Best of The Program | Guest: Steve Deace | 3/23/20

Welcome to the podcast.

It is

an interesting time in the coronavirus saga.

We get into that today.

Talking about sort of a maybe a turn in the tide in the public opinion where people are starting to think, well, this is a dangerous thing, but when does it end?

How do we end it?

We need to figure out something before the economy dissolves in front of our eyes.

Also, looking at what else the spending is going to do to us, we're talking about multiple trillions of dollars that are going to be spent.

Steve Dace joins us to outline his new column, which is upon theblaze.com, which kind of talks about whether we have enough facts to make the decisions about coronavirus.

And we get into a bunch of other stuff as well.

Make sure you check it out.

You know, this really does sort of develop as the minute goes on, but we have not only the radio show today, if you're listening to the podcast, also Stew Does America, we have going on tonight.

It airs at 8 p.m.

Eastern if you're on Blaze TV.

But you can subscribe right now.

Get all episodes for free on YouTube or right here on your podcast app.

Searching for Stew Does America and clicking subscribe, we would love that.

And don't forget to rate and review this podcast as well.

Five stars is the appropriate amount of stars as designated by Dr.

Fauci himself.

So here's the podcast.

You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

All right, our coronavirus update from John Hopkins University.

The daily stats are locked in at 5.30 a.m.

Central Time.

Total confirmed cases worldwide, 341,632.

Think of that.

That's up almost 100.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

100,000.

Holy cow.

That's up almost 100,000 since Friday.

Total confirmed deaths, 14,749.

That is up almost 5,000 or 5, yeah, 5,000.

These numbers are

getting so huge, and the jumps are getting so huge, it's hard to even imagine.

Total confirmed recovered worldwide, 99,000, up 10,000 from Friday.

Total confirmed recovered worldwide, 89,000, up from 85.

Now 192 countries have confirmed cases up from 182.

Only two countries, the Marshall Islands and St.

Kitts, do not have confirmed cases.

St.

Kitts, isn't that a place where all the rich people live?

St.

Kitts?

Yeah, it's very nice.

Very nice, St.

Kitts.

Have you been to St.

Kitts?

I've never been there.

I've done a lot of research on it because you can buy citizenship there.

So

I'm very much looking into that.

It's more and more attractive.

The price might be going up as we speak.

What is citizenship cost nowadays?

It varies very widely depending on where you would like to go.

Oh, really?

There are customers.

Like St.

Kitts.

They don't have the coronavirus.

I believe St.

Kitts is several hundred thousand dollars, which is

not buying.

A lot less.

Is there like a kit St.

Kitts?

Like a kit car, but it's not exactly St.

Kitts, but it's kind of a knockoff that's a lot cheaper.

If I got $100, what country would take me?

There's not a lot that will do it for $100.

There are some

that are like countries you've never heard of.

They're like landlocked in the middle of Madagascar that you can go to for cheaper.

Yeah, there's one right there that the pirates like to take

right off of Africa that you're like, oh, well, they'll take you.

Yeah,

they've got pirates hanging out there all the time, too.

Arby, maybe.

5% now of active cases are considered considered serious requiring hospitalization.

That's steady from 5% Friday.

But remember, three weeks ago, that number was 19%.

By the way, our sincerest thoughts and prayers to Amy Klobuchar's husband, John, who has the coronavirus, is not on a respirator yet, but is getting oxygen.

He was coughing up blood.

It's very bad for him.

So please keep Klobuchars, the Klobuchars, in your prayers.

You know, I may not vote her way, but she's an American and we're all in this one together.

Who's going to be the first celebrity, Stu?

Who's going to be the first person that gets this that

dies?

I think that will be a significant moment.

You know, if we would have lost Tom Hanks or Rita, that would have been bad.

Yeah, no, I know.

I do think that there's a moment like that that's very potentially possible here where you see one of these people who seem, you know, you think

a lot of these people almost seem

insurmountably protected from the world, right?

Did you see the press conference on Friday with what the president said?

He said he can't walk into a room without somebody taking his temperature.

He said, every time you move from room to room in the White House, somebody's there, beep, beep, beep, taking your temperature.

Can you imagine?

I know.

So it's a different world, man.

One people, one billion people now sheltering in place.

More than a billion people remain indoors in India for a 14-hour curfew as Singapore banned all short-term visitors.

Now, you know what's amazing is

they only had a 14-hour curfew in India.

If you're going to keep people inside India seems like didn't, I've always wanted to go to India, but I've never wanted to go to India.

You know, it's one of those, I'd love to see the Taj Mahal.

I'd love to go see, you know,

a beautiful place in India that I can't name right now I'd like to go to India I think it would be a wild experience but I want the India that I see like in

oh I don't know

Indiana Jones where it doesn't smell

I can go to the counter for popcorn and a Coke you know what I mean I want I want to experience some of these places maybe just in the movies I'd like to go but I don't think I ever will because it doesn't seem like a safe place

all right planting season is here here and there is a worker shortage.

This one could be a problem.

The farming industry is warning that immigrant visa restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic could mean a loss in farm labor sharp enough to hurt its ability to get many items to the grocery store shelves.

If the current policy holds, we will have some very serious shortages of labor.

That's according to the Western Growers Association.

We don't go out and pick our own fields.

We don't do that.

And I don't see American children running out to do that anytime soon.

This could be

a real problem

coming at the end of the growing season.

We really need to have the president look into that.

Respiratory therapist describes the terrifying lung failure from COVID-19, even in his young patients.

He said, it first struck me how different it was and how my first from my first corona patient.

I was like, holy crap, this is definitely not like the flu.

Watching this relatively young guy gasping for air, pink, frothy secretions coming out of his tubes, said the therapist on condition of anonymity because he's not authorized to speak at his hospital.

But reading about it in the news, I knew it was going to be bad.

But we deal with the flu every year, so I was thinking, well, it's probably not that much worse.

But seeing patients with COVID-19, it has completely changed my perspective.

It is a lot more frightening.

Donald Trump on Sunday announced that he has activated the National Guard in California, New York, and Washington state in order to combat the spread of coronavirus.

He said this is war and we're going to treat it like a war.

The administration emphasized the deployment of Guard members does not constitute martial law.

There's a really nasty rumor going on around martial law, and it is a rumor.

Some units have been put under notice to remain prepared to be called up for service here in America, but that is not for martial law, and that is not nationwide.

State governors retain command of the National Guard, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency will cover all of the cost of the missions to respond to the virus outbreak.

That's according to the president.

That's huge.

The White House said more than 1,100 troops should be deployed to start with more to follow as needed.

Is anybody else sick of de Blasio and everybody else just tearing down the president that he can do no good?

I mean,

I can't take it anymore.

What are you guys doing?

And by the way, have you seen the latest poll numbers?

Looks like Cuomo's starting to make an impact.

Was Cuomo just was this a stealth run for Mar for

Governor Cuomo?

Is that what this is?

Was he he just

because he's been

forefront in the news?

Now, again, he is the governor of New York and his brother is on CNN.

But now there are those in the Democratic Party that are saying, oh, you know, maybe he should run for president.

Senate Democrats blocked COVID-19 stimulus and relief plan, the trillion-dollar coronavirus stimulus package that would help offset the devastating economic effects of the virus hit a roadblock last night as Democrats blocked the procedural vote on the measure.

It was deadlocked at 47 with five Republicans not in the chamber, including Senator Rand Paul, who announced Sunday that he does have the virus.

Mnuchin, our Treasury Secretary, said that the bill, which has grown to as much as $1.8 trillion, includes direct deposit checks to Americans and expanded unemployment benefits.

Democrats want more money guaranteed toward child care, expanding funding for women's health care, and more for the aid package guaranteed to go toward hospital and health care workers.

You know, I love this.

Funding for women's health care.

What do you think they meant in that,

Stu,

from the New York Times?

What do you think that was?

The only kind of health care that matters for women to Democrats, which is, of course, abortion.

Killing their baby.

Yeah.

So from grocery stores to the elderly, delivering meals or offering free classes

online, Acts of kindness during the coronavirus pandemic are providing uplifting moments of joy in the United States where we are just freaking out, it seems, all the time.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Welcome to the Glen Beck program.

We're glad you're here.

There is a vote going on here in a second.

Give me an update on the stock market, Willie, Stu?

Yeah, it's at a couple hundred points.

They're waiting for the vote, of course, and there was a very large...

You've got a speaker on or something there.

I know, I know.

There's a very large

promise

from

the Fed that said they would give

unlimited money basically to back the economy.

That's what they're promising.

So could you just say that again?

Because I think that's that's a

what was that?

Again, that's just unlimited money from the Fed to back the economy, which is totally sustainable.

Like, we should totally look at that as a long-term solution.

Yeah.

Right.

So, there's no limit to the money that they will use to bail out the market.

Now, see, when I see something like that, I think to myself, oh,

now's not the time to put money into the market.

Right?

Does that help you or or make things worse?

Because for me, I'm like, oh,

no, that's not a good sign.

No, that's not a good sign.

No, it's not.

It's a little, yeah, these things so far haven't worked, right?

They've tried this over and over again over the past couple weeks where they're just dumping.

Remember, the first ask for the stimulus

process was $750 billion by Chuck Schumer.

And then the administration came back and $850 billion.

We're now north of $2 trillion.

And we should add on to that that that does not include the $4 trillion they're promising in

backing from the Fed and other, and now I guess unlimited money, is what they're saying.

But that's only $6 trillion.

That's not like $4 quadrillion.

That's a great point.

If you compare it to that, well, remember, remember.

Yeah, remember it.

Remember, the banks are only with the CDOs now, they're only a quarter of a quadrillion dollars deep.

So, yeah, you know, it used to be that a trillion dollars here and a trillion there added up to some real money.

I'm glad that's not the case anymore.

Amen, brother.

Yeah.

You remember when a trillion dollars meant something?

Remember when $775 billion?

Remember, it was $770 or $775, something like that for a tarp, and we were freaking out.

$700 billion.

Now they're like,

whatever.

Doesn't matter.

$4 trillion we did last week.

I think we could do another $7.

We just got to keep those printing machines just well oiled.

Holy cow.

Money is like Cerritos court chips.

No, you just eat all you want, we'll make more.

Spend all you want, we'll print more.

That's great.

Right.

I love it.

It doesn't matter.

Yeah.

I love it.

So

let me just go over the news.

The reason why we're looking at the market is not because it's what we do every day here in the last few weeks,

but also because Mitch McConnell had a vote in the Senate last night and it didn't go well.

47 votes from the GOP.

Not a single, single person voted for it on the Democratic side.

And he said, okay, here's what we're going to do.

We're going to vote at 9.45 in the morning, the exact same vote that we had at 6 p.m.

tonight.

We're going to vote 9.45 tomorrow morning, 15 minutes after the markets open.

I'll see if there's a change of heart then.

Holy cow.

Holy cow.

That sounds like a Democratic move, quite honestly.

Yeah.

I wish it wasn't on a spending thing, but I am glad they finally, you know, learned how to do that.

Yeah, it's good to see the Republicans with some giblets for a change because they never do this.

They never force their will, even when they have the majority.

And when they have the majority in all three branches, they still don't.

So it's kind of nice to see that they're at least trying to do something.

They're trying to do the wrong thing, but at least they're trying to do something.

Well,

Nancy Pelosi is offering her own emergency support bill.

And

that's fantastic.

I'm so happy for it.

Did you guys see that there is a Democratic group now that has launched a $6 million campaign attacking Trump on coronavirus response?

No.

Does anybody think

that's going to work well for them?

No.

Not in the middle of it, certainly.

I mean, if it gets completely out of control, they may look back at it and

pick them apart or whatever.

They're going to try that.

I mean, you've noticed the testing talking point has gone completely out the window.

When's the last time you heard it?

Gone.

Gone.

It's dead because it's ramped up so quickly, and now we're testing at rates three times what South Korea,

at least in numbers, I should say, three times as many as South Korea is testing, which is pretty impressive.

And it's happened pretty quickly.

That talking point's just gone now.

You just eliminate that one from your memory.

Remember, it was the most important thing.

Well, there's nobody as good.

Yeah.

There was nobody as good as South Korea just last week.

And I guess there's not anybody that's beaten them.

Yeah, no.

We were testing.

So there was a story, I think it was Science Magazine, ran a story last week of the amazing accomplishment of South Korea.

Then they were testing 15,000 people a day, which is an incredible number.

And it was an incredible number until the United States kind of came into the picture.

And last week we we were right around them.

We had caught up to about 13,000 per day.

Yesterday we tested 45,627 people.

Wow.

And that does, that includes most of it.

There's actually the number is slightly larger than that, but that's all they can confirm by yesterday.

But still 45,000 people, now three times as many as South Korea.

Obviously, we are a larger country and there's some qualifiers to that number.

But the point is that we were testing almost nobody one week ago.

And we're already up to 45,000.

We're going to pass South Korean total tests this week.

And

this is why you need to not freak out about the case numbers going through the roof.

The case numbers are unimportant largely because of how many people we're testing.

We're testing at an incredible, an incredibly increasing rate every single day.

So those numbers are going to go through the roof.

And we've talked about that.

We've talked about that in Glenn two weeks ago on the show.

We're about to enter a period in which you feel like you're sacrificing a lot and the numbers keep going up and getting uglier and it's going to feel like you're wasting your time.

Even though it does take your breath away a little bit when you know that on Friday it was 14,700 some and today it's 35,000 some,

it's startling to you.

But you're right.

We're at the hockey stick.

We're at the hockey stick point.

Yeah.

Right.

But the deaths are really more important to look at because, you know, the deaths are, and those are increasing too.

They're just not increasing at the type of rates that you're looking at for cases.

I think percentage-wise, it's actually slowed down.

458 out of 35,000.

That's not a huge mortality rate.

I mean, you don't want anybody to die, obviously, but those are more numbers than Pat, stop it.

Yes, you do.

Go ahead.

You've got a list.

You've got a list.

You wouldn't mind people who are just kicking it.

And there was a day that you would have given that list on the air.

Right.

Right.

That day is not today, though.

That day is not today.

In fact, that day is

long gone.

Long gone.

I noticed, though, that you're not talking about the, obviously, the real issue.

Thankfully, there's the Toronto Star, which is discussing.

You know, because COVID-19 is just something of a test run for worse news,

which, of course.

It's wait.

Yes.

Climate change.

It's a test run.

It's climate change.

Climate change.

Yeah.

Climate change could be so much worse than this.

You know.

I mean, with all the hand washing, according to Dr.

Matth Lowski,

all the water or some of the water in some of the month will completely disappear out of most of your water bottles within the next seven to nine millennia.

And so it will be bad then.

So

in seven to nine thousand years, the water in our water bottles may not be.

Actually, water may be gone.

Seven to nine years.

The point of the Toronto Star article is just that global heating is another universal danger where the suffering will be intensely personal.

And why are we so frantic about COVID-19 and we're not even talking?

about climate change.

I mean,

one, because one's 100 years away.

Yeah.

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe.

And probably not even then.

Maybe.

You're right.

And the other one is in your house.

Yeah.

And we're even looking at this.

What are they saying about, oh, look at, look at.

They won't take it seriously.

No, it's hard to take it seriously when it's not here, when it's not in your own backyard.

People need to see that it's in their own backyard.

I think President Trump is right.

You know, he's looking at what are we going to do?

And in 15 days, he said, at the the end of the 15-day period, we're going to have to look at this and re-evaluate.

So, I mean,

I think he's right.

People are

people, you know, people will do it for a week.

They might even do it for two weeks.

But any longer than two weeks, there's a lot of people.

That 15 days,

I don't know if that was wise because everybody I talk to, they'll say, oh, yeah, well,

we're two weeks away.

And I'm like, no,

not really.

Not really.

I don't think we are.

I think it was a smart thing to set up an attainable goal, right?

Where if you would have said, oh, look, we're going to be doing this for six months, and after that, we'll assess it.

Like, no one would have put up with that from the beginning.

Here, he's gave 15 days.

No, but I think we can kind of all kind of come together and do it for 15 days.

But they better have a plan at the end of the 15 days.

There better be something that we're doing that is well-defined because the American people are not going to put up with this forever.

No, they're not.

It's not China.

You know, everybody keeps asking for a plan.

How?

How?

We don't know how this is going to work out.

How do you plan for this?

Well, I think

you have to have

some

ability for people to go back to work or change things up, whether it's just quarantining the

most vulnerable, whether it's another two weeks of quarantine and that's it.

Whatever it is, it can't be just open-ended forever.

So I would say unless the American people see it looking really ugly.

If there's 25,000 dead people in New York City, then a lot of this calculus goes out the window.

But if this sort of stuff does not ramp up the way that they keep telling us it is,

to an example of Gavin Newsom saying 26 million people in California in eight weeks would have this.

Again, if that's what we're looking at, we probably are willing to sacrifice a lot on the economy, and we'll probably stay inside a lot to avoid that.

If it doesn't ramp up like that and people don't see it, they're not not going to put up with it.

I really love Trump's point, though, when he tweeted out today that we can't make the cure worse than the problem.

I'm so glad that he actually recognized that.

And I hope the American people, you know, conservatives at least, Republicans should certainly recognize that, that we can't make the cure worse than the problem.

And that's the risk you run by shutting America down.

Well,

what was the governor that just was at Illinois?

Which was the governor that just shut things down and said, look i i understand

uh

you know the the the decision i have to make i have to make

am i going to save lives and kill the economy or save the economy and and kill lives and that's the problem here well we we don't know what we're dealing with for sure over here but i mean i don't know if you saw this In Italy, they're now turning away anyone who is 60.

The care has become so rationed

that if you're 60, go home.

We can't help you.

This is bizarre because, of course, those are the people who need it the most, right?

You know,

it's very strange.

But I think that's one big mistake we keep making is saying it's either the economy or lives.

And as I think Trump is illustrating today, I know Leon Wolfe had a good column on The Blaze that illustrated the same point.

The economy is lives.

That's what it is.

Yeah, it is.

The reason why we have an economy is to make civilization and life better.

It's not all about flat screens, although I I certainly love the flat screens, but it's a lot bigger than that.

And it's the reason why

we are able to extend life expectancy and keep people alive is because of this economy.

So at some point, there is a trade-off.

There's a line where

here's what I'd like to see.

At the end of the 15 days, the president and the CDC say, all right, there's enough vaccines out there that if you test for it and you test you've already had it, or you test negative, go back to work.

And, you know, we're just going to test everybody.

And as you get a test, you can go to work.

If you don't have it, go back to work.

Everyone else has to stay in their house.

I think that at least gives you some light at the end of the tunnel because I think that's what people need right now.

It's just a little ray of sunshine, something that they're aiming for.

This is the best of the glenbeck program

this is the glenbeck program uh i want to bring steve dace in uh steve has has written a fascinating uh fascinating op-ed for the blaze and something that needs to be heard and needs to be considered uh

and it goes to the heart of

of what i talked to you about originally i said the coronavirus is not going to kill us.

We're going to survive.

We don't want to overwhelm the hospitals

because that will take a great toll.

But also the real problem here, the real killer is the economy.

And

I'm not sure how we get past what this thing is doing to the economy.

Well, Steve has done his work now.

He's been working on this

for really a couple of weeks because it hasn't sat right with him.

And he says, I don't understand how we're making these decisions.

Welcome to the program, Steve Dace.

Hey, Glenn.

How are you, brother?

I'm good.

I'm good.

I'm a little concerned, Steve, because I feel like

I believe the coronavirus is real.

I believe there is

a pandemic, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't know what I would necessarily do about it, but I will tell you that my feeling is this is being used

to

do some house cleaning and game changing.

Well, one of the things, the whole premise of this piece that's kind of a compilation of everything I've been researching and writing and talking about in the last week, is to frame this now as a public policy debate.

And, you know, the Constitution charges us with a president elected by the people as our CEO, not a team of subject matter experts, not a surgeon general,

not joint chiefs of staff.

The presumption of our Constitution and Republic is that the average American can be educated and informed enough to ask the kinds of questions that balance

what really is

the unknown factor, the collateral damage

of every action, rather than just looking at it myopically.

And so to me, the epidemiology is separate from the public policy.

And the question that we have to ask, and I worked on this piece, Glenn, not knowing what the president was going to tweet last night.

But the whole premise of this piece is to ask, from a public policy standpoint, is the cure worse than the disease, given the data that we currently have, which is very insufficient, very incomplete, and has some anecdotal questions that beg asking, which is, according to Business Insider, Apple said it was reopening its 42 stores in China last Friday.

Did they do Have we even followed up?

Because I don't trust China's data at all, and I'd urge nobody in my audience to, but I certainly trust Tim Cook's love of his share price.

I certainly trust that.

South Korea is resuming pro sports at the end of the month.

How are they doing that?

Japan is on the doorstep of Wuhan.

Washington, D.C.

is 8,000 miles away.

How are they not on a societal-wide lockdown?

I mean, these are cultures that, Glenn, have a lot more experience with Chinese outbreaks

than we do.

And so I think it's time for us this week especially to look at this now from a public policy perspective with this 15 days about to expire a week from tomorrow and ask ourselves, based on the data we have now, how is it possible that the country that could go back to work post-9-11

and keep its economy roaring, the country that could put a man on the moon and keep its economy roaring, how is it that a virus that right right now has a mortality rate amongst the limited affected of about 1.27%

can manage to cripple the entire American engine in ways the Soviet bloc, the Nazis, the Japanese, and Islamic jihadists couldn't?

I think we need to start asking that question.

So

you don't buy in to the fact that this is as dangerous as they say it is.

Is that right?

I don't know.

I don't know how dangerous it is.

The question is,

what's the law of unintended consequences for public policy?

That's the question.

So the week before we shut the government down, really most of the country down, Glenn, the government reported 7.7% of all deaths in America were because of the flu the week of March 7th.

When you look at last year, I take all these numbers and cite them in my piece.

When you look at last year, last year at this time, the week of March 16th, we had a massive spike on the flu bug.

7.1% of everybody who had the flu that week in America died.

That's a massive cliff that needs

a curve that needs leveling.

Why weren't we called to do that?

And keep in mind, we were seeing those numbers with flu, Glenn, when we've got vaccines and all kinds of public awareness about that disease that we don't have about COVID-19.

And so I think that the question an average American should ask is this.

Given how acute, how non-discriminatory, I mean, the flu goes from infants to the elderly, given how acute, how non-discriminatory, and far more lethal that the cold or that the flu and pneumonia viruses are, and we didn't shut the country down for them, 65 million Americans were infected last cold and

last flu season, according to CDC.

Why are we doing this right now given the percentages of what we're looking at?

Why haven't we taken more of a herd immunity approach, which has been taken for thousands of years and fighting plagues?

This might be the first time in human history we sequestered the healthy rather than the sick and the vulnerable.

I just think these are public, and there might be good answers for these.

I keep telling my audience that.

There might be really good answers for why we've done these things.

We don't have any of them.

And the number one reason we don't is that a skeptical press is too far interested in playing PR flag for China and asking these kinds of questions at these briefings.

So what should we be doing?

I think

if you're president of the United States or you were advising the president, what would you be doing?

Well, we would have locked down all the borders day one in five seconds.

We would have done that day one.

We would have banned international flights.

I mean, have you ever gone on Expedia and charted a flight from Wuhan, China to Spokane, Washington, where PDC is now saying that's the first case they currently have of COVID-19 in America back in January?

That's a 24-hour minimum flight.

You stop in Peking, LAX.

And on most of these routes, you've got to stop in San Francisco as well.

All right, so I'd have to shut down every international flight day one.

I would have shut down the borders day one, protected the American people before we knew what was going on.

My instinct would have been to do that day one.

Now, the president has done some of these things

gratefully as time has gone on.

But I like the 15-day period that they put out.

I think that is a reasonable amount of time, given the

medical infrastructure we have around the country.

While we're hurting ourselves now, I don't believe if 15 days is a mortal blow.

I think the psyche of the American people could come roaring back pretty quickly, feeling like they've conquered something or overcome it, if we really have.

And I think what the President's message is this morning is right on the money.

In 15 days, that's a week from tomorrow, when they launched this last Monday, we're going to, you know, let's find out where we are really at.

and then assess what the total socioeconomic cost is.

Because this is the final question my piece ends with.

The question that our government has to wrestle with.

And we're a government of representatives, not experts.

The questions that have to be wrestled, the number one question in my mind is, will any potential toll we pay as a society from COVID-19, based on the data we have, will it be more expensive than the toll we are already paying by preemptively shutting down our government?

And I think that's the equation.

that the president has to weigh on behalf of the American people.

And I know people want to say, well, what about experts?

Hey, expertise is one thing, worldview is another.

If I wanted to invade Afghanistan, don't listen to me.

I mean, I'd go get the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ask them how to do it.

But then if I wanted to know after 17 years why we're still circling the drain there, and their only response is, well,

if we leave, we'll lose.

Okay.

Well, what does victory look like?

Well, we don't know.

We just keep doing this.

At some point, expertise ends and worldview gets in the way.

And I think that's why we have elected representatives that are directly accountable to us, not a plutocracy, not an oligarchy, not non-governmental organizations, because we get to question those things.

Even if you and I go in a hospital and they give us a diagnosis of a terrible illness, we still have the right as patients to question whether the cure is worse than the disease.

So I think the President is right on the money this morning, and I think that he is listening to these concerns.

Now, I should caution people, we may not like the answers we get, okay?

But at the very least, they're questions that need to be answered.

Here's what the president said.

We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.

At the end of this 15-day period, we will make a decision as to which way we want to go.

The Fed is taking extraordinary steps.

I mean, we are in,

wouldn't you agree?

We're just giving modern monetary theory a whirl.

We're just like, yep, let's try it.

I don't.

We're basically saying right now, Clem, that

we can print any amount of paper because our military weaponry is bigger than yours and nobody will call in the note.

That's essentially what we are doing right now.

Well, nobody's calling, nobody's buying our notes.

I mean, the Fed now is buying the notes.

I mean, we're just buying our own

debt now.

We had a 30-year treasury bond sale, what, last Friday, Friday before last?

Not a single bidder, not one.

It all went to the Fed.

So nobody wants our debt anymore.

So now we're at that place.

And so we're doing

modern monetary theory where we're just printing our own money and we're buying our own debt.

That's not going to last.

When they came out today to try to stabilize the market and said, don't worry, we will print an unlimited amount of money.

We will buy as many bonds as we have to to stabilize the market.

How do you recover from that?

You do that the least amount of time that you possibly can.

Because if this goes on further,

you're talking about unless this is worse than the 1918 epidemic a century ago, unless this is worse, this is the worst plague that this nation has ever faced.

And on a systemic level, beyond hospitals being overrun, we've got Army Corps of Engineers.

Just build more adjunct sites

beyond infrastructure being overrun.

That unless we're dealing with captain troops here,

this is that level of a societal event, you cannot justify

that cost.

Now,

I don't know that we have enough data to say affirmatively that it's not yet.

And that's why I think this 15 days is a wise course of action.

And I think what's going to happen is now that the president has put this out there politically, everyone in these various departments are

now going to hunker down because nobody wants to be left on the wrong side of history.

So the medical people will become more alarmist.

The economic people will become more alarmist.

The political people will become more alarmist because no one wants to be wrong on the other side of this.

And so that's why I've also urged my audience.

Pray for this president like you have never prayed for him before.

This is going to take a supernatural level of wisdom and courage of conviction to navigate.

I would agree with you.

And his gut has proven to be right usually.

I mean, I think this tweet that came out this morning says a lot, because I think that's exactly where the American people are, and

hopefully that is also a part of a God thing.