The Megyn Kelly Show - COVID Truth and Propaganda, and a Trans Swimmer Update, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Cynthia Millen, and Nancy Hogshead-Makar ｜ Ep. 232

00:00:00.000 When I found out my friend got a great deal

00:00:02.160 on a wool coat from Winners,

00:00:03.760 I started wondering,

00:00:05.440 is every fabulous item I see from Winners?

00:00:08.560 Like that woman over there with the designer jeans. 1.00

00:00:11.260 Are those from Winners?

00:00:12.780 Ooh, or those beautiful gold earrings.

00:00:15.260 Did she pay full price?

00:00:16.600 Or that leather tote?

00:00:17.600 Or that cashmere sweater?

00:00:18.500 Or those knee-high boots?

00:00:20.300 That dress?

00:00:21.080 That jacket?

00:00:21.740 Those shoes?

00:00:22.780 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:00:25.800 Stop wondering.

00:00:27.000 Start winning.

00:00:27.940 Winners.

00:00:28.520 Find fabulous for less.

00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:32.520 Your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:41.960 Hey everyone, happy new year.

00:00:44.580 I'm Megyn Kelly.

00:00:45.800 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:47.640 And welcome back.

00:00:48.620 It was a great vacation for yours truly, my family as well.

00:00:51.760 We went out to Montana, we did a bunch of skiing,

00:00:54.260 posted some fun shots on social media,

00:00:56.360 if you have any desire to see those.

00:00:58.880 And just spent some great time with family.

00:01:00.680 And I hope you did the same.

00:01:01.800 It was, you know, it's always so heartening, right?

00:01:03.560 Just hanging out with the family, my kids, my husband, friends too,

00:01:08.640 that we've gotten to know now over the years in Montana.

00:01:11.000 And you come back feeling renewed and just sort of ready to go.

00:01:14.780 I missed doing the show, though.

00:01:15.820 I have to be honest.

00:01:16.640 You know, there have been shows I've done, like, well, you know,

00:01:19.020 let's not get specific, but there have been some shows I've done

00:01:21.440 where I've been like, ah, back to work.

00:01:23.880 And this one I really missed.

00:01:25.600 And so while it's not fun getting up super early to get the kids off to school,

00:01:28.740 it is fun coming in and sitting behind the microphone and speaking to all of you.

00:01:32.520 So let's get to it.

00:01:33.700 We're going to start today with the latest in COVID mania,

00:01:35.860 what it has revealed about our society and why I believe it should make us feel good

00:01:40.340 about the future.

00:01:42.280 First off, it has been fascinating to watch as many hysterical people come to the grips

00:01:47.580 with the realities of COVID.

00:01:50.200 Like you can catch and spread it even if you're vaccinated.

00:01:54.720 The vaccines help prevent severe and deadly outcomes.

00:01:57.640 And that is all.

00:01:58.940 COVID hits red states no harder than it hits blue states.

00:02:02.400 Most masks do zero to prevent COVID.

00:02:08.020 Yes, all of these are becoming clear now, even to the leftists.

00:02:11.960 Lockdowns are an unnecessary disaster.

00:02:14.840 School closures, same.

00:02:17.080 Hospitalizations of children are being grossly overstated.

00:02:20.280 They are including children hospitalized with COVID instead of just children hospitalized

00:02:25.260 because of COVID.

00:02:27.580 And finally, relying on the number of COVID cases as proof of COVID severity is pointless.

00:02:35.260 The relevant metrics are hospitalizations and deaths.

00:02:38.820 COVID is here to stay.

00:02:40.020 We need to live with it, not live cautiously biding our time until it's gone.

00:02:46.320 If you've been consuming independent or more conservative press, you have known all of this.

00:02:50.600 If you have been relying on leftist corporate media for your information these past two years,

00:02:56.640 this may be news to you.

00:02:59.360 Take, for example, Nicole Wallace.

00:03:02.200 This is an educated person who once called herself a Republican and worked for the Bush

00:03:06.460 administration.

00:03:07.760 Now she's in lockstep with the Joy Reads of the world. 0.77

00:03:11.740 Take a listen to this person.

00:03:13.880 I'm a Fauci groupie.

00:03:15.820 I'm a thrice vaccinated mask adherent.

00:03:18.440 I buy KN95 masks by the, you know, caseload.

00:03:22.520 They're in every pocket.

00:03:23.480 I wear them everywhere except when I sit down.

00:03:25.840 And I am certain that this is not a variant I can outrun.

00:03:32.920 First of all, the stomach turning embarrassing virtue signaling.

00:03:38.360 That's a good girl, Nicole.

00:03:40.240 Good girl.

00:03:40.940 You worship a government bureaucrat who has lied about COVID repeatedly and you got all

00:03:45.980 your shots and you wear your N95 masks and you never leave home without them and you muzzle

00:03:51.700 your children all day long.

00:03:53.760 What a good girl you are.

00:03:55.420 Let me rub your belly. 0.98

00:03:57.440 But what's really happening here is she is starting to see the truth.

00:04:02.580 And by the way, that truth existed before Omicron, when you could still get COVID despite the vaccine

00:04:08.960 and despite the mask.

00:04:10.940 Nicole, even if you are a Democrat, the dirty little COVID veil is starting to fall away

00:04:17.360 from her eyes and certain truths that have been obvious to the rest of us for months are

00:04:21.780 dawning on her.

00:04:23.080 And it's not just Nicole Wallace.

00:04:25.680 Joe Biden, who eviscerated President Trump for COVID deaths on his watch and ran for office

00:04:32.040 on the promise that he would shut down on the promise that he would shut down the virus, finally admitted there are limits to what the federal government can do.

00:04:41.300 There is no federal solution.

00:04:43.380 This gets solved at a state level.

00:04:46.640 State level.

00:04:47.840 There's no federal solution.

00:04:48.980 This is the same person who said Donald Trump should be booted from office because some 200,000 Americans had died of COVID at the point he made the argument.

00:04:56.800 Far fewer than would die on Joe Biden's watch, which, by the way, was all post-vaccine.

00:05:03.140 Two hundred and twenty thousand Americans dead.

00:05:08.300 If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this.

00:05:12.680 Anyone who's responsible for not taking control, in fact, not saying I take no responsibility initially, anyone who's responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America.

00:05:26.080 And this president, if he's reelected, you know what will happen.

00:05:32.160 Cases and deaths will remain far too high.

00:05:35.900 Now we're over 800,000 deaths in America and the cases are as rampant as they have ever been here.

00:05:43.260 Now that that's the case, it's, well, no president can solve this.

00:05:47.200 As Rich Lowry of National Review asked this week, and where does Trump go for his apology?

00:05:51.060 The rise in Omicron, a relatively mild virus, thankfully for the vast majority of people who get it, has forced even the prophet Fauci to admit that the obsession with case numbers as a metric for community response is off base.

00:06:09.460 As you get further on and the infections become less severe, it is much more relevant to focus on the hospitalizations as opposed to the total number of cases.

00:06:22.460 More shockingly, he has finally, finally, almost two years into this pandemic, admitted the need to balance the goal of minimizing COVID with the need to live our lives as Americans, a free people.

00:06:39.800 The CDC last week with Fauci's blessing shortened the quarantine time for people with COVID and those in close contact with them down to five days from 10.

00:06:53.180 I mean, obviously, if you have symptoms, you should not be out.

00:06:56.400 But if you are asymptomatic and you are infected, we want to get people back to the jobs, particularly those with essential jobs, to keep our society running smoothly.

00:07:07.440 So I think that was a very prudent and good choice on the part of the CDC.

00:07:13.280 You see, he's saying there are other things to consider beside this obsession with zero COVID.

00:07:21.160 We have to keep society rolling.

00:07:23.100 We have to keep business open.

00:07:25.160 We can't just hover shelter in place and live in fear.

00:07:30.400 That's essentially what he's saying, that there is a need for balance.

00:07:33.140 Believe me, from Fauci, that's huge.

00:07:34.880 Now, some leftists told for months by Fauci and others that the virus remains contagious for at least 10 days.

00:07:42.100 You've got to quarantine for at least 10 days.

00:07:43.740 Now they're mad.

00:07:44.860 They don't see the return to work as a valid explanation for exposing contagious people to the world.

00:07:51.540 And now they're saying, well, we might moderate it.

00:07:53.120 Maybe we're going to say five days and then you can come back to the workforce if you get a positive test.

00:07:57.200 Well, why didn't they say that to begin with?

00:07:58.720 Because there aren't any tests because they know they didn't create tests.

00:08:03.120 They didn't encourage the creation of tests.

00:08:05.060 And they can't really require tests of people because nobody can get them.

00:08:08.500 That's their own creation.

00:08:09.980 That's their own problem that they created.

00:08:12.240 So we'll see if they if they change that or not.

00:08:15.400 But the truth is that that 10 days was a made up standard from the beginning, as was the six feet distancing rule, as was the cloth mask rule, as was the 70 percent for herd immunity rule.

00:08:26.060 I could go on. The point is, we have been lied to.

00:08:31.060 We have been actively misled.

00:08:33.740 We have been led around like mules on a tether by government bureaucrats like Fauci, who want to shut down your job while he makes north of four hundred thousand dollars a year.

00:08:44.380 And we learned this week is set to retire with a pension of over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.

00:08:49.800 These people want to muzzle your kid all day at school while they parade around Maslisk at dinners and the Met Gala and so on. 1.00

00:08:58.480 They want to scare parents into sticking an experimental vaccine into their kids arms over and over and over.

00:09:05.520 Not one, but two shots and then a mandatory third or no sports or school or indoor fun of any kind.

00:09:13.340 Despite the data that unvaccinated young people face a risk far less severe than that of fully vaccinated adults.

00:09:22.780 By the way, the Justice Department just admitted in a filing in support of its vaccine mandate that people between the ages of 18 and 30 have about the same risk of of, you know, from covid as those who are 50 plus who are fully vaccinated.

00:09:39.480 So the unvaccinated 30 year old has about the same risk as the fully vaccinated 50 year old.

00:09:45.420 And yes, and yet we're firing people.

00:09:46.840 We're firing 18 to 30 year olds for not getting the vaccine.

00:09:50.120 They had to admit it in court.

00:09:51.760 You see, just like Trump and his election story, when they get into court, they start to tell the truth.

00:09:59.860 And the Biden administration is telling the truth about the real risk young people face.

00:10:04.040 And it's minuscule and does not justify vaccine mandates or any of this nonsense.

00:10:08.660 And their lies are starting to be exposed.

00:10:11.760 So while we continue to see outrages, I mean, not everyone's listening to reason.

00:10:17.140 They're just starting to.

00:10:18.760 We continue to see outrages like schools closing right now, despite the harm we know this causes the children.

00:10:25.180 Thanks a lot, unions or letters like the one from our own boys school proclaiming that.

00:10:30.340 Oh, of course, that's a quote.

00:10:31.580 Of course, the boys will remain masked for the foreseeable future.

00:10:35.220 Or the notice in my friend's New York City building mandating that all contractors, delivery personnel and employees servicing residents in the building must now be fully vaccinated.

00:10:46.500 OK, so now you're cleaning lady, your plumber, your pizza delivery guy.

00:10:50.320 They got to get vaxxed to do their jobs.

00:10:52.700 Despite all of that, the House of Cards is coming down.

00:10:59.180 The realities of covid are becoming undeniable.

00:11:02.740 When even the leftists start to realize that covid comes for all, even Democrats in New York City, even members of the media, the politics will moderate.

00:11:14.960 Voters will make short of it.

00:11:16.340 There are enough conservatives and independent and center leftists out there that voters will make sure of it.

00:11:25.680 And for that reason, we should be hopeful that this madness will soon be over.

00:11:31.720 Joining me now is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of health policy at Stanford University.

00:11:38.220 Doc, it's great to have you here.

00:11:39.500 One of the headlines I want to get to you with you is not just the latest in covid, but the revelation that you specifically were targeted, targeted, targeted by Fauci and others at his level, including Francis Collins, for your position with the other doctors in the in the great Barrington recommendation.

00:12:00.500 And so, you know, personally, what it's like to have the world look at Fauci as a god.

00:12:06.060 And when he comes against you, there are there's fallout.

00:12:09.560 I want to get to that in a minute.

00:12:10.540 But let's just start with the latest on Omicron and people's realization.

00:12:14.060 I think slowly but surely that covid is ubiquitous.

00:12:18.200 There's no outrunning it.

00:12:19.800 There's only learning to live with it, with which you and the other great Barrington docs saw very early on.

00:12:26.440 So the thing about covid is that we knew even from the from even like April of 2020 that a very substantial number of people had already been infected outside of the can of public health.

00:12:39.960 There were so many people in like, for instance, I did a study in the early days of the epidemic in Santa Clara County, where we found four percent of three and a half.

00:12:48.600 It was a two and a half percent of the population had already been infected.

00:12:51.540 And in L.A. County, four percent of the population already infected by April of 2020.

00:12:56.440 Fifty times more cases, 40 times more cases than public health authorities knew about.

00:13:00.440 If that's the case, that it's so easy to spread, the lesson should have been right then.

00:13:06.460 There's no chance of stopping disease from spreading down to zero.

00:13:11.980 Instead, we have pursued for two years this very foolish path where we just we thought with this illusion of control that we had some technology to stop the spread of the disease from and bring it down to zero.

00:13:25.080 Well, we don't.

00:13:26.440 And instead instead of pursuing normal, reasonable things like protecting the vulnerable, you know, especially especially the older population, we decided we were going to shut society down in order to to end the virus.

00:13:39.200 Well, in retrospect, that's turned out to be an enormous mistake.

00:13:42.900 Absolutely.

00:13:43.600 You've been proven right.

00:13:44.900 And despite despite that, you're not going to get an apology, even though we now know I was stunned when I saw this just because it's rare you actually find the proof in writing.

00:13:54.620 But you you came under severe attack from Francis Collins, now retiring director of the NIH, and Anthony Fauci, who were on board in late December.

00:14:06.820 This was revealed, but they were on board from the time you came out with the Great Barrington Declaration with trying to smear you and the other doctors of behind the Great Barrington piece who said, you know, let's let's do focus protection.

00:14:20.000 Let's let's focus on protecting the most vulnerable, but the rest of society should remain open, which is basically where they've where they've landed.

00:14:27.520 OK, so it's been revealed now thanks to this is the American Institute for Economic Research published emails from some of these scientists revealing that they want to discredit you.

00:14:37.160 And they had a conference in October, early October, 2nd through the 4th, 2020.

00:14:43.580 This is four days after the conference.

00:14:46.180 Dr. Francis Collins called three of the scientists in attendance, quote, fringe epidemiologists and sent a directive to Anthony Fauci and other senior staff to publish.

00:14:57.800 He wanted a quick and devastating published takedown of the Great Barrington Declaration's premises.

00:15:03.600 He stayed on it. Fauci was on board. He wrote the same night to let Collins know that there was already a devastating takedown of the declaration in Wired by some science reporter, not not a doctor, not a doctor at Stanford named Matt Reynolds.

00:15:17.620 And then by mid-October 2020, Collins emailed again to boast about calling the three scientists, you and your two colleagues, fringe in The Washington Post, told Fauci the ongoing campaign to take down the Great Barrington Declaration won't be appreciated in the Trump White House.

00:15:33.860 But Fauci assured him, oh, don't worry, the Trump White House is too busy dealing with other things to worry about Great Barrington and went on to make sure that pieces were being published, trying to diminish you and smear you as a doctor and the theory behind the Great Barrington piece.

00:15:50.260 So your feeling upon learning that there was a coordinated campaign against you.

00:15:55.320 You know, I kind of sensed, even from the last year, that there was some very strange things happening.

00:16:02.800 Reporters started calling me very shortly after we wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, asking me why I wanted to let the virus rip through society.

00:16:11.220 The Great Barrington Declaration doesn't say that we want to let the virus rip to society.

00:16:14.720 Quite the contrary.

00:16:15.560 We said we wanted to take action to protect the vulnerable.

00:16:20.000 We had a lot of discussion about that.

00:16:23.140 And what I actually hoped out of that was a broader conversation with public health officials who know the living circumstances of the elderly in their communities and are perfectly capable of devising creative ways to protect the vulnerable.

00:16:35.820 Instead, we got a propaganda campaign.

00:16:37.880 We had people accusing me of wanting to expose people to the virus, wanting to let the virus rip through society.

00:16:46.100 And it was what we learned.

00:16:47.860 It was a propaganda campaign initiated and directed by the top levels of scientific leadership within the federal government, including Francis Collins and Tony Fauci.

00:16:59.320 That is absolutely shocking to me.

00:17:01.360 What it essentially did is it sent a signal to all other people, scientists and others, who were having qualms with this lockdown-focused policy and told them, you know, it's a nice career you got there.

00:17:16.220 If you were to speak up, you know, that nice NIH grant you have, well, I mean, I don't know.

00:17:22.340 It would be nasty if something were to happen to it.

00:17:24.660 In effect, they had created a conflict of interest where you have these people who are charged with tens of billions of dollars of scientific funding.

00:17:35.000 The careers of scientists are made or broken on whether they can get funding from the NIH.

00:17:41.560 And so now you have the head of the NIH essentially saying this is a fringe view to someone, you know, like, okay, you can ignore me.

00:17:49.460 But, like, you had Martin Kulldorff at Harvard University and Sunetra Gupta at Oxford University signing on and tens of thousands of others epidemiologists and scientists signing on.

00:17:59.300 Essentially, to call all of that opposition fringe, what was at play here?

00:18:04.220 What they wanted to do was to create a false sense that there was a scientific consensus when there wasn't a scientific consensus.

00:18:11.640 They effectively lied and created a propaganda campaign in order to get their policy.

00:18:16.500 And, unfortunately, they got their way.

00:18:20.160 It's stunning to see how political they are.

00:18:23.420 I mean, we've sort of seen it over the past two years, but it's stunning to see it in writing.

00:18:27.540 And to talk about, as you point out, you and your two colleagues who came on this show right when you published it in October of 2020.

00:18:33.800 We had you guys on.

00:18:35.100 We talked about it.

00:18:36.660 These are not fringe epidemiologists.

00:18:38.940 I mean, we've got Harvard, Oxford, Stanford.

00:18:41.720 Last I looked, these aren't fringe organizations.

00:18:44.100 I realize you don't speak for your entire institution.

00:18:46.820 But you came out with a thoughtful alternative to the devastating lockdowns that we've seen.

00:18:52.720 And when you came on my show, you highlighted the devastation that the lockdowns were causing.

00:18:57.300 That was one of your great concerns that, yes, we're only looking at harm from COVID.

00:19:01.200 But we need to look at the hunger, for example, that's going to happen in foreign countries as a result of this and so on and the deaths that we're going to see as a result.

00:19:09.700 That's not fringe.

00:19:10.940 That's a legitimate concern that they just chose to disregard.

00:19:13.400 And now when you see it in writing that they wanted to, I mean, they wanted to ruin you guys.

00:19:17.720 And I'm sure you still will deal with some of the fallouts.

00:19:20.660 I mean, what would you say to Dr. Fauci if you could talk to him?

00:19:23.960 I would ask him to step down.

00:19:26.480 He's done enough damage.

00:19:28.880 He the role he's played in this epidemic has been, I think, in large part negative.

00:19:36.660 He has silenced scientific discussion around his policies.

00:19:41.160 He has pushed forward policies like lockdowns that are blind to the harms they have caused, as if they were the only responsible thing to do when they were not.

00:19:51.740 There were alternatives available, like focus protection.

00:19:54.760 And, you know, the fact that he is the head of the NIH where he controls or they have the NIAID where he controls the budgets of epidemiologists and virologists and others who have been put elevated to the top of their ability to comment on COVID policy, that itself has created this enormous conflict of interest.

00:20:17.920 He should never have been in charge of COVID policy.

00:20:20.840 I mean, in effect, he's been the de facto president of the United States for the last two years, setting the most important policy followed by the United States and actually around the world.

00:20:34.360 It's far past time for him to step down.

00:20:37.880 Have you heard from him or from Francis Collins in the wake of this revelation?

00:20:42.540 No.

00:20:42.880 In fact, I was really surprised to see Francis Collins go on TV shortly after the FOIA'd email documents come out and double down.

00:20:52.640 He called us fringe again.

00:20:54.300 He defended himself, saying that this was an irresponsible, let it rip strategy.

00:20:57.440 He continued the propaganda campaign instead of forthrightly apologizing, which is what he should have done.

00:21:03.000 It's one of these things where, I have to say, I've long admired Francis Collins.

00:21:10.320 I even at once upon a time admired Tony Fauci, especially Francis Collins as a giant in his field.

00:21:17.800 He was a geneticist that's responsible for the Human Genome Project.

00:21:23.200 But I think in the context of COVID policy, he was far out of his league.

00:21:28.500 He does not know public health.

00:21:30.820 It's very clear that he did not understand the devastating harms of lockdown to the poor and vulnerable around the world.

00:21:37.380 He was blind to it.

00:21:38.920 And then he acted in this irresponsible way, silencing debate, when instead he should have been embracing it.

00:21:44.640 And the irony, the irony of now Fauci on TV saying, well, the reason we're shortening the quarantine period from 10 days to five is because people need to get back out there to work.

00:21:56.060 You can't have a society run like this where this many people who are infected are sitting out for 10 days.

00:22:01.080 Finally admitted, admitting some balance is required.

00:22:04.760 Zero COVID is not possible.

00:22:06.900 You can't design every policy around how do we minimize the disease's spread.

00:22:11.740 You have to be realistic about the fact that society must go on.

00:22:16.740 But you you made that recognition in October of 2020 and were called fringe and publicly attacked by Fauci and Collins and others doing their bidding because of it.

00:22:27.800 There's a lot to go over with Dr. J. Bhattacharya on on COVID, on the latest on Omicron and what we're seeing now with the response of public policy.

00:22:37.880 And we'll get to this as well.

00:22:39.100 Remember how AOC loved to attack Ted Cruz when he left Texas during the crisis down there?

00:22:45.800 Wait until you hear how she's responding to her critics who just accused her of doing the exact same thing. 0.90

00:22:50.880 Saw the pictures of her in Florida on vacay.

00:22:54.660 Plus, later today, we're going to get you up to speed with my own reaction and Andrew Branca's to the Kim Potter verdict.

00:23:01.720 And we'll have the latest in the saga of the transgender swimmer breaking collegiate records at UPenn as two top swimming executives speak out right here.

00:23:12.560 Stay with us.

00:23:13.020 Let's talk a bit about Omicron and what's real and what's not real.

00:23:23.980 What I my takeaway and having read many different sources now over the past couple of weeks is Omicron is indeed far more mild version of this virus than Delta.

00:23:34.880 That you are very, very unlikely to be hospitalized or to die from Omicron unless you are, you know, among the very elderly or very immunocompromised and and haven't been vaccinated.

00:23:47.520 Those are the people who need to worry, who have, you know, one or two of those three factors on that for the rest of us.

00:23:54.020 If you get Omicron is probably going to be basically like a cold.

00:23:57.840 Do I have my facts right?

00:23:59.300 I mean, Omicron, thank God, it appears much milder.

00:24:02.860 The mechanism seems to be that it it unlike the previous variants, it doesn't seem to be very efficient at infecting your lungs.

00:24:09.860 It affects your your upper mucosa, but not your not your lungs.

00:24:13.020 So in that in that sense, it's a really I mean, we should be thankful.

00:24:17.740 I mean, of course, it's not never thankful for getting a disease.

00:24:20.320 But, you know, like if you had to choose between Delta and Omicron, I think I'd pick Omicron.

00:24:24.820 I think the the the as you said, Megan, you're right.

00:24:28.620 There still are vulnerable people and there's still Delta floating around. 1.00

00:24:31.980 So it's not that we have to let down our guard entirely.

00:24:35.660 And if you are unvaccinated, especially if you've not got COVID before, I really, really strongly recommend it.

00:24:41.480 Not in order to prevent you from getting Omicron or any other variant, because the vaccines don't do that.

00:24:47.280 They don't stop you from getting the disease.

00:24:49.420 But what they do do is they protect you against severe outcomes should you get the disease.

00:24:52.980 So that's that's just a prudent thing to do, especially if you're in a vulnerable group.

00:24:57.060 And so I think that that's that's completely reasonable.

00:25:00.880 Now, what do we do with that?

00:25:02.280 Well, for one, these absolutely ridiculous, coercive, anti-scientific vaccine mandates just have to end.

00:25:10.200 There is no good argument for a vaccine mandate even before Omicron, because the vaccines don't stop disease spread.

00:25:17.340 Now, with Omicron, given that the disease is mild and we have such a large fraction of the population either vaccinated or recovered from COVID, and you have a relatively mild version of the variant going around, I don't see any good argument to do to fire people on the basis of the fact that they didn't take the vaccine, which is what we've been doing.

00:25:37.000 The staff shortages, by the way, you mentioned earlier about about about the finally taking into account other harms from the from the policies.

00:25:44.760 You know, the staff shortages caused in hospitals are in part due to these vaccine mandates, the the slowdown in in in in the inability to like manage patients to have to like we're actually overwhelming hospital systems in part because of these vaccine mandates.

00:26:01.720 It's a lot of these sort of short sighted policies, I think, should absolutely end, especially in light of Omicron.

00:26:06.420 Yeah, they're saying some of the so-called flight mare problems that we saw over the holiday season with the flights not taking off or do it in part to staff shortages that they don't have enough pilots.

00:26:16.420 They don't have enough flight attendants to actually staff the flights.

00:26:20.200 So we have to get more realistic because everyone's getting Omicron.

00:26:23.860 I mean, it's you can be double vaxxed and boosted and Omicron's likely to come your way and there's not much you can do about it.

00:26:30.260 The vaccine isn't very effective at preventing Omicron.

00:26:33.940 You can spread, unlike with the very first variant of this virus where we didn't know.

00:26:38.240 It looked like the vaccines might provide provide some measure of protection against transmission of that version of covid.

00:26:46.260 That's no longer the case.

00:26:48.260 You can still spread Delta. 0.98

00:26:50.220 You can absolutely spread Omicron if you've been vaccinated, if you've been boosted.

00:26:55.560 That's just a reality.

00:26:56.740 But thankfully, it's not as severe a disease as as you point out Delta. 0.99

00:27:01.680 But now here's what I hear.

00:27:03.160 Tell me if this is true, that so far I heard this actually on The Daily, the New York Times podcast today, that the if you've had Delta, it doesn't necessarily give you great odds of staving off Omicron.

00:27:18.160 But if you've had Omicron, you have better odds of staving off Delta.

00:27:23.720 I mean, there's still the studies on that need to be done more carefully still.

00:27:28.360 I don't I'm not convinced one way or the other on this.

00:27:30.900 I think that previous infection, no matter what variant, provides protection against future variants in terms of severe disease.

00:27:39.120 That seems very clear that when reinfection happens, it tends to be milder than if and it's very it's relatively rare.

00:27:45.820 Like with the literature before Omicron suggested that at one year, only somewhere between 0.3 and 1% of people were reinfected.

00:27:56.780 So you get infected, recover, and then a full year later, only 1% of people get get the infection again.

00:28:03.040 And the infections tended to be milder.

00:28:04.680 So that was the literature before Omicron.

00:28:08.140 It looks like from the preliminary literature, Omicron does evade the protection you got from Delta and from the other variants in terms of infection.

00:28:20.440 It seems to me like Lisa's my gestalt, not yet based on I don't think any solid studies as yet.

00:28:26.720 But like I think based on what I've seen thus far, it seems like there is a higher reinfection rate with Omicron, even if you had Delta before.

00:28:35.480 Whether it goes the other way around, Megan, I just haven't seen any literature to suggest one way or the other.

00:28:40.440 And this is what they were reporting today in the New York Times reporting that if you get Omicron, you have a lesser chance of then getting Delta than if it went the other way around, which, of course, will lead a lot of people to say, well, great.

00:28:53.440 If I have to get one variant, I'll get Omicron and I'll prevent the double.

00:28:57.840 You know, I'll prevent another Omicron and I'll prevent a Delta because there are a lot of people who either can't get vaccinated or have just chosen not to get vaccinated. 0.66

00:29:04.800 And, you know, they're not afraid of covid, you know, for whatever reasons, maybe it's the 18 to 30 year old said that they don't need to be afraid of covid unless they're immunocompromised in some way.

00:29:14.240 So, I mean, you can understand it. The the rate of spread, however, is at an all time high in the country.

00:29:20.620 That's why Fauci is saying stop looking at case numbers. And now it so happens.

00:29:24.080 Most of us agree with him and have been saying don't look at case numbers as the metric all along.

00:29:28.040 That's that hasn't been the right metric from the very beginning.

00:29:30.260 But now even he's saying it because what you tell me, how bad will it get?

00:29:36.300 And should we be basing any policy, school closures or otherwise, a number of cases at this point?

00:29:42.540 Absolutely not. It makes no sense to base the school closures or any other kind of policy on on case spread alone.

00:29:50.200 I think the thinking was that you look at case spread because you want to get a sense of how how well we're doing with our with our masking or lockdown policies to try to stop the disease from spreading around.

00:30:03.320 Right. In New York, in the early days, there was every day there would be a press conference bragging about how we were getting the virus under control.

00:30:10.820 And for a long time, every time the cases went down, it was it was a success of the governor that was running the state as long as it was a sort of blue state governor.

00:30:21.200 And if the cases went up, then then obviously was a failure of the governor of the policies that usually in a red state.

00:30:28.200 I think that kind of politicization based around a scientific fallacy that we have some possibility of controlling the spread of this virus at all is has been completely destructive to the confidence that people have in public health.

00:30:41.940 Public health should not be politicized in the way it has been. It should not be used for political purposes the way it has been.

00:30:47.680 And I think so from a scientific point of view, from an epidemiologic point of view, tracking cases by themselves, if maybe interesting, it's something epidemiologists can talk to each other about.

00:30:59.160 But to use it to drive policy and especially to use it to drive panic and fear in the population has been completely irresponsible.

00:31:08.420 And I'm really glad to see that that they're finally scaling. You're sort of pushing sort of tracking back from that.

00:31:15.240 Now, I am seeing that when you look at rates of hospitalization and death, the numbers are promising.

00:31:21.060 I mean, nobody wants to see people still dying or being severely hurt by covid, but it's a reality, especially if you're very old or very sick and haven't been vaccinated that, you know, it poses a real threat.

00:31:33.100 So if you're in those groups, for sure, you should be getting vaccinated and you should be looking into one of the therapeutics.

00:31:37.940 God forbid you contract covid because especially this this Pfizer drug can really, really prevent you from dying.

00:31:44.640 However, if you look at the numbers out of South Africa and they're the ones who first alerted us to Omicron, they're encouraging.

00:31:49.860 A South African study just found that the hospitalized patients during the Omicron surge were far less likely, far less to have severe illness or to die.

00:31:59.220 Seventy four percent of hospitalized patients required oxygen therapy during Delta.

00:32:03.820 During that wave, the number in South Africa dropped to seventeen point six percent amid Omicron.

00:32:09.420 That's huge from seventy four to seventeen.

00:32:11.760 The median length of stay in the hospital prior to Omicron was seven to eight days.

00:32:15.500 Now it's three.

00:32:16.440 The death rate of hospitalized covid-19 patients in South Africa during Delta was twenty nine point one percent during Omicron.

00:32:23.800 It's two point seven.

00:32:26.280 And on it goes.

00:32:27.300 So that's all very, very encouraging.

00:32:30.660 I know you tell me whether we should be fearing severe disease or death from Omicron in this country.

00:32:36.800 I mean, I think the typical person, no.

00:32:40.600 I mean, we shouldn't be we shouldn't be fearing this disease in that sense at all.

00:32:43.580 Like it's a disease that we need to manage.

00:32:47.000 You know, there may be groups, immunocompromised people and older people that still face some threat.

00:32:52.280 And of course, for them, I think vaccination is absolutely the most important thing they can do.

00:32:56.840 But we and but Megan, I think you said something really, really important there.

00:33:00.380 We now have in our toolkit a lot of things that we didn't previously have to to help treat the disease even after you should get it.

00:33:09.040 You mentioned the Pfizer drug that was that that that I don't actually I'm not sure does it.

00:33:13.940 I don't see it been approved in the U.S., but I think it's sort of headed in that direction.

00:33:17.440 And I think there are other countries that have approved it.

00:33:20.300 I never know if it's an official approval or not.

00:33:23.120 But yes, you can get it now as of as of late December.

00:33:25.440 You can get that drug in the United States if you get sick.

00:33:28.260 Oh, good.

00:33:29.180 I mean, so that's that's quite good news.

00:33:31.420 The other thing is, is there are other drugs as well.

00:33:33.840 So like, for instance, it looks like the evidence on a drug called fluvoxamine, a cheap drug that that's been available for a long time.

00:33:42.320 It seems like it's effective against severe disease if you if you were to get sick.

00:33:45.980 Like we know that vitamin D, for instance, it sort of improves outcomes with covid if you're especially for vitamin D deficient.

00:33:53.860 So we're seeing a lot of like developments that help people if they were to get sick.

00:34:00.540 Right. So the vaccine doesn't stop you from getting sick.

00:34:02.840 So these are important even for the vaccinated population.

00:34:04.900 And of course, there's monoclonal antibodies, which Governor DeSantis sort of rolled out very, very sharply in the summer.

00:34:11.000 For reasons I don't understand, the Bush administration has pulled back on this.

00:34:19.220 And I think they finally relented and put some of that out again.

00:34:22.800 This is one of these things where it's so short sighted.

00:34:25.320 It's so I can't I can't like wrap my mind around it.

00:34:28.560 This is a drug.

00:34:29.920 There's monoclonal antibodies.

00:34:30.860 It actually has been shown to reduce severe disease and death if you were to get sick.

00:34:34.580 It may have some diminished capacity against Omicron, but Delta is still floating around.

00:34:39.880 And yet the Biden administration pulled back supplies.

00:34:42.960 So, you know, the federal government took over control of purchasing of it and distribution of it.

00:34:47.200 And they pulled back supplies of it.

00:34:48.420 They should have been stocking up all summer long for this very predictable winter surge that's come along.

00:34:54.100 It really does make you think it's all about politics.

00:34:56.200 You know, it's like, well, it was a DeSantis thing, a death Santis thing.

00:34:59.360 And so we can't be associated with that, you know, because he has to be demonized the whole Florida policy, just like you three guys and gal, I should say, two guys and a gal at Great Barrington Declaration.

00:35:09.180 You need to be demonized anything once they've decided it's anti what they're saying for the moment has to be demonized rather than considered, tested, kicked around, you know, the normal scientific process.

00:35:20.360 And it's really to the detriment, A, yes, of our well-being, but B, of our trust in these institutions and public health in general.

00:35:27.640 Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I don't, I don't, I had never thought about this disease as a political thing.

00:35:34.460 And it's, it comes as a matter of some shock and sadness that has become politicized in this way, because I think that kind of politicization has made it difficult to actually consider alternate ideas that actually might work better than the ones we've adopted.

00:35:48.620 A lot of the, the, the, the attacks on, on me personally, and on, on the, on the Great Barrington Declaration generally, and on, on, on early treatment, on, even on the, on the vaccines themselves have been fueled by this political politicization of the, of the discussion of public health.

00:36:06.480 And, you know, I, frankly, it's, it's, it's, I, I don't even blame politicians.

00:36:11.520 It's public health itself that has been responsible for this.

00:36:15.520 Does anyone looking at the actions of Dr. Fauci doubt what political party he favors?

00:36:21.080 Is there anyone who looks at the actions of public health generally and how they treated Dr. Scott Atlas last year, for instance, just for the crime of advising a president?

00:36:30.660 I have any doubt about the sympathies of public health and their politics, that kind of political leaning in a profession should ostensibly be politically neutral, fuels distrust, fuels the kind of bad outcomes that we've seen.

00:36:46.920 Um, and that's something that I think public health needs to look itself very carefully in the mirror and, and deal with going forward because public health needs to be trusted by everybody.

00:36:56.140 It should be for the public at large, not for just a part of the public with whom public health agrees with politically.

00:37:01.660 Mm-hmm.

00:37:02.520 The, um, the, the, the point is underscored by the fact that AOC, who has spent the past two years ripping on DeSantis and any Republicans who push back on the Fauci narratives, um, decided to take her vacation.

00:37:13.720 She's, of course, from, uh, New York state, from the Bronx, well, really from Yorktown Heights, which is a Tony area of Westchester.

00:37:20.180 Um, she decided to take her vacation down in Florida.

00:37:22.720 Where did she go?

00:37:23.440 Not, not the great state of New York, my home state, uh, but down to Florida.

00:37:27.960 And, uh, DeSantis' office sent out a tweet saying something like, welcome to Florida where we're free.

00:37:32.140 And she decided to respond, this is not for you, Jay, but basically for our audience, she decided to respond by saying those who were attacking her, uh, were Republicans mad that they can't date her.

00:37:43.720 And that they are projecting their sexual frustrations onto her.

00:37:48.780 Um, okay.

00:37:51.180 So it doesn't have anything to do with sexual frustrations or desire to date you.

00:37:56.180 It has to do with your hypocrisy.

00:37:57.920 People are allowed to call that out without being called perverts, which is basically what she did. 0.78

00:38:03.120 Um, and you look down at Florida and I'll tell you, now I'm in the state of Connecticut and I feel, I feel envious.

00:38:07.920 I wish I, I wish I didn't have so much family and so many friends up here because I too would like to live free.

00:38:13.520 I too would like to take off the mask and live free the way they do in Florida.

00:38:16.860 But, you know, my mom's here.

00:38:18.120 My husband's mom is here.

00:38:19.080 We stay in the Northeast.

00:38:20.120 And I'm so sick, Jay, of the, the masking, you know, like, like I said in the, in the intro, our school sends out this letter like, oh, of course, of course these boys are going to stay masked indefinitely.

00:38:30.520 I just don't know what to do to make them see reason.

00:38:32.620 I don't know what it's going to take.

00:38:33.700 I mean, I think, uh, uh, you know what, I, I, uh, applaud anyone who wants to live, live their life.

00:38:41.200 I mean, I think that is in, in our lives, we have to decide what's important to us.

00:38:45.640 And if a politician wants to go to Florida and, uh, have a, you know, have a vacation, I'm, I'm not going to, I'm in no role to criticize, but I, you know, my, my wife would love to go, like move to Florida as well.

00:38:58.060 California has been in many ways, much more miserable than I, I mean, I've lived here for many, many years and, uh, it has been a, uh, kind of a miserable time the last two years, uh, with so many of the policies focused on control of one virus, as opposed to thinking more broadly about public health.

00:39:15.440 Uh, generally, I think it's, it creates a living situation that doesn't feel free.

00:39:19.900 And so it's not surprising to me that, uh, that people want, find attractive, a place like Florida that where, uh, public health is taken much more holistically.

00:39:28.560 Mm-hmm. The, I have a friend who's out in LA right now on a vacation and she was hiking outside. It's beautiful there. You know, if you want to hike outside. And, uh, she said, most of the people were wearing masks outside while they're hiking. It's like, hello, you don't need my, even my brother-in-law who I love. He, we saw him over the holiday and he, he was offering us these little things that you can put under your mask that make it easier to breathe. I don't, it's like these little plastic things. And I said, Ken, I don't, I don't want to make the mask more

00:39:58.560 user-friendly. I want the mask off. That's my goal. I refuse to submit to fashion or comfort or anything else with these masks. In the meantime, I want it off my face and I want it off my kids' faces. And I just don't think short of moving, um, or politics, I'm going to be able to convince these heads of school out here that it's the right thing to do. What do you make of the masking?

00:40:21.620 I mean, I think we have vastly oversold masking as a solution to this epidemic, uh, as a solution to controlling the spread of the disease. At the beginning of the epidemic, there were dozens of randomized studies with the flu, randomized studies conducted in community settings, even in hospital settings where it, they showed very little efficacy against control of viral spread. And back then it was the flu, right? That, that they'd done these randomized studies, dozens of them. Um, since that, since COVID,

00:40:51.540 there've been two randomized studies and both have found either small or no effect in terms of the efficacy of masking and protecting against disease spread, both protecting UN and protecting others. Um, very, very low efficacy. Uh, when you

00:41:05.060 have public health putting, going so four square behind one, a, a, a intervention, uh, universally adopted, pushing it for universally adopted, uh, with such low levels of efficacy, it's going to breed distrust. And especially when you're told, well, it's not that, it's not that problematic to wear. It's like, you know, there's no cost to wearing it. There's no harm. Well, anyone, I mean, truly there's, uh, is there anyone that can honestly say that they prefer wearing a mask? If they, uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's okay. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

00:41:35.060 it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's

00:42:05.560 The United States is unique in this, by the way.

00:42:07.900 Only the CDC says two to five-year-olds should wear masks.

00:42:10.920 Even the World Health Organization doesn't say that.

00:42:13.520 Yeah.

00:42:13.840 And now they're talking about out in L.A. mandating the N95 masks.

00:42:18.800 I mean, the ones that really suck your face, that's the complete coverage that we get through

00:42:23.760 with sort of the cloth masks, which are as loose and as comfortable as possible with

00:42:28.000 my kids.

00:42:29.100 But N95, you got to be kidding, man, on all the children.

00:42:31.860 And Fauci's saying we're never going to be able to take the masks off on air travel.

00:42:36.020 It's like you're you will not be in charge forever, Fauci.

00:42:40.240 You will retire with your three hundred.

00:42:43.400 And OK, so right now he makes four hundred and thirty four thousand three hundred and

00:42:46.300 twelve dollars a year.

00:42:47.260 Unbelievable.

00:42:47.920 And he'll be retiring with at least three hundred fifty thousand per year in retirement.

00:42:50.980 But go.

00:42:51.500 You enjoy that, Dr. Fauci.

00:42:52.860 And you realize that at some point you will not be running public health policy and you

00:42:57.060 will not.

00:42:57.580 You and Pete Buttigieg will not be able to keep your hands over our mouths for every

00:43:01.500 domestic flight.

00:43:02.280 There will be a return to order and reason at some point because the public has the final

00:43:07.120 say.

00:43:07.980 All right, Dr. J, we've got we've got to talk about testing because now this is becoming

00:43:11.680 the new holy grail.

00:43:12.780 I've noticed on the left now it's like testing.

00:43:15.180 Oh, we fell down.

00:43:16.200 We needed more testing.

00:43:17.340 But I mean, I'm more in the camp of this is not the holy grail.

00:43:22.240 This is not the solution.

00:43:23.400 But I'd love to get your take.

00:43:24.420 And I'll do that right after this quick break.

00:43:26.560 And remember, folks, you can find The Megyn Kelly Show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel

00:43:31.880 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show and clips when you subscribe to

00:43:37.340 our YouTube channel.

00:43:38.180 That's YouTube dot com slash Megyn Kelly. 0.85

00:43:40.200 If you prefer an audio podcast, just subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher

00:43:45.620 or wherever you get your podcasts for free.

00:43:48.040 And there you will find our full archives with more than 230 shows, including Jay's first

00:43:54.220 time on our show way back because it was December.

00:43:57.180 So it was a couple of months after he released the Great Barrington Declaration, December 2020.

00:44:01.460 It was episode 34.

00:44:03.340 And it's well worth your time.

00:44:09.780 So, Dr.

00:44:10.860 Radhacharya, let's talk about testing because now it's like, OK, here's the real failure.

00:44:15.060 We didn't produce enough tests.

00:44:16.560 I mean, I think that's obvious, right?

00:44:17.780 People want tests and they can't get them.

00:44:19.380 And there are situations where you really need to know if you have covid and it's hard

00:44:23.380 to get a test and it's hard to stand.

00:44:25.220 And if you like in New York City, if you got to get it right away, it costs an arm and a

00:44:28.740 leg, right?

00:44:29.160 If you got to pay for the rapid thing anyway, it's they've fallen down on the job when it

00:44:35.040 comes to the testing.

00:44:35.740 But there are some on the left who seem to see this as the answer.

00:44:40.500 Like if we could just get all the testing now with Omicron, then our troubles will be over

00:44:46.360 because people can test all the time and they're always going to know.

00:44:48.540 And I'm sitting here thinking you got you got a variant that is rising.

00:44:53.400 That's going to be the dominant variant.

00:44:56.140 I realize Delta is very much still out there that barely does anything to the vast majority

00:45:01.520 of people.

00:45:02.100 And we don't have to test before we go on an airplane or into a sports arena or into

00:45:07.460 school for flu or even pneumonia or stomach viruses, which can make you very ill.

00:45:16.060 And I see this as going to a dark place where it's like, did you test?

00:45:20.240 Did you take your test this morning?

00:45:21.120 Let me see your test.

00:45:22.020 Did you test within the last four hours?

00:45:23.480 Why not?

00:45:24.100 It's only as good.

00:45:25.020 You know, like that's going to take over in a way I think is going to be pernicious.

00:45:28.980 I think you're right.

00:45:29.740 I mean, I think the problem is you have to think about testing, like what's it for, right?

00:45:35.580 So if you're using a test to manage a patient, that's a good use of a test, right?

00:45:39.560 Do you want to understand, does the patient have COVID or does the patient have some other

00:45:42.680 disease so that you can decide what treatment to give?

00:45:45.060 That makes complete sense.

00:45:46.380 That's when you need a test.

00:45:47.840 You can also imagine using the test at home settings before you go visit a vulnerable family

00:45:53.180 member, right?

00:45:53.860 So before you visit grandma, you check to make sure you're COVID negative.

00:45:58.160 So that, you know, you're not unintentionally exposing her.

00:46:01.460 That makes sense.

00:46:02.760 But to use tests at a population scale to stop the disease from spreading, it's the same

00:46:08.220 mistake we've been making over and over again.

00:46:10.560 It's not possible to do that.

00:46:12.220 The tests have errors.

00:46:13.180 So they might have false positives and false negatives.

00:46:15.780 As a general matter, the wide scale mass testing tied to particular decisions like quarantines,

00:46:24.380 school closures have been enormously harmful because the harms from those decisions end up

00:46:30.160 harming more people than helping.

00:46:33.480 So I think the key thing is you use these tests in appropriate settings, understanding

00:46:38.380 their limitations and their strengths, and then they're worthwhile.

00:46:42.000 I mean, I think, I do think, I do lament the fact that the Biden administration did not anticipate

00:46:47.920 the winter surge, and they didn't order enough tests so that people could have these at their

00:46:53.320 disposal.

00:46:53.980 Actually, can I bring up one other thing about these tests that's really important, I think,

00:46:57.960 and sort of gotten less play than it should have?

00:46:59.700 I think part of the reason why these at-home tests have been underplayed that compared to

00:47:05.900 the PCR tests, the ones that you go get and you send to a lab, is that the PCR tests are

00:47:10.280 automatically publicly reported.

00:47:12.600 And because they're publicly reported, they're tied to, like, you know, quarantining.

00:47:16.900 They have, like, these test and tracing kinds of things that happen.

00:47:20.180 This whole apparatus to try to stop the disease from spreading and, in essence, as a result,

00:47:26.940 harming people from, like, participating in society has been central to public health thinking.

00:47:32.260 Public health has not gone behind these at-home tests because it puts power in the hands of

00:47:36.420 regular people.

00:47:37.500 It's not automatically publicly reported.

00:47:39.160 You get to look at the result and then decide, okay, I can take a responsible action.

00:47:43.320 I won't go visit grandma because I got a positive test.

00:47:45.960 This idea that people should have the power to, like, make decisions for themselves, I think,

00:47:49.760 is actually really important.

00:47:51.180 It puts trust where it belongs, as opposed to the sort of, like, centralized control paradigm

00:47:56.220 that I think, which is what's led to this shortage of tests, actually.

00:48:00.100 We didn't get behind these tests because we thought we needed public control rather than

00:48:04.620 putting the power in the hands of people.

00:48:06.860 That is so interesting and makes tons of sense.

00:48:09.000 All right.

00:48:09.160 I got to ask you about boosters.

00:48:10.560 Now, booster, booster, booster.

00:48:12.640 And, okay, it's one thing for you, for me.

00:48:14.920 You know, I mean, I'm old enough.

00:48:16.000 It's fine.

00:48:16.640 But I'm worried about boosters for teenagers now becoming mandatory in more and more places,

00:48:22.580 more and more schools.

00:48:23.360 And I saw you tweeted about this as well.

00:48:26.100 What are your concerns about boosters for teenagers?

00:48:29.820 Well, I mean, the results on side effects for these vaccines in younger people is that

00:48:36.520 there are actually higher risk of things like myocarditis.

00:48:39.140 I mean, it's not extreme.

00:48:40.700 It's like one in 5,000, something on that order.

00:48:43.100 But it gets worse after even the second dose.

00:48:45.720 And I haven't seen a ton of data on the boosters, but it would not surprise me to see if it got

00:48:49.820 worse after the booster in terms of the myocarditis risk for young people taking the vaccine.

00:48:54.820 Given that, the fact that the virus itself produces a relatively mild illness in young men,

00:49:03.260 young women, and you have this side effect. 1.00

00:49:07.280 Well, on balance, I just don't think it's wise.

00:49:10.540 Maybe one dose.

00:49:11.440 But at the very least, I think this should be something that should be left to a conversation

00:49:15.940 between a doctor and a patient, right?

00:49:19.620 Not mandated.

00:49:21.160 I think mandating it is just a mistake.

00:49:23.040 I'll give you another one.

00:49:23.920 The dosage.

00:49:24.740 You know, I've said before, my 12-year-old is skinny and my 10-year-old is already in puberty,

00:49:31.820 right?

00:49:31.960 So she's taller than he is.

00:49:33.180 Like a lot of girls, they're taller than the boys and so on. 0.82

00:49:35.260 She weighs more.

00:49:35.800 So why should my 12-year-old, who if you put him on a scale, you might think he's 9 or

00:49:41.320 10, why should he get the same dose as my, you know, 180-pound husband?

00:49:45.860 It makes no sense, but our school won't consider him fully vaccinated unless he gets the double 1.00

00:49:49.740 dose of the full, which so far we've managed to avoid.

00:49:53.360 Dr. Jag Bhattacharya, it's always a pleasure.

00:49:56.320 Thank you so much for being here and consider us on your team, not on Team Fauci Collins.

00:50:01.260 Thank you.

00:50:02.220 See you soon.

00:50:02.980 Coming up, the latest on the transgender swimmer, Leah Thomas, with a former USA swimming

00:50:07.940 official who quit her job in protest and an Olympic gold medalist swimmer.

00:50:11.860 Speaking out now.

00:50:17.840 Over the holiday break, there were several developments in the controversy surrounding

00:50:21.340 the University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer, Leah Thomas.

00:50:25.320 To recap, after swimming for the school's men's team for some three years, Leah is now a member

00:50:31.600 of the women's team shattering records once held by biological females.

00:50:37.060 Several of Leah's teammates are apparently considering boycotting their next meet this

00:50:41.360 coming weekend, looking for any way to voice their frustration.

00:50:45.540 My guests now know what is at stake for these young women.

00:50:50.360 Cynthia Millen is now a former USA swimming official.

00:50:55.500 She just quit her job in protest over this controversy, saying this is just not fair.

00:51:00.400 And Nancy Hogshead Makar, who represented the United States at the 1984 Olympic Games.

00:51:07.540 And boy, did she represent. 0.91

00:51:09.000 She won three gold medals and a silver in women's swimming, are my guests now.

00:51:14.820 Thank you both so much for being here.

00:51:16.680 Thank you, Megan.

00:51:17.740 Yeah.

00:51:17.980 Thank you for having us.

00:51:19.440 OK, so it's I think we're all on the same page because I've read a lot about both of

00:51:23.860 you.

00:51:24.120 This isn't about being anti trans in any way.

00:51:26.680 This is about being about fairness, fairness to the women who are swimming and trying to

00:51:32.460 compete their hardest, their fastest, their best and are basically being told you have

00:51:37.640 no chance.

00:51:38.160 Now, your your best you can possibly achieve is probably second place and no one's standing

00:51:44.020 up for them.

00:51:44.820 No one's saying I'll just start with this because it's the thing that outraged me most

00:51:47.800 before I went to break.

00:51:48.940 The parents of the women at the UPenn team finally wrote a letter to the University of

00:51:54.600 Pennsylvania saying this isn't fair.

00:51:56.160 Where where is the NCAA?

00:51:58.040 Where are you folks in terms of standing up for them?

00:52:00.480 They shouldn't be in the position of having to speak out against Leah.

00:52:03.580 That's an impossible position for these young women. 1.00

00:52:05.740 And they were told by the University of Pennsylvania to go to mental health services, that the young

00:52:12.580 women who objected should go get counseling to deal with their upset. 1.00

00:52:17.800 Which really made me want to punch somebody in the face.

00:52:20.660 OK, speaking of testosterone.

00:52:22.620 So I was really heartened to see both of you speaking out about it because I know it's

00:52:27.060 hard and I know, you know, you get from J.K.

00:52:29.300 Rowling on down, you get called names if you say anything about it.

00:52:32.340 So let me start with you, Cynthia.

00:52:33.520 You you quit your job because you were going off to judge a Paralympic swimming meet at which

00:52:40.240 my understanding is men swim against women.

00:52:42.080 And, you know, it's basically you have to sort of fall within a certain group in terms

00:52:46.540 of your your physical challenges.

00:52:48.740 But what what was it about this thing happening at University of Pennsylvania that made you

00:52:53.320 quit?

00:52:54.740 Well, thank you, Megan.

00:52:55.680 I've been a USA swimming official for over 30 years.

00:52:58.940 Paralympics as it comes under USA swimming as well.

00:53:03.120 The thing that I've always loved about swimming, as Nancy will tell you, from the time you start

00:53:07.720 swimming, you're divided by age group and by sex.

00:53:10.380 And even in Paralympics, they're divided by sex and then disability.

00:53:14.220 The idea is that like swims against like and in swimming, as in any other sport, bodies

00:53:20.280 swim against bodies.

00:53:22.540 And no matter how much testosterone suppression drugs Leah may take, Leah will always be swimming 0.99

00:53:30.320 in a man's body.

00:53:32.360 And this is just blatantly unfair.

00:53:34.460 Men will always swim eight to 12 percent faster than women. 0.99

00:53:37.780 They have larger lung capacity.

00:53:39.180 They have larger skeleton, more fast twitch muscles.

00:53:42.300 This is the whole reason why swimming has always been divided between male and female from

00:53:47.600 the youngest age.

00:53:48.960 So it's wrong.

00:53:50.400 And by the way, just to note, all volunteers are official or excuse me, are volunteers.

00:53:54.880 And so I just felt very sad to quit a great group of people.

00:54:01.660 But there's just no way that I can lend any support to this at all.

00:54:06.140 And did USA Swimming respond at all to your letter resigning and raising these concerns?

00:54:11.540 No.

00:54:13.320 They've said nothing.

00:54:15.440 They've said nothing.

00:54:16.400 NCAA has said nothing.

00:54:18.000 Again, University of Pennsylvania refers the girls for therapy to get over their upset. 0.66

00:54:22.200 This is this is par for the course.

00:54:23.720 Is it not, Nancy, like it's somebody else's problem?

00:54:25.940 No one has the courage to speak out as if we're we're going to pretend there's no way

00:54:29.880 of speaking out without being sensitive.

00:54:31.720 Yes, someone is going to get a little upset.

00:54:34.840 But right now they've just settled on, well, it's going to be the girls and too bad.

00:54:41.040 Yeah.

00:54:41.440 First of all, Megan, thank you so much for having me on here today to be able to talk about

00:54:45.180 this.

00:54:45.460 I think it speaks to the sex discrimination that you see throughout sport and the lazy

00:54:56.120 way to go about transgender inclusion in sport is just to say, look, you know, transgender

00:55:03.700 women can just participate in here if they and not really go with the science, not really 1.00

00:55:10.560 go where the science is.

00:55:11.460 Now I'm a lawyer, I'm not a scientist, but so it's hard for me to speak about exactly

00:55:16.240 what happens when somebody does go on gender affirming hormones.

00:55:20.360 But what I can speak to is what is the percentage difference of between men and women?

00:55:27.300 Like what does male puberty get somebody?

00:55:30.880 And that typically is, as Cynthia was just saying, somewhere between eight and 12%, usually

00:55:36.380 right around, you know, 11 and a half percent.

00:55:38.440 We've done a whole bunch of different numbers and Leah has only reduced her times by a little

00:55:45.360 over 2%, a little over 5% in the 200 and the 500 yards respectively.

00:55:53.400 So that is not mitigation.

00:55:55.560 That is not fair.

00:55:57.140 She still retains a huge advantage over her other competitors. 0.80

00:56:02.040 And, you know, at the same time, we are not thinking about how it is that we're going to

00:56:09.980 include transgender men to be able to participate.

00:56:13.320 So I competed at the height of when the East German women were taking steroids. 1.00

00:56:18.820 So they were shaving their faces and they, you know, were taking as many steroids as one

00:56:25.920 can take.

00:56:26.560 And a lot of them did transition after their, after their competitive days and in no way

00:56:33.000 were they close to the, the men's times that, so they were not competitive in the men's category.

00:56:41.680 So on the one hand, you're taking trans women and having it be unfair, but there's no unfairness

00:56:49.400 in the other direction and we're not thinking about like, well, okay, so if that's not fair,

00:56:56.040 well, how do we change sport?

00:56:58.700 How do we adapt sport so that trans athletes can participate, but just not head to head

00:57:04.260 competition?

00:57:05.300 Yeah.

00:57:05.520 So far it's been the, the women, the biological women need to shut up and take it. 1.00

00:57:10.000 That's it.

00:57:10.400 Shut up and take it or you're, or you're a bigot. 0.82

00:57:12.620 And it does take courage to say, hold on, that's not true.

00:57:18.120 We can find a sensitive alternative.

00:57:21.620 And no, not everyone's going to be perfectly happy in the end, but what's happened right

00:57:25.940 now is all women on every team have been told you will be the unhappy ones period without 0.99

00:57:32.500 any debate or even any weighing in from the NCAA or USA swimming.

00:57:37.040 And you tell me, Cynthia, because what I hear now is the NCAA, they've been saying, you know

00:57:41.740 what, and we're also just going to change it so that every sport can determine what it's

00:57:45.560 going to do.

00:57:45.900 Like in the Olympics, now it's the Olympics said every sport's going to determine, do

00:57:49.820 you really need somebody to take cross gender hormones for a year? 1.00

00:57:52.940 Maybe that's not necessary.

00:57:54.020 Maybe it could be shorter than a year.

00:57:55.000 Like what?

00:57:55.960 Because that's only going to lead people to want to be more and more accommodating of the

00:58:00.380 trans swimmer or trans athlete and less and less of the biological, you know, girls. 0.55

00:58:07.040 It's always women. 1.00

00:58:08.620 Yeah.

00:58:08.920 I'm going to leap on what Nancy just said.

00:58:11.240 It's the women who are suffering. 1.00

00:58:13.180 And there's two points to be made here.

00:58:14.900 When Nancy started swimming as a young girl, there was no title nine.

00:58:19.800 And when I was playing lacrosse in college, there was no title nine and women really got 1.00

00:58:24.480 the shaft.

00:58:25.300 Women got so, were treated so unequally. 1.00

00:58:28.180 Finally, women are being treated equally.

00:58:30.200 Finally, women are allowed to shine as athletes.

00:58:33.620 And so as Nancy adequately so well pointed out, this is never going to affect men's sports.

00:58:38.760 It's only going to affect women's sports. 1.00

00:58:40.620 And second, Megan, what does this do to all those little girl swimmers, those eight and

00:58:44.900 unders, those nine tens?

00:58:46.480 They looked up to people like Nancy.

00:58:49.820 You think of Janet Evans.

00:58:50.920 You think of Jenny Thompson.

00:58:52.000 You think of all those great swimmers.

00:58:54.100 And those little girls look up to them.

00:58:55.800 And now basically USA swimming and the NCAA is throwing them all under the bus.

00:59:01.120 You don't matter.

00:59:02.600 You don't matter.

00:59:03.680 And that's what really is so it's such a travesty, in my opinion.

00:59:08.840 I know you've both pointed out, you know, years you look at the difference between male

00:59:13.000 and female swimmers, especially post puberty, which, of course, Leah is well past puberty. 1.00

00:59:16.600 You know, men, men get taller, men get bigger hands and feet, men get sort of that sort of

00:59:22.940 broad shouldered, more narrow waisted look.

00:59:25.540 And women kind of go the opposite. 1.00

00:59:27.280 We grow breasts.

00:59:28.620 Our bottoms get bigger.

00:59:29.800 Our hips get bigger.

00:59:30.900 We're awesome.

00:59:31.960 We look totally gorgeous as a result.

00:59:34.020 However, it's not the most conducive thing to being a fast swimmer, Nancy.

00:59:38.620 Yeah, but even when you take sort of like, like, when you look at Missy Franklin, who's

00:59:45.120 an icon in swimming, and Ryan Lochte, another icon.

00:59:48.540 Okay, so they both have the same size hands.

00:59:52.100 They have the same wingspan.

00:59:53.820 They weigh the same.

00:59:54.720 They're about the same height.

00:59:55.820 And guess what?

00:59:56.800 There's about 11 or 12% difference in their times.

01:00:00.180 If Missy Franklin had to compete against Ryan Lochte and in the men's category, we would

01:00:04.980 never know her name.

01:00:06.500 We need to be able to have, you know, have, draw some boundaries around the girls and women's 1.00

01:00:12.440 category in the same way that we draw boundaries around a weight class, the same way we draw

01:00:18.620 boundaries, what Cynthia does when it comes to para sports on what somebody's level of ability 1.00

01:00:24.000 is.

01:00:25.900 What that designation determines is whether or not they get to win or not.

01:00:32.040 And, you know, I've been a Title IX advocate for a very long time in my career.

01:00:39.280 And starting, it used to be that we were, what we were fighting for was to make sure that

01:00:45.620 you could have sex segregation in sport, right? 0.99

01:00:48.200 We almost have no racial segregation throughout society.

01:00:52.340 We have almost no religious segregation throughout society.

01:00:55.500 But we do when it comes to sport.

01:00:56.980 We have sex segregation. 0.99

01:00:58.240 We have separate but equal over here.

01:01:01.020 So to preserve that, what I've been saying, literally, I'm not exaggerating for the last

01:01:05.560 30 years is in order for girls and women to have an equal opportunity to participate in

01:01:12.560 sports, they need to have their own team.

01:01:15.960 And here I am.

01:01:17.460 It's right.

01:01:17.900 It's a different situation, but it's the same principle.

01:01:21.040 Girls and women need to be able to have their own team in order to be able to to participate, 0.92

01:01:27.780 to win, to break the records, to and have role models for other people to look up to all

01:01:33.180 those little girls that Cynthia was just talking about.

01:01:35.860 Well, and I want to get to what the options are in a minute.

01:01:37.600 But let me start with this, Nancy, because what Cynthia, because what would you do like as

01:01:41.680 a swimming official, if you if you saw a transgender swimmer like Leah, what would you do? 1.00

01:01:49.620 How would you have handled that?

01:01:51.640 Well, as Leah, if Leah came on my deck, I would welcome Leah to swim.

01:01:58.400 But we have a couple options.

01:01:59.940 Leah could time trial or Leah could swim exhibition because the underlying focus of USA Swimming

01:02:05.520 rules is fairness.

01:02:06.740 We make sure that every lane is fair for every kid to the point that we make sure the lane

01:02:13.220 lines are straight.

01:02:14.060 We make sure that the flags are straight.

01:02:15.780 We make sure that that the blocks are solid.

01:02:18.260 We want to make sure that every swimmer is treated fairly.

01:02:21.380 And by Leah swimming, that is not fair competition to the other women in the pool. 1.00

01:02:27.700 So I would say, Leah, swim against Leah.

01:02:29.800 Keep swimming.

01:02:31.020 But your times could either be time trial or they could be exhibition times.

01:02:35.500 And I would make that clear to the coach as well.

01:02:37.840 As a referee, that's what I would do.

01:02:39.860 What they're saying now is that this coach at UPenn, the girls, I've spoken out anonymously

01:02:44.180 to Outkick.com.

01:02:45.660 They're saying he he likes to win, you know, and Leah's times are very good for the UPenn

01:02:53.180 team.

01:02:54.040 I mean, it's like, well, that's really not that's not supposed to be the end goal.

01:02:58.720 Yes, winning's great, but you want to win fairly.

01:03:00.880 I mean, I'm sure they'd win more if all the girls took steroids, too. 1.00

01:03:03.500 But it's not fair.

01:03:06.680 You know, they're not allowed to.

01:03:08.220 And what we heard, Nancy, from I'm going to get the name of the organization correct,

01:03:12.580 but it was an LGBT, you know, sort of advocacy group.

01:03:17.240 OK, Transgender Law Center actually weighed in on this and said that really what we need

01:03:22.740 to do is shift the conversation around sports from a competitive one to a collective frame.

01:03:30.020 That that's the problem here is that what we need to be thinking about is sports through

01:03:35.020 the lens of what's good for society as opposed to who's going to win instead of striving for

01:03:41.800 equality in sports.

01:03:44.000 Certain politicians are distracting us, they say, from the real issue by blaming transgender

01:03:49.120 women instead of helping make sports a better place for all women. 1.00

01:03:54.380 So they're trying to sort of co-opt the narrative of feminism and equality and Title IX by just

01:04:01.260 sort of folding in transgender women into that. 0.99

01:04:03.740 Whereas when it comes to this particular issue, there is a division that has to be acknowledged.

01:04:09.080 Yeah, so a couple of things.

01:04:12.340 Number one is I run an organization called Champion Women. 0.88

01:04:15.340 We provide legal advocacy for girls and women in sports.

01:04:18.260 And we've documented that women are being denied right now in the United States, 183,000 0.92

01:04:24.480 opportunities, a billion dollars in college scholarships.

01:04:28.580 I don't see any of these organizations and frankly, a lot of women's organizations

01:04:32.400 that are speaking out as loudly as they should about basic, just, you know, how women are 1.00

01:04:39.800 not being treated the same.

01:04:40.980 I think most college women, I've never talked to a college woman who is not acutely aware

01:04:48.360 of all the ways that they're not getting what their male peers are getting.

01:04:52.880 They're not being treated the same way, scholarship dollars, et cetera.

01:04:56.260 So, and then the second thing is, is that in sport, you can value different things, right?

01:05:02.980 So you can value inclusion, you can value fairness or safety.

01:05:07.400 Now, safety doesn't really apply in the sport of swimming because we're not coming in contact

01:05:10.860 with each other.

01:05:11.680 It's not like, you know, a contact sport or rugby or one of those.

01:05:15.940 But when it comes to either fairness or inclusion, you know, you really come up against these two

01:05:22.460 different values, um, to ask only women's sports to bear the brunt of this holistic change that you 0.99

01:05:31.540 were just talking about, about to, uh, have sport not be about competition.

01:05:37.200 Um, you know, I, I, I can't imagine working any harder than I did.

01:05:44.740 I can't imagine, um, you know, and for somebody to say, well, if you really want to win, then

01:05:50.860 you should just work harder.

01:05:52.120 It's very offensive.

01:05:54.020 Um, that, and men are, again, men are not being told any of this.

01:05:59.000 This is why did just the women have to give up on competition and, and be about what's 1.00

01:06:03.860 good for the world.

01:06:04.680 Why?

01:06:04.940 And how is that?

01:06:06.140 If we're going to go for the collective good, how is demoralizing millions of girls across 0.93

01:06:11.480 this country good for the collective?

01:06:14.280 It's, it's not, you know, they just get forgotten.

01:06:17.240 They just get written off.

01:06:18.220 And as you point out, legitimately, they're already at a competitive disadvantage versus

01:06:22.780 men in terms of funding opportunity, athletic scholarships, and so on.

01:06:28.380 So that's a problem we already need to deal with.

01:06:30.780 We don't need further demoralization.

01:06:34.120 Yeah, no, I would, I would absolutely agree with that, that, um, that, that, uh, you know,

01:06:41.180 women's sports, we need to have a major push. 1.00

01:06:43.920 If, if sex discrimination was evenly distributed, it's not, but if it was every single college,

01:06:50.880 junior college, uh, NCAA, NAIA would need to add 3.5 new teams.

01:06:57.940 Um, that's a lot.

01:06:59.760 That's a lot of sex discrimination that's going on out there.

01:07:02.900 And again, what they're asking in, in, in, in pursuit of inclusion is for women to step 1.00

01:07:09.680 aside.

01:07:10.420 I would argue that that's not doing their goal of inclusion any favors because everybody

01:07:17.920 can see what the difference is.

01:07:19.220 So if you want inclusion in society, when it comes to things like employment or the classroom

01:07:24.580 or banking or family law or any of these other areas, absolutely, there should be fairness.

01:07:32.060 There should be inclusion that right inclusion.

01:07:34.440 There's it, there's no difference, but sport is this very unique area that we do have sex

01:07:41.500 segregation.

01:07:42.360 And so to preserve that sex segregation, that is based on sex, that is based on science, not

01:07:49.180 based on gender identity.

01:07:51.740 Well, and the, the transgender law center recognized this in this piece released December

01:07:56.920 29, 2021, um, where they say right now, our opposition wins the debate on trans youth in

01:08:04.560 sports against any and all arguments we have tried for our side.

01:08:08.820 They recognize that people see the difference in athletics when they may be generally supportive

01:08:12.760 of trans rights, but this is an area in which it, it makes a situation less fair for whole

01:08:18.400 groups of, of competitive athletes.

01:08:20.820 And they go on to argue that we should be connecting attacks on trans women athletes to the long

01:08:27.060 legacy of discrimination against all women athletes.

01:08:31.600 Again, like you tell me, Cynthia, I, that makes me angry.

01:08:35.600 You know, as somebody I played sports when I was in, in school, bullshit, you know, like

01:08:40.120 bullshit.

01:08:40.560 They're two separate things.

01:08:42.000 I'm sorry, but no.

01:08:43.880 I mean, that's my, that's for you, Cynthia, because you've seen it too.

01:08:46.060 You've been standing at the, at the lines, watching these women leave nothing, you know, 0.99

01:08:50.820 in the lane, um, and girls have had it tough. 1.00

01:08:53.800 And now to be told that if you speak up, like somebody like you speaks up against it, what

01:08:58.200 you're essentially doing is attacking womankind. 0.94

01:09:01.400 You know, it used to be that only girls could be cheerleaders and all they could do is stand 1.00

01:09:06.560 by and cheer the boys.

01:09:08.000 When I was in school, I'm 66 years old, much older than you guys.

01:09:11.640 And it's disgusting to say that women, again, need to just go back and be the nice, quiet 0.90

01:09:18.480 cheerleaders.

01:09:19.400 Let's, you know, rah, rah for everybody else.

01:09:22.320 No, I, you said it best, but I won't repeat that.

01:09:25.780 But, um, it, it is, it is.

01:09:28.840 I, you know, I'll believe them when I see the green Bay Packers welcome trans men on their

01:09:36.040 team, right.

01:09:37.220 For inclusion, that's not going to happen.

01:09:41.100 Well, of course we have exactly the opposite problem, right?

01:09:43.180 We have exactly the opposite problem going the other way because we don't have the musculature 0.99

01:09:46.560 and the bone structure and all that to, to do it.

01:09:49.460 So, but there's something, there's something more.

01:09:51.520 Yes.

01:09:51.980 Women, darn it. 1.00

01:09:52.800 Have the right to compete.

01:09:54.020 We have the right to win.

01:09:56.020 We have the right to do our best and get that gold medal.

01:09:59.860 Don't throw that, that, that malarkey that, oh, we should just be inclusive and be nice.

01:10:04.440 No, no.

01:10:06.360 So I like that.

01:10:07.760 You're right.

01:10:08.080 They're tapping into something that women have been told for a long time would be a nice

01:10:11.640 girl and be quiet and don't complain. 1.00

01:10:13.080 Don't make waves.

01:10:14.080 And that's how the UPenn swimmers are feeling right now.

01:10:16.460 So their parents are speaking out.

01:10:17.780 They're getting blown off.

01:10:18.860 The NCAA is doing nothing.

01:10:20.540 The U S the international Olympic committee is going the wrong way, not just in swimming,

01:10:23.620 but in all sports, basically saying it'll be a sport by sport thing so that they don't

01:10:26.920 have to get their hands dirty with policies that may upset people.

01:10:30.380 And, um, I, you tell me, because I look at the numbers, Nancy, and you're the one who

01:10:34.720 actually won all the gold medals and the, and the silvers, but it doesn't seem like these

01:10:39.520 women on the UPenn team have much of a chance. 1.00

01:10:42.500 And it actually seems like Leah Thomas may be well on her way to Olympic gold too.

01:10:49.080 Um, if you win at like these amazing times, how does it work?

01:10:53.840 Do you automatically qualify for the Olympic team?

01:10:56.600 So I'm just reading a piece of us by, uh, John lawn, editor in chief of swimming world

01:11:03.220 magazine.

01:11:04.080 And he says last spring, Virginia's page Madden, who represented team USA at the 2020 Olympic

01:11:10.240 games in Tokyo, won the NCAA title in the 500 yard freestyle with a time of four minutes,

01:11:16.560 33 point 61.

01:11:19.580 Leah Thomas owns a best time of sub for 20. 0.75

01:11:24.640 Okay.

01:11:25.040 So that would be 13 seconds faster, uh, than page Madden and recently went for 34, which

01:11:33.640 is not even a half second slower during just a mid season invitational.

01:11:39.460 And he writes, even if Leah Thomas does not get near her best time, she seems likely to

01:11:44.540 go faster later in this season and easily win the NCAA title in the 500 free.

01:11:49.840 So what do you agree with that?

01:11:52.500 And what was that?

01:11:53.240 What will that mean for possible Olympic prospects?

01:11:57.720 Yeah, I, I don't agree with this.

01:12:00.100 Um, I'm really hoping that, you know, every sport has got an international federation that

01:12:04.380 the international federation will take this on and we'll recognize how important it is

01:12:09.280 to draw boundaries around the girls and women's category.

01:12:12.120 But again, right now, uh, the organization GLAAD says that it's, it's roughly 11% of this young

01:12:21.740 generation identifies as either trans or non-binary.

01:12:25.060 And if that's true, then we as sport need to make sure that we have places for transgender

01:12:31.000 athletes to be able to compete.

01:12:33.220 I don't think that the answer is come on into the women's category, but, uh, but there are

01:12:38.500 lots of different ways.

01:12:39.780 One of the ways Cynthia just said is, uh, for, for Leah to be able to compete as an exhibition 0.94

01:12:45.240 so that people can really celebrate her, who she is and the fact that she's transitioned

01:12:50.200 and what her good times are.

01:12:52.120 And people would be able to do that if she was only doing an exhibition.

01:12:55.860 Um, but so there are all different kinds of, of ways to be able to include, but not direct

01:13:03.280 head to head competition.

01:13:05.380 Mm-hmm.

01:13:05.880 And then the argument as well, that, that, that is separate, but equal that she wouldn't

01:13:10.900 ever get the joy of competing against other women in the lanes, you know, to her left and 1.00

01:13:15.940 her right, knowing the glorious feeling of, you know, being the first to finish.

01:13:20.500 And I imagine somebody like you would say, having done it, Nancy, well, the other women aren't

01:13:25.640 having that now either.

01:13:27.000 Thanks to Leah.

01:13:27.900 So it's like, someone's going to suffer a little.

01:13:32.100 Yeah.

01:13:32.280 The women's team is not the B team.

01:13:35.000 This is for half the world's population to be able to have an opportunity to, uh, to,

01:13:41.700 I mean, I would say like, you know, to win, to get the records and the acknowledgement and

01:13:46.620 everything else.

01:13:47.100 But for me, the main thing was being able to experience flow from having my 10,000 hours

01:13:53.000 working in it.

01:13:53.980 I mean, there is just nothing like, you know, when you're, when you're going for sort of

01:13:58.680 an impossible goal to sort of lose yourself as part of it.

01:14:02.580 And you just forget sort of who you are and, um, and to be able to get that.

01:14:07.860 I mean, I would want Leah to be able to get that just not as part of the, again, the, the

01:14:15.080 women's category.

01:14:16.320 Um, we've done this before with para sports, as Cynthia was just saying, we've done it

01:14:21.780 before when it comes to special Olympics, we've done it before, um, and looking at how

01:14:27.660 it is that we include people, uh, uh, para athletes who want to compete against non-para

01:14:33.240 athletes.

01:14:33.880 Um, and kind of the guiding principle has always been fairness and inclusion.

01:14:39.300 So you got to figure out which one of those is more important, given that it's half the 0.99

01:14:44.620 world's population.

01:14:45.640 Um, I would say fairness for those half the population is what would, what should be the

01:14:52.700 primary motivator here.

01:14:54.140 Yeah.

01:14:54.740 When you, when you start to see Leah Thomas shatter records, like Katie Ledecky's record,

01:14:59.740 you know, or what if Leah goes to the Olympics and gets five golds instead of the three that

01:15:04.520 you got, I really think people are going to start to speak up because, you know, it's

01:15:10.220 like that the Biden administration official who lived her entire life as a man.

01:15:15.100 And then in, I think her sixties transitioned to a female and then said, I am the first woman 0.68

01:15:21.660 five-star Admiral.

01:15:22.620 Well, no, because the reason you can say first woman who did this or the only woman to ever

01:15:28.000 get X medals is it baked into that equation is the struggles, especially if you're in

01:15:33.440 your sixties or seventies that you've had to overcome as a woman in America.

01:15:37.240 You can't just co-opt all of that and say first woman to, or first, like there are real

01:15:42.260 reasons for women who have had to climb the mountain without the chairlift, taking them 1.00

01:15:47.560 up to speak up and say, some of these things are worth arguing over.

01:15:52.940 And if you want to call us names, go right ahead, go right ahead.

01:15:57.460 Cynthia, Nancy, thank you both so much.

01:15:59.540 And again, I'm, I always love talking to our Olympic athletes who have brought home gold.

01:16:03.120 So it's, I want to say thank you for that too.

01:16:05.300 Uh, many years after the fact, but good for you, Nancy and all the best to you both.

01:16:09.600 Thank you.

01:16:10.180 Thank you, Megan.

01:16:10.820 Appreciate it.

01:16:12.380 Uh, coming up, we're going to talk with Andrew Branca.

01:16:14.560 He is here to discuss the Kim Potter verdict from last week.

01:16:18.380 I'm sure you were away or enjoying the holiday, uh, when this broke and I really wanted to

01:16:22.360 talk about it.

01:16:22.920 I do have some thoughts.

01:16:29.960 Now to another major story that happened over the Christmas week, the guilty verdicts against

01:16:34.620 Minnesota police officer, now former Kim Potter.

01:16:38.100 Potter is now facing the possibility of 15 years in prison when she is sentenced next month.

01:16:44.160 Joining me now with reaction, Andrew Branca, the founder of law of self-defense, uh, from

01:16:50.400 start to finish, he followed the trial.

01:16:52.320 Andrew, welcome.

01:16:53.060 What did you make of it?

01:16:54.220 Well, thanks very much for having me back, Megan.

01:16:56.060 I have to say it's humbling as a small town lawyer from Colorado to follow two Olympic

01:16:59.580 champions, but, uh, always happy to be on the show.

01:17:02.520 Pretty cool.

01:17:03.080 I think this, uh, conviction of Kim Potter on these charges was, uh, just simply unjust,

01:17:08.820 a miscarriage of justice on every level.

01:17:10.700 Uh, and I know many people emotionally feel like, look, a bad outcome happened here.

01:17:14.980 Dante Wright died.

01:17:16.080 He ought not have died.

01:17:17.660 Uh, so someone ought to be held accountable, but, um, as a society and, and Kim Potter certainly

01:17:22.720 made a mistake.

01:17:23.320 There's no question about that and should be held accountable for a mistake, but our society

01:17:28.400 distinguishes between negligence, civil liability for mistake and recklessness, criminal liability

01:17:35.580 for having a criminal mental state for which there was zero evidence in this trial than Kim

01:17:40.780 Potter ever had a criminal mental state.

01:17:43.640 The, it came down to, and we'll get to possible sentences in a minute.

01:17:47.320 So the audience has an understanding of what Kim Potter is likely facing here, but it came

01:17:51.840 down to, and one of the jurors spoke out.

01:17:53.660 So, so this is how we know it, um, with Lou Raguse.

01:17:57.360 I don't, I'm not familiar with Lou.

01:17:58.620 My apologies.

01:17:59.320 Maybe that's not how you pronounce it.

01:18:00.580 Um, but it was a male juror, not on camera and spoke out asking to remain anonymous, given,

01:18:06.020 you know, the animosity towards jurors in cases like this and said, um, they were divided.

01:18:12.120 They were pretty much against Kim from the beginning, but there were some holdouts.

01:18:15.620 They were leaning toward guilty on the second degree manslaughter, but on the first degree

01:18:19.960 manslaughter, that one point they were divided four, four, and four, four guilty, four, not

01:18:24.300 guilty for, we don't know.

01:18:26.060 And that in the end, it really came down to a couple of jurors saying, I just don't think

01:18:30.280 she, she did something intentional and you have to prove a conscious or intentional disregard

01:18:37.520 of risk.

01:18:38.680 And I don't see the intentionality, uh, and I don't see the, the conscious disregard of

01:18:44.580 risk.

01:18:45.100 And I guess the way they got that juror over was to, to speak about, okay, maybe not a

01:18:49.700 conscious disregard, but intentionality in reaching for a weapon, which she thought was

01:18:55.780 her taser in doing that, understanding the risk of weapon confusion, which she testified

01:19:02.220 she understood was a thing for police officers, uh, in doing that in understanding that the

01:19:08.080 circumstances did not justify the use of deadly force, which apparently Kim Potter admitted

01:19:14.380 on the stand, which, you know, her lawyers had been trying to argue earlier.

01:19:19.000 This would have just, this would have been a situation in which you could use deadly force.

01:19:22.020 So that's how they got the jury there.

01:19:24.280 Your take then on the jury saying maybe not conscience, conscious disregard, but an intentional

01:19:30.400 disregard that led to recklessness.

01:19:33.540 Well, this conscious disregard of risk is required for both those criminal charges, first

01:19:38.680 and second degree manslaughter.

01:19:39.960 It did not exist in this case.

01:19:41.320 So she ought not have been convicted on either.

01:19:43.020 Indeed, these charges should have been dismissed before trial.

01:19:46.020 She ought not have been tried in these charges.

01:19:47.460 What the prosecution effectively did was they removed from the law, this requirement that

01:19:52.840 she consciously disregarded a risk of death to Dante Wright.

01:19:56.260 That is what manslaughter requires.

01:19:58.020 Reckless manslaughter in Minnesota and every other state.

01:20:01.380 And the prosecution effectively told the jury on closing and rebuttal.

01:20:05.360 No, that's not what's required.

01:20:07.160 All that's required is that she made a mistake, that she should have known that she was making

01:20:11.320 a mistake, that theoretically there was some risk.

01:20:13.660 But reckless manslaughter requires that you knew there was a specific risk of the outcome

01:20:19.100 that happened, the death of Dante Wright, and you consciously disregarded that risk.

01:20:23.580 There wasn't even evidence that she consciously disregarded weapons confusion.

01:20:27.600 There was no evidence that she consciously disregarded that.

01:20:30.480 So what they were really arguing is, well, she should have known that she could confuse her

01:20:34.900 weapons.

01:20:35.300 She should have known that she might have come out with her gun instead of her taser. 0.63

01:20:38.560 But should have known is the standard for negligence, not the standard for recklessness.

01:20:44.200 Recklessness is not only should you have known, but you did know, in fact, in the moment and

01:20:49.940 decided to do it anyway.

01:20:52.420 You had apparently what he said, the jury, they listened to the expert.

01:20:58.160 You know, I think it was the expert, you know, the paid expert from the prosecution who tried

01:21:01.920 to say she just didn't really have self-defense available to her.

01:21:05.640 She didn't have no mistake would have been authorized, according to the prosecution expert.

01:21:11.760 Right.

01:21:11.900 This is a hired paid gun who made, what, 10,000 bucks for giving this testimony.

01:21:16.440 It's amazing to me.

01:21:17.220 Also testified in the Derek Chauvin trial, by the way.

01:21:19.600 Exactly.

01:21:20.120 And this is a guy who, by the way, hasn't had much of a police career behind him.

01:21:24.360 No, briefly, mostly behind the desk 15 years ago.

01:21:27.920 OK, so he's going to speak as, you know, an expert on what an officer in the moment

01:21:32.140 is supposed to do as a guy is trying to drive away with another cop hanging half out of

01:21:36.320 the car and the risk to him.

01:21:38.640 So the jury buys it and they disregarded why you tell me, why did they disregard the argument

01:21:45.640 that you and I last spoke about last time you were on talking about this case?

01:21:48.080 We're talking about how the defense seemed to be trying to make the case and the fellow

01:21:51.460 officers were backing it up that she could have fired her service weapon at him.

01:21:56.100 She could have intentionally fired her service weapon at him. 0.99

01:21:58.440 And this could have been a justified shooting, given that he was almost killing a cop and

01:22:02.640 driving away during an act of arrest.

01:22:04.340 Yeah, it's not a bad emotional argument, but it's not a very strong legal argument because

01:22:08.820 the use of deadly force in defense of yourself or of others can't be an unintentional act.

01:22:14.460 It has to be an intentional act.

01:22:15.900 You're intentionally using deadly force to neutralize some unlawful deadly force threat

01:22:20.560 to innocent people.

01:22:21.820 And she did not do that.

01:22:24.160 She did not use deadly force intentionally.

01:22:26.300 So that fundamentally undermines that legal argument.

01:22:30.000 The key legal argument here, and there's really only one, is that Kim Potter did not 1.00

01:22:34.920 consciously disregard a risk of death.

01:22:36.800 She made an error.

01:22:37.820 She made a mistake.

01:22:38.860 And frankly, she ought to be held civilly liable for that error.

01:22:41.980 There's no question in my mind she committed an act of negligence.

01:22:44.880 And in the civil court, she should be held liable for that.

01:22:47.580 But she did not commit a criminal act on the facts of this case.

01:22:51.420 Mm-hmm.

01:22:52.800 I think this is the fault of Keith Ellison.

01:22:56.260 I really do.

01:22:56.940 I think I don't blame the jury.

01:22:58.400 I think they went with what they were presented.

01:23:00.420 The law presentation was a mess.

01:23:02.280 The jury instructions were a mess.

01:23:03.880 I think the judge showed absolutely no courage in presenting a very clear, concise.

01:23:08.440 Absolute failure by Judge Chu.

01:23:09.940 Right?

01:23:10.240 Wasn't it?

01:23:10.880 The prosecution explicitly misstated the law to the jury in their rebuttal.

01:23:14.800 And the rebuttal, folks, by the way, there's no opportunity for the defense to correct at

01:23:18.040 that point.

01:23:18.760 The last words the jury are going to hear are the words from the prosecution of rebuttal.

01:23:22.380 And the prosecution simply misstated the law.

01:23:24.540 So either they misled the jury into that guilty verdict or they simply provided the jury with

01:23:29.900 an excuse the jury might have been looking for to return a guilty verdict.

01:23:33.460 Mm-hmm.

01:23:34.040 I don't know.

01:23:34.740 I don't feel like the jury was looking for an excuse to find her guilty.

01:23:37.480 I think in reading this guy's interview, it seems like they were genuinely searching

01:23:41.020 for the right result.

01:23:41.860 He talks about how the entire time they were debating the law, the jury instructions, that there

01:23:47.500 really was no factual dispute about what happened here.

01:23:49.820 And therefore, the obligation on the lawyers and on the judge to give them crystal clear

01:23:53.860 jury instructions was higher than ever.

01:23:56.800 Right?

01:23:57.300 And I don't think this judge did that.

01:23:59.860 But I also think Keith Ellison never should have brought this case.

01:24:02.240 He's an activist.

01:24:03.240 He is a partisan hack.

01:24:04.760 I'm sorry, but he is.

01:24:06.060 And he made clear he wanted to go after her to make right sins of other people.

01:24:11.740 This is in the wake of George Floyd.

01:24:13.720 He's an activist guy.

01:24:15.100 She's a white police officer. 0.58

01:24:16.540 Dante Wright was a black man, and he decided to make an example out of this woman who in

01:24:21.760 26 years as a cop never had a smidge of misconduct on her record or even alleged against her.

01:24:29.420 He decided to make an example of her for other people's sins.

01:24:33.360 That's my take on it.

01:24:34.220 What do you make of it?

01:24:35.440 Yeah, I agree.

01:24:36.120 Absolutely.

01:24:36.600 And frankly, much like the George Zimmerman case, if Trayvon Martin had not been killed

01:24:40.280 by George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin would have been facing felony charges after that event.

01:24:44.400 In this case, had Dante Wright not been killed in this encounter, he would have been facing

01:24:48.180 very serious charges for his attempts to flee the police, fight the police, resist lawful

01:24:53.300 arrest.

01:24:54.040 But it became a political persecution the moment he died.

01:24:57.180 And therefore, there was political capital to be made by people like Keith Ellison and

01:25:00.720 bringing this prosecution.

01:25:01.940 Yeah, that's absolutely right.

01:25:03.140 And then you have this is crazy.

01:25:05.540 It's Keith Ellison speaking of him.

01:25:07.020 So he's AG in Minnesota.

01:25:08.180 So he was the one in charge of making sure this case got filed and now has said he's going

01:25:13.000 to he's going to push for a departure from the sentencing guidelines.

01:25:16.740 He wants it to go higher.

01:25:18.420 He wants the judge to sentence her to more than the law requires or allows, because that's 0.92

01:25:23.300 how egregious he thinks this is.

01:25:24.880 But before I get to sentencing, he's talking about Dante Wright like he like I mean, he was

01:25:29.940 a Boy Scout.

01:25:30.600 And look, I'm not saying Dante Wright deserved to die.

01:25:32.880 He didn't.

01:25:33.540 It was a mistake.

01:25:34.440 It was a hideous accident.

01:25:35.580 And we all saw it happen.

01:25:37.260 But let's be real.

01:25:39.400 He was not the perfect man with the bright, bright future ahead of him that Keith Ellison

01:25:44.280 suggested in the soundbite.

01:25:46.900 Listen, I think this is number 13 on our list.

01:25:50.900 I ask Gasol to reflect upon the life of Dante Wright and who he could have been had he had

01:25:57.480 a chance to grow up.

01:25:58.340 At 20, Dante could have done anything.

01:26:03.400 Maybe he could have gone into the building trades and his whole life in front of him.

01:26:08.640 And he could have become anyone.

01:26:11.880 All of us miss out on who Dante could have been.

01:26:16.420 I mean, it's Al Sharpton, of course, he spoke at Dante Wright's funeral and talked about him

01:26:23.740 as the prince.

01:26:24.500 He's the prince of Minnesota and, you know, his bright future.

01:26:28.340 The truth is, Dante Wright had lived his life as basically a career criminal and has been

01:26:33.180 accused in death through civil lawsuits in at least two or three cases of having shot

01:26:38.860 somebody in the head, paralyzed another guy.

01:26:41.040 He's he allegedly hurt a lot of people in his 20 years.

01:26:45.600 Yeah, I mean, it's never, ever good when someone dies unnecessarily.

01:26:49.400 None of us want that.

01:26:50.180 And of course, the loss to his parents and his family is completely genuine.

01:26:53.880 I mean, they lost a loved one.

01:26:55.440 Nobody wanted this outcome.

01:26:57.320 Least of all, Kim Potter, assuredly, but and and Dante Wright might have turned into anything.

01:27:03.460 Who knows?

01:27:04.140 But on the day he died, this was a person with the track record of a very, very bad,

01:27:10.480 endangered dude.

01:27:13.120 And that's the reason why, you know, people were saying that, look, he they didn't know

01:27:17.740 that whole history when they pulled him over, but they did know that there was a warrant

01:27:21.260 out for his arrest as if I'm not mistaken, on a gun charge, Andrew.

01:27:25.080 Well, after they pulled him over, they ran his name through the database and they came

01:27:29.620 back with the warrant for the gun charge, the protection order for a woman who, for

01:27:34.100 all I knew, was the woman in the car with him.

01:27:36.160 So there was no way he was leaving that scene.

01:27:38.360 I mean, he had to be arrested on those facts, but they didn't acknowledge that.

01:27:43.240 And so now she's been found guilty on the most serious charges.

01:27:47.080 And this one juror who spoke out said, I want to go and sit there for the sentencing.

01:27:50.800 OK, well, he says, you know, I don't think it should be too high, but I don't think

01:27:55.000 it should just be a slap on the wrist either.

01:27:57.420 Well, what should it be?

01:27:58.240 Because if you look at the law, existing law for somebody like Kim Potter, who has no priors,

01:28:03.420 she's unlike Dante, right?

01:28:05.260 She had not been in trouble with the law ever.

01:28:08.300 It should be maybe at worst six years, seven years.

01:28:13.080 You tell me what it would likely be.

01:28:16.580 Yeah, Megan.

01:28:17.020 So if we look at a comparable, like you might do in real estate, for example, we just had

01:28:21.380 this truck driver in Colorado, where I live, convicted, sentenced to 110 years for recklessly

01:28:27.200 driving his truck with bad brakes through the mountains.

01:28:29.500 He killed four people, maimed many other people.

01:28:32.960 And the governor here just commuted his sentence to 10 years, and he's eligible for parole in

01:28:38.740 five.

01:28:39.240 And he reckless manslaughtered four people.

01:28:42.200 So by that measure, Kim Potter should be eligible for parole in, what, 14 months?

01:28:47.220 But that's not the sentence she's going to get.

01:28:49.240 I expect the judge would give her the full 15 years.

01:28:51.660 Plus, Minnesota has what they call Blakely factors, which are an upward departure from

01:28:56.240 sentencing.

01:28:56.900 If someone, for example, is a uniformed cop while they commit the crime, which is clearly

01:29:00.800 the case here.

01:29:01.620 If they endangered other people while committing the crime, which also occurred here.

01:29:05.840 Derek Chauvin was essentially convicted of the same reckless killing charge.

01:29:09.480 And he's looking at, well, he was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison.

01:29:13.880 It wouldn't surprise me if Potter received a similar sentence.

01:29:16.720 Oh, my God.

01:29:17.520 I mean, that will be a true travesty.

01:29:20.660 If they put this mother, decent cop, decent person, good cop, according to everybody who

01:29:26.760 testified other than this one incident in jail for 20 years, she shouldn't go to jail.

01:29:32.160 I don't think she should spend any time in jail. 0.98

01:29:33.920 I really don't.

01:29:34.540 I think this, as you think, this is a negligence case.

01:29:37.400 You don't go to jail for negligence.

01:29:39.500 And even if it was reckless manslaughter, clearly it's an aberrant event.

01:29:42.500 She's not a danger to the public, especially no longer a police officer.

01:29:46.040 There's no reason to actually put her in a cage at all. 0.95

01:29:49.360 Right.

01:29:49.840 Well, the judge already rejected that, didn't she?

01:29:52.400 Because Kim Potter's lawyers made that argument in asking that she could remain free 0.99

01:29:57.820 pending sentencing.

01:29:59.540 And the judge was not sympathetic to not a danger to the community.

01:30:03.340 Nope, she was not.

01:30:05.120 So what do we know about this judge and her sentencing?

01:30:07.520 Do we expect her to listen to the Keith Ellison lunacy of upward departure?

01:30:13.640 You know, I don't know her reputation.

01:30:15.240 I can only judge by the trial itself, of which I watched every minute.

01:30:19.040 So I saw her performance through that.

01:30:20.500 And especially when the prosecution blatantly misrepresented the law of manslaughter to the

01:30:25.560 jury in rebuttal, and she did nothing to correct that, despite the defense objecting,

01:30:31.220 asking for correction, asking for a mistrial.

01:30:33.740 She did nothing to correct that misstatement of law to the jury.

01:30:36.580 That tells me she's, from my perception, she's fully in with the state on this case.

01:30:40.740 And I would expect the most severe sentence that she's lawfully able to deliver to Kim 1.00

01:30:46.040 Potter.

01:30:46.620 Boy.

01:30:47.740 So can you just expand on that?

01:30:49.960 Say specifically what they said, what the prosecution said in the rebuttal that was wrong.

01:30:54.300 And tell me whether you think it actually will be grounds for appeal for a legitimate

01:30:58.260 appeal.

01:30:58.960 Sure.

01:30:59.560 So reckless manslaughter requires the creation of a risk, an unjustified risk, and the reckless

01:31:04.660 disregard, the conscious disregard of that risk.

01:31:07.840 What that means in this context is that for Kim Potter's conduct of been reckless disregard,

01:31:11.980 she needed to have known she had the gun in her hand.

01:31:15.380 Like maybe she thought she was reaching for a taser, but when her hand came out in front of

01:31:18.860 her, she saw it was a gun and she decided to use it anyway, even though she didn't believe

01:31:24.760 there was a justification for deadly force.

01:31:26.680 That's not what happened here.

01:31:27.800 She never knew she had a gun in her hand, so she never knew she was creating a risk of

01:31:32.420 death, so she never consciously disregarded a risk of death.

01:31:35.600 So unless you can prove she knew she had the gun in her hand, there can't be reckless

01:31:39.900 manslaughter here.

01:31:41.360 Prosecutor Matthew Frank told the jury in rebuttal the state does not need to prove that she knew

01:31:46.840 she had a gun in her hand.

01:31:48.300 That completely strips out the conscious disregard element for manslaughter.

01:31:52.320 It makes manslaughter based on mere civil negligence.

01:31:56.760 Right.

01:31:57.200 That makes perfect sense that the jury then got confused and came to the conclusion that

01:32:01.100 it did.

01:32:01.500 So but what about the performance of the defense attorney?

01:32:04.880 Because Earl Gray, which is his actual name, really took a beating from lawyers I really

01:32:10.720 respect.

01:32:11.940 You know, it's not a partisan thing.

01:32:13.800 It's just but people he just got panned for not being more aggressive in particular in

01:32:18.020 his closing.

01:32:18.580 Your thoughts.

01:32:19.800 So I think Earl Gray is a fantastic lawyer.

01:32:21.800 He's been practicing law forever.

01:32:24.260 He's quite famous in the Minnesota legal circles and surrounding states.

01:32:27.720 He's an outstanding criminal defense attorney.

01:32:30.140 I would not hesitate to retain him if I were facing criminal charges.

01:32:34.020 He did a great job throughout that trial, especially on cross-examination of state's

01:32:38.000 witnesses.

01:32:38.620 But that closing was far below his normal standard of work.

01:32:42.660 It was kind of disconnected.

01:32:45.620 He spent inordinate time arguing legal issues I thought were weak or really incredible to

01:32:51.420 a jury, for example, that Dante Wright's cause of death was his flight from the shooting scene

01:32:56.260 as opposed to the bullet that went through his heart.

01:32:58.640 I don't think he can sell that to a jury.

01:33:00.660 And he didn't spend enough time on the core, what I perceive to be the core issue in this

01:33:04.360 case.

01:33:04.740 And that is the lack of evidence of conscious disregard of risk, which is the core requirement

01:33:09.100 for reckless manslaughter.

01:33:10.580 Yeah, right.

01:33:11.440 Because we don't criminalize negligence.

01:33:13.360 People make mistakes, even egregious ones in this country.

01:33:16.400 And we don't throw the criminal law at them.

01:33:19.060 And that's why, again, I blame Keith Ellison for this.

01:33:22.840 I will say there's been some bizarre reaction, Andrew.

01:33:26.040 I'll give you one example.

01:33:27.360 Cardi B decided to tweet out because there was the weird smiling mugshot of Kim Potter.

01:33:32.720 She went back and had a second mugshot.

01:33:34.920 And Cardi B tweets out saying, it's funny to me how her cries seem so fake, but her smile

01:33:41.340 so genuine, seems so genuine.

01:33:43.600 Hashtag, it was never a mistake.

01:33:45.840 She goes on, she's smiling because she only got manslaughter.

01:33:49.060 Also, because she don't have to fake it and she can live in her truth.

01:33:53.300 Her truth is, yeah, I killed him.

01:33:55.320 And what?

01:33:56.560 That's the truth she's been wanting to say, but had to act like she was sorry.

01:34:01.740 Like, I'm sorry.

01:34:04.080 There's why do these morons feel the need to comment at all on these verdicts?

01:34:08.040 They're never right.

01:34:09.300 They're never helpful.

01:34:11.320 You know, I hate to quote Laura Ingraham, but to paraphrase, just shut up and sing because

01:34:16.240 you just like, you don't know what you're talking about.

01:34:20.020 Well, I think she's just a professional mean girl. 1.00

01:34:22.580 That's what she does for a living. 1.00

01:34:24.000 So I wouldn't expect anything more of her.

01:34:26.640 I don't know.

01:34:27.100 It's one of those things where wasn't she the one who was talking about her cousin's

01:34:31.160 testicle?

01:34:32.380 Was that or was that or no, it was that it was Nicki Minaj actually was another big

01:34:36.800 singer.

01:34:37.300 So in any event, I think Cardi B should educate herself a little bit more on what actually

01:34:42.020 happened in this case, because nobody argued.

01:34:44.040 Nobody argued that Kim Potter shot Dante Wright intentionally or wanted him to die.

01:34:50.240 All right.

01:34:50.840 Andrew Branca, such a pleasure as always.

01:34:52.420 Thank you so much for being here.

01:34:54.240 My pleasure, Megan, anytime.

01:34:55.760 And to our audience, do you want to learn about self-defense?

01:34:57.760 Andrew's got a very cool offering for you.

01:34:59.840 He's teaching his Law of Self-Defense advanced class on Saturday, January 8th.

01:35:05.080 So you can learn more about it.

01:35:06.380 You can learn the law yourself and go by going to lawofselfdefense.com.

01:35:12.300 And it's very clear how you register and how you participate.

01:35:14.420 And you can ask him questions and all this fun stuff.

01:35:16.000 So highly recommend that.

01:35:22.280 We're going to do some written questions for right now.

01:35:25.620 Asked and answered.

01:35:26.280 This is where listeners submit questions via email to questions at devilmaycaremedia.com.

01:35:32.920 My executive producer, Steve Krakauer, joins me now.

01:35:36.020 Hey, Steve, what are they, what are folks wanting to know?

01:35:38.360 Yeah.

01:35:38.640 Hey, Megan.

01:35:38.960 Happy New Year.

01:35:39.520 Lots of questions have come in.

01:35:41.020 Actually, a lot of emails to that, questions at devilmaycaremedia email address.

01:35:45.040 So keep them coming.

01:35:45.780 Also on Instagram, where people can follow us at Megan Kelly Show.

01:35:48.840 This one is from Alyssa Frost.

01:35:50.880 She wants to know, what will you do if the vaccine is mandated at your boys' school?

01:35:55.040 Melissa, thank you for that.

01:35:57.580 Well, it has been.

01:35:58.460 It has been for 16 and up.

01:36:00.760 And thankfully, my boys are only 12 and 8.

01:36:02.880 So it's not mandatory yet.

01:36:05.180 But it's, you know, strongly recommended for the young ones.

01:36:08.260 And I have not gotten my kids vaccinated yet.

01:36:10.680 And I don't know what I will do.

01:36:12.800 Because I'm not anti-vaccine.

01:36:15.160 And I'm not even anti-vaccine for children.

01:36:18.400 I just, I don't want my kids to go first.

01:36:20.860 And all these people who are super pro-vaccine, let your kid go first.

01:36:24.500 Great, go.

01:36:26.140 No problem.

01:36:27.040 We'll sit back and we'll wait and we'll see.

01:36:29.200 And if it goes okay, then, you know, I'll probably do it.

01:36:33.060 So, because I'm not anti-vax.

01:36:34.560 But I don't like being told I have to when I might not want to, right?

01:36:38.900 It's like, this is a very personal decision.

01:36:40.360 And it's ridiculous because it only prevents serious, you know, risk of injury or death,

01:36:46.420 which children are generally not at risk of at all, unless they've got some immunocompromised

01:36:51.100 situation or whatever, which, thank God, my kids don't have.

01:36:53.400 So it's just, the whole thing is absurd.

01:36:55.320 It's theater.

01:36:56.800 I'll tell you what, if I had already had them vaccinated, I would give serious thought

01:37:01.180 before I gave them a booster.

01:37:02.660 Read the Wall Street Journal article that came out, I think, December 21st on that.

01:37:06.740 Before, before you do that.

01:37:08.700 Anyway, I think hopefully things are going the other way now that we realize everybody's

01:37:12.000 getting COVID and like the vaccines are not going to stop it.

01:37:15.400 So that's, that's sort of where my hopes are.

01:37:17.880 And my daughter's school has not yet mandated it, but it's getting mandated by sports teams,

01:37:22.000 right?

01:37:22.160 So even the schools that aren't mandating it are getting sucked in.

01:37:25.120 The kids are because of the sports.

01:37:27.140 So hopefully people are going to see reason soon.

01:37:29.060 Maybe that'll be one upshot of Omicron.

01:37:31.660 I end today as I began.

01:37:33.480 I want to tell you that tomorrow, Zuby will be here.

01:37:35.780 Fascinating author, host, and rapper.

01:37:37.820 A lot to talk to him about.

01:37:39.500 In the meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, or Stitcher.

01:37:42.920 Also go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly and subscribe.

01:37:46.140 Thanks for listening.

01:37:46.900 See you tomorrow.

01:37:49.120 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:37:51.140 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 03, 2022

COVID Truth and Propaganda, and a Trans Swimmer Update, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Cynthia Millen, and Nancy Hogshead-Makar ｜ Ep. 232

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