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Episode Three Hundred Five: Grading On A Curve · The Death Of Journalism

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to episode three hundred and five of the Death
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Speaker 1: of Journalism podcast. My name is John Zigler. I'm your
0:05
Speaker 1: host on this week's show. The doctor Fauci Senate hearing
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Speaker 1: turns into a crap show as he takes the fifth
0:11
Speaker 1: and turns into a punching bag. I'll tell the important
0:15
Speaker 1: backstory of my CNN appearance the night before the hearing.
0:19
Speaker 1: RFK Junior and Aaron Rodgers are unleashed against the machine.
0:23
Speaker 1: More WNBA madness, significant college sports news, and for the
0:29
Speaker 1: first time in fifty years, I speak to my first
0:32
Speaker 1: best friend, Doug Gorman, who ended up becoming a sports reporter.
0:39
Speaker 1: Last week's episode of the podcast, unfortunately was taped about
0:43
Speaker 1: day early, and so therefore we missed maybe the biggest
0:47
Speaker 1: story of last week' certainly the most fascinating, though not
0:51
Speaker 1: all that much actually happened, and that was the results
0:55
Speaker 1: of the much anticipated Senate hearing where doctor Anthony Fauci
1:00
Speaker 1: was to testify at the request or the demand of
1:04
Speaker 1: Senator Ran Paul from Kentucky. And I guess the biggest
1:10
Speaker 1: news out of this was that doctor Fauci ended up
1:13
Speaker 1: taking the fifth Amendment, which I'm sure you're already aware
1:15
Speaker 1: of at this point, because that happened now over a
1:19
Speaker 1: week ago by the time that you're listening to this podcast. Now,
1:23
Speaker 1: when it comes to taking the Fifth Amendment, I generally
1:28
Speaker 1: don't like it when people, sometimes even Donald Trump, even
1:31
Speaker 1: though he's done so himself, presume that taking the Fifth
1:35
Speaker 1: Amendment means that you are guilty of some sort of crime,
1:40
Speaker 1: because that's not what the Fifth Amendment is. And of
1:43
Speaker 1: course everybody knows that once you take the Fifth Amendment once,
1:46
Speaker 1: you have to take it every single time. And so
1:49
Speaker 1: there's this game that ends up getting played when a
1:53
Speaker 1: person who's testifying takes the Fifth Amendment, where people will
1:57
Speaker 1: ask them simple questions and therefore it will look very
2:01
Speaker 1: suspicious when they're unwilling to answer and they say, on
2:04
Speaker 1: the advice of my counsel, I'm taking the Fifth Amendment.
2:07
Speaker 1: And it's a game because there are a huge number
2:10
Speaker 1: of people don't really understand the Fifth Amendment. And I understand.
2:14
Speaker 1: I get it that it looks bad, it looks terrible,
2:17
Speaker 1: it looks like you're hiding something, But sometimes you're just
2:21
Speaker 1: exerting your constitutional rights because you feel like you're in
2:25
Speaker 1: an impossible situation. Now, what made the fauci circumstance. Particularly interesting, bizarre,
2:32
Speaker 1: and frankly almost unique was the fact that Fauci already
2:36
Speaker 1: had been given a pardon. Now, to me, the fact
2:40
Speaker 1: that he got a pardon, a widespread, sweeping pardon. It
2:43
Speaker 1: goes back many many years from Joe Biden, or at
2:46
Speaker 1: least the auto pen from Joe Biden. The fact that
2:49
Speaker 1: he even got the pardon, to me, is way more
2:51
Speaker 1: suspicious inherently than him taking the Fifth Amendment. What does
2:56
Speaker 1: he need a pardon for now? Those on the left
2:59
Speaker 1: will say, but John Trump's an insane person. He's been
3:03
Speaker 1: shown that he wants revenge against his enemies, although you know,
3:07
Speaker 1: Fauci has never really been on the enemy list. Unfortunately,
3:10
Speaker 1: back Fauci got an award from Trump when his last
3:13
Speaker 1: day in office. But the argument goes that Biden had
3:16
Speaker 1: to protect people like Fauci from potential retribution against a
3:20
Speaker 1: Republican administration. I'm not really buying that. I get some credence,
3:27
Speaker 1: or not really credence, but I get I at least
3:30
Speaker 1: understand the philosophy there. But to me, the important part
3:34
Speaker 1: of that pardon comes when he decides to take the
3:37
Speaker 1: Fifth Amendment. He doesn't have a pardon already, then the
3:41
Speaker 1: Fifth Amendment is exerting a natural and important constitutional right
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Speaker 1: if you're in a witch hunt, but you already have
3:49
Speaker 1: a pardon for your past acts. So the only thing
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Speaker 1: that the pardon doesn't, apparently, you know, protect you from
3:57
Speaker 1: is future crimes like, for instance, committing perjury in last
4:02
Speaker 1: week's hearing. Now, perjury is very difficult to prove. It's
4:06
Speaker 1: important that perjury become very difficult to prove. Otherwise that's
4:10
Speaker 1: the only thing that our court system would ever deal
4:12
Speaker 1: with is would be perjury, and perjury would be an
4:15
Speaker 1: incredibly easy thing to use to go after one's political enemies.
4:19
Speaker 1: So I think that's a proper part of our system
4:21
Speaker 1: that it's not easy to prove or even charge perjury.
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Speaker 1: But that also provides more context to why it is
4:30
Speaker 1: that Fauci deserves criticism in this particular case for taking
4:34
Speaker 1: the fifth because there is really no such thing as
4:37
Speaker 1: a perjury trap. I mean, if you don't want to
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Speaker 1: commit perjury, just tell the goddamn truth. It's really pretty simple.
4:45
Speaker 1: You can't be charged with anything that happened before that
4:48
Speaker 1: hearing because you have a pardon effectively, and you know,
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Speaker 1: if you have to make some embarrassing admissions. Then that's
4:55
Speaker 1: just the price of being in the public eye the
4:58
Speaker 1: way that you are. You got to take the good
5:00
Speaker 1: with the bad. And if you're going to be a
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Speaker 1: hero in the minds of the media for many years,
5:06
Speaker 1: obviously the six years since the COVID panic, and you
5:09
Speaker 1: finally get put under oath in a situation where you
5:12
Speaker 1: are forced to tell the truth because that's the only
5:14
Speaker 1: way you can ever be charged as if you commit
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Speaker 1: perjury in a Senate hearing under oath, then I'm sorry.
5:19
Speaker 1: That's the way the cookie crumbles. So I don't have
5:24
Speaker 1: merely as much empathy or sympathy with doctor Fauci over
5:29
Speaker 1: this issue of being criticized for taking the Fifth Amendment.
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Speaker 1: This is a pretty unique situation, and I don't see
5:37
Speaker 1: why he needed to do that, and there are those
5:39
Speaker 1: that believe that it was a mistake for him to
5:41
Speaker 1: do that. Now I have no idea. I don't think
5:43
Speaker 1: anybody really knows what the truth of that matter is,
5:47
Speaker 1: whether or not he may have put himself in more
5:48
Speaker 1: jeopardy by now allowing RAND to go after him on
5:52
Speaker 1: a contempt charge. I don't even know if they're going
5:55
Speaker 1: to have the votes in the Senate. My guess is
5:58
Speaker 1: they're going to have the votes in the Senate. Otherwise
6:00
Speaker 1: Ran Paul wouldn't be so dumb as to make a
6:02
Speaker 1: huge deal out of this. I don't know what ends
6:05
Speaker 1: upcoming of that. I really don't, But I'm most interested
6:08
Speaker 1: in the substance of all this. I get the theater,
6:12
Speaker 1: I get the circus, I get the desire for some
6:16
Speaker 1: sort of revenge or accountability, But I'm most concerned with
6:20
Speaker 1: how we handled the COVID panic and that we never
6:24
Speaker 1: do this again. And the number one way for this
6:27
Speaker 1: to never happen again is to have some semblance of
6:31
Speaker 1: accountability for those that made massive, numerous mistakes during the
6:37
Speaker 1: COVID panic to begin with, and that was obviously doctor Fauci.
6:41
Speaker 1: Doctor FAUGI likes to try to claim that he didn't
6:43
Speaker 1: really have that much power. Bull crap, And it let
6:47
Speaker 1: just be clear about this. Not only was he the
6:50
Speaker 1: biggest celebrity, which is everything in today's world. Not only
6:54
Speaker 1: was he Trump's biggest advisor, but he became such a
6:57
Speaker 1: media darling that all across the kind of tree, specifically
7:01
Speaker 1: in bluestates. Because I know this happened here in California.
7:04
Speaker 1: I know what happened in New York. I know it
7:06
Speaker 1: happened in Pennsylvania in other places that where cod the
7:11
Speaker 1: COVID panic just ran crazy and we lost their goddamn minds.
7:15
Speaker 1: Where all these local health officials that no one had
7:19
Speaker 1: ever heard of before all instantaneously became little Fauci's. They
7:24
Speaker 1: all were in lockstaff with doctor Fauci. Whatever Fauci said
7:29
Speaker 1: was like Moses coming down with the tablets. That was
7:34
Speaker 1: the word of God. Literally. They even flipped their positions
7:38
Speaker 1: on masks in many cases, like they did in our
7:42
Speaker 1: county here in southern California, Venturre County, where our doctor
7:46
Speaker 1: was against mask mandates, and then when Fauci flipped on
7:49
Speaker 1: mask mandates, he was in favor of mask mandates. I mean,
7:52
Speaker 1: that was just one example that proved the larger phenomenon
7:57
Speaker 1: that there was no separation between foul she and the
8:01
Speaker 1: local blue state health officials. So one hundred percent, Fauci
8:06
Speaker 1: was the number one person to blame. And it's not
8:09
Speaker 1: even close now. As far as the way the rest
8:12
Speaker 1: of the hearing went, I thought it turned into a
8:16
Speaker 1: crap show. I thought it was a circus. I didn't
8:20
Speaker 1: think we really got much at all to the truth
8:24
Speaker 1: or to any real semblance of accountability, except for the
8:28
Speaker 1: fact that doctor Fauci was finally forced to sit there
8:32
Speaker 1: and hear the truth in many cases, be criticized in
8:36
Speaker 1: many cases. Lamb based did in many cases, and that
8:40
Speaker 1: had to be unpleasant, especially, you know, in front of
8:44
Speaker 1: some national television audiences. Obviously wasn't a widespread national television audience,
8:49
Speaker 1: but it did get a lot of live television coverage
8:52
Speaker 1: on some of the cable news networks. This had to
8:55
Speaker 1: be embarrassing, especially for a guy whose ego is as
8:58
Speaker 1: massive as doctor Fauci's. Now, by and large, while it
9:04
Speaker 1: was enjoyable as a critic of doctor Fauci, to see
9:08
Speaker 1: him being used as a punching bag, and that's another
9:11
Speaker 1: that's another price you pay for taking the Fifth Amendment.
9:15
Speaker 1: Once you make it clear you're going to take the
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Speaker 1: fifth everything now you literally become a punching bag because
9:21
Speaker 1: the questioner knows there's not going to be any kind
9:24
Speaker 1: of response, so now you get to do whatever the
9:27
Speaker 1: hell you want. And a lot of the Republicans I
9:29
Speaker 1: thought maybe went a little bit overboard. I mean, again,
9:32
Speaker 1: I'm not defending Fauci at all, but I just thought
9:35
Speaker 1: it was a little bit too much at times. But
9:38
Speaker 1: I am going to play one clip from the Senator
9:42
Speaker 1: Republican Center from Missouri Josh Holly, who is a very
9:45
Speaker 1: smart guy, and this one was just too good not
9:49
Speaker 1: to play, because this was how Holly ended his questioning
9:54
Speaker 1: of doctor Fauci and basically read him the Riot Act
9:58
Speaker 1: and made it very clear to anyone who was watching
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Speaker 1: what doctor Fauci is really all about, and really hit
10:05
Speaker 1: on what I think is the primary point in his diaries.
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Speaker 1: There was a lot in the diaries which I'll get
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Speaker 1: to a little bit later on when I talk about
10:14
Speaker 1: how I went on CNN to discuss this in a
10:17
Speaker 1: particularly interesting and I think somewhat significant fashion. But to me,
10:22
Speaker 1: the number one issue is his obsession with celebrity, because
10:26
Speaker 1: I think that impacted all sorts of his decisions or reasons.
10:30
Speaker 1: I'll get to in just a little bit, But here
10:32
Speaker 1: was Josh Hallie taking doctor Fauci to the wood shed
10:38
Speaker 1: in a clip that I just want injected straight into
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Speaker 1: my veins.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, well, silence this admission, And here's the real saying.
10:47
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, it wasn't just about
10:49
Speaker 2: the money, really wasn't It was really about a power trip.
10:53
Speaker 2: I mean, through all of this, you want to be
10:55
Speaker 2: the most famous scientists in the world. You were so
10:57
Speaker 2: focused on getting every award and every drop of cash
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Speaker 2: that you could, all because you wanted to be on TV.
11:03
Speaker 2: You wanted to be the sun god of science. You
11:06
Speaker 2: wanted to be the guy who was in charge of
11:08
Speaker 2: it all. You wanted to blam bass Trump. You wanted
11:10
Speaker 2: to make sure that nobody else stole your spotlight. You
11:13
Speaker 2: wanted to be the guy you had time to sit
11:16
Speaker 2: for in Style magazine. Here's what you were doing with
11:20
Speaker 2: your time. You could sit for in Style magazine, but
11:24
Speaker 2: you can't answer questions for the American people you could
11:27
Speaker 2: sit for in Style magazine.
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Speaker 1: But you're here taking the fifth.
11:30
Speaker 2: You could sit for in Style magazine and get a
11:32
Speaker 2: million bucks in cash awards. But now the cat's got
11:36
Speaker 2: your tongue.
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Speaker 1: I bet he does. I tell you what.
11:39
Speaker 2: Here's my conclusion from all of this. This was really
11:43
Speaker 2: all about you the whole time. Somewhere along the way
11:45
Speaker 2: you lost your way. You may have been a good
11:48
Speaker 2: public servant at one time. I don't know, but I
11:50
Speaker 2: can tell you. From reading your emails now, from looking
11:53
Speaker 2: at what you did, how you used your employees. Somewhere
11:56
Speaker 2: along the line it became all about you. You became
11:59
Speaker 2: an narcissist and a megalomaniac and a liar, and you've
12:04
Speaker 2: lied to the American people, and you've lied to this body,
12:07
Speaker 2: and you've disgraced your profession by doing it. You called
12:09
Speaker 2: yourself the most famous scientists in the world. You've done
12:12
Speaker 2: more to harm science than anybody in my lifetime. And
12:15
Speaker 2: I hope you'll go home and write that in your diary.
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Speaker 1: Now, that was at least somewhat cathartic for someone like
12:21
Speaker 1: myself who has been a COVID contrarian and a Fauci
12:25
Speaker 1: critic critic from basically day one. And that's not hyperbleeve,
12:30
Speaker 1: that's not twenty twenty hindsight. If you've been following what
12:34
Speaker 1: I've been doing since the COVID panic, the record could
12:37
Speaker 1: not be more clear in both my podcasting as well
12:41
Speaker 1: at the time my writing for Mediaite as a senior columnist.
12:45
Speaker 1: And so I did enjoy that. I realized that, you know,
12:50
Speaker 1: Fauci wasn't going to respond, and you know, it's limited
12:53
Speaker 1: accountability under these circumstances, but at least it's something. At
12:57
Speaker 1: least there's a record of it, and at least you know,
13:00
Speaker 1: some portion of the public got exposed to that point
13:05
Speaker 1: of view, which I think is really really important. Now,
13:09
Speaker 1: as far as those who were really at the epicenter
13:13
Speaker 1: of this, who may have changed their mind over new
13:17
Speaker 1: revelations or the passing of time, or specifically Fauci's diaries
13:23
Speaker 1: and his unwillingness to answer questions, there wasn't a lot,
13:27
Speaker 1: but there was some. There was some movement, at least
13:32
Speaker 1: in a way that surprised me. For instance, one of
13:35
Speaker 1: Biden's COVID czars acknowledged on national television that they now
13:40
Speaker 1: believe that the lab leak theory is the explanation for
13:44
Speaker 1: how COVID began in the first place. Now, I've never
13:47
Speaker 1: been that into the lab leak theory. I know that
13:51
Speaker 1: ran Paul is very much motivated by it. I get it.
13:55
Speaker 1: I do think it's significant. I do think that if
13:58
Speaker 1: we had known that Fauch he was totally wrong and
14:02
Speaker 1: maybe lying and maybe covering up the cause of the
14:05
Speaker 1: pandemic at the time, it absolutely would have viscerated his
14:09
Speaker 1: credibility and maybe changed a lot of history. If there
14:13
Speaker 1: really is a cover up of that, I do think
14:15
Speaker 1: that that is, you know, maybe why he got the pardon.
14:19
Speaker 1: So I understand why people are into the lab leak theory,
14:25
Speaker 1: but to me, it's more philosophical and maybe goes more
14:27
Speaker 1: to whether or not Fauci is a credible person, whether
14:31
Speaker 1: he's a liar, whether or not he's corrupt. I've always
14:35
Speaker 1: been more interested in what the actual decisions were that
14:40
Speaker 1: were made to try to mitigate, or at least allegedly
14:43
Speaker 1: try to mitigate, what was going on with the COVID pandemic.
14:46
Speaker 1: But Biden's COVID z are has essentially flipped their position.
14:50
Speaker 1: Not one hundred percent, They're not one hundred percent sure.
14:53
Speaker 1: But that's really, I think remarkable because we were told
14:57
Speaker 1: at the time that anybody who believed in the lab
15:00
Speaker 1: theory was a conspiracy nutjob. I mean, major media outlets
15:04
Speaker 1: said that there's no chance. The experts have told us
15:07
Speaker 1: that this did not come out of the lab and Wuhan,
15:11
Speaker 1: and then we had this very bizarre situation where John Stewart,
15:14
Speaker 1: liberal comedian, went on a late night show at Stephen
15:20
Speaker 1: Colbert's show, I think and basically laid out the laughleek
15:24
Speaker 1: theory just based on common sense in a hilarious way.
15:28
Speaker 1: And ever since then, the momentum has kind of shifted
15:32
Speaker 1: in the other direction, and now I think most thinking
15:35
Speaker 1: people have accepted that the lab leak theory is the
15:38
Speaker 1: most logical and most likely scenario for how this whole
15:41
Speaker 1: thing began. But I found that to be interesting that
15:44
Speaker 1: someone on the left, a so called expert, was willing
15:47
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that Fauci was wrong about something that was
15:51
Speaker 1: very important. But I was even more stunned by an
15:55
Speaker 1: interview that doctor Deborah Berks gave. Now, maybe I've just
16:00
Speaker 1: not been paying enough attention to Deborah Brooks. Maybe I
16:03
Speaker 1: wrote her off during COVID, because during the panic, it
16:07
Speaker 1: was very clear to me that doctor Fouchi was an
16:10
Speaker 1: egomaniac and was going to cause an enormous amount of trouble.
16:15
Speaker 1: And I saw this immediately. I think it was at
16:18
Speaker 1: least the second, maybe even the first press conference that
16:21
Speaker 1: he gave that this is going to be a massive problem,
16:25
Speaker 1: and he was kind of batman to Deborah Brooks as
16:29
Speaker 1: Robin and Deborah Brooks was there where her scarf and
16:33
Speaker 1: her sanctimonious way of speaking, and she just gave off
16:39
Speaker 1: the vibes of being as super liberal to me. And
16:42
Speaker 1: I never did a deep dive into her, but it
16:45
Speaker 1: just seems so obvious that she was going to go
16:48
Speaker 1: along with whatever Fauci said, and that she was clearly
16:51
Speaker 1: a lib like most people in these positions are. And
16:55
Speaker 1: I didn't think that she was particularly smart or particularly
17:00
Speaker 1: credible or competent. I did not trust her, and I
17:04
Speaker 1: thought that she was one hundred percent down with Fauci. Well,
17:08
Speaker 1: she gave this interview. Apparently she's been doing interviews on
17:11
Speaker 1: fairly conservative or even sometimes super conservative outlets in recent years,
17:16
Speaker 1: and I just haven't been exposed to it. But she
17:18
Speaker 1: was asked post Fauci hearing about what really went down,
17:24
Speaker 1: and she said a lot of kind of remarkable things.
17:27
Speaker 1: But the most important in my mind was that she
17:30
Speaker 1: made the allegation, which I think is true, although I
17:34
Speaker 1: also think it's twenty twenty hindsight on her part, or
17:37
Speaker 1: maybe she's rationalizing the past to get off of some
17:41
Speaker 1: accountability herself. But she made the argument that they were
17:47
Speaker 1: surprised by how much the Blue States locked down, that
17:54
Speaker 1: that was not the intention. Now, I wasn't there. I
17:58
Speaker 1: was obviously in the input epicenter of all this. I'm
18:02
Speaker 1: not one hundred percent convinced this is the truth, but
18:05
Speaker 1: I can certainly see it where in their minds. In
18:10
Speaker 1: Brooks's mind, at least, what she thought the plan was
18:14
Speaker 1: was one level of shut down, and then Newsome and
18:16
Speaker 1: Cuomo saw that as an invitation to go hog wild,
18:22
Speaker 1: one because you know, they were power obsessed, and two
18:26
Speaker 1: because they realized that this was going to be very,
18:28
Speaker 1: very good for the effort to defeat Donald Trump in
18:31
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election. And I was astonished that Deborah
18:36
Speaker 1: Brooks said this on television in the aftermath of Fauci's hearing.
18:41
Speaker 1: And here's what that sounded like.
18:43
Speaker 3: When President Trump said to me, we will never close
18:47
Speaker 3: down America again as what happened in which I couldn't
18:50
Speaker 3: understand how that happened so rapidly, we put out guidelines
18:53
Speaker 3: to slow the spread, and the next thing we know,
18:56
Speaker 3: everything is closed down. Now I know that doctor Fauci
18:59
Speaker 3: was having private conversations with these governors and mayors to
19:03
Speaker 3: tell them to close the schools and to tell them
19:05
Speaker 3: while we were trying to figure out how to contain
19:08
Speaker 3: the virus without doing all of that a long way
19:11
Speaker 3: of saying, you know, you have to follow what your
19:14
Speaker 3: commander and chief is saying to you. That doesn't mean
19:18
Speaker 3: that you change the science. It doesn't mean you change
19:21
Speaker 3: the data, but you figure out a way to execute
19:24
Speaker 3: the plan that they want. So when President Trump, on
19:27
Speaker 3: i think April fourth, said we'll never do this again
19:30
Speaker 3: to the country, we pivoted to how do we bring
19:34
Speaker 3: testing so that people are aware of their status. No
19:36
Speaker 3: one wants to infect anybody else, but if you get
19:39
Speaker 3: the tests, instead of quarantining people who are exposed, you
19:43
Speaker 3: just only tell the people who are infected to stay home.
19:46
Speaker 3: That is a very different approach. It worked fabulously in universities.
19:51
Speaker 3: It's why we were able to keep them open, and
19:53
Speaker 3: Secretary Devace was working on keeping K through twelve open.
19:56
Speaker 3: There were solutions, but it became very political, and we
20:00
Speaker 3: all have to be aware because it was a presidential
20:02
Speaker 3: election year, it was really important for bluestates to show
20:07
Speaker 3: that they were taking it very seriously, and they overclosed
20:12
Speaker 3: and we just have to be honest that that happened.
20:14
Speaker 3: And that's why that discussion from both sides of the
20:17
Speaker 3: aisle and a resolution and a way to go forward
20:20
Speaker 3: is critical so that we can do this right in
20:23
Speaker 3: the future.
20:25
Speaker 1: So kudos to doctor Deborah Burks for saying that, the
20:29
Speaker 1: first time I've heard her make that kind of acknowledgement.
20:32
Speaker 1: It would have been nice if she had said it
20:34
Speaker 1: at the time. I don't I'm pretty darn sure she
20:38
Speaker 1: didn't say anything like this. Would it actually mattered. But
20:41
Speaker 1: if she's telling the truth, and I think she probably is,
20:44
Speaker 1: I do think that's an important part of the historical
20:47
Speaker 1: record here. But by and large, with some exceptions which
20:51
Speaker 1: I'll get to, the media has circled the wagons around
20:55
Speaker 1: doctor Fauci, and this is not a surprise at all
21:00
Speaker 1: because obviously they're literally on the same team. His diary
21:04
Speaker 1: shows that they were on the same team, specifically at
21:08
Speaker 1: CNN and Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and others, and
21:12
Speaker 1: he was really very enamored with his celebrity. They were
21:16
Speaker 1: protecting him, he was giving them what they wanted. It
21:20
Speaker 1: was a symbiotic relationship. And now, of course he's being
21:23
Speaker 1: accused of lying and being wrong about virtually everything, which
21:26
Speaker 1: effectively means they are being accused of lying and effectively
21:31
Speaker 1: being wrong about everything. So they're never going to admit that,
21:35
Speaker 1: They're never going to take accountability. As I've said many,
21:38
Speaker 1: many times, this story is too big to fail. There
21:40
Speaker 1: was too much damage. Nobody is ever going to admit
21:44
Speaker 1: that they caused the world to shut down for two
21:47
Speaker 1: years and we're wrong about that. So they have to
21:51
Speaker 1: have Fauci maintain himself as a hero or at least
21:56
Speaker 1: a martyr. And you know, this was a classic Rarshack test,
22:01
Speaker 1: this Fauci hearing, because the right saw it as accountability
22:08
Speaker 1: of some level, and the left saw it as this
22:11
Speaker 1: poor old man who was a hero being attacked and
22:15
Speaker 1: effectively he was turned into a martyr. So that was
22:18
Speaker 1: the narrative that most of the mainstream news media went with,
22:22
Speaker 1: was doctor Fauci is a martyr at the hands of
22:27
Speaker 1: these mean, nasty Republicans who are doing the work of
22:30
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. I guess, although that doesn't even make any
22:33
Speaker 1: sense sense, Trump has actually at times been extremely pro
22:37
Speaker 1: Fauci when it mattered, So it was not a surprise
22:41
Speaker 1: at all. As frustrating as it is that the vast
22:44
Speaker 1: majority of the media has in fact protected doctor Fauci,
22:48
Speaker 1: they at first tried to mute this story with regard
22:52
Speaker 1: to the diary and then the hearing exploded it and
22:55
Speaker 1: they really had no choice. So now they protect and
22:59
Speaker 1: move on. Protect and move on has been their general
23:03
Speaker 1: strategy when it comes to dealing with the doctor Fauci story.
23:08
Speaker 1: I found it particularly interesting and frustrating the two commentators
23:13
Speaker 1: who are not technically really newspeople, although they're very prominent people.
23:17
Speaker 1: I found that two people really personified this very frustrating
23:24
Speaker 1: circumstance where people have this knee jerk need to not
23:30
Speaker 1: admit that they were wrong and to in this case
23:33
Speaker 1: because they're part of the liberal elites, protect doctor Fauci.
23:37
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about two people that are more in
23:40
Speaker 1: the tabloid world. One is Harvey Levin, who owns and
23:43
Speaker 1: runs TMZ, and the other is Andy Cohen, who effectively
23:46
Speaker 1: owns the television network and not owns but runs I
23:50
Speaker 1: guess the television network Bravo, and both Harvey Levin and
23:56
Speaker 1: Andy Cohen at times during the COVID pan we're a
24:01
Speaker 1: little bit contrariant. That's why I'm mentioning them. They were
24:04
Speaker 1: not in lockstep. They understood that there was at least
24:09
Speaker 1: a legitimate other side of the story. Andy Cohen, who's
24:12
Speaker 1: a liberal gay guy even praise Ron DeSantis because I'm
24:17
Speaker 1: sure he was tired of living in the Hamptons in
24:19
Speaker 1: New York where he couldn't do anything, and he was
24:21
Speaker 1: able to get down to Florida and actually have some fun.
24:25
Speaker 1: And then, of course he eventually retracted those statements when
24:28
Speaker 1: it was no longer politically viable when DeSantis was running
24:32
Speaker 1: for president. But Harvey Levin was in somewhat of the
24:35
Speaker 1: same group, and both of them went way, way, way
24:39
Speaker 1: out of their way in very dramatic fashion to defend
24:43
Speaker 1: Fauci after his hearings and make him into a martyr
24:47
Speaker 1: and call him a hero and say that this is
24:50
Speaker 1: an embarrassing moment for America that were attacking this man
24:54
Speaker 1: who has done such great things. And I found that
24:57
Speaker 1: to be really a really strong and pressing indication of
25:02
Speaker 1: where the rest of the media was going to go
25:04
Speaker 1: on this. Andy Cohen, I've never met. He's very good
25:08
Speaker 1: friends with my friend Matt Lower. I'm not a fan
25:11
Speaker 1: of Andy Cohen for lots of reasons on which I
25:14
Speaker 1: can't tell you. I'm not sure he's a really particularly
25:17
Speaker 1: good guy. And his handling publicly of the COVID issue,
25:21
Speaker 1: I think is a classic example of how he's not
25:24
Speaker 1: a really good person because he's been completely two faced
25:29
Speaker 1: and his position has shifted obviously because of his political
25:34
Speaker 1: self interest at the time. So that to me was
25:38
Speaker 1: a strong indication that there was not going to be
25:41
Speaker 1: anything close to a come to Jesus' full accountability moment
25:47
Speaker 1: within the media when it comes to reevaluating doctor Fauci.
25:52
Speaker 1: That was not gonna happen. However, there were a couple
25:55
Speaker 1: of exceptions that kind of proved the rule, And maybe
25:59
Speaker 1: the most remarkable, because I don't like this guy either,
26:04
Speaker 1: was Stephen A. Smith from ESPN. Stephen A. Smith has
26:08
Speaker 1: probably become the most unpredictable major commentator in America. You're
26:14
Speaker 1: never one hundred percent sure how he's gonna come down
26:17
Speaker 1: on anything. And he attacked Fauci for taking the fifth
26:22
Speaker 1: but maybe even more interestingly, and I think maybe more significantly,
26:28
Speaker 1: he apologized. He apologized to Kyrie Irving, who he attacked,
26:32
Speaker 1: the basketball player who he attacked unmercifully at the time
26:37
Speaker 1: for refusing to adhere to the vaccine mandate. And he,
26:43
Speaker 1: to his credit, Stephen A. Smith, who is wrong about
26:46
Speaker 1: a lot of things. And I've been very very critical
26:48
Speaker 1: of over the years, most prominently the whole Penn State story. Boy,
26:53
Speaker 1: I wish he would acknowledge he was wrong there, at
26:55
Speaker 1: least take a second look at it, because there's a
26:57
Speaker 1: lot of similarities in those two moral panics. But to
27:01
Speaker 1: his credit, he fully apologized to Kyrie Irving. Now he
27:05
Speaker 1: probably should have also added I don't think he did,
27:08
Speaker 1: Novak Djokovic and Aaron Rodgers, because those three athletes were
27:13
Speaker 1: the most prominent when it came to pushing back specifically
27:17
Speaker 1: against vaccine mandates and the general madness of what was
27:21
Speaker 1: going on with the panic. But kudos to Stephen A.
27:25
Speaker 1: Smith for very very prominently and enthusiastically and emphatically criticizing
27:34
Speaker 1: Fauci for his handling of the hearing, as well as
27:36
Speaker 1: apologizing to Kyrie Irving. Another ESPN personality, Pat McAfee also
27:44
Speaker 1: joked a bit about doctor Fauci at his hearing, and
27:48
Speaker 1: that became more understandable later when Aaron Rodgers went on
27:53
Speaker 1: his show to blast doctor Fauci, which you're going to
27:56
Speaker 1: get to in just a little bit, But before I
27:58
Speaker 1: do that, I want to talk about my own very
28:01
Speaker 1: very small role in how the media coverage of this
28:05
Speaker 1: story evolved because I think this will give you some
28:07
Speaker 1: interesting insight and to how this whole thing works in
28:11
Speaker 1: general and specifically in this situation. Now, you may recall
28:16
Speaker 1: in the last episode of the podcast, I told you
28:19
Speaker 1: that I was booked to do two segments on CNN
28:23
Speaker 1: Live on that Tuesday night, the night before Doctor Fauci's
28:27
Speaker 1: hearing on Alex Michaelson's show, on which I had appeared
28:30
Speaker 1: twice previously. Now, this was booked about a week in advance,
28:36
Speaker 1: so we had no idea when I was booked that
28:39
Speaker 1: there would be the diary. I don't think we even
28:42
Speaker 1: knew that there would be a hearing. I mean, so
28:46
Speaker 1: this was not on the radar screen when I was booked.
28:50
Speaker 1: This is the way that show does it because they
28:52
Speaker 1: like to have guests in studio in Los Angeles, and
28:55
Speaker 1: it's just not logistically possible to decide your topics at
29:01
Speaker 1: six six o'clock in the evening and then in a
29:05
Speaker 1: couple of hours notice, get good people into the studio
29:08
Speaker 1: who are experts on that particular topic. It's just not
29:11
Speaker 1: logistically possible. So they do it ahead of time. And
29:15
Speaker 1: I told you on last week's podcast that at the
29:18
Speaker 1: moment of taping. I did not know whether or not
29:23
Speaker 1: the doctor Fauci subject was going to come up, but
29:26
Speaker 1: I felt like I was in a moral dilemma because
29:30
Speaker 1: it was almost a perfect storm of circumstances. One, there
29:35
Speaker 1: was nothing else going on, I mean nothing. It was
29:38
Speaker 1: as slow a news period, even for the summer, as
29:42
Speaker 1: you could possibly imagine. And two, we were doing not
29:46
Speaker 1: just one, but two segments over two hours. So therefore,
29:52
Speaker 1: in my mind, there was absolutely positively no other explanation
29:57
Speaker 1: if the Fauci subject was not on the agenda, then
30:02
Speaker 1: for that to have been effectively political censorship. And I
30:07
Speaker 1: didn't know whether or not Alex Michaelson's show was going
30:10
Speaker 1: to engage in that, because I've had a very good
30:13
Speaker 1: relationship with him so far, and I have respect for Elex,
30:17
Speaker 1: and so I was hopeful. I even said on the
30:19
Speaker 1: show last week, I'm hopeful this is all going to
30:21
Speaker 1: go well. But I'm also well aware of the circumstances
30:24
Speaker 1: at CNN, because prior to my appearance, CNN had effectively
30:31
Speaker 1: done almost no coverage, literally no coverage of this, and
30:34
Speaker 1: in fact, one female commentator had tried to bring it
30:38
Speaker 1: up when it wasn't actually the subject matter and got
30:43
Speaker 1: completely shouted down and mocked, and that clip kind of
30:46
Speaker 1: went viral, and I thought, oh boy, all right, I
30:51
Speaker 1: might be in a spot here because if I'm booked
30:54
Speaker 1: for two segments and we're not going to talk about
30:57
Speaker 1: doctor Fauci, and I know that CNN is battening down
31:00
Speaker 1: the hatches on this as far as a general philosophy
31:04
Speaker 1: on this story, They're going to just try to pretend
31:06
Speaker 1: that this isn't happening the whole diary thing, then I'm
31:10
Speaker 1: going to be in a tough spot because over two segments,
31:15
Speaker 1: I'm going to feel compelled to bring it up. And
31:18
Speaker 1: so I told you last week that I had a
31:21
Speaker 1: pretty long conversation with Matt Lauer and got his thoughts
31:25
Speaker 1: and his advice on it. And Matt is, obviously, you know,
31:28
Speaker 1: one of the top people in the world to discuss
31:30
Speaker 1: this kind of subject matter with. But there's one vulnerability
31:34
Speaker 1: he has, and that is that, throughout the vast majority
31:37
Speaker 1: of his career, he has been in a situation where
31:40
Speaker 1: he has had massive amounts of leverage. I talked to
31:43
Speaker 1: him about this all the time. I'm not sure he understands.
31:45
Speaker 1: I think he understands where I'm coming from. But I
31:47
Speaker 1: had to remind him all the time that he has
31:50
Speaker 1: extensive media experience, more than almost anybody on the planet
31:54
Speaker 1: in this kind of situation, but it's almost always from
31:58
Speaker 1: a position of leverage. In the exact opposite position, I
32:03
Speaker 1: have zero leverage. I'm not an employee, I'm not even
32:07
Speaker 1: you know, a CNN contributor. I'm not a celebrity. You
32:12
Speaker 1: know there, I am easily discarded, and so that makes
32:18
Speaker 1: the situation much much more difficult. But I also know
32:21
Speaker 1: how passionately I feel about this COVID panic topic, and
32:25
Speaker 1: that this was never going to come around again. This
32:27
Speaker 1: was a one shot deal. This was one of those
32:30
Speaker 1: very rare circumstances in my life where everything kind of
32:33
Speaker 1: came together, and the timing was absolutely perfect for me
32:37
Speaker 1: to go on CNN the night before doctor Fauci was
32:39
Speaker 1: going to testify in front of the US Senate. But
32:43
Speaker 1: I was also very concerned. You may recall I referenced
32:46
Speaker 1: that I had a moral dilemma on my hands because
32:48
Speaker 1: I did not want, out of loyalty to Elex, I
32:52
Speaker 1: did not want to cause an embarrassing situation for him.
32:54
Speaker 1: So I even called Liz Habibe, my former co host
32:59
Speaker 1: with the benefit of hindsight and at the beginning of
33:01
Speaker 1: this podcast the Death of Journalism. Now, Liz is an
33:04
Speaker 1: important person here because she and Alex used to work
33:08
Speaker 1: together at the Fox affiliate in Los Angeles, and in fact,
33:11
Speaker 1: it's because of Liz that I even began communicating with
33:15
Speaker 1: Alex during the COVID panic. See the context here is
33:18
Speaker 1: so important. This whole backstory is actually kind of fascinating
33:21
Speaker 1: and really very telling about the way the news media works.
33:24
Speaker 1: I've referenced before on this podcast several times that I've
33:28
Speaker 1: had a very interesting, almost bizarre, somewhat abusive relationship with Alex.
33:33
Speaker 1: Michael said, because since the beginning of the COVID panic,
33:38
Speaker 1: I have been really very hard on him. I'm sure
33:43
Speaker 1: much harder anybody else is willing to be on his
33:46
Speaker 1: coverage of the COVID panic, both publicly as far as
33:49
Speaker 1: my posts on X as well as direct messages to
33:53
Speaker 1: him as well as several phone calls. And he has
33:55
Speaker 1: always been open minded, he's always been rational, and I've
34:00
Speaker 1: always appreciated that, and I worked on him hard. I
34:04
Speaker 1: have lobbied him, not constantly but intermittently for almost six
34:08
Speaker 1: years on this very topic, and so I feel at
34:14
Speaker 1: least a bit of loyalty to him, and I didn't
34:16
Speaker 1: want to do anything to put him in a bad spot. Well,
34:20
Speaker 1: by the time I spoke to Liz, I found out
34:24
Speaker 1: that doctor Fauci was in fact going to be discussed.
34:27
Speaker 1: It was going to be the first topic and the
34:29
Speaker 1: second appearance later that night on CNN and the beginning
34:34
Speaker 1: of the ten o'clock hour on the West coast, so
34:36
Speaker 1: basically the middle of the night on the East coast.
34:39
Speaker 1: So maybe it was safer that I don't know. And
34:42
Speaker 1: Liz gave me some I thought good advice because she
34:44
Speaker 1: understood where I was coming from and she likes Elex.
34:47
Speaker 1: She told me I could trust Elex. And one of
34:51
Speaker 1: the things I was curious about from her perspective was,
34:54
Speaker 1: so Elex has to know what's going to happen here, right,
35:00
Speaker 1: I mean, if doctor Fauci is on the agenda and
35:03
Speaker 1: he knows me very well on this subject, I have
35:07
Speaker 1: to give him what, you know, I can't hold back, right,
35:10
Speaker 1: And she basically made the point that she thinks that
35:14
Speaker 1: Elex probably does know what he's getting into, but then
35:17
Speaker 1: I should probably try to modulate it a little bit.
35:19
Speaker 1: I think we came up with the number seven out
35:21
Speaker 1: of ten because if I go to eleven, it's gonna
35:25
Speaker 1: be too much for CNN. I mean, because no one's
35:28
Speaker 1: ever really done this on CNN before. I mean, the
35:31
Speaker 1: audience is gonna have their heads explode all of a sudden,
35:34
Speaker 1: have this straight, white, non celebrity male attack doctor Fauci
35:40
Speaker 1: in a way that they've never heard before. So I agreed, Okay,
35:44
Speaker 1: a seven is pretty good. My seven is probably someone
35:48
Speaker 1: else's nine or ten, especially on this particular topic and
35:53
Speaker 1: not of work. Well, when I got into the studio,
35:56
Speaker 1: something really remarkable happened. Alex came in to the green room.
36:01
Speaker 1: He said, Hey, how you doing. I'm doing fine, he says,
36:04
Speaker 1: And he made it very very clear, very very clear
36:07
Speaker 1: to me that this was all done by design, that
36:10
Speaker 1: he had formatted the show with me and mine. I
36:13
Speaker 1: think that was almost a direct quote. And the other subjects,
36:16
Speaker 1: you know, one of them involved Gavin Newsom, which was
36:18
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting topic as well. He knows how
36:21
Speaker 1: I feel about Gavin Newsom, so I felt like, okay,
36:25
Speaker 1: Alex knows what he's getting himself into. I'm not going
36:28
Speaker 1: to put him in a bad spot. That frees me
36:31
Speaker 1: up at least a little bit, and so eventually the
36:35
Speaker 1: second hour comes along. The first hour went fine, the
36:38
Speaker 1: second hour comes along and Alex introduces the doctor Fauci story.
36:44
Speaker 1: And it's important to point out from a media evolution perspective,
36:48
Speaker 1: the only reason I think that Alex felt totally comfortable
36:51
Speaker 1: in doing this was that because of the pressure from X,
36:57
Speaker 1: which was enormous about the diary, CNN did do a
37:03
Speaker 1: online story, at least one story. Somebody might have made
37:08
Speaker 1: a mention about it about it on the air, but
37:10
Speaker 1: it just opened up the door enough because I guess,
37:15
Speaker 1: you know, based upon what happens when we get the topics,
37:17
Speaker 1: they send us a link to what CNN is reporting
37:22
Speaker 1: on that particular story, and so if there there wasn't
37:26
Speaker 1: a link to the Doctor Fauci diaries, then I'm not
37:30
Speaker 1: sure that we would have been allowed to discuss it.
37:33
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's just mind surmising, but that
37:37
Speaker 1: that's an important thing to understand for your ability to
37:43
Speaker 1: realize how the sausage gets made, and sometimes that's significant
37:48
Speaker 1: and understanding the nature of the news. So because X
37:52
Speaker 1: forced CNN to open the door just to crack. Alex
37:56
Speaker 1: was able to put it on, in my opinion, was
37:59
Speaker 1: able to put it on rightfully on the agenda for
38:03
Speaker 1: the show on the topics at the start of this
38:06
Speaker 1: particular segment, and so I felt like, great, I'm not
38:12
Speaker 1: going to get Alex in too much trouble. But I
38:14
Speaker 1: also need to make sure that I understand the audience
38:19
Speaker 1: my situation. I'm in a very difficult spot here. I've
38:24
Speaker 1: been waiting for almost six years for something like this
38:26
Speaker 1: to happen, for me to have a chance to go
38:28
Speaker 1: on CNN to discuss this particular topic, but I know
38:31
Speaker 1: time is very short. I'm with a liberal female who
38:35
Speaker 1: is also on the desk with me. Importantly, she is
38:39
Speaker 1: sitting between Alex and me, which kind of limits my
38:43
Speaker 1: ability to interrupt if she's on the outside. I'm basically
38:46
Speaker 1: in the Rosa Parks seat. I'm always at the far
38:50
Speaker 1: back end as the conservative, which basically makes it impossible
38:55
Speaker 1: for me to interrupt, which will become important when you
38:58
Speaker 1: listen to this clip, because I know a lot of
39:00
Speaker 1: people wanted me to interrupt her when she starts blabbing
39:03
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump, saying that we ought to be injecting bleach,
39:07
Speaker 1: which never happened. That never happened. I know it never happened,
39:10
Speaker 1: but I couldn't interrupt her, one for logistical reasons, and
39:15
Speaker 1: two because I knew it would take us off on
39:17
Speaker 1: a completely different tangent, and so not having any leverage,
39:21
Speaker 1: I made the decision that I was just going to
39:24
Speaker 1: ignore that. I tried to ignore as much as I
39:27
Speaker 1: possibly could a lot of what she said, although I
39:29
Speaker 1: had to acknowledge, because this will give you some context
39:33
Speaker 1: as you listen to this clip. When she starts talking,
39:37
Speaker 1: I do something with my head, like, what the hell
39:40
Speaker 1: did she just say? My nine year old daughter Diana,
39:43
Speaker 1: when she saw the clip on her mom's phone, actually
39:48
Speaker 1: asked me, Dad, what did you do? What was going
39:50
Speaker 1: on with your head when she started talking? I said,
39:53
Speaker 1: I think it was about to explode. But anyway, the
39:56
Speaker 1: point here is this was a really difficult situation, suation,
40:01
Speaker 1: A lot of yellow lights, not many greens. Alex tease
40:07
Speaker 1: me up really well, but then he interrupts me about
40:09
Speaker 1: the lab leak thing, which kind of pushed me off
40:14
Speaker 1: my game a little bit. Although I think I recovered
40:16
Speaker 1: pretty darn well and I believe I was able to
40:20
Speaker 1: get my primary points across in a way that the
40:23
Speaker 1: CNN audience probably had never heard before. And so here's
40:27
Speaker 1: what that sounded like.
40:28
Speaker 4: Our panel, Diana Dahl, attorney and legal analyst, with Midas
40:32
Speaker 4: Touch on the left and on the right, John Ziegler,
40:35
Speaker 4: host of the Death of Journalism podcast, Welcome back both
40:38
Speaker 4: of you. John, you talk a lot about twenty twenty
40:43
Speaker 4: and COVID. Why does COVID and twenty twenty matter in
40:47
Speaker 4: twenty twenty six Because this was the.
40:49
Speaker 1: Most important thing that's happened in the modern history of America,
40:52
Speaker 1: at least since World War Two. And I think a
40:55
Speaker 1: lot of mistakes were made. I think it's incredibly important
40:57
Speaker 1: to understand why those mistakes were made and what I
40:59
Speaker 1: think was mostly a moral panic. Let's be clear, the
41:02
Speaker 1: pandemic was real, it was terrible, a lot of people
41:05
Speaker 1: lost their lives. But there were some decisions made, specifically
41:08
Speaker 1: by doctor Fauci, that I don't believe hold up under scrutiny.
41:12
Speaker 1: And this diary is astonishing. This is, to me, is
41:16
Speaker 1: far more significant than the Epstein Files ever possibly could
41:20
Speaker 1: have been. Yet the media coverage of the Epstein files
41:23
Speaker 1: is a thousand times more than what we've seen so
41:25
Speaker 1: far on this. I'm not that interested in the lab
41:28
Speaker 1: league theory, which I know Rand Paul is going to
41:30
Speaker 1: get into with Fauci tomorrow.
41:32
Speaker 5: I'm way more this idea.
41:33
Speaker 4: The Lablik theory is that maybe Fauci was ordering some
41:37
Speaker 4: testing and then maybe America helped to engineer COVID, which
41:42
Speaker 4: Fauci did that right, isn't true.
41:44
Speaker 1: I'm way more interested in what we did here in America.
41:46
Speaker 1: As the father of two young daughters who had their
41:49
Speaker 1: lives largely destroyed for two years, and decision making that
41:52
Speaker 1: I think was ill advised and had no backing. I
41:55
Speaker 1: want to know how and why those decisions were made,
41:58
Speaker 1: and we've already learned from these diary he said. Doctor
42:00
Speaker 1: Fauci lied publicly about who was behind the shutdowns here
42:04
Speaker 1: in California and New York. He bragged about those He
42:07
Speaker 1: lied about data, including the death rate.
42:09
Speaker 5: He lied about all sorts of things.
42:11
Speaker 1: But here's the part that I think is most significant
42:13
Speaker 1: and what I think your viewers need to understand most.
42:16
Speaker 1: This was a man obsessed with his own celebrity.
42:20
Speaker 5: It is off the charts.
42:22
Speaker 1: In these diary entries.
42:23
Speaker 5: And why does that matter? Because when you want to
42:26
Speaker 5: be loved, especially.
42:27
Speaker 1: By the liberal elites. It is going to impact your
42:30
Speaker 1: decision making because you want to maintain that love.
42:33
Speaker 5: You want the pandemic to go on as long.
42:36
Speaker 1: As possible, because it is the greatest thing that has
42:38
Speaker 1: ever happened to you. And when you flip on masks
42:41
Speaker 1: as Matt Fauch, as Fauci did in February of twenty
42:45
Speaker 1: twenty to Megan two twenty, he did so because his
42:48
Speaker 1: fan base, the liberal elites, demanded that he do so,
42:51
Speaker 1: because it was a virtue signal for anti Trump supporters.
42:55
Speaker 1: And my children had to wear masks uselessly for two
42:58
Speaker 1: years and missed school because of those decisions.
43:01
Speaker 5: A lot to do, a lot to unpack.
43:03
Speaker 6: First, I think it's a mischaracterization of his diary. Significantly.
43:07
Speaker 6: I do not think he lied. I do not think
43:09
Speaker 6: he was obsessed with celebrity from what I've read with
43:11
Speaker 6: the diary.
43:12
Speaker 7: But also.
43:14
Speaker 1: He discussed it.
43:16
Speaker 5: But it was a personal diary.
43:18
Speaker 6: He was detailing his life, which included celebrity interactions. But
43:22
Speaker 6: the fact is, I mean, I also know somebody who
43:25
Speaker 6: died in his young thirties.
43:28
Speaker 5: We all do.
43:29
Speaker 7: That's what help.
43:31
Speaker 6: The fact of the matter is they did help that
43:35
Speaker 6: they did help that more it was difficult, I didn't.
43:39
Speaker 4: I mean, my point is that.
43:43
Speaker 6: It prevented death. This was a man in his young thirties.
43:45
Speaker 6: He left behind a baby and a young wife, and
43:49
Speaker 6: we would have had a lot more deaths if Fauci
43:52
Speaker 6: and others had not closed it down. Was their ramifications
43:55
Speaker 6: with closing it down? Of course, it was a lose
43:57
Speaker 6: lose situation. The fact of the matter is I remember
44:00
Speaker 6: sitting and watching and hearing Trump as president talking about bleach,
44:04
Speaker 6: and people were grateful that doctor Fauci, who is a
44:07
Speaker 6: renowned physician ahead of the NIH for years, was able
44:11
Speaker 6: to calm us and provide us with guidance. But the
44:14
Speaker 6: fact of the matter, this hearing isn't really about did
44:18
Speaker 6: they make the right decisions or not, which honestly could
44:20
Speaker 6: be litigated about forever. It is this vindictive retribution which
44:25
Speaker 6: is the entire Trump Maga regime. It's all about retribution.
44:30
Speaker 6: And Fauci has gone, He's had harassments, he's had death
44:34
Speaker 6: starts for just trying to be a public servant and
44:37
Speaker 6: honestly doing the best he could well.
44:39
Speaker 4: Joe Biden was concerned that Anthony Fauci would be prosecuted
44:43
Speaker 4: by the Trump administration. So he pardoned him for everything
44:47
Speaker 4: that he had done previously, and now some of that
44:52
Speaker 4: could change. So this is a quote from cnn dot com.
44:57
Speaker 4: Paul could attempt to renew calls for per to recharges
45:00
Speaker 4: based on the scientist remarks in Wednesday's hearing. If he
45:04
Speaker 4: lies during the hearing, that's a new lie and the
45:07
Speaker 4: part in won't cover that. And so that's what he
45:11
Speaker 4: told Fox Business. Do you think this is like a
45:14
Speaker 4: perjury trapper.
45:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
45:15
Speaker 5: Look, perjury is purposely very difficult to prove.
45:18
Speaker 1: I'm not one of these people that says Fauci should
45:21
Speaker 1: be in jail. A lot of conservatives believe that I
45:23
Speaker 1: want accountability for wrong decisions.
45:26
Speaker 5: I want him to admit he was wrong about things.
45:30
Speaker 1: He admits so in his diary. If you use basic logic,
45:33
Speaker 1: because he ether lied in his diary or helied in
45:36
Speaker 1: his public statements, you can't do both.
45:38
Speaker 5: He was wrong about a lot, and we need to
45:41
Speaker 5: learn from.
45:41
Speaker 1: The past so that if anything like this ever happens again,
45:45
Speaker 1: we don't make the same mistakes. We devastated our education system,
45:49
Speaker 1: our economy, and we did all sorts of things that
45:52
Speaker 1: I believe we are going to rule for years and years.
45:55
Speaker 5: I just want the truth.
45:56
Speaker 1: I just want some accountability.
45:57
Speaker 6: I mean, if Ram Paul wants to know why Trump
46:00
Speaker 6: messed up the handling of COVID, he can. This should
46:04
Speaker 6: not all be on Fauci's steps.
46:06
Speaker 4: Is it possible that both of them screwed up?
46:08
Speaker 6: Yes, well, but where's the Republican Party screwed up?
46:12
Speaker 4: And other people's screw up? There was an overreaction and
46:15
Speaker 4: shutting down beaches didn't make any sense, And why don't
46:17
Speaker 4: we admit some of that stuff now so that way
46:19
Speaker 4: we can move forward and talk about this logically, so
46:22
Speaker 4: we can avoid this sort of things. And both parties
46:25
Speaker 4: made mistakes in this whole thing because there was mass
46:28
Speaker 4: panic and overreaction. But you also understand that because people
46:31
Speaker 4: didn't want to have deaths on their hands, and you
46:33
Speaker 4: understand how some of the people respond to that. Okay,
46:35
Speaker 4: let's talk about what's happening. Wow, that was awesome with
46:37
Speaker 4: Ice right now, and there is some new CNN dot
46:42
Speaker 4: com reporting about.
46:44
Speaker 1: This idea now, the end there was really kind of remarkable.
46:49
Speaker 1: You may have even heard me say that that was awesome.
46:52
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever done that in the hundreds
46:55
Speaker 1: of television appearances that I have made where I was
46:59
Speaker 1: complimenting the host to that degree, I'm not even sure
47:03
Speaker 1: it was really conscious. I think it would just kind
47:05
Speaker 1: of came out. I was even applauding what Alex Michaelson
47:10
Speaker 1: was saying. Now, I know that from online. This is
47:13
Speaker 1: where this story is so divisive. You can't really please everybody.
47:18
Speaker 1: It's impossible to please. In fact, it's almost possible to
47:21
Speaker 1: please anybody completely because that's how device of this subject is.
47:26
Speaker 1: I mean, I had people didn't think I was tough
47:29
Speaker 1: enough and didn't defend Donald Trump, and I had people
47:34
Speaker 1: upset with me because I said that I'm not really
47:36
Speaker 1: into Fauci going to prison. Look, if Fauci committed an
47:39
Speaker 1: actual crime that could be proven, fine, go ahead and
47:42
Speaker 1: prosecute him. But I frankly have not been shown evidence
47:46
Speaker 1: that that's overwhelmingly true that he committed the crime. I'm
47:49
Speaker 1: open to it, that's for sure. But we're now in
47:51
Speaker 1: a world where if you don't say Faluci should go
47:53
Speaker 1: to prison, then somehow you're not strong enough on the
47:58
Speaker 1: subject matter. But when it came to Alex's statement, I
48:02
Speaker 1: thought that was amazing. I mean, here's a CNN anchor
48:06
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles who I had battled with during COVID
48:10
Speaker 1: on a fairly regular basis, lobbied him hard for years
48:16
Speaker 1: through a strange set of circumstances, a perfect storm that
48:20
Speaker 1: actually was working in a positive direction for once. I
48:23
Speaker 1: happened to be his live guest the night before Fauci
48:26
Speaker 1: is testifying in front of the US Senate and he
48:31
Speaker 1: is willing to have the guts to allow me to
48:34
Speaker 1: have my say, and then he makes a statement which
48:38
Speaker 1: wasn't perfect, but for a CNN anchor, if you're grading
48:42
Speaker 1: on a curve, this was, in my view, in a
48:45
Speaker 1: maybe an A plus what he said. Yes, it was
48:49
Speaker 1: draped in the idea of both sides, and I know
48:51
Speaker 1: people hate that, but there's a lot of blame to
48:54
Speaker 1: go around because Donald Trump was running the show at
48:57
Speaker 1: the time and effectively giving auci Is power. So I
49:02
Speaker 1: think what Alex said was mostly of not entirely true,
49:07
Speaker 1: but more importantly, it was acknowledging we made mistakes so
49:13
Speaker 1: that maybe, just maybe we won't make them again in
49:17
Speaker 1: the future. That is my most significant major concern here.
49:23
Speaker 1: I want there to be some accountability for the truth
49:27
Speaker 1: so that we might be able to learn from this
49:29
Speaker 1: or at the very least not make the same mistakes again.
49:33
Speaker 1: So I thought Alex handled the whole situation almost as
49:37
Speaker 1: well as he possibly could have. He and I exchanged
49:40
Speaker 1: some really great texts after this segment. Actually it was
49:45
Speaker 1: a few days later, and he indicated that the ratings
49:48
Speaker 1: were really good and gave all indications that everyone was
49:53
Speaker 1: happy with the way that the segment went down, and
49:55
Speaker 1: he complimented me on how I handled it, and I
49:58
Speaker 1: complimented him, So it's almost a love fest on text.
50:01
Speaker 1: And again, I have no idea if it went I'll
50:04
Speaker 1: be back, by guessing I'll be back on the show
50:06
Speaker 1: at some point, although I'm not currently booked to be back,
50:09
Speaker 1: but I don't think that's a significant thing, because it
50:12
Speaker 1: seems like they're going to want me, you know, every
50:14
Speaker 1: two or three weeks, depending on what's actually happening. But
50:18
Speaker 1: by and large, it was a very positive appearance. I thought,
50:22
Speaker 1: not perfect. There were a few things I wish I
50:24
Speaker 1: would have done differently, and I take accountability for that,
50:28
Speaker 1: so I'll give myself a BB plus. But again, it
50:32
Speaker 1: was a very very difficult set of circumstances, and it
50:36
Speaker 1: could have gone a hell of a lot worse because
50:38
Speaker 1: I only got one shot at this. It's live, I'm
50:41
Speaker 1: in the belly of the beast on CNN, and I've
50:45
Speaker 1: got someone sitting next to me who clearly didn't fully
50:48
Speaker 1: understand maybe maybe didn't even read the diaries, and was
50:52
Speaker 1: not going to agree with me on anything, was not
50:54
Speaker 1: going to be open minded about what I was saying
50:57
Speaker 1: on any level. And and and so, if you understand
51:02
Speaker 1: all the circumstances at play here, I thought it went
51:06
Speaker 1: about as well as it could have gone, but there
51:09
Speaker 1: was I think some larger relevance to this appearance. I'm
51:14
Speaker 1: not going to pretend that that appearance like broke the dam,
51:17
Speaker 1: but I do think it was at least somewhat of
51:21
Speaker 1: the process of breaking the dam, because people need to
51:25
Speaker 1: remember that when the diary story broke, CNN and the
51:29
Speaker 1: other liberal mainstream legacy outlets basically ignored it, not completely,
51:34
Speaker 1: but almost entirely. Then X forced them to start to
51:38
Speaker 1: acknowledge it just a little bit, and then I went
51:42
Speaker 1: on CNN. I think I think there was another female
51:44
Speaker 1: that went on CNN that had a similar appearance, And
51:48
Speaker 1: so I know it's got a lot of traction online.
51:51
Speaker 1: And so once that happens, and then once you're forced
51:56
Speaker 1: to see this is all important, this domino effect. Once
51:59
Speaker 1: they are forced to then acknowledge the hearing itself and
52:04
Speaker 1: air parts of the hearing itself, and that became so explosive.
52:08
Speaker 1: Now they have no choice but to acknowledge the story
52:13
Speaker 1: and to report on it. And if only by accident,
52:16
Speaker 1: the truth is going to come out under those circumstances.
52:19
Speaker 1: And because of this remarkable evolution, where from the beginning
52:23
Speaker 1: of the week CNN was doing its best to try
52:27
Speaker 1: to ignore everything Fauci, to the end of the week
52:31
Speaker 1: where Dana Bash, who was prominently mentioned by Fauci in
52:36
Speaker 1: his diaries in a way that made it very clear
52:38
Speaker 1: that she was one hundred percent on team Fauci. She
52:41
Speaker 1: has on her program on CNN RFK Junior, who's obviously
52:47
Speaker 1: part of the Trump cabinet, And I am a major
52:51
Speaker 1: critic of RFK Junior. I think he is nuts in
52:55
Speaker 1: many many ways. I think he is wrong about a lot.
52:59
Speaker 1: He reminds me a lot lot of Jason Whitlock from
53:02
Speaker 1: The Blaze Jason Wentlock. When he is right, is really
53:06
Speaker 1: really right? When he is wrong, he is really, really,
53:09
Speaker 1: really wrong. I've referred to Jason Witlock as a baseball
53:13
Speaker 1: three hundred hitter who, you know, hits a lot of
53:17
Speaker 1: home runs. Maybe he's a two fifty hitter, hits a
53:21
Speaker 1: lot of home runs, but strikes out a lot, like
53:24
Speaker 1: a Dave Kingman. Since Mike Egavito is a New York
53:27
Speaker 1: Mets fan, he's you know, Jason Wentlock is a Dave
53:30
Speaker 1: Kingman type of hitter, and r. M K Junior is
53:34
Speaker 1: very similar. And with that as the context, I have
53:38
Speaker 1: to say that, other than his voice makes what he's
53:41
Speaker 1: saying difficult to understand at times. R MK Junior absolutely
53:47
Speaker 1: crushed Dana Bash on issues related to Fauci and the
53:52
Speaker 1: COVID panic and experts and how they got it wrong
53:56
Speaker 1: and how the media was complicit and and this I think,
54:01
Speaker 1: you know, could never have happened at the beginning of
54:04
Speaker 1: the week. It could only happen at the end of
54:06
Speaker 1: the week, after everything that I've already told you happened
54:09
Speaker 1: in the evolution of the story. And this was frankly
54:12
Speaker 1: rather glorious on CNN, especially considering the fact that the
54:16
Speaker 1: host was Dana Bash.
54:19
Speaker 7: You are the HHS secretary, and you are talking about
54:24
Speaker 7: things that lead to vaccine hesitancy in this country, and
54:30
Speaker 7: it is something that causes problems for people. I mean,
54:35
Speaker 7: when there is not anything.
54:36
Speaker 1: Let me ask you something.
54:37
Speaker 8: Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesidency or
54:42
Speaker 8: do you see your job it's telling the truth.
54:45
Speaker 7: I see my job as telling the truth, and the
54:47
Speaker 7: truth is that there is study after study after study.
54:52
Speaker 7: It's one of the most study things out there in science.
54:56
Speaker 5: And it is different.
54:58
Speaker 1: Like a parrot. So I've actually read the science, but
55:02
Speaker 1: you don't want to. You don't want to hear and
55:04
Speaker 1: debate this.
55:04
Speaker 7: So I'm not debating this view.
55:06
Speaker 1: Of course you won't know because I'm not know.
55:09
Speaker 8: How to do is repeat things that people told you
55:12
Speaker 8: and say trust the experts.
55:13
Speaker 1: That's what you do. During COVID.
55:16
Speaker 8: Now we know that anthy Fauci, who was the expert,
55:19
Speaker 8: was lying about everything about massive about the social distancing,
55:23
Speaker 8: about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about
55:28
Speaker 8: the source of COVID. He was lying, and you were
55:31
Speaker 8: punishing people for not trusting the experts. And now you're
55:35
Speaker 8: rolling out the experts again to talk about something that
55:38
Speaker 8: you have no personal knowledge of.
55:40
Speaker 7: Okay, well, guess what that is my job to talk
55:44
Speaker 7: to people. Your job, yes, yes, and my job is
55:49
Speaker 7: much as I can.
55:51
Speaker 5: What we were doing.
55:52
Speaker 7: What we were doing for skepticism, what we were doing
55:56
Speaker 7: in COVID and still with regard to these vaccines, is
56:00
Speaker 7: getting the best information, the best science that we can
56:04
Speaker 7: and putting it out there. And sir, what you are
56:06
Speaker 7: doing is causing information to be out there that is
56:10
Speaker 7: not you accurately. But I also don't want to use
56:16
Speaker 7: this interview to allow you to say things that aren't
56:20
Speaker 7: entirely true. You're talking about therapeutics, fine, it is also
56:24
Speaker 7: factually true that the COVID vaccine worked. The COVID vaccine
56:28
Speaker 7: prevented deaths. There is data upon data upon data. Let's
56:33
Speaker 7: talk about the measles please, because this is something that
56:35
Speaker 7: is happenings as we speak, the cases in the US.
56:39
Speaker 1: Seeing protected children.
56:42
Speaker 7: I think that what I have talked to scientists and
56:46
Speaker 7: doctors about it.
56:47
Speaker 5: Just give me look, can you show me one study?
56:49
Speaker 1: Yes, I can. It shows that I can children were
56:53
Speaker 1: protected by the COVID vaccine.
56:54
Speaker 7: I can tell you that there are.
56:57
Speaker 1: More good than harm to children.
56:59
Speaker 8: Can you show me study that shows.
57:01
Speaker 7: I can tell you that when it comes to the vaccine,
57:04
Speaker 7: there have been studies that show that because of vaccine
57:08
Speaker 7: disinformation disinformation, there could have been one hundred to two
57:12
Speaker 7: hundred thousand lives in the US saved, but because people
57:16
Speaker 7: didn't get the vaccine. That's why I'm not saying that
57:19
Speaker 7: it entirely you are saying.
57:21
Speaker 8: You are saying something that you cannot show them a
57:24
Speaker 8: single study.
57:25
Speaker 7: I am not saying nonsense.
57:27
Speaker 5: I am talking with somebody told.
57:29
Speaker 1: You, excuse me.
57:31
Speaker 8: And let me study what study study?
57:34
Speaker 7: You know what studies are just talking about. You're talking
57:36
Speaker 7: about studies that actually don't exist. I want to talk
57:39
Speaker 7: about that.
57:40
Speaker 5: You're talking about it. Study the study.
57:45
Speaker 7: This is not productive. I am not here to defend
57:47
Speaker 7: all of the practice.
57:49
Speaker 8: You're talking nonsense, you making assertions you can't support it,
57:52
Speaker 8: and then what I call you, you're telling me I'm missing.
57:55
Speaker 7: Okay, do you want to talk about you want.
57:57
Speaker 1: To talk now? Just to be clear, what you just
58:00
Speaker 1: heard was a combining of two different clips. I should
58:05
Speaker 1: have made that more obvious when I introed the clip itself,
58:09
Speaker 1: but I think you got the idea. So RFK Junior
58:12
Speaker 1: clearly won that battle with Dana Bash and I give
58:16
Speaker 1: him huge kudos for that, and I do think that
58:18
Speaker 1: that's an indication that there was some shifting of the tides.
58:23
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm a realist. Among everything else, I have
58:28
Speaker 1: very I think realistic expectations of what is possible here.
58:33
Speaker 1: Our side, the COVID contrarian side, is never going to
58:37
Speaker 1: fully win the day. It's never gonna happen, especially because
58:41
Speaker 1: of the role that Donald Trump plays of this story.
58:44
Speaker 1: But if you consider, and it seems to be the
58:47
Speaker 1: theme of this podcast, grading everything on a curb, if
58:50
Speaker 1: you consider the problems that our side has because you know,
58:55
Speaker 1: the leader of the quote unquote conservative movement or the
58:59
Speaker 1: MAGA movement is inherently, deeply, deeply compromised on the Fauci issue,
59:04
Speaker 1: and that's Donald Trump. I think we actually have made
59:08
Speaker 1: remarkable progress. I think that there's gonna be more evidence
59:12
Speaker 1: of that in a moment. But let's deal with Trump.
59:15
Speaker 1: I mean, I have been extremely critical, I think fair
59:19
Speaker 1: of how Donald Trump handled the entire COVID panic and
59:23
Speaker 1: specifically the Fauci problem. And he has a massive blind
59:27
Speaker 1: spot here. This is classic Trump. He will not accept
59:31
Speaker 1: that he made a massive mistake and that it was
59:34
Speaker 1: an error in judgment right in his wheelhouse, in his
59:39
Speaker 1: area of expertise, which is media and celebrity. That's the
59:43
Speaker 1: part of this that has always been most baffling. How
59:46
Speaker 1: did Trump blow this so badly when this is his
59:50
Speaker 1: area of expertise. But of course, Trump, because he is
59:54
Speaker 1: an egomaniac, much like Fauci, can never accept that he
59:59
Speaker 1: was wrong, never accept any responsibility. And when he was
1:00:03
Speaker 1: asked at the White House about the Fauci hearing, he
1:00:07
Speaker 1: is basically living in an alternative universe, in a university
1:00:12
Speaker 1: where the truth does not matter, where it's malleable, where
1:00:17
Speaker 1: he can rationalize the past in whatever way he wants
1:00:20
Speaker 1: in order to try to manipulate a narrative where he
1:00:24
Speaker 1: doesn't have to accept that he crapped the bed and
1:00:27
Speaker 1: then rolled around in it and told everyone he smelled
1:00:30
Speaker 1: like perfume. That's what happened with Donald Trump, COVID, and Faucci.
1:00:35
Speaker 1: And here is Trump still not accepting any semblance of
1:00:39
Speaker 1: responsibility for his role in this fiasco.
1:00:43
Speaker 7: Doctor Fauci invoked a Fifth Amendment more than a hundred
1:00:46
Speaker 7: times today.
1:00:46
Speaker 9: Consider Rand Paul said he's going to hold a.
1:00:48
Speaker 4: Vote on holding him in contempt of Congress.
1:00:50
Speaker 1: Do you think doctor Fauci should basic re questions for this?
1:00:53
Speaker 10: Well, I watched the whole thing today, But more importantly,
1:00:56
Speaker 10: I was a part of the whole Fauci. I inherited Fauci.
1:01:00
Speaker 10: He was here from the nineteen eighties, so I had
1:01:02
Speaker 10: him for a period of time, and I disagreed with
1:01:05
Speaker 10: him in a lot. I would have kind of closed
1:01:06
Speaker 10: down the whole country if I listened to him. I
1:01:09
Speaker 10: went the federalists way, which is basically, let the governors decide,
1:01:12
Speaker 10: and generally speaking, the Republican governors did very well. The
1:01:16
Speaker 10: Democrat governors did not very well. But Prouts, you wanted
1:01:20
Speaker 10: to have nobody wearing masks, if you remember, and then
1:01:22
Speaker 10: everybody had to wear five masks, as many masks as
1:01:25
Speaker 10: you could get. I mean, made a lot of mistakes.
1:01:28
Speaker 10: And he wasn't a big factor for me. He was
1:01:31
Speaker 10: a very big factor for Biden. And if you remember,
1:01:34
Speaker 10: even though we were sort of prime time in terms
1:01:38
Speaker 10: of that whole disaster of COVID, far people died fewer
1:01:45
Speaker 10: in the Trump administration than in the Biden administration. We
1:01:50
Speaker 10: ran it well. Operation Warp Speed was talked about as
1:01:54
Speaker 10: being one of the great success stories anywhere in the world. Actually,
1:01:57
Speaker 10: and we did a good job, but many more people
1:02:00
Speaker 10: died under Biden then died in the Trumpan administration from COVID.
1:02:04
Speaker 10: COVID was a disaster, but Fauci did not help.
1:02:07
Speaker 1: Why do you think doctor Fauci invoked the fifth and
1:02:09
Speaker 1: I and so many times today Wendy has the pardon
1:02:12
Speaker 1: and why didn't What was stopping him from just getting
1:02:15
Speaker 1: an August testimony in this morning?
1:02:17
Speaker 10: Well, look, I've never been a big fan of Fauci.
1:02:19
Speaker 10: Why he did that was very simple, as lawyer told
1:02:22
Speaker 10: him to. You know, I don't know if he would
1:02:23
Speaker 10: have been better off not doing it. There were a
1:02:26
Speaker 10: lot of questions that I guess he could have answered,
1:02:29
Speaker 10: and some maybe he didn't feel comfortable in answering, but
1:02:32
Speaker 10: his lawyer told him to do that.
1:02:34
Speaker 1: Now, I want to wrap up the COVID topic and
1:02:37
Speaker 1: then transition to some other things with really maybe one
1:02:42
Speaker 1: of the most remarkable moments in this entire media Maelstrom
1:02:47
Speaker 1: that occurred after the doctor Fauci hearing, because it happened
1:02:52
Speaker 1: on ESPN on Pat McAfee's show, when the guest was
1:02:56
Speaker 1: Aaron Rodgers, who is the quarterback for the Pittsburgh's Dealers
1:03:00
Speaker 1: coming back for one more season, which I actually think
1:03:02
Speaker 1: is a mistake. But he's going to come back for
1:03:05
Speaker 1: one more season. And I referenced that Pat McAfee was
1:03:09
Speaker 1: kind of hard on Doctor Fauci, at least by the
1:03:12
Speaker 1: standards of an ESPN host, where ESPN obviously is extremely woke,
1:03:16
Speaker 1: and I thought, of the time, boy, is this an
1:03:19
Speaker 1: indication that Aaron Rodgers has had some influence on him,
1:03:23
Speaker 1: maybe in a weird way, like I have had some
1:03:25
Speaker 1: influence at least in theory with Alex Michaelson on CNN.
1:03:29
Speaker 1: I think there's somewhat of analogy to be made there.
1:03:33
Speaker 1: And Aaron Rodgers went on Pack McAfee's show a couple
1:03:37
Speaker 1: of days later, and the beauty of Aaron Rodgers. You
1:03:41
Speaker 1: can like Aaron Rodgers, you can dislike Aaron Rodgers. I
1:03:44
Speaker 1: think there's a lot to be said on both sides.
1:03:47
Speaker 1: I'm going to miss him what he's gone, because he
1:03:49
Speaker 1: and maybe Matthew Stafford are going to be the last
1:03:52
Speaker 1: NFL quarterbacks with any memory of the way the National
1:03:54
Speaker 1: Football League used to be the real National Football League.
1:03:58
Speaker 1: They're going to be the last two quarterbacks to have
1:04:00
Speaker 1: played legitimate NFL football. I'm also gonna miss the fact
1:04:05
Speaker 1: that Aaron Rodgers is that very very very very rare.
1:04:09
Speaker 1: And maybe you know Novak Djokovic and Kyrie Irving or
1:04:15
Speaker 1: two of the others, but this is a very very
1:04:17
Speaker 1: small group of major celebrities who have no fucks to give,
1:04:22
Speaker 1: who really do not care, and Aaron Rodgers doesn't. He
1:04:26
Speaker 1: cares less than even Djokovic or Irving, partially because although
1:04:29
Speaker 1: Djokovic understands he's near the end, partially because Aaron Rodgers
1:04:33
Speaker 1: knows this is it, this is the last go around,
1:04:37
Speaker 1: and he doesn't seem to have any desire to have
1:04:39
Speaker 1: a media career after. I don't know if that's true
1:04:41
Speaker 1: or not, but that's what he keeps saying, and he's
1:04:43
Speaker 1: acting as if he doesn't care about that, because he's
1:04:46
Speaker 1: making it much more difficult for him to have a
1:04:47
Speaker 1: media career, at least mainstream and to he retires because
1:04:52
Speaker 1: he is letting it all hang out. He has no
1:04:55
Speaker 1: fucks to give, and in this world where everyone is
1:04:58
Speaker 1: afraid of their own shadow, I inherently respect that. So
1:05:02
Speaker 1: Aaron Rodgers went on Pat McAfee's show and immediately turn
1:05:09
Speaker 1: the conversation, which was he was not asked about, directly
1:05:13
Speaker 1: turned the conversation towards doctor Fauci, and he unleashed on
1:05:18
Speaker 1: doctor Fauci for taking the fifth and for being a coward.
1:05:22
Speaker 9: I was endangering my teammates and this and that, and
1:05:25
Speaker 9: now look what happened. We talked about They suppressed early treatments,
1:05:28
Speaker 9: They lied about where it came from. Tony Fauci's writing
1:05:31
Speaker 9: in this journal about I don't want to, you know,
1:05:34
Speaker 9: like create any vaccine hesitancy. If I tell him what
1:05:37
Speaker 9: the actual stats are, how many papers haven't written, how
1:05:39
Speaker 9: many mccullaugh's and malons and all the great doctors out
1:05:42
Speaker 9: there who actually did treatment on the front end and
1:05:47
Speaker 9: repurposed drugs that are the safest profiles in the world.
1:05:50
Speaker 9: But no, Tony Fauci pushing his medicine just like he
1:05:53
Speaker 9: did back in the eighties. And now when you have it.
1:05:56
Speaker 1: You have an autopen party. You know what, you have an.
1:06:00
Speaker 9: Auto pin pardon, and you can't you can't answer one question,
1:06:06
Speaker 9: not even your name. I mean, come on, what and
1:06:10
Speaker 9: how much time did the network spend on that? Hey,
1:06:12
Speaker 9: can we do something for you real quick? How much time.
1:06:13
Speaker 5: Hey, hey, can we do something for you real quick?
1:06:15
Speaker 10: Yeah, hey, way to stand on your truth throughout the
1:06:18
Speaker 10: entirety of that thing.
1:06:19
Speaker 9: I could about it.
1:06:21
Speaker 1: Yeah you should. I feel right about it.
1:06:23
Speaker 9: I told you I'd be on the right side of
1:06:24
Speaker 9: history when I had that mustache. You we were in
1:06:26
Speaker 9: New York. You had a Halloween party, though they killed
1:06:29
Speaker 9: a lot of people, remember that long? Oh yeah, we
1:06:32
Speaker 9: were a ten thousand square foot warehouse with twenty one people.
1:06:35
Speaker 9: And you know that I am science says six foot
1:06:37
Speaker 9: of distancing. You know that'd be a good thing. We
1:06:39
Speaker 9: can scare them enough. You know, they'll probably take this
1:06:42
Speaker 9: vaccine that said, zero trials done fort You have no
1:06:45
Speaker 9: idea what the consequences are. There's no informed consent. You
1:06:48
Speaker 9: can't even look at the insert to know what you're doing.
1:06:50
Speaker 9: They're not even you know, pulling the plunger back to
1:06:54
Speaker 9: make sure that they got in the right spot in
1:06:56
Speaker 9: the arm. Like, what are you even talking about here?
1:06:58
Speaker 9: The insanity I stood. I set here amongst a lot
1:07:02
Speaker 9: of actually brave Americans who avoided the trillion dollar propaganda
1:07:06
Speaker 9: campaign they would hijacked on the American public and look
1:07:11
Speaker 9: at us, now, Hey, we god we have anything to say,
1:07:14
Speaker 9: we have anything to say.
1:07:15
Speaker 4: We go back tomorrow on TV Live from Indianapolis.
1:07:18
Speaker 1: That's MVP Aaron Rodgers. Okay, you're good, and now we're digital.
1:07:21
Speaker 4: Now we continue.
1:07:22
Speaker 9: Now you can.
1:07:25
Speaker 1: Now we will continue.
1:07:26
Speaker 8: I want to let you know, good for you, man,
1:07:28
Speaker 8: just because everything that was said about you for years
1:07:30
Speaker 8: and years by a lot of people. Man, there were
1:07:32
Speaker 8: some powerful positions coming out saying you were the worst
1:07:34
Speaker 8: person on earth.
1:07:36
Speaker 1: I thought that was great from Aaron Rodgers, especially since
1:07:39
Speaker 1: he's earned the right to criticize Fauci because he took
1:07:43
Speaker 1: a lot of heat at the time for his contrarian
1:07:46
Speaker 1: opinions on many things related to the COVID panic. But
1:07:51
Speaker 1: he didn't stop there, because remember he's on ESPN and
1:07:56
Speaker 1: he references the Diana receiving Mike Rabel controversy, which ESPN
1:08:04
Speaker 1: has systematically ignored in much the same way that a
1:08:08
Speaker 1: lot of the networks tried to ignore the Fauci diary
1:08:11
Speaker 1: until the hearing and other factors and the outcry on
1:08:15
Speaker 1: X made that an untenable position for them. But there's
1:08:19
Speaker 1: some some significant similarities between the Diana Rassini Mike Rabel's
1:08:24
Speaker 1: story and the Doctor Fauci media story. In fact, you know,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: you could argue that even Diana Rossini never did for
1:08:33
Speaker 1: Mike Rabel some of the things that the media did
1:08:36
Speaker 1: for Doctor Fauci during the COVID panic. But Aaron Rodgers
1:08:41
Speaker 1: decides on ESPN to attack ESPN for ignoring the story
1:08:48
Speaker 1: and the obvious reason for why they have ignored the
1:08:51
Speaker 1: story of former NFL reporter Diana Rossini having a significant
1:08:56
Speaker 1: multi year affair with the head coach of once the
1:08:58
Speaker 1: Tennessee Titans and and the New England Patriots, Mike Vrabel
1:09:03
Speaker 1: is that at the beginning of the affair, Russini was
1:09:06
Speaker 1: working for ESPN, so rogers with no fucks to give
1:09:14
Speaker 1: and understanding that Pat McAfee is untouchable. See, he doesn't
1:09:17
Speaker 1: have to worry like I did with Alex Michaelson because
1:09:21
Speaker 1: Alex just started to show late night on CNN. I
1:09:24
Speaker 1: don't want to do anything that's going to put him
1:09:25
Speaker 1: in a bad spot. Pat McAfee is the eight hundred
1:09:28
Speaker 1: pound gorilla at ESPN. He's untouchable. So you have a
1:09:32
Speaker 1: superstar with no fucks to give and a host that
1:09:36
Speaker 1: has no concerns about getting in trouble and obviously has
1:09:40
Speaker 1: a mischievous streak in him to begin with, and so
1:09:44
Speaker 1: it's really the perfect situation for Aaron Rodgers to crap
1:09:48
Speaker 1: all over ESPN on ESPN And here's what that sounded.
1:09:53
Speaker 9: Like Network doing, Like you have literally an individual that
1:09:59
Speaker 9: maybe used to work DSPN that covers our league at
1:10:02
Speaker 9: the highest level, and there's a major scandal and it's
1:10:06
Speaker 9: just like nobody can fucking talk about it.
1:10:08
Speaker 1: What do we even.
1:10:08
Speaker 9: Doves like you of all people should know that I understand,
1:10:14
Speaker 9: But if it's affecting certain things, that there's leaks going on,
1:10:18
Speaker 9: if there's tampering going on, if that person is also
1:10:21
Speaker 9: an MVP voter, and a Coach of the Year voter,
1:10:24
Speaker 9: remember when I want MVP in twenty twenty one.
1:10:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that bum in the in.
1:10:28
Speaker 9: Chicago, uh huh yeah yeah, that that's real life. Like
1:10:31
Speaker 9: how are we allowing these people to have an inpact?
1:10:34
Speaker 1: Poorn Hobar Cush Cush I remember had a name. Okay,
1:10:39
Speaker 1: so on that note, Good for you, man, Hey, Actually
1:10:42
Speaker 1: maybe eight.
1:10:44
Speaker 9: I told I told these boys I was bringing it today.
1:10:46
Speaker 1: Did you tell bart that it was remarkably refreshing to
1:10:50
Speaker 1: me to see a major celebrity willing to attack a
1:10:55
Speaker 1: media outlet because they just don't care, especially when they
1:10:58
Speaker 1: deserve it as much as ESPN does for the way
1:11:01
Speaker 1: that they have censored, and that's really what they have
1:11:04
Speaker 1: done the Diana Rossini Mike Rabel's story. Before I move
1:11:08
Speaker 1: on to other topics and other liberal insanity and most
1:11:11
Speaker 1: of a dealing in the world of sports, I just
1:11:13
Speaker 1: want to share a couple of quick conclusions back with
1:11:16
Speaker 1: the Fauci story and the COVID panic in general and
1:11:21
Speaker 1: the major takeaways from Okay, what really happened here? Yes,
1:11:25
Speaker 1: from a COVID contrarian perspective, it was a lot of
1:11:28
Speaker 1: fun to see Fauci get the crop beat out of them,
1:11:32
Speaker 1: and it was remarkable to me to see the outcry
1:11:36
Speaker 1: on x and to see some of the medium moments
1:11:39
Speaker 1: that I've already documented that would never have been able
1:11:42
Speaker 1: to happen years before. And all of it is somewhat cathartic.
1:11:48
Speaker 1: I personally, my appearance on CNN was somewhat cathartic, but
1:11:52
Speaker 1: it was also cathartic to see that it seems like
1:11:55
Speaker 1: my view is being accepted by a larger portion of
1:11:58
Speaker 1: the audience or of the country than it ever has
1:12:02
Speaker 1: been before. How large a portion of the country that is,
1:12:06
Speaker 1: I don't know, I really don't. There's been no good
1:12:09
Speaker 1: pulling on this. I don't know whether it's thirty percent,
1:12:14
Speaker 1: fifty percent. My guess is that we're now in a
1:12:18
Speaker 1: nation where it's basically thirty thirty thirty, where thirty percent
1:12:23
Speaker 1: of the people think what we did was completely insane,
1:12:26
Speaker 1: totally wrong, and are angry about it. Thirty percent of
1:12:29
Speaker 1: the people probably have suspicions that what we did was wrong,
1:12:33
Speaker 1: but they don't want to admit that they panicked, and
1:12:36
Speaker 1: they don't want to acknowledge any accountability on their own,
1:12:39
Speaker 1: and they just want to move on. And then thirty
1:12:42
Speaker 1: percent of the people are still thinking that doctor Fauci
1:12:45
Speaker 1: is a hero. They didn't read the diary. They think
1:12:48
Speaker 1: he's a martyr, mean nasty Republicans. And I think that's
1:12:52
Speaker 1: probably a pretty accurate view of where we are now.
1:12:55
Speaker 1: That's a hell of a lot better than where we
1:12:58
Speaker 1: were during the panic itself, because the contrarian position was
1:13:02
Speaker 1: nowhere near thirty percent, at least not willing to say
1:13:05
Speaker 1: it publicly, partially because there was a lot of censorship
1:13:08
Speaker 1: going on on social media and clearly on legacy media
1:13:13
Speaker 1: during the panic itself. So I think we're in a
1:13:17
Speaker 1: much better position than we were. I don't think it's
1:13:19
Speaker 1: as good a position as some people who live in
1:13:22
Speaker 1: their bubble on the right think that it is. And
1:13:26
Speaker 1: let's be clear, Donald Trump was a major part of
1:13:30
Speaker 1: this problem. But weirdly, I think this here's the way
1:13:33
Speaker 1: I think the greatest achievement so far when it comes
1:13:36
Speaker 1: to the narrative regarding the COVID panic. I think now
1:13:41
Speaker 1: post Fauci hearing, our side has overcome largely, if not totally,
1:13:47
Speaker 1: the Trump problem. Trump stunted any pushback from the right
1:13:55
Speaker 1: during the COVID panic because he confused the fuck out
1:13:59
Speaker 1: of everybody in MAGA world. Because one week he was
1:14:03
Speaker 1: let's lock it all down, the next week is we
1:14:05
Speaker 1: got to reopen Fauci's a hero. Fauci's terrible. It was very,
1:14:10
Speaker 1: very confusing to people, and fear took over.
1:14:13
Speaker 9: Well.
1:14:14
Speaker 1: I now believe that despite Trump trying to come up
1:14:17
Speaker 1: with some sort of way that he can be anti
1:14:20
Speaker 1: Fauci but still not acknowledge anything that he did was
1:14:24
Speaker 1: wrong during the COVID panic, Despite all that, I now
1:14:28
Speaker 1: think that that has been overcome. So that's quite an
1:14:31
Speaker 1: achievement in magaworld, it's quite an achievement to overcome your
1:14:36
Speaker 1: cult leader being totally wrong about a subject and eventually
1:14:40
Speaker 1: the vast majority of the members of the cult coming
1:14:43
Speaker 1: up with the right answer. So I think that's positive.
1:14:47
Speaker 1: Trump has been a massive, massive problem on this from
1:14:51
Speaker 1: the beginning. But in the bigger picture than that, if
1:14:54
Speaker 1: we're really in anything close to this thirty thirty thirty
1:14:58
Speaker 1: split that i'm and I realize that it's not one
1:15:01
Speaker 1: hundred percent, so I should have said thirty three thirty
1:15:03
Speaker 1: three thirty three, but I think you understand where I'm
1:15:05
Speaker 1: coming from. Anyway. The point here is if we're really
1:15:07
Speaker 1: split in thirds, that really does show how divided we
1:15:13
Speaker 1: are as a nation. That we're all living in our
1:15:15
Speaker 1: own bubbles, in our own information silos. And I can't
1:15:20
Speaker 1: think of a story that more dramatically exposes our information
1:15:26
Speaker 1: silos than just simply the subject of COVID in general
1:15:29
Speaker 1: and doctor Faucci in particular. People generally are set in
1:15:35
Speaker 1: what they believe, nothing's going to change their mind, even
1:15:38
Speaker 1: this remarkable diary, which, as I said on CNN, and
1:15:43
Speaker 1: I mean it with one hundred percent of my being
1:15:46
Speaker 1: was way, way, way more significant than the Epstein files
1:15:50
Speaker 1: ever possibly could have been, and didn't get anywhere near
1:15:54
Speaker 1: even after the hearing exploded things and opened up the
1:15:57
Speaker 1: damn didn't get anywhere near as much coverage as the
1:16:01
Speaker 1: largely irrelevant and inaccurate Epstein files were. And so you know,
1:16:08
Speaker 1: to me, it's a rorshock test, doctor Fauci and COVID.
1:16:13
Speaker 1: But I think we're in a better spot today than
1:16:16
Speaker 1: we've ever been before, and I feel at least somewhat confident.
1:16:20
Speaker 1: Here's what I think is on the positive side of this.
1:16:24
Speaker 1: If something similar were to happen, certainly within the next five,
1:16:28
Speaker 1: maybe ten, maybe at the fifteen years twenty is probably
1:16:31
Speaker 1: too much, But sometime in the next five to fifteen years,
1:16:35
Speaker 1: if we were to face a similar circumstance, I am
1:16:40
Speaker 1: very confident that the right, with this time, assuming normal circumstances,
1:16:46
Speaker 1: would this time stand up strong immediately against the tyranny
1:16:53
Speaker 1: and the irrationality. I do truly believe that, and I
1:16:58
Speaker 1: did not believe that up until really recently, maybe even
1:17:02
Speaker 1: just this week, because I've always felt that the Trump
1:17:06
Speaker 1: issue splintered conservative positions on this and beliefs so much
1:17:12
Speaker 1: so that we could not galvanize any sort of opposition
1:17:16
Speaker 1: against this kind of insanity happening again. But now I
1:17:20
Speaker 1: think the marker has been set. Certainly within the right
1:17:23
Speaker 1: wing media, it has now been set because they've all
1:17:25
Speaker 1: seen the reaction on x and on conservative media that's
1:17:30
Speaker 1: been overwhelmingly negative to doctor Fauci and very much open
1:17:36
Speaker 1: to a revisionist view of what really happened during the
1:17:39
Speaker 1: COVID panic. So I think it's positive. I'm always trying
1:17:44
Speaker 1: to see the optimistic side of things. I'm always trying
1:17:48
Speaker 1: to have some semblance of hope. I do see a
1:17:51
Speaker 1: little bit of hope in what has transpired in light
1:17:55
Speaker 1: of the Fauci diary and hearing. Although obviously far from perfect,
1:17:59
Speaker 1: because if we live it's in a remotely perfect world.
1:18:01
Speaker 1: The love wig news media would completely revisit everything that
1:18:05
Speaker 1: they have said previously. They would go through Fauci's lies,
1:18:09
Speaker 1: they would go through all the things Fauci got wrong.
1:18:11
Speaker 1: They would attack him for taking the fifth when he
1:18:12
Speaker 1: already has a pardon. None of that has happened, But
1:18:15
Speaker 1: I've just accepted that that's the reality of this broken
1:18:19
Speaker 1: news media world that we live in, which is why
1:18:21
Speaker 1: we do the Death of Journalism podcast on a weekly basis.
1:18:25
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1:18:28
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