Episode 2: Dr. Peter Navarro interview, Biden's vaccine mandate, Senator Karen, and more...

Published Dec 23, 2021, 10:00 AM

Biden's OSHA Vaccine Mandate heads to Supreme Court showdown; Elon Musk vs. "Senator Karen"; Joe Rogan breaks the internet with controversial interview with Peter McCullough; The Gawker-Peter Thiel beef pops back up.

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Calgary Audio. Ladies and gentlemen, you're Weekly Dose of Sanity, December twenty, two thousand twenty one, the holiday edition of The Prevailing Narrative. Thank you so much for joining us. UM So this week, UM, I'll get to topics in just a minute, but one piece of the this week's episode will be an interview with a gentleman named Dr Peter Navarro. Peter Navarro was the Director of Office of Trade and Manufacturing under President Trump UM and then was head coordinator of the Defense Production Act when once COVID hit. And just to give you a little kind of funnel into that interview, UM, I think Peter and I wanted to talk to him for a long time because there's just very few people who were as fronts and center to the first phase of the pandemic in the White House with the the security briefings, and Navarro in particular because he was on he was one of the lead China negotiators. UM. Everyone forgets. The middle of January two thou twenty, as COVID is heating up around the world, UM, the US che ching Ping and the China delegates meet with UH President Trump and American delegates on the front lawn of the White House just on the first phase of the of the trade deal, right, so you know, everything was happening within that prism. And so someone like Peter, who was supposed to be kind of lead in front and center on the China issue, anything that came out of China he saw first. So we get a first hand account of a primary source who got to see everything from decisions around travel bands and therapeutics. You you think that the that the Trump administration was kind of COVID denialist, Well, Peter Navarro was the first person in the administration to sound the alarm on COVID. He wrote a memo in late January I believe it was January, Um, kind of sounding the alarm and telling everybody, Hey, we've got to circle the wagons and this is gonna be a problem. Um. You think that if you're pro vaccine, Peter was intimately involved in the decision to begin Operation Warp Speed and the decisions around how to approach Right, we didn't just know which vaccine was gonna work and how to produce them. There's a very specific thought process us that went into it, and Peter contributed, you know, pretty significantly to that and a host of other topics. But the key point is people are gonna do whatever they do, right. But I don't want his association with Trump or he's a fan, right think I worked for him, he worked for President Trump or for Donald Trump for four years. But in recent American life, what happened is that the inclusion of the name Trump and any topics seems to scramble it. Right, is that people make a decision based on whether they believe something or don't believe something based on what Donald Trump believes. Right. So I think it's a helpful exercise if you hate Trump, and many of you do, and I understand that, or you know, not a fan of Peter Navarros, to see if you can go through the exercise of determining whether or not something is true. Take Donald Trump out of the equation. Okay, he does not matter to to the topic or two to the decision um. And so as you hear Peter describe what he saw during early two thousand twenty, whether it's from China around therapeutics, the spread of the virus Ppe, dealing with people like Andrew Cuomo and Dr Faucci, see if you can judge it on its own merits. Maybe you think maybe you don't like his perspective, maybe you think he's wrong. That's fine. There's a lot of things that he said that I you know that I would question, particularly around hydroxy chloroquin although he makes some really good points around you know, how the media drove that issue off the rails. So I love I definitely think it would be at the very least a very thoughtful and engaging interview, and I think people enjoy it, you know, even and and once again we're trying to go through the exercise of judging every source and every set of facts on its own merit as opposed to which side it's supposedly is on. UM. So that'll be coming up after we go through a couple of topics here. So last week are made in voyage. It was great, a lot of great feedback, Thank you so much for the support. Definitely a couple of notes and definitely a couple of legitimate notes. One the feedback was, hey, this is a little too heavy on dunking on woke bullshit. And that's a fair note. Um, But wokerie and this kind of perverted foe social justice is now the governing ethos of the American elite class with nearly universal institutional capture. Right, So I'm gonna be talking about it a lot because has it's threaded itself into so many aspects of American life. If it was truly fringe, as many people claimed it would would remain when I started sounding the horn on this stuff, maybe two thousand fourteen fifteen hadn't remained to just a bunch of annoying kids on college campuses and uh something stupid. You know, some stupid campaign around a movie here, and they're great. You could definitely make the case that I'm I'm giving overkill on this, um, but no, this is now the dominant framework for which people attack just about everything from corporate HR and PR to the entertainment industry to your child's schooling. And I think a lot of people have woken up to that over the last two to three years. So, um point, well taken, guy. This podcast will be on a ton more than just dunking on woke bullshit. But if you're not looking to dunk on some woke bullshit or not expecting that, probably hey, probably not the podcast for you, but appreciate all of the notes and feedback. Um So, this week as we approached the holidays. It's a lot of battles. We'll talk about a lot of heads to head right right now. So one head to head and this one is gonna ramp up very quickly as it heads to the Supreme Court um the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals versus the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals around the Biden administrations osha uh vaccine mandate. So just to refresh everybody, end of August, as things were kind of tape, you know, the heating up around Afghanistan. All of a sudden, Joe Biden, eight months into his his administration UM and with the vaccine having been available for about eight months and for just about everyone about four months, decides, hey, not enough people are getting vaccinated. I'm going to issue a just probably the most sweeping public safety mandate of all time other than the lockdowns, and via the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issue what's called an Emergency Temporary Standard and e T s U mandating that all employers with a hundred or more employees require all employees to either be vaccinated or submit to consistent testing, with a couple of small exceptions. But the exceptions were so narrow they don't really play into the analysis. Um. Obviously, this pick the This picked the interest of a lot of people, and a lot of people came out against it, uh in particular a number of retail and trade organizations and some of the red state attorney generals in particular Ken Paxton, Attorney General for Texas, And there were a bunch of lawsuits filed. One of them got to the Fifth Circuit last I believe it was early November, and they the Fifth Circuit stayed the state the mandate. They said, hey, we we think that those challenging the mandate have a high likelihood of success um wherever this does land in court, and we for that, given their high likeli of high likelihood of success, we want to put the mandate on ice for the moment um. So what happens there. And this is kind of an interesting cork of how the appellate court system works is that they weren't the only lawsuit on this topic. So when there's so many lawsuits about the same topic, the courts try to funnel them together and then via lottery, assign it to whichever certain you know, whichever circuit court of appeals, through whatever process I think it's pretty random. But anyways, it ended up with the Sixth Circuit, and the Sixth Circuit dissolved this day and allowed it to allow the mandate, the Ocean Mandate to go forward. However, unsurprisingly they directed that to the Supreme Court, and actually as of today, the Supreme Court has ruled that it will hear will hear an appeal on the Ocean man date on January seven. So I think this is probably the seminal showdown about the mandate and so beyond just what this mandate applies. I think going through the ruling from the Fifth Circuit and the response from the cist Sixth Circuit, and even more poignantly, the Fifth Circuit staying the mandate was unit was unanimous. The Sixth Circuit was two to one favor of the mandate. Was an Obama pointee, one was a George W. Bush appointee, and the Trump appointee was against the mandate. So looking at the reasoning and how how they analyze the mandate inseparable from analyzing COVID, I think is very interesting and very telling about how we should be thinking about this outside the court system right and judging our our own personal decisions and private business decisions and things of that nature. So okay, first off, and this is something that pops up a lot on the mandate discussion, all right. Inherent in him and I said this last week, inherent in a mandate is that whoever doesn't comply with the mandate gets punished, right, So you're you're punishing them if you're restricting something that's a restriction on civil rights and civil liberties. And I don't think that we can take that that lightly. Of course, you can't just say anything that restricts civil liberties or punishes people is per se unconstitutional, because that would essentially eviscerate the notion of a law in the first place. The conversation around mandates has been far too flippant about people losing access to their livelihood or other basic live functions. And it's like, if you're going to deprive someone of that, you better have a really strong case. It can't just be something that was kind of dangerous. It's got to be something that really passes the smell test in his rock solid. And I think in looking at the reasoning of the fifth circuits, as I'll go into in a second um, I don't think these mandates past past that test. So there's a really good thread documenting the reasoning of the Fifth Circuit. The Twitter account is the real a roo. Who the hell knows what the rest of that account is, but they did a great job on this um. So first off, OCEA has only issued ten ets has ever six were challenged in court and only one of the six that was challenged made it through. So this is something that doesn't happen very often at all. As the court acknowledges, OSHA was enacted by Congress to assure Americans safe and healthful working conditions and to preserve our human resources. It was not and likely could not under the Commerce Clause and non delegation doctrine intended to authorize a workplace safety administration in the deep recesses of the federal bureaucracy, to make sweeping pronouncements on matters of public health, affecting every member of society in the most profound ways. A mandate that says you cannot work for this company or you can, you do not have the right to be of gain full employment if you don't satisfy ex tests. I mean that's pretty sweeping. That's once again people are too cavalier about this. Doesn't mean that you that No, there's no argument ever for a mandate, but it's got to be pretty significant. So they go on that the mandate is both over inclusive and under inclusive. Okay, Um, they'd say it's fatally flawed on its own terms. It applies to all employers in all industries. There's no effort to account for obvious differences between the risks. Right. Uh, we know that the risk from COVID is heavily stratified by age and health. To begin with, once again, you have to be crafting laws that deprive people of their civil liberties in the most narrowly tailored manner as possible. You can't go fishing with dynamite. You can't just throw down a universal law that doesn't account for the particulars and the distinctions of the situation. But they do that. For instance, there could be a business that has a hundred and one employees that are on a factory floor. Right, they're really close to each other. The employees passed by each other every day. Could be another employer that has two hundred employees, but they're all distributed, they're all remote workers. How does it make sense that requiring that they be vaccinated to have their to to maintain their job makes sense, right, Or you could have a workplace that's all young people things involving athletics, You're going to have a lot of younger, younger individuals. It's gonna be heavily weighted in that favor. And that the smell to the numbers do not pass muster, that that COVID presents a grave danger to these people and all likelihoody're going to survive doesn't factor in natural immunity monu like man at the mounts of evidence that people who got infected previously either one doesn't mean that they can't ever get infected again, period, but low likelihood, incredibly low likelihood of severity and not a massive delta, not a massive difference in their likelihood of reinfection or breakthrough case or a severe a severe case from those who are vaccinated. So how do you deprive one person of life, liberty and in the ability to earn a living uh based on that fairly nominal and immaterial difference, that they don't make any attempt to factor any of this in the men is also under inclusive right because if you're saying that it's such a grave threat and grave concern. Why are we stopping at a hundred employees? What about the businesses with nine D eight employees? Do they not get the same protection. If this is so dangerous and so dire and so grim that every business in America eighty million employees needs to have this mandate, then why stop at a hundred? Why not go down to five? Right? What about all those businesses as the example I used a moment ago, a knitting factory, nineties seven employees right on top of each other all day long. They don't have to get vaccinated under this Ocean ruling. But a business with two D people a thousand people that are lightly you know, not densely populated, or even not in the same office, they have to get vaccinated. How does this make sense? You have to craft this with more particularity. And there's also in this factored into the the the the ruling as well. Um, this was under this is supposed to be the emergency testing standards. So is this an emergency? Um? The thinking being, Hey, if this is an emergency, why Joe, why didn't you Why didn't you rule on it? Your first day in office, or why didn't you rule on it in April or in May? How did all of a sudden become an emergency now in the late August early September, Like, how did the why we're emergency conditions present now but not previously? And there's a valid counter argument meant that for most the first year of COVID that it was a different administration and Donald Trump Trump's administration was never going to mandate something like like this, and the vaccine wasn't available. But I don't know, start to get a little questionable if OSHA doesn't consider that there to be emergency conditions for the first seventeen eighteen months of COVID, while all of a sudden is an emergency, and it goes on beyond that, you know, unclear of COVID poses grave danger. The e t S itself concedes the effect of COVID nineteen is mild on most of the population of American adult Americans already vaccinated, and the administration essentially said they admit, like people who are vaccinated, if you do get a breakthrough case, it's incredibly unlikely to be severe. So how do the people who are not vaccinated post such a threat so these are all problems that the Fifth Circuit noted with the vaccine mandate. Um went to the Sixth Circuit. Like I said to judges voted in favor of the mandate, one voted uh to support to support the stay on the end date. And I don't know, man, the six Circuits a pro which was essentially, hey, covid is is very dangerous. This agency is tasked with ruling on safety. Thus we don't really have much standing whatsoever to to judge their policy. There's no real constitutional question or analysis. And I think they really, they really passed the buck. And I think that's why this case is going to the Supreme Court. Um, if you even look at the top of the ruling, right off the bat, this is from the Sixth Circuit Judge Jane Stretch, recognizing that the old normal is not going to return, employers and employees have sought new amount models for a workplace that will protect the safety and health of employees who earned their living there. Hey, it's the there's a new normal. Like, all right, you have to explain why in the Sixth Circuits ruling, I think if you read it, I didn't read the entire thing, but quite a bit. It doesn't really get into the details. It doesn't address over inclusion or under inclusion. It just says, well, you can error on the side of safety. It's not unconstitutional just because it airs on the side of safety. Probably it's most legitimate argument is that I don't agree with it, but at least it's pointed in the right direction. Is that because it allows the testing option, meaning that if you don't want to get vaccinated, you can just get tested and wear a mask. That it that's narrow that that's enough tailoring. It's narrowly tailored enough just based on that that you're not infringing on people's civil liberties. And I don't know. I think it's a pretty they're they're pretty flimsy here, and I think that's acknowledged by the descent. The one judge who ruled against the mandate and in favor of continuing this day. Her name was Joan larson Um. There's a Reason, an article and Reason magazine. I guess it's a website at this point. Anyways, here's why the Sixth Circuit reinstated oshous vaccine mandate and why one judge disagreed, And they lay out Judge Larsen's Descent in pre stellar detail. And I don't know, man, if you go in and read Larsen's Descent versus Stranches ruling and see which one is more thorough and better reasoned, I mean it's larsened by a mile. She mentions that the majority ruling doesn't really make sense. Says, the majority opinion initially agrees that an emergency standard must be more than reasonably necessary, it must be essential, But then that word and the concept disappear from the analysis. What starts as a demand for an essential solution quickly turns into an acceptance of any effective or meeting meaningful remedy, and later acquiescence to a solution with a mere reasonable relationship to the problem. That's the problem in general is that a lot of people, not just vaccine mandates, but a lot of COVID restrictions in general. And this is what we're going back to, the disease of something. There's a risk, there's a threat, and this is dangerous. Thus anything to address that threatn that risk is justifiable. And no, you have to be more particular, you have to be more detailed. So talked about that a lot last week. But I think Larsen seems to agree with me in that regard um other aspects of her dissent, she uses a imperfect but still useful analogy about a pizza parlor. Pizza parlor, you could mandate that everybody have to wear oven mits at all times, right, and people people work at pizza parlois they get burned by stuff, okay, you know, grab a pan uh, pizza's piping hot and something. You know, they get burned, right, and cook particularly people in the kitchen. You don't mandate there's there's internal private that's good policy, it's the best practice for everybody. There's no law saying everybody in a kitchen and a pizza parlors handling hot pizza has to wear oven mits, right, And if you did that, you would stop a lot of people from harm and stop a lot of people from getting burned. Right. Can you punish someone for not doing it? And that's the question that you have to ask, And so she gets Larsen also gets into the notion of a grave danger in the workplace. And you know, oh, shows this is usually for toxic substances, stuff that if you come in contact with it at all, is in all likelihood going to Atlanta in the hospital or some other grave health threat, not COVID, which has you know, forget death hospitalization well below one percent for pretty much everyone below sixty. It's hard to compare the two. So you know, enough discussion about that. It's headed to the Supreme Court, and I think this case and is going to have probably gonna be the biggest Supreme Court case in quite a while. It's gonna have a ramification, wide ranging ramifications, not just about vaccine mandates, but across the board. So another battle this week and entertaining one good old Elon Musk and Senator Karen herself Elizabeth Warren. Uh, Elon Musk has kind of become, you know, villain number one for a lot of progressives because he's very wealthy. He doesn't seem to give his ship, and there's a lot of accusations that he doesn't pay taxes right, and he's they kind of put a target on him as a member of this kind of alienated, undeservedly wealthy billionaire class, and and they like going after him. Elizabeth Warren has noticed that amongst her constituents, and uh and taking some kind of gratuitous shots at Elon so Elon was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year this year, and Elizabeth Warren decides to malve off about this and goes to Twitter and tweets out the story with with a caption, let's change the rig tax codes. The person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else. Some strong words there, it, Liz, so elon On, not one to sit out a good Twitter battle, responds one you remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason. With the follow up, please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen, Liz, you walked right into that one. I mean, you've got too many vulnerabilities. You're making it easy on Ellen. But Ellen went after, you know, shut her down pretty quickly. But you know, as usual, we're not just looking at this little Twitter beef. What what's really going on there? Okay, So first off, you know, I like looking into the background of a lot of these super successful kind of celebrity entrepreneurs and wealthy people, right because a lot of times there's there their origination stories different than what people remember. Um in particular, for Elan and a lot of people want I posted about this on social media. Came Oh, he was born on third base. His dad owned a diamond mind. He came from a rich family. So I did did a little digging on Elon. So yes, he did come from a wealthy family in South Africa. However, he says his dad is an asshole. He became a strange from his father. In nine he moved with his mother to Canada to avoid military service and Africa, drops out of a philosophy PhD program and Standford essentially to try his luck in the tech world. And everyone forget this is before dot the dot com thing. Okay, this is barely any internet adoption whatsoever. He had a couple of people using Prodigy to see what use their computer to find out what some baseball scores are, find out what the weather is. Very few people are using email. There's not much going on, like to drop out of a Stanford program and pretty much a path to a comfy lifestyle to take to roll the dice in tech. I mean that was pretty adventurous, and it was very adventurous in it's like very few people who are doing it. But he drops out. He found he found a company called ZIP two, which is kind of a city guide um in n He says that before the company became successful, he could not afford an apartment. Instead rented an office and slept on the couch and showered at the y m c A and shared one computer with his brother and essentially says, the website was up during the day and I was coding NonStop at night, seven days a week, all the time. Um, that's how most of these guys got successful. Okay, they didn't just they didn't just throw some cash out there, use mommy, your daddy's trust fund to fund a company. They made They made immeasurable sacrifice, right, and they grinded. They made sacrifices that your average person is just not willing to make. And that was the first real money that Elon Musk made off SIP two. Right. He got the same thing with with Mark Cuban. Everyone thinks everyone traces Mark Cuban's wealth back to Broadcast dot com, and most of it is. But he had a company before selling selling uh computer software. And you know, from what he says, in his twenties, he pretty much grinded that seven days a week for about six seven years sold the company and that was the first time he had real money. I think he made you know, seven eight million dollars mid nineties. It is pretty damn good. Um. So, anyways, that's how Elon Musk originally made money. Interesting story I'd love to dive more into at some point. But um, PayPal came about because Ellen started a company called x dot com, which was one of the first federally insured online banks that merged with an online bank and other online bank called Confinity. Confinity was founded by Peter til and Matt max levitchen Um and they had a payment system called PayPal. And that's how that all came together was from the merger of those two companies. And then there was a bit of a rift between Musk and Teal Muscott Teal booted as CEO. The board became unhappy with Musk, they booted Musk and replaced Teal as as CEO. Teal focused a little bit more on PayPal and that's what grew apparently what turned PayPal into a monster, and they sold for hundreds of millions of dollars in uh and that's when he Ellon exited with real money, over a hundred million dollars um. So that's kind of the genesis of this guy attaining wealth. And you know, does that sound like the story of a freeloader? Odd? Did he not pay taxes on the sales of those companies? Did he not pay taxes on any of his wealth through his twenties and thirties where he was making quite a bit of money? I mean, do we have any evidence of this? What is Elizabeth Warren's What is Senator Karen's case for this guy who's he didn't make his money like Warren Buffett just investing in other people's companies. He started companies, He's made massive He's been a massive innovator and clean energy created prices gone zero to one. He's created stuff that was not there before that's been used by people. Right, So, where where does Elizabeth Warren get off calling him a freeloader? And why is she doing it? So I'm thinking back, and I'm not much of a fan of Elizabeth Warren now, but that wasn't always the case. First time I recall seeing Elizabeth Warren um was round the financial crisis two thousand and eight, two thousand nine. She was a guest on the Bill Maher show a bunch of times and you here talk about what went wrong in the economy and the financial crisis and the problems in the mortgage system. And I was like, Wow, this woman seems really level headed, smart, and you know, we got we gotta get her in here. We got we need her. She should be making the rules, like she's going to keep order in our financial system. And she she was great, right, And she's no dummy. I mean she was running prior to her appearance on the political scene, you know, more more kind of viscerally. Um, she was a member of the f D I C. And she was a very well well regarded economist, you know, private economists and um. And she was pretty level headed woman. Um much lesson. I think showing the drift of Elizabeth Warren from someone who would acknowledge the value of innovators and judge was really just trying to clean up a mess in two thousand and eight, two thousand nine to someone who's shamelessly and gratuitously demonizing anyone who happens to be very successful in two thousand twenty one really shows an unfortunate drift in the trajectory of where a discourse is around wealth, success work, what have you? Um? And also, once again, why did senator why did Senator Karen go after Elon? Um? You know, she's not dumb, she knows why or why. And I'll get into Elon's tax situation just a second. But she's not dumb. She knows that he's been paying his taxes and to the extent that he hasn't, it's because it has been attaining wealth via the stock in his company. Doesn't get a salary, doesn't get vote as he just takes his his compensation in test La stock, some of which are in options that are expiring in August two thousand twenty two, which is why he's elding a bunch, which is why he's going to have a massive tax bill this year. Elizabeth Warren's not dumb. She knows what she's doing. So then you look on the internet. Elizabeth Warren's Facebook page is spouting fifteen minutes after she tweeted Elon and Elon tweeted her back, spouting UH sponsored ads trying to dunk on Elon. Here's one from a Warren Democrats in Elon Musk is winding like a baby to his millions of Twitter followers. He must be scared because he knows what every other billionaire America does, that he's been freeloading off working people, and that I won't back down from a fight. This was completely cynical and corrupt by Warrant. She knew what she was doing. She's falsely labeling a high profile target so she can go on fundraise because she knows that's the red meat that her followers and a more progressive based want to hear from. And it's really, you know, it's very undignified to know a woman as credentialed and informed as Elizabeth Warrant is just gonna go ahead and do this gratuitously so she can try to fundraise off misleading posts around, you know, calling Elon Musk, who's an incredible American success story who freaking slept at the office, you know, on a cot and coded seven days a week in order to its end his wealth, a freeloader. And I think it's a really bad sign of of where we're at. And I think the people I know, some people I don't know a ton of Elizabeth Warren fans, but some people you know, warm up to her. I think we gotta understand she's dragging people like her, dragging the discourse down. People like her, they've they've got to be held accountable. I hate. I have even more animous for people who are smart enough to know better. But otherwise there's some idiots all like a Marjorie Taylor Green or on the liberal side, Corey Bush. These are not smart people. They don't have like levels of actual raw intelligence that like even puts them on my radar. Elizabeth Warren's very smart person. She knows what she's doing. It's kind of craving and you know, we can see what she's doing with the law and so in terms of a law. And there's actually a very good scene as a CNN dot com piece describing his tax situation. But yeah, he hasn't been paying many taxes the last few years because all his money has been tied up in testlea stock and you don't pay until there's a liquidity event and variety of liquidity events. And this one gets into the details of, you know, of his statch of options expiring next year and why selling. So it's an interesting piece can be googled at CNN. Why Elon Musk will end up with an eleven billion dollar tax bill this year, the headline that usually looks like uh more click baity, but it's actually a pretty good article and suggest you check it out. Moving on from Elon versus Senator Karen So something that everybody was talking about this week a Joe Rogan podcast with a doctor named Peter McCullough. So, if you are a COVID skeptic, if you are suspicious of the kind of common mainstream establishment orthodoxy around COVID, it's origin, how dangerous it is, how to handle it, whether or not vaccine mandates are are necessary, you know how effective vaccine If you if you're skeptical of the conventional wisdom, Wow, did this one support many of your suspicions? Um, because Peter McCullough very welkre that credential doctor. It's a cardiologist and apparently has something like six hundred citations. I mean, he's been published more than just about everybody's got a very impressive track record, and he's able to give two and a half three hours of of seemingly very you know, coagent in and informed uh commentary on how so many aspects of what we've been told about COVID by the mainstream are wrong, um from you know, some pretty size of all tracks back to his conclusion and his thesis that this is being manufactured and directed for one purpose, to promote that mass vaccination across the population, which we've never seen before. And he's got a point in terms of the mass vaccination, and he's also directionally correct about a lot of stuff. But I don't know. I was a little skeptical when I heard a number of his claims, as I'm sure a lot of other people are. And then there's a doctor names Zuban Demania Um and he goes through in a very really so here's what I think about and how I'm thinking about this, and goes back to what I said about Dr Peter Navarro. People need to be able to ingest information from a number of sources and acknowledge that some of the each source may have some truth and some falsehood right, and then meld that together right and come up with some sort of fusion. So I think it's an incredibly good if you want to understand your biases, really go through an exercise where you're testing out with your own beliefs and here from you know, and and get a fuller perspective I think listening to the full McCullough interview with Rogan and then listening to Uh Demania as he calls I'm not calling him z dog, Okay? Is he calls his podcast the z Dog Podcast. None of this attaching dog to your name. The guy's name is Zubin Demania. Anyways, I think listening to both the McCullough interview and then the Demonia breakdown and essentially critique of the interview in mccaulla's claims is really good. And I think Uh Demania, he explains the types of biases and rhetorical tricks that McCauley uses, but he also acknowledges a few things and one just to back up here, Demania is one of the better COVID skeptics, right, but he's part of a group of contrarian doctors like Vini Prasad, Marty Marquery Mockery and Monica Gandhi and a few others that have been really good about calling out the bullshit orthodoxy around COVID where it's wrong right and that and acknowledging. And what what Domania does that's I think awesome is that he acknowledges, like hey, even the stuff that I think mccull is bullshitting you about. I understand why you might believe it, because there's been so many mainstream narratives that have turned out to be bullshit. The over the the trying to bully people out of reasonable positions, not acknowledging natural immunity, flip flopping on things like masks, or whether or not you can get a breakthrough infections from the COVID vaccine. Like Joe Biden. You can hear the clips all over the place in July two thousand twenty one is talking about how if you get the vaccine you can't it will stop transmission. Well, that turned out to be blatantly false, right, And it doesn't mean that that that's a single point of failure that that essentially invalidates the vaccine overall. I don't think it does. But if you make claims like that and they turn out to be wrong, you can't be surprised when people lose trust in you and your pronouncements right and lose trust in the system. So I think Demania does a fantastic job in both, you know, being specific about some of the places where McCullough goes overboard, but not being gratuitous about it and not being not not badgering people, not vilifying people, and understanding like, Hey, I I don't blame you for being skeptical of what the mainstream is telling you. It's just that McCullough. He fudges some numbers, he fudges some arguments, He says some stuff that doesn't quite add up. Um. But I think I like the I like the exercise of going through both of these, and also I think that it kind of frames this pandemic, and now that it's coming to its end two years, we're looking back on it and I get in this battle with a lot of people out of the time. It's about essentially the way that I put it is, is COVID this pandemic? Is this plan deemic? Or is this office space? I believe it's office space plan deemic? Is how Peter McCullough frames it. That it's the sinister plot with that that is, you know, kind of the deliberate, deliberate conspiracy of some shadowy, unidentifiable figures, all for a certain purpose, right, and everything else can be understood within that prism. I don't love if I don't know if I buy that man there's there's too much fragmentation and differentiation across different territories, across different countries and trying to keep that all together. And for instance, like McCullum makes a couple claims that are you know, they're not just they're not just I'm not just skeptical. They're outright wrong that the vaccine was being developed before covidy was even announced. That's wrong, and in particular one of them. If you want to find value and interesting pieces of of my interview with Peter Navarro, I mean, Peter Navarro can tell you what the status of the vaccine was in March two thousand. In February two twenty, it's like, okay, if there was a vaccine being developed for COVID, they knew about this beforehand. Well, the Trump administrations in on it, because Trump and Navarro they there. They claim that there was a decision, a discussion, and a decision to um jumpstart development of vaccine in February two twenty. So if there's some sinister plot to vaccinate everybody the Trump administration, it completely passed the Trump administration's radar, including the very skeptical, hardcore contrarian. No, no, you know, hard bullshit detector guys like Peter Navarro, So that's kind of ridiculous. He also mentions that there's a Johns Hopkins stuff that one of one of his supportive pieces of evidence is a Johns Hopkins study from a couple of years ago that describes a lot of the conditions that we saw during the pandemic. And it's like, what do you think research papers and product project projections are right? When the military runs a war game, they're trying to run a simulation of a likely scenario that might happen. And so if we're aware of stars and mirrors and these other coronavirus is then okay, if you've got people studying infectious diseases, they're gonna consider the possibility that something like what happened with the coronavirus might happen. That's that I'd be saying, Like, if if the military runs a war game in the South China Sea and we end up going to war with China, that means the military deliberately planned planned the start of the wars, Like, no, they've figured that this was a possible contingency and they ran it, and they ran a simulation. So he does some other stuff. I mean, also, you know, some pretty bold claims that nobody has forgotten COVID twice. It's like and then he mentions that his explanation is that anyone who tested positive twice it was dead particle cells and that it was just the flu or some other sickness, and the dead particles are you know, with the overly sensitive pc AR test is why he tested positive. Well, okay, well, what about all those people who tested positive for COVID, tested negative and then got sick, had symptoms and tested positive again, Like what about the SIMP Did the symptoms trigger the dead particles? Because if the dead particles we're gonna show up on the pc AR test, these people never would have shown up negative in the first place. So, um, there's a lot, you know, And and Demania goes into more detail about a lot of the flaws in mcculla's thinking. Um, and I highly once again, I recommend them together, right, because there's a little truth in the McCullough interview, and he's directionally correct. He just outkicks his coverage in a number of ways. So I think in order to test that biases and go through the practice of looking at multiple sources that disagree with each other, both of which have validity. If you got the time it's Christma this week, you got more. I think it's a good exercise to go ahead and listen to them both in tandem. I think I eyeside more with Demania. The explanation for a lot of the nonsense around COVID. It's office based, man. It is if you have ever worked at a big corporation, or even more even more so, if you've worked at a big us, if you've worked at a startup that has been bought by a big corporation, you see how the changes go from working at a young, small, nimble company to a big corporation. That's what you're seeing with COVID in the public health system. Faucci is no evil genius. Faucci is Lumberg. Okay, He's a bumbling, hand fisted bureaucrat who's better at talking in circles than he is at medicine. Okay, think about Lumberg was not a smart guy. But Lumberg made sure that everyone got the TPS ports in around in time that when you know you needed a new stapler, that you filed the right memo. These types of bureaucratic processes, you know, inefficient processes and sticking to processes over reason and and effectiveness. That's what you're seeing a lot of with COVID. I see the last couple of years as as office space, the pandemic version, and not so much of these sinister forces all directing it towards you know, for a common purpose. But that's just me. I hopefully, I hope that that is a helpful way to think about this stuff. One last battle, you know, one last head to head that I want to talk about today. Um, it's not very topical, it's not something that's relevant to this week's news, but what I think is one of the most fascinating stories in recent American history. And it popped back up just on Twitter. So it's the battle between Hulk Coogan, Peter Teal and Gawker for anyone, And I just think this is the most fascinating story that tells so much about our media environment, fake news, power everything. And if you are interested in it, there's a book by Ryan Holiday called Conspiracy that goes into it in stunning detail, and I highly I mean, if you put it at the top of your reading list. It's my belief. So anyways, Um, Gawker, the kind of you know, crass tabloid website. They early two thousand tens, they publish a sex tape with Hulk Coogan apparently having sex with the wife of his best friend to Tampa Bay shock jock named Bubba the Love Sponge God Bless. So apparently, you know, Hogan was Hogan was down and out, he was having tough times. He you know, lost a lot of money, was having physical troubles, gotten divorced, his kids were in trouble, would have been in jail, and to cheer him up, Bubba Love Sponge apparently said, hey, why don't you come over and funk my wife. Hogan took him up on it. Unbeknownst to Hogan, Bubba the Love Sponge was recording it, and the recordings somehow got out and it got into the hands of Gawker, and Gawker put it up. And that's not that's not legal. Like a person has an inherent right of privacy to conduct intimate activities in their own bedroom. Right if Hogan had known that, like if if he had released the tape himself, or if he had done something in public, then the right of privacy does not apply. But in a private home, in a bedroom like you ever write a privacy and without your permission, people can't um release a material showing what you're doing in there. Um so Hogan, you know, he made the demands to take it down, and Gawker had you know, they pushed the envelope on a bunch of stuff. But they always intimidated people out of lawsuits because they had a lot of money, and they also the First Amendment. But the First Amendment didn't apply that much. Here is once again it was a violation of the right of privacy as opposed to a commentary on a person. They didn't say whole Cogen has gone back like that doesn't give rise to a case. But hey, this sex tape that you didn't even know was being that that was being recorded. Um here, we're gonna put it on the internet for everyone to see. That's a violation of the right of privacy anyways, But they figure, Gawker figures, all right, this guy, we've got a big insurance policy. We have deep pockets. And this is how litigation usually goes, particularly between an individual and a big company. It's really aside from the legal substance of the case. It's who who can who who has the money to draw it out? Right? And so Hogan sues and the you know, nobody really pays attention to the case for a year or two. But it's going along, and Hogan keeps pushing the case forward, and one Gawker keeps on screwing up. The case keeps on going poorly for Gawker. They've got cocky writers who keep on going under depositions and making stupid comments. Um. And Hogan gets the case moved from New York to you know, his hometown in Florida, where he lived in Florida, very favorable to him. And but then they start, you know, they're, okay, let's give this guy some money and get rid of them. They offer Hogan five million, they offer Hogan ten million, and he turns it down, and they're like, what the fund is going on here? Why is he turning down? Like he doesn't We've looked at he doesn't have much money. His funds are dwindling, Like, how is he paying for this case? It's expensive and we're not buying him out of it. So eventually, after a bunch of of settlement offers are rejected, Hogan takes the case always all the way to court, to a jury and nails Cocker with a hundred thirty million dollar judgment and puts Cocker out of business. It's an incredible story. A few days after the verdict is after the verdict, it turns out, you know, I remember seeing the headline it was like Gockard always suspected somebody was funding Haul Cogan's lawsuit and that he was someone was it was Peter Teal And it's like, what, mind blowing holy shit, where the how the funk does Peter Teal get involved in this, get wrapped up with Hulk Hogan and is kind of in the shadows funding this lawsuit to take down Gaker who he hated um for a number of reasons, and you know, and that their approach towards commentary on public figures and some stories they had written about him, and it's like, wow, just how do you keep that under wraps? How do you you know, keep how do you have the resilience to keep going with that type of conspiracy in the shadows all the way and see it all the way through. I just thought it was an incredible story. But anyways, this week um a Gawker And you know these days all the Gawker infants and and the people work for Gawker who are decrying there, you know, the their bankruptcy. Um, they like whining about this stuff. So Elizabeth Spiers, who was a form of Gawker writer, in response to a tweet that said, tell us a true story from your life that sounds made up, Elizabeth Spires responded, hulk Cogan and a billionaire who might be a vampire, spent ten millions to put a blog I started out of business and this is I'm sorry, like this is bullshit. Okay, let's just get this straight. And this is something to keep in mind whenever you see these cases or if you ever end up involved in one, that part of litigation strategy is who's outspending who Who's going to spend the other person out of the case. So all that happened with Peter Tillen hul Cogan was that Gawker was trying to spend Hogan out of the case, and TiAl just gave him enough money to go take the case all the way that the jury and have it decided on its merits in the substance and the facts that's all that happened. So I just can't take this phony narrative that's out here that you know, a lot of other media. It's like, who's I. I don't agree with Gawker. I don't like Gawker, but it's dire, you know, consequences that a billionaire can just go fund to case to take out one of his enemies a billion Okay, let's just get this straight. The only reason Peter Teal was able to take take out Gawker is because Gaker broke the law. Right, this case was decided on its substance, on the facts. Right, if he didn't just he didn't just flood Gawker with so much money that they had that they went out of business, they lost in front of a jury. Right, it would have been different if if Tile had spent so much money that Gaker couldn't keep up with the litigation and they had to settle and it was too much money in that case, that it's a different story. But that's not what happened. So I think a lot of people around you know, First Amendment issues, tabloid press and these issues they and and the and it also goes back to the battle. But weeen, you know, and how Elon Musk is viewed and the attacks from people like Elizabeth Warren and a lot of her medius arrogance is that nobody these billionaires are not able to go by the court system. Okay, if Cowcher didn't funk up on the merits, they wouldn't be out of business. If they hadn't released a sex tape, they'd be fine, Okay, But they had their strategy turned around on him. They wanted a flood, they wanted a swamp hogan with money that you see, he wouldn't have money to continue with the case, and he'll let him go toe to toe, and that's what happened there. So once again, if you like this this, if this sounds interesting in this story, I highly recommend the book Conspiracy by Ryan Holiday and everything about I just find it utterly fascinating. And we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. We are coming up on the two year anniversary of this pandemic um and the pandemic obviously being the the defining, you know, most significant event of modern times, and I think the story of the pandemic is inextricably linked to the story of China's ascent in the twenty one century UM, and it's threat to America as the world's soul hegemonic power. UM. And those two stories cannot be told separately. And if we're gonna tell that story, there are a few people on earth who are more uh knowledgeable and more equipped to tell it or contribute to it than my guest today, Dr Peter Navarro UM. Dr Navarro was the Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing, reporting to the head of the National Economic Council, Chief Gary Khone during the Trump administration. Was also the Chief coordinator of the Defense Production Act in regards to the pandemic. Dr Navarro, thank you for joining us. Hey, great to be with you. And just to clarify the record, I never reported to Gary Cone. That was a matter of of some uh some conflict within the White House uh keef his staff, John Kelly, one of the most abusive people ever walked the planet, tried to force me to do that and I basically told them to go Brandon. So um. You know, UM, that's a story in and of itself, a little bit into that Trump time book. But it's great to be when you hear the period from two thousand one to two thousand and sixteen. Let's call it the period uh in between China joining the World Trade Organization and you you know, joined in the Trump administration as a as an you know, lead official on essentially addressing China economic aggression. UM. And you were you were sounding the alarm pretty early about you know, the relationship between the two the two countries, China's ascent and and the you know, the economic tactics that they were they were taking in, you know, and and trying to rise economically and threatened American hegemony. UM. You had two books, The Coming China Wars and Death by China. UM. Would love to hear your perspective on on that period and what you noticed, UM. And you know, kind of elaborating on a few different pillars of Chinese economic aggression that you note in your book. And UM. And you know also why why or why not or American public officials or people in power, Um were they were they addressing it properly or you know, into the extent that they were not? House Yeah. Well, for me, my journey really began uh in UH ninety three when I when I joined the Peace Corps and went over to Thailand, and I think, um, I think it's fair to say that far too many Americans don't have an adequate worldview. You know, we have such a great country, and we're very kind of parochial about who we are. And and um, I was able while I was over an age of three years to travel quite extensively to most of the countries there and get a keener sense of what Asia was all about and what what China's role was. Um there. So fast forward to two thousand three, when I'm teaching in an NBA classroom the University of California to supposedly fully employed executives, and I began with alarm to note that there's a lot of them are getting unemployed. And it was like paradoxy with me because Orange County, California has one of the best labor markets in the world. Um. Yet, when I began to look at this more closely, all roads led to Beijing and and then I began to put two of you together. Yeah, two thousand and one, Communist China was shoehorned into the World Trade Organization by Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress. UH. They immediately began to dump their products, and I just want to be clear on that. It's that is that you know, while Bill Clinton left office in early two thousand one, he had and Bill Clinton, the Republican Congress had had lit the fuse on China, China's entrance into the World Trade Organization while he was still president. Yeah, it was a fade accompleted by the time George Bush rolled around what what Clinton did. And I feature him fairly extensively in My Death by China movie. I showed his speeches and how he's talking about, you know, for the first time com and Shine will open their markets for the first time. It's going to be a one way street, you know, straight from America to China and the other thing. And it was really one of the great seductions of all time. And it's it's unclear whether Clinton, who had ran in ninety two against the butchers of Beijing, you know, eight years later he's like helping them get in in there. And you know it's like, was was that Nate on Billy's part or was he just simply uh captured by the corporate interests. But but you know, he I got hold him largely responsible for the lobbying effort because um it was the Republicans at the time wanted to do that. The Democrats and the organized labor folks knew damn well it was going to be um devastating to blue collar Americans. But um, you know at the time, you know, I'm a macro economist and my my job is that like forecast movements of both the stock marketing the economy. And it's like I learned that you couldn't really do that unless you understood China. So I did a deep dive one year research project to get to the bottom of what was going on to no hypothesis, as we say in the trade was yeah, it was just cheap labor and they had a lot of it. Um. But what I discovered would be the beginning of my construct of seven, the seven Deadly Sins, the seven Deadly merk until a Sins of China. I did an academic study which which pointed out other things like currency manipulation and dumping, and intellectual property theft and lacks of environmental regulars. Oh and by the way, that cheap labor was often slave labor. So um that that gave birth to uh the Coming China Wars book, the first in the trilogy. And it was that book that caught the eye of President Trump in eleven uh he made it one of his top ten China books. And from there the relationship blossom. And and so it was I find myself first on the campaign in is the top Trade and econ guy, and then um um when when we won, I went into the White House, and you know, fast forward, and I think in the in Trump Time book, the book has written um as much as as a historical fact as it is kind of a dramatic production, because a lot of things that happened were really cinematic. You know. The first chapter in Trump Time, I'm in the east wing of the White House. The comedies are there on age getting ready to sign a skinny trade deal with us. It's January, the bosses at the top of his game, looking like a lock for reelection. And I'm sitting there in a cold sweat, thinking myself, what did these comic bastards know that they're not telling us about the pandemic? Yeah, so I'd love to just t that up real quick for those who haven't haven't read the book. Right, So you're sitting there January once again, this is January, right, So there's there's word out of China that there's a virus circulating. We're seeing some kind of strange lockdown measures in Wuhana city of eleven million people. Um you you know, and as one of the heads the head officials mandated with essentially recalibrating our trade and economic relationship with China from two thousand seventeen through two thousand twenty. And us I'll let up to this moment where, you know, the first major while while there had been a tariff war, there had been kind of you know, economic vouluing back and forth between the U S and the U S and China. But now we're finally, we're finally at the White House signing a trade deal that is in furtherance of your ultimate goal, which is to repatriot a lot of the supply chains. And you know, like I said, recalibrate the economic relationship between the U S and China. January. When at the signing of this phase one trade deal, what was the word from the from the Chinese representatives? How were they framing how are they they presenting the virus and the virus situation in Wuhan. They were they letting on at all the the gravity or what could at that point probably be firmly projected as as you know, as the impact of the virus as its spread across the world. What was their story at that time? This may shock you, but there was no story at all. They didn't talk about it, not a word, not a single word. They just sat there and smiled and acted like nothing was happened. A union. Look, we know now a couple of things on their side of the Pacific. We know that dad virus likely escaped sometime in October because that's when they first began to mobilize forces around the lab. They did coordinate off that's when they started to destroy evidence. And the one thing that you mentioned your book that I think and I definitely also want to get into the particulars of the evidence around, you know, its origination and their claims of of the Buhan wet market. But you mentioned that they washed and bleached the wet market, and that's that's an interesting claim and something that that you know, I think aligns very much with a lot of their suspicious behavior around the investigation into the origination of the virus. Could you maybe talk a little bit about what your discoveries were about the wet market and how they treated it. Well, let let me come at it from Fauci's perspective in January twenty What he said and then he didn't say. What he said was the virus was at low risk and that it came from nature. What he knew at the time, that was that it almost certainly came from a lab he himself had funded, and not only had funded, but had funded the dangerous gained A function experiments that likely led to the creation of the virus. Now I say that because um, the the wet market was the other possible source of the virus, that they would argue, and you know, at first blush, it was plausible because stars Covie one was quickly traced, quickly traced to a raccoon dogs and civic cats. They they it's what's called a direct progenitor, Matt. This is like how how something jumps from an animal to a human. The direct progenitor in that case was the civic civic cats and raccoon dog. Um. But the problem with this virus could you couldn't? Yeah, I mean they've looked at thousands, thousands, thousands of things. So when they when when the Chinese quickly went in and bleached the Wuhan wet market. They weren't trying to clean that. What they were trying to do was remove any evidence that would prove that, yeah, it did not come from the web market. In other words, you went in there forensically and scoured the place, you wouldn't find any sign that that had come from there. And then at the same time, I think that the more pertinent piece of damning evidence is the fact that that not only did they did they shred a bunch of evidence there and and stripped the Internet of all sorts of things. They actually made people disappear. There's people who worked in that lab that have never been seen or heard from again. So I look there, Look, there's no question, there's no question that China is responsible, and Fauci was. It wasn't accomplished. A big part of the Entrump time book was me trying to do an executive order that would have held China accountable and thereby successfully shifted the blame that the American people was pointing at President Trump to communist China where it rightly belonged. But you know, as you and I talked to this day, we still don't know what the original genome of that virus is now, and that's very union and that's that's very unique right in all likelihood, and for other um, you know, other uh similar viruses and coronaviruses and mers and stars one, they have been able to sequence it and find the progenitor and there would be no no reason not to. There's no yeah, there's no there's no plausible right, there's no reason in it. But here's the importances and the and the sath Faucci's big lie of omission was not to tell us of the role of the lab and his gain A function experiments in the creation of the virus in January, which deprived me and the Boss from being able to properly pressure China to tell us, among other things, what the original genome looked like. Why was that important because part of my remits that fell upon me was to try to help develop a vaccine. And instead of developing UM what's called like a virus attenuated vaccine like for polio in smallpox, which we might have been able to do, you exactly what we were dealing with UM, we went with these um experimental gene technologies. The mr NA technologies which you're effectively. I mean, you can think about it as as provoking a narrow spectrum set of immunities based on the injection of really small number of spike proteins. And not surprisingly, we're seeing that these experimental gene technologies do not protect people against infection of for example, delta and omicron and UM. It's an open question as to whether they do anything at all better than UM those people who have gotten infected and already have anybodies. And I mean, really a sensible strategy would have been, and this is what I advocated back in February. You pursue the vaccines, but flood the zone with therapeutics, cheat therapeutics like hydroxicar and imected. And I absolutely want to get deep into the kind of chatter and the thinking behind, you know, your involvement in Operation Warp Speed and also your directives to to develop therapeutics. But I think you know, as we kind of about this chronologically, I think it really you know, your other activities and this winter and spring kind of funnel into that perfectly almost, So I'd love to kind of get into that. After January. UM. You were one of the earliest members of you know, the earliest public officials period anywhere sounding the alarm about the coronavirus and with a memo on January twenty UM, if you could tell us about the genesis of that memo and its contents, sure. I UM was dispatched by President Trump to the Situation Room on January. He had decided already to impose a travel ban on communist China, and he needed the support of the then Nason White House Coronavirus Task Force, which was balking at the idea. So they balked at the idea of a of a travel band. Yes, And so I went to the sit room, acting Chief of Staff, make move any was it was chairing the meeting. You had the usual suspects there, Red Field from the c d C. A's are from Health and Human Services. I had one of Pompeo's hacks on my left shoulder. There was this little guy with a little round glasses sit across from me, who I probably got in an argument with about the whole thing. He kept insisting travel bands don't work. Uh. And at one point I said to him, you mean to tell me that if twenty thousand Chinese nationals are coming in every day to Kennedy and O'Hare and l a X. Many of them lit up like a Christmas tree with the Wuhan virus that were better off just letting them come in. Is that what you are saying, sir? And he kept just saying that travel bands don't work. And this guy, I looked at him. I thought, you know, this guy, whoever he is, he thinks he's smarter than he is and he's probably gonna hurt this country. And lo and behold, there was nothing other than st faul. She didn't know he was walked on water, didn't know he was supposed to be a genius. I just took the measure of the man and it was like, now this guy doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. And by the way, ex Post, I know that he already knew the thing was from the lab and he was responsible for it. So um I. At the end of that meeting, it it ended in chaos because mulvaney tried to assert that there was a consensus against the band, and I said, no, no, no, no, Mick, they no consensus in this room. And he threw up his hands and the meeting adjourney and I went home that night, and uh, I thought about the whole thing. Early next morning, I penned that memo you referred to. Um, it's a it's you know, I'm a Harvard trained economist and industrial organization with a with some expertise and game theory. So this was a game theory memo that basically looked at what what the dominant strategy should be on our part. And basically I said that it was a travel ban and if you didn't do that and some other things. Um, and think about how prescient this was. They said over half a million Americans would die and there would be over two trillion dollars and damages. Now, um, and that was just from a travel ban. And you know, obviously more more than that have died, and we spent trillions and trillions more than I predicted. But that that was at that point in time. That was that was as prescient as it got. And I I just knew in my bones, no one common is shining, and knowing what I knew about about viruses, that we were we were in for tough times, and we damn we allowed to do something about it. In early February two thousand and twenty, once again before the vast majority of people were even paying it. At least state side, we're paying attention to the issue. You penned another memo. I believe what you mentioned in your Trump time book UM laying out the five vector strategy to attack the pandemic. So I love you to, you know, elaborate on the five vectors, one of which is vaccine production. And then this get into some of the details around the thinking about how we went ahead, uh in in crafting operation warp speed and that the thinking behind it. Well, okay, let's take the five two of them which are like salt pepper like vaccine and therapeutics UM, which which you're like prevention treatment UM. And then the other three UM the PPE personal protective equipment that's the mask, loves, goggles, thermometers, folks, simmers, all of that you eat that for all the front line defenders, UM, ventilators for the hospitals, and then the testing equipment. So I knew, and I wasn't doing this alone. I was blessed. There's a great character in the in Trump type book, Dr Stephen Hatfield, who was tremendously helpful UM to me and thinking through some of the issues and then before he went over to the dark side. UH Dr Rick Bright from HHS, which is the historian and of itself. But um with Hatfield, UM, we knew going in that it was sensible to pursue a vaccine, but we also knew that the odds were long there would be a silver bullet just based on the history. Now, the good news is we were able to get something done in the third of the time, truly in Trump time, by turning the paradigm of vaccine development on its head. UM. I won't get into the details of that, but we get if possible, I'd love to. I think that would be I think a lot of people who have enough would love to hear the details of that, because yeah, this is straight out of business school to where where to where I used to teach. Right. So, the the way UM vaccines are traditionally done is that you find a candidate step one and then step two is to go through uh phase one through three trials. For phase one is for safety two and three or for safety and efficacy you know, is it safe and doesn't work right? And so UM Sequentially you go through this and only after you determine after phase three that's something safe and efficacious to you, as a drug company, usually start to invest in the capital to mass produce those that vaccine or that medicine, whatever it is, right, And from a private sector point of view, that's the prudent thing to do, because you don't want to make plans to manufacture something that turns out not to be safe and effications right. So that's the kind of sequential paradigm traditionally used. It takes a long time. Vaccine development can take like three years. What we said was no, no, no, no, We're gonna do a simultaneous approach and we've got like six different shots on goal. We call it um six different possibilities, and we're gonna move those through the phase three trials. But at the same time, we're going to prepare to mass produced every single one of those, even if we wasted money on some of them that didn't pan out, under the theory that that wouldn't be wasted money at all, because if you had the thing ready, you would save a bunch more money by having it ready than not having it ready, so that you would have to essentially toss aside some traditional economic efficiency concerns in you know, at the sake of speed in order to get it out into the market, save lives, and you know, help unlock kind of counter other economic damage from the pandemic. And the important teaching point there is that it's it's efficiencies from the private sector. Point you from the public sector. Is that what we call in the economics a market failure because you get an underinvestment in vaccine development in an emergency. And so to overcome that, we use government funds to basically say, hey, Fiser, hey Modarna, hey j and j hey astros Eneka, um as you're doing this ramp up and get ready to have a hundred and fifty million doses for us as soon as um you get the green light from the FDA. So I mean, that's a it's a it's a case study straight out of um, you know, a business school. And and it worked like a charm um. But but um, I never dreamed that the damn thing would be used as a weapon um economically, culturally, and socially. The vaccine passports and you're fired and this that and the other thing. And and importantly I knew going in that this thing was was a crapshoot and that the far more important vector in the five vector strategy was low cost therapeutics. Right. These are these are treatments that people could use if they got infected. They could take them early and on and and reduced my severity of their symptoms, reduced the probability they go to the hospital, reduced the probability being ventilator, and reduced the mortality rate. And so one thing you mentioned in your in your book, particularly in regards to the virus, so sorry to the the vaccine, and it it's definitely kind of reflective of you know, what I think is sound analysis about the virus in general is age and risk stratification, right, and that even going into the thinking even behind the vaccine and even understood generally at this time in February April March April two twenty is the really intense uh age and risk stratification of COVID that it is far far far more dangerous to people in certain high risk categories. And thus the applicate the act, how applicable, and the value of the vaccine and the intent behind the vaccine is, you know, is also stratified in terms of providing protective cover and therapeutic benefit to them. And so you know, you lay it out very very uh cogently in your book, but what you know, what was the understanding at the time, and how did that inform the the thinking behind Operation Warp Speed and vaccine development. Well, in the fog of the pandemic war in in February and March, we had UH little statistical analysis on who the targets of the virus would be. Would it would it be kind of a uniform attack and everybody would face equal risk, or would it be as you say, stratified. We had no idea at the time. You know, my worst case scenario, UM was that it would hit hit our kids and and uh at least thus far, and thank god, it was just the opposite. And what we've learned now is that it's it's it's dangerous almost exclusively to senior citizens and or people with significant comorbidities, which are often senior citizens. And so you know, all of this is a learning experience. I the the the optimal strategy UM today UH and and as as early as probably April, I realized this UM would be to have a parsimonious vaccine strategy where you only vaccinated uh those highest and highest risk. The seniors and the co morbidities. And the reason why you don't go beyond that is basic virology one O one that viruses new take. And again this is all in the book, and it's all in my memos, and this is Doc Hatfield. It's like, this is Stephen Hatfield. Yeah, and if you give us but in his position was once again, uh he was. He was my de facto uh medical adviser. He had no official position in the White House, but he came in every day and worked with me, often through the night on this thing. And there's a great quote in there about how viruses are clever little beasts. Uh. They want to kill as many people as possible. So they don't kill you quickly like a bola. They want to kill you slowly so that they can see it and spread. Oh and by the way, they will new take. Right. So so the point here for vaccines, this is a really important point for your listeners, is that, um, the fewer people that you vaccinate, the less chance you have of a mutation that is vaccine resistant. And you say that one more time. The fewer people in our population you vaccinate, the less chance you have of a mutation that is vaccine resistant. Now, if you flip that on its head and say if you vaccinate everybody, you not only have a high probability of a vaccine resistant mutation, you can breed a mutation it's vaccine resistant that can kill everybody that's vaccinated. That's the that's the end of the world scenario right there. So we're playing you know, it's like Fauci and the Chinese community is played with God and right now Biden's playing with fire with his universal back strategy. And so that's why the therapeutics are so important. Therapeutics which can which can get people through the disease in a way where they come out the other side not only healthy, but with anybody's against the virus is the way to what's called herd immunity, which is a state of of of of grace in a in a society where you're no longer vulnerable, uh, in large numbers to a disease. And so what was once again, you know that that period right as we're first encountering the coronavirus and and learning things in real time, Um, there was just and we'll talk about how the conversation around some therapeutics from a political standpoint, and within the media ecosystem just went off the rails. What was the early discussion around therapeutics and and obviously there was some UM this, there was R and D, and there was there was beta testing, right and that there were some there was some therapeutics that were suspected and as good you know, that had had been seen to have other value as helping with other viral infection. UM. You know that we it just made sense to test out and pursue and research its potential UM therapeutics for covid UM. So what what were the learning the key learnings and the conversation around that spring two thousand twenty, Well, go back to February of one of my memos um stress the need UH to move forward with the two particular types of therapeutics remdessevere and monoclonal antibodies. UM. We didn't know whether remdessevie would work at the time, and my admission to the task force was let's secure our supplies, get this thing to clinical trials and see what we have. And UM, the good news is that we did that. The bad news is that it's a very expensive drug that can only be in administered intravenously and is usually reserved for people who are pretty damn sick. So it's not the kind of therapeutic that that that really can be used in a wide spread basis. Monoclonal anybodies is UH is a really encouraging technology. Uh. It basically injects you with anybody's UH to fight the virus that that you weren't able to develop on your own. But the problem with that is that there's some research to suggest that that if you use them, it interferes with your body's ability to create its own anybody's right. So all of this stuff. So, so there was that, but then there was also hydroxychor and this uh there is the longest chapter in the interimp Time book. Chapter seven is about um in hysteria. Yeah, and I think this is in this there's I think it's very much justifiable that this was the longest chapter in your book because the convert There's almost two pieces to this. There's the actual scientific, you know, analysis of hydroxy chloroquine and its effectiveness as a COVID treatment treatment, but also it's handling in the media and the politicial politicization around hydroxy clarice and what that says about the media environment. Um, So you know, I'd love for you to to get into that both your initial just kind of very objective plane analysis of this treatment from a from a scientific and health perspective, but also what we saw in the media. How this, you know, this almost became the proxy this one topic for how the discourse around everything I've been to do with COVID just got poisoned and just went off the rails. Well, I'd actually had two things going against it immediately. One, President Trump suggested at first, so there was immediate kind of orange man bad, it must be crazy kind of thing. But the other thing is it's like one of the cheapest and safest drugs on the market. You know, for for the lupus patients, rheumatory authoritist patients, they take the same amount of hydroxy flork and every day of their lives that a COVID patient would have to take for just seven days at a cost of twelve dollars. Right, So, just as a as a profit proposition for big pharma, it's it's not a medicine that they um, they were not incentivized to to support it, correct. Yeah, Whereas you know, like Fauci, he would dump on hydroxy pork when because it didn't have his view adequate scientific evidence. But then he'd go out of his way for ramdessevere, which was produced by one of his big Farma buds, to to basically um grease the skids on the clinical trial that was run. I mean he actually changed the endpoint from mortality rate to days and days in the hospital. It was like, no, no, no no, no, can help save lives. Right what I what I'd be correct in saying, And this is what you hint add at your book, and it's definitely what I think, Uh A lot of people can kind of just instinctually glean from, uh from watching Fauci over the last eighteen nineteen months, is that he has a bureaucratic sense of risk aversion and fair enough, that's fun in many bureaucratic settings, but that makes him less good at the job that he that is the role that in the responsibility that he's been given right now, that he continually is looking for you know, uh, silver bullet data that he will not act based on on you know, high probabilities and accept a certain degree of of the unknown um to his detriment, and that that you know, in many ways does not serve the population that that is hanging on his warden, that is taking his instruction. What I'd be correct in saying that, I think that's uh, that's too kind. If you look at the data about, for example, the the the vaccines uh Fiser, MODERNA, J and J. If you actually look at the data, there's some very real risks associated with those treatments that Fauci in fact wanted to bury. Now he loves to tell the noble lie. When we had a shortage of masks, he told people don't wear masks so he could preserve them for the frontline defenders. When he wants to implement his universal vaccine policy, he tells you, you gotta get vaxed because it will protect you from the virus uh and won't hurt you, when he knows full well from the data that the vaccine is not uh not bulletproof, it's leaky, and oh yeah, you're gonna have to get a booster. Yeah, you're gonna have to get another booster. Oh yeah, you're gonna have to wear air mask on airplanes for the rest of your life. Oh yeah, this is probably gonna come back every year I mean he's always he's always the gold posts. Uh, And you have to ask the question. Yeah, I the more I know about the guy, the more I think that he's just he's just a biter looking version of Joe Biden. And he's not playing with a full deck mentally. I mean, he knows kind of what to say and things like that, um, in terms of words coming out of his mouth. But when you Parson, they don't make sense. Fauci, Peter Dad, Zack, Francis Collins, their relation to the wu Hunt Insto Institute of Horology, and what your discoveries are and if you're if you were in a court of law putting a case forward for the the you know, the notion and the claim that the virus originated there. Let me take you to January again, back to that situation room where I'm I'm going to head to head with Fauci on the travel band. Um. I know now that Fauci knew then that the virus almost certainly came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And and here's the case and facts and evidence. First of all, we know that the virus came from China. We know that it came from Wuhan, and we know that it's surfaced within yards yards of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We have ruled out categorically the zooonotic theory, that is that it came from nature, So that leaves by Acam's razor and logic that it came from the lab. Now we necessarily ruled that out. Is it unlikely or zoo the tropic has it been ruled out or is it just unlikely based on what we know right now? Bye, By the amount of direct projet we have explored and not found anything in the tens of thousands, we are basically out of suspects, right. And then there's I mean there's the furring cleavage issue. There's a whole would you be able to get into that the fern cleavage issue just briefly, Well, if you look at the virus itself, um, it looks like it was genetically engineered based on this thing called the furrn cleavage. I mean you would look at that and say that didn't come from nature and if you were virologists, right, So we know that right, and and we know as as another fact that Fauci funded the Wuhan lab, which brings his culpability into question. Know that in twenty seventeen Faucci went behind the back of the Trump administration to lift the band on gain of function experiments, and that had been had, that had been outlawed, that had been shut down in two thousand fourteen because it was Obama administration because they were too damn dangerous. And the technology which effectively can be used by the Chinese communist bioweapons people to genetically engineer a bioweapon that can kill people out of the harmless bad viruses, and Faucia had been told by a script scientist that it was genetically engineered in all likelihood. Now from there we go to the fact that Fauci then used this guy, Peter Dask you mentioned two orchestrate a cover up to make it seem like this thing came from the lab by organizing a bunch of scientists the right letters and make statements saying, of course this came from nature, not the lab. Right. Meanwhile, Dasse, it had gotten money. He was the conduit for a lot of the money to go into the gain of function experiments. I mean it stinks the high heaven. I mean, there's no question in my mind there's there should be no question in anybody's mind that Faucci had is complicit in what happened in Wuhan, China at that lab, and that his lie of omission, by not at least telling us about that possibility as early as January, deprived us of the ability to develop a Vaca virus attenuated vaccine in the mode of a smallpox and polio vaccine that would be a true vaccine, and instead has left us in this limbo of experimental gene therapy technology. And there's another individual Uh woman named She's Ang Lee, who was of that lady of Wuhan. She was the one who went a thousand miles away to a bat cave um in uh in the southern province and brought back these bat viruses, some of which had been known to infect and kill miners there. But but we're not humanly transmissible, and these we believe we're the were the effectively the building blocks um for the genetic engineering. The the O and Dacic. There's a great uh scene in the in Trump Time Book where Dacic explains on TV in an interview, how you just go into the backbone and one of these viruses and inject some stuff and thereby turning inject some spike proteins and turn it into a human killer. So essentially, you know the the the the theorem is um the bat the basket that was secured from these caves in southern China, taken to the Wuhan Institute of Horology, gain a function research as applied in order to you know, explore um what happens when you make them more prolific um or you know that do you put it in your book improves the ability ability of a pathogen to cause disease. And the evidence points to that being the origination of the COVID Night Team. Yes, yeah, yeah, and certain and certainly seems to be and and a very plausible As you mentioned Acam's razor. It's this was this is not a far flung notion. It's not a far flung theory. This is if you were sitting there and even in February two twenty and looking at the most likely explanation for this that's right in front of everyone's face. Yet such a pursuit of this theory was demonized and dismissed and claimed to be debunked, which obviously it wasn't what do you think was driving the the you know, the response or the demonization of this theory and and the you know, the claims of a lab leak, even though it was you know, fairly obvious or at least to UH to investigate based on the fact that right in front of everybody's face. I think it's very simple. The whole thrust of the campaign against Donald Trump was to blame him for the pandemic. And if you blamed commonist China, uh, instead, you couldn't blame Trump. And what I was trying to do, um is shift to blame rightly to China with an executive order that would have helped China accountable. It's part of the story in trump time book. But I think it was as simple as that. And and as Corey Lewandowski once said that, you know, these people who were fighting Trump hated him more than they loved this country or in this case, wanted to save lives. And there's this has been a lot of bloodshed, and we need to get to the bottom of Fauci needs to go. Communist China needs to be held accountable. And I really appreciate this very thoughtful conversation. Absolutely and appreciate you taking the time as well. Um, and you know, I know that you have to go right now, and you know, admittedly, and this is my fault for for the you know, um, kind of not making the pieces fit timing wise. I really would love to get in. I think it would be critical to the interview quality overall into the kind of five heinous acts of the cc he And do you think that we might be able to even find ten to fifteen minutes, um sometimes you know, in the next couple of days, if at all possible, just to to kind of one more second this this week is chopped to be honest, or maybe maybe next week. But the worst of the five haynous acts again, this really you gotta run right here or I'm getting no problems. Trouble um was was shutting down communist China at the same time they let airliners fly around the world with Chinese nationals. Yeah, that that did it right there, No understood. Listen, Well, I'd love to see if we can find that time. I think it would be you know, kind of critical to the interview. But obviously at your whenever you're free. Um. But but this was fantastic and you know, really appreciate your time. And UM, you know, I'll talk to Eric and we'll see you know, we'll see if we can coordinate. That does that sound good? Yeah? I gotta thanks so much better. So that is it. UM. I hope you didn't ad this and my interview with Dr Peter Navarro. Once again not asking everybody to agree with everything that goes that that is said in that interview. Um, but we need to be looking at people who have firsthand accounts of important situations, right and I think Peter is and I think he dispenses a ton of interesting, relevant information. But I hope you find it valuable. So happy holidays, Merry Christmas everybody. I'll see you soon. I am at Bolinski once again. You can listen and subscribe to The Prevailing Narrative on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening right now. Make sure to follow me on my socials at Matt Polinsky M A T T B I L I N s K Y. The Prevailing Narrative is a Cavalry audio production and association with I Heart Radio, produced by Brandon Morrigan, executive produced by Dana Burnetti and Kegan Rosenberger for Calvary Audio. I'm Matt Bolinsky,