Dr. Marty Makary: Stop Talking Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated

6 Aug 2021

BUCK: We have a mission here, Clay, and one of the things that we’re trying to do is to speak the truth about all the madness out there with regard to the way that vaccine passports are coming to New York City. As of today, it’s still happening, and there’s no willingness from the Biden administration to address the issue of what about those who have already had covid and have antibodies and all the truth about it.

Here’s Dr. Marty Makary, who we’re gonna be having on this show next week to talk to us about this specific topic. But here he is on Fox News.

MAKARY: I wish we would change the lexicon and stop talking about the “vaccinated” and “unvaccinated” and just talk about the “immune” and “nonimmune.” There’s been this demonization of those who are nonimmune, not vaccinated. Those who are unvaccinated pose no risk to the vaccinated beyond that of a common cold.

BUCK: There’s so much here, Clay.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: What he’s saying… Here’s a doctor who’s saying essentially what you and I have been talking about now for weeks, and I know some of the of the people who are with us now feel the same way. The hysteria is being pushed by the vaccinated as those they’re at substantial enough risk from the unvaccinated or from those who are likely to get covid if exposed to it, that their hysteria is warranted, and it’s just not.

This is the problem. And then beyond that, we should also be talking about immunity that is inclusive of those who have had the virus. But instead (chuckles), what you have is CNN — I actually was surprised by this yesterday — just straight up fired three employees. This broke yesterday. Jeff Zucker, you know, had ’em booted because they showed up to work and they had not been vaccinated. I also would want to know how they found out. Maybe they just told people or something but how’d they find out about this. I used to think, Clay, there were HIPAA, privacy regulations, apparently not in covid era.

CLAY: Well, this, again, is why I would tell you listening to our conversation with Alex Berenson yesterday in the final hour of the program was so informative and illuminating, I think, for many of you, including us as well. But the way that we are defining… This has been something we’ve been arguing for a while.

I don’t understand, if you are vaccinated, why you care whether someone else is vaccinated. Right? Okay. On the most basic level, if you feel that it’s the right decision for you and your family, why does it matter to you whether other people are vaccinated? They have chosen to take the risk, and there may be a variety of different reasons why they’re not vaccinated. For instance, Buck and I…

And that’s why I also think this Dr. Makary interview and discussion which we’re going to have with him on Monday is so interesting. He has come out and pointed out that there’s a big difference between people who have natural immunity and vaccine immunity. And we both have natural immunity ’cause we both already had covid. Well, a huge percentage, I would bet, of people that are ending up unvaccinated are making the choice not to get the vaccine because they’ve already had covid.

And no one talks about it! Have you ever heard Biden mention the idea…? We hear all the time, “Hey, 70% of 18 and up have been vaccinated.” We don’t hear it as often, but I do think it’s significant: 90% of people who are 65 and older have gotten at least one shot, and those are the people that are at the most risk. And there’s this idea that the remainder — that 30% of adults, everybody else — who hasn’t made that choice is doing it to willfully choose not to take the vaccine. But if you’ve already had it… I’ll give you an example, Buck. I had chicken pox.

BUCK: Yes, we know.

CLAY: I never had the chicken pox vaccine. There’s never been a point in time where anybody has suggested to me, “Oh, my God. How have you not gotten the chicken pox vaccine? You don’t care about somebody’s grandma!” No, ’cause I had chicken pox when I was a kid. I might have gotten a booster at some point. I don’t even know. I’ve gotten the booster for all the others. It’s not like I’m anti-vaccine.

I’ve gotten booster for all those things. But usually you never hear, “Oh, you had it.” Well, now you have to go get it as well. And one of the great failures of our covid response has been the lack of data that we have. We know in England, Buck, 92% of people either had covid or have gotten the vaccine. We know in India, two-thirds of people have gotten covid. Almost no one’s gotten the vaccine. How do we not have that data here? It’s absolute madness. How do we not have that, and why wouldn’t we have it?

BUCK: The former star of the show Friends, Jennifer Aniston, has come out very publicly and said that she is cutting people out of her life now who are unvaccinated. She won’t see them, won’t be around them. This is what’s happening. And now more and more offices and workplaces are doing this too. No one has explained how it’s going to happen in New York City that you’re gonna have bouncers checking — not necessarily bouncers, but someone checking —

CLAY: Effectively.

BUCK: — vaccine status at every place you’re gonna want to go — bars, restaurants, movies, et cetera, gyms. And how over half the city’s African-American population right now is not vaccinated. Therefore, they’re just going to be, as of a couple of weeks from now, few weeks from now, excluded from all that. Nobody has explained how that’s okay, how that’s gonna not be a big problem.

The de Blasio administration just seems to think that maybe by bluffing us all into this, everyone’s gonna rush out. There has been a surge in vaccination in some places. But it just goes to show you how much the same way that masks went from an epidemiological — alleged epidemiological — tool that then turned into a political symbol that then transformed into something more like a religious symbol for a lot of people, you’re seeing the same thing with vaccines now.

It’s not even about whether you’re at risk for a lot of folks. It’s not even about whether you should be concerned with what someone else does. This is the campaign. Until a hundred percent of those who can be vaccinated are vaccinated in this country, there are a lot of folks out there who will continue to be unhappy with the situation and will insist. They will insist that there will be measures taken to force everybody else to have to go and do this. Here’s Governor Hogan, for example, who’s just saying — technically a Republican, which is always amazing. I’m pretty sure this guy’s a Republican.

CLAY: You’re right.

BUCK: He’s theoretical a Republican. Here’s he is.

HOGAN: I don’t care what, uh, misinformation or conspiracy theories that you have heard. Uh, the plain and simple fact is that these vaccines are working. If you’re still unsure about the vaccines, uh, here is the important fact for you to consider: Nearly every single person hospitalized or dying with covid-19 in Maryland right now is unvaccinated.

BUCK: So he’s just saying it’s something that comes down to conspiracy theory. It comes down to people who have misinformation. Meanwhile, we can’t get a very basic straightforward answer on, “Okay. What about those who have had it?”

CLAY: And I think the challenge here is — and we talked about this with Alex Berenson yesterday — we are being sold on an idea. I think this is where what you are being sold and what the reality ends up being is a significant issue. We’re being sold on the idea that if a hundred percent of Americans were vaccinated, covid would have disappeared, wouldn’t exist anywhere. I don’t think that that is true if you look at the data that came out of Israel and the data that came out of England.

Lib Journo Visits Gun Range, Hilarity Ensues

6 Aug 2021

Vermont is a state that, surprisingly, at least until pretty recently, has a very pro-Second Amendment stance for a very blue state.

Well, they’ve opened their first indoor gun range and a journalist went shooting there. He’s written an account of his adventure for the online Vermont website Seven Days called Shots Fired: A Reporter Visits Vermont’s First Indoor Gun Range.

His name is Kevin McCallum and, as Buck described, “He acts like firing an AR-15 is like throwing Zeus’ thunderbolt.”

Buck read excerpts from the “Shakespearean” column on-air, which must be heard to be believed.

Clay mused, “How stunned would you be if Kevin was a huge Trump guy?”

The dramatic reading prompted Clay to wonder if we could get McCallum to come on the program to talk about his experience firing a gun. We won’t hold our breath.

Listen to C&B break down one reporter’s play-by-play of his day at the gun range:

Cori Bush Says Stupid Stuff

6 Aug 2021

CLAY: If you haven’t heard these clips, Cori Bush is the one who was on the steps of the Capitol. She has been in favor of defunding the police. On July 4th she said America was an awful, racist country. You need to hear this. This is an interview with CBS News. Here is Congresswoman Cori Bush.

BUSH: And we’re also talking about the same exact people who say horrible things about me, who lie to get — to — to build up their base. And because they will lie about me, I receive death threats! Now, they don’t address the fact that I receive deaths threats after they’ve gone on air and say horrible things about me. But then they want to say, “Oh, but she wants… She needs private security.”

I have private security because my body is worth being on this planet right now. I have private security because they — the white supremacist, racist narrative that they drive into this country. The fact that they don’t care that this black woman that has put her life on the line… They can’t match my energy, first of all. This black woman (sputtering) who puts her life on the line, they don’t care that my… that I could be taken outta here. They actually probably are okay with that.

BUCK: I want my body to stay on this earth too.

CLAY: Yeah. I think everybody’s in favor of their body on the earth. Yeah.

BUCK: I can understand that part of it, for sure. Clay, here’s the issue with Cori Bush. (chuckles) On a number of levels, there are questions that this raises. One is: So there are still people… ’cause Democrats will pretend like this is not the case. There are still elected officials who say that they mean defund the police.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: It’s not some slogan that they use to get attention or anything else. They actually mean defund the police, and they cling to that, even though we’ve had now over a year of real numbers in every major American city showing that when you not only defund police as a matter of finances, but you refuse to continue to give law enforcement the backing they need to do their jobs appropriately…

When law enforcement feels like at any point in time, they could risk their careers, perhaps even their freedom for having to make a difficult but good-faith decision, it results in very bad things happening — more murders, more shootings, more violent crime in major cities. But then also this idea that Cori Bush is special, and she says she’s under so much threat. I think that a very small percentage of the country knows who Congresswoman Cori Bush is.

CLAY: God. (chuckling) Minuscule. How many white supremacists…? Let’s pretend that this is the bogeyman, right? Let’s pretend… This reminds me a little bit of Jussie Smollett, yes? And to your credit and my credit, we were some of the people who said, “Come on. This doesn’t pass the smell test.” Nobody knows —

BUCK: I did a podcast titled “Jussie Smollett is lying” before the footage came out of the two guys buying the rope and the stuff in the store.

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.

BUCK: So, yeah.

CLAY: Yeah. You were on the very front edge of this is stupid. Even when this story happened, I remember turning to my wife and saying, “No white supremacists sit around and watch Empire, first of all. Let’s start here. Second, if they do watch Empire, they certainly don’t know what Jussie Smollett is, and they certainly don’t know that he’s racist.”

All of these things. Cori Bush… Let me be clear about this. If you are one of these people who’s running around on social media making death threats or threatening violence, I do think you should be prosecuted, ’cause we have to set the precedent that online life should be treated in some way similarly to real life. You can’t just walk up —

BUCK: It is illegal to threaten to kill somebody, and it should be, by the way.

CLAY: And you should be prosecuted.

BUCK: I even also always say that anybody who wishes harm on someone they’ve never met —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — in any capacity, people that celebrate when someone dies —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — or when someone they disagree with gets cancer, to me it’s a sign of a deep not only moral failing, but emotional and psychological instability. I actually worry about the fitness to handle day-to-day life of anybody who says, “Oh, this politician or this pundit or whatever just died or has cancer or had a heart attack, so I’m gonna celebrate that online.” Those people? They’re sick in the head.

CLAY: Yes, and you should be prosecuted if you threaten to kill someone. But there is a difference between random losers on Twitter or wherever sending a message and someone actually putting you in danger such that you need to have a security detail.

BUCK: She referred attempts on her life, by the way. That’s a very specific thing.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: That’s someone actually… I am not aware of that having happened. If that has happened, we should know about it, that would be a major news story because it would be an attempt on the life all of federal official, a member of Congress. We should know. But, Clay, I think we all know what’s really going on here, which is that she’s coming up with some story to try to make it seem like what’s not happening here is…

And it is what is happening. You have another person who wants to make sure they feel safe with resources put around them, men with guns (and women) to protect them while the rest of American society — in poor neighborhoods that have higher crime rates — are supposed to say, “Yeah, but this is all for the cause. We’re all suffering the crime.” By the way, you look at minority communities in cities like Detroit, specifically when they’re polled, and they completely reject this crap.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: This is top down from the elites. No matter what, you know, ethnicity you come from, you want you, your family, your communities to be safe. It’s this mentality of the elites and the activists that somehow dispenses with this because it makes them feel good when they go on TV. It’s virtue signaling.

CLAY: You want more cops. You want more cops if you are a minority living in an inner city neighborhood. That’s what all the numbers reflect. Now, so that was Cori Bush talking about how, again, unbelievable quote, “I have private security because my body is worth being on this planet right now.” Ostensibly what she’s saying is other people’s bodies are not, because they can’t afford their own private security.

BUCK: I think your body is worth being on this planet.

CLAY: Thank you. I feel the same about you and many of our listeners, maybe even all of them. (laughing) Let’s go in. Here she is furthermore saying, “Well, yes, we need to defund the police,” but she needs private security because would she rather they die?

BUSH: And defunding the police has to happen! We need to defund the police that and put that money into social safety nets because we’re trying to save lives. What other — what other occupation can do work that’s out of their scope and still be propped up to do work that’s out of their scope? As a nurse, I can’t be the surgeon too! You don’t want me being your surgeon and I’m the nurse.

At what point… Do we pay police to be social workers? No, we don’t. How do they get to be social workers? So what I’m saying is, you do your job. Let the people who are… (sputtering) who, uh, have gone to school with a particular skill set do theirs. Neither the… Defunding the police and being able to have security because — becuase those same folks are causing it? Two totally different things.

BUCK: If I’m gonna take her analogy and play it out a little bit which —

CLAY: (laughing) Oh my God.

BUCK: Yeah — and, by the way, Nancy Pelosi is heaping praise upon Cori Bush being a hero for her protest, sleeping out on the steps of the Capitol. All over social media, MSNBC, “Oh, my gosh. Cori Bush. Amazing.” What she’s actually advocating for, if we’re gonna take her, “I’m a nurse; I’m not the surgeon.” Okay. Fair enough. The people that want to defund the police are saying…

They’re walking to the hospital, and they’re saying… Sometimes surgeons, Clay, make mistakes, and they cut where they shouldn’t and somebody could bleed out on the table. So let’s fire all the surgeons and let the nurses handle whatever comes afterwards. That’s what defund the police would actually be. But if we’re gonna take her analogy to its logical conclusion, we could see how illogical and absurd the whole thing is. But I think it’s important we all know: This has not been abandoned!

CLAY: Let the nurses do it by themselves? First of all, I don’t know what percentage of Congress men and women are truly idiots. I’m very confident that Cori Bush —

BUCK: It’s more than zero.

CLAY: Yeah, it’s more than zero. And, by the way, Democrats and Republicans, right? There are dumb people in both parties. Cori Bush is… That analogy, Buck, you’re even being, I think, too generous to her. That would be like not letting the nurse because at least the nurse has some training in how to respond to let’s a say gunshot wound.

It would be like saying, “Hey, hospitals made mistakes. Let’s eliminate all the hospitals and everybody just go to a random house when you need a doctor and let whoever’s there treat you. They’ll do good as good of a job.” When you defund the police, you’re trying to sweep them all off the streets and do away with them completely. We still have another cut from her that is even dumber.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: One more Cori Bush. She’s a member of Congress, and she just had a big win with the eviction moratorium extension.

CLAY: They listen to this woman.

BUCK: They listen to this woman. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer. She just had a big push. She moved the Democrat Party to rally behind the extension of the eviction moratorium. Unconstitutional, yes. Marxist, yes. But she got her way. So she’s in the news this week for that reason. But also she’s got private security, and she’s a very vocal defund the police person. And here’s the kind of stuff that she says about it.

BUSH: They would rather I die? You would rather me die? Is that what you want to see? You want to see me die? You know, because there could be the alternative. So either I spend $70,000 on private s-s-security over the last few months and I’m here standing with (sputters) here standing now and able to speak, able to help save 11 million people from being evicted, or I could possibly have a death attempt on my life.

BUCK: This is the new standard we’re gonna start seeing. First of all, of course, no one wishes any harm on any member of Congress or any politician or any public figure. Any person with any decent, morality doesn’t.

CLAY: We’re all antimurder.

BUCK: Exactly!

CLAY: Be straightforward and clear. No one is in favor of untimely death by violent measures. (laughing) Anyone who is in favor of murder —

BUCK: We’re not afraid to upset the constituencies out there that does not respect human life, okay?

CLAY: Yes. That’s right.

BUCK: We stand firmly and strongly against them in every way we possibly can. But this is such a dishonest way of setting up a debate. It’s a way… It’s saying, “Oh, look at me! I’m under threat, and therefore,” let’s get down to what this is really about, “It’s not hypocritical that I pay for private security,” she’s saying, “’cause I need it so badly.”

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Well, a lot of people would like to have security. It’s not even just the police issue. Democrats don’t want you to be able to arm yourself. If you gave me… If I was living right now — and I live in Midtown Manhattan, which does actually have some crime issues these days. But if you gave me the choice right now between a 20% increase in police presence in my neighborhood where I live, or the ability to conceal carry?

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Not even close. Not even a second’s hesitation, I’d want to be able to conceal carry. Of course, I live in New York and I’m not super fancy and rich. So I’m not allowed to conceal carry. But that’s… If you gave me my druthers, that would be my move. Democrats want to prevent you from doing that and they want to prevent you from having police to protect your neighborhood.

Remote Learning Was a Disaster, Minorities Hardest Hit

6 Aug 2021

CLAY: Now, the other thing we were talking about off the air — and this is not as positive, but I was talking about the difference between the experience that kids are gonna have in school and you looked at that. You’ve got some data I think it was out of Newark, right?

BUCK: Yup.

CLAY: There’s all this talk — and I’m gonna let you hit the data, but my wife was a guidance counselor before we had our third kid and chaos kind of hit in our house. But this has been a big deal for her, and we’ve had this discussion a lot in the house, that the Democrats claim that they are the party of equity and inclusion and that they want to make sure that everybody has an even playing field.

And their response to covid, as it pertains to kids that are at home and might not have Wi-Fi, that may not have parents that can help them get online, may not have laptops, may not have access to the internet… Their response to covid has ensured by these kids not being able to be in school, has ensured that the poorest and the least advantaged kids among us are going to fall further and further behind compared to the advantaged kids.

And it’s as if… Randi Weingarten and all these teachers association union people, they won’t even address this but the numbers — again we try to look at data, right? On this show we try to share data. The data is terrifying for anyone who believes in equal opportunity of education.

BUCK: So this is from Chalkbeat in Newark. Just 9% of students met math standards this spring, according to the latest data. And when you start to look at what the comparisons are here, when you start to get a sense of how it lines up to pre-pandemic versus now… Now, keep in mind, Newark is a largely… It’s a majority minority district in terms of schools. There are more minorities than there are non-minorities in the school districts there.

In the public school system, 2010: Third grade math, 35% prophecy. Now, let’s keep in mind that’s not very good, but it’s 35%. As of 2021, Clay? It’s 10%.

CLAY: Ugh.

BUCK: Third grade reading 28%. This was in 2019. 2021, 14%. Cut in half. Eighth grade math, 2019: 25% prophecy; 2021, 12% efficiency. Again, cut in half. And then this was the biggest gap. Eighth grade reading, in 2019, 44% of students who took the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment were proficient in eighth grade reading.

In 2021, Clay, 12%. So a complete fall-off-the-cliff loss of what feels like years of learning because of just the way it’s going to hold them back for a long period of time after this. How do they catch up? Remember, it’s about a gap. There appears in parochial and private schools were going to school normally.

CLAY: And some good public schools.

BUCK: And some good public schools stayed open. But the public school unions are very powerful Democrat constituencies. So they weren’t going to be held to account for this. Somehow it was safe to expect that the grocery store clerks in my neighborhood —

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: — and the people who work at CVS or the Duane Reade —

CLAY: Exactly.

BUCK: — somehow it was normal to expect that they would show up for work. But it was not to be expected that teachers could go in and be around small children who as we know not only are quite safe themselves from the disease but are very unlikely to spread it to adults in the first place. This is a scandal. The data always suggested that they never should have shut down schools. They shut down schools because they could get away with it politically and because they wanted to.

And this is one of those areas where people like me and you who are saying, “This is madness,” back in the August 2020 time frame were being told, “Oh, you don’t care about the people who are on the front lines and teachers are front line workers” and all this stuff. And it was just hysteria. And it was people picking preferred constituencies and saying, “They can have special privileges.”

But the rest of us have to live by a different set of rules. It all has to do with what powerful within the Democrat Party. It’s disgusting, though. These kids are suffering, Clay. How do we catch up? What do you think? The public school system is troubled enough in Newark.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Now they’re gonna get really excellent? Plus, they’re gonna be masking kids up.

CLAY: Yeah. And, to me, this is what should be one of the main stories for the past year in terms of its long-range impact for kids. And, Buck, to your point about shutting down, remember 15 days to stop the spread or whatever the heck it was, you always fight the battles of future wars — as you well know as a military history guy, too — based on the technology of the past wars.

What’s so frustrating and what so few people will eject acknowledge now is, the decision to shut down schools was based on a hundred years ago what happened with the flu. When the flu, actually, in 1918-19 presented a substantial risk to kids in a way that covid never did. And so it was a failed process, and I think we’re gonna be unfortunately dealing with the fallout from this for generations to come.

Rush: We May Have Cured the Flu

6 Aug 2021

Be sure to listen daily to Rush’s Timeless Wisdom podcast here or on iHeartRadio. It’s absolutely essential information from America’s Forever Anchorman.

EIB 24/7 OT: Alex Berenson Answers Your Questions

5 Aug 2021

The deep dive on the air with Clay and Buck was not enough. So, Alex Berenson, the courageous journalist who’s been asking the important covid questions and going against the conventional wisdom when the data told him to do so, stuck around in studio to go into even deeper, fascinating detail with Clay and Buck — and answer listener questions.

This is the kind of stuff that got Alex suspended from Twitter for a week.

And only EIB 24/7 members can listen to this exclusive conversation.

If you’re not a member, sign up now. You can also use the special VIP email to tell Clay and Buck what you think about this topic or anything else on your mind.

Listen here:

Rep. Elise Stefanik Tells Us Why She Thinks Cuomo Is Toast

5 Aug 2021

BUCK: We’ve got Congresswoman Elise Stefanik with us now, representing a district in the great state of New York. Congresswoman, thanks for being with us.

REP. STEFANIK: Good to be with you.

BUCK: So, is Cuomo definitely getting impeached and is he going to be removed from office, in your opinion, as a result of that process?

REP. STEFANIK: I believe that we’ve finally reached a tipping point and finally state Democrats are going to move toward impeachment. They’ve still said they’re going to delay this until next Friday to start the Judiciary Committee process in the state legislature. But, remember, this has been months for the Democrats in Albany who have slow walked this and really put their heads in the sand.

But there is not a single elected official in Albany who has stuck their neck out to protect Governor Cuomo. That’s a sea change. That’s very different than where we were a week or two weeks ago. And, if you read the attorney general’s report, it is just unbelievable. It makes your skin crawl.

Especially one of the cases of his sexual assault and sexual harassment of a New York state trooper that was assigned to his protective service. That had not been in the press before; so that was a bombshell report. So, I do believe that he will be impeached. And, if the state legislature Democrats fail to, they need to be held accountable by the voters across New York.

CLAY: Congresswoman, if he is impeached and removed from office, could he come back and try to run again in 2022 to reclaim the office that he has now? Obviously, we talk a lot about impeachment on the national level as it pertains to the Congress and the president, but how does it work in the state of New York in terms of Cuomo’s viability going forward?

REP. STEFANIK: You know, I really don’t see him running again if he is impeached. I have to look technically at what the rules are in New York state. Again, I’m a federal official and I’m very familiar with the impeachment proceedings (chuckles) —

CLAY: Yeah, no kidding.

REP. STEFANIK: having lived through two impeachments that were illegal and unconstitutional at the federal level, but any assumption is that if he is impeached, he — that will be the end of his time in politics. Certainly he, I think, would be unable to win a Democratic primary if he were even going to run again. He was trying to run again. You saw earlier this year, despite the multiple scandals, he was hosting fundraising. Shame on those donors for supporting Governor Cuomo, but I don’t see him being on the ballot next November.

BUCK: Can I just ask, Congresswoman, if he’s going to fight this out ’til the very end, ’cause he knows the process, he knows New York state politics as well as anybody. A lot of favors owed to him, probably knows a lot of things about people that he might be able to use as leverage on them, behind closed doors at least. What are the ways that you could see this getting derailed? I mean, is delay essentially the greatest ally that Cuomo would have in staying in office and surviving this current moment of revolt against him even from Democrats?

REP. STEFANIK: I think delay is something that every New Yorker should be concerned about. Remember, virtually every elected official had called for his resignation months ago, yet they failed to act in the state assembly and state senate. So they have been slow walking this. That was before the report. You bring up a really important point.

Cuomo’s entire reign in New York is known for political vindictiveness, for leaking materials — sometimes true, sometimes not true — against his political opponents. You saw even in the attorney general’s report the retaliation — which is illegal in the state of New York — against some of the victims. They leaked personnel files and shopped them around to the media. So I would not put anything past him. He is a political, vindictive bully.

Even I’ve experienced that. I have been one of the strongest Cuomo critics during my time in office, and I was vilified in the press for simply call him the worst governor in America, and it turns out that was a very true statement and everyone across America understands that to be the case right now. But I think time is something we have to watch, but also the political vindictiveness that he and his team are known for.

And you’ve seen it in some of the articles in the New York Post, the Washington Post today, about his senior aides. Their job has only been to protect Governor Cuomo, and they have smeared victim after victim. They smeared the families who lost their loved ones in nursing homes, and they’ve smeared their political opponents.

CLAY: Congresswoman, does it surprise you even if Cuomo is getting some of what he deserves because of this sexual harassment investigation, that simultaneously the fact that he may well have caused thousands of additional deaths with the way that he responded to covid nursing homes in particular, and that the Department of Justice basically has stepped away from that investigation. Shouldn’t he have to answer for that as well for people in New York?

REP. STEFANIK: Absolutely, and we are going to continue holding the Department of Justice accountable for that decision of closing up that investigation. Again, New York state lost over 15,000 vulnerable seniors. I’ve talked to family members and loved ones of seniors who were lost in nursing homes in my district.

And regardless of whether or not Governor Cuomo stays in office, we need justice, transparency, and accountability for those families. And most importantly, we need to make sure that we have policy protections so never happens again in future public health crises. These were truly our most vulnerable people that Governor Cuomo essentially sent to their deaths, defying and breaking federal guidance from CMS.

He forced nursing homes to take positive covid patients without their ability to isolate them. Meanwhile, he had empty bed space in the Javits naval ship that was sent by President Trump at the time. And what’s really stunning is, yes, the media is very focused on the sexual assault, sexual harassment. The media has not been as focused on the nursing home scandal of late.

And how they covered Governor Cuomo at the beginning of covid is just shameful. The fact that he won an Emmy — the fact that they were lifting him up, praising him as the most effective governor in the nation — it just shows how out of touch and disingenuous the mainstream media is, and they should have accountability in this too. So much of Governor Cuomo’s actions — bullying, retaliation, criminal conduct — has been done in plain sight for years.

BUCK: What happens if, in fact, he is removed? Do you think that that has reverberations in the Democrat Party statewide in New York that could result in some changes in policy? And also, could a Republican, you think, take that seat if in fact Cuomo goes?

REP. STEFANIK: I think a Republican can win statewide and win the governor’s seat, regardless if it’s Cuomo or someone replacing Cuomo. Because the New York Democratic Party has protected Cuomo, they have put failed policies into place. You see crime skyrocketing. We’re one of the least friendly states when it comes to businesses. We have the some of the highest taxes in the nation.

Corruption is, unfortunately, king in Albany and has been for years. What happens technically — and New Yorkers know this, ’cause this is not the first governor that we’ve had to either resign — it is the first one in my lifetime that will be impeached, though — is the lieutenant governor, that’s Kathy Hochul, she will step into that job.

I anticipate the Democrats will have a very, very contested primary for who will be the gubernatorial nominee. And who knows. We may end up with a very far-left socialist candidate who could be the Democratic nominee, and Republicans have a great opportunity to win statewide I believe just because of the overall frustration with the failed far-left policies.

BUCK: Representative Elise Stefanik, thank you so much for joining us here on the Clay and Buck Show. We appreciate it.

REP. STEFANIK: Thank you!

Dinesh D’Souza on the Real Outrage of January 6th

5 Aug 2021

CLAY: Joined now by — a good title, I think — filmmaker, author, and host of the Dinesh D’Souza Podcast. He is Dinesh D’Souza. What do you like more, the title filmmaker or author?

DINESH: (laughing) Well, you know, to be honest, I’ve been an author for almost 30 years. My first book came out in 1991. It actually popularized the phrase “political correctness.” It was called Illiberal Education. I’ve written, I don’t know, 17/18 books, but I only got into movies in 2012 when I made my first film on Obama called Obama’s America, 2016: Obama’s America, and I’ve done five films since then. So, I really like both. But I think author has been my defining kind of title for most of my career.

CLAY: We appreciate you joining us. I want to start off with this question: Does covid madness ever end? You’ve seen a lot of different storylines in your career, as you said, since you wrote that first book back in 1991. Trends come and go. It doesn’t seem like we can escape covid. Will we?

DINESH: Well, I think what you have is the real story of covid is not the epidemic. There is a real virus and there is an epidemic. But how we got the virus, what is the precise nature of this virus, what is the best way to deal with it, is it really necessary to lock down whole economy?

What I’m talking about is the way in which the epidemic has been politically massaged and manipulated. I mean, even the 2020 election, the way it was handled is inconceivable without covid. They rigged the rules of the whole election system to build it around covid and to take advantage of covid. So that, I think, is the real political story of the virus.

BUCK: Now, Dinesh, we are seeing some efforts right now… It’s, Buck, by the way. Good to talk to you, my friend. It’s been a couple weeks. I gotta say, this latest eviction moratorium that we were talking about right before you came on, in the face of the fact that there was already a Supreme Court ruling that said, “The CDC really can’t do this.”

And the Biden administration is just saying, “Ah, we’re gonna do it anyway,” and given that they floated out things recently like a national vaccine mandate, they’re talking about vaccinating every single active-duty member of the United States military. No ifs, ands, or buts. It feels like these are just trial balloons they’re putting out there for even more tyrannical overreach. And I’ve gotta say, I’ve been surprised at how little there has been mass pushback and mass noncompliance from Americans in a lot of the parts of the country that you’d expect something else.

DINESH: Yes. I think it’s also striking that we’re seeing lawlessness creep into our society in many different ways. I mean, this is not an isolated case. Look at the way in which the Antifa, BLM rioters or catch-and-release or $50 fine for burning a church. You know, look at the way in which they let in covid-infected illegals across the border.

So they’re trying to tell American citizens, “You gotta do this; you gotta do that.” They’re showing a blatant disregard by keeping the back door open and letting in, by the way, not just Mexicans. They’re letting in people from Haiti, from India; people who are coming from Asia to come across the Rio Grande and through the Mexican border.

Look at the way they’re trying to pack the court. So in case after case, you see that they’re quite willing to step aside from established laws and practices just to push their ideological agenda — as if daring the American people to push back.

CLAY: How does the pushback come? What, in your mind…? I know we’ve got the 2022 election. The House can swing; the Senate can swing. But when you’ve got a power dynamic such as this. We’re doing the show right now, Dinesh, in New York City and the mayor of New York City came out and said, “Hey, I’m gonna require vaccine passports.” It may happen in L.A. now. The creep of freedom being stolen away is continuing 18 months after this all began. What has to happen in order to win and fight back on these battles?

DINESH: Well, first of all, never in the history of the world have people — the ordinary citizen on their own — come marching out and organized a revolution. That’s never occurred. Even the American Revolution when you think about it, was organized by a group of elites who basically called the people to action. What we’re seeing now, I think, is a massive failure of leadership. There’s a huge vacuum.

Obviously, Trump had filled that vacuum before. But now — apart from issuing a periodic statement — Trump is largely silent. Now, there are Republican leaders in individual states like DeSantis and here in Texas, for example. But on the national level, there is a screaming need for leaders who say, “This is what we need to do. This is what we’re demanding and calling the people to do,” and then the people will respond. But they won’t respond without the call.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Dinesh D’Souza, filmmaker, podcaster and author. Check out the Dinesh D’Souza Podcast. He does excellent analysis there. You should go check it and subscribe. Dinesh, we had a Tea Party when I first got into doing this instead of doing stuff for the CIA 10 years ago. The Tea Party came about because of the concerns over massive government spending.

And we did have a mass movement. Do you think that there’s room for something like that now? It feels to me like conservatism is standing by and ready to assert itself, and I would have thought the spark would have already happened. Is it incumbent upon all of us and those who are listening? We’ve got people listening in all 50 states right now across the country. Do we need a grassroots movement to get this stuff to stop, and how do we get there?

DINESH: Well, I think that someone has to strike the match in all these cases. Now, a classic example is, look at these January 6 defendants. The way in which the Biden administration is literally brutalizing these families, and the GOP is basically silent. So yesterday my wife Debbie and I decided to write a $100,000 check to support the family fund of the January 6 defendants. Why? Well, partly we want to help.

But the only reason I’m mentioning it publicly is I want to encourage other people to step in. This is a case where you’ve got all these people that are being left on the field, their own party has kind of abandoned them, even the good guys on our side are largely silent, and the abuse of law and the way they’re being treated… I mean, if you just contrast the January 6 families with, say, the Antifa and BLM families, you’d have to conclude that there’s really no equal justice under the law in this country.

CLAY: It is kind of wild to think about the way that — and, frankly, many of these defendants are starting to make those arguments of prosecutorial misconduct in the way that they are dismissing charges against let’s say the Portland courthouse, all of the different arrests that went on even involving federal related buildings and comparing them to what happened on January 6th. There’s no rhyme or reason other than politics to justify the dichotomy of treatment there, and I imagine that’s one reason you gave the money to help in the defense.

DINESH: Yeah, and I think it goes to more than that because I think what’s happening is the Biden administration wants to create a larger narrative. They want January 6th to go down in history as the next 9/11. Now, how can you do that when the only person deliberately killed was a Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt? It’s very hard to do.

So they’re relying on a massive coordinated network of propaganda to put out this narrative. But they’ve got to brutalize the families by acting as if they’re going after Bin Laden types when you’re actually going after some plumber who took time off work to go to Washington because he was very concerned about his country.

The doors of the Capitol were open. There were police walking around. They didn’t tell anyone to leave. These guys are taking photos and the cops are posing in the photos and then the FBI hunts this guy down with helicopters– people outside his door, guns drawn — and now the guy’s facing the destruction of his life.

BUCK: Dinesh, it’s stunning to see the disparity in what I call the treatment of the so-called insurrection and the other insurrection that happened for not just days, but weeks and even months of 2020 with an entire police station burned down to the ground in Minneapolis. Multiple attempts to burn down a federal courthouse in Portland. Officers attacked with bricks, with batons, with bats.

Feces and urine were thrown at them, lasers deliberately shined in their eyes to intentionally try to blind them permanently. I haven’t seen anybody held for six months in solitary on any of those charges, and I think the American people have to start to ask, “At what point do we recognize that what we had called the deep state within the apparatus of the federal government under the Trump administration is now essentially running the federal government”? The deep state is the state!

DINESH: Absolutely. I think another question that we will not expect to be answered by Pelosi’s task force is this: To what degree did the FBI instigate the storming of the Capitol? I’m not just talking about the FBI infiltrating groups like the Oath Keepers and the 3%ers and then watching to see what they did. But to what degree the FBI actually light the fuel that said, “Let’s do this!

“We’ll provide the logistics. We’ll show you which doors are open.” These questions need to be asked. Why? Because this is exactly what the FBI did not very long previously in the Whitmer kidnapping plot. They were actually very involved in bringing that plot to fruition, and there’s some question whether that plot would even have occurred without the FBI basically saying, “Let’s do it!”

BUCK: The one part of this we know, Dinesh, is that there will not be an honest review of security on January 6th. It’s just gonna be a lot of theatrics and waving the so-called bloody shirt in a sense to try to make it seem like all Trump supporters share in the guilt. We just got about a minute, Dinesh, but I want to know: Do you feel like this Biden administration is increasingly weakened and that we’re setting up for a conservative reversal here? Or do you feel like it’s cornered, lashing out and therefore even more dangerous when it comes to authoritarian and tyrannical actions?

DINESH: I think that the Biden administration has essentially started ripping out the guardrails of society. It’s almost as if they’re daring the American people to do what they can. It’s almost as if they’re saying, “Listen, you can fight back, but we’ve already thought of that. We’ll get you kicked off social media. We’ll get you fired from your job.

“So we’ve got the system fully under control — fully locked down, you might say –politically.” But, I think yes. If you’re asking me, is there a massive anxiety about what they’re doing and increasing awareness than that is deeply wrong in this country, a lot of buyer’s remorse for independents who might have voted for Biden. I absolutely think so — and, yes, I do think it will manifest itself next year.

CLAY: Dinesh, we appreciate you coming on, my man. Filmmaker, author, and host of the Dinesh D’Souza Podcast. We’ll talk to you again soon.

DINESH: My pleasure.

A Deep Dive with Alex Berenson: Covid Fact and Fiction

5 Aug 2021

BUCK: We have been looking forward to this deep-dive conversation into covid, everything going on right now with the vaccines, the mandates, the masks — what works, what doesn’t, what does the data tell us — with the one and only Alex Berenson. You’ve probably seen him on Fox, and you maybe have gotten Unreported Truths downloaded. I recommend you do so on Amazon before they decide you can’t. You can also find him on Substack, Alex Berenson on Substack. He’s just a journalist who’s been asking questions and gone against the consensus when the data told him to and he is here with us now in studio in New York. Alex, great to see you.

ALEX: It’s a pleasure.

BUCK: Clay and I have both been talking to you now about this issue for about 18 months and we’re going to for a long time.

ALEX: Yes.

BUCK: Can we start with this, actually, ’cause we have so much we’re gonna keep you, like I said, for a deep dive so you can actually have time? It’s not a four minute TV hit such as it is. Masks. You got a lot of heat in the beginning. It seems like now finally people understand that this is almost like a religious symbol for most folks. Is the data clear on this one? Before we get into vaccines, can we just get into, “If they had good mask data, wouldn’t we know about it?”

ALEX: Has anybody been alive the last 18 months? Didn’t we all mask up for about 12 of those months and the virus came and went and came and went and came and went. Masks are useless. They are useless. They’re certainly useless to keep you from getting sick, and they are almost as certainly useless to prevent you from transmitting the virus to other people.

BUCK: Are there (crosstalk) that you know, can I ask, who are willing to say that to you offline?

ALEX: Oh, yeah! Absolutely. And, by the way, we’re not talking about what they call respirators, N95. N95s may be largely useful; I’m not willing to be as definitive about that. But when you ask the CDC to present studies showing that masks work, that cloth or surgical masks work to protect their wearers from covid they don’t have any because those studies don’t exist.

CLAY: Okay. This is important, I think, because so many kids are going to back to school. My kids go back to school tomorrow, Alex. Thanks for being here in the studio with us. Does it make any sense at all for kids in particular to be wearing masks in school —

ALEX: No.

CLAY: — or is it madness?

ALEX: No, it’s madness, okay? It’s madness. First of all, they don’t work. Second of all, kids are dirty little creatures who are like constantly touching them and taking them off and switching them with each other. And third, when kids get covid, unless they’re lightning-strike unlucky or they’re really sick, they don’t — I mean pre-existing, like have leukemia or some terrible condition —

CLAY: Yes.

ALEX: They don’t get sick from covid. At most, they get a fever for a couple days. They don’t get sick.

CLAY: And I want to say this. I’m a parent. I’ve got three young kids. You have how many kids?

ALEX: Three kids.

CLAY: Three kids. Okay. So, for people out there, you shared some data before Twitter banned you — or suspended you, I should say, for seven days, which we’ll get to in a minute. But we’re talking to Alex Berenson. You shared some data from England about kids in particular and the impact that this great British study had shown covid has on them, and the numbers were truly staggering.

ALEX: Yeah. No. So there are two, actually, that Lancet published over the last year. One was from I believe last summer or fall, and they looked at some children. They found six children who died in Britain from covid. Three of the six were neonates with severe genetic abnormalities — like babies born just too sick to live — and I think the other three had terminal illness.

And then there’s an updated study from a month or two ago where there were 61, I believe it was, updated people under 18 — so children and teens — who died in Britain. Thirty-six of them I think you could just say were totally wrong. They’re homicide or suicide or something like that.

CLAY: Yes.

ALEX: And then of the others, there were only six who didn’t have trisomies or other really severe genetic conditions who’d be classified as healthy. So that’s six out of 12 million in Britain.

CLAY: I think that’s just significant ’cause so many parents are out there as it pertains to kids and covid. That’s a great study out of England that I don’t think got enough attention.

BUCK: I also want to ask you about the vaccine situation here, ’cause reminded with masks, I have more and more people on the left who are saying things like, “Masks are really now just…” They are a symbol.

ALEX: That’s right.

BUCK: When we used to say they were a symbol it was shut up, it’s science. Now people will you tell you, I’ve had leftists that are people I know or work with will say, “It’s really just about reminding everybody about all the things we have to do. It’s reminding everybody that we all need to go get vaxxed, all that kind of stuff.”

ALEX: Yeah. Yeah.

BUCK: So they’ve transitioned, because otherwise if you look at data it doesn’t make sense. Okay. So we’ll put masks aside for a second but even though the amount of ferocity directed at people like you, me, Clay, for even questioning it, to me, was like a mask mental illness on display. But vaccines. What is going on right now?

People look at the numbers, they look at the data, and come to very different conclusions. And even people that I know, Alex, who have been really supportive of a lot of work you’ve done have complained to me and wanted me to ask you, “He’s too critical. He does not show enough of the upside of the vaccines.” How do you respond to that?

ALEX: Okay. So vaccines are supposed to be permanent, right? That’s inherent in the name. They’re supposed to last 10 years, 20 years, a lifetime. It is abundantly clear these vaccines don’t meet that definition. Okay? They don’t work like traditional vaccines. I’m talking about the mRNA, and the J&J that works differently as well, but it’s essentially the same idea as the mRNA vaccine.

They don’t work like traditional vaccines, and we have now pretty good data on this — the first couple of weeks after you get the first dose, you’re actually more likely to get infected, it looks like. The clinical trial data didn’t show that. It showed there was no protective effect, but the real-world data shows there’s some increase in infectivity. Okay?

Then it takes a couple more weeks and you get the second dose. After the second dose, it looks like you have this sort of Happy Valley. Okay? There’s a couple of months where this thing really does seem to work and it provides protection and you saw that in Israel, you saw it in the U.K., you saw it through the American nursing home data. It’s pretty clear. Okay. The problem is it doesn’t last, and the last month in Israel the data is horrific.

BUCK: Yeah, tell us about this, ’cause people believe… The thing we hear — and Clay and I are looking at this stuff every day from the news cycle perspective. You hear, it’s good at least six to eight months is what they’ve been saying. That’s what the narrative has been.

ALEX: Okay. First of all, let’s say it’s good six to eight months. How did that about something that we all have to take for the rest of our lives?

CLAY: And your point… Sorry, before we get to Israel. Your point based on the data that you are seeing would suggest that instead of being a traditional vaccine like measles, mumps, and rubella, what you’re effectively saying is this is more akin to a flu shot where you’re going to have to get it every year forever, and it provides some measure of protection, but it’s not the equivalent of, “Hey, you’re never gonna get chicken pox, for instance.”

ALEX: That’s right but it’s also much more dangerous than a flu shot. Anybody who looks at the data is gonna agree to that okay the side effects are off the charts compared to the flu shot. Even if you only talk about the myocarditis risk and the venous science thrombosis risk with the J&J vaccine. No 19-year-old dropped dead of venous sinus thrombosis after getting a flu shot. It does not happen, okay? So these are —

BUCK: And that has happened —

ALEX: Yes!

BUCK: When you talk about myocarditis, what kind of numbers we talking about? ‘Cause they’ll say 160 million have gotten the shot in this country. If 50 people got myocarditis, they’ll just —

ALEX: It’s not like that. So, again, we have better data out of Israel.

CLAY: Explain. Sorry to cut you off. Explain that Israel data, for people out there.

ALEX: Okay.

CLAY: What are you seeing? ‘Cause Israel’s ahead of us in terms of vaccinating their people. For those listeners who may not be aware, what are you are seeing from that data?

ALEX: That’s right. So the two countries that were more aggressive than the U.S., significantly more, were Israel and the U.K. And the data is cleaner out of Israel for a couple of reasons. First of all, the U.K. used a lot of AstraZeneca which we don’t use here. U.K. also did this weird thing where they didn’t go with the regular vaccine schedule. In other words, in the clinical trials it was one dose and then a second dose, three weeks later for Pfizer, four week or so later for Moderna.

U.K. didn’t do that. They wanted to get as many people to have one dose as possible. In Israel they only use Pfizer which the mRNA vaccine which more people in the U.S. have gotten and they did it on the… We’ll say correct. They did it on the correct schedule. So the data is more comparable to the U.S. data.

Second of all, Israel’s relatively small, and they’ve been collecting data on a daily basis and releasing it since before the vaccine started. Okay? And they do it in a pretty transparent way. It’s not as transparent as I would like, but it’s pretty transparent. It is far, far more transparent and honest than the data we get in the U.S.

And they’re in front of us. As I said, they started before us. So Israel actually was saying that young men — who are at the highest risk for myocarditis — appear to have about a one in 3,000 to one in 6,000 risk of clinically significant myocarditis. Now, that may not sound like that much, but those young men have essentially zero risk if they’re healthy from covid and there’s a second point. There’s a point that does not get understood here, okay?

It’s not likely that one in 3,000 people is having risk-for-myocarditis bad enough to go to the hospital and the other 2999 are having nothing happen to them. Okay? It is likely that a significant number of people are having changes in their heart function that are real but are not bad enough to send you to the hospital. And we don’t know how many people that might be because the companies didn’t do any work in the clinical trials that might help us with that.

BUCK: Alex, we want to return to this with you in a second, and also I want to pose to you and for everyone listening just the narrative right now from the Biden administration on down is get the shot, you’re fine; it’s over. If you don’t get the shot, you’re a barbarian who basically, you get what you deserve.

ALEX: Yeah.

BUCK: I mean, it’s very clear that’s what they’re saying.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Okay, Alex, I want to ask you this question. Right now, we are being told that if every single person in the entire United States got the covid vaccine, that covid would be over, that people who are unvaccinated are the only reason why covid still exists. Based on the data that you see in Israel and in England, is that true? And if not, what does the future look like right now?

ALEX: No. I mean, that’s demonstrably untrue. In Israel 95% of people over 80 are vaccinated, 90-plus percent of people over 60 are vaccinated, and 85% of people over 30 are vaccinated. Fully vaccinated, two doses, two weeks. Fully vaccinated, okay? That is above the levels that we were told would lead to herd immunity. It’s as you close to full vaccination as you can reasonably hope for.

The number of infections in Israel has increased more than tenfold in the last month. There are 3,000 to 4,000 a day. This is a country of nine million people, okay? So you gotta multiply that by 30 plus to get to U.S. numbers. That’s over a hundred thousand infections a day, the last few days, the equivalent. More concerning even than that is: The number of people who are in critical care, seriously ill, in Israel has increased tenfold in the last month, to 250. So, again, Israel had this period of time late April through mid-June when basically it looked like the epidemic was over there.

CLAY: It looked like the vaccines were working flawlessly and it was gonna vanish.

ALEX: That is right. They dropped all the restrictions. You can find all the articles from all the people who criticized me talking about how great the situation was in Israel, how this was the future if you got everyone vaccinated. The vaccines don’t last! It is just abundantly clear. The data in the U.K. is the same, although it doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes. But it’s roughly the same.

BUCK: So in this country right now going back to the narrative that’s all being jammed down our throats all the time by the generally Democrat-aligned corporate media —

ALEX: Yep.

BUCK: — is that the only reason we still have covid-19, really, is because of Delta being more efficient at spread and unvaccinated people. Sounds like you’re tell us that even if they didn’t have those bad unvaccinated — you’re talking to two of them right now, those unvaccinated — people out there, there would still be but is it then the situation that they don’t want to be honest about that with the public because they don’t want to get to 100% vaccination and then tell us there will be boosters? Is that what we’re heading for?

ALEX: I can’t guess at the motive. I’ll say this, okay, when you look at the Israeli data there is one thing that they’re sort of clinging to, this idea that vaccines still prevent or lower the risk of severely illness and death, okay? And it is clear, actually, right now from the Israeli data that people who haven’t been vaccinated are at higher risk of severe illness and death than those people who are vaccinated.

Even though vaccinated people make up far more of the overall number who are severely ill, because that pool is so small of unvaccinated people, those people do appear to be at higher risk. But now I gotta take it down one more level. The people who are unvaccinated in Israel, especially the older people, are probably people who are — or many of them are people who are — too sick to be vaccinated to begin with, right?

So if you’re vaccinating 95% of people over eighty, it’s not like some 88-year-old is saying, “I don’t want this thing.” No, they’re probably just too sick to get it and that means that’s probably why they seem to be at higher risk or at least part of the reason. What I’m saying is you add it all up, okay? The country that did the best job with the mRNA vaccinations has a serious crisis on its hands right now

It is talking about going back into lockdown for the Jewish holidays in September. Okay? That is the fact. However much they want to scream about Mississippi and Florida which has a national average vaccination rate, by the way, how much they want to scream about people like me, they can’t get around that fact.

CLAY: It’s never going away, right? That’s the big takeovers here.

ALEX: It’s never going away. Never.

CLAY: And so this is going to be endemic for years and years to come. That’s what people need to prepare themselves for.

ALEX: Let me tell you one thing. It doesn’t… It looks like if you get it and you recover from it —

CLAY: Which Buck and I both did, by the way.

ALEX: — you are very unlikely to get it again.

CLAY: That’s a shining light in terms of natural immunity.

ALEX: That’s right. Natural immunity appears significantly superior to vaccine-generated immunity, and there’s good biological reasons to think that’s the case: Because your body reacts to the whole coronavirus. The vaccine only tells you about one small part of it. And if the virus changes in that part, your body’s not gonna recognize it.

BUCK: Alex, we’re gonna come back here in a second ’cause I want to talk to you about T-cell immunity. But also we’re here in New York City, and there are vaccine mandates that they’re about to put into effect. This is the tip of the spear of tyranny, unfortunately.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: Alex, Clay wants to establish a lot of things about how you’re not anti-vax, and I want to get that in. Can I just ask you, though: The people who say on the vaccine that you’re wrong. What do they say, and why are they wrong? I mean, get to the criticisms first because right now, as you know, there are people who just know they’re supposed to oppose you.

ALEX: (chuckles) Right.

BUCK: That’s all they think about.

ALEX: So, you know, a couple months ago they had an easier case, right? It was sort of like, “Well, look at Israel. There’s no cases. Look at the U.K. There’s no cases.” So, back then the argument would be sort of about, “Look, there’s all these side effects,” which, by the way, we’re not even talking about side effects any more. We’re just talking about whether this thing works at all, okay?

So that idea that the vaccines are gonna end up the epidemic, that they are going to return life to normal by themselves? That’s gone. I think Delta has ended that. Now, that doesn’t mean we can’t get back to normal. We can get back to normal whenever we want! There is no evidence that this thing is gonna cause — that covid or any of the variants — is gonna cause health system collapse.

That was the whole point 18 months ago, “15 days to flatten the curve,” 15 days so that if you got in a car accident, there would be a hospital bed for you. The day the hospital ships left New York City, New York Harbor in April/late March — or I guess it’s late April — of last year, that argument should have ended. New York was the worst hit city basically major city in the world.

And it was a terrible time, and Cuomo made bad decisions and it got worse because of the nursing homes. It got worse ’cause they overventilated people. Nonetheless, the hospital system in New York City did not collapse. There were no mass graves. There was no people being cared for in tents in Central Park. It didn’t happen. This thing is not bad enough to destroy our society.

Only we can do that to ourselves. Okay? This ends when we say it ends. It doesn’t end because of vaccines. And the problem — and we were talking about this a little bit during the break is there are so many people who’ve been so frightened because all they do is watch CNN. They have no idea who really gets very sick from this. They have no idea who really dies from it.

They have no idea what the numbers really are. They’ve been lied to for 18 months, they were told the vaccines were gonna save them and, you know, get us all back to the hot back summer. Now that’s been taken from them, and they are looking to blame somebody. They are looking to blame me. They should be blaming the people who told them the vaccines were the way out of this, when that was never true.

CLAY: Okay. I think this is significant — and thank you. We’re talking to Alex Berenson in studio, Clay Travis, Buck Sexton. You are not anti-vaccine.

ALEX: That’s true.

CLAY: I want to make this clear, because there is this idea that if you ask questions about the covid vaccine, it means you question the legitimacy of all vaccines. That’s different. You have young children. You just took your kids to go get their vaccines.

ALEX: That’s right. Well, and I said this last week and I wasn’t clear. People said, “You got your daughter vaccinated against covid?” No, I got her vaccinated against MMR and DTaP. That was our two-year well child visit she got the shots.” Let me tell you, she doesn’t like the shots.

CLAY: Yes.

ALEX: She got the shots and now she doesn’t have to worry about those things.

CLAY: Ever again.

ALEX: Basically, ever again. And one of these things people sayis, “Oh, yeah, the measle vaccines fails.” Yeah, after 25 years if you’re exposed to somebody with measles and you’re in the same room with them for an hour, okay? If the covid vaccine did that, sign me up, okay? Unfortunately, it doesn’t do that. We went at warp speed. I said this on Twitter. Now I can’t say anything on Twitter because I’m banned. “You want it bad; you get it bad.” We wanted this bad, and we got something that doesn’t really work as promised.

BUCK: How could we not know if boosters are required?

ALEX: (chuckling) That’s right.

BUCK: There will be a news story that will say, “Booster getting approval, booster here, booster there.” Well, shouldn’t that be known? If we have a strategy to end this thing or if we have a strategy to handle this, if the Biden administration’s doing such a great job which is what we were told, shouldn’t we already know, Alex, if you’re gonna need a booster shot for this? Do they kind of already know but they just don’t want to talk about it? What’s going on with that?

ALEX: That’s a fascinating question. If you look back at Moderna — and the companies have played this so brilliantly. They were talking about boosters back in January. The companies were much, much smarter. I mean they are smarter, they have more money, much smarter than the public health authorities. They have let the public health authorities do the hard work for them the whole time.

So, I mean, if you told people, “Yeah, guess what? You’re gonna be on a treadmill with this vaccine for the rest of your life — and, by the way, we don’t know what the side effects for a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh dose are gonna look like. And, by the way, we don’t know how long immunity is gonna last with each booster.

“Will it get short with each booster or will it get longer with each booster? Who knows! And, by the way, we don’t even know that these vaccines actually reduce deaths, okay?” It’s never been proven in a clinical trial. You can look at the real world data and say, “Yeah, it looks like they reduced deaths for a time,” again, for a time. But it has not been proven in a clinical trial that these reduce deaths.

BUCK: How certain are we on the question of Delta variant versus vaccine failure as the cause of the surge right now? Is it just the unvaccinated are getting whacked with Delta all over the place or what?

ALEX: No. Again — and this is a really complicated. There’s like immunology in this question. There’s a very complicated technical questions here that are sort of above my pay grade. But smart people I talk to say it looks to them like it’s not that the Delta variant is so much worse. It’s that the vaccines happen to be failing now.

CLAY: The timing of it more than anything else.

ALEX: That’s right.

CLAY: Okay. So you are right now suspended from Twitter for seven days.

ALEX: Yes. Yes.

CLAY: This is the first time you’ve been suspended during the 18 months?

ALEX: No, I was… So since the Biden administration had that press conference, since Jen Psaki put the list of 12 names and mentioned that —

CLAY: Yes.

ALEX: — which I don’t think I was on. But since she said that, Twitter has been much, much harsher to me. So Twitter suspended me for 12 hours, they suspended me for 12 hours again, and then last week they suspended me for a week. And they suspended me for a week for a tweet that did nothing but report the results of Pfizer’s pivotal clinical trial about the vaccine. I pointed out — correctly; no one has said my information is wrong because it’s not — that 15 people who received the vaccine died and 14 people who received placebo died in that clinical trial. Not of covid, of all causes.

CLAY: Right.

ALEX: Okay? So if you’re hoping that the vaccine reduces all-cause mortality, that it actually prevents death — which is the whole point of all this, I thought — you cannot find that data in that clinical trial. And that is the trial that is the reason these vaccines got the emergency-use authorization.

CLAY: So what happens? Do you think that Twitter is going to ban you? And if they do, how would you tell people…? Obviously they’re listening to you on the radio show right now. But how would you tell people to be able to consume what you put out?

ALEX: So the best way to find me right now is on Substack. Again, it’s sort of a new platform. It’s called Substack. S-u-b-s-t-a-c-k. You just put my name in, Alex Berenson, and you’ll find me. AlexBerenson.Substack.com. You can sign up for free, you know, almost 100,000 people have now signed up mostly just in the last couple of weeks. People are clearly aware that I’m on very thin ice on Twitter.

You can also pay. Basically, you’re gonna get the same content if you pay or if you don’t. In fact, I’ve been, frankly, shocked how many people are willing to pay. They clearly they think that what I’m doing has some value. And so they’re paying for what they can get mostly for free. Which is —

CLAY: Want to support your work on some level.

BUCK: Full disclosure: I pay for your Substack, so I’m sitting here as one of them; so there you go.

ALEX: Thank you, Buck. So assuming Twitter lets me back on tomorrow, I am gonna figure out what my options are. Because I’m not gonna tweet with a sword hanging over my head. I’m gonna tweet what I want to tweet, and I need to make sure that Twitter’s aware of that. And if they’re not okay with that, then I guess I have to consider my legal options.

BUCK: Another thing that we are told, and it’s one of these… It’s like the hamster hitting the pedal to get the little pellet, you know what I mean? It’s just this is your response that’s supposed to be, “If you get the shot, you’re going to basically just be fine.”

ALEX: Yeah.

BUCK: Even if you show up. ‘Cause originally they did say that it was gonna prevent transmission —

ALEX: Right.

BUCK: — and now they’ve gone back on that.

ALEX: That’s right.

BUCK: That is a fact. That is a reality. This data out of Cape Cod, the big party and the Delta variant.

ALEX: Yep, yep. Right.

BUCK: And now, “Okay. Well, now you can get it,” and in fact, there were headlines a few days ago saying that if you have a breakthrough infection you’re actually as likely to transmit it as somebody.

ALEX: Yes.

BUCK: Which, again, seems like a complete moving of the goalposts on this. But it sounds like what you’re telling us is that it’s just not really provable? I mean, do you believe that it’s not the case that for anybody, that if you get the shot, whoever you are, whoever you may be, you’re much less likely to end up in the hospital and/or die from this from covid? Is that really it? Is that where we are now pretty definitively, based on the data?

ALEX: No. That’s a little bit of an overstatement.

BUCK: That’s too much. Where are we on it?

ALEX: The really smart people who are not, you know, Fauci, are not sort of like you have to get the vaccine tomorrow who look at the data. Where they disagree with me is they would say it still looks like there’s decent efficacy here against severe illness and death. If you look at the clinical trial, what the clinical trial did show is that in this group of people — this group of relatively healthy people who they tested the vaccine on, there were fewer cases of what they called severe illness — which wasn’t actually that severe. It was basically, for most people, having low oxygen. But okay. That’s actually good. That’s good. There’s two problems with that. One is, again, it’s this problem of how long does it last? So you do have this period where you get some protection, protection against infection and everything else.

BUCK: What I meant is, if the vaccine fails, is that then…? Do we know?

ALEX: So my position on this and what I said to them, to the smart people I talk to is, “You’re assuming that you can have partial failure and still have protection,” and I don’t see great evidence for that in the real-world data.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: Buck and I, Alex, have been saying, “Hey,” to our parents, “you should go get the vaccine.”

ALEX: Yes.

CLAY: If you’re over 65 years old, you look at the data, the mortality is much higher for older people. Even with concerns about the vaccine, would you tell people 65 and over to get it?

ALEX: Yeah, absolutely. I said that all along. My mother months ago asked me if she should. She told me she was gonna get it. I said, “That’s good. Go get it. You’re 70…” Well, I’m not gonna say how old she is. But, yeah, she —

BUCK: She doesn’t look a day over 50, by the way.

ALEX: Exactly.

CLAY: I always thought she looks fantastic for her age.

ALEX: (laughing) Exactly. So, anyway, yes. And even now with sort of somewhat depressing data out of Israel, it still looks like the vaccines are a better bet than not for older people. And I’ve never been in this camp these people 5G and graphene oxide and this is a depopulation campaign. One of the reasons the Fauci-ites and my old employer at the Times hate me so much is you can’t dismiss me as a conspiracy nut because I’m not a conspiracy nut.

CLAY: You’re looking at the data and allowing it to tell a story.

ALEX: That’s right.

CLAY: One more question on the data here. We got a lot of this, people reaching out. Why do we not know how many people have natural immunity?

ALEX: (laughing) Yeah.

CLAY: ‘Cause there’s a positive side here which is natural immunity, like Buck and I have, ’cause we both got covid seems to provide the best possible immunity going forward. Yet we don’t know how many people actually have had covid the United States. We have poor studies.

BUCK: Two-thirds basically of Indians have had covid right now.

ALEX: That’s right, and that’s up from like 10% at this time last year.

CLAY: And 92% in England have either had covid or they’ve had the vaccine. We don’t know those numbers in the United States.

ALEX: That’s right. Again, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but that’s one of those questions that doesn’t have a good answer, like why haven’t they told us how many people have gotten this and recovered? We should have been doing those studies. I mean, you can find tweets from me saying we need to it’s called a serology study.

CLAY: Serology studies.

ALEX: Again, 17 now months ago back in April of 2020 —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: I mean, New York back when they did it in, I think it was, June 2020 said it was 20%. And that was now well over a year ago, and that was before the huge wave we had through the winter where we had the all-time records hitting. So clearly there should be a greater interest in that. But I want to know what you think now. Let’s say we could get Alex Berenson to walk into the Biden Oval Office right now and they would have to listen. They would have to hear you out. What do you think they should do right now?

ALEX: I mean, it’s completely clear what they should do. They should encourage the sort of rump of people who are at high risk and haven’t been vaccinated be vaccinated. That’s older people — and, listen, if you’re 400 pounds you probably should. Although —

CLAY: Obesity is a big factor.

ALEX: Oh, it’s a huge factor.

CLAY: And it hasn’t been talked about that much.

ALEX: Yes, that’s exactly right. So, listen. Fauci was around for HIV. And in the eighties, the infectious disease specialists lied. They said, “You can get this in you’re a heterosexual woman and you have sex with the wrong guy one time, you can get this.” They knew they were lying. They were afraid the disease would be stigmatized. And something like that is happening on a much broader level with much bigger consequences right now. So there’s several things we should do. We should encourage those people who are not vaccinated to be vaccinated.

CLAY: The elderly and high-risk. Yes.

ALEX: That’s right. That’s right. We should figure out what multiple doses mean and what they look like, ’cause those people, it looks like, are gonna need to be vaccinated again.

CLAY: A third time and maybe more, maybe years and years.

ALEX: Why would you assume that the third dose is the one that fixes everything for them? Okay. The second thing they need to do is just turn down the fear. Drop the masks! They don’t work. They don’t do anything. Just let everybody live, okay? Fifteen years ago, a really good paper about this by the guy who did more to eradicate smallpox than anyone else in the world, said, “Get back to normal. Communities function better when people have normal life,” and, three, get the schools open normally, period.

CLAY: No masks.

BUCK: No masks.

ALEX: No masks. No nothing. We have punished our kids enough.

BUCK: It’s craziness. Alex, your Substack, people can go find it, Alex Berenson on Substack?

ALEX: Yes.

BUCK: They should go to Substack.com.

ALEX: Substack.com and put my name in and hopefully Twitter won’t ban me. If they do, in the end —

BUCK: You come hang out with us.

ALEX: There you go.

CLAY: That’s why we took the show, Alex.

BUCK: It’s Clay, it’s me, and a few million of our best friends.

ALEX: There you go.

BUCK: So come hang out with us any time.

ALEX: Thanks so much, guys.

BUCK: We appreciate you so much spending an hour here with us in a deep dive.

Clay and Buck

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