Ask Dr. Drew - Dana Loesch: Insane Texas Law Threatens To JAIL Political Meme Posters & Criminalize Parody (Up To A YEAR In Jail) w/ David Zweig – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 482

Episode Date: May 11, 2025

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Well, we're going to hear from Dana last day about the United Kingdom of Texas. Texas has some insane laws, threatened to jail, political memes, posters, and criminalized parody up to a year in jail. I thought that was something limited to England. I didn't realize we were going to jump on board with that. And of all the places, Texas, well, Dana is in Texas and she will tell us about it. She hosts, of course well, Dana is in Texas and she will tell us about it. She hosts of course, the Dana show from Dallas and she's authored three books, hands off my gun, fly over nation and grace canceled. Second amendment advocate.

We'll talk to her in just a few minutes. And David's white comes in author of an abundance of caution, American schools, the virus and a story of bad decisions. God knows there was a ton of them. We'll get into that with David and Dana right after this. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre. A psychopath started this.

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which is L-O-E-S-C-H, Dana Lash radio. You're going to have to be very careful with the spelling of her last name, which is L O E S C H Dana Lash radio on X D Lash on Substack. It is a Dana Lash and Dana Lash.com Dana. Welcome to the program. Thank you, Dr. Drew for having me. Good to be here. So congratulations for simplifying a name rather than complicating things further. Taking it from six letters down to four, well done. There you go, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So what is going on in the Texas House of Representatives? Has somebody just hoodwinked the group?

Is it an insanity that has gripped the Great Britain, now gripped Texas? Britain now grip Texas? It's one of the craziest things. One of the, one of the weirdest proposals that I've seen from the Texas house and quite some time. So let me, let me lay the groundwork here for your viewers and lay it out. So Texas, you know, it's Texas. It's, you know, I mean, we're like cowboy land, right? I mean, the Dallas Cowboys, you know, you got the Houston Oilers here, you know, West, you know, the West is here. You said it all with that.

It's Texas. Exactly. So you think I moved here 13 years ago from Missouri and I was very excited because I thought, oh my gosh, going to be a lot of like-minded people who are going to leave me alone. It'll be great. There's a lot of Republican lawmakers. I lean towards, I always vote, you know vote most conservative, I vote Republican usually.

And I was very excited about the prospect of having like a decent legislature. And it was like a bait and switch. I get down here and I realize a lot of Republicans are really just Democrats who couldn't get elected in their districts running as Democrats. So they switched party affiliation, raised enough money, they had the name recognition, the contacts, the backing,

and they were able to get elected as Republicans. And so we're seeing that kind of play out in the Texas House and in the Texas Senate. And we're really seeing that play out most recently with this House Bill 366 that you just mentioned. So the former speaker of the House is a guy named Dade Phelan. This is how it started.

Dade Phelan apparently went to the dais one night. They had a long day in Austin and he was slurring his words and when he held up that big acme gavel and banged it down on the ground he almost lost his balance and all of these memes erupted after that they called him drunk-dade people made fun of him on radio all of these memes all over Facebook and tick-tock and Instagram and X and I don't think he liked it very much because here we are not even a year later after that video and he's introduced this bill.

And they say that it is about protecting, I guess, truth in advertising and protecting people from generative AI, which that's really not what the language of the bill gets into. It's not just about political advertising. And it's really, the text is fairly short, I've read it. And they make it intentionally vague.

So it's not about just political advertising. The nature of the language makes it to where technically, yes, it is actionable. They could go after people if they don't have a state approved disclaimer on whatever image or video, et cetera, that they're sharing, if it runs a foul of this. And you're talking about potentially a year in prison and a hefty, you know, multi-thousand dollar fine.

And it's, they look at it as a misdemeanor. It's, it's, it's not first amendment. It's not in keeping with the first amendment. I can't imagine that it would pass, you know, legal scrutiny. So, but that it hasn't stopped them from proposing it anyway. So that's what's happening with us. It's sort of extraordinary. It makes me wonder, is it all the Californians that have moved to Texas that really is that issue here?

Maybe they have sort of infected the representatives in some weird way. I think yes and no. So the town that I live in in Texas, our county, Herent County, and it's the largest, the last large red urban county in the United States. And there has been a major influx of Californians coming in here, which has somewhat altered the voting electorate a little bit. So when Bader or work ran, he actually got almost 2600 more votes than Ted Cruz

running against him his last Senate race that he ran. And so it's a real, it's a battleground and it's it's the most, was the most conservative county in Texas, one of the most conservative districts in Texas. So it has changed it somewhat, but some of these outline rule areas are still pretty hardcore red. When you get around Austin and Houston and around Dallas County itself, it gets pretty murky. So what are Texans going to do about this? I mean, it really is sort of extraordinary. When I hear about what's going on in Great Britain, as you know, I don't know if you saw Winston Marshall in the press pool yesterday or the day before asking Carolyn Levitt if the Security Council

would consider taking refugees from Great Britain who are fleeing the incredible violations of free speech. And she says you look into it, I'm dying to hear what the feedback is, but it has gotten to the point where, I mean, no hyperbole, I think the US government is going to contemplate asylum seeking to run away from exactly what Texas is doing.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and in Texas, one of the most conservative states in the union, I wouldn't doubt it. I thought that question was quite interesting. But in terms of what voters can do, I mean, obviously, the easy answer is voters have to elect more constitutionally minded lawmakers into office, but it gets very difficult when you start talking

about money and influence, because a lot of these lawmakers are so entrenched and they have a lot of favors that they can call in. So like Dave Phelan, for instance, he has a huge war chest. If he doesn't spend it all in one campaign, what he does is he basically pays off these other lawmakers to have his back. They get these Democrats elected to these

or installed in these different committees, which is unthinkable. I mean, if you have a Republican, not a super majority, but almost a super majority dominated state legislature, why are you allowing status to want to jack up your taxes to an ungodly amount who want to prevent you from having constitutional freedoms or age-appropriate materials in your kids' school,

people who wanted to lock everybody down for even longer than what was already happening under COVID. These individuals are empowered and they're put in these hefty positions by people like Dade Phelan and others because they have the cash to throw around. They come in with a big bank account, a lot of name recognition, a lot of favors to call in,

and so they protect their positions. It's really hard for citizens to go after them. It takes a lot of grassroot effort. And frankly, a lot of people don't follow what's happening in their state capital. It's way sexier to follow stuff federally. It's a lot harder to watch what's happening in your own backyard.

There's less attention for it. No, and you're right. And it has, of course, the closer to the citizen, the more the impact on their lives. And we should be paying attention to county and city and state for sure. We don't, I agree with you. Tell me about the book, your latest book,

Grace Canceled. I think I know what Hands Off My Gun is about. Tell me about Grace Canceled. Yeah, Hands Off My Gun is pretty self-explanatory. Grace Canceled was kind of like right when, I guess, the woke schooled ascendancy and the cancellation that we started seeing. I actually got inspired to write that book

from Norm MacDonald. He was a friend. I never met him in person. We only ever talked in messages. And it was an interview that I saw him give on The View when he was sticking up for Roseanne Barr. And he was very contrite when he went on The View to the point where it disarmed everyone.

They didn't quite know how to handle him. He was saying that he was sorry for past offenses. And at first I thought he was trolling them. And to see somebody who is such a you know powerful wise-ass like Norm Macdonald in that position in front of all of those women in the view it just struck a chord and I kept thinking these people don't want reconciliation and they don't want to mend fences and build bridges they just want sheer and utter destruction and so

that's what started the idea of the book because it's not about that. It's not about unity or cohesion. It's about destroying your ideological opponent, not even persuasion, which I think is the biggest win that you could have. They wanted a lesser win, which was destruction. Persuasion takes too much. Well, it is a psychopathology that's getting acted out

all over the place and sort of all roads lead to narcissism and Narcissistic rage doesn't it? I mean that's and so you're not going to find any satisfaction in coming together with people that are finding a common ground That's not that's not the feeling that they're they're responding to last time I saw Norm Macdonald I was at a with him in a green room at in the ice house comedy club in Pasadena and he I watched him go Right out on the stage and he goes hey, you know, I'm sorry. I I love Bill Cosby I love I model my I love everything about him. I model my life out of Bill Cosby

I love everything about it except his comedy anyway, so Oh my God. He's so funny. Last question. That's about gold prices. That's so funny. That's me about price of gold. What do you think about that? It was weird little questions, but he was, he was a really nice guy. And I had told him, I said, I got inspired to write the video. Like you kind of kickstarted that whole line of thinking. And it was true.

And he talked about that a little bit later on before he passed away. But yeah, that's where that book idea came from. And he was a great example of that. Yeah, he will be missed. So how do you assess, speaking of the federal government, let's talk about the federal government, let's talk about the sexier, bigger version

of our government that was meant to be not so big. How do you feel about what has gone on with the attempts to reduce expense? It seems like, yeah, it seems like Elon has been in there hard at work and yet what's happening. I love the idea of having a very flashy auditor. And that's what Doge is. I mean, it's a glorified auditor and I love it. And I love how flashy they are about it because it's like, let's make cutting spending look cool. And I love the fact that it's a bunch of dorks. And I

don't say that as a pejorative. I mean, I really respect these people. There are a bunch of nerds that are going in there with read-only access, all under NDAs, and they're seeing a lot of the obvious waste and fraud and then some stuff that people haven't been tracking. My concern is that people are going to turn on them and him if there's not a lot of movement in Congress. None of this stuff matters

if Republicans don't get it together in the House and codify this. They got to make tax cuts permanent. They got to pass these USAID cuts. They have to do all of this stuff and they're too busy fighting amongst themselves. And I get it, they got a razor-thin majority. But that's not an excuse. I mean, if you're really good at messaging, it's really easy to get some of these purple state Democrats on your side to do this and use the power of the cudgel That is POTUS. I mean nobody's better at putting heat on people than he is in a very dramatic public fashion Kick that into gear and let's you know let's start taking names and going after some of these lawmakers that are holding all of this up because

What's gonna happen is if they don't do this the economy the polling on the economy We knew it was gonna be a little tough with the tariff war and all that, but without tax cuts, you know, the sequencing was a little concerning to me. Without tax cuts, you get basically a double taxation. You need a shot in the arm for the consumer. If you're not providing that,

then the polls are gonna start tipping a little bit on the economy. It could bleed over into other things. Then before you know it, midterms. We're looking at losing the house, and then it's gonna be impeachment palooza. It'll be a disaster. Oh, we're going to go through that again. Oh my God. It's just too crazy. Old guy with the two pay who said he was going to, he filed articles of impeachment

for what? I don't know. The guy who left all the animals in the animal testing lab to die. And then Huffington Post wrote that they had to free them, that guy. Yeah, I saw that. And now there are, I think there are billboards out attacking the guy in his district. It's all such, it's anything but governing, right? Anything but doing what's good for the people or what people need. I am so sort of disappointed and deflated

by so much of what and deflated by so much of what has gone on. Hard to be what? Hard for lawmakers to stay principled. There's a lot of special interest and a lot of reasons for them not to be once they get to DC. And I think that's one of the things that some of the Doge folks are finding out for,

I mean, it's a tough fight and I love that they're fighting it. I just, I'm a little worried as we roll into midterms, to be honest. Do you know what's going on with these law-making maneuvering that's going on now? It feels like the sausage is getting made and it feels like there's a lot of action,

but no reporting, I don't know what's going on. There's a lot of debate about it. I had a conversation with Congressman Chip Roy, who has been fighting the increase in spending for some of these other programs, because the argument always is, well, if you cut taxes, that's spending, and you're going to have to make up for it elsewhere. Well, if you just cut spending, then you won't have to make up for it elsewhere. I mean, there's so much ridiculous waste.

If we just went back, ideally, if we went back to Article 1, Section 8, that would be amazing, and we would have a surplus. But nobody has the spine in Congress to do it. If we went back to an Article 1 Section 8, that would be amazing and we would have a surplus. But nobody has the spine in Congress to do it. I mean, they're bristling at even incorporating some of the cuts that they're talking about. And that's what I've heard from numerous lawmakers in DC. They want to do it, but they also know that they're going to get beaten over the head about it in their own districts.

Because a lot of these lawmakers, this wasteful spending comes in the form of contracts, you know, pork barrel spending, stuff that they win for their voters, and they can't come back empty handed. They have to have something to show for it. So it's not just the lawmakers, it's also voters' expectations because I'm sure, you know, Dr. Drew, you've seen people criticize, oh, I don't want to eat, they're cutting too many government jobs. They're, you know, proposing too many to Medicaid. Well, that's part of austerity hurts.

And when we saw the Greeks go through it, austerity hurts and it requires, it's a tough road, but if you're serious about it and you really want long-term sustainability, this is what it takes. And it's, this is the reality of it. And what hurts if you don't do it is far more painful. I spoke to Scott Besant about this and he was very focused on deregulation. He felt like if we could get some of the spending

under control and we could really deregulate, and I would dare say the way the economy's kind of going, it feels like rates are gonna come down too, that's the kind of sort of management he seemed to be looking at. Do you think that would work? I think it would work and I think he's one of the smartest minds that seemed to be looking at. Do you think that would work? I think it would work. And I think he's one of the smartest minds

that they have in the administration. I feel very encouraged that he's right there and has the president's ear because he gets it. He understands that. I mean, none of this is gonna matter without deregulation and cutting spending. And I also love that they're also kicking in more energy, domestic production with energy,

loosening up some of those regulations as well as part of this. So we can, you know, it's also a net sec thing too, but I mean, it's great that he's doing it. It's great that there are people who get it after four years of not having that. So I'm excited and I'm glad that he's winning a lot of the inter administration battles on this too. I think that's important. What is article one section eight? That's everything that the government can do

and what the government can't do. All the authority of the federal government is all listed in article one, section eight. Anything that's not in that reverts back to the state. So all of the stuff with, I mean, it's uncomfortable it is for some people to acknowledge, education, all of these other things that are not included in there.

If it's not kicked back, we don't need it. Yeah. Right. So I'm sure you saw the White House Correspondents Dinner where they were congratulating themselves and they gave an award to an author who wrote a journalist who wrote an article about a book about Biden's decline and the Democrats that were hiding that from them and how they just missed it and how it was impossible for them to see it.

I don't know about you, but I was reporting on his Parkinsonism for three years before his presidency ended. And in terms of his cognitive decline, that poor guy, I don't know if his cognitive decline was from the medication he was getting for his Parkinson's or part of his Parkinsonian syndrome or a separate dementia, benign illness

or something else more serious medically going on. Could be any of those things, cause we got none of that information. But to say that we couldn't see objectively the changes that you're, who are you going to believe? You or your lion eyes, you couldn't obviously see the changes. Look, I can look at a rash and say there's a rash

and I could look at somebody as Parkinsonism and say that's Parkinsonism. And that was there years before people started admitting what was going on here. But they claim that they didn't miss anything. They, you know, we have Todd, what's the guy from Meet the Press, Todd, you can help me with this.

Oh, Chuck Todd, yeah. Chuck Todd, yeah. Chuck Todd saying, oh, I refuse this is a Oh, Chuck Todd, yeah. Chuck Todd, yeah, saying, oh, I refuse this is a commune, this is a plot, this is a talking point as a narrative. Now shut the F up. This is, we're just, and by the way, not only did you have motivated reasoning and bias,

and probably, I'm certain numbers of them lied, I'm sure, because it was so obvious what was going on. You attacked people who said something that you didn't like. When I talked about Parkinsonism, you attacked it. I mean, I was on Greg Gutfeld's show for two years doing medical parodies with Tom Shalhoux, where he played this elderly, decrepit, demented old man and we've talked about doing dimensional status exams on him and neurologic exam.

And it looked like, you know, we made it look like what the president would, how he would perform in those things. That was years before people started talking about it. So what do we do with these so-called journalists that don't seem to be able to do any self-assessment or course correction. Oh, I've had such a problem with legacy press for so long.

And with this, it's almost redundant, you know, Democrats in the media, because that's who they all are. That's why so many of them from these previous administrations go and they're either on ABC or they're on CNN or MSNBC or they go to these like super far left think tanks and they run those and they go on the left or leftist speaking circuit. I mean, they knew we all knew the thing about this is every single person in the United States has somebody in their family or they know of somebody that is dealing with like motor motor skill issues or neural or something some kind of decline cognitive decline.

And we see it and we saw it in Joe Biden as much as they wanted to try to hide that the window dressing of Having very controlled press availability not doing a lot of press conferences Even like when he would walk from the White House to Marine One and he had a flank of people around him So you really couldn't see him walk you couldn't see his gate You couldn't see you know if he was actually aware of what he was doing and where he was going, they, they did not an okay job at hiding that, but the press did the rest of the heavy lifting. And you're right. I mean, they already, they were getting this thought, these thought control

police, uh, in order, I think there was another article that came out just this afternoon when I was on air that discussed how, yes, it went even deeper and the network was even wider than anyone had ever anticipated. The thought police and the way that they were trying to manipulate the tech bros into stifling everyone. I had my account suspended, how many times for talking about it before Musk bought it on X. I was demonetized on YouTube

and I had stuff taken down on Facebook. If it wasn't about the laptop, then it was about questioning his cognitive ability. They did a horrible job at hiding it because the coverup is always sometimes greater than the offense, right? And when you cover it up, Americans are just, we're naturally curious people.

We wanna know more, what are you hiding? I mean, that's just kind of who we are. So people wanted to dig into it more and it just made it even more ridiculous. And all they had to do was, I remember when they were trying to go after Reagan and saying that Reagan was unfit to lead because there was like a hint of Alzheimer's. And that didn't even emerge until he was well out of the White House and he was all camped up at Rancho Del Cielo and

way far away from making any decisions as commander in chief. But with Biden, my gosh, he falls up the stairs and they said it was, don't you make fun of his stutter. Like that's not a stutter, he literally fell with his purse. His feet don't stutter, that's not how that works. But they attacked everyone and they made you sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist for, as you said,

just like noting what was happening right in front of your face. All of the disinformation and the info ops that they perpetrated upon the American people did so much to damage our faith and our system. And really in the people that are supposed to bring us the news, that's why nobody believed anything

that was coming out about coronavirus because we couldn't trust the people that were telling us this stuff. It all is related. Well, that was where their misinformation campaigns and the provision of misinformation went on steroids. Did you see Rubio, I think it was yesterday, talking about the dossiers they found

at the Department of State, and a department dedicated to monitoring American citizens' social media? Yep, yes. and how sad is it that I wasn't surprised? I felt almost like a shame to myself. Like I'm not surprised. Ooh, that means I'm getting used to this. I'm not surprised. That's kind of a bad thing, right? But that's how much we've taken of this. I, I love that it's all coming right. It explains a lot, but it's terrifying all at the same time. Yeah, that our government could be so propagandistic, so totalitarian.

So, you know, listen, I don't, this is stuff I used to think only existed in these communist states in the 60s and 50s. I think it's sort of like out of the history books of the behavior of governments, I thought we were insulated against that here. And evidently not, it can happen here. And we have to really thank God we have the state system,

thank God we have the constitution to reassert itself. Who was running the presidency? Who do you think was in there actually making decisions other than a auto pen? Yeah, Valerie Jarrett maybe. I mean, he was basically a continuation of Obama Biden. He was just continuing Obama's term. So I would imagine, you know,

there's some of the same handlers in there, but that's a great question. I mean, you had, I mean, for some of these most important calls, the shots being called, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't there. He wasn't, he could not have been't there. He could not have been mentally aware. He was not healthy enough to be aware of this stuff. I'll never forget the one press

conference where he tried to, I can't remember the name of the lawmaker, but he tried to bring up the name of the lawmaker and was looking around the room. The guy was dead. Or the other time that he called another guy to stand up, the guy, you know, literally had cerebral palsy. He can't stand up. He's in a wheelchair. He can't stand up. I mean, basic social decorum. I mean, I get why they wanted to hide it so badly, but the idea that they were able to carry this out as long as they could, and we just kind of, and expect everybody to tolerate it,

and then actually, you know, entrench it in our federal government to go after people and, you know, use the Patriot Act in some instances to kind and, you know, use the Patriot Act in some instances to kind of go after. It was the Patriot Act. It was the Patriot Act. Once you declared white supremacy and domestic terrorism,

the number one problem, you could apply the Patriot Act domestically. And that's what they did. Exactly. Parents who spoke up at school board meetings, you know, if you are a suspected domestic terrorist, then, oh, look, all the old rules are out the window. We're going to go with these new rules under the Patriot Act and we're going to, we're going to supervise all of your actions in the interest of national

security while we let a million people in at the border. That makes perfect sense. Nothing hits like playoff hockey. The road to the cup starts on FanDuel, your home for live bets, all playoffs long. With new features like live SGPs, build a parlay, any game, any period, or stack multiple matchups onto one slip with same game parlay plus. What's better than playoff hockey, overtime playoff hockey, get more from the game with live overtime markets. Download FanDuel today and get more playoff action with North America's number one sports book. Please play responsibly.

19 plus and physically located in Ontario. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please contact connects Ontario one eight six six five three one two six zero zero to speak to an advisor free of charge. I feel like an idiot for sort of not defending the Patriot Act, but sort of being one of those people that said, oh come on, I got nothing to hide. What's the big deal? I never imagined, never imagined that this is where it was. You want to have state-of-the-art government? Why?

You, you, I mean, you want to think that your government does it better than everybody else's government. And that's why the United States is a world power. That's, we all grew up thinking and you don't want to have to, you don't want to not think that. You want to think the best of your fellow man. Well, turns out you can't. Yeah, it's weirdly made me a free speech absolutist

and a bodily autonomy absolutist. Those are two things that came out of it for me and a willingness to fight for those things in a time in my life when I don't even wanna think about these things. It should be automatic. It should be in our DNA and that's that. And finally, I don't know if you heard Kamala's recent

speech, wonder if you had any thoughts about that. The one, the word, I mean, I don't even know what her speeches are about anymore. The one where she was basically like reciting the lyrics of This Land is Your Land and acting like it was an original speech and then she cackles. I mean, what a disappointment. She's been groomed though from the early stages by the, by Obama, by Valerie Jarrett when she was in California, when she was a top cop and then she went to Senate.

Everybody had high hopes for her. And then as she got on the national stage, they realized, you know, she's miles wide and inches deep, not going to work out so well. I know she wants to hopes for her. And then as she got on the national stage, they realized, you know, she's miles wide and inches deep, not gonna work out so well. I know she wants to run for governor. I mean, at least that's the rumor. It's not gonna happen. Her career is done, but that's just an embarrassment.

It was an embarrassment, honestly, for me as a woman, that this is the woman who becomes vice president. And she's like held up as the standard for women in politics now. We can do so much better as a sex. That's so sad. You know, it's interesting. I spoke to somebody, I was in Washington

and somebody who had worked in her under or had a relationship with her of some type. And she goes, she told me, she goes, you know this woman was really smart and she would get up at the podium and I don't understand what happened to her every time she'd get to the podium. And I don't know if there's some vodka involved.

I don't know if it's a speech phobia, that you would think they'd get a psychologist in there to help her with that. But I have a hard time believing, I mean, maybe it's true, but I have a hard time believing that everything falls apart at the podium every single time. I agree. That's just her week's wide.

Yeah. Yeah, I think the word is a lack of self-discipline. And she's not likable. She does not, she does not have like this very amiable countenance. She's just does not come across that way. Like I can look at people on the other side of the aisle and be like, okay, you have a likable personality, like Bill Clinton. I mean, Google the policy, but get a likable personality.

You know, a lot of people may not like Trump, but he's got a likable personality. You can't say that about Hillary Clinton. You can't say that about Kamala Harris, JB Pritzker. He comes across as incredibly unlikable. She also has that unlikable quality. And you cannot manufacture it. You can't focus group it. And you can't hire enough people

off K Street to make it real. It's so weird that she has to know that people are making fun of that laugh. And yet it just doesn't, it doesn't change. It's the same every day. It never changes. It's that cackle. I can't even make that sound.

It's like, And then there's a whole, you know, throw your head back and bring your chin down. There's a whole, you know, it's like, don't do that. She's like a vaudeville villain. She's like, I, that's what you hear from somebody who's like standing at the railroad track

buying somebody up, but not like a person at the podium, like very politician. Twirling her mustache. Were she a male? So let's kind of wrap this up with what's on your radar now. What are you worried about? What's, what are you thinking? So I had a really good conversation today talking with the secretary of the army

and our general of the army, General George, about drone warfare, which fascinates me. And I find that, like, that was, I thought, a really great announcement that they came out with today. They told Doge, you don't have to doge us, we're gonna doge ourselves, because apparently in the military, you have a group of hardliners who just wanna be

a lethal fighting force and they don't wanna be a social experiment and they just wanna do what they need to do, save resources, save lives, accomplish the objective without mission creep, get out and get home. And you have a bunch of people who wanna make a political fodder, you know, and just nation build and drag us all over the world. So it was really good to see that transparency. They came out, they're like,

we're a little bit behind in some technologies. We're going to change that. We're cutting spending, we're reallocating resources, we're going to streamline it, and we're going to expand acquisition so that we can actually like start moving towards more modern warfare, like drone warfare, which I think is fascinating. it changes like just like how Stalingrad changed war fighting from you know armor divisions tanks and you know the old way of doing things to urban combat this is changing the the whole game as well and it's very it's it's interesting to see where it goes it's a little frightening because we're a little bit behind and I really appreciated the transparency that they

had and that's like one of the most positive things I've ever had to say frightening because we're a little bit behind. And I really appreciated the transparency that they had. And that's like one of the most positive things I've ever had to say about military leaders in like eight years. So that was nice to see. So following that, obviously, you know, the Mike Waltz stuff and then everything with cutting spending, all the stuff

that we've been talking about, being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars. Dana Lashkirk, when you see your radio show and hear it. Everywhere, channel 347 direct TV, you can find us on X and rumble and Facebook and YouTube and all that good stuff. Appreciate you joining me. I hope we'll have you again.

Hope to meet you in person one day. Yes, would love it. Thank you, Dr. Dirtzer. It's a real pleasure. I've watched you for so long. Love line back in the day. Been doing it. Thank you. Dr. Dertz. It's a real pleasure. I've watched you for so long. What love line back in the day And doing it for so long that's that sort of summarizes it but yes, thank you for that. I appreciate it I think you're a vampire, but that's okay. God bless you

Thank you so much You follow Dana on Xd lash lo esch watch the spelling Dana lash L O S. No Botox either. C H me no. Is all now a sub stack Dana Lush Lash Dana Lash.com. Dana L O E S C H David's why he comes in just a second. The book I'm going to give you the name of it.

Hold on here. Screwed up. Here it is. But an abundance of caution, which is a words that shall ring in my head forever. Now let's call it abundance of caution was the opposite opposite of risk reward considerations, which is what clinical medicine always is. Abundance of caution. I've never uttered those words talking to a medical student or a resident. It's always what's your reasoning and then why did you make that decision? What was the risk reward?

And if it doesn't come down clearly on the side of reward, then you shouldn't have made that decision. There's no abundance of a caution. American school is the virus and the story of bad decisions. Right after this, David Swire. The wellness company knows that taking charge of your family's healthcare is a top priority and being rationally ready, and who knows what the future will hold for us.

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If you sign up for a year, you'll save $200. And when you use the link, drdew.com slash TWC, you'll get 10% off the first payment to the One Wellness Elite membership. Check out One Wellness at drdew.com slash TWC and get 10% off your first payment. DrDrew.com slash TWC. It's all there. Dr. Drew said the best way to quit drinking is by going cold turkey and he's a doctor so why would you question doctors? Dr. Drew called me unfixable.

Dr. Drew called me unfixable. And of course you can see here we've been on the road for the past week. We're in Elijah Schaeffer's studio still and we appreciate him. Almost Serious is the podcast I am on with him on RIF TV. What's that Susan? In Boca Raton. In Boca Raton, Florida. And getting on planes and trains and we are exhausted and luckily we packed some paleo valley protein sticks for the trips and we travel with a bag of grass fed and finished bone broth as well. We do the chocolate protein sticks are made with also grass fed pasture-phrased meats like my favorite varieties,

venison chicken and the original beef. What is different about these? They are minimally processed, nutrient and protein dense and low in calories, like 60 calories, most of them. Same time they're filling, in fact, I've eaten them as meals when the options are limited on crummy fast food or airplane fare.

Haley will tell you, they came in very handy when we were at the White House meeting with some of the HHS staff. I see he was downing the sticks. Oh man, I was so happy I brought those. I ate them at the White House. Bringing Paleo Valley to the White House, it was great. I Oh man, I was so happy I brought those. I ate them at the White House. Bringing Paleo Valley to the White House, it was great. I loved it, I'm so happy I found those in my bag.

I told Caleb, Drew does not, I told Drew, I told Caleb, Drew does not eat, okay? So you have to have food with you. I packed 10s, I knew it was gonna be great. It was great. So get a lot, go to DrDrew.com slash paleo Valley to support our show and the small business of paleo Valley, which is a great, you saw you've seen autumn on here. They're great. 15% off your first order 15 or save 20% off when you subscribe. That is at drdew.com slash

paleo Valley. All right. And Susan, you see, you wanted to comment about YouTube and all the speaking of the White House. Well, I just I feel Caleb's pain right now because he was he's worked very hard on putting together clips of your trip to the White House, which you know it was a lot of work and early hours and long days and and Last still feeling trips, you know and it is paleo Valley beefsteak. Thank plane trips, you know, and yeah, it is Paleo Valley beef stick, thank God. But, you know, when he's posting all this stuff, he's realizing that YouTube is still sort of putting us

on the back page. I mean, we've been with them for years and it's just a very strange feeling. Shadow banning, we've been there before. Yeah, it's, we've been there before, so. We're almost tempted to just cut them off and move over to rumble and X for a while But we don't want to lose our followers on YouTube. Obviously, we appreciate everybody is there But it's just it's just really disheartening and I don't know if there's a way to get in touch with

Them and make changes, but if anybody knows anybody let us know All right, let's get to my guest, who as I said, wrote the book, An Abundance of Caution, David. He doesn't appear to be back there, but he'll be back in a few minutes. Let me talk about it a little more. I'll talk to him.

He's testified before Congress twice about the schools during the pandemic. He's reporting on the CDC's camp guidelines led to the agency rescinding so-called outdoor mask requirements, which is an insanity and an absolute insanity for an organization as scientifically entrenched as the CDC to mandate an outdoor master on COVID is nothing short of pathetic. He also wrote swimming inside the sun and invisible as you can find more about David's white on X David Z W E I G and also David's white.com. Yeah. This, this issue

on schools. I remember, I want to tell him this story. I'm gonna have to repeat it. He also wrote a major piece for his first major American publication in May, 2020, which argued, and he had a ton of evidence that schools should reopen. That was May of 2020, and I was written a book about this. And I myself was doing some reporting. I had a local, I was working on a local television show on the Fox 11, think the Simpsons Fox, you know, like in Fox network.

And we had a local show every night and we would, I was there when they decided to close the schools. And we had somebody from the school board who came in and said, we're closing the schools. And I thank God, I'm still proud of this moment. Adam has re-aired it a couple of times on the podcast I do with him. I just said, why are you doing this?

Why are you closing the schools? What did you meet with a group of infectious disease consultants and they said this would be a good idea? Why, who advised you? No one. We just thought it was the right thing to do. And then they kept them closed.

And even then I was thinking to myself, well, I guess I'll be a good citizen. These are tough. Maybe I'm missing it. Maybe this thing is so much worse than I realize. And maybe it is affecting kids. I just, I'm not a pediatrician good citizen. These are tough. Maybe I'm missing it. Maybe this thing is so much worse than I realize. And maybe it is affecting kids. I just, I'm not a pediatrician, so I don't understand. I just talked myself out of it.

And then it became ridiculous, you know, a year, 18 months into it. And I'm gonna have to tell them. And then they had to wear masks. Oh my God. And then we traumatized the children. We were masking two year olds. We traumatized kids.

Kindergarteners. Kindergarteners, we- They're supposed to get sick. It was so, that is true. It was so predictable how much we would injure eight to 15 year olds. Eight to 15 year olds are at a critical period of development when they have to be around their peers

in order to develop, in order to do those developmental milestones. And we isolated them from one another. We limited their cognitive development. We just destroyed an entire generation. And I hope they grow up to be pissed because they should be pissed. They should be furious with what was done with them.

And it was done in the name of, I mean, the whole meantime, Florida was open the whole time. They had no problems. They had no teachers getting sick. They had no students getting sick, whole time. And I'll remind people speaking of Florida, this is a separate topic, but something that's been on my mind lately

and I don't know quite what to do with it. But if you remember, they had mobile units for monoclonal antibodies. Monoclonal antibody kept me out of the hospital with a bad case of alpha or delta, whichever I had back in 2020. And the country bought hundreds of thousands of doses of monoclonal antibody and had them available,

essentially for free, for everyone in the country. And the state of Florida put some mobile vans together and started moving them around the state and the federal government cut them off. I think how disgusting that is. That is allowing people just to die when available treatment was readily available. David Zweig, welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure.

Thanks for writing the book. I was just recounting the story about how I was there in LA doing a news broadcast when they decided to close the schools in Los Angeles. And one of the school members came in and said, we're closing the schools. And I was sort of angry. I said, why are you doing this?

Who told you to do this? What consultant came in and he said, no one. I said, well, then why are you doing this? I don't know of any infectious disease consultant that said this is a good idea. I mean, there was that one paper about the flu, maybe localized school closures could help with the flu, which is child transmitted, fluid transmitted, maybe.

And he said, it's just the right thing to do. No, it was not. What do you say? Yeah, I think you were quite prescient, obviously. This was not the right thing to do. I wrote a 450 page book about why this was not the right thing to do. And in my view, this was possibly the worst

other than people who died from COVID, this was the worst result of the interventions that the public health professionals had implemented during the pandemic. This was a catastrophe that could have and should have been avoided. And that's what I discuss in the book at length. And I so appreciate discuss in the book at length.

And I so appreciate you writing the book and I actually saved my next comment for talking to you here live because I know you, I tweeted that the real problem I had was not just that they closed the school but they had the journalist who didn't know what was going on attacked everybody who's had a different opinion. And I understand that you didn't do that. I was actually taking issue with the journalist

who was interviewing you at the time. And I know it sort of sounded like I was coming after you. That was not my intention at all. I am deeply appreciative of you writing this book. And I always look for opportunities to apologize. So I wouldn't apologize if it seemed like I was going after you, that was not the case. But the fact that the canceling and the propaganda

and the aggressive takedowns of people who were merely offering an opinion, who turned out to be right, why aren't journalists taking account of themselves during that period? It's quite an extraordinary circumstance that the degree of tribalism that occurred during the pandemic and still does now

in certain respects. And as you described it, I occupied a pretty rare lane where I was writing a lot of pieces in Wired, the Atlantic, New York Magazine, pieces that really challenged the establishment view, but I was doing it from the establishment. And I was maligned. I mean, very early on, I was called a murderer,

a Trump-er, et cetera, et cetera, all for just pointing out the evidence. That was it. I approached this topic apolitically as a journalist with my features and then certainly with the book that I have no agenda, not trying to win points. I'm trying to make things clear to the American public.

This book is almost like a case study of the failure of the expert class. like a case study of the failure of the expert class. So what do you imagine was happening there? I have another memory now where I was interviewing, I think it was either a school board, probably a school board or maybe a teacher's union member. She was like the secretary of one of these organizations. And she was like, well, we need,

this was a year into lockdown or nine months into lockdown. And we were discussing opening and she was like, well, we need gloves and we need plexiglass and we need this. I said, all right, let's do it. How long is it gonna take? How many weeks do we need to put that all in place? Let's do it.

She goes, what, huh? I go, yeah, let's go. I assume you're right. Let's say you're right. Let's do it. How much can it cost? How long is it gonna take? She accused me yeah, let's go. I assume you're right. Let's say you're right. Let's do it. How much is it gonna cost? How long is it gonna take? She accused me of sexism and racism.

Here's the location. That sounds about right. That's about right, right? Yeah, and so what happened? What do you imagine? Let's take account of your peers. What happened there? What's going on?

How do we understand what that was? And why can't they come to terms with it now? And they better, by the way. Yeah, don't hold your breath on that, unfortunately. I mean, look, people are generally not inclined to admit when they were wrong. You know, what I- I'm gonna stop you.

I wanna stop you. Wait, wait, I am delighted to admit when I'm wrong. It means I learned something. And I will happily to admit what I'm wrong. It means I learned something. And I will happily apologize where I got it wrong. I'll happily do that, really. And I do it, like I apologize to you. I will take every chance I get to apologize, at least as an example to how that works.

You can't apologize. I'm gonna talk to Jenny McCarthy in a couple weeks. I wanna apologize to her. I apologize to, oh my gosh, I'm blanking our friend's name. Naomi Wolf. Naomi Wolf, because I said something really dismissive about something in case she was making it. She was right.

I was like, that's pathetic. I'm apologizing. Disgusting how I was. That's not okay. And I won't do it again. Well, you're obviously the exception, not the rule. Most people, and perhaps particularly so in media, corrections on things are not always forthcoming.

I mean, one of the things that I think you'll find interesting is that, and that hopefully your audience will, is that in the book, one of the things I try to show is that a lot of the way the media covered the pandemic, and in particular children in schools in America, it's not necessarily that there were factual errors although there were plenty of those but rather what I would I try to show is how it's really through framing.

It's the information that's left out and it's the particular kind of the same pundits. There is this one emergency medicine physician who now got rewarded by being put in charge of one of the public health schools at Yale for her punditry, even though she had no expertise in infectious disease mitigation or anything else, but she was on speed dial at the New York Times and many, many other sort of legacy media outlets

that the way you craft a narrative isn't necessarily through lying or giving false information. It's through a very, very careful catering or tailoring of what you put in an article and what you leave out. And I show through these series of case studies about how I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase of an argument from authority, which is in philosophy, this is what's known as a logical fallacy, which means it's when people say that something is true

simply because of the credentials of the person who says it. So over and over again in the New York Times and a number of other media outlets, they would quote various experts or professionals, oftentimes, again, people who had no particular expertise in the subject matter, such as emergency medicine physicians. But nevertheless, they would quote them, saying, we need to have a mask mandate,

or there needs to be HEPA filters, you know, or such and such, before a school can open. But then they never provided evidence for that statement. Sometimes it was just unattributed at all. It just said, experts say, experts have, you know, the consensus of experts concludes, blah, blah, blah. And that's what's led me on my path pretty early,

was observing that over and over, I kept being told these things, but I wasn't seeing evidence. And the way my mind works and the way I work as a writer and a journalist is, I'm always drilling down. I try to get to the source. I spent years, many, many years ago,

before it became politicized as a magazine fact-checker. And we were taught you always have to go like two, three, four layers deep until you get to the source of information. You can't just trust something because someone says it, but that's exactly what happened within the media. And unfortunately it left the American public deeply misinformed about a variety of things in the pandemic, but I think most damagingly about one,

the risks that SARS-CoV-2 posed to most Americans, but most importantly to children or the lack of risk that it posed to children by and large. And two, the public were deeply misinformed about what the effect or benefits would be from these various NPIs, or what are known as non-pharmaceutical interventions, the six feet of distancing,

the mask mandates, the school closures, this hybrid schedule, what my kids were under for more than a year, or you went to school for like one day a week or two days a week. There was no evidence behind any of this stuff. There was quite a bit of literature before the pandemic, which we could get into, that indicated this would not be effective or successful. But nevertheless, this is what we were told by the most esteemed health professionals in our country and what we were told by the media

was critical in order for schools to open. Meanwhile, millions of kids were in school in Europe by and large without any of these interventions. And we could talk about that, that was ignored. So this empirical evidence was ignored and instead we were basing everything on theory. And in terms of risk, I always point out, you know, before you jumped on, I was saying,

the 18 to 15 year olds need their peers to go through their developmental milestones. Their cognitive development is critical at those windows. And we just threw it away like it would have no effect. It's sacrificing a generation is predictably, profoundly effective on their development, their cognition and their mental health. And I always said early in the closures,

the Ukraine war broke out in the middle of all this. And there was a video I saw, a news report, and I just brought it up again and again, because it was so illustrative to me of women and their younger children streaming across the border to Poland. And there were reporters putting cameras in their faces as they came across and they all said the same thing.

This is terrible, we're having to leave our husbands and our sons behind to fight this war. But these kids have got to get back in school. They've been out of school for two weeks, two weeks. We have to get them back. And they put them in a country where they didn't speak the language. That's how important they thought school was.

Just put them in, let's get going, they'll learn it. Here we go, now you speak Polish. And that was the priority appropriate for education in the middle of a war. And yet we tossed that all away. What does it say about our country that we behaved so differently from many, many of our peer nations,

though the duration of school closures in America was extraordinary and unnecessary. And what I show repeatedly throughout the book is that the evidence from the very beginning, Drew, we knew that this, like I said, the academic literature had already pointed out that this wasn't going to be successful over a long term. It's possible that an immediate closure

in certain locations where there was a massive outbreak, it's possible that a school closure combined with everything else being shut down may have some limited benefit for a very brief window. But what we know is that over a long period of time, and there's some interesting studies on this that I point out,

you might do remember the St. Louis versus Philadelphia example? This was something that governors talked about. It was all over the media. They said basically St. Louis did the wrong thing. They had a big spike in cases, but Philly did their, I forget, or maybe it was the reverse, but one of those cities did the wrong thing.

They didn't stay home. There was a spike in cases. The other one did the right thing and it was gentle. It was sort of the, it was like the example of the cities did the wrong thing. They didn't stay home. There was a spike in cases. The other one did the right thing. And it was gentle. It was sort of the, it was like the example of the flat and the curve. We hear it, so that led to a lot of the closures and particular school closures.

This was used as a justification. Here's the problem with that. An analysis was done of the 1918 pandemic, including St. Louis and Philly and many, many other cities. What they found was over time, all the school closures did nothing at all. There was no benefit from the school closures. There was no correlation.

So you have this very arresting graphic of one city with a spike in cases, the other one where it's gentle. You're told, look what happened when you didn't follow directions, and everyone believed it. But they left out the ending. They only did the first chapter.

They left out the next five chapters where it wasn't effective. So we had this circumstance in our country where the schools remained closed for month after month after month. And as you know, in California, there were kids who didn't step foot in the classroom for over a year. Healthy kids were barred from a classroom. Well over a year, way over a year. And listen, they just didn't look at the X axis,

which was time. And so they weren't looking at the area under the curve, which was the total number of cases. And that's all that really matters. And in terms of the timeframe, the timeframe was to prevent the overcrowding of ICUs and hospitals. That's the whole reason we got involved in this logic,

this thinking in the first place and threw away our pandemic preparedness plan. Threw it away, just tore it up. That's exactly right. So there are a couple pandemic plans from the government. Two of them that I focus on, they're the most important, I think were from the CDC. One of them was in 2007,

and then they did a revision in 2017. And this was referred to specifically by CDC officials during the COVID pandemic. So we know that this was part of their guide that they ostensibly were following. And those guidebooks were deeply flawed. They were based on all sorts of dubious assumptions. The idea about how they built their models

was based on just a model on top of a model on top of a model. I bring readers through, I tried to find out, well, where did they get the information that went into this model? And you know, you see like a citation in a study. So I click on, oh, well, let me read that citation. That's where they must have got.

But then the citation just takes you to another model. And then that model takes you, it was just a models for your audience who don't know. This is just a prediction. It's not an actual study. And so I likened it to like Russian dolls where it's just the layers, it just kept opening, but it never ended.

And finally, one of them, I mean- I fear that climate science is a similar, I worry about that. Well, yes. But keep going, that's a different topic. I hear you, and one cannot help but wonder. You know, when you start to see how models are built, you can't help but wonder how that's gonna play out

for all sorts of things, including that. But finally, after the layer upon layer upon later, I keep digging down in these citations, trying to find out. One of them, because in the model they talked about, it was something like 37% of the transmission was occurring, would occur in schools. So they build the model based on these assumptions.

So deep in the supplement of one of the, of like, you know, eight layers deep of the citations, deep in the supplement, I see something where they say about the 37% figure. They said this number was chosen arbitrarily. Like people don't understand. This is like one of the many bombshells I have in the book. I've heard that like people do as bad as six feet, six feet, six feet was completely, completely brought out of thin air.

But as bad as people think this may have been, and as cynical as we are, people do not realize the half of it. The fact that the models that the whole response were built upon were in part based on an arbitrary number, but you have to go deep enough digging into the supplement to find out. So this type of thing just shows the really shaky science, But you have to go deep enough digging into the supplement to find out. So this type of thing just shows the really shaky science. But here's where it gets worse.

As bad as those guidebooks were, at least they were made during a sober period of time. They weren't done during an emergency. They had a plan. There was some logic in them. And they even talked about some of the harms that would come from school closures. So they had a lot of problems, but they had a plan. And as bad as they were, we then completely divorced ourselves from the plan.

So in some regards, we were two steps deep. First of all, we were following these very dubious plan books to begin with, and then we weren't even following them. We just went even further off, kind of reaching escape velocity, just where we were never to return. And I observed that very early on.

As you noted, the whole plan was, let's just flatten the curve, let's keep the hostiles from being overwhelmed. It's 15 days to slow the spread. I'm sure you remember the slogan. Well, as you know, what happened after 15 days, they added another 30 days. But do you remember big pushback in the media?

I don't, it just sort of happened. It's like the frog in the pot. The opposite. No. The opposite, because at that point I was saying, I kept saying two things. Well, two things I encountered. One was I kept saying, you know guys,

we had a pandemic 10 years ago and H H1N1 and it was brutal. It killed 300,000 people and you didn't know it happened. The Obama administration elected wisely not to make a big issue of it and to put their pandemic plan in place. And it killed a bunch of people and it passed. Political virus. But isn't what I kept saying, can't we now, isn't there an in-between reaction between what Obama did and now shutting, closing the world?

Isn't there some sort of intermediate? Like the Great Barrington Declaration, they had an intermediate plan, but no, no. And I was then met with two words from the press repeatedly that I swear to God, I'll get violent if I hear again, these are grim milestones and staggering numbers. I heard that over and over and over and over again. And at the time, that was at the beginning.

And I kept saying, you know, the numbers are gonna get big. What are you gonna call them then? Because they're not big yet. They are unfortunate that they're not big. Then they were just great milestone, great milestone, great milestone. Cumulative numbers too. You had to clean up all those stickers.

Yes. What's that say? I'm sorry. So for me, one of the things that kind of really set me on the path and that alarmed me was just kind of dovetailing with our point here about you add the 15 days, I live in the New York area, I wasn't knowledgeable about what was happening,

so I'm gonna go along with what the CDC says. I didn't necessarily fully believe them or know, but I didn't have enough knowledge to go against their guidance at the time. But once they added on the 30 days, the sort of spidey sense kind of began for me where I was trying to make sense of what was going on. And toward the end of April,

I was walking with a friend of mine on like a high school track at the time. And at that point in time, I was tracking what was going on with case rates and hospitalizations. The new cases in New York had dropped by 50% by the end of April. So I said to him, my friend, I said,

hey, this is great, we did it, man, we did it. We flattened the curve. You know, we were told what to do, we followed the instructions and we achieved the goal. We did it, we flattened the curve. So I said, do you think they're gonna open the school next week or something? And he was like, they're not opening the schools. I'm like, what do you mean? We did it, we flattened the curve. So I said, what do you think they're going to open the school next week or something? And he was like, they're not opening the schools.

I'm like, what do you mean? We did it. We flattened the curve. We did what we were told and it worked. Now we flatten the curve and they didn't open the schools. And that's, that was the first thing that even now, this many years later, even after spending years writing this book, I still, when I talk about this, it still kind of makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

It still is so alarming how things can happen when you're told, you know, the government has some degree, you know, of authority to act tyrannically if they think there's an emergency. But then they just kept extending it, and there wasn't any real evidence or reason given for why we achieved this thing we were told,

and then they didn't care and kept going. And then the second piece to that is, toward the end of April and the beginning of May, millions of kids began going back to school in Europe. And as you know, in Sweden, their lower schools kids... In Florida.... kids stopped going. And it took a little while for Florida before they went back. But in Europe, they began going back in the spring.

And the education ministers of the EU met in late May, and they said, there are 22 countries, 22 countries reopen schools. And they said, we've observed no negative consequences of this. Now, I watched this video over and over because it seemed like a mirage. How could I, it was almost like,

how could I be seeing this because no one was talking about it. This wasn't on the front pages of our papers, but isn't this the most important piece of evidence they were looking for? That Europe were our guinea pigs in effect. We should have opened our schools way earlier, but even if we didn't, once they reopened and they said this wasn't in like,

this wasn't a blog post, this wasn't in an obscure medical journal, this was a meeting at the EU. And they said, we've observed no negative consequence of 22 countries reopening their schools. And they met again in June and had the same determination. And no one, virtually no one covered this. And that to me, what I talk about in the book,

it's almost like the original sin, or one of the original sins at least, where at that point, we know health professional in America could honestly say that, well, we didn't know. There was so much we were learning. We're building the plane as we fly it. All these, you know, very exculpatory metaphors. None of them were true because millions of kids were already in school and they kept giving excuses, well, that's Europe. It's different. It doesn't count. No, there were cities and towns throughout Europe

that had the same population densities as cities and towns in America. Some of them had higher case rates. Some had lower case rates. It didn't matter. They opened their schools and there was no negative consequence that they observed. And by the way, as you surely know, they also didn't matter. They opened their schools and there was no negative consequence that they observed. And by the way, as you surely know, they also didn't have mask mandates on two year olds and stuff the way we had here. They did not have HEPA filters by and large. They did not have six feet of distancing across the board. Many of them were doing three feet or one meter or nothing at all.

All these excuses we were told were critical. We cannot open schools, they're not safe until we do this. They weren't doing any of that stuff there, yet somehow this was like ignored. It was as if we didn't have modern technology to understand what was happening across the Atlantic. So to me, it's very, very challenging to square how our public health

quote experts kept telling the American public with the aid of the legacy media that all these very special interventions needed to happen in order to get kids in school, even though we had the most perfect open study, natural study possible with millions of kids where none of this stuff was being used. At the time it really, it did not, you know,

the physicians, the medical community was cowering. They saw what happened to anyone who spoke up out of line, who challenged anything about the public health that the government was saying. So it was not the medical community doing it, although they were duplicitous, they weren't the chorus. It was the journalists, it was the press. So it really begs the question, what happened?

I mean, I hope you write at least two more books. One about the behavior of journalists during COVID, one about masks and one about the vaccines and the vaccine mandates in particular. Those three books need to be written because the history needs to be documented in the way you documented the school closure. But I should say a significant portion of my book

that School Closures is the launch point. You will be happy to know I have multiple chapters exclusively devoted to the media. Where I have like the media part one, part two, and part three where I basically dissect and take apart. You look at the anatomy of what happened in these like lengthy New York Times features and other pieces to understand what was actually going on

with journalists where I basically describe that they shirked the sort of core responsibility, which is to be skeptical of claims by those in power. When you think about what journalists traditionally are supposed to be doing, they're very skeptical of big business, of the government, of the church,

whatever it may be, all these large institutions that journalists typically, or at least ostensibly, are highly critical of, somehow that evaporated during the pandemic when it came to the public health authorities, which imposed arguably the single most invasive, you know, interventions on the American public in a generation, if not in history,

yet there was no question. Even history. Exactly. Sort of a draft. So it's so extraordinary. And what I discuss is, I think a lot of this comes back to a sort of political tribalism. The reality is most of the people who work

in our prestigious legacy media outlets tend to be from the same background and same political persuasion as those within the public health community. They all tend to lean toward the left and they also self-select for a certain type of person who's got, you know, you don't, you're not an iconoclast in generally

in getting in at the New York Times or moving up the ladder in public health. These people often are very smart and work very hard, but they're rule followers. They're people who tend to understand and want to be within the group. So when you have this group think between these two really important institutions,

the public health apparatus combined with the legacy media, it was basically unstoppable at that point. Because as you know, Trump in the middle of the summer or early summer had said in his way with a tweet in all caps, open the schools in the fall with a bunch of exclamation points. And once he did that, he ensured that half the schools in the fall with a bunch of exclamation points. And once he did that, he ensured that half the schools in the country would remain closed.

Because these people, it was intolerable to them to ever agree with Trump on anything. So once he said something, it became immediately radioactive and they had to take the opposite stance. And I give examples of how we know this is true because the American Academy of Pediatrics had come out very forcefully for opening schools.

They even said, don't worry about six feet of distancing. As soon as Trump made that tweet, within days, the AAP reversed its guidance. These people should be ashamed of themselves because they are not serving the interest of the public. They're serving these weird political derangements that they had at the time. But, and not only were they doing that, I agree with you,

but they also felt some grandiose privilege of setting public health policy, demanding shut lockdown, things like that they have no business even having an opinion about. So it begs the question still back to what happened to the journalists. I first had two thoughts at the time. One was who do they think they are?

They're setting public health policy. They think they should demand it. That's not journalism or one. And then why the overwhelming, you brought this up yourself, the overwhelming preoccupation with narrative story. Why don't you just report the facts? Why does it have to form some narrative

that you've conceived in your head? Why can't you just be a reporter, report the facts? What's going on there? Narrative formation is how policy essentially was both created and defended. And as you pointed out, I think at the beginning of our conversation, part of that narrative formation and sort of narrative, there's almost like a policing of the narrative, was the charge that anyone who disagreed was a fool, was, you know, you're a piece of garbage if you didn't wanna wear a mask and keep your six feet of distancing.

Nevermind that these rules were made up and arbitrary, you know, as I'm sure you're aware, that much of the mask, you know, defense of the mask, I mean, it's more based on studies such as ones that were done in a lab where they glued the mask to a mannequin's face. Like that is not how human beings operate. So, I mean, much of what I talk about in the book

is this sort of distance between something that might make intuitive sense and might look good in a lab study, but the distance between that and reality, because human beings are not mannequins. And generally, even healthcare professionals, and I'm sure you know about this, even they have trouble wearing a mask properly and tightly fitted for a long duration. And that's the professionals.

There was zero chance that children in the school, you have a bunch of five-year-olds wearing a mask that their parents bought off of Etsy or Amazon, that they were having any sort of effect on this. And sure enough, there's zero randomized trials that show that mask mandates in schools are effective. And they're not. In fact, there's quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, that they're just not effective.

And it's not because a mask theoretically will stop a virus from passing through. Yes, it can if it's glued to a mannequin's face, but humans don't behave that way. And it's the same thing with the school closures overall. Someone might intuitively think, well, yeah, there's a bunch of kids running around with snotty noses.

Sure, closing schools will probably have some benefit. But again, that is the distance between the theory and the reality, because the reality is, as we talked about earlier, over time, people don't comply with uncomfortable and difficult recommendations, just like you're not going to keep a mask tightly fit to your face for eight hours. People, even the introverts among us, don't stay sequestered at home for weeks and then months and months on end.

It doesn't happen. And sure enough, I point out in the book, there's a lot of mobile phone data that proves this, that even before they pulled back on a lot of guidance, people were already moving around. And that's to say nothing of a significant portion of the population of the first-line people who are out there working, who are always mixing in society.

And where were their children going? Well, some were left home alone, but many of them went with a grandparent or a neighbor or they went in some sort of childcare situation where they were mixing with kids from all different neighborhoods and towns, which it is argued is actually worse than just going to school

if you're concerned with viral sort of spread, that now, instead of kids being with the same group of kids every day at school, now they were mixing with all sorts of people. So what I try to point out is that there's such a chasm between what our intuition might tell us and what actually occurs in real life, that our intuitions are often wrong,

and that's particularly true with medicine. And I give a zillion examples through history where things that seem really obvious, like they might work, don't actually work once they're tested. And that's exactly what happened in the pandemic is that in America, our health professionals followed intuition and theory

and ignored empirical reality. It's why we have to do double-blind placebo controlled studies, crossover studies, is because the evidence is the evidence. And if you don't have the evidence, you can't say shit. That's just unfortunately the reality. And I've taught medicine for years. I've had to work on the thought processes

of young residents and medical students. And I understand it's not normal to think that way, but in medicine you have to think from the evidence exclusively. And to say something like I had to do something is how you do harm. It's why we press do no harm. And the fact that you have Francis Collins

and guys like that not contemplating the harm, it is disgusting. There's something wrong with that man. And then finally, you mentioned that no one is going to follow the recommendation of wearing a mask tightly fitting for eight hours. You know what? No one got that recommendation because everyone was told mask up between bites during the middle of the day. So they were encouraged to pull their mask down to eat. And that completely invalidates any effect on the mask at that point, which is just totally bizarre. That's how you knew this wasn't working. Mask up between bites. The most outrageous recommendation of all with masks. Right. Along with the, with the, on the airplanes, you know, where you're allowed to take it

off while you're having a drink and all that. I mean, the idea. Yes, exactly. The idea that a bunch of kindergartners were going to effectively have a mask on all day long was basically so dishonest that it was farcical. There was almost a fantasy. I'm gonna be charitable and say- David, it's delusional. It's actually mass delusion. It was delusional. I was saying at the time,- David, it's delusional. It's actually mass delusion.

It was delusional. I was saying at the time, in retrospect, it looks delusional. It is a thought disturbance. They were in an altered state. And I guess I've never been through one, but I guess being, you know, the behavior of crowds, Le Bon had it right, mass delusions happen.

And that's just the way it is. It's like a huge state. And you've, well, it's a collective loss of mind. It's a behavior of crowds. I mean, I started, I found myself reading books like the True Believer and what was Gustave Le Bon's book. I started reading them at that time, because I'm like, this is something,

this is not normal, they're disturbed. This is something wrong. There's something wrong with people's thinking. And you sort of hinted at it being their political derangement. Yeah, I think that was made up in the sort of igniting issue, but it was panic. And the panic always makes things worse

and panic goes into delusion eventually. So, well, listen, I just so appreciate if you're writing this book. I'm delighted to hear that you take on the press. I can't wait to read this. I do say that you should on the press, I can't wait to read this. I do say that you should tackle the vaccines because we need a rational, even conversation. Mandates is where they, just no one could defend the mandates.

It's just completely off the rail. But it seems to me, humbly, but maybe you'll come up with a defense for it when you write your book. No, there was no reason to mandate them. For a vaccine that doesn't stop transmission or infection. Don't even, and it hurts young people, harms them, and we're just starting to deal with that.

But again- You might have helped the old people at the beginning. Yes, I listened. I gave it to my elderly patients, and some of them, I think, benefited from it. I really do, but- I mean, that's what it was made for. Elderly people-

I should have been, I should have been. Remember, teachers in many places were moved to the priority line for the vaccine, and then they still didn't go back to school in many places were moved to the priority line for the vaccine. And then they still didn't go back to school in many places even after they went ahead of more vulnerable people. Just wanted to add that in since you're talking about the vaccine.

No, of course. And when I was tweeting with you earlier last week, people were like, oh, what about the teachers? What about the teachers? The kids have to save the teachers. It did not affect the teachers. But millions of people died, don't forget. Yes, it was a terrible virus.

It killed millions of people, and it would have done so anyway. That's it, that's the way it works. What you've described is the exact argument people keep giving to me is, do you know how many people died? I'm like, whether it's 10,000 or 10 million, that still doesn't mean that these interventions

were effective, would ever be effective. It's irrelevant. And that they didn't add to the harm dramatically. Exactly. A whole generation of, and by the way, in terms of years of life lost and years of productivity and years of illness, mental illness and cognitive, years upon years,

massively more impactful than us losing a lot of 80 year olds which was horrible, but it's way worse. So there we are, the years of life loss people, you've got to take that into account. Older generations are supposed to take care of younger generations. That's the social contract and we failed. We failed on that. Disgusting.

Any of that, are you having any other books coming up or things on your radar? Should we look forward to it? This is it. I just hope people will read this. The vaccine mandate, I'm gonna have you write. Yes. Because while you know this and your audience knows it,

it's really important that I wanted to set the record straight that because otherwise you have this convenient, exculpatory narrative of, well, we did the best we could. That is what most people within the establishment are saying now. So I hope my book for people will serve as this counterweight to try, at least we'll have something in the quote official record

saying, no, we knew from day one what was going on. This is not a retrospective Monday morning quarterbacking, this book takes you through chronologically in real time, here's what was known, so we actually have a historical record of the failure of the expert class that happened. Yep, there we were, davidsweig.com is where you can go,

Z-W-E-I-G, Davidzweig on X. Silentlunch.net is the newsletter, is that correct? That's an homage to, they barred children from speaking during lunch in many schools. So I named my sub stack after that completely bonkers practice. They were not allowed to talk. Little kids were having silent lunches while sitting on the concrete outside in New York City

and other places. So that is the odd name of the newsletter, silentlunch.net. You will not cease to talk. You have an important story to tell and the history must be remembered as it happened, not as some, we wish it had happened or make ourselves feel better about what we did.

Silent Lunch, and then of course the book is An Abundance of Caution, which is a cautionary tale in and of itself. David Zweig, such a pleasure, thank you so much. Yeah, I'm really glad to have the opportunity to chat with you. Appreciate it, stay in touch, thank you. And coming up, we are taking a little time off here.

We come back with Jenny McCarthy, as I said, on the 16th, I think it is. 15th. 15th, okay. Of Caleb put the upcoming guest on the board. There we got a lot of great Tim. All I keep thinking is this is what socialism feels like. So, I'm not sure. We know, we understand.

Silence your children. Put a mask on, stand six feet apart from one another. It's socialism. Put up a glass barricade. It's Soviet, Sovietoid. You know, it's like really, yeah, but really like the worst form. Gary Brekha, biology hacker. We're going to get into him.

We're gonna get into, I can't see quite who follows there where I'm reading. Lauren Delano is on the 20th. Lauren Delano, 22nd. She is with the book, Unshrunk, Tim Pool. We've got Clayton Baker. I'm looking forward to talking to him. He's written a great book I've just recently read.

And Coulter, a lot of good stuff. We appreciate you guys supporting us. Caleb, tell them what you're gonna put up next week so they can look for it I have a bunch of classic episodes that I'm lining up These are the ones that are may have been right at the early part of the pandemic people like probably dr Zelenko is gonna be in there rest in peace. We're gonna have early ones of dr. J Bhattacharya that I'm lining up they're gonna be We're gonna have early ones of Dr. J Bhattacharya that I'm lining up. They're gonna be live streamed back out again, and you'll know, it'll be show on the screen that this is a replay of something,

but really to bring up some of these classic episodes and remind people of what you went through back then, Drew. Like back in these early days, you were trying to tell people all this stuff and people weren't, it was tough. It was tough. They kept trying to censor you and they still try to. But Drew, I actually have a question before you leave because I know you're going to go out of town and this is breaking news. Can you explain why a lot of people, experts, health experts are alarmed at the fact

that RFK Jr. wants to order placebo testing for new vaccines? This just came out today in Washington Post. I don't understand. I was going to read Vinay Prasad's sort of defense of this, why this needs to happen. And I was gonna use it when people asked me this question, I haven't had a chance to read it yet,

but I don't understand why it's an issue at all. I guess their alarm is that they won't stand up to scientific scrutiny and that somehow that will hurt people if they don't sign up to, I don't understand why you'd be afraid. Nothing's gonna happen in the meantime why you would be afraid of seeking the truth. I don't understand it.

It's just very hard for me. The argument I've seen, which I do understand, which is that, well, if you're trying to save people who might be suffering or dying, and then you're giving some of people a placebo, then you're allowing them to suffer more. But I also think at the same time, just the lack of confidence

that so many people have in public health now, that is a, that's a disaster. That has to be fixed. And I think the way to fix it is to do these studies. This is what the moms have been asking for for decades. Just do the studies. Just do it. Let's be clear.

There are a lot of people who willingly don't want to take vaccines. There are a lot of those people out there and they can be the control group, everybody. So there you go. So it's not as if treatment will be withheld from some group who would otherwise take it. But in the study, so that makes no sense at all. Nobody's going to do the study though. NIH can do it. Kennedy says he's going to do it.

He just announced placebo control studies. Yeah. Nobody's going to do the study though. NIH going to do it. Kennedy says he's going to do it. He just announced placebo control. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for all new vaccines is what he said. Any new vaccines, he says, have to go through these placebo controlled trials, or at least that's what he's proposing that he's going to have to do, which why not? If they work, build the confidence back up in them. There's a loss of confidence in it.

And just why don't you just do the studies? And if it comes out the way that people have been saying for decades and fine Isn't that gonna save a lot of lives? Let's just do the studies guys and Then I would urge you to follow Vinay Prasad Vinay Prasad is one of the best medical commentators out there and he has been Spot-on all the way through the pandemic and he continues to be to this moment.

All right, y'all, we'll see you with Janie McCarthy on the, is that the 15th, Caleb, am I getting that right? That's a new show coming up a week after next. We'll be out of the country for a little while and Gary Brekka, that looks all great. That's Thursday, the 15th of May. And Ann Coulter, we got a lot. These are all my friends.

That's when we'll be back. Tim Pool, we'll get all that coming your way. And we appreciate your support. Please support people that support us. Continue to buy their great products. We just are so, so, so fortunate to have these great products on board with us. And I use them all day long.

Somebody asked when will Adam be on? Susan has been working on that. She's been bugging me about that. We've talked about getting Tyrus back on here. Speaking of recreating the pandemic era. We'll get him back in here and maybe get Kat back in here. She needs to go off and everyone that's attacking her for being a bad mom.

We will see you all when- He's already a bad mom. She's fine, but people love attacking moms for anything that's not perfect in their eyes. So I told everybody on YouTube to mention rumble to see if we could get a strike because Casey Gates said that they're doing strikes for saying rumble on YouTube. Is that right? Yeah.

Then we can complain about being censored. Oh my God. Let me look at the restream real quick. Messing with the algorithm. Yeah. Your question, Anna Carl. Let's see anything on the rumble range. Hey everybody on YouTube. Let's hear a rumble over there. Say, I love rumble. All right,

wrap this up and we'll see you all in about 10 days or so. Thank you so much for being here. Two weeks almost. We'll see you then. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving.

Though my opinion is based on the information that is available to me today, some of the contents of this show could be outdated in the future. Be sure to check with trusted resources in case any of the information has been updated since this was published. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, don't call me, call 911. If you're feeling hopeless or suicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. You can find more of my recommended organizations and helpful resources at DrDoo.com slash help.