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We’re now living under government by modeling. That’s the best way that we can describe this. And here are some shocking numbers. I mean, the numbers themselves are shocking. The fact that it’s happened is not that shocking because we’ve shut down our economy.

In just the last two weeks, 10 million people have lost their jobs. Ten million people, based on unemployment filings, people filing for unemployment compensation. Ten million people have lost their jobs. That means 10 million people and counting — and that’s not enough. That’s not enough for people like Bill Gates. That’s not enough for people who want to shoot down the entire country. They want uniformity. They want every state to be forced to be locked down by the federal government.

The same people who were running around accusing Trump of being a dictator are upset that Trump is not acting in a dictatorial way to satisfy them. Ten million people have lost their ability to feed and take care of their families themselves. And in some cases, to be fed and taken care of. The irony here is that their own government made it illegal for them to work.

Now, folks, don’t misunderstand, look ,I’m not trying to stir anything up here. There’s all kinds of people speculating about things out there. I’m just giving you facts. In fact, there’s a great speculative piece today that I came across in the U.K. Spectator by Dr. John Lee. He’s a pathologist, a statistician, he’s a qualified doctor, and he has written a piece: “How Deadly Is The Coronavirus? It’s Still Far From Clear.”

We’ve got massive speculation going on out there. And this guy’s weighed in with his. And he’s got many points here. One of his primary points is how are we reporting coronavirus deaths? In other words, let’s use the U.K. Since it’s where Dr. Lee is from. Let’s say 50,000 people a day die in the U.K. anyway. There are methods on the books that are a matter of law for how deaths are reported, not just in the U.K., but here. And he’s concerned that with this new arrival of COVID-19, that coronavirus is being listed as a cause of death for many people who are not dying because of it. They’re dying because of other things. But it’s speculation. It’s fascinating. I’ll share some of it with you.

I mean, I could use this as my daily briefing to the nation. In fact, I think I will use this. I’ll use excerpts of this as my daily brief to the nation. I mean, if they can get up there and daily brief from whatever the modelers are saying here, I can use my own guy and daily brief. So that’s what I will do. At some point during the course of the program I will use this piece as my daily brief today. Because it’s got some fascinating points. It’s admittedly speculation, but his point, what if we are recording a bunch of deaths to coronavirus which really should not be chalked up to coronavirus? People die on this planet every day from a wide variety of things. But because the coronavirus is out there, got everybody paranoid, governments are eager, almost, to chalk up as many deaths to coronavirus as they can because then it furthers the policies they have put in place by virtue of their models.

So I don’t know when I’m gonna do it. Depends, everything’s spontaneous on this program, folks. I’m a spontaneous person. I don’t plan very much in advance, in my life at all. It frustrates people I work with. Because I want to leave the option open for something better to come up. Somebody will invite us to dinner two weeks ago away. I’ll wait and tell ’em because I might get a better invitation the next day. I’ve got the optimist gene. I’m always holding out for something better. (interruption) Why wouldn’t they believe it? I’m telling them. I’m saying it. I plan as little in advance as I can. The people around me, familia and work associates that it frustrates, are legion. I’ve always been that way.

I plan so little in advance I actually don’t even need a calendar. I don’t need a daybook. Anyway, I don’t mean to get sidetracked here. But I am going to use this as a daily brief when I feel like it’s the right time to do it. (interruption) What? What now? (interruption) You can’t believe I’m saying what? What did I say that’s so shocking? (interruption) Well, not every time. I mean, I don’t delay every invitation to dinner. Sometimes the ones I get I actually want to accept. Let me ask, do you want to go to dinner every time somebody asks you to go? I mean, I don’t. Look, it’s working well. I don’t get that many invitations precisely because of this. It’s working well. So I don’t have to deal with it. Anyway, my point is when I feel like getting to my daily brief today, I’ll get to it and I’ll use Dr. Lee’s piece.

So 10 million people have lost their jobs. Ten million people lost the ability to feed, take care of their families. Eighty-eight percent of the country I have seen on lockdown — and in some places there is a penalty for leaving home, other places there’s not. There are a lot of essential businesses that are still open and operating, and the list, depending on the state you go to, the list is long. You know that in Florida pet care, going to the vet, essential business, that veterinarians stay open. Makes sense. Churches, construction, pharmacy, grocery store, post office.

The post office has to stay open because people have to file taxes on April 15th. Most people don’t, but those… Get this. Those taxpayers who file quarterly rather than have their taxes withheld every deposit, every pay period — those who will owe a million dollars or more in federal taxes on April 15th — must pay it, must file it.

Whether you’re out in the Caribbean on your boat or not, you must file. If you owe less than a million dollars, you get a postponement, you get a grace period. So they have to keep the post office open. The mail has to be delivered and so forth. You have to be able to send stuff in the mail.

The federal government has made it illegal now for people to go to work in the nonessential areas — and how did government respond to this? How has government responded to 10 million people losing their jobs, being forced out of their jobs? By giving them $2,000 (plus or minus) as part of a stimulus check. And to sound like a broken record, it’s not sustainable.

It simply is not sustainable. I want to throw a question out. You know, we’re talking about… We’re trying to take more phone calls than we usually do here. Let me tell you why. There’s really one topic out there (and there are many offshoots to it), and that is the coronavirus and then the related topics to it. For example, politics, the presidential election?

I mean, it’s back burner for the most part. If this were not going on, we’d be talking about Plugs. We’d be talking about Crazy Bernie, the Democrat primaries and so forth. But now we’re just recycling it. Adam Schiff is actually thinking about…

To show you how literally intellectually, politically vacant the Democrat Party is, Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee is literally getting ready to start up impeachment investigations of Trump on coronavirus and his “delayed reaction” to it. That’s all they’ve got, which means they’ve got nothing.

Now, a question for those… If you want to tackle it, you don’t have to. Ten million people are getting unemployment compensation. The number is gonna rise as we continue to shut down. Is any of this, do you think, endangering President Trump’s reelection, or is he going to be able to sail through here because of his captainship of the coronavirus crisis?

Normally, if 10 million people lost their jobs and we turned off a $22 trillion economy, the administration in power at the time that happened would be guaranteed to be swept out of office in a landslide. But there are other factors. The Democrats don’t have anybody right now that can beat Trump, particularly Joe Biden.

They don’t have anybody that can withstand five minutes or 10 minutes on a debate stage with Trump. They don’t have anybody who has anywhere near as commanding a presence. So even if Trump’s support is harmed somewhat by this — and that’s even arguable. I doubt that it will be much because these are not normal economic times.

So 6.64 million people filed for unemployment. The 10 million figure is arrived at because there were three million last week. The experts predicted another 3.4 million this week. They were wrong. Last week was revised up to 3.3 million. So we’re now at 10 million. Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi is plotting ways to cram for leftist garbage into another relief bill.

Something else that I have noticed.

We’re starting here with some random thoughts, ladies and gentlemen. I noticed yesterday at the briefing and the day before at the briefing… You know, there’s a story. We had it yesterday. Bloomberg News had this shocking, breaking news story that American intelligence had discovered that the ChiComs had lied about the number of cases of the coronavirus that they had in Wuhan, the number of deaths and how the ChiComs lied.

So? This is news? This is breaking news? The intelligence community just figured this out? The ChiComs have been lying about this from the get-go! The Chinese government is built on deceit. Communism is built on deceit. It’s built on not telling the truth. Now, I realize this may be controversial to many of you who’ve grown up… If you’re young, you haven’t been taught the truth of communism.

You haven’t been taught the truth of capitalism in school. You haven’t been taught the truth about the Great Depression. You haven’t been taught that liberal attempts, socialist attempts to fix the Great Depression are what prolonged it for 10 years. The Great Depression went on years longer than it need have, than it should have because we tried liberalism and socialism to prolong it.

FDR did what Gavin Newsom’s talking about. FDR saw a great opportunity to expand liberalism, expand government, make government the centerpiece of everything and guarantee Democrat Party power for 50 years in the process. Gavin Newsom is openly saying… You know, people on CNN were very depressed when Gavin Newsom praised Donald Trump.

You could see Jake Tapper almost peed his pants. Jake Tapper was interviewing Newsom, and Newsom’s praising Trump. “Yeah, he called every time I want to talk to him. Everything we’ve asked for, he’s given us. We’ve got this ship out here in Los Angeles.” He praised Trump to the hilt, and Jake Tapper didn’t quite know what to do.

I thought I saw him reaching for a pee cup! Gavin Newsom said, “This is a great opportunity that we have in California to expand the progressive agenda.” Of course this is how they’re gonna look at it. Well, progressivism, liberalism, communism, socialism is built on deceit — and the primary deceit is denying that they are who they are, denying that they are socialists and denying that they are liberals and denying what their real agenda is.

Because it does not have — and never has had in the United States — majority support. We are a capitalist country driven by the free flow of oil at market prices. That is the bedrock and foundation — and private property, of course, and Constitution thrown in. That’s the bedrock foundation of our country. It’s why we are the world’s lone, large superpower. It’s why we’re constantly under attack.

The ChiComs want to replace us, the ChiComs want to cut us down to size, and we’re helping. But the Chinese lying about coronavirus numbers and the intelligence community just gave us breaking news and Bloomberg runs it yesterday? You know what? It’s irrelevant! And yet two days in a row at the briefing, it’s been used as a crutch. It’s been used as a crutch by the people doing the computer models.

“Well, we would have more data — we would have had more accurate data — to input into our models if the Chinese had not lied to us.” Why was anybody gonna accept what Chinese said in the first place? Other than the American media, who is helping to promulgate Chinese propaganda. (More on that as the program unfolds.) Well, what the Chinese did or didn’t do and how they lied or didn’t lie?

Folks, do you realize how irrelevant that is to the present? Except to people who have to, for some reason, make excuses? And one thing about bureaucrats. The number one job of the bureaucrat is CYA: Cover their rear end. That’s job number one. The only question that ought to be on anybody’s mind is: How do we stop this and how do we reboot our economy?

It doesn’t matter whether the Chinese murdered 800,000 people to get the phony statistics they’re talking about today. It doesn’t matter whether they lied to us three months ago about the status. Because it is what it is now. We can’t go back and erase it. We can’t go back and make the Chinese tell us the truth.

We can’t, therefore, revise our own behavior and policy from three months ago, two months ago, one month ago because of what the Chinese did or didn’t do. We are dealing with a hard, cold reality today, which is that we have turned off our economy. The focus needs to be on the future, not the past. But bureaucrats are focusing on the past ’cause that’s where CYA is.