The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage: Earth Day from Lockdown Edition

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

Will the lockdown ever end? Has the government's response to the coronavirus been worse than the virus itself? What will life look like after the pandemic subsides? Does anybody even remember there's a presidential election coming up? Join this roundtable discussion featuring Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and Daily Wire god-king Jeremy Boreing as they get to the bottom of these questions and more! LIMITED TIME OFFER: Become a Daily Wire Insider Plus or All-Access member and get a SECOND LEFTIST TEARS tumbler: https://utm.io/uuZ0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The most important holiday of the year is here. Earth Day. A time to recognize this holiday's pioneers and enthusiastic followers and spend hours making fun of them from the comfort of our homes. Daily Wire backstage, Earth Day from Lockdown Edition is here. So join me, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Claven, the God King, Jeremy Boring, along with a rare appearance from Matt Walsh, as we discuss the wonders of Earth Day while we are all locked indoors.

It's all that and so much more. Take a listen. Welcome to the Daily Wire backstage Earth Day from Lockdown Edition. I'm your host, Jeremy, the lowercase GK boring. And because we are good global citizens who don't want to burn fossil fuels or spread the rona, I'm being joined remotely tonight by Ben, what coronavirus I just don't like people, Shapiro. Also, Andrew, oh my God, he hasn't died yet, Claven. And of course, Michael, he still technically works here, Knowles.

Actually, the truth is that Ben and Drew are, in fact, remote today. Ben, because we can't afford to lose him and Drew because we can't afford to ensure him. But other than that, it will be backstage as always from her basement. We still have the lovely, even during the apocalypse, Alicia Krauss. Hello, Elisha. I am here, although I think this basement is a lot nicer than the Michael Mnull's broom closet that Ben likes to throw Michael into. Hey, guys, I'm glad you're all still alive and well, mainly Drew. You've been in my prayers every night.

And I just wanted to remind everyone that for the members that are watching at home, if you want to ask the guys questions tonight, head on over to Daily. Wire.com, navigate to that show's page and then be sure to open up the backstage box and type your questions for all of the guys into the chat box over there. And we got a cool discussion happening after the show tonight. So only members get to ask questions. So if you're not a member, be sure to head over to DailyWire.com to become a member and ask those questions for the guys tonight. Thanks, Alicia. You know, I think people are going to want us to talk about things other than the Rona. The news has mostly been depressing for the last month. People are locked in

their homes. And, you know, we've done a good job, I think, during our All-access here at the Daily Wire, which we've been doing every day during the lockdown, to talk about other things, be a little bit more lighthearted. And I want to do that today. Obviously, it's the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, or as I like to call it, National Tire Burning Day. So maybe we can talk a little bit about, you just got to take it off. What, this? I don't want to get the Rona. Are you kidding me? All right, fine. Fair enough. I think this is like a Class C felony in L.A., but that's fine. We will talk about things other than the COVID-19, but I do think we should start off because we haven't all been together

to have a conversation about this since it's been going on. Obviously, since the last time we were together, the world has changed in many ways. And I would argue that it's changed at least twice. First, we had the onset of COVID-19. Very little was known about it. There was a lot of room for concern. We took the dramatic actions that we've taken,

mostly at the state and local level around the country. then we went through the period of just unbelievably rapid job loss. We're still in that period. The number is $22 million officially right now, but that's just the people who've actually been able to file for unemployment. We all know the real number is $25 million, $27 million, $30 million. Astronomical by any measure. And now we're sort of moving into this third wave of the crisis.

It's five weeks on. We know, in large measure, what the initial economic damage is. We know a lot more about the virus than we knew five weeks ago. we know which models that were pointing us in the right directions, which models may have been sort of overly pessimistic, and we know what has happened in certain local local pandemic, but there's certainly an epidemic in New York City. There's an epidemic in the north of Italy. We've seen countries like Sweden take novel approaches. We've seen some of the states here begin to contemplate reopening, some of them as soon as Friday of this week, beginning

a measured process of reopening. So we're disarmed with so much more information than we're had, I thought maybe the best way to open up would be to kind of go around the horn and just have everybody weigh in on where you are in this moment, not necessarily where you've been when we didn't have as much information as we have now, but where you are right now, where you think this is going, just to sort of set the stage for the rest of the conversation. Ben, why don't you kick it off for us? I mean, I think that we're now kind of hitting stasis. What I mean is I don't think that there's going to be any Deasex Machina. I think people were sort of hoping that there would be some cure that came along that fixed everything, that the vaccine would either be accelerated

or there'd be some sort of treatment that made this thing a lot less dangerous than it is. That's not going to happen. I think people are still being misinformed by the media about this. I think the media are lying to them that if there's widespread testing, then you won't get it, which is not what testing is designed to do. It's designed to trace hotspots and quash them so they don't exceed the medical capacity. I think people thought that flatten the curve meant that once we were done, then we could just go back to our regular lives because we would all be safe.

I don't think that was ever accurate. I think that politicians and the media were deliberately misinforming people about all of that. And that's led to outsized expectations as to what the recovery is going to look like. I think that most Americans at this point are trying to assess their level of personal risk. I think many Americans are still waiting for the government to sort of fix this. The government is not going to fix this. The government is going to have to allow people to go out and use their best judgment as to whether they want to work, how they want their lives to go. If you're young and you are healthy, presumably you're going to want to work.

You just have to stay away from people who are older and people who are more vulnerable. If you can't do that, then that's sort of my situation, right? I'm at home mainly because while I'm young and I'm healthy and I'm really not worried about me, I have parents who are over here 13 hours a day helping to take care of my kids. I have three under seven, and I have a newborn baby and no help. So my parents are over here a lot, so it would endanger them if I went back into the office, in my opinion. But that's arguable.

What is not arguable at this point is that we live in a free country, and that means that free citizens are going to have to be given at least the leeway to use their best judgment about what they want to do. If you feel like you're in a risky or subcategory, you're not going to go back. If you're in a less risky subcategory, you will go back. But so that there are not externalities, people will be masking, people will be engaging in social distancing. we're all going to end up doing what Sweden did. The only question is how long each state waits to go back to what Sweden did.

And yet we see online this idiotic binary between everybody go back and just smooch each other on the beaches en masse, or alternatively locked down forever until the end of time, until the vaccine is down. Neither of those is realistic. We're going to end up all doing Sweden, and the only question is one. Michael, where are you at on this? I agree, certainly with Ben's point, that we're all going to end up doing Sweden, and we could have avoided a lot of misery had we done that. I think this is the most outrageous political power grab of my lifetime.

It has been based apparently now on ignorance at best and lies at worst. The doomsday models did not come true. Those who were skeptical of the experts absolutely were right to be skeptical of the experts. This slogan that we've heard, which is a perfectly worthwhile slogan, flatten the curve has been totally misunderstood and warped by the media. What people seem to think flatten the curve means is that fewer people will get it and fewer people will die. That's not what it means. the purpose of flattening the curve is so as not to overwhelm our health care system.

But of course, if you are not getting an overwhelmed health care system, which we are not seeing anywhere in America, including in New York, and if you do not have a vaccine, which we do not currently have, and the experts tell us we're not going to have for 18 months, then flattening the curve is absolutely pointless. It means we're all going to get it at some point anyway. It's going to make it through society. And so you could either have that occur and go on basically with business as usual while taking precautions and protecting the frail and the infirm and Drew, obviously, or what you can do

is shut down the economy and throw 22 million people out of work and destroy lives and see huge upticks and suicide and drug overdose. It was just painfully incompetent, and the people who were still pushing it are out of their minds at best. Andrew. Yeah, I can't agree with that at all, I got to say. I think that this thing came down the pike. It's not a question of the ultimate numbers. It's the question of how many people die and how short a time and how small is space. And if Broadway in New York is lined with corpses, you know, it's going to have a major, major effect on the entire country. So this thing, I am really, here's what I'm happy about.

Let me start there. I'm really happy that Donald Trump has negotiated his way through a major crisis without seizing power. This is one of the few times I've ever seen in a crisis. I can't remember a crisis when the federal government didn't. sees power when in fact he ceded power he cut back on regulations that were holding things up if he can keep that going when the crisis passes i think it will actually be a net win for us i it's it's it's kind of easy for me to be you know when a writer is quarantined how does he even know it's kind of the way writers live their lives alone but i'm very cognizant that there are people who can't work

from home uh who are hurting as you say people being out of work so now as trump has said uh we have this kind of narrow space we have to negotiate where we have to bring people back to work, we have to get the economy started again, and we have to keep people relatively safe because we don't want a second flare up, which would really damage the economy. The thing is here and there, there have been people like Bill de Blasio in New York and the Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan who have abused their power. There have been police officers who have really not acted like American police officers and have been overbearing. And those things, because we get them on our, the internet right away. They seem like they're happening everywhere, but they're not, actually. I think

that this has been handled relatively well, given the fact that it was something we didn't, we'd never seen before, that came out of nowhere, that we weren't sure what was going to happen. And even though people who, like me, who said these computer models are unreliable, I don't know what I'm talking about. I mean, I just happen to know the computer models are unreliable. I'm not a doctor, and I think that Trump did the right thing. He listened to his medical people. Now he's listening to his financial people. And it's just one of those diseases are bad. You have to keep calm and carry on. And now it's time to slowly, carefully move back into a moving economy again. The one thing I will just say is I do not think I'm very big on systemic threats to freedom, bureaucracy, Supreme Court

decisions that are stupid, laws that take away from the Constitution. I don't see a systemic threat to freedom here. What I see is a crisis. that has been handled to the best of the people's ability, not knowing what they didn't know. Well, I'm certainly the most radical of the four of us. I was opposed to the government shutdowns from the very beginning. I think that if I had ever believed a model that said two and a half million Americans were likely to die over the course of, you know, nine or ten months, maybe I would have thought that the actions being taken by the government were merited. I never believed those models.

I think that what's actually going to happen is we're going to lose, you know, 100,000 people, which is probably in line with, you know, maybe it's twice as bad or even three times as bad as a particularly bad flu year, but comes nowhere near heart disease, comes nowhere near what cancer kill in the country. I think that I'm willing, even though I was against the lockdown, I'm willing to say that based on what Donald Trump knew or what Gavin Newsom knew or other governors or mayors around the country five weeks ago. I can understand why they may have been scared into taking the initial actions that they took. But I agree with Michael and I agree with Ben that now there's no longer any question really as to

what's about to happen. We have no cure. We're not going to have a cure. We have no vaccine. Maybe we'll have a vaccine in 18 months. Maybe we won't have a vaccine in 18 years. You know, they say there's no cure for the common cold. And the common cold is a coronavirus.

These things are notoriously difficult to come up with vaccines against, to come up with cures for. And so where we are today, as opposed to five weeks ago, I don't want to rehash, I was right and you were all wrong. I mean, I definitely knew that we shouldn't do this and we did. And then you should all have that rubbed in a little bit. But there's not beyond gloating. There's no point in relitigating it. I'm not suggesting that we need to run people out of town for the decisions they made five weeks ago. What concerns me are the decisions being made right now?

why is any part of the country still locked down? Now that we have realized that this is the blitz, that we're just going to have to, drew to your point, keep calm, carry on and do our part, as Churchill said. This is something that we're just going to have to endure. There is no silver bullet coming. You know, there's a poll out today by Reuters that says 72% of Americans believe that we should not open the economy and go back to work

until medical professionals and politicians tell us that it's safe. And that actually illustrates just how bad the messaging has been on this by politicians in the media for the last five weeks, because it is not going to be safe. There's going to be COVID tomorrow. There's going to be COVID a week from now. There's going to be COVID a month from now. We'll be lucky if there isn't COVID a year from now. It's possible that COVID-19 is just with us to stay in some form. That it's just something that we'll always have to deal with from this point forward. You can say that five weeks ago we didn't know what we didn't know. And that may valid. some of the decisions, but today we actually know. There is no difference between opening tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now. Whenever we open, whenever people begin going back to work,

they are subjecting themselves to the risk of getting this probably at some point most of us are going to get it. There's probably no way out but through. So while I certainly think that there are steps that we need to take to be as responsible as we can be, ultimately I don't think that there's any, I think there's basically nothing for it but to take it. Drew, you bring up the idea of if we saw bodies on on broadway that that would certainly have a psychological effect i i don't doubt that there would be a devastating psychological effect of that i also though would say that every day that this lockdown can you cannot have 30 million fighting age young people particularly low income people people who don't have savings out of work for any prolonged amount of time

without without worse damage than any momentary trauma that we could absorb and i i fear that that's what we're on the brink of. I agree with you, Drew, that the mom being arrested on the playground today is not a sign of systemic lack of liberty, although any lack of liberty I object to. If they take one morsel more freedom than is absolutely required to get us through the crisis, I'm going to bucket that, and I think they certainly have and are. But I agree that that isn't the real threat to our future freedom. But I do think that we're facing the greatest threat to freedom that we've ever faced in my lifetime, and probably in the lifetime of anyone with the small exception of the very small handful of people who still are alive, who are veterans of the Second World War, the living memory of most Americans.

It's not COVID-19, and it's not even this lockdown. It's the consequence of the lockdown. 30 million unemployed people in a presidential election year when the woke left is openly calling for out-and-out socialism is a fundamental threat, like nothing that we face politically in our country in my lifetime. actually the thing that I'm the most concerned about. And the main reason that I think we have to become realist about COVID so that we can fight the real battle that I think we're in, which is the battle against an ascendant socialist ideology in the country that now has a huge base of unemployed people to go and promise money and welfare and dependency to who are desperate and actually need something. And so they're more likely candidates for that than people who have a job and are able to provide what their family are. Let's talk a little bit more about this. We'll get a little bit more

conversational, but first, when you're shut down and there's absolutely nothing for you to do except argue with Drew, you may wonder, how can I, because those of you who know, Drew, he likes to argue the old-fashioned way, pen and ink, probably quill in his case, strongly worded letters with stamps on the, wax seals on the back, are exchanged rapidly, dear sir, I'm sitting in the smallest room of my home, your letter is before me, soon it will be behind, the classic Drew rebuttal. How does one do such a thing when you can't even go to the post office? And that's where our friends over at stamps.com come in. Because with stamps.com, you have basically the entire postal service at your disposal on your computer right there from the safety of your home. It's a remarkable

service. Stamps.com, it beats the post office even in the best of time. Here's what I'll say. When one can go to the post office, does one prefer to go to the post office? Does one prefer to go to the post office. And now one has very little choice. Simply use your computer to print U.S. postage 24-7, any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send. Once your mail is ready, just leave it for your mail carrier, schedule a free package pickup or drop it in a mailbox. No human contact required. It's that simple. You'll get five cents off every first class stamp and up to 40% off of U.S.PS shipping rates. And now, in addition, to offering discounted U.S. Postal Service rates, Stamps.com also offers UPS services with discounts up to 60%.

2%, plus Stamps.com, you won't even have to pay UPS residential surcharge. Ben, every letter I've gotten from you in the last three years has been sent via Stamps.com. I think you were the first adopter of any of us. Oh, yeah. I've been using Stamps.com even before they were actually an advertiser on the show. Stamps.com is indeed a no-brainer. You don't want to be schlepping your stuff over to the post office. Right now, in many cases, you can't schlep your stuff over to the post office right now.

My listeners and our listeners get a special offer to includes a four-week trial, plus free postage and digital scale, no long-term commitment. Just head on over to stamps.com. Click on the microphone at the top of the homepage. Type in Shapiro. That is stamps.com. Enter code Shapiro, and you get that awesome, awesome deal. You'll save yourself tons of money and tons of time.

And all the hassles associated with going into a public area where people are coughing on packages, go to Stamps.com and use that code Shapiro for the special deal. Sometimes at home, when I'm about to open a package, I still cough on it, though, just so that I can kind of feel normal. Yeah. Just I can kind of feel normal. Drew, you're the person, I think, of the four of us, there's certainly room between my position, Ben's position, Michael's position. It sounds like your position may be the most unique of the four of us.

So why don't you kind of respond maybe to what you heard the three of us say and give us a little bit more detail about where you are? Yeah, I mean, I think the whole thing about statistics, you know, lies, damn lies in statistics, is that when you say so many people die of a heart attack, so many people die of a flu, this is just the way it is, that's not really what's happening so far. Again, there's a lot of things we don't know, and it's important to know that we don't know. And there's a lot of people on Twitter who's gotten these Twitter medical degrees that seem to just come with turning on Twitter. You know, I mean, you don't have to go to college for a lot of things. To be a doctor, I think it's a good thing, you know, to go to school. And the thing about the statistics here

is that when 3,000 people died in one day in New York, we went to war for 20 years. We're still at war because those 3,000 people. die. That's 20 years of war. 700,000 people have died of Americans, have died of AIDS in 40 years and our entire attitude toward gay people has gone through a revolution mostly because of that.

It's really not all about statistics and it really is all about humanity. And when I say if something hit New York and if I'm looking at my TV or my computer and I'm seeing bodies lined on Broadway, everything is going to change forever. And if you think people are unwilling to come out now

after they see that, they're going to be completely unwilling to come out. So I think the problem is, look, I really love my liberties, and I'm very fierce about defending them. But I defend them against things that I think long-term are threats to them. And because Donald Trump is president right now, and because his interests align with mine, he wants to keep people safe, if only for his own political fortunes, he wants to reopen business, if only for his political fortunes.

because he's he's the president i'm not worried about what they're doing i think they're doing the thing that they feel they have to do and they have the they do have as donald trump might say the best information they have the best information of anybody and they're doing the thing that i think should be done so i i guess what i feel is like yeah you know if if you could just eliminate the shouting if you could you know just suck out the shouting out of the air for a minute all the you didn't do this first and you didn't do that what you would see is a threat came down the pike we shut down to keep the hospitals, to flatten the curve so that the hospitals wouldn't be overwhelmed. Things, obviously, as they always do, they didn't turn out the way the experts think they did,

but they had to do what they had to do. Now we have got to go back to work, but we've got to go back to work in such a way that there is not a massive flare-up of this thing so that people shut down again, because I think that would be the worst thing that could happen to the economy. And I am really cognizant, very cognizant of the people out of work. Again, with statistics, it's not so much how many people are out of work. long they're out of work. If everybody on earth is out of work for 10 minutes, that's not so good. If, you know, if 30 million people are out of work for a year, then we've got a real problem.

So, so what I'm concerned about is that we start the economy in a smart way. That seems to be the idea. There's going to be, I love the fact that Trump, you know, remembered the word federalism, and that's actually what he was doing, you know, he's like, he doesn't know what it's called. He said, I think they call it federalism or something. He doesn't know what it's called, but he's doing it. So each governor is actually in a position to do what has to be done, which is the way federalism is supposed to work. And, you know, I just think it's sad, but this is what we should be doing. And the problem for me with the, you know, the Churchill thing and there's no way out but through. There's no enemy here.

It's just a germ. It's just a bug. The enemy is China. And we have to deal with that later. But this is just one of those terrible things that happens. But I think they're handling as best they can. Let me at least ask a follow up. When I say there's no way out but three, it's because there is no way out but three.

What is the alternative? Like, do you believe that sometime in the foreseeable, in the amount of time that we can keep the economy shut down, let's call that a couple more weeks, maybe another month, do you believe that there will be some externality to use Ben's word that comes along and mitigates this disease for us? Or do you believe, as I do that, no, we are actually just going to have to go through this. Well, I think that it's all the question, look, you know, there's not really a lot of wiggle room here. It's all the question, we have to restart. the economy. We agree about that. But we also have to keep vulnerable people as safe as possible for as long as possible and hope there will be externalities. I've been very disappointed in Israel. You've got a whole country full of Jews. They can't cure a disease. I mean, what the hell, Ben? What's going on here? But no, seriously. I do look forward to all the people who are boycotting divesting and sanctioning Israel, not taking any of the things that Israel develops. He'll do it later. That'll really be. Suddenly not so much, right? They're going to boycott the day

after the vaccine comes out, but not before then. In terms of sort of long-term threats, and Drew, you mentioned long-term threats. There are a couple of threats, and on these, I agree with Jeremy, that you cannot have 30 million people unemployed this quickly. The government is not capable of filling in that gap. We cannot float this kind of money interminably. I think there are a lot of people who are very happy to float that kind of money interminably. It's not that I think that people are interested in shutting down and locking down forever because they're malicious or evil.

I think that what's happening here is that if you are a, Democrat governor, and you look at the lockdowns. You're saying yourself, okay, so I'm supposed to balance people's free economic enterprise with human life. I'm going to err on the side of human life. And also, this happens to support sort of my political agenda if a lot of people end up unemployed, and then I have to grow government in order to fill that gap. That actually isn't the end of the world. So it kind of is, you almost get a two-fer. If you are somebody who is saying, well, you know, if we have a lot of unemployed people for a very long time, and then those people go out and and decide that they need to vote in people who are going to completely remake the nature of

American rights, then people who want to reopen and be like, okay, let's reopen faster. I agree with you. This is one of the times I've been most grateful that Trump is president because he is not obviously attempting to do that, right? He doesn't want that. He wants people to go back to work. He wants to go back to something approaching normal. People have been asking, why has this become such a partisan issue, the reopening? And I think the reason it's become so partisan is because a lot of people are rightly suspicious that there are people who are looking to employ the Rahman manual mentality of let no good crisis go to waste. There are some people in the New York Times who are talking routinely about we need to do Medicare

for all now. We need to have federal jobs guarantee. We need permanent universal basic income. We need wealth taxes, right? Basically the entire standards born agenda, we need that in order to solve the pandemic. And oh, look, an excuse for us to do that is the pandemic, right? The making of pandemic politics normal. I love that Trump hasn't been doing that. I mean, I'm really grateful for that. I think, first of all Americans should be grateful for that because guess what? The reason federalism exists is because Utah is not New York. And when we talk about lockdown policies, one of the real problems has been the universality of the policies, right?

Not all areas ought to be treated equally. And that I'm sure we all agree on. I mean, the idea that Georgia should be opening at the same time as New York City is an assonite. I mean, New York City is going to have a major problem for a very long time. And until they have an extraordinary testing regimen in place in New York City to be able to almost block by block identify hotspots and contact trace them, it's going to be nearly impossible to open up in New York City.

New York City is the disaster area in the center here. And yes, that's an American city. And yes, if the system is overwhelmed there, that has consequences for the rest of the country. But it doesn't have as many consequences for the rest of the country as the federal government, if it were run by a Democrat, coming in and literally shutting all economic activity from Utah to Georgia to Florida to Idaho, right?

These places are not similarly situated. So I'm very grateful that there is local rule. I'm very grateful that there is federalism. And I'm grateful that right now there's someone in the White House who doesn't want to use the crisis as an opportunity. to remake America, I'm suspicious that there are many Democrats who seem eager to use the crisis as an opportunity to remake America in ways that confirm their prior political predilections. And that's why it's pretty important that people get back to work if they can as soon as possible,

if you can work from, and again, responsibly, right? The key word here is responsibly. And I think that the media are nutpicking. I think the media are going to rallies and finding people who are taking off the masks and carrying around Confederate, like Nazi flags and and suggesting the lockdowns are Nazi Germany and yelling at nurses. And it's easy to nutpick. But the truth is that the vast majority of people who are protesting to get their jobs right now are people who are not wanting to get a haircut as morons on Don Lemon suggested on CNN. They're losing their jobs.

They're in food lines for, like, they never thought they would be going to a food bank. Who the hell thinks they're going to go to a food bank? Like huge numbers of people who are doing this. And they're right. They're right to want to go back to work. It has to be done responsibly. And what that means to me is looking at the risk factors for each population. one of the ways I think the media and the politicians have been so irresponsible is using one COVID case fatality rate that is wrong, by the way, using that as a blanket.

Right. So originally the WHO said that this was going to be, not the ban, the garbage Chinese front organization, the WHO, they had suggested that there was a 3.4% case fatality rate from this thing. That is obviously untrue. The actual case fatality rate from this thing is probably somewhere between 0.3 and 0.6%. And that is a lot higher than the flu. And when you combine that with the fact that the replication rate, the infection rate is at least three times higher than the flu or about three times higher in the flu, you could easily just by doing some simple math realize that if you lose 50,000 people in a year from the flu, the number from this is going to be 450,000 people, right? You're going to multiply it by nine because you're getting three times the infection rate and three times the actual death rate. But that is mostly people who are older, right? I mean, the death rates for people who are obtaining this and are above the age of 80 are staggering and horrifying. If you are below the age of 40, the chances and healthy, and you don't have a serious preexisting condition, the chances that you die from this are incredibly minimal. I mean, very, very low.

If you're under the age of 20, you're not dying from it. If you're under the age of 40 and you are healthy, the chances are excellent. When I say excellent, me like one in 1,000, like 99 out of 1,000 people who get this and are under the age of 40 and healthy are not going to die from this. And so we should be looking at tranching back in populations that are least susceptible. It's kind of ridiculous that the media not only ignore this, But push out a countervailing narrative. What they'll say is things like, well, yeah, sure, it's hitting mostly older people and people with preexisting conditions, but it could kill anyone.

That is utterly unhelpful information. What could kill anyone? Anything could kill anyone. Michael, you're the youngest person here and probably the only one who will survive. I am the safest one. I think Ben and Drew are totally right on this federalism point. I think Trump has exhibited very good judgment here in deferring to federalism and to the governors.

Unfortunately, the problem is that the governors and the mayors have not. exhibited that judgment. And that's what this is about. You know, the reason that this has become a partisan political issue is because politics is partisan. And the left has this idea that they want to remove the political questions from our debate and just export all of it to our exalted experts like Dr. Fauci. And he can make all of our decisions for us without debate. But of course, that's not what politics is. And so, of course, the question is, are the lockdowns helping? Did they prevent the bodies in the street in Broadway? And I think, look, deferring with 2020 hindsight deferring to Andy Cuomo. He faced a tough decision. He did what he thought was best.

The problem now is the politicians who are not changing their ideas based on the new information. And so obviously that did not happen. The lockdowns work when they prevent the hospital system from being overwhelmed and when you can stall long enough to get a vaccine. Neither of those things are happening. Okay. So now it seems likely that the lockdowns will cause more damage, more deaths than had they not happened. Again, hindsight's 2020. But the problem now, you've seen. see Andy Cuomo doubling down. You see Eric Garcetti, the worst mayor in America, mayor of L.A. He said three weeks ago, he said, there is no projection in which in two weeks, L.A. doesn't look like New York, you know, mass death, chaos like Italy. And then the trouble with making predictions is, eventually you get to see if they're true or not. It did not come true. L.A. is doing fine.

On the day it turned out that his projection was false. Do you know what he did? Did he change his mind? Did he lighten up? Did you let people go back to work? We now have half of Angelinos are unemployed. No, he doubled down that very same day and extended the lockdown. To me, that seems like an abuse. And that seems like poor judgment, which is all we're asking of our politicians is their judgment. And I don't think a lot of them have shown. And the worst lack of judgment that we're seeing is turning criminals out onto the streets, which, like we're seeing crime, crime rates are starting to soar. We had actually an incident here at the Daily Wire where at 545 in the morning, one of our critical staff,

We are, because we're media, we are considered an essential organization. Nevertheless, 90% of our staff is working remotely, but there are a handful of people who have to be here to make sure that the broadcasts are able to go out and they start their day very early. Someone drove, one of our employees drove in at 545 in the morning. Someone pulled out of a parking lot and started following them. We have gates on our parking garage. The gate open, the employee came in. The person gunned the gas and flew in after them and pulled up behind them and blocked them. Of course, it's 545 in the morning.

It's pitch black outside. The person is wearing a mask and now is blocking our employee in. Fortunately, we have armed security in the building, and armed security saw this happen, ran down to the parking garage and had a confrontation with the person, and we were able to get them out the door without any extreme incident. To me, though, there's no question what was happening. And it's that with so little activity out there with so few people, so many people, so desperate, There's just an increase in crime.

I know we're all also a little bit edgier than usual being shut in with your loved ones day after day after day makes you, you know, love them just as much. But I heard something in my house a few nights ago. Sleep on the second floor. I heard something downstairs that normally wouldn't have startled me at all. Under the circumstances, I was more startled than usual. That's why I'm glad that we all have ring at our homes. Wow.

What a segue. I'm just getting better. There's no question about it. Ring is great because without getting out of my bed, I can see what that noise was down there. Maybe not what the noise was, but I can sure see what it wasn't, that it wasn't someone in my home. Ring gives you protection at every corner and helps create custom affordable security for your home. Ring to text motion when people come onto your property and rings video doorbells let you answer the door and check in on your home anytime from anywhere. And as we all know, from anywhere just means from your bedroom, the only place you're allowed to go today. This is also great.

Listen, right now we're having a lot of things shipped to our house. You know it's not good, especially when crime is up. They have stuff sitting on your stoop for too long. You want to know when something gets dropped at your front door. You want to be able to keep an eye on your property. Ring helps you do that. Ring helps you stay connected to your home anywhere in the world. If there's a package delivery, a surprise visitor, you get peace of mind,

knowing that your loved ones are safe and that that was only your small terrier rummaging around downstairs, and you're really something of a coward. Hypothetically. Ben, you use Ring. I do indeed use ring, and I keep track of my children. And also, I scout out future vacation spots like my other bedroom and also the kitchen. So ring is really useful this way. If you are looking, it's like Travelocity now for your actual life.

The ring is great. I mean, I've been using it for years to keep me safe because I receive an inordinate number of death threats. Now the good news is that all those people are quarantined too, but at the very least I can keep track of my kids on my property. And as Jeremy says, you can keep track of anything going on on your property or at your front door. any time, all the time. Right now, they've upgraded a lot of their stuff. They've got the Ring Video Doorbell 3 upgraded with additional security features and works on any home. You can see it and speak with visitors with the HD Video, two-way talk. They've got dual-band Wi-Fi, which makes it more flexible and reliable connection. Plus, they have a quick-release rechargeable battery packs.

You can recharge this thing super easily. Get a special offer on the Ring Welcome Kit when you go to ring.com slash backstage. That welcome kit includes the Ring Video Doorbell 3 and the Chime Pro. That is all you need to start building that custom security for your home today. Just go to ring.com. slash backstage. That is ring.com slash backstage. Go check them out right now. Ring.com slash backstage. So we're going to hear from our DailyWire insiders who are able to write in at dailywire.com and ask questions. Elisha sorts through those questions and brings us only the very best. But before we do that, we're going to give you time to get your questions in by becoming a subscriber. If you join as an all access or Insider Plus member right now using the promo code backstage,

Not only will you get an additional 10% off, but you will get a second, yes, a second leftist tears, Tumblr, and you can get your question in on the show. Head over there and do that. Before we take questions, though, there is one other major event happening in the world today besides nothing, which is what we're allowed to do. And that is that today is the day every year when we commemorate the beautiful Gaia, when we commemorate the murder and composting of a woman more than 50 years ago, when we celebrate our ride as Americans to catch actual tires on fire,

to blot out the drones which are trying to spy on us from above. Yes, that's right. It's National Tire Burning Day. Michael, tell us a little bit about how we got this holiday. This year, Jeremy, marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. And that's a long time to be around. 20 years longer, to be precise, than the life of Hollyman. Maddox, who was beaten and murdered at the age of 30 by one of Earth Day's leaders, Ira Einhorn. Yes, the media portray a bright picture of Earth Day, happy hippies celebrating nature.

But there's a darker side to this pantheistic bacchanal that the treehuggers don't want you to know about, namely that the co-founder was a lunatic killer who took his environmentalism so seriously that he composted his girlfriend's body in a trunk. Einhorn spoke at the first Earth Day celebration in Philadelphia on April 22nd, 1970. Seven years later, his girlfriend dumped him, at which point he flew into a rage and murdered her. But like so many leftists before and since, Einhorn wasn't held responsible for his crime, at least not at first. In fact, one year after the murder, I kid you not, Harvard gave Einhorn a job lecturing at the Harvard University Institute of Politics.

The Harvard administration welcomed the yippie with open arms, gushing in the student newspaper that Einhorn offered a perspective different from anybody else's You can say that again, and that he would contribute to the richness of our program. Einhorn was finally caught the following year when a strange red-brown liquid began to leak from the ceiling beneath his apartment, at which point the environmental activist jumped bail and fled the country for 17 years before being extradited back to the States in the late 1990s. Since then, the environmental movement and its sycophants in the mainstream media have done everything they can to distance themselves from Einhorn. The other founders have disavowed him. Time magazine ran a spread calling the story fake news.

But the historical accounts remain, and even Big Green, can't deny the photos of Einhorn on stage addressing the crowds at the first Earth Day event in Philly 50 years ago today. Happy Earth Day, everybody. So the water is cleaner. The sky is clearer, but don't go upstairs for the love of God. If you want to ask us questions about the Rona, about Earth Day, about where you can burn your tire, head over to DailyWire.com and become a member. Elisha, what kind of questions are we hearing so far today?

Well, I think an Earth Day applicable one, it's very important. I'm a big fan of this show, and I just want to make it known that not all Oghis are like the Tiger King, but a subscriber wants to know if there was a Tiger King of the Daily Wire, who would it be? And I just want to add that obviously Nolz is Carol Baskin, right? That I'm Carol Baskin? No, no. You're the Carol Baskin of the Daily Wire. I want to be that weird guru, like sex cult guy.

I forget his name, but that's what I want. Doc Ansel. Doc. No, there's no question, Jeremy, is Doc Ansel in this particular cast. Fair enough. And there's also no question that Noles is basically the, what's the name of the guy who steals the zoo. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, what is that guy's? That's a good guy to be. I like that. There's no question he's that guy, right? I mean, like, going to Vegas, pretending that he's super rich. But Jeff, Jeff Lowe, Jeff Lowe. He's definitely Jeff Lowe. Joe Exotic, you know, hard to peg who Joe Exotic is.

I actually have an answer. I mean, you do, because I was going to go, Claven is certainly the reality TV producer sitting there in the hat, right? I mean, there's no question that that is who Clavin is. I filmed it all. It was some crazy crap. Yeah, that guy was driven. I got to say that we, and this won't mean much to the folks at home, but we have a senior accountant on our team, one of our great, one of the best employees in the company.

His name is Matt. I'll spare his last name in case. For his future employment. And he has a mullet already. He came into the office. He's been working from home for the last five weeks. He came into the office to do some temporary accounting work that someone just had to be here legally to do. He's always had a mullet and handlebar mustache. In quarantine, it has been. become a sublime. It is a thing of such beauty. All that's missing is the bleach, and he will

be Joe Exotic. And I got to say, I don't know what Tiger Piss smells like, but that guy had been in quarantine for quite some time when he walked down the halls. It is possibly he has big cats. By the way, quick note, I mean, Elisha, I hate to do this to you, but there is no question you're Carol Baskin. There's no question you're Carol Baskin, right? I mean, like, can we all agree on this, Eric is in serious trouble. The fact of the matter is, who at this company is like, animals, animals are great, and I would love to protect

animals, animals are wonderful, and also no one else, I will have all of the animals. I'll have all of them. And also, Elisha, like, for those who watch the show, they understand that Elisha is incredibly charming and wonderful. Hi, little cats and kittens. And then, you know, she is a vicious,

vicious killer. There's just, this is the easiest casting decision we've ever had to make here at the daily wire. Alicia Crassus Carol Baskin is a no-brainer. Ben just knows that because he's seen me at 6 a.m. for four years in a row. Correct. Absolutely correct. Absolutely correct. We are all our true selves at 6 a.m. With a lovable liberal, who will not be named? All right. Next important question.

Drew touched on it a little bit, and you guys were kind of debating about this at the top of the show. Subscriber was interested to know, do you guys think that the Democrats partly want us to say quarantine, shelter at home, lockdown, whatever you want to call it, as long as possible, so the economy continues to fail, and then that hurts Trump in the election in November. Correct? Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's no question about it. I mean, you know, the one thing that has really come out, and it's something I just hammer at,

and I think it's so important, is our media are really the worst people in the country. I mean, there are guys that they are letting out of prison now who are not as bad as the people who work in the news media. I mean, they have been irresponsible. I didn't mention that the guy who pulled into our parking garage at 545 looks to say, suspiciously like Chris Cuomo, but it couldn't have been him because he was still in the basement. He was in the basement. You know, I mean, when Brian Stelter said he missed his deadline because he had to crawl into bed and cry,

you know, I thought of all the times in American history when men have said, you know, like, give me liberty or I'll crawl into my bed and cry or, you know, or remember the alamo because I'm crying for our pre-Alamo life, you know, all the great men in history who've acted like Brian Stelter. And this is what they're displaying to, to people outside of the media world is just absolutely terrifying. And one of the things I think that has actually been, in a serious way, a bad thing, is that it's hard to get information.

I mean, I'm reading charts. I'm reading, you know, medical things. But if you're watching the news, you have no idea what the facts are, unless you are reading maybe the Wall Street Journal, watching Brett Baer's show on Fox. You have no idea what the facts are. So, yeah, I definitely think, to answer the question, I definitely think there are Democrats, many Democrats, who, as Jeremy was saying and Ben was saying,

want to manipulate this crisis into socialism. And there are also Democrats who would like just to see the world burn, basically, so that Donald Trump loses in November. Anybody who votes for Joe Biden to handle this crisis deserves every single thing that they get. I don't even want to think about what you do is. By the way, is Matt drudged the Joker from the Dark Night? Speaking of people who are just wondering, watch the world burn. I do not believe the Drudge is running that site anymore. Yeah, I don't think so.

I think he's actually just like Bruce Wayne from the Dark Night because he's a super rich guy who's not running a website anymore and whoever bought it from him is doing it. I mean, there's no question that the coverage at Drudge in terms of what he chooses to link is extraordinarily alarmist, right? I mean, if you read nothing but Drudge, you will come away so alarmed about the state of the world that you will lose your mind.

And then when you actually look at the studies that are coming down, you're concerned, but not in a state of, you know, screaming hair-on-fire alarm unless you're a member of vulnerable group, right? I mean, which is, which is really where we ought to be. As far as sort of the intent of Democrats, I think that it's worth noting that I think the intent of the media is in part to just slam Trump. I'm not even sure it's, I want the economy to tank and therefore I want lockdown. It's Trump is anti-lockdown, therefore I want lockdown, right? We are going to set up a bar that no one can clear. And this is why you see Anderson Cooper repeating obvious idiocy is like, we're not going to be safe.

until we have 20 million tests a day. Okay, so now you set up a standard that no one is ever going to clear. That isn't about him like wanting the economy to tank. I think that's about him setting up a standard that no one could possibly meet. And you see this in the media in the coverage of the ventilator stuff, right? Rich Lauer had a great column on this at National Review talking about the ventilators came. Trump did it, right? The ventilators showed up where they were supposed to show up. There was no shortage of ventilators. And all you were getting for weeks on end was where are the ventilators? And Trump gave them. And then it was like, oh, what, was that a story? Ventilators? Oh, well, what happened there? It really is more about getting Trump than anything

from the perspective of what bars they are setting that need to be exceeded in order for the lockdown stand. Again, I think that some of this is unconscious. I think that if you are a, if you are Gretchen Whitmer, you're thinking, I'm going to get blamed for every excess death. I'm a politician. I'm getting cheered for my lockdown policies. And if things stay locked down, well, then I also get to pursue some of my broader policies, like extending the scope of government. So it's not that she is choosing between competing priorities. It's that all the priorities, line up behind what she wants, right? I mean, it's not like the economy versus lost life. It is, we can avoid lost life. And also, I can shape the economy in a way that I think is actually

better for the country at the same time. So the competing priorities tend to not even be there. Instead, it's just reinforcement. This is what you see with Garcetti, right? Garcetti, as Michael says, I don't know how you can name him the worst mayor in the United States. Bill de Blasio is a human man. Well, fair. I was a mayor of major say. I mean, Bill de Blasio. I mean, like Garcetti's awful. I mean, make no mistake. Garcetti is a garbage heap of humanity. I mean, the man shut down. The turnoffs on Mohalan Drive. On Mohan Drive, those turnoffs are the size of like my couch over here, right? Those are postage stamps. And he had somebody go out there with yellow tape and tape them off, as though we're going to have like mass gatherings on the turnoffs on Moha and Drive.

And by the way, you just drive over to Burbank and Burbank where they are not crazy. They have signs in the park that say you should act responsibly. So there are a bunch of people to park and they're all 20 feet away from each other acting responsibly in the open air where you're not going to get coronavirus because it turns out, you know how you get coronavirus being stuck in small, rooms with other people. Being outside is actually a very, very good thing. I generally agree with, I generally agree with everything you just said, except that defense of Governor Whitmer, who you say that she's acting out of self-interest. She's acting out, she's obviously trying to punish the November criminals. And I don't think there's any, I think there's any question about it.

Alicia, do you have one more question for us? I do. Somebody actually has a question and kind of along the line of the governors and their overreach here. People want to know, what do you guys think that places like Michigan and California are going to do when it comes to reopening of churches in synagogues. I know here in California, Newsom keeps talking about, like, events under 50 people. Does that mean that my church is going to have to have 10 services a day and rotate out 50 people at a time? Michael? Yeah, I actually think the issue here is more the religious leaders than it is the governors of those states. Some governors have been overzealous and they're arresting pastors and spying on people going to drive through church. That's obviously an overreach. But when I look at California,

all of the churches and the synagogues had already capitulated by the time the state got involved. Catholic Church completely closed down before the state ever raised a voice about it. So I think, frankly, more of the onus is going to be placed on those religious leaders. I don't think it's a fight that the liberal governors are necessarily going to pick. You know, de Blasio, mayor of New York, was blowing off steam and he said, I'm going to shut down church buildings permanently. That obviously is ridiculous. I don't think that would ever happen.

But frankly, I place a little bit more blame on the religious leaders here. then I do the liberal governors. And you know my feeling on liberal governors. Well, the one thing I just wanted to say that, you know, my church went online very early. And the fact that you don't have to shake people's hands and wish them God's peace has just been a real benefit. And I'd like to see that just included in all church services forever,

that you just don't have to talk to other people or shake their hands. My problem is that in the absence of being able to greet everyone with a brotherly kiss, I'm not sure if I'm straight. A lot of concerns. I will say that when it, when it, I am actually very grateful to a lot of the church and synagogue leadership for being early on this. The Orthodox community got smoked. I mean, absolutely destroyed in New York and New Jersey. The number of the number of people who died of this because disproportionately elderly populations, a lot of intergenerational contact, big parties. In Israel,

they had a major hit because of Porum because that happened right at the beginning of this. And I actually remember for myself and my family, I started to actually pre-lockdown on Porum. Like we went to Shul and I looked around and I felt like, this is kind of uncomfortable. And we were invited to a party and I said, okay, my parents are here. We're not going to the party. Like, we just can't do that. And so we sort of started that early. I think that it is smart that churches are and synagogues are socially distancing. You also know, by the way, that if there are outbreaks at churches, you know who's going to get blamed. And we see this already in sort of the New York Times' treatment of the Orthodox community in New York, which, by the way, again, shut down pretty early. There's certain

very core areas that didn't shut down. And you're seeing those stories covered in excess. But Israel, they shut everything now, that if things go wrong, recognize that the media is going to be looking to blame. I mean, they're already preemptively declaring that Brian Kemp killed a million people in Georgia, right? They were going to preemptively be looking to blame churches and synagogues. One question for Know's real quick. Yeah. What's up with your boy?

I mean, can you get your Pope on Earth's control? I know. You're talking about the Earth Day stuff. You're over there ripping on Earth Day. You might want to talk to your man over there because that dude put out the biggest load of pagan garbage. I have seen in quite a while. So you know what I... Nature is taking revenge on you. Last I checked, that was a pagan thing, not a Christian thing.

No, I mean, this is the issue. I saw this. He actually made the first version of these comments like two weeks ago, and then it came out today. So what I always like to do, whether it's true or not, is say that to Papa Francesco has been a misstranslated. People's going to understand what he's saying. And now, you know, unfortunately, the Pope sort of encourages this confusion. So I read exactly what he said in the Italian, however he said it. And what he's saying is there's an old Spanish idiom, right? And he's kind of going on and then using this to suggest to the secular press that he's saying that the earth is going to condemn us for our sins or something. And this is really a problem because if what he is doing is what the press is reporting on,

then he's engaging in what's called the pathetic fallacy, not just pathetic like it's no good, but pathetic meaning it's attributing to inanimate objects, human emotions and human desires, which is obviously ridiculous. And one hallmark of this papacy, has been encouraging these kind of confusing things in the press. He keeps talking to the journalists who are allegedly mistranslating him. So just a filial bit of advice to the Holy Father is maybe don't talk to the liberal press. I don't know. Probably not going to get an answer on that one.

Yeah, I suspect you're going to come up dry, buddy. One of the things I've been doing during the shutdown is trying to broaden my horizons a little bit. I've been listening to so many audiobooks. I listened to Another Kingdom, Drew's fantasy masterpiece. I wanted to listen to the second volume of Another Kingdom, but Drew forgot to release the audio book when he released the second installment of Another Kingdom. Drew, first of all, what's up? Are we going to get Another Kingdom, too?

Yeah, it should be. Noel's recorded it, I believe, and I don't know why it hasn't come out and why they messed up. They messed up and not bringing it out at the same time as the book. But you did record it, right? And also, it must be on its way. We did. And I actually, when I was called in to record it, it was right at the beginning of, are we going to lock down? So I actually burned through this audiobook. I did it in like two days. So I did these six days, you know, sessions. It is done. It's in the can. And it should be online soon. I listen to so far Drew's book, 1776. I'm going through the Eric Larson book right now,

The Splendid in the Vial about Churchill in the first year of the war. It's terrific. I'm listening to them all on my Racon earbuds. the Racon earbuds. Fabulous earbuds. You need a new pair of wireless earbuds. You should get something stylish, comfortable, long-lasting with quality audio, but don't take half your paycheck. That's where these Racon earbuds come in. Their newest model, the everyday E-25 earbuds are the best ones yet. Six hours of playback time, seamless Bluetooth pairing, more bass, and more compact design that gives you a nice noise-isolating fit. Racon's wireless earbuds are so comfortable, perfect for conference calls, video chats, binging podcasts, listening to

Drew's books, if they're available, it is the perfect earbud. And I will tell you, it's actually, you don't look like an insect when you wear the E25s. And you wear your Raconne earbuds. They're very discreet. They're very high-tech looking. It's just a fabulous product. I think every one of us here has a pair. Michael, you've got a pair, yeah? I do. I love them. They're fabulous. They, the thing I like, I'm a very vain person, obviously. I want to look good while I'm listening to my music. I don't want to look like some weirdo with random things popping out. They sound amazing, they look really good, and they're very comfortable, too. And?

Well, I can tell you my favorite thing about the Raycons, they have a variety of fits for your ear. And if you have a weird ear, not to say I do, but if you do, then they have a card that comes with a variety of fits, and you can actually tailor the fits to your ear, which is great. Right now, you get 15% off your order at Buyraycon.com.com slash backstage. That would be buy raycon.com slash backstage for 15% off. Raycon Wireless Earbuds. Buyraycon.com slash backstage. Again, buyraycon.com slash backstage.

you get 15% off those Raycon wireless earbuds. Go get you a pair. Every now and then, our director of production, Mathis Glover, comes up to me with an idea. In five years, none of them have been very good, but he does often come to me with ideas. He came to me this week with an idea

to find out who is the greatest American. And he thought that we could arrive at this by a simple intuitive quiz, and that's how we came up with this segment called Who is the Greatest American? the greatest American. All right, so welcome to the quiz. What we're trying to do here is determine who among the Daily Wire posts is, in fact, the

greatest American. And there's only one way to find out, and that's to test our knowledge of the bald eagle. Okay, I'm not getting any of these rights. Okay, okay, okay. Question number one, bald eagles are only found in North America. That's true. I'm going to say true. Nailed it.

I'm going to go false. Why? I think that's false. I think they're found in China as well. Well, I don't know. I figured there were zoos elsewhere. That was wrong. It was true.

They're only found in North America. That's what I meant. That's what I was trying to say. In what year did the bald eagle become the national emblem of the United States? 1776. Yeah, I know. 1788, answer C. Damn it.

82? I should have gone with 82. See 1776. Okay, incorrect. 1782. Okay, so the musical 1776 is incorrect. Okay. It's either B or C.

I'm going to guess 1788. Ah, come on. 1782. I knew it was one of those. All right. How much does an average adult bald eagle weigh? You know, the last time I weighed one, I don't know. Let's see.

I know, I've never roasted one. D, 24 pounds. Damn it. 12. Damn it. I keep, ah. Damn, can I get reduced? Hmm, 24 pounds?

No, incorrect. 12. 12, yeah, a lot of feathers on the bald eagle. 12 pounds. Yeah, yeah, come on, that's the way. Now we're cooking. Now we're rolling. Benjamin Franklin didn't want the bald eagle to be the national symbol of the United States. Which bird did he want? He wanted the turkey.

That I know is right. He wanted the turkey. I actually know the answer to this question because this is an actual interesting question, right? It was the turkey. He wanted to be the national symbol. Turkey. I think he was joking about that, but that's fine. I'll take any correct answers I can.

Where would you find the most wild, bald eagles? Florida, Louisiana, Alaska, Ohio, California. My guess is either Alaska or California. California? Alaska? Okay. Okay. Well, I had it down to the final, too.

Oh, Alaska. I'm going to say Alaska because the last time I was in Alaska, I was in a town that was like filled with bald eagles, and unless they were migrating to Louisiana, I would say Alaska. All right. That's like three, that's like three bald eagle questions in a row I got, right?

I'm going to say Alaska, see. All right, how long until the bald eagle reaches maturity that would probably be another 20 years? It's because of the drinking. You know, if he wouldn't go out to the bars all the time, he would become matured, get a job. Get a job, Bald Eagle. How long until the bald eagle?

how long until the bald eagle reaches maturity and sports the signature snow white head and tail? I have no idea. One year. I don't know. Four years? My God. They age like a movie star. Well, in my lengthy study of bald eagles, which I was planning to do but never got around to, I'm going to say six months.

What is it? Four years before he gets bald. It took me 23. They don't have the signature white head and tell until they're three years old. Oh, four years old. How fast can the bald eagle move when chasing prey? B, 60 miles an hour. I'm gonna go with 75 miles per hour.

One hundred miles an hour? God thing, that's a great bird. Oh, 60 miles an hour? Incorrect. D, 100 miles an hour, wow. We picked a cool animal, guys. Good job, founders. Male bald eagles are usually larger than females.

True? Yikes. America's always been a matriarchy. John Wayne said that once. I'll say true. False. Okay. So, my knowledge of the animal kingdom is wildly flawed, guys. Well, that's false. That sounds like a trick question that's going to be false. I'm going to say true. All right. They just look larger because they're holding the remote. Where does a bald eagle usually build its nest? Sturdy ledge of a cliff? I don't know.

No. Top of a tall tree in the side. I'll stay on the ledge of a cliff. Usually build their nests in the top of a tall tree. B, on the sturdy ledge of a cliff. I don't care that that's wrong. It's so romantic and dramatic that I'm still going to stick with that one. What size was the largest bald eagle nest ever recorded?

Let's see B. 5 feet deep, 500 plus me. Ah. You know, I'm just going to go for it. 30 feet deep, 6,000 pounds. Why the hell not? No, I know that's wrong. D, 20 feet deep, 4,000 pounds.

I should have gone with the SAT strategy, which has always picked the second to the least crazy answer. I don't know, five feet deep, 500 plus pounds? How big was it? 20 feet deep, 4,000 pounds? Oh my gosh. I'm going to go all the way. 30 feet deep, 6,000 pounds.

20 feet deep, 4,000 pounds. So I overestimated the greatness of the bald eagle in this one regard. How old was the oldest bald eagle living in the watch? Well, they only mature when they're four, so I'm going to go 23. No? 23 years old. 38? Oh my gosh. I'm going to say 15.

I'm going to say the oldest one was C, 38 years. Boom. How did they date that eagle? How did they figure that out exactly? They show up every year. Yeah, exactly. They chopped them in half and checked the rings inside. How did that work?

Name as many movie and or song titles with the word eagle as you can. Oh my gosh, I can't do that at all. Let's see, where eagles dare. Fly like an eagle. Eagle eye. Night of the eagle. Iron eagle. What was that song,

the wind beneath the wings, I can fly like an eagle? On eagle's wings, that's that horrible pop Christian hymn. I'm sure there is a song called The Eagle, so I'll just say The Eagle. When the eagle fly. That's a real movie, right?

Legal Eagle. Did I mention fly like an eagle? Did I get that one? I'm sure there's a punk rock song called Spread Eagle. What did I get, like six? I have no idea. Oh, two, okay. All right, well, that's all I got.

I don't know. I give up. That's it. The Eagle is not my thing, guys. Whatever, it's over. It's all over. All right. Well, that was humiliating. I'm pretty comfortable with that. And the answer is that I got wrong. I think I'm still going to stick with because the bald eagle is not a real animal in my mind,

but just a mythical, larger-than-life symbol of America. and so no answer could be too grandiose for that. Jeremy, you are the greatest apparent. In fairness, I wrote the questions and still missed three, so it probably doesn't count. But we have this lovely prize. As the greatest American, I have been bequeathed by Mathis,

this beautiful bald eagle shirt. Is nobody going to acknowledge that John Voigt was in that video? John Voigt was in that video? Crazy. The question I thought was. going to be on there is which is more delicious, the bald eagle or the humpback whale, in which case, the answer is yes. The answer is always yes. I want to talk about our friends over at Bravo company manufacturing, one of the great companies, almost as great as the bald eagle. These guys love

America so much. When the founders crafted the Constitution, the very first thing they did was to make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by their government. Freedom of religion. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to petition the government for grievances, freedom of assembly. Freedom of the press still exists. So the First Amendment, it's still, it's still doing pretty well. The second right that they enumerated was the right of the population to protect the First Amendment using force. You know how strongly we believe in these principles here at the Daily Wire, and that's why we are all four gun owners, all four of us, many of our other employees, I believe,

Michael, you and I are both owners of black rifles, and we can say with certainty that Bravo Company manufacturing, one of the great companies, they were started in a garage by a Marine veteran more than two decades ago. Bravo Company manufacturing builds professional grade products, which are built to combat standards. That's because Bravo Company, they don't believe that your gun is for hunting. They don't believe that your gun is for sport. They don't believe that your gun is for a nice ornament above your mantle. If you live in something, movie house, people really put guns about their mantle. They believe, as we do, that your weapon is for your protection, the protection of yourself, of your family, and for that reason,

if you're an American and you own a firearm, you need that firearm built to combat standards. You need that firearm to be built with rigorous standards so that you can depend on it, if God forbid you're ever called upon to use it for the purpose for which it was actually created. Ben. To learn more about Bravo Company manufacturing, they're awesome people. on over to bravo company mfg.com. You can discover more about their products. Special offers, upcoming news. That is bravo company mfg.com. Really stellar, stellar folks. You should check out their awesome videos. Meet the people who make their products at YouTube.com slash bravo company USA. Now is a good time to be armed, I think. So I think Bravo Company MFG.com would be a good stop for you on

the interwebs today. And check out their videos to YouTube.com slash bravo company USA. Fantastic videos that they put out, by the way, very informative, a lot of their entertaining. and it's not only the right of an American to own a firearm, I believe it's the responsibility of an American to own a firearm. Head over to Bravo Company manufacturing with us today by popular demand because people often write in. And when they write in, one of the things that they say is, Matt Walsh isn't on the show.

When are you going to have Matt Walsh on the show? Why isn't Matt Walsh on the show? And I always say because Matt Walsh lives on a freaking farm on the East Coast. He checks for sunlight twice a year. He raises his kids and he does his show from his home studio. I have met Matt Walsh point five times in all of my years in the conservative. But since we're all doing the show remotely now, it seems perfectly natural to invite on our colleague, Matt Walsh. Matt, are you with us?

I'm here. I think I'm here, right? You are here. I am here. Okay. You are the Daily Wire host with the finest beard. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. Wow. Well, that's, I guess it's just between me and you, so you have given me that title then. Occasionally, Drew, has a nice beard.

In fact, Drew, the last time I saw you, you had a beard. I have a beard. It's just white, so you can't see it. Is that what's going to happen? Not to you, bud. I'm waiting for it to grow in someday. Matt, we've all kind of gone around the horn and given an update about where we are on the current goings-on, COVID and the, and the government response.

I think we should give you that same opportunity. Just give us a brief catch-up of where you are on the topic. Well, I've been ready to get things opened up again for weeks now. So I'm glad that some states are starting to do that. I think, I don't know if you guys mentioned the report in the New York Times about the U.N. raising the concern of 150 million people globally who could be on the brink of starvation because of the lockdown and the ramifications of that. You know, when you look at that and then you also factor in, of course, in this country, the homelessness and drug overdoses and suicide, there's a very good chance that many more people will die because of the lockdown than we have saved by the lockdown, especially when you consider, I'm not convinced we've saved a single person from the lockdown.

We may have just sort of put off their death temporarily. So is that worth the price? And I would say definitely not. And then when you factor in, of course, civil liberties and everything is. It's just, I think it's been maybe the greatest blunder by the American government in history. It could end up being their worst blunder in history when all is said and done. That's an interesting point that you raised that we may not have actually saved any lives from the lockdown. And I think this is something that we have talked about. We haven't gotten very specific on this show. And that's the, Ben, you've talked about this on your show. The idea that flattening the curve doesn't actually change the total area of the curve,

the area of the curve representing the total number of people for sort of encompassing. in the curve, that when you flatten it, you also extend it out. And since you can't extend it backwards, because time moves linearly, you're just extending it out in front of you into the future. How are, right now, how are Dr. Fauci, how are the other people who are leading sort of the federal government's response to this, the so-called, I won't say so-called experts. They're certainly experts at things at which I'm not an expert. I don't know that means that we should defer the running of the country to them, but they certainly know more about virology and epidemiology than I do. What are the experts been saying right now about the actual projected death toll as a result

of the lockdown? So the latest that I've seen is still from that IHME study, which was obviously being downgraded in real time. It was a curve-fitting study. It wasn't a study where they were sort of trying to intuit what factors went into this. They were just looking at various curves in various countries and then basically averaging them. And as more information came in, the study's got more accurate. They're suggesting still, last I checked, about 60,000, 61,000 deaths in the United States. That's by the end of June, I believe. So now everybody is talking about that second wave. And I was pointing out when it came to these models, particularly that particular IHME study, that that study cuts off August 1st.

So if it cuts off August 1st, you don't get any of the second wave. And one of the things that Sweden has been trying is, of course, to try and reach some level of herd immunity so that when a second wave comes, it's more of a ripple than a second wave. One of the concerns here is that as kids go back to school and as people start to sort of go back to normal, that there will be a massive second wave in the fall. Now, I will say that if the U.S. healthcare system had been completely swamped, that would have been a very, very bad thing. It would have meant additional deaths because some people who needed care were not going to be able to get care the way that it was in Italy. Also, if you happen to like our private health care system, there would never have been

a better case against the U.S. private health care system than if we get swamped by Italy. If it turns out there's just people dying in the ER wards waiting for a ventilator, then the calls for Medicare for All would have been a lot, a lot worse than they have been even so far. I want to push back just a little bit with something that I haven't heard a lot of people drawing attention to. And that's the fact that actually our health care system is largely shut down with the exception of the response to COVID-19 itself. A lot of hospitals, no elective surgeries, but it's not just no elective surgeries. I know people who are pregnant who have not been able to get in and see a doctor in the last month. I know people personally have not been able to get chemotherapy for their cancer treatment within the last month because hospitals are laying off staff.

They can't bring people in. They're afraid of the liability of bringing people in with COVID rampaging the way that it is, in particular people with cancer or other diseases. Do you think it's possible? You know, 600,000 people die in the country every year just from cancer. If you take one month of cancer treatment off of the table, I mean, you could see 60,000 extra fatalities in the country just from the care. we're not giving people another high-risk categories. Have you seen any science around that yet, or is it just one of the things we haven't gotten? Well, the number of excess deaths, I mean, so far the number of excess deaths this month is a lot

higher than it was this time last year. So, you know, to suggest that on the tail end, there might be more death. Again, that is possible, but I think that it's hard to imagine that the tail-end death rate for what are basically emergency surgery was still available during this time. If you're talking about elective surgery, which, again, for many people, is not elective, right? some of those surgeries are deeply important, hip replacement surgeries and all that, then that's bad stuff and it means that it's going to have to come back online. Even Andrew Cuomo is now allowing those things to come back online in New York State.

With all of that said, I wouldn't want to downgrade what has happened over the past month. I mean, when people compare this to the flu, for example, I know a lot of people have been objecting to any of those sorts of comparisons. First of all, I think that comparing viral diseases to viral diseases make sense. but there are ways in which this is not like a flu. One way is this is not like a flu is that the entire death toll for a year in a completely open environment with a vaccine available for the flu is maybe 30 or 40,000, anywhere from 20 to 60,000 in a year. We've seen 46,000 deaths in the United States effectively in three and a half weeks.

I mean, that is an extraordinary toll. And if the lockdowns end and people do not socially distance, and again, I think that's the best it's going to be. I don't think there's a world where the lockdown ends and everything is hunky-dory and a lot of people don't die. I think a lot of people will die. I think the question is going to be, are people responsible enough to be trusted with their liberty, such that they are not going around, coughing on each other, going to highly populated areas and infecting each other.

I do trust the American people with that liberty. I think that this is what you saw in Florida. In Florida, Ronda Santis left a lot of the beaches open because guess what? You're not going to get this on a beach if you stay six feet away from other people. And that's why the objections to what was going on in Jacksonville were absurd. Even Dr. Berks was pretty cautious on this stuff. It was like, are you guys kidding. There have been 20 cases in Jacksonville.

And people are six feet away from each other. Matt, I want you to speak if you can to something Ben just said. You know, the only place Ben I'll push back is when you say, you know, 30 to 60,000 people die in America from the flu in a year. But that's not quite right. The flu season is a fairly short piece of the year, three, four months. So, of course. That's a calendar year. I mean, the flu dies off during the summer and then it comes back during the fall.

I mean, during a calendar year, 30 to 60,000 people, 20, 60,000 people will die. We've seen nearly that many people die in a month. And there's no question that in this month, we've seen an unbelievable number of fatality. Certainly that's true. It has yet to be seen. Will COVID die down also during the summer? Will it also have that sort of seasonal aspect to it? Matt, the one interesting piece of what Ben just said, though, is we do have a vaccine for the flu. So we have 30 to 60,000 people who die every year from the flu in this country with a vaccine. What do you think is our hope where things like treatments and vaccines are concerned? What are you seeing out there that gives you hope? And what are you seeing out there maybe just as a realist? Yeah, I can speak as a realist. I mean, in terms of what treatments are on the horizon, I can't really speak to that. All I can do is listen to what the doctors say in terms of a vaccine. And I haven't heard anyone, any knowledgeable person predict that we're going to have a vaccine within a year. I mean, we're looking at a year or two years. If they even come up with a vaccine, that's the other thing. We're acting as though it's definite there will be a vaccine. There might not be one. But if there is one, it's going to be years, you know, it's going to be quite a distance in the future. So the point is, you know, Ben raises, well, can we trust Americans with their liberty? well, eventually we're going to have to no matter what. And so it seems to me, it seems to me either we can trust people to go out and be responsible or not. And if we can, then what was the point of the lockdown?

Because we could have just done that to begin with. And if we can't, then we're going to have to face that eventually anyway. And I don't see what delaying it really accomplishes because, yeah, we avoided overrunning the hospitals in the last couple months. But it doesn't mean that it can't happen whenever we do open up because we're going to have to open up before. before the vaccine comes. The other thing I'd also raise is we're looking at this, and it's way to a media. Like, we're looking at, you know,

what's happening in the last month or two months. We're trying to solve the problem in a span of months. Really, the story is going to be told over the course of many years. I mean, even something like, look at the Great Depression. People point out that during the height of the Great Depression, suicide rates actually did not spike. And that's the claim anyway. But if you look at the late 1930s,

you did see a spike in suicide rates. And I think the reason is because people are having their lives destroyed, they don't kill themselves immediately. It's just, it's an over a course of time, and then they just give up, and they fall into despair. So we have to look at this. We have to take a, we're expecting results way too quickly, I think, and we're judging things in a much of, too immediate fashion, I think. Yeah, because that is the question. You know, I think to Drew's point, when you're looking at these politicians, and they've got something, they, they have no idea what it is. China's been lying. The WHO's been lying. Sure, you give them a little bit of grace,

because they want to err on the side of caution. That's fair enough. But we did not overwhelm the hospital system. I think now there's a lot of evidence. We would not have overwhelmed the hospital system. We don't know yet. I mean, I guess we'll have more data on that as this goes on. Was this more widely spread than we thought it was?

Did it hit us earlier than we thought it did initially? Who knows? If the lockdowns did not do anything to mitigate the overwhelming the hospital system, if that wasn't a factor, then we need to reassess immediately because then to Matt's point, it will have served no purpose other than, I suppose, a psychological purpose. We feel good that we're doing something. And perhaps a fact-finding purpose.

Like, we didn't know five weeks ago the things that we know today. Exactly, yes. This is why I always objected to the lockdown, but I'm willing to concede that I was an extremist on it, and that perhaps the lockdown was warranted five weeks ago. The question is, does it continue to be warranted today? Drew, you have a unique experience that I don't believe any of the others of us tonight have, which is you've done work with suicide hotlines, you're married to a professional therapist who helps people deal with these psychological problems and some of the hardships that can befall

a person in life. What kind of concerns do you have about increased suicidality and even generational problems like the generational effects of unemployment, alcoholism, increased rates of suicidality, increased rates of teen pregnancy? Do you think those are legitimate concerns or do you think it's too early for those to be things that we're overly worried about? Well, it's too early to know whether they'll happen, but there's certainly legitimate concerns. And, you know, this goes back to an old argument, you know, we always had where I say, you've always said, well, if your community falls apart, you should move, and that may be true, but that's not what happens. And when people's lives and communities fall apart, they die.

And that is something we saw because of the Obama economy, and it could happen again. If we suffer that kind of depression, Matt is absolutely right. it doesn't happen right away. Being isolated is terrible for depression. Marriages that have tensions in them. I mean, I'm thanking God every day that I love my wife so much because if you're stuck in a, you know, it's terrible for her because she's stuck with me, but I'm like stuck with her and it's great.

You know, if you're stuck in a marriage that's tense and now you've got to really deal with those things and know where to go, that can be a real stressor. And the isolation can be a terrible, terrible thing. So yeah, this is going to be, you know, I'm not going to predict suicides because I just don't know. I really don't know what's going to happen. I think that that's the most important thing.

None of us knows yet what is going to happen or how this is going to play out. I'm hoping the economy will rumble back to life in a good way. But over time, absolutely, this is a real thing. And the people in the press who are saying that if you are talking about the economy, you don't care about human life, are just idiots because economy is human life. The economy is how we live. It's how we support one another. It's how we find meaning in our life.

It's how we have dignity in our life. And we saw under the Obama economy what happens to people when they don't have that. So, yeah, it's definitely a concern. Ben. I mean, I would also urge people who are conservative not to rely too heavily on the argument that when the economy goes down, people will be suicidal or there will be deaths of despair, simply because that is betting an unsure thing against a sure thing, which is the number of bodies that are piling up on this thing.

that sort of, I just don't think that's an easy argument to make. I think the argument that nobody will make, but is the honest argument, is the quality of life matters too in this country. I mean, the idea that somehow it does us no damage, that we just have to stack up, the way Andrew Cuomo put it today, we just have to stack up pure loss of life against all other factors. Single factor analysis sucks, no matter how you slice it. Single factor analysis is the worst analysis you can do. It's true statistically. It is true in life. That is not how people actually make considerations. I mean, the fact is that if you,

Andrew Cuomo is saying things like, well, if we could save one life, then we should do whatever. That is the last refuge of the rogue, that particular argument. And to pretend the public policy isn't the weighing of priorities, including, by the way, the priority of not being broke and watching your life's dreams destroyed and watching your family fall apart. You may

live, but your life may suck an awful lot. Last I checked, the conflict between capitalism and communism wasn't purely about the number of lives to be saved. It was also about the kind of life that people wanted to live, and that sort of stuff is incredibly important. I mean, you're seeing tens of millions of people who never thought that they were going to be on a food line. Now, waiting in line for a food bank after having expended their entire life savings to start a restaurant, then having it forcibly shut down by the government in the middle

of this thing. And then you're seeing people like Don Lemon on TV saying, well, you know, these are just people who want a haircut. You know, go F yourself, dude. And if the consideration is supposed to be that there are, you know, that if the consideration is supposed to be just purely along one axis, which is the loss of human life, then obviously that does implicate the sort of bubble argument. Okay, fine, well, then let's all lock down. Let's go into bubbles. Nobody ever drives again.

Nobody ever works again. That's when you get into the arguments that you've seen some people getting criticized for on Fox News. But that argument is begged by the attitude of some people on the left, which is the only factor that we should be concerned about in any way is purely the number of lives lost. Again, quality of life matters.

I mean, my God. That brings me to my last question while we have Matt with us. There's five religious men broadcasting here today. Only one of us is correct in our theology, which means that it can't be the two who agree with everything that the Pope says. Not this Pope, but just other Pope. Just generally. Just the Pope's generally.

And we all know that it's not Drew. I'm the only one with a direct connection. Five religious men, and we are obviously going through something that has massive spiritual implications. in the country right now. In fact, my view is that one of the reasons that we've seen the level of panic that we've seen, and I love it when people say, there's no panic. There's only us trying to do the absolute right thing. And then we have snitch lines for what to do with our neighbors. Obviously, obviously there's panic in the country right now, huge tension in the country.

My view of it is that at least in part it's because we're, you know, we stand on the shoulders of the greatest generation who defeated war, disease, poverty, and death in the West, in particular in America, and we are a generation of people who've just not contemplated mortality. Matt, what do you think about the sort of spiritual piece, the sort of spirit? What does this reveal about us, and what might we do to address it? I think you're exactly right. I think people are coming up against the reality that we are mortal, and you see that even in far less dramatic circumstances. You think back, it feels like 10 years ago now, but Kobe Bryant, remember when Kobe Bryant died, not that long ago,

biggest story in the world for a week. And I think the reason why that stuff, celebrity deaths and so on, affect people so much is just because it makes us think about the fact that, oh, my gosh, I'm going to die. And here's this person who was a part of my life, at least in a peripheral sense, and it's gone now. So I'll be gone soon too. And then this even more. It's a reality. Death is out there. And then it becomes this awkward thing because you do want to make the point that, listen, you know, death is not the worst thing in the world. It is going to happen to all of us. We don't want to give up everything just to avoid death because it's a fool's errand anyway. And that's just not the right or dignified way to live. When you try to make that point,

of course, you get descended upon by the media. Look at the lieutenant governor of Texas, Dan Patrick. Yeah. He made this point and said that there are things worse than death. And I would rather risk my own life to preserve a civilization for my children, which is the, which is the the right attitude for a parent to have, but of course people act like that's some sort of nihilistic, suicidal position when it's the exact opposite. That's the position of someone who realizes that life is meaningful. And if you realize that life is meaningful, you also realize that it's not the most meaningful thing in the world. And I think that's what we're missing. You know, Glenn Beck was also descended upon by the vultures in the media for making a similar

point three weeks ago. It was actually a really good point. His point was, there are things that I'm willing to die for, and I'm willing to die to keep 30 million of my countrymen from going through that kind of despair. He wasn't calling for recklessness, but he was calling for a shift in perspective. Michael? Yeah, this was the thesis of one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, Ronald Reagan's a time for choosing. He said, the people to our left, they say better red than dead. I mean, Andrew Cuomo more or less said that today. And he said, that isn't true, but when did this idea begin? Should Moses have refused to lead the Israelites out of Egypt? Should Christ have refused the cross should the Patriots at Concord Bridge have refused to fire the shot heard down

around the world. There are things in life that are worth dying for. Of course there are. And there's something really beautiful about this carnage of coronavirus. There's actually a little beauty hidden tucked away there as a silver lining, which is that it began basically on Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of Lent when you have what's called the Memento Mori. You were told, Remember Man, you were dust and to dust you shall return. One of my earliest shows during this whole pandemic was called, we're all going to die. Statistically, the vast majority of us are not going to die but we are going to die. And, you know, if there's anything positive about being in isolation, it gets you away from all the distractions of life and you start to contemplate the eternal questions.

And that can either be very uplifting or absolutely terrifying. Yeah. Probably more terrifying when you're Drew's age. It's not my only joke. Actually not, though. It's actually, it's actually the other way around. I mean, at some point, you feel like you've lived. At some point, you feel like you did some of what you were sent to do. In my case, my life has been insanely joyful, and God owes me absolutely nothing. But to Michael's point, what he said is really true, is the one positive thing about this, is to stop for a minute, to get away from distractions, to get away from the business of your life, for those of us who are not necessarily in desperate financial straits, does give you a moment to sort of say, well, wait a minute, what was I doing that for?

Why was that so important? One of the aspects of American life is that it really is full of good stuff. It's full of machines and it's full of food and it's full of wine and it's just got a lot of stuff to enjoy that can make you think that life is everything, that this moment is everything. The fame that can be gotten just by going on Twitter is fame that the poets would have died for a long time ago. Or now. Everybody has it.

Everybody's, yeah, exactly. Everybody's, everybody's family. Everybody's got it now except poets. Except poets. But no, you know, suddenly you realize that there's a reason rich, famous people commit suicide. There's a reason they're unhappy and they drink and they have a thousand divorces. It's because suddenly you find that's actually not what life is about.

Life is about a lot of other things. And when you have a certain amount of time to confront your mortality, but also to confront the quiet. just the sheer quiet of not being distracted, it can be very edifying. Welcome to Shabbas, bitch. He's the host of the Matt Walsh show. Matt Walsh, thank you for joining us, and thanks for being a great contributor to Daily Wire,

even though you are rarely a contributor to backstage. Well, can I just say that I want to predict that our friend Jason over at Media Matters is going to... That moment from Michael when he said there's something beautiful about the carnage. That's going to be on Twitter tonight. I'm just predicting right now. You know, that guy, Matt, that guy...

The thing that's beautiful. For Media Matters, explainer, for media matters, he doesn't mean the dead people and all of the carnage. He doesn't mean any of that. He's just... The thing that you guys... Let them take Knowles. The thing that you guys don't know.

Just cart them away, like the Ghanaian grave carriers. Just go. Just go, Noel. The thing that you guys don't understand about that guy, Jason, and all the other people at Media Matters, I'm actually paying them. They're my publicist. The only reason people watch my show is they cut my clips, so I'm very grateful to them.

Matt, thank you for being with us. You know, one of the things that I've done since the last time that we were all together, and it's actually not because of COVID. I had actually started contemplating it before and even taken the first steps, is I actually went to policy genius and bought a life insurance policy. I felt they've been great sponsors to show. My wife and I, neither of us have had a policy beyond our limited policy that we both have through our employers. And I wanted to go through the whole process with PolicyGenius. I went over

to PolicyGenius.com. It took mere minutes to get a quote. Even during this difficult time that we've been in when most of L.A., most of the country has been shut down, they still sent health professionals out to our home to take blood and do the sort of physical examinations that they need to do to be able to qualify us for these policies. And I can't speak highly enough about this remarkable service, policy genius, you know, we're always prone to get things wrong. That's just life, but there are also things we can get right on the first try. Shopping for life insurance can be one of the latter instead of one of the former. That's where policy genius comes in. Policy genius makes finding the right life insurance a breeze in minutes, and it was truly minutes. You can compare quotes from the

top insurers to find your best price. You could say $1,500 or more a year by using policy genius to compare life insurance policies. I'll go ahead and tell you a little bit more. more because I did want to go through the whole policy genius experience, but I'm also what they call a cheapskate. And so once I got my quotes from policy genius, I will confess to you that I went to a whole other carrier and got a quote before I decided to pull the trigger. And policy genius blew them away. I want to say who I got that quote from. It is someone well known in our space who also offers life insurance. Policy genius absolutely came in with the best quotes, made it super simple, both for myself and my wife, and life insurance is not the only thing that they offer.

You can also get your home, auto insurance, disability insurance. Take care of yourself, take care of your loved ones. Now's a good time. While we're all contemplating mortality, it's also good to think about what happens in the wake of our mortality. Who do we leave behind? What kind of needs do they have? What sort of responsibilities do we actually still have? We incur those responsibilities now, and they remain even after we're gone. Life insurance is one of those. Being able to provide for your family is one of those, and you can do that at policygenius.com. Ben. Well, here's the deal, folks. There are lots of things in life that you regret. I regret having hired Knowles. I'm going to regret it more in the coming days after what he just said, the idiot.

But the fact is that one of the things you shouldn't regret is buying life insurance through policy genius because you will be doing it right. Go check out PolicyGenius right now. In just a few minutes, you can find your best price and apply at policygenius.com. We all get things wrong from time to time. At least get your life insurance right with policy genius. I believe that we have Elisha Krauss back with us to bring us some questions from our DailyWire.com, all access and insider plus members. Elisha.

Absolutely. And for people that want to be able to ask questions during this backstage or future backstages, by the way, be sure to head on over to DailyWire.com because there's that special special happening right now where you can get not one but two leftist tears, tumblers. So all the more reason, even if you live alone and you're sheltering at home alone and you don't feel like doing the dishes while you just chill on the couch and eat snacks and watch Netflix all the time, then that's okay. You can have two to rotate out while you wash or hopefully you're a good conservative who's gotten married and is making lots of babies, so then you and your spouse can have one too. So head on over to dailywire.com. That's if you become a DailyWire Insider Plus or an All Access member, then you can get the 10% off code using backstage over at DailyWire.com.

Right, this is an interesting question because we've talked a lot before. I mean, in American politics in general, every guy seems to get elected to office and four years later they have aged an insane amount, right? So do you guys think that Donald Trump has aged at all in the last four years or has he aged more since all this COVID stuff happened? Donald Trump has not aged a day. Not a minute. It's unbelievable. Not a minute. No, you know, the reason for this. They're just sort of like, go ahead, Niles. You make your joke and then I'll make mine. This is, I mean, it's not, it's almost not. not even a joke that you saw Obama age like 300 years in the eight years he was in office because he hated being president. He loved campaigning. He was really good at that, but he was not good at being president. And Trump, it's like he gets younger every day. He loves fighting with Jim Acosta so much that he is now holding daily press briefings. He's like he's going to be 10 years old by the time this is all over. Okay, so now I'm going to make my joke. Okay, so have you ever left?

I remember back in the days when my family did not keep kosher, and you would get like McDonald's fries, and then you would just sort of like leave them in the car, right? And then you'd come back, like a year later, and there's no mold on them. They looked exactly the same. That's Donald Trump. It turns out that organic does not do you good.

When your entire diet, your entire life consists of nothing but fast food and diet Coke, it's actually like formaldehyde for the body. Like at a certain point, you just become that. He's actually, you don't need a wax figure of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a wax figure of Donald Trump. Yeah. I believe it was, I believe it was, I believe it was, uh, I believe it was Jay Leno who said once that you could bury a chicken McNugget. Uh, a thousand years later, someone could be digging. They'd find it and they go, ah, a chicken McNugget. This is exactly, exactly right. And as opposed to like Joe Biden, right? Like Joe Biden is somebody who, it seems, tried to stay healthy, ate a salad every once in a while. But then he tried to backfill this thing. You can't backfill it. Okay, if you're going to go full fake, you've got to start at like age 20 and eat nothing but artery-hardening food and just never exercise.

You've got to keep that life force in place. Never exercise ever because we all know that expends your life force. Biden like goes for walks and he challenges people to push up contest. And the plastic surgery was in attempt to backfill time. And so what's happened is that it's had an outsized impact on him to the point where his forehead actually now extends from the middle of his face all the way to the back of his head. And the rest of his face has actually been crammed into the bottom half of his face. are now millimeters away from his mouth. And that is not happening with Donald Trump. Donald Trump is just, he's like the portrait. He's like the portrait of Dorian Gray. He never ages, except he's the

reverse, because the portrait is also him, right? The portrait is just a mirror for Donald Trump. All of his sins never actually accrue to anyone. And also, they do not age him. It's pretty incredible. What sense? Donald Trump likes to live a life where you don't really have to ask for forgiveness. That's a great point. True. Fair. You know, when Obama finally endorsed the last man in the room because the potted plant with vote for me finally fell over. So he said, all right, I'll endorse Joe Biden.

And I heard that voice again. I have to say it was like a drill in my teeth. It was just that droning, wade, pompous voice. And then you hear Donald Trump and they say, well, there's going to be a depression. And he says, I built a great economy before. I'll do it again. That's how you stay young forever. It's like, what could you say? There'll be a nuclear war. I'll bring everybody back to life, you know? I think that attitude, I think that attitude is just good for you.

Alicia. All right, speaking of nuclear war that Drew just mentioned, somebody says Kim Jong-un with a question mark and says that you guys should have no context necessary. Well, that's fair. I would say it's more like Kim Jung, unlikely to be alive. Am I right? Am I right? The most amazing thing about the Kim Jong-un story, because truly none of us know. It's a close society. It's very difficult to get information. Donald Trump doesn't know, although he wishes Kim Jong-un well, because he knows him very well.

I'm sure Dennis Rodman may have an inside scoop that we, the real story here right now, listen, there may be a story of a transition of power. There may be a story of a complete new day for North Korea, but we have not arrived at that story yet. The story we have arrived at is how badly CNN handled the rollout of this story and how there will be no mention made of it anywhere, no consequences, nothing. That's where we've arrived with the media is no matter what they do, no matter what prediction doesn't come true, no matter what story is completely false, no matter what false narrative they peddle. It gets memory holds so fast. Ben, is that because of the age of Trump? Is it because of the age of the

internet or is that because the only place you would get such a story as well there's no account there's no accountability for mainstream media you know for a fact that if daily wire had jumped on that and reported at first suddenly that appears in every single google result for a year right right for us but if it's cnn that does it then cnn is still a reliable trusted source that people should trust for their news i mean that that is just the the bias that is inherent in the industry that we are in there actually is another buried story here too which is that people are like oh you know kim jung un sister might take over remember five minutes ago when the media were basically bowing down to kim jim jung sister. Remember, she went to the Olympics, and the whole thing was, she's so gorgeous and look at her,

and she slay queen. Well, she may actually be slaying people. She may actually be slaying queen, right, in very short order. And it's going to be fun to watch the media. I will say, I'm looking forward to the obits. I mean, for Kim Jong-un, number one, because he's a horrible human being. And there are very few people who deserve to die, but he's definitely one of them. But if Kim Jong-un, word of plots, the obituaries would just, like, would be, he's not an austere religious scholar quite, like All Backdadi, but would he be beloved, rotund, scratch golfer? Would he be, would he be well-known, well-known unicorn sanctuary founder? Like, well, what exactly would be the headline in the New York Times about Kim Jong-un?

Unbelievable. Elisha, we have time for one more question. All right, this is a fun question. kind of takes people's mind off of COVID for a little bit. If there was one person from the past that you could bring back to life, who would it be? Drew. No, that was my answer. You would dream, Drew, Rex.

I thought you were going to say Ben because Ben died over a little like 30 minutes ago. I don't mind you're making fun of me. I mind that you've got the best line of this show. That disturbs me. You know, it's funny. I've been living a lot of. just because of stuff I'm writing, I've been living a lot among the romantic poets who are my favorite, the English romantic poets, were my favorite poets. And I've always wanted to meet John Keats. He lived for a very short time and did some of the greatest poetry in the history of the world. And I've just, he had an amazing mind. And he was one of the very few poets who was a decent human being. And he's just been much on my mind of late. And I just would love to sit down and talk to him. Michael? You know, I guess I'd have to go with Dante. I want to go way back. I don't want to say like Reagan or Washington or I want to go all the way back to Dante because Reagan, you know, he was like a pretty quiet guy. He didn't have a lot of friends. He was very loud publicly, but privately wasn't. Washington was apparently kind of stern. I think Dante, he's a guy I could get like 10 or 20 drinks with and really probe him, you know, and have a great time. So I'm going for him also because there hasn't been a great poet since John Keats. So, you know, I want to bring one of those guys back.

Ben. I mean, the obvious answer is Moses, because I have questions. I have some serious questions. Yeah. I will give an answer, but I'll also give a faux answer, which is a friend of mine once said, it's too bad you can't bring Jesus back to life. Imagine what he could have accomplished if they hadn't killed him,

which if you're a Christian, if you're a Christian is one of the great. You've got to reread the story, you know. You've got to reread. I probably would bring Washington. I'm fascinated by Washington because he was such a singular figure historically. There's very few men in all of history who were as central to the moment in which they lived as he was. Truly, if any other person had been in the position that he was in, I don't think we would have had the country that we have.

That said, I'm sometimes struck by the fact that he died, and his death is terrible, because he basically bled himself to death, right? he basically killed himself by believing in a barbaric practice of bleeding when you have a fever. Otherwise, he'd still be with us. And yet, his death came, as with almost every aspect of his life, his death came exactly when it probably had to occur in order for us to remain America. Because as things fell into more and more disarray after he left office, there's more and more call for him to sort of step back up. John Adams wanted to bring him back in a military capacity, bringing back his commander-in-chief. And so it's probably, it's fairly amazing that he did every single thing that he had to do to give us a country, including dying, when he did.

Guys, we've all gotten this answer wrong. And when I say the correct answer, you're all going to acknowledge it is the correct answer. A person who you would bring back from death so that you could ask questions? Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein. What did you say? What did you say? Jeffrey Epstein.

Who's that? I, I know. Out of the news. I honestly thought you were going to say Carol Baskin's first husband. Right. But Jeffrey Epstein has so much more to tell. I mean, all Carol Baskin's first husband has to say is that was a mistake. Jeffrey Epstein, man, that guy's got some stories to tell.

Yeah. Another guy who probably died right when he had to to save our country. Elisha, what's your answer to this one? I would say Hamilton, just because I want to know if he likes the play or not, and who shot first. He does not like the play. He doesn't like the play. I'll answer it for you, Alicia. He doesn't like the play. I know you think he doesn't like the play. But you're right. You're right. He's going to come back. You're right. He's going to come back from 1803. And he's going to be like, you know what I like this newfangled form we call rap? I'm really into it. I want him to school Lynn Manuel Miranda and be like, no, half of this is not historically accurate, dude. What the heck?

So Alicia, stick around with us as I present my last question to the panel. for tonight. You know, it, as we talked briefly about, it's Earth Day. Also, we're in the middle of a once in a century traumatic event for the country. Leave it to the left to conflate these two things. And they also see a silver lining. Their silver lining isn't what it can teach us spiritually to look at the kinds of tragedies that are taking place around us. To them, the silver lining is humans are dying and not burning fossil fuel. Yep. And this isn't a joke. It's not hyperbole. There was an actual story out today about how we've cut carbon emissions. for 2020 by 6%.

And if we do that every year for the next 10 years, we'll be on track to accomplish the Paris climate changes. The Paris Climate Accords projections, Ben. You got into a little bit of a war on Twitter over this today, which I always appreciate. Well, yeah, I mean, the guy's a tool bag. I mean, Eric Holdhouse is the name of the guy. So he tweeted out, he's like, well, this just proves that we can do it, guys.

I have questions. Like a few hundred thousand people are dead and the entire world economy is destroyed. So we could. But we're one tenth of the way they're been. Exactly. I feel like there's some downsides that are being ignored in this little calculation that you've done here. And then, of course, he did the ridiculous Twitter trick,

which is that when somebody who's more prominent than you retweets you or says something to you, then you change your Twitter handle to rip them. And so his very clever repost to me pointing out that perhaps the near apocalypse might not be the best solution to the possibility that the climate is going to warm by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the course of the next 100 years, that perhaps the complete destruction of all we hold dear and the deaths of thousands of people who we like, that maybe that might not actually be the best possible solution to the fact that water level is going to rise by like, you know, a foot over the course of the next century. When I pointed this out, he went to Ben Shapiro was a racist, which I have to say, was extraordinarily

convincing. I immediately recanted my prior position. And now I am absolutely on board with mass numbers of people just dying, because, I mean, that will obviously save, that will obviously save the world. If we can only save the world so that there are no people. I mean, this is actually the real solution, right? We just get rid of the people, right? If it weren't for the people, the air would be beautiful, the trees would be blooming. This, I actually connected the whole house thing to, I'm going to rip on your boy again here in Knowles, but I connected it to the whole Pope Nature is taking revenge. It's like, I have something to tell you about nature.

I've been trying to warn people about nature for a long time. I'm warning about nature. And Alicia, this one's for you. This goes out to Alicia Krause, who loves her some nature. Okay, I've been saying this, Alicia can test to it because she was on morning radio with me for years. Nature is trying to murder you. This is nature's job. Nature is trying to kill you.

Yes, nature will give you the bounty of her fruit. Until you're age 35, at which point you are susceptible to everything and you will die, right? If you are just out there in the open, your life expectancy is like 35 years old, and then you're dead. You're dead, right? So nature's been trying to kill us for an awful long time. And the idea that I ought to have sympathy for the rocks and the trees and the dung beetles, in the absence of what they can do for, you know, intelligent human beings who are capable of helping other people and making the world a better place for other human beings. Like, yes, I damn well do value my children over the trees.

Sorry, if I have to make the decision to sweater the air is minutely cleaner or my kids live another year, that is not a decision in any way, shape, or form. And this notion that like we're supposed to prize nature for herself because nature is the true glory. You know what nature is trying to do right now, right now that she's planning. You know what nature is trying to. Yeah, she's hiding right behind that wall. That is correct. Behind every wall, in fact.

Behind all the walls is nature. And nature is waiting to murder you. We developed an entire civilization to get away from nature, like a horror film. Okay. People go camping. Notice to people go camping. I'm glad you enjoy the camping. We developed an entire civilization so you don't have to camp.

an entire civilization that has a permanent roof, right, with like running water and toilets so that you don't live in your own feces and have to drag animals out of their hidey holes and roast them over tiny fires. Let's, the absolute worship of nature, I like hiking too. Okay, but can be real about like what nature does and what nature is and how nature is amoral and wants to kill you? But Ben, one of the things that the guy actually said in that Twitter thread was, if we don't accomplish the Paris Climate Accord projections, in other words, if things aren't as they are now for a decade or more, he said, in our lifetime, our entire civilization will be destroyed. And they say we're science deniers. I mean, the same people who think that humans can live on Mars think that the temperature going up, a degree and a half on Earth, will destroy all civilization, not have consequences, destroy our civilization. Michael. You know, the timing of this is pretty amazing, exactly to Ben's point, which is that at precisely the same time that we are being told that the Earth in its fury concocted the coronavirus to wipe us all out, because we, humanity, we're the true virus. At the very

same time, we are being told that we need to celebrate the Earth. This is the greatest argument I've ever heard for pollution. I'm going to go out when this is all over and buy a Hummer. I'm going to drink out of 10 plastic straws at a time. I think now's the time. We've got to to start polluting. Oh, sorry, sorry. I have to, we have to say, sorry, everyone, I need your comments on that amazing AOC tweet about the price of oil. Okay, I just need your comment on this, right? Because this was a signal moment in American political history, was the price of oil, the futures drop a low zero. It was like negative $36 a barrel. So they would be like pay you to just take a barrel of oil and wheel it over to your house and just leave it in the backyard. And AOC's like,

I can't think of a better like time to invest in green energy. It's like, remind me not invest with the AOC hedge fund. That's not how investing works. They always say, really, buy, high, sell low. I think that's what the AOC hedge fund is telling you to do. And it's also, it was a genuinely offensive comment because you've got tens of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Americans maybe in the energy sector losing their jobs.

And she says, you love to see it. That's what she said. You love to see it. You know, this is, well, this is the thing that has been revealed is how, incredibly much. They detest the working classes. They hate us. They hate the people who and I shouldn't include me. I mean people that they're supposed to be the defenders of. Socialism is supposed to be workers of the world unites. They hate them. And I would just like to add that Earth Day, I always like to say this at least once on Earth Day. There's only one

interesting thing about the Earth, just one, and that's us, that mind of man is the only interesting thing about the Earth. When somebody once said to me, I would give up every human being to preserve the beauty of the tiger. And I said, the tiger has no beauty except in the mind of man. Nothing that exists that is of value exists except in the mind of man, excluding in the mind of God. I will acknowledge that. But here on earth, here on earth, everything, beauty, truth, morality, the worth of the earth, all of it exists in the mind of man. Take away the mind of man. The earth is just a rock floating in space. And all of these people who worship Gaia and all of these people who worship isms, you know, socialism or this is a fact.

feminism or whatever isom they worship. They don't understand. It's all about us. It's all about our good, our benefit, our closeness to our creator. That's it. Elisha, you like to sleep in tents and pee on rocks. I think you're the only camper among us. Are you trying to say in the manlies of you all? Then yes, maybe. But in my defense, as much as I like hiking and camping, and so does Drew, by the way. How come y'all don't give them crap for that? I am the one that it's actually, like, gone hunting and knows how to skin a deer and would, you know, was raised around cattle and stuff. It's been interesting because you do know that people now are buying, like, chicken, like laying hens in mass. And there are suppliers all around the country that say that they're not laying chicks available until June.

So I'm going to wait and get a deal in July and August when all of this is blown over and finally get my Krausehouse chicken coop. And then when I deliver you guys fresh eggs, you will not be making fun of Mother Nature anymore. No, we'll just be making fun of Mother Nature anymore. nature because I'm just going to note there's a place. It's called, it's called a supermarket. It sells eggs to me like right now. Like any time I want, anytime I want. I don't have to wait till June for you and your chicken to bring me eggs. All I have to do is go down the block with like five bucks because cap, here's an isom. Capitalism. I love capitalism. Oh, there is. The monies. Because capitalism is not really an ism. That's why. Well, that's true.

That's right. It is a recognition of basic human freedom. That's all. It's just a Corollary basically came in for you. Capitalism is. And in fact, even where people aren't free markets exist. Guys, thank you for tuning in and joining us for our lockdown edition of Backstage. If you are a Daily Wire Insider Plus or Insider or All Access member, listen, we're grateful. Thank you for supporting us. If you're not, hey, head over to Daily Wire right now. We do have this special on right now. You can get a second Leftist Tears Tumblr for the price of one membership. That's a Tumblr for the left hand, a Tumblr for the right hand. And while you're sipping from each of your two leftist here's Tumblr. You can actually head over to dailywire.com right now and join us post

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