The Tucker Carlson Show - Alex Berenson

00:00:00.000 In 2002, you may remember, all the smart people in Washington assured us, in fact,

00:00:15.760 commanded us to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, chem,

00:00:20.640 bio, maybe nuclear. And the next year, on the basis of those claims, we invaded Iraq.

00:00:24.880 But it turns out those claims were false. Saddam did not possess those stockpiles.

00:00:28.640 But here's the interesting thing. The people who told us that, who commanded us to believe them,

00:00:33.600 never apologized. There was no contrition. There was certainly no punishment. And because there

00:00:38.240 wasn't, those people continued to ascend the hierarchy within Washington. They now run the

00:00:42.720 federal government. And as a result of that, these same unwise people have led us down the same

00:00:48.000 unwise paths again and again in the 20 years since. So that doesn't work as a management strategy,

00:00:54.720 letting people get away with massive screw ups and then promoting them. You'd hate to see something

00:00:59.920 like that happen after COVID. You would hate to see the people responsible for the lockdowns and

00:01:04.720 the vaccine strategy dividing the nation on the basis of medical status. You'd hate to see those

00:01:09.440 people go unpunished, indeed be rewarded. And so in an effort to prevent that from happening,

00:01:15.680 we're going to speak today to someone who called it right and was not rewarded for it. In fact,

00:01:20.960 was reviled for it, but hasn't stopped. His name is Alex Berenson. He joins us on set now. Alex Berenson,

00:01:27.280 great to see you. Good to see you, Tadra. I think the guilty should be punished,

00:01:30.720 not mercilessly, but fairly in the way that you would spank a child and that the virtuous should

00:01:36.720 be rewarded. And on this topic, you are the virtuous. So I just want to frame this conversation

00:01:41.120 around a conversation that we had in January of 2022. And that conversation was described by the

00:01:50.160 Washington Post as the most dishonest and dangerous segment ever to air on our show.

00:01:56.080 Here's what it looked like. I have not said this to you before because

00:01:59.280 I'm pretty careful and I'm pretty careful with the data, but these vaccines, these mRNA vaccines,

00:02:04.080 the mRNA COVID vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market now. No one should get them. No one should

00:02:09.200 get boosted. No one should get double boosted. They are a dangerous and ineffective product at this

00:02:14.800 point against Omicron. The spike that they make your body make that you then produce antibodies to

00:02:20.160 is not the Omicron spike. And earlier today, Tony Fauci said, we're not going to give people

00:02:25.600 monoclonal antibody products because the first generation products, because they don't work

00:02:29.600 against the Omicron spike. The same logic applies to these mRNA vaccines and giving people boosters,

00:02:36.720 even if in the very short term it knocks down infection rates, there's a boomerang effect. And that's

00:02:42.080 what they're seeing in all these countries. Dishonest and dangerous. That was the Washington

00:02:46.480 Post assessment of that clip right there. Given that it's been almost two years since you said

00:02:50.720 that, how would you assess the accuracy of that statement? It was quite accurate. It turns out

00:02:56.720 that the overall picture is a little bit worse than I thought, because even when you give people

00:03:02.080 what are quote unquote targeted mRNA vaccines that are supposed to be targeted to the new variants,

00:03:08.560 which is the strategy we follow now, those don't really work very well in terms of making your body

00:03:13.840 produce antibodies to the new variants either. So there's really no mRNA product that you can give at

00:03:19.200 this point that is going to be useful, probably at all, certainly for more than a couple of months.

00:03:24.960 The mRNAs also come with side effects that look worse than they did at that time, when I said

00:03:30.400 that to you in January 2022. And there's something that we didn't know about at all, which is really

00:03:36.160 the biggest, to me, long-term risk with the mRNAs, which is that they appear to make your body produce

00:03:42.880 a kind of antibody that it normally only produces in response to an allergen, like bee venom. There's

00:03:50.080 a specific subclass, it's called the IgG4 antibody, that people who've been repeatedly given mRNA, it looks

00:03:58.400 like three shots is sort of where the switch comes on. If they're then infected, a number of these people

00:04:04.800 will produce this IgG4 in volume. And frankly, I would say even immunologists and virologists have

00:04:12.560 no idea what that means long-term. Now, I don't want to overstate the risks here because we don't

00:04:18.000 know what they are. And Omicron is very mild in general for most people. Most people shake it off

00:04:26.000 after a few days, certainly a couple of weeks, even if they're not particularly healthy. But this is a real

00:04:31.680 risk. Has there ever been an effective and safe mRNA product that you're aware of?

00:04:37.600 No. No. I mean, these products were nowhere near reaching the market before COVID. They were rushed

00:04:45.920 onto the market, supposedly as the answer to COVID in December of 2020 on the basis of large, let's

00:04:52.480 acknowledge it, very large clinical trials, but clinical trials that had only lasted a few weeks,

00:04:57.120 only generated a few weeks of safety data after the second dose. They appeared to work in early 2021.

00:05:04.640 They certainly do cause the body to make a lot of spike protein, and that's a lot of antibodies to

00:05:09.760 the spike protein. And in the short term, you get a decrease in infections. To me, the real...

00:05:15.920 I'll say mistake, because I don't want to impute anything more than that. But let's say the real

00:05:24.960 mistake was made in the summer of 2021, when it was very clear that the vaccines were not working

00:05:31.280 as promised and infections were starting to go up. And we talked about this a lot in the summer of 2021.

00:05:39.760 We saw this in Israel in the summer of 2021 before anywhere else, because Israel had vaccinated more of

00:05:44.240 its population more quickly than anybody else with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. And so what happened was,

00:05:50.640 instead of everybody pausing and saying, you know what, let's take a breath here and let's see

00:05:56.160 what we might need to do next. Should we try a different type of vaccine? Do we need to move away

00:06:04.160 from vaccines because this is a respiratory virus that mutates quickly? And maybe that's not the... maybe

00:06:09.440 maybe an intranasal vaccine. Maybe there's something we can do. The Biden administration,

00:06:14.560 and most of the rest of the world, but really led by the Biden administration, said two things.

00:06:18.880 We're going to give people a third shot, a booster, which had not been... which had been tested on,

00:06:26.880 I believe at that time, a couple of thousand people worldwide. And there was no... not even medium-term

00:06:32.960 safety day about the booster. And that upset two of the senior scientists at the FDA who regulate

00:06:38.480 vaccines so much that they announced their retirement within a few days after the Biden

00:06:43.120 administration said, we're going to do this booster in mid-August. And the second thing,

00:06:47.440 which to me is even more incomprehensible and wrong, was they said, we're going to have mandates.

00:06:56.240 We're going to force essentially all working age Americans that we can reach to be vaccinated. 0.99

00:07:02.000 Once it was clear, it didn't work. Once it was clear, it didn't work as advertised. At best,

00:07:06.000 you were going to get a few months of protection. So that's the point at which

00:07:10.720 what I'm willing to believe was a mistake looks much more like a crime.

00:07:16.160 It was an aggressive policy decision. And one of the things that I've concluded is that one reason

00:07:21.600 the Biden administration may have done this is because Uncle Joe, as I like to call him,

00:07:25.840 looks so terrible in the aftermath of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

00:07:30.480 So that's the other thing that's happening in the summer of 2021. We leave and a month later,

00:07:36.080 the Taliban are in Kabul and there are Afghans hanging off of airplanes. And the United States

00:07:41.760 looks as bad as it has since probably Jimmy Carter and 1980s, in 1980. Okay. So Joe Biden needs to

00:07:50.240 prove he's doing something. Now, the reason that I've reached this conclusion is let's take the Biden

00:07:55.680 administration's theory about the vaccines at face value, which is not enough Americans are being

00:08:00.560 vaccinated. And that's why we're having this Delta spike and the unvaccinated may be a danger to the 1.00

00:08:06.480 vaccinated, which, by the way, is not a great argument for vaccines, if it's true. But so you're

00:08:12.000 the Biden administration. You think you've got to get Americans vaccinated. Okay. Who dies from COVID?

00:08:18.080 Tucker. Very old people. And, you know, people who are really sick if they're younger. Okay. 0.92

00:08:25.040 The vaccine mandates will work place mandates. They only covered Americans who were healthy enough 0.90

00:08:31.360 to be in the workforce. Almost definitionally, those people are very, very low risk from COVID.

00:08:37.120 The people making this policy were not stupid. They knew that they, they had to know that even if the

00:08:43.600 vaccines worked as advertised, which they knew they didn't work as advertised, you weren't going to be

00:08:47.680 able to reach whatever tiny rump of unvaccinated elderly people there were with these mandates.

00:08:53.440 And there were few, very few unvaccinated elderly.

00:08:56.080 That's one of the great, you know, sort of lies of the, you know, the, the elite media is that there

00:09:00.320 were a lot of unvaccinated elderly people in red states. It's not true. The differential is in people

00:09:05.600 mostly under 65. Right. So, so even if the vaccines had worked as advertised and even if the mandates

00:09:11.600 hadn't been unconstitutional and wrong, they wouldn't have reached the people. If you'd wanted

00:09:16.960 to save people using the Biden administration's theory, this, it should have been, if you want

00:09:20.800 a social security check, you need to be vaccinated. That's, that's what would have gotten whatever,

00:09:27.280 you know, few unvaccinated elderly people there were. And so when you make a decision that's that bad,

00:09:34.080 even taking your incorrect policy assumptions into account, there's got to be another reason.

00:09:39.040 Do we know before we get to what that other reason might be, who made that decision? Who drove that

00:09:45.200 decision? We don't, we don't. We know that for most of early 2021, the Biden administration was

00:09:51.520 saying no mandates, no vaccine passports. You know, there was this discussion of private vaccine

00:09:56.160 passports, of state vaccine passports, a few states. Well, they attacked anyone who suggested

00:10:00.240 that they might institute, including me. I remember that very well. That's correct. Meanwhile,

00:10:04.240 the states were sort of pushing them. There was this idea that federal government is going to be

00:10:07.280 hands off and we're certainly not going to require mandates. I mean, Biden said that explicitly.

00:10:12.000 And at some point in, in July, 2021, this started to be discussed. And in a matter of weeks without

00:10:19.680 a congressional hearing, without, you know, a policy round table, without anything, it went from,

00:10:26.080 this is not something we're going to do. We don't, we, we, we're just going to, you know,

00:10:29.680 we're going to give people a shot and a beer. There were all these sort of ridiculous theory, 0.74

00:10:33.440 uh, you know, you know, ridiculous, um, incentive programs, which to me were completely wrong too, 0.61

00:10:38.400 because you're trying, you're essentially trying to bribe people into taking a pharmaceutical

00:10:42.480 product. But, but those are better than mandates. It went from, we're never going to do this,

00:10:47.920 to we're doing it. We're doing it to, I mean, Biden didn't say punish, but he did say,

00:10:53.920 I'm frustrated with the unvaccinated. It was a pandemic of the unvaccinated. 0.99

00:10:57.920 He blamed Americans for a Chinese virus. Yes, he did that too. So, so he, um, so, so in this

00:11:06.800 period of weeks, this enormously important consequential policy decision, um, both from

00:11:12.640 a health point of view and frankly, from a constitutional civil liberty, liberties point

00:11:16.080 of view, got, got pushed through with no public discussion at all. Biden just comes out on September

00:11:22.960 9th and says, I am going to impose workplace mandates. You think this was an effort to divert

00:11:29.920 attention away from a foreign policy failure? I think that's part of the reason why. I think

00:11:34.480 they wanted to show him doing something, something other than sitting at an empty table in the

00:11:38.800 situation room, looking at screens. Wouldn't it have been better to do something constructive,

00:11:42.000 useful, life-affirming? Is that how it works? No, but like, here's a massive screw up in Southwest

00:11:48.400 Asia. We're going to have a massive screw up here. So you don't think about it. It was also very 1.00

00:11:52.400 popular, not just with the democratic base, with the media, uh, people remember for the 1.00

00:11:59.600 previous six months, there had been the unvaccinated or stupid, the unvaccinated, 1.00

00:12:04.240 then it became the unvaccinated can get you sick. Right? So there was, they're dirty. They can kill 1.00

00:12:08.880 you and they deserve to die. There were ethicists seriously arguing whether unvaccinated people 1.00

00:12:14.880 deserve to be sort of pushed to the back of the triage line. If, in, if the hospitals overflow,

00:12:18.960 which of course they never denied organ transplants, a lot of them, I interviewed them.

00:12:22.720 That is also true. Yes. Because they weren't vaccinated. So this was a popular decision too,

00:12:27.360 never, you know, he got to do something popular. Yep. Um, so in, so now, I mean, it's almost hard

00:12:33.440 to hear all this. Maybe that's one of the reasons most people aren't talking about it because it's so

00:12:36.720 painful to hear it. But has there been any concerted effort by big media organizations to figure out what

00:12:44.480 exactly happened and to look at this honestly? No, absolutely. I'm laughing because, you know,

00:12:50.560 for two years I've been saying to people, look, you don't want to, you don't want to, you know,

00:12:53.680 you don't want to be smeared the way I was smeared. Fine. You don't want to, you don't even want to

00:12:57.680 write about vaccine efficacy. Fine. Here's a story you can write. Literally billions of vaccine doses,

00:13:05.360 mRNA vaccine doses were paid for and never used. It was a billion, billions. By my best guess,

00:13:11.840 about 5 billion doses were made by Pfizer and Moderna and about 3 billion were used.

00:13:16.400 And all those other doses were paid for or, you know, or will be paid for when there, there may

00:13:21.520 be a few more still to be delivered in the next couple of years to the EU. So that's 2 billion doses,

00:13:26.560 probably about $40 billion just literally poured down the drain. Now that's a, that's an estimate,

00:13:32.320 but it's an estimate sort of based on the publicly available data, because what happened was

00:13:37.360 in, so remember the, the, the initial course is 2 doses. Um, in April of 2021, the J and J vaccine,

00:13:47.600 um, which is a different, uh, it's a different delivery system. Uh, it's not mRNA. Uh, it's a

00:13:54.160 different biotechnology comes under pressure or people, you know, it can cause this very unusual,

00:13:59.200 um, uh, uh, but terrible side effect that where you, where you get blood clots in your brain and,

00:14:05.040 you know, that no one wants blood clots in their brain. So, so J and J, which was going to be,

00:14:10.080 which was, which was viewed sort of as the, an easier vaccine to administer only one dose,

00:14:15.280 uh, didn't need to be refrigerated the same way. You know, there was this idea for, let's say for

00:14:20.560 homeless people or for people who maybe you couldn't, you were going to have a hard time

00:14:23.520 convincing to take a second dose or for poorer countries where the refrigeration was an issue.

00:14:28.880 J and J was going to be a good alternative. J and J sort of came off the table after April, 2021.

00:14:35.520 And there was this huge push. We're going to get everybody in the world to mRNA doses.

00:14:40.800 And then the booster, we're going to get everybody in the world, three RNA doses, even,

00:14:45.120 even after it became obvious to me that this wasn't working, there were the fights in the fall of 2021

00:14:51.280 were, should the U S get a booster before, you know, some African country gets its first dose,

00:14:57.520 right? This is such a great technology. You know, who's going to get these, these supplies.

00:15:02.480 So the companies ramped up and they made a ton and they sold it. You know, they basically said to

00:15:07.680 the governments that wanted it, if you want it, you've got to pay for it before we make it. Um,

00:15:13.280 you know, not, not like you have to cut the whole check, but you have to agree contractually.

00:15:17.360 The down payment on your mRNA. Exactly. You, you want it. You agree that when it's done,

00:15:22.800 we deliver it, you take it. And so, and so that's what the governments agreed to, not just the U S this

00:15:29.840 was, this was the EU. And then there was this thing called COVAX where, uh, where the companies, um,

00:15:36.080 sold vaccine to, you know, to poorer countries that the U S paid for in some cases, or, or, you know,

00:15:41.360 or other organizations paid for. Okay. The point is after late 2021, after it became clear that the

00:15:48.880 boosters had stopped working demand, basically fell off a cliff. People said, you know,

00:15:53.840 fool me, fool me twice, shame on you, but we're, but I'm not taking a second booster.

00:16:00.080 And ever since the spring of 2022, there's been a S basically, you know, outside of the, like

00:16:07.520 the deep blue States, even in Europe, there's very little demanding pediatric demand solo.

00:16:12.480 So the point is these companies they'd ramped up, they'd made it.

00:16:16.800 And they, they said, we have contracts with you. You're going to pay us. And the government's paid.

00:16:22.560 Why didn't the government say, I'm sorry, your product doesn't work.

00:16:24.880 Well, that's not, that wasn't one of the contract outs. There was no, there was.

00:16:29.360 So you're saying that all of this proceeded for a full year in the face of overwhelming

00:16:35.440 evidence that it didn't work and that it harmed people because it was a political diversion.

00:16:40.480 That may be true. I have no way of knowing. I do, however, have sympathy for the people who say,

00:16:45.120 wait a second, there's something else going on here. I mean, and I know it's, they're easy to mock and,

00:16:50.640 but like, this is a lot to take attention away from Afghanistan.

00:16:56.080 Right. No, I mean, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say the evidence,

00:17:01.200 the evidence that the vaccines don't work has been around since, you know, depending on,

00:17:07.040 depending on how you want to argue it since the summer or fall of 2021, the evidence that they're

00:17:13.520 dangerous, you know, it's slower to develop and the risks are more subtle than the people.

00:17:18.800 I knew someone who's died of a heart attack in January of 2021 and was told,

00:17:23.440 and his family was told by the doctors that that's a vaccine death right there.

00:17:26.560 I know two other people who I'm really close to who had heart attacks after taking it,

00:17:29.840 and that's just my little world, which is very small. So like, it was definitely out there.

00:17:34.240 So what people would say is people have heart attacks.

00:17:37.920 Yeah, but not, I mean, I've lived here for 54 years. I've never, you know, had three people

00:17:42.720 I know have heart attacks in like a short period of time, days after taking the vaccine.

00:17:47.120 That's the reason that I pushed back on this is if the danger was more obvious,

00:17:51.840 it would be easier to make the case that I'm making that this technology is, you know,

00:17:57.440 is not safe or effective, right? Like I don't see, this is where I guess I'm a little different than

00:18:03.200 maybe than you are. I don't believe that this entire regulatory apparatus would ignore screaming

00:18:09.200 danger signs. Okay. And I don't believe doctors would. I don't. I think that the problem is that the

00:18:16.080 dangers are- But it seems like there are screaming dangers. I mean, maybe I'm just totally imagining

00:18:19.920 it. I'm, you know, not an epidemiologist, but I mean, that's, that's a lot for the

00:18:25.200 small group of people I know. And moreover, it does seem like there has been a spike in

00:18:30.640 in unexplained death. I mean- So, so let me give you a counter example, which is there's a,

00:18:34.880 there's a military, you know, the military obviously was very highly vaccinated and the military reports

00:18:41.120 it's healthcare statistics and by year, like, you know, pretty, pretty grand at a pretty granular

00:18:49.760 level. And it, and I've looked at those. Okay. Cause once I found out, I was like, wow,

00:18:53.440 if there's a signal, it's going to pop out here and it doesn't pop out. Okay. I, by the way,

00:18:58.240 I'm not saying that the vaccines can't kill people, that they don't have autoimmune,

00:19:02.400 that they don't cause autoimmune problems in some people, that they don't cause strokes in some people,

00:19:06.240 that they, we now have evidence they cause seizures in some little kids, which, which,

00:19:11.760 which the, I wrote that story about three weeks ago in the, on my, on, on reported truths on my,

00:19:17.040 on my website or, you know, on my sub stack. And two, about a week later, the New York

00:19:21.840 Times wrote the story and they quoted people saying, quoted doctors saying, oh, well, you know,

00:19:28.640 the vaccines are going to cause fevers in some kids. So we would expect this.

00:19:32.480 You would expect this. You didn't tell any parents this until the FDA published a paper where everyone,

00:19:38.960 where they had to admit it. So this is, I mean, I guess I'm arguing against myself.

00:19:44.880 Yeah, you are pretty persuasively.

00:19:47.520 But, but there are signals. There are things that have turned up.

00:19:51.920 Let me just, so like, why would it fall to you to look at the data? Why would it fall to me to like,

00:19:58.080 make guesses about where is the national federally led effort to get to the bottom

00:20:04.160 of the effects of these vaccines on the entire population?

00:20:06.400 There isn't one.

00:20:07.840 How can there not be?

00:20:10.240 I'm just a reporter.

00:20:11.680 No, I'm serious. Like, where's, where's the CDC?

00:20:14.640 The CDC is promoting these. They're still promoting them for children,

00:20:19.840 for a virus that can't touch healthy children that all kids basically have had by now.

00:20:25.440 And when I say can't touch, I'm almost willing to say that with no, you know,

00:20:30.480 you know, again, one in a million, right? There's a slight, slight chance, but, but it can't touch

00:20:35.520 healthy children. Every kid has had it. And we know now these vaccines can cause, or there's a strong

00:20:41.840 signal that they can cause seizures. What are they doing all over the rest of the world? They're not

00:20:45.920 doing this. Okay. So I don't know what we're doing. Okay. I don't, I think,

00:20:55.760 I tend to believe policy gets set. People fall in love with it. They just won't admit they've made a

00:21:01.520 mistake. So there are no ethical people at CDC, like none. I mean, because what you're describing,

00:21:07.520 I'm just using your descriptions, which are highly informed since you do this for a living,

00:21:11.600 you're describing like something that's horrifying and evil. And like, why doesn't just,

00:21:17.280 just the facts that you stated, I'd say that's evil. So where are the CDC employees who are saying,

00:21:22.000 like, I'm not participating in this? So I don't know. I guess what they're saying

00:21:26.960 is nobody, no kids are getting the shots anyway, so it doesn't matter. So we're just gonna,

00:21:31.440 we're here's, here's what, here's what they say publicly, which is, yes, we know there's a risk

00:21:37.200 differential here. We know that this is much, you know, more dangerous to older people, COVID,

00:21:42.000 I mean, but if we offer differential recommendations that will confuse people 0.99

00:21:47.760 because, you know, this they do think, they do think everyone is stupid. 0.95

00:21:51.840 So, so we, if we offer differential recommendations, it will make the old people 1.00

00:21:57.120 less likely to take it. If we tell a two year old, the mother of a two year old, not to have her 0.98

00:22:01.760 kid get it, then it makes an 80 year old less likely to take it. And we want the 80 year old 0.81

00:22:06.240 to take it. That, that's basically what they, the excuse they use. I admit, it doesn't sound

00:22:10.640 like a very good excuse. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. And you do feel like there's, again,

00:22:14.560 something else going on here. What is this doing to the population's attitudes about vaccines more

00:22:20.240 broadly? Interestingly, it's not changing as much as people on either side would say, because Americans,

00:22:26.640 I think generally feel they've had good experiences with vaccines pre mRNA. Now, of course, there's a,

00:22:32.400 there's a group of Americans who, you know, whose children developed autism and they blame that on

00:22:37.760 the vaccines. I don't see strong evidence there, but I know that's a very controversial topic. I will

00:22:45.120 say I don't see strong evidence there. But in general, Americans, again, despite what, what both the,

00:22:51.200 you know, the anti-vax community and the sort of vaccine fanatic community says, have been generally

00:22:56.560 over the years, pretty willing to listen to the CDC's recommendations. Now there's some evidence

00:23:01.360 that the mRNAs, what's happened with them has made overall vaccinations a little bit less common.

00:23:08.400 But what it's really made is mRNA vaccinations a lot less common. So people, one of my core beliefs

00:23:13.840 is that people are not stupid. And people differentiate between these two new vaccines that came out 0.86

00:23:18.880 from Pfizer and Moderna based on months of testing and were promised to fix COVID and didn't and

00:23:25.600 everything else. But people may not be stupid, but doctors obviously are and unethical because I know 0.98

00:23:31.280 from my side, I would never go to a doctor who pushed mRNA vaccines. What does that say about you? 0.96

00:23:35.120 If you're a doctor, it's your job to know what these things do. You had no idea and you pushed them

00:23:38.880 anyway. So how many people are deciding, again, I'll speak for myself. I'm not, I'm not going to any

00:23:43.440 doctor who did that. I have contempt for those people. I don't want to be around them.

00:23:47.680 And it's totally changed my view of medicine. Are a lot of people reaching that conclusion? Or am

00:23:51.120 I just like an insane? I think there's been a, it's hard for me to, I haven't seen data on this.

00:23:58.240 I will say this, and you know, my wife is a physician. I think, and she never liked these

00:24:04.240 vaccines, but, but I think that, I think that doctors right now are not pushing these at all.

00:24:12.080 But why has no one apologized? That's what I don't understand.

00:24:15.360 No one ever apologized for anything, Tucker.

00:24:17.280 But nothing gets, but this is science and science is based on truth, period. That's what it is. It's

00:24:23.280 the pursuit of truth. And if we get something wrong, we admit it immediately or else it's not science.

00:24:27.200 But they're not admitting it immediately. Therefore, it's not science. Therefore,

00:24:29.840 it's like some weird witchcraft thing that I don't want anything to do with. Fair? 0.99

00:24:32.560 So what these people would say is in 2021, the vaccines did some good. Since then, we don't

00:24:40.240 know so much, but they'll point to charts. There's this one chart. It's the bane of my existence that

00:24:46.400 appears to show that vaccinated people, you know, die from COVID even now at much lower rates than

00:24:52.320 unvaccinated people. The problem with that is the two groups are not comparable. Okay. This is,

00:24:57.040 and I don't want to spend 15 minutes boring you and your audience with the science behind this,

00:25:02.080 but the two groups are not comparable. The reason we do clinical trials,

00:25:07.840 a clinical trial is an artificial experiment, but it generates the only data you can truly trust.

00:25:15.120 Okay. You take two groups, you take a group of people, you split them in half, you have a computer,

00:25:20.240 make sure that the two groups are completely equal or as close to complete. So, you know, if,

00:25:25.520 if you're in one, then, uh, you know, then, then, then someone who's just like you in terms of smoking

00:25:30.640 status and age and gender and, you know, history of heart disease, whatever goes in the other group.

00:25:36.000 Okay. You split, you take a big group, you split them up, you give, you give one group, the vaccine or

00:25:41.520 the drug, you give the other group, a placebo, a sugar pill, or a saline shot. You follow them.

00:25:48.320 Nobody knows who got what. And at the end you can say, okay, this benefit came from the, you know,

00:25:56.480 vaccine or this injury, you know, the safety problem came from the vaccine. You need that data.

00:26:03.040 The truth is we never really got that data, but the MRNAs, because we blew up the clinical trials

00:26:07.760 much too soon. And so we're all arguing on the basis of incomplete information and the people and,

00:26:15.120 and the people who understand this are mostly on the pro vaccine side. They mostly either indirectly

00:26:22.000 or directly get money from Pfizer or the federal government or people with a giant stake in vaccines.

00:26:28.880 And, and so I am arguing a lonely battle here.

00:26:33.280 You certainly are, but where, okay, so leave the, and I should just remind our viewers who maybe haven't

00:26:37.840 followed your career in the detail that I have, that you waited a long time before even addressing

00:26:42.080 questions about vaccines. I mean, you originally were just pointing out the disparities between

00:26:45.920 what they were claiming about COVID and what the data were showing. Is that right?

00:26:48.960 Yeah. Yes.

00:26:50.240 I didn't even think you wanted to get into the vaccine stuff, but you kind of had no choice.

00:26:53.360 Yes.

00:26:53.760 Right. So you were not like some anti-vaxxer going back with Bobby Kennedy 30 years.

00:26:58.240 No.

00:26:58.560 At all. So, um, but one common sense question that no one's ever adequately answered in my view

00:27:03.600 is why weren't physicians in the public health community encouraging people to be healthier?

00:27:08.480 Especially when it became obvious like the first week that fat people were at a greater risk of dying.

00:27:14.960 What could possibly account for their closing gyms, not promoting obesity in the middle of the COVID

00:27:21.440 pandemic? What is that?

00:27:23.520 So the pandemic became an occasion for social scientists to try

00:27:28.480 a lot of public health measures that they wanted to try. And, you know, one of those was sort of like,

00:27:36.640 what signals are there that this is a serious illness? I mean, that was,

00:27:40.640 I think masking was a huge part of that, the push for masking. Um, we don't want to stigmatize,

00:27:46.320 right? So, so, although it's okay to stigmatize people who choose not to be vaccinated.

00:27:49.440 Yeah. Or smoke cigarettes or whatever.

00:27:51.440 That's right. That's right.

00:27:52.480 We don't want to stigmatize, uh, obese people, people who, you know, who don't take good care of

00:27:59.120 themselves. So we're going to lie about where the risks are. We're going to pretend that some 25 year

00:28:03.520 old is at real risk from COVID. And I think the other, the other argument that they would make and

00:28:09.840 did make at the time was we think there's a real risk of hospital overrun. So if this spreads too

00:28:15.760 quickly, remember, wait two weeks, flatten the curve. One of the things that I think wasn't

00:28:21.600 widely understood was the people promoting that weren't saying we're not all going to get COVID

00:28:26.080 because at the time they didn't realize how quickly they could rush a vaccine to market.

00:28:30.000 Of course we all got COVID anyway, because the vaccine didn't work. But the idea was we're going

00:28:33.760 to get COVID over time. So the, you know, when people, the hospitals won't be overrun.

00:28:39.440 And like that was sort of the number one concern back in March, 2020 was hospital over.

00:28:45.040 So to do that, you had to convince everyone to stay home in their view. You had to lock down

00:28:50.000 everyone. And so that meant you had to lie about who was at risk. That was the original sin, right?

00:28:55.600 The original sin of COVID was that, the original sin of the vaccines was pretending that they had

00:29:02.400 been properly tested. Okay. I get all that, but it went beyond that. I mean, they actively prevented

00:29:10.560 people from getting in better physical shape, cardiovascular health. And then all the women's 1.00

00:29:16.080 magazines, which are still influential, decided to put fat women on the cover and say, this is 1.00

00:29:22.000 the new body ideal and the soap companies and the makeup companies. This was clearly an orchestrated

00:29:27.840 attempt to make people think it was okay to be fat in the middle of a pandemic that was killing fat 0.85

00:29:32.080 people. So that's the point where I'm like, hmm, actually they are trying to kill people. 0.98

00:29:35.120 Because like, what could, no, I'm serious. What could, if I, if I encourage my children to smoke

00:29:40.400 cigarettes, maybe I'm trying to hurt them. Or maybe you're trying to sell cigarettes.

00:29:44.000 Maybe if 60% of the country is fat and you're dove, you want to sell soap.

00:29:48.480 Maybe, but like, they've never tried that before. There'd never been a time.

00:29:51.840 Well, Philip Morris tried to sell cigarettes for a long time.

00:29:53.520 Of course. But being fat, you know, no woman wants to be fat. And all the women's magazines spent 0.99

00:30:00.320 decades telling women, you know, you shouldn't be fat. That's why they don't want to be fat. 0.99

00:30:04.720 And then during COVID, it's like, no, no, be fat. At the exact time where being fat could kill you.

00:30:09.680 I think that trend was happening before. I think that trend was happening before. I do. The, like,

00:30:16.880 the DEI stuff on obesity, which I agree, like obesity is, obesity is terrible for people in

00:30:23.360 general. I mean, even if it doesn't. Look, I'm not, I personally am not judging fatness at all.

00:30:30.160 I'm just saying. No, but physically it's terrible. It's not good for you, right? And for public health

00:30:34.800 authorities to be promoting it and stopping people from getting on the treadmill. I don't know if

00:30:40.640 they were, they were, they were, they were, they literally were closing people from going. Yes.

00:30:43.520 They were closing gyms. But keeping liquor stores open. But keeping liquor stores open.

00:30:46.880 And weed dispensaries. So that's the point where it's like, look, I'm not some kooky internet

00:30:51.120 conspiracy guy, but how many signs do I need that you're trying to kill me before I say you're trying

00:30:55.600 to kill me? I think people make bad decisions. Yeah, but they're all consistent. It's like,

00:31:03.440 they're all pro-death. It's like, oh no, we're not going to spend any time working on therapeutics

00:31:08.560 at all. Well, they did. They came up with one that didn't work at all, remdesivir. But people

00:31:13.200 were kind of trying all this different stuff. And like the media immediately jumped, you can't do

00:31:16.800 that. How dare you try something other than the vaccine? And then, you know, I interviewed this gym

00:31:22.080 owner, Ian Smith, 20 times. And he's like, I just want people to work out because that might help.

00:31:26.720 That might help. Shut up, criminal. That's right. And so, I don't know. Like, I think it's important 1.00

00:31:32.400 to be more like your dog. Your dog can't speak English. He has no idea what you're saying. He

00:31:36.400 just watches you. And then he knows your intent. I'm watching them and I can tell their intent,

00:31:41.120 which is to kill me. What am I missing? Their intent is to make you feel good about yourself, 1.00

00:31:45.840 even if it kills you. I don't see those as separate categories. They are though. They are? Yeah.

00:31:51.760 I don't know. Firing squad, opioid OD. One feels good, the other doesn't, but they both kill me,

00:31:59.040 right? Again, you're not going to get me to say it. Because I don't really believe it. Look,

00:32:08.560 I don't understand what happened during COVID at all. And the last thing I'm going to do is

00:32:13.360 going to speculate or say anything, you know, that I can't say. You speculate all the time.

00:32:16.800 I do. But on this, like, as to motive, it always makes me uncomfortable to speculate,

00:32:20.560 though of course I do do it and I regret it every time I do it because you can't know

00:32:23.840 another person's motive, but you can watch what they do.

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00:34:10.720 Now, I got something for you, Tucker. I'm ready. This is one of a kind. These are four of the great

00:34:18.480 villains of COVID. I love that. Here, I'm going to put this up to the camera.

00:34:23.360 The next time you're shooting. You tell me what this says and what it means.

00:34:26.080 Okay. Fauci and Gottlieb and Slavitt and Borle. Now, everyone knows who Tony Fauci is.

00:34:31.920 The bottom guy's a veterinarian, I think. He is. He's also the head of the world's largest or

00:34:37.120 what was the world's largest in 2022 pharmaceutical company. Andy Slavitt was the senior advisor for

00:34:43.680 COVID response under the Biden administration from in early 2021. And Scott Gottlieb is the

00:34:49.600 former head of the FDA who left the FDA and three months, I believe three months of the day later,

00:34:54.720 which was the earliest he could, joined the Pfizer board, where he is a senior board member of Pfizer.

00:35:01.120 He also is on CNBC all the time, where he always manages to say something good about Pfizer's products.

00:35:08.080 So these three of these four men, not Tony Fauci, are defendants in my lawsuit against the Biden

00:35:14.800 administration and Pfizer for their unconstitutional efforts to silence me and get me thrown off Twitter

00:35:21.200 in 2021. So can I just that? Thank you. I will wear this with pride or without pants. But either way,

00:35:27.840 I will have this on. It's one of a kind. It leads to a question I've been wanting to ask you since

00:35:35.360 we've had so many interviews over the years. But two questions. One, you became very focused. I mean,

00:35:41.440 you were a successful novelist. Your books are in my shelves at home, actually. Former New York Times

00:35:46.880 reporter. You had this whole life that had nothing to do with any of this. And you just basically threw

00:35:51.680 it all the way to go after this story. Why did you do that? And what have the effects been?

00:35:58.960 Uh, I did it because I didn't have any choice. Because it's like you take one step and one step

00:36:02.800 and one step. I remember once being in Iraq. You don't have a choice. You go write your novels. 0.83

00:36:05.840 No, no, you don't have a choice if you're a certain type of person or a certain type of reporter.

00:36:10.480 Um, I remember I was once in Iraq in 2004. Um, and like, I'm not a particularly physically

00:36:18.160 courageous person, but you know, it's a war zone. And like, and I was talking to a, uh, colonel,

00:36:23.360 a lieutenant colonel who, who is a like, you know, tough guy. And we were sort of out there. And he

00:36:29.120 said, you know, this is just what you do. Like you just, all of a sudden you're in the middle of it.

00:36:33.840 Like you just take a step at a time and then there's kind of no going back. And I pursued the story and

00:36:40.560 the truth to the best of my ability. But you weren't even a reporter at the time. You've given up

00:36:44.400 reporting and you're writing novels. I've always been a reporter. I, you know, I even,

00:36:48.560 even the novels would be better if they were a little bit less reported and a little bit more

00:36:52.400 flights of fancy. That's my one regret as a novelist is that I could never, you know,

00:36:56.480 not that I was, I mean, I'm writing about Islamic terror and, you know, in various, 0.99

00:37:00.960 there are spy novels about modern events, but a really great novel, whatever the nominal category

00:37:08.480 has some magic in it. And that's something hard for me to put in my novels. I'm very fact grounded.

00:37:14.000 And so, so when, and I, you know, I write about this on unreported truths. Like we talked a tiny

00:37:19.680 bit about, you know, the baby bus, which is something I'm now interested in. Um, uh, because,

00:37:26.000 because I look for stories that, you know, as an individual reporter who's not working for the New

00:37:30.720 York times, I can, you know, I can do in a, in a credible, reasonable way. You know, it'd be hard for

00:37:35.760 me right now to go to Israel because I don't have a big organization backing me up if I get shot in the

00:37:41.040 head or something. Right. Um, so, so, so these are COVID believe it or not is very data driven.

00:37:46.720 And as a story that, uh, you know, I could, I could follow, I look for stories where I think,

00:37:51.840 um, I think I can add something to the conversation because, because the mainstream media usually for

00:37:58.640 political reasons, doesn't want to report on it. And, and I look for stories that are important.

00:38:04.320 And COVID obviously was the most important story. Do you look for stories that

00:38:08.640 will make you super unpopular with everyone you've ever known during the course of your life?

00:38:13.440 That's just an added bonus. Losing, losing three quarters of my friends and,

00:38:19.600 and messing up my marriage was just an added bonus.

00:38:22.800 But you kind of knew that. I don't mean to pick at an open wound, but you kind of knew that going in

00:38:27.840 because anyone who asked, I mean, I remember the first couple of posts you wrote on this

00:38:32.880 were greeted with ferocity. People were very angry. I don't like being told what I can and can't ask.

00:38:38.320 That's a spirit. By anybody. And certainly not by the Biden administration or Pfizer.

00:38:44.720 Okay. And that, and that, you know, this lawsuit, I, you know, we have, we have filed our initial suit.

00:38:51.440 They have filed a motion to dismiss all three of which are the federal defendants. Andy Slavitt is

00:38:56.400 his own defendant. And then, uh, uh, Albert Borla, who's again, the chairman of Pfizer and Scott

00:39:01.840 Gottlieb have their own lawyers. I, I guarantee you they're, you know, I guarantee you they,

00:39:05.600 this is a good day for the law firms. Right. But, uh, or so they've, they've tried to dismiss it.

00:39:10.400 We've now filed a response to the motions to dismiss, which I think is very strong.

00:39:15.120 Um, and by the way, we're now asking for third party discovery, meaning we want Twitter

00:39:19.600 to turn over everything, uh, that Pfizer or the white house said about me. And Elon,

00:39:26.400 I'm hoping Elon, you'll hear this and you will tell your lawyers to do this and not fight the

00:39:31.280 third party subpoena. Um, but so if we can get past the motions to dismiss, and I believe we can,

00:39:38.000 we will get the discovery on what the white house and Pfizer were saying to each other

00:39:43.200 about me and possibly somewhat more broadly in the summer of 2021 about the vaccines. And, and that

00:39:50.160 the world needs to know what was really going on, why everything changed, why the public attitudes

00:39:58.880 towards vaccine skeptics got so much harsher, why there was a push for boosters, why there was a push

00:40:04.720 for mandates. I, I'm not really exaggerating. I say that this lawsuit is maybe the only chance

00:40:10.720 that we'll, that we're ever going to have. Has anyone come up to you in your personal life to say,

00:40:15.360 you know, congratulations, you've been vindicated. You took a lot of crap, but you turned out to be 0.99

00:40:20.400 right. One person, uh, in, in my town, uh, has said to me, you know what, you were right about the 0.99

00:40:26.320 lockdowns. No one's ever said about the vaccines. I think people just want to forget the vaccines,

00:40:30.640 whether most people were vaccinated, obviously. Um, and they certainly want to forget what they

00:40:35.200 thought and said to unvaccinated people. Um, yeah, there's a, there's a fascist strain right

00:40:41.120 beneath the surface that I did not perceive until that moment. And it was very distressing.

00:40:45.760 I mean, one thing my wife said to me, I can't remember when, and she was right. She said, 1.00

00:40:50.720 you know, there's a large part of the country must've been 2021, uh, that, that if Tony Fauci 0.98

00:40:56.960 said to them, this will just end if we just burn Berenson at the stake, just burn him at the stake. 0.98

00:41:02.080 That's all we gotta do. Like there would have been people with pitchforks on our doorstep. Um, 1.00

00:41:08.400 you know, and she's Canadian. I think she was, she was, although the Canadians behave terribly. 1.00

00:41:13.120 Well, the Canadians are very easy to control. I mean, it doesn't take much. Uh, 1.00

00:41:18.240 but Americans, I, well, you're, you're from this country. You grew up here.

00:41:21.680 Yeah. Were you surprised?

00:41:23.920 Yes. Oh, this is, this is what I wanted to say to you earlier when we were talking, uh,

00:41:31.920 herd instinct. Okay. We, again, we were talking about the baby and how easy it is and why parents

00:41:37.040 don't challenge, let's say, as you mentioned, you know, uh, DEI stuff in classrooms that they

00:41:42.480 might not like for their kids. I mean, just, just go back 3000 years. Okay. When somebody committed a

00:41:48.320 crime, there were no prisons, right? So how did you punish that person? You left them. You left them

00:41:53.360 on their own without the protection of the herd. And mostly those people died. Right. We are, we think

00:42:00.000 we're lone wolves, but we're herd animals. And if you can get, you know, 60, 70, much less 80 or 90%

00:42:06.960 of the population moving a certain way, it gets harder and harder to stand up. Um, and so, uh,

00:42:14.320 I mean, I think, I think that force is overwhelming and it doesn't. And, and I think the U S actually

00:42:21.280 has more people willing to stand up, but that doesn't mean it has a lot.

00:42:24.160 So given that, what's the next iteration of COVID? I mean, we're moving into flu season.

00:42:32.640 Yeah. I, so, so I don't know what's going to happen. If Omicron stays this mild, I, I, you know,

00:42:38.480 it'll just be something, you know, it'll, it'll run through nursing homes. Sometimes it'll hurt some

00:42:42.960 people. Assuming the IgG4 thing doesn't become a true problem. There will be people who will be sick. 1.00

00:42:49.280 You know, I personally, I get, you know, I get flack from this from some areas. I think

00:42:52.560 pex a little bit actually works. I think they will come up with some more antivirals. I mean,

00:42:56.320 again, how do we get out of HIV? Not a vaccine. Uh, we got effective antivirals and, and, you know,

00:43:02.240 I think there will be some more antivirals for COVID. I, I, it should be manageable. The, the two

00:43:06.960 big issues going forward actually are less to do with COVID and more to do with, are they going to

00:43:13.280 try to push MRNAs for other respiratory viruses, which they clearly are. Moderna, you know, that's 0.56

00:43:19.200 Moderna's business and Moderna stock is down 85% since its peak, which was basically the same day

00:43:26.880 as the Biden administration's mandate, uh, in September, 2021, but they still are in business.

00:43:33.920 They're still a large, powerful company and they want to sell you.

00:43:37.520 Has anybody ever checked? I mean, has the SEC, for example, ever checked the buy orders from

00:43:45.440 policymakers or their spouses who were aware that that mandate was coming?

00:43:49.600 That's a great question. I don't know. That's, that's, I wonder if that's,

00:43:53.760 it's probably not even visible, but, uh, but it's a great question to ask.

00:43:57.520 Do you think that, um, we will ever have lockdowns again?

00:44:08.960 It would have to be way worse. I mean, there literally have to be people dying in the streets.

00:44:13.040 I think, I think that, I think in general, there are a lot of people who are much more

00:44:16.800 suspicious of the public health establishment.

00:44:18.400 So we've been inoculated against that.

00:44:20.480 As we should be. So, and the other, but the, but here's the other thing, you know, you say, well,

00:44:24.800 uh, I won or my position won. It's not really true. Um, here's the virology community continues

00:44:33.440 to push gain of function research. They continue to push these, uh, you know, wandering into caves,

00:44:39.200 looking for the worst possible virus. I mean, it's increasingly clear that virology is toxic

00:44:44.240 and dangerous, at least this part of it, this emerging infectious diseases part of it,

00:44:48.800 because you're much more likely to cause a pandemic than to prevent one.

00:44:52.560 Either by messing with viruses in labs to make them more dangerous, which is really

00:44:58.160 the most insane idea possible, or just going to these caves, like where the bats are not

00:45:03.760 bothering anybody and looking for dangerous viruses. And here's the, here's the, like to me,

00:45:09.120 one of the best pieces of evidence for this. Let's, let's pretend that the, uh, that the Chinese 1.00

00:45:15.120 lab is not the source of it. So by, by source, I don't mean that it was fully created there. I mean,

00:45:19.920 they were probably experimenting with it and it leaked. Okay. Well, I want to be clear what I'm

00:45:23.520 saying, but let's pretend that let's pretend that this didn't somehow escape from a Chinese lab.

00:45:28.000 Let's pretend that the people who say that this came out of a, uh, a farm in Wuhan or a,

00:45:32.800 uh, the wet market in Wuhan, a pangolin. Yes. A wet market in Wuhan are actually telling the truth.

00:45:37.440 Yeah. Okay. The best thing you can say then is that this effort led by, you know,

00:45:43.440 Peter Daszak and, uh, you know, funded by the U S government that Tony Fauci was aware of,

00:45:49.440 that the Chinese were very invested in that was supposed to help prevent the next pandemic did

00:45:56.160 nothing to prevent the next pandemic, even though the next pandemic happened under their noses.

00:46:02.160 That's the, that's the absolute best case for what happened in 2020. We funded a ton of research

00:46:08.880 that did nothing to help us predict what the next problem would be or stop it when it happened.

00:46:15.760 So what on earth are we doing? It's just like the vaccines at this, certainly at this point,

00:46:21.920 all downside, no upside. The rational person stops gambling in that position, but go to a casino,

00:46:29.920 Tucker. There are a lot of irrational people. But if you're promoting that,

00:46:35.760 and if you're at any point along the chain of COVID policy that I think inarguably got a lot

00:46:41.840 of people killed and wrecked our economy and destroyed a generation of children who are now 0.98

00:46:46.480 illiterate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Has anyone ever been punished for that?

00:46:50.960 No, no, no, absolutely not. Um, has anyone not been rewarded for it? They all seems like what,

00:46:56.240 can you tell us what these four guys are doing right now?

00:46:58.160 Sure. Well, Tony is a, you know, he's given talks, I believe at six figures of pop.

00:47:03.200 I don't want- He still has secret service protection.

00:47:04.960 He still has secret service protection.

00:47:06.160 My neighbor in DC just took a picture of him in our dog park in Northwest Washington,

00:47:10.480 followed by secret service detail.

00:47:11.840 Yes, he does. No, he certainly does.

00:47:13.920 Do you have secret service protection?

00:47:18.800 I have a couple of dogs that bark a lot.

00:47:21.280 Yeah, perfect.

00:47:24.160 So Fauci works at Georgetown. He's a millionaire.

00:47:26.480 Yeah. Scotty Gotti is still, he has protection.

00:47:30.080 Pfizer pays a couple hundred grand a year for his protection because he's so much at risk.

00:47:37.120 Gottlieb has a security deal?

00:47:38.560 He certainly does. You can find the details about it in the Pfizer proxy statement.

00:47:45.680 He's on all the boards. He's on CNBC. He's never apologized for slandering me or anything else.

00:47:50.800 He's doing just fine. Slavitt runs a healthcare focused venture fund

00:47:58.640 that funds things like getting trans medicines to people, to young teenagers in states

00:48:07.280 where they aren't going to necessarily need to be seen by a doctor.

00:48:10.320 True story. That's one of the, that's one of the, and I may be exaggerating slightly, but that is the

00:48:15.600 point of one of his, uh, venture capital investments. Uh, and Albert Borla remains the

00:48:22.000 chairman and CEO of Pfizer incorporated, um, you know, and gets about $35 million a year.

00:48:28.160 So all of them are fat, happy and continuing to spread the evil.

00:48:31.120 Yes. By the way, these two gentlemen, Scott Gottlieb and Albert Borla, 0.87

00:48:34.960 their lawyers accused me of being in it for the money.

00:48:38.320 So for your, from your sub stack.

00:48:40.000 From my sub stack. Yes.

00:48:41.920 Do you make more or less than 35 million a year on your sub stack?

00:48:44.640 It's close, but a little less. Um, so yeah. So, oh, by the way, one, just to go back to the,

00:48:51.280 you know, the 5 billion doses to 2 billion, you know, poured down the drain. Uh, the companies

00:48:56.480 were paid for no reporter, actually a few reporters in Germany, they've, they were whatever, for whatever

00:49:04.320 reason, they're a little more interested in like the federal purse have noted that, you know, hundreds

00:49:08.880 of millions of doses in Europe were wasted, but I've never seen a story like that in the United

00:49:14.480 States. And ironically, you know, you can find tons of stories about how Africa was going to be the

00:49:20.960 next terrible wave, even into 2021, when it should have been clear to everybody that the, you know,

00:49:25.440 the African demographic is so much younger that they're basically zero risk from COVID. Um, you 0.97

00:49:31.200 can still find all these stories about how we have to get vaccines to Africa. We have the, the number of,

00:49:37.600 uh, MRNA vaccines or COVID vaccines in general taken in Africa is, you know, near zero, certainly

00:49:43.280 outside of South Africa. And my joke, it's not really a joke. This is the first time in history 0.96

00:49:47.920 when rich white people have demanded to be the, you know, the Guinea pigs, um, for, uh, you know, 0.85

00:49:53.040 for an experimental medicine. Well, national suicide. Um, and speaking of that last question, 0.98

00:49:57.600 but you, you alluded to this a second ago, your new interest or one of your new interests is in

00:50:04.080 the population and its decline because people are not having kids. What, what's the overview?

00:50:10.480 So, I mean, obviously this has been going on for a while. We've been below replacement

00:50:14.560 birth rates in the U S we're a little closer in the U S but you know, in East Asia and Western Europe.

00:50:20.000 Um, uh, but you know, birth rates in general are trending down worldwide to, you know, even Muslim

00:50:24.080 countries too, they're trending down. Um, but COVID seems to have accelerated this process. And I first

00:50:28.880 got interested in it because my question was, you know, are the code vaccines or the MRNAs accelerating

00:50:33.920 this fertility crisis? Cause we know they can have an impact on menstrual cycles and they seem to 0.69

00:50:38.080 have at least a short term impact on sperm. Uh, I, I, I don't know if it's production,

00:50:42.560 but sort of production of healthy sperm. Um, my conclusion right now is you can't really

00:50:47.760 find an MRNA effect because this is happening in China too, where, um, where, uh, you know,

00:50:53.360 which didn't use the MRNA. So, but, but all over the world and certainly in the U S and, and,

00:50:58.480 and in your, it's most visible in Europe and in East Asia, birth rates have suddenly gone off a

00:51:04.560 cliff. I mean, the, the South Korean birth rate now is, is barely one third of replacement level

00:51:10.800 and there doesn't seem to be a bottom to this. And I mean, it's really stunning in that it's

00:51:16.560 happening across every culture or, you know, every religion, every ethnicity, the only thing that the

00:51:22.720 countries have in common, you know, uh, attitudes towards women are different in these countries. The only 0.88

00:51:26.400 things that these countries have in common is that they're wealthy. So you're saying, and I,

00:51:31.680 now that I think about it, it's probably true. The birth rate in South Korea is lower than the 0.96

00:51:35.520 birth rate in North Korea. That's a great question, but probably true. I haven't, I haven't looked, but 1.00

00:51:40.320 yes. I wonder if there's a clearer indicator of the health of society than its birth rate.

00:51:46.960 I mean, it's certainly, it's certainly hard to square that with a healthy society or, you know,

00:51:51.760 not a lot of anxiety among young people. And, and the idea that this is, this is happening in

00:51:57.280 wealthy societies, but it doesn't seem to be driven by economics because, you know, there's

00:52:02.160 still pockets of high fertility for ultra Orthodox Jews and various other religious sects. And those 0.96

00:52:08.640 people are very rarely wealthy. So it's a, so, you know, it's, it's not a problem of lack of abundance.

00:52:15.120 It's, it's, it's caused by abundance. I mean, the richer you are, the fewer kids you have.

00:52:21.360 Although at the very top, certainly in places like New York City, you see, right? No, you see this

00:52:25.760 where you, where there is a little bit of kids is a luxury good at the very, very top, but, but not

00:52:32.520 broadly. So I, you know, this is something I'm just beginning to explore. I know you want me to make

00:52:37.520 some grand concepts about it, but I really, I'd really, I find it fascinating. It's obviously fascinating to

00:52:42.480 readers. Um, because I wonder what's more important than reproducing. Right. Well,

00:52:47.280 you know, I mean, my joke is it's the future of humanities at stake. Now, obviously we're not

00:52:50.960 going to get to zero anytime soon, but, but it's pretty striking. And somebody said to me yesterday,

00:52:56.160 well, you know, it's about the earth's carrying capacity. And that's just nonsense. I mean,

00:53:01.280 we can support far more than 8 billion people. I wonder though, you hear a lot of chatter, um,

00:53:07.760 about, you know, depopulation strategy. I don't know if it's a strategy. I doubt it was hammered

00:53:13.840 out at, you know, Davos or anything, but clearly there's a depopulation instinct.

00:53:18.400 Yeah. That's what's so bizarre, right? Clearly, clearly it's, look at the effects. I mean,

00:53:23.440 if you're trying, if you cared about your country, you'd want people to have kids, right?

00:53:28.400 Do you want your, do you want grandchildren? Of course. Because you love your children. Right.

00:53:31.840 So if you loved your population, you'd want to have kids. I mean, I agree. It seems like a very

00:53:36.400 basic idea that a healthy society continue, at least retains its population. And, you know,

00:53:43.520 the countries in East Asia are already beginning to shrink amazingly. Now, Taiwan, Taiwan is shrinking.

00:53:48.960 I mean, it's, and as Elon said to me, this was a few months ago, he said, you know, the demo,

00:53:55.760 you can make it very complicated demographically, but it's actually very simple. Multiply the current

00:54:00.000 level of births right now by 85. And that's what the population will be in 85 years, assuming the

00:54:05.760 trend doesn't continue. Right. So for a country like Taiwan, they have 130,000 births this year.

00:54:11.520 They have 23 million people. 85 times 130,000 is about 10 million. So, so, so that when I say

00:54:18.960 they're not close to replacement level, I mean, they're not close to replacement. They're going

00:54:21.920 extinct. Well, I mean, if that continued at that level, you would be, you know, you'd be down 90%

00:54:29.040 in a hundred years. I mean, that's, it's pretty stunning. I, I, I look, these things can reverse.

00:54:35.040 If you look at, you know, the popularity of the baby boom, you know, post-World War II,

00:54:40.480 there were tremendous, you know, growth in population in the U S and Japan and other countries. So,

00:54:44.800 so these things can reverse, but there's, there's no sign it's even stopping.

00:54:48.160 Can I start one final thing at you? So the, the conventional view has always been, well,

00:54:53.040 this is a result of birth control. It's become much more sophisticated and widespread in the past 50 years.

00:54:57.920 But if you look at the rate at which people are like having sex, they're not having sex. 0.64

00:55:02.960 They're not having sex. Young men not having sex. So, I mean, who saw that coming? 0.82

00:55:09.360 But that's probably about the darkest thing I can think of. Like, what is that?

00:55:12.720 Right. That's part of this. I mean, I, you know, and it's funny, right? Because for a couple of years

00:55:17.280 in the, in the aughts, there was, oh, the internet is, you know, it's going to like, there's going to

00:55:21.120 Tinder. They're all, they're all going to be screwing all the time. All the, all the youth. 0.69

00:55:25.520 It turned out that's exactly the opposite. Didn't happen at all. Um, and, and, which is worse.

00:55:32.080 The latter is worse. Not is worse. Way worse. Way worse. Yeah.

00:55:37.840 Uh, well, I just want to, first of all, thank you for the, for the lovely sweatshirt,

00:55:40.640 which I will wear this afternoon. All right.

00:55:42.320 And, um, and also to congratulate you on being vindicated.

00:55:44.960 Even, even if no one else notices. No one else notices, but I noticed.

00:55:48.640 Unreported truths, my friend. Dishonest and dangerous.

00:55:54.800 Alex Berenson, thank you very much. Thank you, Tucker. 0.77

The Tucker Carlson Show - January 12, 2024

Alex Berenson

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