The Megyn Kelly Show - Fauci's Finances, and Growing Immigration Crisis, with the Ruthless Podcast Hosts and Adam Andrzejewski

00:00:00.500 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.620 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. So much to cover on this Monday

00:00:16.400 morning, including the New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, laughing in the face of parents

00:00:21.840 upset over the re-masking, mandatory masking, thanks to him, of their toddlers. Remember how

00:00:29.080 he ended the show on Friday with the good news? Well, it turned bad later that day. We'll

00:00:33.000 update you. Plus, President Biden apparently forgetting that he was Barack Obama's vice

00:00:38.480 president. He it was it was he Joe Biden, not his wife, Jill Biden. And the backlash he's

00:00:46.240 now facing from his own party over ending a Trump era immigration policy with one top

00:00:53.000 Democrat outright calling the decision frightening. The situation at our southern border is about

00:00:57.720 to get seriously worse. Joining me now to discuss it all and much, much more. The co-hosts

00:01:03.080 of the Ruthless podcast, Michael Duncan, Josh Holmes, and the man known to us as comfortably

00:01:09.160 smug. Good to see you guys. Good to see you, Megyn. Good to be back. All right, smug. I'm

00:01:14.920 going to be looking like you in about four days. I'm wearing my glasses. I'm going to have LASIK

00:01:17.960 on Thursday. Oh, nice. Let me know how that goes. I've been thinking about it. Yeah, I will. I'll

00:01:23.000 let the world know. But they say you have not just bloodshot, but potentially blood like bloody

00:01:28.540 eyes after it. So I decided I was just going to pull a smug and put those glasses on and I'd be

00:01:34.660 good. Yeah. Everything I've read is like you have to keep your eyes completely covered for like 24

00:01:39.560 hours. Like any light could damage your eyes. I mean, it sounds intense, but you might look like Joe Biden

00:01:45.020 that first primary debate where he burst the blood. Yeah. I will definitely be pulling a smug in that

00:01:53.100 case. Maybe ever. We'll see. Update you further as the week goes on. So let's kick it off with Eric

00:02:01.020 Adams. I'm so mad about this. I'm just so irritated at. So what happened on Friday was we had the guy on

00:02:08.540 our show who filed a lawsuit saying you don't have the power to do this to the toddlers. It's the

00:02:13.140 toddlers. They have the lowest risk from covid. And yet they're saying, oh, because they can't be

00:02:21.060 vaccinated, they have to wear the masks. And so he filed a lawsuit. He won. A trial court judge in

00:02:27.460 New York said this is unconstitutional. You didn't have the powers to declare this. Yay. That's how we

00:02:31.520 ended our Friday show. Then I was like, maybe Eric Adams is the reasonable man. Some told us he was

00:02:37.780 and he just won't appeal this. You know, maybe he's just looking to, like, appease that far left

00:02:43.240 constituency and he can say, sorry, you know, we lost in court. No, that wasn't it. They filed an

00:02:49.540 appeal immediately and they got an appeals court ruling saying they have to wear the masks while,

00:02:55.800 you know, the case plays out. And so the masks are back on. And just to set it up for you,

00:03:01.420 Eric Adams went to yet another celebrity event this past weekend. And parents were mad and showed up

00:03:09.460 there to protest. I mean, you know what it takes to make somebody actually go out and protest like

00:03:13.120 they're irritated. You got it like especially New Yorkers who they're constantly irritated. They

00:03:17.220 don't protest. They showed up outside of it was like a theater he was going to for some show. I think

00:03:22.980 it might have been the Jessica Parker, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick show. Anyway,

00:03:30.420 he's walking in and this is how he handles the parents. It's hard to hear for that for our

00:03:34.360 listening audience. But basically, this other guy's got his arm around Eric Adams and the parents are

00:03:39.560 yelling. And the other guy's like, oh, oh, Adams go toddlers and masks. How you doing, man? And the

00:03:47.300 friend's like, hey, good to see you. Adam says, welcome to politics. The friend's like, yeah,

00:03:51.860 welcome to politics. Ha ha ha. I have angry parents. Take a listen and a look if you're watching on YouTube.

00:04:00.420 Ha ha ha. So funny. So funny to have the two year olds in the masks forever. Your thoughts?

00:04:17.500 Well, I mean, imagine going to the mat on that, right? I mean, look, we know that the progressives

00:04:24.180 across this country are having a very difficult time grappling with the fact that they actually

00:04:29.080 have to move on from COVID, right? It's fulfilled their wildest fantasies in terms of government

00:04:34.420 intervention in the lives of the American people. But that, I mean, look, I can't even fathom

00:04:43.060 how you make the decision that, oh, no, no, no, we got to go absolutely to the end of the

00:04:48.900 year to make sure that this kindergartner is forever scarred with a mask. Well, Holmes,

00:04:54.740 you and I talked about this a few days ago and that, you know, because we live in Washington,

00:04:58.160 D.C. and you see similar sorts of things, people still masking out on the streets and stuff

00:05:02.680 in public, you know, out outside. And you get this sense that that these liberals are playing a game

00:05:08.800 of chicken amongst themselves, that the person who keeps the mask on the longest has the most

00:05:14.140 virtue, right? And so I think in these liberal enclaves like D.C. or New York, that's what

00:05:19.340 we're seeing transpire right now. But it's particularly sadistic when you're talking about

00:05:23.560 toddlers. Yeah, of course. I mean, there's not a speck of research that indicates that that would

00:05:28.480 be good for anyone. There's tons of research and, in fact, a ton of clinical data that suggests that

00:05:33.800 you may have longer term problems with toddlers not being able to recognize like facial recognition,

00:05:39.200 expressions, emotional development. Yeah. But any way to like, you know, we could be raising an

00:05:44.120 entire generation that stares at each other. Right. Right. I mean, it is it's just sickening. And I

00:05:50.540 can't for the life of me understand how anyone, particularly someone who tries to think of

00:05:56.160 themselves as a reasonable human being, would draw the line here. Yeah. I mean, I think this is

00:06:01.500 a huge issue for a number of reasons. Holmes brought up, you know, the most salient one,

00:06:07.940 which is the science has shown that children are the least at risk group. The most at risk group,

00:06:15.260 other than, you know, comorbidities, is the elderly. And, you know, not too long ago,

00:06:20.400 you had Joe Biden in a room full of a bunch of elderly people at the State of the Union discussing

00:06:26.660 about how, oh, it's good to be here without masks. So the decision making here isn't in,

00:06:33.940 you know, in any way connected to the science. I think a lot of it might have to do with the fact

00:06:40.260 that, well, you know, toddlers can't vote. So a lot of these dams just take it for granted on

00:06:46.100 the face of that, which makes it all the more important that their voice is heard by their

00:06:50.560 parents. And I think we saw that in Virginia. And I think we're going to see it again in this

00:06:55.540 election. I think it's more important than ever for parents because, again, like Holmes said,

00:07:00.380 the damage that's being done to children, you saw a statistic that came out last week where it was

00:07:04.360 what, like 15% of teenagers contemplated suicide during lockdowns. This is having a very significant

00:07:10.600 impact on the youngest people, the one who count on the adults in the room being the adults in the

00:07:17.000 room and making decisions that help their future and are looking out for them. And that, you know,

00:07:21.980 you've got a mayor who will show up to parties and thinks that, you know, parents being concerned

00:07:28.580 about their children's health is just politics. Right. Yeah. They really feel like they're that

00:07:33.740 they're untouchable. They don't care what parents have to say. We've already seen,

00:07:37.460 you know, uh, this federal government, you've got Merrick Garland who will go after parents

00:07:41.720 considering they are like domestic terrorists. Right. Right. So I think for one, one second on

00:07:47.720 your way into your celebrity filled event to say, I hear you, I hear you, you know, I'm following the

00:07:53.400 recommendations of my, my health guy, you know, we're keeping a close eye on it. I know you don't

00:07:57.860 like it. I'm listening, you know, something, not just like, ha ha ha ha ha. Parents and master toddlers

00:08:03.700 in masks. Ha ha ha. I mean, look, we like to laugh and joke about absolutely everything.

00:08:09.640 It's really hard to laugh and joke about this topic. I mean, this is one of the saddest topics

00:08:13.880 that of a many, many sad topics that COVID has brought us, but what has happened to the youngest

00:08:19.800 amongst us is really a tragedy in every possible way. Right. But it's also, you know, it's also

00:08:25.980 indicative of this larger catch 22 of one of many catch 22s that Democrats have in their party right

00:08:30.780 now is that they know they've been killed by their COVID politics, right? They know that it's

00:08:36.140 hurting the democratic party all over the country. Saw what happened in Virginia. It's we're watching

00:08:40.360 it happen, play out in generic ballots and that, and all that. And the Biden administration is

00:08:45.080 basically pretended ever since Ukraine started, basically the COVID no longer exists. Right.

00:08:50.340 And they'd like for all of their followers to continue that sort of facade. And it, what's

00:08:56.860 happening is it's running up against an activist element that treats us as a religion.

00:09:00.780 Basically that, I mean, they're, they're bought it full, full lock, stock and barrel.

00:09:06.300 That's a good question. Triple mask, you know, because if, if COVID is so problematic that we

00:09:12.140 still have to keep these muzzles on two year olds who are literally at virtually zero risk from COVID,

00:09:20.300 then why are we taking away title 42 at the border? Why are we now opening the border to all immigrants

00:09:27.900 who want to quote, seek asylum? Sure. Okay. Here in the United States, because we were only doing that

00:09:33.900 because COVID is no longer an emergency. So how do you square the two? How is it toddlers shut up and

00:09:38.120 keep your faces covered, but migrants come on in. Welcome back. Again, it goes back to the voting issue

00:09:44.580 where when you had a Democrat primary and every single candidate on stage, raise their hand and said,

00:09:49.600 I would let any migrant who makes it into America have healthcare and all the benefits that come with

00:09:54.380 citizenship. New York city is testing out, letting illegal immigrants vote. Hey, we can either have

00:10:00.920 all partners, but you know, these toddlers aren't going to be voting for us. So that's all they're

00:10:06.240 concerned with is power. Not, not what is in the best interest of the people or the kids or what,

00:10:11.000 what's most helpful for this country. They just want to hold onto power.

00:10:14.240 And the Democrats are not only getting rid of title 42 at the border, they want to ask for more money

00:10:20.260 in the budget to fight COVID. Yeah. Right. Right. How do you square that circle? I mean,

00:10:25.000 you got DHS anticipating like 18,000 border crossings a day. And that's, that's now with

00:10:31.660 title 42 in effect. They need those, they need that money, Michael, to pay for the N95s that

00:10:38.860 they're going to mandate on those toddlers. Very important point. We need miniature N95s for

00:10:43.780 all of the children. I mean, when you come to the conclusion, if your goal as a president and as

00:10:51.400 sort of the larger democratic establishment governance across this country was to do

00:10:57.340 everything wrong. Like if you, if you were like, I'm going to take the next two, two years and I'm

00:11:02.240 going to try to make every bad decision I could possibly make just to see what would happen.

00:11:06.900 What would you change? What would you change? I mean, the border stuff, are you kidding me?

00:11:12.680 Now it's title 42. How about the remain in Mexico policy? We pull that day one. It's like,

00:11:17.240 Oh, Holy shit. I guess the caravan was real. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say,

00:11:22.840 even, even like Jill Biden's attempt to undo the Melania Rose garden. I'm against it.

00:11:29.880 That's bad too. Even her Christmas decorations. I think Melania's were better. I'm not going to lie.

00:11:33.760 I don't think they have any taste. I don't, I just don't. Sorry. I mean, you can say what you

00:11:38.200 want about Melania Trump that she doesn't have good taste is not one of those things. Um,

00:11:42.000 let's talk about four title 42 and what's happening. Cause a lot of people don't even

00:11:44.860 know what that is a reference to, but, um, it was a CDC directive during the Trump administration

00:11:49.900 at the Southern border saying, we're not really interested in your asylum claims during a

00:11:53.900 pandemic. Sorry, but take your troubles walking, bring them someplace else. Ask another country

00:11:59.160 we're dealing with a pandemic and we can't handle your problems too. And it was left in place when

00:12:04.720 Biden took over for very good reason. And now the CDC, and it's funny cause the white house is like,

00:12:10.340 we got nothing to do with it. It's not us. It's the CDC. It's the CDC. We, we have no power over

00:12:16.180 the CDC. Why? What would make you think that we control Rochelle Walensky? It's crazy talk.

00:12:21.820 Um, we only nominated her. They're lifting it. Right. And by the way, it's like, Oh, well,

00:12:26.140 you know, I mean, obviously, so you, the white house doesn't control Rochelle Walensky,

00:12:29.320 but the teachers unions do. Okay. I don't understand the power balance there. So, um, a couple of the

00:12:34.900 numbers that you were just citing to put some meat on them. Uh, this CDC directive has caused

00:12:39.640 migrants to be expelled 1.7 million times since March of 2020. The white house admitted on Wednesday

00:12:46.940 of last week that they are expecting quote, an influx of migrants of illegal migrants, again,

00:12:54.220 quote, seeking asylum. Of course, um, they defer to the CDC. We defer, we defer to the CDC on this

00:13:00.980 decision. And DHS last Tuesday said, we're getting about 7,100 migrants per day. As you point

00:13:08.240 out, um, Jay Johnson, who was Obama's DHS secretary, national review review was reporting. This said

00:13:14.920 anything over 1000 a day quote overwhelms the system. Anything over 4,000 a day is officially

00:13:21.060 quote a crisis. We're already getting 7,100 a day officially in crisis. This is before we lift

00:13:29.820 title 42. And on top of that, these Axios reports that we, we believe that there's 170,000 migrants

00:13:38.980 now just sitting there in Mexico waiting to immediately rush the border. Once this thing

00:13:46.800 is lifted, um, soon in a couple of weeks. Oh, and also I think it's important to remember that

00:13:54.220 even before they're trying to get rid of this, uh, the crisis of the border is, is happening. It's,

00:14:01.040 it's continuing. It's an emergency. I was having a dinner with a buddy last week and he was telling

00:14:06.600 me that, uh, something that a lot of folks probably haven't noticed is that flights out of South Texas

00:14:12.340 airfare has gotten very expensive. And the reason for that is if you're just trying to get a plane

00:14:18.600 ticket, you're now competing with the United States government because they're buying commercial

00:14:23.160 flights to fly migrants around the country. So on his flight, it was about 75% migrants who have

00:14:31.220 been, who are being flown across to various locations across the country. They're all given the same

00:14:36.220 uniform. Uh, you know, they basically give you're like, welcome to America starter pack. They're like,

00:14:41.000 you know, we think you're going to show up, uh, to this assigned, you know, hearing a year from now,

00:14:46.280 which most likely they're not going to. Here's your, here's your Democrat, a sample ballot

00:14:52.380 for the next election. Yeah. And maybe you'll show up at the hearing or not. I don't know.

00:14:56.200 Well, it's an honor system, right? It's a lot of inflation. I mean, it really shows where their

00:15:00.520 priorities are. Yeah. Well, the good news is that look, the good news is Kamala's on it,

00:15:04.580 right? Because nobody's clear, more clearly articulated our vision, uh, at border. Yeah.

00:15:11.160 Well, that's true. That's true. I mean, really, truly what she says is probably a good articulation

00:15:17.640 of our vision. If you can figure it out, I guess that's all words, just a lot of words that mean

00:15:23.460 nothing. She is one big air sandwich. Oh man. It's incredible. I hear she's trying to hire a new

00:15:30.680 speech writer. The good news is with her speeches, you can, you can write the words forward or backwards

00:15:36.540 and they're all the same. That's right. And then you just do like a copy paste and then you say it

00:15:41.600 again and then you fit your word count. Just for fun. I mean, since you raised it, here she was,

00:15:47.440 um, asked, let me see what the context was. I wrote it down. So I, I didn't forget. It's tough to know

00:15:53.360 from just listening to her. Um, let's see, let's see. She's, oh yeah. She was asked if Vladimir Putin

00:16:00.560 should be removed. And basically the answer was, I've been to Poland. Stand by. Listen.

00:16:07.140 He said that Vladimir Putin, um, should no longer be the leader of Russia. Do you agree?

00:16:13.700 Listen, I think that you, you framed the point quite accurately and well, which is America's policy

00:16:22.740 has been and will continue to be focused on the real issue at hand, which is one, the needs of the

00:16:29.960 Ukrainian people, which is why our policy from the beginning has been about ensuring that there are

00:16:36.720 going to be real costs exacted against Russia in the form of severe sanctions, which we know are having

00:16:43.400 a real impact and an immediate impact, not to mention the, the longer term impact, um, which is

00:16:50.280 about saying there's going to be consequences. And I think the president has been a, an extraordinary

00:16:56.780 leader. To your point, Joy, I've been to Poland. I was in Romania. I've been to Europe, I think

00:17:02.040 probably at least three times in the last four months. Uh, I was in Munich. I was in France before

00:17:07.280 that speaking with heads of state about this issue among many other issues, but most recently about

00:17:16.040 this issue. And they all love what we're doing is basically what she said. Wait, I can't think,

00:17:20.660 what did she say? She was asked about Vladimir Putin and she's given us her travel. She managed

00:17:27.900 to get stumped by a softball question by Joy Reed. I mean, it's time to hang up the cleats.

00:17:36.300 I mean, it really is the ultimate Billy Madison every time. Right. It's like, you remember that

00:17:41.360 Billy Madison routine where he would give a speech and that's like, that's the dumbest thing.

00:17:45.100 Everyone in this room is now dumber for having heard it. Honestly, it's like God have mercy on

00:17:49.960 your soul. Every time she's asked to speak on any issue, it's kind of like a kid who had to do a

00:17:56.600 book report, but they forgot to read the book. So they're like looking at the back cover.

00:18:00.060 Right. Trying to hit the word. You get, you get this, you get the sense that she's sort of buying

00:18:04.740 time for her to come up with an actual answer, but she never gets around to it. It's just a lot of

00:18:09.580 like dependent clauses and the sentence never ends. No, I was saying on the show last week,

00:18:14.980 it reminds me of a certain personality at Fox news. I'm not going to name who it was. I'm not

00:18:19.420 going to say if it was a man or a woman, but this person used to, this is, this is how this person's

00:18:24.520 answers used to sound every time. You know, what do you think of that? I think it's inappropriate.

00:18:29.100 It's wrong. It's improper. And there should be consequences. There should be severe consequences

00:18:33.940 for how wrong that was. The American people need to stand up and need to fight injustice.

00:18:38.940 And things that are wrong and offensive. And this is one of those cases. What?

00:18:46.740 What? It sounds like you can make it sound good. You can make it sound like, you know what this

00:18:52.740 reminds me of? When I was in the first grade, I learned how to count to 10 in Japanese. The first

00:19:00.880 grade. And we asked that we studied Japan. Now you couldn't do it. We made little kimonos and we

00:19:05.240 would walk in and walk out. We'd say sayonara, Mrs. Peterson. Now we'd be called cultural

00:19:08.720 appropriators and so on. But we learned how to count to 10 and I never forgot. Well, I don't do

00:19:13.880 it well, but I still know how to do it. And I used to do this bar trick where if you say the numbers

00:19:18.140 really fast together, it sounds like you can speak Japanese. Like, here we go.

00:19:21.280 I'm impressed. I'm very impressed. Thank you. You have to say it like with conviction, you know,

00:19:31.540 like, like you're really making a point, like you're angry or you say with a laugh, like each

00:19:35.440 and he's on, she go anyway. So I tried this bar trick, right? She's got that like contemplative

00:19:41.660 look on her face when she gives these answers. Like she's really thinking about it. You know,

00:19:46.200 that's what she's doing. She's doing my little Japanese number trick. And I tried my trick one

00:19:51.680 time in a bar with on some friends. And one of the guys there, um, unbeknownst to me speaks Japanese.

00:19:58.480 And all my friends looked at him and said, what is she saying? And he goes, I think she's counting.

00:20:08.080 No, I'm not. I'm like, she's counting. That's what she's doing.

00:20:15.080 I love that. This is a lie. That's exactly what's going on here.

00:20:20.180 Um, so then back to the border. Now, DHS, this is going to comfort you. Okay. You're going to feel

00:20:25.280 better. They're planning there. They are planning for this, for the influx or as Jay Johnson,

00:20:32.160 Obama's guy would say the crisis that we're already dealing with. They're planning for as many,

00:20:37.360 keep in mind, four thousands of crisis. We're getting over 7,000 every day right now. And we

00:20:42.640 got 170,000 people waiting on the border to rush it. As soon as they lift this DHS is planning for as

00:20:47.640 many as 18,000 arrivals daily. They say it's not a projection, not a projection. That's just our

00:20:53.200 planning and our preparing number. Um, and so don't worry because we're on it now. They won't

00:21:00.020 say how they're on it. I have absolutely no faith that they actually, in fact, are on it.

00:21:05.200 And I wonder, I do wonder what actually is going to happen to all these migrants. They say there

00:21:10.760 were 55,000 of them released in the United States in January alone, January alone, because they take

00:21:17.100 these folks, they don't make them show up at their asylum hearing. And then if they get quote

00:21:20.640 deported, they never follow up. They don't actually like escort you back down to the Mexican border.

00:21:25.140 They're just like, now you got to go. Bye. Oh man. Well, look, part of the issue, and you put your

00:21:31.800 finger on it here, is if you can set aside sort of the sovereignty issues and the economic issues upon

00:21:38.840 American citizens as a result of all of this, it's all super inhumane, right? There's this sort

00:21:47.120 of progressive viewpoint that somehow having open borders is better for people is better for these

00:21:54.100 people that are trying to get across. I think by any demonstrable evidence, you can, you can quickly

00:21:59.540 ascertain that it is, is probably the most inhumane thing you can do to a bunch of people with absolutely

00:22:05.700 no hope, then provide them this glimmer of hope. And then the ability to try and, and, and reach it

00:22:12.240 only to get to a border that is absolutely jam packed without the resources necessary to even

00:22:18.620 house them. That is the most inhumane thing you could, there is no compassion in that point of

00:22:25.880 view. That is, that is cruel. And, but that is what this administration's view. And basically the

00:22:31.760 progressive view of immigration is in this country. I mean, that's a really interesting point. It seems

00:22:36.360 kind of like an inherent fiber of modern progressivism is, is this masquerading chaos as

00:22:44.000 compassion where a fine example is like in San Francisco where they're like, well, you can have

00:22:48.940 basically an open air drug market. You can, you can let people do whatever they want if they want to

00:22:55.100 steal from a store, whatever, but you have to understand, you know, the reason these people are,

00:22:59.280 are, are breaking into a jewelry store is because they have to feed their family. Like their family only

00:23:02.860 eats diamonds. It makes no sense. It has nothing to do with compassion of, of, of, of giving these

00:23:09.600 people a glimmer of hope of wherever and, and enabling an entire market of human traffickers.

00:23:15.060 Right. Yeah. Like they're essentially, they're building a pipeline for human trafficking by,

00:23:20.740 by having this kind of a policy. Yeah. And, and by the way, politically, how stupid is this? I mean,

00:23:27.540 this is like your bread and butter. This used to be your full-time business. How stupid

00:23:32.340 is this? You look at the polls. There was one, I think it was last week. Um, it was a Harris poll,

00:23:37.520 uh, say of nearly 2000 registered voters, most important issues facing the country. Number one,

00:23:43.040 inflation, clear winner, 32%. Number two, the economy. It's kind of the same thing. 27%.

00:23:48.780 Uh, and number three, the, the very next most important issue after inflation slash economy

00:23:53.540 is immigration. 21%. They care about immigration. And by the way, I think it was an NBC new polls,

00:24:00.320 NBC news poll showed the, the GOP has a seven point advantage over the Dems already on who's

00:24:08.320 better suited to handle immigration and the problem at the border. So where's the sense in this

00:24:13.000 politically? Well, I mean, I was just going to say the political acumen in this administration.

00:24:18.640 Wow. Wow. Right. I mean, like you said, number one issue, inflation, 7.7% inflation, every,

00:24:24.520 on top of everyone's mind, what's the solution you read Monday morning. Well, we're going to try to

00:24:30.300 reconstitute BBB. We've got to, we can still have to try to figure out how to spend $5 trillion.

00:24:34.920 Right. Yeah. And then immigration, right. You're concerned about immigration,

00:24:38.120 the crisis at the border. Oh, I know I got a perfect guy. You guys, let's just open it up and

00:24:41.680 create complete chaos. So whatever concern you had up to this point will be magnified times 10 before the

00:24:46.440 election, each and every issue, literally every single thing that you, that comes across this

00:24:52.380 president's plate, the path that they choose is political disaster. Thank goodness, because the

00:24:59.180 actual policies that they are disastrous, right? I mean, thank goodness that there is recourse with

00:25:04.380 elections on this situation. And I think you, especially the timing. And I think that's something

00:25:08.880 to hammer on is that, you know, a week from today, taxes are due. Americans are having to pay

00:25:13.780 their share of their paycheck to this government. And this same government is basically allowing

00:25:20.960 people to become citizens for free, no responsibility, no accountability. You know,

00:25:26.720 if you're lucky enough to, to, to be able to, at this point has become lucky to be able to make it

00:25:32.380 by, I think it was something like what 40% of Americans are saying that inflation's outpacing their

00:25:37.100 ability to afford their living expenses. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's like everything, like you were saying

00:25:42.560 earlier, Holmes, everything that they do, their solution to these crises is that they create is to

00:25:48.560 double down and make the crisis worse. For example, like, you know, with the inflation and gas prices,

00:25:54.220 you know, they're saying in California, like, oh, we'll just give everyone gas cards. And it's like, how do

00:25:59.260 you think inflation works? You know, like, let's not drill more in the United States. No, we'll give

00:26:05.240 everyone gas cards with the taxpayer money that's also their money. And then the gas will be cheaper

00:26:09.520 for them because it'll be free. Excellent. Everything's free. Well, that's what AOC was

00:26:14.200 saying. I mean, not that anybody cares what she has to say in response to anything, but that was

00:26:17.920 her push in response to these polling numbers and inflation and so on. She was like, you know,

00:26:21.340 if we could just like stick to the agenda, get BBB passed, push this stuff there and get rid of

00:26:26.860 college debt for all, you know, college students. You know, she's back. She's a one trick pony.

00:26:31.680 Everything should be free. We should go back to our socialist roots. And then the Democrats won't be

00:26:35.860 facing a bloodbath in November. And all these numbers will turn around. Free college for

00:26:40.200 everyone. Didn't you guys have somebody pay for your college? I mean, it's just such a stunning.

00:26:45.320 I mean, I know you you're super hot on this one, Smug. Oh, I mean, especially because I remember

00:26:50.440 going to state school, which was inside my budget. I remember being a bouncer at a college dive bar

00:26:58.020 and bouncers are the guys who have to clean the bathrooms. And that sucks at the end,

00:27:01.740 which was news to us. We didn't know that. I don't think that's true, Smug. I feel like

00:27:06.960 somebody took advantage of, you know, at the East Village, terrible dive. It was actually a good

00:27:12.740 dive bar. It's a decent dive bar. You know, I ran a tight door. An unsuspected Smug was in with a

00:27:18.600 plunger three times a week. But I mean, everyone else in this country has always figured out a way to

00:27:25.720 budget for their education. And then again, it's it's progressivism masquerading as this is

00:27:31.580 compassion. No, it's not. It's a handout to the wealthiest liberal coastal. It's like the liberal

00:27:37.400 coastal elites embodied. It's the people who have taken out massive loans. Right. For universities.

00:27:42.440 Yeah. You know, and and the majority of those people, they're not working class Americans.

00:27:47.500 The size of these loans is OK. If you go to Columbia and you want to major

00:27:51.100 in like underwater basket weaving and pay 100000 a year for it, I mean, you have to be responsible

00:27:58.600 for that decision. That's not on everyone else's back who decided that, you know, I'm going to earn

00:28:03.940 a living and I'm going to try to stay within my means on top of inflation going up to seven and a

00:28:08.240 half percent a year. It's completely absurd. It's completely absurd. And it's a handout both ways.

00:28:12.260 It's a handout to the liberal base of these coastal elites. Like you look at Elizabeth Warren's

00:28:17.120 replies. It's all like, oh, yes, Senator, I'm in Massachusetts and I support you. I don't want to

00:28:21.040 pay for my daughter's tuition. It's like overeducated wine moms.

00:28:23.820 Yeah. And then who is the money going to is the university system, which is building,

00:28:27.360 you know, a generation of of of their progressive troops.

00:28:30.520 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Universities with, you know, multi-billion dollar endowments.

00:28:34.240 Right. Yeah. I see taxes. It's just a handout. It's basically just a complete, you know,

00:28:40.660 cash funnel to their base. That's all this is. And wouldn't it be great if you could do something

00:28:45.120 with a degree? I mean, it would really imagine it would be really excellent if some of these

00:28:48.800 schools sat around and thought about, I don't know, maybe like something to do with the

00:28:53.020 semiconductor industry or like artificial intelligence, you know, something that has

00:28:58.700 applicability in today's world. Oh, like women's studies is going to get anyone anywhere.

00:29:04.180 And that's like, you know, I think about it in my own life. My my audience knows that my dad died

00:29:10.040 suddenly when I was 15 of a heart attack. And my mom already had two kids in college at that point.

00:29:14.980 My brother and sister are older than I am. They're in college. She's trying to, you know,

00:29:18.640 he was only 45. We were not in we weren't rich to begin with. So it's not like he had some big

00:29:23.880 fat life insurance policy. He had like the bare minimum you have when you're in your 40s and you're

00:29:28.580 a professor, which is what he was. Anyway, what did she do? She used the entirety of that

00:29:35.120 that payment to to pay for the rest what she could of my brothers and sisters college and my

00:29:40.620 college education. And all three of us had to take out loans on top of it, of course. So

00:29:45.080 like, do I think now that, you know, I would have been better off if the federal government had

00:29:50.960 stepped in? Look, it would have been nice. But that's that I don't think the neighbor should

00:29:55.600 have to pay for my college education. And my mom made a sacrifice. She could have been living off of

00:30:00.820 that money. Suddenly she didn't have a two income home, but she used it to help her children. Like

00:30:06.260 that's what parents do. They scrimp and they save and they do what's necessary to pay for things like

00:30:10.200 education. And we took out loans, too. And then we paid those loans back. Why should these snot

00:30:16.800 nosed kids today? I'm sorry. The ones who really need it, they can get loans. Right. But like like

00:30:22.980 you point out, a lot of these people are going to be these sort of college Columbia elite graduates

00:30:27.100 who are going to spend their years in journalism trying to shame half of America for doing absolutely

00:30:32.220 nothing wrong. Why should I be paying for their college education? I don't want to.

00:30:36.140 Totally. But there's another element to this, too, that I think actually has huge consequences,

00:30:43.340 which is if you're guaranteed. I don't know how you structure a full bailout of anybody who went to

00:30:48.340 college. Certainly can't do it retroactively. But if it's still in a loan, you're not changing the

00:30:54.020 price of the school. You're not changing what it costs. This that curve has gone up by enormous

00:31:02.040 amount over the years. And if you think about the American taxpayer guaranteeing those loans

00:31:08.260 and actually being on the hook for all of those loans, what happens when you have the first

00:31:13.040 significant economic downturn that we've had since 08 and all of those recent college graduates can't

00:31:18.980 find jobs? They can't pay anything on those loans. Right. And all of a sudden you can see a way

00:31:24.960 where it makes like a subprime housing market look like like a modern drop on a, you know,

00:31:32.980 10 points in a stock market. Right. Because because that huge McMansion you can't afford

00:31:37.260 when you get the ninja loan is the is the equivalent of the underwater basket weaving degree that you can

00:31:44.160 get because it's going to be financed by the federal government. You've not changed the incentives at all.

00:31:48.120 No, no. And I mean, I think it's a really interesting situation to go a little further

00:31:52.680 on this. I was reading these reports on who in finance, when when when a lot of bankers are

00:31:58.440 reaching out to manage retirement portfolios and just brokerage accounts for folks, they're not being

00:32:05.060 told, you know, start going through the phone book, look for folks who own an HVAC business, look for

00:32:10.280 folks who own a plumbing business, because these people are actually making money. They've got a skill in

00:32:15.220 a trade. Yeah. They're doing great right now because they have something that society actually

00:32:21.640 has. And it doesn't go away. And it's highly in demand. Highly. Well, listen, it's a really good

00:32:27.300 job if you can get it. It doesn't pay that well, but it's pretty good. Vice president. And you may

00:32:32.900 recall that when Barack Obama was president, he had a vice president. His name was Joe Biden. He's now

00:32:39.440 president. And talking about his term and during the Obama administration, he now appears to

00:32:45.200 believe that he his wife had that job, not we're going to play that for you right after the break.

00:32:53.020 And then we'll talk about the media gaslighting America on the alleged missing phone logs in the

00:32:59.420 Trump White House on January 6th. Yet another media lie with the host of Ruthless, which you must be

00:33:05.840 downloading and watching and listening to the podcast immediately if you're not already. That's next.

00:33:10.120 Don't go away.

00:33:19.360 I mean, it's like another day, another gap. And this one from President Biden seeming to forget

00:33:26.940 that he was Obama's vice president. He he was not his wife. Here it is.

00:33:31.720 And I'm deeply proud of the work she's doing as First Lady with Joining Forces Initiative. She

00:33:39.540 started with Michelle Obama when she was vice president and now carries on.

00:33:43.920 So the White House, they tried to fix it with the, you know, like the corrective brackets in like the

00:33:57.260 transcript. You know how you do the corrective bracket instead of like now that it says she

00:34:03.040 started with Michelle Obama, who when she and they struck out, she and they put in the bracket,

00:34:09.380 it I, I was vice president.

00:34:14.600 Can you imagine how busy the corrective bracket guy is?

00:34:18.860 I mean, think of that, you know, it's like you'd be charging by the bracket.

00:34:25.860 A millionaire by week's end. It's just like busier than a one arm paper hanger over there.

00:34:31.460 What's interesting about about this guy's job is usually, you know, every administration runs in

00:34:35.960 this at some point with a transcript or something where something was said incorrectly. Usually the

00:34:39.980 stakes are pretty high in that moment. It seems like Joe Biden can't open his mouth without the

00:34:45.700 bracket guy having to come in on it. And it's like these situations are hilarious, right? When we're

00:34:50.580 talking about the First Lady and it's just boilerplate stuff. But it gets a little scary when he's over

00:34:55.280 there in Europe and he's, you know, remember all of the regime change, regime change that we would

00:35:01.400 respond to chemical weapons used by Putin in kind, as in we would do it as well. And then talking to

00:35:07.660 these troops about you'll see when you get there, as if we're going to put boots on the ground in

00:35:11.400 Ukraine. And then all of that has to be walked back by the administration. And then Peter Doocy,

00:35:16.600 bless his heart, has to ask Biden to his face. Hey, do you think this is a problem? He's like,

00:35:20.800 none of that happened. Which he sounded pretty sincere about. Frankly, I don't think he remembers.

00:35:28.100 That's the thing is he should phrase it correctly and say, I don't remember that happening. Then

00:35:32.260 people are like, all right, well, finally, he's being honest about something.

00:35:34.620 Yeah, you're exactly right. And, you know, one of the things we didn't spend much time on was

00:35:38.720 when he called for, clearly, he called for a regime change. Like, and it was, then they said it

00:35:43.580 was a gaffe, it was a gaffe. And then he was like, no, I stand by it. It was just my personal

00:35:47.240 opinion. I was speaking for my personal opinion. It was like, dude, you're the president. There's no line

00:35:52.220 there. Like, you don't get to draw that line anymore. But we didn't spend any, because like, to me,

00:35:56.640 I actually think he believes it.

00:35:58.100 I think he, he's one of those people who thinks if we could just get rid of Vladimir Putin,

00:36:01.640 this whole mess would go away. As if I really think he and other Democrats believe that like,

00:36:07.400 Jed Bartlett is going to be the next president of Russia. You're going to get some like liberal

00:36:13.260 hero to take over. Like, you know, anything about Russia? And it's like, it's history. You're

00:36:18.660 probably not going to like the next guy that much, much better.

00:36:20.960 Well, I mean, look, you know, by listening to our show, we think that everything in democratic

00:36:26.780 politics is viewed through the prism of the West wing. Yeah. Right. That's right. Like literally

00:36:31.500 every single decision that they make, however small or however big is viewed through the prism

00:36:38.220 of like Josh Lyman and president Bartlett. Right. Discussing very important, serious things.

00:36:43.940 And then coming to the conclusion that we've unified the world. Right. We just get everybody

00:36:48.700 in the room and a speech is made by the president and everybody is stirred to action and they change

00:36:53.520 their minds and they're like, yep, we're doing it. Yes. As if that's the way it works. Or to your

00:36:57.580 point, Megan, like that there's going to be some coup or something in Russia. And then that general is

00:37:03.340 going to call the Oval and be like, sir, I'd like to enter NATO. That's not the way politics works in

00:37:11.940 the real world. But it's not. And this one is you've got like, you know, this guy doesn't have

00:37:17.900 anywhere near Jeb Bartlett's oratory skills. Right. Like instead, you've got like corn pop.

00:37:24.740 That's what our comedian on Friday was doing. That's perfect. Well, I mean, it was a week before

00:37:32.520 last where he, he would, do you see him trying to talk about the, uh, the first lady and the second

00:37:38.760 gentleman and, uh, he got them all crosswise. And by the end of it, I think he had diagnosed two of

00:37:43.920 them with COVID. I mean, it was like, this just mess, absolute mess. The bracket guy must've been

00:37:51.060 having a heart attack. The bracket guy really. Oh, we do. We have a side of Dunnigan doing Biden.

00:37:57.880 Oh, we need to see that. Oh, so Kyle Dunnigan was on our show. He's a comedian. He's amazing. He's

00:38:01.700 got his own YouTube and he's spectacular. He tried out for SNL and he, he totally choked. He couldn't

00:38:07.300 do it live. Like he was not good live. So they did not cast him, but he he's great in an interview

00:38:12.140 setting and he does stand up. He just couldn't do it in front of Lorne Michaels. But here he is. He does

00:38:16.720 this weird face swap thing where he makes his face look like the person. Here's a little bit

00:38:21.040 bit of his Joe Biden watch. Uh, Vladimir, uh, puking is not, not, not, not puking. The guy,

00:38:29.800 the guy without the shirt, man, he's a bad dude. He's a liar, man. Not to be trusted. So I don't

00:38:38.680 believe a word that guy says. He's like, he's like corn pop. Some guys in the world, man, you just,

00:38:46.460 you just can't, yeah, it can't trust him, man. Hey, Hey, did you, did you shit my pants

00:38:55.220 or did I? Mr. President, what, what happened when you, you seem to call for regime change

00:39:01.480 earlier this week? Something that is not us policy and actually could place other world

00:39:06.180 leaders, including men like yourself in danger. Why'd you do that? Huh? Well, what did I do?

00:39:14.800 You said it. You said it, pal. I, I didn't say nothing about that.

00:39:23.800 So that is so accurate. It's so good. If anything, it might give him a little bit too much credit.

00:39:29.680 I mean, he's forming those sentences a bit more than the real deal. I mean, that's the only tell.

00:39:34.560 You said it. You said it. Wait, can we go before we, before we move on to our next topic? I've got

00:39:40.200 to show you his impression of Trump. He, he, he called up trans Trump. It's Trump as if he were

00:39:45.840 trans and running for office. You must see this. Watch. Just it's trans Trump. So do a. Oh,

00:39:53.800 that's true. You can't pain. Okay. Trans Trump. It's so stunning. So terrific.

00:40:00.040 You got, look, look, you got to vote for me. You got no choice. You got to do it. You got to do it.

00:40:08.520 Look like Leah Thomas, the greatest swimmer of all time. I will be leaving all those fat losers

00:40:16.260 in my wake. That's Trump.

00:40:19.260 That is amazing. Incredible. The hands are really good. You know, he does the really good

00:40:24.860 demonstrable. He's got it all. All the hand movements. He did something that not everybody

00:40:29.960 who imitates Trump remembers to do the. Yeah. The breathing in through, through the teeth. Yeah. That's

00:40:36.000 good. I hadn't noticed anybody calling attention to that before. Okay. I've got to get to the media

00:40:39.740 gaslighting on the missing phone logs from January 6th. Dun dun dun. Washington Post, Bob Costa, Bob

00:40:49.080 Woodward, write a piece. They're not giving us all the documents that the White House owes us. There's a

00:40:56.060 several hour gap in Trump's phone logs, which they're, you know, withholding from us. And what's

00:41:03.880 in the phone logs? Well, of course, it turns out to be a complete BS story. I'm trying to find the

00:41:10.660 way they described it because they did it. Oh, seven hours and 37 minutes. There's a gap. They said

00:41:16.800 it's, it's, uh, 457 minutes from 1117 AM to 654 PM. Uh, the committee now has no record of his phone

00:41:26.960 conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol. And you've got every, you know, favorite

00:41:32.220 in the liberal cabal on Twitter tweeting out, you know, Dan Rather, a gap in phone logs. I can't

00:41:37.640 remember. Was anything happening on that day that Donald Trump might've been talking with people

00:41:41.400 about, um, get HuffPost politics, a gap in official records raises the possibility that Donald Trump

00:41:46.940 was using burner phones. Susan Glasser, uh, puts Nixon's 18 minute gap to shame. Lots of references

00:41:54.160 to Watergate, except it turns out it was all wrong because the, the follow-up reporting credit to CNN,

00:42:02.440 they reported this reflects, um, this was totally consistent with Trump's typical phone habits. If you

00:42:08.040 look at every single day of his presidency, he, um, apparently he played place calls through the

00:42:12.700 switchboard, which is all the January 6th committee got only when he was in residence, but rarely when

00:42:17.400 he was in the oval office. And that explains the fact that the log does not show the calls while he

00:42:21.740 was sitting in the oval office. Cause he typically just while they're used, had staff place calls

00:42:26.580 directly for him on landlines. That's okay. Or on cell phones. And those would not be noted on the

00:42:31.920 log. So yet another fake story. What do you make of it? It was even framed fake, right? Because

00:42:37.840 the actual framing of it didn't have a specific specificity in terms of the switchboard. It

00:42:45.340 basically just said all calls, like they were supposed to have access to all calls. Well,

00:42:49.560 that of course is not the case. And we learned from subsequent reporting by CNN. I think the

00:42:54.240 biggest thing is, doesn't this remind you of Russia gate? I mean, it just, it reminds you

00:42:57.900 of what we've experienced over the last five years. Every time Adam Schiff's staff came up with some

00:43:03.160 absolutely incredible allegation. They ran directly to the Washington Post or New York

00:43:08.100 times. They wrote this just splashy front page stories about alleging all kinds of nefarious

00:43:13.680 behavior. And then you find out like a month later, it's complete bullshit.

00:43:17.140 Right. And it's sort of an easy allegation to make, to say like something is being withheld.

00:43:22.380 We need the, we need the super transcript with no redactions. You know what I mean? Like that's

00:43:26.960 always like sort of a tell in, in, in all of Russia gate was at least that, you know, they

00:43:32.000 couldn't, they couldn't actually, uh, find any of the things that they were accusing Donald Trump

00:43:37.180 of. So there was always something just beyond their reach. And that was the thing that was

00:43:41.900 going to prove it. Right. And that's sort of a tactic they've used with everything. I think

00:43:45.620 now on the Hunter, on the, on the Hunter laptop is exactly the opposite, right? That nobody went with

00:43:50.440 that story. And now the Washington Post editorial board comes out and says, look, the reason we

00:43:54.800 didn't do it is because, um, I want to get this. The media had been unwitting tools of a Russian

00:44:02.460 influence campaign in 2016. It was only prudent to suspect a similar plot. The lesson learned from

00:44:08.420 2016 was evidently to err on the side of setting aside questionable material in the heat of a political

00:44:14.120 campaign. Sure. I'm sure you would have set it aside if you thought it hurt Trump too.

00:44:20.720 They were the media campaign. Like that's the funniest thing about that is that they still

00:44:26.260 can't figure out. It's not that they were victims of anything. They were the Russian media campaign.

00:44:31.580 Right. Like they're the ones that carried the water on the whole deal. It's like the, what's

00:44:36.580 the hot dog meme? Yeah. We're trying to figure out who did this. It's like all of Russia gate was fed

00:44:42.140 through you through surrogates of Hillary Clinton who paid for the dossier and, you know, came up with

00:44:46.780 these, you know, the abuses of the FISA court system and all of it. And, and you were willing

00:44:50.580 participants and all of that. But then suddenly you get some sort of a conscience about the whole

00:44:55.020 thing when it, you know, it's October of an election year and maybe this hurts Joe Biden.

00:44:59.460 Well, I saw you, Duncan, I saw you saying out there about Leslie Stahl, right? Remember her?

00:45:04.520 Like it can't be verified. Can't be verified. It's history repeating itself because you've got

00:45:09.760 a situation where the January 6th committee is leaking and clearly they don't have anything strong

00:45:16.780 to roll with. So they're trying to just feed their media allies, these salacious fake news stories

00:45:22.360 to get some kind of attention going to, to get imprinted into the public's mind that, Oh, Trump

00:45:28.840 must've done something wrong. The same way they spent four years on this fake media campaign about

00:45:34.620 Russia that we now all know was completely phony made up garbage that launched how many careers,

00:45:40.900 how many cable and use contributor ships, right? How many book deals? Cause they don't actually think

00:45:45.040 that they can win on the law. They just want to win in the court of public opinion. And that's why

00:45:49.140 there's no accountability in journalism is because it's too, you know, the racket pays too well to

00:45:54.140 push fake news. How many, how many, I mean, like the number of these Trump Russia conspiracy books

00:45:59.320 that came out is insane. The number of people who launched careers. Here's the good news. We can

00:46:05.080 end it on a, on a positive note. Unlike six, seven years ago, the American public has caught on. They

00:46:12.280 know the media is biased. And so the media's power, like these stupid leaks, they do nothing now because

00:46:17.440 the, the, the entities to whom they leak have lost all credibility. No one cares anymore. Like who gives

00:46:22.760 a damn that the Washington post has finally caught up to the, um, to the New York post reporting.

00:46:27.280 It's too late. You've already lost your credibility. The liberals don't care anyway, by the way. So WAPO

00:46:32.460 thinks it's like sustaining its credibility, but like we're on record with the truth. Liberals don't

00:46:37.200 care. And, uh, they don't care about the Fauci reporting either. And, um, now we're at a point

00:46:42.840 where they've been defanged. The media has been defanged because of their own behavior. All right.

00:46:46.900 Got to leave it at that guys. Love, love, love the ruthless podcast. If you are smart, you will go

00:46:51.620 subscribe right now and don't miss a single episode. Thanks for being here. We'll be ready.

00:46:57.280 My, my financial disclosures are public knowledge and have been. So you are getting amazingly wrong

00:47:09.720 information. So lie by Anthony Fauci, because they're not. And up next, we will have a guest,

00:47:18.460 Adam Andrzejewski, who has been working night and day to get information on Fauci's salary and how much

00:47:24.080 he's made during the pandemic and other information. Why is, uh, our federal government

00:47:28.840 fighting him? That's next.

00:47:35.580 Our next guest is Adam Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of the national transparency organization,

00:47:41.620 OpenTheBooks.com. Up until recently, Adam was also a Forbes contributor who reported on,

00:47:48.040 among other things, Dr. Fauci and his finances, including on the fact that Fauci is the highest

00:47:52.860 paid federal employee, a fact we know, thanks to Adam. That is until the backlash came and Adam was

00:48:00.060 no longer associated with Forbes because of the Fauci reporting. Adam, great to have you here.

00:48:05.780 Thanks for being here.

00:48:07.440 Megan, thank you for having me on. Great to be on the program.

00:48:10.700 So you've been working. It's not just Fauci. You've been working for years to try to hold our

00:48:14.440 public officials to account and to expose more information about the money that we as taxpayers

00:48:20.120 spend and where exactly it's going when it comes to our federal workers.

00:48:25.760 Absolutely, Megan. So back in 2011, I founded the watchdog organization, OpenTheBooks.com.

00:48:32.580 Here's our mission. It's to capture and post online every dime taxed and spent at every level of

00:48:39.400 government across the entire country. We simply summarize our mission as every dime online in

00:48:44.560 real time. And last year, to that end, we filed 47,000 Freedom of Information Act requests. It was

00:48:52.180 the most in American history. And we successfully captured $12 trillion worth of federal, state and

00:48:59.480 local spending. And we post it all for free on our website at OpenTheBooks.com.

00:49:04.460 Yeah. So you're not picking on Fauci. You're a guy who wants to know where every tax dollar is going

00:49:10.520 and whether we're putting it to good use, or at least you give us the information so the taxpayers

00:49:14.520 can make that decision. So along comes Dr. Fauci. And he testifies in what became a viral exchange

00:49:23.400 before the Senate. And there is a senator, a Republican from Kansas named Roger Marshall,

00:49:29.860 Senator Roger Marshall, who starts questioning Fauci about his money, his investments, and so on.

00:49:36.840 And he's trying to get at exactly how much money Fauci's been making as this long term, almost 50

00:49:42.760 year bureaucrat. And Fauci, instead of just disclosing it, because he works for us, gets very

00:49:49.760 defensive and winds up calling the senator a name that was caught on an open mic. Here's that exchange

00:49:55.320 part. My financial disclosures are public knowledge and have been so. You are getting

00:50:03.620 amazingly wrong information. So I cannot find them. Our office cannot find them. Where would

00:50:10.220 they be if they're public knowledge? Where? It is totally accessible to you if you want it.

00:50:15.920 For the public. Is it accessible to the public? To the public. Right. We look forward to reviewing it.

00:50:20.500 Totally incorrect. Well, we look forward to reviewing it. Senator Marshall, Dr. Fauci has

00:50:25.840 answered you. It is public information, and he's happy to give it to you if you would ask. Senator

00:50:30.960 Moran. What a moron. What a moron, Fauci says about the senator. And it turns out that neither,

00:50:38.340 you know, the woman at the end, nor Dr. Fauci were correct. It's not public. You tell us it's not

00:50:46.420 public. It's not just they're ready for the rest of us to grab and see. And one of your questions is,

00:50:52.080 why not? Exactly. Well, you can't be America's top doctor if you're misleading the American people

00:51:00.060 in a Senate hearing when you're under oath. So look, for 14 months before that exchange,

00:51:07.340 and Senator Marshall knew about this, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com, we had filed

00:51:12.260 Freedom of Information Act requests on Fauci's finances to open the books. And we filed that

00:51:17.820 with his employer, the National Institutes of Health. They produced virtually nothing on the

00:51:23.760 Fauci financials. So 10 months later, with Judicial Watch as our lawyers, we sued NIH and federal court

00:51:29.980 to open the books on the Fauci financials. Then the U.S. Senator Roger Marshall cited Forbes,

00:51:36.580 my column, and demanded that Fauci open the books on his finances. And Fauci misled the American people.

00:51:45.120 He said that his finances were public knowledge. When I called him out on it in my column at Forbes

00:51:50.800 to have NIH post online the Fauci financials that according to our lawsuit, there's 1,200 pages that

00:51:59.040 NIH admits to. That's when NIH came down hard on Forbes. Forbes came down hard on me.

00:52:07.000 I told the truth. Forbes pulled the plug.

00:52:10.500 It's crazy. Next thing you know, you're out of a job. And it's when you look at the editor's note

00:52:15.180 to you, it's very clear. They were most unhappy that they were getting blowback from the NIH.

00:52:20.240 And with your column, though, and you know me, I was like, did he screw it up? Let's get to the

00:52:25.200 bottom of it. Maybe Forbes had a right to get rid of him. This is a nothing. What they're picking on you

00:52:30.500 for? And the minor sort of thing that they're coming at, it's a nothing in any other newsroom.

00:52:35.880 Like you changed one word in response to the NIH report. We can get to what that was about.

00:52:40.780 But it was a nothing burger. They use this as an excuse, clearly, because

00:52:44.780 it seems they didn't like you focusing on Fauci.

00:52:49.560 So here's what we've come to realize, Megan. Fauci is unreviewable by his employer,

00:52:55.380 the National Institutes of Health. He's untouchable, and he's protected by the United

00:53:00.100 States federal government. So we unearthed the memo. It was back in 2004. That is evidence of

00:53:07.780 all of this. And it's a memo that spells out a permanent pay adjustment. It's why Fauci is the

00:53:13.140 top paid federal employee, out-earning the president, four-star generals in the United

00:53:17.220 States military, and all 4.3 million of his colleagues. This memo gave what's considered a

00:53:23.700 permanent bonus, a permanent pay adjustment to Dr. Fauci, expressly because of his work on

00:53:29.920 biodefense. Megan, in other words, Fauci was paid to stop the next pandemic through research,

00:53:37.200 through defense, and obviously the pandemic happened, and so through his response.

00:53:43.460 And so all of this needs to be debated as to whether Fauci actually failed on all three points.

00:53:50.760 Right. We're entitled to know. I mean, it's like somebody who works for me and my team saying,

00:53:56.120 oh, you forgot what you pay me? Well, I'm not telling you. Well, guess what? I'm entitled to

00:54:01.540 that information. I'm Fauci's boss. So are you. So are all of our listeners. So we get to know what

00:54:06.740 we're paying him. You did find that out. Can you just, let's just start with, because you say he's

00:54:10.640 the highest paid federal employee, more than the, I mean, you sent out a tweet or something that really

00:54:14.980 brought it home. You're like, how does Fauci, who works for a sub-agency of a sub-agency, make more

00:54:20.020 than the head of the entire agency, nevermind the president above him. He makes more than his

00:54:24.700 boss's boss, his boss's boss's boss, all of them. So give us some of the numbers.

00:54:30.540 Yeah. He makes about two and a half times what the secretary of health and human services makes,

00:54:35.080 and that's a cabinet level position, Megan. Okay. So here's what the record shows. Here are the facts

00:54:40.680 on the Fauci household compensation. Number one, Dr. Fauci out-earns the president and makes in 2021,

00:54:47.960 $456,000 a year. Number two, Mrs. Fauci, Christine Grady, many people don't know. She's actually

00:54:56.180 the chief bioethicist at Fauci's employer, the National Institutes of Health. And this is great.

00:55:03.300 And Christine Grady out-earns the vice president of the United States at $236,000 per year.

00:55:11.700 Here's the third thing we found. We estimated that when Dr. Fauci retires,

00:55:16.480 he'll retire on the largest golden parachute retirement pension ever in U.S. federal government

00:55:22.940 history. In his first year, he'll retire on $355,000 a year. Now, here's the point.

00:55:30.120 Everything that I just talked about, we received none of it from Fauci's employer over at the

00:55:35.720 National Institutes of Health. We had to file Freedom of Information Act requests with other

00:55:40.100 federal agencies just to get how much Dr. Fauci and his wife make. If it was up to NIH, we wouldn't

00:55:48.820 even know how much he makes. And it's so crazy to see him get so indignant in response to the

00:55:55.740 questions from the senator saying, like, give me the information. Him being like, it's public

00:55:59.760 information. You don't know what you're talking. It's the same exact thing he did to Rand Paul.

00:56:03.900 I mean, identical, just obfuscation, indignation, but no information, at least none that's correct.

00:56:10.680 Well, that's a fair characterization. This is what we didn't know. At the time of that hearing,

00:56:15.800 this is what we didn't know. We didn't have his ethics and financial disclosures on an unredacted,

00:56:21.680 non-redacted, non-blanked out basis from 2019 and 2020. And it was federal fiscal year 2022.

00:56:29.860 We didn't know his stock and bond trades during the pandemic or currently. We didn't have a copy

00:56:37.860 of his job description, just a basic public document. We didn't have copies of his contract

00:56:43.420 with all amendments and additions and modifications. We don't know if he has a hush agreement,

00:56:49.300 Megan. So he's done all this media and we don't know what he can't talk about if he's got a

00:56:55.700 non-disclosure agreement. We didn't know if he was getting royalties. Now, only a small portion of

00:57:02.080 this, we know to this day, most of it is still hidden over at the National Institutes of Health

00:57:07.320 because we requested this. We're suing on this. They admit they're holding 1,200 pages subject to

00:57:13.500 our request. They haven't produced it. And so right here, I so appreciate your platform. We want to issue

00:57:20.180 the transparency clarion call to the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Fauci says that his

00:57:27.700 financial information is public knowledge. It's not. You're holding it. You're being sued for it.

00:57:35.160 So release it to the American people. Come clean with the American people.

00:57:40.660 How can NIH withhold it? I mean, you're quite literally in the business of forcing these

00:57:45.640 bureaucrats to fork over information like this. So how did their protestations match up against

00:57:52.280 other pushback you've received in going after other federal bureaucrats?

00:57:57.060 Megan, you're a lawyer. You know the cost of litigation. You know the time. So here's what's

00:58:02.020 going on at the National Institutes of Health. They're using expensive litigation funded by taxpayers

00:58:08.120 to keep taxpayers in the dark. They're using this litigation and slow walking Freedom of Information

00:58:14.860 Act requests, forcing us to sue on an expensive basis funded by taxpayers to keep taxpayers ignorant.

00:58:23.620 The National Institutes of Health, because of our federal lawsuit on discovery, we now know that

00:58:29.800 the National Institutes of Health are behind. They're past due on 633 Freedom of Information Act

00:58:37.760 requests. They're being sued in addition to the two lawsuits we have against them 33 other times.

00:58:44.260 And Megan, this is by design. They have underfunded their Freedom of Information Act production

00:58:52.460 department, while they, for instance, have fully staffed their public affairs, public relations

00:58:58.660 department. According to our data at OpenTheBooks.com, the National Institutes of Health employs 86

00:59:06.240 PR officers for a total annual taxpayer cost north of $15 million a year. So they have plenty of time to

00:59:14.620 pressure mainstream news organizations like Forbes. Yet on the other hand, they're past due on an

00:59:20.580 incredible, stunning amount of Freedom of Information Act request 633 during a pandemic, no less.

00:59:28.340 The NIH has 86 press flags. Yes, that's unbelievable. That's incredible. So yeah, but you say it's by

00:59:38.380 design. That's an important point. It's not like they really want to comply with your demands. If only

00:59:43.440 they had the staff. I mean, this is basically Fauci. He runs the public health industry in America.

00:59:48.540 He does. He has no interest in complying with any of these things on a speedy basis. Otherwise,

00:59:53.120 they would have staffed that department adequately. Well, think about the war on transparency over at

00:59:58.920 the National Institutes of Health. Megan, every year they spend $30 billion that they dole out on

01:00:05.500 grant making. And that buys you a lot of friends. That buys you a lot of favors. They dole out 56,000

01:00:11.480 grants over at the National Institutes of Health. And they want to do this without accountability.

01:00:17.420 They're basically telling taxpayers, you and I, Megan, pay up, shut up. But we run it the way we

01:00:26.220 want to. And these are unelected bureaucrats. It's so disturbing to me because we've seen in

01:00:33.240 the course of this pandemic and there's new reporting all the time now that backs it up

01:00:36.760 that Fauci, he behaves more like a mob boss than he does the director of this, you know, offshoot of

01:00:43.540 the NIH. He threatens. We've seen it in the papers that we've gotten via The Intercept and other news

01:00:48.480 organizations. When the great Barrington doctors came out and said, what we need is focused protection,

01:00:53.940 we need to focus on the most vulnerable, not massive lockdowns and so on. There was a concerted

01:00:58.560 plan to ruin them. I mean, to dismiss them as fringy. And there was follow up to make sure that

01:01:04.080 was being done with Fauci and Collins and so on. Those two colluded when it came out at the beginning

01:01:10.540 that a bunch of the world's top virologists saw this virus and said, that thing looks like

01:01:15.660 it came from a lab and not just any lab, but the Wuhan lab. And where's Peter Daszak who's been

01:01:21.360 doing this exact research in the Wuhan lab? Let's get him in here. And within 24 hours after talking

01:01:27.760 to Fauci and Collins, they'd all reverse themselves. They know how to strong arm and silence Robert

01:01:33.580 Redfield, former director of the CDC. He came out and suggested this looks like it came from a lab.

01:01:40.540 Before you knew it, he was silenced. He was moved off of all the discussions. He actually just went

01:01:45.560 on the record with Vanity Fair and said exactly that. So he he's a mob boss. That's how he behaves.

01:01:51.820 And it's no coincidence, if you ask me, that you lost your job at Forbes after you had the temerity

01:01:57.160 to not go along, to get along and to actually try to unearth real information on him.

01:02:04.180 Well, and let's put Dr. Anthony Fauci and his position in the context of the federal bureaucracy.

01:02:09.580 I really believe he's a bureaucratic genius better than anybody else in Washington, D.C.

01:02:15.320 He knows how to manipulate the system. Think about this, Megan. You've got health and human services

01:02:20.600 and then the subagency, the National Institutes of Health. And then there are actually 28 subagencies

01:02:27.880 under NIH. Fauci runs just one of them. But over the course of the last 55 years, he's learned how to work

01:02:36.700 the bureaucracy. And all of a sudden, I don't even know if this is without argument. He's probably the most

01:02:44.160 visible federal bureaucrat ever in the history of the United States federal government. So he has learned

01:02:49.600 how to work his small little agency into massive. Nobody over the course of the past two years has

01:02:56.040 has affected American public health policy more than Dr. Anthony Fauci.

01:03:01.580 Well, and the reason it matters is because there is not proof positive, but there's circumstantial

01:03:09.920 evidence and more and more proof along the path that may take us to we, the American taxpayers in grants

01:03:18.220 approved by Dr. Anthony Fauci helped create this pandemic. We were not there yet. We don't actually

01:03:24.940 have the smoking gun, but we do day by day get more reporting that Anthony Fauci was funding Peter

01:03:32.080 Daszak's group EcoHealth Alliance. They, in connection with the Wuhan lab and the so-called

01:03:37.440 bat lady, were doing gain of function research, gain of function research. Fauci's denied under oath

01:03:43.320 that that's what they were doing. One of the new documents revealed by this Vanity Fair article

01:03:46.840 specifically has them saying it's gain of function research. It's there's no mystery. People already

01:03:51.200 knew. But anyway, that we were funding it. Peter Daszak was doing with the back lady where they would

01:03:56.600 take a bat coronavirus and impose one of these furin cleavage sites that's manmade to make it

01:04:04.100 more transmissible to humans and test it out in, quote, humanized mice. That's exactly what they

01:04:08.360 were doing over there. That's what they were doing over there. And the only leap that hasn't been

01:04:11.660 concluded proof positive is that what was ultimately released, what came from this lab, which wasn't

01:04:18.680 being well oversighted, right, overseen, was in fact the virus that infected the world.

01:04:26.600 So when we unearthed that 2004 memo, that showed that he was paid for his work on biodefense.

01:04:33.940 There's three components of that research. Did the firemen become the arsonists? As you've alluded

01:04:39.740 to, Megan, that is an open question. And there needs to be a bipartisan congressional investigation.

01:04:46.800 Number two, he was paid to stop the next pandemic. He obviously failed on that basis.

01:04:52.400 Number three, he orchestrated the response to the pandemic. So here's the open question.

01:04:59.780 Was the cure, was the cure promulgated by Fauci worse than the disease itself? All of this,

01:05:07.040 America's ready for a serious conversation. We need a serious, robust, deep conversation on our

01:05:13.480 response to COVID-19.

01:05:15.600 Well, and the thing is, Adam, he won't go like there. He gave an interview recently saying,

01:05:22.060 I'm not going anywhere. I'm not retiring until this thing is done. And, you know,

01:05:26.320 when Anthony Fauci's eyes, it's never done ever. It will never be done. And it's starting

01:05:31.740 my me. It's causing me to think, is he in a position? Sorry to compare him to Vladimir Putin.

01:05:38.340 It's not valid, but almost like a Vladimir Putin, where like he can't leave because if he leaves,

01:05:45.760 he steps away from all the power that has protected him for all these years. If somebody else comes in,

01:05:54.000 God forbid, somebody, you know, fresh and unbiased and uncompromised who wants to take a hard look

01:06:01.240 at everything his little subgroup of the NIH has been doing. How will that reflect on Anthony Fauci,

01:06:07.320 who will now no longer be in a position to exert all this control over all these virologists and

01:06:12.280 immunologists who he threatened allegedly because he's no longer doling out the grants?

01:06:18.540 So you've raised a very important question, Megan. Earlier in the interview, I said that

01:06:22.960 he's unrevealable by the National Institutes of Health, his employer. Well, think about this.

01:06:29.060 He's probably not fireable either. Okay. It's an open legal question as to whether the president

01:06:35.580 United States could fire him. Obviously, Biden won't. So who fires Dr. Anthony Fauci? So then,

01:06:43.260 you know, the director of the National Institutes of Health. But as you remember, Francis Collins,

01:06:49.540 he was the director and he left. He went into retirement. So now you have an acting director

01:06:55.380 that nobody's ever heard of, Lawrence Tabak. Okay. Is an acting director going to fire Fauci?

01:07:01.520 No way. So then you have possibly the secretary of health and human services,

01:07:07.680 Javier Becerra. So is the former California attorney general, the attorney general in California that

01:07:13.720 succeeded Camilla Harris, is he going to fire Fauci? Not a chance. Yeah, right. So Fauci knows he is

01:07:20.280 untouchable. He's protected. He's unfireable. And he's been a long time ago knighted by the United

01:07:27.720 States federal government that he was in this protected basis. I mean, think about this. This

01:07:33.100 was during the George W. Bush administration when that memo that gave him the permanent pay

01:07:37.500 adjustment, the permanent bonus was given out. And then it was publicly announced. Everybody got the

01:07:43.320 message in 2008 when Bush gave Fauci the highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

01:07:49.280 That's I had Josh Holmes of the Josh Rogan, sorry, of the of the Washington Post, who he's been doing

01:07:59.020 great and bold reporting on Fauci and gain of function and the Wuhan lab and all that. He's

01:08:03.400 been leading the way. And he's been writing about this since March of earlier of last year. He came on

01:08:12.120 my program, I think, in April and said. It could it could have been Fauci, like this whole lane of

01:08:20.720 doing gain of function. And I know that the audience is like, duh, it was Fauci. We don't have

01:08:24.860 that proven. If you were in a court of law, you wouldn't have it proven. You could offer a

01:08:28.500 circumstantial case, but you couldn't. It's not you don't you don't have the smoking gun. So I'm just

01:08:33.920 saying, you know, he's offer as a reporter. You're not supposed to say it's proven because it's not

01:08:38.360 necessarily. We think it and there's lots of reasons to believe it. So he said it could be

01:08:43.500 it could be that Fauci that we essentially unleashed this virus through that Chinese lab

01:08:48.640 and the Bat Lady and all the research that we were funding. And since then, a couple of people have

01:08:54.700 picked it up in the mainstream, trying to look at it a little bit. But I mean, now that you see the

01:08:58.920 amount of power he has, the the amount of times he's managed to ruin careers, shut down POVs,

01:09:05.000 points of view, he doesn't like the amount of power he has in terms of granting grants to people

01:09:10.720 like, for example, those virologists who did the one 80 on. Oh, man, it looks like he came from a

01:09:14.960 lab. Then a conversation with Collins and Fauci. And 24 hours later, no way. Definitely came from

01:09:19.320 some weird animal that we were never able to find. And then they got a 10 million dollar grant approved

01:09:23.140 by the NIH or by Fauci. Right. So it's like now that we see all that a year plus later,

01:09:28.660 the evidence is only growing that we need an independent investigation of him,

01:09:33.680 of ourselves, of the NIH, of the, you know, NAID, whatever it would be, the letters are for his

01:09:39.340 group, Peter Daszak, all of it. And not not the fake Intel thing we did and not the fake WHO thing

01:09:46.960 that had Peter Daszak. He was on the the group, right, that the WHO sent over. There's a joke.

01:09:53.400 But I'm talking about real like sort of 9-11 commission stuff where you've got

01:09:58.040 non-hacks sitting there trying to find real answers.

01:10:02.900 Well, the Washington Post has done great reporting on gain of function and everybody

01:10:06.840 watching or listening to the program should read the August article, Science in the Shadows,

01:10:11.920 where the Washington Post, no less, did an analysis of grants. And they came up with 44

01:10:18.180 million dollars in grants, 18 times that NIH and Collins and Fauci funded what the Washington

01:10:25.020 Post defined as gain of function research. And this was through the Obama years. It was from

01:10:30.580 the years 2012 through 2018. So through Obama and through Trump.

01:10:34.760 When there was a ban, there was a ban. There was a federal ban.

01:10:37.680 When there was a ban. Correct.

01:10:40.620 They did it by changing the definition of words. Again, he's a bureaucratic genius.

01:10:45.560 He knows how to get exactly what Anthony Fauci wants funded.

01:10:50.180 This is all. So it's all part of the same puzzle. You know, it's like you can see all of it coming

01:10:57.660 together. I'm trying to find that the one excerpt where the the word gain of function. Oh, yeah,

01:11:01.720 yeah, yeah. So this is this again from the Vanity Fair report. It says in July, the National

01:11:08.020 Institute of Health accepted DASIC's terms because DASIC was saying, give me money to go over there and do

01:11:12.760 all this exact research that we find so problematic where you take the back coronaviruses and you try to

01:11:18.120 make them more lethal to humans. You know, he says the NIH accepted his terms and there was an

01:11:24.940 agreement of mutual transparency in which both parties would disclose concerning developments

01:11:28.720 involving the lab constructed viruses. And he writes, DASIC writes to the NIH, quote,

01:11:34.180 this is terrific. We are very happy to hear that our gain of function research funding

01:11:39.740 pause has been lifted. And off he went to the races. I mean, it just it gives you some context for

01:11:46.520 the Rand Paul, Dr. Fauci exchanges. No, no, we weren't doing gain of function. No, it's a lie.

01:11:51.960 You don't know what you're talking about. And then look at him against, you know, the senator we

01:11:55.340 were just talking about. No, you don't know what you're talking about. You're a moron. You know,

01:11:58.920 all of my information. He has an uncanny ability to look right at a U.S. senator while under oath

01:12:05.720 with cameras on him. And it's my opinion. Lie. That's a lie. He's telling lies. Those aren't

01:12:12.680 mistakes. They're not turns of phrases. In my legal opinion, you can tell he's lying.

01:12:19.500 Well, and then they have the power to get their critics de-platformed and cancel. So NIH put a lot

01:12:25.520 pressure on Forbes on it. And here's how sensitive the Fauci financial information was to Fauci and NIH

01:12:34.180 that I published in my column at Forbes. Here are just some of the findings. He's got a net worth

01:12:39.260 that rivals $11 million between his federal salary for him and his wife. If you add the cost of

01:12:46.060 benefits, they both clean off north of $900,000 at taxpayer expense every single year. He won a $1

01:12:53.640 million prize, which NIH allowed him to accept by the Dan David Foundation out of Israel for quote

01:13:01.160 unquote, speaking truth to power during the Trump years. So these are just, you know, that is such

01:13:07.560 sensitive information. We know it's sensitive because on a Sunday morning, two bureau chiefs over

01:13:14.040 at the National Institutes of Health, two directors of the agency and two of their top PR people took

01:13:21.260 time out from defending the nation during a pandemic to write a note to Forbes, an institution

01:13:29.080 that's been around for a hundred years, basically saying, back off, subliminally delivering the

01:13:37.000 message. We don't like Angie Evsky's work and we want you to do something about it. Forbes got the

01:13:42.680 message. They folded quickly and my column was terminated. Megan, it's the last column I ever wrote at

01:13:48.900 Forbes. It's unbelievable. Now, wait, I, two things, one, a question about his finances. And then two,

01:13:57.420 I want, we're going to do a second block because I want to talk about the firing and Forbes and what

01:14:02.520 it did. So we'll get into that deep after this, but can I just ask you quickly? No, no, we don't.

01:14:08.840 Yeah. No music yet. You, you mentioned the total value of his investment accounts, 8.4 million,

01:14:14.240 his wife who also works for us totaled another 2.1 million. So you're over $10 million. It, to me,

01:14:21.180 I realize he makes a lot and so does she, that seems like a huge investment account for a government

01:14:26.340 bureaucrat. I mean, that seems like they're rich there. That's eight figures, um, for a couple of

01:14:33.100 bureaucrats. So is that suspicious to you or does that make sense given that he's been making, you know,

01:14:40.160 over 400 for so many years? So they're deck of millionaires, that's national news. And, and the

01:14:45.960 column was important. Every time I wrote about Fauci and gave him oversight on his finances,

01:14:50.200 we broke national news, whether it was top paid salary, whether it's his largest retirement golden

01:14:55.940 parachute, whether it's his net worth in the deck of millionaire status. I mean, all of these columns

01:15:02.340 were very important to the national debate. Hmm. I don't know. It's a big number and it would be worth,

01:15:08.820 I mean, it's good reporting and it would be worth probing just a little bit further and find out

01:15:12.620 how it got to be quite so big. Maybe he's just a brilliant investor. Um, we, we will probably never

01:15:18.560 know since you're having trouble even getting them to produce the full documents, nevermind the ones

01:15:23.940 you get with all the redactions. Okay. I want to, I want to talk about that, but I also really want to

01:15:28.960 get into Forbes fig leaf of a claim against you and we'll be naming some names right after this.

01:15:38.820 So Adam, January 5th, you publish an article on Forbes. And by the way, just before that point,

01:15:45.620 you'd published so many articles. You've been with them for eight years. Any problems prior to that?

01:15:50.780 Was that, was all good? Had you, did you have like a history of being corrected or how was it before you

01:15:55.500 published that article? Well, I think you have to be fairly humble when you're a journalist.

01:15:59.740 I always subscribe to what the progressive Supreme court justice, Louis Brandeis, who just happens to be

01:16:06.540 the father of modern day transparency as well. He's the guy that coined the phrase sunlight is the

01:16:12.620 best of disinfectants. And Brandeis said about journalism, there's no good writing, only good

01:16:18.920 rewriting. And that's, that's a philosophy I subscribe to. So I, you know, I went back and searched my

01:16:24.900 emails from my primary editor in 2021. And only, there's only a handful of emails the entire year.

01:16:32.200 We published 54 pieces in 2021. So, I mean, it's rather rare that I would ever hear from an editor

01:16:38.460 at Forbes. I treasured the platform there. I put up 206 pieces, even after they terminated my column.

01:16:45.480 They recognize the value of those columns. They've left my author archive live. I appreciate that.

01:16:52.120 Although I'm disappointed in the, in Forbes itself for folding so quickly after being pressured by a

01:16:59.080 government bureau. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about what happened. So you published the article

01:17:03.080 as shares Fauci's household earnings of 1.7 million in 2012, uh, between he and his wife.

01:17:10.160 And then you get an email from Caroline Howard, executive editor at Forbes, someone you had not

01:17:16.420 interact, interacted with in your career. So this is weird. This comes out of left field. And she writes,

01:17:22.480 uh, to you and let me pull it up, um, saying in part, okay, I believe someone has been redacted,

01:17:33.500 spoke to you about the tone of your posts straying into advocacy, not to mention the reporting errors

01:17:40.620 pointed out today. Uh, it's your third article on Fauci in three weeks. Huh? Huh? She actually writes,

01:17:48.740 huh? In the email. Then she goes on to be clear. Anyone who engages in this type of writing,

01:17:54.280 this type of writing is subject to review and swift action from coaching to reprimand warning

01:18:02.140 and dismissal. And this was in response to a complaint, as you point out from six top communications,

01:18:12.660 government relations and public affairs officers, meaning PR flax at, um, the NIH who wrote to her saying,

01:18:22.820 you got your facts wrong. And this was deeply concerning to them. And there was some, I don't know,

01:18:29.000 some guy named Randall Lane who purports to be the chief content officer and editor over at Forbes,

01:18:34.000 who was apparently the responsible for the, for the decision to bar you from writing about Fauci, um,

01:18:41.560 at that point, from that point forward. So let's go back over your alleged mistakes. So the audience

01:18:47.460 can decide whether what you did was, uh, was worth the death penalty here. What, what did,

01:18:52.000 what were they mad about? Cause as I read their letter, it's like, it's a yawn. You tell me.

01:18:57.080 It is. It is a yawn. We were tip of the spear on giving oversight to the Fauci financials.

01:19:02.340 I did have a typo. There was a number in, in the body of the piece when it initially published,

01:19:08.380 when it had less than 350 views that an editor caught, the number was right in the title and

01:19:13.980 wrong in the body of the piece. It was quickly corrected. They had some other, uh, phrasing and

01:19:19.480 language, uh, edits that they wanted made. I'm light to lift. I quickly made them. The piece today

01:19:25.480 is the definitive repository of the 2020 Fauci financials. That's the last year available,

01:19:31.940 Megan. And it has over 130,000 views today. So these things were corrected quickly.

01:19:36.480 And the piece was robust and substantial. So let me just read, you explained to me whether this is

01:19:44.900 correct or not, because you reported in the original piece that Fauci collected 8,100 bucks

01:19:48.960 to attend three galas. Then they wrote in saying only one of those galas honored Fauci, uh, as an award

01:19:57.800 recipient. And he reported the gifts of free attendance, um, with the market value of the

01:20:04.700 tickets face value. He quote, never collected any money for these events. Is that true? Then he did

01:20:11.080 not collect 8,100 to attend any of these galleys galas.

01:20:17.020 Right. He didn't collect any cash. He collected quote unquote, the market value of 8,100 dollars for

01:20:24.200 the tickets. So I, I, I took their edit. It's no problem. I changed collected to report it. It's a

01:20:30.640 difference without a distinction, Megan. It, it didn't mean any, anything to the veracity of the

01:20:35.260 piece. Here's what NIH didn't correct. They didn't correct his salary, the benefits, the investment

01:20:42.480 gains, the royalties, the $1 million prize of speaking truth to power, all of, all of our

01:20:48.760 substantial findings in the piece. They didn't say anything about which essentially validates them.

01:20:56.700 If we'd made a mistake on anything else, they would have certainly pointed it out. So these

01:21:01.260 were just ticky tack. Uh, it was a ticky tack quote unquote corrections email, but the purpose of it

01:21:07.680 was to put me on the bad list with Forbes and that for them, it ended up being mission accomplished.

01:21:13.860 To underscore that. So the second complaint, I mean, you'll tell me, but like, unless there's

01:21:17.660 another email from them complaining, is there like, this is it, this is the complaint email. Yes.

01:21:22.340 Yeah. Okay. So there was that one. They don't want you to say he collected 8,100, that he reported

01:21:28.080 an $8,100 value to him in attending the galas. Okay. You did it. The second point they raise,

01:21:35.180 cause they make it sound like you, your string of corrections, you completely blew that article.

01:21:39.400 It's like, when I went back, I'm like, what'd he do? My God. I'm like, this is it. The second one is

01:21:43.780 Fauci's reports also disclose his approved editorial board position with McGraw Hill. With regard to the

01:21:51.540 Forbes reporting about travel perks, the editorial board members at McGraw Hill meet in person when

01:21:59.840 organized by the publisher and they're reimbursed for their travel expenses that they pay for

01:22:05.380 themselves out of pocket. To begin with, Dr. Fauci as a board member receives the same travel

01:22:09.180 reimbursement as other non-federal board members. That's it. So what's that about? Did you say that

01:22:15.400 he was getting some sort of a big perk from McGraw Hill that he shouldn't have gotten?

01:22:18.960 Well, it is a perk because he does have to, by law, disclose it on his ethics and financial

01:22:25.500 disclosure forms, which I reported on. Now I had reached out to the National Institutes of Health

01:22:31.280 for a request for comment on this point. They did not respond before the article was published. They

01:22:38.540 responded after the article was published on a Sunday morning. Okay. That's fair enough. We updated the,

01:22:43.940 we updated the piece with their additional context. I didn't quibble about it. Again,

01:22:48.200 we're just light to lift. We want to be fair. We want to, you know, they responded eventually to

01:22:52.380 the request for comment. We updated the piece. So that's it. That's it. And then you get the,

01:22:58.680 the sort of tsk, tsk, uh, email from Caroline Howard, your tone, third article on Fauci in three

01:23:05.440 weeks. Huh? Yeah, go ahead. Just to be clear. So the Caroline, uh, Caroline Howard email from Forbes

01:23:11.500 came first. Forbes was already upset. I was writing about Fauci three times in three weeks

01:23:17.060 that we were making national news being cited in the wealth in the, uh, in the, uh, in the Senate

01:23:21.520 hearing when Marshall questioned Fauci incited Forbes, which was my column. I obviously by the

01:23:27.760 tone of that email, they did not like that citation. They did not like giving oversight

01:23:33.880 on Fauci's financials. That's before Fauci and his comrades complained. Yes.

01:23:41.100 Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay. So then they complained, you make the changes and then you've got Randall

01:23:49.160 Love chief content officer and editor at Forbes who basically cans you. He, he bars you from writing

01:23:56.180 about Fauci and mandates pre-approval for all future topics. Or was that like an interim step

01:24:01.620 before the end of the relationship? So we got the Caroline, uh, Howard email from Forbes.

01:24:07.240 That's quibbling about three columns on Fauci in three weeks. Huh? Then we have the pressure from

01:24:13.320 NIH, the two bureau chiefs, the two directors, the two PR officers, a message cleared at the highest

01:24:19.840 levels of NIH. And then within 24 hours of that email, I receive a phone call from my regular editor

01:24:27.200 with two rules that had never been instituted on me. Number one, I was barred from writing about

01:24:34.880 Anthony Fauci any longer. Number two, I had to pre-clear every single topic with them before I

01:24:42.520 published again. Now I tried to do that. They went silent for 10 days and then terminated the column.

01:24:51.300 Wow. Wow. Here's the update to this.

01:24:54.540 Well, let me just put one other point on it because then as I understand it, they went on and on about

01:24:59.400 like their journalistic standards and about how Forbes, um, they have high editorial standards

01:25:06.300 and that they don't allow, um, I'm trying to find it here, basically opinion or bias. Let me find it.

01:25:13.340 Uh, let's see. Oh, I'll find it. But basically they, they sort of tried to take the high road saying

01:25:21.500 like, this just doesn't meet our high editorial standards. We don't allow bias. We don't allow

01:25:25.700 opinions. We don't allow sort of, you know, scale tipping at Forbes. I'm like, okay. I mean,

01:25:31.080 I love Steve Forbes. I believe that's true about him. As for these other people I've never heard of,

01:25:36.420 I doubt it. I highly doubt it. And, and it's actually reflected if I'm not mistaken, the one guy,

01:25:43.200 Randall Lane, the one who was, who was, um, telling you no more Fauci. No, you can't write about him

01:25:49.440 anymore. This guy, um, wound up offering an op-ed in Forbes calling or called as follows a truth

01:25:59.160 reckoning. Why we're holding those who lied for Trump accountable. And he goes on talking about

01:26:05.420 how as American democracy rebounds, this is January 7th, 2021. Um, so about a year later after this at

01:26:12.480 January 6th thing, uh, we need to return to a standard way. No, it was, yeah, it was right

01:26:18.860 after as American democracy rebounds. We need to return to a standard truth when it comes to how

01:26:23.680 the government communicates with the governed. The easiest way to do that from where I said is to

01:26:27.080 create repercussions for those who don't follow civic norms. Let it be known to the business world,

01:26:31.580 hire any of Trump's fellow fabulists and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firms talk

01:26:38.220 about is a lie. Well, that doesn't exactly. That sounds a little opinionated and slightly biased

01:26:45.820 against Trump and his supporters. Well, absolutely. And here's a corollary to that. Just about 45 days

01:26:53.180 ago, Forbes announced that they were giving a lifetime achievement award to Hillary Clinton.

01:26:59.340 Of course, of course they did. She, she's done a lot. Stop it right now, Adam. She, she hasn't been

01:27:06.640 recognized enough, uh, by the media. They, they need one more award just to make them feel like

01:27:11.380 they're not misogynistic pricks. Oh, sorry. So just to give some, just to give some context to all of

01:27:17.200 this. So in, in the year, uh, 2020, I published 36 investigations at Forbes and Megan, 26 of those

01:27:24.680 investigations, the editors at Forbes specifically designated as editors picks for special promotion

01:27:32.020 on the website. So two out of every three pieces they chose as an editor's pick designate designation.

01:27:39.140 The first piece I wrote in 2021 was the piece on Dr. Anthony Fauci is the most highly compensated

01:27:46.020 federal employee. That piece has over 900,000 views. It is not an editor's pick. I put up 55 more

01:27:54.340 investigations between 2021 and 2022. None of them were editors picks. Something changed at Forbes.

01:28:01.860 When I wrote about Dr. Anthony Fauci, I went on the bad list. Wow. So how do we get information about

01:28:09.400 this guy? I mean, his, his tentacles are everywhere. His control is vast and there are very few reporters

01:28:16.920 willing to do what you're doing. I'm so pleased to be on your program because today, you know, it's the

01:28:23.120 internet world and the internet does have a way to curate the top content and being able to come on

01:28:29.880 your platform and talk about all these issues in long form format. Thank you very much for having

01:28:36.780 me on the platform to help you and I and, and your platform to help educate the American people on these

01:28:43.400 issues. Highly critical. Oh, the pleasure is mine. And I should apologize to you because Adam was actually

01:28:48.460 booked the day we had to cancel our show because of my son Thatcher's spleen injury and you were so nice

01:28:57.000 about it. And I felt bad that it was a last minute cancellation, obviously for good reason, but you've

01:29:01.460 been just so cool and cooperative and unlike what Forbes is implying, very easy to work with. But now if

01:29:07.640 people want to read your stuff, cause they, they do need to continue reading your reporting. How do they do

01:29:11.800 that? Where do they find you? The best way is to come to open the books.com and then there'll be a

01:29:17.520 pop-up. Just put your email and address into that pop-up and sign up for our newsletter. You'll get one

01:29:23.280 about one only when we have serious and substantial investigations that we publish and you'll get an

01:29:29.220 alert right away on that. The second way, especially to read all the details about what we're talking about

01:29:34.760 here today, Megan is over at Substack. We opened up a Substack account. It's open the books dot

01:29:42.240 substack.com. And you'll, again, you'll be the first to know about all of our investigations that publish.

01:29:49.280 That's awesome. You're doing important work and keep us in the loop too, because we'd love to have

01:29:52.920 you back anytime. Adam, thank you. Super Megan. Thank you. Wow. Fascinating, right? God, it is one of the

01:29:59.180 things I love about the new job is like you can go in depth and you can really expose. I mean,

01:30:03.620 did you think those sins, his alleged sins were so bad he should lose his eight year relationship

01:30:08.320 with Forbes? Okay. Huh? Three articles. Huh? Listen, I want to tell you that tomorrow I'm excited.

01:30:16.240 I've never had Andrew Klavan of the Daily Wire here, but he is so smart and cutting and unsparing.

01:30:23.780 And his son has got this really cool podcast on the classics too. So I'm looking forward to talking

01:30:29.560 to him. You can download the show in the meantime, subscribe at youtube.com slash Megan

01:30:33.600 Kelly. Do it just to check out those Kyle Dunnigan imitations. You won't be sorry. We'll see you

01:30:38.400 tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 04, 2022

Fauci's Finances, and Growing Immigration Crisis, with the Ruthless Podcast Hosts and Adam Andrzejewski ｜ Ep. 292

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