The Megyn Kelly Show - Legacy Media Constraints, and COVID Gaslighting Continues, with Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowles, and David Zweig

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

00:00:12.240 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.420 It is a week of firsts here on The MK Show. First week in our new studio.

00:00:19.540 First time having an on-set guest today. How about that?

00:00:23.980 And we're having a free press day.

00:00:26.360 The free press, as you may know, is an online news magazine launched by journalist Barry Weiss after she left the New York Times in a blaze of glory, submitting and posting a scathing resignation letter for all the world to see.

00:00:41.180 You may remember she was one of our first interviews on the show after she did that.

00:00:45.380 It was one of my favorite episodes.

00:00:46.580 It was just Barry, unchained, talking about what it had been like at the New York Times, where she entered in good faith, earnestly, only to find that having that approach to the news was not acceptable at the Times, as all of our listeners know.

00:01:02.020 You can find her journalistic outfit, the free press, at thefp.com.

00:01:08.580 And there you can read their free articles or become a subscriber for all of their content.

00:01:13.660 One of their recent major stories involved a woman blowing the whistle on appalling care, in quotation marks, at a major transgender clinic in Missouri.

00:01:24.320 The New York Times later investigated the reporting done by the free press and ended up confirming the horrifying details.

00:01:30.960 But that was not their mission.

00:01:32.240 At first, they wanted to cast doubt on it.

00:01:33.940 People like Chris Hayes of MSNBC cast doubt on it, only to find out, oh, the free press and Barry were right all along.

00:01:41.360 But later in the show, we're going to have David Zweig.

00:01:42.940 You know, David, he was one of the few writing for places like New York Magazine during the pandemic, pushing back in that publication and others against the mask and the mandate madness.

00:01:55.460 He's going to be here.

00:01:56.440 And then the back half of the show, Barry's wife, Nellie Bowles.

00:02:00.540 She will join me.

00:02:01.600 She never goes on camera.

00:02:02.800 I don't even know what Nellie looks like.

00:02:04.640 I just know she's married to Barry.

00:02:06.240 So we're going to get to meet Nellie and find out how she had a similar journey to Barry at the Times.

00:02:11.740 The Times is creating more conservatives than Hillsdale these days.

00:02:17.200 But for now, we welcome Barry back to the show.

00:02:20.840 Barry, how are you doing?

00:02:22.340 Megan, it's really, really great to be here.

00:02:24.660 I don't even know if they're minting conservatives.

00:02:26.320 I think they're just ejecting normal liberals.

00:02:29.380 But yes, I'll let Nellie speak for her experience.

00:02:31.780 That's right.

00:02:32.820 No, I know you're not actually conservatives, but you're just you're not the liberals you were when you entered the Times, or at least you've been disabused of your belief in those kinds of liberals and what they stood for.

00:02:44.040 I think we've been we basically realized that in order to do the kind of journalism that drove us to places like the Times or for me, the Wall Street Journal or for Nellie, the San Francisco Chronicle.

00:02:55.840 Before that, we had to leave the legacy institutions because even though they have the, you know, the prestige, even though they have the distribution, they don't actually live up to the values that they claim to.

00:03:09.640 And so we needed to leave in order to do the job that we came to do.

00:03:13.520 And that's exactly what we're doing at the Free Press.

00:03:16.280 I mean, it's the aptly named.

00:03:19.000 Can I just ask you, how are you?

00:03:20.200 You're the busiest person in media.

00:03:22.000 You've got 10,000 projects.

00:03:24.040 You started a university.

00:03:26.020 You started a media outlet.

00:03:28.120 You got married.

00:03:29.160 You had a baby.

00:03:30.320 Oh, I know you did.

00:03:31.660 The Twitter files with Elon Musk.

00:03:33.880 You were like one of the, if not the first, you and Matt Taibbi journalists called to go investigate.

00:03:38.380 Like the list.

00:03:39.300 I don't.

00:03:39.900 How are you?

00:03:41.340 You're so sweet.

00:03:42.280 I'm I'm amazing.

00:03:43.580 I mean, when I think back to what has changed in my life over the past two years, I do get a little bit of whiplash.

00:03:53.200 You know, we moved from New York to L.A.

00:03:54.920 We bought our first house.

00:03:56.620 We got married.

00:03:58.240 We had a child.

00:03:59.360 We became first time entrepreneurs.

00:04:03.160 I mean, as you know, Megan, I am not a business person.

00:04:06.820 Like I didn't know what ROI was.

00:04:08.980 I didn't know what EBITDA was.

00:04:10.420 And now here I am running a company with 20 people and growing and offices as of a few weeks ago in L.A. and New York.

00:04:19.040 So it's been just an absolutely wild ride.

00:04:22.480 I wouldn't change it for the world.

00:04:23.700 But, you know, having a kid and growing a business in the same year, like maybe not don't do those two things at the same time if you want to maintain some semblance of healthy sleep patterns.

00:04:34.040 But I'm excited and we're putting on our first live debate next week here in L.A., which I'm also incredibly excited about.

00:04:41.300 And I hope it's going to be the first.

00:04:42.180 I'm interested in this debate.

00:04:43.580 If that were here in New York, I would have been there.

00:04:45.700 I apologize.

00:04:46.460 I can't fly out to L.A. for this because I actually would really have liked to enjoy this.

00:04:50.480 So who's debating and get to what what is the heart of this?

00:04:55.020 Because I love this whole idea of the debate series.

00:04:56.780 We do a debate series on the show where we have both sides, strong representatives, you know, from on the gun debate.

00:05:02.220 We did Palestine and Israel.

00:05:03.360 We've done a bunch of them.

00:05:04.480 So I completely support the concept.

00:05:06.820 It seems like you've gotten some spicy women who are ready to go at it on this issue.

00:05:12.400 I loved your Israeli-Palestinian.

00:05:14.460 I think you had Alan Dershowitz and Shadi Hamid for that.

00:05:17.040 It was so, so good.

00:05:18.600 But, yeah, I mean, what we've found is that, you know, despite what a lot of the legacy publications would have you believe, which is, you know, don't treat readers or listeners like adults.

00:05:29.800 Give them a kind of pre-masticated mush that confirms their biases.

00:05:37.560 Actually, it turns out that huge numbers of people crave open, honest, sober, provocative debates.

00:05:44.820 And when I look at the kind of episodes that have done the best on my podcast, honestly, often they're debates, including most recently about Ozempic, which I thought was a really provocative one.

00:05:54.700 So what could be more provocative, in our view, than debating the legacy of the sexual revolution, something that growing up, I believed, was an unadulterated good, allowed women to become not second-class citizens to men in a revolutionary tiny pill, allowed women for the first time in history to have autonomy and control over their bodies.

00:06:17.460 And when to have children, did it make you a slut or a wench or whatever the smear would be to have sex before marriage?

00:06:24.840 Holy shit.

00:06:25.640 It changed the world.

00:06:27.100 And yet, what are the unintended consequences of all of these freedoms?

00:06:30.520 We see that people are having less sex.

00:06:33.160 They're not getting married.

00:06:34.140 And therefore, they're unhappier and they're lonelier.

00:06:37.400 You know, what of hookup culture?

00:06:39.600 What has happened to men as a result of feminism and the sexual revolution?

00:06:43.700 I think that this is an extremely juicy debate, and we put together an amazing group of women.

00:06:49.580 All, by the way, happen to be young mothers on stage.

00:06:52.560 On one side, we have the great and powerful Sarah Hader, who's incredible.

00:06:58.480 Look her up.

00:06:59.020 If people don't know her, her podcast is a special place in hell.

00:07:02.000 She's paired up with the inimitable Grimes, which I think is going to be an incredibly interesting pairing.

00:07:07.480 And they're arguing that the sexual revolution has not failed.

00:07:12.820 On the other side of the debate, arguing that the sexual revolution has failed, we have Louise Perry.

00:07:18.740 Megan, if your listeners don't know her, I think that they will be extremely interested in what she has to say.

00:07:23.660 She's out of the UK.

00:07:24.420 Yeah, they know her.

00:07:25.060 We've had her on.

00:07:25.880 Yeah, you've had her on.

00:07:26.540 She's flying in from the UK.

00:07:27.780 Her book is called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.

00:07:30.280 And she is joined with, certainly not a conservative, Anna Katchian, one of the hosts of the podcast Red Scare.

00:07:36.260 Yeah, we've had her on, too.

00:07:37.560 Red Scare.

00:07:38.120 She's amazing.

00:07:39.380 She's amazing.

00:07:40.180 And the opener is, and this is the real wild card, Tim Dillon, one of my favorite comedians.

00:07:47.200 And I love him, too.

00:07:49.820 So it's going to be a really, really great night.

00:07:51.600 The theater's about to sell out.

00:07:52.900 It's 1,600 seats.

00:07:54.000 And it's the first live debate we're ever doing.

00:07:57.000 So I'm nervous, excited, really hope people will join.

00:08:00.720 It's September 13th, 7 p.m., downtown Los Angeles.

00:08:04.320 You can get tickets at vfp.com forward slash debates.

00:08:08.420 And my plug is now over.

00:08:11.020 It's a good plug, though, because, I mean, there's a lot of juiciness in there.

00:08:14.300 And the phrase you said that I know is true from just reading the news that stuck out to me is people are not having sex.

00:08:20.320 Right.

00:08:21.240 Why are the young people not having any sex?

00:08:24.260 They're not having sex.

00:08:25.920 They're not driving.

00:08:27.460 I mean, we watched.

00:08:28.140 I don't know if you saw.

00:08:28.720 There's this new, really funny Jennifer Lawrence comedy.

00:08:31.260 No hard feelings.

00:08:32.160 Have you seen it yet?

00:08:32.780 Mm-mm.

00:08:34.360 Okay.

00:08:34.600 Well, there's this.

00:08:35.060 How have you seen it?

00:08:35.820 How are you taking in any entertainment?

00:08:38.120 I don't know.

00:08:38.900 Because I don't think it's.

00:08:40.220 You've got to unwind.

00:08:41.540 Anyway, we had family in town.

00:08:42.980 We were like, oh, this looks appealing to everyone.

00:08:44.780 And it's actually kind of a throwback movie.

00:08:47.440 It's really.

00:08:48.400 It's just very fun and raucous.

00:08:50.780 But there's this scene where Jennifer Lawrence, who's like 32 or 33 in the movie, and the whole conceit is that she's being paid by the parents of a dorky snowflaked helicopter kid in order to take him out of his shell, maybe have sex with him.

00:09:05.400 And it's like this classic rom-com scene in which they're at a house party.

00:09:10.320 And you imagine that behind every single bedroom door upstairs, there's going to be kids hooking up.

00:09:15.660 And instead, she opens every door, and it's just kids on their phones or kids on VR headsets or kids, you know, looking at a TikTok video together, sort of hunched over the screen.

00:09:25.940 And it's just very emblematic of the current moment, right?

00:09:30.260 The Internet's changed everything.

00:09:32.040 The Internet is revolutionary in ways beyond our imagining.

00:09:36.540 And it's definitely changing the expectations that teenagers and men and women have about sex and what it looks like, what other people's bodies should look like, and also whether or not you need to have it in the first place when you can just go and look at Pornhub.

00:09:50.280 So this is like one of the many topics that we think are just really relevant to everyone's lives, men, women, gay, straight, et cetera.

00:09:58.600 So really excited to hash it out on stage as the moderator of this conversation.

00:10:03.560 It's such a difference from, you know, you're younger than I am.

00:10:06.940 But when both of us grew up, when you actually had to court someone a little bit, you had to actually work on building a relationship if you wanted to have sex with them.

00:10:15.400 Um, now you just swipe and Tinder and next thing you know, somebody shows up at your door.

00:10:21.440 We've heard some horror stories just among our adult friends about young, you know, their kids who are in their young 20s.

00:10:29.940 You can be extorted.

00:10:31.640 Like, you don't know who's coming to your door.

00:10:34.160 You, like, you're just going to have random sex with a random stranger you found on Tinder.

00:10:37.860 And you have no idea whether this person, like, has an idea about your family financial situation, what she's going to allege after she leaves.

00:10:46.720 It is a fraught way of having action.

00:10:50.800 I mean, like, just put down the phone, call somebody up, like, on the rotary dial, ask them to a movie, whisper some sweet nothings.

00:10:59.680 You know, that's the old school way worked, Barry.

00:11:02.240 It worked.

00:11:02.720 It worked.

00:11:04.280 It worked.

00:11:05.120 I mean, I have to say there's some amazing couples I know that have met on the apps.

00:11:10.280 And, you know, technology has allowed you to connect with people in all over the world who you might not otherwise know.

00:11:16.280 But, yeah, I mean, it's definitely a brave new world.

00:11:19.940 One of the things I've debated sort of bringing back at the free press is the question of – or one thing I think could be really fun is, like, a classified section.

00:11:27.640 There are people that have written in saying, you know, I'm single.

00:11:31.120 Do you know any like-minded people?

00:11:33.120 And I'm realizing that –

00:11:34.160 I feel like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain.

00:11:37.460 Exactly.

00:11:39.300 That's right.

00:11:40.780 I like that idea.

00:11:42.000 That would probably drive your readership way, way up.

00:11:44.880 I mean, not that it needs it.

00:11:45.720 It's already high.

00:11:47.040 I don't know.

00:11:47.740 I feel like it's such a mixed message.

00:11:50.220 All these young girls today are getting such mixed messages, whether it comes to, you know, their sexual freedom, their gender, right?

00:11:59.400 What does it mean to be pro-woman in today's day and age?

00:12:02.460 Is it okay to advocate for women's spaces?

00:12:05.380 And then there's lane three, which I've been thinking about lately.

00:12:09.160 I didn't actually plan on discussing this with you, but since we're on the topic, it's sort of the Matt Walsh messaging that was all over Twitter this past weekend, or X, as it's now called.

00:12:17.700 And, you know, Matt Walsh sort of took on this young woman who was online.

00:12:23.460 She said, I'm – there are these videos all over.

00:12:25.740 She was on TikTok, and he reposted on Twitter with a commentary, and she was like, I'm 28.

00:12:31.020 You know what my life looks like because I don't have a husband and children?

00:12:34.180 I got to sleep until 1030 after going to the Beyonce concert last night.

00:12:38.240 I didn't rise from my bed until 1015.

00:12:41.220 Every time I thought, I should probably get up and do something, I thought, why?

00:12:44.820 Nobody's making me.

00:12:45.800 I'm not missing out on anything.

00:12:46.840 I went to Beyonce last night, and I didn't get home until 1 a.m., and I danced and drank my little heart out, and I didn't pay a babysitter to watch my kids as I did that.

00:12:54.860 And I woke up a tad hungover this morning, which is probably why I was in bed for so long.

00:12:58.720 And I was just scrolling on my phone, and I saw a picture of shakshuka, and I thought, you know what sounds really good?

00:13:03.940 Maybe I'm going to learn how to make shakshuka today because I have no plans, and I don't have kids, and I don't have a husband, and I don't have errands to run.

00:13:11.040 I can go to the grocery store and learn how to make shakshuka.

00:13:15.180 She's going to learn how to make some dish.

00:13:16.600 It's just Rayleigh's dish with poached eggs and tomato sauce, and I will make it for you next time you're in L.A.

00:13:22.700 Okay.

00:13:23.300 It's done.

00:13:24.820 So I saw it, and I was like, she sounds kind of obnoxious, but okay, fine.

00:13:29.280 She's loving her life.

00:13:30.380 Who cares?

00:13:32.100 He sort of saw something else, which is she doesn't realize how vapid and empty her life is, like that this is no answer to, hey, why aren't you married yet?

00:13:41.880 Hey, where's your family?

00:13:42.900 Like he, forgive me for trying to paraphrase Matt without having his commentary right in front of me, but he took issue with it as like the glorification of a lonely lifestyle that he doesn't agree with.

00:13:57.400 You know, he doesn't, he wants marriage.

00:13:59.680 He wants families.

00:14:00.840 He wants, I think he would like that woman to see the way he and his wife live and be willing to celebrate it.

00:14:08.320 And she certainly didn't sound like she wanted to.

00:14:11.460 Now, to me, both of these people make me a little uncomfortable, right?

00:14:15.620 Like the one woman seemed a little in your face, you people who've chosen to get married and have kids, F off.

00:14:21.460 I'm here with my post-Beyonce hangover and it's glorious.

00:14:25.380 And he's the same, frankly.

00:14:27.920 You know, like, you know what it's like when you're a young woman and you're 28, I've been there, and you're not married.

00:14:33.940 Everybody's asking you why you're not married.

00:14:35.520 Like, so it's like, she's trying to say, like, I'm good.

00:14:39.820 Exactly.

00:14:40.620 Like, I honestly saw that as just kind of online bullying of a kind.

00:14:48.800 Like, I, you know, there was no sense of empathy in what, and maybe, maybe there were tweets that I missed, but I sort of glanced at it.

00:14:57.960 I watched the video.

00:14:58.680 I don't think that's, no, he's not feeling empathetic toward her.

00:15:01.340 Like, I mean, I'm, I'm divorced.

00:15:05.740 I know what it is to be single and, you know, be on your own and, and looking for a family, which thank God I found.

00:15:16.260 And I'm, I'm so grateful that I have, but the idea of looking at a 28 year old woman who's talking about going to Beyonce, which I do wish I got a chance to go to Beyonce or Taylor Swift this summer.

00:15:26.600 It did not.

00:15:27.220 That, that, that the answer to that is to dunk on her and say, you're glorifying being single.

00:15:34.840 Well, no, maybe what she's doing is telling herself and doing it in public as a way to sort of destigmatize the feelings of being alone, that it's okay.

00:15:44.160 And, you know, I can look out for myself and I can find meaning and happiness in a life without the things that, you know, ostensibly she, like most people would want.

00:15:54.300 Which is love and happiness and the meaning that comes from a family life.

00:15:59.820 And so I just don't think that if you genuinely believe in so-called family values, that the way to advance those is dunking on people who haven't yet found it.

00:16:12.300 So, you know, that's just not, I'm, I'm not, I'm not down with that sort of messaging.

00:16:19.960 I don't, it don't resonate with it.

00:16:21.640 And certainly Matt Walsh believes in his family values.

00:16:24.820 I'm not sure that he believes in, and, and marriage.

00:16:27.500 I doubt that he believes in the kind of marriage that I'm a part of.

00:16:30.880 And I believe that I and my family are, you know, just as, just as valid as any other.

00:16:37.300 So I was struck, I watched, what's his documentary called?

00:16:41.700 What is a woman?

00:16:43.060 And I was really impressed.

00:16:44.380 There was a lot that I liked in it.

00:16:45.860 And then I came to the last scene, which just made me utterly cringe in which he walks into this softly lit kitchen and says essentially to his wife, and you'll correct me.

00:16:58.440 Like, I need, like, not make me a sandwich, but like, or no, the wife's hands him a jar of pickles or something.

00:17:05.060 And it's like, I need help.

00:17:06.580 Just this, like, I don't know.

00:17:08.620 I, for me, you lost me in that moment.

00:17:11.600 Personally.

00:17:11.960 And then, and then he says to her, after asking all the experts, what is a woman and no one can tell him, he asks her and she says an adult human female and, you know, done.

00:17:20.900 It's like a simple thing.

00:17:21.760 So I, I got the message.

00:17:22.960 I know what you're saying.

00:17:23.980 I, I have, I really like Matt Wall.

00:17:26.380 She's been on the show.

00:17:27.220 He's, he's provocative.

00:17:28.240 He's interesting.

00:17:28.800 He's got this, you know, I don't know.

00:17:31.740 You could say dated view of the family structure of women in general.

00:17:35.780 I loved what is a woman.

00:17:37.800 I think it was such a force for good, but I do like he, and it's not just Matt who I love and I'd have on, but like, it's not just him.

00:17:45.160 There's like a block growing within the right that the new messaging seems to be to like women who are like you, like me, like who've chosen, chosen to work.

00:17:57.840 That somehow this is an abandonment of our responsibilities that like we're missing our true calling, even though you're a mother and I'm a mother too.

00:18:07.340 And we are doing it all, but not perfectly.

00:18:10.320 Neither are the stay at home moms.

00:18:11.720 And I feel like women have actually kind of gotten to the place where we're not judging each other as much for this anymore.

00:18:17.260 Like we're realizing that stay at home moms are rocking it and they've made great choices for them.

00:18:21.260 And so have the working moms.

00:18:22.500 And then it's like this group of men, mostly on the right, I have to say, who more and more are like sending out these kind of nasty messages about how somehow there's been some dereliction of duty by those of us who have chosen to have professions in addition to families.

00:18:39.860 Yeah, I mean, I think there's always been sort of a retrograde element on the political right, and we shouldn't be surprised that it's still there.

00:18:47.500 But if we want to sort of put it in cultural context right now, I think one of the things that's happening is that as the sort of illiberal left or the woke left has gotten especially sort of disconnected from reality, it has given a sort of opening to the right and toward the cultural right to say, look how crazy they are.

00:19:10.960 The only solution is to sort of wind back the clock to the 1950s.

00:19:15.180 Look how crazy they are.

00:19:16.260 If you want to get back to normalcy, we need to simply, you know, go back to the moment sort of like pre-feminism, pre-women's equality.

00:19:26.420 And I just don't believe that.

00:19:29.420 Period.

00:19:29.960 Right, right.

00:19:30.800 You're right.

00:19:31.360 It's reactionary in response to the left trying to demonize the stay at home moms.

00:19:35.580 And it's under, you know, and like, exactly.

00:19:37.980 We're in the middle saying you don't have to choose.

00:19:40.180 You don't have to demonize anybody.

00:19:41.300 Both of those choices are totally cool and valid.

00:19:43.100 And the answer to like what the left is doing to the stay at home moms is not to do that same thing to the working moms.

00:19:50.080 Exactly.

00:19:51.500 Exactly.

00:19:51.820 And also to the women who aren't moms at all, like the women who have chosen not to get married and have kids or the women who would like to get married and have kids but haven't yet found the person.

00:20:00.760 This is actually what Matt tweeted on the gal.

00:20:03.660 He tweeted, her life doesn't revolve around her family and kids, so instead it revolves around TV shows and pop stars.

00:20:10.640 Worst of all, she's too stupid to realize how depressing this is.

00:20:14.080 And then she got on there.

00:20:15.060 A lot of people said he was bullying her.

00:20:16.180 And he said, the woman that I, quote, bullied posts constantly to TikTok about how she's 29 and single, living an easy life because she doesn't have kids.

00:20:23.740 She wants people to notice these facts about her, which is why she announces them to the world daily.

00:20:28.040 So I noticed and I gave my take.

00:20:30.020 That's how the Internet works.

00:20:31.180 She's not a victim.

00:20:32.140 Calm down, everyone.

00:20:32.880 So I have to say I agree with that second tweet.

00:20:35.420 You put it out there.

00:20:36.660 If you don't want anybody to comment on your lifestyle, don't put it out there.

00:20:41.980 But you know what?

00:20:42.680 I have to say there is this.

00:20:45.020 I really try and abide by the rule.

00:20:47.660 And everyone really at the Free Press does as well, which is act online the way you would act to someone's face.

00:20:53.800 And there's too many people with huge, enormous platforms and followings online capable of sicking their followers on, I don't know the woman's name who posted the video.

00:21:05.320 And there's just sort of like a lack of.

00:21:07.860 Responsive responsibility, I see among a lot of people that sort of have no hesitation about saying to someone you're dumb.

00:21:19.580 And I say to myself every single time before I tweet, would I say this to the person's face?

00:21:24.280 And if the only people I say that about generally are Kareem Jean-Pierre and well, I could think of a couple.

00:21:30.460 But yeah, I would say that to her.

00:21:31.480 One hundred percent.

00:21:32.680 You're too dumb for your job.

00:21:33.860 I'm sorry.

00:21:34.900 I have to be honest with you.

00:21:36.320 Get out.

00:21:36.920 So, OK, but it's a good rule of thumb.

00:21:39.160 It's a good rule of thumb.

00:21:41.280 Yeah, just only because, listen, none of us are immune to it.

00:21:45.260 The Twitter and all of these platforms just create this incredible mob mentality in every single one of us.

00:21:52.820 No one is immune to it.

00:21:54.540 And I think that in general, just trying to stick by that principle leads to classier outcomes.

00:22:01.800 Classy.

00:22:02.380 That's true.

00:22:02.820 Tough to find classy on Twitter, on X.

00:22:06.820 That's not what it's known for.

00:22:08.460 But that is part of what I like about Twitter at X.

00:22:11.280 I got to get used to that is, you know, you're going there for nastiness.

00:22:14.860 That's that's part.

00:22:16.280 It's clear.

00:22:17.320 You know, you're going to go.

00:22:18.840 You're going to get upset and you're going to get off.

00:22:21.760 Instagram is the sneaky son of a B because like you go over to Instagram, you're like, I feel good.

00:22:26.680 I'm going to.

00:22:27.140 This is the nice one.

00:22:28.480 And then when you log off of that, you feel like crap.

00:22:30.940 You're like, all my lifestyle choices suck.

00:22:33.680 Everyone is doing it better than I am.

00:22:36.640 I don't know why I feel so blue after getting off of the happy site.

00:22:40.500 Oh, interesting.

00:22:41.040 No, for me, Instagram is my safe space.

00:22:43.120 I get targeted ads for like cookware and moomoo's.

00:22:47.180 And then I go on Twitter and all it is is Cheech and Chong marijuana edibles.

00:22:51.920 And frankly, a lot of anti-Semites in my mentions.

00:22:55.600 And I'm like.

00:22:56.160 And naked girls now.

00:22:57.400 Have you seen naked girls in your feed?

00:22:59.320 Like in your comments, like what?

00:23:01.400 Yeah, but I wondered if that was the algorithm.

00:23:03.880 Are you getting that, too?

00:23:05.860 Getting what?

00:23:06.980 I said I wondered if the naked girls were just being targeted to me, but apparently not.

00:23:11.660 So, no, they've not figured out that you're a lesbian.

00:23:15.720 They do it to the straight gals, too.

00:23:17.140 I'm like, why are there so many naked girls who really want me to call them?

00:23:20.660 It's a no.

00:23:22.460 Twitterism.

00:23:22.940 I mean, all of these like it's a mess.

00:23:25.420 And the people that actually have the wherewithal and the discipline, unlike me, to log off entirely

00:23:31.580 are going to be massively more productive than I am.

00:23:35.920 So kudos to all of the people I saw that are taking, you know, August off or whatever.

00:23:39.540 I think it's amazing.

00:23:40.940 Yeah, it's true.

00:23:41.860 All right.

00:23:42.120 Now, one of the great things about the free press is, as we discussed off the top,

00:23:46.580 you can cover stories that will not be covered in the mainstream that would never be delved

00:23:51.420 into at places like The Times on a regular basis.

00:23:54.100 And the few times that The Times has tried to delve into the transing of children, however

00:23:59.040 you want to refer to it, the medicalization of children who say they have some gender confusion.

00:24:03.560 They've gotten a lot of blowback if they come anywhere near to a fair story.

00:24:09.300 GLAAD, which ran out of things to do once gays and lesbians got the right to same-sex marriage

00:24:13.700 and kind of achieved equality, has turned itself entirely to this trans organization

00:24:19.280 that now harasses people like The Times if they write such an article and so on.

00:24:23.460 And now probably people like you too.

00:24:25.640 So you guys took a deep dive on Jamie Reid, who blew the whistle, as I said in the intro,

00:24:31.160 on this clinic that was providing this so-called care.

00:24:34.160 It's anything of the kind, anything but that, at this clinic.

00:24:38.660 And immediately the reaction by many on the left, including, as I pointed out, Chris Hayes

00:24:42.680 of MSNBC was, hmm, I don't think so.

00:24:46.640 I doubt it.

00:24:48.360 So can you set it up for us?

00:24:49.680 What happened with Jamie Reid, the pushback, and where it landed?

00:24:53.940 So six months ago, for those who haven't read the story, we published this really explosive,

00:24:59.300 whistleblowing account from the woman that we've been mentioning in this conversation.

00:25:02.920 Her name is Jamie Reid.

00:25:04.660 Jamie Reid is not someone that has a political axe to grind.

00:25:08.300 She identifies as queer.

00:25:10.380 Her partner is actually a trans man.

00:25:13.040 Politically, she says she's to the left of Bernie Sanders, and she has dedicated her

00:25:17.040 life to working for vulnerable populations.

00:25:19.880 That is why she took a job at the Pediatric Gender Clinic at Washington University in St.

00:25:25.600 Louis, Missouri.

00:25:26.780 But, she says, in the four years that she spent there, what she saw, in her words, was morally

00:25:32.080 and medically appalling.

00:25:33.420 She says she saw teenagers, vulnerable teenagers, with multiple mental health problems rushed into

00:25:40.220 life-altering treatments, including possible sterilization, that they, as teenagers, in

00:25:44.980 her view, couldn't possibly consent to.

00:25:47.780 She wrote in the piece, predicting exactly what the reaction would be, she said this,

00:25:52.500 I am speaking out, doing, I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation around this

00:25:58.800 highly contentious issue is, and the ways that my testimony, she says, might be misused.

00:26:04.060 But I'm doing so knowing that I do, and I'm doing so knowing that I'm putting myself at

00:26:09.040 serious personal and professional risk.

00:26:11.380 But she said she was doing so because her reputation and her personal comfort were less important than

00:26:17.900 the lives of these vulnerable patients.

00:26:19.820 She knew she would be demonized, and that's exactly what happened.

00:26:23.240 She was demonized.

00:26:24.420 She was disavowed.

00:26:25.660 We were accused of journalistic malpractice for publishing the piece.

00:26:29.840 The day after the piece published, I've never seen such a sort of rapid reaction to a piece of

00:26:35.560 journalism.

00:26:36.520 Missouri's attorney general announced an investigation into the gender clinic.

00:26:41.080 And you would imagine that such a story would inspire journalists just pique their curiosity to say,

00:26:47.400 wow, what is this woman talking about?

00:26:50.320 She's a very, you know, she's not a political conservative.

00:26:53.880 She's not a right winger.

00:26:55.380 She obviously is not transphobic.

00:26:57.700 She is with a person who is transgender.

00:27:00.980 Maybe we should look into that.

00:27:02.600 But instead, largely what you saw was reactions like those from Chris Hayes.

00:27:06.780 People saying there's something fishy about this story, accusing us of sort of

00:27:11.000 not having the full picture and sort of demonizing Jamie Reid.

00:27:17.520 Cut to two weeks ago, and the New York Times publishes a story in the words of the New York

00:27:22.880 Post vindicating ours, largely substantiating Jamie Reid's claims, talking about how the clinic was

00:27:29.340 overwhelmed and how people were sort of being rushed into treatment that they didn't fully

00:27:35.240 understand. Teenagers with, again, complex mental health issues. And obviously, Megan, as you know,

00:27:42.780 when you break a story and other publications follow it, as happens a lot of the time with

00:27:48.380 the free press, it's very professionally gratifying. But the reason that this story was

00:27:53.280 especially important and gratifying for us to have substantiated was because it's exactly the kind of

00:28:00.260 story that we exist to pursue. It's exactly the kind of morally naughty story in which

00:28:06.700 journalists avoid pursuing it because they know they will be punished or smeared for

00:28:11.680 doing so. That is why the free press exists. And it exists to sort of ask the questions that a lot of

00:28:18.540 people are asking themselves quietly. Questions like, how did this become the medical

00:28:24.200 consensus? Can teenagers really consent to life-altering medical decisions?

00:28:29.620 You know, we don't allow teenagers to do all kinds of things, and yet we're allowing them to do this

00:28:35.520 why and how. And just covering those topics, not in a histrionic way, but in a sober, fair-minded,

00:28:43.620 honest, frank way that treats readers like adults, that is what we're trying to do. And that is what

00:28:51.100 we're so incredibly proud to have done in this particular situation. Well, this is one of the

00:28:56.980 reasons why the free press is so important because I think, and I know it's not homogenous, but I think

00:29:02.420 there are a lot of liberals who read it and who are your fan and who, you know, maybe they're not, you know,

00:29:10.080 openly anti-woke because their social circles won't allow that, but they're sympathetic toward what you

00:29:16.740 write about and the causes that you that you write about and like an article like this. And so they have an

00:29:22.860 outlet where they see smart people who share their politics saying the things. That's better for

00:29:27.960 someone like that than hearing it from, you know, the Daily Wire, right? Like, love the Daily Wire,

00:29:33.960 amazing, but they're not going to go there. So they love you, they respect you, they followed you at the

00:29:39.420 times, and they hear you and your news outlet, your new news outlet, writing about these things,

00:29:45.020 talking about these. It gives them permission. It's okay. They're not alone, right?

00:29:48.980 Right. And I think what we're trying to do is very old school. You know, it's very basic. It's just

00:29:56.060 good, honest journalism, right? It should pique our curiosity that suddenly in certain states in this

00:30:05.560 country that happen to be on the coasts and not often in other states, there's enormous numbers of young

00:30:12.100 teenage girls who are identifying as transgender. That is a medical mystery, one that should be

00:30:18.100 one that should provoke and make curious and, you know, make journalists whose job is to pursue

00:30:26.640 their curiosity interested in. And yet there are entire areas of American political and cultural life

00:30:33.420 that have simply become off limits. You're simply not allowed to pursue stories in those areas. And I

00:30:40.980 think that most people, right, just most Americans, the majority of Americans, the politically homeless,

00:30:47.100 the, we talk about them as the coalition of the same people who don't identify on the hard left or

00:30:53.500 the hard right people who simply want accurate information about institutions and which ones

00:30:59.600 they should trust and not about schools and which ones are trying to indoctrinate their kids and which

00:31:04.400 ones aren't about cities and which ones are safe and which ones aren't basic information that people

00:31:10.820 need in order to make decisions about their lives. Turns out there's a huge number of people that still

00:31:17.520 hunger for that, who don't simply want ideological news, who want accurate, fair, sober news and great

00:31:26.640 storytelling. And that is what we're trying to do with the free press. We're for anybody who seeks that,

00:31:32.120 regardless of how you voted for, regardless of how you used to affiliate. And frankly, for people who

00:31:37.520 look at those boxes and just say, I don't fit into either of those anymore. That's me. And I think

00:31:42.980 that that's a lot of our readers. Hmm. This is, this is how Barry and I first became friends,

00:31:47.840 because even though we're, we've talked about this, but like maybe she's a four on the political scale

00:31:52.400 and I'm a, I guess six, um, there's room in there. There's plenty of room for people to get along and

00:31:57.340 talk about ideas and, you know, disagreements too, but so much common ground. And yet we have a press

00:32:04.580 that doesn't cater to that at all. That doesn't even acknowledge that, that as she points out,

00:32:08.680 doesn't want the debate. You, I'm sure you saw the Philip bump, uh, interview with my friend,

00:32:14.280 no, I'm dormant at the seller. Yeah. It was amazing. Totally non-curious. I didn't hear it.

00:32:20.660 Fingers in the ears. No, it isn't happening. It isn't happening. That's why they leave the lane

00:32:24.920 so wide open for people like you and yours truly. Barry Weiss. So good to see you. Hang in there,

00:32:32.160 lady. Wonderful to be on Megan as a pleasure as always. She's got so much going on. Send a prayer

00:32:38.240 Barry's way. She's a busy, busy person in a great way. And thank God for us. She is coming up another

00:32:43.760 free press contributor who, you know, well, if you've been listening to this program and that's

00:32:47.660 David Zweig, one of the bravest men in New York, he's here on our new set. Our first onset guest,

00:32:54.060 Doug Brunt is in the house too. He's, he's been our mixologist today. Cause I felt like we needed to

00:32:58.380 have a cocktail given the fact that we're having our first onset guest that's next. Don't go away

00:33:02.780 on set for the first time. This is our first onset guest, David Zweig. He's a contributor to

00:33:12.260 the free press and has written for many, many magazines. And what is the break was one of the

00:33:16.440 bravest voices we had during the COVID pandemic, pushing back against mask mandates and other

00:33:21.360 mandates. And we've now stolen a page out of the Doug Brunt dedicated podcast book, um, by having

00:33:28.960 a signature cocktail on the set. Doug Brunt has actually made these cocktails for us. It's a

00:33:33.580 little early in the day for cocktails, David, but we have to do it because it's celebratory. Welcome

00:33:37.080 to the show. Thanks for having me. How's it going? It's going great. Oh, it's so fun to have you here.

00:33:42.260 I'm thrilled to be here at the, uh, inauguration. Thank you very much. Um, yeah. And this is,

00:33:49.000 this is what my husband does on his book podcast where he interviews authors is he makes a bunch

00:33:53.440 of booze and they drink it. So cheers. Cheers. Yeah. Yay. To the studio. See if I'm still

00:33:59.460 sitting at the end of this fall over. Oh, that's excellent. That's powerful. That's a real

00:34:05.560 martini. Jen. It's for real. With the twist. I have to say the twist is nice. That's nice. Are

00:34:10.140 you a martini drinker? Yeah. On occasion. Yeah. Do you go for the vodka or like the real martini is

00:34:15.440 gin? Yeah. And that's why you have to have the twist and not an olive. It's a little more

00:34:19.720 civilized. Don't you think? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um, all right, let's get down to Fauci. Okay. Let's

00:34:24.900 get down to facts and Fauci. Uh, unbelievable appearance, uh, with Michael Smirconish, who's

00:34:30.060 also a SiriusXM host, uh, this weekend at his CNN job. He hosts a weekend show on CNN and got out

00:34:35.820 there and Smirconish, it was a thing of beauty. I'm sure you loved it too. Raised the Brett Stevens,

00:34:41.420 uh, piece. He writes for the New York Times, a conservative who writes for the New York

00:34:44.440 Times, um, about masks and how they don't work and citing like a definitive study. Like

00:34:49.800 it's one of those massive mega studies going after Fauci on the subject and Fauci, I think

00:34:56.240 got his heels. He tried to sort of, well, we'll, we'll play it for the audience. Here it

00:35:00.240 is. Okay. Uh, Brett Stevens in the times talked about Cochran, put that on the screen. The most

00:35:06.240 rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks

00:35:10.860 for reducing the spread of respiratory illness, including COVID-19 was published last month.

00:35:16.320 Its conclusions said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is the lead author were

00:35:21.340 unambiguous. There is just no evidence that they masks make any difference. He told the journalist

00:35:27.660 Mayan Demasi full stop, but wait, hold on. What about the N95 masks as opposed to the lower quality

00:35:34.300 surgical or cloth masks makes no difference. None of it. He said, well, what about the studies that

00:35:39.920 initially persuaded policymakers to impose mask mandates? They were convinced by non-randomized

00:35:45.820 studies, flawed observational studies. How do we get beyond that finding of that particular

00:35:52.000 review?

00:35:53.980 Yeah, but there are other studies, Michael, that show at an individual level for individual,

00:35:59.060 when you're talking about the effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole, the data are

00:36:06.280 less strong. There you go. You see that that's the qualifier. And the guy who did that, who's the

00:36:12.360 Cochran lead author, his name is Tom Jefferson, responded to Fauci in an interview with journalist

00:36:18.860 Marianne Demasi, who's posted on Substack saying, so Fauci saying masks work for individuals, but not

00:36:25.240 at the population level. That doesn't make sense. He said there are other studies. What studies,

00:36:31.880 says this guy, Jefferson, he doesn't name them. So, you know, he conveniently, we cannot go and try to

00:36:37.620 interpret them. But he, he explains this guy, Jefferson, that the entire point of the Cochrane

00:36:42.480 review was to systemically sift through all available randomized data on physical interventions

00:36:48.360 like masks and determine whether they were useful or were not. And the masks were not. There was no

00:36:55.500 evidence. He said that masks reduced transmission. This is, he continues to try to obfuscate even when

00:37:02.880 he's caught dead to rights. I mean, I think most, or at least a lot of humans tend to be defensive if

00:37:10.040 they said one thing and then they're caught in that thing being wrong, particularly for something as

00:37:14.020 contentious of an issue as masks. I forget it. It's a couple of years ago at this point, but I wrote

00:37:19.740 a large piece for New York Magazine and then another one for The Atlantic that were, I think,

00:37:25.320 some of the first really major pieces and sort of mainstream publications that really looked at the

00:37:32.800 evidence. What are we doing here? That's how we first fell in love with you here at the Megan

00:37:36.080 Kelly Show. Right. So, you know, my focus to a large extent has been on kids and schools. And I was

00:37:42.960 saying, what are we doing? You know, what is the evidence for this? And you looked at what the CDC was

00:37:48.940 showing. It was a study of two hairdressers and all this random stuff. It was just a bunch of

00:37:53.340 junk. And it was, it was a really bizarre moment for me, particularly in a study that the CDC had

00:38:01.460 published about these schools in Arizona. It was a lie. And then you came on and talked about this and

00:38:06.760 how Rochelle Walensky kept repeating the lie of the conclusion. Sorry, finish your point. Yeah, no, you're

00:38:11.620 absolutely right. And it was, they knew that the information was incorrect because I had gotten the

00:38:17.280 actual data from the state of Arizona and from the counties. So this was official data that I got. It

00:38:24.760 wasn't my version of it or my interpretation. And I emailed with the editors at the journal at the CDC

00:38:30.880 and the studied authors. And I said, hey, the statistics you have in your paper differ from the

00:38:37.540 statistics that the state is giving me. How can this be? They're the official numbers. And they wrote back

00:38:43.480 and said, there are no errors. Right. We've been misrepresented. So this is all very relevant

00:38:49.760 because we're still angry about it. One, but two, it's ramping back up. They're doing it again. And

00:38:55.280 the audience is probably seeing this more and more. Many people think it's intentional because we're

00:39:00.140 going into an election year soon and they need it and they need it to prop up Biden, who's considered

00:39:05.900 too old by at least 72% of the American population, including two thirds of Democrats. Right. So we're

00:39:11.860 starting to pay more attention just today or yesterday. It was a school in Montgomery County,

00:39:16.180 Maryland brought back the mask mandate. We saw, well, Lionsgate, the big movie studio with mask

00:39:23.180 mandates and bit by bit, it's start it's creep. It's creep. So, you know, whether they work is going

00:39:29.580 to become very relevant again and you still have him lying. Well, yeah, that that's why it's so

00:39:35.940 important, I think, for journalists to not only act as a amplifier for what public officials or experts

00:39:45.220 tell them, but to actually look at the underlying evidence. And that's sort of what I've been trying

00:39:50.180 to do from day one. We were told certain things. I'm like, OK, they said this, but I always have a

00:39:56.280 healthy skepticism. Well, let me see what what's the underlying support for what these people are

00:40:01.500 telling me. And the more I kept digging, there didn't seem to be a really good foundation in a

00:40:05.960 lot of instances. And, you know, with community masking, that certainly is one of the cases we

00:40:10.960 don't need. Is there a situation, David, where, like, for you, you see the mask come off? Because

00:40:16.180 I think we go into this with Anthony Fauci, many of us thinking, OK, who's that little guy? All right.

00:40:21.320 They're putting him in charge. He seems to know a lot about disease and viruses like, OK, we'll listen.

00:40:25.500 And then just the more things that he said that didn't make sense, the more your spidey senses

00:40:31.580 are up. Like you have to mask outside. You can't be at the beach. What? Why? Wait, why are we

00:40:37.580 listening to these people? And I so I just wonder for you as a journalist, because you're not some

00:40:41.760 epidemiologist, it's not any easier for you to figure out the data behind these assertions than

00:40:46.580 it is for anybody. It just takes time and many phone calls to honest people who will steer you.

00:40:52.600 Like, was there a moment where you realized these guys are misleading us like they are not to be

00:40:58.480 trusted? It was it was definitely sort of this this cascade of moments. And like I said, referring

00:41:05.360 before when I was emailing with the I was convinced, you know, once I remember emailing back and forth

00:41:10.800 with my editor at the Atlantic, I'm like, well, obviously, once I email with once I, you know,

00:41:16.560 send the editors at the journal from the CDC, I got them, you know, like I was convinced.

00:41:22.380 And I was astonished when I got the reply that there were no errors in the study. It was,

00:41:28.680 you know, this word gets overused a lot, but there was a degree of gaslighting. It was it was unreal.

00:41:33.580 So that was probably for me, that was my kind of like moment where something within me, I felt

00:41:40.360 just a sense of betrayal. Actually, you know, we sort of most people, I think, have a healthy

00:41:45.660 skepticism of big business, of of the government in general, of all these large institutions of

00:41:52.360 society. But somehow that skepticism seemed to vanish for a lot of people, and particularly, I

00:41:58.640 think, for a lot of journalists when it came to the pandemic and when it came to what public health

00:42:03.000 officials or experts were telling them. And one of the things that's interesting, because you were

00:42:07.940 talking about Fauci with mass is he's one person and someone who is, you know, a lab scientist,

00:42:14.320 they have no expertise in understanding the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions.

00:42:20.300 But yet you have certain people who are an emergency room physician or these other people who were

00:42:25.520 constantly in the media who had no particular expertise in any of these matters at all. Yet they

00:42:31.340 were, you know, speaking about them on a regular basis. So we have to be careful about who we call

00:42:38.500 quote an expert. Now, anyone should, of course, be allowed to speak about any topic. But again,

00:42:44.100 I get back to this point. Show me the evidence. Don't. So what happened time and again was you had

00:42:49.760 people just saying things without actually showing support. And as we all know, in the beginning of the

00:42:55.380 pandemic, we were initially told, don't bother with masks. Don't. And then there was a span of a few

00:43:01.240 weeks from the last time Fauci had said that publicly to when the advice did 180 and changed

00:43:07.100 completely. There was no change in evidence between those two times. There was no randomized

00:43:12.740 control trial that came out. Nothing changed. The only thing that changed was they said that,

00:43:17.720 oh, we see that people who aren't symptomatic are spreading more and we can get into that if we

00:43:21.740 want to. But that's a separate issue from whether or not wearing a cut up T-shirt on your face

00:43:27.180 is actually an effective means of, you know, transmission control.

00:43:31.200 Right. So by the way, when we get into it, the headline will be people who are not symptomatic

00:43:35.560 have very little chance of spreading COVID, which was not what we were told. So, and thanks to David

00:43:40.300 Weiss, we know this. Wait a minute. I wanted to get to something more about Fauci because this was all

00:43:45.220 over, I'm trying to find the soundbite of Fauci reversing himself. He, this is all over Twitter

00:43:51.760 this past weekend where he was, he said the one thing. And then if you look back, hold on, if you

00:43:57.960 look back at his earlier statements, it was about how he claimed he did not push for shutdowns.

00:44:03.740 That's his new line that he did not push for shutdowns. It wasn't Anthony Fauci, but we have the

00:44:08.460 receipts. Do we have a soundbite guys? First of all, I didn't recommend locking anything down.

00:44:12.180 And the record will show, Neil, that we didn't recommend shutting everything down. I recommended

00:44:18.500 to the president that we shut the country down. And that was very difficult decision because I knew

00:44:26.360 it would have serious economic consequences, which it did. That's amazing. So one of the things that

00:44:34.000 bothers me so much is this notion that we didn't force anyone to do anything. And, you know, the CDC

00:44:40.320 doesn't make laws. Generally, the CDC makes recommendations. And, you know, this happened with

00:44:46.480 one of the things that I'd written about was with vaccines. And remarkably, I interviewed one of the

00:44:52.220 people on the CDC's advisory committee. And one of their large discussions was on whether they should

00:44:57.920 use the word should or may for children getting the booster. And they settled on the word should.

00:45:04.560 And I asked her, you know, well, how did you come to this conclusion? I didn't, you didn't,

00:45:09.040 there wasn't any evidence presented. What, what? And she said, well, we were afraid that people,

00:45:13.460 it was too confusing just to say, just to say may do this, but we found that people were confused.

00:45:18.840 So we just wanted to make it shoulds. And I said, but when you use that language, that then gets

00:45:25.140 interpreted by many people who are in charge of schools and other places as an invitation to require it.

00:45:31.920 Words matter. So when you have someone like Fauci or other people saying, I never shut down a school.

00:45:38.320 Yes. Anthony Fauci did not go up with a padlock on the doors of the school. But when he gives his

00:45:43.700 advice, when the CDC gives their advice and their guidance, those words then get interpreted by

00:45:49.260 others. I mean, to me, it's really a distinction without a difference. It's, it's, it's dishonest.

00:45:55.440 We lived it. We lived it. I mean, our schools mandated the vaccine. The kids were being kicked

00:46:01.920 out because they didn't get the vaccine. The only reason my kids didn't get kicked out is because

00:46:06.020 they weren't yet 16. But I mean, every week we got the really looking forward to getting Yates's

00:46:11.860 vaccination card, getting Yardley's vaccination update. Well, you're a long time waiting. It's

00:46:16.920 not coming. And I thank God I didn't, I didn't stick them with that vaccine. I'm sorry. I did it to

00:46:20.900 myself. I've said this before, but I, I regret getting the vaccine, even though I'm a 52 year

00:46:26.920 old woman, because I don't think I needed it. I think I would have been fine. I'd got COVID many

00:46:32.540 times and I, it was well past when the vaccine was doing what it was supposed to be doing.

00:46:37.340 And then for the first time I tested positive for an autoimmune issue at my annual physical.

00:46:43.140 And I asked, I went to the best rheumatologist in New York and I asked her, do you think this could

00:46:47.480 have to do with the fact that I got the damn booster and then got COVID within three weeks?

00:46:52.580 And she said, yes, yes. I wasn't the only one she'd seen that with.

00:46:57.680 I mean, vaccines are like any other medication that they have benefits and they have drawbacks.

00:47:03.400 And this is sort of the theme of our conversation. I feel like is whether it's on masks, on vaccines,

00:47:09.480 on a whole variety of issues, the CDC and other public health authorities, for some reason that I'm

00:47:15.840 still trying to figure out, refuse to give an honest and sort of broad picture of things.

00:47:24.060 Typically, when you go to the doctor, if you're going to have a procedure done or you're going

00:47:28.100 to get a medication, they will say to you, look, this is, or at least a good doctor will, they'll

00:47:32.320 say, this is the benefit I think you'll get, but these are some of the side effects you may have.

00:47:37.080 The CDC repeatedly and consistently downplayed the issue of myocarditis and particularly in young

00:47:44.420 males. The issue of masks was repeatedly downplayed. We were gaslit where they said,

00:47:49.380 there's no downside. So all these things that you can say that the vaccine is beneficial for some

00:47:57.260 people and we really strongly recommend it, but we're not certain that this is on a net net cost

00:48:03.620 benefit, that it makes sense for everyone. That would have been honest. And I think that would have

00:48:08.480 caused a lot less of the sort of adversarial environment that we were in. Once people are

00:48:16.120 told that they must do something, people can sniff it out when, well, but I'm seeing, I know my friend,

00:48:22.400 they just got the vaccine and something strange happened to them or whatever. So one of the things

00:48:27.100 that I try to always focus on is this idea of being honest and how honesty ultimately, I think,

00:48:35.540 will have less of the sort of contentious atmosphere, but they seemed afraid to say

00:48:41.720 that anything might be wrong.

00:48:43.380 Will set us free. All right. More with the free press and with Dave right after this. Don't go away.

00:48:54.320 And we're back now with journalist David Zweig, who's with me from, well, among other publications,

00:48:59.500 the free press. What's the name of the sub stack so people can support you?

00:49:02.060 Silent lunch dot net. Why silent lunch? Silent lunch is what they forced kids to do during the

00:49:10.440 pandemic. There were a number of schools around the country that prohibited speaking in a, but ours

00:49:16.260 included, what I believe New York city schools. Yes. A very foolish and ill-conceived attempt to

00:49:22.720 mitigate transmission. So little kids around the country were barred from speaking the silent lunch.

00:49:28.940 Oh, that's so great. Thank you for paying homage to that horrible moment.

00:49:32.280 Right. So I'm keeping it alive because it resonated with me. I it's again, yet another unreal sort of

00:49:38.240 moment of, of just utter craziness on so many levels. And they were behind plexiglass. So they

00:49:43.700 couldn't speak to the person like you and I are right now. I mean behind plexiglass and you can't

00:49:48.480 speak. They used to try to sneak it by leaning back and talking to the person behind them and they

00:49:53.340 would get in trouble. This is at our insane New York city schools. That's right. And I I'm sure

00:49:58.320 I've told you the story, but then at my daughter's school in New York, then they go outside for

00:50:02.200 recess where they all had to be masked outside. And the girls came up with, they decided because

00:50:06.920 there was no like arts and crafts or theater or anything, everything was shut down, but the

00:50:10.980 essentials, um, they started to rehearse the show Hamilton. One of the girls in their school had seen

00:50:16.940 it and loved it. And she knew the songs and was teaching the other girls Hamilton, which you'd think

00:50:21.780 at any normal school, they'd be like, that's great. No, the music teacher of all people was

00:50:27.160 out there running around saying, shh, whisper. You have to whisper the lyrics. And this was outdoors

00:50:32.660 outside. I mean, it's just, it's insane. I wrote about a school in a private school in Ithaca,

00:50:40.120 New York, that as of last spring still required a silent lunch, indoor masking and outdoor mask.

00:50:47.060 Oh my God. Was it like K through 12 school? It was a Montessori school. I think it was K through

00:50:50.720 eight. Um, yeah, it's, it's just, it was remarkable. But it's coming back to like some

00:50:57.220 colleges now it's coming back to the white house. I was going to play this before, but here's Corrine

00:51:01.120 Jean-Pierre talking about Joe Biden because the first lady has COVID. I mean, okay. So do a lot

00:51:06.400 of people. It's like a cold now, but in any event here, she is reassuring us that the president

00:51:11.180 would be wearing a mask inside. President Biden tested negative last night for COVID-19 and tested

00:51:17.580 negative again today. He's not experiencing any symptoms as far as the steps he is taking.

00:51:24.140 Since the president was with the first lady yesterday, he will be masking while indoors and

00:51:29.420 around people in alignment with CDC guidance. And he, as, as has been the practice in the past,

00:51:36.320 the president will remove his mask when sufficiently distance from others indoors and while outside as

00:51:42.720 well. Oh my Lord. Do you feel better? There's a great clip. Uh, Anthony La Mesa had tweeted this

00:51:49.680 sort of a montage of images of Biden where he was wearing the mask and took it off. And then he was

00:51:54.660 giving like a medal of honor to someone. Yesterday he was in the medal of honor ceremony, which he

00:51:58.160 walked out of prematurely because he got confused and he did not have the mask on. Yeah. I mean,

00:52:02.020 it's obviously, I think one of the things is the conversation to some extent has been hijacked

00:52:07.400 about, um, the evidence of whether masks work or don't work. But the, the bigger issue is even if

00:52:13.480 they do work, let's just grant that for a moment and say a mask mandate is effective, but to what

00:52:18.780 end? And that's the bigger issue. Even if they, even if we want to say that they're very effective,

00:52:23.800 you know, we could all wear, um, a helmet when we walk around on the streets and wear it when you

00:52:29.600 drive a car, but we choose not to because we've, that's being in a society. We weigh different things.

00:52:34.040 The speed limit on the highway. We could make it 35 miles per hour, but we don't because we are

00:52:39.220 willing as a society to accept a certain amount of people are going to die or be injured because

00:52:44.420 people want to get somewhere faster. We accept that. And similarly, the idea that we are supposed

00:52:49.620 to try to constantly mitigate the spread of a highly contagious respiratory virus and that that's worth

00:52:56.340 it for kids and everyone else to have to wear a mask doesn't make sense because it's, that's not even

00:53:01.600 in line with how we function as a society in a whole other range of areas. So I think that's one

00:53:07.320 of the things that when people are listening to public health officials and others making these

00:53:12.120 recommendations, we're losing sight of the bigger issue of even if this does work, do we want to do

00:53:17.780 it at all? And to what end? No, we don't. It should be voluntary. That's the thing is, and like,

00:53:22.400 you're right to Fauci's, uh, Oh, you know, we don't, the CDC doesn't mandate anything. As soon as the CDC

00:53:27.320 recommended something, it became mandated in schools across the country. So it's, he's not

00:53:32.820 kidding anybody with that. At a minimum, it should be optional for the hysterics. They can wear it. And

00:53:38.520 for the normal people who accept there's a certain amount of risk in life, we don't have to, and we

00:53:43.140 don't have to make our kids do it. We don't have to raise them like that. Now, meanwhile, I want to

00:53:47.220 get to, you had an extraordinary interview with David Asher. Everybody knows about the lab leak versus

00:53:52.920 natural origin theory. I think most people listening to this show believe it's, it was a lab leak that

00:53:58.840 caused the COVID virus. We were funding gain of function research at the Wuhan lab. We were lied

00:54:04.020 to about it repeatedly by Anthony Fauci. We know it's true. Even the CDC has now had to admit the NIH has

00:54:09.780 had to admit it was true. Um, and you had this great interview with, he's from the state to ex state

00:54:17.500 department official, as I recall, who was in charge of the COVID origins investigation, but he's no

00:54:23.800 longer with the state department and man, is he speaking freely. So what did he say?

00:54:28.500 Right. So I was able to interview David Asher. He led the U S state department's investigation into

00:54:34.960 COVID origins. And he said on the record to me, which I wrote about in my piece on my sub stack,

00:54:39.740 he said, this is a massive coverup. I mean, what's amazing to me is that like, this happens to me

00:54:47.600 over and over and I'm always wrong, but I go to bed at night, I'm laying in bed talking to my wife

00:54:51.520 and I say, everything's going to change when this comes out. Cause I'm like, this is so huge. This

00:54:56.440 is crazy. You know, when I wrote a piece about the hospitalization numbers are, are, are inflated by

00:55:02.840 40 to 50% in children. Oh, once this happens, everything's going to change. I keep having these

00:55:07.400 moments. The lead investigator for the state department said, there is an enormous amount

00:55:13.300 of information that is both classified and unclassified that the government is not releasing.

00:55:19.080 This is a massive coverup. How this is not, you know, on the front page of everything,

00:55:25.180 it just blows my mind. It's good for me, I guess, as a journalist, cause I have this lane

00:55:29.880 that I can stay in. People are going to go to, go to my, you know, uh, newsletter to see this,

00:55:34.800 but silent lunch, silent lunch.net, but it's not good for society. And that is quite a remarkable

00:55:41.200 statement. And when you look at the evidence, which I talked about with him, I mean, there's

00:55:46.500 just that, by the way, there was a law that was passed. Biden signed it where they had to release

00:55:53.300 all of the information related to, um, the Wuhan lab. This was, I don't recall the precise wording,

00:56:00.020 but this was required. So the fact that this, um, there was a report put out by the DNI. That's

00:56:05.640 the director of national intelligence. It was like five pages of actual content. Astonishing.

00:56:11.340 This was supposed to be a comprehensive report. And again, this by the lights of many people was

00:56:16.800 in breach of the law. Why aren't there constant articles about this? Wait a minute. The, the law

00:56:23.160 that was signed by the president says you have to release everything, five pages. That's everything

00:56:28.080 we've got. How is this not like a massive story? This piece of it? I don't, I don't fully get.

00:56:33.660 I get why these insane leftists want the masks and want to reject any reporting that they don't work.

00:56:40.980 Same on the vaccines. I don't get why they don't want to figure out once and for all, definitively

00:56:46.340 what caused COVID that caused the death of their loved ones, of teachers, of students, of parents

00:56:51.960 that made them not be there when their parents died in the nursing home. Why do some of these people

00:56:57.080 have no interest? I get why Anthony Fauci doesn't want it. He appears to have dirty hands. He helped

00:57:02.800 cause it. That's what the evidence seems to be driving us toward. Um, I get why even at the

00:57:07.420 government level, they may not want it. China were too in bed with them. We don't want to upset the

00:57:12.040 apple cart, the relationship. Um, I don't get why normal liberals don't want to know exactly how it

00:57:21.420 was caused. Do you understand? I think there's two things at play. So you're absolutely right

00:57:25.880 regarding the government. There's so much money that sloshed around. It wasn't just from NIH. It

00:57:30.280 was from USAID as well. Many, many millions of dollars went toward this type of research,

00:57:34.860 but it got funneled through different universities and then funnels down through the NGOs. So it

00:57:39.400 wasn't just like a check was written, but there's a long trail. So there's a reason why so many

00:57:43.840 people, and as you said, the sort of geopolitical, um, fallout from if it actually was from China and

00:57:49.300 if we were involved, how, so there's, but I think there's two things for as far as like regular

00:57:53.820 people or regular sort of professional class elites or liberals. I think a lot of them do want

00:57:58.620 to know. It just doesn't get covered by MSNBC or whatever, because they, and I also think the other

00:58:03.920 ones who don't want to know it's because this has been coded as right wing from day one. Um, when you

00:58:09.040 had a lead reporter at the New York times who had tweeted and then deleted something about, you know,

00:58:13.640 this is racist. Right. So the lab leak theory. Right. And so I think once something gets branded in a

00:58:19.760 specific way as right wing, it's very, you know, it's, it's really, um, it just calcifies for people

00:58:26.640 in the, in the public conversation and then this political dynamic. And I think it's very hard for

00:58:31.420 people both publicly, but perhaps even for themselves to allow themselves to feel like

00:58:37.500 maybe they're on the other team, you know, because that's how something gets branded. And that happened

00:58:41.840 with me over and over again during the pandemic, particularly early on, I would talk with top

00:58:47.520 infectious disease specialists, top immunologists, epidemiologists, and every conversation began

00:58:54.000 with, I didn't vote for Trump, but, and that's how every, every, they had to sort of like establish

00:58:59.400 that, like, wait a minute, don't worry. I'm not on the wrong team, but this is a bunch of bullshit,

00:59:05.000 you know, and whatever we were going to talk about the fact that every conversation had to start off

00:59:09.260 with this preamble by someone who's, you know, at an elite university at a top flight hospital

00:59:15.200 that they felt that they had to do that. That's to me, indicative of the larger problem. So I think

00:59:21.580 a lot of it is just how things get coded in our public conversation. And once they're associated

00:59:27.580 with the wrong team, it just doesn't matter. It's impenetrable to evidence or logic.

00:59:32.680 Another layer of that is their deification of Fauci. I mean, they, they fell in love. He became a

00:59:39.460 political lightning rod. They dug in as opposed to saying, I'm open-minded that maybe he's misleading.

00:59:44.520 And what exactly did he fund and not fund? And what role did he have in telling us all via that

00:59:50.380 one origins paper that is definitely not a lab leak? Was he involved? Cause that's been, you know,

00:59:56.500 I think debunked is the correct word. They, they've dug in. Fauci is a saint. Fauci has been unfairly

01:00:03.800 attacked. Fauci is our superhero. And so they're not willing to hear any news that would belie that,

01:00:10.480 that belief. You covered this. We covered this too. Um, it's to me, I've said this to the audience.

01:00:17.400 It's wonderful to me that that Republicans have control of the house divided government is a good

01:00:22.160 thing. And thank God that they did because otherwise we wouldn't have half of the documents

01:00:26.560 we have on Hunter Biden. We wouldn't have any of those documents and we wouldn't have the documents

01:00:30.760 that we got on COVID origins on Fauci and how that paper came about in, was it March of 2020 was March

01:00:38.880 or was it April, 2020? April. Yeah. I think April, 2020. Uh, I always grew up whether it was nature or

01:00:43.660 science, um, saying, right. It's like, it's basically the same thing. Coke or Pepsi. Okay. Exactly. So

01:00:49.580 one of the big, um, you know, uh, medical journals, uh, and it was all Fauci's favorite

01:00:54.780 virologists, some 11, 12 of them who had gotten on a phone call and started out by saying, we think

01:01:00.240 this is a lab leak. This looks very much like a lab leak. And then within 48 hours, reverse themselves

01:01:04.900 on it. Uh, you've done reporting on this too. And when you saw that trove of documents that came out

01:01:09.440 of the house Republican committee on the pandemic, they got the actual documents showing the back

01:01:15.020 and forth between Francis Collins and Fauci and all these virologists and the manipulations and the,

01:01:19.840 the amount of coordination, I should say, what was your reaction? It was a pretty remarkable,

01:01:25.620 uh, amount of material where we were looking at emails as well as, um, Slack messages between the

01:01:32.460 different virologists and others. And the one thing that stuck out to me, and again, same theme

01:01:38.060 about honesty. When Anthony Fauci first spoke about this paper, um, at a white house press briefing,

01:01:43.700 he just mentioned it as if it was, you know, these people, I don't know them. I'll see if I can,

01:01:49.820 you know, get it for you later. These virologists, he never mentioned, Oh, I was on the phone with

01:01:54.260 them. I was thanked in an email privately from them for helping out, you know, for offering

01:01:59.300 assistance or guidance with the paper. Um, that doesn't mean that he manipulated what happened.

01:02:04.800 I don't know. We're not privy to, to that, but what we do know is he certainly was involved on

01:02:08.860 some level. And I think just from an optics standpoint to pretend that this was just some

01:02:14.060 objective scientific endeavor that he had absolutely no investment in or involvement in

01:02:19.260 would seem to be quite misleading. Um, in my view,

01:02:22.420 the underlying papers that we got reveal that, I mean, we knew to some extent, and now we know

01:02:27.340 beyond a shadow of a doubt that they all believed it was lab leak, that they had serious questions

01:02:33.460 about the theory of natural origin. Their expertise was telling them in the first look at this virus,

01:02:38.460 this thing definitely looks man-made. It's all reflected in their emails and their,

01:02:42.960 their correspondence with one another. And then within 48 hours after talking to Fauci and Collins,

01:02:49.400 they did a one 80 and we know Fauci and Collins were concerned about China, about the relationship

01:02:53.700 with China, about science and all the coordination we do with them. They didn't want anything that

01:02:57.720 would turn the public on China. Uh, Robert Gary was one of those scientists who was involved in

01:03:04.280 the whole thing. He actually, to his credit, to his credit came on our show and answered tough

01:03:09.640 questions. We pulled up just a bit of it. Here's what happened.

01:03:11.960 Hmm. Why, why did you originally think that it was likely from a lab? Because we've seen in your

01:03:19.820 correspondence with Fauci and Collins, that you initially took a look at this along with other

01:03:23.780 virologists and experts and said, um, things like, I can't think of a plausible natural scenario. That

01:03:29.360 was February 2nd, 2020, where you get a bat virus or one very similar to it, um, where you insert

01:03:35.360 exactly these amino acids and nucleotides that all have to be added and so on. And then you said, um,

01:03:41.040 I just can't figure out how this gets accomplished in nature. Then you spoke to Anthony Fauci and,

01:03:47.600 uh, Francis Collins. And then within days, you completely reversed yourself and did a 180 and

01:03:52.060 said, it's lab. It's, it can't possibly be lab leak. It is nature. Yeah. So let me correct that

01:03:57.520 a little bit. I mean, that, that was one email. It wasn't it just days. Wasn't it just two days

01:04:02.400 later that you reversed yourself and said, uh, actually, no. Okay. I forget what I said about

01:04:06.400 it coming from a lab on. I now say it wasn't really a reversal. Well, what happened in those

01:04:10.560 48 hours? What changed? What, what did you see? Well, it looked at the genomes of the viruses more

01:04:16.560 closely. It's one thing. If you can say, Megan, let me show you what I saw that proved to me.

01:04:21.260 It came, we found the pangolin, you know, that's why I'd say, gotcha. I get it. But there's nothing

01:04:27.000 that proved this thing came from natural, from nature in those 48 hours. Nothing.

01:04:31.720 Yeah. So that would go. That was fun. That went over well. I mean, look, scientists are allowed

01:04:37.560 to change their mind. Um, as they review the data, I've interviewed a lot of scientists in the space

01:04:42.980 and there was no difference in, in the evidence that would warrant not just, you know, not just a

01:04:49.880 little bit of a change, but we're talking about 180 degree switch. Some switched to, I think it was

01:04:55.660 definitely a lab leak to two days later. It's racist to say it's lab leak. Right. And it went,

01:05:00.260 I think the language initially in the paper was something like it's unlikely. And then it was

01:05:04.480 changed to implausible or something like that. So, and typically when I read a lot of scientific

01:05:09.480 papers, they're generally fairly understated and in, in their claims, you know, um, and this was,

01:05:15.200 this was somewhat unusual in its, um, aggressiveness in how strongly they asserted,

01:05:20.500 um, their conclusions. And by the way, this wasn't really a study. This was just a,

01:05:25.500 I forget the classification in the journal, but, but it's, it's like a commentary. This was not

01:05:30.360 like a proper study anyway, but that's how it's often referred to. Um, so people are allowed to

01:05:35.580 change their minds. And I just put, I think if any regular person simply reads and looks at the

01:05:41.700 evidence themselves, they can draw their own conclusions about what they think happened or

01:05:46.020 didn't happen. But there's certainly, there's no ambiguity. There was a lot of ambivalence from

01:05:51.040 these people, um, amongst themselves privately term. And then, and then the public pronouncement

01:05:59.540 about it was so with made with such certainty. And again, it's just like with mass, it's just

01:06:06.140 like with vaccines, the degree of certainty within which public health professionals continue to make

01:06:12.580 pronouncements really is not in line with what science is about. It should be much more understated.

01:06:19.320 There should be all sorts of hedges in there. And for whatever combination of reasons on this stuff

01:06:26.280 has become so politicized, I think that they feel the need toward either a noble lie or toward this

01:06:33.140 kind of like turning the dials up where there can't be any room. But of course the problem is ironically,

01:06:39.100 it ends up just making things worse.

01:06:40.860 Mm-hmm. So here we go again. It does feel like we're headed down a familiar path. I showed you the,

01:06:48.040 uh, the president, the screen, Jean-Pierre, he's going to mask inside. Okay. Uh, yesterday,

01:06:53.960 Whoopi Goldberg was not on the view as they came back to air after the holiday because she has COVID.

01:06:59.160 So she's got a quarantine at home. I mean, it's just absurd. COVID is now a cold. I realized for some

01:07:03.620 people it's potentially dangerous. I'm not going to dispute that, but they're still treating it like it's

01:07:08.260 this lethal pathogen that we all are going to die from if we get near somebody. And the, and the

01:07:15.400 number of news articles now that are talking about the surge, the surge, the surge, you've taken a

01:07:20.320 look at the big surge. What did you find? Yeah. One again, language matters over and over again.

01:07:27.600 Media outlets have called this a surge. I think the New York times referred to it as a wave. So lots of

01:07:32.160 good oceanic metaphors, you know, um, if you look at, this is the difference between absolute and

01:07:38.220 relative, right? So if you have two of something and it goes up to four, oh my God, there was a

01:07:43.820 hundred percent increase. Okay. It went from two to four. And this is, if you actually look at,

01:07:48.780 at the graphs of the hospitalizations, it's, we are in essentially the lowest point ever tied with,

01:07:55.500 um, two or three other times in the last three years of actual hospitalizations for this,

01:08:00.760 which is wonderful. This is something that should be celebrated, but you know, look, the nature of

01:08:05.420 news is the, what's sensational, what's going to scare people. And that's not confined to, you know,

01:08:12.340 the inquirer or something on the newsstand. This is how the major media operates. So using terms like

01:08:18.860 the surge, and it's not just the media, it's also a lot of public health professionals. Um, and I went

01:08:23.660 after one of them in my sub stack, um, who, who, who had talked about this, but the idea that a small,

01:08:30.320 uh, that, that a large increase of a very tiny number that means something. And that matters

01:08:35.520 context matters. So it's just one of the things that bothers me when, when this type of language

01:08:41.740 is used purposefully to scare people and perhaps purposefully to, um, justify certain policies.

01:08:49.100 And I see you raising your eyebrows. So, uh, you know, it's an election year we're going into,

01:08:53.340 they don't want mailing bad ballots to go away. That was absolutely helpful to Joe Biden for many

01:08:59.240 reasons, even the above board reasons, nevermind this suspicions about what may have happened below

01:09:04.040 board. Um, and they think it ramps up their base may also help somebody like governor DeSantis,

01:09:09.760 not for nothing, but, uh, most of us don't want it. I mean, I think people who are still part of,

01:09:15.220 as Barry said, sort of the same coalition are going to rebel. If anybody tries lockdowns,

01:09:20.680 school closures, vaccine, or mask mandates again. Well, there were a couple of universities that did

01:09:26.500 put in, put in place mask mandates. And as you mentioned, Lionsgate. So I suspect there are always

01:09:31.400 going to be these pockets in our society, perhaps for quite a long time, um, maybe in perpetuity that

01:09:37.420 are going to be susceptible to kind of doing these types of actions. Hopefully it's not going to be a

01:09:43.900 broad based thing. But again, the type, you know, it's a dirty thing for people to do your own

01:09:49.100 research. You're like a moron and a bad person, but the fact, and look, and I get it. People have

01:09:53.460 jobs. They have like, they don't have time to do their own. That's, that's why I'm here. You know,

01:09:56.960 other people I've tried, I'm the crazy person who actually then starts reading the studies or is

01:10:01.020 looking at the charts from the CDC. You, you must be a rip-roaring fun time at dinner. Your wife is

01:10:06.220 like, for the love of God, stop talking. My daughter, uh, her eyes could not roll back any further. The next

01:10:11.580 time I, each time I talk about absolute versus relative difference in the number of cases, but

01:10:16.700 people need to actually look at the evidence, not what people, not the words that they're being told

01:10:23.520 at. Just take five minutes and look at the actual numbers. Or don't, and just go to free or silent

01:10:30.260 lunch, not free lunch, silentlunch.net. Right. Or you could go there. Yeah, exactly. So that's,

01:10:35.520 that's one of the things, and it's both a blessing and a curse, but that's my own sort of thing that I

01:10:40.320 see this. And I just feel compelled. I have to look it up and say, well, wait a minute. Is this

01:10:45.520 really a surge? What does that mean? And you had, um, this physician at, you know, University of

01:10:50.520 California, San Francisco, who has a very large following, um, guy named Bob Wachter, who had

01:10:55.860 said the reason that there's more COVID prevalence is because people quote, let their guard down.

01:11:01.900 Oh my God. And it was just, there, there's no evidence for that claim whatsoever. I mean,

01:11:07.380 schools have been running at capacity for, you know, a year or longer businesses are open. People

01:11:11.880 are Taylor Swift's, you know, tour has been sold out. People are living normally. There, there is

01:11:16.240 no evidence behind this claim. This is someone with hundreds of thousands of followers who's on the

01:11:21.540 media constantly giving, you know, espousing his views on what people should and shouldn't do.

01:11:26.320 And he is saying, and the problem with this is, is that it makes us seem like we have more agency

01:11:32.100 than we really do. And I'm not a religious person, but I understand why I think a lot of

01:11:37.900 religious people during the pandemic made out quite well in a lot of regards, not all of them.

01:11:43.120 And some people, I'm not saying an old person shouldn't have been vaccinated because there's

01:11:46.600 a certain amount of like, of, of acknowledging there's a limit to what we can control. And there's

01:11:51.680 a hubris, I think, in a lot of public health people to think that we have more agency, that

01:11:57.660 we have more control than we actually do. And when you have that degree of hubris, it causes

01:12:02.660 all these sort of this cascade of second order effects. And you need to think through if we're

01:12:08.180 going to implement this thing, what are the dominoes that are going to fall on the other side

01:12:12.940 after we put this in place? You need a certain amount of humility. And I think a lot of that was

01:12:18.460 lost. And that's what worries me. You see why we love David Zweig. Uh, you're welcome back anytime.

01:12:24.380 Thank you so much for all you do. Thanks for having me, Nikki. Treasure. What a treasure.

01:12:28.820 Okay. Up next, another free press contributor, somebody I've never spoken to before. She's

01:12:32.960 head of strategy. She also happens to be Barry Weiss's wife. Nellie Bowles joins us for the first

01:12:39.180 time. We'll talk about her exit Khaleesi-like from the New York Times as well.

01:12:49.220 Some of that funky new music. We've updated our music. I'm just now hearing some of the tracks.

01:12:53.440 Yeah. Yeah. It does remind me of Pornhub. No, I'm just, I've never been on Pornhub.

01:13:00.980 What is it? What are the fifth column guys say I'm getting? My own OnlyFans?

01:13:05.400 OnlyFans. It's a little OnlyFans-y.

01:13:09.500 Poor Nellie Bowles. She didn't realize you can have to be dealing with this.

01:13:12.860 She was a longtime reporter at legacy media outlets like the New York Times, San Francisco

01:13:16.720 Chronicle. She has seen it all, including today. She's seen quite a lot. She does not do many

01:13:22.120 interviews, but we are honored to have her here today. Nellie, so nice to meet you.

01:13:26.340 It's such a pleasure to be here. And I don't do many interviews. And I see on your desk that you

01:13:30.940 guys were having some cocktails earlier. A little. This is the problem. Oh, you know,

01:13:35.200 it's no accident. Abby took it away. She took away my cocktail before I'd finished. What happened,

01:13:38.840 Abigail? Is that a hint? OK, I get it. She's like, we're making porn references. It's over.

01:13:43.180 All right. So you're back in the same spot that Barry was. I guess you're you're coming to us from

01:13:50.400 the same studio. So this is one of the benefits of your working slash personal relationship. You

01:13:56.620 guys, you're running a business. You're running a family. You got a new baby and you seem just as

01:14:01.200 busy as she is. I don't know how you two are. Do you have like a staff that looks like Downton

01:14:04.500 Abbey? You must. No, we're just exhausted. I need some of that. One of your ads was for a

01:14:09.580 lightning ointment of some sort, which I definitely need for some dark spots.

01:14:15.200 Yeah, I'm going to send some to you. We've got a baby. We're this is very sort of backyard

01:14:20.900 studio converted garage. And the podcast recorded out of here. It's a mess. And we're having a

01:14:28.640 blast, to be honest. It's a lot of work, but it's well. And it's there's been a lot of interest

01:14:36.500 in what we're doing. And it's been heartening, honestly. Well, you I was talking to David about

01:14:42.040 this, about how he's loving. I think it was during a break. I'm trying to remember whether

01:14:46.520 it was on air. I think it was off. But he was just saying how much he's loving being independent

01:14:49.960 and how, you know, he used to see that in his circles, there was a cachet in like saying,

01:14:57.100 oh, I had a piece in the Times this weekend. And now he just couldn't care less. He loves

01:15:01.720 being on his own and being able to write the truth again, support him at silent lunch dot

01:15:06.180 net. But that's you and Barry have had very similar experiences. So let's just go back

01:15:10.960 before you left the Times. Like, let's just go back because it seemed to me I characterized

01:15:16.180 you earlier. You characterize yourself. I described you as a liberal, like Barry, a pretty liberal

01:15:21.140 going into the New York Times, probably dream job until it wasn't. So what what happened?

01:15:26.360 It was the only dream job I could ever have imagined. I mean, growing up getting on the front

01:15:33.220 page of the Times was literally my singular aspiration. I used to look up the names of

01:15:39.000 the reporters and look and see how they'd gotten there, read their whole career trajectory.

01:15:44.840 And honestly, for a few years of the Times, I had an amazing time and I had a lot of great

01:15:50.060 editors who were wonderful. Basically, what happened with me was not quite as dramatic as

01:15:56.260 what happened with there. It was it was that. As 2020 came and as the sort of boundaries

01:16:03.720 for what was allowed to be reported on got tighter and tighter, I started to feel very

01:16:08.720 constricted in where my curiosity could lead. And I was I started as a business reporter.

01:16:14.120 I was kind of a free ranging features reporter and I couldn't cover a lot of the most interesting

01:16:20.420 stuff. Editors were kind of making that very difficult. And my colleagues were making that

01:16:27.240 very difficult when I tried to cover things such as like, you know, the most interesting

01:16:33.380 stuff that was going on that year, like Chaz, CHOP, whatever you want to call it in Seattle,

01:16:36.620 where a group of Antifa activists took over the gay neighborhood of Seattle and to credit an

01:16:43.880 economist zone. I like gayborhood. Is that a new is that a new term? I like gayborhood.

01:16:47.840 That works. Only only for internal gay use. But I found basically I wasn't allowed to write about

01:16:57.700 a lot of things I was really curious about writing about. And so that was happening.

01:17:00.460 Then when I was with Bear, obviously, I started getting kind of treated like a not cool kid in

01:17:05.660 high school or something, which is hard because I was always cool in high school. And and then

01:17:12.320 Bear started the sub stack. We started it on a flight. She had been kind of she'd quit.

01:17:17.620 She was wandering around the house, not sure what to do. And I opened up this thing,

01:17:23.560 sub stack. And I was like, you got to just start writing here. And and then she started having a lot

01:17:27.840 of fun on it. And it was a hit and it was growing and it was making more money than she had made at

01:17:33.960 the times. Then twice as much money she was made at the times. And it was like there was a lot of

01:17:37.820 interest. There was traffic. And honestly, like part of me quit the times because I was frustrated

01:17:45.460 with what was going on. But I had a really good experience there in a lot of ways. I loved my

01:17:51.080 bosses and stuff. And but part of me quit because there was a lot more fun in the new world. Like

01:17:55.260 you said, what David was saying, the new world is really exciting and positive. And it felt fun

01:18:01.820 and it felt like happy and exuberant. And I was so thrilled to be part of that. And so I quit and I

01:18:08.500 joined and and trying to explain my parents why I was quitting the New York Times to join

01:18:13.860 Barry Weiss dot sub stack dot com was was a little bit crazy. But but they they came around and and

01:18:22.880 then, yeah, now now we've kind of made it into a little media company. Yeah. And growing by the

01:18:27.920 day. So it wasn't all, you know, a ball of roses, unfortunately, because I know you had said early

01:18:35.580 on it was twenty twenty one. It was shortly after you left that some of the colleagues at the times

01:18:40.740 decided might be a fun thing to leak negative stories about you and that they were taking aim at

01:18:47.320 you. Now, was that because of ideology? Because they saw you covering stories like Chaz that they

01:18:52.560 didn't want you covering? Or was that because the link to Barry, who they already saw as controversial?

01:18:57.360 It was a mix. But basically, as soon as you. Cross whatever the sort of red line that that this

01:19:07.340 world has put up, as soon as you are are exposed to anything, even slightly ideologically off kilter or

01:19:14.160 just not exactly in line with whatever the line of the day is, you become a real target. And so,

01:19:21.400 I mean, I'm not going to say I'm some great victim in this like it.

01:19:26.200 But yeah, it was nasty and bullying. And well, can you can you expand on that, though? What do you

01:19:31.380 mean? Like what what was your alleged sin and how did you feel the blowback?

01:19:36.560 The alleged sin was curiosity about the wrong things. So.

01:19:39.740 So. I wanted to cover.

01:19:43.440 The financial ramifications of some of the protests in a town called Kenosha, where.

01:19:49.720 Yeah, I remember this reporting.

01:19:52.160 Yeah. We're like the minority owned businesses of the poor neighborhood had been completely burned

01:19:59.360 and destroyed and they were all underinsured and they were kind of begging for attention and

01:20:03.360 begging for people to care about what was going on. Of course, the wealthier area of town had boarded up

01:20:07.920 their windows and had proper insurance and were totally fine. Anyway, so I.

01:20:13.220 Pitched this story and wanted to go because as a business supporter, that seemed really reasonable.

01:20:17.760 And.

01:20:17.860 Basically, the story was held until after the election, it was just I realized that politics

01:20:25.860 were coming into.

01:20:29.080 My work in a way that felt really uncomfortable and that felt inappropriate and weird and not

01:20:36.280 just not right. And then honestly, but also the interpersonal stuff is just as much an issue

01:20:41.680 as the actual work stuff. Right. Like you don't want to work somewhere where people are

01:20:45.200 mean to you and like their actual opinions of you change to where they were treating you

01:20:51.660 differently. Yeah. People would call me a fascist on Twitter or like.

01:20:56.120 Colleagues.

01:20:57.960 Colleagues. Again, of course, but you know this stuff, you know, this is what I have only ever

01:21:06.260 worked with the most delightful, supportive people. I don't know what you are talking about.

01:21:10.880 I mean, yeah, people were bad. I I remember this one editor. There was just sort of a drumbeat that

01:21:22.060 like. That like I was going to be smeared in some way and I got a note about how I had a white

01:21:31.740 gaze from an editor that that my whiteness was imbuing my work and all this stuff. And I just had

01:21:37.220 this feeling of like, oh, God. And then the Donald McNeil stuff happened. I don't know if you

01:21:41.420 remember that, that when that amazing science reporter was smeared for having years ago on a

01:21:48.660 trip with kids. Yeah. Repeat the N word to back to some kids after they asked him about the use of

01:21:55.760 the N word and he asked them for the context of it. Whatever. It was like an insane moment.

01:21:59.580 It just it was just that he uttered it. He uttered it. It wasn't even like he was using it. He was

01:22:03.600 repeating a story in which it was used. Exactly. And he'd been punished for doing so. And that was

01:22:08.800 probably the right thing and all that. But this was dredged back up then in that moment and used to

01:22:13.620 kind of drumbeat him out of the times and to smear him as a racist and as someone who had used the N

01:22:20.620 word as though he'd like yelled it at someone. And I just was watching that and watching this career

01:22:26.240 Times reporter be smeared in that way, in a way that is so humiliating and so, I mean, humiliating

01:22:35.340 in like a Broadway for his life, like his kids. Like, it's like it's embarrassing. And I was like,

01:22:41.140 I don't want to hang out and wait around until some folks figure out how to do that to me. Like,

01:22:45.540 I better go out with my head up at least. Anyways, you don't need to hear about me complaining about

01:22:51.020 old colleagues years ago. Well, I do think it's interesting. We, you know, we had Sage Steele on the

01:22:55.740 show last week and we talked about what ESPN did to her for coloring outside the lines. And in her

01:23:02.100 case, what she, all she was saying was how she felt about being biracial. These are her feelings

01:23:06.980 about herself. Not okay. And she questioned the vaccine mandates also not okay. You're here telling

01:23:12.900 your story. I've had Laura Logan on the program talking about how they came for her when she was

01:23:19.340 at CBS years ago, because she did some reporting on Benghazi. They didn't like, it's just, you know,

01:23:25.100 it's a pattern. It's a disgusting, toxic, awful industry. And maybe it's the necessity is the

01:23:30.680 mother of all invention, not just the bias, but the toxicity of that lane. And there's just the

01:23:35.760 absurd rules of it force people who are not insane to create something else, to go someplace else where

01:23:43.220 they can do great journalism and also be happy people. Yeah. At this point, I'm grateful for it.

01:23:50.620 I mean, I, yeah. Bears dad always says we should pay these folks in Brooklyn to keep tweeting me and

01:23:57.280 stuff about us at this point, because the, the insanity of that movement has become the bedrock

01:24:04.140 of, of all this new world, um, and has allowed for a flourishing of like all the best interesting

01:24:11.780 reporters are leaving and are starting their own things and are now available to join us. And, um,

01:24:17.500 so I'm grateful for how nuts it's gotten. And honestly, if the times started being a little

01:24:25.320 less crazy or got a little towards the center, that would be a huge threat to our business. So

01:24:29.520 we're, we're really, I have nothing to worry about. You're good. I'm helping organize those

01:24:36.940 glad protesters outside the times building myself. Yeah. We've talked about it with Barry glad is

01:24:43.560 protesting the times because they did some reporting. They protested Barry. I mean, do you

01:24:47.740 think like, you know, Barry is an openly out lesbian in a, in a gay marriage? No, she gets

01:24:54.540 protested, posted by glad because she's done fair reporting on the trans issue. It's like, I don't

01:24:59.880 even know what glad is anymore, but they've lost the mission. The it's been mission creep to a bad

01:25:05.520 place. And speaking of creep, go ahead. Not you. I was going to ask a different thing.

01:25:09.960 I probably am. But that, that glad situation so encapsulates the issue with, um, sort of the gay

01:25:18.700 activism of the moment. It's like, it's like, there are so many, um, real anti-gay things to fight.

01:25:29.160 Like there's, you look at Iran, you look at even what's happening in Italy. And, and yet our American

01:25:34.200 organizations are focused on, um, organizing around like two mildly dissident times reporters. It's

01:25:41.060 just, it's bizarre. It's really bizarre. It's sad. It is. Um, so now we've got two key cues for this

01:25:49.560 story, bizarre and creep. Um, I take you to the university of Wyoming and the sorority Kappa Kappa

01:25:56.140 Gamma, which we've been covering this case, the sorority sisters who complained about a man posing as a

01:26:01.920 woman coming into their sorority. Artemis Langford is the name that he goes by now. It's a long story,

01:26:08.460 Nellie. I don't use the pronouns of choice any longer. I did a whole post on it, but, um,

01:26:13.780 he Artemis was a man. I mean, like two seconds ago, uh, I'll give the audience a flavor for what

01:26:20.920 Artemis looked like during the midst of the pandemic. Wasn't flirting as far as we know with

01:26:24.580 transitioning at all was appearing on campus as a man. Here he was communicating with friends,

01:26:31.880 uh, putting that, you know, social network that you have, uh, from in-person to an online format,

01:26:41.020 uh, would be extraordinary beneficial. And I wish that I had developed that better,

01:26:47.700 but living in a new environment, uh, it was really difficult to,

01:26:54.580 well, that is one of the newest members of Kappa Kappa Gamma at the university of Wyoming,

01:26:58.460 because he then declared that he was a woman and went into the sorority house under pressure from

01:27:04.560 the national chapter. They admitted him, um, by a vote that was secret in which the girls were not

01:27:10.540 allowed to see who is voting, but they were told, unless you have a reason other than him being

01:27:14.680 biologically male, you may not vote against him. Uh, so he gets in and then the sisters,

01:27:20.840 many of them complained about inappropriate conduct while in the sorority house. Frankly,

01:27:25.560 not, it's not even relevant to me. Like, I mean, it's disgusting what they alleged he did,

01:27:29.560 but it's not even relevant to me. Men don't belong in women's spaces and sororities by definition

01:27:33.640 are one of them. The sorority was on his side. Um, the sisters sued because they thought the

01:27:41.980 definition of female, they required a female, uh, membership in the charter should control and they

01:27:47.880 lost. And now the guy who was alleged to have been getting off while watching the girls do their

01:27:55.300 yoga, change into their nighttime clothing, kept asking them about their breasts and their vaginas.

01:28:02.140 Cause you know, that's normal girl talk. Nellie, how's your vagina? How's it? Hey,

01:28:06.100 welcome to the Megan Kelly show. How's your vag doing? That doesn't happen. Not a thing.

01:28:10.440 Okay. So, all right. So I'm setting it up. She's laughing. I think in these conversations,

01:28:19.840 it is important to remember that there's a real person here and this person is often suffering and

01:28:25.920 it is, you know, there's a, I feel really sorry for this person. Right. At the same time.

01:28:32.660 I was, I was, I could have gotten behind that before we got to the, you know, touching himself

01:28:38.080 an erection under the pillow while he's watching the girls in the sorority that I, my empathy is

01:28:43.280 only with the girls. Uh, it really is. I get it. I mean, at this point though, the American left is

01:28:48.980 really out of step with basically broader liberalism. Um, the, the American left stance is that anyone can

01:28:59.620 declare themselves any gender they want and ought to have, um, access to any space they want a women's

01:29:07.300 prison, uh, sorority sports teams, obviously anything that's really out of step with again,

01:29:14.160 broader liberalism with what's happening in Europe. Um, where you see a real walking back of that.

01:29:21.260 And the British labor party just actually, um, put out maybe a week or two ago, a couple of weeks ago,

01:29:27.100 um, a statement saying self ID, this idea that you can just announce that you're a certain gender

01:29:33.200 and that then you have access to those spaces. It's not what we support anymore. And in fact,

01:29:37.320 women's only spaces make sense and are really important. And we stand by that. And so I don't

01:29:43.380 know if I found myself agreeing with the British labor party and feeling like my politics align pretty

01:29:47.800 well with that. Then I know I'm not too right wing on an issue. Um, yeah, I, I, the American left on

01:29:54.280 this is, is in a bizarre tangle and I cannot figure out why. Yeah. And the story now that he's won his

01:30:04.660 lawsuit, uh, sorry, the sisters have lost their lawsuit against Kappa Kappa Gamma. Um, he's out

01:30:10.680 there claiming that he was the victim here and the, the press is going along. Look at this absurd clip

01:30:19.360 from MSNBC in which this anchor who I've literally never heard of before gives not even a word to the

01:30:27.300 discomfort of the women who were in the sorority house, uh, allegedly being stared at and so on.

01:30:33.580 But even if, even if he didn't do that, they shouldn't have to share their sorority house

01:30:38.280 with a man. Uh, but listen to how the press addresses this story that I just outlaid for you.

01:30:44.220 Artemis Langford, the very brave woman at the center of it all is joining me now. It's got to

01:30:50.300 be hard Artemis to start off your junior year. You know, you should be thinking about what classes

01:30:54.240 you're taking, um, which friends are going to be hanging with instead you're thinking about

01:30:59.040 this lawsuit. Do you have support from other women in the house? It takes a very brave and unique

01:31:05.160 person to do this, to be a first in a situation like this, and then to continue on. Um, what makes

01:31:13.320 you want to stay with everything that you've been through? I'm certainly not the first trans person

01:31:18.640 to ever be attacked by elements in the media to be used. And unfortunately, I don't think I'll be

01:31:25.980 the last, but I want people to know that it's never okay for that kind of scrutiny on a person just

01:31:35.720 because of their identity, just because I'm trans. It's okay to be exactly who you are.

01:31:43.320 The scrutiny is not because Artemis is who he is. It's because he joined a woman's only group.

01:31:54.640 Sure response is to call him a very brave woman. There's not even a trans on it. He's a woman now.

01:32:00.640 Okay. He had takes a brave and unique person to be first, not a nod to the discomfort of the women.

01:32:06.300 And you've got to give her a cherry on top of it for, it's got to be hard. It was hard. And if you

01:32:12.080 had done your homework about this case, you would know that that was part of the problem. Unknown anchor

01:32:16.940 who I've never seen before. Your thoughts on it.

01:32:20.180 Odd that this movement that was all about believe women is now so skeptical of women saying they're

01:32:27.440 uncomfortable with something. It seems really odd to me. And, and that the empathy is like we talked

01:32:37.680 about at the start, that the empathy is only with this individual and not at all with any of the

01:32:42.680 other people who are being impacted by having a biological male in a women's house.

01:32:49.880 Um, I, again, I don't understand why the American left has taken this stance and has become so

01:32:58.820 obsessed with this hard line. It seems irrational. And, um, but this is definitely the hill they want

01:33:04.740 to die on. All right, wait, I only have a couple minutes left and I wanted to get this in because

01:33:08.440 you're a California. You've been doing some reporting on Gavin Newsom. Somebody just asked him if the

01:33:12.580 debate is still on between Newsom and DeSantis, which Hannity was going to host. And he said,

01:33:19.380 we'll see, do we think, cause there's a lot of people even on the left who think the plan is

01:33:24.500 for Biden to accept the nomination to like, to go through the, you know, the initial sort of

01:33:28.800 election seasons and then pass the baton to someone like a Gavin Newsom. Do we think that's the plan

01:33:35.500 and that Gavin Newsom could be a viable candidate on the national stage? I could be viable. God, I

01:33:43.340 don't, I don't know. I mean, he's fun to watch. I, I, I sort of like his scandals as a writer. His,

01:33:50.240 um, Kimberly Guilfoyle, I like the, even his COVID scandal was kind of fun. You know, he, he

01:33:58.500 French lockdown when I was missing Thanksgiving, it was just like insane. Um, do I think he could be a

01:34:06.940 viable candidate potentially in that? Like, I think it's very reasonable to think that Biden

01:34:12.740 might not make it all the way to the election. I don't know. Um, yeah, we'll find out. I mean,

01:34:20.700 the fascinating thing is if it's Trump, let's say they do that and it's Newsom versus Trump,

01:34:26.000 then you've got Kimberly Guilfoyle who used to be married to the democratic candidate

01:34:30.720 candidate and is engaged to the son of the Republican candidate. And that will be the

01:34:37.500 most fascinating, like viewpoint into the two men. Like she's got to come on. She's got to tell

01:34:42.660 us everything. She knows everything from start to finish Nellie Bowles. What a pleasure. Thank you

01:34:48.740 so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me on. It was, it was really fun. Oh, for me too.

01:34:54.140 All right. And you can find her work every Friday at the F P.com and find all of the free presses.

01:35:01.100 Great work by becoming a subscriber. I want to thanks. Uh, thank everybody for joining me here

01:35:05.920 today. That was fun. Having a drink on the set. That's, you know, like I say, my husband's that's

01:35:10.160 his, that's his jam. Um, and by the way, I should mention that a Doug Brunt is going to be on the show

01:35:15.360 soon. Um, I'll, I'll more on that later. Uh, and in the meantime, tomorrow, Rick Grinnell is back,

01:35:21.820 is the GOP primary over? We'll ask him. See you then.

01:35:29.820 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - September 06, 2023

Legacy Media Constraints, and COVID Gaslighting Continues, with Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowles, and David Zweig ｜ Ep. 621

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