Exclusive Breonna Taylor Raid Details, and Omicron Reality, with Sgt. John Mattingly and David Leonhardt | Ep. 279
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 32 minutes
Words per Minute
193.52719
Summary
On this episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, Meghan talks to one of the officers involved in the case of Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed by a fellow officer during a raid on her home after midnight in 2011.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live this week from Montana.
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One of the most influential reporters when it comes to COVID, David Leonhardt of The New York Times, will be here later today.
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His latest piece on the data showing COVID precautions like masks and social distancing did basically nothing to stop the spread of Omicron,
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is drawing backlash from others in the media, despite it being a purely fact-based report.
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We will speak to him about that and the backlash.
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But we begin with an exclusive interview today with one of the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor case.
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Yesterday marked two years since the shooting that took the life of Taylor.
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Who was 26 years old at the time, Sergeant John Mattingly, was also shot during the raid.
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He survived, but Mattingly says the false narrative about this shooting, driven by media,
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by Hollywood's biggest stars, from Alicia Keys to George Clooney to Oprah Winfrey,
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and even by our now vice president, destroyed his life.
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He tells the story in his new book, Out Tomorrow, 12 Seconds in the Dark,
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a police officer's first-hand account of the Breonna Taylor raid.
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John, thank you so much for being here. How are you today?
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Good. It's nice to meet you, and thank you for sitting and talking about this case.
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So, to refresh our viewers' memory, this happened in Louisville, Kentucky.
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He's the attorney general of the state who brought the case before the grand jury,
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did not recommend criminal charges against you,
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or your other officer, one officer, got charged with endangering some of the residents in the building.
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And this was the case about the so-called no-knock warrant
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that you and your fellow officers executed just after midnight, two years ago.
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And two people came out in the hallway, one of whom was 26-year-old Breonna Taylor,
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She was shot by your fellow officer because her boyfriend shot you.
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And then the media went off on how this was a black woman killed by white police officers
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No one could understand why the cops were ambushing this poor young woman.
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So that's just to refresh people how this became a national story
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and was the subject of protests in Louisville for more than 100 days.
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And you are the officer really at the center of it
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because you're the guy who was shot by her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker,
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who was the other man standing at the end of that hallway
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when you went in, the other person next to her.
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That night, two years ago, did you have anything to do with the investigation into...
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but she had a different boyfriend who was under investigation by the police
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Did you have anything to do with that investigation?
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No, the only part that you could say I had anything to do with was
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which investigated, you know, large criminal syndicates and organizations.
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We did wiretaps and, you know, worked with the feds.
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And I had moved to our parcel interdiction unit,
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which worked with UPS, FedEx, and DHL, different carriers.
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And we didn't have any relationship with the United States post office
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there had been some tiff between the two departments, two agencies,
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and they took their ball and went home, basically.
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So, when the detective in charge came to me and said,
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and see if there's anything that they can, you know, shed light on.
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And at that time, they communicated back and forth
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and realized that Jamarcus Clever did not have any,
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what they called suspicious packages going there.
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And other than that, we were just hired help for the night.
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Okay. So, you and your fellow officers were told
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or on-again, off-again girlfriend of this guy, Glover,
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You go just about midnight with your fellow officers.
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whether you were told to execute it as a no-knock warrant,
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So, first, just explain what a no-knock warrant is.
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So, all that stuff tied Glover to her residence.
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someone was kneeling on his neck for a minute and
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what he said about george floyd as well was was
00:56:45.820
to do with this trying to bring the character of
00:57:02.260
she made with jussie smollett before she starts
00:57:05.080
lecturing someone on how to respond to questions
00:57:10.680
absolutely nothing absolutely nothing about law
00:57:13.440
enforcement nothing to sit there in judgment of
00:57:15.940
you why doesn't george stefanopoulos go explain
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attack bill clinton's sexual harassment and assault
00:57:23.420
victims before he passes judgment on you and the
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way you communicated the unmitigated gall they know
00:57:30.660
nothing nothing about law enforcement nothing about the
00:57:33.780
law and yet they sit on there on that set as pundits
00:57:37.020
judging a guest after he did them the courtesy of giving
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them an exclusive interview to me as a member of the media
00:57:43.200
john it's infuriating that infuriates me what did what did
00:57:49.240
i was ticked off i was mad because we talked for three hours
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three and a half hours something like that non-stop no break
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anything and there was a there's a lot of good conversation
00:57:59.300
there are a lot of things that could have been positive for
00:58:02.360
police and public relations and they chose to leave all that
00:58:06.200
out and take things number one they didn't play them in the
00:58:09.020
correct order they spun it around they edited and you know
00:58:13.000
the fact that that when i look at him and say so just because
00:58:18.120
you feel something doesn't make it a fact he's like what's
00:58:20.720
real to me and i said doesn't matter if it's real to you if
00:58:23.420
it's not reality doesn't matter what you feel and so we went
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back and forth on a lot of things and for him to sit there and and
00:58:32.380
when we're done shake my hand and say i think you're a good person
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and then go on tv and say that stuff and i understand he was probably
00:58:41.340
scared to lose his job you know as a black man if he goes on
00:58:43.980
there and goes well you know i kind of understand where
00:58:47.240
he was coming from he did get shot and he was trying to save his life
00:58:50.520
you know he didn't go there to kill brianna but you know he he just
00:58:54.480
didn't say that couldn't say it wasn't brave enough to say it i
00:58:57.040
don't know the words for it the also your email to your fellow
00:59:01.520
officers taken out of context in which you're saying to your fellow
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cops i just want i want to tell you something i want to tell you
00:59:09.160
that and you're right you do not deserve to be in this position the position
00:59:12.780
that allows thugs to get in your face and yell curse and degrade you throw
00:59:18.100
bricks bottles and urine on you and expect you to do nothing it goes against
00:59:23.200
everything we were taught in the academy the position that you if you make a
00:59:27.240
mistake you do not deserve to be in this position it goes on from there
00:59:29.940
that's what you were trying to say they make it sound like you
00:59:33.100
had absolutely no tolerance for any sort of peaceful protest like actual
00:59:39.320
violent protests attacking cops right and then at the end at the very end i
00:59:44.620
even go on to say do not make the mistake of letting them bait you into
00:59:48.640
something basically don't fall for it be professional don't lose your job over
00:59:54.120
these idiots and and you know again all that gets overlooked or taken out of
00:59:58.120
context to me it's so maddening because they're part of the problem they're part
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of the reason we're having escalating murder rates in our major cities right
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now because they help demoralize the cops they help the cops convince the cops to
01:00:09.620
sit back because what's going to happen to them they're going to get the
01:00:12.120
mattingly treatment they're going to get bashed by every corner from the vice
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president to george clooney to oprah to the entire cast of gma even if they
01:00:19.980
reach out to them even if they get shot in a life-threatening injury none of it
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matters they will be bashed right yeah it's it's a bad it's a bad catch 22 to be
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in because you do sign up this job to help people you do and because who else is
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going to take the ridicule in the in the situations you're put in for not great
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pay it's not horrible pay but it's not great you're not going to get rich off of
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it and so if i'm willing to do all that and then nobody has my back or when i do
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what you trained me to do and then you're going to prosecute me for it you know who
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wants who wants that you were doxed by blm that put out your home address all of
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the cops involved their home contact information i mentioned you received
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death threats at one point you received information that there had been a quote
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credible threat per an informant they'd been told on your life that even a
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fifty thousand dollar reward had been placed for your harm or death and that
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there was an fbi investigation opened up into some motorcycle groups possibly that
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may have been behind that one motorcycle group involved what i read from your book
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is that brianna taylor's mother was a member of it and her boyfriend i guess was the
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head of it what happened with that fbi investigation well after 10 we think 10
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days 10 11 days from the best date range we can get from them that that
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investigation was dropped the the word in the office was the optics look bad
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going after you know the victim of a national or a national victim's mother and i i had
01:02:00.460
fbi clearance at this point i'd worked with the fbi some of my guys were on task force
01:02:04.920
with the fbi so i know how they work i know that what it takes to get a case
01:02:09.680
open i know that once a case is open they don't like shutting them because it's
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hard to regenerate that number to get the case back open
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so it's not it's it's not like a local local thing where you can just pull a
01:02:20.780
number and you open a case and then you can close it out then if you need to
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reopen it do it you know they've got to go through a huge chain of command up
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through bc so when they when i found out that this case was closed after 10 11
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days i was just mind blown i knew at that point they had they had no
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intentions of following up on these threats even though one of them came
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from a federal informant and the other came from one of our local informants two
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separate informants with the same information that they were able to
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corroborate and then due to the to the optics or the political pressure they just
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said you know what we're not we're not going to touch this it's too much for us
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i know you write in the book that there's this woman amy hess uh was you
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thought she was a liberal and she may have pressured the feds to drop it she
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did we reached out to her she said quote after being briefed on the alleged
01:03:10.340
murder for hire plot in the summer of 2020 recognizing the potential conflict of
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interest for the lmpd the louisville police department i recommended the fbi or
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another law enforcement agency look into the matter and assess the credibility of
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the info i have absolutely no doubt the resulting investigation which did not
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substantiate the allegations was conducted objectively thoroughly and
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independently so that was what how she sees it let me ask you this john before
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i let you go go fund me so they allowed fundraisers for brianna taylor's family
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uh for kenneth walker too i can't remember whether he got one yes he did he's got two
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of them he's got two of them one of your friends said let me get one for you you
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said no he said john you're gonna lose your job
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everybody's losing their job you know you you retired but the other guys got fired got
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tried and so finally you say okay fine and what happened it had been up maybe
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five hours and uh it was doing pretty good had a lot of momentum going picking up
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i mean i was kind of surprised honestly and all of a sudden it got taken down
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people are texting me going hey where's where's this at i was like i don't know i
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didn't i hadn't even been following it so i'm not sure
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um so i reached out to the to the couple that started it and i said do you know
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anything about this and they said yeah they they sent us an email saying we
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violated the rules and i said what rules did you violate
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exactly and they're like we don't know and so they asked go fund me they said
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what rules do we violate and they wouldn't tell them
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even though so we scoured through the posting and there was nothing in there
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there was no um negative talk i mean it was all about
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hey this officer was shot in the line of duty and he's trying to heal
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let's support him and his family so they can get back on their feet and it was
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just gone and uh again yeah kenneth walker has two of them he had one for his
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legal defense and one for his civil defense and and people like tyler perry
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gave a hundred grand to that i'm going you know my goodness this is a guy that
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supposedly supports police yet where's where's george clooney's donation to
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you after misleading the public telling everyone that you shot her in her bed
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where's his apology him and jennifer lawrence both both kentucky natives you know
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both hung me out to dry it's just it's whatever i don't want his money
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well what do you do now well how do you you have a pension right so
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is that how you support yourself and you know i guess we should close it out with
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life's changed big time because we we don't live anywhere near where we used to
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we're a couple hours away from from louisville so you know i've still got
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family and friends all there so it's that part's been difficult um
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our son's been uprooted several times i think we moved a total of six times in
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one year trying to figure out where we were going
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to end up and again the department on that was just
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like good luck buddy you know we don't have anywhere for you
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you know find a place and um so all these things that kind of
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culminated into where we're at today you know god's blessed us i have i don't i
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don't have complaints on that end you know i'm healthier now
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i've been able to spend time with my family but you know with this book
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coming out i hope people 12 seconds in the dark i hope people
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take this and not as a pity for john i could care less i don't need your pity
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i want them to look at this as a warning hey we better pay attention we better
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stop doing going down the path we're going on or you're going to have a law
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enforcement in this country that that you're not going to want we're going
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to look like canada where these guys are just going to do whatever the
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government says because they're scared of losing their job or scared of
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getting indicted and we need to support law enforcement we need to vote people
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in office that are are going to uphold the constitution and the laws and we
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need to follow these judges these judges are letting these guys out and it's
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nothing but repeat repeat offenses by the same people and then when action
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needs to be taken against these thugs these lowlifes then all of a sudden
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the cops are the bad guys because it took force to do it so i think our lives
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changed dramatically but i'm praying that we can take this change and help
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other people who are in these similar situations just come up for air and go
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okay everything's going to be okay we'll get through this
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if you want to support john you can do so again simon and schuster tried to stop
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you from seeing this book thanks to the daily wire you can it's called 12
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seconds in the in the dark john thank you for your service thank you for
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telling your story all the best to you i would appreciate you having me you bet
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coming up we have the new york times is david let leonhardt who's here to talk
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covid and his latest reporting on omicron which the left is bashing him for
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senior writer and author of the morning newsletter for the new york times hugely
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hugely popular over 5 million subscribers as i understand it david leonhardt has
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been an excellent reporter on covid putting fact-based coverage out to his
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readers imagine that lovely and now he's facing backlash for it of course
01:08:05.440
welcome back to the show david thanks for having me it's nice to be back
01:08:09.200
oh it's our pleasure so i mean my friends on the left and the right love reading
01:08:16.440
craziness and have for quite some time now and of course that's going to come
01:08:19.780
with pushback right because one side or both sides they will not like your
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little truth bombs and uh the latest one had to do with whether these
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precautions that we've been taking some of them like social distancing and
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masking those are two of the you know favorites actually did anything did they
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actually work were they meaningful ways to quote stop the spread and what did
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you opine what did you find and then we'll talk about the reaction
01:08:49.140
so covid i mean like so many things in america today covid has just become so
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polarized right and so the partisan point on one side is masking
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doesn't work at all it's all irrelevant and the the partisan talking point on the
01:09:02.520
other side is you know if only we wear our masks enough and are diligent enough we
01:09:07.520
can stop the spread of covid and when you actually look at the data the truth
01:09:11.580
ends up falling um into neither one of those camps
01:09:15.040
so their masking does work in the sense that there are repeated studies that
01:09:19.860
show if you and i are in an indoor place having a conversation and one of us has
01:09:24.020
covid and we're not masked we're more likely to get it than if one of us has
01:09:27.980
covid and we are masked the question is how big is that effect and i think that a
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lot of americans predominantly on the political left have have come to think that
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masking is sort of everything and yet when you look at the data you actually see
01:09:41.940
that during the omicron wave masking doesn't seem to have had a huge effect
01:09:45.980
and as technical and as complicated as all this stuff is you don't have to
01:09:50.380
actually dig into incredibly fine data to get the main point which is when you
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look at a city like seattle or a city like san francisco or a city like boston
01:10:02.560
where there has been much much more masking when people have been going into the
01:10:06.220
office less when they've been eating out much much less relative to cities like
01:10:10.800
charlotte and tampa and even austin texas which we think of as a liberal city but is
01:10:15.300
in texas um there have been huge differences in how much people are masking and how much
01:10:19.560
people are eating in restaurants but the difference in how much covid spread there
01:10:23.560
was is really difficult to find and so it looks like that omicron is just so
01:10:28.940
contagious that um the kind of masking that we've done has a small effect but only a small
01:10:36.520
effect it's like we masked back up when delta hit and then we just never unmasked we just never
01:10:44.780
paused again to say wait does this make sense do we need to be doing this yes and i think it may
01:10:52.000
have made sense at the height of the omicron wave because again um i know some people disagree
01:10:57.220
with us probably some of your listeners but look masking there's a reason why doctors wear masks in
01:11:02.340
hospitals there's a reason why which is dealt with there's a reason why asia which has dealt
01:11:07.840
with these sort of contagious flus more in the last 30 years than other regions there's a reason
01:11:13.200
why people there think masking can make sense masking really can work omicron was so contagious
01:11:18.340
that it had only a small effect when our hospitals are full when we're really at a crisis point a small
01:11:25.660
effect i would argue is worth it but when that's not the case and it's not the case now our hospitals
01:11:30.360
are not full anymore i do think there's really a question of is masking worth the downsides is it
01:11:35.200
worth the fact that every single conversation you have is harder when you're wearing a mask is it
01:11:41.000
worth the fact that i know you've pointed this out when i've been on your show before your glasses fog
01:11:44.620
um uh is it worth the fact that it's harder to communicate for kids with learning disabilities
01:11:49.280
is it worth the fact that it's harder to communicate for people who are hard of hearing
01:11:52.680
and so it's just hard every form of communication is harder i quoted an expert i think she's a
01:11:58.700
psychologist who's who said basically talking with a mask on it's like having a cell phone conversation
01:12:03.860
when you're in a bad service area um and so is that worth it when our hospitals aren't full and the
01:12:09.980
effect is small i think that's highly debatable well and also i'll tell you um so we're in here
01:12:15.140
we're in montana because my kids are on spring break and um one of the inappropriate things we did
01:12:20.860
while here was i showed them the movie contagion you know with uh matt damon gwyneth paldro and um
01:12:27.360
jude law and uh totally i said we're gonna watch something definitely inappropriate and disturbing
01:12:32.380
and they said cool um i mean and it was i never would have showed that to them during the middle
01:12:38.820
of the pandemic but now that we're at the place we're at i could put it in perspective and they
01:12:42.740
could understand because there's just so many things in that movie that are predictive of how
01:12:46.340
things would go you know during the pandemic we just went through like how people would react and
01:12:51.060
what we would do and so on and so forth but if we had a disease like that one right where it was
01:12:56.620
like a 30 death rate 30 of the people who get it are going to die um people would have been masked
01:13:03.000
to the nth degree in every setting there wouldn't have been pushback by parents to the masking in
01:13:08.940
school that people would have been genuinely scared blankness and less and would have complied i think a
01:13:15.520
lot more quickly and happily and you know without complaint but the very fact that especially with
01:13:22.000
respect to children we thank god did not have that in covid is what i think led people to get
01:13:28.440
to their breaking points on it and start to really speak out and and you know it's i mean to some
01:13:33.560
extent i'm not saying that covid even before the vaccines was like the movie that you watched
01:13:38.260
but covid was much closer to the movie that you watched before the vaccines than it is now and another
01:13:44.200
way to make that point is look before we had vaccines when someone who was 70 years old
01:13:50.000
or someone who had underlying health issues when people like that were for them when covid presented
01:13:55.980
a threat that was more serious than anything else that we confront in life then there was a really
01:14:01.920
strong argument for masking not just for them but for the rest of us to protect them the vaccines
01:14:06.800
have completely changed the calculus on this the vaccines provide an enormous amount of protection
01:14:12.360
statistically they provide the most protection for the elderly even though they don't provide
01:14:17.080
complete protection and so i think it's a version of what you're saying now that we're at the point
01:14:21.980
where anyone who chooses to protect themselves from this horrible virus with these extremely effective
01:14:28.980
vaccines um can do so and if if you're someone who's gotten the vaccines but haven't been boosted i would urge
01:14:35.200
you do all the research you can on boosting they boosting saves lives and so because people can
01:14:41.000
protect themselves because the people who are suffering the worst of covid today are overwhelmingly
01:14:46.140
choosing to expose themselves by not being vaccinated that puts us in a different situation
01:14:52.160
in terms of say should we be asking six-year-olds to wear masks yeah and or in new york city where
01:14:58.520
they're still making under five-year-olds you know two to five-year-olds wear masks why why stop it
01:15:05.620
that's insanity and that's exactly the group that needs to have faces visible so they can learn social
01:15:11.440
behavior and social cues and proper language it's madness and there's just not a lot i mean i mean
01:15:17.320
that not only do young kids need to learn social cues and i think if we're talking about just a couple
01:15:23.680
weeks of masking it's not going to upset anyone's social cues but you know we're now moving into year
01:15:28.520
three of this pandemic so we're not just talking about a couple weeks and covid is overwhelmingly mild
01:15:33.300
i i've said this many times um if you have a child and you put your child in a vehicle today
01:15:39.980
you will be exposing them to more risk than um covid presents to that child today um children uh face many
01:15:48.240
larger risks through normal daily life than covid presents to them and so given that um uh it's just
01:15:56.220
really hard i get the psychological reasons um that many people are in favor of masks for young kids
01:16:02.880
i think it should be i'm assuming you would agree with this it should be parents rights to mask their
01:16:06.980
own kids if they so choose it is hard to find a scientific basis for a mask mandate that says
01:16:12.960
all young children must wear masks yeah and it's hard to find actually a legal basis that would allow
01:16:18.680
these ongoing emergency powers you know acclaimed by the mayor there's a lawsuit on that which we're
01:16:23.840
going to be having an interview on uh i think tomorrow um okay so were you surprised then knowing i mean
01:16:30.000
you definitely know how controversial it is especially on your side we talked about that
01:16:36.280
the last i was just writing for the new york times to say things like you're saying were you surprised
01:16:40.320
at the backlash to you i think it was your march 3rd piece to where like new york magazine was it they
01:16:44.660
did a whole long piece citing all these experts telling us what a lunatic you are lunatic fringe and
01:16:52.900
how you're hurting people and you just underestimate the risk and you know he just doesn't get it
01:16:57.300
i kind of laughed because of course i'm probably more used to that than you are but how were you
01:17:02.780
surprised i wasn't surprised i mean i've been doing this a long time and i i really do think that
01:17:09.740
debate even passionate debate is healthy for a democracy i wish we didn't have the kind of debate
01:17:16.220
where people so quickly got personal i wish we didn't have the kind of debate where people figure
01:17:21.480
out what team they're on red or blue and then they have they fit all their opinions to that team
01:17:26.140
um but i guess in some ways i wasn't surprised i mean some of it i could laugh off because it's
01:17:31.800
so ridiculous and others of it i just think look these are important issues and we really should
01:17:37.220
be having a fulsome debate about it and you know the fact is that that i think a lot of people want
01:17:42.340
to imagine that if only we can find the number one expert they will tell us what to do but that's
01:17:47.520
not the way it works in a democracy i spent a ton of time talking to experts there are experts who think
01:17:52.100
we should have mass mandates on children for many more months there are experts who think that is
01:17:58.620
madness and so it's not like there is expert opinion on any of one of these any one of these things and
01:18:04.300
what i've sort of found is a little bit sad is you know if you find out that someone hasn't been
01:18:10.080
vaccinated which is to me a position that is both dangerous to that person um and it's just not in
01:18:15.520
keeping with reality the odds are overwhelming that that person is a republican and if you find someone
01:18:20.940
who is irrationally afraid of covid and wants to make everyone wear masks in perpetuity the odds
01:18:26.460
are overwhelming that that person is a democrat and there really is nothing about the philosophy
01:18:31.080
of conservatism or progressivism that should point to those views and i do wish people were a little
01:18:37.000
bit more willing to look at the facts for themselves instead of sort of taking a view about covid off the
01:18:43.060
shelf but if in the sort of course of that people are going to fight about it um my attitude is if
01:18:49.240
they're fighting about what i'm writing i'm i'm i'm grateful that they're reading what i'm writing
01:18:52.960
yeah you're still winning but soon if you keep this up you're going to be like me where before they
01:18:57.180
introduce you they have to say controversial journalist david leonhardt controversial you get
01:19:01.920
that label like oh and i kind of like it so like it's something i don't know intriguing go on um
01:19:08.980
can i ask you i have a couple questions i want to ask you about this um i've had people say to me i
01:19:14.640
you know we've talked about i i had double vax and i got boosted and all that uh and i had covid so
01:19:19.920
it's like okay i have it all um i've had people say how do you know the vaccines prevent severe
01:19:26.680
illness or death how do you know that if you know i had a mild case right and i and and people would
01:19:33.060
say that's because you had all those shots and i would say yeah or i don't know i have no idea i'm
01:19:39.800
healthy i'm 51 like i i don't know that the vaccine helped me have a very mild case but you
01:19:45.820
tell me like for people who doubt that the mild outcomes are attributable to the vaccines right
01:19:52.400
what's the answer to that i mean so first of all i would say doesn't this question apply to
01:19:57.440
everything right i mean when you throw a ball up in the air how do you know it's going to come back
01:20:01.840
down right how do we know that it's safer uh to drive sober than to drive falling down drunk um i mean
01:20:09.380
these are these are the deepest questions of humanity how do we know god exists um and so how
01:20:14.020
do we know i mean to some extent it's all unknowable um i think the answer is when you go around and you
01:20:19.620
look at every place in the world that reports these statistics um i spent a lot of time looking at the
01:20:25.040
data in utah not exactly a liberal haven i spent a lot of time looking at the data in seattle which
01:20:30.860
is a very liberal place i spent a lot of time looking at the data in new york city and in minnesota
01:20:35.400
these are places that happen to report outcomes by vaccination status um so do other countries like
01:20:42.300
britain and israel and when you look at that data the message is entirely consistent in every place
01:20:49.220
the risk of something bad like hospitalization and death is many many times higher if you are
01:20:56.020
unvaccinated than if you're vaccinated and then it's even lower if you're boosted than if you're
01:21:01.280
vaccinated and so kind of all over the world the lines look the same your risk of having to go to
01:21:06.240
the hospital if you're boosted basically looks like a straight line at the bottom of the graph
01:21:10.480
people may remember this from math class it looks like the x-axis it's basically zero if you're
01:21:15.420
vaccinated it's just a little bit above that and if you're unvaccinated the odds of you having a really
01:21:21.020
bad covid outcome are very high the people who are dying from covid are overwhelmingly unvaccinated
01:21:27.660
people and so the way we know it didn't have covid i mean that's the other thing right because natural
01:21:31.920
immunity does have a role here next natural immunity does have a role here everything i've read suggests
01:21:36.980
that um vaccination immunity is stronger than national isn't natural immunity um but yeah
01:21:42.120
wasn't there the israeli study that said natural immunity was 27 times greater than vaccine immunity
01:21:47.400
i mean you know you can find a study one study showing anything on any of this stuff my reading of it
01:21:53.680
is that if you told me i could have only one form of immunity i would choose vaccinated immunity the
01:21:58.280
good thing is we can all choose to have vaccinated immunity whether or not we've had covid or not so
01:22:02.720
well i'm just saying i think like when we look at the number when we say the unvaccinated are the most
01:22:06.440
and i i confirm i i also see the same thing you're saying when you look at the people who are dying of
01:22:11.040
covid or you look at the people who are hospitalized because of covid there are way more of those who are
01:22:17.560
unvaccinated than there are who who have been vaccinated that is a fact but you just don't know
01:22:23.100
when i see unvaccinated i always want to ask myself then like there should be another category for
01:22:27.700
unvaxxed and never had covid because i would think most of those people are in that category as opposed
01:22:32.860
to unvaxxed and recently had covid too i think what i would say to someone who said who someone who said
01:22:38.360
to me i've had covid and i don't want to get vaccinated i would say the two things i would ask yourself are
01:22:43.660
why don't you want to get vaccinated there is basically no evidence of there being any problems
01:22:51.060
of vaccination i there is there some uncertainty sure this vaccine hasn't been around for 20 years
01:22:56.180
but many other vaccines have and so i don't see any reason to fear the vaccine other than like
01:23:02.320
the same way it's a little weird to step on an airplane like i'm in a metal tube hurtling you know
01:23:07.160
many miles above the ground i get it it's like weird to have someone stick a needle in you i i totally
01:23:11.840
get it it's weird well and we just don't know like what does it do to our immune response what is
01:23:15.800
like there are people who have vaccine injuries and you know you don't want to be one of them so if
01:23:19.780
you're at low risk from covid you know like whatever you're 16 or your kid is you're thinking
01:23:24.180
i just don't want to take the chance but i think that's paralyzing megan because there's lots of
01:23:29.740
stuff we don't know about i mean how do you know when you get in your car this morning and turn it on
01:23:33.980
that your car isn't gonna blast some horrible fume at you from the engine and kill you you don't but
01:23:39.640
there's no reason to think that it's going to and i really am deeply worried that many people out
01:23:44.660
there are confusing so what i see on the left is people think they can get risk in their life down
01:23:50.600
to zero and so they're saying let's do that with covid and let's put on masks and let's not go out
01:23:55.120
to eat and i think that's just fundamentally wrong and i think what people on the right are saying is
01:23:59.460
there's this uncertainty about the vaccines but the uncertainty about the vaccines look like the
01:24:04.160
kind of uncertainty that we accept every day when we do all kinds of things that we don't
01:24:09.120
absolutely know how they work all the evidence can i ask you a question about that i hear you 100
01:24:14.320
but i have a question about these ongoing boosters because even just it was a today or yesterday pfizer
01:24:20.120
said you're going to need a fourth booster i mean a fourth shot a fourth shot um and i i do have
01:24:27.480
concerns about messing with my immune system this much you know that's four shots and i had covid so
01:24:33.940
that's five unnecessary well i guess one was beyond my control but interferences with my own immune
01:24:40.460
system and i actually spoke to a doctor about this she was a rheumatologist and she said there there is
01:24:47.280
reason to question just how many of these boosters would be okay and to be a little concerned about
01:24:53.580
messing with your immune system over and over and over in this way i mean rheumatologists deal with
01:24:59.500
uh you know compromised immune like autoimmune disorders so she that's why i asked her i mean
01:25:05.260
do you get the yearly flu vaccine no i do um so i'm already messing with my immune system i mean i take
01:25:13.280
aspirin um i take antibiotics when i get sick um uh uh i know many people in my life who have pill boxes
01:25:20.680
because they have serious heart problems uh i mean all these things are messing with our bodies statins
01:25:25.700
mess with your bodies anti-cholesterol medicines mess with your body i really would put this in
01:25:29.800
the same category as all those and if someone said to me look i'm a christian scientist i don't i don't
01:25:35.120
take medicines um uh then uh that's not the choice i would make but then i would get this idea of i don't
01:25:41.560
want to mess with my body but you know in a country where we drink coffee and we drink alcohol and we
01:25:46.760
eat sugar and we take aspirin and we not exactly the temple i just you know like we're well beyond
01:25:53.780
kind of you know eating grass and and and killing animals and roasting them over the fire i put this
01:25:59.620
in the same in the same category uh get out of my head stop that um what about one of the things that
01:26:06.200
really bothers me about where we are right now we have a moment to sort of look back and say
01:26:09.940
what have we learned is the collapse in faith and trust in our public health officials by more than
01:26:17.560
half the country you know i've read this in the times i've seen it in some of the polling you've
01:26:21.760
done and i've just been watching you know the the wider polls people don't trust anthony fauci
01:26:26.760
they don't trust the cdc they don't trust rochelle walensky majorities now and i think they have
01:26:33.560
been exposed as far more partisan and tied to big pharma than i ever knew i don't i didn't go into
01:26:41.500
this two years ago fully understanding that but certainly i mean they've proven it what am i wrong
01:26:46.960
i'm sorry to interrupt no go ahead i mean i've written some pretty critical things about the cdc and
01:26:53.340
and dr walensky some of her decisions i don't think of her as partisan or enthralled to the
01:26:59.100
pharmaceutical industry i mean i really do think i think they've made mistakes but i really do think
01:27:04.680
these are people who are trying their hardest to get this right crazy talk and who are fallible
01:27:11.280
she is so partisan let me just give you a quick a quick response first of all the fact that she
01:27:15.360
wouldn't criticize sotomayor for her gross overstatement of the number of children who
01:27:18.460
have been hospitalized because of covid was 100 partisan she 100 would have done that if it had
01:27:23.240
been clarence thomas understating the death numbers instead of sotomayor overstating them that's why
01:27:28.180
don't we have a direct comparison did she i honestly don't know so this is i'm not trying
01:27:31.880
to score points this is the classic i'm asking a question i don't know the answer to did she
01:27:35.200
criticize gorsuch for not wearing a mask on the bench which she wasn't asked that advice at the
01:27:39.780
time she was she wasn't asked that she was asked about sotomayor and it's her job to correct public
01:27:44.000
health misinformation and she declined she didn't want to she want to go there okay but that's just
01:27:48.020
why i mean we could go on forever you know what i will i will look at the transcript of that that's a
01:27:51.660
fair point she's taking her marching orders from the white house that's what we hear that
01:27:56.080
that she and the teachers unions the teachers unions that that the cdc mandated them the ongoing
01:28:02.460
masking in schools because the teachers union went in there and said you have to do it no non-partisan
01:28:07.200
would be doing that well i mean the cdc has removed a whole bunch of this mask advice right and so and
01:28:15.500
it's what they eventually got around to it doesn't mean that they weren't under the influence of
01:28:19.460
partisans when they did it for so long unnecessarily but when you think about you know you mentioned
01:28:24.640
how angry some people have gotten about some of the things that i've written i mean there are a huge
01:28:30.440
number of democrats today who disagree with what the cdc has now done with with loosening things and so
01:28:37.440
i i would say i have yet to see evidence that those officials have behaved in partisan ways what i find sad
01:28:46.720
is that we live in a country where kind of everything tends toward the partisan and so because we have
01:28:53.500
these divides over covid that very much are partisan most of the criticism of the officials tends to come
01:29:00.480
from republicans and as a result they end up looking partisan because they are criticized from one side
01:29:06.960
even if they are not partisan and the way i would and i think we have an honest disagreement here the way
01:29:12.540
i would describe them is fallible i think they've made some significant mistakes i think they've they've
01:29:17.880
played too much the cdc in particular into this notion of um trying to reduce covid risks so low
01:29:24.000
that they're not worried about other kinds of risks like mental health i really think they've made
01:29:28.580
mistakes they've been too slow to get tests out there the fda and the cdc they've been too slow to
01:29:33.760
give a formal approval to the vaccine so i can give you a long list of mistakes they made i don't see
01:29:39.120
those as as mistakes of partisanship i i see them as mistakes coming from other sources we definitely agree i
01:29:45.740
mean just agree to disagree on that one but i want to ask you this other about this other point there
01:29:50.520
was reporting today about i don't know if it's another variant but all these chinese factories
01:29:57.260
shutting down what do we know and yeah so are we looking at another variant that's what the pfizer
01:30:04.400
guy was saying yesterday he's like we're gonna get more variants they're coming so where do we stand
01:30:08.600
on that we are gonna get more variants so i would separate out of two different important things to
01:30:13.520
keep in mind here we are going to get more variants covid is is not over um uh and so uh i don't know
01:30:21.640
whether we're now headed into a new cycle where we're getting one um but covid is not over and we
01:30:27.080
shouldn't we shouldn't pretend that it's over i think the second thing is and um i think the problems
01:30:33.320
in china and hong kong are yet another sign of how well the vaccines work when you look at the numbers
01:30:40.420
in hong kong there are a shockingly large percentage of people who are not vaccinated when you look at
01:30:45.700
the quality of those chinese made vaccines they do not approach the effectiveness and the quality
01:30:51.980
of the vaccines from europe and the united states and so one of the reasons why we seem to be seeing
01:30:58.880
kind of a growing number of cases in some of these places is that again that the vaccines work and if
01:31:04.800
you are lucky enough to live in a country where you don't have to take sinovac but you can take
01:31:09.340
pfizer or you can take moderna or you can take j&j go do it i was talking to a pfizer uh somebody
01:31:17.960
senior at pfizer and uh just been in a personal conversation and i you know had my questions i said
01:31:22.960
of course you take the vaccine yes and would you give it to your children a hundred percent and that
01:31:27.740
always makes me feel better like they'll give it to their own children i know it's a simple point but
01:31:32.340
it resonated for me and maybe it will for the audience or maybe not you know what really when
01:31:37.660
you know what really sticks with me if we could i know we're beyond having a kind of bipartisan
01:31:41.400
compromise in this country on covid but if we could we would we would spend a lot less time masking
01:31:47.300
and we would get many many more people vaccinated and it's sort of sad last time you were on i don't
01:31:52.320
know why people just didn't listen right then and there slowly but surely they're starting to listen
01:31:56.880
to us it's a pleasure david thanks for coming on thanks for your kind words and thanks for having me
01:32:01.760
all right to be continued i want to tell you to make sure you download the show before tomorrow
01:32:05.100
because we've got senator rand paul joining us there's a lot to go over with him he's always
01:32:10.300
entertaining uh and spicy what do you think he would say about the loss of trust in public health
01:32:16.020
we're gonna ask him download the show in the meantime and subscribe to youtube see you tomorrow
01:32:19.900
thanks for listening to the megan kelly show no bs no agenda and no fear
01:32:31.760
thanks for listening to the megan kelly show no bs no bs no bs no bs no bs no bs no bs no bs no bs no bs no bs