The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Makes it Official, and Defeating the Censors, with Alex Berenson, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Jason Miller

00:00:00.600 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.860 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.920 Coming up in just a bit, Alex Berenson will be back with us.

00:00:18.020 Oh, there's a lot to go over with him. I'm looking forward to that interview,

00:00:21.060 including the new study that calls for masking children to combat racism.

00:00:25.400 All right, if the actual combating COVID doesn't work,

00:00:28.120 there's always combating racism, the media getting a tiny bit more honest about the risks of

00:00:34.200 myocarditis. The vaccine companies have now been forced to actually study this.

00:00:39.220 And what Alex has learned about the efforts many took to get him kicked off of Twitter.

00:00:46.480 All right, it wasn't just Twitter's decision. The White House had a hand in it. And our old pal,

00:00:51.380 Scott Gottlieb, had a massive hand in it as well. And boy, oh boy, is Berenson ready to fight back.

00:00:57.380 We'll get to all of that. And we'll also get to his warning that the unraveling of FTX and its

00:01:01.940 founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is far worse than Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. First, though,

00:01:08.120 former President Donald Trump has made it official, formally announcing last night he is running for

00:01:12.940 president. We will get to some of the key moments from his speech, plus the media's reaction,

00:01:17.540 with two first-time guests on the podcast. How is that even possible?

00:01:21.200 I listen to Michael Brendan Doherty and read his stuff every day over at National Review. This

00:01:26.320 is our first time on his show, on this show. He's a senior writer at National Review. And Jason

00:01:31.220 Miller, my old pal from Fox News, he's the CEO of the social media platform Getter. And in 2016 and

00:01:37.540 2020, he served on Donald Trump's presidential campaigns. Guys, thank you so much for being here.

00:01:43.400 Thank you.

00:01:43.800 Thank you.

00:01:44.680 All right. So this is, there's so much to go over. This is a great day to have you both.

00:01:48.260 Um, I'll just give you my sort of back of the envelope reaction to Trump last night. I was

00:01:53.780 looking forward to watching it. I, I, you know, Trump never disappoints, but he kind of did

00:01:59.620 disappoint a little last night, not to be too hard on him. But I, I know he was trying to do

00:02:04.480 presidential and he was trying to not screw anything up for Herschel Walker, but he did seem

00:02:09.180 a little low energy. I was slightly bored. I'm not going to lie. I did fall asleep before the end of

00:02:14.320 the hour. Now I'm getting old and my kids wake me up early, but I did doze off. And that's just

00:02:19.640 unprecedented for a, for a Trump rally or a Trump. And I have to think Jason Miller, you got to tell

00:02:24.960 me like, there must've been a decision on his part, not to be his normal free will and off prompt

00:02:31.160 herself for some reason.

00:02:34.320 Well, I think there are a couple of things that go into it, Megan. First off, you're, you only get

00:02:38.280 one introduction speech. Of course, in 2015, he had the iconic come down the escalator moment,

00:02:44.380 but the kickoff speeches or kickoff interviews haven't always gone well for certain candidates

00:02:50.500 go back to Ted Kennedy, 1980, for example. So coming out and laying out the clear case of why you're

00:02:56.160 running is critical. It's one of the, as you remember the old adage, you never get a second

00:03:00.240 chance to make a first impression. Now, the reason why that's important is because president Trump

00:03:05.600 hasn't really had an unfettered access to go and get his message out on something that's coming

00:03:11.480 across and say, uh, the mainstream media, the, um, you know, even Fox news, NBC, probably going back

00:03:17.420 to convention in 2020, this was his chance to come out and lay down that marker. So number one,

00:03:22.460 he needed to make sure that not only his base, but the sometimes Trumpers or the independents who

00:03:26.880 swing back and forth each time got a sense of really where it was coming from. Make sure that was

00:03:31.840 clear and make sure it was forward looking. Let's put some of the attention back on Joe Biden.

00:03:35.500 And so he had his objective that he wanted to reach. And I think he hit it.

00:03:39.540 Michael, one of the things I did think was in his favor was it was pretty powerful to listen to him

00:03:44.760 list the accomplishments of his administration, you know, and take you through some of the problems

00:03:49.540 with the Joe Biden administration. It was like, you know, when you listen to the actual plus column

00:03:54.340 for him and minus column for Biden, it was good. It was powerful. And, you know, Trump's always a good,

00:04:00.580 relatively good spokesperson for it. He just didn't have the normal fire.

00:04:04.140 And Trump on prompter is just nowhere near as good as Trump off prompter.

00:04:10.480 Right. I mean, I looked at the speech last night as like, and I don't mean to trivialize Donald Trump

00:04:16.120 at all by saying this, but it felt like a standup comedian who is getting a new set of material

00:04:21.700 together again. And that by the time he takes this material out on the road, tests lines, incorporates

00:04:30.380 new current events that haven't occurred yet into his jokes. It's going to improve greatly from what

00:04:40.060 we saw last night. I mean, by the end of the 2020 campaign in his last rally in rural Pennsylvania,

00:04:46.260 I mean, he was a master showman. And so I think you're right that he's starting with this base

00:04:53.620 of here are my accomplishments as president. Here's what's happened in the years since I left

00:04:59.060 office. And where do you really stand? Right. We have 10 percent inflation. We have a war going on

00:05:05.940 in Ukraine. That's that's potentially dangerous that, you know, he implies wouldn't even be happening

00:05:12.100 under his watch. And so he's presenting a compelling case to that independent swinging voter

00:05:19.820 that Jason talked about. But he's only just beginning to reconnect with the, you know,

00:05:25.700 the deep Trump voter. I think the other thing that is working for him, and maybe others won't see it

00:05:32.820 this way, is that we're almost back in in 2016 again, or in 2015 again, with a lot of the Republican

00:05:43.040 establishment aligning against him and aligning behind a popular Florida governor, with the media

00:05:50.120 kind of all gathering against him. And I think he and his hardcore supporters thrive on that united

00:05:58.260 opposition. I think that that's when he kind of does his best work. And when he makes himself

00:06:03.300 most credible to his core base of supporters as I am the only one standing up for you in this position.

00:06:12.040 And so in a sense, like his his weakness is his strength, right? The the kind of divorce people are

00:06:18.400 trying to affect between him and the Republican establishment. That's actually going to work for

00:06:24.000 him going forward. This is this is reminding me of the movie. Jumanji with Kevin Hart's character

00:06:30.120 going, how is strength my weakness? Also, it makes me explode. Two of the greatest lines in that movie.

00:06:38.580 So the thing is, Jason, that the media did some interesting things last night. Okay,

00:06:44.040 now the left wing media, you won't be surprised. It was insane. They were trying so hard to outdo each

00:06:50.140 other in their summary descriptions of Donald Trump. You know, if you wanted to write a fair

00:06:56.300 summary of Donald Trump in a paragraph, maybe you'd say, you know, something about the fact that

00:07:02.000 he appointed three Supreme Court justices. He pushed through the Abraham Accords, pushed through

00:07:07.900 criminal justice reform. You know, you could pick a lot, but also challenge the results of the 2020

00:07:13.180 election and ultimately led to a violent riot at the Capitol. Okay, you could say that you could come up

00:07:19.140 with a balanced, did some things that, you know, were universally hailed by GOP and some Dems and

00:07:26.180 did some things that were condemned by most Dems and Republicans. This is how NPR went. Breaking.

00:07:33.440 Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a

00:07:37.840 deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power, has filed to run for

00:07:44.180 president again in 2024. The liberal blue checks went nuts. They loved that one. Okay. Here's

00:07:51.280 Washington Post. The twice impeached former president Donald Trump, 76, who refused to concede in the 2020

00:07:59.120 election and is the subject of multiple criminal investigations, is running again in 2024, increasing

00:08:05.020 the likelihood of a potential rematch with President Biden. New York Times got in trouble with some of

00:08:12.640 its liberal followers for only using the following lead line. Donald J. Trump, whose historically divisive

00:08:19.720 presidency shook the pillars of the country's democratic institutions on Tuesday night, declared his

00:08:24.480 intention to seek the White House again. That wasn't angry enough for the liberals following that.

00:08:29.680 And on it goes. So to Michael's point, I mean, this is catnip for Trump's base. They love this stuff.

00:08:40.000 Well, it is. And I have a unique perspective in that 2016, I was actually working for and supporting

00:08:44.900 Senator Ted Cruz in the primary and then joined President Trump in the general election. So I saw

00:08:49.720 it from the other side. And the thing that was not clear to us immediately, it should have been,

00:08:54.460 but this was kind of President Trump's superpower, so to speak, is that the more that there was a

00:08:59.440 piling on from whether it be the Washington establishment or the media, then he just seemed

00:09:03.240 to grow in strength. It's like the energy guy in Spider-Man, where the more you attack him,

00:09:08.040 just the bigger and stronger he gets. And to see the out-of-control, unhinged reaction from the

00:09:14.580 media, you know, Megan, you read the headlines, but if you look at NewYorkTimes.com or NYTimes.com

00:09:19.740 right now, literally, I think it's seven out of the first nine stories are anti-Trump leads.

00:09:24.680 It's so over the top and so crazy. There's a certain snapback effect that many of the sometimes

00:09:31.340 Trumpers, when they see those attacks from the media, they're like, wait a minute, why are they

00:09:35.560 attacking our guy? We need to fall into the position of supporting President Trump. Or even

00:09:40.940 as we saw with Michael, which at the time, the initial publication with National Review, they had

00:09:46.160 the essays against President Trump and that only bolstered him and he got stronger. I think even beyond

00:09:51.300 the media, I think even when you look at some of the donor heavyweights who have come out, the Ken

00:09:55.420 Griffins, the Steve Schwartzmans in the last couple of days, those are not exactly the poster

00:10:01.080 children of the Republican base that you want out there cheering either for your side. I mean, those

00:10:07.440 are the people your President Trump's kind of running against. So it's good they're doing it. I do have

00:10:11.160 to say, though, because Megan, I'm usually pretty tough on the media. I do have to say that I thought

00:10:15.180 the Wall Street Journal's news story today, I thought was very fair, probably the best of the

00:10:19.840 mainstream outlets. I think Alex Leary is a very fair journalist. And CNN, believe it or not,

00:10:26.120 actually did cover the first 20, 25 minutes of President Trump's speech last night. And so I

00:10:30.880 got to give credit where it's due because I do beat up on these guys quite a bit.

00:10:33.980 Okay, but what did you make of the New York Post? The headline, they had the front of the cover was

00:10:39.740 about something else. And then there was a little line at the bottom that read, Florida man makes

00:10:44.900 announcement. The story about the announcement is deep inside on page 26. And I'm going to read it

00:10:52.420 for the audience because it really says something. It's just a singular column on the left side of the

00:10:57.880 page called Ben there, Don that. With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree

00:11:07.160 made the surprise announcement Tuesday night that he was running for president. In a move no political

00:11:11.520 pundits saw coming, avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and

00:11:16.860 classified documents library. Trump, famous for gold plated lobbies and for firing people on reality

00:11:22.740 television, will be 78 in 2024. If elected, Trump would tie Joe Biden as the oldest president to take

00:11:29.420 office. His cholesterol levels are unknown, but his favorite food is a charred steak with ketchup.

00:11:34.700 He has stated that his qualifications for office include being a, quote, stable genius.

00:11:39.220 Trump also served as the 45th president. The author was post-staff. Wow. Wow.

00:11:48.980 Megan is a mutual friend of ours, likes to always say no such thing as conspiracies,

00:11:54.120 but also no such thing as coincidences. Clearly, there's been an order, the vertical integration

00:11:59.660 of here's what you're supposed to write that's been delivered. And we're seeing that in the post.

00:12:04.240 There are a lot of really fine journalists who are at the post, a lot of really good columnists

00:12:08.920 who I really like. But if you go in the time machine just about two, three months back,

00:12:13.380 the post was tripping over themselves to praise President Trump. And now the switch to basically

00:12:18.340 trying to cut into the daily news space, I don't think that's going to work well. Curious what it'll

00:12:22.860 do with their readership base. But it's too much of a flip-flop in such a short amount of time.

00:12:28.640 I don't think most people are going to buy it. Hmm. What do you make of that, MBD? It's fascinating

00:12:33.460 to see the post really coming down on him. And the journal's been unkind, too, notwithstanding

00:12:37.560 what Jason says about today. Clearly, and there's also a report out that Rupert Murdoch has given the

00:12:44.040 word directly to Trump. Don't run again. We don't want it. We won't back it. And actually, if you run

00:12:50.180 again, if it's against anyone other than Joe Biden, we might actually back the Democrat. If you run and

00:12:56.880 the nominee on the other side is Joe Biden, we might just stay neutral. But in no event will we

00:13:01.680 be supporting you. He, of course, owns Fox News. He owns the Journal. He owns the New York Post. He

00:13:07.740 owns HarperCollins Publishing and so on. I think Rupert Murdoch has tremendous influence.

00:13:15.200 We're seeing it now. I think it's an open question for a lot of media outlets. There was something very

00:13:21.640 surreal about the way Fox News covered the speech last night. I mean, I was watching the speech and

00:13:27.900 like you, Megan, I was saying this is not the best material. And it's kind of like looking over

00:13:32.680 Twitter to see what the reaction was. And suddenly, before the speech was even over, Fox was, you know,

00:13:39.940 Sean Hannity was cutting to Mike Huckabee. And Mike Huckabee was saying, if Donald Trump sticks with

00:13:47.520 this message, he's unstoppable. And then he's cutting to other commentators who are saying,

00:13:53.860 like, this is the greatest message. This is what he has to stick with. You know, basically a kind of

00:13:58.600 commentary saying, don't talk about the election, 2020 election, talk about Joe Biden's record.

00:14:04.420 But the speech was still going on in a corner of the screen. And, you know, there, there was a kind of,

00:14:12.220 like I said, there was a surreal quality where they're saying, this is the most amazing speech,

00:14:16.620 but we're not showing it to you, uh, in certain sections. I was like, where do I find it? I found

00:14:22.020 it finally on Newsmax. I'm like, I'm awake. I want to hear what he has to say. Newsmax took the whole

00:14:27.180 thing, but yeah, it was strange. I will tell you, this is a rule of Brit Hume's that I learned from

00:14:31.700 him young in my career. Never put a little box of a talking head on the screen while the anchor is on

00:14:38.260 the screen talking with another guest, because it only leads the audience to be like, well, what's that

00:14:42.700 little box saying? Why are they showing me that little box? If you, if you're showing me the box,

00:14:45.840 let me hear the box. It's annoying. Clearly there'd been an order on him to do that. I just

00:14:50.380 can't imagine a world in which Hannity voluntarily cut away from Trump mid speech, but also right.

00:14:56.180 And it continued on in the next hour. Then suddenly Laura Ingraham is giving highlights of earlier in

00:15:01.700 the speech while the speech hasn't concluded yet. Like we're already nostalgic for the speech that

00:15:07.080 hasn't finished. And then, uh, so, so Fox news's coverage was odd, but of course I think one of the

00:15:15.620 biggest, you know, because we're doing, we're basically doing it over again, we're going to do

00:15:20.460 everything like it was in 2016, but knowing how 2016 played out. And so the other thing is in 2015 and

00:15:28.480 2016, Jeff Zucker at CNN made the very deliberate decision of we're carrying Trump's rallies end to

00:15:36.300 end, right. From beginning to finish. Most of them that put pressure on Fox and even MSNBC to do the

00:15:43.060 same. And I remember running into Lawrence O'Donnell in the back of MSNBC once, and he was livid and

00:15:50.500 basically said, we're going to end up making this guy president just by following what Jeff Zucker is

00:15:55.480 doing. Uh, that had a tremendous effect on Trump's campaign. It made him kind of omnipresent, uh,

00:16:03.040 feature. It made him the only topic of conversation in news media during the entirety of his campaign.

00:16:10.300 And I don't think they're going to do it again. And I think we saw the evidence of that last night.

00:16:14.820 And that's, that is going to be a huge, uh, obstacle that Trump has to overcome, right. That the road is

00:16:21.300 not paved for him the way it was in 2016, right. Because after the election, when he won, you know,

00:16:28.220 a lot of these news executives thought that they were undermining the Republican party by getting,

00:16:33.320 by helping Trump get the nomination and undermining Trump by showing him all the time. I think, oh,

00:16:39.500 he's going to expose himself as a crazy person. And instead, you know, he won narrowly. And afterward,

00:16:46.060 only then did they begin regretting their coverage decisions. But this is, but we're already seeing

00:16:51.680 that it's going to be very different, uh, field that he's playing on in the next two years.

00:16:56.760 I really wonder what they're going to do because I lived that firsthand. I, we at the Kelly file

00:17:02.400 watch Trump and it, you could, you can see the minute by minute ratings. You can see your every

00:17:07.120 15 minutes, how you did. And you can see minute by minute, uh, if you ask for it and you'd see some

00:17:11.960 huge spike in your minute by minutes and you're like, what's that? You go back and look invariably

00:17:16.480 it was Trump. Trump speaking extemporaneously is like heroin to viewers. At least it was back when

00:17:24.940 he was running the first time. And so it was no surprise to me that CNN wound up taking them wall

00:17:30.760 to wall because they were hemorrhaging viewers. They had nothing interesting going on. They couldn't put

00:17:35.960 numbers on the board. And all you had to do was turn the cameras on the man and sit back and watch.

00:17:41.500 You get record numbers. And I remember we at the Kelly file had a long talk behind the scenes about

00:17:47.280 how we would not be doing this for Scott Walker, who is not that exciting on television. We certainly

00:17:53.940 wouldn't be doing it for Hillary Clinton and we can't do it for Donald Trump as, as much of the

00:17:59.380 catnip as it might be. We can't. And so we didn't, we do, we treated him the way we treated everybody,

00:18:03.620 but we were not in the majority amongst our friends at Fox or across the media landscape. However,

00:18:10.700 Jason, when he became president and they realized he was powerful, the media changed. They would cut

00:18:16.300 away from him while giving a presidential press conference. The president of the United States,

00:18:21.420 they turn off the cameras and go back to their anchor for some fact check on some COVID line or what

00:18:27.740 have you. But the thing is, the ratings are once again terrible for CNN and MSNBC. And so I really do

00:18:36.460 wonder how they'll handle it now. What do you think?

00:18:39.760 You know, it's a really good question. Short answer is, I don't know, but much of the media,

00:18:44.180 and you saw this starting with the Sunday shows and then even going into last night,

00:18:47.760 they're a bit bipolar in how they want to approach it because they don't want to talk about Trump,

00:18:52.660 but then they do want to talk about Trump because he's ratings gold. But then with Joe Biden,

00:18:57.120 there's a bit of a catch there. They don't want to spend a lot of time talking about Joe Biden

00:19:02.280 because they know just how underwhelming he is for the Democratic base. You saw Anita Dunn on the

00:19:08.100 Sunday shows and her tortured answer about if Joe Biden is going to run again in 2024. And of course,

00:19:13.580 Joe didn't have a very good week, whether it's at COP 27, the climate change conference or G20 in

00:19:18.900 Colombia and Cambodia. I mean, you know, everyone mixes those two countries up. It happens to the best

00:19:25.300 of us. They can't go out there and say, but we love Joe Biden because, I mean, to say he's a fossil

00:19:30.980 is probably kind of being nice to him. So they're in this thing. Do they want to cover President

00:19:35.140 Trump? Do they not want to? Do they want to, but if they cover Joe Biden, do they just kind of feel

00:19:39.940 the narrative that he's not up for the job in 2024? That's a big question where I think they're going

00:19:45.000 to land is they're going to pick or choose. I think if President Trump, if he's hitting, if he's,

00:19:50.060 if it's forward focused and he's taking it to Biden, I think he's gonna have a pretty good chance of

00:19:53.420 getting picked up. If it's 2020 retrospective grievances, then I think he's going to get a lot less

00:19:58.580 coverage. They'll be less likely to go and pick it up. So I think it's going to be kind of feeling

00:20:02.100 our way around in the, in the dark here, um, uh, as we go forward the next few months.

00:20:07.420 That's a good point. So national review has a piece today, Michael, uh, that that says national

00:20:12.520 review, no, and N O period with a great line to paraphrase Voltaire after he attended an orgy

00:20:21.760 once was an experiment twice would be perverse. This is not an endorsement of Donald Trump and

00:20:29.400 it's quite a clever way of saying no more. Um, right. I know that you guys would much prefer

00:20:35.840 to see somebody like DeSantis or even Youngkin in, in the lead role, but how do you reconcile

00:20:42.600 the challenge that lays ahead that lies ahead for DeSantis in taking Trump down? That's the only way

00:20:51.580 forward. Trump is running. How, how do you see him doing that with that incredibly strong and loyal

00:20:58.680 Trump base? It's well, here's the key thing. Uh, DeSantis cannot run and cannot be seen to be

00:21:08.660 running as if he is the tool of the establishment to try to purify the GOP of this Trumpist obsession,

00:21:18.580 right? That will never work. If, if he runs as a kind of revenge tour against populism, against

00:21:26.580 Trump, uh, that will fail miserably. And I think he knows that, uh, DeSantis is path to the nomination

00:21:34.980 is I can unite this party. We have a problem, right? Which is that there's 10% of the Republican

00:21:41.700 party doesn't want to vote for Carrie Lake, but that 10% of the party can't dictate to the 25 or 30%

00:21:50.480 or 40% of the party that loves a Carrie Lake, you know, what's who the nominee is going to be,

00:21:55.860 but we all agree on Ron DeSantis, right? That's why he won by 20 points. Uh, that's why he won in

00:22:03.580 districts, uh, in Florida that Republicans haven't won in, in two decades. Uh, that's why he's increasing

00:22:09.940 his margin with independent voters and with Hispanics. It's something that all people on

00:22:15.900 the right and basically everyone who dislikes Joe Biden, we can all agree on Ron DeSantis.

00:22:21.660 That's sort of his sweet spot, but it's going to be very difficult because Donald Trump has star power,

00:22:29.080 like we were just talking about star power that affects the decisions made in newsrooms by heads of

00:22:35.900 news networks by heads of global media empires. Uh, Ron DeSantis does not have that. Uh, what Ron

00:22:43.940 DeSantis has though, is he has a very substantive record in Florida. Um, he talks about that. He gives

00:22:51.540 a very good speech on Florida as a model. Uh, and the one maybe advantage he has over Trump

00:22:59.780 is the loyalty of people that were radicalized during the pandemic, which is Ron DeSantis seemed

00:23:07.440 to be leading people who were skeptical of lockdowns at a time when Donald Trump was criticizing Brian

00:23:15.360 Kemp for reopening Georgia too soon. Um, Ron DeSantis made Florida safe for people who had questions about

00:23:26.340 the vaccine or doubts about the vaccines and basically saying like in Florida, you can live a normal life

00:23:31.900 here. We're going to restrict businesses from imposing vaccine passports on you. We're going

00:23:37.240 to restrict businesses from firing you for a medical decision that's up to you. And that is private

00:23:43.140 and that you may have perfectly reasonable, uh, reasons to, to choose a different way. Um, so,

00:23:52.240 you know, I think a lot of people are waiting for Ron DeSantis to stand up and say, Hey, you didn't fire

00:23:57.800 Anthony Fauci. Why not? We, we got rid of his influence in Florida and we thrived, uh, that day

00:24:06.420 may come, but I think Ron DeSantis would be well advised to wait. Let, let Trump get out there for a

00:24:14.440 while. Let's see if he really has the spark that wasn't there last night. Let's see if he really can get

00:24:20.660 the crowds going again and then, you know, take your time, you know, wait until the legislative

00:24:26.520 session is done in Florida in May. And then you're, I mean, Ron DeSantis already has GOP mega

00:24:33.100 donors behind him, so he can play this slow. Um, but I think that's his plays. I can unite this party

00:24:39.580 after Trump and Trump can no longer unite this party. Um, just a sample of some of the tweets and

00:24:46.220 the reaction from the speech there, uh, Josh Green tweets out Jeb Bush could win Twitter right now

00:24:52.260 with a low energy tweet. Um, let's say then some of Trump's fans and the Trump is formidable,

00:25:00.480 but this is not the look of an invulnerable candidate. That's from David Drucker of the DC

00:25:05.240 examiner, Paul Begala. If I'm a strategist for Ron DeSantis, Florida, nothing I saw from Trump tonight

00:25:10.680 would scare me in the least. So what about that, Jason, that, you know, Michael's raising some good

00:25:15.400 questions about COVID and how Trump handled it that I hear from Trump's faithful to people who

00:25:20.380 like him are mad. They don't think those vaccines are as wonderful as some, some say they, they

00:25:27.020 remember that Trump was pro lockdown for a period. He didn't fire Fauci. Those are all points for

00:25:33.660 DeSantis. No, no. And look, governor DeSantis has done a great job with the state of Florida. And I

00:25:39.820 think he will be a formidable opponent if he gets in the race against president Trump. I do want to point

00:25:44.600 out one detail here that there, the challenge for governor DeSantis is that his pathway forward,

00:25:50.940 his strategy relies on hope. It relies on third party, uh, individuals or third party events to

00:25:57.540 really open up that path. If president Trump continues to deliver speeches like he did last

00:26:02.520 night, I believe he's going to be very tough to beat. Uh, in many ways, you could say that president

00:26:07.080 Trump is in a sense of running against himself right now because governor DeSantis is not yet known

00:26:12.660 on the national stage. Keep in mind that his, his aura, his, his figure is largely based on what

00:26:18.680 people see. They see a little bit of the news reports, but much of it is built on effectively

00:26:23.520 the sense of, could it be president Trump without the warts or president Trump without the shortcomings

00:26:27.980 at a certain point, he will be in the spotlight. And that might seem a little bit trivial. I'm not

00:26:33.240 saying that there'll be a, you know, the, the Gary Hart, um, uh, you know, nonsense or, or something

00:26:38.040 of that, but getting out there on the stage, when you start going toe to toe really starts to open

00:26:42.860 up some changes, you know, Michael made a really good point. The governor DeSantis is, does not want

00:26:47.340 to become the candidate of the establishment. And that's where I think is real tricky situation with

00:26:53.420 the Ken Griffins and the Schwartzmans and folks like that, because keep in mind, governor DeSantis

00:26:57.520 was always essentially the proverbial club for growth candidate. He very much is someone who would

00:27:02.820 oppose all tariffs, uh, on China and the much different position when it comes to trade some of the

00:27:07.800 international relations aspect that you don't have pop up as governor of Florida, that those then do

00:27:12.720 become front and center if you go to run. So I think in many ways right now, president Trump is

00:27:17.880 effectively running against himself, but hope is not a strategy and relying on third party

00:27:22.900 individual individuals or events to open up that lane for you. Um, that can be a real tough.

00:27:28.760 Why now? Why do you do it now, Jason?

00:27:31.720 Yeah. So I asked him that exact question, uh, a couple of things coming off the midterms. He said that he

00:27:36.500 wants to go and infuse some energy into the party. He said it because people know that he wants to run

00:27:41.160 again. He's been chomping at the bit. Uh, it's been no secret. I've been watching his rallies over

00:27:45.340 the last couple of months. He said, he's ready to get going now and start raising money and let's go

00:27:49.320 and put the focus back on what we did in our four years versus Joe Biden. And there's something to be

00:27:55.140 said there with 2020 and the way it played out that you have the powers to be, you have the social media

00:28:00.240 guys all come together and say, we're going to shut down the Hunter Biden story. We're going to

00:28:04.260 change the rules of the game and start kicking people off platforms and censoring. You have the

00:28:08.380 media, which I think it's a very fair usage of the word collusion with what they did in 2020.

00:28:14.260 Um, but the establishment, the insiders, the media elites kind of got the candidate they wanted in

00:28:18.740 Joe Biden. It's been a pretty disastrous last two years. And president Trump's point was Joe,

00:28:23.820 this is a perfect time to go and draw the contrast with Joe Biden. He is at a low point. Democrats do not

00:28:29.160 want to talk about Joe Biden. Let's go and take it to him. Hmm. And it certainly sounded like at least

00:28:35.080 at one point of the speech, he was trying to draw a contrast between himself and DeSantis as well,

00:28:40.340 talking about this is not the time for a conventional candidate. Um, let's pick it up there right after

00:28:45.460 this quick break, more with MBD and Jason Miller. As we go to break, I will let you hear that soundbite

00:28:50.500 saw three. Our country is in a horrible state. We're in grave trouble. This is not a task for a

00:28:59.340 politician or a conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage,

00:29:05.900 confidence, and the spirit of the American people. This is a job for grandmothers and construction

00:29:12.360 workers, firefighters, builders, teachers, doctors, and farmers who cannot stay quiet any longer. It's a

00:29:19.220 job for every aspiring young person and every hardworking parent, for every entrepreneur and

00:29:25.700 underappreciated police officer who is ready to shout for safety in America. The police are being treated

00:29:32.580 so badly. This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign. Hmm. All right, back to the guys in

00:29:42.260 one second. So MBD, one of the biggest problems DeSantis has is the fervent, deeply devoted Trump

00:29:55.660 base, right? The people Trump got off of their living room couches to vote who had not voted before

00:30:02.040 the Democrats who had never voted Republican before in their lives who crossed over because of him and,

00:30:09.600 you know, just finger in the wind. How did those people react to the speech and to the back and

00:30:16.480 forth with DeSantis yesterday? DeSantis, as we closed out the show, we told the audience about his

00:30:21.740 comments about one of the things I've learned. When you're leading, when you're getting things done,

00:30:25.920 you take incoming fire. That's just the nature of it. But look at the scoreboard. All right,

00:30:29.560 look at the scoreboard from last Tuesday night. Here's just a sampling of Trump's base.

00:30:34.120 USA! USA! USA! He has plenty of time to gain wisdom. Trump or death? Well, good morning,

00:30:44.100 patriots. Do you know what time it is? Do you know what time it is? I've been dying to say this.

00:30:50.940 Trump 2024, motherfuckers.

00:30:52.880 We have come this far because of President Trump, because of his tenacity and ambition

00:31:04.740 to not bow down to anyone, to not be politically correct, and to put Americans first.

00:31:10.480 Let's not forget who brought us here. This is disgusting what we are seeing. I'm not saying

00:31:15.700 you got to walk around and worship the man. I'm not in a cult and I'm not asking anybody to behave

00:31:20.120 that way. What I'm asking is to remember where you came from and how you got here.

00:31:27.080 I don't know. I wouldn't put them in the category of persuadable, MBD.

00:31:31.900 No, listen, listen. Populist leaders, like, don't just go away. Like, right? They die or they're

00:31:40.440 assassinated. I mean, that's they don't just disappear from the scene or fade away.

00:31:44.920 Or pass the baton.

00:31:47.540 Yeah. So, and listen, Donald Trump's strength is that he is more than a Republican, right? That he is.

00:31:56.440 And that's why his midterm choices can't replicate his magic, right? Like, it doesn't matter if you

00:32:04.140 think the 2020 election is stolen. It doesn't matter if you're willing to say wild stuff and provoke the

00:32:10.060 libs the way Trump is. Because, you know, Doug Mastriano doesn't have Melania as his wife,

00:32:17.120 doesn't have a billion dollars in a bank account, and doesn't have his name on buildings in almost

00:32:21.940 every city in the country and on golf courses around the world, right? There's a special magic

00:32:27.140 that Trump brings. And that's also why, you know, Republicans did better in the 2020

00:32:35.400 congressional races because Trump was on the top of the ticket, right? Basically, the political

00:32:42.300 dynamic for Trump has always been, I'm going to let Hillary Clinton unite the traditional Republican

00:32:47.900 party. And then I'm going to reach beyond that party and get all of these rural voters that

00:32:53.960 Republicans don't normally get, all of these populist voters that they don't get, all the people who feel

00:32:59.780 like they haven't been hurt on trade in the Rust Belt. And I'm going to add them to the Republican

00:33:05.560 party that Hillary has united. So that is his dynamic strength. And that that is why I still think he is

00:33:15.420 the odds on favorite to win the nomination, because he has this devoted base, and it's hard to see it

00:33:21.440 dropping below 30 or 35% in any of those early states. And in a multi candidate field, that's enough to

00:33:29.160 get runaway momentum. And the minute he gets runaway momentum again, the people you just featured in

00:33:35.680 that video, like their special bond with Donald Trump, is that nobody believed he could win, except

00:33:43.800 me, all of the smart people on television, all of the high paid pundits, the people at National Review,

00:33:50.840 the political consultants, they all doubted him, but I saw something in him. And in a sense, his victory

00:33:57.480 was theirs, right? It was showing, it was almost biblical, right? That the first shall be last,

00:34:03.360 and the last shall be first. And so this period of the next cycle, they're going to experience it as

00:34:11.800 Trump is being tested, and we're being tested, and I want to come out passing the test with my faith in

00:34:19.340 him. That's a dynamic that is, I would say, beyond normal politics. And it's going to be very difficult

00:34:27.900 for, as Donald said, a normal politician to challenge him, because frankly, Donald Trump is

00:34:33.080 playing a slightly different game, a deeper game. Yeah, and has a much longer, more intense

00:34:39.740 relationship with the GOP core base than any other person in America, than any other politician,

00:34:48.240 certainly, but than any other person in America. But now, what they're saying, Jason, is, well, he's old,

00:34:55.640 right? He's a lot older. He's 76 now. When he announced back in 15, he was 69. We've already dealt with a

00:35:02.780 very old president. It hasn't gone particularly well. He could only be a one-term president. So

00:35:08.780 we're going to go through all this, you know, and even in best case scenario for the Republicans,

00:35:12.400 they only set themselves up for one term, and then we're back to square zero for the second. You know,

00:35:18.260 like, these are the things, and DeSantis is young. He's new. He's shiny. He's only 44. He also has the

00:35:23.840 beautiful wife. He also fights the woke. He's combative. He doesn't tweet. You know, you can see how

00:35:30.600 the other thing looks so shiny, and why so many donors and non-Trump devotees are like,

00:35:37.100 let's just end the crazy drama and turn the page. Well, to which point, I would say that's why last

00:35:45.780 night's speech was so important, because obviously, they're the 10% never-Trumpers who are just never

00:35:51.500 going to find a way to supporting him. But you have that sizable block of the sometimes Trump supporters.

00:35:56.400 And when people say about turning the page, what they like hearing, they're the parts of last

00:36:01.980 night's speech about reversing American decline, fixing our economy, those messages. They remember

00:36:07.220 the gas being less than $2 a gallon, all the accomplishments, which were pretty powerful,

00:36:11.360 as you pointed out. There are a number of things from the speech last night that really went to

00:36:16.220 also speaking to that base of the always-Trumpers, the supporters. And it's not always just issues.

00:36:22.460 I think this is where pollsters and a lot of the pundits blow it when they say it's purely about

00:36:27.460 trade, or it's purely about taxation, or where do things stack up in rankings. A lot of it also is

00:36:32.780 the sentiment. It's the emotional connection with the candidate. Some of the rhetorical devices the

00:36:38.600 president used last night, where they're talking about, say, this isn't my campaign, this is our

00:36:43.000 campaign. I'm going to be your voice. The line that you highlighted earlier about it's not going to be

00:36:49.960 a conventional candidate. That applies to both the primary and the general election,

00:36:53.940 because people realize this is much more in 2016 of us against them, taking on Washington,

00:36:59.820 taking on the elites. Interestingly enough, there was a lot more content from the speech last night.

00:37:04.460 This was by design to come across as more anti-establishment and to remind people of his

00:37:09.560 street cred about taking on the insiders. Some of the biggest applause lines from last night,

00:37:14.680 believe it or not, term limits. It was literally a standing ovation line from his speech last night

00:37:21.120 as he was going through and highlighting a number of these other things, taking away

00:37:24.800 the ability for members of Congress to trade stocks and to make money off of that,

00:37:30.660 not allowing members of Congress to be lobbyists after done being in office.

00:37:35.760 These are things that maybe might not show up on a top pollster level, but makes people realize

00:37:40.360 this guy's going to fight for me. He's not going to fight for the fat cats. He's going to go and

00:37:44.020 fight for me. So yes, you have the folks who are motivated by specific issues. Other people,

00:37:49.740 it's more of an emotional connection. What I would say, Megan, just kind of comically,

00:37:53.740 it was good to see several people who had to consider friends in that highlight video.

00:37:57.980 Also good getter users, real Tina 40, Sean Farage, who also does the great Trump impressions.

00:38:04.040 The fact I knew about half the people on that highlight reel, I guess your guys did a great

00:38:09.340 job of putting that segment together.

00:38:10.620 Shameless plug, but why not? So let's talk a little bit about policy and news of the day.

00:38:17.200 One of the things that Trump commented on last night was the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal

00:38:22.080 and what's happening in Ukraine. And the latter is very much in the news today. Let me just play

00:38:27.620 you the soundbite and then we'll talk about the latest. This is not one.

00:38:30.020 The United States has been embarrassed, humiliated, and weakened for all to see. The disasters in

00:38:38.740 Afghanistan, perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, where we lost lives,

00:38:46.660 left Americans behind, and surrendered $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment anywhere in the

00:38:55.380 world. And Ukraine, which would have never happened if I were your president.

00:39:01.840 Hmm. Now today, of course, there's been plenty of back and forth over these two missiles that were

00:39:08.580 fired that have landed in Poland. And the question is, where did they come from? I guess it was maybe

00:39:16.500 one one. Originally, it was two. And now the Polish president says there's no proof that the missile

00:39:24.680 that landed in NATO territory, meaning Poland, was fired by Russia. No indication this was an

00:39:31.520 intentional attack on Poland. Joe Biden came out last night and said something which seemed pretty

00:39:38.440 responsible, saying it is unlikely that it was fired from Russia, but we'll see. Meanwhile, you've got

00:39:45.060 Zelensky jumping up and down, trying to blame the whole thing on Russia. And I think one of the top

00:39:51.940 UN officials said it was from Russia. And I mean, if it came from Russia and it was intentionally fired

00:39:58.760 into Poland, it's disastrous. I mean, it's very, very high stakes consequence because of the NATO

00:40:05.800 agreement that will defend any NATO country as though it's an attack on us. And Russian President

00:40:12.340 Vladimir Putin, his top guy, Dmitry Peskov, came out today praising Joe Biden for exercising some

00:40:18.180 caution on this, resisting the urge to turn what appears to have at best been a mistake or potentially

00:40:25.060 even just been a Ukrainian missile that was misfired into World War III. What do you make of the whole

00:40:30.580 thing, Michael? Well, I mean, the Ukrainian military has made mistakes previously in this war. There

00:40:39.180 were some adult Moldovans who were killed and some state outlets in Ukraine tried to blame that on

00:40:45.300 Russia. And it was a Ukrainian misfire. This may have been another misfire. But what's interesting is

00:40:53.200 you've seen in the last couple of weeks, Joe Biden start to make some, create some distance between

00:41:01.580 Ukraine himself and Zelensky in Ukraine. And it might be a sign that the United States is looking

00:41:08.580 at the disposition of Germany and France and maybe even of the incoming Congress and deciding that,

00:41:14.760 you know, now is a better time than later for Ukraine and NATO and Russia to get around a table

00:41:21.160 and begin talks to end this conflict because Ukraine's economy is destroyed. Russia is training

00:41:30.280 reinforcements. And, you know, the war may not get better for Ukraine. This may be a high tide mark

00:41:37.000 for Ukraine absent, you know, a tremendous amount of support from the West that is starting to trickle

00:41:43.880 to, you know, a few drops as far as more military aid from Europe itself. So we may see a move here,

00:41:54.000 I think, to, by the Biden administration, to try to end this conflict. And this may be another

00:41:59.680 little sign to Europe that, you know, you don't just want to give so many weapons to Ukraine when

00:42:06.660 they clearly, you know, don't know how to control all of them. Yeah. And then we're very brash in

00:42:13.480 their demands for international condemnation of Russia and its missile strike. I mean, they seem to

00:42:20.300 do everything within their power to propagandize anything that happens to tempt us into getting more

00:42:26.220 involved. Am I wrong, MBD? No, their media war has been very helped by the United States and by

00:42:35.320 outlets here. I mean, Ukraine has withdrawn the visas from top level New York Times and Washington

00:42:43.060 Post reporters over stories that weren't perfectly flattering to the Ukrainian cause. And the New York

00:42:50.300 Times and Washington Post don't make a loud protest about this. We actually, Ukraine is a little bit

00:42:56.200 of a black box as far as news goes. We don't know how many casualties they've suffered, what the

00:43:01.880 condition of their military is, what the condition of their domestic economy is, how much coercion they

00:43:07.820 have to exercise to keep fighting age men in the country. In one way, you can say that's a huge success

00:43:14.460 for Ukraine's military operation, that it has the media so under control inside and outside of its

00:43:21.600 country. But on the other side, it makes you question the wisdom of the United States is, you know, utterly

00:43:30.280 massive investments in this conflict. So where's it going? I mean, there's already even some reports

00:43:35.220 of weapons escaping Ukraine and heading into Western Europe to be controlled by gangs in Sweden. I mean,

00:43:42.940 not, we're not talking about high Mars or anything like that, but we're talking about guns that normally,

00:43:49.920 you know, aren't available in Western Europe or small munitions. And this has been a problem

00:43:56.800 of a weapons trade going from the Balkans in the past to gangs in Sweden and Norway.

00:44:06.340 We may see that get worse in the coming months.

00:44:10.100 Just to round out what I was saying, the Ukrainian foreign minister called for NATO members to convene an

00:44:15.080 immediate summit to bring tough measures against Moscow following the reports that Russian missiles had

00:44:20.880 landed in Poland. A collective response to Russian actions must be tough and principled and goes on from

00:44:26.740 there. You know, it's just like just, whoa, Nelly, let's take a seat. Turns out not to have even been a Russian

00:44:32.960 missile. And this whole thing underscores the dangers of our role over there right now. Jason, I got to ask you

00:44:38.740 quickly before we go. Alex Berenson is going to come on in a bit. We're going to talk about a lot of different

00:44:43.040 things. One of the things is what Twitter did to him with the cooperation of the White House.

00:44:49.180 And it turns out Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, you've got a social media platform.

00:44:54.900 What's happening over Twitter right now on the Elon, it's not going so well. There's actually talk of

00:44:59.760 potential bankruptcy declaration. They're losing something like $4 million a day. Advertisers have

00:45:06.640 fled on Moss because they're like, oh, it's a cesspool now with Elon running it. I know you're a competitor, but do

00:45:14.760 you think what's happening to him right now is fair?

00:45:18.620 Great question, because as someone who, yes, is a marketplace competitor, he might not view me yet as a

00:45:23.880 marketplace competitor, but I'm trying to get there. Yeah, I'm definitely working on it. But anyone who supports free

00:45:29.680 speech should be supportive of what Musk is trying to do. He's trying to bring some normalcy to Twitter.

00:45:33.980 Here's the thing that I think gets lost in the swirl is whether his being on Twitter, maybe a little bit

00:45:39.080 more than he needs to, or the news about the bumpy road to the merger, things like that. It all comes

00:45:44.900 down to the user experience. If people are excited about going to the platform, if there are functions

00:45:49.280 that they want to use, if there's content that they want to follow, then people are going to come.

00:45:53.980 But if there's nothing that's innovating, if there's nothing that's drawing people back in,

00:45:58.580 they're not going to come. That's why the daily active user count is as low as it is. And Musk is

00:46:03.220 saying he needs to quadruple it to get it to a strong place for monetizing. So I think that's

00:46:09.040 the bigger problem for Musk isn't so much that maybe they're trying to figure out the exact model

00:46:12.760 for monetizing. It's that Twitter hasn't innovated in the way that say Instagram or TikTok or some

00:46:18.940 other platforms have. It's basically the same user experience as it was 10 years ago. There really

00:46:25.140 isn't much to change. That's the problem. Musk is actually being an innovator is the thing that's

00:46:29.880 his strength. But it all goes back to the user experience.

00:46:33.860 It kind of reminds you that all this time, you know, Jack Dorsey with the big long beard and his

00:46:38.340 liberal cohorts over there were enjoying running this social media platform is just this liberal

00:46:44.060 bastion where they could talk with all their friends and promote the viewpoints they wanted and

00:46:47.820 forgot to run it as a business. Now you've got a guy in there who actually wants to make money

00:46:51.920 and you can feel his oh shit moment happening. Like, oh my God, what's been going on? It's going to be

00:46:59.060 fascinating to watch. You guys, thank you so much. This was the conversation we needed today. It's a

00:47:02.560 pleasure talking to you both. Thank you so much. All right. And as I mentioned, we're going to be

00:47:07.380 right back with Alex Berenson. So much to go over with him. He's got deep thoughts on FTX as the New York

00:47:12.160 Times guy who investigated Bernie Madoff, not to mention what Twitter did to him and the latest on the

00:47:18.300 reporting on vaccines and myocarditis. OK, don't forget. In the meantime, you can find the Megan

00:47:23.640 Kelly show live on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon east and the full video show

00:47:29.880 and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. We appreciate you

00:47:36.820 going over there and subscribing. That thing has been really, really strong. And it's thanks to all of

00:47:41.840 you. My next guest has been at the forefront of the entire covid saga, getting banned for nearly a

00:47:52.580 year from Twitter over his questions and reporting about issues like masking and vaccines. Now he says

00:47:59.760 he is planning to sue the people who tried to silence him, and he has a whole lot of information

00:48:04.480 on exactly who was behind it. We're going to get into that in detail and so much more. Alex Berenson is a

00:48:11.180 journalist. His sub stack is unreported truths. Alex, great to have you back. How are you?

00:48:17.260 I'm good. I'm glad to be on with you. All right. Let's before we get to the lawsuit,

00:48:21.120 and I'm very into this whole thing, what you discovered. Let's just deal with a couple of

00:48:25.140 the latest, quote, studies from the, quote, experts on covid related things like masking. Scientists

00:48:33.880 at Harvard and Mass General, the Boston University School and so on, have published a study

00:48:41.000 in the New England Journal of Medicine. I'm saying all the most fancy things that are supposed to

00:48:46.020 make us believe that it's real and we need to pay attention. And they have determined that masking

00:48:52.940 works. It works in schools in particular. And not only does it prevent covid spread, it actually

00:49:02.600 prevents racism as well. They actually said that it's going to decrease racism and it's going to

00:49:09.500 decrease covid. And what do you have that could make me question the renowned scientists from Harvard

00:49:15.700 and Mass General, the Boston University School and so on?

00:49:20.180 So so there's an interesting study. It didn't actually they didn't actually count the number

00:49:26.220 of kids wearing masks or the number of teachers wearing masks. What they did was they looked at

00:49:30.320 at schools that had mask mandates. OK. And which in Massachusetts, you know, certain schools dropped.

00:49:39.460 It was earlier this year they dropped mask mandates in, you know, in in in Boston, they didn't. And then

00:49:47.140 in a lot of the surrounding towns, they did. And so the idea was this was a sort of natural experiment

00:49:52.520 where what happened in the districts that dropped mask mandates, what happened in districts that didn't

00:49:58.240 drop mask mandates? And they found that, you know, months later during sort of the spring or early

00:50:04.640 summer Omicron surge, the districts that didn't drop mask mandates, Boston essentially, again, did better

00:50:12.620 in terms of the number of positive tests than the ones that did. So if you dropped your mask mandate

00:50:18.780 in February, you had more positive Omicron tests

00:50:23.420 in in in in June.

00:50:27.760 So, again, the most important thing to understand about the study is they didn't actually count who was wearing masks.

00:50:34.180 So there's no way of knowing, you know, it's Boston, right?

00:50:37.800 Like it may have been that, you know, that in the inner city schools in Boston, kids were less likely to wear masks

00:50:43.320 than in the sort of fancier districts around Boston with or without a mask mandate, right?

00:50:48.260 Mask mandates might not have actually changed masking behavior in any way.

00:50:52.800 I mean, I know having, you know, three little kids that mask men, you know, who last year and the year before,

00:51:00.720 since we live in the Northeast, were mandated to wear masks in school that by, you know,

00:51:05.960 certainly by the middle of last year, everyone had their masks around their chins anyway.

00:51:09.920 So it didn't it didn't really matter. So I think that's probably the best critique of this study is that

00:51:16.940 you're not you're not actually you don't have any idea whether having the mandate or not actually changes

00:51:22.640 masking behavior. Here's what I will tell you. Masks are useless. OK, we have we have a tremendous amount

00:51:29.840 of evidence that shows that certainly that the kind of surgical masks or cloth masks that kids wear,

00:51:37.680 OK, are completely useless against respiratory viruses. That's covid. That's the flu.

00:51:44.300 You know, they they don't do anything and kids don't wear them properly anyway. So.

00:51:49.620 So. So. So this and there's and there's been very good studies, for example, in in Spain,

00:51:57.120 there was a there was a paper done with comparing, I think, five year olds and six year olds and the six

00:52:03.320 year olds were supposed to wear masks and the five year olds didn't have to wear masks at all.

00:52:07.260 And there was no difference in the rate of infection between the five year olds and the six year olds.

00:52:12.060 This is a this is from several months ago. And there's there's been there was a very good

00:52:17.140 randomized controlled trial of people wearing masks versus not wearing masks. This is adults.

00:52:22.840 This is this was sort of the study that really should have put this to bed.

00:52:25.960 And it's now two years old, showing that that, again, surgical masks didn't do anything.

00:52:31.400 This was in Denmark. It was several thousand people.

00:52:34.840 There's just we just know that masks don't do anything.

00:52:39.540 So maybe if you wear an N95, maybe if you wear it properly and you have the discipline to wear it all the time

00:52:44.560 and you change it every six hours so it doesn't get too damp and you, you know,

00:52:49.400 really stick it around your face tightly, even then there's still some viral particles that are

00:52:56.600 going to get through. But but these masks and, you know, less less effective masks and worn by

00:53:03.040 children don't do anything. So so this study doesn't change that reality.

00:53:09.120 It's just a nice artifact if you for some reason like, you know, putting kids in masks that you can use.

00:53:16.420 OK, but but the reality is we have a tremendous amount of evidence on the other side here.

00:53:22.240 And so this study has to be wrong, basically, because because there's so much other evidence

00:53:28.160 that contradicts it. So the question is, why is it wrong?

00:53:31.360 And the answer probably is they didn't actually check masks.

00:53:36.140 They just check mask mandates.

00:53:38.160 It was just observational, which the left has said over and over.

00:53:41.520 Well, that can't be the standard on the studies that show that the masks don't work.

00:53:45.720 They're the first ones to say, oh, observational. You have to dismiss it.

00:53:49.340 And now that this one's observational, it says what they want.

00:53:51.740 They're they're touting it in The New York Times like it's the Bible revisited.

00:53:55.240 And it will be used by these zealots running some of these schools to mask up our kids.

00:54:00.900 I swear this will never happen to my children again.

00:54:03.220 They will not be putting masks on their faces. It's just too infuriating.

00:54:07.120 All right. Let's move on to NBC now reporting that there may be a link between myocarditis

00:54:16.160 and vaccines. And there could be some but very, very rare and very, very unlikely

00:54:22.320 myocarditis lasting damage from all of this.

00:54:26.800 Here's what they say.

00:54:27.700 The vast majority of the cases occur in young men, 16 to 24, citing the CDC.

00:54:33.420 Then they say.

00:54:35.580 Hold on, I want to get my numbers.

00:54:37.600 A study by Canadian researchers published in the Journal of the American College of

00:54:40.800 Cardiology found that men younger than 40 who got the Moderna vaccine had the highest

00:54:45.520 risk of heart issues, usually within 21 days after the second dose.

00:54:50.020 That study, too, was observational.

00:54:51.860 Um, they said the scientists found incidents of myocarditis following a booster dose of

00:54:57.200 Pfizer or Moderna were higher than after the first dose, but still lower than after the

00:55:02.760 second, concluding that it's that second dose that really could potentially endanger you.

00:55:07.960 According to a vaccine expert at Kaiser Permanente, the vaccine related illness is usually

00:55:14.700 milder than the viral type.

00:55:17.920 Like if you just get myocarditis not related to a vaccine.

00:55:21.180 And most people with the condition make a full recovery, like how they know that two

00:55:28.820 years into this vaccine regimen.

00:55:31.700 I don't know.

00:55:32.760 I have they tested all of these hearts fully in an ongoing basis and they can tell that

00:55:37.060 they're 100 percent back to normal.

00:55:38.540 Maybe they can.

00:55:39.300 I don't know.

00:55:40.340 Um, but they are basically acknowledging that there's somewhat of a risk and suggesting that

00:55:46.580 it's really only after that second dose, um, and that the myocarditis you would get from

00:55:51.500 a vaccine will be far less damaging potentially than the myocarditis you would get from just

00:55:58.400 a regular infection.

00:55:59.540 What do you make of it?

00:56:02.280 So, uh, so this is a complicated issue on a couple of levels.

00:56:06.220 Uh, look, you can get myocarditis after COVID or the flu or any other viral infection.

00:56:12.060 Um, it's probably pretty rare.

00:56:15.300 Uh, it's certainly very rare in, you know, in young men, uh, to, to, to wind up with myocarditis.

00:56:22.600 Look, there's a broader issue.

00:56:24.340 And, and the broader issue is this.

00:56:27.080 The vaccines definitely cause myocarditis in some young men and young women, by the way,

00:56:32.420 or in young men, but also in young women.

00:56:34.740 But the broader issue is that the, the benefit profile of the vaccines for anybody healthy

00:56:41.600 under 50, certainly under 30 is not there.

00:56:45.000 Okay.

00:56:45.800 And the reason for that is that if you're a reasonably healthy person, I don't mean that

00:56:50.180 you're like a triathlete or something.

00:56:51.440 I just mean, you're not morbidly obese.

00:56:53.380 You're not, you know, you don't have cancer, you know, some terrible, uh, chromosomal condition.

00:56:58.900 If you're, if you're a reasonably healthy person under 30, uh, really all the way up

00:57:04.560 to 50, but let's, let's say 30 and under for, for these purposes, you're not going to

00:57:09.140 get notably sick from COVID.

00:57:11.280 And you're certainly not going to get notably sick from Omicron, right?

00:57:14.700 You, you probably aren't even going to know you have it unless you test for it.

00:57:18.940 Under those circumstances, there's no reasonable way to force people or even encourage people

00:57:25.640 to take this vaccine, which isn't a vaccine at all because it doesn't work for more than

00:57:29.660 a couple of months.

00:57:31.260 Okay.

00:57:31.540 And, and against Omicron doesn't really appear to work at all.

00:57:35.380 So the risk benefit on these quote unquote vaccines for anybody under 30, 40, 50, who's

00:57:43.620 reasonably healthy is not there.

00:57:45.700 And that is what many other countries, not, you know, sort of like poor countries that don't

00:57:53.140 have a decent, you know, regulatory apparatus.

00:57:56.040 I'm talking about wealthy countries in Europe and Australia and, and other places in the

00:58:01.020 world have moved away from recommending these vaccines at all for people under 50.

00:58:06.980 Okay.

00:58:07.360 They're, they're not recommending the boosters in Australia for people under 50.

00:58:11.100 They're not recommending the boosters in Australia or I'm sorry, in Norway for people under 65

00:58:16.640 with some exceptions.

00:58:18.420 And there's other countries too.

00:58:20.820 Okay.

00:58:21.320 They countries all over the world have realized that for anybody reasonably healthy, who's not

00:58:27.280 elderly, these vaccines don't make a lot of sense.

00:58:30.260 And myocarditis is just one aspect of this.

00:58:33.440 And we, I don't know why I assume it's political.

00:58:37.820 I assume it's because the Biden administration is so invested in this and we've spent so much

00:58:42.220 money on these and, you know, and Pfizer is an American company.

00:58:45.280 Moderna is an American company.

00:58:46.360 We are not being honest about where we now stand on this.

00:58:51.480 It's, um, it's disturbing to me that this is how they begin the article of the hundreds

00:58:55.600 of millions of COVID vaccine doses given in the U S since late 2020, there have been

00:58:59.860 around 1000 reports of vaccine related myocarditis or pericarditis in children under 18, primarily

00:59:06.820 young males, according to the CDC.

00:59:09.000 I don't believe that.

00:59:10.480 I don't, there is no way there were only 1000 reports of vaccine related myocarditis.

00:59:16.080 Which I understand is that's, they're lying.

00:59:18.420 Okay.

00:59:18.580 It's not hundreds of millions of doses given to people under 18.

00:59:21.920 They're, they're taking the whole sample of everybody up to, you know, age 110 who got

00:59:28.720 the vaccine, who got the shots and then saying of people under 18, it's a thousand.

00:59:34.280 Okay.

00:59:34.920 Maybe, you know, there, I don't know what the exact number of doses given to people under

00:59:39.000 18 is, but it's not in the hundreds of millions.

00:59:42.260 Okay.

00:59:42.460 So these are the games that, you know, the NBC, that the New York times, that the Washington

00:59:48.000 post at CNN, certainly they're all playing these games.

00:59:51.280 They will not acknowledge what the real denominator is.

00:59:54.260 They will not acknowledge that probably a lot of cases are not, you know, going reported.

01:00:00.060 They just won't tell the truth.

01:00:02.580 And it is, it is, it has been devastating to public health and trust in public health

01:00:07.000 in this country.

01:00:07.760 That's right.

01:00:08.220 And that's the thing.

01:00:09.060 There are other vaccines out there that have a much better safety profile and they are destroying

01:00:13.340 trust in those.

01:00:14.920 That's right.

01:00:15.460 So they, they go on to quote in this piece, um, uh, a doctor, Dr. Leslie Cooper, the chair

01:00:22.860 of the department of cardiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, uh, Cooper

01:00:27.240 joined an expert advisory panel formed by Moderna to monitor its COVID vaccine safety.

01:00:31.540 It is unknown how many people with vaccine associated myocarditis will experience cardiac

01:00:36.980 scarring, said Cooper, noting that about 20% of people with myocarditis linked to viruses

01:00:43.400 go on to experience heart failure.

01:00:46.700 It could be 2%.

01:00:48.200 It could be 0%.

01:00:49.340 It could be 20%.

01:00:50.380 He said, referring to the percentage of people with vaccine associated myocarditis who could

01:00:54.540 experience long-term heart consequences.

01:00:57.480 We don't know the answer.

01:00:58.680 So this is the guy they're using to try to defend their vaccine, but he's acknowledging

01:01:02.680 that it could be 20% or more.

01:01:05.380 They don't know who go on to experience long-term heart consequences, including cardiac scarring.

01:01:12.500 Dr. Vinay Prasad interviewed a similar doctor.

01:01:16.020 I ran this on my show a couple weeks ago, acknowledging that the, the, the pictures of the hearts and

01:01:21.840 the children who develop myocarditis months and months after would be very troubling to

01:01:27.500 any parent.

01:01:28.340 So we're supposed to shrug our shoulders and be like, okay, so I'm risking cardiac scarring

01:01:32.780 and myocarditis and up to what?

01:01:34.780 20% more of our children for this negligible benefit, as you point out.

01:01:40.120 And yet they continue to tout the vaccine.

01:01:43.900 The CDC still recommends that all the children get it and millions and millions of parents

01:01:48.800 are opting for this.

01:01:51.240 Well, yes, but most parents, the vast majority of parents of young children are not, and the

01:01:56.600 majority of children, parents of children under 11 or not.

01:01:59.080 But I just want to come, I just want to keep coming back to this, Megan, that we are now

01:02:02.560 the outlier.

01:02:03.160 Okay.

01:02:03.880 It's not, it's not, you know, some like red state that, you know, that the rest of the

01:02:09.040 world and, you know, in France and in, you know, Norway, Denmark, Germany, all these other

01:02:16.060 countries, they're so smart and we're so dumb.

01:02:18.040 Somebody in, you know, in, in, in Georgia or whatever is too stupid.

01:02:21.860 It's the other way around.

01:02:23.380 The blue states are the outliers increasingly on this issue.

01:02:27.660 Most of the, you know, sort of advanced countries that use the mRNAs are moving away or have

01:02:34.660 already moved away from recommending them, certainly for children, for teens.

01:02:39.920 And as I'm telling you, up to 30, in some cases up to 50, and in the case of Norway, up

01:02:44.720 to 65 for people who are healthy.

01:02:47.900 And so that's what people need to understand.

01:02:50.300 They are, they are being essentially lied to by places that, that are telling them that

01:02:56.000 this is the norm now.

01:02:57.060 It is not the norm now.

01:02:59.540 Now, I had this discussion with a friend of mine who's a doctor.

01:03:02.480 She's not my doctor.

01:03:03.140 She's just my friend who happens to be a doctor and she's a great anesthesiologist.

01:03:06.740 And she was in the midst, you know, if you have, if you arrest in the hospital and you

01:03:11.000 needed to be resuscitated, they call the anesthesiologist.

01:03:13.980 It's a person who's really responsible for saving your life.

01:03:16.460 Same thing during a surgery, of course.

01:03:19.720 She was talking about the number of people in her hospital who died during the peak of the

01:03:25.320 COVID spreading.

01:03:27.320 And she was saying, MK, the ones who did not have the vaccine, like the ones who were dying

01:03:33.080 to a person had not gotten vaccinated.

01:03:35.820 And that was anecdotal.

01:03:37.000 But that was her observation about why it is worth getting vaccines and boosters and so on.

01:03:41.600 And I have heard you say, and I heard RLK Jr., who came on the show a couple of times, say

01:03:46.360 that that you believe and forgive me if I'm not phrasing it right, but that the vaccines

01:03:50.720 are not preventing increased death or severe illness, that they're not preventing severe

01:03:59.320 illness or death from happening.

01:04:00.700 And so I'd love to know what you think about that, because I just pulled, just to set the

01:04:05.760 record from the CDC side, they say that during Omicron, for example, COVID-19 associated hospitalization

01:04:15.900 rates increased for all adults, regardless of vaccination status, but that the rates were

01:04:21.220 12 times higher among adults who were unvaccinated compared to those who had received a booster or

01:04:29.360 additional doses.

01:04:30.260 And in other words, if you have no vaccination in you at all, not even one shot, you have

01:04:34.700 a much better chance of 12 times more likely chance of winding up in the hospital.

01:04:39.240 So do you seem to contest that?

01:04:41.740 Yes.

01:04:43.540 So so this is very complicated epidemiologically for a number of reasons.

01:04:50.060 And and I don't want to I don't want to sort of go into too much detail.

01:04:54.400 I don't want to bore you too much.

01:04:56.000 But let me just let me just point two things out.

01:04:58.660 OK, there's a period of time and certainly last year, there was a period of time when

01:05:03.900 the vaccines actually worked as promised.

01:05:07.000 OK, it was a short period of time.

01:05:08.860 It was in the spring and the summer of 2021.

01:05:12.840 People who had been vaccinated had very high level of antibodies and were very unlikely to

01:05:17.380 get infected.

01:05:18.440 OK, not just not just forget the severe illness part for a second.

01:05:22.540 OK, they were unlikely to get infected.

01:05:25.660 And you may remember that there was talk about, you know, we're really going to eliminate

01:05:30.060 covid.

01:05:30.880 We it's going to I mean, I got none other than Anthony Fauci in in in May of 2021 said, I

01:05:38.220 think we can eliminate this illness basically in the United States.

01:05:41.960 OK, there may still be a haze here and there, but we're going to eliminate it.

01:05:45.940 OK, that was wrong.

01:05:47.980 That was I don't think anybody would disagree.

01:05:50.100 That was wrong.

01:05:51.140 The vaccines failed.

01:05:52.620 They created to they created our bodies sort of rejected this very, very high level of

01:05:58.380 antibodies they created.

01:05:59.480 We cleared out the antibodies.

01:06:01.500 Once that happened, people were open to infection.

01:06:04.280 OK, and there's some evidence that in the case of Omicron, you're actually more likely to

01:06:08.180 be infected if you've been vaccinated than not.

01:06:10.020 That I've seen that, too.

01:06:11.600 So the question then became the secondary issue, an important issue, but a secondary

01:06:16.460 issue, even if the vaccine stopped working against infection and transmission, as they

01:06:22.120 did, as everyone agrees they did, do they still prevent severe disease and death?

01:06:26.960 OK, and this is a very, very complicated question scientifically.

01:06:32.880 And the reason there's a half dozen reasons.

01:06:35.780 But maybe the most important reason is that people who are vaccinated tend to be healthier

01:06:42.160 than people who are not vaccinated.

01:06:44.420 They have better access to health care.

01:06:46.640 Maybe they pay more attention to their health.

01:06:49.180 They they in the case of covid, maybe they took more lockdown measures.

01:06:54.140 So they, for a period of time, were may have been actually less likely to get infected aside

01:07:00.200 from from the vaccine.

01:07:02.840 And they were healthier at baseline.

01:07:05.160 And then there's this very small group of people, Megan, who can't be vaccinated at all,

01:07:10.080 essentially because they're too close to death.

01:07:12.040 OK, they're too sick.

01:07:13.580 Doctors aren't going to do it.

01:07:14.880 Their family members don't care.

01:07:16.620 They don't care.

01:07:17.280 So when you factor out those groups, it gets much, much harder to see a benefit of vaccination

01:07:27.480 in in stopping severe disease and death.

01:07:31.840 OK, so if the vaccines are stopping you from getting infected, they're definitely stopping

01:07:37.240 severe disease and death, because if you're not infected, you can't progress to severe disease

01:07:40.680 or death.

01:07:41.260 Once they fail on that, it's much harder to make the case cleanly that they stop severe

01:07:48.520 disease and death.

01:07:49.480 And so what happened was in the fall of last year, we boosted people.

01:07:53.360 But what happened when we boosted people?

01:07:55.100 We briefly again protected them from infection.

01:07:58.980 We gave them a lot more antibodies again.

01:08:01.700 And so that started the cycle again, where there was this group of people who was temporarily

01:08:06.680 protected from infection and thus from severe disease and death.

01:08:09.900 So what I'm telling you is that when the CDC says that, you must understand that the case

01:08:17.560 is much, much more complicated than most people who understand this will admit.

01:08:24.540 They won't admit the truth about this.

01:08:26.580 And when I say to you that 90% plus of people in Britain and Australia and places where they

01:08:33.380 disclose the data accurately are vaccinated, who are dying of COVID, I am telling you the truth.

01:08:39.160 You can find those numbers for yourself.

01:08:41.740 OK, and here's the other thing.

01:08:44.000 We are now almost two years into this vaccination campaign.

01:08:47.820 In places in the United States, in Europe, people are still dying of COVID with COVID.

01:08:55.100 There's still a lot of mortality related to COVID.

01:08:58.680 Again, it's nearly all in vaccinated people.

01:09:01.540 It's not because there's some huge group of people in Denmark who love Donald Trump and

01:09:05.800 won't get vaccinated.

01:09:07.000 It's because the vaccines don't work nearly as well if they work at all at this point,

01:09:13.040 as the CDC and other people are saying.

01:09:15.520 It's amazing we don't have a cure.

01:09:16.700 Like all that effort, all Operation Warp Speed.

01:09:19.440 Like, why couldn't we have focused on a cure?

01:09:21.900 Nature is hard.

01:09:23.480 That's why nature...

01:09:24.620 Like, we don't have a cure for the flu.

01:09:26.360 The flu's been around forever.

01:09:27.760 This isn't...

01:09:28.980 The lie wasn't like...

01:09:30.260 The mistake wasn't, hey, we weren't good enough to fix this.

01:09:33.980 The mistake was lying about what we could do.

01:09:37.860 Gosh.

01:09:39.100 Meanwhile, it's important to stay fit, not let yourself get obese.

01:09:44.920 You know, try not to smoke.

01:09:46.320 Like, there are things that you can do to reduce your risk.

01:09:49.760 And of course, back to the racism thing, this is really kind of what they say, that

01:09:53.400 certain populations had an increased death rate, and that doesn't take into account their

01:09:58.300 lifestyle.

01:09:59.180 How did they...

01:09:59.680 Right?

01:09:59.920 So it's like none of this stuff, if it doesn't fit the narrative, it gets ignored.

01:10:03.860 All right, let me move on, because before we leave COVID, I wanted to ask you about a

01:10:06.820 column you had posted on your sub stack on November 4th.

01:10:09.860 Very interesting.

01:10:10.720 Veteran medical examiner who reviewed 4,000 COVID deaths explains how many were really

01:10:18.120 from COVID.

01:10:19.820 How many were actually from COVID?

01:10:21.400 That's been the big question, right?

01:10:22.780 Like, so many deaths get chalked up as a COVID death from COVID as opposed to with COVID.

01:10:28.220 And the CDC didn't care to distinguish between those two things at all.

01:10:32.020 They seemed to weirdly want to just ratchet up the numbers.

01:10:34.620 And this column takes a deep dive into why some people do want to ratchet up the numbers

01:10:40.420 and what this one intrepid medical examiner did and what he found.

01:10:45.120 Can you tell us about Brian Peterson?

01:10:49.280 Sure.

01:10:50.000 So Brian Peterson, really interesting guy.

01:10:52.240 He's conducted almost 12,000 autopsies.

01:10:55.840 You know, medical examinations are his life.

01:10:59.920 He's been doing this for close to 40 years.

01:11:01.960 Um, so he decided when COVID hit, uh, he, he was the medical examiner for Milwaukee that

01:11:08.360 he was going to personally review every case before, you know, he put COVID on the death

01:11:12.940 certificate.

01:11:13.420 Um, now these were not all autopsies for the most part, they were, uh, they were medical

01:11:17.940 records reviews and, you know, cause of the volume of them, he wasn't necessarily looking

01:11:21.280 at every document, but he, but he's very skilled and experienced.

01:11:24.480 And what he found was of the 4,000 cases he reviewed about 20% in his mind had essentially

01:11:31.160 no connection, uh, to COVID at all.

01:11:33.560 And then there was another 20% of people who were really at death's door, essentially at

01:11:38.920 hospice or, you know, their last days and they got COVID and maybe COVID pushed them over

01:11:43.680 the edge.

01:11:44.260 And then the other 60%, he would classify those as really COVID deaths.

01:11:50.160 Meaning, meaning this person was not imminently in danger of death and they got COVID, he

01:11:56.360 or she got COVID and he or she died.

01:11:58.300 But what was fascinating to me was I said to him about those 60%, um, how many of those

01:12:04.200 people were healthy?

01:12:05.260 And he said, essentially none.

01:12:06.900 And I pushed him on that.

01:12:08.140 I said, I said, really, how many, you know, you reviewed 4,000 cases.

01:12:11.740 You're telling me 60% of those, that's about 2,500 people, um, uh, died, you know, from

01:12:17.680 COVID, he said, he said, dozens, meaning, you know, 25 or, or, or 50 maybe were, you

01:12:26.460 know, under, let's say 60 and reasonably healthy people.

01:12:30.660 And I said, do you remember any of those cases?

01:12:32.620 He said, well, there was, and you can read all about this, by the way, on the unreported

01:12:37.020 true substack, which is my substack.

01:12:38.820 Um, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's certainly worth taking a look at, I think, you know, if

01:12:42.640 you're interested in the topic at all, he said, he said, you know, there was one teenager

01:12:46.520 I remember, I thought to myself, a teenager, that's terrible.

01:12:49.020 And then he said, well, he had leukemia, this teenager.

01:12:52.460 I thought, he had leukemia?

01:12:53.860 And he said, well, yes, but you know, people with leukemia, uh, young people with leukemia,

01:12:58.620 it's treatable.

01:12:59.420 And, and, and, and in my mind, this, this young man was being properly treated and might

01:13:05.020 not have died at all if he hadn't gotten COVID.

01:13:07.320 So that was the one case of the 4,000 that he reviewed that really jumped out at him, a

01:13:12.700 young man with leukemia.

01:13:13.820 And again, this just comes back to this issue, COVID targeted, really unhealthy people, as

01:13:19.660 you say, it was people who were, you know, obese, people who, uh, you know, might, might

01:13:25.500 have had diabetes.

01:13:26.800 It was, you know, we have a lot of, unfortunately unhealthy people in the United States.

01:13:31.300 And instead of telling the truth and saying to people, Hey, you know what?

01:13:34.440 A little exercise might be good for you.

01:13:36.380 Um, we, we have, you know, we, we, we try to medicalize everything we, you know, we,

01:13:42.220 we spend enormous amounts of money, whether it's on, on, uh, vaccines on treatments.

01:13:47.680 We know, and we never say to people, Hey, you know what?

01:13:49.820 It might be simpler if you could, if you could try to lose 10 pounds like that, that would

01:13:53.380 be a good place to start.

01:13:54.860 Um, one last point on this, by the way.

01:13:56.780 So, so Brian Peterson, his, his number is 60%, 60% of the deaths from COVID, you know, reported

01:14:05.500 with, or from COVID were actually from COVID.

01:14:08.440 Amazingly, a Finnish medical examiner who I believe reviewed every death in Finland, which

01:14:14.500 is a, you know, in, uh, on the order of Milwaukee is, I think it was like six or 7,000 gave the

01:14:19.980 exact same estimate.

01:14:22.020 60% of the deaths in Finland that were reported as COVID were actually COVID.

01:14:26.780 So, so maybe worldwide, we're overstating the number of deaths by 40%.

01:14:32.060 I mean, which, which by the way, still would mean that a lot of people died from COVID,

01:14:36.780 but it would mean that instead of a million point, you know, 1.1 million people dying over

01:14:40.520 the last two and a half years, maybe the number is really 650 or 700,000.

01:14:45.260 And look, that's still a big number, but it's also a big difference.

01:14:49.080 Well, and the other thing is Brian Peterson got forced out of the Milwaukee County's coroner's

01:14:53.180 office, forced to resign.

01:14:54.560 And one of the reasons what he was doing was so controversial, yes, it undermined the

01:14:58.160 narrative, but also your piece, and people should read it for themselves, go to the sub

01:15:01.620 stack, um, is that the Biden administration's American rescue plan you point out in the piece

01:15:07.800 included government reimbursements of up to $9,000 for funeral expenses for COVID deaths.

01:15:14.880 And so you, you, it was to your advantage to have your relative's death deemed a COVID death because

01:15:23.200 the feds would pay the funeral costs.

01:15:25.980 So people were getting upset that this medical examiner was overruling what a doctor in the

01:15:32.300 hospital had said, Oh, it died from COVID.

01:15:33.940 And he was like, actually, this wasn't from COVID because it did change their financial outlook.

01:15:38.600 I mean, just another one of the weird perversions of how the feds have handled this thing from the

01:15:43.520 start.

01:15:43.900 All right.

01:15:44.040 Let me squeeze in a quick, yeah, I'm really glad you pointed that out because that, that

01:15:47.340 was a big part of this.

01:15:48.560 And, you know, it's the, the, the federal government on that slide, you could see they've spent more

01:15:52.660 than $2 billion on this program.

01:15:54.060 This has not been a small program.

01:15:56.160 Several hundred thousand people have gotten money from this program.

01:15:59.220 And, you know, you can look, the hospitals made more money if they were treating a COVID

01:16:03.980 patient.

01:16:05.320 And, and, you know, if you're a family member, you know, it was a way to get your funeral paid

01:16:10.240 for, by the way, it was never clear to me.

01:16:12.080 It remains unclear to me why somebody dying from COVID should be privileged this way.

01:16:17.540 But it certainly did help push the numbers up.

01:16:21.540 Right.

01:16:21.720 Like why, why didn't the government help people dying in other ways with their funeral expenses?

01:16:25.480 It's not like the government, unless the government knows that it caused COVID.

01:16:28.500 Maybe the government's got some information about what happened in the Wuhan lab.

01:16:32.780 Now we're in a different territory legally.

01:16:34.380 All right.

01:16:34.560 Standby quick break.

01:16:35.840 So much more to get to with Alex, including his discoveries about Scott Gottlieb, Twitter

01:16:41.120 and the White House.

01:16:45.240 Okay.

01:16:45.760 So let's start with your lawsuit.

01:16:47.880 You, you actually filed against Twitter, right?

01:16:50.700 And you won that one.

01:16:51.620 I'm just trying to get my legal procedure straight.

01:16:53.900 And, but now you, you are, you've discovered a lot since the Twitter ban that kept you off

01:16:59.520 Twitter for a year.

01:17:00.780 There you are back on video.

01:17:01.760 Yay.

01:17:02.360 Um, you've discovered a lot about who else had their hand in silencing you.

01:17:07.380 And it's fascinating.

01:17:09.560 Tell us.

01:17:10.040 So, so yeah, so last year in, uh, in August, 2021, uh, Twitter banned me, um, and that followed,

01:17:17.860 uh, you know, I, I've been speaking out against, uh, the mRNA vaccines.

01:17:23.660 I always distinguish that cause I, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't speaking out against all

01:17:27.820 vaccines or even necessarily all COVID vaccines, but you know, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines

01:17:32.300 that we used in the U S I thought there were issues about whether myocarditis or other stuff.

01:17:37.480 And, uh, you may recall that in, uh, July of 2021, president Biden said, uh, that, you

01:17:44.120 know, social media platforms allowed debate about the vaccines.

01:17:46.840 They were quote unquote killing people shortly after that, uh, Twitter began to, uh, we have

01:17:52.040 that, Alex, let me just play that for the audience.

01:17:53.800 Let me play that so that they, let me play this so people can hear that themselves.

01:17:57.240 Sot 12 quickly.

01:17:59.680 What's your message to platforms like Facebook?

01:18:04.500 They're killing people.

01:18:06.680 I mean, it really felt, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated and that's

01:18:13.300 and they're killing people.

01:18:15.860 Keep going.

01:18:18.260 So that, so that was, that was a lie.

01:18:19.940 Um, it was a lie then it's, it's a lie now, again, the vast majority of people, uh, who

01:18:26.780 die of COVID now are vaccinated.

01:18:30.160 Um, uh, back then that was, that was not necessarily true, but, uh, but there was evidence that the

01:18:37.180 vaccines were failing, even as he said that.

01:18:39.360 Okay.

01:18:40.580 So, so Twitter banned me and I had had, I was in a somewhat unique position, uh, because

01:18:47.260 Twitter, I'd been in touch with an executive at Twitter who's now left, who was said to

01:18:52.680 me, be over email.

01:18:54.040 Basically, we like what you're doing.

01:18:55.480 We like the fact that you're a journalist, that you're raising questions about COVID and

01:19:00.220 the countermeasures and the lockdowns and the school closings.

01:19:03.020 And then when the vaccines came out, I said, look, I, I think I'm going to probably have

01:19:06.880 some questions about this too.

01:19:08.220 I didn't realize how ultimately, you know, concerned I would become.

01:19:13.080 And he said, you know, that's great.

01:19:15.160 We, you know, we think we were sort of happy to have some debate.

01:19:20.060 And so when they kicked me off, uh, I thought, look, I, I have a plausible claim here, um, both

01:19:26.920 that they, you know, suppress my free speech rights and that they breached their contract

01:19:30.980 with me, which was a claim that other people might've had a harder time making.

01:19:34.860 But I had these specific representations from somebody.

01:19:39.000 So in December of 2021, uh, my lawyer, a guy named James Lawrence, uh, who's in North Carolina

01:19:45.200 is a really nice guy.

01:19:46.340 And I, we sued, uh, in, in California, which is where Twitter is based, the Northern district

01:19:51.840 of California, San Francisco, um, uh, in federal court.

01:19:55.680 And we did that because, you know, that's where your agreement with Twitter says you have

01:20:00.220 to sue.

01:20:00.880 And we, we thought we had a real case and we didn't want to get bogged down.

01:20:04.680 And fighting over where it was going to be heard.

01:20:06.760 We just figured, let's go forward there.

01:20:09.020 And we got a judge named a Clinton judge, not a Trump or a Bush appointee named William

01:20:14.420 Alsop, who, who heard our arguments and who heard Twitter's arguments.

01:20:19.040 And basically Twitter's arguments are these social media companies believe they have basically

01:20:23.480 complete protection to do whatever they like.

01:20:26.180 Doesn't matter what they say publicly.

01:20:27.840 Doesn't matter what the terms of their contract are.

01:20:29.680 There's something called section two 30 of the communications decency act, which was,

01:20:33.900 uh, passed in 1996 and has basically been, uh, to my mind, misinterpreted by, um, many

01:20:40.420 judges, um, to give these companies complete protection.

01:20:44.580 If they want to ban users, um, uh, they can do whatever they will like is how this law has

01:20:50.200 been interpreted.

01:20:50.740 And so they, uh, to my mind, Twitter's lawyers were overconfident, Twitter was overconfident

01:20:56.080 in April of 2022, judge Alsop ruled that I did have a viable claim on breach of contract

01:21:04.080 that he was going to allow this lawsuit to move forward.

01:21:06.700 Well, um, as, as you surely know, uh, big companies don't like discovery.

01:21:12.780 They don't like being sued.

01:21:14.620 Uh, and so, um, uh, we engaged in some settlement discussions and it was very, very important

01:21:22.340 to me that I get the discovery and discovery is a legal term, meaning basically that in

01:21:29.020 a civil lawsuit, the person you're suing has to provide you with relevant documentation.

01:21:34.880 So if I'm suing Twitter and I'm saying, you know, I believe that, uh, that you were acting

01:21:39.700 on behalf of the Biden white house, or, you know, this is, this is why you breached your

01:21:43.960 contract with me.

01:21:44.740 They've got to provide those documents to me showing the pressure they might've felt

01:21:49.660 from the Biden administration or, or from, or from the world health organization or from

01:21:55.280 Pfizer or from whoever.

01:21:56.760 And I, I was not going to settle this lawsuit without getting that discovery and without

01:22:04.660 the ability to publish that discovery.

01:22:07.240 So in, in, in July of 2021, I did settle with Twitter.

01:22:12.080 By the way, this is sort of the back, you know, this is as Elon Musk is saying, he's

01:22:15.780 going to buy Twitter and he's going to try to restore free speech to Twitter.

01:22:19.540 That was all off to the side on some level.

01:22:21.880 This was the lawsuit was its own thing.

01:22:24.620 And so in July, they, they put me back on the platform.

01:22:28.800 We settled.

01:22:29.520 And then since then I have published some of the discovery I got.

01:22:34.260 And the two most important bits of that are in late July, I think it was late July, I

01:22:41.400 published something showing that the Biden white house in the person of a guy named Andy

01:22:45.500 Slavitt and other people too, but Slavitt was essentially, he was a senior advisor to

01:22:50.960 the Biden administration's COVID response team.

01:22:53.140 He's a, he's a, he's sort of a democratic healthcare bureaucrat who ran Medicare actually

01:23:00.180 for a little while under Obama and who's best known, I would say by Democrats for helping

01:23:04.820 fix the Obamacare.gov platform, you know, the method, the platform where you signed up

01:23:10.580 for Obamacare, there was a problem with it in 20, like 13, 2014, it didn't work that

01:23:15.040 well.

01:23:15.700 Slavitt got famous among, you know, healthcare people for fixing that.

01:23:20.680 And so Slavitt did not like me.

01:23:23.740 He wanted me gone from Twitter.

01:23:26.160 I had made fun of him in 2020 because I thought he was sort of over the top and he'd said things

01:23:32.660 like, we need to shut down 90% of the country.

01:23:35.440 We need to stop food production.

01:23:37.080 He actually said that.

01:23:38.040 And, you know, I thought this stuff was insanely over the top.

01:23:41.440 So he didn't like me.

01:23:42.920 And when he was at the white house, which he was from January to June of 2020, uh, 2021,

01:23:48.200 I should say he pressured the, uh, Twitter to kick me off.

01:23:53.660 And let me just jump in here, let me just jump in because you've posted these to your

01:23:58.080 Twitter account.

01:23:58.840 And here's an example of an exchange with the white house internally.

01:24:03.180 Um, how, how was white house is the question.

01:24:07.060 And the answer is overall pretty good.

01:24:09.620 They had one, this is the white house.

01:24:11.420 They had speaking about them.

01:24:13.220 They, the white house had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn't been

01:24:18.960 kicked off from the platform.

01:24:21.200 Otherwise their questions were pointed, but fair.

01:24:23.460 These are Twitter employees and mercifully we had answers.

01:24:26.540 So you absolutely have the white house, a government agency interfering with the, the private

01:24:33.060 speech or the, the, the speech of a private citizen on Twitter.

01:24:37.260 Um, this is what the first amendment is all about.

01:24:39.720 And this is when we always say like, Oh, it's gotta be government silencing.

01:24:42.320 That's what was, they were trying to do.

01:24:43.860 They were trying to silence you by going to Twitter to tell them to shut you up.

01:24:46.540 Then there's another question, any high level takeaways from the meeting, anything we should

01:24:51.080 keep an eye out for response or response.

01:24:54.480 Thanks.

01:24:54.920 And yes, they really wanted to know about Alex Berenson, Andy Slavitt, the guy you mentioned

01:25:00.140 suggested they had seen data that, um, let me see that that had, that he had showed he

01:25:07.320 was the epicenter of dis info that radiated outward to the persuadable public.

01:25:13.900 And right after this, what happened to you?

01:25:19.260 So, so yeah, so, well, it's interesting right after this, nothing happened to me because

01:25:23.020 Twitter didn't think that they could take any action against me.

01:25:25.880 That's when Scott Gottlieb came in and see that.

01:25:27.740 So this is all that's right.

01:25:29.500 That's right.

01:25:30.280 So, so that's April.

01:25:31.720 And this is all on the unreported truths on my sub stack, which, and you know, again,

01:25:35.680 I did, you can see the documents for yourself.

01:25:38.740 No one's questioned their authenticity, which they can't cause they are totally authentic.

01:25:42.080 Um, and you can see the Slavitt story and then you can see the other story.

01:25:45.840 And, and I'm really glad you highlighted that because, because it's very clear that Twitter

01:25:52.360 felt that I was being targeted, right?

01:25:55.260 They say, and they distinguish between the other questions that they were asked and they

01:26:00.540 say mercifully.

01:26:01.900 So when people say, oh, well, the white house didn't demand that Alex be banned.

01:26:05.900 They just asked, I say to you, when the cop says, sir, can you please get out of your

01:26:11.480 car?

01:26:12.180 Is that a, is that a request or do you, or is that a demand?

01:26:15.000 How much leeway do you feel you have?

01:26:17.280 Okay.

01:26:17.560 Right.

01:26:17.920 But here's the thing.

01:26:18.900 Twitter still didn't want to take action against me.

01:26:21.960 And then, so that was a private conversation in April of 2021.

01:26:26.500 But then in July of 2021, they, the white house takes it to another level.

01:26:30.880 They go public.

01:26:32.780 Biden says what he says.

01:26:34.680 The surgeon general Vivek Murthy says what he says.

01:26:37.740 They're, they're putting a lot of pressure on Twitter to publicize to, to, uh, and Facebook

01:26:42.740 against people who are questioning the vaccines.

01:26:45.520 And Twitter starts taking steps against me.

01:26:48.160 They start, um, giving me these strikes.

01:26:51.460 And the way the Twitter policy worked and works is if you get five strikes, they can ban you.

01:26:57.560 Okay.

01:26:58.600 I got to four strikes.

01:27:00.880 And then that was in late July.

01:27:02.840 And then in August, they let me back on the platform and I knew, and they knew that one

01:27:08.340 more strike would be the end.

01:27:09.940 Okay.

01:27:10.560 And so, and so I was pretty careful about what I said I tried to be, and I tried to sort

01:27:16.980 of still talk about the vaccines, but do it in a way that I wasn't going to give them

01:27:20.880 any chance to ban me.

01:27:23.560 Um, even though I believed everything I'd said was correct before, I wanted to just really

01:27:27.600 make sure they couldn't ban me.

01:27:28.940 Well, most of August went by and then a guy named Scott Gottlieb is a very, he's a very

01:27:36.240 important person in, in sort of drug industry politics.

01:27:40.000 He was the head of the food and drug administration.

01:27:43.040 He, uh, he was a prominent Republican.

01:27:46.300 He was actually a friend of Andy Slavitt's too.

01:27:48.700 He was advising some governors about COVID response.

01:27:51.620 He was advising both the Trump and the Biden white house about COVID response.

01:27:55.540 And most importantly, uh, Scott Gottlieb is a board member for Pfizer, which is the number

01:28:04.040 one profit maker from the COVID vaccines in the world.

01:28:08.560 They've sold 70 billion with a B dollars of COVID vaccines in the last two years.

01:28:13.600 And so Scott Gottlieb goes to Twitter and says, Hey, this guy is dangerous.

01:28:20.600 He's when he writes stuff, Tony, meaning Tony Fauci is at risk.

01:28:25.980 And lo and behold, less than 24 hours after Scott Gottlieb, the Pfizer board member has

01:28:34.100 a conversation where he's accusing me of all kinds of stuff, or, you know, about being

01:28:38.180 a security risk, which was absurd.

01:28:41.720 Twitter banned me.

01:28:42.700 And that is going to be the subject of the new lawsuit, which will be against the Biden

01:28:49.400 administration and Andy Slavitt, but also against Scott Gottlieb and Pfizer.

01:28:54.520 This was a sort of broad, uh, conspiracy by both government actors and a private company

01:29:00.720 to, uh, to destroy my, uh, first amendment rights and to interfere with my contract with

01:29:06.440 Twitter.

01:29:06.920 And, and it succeeded temporarily.

01:29:09.140 They banned me, but guess what?

01:29:11.180 I'm back on and I'm not going away.

01:29:13.800 And just like, uh, you know, that first lawsuit move forward, I believe we have a really good

01:29:19.320 case with this one and I'm going to, you know, and James Lawrence and I, and, you know, and

01:29:23.800 other lawyers were, you know, they're going to push, we're going to push.

01:29:27.640 This, uh, Gottlieb came on my show, uh, about a year ago and I pressed him on his assertions

01:29:34.440 about masks and other things.

01:29:36.280 And he really had no data.

01:29:38.160 It was just these sweeping generalizations.

01:29:40.000 Oh, they work.

01:29:40.820 Oh, well, you know, lots of kids get COVID when they don't wear the mask.

01:29:43.580 There was no actual facts and it didn't go particularly well for him.

01:29:48.060 And when it was over, he said to my staff, I, I am an authority.

01:29:53.520 I'm an authority.

01:29:54.760 Like as if I'm supposed to just defer to his messaging because he has this title.

01:30:00.380 Well, I didn't.

01:30:01.200 And you didn't.

01:30:02.600 And now we see the type of vindictiveness that people in these circles have for people

01:30:07.520 who question the regime.

01:30:08.780 Yeah.

01:30:10.000 I would love to have it.

01:30:12.500 We, we, Megan, you and I need to have an off air conversation about this because that's

01:30:15.620 very, very interesting to me and sort of fits with other stuff that I've heard about Scott,

01:30:19.680 but let's, let's, let's have that conversation off air.

01:30:22.460 But yes, he's, he's, he was, you know, he's on, he's a contributor to CNBC.

01:30:28.080 He was on meet the press.

01:30:29.420 I mean, in some ways he was sort of the shadow COVID czar.

01:30:31.940 He was, he was everywhere and he would always sort of parrot the conventional wisdom, whether

01:30:37.580 it was about masks or vaccines.

01:30:39.500 And, you know, he, he, he, he's too smart and too smooth to, to, you know, to really push

01:30:46.120 Pfizer openly.

01:30:47.600 That wasn't, that wasn't his job.

01:30:49.380 His job was more to say, yeah, I think the vaccines are really, you know, they're really

01:30:53.160 great.

01:30:54.040 And here's how we're going to encourage people to get at them.

01:30:57.000 He he's, he's a real on air.

01:30:59.320 Anyway, he's a very smooth guy, how he behaves when the camera's not on him.

01:31:03.340 That's a conversation I'd love to have with you.

01:31:05.480 Okay, done.

01:31:06.800 In the three minutes we have left, I got to get your thoughts on Sam Bankman freed and

01:31:11.520 this FTX implosion, just latest news, just breaking a class action has been filed.

01:31:16.980 I'm sure it won't be the last against FTX against not just them, but a bunch of celebrities

01:31:23.500 including Tom Brady, Giselle, Steph Curry, Shaq, Larry David, others who promoted FTX.

01:31:32.440 And I get it, right?

01:31:33.540 Because the common man sees Tom Brady out there promoting this thing.

01:31:38.280 And they're like, I trust Tom Brady.

01:31:40.000 I'll buy it.

01:31:40.760 So they cast a wide net.

01:31:42.440 Don't see that against the celebrities going far.

01:31:45.000 But you've also been saying that's one of the things that made this alleged fraud so

01:31:50.140 disturbing.

01:31:53.500 Yes.

01:31:54.220 I mean, so, you know, look, if you look at Madoff, which was sort of the last big financial

01:31:59.060 fraud, which when I was at the New York Times, I was one of the people who was, you know,

01:32:02.680 covering that scandal.

01:32:05.120 Madoff really was looking for, you know, institutional investors, big private investors.

01:32:12.080 Most people did not know.

01:32:14.220 They'd never heard of Bernie Meneally.

01:32:15.360 He certainly wasn't hiring, you know, Tom Brady or Giselle to advertise for him on the

01:32:20.640 Super Bowl.

01:32:21.260 And so this FTX, they they it looks like, you know, we will see what comes out.

01:32:27.700 But it certainly looks like they just essentially were getting money from retail investors.

01:32:31.840 And then at some point, we don't know when they basically just started stealing.

01:32:36.240 They had losses in a hedge fund that was affiliated with FTX called Alameda.

01:32:41.460 They couldn't pay that money back.

01:32:43.540 And they just they did something that, you know, it's not even close.

01:32:47.280 I mean, it's way over the line.

01:32:48.840 It's illegal.

01:32:49.580 They just stole their customers money.

01:32:52.120 You know, it'd be like if you, you know, you have an account that at, you know, at Fidelity

01:32:56.760 and one day you woke up and discovered that the Fidelity executives had just taken all your

01:33:01.120 money out to for for whatever reason.

01:33:03.980 They can't do that.

01:33:05.180 It's your money.

01:33:05.980 It's not their money.

01:33:07.660 Look, there's a lot of complexities here.

01:33:09.520 There's a lot of complexities around crypto.

01:33:12.920 But but at its simplest, this looks like just theft of customer deposits.

01:33:19.000 And and by the way, Sam Beckman Freed was one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party

01:33:24.900 in 2020 and 2022.

01:33:26.660 And he said he might spend up to a billion dollars to support Democrats in 2024.

01:33:32.860 And, you know, that would have been an unthinkable number.

01:33:36.840 It would have made him by far the largest donor.

01:33:38.720 And, you know, he's this he was this, quote, unquote, effective altruist.

01:33:42.220 So there's a lot of stuff that makes him like appealing to people on the left in the media.

01:33:47.200 And he, you know, so far, the stories that have been written, the investigative stories

01:33:53.120 have have I think they've gone light on him.

01:33:55.380 And I wonder if that is part of the reason why they have the New York Times, you pointed out

01:33:59.960 a couple of pieces have been just so coddling and pathetic compared to the way they would cover

01:34:05.980 anybody else.

01:34:07.100 One has to wonder why and hope that they'll step it up and hope that there really are

01:34:12.120 honest financial journalists left maybe over the journal who will take a deep dive into how

01:34:16.720 this guy got away with it for so long.

01:34:19.120 Alex Berenson, I could spend another hour with you.

01:34:21.080 Thank you so much for coming on and please come back.

01:34:24.340 A real pleasure.

01:34:25.780 I hope people will check out Unreported Truths and and please, we need to talk about

01:34:30.300 Scott Gottlieb welfare.

01:34:31.960 It's happening.

01:34:33.320 No problem.

01:34:33.920 We'll do it today.

01:34:35.500 Don't forget to tune into the show tomorrow.

01:34:37.580 Guess who we have?

01:34:38.860 Doug Brunt.

01:34:41.060 It should be really fun.

01:34:42.300 We're going to talk about his new podcast and all things in the Kelly Brunt household.

01:34:46.420 Maybe we'll take your calls.

01:34:47.460 That'll be fun.

01:34:48.380 Anyway, tune in and enjoy.

01:34:50.420 We'll see you tomorrow.

01:34:50.820 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.

01:34:55.040 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - November 16, 2022

Trump Makes it Official, and Defeating the Censors, with Alex Berenson, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Jason Miller ｜ Ep. 436

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