BUCK: Years ago, I was asked by TheHill.com to move down to D.C. while was I a syndicated Premiere host on 6 to 9, now a slot that my good buddy Jesse Kelly, a fantastic radio host is in. But I moved down to D.C., and I was launching a show called Rising. And I lasted about a year and a half, and then I had to come back to New York for radio and, well, you know, the rest ’cause here I am.

But there were some great folks who stepped in afterwards including, well, Kim Iversen, who is with us now. She was one of the hosts most recently on Rising, and then she decided to leave. It’s a very popular digital show. She decided to leave. I want to talk to her about why that is ’cause it involves “The Fauch,” from what I understand. Kim, thanks so much for joining us. Also, where can people find your work these days? ‘Cause obviously not Rising; so where should they go?

IVERSEN: Yeah. Thank you, first, for having me on. And, yeah. People can find me now obviously not on Rising but on my own YouTube channel — Kim Iversen Show — and also on Rumble, Rokfin, Locals. So, I’m just kind of all over the place digitally at the moment, just not affiliated with any corporate media outlet at the moment.

BUCK: So, I am among the people who is one of the earliest and most outspoken anti-Fauci people. And I can’t speak for you; I don’t know if you… I just say that. I’m like I think Fauci’s awful. I think he has ruined the mental health of people that I know with his pronouncements and stuff. Tell us what happened and why you left and how Fauci plays into all this. Because everything that goes near Fauci, I think, gets turned into something bad. What happened?

IVERSEN: Well, I started Rising a year ago when Krystal and Saagar left the show and they were looking for all these different hosts and I started in as a fill-in host —

BUCK: Do people still refer to the guy with great hair who left before that or was that not really a thing happening then?

IVERSEN: (silence)

BUCK: I’m just kidding. Keep going. Keep going. You’re supposed to say “yes,” Kim, but, anyway. Go ahead.

IVERSEN: Of course. Of course. Yes. And, you know, I used to watch the show actually when you and Krystal were first on it and I thought, wow. That’s such a cool idea, you know, they’ve got this digital program going and whatnot. But —

BUCK: She is very progressive, by the way, just so understand. So, I talk to on the other side. Keep going.

IVERSEN: Yes. So, I did the show for a year. Some of my most popular segments were on covid, the pandemic response, Fauci. I was very, very critical of all of it. I really was opposed to lockdowns, mandates, rolling out vaccines that, you know, I just felt weren’t tested enough, emergency authorization and mandating them and whatnot. So, I was extremely critical of all of those things, including Fauci, built a name on that show with those segments, brought us in loads of — millions of — viewers, actually, to Rising with those segments in particular and was doing those for a year. And then what happened was I found out that Dr. Fauci was being booked as a guest on the show. And since we had actually all been really critical of Fauci, it wasn’t just me, it was, you know, Robby Soave, my coach, had his own criticisms of the mask mandate.

BUCK: Yeah, I know Robby. Robby is a good man. Yep.

IVERSEN: And Ryan Grim had his own criticisms about the lab leak theory and how that was handled and all that. So, we all had been really kind of raking Fauci over the coals over this last year, really. I mean, no one was really in support of him on that show. But I in particular, that was really sort of my beat was talking about covid and the pandemic response. And they had then said okay, Fauci’s on this show, but they didn’t really announce it. I didn’t really…

I found out sort of in this, like, you know, I wasn’t… I don’t think I was supposed to find out that Fauci was gonna be a guest on the show. So, I got — but I did. And I found out and I was really excited, and I was like, “Oh, I’ve got all these questions for Fauci! I can’t believe it,” and this was on Monday. Not this last Monday, the Monday before it that we were supposed to interview him. So, Sunday night is when I found out.

Of course, when the producers realized I found out, they called me and they said, “Hey, yeah. So, about that Fauci interview, uh, you know, you’re not really supposed to be in that interview.” When the Fauci team asked — over and over, apparently — “Who were the hosts? Who were the hosts? Who were the hosts?” and The Hill went back and gave them two different host names and not mine. And I am a consistent fixture on that show. I had been front and center on that show for the last year. And they had given them Robby Soave’s name and also Batya Ungar-Sargon who I really adore but she’d been a fill in, kind of a new host. She hasn’t hosted the show many times, maybe three times. So —

BUCK: So, the Fauci minions are in the backgrounds ’cause this is something that we’ve dealt with. Fauci has claimed — this is the largest radio show by audience in the country. It is the house that Rush built, and we are trying to continue in his legacy, but this is the biggest radio show by… Fauci’s team has said they are too busy to do this show, Kim, just so you know. That is their response to us. But keep going.

IVERSEN: Right. And the producers kind of said the same thing like, “Well, you know, we’re not even really sure if he’s actually gonna go through with the interview. That has been a really tough interview to get. They’ve been really, you know, hemming and hawing and they’re not exactly committing, but they keep asking us who the hosts are, who the hosts are.” So, they continued to give them the other two hosts’ name and not my name, and I just said to them, “Look, that’s totally unacceptable.”

The audience, which is a very anti-establishment, populist audience, independent-minded, they’re not going to accept me not being on this interview. They want me on that interview. The reason the audience is there is because they’ve been watching my pandemic response videos, specifically. They’re going to want me in that interview. And if you don’t have me in that interview, it’s going to be obviously suspect, the audience will revolt, they will not trust you, you need the audience to trust you.

So, they agreed that night and they said, “Okay. You know. Right. We understand,” and then the next morning, when I was getting ready to do my Radar and getting ready to do the show, the executive producer called, and she says, “Hey, I have to have this really uncomfortable conversation with you. But, you know, we ran this kind of up the chain, and everybody agreed from the senior vice president of programming and the general manager and the editor-in-chief and the executive producers of the show that they had all discussed. And they all agreed that basically because they’d already gone to Fauci’s team and said that these other two hosts would be the hosts, that they weren’t willing to go back and make a correction.”

BUCK: Kim, why is Fauci so scared of you? I mean, he’s a bureaucrat. He never wants to give up this job. He’s the highest paid federal government employee. Why is he such a coward?

IVERSEN: Well, he obviously doesn’t want to face any actual, real criticism or questions that actually have meaning. I mean, one thing we’ve seen with Fauci going on all of these networks is he’s asked these very softball questions. They champion him. They treat him like he’s a celebrity. They don’t actually challenge the thinking or the logic which just doesn’t exist. There’s no logic behind a lot of the things in this pandemic response. So, nobody wants to ask him those questions if he can’t answer them.

He would just look like a bumbling buffoon. But I actually don’t even know if Fauci’s team would have said yes or no to me. We didn’t even give them the chance, The Hill. And this is why I was so upset with, because The Hill refused to even give them my name. They were afraid of my name. They knew if they told Fauci my name, that Fauci would likely back out of the interview. He likely wouldn’t do it. But they actually don’t know that. I was like, just go ask. If he says, no, he’s not willing to do the interview, then fine, we go public and we tell —

BUCK: Why are they so afraid of Fauci, Kim? I mean, the guy for years has been on TV every five minutes. I mean, he lives in the CNN greenroom.

IVERSEN: Right. So, that was my other beef with it, which is this is not really an exclusive. Fauci is everywhere. We hear from this guy all the time. This is not like, oh, you’ve got this guy who never speaks. He rarely comes out. I mean, this guy’s out all the time. But, yeah, they didn’t want to lose that interview. And I just felt like, look. We go back to the American people, and we tell the audience:

Fauci wouldn’t face us, that he is a government worker, he works for the American people, and he wouldn’t face us. That is a huge problem. But instead, they just wouldn’t go to the Fauci team and say, “Hey, by the way, actually our host who’s actually the most recognizable host on the show who brings in the most viewers about this subject, Kim Iversen, she wants to interview you,” they wouldn’t even ask that question.

BUCK: Can I ask you, what is the first…? I meant you know; you can pretend I’m Fauci for a second. What is the first question that you would have asked? I know there’s a million. Like, I could… I would do a three-hour podcast with Fauci if I could going over all of it, and I think nobody would ever listen to him ever again by end of it. But the point is, if you had one thing right now, what would it be, just so we can get it out there?

IVERSEN: What is a vaccine? I would like to know what a vaccine is in his mind. Because we Americans, as we’ve been raised, we believed that if you got a shot of something, that that meant you were not going to get that disease. If I go get the smallpox vaccine, I think I’m not getting smallpox. If I get the measles vaccine, I think I’m not getting measles, right? Same with polio. That is how we speak as Americans, using English, right?

We say vaccine and we all kind of know what that means. So, what exact — but that’s changed. They’ve also changed the definition and now vaccine means I don’t know what. And I would like to know what he means when he says vaccine. Because that has changed so drastically. And it’s caused so much contention in American society right now amongst our families, our friends. We’ve got people who are calling people anti-vaxxer, saying if you’re not taking this shot you can’t come around my society.

Here’s the @aclu advocating for racism. “You must consider race when admitting students! How DARE you be color blind and admit students based on MERIT!” https://t.co/3cGD2UImS7

— Kim Iversen (@KimIversenShow) August 3, 2022

BUCK: If you’re not taking shot number four, actually, and soon to be five, six, and seven, as we all know.

IVERSEN: Right. So, I would like to know his definition of what is a vaccine. I’d like him to clarify that for the American people, so that we all are on the same page as to how this definition has shifted and what that means. So, you know, well, vaccines are mandated all the time. Like, you know, the military, they’re all mandated. They used these arguments, but we all have an understanding of what those vaccines meant.

BUCK: I gotta tell you, I think I got like a dozen vaccines when I was in the CIA. And for diseases I had literally never heard of before. If I had still gotten all those diseases, I would have been really upset about it. I would have felt like I got, you know, the wrong end of the stick on this one. Kim Iversen, everybody, go follow her on… She’s doing great work. I was hearing about… This is actually the truth, Kim. I was hearing about you from some of the former Hill people I know saying, “Kim Iversen, she’s amazing.” So, go follow Kim Iversen. People who speak out and will stand up to Fauciism deserve your support. Kim Iversen’s show on YouTube. Follow her on Twitter. Kim, thanks so much.

IVERSEN: Thanks for having me.