Will Biden administration embrace Democrats' 'contempt' for America?
Daily Wire contributor Matt Walsh and 'Don't Burn this Book' author Dave Rubin weigh in on 'The Ingraham Angle'
This is a rush transcript from "The Ingraham Angle," January 19, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
LAURA INGRAHAM, HOST: All right, I'm Laura Ingraham. This is "The Ingraham Angle" from Washington. Joe Biden has made clear that he puts the hopes and wishes of illegal immigrants ahead of the safety and prosperity of the American people.
Well, tonight we're going to speak to an angel mom who reacts to Biden's immigration wishlist. For something that got no attention today, an American scientist admits that he only pushed back on the Wuhan home lab theory of COVID to protect Chinese scientists. Oh, Dr. Scott Atlas has something to say about that stunning development. But first, team Biden turns against America. That's the focus of tonight's Angle.
Now there's always been a logical inconsistency at the heart of the Left's attitude toward the United States. Now on the one hand, left wing politicians claim to be interested in helping the average American and make our country better.
On the other hand they believe that America is an inherently evil country that is systemically racist and is destroying the planet. Now, it wasn't long ago that Democrats at least tried to hide their utter disdain for the country but starting with Obama, Democrats began questioning America's exceptionalism.
And after four years of Trump putting America first well, the Democrats are reverting to the old Obama playbook.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That this is a chance for all of us in Congress to sort of begin at a new base line and stop spreading the myth of American exceptionalism and accept the fact that this is exactly who we are and this is exactly who we've been throughout our country's history.
Whenever they have social progress, there's white backslash.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Now even for Biden is inaugurated, we can see the chaos that results from trying to have an American government that is actually anti-American. Now after the events of January 6 the Democrats convince themselves that they were all about to be murdered by ways of angry Americans and to stop this imagine massacre, well, they've turned Washington DC and many state capitals into armed military fortresses.
I have never seen anything like it. It's disgraceful. But many of the soldiers and National Guard personnel that they've called in to protect them are among the tens of millions of Americans who supported President Trump. So now the Democrats are afraid of the very guards that they need - they think they need to protect them from their own people.
The result of this unfounded paranoia has been several days of folly. First, they announced that the FBI would vet for 25,000 National Guard members already serving their country presumably, the left trust the FBI because they think it was part of the effort to hurt President Trump so you got to trust them.
But that offended governor Abbott of Texas as indeed it should offend anyone associated with the National Guard but the vetting continues. 12 Army National Guard members were removed from inauguration duty today for extremely vague indications.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEN. DANIEL HOKANSON, CHIEF, NATIONAL GUARD BUREAU: We're kind of a family in the National Guard. We grow up together. We work together and we keep an eye on each other and if there's any indications, we immediately address it through the chain of command or law enforcement.
We want to make sure out of an abundance of caution as I stated earlier that we do the right thing until that gets cleared up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: We got to find out what that actually means, does it mean that you were like a lifetime member of the NRA or some other conservative work. I understand what that means. Now he's talking about a family, like a family, is that how a family operates? Well, the Pentagon apparently thinks so. According to The New York Times, the DOD is accelerating efforts to root out "far-right extremism in the ranks."
And never mind that during four years of Democrat-led fears of a military coup, there was absolutely no evidence that the military was anything other than loyal to its constitutional duties. The Democrats are in a mood for another witch hunt and the Pentagon is happy to oblige. They'd rather help the left turn the military into a PC patrol to be used against their fellow Americans rather than defend the country from China and other external threats.
Of course we know the Democrats aren't interested in standing up to China. They fear the GOP far more than they fear the CCP and so they'll happily destroy the military in hopes of finding anyone who ever sent an email they don't like. All in the name of crushing their domestic enemies and increasing their own grip on centralized power.
And Joe Biden's own cabinet picks, well, they're playing right into the hysteria for their own political gain. Biden's pick to head DHS is already pledging to use his vast and powerful agency to crack down on Americans who vote the wrong way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, BIDEN'S DHS SECRETARY NOMINEE: I look forward to playing a critical role in empowering the office of intelligence analysis in an apolitical, non-partisan way to do its important job and tackle the threat of domestic extremism is today.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Intelligence and analysis. What you're not talking about by the way he's mentioned is Antifa. He's talking about you. So much for unity and he's not only - he's not the only Biden pick who doesn't trust Americans. Yesterday NPR fawned over another Biden appointee who could police domestic extremism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARY LOUISE KELLY: I want to call attention to one person who will be playing a prominent role. Russ Travers, the incoming deputy homeland security director for President Biden.
MARY MCCORD: I think Russ is a great appointment you know he understands that you need to bring a whole of government and frankly whole of community approach to this problem set, kind of like in international terrorism you had to bring a whole of the international community as well as the U.S. community to the problem set.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Oh my God, that sounds like a bad Thursday night seminar in a really bad college. International terrorism. They're talking about targeting fellow Americans, not Al Qaeda fighters in the mountains of Afghanistan. Now these are your neighbors. Friends, family, people we grew up with who were supposed to be protected from this type of government surveillance by our constitution.
Is this really the kind of administration that Joe Biden wants? If so it's going to be a disaster for poor old Joe who probably we would like to be popular, a successful president and who ran on a promise to bring Americans together. Good luck with that.
A new NBC poll shows that 73 percent of the country, 93 percent of Republicans think the country will remain divided over the next four years. But the left doesn't care about what's good for our country, let alone for Biden. They don't have a very high opinion of either I think and so they'll press ahead with their purges, even if it means gutting the military in the process.
Biden's plainly too weak to stop them so expect this nonsense to continue. So what should conservatives do under these circumstances? First, no governor and certainly no Republican governor should put their National Guard in a situation where their volunteers are going to be vetted by the same conspiracy-minded loons at the FBI who gave us people like Jim Comey.
Second, Republicans on the hill have to look long and hard at the budget for the Pentagon and the Intel community. We're spending a fortune, one that frankly we can't afford anymore, on agencies that are supposed to protect us from external threats like China. We absolutely cannot allow the Democrats to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on what in effect would become a massive domestic spying apparatus turned on the American people.
Every Republican senator who attends a confirmation hearing for anyone associated with the national security establishment should demand sworn on the record testimony that our military and our Intel community will be used to fight America's enemies abroad, not Kamala Harris' enemies at home.
Again the focus should be on the CCP, not the GOP. If Republican members aren't convinced that the military will be used properly and it would take a lot to convince me, well, they should demand immediate and major cuts to the budgets of the Pentagon and the Intel communities.
We can use our tax money in much better ways and that's The Angle. Joining me now is Matt Walsh, Daily Wire columnist and host of the Matt Walsh show and Dave Rubin, host of the Rubin Report, author of 'Don't Burn this Book.'
Matt, it's kind of shocking. How comfortable the left is become with expanding the surveillance state to target their political enemies now that they have that grip on all three branches of government, all three branches of the political side.
MATT WALSH, THE DAILY WIRE CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I mean it is shocking and you said a minute ago, is this the kind of administration Biden wants? Well, the problem first of all is I don't think he knows what he wants. I don't he knows what he had for breakfast this morning so I don't think he knows what he wants and of course he's just being manipulated as by the puppet masters in his administration which is we knew was going to happen.
It's especially shocking though this dichotomy or talk about how they're using the National Guard, their military occupation of Washington DC at the moment especially jarring when you consider the people that are doing this just a few months ago were insisting that even responding with just regular police officers to rioting was some sort of - some sort of Orwellian sort of dystopian infringement on liberties.
And now they're perfectly fine with this so there's a really jarring I think contrast there.
INGRAHAM: I'm just glad we finally found a wall that Nancy Pelosi likes outside of the walls around her own properties so unlike her personal properties so let's take a look Dave, Biden's economic plan. Biden's economic policy team is signaled that it will be the first administration ever to construct economic policy around issues like race, gender equality and climate change relevant around traditional indicators like GDP or deficit ratios.
Dave, how much economic success can we expect from a plan that basically doesn't even take into account GDP.
DAVE RUBIN, AUTHOR, "DON'T BURN THIS BOOK": Yes, well first Laura, with your intro in mind, I just want to go on the record that I am an extremist. I'm a radical freedom extremist that I believe in the constitution and that people should live freely within the laws of the United States.
Putting that aside, yes, of course this is absolutely absurd. The people that are in charge of the economy starting tomorrow, they're basically telling us, we don't really care about math, we care about what your gender, that your sexuality and all the other immutable stuff. These policies can't work but you know, I was on your podcast a couple of days ago and we were talking about the silver lining to all of this and what I truly believe is that if you hire people at the governmental level, not based on their skill set or whether they're experts in their field.
But if you hire people based on whether they're gay or trans or bi or black or green or whatever it might be, well then you will not hire the best people. Not to say that some of the best people can't be those things but that can't be the primary reason for hiring them.
And we're going to see an administration that is going to hire all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons and in many ways it's the reverse. Remember that guys whose birthday we celebrated yesterday that MLK guy who didn't want his kids to be judged on the color of their skin but the content of their character, it's the reverse of what we celebrated yesterday.
And it's being imported by the people who are telling us that the rest of us are bigots and racists and homophobes. Irony is clearly dead.
INGRAHAM: Yes. Exactly. Well Matt, you know looking at DC last few days, well, since the sixth, I mean it is, I'm sorry it's disgraceful. The lockdown of Washington DC, as if we think that Al Qaeda, you know with the most hardened terrorists who ever existed are literally converging on the nation's capital now with the CCP helping them.
And you get the sense that as Muriel Bowser said, this isn't going away anytime soon. This is going to continue. It and it's even more disgraceful when you consider that the implication, what they're basically implying is that well listen, if there's rioting and they're just and they're burning down where your neighbor works, well, you know that's one thing.
We can kind of deal with that. We can live with that especially as lawmakers of DC, we're fine with that but if you start smashing the windows where we work, that's a totally different deal and now we're going to militarize DC and we're going to keep the troops here indefinitely because you know the sacred hallowed grounds of the capital, we can't touch that but go head and burn down a CVS.
Go ahead and attack a pawn shop, kill a retired police guy in the process, that they don't have a problem with. Nancy Pelosi was on a podcast with Hillary Clinton who apparently has a podcast now if anyone wants to listen to it and she was talking about the trauma that our lawmakers suffered during the riots.
Well OK, but I don't remember her ever saying anything about the trauma that regular Americans suffer during the riots that happened for months.
INGRAHAM: No, it's almost like they had a right to rampage. I mean, really, I mean you had a right to rampage because Trump was so awful, you had a rampage. I mean that's the sense you got. Guys, great to see you tonight. Thank you so much and we know Joe Biden and the people he's putting in positions of power can be disastrous for the American people.
But the GOP doesn't have to sit back and just let it all happen. They need to figure out how to harness Trump's unique ability to speak directly to the American people which is on full display in his farewell address tonight.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP: I want to thank the American people. To serve as your president has been an honor beyond description. Thank you for this extraordinary privilege. We are a nation of incredible, decent, faithful and peace loving citizens who all want our country to thrive and flourish and be very, very successful and good. We are a truly magnificent nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Joining me now is Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz. Congressman, nearly nine and ten Republican voters approve of President Trump's job performance. The same is just ahead of the elections so what's going on with GOP leaders kicking in when frankly he's down? In the eyes of the larger public perhaps.
REP. MATT GAETZ, R-FLA.: Throughout the country we see tremendous support for the president among the base because folks support the policies that put our country and our people first but inside the beltway of Washington DC, even the Republican Party isn't immune from the temptations of the establishment.
We see people like Liz Cheney in the leadership of our party who not only took a position against President Trump but who represent a very antiquated version of republicanism. They want to invade every foreign land, invite every illegal immigrant across the border to lower wages for our people and help big business and then enter into trade deals that impoverished the towns in our country.
So if we're going to do as you say Laura and continue to harness the energy of the Trump movement, I believe the Republican Party needs more leaders who will actually animate that movement with the spirit and style of our outgoing president.
INGRAHAM: Matt, do you agree with what I said earlier in The Angle that especially Republican governors sending National Guard troops to Washington to have them be treated like second class citizens. They're vetted, they're looked at with suspicion, got to check their social media.
I mean these are people who volunteered their time to serve their country and they're almost immediately suspect in the eyes of this Democrat establishment on Capitol Hill. I mean why indulge it? I bring my guys back and gals back.
GAETZ: You make a good point. It's the National Guard today but soon it's the rest of us. We see baseless allegations against my colleagues in Congress, folks saying they must have been working in cahoots with the rioters. That's nonsense.
We see our National Guard members having their social media scrubbed, having to answer for their patriotism when they've volunteered to wear that uniform and help keep the rest of us safe and I think your angle was particularly poignant on the issue of using national security tools against our people.
You know what's interesting Laura no one 's ever used the word murder to describe what happened on January 6, even though that's what it is because the incoming Biden administration, they don't want to use the prosecutorial tools that append to a murder.
They want to use terms like national security, insurrection, domestic terrorism because that allows them to access these exquisite authorities to use tools that we envision to go after terrorists in foreign lands than being turned against our own people.
The Democrats mean what they say when they talk about reprogramming MAGA and purging the country of people who have embraced the policies that made our country more prosperous.
INGRAHAM: That's the language of Mao.
GAERTZ: And more focused.
INGRAHAM: Mao - I mean, anyone, I mean again, I don't know if people don't learn history in school anymore but if you know what Chairman Mao was all about, if you ever study Joseph Stalin, if you ever did Russian history, understand it because it starts in a very, very innocuous way.
And it all sounds innocuous, a community good, we all wanted harmony, we want to get along and suddenly you lose your right to petition the government, speak, go to church and then you're branded as an enemy of the state. I mean this is again, Congressman, this is why we do need civic education, patriotic education.
That our children understand what's in front of them right now. You might not like Donald Trump but you're definitely not going to like a lot less freedom under this new administration if it keeps going this way. Final word.
GAETZ: No doubt and more and more we're starting to see big tech work in concert with big media and even some of the big egos in the establishment on Capitol Hill to create in our country something akin to the Chinese social credit score where if your politics are bad or if you've said the wrong thing, you're limited in your ability to borrow money, have housing, get a car, do any of the things--
INGRAHAM: Or serve in the National Guard.
GAETZ: - that you would want all Americans to enjoy.
INGRAHAM: Yes, serve in the National Guard. Congressman, great to see you tonight. Thanks so much and coming up, how does the media coverage look now versus January 2017 when Donald Trump was coming into office. Ooh, that's going to be good plus Mollie Hemingway, Sara Carter react to the stunning then and now. All in moments. Stay there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: On the eve of Joe Biden's inauguration, it's worth remembering how the media sounded in the run up to Trump swearing in.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL, MSNBC HOST: The nuclear moment, the moment the people in this country and around the world have been fearing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Trump era in Washington has begun.
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: It is hard, very hard to overstate how strange and raw the mood is here in the nation's capital.
HANS NIHOLS, AXIOS POLITICAL REPORTER: What is the civil rights committee going to do and how are they going to counter when the suspect is going to be - and the Donald administration.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Could be loss of best friend. Of course the hyping of Joe's inauguration has been the polar opposite of what you just heard.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID AXELROD, CNN HOST: Joe Biden is going to give his inaugural address, birthing unity and offering hope.
KRISTEN WELKER, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: He is going to hit those themes of unity, healing.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It will emphasize familiar themes from his campaign including unity, healing.
KASIE HUNT, MSNBC HOST: It will be an interesting contrast from our previous, the last inaugural address.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: It would be like if they were saying well, you know Trump's going to put America first, that's what he says he's going to do so Trump's all about America first, right? Well, get ready. It's going to be four years of nauseating gauzy coverage like that so instead of being a check on Biden and covering Biden and the Democrats, they're going to cover for Biden and the Democrats.
The watch dogs, well they're just lap dogs like CNN reporter Shimon Prokupecz who tweeted this as Joe Biden spoke in DC today. "Let the healing begin. We have needed this."
Mmmhm, take me to a vomitorium. Joining me now is Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, Fox news contributor and Sarah Carter, Fox news contributor, host of The Sara Carter Show podcast. Mollie, look, if Joe Biden says it, they report it without question.
When Donald Trump came in and he said look, there's a swamp in DC which we all pretty much knew but there's a swamp in DC, I'm going to drain it. It's time to put America's interests first. They were like no, you can't do that. That's outrageous.
What should we expect in the coming months and years?
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, THE FEDERALIST: Well, the media have shown themselves to not just be biased you know you hear Republicans complaining about media bias going all the way back to actually President Eisenhower so bias is not something that Republicans are surprised by or conservatives are surprised by.
What the last four years showed us is that the situation is so much worse than mere bias. It is true corruption and unaccountability for the most politically influential group in America, our corporate media, they are the ones who drive the Democratic Party.
They are the ones that issue orders to the Democratic Party. They're the ones who push identity politics, destruction of our constitution, opposition to our founding principles and they've been remarkably successful.
The other side of what we experienced in these last four horrific years of media malfeasance is that they cannot even pretend to cover President Biden with any sort of scrutiny at all and it's really you know the sudden shift is really alarming to go from their hysterical hatred for all things conservative to now doing profiles about Kamala Harris' tennis shoes and Joe Biden's love of ice cream.
And it's just - it's non-tenable going forward, yes.
INGRAHAM: No, well, the inauguration, that was a hard hitting piece of journalism about and we love dogs here in "Ingraham Angle" as everyone knows but come on. Now listen to how CNN's David Chalian described the scenery around Biden's COVID event today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Those lights that are - that are just shooting out from the Lincoln Memorial along the reflecting pool. I look - it's like almost extensions of Joe Biden's arms embracing America, outstretching his arms.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: I don't even know what to say to that. Sarah. It's like--
SARA CARTER, HOST, "THE SARA CARTER SHOW": That was at the top of my notes.
INGRAHAM: Stretching.
CARTER: It was actually at the top of my notes, stretching and embracing and embracing and then you have a New York Times editor who basically said on Twitter that she got the chills, the chills as Biden was landing an Airforce One at Andrews Air Force base.
It's pretty obvious that the media, the mainstream media or the major media outlets are definitely walking side by side with Biden in the inauguration. They feel that they are being inaugurated. It used to be a time when the media would question and be the watchdog over the government, would fight for civil liberties, would defend the voice of those who had no voice, would be their voice. And now what we are seeing is something exactly what Mollie was saying, is an exact reversal of that.
But remember, if you go back to 2016, 2017, they were literally, and I'm talking about anchors on CNN, on MSNBC, news reporters I saw with my own eyes in New York City, literally crying, crying in anguish when President Trump took office. And now they're abandoning the 74 plus million people that voted for President Trump. It's like they never learned their lesson, right? They were shocked in 2016 when he won, and they didn't understand why. They live in a bubble in Washington.
And now what we're seeing is they are not even doing their job. We have National Guard in Washington, D.C., 25,000, only 1,000 people are going to be attending Joe Biden's inauguration. It's supposed to be about unity, yet they're targeting the American people and they are ignoring --
INGRAHAM: It's a DMZ. This is a military zone now, Mollie, in D.C. And by the way, I want to get something to what Matt Gaetz referred to earlier, Congressman Steve Cohen has been the chief spreader, one of them, of inside job conspiracy, even implicating GOP Congresswoman Boebert. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. STEVE COHEN, D-TENN.: We saw Congressman Boebert taking a group of people for a tour. Now, whether they were people that were involved in the insurrection or not, I do not know. She's not on the home team. She was with the visitors.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: So it's back to the domestic enemy, Mollie, this myth that keeps being spread -- scandal, defamation.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY, SENIOR EDITOR, THE FEDERALIST: First off, that congressman explained that she had done nothing other than give tours to family members, that she had not participated in anything untoward in terms of tours. But yes, this is, what's happening right now is about making being conservative equivalent to being a terrorist. The left wants to wipe out all opposition. They want to censor any disagreement or opposing opinions, and they have a lot of power to do that. They control the media. They control big tech, and those big tech oligarchs are coming for absolute destruction. This causes national security problems. It causes domestic unrest.
And what I think a lot of conservative, 75 million plus conservatives, are hoping for is that there will be anyone in Washington, D.C., to take their cause up and fight and defend them.
INGRAHAM: Well, everybody's got to get ready to defend freedom in every way they can peacefully, and enthusiastically, and joyfully. Ladies, thank you so much.
And Biden says he's going to use science and truth to beat COVID, but what does that mean exactly? Dr. Scott Atlas responds to that. Plus, a stunning update to the Wuhan lab theory.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Throughout this entire COVID nightmare, so-called experts and scientists who know better, they fed the American people lies to further their own agenda, the most stunning example of which has escaped coverage. According to "The Daily Caller," a renowned U.S. scientist, Dr. Peter Daszak, orchestrated a statement published in the "Lancet" medical journal last February condemning conspiracy theories that suggest that virus doesn't have a natural origin. Now, Daszak, who reportedly has direct ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the NIH, now admits he made that statement to protect Chinese scientists from online harassment.
Joining me now is Dr. Scott Atlas, former White House COVID advisor, Hoover Institution senior fellow. Dr. Atlas, each step of the way the scientific establishment, at least that based in Washington and many academic circles, have too often failed us.
DR. SCOTT ATLAS, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: Hey, Laura, thanks for having me. Yes, I think it's just another example of how the information really was never transparent. And for a variety of reasons, whether it was covered up by China or covered up by people here, or simply not aggressively pursued by the press or anyone else who should have known better, we have had incomplete information. The story from the beginning, that this virus was from a market, we don't know, but it seems a little bit unlikely given the high level of coincidence, if nothing else, that the main viral laboratory of China is right there working on these viruses.
So we've never had the complete story, and it doesn't surprise me that there were ulterior motives in people saying things that they really, whether the didn't know they were true or they knew they were false, it doesn't matter. They said things as if they were true.
INGRAHAM: I want you to react to what Biden said about his approach to COVID at an event that just took place on Saturday.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, D-PRESIDENT-ELECT: I have always said that Biden-Harris administration is also going to lead, and we're going to lead with science and truth. We believe in both. This is how we're going to, God willing, overcome the pandemic and build our country back better than it was before.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: OK, Dr. Atlas, he's saying that the Trump administration didn't lead with science? Your response?
ATLAS: I don't even know how to respond to that at this point. This is so ludicrous, this canard that keeps being repeated -- it's about the science. I'll tell you what the science says. The science says the strict lockdowns did not work. The science says that children do not have significant risk from the disease. And the science says that children are not a big time spreader of the disease to adults. The science says that schools are low risk. The science says that schools should be open. The science says protection is from people who not just have antibodies, but have T cells. These are the facts. The lockdowns are a disaster. They should be opened. The science says that people who are at risk for dying should be the priority for the vaccine, not other people. I'm so tired of that. I think the American people must be tired of this already. This is just ludicrous gibberish with nonsensical content.
INGRAHAM: The science is saying that gain-of-function research is responsible, perhaps, for the way this virus moved and spread.
Dr. Atlas, the career CDC people recommended ending travel restrictions on Europe, and the president agreed. And now Biden is saying, he will not allow that to happen. I thought Biden said he would essentially listen to whatever the CDC said, be essentially a slave to the CDC. So why would Biden go against them on this travel ban? Is that a precursor to larger lockdowns?
ATLAS: Well, I get the feeling from what has been said and by the people who are on this incoming task force, that they have no intent of lifting lockdowns, not that I have seen. In fact, there has been stuff said that we have to do all these maneuvers even after everyone is vaccinated. So I'm not optimistic about the course of things. I can't tell why people say that they want to listen to the CDC, and then they don't want to listen to the CDC. I think you should as a leader make the decisions. You don't delegate the decisions to the CDC. So in that sense, that's correct.
But there is a rationale for opening travel. The reason you stop travel is not because there's cases. The reason you stop travel is because you are worried about your hospitals being overcrowded. That would be a reason. If you are not worried about that, then you should open travel, because the restriction of travel is extremely harmful economically and is actually killing people because the economic losses that are disastrous and found to be killing people. These things translate into deaths.
INGRAHAM: We've got to roll, but how is the economy of Florida doing versus the economy of Michigan or Illinois or New York? Dr. Atlas, wonderful to see you tonight. Thank you so much.
And a few weeks back we brought you a stunning story about states overcounting COVID deaths, now, one of which included a 99-year-old woman in Washington state who died after losing her balance and falling. My next guest, Christine Frye, happens to be watching our show that night and suspected that the woman may have been her mom. So she worked with the Freedom Foundation, who sounded the alarm on these shocking examples of overcounting, to compare her mother's death certificate to Washington state's data. And guess what, they were a perfect match.
Christine Frye joins us now. Christine, thank you for joining us tonight. Your mother did have COVID, right, but she did recover. And is this right, that that was weeks before she passed away?
CHRISTINE FRYE, SAYS MOM WRONGLY PUT AS COVID DEATH: Yes, it was. Thank you for having me and letting me tell my story. She had survived COVID, and about three weeks later, four weeks later, she passed away after having fallen in her room trying to do something that she probably shouldn't have been doing.
INGRAHAM: Well, the problem is, it really feeds public skepticism on some of the record-keeping, at least, because your mother's death certificate doesn't even have COVID-19 listed anywhere as the cause of death.
FRYE: No.
INGRAHAM: And under the manner of death part, it's ruled an accident. So one wonders how she got classified as a COVID death. I guess they would say, that is just one-off mistake, but one does begin to wonder.
FRYE: It is a good question. We're not sure how many other people have gone through this. But my mom did not die of COVID. She had survived it at age 99, and was moving on with her life. She did have a congestive heart failure, and the fall, she had fallen over backwards. And that fall was just too much for her body to sustain, and she passed away a couple of weeks later after fighting those injuries.
INGRAHAM: We have heard similar stories, and it would be nice if we could get a real database of actual facts. There's been a lot of people who have died and a lot of tragedy and a lot of suffering. But Christine, thank you so much. And what an amazing woman, what an amazing life, 99 years of age, and God bless you for sharing that story.
Biden's decision to cancel the border wall is a slap in the face too many Americans who have lost wages and loved ones to illegal immigration. An angel mom weighs in, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
INGRAHAM: Now, building that wall across our southern border wasn't just a signature Trump campaign promise. It was a signal to Americans all over the country who had suffered the ill effects of illegal immigration. But now they incoming Biden administration is telling those same Americans they are basically going to be on their own.
And my next guest is an angel mom who does not want to see the wall canceled. Joining me now is Maureen Maloney. Her son Matthew was killed by an illegal immigrant 10 years ago. Maureen, incoming President Biden also wants to give amnesty to 11 million illegals, and end deportations, I guess, for everyone for 100 days. Who the heck cares about COVID? What message does that send to law-abiding Americans and legal immigrants across the country?
MAUREEN MALONEY, ANGEL MOM: It's a slap in the face to law abiding Americans. We're a country of rules and laws, and laws have to be abided by. And so by giving amnesty to these illegal aliens, which you said 11 million, but we really don't know. It's probably closer to 20 million of them here in the country, you are rewarding them for breaking our laws. And you are sending a message to other foreigners that our borders are open, and if you come here, we will reward you for breaking our laws.
INGRAHAM: Now, it is really shocking, is it not, that, Maureen, you have thousands upon thousands of Hondurans and others from Central America and elsewhere who know that Joe Biden is going to give them all these benefits, and Congress will probably give them free health care, and obviously, their kids already get public education and SNAP benefits, and so forth. But it is amazing how word carries pretty fast. So the caravans start, and the police are overwhelmed. And yet we have this amazing fortification around the Capitol building, and all of Washington is locked down, but apparently no appetite to actually protect the rest of the country.
MALONEY: And after the inauguration, they should take all those National Guardsmen put them down on the southern border and protect Americans.
INGRAHAM: I wouldn't hold your breath on that. But here is what Biden's DHS nominee said about the migrant caravan, I think there are a number of them now, heading to our southern border.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When people present themselves at our border, we apply the laws of our nation to determine whether they qualify for relief under our humanitarian laws, or whether they don't.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Well, Maureen, we have seen how this worked in practice during past administration, and early on in this administration they let everyone in.
MALONEY: Right, and then they give them a court date a couple years down the road to show up. It's catch and release. They release them into the country. They move further into the interior, and they never show up for their court date.
INGRAHAM: Maureen, we've got to go, but thank you so much for joining us, and your story is unbelievable.
What does the press corps crave from their next president? The Last Bite explains.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're about to have an emotional, empathetic Irishman as president.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joe Biden is an emotional man, he has always been, and I think now even more so. Empathy, as we all know, is something that is very foreign to Donald Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Empathy, compassion, understanding of loss and pain is back in the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
INGRAHAM: Well, those folks don't have to worry whether empathy puts food on the table as much as we love empathy, and we do.
That's all the time we have tonight. Shannon Bream and the "Fox News @ Night" team take it all from here. A little bit different coverage, Shannon, than four years ago with Trump was getting ready to be sworn in.
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