The Megyn Kelly Show - The COVID Cover-Up, with Josh Rogin, David Marcus, and Richard Muller ｜ Ep. 114

00:00:00.580 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:12.480 Hey, everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.640 Oh, we have a great show for you today. We're going to talk COVID, lab leak in particular,

00:00:19.860 and how we force China to give us real answers. We kick it off with a guy named Richard Muller.

00:00:24.460 He's an emeritus professor of physics at UCAL Berkeley and a former senior scientist at this

00:00:30.200 very well-known lab. And he worked with the State Department on trying to get to the bottom of

00:00:34.100 where this virus came from. And it's a chilling interview. We're going to kick it off with him.

00:00:39.320 And you will hear him say, not only does he believe the evidence is right there in the virus,

00:00:44.320 that it was manipulated by the Chinese, that it came from the lab, but he believes it was being

00:00:50.240 manipulated to be made into a biological weapon, that this was weaponry. And he'll explain to you

00:00:56.560 why. It's scary. I mean, it's a chilling interview. So we're going to start with him. And I promise

00:01:02.940 you're going to find him very compelling. Then we go to Josh Rogan. You remember him,

00:01:06.940 columnist for The Washington Post, author of the book Chaos Under Heaven, which is about COVID and

00:01:11.280 the lab leak. And this is one of those guys has been saying all along, people, open your eyes,

00:01:15.780 open your eyes. We need to be looking at whether this came from a COVID, from a Wuhan lab, 0.90

00:01:19.680 and not from some pangolin in a wet market in China. And we're going to ask him about the

00:01:24.320 revelations that have come out in the news thus far over the past couple of months since we have

00:01:27.700 had him on and he published his book and what he thinks needs to be done to get real answers from

00:01:32.740 China and the number of conflicts of interest we have stopping a real investigation from happening.

00:01:38.260 And then one of my favorite people on Twitter, David Marcus, and columnist too for The Washington

00:01:42.880 Post and from The Federalist, he's got a new book out called Charade, The COVID Lies,

00:01:47.180 The Krishna Nation. And Dave Marcus speaks sense. We're going to get into the myths around this and 0.88

00:01:53.540 why we couldn't say COVID lab for so long and why mask wearing became this virtue signaling thing that

00:01:58.900 was performatory and what happened with Governor Cuomo. Anyway, he's done a lot of reporting and

00:02:04.920 including on like what Trump was doing the first couple of months of this that that people ignored

00:02:08.940 and saying he did nothing. And I think you're going to love him when he sort of does clean up for us

00:02:13.560 and aisle seven and a lot of things that have been out there that are untrue. So anyway, Richard

00:02:17.540 Muller, Josh Rogan and Dave Marcus right after this. Thank you so much for doing this. All right. So

00:02:27.420 you're going to explain this to us because I heard you say the other day, this virus is a whistleblower.

00:02:33.980 How so? Whistleblowers in China cannot get the message out. They are stopped by their government.

00:02:42.120 They can't send a signal. They're completely stifled. The concept doesn't exist. But the virus got out.

00:02:51.200 And it turns out the virus carries with it information in its very genes that tells the story. And this is

00:03:00.640 scientific evidence. This is not circumstantial evidence. This is solid science. And it is it is

00:03:07.380 telling. In fact, it is revealing. It is the whistleblower. It tells it tells the story and gives

00:03:14.880 us the answers that so many people thought we would never get unless we had like like the old Perry Mason

00:03:21.360 show, a confession. China says, OK, OK, you caught me. Let me tell you why I did it. That will never

00:03:27.820 happen. But the virus has come out of China and it's carried with it this message.

00:03:32.620 It has a genetic footprint in which you've found the answers. And you say that this genetic footprint

00:03:39.020 is one that has never been observed before in a natural coronavirus. In other words, in one that

00:03:46.040 was not manipulated by man. Now, if that's true, it's not strictly true. It's never been observed before

00:03:52.940 in the whole class of coronaviruses of which COVID is a member. A class is a big group in genetics.

00:04:01.400 We're in the same class as all other mammals, for example. So within this huge class, these are the

00:04:07.560 coronaviruses which sometimes share genes with other coronaviruses. And this sequence has never

00:04:15.700 been observed naturally. OK, so the sequence to which you refer is the double CGG, double CGG.

00:04:22.920 What is double CGG? Double SIG. Double SIG. OK, so what is that? OK, in the virus, there is a particular

00:04:34.480 part on what's called the spike. You know, if you see a picture of the virus, it's a sphere with these

00:04:40.520 spikes coming out. These spikes are what attach to the victim cell. Now, this spike in coronavirus

00:04:46.740 has a particular feature. I can give you the scientific name for it, but let's skip that.

00:04:51.600 Let's just say it has a feature that makes it extremely capable of attaching to a victim cell

00:04:59.980 and injecting its virus particles very quickly. So this particular thing that appears in the spike

00:05:08.400 protein, this is what is absent in all other coronaviruses in the same class. The Myrrh's

00:05:14.980 virus, the SARS virus, the things that hit in 2003, that hit in 2012. These things don't have this

00:05:22.280 little feature. It's a feature that can make this attachment to the cell and then open up the cell.

00:05:31.380 Actually, what it does is it tells the cell, hey, open up. I'm something you want. Open up.

00:05:37.180 It's just a code. It's like it's a language. It's like someone calling you and saying,

00:05:42.320 trust me. And the cell trusts it. And it opens up and says, come on in. You're obviously something

00:05:48.140 good. And it's a lie. So it comes in and it injects this information that tells the cell,

00:05:54.100 okay, here I am. Now start manufacturing more coronaviruses. And the cell says, yes, sir. And

00:05:59.620 it goes ahead and starts manufacturing a million coronaviruses within the cell. And finally,

00:06:04.440 the cell breaks open. And now you have a million of these things going out and attacking other

00:06:09.480 cells. So this is the tricky mechanism. Some people say a virus isn't even alive. All it is,

00:06:15.560 is a set of instructions. It's like a computer virus. You send an instruction to the computer.

00:06:22.000 The computer does all the work. It's the one who shuts itself down. It's the one that encrypts itself

00:06:27.660 for ransomware. And this is a little code that goes into the cell and it just tells the cell what

00:06:33.860 to do. It's a message, a written message. And the cell then does this and the cell starts

00:06:40.960 manufacturing more coronaviruses. And so this thing just expands and it starts doing its real damage.

00:06:47.180 But to get in and to get in so quickly and so effectively is to be really infectious.

00:06:52.480 It has this little code in it. And the little code is something that has never been seen in this

00:06:58.540 whole class of coronaviruses that include all the coronaviruses that have caused epidemics in the

00:07:07.020 past. They're both SARS, which is famous, and MERS, the Mideast Respiratory Syndrome. Neither of those

00:07:16.740 had this in it. So this is really, really something unexpected, unique. And it's inconceivable that

00:07:25.260 this could have happened by accident. Is it man-made? Is double-sig necessarily man-made? 0.99

00:07:31.980 It is not necessarily man-made because it does appear in other kinds of animals. And it's not

00:07:39.460 just a double-sig. It's a double-sig with the stuff for ballet. It's actually not just CGG,

00:07:44.960 but it's twice as long as that. And this thing is put together in the laboratory. And then it is

00:07:54.540 inserted into this gene. That is how it got in. The laboratory in Wuhan has done this in the past.

00:08:02.560 They have actually inserted this double-sig into other coronaviruses. They've done it and they've

00:08:09.560 published it. This was work that's part of what they're doing in their so-called gain-of-function.

00:08:13.880 And so they have done this. It's been done around the world, I think, 11 or 12 times.

00:08:19.040 Why would they do that?

00:08:19.940 The excuse they give is that they want to examine the most virulent types of viruses

00:08:29.620 in order to prepare for them. So when they come about accidentally, they will already have laboratory

00:08:37.360 experience. And the argument they made is that this will be done in a very secure laboratory. There's no

00:08:43.120 danger that this will get out. And it gives the scientists a way of examining the bad things

00:08:49.100 that might happen in the future. That's the excuse. That was heavily debated in the United States.

00:08:55.280 And under the Obama administration, it didn't sell. The community decided, no, that's not good

00:09:03.380 enough. The dangers are too great. Shut down this kind of research. And it was officially shut down.

00:09:09.940 But through some money laundering, the research actually continued in China. The U.S., some of

00:09:20.520 the money from the National Institute of Health and the other funding organizations was put into the

00:09:26.560 EcoHealth Alliance. And then the EcoHealth is what I call money laundering. They didn't fund it

00:09:30.820 directly. They gave it to the EcoHealth Alliance. That's Peter Daszak's organization.

00:09:34.780 Peter Daszak's right. And so he sent it to China. Now, nominally, they promised not to use this money

00:09:47.240 for that purpose. But in interviews, we learned from Fauci that he said, so they promised they

00:09:59.040 wouldn't do it. How do you know they didn't do it? Well, we generally trust them. And that's what he

00:10:03.660 said on the air. So they're not open enough. They're not transparent enough so that we could

00:10:09.380 see what they actually do with it. But they were doing gain of function.

00:10:14.540 But you think that this is this is as close as we'll get to a smoking gun, seeing the double 0.99

00:10:18.420 SIG combo in this virus. And one of the interesting things about your piece in the journal was

00:10:24.920 the so-called bat lady, you know, the woman who runs the lab in Wuhan. 0.99

00:10:28.840 She did not. She published a paper in February 2020 with the virus's partial genome,

00:10:34.920 but she did not mention this special sequence that supercharges the virus or the rare this rare

00:10:43.320 double SIG section. She didn't mention it. But you say the fingerprint nonetheless was easily

00:10:49.040 identified in the data accompanying the paper. Now, why wouldn't she mention that that was in there,

00:10:56.740 that that genome? I have struggled with that question. How could she do this? There were other

00:11:02.960 things in that paper that are also very suspicious. There are two fingerprints we talked about

00:11:09.660 in our op-ed. And so far we've been talking about the first one, but there are three or four

00:11:15.540 other things. So as I'm trying to imagine, how could she omit this? I can guess it's scenarios,

00:11:23.060 but these are total guesses. I can guess that she put it in there and the censors said, no,

00:11:29.620 when you put that in there, it gives it away. You can't mention that. So she cut it out or come up with

00:11:34.720 a whimsy excuse to cut it out. She only went to so far in the genome to describe it and didn't do the 0.99

00:11:40.380 whole thing. But within weeks, nature, oh, God bless nature, because they require not only that you write

00:11:48.280 their paper, but that you archive the data that were used in determining this. So the data are

00:11:55.340 archived. And that means any scientist in the world has access to it. And within a few weeks,

00:12:00.620 people were saying, wait, why did she stop here? And they went a little bit further and there is

00:12:04.880 the double CGG. I mean, as of March, a year, a little over a year ago, this double CGG was found.

00:12:12.040 And it was identified in a second published paper, not by the Chinese, saying this looks

00:12:20.040 like anal function, that someone had stuck this in. And so this has been known for a year.

00:12:26.100 Right. But covered up as we're now finding out.

00:12:29.580 We weren't releasing any new science. We were just focusing in on what are the scientific issues

00:12:38.060 that are well known and are undisputed and present enough evidence that this case is pretty much

00:12:47.740 closed. Well, one of the things you pointed out, because you mentioned SARS and MERS, that those both

00:12:52.580 were confirmed to have a natural origin. These are other coronaviruses. They evolved rapidly

00:12:57.400 as they spread through humans until the most contagious forms dominated. The viruses got

00:13:02.740 smarter. They got better. And you say COVID-19 did not work that way. It appeared in humans

00:13:08.040 already adapted into an extremely contagious version. No serious viral improvement took place

00:13:14.720 until a minor variation occurred many months later in England. Such early optimization is unprecedented,

00:13:21.420 and it suggests a long period of adaptation that predated its public spread. The

00:13:27.280 theory being that the so-called bat lady and her colleagues had been making it better and better 0.99

00:13:34.420 and better. And the strong version was the first to emerge because it had grown in a lab and gotten

00:13:41.020 stronger. I call it accelerated evolution. So people say, well, hey, this thing looks like it's totally

00:13:48.540 natural. Well, yeah, it looks like it's natural and has evolved over several years. But that natural

00:13:55.440 evolution can take place in the laboratory. And that's what's called a gain of function. You take

00:14:02.180 this thing and you don't expose it to humans, but you expose it to humanized cells. These are mice

00:14:08.060 that have the same receptors in them that the human lungs have, that the human brain has. And so when you

00:14:14.660 put this virus in on the mice, the ones that are most effective are the ones that spread the most. And then

00:14:20.580 you take those and put those on other humanized mice and the ones that are most effective. So it's

00:14:25.920 an accelerated. In humans, it might take weeks to go from one person to the next person and develop

00:14:31.820 again. But in mice, you can do this in days. And so this accelerated evolution mimics absolutely

00:14:37.600 natural evolution. And people look at this thing and say, well, it looks like it evolved naturally.

00:14:41.800 That means one of two things. Either it developed within humans, for which there's no evidence

00:14:47.860 whatsoever, or that it developed in an accelerated evolution in a laboratory using gain of function.

00:14:54.700 And we know that gain of function was being used by Dr. Xi, the so-called bat lady. Bat lady, 0.81

00:15:03.600 by the way, was a term that was invented by Scientific American when they interviewed her. It was meant to

00:15:07.960 be a term of affection. Yeah, it's not derogatory. She likes it. I don't know if she likes it anymore.

00:15:13.660 So bottom line, what do you believe happened? What's your theory?

00:15:19.420 It's clear to me that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was developing exceedingly virulent

00:15:26.140 coronaviruses. But they did two things. They did gene splicing, which means putting in this little

00:15:32.380 segment that doesn't exist in any other of the beta coronaviruses. They stuck that in. Secondly,

00:15:38.760 they accelerated evolution, and they got this thing. And then it escaped somehow. And we have

00:15:46.500 strong evidence that the Wuhan Institute was closed down in November. For two weeks, something bad

00:15:52.100 happened, and it escaped, and it got out into humans. Why was it being developed? It was being

00:15:58.580 developed secretly. And that violates the Convention on Biological Weapons that China and the US have both 0.64

00:16:06.340 signed. I got into this in part through the State Department, where I was a member of Dave Asher's

00:16:13.160 team, looking into this, because their concern was that the Secretary of State has to certify every year

00:16:20.120 that China is in compliance with the Convention on Biological Warfare. And this seemed to be an

00:16:27.500 indication that it wasn't. They have a secret program going on there. This violates their agreement.

00:16:32.360 It's supposed to be completely transparent. We're supposed to be able to go in there and see everything

00:16:36.180 they do. They're not letting us do it. And even worse, there's strong information indicating that

00:16:41.400 the military, the People's Liberation Army, has taken over some of the work that's going on in that

00:16:48.040 laboratory. This just violates the Convention. We need to say China is in violation of this Convention. 0.93

00:16:55.380 And they either... In the United States law, you are innocent until proven guilty. In a biological

00:17:04.920 weapons convention, you are required to prove your innocence. This means transparency. We don't have

00:17:12.840 to find them guilty and then accuse them. No, they have to show us that they haven't done this. And that

00:17:17.260 requires transparency. And they have been violating that transparency.

00:17:20.140 So when you say that the PLA, basically the military, was involved with this lab, do we know

00:17:26.340 whether... Because this is one of the big speculations. Was she just working on making

00:17:30.080 coronaviruses more dangerous so that she could develop an antibody or the effective means of

00:17:35.240 protecting public health? Or was this a biological weapons lab that was not disclosed and partially

00:17:41.700 funded by American dollars? The reason I think it was a bioweapons lab is because if you just do

00:17:48.620 plain gain of function, if you just do acceleration of evolution, you'll find things that might evolve

00:17:55.060 within the humans. But there's no known way that this double CGG, double SIG, could have been

00:18:03.080 inserted through natural processes. So this was a departure. It increases the lethality and the

00:18:10.980 spread, speed of spread in a big jump in a way that we don't expect to happen naturally. And for that

00:18:22.220 reason... Wait, but wait, but wait, but can I just clarify? So what you're saying is if they were just

00:18:27.080 researching, let's take a coronavirus and make it as dangerous as it could naturally get so that we

00:18:33.360 can figure out how to treat it, we would not see double CGG? That's right. That's right. So to me,

00:18:40.340 that's an indication that they were trying to go even further than what would happen naturally. And

00:18:44.500 that departs then from the justification for doing the gain of function research.

00:18:51.380 That's huge. Then that, if that's true, then you're telling me the data attached to her report

00:18:56.860 showed us not only that this has been manipulated by humans in all likelihood, but that it had been

00:19:02.460 manipulated beyond what would ever be necessary to provide for the public health, that it suggested

00:19:08.500 bioweapon. Well, I like to, to what we said, we tried very carefully to say things that nobody could

00:19:15.360 disagree with in our op-ed. And so what we wanted to present was that there are two strong genetic

00:19:23.160 fingerprints in the virus itself that indicate it has been manipulated in the laboratory.

00:19:31.240 Now, what we didn't put in were, were our own opinions as to why this was done. And that was

00:19:37.340 specifically left out because I would like for people to agree that this was done purposefully in

00:19:45.240 the Wuhan laboratory. It's really hard for them to deny it given these two pieces of evidence. What I

00:19:50.240 don't want is for the argument to then say, oh, I disagree with you when you say it was done on purpose

00:19:55.180 because that that's a point in which people could disagree. And we get into an argument and it covers

00:20:01.020 up the fact that, that this, these two pieces of evidence, uh, indicate that it was manipulated in

00:20:08.360 the laboratory and, and, and that this did come out of a laboratory. It was not a natural evolution.

00:20:13.720 And that's a really big first step to get that to, to have the world scientists finally say, okay,

00:20:20.100 we were wrong. And they have an excuse for being wrong. Uh, back when these letters were written in,

00:20:25.700 in Lancet, Lancet and in, in, in, in, in nature magazine, much of this information was not yet known

00:20:32.100 scientifically. The experts wrote their letter at a time when they didn't know this evidence.

00:20:37.000 Well, and the, some of the experts had, uh, you know, they were conflicted too, uh, because they

00:20:42.480 had been, yes. Yeah. He'd been funding this research. So can we spend a moment on what that

00:20:48.820 must've been like? I mean, the moment, because even if they were developing it as a bioweapon,

00:20:53.740 it seems unlikely. They just chose in November of 19 to unleash it, starting with their own scientists.

00:20:58.880 I mean, seriously, it clearly appears to have been an accident that it got out. And the reporting is

00:21:04.880 that these three lab technicians got very ill in November of 19, you know, a few months before it

00:21:09.500 came here. I just, it's, I'm thinking of the movie version of this. How was everything not locked down

00:21:16.220 once those people got sick? How did they? It was too late. It was too late. It's so fast. Remember

00:21:22.120 with, with, with, with COVID, you are a carrier and you are spreading the disease for a week or two

00:21:29.400 before you show any symptoms. Uh, my guess is they get, got infected in the movie version. They got

00:21:34.200 infected in the laboratory and they went around their daily lives. Uh, and, and this thing was

00:21:39.520 spreading and then they got sick and then there was a panic, but it was too late.

00:21:44.960 Yes. There would have been a panic. I mean, that's, do we, do we know who those people are?

00:21:50.940 Have we ever found patient zero or gotten, you know, testimonials from the first people around

00:21:56.700 Wuhan, whether it's from the lab or the alleged market?

00:22:00.380 Oh no, we don't have to. The Chinese took care of that. 1.00

00:22:04.620 How, how so? Cause I know, I know they disappeared.

00:22:06.880 They claim they did this, but no, we don't have patient zero. Uh, we, there is some information

00:22:11.760 as to who got sick, which, which is classified information in which many people are saying,

00:22:16.660 please declassify all this information. But, but, uh, it's a little bit dangerous because if you

00:22:22.080 declassify this information, the Chinese will figure out who gave it to us and, and we know what will

00:22:26.840 happen to them. So, so we really have to be very cautious with sources. Um, but, but, but who's

00:22:33.140 patient zero? Uh, I, I think, I think we have, uh, we have some evidence for that, that we cannot

00:22:38.600 disclose at this point. Uh, and I, I'm not sure it's that important.

00:22:42.840 Hmm. Right. Well, I mean, if it's, if the guy works for the Wuhan Institute of Virology, it's,

00:22:47.380 it's much more interesting than, you know, random Chinese citizen who was at a wet market,

00:22:51.680 right? There's like one proves something and one doesn't. There were three people who worked at

00:22:56.840 the Wuhan Institute who got previously ill and went to the hospital with symptoms that are consistent

00:23:02.300 with COVID. You can't say it's not flu symptoms, but the Chinese say, Oh, in China, if you even get

00:23:07.920 the flu, you go to the hospital. Okay. So, so they have their cover story. We know that we also know

00:23:13.180 that it's spread. Uh, there is a, a, a Metro that goes right by the Wuhan Institute and goes to their

00:23:19.440 other virology laboratory. And the other virology laboratory is 900 feet from the wet market.

00:23:24.360 And all the early cases were along this Metro. So this is all circumstantial evidence, but it will

00:23:30.900 lend to the movie version that you referred to that someone at Wuhan, uh, got ill, but didn't realize

00:23:37.120 it didn't show symptoms. They were traveling on the Metro line. Maybe they were commuting between the

00:23:40.800 two laboratories. Uh, while they were there, they visited the wet market. This, this, this person was

00:23:46.860 spreading the illness. What we do know is that all of the early hospitalizations happen to be, uh,

00:23:54.200 along this one Metro line, their hospitals that are near the Metro line, as if it was spread by

00:23:58.740 people who live near this Metro line. This is something that, that my coauthor, Stephen Quay

00:24:03.260 uncovered. Uh, he's, he's, he's a remarkable person and looking at every single kind of evidence.

00:24:08.900 So there's all this. It didn't come from the, from the cave where the bats were, you know,

00:24:12.860 hundreds of thousands. I mean, the reason I got interested in the first place is this

00:24:17.600 strange coincidence that this disease just happens to break out, uh, right next to, uh,

00:24:23.920 the one laboratory in China that is doing back research and back the inner function research.

00:24:28.640 And that, how could anybody ignore that? And yet that's what people have been ignoring. That's

00:24:33.580 what the, the, the, there are people in the United States who are deeply afraid. These are scientists

00:24:39.340 that the government is going to start supervising their research and nothing impedes research more

00:24:44.720 than close government supervision. That's true. I know that in astrophysics, I hate to have them

00:24:49.800 supervise me in virology. They hate to have people supervise them. And, and so they're really afraid that

00:24:55.920 it's that they're really hoping that this was natural. Uh, and, and there's sometimes your hopes

00:25:01.080 can cloud your judgment. But when you say that you were working with the state department, I mean,

00:25:06.160 what do you make it because the, the latest reporting and in particular, I'm thinking about

00:25:10.220 the vanity fair in depth report, which has state department officials on the record by name saying

00:25:14.660 early on, we had reason to believe this was a lab leak. And we were told, be quiet, keep your mouth

00:25:20.680 shut. That's opening up a can of worms. We've been funding gain of function research and nobody wants

00:25:26.220 to go there. I mean, is that, do you know anything about that? Oh yeah, that's true.

00:25:31.940 Can you elaborate? Okay. Well, let me give you a personal story. Uh, so, um, I have, I have many

00:25:41.500 friends in science and several of them who, who are experts in virology and I called them, uh, one

00:25:48.740 person in particular who is a eminent virologist. I called him and said, there are these papers that

00:25:54.720 came out. Uh, you know, I, I, I, I, I know freshman virology, but I would like to have a professional

00:26:03.280 opinion on whether these papers, uh, are, are, are, are scientifically, uh, strong. And this one friend

00:26:11.260 of mine said, well, you know, I, I don't think I'm in a position to do that myself. I said, well, what

00:26:16.700 about people in your lab? Are there real experts in your lab? And he said, well, there are, but they

00:26:21.440 would refuse to do it. Why would they refuse to do it? And there were fundamentally two reasons.

00:26:27.500 Uh, one of them less chilling in the other, they refuse to do it because they didn't want to

00:26:31.400 support Donald Trump. And Donald Trump had come out and said, this is a Chinese manufactured virus

00:26:39.100 and anything that supported him would perhaps make it more likely that he would be elected.

00:26:44.920 But the second reason was the really chilling one. And this is that if they got involved in a,

00:26:54.540 a program that was questioning the truthfulness of China, that they would be blacklisted as enemies

00:27:04.280 of China. And that meant that any further collaboration with Chinese virologists, which they

00:27:10.700 all were doing, uh, would be, would, would be, would be cut. They could no longer do work in

00:27:16.780 collaboration with Chinese scientists and Chinese scientists were some of the best in this business.

00:27:20.920 They were doing advanced work and, and, and no, this is really chilling because what it means

00:27:26.640 is that the Chinese suppression of freedom of speech, freedom of information, freedom of association,

00:27:34.480 freedom of research had been spread. Their suppression of that had actually reached the United

00:27:40.500 States and people in the United States scientists in the United States were afraid to look into certain

00:27:46.660 issues for fear that that would, uh, insult China. And that, that really bothers me. It still bothers

00:27:54.080 me to this day. The idea that China has now managed by through collaboration managed to suppress our

00:28:03.400 freedom of research in the United States is, is really chilling. I mean, we've got 3.7 million

00:28:09.200 people dead and it's, it's time to stop worrying about your friends and your alliances with the lab

00:28:15.680 buddies across the pond. Um, let's, let's talk about next steps then, because I know in your,

00:28:22.580 in your piece and I saw you on Fox too, saying we have to demand that China opens up the lab,

00:28:28.660 that we have to put sanctions on them until they allow inspections. Um, but they're not likely to,

00:28:35.460 they've certainly not allowed it thus far. Anything they would allow us to see would probably be

00:28:39.980 controlled in a whitewash and not what's real is, is that my feeling from here. So what,

00:28:44.900 what could we meaningfully force at this point?

00:28:47.900 Oh, economic sanctions. Uh, there's a lot that can be done. Uh, Dave Ashley, who led the state

00:28:53.740 department team is an expert in this. He led, he led the, uh, economic sanctions against Iran,

00:29:00.280 which were very effective. He led the economic sanctions against North Korea, uh, which were very

00:29:04.980 effective. He's a super expert in this. And he wrote an op-ed in the wall street journal, uh, just,

00:29:10.420 uh, two or three days before hours. Uh, and he goes through the things that can be done. He says,

00:29:15.700 what the Chinese fear most is that, uh, the U S say that unless you open up, unless you give us

00:29:23.060 complete transparency, uh, you know, I'd love to have, uh, uh, she's angry, uh, come to the United States 0.60

00:29:31.780 and be interviewed in private. I'd love to have that unless they open up, uh, we, we can not only

00:29:38.480 apply these sanctions, which includes such things as tariffs, which, which president Trump was doing,

00:29:43.220 but can even go to the extreme of saying, uh, because you haven't opened up, you are in violation

00:29:48.920 of the, uh, of, of the biological warfare convention. And in violation of that, until you provide proof

00:29:57.020 that you are not responsible for this, we will allow American citizens to sue you. Now you think

00:30:03.240 that's impossible. How can you sue China? China owns a great many assets in the United States

00:30:08.960 and they are, according to Dave, uh, who, who is an expert in this, there's nothing they fear more

00:30:16.180 than having U S citizens who got ill or whose family members died, uh, suing the bank of China.

00:30:22.560 Um, as, as you know, they have been buying up assets in the United States. People worry that

00:30:28.120 China owns us. Okay. But that is an opportunity for us to provide, to, to, to really scare them. 0.99

00:30:34.580 And what I'm hoping that will come about is they will recognize that president Biden is willing to

00:30:40.640 do this. And, and if not, then maybe four years from now, a new president will, uh, will, is willing

00:30:46.700 to do this. And they will see, they have no option other than to be transparent. And the key thing

00:30:53.140 here is to stop them from doing this kind of work in the future. And that means utter transparency.

00:30:58.080 We get to see everything in their laboratory, not just wait for their official publications,

00:31:03.020 but we get to go to their laboratory and see what they're doing.

00:31:05.940 What if they're scrubbing it all now? I mean, what, wouldn't they be, wouldn't this all be gone?

00:31:09.340 Wouldn't they have gotten rid of the evidence?

00:31:10.660 Well, I, the evidence is in the, is in the genome. So no, it's, it's here. We can prove

00:31:16.260 that they did it. What we want to do is stop them from doing it again. And, uh, that's the

00:31:21.460 real danger that, that, uh, you know, my guess is that this is being done as part of biological

00:31:27.880 warfare, that it was a new kind of warfare. It was not a, a hot war. It was a, uh, preparing

00:31:34.280 for an economic war and it's been enormously effective. It's slowing down the Western economy.

00:31:40.480 We're letting the Chinese economy boom. So wait a minute. So is that, does that suggest

00:31:45.140 you think this was an intentional release? No, no, because of the way it happened. If

00:31:49.940 it was an intentional release, they would have carried it to, they would have brought

00:31:55.620 it to near Fort Detrick. Yeah, exactly. So everybody would believe it was Fort Detrick.

00:32:00.220 But you're just saying it had its advantages for them as unleashed.

00:32:03.620 They certainly didn't want it released in Wuhan. Wuhan is the worst place because it was released

00:32:09.200 in Wuhan. Many of us were suspicious. That's the tell. Yeah. So no, this was, this was not

00:32:14.760 deliberate. It was, if it was deliberate, it was done in the most stupid way. And I don't believe 1.00

00:32:18.900 that. So I think it was accidental. Uh, but it, it, it, it, it let out. I mean, it, it let out

00:32:25.060 the information. It gave us the clues that we needed and we were kind of obtuse and, and people

00:32:31.780 didn't notice these clues, but once they did notice the clues and we know these, everything

00:32:35.940 we sent that op-ed article was known a year ago, we're not doing anything new and we're

00:32:41.220 not saying anything that is disputed by experts. Um, I'll give an example. Daszak started tweeting

00:32:47.840 about how our op-ed is all wrong. And then he listed a whole bunch of things, none of which

00:32:53.300 were in the op-ed. He never mentioned the facts we had in the op-ed. He mentioned things

00:32:57.500 that other people were saying about things. That guy has no credibility. He's lost all credibility,

00:33:02.120 but listen, I have to ask you this before I let you go. Can you just walk me through

00:33:05.700 how you, how did you come to this? How did you come to work with the state department?

00:33:09.860 Because I see, um, you're, you were a physics professor at Berkeley, a former senior scientist

00:33:15.780 at a very well-known lab laboratory or Lawrence Berkeley national laboratory. So how is it that

00:33:21.380 you got involved in this? I, I, my lay person understanding of what a physicist does, doesn't

00:33:26.120 bring the two of you together, you and COVID research.

00:33:28.780 Well, I, I had met a new Dave Asher. I, I heard, I heard him give talks on the, on the work that

00:33:35.260 he's done for Iran and North Korea. I had enormous respect for him.

00:33:38.640 And he was state department under, under Trump and who else?

00:33:42.160 Obama.

00:33:43.480 Obama too. Okay.

00:33:44.760 Yeah. Yeah. No, he did some very important work for Obama and nonpartisan. Uh, the work he does is

00:33:51.660 just really super good. I contacted him and I contacted a dozen other people. Uh, and you'll,

00:33:58.220 you'll find this funny. It was, uh, I was suspicious because of the Wuhan laboratory being so close.

00:34:04.040 And so as a scientist who loves to discover things, when you get a clue like that, it doesn't

00:34:09.400 mean you come out and you start accusing people. What it means is you go deeper into it. So I started

00:34:13.760 reading all of the key papers in this field, which is not easy for me as a physicist, but I could

00:34:19.560 quickly learn a lot of the, a lot of the virology. It's, it's not that hard. Uh, you know,

00:34:25.520 we're talking about codes here. It's, it's, it's, it's not something beyond what a physicist

00:34:29.700 can do. So I started reading these things. Uh, uh, remarkably, I got a reference from Fox

00:34:34.600 news of a paper that had come out and I said, Oh, they gave the name of the author. Let me

00:34:39.240 look it up online. I went to Google and I searched for this paper and I found 30 hits. Each one

00:34:46.400 was to an article that was denying the paper saying what was wrong with it, but where's the

00:34:52.320 paper? Maybe it's not available. Why do I get only hits? And then I thought, wait a

00:34:56.820 minute, uh, let me try a different search engine. So I went to Microsoft Bing and put

00:35:02.680 in the name of the paper and Bing, it came up the first on the search list. And I realized,

00:35:09.120 Oh my God, Google is suppressing this paper. What's going on here? That really got my chills

00:35:16.460 up. Uh, it was the first personal experience that I I'd read about things in which the, uh,

00:35:22.240 the, the social media are suppressing things, but this is one that actually hit me at home.

00:35:27.600 And I read this paper and having read this paper, I started talking to a virologist and, and, and,

00:35:33.100 and that's when I had this conversation about no, nobody in my lab will do it. Uh, I, of all

00:35:38.320 the people I contacted was Dave Asher who, who, who was most interested. And, and we talked,

00:35:46.160 he had me brief the state department, the top people in the state department on this issue.

00:35:51.120 Um, and, and we started, uh, he started going into it seriously, uh, because of the biological

00:35:56.840 warfare convention.

00:35:59.400 Uh, rich, thank you so much for your expertise and telling us the story. And, um, it'll be

00:36:04.320 interesting to see who plays you in the movie, but, uh, up next, Josh Rogan returns to the program

00:36:10.720 with what I think is a victory lap for having apparently been right. Certainly right that we need

00:36:15.240 to take a hard look at the Wuhan lab theory. And it appears right that, um, these scientists

00:36:19.620 are conflicted and are protecting their own butts and not ours. He's next.

00:36:27.860 It's been a couple of months since we first had you on, uh, you literally wrote the book

00:36:31.980 on this chaos under heaven, Trump, she, and the battle for the 21st century, in which

00:36:35.700 you very seriously said, can we please take a hard look at the lab leaks theory? And let me tell

00:36:41.500 you all the reasons why that makes sense. And you were on our show in April saying,

00:36:45.460 let me walk you through it. Since then the dam has broken. In fact, I think more people should

00:36:51.160 be mentioning you as one of the dam breakers because, um, you are, you know, mainstream.

00:36:57.020 And I think you're one of the people who made it acceptable, indeed imperative to look at this

00:37:02.700 as real. What? So let me just start with your reaction to these Johnny come lately's who are like,

00:37:08.720 well, now, now we should take a look at the lab leak. Now it's time.

00:37:13.820 Sure. Sure. So first of all, uh, you're right. It's been crazy to watch after, you know, 14,

00:37:18.720 16, 18 months of silence, really shocking silence about a lack of curiosity and a lack of investigation

00:37:25.960 into how we got into this mess and to how the pandemic started, which by the way is crucial

00:37:31.280 information for making sure that we don't do this every year to make sure that we don't have

00:37:35.040 another pandemic after this one right away. Uh, after all of that silence and silencing of people

00:37:41.960 who dare to utter the words lab leak theory, all of a sudden it's become acceptable in the

00:37:46.180 chattering class, especially in Washington to be like, Hey, let's check out the bat coronavirus labs 1.00

00:37:50.980 that are right next to the outbreak of the bat coronavirus. Right. Which it doesn't sound like

00:37:54.940 a crazy thing to say anymore, but since just because I've been saying it for 18 months,

00:37:58.400 it didn't suddenly become a credible theory. It didn't suddenly jump from something kooky to

00:38:03.040 something acceptable. The theory has always been the same. It was the people who were

00:38:07.120 refusing to acknowledge its plausibility who changed. Okay. And that includes scientists,

00:38:12.460 includes the media. It includes all sorts of people in government who, for whatever reason,

00:38:17.640 and I'm telling you, Megan, there were a bunch of different reasons for some people. It was

00:38:21.240 Trump derangement syndrome. For some people it was confirmation bias for some people with source

00:38:25.380 bias. The reporters were biased towards their scientists sources who misled them on purpose to

00:38:30.740 cover their own tushies. But for whatever reason, you got to the place where you had to somehow 0.57

00:38:34.680 explain why you were wrong for a year. And now you can say that the lab leak theory is plausible

00:38:39.460 and should be investigated. All of those rationalizations are pretty much BS. Right. And

00:38:44.920 everyone's like, you know, I can't like the fact checkers unchecking their facts and saying,

00:38:49.820 Oh, well, we were right to be wrong, but now we're right. It doesn't make any sense. Right. And the

00:38:53.740 scientists who came out of those emails, the Fauci, not just Fauci, but the other ones,

00:38:57.980 right. Who were like, Oh, telling each other that the lab leak theory was plausible at the time and

00:39:04.620 telling the public that it wasn't plausible at that same time. And we're revealed to be hypocrites 0.94

00:39:09.280 and to be deceiving the public to the cost of our public health, by the way, which is how we got into 0.78

00:39:14.620 this mess in the first place. They're now called their hypocrisy is out in the public view, but I'm

00:39:19.860 here to say that, forget all that. Welcome to the party. If you're willing to join me and by the way,

00:39:25.320 not just me, thank you for the credit, but there were a lot of journalists and including you,

00:39:29.060 Megan, who are way ahead on this. Okay. Because they just decided to like acknowledge the obvious

00:39:34.580 thing, which is that if you got the bat coronavirus outbreak in the city with all the bat coronavirus 0.92

00:39:39.360 labs, we should check out those labs. Okay. It doesn't mean we know that came from a lab.

00:39:43.800 It doesn't mean we know this is what happened. It means we should check it out. And so now finally,

00:39:48.080 we're going to, it's acceptable to say we can check it out, but that doesn't actually mean we're

00:39:51.520 checking it out. We still no plan to check it out. No one's checking it out.

00:39:54.580 Yes, that's exactly right. It's like, okay, great. Now, now we're being real.

00:39:59.260 Can we check it out? Yeah. Yeah. We're like, let's do it. And so here is the, the most I've

00:40:03.660 heard on how we're going to do it or what we're going to do it because all eyes are on China and

00:40:08.340 that's where the information is. That's where the pressure needs to be exerted. Um, and so we had

00:40:12.780 Secretary of State Blinken asked about this on Axios's Sunday show on HBO. And here's as much as he

00:40:19.940 would say. To do a proper investigation, you're going to need, the U.S. is going to need access

00:40:24.360 to the labs. Will you demand that? Uh, will you put teeth on it? Will you even go as far as

00:40:28.860 sanctions on China if they keep inspectors out? I think the international community

00:40:33.460 is clear that, um, we have to have, the international community has to have access.

00:40:39.500 It has to have information. Uh, it has to have, uh, meaningful, uh, interaction. So what's the real

00:40:46.120 pressure the U.S. will put on China for access to the lab? If, uh, China denies the information,

00:40:56.020 denies the access, uh, denies the transparency that's needed. And you kind of expect that?

00:41:01.300 Well, let's see. It's been the history. Mike, at the end of the day, it's profoundly in

00:41:05.920 China's interest, uh, to do this as well, because look, it suffered too, uh, in the, uh, in the

00:41:11.880 outbreak of this pandemic. So what Secretary Blinken is saying here is that the Biden administration is

00:41:16.260 willing to look into it finally, but they're not willing to actually put their money where their

00:41:20.640 mouth is. They're not willing to at least publicly say that, oh, we're going to use the tools of

00:41:25.000 American power and influence to get Beijing to play along, you know, and that's kind of crazy

00:41:30.060 because if you look at what just happened to the last year, the WHO tried the route of asking Beijing

00:41:34.560 nicely. And look what happened. They rope-a-doped them for a year. Then they let them into Wuhan for 0.97

00:41:40.600 two weeks and co-wrote the report, told them, went, went to the lab for three hours. The lab

00:41:46.140 scientist said, we didn't do it. They said, okay, sorry to bother you. And then they told us we

00:41:50.040 shouldn't look into the lab. And then the head of WHO took a crap on his own WHO report while 0.92

00:41:54.940 releasing the report. Cause it was so ridiculous that he couldn't even defend it at the release of 0.99

00:41:59.220 the report. That was a debacle. Okay. And that wasted a year of our lives where the evidence is 0.99

00:42:04.900 getting older. And, you know, the Biden people, I'll be honest with you, Mike, I talk to them

00:42:08.440 about this all the time and, you know, I'm always bugging them behind. I'm like, listen, you've got

00:42:13.040 to check this out. It's not political. It's not partisan. It's not about blaming Trump. It's not

00:42:17.140 even about blaming China. It's about figuring this out. And they're like, yeah, yeah, but how are we

00:42:20.420 going to do it? It's going to be hard. I'm like, tough, you know? And then Beijing is not going to like

00:42:25.140 it. I'm like, they're not supposed to like it. You know what I mean? Like, can you imagine if,

00:42:28.920 you know, like if you're prosecuting, let's just say like a murder, for example, and the defendant's

00:42:33.060 like, no, I'm not going to let you into my house. And they're like, okay, sorry. Well, that's the

00:42:37.120 end of the investigation. It would be crazy because they're not supposed to, you know,

00:42:41.480 the investigation is not supposed to depend on the kind graces of the person or entity you're

00:42:47.640 investigating. That doesn't make any sense. Okay. So we're going to have to bring pressure to bear.

00:42:51.540 And what I say, and what I think a growing number of lawmakers you'll see saying, and

00:42:55.960 Lindsey Graham actually put this to a point and got a non-answer as well, sanction the labs, 1.00

00:43:01.160 all of them, all the virus labs in Beijing and Wuhan that won't even have zero, because here's

00:43:06.460 the thing, Megan, even if they're, it didn't come from the lab, those labs have proven they

00:43:10.520 can't be trusted because during a crisis, when we need to get out their books, they won't give

00:43:14.720 it to us, right? So there's zero accountability, zero transparency. That's what we know. Even before

00:43:20.460 we know if the outbreak is coming from the labs or not, we know that these, we have to reevaluate

00:43:26.140 our relationships with this lab, with these labs, which gets us back to the other thing that you and

00:43:30.280 I talked about last time, which is that, well, if we can't get into their labs, we can definitely get

00:43:34.440 into our labs. And our labs are run by people who work for the U.S. government, like Dr. Fauci and

00:43:39.820 Francis Collins, and people who are contractors of the U.S. government, like Peter Daszak, all the guys

00:43:44.820 who told us for a year that we shouldn't be looking into the labs. And now all of a sudden, they're like,

00:43:47.980 of course, we should be looking into the labs. You're like, wait a second. That's not what you

00:43:50.840 said. They're like, of course, that's what I said. They're like, no, you didn't.

00:43:53.340 No, the Fauci email show that Daszak behind the scenes was like, thank you, Fauci. Thank you for

00:43:57.780 defending against the lab leak theory. Right. I mean, there was zero desire to look into it. In fact,

00:44:02.940 now we know that there were tons of red flags being raised behind the scenes by people saying

00:44:06.420 100 percent. We need to look at that. Oh, wait, it would open up a can of worms. Wait,

00:44:10.200 it's going to make us look bad. But it really looks like that's how it happened.

00:44:13.820 Right. And guess what? It will open up a can of worms. And guess what?

00:44:16.940 The Chinese Communist Party is not going to like it. They're not supposed to like it.

00:44:20.240 And here's the crazy part is that, you know, we may never find a smoking gun, you know,

00:44:24.700 and if the Chinese government found the smoking gun, they surely buried it along with anyone who

00:44:28.760 knew about it. But we will if we actually do the investigation, which means, yes,

00:44:33.060 pressuring the Chinese government, but also looking into the NIH, USAID, Homeland Security,

00:44:38.020 all the Defense Department contracts with EcoHealth Alliance, all of it.

00:44:41.300 We got to see all of it. We can't trust these guys because they misled us for a year.

00:44:44.680 I'm talking about the Americans now. So we're going to have to see the work. 0.98

00:44:48.760 OK, that means Congress. That means hearings. You know, call it whatever you want.

00:44:52.480 Call it a commission. Call it a committee. Just have, you know, let's see the the the paper on

00:44:56.940 this. And then we're going to have to make a decision as a society. And I'm telling you that

00:45:00.660 that decision must include reevaluating our relationships with all these labs.

00:45:04.920 We're clearly not good actors who are not actually controlled by these very nice Chinese scientists 0.97

00:45:09.440 who just want to prevent pandemics. It's actually controlled by the party.

00:45:12.660 And that's what the book is about. It's about the fact that the party is in control

00:45:16.180 of everything. And that governs our relationships with China.

00:45:20.120 And that's what we have to realize, that even on scientific collaboration, which should be

00:45:23.480 the thing you could I mean, if you can't cooperate with the Chinese government on pandemic

00:45:27.880 prevention because they're going to weaponize it and build another part of the lab, the part

00:45:31.940 that we didn't know about, the part that the Biden administration confirmed.

00:45:35.700 Well, that's really bad. OK, we get we have to wake up to that.

00:45:38.860 OK, and then, you know, if the Biden people don't want to disrupt you at delicate U.S.-China

00:45:43.180 relations, what I say to that is like, well, five hundred ninety six thousand Americans

00:45:47.540 died. If uncovering the truth of that is not worth risking upsetting the delicate of the

00:45:53.180 sensibilities of the CCP, then what is what would be the thing that we would go to Beijing

00:45:57.920 and like this is important to us because I think this is important to us.

00:46:01.020 Right. How weak can we be?

00:46:02.440 This this is this is the point, because it's like, first of all, as an outsider, as somebody

00:46:07.900 who's not involved in setting any sort of China policy, I think to myself, how do we trust

00:46:11.340 an organization that's engaging in forced sterilization of people?

00:46:15.040 You know, that's that's forced labor camps of the Uyghurs, of Muslim minorities over 1.00

00:46:18.260 there. How do we say, yeah, they're trustworthy that I'm sure they're telling us the straight

00:46:21.400 skinny when it comes to what they're doing in that lab that we're giving them funding

00:46:24.360 for. And now, you know, there's your reporting.

00:46:27.980 There was that piece in Vanity Fair last week.

00:46:29.500 I think we have been funding gain of function research there in that lab where they take

00:46:34.360 the bats out of the caves and take them.

00:46:36.580 What was it?

00:46:36.860 Fourteen hundred miles, however many miles to do research on them and to pull the coronaviruses

00:46:41.660 out and to gain a function means basically to make a more dangerous to see ostensibly

00:46:45.520 for our own good to see how to fight them.

00:46:47.480 But lo and behold, the lab, which you point out in your book, had suffered from safety protocol

00:46:51.940 violations. We had already flagged it on our radar as really not that airtight.

00:46:55.640 And that had been working with the Chinese military to some extent wasn't wasn't too

00:47:01.460 reliable. And three people got sick sick in November of 19.

00:47:04.780 And now, according to the latest estimates from the WHO, one hundred and seventy three

00:47:10.600 million people have had covid one hundred and seventy three million people worldwide.

00:47:14.500 Total deaths, three point seven million.

00:47:16.960 So we do need to know.

00:47:19.780 Right. And you put a lot into that setup, but I agree with all of it.

00:47:24.000 What it's really interesting that you focus on this gain of function research question,

00:47:27.180 because this has kind of become a political canard because, you know, what Fauci and Collins

00:47:31.520 Fauci, the head of the the the part of the government that funds all virus research, basically

00:47:37.100 all virus research, including a lot of this stuff.

00:47:39.160 And Collins, the head of the NIH, they have been thwarting congressional investigations.

00:47:43.280 They've been refusing to answer basic questions from Congress members on both sides of the

00:47:47.900 aisle and both side in both chambers about the work that they were doing that was connected

00:47:52.720 to these Wuhan labs, primarily the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:47:56.180 And what Fauci, when he got into that that tiff with Rand Paul that everyone talks about,

00:48:00.940 he said, well, we didn't fund gain of function research.

00:48:03.540 And OK, and that was a heavily lawyered statement.

00:48:07.000 OK, and what he's saying is basically that whatever we were doing with those Wuhan labs,

00:48:11.180 we didn't define as gain of function research.

00:48:13.380 And what Rand Paul was saying is like, no, when you increase the function of a virus, that's

00:48:17.960 gain of function, whether you call it or not.

00:48:20.660 And the reason that Fauci and Collins are playing that game is because they set up an oversight

00:48:25.140 mechanism for gain of function research, and then they subverted it by defining everything

00:48:29.320 as not gain of function research.

00:48:31.240 In other words, they didn't use their own oversight mechanism, which sort of gets you

00:48:35.240 back to the point, which I don't understand that.

00:48:37.420 I don't understand that.

00:48:38.560 When Obama paused the gain of function research, the way that Fauci and Collins got it turned

00:48:42.380 back on was they established a board to oversee gain of function research.

00:48:46.100 And they said they told the world, if we have dangerous gain of function research, we're

00:48:50.160 going to run it through this board.

00:48:51.960 OK, but they didn't run any of the Wuhan stuff through that board because they didn't call

00:48:56.220 it gain of function research.

00:48:57.160 They're like, this is not gain of function research.

00:48:58.700 And what Rand Paul and a lot of other scientists say is like, no, you should have run it through

00:49:02.220 that board.

00:49:02.760 That's the whole point of the board.

00:49:04.360 That's why you set up that board is for this.

00:49:06.820 And you didn't do it because you didn't want to do it.

00:49:09.940 But we were funded.

00:49:10.840 We were funding other entities, right?

00:49:13.160 Like Daszak's lab that were funding gain of function research.

00:49:17.220 Yeah.

00:49:17.420 Well, Daszak doesn't have a lab.

00:49:18.860 He's not actually a virologist.

00:49:20.260 He's a zoologist.

00:49:21.920 You know, so that's one thing.

00:49:23.560 By the way, Fauci's not a virologist either.

00:49:25.280 He's an immunologist.

00:49:26.220 The only virologist at the top of the U.S. government during the outbreak was Robert

00:49:29.520 Redfield.

00:49:30.140 He said it came from the lab and then he got canceled.

00:49:32.700 OK, now now what what happened with the people focus on the NIH and what Fauci and

00:49:38.600 Collins will say, well, that was just one contract and that was a tiny bit of money.

00:49:42.560 And that wasn't the research that caused the pandemic.

00:49:45.320 But what I'm saying is that it's not just that one contract.

00:49:48.320 It was many, many parts of the U.S. government, including USAID, the Defense Department, the

00:49:53.120 intelligence community funneling money into this network of Chinese labs under the theory

00:49:58.100 that we were building them up to be really good partners.

00:50:01.460 OK, so you're not going to be able to trace it to one Fauci contract.

00:50:04.980 I think that's a standard that's not going to be met.

00:50:07.460 You know, in other words, money has money just goes into these labs and they do what

00:50:11.800 they want with it.

00:50:12.500 And they didn't tell us what they were doing with it.

00:50:14.240 And then they built another side of the lab, the side that we didn't know about.

00:50:16.840 So it's not that Fauci funded the research that caused the pandemic, it's that he failed,

00:50:21.620 he neglected to oversee this project to the extent that the Chinese government totally

00:50:28.160 did something that they didn't tell us about.

00:50:30.080 OK, and that's the problem, is that he trusted the Chinese scientists and he trusted the

00:50:34.740 Chinese.

00:50:35.160 Even today, if you listen to Fauci, you'll say, I know these and I know these scientists

00:50:38.940 so well.

00:50:39.480 They're such nice people.

00:50:40.700 They're just trying to do good science.

00:50:42.380 Right.

00:50:43.000 But he's not acknowledging the elephant in the room, which is the Chinese Communist Party, 0.98

00:50:46.440 which will kill the scientists if they say the wrong thing or put them in a gulag or 0.98

00:50:50.480 worse.

00:50:51.520 OK, wait, can you just talk a little bit more about that?

00:50:54.320 The other side of the labs?

00:50:55.520 I never really pictured it like that.

00:50:57.220 I just pictured it as the lab where the bat lady was doing the things. 1.00

00:51:01.260 Right.

00:51:01.420 So this is like really important because this is a lot of people, you know, come not you,

00:51:05.860 but a lot of people out there who are just coming to this issue for the first time don't

00:51:09.360 know this like horrible, tragic history of how the story got all messed up.

00:51:13.820 Right.

00:51:14.040 Not everyone was following it as closely as you and I.

00:51:16.700 Right.

00:51:16.900 Because, you know, most people were like assumed that, you know, the U.S. government was on

00:51:20.720 top of this and they weren't.

00:51:22.100 OK.

00:51:22.700 And basically what happened was the Trump administration put out a statement saying

00:51:26.660 that there was this other side of the lab, sick researchers.

00:51:29.980 They were doing military work with coronaviruses undisclosed stuff.

00:51:34.340 Fauci didn't know about stuff.

00:51:35.700 Robert Redfield didn't know about stuff.

00:51:37.360 Peter Daszak didn't know about.

00:51:38.460 And when Pompeo put out the statement, everyone was like, oh, that's a Trumpian conspiracy.

00:51:42.960 But then the Biden administration confirmed the facts of the statement.

00:51:46.540 Right.

00:51:46.680 In other words, if you think this is a conspiracy theory, then you have to look at the fact

00:51:52.100 that that conspiracy would now have to involve Tony Blinken and Joe Biden, which doesn't

00:51:57.220 mean, in other words, that that's no longer a plausible thing to say.

00:52:01.940 And yeah, Pompeo, Blinken, Trump and Biden are all in on it.

00:52:05.000 Right.

00:52:05.280 How could that be?

00:52:06.000 Right.

00:52:06.180 It doesn't make any sense.

00:52:07.080 OK, so it can't be a conspiracy theory because there's no way that Blinken would enter a

00:52:10.600 conspiracy with Mike Pompeo.

00:52:12.340 But anyway, put that aside.

00:52:13.480 The point is that what both administrations have confirmed is that there was another side

00:52:17.540 of the lab working with the PLA.

00:52:19.040 And as soon as the outbreak hit, they fired the guy or disappeared, the guy who was in

00:52:23.600 charge of that lab, the whole WIV, not just the bad part.

00:52:27.040 And they put a PLA general in charge.

00:52:28.920 OK, and now all decisions are made by the party, by the military, by the the rulers, not by

00:52:35.380 the scientists.

00:52:36.340 That's why they closed down the science.

00:52:38.260 Weirdly, they're not that excited about providing us real access.

00:52:42.540 And so, I mean, I know that we're pushing for, you know, like we need to get over there and

00:52:46.340 we need to have full access.

00:52:47.780 Tom Cotton was saying this full access to health records, inventories of animal test subjects,

00:52:52.420 samples, viruses, the research conducted there.

00:52:55.120 And I mean, I have to say my my feeling is we're never going to get that.

00:52:58.940 Like the Chinese, they're never going to give that to us. 1.00

00:53:02.140 Right.

00:53:02.380 Are they?

00:53:02.920 Is there some way of forcing it?

00:53:04.700 So.

00:53:04.940 So first of all, we don't know if we don't try.

00:53:07.060 OK, and it's been 18 months and nobody tried.

00:53:09.240 So let's apply some pressure.

00:53:10.560 And here's the beauty of the sanctions.

00:53:12.120 You sanction all the labs.

00:53:13.280 Well, they why are we still giving those labs money?

00:53:15.600 They won't even let us in.

00:53:16.980 Hey, here's a bunch of money.

00:53:18.120 Can we come into the lab?

00:53:18.880 No.

00:53:19.520 OK, thank you.

00:53:20.620 Here's some more money. 0.99

00:53:21.640 You know, it makes us into schmucks. 0.99

00:53:23.300 OK, we're the schmucks in this story. 0.99

00:53:25.120 The United States of America for funding all these labs. 0.94

00:53:28.460 And then when the pandemic was, hey, can we look at your public virus database that you

00:53:32.300 mysteriously took offline a month before we knew the outbreak existed?

00:53:35.480 No.

00:53:35.920 OK, sorry.

00:53:37.240 You know, and then we're like, oh, I guess we can't figure it out.

00:53:39.180 Right.

00:53:39.460 So we don't know if we don't try.

00:53:41.120 And here's the best part.

00:53:42.420 If the sanctions on the lab, which are an appropriate and proportional response to the

00:53:45.720 lab's refusals to allow an investigation, if they don't allow the investigation, then

00:53:50.420 the sanctions have the effect of cutting off these labs.

00:53:53.280 And if we can't get basic investigations and labs that we need to get into, then good

00:53:58.060 riddance, I say.

00:53:59.080 You know what I mean?

00:54:00.100 But the truth is, you're right, Megan.

00:54:01.900 We're never we might never find a smoking gun.

00:54:03.900 What we might end up with is a preponderance of the evidence.

00:54:06.140 Again, think back to this murder trial.

00:54:07.760 You very rarely have like OJ on video with the knife holding up his ID card to the camera.

00:54:13.340 Right.

00:54:13.840 It's very unusual.

00:54:15.120 Usually you have a standard of a reasonable doubt.

00:54:17.680 Right.

00:54:17.900 Sometimes you have a standard of a preponderance of evidence.

00:54:20.580 That's what we're going to end up with here.

00:54:22.040 We're going to end up with a preponderance of evidence in one direction or the other.

00:54:25.920 And now let's say that it points to the lab.

00:54:28.060 Are we going to do nothing?

00:54:29.100 Are we going to keep shoveling American taxpayer monies into these labs?

00:54:32.420 Are we going to expand this work sixfold, which is the current plan?

00:54:35.720 One point two billion dollars for the Global Viral Project to have Peter Daszak dig up five

00:54:40.680 hundred thousand more deadly viruses, according to the website.

00:54:43.980 Five hundred thousand deadly viruses.

00:54:45.780 Is that a good idea?

00:54:47.020 And take them into crowded cities.

00:54:48.640 It's not like they're sitting in there and, you know, rural China.

00:54:51.740 Exactly.

00:54:52.400 And and so is that should we go ahead and fund that with our taxpayer money before we've

00:54:57.020 even tried to check it out before we even attempted to?

00:54:59.780 You know, it would be like if we had like 9-11 and then, you know, Al Qaeda was like, 0.91

00:55:04.440 oh, no, I'm sorry, I'm not going to tell you everything.

00:55:05.940 We're like, OK, forget it.

00:55:07.020 You know, let's just sit around and not have a 9-11 commission and not look into our own

00:55:11.760 failures.

00:55:12.320 In other words, we have a lot to fix on our side, no matter what.

00:55:15.200 Look at the intelligence community, Megan.

00:55:17.060 Right.

00:55:17.240 Just think about that.

00:55:18.640 Totally missed it.

00:55:19.840 Totally.

00:55:20.400 If it was the lab, we don't know.

00:55:22.060 We need to check it out.

00:55:23.000 But if this came from the lab, 86 billion dollars of IC stuff every year pointed at like

00:55:29.040 jihadis in Yemen and like Russian cyber hackers and nothing on this network of military labs

00:55:35.060 in China that's doing all the risky coronavirus research.

00:55:37.600 Nothing.

00:55:38.380 Basically nothing.

00:55:39.220 That's a scandal.

00:55:40.280 That's why you can't trust the IC investigation to get to the bottom of this either.

00:55:43.100 And the Biden administration may try to use this IC investigation, the new 90 day thing

00:55:48.220 as an alibi for letting dropping the whole thing.

00:55:51.560 But the part of this investigation has to be into our intelligence community.

00:55:55.620 And that can't be done by our intelligence.

00:55:57.460 They can't investigate themselves.

00:55:58.620 So someone else is going to have to do it.

00:55:59.840 Probably Congress.

00:56:01.300 Hmm.

00:56:01.480 Now, you say that you say we already know a lot and it points to a deadly combination

00:56:07.100 of Chinese negligence and malevolence. 1.00

00:56:09.160 Can you describe the malevolence?

00:56:10.980 You know, there's something about the Chinese Communist Party where they they do their they

00:56:17.000 exert a level of cruelty in their policy that's beyond what's necessary.

00:56:21.360 In other words, they take the amount of cruelty and horrendousness and that they would need

00:56:26.000 to maintain power and advance their interests.

00:56:28.320 And then they add more of it, you know, and that's like sort of like the nature of these

00:56:33.300 totalitarian dictatorships is that they they end up inevitably being worse than even they

00:56:39.420 have to be.

00:56:39.980 Right.

00:56:40.520 And the coronavirus pandemic throughout the pandemic has been a Chinese Communist Party 1.00

00:56:45.760 putting that virtue on full display.

00:56:47.780 And, you know, just think of the covid origin investigation when the Australians suggested

00:56:52.700 merely suggested that they would start their own investigation.

00:56:56.140 The Chinese government cut off their beef and wine industries, crushing their farmers in

00:57:01.200 the middle of a pandemic, crushing their economy further in the middle of a pandemic.

00:57:05.740 Real people suffered under that.

00:57:07.520 Right.

00:57:07.700 Not not to protect China's economic interests, to protect the party's political interests,

00:57:12.440 which tells you all you need to know about what we're dealing with.

00:57:15.080 We're dealing with a it's essentially a mafia or it's a protection racket.

00:57:19.880 Right.

00:57:20.080 It's like if the Gambinos ran the biggest country in the world, that's what they are. 1.00

00:57:23.040 That's what the CCP is.

00:57:24.720 You know, it's an extortion racket for the world.

00:57:26.980 OK, oh, nice country you got there.

00:57:29.080 It'd be a shame if something happened to it, you know, and there's no level.

00:57:33.720 They have no moral compunction and no level to which they won't stoop to advance their

00:57:38.700 goal, which is to protect the party, not even China, not even the Chinese people, the party.

00:57:42.440 And wrapping your mind around that is a very serious thing because it implicate it has

00:57:47.900 implications for what we do and how we treat them.

00:57:50.220 And it doesn't mean we should have a cold war.

00:57:52.240 It doesn't mean we should have a hot war.

00:57:53.980 It doesn't mean we should decouple.

00:57:55.520 It doesn't mean we have to, you know, decouple.

00:57:58.400 You know, that's what it's going to the Paltrow term.

00:58:01.740 No.

00:58:02.100 Well, that's a different kind of decoupling.

00:58:04.160 This would be a non-consensual decoupling.

00:58:07.100 I think hers was like more of a mutual.

00:58:09.500 Conscious.

00:58:09.760 Yeah, a conscious.

00:58:10.620 Yeah, this would be an unconscious.

00:58:15.700 But so but, you know, suffice to say that we can't get a divorce.

00:58:22.720 We're stuck together.

00:58:23.240 We're going to be living in this world together.

00:58:25.060 OK, us and China.

00:58:26.760 So that just means we have to realize what we're dealing with and treat these guys like the 0.99

00:58:30.520 mafia organization that they are.

00:58:33.040 Right.

00:58:33.160 Exactly.

00:58:33.620 With wide eyes, open, open eyes on what we're dealing with.

00:58:36.400 So what's your takeaway?

00:58:37.180 Because I haven't talked to you since the Fauci emails came out.

00:58:39.800 Yeah.

00:58:40.000 And the reporting, you know, that just it's starting to come out now about how inside the

00:58:43.980 State Department they were very, very worried about gain of function research.

00:58:46.600 And we shouldn't be kicking that.

00:58:49.060 We shouldn't be looking underneath those those tarps because we weren't going to like what we found.

00:58:54.840 What's your take on Fauci and what we've learned over the past couple of months about him?

00:58:59.920 Right.

00:59:00.440 So first question on the State Department.

00:59:01.860 Listen, there were a lot of different covid origin investigations going on during the

00:59:05.060 Trump administration.

00:59:06.140 They weren't always perfectly lashed up with each other.

00:59:09.080 You know, the left hand didn't always know what the right hand was doing.

00:59:11.920 But there was a struggle between the political people who wanted to look into really uncomfortable

00:59:17.020 questions like here's a question.

00:59:19.000 If you're building a bunch of virus labs with the PLA military, well, isn't that necessarily 0.86

00:59:24.800 a bioweapons research program, which is not a shocking thing to say if you know anything

00:59:28.680 about it, because we have a bioweapons research program.

00:59:31.340 They have a bioweapons research program.

00:59:33.000 The point is that, you know, this this is something that was going on in Wuhan near the

00:59:36.880 outbreak.

00:59:37.200 Is that connected to this?

00:59:38.640 Well, that's a really uncomfortable question.

00:59:40.300 Right.

00:59:40.740 And so people who are raising that inside Pompeo State Department, the bureaucrats are like,

00:59:44.340 don't don't ask us that.

00:59:45.880 We don't want to know the answer to that.

00:59:47.200 You know, and sure enough, we don't know the answer.

00:59:49.460 You know, and my point is, like, I just want to know the answer.

00:59:51.540 You know, when it comes to Fauci, you know, what the emails show is just that, you know,

00:59:57.340 what him and a group of people, again, it wasn't just him, because he's sort of like

01:00:01.420 the head of a of a system.

01:00:03.820 And the system is actually his his missionaries, his his his, you know, disciples are all over

01:00:10.220 the world and they're the ones and they built their careers on this idea of scooping up viruses

01:00:15.820 and playing around with them and saying what's what.

01:00:17.860 That's their livelihood.

01:00:19.460 That's their funding.

01:00:20.840 That's their legacy.

01:00:22.440 OK, and it's all called into question.

01:00:24.700 If the lab leak theory is true, again, we don't know.

01:00:27.080 We should just check it out.

01:00:28.460 Why won't why don't tell me not to check it out.

01:00:30.580 I don't know.

01:00:31.200 You don't know.

01:00:32.140 But if it turns out to be true, that whole system is going to have to totally change.

01:00:36.440 OK, and their careers and legacies go from being the people who predicted pandemics to

01:00:40.900 the people who caused the pandemic, which is definitely not a good look.

01:00:44.060 You know, that's huge.

01:00:45.520 That's it's huge.

01:00:46.780 It's huge.

01:00:47.280 And so this is my way of saying that about Anthony Fauci that I'm not accusing him of

01:00:52.220 doing anything illegal or necessarily against the rules.

01:00:56.400 What I'm saying is that there's a good reason that he's been throwing cold water on the lab

01:01:00.260 leak theory for a year with occasional, you know, bits of like, oh, sure, we should want

01:01:05.100 to check it out.

01:01:05.640 That's going to be hard.

01:01:06.300 I guess we can't do it.

01:01:07.100 Oh, well, you know what I mean?

01:01:08.180 He's playing a game with us where he's and that game is mostly implemented by his minions.

01:01:13.920 OK, and that's Dazic.

01:01:15.320 And this guy named Kristen Anderson, who deleted his Twitter account.

01:01:19.120 Do you see this one?

01:01:20.400 He was in there.

01:01:21.640 He was in the emails.

01:01:22.760 This guy, Kristen Anderson, who's like, I don't get me wrong.

01:01:25.220 I've been getting harassed by these guys for a year.

01:01:27.060 Like, how dare you talk about the lab leak theory?

01:01:29.360 And this guy was at the was one of them.

01:01:31.220 Right.

01:01:31.740 And he's in the emails telling Fauci in January, hey, this might be an engineered manmade

01:01:37.460 manipulated virus.

01:01:39.320 And then he he's on the letter a couple of weeks later saying that's a conspiracy theory.

01:01:44.200 That's crazy.

01:01:45.160 So and so then, of course, he gets called out on Twitter and he deletes a bunch of tweets. 0.98

01:01:50.000 And then he says, oh, it auto deleted these tweets, which like that's bullshit. 0.93

01:01:54.360 You know what I mean? 0.86

01:01:55.340 Like and then no one believes that.

01:01:57.160 Then he takes his whole Twitter offline.

01:01:58.820 And this is this is the kind of shenanigans that are going on.

01:02:02.820 And so it's not like Fauci did everything.

01:02:04.760 He was just sort of like, you know, the head of a system.

01:02:07.380 And a lot of these other guys were telling everyone, including reporters, by the way,

01:02:11.360 but also including intelligence analysts.

01:02:12.900 Like, think about how crazy this is.

01:02:15.040 I mean, the reporters who got snookered, who got misled by Daszak and these guys, when

01:02:21.440 the IC guys have to go and figure out what's going on with the virus, they go to these same

01:02:25.120 scientists.

01:02:25.660 You know, so they're influencing bad intelligence analysis and bad reporters.

01:02:30.640 But where was the natural skepticism?

01:02:32.800 Where was the IC's, intelligence community's natural skepticism?

01:02:36.440 They're known for their skeptics.

01:02:37.880 They're conspiracy theorists.

01:02:39.160 You know, that's what that.

01:02:39.840 Right.

01:02:40.180 And reporters, too.

01:02:41.400 No, no.

01:02:42.160 But I mean, that's how they get dismissed, you know, because they see a conspiracy around

01:02:44.860 every corner.

01:02:45.480 Why not here when we needed it?

01:02:47.260 What about reporters?

01:02:48.400 You know, we check everything out.

01:02:49.720 Right.

01:02:49.880 Your mother loves you.

01:02:50.620 Well, let me check it out.

01:02:51.540 Where was it?

01:02:53.120 Where was that natural skepticism for Daszak and the others who were like, no, no, no. 0.99

01:02:57.580 Because now we see behind the scenes, they were like, oh, shit, it definitely could have 0.99

01:03:02.180 come from a lab. 1.00

01:03:04.140 Exactly.

01:03:04.620 Exactly.

01:03:05.040 And if we were if we were doing an honest look at what happened last year, we would say,

01:03:08.800 OK, well, listen, you know, as it turns out, media organizations are stabbed with human

01:03:14.220 beings and they're flawed and they make mistakes.

01:03:15.800 And let's take a look at that and fix it.

01:03:17.440 So it's deferential to scientific authorities.

01:03:19.900 Yes.

01:03:20.180 And they had some Trump anti-Trump bias that we have to acknowledge in that.

01:03:23.880 And by the way, the intelligence community was at war with the Trump administration, too.

01:03:27.720 They didn't want the Trump people using their analysis to get reelected, or at least some

01:03:31.640 of them.

01:03:31.920 And the intelligence community is not a monolith.

01:03:33.960 But, you know, again, because you know what?

01:03:35.540 The intelligence community has a lot of human beings.

01:03:37.400 They're flawed.

01:03:38.020 They make mistakes.

01:03:39.440 This is a problem.

01:03:41.140 Got to get got to get over the human being thing.

01:03:43.460 Yeah.

01:03:43.720 I mean, but we're professionals, right?

01:03:44.920 Professional journalists know that we're supposed to acknowledge our biases and account for

01:03:48.900 them.

01:03:49.180 Right.

01:03:49.300 But it's hard.

01:03:49.940 Right.

01:03:50.160 We don't always do it perfectly.

01:03:51.620 Right.

01:03:52.080 And when you combine that with what the group think and the fog of war and the anti-Trump

01:03:56.780 bias and the scientists lying, you could almost see how this got all screwed up.

01:04:01.280 And you could almost forgive all these people for going down the wrong narrative, which is

01:04:05.880 that the lab leak theory is crazy.

01:04:07.060 We shouldn't talk about it.

01:04:08.280 But I can't forgive them because they won't admit.

01:04:10.140 In other words, even now they're defending those positions.

01:04:12.400 Even now they're saying, no, no, no, no.

01:04:15.140 Pompeo was incredible.

01:04:16.560 Therefore, I was right to be wrong.

01:04:18.220 To which I said, no, no, no.

01:04:19.360 You didn't have to take Pompeo's word for you.

01:04:20.920 All you had to do is more reporting.

01:04:22.500 Right.

01:04:22.840 And the only reason that I got it more right than others is because I happened to be writing

01:04:25.860 a book about this called Chaos Under Heaven.

01:04:28.460 And so I was steeped in the reporting.

01:04:30.340 So I had a lot more reporting.

01:04:31.560 That's why I could sort of see this happening in real time.

01:04:35.120 But that's neither here nor there.

01:04:36.980 To all of you scientists and journalists and intelligence community analysts listening

01:04:41.520 right now, I don't care.

01:04:42.900 I forgive you.

01:04:43.900 OK, it doesn't matter.

01:04:45.880 I don't care what you tweeted.

01:04:47.540 I don't care.

01:04:48.120 It makes no difference because we all have the same mission, which is to not have another

01:04:53.440 pandemic.

01:04:54.480 So from here on out, let's call a truce and say, hey, let's investigate these labs, even

01:04:59.480 if it's difficult, even if the Chinese Communist Party doesn't like it, even if we don't find

01:05:03.920 a smoking gun.

01:05:05.040 Let's just do that.

01:05:05.900 If we can do that, then maybe we can rediscover our shared American patriotism and our shared

01:05:12.620 essential humanity and then protect our public health so we don't have to do this every year.

01:05:17.500 Otherwise, we're going to have to go out and buy some masks.

01:05:19.840 You mentioned the 9-11 Commission, right?

01:05:21.400 It's like so we we rightfully established this commission to look into how this happened

01:05:25.040 and where we failed and how we could prevent it from happening again.

01:05:27.400 And that was a great thing to do.

01:05:28.920 Over three thousand people died.

01:05:31.240 Three point seven million people are dead now.

01:05:33.120 Almost six hundred thousand Americans are dead.

01:05:35.340 You know, the numbers are huge.

01:05:37.360 They they dwarf 9-11, not in any way to diminish that the horrificness of that attack, but they

01:05:43.660 dwarf it and six hundred thousand Americans dead.

01:05:45.960 Now, this is a this was a catastrophic failure.

01:05:49.960 If this was a lab leak, it was a catastrophic one on a level we've never seen before.

01:05:55.060 And if this really was something that was covered up intentionally or totally missed by

01:05:59.620 the media and by people like Fauci and so on, then it's the Chernobyl of public health.

01:06:04.280 We will never look at public health or virology or any of these lab, these labs that are across

01:06:08.960 the world the same way.

01:06:10.820 Again, the procedures will have to change everywhere.

01:06:13.780 Exactly.

01:06:14.120 Millions of people have died.

01:06:15.740 Millions.

01:06:16.560 So this isn't just Fauci playing cute with Rand Paul.

01:06:20.580 It's far more serious than that.

01:06:22.740 And finally, now the media is starting to get starting to act like they understand those

01:06:28.080 are the stakes.

01:06:28.600 But those are the stakes.

01:06:31.260 Exactly.

01:06:31.740 And thank you for putting it so clearly.

01:06:34.280 Because I think a lot what one of the things I think we're seeing right now, actually,

01:06:38.660 is the repoliticization of this issue.

01:06:41.240 In other words, what I think this is my prediction, what you're going to see is like we had like

01:06:44.500 two weeks of like semi and I'm using that word sort of like, you know, liberally semi

01:06:49.860 constructive conversation about this, like, hey, everybody, we should check into these labs.

01:06:54.820 And already you could see all of the like Trump will come out and be like, I told you so.

01:06:59.500 And then the New York Times is like, no, it was all Trump's fault after all.

01:07:02.820 You know what I mean?

01:07:03.600 And I see it happening.

01:07:04.960 Right.

01:07:05.260 And I'm like, oh, my God, no, we're not going to do this again.

01:07:07.000 Are we?

01:07:07.600 We're not going to divide, divide up into lab league teams and non lab league teams.

01:07:12.140 Are we?

01:07:12.400 Because are we going to let you know what I mean?

01:07:13.800 Because that would mean another year, another year of going down like who was to blame

01:07:18.500 for what?

01:07:18.940 That's why I say, like, it's not really it's not about Trump.

01:07:21.640 It doesn't matter.

01:07:22.320 It doesn't matter if you thought Trump was credible or a good president because the virus doesn't

01:07:26.200 know who Trump is.

01:07:27.220 OK, the virus is it's not a political question.

01:07:29.860 The virus is not a Republican.

01:07:31.600 It's not a Democrat. 0.98

01:07:32.620 It kills all of us. 0.87

01:07:34.400 OK, and it will keep killing all of us. 0.75

01:07:37.020 And the next pandemic will not discriminate between those people who were pro Trump and

01:07:40.820 anti Trump.

01:07:41.500 So it doesn't matter.

01:07:42.240 We need to investigate all the theories.

01:07:44.780 And my proposal is that Peter Dasik goes and looks in caves in Indonesia for the magical

01:07:49.220 palm civet or pangolin that he thinks exists.

01:07:51.820 You know what I mean?

01:07:52.800 Spend 10 years.

01:07:53.580 Don't call us.

01:07:54.320 We'll call you.

01:07:55.640 You know what I mean?

01:07:56.380 And meanwhile, somebody else has to look into these labs.

01:07:58.920 Not the best friends of the lab, not the WHO, because they tried for a year and they

01:08:02.880 screwed it up and they got nowhere.

01:08:04.400 Not the Chinese scientists looking into their own lab. 0.89

01:08:06.640 That's as some people have suggested.

01:08:08.940 So that's crazy.

01:08:10.660 Right.

01:08:11.020 Independent investigation.

01:08:12.080 And then we got to look into our own labs.

01:08:14.000 And that has to be done in public in front of the people.

01:08:17.460 And this is the other part of the Biden thing.

01:08:18.820 They're like, we're going to be as transparent as we can.

01:08:21.360 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:08:22.540 You have to be as transparent as you need to be.

01:08:25.740 It's not up to you.

01:08:26.960 We're going to have to have whatever it is on a commission, a select committee.

01:08:31.500 Can I tell you something crazy?

01:08:32.660 There's a coronavirus select committee in the House right now.

01:08:36.900 They're having hearings.

01:08:38.360 And the origin of the coronavirus is not part of their investigation.

01:08:42.820 Oh, stop.

01:08:43.540 They're having hearings on, you know, what happened to this shipment of vaccines and, you know, how did this contract go out in DHS about was the mass contract properly competed through the process?

01:08:59.940 That's what they're having hearings about.

01:09:02.760 And and every once in a while in one of these hearings, as I watch all of them, somebody always a Republican, somebody will be like, hey, since we have a select committee, should we look into the origin?

01:09:11.260 Anybody want to talk about that?

01:09:12.900 The gentleman's time has expired.

01:09:14.500 You know what I mean?

01:09:15.060 It's that's what we're.

01:09:15.900 So as much progress as we've made, we're nowhere.

01:09:19.500 OK, can you repeat the fact that you just said a minute ago about the amount we're about to devote more money to this type of coronavirus bat research and other gain of function like it's going up?

01:09:31.860 Sixfold, sixfold.

01:09:33.700 Two hundred million dollars was spent in the USAID PREDICT program.

01:09:37.660 The primary investigator in China, which is like a big part of it, was Dr.

01:09:42.180 Shui Zhongli, the Wuhan Institute of Virology bat woman.

01:09:45.240 She was funded by the U.S. government, not by Peter Dasek and EcoHealth Alliance only, but by the U.S.

01:09:50.300 Agency for International Development.

01:09:52.220 Right.

01:09:52.720 To go dig up bats and viruses from all over the wild and play with them.

01:09:56.600 Now, the current plan is for a global global viral project for one point two billion dollars.

01:10:03.140 And if you just go to the Web site right now, you'll see it says our plan is to get five hundred thousand new viruses that are dangerous to humans and take them back to labs all over the world and see what's what.

01:10:12.160 Does that sound like a good idea before we know?

01:10:15.240 Before we have figured this up or even tried to figure it out?

01:10:18.560 Well, and that's the thing.

01:10:19.540 So it's like, let's say we determine somehow, yes, lab leak.

01:10:22.580 I mean, then, of course, that begs the question, like, OK, how?

01:10:25.260 What?

01:10:25.580 How did it walk out of there?

01:10:26.740 What what procedures need to be in place to protect that from ever happening again before you do go back down to the bat caves? 1.00

01:10:32.400 Nobody should be touching the bats until we have absolute security that we know.

01:10:36.100 So I was saying this to my husband, Doug, you know, like the IBM clean rooms are more secure than this.

01:10:40.520 When they make the little computer chips, the people are better protected and they haven't killed three point seven million people.

01:10:47.480 You remember when NBC went to the they're like, we got into the lab.

01:10:50.220 Right. And then they send the NBC cameras into the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

01:10:53.720 And they put they put the camera up to the window of the lab.

01:10:57.340 Right. As if that's like, you know what I mean?

01:10:59.140 Like inside the lab are the people with like the the NASA spacesuits on.

01:11:03.120 They're like, oh, it looks good to us.

01:11:04.440 You know? Yeah.

01:11:05.340 And what I found most shocking about that was that they were looking at the wrong lab.

01:11:09.780 OK, they were they had their they actually had their cameras pointed at a completely different lab.

01:11:14.260 They might as well have been across the street.

01:11:15.580 OK. And the majority of the bat research lab that was done at the Wuhan Institute was not at the BSL for super, super, super, super duper lab.

01:11:24.440 It was at the BSL three, which is like, you know, like a college or at the BSL two, which is like your dentist.

01:11:29.980 OK. And so the NBC people go in and they're like, oh, look, looks legit.

01:11:35.560 I don't see any coronavirus leak notes on the table.

01:11:39.260 You know, I don't you know, I guess I guess it's fine.

01:11:42.480 They were at the wrong lab.

01:11:43.540 OK, that's the that's the level of absurdity that's going on in our discourse about this.

01:11:48.720 As if they're going to stumble upon flow chart on how we did it.

01:11:51.900 Right, right, right. Exactly.

01:11:53.700 And so all I'm saying is that, you know, we have to be realistic.

01:11:58.340 We may not find a smoking gun, but we have to take steps anyway, because if even if we don't know, but it's a possibility, that means the risk is there and we need to mitigate that risk.

01:12:07.840 And no one can deny that now.

01:12:09.040 And we don't mitigate that risk by expanding that research sixfold without any safeguards, without any checks whatsoever, which is which is the current plan, which is exactly what Daszak wants to do, because he would make a ton of money doing that.

01:12:21.440 No, Daszak.

01:12:22.500 I don't want to hear from Daszak anymore. 1.00

01:12:25.260 That's that's the guy who was on the WHO commission, who it's completely exonerated the Chinese. 0.94

01:12:30.180 And and for a good reason.

01:12:31.160 Who says it's a conspiracy theory?

01:12:32.720 Who still says the lab leak is a conspiracy theory?

01:12:34.600 I want our audience to know your book is called Chaos Under Heaven.

01:12:38.440 It's well worth your time.

01:12:40.140 This one actually will educate you on how we got here and of all the brokers out there pushing information on coronavirus and this lab and so on.

01:12:48.540 You're the one I trust.

01:12:49.960 So, Josh Rogan, thank you for your expertise.

01:12:52.420 I have a feeling you'll be back.

01:12:55.240 Thank you for following the story.

01:12:56.240 Up next, David Marcus of The New York Post, of The Federalist and author of the new book, Charade, The COVID Lies That Crushed a Nation, will join us on the myths that got us into this mess and prevented us from accepting reality as it unfolded over the past 12 to 18 months.

01:13:14.800 That's next.

01:13:20.800 Dave, how are you?

01:13:22.000 Doing well, Megan.

01:13:22.880 Thanks for having me on.

01:13:23.980 My pleasure.

01:13:24.540 I love you on Twitter because I feel like you, you're my spirit animal in many ways.

01:13:29.040 You say so many things that I haven't found the words to say.

01:13:32.080 And, you know, one of the things that's upsetting me now is that, yes, I'm pro-vaccine.

01:13:36.320 I am not anti-vaccine.

01:13:37.380 I got the vaccine.

01:13:38.380 I'm a New Yorker like you.

01:13:39.540 New York got hit hard.

01:13:40.440 But I am not giving my vaccine to my little kids, the vaccine.

01:13:45.000 That is where I personally draw the line.

01:13:47.160 It's just not an emergency for them.

01:13:48.620 It hasn't been tested enough on them.

01:13:50.200 And the news now is that, yay, this is how it's being celebrated.

01:13:53.220 Yay, Moderna is already testing varying doses of its vaccine in children ages six months through 11 and that they are expecting that these vaccines are going to be, quote, available for children as young as six months old come the fall.

01:14:08.020 Which, you know, as well as I do, will translate into your kid doesn't get to do anything unless you put it in him.

01:14:14.120 And it's it's needless.

01:14:15.620 You know, I saw what confused me about the situation with the vaccine was I interviewed Dr.

01:14:21.300 Monsef Slaoui, who was the head of Operation Warp Speed a year ago, but, you know, almost back in July.

01:14:26.920 And I very specifically asked him, right, because I come from a theater background, so I asked him, you know, once people have these vaccines, what about Broadway?

01:14:37.720 Can we go to a packed Broadway show without masks?

01:14:40.820 I mean, he didn't skip a beat.

01:14:42.820 He said, yes, of course.

01:14:44.440 And then all of a sudden people are getting vaccinated and we're hearing, well, keep your mask on.

01:14:50.620 We're still not sure if you can go back to places.

01:14:52.520 And it was really out of nowhere.

01:14:55.540 And it was all of this has just been been meant to keep people afraid so that they'll do what they're told.

01:15:02.660 And there are very few things that are as anti-American as that.

01:15:06.620 Yes.

01:15:06.980 So you're in your new book, which is called Charade.

01:15:11.100 Great title.

01:15:12.300 The COVID lies that crushed a nation.

01:15:14.400 Great subtitle.

01:15:15.980 You say part of like there was this big we're all in it together.

01:15:20.100 We're in it together.

01:15:20.920 And you write part of us being in it together, it turned out, was for us to accept without question what the leading or chosen scientists were telling us.

01:15:31.440 Dr. Fauci and to a lesser extent, Dr. Birx were becoming folk heroes, never to be doubted.

01:15:38.160 How wrong that was.

01:15:40.900 That was a disaster.

01:15:41.680 And I hold myself somewhat accountable because I'll be honest, in the first weeks of the lockdowns, I had some doubts.

01:15:54.360 And I was talking to other journalists, sort of back channeling with other journalists who also had some doubts.

01:15:59.540 And I'll only speak for myself, but I was worried.

01:16:03.760 I was worried that if I didn't appear to be concerned enough about the virus itself, that I could get people hurt through my work.

01:16:14.240 And in retrospect, that was a huge mistake.

01:16:16.540 My job as a columnist was to tell what I believed the truth to be.

01:16:20.800 And at least for a few weeks, I didn't do that.

01:16:24.040 And the whole country didn't do that.

01:16:26.620 And, yeah, I mean, you remember it.

01:16:28.420 You remember if you questioned it at all, you were killing grandma. 0.99

01:16:32.060 And you were some horrible person. 0.97

01:16:34.660 And, you know, I had friends. 0.99

01:16:36.600 You know, it's easier for me.

01:16:37.640 My friend, Bethany Mandel, you know, was another journalist like myself.

01:16:44.080 She's wonderful.

01:16:45.160 She's a former colleague of mine at the Federalist.

01:16:47.420 And, you know, it's so much worse for women, as you know well, you know, on Twitter and on all these places, you know, women just get so sort of brutally attacked.

01:16:59.440 And I watched this happen to all these people who really were just asking basic questions like, when can my kid go back to school?

01:17:07.280 Like, you have to be allowed to ask that without being accused of being a monster.

01:17:11.720 So, yeah, that was a huge mistake, handing the keys to the government over to experts.

01:17:19.480 There's a quote that I have in the book from George William Russell, the Irish writer from the turn of the 19th into the 20th century.

01:17:28.840 And he said, experts should be on tap, not on top.

01:17:33.700 And that's what we didn't do.

01:17:36.260 Yes, of course we needed the experts to give us information.

01:17:39.580 But the experts didn't know anything about unemployment or the restaurant industry or education or suicide rates.

01:17:45.880 And we just put all of that to one side as if it wasn't happening and had this myopic focus on stop the spread, stop the spread.

01:17:53.200 And we destroyed a lot of lives.

01:17:54.780 Well, and I think you pointed out that one of one of the worst parts of covid is that it happened in an election year when it was just guaranteed to be manipulated, lied about, exaggerated, downplayed.

01:18:10.100 It was like, who do I trust type moment that really mattered.

01:18:14.040 The interest on both sides became so perverse because obviously, I mean, you know, I'm old enough to remember a time when this really would have become a we're all in this together moment.

01:18:26.340 When when all sides would have come together and said, we need to tackle this this problem.

01:18:31.760 People use the example of 9-11.

01:18:33.860 You know, there's others that clearly didn't happen.

01:18:38.280 And, you know, I like to use the example of Biden's tweet after Trump closed the border with China.

01:18:45.040 And what people pay attention to in that tweet was that Biden called Trump xenophobic.

01:18:51.800 He didn't exactly call the policy xenophobic.

01:18:54.540 He was very careful and left himself some wiggle room.

01:18:57.540 But the other thing that he said in that tweet that got less attention was he accused Donald Trump of fear mongering.

01:19:03.880 Now, that's very interesting, because at the same time, Donald Trump is being accused of downplaying the virus.

01:19:10.620 So how could he have been downplaying the virus and fear mongering at the same time?

01:19:15.620 And really, the answer to that question is that what any responsible politician would try to do.

01:19:20.900 And I don't think anybody did this very successfully.

01:19:23.680 We say yet.

01:19:24.460 Say, be honest to the American people.

01:19:26.580 Yes, this is dangerous.

01:19:28.440 You know, we're taking a lot of precautions.

01:19:30.960 But don't freak out.

01:19:32.680 Right. Let's be adults about this.

01:19:34.300 And and we weren't adults and we failed our children.

01:19:37.840 Yeah, it was shutting down.

01:19:40.580 Like the Chinese travel ban was the best thing Trump did. 1.00

01:19:43.020 I mean, in retrospect, this thing for which he took so much shit was like that was actually really important. 0.99

01:19:48.920 It was. 0.96

01:19:49.720 But I actually think that he focused too much on that because, you know, the first every chapter in my book kind of breaks down a myth.

01:19:56.460 Right. We're all in this together was one of them that the idea that saying Chinese viruses was racist was another one.

01:20:02.420 The very first myth that I tackle is the idea that like the month of January was wasted, that the Trump administration wasn't doing anything.

01:20:10.460 In April of last year, I obtained from Health and Human Services a document.

01:20:16.340 The whole thing's in my book.

01:20:17.440 It's 12 pages long in the book.

01:20:19.420 And it's just day by day in the month of January what HHS and CDC and all these people were doing.

01:20:25.720 We were starting work on a vaccine before China had reported one death.

01:20:29.540 Now, the Trump administration did a terrible job communicating this.

01:20:35.320 It was a really interesting quote from Trump in September.

01:20:38.920 I believe it was September what he was asked to grade himself on the handling of the virus.

01:20:44.420 And I think it's no surprise on the handling.

01:20:46.900 He gave himself an A.

01:20:48.920 But then he said something interesting.

01:20:50.480 He said, on public relations, I give myself a D plus.

01:20:53.800 Now, he put a caveat.

01:20:55.320 He said, you know, and that's because we have fake news.

01:20:57.500 But even with the caveat, for Donald Trump to give himself a D plus in anything kind of shows you, right, that he knows there was something wrong here.

01:21:09.140 And, yeah, we didn't get that story.

01:21:13.000 And so instead of Joe Biden and the Democrats saying, hey, look, you know, we're making some, you know, some progress.

01:21:19.340 We're working on this.

01:21:20.380 It turned into this complete lie that nothing had been done.

01:21:24.340 And, oh, we were so unprepared.

01:21:26.160 The New York Times ran a piece in February, a glowing piece about how well prepared we were for a pandemic.

01:21:32.460 And the reason I wrote the book is because all this stuff just got memory hole as if it never happened.

01:21:37.700 And remember when Governor Kemp was committing human sacrifice in Georgia by opening the state?

01:21:42.840 Oh, that's right.

01:21:43.420 That's right.

01:21:43.920 Although, you know, as you point out in the book as well, you were allowed to go out and vote in the Super Tuesday primaries, according to the Democrats.

01:21:50.340 That was fine.

01:21:50.880 Go and vote in person because we need those votes.

01:21:52.780 And of course, you were definitely allowed to protest BLM and mourn RBG and celebrate Biden's.

01:21:58.160 Those are all fine. 0.95

01:21:58.820 I mean, that that's just an easy target because their hypocrisy is so clear.

01:22:03.440 But I love the chapter on Cuomo because it's not just about the state of New York where we both live.

01:22:10.120 He became a national figure.

01:22:11.940 I mean, people were talking about making him the Democratic nominee, even though he didn't have his his hat in the ring for that contest.

01:22:19.220 I don't think after Fauci, no one was lionized more than Andrew Cuomo.

01:22:25.740 And yes, tone.

01:22:27.720 It was good.

01:22:28.780 His personality seemed matter of fact.

01:22:31.080 He seemed like he was sharing us, you know, with us real information, good or bad.

01:22:35.240 In the early days, it was like, OK, a truth teller.

01:22:37.960 That was the impression.

01:22:38.900 Like our governor.

01:22:39.820 He's going to get us through it.

01:22:41.220 And man, talk about a fall from grace.

01:22:43.380 I mean, remarkable, right?

01:22:46.060 And there was a point come last fall, especially after New York Attorney General Letitia James, who's a very progressive Democrat, began exposing some of this nursing home stuff where the corporate media had no choice but to acknowledge that they had gotten this wrong.

01:23:03.220 But there were people, you know, I interviewed Janice Dean for the book and people like her were pointing this out months and months earlier.

01:23:11.560 I mean, people who were paying attention in New York knew that this lionization was ill placed and not just Cuomo, but Newsom and Whitmer.

01:23:21.000 Right.

01:23:21.160 I mean, Whitmer was going to be the vice presidential. 0.94

01:23:23.240 All these hypocrites, by the way, all these people you mentioned are like who violated the policies they set for the rest of us.

01:23:29.060 Yeah. 0.91

01:23:29.240 But you want to know what's interesting?

01:23:30.360 Like the hypocrisy bothered me. 1.00

01:23:32.600 And, yeah, you know, politicians are hypocrites. 0.99

01:23:34.560 But there was something deeper than the hypocrisy when you saw Nancy Pelosi getting her blowout or when you saw Gavin Newsom at French Laundry. 0.99

01:23:42.700 What struck me more than the hypocrisy was a political lesson.

01:23:46.760 But when government tries to enforce laws or edicts that run so counter to human nature, at least American human nature, they're not even capable of abiding by them themselves.

01:24:02.260 And that should really tip us off that our society was not really able to do these things.

01:24:10.180 You know, one one story I tell in the book is a few years ago being in Japan and I was walking over to like the Imperial Palace or something.

01:24:18.860 And I got to a little two way street straight as a pencil.

01:24:22.780 I could see back and forth.

01:24:24.520 There were no cars coming.

01:24:26.100 But the sign said, don't walk.

01:24:27.660 Right.

01:24:27.860 And there were about 40 people on my side of the street, maybe 40 on the other.

01:24:31.380 And nobody moved.

01:24:32.720 And, you know, I'm in New York.

01:24:33.860 We have manifest destiny of the intersection.

01:24:35.780 Like there's no cars.

01:24:36.920 We go.

01:24:37.320 And I'm standing there like, are we really doing this?

01:24:39.740 Right.

01:24:39.920 And they were.

01:24:40.740 I mean, nobody moved until that.

01:24:43.160 And I was already smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk, which was illegal.

01:24:45.860 So I don't want to draw attention to myself.

01:24:47.980 But but I thought about that when we started having these lockdowns and everyone said, oh, why can't we be more like Taiwan or something?

01:24:55.260 Because we're not.

01:24:56.260 Right.

01:24:56.740 You know, we're not like that.

01:24:59.260 That's not what our society is.

01:25:00.840 So not only were the American people, for the most part, not able to follow these rules, but but Newsom couldn't and Cuomo couldn't and Whitmer couldn't.

01:25:08.100 It was absurd.

01:25:09.020 We're not.

01:25:09.460 But we're becoming.

01:25:10.540 That's the thing that's so disturbing is the how easily we submitted and continue to submit to these draconian measures by these politicians who think they're they're Jesus.

01:25:21.460 They're not mayors or governors.

01:25:24.000 And like the the the leaning into into fear is just I mean, just just this week, there was a there was a piece.

01:25:30.960 Was it The Washington Post?

01:25:32.960 Where they're saying there is no return to normal.

01:25:35.020 They were talking about for people who have lost loved ones to covid.

01:25:37.400 There's no return for normal.

01:25:38.700 And the CDC saying you don't have to wear masks outside was a punch in the stomach.

01:25:43.640 And and it was the reopening of a wound.

01:25:46.260 Talk about getting the story wrong.

01:25:48.200 We understand if you lost somebody, you're mourning.

01:25:50.140 Of course, we understand that.

01:25:51.460 That doesn't make taking the mask mandate down a punch in the stomach and the reopening.

01:25:57.980 What are they talking about?

01:25:59.480 No mask is normal.

01:26:01.680 That's the default.

01:26:03.280 Yeah.

01:26:03.600 But to see something happened with with the masks, right?

01:26:06.820 The masks were supposed to be a tool.

01:26:08.840 And what happened was they turned into a symbol.

01:26:11.440 And the reason that matters is that tools are very easily discarded.

01:26:14.980 Right.

01:26:15.100 If you're doing a project around your house and you finish the project, you put the hammer or the saw away without a second thought.

01:26:20.680 Right.

01:26:21.380 That's a tool.

01:26:22.000 You don't need it anymore.

01:26:23.120 The mask for too many people became a symbol.

01:26:26.980 And symbols are different.

01:26:28.800 Symbols become a part of your identity.

01:26:31.220 Symbols become a part of your self-worth.

01:26:33.140 And this is what started to happen with the mask.

01:26:35.840 And we know that because we have these people now who say, you know, I'd like to take it off, but I don't want people to think I'm a Trump supporter.

01:26:42.000 That's crazy. 1.00

01:26:43.580 And I don't think that I just think you're an idiot. 1.00

01:26:45.520 But, you know, I put that at the feet of Joe Biden and a lot of people, but specifically Joe Biden, who performed the mask. 0.99

01:26:55.680 I mean, what was it, a month and a half ago when he was on that Zoom call with with world leaders and he had a mask on?

01:27:01.720 Yeah.

01:27:02.120 But that's not that's not exhibiting good behavior.

01:27:05.720 That's exhibiting paranoid and cultish behavior.

01:27:09.900 And and it rubbed off and we're living with the consequences right now.

01:27:13.700 And then and then they wonder why people don't want to get the vaccines.

01:27:15.780 It's like, why would I?

01:27:16.740 It's experimental.

01:27:17.860 You rushed it through.

01:27:19.200 And my life doesn't change once I get it.

01:27:21.340 Forget it.

01:27:21.820 I'm not doing that.

01:27:22.880 They set all the wrong examples.

01:27:24.400 And don't forget that you had Andrew Cuomo saying, well, I might not let the vaccine into New York.

01:27:30.040 Right.

01:27:30.400 But before the election, of course.

01:27:32.260 Right.

01:27:32.480 Because nobody wanted to nobody wanted to acknowledge that this might work because that might help Trump.

01:27:37.980 So Cuomo said, no, I have to have my own experts look at the vaccine.

01:27:42.040 What did Biden say?

01:27:43.300 Biden said, I'll take the vaccine when Dr. Fauci says it's OK.

01:27:47.540 Why?

01:27:48.180 Oh, my gosh.

01:27:49.420 Why?

01:27:49.860 Right.

01:27:50.220 Not the FDA, not a scientific consensus.

01:27:52.920 When the oracle of HHS, Dr. Fauci tells me it's OK, I'll take it.

01:27:58.380 That's a bizarre thing for a president of the United States to say.

01:28:03.100 Yeah.

01:28:03.400 Kamala Harris said the same.

01:28:04.520 Remember, she's like, I don't trust Donald Trump.

01:28:06.460 Like, oh, way to set the example.

01:28:07.700 And then they scratch their head saying, don't understand why we're not at the vaccination rate that we want to be.

01:28:12.620 And they're trying to backfill it with our kids because they created this hesitancy among a lot of people.

01:28:18.280 Now they want to get their numbers up.

01:28:19.360 So they're like, give me your six month old.

01:28:20.960 Well, no, I won't.

01:28:22.160 And yet I can see the clash coming because the kids need to go to school and they control the schools.

01:28:28.660 And they're going to say that we can't send our kids back to school unless we jab them with this experimental vaccine that is not justified on an emergency basis for children.

01:28:36.620 They're going to have to be careful, though, because one of the things, you know, we've seen this rise in homeschooling.

01:28:43.220 We've seen this rise in interest in, you know, private and parochial schools, not just because of this stuff, but also because of the craziness of critical race theory and the rest of, you know, all the rest of it.

01:28:55.180 There's a point at which the public education system and the teachers unions, and I think you're already seeing it better slow their role a little bit because, like, you know, Randy Weingarten and Joe Biden saying recently that they were going to start, you know, a crusade to get the schools open.

01:29:11.640 A crusade against who?

01:29:13.420 You know, you were the people who said, who are you crusading against here?

01:29:19.540 So I think they realize that when they go too far, parents in the United States say, you know what, maybe there's another option for my kid.

01:29:27.400 And, you know, if there's, you know, if there's a silver lining here and I don't think there are many, that might be one.

01:29:34.540 So I they better watch because if they go too far, there will be a backlash.

01:29:39.700 Well, I mean, you're right, because we we still have our masks on.

01:29:42.920 I mean, people are starting to take them off in New York, but inside virtually all the stores, it's still required.

01:29:49.380 And not just New York, but blue states in general are not letting go of the masks or and some are talking about mandatory vaccines.

01:29:56.400 And I know you call it mask zealotry that that we've slipped into.

01:30:00.800 And even here in New York, they said this is actually from The New York Post.

01:30:04.760 Cuomo said that the covid restrictions will be lifted when 70 percent of New Yorkers are vaxxed.

01:30:09.100 And so we'll get rid of restrictions on capacity limits and social distancing and disinfection protocols and health screenings and so on.

01:30:15.760 Guess where we are right now?

01:30:17.000 Sixty eight point six percent.

01:30:19.820 No, can we round it?

01:30:21.300 Can we round it?

01:30:22.260 Yeah. And, you know, the key to what you just said there is Cuomo says.

01:30:26.400 So, you know, what early last summer as I was covered, because I wrote the book and covered the story at the same time.

01:30:34.860 Right. So I'm covering the story.

01:30:36.380 And I called up Joe Borelli, who's a Staten Island City Councilman.

01:30:42.500 Some some of your listeners might know he's on TV quite a bit and stuff.

01:30:46.640 And he had been a state assemblyman.

01:30:48.480 And I called him up.

01:30:49.440 I said, Joe, how's the state being governed right now?

01:30:54.080 And he said, David, he said, it's a it's it's it's Cuomo's dictatorship.

01:30:59.280 He said the state legislature handed emergency power over to Cuomo and Cuomo can do whatever he wants.

01:31:07.220 And I said, has this ever happened before for this period of time?

01:31:11.500 And at the time I was only talking about a couple of months.

01:31:14.100 And he said he didn't know what happened in World War Two.

01:31:17.480 But as far as he knew, no, this was completely unprecedented.

01:31:21.240 And I think maybe the most underreported story of the entire pandemic is that in so many states,

01:31:28.000 we've had governors ruling basically as kings for a year.

01:31:33.920 And part of the problem with this is governors don't do constituent services.

01:31:38.440 Right. There were last summer, there were a bunch of, you know, a couple of dozen restaurants in Staten Island that really wanted to reopen.

01:31:45.820 And these poor guys, they did a lawn sign campaign.

01:31:49.580 Right. They're fighting against big tech.

01:31:51.600 They're fighting against Cuomo.

01:31:52.620 This is all they could do.

01:31:54.260 Now, if the state legislature had been running things, if they could get 500 people together to go up to Albany, Cuomo doesn't care.

01:32:03.320 You get 500 people to go in front of a state assemblyman's office on a weekday.

01:32:08.460 That gets attention. Right.

01:32:10.440 That's why we have a legislature, because these people are accessible.

01:32:13.920 And that didn't that that just didn't happen.

01:32:17.000 There was no one for us to go to.

01:32:19.160 And really, we can never let that happen again.

01:32:22.340 And I mean, it's scary, Megan.

01:32:25.440 That's the idea that my state has been has been run by one man for an entire year.

01:32:31.740 Yeah. You know, we need to talk about that more.

01:32:34.620 And he's not a good man.

01:32:35.820 This is not a good person.

01:32:37.160 Even if he was.

01:32:38.240 But he isn't.

01:32:39.080 Even if he was.

01:32:40.120 No, but I think he isn't.

01:32:41.820 Yes.

01:32:42.200 We should we should look at Pennsylvania because they just they became the first in the nation to curb their governor's emergency powers.

01:32:48.400 They approve constitutional amendments saying you can't do this anymore, that you can't you can't have a governor just extend his own emergency powers over and over, that we have to have the lawmakers weigh in and have more power over disaster declarations and decide whether, you know, whether this is justified and whether whatever the emergency is, a pandemic or something else.

01:33:10.900 We need more of that to happen in these states because we we seeded too much.

01:33:14.820 And by the way, here in New York.

01:33:16.200 Not only was Cuomo signing orders to send a bunch of covid positive patients back into the nursing homes, killing probably more than 10,000 seniors as a result of those orders.

01:33:25.760 But now we know it was, oh, no one can get covid tests except if your last name is Cuomo and make sure you go out to the Hamptons to take care of my loser brother, Chris.

01:33:35.680 Make sure he gets tested.

01:33:37.060 Make sure he gets all the, you know, white glove treatment while he's pretending to emerge from his basement in some theater for seeing.

01:33:43.360 I mean, I mean, just the the Cuomo brother routine, I there was an article in National Review just a week ago with Charles Cook, who I love saying the guy, Chris Cuomo must have like the corporate offices laced with dynamite, he said, because he said, what else could explain their eternal tolerance for being embarrassed and degraded by this man?

01:34:03.560 His ratings stink.

01:34:04.780 His insights are vacuous. 0.94

01:34:06.700 His conduct is a stain on the like.

01:34:09.460 Seriously, both of them have taken a massive hit.

01:34:11.380 Yeah, and that was obviously pure performance.

01:34:14.560 I mean, I remember when when Cuomo was doing his show from the basement.

01:34:19.260 I mean, you and I have both done enough TV to know that if CNN wanted Chris Cuomo's show to look something like normal, there was obviously a way that they could have done that.

01:34:31.380 You know, one of the things I talk about in the book is eventually, you know, you couldn't, you know, normally when you do like a TV hit or pre pandemic,

01:34:40.020 they'd send a car for you, you go to the studio, you go do the hit, they send you back.

01:34:44.660 So they stopped doing that.

01:34:46.360 And they sent these sort of cool sprinter vans with little mobile studios in it.

01:34:51.280 And I noticed that, you know, Fox News was very quick to adopt this because they wanted a normal look.

01:34:58.260 Right.

01:34:58.800 They wanted this to look like TV had always looked.

01:35:02.520 CNN was sort of somewhere in the middle.

01:35:05.000 MSNBC, it was like they wanted people to look like they were on a hostage video.

01:35:09.680 Why?

01:35:10.640 And the reason why is because that sends a very powerful message that, no, things are not back to normal.

01:35:17.280 You're still watching our guests on, you know, grainy Zoom feeds.

01:35:21.820 Um, so all, all of that stuff, the TV ads, right?

01:35:26.040 Like, like all of these things were, were a performance, uh, of the pandemic.

01:35:32.720 And that was really troubling to, to watch that theater go on as much as I love theater.

01:35:38.660 I didn't love that theater.

01:35:40.100 Well, that was the, that, you know, that was the now famous Rand Paul, Dr. Fauci exchange where

01:35:44.700 Rand was saying, why would you wear a mask after you've either had COVID or been vaccinated?

01:35:49.080 That's just theater, isn't it?

01:35:50.420 And Fauci said, no.

01:35:51.820 And then later, you know, within a week, Fauci admitted, yeah, you don't really need your mask

01:35:55.460 if you've been vaccinated or if you've had COVID.

01:35:57.740 And I, it reminded me of something that you said in your book.

01:36:00.140 And I was like, yes, you're the only other person I, I know who said this.

01:36:04.200 And I've been saying it privately to my friends all along that the, the, the sort of fun,

01:36:08.920 I don't know, message mask was a bridge too far for you.

01:36:13.440 I, oh, 100%, Dave.

01:36:15.460 I was like, my friends laugh because my, my close girlfriends all got like, they have sparkly

01:36:20.520 rhinestones on their masks.

01:36:22.200 They have fun things to keep them around their necks at all time.

01:36:25.080 I'm like, I frankly wear the arm breast mask.

01:36:27.320 They're an advertiser.

01:36:27.880 The cloth mask or whatever, you know, the medical sort of mask that you can get at the drugstore

01:36:31.720 or through arm breast, what have you. 1.00

01:36:32.980 I refuse to make a fashion statement out of it.

01:36:34.960 For me, it was a personal revolt against leaning into the masking.

01:36:39.120 Oh, I, I look, I love the Brooklyn Nets, um, you know, and they're having a great playoff

01:36:44.260 run, but you know, I'll rock a James Harden jersey, but I'm not putting on a, uh, you know,

01:36:48.420 a Brooklyn Nets mask.

01:36:49.500 And, you know, frankly, when I pick my son up from school, um, the first thing I do is

01:36:56.460 say, take your mask off because I know how easy, you know, as a moment I describe in the

01:37:02.100 book, I was, it was a little before election day and I was, I was covering Pennsylvania with

01:37:06.540 my colleague, Chris Bedford, um, and we were about to have dinner at the hotel and I sat

01:37:12.260 down and I forgot to take my mask off.

01:37:15.300 And after like a minute or two, either he reminded me or I, and I said to myself, wow, I, I, I

01:37:21.020 just forgot that I was even wearing this thing.

01:37:23.420 I never want that to happen again because again, it's a tool, right?

01:37:27.840 It's nothing more than that.

01:37:29.660 And for that moment, I knew that in my own mind, this had become something more.

01:37:34.020 This had become a part of me in a way that made me deeply, deeply uncomfortable.

01:37:38.240 Don't leave me now.

01:37:39.180 We got more coming up in 60 seconds.

01:37:45.300 Thankfully school's ending now, but it's been absurd.

01:37:48.360 I mean, I was just telling my team that my daughter, that her, her little fourth grade

01:37:52.600 classmates and she, in their free time decided to put on the play Hamilton.

01:37:59.200 They, they learned Hamilton and they were singing the songs.

01:38:02.440 Yardley was Aaron Burr's really sweet.

01:38:05.020 And so when, and their free time, when they're out, they call it on terrace.

01:38:07.780 They were learning the songs and singing and the music teacher, the music teacher came over

01:38:13.680 to them and say, and they had masks on outdoors while they're practicing that they weren't allowed

01:38:19.340 to sing.

01:38:20.660 They had to whisper.

01:38:22.540 They had to whisper Hamilton so that they didn't spread COVID.

01:38:26.540 This happened.

01:38:27.600 It's unbelievable.

01:38:29.460 I mean, if I have, if I hear or, or read one more person, tell me, you know, kids are

01:38:36.040 tougher than we think.

01:38:37.560 I'm, my head's going to explode.

01:38:39.660 I, you know, there was, this became clear to me last Halloween.

01:38:42.760 I had picked my, my son's 11.

01:38:45.320 He was 10 at the time.

01:38:46.160 And I had picked him up from music school, um, in the late afternoon and we were walking

01:38:51.420 back home and there was no trick or treating.

01:38:53.800 I live in a very residential neighborhood and in Brooklyn, Southern Brooklyn.

01:38:58.220 Um, and you know, some people had left bowls of candy on the stoop, which was very nice,

01:39:02.420 but there was no trick or treating.

01:39:04.080 Governor Cuomo said it wasn't allowed.

01:39:05.620 Right.

01:39:06.540 And my son looks up at me and he goes, dad, you know, it sucks that there's no trick or

01:39:10.620 treating. 0.96

01:39:11.720 And I said to him, yeah, you know, that, that does suck.

01:39:14.080 I think, you know, by next year, things will be back to normal, but yeah, you know, that 0.98

01:39:17.360 sucks. 0.64

01:39:18.500 And I, you know, I, I, I put that on social media. 0.97

01:39:21.520 It was, it was on Facebook where I have a lot of progressive, a lot of sort of pro lockdown

01:39:25.160 friends.

01:39:26.240 And almost immediately there was this backlash of like, Dave, why do you always make it seem

01:39:31.140 so bad?

01:39:31.920 It's not that bad.

01:39:32.940 Why do you always have the heart?

01:39:34.000 And I was like, whoa, guys, this is a 10 year old who wants to go trick or treating.

01:39:39.200 Like, do you hear yourselves?

01:39:40.920 That's what's normal.

01:39:42.240 I don't think they did.

01:39:43.420 Yes.

01:39:43.760 That's what's normal.

01:39:45.260 But, but this became, again, this, this became such a part of these people's lives.

01:39:52.540 And I think in a country where so few people have religious faith, where so few people

01:39:58.440 sort of like, you know, go to church and have these things, this became very, very important

01:40:04.980 to people.

01:40:05.540 And, you know, one of the big disconnects, they couldn't understand why so many of us

01:40:10.300 were so upset about not being able to go to church.

01:40:13.940 You know, I'm a Catholic.

01:40:16.120 So for me having to go months and months and months without, you know, taking the Eucharist,

01:40:21.460 you know, to a lot of people, they're like, you know, who cares?

01:40:23.980 Right.

01:40:24.200 And, and they'd always say, well, you know, if there's a God, I'm sure that God would prefer

01:40:28.140 that you be safe and keep others safe than actually, you know, go to church or take the

01:40:34.080 Eucharist.

01:40:34.480 And I, you know, I wouldn't say to these people, like, do you understand that for 2000 years,

01:40:39.780 the Catholic church has been debating this?

01:40:42.280 I mean, the early Christians didn't stay home and stay safe.

01:40:45.920 They got thrown to the lights.

01:40:47.500 Like, this is, but, but, you know, as well as I do in our media class, that's not important

01:40:56.280 and they don't get it.

01:40:57.840 They don't understand why so many people were so, were so hurt by the fact that they

01:41:03.680 couldn't, you know, go to church.

01:41:05.960 Yeah.

01:41:06.160 No, it's like, let me put it, let me put it in terms that you can understand.

01:41:09.520 Imagine there's a BLM rally and you're not allowed to go.

01:41:13.200 How do you think you'd feel?

01:41:14.500 This is how people feel in the Catholic church when they can't go to mass and not just in

01:41:17.980 the Catholic church, because it went beyond that, but that's their religion.

01:41:21.180 Now I could, I could spend all day with you.

01:41:23.240 I do, I cannot let you go without talking about your love and mine of Morrissey.

01:41:29.780 I didn't know what a big fan you were of Morrissey, but I see you tweet out his lyrics all the

01:41:33.960 time.

01:41:34.300 I'm in love with Morrissey.

01:41:35.320 He's like a life-changing artist and actually somebody who's kind of been demonized and not

01:41:40.080 canceled, but he is somebody who's, he's not politically correct to like.

01:41:43.960 You can't cancel him.

01:41:45.440 You can't.

01:41:46.380 And it's one of the really glorious things about Morrissey.

01:41:49.660 It's like, you try to cancel Morrissey and like, even if you do like convince, first

01:41:55.180 of all, like his big fan base is Gen Xers and we don't do a whole lot of that to begin

01:41:59.480 with.

01:42:00.080 But even if you do like get some people to dislike him, like all of a sudden, like out

01:42:04.100 of nowhere, he's got this like gigantic following in Mexico and Japan and, and just all over the

01:42:10.800 world.

01:42:11.140 Like, like, I didn't know that you were a big Morrissey fan, but sometimes when it comes

01:42:14.500 up, it's rare that people go, Oh yeah, no, I kind of like Morrissey.

01:42:18.140 It's usually like, yeah, like, Oh, I love Morrissey.

01:42:21.560 And he's, you know, I think he's, he's a great singer.

01:42:25.020 And, and, you know, obviously Johnny Marr is a great guitar player with the Smiths and

01:42:28.640 Bosworth is great, but really he's a, he's an enormously talented lyricist.

01:42:33.940 And, you know, he, he dips back into the history of English literature so much, um, Irish

01:42:39.700 literature.

01:42:40.180 Um, and yeah, there's a lot of times in my life where I haven't felt great and this will

01:42:46.360 sound weird to people, but as, as mopey and depressing as he can be, there's always a light

01:42:51.580 at the tunnel and he always makes me smile.

01:42:53.500 So I'm glad to know you're a big fan.

01:42:55.340 Yeah.

01:42:55.560 I'm, I've been, you know, since I was a teenager, I had my big Morrissey posters on the wall and

01:43:00.880 yeah, he's my guy.

01:43:02.580 I don't find him depressing at all.

01:43:04.680 I just, I find him meaningful and I'm always moved by when I listen to his songs and there

01:43:09.900 are some that are very upbeat.

01:43:10.960 I love sing your life.

01:43:12.160 That gets your toes tapping.

01:43:13.380 There's a rockabilly version.

01:43:14.660 It's just YouTube, like a sing your life rockabilly.

01:43:17.820 There's a rockabilly version.

01:43:19.220 That's really like, I mean, the, the single itself off kill uncle's great, but this is

01:43:23.100 a lot of fun too.

01:43:24.400 I'm, I'm, I'm writing it down right now.

01:43:26.000 I always laugh because that's all I play over the summer at my house in New Jersey at the

01:43:29.460 shore.

01:43:29.700 And people are like, would you get out of, you know, would you get into at least like

01:43:33.000 the 21st century? 0.87

01:43:33.840 I'm like, screw you go to another house.

01:43:36.340 Well, that's another thing we have in common because I love the Jersey shore and whenever

01:43:39.460 people knock Jersey, uh, you know, that's always my first line.

01:43:43.300 My, you know, my dad grew up in Asbury park and I've spent a lot of time, uh, down the

01:43:47.680 Jersey shore.

01:43:48.480 So, uh, yeah, the Jersey shore, Marcy and a Wawa hoagie and I'm good all day.

01:43:53.800 You know why?

01:43:54.260 Cause we're, we're a man and woman of the people, uh, because we understand whence we came

01:43:59.460 and I do think it's, it's, I'm joking, but not really, because I think one of the reasons

01:44:04.420 that you've been such a successful journalist and your columns resonate so strongly.

01:44:09.180 And one of the reasons I've done well in this industry is because I, I never forgot who I

01:44:13.600 was.

01:44:13.940 You didn't either.

01:44:14.680 You never lost touch with the people and the, you know, like your listeners, your readers,

01:44:18.260 the people who are following you.

01:44:19.460 And too many people have, you know, like that was certainly my experience.

01:44:22.580 For example, when I went to the today show, they had been basking in sort of the accolades

01:44:26.560 of millions of dollars and the bright lights for too long.

01:44:30.260 And it, it manifested in the journalism and the secret I think to people like us is that

01:44:36.000 that didn't happen.

01:44:37.260 Yeah.

01:44:37.480 I mean, I think a lot about what being a columnist is because I haven't, you know, I've only

01:44:43.480 been in journalism for, you know, five or six years, only like three or four full time.

01:44:47.760 And so when I realized I was a columnist, I was like, okay, what's the job here?

01:44:52.100 And a columnist is a really unique type of journalist in that your job is to see through

01:44:57.020 the eyes of the people and to speak with the voice of the people in a way that a reporter's

01:45:01.000 isn't right.

01:45:02.260 A reporter is really there to say, this is what it is.

01:45:05.660 It's not about what you think it's about.

01:45:08.140 This is a columnist.

01:45:09.600 And when you think of people like Jamie Breslin and, you know, John Cass out in Chicago,

01:45:13.460 the really, the really good columnists, they're able to do that.

01:45:18.380 The best email, the second best email I ever get is if someone emails me and says, you know,

01:45:24.820 what you wrote is something that I've been thinking, but I haven't been able to express

01:45:28.320 it.

01:45:28.720 The best email I get is you wrote what I've been thinking and I was afraid to say it.

01:45:33.700 Um, and I think as a, as a journalist, if you can tap into that, if you can find something

01:45:39.780 that a lot of people are thinking, but they're not sure if they're allowed to say it, um,

01:45:43.740 that's a column you should definitely be writing.

01:45:46.180 So true.

01:45:46.680 I'm sort of in this weird hybrid place now, you know, cause I used to do all straight 0.96

01:45:51.080 news.

01:45:51.440 And now in podcasting, it's definitely more opinion than I would have done before, but I

01:45:56.060 like it.

01:45:56.520 And I do love that feeling because when you hear people say that they're afraid of people

01:46:00.380 in our industry, in particular, even media people say that they're afraid or they don't,

01:46:03.980 you can tell they are, they don't want to talk about something or they're quick to apologize.

01:46:07.300 I think, ah, remember what it was like to be on the other side.

01:46:10.720 Remember when I was afraid to, you know, and I wouldn't talk about these kinds of things

01:46:16.060 because I had fear of reprisal.

01:46:19.280 It's extremely liberating, liberating to be able to say what's real.

01:46:23.540 And it's not even opinion.

01:46:24.740 I mean, it's extremely liberating to be able to say what is real about a group like Black Lives 1.00

01:46:29.200 Matter, for example.

01:46:29.960 And not have to worry, you know, let the chips fall where they may.

01:46:34.340 Yeah, that's absolutely right.

01:46:36.560 And look, I think what we've learned over the past few years, especially during the era

01:46:41.460 of Trump, is that this notion of objective journalism to begin with is a little dicey.

01:46:47.940 I mean, when you go back to the history of journalism, the concept of objective journalism

01:46:51.720 is really like an invention of the early and mid 20th century when you had like the big three

01:46:57.180 TV networks and you had a lot of gatekeepers, right?

01:46:59.960 And it was it was objective in a sense.

01:47:02.720 But on the other hand, you didn't report what JFK was up to, right?

01:47:06.900 Yes, right.

01:47:07.820 So, right.

01:47:09.820 So the gatekeeper said, this is OK, this is not OK.

01:47:13.420 And I think we're getting back to a position where, listen, you know what you're getting

01:47:17.480 from CNN or The New York Times as opposed to Fox News or The Federalist.

01:47:21.040 Nobody's under any illusion that any of these places are are are straight down the middle.

01:47:26.400 And I think ultimately it's because straight down the middle is a little bit of a myth.

01:47:30.880 Yeah.

01:47:31.080 Well, I think the goal is to find someone who is fair, right, who will treat the arguments

01:47:35.180 fair, who will bring you the arguments from the other side in a way that is not a straw

01:47:39.720 man, you know, so you can actually learn.

01:47:42.340 But yeah, but owning one's bias, I feel like that's only that's a new thing.

01:47:47.980 Like we were all saying the news media could be trusted.

01:47:51.880 Not that Fox News wasn't saying that about the others, but we were pretending that CNN

01:47:55.260 was unbiased for a very long time.

01:47:57.060 And one of the gifts of President Trump is that's no longer that's over.

01:48:02.180 Wait, can I ask you, what were you doing before the last five or six years?

01:48:05.600 I was in theater.

01:48:06.860 So I my wife and I had a little theater company that we ran here in New York.

01:48:11.380 And, you know, I was a theater actor and stage manager.

01:48:15.740 And, you know, if there was a thing to do in New York theater at some point between like

01:48:19.760 2000 and 2015, I did it.

01:48:22.920 So, yeah, I was I was very immersed.

01:48:25.120 Yeah, I was very immersed in the theater world.

01:48:26.680 And now I'm immersed in a very different kind of theater world.

01:48:30.540 But, you know, not not as different as you might think.

01:48:34.980 You know, it's all storytelling.

01:48:36.600 And I don't mean that in the sense of fabrication.

01:48:38.620 I mean that in the sense of it's all it's all telling people, you know, something about

01:48:43.880 the world that that's what the job is.

01:48:46.620 So, yeah, it's been an interesting transition.

01:48:49.440 Well, if you're looking to get back into it and you need a troop of 10 year old girls 1.00

01:48:52.720 who are really good at Alexander Hamilton, I can set you up short of that.

01:48:57.840 Well, my son loves it, too.

01:48:58.800 So, you know, I you know, he might want to be he might want to be Burr.

01:49:02.220 But we could we could use some testosterone.

01:49:04.260 It's your own. It's all girls. 1.00

01:49:05.240 It's a little awkward.

01:49:06.120 That's good. Great.

01:49:07.260 All right. Short of that, everybody has got to support Dave's current career.

01:49:11.480 And that means go out and buy his book right now.

01:49:13.940 Charade is the name of the book.

01:49:15.340 Charade. The COVID lies crushed a nation.

01:49:18.600 Such a pleasure talking to you, David Marcus.

01:49:20.260 All the best.

01:49:21.080 Thank you, Megan.

01:49:21.500 Great, great show.

01:49:27.000 Don't miss our next show because it's got Jason Riley.

01:49:30.820 I've been talking about him since we launched.

01:49:32.440 Have I not?

01:49:33.100 His book, Please Stop Helping Us.

01:49:35.120 He came on my show seven years ago to discuss it.

01:49:37.120 And I mean, I feel like I know it cover to cover now.

01:49:39.620 He's brilliant.

01:49:40.320 He's fearless.

01:49:41.040 He's a Wall Street Journal columnist, among other things, Manhattan Institute fellow.

01:49:44.400 But really fearless when it comes to the discussion of race.

01:49:48.600 And you will hear truths from him that you will hear nowhere else.

01:49:52.680 And if you don't already love him, you will by the end of our next show.

01:49:55.220 So go ahead and subscribe.

01:49:56.800 Download the show.

01:49:58.020 Give me five stars and send me your thoughts on today's program.

01:50:01.940 Would love to hear them in our Apple reviews.

01:50:03.720 Helps our show and helps me figure out where your heads are as well.

01:50:07.540 We'll talk soon.

01:50:09.300 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94

01:50:11.300 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:50:16.360 The Megyn Kelly Show is a Devil May Care media production in collaboration with Red Seat Ventures.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 11, 2021

The COVID Cover-Up, with Josh Rogin, David Marcus, and Richard Muller ｜ Ep. 114

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