The Megyn Kelly Show - Dark Brandon Tries Again, with Andrew Klavan, and COVID Origins Deep Dive, with Dr. Alina Chan and Dr. Robert Garry ｜ Ep. 426

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.460 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.860 Did you catch Dark Brandon's latest speech about the extreme MAGA Republicans last night?

00:00:19.800 It's like change. It was extreme MAGA, it's ultra MAGA, and now it's mega MAGA, which I actually kind of like.

00:00:24.820 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.

00:00:36.600 And we're going to get into all of that when Andrew Klavan joins us in just a bit of The Daily Wire.

00:00:42.260 But we begin today with a deep dive on a hugely important issue, and that is the origins of COVID.

00:00:48.400 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.

00:00:58.100 Not knowing is not an option, right? How is it that we can't have a definitive answer by now?

00:01:03.740 Today we have two scientific experts with us who have completely different points of view on how it started.

00:01:09.760 I'm going to be joined in a bit by Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and scientific advisor at MIT and Harvard.

00:01:15.880 She wrote a book on why she believes the science points to COVID originating in a lab.

00:01:21.800 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.

00:01:33.280 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.

00:01:50.320 Dr. Gary, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

00:01:53.600 My pleasure. How are you doing today?

00:01:55.720 I'm doing great. All right.

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? 0.72

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.

00:02:57.420 There are lots of coronaviruses.

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.

00:03:08.120 So let me give you an analogy here.

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.

00:03:22.740 But let me tell you what that's like.

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.

00:03:36.800 Right. So it's not really a unicorn.

00:03:39.320 It's like finding a horn on a white horse.

00:03:41.620 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.

00:03:50.060 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. 1.00

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.

00:04:26.080 OK, it's it's a highly volatile site.

00:04:29.520 There's nothing unusual about that furin cleavage site when you look at it. 0.98

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.

00:04:42.040 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.

00:05:31.280 Yeah. OK, I accept that.

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. 0.69

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.

00:05:49.640 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.

00:05:55.020 It's dangerous.

00:05:55.740 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.

00:06:07.420 And that's what a furin cleavage site does. 0.98

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.

00:06:30.380 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.

00:06:46.500 And that's why people are suspicious of this one.

00:06:49.180 So but here's the thing.

00:06:50.520 So we don't like the the fact that it's got a furin cleavage site. 0.89

00:06:53.400 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.

00:07:07.020 They asked for permission.

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.

00:07:17.940 Do you dispute it?

00:07:18.740 Yeah, well, I do dispute it.

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. 0.72

00:08:00.920 Or from American technology.

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.

00:08:20.860 There is absolutely no evidence for that.

00:08:23.180 They didn't.

00:08:23.720 I got you.

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.

00:08:41.120 There's supposition.

00:08:42.020 There's circumstantial evidence.

00:08:43.120 People have their beliefs.

00:08:44.200 But I concede to you.

00:08:45.540 A lot of finger pointing conspiracy theorists like to do that. 0.91

00:08:48.360 But, you know, it just didn't happen that way.

00:08:50.860 Well, I don't know if that's true either.

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.

00:09:13.480 We really want to put a horn on a horse.

00:09:15.100 Please let us.

00:09:16.020 And the Defense Department said, we're not going to fund that.

00:09:17.720 That seems dangerous for whatever reason.

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. 0.96

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.

00:11:11.720 It's it can't possibly be lab leak.

00:11:14.180 It is nature.

00:11:15.740 Yeah.

00:11:15.940 So let me correct that a little bit.

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.

00:17:13.300 But let me this guy, Farrar, he's a Brit.

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.

00:18:02.780 But we changed our mind.

00:18:04.080 I got it.

00:18:05.380 I got it.

00:18:06.180 I got it.

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.

00:18:27.880 I mean, and I remember this.

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.

00:19:23.480 No, I don't think you're correct.

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.

00:20:00.220 He clearly wanted this to go away.

00:20:02.040 Then Fauci chimes in.

00:20:03.180 It's a shiny object.

00:20:04.260 It will go away in times.

00:20:05.940 I wouldn't do anything about it right now.

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.

00:20:35.700 It's just, there's no evidence for it.

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.

00:20:45.740 I mean, the science was very clear then.

00:20:47.480 It's very clear now.

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. 0.66

00:20:57.200 You don't know that.

00:20:58.240 You absolutely do not know that.

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.

00:21:08.320 Well, that's different than, no, that's it.

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? 0.71

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.

00:21:41.320 They didn't have the backbone.

00:21:43.340 They didn't have anything close that was, you know, 99.9%.

00:21:47.320 Have you seen what they did, what they had?

00:21:48.560 Because we've asked the Chinese repeatedly, including from the start, and they didn't provide it. 0.99

00:21:51.880 So how do you know?

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.

00:21:59.880 So, you know, how did they get it?

00:22:01.660 And there's another thing.

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?

00:22:05.920 They wouldn't have published on it.

00:22:07.000 That's a possibility.

00:22:07.720 No.

00:22:08.020 I mean, you know, we're, we're diving into conspiracy theories there.

00:22:12.840 You know, it's not a conspiracy theory.

00:22:14.160 It's a question.

00:22:14.960 It's a question.

00:22:15.640 You can't dismiss a legitimate question by labeling it a conspiracy theory.

00:22:19.540 That's a tactic.

00:22:20.520 That's not science.

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

00:22:46.340 we had engineered it.

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

00:22:54.200 okay.

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

00:23:03.680 on.

00:23:04.180 And then they had a, oh, you know what moment when it got out and an, and an international

00:23:10.840 pandemic was begun.

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

00:23:21.880 Institute of Virology to create SARS-CoV-2.

00:23:24.320 It just did not happen that way.

00:23:26.120 I know there are a lot of people.

00:23:26.680 Again, you're, you're setting us a straw man.

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.

00:23:48.860 Right.

00:23:49.500 But, but they would have had to, you know, they would have had a, had to have a virus that

00:23:54.120 was close to SARS-CoV-2 there.

00:23:55.860 Now I'm going to tell you something here and, you know, the virus didn't emerge directly

00:24:00.520 from a bat to a person.

00:24:02.180 Okay.

00:24:02.580 It had to go through an intermediate animal.

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

00:24:22.320 engineer this virus.

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

00:24:33.280 of the contagion.

00:24:35.140 That's not true.

00:24:35.740 They didn't have mice with humanized lungs.

00:24:38.100 Yeah.

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

00:24:49.240 that for a receptor.

00:24:50.200 Yeah.

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

00:24:58.620 in this lab.

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,

00:25:25.360 you can pick your modifier.

00:25:26.900 It's just positive.

00:25:27.740 It's definitive.

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

00:25:50.400 of the outbreak.

00:25:51.080 Well, there's other data, too.

00:25:53.240 Well, here's the second point.

00:25:54.460 Moreover, my understanding is you guys, many people had the theory that this is where it

00:26:00.400 began, the Wuhan market.

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

00:26:11.760 where else it might have shown up.

00:26:14.080 Yeah, it's it's called the Hanan market.

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

00:26:29.900 are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.

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

00:26:59.280 in December of 2019.

00:27:02.080 Okay.

00:27:02.320 So about 170 cases or so.

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,

00:27:21.740 the Hanan seafood market.

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

00:27:42.020 find any link at all.

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

00:27:54.100 seafood market.

00:27:55.040 So what, what happened is, is the virus spilled over, you know, from the wildlife trade in

00:27:59.620 that market.

00:28:00.160 And it didn't happen just once.

00:28:01.780 It happened twice because there are two different lineages of the virus, which is a whole nother

00:28:07.240 piece of evidence.

00:28:08.220 But here's the question that, here's the question lay people are asking, where's the animal?

00:28:12.660 Show us one, one, show us one.

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,

00:28:50.020 the Southwest corner.

00:28:51.300 Well, it turns out that the Southwest corner was where they were selling these wild animals

00:28:56.060 that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.

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

00:29:07.660 to infected humans.

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

00:29:30.620 be positive for SARS-CoV-2.

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

00:29:42.880 more like a sock.

00:29:43.660 So you don't find it odd we haven't found a single animal that would be the source or

00:29:46.860 the intermediary?

00:29:48.640 No, I don't find it odd.

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

00:30:18.280 wild animals back in 2002 to 2004.

00:30:21.900 Okay.

00:30:22.040 I accept that the Chinese, you know, they cleared the market of those wild animals out and, 1.00

00:30:26.720 and then, you know, okay.

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

00:30:43.740 they do to say it came from the Wuhan lab.

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 1.00

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.

00:31:00.740 They didn't do it.

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?

00:31:19.220 Why?

00:31:20.360 Like, doesn't that cause you some concern?

00:31:22.000 I, you know, I think that's just another part of, you know, a lot of conspiracy theories.

00:31:25.780 I mean, this.

00:31:26.440 Stop saying that.

00:31:27.380 It's a question.

00:31:27.980 Tell me, what would be the non-conspiracy theorist reason for them not to share the

00:31:33.420 data with us?

00:31:34.720 Well, what they said was, is that they were going to try to modernize it and make it more

00:31:38.540 accessible to, you know, to other scientists.

00:31:41.180 It was basically an Excel spreadsheet.

00:31:43.420 Well, we're three years into this now.

00:31:44.900 It wasn't very modern.

00:31:45.720 So they took it down so they could update it.

00:31:48.020 And then, you know, they got all the flack about it and they just said, heck, no, we're

00:31:51.000 not going to put it up.

00:31:52.320 I see.

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.

00:31:58.080 And so they won't.

00:31:58.720 OK, do you do you agree that this would have easily escaped from a lab that only had BSL

00:32:05.620 two or BSL three security on it?

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.

00:32:24.360 I mean, I'm a virologist.

00:32:26.500 I mean, my my safety, my, you know, my personal safety and the safety of my students depends

00:32:31.540 on having good biosafety and biosecurity.

00:32:34.520 So we're not opposed to that.

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

00:32:54.460 level.

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

00:33:11.520 said this looks like a lab leak.

00:33:13.540 And then 48 hours after speaking with Fauci and Collins did a 180.

00:33:17.440 And it wasn't just you.

00:33:18.540 You mentioned some of the others.

00:33:19.900 Sir Farrar, who not only reversed himself, but started calling people racist for saying

00:33:24.300 it was a lab leak.

00:33:25.120 That's that's what concerns me.

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

00:33:34.780 besides SARS-CoV-2.

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,

00:33:52.780 OK, that's that's happened.

00:33:54.600 But, you know, there's no scientific evidence.

00:33:56.980 There's nothing.

00:33:58.580 Let me ask you this.

00:34:00.200 You said earlier that that you did not feel.

00:34:03.520 You said earlier you did not feel pressured by Fauci or Collins to reverse your opinion

00:34:07.300 from lab leak to natural origins.

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?

00:34:17.820 Never once.

00:34:18.860 Neither one ever said that or suggested that in any way, shape or form to you.

00:34:22.780 No.

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

00:34:35.420 and or Collins or anybody at the NIH.

00:34:37.820 Nobody put any pressure on us at all.

00:34:39.940 No, that's not what I asked.

00:34:42.400 Yeah.

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.

00:34:52.560 Nothing totally.

00:34:53.700 OK, are you familiar with those?

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.

00:35:05.600 That was the first time I heard about it.

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

00:35:15.040 it wasn't just them.

00:35:16.120 It was some of your collaborators.

00:35:17.460 It was Collins saying we've got to tamp down the very destructive conspiracy about the lab

00:35:22.680 leak theory.

00:35:23.260 Otherwise, it would do great potential harm to science and international harmony.

00:35:27.220 Then there was Dr. 0.99

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

00:36:00.060 a finger at that Wuhan lab.

00:36:02.680 Megan, it wasn't me.

00:36:03.720 I didn't say that.

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.

00:36:19.020 I never I never said that.

00:36:20.440 I can't speak.

00:36:21.380 Well, you did say you thought it was natural.

00:36:22.820 You did not think it was natural origin.

00:36:24.620 You couldn't figure out how it was that that that's from you.

00:36:27.300 I said that in one email.

00:36:28.780 I mean, you know, that was like, you know, amongst thousands.

00:36:31.220 What do you mean?

00:36:31.560 So did you do you lie in that email?

00:36:33.180 I mean, is that how you felt or isn't it?

00:36:35.540 I didn't lie.

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

00:36:44.120 side.

00:36:44.520 And, you know, that that's what we're doing.

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.

00:37:02.900 And that's what's happened.

00:37:03.860 They cherry pick that one email from me and, you know, said, OK, he's a lab leaker.

00:37:07.820 And he always was.

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

00:37:17.800 going on 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

00:37:31.880 have been written about it.

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.

00:37:51.420 It's right there.

00:37:52.180 I read it.

00:37:53.020 Considered it.

00:37:53.740 You know, we considered it.

00:37:55.200 But, you know, we had to look at the scientific evidence and there is no scientific evidence

00:37:59.920 that the virus leaked from that lab.

00:38:02.980 OK, here's the here's the final thing I want to ask you about.

00:38:06.520 OK.

00:38:07.980 You and another one of the early lab.

00:38:10.040 I haven't convinced you yet, have I?

00:38:11.920 No, you haven't.

00:38:12.800 But I appreciate you coming on and being so honest.

00:38:14.740 I mean, I give you credit, Dr.

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.

00:38:24.300 I've had tougher questions before.

00:38:26.320 I'm sure you have.

00:38:27.240 I mean, I'm not a scientist.

00:38:28.140 I'm doing the best I can.

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.

00:38:47.400 OK, sorry, Christian Anderson.

00:38:49.000 You guys were both more in the lab leak theory originally and then reversed yourselves.

00:38:53.500 Christian, yes, not me.

00:38:55.140 Well, whatever.

00:38:55.880 The record stands.

00:38:56.740 It speaks for itself.

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

00:39:13.440 on research.

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?

00:39:24.520 Yeah, I do deny it.

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,

00:39:36.660 you know, by, you know, period.

00:39:38.400 So you knew it was under consideration when you had the conference with him about lab leak

00:39:42.400 theory.

00:39:43.380 Tell me I didn't quite catch the first word.

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

00:40:00.220 of twenty twenty.

00:40:00.860 What happened in August twenty twenty?

00:40:03.760 I mean, you know, it takes a long time for him to set up all these contracts and everything

00:40:07.380 like that.

00:40:07.940 And, you know, Dr. Fauci doesn't review these grants and he doesn't decide which grant is

00:40:13.020 going to be funded and not funded.

00:40:14.660 This is Collins.

00:40:16.600 No, they don't.

00:40:17.720 You know, you're suggesting that Dr.

00:40:20.140 Fauci couldn't stop it if he if he wanted it, if he wanted to stop it, he could have

00:40:24.040 you he's done it before.

00:40:25.460 Actually, probably be hard for him to do it.

00:40:27.540 There are people that could stop it, but I'm not sure that Dr.

00:40:30.340 Fauci could actually stop it.

00:40:31.720 There are others that could.

00:40:32.780 But but not him.

00:40:34.580 But, you know, it I mean, it's peer reviewed.

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.

00:40:52.600 And they said, yes, award this grant.

00:40:54.520 I'm not saying it's a bad research grant.

00:40:55.780 Anybody knew about SARS-CoV-2.

00:40:58.060 So it wasn't it.

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.

00:41:11.620 That's just insulting.

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

00:41:20.080 on the wall.

00:41:20.740 And it didn't happen that way.

00:41:23.140 Dr. Robert Gary, you're a stand up guy for coming on.

00:41:25.720 I appreciate it.

00:41:26.500 Thank you for the robust back and forth.

00:41:28.500 All right.

00:41:29.020 Sure.

00:41:30.160 Coming up, Dr.

00:41:31.580 Alina Chan, who has been watching this entire interview and is ready to respond.

00:41:35.500 Don't go away.

00:41:41.620 Now, Dr.

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

00:41:55.480 to COVID originating in the Wuhan lab.

00:41:59.380 Thank you so much for coming on.

00:42:00.660 I know you were listening to my exchange with Dr.

00:42:04.020 Gary.

00:42:04.680 And well, let me just start with this.

00:42:06.720 What did you make of it?

00:42:07.340 What did you think of it?

00:42:07.940 I wish that we had been able to talk face to face because there's so many things I

00:42:12.140 would have liked to put to him.

00:42:13.600 We wanted that, but that was not acceptable.

00:42:15.440 Yeah.

00:42:16.020 What did you make of his assertion?

00:42:17.640 I mean, number one, he was saying that the this type of virus has been seen.

00:42:23.740 He conceded not in SARS type coronaviruses.

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 0.64

00:42:51.420 virus would never have caused a pandemic.

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.

00:43:11.220 So it's a very striking coincidence.

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

00:43:50.220 mind in the 48 hours.

00:43:51.540 So I think this paper, this Nature Medicine Proximal Origin letter, is a case study in

00:43:59.640 lack of transparency in scientific publishing.

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.

00:44:15.300 So they didn't acknowledge their involvement.

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.

00:44:25.820 So this is not very transparent.

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. 0.93

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,

00:49:29.960 doctor.

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. 0.93

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,

00:50:24.280 that wound up being the consequence.

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

00:51:09.960 viruses, one day you're going to get unlucky.

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

00:51:29.120 where the animals were kept.

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 0.99

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 0.99

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,

00:55:55.260 not even the US collaborators.

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

00:56:09.900 research on bat coronaviruses?

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.

00:56:38.080 And so what makes you believe it took place?

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?

00:58:28.220 Yeah, I asked him that.

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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. 0.88

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, 0.86

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 0.88

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.

01:16:20.760 OK, so somebody there is a complete idiot. 0.58

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

01:16:36.880 took it down. And that's why they're panicked.

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 0.97

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

01:17:51.040 a lie.

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. 1.00

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 0.79

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 0.90

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, 1.00

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 0.99

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, 0.99

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, 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.99

01:28:21.900 practices against them in the past, like 70 years ago, because they didn't want all those smart Jews 0.93

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. 1.00

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. 0.81

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 0.90

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 0.91

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 0.92

01:29:54.880 other like that, the American project is over.

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 0.90

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.

01:31:17.180 It seems to mean everything for everyone.

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

01:32:02.180 segregation, too.

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 1.00

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 0.63

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 1.00

01:33:24.260 into the middle classes was faster before the great society was instituted. That's the thing 0.95

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 1.00

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 1.00

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

01:34:39.560 you'll really like this book.

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.

01:34:50.620 Thank you for coming on.

01:34:52.140 Great to see you. Thanks.

01:34:55.120 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:34:59.820 Thank you.

01:34:59.880 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 03, 2022

Dark Brandon Tries Again, with Andrew Klavan, and COVID Origins Deep Dive, with Dr. Alina Chan and Dr. Robert Garry ｜ Ep. 426

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