After Party with Emily Jashinsky - Pratt Wrecks Opponents, Fauci’s Indictment Deadline, & the End of Swipe Right Culture, with Dr. Drew

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Emily Jashinsky opens the show with a must-see clip of Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, facing tough questioning from Patrick Bet-David over transgender policies and Emily explains why this could be politically damaging. Then Emily is joined by Dr. Drew Pinsky, a board certified Internist, addiction specialist, Host of “Ask Dr. Drew,” and Co-Host of “The Adam & Dr. Drew Show.” They do a deep dive on the fight for the future of California and all its political dysfunction. They discuss the L.A. Mayor’s race, why Spencer Pratt’s no-BS campaign is soaring, Steve Hilton’s gubernatorial race, and if Republicans stand a chance to lead. Then Emily and Dr Drew take on the case against Dr. Anthony Fauci as the statute of limitations for lying under oath expires, why there still may be a case against him, plus the huge win for Alex Berenson versus Biden in his lawsuit over the conspiracy to force Twitter to ban him back in 2021. Emily and Dr. Drew also discuss the realities of hantavirus and why the media must get its act together when covering the story. They also detail big changes coming to Bumble and why dating apps have only contributed to loneliness and emotional fatigue. Emily rounds out the show with a takedown of Katie Couric after Couric discussed the ‘challenges’ journalists face covering President Trump, and more…   ZBiotics: Go to https://zbiotics.com/AFTERPARTY and use AFTERPARTY at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.   PreBorn: Help save a baby go to https://PreBorn.com/Emily or call 855-601-2229.   Unplugged: Switching is simple, Visit https://Unplugged.com/EMILYand order your UP phone today! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome back to After Party, everyone. We appreciate you being here. Our guest tonight is Dr. Drew Pinsky, so please make sure to subscribe so that you never miss an episode featuring big guests like our guest tonight. Dr. Drew, we're going to bring him in just one moment. What a big day it is to have him on the show. This is the deadline. Actually, it is May 11th. This is the deadline for a Fauci indictment regarding perjury. It looks like that deadline is going to pass, but we have some breaking updates that we're going to get to just as the actual midnight approaches. So, you know, there are obviously statute of limitations, statutes of limitations in cases like these. So we do have updates on that front. There is a lot to get to. There's also been at least one arrest when it comes to accountability, one indictment when it

comes to accountability for people who are involved in the COVID cover-up. So we're going to talk to Dr. Drew about that. Big settlement in the Alex Berenson case today, Berenson v. Biden, So we have some details, six-figure settlement, according to Alex Berenson. So we have some details on that. I'm eager to hear from Dr. Drew. Also on Hanta virus. If you're wondering what to think of Hantavirus, the president, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have been discussing this. We have seen, we know that there are Americans who have been affected by the states around the country are preparing containment measures.

Should you be worried, we will break that down. And, boy, big news tonight in California, both Karen Bauer. and Nipya Raman have pulled out of their next debate after getting basically crushed by Spencer Pratt last Wednesday. We were covering that debate live as it happened. But now the dust is settled and they're both pulling out of the next debate. So we're going to get into that. And maybe even the Bumble, the story about Bumble removing the swipe with Dr. Drew hoping we have time to get to that one. Katie Kirk is also saying things that I feel the need to discuss. So we're going to get into that towards the end of the show.

Stick around. Like I said, we'll be bringing Dr. Druin in one moment. But first, I really wanted to make sure everybody caught this clip of Maryland's Democratic governor, Westmore, certainly somebody who Democrats believe could be a presidential candidate and a competitive one in 2028, who went on Patrick Bet David's show last week. And PPD spent about 20 minutes in conversation, in tough, critical conversation with West Moore, trying to tease out exactly what he believes when it comes to men and women sports, boys and girls sports, and then finally, transitions for children.

So let's start with the clip of Governor Westmore. And then I want to break down what you just watched S-10. Your son comes in saying he wants to transition. What do you do? Well, first, I mean, if it's, you know, it's my son. so I love him regardless. I want to make sure that I'm involved in understanding where he is,

how he's feeling, the way he's feeling, why he thinks is important. If this is a journey that he wants to go down, I want him to always be comfortable in his own skin, and I want him to always know that he has a partner in me to help him along that journey. Would you advise him to wait until he's 18? I, if this is how he is feeling and I feel like I'm, I'm closely tied to him, I'm not going to advise him on something that he feels is at 14 years old, Wes?

No, I understand it. But what I'm saying is the most important thing for me is I want him to feel safe in his own skin, safe in his own decision making. but also know that at 14 years old, I want to be involved. Okay, so he went on to say basically it was not a choice that I would make. He did earlier say that boys and girls sports should be decided on a local level and that the federal government shouldn't be involved, but that it is fundamentally unfair. He wants sports to be fair. It was really, really difficult even to get that out of him in a clear way.

He was eager to sort of say something different from what, the party line was not long ago, but to get a clear position on that out of him was rather difficult, as it was, you just saw this here about, quote, gender affirming care still pretty difficult for Wes Moore, whose website, I checked after I saw this, I checked, the Maryland governor website is still touting that he expanded Medicaid coverage for, quote, gender affirming care, that he has been on the anti-quote conversion therapy bandweds, which means for kids, you're not supposed to, this was a huge case at the Supreme Court recently. You may remember. You're not supposed to be able to suggest that they could detransition.

He has declared the Trans-Day of Visibility in the state of Maryland, which is often used, obviously, for the purposes of propagandizing children, teenagers in particular. And he was backed for the governorship by the very radical Human Rights Commission that has. pushed a lot of this ideological agenda for people under the age of 18 over the years. And so you can see him squirming there. And this is, I thought it was really, really worth talking about. I mean, this is a governor of a very, very large American state who is considering running for President of the United States, who is seen as an ascendant leader of his party. And he is so uncomfortable with clearly expressing a position on

both of these key questions. And I've talked about this before, but I really, really believe this is an important litmus test, though it's not a top voter priority. That is to say, most people don't go to the polls when the economy is bad, particularly if gas prices are like this. Should that happen, God forbid, come 2028, gas prices are still this high. People aren't going to the polls and saying, all right, my number one issue is who is going to do, who's going to push back on what I see as insanity on trans policies for people under the age of 18 in schools that may have been the case in 2020. I know people for whom it was the case in 2020, 2020, 2022, 24. But it's not a huge chunk of the electorate, big, significant, underestimated by

Democrats. It's not everyone. And so what they're trying to do is get by with placating people who are concerned about this while and sounding normal, basically, to the average voter who, whose biggest priority is the economy or some of those like kitchen table health care, some of those kitchen table issues. And it's not going to work because I think it's a litmus test. Maybe it works depending on how bad your opponent is. That can always be the case in America in 2026 or 28. But it's not going to work, I think, because it's a litmus test for whether or not you're

bullshitting people. So when you listen to us more there, get grilled by PBD. You can tell how uncomfortable he is with the line of questioning because he doesn't want to say that he agrees with Patrick Bet David that no, he doesn't want. And many people, if they had gone the locker room route, you don't want your young daughter in a locker room, hypothetically, with an adult or with another teenager who is nude. Again, it's a locker room scenario, a Leah Thomas situation, basically, and is exposed because that person identified. as transgender. That is absurd to the average American. And if you can't answer that question with complete total clarity, you look like you're lying. And this is why I've said, we talked about this in reference to Graham Platner last week. Actually, his best route might be to say,

most of you disagree with me on this question. And I respect that. But here's why I think, what I believe. And even if it's totally unpopular, it actually might be better than doing what West Moore just did because, again, most people aren't voting on this. And what they want above anything else is to believe that you believe what you're telling them. And this is, is it better, I suppose, than where Democrats were in 2024 than where Kamala Harris was in 2024, certainly than where Joe Biden was in 2020. Absolutely for the country better, if Democrats are feeling pressure to have a bit more moderation on this topic. Don't get me wrong. I think that's good for the country. What I think is going to be a political liability for Democrats is they will

fail the litmus test of whether or not they're BSing voters over and over again. And this isn't going away because it happened in a lot of communities. It is still a debate in many schools. There are so many schools who are affected by this. There are many communities who are affected by this. And many Democrats went hard in the paint just like West Moore, who was so radical on this. It was backed by HRC and went and tried to, it's gotten some criticism from the trans community in Maryland, but tried to give a lot and to do a lot on a policy basis to placate that cohort of the electorate and still wasn't enough. And so all that is to say, this is going to be a hurdle for the West Moores of the world in a way that I wonder if the Grandpenter

platiners of the world, if they're just honest with voters, might be able to skirt by saying, this is unpopular and many of you aren't going to agree with me on this. Here's what I would, you know, maybe they can then punt it to localities, which is what West Moore tried to do. Ridiculous, by the way, because the Obama administration nationalized this when it started changing Title IX with a, was literally with a dear colleague letter to say that men in Title IX, male and female on the basis of sex, you had to read gender identity into it. Uprooted the order in K through 12 schools overnight, college campuses overnight with that dear

colleague letter. They nationalized that Democrats have supported nationalizing what was never nationalized for many years by saying sex equals gender identity. That was a policy that nationalized this aggressively, progressive supported it as progress. And so then to reverse and retreat back into your turtle shell and say that, oh, well, we can't nationalize it and also not have a clear answer. I mean, it is just going to be, that can't be the winning message for Democrats in tough races, especially the presidency going forward.

It was giving like slightly better than Kamala. But I'll leave it there for now because we have our guest waiting and I can't wait to get to our guest. But first, let's talk about zbiotics. This year, I'll be like many of you, focusing on some of those small shifts that can make really big differences. Having, you know, an effortless presence for the changes that you make, it's so easy, so easy then to stick with them. It sounds counterintuitive, but for me, that actually means planning ahead so that you can live in the moment, especially when you're enjoying maybe a few drinks. And my simple trick for saying balanced is taking zbiotics pre-alcohol.

Actually, before I start drinking, doing it beforehand is very important. I love zbiotics. Z-biotics works. Z-biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by Ph.D. scientists to tackle those rough mornings after drinking. And here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's a buildup of this byproduct, actually not dehydration.

that's to blame for those rough days after drinking. Pre-alcohol produces an enzyme to break this byproduct down. Just remember to make, as I said earlier, pre-alcohol, your first drink of the night. Very, very important. Then you drink responsibly, and you'll feel your best tomorrow from the first outdoor brunch of the year to the start of wedding season and Memorial Day plans. May's social calendar is officially nonstop. That is a great reminder of a wedding to go to this weekend.

Great reminder to take that zibiotic first. Don't let one long night keep you from the rest of your weekend. Drink pre-alcohol to stay on your game and make the most of every sunny Saturday. Do it. Remember to head over to zbiotics.com slash after party and use the code after party at checkout for 15% off. All right, everyone. We're delighted to be joined this evening, a very new Zee evening by Dr. Drew Pinsky. He is a board certified internist addiction specialist, host of Ask Dr. Drew,

and co-host of the Adam and Dr. Drew show. So thank you so much for being here, sir. It's a pleasure to be here in this newsy evening. You know, I was just thinking as you were talking about the BSing of voters, you know, the one thing I've noticed, I'm sure you're keeping your tabs on what's going on here in Los Angeles with Spencer Pratt. He just speaks the truth. And the Overton window sort of flies open and it exposes the BS. They're like, just to watch the other two candidates talking about, well, we need to say, the course with these housing, he goes, no, you don't, nobody lies down on the sidewalk.

No one does drugs on the street. That's it. Over. We're done here. And it's just so refreshing to see the truth being spoken for once. Do you know Spencer at all? Dr. Truby? I don't know. I've been trying to get him for an interview and he's, he's hiding from me. But I admire what he's saying. He knows Carola. Corolla's interviewed a couple of times. So well, let's start with us actually because as we we speak this evening, both of the other major candidates, in the Los Angeles mayor race have decided to pull out of the debate. Both of them. First, it was Karen Bass.

Now, Nithya Rahman, we can put this up on the screen. I think he did too. I think they're all out. Something was wrong with these debate. It's interesting because my understanding of this is Karen Bass is the one who pulled out first. And then it sort of started the domino effect. And it's fascinating because there were mainstream polls finding people watched and were really, really impressed with Spencer.

or Pratt after last week's debate. And he has been going after we can put this F6 up on the screen. He's been going after CBS really hard for what he saw as a deceptive edit of an interview. He claimed they embarrassed Karen Bass by fact-checking her debate lies about Palisades, but they clearly got the call. CBS filmed with me on my burned-out lot for over an hour, and they turned it over to Karen Bass's PR team to edit it into a comical five-minute hit piece with clips from the hills. He says, they can't beat my ideas, they can't beat me in the debates.

So these, they got to try to turn my campaign into a side show. Drew, is that what, I mean, you know this area. You've obviously been paying attention to this race. Is that your sense that there's now, with Pratt, a level of intimidation that Karen Bass and maybe some of her allies in the media did not expect? No, the BSing of the voters. You open tonight with that. And the BSing of the voters has ruined this state and ruined this town. And he is just raising his hand and saying, I'm sorry, that's not going to do anymore.

Look at how she approached the idea around her response to the fire, right? You know, it's really not my fault because that reservoir is for drinking water. And the whole thing is climate change anyway. So what am I supposed to do? That is a perfect example of how these people govern. They're not interested in governing. They're interested in representing. And so you're not governing.

So if indeed, if indeed climate change is an issue, why aren't you, preparing for it? Why aren't you doing what you need to do to govern the people of this city? So we're prepared for said climate change that you claim is such a problem. You should be prepared. The fact that they just dismiss everything as not my fault, something out there, can't control or can't do anything about it, is shining a bright light on their incompetence. And he doesn't let him get away with he. He just brings it right into the fore and says, well, that's, you know, that's incompetence. That's what that is. Here's what we should be doing. Yeah, there was an anti-Prat ad run. This is incredible. It caught a lot of people's attention online because it was so right on the nose of exactly how in a parody you would attack Spencer Pratt if you wanted to help Spencer Pratt. This was paid for by the LA unions opposed to Spencer Pratt for mayor, 26, and then sponsored by the LA County Federation of Labor. Let's go ahead and rule S5. I want to get your reaction, Dr. Drew.

Republican Spencer Pratt is the last thing Los Angeles needs for mayor. Pratt opposes using taxpayer money to build brand new houses for our unhoused neighbors, saying it's time for the homeless to get help or get out. Pratt thinks L.A. needs thousands more police officers rather than more social workers, and Republican Spencer Pratt thinks public employee unions should have less power, not more. L.A. is on the right track and needs to stay the course. Vote no on Republican Spencer Pratt. Okay, so that, go ahead, go ahead.

You could take every time he says Spencer Pratt out of the commercial and just insert citizens of Southern California. Because that is exactly what the citizens of California want. And it's how it appears it to be a parody. Because they're saying all the essentially 80, 20 issues around here, which is we don't want crime. We don't want people lying on the sidewalk. We want these people to go get help. We don't want to spend $1.2 million for four walls as though that's going to cure drug addiction. He's the first one to say that out loud.

When I say it out loud, I get canceled. He's the first person other than me that I know that said it out loud and did not get canceled, which is that you can't treat drug addiction with four walls. If that role is required to treat drug addiction, oh, my God, what a great breakthrough that would be. We just put addicts in a room and they're cured. It's incredible. But it's the opposite. And he actually understands what's going on where these are drug addicts in their disease.

They want drugs. They don't want housing. They don't want to leave the streets. And if you don't create the circumstances, drug addicts don't get sober because they wake up one day and go, hey, this fentanyl stuff is not agreeing with me. They either nearly die, they are arrested, or they lose their children, or they lose something meaningful to them, where they start to think, maybe I should change what I'm doing. And it's incumbent upon us to help them get to that point.

Well, and people around the country might look at this and say, is it true that these are 80-20 issues in Southern California? at this point, this is the city that elected Karen Bass. This is the city that allowed itself basically to be used as a laboratory for these progressive experiments for many, many years now. So do you sense that people actually really are at this point open to pivots and changes in and policy? It's uncanny how they vote. This makes, it's why you wonder if the voting process is some adulterated because you

you talk to anybody anywhere and they go, yes, common sense. Let's take care of this. What's going on here? Why aren't we doing it? And when they go to the voting booths, they may be so reflexive at just putting a deer and are, you know, wherever they're voting. They don't really think about what they're doing. But I don't know. It just, it feels like something is not functioning the way it's, the way it's not representing the people's opinion.

It doesn't seem to me. Or as we know, they're going out, we have evidence now of them going out and, you know, paying people to vote. You've seen that whole thing where they're going out and paying homeless people to vote for it in certain ways and certain, you know, for certain candidates. You've seen this, all this? It's all caught on video now. I've definitely seen videos of that happening. I don't know how widespread is, but I've seen videos.

Well, it makes you, whenever you see the voting going so consistently, 60%, 60%, 60%, 60%, one way, it makes you wonder. I don't have any evidence either, but it makes you wonder. Yeah, no, entirely fair. When you look around the city and you know everybody's basically unhappy with it, And then you see the LA County Federation of Labor running an ad like that. The level, I mean, I guess I'm sensing, Drew, I'm curious what you think of this, panic. It seems to me like that's where Karen Bass ends up pulling out of the debate.

For her, she's the incumbent. She can try to just coast on being the incumbent, the power that it brings. Why would she subject herself to more side by sides with Pratt? Might as well just let Pratt and Rahman fight it out and then coast off being an incumbent. but when you look at ads like this that are so backwards, all of it just to me smacks of panic over the attention that Pratt is getting, the momentum he seems to have. They don't, I don't sense the panic. I understand that you expect there to be, but they're so hubristic that I don't see it. It's really kind of the, I think the thinking is,

don't we all hate Trump? Let's just keep railing on Trump and that'll take us all the way to the victory across the victory line. Totally believable. And this is your turf, Drew. This is Southern California. It might as well be Mars to me. Well, it might as well be Mars. You could walk around here these days.

But the one thing Pratt has said recently that I have, it's been sort of percolating in my mind for a couple of years is that it's worth saving. This is such a glorious, rich area. There's so much here. And you just, you need, you need to go further than Orange County, where a couple of my kids live. And it's working there. Things kind of work in Orange County.

You can't have a functioning city. I live in Pasadena. Pessie is pretty good. We have our garbage works. Our police department is great. Our fire department works. So we have our own water and power. When you're not infected with this weird representation,

when all they're interested in is a place at the table and not governance, you get decay. You get a mess. Well, and let's talk about the entire state. because Steve Hilton is also thriving in some of these debate-style settings, but whether or not this can actually translate into a win, either for Pratt or Hilton, remains to be seen. S-8, let's roll this highlight from Steve Hilton's recent debate with other gubernatorial contenders. I think what you just saw there is actually what's going wrong with our politics in California,

which is all these big things that affect us on a daily basis. These are decisions made here in California by our politicians. And we've had the same people in charge for 16 years now. And because it's such a disaster and such a high cost of living for everyone and the highest poverty rate in the country and the highest unemployment rate in the country and the worst business client, all these things going wrong, they can't do anything except blame Trump. That is exactly the political.

The perfect description of political landscape in California. Same people doing the same thing, wanting to stay the course into further catastrophe. And their political position is Trump's an idiot. That's their whole political mantra. We hate Donald Trump. He's the reason our gas prices are almost $7 a gallon. It's his fault. Well, and in both of these races, you have the Democratic opponents being either a DSA member,

like Nithio Rahman, Democratic Socialist of America, you have somebody like Karen Bass, who has obviously has a record that is marked by failures in L.A. And then in Hilton, you have Katie Porter. Then you have Tom Steyer, billionaire Tom Steyer, also fairly radical. Javier Becerro, who's trying to run as a moderate, but has a fairly radical background in recent political history as well. Does that, do you think that boosts Hilton and Pratt? Am I missing something there either, Drew? It's complicated. I mean, people in this town are in their echo chambers in their ideological bubbles.

I had a conversation with somebody a couple days ago about Tom Steyer. I interviewed Tom Steyer back when he railroaded through the electric cars only in California as of 2030. Do you know that's a lawner or 2034 or something? We have to have all electric cars. and my question to him was, first of all, he doesn't, well, my question to him was, what about the people that are just getting by here in this town that are already completely on the ropes because of your gas prices? They have to go.

I think of the, I look at gardeners with the trucks and they have their equipment, they're barely making it. How are they going to go buy an electric vehicle and then electrify the house? Where does that come from? They're just going to have to do it. He's heartless. then I said, well, look, if you're really interested in the carbon emissions, why aren't you talking about forestry management?

One of our fires, certainly the Palisades fire, would undo 10 years of only driving electric vehicles in this state. So where are your priorities? You really want to make a difference, or are you just like clinging to popular sorts of popular-sounding shibboleths? And I was talking to somebody the other day, and she was saying, She was, well, I like the concede of a billionaire now making right by wanting to do good.

Like, wow, I don't see that in this guy at all. I don't understand how those ideas even occur to people. He, amongst other things, he was funding private pay prisons. He's not apologized for any of this. He's just taking all his money and said, now I want power. Now I want power. I want to do things the way I want to do it. That's not a billionaire making an amends for somehow being a robber baron or something such as that.

Yeah, it's, I also wonder, with Hilton and Pratt's television backgrounds, you're a great person to ask about this as a Californian with television background who's interested in politics. Have you noticed anything in either of their campaigns that in an almost Trumpian way, he comes right from celebrity apprentice straight into the presidential campaign, basically. There's a level of savvy, them understanding the climate and the media climate, I should say, in a way that others still aren't. They don't, aren't as apt to play politics. Everything you're talking about what Karen Bass does is playing politics. People are sick of it. They would like to, that's what is refreshing about having somebody just speak their mind. You can't lie down on the sidewalk.

We're going to have to do something with you. It's the way it goes. Then it seems so obvious when somebody says these simply pragmatic truths that people gravitate towards it. The other thing about the two of them, they're not afraid of the camera. They have no anxiety in front of it. They'll speak their mind. It's no, no issue to them being around a camera, which is a big problem with people seeming sincere around being photographed.

And the other thing that Pratt has is he understands social media. And that's where he's just been killing it lately. All right. Last question on this. Can one or both of them do it? Are you optimistic? Well, I shouldn't say optimistic. Do you think they can either pull it off?

When Newsom was recalled and then put back in office, I absolutely lost complete and total faith in the California voter. So I do not have any positive expectations about anything ever because they only disappoint me. That sounds very fair. All right. Speaking of grave political disappointments, Drew, let's talk about the deadline for an indictment of Anthony Fauci for lying to Congress over games. of function research. That is about to expire in a matter literally of a couple of hours here on the East Coast. We can put this up on the screen. This is going to be F1. The deadline, as I just mentioned, about to expire, Senator Rand Paul said it is the deadline to charge Fauci or he walks away from

one of the biggest coverups in American history without ever facing a jury. He says, I have spent years building this case. I referred him to the DOJ. I forced the hearings, grilled them under oath. American people relied to about the origins of COVID, gain of function research. and the Wuhan cover-up. Rand Paul, we can also put F3 up on the screen, says with this deadline likely to pass, he now has a whistleblower who is going to come forward and testify under oath on Wednesday

about the COVID cover-up, some pretty big news there to expect just in the next couple of days, but wanted to get your reaction because you've been covering it and following it so closely to the Fauci deadline. I am not one of these people. I'm not super anxious that there be indictments and trials

for people's misbehavior during COVID. I am interested in the truth. And to the extent that Rand Paul has been fighting mightily to bring the truth to bear is what I'm really interested in. I do read occasionally that the DOJ is looking at something where there might have been some transgressions by Fauci more recently that could perhaps expose them to some liability, that the auto pen did not protect.

him from, nor the statute of limitations. But the reality is, I just want the truth, and I want everyone to be exposed to it and to get a generally consensus about that truth because we cannot let this happen again. If there's anything that needs to change, we need to change the way public health is done in this country and the powers that they have.

Yeah, so on that note, to your point, this is a New York Post report. just hours ago with this deadline. Again, expiring. Dr. Anthony Fauci on Monday survived a five-year legal deadline do face criminal charges for allegedly lying to Congress about funding risky research, but he isn't out of the woods. The Post has learned. They're saying that insiders expect there could be potential charges for, quote, lesser-known contested testimony or for alleged conduct stretching closer to the present day, such as for conspiracy. Now, one thing we saw last week that you also

covered, Drew, this is F2. An indictment in a case where you had Dr. David Morins, who was a top Fauci advisor over at NIAID's deputy to, I think, Fauci. He was indicted for concealing records

during the pandemic. People may have seen some of those emails about how they were avoiding FOIA Freedom of Information Act. Just really outrageous stuff. He was also charged with conspiracy. I wanted to roll this clip of you talking to Mike Benz back in 2024, actually about the Morin's situation. Here's S2.

What we see them doing here, and by them I'm referring to Tony Fauci, Peter Daschick, David Morin's right-hand man. They were just busted in about 10 to 12 of the most flaming emails I've ever seen. They actually wrote down some of these. The best way to avoid FOIA hassles is to delete all emails when you learn a subject is getting sensitive. They can complain about a news cycle about gain of function getting out and COVID origins coming from a lab leak. And Dr. Morin says that email somehow fell into the hands of a congressman, probably via a FOIA of someone who didn't delete it, as I did. Also, intentional misspellings in order to prevent FOIA disclosures, telling people, don't send me things. calling for a PR strategy, referring to the orange blob, meaning Trump, not themselves,

and bragging about ways to try to make the PR seem, quote, Trump infected, and then hoping that these bad news cycles go away as long as Rand Paul doesn't amplify, joking with each other about how they deserve kickbacks for all of their hard cover-up work. Unreal. It's under those two years before this all sort of mainstream, him toward the mainstream media started recovering covering this my mike is a genius i hope you do you ever get a chance to interview him oh yeah he's been on for sure okay good i mean he's been on he is on this stuff like white on rice the moment these these he gets access to this material and he has been

spot on the whole way never any he has not been inaccurate he is not overstated he's not been conspiratorial it's been pure accurate let's call it what it is which is you know sort of investigative journalism. He's incredibly precise, incredibly precise and detailed. It's very helpful and sometimes hard to keep track of all the details. I don't know how he does it. I don't either. It's amazing. Well, on that point about what gets us closer to the truth, we're now more than a year

into Trump 2.0. There was a lot promised about getting closer to the truth. And it was always true. There were going to be a lot of obstacles to getting closer to the truth about what happened with COVID. What could happen? Again, we'll talk about hantavirus in just one moment, Drew. But do you feel like, are you satisfied with the rate of progress,

the progress that has been made here in Trump 2.0? Do you think we are getting close to the truth? The truth about COVID? No. Look, you just showed an example, a clip of them two years ago. And only now are people like, oh, I've heard of that. You know, it's like that's been around for a while now. And we, we, and my fear about there being legal action is people will get very

defended and then the truth will be further obscured. So that's why I'm against, you know, a lot of legal sort of maneuvering to try to get satisfaction for having been put through so much. But if we could get to the truth and then to me, when there are laws being passed that respond to the excesses that resulted in that truth, that's what I know where we need to be. You know, we have a wrinkle in our Constitution where public health by at state level has the authority declare emergencies that they determine what is an emergency they declare when to declare it and once they've declared it they can have fiat authority to take away your rights and privileges at their whim that should never be that is a wrinkle that is a mistake that we have to a loophole that

has to be closed yeah absolutely well some good news uh Alex Berenson announced there was a settlement In his case today, F4, we can toss up on the screen as well. And on his substack, he headlined it vindicated. Or I'm sorry, this was from Clay and Buck. They headlined it vindicated. But Alex headlined it urgent. A huge win in Berensen v. Biden said today the Trump administration, I settled the federal government's role in Barence v. Biden.

His lawsuit against the Biden admin and Pfizer officials for violating his constitutional rights and forcing Twitter to ban me, he wrote, in summer 2021. Now, apparently, the settlement includes, quote, a six-finding. figure payment and a statement, this is very interesting from the government, quote, the government did, in fact, violate the First Amendment by exerting substantial coercive pressure on social media companies, such as Twitter, to suppress disfavored speech like plaintiffs. Now it becomes, as Berenson said, Berenson v. Borla, the Pfizer aspect of it, but he believes this is going to help him in the Pfizer element of this battle. Any reaction to this drew, that was

a very significant moment, if people remember during the pandemic, when Twitter, Twitter, throttled Berenson. The Missouri v. Biden, the Missouri v. Biden case, this case with Berenson. Barrensen does not, he had another case that he wanted to. I forget what that one was. There was another, you know, sort of, I don't remember it was a libel case or whether the First Amendment case. But the point is, he takes aim carefully.

He only takes action when truly his rights have been violated or something illegal has happened. That is when he takes action. He sort of is compelled to at that point. And thank God he's there doing that. But I thought Missouri v. Biden was the first big move. This is to me just moving in the same direction. I think we're going to see a lot more like this. Very, very interesting. All right. We're going to take a quick break and be back on Hanta virus and a little dating in just one moment. So stick around. But first, over the years, I have been clear about this. I'm not just pro birth. I am pro life. And being pro life means standing. standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that's exactly why I partner

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70,000 babies this year. Please help be a part of that. So don't just say your pro-life. Live it, help save babies, and support mothers today. Go to pre-born.com slash Emily, or call 855-601-2-2-9. That's preborn.com slash Emily 855-601-229. All right. We are back with Dr. Drew Pinsky. He is a board-certified internist addiction specialist, host of Ask Dr. Drew, and co-host of the Adam and Dr. Drew show. Dr. Drew, let's talk about hantavirus.

Lots of questions from people about hanta virus. Here is what both Robert F. Kennedy Jr., obviously Health and Human Services Secretary and Donald Trump himself have said recently, we can roll S3 and S3. for. We have this under control and we're not worried about it. As soon as we determined that the virus was out there we issued an alert. The alert means nothing. They acted very quickly. I saw the alert too. Give me a book. They acted very very quickly and it looks like and you know can't bet anybody's life on it but it looks like it's just a disease that we've had around in a very small way for a

long time. Not a good one to catch because you know it's a very severe disease if you catch it, but it's very hard to catch it. Do you regret the drugs from the WPTGAT show? No, I'm glad. So we were paying the World Health Organization $500 million year. Look, it's a lot of money, but in the overall scope, it's not that much, but it's a lot of money. And we weren't being treated well, and they were making the wrong diagnoses. I was the one that said it came from Wuhan.

They didn't say that. They refused to say that because they were totally owned by China. So reaction first to the president and Secretary Kennedy's description of the hantavirus, what we know about it, what people should think about it. Trump articulated precisely correct. It's a nasty virus, bad illness. You don't want to get it. Extremely rare.

Extremely unlikely to get it. And they keep saying it's low risk, it's zero risk, unless you're on that damn ship. I mean, you are much more likely to get tuberculosis or Tsutsukamushi disease or myurine typhus. You're so much more likely to get other inferior. In this town down here, West Nile virus, equine, equine encephalitis. These are common by comparison with the hanta virus, which is exceedingly. and the fact that they killed i kept saying from the beginning the fact that kept these poor people on that ship was a terrible idea if they want to quarantine people who've been exposed take them off

the ship and quarantine them that's that this notion of taking large populations of not sick people and shutting them down have we not learned our lesson about that it's just a terrible it's never been an approach to infectious disease ever and why that even occurs to us is bizarre to me i just you know, by the way, I just read something a couple of days ago, where allegedly the word hanta is an Israeli slang Hebrew term for sucker. So do with it what you will, everybody. That will be fodder. No one we're speaking to tonight is going to get hanta virus. No one. But that's great news. That's great news. You said something just then about you said,

So have we learned our lesson in relationship, in relation to the cruise ship, having been, I mean, they got on that March 29th, if I'm remembering correctly, and just disembarked today. You said, have we learned our lesson? And that brings us to the World Health Organization question that President Trump got in the Oval Office with Secretary Kennedy as well. You're saying we weren't getting a lot out of the World Health Organization. I've seen comments on Hanta virus trying to be reassuring, people trying to be resuring from the World Health Organization. And it's astounding how they believe they should have any credibility on this right now. They really don't. And they give some solid information and then they go, but be vigilant, you know, be careful out there. It's like that is not what people need to hear. What are we doing here, everybody?

And then Deborah Birx going around and doing her thing again. Did you see that? That was astonishing. It's like they get off on this. That's not, the job is not to make people anxious. The job is to reassure people, educate them how to protect themselves. It's not if necessary. Assess reality and reality's terms.

We're biological agents. Self happens to us. It does. But here's ways you can mitigate those chances. And final thought here on this subject, it's just an incredible media story as well because so much of the distrust in media was sown for average Americans during COVID. And then they trot to have a burke's back out without serious criticism. of her conduct during COVID.

There's barely any coverage in the quote unquote mainstream press of what happened to Anthony, what happened with the Fauci deadline today or the David Merritt stuff or the Barron's stuff. I did a search just before we got on. Nobody is covering the Barron's and stuff yet. It's silence. Nobody learned in the media. Right. And what they learned, though, was how to attract eyes through panic porn.

I really, I, we have to really, there's a couple things here. The media's behavior in this is reprehensible. I don't think this may have been a, you know, one story, one night late down the news cycle if they want to report something like this. But the fact that they were stirring it up and doing, there were 100,000 articles printed I read within a week. This is something that the CDC and doctors should be concerning themselves with, keeping an eye out for it and learning how to treat and manage.

The public should have no knowledge of this. Why aren't we obsessing about some of the other illnesses that are out there that are much more likely to be an issue? No, because the press hasn't quite caught on to it yet. But because it was on a cruise ship, oh, it reminds us of COVID. People will, oh, this will be great. This will get traction. It really is getting unethical to the point where they are using techniques to upset the

public, to capture eyes, that is reprehensible. It really is. And then what's wrong with us that we've been so alert, we've been so addicted to these dopaminergic surges of anxiety through COVID that we know people seem to want it. They like it. I want to wear a mask. I want to comply. It's just the weirdest.

It's not a healthy thing. It's a very unhealthy situation psychologically. I wonder if our, we've become so numb because we're so overstimulated in the dopamine spectrum from social media now that we just, it's like what people, keep going to harder and harder core porn. They just need it to be worse. You're right. I mean, that is, that is what happens.

What the addicted brain does. It gets sort of used to, let's say, to what they're looking at now. And they've got to increase the dopaminergic pulses. And that happens. That's how addiction gets rolling. And maybe we're all just getting some of that now because of social media. Well, on that point, before you run, Drew, I wanted to get your take on this. Well, I can sort of be pretty big news.

Actually, sort of buried the lead for me here. This is F9. Axios had an interview with Bumble's founder and CEO. And the headline here is Bumble plans a reset to Lord Gen Z back. What is announced in this article, as far as I'm aware, is that Bumble is getting rid of the swipe function. This reset includes an end to the swipe function that Bumble and Tinder and Grindr, of course,

became famous for and really transformed Gen Z dating, transformed dating in the country, period, sex and dating. the country period over the last 10 years. Let's take a listen to what the founder and CEO told Axios S9. The revolutionary component of Bumble has worn off. Now people are feeling exhausted. They're feeling fatigued. They feel like the swipe has degraded their love lives. We are going to be saying goodbye to the swipe. There seems to be more cultural burnout in America and fatigue than there are is in the rest of the world, I'm not entirely sure what to attribute this to. I do think it is the anti-social behavior of social media. Everyone is staring at someone doing something that looks

objectively better than what they're doing when in reality, we have no idea what these people are going through behind the screen. And so I think this is a huge focus of mine is just get people out of this like dystopian, the grass is always greener, staring at other people's lives on their phone and get them into their own life with interesting, relevant people in the real world. It's so frustrating. Listen, she's right. That's the opposite of Bumble. That's the opposite of a dating app. So, so yes, good. See how to do that. The other thing, the other sort of dirty little secret in all dating apps is nobody really understands what attraction is, where it comes from, how it's cultivated, why two people are particularly attracted.

They've tried, all of them have tried to bottle that in some way. No. What really dating apps are just sort of a more efficient way to meet people, but you're ending up meeting people, you're going to end up wasting your time. So maybe she'll come up with something where it's not such a burnout and it's not so demoralizing. I'd be curious to see if she comes up with it. She's got her heads in the right place, but I'm not sure Bumbles the answer.

Drew, I think she's going to come up with an ancient concept called Loveline. She's going to come up with that. Right. That'd be too funny. Yeah, or courtship. She's just going to, let's, there's this thing we call it courtship or dating where people learn to spend time with each other and maybe they don't form a relationship, but they still, they sort of spend time and maybe they break bread together.

What a novel idea that would be. Yeah. Well, it's been interesting for people to remove the physicality from that first, the first pairing not involving the physicality is interesting because they're pheromones involved. You'll be able to explain this better than I do. But pheromones is a significant part of attraction. That's not something you're getting through. And even pictures are manipulated in the like you don't know how to someone really is. You're not getting anything.

And if you do end up sort of meeting someone that you are attracted to, that is serendipity. That's not because the pictures or the app allowed you to do that. Again, it's a good idea in terms of more efficient sort of mingling, let's say, but that's not how people use it. You know, they use it as sort of, you know, got to get to find the one here. Where's the right one for me? And then, of course, no match. Now demoralization. You know, it's not people need dating and courtship, which is a word that has just been expunged from the English language for about 30 years, is a skill.

It's a skill for everybody. whether you're being courted or you're the one doing the courting. And if you don't develop that skill, it's a pretty empty, bleak landscape. And it's hard to navigate it without that skill. And that skill starts in like high school. And we have aborted the entire process. And that's, and unfortunately, the dating apps have been a part of that. Yeah, it's amazing.

The detachment and lack of self-awareness that she brought to the conversation with Axios, Drew Pinsky, board certified internist, addiction specialist, host of Ask Dr. Drew, make sure you go watch it. So much of the coverage that we discussed today was on Ask Dr. Drew, also co-host of the Adam and Dr. Drew show. Thank you for your time this evening. I appreciate it so much. Good to see you again.

Do it again. Let's do it. All right. We have more coming up in just one moment. We're going to take a quick ad break, but I'll be back with Katie Currick. And just not, she's not going to be here, obviously. But we have a clip of Katie Currick that better than the real thing, as they say. See in a second.

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That's Unplugged.com slash Emily. All right, everyone. I'm going to close that tonight's show with this clip of Katie. And when I say clip, it's a clip of a two-hour interview that Katie Kirk did with Trevor Noah on Thursday. Two hours of Katie Kirk. Nobody has asked for that since 1999, roughly. So let's go ahead and bring in Katie Kirk for some thoughts on what it's like to cover the moral quandaries journalists face as they cover the Trump administration. Here we go.

It is very difficult to kind of. do those, you know, moral equivalencies when you feel like one-sided ledger is really wrong. It's not two different perspectives on policy. Like, how do you solve the homeless problem? Yes, exactly. Right? It is a way of doing business that feels wrong and unjust. You know, building of what, $400 million ballroom that is going to eclipse the White House without going through the proper, you know, process of getting permission.

That's where it's become really difficult and challenging, I think, for a journalist. I mean, I love that the example off the top of her head was the ballroom, the ballroom. the ballroom. There's a lot to work with when it comes to Trump. There's no doubt about it. Let me put this up on the screen. I just want to shout out Isaac Saul, who over on reedangle.com did an interesting story last week with the headline, The Everything Everywhere, all at once, corruption, story. And it was a really important and interesting rundown of some of the big corruption, I think is probably the right way to say, conflict of interest, corruption, stories from the, second Trump administration. And once that barely get a lot of media or barely get any media coverage, because, again, this has been a presidency that started with the Ukraine war still ongoing.

The Gaza war is still ongoing right now. The Iran war. Mass deportations. These have been really, really busy, crowded news cycles. So even as eager as the media is to attack Donald Trump, some of these stories get a bit of coverage. You know, there's the original reporting on it. and then they fade into the background because we have crowded news cycles. But it's amazing to go through the list of these with crypto efforts. I'm scrolling if you're listening to this, like crypto conflict of interest type stories, pardons for people who are politically connected, favorable, and the like. Some of the self-dealing in the Middle East, as Isaac writes, quote,

Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law is now representing the U.S. the Middle East as a negotiator to end the Iran war, despite having no congressional approved position. Let's kind of take it tacky, but says he also operates affinity partners, a private equity firm that received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund in 2022. Now, Washington Post reporting suggested that the Saudis were agitating for the war. We're pushing for the war in Iran to begin. It's hard to know what to believe with some of this behind the scenes reporting. But that when you put it all together in the story, which I just recommend people read because the reason a lot of folks on the right and acting in good faith,

I should say, dismiss these stories is exactly what Katie Kirk doesn't get, which is that when these stories were obvious, obvious with Hunter Biden on a smaller scale, by the way, this is a point that Isaac makes in the piece that I think is absolutely accurate. We were talking about a $2 billion investment here from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, $2 billion as Jared Kushner then goes, this is not just Burisma, right? This is Jared Kushner then going to the Middle East and being the key negotiator in some of these conflicts, many of these conflicts. So it is on a different level. But the reason that people dismiss it, the reason that you end up with Trump in the first place is because the Katie Kierks of the world already were putting their finger on the scale as to

what was normal and what wasn't normal without even having the faintest bit of awareness about it because they believed they could be neutral arbiters when it came to Hunter Biden. When it came to Hillary Clinton, yes, the New York Times covered the email scandal. But most of what we know about Clinton corruption, what we knew at the time, was literally coming from Peter Schweitzer. You would get a story here and there from the quote-unquote mainstream media. And then it would largely be treated as a like secondary conservatives react type story fade into the background uh hunter biden a very very very good example of that james biden frank biden valery biden owens do you could you really talk about what they were involved in no because the media really didn't cover a lot of it

biden administration uh anita dunn john pedesta there was a lot of corruption in the biden administration. There was a lot of corruption surrounding the Clintons, the entire Epstein scandal, which Katie Couric told him in emails. We see her talking about his rocking lasagna to Jeffrey Epstein. These are the people who have been pledging journalistic integrity and neutrality and have been demanding your respect, that you respect their journalistic integrity and their journalistic neutrality, because they are just doing their best to speak truth, to power, to hold power to account. They have zero credibility. They have had very little credibility with most of the public for a long time. And it is exactly why nobody trusts their reporting

on these other topics. And you can't blame people for not trusting their reporting and not Katie Kirk's reporting, but reporting in places like the New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal on some obvious, you don't even need to to report some of this stuff out. The Trump family, Kushner, they're announcing this stuff publicly. It doesn't even really take that much investigative journalism because they're just saying it. And what Isaac Saul did was put it all in one place, which I think is rather valuable. But the big picture point I'm trying to make is they see Trump as being the sort of first person to break the seal of politics as usual. And it's just not true. He has broken it in a

much bigger way. There's no question about it. Unorthodox. unprecedented, all of the above, and in some really bad ways. I don't dispute that at all when it comes to this type of crony capitalism and just personal corruption, the pardons. But the reason a lot of people on the right say they have more important fish to fry at this point is because this has already been baked into the process when the media and the political class started excusing it on a smaller scale. And Trump came in and took advantage of those eroded norms over time. That is exactly what he did. He said basically what was the line, I alone can fix it back in 2016 because he knows the political process. He essentially ran openly on saying he understands what

happens in the quote unquote swamp. And that's why he can drain the swamp. Now, he's not draining the swamp in many, many ways. There's some things he could probably count as as in the swamp like USAID basically doesn't exist anymore. That's just one example. Some of the agencies have been cut down significantly, but this is peak swamp type behavior. And the reason it's happening, the reason the norms are eroding more and more is that nobody cares about it, right? Some people do, but the type of people who could be defining voices against it from the administration don't care about it anymore because right now the American public is paying how much for gas. We had a historic immigration surge under the Biden administration. Ongoing

wars. This feels like small ball compared to what's happened in the world over the last 10 years. And the Katie Courics were already deciding that this story was less important. And by this story, I mean, story X, XYZ about normal political, quote unquote, normal. What they saw is normal political corruption, especially from Democrats who they had this baked in sympathy for, that Katie Kirk went to Epstein's house, which if you've seen the pictures of Epstein's townhouse, and you've heard reports of other people who walked into Epstein's townhouse, was incredibly creepy. This was, I believe, after he had been imprisoned for solicitation, if I'm remembering the precise charge was solicitation of a minor prostitution. All of that had already happened. She emails

him sucking up about how his lasagna was rocking, goes to the mansion, does the thing, and now wants to talk about her journalistic integrity. When we actually do have like a corruption fire hose to drink from, and it doesn't take any blame away from Trump or Jared Kushner, it doesn't ascribe to them any less agency than they have. What it does do, is continue to underscore exactly why Katie Kirk has no, no room to demand credibility, to demand people give her credibility to talk about these things. Now it's very, very frustrating to see these totally unapologetic and out of touch comments from people like Katie Kirk who are not reflective at all about their own role in thrusting America to.

to the brink, so much so that people were deeply frustrated with Clinton, deeply frustrated with Obama and Biden and media coverage of all of them. Media coverage is now at a record, trust of media is now at a record low. People were so upset about the collusion between the media and the Biden campaign, the Clinton campaign, particularly the Biden campaign with a Hunter Biden laptop, that many people just stopped trusting the corporate press. And that was a rational decision. And many people just stopped caring about the small ball corruption because it looks like the house is on fire and people are worrying about the window being dirty.

Right. Again, doesn't excuse the bad crypto deals, the affinity partners, sovereign wealth fund, Saudi stuff. The Trump family continue to make deals in places like the UAE. I don't think this excuses any of that. The Trump family is fairly open about making all of it. of these deals and about family and connections being part of the process, it's, I think, intentionally supposed to mirror what the Arab countries in many cases they're doing business with, their intentional method of doing business.

I don't like it. I don't think it's legal in many cases. I don't think it's ethical in many cases. But to a lot of Americans, it feels like, again, claiming the window is dirty when the house is burning down. And they feel like it was the corporate press, Katie Couric. and the political establishment, whether we're talking about the Mitt Romney-Jab Bush types, the Clinton-Biden types, the Obama types, who watched the flames grow and didn't do anything

to start putting them out. In many cases, maybe they blew a little air on them, poured a little gas on the fire. And it's just, I think, again, totally rational, and it's very frustrating to hear the smug lack of self-awareness from people like Katie Kirk in Cleveland. Clips like these. All right. I will leave it there for this evening. Appreciate you all for tuning in. Please do make sure to subscribe if you haven't subscribed yet.

It helps us so much on the channel. You can email me at Emily at devil-makearemedia.com. I answer your questions every Friday on our podcast. You can get that on Apple, Spotify. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast feed so you don't miss an episode. We're going to be back with more after-party on Wednesday. Some great guests coming up. We'll see you then.