JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
With Sebastian Gorka, America First radio.
 
Hour One
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 1, Block A:  Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re:  . . . Why does President Trump speak so kindly of Xi Jinping?  Because Xi has 95% of our antibiotics; he could cut us off and strangle us right now.  We need to engage him agreeably until we can cut him off.
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 1, Block B: Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, in re: California   #in the time of the virus
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 1, Block C:  Conrad Black, NRO and author,  in re: Canada  has a financial-stabilization package of sorts, but a very good low-infection rate internationally. The notion of Americans’s fleeing the US to Canada: it’s not easy to cross the border for no good reason, and Canada’s marginally-better infection rates make it not worth the effort.
Mrs Pelosi’s blue-ribbon commission to investigate the virus, where she attributed “blood on his hands” to President Trump. Not a blue-ribbon committee—if she appoints them, it won't be— it looks like simply  a smear job.  . .  .   They have a semi-comatose candidate who’s rising in the polls.  
February 1942 fireside chat by FDR:  he delivered [difficult] news; he was sincere, but you could tell he was delivering bad news.   I heard Trump as being cautiously confident that we’d come in under 100,000.   Tactically the right move: tell the people the grim truth, but make sure that the immediate future is hopeful and the future beyond immediate is good. Both FDR and Trump know the scale of risk. 
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 1, Block D:  Michael Farren, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, & TheHill; in re:  Skyrocketing unemployment claims: 6.6 million this week.  The national economy has seized.    It’ll get worse before it gets better; it does mean that social distancing is working, diminishing the transmission of the disease. We’re trading off a short financial crisis—a recession—in favor of a recovery sooner. Won’t see needed relief till mid-April or later.   Unemployment insurance in no way can sustain a family; it’s designed to have people continue looking for work, but here we specifically don't want people out looking for work.
This is not a standard recession—the sky isn't falling—this is not the result of deep structural problems; rather, it's a government-induced recession to [avoid something worse].
Canada and Denmark:  don't want people to leave employment and have to file for UE, so he economy can leap out on the other side; Denmark is subsidizing employers for up to 75% of salaries/expense.  Down the road, we need to revamp our plans for such crises. 
 
Hour Two
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 2, Block A: Itai Brun, Institute of National Security Studies in Israel; in re:  COVID-19 in Israel and the region.  The corona virus is making its way across the Middle East and may [be a harbinger] of certain kinds of collapse; we already have bad governance and wars. Rages of infection are far greater than what’s being reported, esp in Syria and Egypt, among many. Governmental mitigation efforts are being favorably received, but we could be looking at a huge humanitarian disaster.  Israel needs to prepare for the possibility of  [chaos], certainly including Gaza and the West Bank. PA is cooperating with Israel; Gaza, of course, is not.  Even Hamas seems to understand that this is not a good  time for more provocations.
In Iran, it’s a huge crisis.  All over the Middle East, populations are quite young; nonetheless, high numbers of refugees and displaced persons. The governments don’t have good data.  Syria,   , and Yemen: we don’t have reports specifically about the virus; official reports are very, very low [and not credible].    We’re not yet at the peak of the outbreak.
Brigadier General (Ret.) Itai Brun joined INSS as a Deputy Director for Research and Analysis in December 2018. In his last position in the IDF he served as the head of Israel Defense Intelligence (IDI) Analysis Division (2011-2015). Prior to this position, he was the head of the Analysis Department in the Israeli Air Force Intelligence and the first director of the IDF's DADO Center for Interdisciplinary Military Studies. He founded the center in late 2006, after the second Lebanon War, and served as its director until January 2011.
‪·         https://www.inss.org.il/publication/coronavirus-in-the-middle-east/
‪·         https://www.inss.org.il/publication/coronavirus-discussion/
‪·         https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/significant-drop-in-military-ops-in-the-west-bank-due-to-the-coronavirus-623181
‪·         https://www.timesofisrael.com/fearing-gaza-virus-spread-hamas-preps-for-mass-quarantines/
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael Rubin,  in re:  The scale of the collapse of the medical system in Iran, inability of the regime to communicate commons sense; no idea of the number of deaths but it seems to be high.  Two carrier groups deployed by the US to prevent Iran from thinking they ought to attack.  Soleimani’s successor two days ago landed in Baghdad on what probably was a military mission.  Iraqis urgently don't want to be a battlefield.   . . .  Iran’s economy is so catastrophic that Iraq is subsidizing the IRGC.
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 2, Block C:  Marc Greendorfer,  in re: Jews and/or Israelis accused of being responsible for the virus: A Jewish plot, a Zionist conspiracy. This is a video from France, among other places.  ‪
‪Marc Greendorfer, the founder of Zachor Legal Institute, is an experienced attorney with an extensive background in legal advocacy and scholarship.   Marc’s works have been referred to or cited in opinions by the supreme courts of both the United States and Israel and have received widespread media coverage. In the Supreme Court of Israel’s 2015 ruling upholding Israel’s anti-boycott law, Marc’s paper on the BDS movement was cited by both the majority and dissent. Marc’s work on the legal standing of BDS movement activity has also been instrumental in the enactment of anti-discrimination laws in the United States, most recently with regard to California’s AB 2844.
‪·         https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/looking-at-anti-semitism-on-the-left-and-the-right-an-interview-with-deborah-e-lipstadt
‪·         https://www.foxnews.com/us/anti-semitism-bds-movement-report
‪·         https://www.adl.org/blog/international-scapegoating-of-israel-and-jews-for-spreading-covid-19
‪·         https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-report-by-stopantisemitismorg-and-zachor-legal-institute-exposes-unprecedented-similarities-between-the-bds-movement-and-far-right-groups-to-propagate-anti-semitism-in-the-us-300975046.html
‪·         https://www.stopantisemitism.org/new-anti-semites-report
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 2, Block D: Malcolm Hoenlein, in re:  Analysis of threats to Israel.
 
Hour Three
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 3, Block A: Sebastian Gorka, America First radio, in re:
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 3, Block B: Sebastian Gorka, America First radio, in re:
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 3, Block C:  Joseph Pappalardo, @PappalardoJoe, Popular Mechanics, in re: In the time of the virus, our most important deterrents are the nuclear weapons guarded by the USAF.  In Montana, Malmstrom Air Force Base, 341st missile wing, within Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC).  Spreading out these bases is good for security—can keep track of who’s around—and if missiles with multiple warheads arrive, widespread separation of targets is beneficial.
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 3, Block D:  Michael Auslin, @MichaelAuslin, Hoover, in re:  [A fairly comprehensive review of current CCP malfeasance.]  The Chinese regime lied to Wuhan whistleblowers and to the world at large.  We cannot allow China to rewrite history, let alone be praised for its deeds.  The regime knew how serious it was early on.  We’re past the point of accepting anything China says at face value; they mustn’t ever again be allowed to get away with making a statement that we not only accept but on which we base our actions, which we did this time.  Wuhanese are crowdsourcing among themselves to figure out how many have died there.  The regime says a little over 3,000; Radio Free Asia and BBC are reporting 46,000.  We need to publicize the fact that the Chinese regime is lying. We need to expose and counter the lies as they're being repeated by fellow-travellers who, incomprehensibly, parrot the CCP lies, saying we need to learn from China; this disinformation is being spread internationally. 
We need at the least to de-fund the WHO, whose leader is [a stooge for Xi Jinping  –ed.].   World governance is at risk: if China gets away with lying to the WHO and the world community, I don't see how we can talk about functioning civil society when the world’s second-strongest power not only blatantly acted in irresponsible, immoral and illegal ways, but literally plunged the world into the most serious crisis since World War II.   https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxwHMZTJhKHrFnTGWxxnSbPmbTDx...
 
Hour Four
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 4, Block A:  Andrew C McCarthy, Ball of Collusion, and Thaddeus McCarthy, American Greatness, in re: the Pelosi intention to probe Trump Admin #in the time of the virus 
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 4, Block B: Andrew C McCarthy, Ball of Collusion, and Thaddeus McCarthy, American Greatness, in re:  Andy McCarthy: statistics about fatality rates in China are much more modest than those in the US.  This is obviously Chinese propaganda, and nonetheless is being reported by official organs [including the WHO].   Thaddeus McCotter: We’re also seeing the US media not reporting anything about essential matters: no statistics at all from China, and acting as though Beijing isn’t putting people in concentration camps—Uyghurs, Kazakhs—as though the CCP cared a whit about the lives of their own citizens, which it’s never yet been seen to do. By artificially keeping their numbers low they’re endangering the lives of their own people and those of all the rest of us.
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 4, Block C:  Gregory R Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:  Rethinking Iran after the virus. 1 of 2.
Thursday 2 April 2020 / Hour 4, Block D:  Gregory R Copley, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:  Rethinking Iran after the virus. 2 of 2.