The Megyn Kelly Show - Fauci's ＂Noble Lie,＂ Natural Immunity, and China's Latest Crackdown, with Sen. Rand Paul, Josh Rogin, and Dr. Aaron Kheriaty

00:00:00.460 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.020 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.340 Well, another big win for Chicago's teachers unions, not notably for the students.

00:00:21.320 No school today for students in our nation's third largest school district.

00:00:25.440 At 11 p.m. last night, the teachers union finally got around to announcing the

00:00:30.000 their members voted overwhelmingly to go back to online school, which any parent who has seen that

00:00:37.600 knows that's no school at all. It's arguably even worse than no school at all. At least if there

00:00:42.920 were no school, the parent would understand that there was a void to be filled. This is like fake,

00:00:47.220 some sort of fake protection that does far more harm than good. But these Chicago teachers don't

00:00:52.540 want to work, and we've seen that throughout this pandemic. They don't want to go to the office.

00:00:55.980 Too bad. Find another job. More than 90% of Chicago public school employees are fully vaccinated.

00:01:03.640 90%. In response, Mayor Lori Lightfoot canceled school altogether, calling online school unacceptable

00:01:11.720 because she understands what I just said. She's right on this. We don't really agree with her when

00:01:17.460 it comes to criminal policing. But when it comes to this, she's right. She's tried to stand up to

00:01:22.900 these guys, but they're bullies. The Chicago teachers are going to try to bully her and bully

00:01:26.300 the families of Chicago. At the same time as this, we are seeing more once hysterical doctors,

00:01:32.800 pundits, and reporters coming to grips on the fact that masks are ineffective when it comes to COVID.

00:01:39.560 Yes, they're saying cloth masks now, but you tell me they're like, the surgical mask is better. Okay.

00:01:44.340 The surgical mask, nine times out of 10, does not fit your face any better than the COVID mask.

00:01:49.200 All the breath is coming out the side and the top. And I get that the N95s probably work better,

00:01:54.240 but nobody wants to wear those. They're uncomfortable. They squeeze your face. Good

00:01:57.940 luck getting that on all the children as LA is now saying they must do. I mean, that is a hill a lot

00:02:02.140 of parents will die on when they try to stick those on our kids all day long. So that's where we are,

00:02:08.000 right? That's where we are right now. But let me ask you this. Why isn't big tech censoring people

00:02:12.440 like former FDA commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, when he finally admits on camera that cloth masks

00:02:19.460 do not work or CNN's vaunted Dr. Leanna Nguyen. They're allowed to say that stuff in the air.

00:02:26.480 They just have. But YouTube and other big tech companies censored my first guest for saying

00:02:32.480 exactly the same thing. Joining me now is Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Senator, great to have you here.

00:02:38.920 Um, so now we've got it on camera. Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, Leanna Nguyen,

00:02:43.980 who the mainstream press loves, you know, she's a COVID hysteric on most things. Now they're on

00:02:48.800 camera. I could play you the soundbites, but I don't want to waste your time saying, yeah,

00:02:51.700 the cloth masks, they really don't work that well. Um, Gottlieb said explicitly on Face the Nation,

00:02:56.700 they're not going to provide a lot of protection. That's the bottom line. This is an airborne illness.

00:03:00.140 We understand that. Cloth masks isn't going to protect you from a virus that spreads through

00:03:04.200 airborne transmission. No problem for him to say that on Face the Nation or Leanna Nguyen to say it

00:03:09.660 on, uh, CNN. She said it's a little more than facial decoration. Don't wear it. Don't wear a

00:03:14.900 cloth. But what did YouTube do to you when you said that? It sounds like maybe there's selective

00:03:20.460 sex censorship. It might be a little different if you're a Republican versus if you're not a Republican,

00:03:24.900 but the bottom line is we need to have a debate in our country over whether debate is good or bad.

00:03:30.960 I think disputation, the idea of presenting both sides of an issue and hearing from people

00:03:35.740 is absolutely necessary to try to figure out the truth. And it's like any viewer, whether you're a

00:03:42.000 viewer of politics or trying to make decisions on religion or philosophy or science, it is really about

00:03:47.640 hearing both sides. And it's often really fierce battles. I've been to many science conventions where

00:03:53.340 papers are produced and public and presented, but then they get attacked from all sides saying,

00:03:59.840 your sample size was too small. You had negative selection. You had, uh, your conclusions don't

00:04:04.760 meet your data. You should have done this. That's the way science works. It's very, very spirited in

00:04:10.180 its discussion. And this is the first time in history where we've decided, well, we don't really

00:04:14.460 want to hear from you because your opinion doesn't fit the government narrative or the group think,

00:04:19.960 but that's dangerous. I think for innovation and also for trying to come to the truth and really in a

00:04:26.420 free society, each individual figures out the truth by listening to the facts. It isn't sort of

00:04:30.720 one set of, uh, facts becomes the truth. And then the government tells you the truth. And that's the

00:04:35.320 only truth. Um, it's difficult sometimes to, to get things. People say, well, who do I listen to?

00:04:40.360 Well, you got to listen to multiple venues and you have to hear multiple ideas to get to the truth.

00:04:45.400 Mm-hmm. You, you pointed out in an op-ed you wrote, uh, earlier this week that it's not,

00:04:51.340 basically they just want to shut down speech as you're saying. Now they, they don't want debate.

00:04:55.480 I was saying yesterday on the show, we do COVID shows all the time and YouTube will slap that

00:04:59.300 little warning on there saying, Oh, for information on COVID-19, go to the following website, CDC.

00:05:04.080 I guarantee you not a single one of my watchers or listeners has ever sing, ever clicked on that

00:05:08.360 button. But if it makes YouTube feel better, so, so be it. Okay, fine. But that's not what they're

00:05:13.220 doing to you, to Brett Weinstein, to Joe Rogan, to Dr. Malone, who was on Joe Rogan. It's complete

00:05:19.720 censorship. And here, here's the thing is when you actually look at and examine the science of

00:05:25.540 these things, it may be that what you're being told is the opposite of the truth and may be

00:05:29.740 endangering you. They say, Oh, the right wing is giving misinformation that could endanger you.

00:05:34.740 Well, think about it. If you're 80 years old and your spouse has COVID and you're going to take care

00:05:39.940 of them and you listen to Dr. Fauci and you put up a cut up piece of a t-shirt over your face and you

00:05:45.060 go take care of your spouse, you're inevitably going to get COVID. But if you really are going to

00:05:49.660 take care of your spouse, wouldn't you want good advice? And this isn't advice to universally wear

00:05:54.380 a mask. It's to wear a mask when you're in close contact with somebody you know has COVID. And this

00:05:59.100 is the way it works in the hospital. In the hospital, the doctors and nurses that go into a

00:06:03.580 room with COVID, they do not wear cloth masks. They only wear the N95 mask because it's the only mask

00:06:09.620 that works. But you're right, it has to have a perfect seal. They also throw it away when they come

00:06:14.840 out of the room and wash their hands and take their gloves off and do all of these things,

00:06:19.060 shed their body suit. That kind of stuff can work. It's very hard to work in the general public,

00:06:24.000 but it still should be told to the public what actually works. But Dr. Fauci for a long time

00:06:29.400 has sort of given us this idea that the noble lie is his job, that he's going to lie to you about what

00:06:35.120 masks work because he's trying to keep you from buying the more quality masks so we have enough of

00:06:40.000 them for doctors. He actually admitted that, that he lied to us about the masks because he didn't

00:06:44.760 want you to buy too many of the masks that works. And now he parades around with a cloth mask,

00:06:49.480 but he's actually endangering people. And he, unlike, sorry, I was gonna say he, unlike Scott

00:06:55.040 Gottlieb and Leanna Nguyen, is not, he continues to maintain this falsehood. We know the cloth masks

00:07:01.360 don't work. Listen, I have them on my kids when they go out to school every day because the surgical

00:07:05.900 masks don't work either on these kids. They're loose, they're like whatever. If we're going to have to

00:07:09.940 engage in theater, I choose to engage in the least uncomfortable theater for myself and for my

00:07:15.960 kids. But here's Fauci. We all do. When I'm forced to wear a mask, I wear the least uncomfortable mask

00:07:22.120 and none of them really are going to work in the public setting. So I work one that has the most

00:07:26.500 aeration around the mask that I can wear, the loosest fitting mask, because I'm only doing it

00:07:31.280 because I'm being forced to do something. But it's not for my health. It is really something that is just

00:07:36.340 given to me because the government edict is telling me I have to do it.

00:07:39.820 Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're at schools now where the teachers are literally in the wake of Omicron,

00:07:43.780 like, get that mask above your nostrils to the children. Like, get it above your nostrils. Like,

00:07:48.420 who are you kidding? The mask? There's so much air coming out of these kids' mouths and nose,

00:07:54.560 out the side, the mask, out the bottom, out up the top, above the nostril, below the nostril. This is all a joke.

00:08:01.560 Most of this advice is sort of equivalent to the 14th century, when the Pope would burn candles to

00:08:10.220 burn out the evil spirits that were causing the plague. There's no science behind burning out

00:08:15.240 evil spirits. There's also no science behind putting plexiglass up. Even the ridiculousness

00:08:21.200 of having these students six feet apart with these shields and the plexiglass around their desk.

00:08:25.860 MIT scientists looked at this and they said, actually, your best friend, when you're in an

00:08:31.760 enclosed area and the virus is spreading by air, is actually ventilation. And they actually did some

00:08:37.620 studies of airflow. And they say that the plexiglass actually disrupts the exchange of the airflow more

00:08:44.240 and has more of the air, you know, going up against the glass and staying in the room than it would

00:08:49.240 without. And it's probably the opposite of what we should actually be doing. So masks don't necessarily

00:08:53.500 work. Plexiglass doesn't work. The whole idea of six feet probably makes no sense either. Even

00:09:00.200 Gottlieb has admitted, if you stay in the same room with somebody, whether you're six feet or 30 feet

00:09:04.980 away from them, it's really your length of time in the room. But now we get to the disease. We have

00:09:10.200 this new variant. The discussion is, do we need any of this anymore? Do we need boosters for a disease

00:09:15.160 that now looks like is 75% less deadly than it was a year ago?

00:09:19.680 Mm-hmm. And it evades the vaccines. I mean, how many people do you know right now with COVID?

00:09:24.660 It seems like everyone's got it or knows somebody who has it. And these are all vaccinated people.

00:09:29.980 This clearly, this variant is not stopped by the vaccines.

00:09:35.960 Yeah. And the thing is, is look, I'm not against vaccination. My in-laws are in their 80s and 90s.

00:09:41.520 I think it was a good idea. They got vaccinated. My wife got vaccinated. I didn't get vaccinated,

00:09:45.920 but only because I've had the disease. And I've looked at all the studies. And people who have had

00:09:50.000 the disease do not get sick, go to the hospitals. There's almost no fatalities from people who've

00:09:54.760 had the disease. So it works as well as a vaccine or maybe even better. But I'm not against taking

00:10:00.000 the vaccine. But the vaccine probably reduces your hospitalization and death. And I think those

00:10:05.720 studies are pretty good on that. But it's no longer stopping transmission. So this whole idea that

00:10:10.960 we're going to vilify people are unvaccinated. They're the ones spreading the disease. Guess

00:10:14.940 what? Everyone's spreading the disease. But fortunately, the disease, while very transmissible,

00:10:20.340 has become much less deadly.

00:10:22.200 Mm hmm. It does. The message doesn't penetrate in these circles in which they've decided to lean

00:10:26.660 into their COVID fear. You know, I still all of my friends are in New York City. And there are

00:10:30.820 crazy stories, Senator. I mean, crazy stories of what parents there are doing to try to avoid COVID

00:10:36.480 in a particular Omicron. It's like, you know, I mean, there are stories about like plastic wrap

00:10:41.300 outside of children's bedroom doors. I could go on, but they really are still treating it like it's

00:10:47.400 the bubonic plague. And that to me is that that scares me, because while the wheels are starting to

00:10:54.660 come off the public health messaging, you can see Fauci starting to waver on some things and some

00:10:58.740 Democrats and some members of the media in these blue, blue cities. People are hardcore.

00:11:03.800 But this is why the truth has to continue to come forward. We have to continue the longer I've said

00:11:10.040 and the more I've said that cloth masks don't work. Even someone on CNN finally said it. So the truth

00:11:15.480 does matter if we say it long enough and loud enough for kids and for schools and for masks.

00:11:21.060 Large whole countries don't wear masks. Sweden, 1.8 million kids. They don't wear masks. Not one kid

00:11:28.300 died. This is not a deadly disease for children. And the masks are not necessary. In Florida,

00:11:33.780 about half the counties mandated masks. And the other half of the county sided with Governor

00:11:38.980 DeSantis and did not mandate masks. It's a large comparison. The incidence of the disease was the

00:11:44.620 same in the schools that didn't have masks as the schools that did have masks. Let's pay attention

00:11:49.020 to the evidence and get beyond the hysteria. Because you know what? These people will never take their

00:11:54.160 foot off our throat if we don't push back. They'll be mandating masks 10 years from now if people

00:11:59.440 like Fauci are in charge. So we have to we have to these people have to be removed from office

00:12:04.640 and sent into retirement because they're destroying our country.

00:12:08.380 The same we had David Zweig. He writes for New York Magazine. He writes for The Atlantic. We had him

00:12:13.320 on. He had done a piece on the CDC's favorite study on masks out of Arizona. And Rochelle Walensky's

00:12:19.240 touted it repeatedly saying it shows a three point five increase in coronavirus at schools where they

00:12:25.900 weren't wearing masks. Well, it turns out it was all a lie. He took a hard look at the actual

00:12:30.820 schools. They had studied schools where they didn't have masks on for, in some cases, double the time

00:12:37.720 that they looked at the schools where they did have mask mandates. So, of course, you're going to have

00:12:41.460 a higher rate of covid if you take a school on the one hand and look at it for six weeks versus the

00:12:47.460 school where they have the masks on for just two weeks. Right. It was just absurd. And they wouldn't

00:12:51.860 answer his follow up questions. Most of the scientists who have looked at this, and there

00:12:56.200 are some really good scientists that are looking at these things. Martin Koldorf from Harvard, an

00:13:00.980 epidemiologist, has looked at these studies and debunked them. Marty McCary, a scientist and physician

00:13:07.540 from Johns Hopkins, has looked at these. Many of them are remarking that the studies the CDC are

00:13:12.780 pointing to would not pass the grade for like a seventh grade science contest. They're that bad.

00:13:18.260 But when you look at things that are in more controlled studies, we're not finding it. There's

00:13:22.420 hundreds and hundreds of studies on masks. There's only a few that are actually randomized with control

00:13:27.540 studies, with placebos that you can compare, and they didn't show any real difference. If you look

00:13:32.500 at the mask mandates, government policy, and you look at before and after, typically the incidence of

00:13:38.260 the disease continued to rise when you had mask mandates. Even when 80 percent of the people were

00:13:42.960 wearing or 90 percent of the people were wearing it, you found that most people who were getting sick

00:13:46.940 would say, oh yeah, I wear my mask all the time. The mask didn't work, so why wouldn't we emphasize

00:13:52.300 things that work? I think the vaccine helps reduce your risk of dying, but there are therapeutics out

00:13:57.260 there. Have you ever heard Fauci talk about the things you can take? And guess what? There's a

00:14:01.660 window of time. If you don't take the therapeutics in time, you might not survive if you're getting very

00:14:07.020 sick and you're at high risk. He doesn't want to discuss it.

00:14:09.660 So the monocle antibodies are the number one out there. You have to get them in a certain period of time.

00:14:12.940 If you wait too long, they don't work very well. He doesn't want to discuss it because

00:14:16.620 he wants all the focus to be on the vaccines, even though, as we see, they don't prevent contagion.

00:14:21.660 And what we thought was sort of a miracle drug initially is still amazing, but not exactly a

00:14:28.460 miracle. It will help you prevent severe illness or death, which is something, but it's not the

00:14:34.380 miracle cure. So now you're advocating to walk away from platforms like YouTube that censor these points

00:14:39.980 of view, even when you see the mainstream press and these very popular mainstream

00:14:45.740 news doctors coming around to positions that you've been banned for. So you want to walk away

00:14:52.540 from YouTube. I know you're going to rumble and you're saying other people should do the same.

00:14:55.740 I like rumble, but why? Because there's so many people on YouTube. It's a huge platform,

00:15:01.260 right? So wouldn't you want more people to hear your arguments?

00:15:04.540 I get plenty of attention. I don't need, you know, necessarily to be on YouTube. The other

00:15:11.340 thing is, is I want to support people who are open-minded. It's sort of be like if someone

00:15:15.980 invited me to a dinner party, do I want to go to a dinner party where the head of Twitter is there,

00:15:21.420 who believes that the small-minded people and the people with other opinions than his shouldn't be

00:15:26.380 heard. And he disdainfully looks at those of us who have different opinions. I don't want to

00:15:31.260 associate it with closed-minded people. I want to, I have friends who are liberal. I have friends who

00:15:35.420 are conservative. I have friends who are libertarian, but I want to associate with people who want to

00:15:39.180 have an exchange of ideas who don't want to say, well, my way or the highway. And so I don't want

00:15:44.540 my content to be given for free to people. YouTube makes money. They make money off of people like me

00:15:50.860 who have millions of followers. Why should I give them my content? Why shouldn't I take my content to

00:15:55.580 people who respect ideas? Rumble says they're neutral. They're not going to censor the left or

00:16:01.740 the right. You're welcome to come over to Rumble and it's going to be what you want to say. And so I

00:16:07.020 just don't want to support entities and outlets that are closed-minded or simple-minded or authoritarian

00:16:13.180 in their impulses. I'd rather take my content and eventually I'm going to go, I'm going to leave them

00:16:17.660 all. I just, everybody pushes back at me and says, oh, you got to stay. You got to stay. No, I don't have to

00:16:23.260 stay. I can go other places. I do want to go other places. You know, we've set up our own website,

00:16:28.800 libertytree.com. We want it to be a news aggregator site. Look, Drudge got so big that

00:16:34.580 half a million people were looking at them a day or a million people were looking at Drudge every hour.

00:16:39.580 I want to be part of something new where people can go and find the content of libertarians or

00:16:44.660 liberty people with a website. So with Liberty Tree, I control that and the access is open. There can be

00:16:51.760 competition and competition will make these people finally behave. They'll quit censoring us when they

00:16:56.400 leave them, but we shouldn't go over there and beg and say, oh, please be nice to us and please let us

00:17:01.340 back on and you shouldn't ban us. It's like, just tell them all to take a hike. Let's go someplace where

00:17:06.640 we're better received, where people want to associate with us. Right. I mean, I love it because

00:17:11.880 I have to say, I doubt, you know, you or I are changing minds on Twitter, right? It's like those people

00:17:18.400 have already made up their minds. It's like, why not just go have a discussion where you can have

00:17:22.060 it full-throatedly and both sides is not a problem, right? Like they enjoy hearing from both sides.

00:17:27.880 Well, I always joke. I got 3.4 million people following me on Twitter of which about 3.3 million

00:17:33.120 of them hate me. And so, you know, it's kind of fun to go there sometime and exchange things.

00:17:38.760 I like the form and I think the form can be duplicated. That is short, pithy comments with links to

00:17:45.660 longer articles. And it becomes a news aggregator in the sense that you're not putting all the

00:17:50.780 articles you read, but say, I read this great article, you know, that talks about natural

00:17:54.460 immunity and you link to it, but that can be done in other forums, but I promise you they will not

00:17:59.900 pay attention. And I'm not a big fan of government telling them what to do. Frankly, the guy from

00:18:04.360 Twitter, the CEO, that arrogant, whatever you want to call him, who says you were private and we can do

00:18:09.480 whatever we want. We can censor you. He is right. The first amendment allows you, if you own Twitter to do

00:18:14.480 what you want, he can censor all of us off and he can kick us off, but that doesn't make him an

00:18:19.060 admirable person. It makes him a small, closed-minded person who I want nothing to do with. He has every

00:18:25.720 right to kick me off of Twitter if he owns it, but I've got every right not to give him any of my

00:18:30.220 content. I don't want the government to regulate him. I just want nothing to do with people like

00:18:34.600 that. I feel like I have a strong libertarian streak in me and I know this is what you're all about.

00:18:40.580 Your dad is all about. Living in these times, watching these overreaches from big tech to big

00:18:46.060 government, schools and so on, it must be driving you crazy. I feel like it's driving me crazy. I'll

00:18:52.920 give you the last word. Well, it is. And we do have to push back because like they always say on the

00:18:59.020 left, every crisis is not to be wasted. They've taken this crisis. They destroyed our electoral system by

00:19:04.920 making it less valid and all through the mail. And they want to do more to it right now with this

00:19:09.580 crisis. They're taking away our personal liberties. So we have to push back. Our country

00:19:14.020 is great because we're largely left alone. And that's what I'm all about. Let's keep government

00:19:18.440 out of our lives. And if we can do that, I'll be happy. But I promise you, it doesn't happen without

00:19:23.900 a fight. And we're in it. Senator Rand Paul, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

00:19:29.760 Thank you. Coming up, we're going to be joined by Josh Rogan of The Washington Post. He's always an

00:19:34.920 amazing guest. You know, he wrote the book on COVID, how it got started challenging the narrative

00:19:39.960 that had been fed to us by the Chinese. He's here to talk China and COVID and much, much more. Don't go

00:19:45.460 away. There's a lot to go over when it comes to what's happening in China. The Beijing Olympics are

00:19:57.660 weeks away and millions of people are currently locked down under insane, life-threatening

00:20:04.640 conditions because of China's zero COVID policy. It's worked over there about as well as it's

00:20:10.380 worked over here. Here to discuss it with me is Washington Post columnist and author of Chaos

00:20:15.800 Under Heaven, Trump, Xi and the Battle for the 21st Century, Josh Rogan. Welcome back, Josh. Great to

00:20:22.120 have you. Great to be here. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. Okay. So can we talk about,

00:20:27.140 I mean, you know, we look at like Australia, putting people in camps. They try to escape.

00:20:30.860 They get tracked down by security guards if they're unvaccinated or if they believe that they have

00:20:34.400 COVID. Of course, China outdoes them all. And there's this Northwest, a Northwestern city. Is it

00:20:40.840 Xi'an? I'm not sure how you pronounce it. Xi'an. Xi'an. Okay. Thank you. And why don't you tell us

00:20:46.920 what's happening there and what they are doing to the Chinese in that city? Yeah. Well, to be sure,

00:20:53.200 you know, having ridiculously overbearing and over-controlling anti-COVID policies is not the

00:20:59.500 sole domain of autocracies. As you just pointed out, there are a lot of countries in the Western

00:21:05.700 world that are doing things that don't make any sense, either politically or scientifically,

00:21:09.860 including in this country, to be sure. But in China, the fact that this is being done by the

00:21:15.460 Chinese Communist Party, which is just, you know, the most shining example of nationalist,

00:21:23.480 socialist, repressive, oppressive criminal gang that's operating a police state and that is

00:21:30.340 systematically surveilling and monitoring everyone's actions and thoughts in order to

00:21:36.680 ding them with a social credit score every time they get out of line or say anything that doesn't

00:21:41.320 redound to the party's benefit. When you add that to the mix, it becomes a

00:21:45.460 incredibly cruel and incredibly horrifying. And what's going on in Xi'an now is because,

00:21:51.140 you know, in China, they have the zero COVID policy, which is ridiculous, especially at this

00:21:56.020 stage, you know, when you think about it. So every time they have a case or a bunch of cases,

00:22:00.720 they subject millions of people to horrendous conditions. And, you know, and of course,

00:22:05.980 these people are in a panic, but there's nothing they can do about it. And, you know, we had that

00:22:09.480 like one story here. You remember where like, oh, they're oh, can people get into the hospitals and

00:22:14.280 the gunshot wounds? And it turned out to be a bad story. And everyone got, you know, got bad on

00:22:20.680 Twitter for two days. But think about in China, where actually it's true that people are locked

00:22:25.500 down to the point where they don't have food and women are having miscarriages because they can't be

00:22:29.720 admitted to the hospital unless they have a negative COVID test. And, you know, that's the that's not to

00:22:35.420 say, again, that, you know, we've done everything right. But it's to say that when you add that kind

00:22:40.540 of system, that kind of oppression to to this kind of authoritarian behavior that we're seeing here,

00:22:46.160 it's really, really ugly. And that just shows you the extreme, extreme example of some of the things

00:22:51.660 that we're seeing in our own societies. There was an article. It was from CNN talking about

00:22:56.220 exactly what's happening there, where they have this is this lockdown in Cheyenne is of 13 million

00:23:02.300 residents, strictest and largest since Wuhan, which sealed off 11 million people in early 2020.

00:23:08.300 So they originally told folks that don't worry, you're going to be able to get food supplies,

00:23:14.920 that food supplies are abundant, no need for panic. The first few days of the lockdown,

00:23:18.700 each household was allowed to send one designated person out to buy groceries every two days.

00:23:23.340 But as the cases continue to rise, they further tightened the lockdown measures requiring all

00:23:29.080 residents to stay at home unless permitted to go outside for mass testing. Well, how are you supposed

00:23:34.260 to get food? Mass testing doesn't give you food. On Friday, footage emerged on Weibo, which is like

00:23:40.400 their big social search engine, of a man being beaten by COVID prevention workers at the gates of a

00:23:49.740 residential compound when he tried to enter with a bag of steamed buns. The video, which immediately

00:23:54.360 went viral, immediately went viral, showed the buns scattered on the ground as the man

00:23:58.020 fumbled. People traveling 60 plus miles to try to get food. And so like, this is nuts. And what are

00:24:06.100 we doing? We're like, yay, Olympics, so much fun. Don't worry, we won't send any diplomatic officials,

00:24:11.320 but yay, China.

00:24:13.280 Right, right. And just think about that's the part of the story that got out. You know, Weibo is heavily

00:24:17.840 censored. Everything is heavily censored. You know, I read one firsthand account of a Westerner

00:24:22.800 reporting from Xi'an, who's credible, who wrote that what's actually happening is that if anyone

00:24:29.520 gets tested positive in your whole building, they take everyone in the apartment building. These are

00:24:33.860 like big Soviet block buildings, and they move them out to a quarantine against their will for

00:24:38.260 God knows how long. It's grotesque to have an Olympics in the middle of all of this horrendous

00:24:44.600 repression and that what the oppression is meant to do, what the Olympics is meant to do is to

00:24:49.860 legitimize this regime while they commit a genocide against Muslims, while they commit

00:24:55.780 horrendous atrocities against students and protesters in Hong Kong and crush the free press there.

00:25:01.840 And if this is what's getting out of Xi'an, God knows what's actually going on on the ground. And

00:25:06.220 when you apply that to the Olympics, you've got a situation in Beijing where we really can't trust

00:25:10.440 anything that they say about what's going on with the health situation there, because they're lying

00:25:14.140 about this stuff all the time.

00:25:15.100 Meanwhile, it's like, once you've decided to overlook genocide, you know, who cares about

00:25:19.380 a little starvation? It's like, uh, right. We get desensitized to it, but it's, but it's

00:25:24.940 horrendous.

00:25:26.280 Um, and not to mention what's happening with, uh, the tennis player, right? Uh, like, forgive me,

00:25:32.020 pen, I was getting punk shui. Okay. I never want to mispronounce punk shui, but she's been

00:25:37.140 effectively disappeared. And even though they're giving us these propaganda videos of her saying,

00:25:41.380 I'm, I'm here and I didn't, nothing, no one did anything untoward to me. There are real

00:25:45.680 questions about whether we're ever going to see her again or whether she's just going to disappear

00:25:49.080 slowly, but surely over the weeks and months to come.

00:25:52.800 Right. Well, it's even worse than that, Megan, because what happened was the international Olympic

00:25:56.420 committee, uh, helped the Chinese communist party produce a propaganda video, essentially a hostage

00:26:01.520 video where they pretended to have a, what they said was a free, uh, interview with Peng

00:26:06.400 shui where she's clearly under duress. And then they trot this out to tell us that everything's

00:26:11.500 fine and we should just shut up about it. And, you know, the woman's tennis association to its

00:26:15.400 credit said, absolutely not. And they canceled all of their events in China, you know, giving up a lot

00:26:19.740 of money and that wasn't an easy decision, but it was the right thing to do is the greatest thing to

00:26:23.740 do. And, you know, that's because a lot of big stars like, uh, Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams

00:26:29.060 decided to come out and, and, and back this, uh, this woman, their friend who, you know, uh, claimed,

00:26:35.580 uh, sexual assault and then was disappeared off the Chinese internet for doing so. And that just

00:26:40.780 shows you that the CCP is not just about suppressing political opposition. It's really, they're, they're,

00:26:45.020 they don't even like it when you accuse CCP officials of sexual assault, that's enough to lose your

00:26:49.620 life, to lose your career, to attack an entire league of people. And then the news today was that the

00:26:54.660 IOC, uh, was asked, Hey, you know, all of that merch that you're passing out of the Olympics,

00:26:59.000 uh, was that made in a, well, it was made in China. We know, was that, was there slave labor

00:27:03.240 involved in all of that? Are you giving athletes from all over the world, slave labor produced

00:27:08.100 goods to put on their backs? And they refuse to answer. They're refusing. They never answer.

00:27:11.520 They might be the worst. They might be worse than the UN human rights council. I mean, honestly,

00:27:15.260 this is a corrupt, pathetic organization that always takes the wrong position.

00:27:20.420 It's horrendous. There, there's no dictator, uh, or despot that they won't, uh, rush to defend.

00:27:27.080 And, you know, so, you know, the Biden administration, okay, well, they did this

00:27:30.160 diplomatic boycott. I guess that's better than nothing. It sends a symbol, but it doesn't really

00:27:34.100 stop the genocide. And now you have all of these, uh, groups all over the country, all over the world

00:27:38.700 really saying, okay, well, we need to do more. And I think what you're going to see is a broad

00:27:42.140 based campaign first to divest, uh, from atrocity linked goods in university endowments. And,

00:27:48.020 you know, uh, I, I know, you know, this, I can, these, these college kids, they're the only

00:27:51.800 non-corrupt people left in our system. You know, they're the only ones who aren't,

00:27:55.640 you know, beholden to Nike or their, or their Disney movie contract or some sort of,

00:28:00.760 you know, uh, uh, Apple product that, that requires them to shut up about the atrocities.

00:28:06.620 And so they are, they're organizing a nationwide school by school, uh, divestment, uh, uh, campaign.

00:28:13.400 And I think that that's something, and then you have, you know, all of these corporations and

00:28:17.520 these, uh, media organizations, what are they going to do? Are they going to all,

00:28:20.540 you know, sponsor these Olympics, which is essentially giving money to the party.

00:28:24.280 I'll tell you. So for, on your first point, uh, you, we just read a letter from a Yale,

00:28:28.300 uh, student saying we need to divest our, our Yale endowment from this country. We, you know,

00:28:32.800 where, where is Peng, where, what are they doing with respect to human rights? And by the way,

00:28:37.840 the IOC, I should also mention, they were supposed to meet with a group that wanted to ask about

00:28:41.800 forced labor in China. They were like, don't really want to, but I guess we will. And then

00:28:45.380 they, then they said, no, we're not meeting with you. Uh, first they said, well, we'll sit there

00:28:49.440 for an active listening session only. We won't be sharing any information with you about whether

00:28:55.020 we are relying on slave labor for some of these clothes and goods. And then as they got closer

00:29:00.180 to the meeting, according to the New York times, the IOC pulled out entirely from meeting with them

00:29:04.500 saying, we're not engaged. We're not able to engage in a dialogue at this time as a result of

00:29:10.400 our differences in approach. We have differences in approach and therefore there will be no listening

00:29:16.360 by us to you. Um, okay. Right. Like that, we're not surprised, but I do have an answer for you on

00:29:23.360 what American corporations are going to do about the problems in China when it comes to covering

00:29:28.300 the Olympics. And I give you the, the example of the very brave NBC. Take a look at, and this is,

00:29:36.660 I'll describe it for our listening audience at, um, how they are sort of their banner to,

00:29:42.800 to promote the Olympics, which they cover and host, um, in terms of its broadcasting, uh,

00:29:48.400 on American television. It's got Beijing written as big as like, well, any normal human might need

00:29:56.140 a little microscope to find it. I can't even see it from where I'm sitting on my desk. It's just

00:30:01.140 the winter Olympics in big letters with Feb 3rd in even bigger letters. And the teeny tiny over on

00:30:10.660 the right. It's almost like one of those trademark signs. Say it loud, say it proud.

00:30:18.520 You know, what's so ridiculous about that is that, you know, when the foreign journalists

00:30:23.280 petitions for the Beijing Olympic committee for basic access, you're right. There's an Olympics

00:30:27.380 happening. There's hundreds of journalists in China, all the U S journalists, Washington Post

00:30:31.260 journalists were kicked out, but they were trying to cover the thing, trying to fight, figure out

00:30:34.300 if it's safe, what the rules are, you know, what's going to happen. And, you know, the Chinese

00:30:38.100 government told, told them all to pound sand. So even as they take the money from the international

00:30:42.520 media organizations, they're treating them like crap. They're not even upholding, you know, basic

00:30:47.720 press freedoms surrounding this games, which the, the media is, and the U S corporations are

00:30:53.220 partially funding. So we're giving them the money and taking the abuse. It's a, it's insult

00:30:58.180 to injury. And of course they, they do it because they can get away with it because no one stands

00:31:02.420 up, but some people have stood up, but you know, there's a guy named NS Cantor freedom

00:31:06.040 who plays for the Celtics, you know, yes, he's great on this. I went, I went to LA and interviewed

00:31:12.120 him and, you know, there's a guy who understands what it is to live under a horrendous dictatorship

00:31:18.520 because his family was, uh, imprisoned by Turkish, uh, president Erdogan for nothing,

00:31:23.620 for no good reason at all. And, uh, so he doesn't care, you know, he, he, he's, he's willing to

00:31:29.940 sacrifice and, you know, he's willing to put his, uh, morals above his pocketbook. And the opposite of

00:31:35.720 that, of course, is LeBron James who won't, you know, would never, ever, ever say anything about

00:31:40.540 who actually goes out of his way to defend the CCP and criticize Daryl Morey for tweeting about

00:31:45.660 Hong Kong, criticize NS Cantor and accused NS Cantor of trying to quote, quote, steal his energy

00:31:50.920 because, you know, LeBron James can't understand that somebody might do something for someone

00:31:56.120 that's not them. That's not in their own interest for the benefit of another group of people,

00:32:00.460 you know, that, and actually sacrifice. Uh, he assumes it must be in NS Cantor's self-interest,

00:32:05.780 but of course it's not. NS Cantor freedom could lose his career over this. And he's come to terms

00:32:10.520 with that. And I think, you know, more and more people are stepping up and, you know, Congress

00:32:14.920 passed a bill to prevent slave labor products to come from coming to our shores. You know,

00:32:20.140 the Biden administration tried to fight against it. They actually, they opposed it secretly until

00:32:24.420 I exposed them. And then they turned around and they're like, okay, fine, we support it.

00:32:28.320 And you could be sure that they're going to try to play games when they implement it,

00:32:31.400 because this is what happens, uh, when people are trying to make excuses for a genocide or look away.

00:32:36.300 Uh, but you know, the other thing is that there's all of these survivors and all of these people

00:32:41.220 who are making it out and, uh, their stories are real and their stories are crazy because they're,

00:32:46.080 they're much more worried at the Biden administration about making sure we refer to,

00:32:49.240 uh, women who give birth as birthing peoples. And then they are about the Uyghurs with forced

00:32:56.100 sterilizations, Peng Shui, what happened in what's happening, you know, in these forced labor camps,

00:33:02.200 they don't care. Like, and then they, and nevermind what happened in Afghanistan to young women and

00:33:06.780 girls over there and what's still happening. So a crisis we're ignoring, um, because, you know,

00:33:11.280 we're so focused on domestic politics and zero COVID here too, right? We're so focused on our own

00:33:16.360 zero ridiculous goals of zero COVID. Um, but the same organization wants to lecture us on human rights,

00:33:22.400 uh, while they happily look the other way, they don't care if, if, if American businesses buy from

00:33:29.060 or sell to, uh, companies that use slave labor, they don't care.

00:33:33.540 Yeah. I mean, the Biden administration is split. There are some people who do care and there are

00:33:36.960 some people who don't care. And the problem is that, you know, they see human rights advocacy

00:33:40.960 as a complicating factor in U S China relations rather than what they should see it as, which is

00:33:45.780 the advantage that we have. In other words, if you just think about it, you know, the thing that

00:33:50.180 the Chinese government hates the most is when you point out their genocide and the reason that they

00:33:54.120 spend billions of dollars to propagandize everyone engages in genocide really hates that.

00:33:58.920 Just like, yes, most genocidal regimes don't like it when you focus on it, you know, and they should

00:34:06.860 not like it because it should be embarrassing because it's a, one of the worst human rights

00:34:11.160 crimes of our time. And, you know, the Biden people see that as like a problem, right? If you're John

00:34:16.220 Kerry, you think, well, if we focus on that, then they're not going to cooperate with us on climate

00:34:20.440 change or Iran or whatever else it is that, uh, we think we need them to cooperate on, which they're

00:34:25.580 probably not going to cooperate on anyway because they don't care about that stuff because, you know,

00:34:29.900 they're building coal plants. So they're not trying with slave labor. So they're not going to be a

00:34:33.440 climate change champion either way. Okay. And once the Biden people realize that, that, and some of

00:34:39.660 them do, and some of them don't to be fair, uh, they'll realize that actually the best thing you

00:34:43.460 can do to fight, uh, you know, the threat of the Chinese communist party is to rally people who

00:34:48.440 don't want to live in a world where genocide is the norm. And that kind of unites everybody, unites

00:34:53.220 Democrats and Republicans, actually unites Americans and Europeans, not like nothing really does

00:34:58.380 anymore. And, and I also think about the people in the region who see that and all people who live

00:35:03.900 under dictatorships are like, okay, are we just going to, are we just going to have genocides for

00:35:07.320 the 21st century? Is that just what's going to happen? Or is someone going to stand in the way? So I

00:35:12.420 think, you know, and this kind of goes back to the COVID thing too, because, you know,

00:35:16.320 there's a lot that China still hasn't done in terms of telling us what's going on with the

00:35:21.500 coronavirus origins. And, you know, the Biden administration claims to want to know, but they

00:35:27.060 haven't lifted a finger. They've buried the investigation. They never bring it up anymore,

00:35:31.560 even internally or, or with the Chinese. And here's another thing you can think, oh, well,

00:35:35.660 wow, that's going to really make us China relations tense. Well, that's completely the

00:35:39.000 wrong way to think about it. The right way to think about it is that no, no, this is first of all,

00:35:43.380 something that's really important for our natural security. And same thing with genocide. Like we

00:35:47.900 can't live in a world where genocides are okay, because eventually that will come back to haunt

00:35:51.980 us. Eventually that will pose a threat to us where we are once the world is full of genocidal regimes

00:35:57.120 that don't care about what we say or what we do. And so all of these sort of contentious

00:36:01.860 relationships, issues in the US-China relationship, we could use them to protect ourselves and to rally

00:36:07.520 countries to our side and to help these suffering people if we had a little more strategery. But I think

00:36:13.160 the Biden people are, they're just, you know, they're just not willing, they're not courageous

00:36:16.980 enough to go there. No, they're, they're too busy not solving things like the supply crisis and the

00:36:22.760 inflation crisis and, you know, not being able to get. Well, that's another thing. Think about the

00:36:26.240 supply chain crisis. 14 hour pileups resolved. Right. But the supply chain crisis, think about that.

00:36:32.620 A lot of it is because we're so dependent on the supply chains running through China,

00:36:36.400 you know, and a lot of it is because they play games with those supply chains in order to mess with us

00:36:40.000 and all the other countries too. So, you know, maybe instead of, you know, uh, just like cursing

00:36:46.120 the darkness, maybe we should light a candle. Maybe we should realize that actually, you know,

00:36:49.500 we're going to have to have some, uh, decoupling that's going to have to run some of this stuff

00:36:53.660 that we need, especially in a pandemic around China. That's the technology, that's the medicine,

00:36:58.860 that's the chemicals, that's the rare earth materials, silicon, all that stuff. You know,

00:37:03.500 unless we want to be dependent on Chinese slave labor, uh, forever, uh, we should probably do

00:37:10.020 something about that now. Yeah. If this has become, as the kids say, a toxic relationship for

00:37:14.780 the United States and we need to walk away for the good of our own collective mental health. And by

00:37:20.040 the way, the, the health of those Uyghurs and everybody else, because no one's standing up for

00:37:24.740 them at the moment. We have more with Josh Rogan, uh, coming up. I'm going to ask him, speaking of,

00:37:28.420 of Ennis Cantor, you know, he came on the show, he's been doing some press talking about the stance

00:37:33.440 he's taken against what's happening in China and the NBA's subservience to China. Um, he may be

00:37:39.680 about to lose his job. Uh, we'll pick it up there right after this break. And don't forget folks

00:37:43.500 that you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at

00:37:50.420 noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash

00:37:55.140 Megan Kelly. Go check it out. Our opening monologue from Monday is still in fuego right

00:38:00.600 there. Um, you can be one of the people to check out that 10 minutes of goodness. Uh,

00:38:04.400 if you prefer an audio podcast, just subscribe and download on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher,

00:38:08.580 or wherever you get your podcasts for free. And there you will find our full archives with

00:38:13.020 more than 230 shows, including the first time Josh was on, uh, which was episode 89, which

00:38:18.640 is well worth your time. We got into it in depth based on his book about whether this

00:38:24.600 virus, uh, started in a lab or was, um, you know, cut came from an animal, uh, naturally

00:38:29.920 in a market. It's fascinating. And he truly is the expert. Don't go away.

00:38:38.440 Josh. So the news is, and I confess, I don't follow the NBA very closely, but the news today

00:38:43.000 is that Ennis Cantor may be about to get booted from the Celtics. Uh, he could, they say he could

00:38:48.600 become a free agent as early as this week. Um, do we, do we have reason to believe that

00:38:54.400 has anything to do with the very open and, you know, by NBC standards, aggressive stance

00:38:59.900 he's taken on their cozy relationship with China?

00:39:03.560 Yeah, it's probably not a coincidence, Megan. You know, like I, I spent a lot of time with

00:39:07.200 Ennis Cantor freedom and, you know, what he told me was that, and, uh, uh, when he first

00:39:13.300 wore his free to bet shoes, uh, two NBA officials came up to him in the locker room and begged him

00:39:17.860 not to do it. And he said, Ennis, please just don't do this. You know, you're going to create

00:39:21.000 big problems for us. And then his agent told him, you're going to lose your career over this. And

00:39:24.760 so, you know, he went into this eyes wide open, but, uh, yeah, this is exactly what, uh, you know,

00:39:30.200 his agent and the, his, the NBA officials warned him about, which is that, you know, you want to

00:39:36.680 speak up against Turkey, no problem. You want to, uh, speak up against, uh, uh, social issues in the

00:39:41.840 United States, no problem. But once you hit that third rail, once you talk about Chinese

00:39:46.400 government atrocities, all of a sudden, everything changes, all of a sudden you've

00:39:50.660 risked out your entire career, your whole life and, uh, that of the whole league. And,

00:39:55.140 you know, we know the backstory, you know, it's in my book. It's about how the NBA punished the,

00:39:59.900 I'm sorry, the Chinese communist party punished the NBA to the tune of $400 million over one tweet.

00:40:04.120 That was only two years ago, you know? And at that time, didn't they remove Boston Celtics games

00:40:10.020 from their, uh, Chinese state TV? Yes. They've already punished the Celtics. They've already

00:40:15.000 cost them money out of their pocket, more money than, uh, apparently they're, they're willing to

00:40:19.520 lose to keep an escanter freedom on their roster. And, you know, what team is going to be like,

00:40:23.680 oh yeah, I'm going to sign up for an attack by the Chinese communist party, you know? And,

00:40:27.220 you know, part of that is because the NBA and these teams are, are, are, don't have any,

00:40:31.940 are, are hypocrites essentially. They, they, they'll, they'll, they'll support your right to free

00:40:36.340 speech until it impacts their bottom line. And part of it is because we don't have, uh, uh,

00:40:41.620 like a system here, uh, in the United States where, you know, when the Chinese communist party

00:40:46.060 threatens to ruin your business or your industry or your career over crap, over nonsense, over,

00:40:52.980 you know, much less over speaking up for human rights, uh, there should be a, a whole, uh, of

00:40:59.840 country, a whole society response. We should say, no, absolutely not. You know, and that's not going

00:41:05.480 to fly because then we'll all be living in a world that's essentially self-censored in the favor

00:41:10.560 of the Chinese communist party and its atrocities. And that's not just in the NBA, that's in our

00:41:15.360 Hollywood films. When's the last time you saw a Hollywood film about Tibet? It's been about 20

00:41:19.500 years. You know, when that's, we see that all the time in our schools, on our campuses, you know,

00:41:24.620 we see that all the time in our tech companies. We see that all our time in our wall street firms

00:41:29.160 and, uh, we see it in our politics too. And, you know, they, they'll use money and if that doesn't

00:41:35.480 work, they'll use threats and, and, and, and they'll try to ruin you, uh, for exercising your

00:41:41.160 right of free speech or on our own soil in our own lives. And that's crazy. And that's can't be

00:41:46.560 tolerated. But, you know, the, the problem is that once you have people like Ennis Cantor Freedom,

00:41:51.300 uh, who say, I don't care, I'm going to do it anyway. Well, then that tactic goes away.

00:41:55.840 And the only real way to fight that to him, that's, what's crazy. Like he should be allowed to just play

00:42:00.460 basketball. He shouldn't have to be, you know, the one touting all this, but the NBA owners,

00:42:06.060 I mean, I had Mark Cuban on the show, one of my very first episodes and what's now an infamous

00:42:10.140 exchange and go back and check it in our archives. He wouldn't, right. He wouldn't, he wouldn't speak

00:42:15.280 up against them. Um, you know, Daryl Morey, right. You saw him. He, he got shit storm rained down on him

00:42:21.660 for one single tweet about Hong Kong. Um, Adam Silver, the commissioner, he's shown absolutely zero

00:42:26.340 appetite for it. So it's like, Ennis is sitting there like, yeah, you know, there's a whole thing.

00:42:29.640 It's like genocide. Remember the whole, you go to Dachau or you go to one of the concentration camps

00:42:33.700 out of, um, you know, Hitler's Nazi Germany, uh, or the surrounding regions. And all you see is that

00:42:38.640 never again, never again, never again, never again, right. People are supposed to speak up.

00:42:42.300 They're supposed to stand up when they see something like this. And the NBA is like,

00:42:45.940 oh my God, my sneakers are so nice. You should buy some too. These are amazing.

00:42:49.780 Silence, silence favors the oppressor, right? Neutrality in the face of atrocities favor the oppressor.

00:42:55.460 That's Elie Wiesel. I'm paraphrasing Elie Wiesel and, you know, and, you know, people like Ennis

00:43:01.100 Cantor who are, uh, immigrants to this country, you know, he's a, uh, Turkish Muslim immigrant who

00:43:07.680 became a citizen and changed his name to freedom because he believes in what America stands for

00:43:12.440 around the world. He thinks it makes a difference around the world. He knows it because his father

00:43:16.100 was in prison for running afoul of the dictator Erdogan. And, you know, eventually he was freed,

00:43:21.980 but the point is that if that can happen in Turkey, if it can happen in China, well, it's coming to a

00:43:26.180 neighborhood to you pretty soon. And, you know, the NBA, Adam Silver, when he got into the soup,

00:43:31.620 he went to, for advice to Joe Tsai, that the owner of the Brooklyn Nets, who was like the co-founder of

00:43:37.300 Alibaba, you know, who's not, who was totally in the wrong, on the wrong side of the genocide

00:43:42.340 issue, you know, and it gave him, you know, so all of these American companies and schools,

00:43:48.020 they, they, they have to listen, you know, when people like Ennis Cantor freedom say,

00:43:52.060 we understand what evil looks like and we have to stand on the other side of it.

00:43:56.360 And everyone has to do that in order for it to work. And so, yeah, and Ennis Cantor is paying,

00:44:01.140 uh, uh, Ennis Cantor freedom is paying a big price, but he's, he's doing it, uh, for a reason is

00:44:06.140 because he knows what happens when we remain silent. It's worse. Yeah. But unlike, you know,

00:44:10.400 somebody like Colin Kaepernick who stood up, I will give him this. He stood up for something he

00:44:14.660 purported to believe in, um, and then landed on his feet with hundreds of millions of dollars from

00:44:20.880 Nike. Right. Ennis Cantor freedom will not be getting a Nike deal is in particular will not

00:44:25.400 be getting a Nike deal. Right. So once he gets booted, if he gets booted off the Celtics, uh,

00:44:29.660 phase two for him is, is a lot less clear. Exactly. It's economic coercion and it's political

00:44:35.180 coercion and it's being done on our soil and, uh, it's anti-free speech. And yes, if you're going to

00:44:39.840 support the free speech of Colin Kaepernick, then you have to support the free speech of Ennis

00:44:43.040 Cantor freedom. If you're going to support Ennis Cantor freedom, talking about Turkey,

00:44:46.660 then you have to support him talking about China. No ifs, ifs, ifs, ands, or buts about it.

00:44:50.640 What do you make of, um, I, you had an article recently talking about how the Chinese

00:44:54.120 are becoming more emboldened. They're testing us. They're testing us. There was an article in the

00:45:00.140 Wall Street Journal recently talking about it in a different way too, saying they are becoming more

00:45:03.760 emboldened. They're doing some sketchy things over there. Real huge government reaches into,

00:45:07.560 you know, the way you refer to whatever. It's basically trying to crack down on kids and

00:45:11.940 technology use, but you say they're testing us and we better stand up to, to that test. How so?

00:45:18.480 Right. This is really important. I'm really glad you brought this up, Megan, because, you know,

00:45:21.420 we're one year into this Biden administration and, you know, for a lot of China hawks, uh, like me,

00:45:26.680 you know, there's some things to like, and there's some things to criticize, to be sure.

00:45:30.180 But overall, you know, it seems like the people in control of the Biden policy know that,

00:45:34.660 you know, we have a problem here. But the question is whether or not they think that

00:45:38.440 solving the problem means working with China or working with all the other countries around the

00:45:43.020 world that are trying to stand up to China, but also defend ourselves together, because that's

00:45:47.100 what it's going to take, because it's the biggest, richest country in the world. And it's run by a

00:45:51.060 mafia organization that's committing a genocide. And so I'm in that latter camp. I think that,

00:45:55.660 you know, we focus way too much in Washington and are like, oh, are China, US-China relations good or

00:46:00.580 bad? Are they warm or cold? Are they getting, you know, are we moving upward or downward? Is it too tense?

00:46:06.620 Do we need to cool it off? Should we cool it? You know, is it too cool? Should we heat it up? And

00:46:10.960 all of those things are nonsense, because first of all, none of them can be measured. And second of

00:46:15.500 all, they all place the success of the policy of the strategy in the hands of our adversaries.

00:46:21.740 And the Chinese know that they can turn up that dial of, oh, things are too hot. Now you got to back

00:46:26.260 down. Things are too cold. Right. And so, you know, what they've, what they've been doing recently is

00:46:31.220 every time we do something, it doesn't matter what it is, Uyghur sanctions, tariffs, you know,

00:46:36.240 trade restrictions, you know, technology restrictions, call it a genocide. They

00:46:42.500 overreact. They throw a huge tantrum. And this usually, in many cases, includes sending a lot

00:46:47.980 of planes and bombers into the air and doing a lot of other ridiculous things like that and

00:46:52.780 yelling and screaming and wolf warrior diplomacy. And, you know, you guys are the real genociders

00:46:57.700 because of the American Indians or whatever, you know, cutting somebody's mic in the middle of a

00:47:01.300 live interview. But anybody who's the parent knows that if you respond to the toddler's tantrum

00:47:05.600 with, you know, by exceeding to his demands, what you get is more tantrums. Josh, thank you so much,

00:47:10.760 as always, for your insights. Love talking to you. Thanks for being here. Up next, turning to a doctor

00:47:14.980 who says nearly everyone was a fan of him until he spoke out about vaccine mandates. Now he's out of a job.

00:47:19.380 Throughout the COVID pandemic, my next guest helped countless patients and frontline workers

00:47:30.320 and eventually contracted the virus himself. But when it came time to get the vaccine,

00:47:36.440 Dr. Aaron Cariotti couldn't do it. He didn't think he needed to. He argued that his natural immunity

00:47:42.260 is far better than any vaccine and believes people who have already had COVID should also have a choice

00:47:48.860 about whether or not to get vaccinated. His employer did not agree. He took his fights to

00:47:54.840 the courts and he lost. Now he's appealing to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But in the meantime,

00:48:02.220 it has cost him his nearly 15 year career at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Aaron Cariotti,

00:48:10.820 thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Megan. It's great to be with you. That's horrifying.

00:48:15.700 So that's horrifying. As I understand it, you were there at the height of the pandemic,

00:48:19.960 in there with doctors and nurses and patients and sick people and working night and day and not

00:48:25.580 getting compensated necessarily for all these extra hours without complaint.

00:48:31.000 That's right. You're lauded as a hero one year and then the following year, you're seen as a threat to

00:48:38.060 the health and safety of the community and summarily fired. So I've spent my entire career at the

00:48:43.640 University of California, did my residency training there and then joined the faculty

00:48:47.560 right afterwards. And I've taught for 15 years in the School of Medicine. I think I was the only

00:48:54.440 faculty member that directed courses through all four years of the medical students training. So I was

00:49:00.700 deeply involved with our medical students. I ran a residency training program at the Department of

00:49:05.860 Psychiatry for several years before I took over as the medical ethics program director.

00:49:14.860 So starting right out of the gate during the pandemic, I was involved not only in treating

00:49:20.560 COVID patients in the emergency room in the main hospital with either psychiatric consults or ethics

00:49:27.500 consults, dealing with end of life cases, dealing with families who couldn't visit their loved ones

00:49:35.460 who were in the hospital with COVID, having to have actually several anguishing conversations with family

00:49:43.440 members, telling them that their loved one was irretrievably dying of COVID. And so I was on the

00:49:51.500 front lines, I saw the worst that this illness could do, I have no doubt that elderly and other people

00:49:58.160 with comorbidities who are vulnerable to this illness, you know, are at significant risk of bad

00:50:04.940 outcomes if they contracted. But at the same time, I started to see that our pandemic response, in many,

00:50:12.700 many ways was was not making sense. From a public health perspective, certainly from an ethics

00:50:19.020 perspective, we began taking a kind of all or nothing approach to almost all of our pandemic response

00:50:28.700 measures. And vaccines are a good example of that. So again, I was I was eagerly waiting for a safe and

00:50:37.080 effective vaccine back in 2020. In 2021, I served on the Orange County Vaccine Task Force, I helped the

00:50:45.400 University of California develop our vaccine allocation policy, you might remember earlier

00:50:51.600 last year, when the vaccines first came out, there were more people that wanted them than we than we

00:50:57.660 had vaccine supply for at least in the first couple of months. So there were ethics questions at that time,

00:51:04.640 around who ought to be first in line to get the vaccine? Do we vaccinate the people who are most at risk

00:51:11.220 of bad outcomes from COVID? The elderly, or people with co occurring conditions? Or do we prioritize

00:51:17.920 healthcare workers to make sure that we have enough of them to, to be able to treat people with COVID?

00:51:25.360 So there were there were important questions to work through there, which I helped both our county and

00:51:32.920 the university as a whole contend with, I advocated very publicly in the Los Angeles Times, that the poor

00:51:40.220 and underserved, not be deprioritized for vaccine access early in the pandemic, if they were at high

00:51:46.700 risk of bad outcomes from, from COVID. So I sort of lived and breathed this pandemic for two years

00:51:55.280 straight. Well, let me let me just jump in here and ask you a question. When you were treating patients

00:52:01.380 back in at the height of, you know, when things were unfolding the quarantine, spring of 2020, clearly,

00:52:06.880 you weren't vaccinated, we didn't have a vaccine. But, and I know you didn't contract COVID until

00:52:12.560 later, I think it was January of 2021. No, I, I contracted COVID back in July of 2020.

00:52:21.940 And it was actually a community acquired. Yeah. Here's my question. So after you had COVID in July

00:52:29.980 of 2020, and other doctors and nurses around you, presumably were getting it back then, too,

00:52:35.660 did anybody say you shouldn't, either either before or after, I should say, you're you're you

00:52:43.680 contracting the virus? Did anybody say you shouldn't have access to patients?

00:52:47.720 No, absolutely not. Of course not. I mean, after I had COVID, the science clearly showed that I was the

00:52:56.420 safest person to be around. Was there any acknowledgement of that at the university,

00:53:01.000 like at the hospital? Do people say like, Oh, well, you know, carry out he's had it. So let's

00:53:04.540 send him in there. A few of the residents would acknowledge that. But none of the policies

00:53:12.740 acknowledge that. So this was one of the very, very strange and inexplicable kind of policy developments

00:53:20.500 during the pandemic, that right out of the gate, we should have recognized that people who have

00:53:26.160 recovered from COVID are a real asset in terms of dealing with the pandemic. So I mean, one proposal

00:53:33.640 that could have offered better focus protection for very high risk individuals, like let's say people

00:53:39.520 in nursing homes, would be to try to hire individuals as caretakers who had recovered from COVID that would

00:53:47.780 create a kind of buffer around that high risk population that that could help impede transmission

00:53:55.940 to those elderly individuals. But our public health officials never had any interest in either

00:54:02.720 acknowledging natural immunity or factoring it into our pandemic response.

00:54:07.420 They're solely focused on that vaccine and remain so. So you being a doctor, you get COVID,

00:54:14.100 you recover from COVID. And you don't think you need a vaccine. I mean, we kicked off the show today

00:54:18.660 with Senator Rand Paul. He's also a doctor. He's in the exact same boat. You didn't think that he

00:54:22.960 needed a vaccine because he already had COVID. He's refused to get one. You were in the same boat as a

00:54:27.180 doctor saying, I didn't need it in July or August or September to go see patients. And I don't need it now.

00:54:34.260 And the university said what?

00:54:35.940 The university said our policy is that everyone needs the vaccine without exception. I guess,

00:54:47.600 with the exception of a very, very small number of people who were trying to get

00:54:52.920 medical exemptions. So for reasons that we can get into, if you're interested,

00:54:57.560 it became almost impossible to get a medical exemption in the state of California because

00:55:02.920 Oh, they're taking licenses away from doctors who do that.

00:55:05.560 Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of pressure from the medical board not to write any exemptions for

00:55:10.440 masks or vaccines. So with that pressure on physicians, it became very difficult. Nevertheless,

00:55:16.940 my physician did write me a medical exemption on the basis of natural immunity. We included 15 pages of

00:55:23.120 documentation on the science of natural immunity. And the university rejected that request for a

00:55:30.260 medical exemption to their vaccine policy. So it was really sort of all or nothing policy that didn't

00:55:39.020 acknowledge that some ages, some populations were at very different risks of COVID than others. So the

00:55:47.640 risk to a college age student from this virus is about a thousand fold different than the risk to an 85

00:55:55.620 year old. And yet the policy that we created was a one size fits all, no exceptions admitted, no

00:56:04.340 acknowledgement of natural immunity type policy. And what I argued was, if you look at the science

00:56:11.140 on natural immunity, and this is kind of the crux of my legal argument in the case that I still have

00:56:16.900 going in the federal courts, is that the science on natural immunity, very conservative estimates would

00:56:25.560 suggest that it's 95 to 99% effective. And most studies suggest it's greater than 99% effective at

00:56:33.160 preventing reinfection. It offers what's called sterilizing immunity, which means not only do I not

00:56:40.780 get reinfected to any significant degree, but in those very rare cases of reinfections, there have not,

00:56:50.420 there's not been a single documented case of someone getting reinfected and transmitting the virus

00:56:56.420 to others. So natural immunity actually impedes transmission. We made that claim in our legal case

00:57:03.660 and the university's experts were not able to refute it. In a separate legal action that I have against

00:57:12.480 the CDC, we made the same case and the CDC was not able to produce any documentation showing that

00:57:22.080 there had been a single case of infection and transmission. Well, let me jump in and ask you

00:57:25.880 something. As I read their, the summary of their argument, it's not really maybe a little bit,

00:57:32.280 it's, it's, it's, Oh, you know, vaccines are better, but it's definitely that natural immunity plus

00:57:40.960 vaccines are better than just natural immunity. And therefore, since there's this supersonic level

00:57:47.820 of immunity, we could get you to you who have had COVID by jabbing you. And you, you may say you don't

00:57:55.000 want that extra protection, but too bad, because basically our policy is you must be as protected as you

00:58:01.240 can possibly be short of making those who haven't had COVID go out and get COVID.

00:58:07.380 Yeah. Well, there's two, there's two problems with that notion that is now known as hybrid immunity.

00:58:12.700 So you're right, Megan, that once it became impossible to ignore the efficacy and durability

00:58:20.360 of natural immunity, then the narrative shifted to, well, okay, but you should still get the jab because

00:58:25.700 then you have hybrid immunity. But science on hybrid immunity is very poor. It's based entirely on the

00:58:33.740 fact that you get an antibody bump. If you have natural immunity and you get the vaccine, there's

00:58:40.280 actually no clinical evidence that it improves outcomes like infection, hospitalization, or death.

00:58:47.140 The one study that tried to look at that on a large scale was out of Israel. So they, they actually did

00:58:53.200 a comparison of people with natural immunity who didn't get an additional vaccine versus those with

00:58:58.420 natural immunity who got one more dose of the Pfizer vaccine. And between the two, they went from 99.7

00:59:06.560 to 99.8% efficacy against reinfection. So, which was, it was not clinically meaningful. There was no

00:59:14.180 difference in terms of symptomatic illness. There was no difference in terms of hospitalization. There

00:59:18.880 was no difference in terms of death. So because the immunity is already so good, it's really hard

00:59:24.420 to improve it. In addition, there's some studies that suggest that if you give a vaccine to someone

00:59:30.480 that already has natural immunity, first of all, they have higher risks of side effects. There's about

00:59:35.380 half a dozen studies now that suggest that problem because it's almost like getting a fourth or fifth dose

00:59:41.920 of a vaccine if you've already got natural immunity. And there's some studies, and this has not been

00:59:48.700 proven yet. It's still, it's still a working hypothesis, but there's at least some suggestion

00:59:53.460 that it might actually impair your immunity by focusing your immunity, taking a very broad immunity that

01:00:01.300 should be effective against new variants and focusing it just on the spike protein from the original

01:00:07.720 wild type strain, which the virus has evolved beyond that now. So there are plenty of reasons to think

01:00:16.300 that people with natural immunity shouldn't get vaccinated. Now they can if they want to. I don't

01:00:22.580 have any problem with someone looking at the information, looking at the data and deciding that they

01:00:29.660 already had COVID, but they still want the vaccine. Great. I've always been in favor of informed consent

01:00:35.100 and informed decision making. I've never advised anyone that they'd not get the vaccine. What I've advocated

01:00:41.800 for is for the right of informed consent, for the right of competent adults to make that decision for

01:00:49.320 themselves.

01:00:50.380 But we're not even acknowledging right now that natural immunity is worth much of anything, which isn't really

01:00:56.220 informed consent. I mean, if you're somebody who's had it, and you're deciding whether to get a vaccine, you should be

01:01:01.360 told exactly what's real about your odds of getting it again or spreading it or dying of severe disease if you

01:01:09.760 get it again, right? Like that's, this is all part of informed consent. I know this is your point. But let me ask you,

01:01:15.140 because I asked my team, you know, I know the Israel study that's that this is the famous where Sanjay Gupta

01:01:20.880 asked Fauci, he never gets asked about natural immunity. Well, why don't we just play it so that we can refresh

01:01:26.820 the audience's memory on this. This is where he asked him about this study showing that you're you're more

01:01:32.340 protected against COVID if you've had natural immunity than if you've had the vaccine. Do you guys have it

01:01:37.860 my team? Okay, listen, listen.

01:01:41.240 I get calls all the time. People say I've already had COVID. I'm protected. And now the study says maybe even

01:01:47.580 more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine? How do you make the case to

01:01:52.220 them? You know, that's a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a really firm answer for you on that.

01:01:57.500 That's something that we're going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response. The one

01:02:02.820 thing the paper from Israel didn't tell you is whether or not as high as the protection is with natural

01:02:09.160 infection, what's the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine. So it is conceivable

01:02:14.840 that you got infected, you're protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of

01:02:19.920 time. So I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.

01:02:25.260 I mean, first of all, that's so absurd, because we know that the vaccines have a limited shelf life.

01:02:29.640 That's why we have to get boosters now and all that. I mean, he talks about natural immunity like

01:02:36.020 that's a deficiency of it that the vaccines don't have. And that's dishonest. I mean, that's a

01:02:42.480 dishonest suggestion. But but the thing I want to ask you about is there was a Johns Hopkins study

01:02:47.560 November 23rd, 2021. By the way, that was Fauci in September claiming, oh, we don't know. Why don't

01:02:53.560 you know in September of 2021? Why don't you know about natural immunity? Come on. So November 2021,

01:02:59.820 Johns Hopkins large study on natural immunity. And what it claimed to show is that antibody levels

01:03:05.680 against COVID-19 stay higher for a longer time in people who were infected by the virus and then

01:03:13.720 were fully vaccinated. It says the study also suggested a longer interval between infection

01:03:20.160 and first vaccine dose may enhance the antibody response. But they're saying this, Johns Hopkins

01:03:27.780 basically saying it will significantly enhance your immune protection if you have natural immunity

01:03:33.240 to go get the vaccine. So Megan, it's very important to recognize that what that study was looking at

01:03:41.660 was a lab value, antibody levels. And there's this assumption built in there that the level of my

01:03:48.820 antibodies automatically correlates with my level of immunity. And that assumption turns out not to be

01:03:55.100 true as anyone who has studied immunology understands. Antibody levels rise and fall with exposure

01:04:02.780 to vaccines, with exposure to the virus, with re-exposure to the virus. And long-term immunity is not

01:04:10.380 conferred by circulating antibodies. It's impossible for us to maintain circulating antibodies to every

01:04:17.540 pathogen that we've ever encountered. If we did that, the energy requirements would be far too high. And our

01:04:23.980 blood would be as thick as sludge because there would be too much protein in it, basically. So that's not

01:04:30.000 how the immune system actually works. Once the antibody levels rise, they gradually diminish, whether it's from

01:04:38.300 the vaccine or exposure to the virus or whatever. And long-term immunity is conferred by cells in your bone marrow,

01:04:46.000 B cells, that ramp up antibody production the next time they see the virus. And also by a different branch of the

01:04:53.560 immune system involving T cells, which kills cells that are infected by the virus. So it's long-term

01:04:59.880 so-called memory T cells and B cells that confer long-term immunity. So this whole notion that we can

01:05:08.440 measure immunity by showing that you get an antibody spike when you get the vaccine is just false. That's

01:05:16.220 why it's important. That's why I look to the Israel data because the Israel data doesn't just look at

01:05:21.340 antibody levels. It says, does that actually play out into a clinically meaningful outcome? Clinically

01:05:28.960 meaningful differences in infection, hospitalization, death? That's my next question. So we're now what,

01:05:34.640 you know, almost two years into this thing. They have actual humans who they can ask. That's right.

01:05:40.660 You had COVID. How many times did you get it again? Did you get a quote breakthrough? That's what we call it

01:05:46.600 when you've been vaccinated. Did you get a breakthrough infection? And I know the answer is yes,

01:05:50.660 for some people, but just anecdotally in my own life, it seems like far fewer had COVID twice,

01:05:59.000 you know, actually had COVID twice, then got a vaccine and then got COVID.

01:06:03.600 Yeah, no, that's correct. And that squares with all of the data. I don't think anyone would deny

01:06:07.800 that so-called breakthrough infections with the vaccines are far, far more common than reinfection

01:06:14.120 with natural immunity. And the rare cases of reinfection, the second case is always milder

01:06:22.160 than the first, far fewer hospitalizations, no recorded deaths from reinfections after,

01:06:28.640 you know, two years into the pandemic. So we haven't seen natural immunity decline two years into the

01:06:34.640 pandemic, as opposed to the vaccines, which unfortunately, the vaccine efficacy starts to

01:06:41.760 decline after about four months. And by six months, efficacy against infection is below 50% below the

01:06:50.440 threshold that we set for FDA authorization after only half a year. We have several studies to jump

01:06:57.280 in on that, just to jump in on that. Also, it doesn't appear that they do much, if anything,

01:07:01.460 to prevent Omicron. I mean, right from the beginning.

01:07:04.720 Yeah. Omicron has been, I think, a little bit of a wake-up call for people to understand

01:07:11.200 that with or without the vaccine, natural immunity is our way out of this pandemic.

01:07:19.900 Now, the vaccines still have some efficacy. I don't want to denigrate the vaccines. I don't think

01:07:25.140 there's any reason to do that. They still have some efficacy at preventing more severe symptoms

01:07:30.320 and hospitalization. So people that are at risk, that's a good thing. How long that will last,

01:07:36.240 we're starting to see those effects decline as well. But regardless, many, many people that have

01:07:44.140 been vaccinated, many people that have been boosted are nonetheless getting infected with Omicron.

01:07:49.340 Fortunately, most of those infections in the vaccinated and unvaccinated are mild. And what's

01:07:57.180 important for people to understand is that exposure to the virus in that way will create durable immunity.

01:08:05.040 And it will help you to move forward with some degree of hope that I don't need to continue living

01:08:12.920 my life in fear. I don't need to continue fearing every person that I encounter as a potential threat

01:08:21.180 to my health and well being. Because our immune systems are designed to deal with pathogens, the closest

01:08:31.680 relative to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID is the original SARS virus. And that virus was the outbreak

01:08:41.580 from that virus was now 17 years ago, almost 18 years ago. One of the interesting findings is that the natural

01:08:48.120 immunity of people who got the original SARS virus is still good 17 years later. And in fact, there's

01:08:54.700 some cross immunity against COVID. So the closest viral cousin to this particular pathogen shows

01:09:03.400 long-term durable natural immunity. We have studies that go up to 10 to 12 months for natural immunity.

01:09:09.620 But there's also this evidence from that prior virus that strongly suggests that natural immunity is

01:09:17.100 is going to last potentially indefinitely. Now, could you get a mild infection down the road,

01:09:23.820 mild reinfection down the road? Sure. But actually, every time you do that, you strengthen

01:09:29.860 and broaden your immunity once again. That's how the immune system works.

01:09:35.520 Well, we haven't been acknowledging any of that because Fauci and our public health officials

01:09:41.920 are singularly focused on the vaccine, even in the wake, you know, so far of Omicron, which they know

01:09:50.400 is not prevented by the vaccine. It's not. So, you know, why, right? But why are they so obsessed with the

01:09:57.760 vaccine? Well, there's been a little wobbling on even that. I actually, for the first time with my own ears,

01:10:06.760 heard the prophet Fauci acknowledge natural immunity counts. I'm going to play you that soundbite.

01:10:14.620 When we come back, I'll squeeze in a break, play that soundbite and ask you if you think this is

01:10:18.800 the beginning of the end of the natural immunity denialism.

01:10:23.300 So, Doc, one of the reasons why you got demonized by your institution was this just

01:10:35.500 single, like, tunnel vision when it comes to the vaccines, but the vaccines, but the vaccines

01:10:41.940 over everything. And what we've been told for the better part of two years, but even since Omicron,

01:10:49.020 even since Omicron, the White House just actually came out and doubled down on this story yesterday

01:10:54.260 that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, right? And they don't care that a lot of the unvaccinated

01:11:02.960 have natural immunity. They just ignore that strain of the unvaccinated, never mind the young

01:11:09.100 who are really not going to be effective spreaders of it or face much danger from it. So listen to this.

01:11:16.140 This is Biden. I want you guys to listen, not just to him yesterday. It starts with him

01:11:20.600 yesterday, but there's a soundbite in here where he actually promises, I had forgotten about this

01:11:25.180 in July, you will not get COVID if you get this vaccine. Listen to this.

01:11:33.800 It continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The pandemic of the unvaccinated is a tragedy that

01:11:40.080 is preventable. You're okay. You're not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.

01:11:46.140 The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.

01:11:49.160 We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.

01:11:57.600 How about that? You will not get COVID if you have these vaccinations. It's not true. It's just not

01:12:05.600 true.

01:12:05.920 It's absolutely not true. It's very dangerous rhetoric as well. Not just because it's false

01:12:13.840 from a public health standpoint and gives people a false notion that they're not going to get

01:12:20.560 infected if they have been vaccinated. The CDC has acknowledged, obviously, that that is not true.

01:12:25.820 At this point, I think everyone in the United States knows someone or has personally gotten a COVID infection,

01:12:34.160 even if they have been vaccinated. So there's just far too many cases of this to continue denying it publicly

01:12:41.320 like that. Just last week, I posted on Twitter, Megan, some data from Ontario. For weeks, Ontario had showed

01:12:49.480 far more cases among the vaccinated than unvaccinated in total. But the response to that was always,

01:12:57.700 yeah, but most of their population has been vaccinated. So proportionately, if there are some

01:13:02.200 cases, they're going to affect the vaccinated. But just last week, if you look at cases per 100,000,

01:13:10.000 so rates of infection, the vaccinated and unvaccinated lines crossed. And so there are now more cases,

01:13:17.880 not just in total, but cases per 100,000 in Ontario, Canada, among the vaccinated than among the unvaccinated.

01:13:26.260 So it's just become impossible to maintain that claim anymore. And it's also, I think, very divisive

01:13:35.320 and irresponsible, this sort of rhetoric that of scapegoating, of othering, our patience is wearing

01:13:44.380 thin, and we're not going to tolerate you people anymore. We've heard this kind of rhetoric before

01:13:50.700 from leaders, and we know where it goes. It never ends well.

01:13:58.020 Well, and no exceptions at all for well-meaning people who have a religious objection or who have

01:14:06.000 something wrong with them that doesn't allow them to take the vaccine. We had a doctor on the show who

01:14:11.060 had a medical treatment that she was undergoing that her doctor said, you cannot take the vaccine

01:14:16.760 while you're doing this. Why should she be vilified, right? Why should you be vilified? You

01:14:20.520 had COVID. You served the country. You took care of sick patients. Why are we doing that to our

01:14:24.560 doctors and nurses? So there's never any allowance, in particular for natural immunity. But a crack in the

01:14:33.280 egg, because maybe it's just me. This is the first time I've heard Fauci, other than that moment

01:14:38.920 with Sanjay Gupta, give any sort of a nod to the fact that getting COVID will provide you with natural

01:14:45.880 immunity, that even in the eyes of the prophet Fauci will count. Here is Fauci. This is soundbite 10.

01:14:53.480 This is from December 22nd.

01:14:56.260 We are not going to be in a situation of this degree of intensity indefinitely, for sure. And what we're

01:15:03.660 hoping that when we get through this Omicron wave, that we will have enough people vaccinated and or

01:15:10.420 having been infected and recovered well, that there will be a degree of immunity in the community,

01:15:16.520 such that you don't have a situation where it's dominating your life.

01:15:23.100 I feel like he slipped. I feel like that should be an exhibit to your appellate brief with to the

01:15:28.180 Ninth Circuit. The mask came off temporarily, if you'll excuse the metaphor.

01:15:35.100 I feel like that's big. He hasn't been acknowledging it. That's the first time. And I think it's just

01:15:39.880 because Omicron is so rampant. He's even he's got to acknowledge what's going to happen on the

01:15:46.460 opposite side of this. And it clearly is that millions of people will be immune, even if they

01:15:51.940 didn't get the vaccine. Yeah, the virus is becoming endemic, which means it's going to be a seasonal

01:15:57.580 virus that all of us are exposed to again and again. There's no there's no way at this point to

01:16:04.160 avoid exposure to COVID. Trying to live your life and not get exposed to this virus is is a physical

01:16:11.880 impossibility. It will happen sooner or later. And with or without the vaccine, most people are going

01:16:20.260 to respond to this and do just fine. The challenge right now, since people were not exposed to this

01:16:26.000 endemic virus when they were older people were not exposed to it when they were younger, is that we

01:16:31.960 need to we need to try to protect those folks. And we need to make sure that early treatment and

01:16:36.960 excellent treatment and better, newer treatments are made available to individuals who may have bad

01:16:42.680 outcomes from COVID. But this idea of the virus becoming endemic and circulating every year shouldn't

01:16:50.040 terrify people. Because once your body gets exposed to it and builds up natural immunity, if you know,

01:16:59.280 in a few years or down the road, you get another infection, it's going to be mild, it's going to once

01:17:05.300 again, broaden and deepen your immunity against new variants of this virus. So this will be something

01:17:14.560 like influenza that the that the human race learns to live with. And I mean, sad to say there are

01:17:22.020 elderly people or people with pulmonary conditions that die every year of influenza. And again, we should

01:17:30.360 do whatever we can to treat those folks and to protect them. And to, you know, to prevent bad outcomes if

01:17:36.200 they get infected. But the idea of turning everyone's lives upside down, and putting putting

01:17:44.660 in place measures of surveillance, and it's like firing people like you, firing people like you who

01:17:51.840 won't get the vaccine when you've had natural immunity. What are we going to fire people who

01:17:55.420 are obese, which is a major comorbidity, when it comes to your outcome, if you get COVID? I mean,

01:18:01.000 that's absurd. We would never even consider such a thing. But it's equally absurd to fire people who

01:18:05.960 have had COVID. And even before they had COVID, or and before there was a vaccine, and before there

01:18:11.240 were therapeutics worked up to his neck in sick patients, night and day to try to save lives.

01:18:16.680 It's grossly unfair and wrong. And I do wonder whether you think I mean, whether your lawyers

01:18:22.180 have said, now that your case is on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, which is, you know, we know is the

01:18:26.600 most liberal court of appeals in the nation. So that doesn't exactly bode well. But now that we are in

01:18:34.680 the midst of an Omicron surge, which is clearly more contagious than Delta, I mean, in defense of

01:18:39.340 the people who are, you know, taking the other position before the vaccines, they seem to be no

01:18:44.260 measure against getting Omicron. And they seem to maybe protect a little against Delta. And that seemed

01:18:50.280 to be what the doctors were saying. So now vaccine mandates make less sense than ever. Because you,

01:18:58.280 you could go, you could fold, you could get the vaccine tomorrow. And you could literally get

01:19:04.440 Omicron that week, and give it to somebody. So do you think it changes your litigation and

01:19:09.580 potentially the litigation that a lot of Americans have pending right now against employers who want

01:19:14.260 to do to them what yours did to you?

01:19:15.500 Well, I think you're correct that with each passing week, with each passing month, my case,

01:19:22.920 the case against mandates, the case in favor of recognizing natural immunity only becomes stronger.

01:19:29.040 On the flip side, though, Megan, I've been astonished at the ability of elites, public health officials,

01:19:39.680 leaders, to continue doubling down on a particular narrative, even in the face of overwhelming

01:19:47.000 evidence to the contrary. So in terms of reading the tea leaves, and what the court is going to do

01:19:52.400 in my case, I don't know. What happened at the district court level was the judge didn't agree with

01:20:00.220 my claim that there was a constitutional right at stake. So I was making a claim under the 14th

01:20:05.960 amendment that my equal protection was being denied because somebody who got the Johnson and Johnson

01:20:10.740 vaccine, which according to the company's own data right out of the gate was 67% effective against

01:20:16.880 infection, was allowed back on campus was allowed to go to work. Whereas I that had 95 to 99%

01:20:23.040 protection was not allowed to go back that this violated my equal protection rights. The courts

01:20:28.820 disagree, the district court disagreed that there was a constitutional claim at stake. And so they

01:20:35.700 applied a lower level of scrutiny to the university's policy, which, which means they just, they just

01:20:43.920 said, we're not going to opine or get into any of the fact finding on the science, right?

01:20:48.820 Once a court decides that a constitutional claim is going to be judged under whether there is a rational

01:20:55.120 basis for the policy being challenged, you're dead. That's it. As soon as they decide rational basis is the

01:21:02.020 test they're going to apply, you've lost your constitutional claim. And that's what happened to

01:21:05.900 you. You needed them to require either intermediate, it's called intermediate scrutiny or strict

01:21:10.700 scrutiny. And the, the opposite, opposite is true on strict scrutiny. They can almost never uphold the

01:21:16.280 policies. If that's the, the framework, the court loses. So you lost on the standard they chose to apply.

01:21:23.320 That's, that's absolutely correct. You're sounding like a lawyer. Now, Megan, you're clearly versed in

01:21:28.220 this. In another life I was. Rational basis review. They, they said the university's policy

01:21:34.480 actually doesn't have to achieve the aim that it says it's going to achieve. It just has to have a

01:21:39.720 sort of plausible public health goal. It doesn't have to be narrowly tailored so it could capture

01:21:44.840 cases that it need not capture like yours. And so, yeah, at that point, basically the court is

01:21:50.840 entirely deferring to the university to make any policy that it wants. And so I think it is important

01:21:57.380 for the courts to, to weigh in here and the Supreme court is going to weigh in soon, at least on some

01:22:04.840 of the mandate cases to weigh in and say, what, what are the limits to the measures that can be taken

01:22:13.260 by these various institutions elected and unelected during a public health emergency? And most of what's

01:22:22.200 been rolled out during COVID has relied on the 1905 case precedent called Jacobson v. Massachusetts.

01:22:29.960 And this was a case in which the Supreme court upheld the right of the city of Boston to levy a $5

01:22:35.240 fine against anyone who didn't want the smallpox vaccine during a smallpox epidemic. Now, keep in

01:22:41.980 mind a couple of things about this precedent. Smallpox is far more deadly than COVID. It affects both the

01:22:47.860 young and the old. Um, and $5. I did the calculation adjusted for inflation is $155 fine today. So that's

01:22:56.480 the precedent that all of these mandates are relying on. Um, I think losing one's job is, is not quite in

01:23:05.020 the same ballpark as having to pay $155 fine for declining a vaccine. Um, so I think that the court

01:23:13.860 and probably the Supreme court has to be able to set some limits to, um, the Jacobson precedent because

01:23:20.560 these, these tiered level of levels of scrutiny that you described, um, and legal doctrines around

01:23:26.860 bodily autonomy have developed a lot in the last hundred years since that 1905 case. Um, and yet, uh,

01:23:34.960 so far we've seen all kinds of policies being rolled out under the umbrella of the Jacobson precedent,

01:23:42.100 um, that, uh, I, I think there's several, several problems here. One is that public, the notion of

01:23:49.760 what counts as a public health emergency is never defined, right? So I think in the initial weeks of

01:23:55.260 the pandemic, everyone agreed that some sort of emergency measures needed to be taken, but once

01:24:00.780 we get a handle on the illness, we know who it affects, we have to establish, um, some meaningful

01:24:06.780 definition of emergency, how many cases, how many hospitalizations, you know, uh, so that we know,

01:24:14.280 um, when the emergency is over, the fact that that has been left open ended, I think is not by accident.

01:24:22.580 No one, none of these officials will give us off ramps criteria by which they judge when there's an

01:24:28.400 emergency, when there's not, when the masks can come off. No one will say it's one of the most

01:24:33.880 frustrating parts of this because the people in charge owe us some sort of metrics, objective

01:24:39.120 metrics. Even if they set them at ridiculous levels, at least we'd have something we could hold

01:24:44.220 them to, but they just keep moving the goalposts. And then there was, there's a woman, um, Bethany

01:24:49.760 Mandel, who came on our show. She's a journalist, she's a commentator. And she was just, uh, on Twitter

01:24:55.280 yesterday, there was a video of her arguing in her Maryland home County. They want to make indoor

01:25:00.000 masking permanent. This is happening in more and more places. She was saying that you're not even

01:25:06.080 moving the goalposts anymore. Now you're just removing them from the field. Like there, there

01:25:10.320 are no more goalposts. Well, this, this actually is not new. I mean, this gets at some of the larger

01:25:16.040 social and cultural transformations in play during this pandemic. And Megan, I think this is really

01:25:21.100 important to talk about because many of our leads, I think, want this state of emergency to become

01:25:26.940 a new standard paradigm of, of governance. You might remember very early in the first weeks of

01:25:35.020 the pandemic, there was this phrase, this meme that people started repeating about the new normal.

01:25:42.000 And I think, uh, I think the fact that that phrase emerged almost immediately in the first weeks of

01:25:50.340 our pandemic response was, was very concerning. It suggested that our ruling class saw the pandemic

01:25:58.520 both as, as an urgent issue to be dealt with appropriately, but also as a pretext for

01:26:05.320 transforming certain paradigms of governance. I mean, there was a huge power shift. Um, there was,

01:26:12.420 there were large, uh, shifts of wealth from the middle class to, to the ruling class and to,

01:26:18.860 uh, uh, particularly tech sectors and tech elites who benefited a lot from the lockdowns and benefited

01:26:26.980 a lot from the particular, uh, response that we instituted for the, for the pandemic. And so I think

01:26:34.900 there's a, there's a broader social, uh, context behind the way in which our pandemic response unfolded,

01:26:42.280 that there were institutional powers that in the last several decades probably had been suffering from a

01:26:47.960 kind of loss of legitimacy. And they saw that they could mitigate this by constantly evoking a state

01:26:55.940 of exception or a state of emergency and a perceived need for strong measures in place for security and

01:27:03.720 stability. And, and when people were afraid, um, they looked to leaders for that. And so it became this

01:27:12.300 kind of, um, this kind of feedback loop where more and more extreme measures were instituted and called

01:27:21.540 for. And now, you know, we're, we're at the point where people are saying that we should never take

01:27:26.360 off our masks. But I mean, I remember early in the pandemic Fauci saying that the new normal will

01:27:33.200 involve never shaking hands again, like indefinitely. We should just do away with that social

01:27:38.720 custom. Um, which is a very bizarre thing for, uh, I think anyone to say much.

01:27:45.540 I hear this more and more. There's a, there's a woman I know in New York who was like, I I'll never

01:27:50.160 go to the theater again without this mask on. Would you, I mean, would you ever, I'm like,

01:27:53.200 are you kidding me? I never wear my mask. I only wear it when I actually physically have to,

01:27:57.360 in order to get my shopping done or whatever. I, and I always wear it under protest. I mean, I,

01:28:02.060 I want, you know how people put like vote on theirs. I want to sort of write F you mask. I don't know

01:28:07.840 something to communicate how much I hate having this thing on my face. Um, but I'm certainly not

01:28:13.920 going to decorate it and I'm not going to make it look good. And I'm not going to wear it in

01:28:18.940 circumstances where I don't absolutely have to, in order to attend. And that's my choice. It should

01:28:23.860 be my choice. We're going to bring in our callers. They're calling in right now. So I don't want to

01:28:28.220 keep them waiting. We'll squeeze in a quick break. Um, and then we're back with the good doctor

01:28:33.140 who was treated very wrongly, uh, by UC Irvine, uh, right after this.

01:28:43.080 Aaron is staying with us for your calls and you can find more, um, from Dr. Cariardi by,

01:28:48.840 by, uh, checking out his blog, human flourishing on Substack. And let me ask you, doc, is that what

01:28:55.320 you're doing now? Cause I mean, before we get to the callers, I, did you find another job? Cause you

01:28:58.720 need a job. Yeah. I'm, uh, starting at private practice, doc one health in Southern California,

01:29:05.980 a practice run by doctors for patients where you actually have, have access to your position

01:29:11.860 directly. Um, I joined the unity project, which is organizing opposition to, uh, vaccine mandates

01:29:19.100 for healthy children. Uh, we've got a March that we're co-sponsoring in DC defeat the mandates

01:29:25.140 on January 23rd. Uh, we're going to have Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, Laura Logan's going to

01:29:30.960 be there, Brett Weinstein. It's, it's a terrific lineup and we're hoping to get a lot of folks out

01:29:36.020 for that as well. So I'm, I'm involved, get to the child mandates, which is just, they're,

01:29:42.500 they're nuts. Um, but coming down and now it's boosters. Now boosters are being mandated for your

01:29:48.040 12 year old and more and more cities. And there's so many questions about whether you should do that.

01:29:52.760 All right. Let me bring in some of my listeners. Cause I know that they've got comments or

01:29:56.280 questions for you. Um, Robin in Kentucky has got a question for you that I actually would like to

01:30:02.820 know more on too. Hey, Robin, go ahead. All right. Well, it's wonderful to be with you both. I've

01:30:08.040 really enjoyed the conversation so far. And as a psychiatrist and an ethicist, two areas, which I

01:30:14.380 find fascinating. Can you speak to a theory or a hypothesis twofold? Why our leadership class is

01:30:22.040 doing this and how they've done it. And then as, um, as a nation and as a people, why are we so

01:30:30.540 easily manipulated and, um, so into fear that we are willing to accept this? I'm not that old,

01:30:38.880 but I do remember when, you know, we believe that the government worked for us and not the other way

01:30:44.680 around. That's a good question. Why are they doing it? And why are we allowing it doc?

01:30:48.560 So Robin, thank you. That's a really great question. I think we could spend another hour

01:30:54.640 answering that question, but I'll give you a few quick thoughts just to sketch what I think is

01:30:59.960 going on. Um, so I think some people are doing it for reasons of power and control, and some people

01:31:09.320 are motivated by financial interests. So one way to gain power over people is to isolate them.

01:31:18.560 And that happened during the lockdowns. There was a kind of new model of social relationships

01:31:22.560 where digital connection was supposed to replace physical presence. This was strongly enforced

01:31:28.600 during the lockdowns. And when people are separated one from another, uh, it, it makes them easier to

01:31:35.580 control. You can control the flow of information to them. Um, you can control and monitor their movements

01:31:41.620 and there, there are no doubts. This is not a conspiracy theory. There are people, um, that have, uh,

01:31:49.180 great wealth and great, uh, financial and other forms of power that have been clear about a desire for

01:31:56.300 transforming the way in which people, uh, engage and interact with one another. Um, and this was an

01:32:04.840 opportunity, I think, I think to do that. So a lot of what's happening is that an infrastructure is being

01:32:11.220 put in place. What I've called on my, uh, substack newsletter, a biosecurity surveillance regime,

01:32:17.280 uh, of which vaccine passports are kind of an important piece. So getting people used to the idea

01:32:24.540 that in order to do things, uh, like get on a plane, get on a train, uh, go to a restaurant,

01:32:31.960 I need to show some form of credential, the QR code, um, or the proof of vaccination that says I

01:32:39.820 have done what I have been told to do by those in authority. And some people, some people get off

01:32:47.060 on requiring that of you. And some people get off on, on proving that they, as I said the other day

01:32:51.500 with Nicole Wallace are a good, good girl, and they've done all that they're required to do. And

01:32:55.340 now they want their head pat. Um, let me get another caller in Martha in Virginia has a good one.

01:32:59.960 Martha. Hi, go ahead. Yes. Um, how do they determine what's like your at home testing and

01:33:06.680 the testing they're doing around the country between Delta and Omicron? How are they saying

01:33:12.080 that one is, um, you know, what's what? That's a great question. So the ordinary tests that most

01:33:18.680 people are getting cannot distinguish which type of variant you have. That requires more specialized

01:33:23.880 testing where the sequence, um, of, of, of RNA in the virus is actually sort of spelled out by the

01:33:32.440 test. So most people, when they get a test, they're not going to be able to find out whether

01:33:37.960 they have Delta or Omicron. Uh, the public health authorities can test a population and see that,

01:33:46.220 okay, 70% of the cases now, let's say in Southern California are Omicron and 30% are Delta. But in

01:33:55.600 terms of an, in a case by case individual, which of those strains do you have? Most people are not

01:34:01.860 going to know whether they have the Omicron variant or the Delta variant that that requires more

01:34:06.620 specialized testing than the stuff that you're getting at the lab or the at home testing kits

01:34:11.880 that you can buy. I mean, we're in the midst of Omicron right now, but Delta is still out there.

01:34:16.760 Doc, thank you so much for telling us your story. Good luck with the substack and with the private

01:34:20.620 practice. Uh, really appreciate you taking a stand and being so honest about it. Thanks, Megan.

01:34:26.100 Well, don't miss the show tomorrow. We got the ruthless guys back and there's so much to go over

01:34:30.640 the January 6th hysteria that's going on so much more. Check it out tomorrow. Download the show and

01:34:35.760 check out YouTube in the meantime.

01:34:36.620 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - January 05, 2022

Fauci's ＂Noble Lie,＂ Natural Immunity, and China's Latest Crackdown, with Sen. Rand Paul, Josh Rogin, and Dr. Aaron Kheriaty ｜ Ep. 234

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