Brooke Baldwin must be off somewhere getting a stiff drink after interviewing Juan Desmarais, owner of three barber shops in California. At least, I hope she is, because she deserves it.
Desmarais has decided to defy California law, re-open his barber shops to customers, risking a $1,000 fine for each citation. (Note to California authorities...he's right there.) He swears to take precautions, wear masks, only allow one customer at a time into the shop, sanitize the chairs between customers, blah blah blah, but you've heard the argument before. Times are tough, he and his employees need to earn money, and no dang gub'mint is a'gonna tell him when to open and close.
Baldwin sympathizes with the economic hardships, but when she begins to ask about the risk of catching the deadly disease — one from which she has just recovered — that is when things go truly off the rails into Yellow Submarine-land. He'd told her producer that he did not care if he caught COVID-19, so Baldwin asked if he still felt that way.
BALDWIN: Hang on, hang on, Juan. Let me jump in because I think neither of us are doctors and I know there's a lot of numbers being thrown out. I've had it. It was not fun, and I had it way better than a lot of the folks who are on ventilators, and about half of the folks put on ventilators don't make it out of the hospital. So just, I don't think you want to say, maybe, it's okay if I get it.
DESMARAIS: Well, I don't know if half the people who get on ventilators don't get out of the hospital either.
BALDWIN: I know that. That's a stat. That's data.
DESMARAIS: You're a healthy young lady and you recovered from it. I'm a healthy young man. I'm gonna recover from it. I have no underlying risks. Any of my clients who do are welcome to not come to the shop, and quarantine as long as they feel necessary for the loved ones or themselves. I'm not going to force any of my clients to come to my shop.
Oh, I love my idiocy with a side of mansplaining, don't you? He throws out bogus numbers and completely baseless predictions that he will recover from COVID-19 should he catch it, and then he questions HER numbers about people on ventilators as if she is not a professional journalist who has not only experienced the disease, but done her homework.
After she continues to box his ears with actual facts and he has no response, he decides he needs to swing his d*ck around in the next set of questions. You know, to reassert his macho, manly, testosteron-laden aura — or soothe his bruised snowflake ego, take your pick.
DESMARAIS: Well, listen. I'm not going to live in fear. It's not American. I'm a Marine officer, I was a law enforcement officer for over a decade...
Got that? Juan's not gonna let a thing like a deadly disease, a thousands of dollars in fines, or jail time scare him because THIS IS AMERICA and if he wants to break the law and threaten people's lives, dammit, that's his right as a red-blooded lunatic!
Baldwin is barely maintaining her composure, but true professional that she is, continued to challenge him with questions. When he comes out with more justifications based on completely bass-ackwards, unrelated, and false statements about the criminal justice system, that's when she shuts him down for good.
DESMARAIS: Absolutely, I'll keep rolling. Listen. They're letting criminals out of jail left and right. The courts are all shut down. How long do you think it will be before we're even --
BALDWIN: Juan, Juan, Juan, nobody is letting criminals out of jail left and right. Let's stay on topic.
DESMARAIS: They are absolutely letting criminals out of jail left and right.
BALDWIN: What does that have to do with coronavirus, sir?
DESMARAIS: You're asking about the citation.
BALDWIN: I'm just asking if you defy.
DESMARAIS: Right, I'm gonna defy all the way up to the end, if I end up with 20 tickets in the superior court, six months from now, that's a risk I'm willing to take.
BALDWIN: So that's $20,000 and if you want to have your other barbers provide for their families, how did that math work out?
DESMARAIS: That means I'll have to shut down my shops and I guess someone will take my Harley or I might get time in the county jail. For me, the trade-off would be worth it.
Remember, kids. He said he is defying the order so that his barbers CAN earn enough money to feed their families. Yet somehow, if he has to shut down his shops for good because he defied the order, AND owe $20,000 in fines AND/OR spend time in jail AND/OR have his hog repo'd, it will be worth it, because he showed the governor he wasn't afraid.
These colossal lunatics will do absolutely anything, including self-destruct, to own the libs.
