China LIED In Order To Extract Critical Medical Supplies, Launches Propaganda Campaign To Exploit Us
China LIED In Order To Extract Critical Medical Supplies, Launches Propaganda Campaign To Exploit Us. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic China has been lying.We now know that while they were lying to the world about the severity of the virus they were also instructing employees abroad to begin purchasing up critical medical supplies and having them ship it to China. This happened in several countries.By holding us at bay by downplaying the severity they bought time to extract our resources and this has led to our people suffering.China is still lying and is now actively harming us and other countries by sowing disinformation campaigns meant to slow our response as well as sending faulty medical equipment back to these countries.Trump has been has been right about China from the start and its time we start trusting ourselves and not the disinformation.
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Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, which started in Wuhan, China, the Chinese government has been lying every step of the way to the U.S.
and many other countries.
These lies resulted in a delayed reaction from our country and many others, which resulted in a loss of control and a major loss of life.
Now, many people speculated, why would China lie about this?
Well, first of all, China lies about a lot of things.
Many people thought it was because they're trying to save face.
They didn't want to be held responsible for what was really going on.
But now we have evidence to suggest that China is lying to us to actively hurt us, dare I say actively kill our people and people in many other countries.
In a story from the Sydney Morning Herald, Chinese-backed companies were sending millions of pieces of medical equipment to China At a time when everyone was downplaying this, particularly China, they were lying about it.
Yet these companies were instructed to round up as much supplies, as many pieces of medical equipment as they could, and send it back to China.
You see, China knew what was going on.
And they didn't want us to find out because they wanted a chance to get our resources first.
Now, it is being suggested they are using this opportunity for predatory economic policies targeting our countries and others, and it's worse than that.
They're sending faulty pieces of medical equipment to many other countries that are now reacting negatively, saying this is on purpose.
We should not be trusting China.
But unfortunately, many people in our media are just repeating Chinese propaganda.
And dare I say, yes, at least one journalist and probably many others are praising China over their response, saying, hey, better there than somewhere else.
But like India, Yet China's been lying to us.
It could have been worse if it started in another country.
But if this started in another country, and then they were honest with us, we could have got a better handle on things.
But China, it would seem, is actively trying to hurt us.
Now we're hearing the U.S.
may expel who they say are Chinese spies in media, and this is in response to China expelling our journalists.
It's very likely China is lying still about what's going on in their country.
The UK believes that the official numbers they've put out are wrong, and it could be 15 to 40 times worse than what they're actually saying, which would mean We're in this for the long haul.
We're in this and things are going to get bad.
In Italy, they're already seeing a breakdown of social order.
They're seeing the same thing in China and China is lying so they can come out on top.
They want us to be hurt.
Not just the United States, but Australia and countries in Europe as well.
We have to stop trusting them and we have to protect ourselves.
Let's start with the first story to see exactly what these companies were doing at a time when we were being told not to worry about this.
Mind you, While these companies were sending millions of pieces of medical equipment back to China, we were being told by people like Bill de Blasio in New York to go out.
It's fine.
This was as early or as late as March.
The mayor of New York was saying everything's fine.
Now New York is the epicenter with almost half of all of the coronavirus-related deaths.
They were saying it was fine.
And you know what?
I think they blundered this really bad.
But to a certain extent, China is responsible for starting it and lying about it so we couldn't respond properly.
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The Sydney Morning Herald, Chinese-backed company's mission to source Australian medical supplies.
As the coronavirus took hold in Wuhan earlier this year, staff from the Chinese government-backed global property giant Greenland Group were instructed to put their normal work on hold and source bulk supplies of essential medical items to ship back to China.
A whistleblower from the company has told the Herald it was a worldwide Greenland effort, and the Sydney office was no different, sourcing bulk supplies of surgical masks, thermometers, antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizers, gloves, and Panadol for shipping.
The company even posted its efforts of packing pallets in the company's Sydney headquarters on social media.
Basically, all employees, the majority of whom are Chinese, were asked to source whatever medical supplies they could, one company insider told the Herald.
This exercise went on for weeks, through January and February, he said.
The entire accounts department, contract managers, the human resources team, and even receptionists were sent on a mission to find bulk supplies of surgical masks, thermometers, antibacterial wipes, hand sanitizers, gloves, and Panadol.
There were numerous requests from the HR manager and even our direct reporting line, which prioritized the assisting of the company in gathering these supplies over other work activities.
The entire accounts department were absent for days as they were out purchasing supplies.
Now, why would an employee of what seems to be a real estate management company be sourcing medical supplies?
Because China knew.
This was going on from January to February.
They say Greenland Australia supported the group's initiative by arranging for medical supplies to be dispatched to China, which at the time was the epicenter of the outbreak.
Sherwood Luo, the managing director of Greenland Australia, posted photographs of this occurring on social media.
For instance, on February 13th, he posted on WeChat, combat coronavirus.
Greenland Australia is taking action.
The second batch of non-contact forehead thermometers will soon take off to China.
Coronavirus situation is serious.
Chinese people, local and overseas, are trying their best, fighting together to combat the virus.
At this time, China was battling the COVID-19 epidemic as of February 14th, Australia only had 15 known cases.
According to a company newsletter, the Greenland group sourced 3 million masks, 700,000 hazmat suits, 500,000 pairs of gloves from Australia, Canada, Turkey, and other countries.
Now first, many of the people who are sourcing this, it can be assumed at the time, we're saying China needs our help.
We don't have that big of an outbreak.
So you can chalk this up to a bit as a major blunder from these countries not realizing they would need these supplies in the future.
But China has been lying to us the whole time.
And because of this, many people probably thought it wasn't a big deal.
We're gonna help China.
We don't need these things.
It's not that bad.
Let me show you how bad it really is.
In a tweet from January 14th, the World Health Organization said, Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus identified in Wuhan, China.
This is propaganda.
We have a timeline of events.
And on December 25th, according to the National Review, they say, Chinese medical staff in two hospitals in Wuhan are suspected of contracting viral pneumonia and are quarantined.
This is additional strong evidence of human-to-human transmission, and not even the first.
Sometime in late December, Wuhan hospitals notice an exponential increase in the number of cases that cannot be linked back to the Hunan seafood wholesale market.
On December 30th, Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to a group of other doctors warning them about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled SARS, urging them to take protective measures against the infection.
On December 31st, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission declares, the investigation so far has not found any obvious human-to-human transmission and no medical staff infection.
This is the opposite of the belief of the doctors working on patients in Wuhan, and two doctors were already suspected of contracting the virus.
Three weeks after doctors first started noticing the cases, China contacts the World Health Organization.
Tao Lina, a public health expert and former official with Shanghai Center for Disease Control and Prevention, tells the South China Morning Post, I think we are now quite capable of killing it in the beginning phase, given China's disease control system.
Emergency handling capacity and clinical medicine support.
January 1st, the Wuhan Public Security Bureau issued summons to Dr. Li Wenliang, accusing him of spreading rumors.
Two days later at a police station, Dr. Li signed a statement acknowledging his misdemeanor and promising not to commit further unlawful acts.
Seven other people are arrested on similar charges and their fate is unknown.
China was arresting people who are warning this was spreading.
They then told the World Health Organization that there's no evidence.
Why?
Because they wanted to source supplies from other countries so they could save themselves first.
Well, I would say they're actively trying to kill us now because they're sending faulty supplies to other countries who now have to reject them.
But I would also say, based on this story, The World Health Organization accused of carrying China's water after official refuses to acknowledge Taiwan during bizarre interview.
Now, I'm not going to get into the full politics of China and Taiwan, but suffice it to say Taiwan views itself as independent.
China does not.
In an interview with the World Health Organization, A woman, the journalist, asks the World Health Organization, let's see, here's what they say, Hong Kong City, World City.
Bruce Aylward, slash who, did an interview with Hong Kong's, with a Hong Kong news outlet.
When asked about Taiwan, he pretended not to hear the question.
The journalist asks again, and he hangs up.
In fact, it wasn't just that.
Canadian physician Dr. Bruce Aylward, an aide to World Health Organization Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom, sat down for an interview with RTHK about the coronavirus outbreak, where he was asked whether the organization would consider Taiwan's membership.
For several seconds, Aylward sat in silence.
Hello, the reporter asked.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hear your question, Yvonne, responded the doctor.
Okay, let me repeat the question, she said.
No, that's okay.
Let's move to another one then.
When she asked again, the doctor hung up.
This is a sign that this individual was trying very hard not to displease China.
They wouldn't consider Taiwan's membership.
He then comes back.
She calls him back and he says, Oh, you know, we've talked about China.
So, you know, we don't need to talk about it anymore.
Taiwan is not China, at least by Taiwan's standard.
Obviously, China thinks it is.
This shows the World Health Organization is carrying water for China to a certain degree.
This is a Canadian physician who did this.
Then we see the lies or the misinformation coming out of the World Health Organization.
This caused the problem we're facing now.
If they had warned us, we could have reacted more quickly.
But many people downplayed it, be it local governments like Bill de Blasio in New York, Andrew Cuomo, Donald Trump, or even the media in this country.
And while this is happening, Ottawa faces criticism for sending 16 tons of personal protective equipment to China in February.
This is all a part of the lies.
They were doing China's bidding.
And now where are we?
In dire straits and desperate need of equipment, we don't have.
Trump had to invoke the Defense Production Act.
Now, whether or not he orders companies to actually start mass producing these things, we'll see many of these companies are already volunteering.
But in the UK, Boris Johnson is concerned that China is actually understating, they're still lying about how severe it is, but that they're lying on purpose for predatory economic, to gain predatory, or I'm sorry, to gain economic power through predatory means.
A source said, quote, there is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable.
The Chinese government know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it, they are spreading lies.
Mr. Johnson has been warned by scientific advisors that China's officially declared statistics on the number of coronavirus cases could be downplayed by a factor of 15 to 40 times.
And No.
10 believes China is seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with, quote, Predatory offers of help to countries around the world.
A major review of British foreign policy has been shelved due to COVID-19 outbreak and will not report until the impact of the virus can be assessed.
A government source close to the review said, it is going to be back to the diplomatic drawing board after this.
Rethink is an understatement.
Another source said, there has to be a reckoning when this is over.
Yet another added, the anger goes right to the top.
Spain received faulty coronavirus testing kits.
Spain returns faulty testing kits bought from Chinese company as experts say China is filling the void left by Europe's usual go-to ally, the US.
Or it could be that China is sending out faulty medical supplies because they're trying to actively hurt us.
I'm going to make the assumption that's the case.
NBC reporter ends up getting blasted after praising China for stepping in to help Italy battle the coronavirus.
You see, Italy found that the tests weren't working and several countries started rejecting.
Countries reject China pandemic product batches.
This is from the Financial Times.
Several countries in or neighboring the EU have rejected Chinese-made coronavirus testing kits and protective equipment as substandard, raising concerns about the quality of supplies.
The Netherlands, Spain, and Turkey have all claimed there have been problems with products, including masks and tests, as rising confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in Europe increased dependence on Chinese imports.
The claims come as tensions grow over what the EU's top diplomat has branded Beijing's use of the politics of generosity in a battle of narratives over who were the most reliable international partners in the global crisis.
The Dutch health ministry said at the weekend it was forced to recall 600,000 face masks shipped from China on March 21st after they were found to be defective, which I find strange.
Because we had been manufacturing a lot of our supplies in China.
Many of the supplies we have now that work came from China.
So how is it that China is able to mass-produce working equipment, they lie about what's going on, then start extracting much of that equipment back from these countries like Australia and Canada to China, and then send out faulty equipment.
I would assume it is intentional.
I would.
You don't have to.
But we have seen them actively sowing discord from BuzzFeed on March 5th.
Chinese trolls are spreading coronavirus disinformation in Taiwan.
Even in five years of looking at troubling disinfo every day, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite this malicious.
How about this one from the Daily Beast?
China launches a fake news campaign to blame the US for coronavirus.
There's more.
When China lies and actively sows disinformation, people lose their lives.
But it's more than that.
the coronavirus. ProPublica analyzed thousands of fake and hijacked Twitter accounts to understand
how covert Chinese propaganda spreads around the globe.
When China lies and actively sows disinformation, people lose their lives. But it's more than
that. When they send faulty medical equipment, people lose their lives. If they're sending out
misinformation that gets people killed on purpose, then I can safely say China is trying to
kill us and many others.
And then I'm going to go ahead and assume that the equipment they're sending out is intentionally faulty because we used to buy our masks from them in the first place with no problems.
In fact, at one point, China recalled a cargo ship carrying medical supplies that were headed to the US.
They recalled it back to China to use for themselves.
So the supplies made there work for them.
But the supplies then sent to Italy and the Netherlands and Spain don't seem to work.
But now we can see, unfortunately, in our own country, people carrying water for the Chinese government.
This is a serious threat.
And I don't know if we can do anything about it, because we have a lot of people who are in on the take.
There were numerous stories going back a long time, or going back several months, of professors secretly receiving money from the Chinese government because China wanted access to our research.
These professors were arrested.
They were lying to the federal government about receiving money from the Chinese government.
Now these people are facing prison time.
The Washington Free Beacon reports, the Economist runs Chinese coronavirus propaganda disguised as news.
Chinese outlets flout federal disclosure laws in disinformation campaign.
They say, The propaganda advertorials, which are ads designed to look like news stories, come from the Beijing Review, an entity backed by the Chinese Communist Party.
The outlet has never registered with the Department of Justice, as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and does not include a legally required disclaimer that the ad is being pushed by a foreign nation.
Why wouldn't the economists label these things?
Why wouldn't they call it out?
And why would they take that money?
I'll tell you why.
Because the money's good.
I mean, look, we saw what happened with the big, you know, Chinese controversy surrounding the NBA.
When all this stuff started going down in Hong Kong, what did we see?
How many companies in the U.S.
bent the knee to China because they want to suckle the teat?
They want what China's got, and they will lie and sell out the U.S.
in order to get it.
That's one of the biggest risks of staunch individualism that we face.
There are many people in this country who don't care about this country.
They just want money and power.
When China offered them money and power, they took it.
And they're going to lie, and they're going to defend this country that is actively causing harm and death in the United States, Australia, and many European nations.
It's about time people started calling it out, but unfortunately our media is, to a certain degree, complicit from CNBC.
Speaking to CNBC's Squawk Box on Wednesday, former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill said the virus had brought up the best and the worst of the Chinese model, praising China, saying, Thank God this didn't start somewhere like in India.
I disagree.
If it did start in India, they probably would have told us about it.
They probably would have told us and everyone else, and it could have been taken care of properly.
China is exploiting this for economic gain, and they're exploiting this to cause harm to other countries like the United States.
Senator McSally says some in media are parroting Chinese propaganda amid coronavirus pandemic.
And yes, she is correct.
The Atlantic writes, President Trump labeling the novel coronavirus a foreign virus isn't a new strategy when it comes to popular naming of infectious disease.
Xenophobia has long played a prominent role.
Oh, we've seen it across the board.
The desperate propaganda from the far left and from not everybody in the far left, but many.
Who would claim bigotry or otherwise.
Or mainstream media outlets that receive advertising and major benefits from the Chinese government.
Keep in mind the economists running ads for China.
That's money for them!
And now we can see the strange ideological propaganda from campus reform.
The University of California tells students do not say Chinese virus and do not allow others to say it either.
Why?
It originated in Wuhan.
They're actively lying to us and causing harm to our country.
Why not call it the Wuhan coronavirus or the Chinese coronavirus or China's coronavirus?
They don't want to take responsibility for it.
That's true.
But they're also trying to get us hurt.
So we should call it like it is.
The Council of Chief Diversity Officers at the University of California released a guidance document to announce supportive, positive, and inclusive campaign climates during the COVID-19 crisis.
The list begins by telling students to reject racism, sexism, xenophobia, and all hateful or intolerant speech, both in person and online, and to be an upstander and discourage others from engaging in such behavior.
Now is not the time to play ideology and say this kind of weird stuff, but Look, if many professors were in on the take, selling research or giving away information to China and lying about it, why should I believe that these people aren't in on it either?
There's probably more people taking money from China than we realize.
Now, when it comes to critical research towards technological advancements and other important bits of You know, our economy, that are being worked on in colleges and universities.
I can understand why the Feds would investigate these things.
But has anyone investigated these social justice, humanities, or diversity individuals?
Are they taking money from China at all?
I'm not saying we should start a witch hunt or anything like that.
If the government is already looking into this and we've already found proof that people are lying about receiving money and getting arrested for it, Does the investigation stop there?
I don't know.
I don't like witch hunts.
And I don't want to single people out and accuse anybody of being, you know, treasonous or anything like that.
But we have to be careful because we have a hard adversary that has been stealing our intellectual property.
They've been extracting our manufacturing and our resources.
And now they're lying to us and watching us squirm.
New York is in serious trouble.
And it's because we were lied to.
We can't trust the Chinese government.
It has nothing to do with the Chinese people.
It's their government.
Well, at least the U.S.
is starting to take some action.
U.S.
officials push for expelling suspected Chinese spies at media outlets.
The Trump administration officials are discussing taking action after China said it would expel almost all American journalists for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal.
The concern here is that there are news organizations that are owned and controlled by the Chinese government, and the people working there mostly just file intelligence reports.
So are they really news outlets?
It doesn't seem to be the case.
They say the action is under consideration because some U.S.
officials want to retaliate against China in a new conflict that has revolved around news organizations and is being fueled by hostility over the coronavirus pandemic.
Since the virus began spreading across the U.S., Washington and Beijing have waged a global information war over the outbreak.
President Trump and his aides are trying to pin responsibility on China, where Communist Party officials initially covered up the dangers of the virus as it was first discovered.
Mr. Trump, though, has been criticized for vast failures in the American response.
The New York Times said China covered this up.
I'm sorry, New York Times.
Most of most Americans support the president in his efforts, and they give him high marks in job approval related to the coronavirus.
It's China that's caused this problem, not Donald Trump.
And as much as we can, we can criticize Trump for downplaying this initially in the beginning.
Not as bad as others, but he did a little bit.
Bill de Blasio downplayed it, and so did Andrew Cuomo.
But you know what?
I'mma tell you right now.
They all get a free pass from me on this one.
You know why?
Because the real adversary here is China.
They are actively trying to hurt us still, and covered this up.
Sure, Bill de Blasio was bumbling around and he was wrong, but some of his decisions were based off of the lies coming out of China.
Now, by the time he was telling people to go out and go about their lives in the beginning of March, he should have known better, but I think China is responsible for the most part.
We could have acted much sooner, and the World Health Organization is carrying water for them, so we should not be listening to them either.
We gotta take care of ourselves, and we can look to what's going on in Italy to predict what's going to happen here in the future, and it's going to get bad.
Social order is breaking down in Southern Italy.
People are looting grocery stores.
They are setting up Facebook pages, organizing raids on grocery stores.
We don't want the same thing to happen here, so at this point we must disregard the information coming out of China, and we have to figure this one out for ourselves.
Because even if we think that data could be valuable, we never know if it's tainted.
Even if we need the supplies, well, as we know, they don't work.
China is sending out bad supplies, and I bet it's on purpose.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment will be coming up at youtube.com slash timcastnews at 6 p.m.
Thanks for hanging out, and I'll see you all there.
Tensions are flaring up between New York and Rhode Island after it was reported Rhode Island is sending National Guard door to door to find people from New York and essentially force them into quarantine.
If they don't do it, they could be arrested.
They could face jail time, potentially 60 days.
Now, Andrew Cuomo of New York is threatening to sue and has said that a hard quarantine on New York, New Jersey, Connecticut would be a federal declaration of war.
Maybe you all saw my video from last night.
Gotta say, we were all decently worried.
And I still am a little bit.
Donald Trump announced yesterday that they were contemplating a hard quarantine.
on three states. Now he said New York, parts of New Jersey, and parts of Connecticut. That makes
sense. He's basically talking about what they call the tri-state area, which would be the New York
metro, essentially. Now I'm in the Philadelphia metro for the most part. I don't know if we would
be roped up in that.
But if they did want to quarantine all the states, it's a very terrifying prospect, and this resulted in tens of millions of people being very, very worried.
You see, when things start getting bad, it's all the rich people in these states, which happen to live in New York, who have already dipped out very easily.
Probably hopped on a helicopter from one of the East River launch pads, or Hudson launch pads, and just flown down, you know, to one of their summer homes in a different state.
Well, with all of these... It's not all rich people, to be honest.
But with all of these people fleeing, a lot of states are upset.
They don't want the infection spreading, and I can understand that.
I am not particularly happy with the president coming out and saying, we're maybe gonna do this, we'll see, but...
While some people are upset because they feel like he needlessly panicked everybody, I don't know, part of me is kind of happy that he was telling the world that he, you know, he was contemplating doing it.
But the main story that I want to get to here is what's going on with Rhode Island because the escalation of authoritarian tactics will not stop here.
There's a bunch of big stories about the need for ventilators.
There's a bunch of fake news.
It's really difficult to know what is really going on.
Andrew Cuomo, for instance, is yelling, we need more ventilators!
We don't have enough!
Donald Trump says you do.
Cuomo says he doesn't.
Trump then says Cuomo's got them all stockpiled, and Cuomo goes, well, yeah, we do have them stockpiled, but we need 30,000 more.
So the question is, if they're claiming they have a shortage, but they're sitting on stockpiles of ventilators, why do they need more right now?
Because of projections?
None of this is easy to follow, I gotta be honest.
But to see the National Guard going door-to-door, look, you know, I got respect for those who serve in the National Guard or U.S.
Military or whatever branch they serve in, and I'm not gonna put this on them as individuals, but we're getting Like, we're on the edge of the precipice, man.
Yesterday was us about to tip over with Trump announcing potential state quarantines and Rhode Island's basically doing it.
Now, they can't go that as far as to say no cross-border travel.
That would be unconstitutional.
And that's probably why Trump didn't enact a quarantine.
What ended up happening was the CDC is issuing strong travel advisory asking residents of the three states not to travel domestically.
I think it's kind of silly Because, like I said, for me, I'm in the Philadelphia metro, not one of the hardest hit areas.
It's the New York metro.
Now, I think eventually it will be down by me, but I'm a couple hours south of New York.
So, it's not even the same area.
But that's the challenge with figuring out where to draw the lines, and you could potentially spark panic.
There are some people who have jumped just over the, I believe, the New Jersey state line into Philadelphia, or even, I'm sorry, Pennsylvania.
And Philadelphia, to try and get away from this stuff.
We'll see how things play out.
Let's see what's going on in Rhode Island, because this seems to be a decent escalation.
Now, we heard yesterday that they were hunting down New Yorkers, so Cuomo is quite upset.
But I do want to make sure, you know, for all of you watching, we are going to rag on the fake news media, because you know I love to do it, right?
Daily Mail reports, the Rhode Island National Guard is going door-to-door in coastal communities on Saturday to tell visiting New Yorkers of a mandatory 14-day quarantine as a furious Governor Andrew Cuomo threatens to sue over what he calls a reactionary policy.
Now hold on.
Well, I can certainly be concerned.
The National Guard is going door-to-door and flagging people down.
Come on, dude.
We're not at that point yet.
We haven't crossed that line.
We haven't jumped off the cliff.
It's a bunch of dudes who happen to be wearing uniforms, knocking on your door and saying, if you're from New York, please self-quarantine for 14 days.
If you don't, you could be arrested.
That's getting close to the line.
That's like we're standing on it, okay?
If right now all they're doing is Advising people?
I'm not really all that.
Look, you know, it's disconcerting when you think about what comes next.
But as of right now, I wouldn't freak out if a National Guardsman knocked on my door.
I'd be like, appreciate the heads up.
Thank you.
The measure, while extreme, is necessary because the New York City area is the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S.
and is needed to control its spread, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo said on Saturday.
The order came the same day state police started pulling over vehicles with New York license plates to get contact information for drivers and passengers and to inform them of the quarantine order.
You can see all these photos we have here.
Cuomo's not happy.
People who break the order face fines and even arrest for subsequent violations, the Democratic governor said.
The ACLU of Rhode Island on Thursday questioned the constitutionality of pulling over vehicles for no other reason than having a New York plate.
Because you can actually have a car registered to one place and live in another for a certain period of time.
You're supposed to get it registered within a certain period of time.
But what if you had been visiting family?
What if you're from New York?
And before all this went off, you're visiting family in Rhode Island.
You're saying, I'm going to spend a month out here.
It's not unreasonable to do if you're just visiting someone for a month or two.
In fact, think about foreign countries.
You get a three-month visa when you go to Europe.
So you could feasibly be like, it's the Christmas holidays, I'm gonna go up for the next couple of months to see family in Rhode Island.
Now you've got a New York license plate and all of a sudden the National Guard's knocking on your door and you're like, dude, I've been here since before the outbreak.
But they're gonna impose a quarantine on you anyway?
There's a lot of problems with just pointing the finger at someone because of their license plate.
But Raimondo said Friday she had consulted with lawyers and is in line with White House and CDC guidelines.
Cuomo said that if Raimondo doesn't walk back the policy, he will take her to court.
You know, man.
I'm with Cuomo on this one.
I do not want to see states locking down their borders and them targeting people based on a license plate or something.
I'm not a fan of that.
We are the United States.
We're one country.
And what comes next is the big question.
Because if they're going to lock down state borders, why not cities?
Why not counties?
Why not one city?
Maybe in New York, right?
Maybe Poughkeepsie.
Just north of New York City by a couple hours.
I kidding, a couple hours.
Hour or so.
What if they put checkpoints around their city and said, nope, you can't come in because you guys are sick?
I don't think we can do something like this.
And besides, the more important point is that it's basically already too late.
We're talking to Rhode Island now, Cuomo said on CNN.
If they don't roll back that policy, I'm going to sue Rhode Island.
No state should be using police to limit interstate travel.
While Rhode Island's response to the outbreak has been solid, the state is unprepared for a huge surge in cases such as experienced in New York and New Orleans.
Because of that, she extended the state's social distancing guidelines that include no public gatherings of more than 10 people and limiting restaurants to takeout and delivery service until April 13.
In New Jersey, I told you a couple people got arrested for having a get-together.
It happened again.
I don't know the full details, but it was some tiny apartment, and they called it a coronavirus party.
Now, some people are claiming that the goal of the party is for everyone to get sick so they can get over it.
I don't necessarily think that's the case.
I think they're just people having parties, but the guy who threw the party apparently got arrested.
That's where we're at now.
And I don't know if that's even... I don't know if you can do that.
The government does not have the right to stop people from peacefully or peaceably assembling.
Under emergency orders, perhaps there could be a court case, but that's very dangerous precedent.
Imagine if a bunch of people gathered in a public square to denounce the government's authoritarian restrictions on movement and travel because of the emergency.
Unfortunately, that's what the First Amendment protects.
Now, they would argue, but under an emergency, we can suspend those rights.
No, that's supposed to be what the Constitution is for, but it's been done in the past.
There have been suspension of civil liberties, and to me, I don't know how you balance those two.
If people want to have a party, isn't that protected under the First Amendment?
You can't go up and, I mean, look, if they're being noisy and they're like, you know, doing
things that are illegal or whatever, I get it.
You can break a party up.
But if the only thing you're saying is that there's too many people hanging out, should
that be allowed?
I honestly think the answer is no.
But that's a principled position, and the challenge is we got a serious virus sweeping through the country and the world, and now the U.S.
has 123,000 or so, you know, cases.
So, look, man, I'll tell you what.
When Trump made that announcement about quarantine, that was freaky.
Definitely got worried.
We, you know, had a conversation with friends, you know, here and in other places, like, what should we do?
Because if you wait, if they say, you know what?
We're going to lock everything down.
It's too late.
If they say, we're thinking about it, I mean, if you really want to get out, that's time to get out.
Now, the bigger question is, should you even get out?
Because you're being quarantined for a reason.
The other issue is that, you know, where I live in South Jersey, I'm nowhere near any of the epicenter, you know, I'm, well, I should say nowhere near as relative.
I'm a couple hours away.
And none of us have been out, so we're all healthy and fine.
That's the point of a quarantine, though.
They don't know, they won't take the risk, they shut everything down.
Would they shut us down?
I don't know, but I'll tell you what, a lot of people want a GTFO.
We'll see how things play out.
For the time being, it won't happen.
But we still are seeing an escalation in... I don't want to... You know, look, we're getting close to authoritarian measures.
And you have to keep an eye on this stuff because it's never going to be a finger snap.
They're not going to one day wake up and be like, oh, and by the way, if you leave your house, you'll be shot on sight.
No, they're going to be like, please, everyone stay in your homes.
You can go out.
Then a couple of weeks later, they're going to be like, we don't want anyone leaving their homes.
If you're seen outside, you'll receive a fine.
Then they're gonna be like, if you go outside, you will be detained.
You see where it leads to?
Because people keep violating these orders, and asking politely doesn't seem to work for the most part.
I'm not advocating, I'm absolutely resisting any, you know, incrementing towards the authoritarian, but you can see where things go.
Some people have said the quarantine's too little, too late.
Even if Trump was gonna do it, and by saying he was thinking about it, people probably fled already, but more importantly, People fled already anyway.
A lot of people have gotten out of the Northeast, and that's why Rhode Island is doing this.
But let's, uh, I want to show you something that's really, really funny about what's going on.
It's really difficult to know what's true.
I gotta be honest.
I'm seeing people on the left and the right fight against each other, the left and the left, even the right and the right in disagreement over what's going on and what the right policies are.
Everybody seems to be breaking down and fighting over a bunch of different things.
The stimulus package, whether there should be quarantine stuff.
And one of the reasons is the media is just, there's no trust in it.
But I bring you now to something I saw over on Reddit.
Murdered by words.
Are you familiar with the murdered by words subreddit?
If not, let me enlighten you.
It's basically a subreddit dedicated to people getting, you know, mocked on social media.
Someone will say something and then someone, like something stupid, and then someone else will respond with this overly verbose and often, I am very smart, insult.
Murdered by Words is... You get it.
Now, this woman... This is the top post right now, mind you.
And it's hilarious.
And I'm gonna read you these comments.
It's sad.
Murdered by Words.
Getting advice from Karen?
Anna Cabrera tweeted, Just in.
51 Italian doctors who tested positive for coronavirus have died.
Italian Association of Doctors.
A response from someone on Twitter named Broken Soldier.
Could we get this confirmed by a non-MSM source?
Lailana Munter, verified Twitter user, responded.
This is a statement from the Italian Association of Doctors.
Who do you want to hear it from?
Karen on Facebook?
Oh man, sure murdered that guy by words, I'll tell you what, but these people are oblivious.
Edelman Research found, yes, the news media is the least trusted group when it comes to delivering information on the coronavirus, and quote, somebody like me is considered substantially more trustworthy.
Now that's what they're mocking.
Oh, would you really rather hear this from someone, you know, like Karen on Facebook?
That's how little people actually trust the media, dude.
Yes!
They would rather get it from Karen on Facebook.
Here's the best part.
They think the dude's a Trump supporter.
Or some of them do.
They think he gets his information from Alex Jones.
Not all of them.
Some of them call him out as the enlightened centrist.
I respect that.
Enlightened centrists, you know, here we are.
So, let me pull up the comments here.
Getting advice from Karen.
Here's a top comment.
I can only imagine where that fella gets his news from.
And they said, Alex Jones.
Let me show you some.
See that little blue hat?
And that little Hawaiian layflower?
This person's clearly a Yang or Tulsi supporter.
And their image shows Trump and Hillary.
Yes, enlightened centrists chiming in.
But that's how these people view the world.
And what's really funny, Is that even though we have all these polls showing that nobody trusts the media, and, in my opinion, for good reason, the people on Reddit... Reddit, in my opinion, is like the toilet of the news cycle.
Because I'll give you... I'll break it down for you.
Check it out.
They're not actually looking at the Twitter thread.
The Twitter thread is the real conversation.
If you're on Twitter, you will see what these people are saying to each other.
No.
The toilet bowl of Reddit is the screen grab recycling of the out-of-context tweet.
So these people are getting their information, like, third or fourth hand.
It reminds me of, like, if you've ever seen Futurama, where the mutants live under New York City, and all the refuse comes down, and then they use that to build their houses and stuff.
That's kind of what it's like.
These are like the sewer people, absorbing all of the garbage toilet information, and then garbling it up, thinking it's real.
This dude clearly doesn't watch Alex Jones.
Or maybe he does, I don't know.
But why would you think a Yang supporter is watching Alex Jones?
Oh, because you don't actually watch the news, you have no idea what you're talking about, and you live in a toilet bubble where people vomit bad information into the toilet and then you garble it up.
Congratulations.
Some people have accurately pointed out that... Look at this, they don't even know what MSM means.
Someone said non-MSM and then someone responded mainstream media.
O.F.
We are abbreviating that now?
This is a really good example of people who don't do any real investigation.
These are the people who are probably sitting on their phones, you know, scrolling and then saying, I don't know what that means.
Well, to the average person who actually investigates news, they probably know what MSM means.
But if you're someone who just browses the default of Reddit, and you're being, you know, people are vomiting word, well it's word vomit all over your face, you don't know what any of it means because the information you're getting is absolute garbage.
But don't take my word for it.
Perhaps you can take the word of Gallup polls.
The news media has the highest disapproval rating.
Donald Trump has a 60% approval rating.
And the media has a 44% approval rating.
So, uh, yes.
Lookit.
Your child's school or daycare approval much, much higher than the media.
Nobody's interested, man.
Let me show you something real quick.
This is a story from Politico.
Trump downplays need for ventilators as New York begs to differ.
Quote, I don't believe you need 40 or 30,000 ventilators, the president said.
But city and state officials say they require far more than the administration is providing.
So Trump made an interesting point.
He said, you'll see these hospitals, and they'll have a couple of ventilators, and now they're saying they need 30,000?
Here's what he said.
I have a feeling a lot of the numbers that are being said in some areas are just bigger than they're going to be.
I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.
You go into a major hospital sometimes, and they'll have two ventilators, and now all of a sudden they're saying, can we order 30,000?
Yeah?
Dr. Deborah Birx.
So keep in mind, this story is from the 26th.
Dr. Birx said in a news briefing on Thursday that she was told New York had enough ventilators to meet current needs.
While there may be shortages in urban areas like New York City, she said, there are parts of the state that have lots of ventilators and other parts of New York State that don't have any infections right now.
Okay, so why is Cuomo Demanding that we get more ventilators, he says.
The interesting thing is that Dr. Burke said that New York City may, there may be shortages in urban areas like New York City.
Why are you demanding more ventilators from the federal government when you're not even using the ones you already have?
Now, hold on.
I get it.
You could argue, well, they might need them soon.
That's what Cuomo was saying.
Once they reach the apex, they will need it.
And what if New Orleans becomes a hotspot and they need ventilators?
If New York State has stockpiled ventilators and other ventilators not in use around their state, why don't they just send the ones they have?
That's the argument he's making to Trump.
It's quite literally.
Trump has to consider the amount of ventilators they have, the amount they're in production, and where he's going to be sending them.
New York already has more than it needs for the time being.
They may need more, that makes sense.
But what if another area becomes a major hotspot?
Trump has to make sure he gets the right amount of ventilators to the right places.
And just because New York is a hotspot now doesn't mean that Seattle won't be, or Philadelphia won't be.
In which case, it would make no sense to start sending all of the ventilators to New York City.
Especially when Cuomo's got them in a stockpile!
So I can make the exact same argument to Cuomo.
Why don't you take the ventilators from the other areas that aren't using them and send them to the city?
That's what you're asking Trump to do.
Why don't you have Trump take the ventilators that are potentially for other areas and send them to your city?
Well, you could do the same thing and you're not doing it.
I think it's fair to say they may come to a point where they need a ton of ventilators, but it really is shocking that he's saying he needs 40,000.
He may be right, and that's really, really scary.
In the UK, they're outraged over what China's saying, blaming the US, and the UK believes China may be lying about the number of infected by 40-fold.
40.
So that means there could be potentially 304,000 people in China who have been infected, and it makes sense.
In the U.S.
we're at 123,000.
I believe we have a couple thousand who have already died.
How could China have less than everyone else?
Unless they're lying.
You see, riots erupted in Wuhan a couple days ago.
I don't think China's telling the truth.
I think they're breaking down.
And they gave out around 5,000 urns, but claimed only 3,000 died.
Hmm, that's weird.
Well, I'll leave it there, because I don't need to rant about literally everything we're seeing.
But I will jump back to the main topic here to wrap things up.
If we don't get a handle on this...
Then the authoritarian measures we'll see will continue to escalate, and people are already bugging out.
And I mean it.
A lot of people have started renting Airbnbs in other states, like rural properties, renting them out for months on end.
This is being reported.
Celebrities, for instance.
Some people are getting on boats and kicking off, like taking their little boats, you know, loading with supplies and just dipping out.
People are freaking out.
People are spreading out.
This is gonna have major, major consequences beyond just what we're dealing with now with the economy, but the election, census, it's gonna be interesting.
I'll leave it there.
Next segment will be at 1 p.m.
on this channel, and I will see you all then.
Social order is beginning to break down in Italy because people don't have money, they're desperate, and they're hungry.
And this is being reported by multiple news outlets.
We have this from the AFP.
Police with batons and guns have moved in to protect supermarkets on the Italian island of Sicily after reports of looting by locals who could no longer afford food.
And this is where things start getting scary.
I got a bunch of stories for you, man.
Italy is a few weeks in front of us.
Now, we're not necessarily going to be the same as Italy.
They got a different social structure in many different ways.
They are very similar to us.
They're much more similar to us than China, for instance.
China locked everybody down.
But even in Wuhan recently, there was rioting because the people didn't want to be locked down in Wuhan.
They weren't being allowed to cross this bridge into a different city, so they actually flipped a police car.
You gotta understand how serious that is because China is an authoritarian dictatorship.
The Communist Party detains people for saying the wrong thing or thinking the wrong thing.
What do you think they would do to someone who flips a police car?
These people are at their wit's end, and social order has begun to break down, even in a communist country like China.
In Italy, it's much more sad.
People have families.
There are children.
One story of a man saying his mother was begging for food, so he went to go take it by any means necessary, and the police had to stop him.
If we're only a few weeks behind Italy, at what point do we start seeing the same thing?
Unfortunately, the stimulus bill will not be enough.
Hopefully it will.
We don't know.
But many people are saying it's not enough.
Hospitals are facing shortages.
And we are going to see hospitals overwhelmed.
And if we do, then social order breaks down to a much more terrifying degree.
Everyone wants to save their life and the lives of their friends and their families.
And when it comes down to the threat to them personally, that's when you see things fall apart.
I have personally witnessed at least one revolution in Egypt, but I've seen many different civil, you know, moments of civil unrest.
And I was reading a story about why people revolt.
And one of the key factors is that food becomes less available.
If the cost goes up and people can't afford food, what are they supposed to do?
A person will not just roll over for the most part and die if they can't get food.
They will go and take it.
And that's what we're seeing now.
Italy becoming impatient with lockdown and social unrest is brewing.
Police descend on a supermarket after reports people have stolen food to feed themselves as patience turns to desperation.
Videos have emerged of desperate people in Italy begging for help because they have run out of money and food.
Well into its third week of the coronavirus lockdown, Italy is still seeing many hundreds of people dying each day.
Progress in containing the COVID-19 spread is slow.
Hope and patience are fading.
And the economic cost is becoming ever more acute.
In this photo you can see a desperate man filmed shouting at a police officer.
The strain is showing in the south of the country, where one man in Apulia reportedly called police after the bank closed and they couldn't withdraw his mother's pension, their only income.
Footage shows him shouting at officers, telling them the family has no money.
His mother is begging them to go to their home so she could show them they have no food.
It's hard to watch.
It's what desperation looks like.
Another video has been shared around the country showing a father with his young daughter addressing the Italian Prime Minister saying, it's already 15 to 20 days that we've been inside and we're at our limit.
He gestures to his little girl who is eating a piece of bread and says, like my daughter, other children in a few days won't be able to eat this bit of bread.
Rest assured you will regret this because we're going to have a revolution in Italy, a European country, not the same as us.
But yes, when people can't get food.
Now many of you might not have children, many of you may.
And to those that do, you understand what this man means and just how close it may actually be to complete social upheaval.
I assume most people can at least empathize or understand that when someone has a child and that child needs food or protection, they would lay themselves down on the landmine to save their kid.
They would absolutely kick in a glass window and get the food their child needs.
This is how humans have survived for so long.
The willingness to sacrifice everything to save their children.
When this man says, my kid can't eat, he says there will be a revolution.
Images have also emerged of police descending on supermarkets in Palermo in Sicily after reports people have started stealing to feed themselves.
And groups have been set up in the last few days on social media to organize raids of supermarkets.
Sky News was sent a video message of a man in Sicily with a gun even offering to kill.
The mayor of Palermo told Sky News crime gangs are exploiting people's hardship and inciting violence.
He warns a social emergency is next.
And you know what comes after that?
Martial law.
Complete military lockdown.
Discomfort and malaise are growing, and we are recording worrying reports of protest and anger that is being exploited by criminals who want to destabilize the system.
That's a government exaggeration.
It is desperate people who are trying to get by by any means necessary.
And sure, they're criminals.
Do they really want to destabilize the system?
No.
That's comic book villainy.
What they really want is an opportunity to get access to resources.
A person who's offering to kill or setting up groups for raiding supermarkets, they're not doing it because they're just twirling their mustache saying, haha, the end, we'll bring it!
No, they're saying, how do I get food?
How do I get shelter?
How do I pay my bills?
How do I take care of myself?
Some people are criminals, and they'll say, I offer up my services.
They don't want the system to destabilize.
And in fact, most people, even villains, want the system to function, so they get access to resources.
It's about ensuring they get what they need.
The more time passes, the more resources are exhausted.
The few savings people have are running out.
This tells us socioeconomic issues will erupt.
Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has made 25 billion euro available to support families and businesses affected by the lockdown.
Some say they're still waiting for that help.
Others don't qualify because their employment is not officially recorded.
Italy has a big cash economy of unregistered workers.
The large majority of this is in the south.
The further south you go, the higher the level of deprivation and the higher the unemployment.
While the virus hasn't reached the same crisis levels in southern Italy, hunger and hardship threaten to be even bigger problems.
Italy is ahead of other countries in this outbreak and unrest threatens to be the next chapter in this crisis.
As the country struggles to bring the virus spread under control, the government has extended lockdown from April 3rd with no new deadline.
Lockdown is the only solution to save lives.
But in Southern Italy for many, it feels like it's threatening their very survival.
This is why Donald Trump said we need to reopen things.
Presumably by Easter.
He wasn't saying it, at least in my opinion, because it's a guarantee.
He's saying it because if people don't see a light at the end of the tunnel, then you get riots.
Well, you get a market collapse, followed by an irreparable situation.
People need to know things will eventually work out.
They need to say, we just need to wait this out until at least Easter.
But doctors and the media want to rain on that parade.
That stokes fear.
Let's be honest.
We may or may not open up on the 12th, our economy.
It's possible Trump is just trying to give people hope and show there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
It may be we have no choice but to open up.
The possibility is there, though I lean towards— Here's what I think will happen.
I think by the 12th, Trump will do a press conference with Dr. Birx, maybe Dr. Fauci, and they'll say, We think we can open now, but as a matter of precaution, we're gonna extend it one more week, then a week will go by, and they'll say, everyone seems to be doing well, the market is doing well, so we all think that maybe just one more week, that way we can guarantee these excellent returns and the market will return to strength.
They'll do it that way, in my opinion.
We'll see what happens.
I mean, I could be wrong, but I think that's what they might do, because it'll keep people saying like, okay, one more week, one more week, but you can only do it a couple times.
What if they came out and said, we have no idea when things will open up, maybe two years.
People are going to be like, nope, F that.
And that's crazy.
Now the media, they want discord.
You want to talk about people who want to destroy and destabilize the society.
It is the media.
No matter what the president says, they just say it's wrong, it's bad, and they give people fear and they're very pessimistic.
Now look, I'll be honest, I won't sugarcoat things for you.
But I'll try and tell you to the best of my ability what's going on.
I think Trump is doing a pretty good job.
I think giving people hope and offering up the possibility we reopen things is a good thing.
And it might not happen.
But Trump himself said it may or may not happen.
When it came to the medicine, he said it might or might not work, but people need hope.
And the media tried to destroy that.
And if people have no hope, you get this.
They're not gonna sit around waiting for their kid to go hungry.
They're gonna go and take it.
And there's a lot of other scary stories.
One we covered a few days ago.
Hospitals consider universal do not resuscitate orders for coronavirus patients.
It might also come down to the fact that your kid or your mother or whoever who's in the hospital will not be saved.
If their heart stops, if their breathing stops, the doctor will just hold you back and say, no, we're not going to try.
That's where we're close to.
But we have already seen some draconian measures.
Look, if you want to talk about locking down certain things, you know, to stop the spread, don't go clubbing, don't go bowling, whatever, I get it.
Why shut down gun stores?
L.A.
Sheriff orders all gun stores closed amid coronavirus shutdown.
What were they thinking?
Well, it could be, as you see this huge line of Los Angeles, presumably not liberals, I don't know, Los Angeles residents, lining up at a gun store.
We have seen something truly amazing.
In major urban centers, guns are being sold out.
Ammo sold out.
People are buying up whatever they can.
They're starting to realize, perhaps you're gonna need a weapon to protect yourself.
Otherwise, you will be left out in the dust.
For all of the people in these districts, in these cities and counties, whatever, that were voting to ban weapons, well, now you can reap what you have sown.
The L.A.
County Sheriff, shut it down, so you won't get one.
Now fortunately for those urban liberals who were trying to buy a gun, your conservative Republican president just added firearms to the federal list of critical pandemic infrastructure.
I do find it kind of funny because, to be honest, I don't think guns are critical infrastructure.
But I do believe the stores should remain open simply based on the fact it is a constitutional right.
And if that's the case, whether I think it's important or not, you can shut down things that aren't like, you know, nightclubs and bowling alleys.
But if people have a right to own weapons, the right shall not be infringed.
You cannot shut down these stores.
And I'll be fair.
To an extent, there is a good critical infrastructure argument.
It's home defense, it's self-defense, especially when police are overwhelmed.
So it makes a lot of sense.
But the stimulus package is not going to be enough.
And that's where things get scary.
We're going to see more draconian measures.
We're already seeing in Rhode Island, the National Guard going door to door, hunting down what they're literally, I mean, they're actually calling them refugees from New York.
New York, the epicenter of the pandemic.
People are fleeing.
I'll tell you what, man.
I really, really do think this will get way worse.
You know why?
They told me this on the TV.
The Surgeon General said it will get worse.
Fauci.
It will get worse.
They are telling us every day.
Trump's trying to give us hope.
It's the right thing to do.
But it's not a conspiracy.
It's not paranoia to say it will get worse.
Dr. Fauci to Jake Tapper, quote, looking at what we're seeing now, I would say between 100,000 and 200,000 cases of coronavirus, excuse me, deaths.
I mean, we're going to have millions of cases.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Dr. Fauci is saying 100 to 200,000 dead.
China is lying.
And the UK thinks their numbers may be 40 times higher.
It's kind of crazy that we had this meme about a pandemic coming, because you have a pandemic every hundred years, and it happened!
It's absolutely insane.
But I'll tell you what.
Relief package.
Billions can't buy hospitals out of shortages.
This is why the economy must start up again.
I don't know what you want.
I don't know what you hope for.
If we have the economy shut down, then people will die because the hospitals can't get what they need.
Then people will start rioting because they can't work and they're hungry.
And if you open the economy back up, people will die of this virus.
Perhaps the only thing we can do is realize we can't control nature and these things will happen.
We can mitigate the damage.
We can be smart.
Here's the saying.
You cannot change the direction of the wind, but you can adjust your sails.
If a storm is coming, I mean, the storm is here.
What are we going to do?
Are we going to just lock everyone away in their homes for months or years?
It's impossible.
People will leave and they will go riot.
They will kick doors in.
You know why?
Because their mother is hungry.
Because their daughter is hungry.
Because their son is hungry.
Their grandfather, their father, their brother, anybody.
Someone they care about will be in dire straits and desperate need, and they will say, I don't care.
I'm going out.
Every man for themselves.
That's what they'll do.
We're already starting to see it.
The next action I think we'll see from Italy, because they've already deployed police, is going to be more of a militaristic response, which will then result in what we've seen in the Arab Spring and other countries.
The police and the military will come out.
They'll try and quell the uprising and the unrest.
But hungry people have nothing to lose.
It's, at that point, kill or be killed, basically.
And then you'll get a revolution.
And in that revolution, you will get many dead, many infected, and the stores will collapse, and it will be worse than you could possibly imagine.
Now, I don't know if that's going to happen.
I'm not trying to make a prediction saying that it will happen.
What I am telling you is, Dr. Fauci just told us it's going to get a lot worse.
The Surgeon General said it's going to get a lot worse.
We have numerous stories saying that the stimulus package will not be enough.
There's already talk of another stimulus package.
And I don't know if that'll be enough either.
After three stimulus packages, Congress is already preparing phase four.
We just dumped, what, six trillion dollars into the economy?
You realize that's only gonna go so far.
You know what happens when we just print money like crazy?
Rapid inflation.
We are gonna end up in a Venezuela situation, but what's the alternative?
This is the challenge.
By locking down the economy, people won't eat.
We see what happens in Italy.
So, we can have the entire society break down and collapse.
The alternative is also scary.
Open things back up, the coronavirus spreads and infects hundreds of thousands of people.
Hundreds of thousands of people die, I'm sorry.
Infects millions of people.
What do you do?
I don't know.
I don't think anybody wants to be the person to say, you know, let them eat cake or whatever.
Nobody wants to accept responsibility that a hard decision will have to be made.
The economy may have to open up, but perhaps there's a happy medium.
Perhaps we can slowly start reopening certain stores with skeleton crew staff, younger people.
Some have suggested isolating immunocompromised people and the elderly, and then starting, you know, the economy back up.
They want to dismiss Trump, but the stimulus won't be enough, and Trump is right, that the cure could be worse than the disease itself.
The reality may be, we are going to get a really bad situation no matter what we do.
So what's the least harm?
If Trump had suspended travel in January, they would have screamed, like for everybody I mean.
If Trump said in January, Everyone in the US, shelter in place for two weeks so we don't catch this thing.
You'd have to do it longer than that because Italy is still infected, there's still the potential.
But let's just say, the beginning of February, Trump was like, we're closing our borders down completely and everyone must shelter in place until this thing ends.
They would call him a dictator.
They would call him a fascist.
And they would riot and revolt.
So Trump doesn't do that, but he does roll out the Coronavirus Task Force and other protective measures.
And now it's too late.
Now when Trump is talking about quarantining the New York metro, people say, it's too late, you should have done it two weeks ago.
Two weeks ago, it wasn't that bad.
If he did, they would have screamed in his face.
Now that it's too late, they say, you should have done it two weeks ago.
There's no answer.
No matter what Trump does, it will be wrong.
So what do you do?
Pick one.
Collapse the economy, social unrest, revolution, or the virus gets a lot of people sick and they die.
No one wants to be the person to make the decision.
It's like the trolley problem.
You're familiar with this?
You've got one person here, you've got five people there, the train is headed for the five, you can save them, but you've got to pull the lever to kill that one person.
That's the trolley problem.
Nobody wants to pull the lever.
And that's, my understanding is most people wouldn't do it.
So you back away and say, I will not take an action that will hurt one person, even if we're headed, our train is heading right off the cliff.
I'll put it, I'll put it another way.
If the economic collapse and the massive pumping out of cash into our economy is one side of the track, that's where we're going.
That's not five people on the track.
That's the entire train we're on about to fly off the cliff.
But if you pull the lever, there are people on the other track.
And the train would move, and it would kill all of them.
Many of them.
And the train would make it.
Nobody wants to make the call.
I don't know if it's the right call or not.
I don't know if my depiction of things is accurate, and that's the problem.
No one knows which track they're actually looking at.
Are we on the one that's going to run off the cliff?
Or are we on the one that's just going to hurt a lot of people?
I think the economic collapse will be worse.
Keep your eyes on Italy, because they're a couple weeks ahead of us.
And I'll say it again, I know we're not the same, but we are very similar.
How long until someone in the U.S.
says, My kid needs food.
Out of my way.
How long until someone says, My mother is begging me.
She's starving.
Out of my way.
And then how long until we see cops come out?
In Rhode Island, they're going door-to-door.
Keep it in mind.
I'll see you all at 4 p.m.
YouTube.com slash Timcast.
Thanks for hanging out.
BuzzFeed says that the media is facing an extinction-level event.
Many media companies are collapsing amid collapsing ad revenues.
I mean, the economy is taking a major hit.
And you know what?
I gotta say, I feel for everybody.
You lose your job.
It's not cool.
It's not the way you're supposed to go out.
If your business can't survive in any normal circumstance, then yes, your business probably shouldn't.
But right now, it's all artificial.
So as much as I disagree with many of these organizations and have Nothing but disdain for many of them.
It is kind of a bummer to see people lose their jobs this way, right?
It's not a fair fight.
However, we are seeing now another news organization brandish its hypocrisy.
Remember when the Young Turks were facing a potential unionization among its staff and Cenk Uygur, the progressives who champions the unions, resisted?
Well, now we're seeing something similar.
See, over at Truthdig, a leftist act, a progressive publication, Many of the workers decided to go on a strike.
It was a work stoppage because they were making several demands.
You know what the company did?
In all of its progressive glory, it just shut down.
You know what, man?
They just shut down.
The first thing I want to say is, there's a couple people here at this company I think are kind of alright.
Chris Hedges, bit of a lefty guy.
I don't know too much about him, I don't follow him all that much, but he's an alright guy for the most part.
Lee Camp is also a pretty good dude.
I know him.
I think he's a good guy.
I disagree with him on some political stuff, but that's fine.
Lee Camp's a cool dude.
So I'm sad to see this affecting, you know, people like Lee and people like Chris.
Although I don't know too much about Chris.
I don't know who the rest of them are either.
I'll tell you what, man.
If you want to work for these companies, under the assumption they're progressive, and you think they're gonna protect you, I gotta bridge sell you, man.
They're businesses.
We see it time and time again.
But now here's the juiciest part of this whole story.
First, Salon.com reports Truthdig's staff laid off amid work stoppage.
You reap what you have sown, okay?
And I'm not trying to be overly disrespectful or anything, but come on, man.
These companies don't care about you.
They are putting out this progressive message, uh, this message.
It's a lie.
They don't actually care about this stuff because when it comes to them putting their money where their mouth is, they just terminate everybody and shut the company down and take the cash and put it in their pocket.
They never cared about these values, they exploited you, and you know what?
You reap what you sow, okay?
That's all I can really say, but I'll tell you what.
This article, and the subsequent articles, expose the incestuous nature of the media, and it is mind-numbingly awful.
Salon writes this article about people being laid off, and you know what the article actually is?
It's just inside baseball.
It is so extremely esoteric.
I can't even read it to you because you'd be like, I don't know who Bob is.
I kid you not.
In one of the quotes they get, they say that Bob, in our view, was the only person standing up.
I don't know who Bob is.
Why would I read this article about a guy named Bob?
What's his last name?
Who is Zwade and Robert?
I don't know who you're talking about.
Salon wrote an article that seems to be written for the 10 people who hang out with each other at the bar every day after work.
I'm not kidding.
And over at the Truthdig letter that was written by these employees, I don't know who any of these people are and I don't know why I should care.
If you want me to care about your cause, don't write it like you're writing for your buddy you go have drinks with.
And look, Some media does work when you write about, when you write in such a way that you're talking to a friend, right?
Kind of like what I'm doing now.
But what if I said to you, like, this story's actually really crazy because James was like, he came over and he said, dude, Sarah's not even going to have it.
And then Bill was all like, dude, you're getting fired.
You'd be like, I don't know who these people are and I don't care.
Now you may be saying that right now, Tim, why do I care about these people writing these articles?
Well, I'll tell you what.
This is a perfect example of how awful media is, particularly in New York City, and why it is.
These companies are all basically one company.
I used to work for them, and I've been to these bar gatherings a couple of times.
These journalists who work for different companies, many of them know each other.
And after work, they all say like, hey, we're all going to meet up at this bar, let's show up.
They all show up, sit down at a table, and they all regurgitate the same trash talking points.
And so it's no surprise the next day all these different outlets say the exact same things.
And it's exemplified in the fact that they're writing about each other and no one would have any idea unless you were sitting at the bar with them and you knew these people were.
So when it comes to narratives, orange man bad, all the fake news stuff, you know, bigots alt-right, whatever, it's because they'll sit down at a bar and one guy will be like, yo, did you see like that alt-right guy did this thing?
And then I'll go, oh, and the next day they all write the same story.
So the media is collapsing.
And we've got this stupid public back and forth.
So the first thing they did is they write this letter saying, you know, oh, we demand, you know, better working conditions.
And I can respect that.
They wanted, you know, they wanted better conditions.
I don't know if it's possible for the company to pay, but they wanted it.
So then what ended up happening was the publisher and CEO, I guess, just like shut everything down and said, we are officially shutting down.
So then they wrote another letter and I don't think anybody cares.
But the few important takeaways would just be, in my opinion, the hypocrisy.
But this is just the beginning.
Why would they lay everyone off?
Why would they just terminate the site amid a strike?
It's probably because there's no recovery for these websites right now.
Advertising spending is going down.
And according to Barron's, ad spending collapse will be worse than in the financial crisis.
That means, if you're seeing this one collapse, you're seeing BuzzFeed scream it's an extinction-level event, and we're already seeing many people get laid off, oh, the worst is yet to come.
This won't likely affect many of the conservative outlets who have been flourishing and doing really well.
You know why?
These left-wing media sites, and not necessarily Truthdig, but many of them operated off of venture capital.
They were growing inorganically.
It's probably because people don't... I mean the way people consume news on the left versus the right are very different.
Someone would go to, say, The Daily Wire because they want to see what The Daily Wire has to say about certain things.
Somebody would go to BuzzFeed because someone posted a link on BuzzFeed and it was rage bait.
So the people on the right, and not necessarily like everyone who does this is conservative, But this tends to lead to a conservative perspective.
These are people who are actively searching for information.
The people who go to say like Vox or Buzzfeed aren't.
They're being sent links, and they probably don't pay all that much attention, so they believe the fake news.
These companies are heavily reliant on an existing ad infrastructure, whereas conservative sites have been flourishing and expanding, and will take a hit, but probably won't be that bad.
Barron says advertising budgets will likely fall even more in the current coronavirus-driven economic slowdown than they did in the crisis of 2008 and 2009.
The survey, released Friday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, asked 390 media buyers, planners, and executives about their advertising plans for the rest of 2020.
The group represents 650 companies.
The research found that nearly a quarter have paused all advertising spending for the second quarter.
Another 46% are reducing their budgets.
The impact on the second half of the year is expected to be more modest, although most say that it is too early to know.
Of the survey group, 44% say the impact of the current slowdown will be substantially worse than the 08-09 crisis.
And another 30% say it will be somewhat worse.
You know what I think we'll see?
We're going to see a major collapse in left-wing media publications, kind of like Truthdig.
Don't expect to strike at a time when everyone's, you know, collapsing.
But in 08-09, you saw the rise of a lot of these companies, right?
BuzzFeed, Ovenimpose, etc.
I don't know exactly when they were founded.
But this is the opportunity for low-cost content to start emerging around the same time that social media was flourishing.
I think channels like mine, independent commentators, have the potential to do really, really well.
The only problem?
YouTube actively suppresses our content in favor of BuzzFeed!
Oh, bravo, YouTube.
If you go on YouTube and look up political commentary and news and stuff, you won't find me.
I don't even know how people find my channel in the first place.
YouTube does not promote independent content creators.
And that's not even necessarily a fair thing to say, because the only difference between me and, say, CNN is CNN's massive budget.
So it's really an issue of, if you don't make enough money, YouTube won't promote you.
We are going to see major, major collapses among digital media publishers.
BuzzFeed, Vox, Huffington Post, etc.
All the Verizon AOL properties.
And YouTubers and people who do low-cost content are going to thrive.
You are going to see more hypocrisy from progressive news outlets, these left-wing media sites, as they start to slash salaries and terminate people and refuse to negotiate with unions because they just don't have money.
Oh, they'll pretend all day and night they're progressive, but they're not really progressive.
This right here from Barron's is a sign of things to come.
Taking the biggest hit is traditional out-of-home advertising, billboards and the like.
That has nothing to do with me, so, you know, bummer.
They say, the survey group expects steep spending reductions in every category.
Digital display, video and audio, linear TV, terrestrial radio, print, out-of-home, direct mail.
Least affected will be paid search.
But even there, spending is expected to fall 30% in the March-April period from previous plans.
Outlays for May and June are seen falling 21%.
I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens.
I honestly don't know, but I can basically assume there's going to be a lot of angry progressives on Twitter screeching as loud as possible.
They're probably going to up the ante on their screeching in an effort to get people to go to their PayPals and their Patreons.
So if you thought it was bad when they got a steady paycheck, wait until they don't and they're in desperate need of clicks in order to pay their bills.
Although, I gotta say, I think we have way more to worry about than just screeching social justice warriors on Twitter.
Because if people can't pay their bills, They can't buy food.
And when people can't buy food, they get desperate.
And desperate people do desperate things, so... We'll see what happens.
I got a couple more segments for you coming up in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
Nobody actually wants Joe Biden, not even Joe Biden's own supporters.
And I'm not kidding, we have a poll from ABC News that finds that those who support Biden are just meh on him.
No one's going like, woohoo, Biden!
But among Trump supporters, they are foaming at the mouth, screaming, and waving little American flags in favor of the president.
53% of Donald Trump supporters strongly, their, what does it say, strong enthusiasm For Donald Trump among his supporters, it's at 53%.
And for Joe Biden, less than half of that.
Even Biden's own supporters.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has emerged as Democrats' top choice for the presidential nomination in a new ABC News Washington Post poll.
But with only bare majority support within his own party and massive enthusiasm gap in a November matchup against Donald Trump.
Indeed, strong enthusiasm for Biden among his supporters is at just 24%, the lowest on record for a Democratic presidential candidate in 20 years of ABC Post polls.
Wow!
More than twice as many of Trump's supporters are highly enthusiastic about supporting him, 53%.
Trump's still strong rating on the economy is another challenge for Biden.
So is this.
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who prefer Senator Bernie Sanders for the nomination, 15% say they'd back Trump over Biden in the fall.
Man, this is bad news.
Wow.
Incoming democratic panic, I gotta say.
You know, Tucker Carlson said the other day, you may have seen me talk about it, he doesn't think Biden's gonna be the nominee.
I gotta agree.
If you got a 15% Bernie or bust contingent, and nobody actually wants Biden, then why would they actually bring up Biden in the first place?
It's political suicide.
In the nomination contest, 51% of leaned Democrats now prefer Biden versus Sanders, which is at 42%.
That's a vast 34-point gain for Biden since mid-February.
With other candidates having left the race and endorsed him, Sanders gained 10 percentage points.
Even as he's advanced in his party, Biden's slipped against Trump in a November matchup.
The two are locked into essentially a dead heat among registered voters.
49 to 47 Biden to Trump, after a slight Biden lead, 52 to 45 in February.
Biden does better versus Trump.
Among all adults, Democrats are less apt to be registered.
50 to 44 percent.
It's a slight lead, but it was more solidly significant in February.
Perhaps the Democrats' biggest risk is under the surface, in Trump's big advantage in backers who are very enthusiastic about supporting him.
Strong enthusiasm for a candidate can help boost turnout on election day, a must-have particularly for Democrats who rely more on motivating less frequent voters to come to the poll.
While trailing Trump by 29 points in the high-level enthusiasm, Biden makes up some of the difference with those who are somewhat enthusiastic, sorry.
But he still trails Trump by 12 points in the combined measure, 74 to 86.
Look at this!
to 86. Look at this. 49% of Biden supporters are like, meh.
26%- oh man, it's so bad for Biden.
26% of- 26% of Biden supporters say they are not at all enthusiastic about Biden.
And 24% are very.
There are more people claiming to support Biden who don't actually want him than those who actually do.
They're doomed.
How do you win running no one against Donald Trump?
Like, I'm not saying they're not running anybody.
I'm saying they're literally running.
They might as well put a mannequin in a suit.
Actually, the mannequin has less gaffes than Joe Biden does.
He'd do better.
So yeah, you might as well.
There's déjà vu in these results.
Oh no, it's 2016 all over again.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton found herself in largely the same position four years ago.
She too had a slim lead among Democrats for the nomination and ran essentially evenly with Trump among registered voters.
And she lagged in enthusiasm with a low of 32% very enthusiastic in September of 2016.
Biden is 8 points under that mark now?
Biden is doing worse than Hillary Clinton?
I swear Trump is going to get 500 electoral votes or some ridiculous number.
Bad as Biden's enthusiasm score is, we've seen worse.
As few as 17% of former Republican presidential nominee John McCain supporters were very enthusiastic about his candidacy in 08.
And former Governor Mitt Romney saw 23% in 2012.
saw 20, you can call him Senator Romney, can you saw 23% in 2012. The poor omen for Biden
is that Clinton McCain and Romney all lost.
They then going to bring up some problems.
I don't care about your polling problems.
I care more about this.
A story from the week.
Joe Biden is the worst imaginable challenger to Trump right now.
Yeah, the progressives get it.
But I'll tell you what, man, these mainstream, moderate, Democrat, whatever you want to call them, They live in some alternate reality.
Or they just don't care.
I think that's the real reality.
You got a bunch of people sitting at home saying, eh, Biden, whatever, I don't care.
Who cares?
Whatever.
It's fine.
They certainly don't think Trump is the end of the world, so they're screeching for Biden.
But you go to Twitter, and what do you see?
These people are screaming for Biden because they think Biden can win.
Now I think it's fair to point out, Bill Maher once said, do I want Joe Biden to be the president?
Not really, but he's the only one who beats Trump in Ohio.
Nah, that's wishful thinking.
You're basing this off of the wrong polls.
I mean, they did it in 2016, and now we're seeing similar data, so it's very likely going to happen again, and Trump's base is bigger than when it was in 2016.
He's got every reason to get re-elected, and yes, Joe Biden is the worst challenger.
Now, The Week is a left-wing site.
Let's see what they have to say.
For anyone plugged into the news firehose about the coronavirus pandemic, it has been extremely bizarre to watch President Trump's approval rating.
He has botched this crisis beyond belief, and the United States now has the biggest outbreak in the world.
Because of his ongoing failure to secure stockpiles of medical supplies, doctors and nurses are reusing protective gear and suiting up in garbage bags and page protectors to treat COVID patients.
Yet Trump's approval rating keeps going up.
Maybe it's because you live in fake news world, dude.
Stop reading the trash news and start paying attention to what Americans are paying attention to, not the garbage news cycle of lies.
It's funny because they're very obviously in the wrong side of history, whatever you want to call it, on the wrong side of history.
Because the regular people are saying he's doing a good job.
Where are you that you're hearing screaming at the top of their lungs and you actually think Trump's doing a bad job when everyone else likes it?
You're in the minority.
You are not speaking or representing the American people.
They mentioned the polls where Trump is doing really, really well.
And they say, this is what happens when the Democratic Party, de facto led at this point by its presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, refuses to make the case that Trump is in fact responsible for the severity of the disaster.
Biden is proving to be about the worst imaginable nominee to take on Trump.
Now, I don't completely agree with what he's saying, but I do agree with the essence of it.
Joe Biden is failing so miserably The dude could come out and just start word vomiting lies all day and he'd be doing better.
Okay, maybe you'll say, but Joe Biden has integrity.
No, he doesn't.
He lies all the time.
He launched his campaign on a lie, the very fine people hoax.
The whole campaign is started from a lie.
So if Biden really wanted to win and he's already thrown scruples out the window and doesn't care, why doesn't he just start lying now?
I'm not saying he should.
I'm saying the guy clearly has no idea what he's doing.
He's sitting in his basement muttering and mumbling about nonsense and he's become completely irrelevant and everyone knows it.
The Democratic Party is doing nothing to stop Trump.
My only assumption?
They want him to win.
I it feels like the Democrats want Trump to win.
It really, really does be either that or they're really dumb.
You know, I just saw that movie The Hunt, and there's a line in it that I think is pretty apt.
It just depends on whether or not they're smart people pretending to be stupid or stupid people pretending to be smart.
If they're smart and to be dumb, then, yeah, they really do want Trump to win.
And they're fumbling around with Joe Biden to help Trump win.
But I think the reality is they're stupid people pretending to be smart, so they've chosen Joe Biden, who can't possibly win.
All right, I'll tell you what.
I want to make sure I always add this caveat.
They said Trump couldn't win, and he did.
If Joe Biden wins, I will laugh a hearty laugh, because no one saw it coming.
Joe Biden?
Come on.
They say now Biden is not entirely to blame here.
Surely some of Trump's approval bump can be chalked up to the usual rally around the flag effect that tends to happen at times of crisis.
And the fact that we are likely still in the very early stages of the pandemic.
But if we dig, Into the numbers.
Some of the bump in Trump's approval rating is coming from the changes in Democratic attitudes.
A Pew poll, for instance, found that Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters nearly doubled their approval of Trump over the last few weeks, from 7 to 12 percent.
It's not a huge change, but it could make the difference between Trump winning or losing an election, which is likely to be close.
As has been made abundantly clear, Democratic voters tend to take their cues from Democratic elites.
The party rallied around Biden in lockstep right before Super Tuesday, and voters fell in line.
They go on to talk about how Biden won a bunch of states.
And I gotta say, I still, I agree with the essence.
I don't care that Biden is fumbling.
You know, he's basically on the ground, like, just staring at the sky, muttering and mumbling while Trump is running circles around the track.
I don't necessarily care, so I'm not going to complain.
I think it's funny.
The Democrats have lost their minds putting Joe Biden up to this, and we can see it in his enthusiasm gap.
He is doing worse than Hillary Clinton!
What are you people thinking?!
They clearly don't want to win, man.
It's like, you know, the definition of insanity.
If they keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different outcome.
And it's not the real definition of insanity, but that's like a colloquial thing, or it's like a cultural definition, I guess you can call it.
Hillary Clinton, everybody hated, okay?
Like, most people didn't like her.
How is it that Joe Biden has less enthusiastic support than she did?
And you're gonna run that?
You gotta learn your lessons, man.
Maybe you'll win, I don't know, I doubt it.
I'll leave it there.
I got one more segment coming up for you in a few minutes, and I will see you all shortly.
On my main channel at 4pm today over at youtube.com slash TimCast, I talked about the threat we are facing from China.
They've been lying from the start.
They've been sending faulty medical equipment to other countries like Italy and Spain.
And they've been extracting critical medical resources from other countries while downplaying this so nobody could see it coming.
China is a serious problem and they deserve to be blamed for most of what we're experiencing because they've lied since the beginning and caused us to mess everything up.
But I do think it's fair to point out that there is still some fault to go to people like Bill de Blasio.
In the United States, New York is the epicenter and New York City is the worst hit place, but it makes sense.
The population density is insane there.
Well, Bill de Blasio is the person who should take all of the blame for this one.
I think it's fair to say, as a whole, our country should point the finger at China.
Internally, we can still criticize de Blasio, to a certain degree Cuomo, and to a certain degree Trump.
Trump downplayed this early on, but he did take some effort, so I can say okay to that.
Cuomo definitely downplayed this as well, but he was working on this.
They just didn't do a good enough job.
I can't blame him for not expecting this, and they were doing something.
But Bill de Blasio, around the time he should have been taking more action, months after Trump already did, was encouraging people to go outside and do normal things.
And now we can see the photographs of what's happening in New York.
I'm sorry if this is graphic, but this is posted by BuzzFeed, and this is Bill de Blasio's fault.
Now, I'm not going, I'm not saying, Anything stupid, like the blood is on his hands or anything like that, like Chuck Todd was asking?
No, no, no.
Of course, Bill de Blasio wasn't intending for any of this to happen.
I don't hold him responsible.
When I say it's his fault, what I mean to say is, on his watch, he let the people of New York down, and this will have a rippling effect for the rest of the country.
He was responsible for this.
It was his watch.
I'm not gonna say it's, you know, his, like, the people who lost their lives because he made grave mistakes.
I think it's fair to say he tried his best, I would suppose, but he just did a really, really bad job of it.
Let me just rephrase this, okay?
He's done a miserable job, and he should probably step down or not run for re-election.
He needs to give up control because he is not equipped to handle this crisis.
Alright, let's read.
Politico says, New York City's top health officials were tracking warning signs of the flu and didn't like what they were seeing.
A massive late-season spike in influenza-like illnesses then that revealed a troubling aberration.
So on March 10th, Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbit went to City Hall to share the findings with Mayor Bill de Blasio and urged him to begin taking more drastic action to control the spread of the coronavirus.
Which has since claimed 450 lives across New York City.
Well, as of the writing of this, it's nearly a thousand now.
It's jumped significantly.
I'm sorry, a thousand in New York State.
De Blasio resisted, believing that closing schools, restaurants, and cultural centers would cripple the city's economy and disproportionately hurt the marginalized residents he aims to prioritize.
Instead, he ended up burning it all to the ground.
What followed was a week of mixed messages, delayed decisions, and feuds that escalated to what one person described as warfare amongst city officials, all while the federal government withheld critical aid to New York and Governor Andrew Cuomo grappled No, you know what?
Politico, I roll.
Let's move on.
A week later, the mayor began following most of Barbet's advice, after plotting through a decision-making process that was described by people involved as tense, laborious, and rife with conflict, as he huddled in City Hall with top aides, contending with how to handle the biggest crisis of his tenure.
Residents of one of the most densely populated cities in the country continue to cram into subway cars, dine in restaurants, and pop into their local watering holes.
Something de Blasio encouraged only hours before he ordered them to shut on March 15th.
Not even Donald Trump.
Yet they would go on Twitter and say, it's all Trump's fault.
No, no it isn't.
The epicenter in this country is New York City.
And it was Bill de Blasio on March 3rd, I believe it was, all the way up till the 15th, apparently, encouraging people not to be social distancing, quite the contrary, to actually be socially engaged.
And now here we are, with New York, with Cuomo, saying, Trump, give us all your ventilators.
You know what, man?
Did you hear what happened?
Trump's apparently sent ventilators to New York, and they're in a stockpile.
So why are they complaining about a shortage of ventilators?
Why is this crisis happening?
Well, it's happening because everybody, to some degree, dropped the ball.
But how are you going to point to what's happening in this country and say we have 123,000 infections?
Yeah, more than half, I believe, are in New York.
Around half of those who lost their lives are in New York.
That's the hot spot.
Now there is responsibility for Trump, but I'm not going to act like an act of nature is solely the fault of our leaders.
I will criticize them for the job they're doing, but the reality is, while Donald Trump may not be perfect, we have nothing really to compare it to, right?
We know Bill de Blasio made mistakes, and it's fair to say we know Trump and Cuomo made mistakes as well.
But Bill de Blasio's were worse, and obvious.
On March 11th, Donald Trump announced we were freezing travel, we were restricting travel from those coming from Europe.
You'd think at that point, Bill de Blasio would stop telling people to go party!
We just shut down travel!
The president gave a national address and said, we will be suspending travel from Europe.
That should have been a warning sign to you.
Apparently, it wasn't good enough.
New York City is now ground zero of a global catastrophe few saw coming.
One that has thrust Bill de Blasio into the national spotlight, laying bare his managerial vulnerabilities and threatening to undermine the legacy he has been building over the past six years.
What's more, the virus shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
I'm sorry.
You're saying it's threatening to undermine his legacy?
His legacy is undermined.
People have died on his watch.
Because he came out so late on this one.
They claim Trump is late.
I have no problem criticizing Trump because he was, yeah, a little bit.
But come on, man.
When you look at de Blasio, I get it, Trump is the president.
But we can't expect him to be completely perfect, and you can't expect de Blasio to be completely perfect either.
But there is a difference.
On January 29th, Trump formed the task force.
Trump was putting into position plans to deal with the coronavirus, and while maybe he didn't do enough, Would anyone else have done more?
We don't know.
We don't know.
So we can, you know, hindsight is 20-20.
But you'd think when Donald Trump said, hey, we're going to do this measure in January, Bill de Blasio would have said, we should keep an eye on this.
Instead, he said, go party.
Why is the media coming after Trump, then?
Why aren't they pointing to the job that, you know, de Blasio did?
To a certain degree, there are people going after de Blasio.
Many progressives are pointing the finger at him and Cuomo.
But Cuomo is getting a free pass on everything.
See, even after this, Bill de Blasio said that we might lock down New York City.
And Cuomo said, get real, Bill, we're not gonna do that.
Where's the critique?
Quote, I think in retrospect, we deliberated too long on the various shutdown steps.
City Council Member Mark Levine, who chairs the Health Committee, said in an interview, we are racing against the clock in slowing the spread of this, and even a day or two can change the trajectory.
The virus was first reported in New York City on March 1st, when a healthcare worker who had been infected in Iran began displaying symptoms after returning home.
By then, the alarm bells had already begun ringing and would grow deafening in the subsequent weeks.
So you mean on March 1st, de Blasio could have said, we're locking down now and fast?
You're likely to get the coronavirus warned a headline of a February 24th story in Atlantic, which quoted a Harvard epidemiology professor predicting up to 70% of the world's population would be infected within the year.
City Council member Steve Levin read the article in horror and began cautioning anyone that would listen, including members of the administration.
He said in an interview, I mean, I was telling it to the cops outside City Hall at the metal detectors.
Levin said he reached out to de Blasio's chief of staff, Emma Wolfe, who was promoted to deputy mayor last week, as she helps lead the city's response.
She was adamant that, we get it, we know what's happening.
Levin said, in fact, she was so consumed with responding to the virus that when he broached her about another subject during the first week of March, she brushed him off, saying she could focus on nothing else, he added.
De Blasio showed less urgency.
I caught him in passing and he listened, Levin said.
Asked how the mayor reacted, he paused to carefully choose his words.
You know, he was, I think, along the lines of, I hear you, he said, and declined to go further into detail.
Meanwhile, city health officials were watching emergency room visits from possible coronavirus cases explode.
1,156 patients complaining of flu-like symptoms on March 12th.
Compared to no more than 422 on any given day in March last year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
But de Blasio was determined that life in the city continued apace.
He and top health officials fought during lengthy planned meetings in City Hall, according to multiple accounts from sources with knowledge of the interactions.
He certainly has no trust in his field of expert commissioners and high-ranking agency officials, one former city official said last week.
If an expert at an agency says to him, Mayor, this is what's happening, instead of granting that some truth or acting on it, he will laboriously poke and prod at the opinion for hours.
And now here we are.
Politico ends by saying, He has been spending up to three hours a day preparing for his daily news conference, often facing the public around 5pm, well after Cuomo has already addressed New Yorkers in briefings that kick off the day's news cycle and attract a loyal following.
De Blasio keeps using this wartime analogy.
He does not seem like a general.
He seems like he's writing a book about the general.
Cuomo seems like a general, a former city hall official said.
On Friday, the mayor vented his frustration at the ordeal.
This whole godforsaken experience has been a learning curve, he said.
On the Brian Lear show, none of us have been through anything like this.
Optimism bias.
How is it that in January... You know, I always liked the part where it was January 23rd, I said, I don't think it'll be a big deal.
Within a week or so, I was like, no, I was wrong.
It's gonna be a big deal.
Tucker Carlson, February 3rd.
You know, when someone comes out and says, we have a serious threat, nobody wants to believe it because they have an optimism bias.
And as I've mentioned many times, I told people to buy emergency food.
Now store shelves are being cleared out.
I hope you bought yours.
Many people were laughing at me on Twitter.
They're not laughing now.
They're morons.
Bill de Blasio was just like these people.
No, we'll be fine.
It's not a big deal.
Here we are.
New York, the epicenter of the United States.
And I know China takes the blame because if they had told us the truth from the get-go, this could have been averted.
But you've got to still point out the fact that de Blasio had numerous opportunities to deal with this properly.
Now they claim Trump is bungling everything, but I will be fair.
I will point out, de Blasio's not perfect.
I will absolutely agree it's a learning curve.
How could he have known?
It's fair.
China was lying.
The same is true for Trump.
The same is true for Andrew Cuomo.
No one will know everything.
So let's, you know, at least to that degree, cut everybody a little bit of slack.
Trump downplayed this.
He definitely did.
And he could have done more.
The only problem is that if he did, they would have claimed he was a fascist.
And they called him a bigot when he implemented a travel restriction from China.
It was the first thing, it was like January 31st, second thing he did.
So you know what?
I'm tired of playing games.
People are saying, Trump is bungling this.
Yet, well, the polls say otherwise.
So just stop.
It's not the case.
de Blasio bungled it.
And Cuomo is somewhere in between.
I hope we get through this.
And I mean this genuinely.
I'm not a New Yorker.
I lived in New York for a bit.
I hope de Blasio succeeds.
And my criticism, I hope it's taken to say, we need new leadership for New York.
But for the time being, de Blasio needs to win on this one.
He absolutely does.
Cuomo, de Blasio, and Trump, we should support them and make sure they get us through this.
They may not be the leaders that we want or even voted for, but they are the leaders we have now, and it's about protecting each other.
So I can be critical of de Blasio more so than the other two.
