The Megyn Kelly Show - Remembering Pope Francis’ Life and Legacy, Reality of Trump’s Tariff Policies, and Media Lies, with Kevin O’Leary and David Zweig

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00:00:31.200 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.640 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Monday.

00:00:47.080 We begin today with news from the Vatican.

00:00:49.980 Pope Francis dead at age 88.

00:00:53.280 It was kind of shocking to wake up to.

00:00:54.580 Even though we knew he was not in good health, he had had double pneumonia

00:00:58.360 and been hospitalized for some five weeks in mid-February.

00:01:03.320 I mean, we knew he wasn't doing that well, but it seemed like he was past the worst of it

00:01:10.400 and maybe was getting a little better or at least on the road toward getting a little better.

00:01:16.740 And then Cardinal Kevin Farrell somberly came out this morning and stated at 7.35 this morning,

00:01:23.460 the Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the house of the father.

00:01:28.180 There's no official cause of death released as of now,

00:01:31.500 but as I said, he's been suffering from these chronic lung issues.

00:01:34.740 And then beginning in February, he was in the hospital for some 38 days with these respiratory issues.

00:01:39.760 Amazingly, you've seen this maybe by now, yesterday, just yesterday, he appeared in his wheelchair,

00:01:50.240 in like the back of the Popemobile.

00:01:53.140 I don't know what that is.

00:01:54.920 I'm not exactly sure of the vehicle.

00:01:57.180 On Easter Sunday.

00:01:59.160 Look at that.

00:02:00.460 It's kind of amazing in St. Peter's Square.

00:02:02.340 And one of the last people to meet with Pope Francis was Vice President J.D. Vance.

00:02:09.400 Pretty incredibly.

00:02:10.920 The Vice President had a brief meeting with the Pontiff yesterday,

00:02:14.940 where the pair exchanged Easter greetings and gifts,

00:02:17.540 Mr. Vance telling Pope Francis he prays for him daily.

00:02:20.040 Watch.

00:02:20.660 I know you've not been feeling great, but it's good to see you in better health.

00:02:24.700 Pray for you every day.

00:02:26.020 God bless you.

00:02:26.620 I pray for you every day, for God to bless you.

00:02:30.840 Thank you, St. Peter.

00:02:32.160 Happy Easter.

00:02:33.680 Wow.

00:02:34.480 Pretty extraordinary.

00:02:36.320 This Pope was elected Pope in March of 2013,

00:02:40.260 after the shock resignation of Pope Benedict.

00:02:43.180 No Popes resign.

00:02:45.280 They just don't do it.

00:02:47.180 The first Pope Benedict, sorry, Francis, from Latin America.

00:02:51.060 First ever.

00:02:51.840 Can you believe that, given how Catholic Latin America is?

00:02:54.520 He was our first Pope from there.

00:02:56.620 And Pope Francis immediately jolted energy and enthusiasm into the church.

00:03:01.100 He was a Jesuit.

00:03:02.840 He was a little bit more progressive.

00:03:05.580 And this got a lot of people excited.

00:03:08.560 Many people thought the church had gone too hardcore,

00:03:11.300 though he stood by some traditional things,

00:03:14.340 like an all-male papacy and celibacy, among other things.

00:03:18.820 The church's stance on abortion,

00:03:20.480 which people are kidding themselves if they want the Catholic Church to amend.

00:03:23.900 But this is what we hear from young progressives within the Catholic Church.

00:03:27.360 Okay, good luck with that.

00:03:28.700 Maybe we could get, you know,

00:03:31.120 I guess you can still have priests who come to the church married.

00:03:34.940 Like, you can become a priest after having been married, that is, at least,

00:03:38.420 and having, like, children.

00:03:39.580 But you cannot enter the priesthood and then get married.

00:03:42.460 That's just, anyway.

00:03:43.600 Anyway, here's Pope Francis's first appearance as Pope on the balcony of the Vatican.

00:03:48.380 Well, it's always a sight to behold, right?

00:04:09.980 He was born Jorge Mareo Bergoglio in Buenos Aires,

00:04:15.400 where his mother hoped he would become a doctor.

00:04:18.120 But just before his 17th birthday,

00:04:20.640 he paused in front of the Basilica of St. Joseph and later recounted he,

00:04:25.400 quote, felt like someone grabbed me from the inside and took him into the confessional.

00:04:30.580 Right there, he said, I knew I had to be a priest.

00:04:33.780 His mother evidently was upset he would not become a doctor.

00:04:36.960 But he said, quote, I'm going to study the medicine of the soul.

00:04:39.620 Can you imagine?

00:04:41.000 And then he went on to become the pope.

00:04:43.160 It's incredible.

00:04:45.220 Pope Francis moved the church in a leftward direction, no question,

00:04:48.960 and away from some of the more divisive issues within the church.

00:04:53.580 As I mentioned, he did not focus that much on abortion,

00:04:56.460 but he didn't change the stance.

00:04:59.020 Homosexuality shifting its emphasis to global problems like climate change, poverty,

00:05:04.440 and he was very big on migration.

00:05:07.080 He clashed with President Trump over Trump's immigration policy,

00:05:11.340 saying before the 16th election that a person who thinks only about building walls

00:05:15.180 and not of building bridges is not Christian.

00:05:19.280 This is why he was controversial amongst, in particular,

00:05:23.420 a lot of Christians here in America who tend to be more conservative.

00:05:27.900 The Trump campaign responded by pointing out that the Vatican is surrounded by walls.

00:05:31.420 We saw that exact thing happen a couple of weeks ago, where once again,

00:05:35.140 he was ripping on Trump's policies when it comes to immigration.

00:05:37.940 And once again, we had Tom Homan coming out and saying,

00:05:41.300 my response as a lifelong Catholic to this pope is that the Vatican has walls.

00:05:44.960 Why is that?

00:05:46.640 Ahead of the 2024 election, the pope declined to say whether people should vote for Trump or Harris,

00:05:51.480 merely urging people to choose the lesser evil according to their conscience.

00:05:55.620 But in a letter to U.S. bishops in February, Pope Francis wrote that mass deportation,

00:06:01.660 quote, damages the dignity of many men and women and of entire families

00:06:05.420 and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness, unquote.

00:06:11.260 Now, look, this is the problem,

00:06:13.560 because not only is that the church's official stance,

00:06:17.740 but the church has been participating in getting immigrants here and then finding them housing

00:06:23.720 and helping them stay here, irrespective of the fact that they're here illegally.

00:06:28.100 And Pope Francis didn't have to deal with that.

00:06:30.920 You know, and it's caused a lot of us in the Catholic Church to wonder what exactly we're donating toward on Sunday.

00:06:36.640 It really does.

00:06:38.500 It's one thing if you want to help support your priests,

00:06:42.140 make sure that they're well taken care of,

00:06:44.000 make sure your church is well taken care of,

00:06:45.600 make sure it's got flowers on the altar for Easter Mass.

00:06:48.820 But funding illegals coming into the country,

00:06:52.300 they're not all upstanding Catholics.

00:06:56.500 And, you know, a lot of us who are Catholic,

00:06:59.300 but lean right,

00:07:01.440 felt this tug of war going on between the Pope's messaging

00:07:04.540 and what he wanted us to believe were,

00:07:08.400 you know, deep Catholic teachings.

00:07:10.420 And what we understand as Americans who are watching our citizens murdered in the streets by these people to be true.

00:07:20.420 Anyway, it look, it's on a day like this, you pay, you pray,

00:07:24.080 you pray for the loss of the Pope and for a very obviously holy man who was the leader of the Catholic Church,

00:07:29.540 who had enormous challenges on him and pressures on him.

00:07:33.320 And, you know, the church is very political, too, especially at the top.

00:07:37.980 It's such a really interesting organization.

00:07:41.860 And then also you look at the messaging and you try to understand

00:07:46.040 how he could so misunderstand somebody who is our leader here,

00:07:51.900 our political leader here.

00:07:53.200 And the reason President Trump is so devoted to getting rid of these people

00:07:59.740 who Pope Francis just looked at as vulnerable and defenseless.

00:08:02.780 Well, you know who is vulnerable and defenseless?

00:08:04.780 Lakin Riley.

00:08:06.440 You know, it's like.

00:08:08.440 I wish I could have gotten to talk to the pontiff about it.

00:08:11.020 I really do wish I could have had an interview with him where we talked about things like that.

00:08:14.620 I'm sure he would have had nothing but empathy for those killed by these illegals.

00:08:18.060 But that's the problem, in part, with, you know, the Catholic Church

00:08:22.060 and its approach toward this issue.

00:08:25.200 No church is going to satisfy its constituents across the board.

00:08:28.780 This one didn't.

00:08:30.360 Pope Francis didn't.

00:08:31.460 But unquestionably a good, decent, honorable, holy, loving man.

00:08:36.960 And President Trump, for his part, was very gracious in the wake of the news today,

00:08:40.500 posting on True Social, rest in peace, Pope Francis.

00:08:43.620 May God bless him and all who loved him.

00:08:45.500 Now, a public viewing for Pope Francis could take place as early as Wednesday.

00:08:51.000 And then a conclave.

00:08:52.740 This is such a big deal whenever this happens.

00:08:54.940 I don't know if for our younger viewers, you may not have seen it.

00:08:57.360 But I will never forget when we were on the air at Fox and Shepard Smith said that he said

00:09:05.200 he said the Pope had died when the Pope hadn't died.

00:09:08.000 That was it.

00:09:08.760 I guess I will forget because my details are somewhat fuzzy.

00:09:12.060 But we were waiting.

00:09:13.300 It was like the Pope was sick and we were waiting to see if he had died.

00:09:17.800 Anyway, he got that wrong and it turned out to be a big, turned out to be a huge deal.

00:09:22.540 We covered these things at Fox News like they were presidential elections.

00:09:27.020 And so they're going to go through this process now, the conclave, where they choose his successor.

00:09:31.200 The 120 cardinals will gather.

00:09:33.580 They say this typically begins between 15 and 20 days after the papal office becomes vacant.

00:09:38.500 So call it two weeks from now or thereabouts, we can expect to see that they had to actually

00:09:45.740 have a good write up today in the Daily Mail about it.

00:09:49.200 120 cardinals behind closed doors.

00:09:51.140 If you saw the movie Conclave, you know, where the Pope turns out to be intersex, spoiler alert,

00:09:58.940 then you have seen a refresher.

00:10:04.040 But this article pointing out some differences in real life, you will not have somebody coming

00:10:12.420 up and briefing the media while the process is underway.

00:10:15.420 And in real life, anybody who did that would face excommunication for that offense.

00:10:20.600 You're not allowed to talk to the outside world while the cardinals are in the conclave.

00:10:24.920 Um, nor are they allowed to make packs with the other cardinals who are voting, uh, nor

00:10:31.620 they say, would a dead Pope ever be allowed to be swarmed over by priests, nuns, and officials

00:10:35.500 nor laid out in his pajamas.

00:10:37.960 Uh, they say in the real world, uh, the Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church declares a Pope to

00:10:43.760 be dead in the presence of the papal master of ceremonies and a handful of other members

00:10:47.960 of the papal household.

00:10:49.200 Nine days of mourning are then declared in which the body of the late Pope will lie in state in

00:10:53.580 St. Peter's Basilica.

00:10:54.920 Uh, it will be at least 15 days before the conclave.

00:10:59.400 And, um, then the cardinals though are no longer physically locked in a building until

00:11:04.780 they've made their decision, but they will stay at a guest house house within the Vatican's

00:11:08.520 walls known as St. Martha's house, where they'll have the services of cooks and housekeepers,

00:11:13.660 plus two doctors, one of whom is a surgeon.

00:11:16.560 And, uh, you know, many of these are old guys.

00:11:18.460 And then they will walk daily in their blue cassocks and red sashes to the papal palace

00:11:23.780 or the Sistine chapel where the voting will actually take place.

00:11:27.600 They will not be allowed to read newspapers.

00:11:29.100 It's like being a sequestered jury.

00:11:31.340 Access radio, TV, or at the internet.

00:11:33.520 They can't, they'll not be allowed to send or receive any kind of messaging, uh, to or from

00:11:37.600 the outside world.

00:11:38.620 And they could be there for some time.

00:11:40.340 The longest in history lasted 34 months.

00:11:42.900 Good gracious.

00:11:43.620 Back in 1271, in modern times, none has lasted longer than the five days it took in 1922.

00:11:53.900 The conclave to elect Pope Francis lasted just two days.

00:11:57.160 This is from this daily mail piece.

00:11:59.020 Um, no firm procedure for the multiple ballots, which are likely to be held.

00:12:02.900 The conclave will determine its own procedure.

00:12:05.700 If a candidate receives two thirds of majorities, uh, majority of the votes, that should be it.

00:12:10.260 And then when they have the next pontiff, they will blow white smoke up the chimney.

00:12:18.680 Black smoke indicates no decision has been made.

00:12:23.160 Uh, good luck to them.

00:12:24.620 This is a big decision.

00:12:26.200 We've never had an American Pope, but I'm voting for Cardinal Dolan.

00:12:29.480 I hope they get behind him.

00:12:30.660 It'd be great to have.

00:12:31.420 We had one from the Americas, this Pope, Latin America.

00:12:35.080 We haven't had an American.

00:12:36.340 American would be amazing if we did.

00:12:39.740 And Cardinal Dolan is just the best man you could ever hope for, for the job.

00:12:44.880 An inspirational leader.

00:12:47.120 It's brilliant.

00:12:49.020 It's just, I mean, all the knowledge you could ever want in a church leader and a man of the

00:12:54.680 people, somebody who can inspire the working class and elites alike.

00:12:58.600 Somebody who knows how to talk to people in a language they can understand.

00:13:01.200 Uh, and just an all around dear man.

00:13:04.480 He's, he, you know, we've got Catholic radio on Sirius XM.

00:13:07.220 He's, he does a show, uh, every Christmas he has one.

00:13:11.020 I was on it a couple of years ago.

00:13:12.880 Wouldn't it be amazing if we had a, a Pope who had a Sirius XM radio show?

00:13:19.300 Be fantastic for Sirius.

00:13:21.180 They'd be so psyched.

00:13:22.200 Um, in any event, prayers with all of the men who will make this new decision and with

00:13:30.120 the one who becomes the next pontiff.

00:13:31.920 It's a big responsibility.

00:13:33.880 Um, on the subject of illegal immigration, I'm going to bring in my guest in a minute,

00:13:37.320 but I just want to start with this.

00:13:39.840 What an incredibly frustrating series of events that we have been through legally over the

00:13:45.060 past six weeks since Trump started implementing his reforms and the ACLU became his co-president

00:13:52.840 in, in batting them down one by one.

00:13:56.780 It's, it is one step forward, two steps backward for the Trump administration when it comes to

00:14:01.640 fulfilling the people's wishes to deport, not a few, not some, but all, all of the illegal

00:14:13.880 immigrants in the United States right now.

00:14:17.000 That's what the people want.

00:14:19.020 Harry Enten took this on late last week on CNN, you know, their data guy.

00:14:23.520 Let me just show you the numbers.

00:14:25.120 Okay.

00:14:25.400 Look, look at soft 15.

00:14:29.540 Deport all undocumented immigrants, voters favoring the government trying to deport all 11 million

00:14:36.040 of them back in 2016, just 38% of voters wanted the government to, to try to deport all 11

00:14:42.980 million undocumented immigrants compared to where we are in 2025, 56%, the majority, the

00:14:49.800 American people have come a long way on this issue, much closer to Donald Trump.

00:14:53.840 And I think that's a big part of the reason why Americans are increasingly saying the country

00:14:57.900 is on the right track when it comes to immigration policy and why Donald Trump's net approval rating

00:15:01.740 on that issue is in the positive.

00:15:05.280 Okay.

00:15:05.740 So it's a clear majority who want all of them gone, all of them, not just the ones who committed

00:15:10.800 additional crimes, but all of them.

00:15:13.680 They want all illegal immigrants in the United States to be deported.

00:15:17.440 Now that number, how many is that?

00:15:18.920 It was said in 2020 or so to be about 10 million, between 10 and 11 million.

00:15:23.400 That was 2020 when Trump left office, how many have come in, in the four years since you go

00:15:29.720 to the center for migration studies, they'll say it's only 1.7 million that were added so

00:15:34.880 that we're only up to 11.7 million bull shit bull.

00:15:40.600 That's that grossly underestimates the millions who swarmed into this country under Biden.

00:15:46.220 He was letting in 300,000 a month, 300,000 a month, people.

00:15:53.460 It's estimated by House Republicans and Customs and Border Patrol, which is in a position to know

00:16:00.760 to be closer to 8 million under Joe Biden, 8.

00:16:05.740 Okay.

00:16:06.600 10 in 2020 plus 8 under Joe Biden gives us almost 20 million, 18 million total in the country.

00:16:14.820 Illegals.

00:16:15.380 You don't think that has an effect on the American economy?

00:16:20.040 So Trump's got to get rid of 18 million people.

00:16:23.760 That's what a clear majority of Americans want, 18 million.

00:16:27.740 How are we doing?

00:16:28.900 You've seen Tom Homan out there doing his level best.

00:16:31.960 ICE is out there doing their level best and they're doing yeoman's work at the southern

00:16:34.980 border.

00:16:35.680 The trickle back into the country has been stopped.

00:16:38.420 It's all been stopped.

00:16:39.780 It's been stopped as much as you can stop without having an airtight wall, which he's also

00:16:44.240 said he's going to work on.

00:16:45.940 But in any event, they're doing a great job now stopping the flow.

00:16:48.300 But how are we doing on the deportations, on the removals of those already here?

00:16:52.700 Well, in February, for the month of February, Trump deported just over 11,000.

00:16:58.880 You've never had an administration more devoted to rounding them up and shipping them out.

00:17:05.840 He is doing everything within his power.

00:17:08.280 He has expanded his rights of removal when you encounter somebody at the border, like

00:17:15.300 immediate removal.

00:17:16.060 He's expanded that to basically cover all of the United States.

00:17:19.520 He's using the Alien Enemies Act.

00:17:22.020 He, as you know, has been getting hit by the courts left and right for not providing these

00:17:25.520 people enough due process.

00:17:27.520 And even with Trump's, you could call it, you know, cut corners, he's only gotten 11,000

00:17:34.940 out in February.

00:17:36.240 I haven't seen the March numbers, but you can assume it's around there.

00:17:39.260 So let's say it's double if you add March in there.

00:17:41.840 So let's say it's 22,000 that we've gotten out, but I think it's slowed down in March.

00:17:48.240 All these sanctuary cities trying not to work with Tom Homan.

00:17:51.820 You've got these whistleblowers calling up the illegals, saying Homan's coming.

00:17:55.840 We saw some of that.

00:17:57.520 And keep in mind, Tom Homan said that they were going to start with the worst first.

00:18:01.000 And that means those who have committed additional crimes beyond illegal entry are overstaying their

00:18:05.620 visa.

00:18:06.820 Well, how many of those are there out of that?

00:18:09.040 Call it 18 million.

00:18:10.100 ICE told Congress last year it was about not quite half a million, 435,000 illegals who

00:18:16.440 have criminal convictions who are not yet in U.S. custody.

00:18:20.240 All right.

00:18:20.560 So we're starting with the worst of the worst, worst first, 435,000 here illegally.

00:18:26.100 And maybe this, since Trump took office, we've got now what, let's call it 22,000, 25,000.

00:18:31.000 You round up for the couple of weeks of January and April that we have going here.

00:18:35.080 Let's just call it 25,000.

00:18:37.120 That doesn't even get us down to 400,000 of the illegals who are still running around who

00:18:43.840 have also committed crimes.

00:18:45.220 And you haven't even cracked a million of the 18 million.

00:18:48.220 This is not a rip on Trump.

00:18:49.780 He's trying.

00:18:50.880 Tom Homan is trying.

00:18:52.420 Tom Homan's jumping up and down saying, I need more money because I don't have the resources

00:18:55.600 to do this.

00:18:56.360 And on top of that, I don't have the facilities to store them, even though even the numbers

00:19:00.340 he's getting.

00:19:00.840 There's no place to put them.

00:19:02.800 Just today, we have this long article about how now the ACLU is complaining that the ICE

00:19:06.860 facilities aren't nice enough, that some female migrants are having to sleep on mats on concrete

00:19:14.380 floors.

00:19:14.920 Okay.

00:19:15.740 They're complaining that some of the lunch tables don't have enough seats.

00:19:19.000 I mean, really?

00:19:21.700 Then get them out.

00:19:22.560 Go home.

00:19:23.180 You know where they have seats and mattresses?

00:19:24.940 Back in your home countries.

00:19:26.380 Get out.

00:19:26.900 Okay, but it's all on us.

00:19:30.700 It's all on Trump.

00:19:31.680 It's all on Tom Homan.

00:19:33.120 It's all on them to find them all, overcome the sanctuary city's objections, overcome these

00:19:38.440 mayors who are undermining them, overcome the whistleblowers, whatever you call them,

00:19:42.640 the leakers who are telling illegal groups when Homan's groups are coming.

00:19:46.660 And now, biggest and most importantly, overcome the ACLU, which at every turn is going into court

00:19:53.120 and challenging the deportations, saying, you can't expand expedited removal.

00:19:57.760 You can't use the Alien Enemies Act.

00:19:59.900 And they just had a huge victory.

00:20:04.340 Late Friday night into Saturday, at 1 a.m., the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling, unsigned,

00:20:13.760 but we know that it was Thomas and Alito who were in the dissent,

00:20:16.160 stopped him from deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act.

00:20:22.940 And buses that were seen leaving the ICE detention centers, said to be full of Venezuelans,

00:20:30.720 had to stop and turn around and put them back in there.

00:20:34.040 We're only at maybe 25,000 deported out of 18 million.

00:20:38.800 And now you've got these courts saying that they want due process that looks like it's

00:20:44.900 going to be akin to the due process you get when you're charged criminally.

00:20:47.820 How much due process do we have to give each one of these people individually, individually?

00:20:53.660 No due process afforded American citizens.

00:20:56.820 As 18 million of them came in, as some half a million committed crimes against us,

00:21:03.160 stealing from us, raping our women, murdering us, along with our children,

00:21:07.580 child molestation, did they have due process?

00:21:10.480 Did the American people have any due process at all?

00:21:12.400 No.

00:21:13.460 Now, for each one, we have to have due process before we deport them to El Salvador or anywhere else.

00:21:21.560 And it's starting to look like just a peppercorn will not be enough,

00:21:26.220 to steal a phrase from another area of law consideration.

00:21:29.960 It's starting to look like we're actually really going to have to provide hearings in each case,

00:21:36.360 allow these people, if they're upset, their notices that they could challenge it weren't in English.

00:21:41.980 Who?

00:21:43.220 That's your problem.

00:21:44.760 Like, now, what are we going to have to have a translator for every single language?

00:21:48.920 If we got, like, somebody in there who only speaks Arabic, we got to make sure.

00:21:53.100 English is the official language of the United States.

00:21:55.660 You don't understand your language too effing bad.

00:21:58.700 So the Supreme Court, for now, has shut down the use of the Alien Enemies Act.

00:22:07.360 And the ACLU does nothing but file challenges to every single attempt to deport these people.

00:22:13.520 And Pam Bondi's got up to her neck, up to her chin now in ACLU legal filings,

00:22:21.180 not to mention the offense that Trump is trying to play legally with things like trying to get,

00:22:25.580 you know, open anti-Semitism to stop on campuses like Harvard.

00:22:30.260 OK, that's where we are today.

00:22:31.720 Here to help us unpack this and much, much more is Kevin O'Leary.

00:22:37.400 He's chairman of O'Leary Ventures and Beanstalks,

00:22:40.000 and you probably know him as Mr. Wonderful on ABC's Shark Tank.

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00:24:01.600 So, Kevin, it's not exactly a legal debate I'm looking for with you.

00:24:05.460 It's, I want to talk about the frustration of this scenario as I've just laid it out.

00:24:10.860 And what, how we're ever supposed to get ahead on any of this.

00:24:16.260 You know, when the beatdown against everything they try to do is constant.

00:24:21.880 And there are so many enabling judges who will work with the ACLU.

00:24:25.580 Same as enabling media who will work with his left-wing critics on the tariffs,

00:24:29.840 which I know you defended him on.

00:24:31.380 It's just at every turn,

00:24:33.460 these same establishment types that got us into this mess are doing their level best to keep us there.

00:24:38.700 True process.

00:24:40.540 That's what everybody calls it.

00:24:43.060 I think the bigger picture, though, is to go back to the mandate that came out of the election

00:24:47.880 and that data that you pointed to earlier.

00:24:50.620 56% of people want this issue dealt with.

00:24:53.060 It's one of the reasons that Trump got his second term was illegal immigration.

00:24:57.560 And so I anticipate this will twist and turn through the courts.

00:25:03.660 Some good decisions will be made, some bad.

00:25:06.020 It depends which side of the equation you're on.

00:25:07.740 I've come to the realization now, as I deal with all kinds of issues around the administration,

00:25:13.620 that 50% of the people I deal with internationally, too, have what I call,

00:25:19.900 or has been termed, Trump derangement syndrome.

00:25:23.160 And what I mean by this is it's kind of useless to litigate why he's back in the White House.

00:25:30.480 As I point out to people saying, look, I don't shill for politicians, Trump included.

00:25:35.840 I shill for policy.

00:25:37.820 And I have to deal with the policy.

00:25:40.200 So why do we have to keep reiterating why Trump's in office?

00:25:44.840 I don't care at this point because he is.

00:25:47.240 And now we deal with the outcome.

00:25:49.120 Now we deal with the policy.

00:25:50.920 Now we deal with the environment we're in.

00:25:53.880 And we want to move forward, particularly for me as an investor.

00:25:57.140 I care about the policy coming out of the White House.

00:26:00.020 So tariffs is a big deal for me, obviously.

00:26:02.740 I invest internationally.

00:26:03.960 And so the narrative I want to have in foreign countries is, look, forget about Trump.

00:26:09.480 He's not leaving the White House.

00:26:10.700 He's going to finish off his second term.

00:26:12.440 Get over it.

00:26:13.260 Let's deal with the policy.

00:26:14.540 That's how I look at it.

00:26:15.620 And that tends to be working.

00:26:17.300 It's almost like I have to bring psychiatrists with me.

00:26:19.920 People really get crazy with the Trump stuff.

00:26:24.000 You know, if if the shoe were on the other foot, you know, and the Trump administration

00:26:30.420 or Trump's supporters were using lawfare to stop the Joe Biden agenda on green energy at every turn,

00:26:39.200 we'd be getting all these discussions about how if the Supreme Court gave them a decision,

00:26:44.240 Trump, they're illegitimate.

00:26:46.020 Right.

00:26:46.540 But now now suddenly they're fine with these courts and probably even this Supreme Court

00:26:52.040 because they've gotten these late night rulings saying, OK, we're going to stop it.

00:26:56.100 I don't I think we do have to abide by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

00:26:59.500 I think that's very clear.

00:27:00.800 You cannot delegitimize the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:27:03.300 There's a rule of law in this country and it must be upheld.

00:27:05.980 But we're we're heading toward a serious crisis, Kevin, where 56 percent of the country wants

00:27:12.000 all of these illegals out.

00:27:13.520 And when we're only some 20,000 into the deportations, it's basically been shut down.

00:27:21.800 The main tool for deporting most of them, the most dangerous, has been shut down.

00:27:26.080 And you're that's what's going to push us toward a crisis where the executive branch doesn't

00:27:31.160 listen to the Article three courts.

00:27:32.900 Yeah, but there's other ways to deal.

00:27:36.080 I mean, your numbers are let's let's let's round it out.

00:27:39.320 Let's say it's 20 million total illegal immigrants of which 500,000 have been charged with crimes.

00:27:45.980 Everybody would agree that they should go first.

00:27:48.980 And I think that's where the focus will be.

00:27:50.840 There's a really interesting narrative, Megan, going on right now in small business in America

00:27:54.920 where 62 percent of jobs are created.

00:27:57.320 These are companies, five to 500 employees, many of these illegal immigrants that have

00:28:03.020 not broken the law are employed in these businesses, particularly in agriculture.

00:28:08.440 And they're those business owners are asking, is there any other way to deal with this where

00:28:13.740 we can legitimize their residency here because they're actually productive in terms of being

00:28:19.460 workers for some jobs a lot of Americans don't want?

00:28:22.000 You've heard that narrative.

00:28:23.200 These are the people that are not been charged with any other crimes.

00:28:26.700 They came into the country illegally, yes, but they actually found jobs that are being

00:28:31.640 paid by American companies.

00:28:33.480 This is a difficult situation because if you just took 18 or call it 20 million people,

00:28:39.440 including the 500,000 that have done crimes and they should everybody agrees they should

00:28:44.600 be gone.

00:28:45.300 I mean, they're here illegally and they're not everybody.

00:28:48.440 Well, I mean, most voters think that's a double whammy.

00:28:52.700 That's almost three strikes and you're out.

00:28:54.180 I think the Trump administration will focus really hard on those 500,000 and one way or

00:29:00.180 another, they'll be gone because they are illegal and they did break the law.

00:29:04.100 So they're either going to end up serving time in an American prison when they're caught or

00:29:08.900 they're going to go somewhere else back to their native homeland.

00:29:11.520 We'll see how that works out.

00:29:12.940 But the dilemma for the rest of them is, is there a process by which they can apply legally

00:29:21.180 if they have a sponsor?

00:29:23.540 Now, this same issue occurred in Europe years ago when they brought workers in into places

00:29:29.920 like France where they found a way to give them employment because they were willing to

00:29:35.620 sponsor them.

00:29:36.980 I don't know if we're going to get to that place here because you made the numbers very

00:29:40.180 clear. If Trump got to a million deportations a month, he still wouldn't get it all done

00:29:45.740 before his term's over.

00:29:47.280 Think about it.

00:29:47.780 And there's zero chance of getting to even 100,000.

00:29:50.520 Never mind.

00:29:51.000 Yeah, I don't think that's realistic.

00:29:53.000 I mean, you'd have to take the commercial airlines into account.

00:29:55.440 You need to be booking seats on every aircraft in America.

00:29:58.180 I just don't see that happening.

00:29:59.800 So, however, I do see the half a million that have broken the law and he has got a clear

00:30:06.160 mandate from the voter.

00:30:08.020 And by the way, I think this is a bipartisan issue.

00:30:10.240 I don't think there's a lot of Democrats saying, yeah, this is a murderer that came in illegal.

00:30:14.540 Let's keep them here.

00:30:15.580 That doesn't even make any sense.

00:30:16.720 That's what they're fighting over right now.

00:30:18.160 He started with the worst.

00:30:19.360 He's starting with the ones he understands to be in gangs.

00:30:22.420 And the left is trying to pick every single one whose gang affiliation they question.

00:30:27.420 Oh, was he really in the gang?

00:30:28.780 Oh, you didn't have all the proof that he was in the gang.

00:30:31.120 He's here illegally.

00:30:32.060 He can be deported.

00:30:33.280 Like, I don't even know.

00:30:34.080 We're wasting time trying to argue about the extra crime because it's better.

00:30:40.620 It sounds better.

00:30:41.720 We don't have to prove any of that.

00:30:42.880 You're here illegally.

00:30:44.000 You can be deported.

00:30:45.140 Goodbye.

00:30:45.800 That's it.

00:30:47.420 Yeah, you're making.

00:30:48.260 Look, that point is probably on a bipartisan basis by a majority of, you know, if you check

00:30:54.900 10 people, you're going to get six of them saying, I agree with this.

00:30:58.080 How it gets worked out.

00:30:59.720 I mean, the administration is, it's not just Trump.

00:31:02.600 The whole administration has to do battle, but you cannot go against the Supreme Court.

00:31:07.420 I mean, I mean, there's no way we can ignore that ultimate decision.

00:31:14.100 You ignore the Supreme Court.

00:31:16.180 You become a Democrat.

00:31:17.000 You become AOC.

00:31:19.880 We can't.

00:31:21.220 We can't let them, you know, make us become the things that we can't stand.

00:31:25.260 The ridiculous morons who have been talking about packing the court and delegitimizing

00:31:29.880 the court.

00:31:30.440 That's not going to fly.

00:31:31.860 We have to, we on the right must abide by the U.S. Supreme Court rulings, period, while

00:31:38.760 being extremely critical and doing what we can to find the right legal cases to make sure

00:31:43.040 the right cases get tested.

00:31:44.160 This is an issue that Trump is dealing with.

00:31:46.620 It's an issue, but it's not the only one that people are concerned about right now.

00:31:50.680 As we talk, the market's down a thousand points.

00:31:53.300 There's a lot of volatility in people's net worth.

00:31:55.420 Why?

00:31:55.820 The tariffs ripping through.

00:31:57.200 There's a lot of stuff on his plate right now.

00:31:59.200 Can we talk about the tariffs, Kevin?

00:32:00.560 I don't understand them.

00:32:01.560 I never purported to understand them.

00:32:03.700 I hear, of course, all of the Trump deranged people tell me he's an idiot.

00:32:09.000 He's doing it all wrong.

00:32:10.400 Market volatility.

00:32:11.780 Then I hear his defenders say he's playing the long game.

00:32:14.340 It's chess.

00:32:14.960 You don't get it.

00:32:15.660 Like, I don't know.

00:32:16.540 I will tell you this, a dear friend of mine who is at a very important hedge fund, who

00:32:22.600 I really do trust, said that everything is so unpredictable that people are at their wits

00:32:28.820 end who are in the market.

00:32:30.760 And that's one of the reasons why we're seeing such volatility.

00:32:33.440 Like, they can't stand the uncertainty and the unpredictability.

00:32:37.220 And that dovetails with what Maria Bartiromo was asking Trump about face to face.

00:32:41.480 So can you speak to that, the uncertainty?

00:32:44.480 And where are we with the tariffs?

00:32:46.420 Have we settled in a good place right now as we're in, like, a pause for almost everyone

00:32:51.260 but China and renegotiating?

00:32:54.940 Yeah, I think what you're going to see from a pragmatic point of view, again, leaving out

00:33:00.500 Trump derangement syndrome and just saying, where are we at with the current policy on

00:33:04.720 tariffs?

00:33:05.080 If you look at the big blocks, which is the European Union, Switzerland and England, which

00:33:12.560 are not part of that union, but also trading partners, Canada and Mexico, that's about

00:33:18.620 70% of what Trump is looking at.

00:33:23.960 And what he's saying, if you leave out all the bombastic statements, and I always say this

00:33:28.820 about Trump, you've got to forget about the noise, you've got to focus on the signal.

00:33:31.780 Because if you don't understand that after 12 years of Trump, you never will.

00:33:35.840 So the noise is all the volatility in the market.

00:33:40.380 The signal is this.

00:33:42.080 What he wants and what his administration wants, Lutnik wants and Bergam wants and all the rest

00:33:47.020 of them working on this stuff is reciprocal tariffs, including zero.

00:33:51.780 So if you think about this, take car parts in Germany.

00:33:55.560 I always use that example.

00:33:56.600 They had outrageous tariffs on car parts going into Germany, and American companies want

00:34:02.940 to compete on the componentry of all kinds of cars, and they can't because they have

00:34:08.060 some crazy tariff.

00:34:09.580 So Trump is saying, I'm going to throw on the same crazy tariff on car parts from Germany

00:34:14.580 coming into the United States.

00:34:16.340 Right away, rational minds would say, well, that's not going to work for both of us.

00:34:20.940 It's kind of dumb.

00:34:21.600 Why don't we take that down to 10% or zero?

00:34:25.000 And then we're going to end up, this is why I'm an optimist, with these giant trading partners

00:34:30.120 at zero tariffs.

00:34:32.440 So we'll open up the border to Mexico and Canada and have free trade there eventually,

00:34:37.480 after this gets worked out, because there'll be no tariffs in either direction.

00:34:41.020 It's nobody's benefit.

00:34:43.420 The case in Canada right now, there's an election on the 28th.

00:34:46.660 So it's very close after that gets done, they'll be negotiating.

00:34:50.080 Germany and England and lots of other ones have already stated openly, I'm willing to

00:34:55.700 go to zero to get a deal done.

00:34:58.180 So all of these things will get worked out.

00:35:00.760 And during this period, lots of volatility, because it's not just tariffs today.

00:35:05.860 It's Trump beating up on the Fed.

00:35:09.140 And this is an old game that's been going on for every administration, including bipartisan.

00:35:13.800 The executive always beats up on the Fed, because the Fed is independent, and you can't

00:35:19.520 jawbone them into making decisions about interest rates.

00:35:22.080 The Fed is worried that these tariffs stay on too long, particularly with China, and they're

00:35:26.340 inflationary.

00:35:27.520 Inflation right now is still north of 2%.

00:35:30.020 So if I were the Fed, I wouldn't drop rates either, because I'm going to look like an idiot

00:35:33.300 in 90 days when inflation is going up because of tariffs not down.

00:35:37.660 So that's a different issue.

00:35:38.980 That adds volatility.

00:35:39.880 But my point is, all the tariffs are going to get worked out except for China.

00:35:45.680 China's a different deal.

00:35:47.980 We are really getting to the point, and everybody realizes this now, that we are in an economic

00:35:52.680 war with China.

00:35:54.800 They want to become the supreme economy.

00:35:57.220 They want to do it by stealing IP from everybody, including American IP, lots of that.

00:36:02.180 They don't play by the rules of the World Trade Organization, and they haven't since 2000.

00:36:06.020 They just don't give a shit, and everybody's figured that out, and the only way to change

00:36:12.640 their behavior is to show consequence, and we haven't ever done that.

00:36:17.560 Well, this administration has decided there are consequences to stealing IP and not playing

00:36:23.740 by the rules and not giving assets to markets and using our capital markets by not playing

00:36:28.260 by the rules of GAAP, and all of these things are coming to a head.

00:36:32.540 I mean, I hate to use this analogy, but it's a good one.

00:36:34.780 This is like squeezing a teenage pimple.

00:36:37.840 That's what's going on here, and they're going to keep squeezing until the acne is gone, and

00:36:42.820 it's going to get ugly, but it's going to get resolved because China can't afford not to

00:36:48.480 have access to the world's largest economy.

00:36:51.020 They just can't.

00:36:51.760 Otherwise, everybody would be unemployed there, but it's sort of a nasty situation, but I'm

00:36:58.060 frankly happy that we're finally doing this.

00:37:00.440 As a guy, I've said this countless times.

00:37:03.360 I do business in China, and I've been royally screwed, and I'm tired of it.

00:37:08.060 I'm just sick of it, and I speak for millions of entrepreneurs that have been screwed in China

00:37:13.120 for 20 years.

00:37:14.500 We're done.

00:37:15.580 Fix it.

00:37:16.220 I'm okay with this volatility.

00:37:17.660 I'd like to get it fixed.

00:37:18.980 I want the other tariffs to get worked out because there's a lot of trade going on there.

00:37:22.920 It's going to happen.

00:37:23.520 But China, squeeze the pimple.

00:37:27.000 There was a gal who was on Shark Tank not long ago, and you did not invest, but she had an

00:37:36.540 idea for a silicone placemat for like a baby's crib.

00:37:40.820 I mean, not crib, high chair.

00:37:42.000 And she wound up getting this project off the ground, and she has her product made in China,

00:37:49.860 and the New York Times' daily podcast called The Daily featured her last Monday.

00:37:56.680 We pulled a thought.

00:37:57.780 She's trying to be there.

00:37:59.380 They're using her as their real-life witness on how bad these Chinese tariffs are hurting

00:38:04.380 Americans.

00:38:05.480 Here it is.

00:38:06.180 Take a listen.

00:38:06.560 I shudder to ask this.

00:38:08.940 What happens to the tariff cost you would bear once the tariffs go from 104 to 145 percent?

00:38:19.540 $229,000.

00:38:21.660 Just the tariff you would pay on $158,000 worth of product?

00:38:26.440 Mm-hmm.

00:38:27.200 And we would have to come up with that in the 30 to 40 days it takes for the product to

00:38:31.380 get to the U.S.

00:38:32.520 Wow.

00:38:33.140 And I can't get any more loans.

00:38:34.880 I'm fully leveraged.

00:38:35.760 I have my house on the line already.

00:38:37.880 I can't get more loans.

00:38:40.060 Yeah.

00:38:40.280 I mean, that's...

00:38:40.720 I can't come up with that kind of money.

00:38:42.020 That's an astonishing number.

00:38:43.940 I'm not okay.

00:38:46.840 I'm scared for my friends.

00:38:48.180 I'm scared for myself.

00:38:49.980 Like, they don't understand.

00:38:50.840 This is certain death for us.

00:38:53.740 That's Beth Benecke, founder and CEO of Busy Baby.

00:38:56.700 So what do you make of that?

00:38:59.100 I'm familiar with the deal.

00:39:00.500 I'm familiar with the situation.

00:39:01.700 I probably had that podcast sent to me 2,000 times already as a member of investors on Shark Tank.

00:39:11.160 But we also have stories of hundreds of companies that have been on Shark Tank that also manufactured

00:39:17.360 their product in China.

00:39:19.720 As soon as it gets to 5 million in sales domestically, the same factories that are making it there knock it off and sell it at a 40% discount

00:39:28.240 because they never have to recoup the R&D that the company put into making the product in the first place.

00:39:33.840 And they get wiped out a different way.

00:39:35.660 They get wiped out by China.

00:39:38.440 They just totally ignore the IP and they can't go back and litigate.

00:39:44.480 The crazy thing, Megan, is Chinese companies use the American legal system to sue American companies after they've knocked them off.

00:39:53.720 Why is that okay?

00:39:55.160 Then they go to the capital.

00:39:55.640 So in other words, you are over here as an American company.

00:39:58.340 You come up with a design.

00:39:59.580 You do all this R&D to make sure it's a safe product.

00:40:02.700 It's an effective product.

00:40:04.780 And then you bring it to market here and in China.

00:40:08.920 And here you'd be protected by certain copyright laws or whatever you're using to protect your IP.

00:40:16.340 But over there, you don't have the protection.

00:40:18.060 So they just knock it off and they start selling it for cheap.

00:40:20.640 That's what you're saying, that there's no respect for your IP.

00:40:23.280 Well, it's worse.

00:40:24.860 Maybe when they're young, they're taught, this is completely fair to do this.

00:40:28.960 You steal, you cheat.

00:40:31.980 It's part of the psyche of how you build your economy.

00:40:34.960 It doesn't matter that it wasn't your idea or that you've spent millions of dollars in R&D to create it.

00:40:40.900 They simply don't give a shit.

00:40:43.720 And that is what we have to fix.

00:40:46.620 Because if they want to play with the big boys, including trading in Europe and everything else,

00:40:50.920 stealing everybody's IP and then selling it back into those markets

00:40:55.100 and flooding the markets with the exact same product at usually a 30% to 40% discount with no consequences

00:41:00.800 is going to end up in a very bad place for everybody because they can't sustain that forever either.

00:41:07.760 And then, look, everybody wants to do business in China.

00:41:10.240 I want to do business in China.

00:41:11.540 All I'm asking for, and I don't think I'm being unrealistic in this request, is give me a level playing field.

00:41:18.280 Let me use their courts to litigate trade disputes and resolve them, just like they use ours.

00:41:24.060 Can you not do that?

00:41:25.880 No, you can't.

00:41:27.040 I mean, just to give you a sense of how crazy it's gotten, there's a law on the books that says for Chinese companies,

00:41:37.020 when they want to raise capital in America, they can go to the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange,

00:41:44.340 form a company, issue shares to Americans that aren't real shares.

00:41:48.260 They're shadow shares.

00:41:50.000 And what's incredible about this, they don't even comply with GATT.

00:41:54.020 And so what this law said was, it was Rick Scott who originally got the momentum,

00:41:59.380 the senator out of Florida on this deal, and said, look, we'll give them three years to comply.

00:42:04.740 That's a long time.

00:42:06.020 And then they can stay listed on the exchange.

00:42:08.560 And while Gensler was the head of the SEC, he didn't enforce this law.

00:42:12.280 But a new guy, a new sheriff's in town named Paul Actons just got confirmed last week.

00:42:16.640 And he has made a public statement saying, OK, I've had enough of this too.

00:42:20.900 Every Chinese company that is listed right now that is not complying with GATT, I'm going to delist them.

00:42:26.860 That could be as much as $800 billion of market cap.

00:42:31.340 That should happen.

00:42:32.500 Because why is it fair for an American company to have to pay for compliance and be compliant with all the regulators here in America to stay listed,

00:42:41.980 which costs millions of dollars in some case,

00:42:43.880 and they're competing with a Chinese company right next door to them that doesn't have to?

00:42:49.160 Why is that OK?

00:42:50.840 Under what scenario is that fair?

00:42:53.520 And I think that's the kind of question that people like me are raising their hand and saying,

00:42:58.140 enough, let's fix this problem once and for all.

00:43:01.320 And yes, there's going to be stories of that poor woman's situation.

00:43:04.840 But these tariffs are not going to be forever.

00:43:07.500 However, this is a game of chicken, two economies colliding with each other, one cheating and stealing, one not.

00:43:13.580 At some point, you've got to resolve the issue.

00:43:16.100 And I think at some time in the near future, Xi is going to call Trump and say, OK, where do you want to meet?

00:43:23.080 You want to go to Geneva?

00:43:24.660 Is he?

00:43:25.260 Because whenever you're hearing somebody talk about this who knows China, who knows Xi, knows Chinese culture,

00:43:30.760 they say he'll never call, never, like they he cannot lose face.

00:43:35.140 I mean, any communist country leader would be this way.

00:43:38.320 And that includes him, that they just can't.

00:43:40.660 They can't.

00:43:41.000 He can't lose face.

00:43:42.220 That's the last thing he'll do.

00:43:43.760 And now Trump has to find a way of going to him.

00:43:45.940 But, you know, Trump's kind of like that himself as well.

00:43:49.180 Well, I can assure you within the Communist Party of China,

00:43:53.020 there is a bunch of narrative going on about how long do they want to do this?

00:43:56.980 Because the only reason you stay in power in a communist society as a supreme leader is everybody's fed.

00:44:04.080 They can take care of their families and they have jobs in factories.

00:44:07.820 Now, what you could do, even though they're not making rubber mats anymore because they're all sitting on the water,

00:44:13.020 no one's going to buy them.

00:44:14.660 You can't.

00:44:15.200 There aren't enough markets big enough to replace the American consumer.

00:44:18.520 There just aren't.

00:44:19.180 So at the end of the day, you've got to start asking yourself, OK, if I'm cheap, do I print money so that I can pay these workers

00:44:27.380 and then have hyperinflation where a loaf of bread, you know, goes up a thousand percent, the Venezuelan model?

00:44:35.000 Or do I work something out with Trump so all this stuff we've made can get back into the market, including that woman's, you know, rubber bib?

00:44:44.300 I mean, somebody's got to buy that.

00:44:46.140 There's not enough people around the world to buy that, except you've got to have the 39 percent of the consumers are sitting in America.

00:44:51.920 That's who are going to sell the product.

00:44:53.300 That's why I would think at some point, because I'm a pragmatic guy.

00:44:56.480 Again, I look at the policy.

00:44:57.980 I know there's a lot of politics here.

00:44:59.320 But if I'm cheap, I'm thinking, OK, how do I save face on this deal?

00:45:03.600 What do I do here to get things going again so the stuff on the boats gets to America with no tariffs on it?

00:45:10.380 All the Europeans have made, the guys in England right now today are saying, OK, let's drop our tariffs on agriculture so we can start shipping grain in both directions, whatever they want out of ag.

00:45:19.900 German car parts, we talked about that.

00:45:21.720 All of these guys are working this out.

00:45:23.380 Chi has to do that, too.

00:45:25.100 Now, is it going to take two weeks?

00:45:26.940 Is it going to take two months?

00:45:27.800 I don't know.

00:45:28.420 But I guarantee you there's no scenario where Chi can outlast the American consumer, because that's really what you're talking about, Megan.

00:45:38.360 At the end of the day, can he really cut himself off from the largest consumer market on Earth?

00:45:43.540 No.

00:45:44.620 And so I'm on the camp that says, OK, let's see how long this game of chicken lasts.

00:45:50.700 But would I like to resolve this thing once and for all?

00:45:53.700 Let me speak on behalf of millions of investors and entrepreneurs in America.

00:45:57.500 Yes, I want to do business in China.

00:46:00.620 I'm willing to compete with Chinese on a level playing field.

00:46:03.220 And I want to open the markets up.

00:46:04.880 Yes, I have nothing against the Chinese people.

00:46:07.720 I don't like their government.

00:46:08.720 I don't like their policy.

00:46:09.920 And if you're not going to change the government, then let's cut a deal to have a reciprocal tariffs or no tariffs, but definitely access the markets and definitely got to play by the rules.

00:46:19.240 I would like to raise money in Hong Kong.

00:46:21.440 I would like to approach their markets.

00:46:23.700 I don't want to have my IP stolen.

00:46:25.680 I don't want a 51% Chinese partner.

00:46:27.760 We don't force that on Chinese companies here.

00:46:30.200 But I'm telling you, it's time to clean this mess up once and for all.

00:46:34.180 And yeah, it's uncomfortable and the ebb and flow and the volatility.

00:46:38.120 But I say to everybody, chillax.

00:46:40.980 Let this administration get this thing done and let's move on because the last 20 administrations never dealt with it.

00:46:47.920 This one is, you may hate Trump.

00:46:50.720 You may have Trump derangement syndrome.

00:46:52.960 I feel your pain for that.

00:46:55.040 I don't care because that's not what matters.

00:46:57.980 It's the policy.

00:46:58.740 Okay, let me ask you about the tariffs and the effect on some of our international friends.

00:47:06.260 Up in Canada, we were all watching Pierre Polyev, who's a conservative, who was the guy eating the apple in that great clip where he was just stone cold against the liberal journalist trying to get him with the gotcha questions.

00:47:20.580 And I think we were all kind of rooting for him and then came the tariffs and suddenly he was losing a race he was winning and now is like something like 20 points behind in the polls to the liberal.

00:47:35.720 And so it looks like, and some are directly stating that it's the tariff war we're having against Canada that's going to lead to Justin Trudeau 2.0 when they elect their new prime minister instead of doing what they need, which is putting Pierre Polyev at the top.

00:47:51.200 Are you Canadian?

00:47:52.520 Do you have dual citizenship?

00:47:53.500 You've got some connection with Canada.

00:47:54.900 Yeah, I have multiple citizenships, but I'll tell you, and I've got, I'm in a very interesting situation because I invest in Canada too and I'm very close to the polls there.

00:48:03.640 I get private polls every day because I have a massive project in Alberta, the world's largest data center being built there.

00:48:10.620 So it really matters to me how this goes.

00:48:14.380 Let me give you some data you'll find interesting that I don't think your listeners have had any information about.

00:48:20.360 The first polls opened in Canada, early polling, two days ago.

00:48:26.780 Canada has an official department for elections and they also hire a lot of volunteers.

00:48:41.580 In the history of Canada, never, ever have they ever seen such turnout, ever, since the beginning of the Confederation.

00:48:50.100 Something's going on.

00:48:52.760 Nobody knows what it means.

00:48:54.060 There are lineups up in Toronto, Canada, the largest city, fourth largest city in North America, around city blocks of people voting early.

00:49:04.840 Now, this may look just like the American election did three weeks before when everybody said the seven swing states were going to go to Harris.

00:49:16.900 It didn't happen.

00:49:20.240 There may be a highly motivated group of people who are so pissed with what happened to them over the last decade.

00:49:28.340 Basically, 25% of the Canadian population is now living on or below the poverty line based on the failed mandate of Trudeau.

00:49:37.400 In the last five years, Trudeau's advisor was Mark Carney.

00:49:41.940 So, Mark Carney comes in with blood on his hands and he has tried to tell every Canadian over the last 36 hours, don't look at my track record.

00:49:52.940 Please don't look at that.

00:49:54.620 Look at the shiny bead south of the border named Donald Trump.

00:49:57.640 Only I can save you.

00:49:59.580 I can save you from that horrible shiny bead.

00:50:03.580 Don't look at me.

00:50:04.580 Don't look at my party.

00:50:05.400 Don't worry that I left all of the old people that killed you in the last 10 years still in their seats.

00:50:11.780 Freeland, the finance ministry, she's still there.

00:50:14.520 She's still in the cabinet.

00:50:15.860 All of those people, they're still there.

00:50:18.060 They killed the Canadians.

00:50:19.840 Look at Trump.

00:50:21.880 Don't look at my track record.

00:50:23.480 And please, when you're voting, remember, only I can save you.

00:50:27.140 And I think the Canadian people, based on what I've heard, we'll see, are calling bullshit.

00:50:33.240 But the actual date of the election is 428.

00:50:37.100 Carney's up by six points.

00:50:39.680 He has erased what was a 20-point lead by Polyev.

00:50:43.040 That's a very interesting theory.

00:50:44.600 I can't wait to find out whether that's actually what's happening.

00:50:47.200 It would be a miracle to see conservative leadership there again.

00:50:50.060 Well, you said the same thing before the Trump election.

00:50:53.800 You said the same thing.

00:50:55.460 But his odds weren't quite as long.

00:50:57.120 I mean, I don't know.

00:50:58.060 But you may be right.

00:50:59.320 I don't know Canada that well, but I'm certainly hoping you're right.

00:51:01.820 It's a pleasure to see you.

00:51:03.260 Thanks so much for being here.

00:51:04.840 22% down to six in basically 36 hours.

00:51:08.820 I think the trend is going to be a very tight race.

00:51:11.640 But I smell something going on.

00:51:13.900 And I think it's people calling bullshit.

00:51:16.240 And they don't want more liberals.

00:51:18.720 They're done.

00:51:20.140 Yeah, they should be.

00:51:21.260 Because, my God, you think about what was happening with the swim meetup there.

00:51:26.140 The otters, where they have 50-year-old men pretending to be women swimming against and

00:51:31.580 changing in the same locker room as 12-year-old girls.

00:51:34.280 Like, somebody needs to take Canada by the helm, and it needs to be a strong, right-leaning

00:51:38.980 leader.

00:51:39.700 Kevin, talk to you soon.

00:51:41.100 Thanks so much for being here.

00:51:41.940 Don't go away.

00:51:42.360 Thank you so much for being here.

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00:52:29.420 a path to help you fulfill your dreams.

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00:52:34.900 Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University.

00:52:38.420 Private, Christian, affordable.

00:52:40.720 Visit gcu.edu.

00:52:42.540 It's been five years.

00:52:48.320 I mean, actually five years since schools closed in an effort to curb the spread of COVID, a

00:52:54.680 policy that had devastating ramifications that are still being felt to this day.

00:52:58.300 Well, my next guest, David Zweig, has a new book out tomorrow that is a thorough account

00:53:03.460 of the faulty decision-making process behind the school closures.

00:53:06.540 It's right here.

00:53:07.380 I have it in hand, and the book is called An Abundance of Caution, American Schools, the

00:53:12.360 Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions.

00:53:16.420 A Story of Bad Decisions.

00:53:18.020 Man, that's perfectly put.

00:53:19.980 David's here to break it all down for us.

00:53:21.340 Welcome back to the show, David.

00:53:22.380 So one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you was you're the guy.

00:53:26.020 Like, you are, if I think back on the whole COVID misadventure, who were, like, there's a

00:53:32.880 couple, only a couple of people who all along were like, that's bullshit.

00:53:36.900 No, that's not true.

00:53:38.280 No, I've done the underlying research, and they're wrong about that, too.

00:53:41.540 And for me, you were number one.

00:53:43.860 Alex Berenson was another.

00:53:45.000 He was great.

00:53:47.300 I'm sure I'm missing one or two, but, like, for me, you were it.

00:53:50.820 And so I know, like, we don't like going back over COVID.

00:53:54.680 People don't like it.

00:53:55.540 I think it just brings up too many triggers.

00:53:57.240 It's like, I wish I hadn't gotten that vaccine.

00:53:59.440 Some people feel like I wish they hadn't gotten it for their kids.

00:54:02.340 They wish they had fought harder against the nonsense.

00:54:04.560 You know, we all kind of feel like we're human lab rats now walking around with weird stuff

00:54:09.560 inside of us, thanks to these fucking Fauci.

00:54:12.340 Sorry.

00:54:13.840 So that we do need, but we do need an accounting of what was done.

00:54:18.700 And even Team Trump just last week changed the COVID.gov website, the one that YouTube's

00:54:25.380 referring everybody to.

00:54:26.440 It's supposed to be like, oh, that's where, like, Fauci and Deborah Birx are going to give

00:54:29.120 us all of their nonsense.

00:54:30.400 Now it's officially Team Trump saying it was a lab leak.

00:54:33.420 That's obvious.

00:54:34.620 Like, they're saying all this stuff, which is going to send everybody who depended on

00:54:38.080 that into a meltdown.

00:54:39.080 But that's kind of what you're doing here, which is like, now that the dust is settled,

00:54:43.440 let's just count the score.

00:54:45.060 And let's figure out how we made so many terrible decisions and maybe how we can not do that

00:54:51.960 the next time.

00:54:52.840 So let's just start with this.

00:54:54.420 Of all the terrible decisions, and there's so very many, what was the worst one?

00:54:58.720 What stands out?

00:55:00.280 Well, my entire book is focused on, or at least it's the launch point, on the long-term school

00:55:06.140 closures and then sort of all the decisions that followed in the wake of that.

00:55:10.420 The mask mandates, barriers on desks, six feet of distancing, all this kind of-

00:55:15.900 That's the picture on the front.

00:55:17.060 That's right.

00:55:17.420 I want to show that to the audience again.

00:55:18.800 Did your kid ever get subjected to this, where they have these weird little barriers

00:55:22.960 on the desks that did absolutely nothing?

00:55:26.300 But my kids had this, too.

00:55:27.580 Nothing at all.

00:55:28.620 I mean, and these have opaque sides.

00:55:32.020 So the kid, it was like horse blinders.

00:55:33.560 So you can't see anybody next to you.

00:55:34.820 Yep, they had that, too.

00:55:35.620 And you launched a podcast called Silent Lunches, right?

00:55:38.220 A substack?

00:55:38.620 That's right.

00:55:39.040 Yep.

00:55:39.380 Yeah.

00:55:39.700 Called Silent Lunches, because they had to sit here during the lunch period and not speak

00:55:43.560 to anybody, unless their breath infects somebody.

00:55:45.920 That's right.

00:55:46.240 You could eat, but you weren't allowed to talk.

00:55:47.960 So we had children.

00:55:49.360 Meanwhile, at the same time, adults right down the block from the school were dining

00:55:54.440 at a restaurant.

00:55:55.460 You could go to a bar.

00:55:57.120 Right.

00:55:58.180 Alcohol kills the virus.

00:55:59.620 Right.

00:56:00.040 I mean, yeah.

00:56:00.540 But yeah, children weren't allowed to speak during lunch.

00:56:02.940 In New York City, some of the schools, the kids were sitting in the winter on concrete

00:56:06.260 outside.

00:56:07.160 Yeah.

00:56:07.840 I mean, this is a good sort of launch into discussing this.

00:56:11.660 When we talk about it, you sort of kind of laugh, looking back.

00:56:16.240 This was so radical, so absurd.

00:56:20.840 The idea that children, that's if they were in school, but millions of them were not even

00:56:26.740 allowed, didn't set foot into a school building for over a year.

00:56:31.140 Healthy kids.

00:56:31.780 We barred healthy children from school while at the same time, malls were open, bars, restaurants,

00:56:38.400 casinos.

00:56:39.540 Adults who were actually at higher risk than children, they could carry on.

00:56:44.600 But kids were barred from school.

00:56:46.520 I mean, kids in California, except for the governor's children, they were in school, in

00:56:50.960 private school.

00:56:51.500 But everyone else, this is such a wild, wild circumstance that I don't think it's been

00:56:59.200 fully reckoned with, how insane that is.

00:57:02.680 And at the time, it seemed insane, but a lot of people went along with it.

00:57:07.440 And the reason I wanted to write the book was, and this is years of research, was to

00:57:13.040 try to create a historical record.

00:57:15.840 And the book is not a cataloging of these are all the harms that happen to kids.

00:57:19.480 I touch on that, of course.

00:57:20.580 It's important.

00:57:21.500 The book is like an anatomy of decision making.

00:57:25.100 How is it that such an insane decision like that and all the ones that followed after,

00:57:30.380 how did that happen?

00:57:31.680 And that's what the book does.

00:57:32.680 I try to kind of pull the curtain back and show this is how politicians, this is how health

00:57:37.780 officials, this is how the legacy media made its decisions to create a culture where something

00:57:43.780 like that actually happened.

00:57:45.160 School closures caused real damage, real damage.

00:57:49.600 And look, they damaged all kids across all stratospheres, all classes, all whatever.

00:57:55.300 But the kids who are at the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale got hurt the most.

00:58:00.060 They didn't, their parents didn't have private tutors.

00:58:02.320 They weren't already at these toyty, you know, private schools where their learning level and

00:58:07.420 the challenges and the opportunities were probably advanced to begin with.

00:58:10.380 So some loss would only bring them down to average.

00:58:13.240 They were already struggling just to hit average and they haven't made it back.

00:58:17.900 That's clear from everybody who's taken an honest look at it.

00:58:20.880 You put, you reveal in this book that loss, I mean, like all of it may have originated with

00:58:26.500 the idea of a 14-year-old girl.

00:58:28.000 Well, that's right.

00:58:30.340 So I go back and show the CDC created these guidebooks or playbooks for how to handle a

00:58:37.660 pandemic.

00:58:38.100 And there were a series of them, but two of them in particular were very, very important.

00:58:43.080 One of them came out in 2007 and then there was a revision in 2017.

00:58:48.280 These books were mentioned by officials from the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic.

00:58:53.000 So there's no ambiguity that these were very important and influential.

00:58:56.760 These are the guidebook on here's what you do when a pandemic comes.

00:59:00.820 And one of the astonishing things about these books is they were built on these models and

00:59:07.380 people hear the word model and they might not know what that means.

00:59:10.700 A study is something that actually happened.

00:59:12.960 A model is a prediction.

00:59:14.900 It's, you know, you see a graph where the lines are going to do this over time.

00:59:18.760 It's based on various inputs.

00:59:20.680 The researchers get to decide whatever inputs they want go in.

00:59:25.840 So you plug the things in and then out comes your model saying whatever it is you want it

00:59:30.040 to say.

00:59:30.460 If you don't like what it says, well, you'll just change the inputs until they show what

00:59:34.360 you want it to show.

00:59:35.420 One of the people who was involved in creating some of the models in these guidebooks by the

00:59:43.100 CDC, his daughter did a science experiment in school where she talked about it was supposed

00:59:49.240 to simulate the flow of a transmission of a disease within a school.

00:59:55.020 And like all this stuff was made up.

00:59:58.600 Like, and I go through details showing how, and even beyond her, this guy's daughter, even

01:00:04.780 beyond Robert Glass, beyond her, his daughter were more August people at places like Imperial

01:00:13.280 College of London and IHME, these like very, very esteemed institutions, public health

01:00:19.660 institutions, their models were deeply flawed.

01:00:24.480 And because I'm a crazy person, I actually go in and read all of the models and I'm reading

01:00:29.140 the supplement, you know, 35 pages in and tiny print.

01:00:32.660 And one of the things I found was they had had this figure, something like 35% of transmission.

01:00:39.460 They thought something to that effect was coming from schools and I'm like, where did this

01:00:43.320 number come from?

01:00:44.240 So I look through, there's a citation.

01:00:46.120 I'm like, oh, that's interesting.

01:00:47.220 Then that citation goes to another citation.

01:00:49.380 You go eight layers deep and there in the supplement, it says this number was chosen arbitrarily.

01:00:55.380 Oh my gosh.

01:00:56.300 So people need to understand, remember at the beginning of the pandemic, Megan, they had the

01:01:00.400 flatten the curve meme.

01:01:02.240 Everyone, they show, if everyone just follows our orders, then it'll go down.

01:01:06.400 And then you don't have to worry about the hospitals being overwhelmed.

01:01:09.020 And they had all these models saying 2 million people will die within the next X number of

01:01:13.000 months if you don't do exactly what we're told and they show you the graph.

01:01:15.640 So a regular person, oh my God, look what happens with the cases if we don't listen.

01:01:19.680 But if we follow directions, then this will happen.

01:01:22.060 And part of those directions was closing schools.

01:01:25.300 In part, this was based on made up figures.

01:01:28.960 Well, Deborah Birx kind of admits that, doesn't she, in her book?

01:01:31.720 I, she, one thing she does admit, she sort of touches on that.

01:01:36.280 One thing she does admit is that the 15 days, she never had an intention of stopping there.

01:01:42.100 She purposefully didn't tell the president or the American people.

01:01:45.480 And she admits this candidly.

01:01:46.660 That was to get us on the hook.

01:01:47.920 Yeah.

01:01:48.280 Let me just like reel them in once they're already locked into it.

01:01:51.940 You know, it's like the frog in the pot.

01:01:53.420 They're not going to, oh, we'll just go on.

01:01:54.760 So that 15 days, people may forget, 15 days.

01:01:58.520 To slow the spread.

01:01:59.280 15 days to slow the spread.

01:02:00.860 Then they added another 30 days on right at the end.

01:02:04.480 And it was if, and same with the gatherings.

01:02:07.260 Yes, we can touch on this.

01:02:08.580 I mean, but a huge part of my book is about the media.

01:02:12.980 It's really a work of media criticism.

01:02:15.740 Imagine this, the entire like master switch for our country is shut down.

01:02:19.880 We have 15 days.

01:02:20.800 Everyone's like, okay, let's all do this together.

01:02:23.220 This is a scary new virus.

01:02:24.300 At the end of 15 days, they're like, we're going to make it 30 more days.

01:02:27.660 Because where was any of the questioning from the media?

01:02:31.880 Where were, it was crickets.

01:02:33.580 They just were, let's keep going.

01:02:35.320 Let's keep going.

01:02:36.200 There was very, there were some, but yes, it was very few.

01:02:38.260 Not mainstream.

01:02:39.140 No.

01:02:39.780 And that's a large part of my book was this sort of conjunction between the media and

01:02:46.240 the health establishment and how the media, which normally supposed to be skeptical.

01:02:52.460 And normally, particularly when you think of the liberal media, of which I used to count

01:02:58.100 myself a part of, where their entire thing here was throughout, throughout time, what's

01:03:05.060 the media?

01:03:05.460 What's a journalist job?

01:03:06.500 It's to be skeptical of those in power.

01:03:08.220 The government, the defense department, the church, you know, all these large institutions,

01:03:14.640 big businesses, yet that evaporated in the, in the pandemic.

01:03:19.500 So you had this circumstance where you had these bogus models that we were told, if you

01:03:24.980 do these things, it's going to affect cases in such and such manner.

01:03:29.020 And everyone's like, oh, that looks official.

01:03:31.060 It's from these fancy colleges.

01:03:32.860 Deborah Burke, she's wearing a nice silk scarf.

01:03:34.800 She looks like she's smart.

01:03:35.800 I'll listen to her.

01:03:36.400 She looks so schoolmarm-y.

01:03:37.740 Yeah, Fauci is telling us this, you know, oh, we'll listen to them.

01:03:41.520 But no one bothered to really investigate what was the underlying information?

01:03:46.620 What was the underlying data that fed into these various models?

01:03:50.780 Well, I did.

01:03:51.400 That's how you became a star.

01:03:52.560 That's really because you started publishing articles after having done that.

01:03:55.920 And those of us who just knew instinctively that this is not right, we started paying attention.

01:04:00.920 And then, you know, if you find a real data hound, it's a gift.

01:04:03.980 A couple of things I wanted to follow up on what you just said.

01:04:07.160 Why wasn't the media more skeptical of these claims?

01:04:14.080 So I spend a lot of time on this in the book.

01:04:18.280 And what I believe that I show persuasively is that, unfortunately, this all comes down

01:04:23.980 to tribalism, that political tribalism, we had such an, I shouldn't use past tense, had,

01:04:30.380 we have such an acrimonious political environment in our country.

01:04:34.620 And the fact of the matter is, most of the legacy or, you know, prestige media outlets

01:04:40.080 are left-leaning.

01:04:43.120 Almost everyone there, most of the people within public health also share that political persuasion.

01:04:48.020 And what I show is that, time and again, there's a zillion examples of this, that it was this

01:04:54.700 sort of what I call like Newtonian physics.

01:04:56.480 With every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.

01:04:59.440 When Trump said, open the schools, that was it.

01:05:03.880 He basically ensured that they would be closed.

01:05:06.580 You write about the American Academy of Pediatrics.

01:05:08.700 By the way, the book is called An Abundance of Caution by David Zweig, spelled Z-W-E-I-G.

01:05:13.840 You write about the American Academy of Pediatrics and its recommendation that schools be opened.

01:05:22.080 It was July of 2020, and it was saying, when we get back to September, these schools need

01:05:27.180 to open.

01:05:27.620 That's what's best for children.

01:05:28.860 And then?

01:05:29.520 That's right.

01:05:30.160 So the American Academy of Pediatrics comes out with this guidance early on saying, no matter

01:05:34.500 what, let's get kids in school.

01:05:36.140 And on top of that, they said, don't worry about six feet of distancing.

01:05:39.460 If you can do it, great.

01:05:40.500 But if you can't, let's just get the kids in school.

01:05:42.400 This is the most important thing.

01:05:43.840 It was unambiguous what they meant.

01:05:46.400 Shortly thereafter, Trump tweets in all caps with like a million exclamation points, as

01:05:50.880 is his way, schools need to open in the fall.

01:05:54.740 Within days, the American Academy of Pediatrics reversed its guidance.

01:05:59.900 It was so stark.

01:06:01.340 It was so crazy, the reversal that even NPR had reported on at the time.

01:06:07.020 Gone was any mention of, you know, don't worry about distancing.

01:06:10.420 That was out.

01:06:10.940 Gone was the idea of no matter what gets kids in school.

01:06:13.980 That was out.

01:06:14.560 Instead, the new statement was, listen to the experts.

01:06:18.180 Oh, God.

01:06:18.880 And on top of that, something that was missing in the earlier guidance, we need money and

01:06:24.680 lots of it if you want to open these schools.

01:06:27.080 And here's the last thing that's interesting about the revised statement.

01:06:29.920 It's not what's in the statement, but it's who authored the statement.

01:06:33.460 And it wasn't the American Academy of Pediatrics by itself.

01:06:36.500 It was co-authored with the two largest teachers unions in the country.

01:06:41.020 Is there a bigger villain in the COVID story than those teachers unions?

01:06:46.120 I think public health and the media are the bigger villains because ultimately the teachers

01:06:51.200 unions couldn't have made this outlandish list of demands that they did in so many places

01:06:56.320 without having the cover of the media and public health saying these things.

01:07:00.960 And I recount all sorts of stuff in the book.

01:07:02.880 In other words, they're hacks who behaved like hacks, but there should have been a higher,

01:07:07.200 an establishment that was devoted to a higher purpose that didn't buy into it and enable it.

01:07:12.320 Had Anthony Fauci and everyone else within the public health establishment said,

01:07:17.220 hold on, none of this stuff is true that they're demanding.

01:07:21.160 I have a whole long section in there about these claims about needing HEPA filters and

01:07:24.760 HVAC upgrades.

01:07:26.580 All of these, no one was challenging that.

01:07:28.420 And believe me, Anthony Fauci was in front of a camera every single day, gave a zillion

01:07:32.520 interviews and tons of public health pundits.

01:07:35.420 There was this one emergency medicine physician who I talk about in the book quite a bit.

01:07:40.980 She gave hundreds of interviews constantly on the speed dial at the New York Times and

01:07:45.980 other places, even though she had no particular expertise in infectious diseases or any of these

01:07:50.720 interventions.

01:07:51.320 She was now an expert.

01:07:53.000 She was on speed dial.

01:07:54.300 Well, none of these people said a word that this, that this is completely bogus.

01:07:59.400 And the, the most important part that I, that I mentioned in the sort of chronology is

01:08:05.640 that in late April and early May, many, many countries throughout Europe, 22 countries began

01:08:13.960 to reopen their schools, millions of children.

01:08:16.920 We're not talking about like a little school somewhere in, in Tibet, you know, with 12

01:08:21.300 kids, millions of children were going back to school in Europe.

01:08:25.700 And later that month in May, the education ministers met from, in the EU.

01:08:31.800 And in that meeting, they announced, we have observed no negative impact from opening schools

01:08:37.600 here.

01:08:37.920 A month later, same meeting, same announcement.

01:08:43.020 Here it is yet a whole, another month later.

01:08:45.400 We haven't noticed any, we haven't observed any negative impact of opening schools, millions

01:08:49.660 of children, 22 different countries.

01:08:53.000 No one in the American media reported on this.

01:08:56.220 I did ultimately.

01:08:57.220 But when this initially happened, I was so astonished.

01:09:00.660 I kept re-clicking the link for the, you know, for the video, because I was like, how

01:09:04.260 can this be?

01:09:04.960 How is it possible that no media outlets, this is, this wasn't in a blog.

01:09:08.740 This wasn't, you know, some random or obscure medical journal.

01:09:11.440 This is the meeting at the EU.

01:09:13.300 And they said, millions of kids are back in school and nothing has happened.

01:09:17.580 It's fine.

01:09:18.660 This was ignored.

01:09:19.860 To me, this is kind of one of the original sins that I point out that happened.

01:09:24.320 And once we ignored that or waved it away, and we can go through this, Megan, the various

01:09:29.120 excuses they gave.

01:09:30.440 Well, that's Europe.

01:09:31.580 That's different.

01:09:32.380 That doesn't count.

01:09:33.280 And they gave this list of reasons which were all made up.

01:09:36.480 None of them were real.

01:09:37.020 And it makes no sense anyway.

01:09:38.060 I mean, the United States of America, for the most part, has way more land and way more

01:09:40.800 expansive facilities than France does, where they're on top of each other.

01:09:45.160 No one, no one in Europe, or very few, this was not the norm.

01:09:48.340 They didn't have HEPA filters in all their schools.

01:09:51.460 I've spent enough time in Europe.

01:09:52.720 I know people, the schools there are not all these glistening oasis, you know, of HEPA

01:09:58.860 filtered air.

01:09:59.960 Many kids weren't wearing masks.

01:10:02.480 In fact, the ECDC, that's like Europe's version of the CDC, recommended against kids in primary

01:10:07.800 schools wearing masks, where in the U.S., they wanted kids as young as two years old to wear

01:10:12.680 masks all day.

01:10:13.780 They weren't doing distancing.

01:10:15.420 In many instances, it was three feet or like what they would say, one meter, or no distancing

01:10:19.860 required at all, a list of things that we kept being told by these public health experts.

01:10:25.300 Well, don't don't look at Europe.

01:10:26.540 It's almost like a magician.

01:10:27.720 Look away.

01:10:28.460 Don't look there.

01:10:29.180 That's because and then they would list the things they controlled the virus.

01:10:32.520 They did all these things.

01:10:33.440 I still am struggling to figure out why, because if you look at take woke ism, you know, Europe

01:10:37.700 is as woke as we are.

01:10:38.800 They're gone.

01:10:39.580 And truly, like the U.K. is gone.

01:10:42.940 So is France.

01:10:44.220 Italy.

01:10:44.480 I mean, Ireland, gone.

01:10:45.820 Italy is not as bad.

01:10:47.620 So I was thinking maybe it's just this knee jerk safetyism that we've embraced here in

01:10:52.540 the United States.

01:10:53.160 Now, your safe spaces, your trigger warnings, you can't discuss certain things, you can't

01:10:56.980 say certain terms.

01:10:57.800 But they're just as bad as we are over there when it comes to that stuff.

01:11:00.600 So they're, I think, just as sort of safety conscious, and I mean that in the most negative

01:11:05.720 sense possible, as we are.

01:11:08.620 So I don't get it.

01:11:09.740 Why?

01:11:10.060 Why over there were their authorities still willing to look objectively at data?

01:11:16.240 And over here, ours weren't.

01:11:18.680 And also the entire media establishment wasn't either.

01:11:22.360 Right.

01:11:23.080 I mean, one of the things, to your point, that's really important is this was so coded politically

01:11:30.280 within our country that opening schools or wanting to go to work or go to the beach even

01:11:35.440 or a child playing at a playground that was coded as right wing and to want to, you know,

01:11:40.680 and it was virtuous and left wing if you stayed home.

01:11:43.480 It's part of Trump arrangement syndrome is what you're saying.

01:11:45.220 It's it was TDS.

01:11:46.560 Yeah.

01:11:46.760 Because those countries, which are far more progressive than the United States, they sent

01:11:52.300 their kids back to school.

01:11:53.240 And then you have other countries with more conservative governments where they were doing the reverse.

01:11:57.680 There was no correlation between the political leaning of a particular government in their

01:12:03.720 countries and with whether things were open or locked down.

01:12:07.460 There was no correlation.

01:12:08.900 So the idea.

01:12:09.540 But in America, people were living within such a bubble of our own sort of world here that

01:12:15.860 anyone who went against Trump was virtuous and anyone who agreed with him was this horrible

01:12:22.740 monster.

01:12:23.460 What are you, some right right wing, you know, asshole?

01:12:25.720 You're trying to do your own research.

01:12:27.640 So you had this situation that was so divisive in America.

01:12:32.620 And again, it comes down to we go back to that American Academy of Pediatrics reversal,

01:12:37.340 where it was so clear that what was happening was this had to be a sort of reaction against

01:12:45.860 Trump.

01:12:46.360 And one of the things that I talk about in the book is that after I started writing my

01:12:50.560 articles, which were some of the only articles and sort of what we might consider legacy media

01:12:56.080 or mainstream New York magazine, that was shocking.

01:12:59.080 It was like, what, what, I'm actually getting value out of New York magazine later in the

01:13:02.520 Atlantic and other places.

01:13:04.480 And in Wired, which is, you know, ostensibly nonpolitical.

01:13:08.020 No, they are left.

01:13:08.780 And they are very annoying.

01:13:09.620 Right.

01:13:09.900 So, OK, so I've managed to get my contrarian pieces in these publications.

01:13:15.920 And people have asked me why and how did that happen, because I've had other journalists

01:13:19.800 who sort of shared some of my views.

01:13:21.500 How did you do it?

01:13:22.280 I said, because I provided evidence.

01:13:24.740 Like, I think that's what it comes down to.

01:13:27.040 But one of the things that I talk about is once these articles started coming out, I started

01:13:32.080 getting emails from doctors around the country and regular people, too, and former CDC officials.

01:13:38.720 And these were doctors, not just necessarily some random pediatrician in the suburb somewhere.

01:13:42.460 We're talking about people at elite university hospitals, at some of our top institutions.

01:13:48.580 And they would write me and say, I want you to know I agree with you.

01:13:52.400 I think what's going on is crazy.

01:13:53.900 There's no evidence of closing schools is going to be beneficial.

01:13:57.100 This is terrible.

01:13:57.960 Having little, you know, toddlers wearing masks, whatever it was, they said, I want to

01:14:02.460 agree with you.

01:14:03.120 But this all has to be off the record.

01:14:05.100 I can't talk about it publicly.

01:14:07.020 And I, you know, and I was like, why?

01:14:08.540 How is this happening?

01:14:09.220 Because one, they knew it was the environment was so clear.

01:14:13.680 People aren't stupid that they self-censored.

01:14:15.820 And number two, they were overtly censored.

01:14:18.900 Many people were admonished by their superiors.

01:14:21.860 Some, you know, administrator at the hospital saying, don't ever talk about this again.

01:14:26.180 And I have a couple stories of that where people spoke out.

01:14:28.860 So there was this environment where no one, no one could be seen, including, you know,

01:14:35.280 a university hospital as an institution.

01:14:38.060 None of them could be seen as agreeing with Trump.

01:14:40.960 It makes perfect sense because you look at what happened with the Great Barrington Declaration

01:14:45.080 in the spring of 21.

01:14:46.780 In Jay Bhattacharya, now the head of NIH, praise God.

01:14:51.440 I was there with Jay.

01:14:52.560 Great.

01:14:53.380 And Martin Koldorf.

01:14:55.000 And I'm forgetting the name of the female.

01:14:57.200 Yeah, Sinatra Group.

01:14:57.920 Right.

01:14:58.180 From our top, top universities, they come out with this.

01:15:01.520 And what happened immediately?

01:15:02.400 Immediately, they got smeared by Fauci and Collins, like immediately as fringe.

01:15:06.980 Like there was absolutely nothing fringe about them.

01:15:08.920 They were as establishment and respected as a doctor can get in the United States.

01:15:12.540 And I'm sure that they were the example.

01:15:15.720 They were maligned.

01:15:16.620 Everybody else is looking.

01:15:17.520 If you can do that to them, you can do that to me.

01:15:20.600 From Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford.

01:15:22.940 Oh, if they're maligned, if they're called fringe, I don't stand a chance against this.

01:15:28.460 So there was no way that, and look, I'm sympathetic toward, if this is someone how they're making

01:15:33.720 their living, you know, taking care of their family, they've spent the last 20 years studying

01:15:38.740 in order to work in medicine.

01:15:40.960 And I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea that they didn't want to get fired.

01:15:44.340 Because Fauci had his hands in everything.

01:15:46.420 Fauci had, he controlled all the money.

01:15:48.740 I didn't think, I didn't realize that before COVID, that how many of these university research

01:15:52.260 programs are funded by his group.

01:15:55.800 And I add NIH more broadly.

01:15:57.780 That's right.

01:15:58.140 When you control the purse strings.

01:15:59.540 But I would say, Megan, even beyond the sort of, any sort of explicit thread of withholding

01:16:04.700 funding, people were social creatures.

01:16:07.840 And most people are not really inclined to be in the out group.

01:16:12.760 And I talk about this in the book, is that if you think about medicine, it self-selects

01:16:18.140 generally for a certain type of person.

01:16:20.020 A really hard worker.

01:16:21.240 Someone who's smart.

01:16:22.200 These are great traits in a doctor.

01:16:23.580 Hard worker and smart.

01:16:24.640 But it also selects for rule followers.

01:16:26.740 Yeah.

01:16:26.940 It doesn't select for iconoclast.

01:16:28.900 You go in, you do your residency.

01:16:30.360 You have to listen to the attending.

01:16:31.740 You're not going to start challenging them.

01:16:33.600 They got there by following the rules.

01:16:36.780 These are people who their general nature is not to be an outcast.

01:16:41.220 So they don't want to be cast out of that social group.

01:16:43.440 And I would argue the same thing is within the sort of prestige media outlets.

01:16:47.640 How do you get to the New York Times?

01:16:49.080 Well, you got straight A's in school growing up.

01:16:51.860 Then you went to Brown.

01:16:53.200 Then maybe you went to Columbia Journalism School.

01:16:55.500 And now you're at the Times.

01:16:56.680 I'm not saying every reporter there is like this.

01:16:58.520 There certainly are plenty who are excellent reporters and who are doing important independent

01:17:03.540 work there.

01:17:04.600 But nevertheless, the broader type of person who gets into an institution like that is

01:17:10.120 the same type of person who's going to get into Columbia University Medical Center and

01:17:16.020 these types of places.

01:17:16.920 It self-selects for people who got to where they are, became successful by being part of

01:17:23.440 an in-group.

01:17:24.020 So you have these two institutions, health and media, that were controlling the narrative

01:17:30.240 within our country.

01:17:31.380 Yet the people within those institutions were a certain type of personality.

01:17:36.200 And I'm not saying this was nefarious even.

01:17:38.360 This is just kind of a human nature.

01:17:40.780 And then you had the small group of them who were coming to me off the record saying,

01:17:45.600 hey, I don't like what's going on.

01:17:47.220 This is wrong.

01:17:48.100 But I can't say anything about it.

01:17:49.840 So it's really important for people listening and watching this program to understand, and

01:17:55.880 hopefully they'll read my book and get a deeper understanding.

01:17:58.100 The book is called An Abundance of Caution, American Schools, The Virus, and A Story of

01:18:02.080 Bad Decisions by David Zweig.

01:18:03.320 Keep going.

01:18:03.860 Hopefully they'll have an understanding of how, what I try to show is how narratives get

01:18:09.080 created.

01:18:10.260 And it's sort of the like, how did the gears turn within our society?

01:18:14.980 And like, how is it, you know, it's almost like Plato's cave.

01:18:17.600 Like, who's looking at the shadows, who's creating those shadows, and how do you actually

01:18:21.260 get out of the cave?

01:18:22.460 And a lot of the book is about evidence.

01:18:24.700 That's the way that we really can arm ourselves to be aware.

01:18:29.820 It's sort of like a media literacy that you can even bring to your doctor.

01:18:33.080 I suspect you, Megan, when you go to the doctor, they're not like, here's what you need to

01:18:36.300 do.

01:18:36.460 And you're like, yes, doctor.

01:18:37.700 You know, this isn't-

01:18:38.320 Not anymore.

01:18:38.820 Right.

01:18:39.080 This isn't 1955 where you just do what people say.

01:18:42.360 And this doesn't mean that we should ignore what, quote, experts say.

01:18:45.780 It doesn't mean that we should dismiss it out of hand, but it does mean that you should

01:18:49.800 bring your own skepticism with you, and you need to think about evidence.

01:18:54.180 Ultimately, my book really, I think, is about kind of what we might call like epistemology.

01:18:58.600 It's like, how do you know what is true?

01:19:00.800 How do you know that this thing is true?

01:19:03.020 And over and over again in our country, and we still do this now in every topic under the

01:19:08.600 sun, but when I show what happened in the pandemic with such horrible consequence, is

01:19:13.060 that the experts repeatedly told us things without providing any evidence behind what

01:19:19.680 they were telling us.

01:19:20.480 And then the media regurgitated this same information without providing evidence.

01:19:25.760 And within philosophy, that's called what's known as a logical fallacy.

01:19:28.960 This is, it's an argument from authority.

01:19:31.460 Just because a person is saying something doesn't mean it's true.

01:19:36.100 And they never pushed back and said, well, wait a minute.

01:19:39.600 I know you're saying that they need HEPA filters and we can't open a school until they get the

01:19:44.020 HEPA filter.

01:19:44.900 What's the evidence behind this claim?

01:19:47.060 What is the evidence for this?

01:19:48.620 No one bothered to push back.

01:19:50.440 A couple of things on it.

01:19:51.300 Um, I feel like there's another element to the journalistic failures.

01:19:55.600 And I think it has to do with elitism.

01:19:58.600 I think it has to do with a fact, the fact that like you look up and down that lineup on

01:20:02.360 CNN and MSNBC, and all those people are millionaires or close to it.

01:20:07.280 And they were enjoying the pandemic.

01:20:09.680 Their kids were home.

01:20:11.600 They had a tutor or they had some private school that was basically taking care of them.

01:20:16.320 They knew they'd be fine.

01:20:18.460 Their lives were easier.

01:20:19.840 They got to go to work via zoom.

01:20:21.920 They got to be out East in the Hamptons with all their friends.

01:20:25.680 They got to start drinking wine at 1 PM instead of 4 PM, which is a big sacrifice to wait.

01:20:31.240 And they didn't want it to get back to normal.

01:20:34.480 I think one of the most important and remarkable things that happened in the pandemic that we

01:20:40.360 need to reckon with as a society is that this was one of the most classist, you know,

01:20:47.060 class-based policy endeavors that had ever occurred in America.

01:20:53.300 It's quite remarkable.

01:20:54.620 The people who made the rules coincidentally fared the best during the pandemic.

01:21:00.820 So you have what, you know, what people today might call the laptop class.

01:21:04.720 Who do you think works at the CDC, the NIH?

01:21:08.040 Who are these, you know, um, who are these people on television and working at these elite,

01:21:12.760 um, media outlets by and large, these people are making six figure salaries or seven figure.

01:21:18.600 Their lives are very different from the people, millions and millions of people in our country

01:21:24.200 who their policies and their guidelines were affecting.

01:21:26.860 And that includes, I mean, there were kids who were sitting in a parking lot of a Taco

01:21:31.600 Bell to try to get Wi-Fi signal so they could do their, you know, fake remote learning.

01:21:37.800 There are children who are in homes that are unsafe.

01:21:41.140 One of the crazy things that happened was there was a drop in, um, in claims of child abuse

01:21:47.400 early on.

01:21:48.120 And you might think, oh, that's great.

01:21:49.980 Child abuse went down.

01:21:51.140 It's so heartbreaking.

01:21:52.260 What they found was, it's not that it went down, it's that teachers and educators are

01:21:57.540 the most important line of defense for a child who is in danger at home.

01:22:02.460 Now those kids had no one to talk to.

01:22:04.400 And some of them were left home with a monster.

01:22:07.000 You had kids who didn't have, um, their final year there.

01:22:11.540 This was their chance to get into college.

01:22:13.900 Maybe they were a football player.

01:22:15.580 Maybe there was someone who was a wonderful actor or an artist.

01:22:18.940 All of those things were canceled.

01:22:20.380 You, you're not going to get recruited for the football season, um, to play in a college

01:22:24.480 and get, um, recruited there if there is no season.

01:22:27.600 So all of these things were happening to kids around the country.

01:22:31.200 And I haven't even mentioned learning loss, which obviously is the most overt that people

01:22:35.440 rightfully so are continuing to talk about.

01:22:37.760 There are so many things that we're affecting, and it's not a small number, millions and millions

01:22:42.980 of kids, including we can touch on kids who have learning disabilities.

01:22:47.040 And it's something like 7 million of them, I think, get an IEP, which is like a special

01:22:51.840 program that they're required to get by law.

01:22:55.040 And some of these things require them to have physical therapy.

01:22:58.640 You can't do that through a computer screen.

01:23:00.740 Children with severe autism, children with all sorts of, um, physical and variety of neurological,

01:23:07.600 um, challenges and disabilities.

01:23:09.680 These kids, unless you lived in a very wealthy family, they were screwed and they still haven't

01:23:16.000 come back from this.

01:23:16.760 And that's why it's so infuriating when you saw those Chicago public teachers unions, uh,

01:23:23.780 union teachers dancing, using the dance to try to show us how inappropriate what it was

01:23:29.980 to send them back into schools.

01:23:31.260 Like these are totally able-bodied, mostly young females, like the tick tock videos of

01:23:37.700 everyone's just dancing about to try to show they're upset about having to do their damn

01:23:43.540 jobs.

01:23:44.720 And that's why I really think like they're right up there.

01:23:47.240 I agree with you, Fauci and Birx.

01:23:48.640 They're up higher.

01:23:49.440 Fauci's number one.

01:23:50.760 Um, and by the way, to your point about the fact that these people at the CDC, they weren't

01:23:54.460 going into the office.

01:23:55.340 I was at FDA last Thursday with Marty McCary and we were walking around.

01:23:59.360 It's a huge complex.

01:24:00.940 It's in Maryland.

01:24:01.520 It's not in DC.

01:24:02.440 And even to this day, it's largely empty.

01:24:05.960 And he's, he's right now saying everybody get back in here.

01:24:09.340 It's 2025.

01:24:11.080 It's been five years.

01:24:12.800 They peaced out things to COVID.

01:24:14.760 They were never made to come back in.

01:24:16.440 They were all loving it.

01:24:17.780 There was a built in incentive to say, it's not safe.

01:24:21.120 We need to keep this rolling in the name of safety because they were loving it.

01:24:25.180 These teachers, they don't usually get to teach from home or do the stupid Zooms.

01:24:28.580 That's easier.

01:24:29.120 They're in their pajamas.

01:24:30.640 I think, yeah, I don't know.

01:24:32.820 It's in the mind of all the teachers.

01:24:34.040 Some of them definitely appeared to have taken advantage.

01:24:36.100 Others, I think genuinely were frightened by a media that, you know, if it bleeds, it

01:24:40.920 leads.

01:24:41.540 And I talk about this in the book.

01:24:43.140 The American media was unique in its, um, dialing the knob up to 11 for hysteria over

01:24:50.680 this.

01:24:51.000 And there was some research out of Dartmouth where they sort of do like a content, like

01:24:55.240 tone analysis.

01:24:56.120 And the U S was off the charts in the way we covered this, um, phenomena that was happening.

01:25:03.440 Whereas, and I talk about this, there was an article in the New York times that came

01:25:07.260 out on the very, that was like hysterical about if schools open, this is what could happen.

01:25:11.680 And, you know, there's like, you know, flames, you know, practically shooting out of, out of

01:25:15.680 the, the, the screen.

01:25:16.600 If you're reading the article on the very same day, an article came out in what's known as

01:25:20.520 the BMJ.

01:25:21.240 It's the British medical journal.

01:25:22.360 And the title was something like kids are not super spreaders open the schools that the

01:25:28.120 dichotomy on this one day of these two articles couldn't be more stark and more emblematic of

01:25:34.840 the difference of how we were experiencing the pandemic here in America versus other places.

01:25:40.540 It's not to say that they were flawless outside the United States, but there was something uniquely

01:25:45.840 hysterical about the response in America.

01:25:49.260 We are a country that was ill-equipped to function under duress.

01:25:53.700 And I understand why people felt that Trump had poisoned the well to such a degree that,

01:26:01.020 that ultimately they had to react in this manner.

01:26:03.620 But those are reasons, not excuses.

01:26:06.140 That is not like the idea that someone, he was so odious to them, such TDS, as you were

01:26:12.140 saying that it didn't, I mean, Trump could say, I love puppies and vanilla ice cream.

01:26:16.500 And they would say, I hate puppies.

01:26:18.240 I hate vanilla.

01:26:18.820 It didn't matter.

01:26:20.460 So there was such an environment created that all of these people were terrified.

01:26:27.400 And only a very small portion had the courage, like Martin Kaldorf and others, to come out

01:26:32.340 and say, you know what?

01:26:33.440 Trump is right.

01:26:34.580 He's right on something.

01:26:35.840 He may be, you know, even a broken clock is right twice a day, even if you disagree with

01:26:39.440 him on everything.

01:26:40.360 But they couldn't do it.

01:26:41.960 The media just couldn't bring itself to possibly agree with this man, even on something that

01:26:47.160 he was so clearly right, that millions of kids in school in Europe, it didn't matter.

01:26:51.620 They were too busy pumping stories.

01:26:53.140 Like two teachers have already died of COVID, thanks to the reopening of the schools.

01:26:56.700 Meanwhile, then it would come out.

01:26:57.940 They died of COVID that they got in their communities before the school had even opened.

01:27:01.680 Like you're trying to suggest the children gave it to them.

01:27:04.740 But that's how stories were being styled and presented by places like CNN, that was

01:27:09.340 a CNNer, across the media.

01:27:12.700 I mean, the New York Times is still, I mentioned that website that Trump has got up now, that

01:27:16.100 COVID.gov.

01:27:16.840 And they're still, even after the New York Times wrote that ridiculous, we were misled

01:27:21.500 on COVID a couple of weeks ago, like a month ago, saying, oh, the authorities, they misled

01:27:26.680 us.

01:27:27.000 They had this long column on it.

01:27:28.680 Even though they're now coming to terms with, they were misled, they're writing an article

01:27:34.700 about that website being like, oh, there are a lot of experts, a lot of experts who still

01:27:38.180 believe this was natural origin.

01:27:39.960 They believe that this did not come from a lab.

01:27:42.880 Like they can't let go of their little darlings, David.

01:27:45.520 They can't let it go.

01:27:47.020 And the idea that they were misled, but your job as a journalist is to ask questions.

01:27:54.760 To not be misled.

01:27:55.920 And when it happens, to let it be infrequent.

01:27:58.820 To not allow, to simply quote an expert, so to speak, an expert on something without

01:28:06.400 asking, well, wait, what's the evidence behind that claim?

01:28:08.540 Or if you don't ask them, then go report it out yourself and dig into it.

01:28:11.780 And that's what I started doing from the beginning.

01:28:13.820 I was like, I thought it was so strange.

01:28:15.820 We kept being told all these things, school is dangerous, the kids, they might spread

01:28:19.860 it to everyone and all these various claims.

01:28:22.100 I'm like, wait a minute, is that true?

01:28:23.900 And I couldn't speak to people in the United States.

01:28:25.960 So I started talking to experts in Europe and I'm like, let me find someone, anyone who

01:28:30.300 knows what's going on.

01:28:31.540 And I was like, well, wait a minute, this is all bullshit.

01:28:34.120 Everything they're saying is made up.

01:28:35.860 I know there might be some listeners or viewers who are thinking that I'm overstating things.

01:28:39.700 They might think that like, this is hyperbole.

01:28:42.620 If you, I'm telling you, if you read the book, it's, it's deeply destabilizing, but I hope

01:28:48.140 also really instructive to see how wildly off so much of the information we were given

01:28:55.440 was.

01:28:55.960 And it's easy for the media to, to make these claims.

01:28:58.820 Trump's, you know, Trump said plenty of crazy things himself where he, oh, the virus is just

01:29:03.120 going to go away.

01:29:03.940 And, you know, and there was, they, they misquoted him about the bleach thing and whatever else.

01:29:08.220 There are plenty of crazy things.

01:29:10.140 It's not hard to find something from Trump or from QAnon or whatever.

01:29:13.500 And that's where the media kind of dug its hooks in.

01:29:16.100 But what, but what no one was doing was looking, of course, with the mirror at themselves.

01:29:20.940 And it's much more upsetting when the experts, I don't listen to QAnon.

01:29:26.040 I don't take my, you know, guidance on how to conduct myself or what's happening, but I

01:29:30.420 used to listen to the CDC.

01:29:31.740 I used to listen to the NIH and what I show is that these people deeply, deeply let us

01:29:37.740 down.

01:29:38.800 I, um, I will defend Trump on that.

01:29:41.540 It's just going to go away because I have a doctor who is an infectious disease doctor.

01:29:46.960 That's just my primary care physician happens to be.

01:29:49.260 And he's one of the most respected infectious disease doctors in the country.

01:29:53.740 And that's what he said in the beginning too.

01:29:55.580 The history of this kind of disease suggested that when you got to the warmer weather, it would

01:30:01.160 kill the virus seasonality.

01:30:02.760 Yeah.

01:30:03.100 And that's what a lot of people believe.

01:30:05.260 And I think that's what Trump was advised early on.

01:30:07.280 Obviously Trump wasn't just making that up.

01:30:08.740 He was getting that from doctors.

01:30:10.140 And then of course things changed.

01:30:11.300 But I remember when he said it being like that dovetails exactly with what my doctor

01:30:15.620 said.

01:30:15.900 And I didn't, I didn't think anything of it, you know, now, now in retrospect, it's used

01:30:20.320 against him by his detractors.

01:30:21.460 But at the time it dovetailed very well with a lot of what we knew.

01:30:25.700 All right, standby.

01:30:26.260 There's more to go.

01:30:27.020 Again, it's called an abundance of caution with the yellow tape.

01:30:31.080 It's actually quite well done by David Zweig.

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01:31:43.840 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on Sirius XM.

01:31:49.060 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and

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01:32:42.780 My guest today, David Zweig, the author of An Abundance of Caution, a new book.

01:32:53.520 It's not really about COVID exactly.

01:32:55.260 It's about how deeply we were betrayed by our public health officials and the media.

01:33:02.160 And it's got all the lessons so that we can fight them better the next time.

01:33:06.160 I mean, there were some of us who were fighting them and some people who fought them at every

01:33:09.840 turn, but it was very hard because part of half the battle was trying to figure out what

01:33:14.800 was true and you just stayed to an evidence-based approach.

01:33:17.920 Now, the problem in doing that is that you had a whole government apparatus that didn't

01:33:22.560 like your information.

01:33:23.600 And even when you, David Zweig, were citing the CDC's own studies like on masking and how

01:33:30.800 it didn't do anything in schools, that they didn't listen.

01:33:35.640 They buried the studies.

01:33:36.840 They moved on.

01:33:37.620 They tried to diminish people like you.

01:33:39.840 And I was mentioning during the break, the great movie Contagion, which I really enjoyed

01:33:44.540 with Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon, which was made years ago, but clearly they used the

01:33:49.000 CDC's blueprint for what they would do in a pandemic, was really telling.

01:33:52.980 And they even had this like sort of citizen journalist played by Jude Law.

01:33:59.260 Now, he wasn't like you or Alex Berenson.

01:34:01.720 This guy wound up hawking supplements and trying to make money off of the pandemic.

01:34:05.640 But they did sort of use him as like the one detractor, the one lone voice pushing back.

01:34:11.880 And in that movie, it's very interesting because he's, they demonize him, right?

01:34:16.300 Like you shouldn't believe the doubting Thomas because he's a hack who's trying to make money

01:34:23.340 off of you.

01:34:23.820 He's got some angle.

01:34:24.700 He's the one person you shouldn't listen to, right?

01:34:26.860 You should listen to the authorities.

01:34:27.940 The studies show that there is no proof that Forsythia works.

01:34:32.240 Who conducted the studies?

01:34:33.760 What defines works against what strain of the virus?

01:34:37.660 Did you know about the studies when we met the last time?

01:34:40.600 We can get in a lot of trouble.

01:34:41.780 You really think this Dr. Hextall CDC person is Jesus in a lab coat?

01:34:46.340 The government rushed the trials.

01:34:48.800 The lawyers indemnified the drug companies.

01:34:51.880 Maybe it causes autism or narcolepsy or cancer 10 years from now.

01:34:56.080 Who knows?

01:34:59.480 The swine flu vaccine killed people back in 1976.

01:35:05.140 Nerve disease.

01:35:06.260 So we're all guinea pigs starting from today.

01:35:09.040 Just wait.

01:35:09.800 They'll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.

01:35:14.520 And that's what they tried to do to Alex Berenson.

01:35:16.760 That's what they tried to do to you.

01:35:17.620 They tried to do to Tucker, right?

01:35:19.220 Like try to just ignore or in some cases actively diminish or fringe or ban on Twitter in Alex's

01:35:24.820 case, right?

01:35:25.620 They didn't like these contrary voices or the great Barrington people like fringe try

01:35:30.020 to tramp down on them so that people looking for good information either couldn't find

01:35:35.800 it.

01:35:36.000 It had been stifled.

01:35:36.680 It had been censored or had like a sense of worry in taking it in from the outliers

01:35:42.080 because we've been told this is a fringe person.

01:35:44.480 This is the weird Jude Law character I'm not supposed to listen to.

01:35:48.480 I had written one of the articles challenging one crazy rule or another, which all of my work,

01:35:56.940 none of it's been retracted.

01:35:58.360 As far as I'm aware, there's no giant corrections in any of them.

01:36:01.000 This doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, but directionally, everything I wrote was true.

01:36:06.200 And one of the articles, I remember my wife was talking with a friend of hers about it.

01:36:11.460 And I think at this point I started writing for the free press or maybe it was on my own

01:36:16.340 sub stack, but I had written for the Atlantic and the New York Times and New York, plenty

01:36:21.220 of these types of contrarian pieces.

01:36:22.700 And she said, well, where's the article?

01:36:25.180 Where's it coming out?

01:36:26.280 And my wife said, it may have been in my, my sub stack or the free press.

01:36:28.780 She said, well, if it's not in the Atlantic, then I don't believe it.

01:36:31.200 And she said, but it's David, you, you know him.

01:36:33.180 He's the same reporter.

01:36:34.280 He wrote other things.

01:36:35.100 And she was like, yeah, I'm not interested.

01:36:37.520 It's not.

01:36:37.960 So to have that like imprimatur of these certain institutions meant everything.

01:36:43.660 Yeah.

01:36:43.980 And, and this, the problem is the idea that like most, I think regular people, at least some

01:36:51.480 of them are on, particularly on the left, saw these things are like, it made intuitive

01:36:55.860 sense.

01:36:56.520 It's like, well, of course, if you close schools, all those snot nose kids, that's going to help

01:37:01.120 or mask.

01:37:01.980 I think maybe having something in front of my face, my, the problem is, and I give all

01:37:06.440 these like crazy examples through history, our intuitions are often wrong.

01:37:11.060 And that happens, especially within medicine.

01:37:14.260 That's why we need randomized studies.

01:37:16.720 That's why we need actual, like a structured, what's known as evidence-based medicine.

01:37:20.620 But instead, during the pandemic over and over, we were just told it's basic physics

01:37:26.120 that masks work, but that's not how human beings work.

01:37:29.420 They might, a child might pull it off.

01:37:31.040 It doesn't stay glued to your face.

01:37:32.440 They were using studies done on mannequins where the masks were glued to their face.

01:37:36.660 Right.

01:37:36.780 And this is the stuff that the CDC and other people were citing as evidence that everyone

01:37:41.180 needs to wear a mask.

01:37:42.640 Our intuitions are wrong all the time, but yet we didn't actually look at science.

01:37:47.880 We were told we're just following the science.

01:37:49.740 There was no following the science.

01:37:51.600 It's bad enough when we are seriously hurting children, when we're not being allowed to

01:37:55.720 say goodbye to our loved ones who are dying in nursing homes alone and isolated.

01:38:00.620 And then came like the final insult, which was the deceptions around the vaccine and the

01:38:07.860 total unwillingness to discuss the actual side effects that were happening to people, including,

01:38:13.040 most importantly to me, the myocarditis, because that was killing young people.

01:38:16.800 That was hurting young people.

01:38:18.960 You know, everybody's life matters, but it's, there's a different value in somebody who's

01:38:22.200 90 versus somebody who's 15.

01:38:24.380 And they were seeing actual myocarditis, heart infections happen to teenage boys as a result

01:38:31.580 of the vaccines.

01:38:32.280 And you were basically not allowed to talk about it.

01:38:35.480 Even now, even now YouTube's going to slap a warning video on this video because I said

01:38:40.060 that, and it's a fact.

01:38:42.000 And yet they still, still want to bill it as though it's somehow misinformation.

01:38:47.620 I always thought that if there's something that wrong with the vaccines, the vaccine makers

01:38:52.760 will come back and fix it.

01:38:53.840 They'll own it and they'll fix it.

01:38:54.920 These are the biggest, most rich vaccine or drug companies in the world.

01:38:59.300 I never anticipated that they would just deny, deny, deny, deny, and let people suffer and

01:39:05.040 even die.

01:39:06.340 I mean, I was, I believe the first journalist in a mainstream publication to interview Joror

01:39:11.500 Mavorok, who was the Israeli physician who initially found the signal of myocarditis in

01:39:17.560 young males.

01:39:18.940 And, you know, again, this is just completely radioactive.

01:39:23.000 Like you can't, it doesn't mean that the vaccines weren't necessarily beneficial for old people

01:39:29.060 and those who are vulnerable.

01:39:30.260 I'm not making that statement.

01:39:31.640 I'm not talking about that one way or the other.

01:39:34.160 What is true is that there is this effect from the vaccine, particularly for young males,

01:39:39.900 not exclusively to them, but they were affected far more than any other group.

01:39:43.380 And there's reasons for that we don't need to get into.

01:39:45.780 And this was essentially ignored and kind of like buried by the CDC when the signal came

01:39:52.000 out.

01:39:52.240 And I give examples of that.

01:39:54.040 I mean, the thing that's interesting is setting that aside, how these sort of danger signals

01:39:59.620 were buried.

01:40:00.840 Teachers were prioritized for vaccines in much of the country and in many locations.

01:40:07.320 Yet they still didn't go back to school in many locations, even after that.

01:40:12.000 So they were put ahead of sometimes more vulnerable people.

01:40:15.100 And you can look this up.

01:40:16.300 This isn't me making this up.

01:40:17.720 This isn't a conspiracy theory.

01:40:19.240 You can see the different levels of sort of priority that the CDC and various health

01:40:25.600 governing bodies put out.

01:40:27.200 They prioritize teachers in many locations.

01:40:29.880 Okay, I got it.

01:40:30.960 You want to be protected?

01:40:32.500 And they still didn't go back to school.

01:40:34.180 But meanwhile, and this goes back to what we talked about in the very beginning, how class

01:40:38.320 based the whole entire pandemic response was.

01:40:41.660 I only have a minute left.

01:40:42.460 I got to interrupt you.

01:40:43.280 Final thoughts on Fauci and what his legacy in all of this should be.

01:40:47.520 Well, he's pardoned.

01:40:48.800 So there's that.

01:40:50.820 I don't suggest that there was criminal behavior.

01:40:55.760 I don't know enough about those angles.

01:40:58.460 What I would say is Fauci was sort of the figurehead.

01:41:02.700 He was the face of the response in our country.

01:41:06.040 And Anthony Fauci, along with many, many others, overstated evidence over and over again.

01:41:12.780 And they said kids couldn't go back to school until it was safe with a contrived list of

01:41:18.120 reasons and that there was never any support behind them.

01:41:21.200 And not only was there not support for them, we had an enormous amount of evidence right

01:41:25.480 across the Atlantic showing millions of children in school without consequence, without doing

01:41:31.500 any of this stuff.

01:41:32.420 He funded EcoHealth Alliance, which very well may have been behind the research that caused

01:41:36.560 the pandemic.

01:41:37.480 Very possible.

01:41:37.760 He appears to have lied repeatedly to Congress while under oath.

01:41:41.820 That's why he needed a pardon.

01:41:43.820 And yeah, he's villain number one in my view.

01:41:45.820 But there's so many to choose from.

01:41:47.480 Don't forget to buy this book.

01:41:48.520 It's called An Abundance of Caution.

01:41:49.940 American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions.

01:41:52.600 David Zweig.

01:41:53.520 Z-W-E-I-G.

01:41:54.660 Great to see you.

01:41:55.440 Thanks, Megan.

01:41:56.680 Okay.

01:41:57.400 Tomorrow on the show, Steve Bannon and Nancy Grace.

01:41:59.760 There's a combo.

01:42:02.940 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:42:04.840 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - April 21, 2025

Remembering Pope Francis’ Life and Legacy, Reality of Trump’s Tariff Policies, and Media Lies, with Kevin O’Leary and David Zweig ｜ Ep. 1053

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