Alex Berenson
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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.
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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,
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not mercilessly, but fairly in the way that you would spank a child and that the virtuous should
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be rewarded. And on this topic, you are the virtuous. So I just want to frame this conversation
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around a conversation that we had in January of 2022. And that conversation was described by the
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Washington Post as the most dishonest and dangerous segment ever to air on our show.
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Here's what it looked like. I have not said this to you before because
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I'm pretty careful and I'm pretty careful with the data, but these vaccines, these mRNA vaccines,
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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
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point against Omicron. The spike that they make your body make that you then produce antibodies to
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is not the Omicron spike. And earlier today, Tony Fauci said, we're not going to give people
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monoclonal antibody products because the first generation products, because they don't work
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against the Omicron spike. The same logic applies to these mRNA vaccines and giving people boosters,
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even if in the very short term it knocks down infection rates, there's a boomerang effect. And that's
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what they're seeing in all these countries. Dishonest and dangerous. That was the Washington
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Post assessment of that clip right there. Given that it's been almost two years since you said
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that, how would you assess the accuracy of that statement? It was quite accurate. It turns out
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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,
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which is the strategy we follow now, those don't really work very well in terms of making your body
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produce antibodies to the new variants either. So there's really no mRNA product that you can give at
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this point that is going to be useful, probably at all, certainly for more than a couple of months.
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The mRNAs also come with side effects that look worse than they did at that time, when I said
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that to you in January 2022. And there's something that we didn't know about at all, which is really
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the biggest, to me, long-term risk with the mRNAs, which is that they appear to make your body produce
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a kind of antibody that it normally only produces in response to an allergen, like bee venom. There's
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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
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will produce this IgG4 in volume. And frankly, I would say even immunologists and virologists have
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no idea what that means long-term. Now, I don't want to overstate the risks here because we don't
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know what they are. And Omicron is very mild in general for most people. Most people shake it off
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after a few days, certainly a couple of weeks, even if they're not particularly healthy. But this is a real
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risk. Has there ever been an effective and safe mRNA product that you're aware of?
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No. No. I mean, these products were nowhere near reaching the market before COVID. They were rushed
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onto the market, supposedly as the answer to COVID in December of 2020 on the basis of large, let's
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acknowledge it, very large clinical trials, but clinical trials that had only lasted a few weeks,
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only generated a few weeks of safety data after the second dose. They appeared to work in early 2021.
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They certainly do cause the body to make a lot of spike protein, and that's a lot of antibodies to
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the spike protein. And in the short term, you get a decrease in infections. To me, the real...
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I'll say mistake, because I don't want to impute anything more than that. But let's say the real
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mistake was made in the summer of 2021, when it was very clear that the vaccines were not working
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as promised and infections were starting to go up. And we talked about this a lot in the summer of 2021.
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We saw this in Israel in the summer of 2021 before anywhere else, because Israel had vaccinated more of
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its population more quickly than anybody else with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. And so what happened was,
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instead of everybody pausing and saying, you know what, let's take a breath here and let's see
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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
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maybe an intranasal vaccine. Maybe there's something we can do. The Biden administration,
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and most of the rest of the world, but really led by the Biden administration, said two things.
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We're going to give people a third shot, a booster, which had not been... which had been tested on,
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I believe at that time, a couple of thousand people worldwide. And there was no... not even medium-term
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safety day about the booster. And that upset two of the senior scientists at the FDA who regulate
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vaccines so much that they announced their retirement within a few days after the Biden
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administration said, we're going to do this booster in mid-August. And the second thing,
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which to me is even more incomprehensible and wrong, was they said, we're going to have mandates.
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We're going to force essentially all working age Americans that we can reach to be vaccinated.
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Once it was clear, it didn't work. Once it was clear, it didn't work as advertised. At best,
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you were going to get a few months of protection. So that's the point at which
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what I'm willing to believe was a mistake looks much more like a crime.
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It was an aggressive policy decision. And one of the things that I've concluded is that one reason
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the Biden administration may have done this is because Uncle Joe, as I like to call him,
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looks so terrible in the aftermath of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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So that's the other thing that's happening in the summer of 2021. We leave and a month later,
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the Taliban are in Kabul and there are Afghans hanging off of airplanes. And the United States
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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
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administration's theory about the vaccines at face value, which is not enough Americans are being
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vaccinated. And that's why we're having this Delta spike and the unvaccinated may be a danger to the
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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?
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Tucker. Very old people. And, you know, people who are really sick if they're younger. Okay.
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The vaccine mandates will work place mandates. They only covered Americans who were healthy enough
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to be in the workforce. Almost definitionally, those people are very, very low risk from COVID.
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The people making this policy were not stupid. They knew that they, they had to know that even if the
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vaccines worked as advertised, which they knew they didn't work as advertised, you weren't going to be
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able to reach whatever tiny rump of unvaccinated elderly people there were with these mandates.
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And there were few, very few unvaccinated elderly.
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That's one of the great, you know, sort of lies of the, you know, the, the elite media is that there
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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
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hadn't been unconstitutional and wrong, they wouldn't have reached the people. If you'd wanted
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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,
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you know, few unvaccinated elderly people there were. And so when you make a decision that's that bad,
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even taking your incorrect policy assumptions into account, there's got to be another reason.
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Do we know before we get to what that other reason might be, who made that decision? Who drove that
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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
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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
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a congressional hearing, without, you know, a policy round table, without anything, it went from,
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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,
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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,
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to we're doing it. We're doing it to, I mean, Biden didn't say punish, but he did say,
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I'm frustrated with the unvaccinated. It was a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
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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
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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
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9th and says, I am going to impose workplace mandates. You think this was an effort to divert
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attention away from a foreign policy failure? I think that's part of the reason why. I think
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they wanted to show him doing something, something other than sitting at an empty table in the
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situation room, looking at screens. Wouldn't it have been better to do something constructive,
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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
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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
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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.
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That is also true. Yes. Because they weren't vaccinated. So this was a popular decision too,
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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,
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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,
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mRNA vaccine doses were paid for and never used. It was a billion, billions. By my best guess,
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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,
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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
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in, so remember the, the, the initial course is 2 doses. Um, in April of 2021, the J and J vaccine,
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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,
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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.
00:19:47.520
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?
00:20:11.680
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.
00:24:17.280
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.
00:26:33.280
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?
00:26:50.240
I didn't even think you wanted to get into the vaccine stuff, but you kind of had no choice.
00:26:53.760
Right. So you were not like some anti-vaxxer going back with Bobby Kennedy 30 years.
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
00:27:23.520
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.
00:27:52.480
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
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00:32:44.000
would help in the grip Visa and MasterCard have on us. Every time you use your credit card,
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they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee and they've been raising it without even telling you.
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This hurts consumers and every small business owner. In fact, American families are paying $1,100
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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.
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.
00:41:23.920
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
00:44:20.480
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.
00:47:06.160
My neighbor in DC just took a picture of him in our dog park in Northwest Washington,
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.
00:47:38.560
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.
00:48:41.920
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,
00:55:42.320
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.