Will the left force us back into draconian lockdowns, regulations?
Los Angeles County urges even the vaccinated to wear masks indoors; reaction and analysis from Drs. Peter McCullough and Harvey Risch on 'The Ingraham Angle'
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," June 28, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
BEN DOMENECH, GUEST HOST: I'm Ben Domenech in for Laura Ingraham, and this is a special edition of THE INGRAHAM ANGLE. Tonight we start with the failures of the country's top general.
You'd be forgiven if you thought General Mark Milley's aim in senior leadership was to break his own army. His record in office first as Army Chief of Staff, and now as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is a dismal Roll Call of failures. He's never paid a price for them, but the army has and the country has.
General Milley's record of achievements such as they are, include episodes of profound blundering, a persistent misunderstanding of the national interest and a dangerous willingness to politicize the army of the United States. To list just a few, General Milley presided over the disastrous rollout of the army combat fitness test. The ACFT is a misguided, unrealistic and expensive effort to essentially compel the entire army to do CrossFit. The general ignored numerous voices within the army warning against the new test. Those voices were vindicated and today the ACFT is a now a byword for a leadership myopia.
General Milley tried to stonewall the Army's own report on its performance in the Iraq War, running interference to keep the Army's mistakes from being aired in public. He relented only after public pressure that never should have been necessary. General Milley presided over a historic recruiting crisis for the army especially, but also for the armed forces at large. But he did bring back Second World War style uniforms, which is a nice reminder of when our army could win a major war.
Speaking of winning, General Milley's record will likely include presiding over America's defeat in Afghanistan, culminating in the fall of Kabul to the Taliban and a series of massacres thereafter. While our national failures in Afghanistan extend across two decades, it's fair to note that his voice has been absent from the public square on this point. You'd expect a general to want to win.
General Milley was a major force undermining the constitutional authority of the President of the United States during the insurrectionary summer of 2020. While American cities were literally on fire in the grip of a violent uprising with a body count and pervasive fear, Milley assumed for himself the role of preventing the president from using his lawful authority to bring peace and order to our communities. He made it his mission to deny the American people the lawful and constitutional aid of their own armed forces.
It was Milley who apologized for appearing with the president following the now infamous clearance of Lafayette Square, despite the fact revealed earlier this month, that the clearance was pre planned and not the President's doing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARK MILLEY, CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the Military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I've learned from. And I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: General Milley also defended the slow, erratic and uncertain National Guard response to the January 6 over running of the U.S. Capitol as super fast and sprint speed, earning the justified derision of the Speaker of the House and anyone who bothered to watch television at the time. But who are you going to believe? The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or your [ph] long lying eyes? That's the public record of General Mark Milley.
In any organization but the federal government any single one of these steps would have sent him out the door. Instead, like every other DC creature, the ladder leads only upward so long as you stay in the good graces of the right people.
Don't misunderstand me. Mark Milley isn't even slightly unusual in his sphere. Our Armed forces remains a stronghold of brave patriots. But once you get that first star on, things change. Advancement becomes about subjective politics, not empirical outcomes. When your next job and your next promotion depend on a vote of the United States Senate, their priorities become your own and you start to resemble a senator more and more and a general less and less.
So look past Mark Milley for a moment, look at the disaster of an Air Force spending billions on aircraft that still don't quite work, look at the disaster of the Navy's accident-prone 7th Fleet, supposedly our first line of defense against an aggressive China. Look at the men and women responsible, all the generals, all the admirals. Mark Milley is one of them. The crisis of our armed forces is in the fact that he is ordinary.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADMIRAL MICHAEL GILDAY, CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS: There are over 50 books in my reading list to give our sailors. We are always looking inwardly and being honest with ourselves in areas that we need to improve.
MILLEY: I've read Mao Tse Tung, I've read Karl Marx, I've read Lenin, that doesn't make me a communist.
I'm putting China, Russia up there that is not, however, in conflict with the acknowledgement that climate change or infrastructure or education systems. National security has a broad angle to it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: This is a group of leaders who are masters at political climate, media engagement and spending trillions in your taxpayer dollars. They even get the praise of one useful media idiot after another whose natural inclination is to "Yes, Queen", anyone who agrees with their woke ideology. No matter how obvious it is that they fail in any measure of success at their actual job.
Keep in mind. These vaunted leaders haven't won a war since February 28, 1991. This story is as much about the failure of the United States Military as an institution, as it is about Milley, the man. We get what the system gives us. And if we don't fight against it, it's what we deserve. In this case, a series of ageing politicians who can't win wars.
We used to recall our generals from retirement to serve during a time of war, but now they have become so political, they hang around until they're eventually pushed out usually in a swirl of controversy and years past the mandatory retirement. There's little difference between the brands of these generals and any other major brand that has declined in recent years.
Desperate to distract you from their own failure, they seize on something else, anything else, to turn criticism of their performance into an act that indicates racism, bigotry, guilt, or dishonor on the part of any critic. And that's how you end up with a person who is more focused on perceived domestic issues than on preparing the American armed forces to contain, to deter, and if necessary, to win a war with China.
So when you look at General Mark Milley, USA, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put on his show of indignation in the face of entirely justified civilian oversight, as he did a few days back in response to sharp congressional questions on whether the Military has gone woke, just know that it's all for show.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MILLEY: I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States Military, our general officers, our commissioned non-commissioned officers, are being "woke" or something else because we're studying some theories that are out there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: So what if I told you, General Milley, that a flag officer of the United States Army addressed the 2020 graduates of the National Defense University with an affirmation that America is guilty of centuries of injustice toward African-Americans, that America is afflicted with an original sin in Jamestown 401 years ago. And further, that our country features structural preferences, patterns of mistreatment, and unspoken and unconscious bias. Would you say that officer is woke, General Milley?
Would you be offended at the term? Would you acknowledge that this officer parroting the cant straight off the pages of the 1619 Project is voicing the exact ideology, your congressional questioners alleged? Of course, I don't have to ask you the hypothetical. Those words are yours. That officer is you. And this country and the brave men and women of every race, color and creed, who serve in her defense, deserve better.
Joining me now is JD Vance, venture capitalists, Iraq war veteran, and author of "Hillbilly Elegy". JD, I know that you got into a little bit of internet flack for pushing back against what you heard from General Milley recently. Just give me your reaction to what you heard and what it represents as a form of leadership within our current U.S. Armed Forces.
J.D. VANCE, "HILLBILLY ELEGY" AUTHOR: There's so much to say, Ben. But the most obvious thing is that these people use accusations of white rage and white privilege to deflect from the fact that they're failures. General Milley, as you mentioned in the opening monologue, hasn't really won a war in his entire time and Military service. And it's not because of the troops who have served bravely, it's because of the Military leadership that has effectively become political stooges for Washington, D.C.
So I would like the general to read a lot less about white rage, I'd like him to read a lot more about how not to lose a war because that's what he is feeling at, and that's the job we pay him for.
DOMENECH: It really is infuriating to me to see what you're describing here go on time and again under both administrations, both the Obama and the Trump administration struggle with this. And you've seen this happen over the course of years. These insulated DC operator generals who are really not assessed on the measure that we ought to assess them by. What can be done to change that? Because it seems to be something that is now a permanent feature of what we deal with in Washington.
VANCE: Well, we could force the generals who have gone woke to effectively retire or we can fire them. Of course, we're not going to get that with President administration. But if you really think about what this general is doing, he is basically telling people who are upset about the conditions of their country. They're upset about the wars that we're fighting, they're upset about the fact that we haven't won a war in three decades in this country. And he's basically telling them to shut up because when we think about what this accusation of white rage is really about, it's about telling people who are justifiably angry about the conditions of their own country to stop complaining, to reflect on their privilege instead of actually voicing their concerns in our constitutional republic.
So I people are like, Milley should step down or should get fired, or should just go away, because they're not doing their job. It's more than that. They're not just not doing their job, but they're actually failing to listen to the frustrations of the American public. And instead effectively parroting the talking points of the left to tell them to shut up.
DOMENECH: You made a point, which I think is so important about the message that this sends to the communities across the country, many working class communities and alike, that it essentially diminishes everything that they are complaining about into a form of racism. It rejects everything that they're arguing for as being unacceptable and coming from a place of bigotry.
To me, that's a very dangerous message to send, because if you don't have some of these young men go into the armed forces, they can go in very different directions that could be very negative and bad for the country and for themselves. How can we prevent that from happening?
VANCE: Yes. The great Marine Corps comment on Charles Krulak that the Marine Corps does two things for this country, it wins wars, and it makes Marines. Unfortunately, so much of our Military leadership doesn't appreciate that a really robust and powerful Military can and should be doing those things. It should be making soldiers and Marines, and it should be winning wars.
You're exactly right that our country benefits from a robust Military, from having young men and women go into the service serve, acquire some skills and come out back into the civilian world. But if we're constantly pointing our finger at people and telling them that they are white privilege, they suffer from white rage.
If we basically turn the Military into just another woke institution, then we're going to tell a lot of people who could benefit from the Military that they're actually not welcome. And that's a disaster for this country to have so many Americans not feel like they're welcome in their own Military.
How are we going to win the wars of the future? How are we going to train next generation of citizen soldiers if the Military is no longer a respected institution in our country? And it won't be a respected institution in our country if people like Mark Milley keep on sounding like idiots.
DOMENECH: J.D., I want to thank you for joining me. I know you have a big announcement later this week. I look forward to seeing what that holds.
VANCE: Thanks, Ben. Have a good day.
DOMENECH: The scourge of critical race theory is most acutely felt in our schools. Parents all over the country now see the evils being perpetrated by activist school boards and teachers. But how do you fight back outside of just pushing for things like more school choice?
Joining me now is Corey DeAngelis, National Director of research at the American Federation for Children. Corey, thanks so much for coming on.
COREY DEANGELIS, AMERICAN FEDERATION FOR CHILDREN: Thank you so much for having me.
DOMENECH: Corey, it seems like we're at this point of inflection on education in America where people are waking up to what's not just going on right now. But what's been going on for a long time. And we all have heard the normal list of answers that conservatives and pro school choice people have, charter schools and vouchers, and things like that.
It seems to me like this is a point, though, where a much bigger answer is required in order to meet the demands of parents who are absolutely infuriated with what they see. So what does that look like?
DEANGELIS: Yes. I will say there aren't any perfect solutions, but the best solution that we have in front of us his school choice, or what I call funding students directly. And so you would allow families to take their children's education dollars to whatever educational institution works best for them that aligns best with their values.
And another benefit there is that it provides bottom up accountability for the traditional schools to change their curriculum to align with families, because they wouldn't want to lose their children - those education dollars going forward. I know that's not the answer you're looking for, though. So I'll give you a couple of other approaches that we can take.
One is, take back the school boards. Families are already fighting back, and they're going into school board meetings and pushing back, and that's a great move in the right direction to make their voices heard. They also need to get involved in the school board elections. And one way to do that and one way to make it more fair for families is to align school board elections with general elections as opposed to on - in random months during the summer, where you get low turnout and the teachers union takes over and essentially gets whoever they want into office, or into the school board.
So a way to putting the school board elections with the general election will increase turnout and increase the likelihood that conservatives will make their way into the school board.
DOMENECH: Corey, I've seen all sorts of background information, polling that's been done that illustrates today across the country, a massive and not even motivated by conservative or politically active parents movement of opposition to what they view as teachers unions that put their kids learning on the back burner during this entire past year and a half.
What can be done to seize this opportunity to speak to a lot of people who haven't been politically engaged on these issues historically?
DEANGELIS: They need to just be engaged in their school board meetings and families are already doing that all across the country. But the solution here that families should have at the top of their list is school choice, or what I call funding students directly. If you don't like what's going on in your classroom and you feel like your child is being indoctrinated or brainwashed, you should ask for your children's education dollars back so that you can go somewhere else right away, and you don't have to wait years for change to happen.
So I think that's the best solution. I think that's what families should have at the top of their list for what they should be asking for. Because look, you might not be in the majority. And I think that if we want to live in a pluralistic society, we shouldn't force our views on the rest of the population in the public school system, and instead, let people go to the schools that work best for them. Then you won't have force, you'll just have freedom.
DOMENECH: Just quickly, I think one of the biggest problems that I've had during this whole thing was just learning how protected so many of these teachers are from any consequences for their actions that would get your average person in any other career fired in terms of so many different instances of things we saw happen over the past year. Is there any way to have ramifications for teachers who have really just gone into a crazy direction, and have said some really heinous things about the children, their parents, et cetera, that we've seen come out on social media and alike?
DEANGELIS: Well, unfortunately, as we've seen over the past year, in particular, the teacher unions are a cause of a lot of the problems here. So you could have teachers opting out of the teachers union, which has been made easier since the 2018 Supreme Court decision the Janus decision. But then also school choice will provide bottom up accountability for the public school teachers to change how they engage with students in the classroom. And so there's some type of accountability built in that way.
I also think that transparency is really important, so pushing for bills that would require schools to just show what they're actually teaching so that sunlight can be the best disinfectant.
DOMENECH: What a revolutionary concept, the right to know what they're actually teaching your children. Corey, thank you so much for coming on on such an important topic.
As the crime wave death toll climbs, Democrats are revealing how much they really care about your safety. Not at all. Victor Davis Hanson pulls back the curtain on the less latest gas lighting.
And speaking of crime, Kamala Harris' border trip didn't include a single mention of the out of control criminal activity along the border. More on that. Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOMENECH: Chicago is no stranger to violence. But the city is on track for one of its bloodiest years in decades. Just this past weekend, there were six killed and 74 wounded in shootings. One of the victims was a 14-year- old girl.
The crime epidemic spread to New York Times iconic Times Square, where a tourist and active duty U.S. Marine was hit by a stray bullet. It's the second shooting in Times Square in just two months. To most Americans, it's obvious who to blame. Democrats who gutted their Police departments and embraced BLM. Realizing this, Democrats have conjured up new scapegoats for the rise in crime.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CEDRIC RICHMOND, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: Republicans are very good at staying on talking points of who says defund the Police. But the truth is they defunded the Police.
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The American rescue plan, the state and local funding something that was supported by the president, a lot of Democrats who supported and voted for the bill could help ensure local cops were kept on the beat and communities across the country. As you know, didn't receive a single Republican vote.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: They're also blaming our men and women in blue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHERYL DORSEY, RETIRED LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT SERGEANT: Officers now we see across these 18,000 Police departments are butt hurt because they can't run willy-nilly through a Police department in abuse with reckless abandon. So they're stepping away from specialized units. Too cowardly to quit outright. (inaudible) bad guys know that cops aren't responding.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: Of course, AOC thinks your concern is the problem.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.): We are seeing these headlines about percentage increases. Now, I want to say that any amount of harm is unacceptable and too much. But I also want to make sure that this hysteria, this doesn't drive a hysteria and that we look at these numbers in context.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: Joining me now is Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Victor, this just seems to be some pretty shocking gas lighting to me. What do you think?
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTE: Well, you should - you will know them by their (inaudible) and they're on record. So remember when the last few years it was Mayor Rawlings in Baltimore that said that she gave rioters space to burn and then that terrible summer.
Last year we had the mayor, I think his name was Frey in Minneapolis. Remember, when he said after the torching of the Police precinct, it's just brick-and-mortar. And then we had the Seattle - liberal mayor in Seattle, Ms. Durkan say, "Well, it doesn't matter if they occupy and take over part of Seattle. It's the summer of love."
And so whether it's the D.A. in Los Angeles County or the D.A. in San Francisco County who are letting out people, not willy-nilly but plan, because they don't believe these crimes are really crimes.
Remember, it was Hannah-Nicole Jones, the architect of the 1619 Project that said, looting and theft wasn't really violence. Don't believe these things are crimes and they can't really blame the Republicans, not just because the data is not there, and they're on record. But their own party, foundation and base won't let them, because their own party doesn't think the crime really matters.
These people, I mean, they're Neo Marxists. And it's sort of like a million people die - one person dies, it's a tragedy; million people die, it's a statistic. Crime is so out of control, they feel that that's a collateral damage to a more fairer justice system. So I don't they're going to - I think they are only - they're not going to deny it because their party and AOC Foundation will not let them deny it.
DOMENECH: Well, it creates this kind of funny moment where the Democrats who know how much damage this did to their cause in the last election, who are trying to be politically savvy, are trying to - they're grasping its straws, trying to find something to seize on that will allow them to spin this away. But they keep being shoved by the people on their left who were like, "Oh, no, we really believe this crazy thing." So they get--
(CROSSTALK)
HANSON: And that's exactly right. And that's the model they have for all of these issues. They wanted an open border. They're delighted that 2 million people within a 12-month period will come on lawfully in the United States. It's only the optics that Kamala Harris is upset about. They're delighted at 450 a gallon gasoline, they're delighted at racial tensions. It's only when the optics are such that they don't pull 51 percent and the establishment says to the base, "Wait a minute, you guys, we got to hold on to power or you'll be out of a job too. So clean up your act a little bit and fake it a little bit better than you're doing."
But I don't think they can do it. Because the - I mean, it's not just the big cities, Ben. I'm in Fresno County. Fresno's murder rate in the first five months is 325 percent above last year. It's everywhere. They created it and they own it and some people are happy within the party they do, others are a little bit smarter and think the optics are bad.
DOMENECH: Well, speaking of bad optics, freshman Congressman Jamaal Bowman is a vocal proponent of defunding the Police. But here's the thing, according to the "New York Post", "Bowman, a champion of defunding cops, who claims policing is rife with white supremacy, asked for and received a special Police detail to guard his Yonkers home."
Over and over again, Victor, we see this thing where it's Police for me, but not for thee. I'm the important one who needs to be protected. You, I mean, if people loot your store, if they damage your property, oh, well, that's just - it's over the course of systemic racism. That's just a drop in the bucket.
HANSON: Yes. Well, that's a foundational tenet of progressivism that the architects of this chaos are never subject to the consequences of their ideology. They feel that - do you remember, John Kerry said, I can't operate if I don't have a carbon spewing private jet. How can I get around to win the battle of Green? Or I don't - I got to move my yacht over to - where'd I know, I shouldn't have to pay taxes that I support. That's the way they feel that they are platonic Guardian, that they have these exemptions so they can help the poor people like us.
DOMENECH: It's Nancy Pelosi saying, hey, I mean, I need my hair done. I have to go on TV. Victor, thank you so much for joining.
Speaking of rising crime, Kamala Harris somehow managed to travel to the border last week, and not once mentioned the rampant criminal activity there. It's not hard to see why? Cartels, human traffickers, and coyotes are only able to operate with impunity because of the policies of this administration.
Joining us now is John Daniel Davidson, political editor at the Federalist. John, you made a good point that it's actually not appropriate to call Kamala's trip a border visit, because she didn't actually go to the border.
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON, THE FEDERALIST POLITICAL EDITOR: That's right. She didn't go to the border, she flew into the airport, went to a border patrol station. I think she met with some immigration activists, and then she went back to the airport for a photo op, and then left without ever having seen anything, done anything or said anything of any consequence or substance whatsoever. It was pure theater.
DOMENECH: So it was a typical Kamala visit, in other words.
DAVIDSON: That's right. Yes. Only a little bit less substantive than her trip to Mexico and Guatemala.
DOMENECH: So I know that you've been covering for many years now at the Federalist the issue of how much the border is now operated for and by the Mexican cartels. Tell me a little bit about some of the things that you've learned over the course of covering this story, that I think most Americans would still be shocked by it at this day.
DAVIDSON: Yes. We need to think about the border, not as a place where gangs or smugglers can, sort of, sneak across and are kind of running these small-time operations in these little inflatable rafts. The illegal immigration at the Southwest border has been industrialized. It's a massive black market that brings in billions of dollars for multinational criminal organizations.
And, Ben, you and I've talked about this before. The way to think about this is if Halliburton was in the business of drugs and human trafficking. That's what is going on at the southwest border. And you do don't hear about it because the media doesn't let us talk about it, it's hard story to cover, and certainly Democrats in power don't want to draw attention to what is happening down there.
DOMENECH: One of the things I things that I think is so astounded is that it's as if people stopped paying attention to the border for almost a 20- year period, and they didn't recognize that the systems that didn't used to exist now exist and are completely, as you say, industrialized. What are the levels that we are seeing right now, and what should we expect to happen when it comes to the border over the coming months?
DAVIDSON: The border is going to get more deadly in the coming months. It's going to get hotter, more people are going to die, get lost in the desert, get lost on the ranchlands in south Texas. We are already seeing that. It's a hot June here in Texas, and it's going to get much worse in July, August, and September as it does every year.
The volumes that we are seeing right now is trending upward. Usually in other years that were comparable to this year in terms of the volume of apprehensions, you start seeing a decline after the spring months. But month over month now we've seen increases, and that tells me that there is a huge pent-up demand to come into this country, probably because of the pandemic and because of difficulties in Central America. And the other thing is the profit motive for these cartels and smuggling networks is there. They are making too much money to stop bringing people into the country. Some estimates, $14 million, $15 million per day at the southwest border. When that kind of money is on the table, they're going to keep people coming through.
DOMENECH: Quickly, John, I know the way that the media covered the border crisis under the previous administration, they seem to be perfectly happy to be shut out of all of these facilities, not able to see what is going on with them today. Is there any kind of awareness of hypocrisy on their part?
DAVIDSON: Not at all, but it is amazing. There's a total media blackout. We can't see inside any of these facilities. There's no border ride-alongs. There's no access to Border Patrol agents. The Trump administration was very open about the border because it wanted the American people to know what was going on, even when things were bad there in 2019. The Biden administration has locked the border down, and most of corporate media seem happy with.
DOMENECH: John, thank you so much for joining me.
DAVIDSON: Thanks.
DOMENECH: Coming up, signs of Biden's decline, bringing down the hammer of Gwen Berry, and Make-a-Wish tells terminal kids they need to get vaccinated. Raymond Arroyo breaks it all down for us in "Seen and Unseen" up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOMENECH: It's time now for "Seen and Unseen" where we expose the big cultural stories of the day. And for that we turn to FOX News contributor Raymond Arroyo. Raymond, Joe Biden had a meeting with the president of Israel at the White House today. So how did that go?
RAYMOND ARROYO, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: As expected, Ben. Look, I don't want to prejudice this, but when it's over, you tell me how you feel about those air strikes in Syria over the weekend. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And -- and I directed last week's air strikes targeting sites used by the Iranian backed militia groups responsible for the recent attacks on U.S. personnel in Iraq. I also want to be clear, as I said, my team and I are working closely with the Israeli government that took office earlier this month.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: Poor soul. Ben, it would've been better to have the defense secretary or someone else read this stuff. He's clearly having some difficulties. It actually makes you worry about who is running the show here.
Then there is that gesture. And the media barely covered this event. There is this gesture we have seen before where Biden rings his hands. That's called perseveration, where people repeat when they are in decline gestures or phrases. Look, I'm not here to diagnose him, but this is deeply troubling, and it's getting worse. Now how do you feel about those Syrian air strikes, Ben?
DOMENECH: So you're telling me that in addition to probably being illegal by any measure, those also might have just been things that just got going around in certain areas. I've got to tell you, that doesn't make me feel good, whatever you would say about it.
ARROYO: It's heartbreaking. There's a part of it that is heartbreaking. But look, Kim Jong-un's weight loss got more coverage in the media than this did, and this is far more grave and importance.
But speaking of inappropriate gestures, Ben, American hammer thrower Bronze medalist Gwen Berry staged her own protest against the flag and the National Anthem on Saturday. When the flag was unfurled, she turned away at first, she put her hands on her hips, she rolled her eyes. Then she threw her activist athlete shirt over her head.
DOMENECH: Afterward Berry said "I feel like it was a set up and they did on purpose. I was pissed, to be honest." Raymond, how is it a set up to hear the National Anthem after an Olympic event? Has she not seeing what they typically do?
ARROYO: This is the whole point, Ben. Now the whole country's pissed, and not just her. When you make a contract, you make good on that contract. You follow through. This woman has made a contract. She wants to represent the United States in the Olympics. This is her shot. And when she gets there, she disparages and protests against the country. It's just not the right venue for this. If professional athletes want to do that, that's one thing. This is entirely different, Ben. It really is.
DOMENECH: You are representing the flag, obviously. The White House defended Gwen Berry today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Part of that in our country means recognizing there are moments where we as a country haven't lived up to our highest ideals. And it means respecting the right of people granting to them in the Constitution to peacefully protest.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: Well --
ARROYO: They are not here to protest. They are here to perform. Remember the Goodwill Games, Ted Turner had the Goodwill Games? We should have the protest games, and they can have the 100-yard cop chase. They can have the long-distance Molotov toss. We can do those things there. But these Olympic trials, it's not the place for protests, I'm sorry.
DOMENECH: I also, I just think that when it comes to performances like this, it's obviously meant to take away from the fact that she came in third, and to actually make that appeal. You forget the fact that Colin Kaepernick ranked 34th out of 32 quarterbacks the year that he got benched. It's just the sort of thing that goes away when you perform in this manner.
ARROYO: You've got to get attention somehow. This is how they do it.
Finally, Ben, the CEO and president of the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Richard Davis, made an alarming statement about their post-pandemic wishes late last week, and it's really disturbing. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All participants, including your wish kid and any siblings, will need to be two weeks pass completion of either a one-dose or a two-dose vaccine.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ARROYO: Ben, the vaccine is only approved for children over 12 years old. These are terminally ill children who in some cases cannot take the COVID vaccine. To deny them their wish as they face eternity is not only cruel, it's frankly absurd, and it cuts against the entire reason for this Make-a- Wish Foundation.
DOMENECH: Yes, the foundation is now clarifying their stance, saying "We respect everyone's freedom of choice. Make-a-Wish will continue to grant wishes for all eligible children. Make-a-Wish will not require anyone to get vaccinated to receive a wish." I'm glad that they've reconsidered, but whoever had this idea in the first place needs to really get their head checked.
ARROYO: But that statement is a bit deceiving, Ben, because when you read deeper you realize, yes, they are saying everyone will be considered to receive a wish. However, if you are not vaccinated, there will be no flights, there will be no large gatherings for you. That is cruel. Since most of these kids want to go to Disney World, that's off the table for them. They can only do a local wish fulfillment.
I'm sorry, these babies, these families are traumatized. They know what your risk is every day of their lives. You let them embrace and you let these kids and these families enjoy their time together. That's why this place exists. And I hope Make-a-Wish, who has done great work in the past, reconsiders this. It's a stupid policy.
DOMENECH: Absolutely, and I agree with you Raymond. Thank you so much for coming on.
ARROYO: Thank you, Ben.
DOMENECH: Lockdown hysteria seems to be spreading faster than the virus, and now it has reached our own shores. THE INGRAHAM ANGLE Medicine Cabinet reacts, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOMENECH: The Delta variant of COVID has reignited lockdown mania across the world. Roughly 70 percent of Australia's population now live under some sort of lockdown restrictions, including residents of Sydney who are being forced into their homes. Supermarkets are even putting limits on toilet paper purchases. How bad is the outbreak there? Less than 200 active cases as of earlier today.
But the Aussies aren't alone. Thailand and South Africa are also imposing shutdowns, and Japan and Germany are throwing up severe travel restrictions. And now this shutdown hysteria has reached our shores. Today the Los Angeles Department of Public Health is urging people, regardless of vaccination status, to mask up indoors.
Here now is Dr. Harvey Risch, epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health, and Dr. Peter McCullough, cardiologist and epidemiologist. Dr. McCullough, are we about to see a resurgence of lockdown policies in parts of this country?
DR. PETER MCCULLOUGH, MD, MPH, INTERNIST AND CARDIOLOGIST: Thanks for having me, Ben. I hope not. These lockdowns are completely unnecessary. It's an overreach. The dela variant is the mildest one we have seen so far, and even though it will proportionally take up a greater number of cases, and we expect this in the United States, it has a very low mortality, appears to be the most treatable strain that we have seen so far. And we're going to keep patients out of the hospital at a very low risk of mortality.
DOMENECH: CNN wants you to believe the sky is falling because of this Delta variant.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANGUS WATSON, CNN NEWS DESK PRODUCER: Not enough Australians have been vaccinated for these lockdowns to become a thing of the past.
DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: South Africa and large parts of the continent are being haunted by this delta variance. This pandemic is far from over.
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Russia is witnessing a powerful third wave. Strict new government guidelines mean that workers in contact with the public will now have to be vaccinated by law if they want to keep their jobs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: Dr. Risch, our governments overreacting to rising cases from the Delta variant?
DR. HARVEY RISCH, YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes, dramatically. As Dr. McCullough said, this is a very mild variant, and the cases are going to go up. They have gone up quite a bit in the U.K., whereas, at the same time, the mortality is flat, at near zero. There's very few hospitalizations, also flat, near zero, while the cases are going on. So basically, what the reaction to is a flu or a bad cold for most people who get it.
DOMENECH: Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb thinks future COVID outbreaks will look like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: You have parts of the United States where we don't have a lot of vaccinations, and we also don't have a lot of prior infection. Those are going to be the more vulnerable parts of this country. It's not going to be as pervasive. We are going to see pockets of the country -- it's going to be hyper regionalized where there are certain pockets of the country where we can have a very dense outbreak.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: Dr. McCullough, I'm concerned that we're going to see a situation where we kind of have these rolling authoritarian responses to situations like this. What do you think about Gottlieb's analysis?
MCCULLOUGH: I think it's completely off base. As of June 20th, we have about 45 percent of Americans that are fully vaccinated, but 77 percent of those over age 65. We know from the June 18th U.K. technical briefing that 42 percent of patients who get the variant have already been vaccinated, and from a June 14th report in "Lancet" from Sheikh (ph) et al, we know that a gradient from those unvaccinated to partially or fully vaccinated, the P value for interaction was not statistically significant, meaning the vaccine has no protective effect against the Delta variant. There's no time to rush out and get the vaccine. We simply just need to take prudent measures and treat our way through this next wave.
DOMENECH: The WHO head is blaming getting back to normal for the Delta variant spread.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS, WHO DIRECTOR-GENERAL: Delta is the most transmissible of the variances identified so far. As some countries ease public health and social measures, we are starting to see increases in transmission around the world. New variants are expected and will continue to be reported. But we can't prevent the emergence of variants by preventing transmission.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: Dr. Risch, is the WHO really in a position to give guidance like this given their recent history of spreading so much misinformation or information that is turned out on further inspection to not really hold up?
RISCH: They actually have it backwards, because this is a mostly harmless virus that will give more immunity. You want it to pass through as quickly as possible. You want people to get immune. Just locking people up will just postpone the inevitable and wreak more misery on the population. There is no benefit of lockdown at this point at all.
DOMENECH: Senator Ron Johnson held a presser today featuring people who had suffered some adverse effects from the COVID vaccine. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The head of my medical team told me that I should get used to being handicapped.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am so fearful that I may have some sort of neurological issue after this, Parkinson's.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why is she not back to normal? She was totally fine before this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've been robbed of her cognitive abilities, our physical abilities. We cannot work, we cannot care for our families.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: Dr. McCullough, these cases are rare, but Senator Johnson is being labeled an anti-vaxxer for raising them. What are your thoughts?
MCCULLOUGH: I don't think they are very rare at all, and the silence is deafening. We are six months into the vaccine program, and we have had no detailed press briefing on vaccine safety. With 387,000 reports in hand, safety reports by the CDC, they have said nothing about them. We have had 21,000 hospitalizations, 21 percent occur in an individual under age 50.
DOMENECH: Gentlemen, I want to thank you both for coming on.
Jen Psaki has her finger on the pulse of middle America. The Last Bite explains.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOMENECH: Jen Psaki detailed the Biden administration's latest plan to waste your hard-earned money.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: If you go to climate, which is an area where I think we still are going to continue to do more work, making sure people across the country, people who care deeply about addressing our climate crises know the components what's in this package, which the president considers a down payment. Not the end, a down payment. So 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations nationwide, that's what this would help support, with a focus on our highways, and rural and disadvantaged communities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOMENECH: That's all the time we have tonight. I'm Ben Domenech in for Laura Ingraham. Catch the latest episode of the Ben Domenech Podcast at FOXNewsPodcast.com, where I interview Michael Knowles, author of "Speechless." You don't want to miss it.
Greg Gutfeld next.
Content and Programming Copyright 2021 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2021 VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of VIQ Media Transcription, Inc. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox