The Tucker Carlson Show - January 12, 2024


Alex Berenson


Episode Stats

Length

55 minutes

Words per Minute

188.18813

Word Count

10,529

Sentence Count

720

Misogynist Sentences

9

Hate Speech Sentences

27


Summary

In 2002, smart people in Washington told us that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. It turns out, he didn t. And the people who told us they did have them, never apologized. And as a result, the same people have led us down the same unwise paths again and again in the 20 years since. In this episode, we speak to someone who called it right, and was not rewarded for it. Alex Berenson joins us on the show to talk about why we need to stop promoting vaccines that don t work, and why we should stop promoting them at all. This episode is brought to you by Shots, a leading provider of vaccines for HIV and other infectious diseases. Shots is a high-yield, high-potency, low-cost alternative to most other vaccines on the market. You can get a $10 credit when you buy a single dose of one of these vaccines, and get 20% off the purchase price if you use coupon code: CRUCODEVaccine. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships/OurAdvertisers. We'll be giving away $5 and $10 off your order of $50 or more when you sign up for a complimentary copy of our newest issue of our new epsiode of Shots! Subscribe to our new issue of Shots to receive $5 or more! to receive 10% off your first month of the entire year, plus free shipping and shipping throughout the rest of the month, plus an additional shipping, plus a discount on our first month, and a free shipping offer when you become a patron gets the offer of $10 or more get $5/month, and we'll get $10/month of your choice of a VIP membership plan, plus they'll get an ad discount, and they'll also get $25/month get $50/month to use the use of our VIP membership offer, and you'll get access to our VIP discount, they'll receive an ad-free version of the newbie gets the entire service, plus all that counts that starts in-they'll get 5/they'll receive $40/online access to the full-service service, they get $4/choice, they're also get the choice of the ad-option option, and also get VIP access to 5/4/ VIP access gets $25 or $6/place they can choose that'll get you get the full service offer, they also get a VIP discount.


Transcript

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.
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
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.
00:08:25.040 The vaccine mandates will work place mandates. They only covered Americans who were healthy enough
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,
00:10:33.440 uh, you know, you know, ridiculous, um, incentive programs, which to me were completely wrong too,
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.
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
00:11:52.400 popular, not just with the democratic base, with the media, uh, people remember for the
00:11:59.600 previous six months, there had been the unvaccinated or stupid, the unvaccinated,
00:12:04.240 then it became the unvaccinated can get you sick. Right? So there was, they're dirty. They can kill
00:12:08.880 you and they deserve to die. There were ethicists seriously arguing whether unvaccinated people
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
00:21:47.760 because, you know, this they do think, they do think everyone is stupid.
00:21:51.840 So, so we, if we offer differential recommendations, it will make the old people
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
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
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
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
00:23:31.280 from my side, I would never go to a doctor who pushed mRNA vaccines. What does that say about you?
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?
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
00:29:16.080 magazines, which are still influential, decided to put fat women on the cover and say, this is
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
00:29:32.080 people. So that's the point where I'm like, hmm, actually they are trying to kill people.
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
00:30:00.320 decades telling women, you know, you shouldn't be fat. That's why they don't want to be fat.
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
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,
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.
00:32:31.840 Tucker says it best. The credit card companies are ripping Americans off and enough is enough.
00:32:37.920 This is Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas. Our legislation, the Credit Card Competition Act
00:32:44.000 would help in the grip Visa and MasterCard have on us. Every time you use your credit card,
00:32:49.840 they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee and they've been raising it without even telling you.
00:32:55.520 This hurts consumers and every small business owner. In fact, American families are paying $1,100
00:33:02.400 in hidden swipe fees each year. The fees Visa and MasterCard charge Americans are the highest in the
00:33:09.040 world, double candidates and eight times more than Europe's. That's why I've taken action, but I need your
00:33:15.280 help to help get this passed. I'm asking you to call your senator today and demand they pass the
00:33:21.520 Credit Card Competition Act.
00:33:23.280 Paid for by the Merchants Payments Coalition. Not authorized by any candidate or candidates
00:33:27.520 committee. www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com
00:33:31.760 Hillsdale College offers many great free online courses, including a recent one on Marxism,
00:33:37.120 Socialism and Communism. Today, Marxism goes by different names to make itself seem less dangerous.
00:33:43.280 Names like Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory and Decolonization. No matter the names, this online
00:33:49.440 course shows it's the same Marxism that works to destroy private property and that will lead to
00:33:54.080 famines, show trials and gulags. Start learning online for free at Tucker4Hillsdale.com. That's Tucker4Hillsdale.com.
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.
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,
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
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
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,
00:40:50.720 you know, there's a large part of the country must've been 2021, uh, that, that if Tony Fauci
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.
00:41:02.080 That's all we gotta do. Like there would have been people with pitchforks on our doorstep. Um,
00:41:08.400 you know, and she's Canadian. I think she was, she was, although the Canadians behave terribly.
00:41:13.120 Well, the Canadians are very easy to control. I mean, it doesn't take much. Uh,
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.
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
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
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
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,
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
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
00:49:47.920 when rich white people have demanded to be the, you know, the Guinea pigs, um, for, uh, you know,
00:49:53.040 for an experimental medicine. Well, national suicide. Um, and speaking of that last question,
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
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
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
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
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
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.
00:55:02.960 They're not having sex. Young men not having sex. So, I mean, who saw that coming?
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.
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.