The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 518. Courage in Controversy： Medical Tyranny & Jan 6th Riots ｜ Dr. Simone Gold

00:00:00.000 It's very unlikely that you went to the University of Chicago Medical School.

00:00:03.400 That's really hard.

00:00:04.460 And to follow that up with Stanford Medical School,

00:00:07.160 like, is there anyone else who's done that?

00:00:08.520 All the doctors knew hydroxychloroquine was safe

00:00:10.860 until media told them otherwise.

00:00:13.680 I said to the world, you need to stop living in fear.

00:00:16.080 There's no reason to live in fear.

00:00:17.600 I had no idea that was going to completely upend my life.

00:00:20.660 The First Amendment exists not just so you can hear what I have to say,

00:00:23.980 but humans have a need to speak truth.

00:00:25.960 Well, everybody who's watching and listening should pay careful attention to that.

00:00:29.220 Living in lies, I might as well be dead. 0.84

00:00:31.860 It's worse than death. 0.86

00:00:33.160 I'm in my apartment working, scream, banging on the door.

00:00:36.260 FBI, FBI, FBI!

00:00:38.160 Battery ram, 20 guys in tactical gear,

00:00:41.300 huge weapons pointed at me as close as I am to you.

00:00:43.860 And I remember thinking, oh.

00:00:59.220 Hello, everybody.

00:01:01.660 I had the opportunity today to talk to Dr. Simone Gold.

00:01:06.380 And she had quite a story to tell.

00:01:11.080 Interweaving medicine.

00:01:13.840 She's a physician, emergency room physician for 20 years.

00:01:17.600 A lawyer, a graduate of Stanford Law School.

00:01:20.520 And she was one of the youngest physicians who ever graduated in the United States

00:01:27.380 and then also went to Stanford Law School.

00:01:30.080 So those are stellar accomplishments.

00:01:32.140 And I say that to establish her credentials because she has been profoundly pilloried

00:01:38.900 as a quack in her own words because of her stance on COVID,

00:01:44.940 the COVID mandates on hydroxychloroquine more particularly,

00:01:47.860 but the mandates really more broadly.

00:01:50.940 And has also served time in prison in consequence of her appearance on January 6th.

00:01:59.760 And so what did we talk about today?

00:02:02.400 Well, we talked about physician training and its positive elements and its inadequacies.

00:02:09.760 We talked about the stunning lack of curiosity that Dr. Gold emerged among her colleagues

00:02:15.180 when COVID made itself manifest on the public scene.

00:02:20.420 We talked about her experiences attempting to share her knowledge with regards to hydroxychloroquine

00:02:27.960 and its effectiveness as a antiviral treatment,

00:02:31.680 particularly with viruses of the sort that COVID was.

00:02:35.560 We talked about the consequences of her training in law.

00:02:39.080 Well, we talked about January 6th and the events there and the particulars of her so-called participation

00:02:47.200 and then the details of the FBI's pursuit of her.

00:02:52.200 In the aftermath of that event, 20 of them dressed in their full gear, broke down her apartment door and hauled her away.

00:03:02.060 And she was imprisoned for 60 days for plea bargaining down to a misdemeanor, trespassing misdemeanor.

00:03:09.760 And so like any one of those stories is enough to occupy two hours and we managed to cover all of them.

00:03:18.120 And so if you want to take a trip through the labyrinth of law and medicine and the judiciary in the United States

00:03:28.060 and with a side trip into the, what would you say, the complexities of the prison system,

00:03:38.460 then join us and we'll walk through all that.

00:03:42.520 So Dr. Gold, when you trained as a physician, did you foresee in any way that you would be like legally entangled and politically active?

00:03:54.420 I did not.

00:03:55.620 Well, so let's go back to when you, when you started your academic training, where, where, where did you train as a physician?

00:04:02.240 I was very young when I went to medical school.

00:04:04.280 I started medical school at 19.

00:04:06.100 I was at Chicago Medical School and I graduated when I was 23 and planned to be a physician.

00:04:12.100 And I, that was my plan.

00:04:13.600 My father was a doctor and I was raised to believe being a physician was the best thing a person could do with their life.

00:04:19.700 There's a law in Judaism called pikua nefesh, which means to save a life.

00:04:23.980 And to save a life, pikua nefesh was the highest honor a person could do, best thing you could do with your life.

00:04:28.740 And that's what I thought I would be doing.

00:04:30.340 Now, how did you get into medical school when you were 19?

00:04:32.800 That's hard.

00:04:33.920 That's a good medical school or great medical school even.

00:04:36.440 So how do you manage that?

00:04:38.240 I finished college.

00:04:39.680 I finished high school at 16 and I did college in three years.

00:04:42.300 It's interesting that paperwork is so onerous these days.

00:04:45.020 I don't even think it's possible to get through school early, at least in America.

00:04:49.560 So, but back then, if you worked really, really hard and fast, you actually could go fast.

00:04:53.320 Right.

00:04:53.620 It's very uncommon.

00:04:54.260 You took extra courses?

00:04:55.440 I took extra courses.

00:04:56.180 And to be fair to myself, when I was the youngest person in America at that time, the day that I graduated, there are other people who have done that.

00:05:04.440 There's, I understand, someone who was 22 at a later point, but it is certainly very unusual.

00:05:09.000 Right.

00:05:09.340 And so you graduated from medical school at 23 and that's when you started your internships, your residencies?

00:05:15.700 Yes.

00:05:15.880 Yes, I did my internship.

00:05:17.040 I did that in Virginia.

00:05:18.500 I had planned at that time to go to law school.

00:05:21.340 I was super interested in health policy and learning as much as I could, just being as academic as I could.

00:05:28.520 And I moved to Virginia for a year, did my internship.

00:05:31.280 And then I zigzagged and I went to Stanford Law School.

00:05:35.460 Okay.

00:05:35.880 So tell me about that.

00:05:37.500 You said that from a very early age, you were inclined in the medical direction and why law?

00:05:44.980 And that you went to Stanford Law School.

00:05:47.700 Yes.

00:05:47.800 That's also very difficult.

00:05:49.320 Yes.

00:05:49.760 So where did you do your undergraduate?

00:05:51.380 So I did my undergraduate close to home.

00:05:54.180 I grew up in New York.

00:05:55.000 That was City College of New York.

00:05:56.560 I lived at home.

00:05:57.480 That was my parents' preference.

00:05:58.560 I was 16.

00:05:59.900 Right.

00:06:00.140 So I could drive into the city or take the train into the city.

00:06:04.020 So I was still very protected, I would say.

00:06:06.720 My father was Eastern European, just very protective.

00:06:09.640 And I finished that by 19, started medical school, went to Chicago, finished my medical studies.

00:06:15.260 But to practice medicine in America at that time, you had to do an internship.

00:06:19.200 Yeah.

00:06:19.740 So the MD is when you graduate, but the internship is you get your license.

00:06:22.960 How long was the internship?

00:06:24.060 One year.

00:06:24.980 One year.

00:06:25.580 So after that one year, I zigzagged and I went to law school.

00:06:28.900 Well, the reason was I really wanted to, my vague idea was to fix the health care system in America.

00:06:36.560 Yeah, that's a hard one.

00:06:38.240 I thought, a lot of people suggested I should get an MPH.

00:06:41.240 It's very funny.

00:06:41.820 We should return back to that.

00:06:43.720 But it just didn't feel right to me.

00:06:45.220 I said, no, no, let me understand the law.

00:06:46.780 Many of our founding fathers were lawyers.

00:06:48.200 I just wanted to understand it.

00:06:49.480 So that was what led me to Stanford Law School, which is an incredibly difficult law school to get into.

00:06:55.380 Yeah, right.

00:06:55.840 Very small law school, 147 people.

00:06:59.240 Harvard is about three times the size.

00:07:01.180 So to get into Stanford was amazing.

00:07:03.740 And it was, I would say, the most intellectually interesting years of my life was being at Stanford Law School.

00:07:10.460 So what was your undergraduate degree?

00:07:12.200 What was your major?

00:07:13.300 You know, I don't even recall.

00:07:15.760 It was some kind of pre-med.

00:07:17.660 It was something pre-med.

00:07:18.200 Okay, so it was mostly scientifically oriented?

00:07:20.100 Yes, yes.

00:07:20.520 Like something approximating a BSC?

00:07:22.940 Yes, yes.

00:07:23.660 Right.

00:07:24.020 Yes.

00:07:24.380 Right.

00:07:24.840 And so from there to medical school at the University of Chicago, and you did your internship.

00:07:30.000 What did you specialize in your internship?

00:07:31.880 So I was starting on a path towards emergency medicine, which is what I eventually started finishing.

00:07:36.920 I was captivated, though, by law school.

00:07:41.800 It was just extremely interesting.

00:07:44.380 Medical school and law school are very, very different.

00:07:46.680 This all played into what's happened over the last few years.

00:07:50.060 But medical school was a lot of memorization, a lot of learning material that was presented to you, much like you would a grade school child.

00:07:58.340 Here's this material, memorize it, learn it.

00:08:01.080 Asked, in a way, kind of approved questions.

00:08:04.120 But law school was completely different.

00:08:07.620 Law school was really training you to think a certain way, a very critical way of thinking, to go back and forth in different people's opinions.

00:08:15.220 We would read Supreme Court opinions a lot.

00:08:17.280 One justice would say this.

00:08:18.360 One justice would say that.

00:08:19.740 So it was very, very different.

00:08:21.440 I think you don't see more doctor lawyers because they are extremely different types of intellectual abilities, night and day.

00:08:29.040 People think it's the duration of time for the school and why, you know, nobody would be a doctor and a lawyer.

00:08:33.760 That's too much.

00:08:34.680 But in fact, there's a lot of MD PhDs.

00:08:37.080 There's a fair number of MD MBAs, right?

00:08:39.820 There's very few doctor lawyers.

00:08:41.340 And I think it's because you need a kind of intellectual, broad perspective to be comfortable in both.

00:08:48.540 Completely comfortable in both.

00:08:50.100 I sometimes joke that I'm bilingual.

00:08:51.680 It's just one and the same to me.

00:08:54.120 One wasn't easier or better.

00:08:56.000 They were completely different.

00:08:57.080 And I was very comfortable in both.

00:08:59.460 So I worked with physicians on the research front.

00:09:02.800 Well, and I taught physicians clinical psychology for a while as well.

00:09:09.300 But I worked with physicians on the research front.

00:09:11.900 And one of the discoveries I made was that physicians and scientists were not the same creatures.

00:09:18.660 And you just made allusion to that, I think, in that when you were in medical school, you characterized it as an extension of grade school, essentially, that there was a lot of memorization, a lot of facts thrown at you that you needed to know and that you could ask the approved questions.

00:09:37.040 And that's very unlike training to be a scientist, because you have to learn to think critically above all.

00:09:44.800 And I trained as a clinical psychologist.

00:09:46.800 And the model for clinical psychology was the Boulder model, Boulder, Colorado model.

00:09:52.160 And that was scientist practitioner, but scientist first.

00:09:56.480 And that meant critical thinking, because science is in large part an adversarial enterprise, like law in that regard.

00:10:06.220 So how would you characterize the difference in your experience at medical school and at law school with regard to your ability to think critically?

00:10:16.820 Because you didn't say anything about learning to think critically at medical school, but you definitely said, well, that adversarial training is you're always looking for like five sides to an argument, right?

00:10:26.840 And learning how to make the case for every side simultaneously.

00:10:31.980 Necessary thing if you're going to think scientifically, right?

00:10:34.620 So can you contrast that and characterize also what you think now about medical education, not only given your experience in medical school and in law school, but also given everything else that happened to you afterward?

00:10:51.000 Right.

00:10:51.540 So I'm so glad to be able to sit here and explain this to you.

00:10:54.500 They could not be more different.

00:10:57.120 Medical school is a lot of work.

00:11:00.160 It would be 12-hour days, 15-hour days, including classes.

00:11:05.260 And you were presented with material by a teacher.

00:11:08.680 You scribbled notes as fast as you could or you typed them.

00:11:11.520 And you would memorize them.

00:11:12.940 You'd learn them.

00:11:13.560 You'd regurgitate them.

00:11:15.160 And you really were only being led to ask approved questions because you had specific material.

00:11:20.920 It might be like doing a reading comprehension test.

00:11:23.940 You read a paragraph.

00:11:25.400 You ask the questions on that paragraph.

00:11:27.360 So I would say there was no critical thinking.

00:11:31.040 It's certainly no critical thinking in the first two years of medical school.

00:11:33.980 It's not.

00:11:35.120 So the implicit presumption there is that what you're taught is correct.

00:11:39.240 Absolutely.

00:11:39.560 And your job is to learn it and then demonstrate that you have that knowledge.

00:11:43.520 Exactly.

00:11:44.040 Right.

00:11:44.360 Right.

00:11:44.560 Exactly.

00:11:45.140 When you got into the third year of medical school, we would do hospital rotations and you'd be at the bedside.

00:11:50.320 So you were expected to read up about the disease that the patients had on your service.

00:11:55.400 And you could ask questions about that situation.

00:11:58.120 But the senior physician on rounds would answer those questions.

00:12:02.400 So they were still, in retrospect, in comparison to law, very circumscribed.

00:12:07.120 Very circumscribed.

00:12:08.300 Why this drug?

00:12:09.600 Why this treatment?

00:12:10.900 How long should the treatment be?

00:12:12.380 How's the oxygen level?

00:12:13.420 It was very, it was almost mechanical in comparison to law.

00:12:17.840 It was never outside the box.

00:12:19.800 It was always within a box.

00:12:21.200 Well, if what you're being taught is correct, then learning the algorithm is the right thing.

00:12:26.420 But the problem is, is that often what you're being taught is not correct, either diagnostically or with regard to treatment.

00:12:32.920 And that can be a major problem.

00:12:35.080 That is true.

00:12:35.860 But it's, it isn't, you're even being a smidge generous because it's always changing, even in medicine.

00:12:41.600 It's always changing in the direction of new medicines, new treatments, new tests.

00:12:45.460 So for, it's just so different.

00:12:48.880 So for example, you would be learning, if somebody came in with a heart attack or chest pain, you would do X, Y, Z.

00:12:55.180 But next year there might be a different lab test and you would just add that lab test to your group of lab tests.

00:13:01.080 You never actually deleted a lab test.

00:13:02.720 You just kept adding and adding and adding.

00:13:04.180 I mentioned that because our healthcare expenses are out of control.

00:13:07.560 So you would never, you would never, you would never think about, well, what's the critical improvement on this test versus that test?

00:13:15.820 Let's just eliminate this test.

00:13:17.320 I came up with that very directly.

00:13:18.980 There was a test when I was growing up.

00:13:20.440 It was called the CK, the CKMB.

00:13:22.440 That was elevated in heart attacks.

00:13:23.920 Then the troponin test came out.

00:13:25.240 That was much more specific, much more sensitive.

00:13:27.620 And I would say to my instructors, why are we not eliminating the CK test?

00:13:31.380 It's not as specific.

00:13:32.760 It's not as sensitive.

00:13:34.180 Nobody knew.

00:13:34.880 We just did them all.

00:13:36.700 So you would not.

00:13:37.460 That means you're also multiplying the probability of false positives.

00:13:40.560 You multiply false positives.

00:13:41.540 That's a big problem.

00:13:42.420 You multiply the false positives.

00:13:43.640 You chase red herrings all the time.

00:13:46.220 Right.

00:13:46.300 And I think, worst of all, you are not teaching the practitioners to think and maneuver in new times, right?

00:13:54.560 Because they should be paying attention.

00:13:56.400 Oh, the troponin test, it is more sensitive.

00:13:57.940 It is more specific.

00:13:58.780 I will eliminate this other test.

00:14:00.140 We were never taught to think how to maneuver and grow.

00:14:04.200 I would say we would not talk to grow.

00:14:06.240 We were taught to stay here and maybe expand a little bit.

00:14:09.780 More testing.

00:14:10.540 I'm not sure if this all makes sense.

00:14:12.280 Yeah, yeah.

00:14:12.640 It's making sense.

00:14:13.480 Okay.

00:14:13.600 So with regards to, so most of the physicians that I interacted with were psychiatrists because there was some overlap in our research orientation.

00:14:23.440 And one of the things also I saw was that the psychiatrists who did research tended to outsource their statistics.

00:14:29.820 And you can't do that, right?

00:14:31.480 Like, that's not an acceptable means of doing research because statistics aren't algorithmic.

00:14:36.280 They're an investigative tool.

00:14:38.180 And unless you do your own statistics, you don't know your data and you have no idea what you've discovered.

00:14:43.280 And so that was, but also, it was also the case that, like, learning to analyze scientific research, that's a very difficult skill to master.

00:14:52.280 And I would say it's probably something more akin to law than medicine because you have to think extraordinarily critically.

00:14:59.000 And it wasn't obvious to me at all that the physicians that I interacted with had been trained in the least to really critically assess the relevant research literature.

00:15:09.240 So now, is that too harsh or what do you think about that?

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00:16:17.860 I think you're exactly right.

00:16:22.780 So, first of all, I was quite weak in biostatistics, for example.

00:16:26.520 It was not a strong suit of mine, and it never precluded me from becoming an excellent physician.

00:16:31.100 Right, right.

00:16:31.760 So, we would always have classes on statistics.

00:16:34.480 Nobody was very good at them.

00:16:35.940 Honestly, it was something we all dreaded.

00:16:37.780 We're not good at it.

00:16:39.020 We are not at all trained how to recognize good research from bad research.

00:16:43.000 That's a problem because most research is bad.

00:16:45.220 Terrible. 0.93

00:16:45.880 You know, I vaguely remember it, but I was coming at this from the perspective, some of the headlines at NIH-funded studies were so kind of foolish.

00:16:54.180 I didn't even understand why we were doing these kinds of studies, funding them.

00:16:57.580 But we were not really taught how to finally distinguish good from bad.

00:17:01.640 Yeah.

00:17:01.840 And Dr. Joseph Ladipo, who I'm sure you know, about a year or two years ago, he tweeted out that one of the problems in medical training is doctors simply don't know how to analyze data critically.

00:17:10.520 I would say 100%.

00:17:12.300 I learned virtually nothing like that in medical school and a little bit in my residency training.

00:17:17.900 And I never, I wouldn't have, I'm not even sure I got it, I would deserve a C- in my abilities.

00:17:23.160 The problem is, is it's hard to learn to be skeptical enough.

00:17:26.620 I mean, psychology has gone through what the psychologists like to describe as a replication crisis, which is their discovery, mostly by social psychologists who dreadfully deserved their replication crisis,

00:17:39.720 that, you know, at least 50% of what's published is simply not true.

00:17:44.180 Now, that never shocked me, because I presume fundamentally that if 5% of what we publish was actually true and original, we'd be, that's a 5% improvement in knowledge,

00:17:55.300 in the total knowledge base on the research side per year.

00:17:59.660 That's a stellar accomplishment, but it does mean that 95% of it's chaff and not wheat.

00:18:05.360 And that's a very, very hard distinction to draw.

00:18:08.300 And you can't just read the research literature and think that because it's published, it's true, because it's not true.

00:18:14.220 And that's not surprising, right?

00:18:16.200 Because it's actually hard to discover something new.

00:18:18.460 But I was struck by the fact that that, you know, because the lay public, and this is partly why I'm pursuing this line of questioning,

00:18:26.280 the lay public don't know how to distinguish between physician and scientist.

00:18:32.000 And physicians also don't know that and presume that they're scientists. 0.87

00:18:35.720 But generally speaking, well, most scientists aren't scientists, and damn few physicians are.

00:18:41.000 And partly it's a consequence of not being able to, not being taught to think critically.

00:18:45.400 Now, you learned that in law school, and you enjoyed that, right?

00:18:49.080 And yeah, and you enjoyed that in a way that you didn't enjoy medical school, is that fair?

00:18:53.120 Yes, 100%.

00:18:54.720 First of all, I didn't even understand the difference between physician and scientist.

00:18:58.600 But I'm validating that American medical schools do not teach critical reasoning skills,

00:19:04.680 and they do not teach us how to analyze science, for sure.

00:19:08.040 That is 100%.

00:19:08.780 That's also a major problem on the diagnostic front,

00:19:11.540 because part of being a good diagnostician really is thinking like a scientist.

00:19:16.460 It's like, here's the presenting problem.

00:19:18.900 Well, maybe, like, have we fleshed it out enough?

00:19:22.660 What are the potential contributing factors, all of them?

00:19:26.280 You know, if you go to diagnosis, and then you have algorithmic treatment,

00:19:29.880 well, that's fine if you got the diagnosis right.

00:19:32.000 But getting the diagnosis right tends to be an extraordinarily difficult thing.

00:19:35.840 The diagnosis is all of it.

00:19:37.480 And I'll just digress a little bit here, just because I share with you some of my training.

00:19:41.540 So I had a very unusual circumstance, because I went to my internship,

00:19:45.200 which was my first year of residency.

00:19:47.000 Then I went to law school.

00:19:48.300 Then I went back to residency training.

00:19:50.400 In that three or four years, something had changed in American medical training.

00:19:54.920 What years were these?

00:19:55.960 This was around 1990.

00:19:58.840 Yeah, okay.

00:19:59.460 So what happened was, perhaps you've heard of the Libby Zion scandal. 0.84

00:20:03.400 What had happened in America was a young girl had gone to the emergency department, 0.81

00:20:07.740 and she was very sick, and she was sitting in this emergency department.

00:20:10.720 And she ends up dying.

00:20:11.880 Turned out her father, I think, was a reporter for the New York Times,

00:20:14.320 a very well-connected person.

00:20:15.640 And he decided that this happened because the medical residents were so tired

00:20:20.240 and sleep-deprived and overworked.

00:20:22.260 So in the years that I was away...

00:20:24.320 And the Austin are.

00:20:25.580 In the years that I was away...

00:20:27.680 But I'm going to blow your mind a little bit.

00:20:28.720 Yeah.

00:20:28.840 Because in the years I was away, they changed how resident physicians were trained.

00:20:32.980 And up until that moment, so in my internship, in my first year, we routinely did 36-hour shifts.

00:20:38.840 It started 7 or 8 in the morning.

00:20:40.060 You go until 7 or 8 the next night.

00:20:41.700 You crash, you go to sleep, and then you have a couple more days of like 8 to 6 or 8 to 7.

00:20:45.920 And then you come back every third or fourth day, do that.

00:20:48.260 There's no question that it's brutal.

00:20:50.080 A friend of mine drove off the road and broke her arm as a consequence of that.

00:20:53.640 And Hawaii, a physician that I know, a radiologist.

00:20:56.120 Yeah, for sure.

00:20:57.020 There's something bordering on sadistic about that.

00:21:01.020 But I'm going to show you a different side of it.

00:21:03.280 Yeah, yeah.

00:21:03.920 So because on the surface, it took policymakers.

00:21:06.780 That sounds brutal.

00:21:07.800 That sounds terrible.

00:21:08.700 That sounds like it contributed to Libby Zayn's death or caused her death, right?

00:21:11.720 That's how it sounds to all the politicians.

00:21:13.880 Okay, whoa.

00:21:15.040 I did that my first year, very hard.

00:21:17.880 Went to law school, went back to residency, and the rules had changed.

00:21:21.880 The rules had now said, no, no, residents have to get enough sleep.

00:21:24.700 So the work schedule became, on every fourth day, the first day was like 8 to 6, the next

00:21:30.200 day was maybe 8 to 10 p.m., then the third night, basically you worked during the day

00:21:35.800 and you had a night float.

00:21:37.220 So you could work 8 or 10 hours, then a night float would come in.

00:21:41.540 This is maybe how nurses worked, which is you have a shift work, graveyard shift maybe, 1.00

00:21:46.920 and then cross over, but you didn't have responsibility throughout the whole cycle.

00:21:51.400 So doctors became shift workers.

00:21:53.960 Now, this was a terrible decision if you want the doctor to understand disease from the

00:22:00.300 bedside.

00:22:00.660 If we're not scientists, right, we can't analyze the data, read the data, really understand

00:22:04.080 it, then our best hope of helping patients is to really understand the disease from the

00:22:08.280 bedside, right, to be with that patient for 36 hours.

00:22:11.740 What happened when I went back to my residency with the change in work hours was resident

00:22:16.780 physicians, young physicians, were no longer following a disease kind of from beginning

00:22:20.960 to end for the progression.

00:22:22.420 They were checking in 8 a.m., checking out at 6 p.m.

00:22:24.860 The crisis would happen at 10 p.m. or midnight on the night float.

00:22:27.860 The night float didn't care about the patient, didn't really know about the patient.

00:22:30.320 You come back in again that next day, it became very sluggish.

00:22:33.160 You didn't see the disease progression from beginning to end.

00:22:35.920 A person would come in with congestive heart failure.

00:22:37.740 And there was never a situation anymore where you followed the disease to see its whole

00:22:43.620 natural course.

00:22:44.660 Right, right, right.

00:22:45.700 It's very unlike clinical psychology practice where that wouldn't necessarily be, that

00:22:50.260 wouldn't be necessary.

00:22:51.280 It wouldn't be necessary, but for physicians, you know.

00:22:53.340 It's not as much of a crisis.

00:22:54.680 When you're seeing a mid-career physician who's 50 years old, you want them to have gone

00:22:59.120 through that full cycle of seeing the disease at some point in their career.

00:23:03.960 The only way you can have that is if you're really in for uninterrupted.

00:23:06.840 When they switched it to shift work, I saw firsthand the shift in how doctors interact

00:23:12.980 with patients, treated patients.

00:23:14.600 No longer did you feel such ownership over the patient.

00:23:16.940 This was your patient.

00:23:18.180 It was like kind of your patient for eight or 10 hours.

00:23:20.120 Then it was somebody else's patient for eight or 10 hours.

00:23:22.240 Then it was your patient again.

00:23:23.360 So there's a diffusion of responsibility.

00:23:24.700 Diffusion of responsibility.

00:23:25.900 Yeah, that's generally a bad thing.

00:23:28.180 And you didn't follow the disease the whole time.

00:23:30.500 So in my first year...

00:23:32.380 Did that increase finger pointing?

00:23:33.880 I think yes, but it was deeper than that.

00:23:38.340 It was...

00:23:39.020 Nobody was really in charge, quite frankly.

00:23:41.560 It was just a checkbox or template that was in charge.

00:23:44.200 Before that, if my patient crashed in the middle of the night, I was there.

00:23:48.380 And I knew it.

00:23:49.380 And so I became a better doctor through those exact experiences.

00:23:52.440 That was gone once the work hours changed.

00:23:54.800 And I don't think policymakers had any idea that there would be a downside.

00:23:57.820 Right?

00:23:58.040 It sounds all positive to protect the work hours.

00:24:00.260 That's the iron law of unintended consequences.

00:24:03.460 I just wanted to share that.

00:24:04.240 Right.

00:24:04.520 Yeah.

00:24:04.800 Yeah.

00:24:05.120 Okay.

00:24:05.500 Okay.

00:24:05.800 So let's...

00:24:06.540 Well, let's go back to law school.

00:24:08.060 So now you really enjoyed that.

00:24:10.340 And what would you...

00:24:13.200 How would you say it shaped your thinking about medicine?

00:24:17.180 And also about your future as a physician lawyer?

00:24:21.460 Like, so you had a completely different kind of training.

00:24:24.740 So now you're looking at the medical profession from a different perspective.

00:24:28.100 Now you go back and you do another internship.

00:24:30.300 What this time?

00:24:31.120 Is it another emergency room?

00:24:32.420 Then I did...

00:24:33.200 My internship was one year.

00:24:35.480 I was rotating internal medicine, all the disease of the internal organs.

00:24:39.600 And then I did three years of emergency medicine.

00:24:41.880 In between, I did law school.

00:24:43.560 I just kept myself very focused on the law in those three years.

00:24:47.420 I moonlighted as a doctor to support myself.

00:24:49.520 So I was working as a doctor.

00:24:50.600 This is during law school?

00:24:51.660 During law school.

00:24:52.420 Yeah.

00:24:52.840 20 hours a week.

00:24:53.240 You moonlighted as a doctor?

00:24:54.480 Yeah.

00:24:54.860 While you were in law school?

00:24:55.900 Yeah.

00:24:57.020 How would you do in law school?

00:24:58.360 I did very well.

00:24:59.840 I only became a quack much later.

00:25:02.120 Oh, yes.

00:25:02.580 Okay.

00:25:02.900 Well, this is...

00:25:03.580 Yeah.

00:25:03.860 Well, okay.

00:25:04.900 Well, so, yeah, that's very difficult what you did to go to Stanford Law School and to

00:25:09.540 do well at Stanford Law School and to work simultaneously as a doctor.

00:25:13.180 I took...

00:25:13.580 Yeah, that's hard.

00:25:14.780 So, you know, kudos to you for what that's worth from me because I know how difficult that

00:25:19.300 is.

00:25:20.040 So, okay.

00:25:21.420 So, but now you come out of law school, but you decide to continue as a physician.

00:25:24.920 Right.

00:25:25.240 So, I think looking back on my life, I looked at the two and I didn't have a clear path

00:25:33.560 in my mind as to what a doctor, lawyer would do or could do other than politics.

00:25:39.640 I didn't have a clear path.

00:25:40.600 Like, if you didn't have a destination in mind, and those, as you said, those are very

00:25:45.200 different forms of academic pursuit.

00:25:47.940 Like, what do you think it was that was driving you in both of those directions simultaneously?

00:25:52.760 Now, you said something earlier about a dream, a vague dream of fixing the healthcare system,

00:25:58.260 which is a very vague dream and also a very grand dream and ill-formed.

00:26:03.580 But I suspect that that ambition has something to do with what motivated you in both directions

00:26:08.900 simultaneously.

00:26:10.200 Yes.

00:26:10.640 So, I did two short stints in Washington.

00:26:13.300 One time I worked for the Surgeon General, and one time I worked for the Senate Labor and

00:26:17.220 Human Resources Committee.

00:26:18.020 When did you do that?

00:26:19.720 One was around 1990, another was around 1993 or 94.

00:26:23.640 Okay, place that in your academic career.

00:26:25.700 First was at the end of medical school.

00:26:27.460 I worked for the Surgeon General.

00:26:29.060 And that was before your internship?

00:26:30.840 Correct.

00:26:31.160 Okay, and how long did you work for the Surgeon General?

00:26:33.480 Just three months.

00:26:34.820 And that was in D.C.?

00:26:35.820 Mm-hmm.

00:26:36.080 Okay, so you got a taste of that.

00:26:37.660 Mm-hmm.

00:26:37.980 Okay.

00:26:38.960 When I went back to medicine, I missed the opportunity to make a change in health policy.

00:26:47.920 So, I went to work for the Labor and Human Resources Committee, which kind of oversaw Medicare

00:26:53.580 and things like that.

00:26:55.060 And that was in the middle of my training as an emergency physician.

00:26:59.460 I know this is hard to follow because this is a very unique path.

00:27:03.180 Nobody really does this sort of thing where they zigzag back and forth.

00:27:05.840 Yeah, right, right.

00:27:06.980 So, policy, law, and medicine.

00:27:08.900 Yes.

00:27:09.360 Fundamentally.

00:27:09.960 I was very interested.

00:27:10.220 You're interviewing all three of those.

00:27:11.860 I kept looking for this, but when I went back to work for the Senate Labor and Human

00:27:15.680 Resources Committee in Washington, D.C., I was working for Senator Jeffords, who's

00:27:19.820 an independent from Vermont.

00:27:21.000 And I really think the system was too dirty to fix the healthcare system.

00:27:27.480 That was my conclusion.

00:27:28.520 How long did you work for him?

00:27:29.820 Also, just three months.

00:27:30.880 These were just three months steps.

00:27:31.880 And that was, put that in your academic career?

00:27:33.960 That was during my emergency medicine training.

00:27:36.780 After law school.

00:27:37.580 After law school.

00:27:38.480 Okay, so you had two doses of being involved in the policy world.

00:27:42.080 Correct.

00:27:42.300 The second time that you got involved, you just said that you felt it was too complex

00:27:47.000 to, you said dirty, though. 0.54

00:27:48.360 I said dirty, you know, dirty, not complex, dirty.

00:27:50.820 Okay, yeah, those are different.

00:27:52.120 My, before I worked for Senator Jeffords, I thought politicians didn't get it right because

00:28:00.040 they didn't understand, they didn't know.

00:28:01.740 And as soon as a smart person who's on the inside can advise them, they would be able

00:28:06.380 to fix it.

00:28:07.140 You know, it was very idealistic.

00:28:08.760 I thought, oh, great, I will, you know, I'm a bedside physician.

00:28:11.060 I could help them understand this.

00:28:12.900 No, no, no.

00:28:13.480 They understood the problem and they couldn't get the job done.

00:28:16.680 So I was there and I remember they were talking about Medicare going bankrupt.

00:28:21.820 By the way, same song, different year now.

00:28:25.220 And I remember talking to my senator about that.

00:28:29.000 And the obvious solution was to raise the age.

00:28:33.000 Because when the Medicare Act was signed into law, it was, I think, 1965.

00:28:37.160 And the average life expectancy, I think, was 67.

00:28:39.740 Fast forward, in the 90s, Medicare still kicks in at age 65, but life expectancy, I think,

00:28:46.620 was 76.

00:28:48.020 Well, they never planned to have 11 years of Medicare coverage versus two years of Medicare

00:28:52.560 coverage.

00:28:53.500 People were, anyway, when you looked at all the options, you know, overcharging wealthy

00:28:57.800 people.

00:28:57.900 And arguably, if you're not a coal miner, you're not necessarily old at 65.

00:29:01.460 Correct.

00:29:02.160 Times have changed.

00:29:03.080 And also, the other options of funding Medicare were worse.

00:29:06.600 They were just, you know, make all rich people pay for it, which, by the way, would never

00:29:10.300 have filled in the gap.

00:29:11.280 Right, right.

00:29:12.540 Limit options like you do in Canada.

00:29:14.860 Rich people are pesky, but they're scarce.

00:29:17.060 But they're scarce.

00:29:17.680 That's a good one.

00:29:18.320 Yes.

00:29:19.020 Limit options, like much like you did in Canada.

00:29:21.240 You know, just give access.

00:29:22.140 Or you just let people die.

00:29:22.960 Or help them.

00:29:24.240 But that was not with MAID, right?

00:29:26.940 Yeah.

00:29:27.200 That was not, that's not palatable to Americans.

00:29:30.140 So, we heard from all these people.

00:29:32.020 Correct.

00:29:32.640 Yet.

00:29:33.200 We heard from all these people about ways to fix it.

00:29:35.480 And everyone, every single advocacy group that was presenting to us was in favor of raising

00:29:40.580 the age from 65 to 67.

00:29:42.640 We had Ralph Nader's group.

00:29:47.200 We had the American Heart Association.

00:29:49.240 We had, I think, the American Medical Association was on board.

00:29:51.620 Everyone.

00:29:52.020 We heard from like 12 company organizations.

00:29:55.020 And over here, we heard from one organization.

00:29:57.400 That was called the AARP.

00:29:59.020 Right.

00:29:59.440 American Association of Retired Persons?

00:30:02.320 Persons, I think. 0.98

00:30:03.380 I was unfamiliar because I was young.

00:30:05.160 And that was the only organization that spoke against raising the age limit.

00:30:09.420 Right.

00:30:09.780 And I remember walking with my senator and I said, well, you know, obviously the solution

00:30:14.780 is, you know, of all the solutions, it's to raise the age limit.

00:30:17.460 And he looked at me and said, this gold.

00:30:19.760 Do I know what the most powerful organization and lobbying organization in D.C. is?

00:30:27.300 AARP.

00:30:28.000 Those people vote.

00:30:29.540 And I, my heart kind of sunk because I knew that's the only solution that I could see at

00:30:34.480 that time was just to raise the age limit.

00:30:36.280 And nobody would have it.

00:30:37.460 Nobody would do it.

00:30:37.980 Nobody would talk about it.

00:30:39.180 And I just remember feeling pretty discouraged that, well, what's the point of my tenure?

00:30:42.700 Yeah, well, this is a diagnosis problem.

00:30:45.040 Again, you know, you think you know how a system works till you try to, till you actually

00:30:51.400 investigate it and try to change it.

00:30:53.080 And then you find out that the problems you thought were the problems aren't the problems.

00:30:57.380 And the solutions that you think are solutions won't work for things, for reasons you didn't

00:31:01.960 know.

00:31:02.580 Correct.

00:31:02.960 Right.

00:31:03.180 And that's actually, that's actually part and parcel of starting to think like a scientist.

00:31:07.700 It's like, I read this great book years ago called Systemantics, which I would highly

00:31:13.780 recommend to anyone watching and listening.

00:31:15.700 It's a cult classic and it consists of about a hundred axioms that you have to adopt if

00:31:21.460 you're going to learn how a system works.

00:31:24.740 And one of the axioms I never forgot, which I think is absolutely brilliant, is the system

00:31:30.200 does not do what its name says it does.

00:31:33.800 Right.

00:31:34.300 And so you have to approach a complex system like you're approaching an organism that you

00:31:39.540 know nothing about.

00:31:40.800 And it'll have a name, but that's not what it does.

00:31:43.720 You can figure out quite quickly what it actually does by looking at what it spends most of its

00:31:48.200 time on or its money.

00:31:49.800 So I learned this in Alberta.

00:31:51.140 I worked for Alberta Social Services when I was like, I don't know, 18, something like

00:31:55.720 that.

00:31:55.940 I had a summer job that turned into a year-long internship.

00:31:58.280 That's when I got some policy experience.

00:32:01.500 And Alberta Social Services at that time did not have sufficient data gathering capacity

00:32:09.260 to answer the question, how much of the money that we spend is spent on the end user?

00:32:17.000 Well, the answer was very little because like with most charities, almost all the money spent

00:32:22.420 by social services was spent on the administrators of the social service program.

00:32:26.740 And so, you know, your first pass diagnosis of a system like that is that, well, it's clearly

00:32:32.400 there to employ the people on whom it spends the bulk of the money.

00:32:36.800 Now, a side effect might be the delivery of some services, maybe.

00:32:40.500 But if they're not even collecting data about whether those services are administered, you

00:32:46.000 know exactly how low on the priority list that service actually is.

00:32:50.500 And so you were trying to, you were looking at a system purely from the perspective of logic,

00:32:58.240 I suppose, something like that.

00:32:59.460 And very unidimensionally, not understanding, for example, that the AARP is not to be messed

00:33:04.200 with no matter what, right, right, right.

00:33:07.960 Why don't they just raise the age a month, a year?

00:33:11.620 Like, does that cause too much, is that too administratively complex?

00:33:16.200 No, no, no, I don't think so.

00:33:17.580 I think it's just that the AARP was telling the politicians what to do.

00:33:21.960 And so they did it.

00:33:22.900 Right.

00:33:23.240 They weren't even messing with it.

00:33:24.860 And that was a huge life lesson.

00:33:27.100 And I learned, for me, in my life, I don't need to spend my time doing that.

00:33:32.280 At least practicing medicine is honorable.

00:33:34.980 And so I shifted just back to practicing medicine.

00:33:38.640 Because at least-

00:33:39.260 Yeah, well, see, that's a problem too, isn't it?

00:33:40.900 Because-

00:33:41.440 You chase out the good people.

00:33:42.460 Well, yeah.

00:33:43.300 Yeah, well, and it's like, to say something on the side of the politicians here, just momentarily,

00:33:49.120 like, congressmen in the United States, they spend a tremendous amount of their time traveling

00:33:56.800 back and forth between D.C. and their home constituency.

00:34:00.680 They are running for election almost all the time, right?

00:34:05.000 So it's like, that's hard.

00:34:06.300 That's hard, right?

00:34:07.720 Because what, they're on a two-year cycle.

00:34:09.460 I mean, they're just campaigning all the time.

00:34:11.660 And then they spend, if I remember correctly, they spend 28 hours a week fundraising, right?

00:34:18.800 And they can't do that in their offices, because that's illegal.

00:34:21.680 So they have these ratty, horrible offices instead with drop ceilings and fluorescent

00:34:26.560 lights, and they're full of mold, and that doesn't help them out at all. 0.55

00:34:29.680 And they're on the bloody phone for 28 hours a week, basically acting as telemarketers to

00:34:35.400 the parties.

00:34:36.440 Well, God, how demoralizing is that?

00:34:38.640 And then, so you have that 28 hours a week, you have your travel, you have your, well, and

00:34:45.640 that's completely independent of the fact that you have way too much to learn about absolutely

00:34:50.300 everything.

00:34:51.080 So now you're entirely dependent on your staff.

00:34:53.900 All of that's demoralizing.

00:34:55.660 And the consequence of that demoralization is, particularly because they're campaigning

00:35:00.900 all the time, they can't take a long-term view.

00:35:03.240 And everybody who can leaves.

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00:36:15.820 Well, so then what the hell do you do about that?

00:36:18.100 I mean, that's, that's, you can throw up your hands and leave and you said, well, you'll

00:36:22.060 go back to medicine because it's honorable.

00:36:23.620 But you know, that's, it is a real problem when the most competent people can't involve

00:36:29.340 themselves in the government because it would mean, it would mean, looks like it's the sacrifice

00:36:35.040 of something potentially more productive and useful.

00:36:38.900 Okay.

00:36:39.260 So, so that is what you decided.

00:36:40.920 You went, you decided to go back to medicine.

00:36:42.460 Yeah.

00:36:42.800 Okay.

00:36:43.160 So you left the policy field and what was your conclusion at that point?

00:36:47.020 You were just, you were going to stay away from the political?

00:36:49.220 That didn't work out by the way.

00:36:51.140 You can't, you can't avoid your destiny.

00:36:53.300 Well, yeah, right.

00:36:55.040 You really can't.

00:36:56.160 If you asked me. 0.99

00:36:56.920 You can kick and scream about it.

00:36:58.180 If you're going in that direction, I wanted to fix the healthcare system.

00:37:01.600 I mean, that was my childhood dream.

00:37:03.400 And I.

00:37:03.740 Why?

00:37:04.420 And what do you mean childhood?

00:37:05.520 How early?

00:37:07.080 I think, first of all, my dad was a doctor.

00:37:09.020 Yeah.

00:37:09.420 I was raised to be a doctor.

00:37:10.640 I always knew I would be a doctor, but the system was so dysfunctional that I think I

00:37:15.400 just always wanted to make it better.

00:37:17.120 Just, it was so dysfunctional.

00:37:18.380 There are things that are wonderful.

00:37:19.300 The doctor-patient relationship with a caring doctor and a patient that they know with modern

00:37:23.420 medicine could be beautiful.

00:37:24.480 It could be amazing.

00:37:25.140 You have a smart advocate who's on your side.

00:37:27.180 That part's amazing.

00:37:28.520 The actual practice of medicine is terrible.

00:37:30.960 That's why so many good doctors go on free mission trips.

00:37:33.560 They donate their time and their money to practice medicine in third world countries

00:37:37.420 so they can actually do some good.

00:37:38.940 I mean, it's a beautiful thing to be a doctor.

00:37:40.460 That's the truth.

00:37:41.720 But the practice of medicine in America, and probably Canada as well, is, you know, it's

00:37:47.480 not, it's not great.

00:37:48.400 So I, I've always known that.

00:37:49.700 Is that, is that, is that a consequence of bureaucratic complexification?

00:37:56.820 I mean, what's the essential problem?

00:37:59.140 You know, I mean, I love being a clinical psychologist when, when, when you could still

00:38:02.720 do that and tell the truth, which wasn't that long ago, but there were no intermediaries.

00:38:07.700 So I'll tell you exactly the moment it started changing.

00:38:10.460 Yeah.

00:38:10.660 I learned this in my health policy law class from Professor Hank Greeley in health law and

00:38:14.940 policy at Stanford, Lyndon Johnson Medicare Act of 1965, the preamble paragraph says nothing

00:38:22.580 in this Medicare Act should be construed to interfere with the practice of medicine.

00:38:28.020 And I was sitting there as a young doctor, law student, and I raised my hand and I said,

00:38:34.900 every single thing Medicare has done has interfered with the practice of medicine.

00:38:38.880 A hundred percent.

00:38:39.640 That's why they put that preamble there to begin with.

00:38:42.200 Nothing in this should, everything came from interfering with the doctor patient relationship.

00:38:48.700 Everything, every, there's intermediaries.

00:38:50.900 There is no more doctor patient relationship for most patients.

00:38:53.960 It's, it's a, in a big insurance company right in the middle or a big hospital corporation

00:38:58.280 right in the middle.

00:38:59.340 Or in Canada, you just can't get a physician.

00:39:01.780 I, when I.

00:39:02.120 One in five now with no physician in Canada.

00:39:04.800 What's happening, you know, in your country, we could talk about for days.

00:39:08.820 Yes, it's a series of catastrophic miracles.

00:39:11.940 It's, it couldn't be worse.

00:39:14.020 Yeah, well, and we've substitute paying, we've substituted dying for paying.

00:39:18.720 Yeah.

00:39:18.980 Right, which is not a great substitution.

00:39:20.940 We write a lot about the maid.

00:39:22.300 It's horrific.

00:39:23.240 Yeah.

00:39:23.720 It's horrific.

00:39:24.560 Yeah, yeah, well, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

00:39:27.080 So, so I just, I think I just always kind of, I think my dad was, was a brilliant man.

00:39:32.960 He was a Holocaust survivor, comes to America, does extremely well, smart, amazing guy, wanted

00:39:40.160 to be a doctor.

00:39:40.740 I was a doctor.

00:39:41.420 We were all doctors, but we also saw patients in our house.

00:39:44.040 That was something my dad did.

00:39:45.000 He would do hospitals and nursing homes all day, and then we'd have patient hours at night.

00:39:49.620 So I saw the care between a doctor and a patient.

00:39:53.640 So I know what it can be.

00:39:55.420 I know what it can be.

00:39:57.160 And I'm holding onto that and saying, I don't understand how in modern times, why can't we

00:40:01.060 also have that?

00:40:01.960 Right.

00:40:02.540 Well, yeah, right.

00:40:03.340 That's what you want.

00:40:04.420 But you've, you have so many.

00:40:06.360 Because it's a relationship, right?

00:40:07.900 I mean, you should have a relationship with your patients.

00:40:10.700 Right.

00:40:10.860 Basically, a doctor, like another educated consultant, when you pay a lawyer, I'm sure

00:40:15.740 you have a lot of lawyers, you are, they're working for you.

00:40:19.580 They're not working for the government.

00:40:20.760 They're not working for a big corporation.

00:40:22.720 They're working for you to serve your interests.

00:40:24.820 If they're not good enough, you move on, you get a different lawyer, right?

00:40:27.820 Why do we not have that in medicine?

00:40:29.680 Because the world has told us medicine is too complicated.

00:40:33.120 Medicine needs an intermediary.

00:40:34.860 The patient can't understand medicine.

00:40:37.400 Even Trump during COVID couldn't understand.

00:40:39.540 He sort of left it to the experts.

00:40:41.420 I am done with that.

00:40:42.780 A person can make their own medical decisions with the advice of a smart consultant, exactly

00:40:47.540 like they do when they buy a house, when they fill out their tax forms, when they see a lawyer

00:40:51.240 or an accountant.

00:40:52.320 There's nothing magical and so black box that a patient can't understand.

00:40:56.740 I'm an emergency physician.

00:40:58.160 I could explain any disease to a person, either the two or three minute version or the 15 minute

00:41:03.220 version.

00:41:03.920 100% of diseases can be explained in three minutes or 15 minutes.

00:41:07.140 Well, and if the patient isn't in charge of their own decisions, they're not going to

00:41:10.940 comply with the recommendations of the physicians anyways.

00:41:13.980 I mean, compliance is a big problem and you don't get compliance from patients unless they

00:41:18.260 trust you.

00:41:18.820 Unless the trust is everything.

00:41:19.940 Yeah.

00:41:19.980 And that's a hard thing to build, especially when people are in crisis.

00:41:22.800 So, one of the last things I did in preparing for this discussion was read your Wikipedia

00:41:29.060 page.

00:41:29.700 Oh, gosh.

00:41:30.180 Yeah, I know.

00:41:30.800 It's really something.

00:41:31.820 But this is worth highlighting because I've noticed this before.

00:41:36.100 It's very easy to damage someone's reputation.

00:41:39.320 It's very, very easy.

00:41:40.640 And I think the reason for that is that each of us can in potential interact with a very

00:41:47.100 wide range of people, very large number of people.

00:41:49.360 And so, if you ever read anything or hear anything about someone that isn't above board,

00:41:57.500 the cost, the apparent cost of writing that person off is basically zero because there's

00:42:02.060 so many other people you can turn to.

00:42:03.700 The downside of that is that it's unbelievably easy to destroy someone's reputation.

00:42:08.620 Now, when I read your Wikipedia page, it's just like a never-ending stream of assaults

00:42:14.040 on your character, essentially.

00:42:15.420 And there's a reason I'm highlighting that.

00:42:18.160 It's because, and it's also partly why I took the route into talking to you today the

00:42:22.460 way I did.

00:42:23.360 Because even though I know that people's reputations are savaged continually, I've seen that firsthand.

00:42:32.860 I know dozens of people who are qualified to whom that's happened.

00:42:36.380 I know that as well as anyone could know it, I would say.

00:42:39.520 It's still effective.

00:42:41.040 It's still effective, you know?

00:42:42.660 Because I thought when I read that, I thought, well, just who is this woman?

00:42:45.540 And like, why are all these terrible things being written about her?

00:42:47.840 And does she know what she's talking about?

00:42:49.180 And so, part of the reason I wanted to inquire into your academic history was to find out,

00:42:55.460 well, you know, what's your base level of qualification?

00:42:58.460 And so, it's very interesting to note that your base level of qualification is extremely high,

00:43:04.040 right?

00:43:04.240 It's very unlikely that you went to the University of Chicago Medical School.

00:43:07.720 That's really hard, particularly given how young you were.

00:43:10.860 And to follow that up with Stanford Medical School, like, is there anyone else who's done

00:43:15.460 that?

00:43:16.520 Right.

00:43:17.140 But that also makes you unique in another way.

00:43:19.240 Like, one of the things that marks people out for peculiar destinies is that they operate

00:43:24.900 at the intersection of two rare skill sets, right?

00:43:28.620 Because you're rare as a physician, because there are not that many physicians, and you're

00:43:33.480 rare as a lawyer, because there aren't that many lawyers, but physician lawyers, it's like,

00:43:37.980 how many of them are there?

00:43:39.220 Well, when I graduated, I actually, there were about 3,000 to 5,000 in all of America.

00:43:44.360 Right, right, right.

00:43:45.620 So, that's a very rare intersection.

00:43:47.380 And then you have the public policy experience as well, right?

00:43:51.020 So, at some point, this is intersectionality on the academic side, you get enough intersections,

00:43:56.000 so there's like one of you, right?

00:43:58.020 Then you're poised, if you're competent, to make a real qualitatively distinct contribution,

00:44:04.440 because there isn't anyone else who knows what you know.

00:44:08.220 Okay, so let's move from your background, which we've delved into in some depth, to, well,

00:44:15.320 let's tell us what happens next, and let's move towards COVID and everything that transpired

00:44:21.920 around that.

00:44:22.460 So, you spent three years in an internship in emergency internal medicine?

00:44:28.680 A residency in emergency medicine.

00:44:30.740 Right, that was three years.

00:44:32.020 Okay, okay.

00:44:32.700 And then, now you're an ER physician.

00:44:34.360 Correct.

00:44:34.840 Okay, and so, how long are you, and where, where are you?

00:44:38.560 I moved from New York, and then I moved to California, and I spent the next 20 years

00:44:42.440 working as an emergency physician full-time.

00:44:44.900 Where?

00:44:45.680 Oh, various hospitals.

00:44:46.900 Okay, but it's all in California.

00:44:48.580 Correct.

00:44:48.840 Why'd you make the fateful decision to move to California?

00:44:52.640 Oh.

00:44:52.920 You were at Stanford.

00:44:54.340 Yeah, I knew California.

00:44:55.760 Yeah.

00:44:55.920 I had some family, personal reasons to be there.

00:44:58.080 Okay.

00:44:58.540 Yeah.

00:44:58.900 Okay, and you spent 20 years.

00:45:00.500 Mm-hmm.

00:45:01.000 Okay, and how does that go?

00:45:03.060 I had a perfect reputation.

00:45:05.660 Okay, so detail that.

00:45:06.980 Let's talk about that.

00:45:07.860 What does that mean?

00:45:08.440 So, among your patients, any complaints?

00:45:11.280 There were no, there has never been any complaints.

00:45:13.060 Lawsuits?

00:45:13.420 Nope, and by the way, to be in a practicing emergency physician and have no malpractice lawsuits,

00:45:18.400 very uncommon.

00:45:19.040 Yes, that's exactly why I'm investigating that, because the default is that you're going

00:45:23.620 to get nailed by, well, you'll come across a nice psychopath at least once during your

00:45:29.020 practice, who will take you to task and make your life miserable.

00:45:33.080 Especially in emergency medicine, because there is no deep doctor-patient relationship.

00:45:37.160 Patients do not have loyalty towards you.

00:45:39.200 Well, things can go very wrong.

00:45:40.940 Things can go very wrong.

00:45:41.660 No doubt often do, since it's an emergency and all that.

00:45:45.100 20 years.

00:45:45.820 20 years, and I was, I would say I was very well-respected.

00:45:50.800 Many people loved working with me.

00:45:52.960 So, your patients didn't complain?

00:45:54.700 Nope.

00:45:55.040 Your colleagues?

00:45:56.180 Loved me.

00:45:56.600 Nurses?

00:45:57.380 Loved me.

00:45:58.200 That's particularly telling, right?

00:46:00.040 And it's a challenge.

00:46:01.140 As a female physician, to have the nurse, there's a whole dynamic going on there, and I know 1.00

00:46:06.020 that I was very well-respected and well-loved, because when I was attacked, many of them

00:46:09.740 stood up for me.

00:46:10.760 So, it's not my fantasy wish.

00:46:12.760 Not only were there no complaints, there's no paper trail against me.

00:46:15.560 You can't find anything negative said about me prior to 2020.

00:46:18.560 It doesn't exist.

00:46:19.940 Right, right.

00:46:20.640 I had the same experience in university.

00:46:22.980 Yeah.

00:46:23.300 Right?

00:46:23.780 And so, it's useful to have that kind of background, although it's not necessarily enough to defend

00:46:28.640 you, but it's a start.

00:46:29.700 It's a good start.

00:46:30.340 I remind people of that.

00:46:31.480 I said, just try to find something nasty that someone said about me prior to 2020.

00:46:34.680 It isn't there.

00:46:37.240 Right.

00:46:37.600 Prior to 2020.

00:46:39.260 Okay.

00:46:39.740 And none of that prior to July 27th, 2020.

00:46:43.140 Right.

00:46:43.800 Right.

00:46:44.300 Okay.

00:46:44.620 Well, so let's move to July.

00:46:47.440 So, you have a perfectly...

00:46:49.160 And are you happy?

00:46:50.060 Are you...

00:46:50.480 I'm happy.

00:46:50.580 So, I got married.

00:46:51.460 I had two children.

00:46:53.500 I was working as an emergency physician.

00:46:55.480 I'm Jewish.

00:46:56.120 I was exploring Judaism more.

00:46:57.880 It was great.

00:46:58.720 I was living in Beverly Hills.

00:46:59.460 Doing anything with your legal training?

00:47:01.060 I was not.

00:47:01.840 I did a little bit of writing, a little bit of policy writing for some independent people

00:47:06.560 on the side.

00:47:08.080 And I was always very interested, but I was in the years of raising kids and working.

00:47:13.540 Right, right, right.

00:47:14.880 Any pull toward the political during those times, apart from the policy investigations?

00:47:18.980 So, I'm super, obviously, as it turns out, as a human, I'm super interested in fixing

00:47:23.900 systems.

00:47:24.580 I'm super interested in efficiencies.

00:47:26.720 But politics, no.

00:47:28.340 So, I never even considered going into politics.

00:47:31.180 Did you do any work at the systemic level when you were an ER physician, or were you mostly

00:47:35.560 concentrating on patient care?

00:47:37.960 Every, so, thank you for the question, because everywhere I worked, I was always pulled in

00:47:42.920 to do something, to fix how the ER was running.

00:47:46.160 For example, an efficiency that you could have in emergency rooms where, I don't know

00:47:50.180 how it is in Canada, but in America, there's long lines.

00:47:52.720 It's very inefficient.

00:47:54.040 And I said, well, we should put a doctor up front, right in triage.

00:47:58.140 So, because at least a third of our patients could go home immediately.

00:48:00.600 Right, right, right.

00:48:01.680 So, it's called PIT, physician in triage.

00:48:04.600 So, physician in triage is super efficient.

00:48:06.440 So, I was a big proponent of that, for example, and everywhere I worked would pull me in to

00:48:09.980 organize the systems.

00:48:10.920 And that's also when I learned nothing really ever gets done, typically.

00:48:14.280 You know, I write up these big plans.

00:48:15.560 I do tons of volunteer hours.

00:48:17.240 I'm like, this is how you have to do it.

00:48:18.360 I was like that eager beef.

00:48:19.600 You're like, this is how you do it.

00:48:20.420 It'll be so much better.

00:48:21.080 It'll be so much more efficient.

00:48:22.400 And then, you know, it would fall flat.

00:48:25.100 There's, you know.

00:48:26.200 Yeah, I don't know.

00:48:26.980 So, tell me if it works the same way in large hospitals, I suspect.

00:48:30.360 So, when I first went to the University of Toronto, the first year I was there,

00:48:37.020 the chair asked me to serve on the psychology departments.

00:48:42.180 We had a position on the planning committee for that faculty.

00:48:48.880 And they were making a five-year plan.

00:48:51.200 And I thought they wanted to make a five-year plan.

00:48:54.220 So, I actually worked on it a lot.

00:48:56.400 And I consulted with a lot of my colleagues.

00:48:58.860 And we came up with a list of recommendations that were appropriate and implementable and well-designed.

00:49:04.480 And they, not only did they ignore all of them in their final report, which was quite remarkable to actually ignore all of them,

00:49:13.760 despite asking for input, continually input.

00:49:17.480 As soon as you hear that word, you should be wary.

00:49:20.020 It's like, we want input.

00:49:21.320 That's like content in the legacy media.

00:49:23.360 And then they put forward their own plan.

00:49:28.040 And then the plan they implemented bore no relationship whatsoever to the plan they produced.

00:49:34.040 Yes.

00:49:34.260 And then, but there was more to it, too.

00:49:36.540 Because part of the reason for that was that many administrative positions change hands quickly.

00:49:43.400 And so, even if you have established an arrangement with someone that's genuine, the probability that it'll be implemented over, say, a three-year period or a four-year period is very low.

00:49:53.180 Because, well, if they're competent, they're going to be promoted upward.

00:49:56.880 And if they're incompetent, it's not going to be implemented anyways.

00:50:00.140 And so, you get to a point where you can't plan over more than a certain time range because the system itself is so fluid that nothing's going to happen.

00:50:08.880 And people also, this is something else I learned very painfully.

00:50:12.520 It took me a long time to understand this, even psychologically, is the typical person is far more risk-averse than opportunity-hungry.

00:50:23.440 And so, the general attitude, especially for a career bureaucrat or a middle manager, is not, will this do any good?

00:50:32.120 It's, is there any way my name could be associated with this under any conditions if anything ever went wrong?

00:50:39.360 Right.

00:50:39.840 Right.

00:50:40.320 Risk minimization.

00:50:41.600 So, that is so disappointing about human nature.

00:50:44.160 That took me forever to realize people didn't want to actually fix the problem.

00:50:49.060 I got a tip from a colleague of mine when I was so disappointed that the plans, much like you had, nobody's implementing them, nobody's doing these better plans.

00:50:56.580 And a friend of mine, a colleague, said, don't you know why they have hospital committees?

00:51:01.480 Why?

00:51:02.480 That's to delay things.

00:51:03.620 He goes, I successfully delayed this policy that I didn't want to have happen for two years, and when I could delay it no longer, I quit the committee.

00:51:11.160 That was advice from a colleague.

00:51:12.780 So, I was a little bit, well, you know what, I'm not going to respect, one thing I won't do is waste my time.

00:51:17.100 So, I was kind of done.

00:51:18.040 That was the last planning committee I ever saw.

00:51:20.380 That was correct.

00:51:20.700 I thought, oh, okay, I see.

00:51:23.860 This was a colossal waste of time.

00:51:26.400 Correct.

00:51:26.620 That's not going to happen again.

00:51:28.200 I'm not wasting my time.

00:51:29.920 My time's wrong.

00:51:30.680 But then you can see what happens there, too, is it means the committees get occupied by people who have nothing else they would rather be doing than wasting time.

00:51:39.760 Right.

00:51:40.080 Right.

00:51:40.540 So, that's exactly it.

00:51:41.540 But I want to share with you, because it's interesting and it became relevant later.

00:51:45.380 I was working, I always had a heart for working with minority communities, poor, underserved communities.

00:51:52.080 So, really, that's what I did all of my career.

00:51:54.220 I was working in just super hardcore.

00:51:55.560 You might have heard of The Boys in the Hood, the movie took place in Inglewood.

00:51:59.540 It's like super hardcore.

00:52:01.040 Like, I was the only white face there.

00:52:03.380 And I liked that kind of work.

00:52:04.900 I gravitated towards that kind of work.

00:52:06.920 So, I was working at Sentinella Hospital for a lot of years in the heart of Inglewood, California.

00:52:12.820 Happens to be about 15 minutes or so, 20 minutes from LA International Airport.

00:52:18.460 Now, UCLA is five to ten minutes further.

00:52:20.700 Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is five to ten minutes further.

00:52:22.680 Those are both world-class research institutions.

00:52:26.340 2014 rolls around and we get the Ebola scare.

00:52:29.780 And the powers that be decide that my hospital should be the receiving hospital for any potential Ebola patients that somehow flew from West Africa to LAX.

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00:53:15.420 So, they're landing here.

00:53:17.960 Now, this is a foreshadow of what came during COVID.

00:53:20.560 This is 2014.

00:53:21.960 And I'm puzzling over this thing, wondering why you would be bringing Ebola patients to this poor inner city hospital that has no resources.

00:53:30.520 I'm saying that you could probably be in central Mexico and it would be about the same.

00:53:35.700 And I was stunned by it.

00:53:37.200 Now, my peers, not thinking, thought this was sort of exciting.

00:53:40.840 And I, as an ER doctor, love the excitement of emergencies, but this made no sense.

00:53:44.820 So, we start the Ebola training that we're going through.

00:53:47.380 And they break out these hazmat suits that we were seeing during COVID, the blue, right?

00:53:51.000 And I was like, well, this doesn't stop the Ebola virus.

00:53:55.480 Like, why are we doing this?

00:53:56.500 Like, why are we putting on paper, blue paper, like, over our body?

00:54:00.440 Like, what?

00:54:01.020 And nobody was asking those foundational questions.

00:54:03.640 And I was the highest ranking person at the time there.

00:54:06.420 And so, people listened to me.

00:54:08.040 And I said, you know what I'm doing if a potential Ebola patient comes here from LAX?

00:54:11.960 What are you doing, Dr. Gold?

00:54:13.580 Yeah, I'm leaving.

00:54:15.980 And people were so shocked to hear me say that, right?

00:54:18.920 Because I'm compassionate and I'm kind.

00:54:20.660 I said, no, no, no, no, no.

00:54:21.980 It's not even about me.

00:54:23.340 I said, who's being put at risk?

00:54:24.840 My poor inner city black nurse who just shows up for work that day. 0.99

00:54:28.740 She's supposed to be exposed to Ebola. 0.87

00:54:30.580 I don't even know.

00:54:31.100 I'm the doctor.

00:54:31.620 I can, like, stand back and just be thinking.

00:54:33.600 She's the one who has to draw blood. 1.00

00:54:34.780 She's the one who has to get close to the patient.

00:54:36.260 And you're saying, because somehow the CDC is failing to capture someone 7,000 miles away, they're on a flight, and they're coming to the poor inner city hospital, and they're not going to UCLA, and they're not going to Cedar Signing.

00:54:47.960 That's okay?

00:54:48.980 I said, this is not okay.

00:54:50.620 And I put my foot down, and I completely refused.

00:54:53.100 And it was very stunning.

00:54:54.520 This was 2014.

00:54:55.420 This was 2014, and people were stunned because I'd never reacted like that before.

00:54:59.020 But let me tell you what the problems were.

00:55:00.380 One, it was irrational what they were trying to teach us.

00:55:02.660 Blue paper, not going to stop the Ebola virus.

00:55:04.560 Two, don't bring me someone who managed to fly 7,000 miles, and somebody in Washington is going to say, but that's okay.

00:55:10.720 We'll just bring them to this, like, poor hospital that has no resources.

00:55:13.180 If she gets stuck with a needle and dies from Ebola two days later, that's no big deal.

00:55:17.560 I had a huge problem with that, and it taught me that whoever's making these decisions either was totally incompetent or completely compromised.

00:55:26.140 How come they weren't going to Cedar Sinai or UCLA?

00:55:28.800 Why?

00:55:29.360 Like, did they lobby better?

00:55:30.920 Did they say, we don't want the Ebola?

00:55:32.620 It made no sense.

00:55:33.960 It made no sense whatsoever.

00:55:35.580 I hope I'm being clear.

00:55:36.620 It's just that I couldn't live with it.

00:55:39.260 So I stopped that policy.

00:55:40.380 And fortunately, no potential Ebola patients came, but I was horrified that my nurses were expendable.

00:55:49.400 I mean, that was the only calculation that could have been.

00:55:51.840 I mean, anybody with any resources didn't go to my hospital.

00:55:55.760 You went to Cedar Sinai or you went to UCLA.

00:55:58.340 Why was the choice made in Washington, D.C. that will send them to the poorest, worst, least provided, least equipped hospital in the area?

00:56:10.120 Yeah, well, it seems kind of self-evident when you put it that way.

00:56:13.860 Well, I was on the grounds.

00:56:15.060 Okay, so you objected to that.

00:56:15.960 And what happened as a consequence of you objecting?

00:56:18.400 You know, if a potentially Ebola patient had landed, I would have walked out.

00:56:23.140 Yeah?

00:56:23.460 It didn't happen.

00:56:24.500 I was a beloved doctor, so I stayed.

00:56:26.140 Did that do anything to your reputation?

00:56:28.660 I'm not even sure people understood what I was saying.

00:56:32.620 Yeah, okay, okay.

00:56:33.440 Do you know what I'm saying?

00:56:34.100 Okay, so, okay.

00:56:35.000 I made a very hard time finding doctors in these poor inner state hospitals, so I was fine.

00:56:38.000 Okay, but that was a foreshadowing of things to come.

00:56:40.440 I forgot about it until years later.

00:56:42.140 Uh-huh, okay.

00:56:43.480 Okay, well, let's fast forward to July 27th, 2020.

00:56:47.440 Okay, tell us about July 27th.

00:56:50.200 So, all through 2020, as we started hearing about this China virus, which is how it was

00:56:54.920 referred for five months or so until China, you know, threw a hissy fit, I was researching 1.00

00:56:59.900 everything.

00:57:00.360 And honestly, I was excited.

00:57:02.140 I'm an ER doctor.

00:57:02.960 I like emergencies.

00:57:03.860 You know, for me, this is exciting stuff.

00:57:05.560 I read every journal article that came out, and I'm talking about it with my peers, and

00:57:09.400 I was discovering that my peers were completely incurious.

00:57:15.140 I was shocked.

00:57:17.800 I don't even know.

00:57:19.140 I was devastated.

00:57:20.140 I was devastated.

00:57:21.120 I didn't know that my peers were not curious about diseases and emergencies.

00:57:28.460 I still don't know how to talk about it.

00:57:30.140 How did you not know that by that point?

00:57:31.480 I mean, what was revealed to you with that new information that you hadn't seen before?

00:57:36.760 Because I think up until that point, you know, you would talk to your peers.

00:57:39.900 A person would come with a hip fracture.

00:57:41.080 They'd come with a pneumonia or an asthma or heart attack.

00:57:42.980 And so you're all doing kind of the same thing, right?

00:57:45.480 Because it's kind of the right thing to do.

00:57:46.780 It's local as well.

00:57:47.800 And so you just, you know, you maybe ask a question here or there, but it was never

00:57:51.160 outside the box.

00:57:52.440 None of us were outside the box at all.

00:57:53.920 But all of a sudden, we had a brand new disease, brand new thing, and nobody knew what to do,

00:57:58.760 right?

00:57:58.820 The whole world doesn't know what to do.

00:58:00.200 But I was reading all the literature, and it was patently obvious that hydroxychloroquine

00:58:04.560 worked.

00:58:05.320 Now, it wasn't a coincidence.

00:58:07.420 Justify that, Clay.

00:58:08.240 The reason we knew it worked is because SARS-2 virus, which caused COVID-19, was 78% identical

00:58:15.680 to SARS-1 virus.

00:58:17.400 SARS-1 virus was 15 or 18 years earlier, and chloroquine fixed it.

00:58:23.100 Chloroquine treated it.

00:58:24.520 So very early on, scientists doing research in the clinic, in the labs, discovered that

00:58:31.040 hydroxychloroquine also stopped the SARS-2 virus.

00:58:33.840 Not a surprise.

00:58:34.820 They're like, oh.

00:58:35.340 Draw the connection between those viruses again.

00:58:38.200 Okay, so COVID-19 was caused by the SARS-2 virus.

00:58:42.660 Everyone kept calling this the novel coronavirus.

00:58:45.640 Yeah.

00:58:46.160 I have no idea to this day.

00:58:47.620 Talk about misnomers, which you're an expert at.

00:58:49.460 Yeah.

00:58:50.040 What was novel about it?

00:58:51.260 That's a good question.

00:58:52.500 It was 78% identical to SARS-1.

00:58:55.300 So there was a SARS-1 18 years earlier.

00:58:58.060 And it was a coronavirus.

00:58:59.300 And it was...

00:58:59.860 How much overlap between...

00:59:01.000 78% identical.

00:59:01.940 Yeah, and with the typical coronavirus, because...

00:59:03.880 Oh, I'm not sure.

00:59:04.500 I don't have a precise...

00:59:05.440 But they're in the same cat clock.

00:59:07.060 So they must overlap substantively.

00:59:10.060 So the SARS-1 respiratory virus, also from Asia, chloroquine was very helpful, and it

00:59:15.980 worked.

00:59:16.520 And there you go.

00:59:17.780 So when SARS-2 came around, scientists in China, scientist Didier Raoul in France, started

00:59:24.240 studying hydroxychloroquine, which, by the way, is a mechanism of action.

00:59:27.620 It's like the same as chloroquine, but safer.

00:59:29.640 So if you see a chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine study, they're all equally good.

00:59:33.640 So they start studying it, and lo and behold, unsurprisingly, completely unsurprisingly, of

00:59:39.560 course it worked against SARS-2.

00:59:40.800 It worked against SARS-1.

00:59:42.420 Not a shock.

00:59:43.260 78% identical.

00:59:44.640 So I'm reading on this.

00:59:45.460 And this is in 2020?

00:59:46.480 This is in, yes, February of 2020 was when the first studies came out.

00:59:52.980 I don't think in January of 2020, but this is very, very early.

00:59:55.600 This is when you would start...

00:59:56.920 There wasn't any coronavirus task force committee, I think, until February or March of 2020.

01:00:02.060 So the studies that show...

01:00:03.260 So this is well before the lockdowns, before the general panic.

01:00:05.220 Oh, absolutely.

01:00:06.420 Yes.

01:00:06.980 15 days.

01:00:07.240 So why are you on this so quickly?

01:00:08.500 Because I'm interested, because I'm an ER doctor.

01:00:11.120 So for me, this was fun.

01:00:12.900 Don't mean to sound like crazy people.

01:00:14.480 Well, that's how scientists think.

01:00:16.240 Right.

01:00:16.400 It's like, oh my God, there's an emergency.

01:00:17.780 I'm an emergency doctor.

01:00:18.660 This is coming to me.

01:00:19.640 Let me read about it.

01:00:20.400 I was so curious about the whole thing.

01:00:22.460 Every free minute, I was reading about it.

01:00:24.600 I mean, this is...

01:00:25.600 I can't even describe here.

01:00:26.640 Like, if you were an emergency...

01:00:27.920 If you loved cars, and you're a car mechanic, and there's a new car that comes out, you'd be

01:00:31.160 so excited to, like, check it out, right?

01:00:33.320 Okay, I'm an emergency doctor.

01:00:34.400 There's an emergency all across the world.

01:00:36.080 Nobody knows what it is.

01:00:37.120 Let me dive in.

01:00:37.760 So you're getting prepared.

01:00:38.480 I'm getting all excited, prepared, reading.

01:00:40.280 And I know that they're going to be my future patients.

01:00:42.420 Right.

01:00:42.680 Like, it wasn't just my ego satisfaction.

01:00:44.740 Yeah.

01:00:44.860 It's like, I'm going to be on the line.

01:00:46.580 And everybody was panicked, which I don't panic.

01:00:49.540 So I was even more excited.

01:00:50.920 I'm like, let me just be calm and read everything.

01:00:52.640 I read everything.

01:00:53.440 There were studies in China that were...

01:00:54.360 So is that a marked characteristic of yours, not to panic?

01:00:57.280 Yes.

01:00:58.240 So are...

01:00:59.740 So I'm curious about that psychologically.

01:01:01.560 Yeah.

01:01:01.860 Like, low anxiety?

01:01:05.160 I'm probably a little bit neurotic.

01:01:07.960 Okay, but you don't panic.

01:01:09.380 I don't panic.

01:01:10.280 Why not?

01:01:11.380 Why not?

01:01:12.240 Yeah.

01:01:13.240 I just think you can figure it out.

01:01:15.880 Yeah, okay.

01:01:16.500 That's a good answer.

01:01:17.320 So you think you can figure it out.

01:01:18.740 That's your presumption.

01:01:20.120 That's my basic presumption.

01:01:21.480 Your father had everything to do with that?

01:01:23.180 I mean, I think you grew up as a daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

01:01:26.280 Maybe you're...

01:01:27.280 You put things in perspective.

01:01:30.140 I mean, I wouldn't panic over things most Americans would panic over just because I knew what my father went through.

01:01:35.100 Yeah, I'm more curious about your implicit presumption that if a problem comes your way, you can figure it out.

01:01:40.940 Because that's not a presumption that most people share.

01:01:45.940 Right.

01:01:46.140 It's relatively rare.

01:01:47.200 Now, that's a very effective presumption if you also happen to be the sort of person who can figure things out.

01:01:51.740 But most people can do more of that than they think.

01:01:54.320 Correct.

01:01:54.540 Okay, so you're excited about this.

01:01:56.360 You're on the...

01:01:57.160 You're keeping up with the cutting-edge research.

01:01:59.420 You conclude, and you're not even doubtful about it, that hydroxychloroquine works.

01:02:05.140 And there's reason to presume that.

01:02:07.100 The literature shows it.

01:02:08.100 But there's also more compelling reason, which is, well, we've seen this before.

01:02:13.380 There have been many, many respiratory viruses and pandemics throughout human history and also even in American history.

01:02:18.280 Like every year.

01:02:19.340 Like all the time.

01:02:20.800 So I was a little...

01:02:23.740 I mean, I'm a human, too, and living in America, you're pummeled all the time with this.

01:02:28.440 It became that the subject...

01:02:30.140 It was the only subject people were talking about.

01:02:32.200 So I would say I considered the possibility that I was wrong.

01:02:37.000 So I would say for the month of March, I was cautious.

01:02:39.980 Like I would come home from the ER and I would strip my clothes off and change my clothes outside and I'd wash up before I'd go in.

01:02:47.720 So I thought there's always possibilities.

01:02:50.740 There's something I didn't know.

01:02:51.740 Like maybe this is the only virus in the history of the world to act a certain way.

01:02:56.180 And so I was humble about it.

01:02:57.300 You know, I said, well, maybe there's something.

01:02:58.880 But everything that people were saying was contradictory to everything.

01:03:04.760 It contradicted Public Health 101.

01:03:06.640 It contradicted how viruses worked.

01:03:08.660 Everything was off.

01:03:10.440 So in March, when our country...

01:03:12.820 I don't remember exactly when Trump said we'll do 15 days to stop the spread.

01:03:16.220 It was March, I think.

01:03:17.160 March of 2020.

01:03:18.700 And that's also when March 15th or something is when he spoke out in favor of hydroxychloroquine.

01:03:23.700 And the world turned upside down for me right then.

01:03:27.300 And so that's a really critical moment.

01:03:30.100 Up until the day Trump mentioned...

01:03:32.260 Because he was pilloried for that.

01:03:34.000 Yes.

01:03:34.320 I think it was March 17th he said it.

01:03:36.680 So on March 17th, Donald Trump spoke in favor of hydroxychloroquine.

01:03:42.540 Now, I had been talking to my peers for the previous two months.

01:03:46.040 What do you think about hydroxychloroquine?

01:03:47.740 But the response was, ah.

01:03:50.820 And I said, well, aren't you going to use it when you get your first COVID patient?

01:03:54.760 And people were like, yeah, probably, I guess.

01:03:56.460 I don't know.

01:03:57.960 Incurious.

01:03:58.640 Like nobody was reading, which I found weird.

01:04:01.220 Okay.

01:04:01.560 All right.

01:04:02.600 March 17th, he gets pilloried for hydroxychloroquine.

01:04:05.960 My next ER shift?

01:04:07.860 Oh, my gosh.

01:04:09.220 Nobody...

01:04:09.780 It was like, oh, no, I'm never going to use that.

01:04:10.880 That's terrible.

01:04:11.360 That's dangerous.

01:04:11.960 Terrible stuff.

01:04:13.020 And I looked at my peers, but they're my peers still.

01:04:14.900 I didn't know what was coming.

01:04:16.040 I was like, huh, why?

01:04:17.860 Like, last week, you didn't care.

01:04:19.520 Oh, no, it's very bad.

01:04:20.700 Very dangerous.

01:04:21.260 I'm like, why is it?

01:04:22.340 And they start saying whatever they heard on the news or on Facebook.

01:04:25.960 That was my lesson number two.

01:04:27.120 Wow, you're just incurious.

01:04:28.460 You're literally like a Facebook.

01:04:30.040 Like, why do people pay you as a doctor?

01:04:31.420 Like, I didn't get it.

01:04:32.360 Like, you were literally just saying what they said at a press conference.

01:04:36.180 I thought it was weird that they went from not caring about hydroxy, no problem, to saying, oh, verboten.

01:04:42.560 Yeah, well, that's that sensitivity to, what would you say, reputation salvaging.

01:04:48.640 It's contagious, right?

01:04:50.080 If you associate with someone whose reputation is being damaged, then it affects you.

01:04:56.260 So I hear what you're saying.

01:04:57.440 That is a good point.

01:04:58.640 I happened, that ER job where I do most of my work was in a politically kind of conservative area.

01:05:05.100 It's where Kevin McCarthy is the congressman.

01:05:07.560 And so I don't, it wasn't like a hatred of Trump in that area.

01:05:11.320 But the world had come down against hydroxychloroquine.

01:05:14.140 Right.

01:05:14.380 And my doctors.

01:05:15.840 And why was that?

01:05:17.440 Why was the, why did the world come down against hydroxychloroquine?

01:05:20.220 Oh, well, we know the answer now.

01:05:21.440 We know the answer now.

01:05:23.000 Let's lay that out just briefly and then we'll return to the story.

01:05:25.940 Right.

01:05:26.160 So it was, first of all, in real time, it was bizarre people coming out against it.

01:05:29.420 It's 70 years approved by the FDA.

01:05:31.260 It's completely denied.

01:05:32.160 Across the world.

01:05:33.020 It's over the counter.

01:05:34.360 Oh, yeah.

01:05:34.720 So those are the reasons.

01:05:36.220 Well, it turns out in America, to release the vaccine on an EUA, an emergency use authorization

01:05:43.360 schedule.

01:05:44.300 Yeah.

01:05:45.120 The prerequisite is that there's no other treatment available.

01:05:49.960 Oh, yeah.

01:05:50.260 So that's the damning clause right there.

01:05:54.200 If anything else worked that had been pre-approved, you couldn't do it.

01:05:58.040 By law, you were not able to release the Pfizer and Moderna shots.

01:06:00.780 So what's the campaign then from the pharmaceutical companies?

01:06:05.340 Like, what orders go out to make hydroxychloroquine verboten?

01:06:10.600 Everything.

01:06:11.100 So everything happened to hydroxychloroquine.

01:06:13.160 So starting in the middle of March 2020, you were, I mean, it was like poison.

01:06:20.180 You know, people were scared.

01:06:21.760 People were rejected.

01:06:22.620 Specific policies that I know you wouldn't know, CVS, the chain pharmaceuticals were instructing

01:06:28.900 their pharmacists not to prescribe it.

01:06:31.120 Like, if a patient came in, the pharmacist would get a red box flashing on their screen

01:06:36.480 to double, triple, quadruple check hydroxychloroquine safety.

01:06:41.020 So pharmacists at the drugstore were being empowered to interfere with the practice of

01:06:47.260 medicine, which in America is illegal.

01:06:49.400 In America, pharmacists is only allowed to dispense and to clarify mistakes or dosage,

01:06:53.940 some kind of error.

01:06:54.940 So they can clarify it.

01:06:55.980 They're specifically by law not allowed to interfere with the doctor's decision.

01:07:00.720 All day long, that's all they did.

01:07:02.460 So if you found yourself a doctor who would prescribe it, the pharmacist blocked it.

01:07:05.700 The hatred on hydroxychloroquine was huge.

01:07:08.980 The World Health Organization came out.

01:07:11.660 It was unbelievable.

01:07:13.400 This is when I really learned how bad the science was.

01:07:16.360 I'm sure you're familiar with the Lancet article that was retracted.

01:07:19.740 Or maybe not.

01:07:20.240 We have different worlds.

01:07:21.180 Lay it out.

01:07:22.160 So Lancet is one of the three most famous medical journals in the world.

01:07:26.440 And so if you say you're published in the Lancet, that is just career.

01:07:28.980 JAMA and British Medical Journal?

01:07:30.140 I would say, yeah.

01:07:30.800 I would say those are the exact, or New England Journal of Medicine.

01:07:33.000 Yeah, right.

01:07:33.660 And then maybe JAMA would be fourth.

01:07:34.620 But it's like number one, number two in the world.

01:07:36.980 You don't get published in JAMA by accident.

01:07:38.740 It's utterly impossible.

01:07:39.620 There's committees.

01:07:40.720 There's layers of lines.

01:07:41.700 It's very hard.

01:07:42.060 It's very hard.

01:07:42.900 I mean, you know.

01:07:43.260 And it takes a long time.

01:07:44.520 Years.

01:07:45.000 And you have to be, you're coming from a prestigious university.

01:07:48.000 And there's a team of people.

01:07:49.020 And so I just want to be crystal clear.

01:07:50.820 You cannot be published by accident in the Lancet.

01:07:53.760 You have a team of researchers.

01:07:55.740 You have a team of researchers who are approving it.

01:07:57.640 You have an editorial board that's doing it.

01:07:59.360 And those are career-making publications.

01:08:01.840 Totally.

01:08:02.260 You got published in the Lancet.

01:08:03.300 You could then go off and be a professor, associate professor, et cetera.

01:08:06.600 So this Lancet article comes out saying that hydroxychloroquine was, you know, unsafe and ineffective for COVID.

01:08:13.300 And the headlines from this Lancet study went all around the world.

01:08:16.920 And everybody who was paying attention at the time read that study.

01:08:20.760 And all of a sudden, it was considered poison and terrible and awful.

01:08:25.720 But independent researchers looked at the study and cried foul.

01:08:29.980 It didn't make sense.

01:08:31.580 The numbers of people they had in the study were in the tens of thousands.

01:08:34.680 I think they said they had 60,000 or 70,000 people in the study.

01:08:37.640 I'm not certain of the number.

01:08:39.000 It crossed like five continents, hundreds of hospitals.

01:08:42.160 And everyone's scratching their heads.

01:08:43.420 They're like, how did we not hear about this study?

01:08:46.060 And how did they compile data from all over these geographic locations in different languages in different countries, like so rapidly?

01:08:52.420 So the independent physicians who became America's frontline doctors raised their hands, published online.

01:08:58.540 They said, this doesn't make sense.

01:09:01.860 And they complained.

01:09:03.380 And so the Lancet got a little embarrassed.

01:09:05.140 The Lancet goes to the authors.

01:09:06.640 And they said, show us the data.

01:09:08.400 Show us the proof.

01:09:09.400 They could not prove it was authentic.

01:09:11.720 They had no way to prove it.

01:09:13.460 And the Lancet had to publish a retraction.

01:09:16.280 I think it was only about three weeks.

01:09:17.840 So kudos to the independent doctors who called foul.

01:09:20.600 The Lancet had to retract it.

01:09:22.180 I've never in my career seen that, where the Lancet retracted.

01:09:26.960 It never happened.

01:09:28.520 Now, do you think that the headlines from its retraction made worldwide news?

01:09:32.580 They did not.

01:09:33.520 Let me tell you what happened from the original Lancet study.

01:09:35.840 The World Health Organization and studies all across the world on hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness in COVID were halted.

01:09:41.080 They said, oh, you've got to stop doing them.

01:09:42.680 It's very dangerous, ineffective.

01:09:43.980 It was almost impossible to restart those studies again.

01:09:46.520 It interfered.

01:09:47.880 So, and the other thing is that the damage was done.

01:09:51.640 The reputational damage to hydroxychloroquine was complete forevermore to this day.

01:09:56.860 People think it's unsafe.

01:09:58.720 And that was what it was.

01:10:00.140 And I witnessed this in real time.

01:10:01.740 I'm watching it.

01:10:02.420 So what's the effect on you?

01:10:03.800 So, well, for, I was the most, just on a personal level, I couldn't believe that my peers, who were more than capable of learning all of this, I was no more sophisticated than they were, were not, they were not paying any attention.

01:10:17.340 And they simply followed the headline du jour.

01:10:19.880 That's it.

01:10:20.640 Oh, today, when the EUA for hydroxychloroquine was authorized, oh, we can use it today.

01:10:24.800 And again, I said to my peers, what changed today?

01:10:27.680 And they'll literally quote Facebook or a press conference.

01:10:31.380 And so I learned that doctors were not curious, and I didn't understand why patients are paying most doctors, because you could get this stuff right off of Google or right off a committee hearing.

01:10:39.320 And it was very demoralizing.

01:10:41.240 The good part about the internet was I found many, many other independent doctors online.

01:10:46.480 Yeah.

01:10:47.120 And we all came together, and we said, we've got to, like, speak up about this.

01:10:50.440 This is just terrible.

01:10:51.580 We didn't know how, because we were very censored.

01:10:53.580 Anybody who put anything about hydroxychloroquine, like, if you had the word hydroxychloroquine in a tweet, you were taken out.

01:11:00.500 So you'd find creative ways of writing.

01:11:02.800 You'd write initials.

01:11:03.760 Like, people would get it.

01:11:04.720 But you couldn't do it.

01:11:06.360 But one by one, we found each other.

01:11:07.920 That was Twitter, Facebook, same problem?

01:11:09.140 All, 100%.

01:11:09.800 It was worse on Facebook than even Twitter.

01:11:12.420 It was everywhere.

01:11:13.880 But we all had, like, a burning passion to say the truth, the independent doctors.

01:11:19.300 So we found each other.

01:11:20.440 And I would say maybe there was 100 that we found just all over, just people who just, like me, could not be silenced, couldn't stand it.

01:11:27.060 And so I said, you know, we've got to speak to the American people.

01:11:29.180 And I also know America is the world.

01:11:31.780 And so I just started reaching out to people.

01:11:33.380 And I started doing interviews and started getting my reputation attacked.

01:11:37.460 And then I decided, you know what?

01:11:39.460 I'm going to do something that was just going to put doctors in front of the world.

01:11:45.260 I said, let's stand in front of the Supreme Court.

01:11:47.120 Because actually, it was supposed to be the Capitol.

01:11:49.700 But there was, they couldn't.

01:11:51.260 So we were in front of the Supreme Court.

01:11:53.040 And I said, let me just bring YouTube influencers.

01:11:55.080 That's what I called social media influencers.

01:11:56.720 I said, let's bring some YouTube influencers and doctors. 0.97

01:11:59.900 And we're just going to stand there.

01:12:00.820 Who did you bring?

01:12:01.480 Who were the YouTube influencers?

01:12:02.340 I randomly called people.

01:12:03.840 Yeah.

01:12:04.040 So the biggest name was actually was Breitbart News, which was an individual.

01:12:09.480 And then I think everybody else was just random influencers who just showed up.

01:12:14.380 You know, these are people who were upset.

01:12:15.520 But with Breitbart, you're going to get the right wing tag instantly, too.

01:12:18.420 Right.

01:12:18.860 But, you know, so we're just doing our thing.

01:12:21.000 We doctors, we're giving education.

01:12:22.780 We spoke for hours on the science.

01:12:26.020 You know, it's 78% identical and hydroxychloroquine is safe and all these things and policy.

01:12:30.920 And then we did that in a room.

01:12:32.580 But then we walked over to the Supreme Court.

01:12:34.520 And I remember the Breitbart guy videotaping it looked at his peer and he said,

01:12:38.560 we have 178,000 concurrent viewers.

01:12:43.020 I have no idea what that means.

01:12:45.140 And so I say to him, is that good?

01:12:47.040 Is that bad?

01:12:47.640 Like, I have no idea.

01:12:48.320 He's like, we've never had anything, even 10% of that.

01:12:51.440 I'm like, whoa, that's interesting.

01:12:53.760 Your life's over.

01:12:54.940 So I had no idea.

01:12:56.280 We stand in front of the Supreme Court.

01:12:57.660 I don't know if you ever saw it because it was taken down very quickly.

01:13:00.520 But I said to the world, stop living in fear.

01:13:04.080 There's no reason to live in fear.

01:13:05.660 There's early treatment available if you should want it.

01:13:08.100 Masks don't stop.

01:13:09.540 Inspiratory viruses.

01:13:11.120 And, you know, this is going to be fine.

01:13:13.660 Like, let's not have lockdowns.

01:13:14.900 We had about 12 doctors up there.

01:13:17.300 Dr. Joseph Latipo, a future surgeon general.

01:13:19.540 We had pediatricians.

01:13:20.860 We had internists.

01:13:21.820 We had orthopedists.

01:13:22.820 A bunch of us.

01:13:23.920 White coats.

01:13:25.100 All that.

01:13:25.940 I had no idea that was going to completely upend my life.

01:13:29.520 We were just speaking truth.

01:13:31.560 And that was July 27, 2020.

01:13:33.660 Uh-huh.

01:13:33.980 And I didn't sleep, again, about 36 hours or 48 hours because the world, my world just

01:13:41.880 was lit on fire.

01:13:43.020 After that?

01:13:44.120 Yes.

01:13:44.620 Yeah.

01:13:44.920 Okay.

01:13:45.460 So I'll walk us through that.

01:13:45.940 So I was a completely private citizen.

01:13:48.300 I had perhaps 100 people on Twitter, friends and family.

01:13:51.160 That's it.

01:13:52.000 And one week later, I had 101,000 followers on Twitter in one week.

01:13:58.420 When they talk about overnight, it was literally overnight.

01:14:00.660 Coincidentally, two days after the White Coat Summit, there happened coincidentally to be

01:14:06.300 a big tech hearing in Congress.

01:14:10.060 And Zuckerberg was in the hot seat.

01:14:12.100 And congressman asked Zuckerberg, why did you take down this video of doctors?

01:14:18.560 And he says something like, well, it's dangerous disinformation and looking out for people.

01:14:23.780 And I remember being shocked.

01:14:25.780 Zuckerberg knows my name and is talking about me.

01:14:28.100 It was very surreal.

01:14:29.260 And everybody asked me to be in the media.

01:14:31.180 And I did a lot of TV shows.

01:14:32.640 And I also got fired from my jobs.

01:14:37.820 I was working two ER jobs.

01:14:40.920 One was in this more conservative area.

01:14:43.640 The other was, which I don't talk about so much, I was working for Native American

01:14:47.240 hospital.

01:14:48.120 I would go down once a month for once a week.

01:14:50.480 And I would live on the Native site and work with the Native population.

01:14:54.800 And I told you earlier on that that's kind of where my heart is, just to help people.

01:14:59.140 They were very appreciative people.

01:15:00.880 And they both summarily fired me.

01:15:03.020 And what was the reason?

01:15:04.720 It was very clear.

01:15:05.720 I got a text message from one, which I still have, which says, they loved me, by the way.

01:15:10.220 Loved me.

01:15:10.740 And they said, I appeared in an embarrassing video, so I couldn't work there anymore.

01:15:16.300 That was the exact wording.

01:15:17.560 I appeared in an embarrassing video.

01:15:20.300 Wow.

01:15:21.740 Well, I just, and so on a human level, as a psychologist, I had trained a long time to

01:15:27.040 be, you know, well paid and have a job that I enjoyed.

01:15:31.660 And you had a reputation, a good reputation.

01:15:33.660 I had good reputation.

01:15:34.260 I started being called a quack everywhere.

01:15:36.080 Everyone called me a quack.

01:15:37.100 I collected 87 pages of media that had attacked me.

01:15:41.480 Huffington Post was the most clever.

01:15:43.020 Because what they did, they clearly had experience.

01:15:45.080 They still exist?

01:15:46.280 They do.

01:15:46.860 They still have experience.

01:15:47.620 Barely.

01:15:48.220 Right.

01:15:48.660 But they must have experience with defamation lawsuits.

01:15:50.620 Because what they wrote was a group of people in white jackets claiming to be doctors.

01:15:56.420 Oh, yeah.

01:15:57.020 Right?

01:15:57.440 Like, death by like, right?

01:15:58.840 I thought, oh, I can't really sue them.

01:16:00.460 Brutal.

01:16:00.900 Because that's true.

01:16:01.600 Oh, man.

01:16:02.460 That's so psychobatic.

01:16:03.200 We had ABC, we had CBS, we had CNN, everyone defamed me.

01:16:07.560 Everyone called me quack.

01:16:08.740 Everyone, the other thing, everyone quoted each other.

01:16:11.160 Yeah.

01:16:11.520 People didn't even look what I said.

01:16:13.280 It was gone.

01:16:13.820 It was off the internet.

01:16:14.480 You couldn't even find it.

01:16:15.540 Right.

01:16:15.920 So I...

01:16:16.880 Right.

01:16:17.140 So people couldn't even refer to it.

01:16:18.860 I wonder if Zuckerberg had been instructed specifically by the Biden White House to dispense

01:16:23.420 with them.

01:16:23.720 We know that now.

01:16:24.580 Oh, and?

01:16:25.260 We do know that now.

01:16:25.760 Was that a direct order?

01:16:27.980 I don't have proof of that.

01:16:30.140 Yeah.

01:16:30.160 Okay.

01:16:30.420 But Fauci has been asked under oath about my organization.

01:16:35.320 Yeah.

01:16:35.480 He said, I don't recall what she said with everything.

01:16:38.420 But later on, there was a lawsuit, Missouri versus Biden, and it came out that the Biden

01:16:43.540 White House was censoring like crazy.

01:16:47.500 But if you remember, this was during the Trump White House when I was getting massively censored.

01:16:52.040 So media was just defaming me.

01:16:54.580 So in that time.

01:16:55.840 But just on a human level, it's a very frightening thing to be fired and also to know that I would

01:17:05.680 not really be employable again as an emergency physician, which is a very high-paying profession

01:17:10.240 in America, but if these hospitals weren't going to have me, other hospitals were not.

01:17:14.220 Yeah, yeah.

01:17:14.500 And I will tell you, I was scared.

01:17:16.320 Now, I was always frugal, so I had enough money to live on for a while, but that was

01:17:19.760 my career as an emergency physician.

01:17:22.000 Oh, and your reputation.

01:17:24.000 And my reputation.

01:17:24.860 Yeah.

01:17:25.440 I think in retrospect, I was very, very hurt by the reputational damage, but I was much

01:17:32.120 too busy to focus on it.

01:17:33.700 Everyone told me to bring defamation lawsuits, and I had a choice to make how I'm using my time.

01:17:38.440 Like, I collected the data because it's evanescent, you know, it disappears.

01:17:42.400 Defamation lawsuits, they're very difficult.

01:17:44.380 Very difficult.

01:17:44.600 And they take forever.

01:17:45.520 They take forever.

01:17:45.980 So how am I going to spend my time?

01:17:47.620 So I put it in a pile over here, but I was busy.

01:17:50.260 The whole world was contacting me.

01:17:52.060 So a week later, I had 101,000 people on Twitter, and I started getting so much support by the

01:17:59.520 world that I realized, oh, people might want to hear what I have to say.

01:18:03.960 So I just stepped into a new lane, a new role.

01:18:07.060 But it was scary.

01:18:07.980 Like, especially in that week, I didn't know how I'd support myself.

01:18:10.900 You know, you can't go to work as a physician.

01:18:12.300 So how did you end up?

01:18:13.540 Okay, so talk to me about that transition.

01:18:15.820 Okay, so now you have 100,000 followers on Twitter.

01:18:19.360 Yeah.

01:18:19.700 And so, and you're, you observe in that mess an opportunity.

01:18:24.440 So tell me how you negotiated your way forward and how you put yourself back on, like, relatively

01:18:30.800 stable financial footing, assuming that you did.

01:18:33.040 Like, how did you, and how long did it take you to make the shift?

01:18:37.620 Yes.

01:18:38.320 So when I realized that I was fired, it was scary.

01:18:42.840 I didn't know how I'd support myself, but I was very busy.

01:18:45.560 The whole world ascended on me.

01:18:46.880 Everyone in the conservative side wanted to interview me.

01:18:49.360 So I made a decision.

01:18:50.320 Did you think you were conservative at that point?

01:18:53.040 How would have you classified yourself politically?

01:18:55.520 The irony is I had taken, like a year before, I had taken one of those little tests that

01:18:59.820 show you where you are politically.

01:19:00.900 Quadrants, yeah.

01:19:02.100 I was dead center.

01:19:03.360 Ah, okay.

01:19:04.100 So you're a centrist.

01:19:05.040 Yeah.

01:19:05.120 I would say I'm, I believe strongly in the Bill of Rights, which nowadays is being maligned

01:19:12.660 as being right wing.

01:19:14.120 But the Bill of Rights, I believe, is really the center between anarchy and tyranny.

01:19:18.640 And I'm probably slightly towards anarchy than tyranny.

01:19:21.980 And that's where I would put myself, which is I believe in free speech.

01:19:24.500 I believe in the ability to defend yourself.

01:19:26.180 I believe in a minimal government.

01:19:27.780 So these things are now considered very conservative.

01:19:29.860 And did you believe that at that point as well?

01:19:31.820 Yeah, I did.

01:19:32.340 Yeah.

01:19:32.560 Okay, okay.

01:19:33.280 If you asked me, I might have said libertarian, not really fully understanding, but.

01:19:38.220 Right, but you were.

01:19:39.020 But I voted Democrat much of my career.

01:19:40.600 I would have said I was pro-choice.

01:19:42.180 I would have said, you know, my children had all their shots.

01:19:45.220 I had shots.

01:19:45.720 I didn't, you know, I thought the government was, you know, irresponsible a lot of the 0.98

01:19:49.760 times, doing dumb policies. 0.87

01:19:51.620 But I voted Democrat. 0.91

01:19:51.860 But mostly you were working as an emergency officer.

01:19:53.440 Mostly I was just working.

01:19:54.980 Right, right.

01:19:55.880 I would, so am I conservative?

01:19:59.020 I say the things that we now call conservative values were not solely conservative values in

01:20:05.800 the past.

01:20:06.240 I mean, now in America, being patriotic was considered conservative.

01:20:09.220 Not wanting to kill babies, you know, like in the sixth month of pregnancy, that's considered

01:20:15.080 a hardcore conservative value now.

01:20:17.180 I don't process it.

01:20:18.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:18.640 So.

01:20:19.040 No, I was thinking back then.

01:20:20.420 No, I.

01:20:20.600 I know things have shifted so bizarrely now that there's no way of telling.

01:20:24.260 I would have said I was kind of centrist.

01:20:25.840 Yeah, okay.

01:20:26.240 Yeah, okay.

01:20:26.280 Centrist, maybe a little right of center.

01:20:28.120 Maybe a little right of center.

01:20:28.900 Okay, okay, okay.

01:20:29.480 I always appreciated Dennis Prager.

01:20:30.960 I liked what he had to say.

01:20:32.080 I, but I wouldn't, I was not particularly political.

01:20:36.040 I voted.

01:20:37.020 Right.

01:20:38.200 Right.

01:20:38.600 I didn't.

01:20:38.940 Okay, so now you see an opportunity.

01:20:41.080 Do you see an opportunity that quickly?

01:20:43.280 Well, I had made.

01:20:43.960 Or is that desperation as well?

01:20:45.360 No, no, no.

01:20:45.880 I, no, I was almost like a crazy person.

01:20:48.040 I was possessed by having to spread the truth.

01:20:50.860 I mean, I was, I was, I was possessed.

01:20:53.280 Like, I couldn't, I can't stand lies.

01:20:56.100 Lies are what led to my father's reality of the Holocaust. 0.98

01:20:58.540 Right, that's for sure.

01:20:59.620 I stand on truth.

01:21:01.440 So I couldn't believe the doctors were lying.

01:21:04.420 The media was lying.

01:21:05.220 The government was lying.

01:21:06.200 The journals were lying.

01:21:07.460 Journals were lying.

01:21:08.240 That's the worst, I think.

01:21:09.460 It was so painful that the journals were lying.

01:21:11.360 Oh, yeah, it's so bad.

01:21:12.280 And then when you start looking, you're like, oh, a lot of other people do know.

01:21:14.820 Like the, the, the former New England Journal of Medicine author, Marsha Angel, I think,

01:21:19.560 who wrote a whole book on the journals, not telling the truth.

01:21:22.420 And then I start discovering that a lot of people are not telling the truth.

01:21:25.080 But in my personal life.

01:21:25.980 What's the book?

01:21:26.580 I have to get back to you on that.

01:21:28.480 What's her name?

01:21:28.940 I think it's Marcia Angel.

01:21:31.080 She wrote a book many years ago about how the journals are not telling the truth.

01:21:35.780 And she was a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

01:21:38.360 Okay, okay.

01:21:38.900 So you'll be able to find it.

01:21:40.000 Yeah, I got to find that.

01:21:41.300 And I had made a decision, though, at that time to spread my message.

01:21:46.180 And so I, in my mind, I said, I will speak to any large group that will have me.

01:21:51.620 That was a decision.

01:21:53.120 Okay.

01:21:53.260 And about two weeks later, somebody called, I, many calls, I did as many as I could.

01:21:59.340 Day Star called me.

01:22:01.080 I don't know if you know them, but they are a Christian television network.

01:22:05.680 And I said, am I free that day?

01:22:07.920 Yeah, I am.

01:22:08.440 I'll go.

01:22:09.100 I'll go.

01:22:09.480 And it turns out they would fly me down there and put me up in the hotel.

01:22:14.440 And I was like, wow, that's so nice.

01:22:16.380 You know, I wasn't even used to that.

01:22:17.660 And I show up and I discover it's a very big Christian organization.

01:22:22.000 They would laugh if they heard me say this, but I'm Jewish.

01:22:23.860 I didn't know.

01:22:24.440 I never heard of them.

01:22:25.360 But I made a decision.

01:22:26.420 I'll go to anybody who will have me if I can.

01:22:28.280 Right.

01:22:28.560 I'll talk to people who will listen.

01:22:30.380 So I'm sitting there and I'm being interviewed by them.

01:22:32.920 And in the middle of it, something like clicked.

01:22:35.460 And the stars of Day Star, the Lambs, turned into their camera.

01:22:40.860 And Marcus Lambs said, we want you to donate to Dr. Gold something like,

01:22:47.760 she said something very nice about me.

01:22:49.340 And he goes, and we are going to match every dollar that you donate.

01:22:52.380 And I went like this.

01:22:54.780 I mean, you could see on the air, I was like, I was like really stunned.

01:22:57.120 And his wife, who's co-hosting, said, no, no, he doesn't do this for everybody.

01:23:00.860 Like, I had no experience.

01:23:02.080 And I was like, huh.

01:23:02.900 And then I went about my life.

01:23:04.260 And I'm doing this, that, and that talk.

01:23:05.980 And about a month later, I got a check for something like $179,000.

01:23:10.780 Uh-huh.

01:23:11.820 And I remember thinking, first of all, I could exhale.

01:23:16.420 Probably people want to hear what I have to say.

01:23:18.420 And probably I'll be able to keep saying it.

01:23:20.980 So I didn't think past that.

01:23:22.440 Right.

01:23:22.740 I knew I could eventually do something in life.

01:23:25.060 Like, I wasn't worried about me.

01:23:27.120 But I was worried I couldn't keep talking.

01:23:30.820 And now I realize I could keep talking.

01:23:32.640 So why was that more important?

01:23:34.020 You kind of alluded to it.

01:23:35.260 You made some allusion to, well, your father's circumstance.

01:23:38.960 And, you know, you said something that we bounced over very quickly.

01:23:42.680 You know, you said that the catastrophe that enveloped the people around your father was a consequence of lying.

01:23:49.940 See, that isn't something that everybody knows, right?

01:23:53.100 Because people think, well, the really naive people think that if you see a dictatorship, you have a dictator and his henchmen.

01:24:00.360 And they're oppressing a whole mass of freedom-loving people.

01:24:04.640 And if you just take out the dictator, well, then democracy will bloom.

01:24:08.180 What they don't understand is that, what would you say? 1.00

01:24:12.540 The dictator is just the biggest devil in hell. 0.90

01:24:15.820 And in a really totalitarian state, every single person is lying about absolutely everything they say and do all the time to themselves and everyone. 0.99

01:24:25.200 And the totalitarian state is actually the grip of the lie.

01:24:29.660 The dictator is just the, well, he's the face of the lie.

01:24:33.100 That's all.

01:24:33.820 But every time someone in that totalitarian state lies, they're participating in their own demise.

01:24:40.140 In Solzhenitsyn detailed out, I thought this was so remarkable, that there were nowhere near enough committed communists to run the gulags.

01:24:48.720 The prisoners had to run them.

01:24:51.000 Right, right.

01:24:51.820 There's a totalitarian state for you.

01:24:53.580 It's an inmate-run prison.

01:24:57.780 And the prison is lies.

01:25:00.040 Right.

01:25:00.480 So why did you know that?

01:25:02.860 That is a great question.

01:25:06.680 I couldn't, I found it more difficult to live with lies than anything else.

01:25:11.960 Nothing else mattered.

01:25:13.260 Why? 0.99

01:25:13.740 But speaking the truth, I think living in lies sucks your soul, sucks your energy. 1.00

01:25:20.600 You're depressed. 1.00

01:25:22.000 You can't wake up in the morning.

01:25:23.300 You don't have, you wake up, but you don't really want to get out of bed.

01:25:26.400 There's no reason.

01:25:27.260 There's nothing to do. 0.57

01:25:28.440 For me, living in lies, I might as well be dead.

01:25:32.080 No, it's worse. 0.86

01:25:33.300 It's worse than death.

01:25:35.200 That's hell, eh?

01:25:36.380 Hell is worse than death.

01:25:38.220 Right.

01:25:38.700 That's a hard thing to understand.

01:25:40.020 I had to.

01:25:40.840 But I'm very curious about why you knew this.

01:25:43.640 It's very telling because that makes your willingness to seek opportunity and your desire to be able to keep speaking.

01:25:54.060 That explains why that's paramount.

01:25:56.180 Now, the reason I'm making a case of that is because, well, I don't know how many physicians leapt to your side, but I've seen how many psychologists in Canada have leapt to mine.

01:26:06.020 And it's basically zero, right?

01:26:08.580 Zero is a very low number.

01:26:10.620 And so even though what has been done to me, although not particularly successfully yet, could easily be done to psychologists.

01:26:19.200 And they're all being compelled to lie in Canada, as are the physicians, but people won't speak up.

01:26:24.420 So now you did, and you wanted to, and you put that before even your concern about what you were going to do economically after your jobs disappeared.

01:26:34.320 Okay, so that's weird, right?

01:26:36.940 And I don't, you tied it a bit to what had happened to your father, but I don't understand how you knew this.

01:26:43.400 I just can't imagine why you would want to live in a perpetual lie.

01:26:52.600 I can't even think of anything harder.

01:26:54.620 Short-term gain.

01:26:57.460 Well, I will tell, maybe this will help you as a psychologist.

01:26:59.900 Once a psychologist, always a psychologist.

01:27:01.900 I was never particularly interested in things that were faddish.

01:27:06.900 So, for example, I didn't care about fashion, which is something girls usually care deeply about. 0.94

01:27:10.680 Because I always knew it was just a form of peer pressure, not saying it in even a negative way.

01:27:15.900 I'm just saying I wasn't moved by it.

01:27:17.720 It didn't influence me.

01:27:19.620 So, all of those things that made me different, doctor, lawyer, Holocaust daughter, curious, not susceptible to the whims of fashion.

01:27:27.740 It never, and I also wasn't a person who lived very grandly.

01:27:32.400 So, would I be able to get by?

01:27:35.040 I mean, my income was really good.

01:27:36.440 My plans for myself, when this happened, the reason I was working two ER jobs was I was going to work really hard for two years.

01:27:42.220 Then I was really going to back off.

01:27:43.220 I was saving a lot of money.

01:27:44.200 It's not like I'm immune to earning money.

01:27:46.860 But all of that went by the wayside if I had to live in a lie.

01:27:50.440 There's just no, it's not even a close call.

01:27:52.320 Right, right.

01:27:53.040 Right.

01:27:53.340 And I do, it's probably somewhat of my nature, but the nurture element, you can teach as a parent how dangerous it is to live in lies.

01:28:01.840 I mean, it's true, my background was Jewish, but people think, you know, Hitler just happened and it just, you know, just happened.

01:28:07.120 No, no, no, no, no.

01:28:08.380 There were a lot of lies to support people.

01:28:10.020 Yeah, like hundreds of thousands of them.

01:28:11.620 Yeah, but I remember, one of them I remember as a little girl is a lot of scientists were in, back in Germany, were measuring Jews' heads and they determined they were different size and different shape than errant heads.

01:28:23.000 And I remember saying to my dad, well, that's weird.

01:28:25.640 Like, why didn't the scientists, they couldn't have found that because it's not true.

01:28:29.060 And I remember thinking, that's so odd.

01:28:30.820 I think I learned that when I was 10 years old.

01:28:32.220 I'm like, well, that's so odd.

01:28:33.740 Like, why didn't the scientists say anything?

01:28:34.920 Like, were they just writing false numbers in their papers?

01:28:36.580 Like, what were they doing that allowed them to conclude that the circumference of the head was different amongst Aryans and Jews?

01:28:43.560 And I remember thinking, that's hell. 0.86

01:28:46.260 You're right, it is hell.

01:28:46.880 It's not death.

01:28:47.680 It is hell to live in a world where you can't speak.

01:28:51.360 You know, the First Amendment exists not just so you can hear what I have to say, but humans have a need to speak truth.

01:28:57.240 They have that need inside of them.

01:28:59.240 Yeah, if they haven't corrupted their soul.

01:29:02.280 Right.

01:29:02.500 But a baby growing up until you've, I mean, a North Korean child learns very quickly she can't speak. 1.00

01:29:08.100 But if you grow up in relative freedom, like we did in Canada and America, you have, I think, an inborn human need to speak and be heard.

01:29:15.760 And all of a sudden, nobody was speaking truth.

01:29:18.460 I know you didn't know hydroxychloroquine is safe.

01:29:20.880 But if somebody said to you, water isn't wet, you would say, and that you had to say that.

01:29:26.080 You'd be like, I'm not saying that.

01:29:27.440 I'm like, that's what they said when they said hydroxychloroquine wasn't safe.

01:29:30.320 They were telling me to say water's not wet.

01:29:33.000 How am I supposed to say that and wake up every day?

01:29:35.760 I felt the same way about Bill C-16 in Canada.

01:29:38.340 Exactly.

01:29:39.120 I have to call a woman a man. 1.00

01:29:41.220 Right.

01:29:41.480 Well, maybe I would just to be polite, but I have to?

01:29:44.720 It's like, no, I don't think so.

01:29:47.120 What do you mean have to?

01:29:48.660 Exactly.

01:29:49.020 And then for me, mine was slightly different in the sense that mine was just like a specific fact that I knew that maybe not everybody knew.

01:29:56.480 But all the doctors knew hydroxychloroquine was safe until media told them otherwise.

01:30:03.020 So let me, this nifty trick they did, they're safe and effective.

01:30:05.700 So if the media and the journals had just said, oh, it's not effective, maybe I would have fallen for it.

01:30:12.980 I don't think so, but maybe.

01:30:14.220 But when they started saying it wasn't safe, when we've had it for 70 years, when there's a government database called FAERS, the FDA Adverse Events Reporting System, which keeps track of all side effects of drugs, and hydroxychloroquine is much safer than Tylenol in that database.

01:30:30.480 They started saying it's not safe.

01:30:32.440 I knew that this is a big lie.

01:30:34.020 And I just knew that it's soul crushing.

01:30:35.760 I didn't want to live with a lie.

01:30:37.480 Yeah.

01:30:37.780 Okay.

01:30:38.220 Okay.

01:30:38.900 Okay.

01:30:39.320 So now you turn, now you're developing a career as a public speaker.

01:30:42.960 Now you have a bit of, you have some financial backing.

01:30:45.380 Yeah.

01:30:45.660 So you're a little more solid.

01:30:46.680 What happens?

01:30:47.360 So we formed a formal nonprofit and people started flooding me.

01:30:53.440 I couldn't keep up.

01:30:54.320 I had to start hiring people, but I had not enough money to hire people.

01:30:57.320 I was having tons of volunteers.

01:30:59.040 And then-

01:31:01.020 And this is happening over what span of time?

01:31:02.780 Oh my gosh.

01:31:03.380 Months?

01:31:04.760 I'm telling you, instantly.

01:31:06.020 Yeah, I know.

01:31:06.500 I spoke July 27th.

01:31:07.720 I was fired.

01:31:08.660 August, I spoke at Daystar.

01:31:10.600 I'm saying by November, I had that foundational check of $170-something thousand dollars.

01:31:16.000 But I didn't really have enough money.

01:31:18.540 I had one person work for me, two people.

01:31:20.980 And I had a bunch of volunteers.

01:31:23.000 And then they started coming out with the shots.

01:31:25.520 And I knew my lane, kicking and screaming was dragged into my lane, which is my lane was

01:31:31.820 to stop mandates.

01:31:32.920 I didn't even care so much about the average person who wanted to take medicine or didn't

01:31:37.440 want to take medicine, or even the average person that wanted to take the shots or didn't

01:31:40.340 want to take the shots.

01:31:41.180 I cared about everyone being lied to, so they're making bad decisions.

01:31:44.080 But I really cared about making sure mandates never became the law of the land, because

01:31:49.180 mandates would have survived COVID.

01:31:51.740 Mandates would have become, show me your passport, Jew. 1.00

01:31:54.980 Yeah.

01:31:55.380 100%, which they kind of did in some nations.

01:31:57.840 Show me your vaccine passport.

01:31:59.580 They did.

01:32:00.480 And I would go to my death stopping a passport, a social credit score system in America, or

01:32:07.700 I will die trying.

01:32:08.600 That was my mission.

01:32:09.540 And I say that because everyone wanted me to provide hydroxychloroquine to the world.

01:32:16.580 I mean, we got thousands and thousands of emails to my nonprofit asking how they can

01:32:21.940 get the medicine.

01:32:22.620 So for two years, that was the question.

01:32:24.480 So at that moment, around December or November 21, I had to decide, would I go and find a way

01:32:31.440 to give medicines to people, because I only have 24 hours in a day, or would I work to

01:32:37.380 prevent mandates from becoming the law?

01:32:39.880 And it wasn't even a question for me.

01:32:42.060 This was my lane.

01:32:43.300 It wasn't the medicine and the science.

01:32:45.000 Whatever how bad this was, this was temporary.

01:32:47.260 This was permanent.

01:32:48.280 Are we losing our constitutional freedoms?

01:32:50.380 So I went down this road.

01:32:52.160 And starting in 20, sorry, 21, I started bringing lawsuits against everybody, against mandates.

01:32:59.080 And that was my mission.

01:32:59.940 Explain that.

01:33:00.520 Yes.

01:33:00.860 So we, you know, they started bringing out the shots for kids.

01:33:04.340 Yeah.

01:33:04.560 And we sued to stop that.

01:33:06.200 Sued who?

01:33:07.260 That specific lawsuit was probably the CDC.

01:33:10.120 I've brought so many.

01:33:10.840 It's hard to recall.

01:33:12.000 That was our very first one in May of 21.

01:33:14.160 Yeah.

01:33:14.340 And what possible justification was for that?

01:33:16.220 There's none.

01:33:17.080 I'm still bitter.

01:33:18.440 Well, one of the, like, part of the reason I presume that you were so terrified of the

01:33:23.580 mandates, apart from the sociological effects that you described, is that enforced medical

01:33:28.520 treatment, well, first of all, that violates the Geneva Convention in a major way, and for

01:33:32.420 good reason.

01:33:32.980 But it's worse than that.

01:33:34.240 But, and we haven't seen this all play out yet.

01:33:36.860 Like, typical people whose eyes are open no longer trust physicians for public health.

01:33:43.560 That's a catastrophe.

01:33:44.800 Catastrophe.

01:33:45.020 Because it means to the degree that that was a viable enterprise, which was quite substantive

01:33:49.240 for quite a long time, that's, all that trust has to be re-established, and I suspect it

01:33:55.940 probably won't be.

01:33:57.300 Because, and so, I have no idea what the consequence of that's going to be.

01:34:02.160 I'm so glad you mentioned that.

01:34:03.720 So, there's so much to say here.

01:34:05.980 Public Health 101 says you don't inoculate in the middle of a respiratory pandemic.

01:34:11.640 Public Health 101 never held that you inoculate everybody.

01:34:15.720 It was always the high-risk group, and you let it kind of travel through the society, and

01:34:19.620 the lower-risk group, like the kids, kind of spread it, and then grandma, maybe you inoculate

01:34:23.480 grandma.

01:34:24.120 Like, everything was thrown out the window.

01:34:26.040 And so, the trust should be lost from the public health, because they completely sold

01:34:29.360 out the public.

01:34:30.260 Right.

01:34:30.600 They completely sold out the public.

01:34:31.220 Well, and we don't even know how bad yet.

01:34:32.980 Oh, it's, I think trust in doctors went from 70 or 80 percent to 40 percent, and I think

01:34:38.680 that that's completely appropriate.

01:34:40.600 So, in May of 21, they start saying that they want to bring the shots out to the kids.

01:34:44.820 Now, this is horrific.

01:34:47.180 Why?

01:34:47.780 Because kids were not dying from SARS.

01:34:49.680 In fact, by the CDC's own numbers, children...

01:34:52.520 Well, it still says on your Wikipedia page that you're spreading miscarriage.

01:34:55.540 There's misinformation about the fact that children don't die from COVID, and yet they

01:34:59.200 don't, and that's very well-established.

01:35:01.680 Very well-established.

01:35:02.320 But it's as risky for a child as the typical cold, I presume.

01:35:06.020 It's something, those are basically the numbers.

01:35:08.160 And what, the average person who died from COVID had like five major comorbidities and

01:35:13.140 was older than the average age of death.

01:35:15.380 Life expectancy.

01:35:16.380 Right.

01:35:16.860 Jesus.

01:35:17.600 Brutal.

01:35:18.100 Right.

01:35:18.120 The average of four comorbidities, and it was like 77, age of longevity was like 76.

01:35:23.240 It was criminal, and it was very criminal to do it to the kids.

01:35:27.280 Yeah, that was inexcusable.

01:35:28.780 Why are they doing it to the kids? 0.79

01:35:29.940 So there's a whole financial motive, which is if you put it on the vaccine schedule, there's

01:35:34.000 a lot of money involved, et cetera.

01:35:35.380 But we fought that very hard.

01:35:37.360 And I'm pretty proud because we brought that lawsuit in May of 21, and we had been told

01:35:42.620 that they were probably going to release it right around May or June.

01:35:46.180 So we worked really hard to get it out.

01:35:47.360 And in fact, they didn't release the kids, the shots to the kids until a few months later.

01:35:52.400 So I know we delayed it by a few months.

01:35:55.240 Nonetheless, the moment they rolled it out, you asked why they did it.

01:35:57.740 As soon as the shots were legally able to be given to kids, you then in America saw local 0.69

01:36:04.080 jurisdictions that took the power from the parents and gave it to the kids.

01:36:08.960 So if a kid wanted to get a shot, but the parents were awake and didn't want to get the

01:36:12.760 shot, them to have the shot, the kid was able to get the shot themselves.

01:36:15.920 I think the age was 14 in certain local jurisdictions.

01:36:19.100 That became very clear that this was Marxism, which is to take away the parental rights and

01:36:23.700 give them to the state.

01:36:24.760 The state was subbing in for the parents.

01:36:27.120 Now, that's never happened in America before.

01:36:29.200 In America, you know, the parent has a shine.

01:36:31.320 So why would you leap to Marxism as an explanation for that?

01:36:34.260 Because that's a big leap.

01:36:35.200 I'm not disputing it, but it's a very big leap.

01:36:37.420 Well, fascism, maybe not.

01:36:38.500 I think of Marxism and fascism as the same.

01:36:40.940 I would say that that I was influenced a little bit by my father growing up in a communist

01:36:45.360 nation.

01:36:46.300 So in Russia, a child who went to school, they're 13 years old, might come home from

01:36:52.460 school one day and tell their mom, oh, the dentist pulled two teeth today.

01:36:56.940 In other words, the parent wasn't involved in the decision.

01:36:59.180 Well, the kids there were invited to inform on their parents, too.

01:37:01.540 And it's part of classic Marxist doctrine that the familial structure should be decimated

01:37:06.300 and that it's fine for the Russians made heroes of children who informed on their parents.

01:37:11.140 So how?

01:37:11.900 But to see that playing out in the United States and to attribute that.

01:37:19.000 Well, it's obvious.

01:37:20.800 You asked me how I thought because it only took two weeks.

01:37:24.260 So in other words, the CDC said you could give it to 14-year-old kids.

01:37:28.040 And then two weeks later, San Francisco and I think Baltimore, but there was a few jurisdictions

01:37:32.280 that allowed 14-year-olds to do it.

01:37:34.040 Yeah.

01:37:34.400 And I was like, well, isn't that nifty?

01:37:36.640 Right.

01:37:36.880 Parents are expendable now.

01:37:38.700 Yeah.

01:37:39.040 That's why I said it's Marxist, because you're separating parents from each other.

01:37:41.560 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:37:41.860 That was obvious.

01:37:42.280 On the ground, you're obviously being prepared for moves like that.

01:37:45.560 Yeah.

01:37:46.000 Yeah.

01:37:46.260 So I felt that, and then I kept, even though we couldn't stop the shots, I was very hell-vent

01:37:54.020 on stopping mandates.

01:37:55.820 So we sued the Department of Defense, we sued UCLA, we sued on behalf of the COVID-recovered

01:38:00.100 soldier, the COVID-recovered college kid.

01:38:02.240 They were saying ludicrous things like natural immunity didn't work.

01:38:05.060 Yeah, right.

01:38:06.180 So we had these really robust arguments.

01:38:08.900 That's when I learned that judges were really just also quite incurious.

01:38:12.720 And judges were very afraid, I think, to even look at what we were writing.

01:38:19.400 I know that because one of our best lawsuits-

01:38:21.500 Well, they're not accustomed to having to adjudicate disputes between, like, profound

01:38:27.340 disputes between credible physicians, right?

01:38:29.600 I mean, you can't expect judges to be able to-

01:38:31.980 You know what I mean?

01:38:32.700 The judgments are going to stay intact as long as the physicians are basically playing

01:38:36.200 a straight game.

01:38:37.100 And all of a sudden now, everything's thrown up in the air. 1.00

01:38:39.880 You can't even trust the damn journals. 0.99

01:38:41.600 But from a status quo perspective, a judge's natural tendency is to keep the status quo. 0.99

01:38:46.320 Yes.

01:38:46.960 Well, depends on the judge.

01:38:48.880 Well, no, but I'm saying in general-

01:38:49.840 Depends on how progressive they are.

01:38:50.560 Or in medicine, it's to be risk-averse.

01:38:53.400 Yeah.

01:38:53.840 Most doctors were telling-

01:38:55.080 Do no harm.

01:38:55.700 And they were telling pregnant women, you know, don't take a bite of sushi, don't have

01:38:59.880 a smoke, don't drink a glass of wine.

01:39:02.000 Right.

01:39:02.300 But all of a sudden, roll up your sleeves and take the new stuff.

01:39:04.480 I'd never seen that in my career.

01:39:06.480 You didn't have doctors saying that. 0.93

01:39:08.060 It was bizarre.

01:39:08.600 It was bizarre.

01:39:09.400 I thought it was like, you know, invasion of the body snatchers.

01:39:12.160 It made no sense.

01:39:13.180 It was completely the opposite of how doctors usually acted.

01:39:16.060 And then when we went to judges and we said, judges, look at these.

01:39:18.800 We've got these world-class experts saying, whoa, halt.

01:39:21.860 They were just not doing their job, in my opinion, and said they couldn't decide.

01:39:27.040 They couldn't figure it out.

01:39:27.980 So they deferred to the executive branch agencies.

01:39:30.560 This is all relevant to being a doctrinal lawyer.

01:39:32.860 Because last summer, the Supreme Court has pulled away from the executive branch agency

01:39:38.940 deferrals that judges acquiesced to.

01:39:42.360 There was a very important case called Inloper Bright, where the Supreme Court reversed 40 or

01:39:47.080 50 years of judges just deferring to the executive branch agencies.

01:39:51.920 It wasn't the NIH or the CDC, but other executive branch agencies.

01:39:55.500 Judges have been given permission in their mind.

01:39:57.540 Oh, you know, the executive branch agency, unelected bureaucrat, said to do this.

01:40:02.280 I'm just going to do that.

01:40:03.780 Well, that's what we were coming up against in COVID.

01:40:06.460 We were asking the judges, in retrospect, here's these world-class, amazing physicians

01:40:11.920 saying, whoa, halt.

01:40:13.340 But over here is the NIH and the CDC saying, give it.

01:40:16.800 And the judges were just deferring to the agencies.

01:40:19.480 Okay, but we have some hope in America, because a few months ago, in June of 24, in Inloper Bright

01:40:24.200 Enterprises, the Supreme Court held that judges were giving too much deference to executive

01:40:29.380 branch agencies, and that's unconstitutional, and they have to adjudicate fairly.

01:40:33.680 They can't just say the unelected bureaucrats are correct.

01:40:36.680 They can't pass the buck.

01:40:37.540 It's a very important legal decision.

01:40:39.260 Okay, okay.

01:40:40.060 Does that make sense?

01:40:40.780 I think it will change the landscape slowly going forward.

01:40:45.720 I didn't understand that so much legally when I was bringing the lawsuits in 21 and 22,

01:40:51.100 that part of the reason judges were so reluctant to believe independent physicians is that

01:40:56.100 the judges had been trained, lulled, into thinking their job was to just go with what

01:41:02.000 the executive branch agency said.

01:41:03.820 That was ripped up this summer.

01:41:04.640 Well, that'd be convenient if it was possible.

01:41:06.460 Exactly.

01:41:07.080 That's not our system.

01:41:08.200 The judges are supposed to be independent.

01:41:09.620 So that actually, it was called the Chevron Doctrine, and it was thrown out.

01:41:13.380 And thank God, it's been 50 years, and it's been thrown out.

01:41:16.080 So going forward, bringing lawsuits, the judges can no longer hide behind the FDA said this,

01:41:21.640 or for example, the EPA said that, right?

01:41:24.600 Oh, yeah.

01:41:24.620 So that'll have effect there, too.

01:41:26.220 Environmental Protection Agency.

01:41:26.920 Any agency, the judge has to adjudicate looking at the evidence, not just give.

01:41:32.680 Well, that's well-timed for the new administration.

01:41:34.540 Well, that's well-timed for the new administration.

01:41:34.560 Well, it's well-timed.

01:41:35.000 Undue deference.

01:41:35.760 He said they were giving undue deference.

01:41:36.940 Okay.

01:41:37.220 So we're nearing the normal closing time, but I still want to talk to you about J6, so we'll

01:41:43.020 go a little longer.

01:41:43.740 And then I think on the Daily Wire side, for all of you who are watching and listening,

01:41:48.200 I think we'll talk about your vision, your opinion of the new administration and what's

01:41:54.400 going to happen when Trump takes office and what your hopes are and what should happen,

01:41:58.680 what role you might play there.

01:42:00.200 At least, I don't know how associated you are with the new people who are coming in.

01:42:04.780 So we'll do that on the Daily Wire side.

01:42:06.340 But I would like to, well, there's still places we haven't gone.

01:42:09.760 And I'd like to hear about January 6th as well, because there's a huge story there that

01:42:14.140 we haven't even delved into.

01:42:15.420 So is it reasonable to leap to that?

01:42:17.500 Pretty much.

01:42:17.800 Okay, let's do that then.

01:42:19.400 Okay.

01:42:19.660 In the middle of all these lawsuits, I have this burning passion for two to three years

01:42:23.560 just to keep speaking publicly.

01:42:25.360 And one of those days of speaking publicly happened to be January 6th in Washington, D.C.

01:42:29.800 My perspective was it was another speaking engagement.

01:42:32.780 I spoke January 5th in Washington, D.C.

01:42:34.740 I spoke January 3rd in Florida, January 10th in Florida.

01:42:37.860 But the 5th and 6th, I was scheduled in Washington, D.C.

01:42:40.640 Where were you supposed to speak?

01:42:41.980 January 5th, no problem.

01:42:43.440 Freedom Plaza.

01:42:44.420 January 6th, scheduled to speak on the east side of the Capitol with a permit.

01:42:49.160 There you go.

01:42:49.780 Okay.

01:42:50.140 With a permit.

01:42:50.900 People don't know that.

01:42:51.760 So I was there to speak.

01:42:53.240 When I—

01:42:53.880 Who were you speaking with or to?

01:42:55.920 I don't know who organized it.

01:42:57.460 I had a team at that point.

01:42:58.880 And there were about 20 speakers, including incoming Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and

01:43:03.740 Paul Gosar, another representative.

01:43:05.820 There was a pretty high-profile speaking opportunity.

01:43:08.780 People were, of course, speaking about their concerns that the election was stolen.

01:43:12.620 But my lane was to speak about medical freedom.

01:43:15.160 I had a prepared medical freedom speech that I did the day before, no problem.

01:43:18.880 Freedom Plaza.

01:43:19.940 And I was intending to do the same thing on January 6th.

01:43:22.500 The east side of the Capitol building is called Section 8, and I had a permit.

01:43:25.640 And when we speakers presented ourselves at the location, we were told by the Oregon—whoever

01:43:33.780 was there—that we couldn't speak.

01:43:36.160 Now—

01:43:36.480 That you couldn't speak?

01:43:37.800 They wouldn't—there was a stage set up, but they weren't allowing anybody to speak.

01:43:42.420 Everyone asks me why.

01:43:43.540 I don't know.

01:43:44.540 Still don't know.

01:43:45.520 I think because the crowds were so large.

01:43:47.420 I don't know.

01:43:48.640 If you have a large crowd, it seems to me you ought to let people speak.

01:43:51.820 So there's a positive energy source for the crowd to pay attention to.

01:43:55.380 But for whatever reason, they would not let the speakers speak.

01:43:58.780 So I was there on the Capitol, basically ready to give a speech.

01:44:03.660 So I said, well, I'm speaking.

01:44:05.620 And so I scampered up to the top of the steps, and I started speaking.

01:44:09.380 But I have zero microphones or anything.

01:44:12.420 And of course, within a minute or two, I stopped because no one can hear me.

01:44:15.360 There's a lot of people, and I'm standing at the top of the Capitol steps.

01:44:18.120 And people are pouring in by the second because Trump had finished speaking,

01:44:22.340 and everyone was walking over.

01:44:23.980 And I'm telling you, every minute had another thousand people showing up there

01:44:28.040 because that was the time Trump had stopped.

01:44:31.040 And so I'm just standing there, and I'm kind of smushed against the wall.

01:44:35.020 And all of a sudden, the doors open from the inside.

01:44:38.560 And I was swept into the building.

01:44:41.140 This is all on video.

01:44:42.520 I can't imagine what they would say about me if there was no video.

01:44:45.940 Because you can actually see on the video that I kind of tumble,

01:44:49.560 and I almost fall into the building because there's a surge behind me.

01:44:53.480 And I find myself in the Capitol.

01:44:56.020 And it's hard to remember what life was like before J6, 0.87

01:45:02.000 but we have a long history in our nation of political protests.

01:45:04.740 Now, when conservatives landed in the Capitol, standing there,

01:45:08.860 everywhere I was was very peaceful, completely peaceful.

01:45:12.320 I find myself in the rotunda.

01:45:14.480 It's beautiful.

01:45:15.960 And I'm walking.

01:45:17.920 I'm walking between the ropes.

01:45:19.200 I'm looking up here because it turns out there was video everywhere.

01:45:21.460 I didn't know.

01:45:22.340 And you can see me walking peacefully in between the ropes, looking around.

01:45:25.940 And I've got my speech in my hand.

01:45:27.640 And I think to myself, it is a fine idea that I should give my speech

01:45:30.800 because this is a political day, and let's give a speech.

01:45:33.500 And there's a lot of people here.

01:45:35.160 So I give my speech, and that is also seen on video.

01:45:38.040 And it's kind of funny when I'm thinking back on it, but that was my mission.

01:45:43.740 And then a little bit later, I give my speech again.

01:45:46.260 And then an officer taps me on my shoulder and says I have to move along.

01:45:49.780 And I'm startled.

01:45:50.940 I look at him, and then I move along.

01:45:52.640 And then I exit the building.

01:45:54.400 And that was my sojourn into the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

01:45:58.700 And I had no idea what was being said about the day.

01:46:04.220 As an eyewitness, on the east side of the Capitol, no violence, kumbaya,

01:46:09.680 literally grandmas singing kumbaya, moms with strollers.

01:46:14.520 And that's what it was.

01:46:16.160 It was very large.

01:46:17.240 It seemed more like the energy of a sporting event or a concert.

01:46:21.260 Large.

01:46:22.040 And that was it.

01:46:22.940 And then we leave, and we got dinner, and I didn't have any news on it.

01:46:26.520 And did you think anything of it after that?

01:46:28.920 No.

01:46:29.440 So I didn't.

01:46:30.520 And I was in D.C. another day.

01:46:32.040 And I'm always working.

01:46:33.300 And I'm just typing away.

01:46:34.620 And people are saying it's something.

01:46:36.260 And I'm like, no, no, it was nothing.

01:46:37.760 And I'm just typing, and I meet friends that night for dinner.

01:46:40.720 And the friends are very, very, very alarmed when I said we were at the Capitol.

01:46:46.740 And they said, oh, my God, it was an insurrection.

01:46:49.520 It was an insurrection.

01:46:50.740 And I start laughing.

01:46:51.920 Like, what are you talking about?

01:46:53.440 Like, I just thought, I was like, no, I was there.

01:46:56.200 I was like, no, no, what are you talking about?

01:46:58.380 And they were very, very worried for me.

01:47:00.260 And I'm sitting at dinner, and I get a message on my phone.

01:47:02.800 And there's a picture of me on the FBI's most wanted list with my picture.

01:47:07.860 Oh, oh, that's a problem.

01:47:09.860 And I look at it.

01:47:10.860 Wow.

01:47:11.360 And my first reaction was, well, this was Photoshopped.

01:47:14.700 This is like a joke.

01:47:15.400 Right, right, right.

01:47:16.540 I mean, I just, I still can't believe it.

01:47:18.600 Yeah, yeah, I can appreciate that.

01:47:20.840 I'm on the FBI's most wanted list.

01:47:22.520 Right, wow.

01:47:23.120 And so they have a picture of me.

01:47:24.460 Somebody handed me a megaphone, and I was giving my speech.

01:47:27.960 And that was the picture of me on the FBI's most wanted list.

01:47:31.000 And I was like, no.

01:47:32.540 And I just couldn't believe it.

01:47:34.720 And then the next day, I started getting a little bit worried.

01:47:37.700 But I went off four days later, and I give another speech in Florida.

01:47:40.820 And I went back years later, and I watched that speech.

01:47:43.160 And I never even mentioned January 6th, just to give you perspective that I didn't think.

01:47:47.600 And then 12 days later, I'm in my apartment working, and the most horrific, loudest, I can't do justice, scream, banging on the door, FBI, FBI, FBI, FBI, so loud, that I immediately thought, well, I can't possibly be the FBI, because this must be a Columbia cartel coming to murder me.

01:48:08.040 Of course, this couldn't be the FBI.

01:48:10.200 Like, I remember thinking, couldn't possibly be the FBI.

01:48:14.120 Like, they would have called me.

01:48:16.440 Like, and they're screaming.

01:48:18.160 And I'm looking, and I'm looking at the person I'm working with.

01:48:20.480 I'm like, is that real?

01:48:21.840 And he says, no, no, that's not real.

01:48:24.040 I mean, we just couldn't process it.

01:48:26.380 About 30, 40 seconds go by.

01:48:28.120 And I stand up, and I turn to kind of come, and they break the door down with a battering ram.

01:48:34.000 This is at your home?

01:48:34.940 Yep.

01:48:35.540 Two-bedroom apartment and battering ram.

01:48:38.500 20 guys in tactical gear, bulletproof vests and tactical gear.

01:48:45.540 Huge weapons pointed at me, the laser sight beams, as close as I am to you.

01:48:49.680 And I'm looking, and I'm like, that's weird.

01:48:51.500 And you asked me if I'd panic.

01:48:52.760 And I remember thinking, oh.

01:48:55.640 And I got really calm.

01:48:57.340 And as soon as I realized that, oh, before that, he had said to me, turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around, like screaming.

01:49:06.280 And I was disoriented.

01:49:07.520 And I took a step forward.

01:49:09.420 Oh, yeah.

01:49:10.160 And I thought later, oh, he definitely could have been justifiable homicide.

01:49:14.040 Right.

01:49:14.160 Like I was, and then I saw the sight beams.

01:49:16.620 I'm like, oh.

01:49:17.500 And I got really calm, and I was fine.

01:49:19.520 And I put this, and they are coming to a rescue.

01:49:23.060 So the emergency room training came in handy then.

01:49:25.880 Oh, and you know what else kicked in there about the ER?

01:49:27.460 So they're taking us off in handcuffs and shackles.

01:49:30.660 It was crazy.

01:49:31.880 And I said, I was very calm.

01:49:33.780 I said, hey, you took my phone, you took computers, you took everything.

01:49:36.340 Could I take some cash with me?

01:49:38.220 Because at some point, you're going to release me, and I'm going to need a way home.

01:49:41.340 Yeah.

01:49:41.560 Nope, can't do that.

01:49:42.820 I'm like, okay.

01:49:43.820 I say that not incidentally.

01:49:45.600 So they whisk us off.

01:49:46.800 We go to jail.

01:49:48.380 Perp walk in front of the neighbors.

01:49:50.380 Handcuffs, shackles.

01:49:51.460 Oh, yeah.

01:49:52.060 So that's the point of the theater.

01:49:53.900 Yeah.

01:49:54.160 The theater is, I think the whole thing was to intimidate and scare me and others.

01:49:59.340 Did it work?

01:50:00.260 You know, it backfires is what it does.

01:50:02.600 Oh, at the time, yes.

01:50:03.400 But now, I don't think there's anything I'm afraid of now.

01:50:06.120 I mean, if you had said to me beforehand, would you be afraid of being in prison?

01:50:08.940 Would you be afraid of being in isolation?

01:50:11.000 What is worse?

01:50:11.980 What is worse than that?

01:50:13.380 And now I'm like, I don't like it.

01:50:14.640 It's unpleasant.

01:50:15.760 But okay.

01:50:16.860 Like, you can't scare me with it.

01:50:18.420 Like, you could probably still scare you with that.

01:50:20.100 You can't scare me with that.

01:50:21.500 Like, it's terrible.

01:50:23.640 Granted.

01:50:24.380 But okay.

01:50:25.360 So, no, it totally backfires on people like me.

01:50:27.440 I mean, it's literally, it's a foolish move if you're trying to silence people like me.

01:50:31.780 It just backfires.

01:50:32.740 Now, they don't know ahead of time who's strong and who's not strong.

01:50:35.420 But handcuffed, shackled, walking, right, good in front of the neighbors, doors, you know, broken.

01:50:41.160 I happen to have had a gun in the house.

01:50:42.820 They asked me where it was.

01:50:43.560 I told them where it was.

01:50:44.760 We get taken off, et cetera.

01:50:46.140 All this stuff.

01:50:47.160 I mentioned just two small things because they're trying to be as dehumanizing as possible.

01:50:51.060 So, one is when they release me, I go from being like this hardened criminal to being released in a matter of one minute, basically.

01:51:00.600 The judge is like, you can be released.

01:51:02.000 And then they have shackles off.

01:51:03.100 And they literally kick me out on the street, downtown Los Angeles.

01:51:08.080 I have no shoes because they didn't let me take shoes.

01:51:10.200 And I said, how am I going to get home?

01:51:11.720 And the officer says, you should have thought of that.

01:51:13.980 And I just got so snippy.

01:51:15.520 I said, you know, I am an ER doctor.

01:51:16.680 I know exactly what it's like to show up somewhere unprepared, and I wasn't going to.

01:51:20.340 And I wanted to bring money.

01:51:21.480 You didn't let me.

01:51:22.180 How am I going to get home?

01:51:23.220 I had no phone.

01:51:24.520 It was insane.

01:51:26.160 Wow.

01:51:26.520 So, I'm just sharing that it's done to break you.

01:51:29.300 And the other thing that they did that was very effective, they took all of our computers and phones.

01:51:34.020 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:34.500 And so, my piece of advice for anyone listening is have backups and not to worry too much about what you're writing,

01:51:40.320 assuming you're doing lawful activities.

01:51:42.260 Just have lots of backups everywhere.

01:51:44.260 Right, right.

01:51:45.460 Like, okay, now you went to trial for this.

01:51:48.180 So, this is very funny.

01:51:49.060 You will enjoy this story.

01:51:50.440 So, there's no right to a speedy trial, even though that's in our Constitution.

01:51:53.760 They delayed, delayed, delayed until the government was ready to go, and then my judge couldn't have been faster.

01:51:58.940 So, I found out I had been charged.

01:52:01.620 Where were you tried?

01:52:03.060 All J6 defendants were being tried in the District of Columbia. 0.92

01:52:06.580 Oh, yeah.

01:52:07.560 That was intentional.

01:52:08.720 Uh-huh.

01:52:09.020 And none of us are from the District of Columbia.

01:52:11.640 Yeah, yeah.

01:52:11.840 And the District of Columbia voted 96% for Biden.

01:52:16.320 Yeah.

01:52:16.680 And this was a political issue.

01:52:18.860 Yeah.

01:52:19.120 So, it's not—and it's a company town.

01:52:21.500 The largest employer, I think 30% of people, or 20 or 30% of people that live in D.C. work for the federal government.

01:52:27.660 So, by definition, it's a company town, plus it's politically—it's a political trial.

01:52:31.960 So, not moving was really unfair to J6 defendants. 0.99

01:52:35.200 So, I had every intention of fighting and pleading not guilty until I saw the charges.

01:52:41.420 So, the charges included a bizarre 1512C2 felony that's a 20-year felony.

01:52:47.140 It's bizarre.

01:52:48.020 It's an accounting kind of firm.

01:52:49.660 Remember the Enron scandal?

01:52:51.120 The theory was that Arthur Anderson, their accounting firm, shredded documents.

01:52:54.680 So, to close that loophole, it's called closing the Arthur Anderson loophole.

01:52:58.140 Somebody, 20 years ago, came up with this 1512C2 statute, which is witness tampering and evidence shredding.

01:53:04.340 That is what they charged me and hundreds of J6s with. 1.00

01:53:07.620 You might ask why.

01:53:08.700 Because it's wholly irrelevant.

01:53:10.280 It has nothing to do with us.

01:53:12.300 20 years.

01:53:13.180 That was why.

01:53:13.960 This is how they got J6s to take a plea. 1.00

01:53:17.280 Oh, I see.

01:53:17.580 Oh, I see.

01:53:18.280 So, that was the biggest club they could wield.

01:53:20.720 And we had no—and I'm a lawyer, too, and I'm looking at this.

01:53:22.900 Some said, what does this 1512 witness tampering and evidence shredding statute have to do with me?

01:53:27.900 I was literally walking through crowds and gave a speech.

01:53:30.800 I understood trespass.

01:53:32.580 I understood parading.

01:53:33.880 Then we could talk about selective prosecution.

01:53:36.480 Like, why are you prosecuting me and not everybody from the summer of love?

01:53:40.440 Conservatives don't get to protest.

01:53:42.000 That's really the rule.

01:53:43.000 But this was weird.

01:53:44.160 This 20-year felony was weird.

01:53:45.920 It had no relation at all to us.

01:53:48.840 And I couldn't—it was a 20-year penalty.

01:53:50.740 So, this is how they got virtually everybody to roll over.

01:53:53.520 They were very, very eager for J6s to just take a plea. 1.00

01:53:57.300 So, the narrative is, oh, we all pled guilty.

01:53:59.700 That was just a terrible thing.

01:54:01.400 So, when I discovered it was a 20-year felony, I did take the plea.

01:54:05.320 I couldn't afford a felony as a doctor and a lawyer.

01:54:07.820 There was no way I could keep my life.

01:54:09.060 I mean, as a practical matter, I would have lost my licenses.

01:54:12.280 And I had an organization to run.

01:54:13.700 I couldn't be put away for years.

01:54:14.840 It was out of the question.

01:54:16.220 And on a personal level, it's pretty scary.

01:54:18.000 So, for all of those reasons, I accepted the plea.

01:54:20.840 And I plead to a misdemeanor trespass.

01:54:24.120 Now, exactly how many misdemeanors do you find going to prison?

01:54:29.300 Low number.

01:54:30.220 That zero number that you like.

01:54:32.120 No misdemeanors in America go to prison.

01:54:34.360 So, I was expecting, when I showed up at trial, to—

01:54:38.040 Right, and that would be an expected part of the plea, too, right?

01:54:40.980 That would have been your presumption.

01:54:42.460 That you—I mean, you have no—you go through the person's past.

01:54:45.820 Does she have a violent past? 0.93

01:54:46.660 Does she ever been convicted of anything?

01:54:48.160 You know, is this a gang offense?

01:54:49.440 Is there violence here?

01:54:50.860 You know, does she have a way to employ herself? 1.00

01:54:52.640 You know, there's a lot of risks I go into when you put someone into prison or not.

01:54:55.900 Of course I didn't think I was going to prison.

01:54:57.780 Yeah.

01:54:58.320 Now, we don't have a ton of time, but I will share with you a very cute little story,

01:55:01.740 which is that my judge was a fellow named the Honorable Christopher Cooper.

01:55:07.400 Now, I didn't recognize the name, except when I showed up in court.

01:55:12.560 That was Casey.

01:55:13.740 Casey was my classmate at Stanford Law School.

01:55:15.560 A class of 147 of us.

01:55:19.400 147.

01:55:20.240 Of course we knew each other.

01:55:21.340 We kind of lightly dated.

01:55:23.160 Wow.

01:55:23.820 Okay?

01:55:24.240 Wow.

01:55:24.740 And I thought that, if anything, he would have been nicer to me.

01:55:33.100 Like, certainly we had nothing negative, really, but he should have recused himself.

01:55:37.140 Right, right.

01:55:37.800 Because the standard for recusal is not just conflict, it's the appearance of impropriety.

01:55:45.080 It's not the actual impropriety.

01:55:47.060 It's the appearance of impropriety.

01:55:48.280 I mentioned this little interesting aside, because the District of Columbia judges, almost to a man, are so smug that they don't even think they're going to be overruled.

01:55:56.740 If you've been to school and dated a defendant, they're like, oh, no, that's no problem.

01:56:02.360 And I am sad as a lawyer to know that's the standard.

01:56:07.080 Yeah.

01:56:07.140 So the appearance of impropriety, which of course this is, and I bring it up because when I stood before him, I felt this heat of hatred and anger emanating from him.

01:56:16.640 All the other hearings every month were on Zoom.

01:56:18.860 But for sentencing, I had to show up in person.

01:56:21.180 And there was so much hatred from him towards me that I will never know if it was personal or just his beliefs on J6th.

01:56:30.220 And he should never have been in that situation.

01:56:32.460 That is why judges who have an appearance of impropriety are to recuse themselves.

01:56:36.180 And I just want everyone to be cognizant of how the infrastructure of fascism is kind of already there in America.

01:56:46.000 No one's checking him.

01:56:47.100 Anyone responsible would have said, you know, get off this case.

01:56:49.500 It's crazy.

01:56:50.100 There's other judges.

01:56:51.540 He didn't.

01:56:51.940 So that exists.

01:56:52.660 Anyway, he sentences me to 60 days, which was insanely harsh.

01:56:55.920 And then the Bureau of Prison puts their thumb on the scale.

01:56:59.380 And instead of sending me to a camp, they send me to a maximum.

01:57:04.500 Really?

01:57:04.860 Yeah.

01:57:06.180 So you ask me.

01:57:06.980 So you got 60 days in prison for a misdemeanor.

01:57:10.200 Yeah.

01:57:10.740 Despite your record.

01:57:11.960 Right.

01:57:12.620 Yeah.

01:57:12.880 Well, everybody who's watching and listening should pay careful attention to that.

01:57:16.460 It's a...

01:57:17.260 Yeah.

01:57:17.600 Wow.

01:57:18.180 It's really scary.

01:57:19.340 So like, what was going on in your mind when you heard that?

01:57:24.900 I mean, were you in a state of disbelief again?

01:57:26.980 I was utterly, utterly shocked.

01:57:29.900 It's one of the few times over the past four years that when I got outside, I started to cry.

01:57:35.040 I couldn't believe it.

01:57:37.080 I've, in my whole life.

01:57:38.700 What was the shock?

01:57:39.820 Was it the sentence or the fact that this had happened?

01:57:42.280 I mean, I'm obviously both.

01:57:45.160 No, you have the greatest questions.

01:57:47.420 Standing in a courtroom and I heard them say the United States of America versus Simone Melissa Gold.

01:57:54.980 This is my country.

01:57:56.260 Yeah.

01:57:56.520 I'm an enemy of the country.

01:57:58.200 Like, it was so awful that moment.

01:58:00.940 But when he sentenced me to prison, it was like, I couldn't even process that.

01:58:07.680 Again, I'm a person who's not prone to panic.

01:58:09.800 It was such an overwhelming moment.

01:58:14.580 It was such an overwhelming moment.

01:58:17.000 So you've talked about a couple of things that have happened to you that you couldn't believe.

01:58:21.260 Yeah.

01:58:21.400 Has that left you with any post-traumatic stress disorder?

01:58:26.360 Do you know?

01:58:27.120 Because that derealization, you know, that sense of this can't possibly be happening,

01:58:31.960 that's a good predictor of post-traumatic stress, right?

01:58:35.580 Because that means you've been affected at a level that's so fundamental that it's easier to believe that things aren't real

01:58:41.220 than to assume that what's happening is happening, right?

01:58:45.160 Yes, I think so.

01:58:47.300 It hasn't changed my actions and it won't.

01:58:49.900 But it is extremely traumatic.

01:58:53.060 Nightmares or anything like that?

01:58:54.580 I did not.

01:58:55.860 I don't.

01:58:56.680 I think, I thank God, my upbringing, my personality, no.

01:59:02.200 But I have become, I've become more cynical, suspicious.

01:59:09.020 Realistic.

01:59:09.660 Yeah, well, it's a tough one, right?

01:59:12.420 To watch the judicial system do wrong.

01:59:14.480 Yeah.

01:59:14.700 I watch the judge not recuse himself.

01:59:16.620 I watch the prosecutors lie.

01:59:18.380 Remember, I read all the evidence as a lawyer.

01:59:19.980 I know the prosecutors lied.

01:59:21.620 Yeah.

01:59:21.900 So, I watch the doctors and the medical industrial complex collapse.

01:59:27.140 I watch the legal system collapse.

01:59:29.860 But in a paradoxical way, I think it energizes me.

01:59:32.980 I think I know that there's a chance in America.

01:59:36.220 I know that we're not living in China, North Korea.

01:59:38.460 Yeah, yeah.

01:59:39.120 Right?

01:59:39.460 Well, we'll turn to that on the Daily Wire site.

01:59:41.600 So, one final question to close this off is like, how do you do in prison?

01:59:47.600 So, my advice to anyone going to prison, which could be a lot of people going forward, a lot of people who might know, right, is have a plan.

01:59:54.060 That's the truth.

01:59:54.740 So, I said, if I'm in there for 60 days, what's my plan?

01:59:58.960 Okay, I'm going to talk to every woman who will talk to me. 0.99

02:00:01.040 I'm going to interview every single woman and get their backstories. 1.00

02:00:04.020 And that was how I spent my time.

02:00:05.740 And so, well, tell me about that.

02:00:07.640 How did that work for you?

02:00:08.620 First, they put me in isolation for eight days because that's normal.

02:00:12.400 That was terrible.

02:00:13.500 And so, what did isolation mean?

02:00:14.760 Did that mean solitary?

02:00:15.740 Isolation.

02:00:16.360 Solitary was a six by ten cell.

02:00:18.840 Yeah.

02:00:19.200 With a sliver of a window.

02:00:20.520 Yeah.

02:00:20.840 And a sliver in the door where they passed you your food.

02:00:23.080 Oh, yeah.

02:00:23.580 And why'd they do that?

02:00:24.860 No explanation.

02:00:26.620 As it turns out, that was how, I didn't get an explanation until after.

02:00:30.700 That was what they did at this prison for women coming in for COVID. 0.98

02:00:35.360 Now, this is July or August of 22.

02:00:40.160 There was no COVID at all.

02:00:42.320 I was in Miami.

02:00:43.220 There was no COVID.

02:00:44.160 So, it was a pretext.

02:00:45.640 So, they put the women there because they didn't want to staff up and put women separate. 0.99

02:00:49.940 I guess I understand a prison being slow and to get with the policy.

02:00:54.200 But you could have had women in a separate wing if they were incoming women, right? 0.94

02:00:58.700 And they're high risk.

02:01:00.600 But that's what they did for the men.

02:01:02.420 And for the women, they just shoved us into isolation cells. 1.00

02:01:05.500 It was insane. 0.92

02:01:06.540 It was ludicrous. 0.61

02:01:07.360 And I didn't know how long I'd be there.

02:01:08.720 For all I knew, I'd be there all 60 days.

02:01:10.600 It is the single worst thing you can do.

02:01:12.100 Well, there's worse things probably.

02:01:14.040 But it's fair.

02:01:16.000 Well, solitary is bad enough so that you can punish the most antisocial people with it.

02:01:20.640 Right?

02:01:21.260 I mean, that's how social human beings are.

02:01:23.340 It's that you can take the most antisocial people there are and punish them by isolating them.

02:01:29.000 Right?

02:01:29.260 Yeah.

02:01:29.460 Right.

02:01:30.180 It was terrible.

02:01:30.960 Okay, so let's just close this with an ending to the story, although we're going to continue

02:01:35.640 it on the Daily Wire side.

02:01:37.420 When did you serve the full 60 days?

02:01:40.080 You did.

02:01:40.680 Yes.

02:01:40.880 They kept you in the full 60 days.

02:01:42.340 Okay.

02:01:43.100 When were you released?

02:01:45.440 September 22.

02:01:47.200 Okay.

02:01:47.800 Yeah.

02:01:47.940 And in a relatively brief period of time, what have you been doing since then?

02:01:55.160 And what are you planning to do?

02:01:57.200 Right.

02:01:57.640 So America's Frontline Doctors was never a COVID organization.

02:02:01.160 We are medical civil liberties.

02:02:02.820 Oh, yeah.

02:02:03.000 Okay.

02:02:03.500 So COVID mandates, you know, we were against the vaccine mandates, et cetera.

02:02:06.200 But we put our eye and our attention and our expertise towards medical civil liberties issues.

02:02:11.300 How big is the organization now?

02:02:12.940 We have almost a million subscribers, and we probably have about 2,000 doctors or allied

02:02:17.840 health professionals.

02:02:18.860 It's just a volunteer.

02:02:21.060 It's free.

02:02:21.800 It's a charity.

02:02:22.440 It's a nonprofit.

02:02:23.320 And the donations go really towards two things.

02:02:28.040 They go towards us submitting amicus briefs on important medical civil liberties cases.

02:02:32.600 You might know the USA versus Scrimetti case that just went to the Supreme Court.

02:02:37.040 So physician licensure.

02:02:38.660 Yes, I know about that case.

02:02:39.780 There's the transgender is the big issue these days. 1.00

02:02:42.160 And then also the other lane I speak up a lot on, America's Frontline Doctors, is on

02:02:45.860 physician licensure and making sure physicians aren't losing the license for First Amendment

02:02:50.360 speech violations.

02:02:51.120 So I fight that heavily, and I fought the California Medical Board aggressively, and

02:02:55.100 I won.

02:02:55.780 And that was an almost three-year battle.

02:02:57.740 We just won at the appellate level.

02:02:59.460 And there's a federal case pending that I expect we will win as well.

02:03:02.340 This then becomes precedent for future physicians that hopefully the government won't be able

02:03:06.880 to pull their licenses for speaking words that the government doesn't like.

02:03:09.780 How come you're not beaten down?

02:03:11.720 Or are you?

02:03:12.700 Like, you don't appear to be at all.

02:03:14.540 Like, your demeanor is very positive.

02:03:17.400 I don't really see any signs of anything like depression.

02:03:19.800 Like, yeah, well, that's a lot, right?

02:03:23.120 I mean, your life was thrown up in a variety of different ways, and then you were hit hard

02:03:28.940 after that.

02:03:29.700 Like, my experience with people who've been hurt is the best way to hurt someone is to

02:03:34.520 hurt them.

02:03:35.540 And then just when they're getting up, hurt them again. 0.91

02:03:38.660 And then if you can do that twice, that often finishes people.

02:03:41.680 But you're like, you seem to be cruising along.

02:03:45.000 So, by the way, it's interesting you said that I was hit again.

02:03:49.460 When I got out of prison, I was immediately hit with a board member who lied about me and

02:03:54.520 defamed me and said that I stole money from my organization.

02:03:57.860 So as soon as I was getting out, whack.

02:04:00.620 There's something inside of me that refuses to give in, and I am grateful that we still

02:04:05.140 have a chance.

02:04:06.260 If I lived in China or North Korea, I would have folded up shop.

02:04:09.440 Right, so your fundamental belief has remained intact, right, at the lowest or the most profound

02:04:15.380 possible level.

02:04:16.640 Right, great.

02:04:17.160 Well, that's a good segue to the next part of this conversation, which will continue on

02:04:21.120 the Daily Wire side, because I'll talk to you about your, well, your future plans and

02:04:25.260 your feelings about, your thoughts about this new administration and what you can see and

02:04:29.080 why you remain hopeful in the face of, that's a lot, in the face of all of that, right?

02:04:34.400 So for everybody watching and listening, join us on the Daily Wire side.

02:04:37.900 And so thank you very much for coming to Toronto and, well, telling that story, which is quite

02:04:43.920 the story.

02:04:45.740 Is it rare?

02:04:47.180 It's a lot less rare than it was 20 years ago, unfortunately.

02:04:51.620 Right, right.

02:04:52.780 And, you know, maybe things will turn around, and I guess we'll talk about that on the Daily

02:04:56.480 Wire side.

02:04:56.980 Very nice to talk.

02:04:57.740 Thank you so much.

02:04:58.400 Yeah, you bet.

02:04:59.020 And to the film crew here in Toronto, thanks very much for arranging this, and to the Daily

02:05:02.900 Wire for making this possible.

02:05:04.280 Well, and to all of you watching and listening for your support, it's much appreciated your

02:05:09.500 time and attention.

02:05:10.660 Yep.

02:05:11.260 Ciao.

02:05:11.480 I'll see you next time.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - January 27, 2025

518. Courage in Controversy： Medical Tyranny & Jan 6th Riots ｜ Dr. Simone Gold

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