otherwise what?
They end up homeless?
I don't know what the answers are to this problem for the most part, but I can identify some of the problems with it.
So, look, For the most part, I'm in agreement with the progressives and the Trump people on this one.
We got to do something.
If that comes in the form of a stimulus package, there are some risks there.
Inflation.
We're borrowing from ourselves in the future, essentially.
We're going to devalue our currency, but it gives us a short-term relief amidst a growing crisis.
Perhaps we have no other choice.
One billionaire, this guy Bill Ackman, told Trump, he's saying just shut everything down for 30 days and then have the government pay for everything for 30 days to just stop it dead in its tracks before the financial crisis slowly worsens because we're drawing this one out.
Here's what they say at Common Dreams.
Nancy Pelosi is officially to the right of Tom Cotton on economic support for American families.
Huffington Post reporter Zach Carter tweeted on Sunday, this is a total failure of Democratic Party leadership.
Seriously, it's like so bipartisan, it's absurd.
Pelosi and Schumer!
That's why I said over and over again, they're the keys to the castle Democrats.
What they want is just to say whatever it is to be opposed to Trump, they just want the keys to get in the castle and sit around and do nothing.
I do not believe them at all when they talk about anything they're proposing.
It's basically, if Trump says it, it must be bad.
Now maybe they don't realize that this one thing actually had support from progressives.
Pelosi's Deputy Chief of Staff Drew Hamill on Twitter Tuesday emphasized that any aid must be targeted for the Speaker to approve it, drawing further anger from the left.
Why?
Asked New York Times columnist Jamal Bowie.
If we agree that the crisis is stark and immediate, and we know that precise targeting takes time and administrative effort, why make that a requirement when you can simply disperse the funds now and collect from high-income recipients later?
New consensus president Saiket Chakrabarty was flabbergasted at Pelosi's resistance to payments for all Americans.
This crazy obsession in Dem leadership with looking reasonable by not doing too much is about as impractical and insane as you can get in the face of a pandemic.
Chakrabarty tweeted, Senator Bernie Sanders, a candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination, has proposed a $2 trillion package.
Trump's just calling for $1 trillion.
Bernie says he wants to up the ante.
Including direct payments to Americans.
Journalist Walker Bragman on Wednesday noted the absurdity of Trump being closer to Sanders on relief than Democratic leadership.
Trump, who bungled the early response to coronavirus, is starting to take actions resembling Bernie Sanders' proposals.
Monthly checks, ramping up productions via the Defense Production Act, freezing foreclosures and evictions, said Bragman.
All the while Dems push things like tax rebates.
Baffling.
I absolutely love this.
And it gets worse, man.
Because Schumer then comes out saying, no.
This is the latest from Reuters.
Democratic leader Schumer criticizes Trump's call for $1,000 checks.
I can't even.
I love this timeline, man.
It is truly, truly glorious.
U.S.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday warned of an economic recession as the coronavirus spreads through the country and criticized the Trump administration's latest call for issuing 1,000 checks to Americans in response.
I absolutely detest these people.
The problem for me, I think, is that I'm not a socialist.
I'm not super far left.
And that puts me at odds with a lot of the socialists.
And it also puts me at odds with the woke intersectionalists.
But I think, right now, you can see what these people are doing.
They have no interest in helping Americans.
Their whole mission right now is whatever Trump does is bad, and they ignore everyone else and everything else.
They have no idea what they're doing.
You can't build an identity.
You can't build a political party off of, we don't like the orange man, because periodically you'll find the orange man is actually in agreement with progressives.
But hey, let them be the odd group out of weirdos who oppose what most of the people in this country think would be a good thing to do in the immediate.
Quote, the coronavirus is slowing our economy to a near standstill, and we are almost certainly anticipating a recession, Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
He added that expanded unemployment benefits would be a more effective way of helping workers than a $1,000 check from Washington.
Check this out.
Andrew Yang fan page.
The Yang gang is now, oh man, I'm so sorry.
I'm just loving this so much.
The Yang gang is now in a very awkward position.
Real Donald Trump is advocating for our top issue, a universal basic income stimulus, while Democratic leadership is in strong opposition.
Not sure how this plays out in November.
There are two hashtags, people versus Schumer and people versus Pelosi.
The progressives who actually want progressive and more social policy and socialist policy are sitting there looking at Trump who's saying, on this one you guys are right, let's go for it.
And the Democrats are saying, no.
I just, I'm a bit speechless because I'm enjoying this too much.
I'll tell you what, when I saw these hashtags trending and started reading what people are saying, I was laughing for a long time.
Maybe, look.
I think a lot of Andrew Yang people, his base, they're rather reasonable people.
I'm not bullish on UBI, I'll be honest.
And what we're looking at right now is a stimulus.
Now, of course, I think they're trying to piggyback off of the idea of a stimulus, calling it a UBI stimulus, and that's fair to a certain degree.
This would be a kind of universal basic income.
Now, I look at it more as like an emergency insurance payment or an emergency stimulus.
But they're calling it UBI because it's gonna go to everyone.
And some people are still working, so... There's a bit of... I can be fair and say, the difference between unemployment insurance or an emergency provision would be under the assumption the people who are getting it are out of work.
But this bill they're proposing would go to everyone who makes less than $100,000, or married couples who make less than $200,000.
Plus, I think they would get like $500 for every child they have.
I don't think it's enough.
I also know we can't necessarily break the bank, so there are limits.
Maybe the guy who's making $100,000 in New York is gonna be left high and dry, and that's just the way things are gonna be.
So check this out.
This is People vs. Schumer.
Let's see what we got.
Here's a random tweet.
Reminder, the Democratic Party and its leadership, Speaker Pelosi and Schumer, are here for us until we need them.
You see?
They're going to jump behind the orange man bad when you say you don't like the president.
They're going to say, sure, sure.
But the moment you then actually say, this one time, I'm glad Trump's on board in agreement with Bernie Sanders.
I think Trump's realizing, you know, desperate times call for desperate measures.
How incredible is that?
That Donald Trump has actually kind of stepped back on this one.
I'm not going to say he's not, you know, being the president.
But for a while, Trump has always been the person who stands up, stands in front, says, this is what it is, this is what I want.
Now we're seeing someone who's starting to take more advice from the experts around him, deferring questions to other experts, to Dr. Fauci, to Mike Pence.
And now people are starting to praise him.
As I noted the past couple of days, MSNBC and CNN saying, this is the kind of leadership the American people are looking for right now.
And he's taking cues, at least to a certain degree, from Bernie Sanders.
Now Bernie Sanders wants to go a little bit further.
Who can you really rely on?
Maybe people will start to see that for all of the faults of the president, he's not an evil, you know, Cheeto dictator.
He's not going around just trying to burn things to the ground.
He's actually doing things he thinks make sense.
And sometimes that overlaps with the populist progressive left.
The Democrats, on the other hand, the establishment cronies, they don't actually care about any of this.
These people are ridiculously wealthy.
They don't care.
Which is funny that, I mean, Trump's a billionaire, but I genuinely believe that Trump, you know, it's almost like Dr. Doom.
You ever read the Marvel comics?
I don't, I'm not, you know, I haven't read a ton of it, ton of the comics, but like Dr. Doom is, he's a villain, right?
But he genuinely believes he's going to save humanity.
And so there's kind of something like that with Trump.
No, I'm not calling Trump a super villain.
I'm just saying that, You know, Trump knows he has to do certain things.
He has to do some things that are hard, that will make people dislike him.
But he thinks.
I don't want to say that he's necessarily right, because I don't know either.
But he feels in his heart of hearts, this is what must be done to make the country better.
I genuinely believe Trump wants to make the country better.
Now, I do think he's got an ego.
I do think he's arrogant.
Oh, you better believe it.
I think he's a bit of a narcissist, for sure.
But I do think that he's driven by, he's motivated because he knows, in his heart of hearts, I can do this, I can fix this, I really can make this country better.
That means, when you're motivated by these things, he's actually going to say, yeah, we need a stimulus, we need this, you know, this kind of UBI emergency, whatever you want to call it, emergency income.
I do think it's more fair to say it's not a UBI, it's an emergency stimulus, but you get the point.
Dear People vs. Pelosi and People vs. Schumer, a stimulus check isn't even remotely in the
same universe as UBI.
They want to means test because people like myself that are salaried, WFH, don't need it, but there's plenty of unemployed that do.
Please learn how this works.
There are still pro-Schumer, pro-Pelosi people who are pushing back on the progressives.
I just love that what we're really seeing exposed here is the populist wing versus the
corporatist wing.
Cut the checks, someone says.
You can see all of this stuff.
Get your head out of your butts and look around.
I don't know what that's all about.
Anyway, these two hashtags are primarily about pointing out that Pelosi and Schumer are on the wrong side of this one.
So I think I've hit the nail on the head with what they're planning to do with this $1 trillion package.
I don't know necessarily whether it will actually work out.
I think we're going to be heading in this direction because if you have Trump and you have progressives on board with this, you can expect it.
So I'll tell you what, we'll leave it there.
We'll see what happens.
So right now we're at two aid packages signed.
The third one is the big one and it's being held up by the Democrats.
So hey look man, if you're a Bernie supporter, if you're a Yang supporter, if you're a progressive, Trump's not the problem here.
You got beef, take it up with Schumer and Pelosi.
Stick around, next segment's coming up at 1pm on this channel, and I will see you all then.
In the previous segment, I talked a little bit about how Donald Trump wants to put cash in the pockets of every American, help give relief to these small businesses that are impacted by the pandemic, and how many progressives are completely on board with this, yet they're being obstructed by the Democrats.
We now have a story from The Nation that the Republicans are now to the left of Democrats.
I have no idea what's happening, but boy, It still gets crazier.
Ilhan Omar praises Trump's incredible response to coronavirus pandemic.
Ilhan Omar basically said that we gotta put politics aside because we have a crisis to deal with.
I completely agree.
We can get back to bickering once we're beyond this crisis.
Well, apparently not for the Democrats because they still need to come after Trump.
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer both are criticizing and rejecting the proposals from Republicans and progressives To get cash into the pockets of every American.
Right now, Bernie Sanders and Trump, the only thing they're disagreeing on is how much to give everybody.
Bernie wants to do $2,000.
Trump and his people are saying about $1,000, but Trump might actually say, okay, fine, $2,000.
Let's read the story and see what Ilhan Omar had to say.
But the first thing you need to understand is why she praised him.
Lee Fang said, Trump suspending mortgage foreclosures, demanding cash payments to Americans, now invoking Defense Production Act to force private firms to produce needed supplies is incredible.
Kind of a shell shock for anyone who reported on any economic policies in the Obama years.
So this is what Ilhan Omar was praising.
Let's see what Fox News has to say.
Minnesota Democratic Rep Ilhan Omar unexpectedly praised Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday night, saying it was incredible and the right response in a critical time.
Omar, normally a staunch critic of the White House, who herself has repeatedly drawn the President's ire, went on to quote Rep.
Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts saying, unprecedented times require unprecedented leadership.
And Omar added, we are seeing that in our country right now.
What?
And I just everything's, we got to be in a simulation.
This can't be real life, can it?
How can we go years of the squad and the bickering and the squabbling and all of a sudden now she's referring to Trump's leadership as unprecedented leadership that we are seeing in our country right now?
Finally, we should never let politics get in the way of good policy, Omar concluded.
This is a great start and hope others will be part of a united front to push for good policies that will help us work through the economic anxiety the country is feeling right now.
You know what, man?
Credit where credit is due, my respects to Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, giving praise to the efforts to make this go away, to make this problem, to make things get better for most Americans.
If you've got issues with them, and boy have I heavily criticized them, and talked about a lot of the financial stuff, campaign finance violations, we can put that aside for now.
For now.
Because what needs to happen is we need to pull through on this coronavirus crisis.
And that means, like Joe Scarborough said, we need to do what we can to support the president in this effort.
Dana Bash as well.
I don't know if you guys caught that.
I talked about it quite a bit.
MSNBC and CNN praising Trump.
That's amazing.
Fox News says Omar was responding to a post by The Intercept's Li Feng, who noted, which I read to you already, that Trump is doing these things that are kind of incredible.
Her praise for the president was matched this week by other Democrats and left-of-center commentators.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday told reporters, his team is on it.
They've been responsive.
I want to say thank you.
CNN's Dana Bash asserted that Trump, his new tone on the coronavirus, made him the kind of leader that people need.
On Wednesday, Trump invoked rarely used emergency powers to marshal critical and medical supplies against the coronavirus pandemic.
So, you may have seen my commentary on this.
This is the Defense Production Act, which means that, well, they say this, the government will have more power to steer production by private companies and try to overcome shortages in masks, ventilators, and other supplies.
Describing himself as a wartime president fighting an invisible enemy, the president also signed an aid package, which the Senate approved earlier Wednesday, that will guarantee sick leave to workers who fall ill.
The Canada-U.S.
border, the world's longest border, was effectively closed, save for commerce and essential travel, while the administration pushed its plan to send relief checks to millions of Americans.
Trump said he will expand the nation's diagnostic testing capacity and deploy a Navy hospital ship to New York City, which is rapidly becoming an epicenter of the pandemic, and another such ship to the West Coast.
And the Housing and Urban Development Department will suspend foreclosures and evictions through April to help the growing number of Americans who face losing jobs and missing rent and mortgage payments.
Now, I want to comment on that.
What about the business owners?
Certainly, some of the people who are some of the landlords can't just go without rent income.
But I suppose if mortgages are frozen as well, then perhaps some of those, you know, landlords who might have a mortgage will be okay.
But what about Just property business.
What about businesses that maintain several apartments in areas they own the buildings outright?
I mean, they're going to be hurting from this and much of the economic relief isn't going to go to them.
They're talking about grants.
I'm sorry, they're talking about loans.
I'm not a big fan of just giving someone a loan after they take a major hit.
But I'll say this, you know, if I had to place, you know, where the resources should go, bail out the American people and hopefully that will go back into the businesses.
Which brings me, well, I want to point out a couple things first.
Ilhan Omar tweeted these things praising Trump, right?
But of course, there are many people who don't care.
This person said, Rep.
Omar, Trump is not actually doing most of this.
You're a U.S.
representative.
You should know that.
Too late.
Here's a person that doesn't like her.
You punched a one-way ticket to Gitmo already.
Jeez.
This person says, Agreed, but to be fair, we never applauded Obama for being human or for watching out for his fellow Americans.
All of a sudden, this corrupt grifter engages in one, two, or three acts that appear to have no secondary agenda, and we should think he is a great American statesman?
Sorry, no.
This person said, progressive pressure can force even the most right-wing hacks to bend.
And this person then said, in response, Really?
Pelosi is right now busy with trying to reduce stimulus to $500 per family, make it means-tested, and since a while advocating that the vaccine should be affordable and treatment-accessible, there doesn't seem to be any pressure on Trump from that side.
Let me just point out, when someone does something right, you praise them for it.
You heard me.
I just gave credit to Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar.
I mean it, sincerely.
There are some people who just refuse to let it go.
They only exist to fight, to obstruct, and to be angry.
Trump did the right thing.
Congratulations, Trump.
Good job.
If you continue to praise him, guess what?
He'll continue to do the right thing.
The same is true for most people, not everybody.
Which brings me now to the next portion.
Right now, congressional Dems are to the right of the GOP.
The party's leadership is failing the test posed by the coronavirus.
This is The Nation, a progressive, this is a progressive newspaper.
Here's what they say.
The coronavirus crisis has helped popularize an essential truth.
There are no libertarians in a pandemic.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 is already ripping apart both America's fragile healthcare system and its economy.
The stock market crash is merely the first symptom of what will soon be a system-wide crisis.
One that could rival not just 08, but also 1929.
A vaccine could be 18 to 24 months off.
If so, we're likely to see not a single global outbreak, but a series of waves, as with the Spanish flu, at the end of World War I. That would keep the economy sputtering for months.
In reaction to the pandemic, even very conservative politicians are embracing sweeping responses.
In the Senate, Mitt Romney has called for the government to write a $1,000 check for every American, while Tom Cotton, perhaps Trump's most rabid supporter in the chamber, Tweeted about the stimulus deal that Speaker Nancy Pelosi negotiated with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
The House relief bill doesn't go far enough and fast enough, Cotton called, for stipends to affected workers and their families so they can buy food and pay the bills during this crisis, plus send help to small and mid-sized businesses to help them weather the storm.
Romney and Cotton are thinking more imaginatively and on a larger scale than the congressional leadership of the Democratic Party.
The Pelosi bill is a step in the right direction, offering universal coronavirus testing, food assistance, and extended sick leave for some workers.
But because she caved into the House Republicans' demands, the sick leave measures are far more limited than they should be.
Carve-outs to protect small and large businesses means that upwards of 80% of American workers wouldn't be covered by the measure.
Congressional Democrats have to be much bolder.
The European social democracies show just how much can be done.
Denmark has reached a deal between unions and large employers to stop layoffs, with the government covering up to 75% of wages.
Norway has promised to pay the self-employed 80% of their pre-crisis earnings for the duration of the pandemic.
The best response to this crisis is a robust social democracy.
Sensible measures would include an emergency universal basic income with job guarantees, low interest loans to big and small businesses alike, pressure on banks to suspend mortgage payments for the duration, abandon evictions, and nationalization of factories to produce medical equipment and medicine.
Now I'm going to stop them right there.
They're going a little bit too far with this one.
But the main point we can highlight is that It seems the Republicans recognize if there's a good idea and it's a drastic time with a call for drastic measures, then it must be done.
What we're seeing now, as I mentioned earlier in the previous segment, is the Democrats don't actually care about what's going to get the job done.
They care about just maintaining this air of, you know, their anti-Trump position.
If Trump proposes it, it must be wrong.
Now we can see how even the progressives are pointing this out.
Dare I say this is good evidence to show that Trump has been acting in good faith this whole time?
The assumption that everything he does is some political agenda or some crony thing to benefit him is patently absurd.
You know, it's been said often, but I think it's fair to say the dude was a billionaire, had no reason to make any sacrifices to be president.
And it's shocking to me that people have talked to me saying, no, Trump knew his business was in danger, so he became, what are you talking about?
I kid you not, people have told me this.
That he knew his business was in trouble, he was losing money, so his only option was to run for president.
I'm like, that makes no sense, but I swear people have said this.
Are you kidding?
The only option he had?
The dude's still a billionaire no matter what his business was doing.
He could go to Mar-a-Lago for the rest of his life and sit around sipping on piña coladas.
He ran for president because he genuinely thought he was gonna do a good job.
And I gotta be honest.
We look at the past several years, solid market gains.
And that's coming from, that was a quote from a BuzzFeed article saying, I think it was BuzzFeed, Trump delivered solid market gains for years.
And now we are being hit with a major crisis that is not his fault.
Now, some people are upset he didn't react fast enough.
Nah, not reacting fast enough is very different from being at fault.
Now we're seeing Ilhan Omar, we're seeing progressives praise Donald Trump as well as Trump supporters, which says to me, I gotta be fair, man.
If Ilhan Omar is gonna come out and say, good job, Trump, of course, what do you suppose, come on!
The people who are still dragging this guy are full of it.
Absolutely full of it.
And they want to be.
They just need their tribal lines.
It's what they're all about.
I couldn't imagine my existence being defined by just hating Trump.
But the people exist.
And for a while I would have assumed Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley would be in that same boat.
But they're willing to come out and support the president for doing a good job.
Guess what?
Donald Trump is doing a good job.
That's it?
I don't know if maybe someone could do better.
Maybe you can make those arguments.
But how could any reasonable person deny it now when we are seeing these major relief efforts and we are seeing a global pandemic affecting everyone?
Almost every country on the planet is trying to figure out how to deal with this.
And Trump is doing it in a way that's actually brought together his base and progressives.
He's even got this.
This is amazing.
Andrew Yang has spoken with Trump officials about a plan to directly give Americans cash to counter the coronavirus slump.
People often ask me what it would take to vote for Trump, and the first thing I want to say is that I'm a fairly ambivalent person, and I'm not super excited about voting for anybody for a lot of reasons.
I'm very critical of Trump and the previous presidents on their foreign policy, while recognizing the nuance of the situation, and not knowing a whole lot about... I don't have access to classified information, so I can only make assumptions based on what I know.
Which limits my abilities.
But I did say.
I'll tell you what, man.
If he appointed Tulsi Gabbard to, like, a national security position, and Andrew Yang to an economic advisor position, I'd probably walk right in and be like, alright, I guess here we go.
Because that's me recognizing I'm gonna get in a couple people I really like.
Now, I gotta add.
Tulsi Gabbard has just dropped out of the race and endorsed Joe Biden.
BARF.
I don't like Biden.
And I'm not enthused that she endorsed him.
That seems terrible.
But it is.
It's her integrity.
Tulsi Gabbard said a long time ago that she would absolutely stand behind whoever the Democrats chose to be the nominee.
And as much as I think it is a lie, That Joe Biden can do the job of the President of the United States.
I can at least respect she's standing by what she said.
She was smeared all day, every single day.
They were claiming she was going to run a third-party spoiler campaign.
She dropped out and said, we got a crisis.
The National Guard's going to be activated.
I'm putting my weight behind Joe Biden to give him my support.
Like she said she would.
I can't really drag her for that, but I really just don't like, you know, Joe Biden as a whole.
I think, I think we're going to pull through this one.
And I think what we're seeing now with Yang coming in to giving advice, Yang's a smart guy.
I think the UBI has got serious limitations, needs to be talked about.
But if Trump is actually getting the progressives to rally behind him, and we pull through this one, even if we don't, All that matters right now is that people think Trump is doing the right thing.
So if we don't make it through this one in one piece, I'm not saying the country would collapse or anything like that, I'm saying we go on an extended period of recession and pain, I think you're still going to see people supporting the president.
I'd like to wait and see how things play out, but I have said this several times in the past months, in the past several months, so to all the people who are still pretending like I'm on board with the Democrats, that's just not the case and it hasn't been for a long time.
I have said numerous times, it gets easier every day to say that you will support the President or you will vote for him.
I don't vote based on who I dislike.
And I don't vote for someone who I don't, for the most part, agree with, which means, guess what?
Yeah, I didn't vote for the past several times.
I was a big fan of Bernie.
He didn't win the primary, I didn't vote in the primary, and I didn't vote in 2016.
If Donald Trump takes some, you know, serious measures, we get through this, I have no problem saying that he has encouraged me, at least.
To be nearly, I say nearly.
I'm not someone who's a fan of standing behind someone for everything they do.
And there are many things I am critical of the president for.
But at this point, who are we supposed to vote for?
If Trump is doing a good job, and even Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, progressives, Andrew Yang and others are praising what's happening right now, MSNBC and CNN, then I think it would be a lie.
Anybody who's claiming that they wouldn't at least consider voting for Trump at this point for his re-election is lying to you.
That's insane.
The dude's doing a good job objectively and everyone can see it.
You know, I'll tell you what.
Trump supporters, if you're listening, what you gotta understand about Trump's character is that people find him to be gross.
I don't think that's a good reason to not want to support someone who can do the job, but it is a reality for a lot of people.
These people aren't necessarily... Look, I disagree with them on that regard, but it is a huge factor.
Andrew Yang, speaking with Trump officials, really, really excites me.
I'm really excited.
Andrew Yang is one of the best people who has run for the Democratic Party in a long time.
He has a huge list of comprehensive policy plans.
He's explained them all.
He's talked about the importance of nuclear energy.
He's repeatedly told Democrats, stop pretending like Trump is the cause of all your problems.
And I'm like, yes, yes, thank you.
Now the UBI thing has got its limitations, and I'm not.
You know, I think he's described it in a way that warmed me up a little bit, but I'm still pretty much opposed to the UBI thing, for a lot of reasons.
What we're dealing with now, while many people are saying UBI, is only kinda, but not really.
It's an emergency stimulus.
But it does fall in line, and it would be an interesting experiment to see how this plays out.
People want to work, people can't work.
This will give us a lot of data on whether or not a UBI could function properly, what the results would be.
But let's be real, the results will likely be inflation in the months to come.
If we do get through this, we will likely see inflation based on the amount of money we're pumping into the system.
That's just how it works.
We're borrowing from ourselves in the future.
So I'll leave it at this.
I want to reiterate, just one last time, if someone comes to you right now and says there's no reason they would ever consider supporting the president, in my opinion, they're lying to you, they're lying to themselves, they're just saying what they think they need to say to fit in.
I'll be completely honest with all of you.
I wasn't a big fan of President Trump in 2016, barely a fan of him for the most part, but you gotta recognize he was right about China, and that's a huge deal.
If the Afghanistan peace deal works, he'll get a tremendous amount of credit for it, but I think even trying was also a really, really big deal.
At this point, I think we're seeing that Trump, while he's not perfect by any means, He has done a really good job in a lot of ways.
And now with the coronavirus and the praise he's receiving, I think it's fair to say that even his staunchest critics and those who don't like him need to recognize there is a good reason to re-elect this guy.
I'm not saying I'm committed.
And we'll see how things play out.
Trump's got a crisis on his hands.
And I'm not someone who's just gonna sit here and be like, yes, yes, woohoo!
I know what I'm gonna do in November.
I don't know what I'm gonna do in November.
I was not planning on voting.
I'm like, I'm out of this, man.
I don't wanna be involved in this.
But look, man.
If the progressives, if the populists are all on board and say, you know what?
He did a good job.
You gotta accept it as reality.
I'll see you all at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash Timcast.
Timcast?
YouTube.com slash Timcast.
It's my main channel.
I'll see you all then.
In what may be one of the funniest things to happen at a Trump press conference, a reporter for One America News asked Trump about using the term Chinese virus, and Trump accuses the press of siding with China amid pandemic.
At least that's the story.
Naturally, everyone is outraged!
That one American news would lob a softball question at Trump.
And sure, come on, man.
That was a softball question.
More in line with espousing your personal opinion than it was actually questioning the president.
But to be fair, it does give the president a chance to address the issue.
It's also fair to point out, many of the people that show up to these briefings are left-leaning journalists.
So when they lob their biased questions, no one bats an eye because they all walk in lockstep.
So, if somebody wants to lob a softball at the president, I really don't care.
But let's read the story, and then I'm gonna show you why, yeah, I mean, look, I'm not gonna say the press is literally, you know, working for, at the behest of, or parroting.
China, to a certain degree.
But man, isn't it funny how they kind of say the same things.
You know, when China's like, don't call it a Chinese virus, the media says, you're right, even though they literally called it that a month ago.
Let's read the story from the Hill.
Trump accuses press of siding with China.
President Trump on Thursday accused media outlets of siding with China and decried their coverage of the coronavirus pandemic in a remarkable exchange with a right-wing news organization.
You know, they don't call Vox a left-wing news organization, and they should.
I think they do.
They are siding with China.
They're doing things that they shouldn't be doing.
They're siding with many others.
China's the least of it, Trump said during a White House briefing on the coronavirus in response to a question from One American News.
So why they're doing this, you'll have to ask them, he added.
If we had an honest media in this country, our country would be in an even greater place.
The president spoke to reporters for roughly an hour during a briefing on the virus.
The focus was intended to be on efforts to fast-track antiviral treatments and therapeutics for those suffering from the novel coronavirus.
But remarks about those efforts, as well as remedies for a slumping economy and the push to increase testing capacity, were overshadowed by Trump's exchange with OAN, which tends to be favorable to the president.
Do they note every single time CNN says something that they tend to be unfavorable to the president?
You see my problem with this kind of reporting?
The bias is palpable.
Like, you literally see it.
They couldn't just say OAN.
Fine.
If you want to go after One American News and say these things about them, even if it's okay, okay, you know, they do tend to be favorable, then just point it out that MSNBC, CNN, and many other outlets tend to be unfavorable.
So we can take that all into consideration when we're thinking about what they're saying.
Thank you very much, Trump said, as he called on the outlet.
They treat me very nicely.
OAN's Chanel Rion then claimed that major media outlets who work right here at the White House are consistently siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicals, and Latin gangs and cartels.
And that question, that statement made me laugh.
Because you know what?
Fine.
If you want to opine, that's fine, but come on.
That was so out of left field, it wasn't even a part of the conversation, but I get it.
Rion, who traveled with Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine last year in his efforts to dig up damaging information on Joe Biden, oh please, did not cite specifics, but she opened her commentary by asking Trump if he felt the term Chinese food was racist, a swipe at other journalists who have asked in recent days whether Trump's describing the coronavirus as the Chinese virus was offensive or enable discrimination against Asian Americans.
It amazes me that when I read the things I read, Trump said, launching into a lengthy diatribe against the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other major media groups, that he took questions from just moments earlier.
Those same outlets had reporters expelled from China this week as the country cracks down on critical coverage, and China should not have done that.
For sure.
But man, now is the time to come together as a country, right?
He accused the press of inaccurately reporting on chaos.
Within the administration, even his top administration officials have had their roles in combating the virus reshuffled, and the White House press shop has not pushed back on those reports.
I hope I came up with the term, but it's fake news, Trump said.
It's more than fake news, it's corrupt news.
Someday, hopefully in five years, I won't be here and that'll be fine.
I will have done a great job because I don't think anyone's done as much in three and a half years as I've done.
The White House is relying on many of the same media organizations Trump attacked on Thursday to get out critical information about the virus.
The administration announced Wednesday a partnership with NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, and ABC Walt Disney Television to broadcast public service announcements about how to slow the spread of the disease.
Trump, who has earned the praise in recent days for taking a more serious tone towards the virus, frequently veered off topic on Thursday.
He opened his remarks with an often rambling 20-minute statement in which he touted right-to-try legislation, boasted about the strength of the economy prior to the recent swoon, and struggled to pronounce drug names as he laid out the therapeutics in the works.
Now, that is just not fair.
Struggled to pronounce it.
You see, this is the problem with the press.
And The Hill is typically not that bad.
They got a great show with Crystal Ball and Sagar Anjali.
They do a great job.
But maybe I'm wrong.
I watched it.
I didn't see Trump struggle to pronounce anything.
I saw him look at the paper and then say chloroquine.
And what some people say is Hydroxychloroquine.
And I'm like, he said the words.
He paused briefly beforehand.
I wouldn't call that struggling.
I would call it him looking at it and saying, I'll make sure I get this right.
Chloroquine.
Because I mispronounce things all the time.
There's no reason to bring it up.
Do you know how often I'm doing these reads and I'm like, I can't say that word.
I don't know what it is.
I'm pretty sure I mispronounced chloroquine when I first saw it too.
If you're not familiar with the word, you probably pronounced it wrong.
And there's a saying.
Never drag someone for pronouncing a word incorrectly.
It means they learned it from reading.
But of course, they've always got to make it something stupid that has nothing to do with anything.
I can sit here and be like, now is not the time or place for these, for the opining questions from One America News.
I think, you know, it's, it's, it's, yeah, I get it.
You know, you're gonna, you're gonna be angry, sick and tired of how the media is framing things, like I am right now.
So I get it.
But you know, time and place.
Yet the Hill still has to do this.
The president chided the press throughout the briefing, quipping at one point that 75% of journalists should leave the room to improve social distancing.
That was clearly a joke!
I swear, man.
Humorless.
More than 10,000 Americans have been diagnosed with coronavirus, and the disease has killed roughly 150 people in the U.S.
as of Thursday morning.
So, I mean, what does that bring us to?
About 1.5%?
That's pretty serious.
We should take that seriously, right?
Let me tell you, man.
In an article where Trump is criticizing the press, they literally misrepresent or mischaracterize what actually happened.
I find that absolutely remarkable.
But yes, the media flipped its tune early on.
They were calling this the Wuhan coronavirus, the China coronavirus.
Well, strangely, when China started getting angry and complaining that we were calling it this, the media just changed its tune.
You get Richard Angle of NBC saying, this is a bat virus.
It doesn't speak Chinese.
No one's saying that.
It originated there.
There are a ton of other diseases that are named after the place they originated from, and that's why I tweeted out Wuhan coronavirus.
Some people have called it Chinese coronavirus.
Fine, whatever.
Now let me show you something that I find to be absolutely hilarious.
Jabin Botsford, staff photographer at the Washington Post says, close up of President real Donald Trump notes is seen where he crossed out Corona and replaced it with Chinese.
This president, I swear, man, as he speaks with his coronavirus task force today at the White House, it's this is this is this is real.
Look at this.
So they zoomed in on the notes that he was reading the speech.
And you can see Corona is crossed out with black sharpie and Chinese is written over it.
This president is a madman.
No, I'm not saying that in a negative.
I'm saying this doesn't mean anything.
Grow up.
Why do people care so much about this stuff?
About any of it?
How is it that a stupid question from an OAN reporter becomes a Daily Beast article?
Really?
Come on, man.
Check out this tweet going back to January 14th from the World Health Organization.
We can trust them, right?
Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV identified in Wuhan, China.
Not only did they say, in Wuhan, China, thanks for clarifying that for us, World Health Organization, but they were actually downplaying it.
You wanna rag on Trump for being late to the party?
So were you!
I mean, so was I, at least by a week or so.
And then I started calling this out, saying it was gonna get serious.
The media played the same game.
When it didn't matter and it wasn't here, they called it Chinese coronavirus, Wuhan virus.
Lisa Booth, who is I believe she's a commentator on Fox News, said,
how many lives could have been saved if China had been honest from the start?
Really, really good question.
But of course, everyone's freaking out over on Twitter, screeching.
We can see this OANN is actually trending on Twitter because people are angry that Donald Trump took a question that was, you know, a softball, that was opining.
You know what, man?
When Jim Acosta did this every single day, where were y'all complaining about CNN?
And where were the journalists to complain about it?
Because guess what?
We know that there were journalists behind the scenes screeching about Jim Acosta, but they wouldn't say anything.
Because they're pathetic.
It's pathetic.
If you can't call this out, then you are pathetic.
I'm sorry.
I'm not trying to be overly disrespectful to, like, trigger an emotional reaction.
I'm just saying.
Jim Acosta comes out grandstanding.
Call him out.
He is causing problems for the industry.
Now OAN wants to come out, and yes, I'm gonna be like, well, what am I supposed to say?
If they won't call out Jim Acosta, am I supposed to really throw Chanel Rione under the bus because she asked a question with an opinion statement in it?
I think there's a time and place.
I'm not a fan.
But what am I supposed to say?
I rag on Jim Acosta all the time, and no one, none of these people stand up.
So you get what you get.
You reap what you sow.
You know what?
The bias, as I pointed out, it's palpable.
You can see how even The Hill is going to rag on Trump in an article where he's calling them out because they take it personally.
That's what Jon Stewart said, at least.
I don't know if you saw the interview.
Jon Stewart said he gets under their skin, they take it personally, and instead of reporting the news, they want to strike back.
So they sneak in weasel words and accusations and mischaracterizations and lies.
And guess what?
Then no one trusts them.
Edelman research found that journalists were the least trusted group of people to inform Americans about the coronavirus.
And welcome to the party they created.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment's coming up in a few minutes.
I will see you all shortly.
Just when you thought the growing global crisis could not get any worse, let me bring you to the next stage of panic.
First we had supermarkets drained of toilet paper.
Then we had gun stores drained of guns.
Now we have bank branches running low on cash as customers make big withdrawals because people seem to think that if the economy collapses, cash money will be valuable.
Uh, no.
You know, there's no- I don't- I don't see a point in going to the bank and taking out cash, because if you're really concerned about the bank collapse, if you're really concerned the FDIC can't insure your money, then your money's not gonna be worth anything, dude.
I'll tell you what.
How about you use your credit card or debit card like normal, and go buy things that are helpful, like, I don't know, camping equipment, or like, water or something, but of course, people don't think.
You know what's funny is I love it when people say things like buy gold in the event of like a market collapse as if like the apocalypse came about and your gold is gonna be worth anything.
So, okay, I'll be fair.
If there's a market tank, that everything's still intact, gold can be a great place to store value, for sure.
I mean, I have a little bit, I'm not a big, you know, I don't go out and do this stuff.
But, if the apocalypse truly does come, and you see someone on the street corner with a gold coin, are you gonna care?
Can you eat or drink gold?
Can gold be used to help you survive?
I mean, maybe, if you're smart, you can whittle into some conductive filament or something?
I have no idea.
But I'll tell you what.
If you saw someone on the street corner on the left, someone on the street corner on the right, one guy was like, I would like to purchase some wares from you, good sir.
I have gold.
You'd be like, uh-huh.
And the guy over here is like, I've got a bottle of water.
You'd be like, give me the water.
Water is way more valuable.
Water is needed to live.
But you know what, of course people are gonna freak out, run to the banks.
And I'll tell you what, I will say it again, I will read the story.
If it ever came to the point where the banks were gonna collapse, then I'm sorry man, you got bigger problems than needing cash at this point.
I hope you know how to hunt and start a fire.
Which reminds me, I'll give you a pointer.
Download Survival Guide when you get the chance.
To your phone.
Not because the world is ending, but because sometimes people get lost in the woods.
It's that simple.
The Wall Street Journal reports some branches of U.S.
banks and credit unions have run low on cash as customers make big withdrawals, prompting regulators to warn that they are putting their money at risk.
Though no precise tallies exist, industry officials describe dozens of incidents across the country, often in affluent neighborhoods of such cities as Seattle and New York, where people have withdrawn tens of thousands of dollars at a time.
I swear.
You know...
The withdrawals... You know what?
No, maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe it's because they're out of toilet paper.
You know?
Hey!
The withdrawals... I'm kidding, by the way.
The withdrawals, sometimes reaching $100,000 or more, appear to be motivated by financial market tumult over the coronavirus epidemic.
In one incident, an elderly couple withdrew some $250,000 all at once earlier this week, an industry official said.
In response, banks and regulators Are warning consumers that it's a mistake to keep large amounts of cash at home where it can be lost to fire or flood or stolen.
In contrast, each deposit account at a bank or federally insured credit union is backed by the government for up to $250,000.
Your money is safer at an institution than if you put it in your pocket, said Troy Stang, President and Chief Executive of Northwest Credit Union Association.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issued a press release on Wednesday to remind consumers that insured deposits are safe.
In bold letters, the agency said, since 1933, no depositor has ever lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds.
You know, I read somewhere, this could be fake, that, like, there's trace amounts of cocaine on, like, every dollar bill or something.
is federally insured and physically secure.
Other banking groups are appealing to individuals worried about the spread of germs in the midst
of the coronavirus pandemic.
Paper money, in short, is dirty.
You know, I read somewhere, this could be fake, that like there's trace amounts of cocaine
on like every dollar bill or something.
Because you know what people do in a party, they roll up their bills, right?
Keeping cash in the bank is a prudent defense against contamination.
The Colorado Bankers Association said in a press release on Wednesday, a single dollar bill can be home to as many as 3,000 different bacteria.
Okay, okay, alright.
You know what, man?
We get it.
Let me be real with all of y'all.
You don't need to withdraw all of your money.
That's ridiculous.
I personally think it's smart to have some cash, just because you should always have some cash.
But if it really came down to it and the FDIC could not insure your money, dude, you've got so much worse to worry about!
So chill, people, chill.
Industry officials say there is no danger depositors won't have access to their money.
The Federal Reserve has plans in place to address a range of contingency situations.
To date, we have not experienced pronounced spikes and have had no difficulty meeting demand for cash.
Banks must set aside a pool of cash called a reserve to cover a share of the deposits owed to customers.
Most banks deposit most of that reserve with their regional Federal Reserve Bank, keeping enough in their vaults to cover expected transactions.
When customers want to withdraw more money than usual, banks can order emergency shipments of cash from their accounts at the regional Federal Reserve branch.
In all, cash kept in the vaults of all U.S.
banks totaled $76 billion during the week of March 11, according to Fed data.
But apparently, The story's not enough, and I think, dare I say it, we may be facing a run on the banks.
And I don't know what that will necessarily mean, but if more people try to withdraw money than money exists in the banks, then you get a serious crisis.
But keep in mind, the FDIC is insuring those banks, so even if that happens, I think we'll be fine.
But to see this story from CNN, You know what, man?
The last thing you want to do ever is in a situation like this.
Tell someone not to do it.
The New York Times wrote a story saying the Surgeon General's messaging on masks was a mistake.
The Surgeon General said, stop buying masks.
They're not going to help you.
We need the masks for medical doctors and nurses because it'll help them.
So people then quickly realized, well, if it's going to help the nurses, it'll help me, right?
That was an important point to be made.
There are special fitting procedures, and you need more than just a mask for it to be effective, but a mask will help to a certain degree.
Of course, the result was, as soon as people saw the government say don't buy masks, they ran full speed straight to the store to buy up all the masks.
Now there's none.
I'll tell you what, man, when the government says don't, people gonna do it.
Now CNN has this story.
DO NOT take a bunch of cash out of the bank because of coronavirus.
And I love how the NOT is in all caps.
It's almost like they're taking their cues from me.
But come on, man.
When this story comes out, this story came out yesterday, uh, yesterday morning.
I'll tell you what, man.
What you've basically done is alerted everyone to the fact that people are scared and taking their money out of the banks.
And it's a game of hot potato.
Banks only have so much, so people are now thinking, oh man, if I don't get my cash out now, then there won't be enough for me if I'm late.
Congratulations on freaking people out and telling them to go get their cash out.
I will stress, You don't need to take out tens of thousands of dollars.
I'd recommend having a couple hundred dollars in cash on hand if you can.
Or just some loose cash, whatever you can pull out.
But this idea that people are gonna run to the bank and take all that cash is just so dumb.
But you know what's stupider?
I love it, love it.
The media.
Now, I think it's fine if the Wall Street Journal wants to report it's happening.
That will probably exacerbate the problem, but hey.
You know, we're not here in media to withhold the truth and facts.
We're gonna give them to you and there might be consequences, but hey, that's on the people.
Now, CNN... CNN, you didn't need to write this.
I mean, I guess you can levy the same criticism at me, because I'm saying something similar, but I think it's more about informing people that it's happening.
Look, man, if you want to run to the bank and take out your cash, you do your thing.
I just think it's stupid, because I'll say it for the third time.
You got bigger things to worry about.
CNN says, yes, these are scary times, but that doesn't mean you should head to the bank, drain your accounts, and put your cash under your mattress.
That's a really bad idea.
Bank deposits are insured by the FDIC.
We know that.
The Fed, which is essentially America's bank for the banking system itself, can provide emergency funding to financial institutions in times of crisis.
It has also slashed interest rates to zero and dusted off several other financial programs from 2008 to ensure that banks have the funds they need.
Big banks are extremely well capitalized, but that may not be necessary especially to the largest banks.
The Fed noted in a release on Sunday that big financial institutions have $1.3 trillion in common equity and hold $2.9 trillion in high-quality liquid assets on their balance sheets.
This means the top banks have substantial levels of capital and liquidity in excess of their regulatory minimums and buffers, according to the Fed.
In other words, there is no need for people to take out big lumps of money from their banks.
Your deposits are safe.
The banking sector is so much better capitalized right now than it was during the 2008 financial crisis.
Regulations have only benefited them.
Liquidity is there, said Matt Daly, head of corporate municipal teams at Conning, an asset management firm.
This crisis feels a lot different from 2008.
That was a true challenge to the plumbing of the financial system.
We don't have that now.
It's also important to point out, we are not facing, first and foremost, an economic crisis.
We're facing a virus that may take a long time.
18 months?
It may wind... Everything might wrap up much, much sooner.
But it's different.
The housing crisis was a financial crisis.
This is not.
This is something where people still want to work, but they can't.
So, it may not matter what's causing it, fine, but I really think that we're facing a different situation.
And, you know, I guess it's unfair for me to criticize CNN if they're gonna put out this article, because I'm saying something similar.
They say cash may no longer be king in a Venmo world.
This is another really important point.
Does it?
I mean, I guess the concern people have is if their bank goes under because of the collapsing market.
Maybe.
But you know what, man?
I'm not worried about it.
If tomorrow my bank just, like, dissolved, there is a risk.
Because you gotta file, like, you gotta file the FDIC claim, you gotta figure out how it's gonna get paid out, where it's gonna go, how it's gonna work.
And there's some businesses that, I mean, a lot of businesses have more than 250 in their accounts.
So I think they'll be insured for more, like, it's like double or something.
But a lot of people aren't going to want to deal with it.
But I'll tell you what.
If tomorrow the banks went belly up, I'd be like... Whatever.
You know why?
Because there would be chaos.
It would be pandemonium.
It would be bedlam.
So... Hey, look, do your thing!
Don't let me tell you not to... Like, if you want to take care of your family, if you think you know what you need to do, I'm not the smartest person in the world, so you do your thing.
I just think it's silly.
But it is... Yeah, I'll say it.
It is still scary that people are doing it.
Whatever, man.
People panic.
I got one more segment coming up for you in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
One of the biggest questions that people have had in the midst of the growing global pandemic
is whether or not this is going to hurt or help Donald Trump. I think it's actually going
to help Donald Trump, especially because we're seeing progressives and lefty pundits praise
the president, and he's likely to pull through this one with success.
That would be a really great reflection on him, and more importantly, who's he going to lose to even if he does worse?
Biden?
Sorry, I'm not buying it.
Right now, Bernie Sanders is in agreement with Trump on some key issues having to do with the growing crisis.
So to me, we're looking at, in my opinion, an unprecedented moment in U.S.
history when it comes to an election.
And while normal data on a recession may hold true, I think we're dealing with something entirely different.
If there was an actual housing crash, a big market crash, people might blame the president.
But are they really going to blame him for an act of God?
It's a virus.
It's not like Trump made it happen.
But the question will be whether or not he helps us through this and does enough to help enough people.
I'm not entirely convinced that when faced with an election and hoping for the best, they would choose Joe Biden over Donald Trump.
So sorry, I think Trump's still going to win.
And we're looking at something interesting.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans have won three special seats, including what they call a Hillary district.
Trump has overwhelmingly secured the Republican nomination with massive voter turnout for an incumbent president.
But we still do have important research to look at.
A coronavirus recession could doom Trump's re-election chances.
And this is from Alan Abramowitz for centerforpolitics.org.
Now I'll tell you this.
If you are a Trump supporter, heed these warnings.
You don't want to make the same mistake Hillary Clinton did while she danced her way to defeat thinking she was going to win.
A smart strategist will take a look at the potential pitfalls, recognize it, and then, you know, adapt to that.
Hopefully Trump and his people are doing that much if they're hope- if, you know, if they really want to win this one.
But I'll- I'm just gonna say one more time, guys, come on, like, you know, if- if- if- if there was anybody else running against Trump, I might think he'd lose, but I gotta say, if Trump lost to Biden, I would probably laugh so hard I'd cough up a lung.
That Biden could win?
unidentified
Come on, that dude can't- get- get- that guy can't even stand up!
He doesn't even know where he is half the time, let's be real.
So here are the key points from the article. The coronavirus public health crisis likely
will lead to an economic downturn of unknown length and severity. Historically, second quarter
GDP growth in an election year is an important variable in predicting how an incumbent president
will perform in the fall. A recession could seriously damage President Donald Trump's
re-election chances. However, we are in a truly uncharted territory, and it's unclear how the
public will respond electorally to an economic downturn forced by a pandemic. In fact,
they might sympathize with the president.
They might recognize we had multiple years of astounding solid market gains.
And now they might be angry at nature.
And they might want Trump to pull them out of it.
Consider this.
It was not Trump's fault the market tanked, but people still recognize that the market did well under Trump.
They might be saying, this is an unfortunate circumstance through no one's fault.
We need someone like Trump to fix it again.
This is the time when a businessman president is really going to matter.
As much as many people on the left want to joke that Trump is now at the phase where he would normally declare bankruptcy, Look, Trump's a guy who knows trade and knows business, and I think he's going to be able to pull us through this one, and he's being praised by progressives for it.
Here's what they write.
Here's what Alan writes.
The coronavirus pandemic has upended almost every aspect of American life over the past few weeks, and the 2020 presidential election is no exception.
We have already seen candidates forced to cancel rallies, hold a debate with no audience present, and shift their campaign staffs to working online.
But the biggest impact of the crisis on the 2020 election is likely to be through its effect on the US economy.
With major sectors of the economy grinding to a near standstill due to the pandemic, many economic forecasters are now predicting that the U.S.
will experience a major downturn in economic growth in the current quarter that could continue for at least the next two quarters.
Some forecasters are predicting a major recession with the economy shrinking by 5% or more That's significant, because in many election forecasting models, including my own Time for Change model, economic growth in the second quarter is a key predictor of the election results.
Models like mine use second quarter GDP growth to measure the state of the economy, because GDP is a broad measure of economic activity, and the performance of the economy in the second quarter seems to shape opinions of the economy in the fall.
So it's possible that even if the economy recovers later in the year, the most electorally salient perceptions will nonetheless be formed in the spring and summer.
For the 2020 election, I have modified my Time for Change model by focusing entirely on elections with a running incumbent.
That is because, in these elections, both the incumbent's approval rating in late June and the growth rate of the economy in the second quarter have much stronger effects than in elections without a running incumbent.
I have also modified the model to make the electoral vote, rather than the popular vote, the dependent, variable, because it is the electoral vote that decides the winner.
I unveiled this version of the model last April in the Crystal Ball.
Let's take a look at this results of regression analysis of incumbent president's electoral votes.
They say June approval, Q2 GDP, and so I'm not super concerned about this.
I will mention We are in unprecedented times.
Not just because of the global pandemic, but because people don't trust the media.
I cited Edelman's research a couple times in the past few videos, talking about how when it comes to the coronavirus, the group of people least likely to be trusted in, uh, it's journalists.
And that's staggering.
So perhaps we're facing something truly unprecedented.
People are waving flags, wearing Trump hats.
And there was a funny viral post I saw on Reddit.
They said, hey everybody, remember when we used to go around with Obama hats, Obama t-shirts, waving Obama flags?
Oh right, I don't because we weren't in an effing cult.
That's what they said.
Alright, that's what you can believe.
I don't care if you want to disparage Trump supporters.
But I hope you realize that means there's nothing you can do to win, right?
That was a meme.
It was on Political Humor on Reddit.
If you really believe Trump's base is a cult, congratulations, you've already consigned yourself to defeat.
Because these people are going to vote for Trump no matter what you say.
But more importantly, people don't trust the press.
And if that's true, they're not going to believe a word out of the mouths of these journalists and they're going to vote how they see fit.
And if that's the case, they're probably going to vote for Trump.
It is unprecedented.
We've not seen this combination of things.
Now, this is interesting.
Conditional forecasts of Trump electoral vote.
This is an easier to understand graph.
We can see this.
If quarter 2 GDP is minus 5 and net approval is minus 5, Trump's going to get 156 electoral votes.
But come on, man.
Against Joe Biden?
Is that what you really think?
Are you factoring in Joe Biden?
See, what they're not factoring with these models is the social and cultural factor.
You can take person A and person B, slap some numbers on it and see who's going to win.
But you also need to consider that for all of the negative numbers you can show, Joe Biden is going to be muttering and mumbling incoherently on stage, confused about where he is, and Trump is going to steamroll him.
Assuming they debate.
Assuming there's even a Democratic primary.
I mean, everything's being upended, so who knows what's going to happen?
So, I think we get it.
Let's read his conclusions.
forecast of the electoral vote for President Trump depending on his net approval rating in late June
and the growth rate of the US economy during the second quarter. So I think we get it. Let's read
his conclusions. He says, based on the results of presidential elections since World War Two with
running incumbents, a president with an upside down approval rating and an economy in recession
would have little chance of winning a second term in the White House.
If President Trump's net approval rating remains where it is now or declines further, and if the recession is severe, with real GDP shrinking by three points or more in the second quarter, the result could well be a defeat of landslide proportions.
You know why I don't buy it?
Because you still have to factor in so much more.
Trump is an incumbent president, and he secured the primary.
Trump clinches GOP nomination with Tuesday primary wins.
Why should I believe the economy would hold back a man Who won the GOP primary by ridiculous margins in a primary where people didn't even need to vote.
If Trump's base didn't come out, he still would be the GOP nominee.
But instead, they came out nearly doubling the voter turnout of many different states.
So you can talk about a bad economy, but nobody's blaming Trump for it.
I mean, some people probably are, sure, the never-Trumpers, but I think Trump's base, they don't care.
They're like, nope, not gonna blame him for this.
A few caveats are in order.
Voters may not hold an incumbent president responsible for a recession brought on by an unforeseeable disaster like the coronavirus pandemic.
I agree.
Although they may hold him responsible for the government's response to the pandemic, which is a story that is still being written.
Yeah, but when you get Ilhan Omar praising Trump's actions, I'm sorry, man.
He's united pretty much everybody at this point.
Moreover, in our current era of deep partisan polarization, events like recessions may not have as great an impact on an incumbent's electoral fortunes as they did in the past.
We have seen that President Trump's approval rating has been remarkably stable due to almost unwavering support from his fellow Republicans and equally unwavering opposition from Democrats.
But the Democrat opposition has has wavered.
Look at the Gallup data.
Come on.
Not a lot, but a few points.
On the other hand, polarization might also mean that an incumbent, especially one who makes little effort to appeal to voters outside his own party's base, might not receive the full benefit of incumbency, which depends on the ability of an incumbent to attract votes across party lines.
Finally, the fact that our forecasts are based on only 11 elections should make us cautious in interpreting these results despite the impressive accuracy of the model.
Listen, If you ignore the negative signs and plug your ears and say, la-la-la-la-la, don't be surprised if you lose.
Now, there's other data to consider.
The GOP just won three special Pennsylvania House races, including a Hillary district.
Keep in mind everything that's been said here.
Make the decisions for yourself, and you should always act as though you are going to lose.
Go out in full force.
Vote for your candidate.
Now, if you're a Biden supporter, whoever you might be, sure, maybe there's a couple of them, you better make sure you go out and vote in full force.
If you're a Trump supporter, the same thing is true.
Bernie supporters, I got nothing for you, man.
Biden's the nominee.
I don't blame you if you don't want to vote for either of them, because, you know, I don't know.