Dark Brandon Tries Again, with Andrew Klavan, and COVID Origins Deep Dive, with Dr. Alina Chan and Dr. Robert Garry ｜ Ep. 426
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 34 minutes
Words per Minute
197.63435
Summary
Dr. Robert Gary and Dr. Alina Chan disagree on whether the deadly SARS coronavirus came from a lab or from nature. Plus, a new theory about the origins of the SARS virus that has killed millions.
Transcript
00:00:00.540
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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Did you catch Dark Brandon's latest speech about the extreme MAGA Republicans last night?
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It's like change. It was extreme MAGA, it's ultra MAGA, and now it's mega MAGA, which I actually kind of like.
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I like alliteration. It flows. Mega MAGA Republicans last night, he spoke to the American people about the threats to democracy just days before Americans cast their ballots in the midterm elections.
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And we're going to get into all of that when Andrew Klavan joins us in just a bit of The Daily Wire.
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But we begin today with a deep dive on a hugely important issue, and that is the origins of COVID.
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Did it come from a lab? Did it come from nature? With millions dead, we've got over a million Americans dead now, around the world, even more.
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Not knowing is not an option, right? How is it that we can't have a definitive answer by now?
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Today we have two scientific experts with us who have completely different points of view on how it started.
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I'm going to be joined in a bit by Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and scientific advisor at MIT and Harvard.
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She wrote a book on why she believes the science points to COVID originating in a lab.
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But we begin today with Dr. Robert Gary, virologist from Tulane University, who now believes from his research that COVID did not originate in a lab, but instead came from nature.
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And he was somebody closely in touch with Dr. Fauci at the beginning of this whole thing before Dr. Gary and others published a piece in Nature magazine saying this looked like it had natural origins.
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Dr. Gary, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.
00:01:56.860
So let's just get into it, because as I understand it, the best case and forgive me because I am not a doctor, but the best case for this coming from a lab is that it has something called a furin cleavage site in it.
00:02:07.720
And that is something not in except in very rare cases seen in nature and that it's never been seen in in a coronavirus of this type ever before.
00:02:19.140
This is it. And it just so happens to emerge in the very same city where there's a lab doing exactly this kind of research.
00:02:27.020
Right. So what did you what how do you dismiss the furin cleavage site?
00:02:31.140
OK, so just to correct a few things, you know, furin cleavage sites are not rare in coronaviruses at all.
00:02:40.540
There are many coronaviruses that have furin cleavage sites.
00:02:44.500
So of this type, like SARS, like those types of coronaviruses.
00:02:48.740
OK, so, you know, the SARS like coronaviruses, there are a specific subgenus of a genus in the coronavirus family.
00:02:58.960
OK, OK, but is it true that there's never been a furin cleavage site in a SARS type coronavirus?
00:03:05.100
OK, so if you if you draw that line very narrowly.
00:03:10.100
I can just answer and then give me my analogy, because that way we can keep me understanding.
00:03:14.620
So in the subgenus, this this small part of this genus of the beta coronaviruses, there's not been another one with a furin cleavage site.
00:03:25.060
So I've heard the analogy, OK, it's like finding a horn on a on a horse in a in one city.
00:03:32.440
But, you know, that's not really and, you know, looking for unicorns.
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But there are, you know, there are lots of different colors of horses.
00:03:45.340
Right. So you've got black horses and brown horses and, you know, spotted horses and the like.
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And all these brown and black and spotted horses, you know, they you know, they could have horns.
00:03:55.740
Right. You know, and that that's if you're in cleavage site.
00:03:58.600
So it's like saying, you know, there's just one small member of the family that, you know, has an unusual feature.
00:04:04.180
And, you know, somehow or other, that's unusual.
00:04:07.560
OK. And there's a there's a wide range of scientists who disagree with your assertion on that and say that it's it is highly unusual.
00:04:16.660
And there's a lot of other reasons to think that that furin cleavage site is natural.
00:04:21.160
It's a it's a site in the virus where, you know, that changes very frequently.
00:04:29.520
There's nothing unusual about that furin cleavage site when you look at it.
00:04:33.900
You know, it's actually if you compare it to other coronaviruses, the furin cleavage site, the nucleotides that were put in there are out of frame.
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And that probably doesn't mean much to many of your viewers, but it's very significant for for a virologist to, you know,
00:04:48.720
if you think that it was cloned in there somehow, there's really no reason for a scientist to put that in out of frame.
00:04:54.340
And there's some other features of it, too, that that look perfectly natural.
00:04:58.560
There is a reason for scientists to put it in there if they're researching back coronaviruses and looking for ways to make them more dangerous or more contagious in humans,
00:05:06.080
which is exactly what they were doing in this Wuhan lab.
00:05:10.760
Well, you know, I don't think they were trying to make them more dangerous.
00:05:13.560
They were trying to figure out how they, you know, cause disease in people.
00:05:17.940
So there's a there's a there's a big difference between, you know, trying to do work that would, you know, create a bioweapon and one that's just, you know,
00:05:25.520
trying to find out, you know, what what kind of viruses are out there and what are potentially, you know.
00:05:33.200
But but they're definitely were looking at back coronaviruses in this Wuhan lab and ways I'll just go with your language and make them more contagious.
00:05:41.100
And the furin cleavage site was a way to, as I understand it, and this is how it explained to me, to basically it you insert this in.
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It tells the cell, open up. I'm something you want.
00:05:52.420
But it's a lie. It's not something the cell wants.
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And then it tells the cell to manufacture more coronavirus and then the cell complies and then they go out and they attack other cells.
00:06:02.620
And it's almost like a computer virus in the way it it multiplies very efficiently.
00:06:09.720
And that's why we don't really like furin cleavage sites and viruses like this.
00:06:14.080
Well, you know, a lot a lot of coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites.
00:06:17.680
I mean, there are two common cold coronaviruses that infect people that, you know, have furin cleavage sites.
00:06:24.220
So it's not necessarily the, you know, the smoking gun of a, you know, a gain of function research or anything along those lines.
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It's just something that viruses occasionally pick up on, you know.
00:06:34.520
I'm just trying to I'm just trying to explain what a furin cleavage site does and why we don't like it and why it's a problem in the coronavirus.
00:06:40.420
Lots of viruses have even, you know, these relatively mild.
00:06:43.680
Well, you said that before, but then you already admitted not in the SARS family.
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And that's why people are suspicious of this one.
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So we don't like the the fact that it's got a furin cleavage site.
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And there's a reason why the Wuhan lab and Peter Daszak's group, EcoHealth Alliance, which is funded by the United States, by Fauci's group, that they wanted to experiment with a furin cleavage site being put into a coronavirus very much like this one.
00:07:08.020
They wanted funding from the Defense Department, which the Defense Department said no to, saying it was too they believed it would be too dangerous.
00:07:15.420
Nonetheless, we believe this kind of work was being done at the Wuhan lab.
00:07:21.140
You know, I mean, I think that, you know, there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that say that, you know, a U.S. lab, you know, and laboratory technologies that were developed here were then, you know, somehow or other used to create the SARS coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2.
00:07:37.000
I mean, there's just really no evidence for that whatsoever.
00:07:40.460
There's a lot more scientific evidence on the, you know, the fact that this virus emerged, just like a lot of other emerging viruses do from nature, from the wildlife trade.
00:07:49.160
Well, I concede to you, there is no evidence that this coronavirus we've been dealing with, SARS-CoV-2, came from the Wuhan lab or from, there's no evidence, there's no proof.
00:08:02.500
And I think that's very important to point out.
00:08:04.460
I mean, you know, a lot of fingers have been pointed at some scientists in the U.S. like, you know, like Peter Daszak and some scientists at the University of North Carolina, for example, saying that they somehow or other engineered this furin cleavage site into SARS-CoV-2.
00:08:24.220
And we're talking that we're trying to make a distinction now between general coronavirus research, bat coronavirus research that may have included insertion of a furin cleavage site and research that led to this coronavirus we've all been dealing with in this pandemic.
00:08:38.120
And that second leap, there's no proof for that yet.
00:08:45.540
A lot of finger pointing conspiracy theorists like to do that.
00:08:52.380
There's no proof to exonerate him either, but there's no proof condemning him.
00:08:55.680
So so but on the first question of the research he was doing on coronaviruses and Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab, that that is potentially problematic.
00:09:05.280
And they on the unicorn example you just cited, they went to the Defense Department and said, please let us do research on how to get a horn on a horse.
00:09:16.020
And the Defense Department said, we're not going to fund that.
00:09:19.180
And then lo and behold, a horse with a horn started walking around Wuhan, China, right next to the very lab in which they wanted to do this very research.
00:09:27.780
And the scientists say it's not unusual for scientists to go in and seek funding for something they actually already have underway.
00:09:35.140
Well, you know, I mean, if you looked at other research grants again, I just want to emphasize to your to your audience that there is no evidence that US, you know, labs and scientists were involved in creating this this virus.
00:09:49.420
And, you know, the horn on the on the on the horse, the unicorn analogy, I mean, it really falls apart really quickly when you when you think, OK, it's just one.
00:09:58.320
You know, this is a white horse, but there are black horses and brown horses and, you know, other a lot of other kinds of horses and, you know, donkeys and things like that that have the furin cleavage site.
00:10:08.260
So it's really not a you know, it's really not the smoking gun for the you know, for the lab leak proponents.
00:10:14.120
In fact, you know, if you really look closely at the at the site and, you know, how how viruses acquire these furin cleavage sites, you can see that it's just been a perfectly natural process as to how SARS-CoV-2 got this this furin cleavage.
00:10:29.000
Well, why why did you originally think that it was likely from a lab?
00:10:33.160
Because we've seen in your correspondence with Fauci and Collins that you initially took a look at this, along with other virologists and experts and said things like, I can't think of a plausible natural scenario.
00:10:43.500
That was February 2nd, 2020, where you get a bat virus or one very similar to it, where you insert exactly these amino acids and nucleotides that all have to be added and so on.
00:10:53.900
And then you said, I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature.
00:10:59.440
And then two days later, well, then you spoke to Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.
00:11:07.920
And then within days, you completely reversed yourself and did a 180 and said it's lab.
00:11:17.800
I mean, that that was one email that, you know, I had sent to, you know, some of my colleagues that were looking at this one email out of hundreds of emails and and, you know, different kinds of Zoom calls and things like this, where we're discussing, you know, the possibilities about where this, you know, where this virus might have come from.
00:11:35.760
And, you know, my my my colleagues and I who wrote that paper in Nature Medicine, you know, when we took on this, you know, sort of trying to figure out where it had come from, you know, we we told ourselves we need to be agnostic about all the different possibilities.
00:11:50.540
We need to not let, you know, some of our priors and some of our previous experience, you know, really biases and, you know, if we would have come up with, you know, data and evidence that the virus had leaked from the lab, we would have been the first ones out there saying, you know, this virus leaked from the lab.
00:12:06.720
So, so that one email that you just read is, like I said, hundreds of emails, I actually wrote it, you know, and at the evening, I was at a Mardi Gras ball here, I'm in New Orleans, right? So, you know, I was typing on my iPhone there.
00:12:19.520
And, you know, just got this question, you know, you know, what's the what's the evidence that, you know, this, this, you know, if you're in cleavage site is natural or not. And that's what I typed out. But, you know, as I, you know, got further and into the, you know, the whole genome and looking at the virus, it came clear pretty quickly.
00:12:36.720
That, you know, this virus, you know, all these features that we were looking at were perfectly natural. So, you know, I, you know, there were some other people that I was dealing with, you know, you've heard the names Christian Anderson and Eddie Holmes and a few others, Andrew Rambo, that, you know, may have been a little bit more open to the, the lab hypothesis early on until they started looking at it.
00:12:56.680
So, you know, I was, I was, you know, always more of the, you know, on the, yeah, this is natural, you know, and I'm going to have to find something really, you know, unusual to make me think that it's going to be a lab.
00:13:07.320
But forgive me, wasn't it just days, wasn't it just two days later that you reversed yourself and said, actually, you know, okay, I forget what I said about it coming from a lab. I now say it's natural.
00:13:16.000
It wasn't really a reversal. I mean, it's, it's what scientists do, you know, we kick around ideas, you know, we have, you know, private conversations. Sometimes you're playing devil's advocate. I mean, that's pretty much what I was doing in that, in that one email.
00:13:28.900
Well, what happened in those 48 hours? What changed? What, what did you see?
00:13:34.160
Well, it looked at the genomes of the viruses more closely. I mean, in fact, at that time, too, there was another, you know, piece of data that came out, you know, the famous pangolin, pangolin coronavirus, right? And this, this virus, when we looked at the genome of that, and it happened all in that timeframe, you know, there's another site besides the curing cleavage site that, that we were focusing in on. It's called the receptor binding domain.
00:13:57.320
And, and that receptor binding domain also, you know, was causing us a little bit of, you know, head scratching, you know, where did that come from? Because it was like, unlike any other, you know, receptor binding domain that we'd seen in, in any coronavirus anywhere.
00:14:13.720
But, you know, the, what made the pangolin coronavirus so significant was, is that it's RBD, or receptor binding domain, this little fragment of the spike protein that helps the virus attach to the cell, was very similar to what was the RBD, the receptor binding domain in SARS-CoV-2.
00:14:31.600
So, you know, that pangolin coronavirus was a natural virus. We knew that for sure. It wasn't a fake virus somebody just put on, onto the, you know, onto a website.
00:14:41.800
How does that prove anything about the, about SARS-CoV-2? How do you, I can see why maybe you say, all right, that requires further study.
00:14:48.260
How do you in 48 hours come out and publish a paper saying, this is natural? I mean, because that, what happened, the thing that bothered me when I saw all this go down was,
00:14:55.980
why didn't all these experts, because it's very suspicious, talk to Fauci, talk to Collins, who are on record as not wanting this to be a lab leak theory,
00:15:04.500
as saying this would be very damaging if that's what comes out. And then suddenly all these virologists reverse themselves.
00:15:10.940
And it's one thing, if you can say, Megan, let me show you what I saw that proved to me. It came, we found the pangolin.
00:15:17.700
You know, that's why. I'd say, gotcha, I get it. But there's nothing that proved this thing came from natural, from nature in those 48 hours.
00:15:25.640
Nothing. What happened was that, you know, I mean, we saw that the receptor binding domain was natural, you know, because it was in the pangolin.
00:15:32.780
And, you know, if you find that site, you know, as a natural thing, then, you know, it's logical to make the, you know, to go to the next step and say, well, the whole thing is natural.
00:15:41.580
And, you know, let me step back to something that you just said about Drs. Fauci and Collins.
00:15:47.260
They were agnostic about it, too. I mean, I, you know, I never got any impression from either one of them.
00:15:52.800
But because we have their writings. I mean, I forgive me because you can tell me what your conversations were.
00:15:58.260
I'm just telling you what my impression was. You know, you can you can come to a different conclusion.
00:16:02.420
But, you know, they didn't, you know, try to influence us when we wrote the nature paper or nature medicine paper or, you know, even, you know, tell us, oh, you've got to write it this way or any way like that.
00:16:13.940
They were they were completely hands off on that.
00:16:16.320
You know, they they they had just what what that conference was about, really, that teleconference on February one that, you know, there's been so much air about it, you know, a lot of speculation, everything.
00:16:26.900
I mean, really what what happened was, you know, a lot of virologists were called together by by Jeremy Farrar.
00:16:34.240
He is, you know, the head of the Wellcome Trust in the UK and, you know, he called his friend Tony Fauci and Fauci also got, you know, his boss on there, Francis Collins from the NIH.
00:16:45.600
And, you know, and a bunch of other virologists that, you know, had expertise in how viruses emerge.
00:16:52.760
And, you know, this is, I think, perfectly natural.
00:16:55.680
This is what you want people that are, you know, advising, you know, the president of the United States in Congress and and also, you know, the you know, the the parliament in the UK.
00:17:06.180
You want these people to get the best information that they possibly can.
00:17:10.440
OK, let me jump in. Let me jump in. I accept all that.
00:17:15.980
He is the one who initially sent an email to Fauci and Collins expressing support for the lab leak theory, citing you, among others, saying Robert Gary, quote, cannot think of a possible natural scenario, saying he, quote, this other guy, Farzan.
00:17:30.860
He says he was bothered by the fear in sight and having a hard time explaining it outside the lab, saying Farzan favored the lab leak over natural origin, 70 to 30 or 60, 40.
00:17:40.200
And then Farrar, he wrote a book actually saying two other experts advising Fauci and Collins were strongly in the lab leak camp.
00:17:48.960
Christiana Anderson, who I know you've worked with and gotten research grants with, he put the lab leak theory at 60 to 70 percent.
00:17:54.840
Eddie Holmes of Sydney put it at 80 percent and so on.
00:17:57.360
And so this is all the information going into Fauci and Collins, all of these top experts, including yourself.
00:18:06.640
You changed your mind in 48 hours, in 48 hours.
00:18:09.520
And what we do know, and I understand Collins may not have said it to you, according to you, but he is on record as saying we must, quote, put down this very destructive conspiracy theory, meaning the lab leak.
00:18:20.760
So he didn't sound exactly open minded to a general search.
00:18:23.860
So let me put that quote in a little bit more context.
00:18:30.280
It's not, you know, it's not well discussed, but, you know, there was actually a preprint that came out right around that time, right before that teleconference, that said that basically this SARS-CoV-2 was a hybrid or a chimera between, you know, some coronavirus and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
00:18:48.440
And that preprint was making a lot of, you know, rounds in the media and people were touting, oh, this is like the smoking gun.
00:18:56.360
This virus came from a lab and they engineered it.
00:18:58.660
They combined the most dangerous parts of HIV, including that furin cleavage side into SARS-CoV-2.
00:19:04.740
And this is really what I think, you know, Dr. Collins's quote is really addressing those dangerous conspiracy theories about, you know, the virus having been engineered and possibly, you know, put together with HIV.
00:19:19.540
I don't think he was making like general, you know, comments or anything like that.
00:19:25.260
He went on to say, first of all, wondering if there's something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy with what seems to be growing momentum with a link to a segment done by my old pal Brett Baer at Fox News about sources being increasingly confident that the coronavirus outbreak started in the Wuhan lab.
00:19:44.880
Then he goes on to say, I hope that that the Nature Medicine article that you participated in after the 48 hour shift on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this, but probably didn't get much visibility.
00:19:56.940
Anything more we can do? Ask the National Academy to weigh in.
00:20:08.120
I mean, to suggest this is all about an AIDS concern is belied by their own writings.
00:20:13.020
Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I, I, you know, I'm not a spokesman for the NIH or anybody like that.
00:20:19.560
You know, I, I think our evidence, you know, at the time we published that, I think that quote you're talking from is in April.
00:20:25.960
I mean, most of the scientists that had looked at it by that time were saying, yeah, we've got to dismiss all these conspiracy theories about the virus having been engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:20:37.340
Well, okay. I mean, that's my point is that that's what Fauci and Collins were saying.
00:20:41.480
Let's get rid of this theory about what was happening at the lab, that this came from a lab.
00:20:48.520
I mean, the virus, you know, they didn't have, you know, a virus like SARS-CoV-2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:20:54.800
They didn't stick a purine cleavage site in it.
00:20:59.880
I mean, you know, based on all the science and the evidence that we've gathered, I mean, you know, it's just extremely unlikely that they had anything close to SARS-CoV-2.
00:21:09.740
Now you're, now you're, you're admitting that you're just positing this.
00:21:12.780
Extremely unlikely is different from, I know she didn't do it.
00:21:15.420
There was, there was bat coronavirus, gain of function research going on.
00:21:22.140
Well, do you, do you deny that there was bat coronavirus, gain of function research going on in the Wuhan lab between this woman who is referred to as the bat lady and EcoHealth Alliance?
00:21:34.740
I mean, there was research being done, but there was no research being done on a virus that could have been converted into SARS-CoV-2.
00:21:43.340
They didn't have anything close that was, you know, 99.9%.
00:21:48.560
Because we've asked the Chinese repeatedly, including from the start, and they didn't provide it.
00:21:54.020
I mean, they would have published on it before.
00:21:56.040
I mean, you know, and you, you can't find, it's hard to find in nature.
00:22:02.800
How do you know they would have published that?
00:22:04.120
What if they, what if they were doing it nefariously?
00:22:08.020
I mean, you know, we're, we're diving into conspiracy theories there.
00:22:15.640
You can't dismiss a legitimate question by labeling it a conspiracy theory.
00:22:21.980
You would have to postulate that there were all these people working like Dayzak and, and,
00:22:26.820
you know, the University of North Carolina scientists and the people from the Wuhan Institute
00:22:31.800
of Virology, you know, the most elite coronavirus virologist in the world, but somehow or other
00:22:37.020
they got together and said, okay, we're going to cover up the fact all this time, you know,
00:22:41.760
three years now, almost that, that we were working on the virus and, you know, and that
00:22:47.340
I mean, I, you know, that sounds to me like a conspiracy.
00:22:50.400
Now, you know, if it's, if you don't want to call it conspiracy theory, I guess that's
00:22:54.460
Why is it not possible that they were working on it in a low security lab?
00:22:58.640
You would concede that level two lab where something like that should not have been worked
00:23:04.180
And then they had a, oh, you know what moment when it got out and an, and an international
00:23:11.960
I have to reject the, you know, the idea that, that people like, uh, Peter Dayzak and, uh,
00:23:17.320
Ralph Baric were involved in some conspiracy with, uh, Zing Li Shi at the, at the Wuhan
00:23:28.320
You'd do better if you would strong man my argument than straw man it.
00:23:31.380
I'm not saying that they had a conspiracy to create this particular virus.
00:23:34.760
I'm saying they were doing bat coronavirus research, gain of function research that was
00:23:39.320
very dangerous and it was not properly supervised in a lab with adequate, adequate security,
00:23:43.920
which is what has led many of us to think something went wrong.
00:23:49.500
But, but they would have had to, you know, they would have had a, had to have a virus that
00:23:55.860
Now I'm going to tell you something here and, you know, the virus didn't emerge directly
00:24:04.740
It had to enter some other mammal besides a bat in order to evolve into SARS-CoV-2.
00:24:09.920
And the people at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they were working on bat coronaviruses.
00:24:14.680
And so, you know, that's a, that's a whole different thing.
00:24:17.480
And that's another piece of data, another piece of evidence that, you know, they didn't
00:24:23.380
Well, no, but they had, they had mice with humanized lungs and they were using those
00:24:29.040
mice to test how contagious they could make this, how they could improve the efficiency
00:24:38.320
And those, those mice are available, you know, ACE2 mice, they're, they're available all over.
00:24:42.120
A lot of people do work on those, those kinds of mice.
00:24:44.120
So why are we pretending that there wasn't a way of making it?
00:24:46.140
The more popular now that, you know, we've got a, you know, a pandemic coronavirus that uses
00:24:50.680
And I'm just saying, of course, this is what people think that, that, that there is, there
00:24:53.900
absolutely was a way of making the coronavirus more dangerous and more, or more contagious
00:24:59.500
And if it happened in a natural origin, where's the intermittent, intermediate animal, where's
00:25:04.940
the original animal, where is even one pangolin?
00:25:07.980
There's not one with over 80,000 animals tested.
00:25:11.340
It wasn't a pangolin, but you know, we do have evidence and, you know, we published these
00:25:15.200
two peer reviewed papers in science magazine, you know, several months ago, the, you know,
00:25:19.880
they went through a lot of strident peer review and we showed, I think conclusively, I mean,
00:25:28.540
You know, I mean, the language that we used in the paper was pretty direct.
00:25:32.360
I mean, we showed that the Hanan market, and we haven't mentioned that word before,
00:25:36.260
but this wildlife market in the city of Wuhan was, you know, the epicenter of the outbreak.
00:25:42.320
I mean, all the early cases were that it was that it may have been the epicenter of
00:25:46.440
the outbreak doesn't prove that that was the source, that that was the original source
00:25:54.460
Moreover, my understanding is you guys, many people had the theory that this is where it
00:26:01.800
And therefore, that's where all the testing was done in the hospitals around the Wuhan market
00:26:05.960
in order to support your own theories, as opposed to casting a wide net to figure out
00:26:16.240
It's the South China, you know, seafood and wildlife market there.
00:26:19.840
And it was one of only four places in the city of Wuhan, this, you know, this mega city,
00:26:24.600
you know, 11 million people there that one of only four places that sold wildlife that
00:26:31.460
So, you know, this is where, you know, where all the early cases were centered, you know,
00:26:38.240
and, you know, it's not ascertainment bias or anything like that.
00:26:41.880
You'll probably hear that, you know, a little bit later on, I'm guessing, you know, but,
00:26:45.680
you know, this was actually a study that was done, you know, after the, you know, after
00:26:48.980
the outbreak had started, they looked at all the different cases, you know, across the
00:26:53.300
whole city of Wuhan, these 11 million people and identified, you know, cases of SARS-CoV-2
00:27:05.920
And it turns out that, you know, we, we were able to look at that data and show that those
00:27:11.240
cases were centered, you know, not just in any place in this, this large city of over
00:27:15.840
500 square miles, but in a very tiny area that included, you know, at its very center,
00:27:23.560
So, and this included people, and this is important.
00:27:26.040
So when you talk, you know, about ascertainment bias about these cases, it included not only
00:27:31.600
the cases that were epidemiologically or, you know, by, you know, contacts linked to the
00:27:37.140
Hanan market, but also cases that were not linked that, that the epidemiologists couldn't
00:27:43.320
And it turns out that those cases too, you know, without the, you know, the link to the
00:27:48.740
market were also, you know, very close in that same community around that, the Hanan
00:27:55.040
So what, what happened is, is the virus spilled over, you know, from the wildlife trade in
00:28:01.780
It happened twice because there are two different lineages of the virus, which is a whole nother
00:28:08.220
But here's the question that, here's the question lay people are asking, where's the animal?
00:28:14.940
Where's the, you know, I mean, it, the, the data that we looked at and that we published
00:28:19.840
on our science papers goes even deeper, you know, when they closed down that market and
00:28:24.400
they closed it down on January 1st, they took environmental samples from the market.
00:28:29.300
Now, all the wild animals had already been cleared out of the market, right?
00:28:32.780
But there were still environmental swabs and things that they took.
00:28:35.800
And they took them from, you know, from around the different parts of the market.
00:28:39.280
And when those environmental samples were tested for the presence of the virus, they, most
00:28:44.760
of the, those, those samples ended up being clustered in one particular area of the market,
00:28:51.300
Well, it turns out that the Southwest corner was where they were selling these wild animals
00:28:57.960
But the truth is, Dr. Gary, let me add, but let me follow up.
00:29:00.800
There's, the truth is you, you don't know that those samples originated with animals as opposed
00:29:09.600
Well, you know, technically you're correct about that, but I'll tell you the samples that were
00:29:14.180
positive came from places in the market where they were selling the wild animals.
00:29:20.360
One of the samples came from an iron cage that they kept the animals in, the sewer out
00:29:26.160
in front of that, that stall where they were selling the wild animals turned out later to
00:29:32.760
So it's all in this, just one tiny corner of this market that it, you know, the, the West
00:29:37.940
side of the market that's about the size of a, you know, a U.S. football field, maybe
00:29:43.660
So you don't find it odd we haven't found a single animal that would be the source or
00:29:49.980
I, I, you know, I, this is, and there's reasons for that.
00:29:52.860
I mean, scientific reasons why I think that it's been difficult.
00:29:56.360
You know, first of all, you know, they, they cleared all the animals out of the market.
00:30:00.580
So, you know, I mean, call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I, I think that, you
00:30:05.200
know, the, the Chinese government didn't want us linking the virus to the wildlife trade
00:30:10.380
because that's how the first SARS started, right?
00:30:13.240
I mean that, you know, it started from spillover, you know, and multiple spillovers from, from
00:30:22.040
I accept that the Chinese, you know, they cleared the market of those wild animals out and,
00:30:27.860
So the animals are gone and, you know, and then, you know, we, we have not been able to
00:30:32.160
get any data or information from, uh, you know, the Chinese authorities there, you know,
00:30:37.540
about, but, but don't the Chinese have more of a reason to say it came from an animal than
00:30:46.180
I mean, I don't think so because the Chinese, I mean, let's, let's be clear when the virus
00:30:51.720
emerged in Wuhan, the scientists did not share their database of the wildlife past pathogens
00:30:57.840
with the public, or even with their American collaborators.
00:31:01.500
This has been created precisely to help scientists in the event of this kind of an outbreak.
00:31:07.300
So why, when the pandemic finally hit, did they not share it?
00:31:11.160
Why, why wouldn't we know where, where these viruses were and how they were kept in their
00:31:15.960
database that they would, and why have they been shared with the public?
00:31:22.000
I, you know, I think that's just another part of, you know, a lot of conspiracy theories.
00:31:27.980
Tell me, what would be the non-conspiracy theorist reason for them not to share the
00:31:34.720
Well, what they said was, is that they were going to try to modernize it and make it more
00:31:48.020
And then, you know, they got all the flack about it and they just said, heck, no, we're
00:31:52.740
So now they're, now they're being spiteful because they were going to do it, according to
00:31:56.040
you originally, but three years later, they're just ticked off.
00:31:58.720
OK, do you do you agree that this would have easily escaped from a lab that only had BSL
00:32:07.820
If they were working on a virus like this, those levels of security are too low.
00:32:14.420
You know, I agree that, you know, we should change those those rules and work on some of
00:32:19.800
these, you know, wild or wild coronaviruses, wild caught coronaviruses at BSL three.
00:32:26.500
I mean, my my safety, my, you know, my personal safety and the safety of my students depends
00:32:36.220
I mean, you know, the rules are not written down very well.
00:32:39.820
But, you know, it's a separate conversation that we need to have.
00:32:43.320
I mean, just just because, you know, you you think there might have been unsafe conditions
00:32:48.040
there at the at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:32:50.740
And I don't think that there were I think they were operating at a at a at a very high
00:32:55.220
Does doesn't mean that the virus leaked from there?
00:32:57.760
That's that's an entirely different different question.
00:33:00.400
And it should be my problem is not I'm not saying it does mean that I'm saying I'm concerned
00:33:05.260
about your lack of curiosity and the lack of curiosity of others like you who originally
00:33:13.540
And then 48 hours after speaking with Fauci and Collins did a 180.
00:33:19.900
Sir Farrar, who not only reversed himself, but started calling people racist for saying
00:33:26.420
The absence of curiosity and open mindedness to a full throated investigation, I've been
00:33:30.460
you know, I've been doing a lot of other things in my my career looking at other viruses
00:33:36.580
But there have been very few other people, you know, besides me that have not been looking
00:33:41.220
at this question so intently, you know, for for three years.
00:33:44.220
And I can assure you, if we had found any scintilla of evidence that the virus had leaked
00:33:48.420
from the lab, we'd be out there, you know, sharing with people and showing that, you know,
00:34:03.520
You said earlier you did not feel pressured by Fauci or Collins to reverse your opinion
00:34:09.480
Did you have a conversation in which they expressed either one of them expressed that
00:34:13.320
they thought this would be harmful to the scientific community if it looked like a lab leak?
00:34:18.860
Neither one ever said that or suggested that in any way, shape or form to you.
00:34:24.160
Did anybody suggest to you that that was how they felt?
00:34:27.760
I never heard it until I saw it on the news there.
00:34:30.420
And I, you know, didn't say none of your fellow scientists told you that, like Fauci and Collins
00:34:44.000
Whatever your answer is, we didn't hear anything from from from Fauci or Collins that, you know,
00:34:49.500
said, OK, it's going to hurt the national relations or anything like that.
00:34:55.440
I mean, you know now that they've said that publicly in Collins.
00:34:58.480
I mean, we published that paper in March of 2020.
00:35:01.120
I think that quote that you that you read was from Collins sometime in April.
00:35:07.340
I'm not sure if it was The New York Times or where it was.
00:35:09.560
But, you know, or maybe it was when the maybe it even was later, you know, but I never heard
00:35:17.460
It was Collins saying we've got to tamp down the very destructive conspiracy about the lab
00:35:23.260
Otherwise, it would do great potential harm to science and international harmony.
00:35:29.280
Ron Foshier, whose group in the Netherlands researches how to make animal viruses more dangerous,
00:35:33.460
who said in an email further debate about such accusations around the lab leak theory would
00:35:37.900
unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm
00:35:41.780
to science in general and science in China, in particular China, which is America's biggest
00:35:47.580
and most important collaborator in scientific research.
00:35:50.480
This is why people believe that they're everyone.
00:35:54.360
You, Fauci, Collins, Foshier, all these people understood it is not good if we start pointing
00:36:04.560
I mean, I'm not not a particular fan of the the Chinese government.
00:36:08.340
I think that they should be more open about, you know, these early cases and, you know,
00:36:12.880
where the animals came from and a lot of things.
00:36:17.000
And so, you know, don't don't quote me on that.
00:36:24.620
You couldn't figure out how it was that that that's from you.
00:36:28.780
I mean, you know, that was like, you know, amongst thousands.
00:36:36.600
I mean, yeah, this is how scientists, you know, work things out.
00:36:40.600
You know, you sometimes you take one side of the argument and sometimes you take the other
00:36:46.340
And that that's another reason why, you know, when we had this, you know, for everyone
00:36:51.620
teleconference that, you know, I think the NIH feels it's important to keep those confidential
00:36:57.960
discussions private because, you know, people can cherry pick.
00:37:03.860
They cherry pick that one email from me and, you know, said, OK, he's a lab leaker.
00:37:08.620
And he changed his mind in 24 hours and and all this kind of stuff.
00:37:12.560
And, you know, it's it's just not doesn't reflect what the actual discussions that were
00:37:18.700
You know, I must say, though, it wasn't just cherry pick.
00:37:21.920
As I pointed out, Sir Farrar wrote a whole book telling us what your positions were.
00:37:27.080
So it's not just like some nefarious character got a hold of some notes like the whole books
00:37:32.680
Like your colleagues are on the records on this.
00:37:34.680
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's I absolutely I mean, I think, you know, some of the people
00:37:39.640
that you mentioned that can be considered the original lab leakers.
00:37:42.740
And we included the lab leak hypothesis in our nature medicine article.
00:37:47.180
I mean, if you if you carefully read it, it's not even you have to carefully read it.
00:37:55.200
But, you know, we had to look at the scientific evidence and there is no scientific evidence
00:38:02.980
OK, here's the here's the final thing I want to ask you about.
00:38:12.800
But I appreciate you coming on and being so honest.
00:38:15.940
Gary, because nobody else is willing to do this.
00:38:18.300
And so just the fact that you're willing to sit here and take these tough questions
00:38:21.240
makes me think more of you, makes me understand better your position.
00:38:29.180
And so I appreciate you giving me the time and my audience the time for that, too.
00:38:35.460
But here's the thing that, you know, that also got a lot of attention that you and
00:38:39.640
this Christian Anderson Anderson, who was also more in the lab leak,
00:38:43.940
Chris, say again, Christian, Christian, Christian.
00:38:49.000
You guys were both more in the lab leak theory originally and then reversed yourselves.
00:38:58.480
And then within a couple of months in August of 2020, you guys received an eight point nine
00:39:05.000
million dollar grant from Fauci to study emerging infectious diseases.
00:39:08.680
And Fauci is the guy who controls the purse strings when it comes to these federal grants
00:39:14.160
And this is why everyone in your community is so beholden to him.
00:39:18.900
So do you deny that you felt some some pressure to make Fauci happy?
00:39:27.320
I mean, and let me tell you, yes, the grant was finally awarded in August.
00:39:30.680
But, you know, that grant was written in the middle of twenty nineteen and it was reviewed,
00:39:38.400
So you knew it was under consideration when you had the conference with him about lab leak
00:39:45.680
You're saying it wasn't granted until later, but you had applied earlier.
00:39:48.620
So what you're telling me is that when you had the conversation with Fauci about your belief,
00:39:51.880
it was a lab leak theory initially, your grant was under consideration.
00:39:56.120
Nope, it was already it had already been awarded, you know, and so you got it in August
00:40:03.760
I mean, you know, it takes a long time for him to set up all these contracts and everything
00:40:07.940
And, you know, Dr. Fauci doesn't review these grants and he doesn't decide which grant is
00:40:20.140
Fauci couldn't stop it if he if he wanted it, if he wanted to stop it, he could have
00:40:27.540
There are people that could stop it, but I'm not sure that Dr.
00:40:37.480
I mean, you know, we competed against a bunch of other very, you know, good scientists and
00:40:41.740
groups and things like that wrote a good proposal.
00:40:44.060
And, you know, the study section liked it and, you know, it was reviewed by the Scientific
00:40:49.340
Council of the NIH, which is another independent group of scientists.
00:40:59.840
Some people have said, you know, and the name of the project is the whole program is called
00:41:05.640
CREED, Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
00:41:09.220
It wasn't a CREED pro quo or anything like that.
00:41:12.800
And the people that, you know, have made those accusations know that that's not true.
00:41:17.060
They're just, you know, throwing out, you know, whatever they think might might stick
00:41:23.140
Dr. Robert Gary, you're a stand up guy for coming on.
00:41:31.580
Alina Chan, who has been watching this entire interview and is ready to respond.
00:41:43.020
Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and scientific advisor at MIT and Harvard, who co-wrote Viral,
00:41:49.740
The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, a book that explains why she says the science points
00:42:00.660
I know you were listening to my exchange with Dr.
00:42:07.940
I wish that we had been able to talk face to face because there's so many things I
00:42:17.640
I mean, number one, he was saying that the this type of virus has been seen.
00:42:26.640
Never before was there this urine cleavage site, which, again, has been described by some
00:42:30.780
as the smoking gun that tells us it came from a man in a lab or a woman.
00:42:35.000
Um, he says, OK, maybe not in the SARS type coronaviruses, but these do occur in nature
00:42:41.600
and that we we have seen this type of thing appear in other type of coronaviruses.
00:42:46.920
So the first thing I'll say is that without this cleavage site, without this feature, this
00:42:53.240
So without this feature, it is completely weak.
00:42:55.920
It's very not transmissible and not very deadly.
00:42:58.380
So the problem is that you have scientists in this one lab in Wuhan, who in 2018 said
00:43:04.580
we're going to put these types of features into SARS-like viruses.
00:43:08.360
And boom, two years later, such a virus shows up in their city.
00:43:13.640
And the problem is that when people say there's no evidence they did that, that's because
00:43:17.640
the evidence exists in lab records, emails and documents, things that we don't have
00:43:21.240
access to and things we should be investigating.
00:43:23.260
So I'm hopeful that next year there will be an actual investigation where these documents
00:43:28.160
are obtained from the U.S. collaborators and the EcoHealth Alliance that can shed light
00:43:32.700
on whether or not it happened and whether or not the virus came from that lab.
00:43:36.340
What did you make of the reversal of all those scientists in 48 hours?
00:43:39.720
They all came out initially and had this conference call saying it looks like it came from a lab,
00:43:43.880
cannot figure out how this could have been natural.
00:43:45.740
And his explanation, which is the first time he's said it publicly about what changed his
00:43:51.540
So I think this paper, this Nature Medicine Proximal Origin letter, is a case study in
00:44:01.840
So they did not acknowledge that their scientific funders had been involved.
00:44:05.300
They didn't say that, hey, we had this phone call, Farrar, Fauci, Collins were on it.
00:44:10.160
And there was this long discussion with multiple other scientists and we ruled out a lab leak.
00:44:17.280
And yet, months later, when Dr. Fauci was telling the media that this couldn't have come from a lab,
00:44:21.580
he just whipped out this paper and said, hey, look at this paper.
00:44:23.700
Independent scientists said it couldn't have come from a lab.
00:44:28.800
He claims that in that 48 hours, the aha moment was looking at the virus appearing in another,
00:44:34.980
forgive me, I think he was talking about another pangolin coronavirus thing that had a similar,
00:44:40.160
I don't know if it's exactly a fearing cleavage site, but something where he was like,
00:44:42.960
ah, you see, it has occurred. And that was the game changing moment.
00:44:47.660
Yeah. So I was listening to that exchange and he is, I think his stance is quite scientifically naive.
00:44:54.200
So he said that from looking at the pangolin coronavirus, which has no fearing cleavage site
00:44:58.860
or any sign of intermediate in that site, he changed his mind. He said, because parts of that
00:45:03.400
virus look similar to the pandemic virus, we can assume that the rest of the pandemic virus is
00:45:07.940
natural too. So how can you make that assumption? That that doesn't make any sense from a
00:45:12.580
point of view. So I don't accept this. I don't accept this excuse that they looked at the pangolin
00:45:18.020
virus and within 48 hours, they changed their minds. They could not dismiss the most concerning
00:45:21.960
feature to them, which was the fearing cleavage site.
00:45:24.640
What did you make of, you know, he, he says that he did not feel pressured or was not told and was
00:45:30.860
not told by Fauci or Collins would be very helpful if you would reverse your original position.
00:45:36.160
It, to me, it just remains very suspicious that they all did, that they were all very strongly.
00:45:41.000
I mean, we're talking about 80, 90 percent people on people saying that their position
00:45:45.480
is 80 percent sure this could not have come from an animal. And then suddenly a 180 to the point where
00:45:52.260
not only were they saying, actually, it did come from an animal, but and you're racist to suggest
00:45:56.320
it didn't. I mean, a real reversal. To me, that's very suspicious. But what do you think?
00:46:02.260
So this is one reason why scientific journals say that scientists, when you write letters and you
00:46:06.580
publish articles, you have to tell us if your funders were involved, you have to declare it.
00:46:10.640
But these guys did not declare that their funders were involved. So they were receiving funding
00:46:14.200
from NIH, from NIAAD, from the Wellcome Trust. And they did not declare that the leaders of
00:46:18.720
these funding agencies were involved in their manuscripts. They had sent these manuscripts
00:46:22.360
to them, drafts of it to get their advice. They thanked them in emails for their leadership
00:46:26.620
and advice. And again, the paper was cited to the media by these leaders as if they had
00:46:32.120
no involvement in it. So this, this is not transparent. And I think it is actually very
00:46:38.080
anti-scientific to come up with a letter and say, case closed, no need to investigate. We,
00:46:42.440
the scientists, the virologists have decided for everyone that a lab leak cannot happen and we don't
00:46:47.360
need to look into it. Yeah. And then, as I pointed out to the doctor, you have that you have
00:46:51.560
Collins on the record saying, I really hope this nature medicine piece would put an end to this.
00:46:56.240
But the speculation goes on. What more should we do? And Fauci saying, oh, it's a shiny object.
00:47:01.240
It's going to go away. The lab leak discussions after that Brett Baer segment that, that Collins
00:47:05.600
was circulating around. So, I mean, it's very clear that they did have a plan, whether, you know,
00:47:10.560
Dr. Gary knew about it is something the viewers can decide, but, and he denies it. But it's very
00:47:15.260
clear that Fauci and Collins were working together to do everything within their power to tamp down
00:47:19.780
the discussion about a lab leak. I'll ask you right after this quick break, because Alina stays with us,
00:47:25.460
um, but I got to get a break at the end of the hour. I'll ask you whether, um, what, why, why were
00:47:31.880
Fauci and Collins so determined to get people off of the lab leak theory, a position they seem to be
00:47:37.220
in to this day, uh, pick it up right there, right after this, Alina, thank you for being with us. Stand
00:47:41.520
by. Let me pick up where I left off and ask you why you think Collins and Fauci were so determined
00:47:51.820
to have the public narrative be natural origins. I want to make two points. So the first is that
00:47:58.280
the science has been clear since day one, since early 2020 until today, is that there's no definitive,
00:48:03.760
no direct evidence for either a natural or a lab origin. Although in my view, in my scientific
00:48:08.960
opinion, I, I think that the circumstantial evidence that exists, it points towards a lab origin. And this
00:48:15.280
is why we need to investigate both. And the second point I want to make is that as this pandemic has
00:48:19.740
gone on, the States have gotten higher and higher with the death toll and the impact on the economy.
00:48:24.660
So at the beginning, you know, infected a few dozen people in Wuhan, but now we're talking about
00:48:27.960
millions of people dead. And, and I think that scientists, journalists, and investigators are
00:48:32.720
rightly worried that if they dig too deep on this issue, they might find out that this pandemic came
00:48:36.840
from research activities. So research that was a collaboration between the U S and China and,
00:48:41.540
and thus implicating a whole coalition of scientists across the world who are engaged in this
00:48:45.740
type of risky research. And it's so much easier to point the finger at the nameless,
00:48:50.340
voiceless market trader in Wuhan and say that the guy with the raccoon dogs did it. And he can't
00:48:55.000
defend himself. And that way you don't actually blame anyone. You don't need to blame anyone for
00:48:58.560
this pandemic. You don't need to do anything to prevent the future pandemic. And this is the real
00:49:03.320
promise that by failing to investigate how this pandemic started, we have left the door wide open
00:49:08.320
for more of this high risk virology research to continue. Although it's such a tiny fraction of
00:49:14.080
virology, it has outsized consequences for humanity.
00:49:18.340
Yeah. Well said. Exactly right. And yet we just granted Fauci, just granted Peter Daszak's group,
00:49:23.740
another multimillion dollar grant to continue gain of function research. It's incredible to me,
00:49:31.340
That is very shocking. So when I, when I saw that news, I was thinking to myself,
00:49:35.460
what have they done to investigate, to make sure that the research they funded, that they funded through
00:49:40.340
the EcoHealth Alliance didn't result in this pandemic? And what changes have they made?
00:49:43.900
And how have they made the research safer, more accountable and more transparent? I have no
00:49:47.700
idea. So we're just pouring more money into the type of activity that could start pandemics.
00:49:53.720
Yeah, because Dr. Gary kept saying, oh, you know, there's no proof they engineered this in this,
00:49:57.460
in this lab. Yes, some people think this was an intentional act, but I think the vast majority of
00:50:02.460
people who are thinking lab leak don't think this was intentional. They think that they were doing
00:50:06.980
gain of function research in that Wuhan lab on bat coronaviruses to see how dangerous we could make
00:50:13.760
them and how we, we might combat them. And that something went wrong, that there was a low level
00:50:18.860
security in this lab, something went wrong. And while they didn't try to engineer this pandemic,
00:50:27.660
Yes, I actually have a very charitable view of the research happening in that lab. So I don't believe
00:50:32.680
that they were intentionally trying to make pandemic pathogens. They tried to do their work in very
00:50:38.500
weak viruses. But I think by accident, they might have put in a pandemic feature that made all these
00:50:43.540
weak viruses capable of starting a human pandemic. And the issue here is that they were doing a lot
00:50:48.500
of this work in the years leading up to the pandemic at a very low biosafety level. So you had asked Bob
00:50:53.600
Gary, was it appropriate for them to do this type of research at BSL2? And Bob said he thought it was
00:50:59.420
a high enough level of biosafety. That is just not true. So you cannot be working with novel SARS-like
00:51:05.180
viruses at BSL2. If you do this for several years, and you're working with hundreds of these SARS-like
00:51:13.820
Right. So what about his point? He was saying all the cases originated around the Hunan market,
00:51:21.000
and that in that market, they found traces of the coronavirus in this particular section
00:51:32.260
There are a few facts that need to be pointed out about this market. So the first thing is that
00:51:36.240
this market is the size of about 10 NFL stadiums. Okay, 10 NFL stadiums, the retail space in that
00:51:41.900
market. And it's located in one of the most densely populated districts in Wuhan City, where most of the
00:51:47.640
elderly people live. It's located right next to the Wuhan CDC and several hospitals, key hospitals in
00:51:53.580
that city. It's also located next to the most highly trafficked metro train station in that city.
00:51:59.160
So by the time the investigators went there, the entire market, 10 NFL stadiums had been
00:52:04.360
plastered with virus. So Bob Gary says that he thinks that based on the available data, which is
00:52:11.020
very little, he thinks that there's evidence of contamination near the wildlife stores. But if
00:52:16.480
you look at it closely, actually, the washrooms in the toilet, the toilets in that market are right
00:52:20.840
there. So he and his collaborators on this peer-reviewed science, which he's pointing to,
00:52:27.840
actually admit in the paper itself, hey, we don't have the data, but we're going to make a bunch of
00:52:31.520
assumptions that support our belief that this came from the market. And we're going to tell everyone
00:52:36.100
that we've found the animal at this market. So I think those studies cannot stand if they were truly
00:52:43.340
opened up for open peer review by other scientists.
00:52:46.240
What do you make of his assertion? Because I said, where's the animal? Where's even one?
00:52:50.520
You know, they tested 80,000 and they're not there. And he said the Chinese got rid of them,
00:52:53.780
you know, in an effort to cover it up, that they didn't want the news narrative to be,
00:52:56.940
they came from a lab, which, you know, or sorry, from the Wuhan market.
00:53:00.620
So I agree that China now has a stance that we, that they don't want any evidence at all that this
00:53:08.700
virus originated in China. It's an anywhere but cure stance. So they're trying to blame it on
00:53:12.900
lobsters from Maine. They're trying to blame it on a cold chain from Southeast Asia. They're trying
00:53:17.440
to blame it on salmon from Faroe Islands, you know, this kind of thing. Everyone who sees that knows
00:53:22.320
it's a, it's a farce, right? So, um, but what, what Bob Gary is saying is that in all of the years,
00:53:29.580
even before the pandemic, the scientists who have been studying the wildlife and the bats all around
00:53:34.380
that area and other parts of China have not been able to find any animals infected with SARS-2 like
00:53:40.020
viruses, except for pangolins far down in South China. They have not found any bats in the area that
00:53:45.440
carry this type of viruses. And so he's saying that all of that evidence must have been covered up,
00:53:51.160
either that or we have been exceedingly unlucky that suddenly a virus with this furium cleavage site
00:53:56.240
just pops up, boom, and leaves no trace across the rest of China in the years leading up to or after
00:54:01.400
the pandemic. So it requires a massive conspiracy across tons of scientists, wildlife traders,
00:54:07.280
hospitals, like the government. So I think that that conspiracy is much, much, much less plausible
00:54:13.880
than the lab leak theory. Well, let's talk about the lab leak theory now and explain to us why you
00:54:19.940
believe, and I understand your initial point, which is there's no definitive evidence in either camp.
00:54:26.600
There's circumstantial evidence and people will draw their own conclusions, but it really is outrageous
00:54:30.880
that we're not having an international open investigation into this with so many people
00:54:37.180
dead. I mean, millions of people dead, 10 plus. In any event, why do you believe that this came from
00:54:42.840
the lab? So I think that the odds are extremely striking. So in the entire world, this was the
00:54:50.480
only lab that was collecting all of these novel coronaviruses from not just bats, but wildlife
00:54:55.340
in the wildlife trade, from even people in the wildlife trade. So they're actively collecting
00:54:59.160
samples from people who reported illnesses, mysterious illnesses, and they worked on wildlife trade,
00:55:04.380
bringing all these samples up from Southeast Asia and China across eight countries up into Wuhan
00:55:08.720
city. They had the ability to seamlessly engineer these in the lab, genetically modify them in the
00:55:14.740
lab, leaving no trace of detection. They also had this 2018 pipeline to put furine cleavage sites
00:55:21.020
into psilocyc viruses. So there's only this one lab in the world doing this type of work at not safe
00:55:26.060
conditions, so at a low biosafety condition. And two years later, this virus shows up in that city.
00:55:31.360
So you have to investigate. And their behavior has really not been very forthcoming. So these guys said,
00:55:37.560
we're going to put horns on horses. A unicorn shows up in the city. And they described everything
00:55:41.680
about this unicorn, except for the horn. And they don't tell anyone about their plans to put
00:55:45.520
horns on horses until late last year. Someone finally leaked the document from the US government
00:55:50.560
showing that these guys had this plan all this time. And none of them said the word,
00:55:57.440
When you refer to the plan, are you referring to Peter Daszak's application to the defense,
00:56:04.000
to the Pentagon, asking for funding to do exactly this kind of research, this kind of gain-of-function
00:56:12.280
Yes. And other top virologists have looked at this document, too, and said this could have
00:56:16.380
plausibly led to the creation of the pandemic virus. So my question is, why aren't we investigating?
00:56:21.560
Why aren't we asking the EcoHealth Alliance and other US collaborators on that grant?
00:56:25.720
What other research happened under this arm of work? Did you actually start doing this work?
00:56:30.200
What were the communications that you got from your Wuhan partners?
00:56:33.380
Okay. And what about the defense of, well, the Pentagon rejected that. They did not fund that.
00:56:40.820
So this is another scientifically naive point that Bob Gary made. He said,
00:56:45.020
just because they didn't get the money, they couldn't do the work. That is, I think,
00:56:49.420
incorrect on so many levels because the slam in Wuhan was extremely highly funded.
00:56:53.260
They had so much money pouring in that not getting one grant from DARPA in the US would not have
00:56:59.400
stopped them from doing any work, especially an idea that was very exciting, considered transgressive,
00:57:04.840
most likely able to lead to a high impact publication. And a lot of scientists, when they
00:57:09.640
write these grants, they've usually done some preliminary work already. And the wording in
00:57:13.660
this grant was so specific. It said, we're going to look in all of the viruses we've collected
00:57:17.280
to see if there are any types of rare cleavage sites. And we're going to put these into
00:57:21.480
cells like viruses in the lab. So I think that it is wishful thinking on Bob Gary's part.
00:57:28.560
He wishes that they had not done any of this work so that it could have just come from that market.
00:57:33.820
And the thing that's really suspicious is the fact that this virus arrived in humans,
00:57:40.420
super efficient and great at being a contagion. Great, great at it, passing from one to another.
00:57:48.860
And that's very rare, as I understand it, with these coronaviruses, SARS coronaviruses,
00:57:53.640
the viruses typically take a long time to get this efficient, this good. And that's why I was asking
00:58:01.240
him about the humanized mice in the lab, because that is how we understand they were doing it. They
00:58:08.820
were using these humanized mice to make the virus more transmissible.
00:58:12.300
So Gary and his co-authors, they make some fairly outlandish assertions. They claim that they know
00:58:20.280
that the precursor to the pandemic virus was never worked with in that lab. And my question is,
00:58:24.680
how do you know? Did you have access to their database and you're not sharing it with us?
00:58:29.060
Yeah, there's usually a lag of a few years. Some labs even work on projects for 10 years before
00:58:36.100
publishing. And we know that that Wuhan Institute of Biology had a very strict confidentiality
00:58:40.900
protocol. Some of their thesis had to be locked for 20 years. So someone's PhD program-
00:58:45.180
You heard his answer on that. You heard his answer. They were originally going to do it.
00:58:49.400
You know, they're getting it together, but then they got ticked off and they were like,
00:58:52.000
forget it. You're going to blame us. You're not getting anything.
00:58:54.760
I don't understand what he means by modernizing an Excel sheet.
00:58:57.780
So I mean, can't you just share the Excel sheet with your US collaborators? You know,
00:59:02.660
the people will give you millions of dollars over the years to build this database to predict
00:59:06.780
pandemics. So this is another example where I feel like their behavior has been suspicious and
00:59:12.000
not forthcoming. Illogical, really. And so it really is a... Sorry. Oh, yeah.
00:59:20.500
Yeah. So if you could comment on the mice and how we believe they were like...
00:59:24.120
Because there's a reason that we find its efficiency and contagion so suspicious.
00:59:29.280
Yeah. And Gary and his colleagues have also flip-flopped on that point a lot. So first,
00:59:36.280
in proximal origin, they said, this virus is very well adapted for humans. And then when I came out
00:59:41.440
with the same idea, they attacked me saying, she's wrong. She's not qualified to comment.
00:59:45.500
And then this year in their preprint, they said the same thing again. They said,
00:59:48.020
it's well adapted. And that's why it caused such an explosion from two spill-lowers at the market.
00:59:52.960
So they can't make up their minds. But for me, it's quite clear that when a virus jumps from an
00:59:59.200
animal to a human, it normally is not capable of causing a pandemic right away. It's like buying a
01:00:04.140
lottery ticket. So if someone buys a lottery ticket for the first time in their life, and they buy one
01:00:08.520
lottery ticket, and they win the lottery, that's kind of suspicious. It's not impossible,
01:00:13.660
but it's very suspicious. Normally, for someone to win the lottery or for a virus to win the lottery,
01:00:20.180
it has to try many times. It has to keep hitting, keep infecting people, keep jumping. Until one day,
01:00:24.780
it gets quite lucky, and it causes a chain of transmissions enough to adapt well and cause a
01:00:29.220
large outbreak in humans. So what now? We've had our intelligence agencies take some sort of cursory
01:00:37.760
look at this. The results were unsatisfying. We've had the World Health Organization with Peter Daszak
01:00:45.340
on the board go over there to try to get answers. Even 60 Minutes caught on to that and gave Peter
01:00:50.200
Daszak a hard time and basically said, this is not to be trusted. Like what now? Because as I mentioned
01:00:56.060
to Dr. Gary, the US and China are neck deep in collaborative research with one another. And as you
01:01:02.020
point out, this is essentially the reason why our public health officials are so determined not to
01:01:06.240
lift up the drape on this particular investigation and get real answers. So we're worried. We're
01:01:12.120
worried about the next pandemic and low security labs and more money going to Daszak.
01:01:19.200
So I wish that at the beginning of this pandemic, the scientists would have, instead of calling a lab
01:01:25.020
victory a conspiracy or racist conspiracy theory, I wish that they would have said, look, even the best
01:01:31.360
scientists have accidents and we are all kind of responsible for this. And the responsible
01:01:36.080
thing for scientists to do is to say, let's investigate and make sure this doesn't happen
01:01:39.420
again. But that's not what happened. And so here we are three years later with no real
01:01:43.960
investigation, with no credible investigation. That study tour that the World Health Organization
01:01:49.160
had in Wuhan last year was a desperate attempt to get data from the Chinese investigators. They did
01:01:54.320
not get that data. So here we are. What can we do? I would say there is a lot we can do. There's data
01:02:00.900
that exists here in the U.S. that can be looked at that can actually tell us when did this start. So
01:02:05.100
there might be sequences of the pandemic virus predating December 2019. And that has not been
01:02:09.780
looked at. The database owners have not allowed scientists to go in and look. We have not subpoenaed
01:02:14.940
for, unfortunately, we have to subpoena for emails and documents between the Wuhan scientists and the
01:02:19.880
U.S. collaborators to see that they actually start putting cleavage science. Yes, the EcoHealth
01:02:24.280
Alliance and the other U.S. collaborators. So there's so many things we can look into.
01:02:28.600
But can I just ask you, Alina, this is so infuriating. We just gave EcoHealth and Peter Daszak
01:02:33.940
several more million dollars. He got one portion of it now and he gets more later.
01:02:39.560
Why can't Dr. Fauci just pick up the phone right now and say, give it all to me?
01:02:44.160
I don't know. I suspect that, again, there might be this feeling amongst scientists,
01:02:56.840
especially top scientists, that they don't want to know the answer.
01:02:59.520
That they would rather have these two science papers. They would rather have these two science
01:03:02.800
papers try to close the case for the entire scientific community, try to tell everyone,
01:03:07.040
don't worry, we did the analysis and we're telling you this came from the market. They would rather
01:03:11.220
that happen rather than investigate. And so you're exactly right that this has led to continued
01:03:17.640
funding, continued investment in this type of research that could start more pandemics and have
01:03:22.240
a catastrophic effect on the rest of us. So more risk on the general population, more vaccination
01:03:29.260
programs, more lockdowns potentially. It's just unthinkable that there's not been a proper investigation.
01:03:34.840
That's the last question of the undermining in the public faith in our public health officials.
01:03:41.960
It's been catastrophic, catastrophic. It trickles down to vaccines and everything else coming out of
01:03:48.440
the CDC and the NIH and Fauci's subgroup within the NIH. I mean, it's all connected to the unwillingness
01:03:56.000
to be transparent and open and honest about how this thing got started. Am I wrong?
01:04:01.260
So I believe that in this pandemic, the vaccines and therapeutics have played an immense role in
01:04:08.020
reducing human suffering. I myself have taken all the vaccines and boosts. But I think that the
01:04:13.840
scientific community has a responsibility not only to advocate the benefits of these countermeasures
01:04:18.640
to pandemics, but to also say that, hey, when the pandemic starts in a city where there's this
01:04:22.980
unique lab working with exactly the type of virus, we need to investigate so that in the future,
01:04:27.880
we don't have more of these ambiguous outbreaks happening, more of these necessary conditions to
01:04:33.520
have vaccines and therapeutics on people. Like, I think that we don't want another pandemic, right?
01:04:39.300
There's no one who wants another one of this happening in the city with a lab in it again.
01:04:44.480
It's, I mean, it's like seeing Fauci and Collins hiding the smoking gun and then turning around
01:04:51.540
saying, trust me to keep you safe. Come in, dine at my table. I've got you. I've got, I'm going to make
01:04:55.880
sure you're safe and you're well. And you're like, can we just talk about what I saw you do over
01:05:00.500
there? Cause I, I don't know if I am safe in your hands and I've got questions and so far few real
01:05:07.680
answers. Doctor, great to have you. Thanks for coming on Alina Chan, everybody to be continued
01:05:12.780
coming up. Our friend, Andrew Klavan returns to the show with thoughts on dark Brandon part two.
01:05:18.720
So that's next dark Brandon part two. He was at it again last night in front of union station of all
01:05:28.320
places in Washington DC, where stores are closing left and right in this economy. We were joking
01:05:32.960
yesterday with Josh Holmes. Why didn't you just do it in front of Bagram America, air force base
01:05:36.460
in Afghanistan? Why? Well, you know, so many places. If you wanted to highlight some of his
01:05:41.300
administration's problems, union station, I guess fit the bill just fine here to discuss that.
01:05:46.300
And more, one of our favorite guests, Andrew Klavan, host of the Andrew Klavan show and author
01:05:51.600
of the newly released crime novel, a strange habit of mind. And Andrew always keeps you turning the
01:05:58.220
pages in his crime novels is what he does now. One of the reasons he's a household name. Great to
01:06:03.620
have you back. How are you? Good to see you, man. I'm doing great. What'd you make of dark Brandon
01:06:08.340
part two saying this election is a battle between autocracy and democracy. If you vote for those
01:06:15.880
Republicans, you're voting for autocrats. You're not a Democrat. You don't believe in democracy.
01:06:21.900
Well, we're not just Republicans. We're now mega, mega Republicans. They're going to keep adding
01:06:26.180
adjectives to this until it goes right off the page. You know, it's actually, it's actually kind
01:06:31.020
of an interesting moment. It really is because not only did he accuse Republicans of taking a hammer to
01:06:38.020
Paul Pelosi, try to link that horrible attack on Pelosi to the Republicans and to January 6th and to
01:06:44.900
Donald Trump. He basically says that the Republicans will destroy democracy by winning an election.
01:06:51.160
And what's fascinating about this to me is that the media before the speech basically endorsed the
01:06:57.040
speech after the speech, endorsed the speech, basically saying, yes, this is, this is right.
01:07:02.140
You know, this violence is coming distinctly out of the Republican camp. No violence from the
01:07:07.040
Democrats, no 2020 riots, no, you know, holding George Floyd up as a hero. None of that.
01:07:12.220
Just January 6th is the only thing that ever happened. They're counting on this media dominance
01:07:17.980
that they've had for so many years in an age when the internet is stripping that dominance away. And
01:07:23.660
that's why you're also seeing at the same time, this fight with Elon Musk to keep him from lifting
01:07:28.220
the censorship rules that have silenced so many innocent conservative voices on Twitter. This is a
01:07:34.560
fight about information. I mean, it's not just a fight about the election. Of course, it's a fight about
01:07:38.440
the election. But what Biden is counting on is the old dominance that the left has had over our
01:07:44.780
information systems and over our culture to uphold what is a lie. I mean, the idea that Republicans are
01:07:51.660
somehow unique in denying the legitimacy of an election is ridiculous. Hillary Clinton denied the
01:07:56.760
legitimacy of Trump's election. Adam Schiff did. They denied the legitimacy of George W. Bush's election.
01:08:03.120
Stacey Abrams still thinks she's governor of Georgia, if not governor, emperor of her entire
01:08:07.740
imagination. So they've and they've called for violence. They've said there should be more violence
01:08:12.420
in the street. Nancy Pelosi herself said there should be violence in the street. So they're really
01:08:17.800
depending on their power to communicate this lie and to silence anybody who says, hey, you know what,
01:08:25.460
if you look on YouTube, you can see Democrats doing the same things that some Republicans do.
01:08:30.900
And I just don't think it's working. The polls show that it's not working. The polls are looking
01:08:34.980
pretty good for the Republicans in a bad, very bad map for the midterms. And that means that we have
01:08:40.720
reached a paradigm shift. We have reached a moment when for all of our worries about information
01:08:46.840
dominance, the right is fighting back and it's starting to win. Now, that is fascinating. That's such
01:08:52.340
an interesting take on it, that their their whole plot is falling apart. The thing that always worked for
01:08:57.260
them is not working because you're right. This January 6th thing is all they've got. They've
01:09:01.600
been shoving that in abortion. That's all they've been shoving on us for months now. And it's not
01:09:06.100
getting the job done. And so what does he decide to do? He decides to double down on one of those
01:09:10.880
failed narratives. To me, it's interesting. First of all, a word on mega mega. I was thinking,
01:09:14.800
is it like mega mega Trump? And then I'm like, what if they called me mega mega? I'd be
01:09:19.880
Megan mega mega. Like, we like illiterate. Or maybe it'd be mega mega Megan. I don't know.
01:09:31.160
So so yeah, so he goes out there and he just doubles down on what's already not working.
01:09:36.380
And to me, it reminded me of we ran a clip up from MSNBC last week, where they got together a
01:09:41.320
Democrat and a Republican and an Independent, and they were asking them about the threat to democracy.
01:09:45.020
And these three were like, eh, you know, the January 6th thing, like, anyway, back to inflation.
01:09:52.360
And then Vox just had the same kind of reporting. They did this. They went out and talked to voters
01:09:56.640
like, what do you care about? What about January 6th? They were like, eh, but the economy. Yeah,
01:10:01.600
let's talk. Right. And so what does he do? He goes out there last night and once again is back to
01:10:06.060
Republicans mega mega. And as you point out, this really low moment with Paul Pelosi,
01:10:12.300
let's run that. It's SOT4. The assailant ended up using the hammer to smash Paul's skull. The
01:10:19.100
assailant entered the home asking, where's Nancy? Where's Nancy? Those are the very same words used
01:10:27.440
by the mob when they stormed the United States Capitol on January the 6th, when they broke windows,
01:10:34.460
kicked in the doors, brutally attacked law enforcement, roamed the corridors, hunting for
01:10:40.800
officials and erected gallows to hang the former vice president, Mike Pence. It was an enraged mob.
01:10:51.260
Wow. I didn't hear any mention of Steve Scalise, who was shot by a Bernie Sanders loving fan who
01:10:58.720
wasn't even said to be a lunatic, who was said to just be this rabid, you know, murder, murderous man.
01:11:04.240
I didn't hear any mention of Lee Zeldin, Republican candidate for governor of New York, who they
01:11:09.480
attempted to stab on stage just two months ago. Right. Like it's all about what happened to Paul
01:11:14.640
Pelosi because he thinks because they yelled, where's Nancy at the January 6th riot, they can
01:11:21.380
tie that to this guy going into Nancy Pelosi's house saying, hey, where's Nancy? OK. You know,
01:11:26.560
there was a shooting outside Lee Zeldin's house and the press asked Zeldin to come out and talk about
01:11:31.880
it. So he came out. And the first question is, why are you politicizing this incident?
01:11:35.980
And I think that, you know, it reminds me of the last scene of singing in the rain where they pull
01:11:41.120
back the curtain and you find out that the villainous woman actually has somebody dubbing
01:11:44.720
her voice. That's the way the media has been all these years. It has been basically dubbing the voice
01:11:50.240
of the Democrats. And it's gotten worse and worse as they've lost control of the narrative. I mean,
01:11:55.640
you know, the Internet is like the invention of the printing press. It really is. It has spread
01:11:59.040
information to places that the people in power don't want it to go. That's exactly what happened
01:12:04.100
when the printing press came out. That's where the Reformation began. That's where all the religious
01:12:08.860
wars began. And now we have this moment when not the dominant religion, but the dominant elite
01:12:15.060
are basically being exposed and they're being exposed for having their own agenda, for propping up their
01:12:21.780
own power at the expense of ordinary people. One of the things that always makes me laugh in a sort of
01:12:27.200
morbid way is when Democrats specifically try to tell us that the economy is good. And, you know,
01:12:34.640
you're sitting there trying to figure out how you're going to make your salary stretch to take
01:12:38.000
in the inflation that they've caused with this fantastic narrative about climate emergency.
01:12:43.520
So we have to get rid of our energy independence and become the slaves of oil rich tyrants for this
01:12:48.740
emergency that actually doesn't exist. The science actually shows that this is not an existential
01:12:53.440
threat. And then when you can't afford to feed your kids, you can't afford to get them new clothes,
01:12:58.440
they come and tell you, no, inflation's fine. Don't worry about inflation. Worry about abortion.
01:13:02.560
Go like, well, I have six kids. Abortion is not on the table. I just want to feed them. Yeah,
01:13:06.820
but don't worry about that. They depend always on this kind of fantasy world that they were able to
01:13:11.820
create for several decades by owning not just the news media, but also the entertainment media and the
01:13:18.180
academy and the publishing industry. And all of that is just starting to tremble and shake. And
01:13:22.960
that's why you're seeing this kind of hysteria on the left. And that hysteria is, you know, it is the
01:13:30.740
real threat of where violence comes from. If you have people who are telling the New York Times,
01:13:36.400
don't tell us the truth about Biden's dementia. That happened the other day. The New York Times
01:13:39.820
actually reported on the fact that Biden's difficulties with keeping the facts straight are getting worse and
01:13:45.820
worse. And they were just excoriated by their own readers. Don't tell us this. Don't tell the truth
01:13:50.920
when there's an election on the line. And so when you have all these people who are suddenly being
01:13:56.500
exposed to ideas they've never heard before, you know, the thing is, Megan, you and I know everything
01:14:01.740
the left thinks because we're surrounded by them. We see them all the time. They don't even know we
01:14:06.220
exist. They don't even know we have opinions that they might agree with. They don't even know that we
01:14:10.180
have thoughtful, nuanced opinions, that we don't follow our leaders off cliffs, that we actually
01:14:15.260
sometimes disagree with them. They have no idea because they never see us. They never see us on
01:14:20.120
their media. They don't want to see us in the New York Times. They only see us attacked. And when that
01:14:24.720
wall breaks down, there is going to be hell to pay. And it might be Tuesday. It might actually begin on
01:14:29.720
Tuesday. But that wall is already becoming very permeable, that wall of information. This is a
01:14:34.480
major thing. This is a major shift from one epoch to a new epoch. And that's why everything's so
01:14:40.100
unsettled. But I'm right now, I'm very optimistic, not just about the election, but about the age to
01:14:46.420
come. Well, another example of what you were just discussing was what they did to Dasha Burns at NBC
01:14:51.800
when she had the nerve to say, hey, I sat down with John Fetterman. And in the prelude to the actual
01:14:56.520
interview where he didn't have the closed captioning thing, he really didn't seem to be able to
01:15:00.360
understand any of the small talk. And the left just descended on her. That is a total appropriate,
01:15:06.180
totally appropriate thing for a reporter to add. It's color. It's another way in to understand the
01:15:11.980
candidate. I 100 percent would have done that with anybody. And they attacked her. They said
01:15:16.140
she was wrong. All these reporters came out and said, I interviewed him. Didn't happen. Didn't
01:15:19.100
happen. Now they look like fools because we saw him at the debate, barely being able to understand
01:15:23.780
with the closed captioning. Dasha Burns is vindicated. She won't be getting an apology. But yeah,
01:15:29.660
they do attack their own when any of them try to do honest reporting. And to your other point,
01:15:34.040
Andrew, about the White House just continually telling us, don't there is no economic problem.
01:15:39.400
You know, first, inflation was transitory. It doesn't exist. It's whatever. It's just you
01:15:43.180
worried about your soul cycle. I don't remember how they tried to dismiss it all the different ways.
01:15:47.860
They they sent out a tweet, this crazy tweet. I think it was yesterday on Social Security benefits.
01:15:55.640
Now, because of the law, Social Security benefits go up when inflation goes up. That was that was passed.
01:16:01.140
I went back during President Nixon, I think. And so it's automatic because that's a fixed income.
01:16:06.780
So the White House sends out a tweet that reads. It was on Tuesday. Seniors are getting the biggest
01:16:13.660
increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden's leadership.
01:16:25.360
But here's the interesting thing. They took it back after because Elon Musk is now in charge of Twitter.
01:16:31.820
He allowed readers to fact check it and to say that that's not the case. And that's why they
01:16:38.400
Now that it's Elon's Twitter, that Twitter added a, quote, added context. This never would have
01:16:45.580
happened under the old regime at Twitter. Added context disclaimer underneath the tweet,
01:16:50.840
noting that the increase was not an intentional decision on the part of the president's, quote,
01:16:55.180
seniors will receive a large Social Security benefit increase due to the annual cost of living
01:16:59.860
adjustment, which is based on the inflation rate. President Nixon in 1972 signed into law
01:17:04.760
automatic benefit adjustment tied to the consumer price index. And then the White House deleted the
01:17:11.740
tweet because they're just so dumb. They're just so dumb. And then Karine Jean-Pierre, who probably
01:17:17.180
wrote the tweet to begin with, was asked about it by a reporter. Here's how that went.
01:17:23.920
Was it removed because of the addition of a note or was it removed because of the concern about the
01:17:28.100
raspy message? So it was, look, the tweet was not complete. Usually when we put out a tweet,
01:17:34.180
we posted with context and it did not have that context.
01:17:39.580
Once again, the tweet read, seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks
01:17:44.360
in 10 years through President Biden's leadership. That's not a context problem. That's what we call
01:17:54.040
Well, that's the other thing. Their big talking point is disinformation. This is the way they're
01:17:58.360
trying to get control over the information flow is by accusing the right of disinformation. But we think
01:18:04.040
back on what they've done on social media, calling the Hunter Biden laptop story Russian
01:18:09.680
misinformation, what Dr. Chan was just talking about on your show, this suppression of the idea
01:18:15.620
that our research, our partially funded research might have had something to do with the Chinese
01:18:21.080
virus spreading. You know, all of these things that they have done that are just lies and
01:18:26.720
disinformation. And then they pick out some guy who's a conspiracy theorist who mouths off on the
01:18:32.160
right. And they compare that to the United States government lying. It's not the same thing. And so
01:18:37.660
really this, again, it's this democratization of information that is driving them up the wall
01:18:44.580
for one big reason, which is that their policies don't work. I mean, this is the thing. An election
01:18:50.640
is essentially a job interview. You know, a campaign is a job interview. And these guys have come into the
01:18:56.140
room and said to the boss, yes, we're going to bankrupt your company. We're going to make all your
01:19:00.900
employees hate one another. We're going to destroy your equipment, but we're in favor of abortion.
01:19:05.620
So, you know, you should hire us. And any employer is going to look at that and think,
01:19:09.420
nah, you know, before we talk about abortion, let's talk about whether you can make my company any
01:19:14.020
better. Well, if the company is the United States and they're trying to run it, you've got to be
01:19:18.420
competent enough to make things run. And they are not because their ideas don't work. It's really only
01:19:24.020
since Obama that they have stopped changing their minds when the electorate tells them they're wrong.
01:19:29.720
You know, you remember Bill Clinton getting shellacked and saying, OK, we hear you. We're
01:19:34.200
going to get rid of this health care idea. We're going to stop. We're going to move to the right.
01:19:38.100
We're going to move to the center. Obama never did that. It was like he never changed. He was just an
01:19:42.980
absolute engine moving forward. And now Joe Biden has taken that on and he's not as talented a
01:19:47.960
politician and he's not getting away with it. Well, I heard Gavin Newsom out there today,
01:19:53.860
yesterday, talking about how my party's getting killed on messaging. We're getting killed on
01:19:58.860
message. We have the wrong message. This is how it goes. Right. They when they lose, because
01:20:03.420
for whatever reason, the voters vote them out or things aren't looking good for them in the polls.
01:20:07.760
It's we were off on the messaging or the voters are as stupid. Oh, they're dumb. They just they're
01:20:15.460
too dumb to know what's good for them. They're deplorables. Hillary Clinton revised that just the
01:20:19.880
other day. They're deplorables who are too stupid to really be placed in charge of our republic.
01:20:24.560
And so we need smarter voters. And by that we mean elite Democrats. Right. So this is a messaging
01:20:30.600
problem is the latest thing. Like if people would just only understand. So what what message should
01:20:35.840
they be? Right. Like how are they going to explain the inflation away? Like that's their problem is
01:20:40.480
they have no good message on that. Right. But but notice, though, that that's what they think about
01:20:46.100
because they've they've been doing it all this time. This thing about slandering their opposition,
01:20:52.280
which they've been doing now for 50 or 60 years, telling you you're racist. You know,
01:20:56.800
even if you won't go to their stupid movies, they call you like homophobic or whatever,
01:21:00.560
transphobic words, words that mean nothing. By the way, there's no such thing, for instance,
01:21:05.320
as an Islamophobe. Nobody has an irrational fear of Islamic people. Nobody has an irrational fear of
01:21:11.260
gay people or trans transgender people. We have questions and we have objections to things and to
01:21:16.620
actions. And those things should be listened to and debated and talked about. But instead,
01:21:20.580
by the way, just to interject, nobody would accuse you of being anti-gay. Spencer, your son,
01:21:24.380
who we both love, is openly gay in a gay marriage. And I am definitely not anti-gay.
01:21:28.860
But my friends are gay and lesbian and in marriages. But that doesn't make me want to go
01:21:33.220
see a gay orgy on film on the big screen for my entertainment. And it doesn't mean that I'm not
01:21:39.820
open to debating with people about what this means for our society. And is it good? And, you know,
01:21:44.620
is gay marriage marriage? These are all open questions that I think should be talked about by
01:21:48.780
people of goodwill. We don't have to sling hate at each other, but we can at least debate
01:21:53.720
these serious issues and these serious changes in our social structure. But no, it's always that
01:21:58.900
we're phobic and we stink and our religion stinks and our country stinks and our country is racist.
01:22:03.580
And then they wonder why they get Donald Trump. They wonder why people are angry. Why are those
01:22:08.680
Republicans always so angry? You know, you kick people in the face for 50, 60 years. You demean their
01:22:14.400
values. You demean their lifestyle. You demean their opinions. And then you wonder why they hate
01:22:18.740
you. And, you know, that that that is why they only want the elite Democrats to vote and why they
01:22:25.740
think that if they lose, they have lost. Democracy is lost. You know, that's the only people on earth who
01:22:31.260
believe that democracy can be lost in an election. You know, that is actually how democracy works.
01:22:37.020
And sometimes you lose. Tom Cotton was saying they're not afraid of democracy going away.
01:22:41.920
They're afraid of democracy making them go away. That's exactly right. So so they have been able
01:22:49.580
to shame many Americans out of expressing their legitimately held viewpoints that are not racist
01:22:54.660
or bigoted and so on. But they object to some of these things you mentioned. One area that they have
01:22:59.620
not yet been able to take over has been the courts. The courts have been a pretty good stalwart,
01:23:04.820
not entirely perfect by any means, but a pretty good stalwart against this woke agenda. And in
01:23:09.880
particular, now we've got reason to believe in the Supreme Court, which is now six, three
01:23:13.760
conservative dem conservative liberal. And it's amazing. I mean, I haven't seen a court like this
01:23:18.880
in my lifetime. I'm I'm, you know, even before I offered more of my positions publicly before I got
01:23:24.920
this show, I was open about the fact that I was a more federalist society type lawyer. And that's the
01:23:31.740
way I look at the law, you know, more originalist. Am I thinking more, you know, Thomas and Scalia
01:23:36.000
than Ginsburg and Stevens. In any event, that is one of the reasons why I have a lot of hope,
01:23:41.120
because the Supreme Court is very conservative and it's very young. And I'm excited about that fact.
01:23:46.380
Well, that takes us to Monday's argument on affirmative action. And at the university level,
01:23:51.800
two big cases going up in which this group is saying you cannot you've got to take race out of the
01:23:57.820
consideration now in deciding who gets into these elite universities or any university.
01:24:02.180
Twenty five years ago, the Supreme Court considered whether it was time then. And they said,
01:24:06.020
it's going to be time. This is you're right. This is not actually constitutional. We feel very hinky
01:24:10.880
about it, but we're going to find an exception and just say you can do it for like another maybe 20
01:24:14.680
years just to like right the wrongs of the past. But I mean, it was kind of a made up decision.
01:24:19.780
But now the court has been asked to take another look at it and they're going to strike it down.
01:24:23.660
They are listening to that argument. It's going away. They're going to say you can no longer
01:24:28.000
consider race as one of the factors in deciding whether somebody gets in. And one of the justices
01:24:32.880
who was actually Ketanji Brown Jackson was saying, well, I'm not comfortable with this because what
01:24:36.900
about all the other factors that you can consider? In fact, I think we have that soundbite. Do we have
01:24:40.080
that soundbite? In any event, she was basically saying, you know, there's all these other things
01:24:44.640
that you can consider when it comes to diversity. You can consider whether somebody is a veteran.
01:24:48.740
You can consider, you know, whether they're in a wheelchair. Why wouldn't you be able to consider
01:24:54.040
race? And really, the answer is because the Constitution says you can't like if I say to
01:25:00.140
somebody, I think your veteran status is a plus for you. That's not diminishing somebody who's not a
01:25:05.760
veteran. But if you prioritize one racial group, there's another racial group that is definitely
01:25:10.640
being deprioritized. And that's not constitutional. That's a problem. In any event, people are getting
01:25:17.400
very upset over this and we're going to get the, you know, illegitimate Supreme Court
01:25:21.400
accusations once again. There was an amazing moment where Justice Alito asked the lawyers
01:25:29.700
arguing to keep this legal about how does it work? Like a student comes in and says, I'm African
01:25:36.520
American or I'm Native American. Do you check? And the answer was no. We accept it's an honor system.
01:25:42.380
He says, what if they say my grandfather, one grandfather was a member of protected class?
01:25:48.020
Do you check? No. Honor system. What if they say my great-grandfather? What if they say my great,
01:25:53.820
great-grandfather? Like, how do we figure out who's in a protected class, racial class that you would
01:26:00.560
protect and you would favor? You know, he was kind of trying to get at this and then had this amazing
01:26:04.940
reference to what was very clearly Elizabeth Warren in Soundbite 10. Listen.
01:26:09.340
It's family lore that we have an ancestor who was an American Indian.
01:26:18.620
So I think in that particular circumstance, it would be not accurate for them to say.
01:26:25.940
Well, I identify as an American Indian because I've always been told that some ancestor back in
01:26:33.480
the old days was an American Indian. Yeah. So I think in that circumstance,
01:26:38.440
it would be very unlikely that that person was telling the truth.
01:26:44.080
That's 100% of an Elizabeth Warren reference, is it not?
01:26:48.420
It's also, it's a great soundbite because it strikes at the fact that race is really a degraded
01:26:54.620
and stupid way to regard other people. You know, to think about people in terms of their race,
01:26:59.340
there are a few legitimate things you can say about racial differences, but very, very few.
01:27:04.380
And we don't really know very much about it. And the things that we call races, like we have
01:27:08.540
African-Americans, that's not an actual race. And so it's so nonsensical and it strikes at the very
01:27:15.460
heart of the American project. It always has. My journey from left to right began with the
01:27:20.100
Bakke decision. I remember the day when they talked about affirmative action and I thought, well,
01:27:24.100
the left is really out of ideas. And the reason they're out of ideas is because they've poured
01:27:28.620
an immense amount of money into great society programs that have made the lives of black people
01:27:33.800
worse. And affirmative action makes the lives of black people worse. It puts black people into,
01:27:38.620
black students into situations that they might not be qualified for simply because of the color of
01:27:44.080
their skin and increases their rate of failure and increases the number of black students who get out
01:27:49.740
of a difficult subject that they want to study and move into an easier subject in order to survive
01:27:54.960
a school that they shouldn't have been in. Ones that don't pay as well. Ones that don't pay as
01:27:59.160
well either. That's right. That's right. It is just like every other thing that pulls people out
01:28:05.220
because of race. It just damages the people it's supposed to help. And the third thing about this
01:28:10.780
that drives me insane is, of course, it is just so discriminatory against Asian people.
01:28:15.280
You know, Stanford University, I believe it was, just apologized to Jews for their discriminatory
01:28:21.900
practices against them in the past, like 70 years ago, because they didn't want all those smart Jews
01:28:28.140
coming in and taking all the places. Now, I'm glad they apologized just in time to start discriminating
01:28:33.740
against Asians because Asians are traditionally hardworking and intellectual and they're coming in.
01:28:39.300
I mean, my alma mater, Berkeley, is now heavily Asian. When I went there, I was startled
01:28:43.800
by the Asian population. They want that because they're thinking in terms of race.
01:28:48.580
They want that to stop. And my feeling about this is like, you know what? If you can't see people
01:28:54.360
like an American, that each person has his own life, his own individual, sacred, precious life
01:28:59.620
that should be treated on its own. If you can't start to say merit is the thing that moves you forward,
01:29:05.320
hard work is the thing that moves you forward, then go to some other country where they're racist.
01:29:09.080
You know, I mean, this is the whole American project is to see if we can be a country based
01:29:15.580
on an idea, based on a series of ideas that can take people in and turn them into Americans. That
01:29:21.280
has been our, you know, our standard idea really from the beginning, that we were not going to be
01:29:27.540
a racist country or a racially based country. And all the stuff that went on, the slavery and the
01:29:33.940
Jim Crow and all that stuff was wrong because it violated the American idea. This violates the
01:29:39.820
American idea too. There is no such thing as good racism. There is no such thing as opposite racism.
01:29:45.940
It's all bad. We are made in the image of God and almighty God. And the Bible doesn't say black
01:29:51.520
people are made in the image of God or white people. It's all of us. And if we don't treat each
01:29:56.600
Well said, there is no such thing as good racism. I think it was Elena Kagan
01:30:01.160
who was saying, well, to be black in America means your chances of going to an underfunded
01:30:06.880
and poor school at the elementary, you know, K through 12 level is much higher to have had
01:30:12.540
certain disadvantages built in. I know it's higher, making no distinction, by the way, between,
01:30:16.980
you know, what about black immigrants? Do they, do they get all the advantages? You know,
01:30:20.840
what if, what if you're black, but you're not descended from slaves? You know, like, no. Okay.
01:30:24.660
Everybody's just consider presumed disadvantage based on the color of their skin. What if both
01:30:29.000
of your parents are doctors? No, presumed disadvantage based on the color of your skin.
01:30:33.480
So she tried to get to basically economic disadvantage, which she tried to, you know,
01:30:38.660
put as a label around all black people, black people tend to be economically disadvantaged and
01:30:43.080
therefore they need this leg up. Well, if that's your case, then you're talking about economic diversity.
01:30:48.940
That's what you actually want to get to. You're not talking about what about the white kids?
01:30:52.700
What about the Hispanic kids? What about the Asian kids who grow up in very, very poor families?
01:30:56.940
Should they be given a leg up? Because that's not the way Harvard's doing it. It's all about
01:31:02.000
melanin. And this is what Clarence Thomas was trying to get to. And he was like,
01:31:06.180
I don't really know what you mean when you say diversity that we do have. It's not 11.
01:31:12.260
I've heard the word diversity quite a few times, and I don't have a clue what it means.
01:31:21.540
First, we define diversity the way this court has and its court's precedents, which means a broadly
01:31:26.280
diverse set of criteria that extends to all different backgrounds and perspectives and not
01:31:31.540
solely limited to race. Tell me what the educational benefits are.
01:31:36.300
The most concrete possible scenario is stock trading. And there are studies that find that racially
01:31:42.340
diverse groups of people making trading decisions perform at a higher level, make more efficient
01:31:46.640
trading decisions. And the mechanism there is that it reduces groupthink and people have longer and
01:31:52.060
more sustained disagreement. And that leads to a more efficient outcome.
01:31:56.660
Well, I guess I don't put much stock in that because I've heard similar arguments in favor of
01:32:03.260
Hmm. So he says, give me an example. He says, it's not all about race.
01:32:07.440
OK, give me an example of what it means. Oh, here's one about race. This is the only one I have.
01:32:12.120
And Thomas says, I don't find that persuasive because actually what you're talking about is
01:32:14.880
segregation could actually lead to good results as well. But when they got pressed on the economic
01:32:19.740
disadvantages some kids have and so on, they had no answer for it. And that's what the conservatives
01:32:25.080
were saying, which is you cannot make skin color the ultimate thing. What they're doing right now,
01:32:30.460
Andrews, they're saying to the Asian kids who grew up poor, who grew up with no advantages,
01:32:35.780
who went to crappy schools, but just worked very, very hard after school and at night.
01:32:40.400
You're out because we have the secret personality test and we can downgrade you because of your
01:32:47.040
ethnic heritage. Thanks to our personality test. We can say you suck as a person, but really it's
01:32:52.680
because you're Asian. And then we can upgrade the people who happen to fall into racial
01:32:56.880
classifications that we like. People who happen to be black or perhaps brown. Those are the ones
01:33:02.100
we like. So they get up. I mean, this is insane. What we're actually doing is totally unconstitutional.
01:33:07.580
Absolutely. And, you know, first of all, I have to say, I don't know what we did to deserve Clarence
01:33:12.580
Thomas, but I hope we keep doing it because he is a gift, a gift from God. But the thing is,
01:33:17.980
this is a question of failed policy all around, all around the bend. You know, the black movement
01:33:24.260
into the middle classes was faster before the great society was instituted. That's the thing
01:33:29.280
that really destroyed the black family and really made people dependent on government largesse and
01:33:34.580
slowed the rise of black Americans into the middle class. And those great society programs provide
01:33:42.060
lots and lots of money for Democrats to buy votes with. They do not want to look at what, you know,
01:33:48.660
they're always talking about the core problems. Where does the problem come from? What are the
01:33:54.080
root causes? The root cause is the fact that the black family has fallen apart and fatherless
01:34:00.920
children do very badly. And that really is the thing that they don't want to face because that
01:34:05.700
is based on great society programs that basically paid people to have children out of wedlock.
01:34:10.920
Before I let you go, a strange habit of mind. Give me a couple of lines on why I want to read it.
01:34:16.620
Oh, it's the sequel to When Christmas Comes, which was a USA Today bestseller.
01:34:20.080
The hero Cameron Winter is fighting a social media billionaire whose opponents get canceled for
01:34:25.760
good. And this is the first character I've ever wanted to make into a series. I have 30 years of
01:34:31.060
crime writing. This is the first time I've had a character I want to make into a series. So I hope
01:34:34.940
people will turn up for this book. The reviews have been ecstatic. Take a look on Amazon. I think
01:34:40.540
I'm into crime. It's a nice escape to read about somebody else's problems.
01:34:45.120
That's, I appreciate it. It makes me feel better about my life. Andrew Klavan, a pleasure as always.
01:34:55.120
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.