The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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.

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

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.

00:09:03.040 Well, and I taught physicians clinical psychology for a while as well.

00:09:09.280 But I worked with physicians on the research front.

00:09:11.840 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 Right.

00:09:37.480 That's very unlike training for to be a scientist because you have to learn to think critically above all.

00:09:44.720 And I trained as a clinical psychologist.

00:09:46.520 And the model for clinical psychology was the Boulder model, Boulder, Colorado model.

00:09:52.280 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.

00:10:06.440 So now, 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?

00:10:16.500 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.

00:10:31.960 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, 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, and you would memorize them, you'd learn them, you'd regurgitate them, 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, 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.

00:11:39.220 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, right.

00:11:44.600 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, and you could ask questions about that situation.

00:11:58.100 But the senior physician on rounds would answer those questions.

00:12:02.380 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 almost mechanical in comparison to law.

00:12:17.860 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 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 you're even being a smidge generous because it's always changing, even in medicine.

00:12:41.720 It's always changing in the direction of new medicines, new treatments, new tests.

00:12:45.560 So it's just so different.

00:12:49.020 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.

00:13:01.060 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 health care expenses are out of control.

00:13:07.540 So you would never think about, well, what's the critical improvement on this test versus that test?

00:13:15.800 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.

00:13:24.020 Then the troponin test came out.

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

00:13:27.800 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—

00:13:37.540 That means you're also multiplying the probability of false positives.

00:13:40.560 You multiply false positives.

00:13:41.180 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.

00:14:23.520 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.

00:15:09.220 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.

00:16:37.760 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.

00:16:45.180 Terrible.

00:16:45.580 You know, I vaguely remember, but I was coming at this from the perspective, some of the

00:16:51.240 headlines that NIH-funded studies were so kind of foolish, I didn't even understand why

00:16:55.040 we were doing these kinds of studies, funding them, but we were not really taught how to

00:16:59.700 finally distinguish good from bad.

00:17:01.660 Yeah.

00:17:01.980 And Dr. Joseph Ladipo, who I'm sure you know, about a year or two years ago, he tweeted out

00:17:06.480 that one of the problems in medical training is doctors simply don't know how to analyze

00:17:09.820 data critically.

00:17:10.860 I would say 100%.

00:17:12.300 Yeah.

00:17:12.740 I learned virtually nothing like that in medical school.

00:17:15.580 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.

00:17:20.200 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

00:17:31.820 crisis, which is their discovery, mostly by social psychologists who dreadfully deserve

00:17:38.460 their replication crisis, that, you know, at least 50% of what's published is simply

00:17:43.640 not true.

00:17:44.220 Now that never shocked me because I presume fundamentally that if 5% of what we publish

00:17:49.780 was actually true and original, we'd be, that's a 5% improvement in knowledge, in the total

00:17:56.740 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.

00:18:08.140 And you can't just read the research literature and think that because it's published, it's

00:18:12.480 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

00:18:24.420 pursuing this line of questioning, the lay public don't know how to distinguish between

00:18:30.140 physician and scientist.

00:18:32.180 And physicians also don't know that and presume that they're scientists.

00:18:35.740 But generally speaking, well, most scientists aren't scientists and damn few physicians are.

00:18:40.720 And partly it's a consequence of not being able to, not being taught to think critically.

00:18:45.520 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.

00:18:52.800 Is that fair?

00:18:53.200 Yes, 100%.

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

00:18:58.580 But I'm validating that American medical schools do not teach critical reasoning skills

00:19:04.640 and they do not teach us how to analyze science, for sure.

00:19:08.060 That is 100%.

00:19:08.780 That's also a major problem on the diagnostic front, because part of being a good diagnostician

00:19:14.620 really is thinking like a scientist.

00:19:16.440 It's like, here's the presenting problem.

00:19:18.880 Well, maybe, like, have we fleshed it out enough?

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

00:19:25.980 You know, if you go to diagnosis and then you have algorithmic treatment, well, that's

00:19:30.380 fine if you got the diagnosis right.

00:19:32.040 But getting the diagnosis right tends to be an extraordinarily difficult thing.

00:19:36.120 The diagnosis is all of it.

00:19:37.360 And I'll just digress a little bit here, just because I share with you some of my training.

00:19:41.620 So I had a very unusual circumstance because I went to my internship, which was my first

00:19:45.960 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?

00:19:55.860 This was around 1990.

00:19:58.820 Yeah, okay.

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

00:20:03.620 What had happened in America was a young girl had gone to the emergency department and she

00:20:08.200 was very sick and she was sitting in this emergency department.

00:20:10.820 She ends up dying.

00:20:11.920 Turned out her father, I think, was a reporter for the New York Times, very well-connected person.

00:20:15.600 And he decided that this happened because the medical residents were so tired and sleep-deprived

00:20:21.020 and it overworked.

00:20:22.300 So in the years that I was away, in the years that I was away, but I'm going to blow your

00:20:28.260 mind a little bit, because in the years I was away, they changed how resident physicians

00:20:32.420 were trained up until that moment.

00:20:34.380 So in my internship, in my first year, we routinely did 36-hour shifts.

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

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

00:20:41.720 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 Then you come back every third or fourth day, do that.

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

00:20:49.580 A friend of mine drove off the road and broke her arm as a consequence of that in Hawaii,

00:20:54.040 a physician that I know, a radiologist.

00:20:56.120 Yeah, for sure.

00:20:57.180 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.

00:21:14.980 I did that my first year, very hard.

00:21:17.040 Went to law school, went back to residency, and the rules had changed.

00:21:21.900 The rules had now said, no, no, residents have to get enough sleep.

00:21:24.960 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.

00:21:32.480 Then the third night, basically you worked during the day and you had a night float.

00:21:36.780 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,

00:21:46.920 and then cross over.

00:21:48.240 But you didn't have responsibility throughout the whole cycle.

00:21:51.480 So doctors became shift workers.

00:21:54.520 Now, this was a terrible decision if you want the doctor to understand disease from the bedside.

00:22:00.600 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?

00:22:09.320 To be with that patient for 36 hours.

00:22:11.760 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.

00:22:22.440 They were checking in 8 a.m., checking out at 6 p.m.

00:22:24.880 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.

00:22:30.240 You come back in again that next day, it became very sluggish.

00:22:33.240 You didn't see the disease progression from beginning to end.

00:22:35.920 A person would come in with congestive heart failure, and there was never a situation anymore

00:22:40.580 where you followed the disease to see its whole natural course.

00:22:44.620 Right, right, right.

00:22:45.740 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 want...

00:22:53.240 It's not as much of a crisis.

00:22:54.740 When you're seeing a mid-career physician who's 50 years old, you want them to have gone through

00:22:59.500 that full cycle of seeing the disease at some point in their career.

00:23:03.980 The only way you can have that is if you're really in for uninterrupted.

00:23:07.040 When they switched it to shift work, I saw firsthand the shift in how doctors interact with patients,

00:23:13.640 treated patients.

00:23:14.580 No longer did you feel such ownership over the patient.

00:23:16.940 This was your patient.

00:23:18.240 It was like kind of your patient for 8 or 10 hours.

00:23:20.220 Then it was somebody else's patient for 8 or 10 hours.

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

00:23:23.320 So there's a diffusion of responsibility.

00:23:24.580 Diffusion of responsibility.

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

00:23:28.200 And you didn't follow the disease the whole time.

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

00:23:32.400 Did that increase finger pointing?

00:23:34.740 I think yes, but it was deeper than that.

00:23:38.340 It was...

00:23:39.280 Nobody was really in charge, quite frankly.

00:23:41.540 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.

00:23:48.360 And I knew it.

00:23:49.300 And so I became a better doctor through those exact experiences.

00:23:52.540 That was gone once the work hours changed.

00:23:54.540 And I don't think policymakers had any idea that there would be a downside.

00:23:57.920 Right?

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

00:24:00.580 That's the iron law of unintended consequences.

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

00:24:04.220 Right.

00:24:04.520 Yeah.

00:24:04.780 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.

00:24:10.360 And what would you...

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

00:24:16.300 And also about your future as a physician lawyer.

00:24:21.500 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 another emergency room?

00:24:32.420 Then I did...

00:24:33.260 My internship was one year.

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

00:24:39.420 And then I did three years of emergency medicine.

00:24:42.100 In between, I did law school.

00:24:43.300 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.

00:24:50.620 This is during law school?

00:24:51.660 During law school.

00:24:52.460 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.

00:24:57.000 How did you do in law school?

00:24:58.380 I did very well.

00:24:59.820 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 do

00:25:09.680 well at Stanford Law School and to work simultaneously as a doctor.

00:25:13.140 I took...

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

00:25:14.760 So, you know, kudos to you for what that's worth from me, because I know how difficult

00:25:18.960 that 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 at 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.

00:25:39.380 I didn't have a clear path.

00:25:40.620 It's important to do it then.

00:25:41.300 Like, if you didn't have a destination in mind, and those, as you said, those are very

00:25:45.200 difficult, different forms of academic pursuit.

00:25:47.580 Like, what do you think it was that was driving you in both of those directions simultaneously?

00:25:52.720 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.

00:26:03.860 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.

00:26:13.280 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?

00:26:19.800 One was around 1990, another was around 1993 or 94.

00:26:23.640 Okay.

00:26:23.820 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?

00:26:30.820 Correct.

00:26:31.320 Okay.

00:26:31.660 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.?

00:26:35.840 Mm-hmm.

00:26:36.000 Okay.

00:26:36.380 So, you got a taste of that.

00:26:37.680 Mm-hmm.

00:26:38.000 Okay.

00:26:38.360 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.

00:26:55.000 And that was in the middle of my training as an emergency physician.

00:26:59.960 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.

00:27:06.420 Right.

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

00:27:08.900 Yes.

00:27:09.380 Fundamentally.

00:27:09.960 I was very interested.

00:27:10.220 You were interviewing all three of those.

00:27:11.860 I kept looking for this.

00:27:13.400 But when I went back to work for the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee in Washington,

00:27:17.100 D.C., I was working for Senator Jeffords, who's 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.

00:27:38.660 So, you had two doses of being involved in the policy world.

00:27:42.060 Correct.

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

00:27:47.220 You said dirty, though.

00:27:48.360 I said dirty.

00:27:49.180 No, dirty.

00:27:49.560 Not complex.

00:27:50.240 Dirty.

00:27:50.820 Okay.

00:27:51.080 Those are different.

00:27:51.860 Before I worked for Senator Jeffords, I thought politicians didn't get it right because they

00:28:00.220 didn't understand.

00:28:01.140 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.

00:28:07.100 You know, it was very idealistic.

00:28:08.720 I thought, oh, great.

00:28:09.540 I will, you know, I'm a bedside physician.

00:28:11.200 I could help them understand this.

00:28:12.900 No, no, no.

00:28:13.460 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.

00:28:21.860 By the way, same song, different year now.

00:28:25.300 And I remember talking to my senator about that and the obvious solution was to raise

00:28:32.220 the age because when the Medicare Act was signed into law, it was, I think, 1965 and the

00:28:37.700 average life expectancy, I think, was 67.

00:28:40.700 Fast forward in the 90s, Medicare still kicks in at age 65, but life expectancy, I think, was

00:28:46.720 76.

00:28:47.820 Well, they never planned to have 11 years of Medicare coverage versus two years of

00:28:52.340 Medicare coverage.

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

00:28:57.780 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.

00:29:02.140 Times have changed.

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

00:29:06.940 They were just, you know, make all rich people pay for it, which, by the way, would

00:29:10.120 never have filled in the gap.

00:29:11.260 Right, right.

00:29:11.880 And 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.

00:29:17.660 That's a good one.

00:29:18.380 Yes.

00:29:19.040 Limit options, like much like you did in Canada.

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

00:29:22.120 Or you just let people die or help them.

00:29:24.260 But that was not with MAID, right?

00:29:26.960 Yeah.

00:29:27.280 That was not, that's not palatable to Americans.

00:29:29.980 So we heard from all these people, correct, yet, we heard from all these people about

00:29:34.200 ways to fix it.

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

00:29:40.380 raising the age from 65 to 67.

00:29:42.640 We had, 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.

00:29:52.180 We heard from like 12 company, organizations.

00:29:54.740 And over here, we heard from one organization.

00:29:57.240 That was called the AARP, AARP, American Association of Retired Persons, Persons, I think.

00:30:03.360 I was unfamiliar because I was young.

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

00:30:09.480 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, do I know what the most powerful organization

00:30:22.280 and lobbying organization in D.C. is?

00:30:24.920 It's AARP.

00:30:28.020 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 investigate

00:30:52.020 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.

00:31:02.660 Correct.

00:31:02.760 Right.

00:31:03.240 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.

00:31:16.680 And it consists of about 100 axioms that you have to adopt if you're going to learn how a

00:31:24.040 system works.

00:31:24.640 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.

00:31:49.820 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.

00:31:58.600 That's when I got some policy experience.

00:32:01.420 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 goes, is spent on the end user?

00:32:16.100 Well, the answer was very little, because like with most charities, almost all the money

00:32:22.060 spent by social services was spent on the administrators of the social service program.

00:32:26.920 And so, you know, your first pass diagnosis of a system like that is that, well, it's clearly

00:32:32.420 there to employ the people on whom it spends the bulk of the money.

00:32:36.780 Now, a side effect might be the delivery of some services.

00:32:39.640 Maybe, but if they're not even collecting data about whether those services are administered,

00:32:45.900 you 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,

00:32:58.280 I suppose, something like that, and very unidimensionally, not understanding, for example,

00:33:02.180 that the AARP is not to be messed with, no matter what, right, right, right.

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

00:33:11.600 Like, does that cause too much, is that too administratively complex?

00:33:16.220 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, and so they did it.

00:33:22.900 Right.

00:33:23.220 They weren't even messing with it.

00:33:24.820 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, yeah.

00:33:43.620 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.

00:34:11.340 And then they spend, if I remember correctly, they spend 28 hours a week fundraising, right?

00:34:18.820 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.

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,

00:34:45.560 and that's completely independent of the fact that you have way too much to learn about

00:34:49.800 absolutely everything.

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

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

00:34:55.880 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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00:36:15.840 Well, so then what the hell do you do about that?

00:36:18.080 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.

00:36:23.460 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.

00:36:39.240 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.

00:36:43.140 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?

00:36:49.200 That didn't work out by the way.

00:36:50.540 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.

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

00:36:58.200 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.

00:37:03.440 Yeah, why?

00:37:04.400 And what do you mean childhood?

00:37:05.520 How early?

00:37:07.100 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.

00:37:18.180 There are things that are wonderful.

00:37:19.320 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.

00:37:27.200 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

00:37:37.440 so they can actually do some good.

00:37:38.960 I mean, it's a beautiful thing to be a doctor.

00:37:40.460 That's the truth.

00:37:41.120 But the practice of medicine in America, and probably Canada as well, is, you know, it's

00:37:47.480 not great.

00:37:48.520 So I've always known that.

00:37:49.680 Is that a consequence of bureaucratic complexification?

00:37:56.840 I mean, what's the essential problem?

00:37:59.160 You know, I mean, I love being a clinical psychologist when you could still do that and tell the truth,

00:38:03.860 which wasn't that long ago.

00:38:05.520 But there were no intermediaries.

00:38:07.380 So I will tell you exactly the moment it started changing, because I learned this in my health

00:38:11.640 policy law class from Professor Hank Greeley in health law and policy at Stanford.

00:38:16.860 Lyndon Johnson Medicare Act of 1965, the preamble paragraph says,

00:38:22.320 nothing in this Medicare Act should be construed to interfere with the practice of medicine.

00:38:28.100 And I was sitting there as a young doctor, law student, and I raised my hand and I said,

00:38:34.320 every single thing Medicare has done has interfered with the practice of medicine, 100%.

00:38:40.000 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,

00:38:48.680 everything, every, there's intermediaries.

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

00:38:53.900 It's a big insurance company right in the middle, or a big hospital corporation right in

00:38:58.680 the middle.

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

00:39:01.520 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.

00:39:09.000 Yes, it's a series of catastrophic miracles.

00:39:11.800 It couldn't be worse.

00:39:14.020 Yeah, well, and we've substituted dying for paying, right?

00:39:19.260 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.

00:39:25.080 Well, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

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

00:39:32.980 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.

00:39:42.340 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.

00:39:53.660 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 on to that and saying, I don't understand how in modern times, why can't we

00:40:01.040 also have that?

00:40:01.980 Right.

00:40:02.540 Well, yeah, right.

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

00:40:04.420 But you have so many.

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

00:40:07.920 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, 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.

00:40:26.140 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.

00:41:19.500 Yeah, and that's a hard thing to build, especially when people are in crisis.

00:41:23.340 So one of the last things I did in preparing for this discussion was read your Wikipedia page.

00:41:29.680 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.

00:41:36.200 It's very easy to damage someone's reputation.

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

00:41:40.300 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.

00:41:49.860 And so if you ever read anything or hear anything about someone that isn't above board, the cost,

00:41:58.500 the apparent cost of writing that person off is basically zero because there's so many

00:42:02.340 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.

00:42:08.320 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.

00:42:15.680 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.

00:42:23.300 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.

00:42:36.180 I know that as well as anyone could know it, I would say, 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?

00:42:45.560 And like, why are all these terrible things being written about her?

00:42:47.860 And does she know what she's talking about?

00:42:49.280 And so part of the reason I wanted to inquire into your academic history was to find out,

00:42:55.420 well, you know, what's your base level of qualification?

00:42:58.080 And so it's very interesting to note that your base level of qualification is extremely

00:43:03.420 high, right?

00:43:04.360 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.

00:43:10.800 And to follow that up with Stanford Medical School, like, is there anyone else who's done

00:43:15.460 that?

00:43:16.760 Right.

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

00:43:19.220 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?

00:43:28.700 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?

00:43:39.200 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?

00:43:50.960 So at some point, this is intersectionality on the academic side.

00:43:54.900 You get enough intersection, 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.

00:44:08.200 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.

00:44:17.360 And let's move towards COVID and everything that transpired around that.

00:44:22.480 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.

00:44:32.680 And then now you're an ER physician.

00:44:34.380 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.

00:44:41.080 And I spent the next 20 years working as an emergency physician full-time.

00:44:44.920 Where?

00:44:45.700 Oh, various hospitals.

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

00:44:48.600 Correct.

00:44:48.860 Why do 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.

00:44:55.780 I had some family, personal reasons to be there.

00:44:58.100 Okay.

00:44:58.540 Yeah.

00:44:58.920 Okay, and you spent 20 years.

00:45:00.500 Mm-hmm.

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

00:45:03.260 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?

00:45:08.460 So among your patients, any complaints?

00:45:11.320 There were no, there has never been any complaints.

00:45:13.060 Lawsuits?

00:45:13.720 Nope.

00:45:13.920 And by the way, to be in a practicing emergency physician and have no malpractice lawsuits,

00:45:18.400 very uncommon.

00:45:19.020 Yes, that's exactly why I'm investigating that.

00:45:21.540 Because the default is that you're going to get nailed by, well, you'll come across a nice

00:45:27.180 psychopath at least once during your practice who will take you to task and make your life

00:45:32.320 miserable.

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

00:45:36.880 Right.

00:45:37.140 Patients do not have loyalty towards you.

00:45:39.700 Well, things can go very wrong.

00:45:40.960 Things can go very wrong.

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

00:45:45.040 20 years.

00:45:45.820 20 years.

00:45:46.460 And I was, I would say I was very well-respected.

00:45:50.840 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.

00:45:58.240 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.

00:46:04.720 And I know that I was very well-respected and well-loved, because when I was attacked,

00:46:09.180 many of them stood up for me.

00:46:10.560 So it's not my fantasy wish.

00:46:12.820 Not only were there no complaints, there's no paper trail against me.

00:46:15.540 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.

00:46:28.860 But it's a start.

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

00:46:30.360 I remind people of that.

00:46:31.440 I said, just try to find something nasty that someone said about me prior to 2020.

00:46:35.980 It isn't there.

00:46:37.180 Right.

00:46:37.580 Prior to 2020.

00:46:38.620 And none of that prior to July 27th, 2020.

00:46:43.120 Right.

00:46:43.800 Right.

00:46:44.300 Okay.

00:46:44.600 Well, so let's move to July.

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

00:46:49.180 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.

00:46:52.220 I was working as an emergency physician.

00:46:55.480 I'm Jewish.

00:46:56.140 I was exploring Judaism more.

00:46:57.920 It was great.

00:46:58.740 I was living in Beverly Hills.

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

00:47:01.060 I was not.

00:47:01.920 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.

00:47:09.740 But I was in the years of raising kids and working.

00:47:13.560 Right.

00:47:13.960 Right.

00:47:14.580 Right.

00:47:14.900 Any pull toward the political during those times apart from the policy investigations?

00:47:19.020 So I'm super...

00:47:20.140 Obviously, as it turns out, as a human, I'm super interested in fixing systems.

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

00:47:26.700 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

00:47:35.280 mostly concentrating on patient care?

00:47:38.500 So thank you for the question, because everywhere I worked, I was always pulled in to do something

00:47:43.860 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.

00:47:52.700 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 Because at least a third of our patients could go home immediately.

00:48:00.440 Right, right, right.

00:48:01.700 So it's called PIT, physician in triage.

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

00:48:06.680 So I was a big proponent of that, for example.

00:48:08.340 And everywhere I worked would pull me in to organize the systems.

00:48:10.900 And that's also when I learned nothing really ever gets done, typically.

00:48:14.320 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 And 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.

00:48:22.320 And then, you know, it would fall flat.

00:48:25.120 There's, you know.

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

00:48:26.960 So tell me if it works the same way in large hospitals.

00:48:29.420 I suspect so.

00:48:30.440 So when I first went to the University of Toronto, the first year I was there, 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.

00:48:48.780 And they were making a five-year plan.

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

00:48:54.340 So I actually worked on it a lot.

00:48:56.080 And I consulted with a lot of my colleagues.

00:48:58.880 And we came up with a list of recommendations that were appropriate and implementable and well-designed.

00:49:04.840 And they, not only did they ignore all of them in their final report, which was quite remarkable to actually ignore all of them, despite asking for input, continually input.

00:49:17.140 As soon as you hear that word, you should be wary.

00:49:19.940 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.

00:49:34.120 Yes.

00:49:34.240 And then, but there was more to it, too, because part of the reason for that was that many administrative positions change hands quickly.

00:49:43.620 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.

00:49:53.120 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.

00:49:59.940 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.

00:50:12.620 It took me a long time to understand this, even psychologically, is the typical person is far more risk-averse than opportunity-hungry.

00:50:22.780 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.

00:50:40.340 Risk minimization.

00:50:41.820 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.

00:50:48.660 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.

00:50:56.620 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.

00:51:03.660 He goes, I successfully delayed this policy that I didn't want to have happen for two years.

00:51:07.760 And when I could delay it no longer, I quit the committee.

00:51:11.180 That was advice from a colleague.

00:51:12.940 So I was a little bit, well, you know what?

00:51:14.400 I'm not going to spend, one thing I won't do is waste my time.

00:51:17.080 So I was kind of done.

00:51:18.040 And 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.

00:51:30.880 But then you can see what happens there too.

00:51:32.780 Exactly.

00:51:32.940 The committees get occupied by people who have nothing else they would rather be doing than wasting time.

00:51:39.740 Right.

00:51:40.060 Right.

00:51:40.560 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.

00:51:44.920 I was working, I always had a heart for working with minority communities, poor, underserved communities.

00:51:52.100 So really that's what I did all of my career.

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

00:51:55.860 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.

00:52:00.580 Like I was the only white face there.

00:52:03.280 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.

00:52:12.700 Happens to be about 15 minutes or so, 20 minutes from LA International Airport.

00:52:18.480 Now UCLA is five to ten minutes further.

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

00:52:22.820 Those are both world-class research institutions.

00:52:26.480 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

00:52:37.020 Ebola patients that somehow flew from West Africa to LAX.

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00:53:32.920 So, they're landing here.

00:53:38.200 Now, this is a foreshadow of what came during COVID.

00:53:40.560 This is 2014 and I'm puzzling over this thing, wondering why you would be bringing Ebola patients

00:53:47.460 to this poor inner city hospital that has no resources.

00:53:50.760 I'm saying that you could probably be in central Mexico and it would be about the same.

00:53:55.940 And I was stunned by it.

00:53:57.440 Now, my peers, not thinking, thought this was sort of exciting.

00:54:00.700 And I, as an ER doctor, love the excitement of emergencies, but this made no sense.

00:54:05.140 So, we start the Ebola training that we're going through and they break out these hazmat

00:54:09.320 suits that we were seeing during COVID, the blue, right?

00:54:11.260 And I was like, well, this doesn't stop the Ebola virus.

00:54:15.720 Like, why are we doing this?

00:54:16.760 Like, why are we putting on paper, blue paper, like over our body?

00:54:21.240 And nobody was asking those foundational questions.

00:54:23.880 And I was the highest ranking person at the time there.

00:54:26.680 And so, people listened to me and I said, you know what I'm doing?

00:54:29.540 If a potential Ebola patient comes here from LAX, what are you doing, Dr. Gold?

00:54:33.800 Yeah.

00:54:34.560 I'm leaving.

00:54:36.220 And people were so shocked to hear me say that, right?

00:54:39.160 Because I'm compassionate and I'm kind.

00:54:40.900 I said, no, no, no, no, no.

00:54:42.200 It's not even about me.

00:54:43.600 I said, who's being put at risk?

00:54:45.080 My poor inner city black nurse who just shows up for work that day, she's supposed to be

00:54:49.720 exposed to Ebola.

00:54:50.820 I don't even know.

00:54:51.360 I'm the doctor.

00:54:51.880 I can like stand back and just be thinking.

00:54:53.820 She's the one who has to draw blood.

00:54:55.140 She's the one who has to get close to the patient.

00:54:56.500 And you're saying, because somehow the CDC is failing to capture someone 7,000 miles

00:55:01.640 away, they're on a flight, and they're coming to the poor inner city hospital, and they're

00:55:05.860 not going to UCLA, and they're not going to Cedar signing.

00:55:08.220 That's okay?

00:55:09.220 I said, this is not okay.

00:55:10.720 And I put my foot down and I completely refused.

00:55:13.340 And it was very stunning.

00:55:14.780 This is 2014.

00:55:15.960 This is 2014.

00:55:16.620 And people were stunned because I'd never reacted like that before.

00:55:19.180 But let me tell you what the problems were.

00:55:20.640 One, it was irrational what they were trying to teach us.

00:55:22.900 Blue paper, not going to stop the Ebola virus.

00:55:24.700 Two, don't bring me someone who managed to fly 7,000 miles and somebody in Washington

00:55:29.420 is going to say, but that's okay.

00:55:30.980 We'll just bring them to this poor hospital that has no resources.

00:55:33.480 If she gets stuck with a needle and dies from Ebola two days later, that's no big deal.

00:55:37.800 I had a huge problem with that.

00:55:39.720 And it taught me that whoever's making these decisions either was totally incompetent or

00:55:44.960 completely compromised.

00:55:46.400 How come they weren't going to Cedars-Sinai or UCLA?

00:55:49.040 Why?

00:55:49.880 Do they lobby better?

00:55:51.180 Do they say, we don't want the Ebola?

00:55:53.120 It made no sense.

00:55:54.160 It made no sense whatsoever.

00:55:55.840 I hope I'm being clear.

00:55:56.880 It's just that I couldn't live with it.

00:55:59.600 So I stopped that policy.

00:56:01.280 And fortunately, no potential Ebola patients came.

00:56:04.120 But I was horrified that my nurses were expendable.

00:56:09.640 And that was the only calculation that could have been.

00:56:12.100 I mean, anybody with any resources didn't go to my hospital.

00:56:16.000 You went to Cedars-Sinai or you went to UCLA.

00:56:17.960 Why was the choice made in Washington, D.C. that will send them to the poorest, worst, least

00:56:24.920 provided, least equipped hospital in the area?

00:56:30.560 Yeah.

00:56:30.800 Well, it seems kind of self-evident when you put it that way.

00:56:34.100 Well, I was on the grounds.

00:56:35.120 So you objected to that.

00:56:36.200 And what happened as a consequence of you objecting?

00:56:38.660 You know, if a potentially Ebola patient had landed, I would have walked out.

00:56:43.400 Yeah.

00:56:43.700 It didn't happen.

00:56:44.760 I was a beloved doctor.

00:56:46.300 Did that do anything to your reputation?

00:56:48.920 I'm not even sure people understood what I was saying.

00:56:52.860 Yeah.

00:56:53.160 Okay.

00:56:53.560 Okay.

00:56:53.720 Do you know what I'm saying?

00:56:54.340 Okay.

00:56:54.680 So, okay.

00:56:55.240 I made a very hard time finding doctors in these poor, innocent hospitals.

00:56:57.380 Okay, okay, okay.

00:56:58.440 But that was a foreshadowing of things to come.

00:57:00.680 I forgot about it until years later.

00:57:02.360 Uh-huh.

00:57:03.000 Okay.

00:57:03.680 Okay.

00:57:04.100 Well, let's fast forward to July 27th, 2020.

00:57:07.680 Okay.

00:57:08.580 Tell us about July 27th.

00:57:10.640 So all through 2020, as we started hearing about this China virus, which is how it was

00:57:15.180 referred for five months or so until China, you know, threw a hissy fit, I was researching

00:57:20.140 everything.

00:57:20.600 And honestly, I was excited.

00:57:22.400 I'm an ER doctor.

00:57:23.220 I like emergencies.

00:57:24.120 You know, for me, this is exciting stuff.

00:57:25.520 I read every journal article that came out, and I'm talking about it with my peers, and

00:57:29.660 I was discovering that my peers were completely incurious.

00:57:35.360 I was shocked.

00:57:38.040 I don't even know.

00:57:39.380 I was devastated.

00:57:40.380 I was devastated.

00:57:41.380 I didn't know that my peers were not curious about diseases and emergencies.

00:57:48.580 I still have to talk about it.

00:57:50.420 How did you not know that by that point?

00:57:51.580 I mean, what was revealed to you with that new information that you hadn't seen before?

00:57:57.000 Because I think up until that point, you know, you would talk to your peers.

00:58:00.160 A person would come with a hip fracture.

00:58:01.320 They come with a pneumonia or an asthma or heart attack.

00:58:03.620 And so you're all doing kind of the same thing, right?

00:58:05.720 Because it's kind of the right thing to do.

00:58:07.020 It's local as well.

00:58:08.040 And so you just, you know, you maybe ask a question here or there, but it was never

00:58:11.400 outside the box.

00:58:12.680 None of us were outside the box at all.

00:58:14.000 But all of a sudden, we had a brand new disease, brand new thing, and nobody knew what to do,

00:58:19.000 right?

00:58:19.080 The whole world doesn't know what to do.

00:58:20.440 But I was reading all the literature, and it was patently obvious that hydroxychloroquine

00:58:24.820 worked.

00:58:25.560 Now, it wasn't a coincidence.

00:58:27.400 Okay, justify that, Clay.

00:58:28.860 The reason we knew it worked is because SARS-2 virus, which caused COVID-19, was 78% identical

00:58:35.920 to SARS-1 virus.

00:58:37.640 SARS-1 virus was 15 or 18 years earlier, and chloroquine fixed it.

00:58:43.100 Chloroquine treated it.

00:58:44.760 So very early on, scientists doing research in the clinic, in the labs, discovered that

00:58:51.280 hydroxychloroquine also stopped the SARS-2 virus.

00:58:53.940 Not a surprise.

00:58:55.060 They're like, oh.

00:58:55.680 Draw the connection between those viruses again.

00:58:58.400 Okay, so COVID-19 was caused by the SARS-2 virus.

00:59:02.920 Everyone kept calling this the novel coronavirus.

00:59:05.880 Yeah.

00:59:06.400 I have no idea to this day.

00:59:07.860 Talk about misnomers, which you're an expert at.

00:59:09.700 Yeah.

00:59:10.300 What was novel about it?

00:59:11.520 That's a good question.

00:59:12.680 It was 78% identical to SARS-1.

00:59:15.520 So there was a SARS-1 18 years earlier.

00:59:18.320 And it was a coronavirus.

00:59:19.540 And it was-

00:59:20.100 How much overlap between-

00:59:21.240 78% identical.

00:59:22.200 Yeah, and with the typical coronavirus, because-

00:59:24.140 Oh, I'm not sure.

00:59:25.040 I don't have a precise.

00:59:25.700 But they're in the same cat clock, so they must overlap substantively.

00:59:30.140 So the SARS-1 respiratory virus, also from Asia.

00:59:33.780 Chloroquine was very helpful, and it worked.

00:59:36.780 And there you go.

00:59:38.000 So when SARS-2 came around, scientists in China, scientist Didier Raoul in France, started

00:59:44.480 studying hydroxychloroquine, which, by the way, is a mechanism of action.

00:59:47.900 It's like the same as chloroquine, but safer.

00:59:49.760 So if you see a chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine study, they're all equally good.

00:59:53.880 So they start studying it, and lo and behold, unsurprisingly, completely unsurprisingly.

00:59:59.580 Of course, it worked against SARS-2.

01:00:01.040 It worked against SARS-1.

01:00:02.620 Not a shock.

01:00:03.500 78% identical.

01:00:04.820 So I'm reading on-

01:00:05.720 And this is in 2020?

01:00:07.020 This is in, yes, February of 2020 was when the first studies came out.

01:00:13.220 I don't think in January of 2020, but this is very, very early.

01:00:15.840 This is when you would start-

01:00:17.160 There wasn't any coronavirus task force committee, I think, until February or March of 2020.

01:00:22.300 So the studies that show-

01:00:23.300 So this is well before the lockdowns, before the general panic.

01:00:25.460 Oh, absolutely.

01:00:26.660 Yes.

01:00:27.240 So why are you on this so quickly?

01:00:29.040 Because I'm interested, because I'm an ER doctor.

01:00:31.360 So for me, this was fun.

01:00:33.120 Don't mean to sound like crazy people.

01:00:34.640 Well, that's how scientists think.

01:00:36.500 Right, it's like, oh my God, there's an emergency.

01:00:38.020 I'm an emergency doctor.

01:00:38.900 This is coming to me.

01:00:39.880 Let me read about it.

01:00:40.640 I was so curious about the whole thing.

01:00:42.720 Every free minute, I was reading about it.

01:00:44.860 I mean, this is, I can't even describe here.

01:00:46.900 Like, if you were an emergency, if you left cars, and you're a car mechanic, and there's

01:00:50.200 a new car that comes out, you'd be so excited to, like, check it out, right?

01:00:53.560 Okay, I'm an emergency doctor.

01:00:54.700 There's an emergency all across the world.

01:00:56.300 Nobody knows what it is.

01:00:57.360 Let me dive and read.

01:00:58.700 I'm getting all excited, prepared, reading.

01:01:00.660 And I know that they're going to be my future patients.

01:01:02.640 Right, right.

01:01:02.920 Like, it wasn't just my ego satisfaction.

01:01:04.980 Yeah.

01:01:05.120 It's like, I am going to be on the line.

01:01:06.820 And everybody was panicked, which I don't panic.

01:01:09.800 So I was even more excited.

01:01:11.140 I'm like, let me just be calm and read everything.

01:01:12.860 I read everything.

01:01:13.680 There were studies in China that were saying-

01:01:14.600 So is that a marked characteristic of yours, not to panic?

01:01:17.520 Yes.

01:01:17.840 So are, so I'm curious about that psychologically.

01:01:21.820 Yeah.

01:01:22.120 Like, low to, low anxiety?

01:01:25.380 I'm probably a little bit neurotic, I would say.

01:01:28.740 Okay, but you don't panic.

01:01:29.620 I don't panic, yeah.

01:01:30.580 Why not?

01:01:31.620 Why not?

01:01:32.500 Yeah.

01:01:32.820 I just think you can figure it out.

01:01:36.120 Yeah, okay.

01:01:36.760 That's a good answer.

01:01:37.580 So you think you can figure it out.

01:01:39.000 That's your presumption.

01:01:40.400 That's my basic presumption.

01:01:41.720 Your father had everything to do with that?

01:01:43.420 I mean, I think you grew up as a daughter of a Holocaust survivor.

01:01:46.720 Maybe you're, you put things in perspective.

01:01:50.360 I mean, I wouldn't panic over things most Americans would panic over just because I knew what my father went through.

01:01:55.340 Yeah, I'm more curious about your implicit presumption that if a problem comes your way, you can figure it out.

01:02:01.200 Because that's not a presumption that most people share.

01:02:06.200 Right.

01:02:06.400 It's relatively rare.

01:02:07.460 Now, that's a very effective presumption if you also happen to be the sort of person who can figure things out.

01:02:12.100 But most people can do more of that than they think.

01:02:14.580 Correct.

01:02:14.780 Okay, so you're excited about this.

01:02:16.600 You're on the, you're keeping up with the cutting edge research.

01:02:19.140 Which you, you conclude, and you're not even doubtful about it, that hydroxychloroquine works.

01:02:25.500 And there's reason to presume that.

01:02:27.340 The literature shows it.

01:02:28.320 But there's also more compelling reason, which is, well, we've seen this before.

01:02:33.660 There have been many, many respiratory viruses and pandemics throughout human history and also even in American history.

01:02:38.540 Like every year.

01:02:39.580 Like all the time.

01:02:40.600 So I, I was a little, I mean, I'm a human too and living in America, you're pummeled all the time with this.

01:02:48.300 It became that the subject, it was the only subject people were talking about.

01:02:52.440 So I would say I considered the possibility that I was wrong.

01:02:57.240 So I would say for the month of March, I was cautious.

01:03:00.220 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.

01:03:08.080 So I thought there's always possibilities.

01:03:10.980 There's something I didn't know.

01:03:11.960 Like maybe this is the only virus in the history of the world to act a certain way.

01:03:16.420 And so I was humble about it.

01:03:17.440 You know, I said, well, maybe there's something.

01:03:19.940 But everything that people were saying was contradictory to everything.

01:03:25.020 It contradicted Public Health 101.

01:03:26.880 It contradicted how viruses worked.

01:03:28.900 Everything was, was off.

01:03:30.460 So in March, when our country, I don't remember exactly when Trump said we'll do 15 days to stop the spread.

01:03:36.460 It was March, I think, March of 2020.

01:03:38.140 And that's also when, March 15th or something, is when he spoke out in favor of hydroxychloroquine.

01:03:43.940 And the world turned upside down for me right then.

01:03:47.540 So that's a really critical moment.

01:03:50.520 Up until the day, Trump mentioned—

01:03:52.460 Because he was pilloried for that.

01:03:54.240 Yes.

01:03:54.560 I think it was March 17th he said it.

01:03:56.920 So on March 17th, Donald Trump spoke in favor of hydroxychloroquine.

01:04:02.780 Now, I had been talking to my peers for the previous two months.

01:04:06.300 What do you think about hydroxychloroquine?

01:04:08.600 The response was, ah.

01:04:11.040 And I said, well, aren't you going to use it when you get your first COVID patient?

01:04:14.980 And people were like, yeah, probably, I guess.

01:04:16.700 I don't know.

01:04:18.040 I'm curious.

01:04:18.880 Like nobody was reading, which I found weird.

01:04:21.420 Okay, all right.

01:04:22.840 March 17th, he gets pilloried for hydroxychloroquine.

01:04:26.220 My next ER shift, oh my gosh.

01:04:29.480 Nobody—it was like, oh no, I'm never going to use that.

01:04:31.120 That's terrible.

01:04:31.600 That's dangerous.

01:04:32.200 Terrible stuff.

01:04:33.240 And I looked at my peers, but they're my peers still.

01:04:35.140 I didn't know what was coming.

01:04:35.880 I was like, huh, why?

01:04:38.120 Like last week, you didn't care.

01:04:39.760 Oh no, it's very bad, very dangerous.

01:04:41.500 I'm like, why is it?

01:04:42.600 And they start saying whatever they heard on the news or on Facebook.

01:04:46.100 That was my lesson number two.

01:04:47.380 Wow, you're just incurious.

01:04:48.720 You're literally like a Facebook.

01:04:50.300 Like, why do people pay you as a doctor?

01:04:51.660 Like, I didn't get it.

01:04:52.600 Like, you were literally just saying what they said at a press conference.

01:04:56.480 I thought it was weird that they went from not caring about hydroxy, no problem, to saying, oh, verboten.

01:05:02.680 Now, a couple of months—

01:05:03.560 Yeah, well, that's that sensitivity to, what would you say, reputation salvaging.

01:05:08.860 It's contagious, right?

01:05:10.320 If you associate with someone whose reputation is being damaged, then it affects you.

01:05:16.500 So I hear what you're saying.

01:05:17.660 That is a good point.

01:05:18.700 I happened—that ER job where I do most of my work was in a politically kind of conservative area.

01:05:25.340 It's where Kevin McCarthy is the congressman.

01:05:28.360 So I don't—it wasn't like a hatred of Trump in that area.

01:05:31.540 But the world had come down against hydroxychloroquine.

01:05:34.360 Right.

01:05:34.620 And my doctors—

01:05:36.100 And why was that?

01:05:37.680 Why was the—why did the world come down against hydroxychloroquine?

01:05:40.460 Oh, well, we know the answer now.

01:05:41.680 Well, let's lay that out just briefly, and then we'll return to the story.

01:05:46.180 Right.

01:05:46.400 So it was—first of all, in real time, it was bizarre people coming out against it.

01:05:49.660 It's 70 years approved by the FDA.

01:05:51.480 It's completely denied across the world.

01:05:53.240 It's over-the-counter, et cetera.

01:05:54.700 Oh, yeah.

01:05:55.020 So those are the reasons.

01:05:56.140 Well, it turns out in America, to release the vaccine on an EUA, an emergency use authorization schedule,

01:06:04.420 the prerequisite is that there's no other treatment available.

01:06:10.240 Oh, yeah.

01:06:10.480 So if—

01:06:10.940 So that's the damning clause right there.

01:06:14.460 If anything else worked that had been pre-approved, you couldn't do it.

01:06:18.280 By law, you were not able to release the Pfizer-Moderna shots.

01:06:21.060 So what's the campaign, then, from the pharmaceutical companies?

01:06:25.560 Like, what orders go out to make hydroxychloroquine verboten?

01:06:30.840 Everything—so everything happened to hydroxychloroquine.

01:06:33.400 So starting the middle of March 2020, you were—I mean, it was like poison.

01:06:40.420 You know, people were scared.

01:06:42.000 People were rejected.

01:06:42.840 Specific policies that I know you wouldn't know, CVS—the chain pharmaceuticals were instructing their pharmacists not to prescribe it.

01:06:51.360 Like, if a patient came in, the pharmacist would get a red box flashing on their screen to double, triple, quadruple check hydroxychloroquine safety.

01:07:00.860 So pharmacists at the drugstore were being empowered to interfere with the practice of medicine, which in America is illegal.

01:07:09.240 In America, pharmacists is only allowed to dispense and to clarify mistakes or dosage, some kind of error.

01:07:15.180 So they can clarify it.

01:07:16.220 They're not—they're specifically, by law, not allowed to interfere with the doctor's decision.

01:07:20.920 All day long, that's all they did.

01:07:22.700 So if you found yourself a doctor who would prescribe it, the pharmacist blocked it.

01:07:26.360 The hatred on hydroxychloroquine was huge.

01:07:29.220 The World Health Organization came out.

01:07:31.900 It was unbelievable.

01:07:33.640 This is when I really learned how bad the science was.

01:07:36.600 I'm sure you're familiar with the Lancet article that was retracted.

01:07:39.980 Or maybe not.

01:07:40.480 We have different worlds.

01:07:41.420 Lay it out.

01:07:42.400 So Lancet is one of the three most famous medical journals in the world.

01:07:46.660 And so if you say you're published in the Lancet, that is just career.

01:07:49.220 JAMA and British Medical Journal?

01:07:50.380 I would say, yeah, I would say those are the exact—or New England Journal of Medicine.

01:07:53.260 Yeah, right.

01:07:53.900 And then maybe JAMA would be fourth.

01:07:55.220 But it's like number one, number two in the world.

01:07:57.220 You don't get published in JAMA by accident.

01:07:58.980 It's utterly impossible.

01:07:59.860 There's committees.

01:08:00.960 There's layers of—

01:08:01.960 It's very hard.

01:08:02.300 It's very hard.

01:08:03.140 I mean, I—

01:08:03.480 And it takes a long time.

01:08:04.760 Years, and you have to be—you're coming from a prestigious university, and there's a team of people.

01:08:09.060 And so I just want to be crystal clear, you cannot be published by accident in the Lancet.

01:08:14.020 You have a team of researchers.

01:08:15.980 You have a team of researchers who are approving it.

01:08:17.820 You have an editorial board that's doing it.

01:08:19.480 And those are career-making publications.

01:08:22.080 Totally.

01:08:22.520 You got published in the Lancet.

01:08:23.560 You could then go off and be a professor, associate professor, et cetera.

01:08:27.000 So this Lancet article comes out saying that hydroxychloroquine was, you know, unsafe and ineffective for COVID.

01:08:33.540 And the headlines from this Lancet study went all around the world.

01:08:38.080 Everybody who was paying attention at the time read that study, and all of a sudden it was considered poison and terrible and awful.

01:08:46.240 But independent researchers looked at the study and cried foul.

01:08:50.380 It didn't make sense.

01:08:51.880 The numbers of people they had in the study were in the tens of thousands.

01:08:54.940 I think they said they had 60,000 or 70,000 people in the study.

01:08:57.900 I'm not certain of the number.

01:08:59.300 It crossed, like, five continents, hundreds of hospitals.

01:09:02.460 And everyone's scratching their heads.

01:09:03.920 They're like, how did we not hear about this study?

01:09:06.020 And how did they compile data from all over these geographic locations in different languages in different countries, like, so rapidly?

01:09:12.640 So the independent physicians who became America's frontline doctors raised their hands, published online.

01:09:18.780 They said, this doesn't make sense.

01:09:22.120 And they complained.

01:09:23.620 And so the Lancet got a little embarrassed.

01:09:25.380 The Lancet goes to the authors.

01:09:26.880 And they said, show us the data.

01:09:28.640 Show us the proof.

01:09:29.600 They could not prove it was authentic.

01:09:32.160 They had no way to prove it.

01:09:33.340 And the Lancet had to publish a retraction.

01:09:36.520 I think it was only about three weeks.

01:09:38.080 So kudos to the independent doctors who called foul.

01:09:40.840 The Lancet had to retract it.

01:09:42.420 I've never in my career seen that, where the Lancet retracted.

01:09:47.200 It never happened.

01:09:48.740 Now, do you think that the headlines from its retraction made worldwide news?

01:09:52.820 They did not.

01:09:53.760 Let me tell you what happened from the original Lancet study.

01:09:56.080 The World Health Organization and studies all across the world on hydroxychloroquine's effectiveness in COVID were halted.

01:10:01.340 They said, oh, you've got to stop doing them.

01:10:02.900 It's very dangerous, ineffective.

01:10:04.360 It was almost impossible to restart those studies again.

01:10:06.760 It interfered.

01:10:08.140 And the other thing is that the damage was done.

01:10:11.900 The reputational damage to hydroxychloroquine was complete forevermore to this day.

01:10:17.080 People think it's unsafe.

01:10:18.960 And that was what it was.

01:10:20.380 And I witnessed this in real time.

01:10:21.980 I'm watching it.

01:10:22.680 So what's the effect on you?

01:10:24.040 So, Wilfred, 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.

01:10:37.580 And they simply followed the headline du jour.

01:10:40.120 That's it.

01:10:40.560 And I said, oh, today, when the EUA for hydroxychloroquine was authorized, oh, we can use it today.

01:10:45.060 And again, I said to my peers, what changed today?

01:10:47.940 And they'll literally quote Facebook or a press conference.

01:10:52.080 And so I learned that doctors were not curious.

01:10:54.020 And I didn't understand why patients are paying most doctors.

01:10:56.060 Because you could get this stuff right off of Google, right off a committee hearing.

01:10:59.560 And it was very demoralizing.

01:11:01.500 The good part about the internet was I found many, many other independent doctors online.

01:11:06.740 Yeah.

01:11:07.360 And we all came together.

01:11:08.560 And we said, we've got to, like, speak up about this.

01:11:10.680 This is just terrible.

01:11:11.820 We didn't know how because we were very censored.

01:11:13.740 Anybody who put anything about hydroxychloroquine, like, if you had the word hydroxychloroquine in a tweet, you were taken out.

01:11:20.980 So you'd find creative ways of writing.

01:11:23.040 You'd write initials.

01:11:23.980 Like, people would get it.

01:11:24.720 Like, but you couldn't do it.

01:11:26.580 But one by one, we found each other.

01:11:28.160 That was Twitter, Facebook, same problem.

01:11:29.380 Oh, 100%.

01:11:30.040 It was worse on Facebook than even Twitter.

01:11:32.680 It was everywhere.

01:11:34.120 But we all had, like, a burning passion to say the truth, the independent doctors.

01:11:39.520 So we found each other.

01:11:40.600 And I would say maybe there was 100 that we found just all over.

01:11:43.620 Just people who just, like me, could not be silenced, couldn't stand it.

01:11:47.300 And so I said, you know, we've got to speak to the American people.

01:11:49.500 And I also know America is the world.

01:11:51.780 And so I just started reaching out to people.

01:11:53.600 And I started doing interviews.

01:11:55.100 And started getting my reputation attacked.

01:11:57.700 And then I decided, you know what?

01:11:59.680 I'm going to do something that was just going to put doctors in front of the world.

01:12:05.500 I said, let's stand in front of the Supreme Court.

01:12:07.380 Because actually, it was supposed to be the Capitol.

01:12:09.780 But there was, they couldn't.

01:12:11.500 So we were in front of the Supreme Court.

01:12:13.280 And I said, let me just bring YouTube influencers.

01:12:15.320 That's what I called social media influencers.

01:12:17.360 I said, let's bring some YouTube influencers and doctors.

01:12:20.140 And we're just going to stand there.

01:12:21.060 Who did you bring?

01:12:21.720 Who were the YouTuber influencers?

01:12:22.580 I randomly called people.

01:12:24.160 Yeah.

01:12:24.200 So the biggest name was actually was Breitbart News, which wasn't an individual.

01:12:29.160 And then I think everybody else was just random influencers who just showed up.

01:12:34.620 You know, these are people who are upset.

01:12:35.780 Right.

01:12:35.880 But with Breitbart, you're going to get the right wing tag instantly, too.

01:12:38.680 Right.

01:12:39.100 But, you know, so we're just doing our thing.

01:12:41.260 We doctors, we're giving education.

01:12:42.580 We spoke for hours on the science.

01:12:46.260 You know, it's 78% identical and hydroxychloroquine is safe and all these things and policy.

01:12:51.200 And then we did that in a room.

01:12:52.840 But then we walked over to the Supreme Court.

01:12:54.780 And I remember the Breitbart guy videotaping it looked at his peer and he said, we have 178,000

01:13:01.540 concurrent viewers.

01:13:03.220 I have no idea what that means.

01:13:05.380 And so I say to him, is that good?

01:13:07.300 Is that bad?

01:13:07.880 Like, I have no idea.

01:13:08.560 He's like, we've never had anything, even 10% of that.

01:13:11.680 I'm like, whoa, that's interesting.

01:13:14.000 Your life's over.

01:13:15.180 So I had no idea.

01:13:16.540 We stand in front of the Supreme Court.

01:13:17.900 I don't know if you ever saw it because it was taken down very quickly.

01:13:20.760 But I said to the world, stop living in fear.

01:13:24.320 There's no reason to live in fear.

01:13:25.920 There's early treatment available if you should want it.

01:13:28.360 Masks don't stop.

01:13:29.780 Inspiratory viruses.

01:13:31.360 And, you know, this is going to be fine.

01:13:33.920 Like, let's not have lockdowns.

01:13:35.440 We had about 12 doctors up there.

01:13:37.540 Dr. Joseph Latipo, a future surgeon general.

01:13:39.920 We had pediatricians.

01:13:41.000 We had internists.

01:13:42.080 We had orthopedists.

01:13:43.060 A bunch of us.

01:13:44.180 White coats.

01:13:45.340 All of that.

01:13:46.180 I had no idea that was going to completely upend my life.

01:13:49.740 We were just speaking truth.

01:13:51.800 And that was July 27, 2020.

01:13:53.900 Uh-huh.

01:13:54.720 And I didn't sleep, again, about 36 hours or 48 hours because the world, my world, just was lit on fire.

01:14:03.280 After that?

01:14:04.380 Yes.

01:14:04.860 Yeah.

01:14:05.160 Okay.

01:14:05.680 So I'll walk us through that.

01:14:06.780 I was a completely private citizen.

01:14:08.520 I had perhaps 100 people on Twitter, friends and family.

01:14:11.440 That's it.

01:14:12.240 And one week later, I had 101,000 followers on Twitter in one week.

01:14:18.640 When they talk about overnight, it was literally overnight.

01:14:20.920 Coincidentally, two days after the White Coat Summit, there happened, coincidentally, to be a big tech hearing in Congress.

01:14:30.300 And Zuckerberg was in the hot seat.

01:14:32.340 And congressman asked Zuckerberg, why did you take down this video of doctors?

01:14:38.220 Yeah.

01:14:38.780 And he says something like, well, it's dangerous disinformation and looking out for people.

01:14:44.020 And I remember being shocked.

01:14:45.740 Yeah.

01:14:46.120 Zuckerberg knows my name and is talking about me.

01:14:48.360 It was very surreal.

01:14:49.720 And everybody asked me to be on media and I did a lot of TV shows.

01:14:52.640 And I also got fired from my jobs.

01:14:58.060 I was working two ER jobs.

01:15:01.180 One was in this more conservative area.

01:15:03.900 The other was, which I don't talk about so much, I was working for Native American Hospital.

01:15:08.380 I would go down once a month for once a week and I would live on the Native site and work with the Native population.

01:15:15.740 And I told you earlier on that that's kind of where my heart is, just to help people.

01:15:19.260 They were very appreciative people and they both summarily fired me.

01:15:23.260 And what was the reason?

01:15:24.980 It was very clear.

01:15:25.960 I got a text message from one, which I still have, which says, they loved me, by the way, loved me.

01:15:31.340 And they said, I appeared in an embarrassing video, so I couldn't work there anymore.

01:15:36.540 That was the exact wording.

01:15:37.800 I appeared in an embarrassing video.

01:15:40.480 Wow.

01:15:42.280 And so on a human level, as a psychologist, I had trained a long time to be, you know,

01:15:49.000 well-paid and have a job that I enjoyed.

01:15:51.860 And you had a reputation, a good reputation.

01:15:53.900 I had good reputation.

01:15:54.660 I started being called a quack everywhere.

01:15:56.320 Everyone called me a quack.

01:15:57.400 I collected 87 pages of media that had attacked me.

01:16:01.720 Huffington Post was the most clever because what they did, they clearly had experience.

01:16:05.320 They still exist?

01:16:06.520 They do.

01:16:07.120 They still have experience.

01:16:07.880 Barely.

01:16:08.460 Right.

01:16:08.900 But they must have experience with defamation lawsuits because what they wrote was,

01:16:12.320 a group of people in white jackets claiming to be doctors.

01:16:16.680 Oh, yeah.

01:16:17.260 Right?

01:16:17.660 Like, death by like, right?

01:16:19.100 I thought, oh, I can't really sue them because that's true.

01:16:21.920 Oh, man.

01:16:22.700 That's so psychobatic.

01:16:25.020 We had ABC.

01:16:25.440 We had CBS.

01:16:25.980 We had CNN.

01:16:26.740 Everyone defamed me.

01:16:27.780 Everyone called me quack.

01:16:28.980 Everyone, the other thing, everyone quoted each other.

01:16:31.400 Yeah.

01:16:31.780 People didn't even look what I said.

01:16:33.520 It was gone.

01:16:34.060 It was off the internet.

01:16:34.740 You couldn't even find it.

01:16:35.780 Right.

01:16:36.180 So I...

01:16:37.120 Right.

01:16:37.320 So people couldn't even refer to it.

01:16:39.100 I wonder if Zuckerberg had been instructed specifically by the Biden White House to dispense with them.

01:16:43.960 We know that now.

01:16:44.840 Oh, and?

01:16:45.540 We do know that now.

01:16:46.000 Was that a direct order?

01:16:48.220 I don't have proof of that.

01:16:50.400 Yeah, okay.

01:16:51.140 But Fauci has been asked under oath about my organization.

01:16:55.520 Yeah.

01:16:55.740 He said, I don't recall, which he said with everything.

01:16:58.860 But later on, there was a lawsuit, Missouri versus Biden,

01:17:02.220 and it came out that the Biden White House was censoring like crazy.

01:17:07.860 But if you remember, this was during the Trump White House when I was getting massively censored.

01:17:12.280 So media was just defaming me.

01:17:14.820 So in that time, but just on a human level, it's a very frightening thing to be fired

01:17:22.020 and also to know that I would not really be employable again as an emergency physician,

01:17:28.680 which is a very high-paying profession in America.

01:17:31.060 But if these hospitals weren't going to have me, other hospitals were not.

01:17:34.240 Yeah, yeah.

01:17:34.760 And I will tell you, I was scared.

01:17:36.560 Now, I was always frugal, so I had enough money to live on for a while.

01:17:39.420 But that was my career as an emergency physician.

01:17:42.240 Oh, and your reputation.

01:17:44.240 And my reputation.

01:17:45.100 Yeah.

01:17:45.660 I think, in retrospect, I was very, very hurt by the reputational damage,

01:17:51.120 but I was much too busy to focus on it.

01:17:53.940 Everyone told me to bring defamation lawsuits,

01:17:56.060 and I had a choice to make how I'm using my time.

01:17:58.680 Like, I collected the data because it's evanescent, you know, it disappears.

01:18:02.640 Defamation lawsuits, they're very difficult.

01:18:04.620 Very difficult.

01:18:04.880 And they take forever.

01:18:05.760 They take forever.

01:18:06.240 So how am I going to spend my time?

01:18:07.860 So I put it in a pile over here.

01:18:09.440 But I was busy.

01:18:10.500 The whole world was contacting me.

01:18:12.300 So a week later, I had 101,000 people on Twitter,

01:18:14.960 and I started getting so much support by the world

01:18:20.140 that I realized, oh, people might want to hear what I have to say.

01:18:24.200 So I just stepped into a new lane, a new role.

01:18:27.280 But it was scary, like, especially in that week.

01:18:29.460 I didn't know how I'd support myself.

01:18:31.140 You know, you can't go to work as a physician.

01:18:32.560 So how did you end up?

01:18:33.780 Okay, so talk to me about that transition.

01:18:36.060 Okay, so now you have 100,000 followers on Twitter.

01:18:39.440 And so, and you're, you observe in that mess an opportunity.

01:18:44.700 So tell me how you negotiated your way forward

01:18:47.800 and how you put yourself back on, like,

01:18:50.680 relatively stable financial footing, assuming that you did.

01:18:53.440 Like, how did you, and how long did it take you to make the shift?

01:18:57.860 Yes.

01:18:58.500 So when I realized that I was fired, it was scary.

01:19:03.080 I didn't know how I'd support myself, but I was very busy.

01:19:05.820 The whole world ascended on me.

01:19:07.020 Everyone in the conservative side wanted to interview me.

01:19:09.800 So I made a decision.

01:19:10.580 Did you think you were a conservative at that point?

01:19:13.300 How would have you classified yourself politically?

01:19:15.760 The irony is I had taken, like, a year before,

01:19:17.760 I had taken one of those little tests that show you where you are politically.

01:19:21.160 Quadrants, yeah.

01:19:22.360 I was dead center.

01:19:23.600 Ah, okay.

01:19:24.340 So you're a centrist.

01:19:25.280 Isn't that right?

01:19:25.300 I would say I'm, I believe strongly in the Bill of Rights,

01:19:30.920 which nowadays is being maligned as being right-wing.

01:19:33.960 But the Bill of Rights, I believe, is really the center between anarchy and tyranny.

01:19:39.380 And I'm probably slightly towards anarchy than tyranny.

01:19:42.220 And that's where I would put myself, which is I believe in free speech.

01:19:44.740 I believe in the ability to defend yourself.

01:19:46.420 I believe in a minimal government.

01:19:48.040 So these things are now considered very conservative.

01:19:50.100 And did you believe that at that point as well?

01:19:52.060 Yeah, I did, yeah.

01:19:52.800 Okay, okay.

01:19:53.520 If you asked me, I might have said libertarian, not really fully understanding.

01:19:58.380 Right, but you were.

01:19:59.260 But I voted Democrat much of my career.

01:20:00.840 I would have said I was pro-choice.

01:20:02.440 I would have said, you know, my children had all their shots.

01:20:05.480 I had shots.

01:20:06.040 I didn't, you know, I thought the government was, you know,

01:20:09.220 irresponsible a lot of the times, doing dumb policies.

01:20:11.860 But I voted Democrat.

01:20:12.340 Mostly you were working as an emergency physician.

01:20:13.700 Mostly I was just working.

01:20:15.220 Right, right.

01:20:15.900 I would, so, am I conservative?

01:20:19.200 I say the things that we now call conservative values

01:20:22.820 were not solely conservative values in the past.

01:20:26.480 I mean, now in America, being patriotic was considered conservative.

01:20:30.080 Not wanting to kill babies, you know, like in the sixth month of pregnancy,

01:20:34.500 that's considered a hardcore conservative value now.

01:20:37.380 I don't process that.

01:20:38.340 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:38.980 No, I was thinking back then.

01:20:40.660 I know things have shifted so bizarrely now that there's no view of telling.

01:20:44.520 I would have said I was kind of centrist.

01:20:46.120 Yeah, okay, okay.

01:20:46.760 Maybe a little right of center.

01:20:48.380 Maybe a little right of center.

01:20:49.120 Okay, okay, okay.

01:20:49.720 I always appreciated Dennis Prager.

01:20:51.200 I liked what he had to say.

01:20:53.920 But I wouldn't, I was not particularly political.

01:20:56.460 I voted.

01:20:57.260 Right, right.

01:20:58.840 I didn't.

01:20:59.200 Okay, so now you see an opportunity.

01:21:01.320 Do you see an opportunity that quickly?

01:21:03.520 Well, I had made...

01:21:04.200 Or is that desperation as well?

01:21:05.600 No, no, no.

01:21:06.020 I, no, I was almost like a crazy person.

01:21:08.320 I was possessed by having to spread the truth.

01:21:11.160 I mean, I was, I was, I was possessed.

01:21:13.320 Like, I couldn't, I can't stand lies.

01:21:16.340 Lies are what led to my father's reality of the Holocaust.

01:21:18.780 Right, that's for sure.

01:21:20.020 I stand on truth.

01:21:21.680 So I couldn't believe the doctors were lying, the media was lying, the government was lying.

01:21:26.260 The journals were lying.

01:21:27.280 The journals were lying, the scientists were lying.

01:21:28.500 That's the worst, I think.

01:21:29.720 It was so painful that the journals were lying.

01:21:31.600 Oh, yeah, it's so bad.

01:21:32.520 And then when you start looking, you're like, oh, a lot of other people do know.

01:21:35.060 Like the, the, the former New England Journal of Medicine author, Marsha Angell, I think,

01:21:39.820 who wrote a whole book on the journals, not telling the truth.

01:21:42.680 And then I start discovering that a lot of people are not telling the truth.

01:21:45.340 But in my personal life...

01:21:46.220 What's the book?

01:21:46.820 I have to get back to you on that.

01:21:48.740 What's her name?

01:21:49.400 I think it's Marcia Angell.

01:21:51.360 She wrote a book many years ago about how the journals are not telling the truth.

01:21:56.060 And she was a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

01:21:58.600 Okay, okay.

01:21:59.140 So you'll be able to find it.

01:22:00.220 Yeah, I got to find that.

01:22:01.540 And I had made a decision, though, at that time to spread my message.

01:22:06.420 And so I, in my mind, I said, I will speak to any large group that will have me.

01:22:11.860 That was a decision.

01:22:13.340 Okay.

01:22:13.500 And about two weeks later, somebody called, many calls, I did as many as I could.

01:22:18.960 And Daystar called me.

01:22:21.320 I don't know if you know them, but they are a Christian television network.

01:22:25.940 And I said, am I free that day?

01:22:28.160 Yeah, I am.

01:22:28.680 I'll go.

01:22:29.340 I'll go.

01:22:29.940 And it turns out they would fly me down there and put me up in the hotel.

01:22:34.680 And I was like, wow, that's so nice.

01:22:36.600 You know, I wasn't even used to that.

01:22:37.900 And I show up and I discover it's a very big Christian organization.

01:22:42.240 They would laugh if they heard me say this, but I'm Jewish.

01:22:44.100 I didn't know.

01:22:44.700 I never heard of them.

01:22:45.620 But I had made a decision.

01:22:46.660 I'll go to anybody who will have me if I can.

01:22:48.400 Right.

01:22:48.820 I'll talk to people who will listen.

01:22:50.620 So I'm sitting there and I'm being interviewed by them.

01:22:53.180 And in the middle of it, something like clicked.

01:22:55.860 And the stars of Daystar, the Lambs, turned into their camera.

01:23:01.120 And Marcus Lambs said, we want you to donate to Dr. Gold something like,

01:23:08.000 she said something very nice about me.

01:23:09.720 And he goes, and we are going to match every dollar that you donate.

01:23:12.580 And I went like this.

01:23:15.020 I mean, you could see on the air, I was like, I was like really stunned.

01:23:17.360 And his wife, who's co-hosting, said, no, no, he doesn't do this for everybody.

01:23:21.100 Like, I had no experience.

01:23:22.320 I was like, huh.

01:23:23.140 And then I went about my life.

01:23:24.500 And I'm doing this, that, and that talk.

01:23:26.220 And about a month later, I got a check for something like $179,000.

01:23:31.020 Uh-huh.

01:23:31.440 And I remember thinking, first of all, I could exhale, probably people want to hear what I have

01:23:38.140 to say, and probably I'll be able to keep saying it.

01:23:41.220 So I didn't think past that.

01:23:42.720 Right.

01:23:42.980 I knew I could eventually do something in life.

01:23:45.280 Like, I wasn't worried about me, eventually.

01:23:47.620 But I was worried I couldn't keep talking.

01:23:51.080 And now I realize I could keep talking.

01:23:52.880 So why was that more important?

01:23:54.260 You kind of alluded to it.

01:23:55.500 You made some allusion to, well, your father's circumstance.

01:23:59.200 And, you know, you said something that we bounced over very quickly.

01:24:02.920 You know, you said that the catastrophe that enveloped the people around your father was a

01:24:09.020 consequence of lying.

01:24:10.720 See, that isn't something that everybody knows, right?

01:24:13.420 Because people think, well, the really naive people think that if you see a dictatorship,

01:24:18.600 you have a dictator and his henchmen, and they're oppressing a whole mass of freedom-loving

01:24:24.220 people.

01:24:25.040 And if you just take out the dictator, well, then democracy will bloom.

01:24:28.480 What they don't understand is that, what would you say?

01:24:32.780 The dictator is just the biggest devil in hell.

01:24:36.300 And in a really totalitarian state, every single person is lying.

01:24:40.560 About absolutely everything they say and do, all the time, to themselves and everyone.

01:24:45.860 And the totalitarian state is actually the grip of the lie.

01:24:49.900 The dictator is just the, well, he's the face of the lie.

01:24:53.280 That's all.

01:24:54.060 But every time someone in that totalitarian state lies, they're participating in their

01:24:59.340 own demise.

01:24:59.960 In Solzhenitsyn detailed out, I thought this was so remarkable, that there were nowhere near

01:25:05.960 enough committed communists to run the gulags.

01:25:08.600 The prisoners had to run them.

01:25:11.240 Right, right.

01:25:12.060 There's a totalitarian state for you.

01:25:14.160 It's an inmate-run prison.

01:25:17.940 And the prison is lies.

01:25:20.280 Right.

01:25:20.740 So why did you know that?

01:25:23.100 That is a great question.

01:25:25.040 I couldn't, I found it more difficult to live with lies than anything else.

01:25:32.200 Nothing else mattered.

01:25:33.500 Why?

01:25:33.980 But speaking the truth.

01:25:35.000 I think living in lies is, sucks your soul, sucks your energy.

01:25:40.880 You're depressed.

01:25:42.300 You can't wake up in the, you don't have, you wake up, but you don't really want to get

01:25:45.900 out of bed.

01:25:46.640 There's no reason.

01:25:47.500 There's nothing to do.

01:25:48.320 For me, living in lies, I might as well be dead.

01:25:52.320 No, it's worse.

01:25:53.480 It's worse than death.

01:25:55.420 That's hell, eh?

01:25:56.640 Hell is worse than death.

01:25:58.460 Right.

01:25:58.980 That's a hard thing to understand.

01:26:00.240 I had to.

01:26:01.140 But I'm very curious about why you knew this.

01:26:03.880 It's very telling because that makes your willingness to seek opportunity and your desire to be

01:26:12.780 able to keep speaking, that explains why that's paramount.

01:26:16.860 Now, the reason I'm making a case of that is because, well, I don't know how many physicians

01:26:21.480 leapt to your side, but I've seen how many psychologists in Canada have leapt to mine.

01:26:26.580 And it's basically zero, right?

01:26:28.840 Zero is a very low number.

01:26:30.160 And so, even though what has been done to me, although not particularly successfully

01:26:35.780 yet, could easily be done to psychologists, and they're all being compelled to lie in Canada,

01:26:41.800 as are the physicians, but people won't speak up.

01:26:44.680 So now you did, and you wanted to, and you put that before even your concern about what

01:26:51.520 you were going to do economically after your jobs disappeared.

01:26:54.560 Okay, so that's weird, right?

01:26:57.040 And I don't, you tied it a bit to what had happened to your father, but I don't understand

01:27:02.420 how you knew this.

01:27:05.100 I just can't imagine why you would want to live in a perpetual lie.

01:27:12.820 I can't even think of anything harder.

01:27:14.860 Short-term gain.

01:27:17.720 Well, I will tell, maybe this will help you as a psychologist.

01:27:20.140 Once a psychologist, always a psychologist.

01:27:21.640 I was never particularly interested in things that were faddish.

01:27:27.160 So, for example, I didn't care about fashion, which is something girls usually care deeply

01:27:30.580 about, because I always knew it was just a form of peer pressure, not saying it in even

01:27:35.000 a negative way.

01:27:36.140 I'm just saying I wasn't moved by it.

01:27:37.980 It didn't influence me.

01:27:39.720 So, all of those things that made me different, doctor, lawyer, Holocaust daughter, curious,

01:27:45.560 not susceptible to the whims of fashion, it never, and I also wasn't a person who lived

01:27:51.340 very grandly.

01:27:52.640 So, would I be able to get by?

01:27:55.300 I mean, my income was really good.

01:27:56.740 My plans for myself when this happened, the reason I was working two ER jobs was I was

01:28:01.180 going to work really hard for two years, then I was really going to back off.

01:28:03.480 I was saving a lot of money.

01:28:04.440 It's not like I'm immune to earning money.

01:28:06.460 So, but all of that went by the wayside if I had to live in a lie.

01:28:10.680 There's just no, it's not even a close call.

01:28:12.580 Right, right, right.

01:28:13.740 No, I, I.

01:28:14.480 And, and I do, it's probably somewhat of my nature, but the nurture element, you can teach

01:28:19.360 as a parent how dangerous it is to live in lies.

01:28:22.080 I mean, it's true, my background was Jewish, but people think, you know, Hitler just happened

01:28:25.940 and it just, you know, just happened.

01:28:27.360 No, no, no, no, no.

01:28:28.620 There were a lot of lies to support people.

01:28:30.260 Yeah, like hundreds of thousands of them.

01:28:31.880 Yeah, but I remember, one of them I remember as a little girl is a lot of scientists were

01:28:36.300 in, back in, in Germany were measuring Jews' heads and they determined they were different

01:28:40.880 size and different shape than Aryan heads.

01:28:43.240 And, and I remember saying to my dad, well, that's weird.

01:28:45.860 Like, why didn't the scientists, they couldn't have found that because it's not true.

01:28:49.300 And I remember thinking, that's so odd.

01:28:51.060 I think I learned that when I was 10 years old.

01:28:52.440 I'm like, well, that's so odd.

01:28:53.980 Like, why didn't the scientists say anything?

01:28:55.140 Like, were they just writing false numbers in their papers?

01:28:57.080 Like, what were they doing that they allowed them to conclude that the circumference of the

01:29:01.720 head was different amongst Aryans and Jews?

01:29:03.820 And I remember thinking, that's hell.

01:29:06.500 You're right.

01:29:06.820 It is hell.

01:29:07.140 It's not death.

01:29:07.940 It is hell to live in a world where you can't speak.

01:29:11.600 You know, the First Amendment exists, not just so you can hear what I have to say, but humans

01:29:15.440 have a need to speak truth.

01:29:17.460 They have that need inside of them.

01:29:19.480 So it's both.

01:29:19.820 Yeah, if they're not, if they haven't corrupted their soul.

01:29:22.540 Right.

01:29:22.740 But a baby growing up until you've, I mean, a North Korean child learns very quickly she

01:29:27.440 can't speak.

01:29:27.960 But if you grow up in relative freedom, like we did in Canada and America, you have, I

01:29:32.840 think, an inborn human need to speak and be heard.

01:29:36.220 And all of a sudden, nobody was speaking truth.

01:29:38.720 I know you didn't know hydroxychloroquine was safe.

01:29:41.120 But if somebody said to you, water isn't wet, you would say, and that you had to say that.

01:29:46.320 You'd be like, I'm not saying that.

01:29:47.680 I'm like, that's what they said when they said hydroxychloroquine wasn't safe.

01:29:50.800 They were telling me to say water's not wet.

01:29:53.240 How am I supposed to say that and wake up every day?

01:29:56.000 Well, I felt the same way about Bill C-16 in Canada.

01:29:58.580 Exactly.

01:29:59.380 I have to call a woman a man.

01:30:01.460 Right.

01:30:01.720 Well, maybe I would, just to be polite.

01:30:03.960 But I have to?

01:30:04.960 It's like, no, I don't think so.

01:30:07.380 What do you mean have to?

01:30:08.900 Exactly.

01:30:09.500 And then for me, mine was slightly different in the sense that mine was just like a specific

01:30:13.240 fact that I knew.

01:30:14.880 That maybe not everybody knew.

01:30:16.540 But all the doctors knew hydroxychloroquine was safe until media told them otherwise.

01:30:23.300 So let me, this nifty trick they did, they're safe and effective.

01:30:26.340 So if the media and the journals had just said, oh, it's not effective.

01:30:30.520 Right, right, right.

01:30:31.980 Maybe I would have fallen for it.

01:30:33.220 I don't think so, but maybe.

01:30:34.540 But when they started saying it wasn't safe, when we've had it for 70 years, when there's

01:30:38.860 a government database called FAERS, the FDA Adverse Events Reporting System, which keeps

01:30:45.100 track of all side effects of drugs.

01:30:47.540 And hydroxychloroquine is much safer than Tylenol in that database.

01:30:51.380 They started saying it's not safe.

01:30:52.680 I knew that this is a big lie.

01:30:54.300 And I just knew that it's soul crushing.

01:30:56.000 I didn't want to live with a lie.

01:30:57.720 Yeah.

01:30:58.020 Okay.

01:30:58.460 Okay.

01:30:59.160 Okay.

01:30:59.560 So now you turn, now you're developing a career as a public speaker.

01:31:03.200 Now you have a bit of, you have some financial backing.

01:31:05.620 Yeah.

01:31:05.900 So you're a little more solid.

01:31:06.920 What happens?

01:31:07.480 So we, so we, we formed a formal nonprofit and people started flooding me.

01:31:13.700 I couldn't keep up.

01:31:14.580 I had to start hiring people, but I had not enough money to hire people.

01:31:17.560 I was having tons of volunteers.

01:31:19.820 And then.

01:31:21.260 And this is happening over what span of time?

01:31:23.040 Oh my gosh.

01:31:23.680 Months?

01:31:25.020 I'm telling you instantly.

01:31:26.260 Yeah, I know.

01:31:26.760 I spoke July 27th.

01:31:27.960 I was fired.

01:31:28.940 August, I spoke at Daystar.

01:31:30.840 I'm saying by November, I had that foundational check of $170 something thousand dollars.

01:31:35.380 I didn't, but I didn't really have enough money.

01:31:38.760 I had like one person work for me, two people, and I had a bunch of volunteers.

01:31:42.700 And then they started coming out with the shots.

01:31:45.820 And I knew my lane, kicking and screaming was dragged into my lane, which is my lane was

01:31:52.060 to stop mandates.

01:31:52.780 Mandates, I didn't even care so much about the average person who wanted to take medicine

01:31:57.340 or didn't want to take medicine, or even the average person that wanted to take the

01:32:00.060 shots or didn't want to take the shots.

01:32:01.440 I cared about everyone being lied to, so they're making bad decisions.

01:32:04.580 But I really cared about making sure mandates never became the law of the land, because mandates

01:32:09.940 would have survived COVID.

01:32:12.020 Mandates would have become, show me your passport, Jew.

01:32:15.220 Yeah.

01:32:15.440 100%, which they kind of did in some nations.

01:32:18.100 Show me your vaccine passport.

01:32:19.820 They did.

01:32:20.720 And if I was, I would go to my death stopping a passport, a social credit score system in

01:32:27.020 America, or I will die trying.

01:32:28.860 That was my mission.

01:32:30.000 So I, and I say that because everyone wanted me to provide hydroxychloroquine to the world.

01:32:36.680 I mean, we got thousands and thousands of emails to my nonprofit asking how they can get

01:32:42.320 the medicine.

01:32:42.880 So for two years, that was the question.

01:32:44.340 So at that moment, around December or November 21, I had to decide, would I go and find a

01:32:51.500 way to give medicines to people, because I only have 24 hours in a day, or would I work

01:32:57.420 to prevent mandates from becoming the law?

01:33:00.100 And it wasn't even a question for me.

01:33:02.300 This was my lane.

01:33:03.540 It wasn't the medicine and the science.

01:33:05.260 Whatever, how bad this was, this was temporary.

01:33:07.500 This was permanent.

01:33:08.520 Are we losing our constitutional freedoms?

01:33:10.200 So I went down this road, and starting in 20, sorry, 21, I started bringing lawsuits against

01:33:16.860 everybody, against mandates.

01:33:19.340 And that was my mission.

01:33:20.200 Explain that.

01:33:20.760 Yes.

01:33:21.100 So we, you know, they started bringing out the shots for kids.

01:33:24.600 Yeah.

01:33:24.980 And we sued to stop that.

01:33:26.440 Sued who?

01:33:27.520 That specific lawsuit was probably the CDC.

01:33:30.360 I've brought so many.

01:33:31.040 It's hard to recall.

01:33:32.040 That was our very first one in May of 21.

01:33:34.420 Yeah.

01:33:34.600 And what possible justification for that?

01:33:36.460 There's none.

01:33:37.360 I'm still bitter.

01:33:38.720 Well, one of the, like, part of the reason I presume that you were so terrified of the

01:33:43.840 mandates, apart from the sociological effects that you described, is that enforced medical

01:33:48.760 treatment, well, first of all, that violates the Geneva Convention in a major way, and for

01:33:52.680 good reason.

01:33:53.420 But it's worse than that.

01:33:54.480 And we haven't seen this all play out yet.

01:33:57.120 Like, typical people whose eyes are open no longer trust physicians or public health.

01:34:03.780 That's a catastrophe.

01:34:05.020 Catastrophe.

01:34:05.260 Because it means to the degree that that was a viable enterprise, which was quite substantive

01:34:09.480 for quite a long time, that's, all that trust has to be reestablished, and I suspect

01:34:15.940 it probably won't be.

01:34:17.240 Yeah.

01:34:17.480 Because, and so, I have no idea what the consequence of that's going to be.

01:34:22.800 I'm so glad you mentioned that.

01:34:23.960 So, there's so much to say here.

01:34:26.320 Public Health 101 says you don't inoculate in the middle of a respiratory pandemic.

01:34:31.880 Public Health 101 never held that you inoculate everybody.

01:34:35.940 It was always the high-risk group, and you let it kind of travel through the society, and

01:34:39.860 the lower-risk group, like the kids, kind of spread it, and then grandma, maybe you

01:34:43.420 inoculate grandma.

01:34:44.360 Like, everything was thrown out the window.

01:34:46.280 And so, the trust should be lost from the public health, because they completely sold out

01:34:49.840 the public.

01:34:50.560 Right.

01:34:50.840 They completely sold out the public.

01:34:51.460 Wow, and we don't even know how bad yet.

01:34:53.140 Oh, it's, I think trust in doctors went from 70 or 80 percent to 40 percent, and I think

01:34:58.940 that that's completely appropriate.

01:35:00.980 So, in May of 21, they start saying that they want to bring the shots out to the kids.

01:35:05.060 Now, this is horrific.

01:35:07.440 Why?

01:35:07.820 Because kids were not dying from SARS.

01:35:09.940 In fact, by the CDC's own numbers, children...

01:35:12.740 Well, it still says in your Wikipedia page that you're spreading misinformation about

01:35:16.580 the fact that children don't die from COVID.

01:35:18.560 Right.

01:35:18.880 And yet, they don't.

01:35:20.040 And that's very well established.

01:35:21.840 Very well established.

01:35:22.560 But it's as risky for a child as the typical cold, I presume.

01:35:26.120 It's something, those are basically the numbers.

01:35:28.400 And what, the average person who died from COVID had like five major comorbidities and

01:35:33.380 was older than the average age of death.

01:35:35.640 Life-expensing.

01:35:36.600 Right.

01:35:37.120 Jesus.

01:35:37.840 Brutal.

01:35:37.860 Right.

01:35:38.360 They had an average of four comorbidities, and it was like 77, age of longevity was like

01:35:43.100 76.

01:35:43.700 Yeah.

01:35:43.880 It was criminal, and it was very criminal to do it to the kids.

01:35:47.520 Yeah, that was inexcusable.

01:35:49.040 Why are they doing it to the kids?

01:35:50.180 So that, there's a whole financial motive, which is if you put it on the vaccine schedule,

01:35:54.040 there's a lot of money involved, et cetera.

01:35:55.600 But we fought that very hard.

01:35:57.580 And I'm pretty proud because we brought that lawsuit in May of 21, and we had been told

01:36:02.860 that they were probably going to release it right around May or June.

01:36:06.420 So we worked really hard to get it out.

01:36:07.880 And in fact, they didn't release the kids, the shots to the kids until a few months later.

01:36:12.460 So I know we delayed it by a few months.

01:36:15.440 Nonetheless, the moment they rolled it out, you asked why they did it.

01:36:18.000 As soon as the shots were legally able to be given to kids, you then in America saw local

01:36:24.320 jurisdictions that took the power from the parents and gave it to the kids.

01:36:29.200 So if a kid wanted to get a shot, but the parents were awake and didn't want to get

01:36:32.860 the shot, them to have the shot, the kid was able to get the shot themselves.

01:36:36.300 I think the age was 14 in certain local jurisdictions.

01:36:38.740 That became very clear that this was Marxism, which is to take away the parental rights and

01:36:43.940 give them to the state.

01:36:45.040 The state was subbing in for the parents.

01:36:47.440 Now, that's never happened in America before.

01:36:49.480 In America, you know, the parent has a shine.

01:36:51.560 So why would you leap to Marxism as an explanation for that?

01:36:54.520 Because that's a big leap.

01:36:55.460 I'm not disputing it, but it's a very big leap.

01:36:57.660 Well, fascism.

01:36:58.140 Maybe not.

01:36:58.760 I think of Marxism and fascism as the same.

01:37:01.320 I would say that that I was influenced a little bit by my father growing up in a communist

01:37:05.600 nation.

01:37:06.540 So in Russia, a child who went to school, they're 13 years old, might come home from

01:37:12.720 school one day and tell their mom, oh, the dentist pulled two teeth today.

01:37:17.180 In other words, the parent wasn't involved in the decision.

01:37:19.420 Well, the kids there were invited to inform on their parents, too.

01:37:21.780 And it's part of classic Marxist doctrine that the familial structure should be decimated

01:37:26.540 and that it's fine for—and the Russians made heroes of children who informed on their

01:37:30.800 parents.

01:37:31.360 So how—

01:37:32.140 But to see that playing out in the United States and to attribute that—

01:37:39.220 Well, it was obvious.

01:37:41.040 You asked me how I thought.

01:37:42.200 Yeah.

01:37:42.660 Because it only took two weeks.

01:37:44.220 So in other words, the CDC said you could give it to 14-year-old kids.

01:37:48.340 And then two weeks later, San Francisco and I think Baltimore, but there was a few jurisdictions

01:37:52.520 that allowed 14-year-olds to do it.

01:37:54.240 And I was like, well, isn't that nifty?

01:37:56.900 Parents are expendable now.

01:37:58.960 Yeah.

01:37:59.280 That's why I said it's Marxist, because you're separating parents from each other.

01:38:01.800 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:38:02.100 That was obvious.

01:38:02.520 On the ground and obviously being prepared for moves like that.

01:38:05.820 Yeah.

01:38:06.260 Yeah.

01:38:06.760 So I felt that.

01:38:07.840 And then I kept—even though we couldn't stop the shots, I was very hell-vent on stopping

01:38:15.220 mandates.

01:38:16.080 So we sued the Department of Defense.

01:38:17.940 We sued UCLA.

01:38:18.900 We sued on behalf of the COVID-recovered soldier, the COVID-recovered college kid.

01:38:22.260 They were saying ludicrous things like natural immunity didn't work.

01:38:25.320 Yeah, right.

01:38:26.440 So we had these really robust arguments.

01:38:29.160 That's when I learned that judges were really just also quite incurious.

01:38:33.680 And judges were very afraid, I think, to even look at what we were writing.

01:38:39.440 I know that because one of our best lawsuits—

01:38:41.860 Well, they're not accustomed to having to adjudicate disputes between, like, profound

01:38:47.580 disputes between credible physicians, right?

01:38:49.840 I mean, you can't expect judges to be able to—you know what I mean?

01:38:52.960 The judgments are going to stay intact as long as the physicians are basically playing

01:38:56.440 a straight game.

01:38:57.340 And all of a sudden now everything's thrown up in the air.

01:39:00.140 You can't even trust the damn journals.

01:39:02.080 But from a status quo perspective, a judge's natural tendency is to keep the status quo.

01:39:06.500 Yes, well, depends on the judge, right?

01:39:09.360 Depends on how progressive they are.

01:39:10.800 Or in medicine, it's to be risk-averse.

01:39:14.120 Most doctors were telling—

01:39:15.340 Do you harm?

01:39:15.920 And they were telling pregnant women, you know, don't take a bite of sushi, don't have

01:39:20.120 a smoke, don't drink a glass of wine.

01:39:22.240 Right.

01:39:22.560 But all of a sudden roll up your sleeves and take the new stuff.

01:39:24.740 I'd never seen that in my career.

01:39:26.740 You didn't have doctors saying that.

01:39:28.300 It was bizarre.

01:39:29.640 I thought it was like, you know, invasion of the body snatchers.

01:39:32.380 It made no sense.

01:39:33.340 It was completely the opposite of how doctors usually acted.

01:39:36.400 And then when we went to judges and we said, judges, look at these.

01:39:39.060 We've got these world-class experts saying, whoa, halt.

01:39:42.600 They were just not doing their job, in my opinion, and said they couldn't decide.

01:39:47.280 They couldn't figure it out.

01:39:48.120 So they deferred to the executive branch agencies.

01:39:50.820 This is all relevant to being a doctor and a lawyer.

01:39:52.740 Because last summer, the Supreme Court has pulled away from the executive branch agency

01:39:59.160 deferrals that judges acquiesced to.

01:40:02.620 There was a very important case called Inlope or Bright, where the Supreme Court reversed

01:40:06.520 40 or 50 years of judges just deferring to the executive branch agencies.

01:40:12.320 It wasn't the NIH or the CDC, but other executive branch agencies.

01:40:15.760 Judges have been given permission in their mind.

01:40:17.440 Oh, you know, the executive branch agency, unelected bureaucrat, said to do this.

01:40:22.540 I'm just going to do that.

01:40:24.020 Well, that's what we were coming up against in COVID.

01:40:26.700 We were asking the judges, in retrospect, here's these world-class, amazing physicians

01:40:32.160 saying, whoa, halt.

01:40:33.380 But over here is the NIH and the CDC saying, give it.

01:40:36.980 And the judges were just deferring to the agencies.

01:40:39.320 Okay, but we have some hope in America because a few months ago, in June of 24, in Inlope or

01:40:44.240 Bright Enterprises, the Supreme Court held that judges were giving too much deference to

01:40:49.280 executive branch agencies, and that's unconstitutional, and they have to adjudicate fairly.

01:40:53.940 They can't just say the unelected bureaucrats are correct.

01:40:56.920 They can't pass the buck.

01:40:57.840 It's a very important legal decision.

01:40:59.500 Okay, okay.

01:41:00.300 Does that make sense?

01:41:01.200 Do you think that will have an effect?

01:41:02.620 I think it will change the landscape slowly going forward.

01:41:05.420 I didn't understand that so much legally when I was bringing lawsuits in 21 and 22, that

01:41:11.520 part of the reason judges were so reluctant to believe independent physicians is that the

01:41:16.540 judges had been trained, lulled into thinking their job was to just go with what the executive

01:41:22.720 branch agency said.

01:41:24.040 That was ripped up this summer.

01:41:24.860 Well, that'd be convenient if it was possible.

01:41:26.700 Exactly.

01:41:27.320 That's not our system.

01:41:28.440 The judges, it was supposed to be independent.

01:41:30.280 So that actually, it was called the Chevron Doctrine, and it was thrown out.

01:41:33.220 And thank God, it's been 50 years, and it's been thrown out.

01:41:36.280 So going forward, bringing lawsuits, the judges can no longer hide behind the FDA said this,

01:41:41.880 or for example, the EPA said that, right?

01:41:44.860 So that'll have effect there too, Environmental Protection Agency.

01:41:47.160 Any agency.

01:41:48.360 Oh, yeah.

01:41:48.660 The judge has to adjudicate looking at the evidence.

01:41:51.280 I see.

01:41:51.740 Not just give.

01:41:52.760 Well, that's well-timed for the new administration.

01:41:54.800 Well, that's well-timed for the new administration.

01:41:54.820 It was well-timed.

01:41:55.260 Undue deference.

01:41:56.000 He said they were giving undue deference.

01:41:57.200 Okay, so we're nearing the normal closing time, but I still want to talk to you about J6.

01:42:02.960 So we'll go a little longer.

01:42:04.140 And then I think on the Daily Wire side, for all of you who are watching and listening,

01:42:08.400 I think we'll talk about your vision, your opinion of the new administration

01:42:13.960 and what's going to happen when Trump takes office and what your hopes are

01:42:17.960 and what should happen, what role you might play there.

01:42:20.200 At least, I don't know how associated you are with the new people who are coming in.

01:42:25.040 So we'll do that on the Daily Wire side.

01:42:26.580 But I would like to, well, there's still places we haven't gone,

01:42:30.000 and I'd like to hear about January 6th as well,

01:42:32.800 because there's a huge story there that we haven't even delved into.

01:42:35.660 So is it reasonable to leap to that?

01:42:37.740 Pretty much so.

01:42:38.040 Okay, let's do that.

01:42:39.020 Yeah.

01:42:39.620 Okay.

01:42:39.920 In the middle of all these lawsuits, I have this burning passion for two to three years

01:42:43.800 just to keep speaking publicly.

01:42:45.620 And one of those days of speaking publicly happened to be January 6th in Washington, D.C.

01:42:50.040 My perspective was it was another speaking engagement.

01:42:53.040 I spoke January 5th in Washington, D.C.

01:42:54.960 I spoke January 3rd in Florida, January 10th in Florida.

01:42:58.280 But the 5th and 6th, I was scheduled in Washington, D.C.

01:43:00.840 Where were you supposed to speak?

01:43:02.240 January 5th, no problem, Freedom Plaza.

01:43:04.680 January 6th, scheduled to speak on the east side of the Capitol with a permit.

01:43:09.420 There you go.

01:43:10.020 Okay.

01:43:10.360 With a permit.

01:43:11.140 People don't know that.

01:43:12.020 So I was there to speak.

01:43:13.480 When I—

01:43:14.120 Who were you speaking with or to?

01:43:16.080 I don't know who organized it.

01:43:17.720 I had a team at that point, and there were about 20 speakers, including incoming Representative

01:43:22.500 Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, another representative.

01:43:26.240 There was a pretty high-profile speaking opportunity.

01:43:29.020 People were, of course, speaking about their concerns that the election was stolen.

01:43:32.820 But my lane was to speak about medical freedom.

01:43:35.420 I had a prepared medical freedom speech that I did the day before, no problem, Freedom

01:43:39.540 Plaza.

01:43:40.160 And I was intending to do the same thing on January 6th, the east side of the Capitol

01:43:43.620 building.

01:43:43.980 It's called Section 8, and I had a permit.

01:43:46.620 And when we, speakers, presented ourselves at the location, we were told by the organ—whoever

01:43:54.040 was there—that we couldn't speak.

01:43:56.400 Now—

01:43:56.700 That you couldn't speak?

01:43:58.060 They wouldn't—there was a stage set up, but they weren't allowing anybody to speak.

01:44:02.680 Everyone asks me why.

01:44:03.780 I don't know.

01:44:04.780 Still don't know.

01:44:05.760 I think because the crowds were so large.

01:44:07.660 I don't know.

01:44:08.900 If you have a large crowd, it seems to me you ought to let people speak, so there's

01:44:12.560 a positive energy source for the crowd to pay attention to.

01:44:15.700 But for whatever reason, they would not let the speakers speak.

01:44:19.020 So I was there on the Capitol, basically ready to give a speech.

01:44:23.900 So I said, well, I'm speaking.

01:44:25.960 And so I scampered up to the top of the steps, and I started speaking.

01:44:29.620 But I have zero microphones or anything.

01:44:32.660 And of course, within a minute or two, I stopped because no one can hear me.

01:44:35.600 There's a lot of people.

01:44:36.600 And I'm standing at the top of the Capitol steps, and people are pouring in by the second

01:44:40.920 because Trump had finished speaking, and everyone was walking over.

01:44:44.240 And I'm telling you, every minute had another thousand people showing up there because that

01:44:49.660 was the time Trump had stopped.

01:44:50.760 And so I'm just standing there, and I'm kind of smushed against the wall.

01:44:55.440 And all of a sudden, the doors open from the inside.

01:44:58.800 And I was swept into the building.

01:45:01.360 This is all on video.

01:45:02.780 I can't imagine what they would say about me if there was no video.

01:45:06.180 Because you can actually see on the video that I kind of tumble, and I almost fall into the

01:45:11.340 building because there's a surge behind me.

01:45:13.720 And I find myself in the Capitol.

01:45:16.260 And it's hard to remember what life was like before J6, but we have a long history in our

01:45:23.400 nation of political protests.

01:45:24.980 Now, when conservatives landed in the Capitol, standing there, everywhere I was was very peaceful,

01:45:31.760 completely peaceful.

01:45:32.840 I find myself in the rotunda.

01:45:34.720 It's beautiful.

01:45:36.280 And I'm walking between the ropes.

01:45:39.440 And I'm looking up here because it turns out there was video everywhere.

01:45:41.680 I didn't know.

01:45:42.520 And you can see me walking peacefully in between the ropes, looking around.

01:45:46.140 And I've got my speech in my hand.

01:45:47.880 And I think to myself, it is a fine idea that I should give my speech because this is a

01:45:52.320 political day, and let's give a speech.

01:45:53.720 And there's a lot of people here.

01:45:55.380 So I give my speech, and that is also seen on video.

01:45:59.100 And it's kind of funny when I'm thinking back on it, but that was my mission.

01:46:03.420 And then a little bit later, I give my speech again.

01:46:06.520 And then an officer taps me on my shoulder and says, I have to move along.

01:46:10.020 And I'm startled.

01:46:11.160 I look at him.

01:46:11.740 And then I move along.

01:46:12.820 And then I exit the building.

01:46:14.080 And that was my sojourn into the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.

01:46:19.680 And I had no idea what was being said about the day as an eyewitness on the east side of

01:46:26.780 the Capitol, no violence, kumbaya, literally grandmas singing kumbaya, moms with strollers.

01:46:34.760 And that's what it was.

01:46:36.380 It was very large.

01:46:37.500 It seemed more like the energy of a sporting event or a concert, large.

01:46:42.260 And that was it.

01:46:43.180 And then we leave, and we got dinner, and I didn't have any news on it.

01:46:46.780 Did you think anything of it after that?

01:46:49.160 No.

01:46:49.680 So I didn't.

01:46:50.780 And I was in D.C. another day.

01:46:52.280 And I'm always working.

01:46:53.540 And I'm just typing away.

01:46:54.880 And people are saying it's something.

01:46:56.520 And I'm like, no, no, it was nothing.

01:46:58.020 And I'm just typing.

01:46:59.360 And I meet friends that night for dinner.

01:47:00.960 And the friends are very, very, very alarmed when I said we were at the Capitol.

01:47:06.820 And they said, oh, my God, it was an insurrection.

01:47:09.600 It was an insurrection.

01:47:10.940 And I start laughing.

01:47:12.180 Like, what are you talking about?

01:47:13.620 Like, I just thought, I was like, no, I was there.

01:47:16.620 Like, no, no, what are you talking about?

01:47:18.500 And they were very, very worried for me.

01:47:20.500 And I'm sitting at dinner, and I get a message on my phone.

01:47:23.040 And there's a picture of me on the FBI's most wanted list with my picture.

01:47:28.100 Oh, oh, that's a problem.

01:47:30.120 And I look at it.

01:47:31.060 Wow.

01:47:31.600 And my first reaction was, well, this was Photoshopped.

01:47:34.920 This is like a joke.

01:47:35.640 Right, right, right.

01:47:36.660 I mean, I just, I still can't believe it.

01:47:38.860 Yeah, yeah, I can appreciate that.

01:47:41.080 I'm on the FBI's most wanted list.

01:47:42.560 Like, it was, and so they have a picture of me.

01:47:44.720 Somebody handed me a megaphone, and I was giving my speech.

01:47:48.200 And that was the picture of me on the FBI's most wanted list.

01:47:51.100 And I was like, no.

01:47:52.780 And I just couldn't believe it.

01:47:54.960 And then the next day, I started getting a little bit worried.

01:47:57.940 But I went off four days later, and I gave another speech in Florida.

01:48:00.920 And I went back years later, and I watched that speech.

01:48:03.380 And I never even mentioned January 6th, just to give you perspective that I didn't think.

01:48:07.860 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, so loud.

01:48:20.720 That I immediately thought, well, I can't possibly be the FBI, because this must be a Columbia cartel coming to murder me.

01:48:28.280 Of course, this couldn't be the FBI.

01:48:30.560 Like, I remember thinking, couldn't possibly be the FBI.

01:48:34.360 Like, they would have called me.

01:48:36.680 Like, and they're screaming.

01:48:38.400 And I'm looking, and I'm looking at the person I'm working with.

01:48:40.720 I'm like, is that real?

01:48:41.920 And he says, no, no, that's not real.

01:48:44.340 I mean, we just couldn't process it.

01:48:46.680 About 30, 40 seconds go by.

01:48:48.380 And I stand up, and I turn to kind of come, and they break the door down with a battering ram.

01:48:54.240 This is at your home?

01:48:55.180 Yep.

01:48:55.760 Two-bedroom apartment, and battering ram, 20 guys in tactical gear, bulletproof vests, and tactical gear, huge weapons pointed at me, the laser sight beams, as close as I am to you.

01:49:09.680 And I'm looking, and I'm like, that's weird.

01:49:11.760 And you asked me if I panicked.

01:49:13.020 And I remember thinking, oh.

01:49:15.900 And I got really calm.

01:49:17.580 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.

01:49:26.480 And I was disoriented, and I took a step forward.

01:49:29.640 Oh, yeah.

01:49:30.400 And I thought later, oh, he definitely could have been justifiable homicide.

01:49:34.280 Right.

01:49:34.460 Like, I was, and then I saw the sight beams.

01:49:36.780 And I was like, oh, and I got really calm, and I was fine, and I put this, and they are coming to a restaurant.

01:49:43.300 So the emergency room training came in handy then.

01:49:46.080 Oh, and you know what else kicked in there about the ER?

01:49:48.000 So they're taking us off in handcuffs and shackles.

01:49:50.900 It was crazy.

01:49:52.160 And I said, I was very calm.

01:49:54.020 I said, hey, you took my phone, you took computers, you took everything.

01:49:56.580 Could I take some cash with me?

01:49:58.460 Because at some point, you're going to release me, and I'm going to need a way home.

01:50:01.580 Yeah.

01:50:01.800 Nope, can't do that.

01:50:03.080 I'm like, okay, I say that not incidentally.

01:50:05.840 So they whisk us off, we go to jail, perp walk in front of the neighbors, handcuffs, shackles.

01:50:11.720 Oh, yeah.

01:50:12.280 So that's the point of the theater.

01:50:14.160 Yeah, the theater is, I think the whole thing was to intimidate and scare me and others.

01:50:19.340 Did it work?

01:50:20.480 You know, it backfires is what it does.

01:50:22.840 Oh, at the time, yes, but now I don't think there's anything I'm afraid of now.

01:50:26.360 I mean, if you had said to me beforehand, would you be afraid of being in prison?

01:50:29.200 Would you be afraid of being in isolation?

01:50:31.260 What is worse?

01:50:32.240 What is worse than that?

01:50:33.640 And now I'm like, I don't like it.

01:50:34.900 It's unpleasant, but okay.

01:50:37.100 Like, you can't scare me with it.

01:50:38.660 Like, you could probably still scare you with that.

01:50:40.340 You can't scare me with that.

01:50:41.760 Like, it's terrible, granted, but okay.

01:50:45.740 So, no, it totally backfires on people like me.

01:50:47.680 I mean, it's literally, it's a foolish move if you're trying to silence people like me.

01:50:52.020 It just backfires.

01:50:52.980 Now, they don't know ahead of time who's strong and who's not strong.

01:50:55.660 But handcuffed, shackled, walking, right, good in front of the neighbors, doors, you know, broken.

01:51:01.420 I happen to have had a gun in the house.

01:51:03.080 They asked me where it was.

01:51:03.800 I told them where it was.

01:51:05.000 We get taken off, et cetera, all this stuff.

01:51:07.420 I mentioned just two small things because they're trying to be as dehumanizing as possible.

01:51:11.300 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.

01:51:20.860 The judge is like, you can be released.

01:51:22.240 And then they shackles off and they literally kick me out on the street, downtown Los Angeles.

01:51:28.320 I have no shoes because they didn't let me take shoes.

01:51:30.440 And I said, how am I going to get home?

01:51:31.980 And the officer says, you should have thought of that.

01:51:34.220 And I just got so snippy.

01:51:35.760 I said, you know, I am an ER doctor.

01:51:36.940 I know exactly what it's like to show up somewhere unprepared, and I wasn't going to, and I wanted to bring money.

01:51:41.720 You didn't let me.

01:51:42.440 How am I going to get home?

01:51:43.460 I had no phone.

01:51:44.760 It was insane.

01:51:46.400 Wow.

01:51:46.760 So, I'm just sharing that it's done to break you.

01:51:49.560 And the other thing that they did that was very effective, they took all of our computers and phones.

01:51:54.280 Yeah, yeah.

01:51:54.760 And so, my piece of advice for anyone listening is have backups and not to worry too much about what you're writing,

01:52:00.560 assuming you're doing lawful activities, just have lots of backups everywhere.

01:52:04.500 Right, right.

01:52:05.700 And they said, okay, now you went to trial for this.

01:52:08.420 So, this is very funny.

01:52:09.300 You will enjoy this story.

01:52:10.700 So, there's no right to a speedy trial, even though that's in our Constitution.

01:52:14.000 They delayed, delayed, delayed until the government was ready to go, and then my judge couldn't have been faster.

01:52:19.180 So, I found out I had been charged.

01:52:21.860 Where were you tried?

01:52:23.320 All J6 defendants were being tried in the District of Columbia.

01:52:26.840 Oh, yeah.

01:52:27.820 That was intentional.

01:52:28.980 Uh-huh.

01:52:29.260 And none of us are from the District of Columbia.

01:52:31.860 Yeah, yeah.

01:52:32.060 And the District of Columbia voted 96% for Biden.

01:52:36.560 Yeah.

01:52:36.920 And this was a political issue.

01:52:39.100 Yeah.

01:52:39.380 So, it's not—and it's a company town.

01:52:41.740 The largest employer, I think 30% of people, or 20 or 30% of people that live in D.C. work for the federal government.

01:52:47.920 So, by definition, it's a company town, plus it's politically—it's a political trial.

01:52:52.200 So, not moving was really unfair to J6 defendants.

01:52:55.440 So, I had any intention of fighting and pleading not guilty until I saw the charges.

01:53:01.680 So, the charges included a bizarre 1512C2 felony that's a 20-year felony.

01:53:07.400 It's bizarre.

01:53:08.280 It's an accounting kind of firm.

01:53:09.920 Remember the Enron scandal?

01:53:11.380 The theory was that Arthur Anderson, their accounting firm, shredded documents.

01:53:14.920 So, to close that loophole, it's called closing the Arthur Anderson loophole.

01:53:18.380 Somebody, 20 years ago, came up with this 1512C2 statute, which is witness tampering and evidence shredding.

01:53:24.580 That is what they charged me and hundreds of J6lers with.

01:53:27.840 You might ask why.

01:53:28.940 Because it's wholly irrelevant.

01:53:30.540 It has nothing to do with us.

01:53:32.540 20 years.

01:53:33.420 That was why.

01:53:34.200 This is how they got J6lers to take a plea.

01:53:37.520 Oh, I see.

01:53:37.820 Oh, I see.

01:53:38.540 So, that was the biggest club they could wield.

01:53:40.960 And we had no—and I'm a lawyer, too, and I'm looking at this.

01:53:43.140 Some said, what does this 1512 witness tampering and evidence shredding statute have to do with me?

01:53:48.140 I was literally walking through crowds and gave a speech.

01:53:51.060 I understood trespass.

01:53:52.820 I understood parading.

01:53:54.140 Then we could talk about selective prosecution.

01:53:56.720 Like, why are you prosecuting me and not everybody from the summer of love?

01:54:00.700 Conservatives don't get to protest.

01:54:02.260 That's really the rule.

01:54:03.260 But this was weird.

01:54:04.400 This 20-year felony was weird.

01:54:06.160 It had no relation at all to us.

01:54:09.100 And I couldn't—it was a 20-year penalty.

01:54:10.980 So, this is how they got virtually everybody to roll over.

01:54:13.760 They were very, very eager for J6lers to just take a plea.

01:54:17.560 So, the narrative is, oh, we all pled guilty.

01:54:19.940 That was just a terrible thing.

01:54:21.520 So, when I discovered it was a 20-year felony, I did take the plea.

01:54:25.600 I couldn't afford a felony as a doctor and a lawyer.

01:54:28.060 There was no way I could keep my life.

01:54:29.300 I mean, as a practical matter, I would have lost my licenses.

01:54:32.520 And I had an organization to run.

01:54:33.940 I couldn't be put away for years.

01:54:35.080 It was out of the question.

01:54:36.460 And on a personal level, it's pretty scary.

01:54:38.260 So, for all of those reasons, I accepted the plea.

01:54:41.100 And I plead to a misdemeanor trespass.

01:54:44.360 Now, exactly how many misdemeanors do you find going to prison?

01:54:49.500 Low number.

01:54:50.460 That zero number that you like.

01:54:52.340 No misdemeanors in America go to prison.

01:54:54.620 So, I was expecting when I showed up at trial to—

01:54:58.280 Right, and that would be an expected part of the plea, too, right?

01:55:01.220 That would have been your presumption.

01:55:02.720 That you—I mean, you have no—you go through the person's past.

01:55:06.060 Does she have a violent past?

01:55:06.900 Has she ever been convicted of anything?

01:55:08.400 You know, is this a gang offense?

01:55:09.700 Is there violence here?

01:55:11.100 You know, does she have a way to employ herself?

01:55:12.880 You know, there's a lot of risks I'm going to when you put someone into prison or not.

01:55:16.160 Of course I didn't think I was going to prison.

01:55:18.020 Yeah.

01:55:18.560 Now, we don't have a ton of time, but I will share with you a very cute little story,

01:55:21.940 which is that my judge was a fellow named the Honorable Christopher Cooper.

01:55:27.640 Now, I didn't recognize the name, except when I showed up in court, that was Casey.

01:55:33.780 Casey was my classmate at Stanford Law School.

01:55:36.900 Class of 147 of us.

01:55:39.640 147.

01:55:40.500 Of course we knew each other.

01:55:41.580 We kind of lightly dated.

01:55:43.360 Wow.

01:55:44.060 Okay?

01:55:44.500 Wow.

01:55:45.000 And I thought that, if anything, he would have been nicer to me.

01:55:53.360 Like, certainly we had nothing negative, really.

01:55:55.820 But he should have recused himself.

01:55:57.380 Right, right.

01:55:58.060 Because the standard for recusal is not just conflict, it's the appearance of impropriety.

01:56:05.380 It's not the actual impropriety.

01:56:07.320 It's the appearance of impropriety.

01:56:08.880 I mentioned this little interesting aside, because the District of Columbia judges, almost to a man,

01:56:13.500 are so smug that they don't even think they're going to be overruled.

01:56:17.100 If you've been to school and dated a defendant, they're like, oh, no, that's no problem.

01:56:22.820 And I am sad as a lawyer to know that's the standard.

01:56:27.240 Yeah.

01:56:27.360 So the appearance of impropriety, which of course this is, and I bring it up because when I stood before him,

01:56:33.080 I felt this heat of hatred and anger emanating from him.

01:56:36.880 All the other hearings every month were on Zoom.

01:56:39.120 But for sentencing, I had to show up in person.

01:56:41.480 And there was so much hatred from him towards me that I will never know if it was personal or just his beliefs on J6.

01:56:50.440 And he should never have been in that situation.

01:56:52.700 That is why judges who have an appearance of impropriety are to recuse themselves.

01:56:56.420 And I just want everyone to be cognizant of how the infrastructure of fascism is kind of already there in America.

01:57:06.260 No one's checking him.

01:57:07.340 Anyone responsible would have said, you know, get off this case.

01:57:09.760 It's crazy.

01:57:10.360 There's other judges.

01:57:11.780 You didn't.

01:57:12.200 So that exists.

01:57:12.900 Anyway, he sentences me to 60 days, which was insanely harsh.

01:57:16.140 And then the Bureau of Prison puts their thumb on the scale.

01:57:19.640 And instead of sending me to a camp, they send me to a maximum.

01:57:24.720 Really?

01:57:25.120 Yeah.

01:57:26.420 So you ask me.

01:57:27.080 So you got 60 days in prison for a misdemeanor.

01:57:30.440 Yeah.

01:57:30.980 Despite your record.

01:57:32.200 Right.

01:57:32.880 Yeah.

01:57:33.120 Well, everybody who's watching and listening should pay careful attention to that.

01:57:36.900 It's a...

01:57:37.500 Yeah.

01:57:37.840 Wow.

01:57:38.380 It's really scary.

01:57:39.580 So, like, what was going on in your mind when you heard that?

01:57:45.140 I mean, were you in a state of disbelief again?

01:57:47.220 I was utterly, utterly shocked.

01:57:50.160 It's one of the few times over the past four years that when I got outside, I started to cry.

01:57:55.280 I couldn't believe it.

01:57:57.320 I've, in my whole life...

01:57:58.940 What was the shock?

01:58:00.060 Was it the sentence or the fact that this had happened?

01:58:03.560 I mean, I'm obviously both.

01:58:05.440 No, you have the greatest questions.

01:58:07.600 Standing in a courtroom, and I heard them say the United States of America versus Simone Melissa Gold.

01:58:15.240 This is my country.

01:58:16.500 Yeah.

01:58:16.660 I'm an enemy of the country?

01:58:18.440 Like, it was so awful, that moment.

01:58:21.180 But when he sentenced me to prison, it was like I couldn't even process that.

01:58:27.860 Mm-hmm.

01:58:28.120 Again, I'm a person who's not prone to panic.

01:58:30.000 Mm-hmm.

01:58:30.220 It was such an overwhelming moment.

01:58:34.820 It was such an overwhelming moment.

01:58:37.240 So, you've talked about a couple of things that have happened to you that you couldn't believe.

01:58:41.520 Yeah.

01:58:42.600 Has that left you with any post-traumatic stress disorder?

01:58:46.660 Do you know?

01:58:47.360 Because that derealization, you know, that sense of this can't possibly be happening,

01:58:52.200 that's a good predictor of post-traumatic stress, right?

01:58:55.820 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

01:59:01.460 than to assume that what's happening is happening, right?

01:59:05.420 Yes, I think so.

01:59:07.520 It hasn't changed my actions, and it won't.

01:59:10.340 Mm-hmm.

01:59:10.620 But it is extremely traumatic.

01:59:13.320 Nightmares or anything like that?

01:59:14.820 I did not.

01:59:15.660 I don't.

01:59:16.920 I think, I thank God, my upbringing, my personality, no.

01:59:22.460 But I have become, I've become more cynical, suspicious.

01:59:29.420 Realistic?

01:59:31.020 Yeah, well, it's a tough one, right?

01:59:32.640 To watch the judicial system do wrong.

01:59:34.720 Yeah.

01:59:34.940 I watched the judge not recuse himself.

01:59:36.840 I watched the prosecutors lie.

01:59:38.620 Remember, I read all the evidence as a lawyer.

01:59:39.980 I know the prosecutors lied.

01:59:41.900 Yeah.

01:59:42.340 So I watched the doctors and the medical industrial complex collapse.

01:59:47.380 I watched the legal system collapse.

01:59:49.980 But in a paradoxical way, I think it energizes me.

01:59:53.220 I think I know that there's a chance in America.

01:59:56.200 I know that we're not living in China, North Korea.

01:59:59.080 Yeah, yeah.

01:59:59.360 Right?

01:59:59.700 Well, we'll turn to that on the Daily Wire site.

02:00:01.860 So one final question to close this off is like, how do you do in prison?

02:00:07.700 So my advice to anyone going to prison, which could be a lot of people going forward, a lot

02:00:11.360 of people who might know, right, is have a plan.

02:00:14.320 That's the truth.

02:00:14.980 So I said, if I'm in there for 60 days, what's my plan?

02:00:19.220 Okay, I'm going to talk to every woman who will talk to me.

02:00:21.280 I'm going to interview every single woman and get their backstories.

02:00:24.300 And that was how I spent my time.

02:00:26.020 And so, well, tell me about that.

02:00:27.900 How'd that work for you?

02:00:28.960 First, they put me in isolation for eight days because that's normal.

02:00:32.680 That was terrible.

02:00:33.740 And so what did isolation mean?

02:00:35.000 Did that mean solitary?

02:00:35.960 In isolation, solitary was a six by 10 cell with a sliver of a window and a sliver in

02:00:41.800 the door where they passed you your food.

02:00:43.340 Oh, yeah.

02:00:43.820 And why'd they do that?

02:00:45.100 No explanation.

02:00:46.860 As it turns out, that was how, I didn't get an explanation until after.

02:00:50.940 That was what they did at this prison for women coming in for COVID.

02:00:56.100 Now, this is July or August of 22.

02:01:00.400 There was no COVID at all.

02:01:02.560 I was in Miami.

02:01:03.440 There was no COVID.

02:01:04.400 So it was a pretext.

02:01:05.640 So they put the women there because they didn't want to staff up and put women separate.

02:01:10.040 I guess I understand a prison being slow and to get with the policy.

02:01:14.300 But you could have had women in a separate wing if they were incoming women, right?

02:01:18.980 And they're high risk.

02:01:20.760 But that's what they did for the men.

02:01:22.960 For the women, they just shoved us into isolation cells.

02:01:25.820 It was insane.

02:01:26.760 It was ludicrous.

02:01:27.520 And I didn't know how long I'd be there.

02:01:28.960 For all I knew, I'd be there all 60 days.

02:01:30.840 It is the single worst thing you can do.

02:01:32.360 Well, there's worse things probably.

02:01:34.020 But it's fair.

02:01:36.220 Well, solitary is bad enough so that you can punish the most antisocial people with it, right?

02:01:41.480 I mean, that's how social human beings are, is that you can take the most antisocial people there are and punish them by isolating them, right?

02:01:49.500 Yeah.

02:01:49.960 Right.

02:01:50.420 It was terrible.

02:01:51.200 Okay, so let's just close this with an ending to the story, although we're going to continue it on the Daily Wire side.

02:01:57.660 When did you serve the full 60 days?

02:02:00.340 You did.

02:02:00.920 They kept you in the full 60 days.

02:02:02.600 Okay.

02:02:03.340 When were you released?

02:02:05.680 September 22.

02:02:07.440 Okay.

02:02:08.060 And in a relatively brief period of time, what have you been doing since then?

02:02:15.420 And what are you planning to do?

02:02:17.460 Right.

02:02:17.680 So America's Frontline Doctors was never a COVID organization.

02:02:21.440 We are medical civil liberties.

02:02:23.060 So COVID mandates, you know, we were against the vaccine mandates, et cetera.

02:02:26.580 But we put our eye and our attention and our expertise towards medical civil liberties issues.

02:02:31.540 How big is the organization now?

02:02:33.140 We have almost a million subscribers, and we probably have about 2,000 doctors or allied health professionals.

02:02:39.140 It's just a volunteer.

02:02:41.360 It's free.

02:02:42.020 It's a charity.

02:02:42.660 It's a nonprofit.

02:02:43.560 And the donations go really towards two things.

02:02:48.280 They go towards us submitting amicus briefs on important medical civil liberties cases.

02:02:52.860 You might know the USA versus Scrimetti case that just went to the Supreme Court.

02:02:57.280 So physician licensure.

02:02:58.900 Yes, I know that case.

02:03:00.040 The transgender is a big issue these days.

02:03:02.220 And then also the other lane I speak up a lot on, America's Frontline Doctors, is on physician licensure and making sure physicians aren't losing the license for First Amendment speech violations.

02:03:11.900 So I fight that heavily, and I fought the California Medical Board aggressively, and I won.

02:03:16.000 And that was an almost three-year battle.

02:03:18.000 We just won at the appellate level.

02:03:19.700 And there's a federal case pending that I expect we will win as well.

02:03:22.300 This then becomes precedent for future physicians that hopefully the government won't be able to pull their licenses for speaking words that the government doesn't like.

02:03:30.020 How come you're not beaten down?

02:03:31.960 Or are you?

02:03:32.940 Like, you don't appear to be at all.

02:03:34.780 Like, your demeanor is very positive.

02:03:37.660 I don't really see any signs of anything like depression.

02:03:40.380 No.

02:03:41.060 Yeah, well, that's a lot, right?

02:03:43.380 I mean, your life was thrown up in a variety of different ways, and then you were hit hard after that.

02:03:49.820 Like, my experience with people who've been hurt is the best way to hurt someone is to hurt them, and then just when they're getting up, hurt them again.

02:03:58.920 And then if you can do that twice, that often finishes people.

02:04:01.940 But you're, like, you seem to be cruising along.

02:04:05.740 So, by the way, it's interesting you said that I was hit again.

02:04:09.720 When I got out of prison, I was immediately hit with a board member who lied about me and defamed me and said that I stole money from my organization.

02:04:17.620 So, as soon as I was getting out, whack.

02:04:20.920 There's something inside of me that refuses to give in, and I am grateful that we still have a chance.

02:04:26.520 If I lived in China or North Korea, I would have folded up shop.

02:04:30.180 Right, so your fundamental belief has remained intact, right, at the lowest or the most profound possible level.

02:04:36.880 Right, great.

02:04:37.320 Well, that's a good segue to the next part of this conversation, which will continue on the Daily Wire side, because I'll talk to you about your, well, your future plans and your feelings about, your thoughts about this new administration and what you can see and why you remain hopeful in the face of, that's a lot, in the face of all of that, right?

02:04:54.520 So, for everybody watching and listening, join us on the Daily Wire side.

02:04:58.380 And so, thank you very much for coming to Toronto and, well, telling that story, which is quite the story.

02:05:06.000 Is it rare?

02:05:07.420 It's a lot less rare than it was 20 years ago, unfortunately.

02:05:11.880 Right, right.

02:05:13.040 And, you know, maybe things will turn around, and I guess we'll talk about that on the Daily Wire side.

02:05:17.220 Very nice to talk.

02:05:17.980 Thank you so much.

02:05:18.640 Yeah, you bet.

02:05:19.180 And to the film crew here in Toronto, thanks very much for arranging this, and to the Daily Wire for making this possible.

02:05:25.920 Well, and to all of you watching and listening for your support, it's much appreciated your time and attention.

02:05:30.920 Yeah.

02:05:31.500 Ciao.

02:05:31.720 Ciao.

518. Lawyer, Physician, Anti-Vaxxer, Jan 6th “Rioter” ｜ Dr. Simone Gold

Summary

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