Buck’s First Thoughts - 12/15/20

be a lot of frustration here. There's going to be a lot of agitation because, yes, we know there was fraud. Yes we know that the Democrats stack the deck in their favor with the elimination of anti fraud safeguards using COVID nineteen as an excuse. But the process is continuing on and with each passing week now it's favoring Joe Biden.

That's just an objective reality that we're dealing with. Is there the possibility that there will be some last minute case, that something will come up that we'll be able to finally prove definitively that there was systematic and intentional fraud, the kind of proof that even a weak will, even a cowardly judge would have to say for fear of shaming his profession or her profession, would have to say, yes, you're correct, this is fraud. We cannot certify the results

in these states. Yes, it is possible. Is it likely? I think you all know the answer to that. Joe Biden now is feeling like he is inevitable that this is over, this is done with. We can continue, you know that old you can walk and chew gum. At the same time, we can continue to look for that fraud. We can dive into the Antrim County autopsy report from the voting machines, right the deep dive that they did. I read it last night. I'm curious to see what's going to be done with it. I'm sure the DOJ

is aware of it. I'm sure that this is being looked at. Now. Being looked at is not the same thing as action taken on. But I believe that there are people who are going to read this thing and take a look at whether or not it changes the certification in a place like Michigan. But we have to look at that and also understand that Joe Biden is preparing for his administration at this point, and this is likely what we are going to face, and I understand there's going to be heat that I get for this.

I understand that people don't want to hear this, but I always tell you that I will speak the truth to you as I see it, and I believe that this is the objective truth right now. It is a future, It is an issue of the future. It is a prediction in a sense. Right the future has not happened yet, to borrow from the Terminator films, the future is not

yet set. But we need to understand what the reality of the numbers tells us right now and prepare accordingly, including making sure that we focus on the race right ahead of us here in Georgia, because a Biden administration with the House and the Senate in Democrat control is a very different thing than a Biden administration with divided Congress.

With a divided Congress, they're going to have to prop up this really buffoonish, clownish and yes, corrupt fellow and spend a tremendous amount of time and energy and resources just to make sure the American people don't see for themselves this is the clown that we've elected. Really this guy. Now, I know a lot of you would say you didn't elect him, but if he becomes president, then he is technically the guy. And so we look at this now and we say, what could we do in preparation, what

could we do to get ready for this? Well, I can tell you this much. A lot of what they were saying about Trump will be true or would be true about a Biden administration. A lot of it would be accurate. For example, when they talked about state media under Trump, they would say this, They really would only say this as a knock on Fox News. And I was consistent in pointing out that state media would indicate that there's only really one acceptable media point of view.

I mean true state media. Some places have a government, a kind of quasi government or government Oregon, but usually if there's an actual state media apparatus, the opposition is at a minimum tiny, right, the opposition is small. In

this country, we had the opposite. We had ninety five percent of journos out there, and of them anti the administration, and they advanced their careers despite what they said, Despite what Jim Acosta would pretend when you go to the White House, you know they were not doing the journalistic equivalent of storming the beaches of normandy, they were advancing their careers, they were becoming more famous, they were fattening

their paychecks. So in no way, whatsoever, in no way do we see this now and have any reason to believe that Joe Biden will be anything other than absolutely coddled and propped up and assisted by the media. That's what's going to happen. And you're going to hear a lot of empty rhetoric from Biden himself but also from the people around him, because this is going to be the most incredible emperor has no closed situation you've ever seen. The emperor is too old, he's incompetent, and he's corrupt.

But they're going to tell you that this is great. There's going to be this amazing restaurant ration of America that happens. You know that's a fraud. You know that's not true. The amount of lies that you are likely to be told in the next ninety days alone will surpass anything you've ever seen before. Because now the media doesn't even really pretend there's no objectivity. They picked a team, He's their team. This is what they're going to do.

And here's what Biden was saying yesterday on the one hand, calling for unity, calling to bring us all together, and then trashing Trump play eighteen. By his own standards, these numbers represent it a clear victory then, and I respectfully suggest they do so now. If anyone didn't know before, they know now. What beats deep in the hearts of the American people is this democracy, the right to be heard, to have your vote counted, to choose leaders of this nation,

to govern ourselves in America. Politicians don't take power. People grant power to them. The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago, and we now know nothing, not even a pandemic or an abusive power, can extinguish that flame. An abusive power. What was the abusive power again? Bringing lawsuits, something that they did endlessly and in bad faith against Trump to slow him down.

But now the courts are bad. Understand that we are not only going into a post journalism area with the Democrats, we're also going into a post principle era. Whatever they don't like, whatever stands in their way, they'll just discard. They don't have to make any show of really caring what you think anymore. This is about the raw exercise of political power. They think they will have achieved it through this, and look at what they did to get here.

Biden's talking about democracy and how beautiful a thing it is now because he likes the outcome for him as

it stands so far. The rest of us stand around saying, you guys changed the rules in an election year by hyperventilating about and exaggerating about the threat of COVID nineteen only as it pertains of course, to voting in person, not to having blm rallies in the streets, not to any number of other activities that are Democrat approved, but voting no that required enormous shifts in the actual mail in balloting process and transforming the process in the year

of the election and using it to the absolute maximum advantage. And I do at some level blame Republicans, who are supposed to be the ones on guard against this blocking this. I blame them for not doing more in advance, for not seeing this train coming down the tracks. Why do you think Pelosi and the other Libs we're going all out with the crazy post office conspiracy over the summer. So that's something that now we have to learn from. I hope going forward, no matter what or what we

end up finding out here about the fraud. I will continue to look at every allegation, every bit of evidence that is presented here by the Trump legal team, by anyone who comes forward and has proof of fraud. We owe that to the country. But we also need to

be ready for what is coming now. And you are going to see an administration that has the full and open partisan backing of the social media companies, the entirety of the journalistic media apparatus in its pocket, big government and big business working hand in glove, not shedding any tears for the destruction, the wanton, reckless destruction of small businesses across the country as a result of these preposterous lockdowns. You're not gonna see any any tears over that. They

like this advantage that they have. The eradication of small business is something that Democrats aren't particularly upset about either. Every business that's independently owned and operated is a little bit of a pushback against central planning. So they prefer that they just have Amazon and Google and these megacorporations calling all the shots and making sure they go in

favor of the Democrats. And we're gonna be up against an administration that has already shown us again, assuming that this pathway continues, but we have to deal with the path that is before us. We're going to have an administration that is already compromised by China, our chief geopolitical rival. They lied about Russia collusion with Trump and pretended that Russia was a much greater threat than it was. But in fact what they were saying about about Russia is

true of China. It has infiltrated our government apparatus, it has been stealing our most sensitive information and secrets for years, and it has compromised the would be first family very directly and very obviously. So this is going to be an enormous challenge. I hope that no matter what, President Trump and all of his chief advisors and supporters will come together and face this as one. But this is where we are, the electoral College. It is now President

elect Biden as of now. I understand that you're going to tell me it's a fraud, and I share your sentiment, I share your outrage. But this is where we are now. I've been saying, we trust the process. The process is not over, but we are taking stock of this today. We have our work cut out for us. Friends, We have a Georgia election to win. We have judges that should be getting at last minute here pushed through as

many federal judges as possible. I don't know what the heck is going on with the Republicans thinking that they can take it easy, and we have to start to make the argument against what will be a bid administration that has a lot of support from very powerful people. And you will be told that what you know is not true and what you know is and so you got to relearn that part of it. Get ready for this. Friends, we are in this together. We will eventually win. It's

just a question of when. Thanks for listening to The Buck Sexton Show podcast. Get the latest news and information from Buck by heading to Bucksexton dot com. Four years ago, when I was a city and Vice president of the United States, it was my responsibility to announce the tally the Electric College votes the Joint Session of Congress and voted to elect Don't Trump. I did my job, and

I'm pleased but not surprised. But the number of my former Republican colleagues in the Senate who have acknowledged already the results of the Electoral College, I thank them, and I'm convinced we can work together for the good of the nation on many subjects. That's the duty go to the people, to our constitution, to our history. You know, in this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed. We the people voted, faith in our institutions held. The

integrity of our elections remains intact. And now it's time to turn the page, as you've done throughout our history, to unite to heal. Yeah, he sounds like he's in great shape, doesn't he. Everything's gonna be just fine. It's gonna be a great present. It's gonna be a great presidency, folks, all all eighteen months or so of it, before he decides he's had enough. Although you know, I will say a lot of us underestimated. You know, I don't think

it's fair to say I underestimated Joe Biden. I underestimated the Democrat willingness to put forward a clownish buffoon, but to create a package of a Biden administration that they were able to sell to enough people that they thought this was gonna be much better. Look, the Trump't arrangement syndrome that they spread all of the media, spread all across the country. It certainly had an effect. I mean,

there were a lot a lot of people. The fact that Joe Biden, let's say Joe Biden cheated just theoretically though I don't want to anyone to fact check me on this, but let's say Joe Biden had had his team add a half a million votes to the tally.

The fact that this guy still got the eighty million votes roughly that he is mind blowing, this clown, this guy whose son is getting spare keys made for him to open up the office where they're gonna be peddling influence to the Chinese Communist Party when he's not, you know, getting strippers knocked up and pretending he's not the dad and doing all kinds of you know, I mean, come, this guy, it's gonna be president. Maybe maybe I know

it's not until he's sworn in. I mean, folks, I just want to know what will be the At what point do you think that it's no longer an issue of having a backbone for the fight to call in there? Do we wait? I will ask some folks this because I know today just by me saying, I'm trying to take stock of where we are and be honest about this. I know people are gonna email me and say that, you know, I don't have enough stomach for the fight, or something like that, and I just want to respond

to them what I've been saying. Fight every step of the way. But at some point, you know, at some point, we're the team that's staying behind on the field, at least for this particular game, when the other team is left, they're waving a trophy in the air, and the stands have emptied out, and the lights, you know, the field lights are getting turned off. It is it the inauguration day?

Do I think that there's going to be an opportunity perhaps to bring action against Joe Biden and against some of the other some of the Democrats who are involved in Russia collusion, for example, based on the Durham probe. I think it's possible. I wouldn't say it's likely at all. I always tell you no one can predict the future. Obviously not a lot of US conservatives can. I really believed in my heart that Trump was gonna win, and yeah, I think that if only legal ballots were countered, I

think that Trump did win. But I can't change this. You can't change this. I mean, I wish that I had the resources and the ability to go out there and find all this fraud and piece it all together. I'm willing to tell you though, the people that are claiming that, don't worry. It's still in the bag. There's the plan release the crack in. They're not being honest

with you. They're not being straight with you. The best, the biggest earliest Trump supporters that I know, people that I won't name because I've talked to them in confidence, but the ones that I know, they'll say offline, yeah, look, this is not it's not looking good. But we fight this to the end. That's where I am. I'm telling you, let's let's deal with what's ahead of us. Continue to push see where this Antrim County audit, the forensic electronic

audit really goes, and understand that there's a lot. There's a lot that we have here that we have to focus on. And I am very concerned about the trajectory of the US versus China under a possible Biden administration now, but you know is this is something that we have to regain our focus here pretty quickly because they're gonna want to hit the ground running. We are weeks away from an inauguration that the media is going to treat as a total reset. And remember, our freedoms are under

assault because of COVID and ways that are unimaginable. We have an enormous challenge ahead of us with the Chinese Communist Party, and we've got a buffoon in Joe Biden who's going to be the one calling the shots. If this trend can continues, you're in the freedom hunt. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast from More Bucked. Head to Bucksexton dot com and remember to subscribe to the podcast.

I mentioned the Michigan voting machine audit. I was going to say that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, was sharing this earlier today. This is what he thinks is going on here, and we should at least follow what the actual commander in chief is saying about all of this. He wrote on Twitter at quote sixty eight percent ararated Michigan voting machines should be by law a tiny percentage of one percent? Did the Michigan Secretary of

State break the law? Stay tuned? And then tremendous problems being found with voting machines. They are so far off it is ridiculous able to take a landslide victory and reduce it to a tight loss. This is not what the usay is all about. Law enforcement shielding machines do not tamper a crime. Much more to come? Okay, well let's see what the much more to come is. As as I've been telling you all along, I want more information,

I want more data, more evidence. There's no there is no part of me that is saying, oh if we find out right and think of there's almost like a murder investigation, all right, you can you can know that someone did the murder. You could know that someone did the murder as a law enforcement person. But you can't hold them while you're gathering all the evidence if you if you have not yet you know, charged them with

the crime, right, you can't just hold them. You're like, well, we think it's you, but we don't have the evidence yet to go and get an arrest warrant, and we don't have that, so we're just gonna hold you until we find all of it. No, you got to release the person, even if you know, even if you know that they're probably guilty, but you don't have the proof yet. You got to release them. That doesn't mean, though, you can't come back to it later. So let's see, let's

see what we're able to pull together here. I've been hearing from people who are not just the Trump legal team, but are independently trying to assess and pull together all the data. You know. Remember, it's one thing to show that it's almost impossible statistically for Trump to have lost in some of these places, but almost impossible without proof of the intentional fraud. Is not going to be enough to get a judge to say that there was cheating here.

And that's not the same thing as saying there was no cheating, right, So this is what I'm trying to I'm talking about the process and the system and trying to make us all understand what's really happening, what's unfolding before us right now. And it's infuriating, but it is what it is. So Trump is saying that they found these problems. We'll see what ends up happening. And as I've also told you, affidavits not going to be enough,

not going to be enough. You and I can sit here and have a conversation about how affidavits are these are. Do I believe them? Yes? I do. Do I think that these people are telling the truth. Yeah, But is a judge going to say, well, this person saw a thousand ballots that it's inexplicable how they all went for Biden. But I'm going to invalidate then the hundred thousand ballots that were counted that day at that election site. They're not going to do that. The judge is not going

to do that. So, as I've been telling you, the the affidavits are not enough. And look, I know if I'm wrong about any of this, I'll come back and I'll tell you that I'm wrong. I will tell you there are people out there right now who are just squabbling from the from the scraps or for the scraps from the Trump train, and it's really just about them. They don't there's no interest in then being honest with people because they don't want they don't want to shoot

the messenger phenomenon to happen right now, you know. But the Electoral College met yesterday and it is now, it is now President elect Joe Biden. That's that's where we are. And I spit out the words too, but I appreciate that those of you who are joining me here understand that we gotta face this. We gotta face it. We can't hide from it, can't run from it. This is what we're dealing with. And you also have the resignation

of Attorney General bar that occurred yesterday. And let me say this, I have been a big proponent of the Attorney General. I think that he's an excellent legal mind. I think he's a good and ethical man, and I understand there's a lot of frustration right now about both the Durham probe and the election. A few things here. One, he appointed Durham. Durham's a guy running that probe, and you know, I don't there's no way for the Attorney General that I'm aware of, to say you need to

speed this thing up. That could be considered undue interference, that could be considered politicization. So he handed this off to somebody who's supposed to be a very dogged and thorough prosecutor. Well, I think a lot of people are finding that its prosecutors are just lawyers. They're just lawyers.

There's not some you know, factory of superheroes somewhere that's churning out great folks will then all become prosecutors, right, there's bad prosecutors, good prosecutors, and so the Durham probe is frustrating. But I also never really believe that they would that they would hold to full account members of the deep state. They're too powerful. There's there's too many connections here among them. And then you have the frustration over bar and the election, and I just he's not

a judge. And I know this is not maybe a popular thing to say right now, but he's not a judge. What is he supposed to do here? People who say that the DOJ is not looking at these allegations, I have it. I have it on very good authority that they are looking at these allegations and they are presenting they are presenting this information up the chain, and that it's exactly what I've been saying. The Democrats removed the safeguards to be able to prove the fraud so we

can keep running around. I understand there's this frustration people are It's like they're banging on the wall here saying, but there was fraud. I'm saying, I know, but you have to be able to prove it or judges will not do anything about it. This is where we are. You know, if you had a burglary and and somebody and somebody pulled all of the alarms and the and the video cameras out of the room, and all of a sudden, the you know, the diamond necklace is gone.

You can talk about how it was stolen, but if you can't show any proof, no one's going to prison. That's what I'm trying to tell you. And other people aren't going to tell you that now, they're gonna say, Oh, the kracking is just waiting on the sign the no, it's not, it's not. I'm every bit as frustrated as you are. I think the four years of a Trump presidency was going to be four more years, was going to be fantastic for us. We're gonna have a great

twenty twenty one booming economy. Maybe maybe we still get it. But it's not looking good, not looking good at all. Now. A. G. Barr resigned. This the last thing that the President said about him. I think should be remembered here because there are a lot of people that are trashing the attorney general. And I think there are people who worked in the Trump administration at a very senior level. I think there are people who were completely incompetent, bad at their jobs

and deserve to be fired. I think James Comey obviously deserved to be fired and sent to prison. But here's what Donald Trump wrote yesterday about the Attorney general. Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one. He's done an outstanding job. As per letter, Bill will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the

holidays with his family. So there's the President saying, look I like this guy, and he's stepping down, and that's fine. So let's not you know, he's not some deep state stuge. He's not the enemy of the people or any of this stuff. He probably just realized he's in an unwinnable situation. He's just gonna get blamed for things by people who understand that there was fraud in this election. But he

has not. You know, the Attorney General has not been able to find enough of it, nor have they been able to present evidence in a federal court of it to change the result. So he's in a losing position and he doesn't and he just figures, okay, look, have someone else do this. I get it. It's a thankless, a thankless role right now. And I just want to everyone to be very clear. The president sent him. This is like being you know, honorably discharged. President said nice

things about him on the way out. The president doesn't always do that, as you know. So this is the Attorney General saying, all right, I've done what I can. Maybe there's somebody better who can step up and do this. I'm gonna go home with my family for Christmas. That's all it is. And I think the Attorney General did a solid job. You freed, of course, disagree with me on that, but I think that overall the Attorney General

was an ethical guy. And for those of you who were going to really get mad at me, let me just say Bill Barr was considered a stooge and a hatchetman by the media of Trump until five minutes ago. So something happened here. And it's not that the Attorney General all of a sudden became some deep state operative, right, That's not what happened. What happened is we've got a very frustrating election result, and there's a lot of blame going around right now, and including the people that don't

deserve it. You're in the freedom Hunt. This is the Buck Sexton Show podcast. Get more from Buck by following him on social media at buck Sexton on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Let me ask you, Governor. There was an allegation made over the weekend on Twitter by a former aid of yours who said that accused you of sexual harassments that had happened over a period of year. I wanted to get your reaction to that. Yeah, I heard about the tweet, uh, and what it's said about comments

that I had made And it's not true, zach. Uh. Look, I fought for and I believe a woman has the right to come forward and express her opinion and express issues and concerns that she has. But it's uh, it's just not true. So he's calling her a liar. Can we can we just all agree that that's what he is saying, that she is a liar. And I would just prefer it if he would come out and say that instead of playing this game where you have him say I I fought for a right to come forward

and you know, to say to things. But turns out thought she's a big liar. Look, I don't think she's lying at all, and it's I know that you could say to me, oh, but Buck, that's because he's a Democrat and you don't like him, and you think that he's you know, King Cuomo and a maniac. I don't like him, and I do think he's a maniac. And it's terrifying that he might be a an attorney general under a bid administration that's already been talked about. That

I find that deeply concerning. But I also am willing to give you my honest assessment of these things. I don't always think that these allegations, even there against Democrats are true. They do tend to be true more often against high profile Democrats than they are against high profile Republicans. I'm gonna say that there you have noticed this, but it's it's not an absolute. But Cuomo is a jerk. And Cuomo is a guy who you can just tell. You can tell that he thinks that he can get

away with stuff. He's known as a bully, he's known as being vindictive. It's not a nice guy. So you know when they accuse Kavanaugh, who is like, you know, Ned Flanders went to Harvard Law School or something, or Yale Law School. I forget which one. And it is like this legal legal supermind who is coaching you know,

girls basketball on the weekend. Everybody loves him. They accuse him of being a serial gang rapist, one of the ugliest, most underhanded and disgraceful episodes in American politics in my lifetime. And no intelligent person could really believe that those things were true, but they wanted to believe it because they wanted to stop him from being on the Supreme Court. Look what we're seeing the Supreme Court. Even when you put constitutionalists on the left. And I'm gonna say this,

and it's annoying, but you gotta know the truth. When the left gets one of their judges on, they've got somebody who plays for their team. When the right gets one of their judges on, they've got somebody who adheres to the constitution. You can see this the left, the left does not disappoint their side. They get what they want. That's what an activist judge means. That's their mandate, give

us what we want. Right, create a living constitution where you just decide that you think this is better, and the progressive should get their way. For the on the right, constitutionalist judges they say, look, I don't like this policy or I don't think this is a good idea, but it is constitutional, so I can't do anything about it. You just think of all think of big cases. That's

what keeps happening. But bring it back to Cuomo. So they'll say that boy scout Cavanaugh is a bad guy, and you know he's a rapist and all this stuff, and it's just absurd and I'm never letting that go. That, in some ways was almost as radicalizing and perhaps it was as radicalizing a moment for many conservatives as the Russia collusion lies about Trump, because it was so obviously false and so vicious, and I'm never gonna forget it, never gonna forgive it either. But then you have Cuomo.

Here's a guy who is a jerk and everyone knows it, and he's powermad and I believe there was actually a domestic disturbance at his house once when he was married, and the police showed up, and that everyone had to pretend it didn't happen. He shut down the Morelin Commission in a corruption of him, just essentially by intimidating and you know, scaring everybody is a bad guy. He's just a bad guy, and now he's being accused of things that. Remember,

she didn't go overboard. She wasn't saying, oh, you know, he drugged me and all this other stuff. I mean, I mean, not that couldn't happen, but that would be a bit of that would be a pretty extreme allegation. She says that he said, you know, sexist comments and talk about my appearance. And you know, if you look at the woman in question, I find it very credible that Cuomo would comment on her appearance. I don't think

that that's a stretch at all. And I'm just bringing this up because get ready to kind of stay with our prepare for the battle ahead mentality today. Get ready for the double standards that we saw in the first four years of Trump. Going forward under a Binden administration will be just mind blowing. They won't have any standards,

accept double standards. They will just everything that they've said in the past, whether it's about the grounds for impeachment, whether it's about the Me Too movement, women have a right, women have a right to be believed, was the That was the line, that was the claim that was made whenever, whether it was Trump or Kavanaugh, ay, any Republican was accused of anything, and there were some people like Cosby and Weinstein who weren't politicians but were I guess democrats.

Winstein's clearly a Democrat who were guilty. And so yeah, those women did have a right to believed because they were telling the truth. But now all of a sudden, when it's Cuomo, they're gonna they're gonna avoid talking about this story and they're gonna take his word for it, and they'll let him get away with the formulation that he gave you there where he's just saying, oh, yes, she has a right to come forward. Well, what does that mean. We were told that she has a right

to be believed. Hillary Clinton said about women coming forward with allegations, they have a right to be believed. And now we when there's a Democrat he's in trouble, all of a sudden, now we have a Oh, I don't know, I don't know if we can really take that seriously anymore. That's standard that we were using to try to eviscerate Republicans. Maybe we need to be a little more thoughtful about

how we do this. Maybe we need to be a little more evidentiary in the way that we approached these things, and I sit here saying wow, no, no, no, duh, no surprise, huh. And Cuomo is going to get away with this. There will be no consequences from whatsoever Democrat voters in New York State where I am, at least for now, I don't know what it's going to take them to realize this guy's a nightmare. I don't know.

I mean, you'd think that at this point they would have figured it out, and they want anybody but him. The media loves this guy. They love him so he can get away with anything. And he's about to get away with these sexual sexual harassment allegations. That's for sure. You're in the freedom Hunt. This is the buck Sexton Show podcast from more buck Head to buck sexton dot

com and remember to subscribe to the podcast. What are we really seeing when it comes to the results of these lockdowns and what has the data told us so far about so many of these expert predictions when it comes to COVID nineteen and how we're supposed to handle it. We're joined out by Phil Kirpin. He's a syndicated columnist and also the president of American Commitment. Phil Thanks for making the time great to be with you. Let's talk

about schools first. What is the data tell us about school lockdowns at this stage, or I should just say school closures, it's not even really lockdowns. Closing school and doing only virtual learning probably the single biggest policy mistake of the entire year, which is hanging a lot because we've had a lot of policy mistakes. It's interesting, the original CDC guidance on schools was really balanced, and I think anyone who actually read it and paid attention would

not have closed schools. And yet we had sort of this panic contagion that swept the whole country and all the schools were closed, and a lot of them never reopened or opened on very limited part time schedules. And it's interesting. There was a study in the Journal of

the American Medical Association a couple of weeks ago. They looked at just the impact of elementary school closures and just for two months in the spring, and they calculated five million years of life lost from two months of elementary school closures, which is probably more years of life lost than we're going to have from the coronavirus. There's a very strong relationship between educational attainment and not just income,

but life expectancy as well. The difference between a high school graduate and high school dropout, on average is about five years of life expectancy. The online learning is not working for a lot of people. For some kids, it's fine, some of them are doing okay, but a lot of kids are failing. A lot more kids than ever failed with traditional school, and that has major long term consequences,

both economic and health consequences. And so we're essentially imposing enormous harms and enormous enormous costs on children societally, even though children are atists near zero risks, certainly much lower risk with coronavirus than they are from seasonal flu, which is five to ten times more deadly for children than coronavirus, and that we tolerate and that we think is a

perfectly acceptable low level of risk. And so children have really been the biggest losers in our policy response to COVID. It feels increasingly feel like the elimination of any tolerable risk when it comes to COVID has been at the same of a lot of the policies that we see and restaurants in New York City have just been closed as of this week. Contact racing shown that they were responsible for they believe about one percent of the spread.

So what are what have we learned about? Where is the virus spreading in New York And it's and it's environs because that's a that's also a good proxy for where it would be spreading in other densely populated parts

of the country. Well, the data the New York published, and it's interesting because they published you know, very very similar data back in May and then ignored it, and now they're finding the same thing again, which is almost all of the spread is inside of homes, inside of households.

And you know, New York of course has a lot of high density residential, a lot of multi family, you know, apartment buildings, and so you know, maybe a little bit different there and some other places, but by and large, I think it's now pretty clear from the contact tracing we've seen all over the country that there's not a lot of spread places like restaurants and retail and so for the spread tends to happen sort of the one to one person to person spread tends to happen inside

of homes. Now we also have this other problem of these occasional sort of super spread or events which are hard to predict, and we still don't really know why some small percentage of people with this virus and it's only maybe ten percent something like that seemed to be

responsible for, you know, a lot of the spread. And so you know, if you got on the average person gets this virus infects zero or one other people, and then but then you've got this small group that affects tons of people, and you know, we still don't really know what makes them different and why they tend to infect lots of people. And I wish with more research we're going into that because that would be very useful to sort of identify and be able to predict what

those characteristics are. But by and large, what we saw in the New York did, and it was remarkable because Governor Cuomo came out and he said, look, here's the data. Seventy five percent of transmission is in homes, one percent is in restaurants. So I'm closing us. And you know, then he said, well, you know, because it's something we can do. You know, we can't close homes, we can

close restaurants. But of course, just because you can do something, doesn't mean that it's actually you know, he said, you know, it's only a small difference, but it's something we can do.

You know, but if you look at the data, but it's more likely to be a negative difference than a positive difference, because if you say, you know, we're going to push gatherings and holiday gatherings and dinners and all this kind of stuff out of restaurants where people are being very strict with their distancing and their hygiene and all this stuff, we're gonna push them out. We're gonna close.

Now they're gonna take place in homes instead. You know, some of them won't take place at all, but a lot of them will take place in homes instead without any of those precautions. And so in my judgment, the restaurant closure is not only economically devastating, but it's more likely to increase transmission than to decrease it because people are going to meet in home settings instead. Well, this was a concern also last winter or late late in the winter, when we recognize that New York City was

facing this first big wave of COVID cases. They went into the fifteen days to stop the spread, and the stay at home orders, and a lot of people are saying, well, hold on a second, We've had this virus is all over the place already, and now what you're going to be doing by shutting down the schools, shutting down anywhere for people to places for people to go, is you might actually be forcing And you mentioned multigenerational, multi family homes,

dense housing, which is all over New York City where people it's very difficult to really stay far away from others. It may have effectively sent everyone home to infect their family members inadvertently, but that was always a concern. Yeah, I think that that almost certainly was a big part of what happened in New York back in the spring. Now, the good thing you've got going for you now in New York is, you know, so many people have already

had it. You have a very high level of community immunity, probably higher than anywhere else in the United States. And so if you look at the New York state numbers, it's now mostly outside of the New York City area and sort of the rest of the state is kind of catching up New York City. If you look at the hospital utilization in the emergency room data, you've actually got lower emergency room visits for respiratory illnesses and influenza like illness now than you know, any of the previous

five years this time of year. So you're actually lower than normal in New York City, I think because you've got a lot of community immunity to COVID and because the other factor, which is happening everywhere in the world right now with very little attention paid to it. There's almost no flu activity this year. And we don't know if that's because the you know, the policy measures like the masks and the distancing and school closures are somehow more effective for flu than they are for COVID, or

if the virus itself has somehow disrupted. We don't really know why it's the case, but it's a remarkable story because remember the experts that we're gonna have this twindemic flu is going to hit at the same time as COVID, all the hospital is gonna be overwhelmed. Instead, we've got you know, the mildest flu season since at least twenty fifteen, and maybe you know, see if it doesn't take off

at all, maybe the mildest flue season on records. So you've got you know, really under utilization of hospitals in a place like New York City that has relatively little COVID activity because we're not saying any fluid. I pulled some numbers last week. I'm glad you brought that up. Phil.

I'm speaking of Phili Kirpin, syndicated columnist, journalist, and at Phil, I looked at the initial Now, now I had someone, right, I've had people right into me since to say, we're not really testing for flu the way that we normally do. And to that, I say, okay, because I am asking. You know, so sometimes people are asking a question and they're really trying to push a conclusion. I'm actually asking

the question. But I pose to the audience. I said, you know, the initial data on the CDC website for the first week of December, and and I think it was it was low for what they actually had for COVID.

So this was initial data. So the numbers are clearly going to go up, and you know, maybe it went from you know, maybe I might even go up by a factor of ten, let's say, right, I mean, it could go up substantially, But the initial data said that they had something like two thousand plus COVID debts in the first week of December that we're officially COVID, you know, meaning that this is what they had three three from the flu. Now I can understand more COVID I could

under but there's clearly something going on here. I mean, you mentioned some of the possibilities. There's no way that you have almost a factor of a thousand more COVID debts than you do flu debts given what we would see in a normal flu season. That's not possible. Well, you know, flue peaks are more often in January February than they are in November and December time. Sometimes you have in earlier flu seasons. So you know a lot of people say, well, you know flu's not here yet,

it's still coming. That might be true, but we've never seen levels this low. We've never seen levels this low. And if you look at the CDC flu testing data, it's down about ninety almost one hundred percent some weeks, and we've at like ninety eight percent reduction from the five year average. And it's not that we're not testing. The flu tests are actually higher than the five year average,

and they're actually at a record high. At the number of flu tests at the CDC tracks and the CDC only tracks clinical labs and public health labs, so they don't track you know, like the rapid tests in the doctor's office. That's not in the stats, so they only have thousands of tests. They don't have millions of tests. But it's still it indicates that I think one of

three things is going on. Buck Either, we've got the public health measures that are being implemented for some reason are very effective at stopping flu, even though they don't seem to be. They're not effective. It's stopping covid right right, So that's a little hard to believe, although a lot of people have been saying that or somehow the covid virus itself disrupts the flu virus, which is possible. There's a phenomenon called viral interference, and this was actually how

swine flu ended back in two thousand and nine. The rhinovirus came in and it's sort of just knocked it out, you know, people got that instead, and it's sort of locked it out. And there was some hope. There was actually an article, you know, months ago, hoping that flu season would come in and sort of disrupt covid that

definitely didn't happen, but maybe the opposite happened. Maybe COVID disrupted flu, and you know, once you get COVID, your mucus build up blocks flu, or some mechanism causes viral interference. Or the third possibility is that we've got some sort of a data artifact where maybe you know, we're get so many false positives for COVID that people get flu, they test false positive, it goes into the stats as

of COVID case instead of a flu case. Maybe there's a timing issue where even though we have lots of flu tests, people are only taking the flu test after they get a negative COVID test back, and by then

flu is not detectable anymore. Some people have suggested that, so they're basically there are three possibilities, in my judgment, Either the policies are actually stopping flu somehow there's actual viral interference, or we've got some sort of a data artifact based on the sequence and the way that we're doing the testing that's causing the flu cases to be mischaracterized as COVID. So it's got to be one of those three things. I'm not sure which it is, or

if it's a combination. But I wish there were a lot more curiosity about this, you know, among the media and among the public health officials, because it's a pretty remarkable of phenomenon. Talk to me about this, and we're speaking of Phil Kirpin. He is the president of American Commitment, and he's a syndicated columnist. Phil. I see all these charts, and I've I've looked at some of the data myself, and they show mask mandates going into place on a timeline.

And you know, for a state, right whether it's California or Hawaii or New York or wherever mask mandate goes into effect, and then you have countless charts where you just give it time and the case is just skyrocket after the mandate goes into effect. What can we just tell from the numbers about this as a policy? Can can we draw any conclusions or you can you draw

any conclusions from what we're seeing. I don't think masks have any effect mask mandates, You know, we should we should differentiate the two masked mandates and masks are not necessarily synonymous, because just because the mandates in an area doesn't mean everyone's wearing them or wearing them properly or

handling them properly and so forth. You know, the reason historically we've never recommended masks outside of medical settings is it's actually really hard to use a mask properly, to make sure you never touch the outside, to remove it and carefully and throw it out or wash it without

ever touching the outside. And you know, that's why we've never recommended them in non medical settings, because even if they work sort of conceptually in sort of a lab test, we never had confidence that people would use them correctly in a way that actually could be beneficial. And I think that based on the data that I'm seeing, you know, it's sort of you could go either way on whether

they work in idealized setting. There is a lot of lab data showing that they probably would be beneficial if they were used sort of perfectly, but in practice, I don't see any evidence that they've been beneficial at all. And you know, there's cherry picking that goes on. And the CDC had a couple of very low quality studies looking at Arizona and Kansas, where they essentially just cherry picked their end dates and their comparators and said, look,

masks to the reason we saw a decline. And you know, if you look at kind of what's happened seasonally, you have essentially identical patterns in places with and without mask mandates, if they've got the same geography in the same sort of time of year, and so I don't think that they make a difference one way or the other. You could argue some have suggested they may actually be harmful.

The reason that the normodic states have all avoided the mask mandates, you know, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and so forth, as they say, look, you know, the mask doesn't really do that much, especially the way a typical person handles it is not well trained, the way as a surgeon would be, and so forth. But if you tell people that the mask protects you, then suddenly they're going to stand right next to each other for prolonged periods of time with masks on, and they're going to think they

don't need to keep their distance. And oh and I'm sure people have mild code. They might go out of the house even if they're feeling set because mask on and so the you know, a false belief that a mask will protect you might actually put you at more resk. This is what I've been saying you're gonna have people and say, well, maybe I got COVID, but my symptoms aren't that bad and I'm wearing a mask, so I'm good to go. It's like, no, this is a bad idea.

There's a bad idea, but I could guarantee that's been happening all over the country, all over the world. Phil, Look, I appreciate that you're willing to take take a look at the data here on the numbers and come to conclusions that you know aren't right in line with the consensus. I feel like this is the brainwashing that has gone on on this issue is unlike anything else I've ever seen in my life. I just want to give you

the last word. Yeah, I mean, probably the most frightening thing of the past year buck has been the extent to which people not only accepted all of these various arbitrary government decrees, but demanded them and welcomed them and cheered them on. And I think the extent to which a large portion of the public supports the heavy handed government policy response is probably the most frightening takeaway of

this whole thing. And uh, you know, it means we could we could see this again every time there's a disease. So I am, I am concerned about that, and I share your uh, you know, I share your sentiments on that. Bill Kirpin, President of American Commitment, Phil really appreciate it. Talk to you soon, all right, have a good one.