Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 562 | Why Didn’t Trump Fire Dr. Fauci? | Guest: Dr. Scott Atlas

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Today we're talking to Dr. Scott Atlas, a former White House advisor on COVID policy and author of the new book, "A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America." We discuss the disorganized mess that was the American response to COVID from Dr. Atlas' insider perspective and how bureaucracy and politics ended up winning out over science and common sense. Of course Dr. Fauci is largely responsible for this, but there is another figure, Dr. Deborah Birx, who doesn't get as much attention and yet was possibly more instrumental than Fauci in laying the groundwork for the government's insistence on lockdowns, masks, and vaccines. We also provide an update to the information in yesterday's episode about the Biden administration providing crack pipes to drug addicts; Snopes tried to "fact check" this story, but, as usual, they just wound up proving us right. --- Today's Sponsors: Carly Jean Los Angeles is a helpful, inspiring resource to guide women in building capsule wardrobes to make getting dressed a joy every day. They do the hunting for YOU & provide clothes that are effortless, easy, and flattering on any shape, size, age, or season. Go to CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com & use promo code 'ALLIEB' to save 20% off your first order. A'del Natural Cosmetics is a family-run, holistic, handcrafted & toxin-free cosmetic company where of their products are made in the USA. Their cosmetics are made in small batches without the use of parabens, synthetic fragrances or preservatives, nano particles, petrol products, etc. Go to AdelNaturalCosmetics.com & enter promo code 'ALLIE' to save 25% off your order. --- Show Links: Snopes: "Did Biden Admin 'Fund Crack Pipes' To 'Advance Racial Equity'?" https://bit.ly/3GLVcXf HHS.gov: "Statement by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and ONDCP Director Rahul Gupta" https://bit.ly/3oH3IRs City Journal: "Covid's Three Blind Mice" https://bit.ly/3Jk0GKy --- Previous Episodes Mentioned: Ep 561: Free Crack Pipes & the Cruelty of Progressive Compassion https://apple.co/34NzZ1S Ep 544: Why American COVID Policy Has Failed Us & How to Fix It | Guest: Dr. Bret Weinstein https://apple.co/3BbFoMt --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers, Kraft Beef, Better Than Organic Chicken shipped right to your front door. Just go to good ranchers.com slash alley for a discount.

That's good ranchers.com. slash alley. Okay, today we are talking to Dr. Scott Atlas. He was part of the COVID task force in the Trump White House. And he recently wrote this bombshell book called A Plague Upon Our House, My Fight at the Trump White House to stop COVID from destroying America. And as you will hear him say today, it really wasn't COVID that destroyed America as much as it was the COVID policies that were being pushed by unscientific bureaucrats. Deborah Birx, Anthony Fauci, the head of the CDC. He reveals so much behind the scenes corruption that was and is going on. This is going to be an enlightening conversation. This is going to be in some ways a frustrating conversation. He obviously has a medical

background, Dr. Atlas, as a radiologist. He is also Robert Wesson's Senior Fellow in Healthcare Policy at the Hoover Institution. And he has been in the thick of this fight over the past couple of years. And he has a lot to tell us today. You are going to love this conversation. Before we get into that, I do want to follow up on what we talked about yesterday, the free crack pipes for equity story. If you haven't listened to that episode or watch that episode on YouTube, definitely go do that. But I wanted to follow up on it because Snopes published a fact check on this story. After it started circulating, it was originally reported, at least on what I saw, in the Washington Free Beacon. And you had a lot of conservatives picking up this story, reporting on it.

Of course, relatable included in that. And then you had a response from last. journalist, particularly in the left-wing salon news outlet, and then from Snopes, and then even Jensaki and the HHS responded to these claims that the Biden administration was going to use American tax dollars to provide crack pipes in what's called safe smoking kits as a part of, quote, harm or risk reduction. So Snopes responded to this. And basically, said no, that's not true. So originally yesterday, their fact check said that this is mostly false. Except in their fact check, what they said was, okay, yes, crack pipes are going to be

included in these, quote, safety or safe smoking kits. But crack pipes are just one of the many things that are going to be included in these smoking kits. There's also going to be syringes. There's also going to be disinfectant. And so it wasn't actually mostly false. It was just that they didn't like that conservatives were focusing on the crack pipe part of the story and not, I guess, all of the other items that were going to be in the smoking kits. However, Snopes has now updated their facts check to say that this is not mostly false. It's just outdated. So here's what Snopes has to say.

They say that the articles and social media posts were misleading, giving readers the. the impression, a reductive presentation and the false impression that they were only including crack pipes in these safe smoking kits. And they say, it's true that grant description required the provision of harm reduction supplies and listed safe smoking kits as an example, an established component of harm reduction strategy. Remember yesterday I said that that is a very propaganda phrase. There really is no safe way to encourage an.

enable people to smoke crack and take fentanyl and things like that. But in reality, Snope says those kits constituted just one of several subcomponents of an even longer list of requirements for grant recipients. In other words, while outraged media coverage focused almost exclusively on crack pipes, this was actually only a very small part of the program, Snope says. They go on to say this was their original fact check. Secondly, the provision of safer smoking supplies did not have as its purpose advancing the cause of racial equity. Rather, its purpose was quite logically, so unbiased Snopes, to reduce harm

and infection among existing drug users. However, so again, they do the fact check and then they follow up and they explain why the conservatives were actually correct. However, Snopes says the grant description did state that priority would be given to applicants who serve communities that are historically underserved. In other words, the grant's terms encourage recipients to advance racial equity while working for harm reduction. Okay, so this is what Snopes does. They rate a claim by conservative outlet or conservative social media users as false or mostly false or grossly misleading.

And then they just explain why the conservative take was correct. Obviously, that's not true. And every single claim that circulates in right-wing social media and right-wing media, but that was certainly the case here. It's been the case many times. in the past. So then they go on to update this particular fact check, this original fact check by saying, however, after this fact was published, Snopes says, the Department of Health and Human Services on February 9th provided Snopes's statement, which stipulated that federal funding would

not be used to include pipes and smoking kits as part of the harm reduction plan. As a result, the accurate component of early news reports that safe smoking kits typically contain glass pipes was no longer applicable and that initial wave of outrage was rendered outdated. As such, Snopes has changed its rating from mostly false to outdated. So here's what the HHS specifically said. Here's what their statement said. And we have to listen very carefully to this. HHS and ONDCP, that's the Office of National Drug Control Policy,

are focused on using resources smartly to reduce harm and save lives. Accordingly, no federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent. reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits. The goal of harm reduction is to save lives. The administration is focused on a comprehensive strategy to stop the spread of drugs and curb addiction, including prioritizing the use of proven harm reduction strategies like fentanyl test strips and clean syringes and also taking decisive actions to go after violent criminals who are trafficking illicit drugs like fentanyl across our borders and into

our communities. All right. There are so many things I want to say about. that. Let's be very careful in reading this statement because the devil is in the details or sometimes the lack of what has actually said, the lack of details that's provided in a statement. But there is one detail here that I think that we need to pay attention to that I think tells us what is actually going on. No federal funding will be used directly or through subsequent reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in safe smoking kits.

That does not say that pipes will not be in safe smoking kits, but that federal funding will not be used directly or through the reimbursement of grantees to put pipes in the safe smoking kits. So we don't know whether or not crack pipes will actually be provided to these drug addicted people, people suffering from drug addiction. They're just saying that federal funding is not going to be used for that. We know that in states that actually provide these so-called safe smoking kits, that crack pipes are typically included as well as syringes. Of course, we talked about everything that's going on in San Francisco yesterday. I won't rehash that now. Like I said, go listen to that episode. So I think the fact that Snopes is not saying that it's completely false, that Snopes is now saying it's outdated and that the HHS is being very careful not to say that crack pipes are not going to be included, but only that are federal funds, which I don't even totally believe.

our federal funds aren't going to be funding the purchase and the distribution of that particular item. I think that tells us that there is a lot of truth to this story. And also, there's obviously a lot of truth to the racial equity aspect of it because even Snopes was forced to admit that. And even if the crack pipes are not being provided to people who are suffering from drug addiction, apparently syringes are. So again, this administration is enabling in some ways drug use. And we talked about how, yes, there are different programs in a variety of states in the United States and a variety of countries across the world that have tried these things. But the countries across the world who have been doing this effectively are not enabling

and attempting to destigmatize public drug use the way progressive cities in the United States are. So I think that they just got a little bit nervous. the administration got a little nervous, the liberal media, maybe the HHS got a little nervous about this, and they kind of wanted to backpedal. Jin Saki did say that the crack pipes apparently are not part of this plan. Again, I would say that's kind of careful rhetoric. I just wanted, though, to provide you guys with that information and with that clarification because it's one of my jobs to give you as much information as possible.

You guys know, I'm going to have my particular perspective. on it. I'm going to have my particular take. I don't hide where I'm coming from. But I also want you guys to know as much as possible, do your own research and arrive at your own conclusions. That's one reason why we always include links in the description of these episodes, because I want you guys to read these things on your own. So we'll do that again today. And I just wanted to make sure that I added that bit of clarification. It's a valid story. It's a ridiculous story. It's an absurd story. It's a really sad story. And if you want to hear about the worldview implications of it, again, listen to yesterday's episode. Hey, this is Steve Day.

If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos.

If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Dr. Atlas, thank you so much for joining us. You wrote a book, which I've heard you talk about a few times, a plague upon our house, my fight at the Trump White House to stop COVID from destroying America. So for those who don't know, I'm guessing there's a lot of people in the audience who are already familiar, but for those who don't know, why did you decide to write this book? Well, really, I tried to write it for three reasons. Number one, to set the record straight for the American people on who these people were that were really in charge of the White House policy.

And what I mean by that is the White House Task Force, the faces of public health leadership that that wrote all the policy to the governors, the guidelines, and that set the policy to the states and their local health officials by visiting. And that means Dr. Deborah Birx, who was the official White House task force coordinator, which means she was in charge of the medical advice coming out of the task force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was the most visible face of the federal guidelines and advice on the medical side. And Dr. Redfield, who is the head. head of the CDC, the most influential public health agency, as we know. So that was reason number one to show people, the American people, what kind of level of incompetence, lack of scientific

thinking, lack of critical thinking, lack of scientific preparation I encountered when I walked in there at the end of July beginning of August 2020. The second reason was to set the facts straight without the filter that distorted the facts from the media, social media, the politicized government bureaucracies, and academia, frankly, that distorted, lied, censored dissenting views, et cetera. I wanted to set the facts straight because these facts have been censored. And then the third reason, the biggest reason of all, is that people need to understand what's happened now. We are a society.

The pandemic management has exposed serious problems in America's society as well as other places, but we care about the U.S. because it's my country. And so, you know, we see a lack of trust now in public health, a lack of trust in the media, in the government, all the institutions that we rely on for truths so that we can make assessments as individuals of what's best for ourselves and our families, that trust has been shattered by erratic statements, by politicized statements, by censorship actions, and all kinds of things that we never thought would happen in this country. We need to fix that because we need to have free flow of information so that we as a free society

can make assessments and solve future crises without that free flow of information. And that means without intimidation, without censure, without overt censorship. If we don't have that information, how are we as individuals going to make decisions, going to be able to tell what's true from what's false and going to help our own families and our children? So we need to fix these institutions. And I'm sure once you kind of got into the Trump administration, you even were a little shocked. It sounds like about the lack of following the science that was occurring within this team that was supposed to be on the front lines of fighting COVID.

Deborah Birx, as you said, in Dr. Fauci. Now, Dr. Fauci has been subject to probably the most criticism from the, the right. But you seem to be arguing that it's really Deborah Birx, who was the author of a lot of the policies that were not based in science, were based in, I'm not sure, paranoia feelings, hubris. Can you talk a little bit more about that? What was going on once you joined the task force, I think, in August of 2020? And what did you see specifically from Deborah Berks? Sure. What I saw was shocking. And I think since I'm the only one who's, willing to say the truth about what actually happened in the task force, I think it's critical

for people to read this because I go through the specifics, but I was shocked because, A, I was naive. I was asked by the president by the White House to help in the biggest health care crisis in a century. I'm a health policy expert working for more than 10 years full time in that after finishing a 25-year history in academic medicine. And the behavior that I saw when I entered the task force discussions, as he said in the early August of 2020, was shockingly opposite that of the scientific process of exchanging in a debate about the actual data, about being sophisticated. I was the only one that walked into these meetings.

When I was asked a question, I was prepared and cited the literature. I had 15, 20 different publications from the world scientific journals in my hand. I went through and critiqued those studies. I went through and said what studies were not reliable because the study design was flawed and therefore the conclusions were not valid. And what I saw was the opposite. What I saw were bureaucrats. Fauci and Berks were in their bureaucratic positions.

government positions for 35, 40 years. The way you survive in that sort of position is not because you're politically neutral and some kind of scientific expert. It's because you're politically savvy. You have, you know, made friends in the health agencies, made friends in the media. They personally had friends in the media and would refer to the media by first names and then run to the media and distort and have their views sort of, they would try to, basically, What I saw was when I presented the data, I was met with either science, I mean, either silence, not science, silence, or accusations that I was, quote, an outlier. Never once did Fauci, Berks, or Redfield bring in a scientific publication from a journal. Never once was there a critique of any of the published literature.

Never once, in fact, did those three disagree with each other? Never, never once. That's unheard of in science in an evolving situation. And what's more, I brought in experts that were actually doing the research. Remember, these people were sequestered in their government bureaucrat positions. I was an outsider, but I also brought in. I thought, okay, what the president needs to hear are answers to his questions from the people doing the research. So I assembled a group of scientists from the best institutions in the country who were doing the research on the pandemic from UCLA, Tufts University, Harvard, Stanford. And they came in and met with the president. They came in and met with the vice president. Deborah Birx refused to attend the meeting, even though the meeting was scheduled specifically so she could attend. At the last second, she pulled out for personal reasons, not because she had a scheduling conflict, and then went to the media.

and the House of Representatives and said there was, quote, parallel stream of information coming to the president that didn't go through her. Well, that's because she couldn't stand up, apparently, to the scientific process, which is talking to the people doing the research, debating, defending what your position is, learning from them. That's the role of an advisor. It's not to be a filter. It's not to have people cover your behind so that you maintain your status.

And then what we saw really unconscionably revealed later, if I can go on, was we saw A, Dr. Birx told the media that she, and I didn't know this at the time, she came forward to the media and said there was a pact between she, herself, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Redfield, that if any of them were removed by President Trump, they would all resign. Is that the behavior of people that are trying to help the country? Is that the behavior people are confident in what they know? Is that the behavior of expert scientists? Or is that the behavior of politically motivated, sort of ego-driven bureaucrats? I'll let people answer that question.

I mean, this is second thing we saw that was revealed in these FOIA requests of emails was there was an active effort by another unconscionable bureaucrat named Francis Collins, who was the head of the NIH. who shamefully ended his career by colluding with the media with Dr. Fauci. These are emails I wasn't aware of when I was in the White House, trying to, quote, take down the scientists who opposed their views, including myself by manipulating stories in the media. This kind of behavior was really a heinous abuse of the public trust.

We can never let this sort of incompetent, politically driven bureaucrat be given the public trust as if they are the real experts. Yeah, you know, it's hard for me to imagine that this is really about incompetence. I know we don't want to impugn anyone's motives and you want to attribute to ignorance or incompetence. What, you know, you don't want to attribute to malice. And I understand that. But it's very difficult because even if Deborah Birx and Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci are

bureaucrats, they do have scientific backgrounds. It's not like the scientific method is foreign to them. They know what science looks like. They know what scientific studies are. And yet, when it comes to some of the most consequential policies that were put in place based on their recommendations, they seem to not care about the science at all. And I just want to read this quote from an article about you and your book from City Journal. It says this. And one of Atlas's first meetings with Deborah Burke, he asked her what she considered the strongest scientific evidence for the efficacy of masks against COVID. She cited a report published by the CDC about a hair salon of Missouri where two stylus infected with COVID had worn masks that supposedly prevented the virus from

infecting their customers. So that was the greatest piece of evidence that she had for recommending masks. And I guess Fauci's recommendation of masks too, did they ever present any more evidence to support their proposal of people of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, universal masking? Well, I mean, it was embarrassing to listen to what they said. You know, I mean, at times one of them, Fauci, I related these stories in the book, Fauci held up, or Redfield held up a single chart of a single state and said, I have proof that mass work.

Mind you, this is seven, eight months after they kept insisting it was proven, by the way. And they show, he shows a chart of a single state showing, oh, Look, they put mass on by the governor's mandate and the cases came down. I mean, this is the most almost infantile, naive assessment of cause versus correlation that a scientist, there were dozens of other states that didn't have that all over the world. That's not proof of anything. And in fact, Fauci did the same thing by stating that two states, one had mass, one didn't. I mean, you know, there was a body of literature proving that masks didn't work,

published by the CDC itself in May 2020 for influenza virus. And that's relevant because influenza is the same size roughly as this virus. But this was already known that widespread masking was not effective. It was proven. It wasn't a question. These people didn't know the literature, but they also, okay, so it's hard to put guesses on why people would say that. But I can tell you this. Even the non-scientists in the task force would finally pipe up and say, that's ridiculous.

That doesn't prove anything. Because at one point, you know, I eventually became frustrated with what I thought was just incredibly low-level statements made by people who should know better. So I was sort of burned out at some point along the way. And other non-scientists in the room would say what they were saying was ludicrous. And you know what? What is the motivation? Okay, number one, it's gross incompetence.

That is true. I'm sorry, but people have this fantasy that these people were experts. They are not experts. They didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't know the literature at all. That's number one. So Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, you're saying they did not know the literature, correct? They never.

But they're not illiterate. So that's why I keep on just wanting to ask why. And I know you can't answer that because we don't know their motivation. but it's not like they can't read. And so I just, why? Okay, well, okay, there's another part of this, before I go into the things you're sort of implying, there's another part, which is the way these bureaucrats function

is they ask other people to give them information in their own sort of entourage, in their own hierarchical setup. I read the papers myself. I sat there and read through and dissected the papers myself. I made the phone calls myself to the people who did their research. These people would send out email saying, does anybody have any information to refute Scott Atlas? Wow.

I mean, this is like, you know, it really, you know, embarrassing to them. Yes. The second part is, you know, these people had other motivations. There's a corruption in the science structure in the United States. It's not necessarily purely financial, but there's a very, unhealthy relationship between the people who are in charge of all the funding of science. That is the NIH. They're in charge of most of the funding of research.

The people who are in the universities, the scientists, they can't get promoted without getting NIH grants. Their careers are dead without NIH grants. They can't do the research that's needed to get promoted. The people reviewing their research are the editor journals that also review the funding applications with the NIH people for NIH grants. France, and it's all this one sort of cartel that controls people's career. So there's no mystery on why an assistant professor at a university who's a top researcher

would feel intimidated and reluctant to criticize something that Dr. Fauci would say, for instance, if it's Fauci controls his career. The third part of this corruption is there's an unhealthy relationship between these people's individual incomes and things like pharma and consulting contracts and uh you know the vaccine industry etc so and then the last part is these people are morally bankrupt and that's a judgment I'm making and I'm happy to make it because I saw it with my own eyes these are people as public health leaders that number one Dr. Fauci I quoted in the book as saying the problem is people aren't afraid enough. Okay, this is when the country was fearful beyond belief in August of 2020.

That's, that's unethical to want to make people afraid as a public health leader. That is beyond moral bankruptcy. The second part of the moral bankruptcy is these people wanted to stop COVID-19 cases at all costs, yet public health involves considering the impact of everything you're doing on the public health. Okay. And instead, I was the only one, literally the only one in any meeting I went to, whoever voiced the concern about the impact of the lockdowns that they were advising, the miss medical care.

The lockdowns killed people, miss medical care, miscancer screenings, you know, suicides, opioid abuse, not to mention severe child abuse, all the impacts on children that the school closures. These are massive problems. The average person, 18 to 24 in the United States, had a 252% of people had an unwanted weight gain in that age group, college age kids in the U.S., during the lockdowns of 2020, and that weight gain averaged 28 pounds.

That's a public health disaster, right? That's not just two to five pounds. I mean, that's a lot. Right. That's not cosmetic. Right. Yeah, these people became obese. okay, two-thirds of cancer screenings or more didn't get done.

We're seeing articles today, actually, it was released, that something like 10 million cancer screenings didn't get done. That's not because of the virus. Right. It's because of the lockdowns. It's because of the advice. And I want to have to say this very clearly. Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci, they advised to do the lockdowns, and they got what they wanted.

The lockdowns were implemented all over the country with rare acceptance. They failed to stop the spread of the infection. They failed to stop people from dying. And those lockdowns killed people and destroyed millions of families, particularly low-income families and the poor. So they got what they wanted. Where's the first step, which is saying, admitting they were grossly wrong. We must have honesty from public health leaders or we will never trust them again.

And when we cannot trust people who are in charge, what do we have as a society? Yeah. And, you know, that's a hallmark of bureaucrats is that they never have to apologize for the consequences of their bad ideas. So it was Deborah Birx, who was recommending to the governors, correct, to shut things down and to mandate masking. Is that right? In writing, there was a one official source of the White House task force. guidance to all the governors. It was written by Dr. Birx. She visited dozens of states personally met with the governors and with the public health officials in the states, went on TV while she

was doing those visits, sometimes with the vice president, sometimes with without officially, all the six months before I was there, the months I was in the White House, three months, three and a half months, and after I left, and those were implemented. I went and visited one single state during the time I was in the White House, that was Florida. They did something different. They did not have the collateral damage that the lockdowns occurred, and they did as well or better. They did better than most states by the data in COVID. So, you know, Dr. Berks was the person in charge of the medical guidance, and she got what she wanted. And you may have heard this bizarre or Wellian attempt to rewrite history by her going on the media and testifying

to the House saying, somehow blaming people who were opposed to what was implemented for the failure of what was implemented. And she recommended what was implemented. And I know that we're supposed to kind of memory whole all of this. But I think back to the very beginning in February of 2020 when it was actually Democrats who were saying, you know, this is not as big of a deal as Donald Trump is saying, you had Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Bill de Blasio saying, come on down to Chinatown. It's fine. This is not a big deal. And then, you know, calling Donald Trump xenophobic when he said that he wanted to try to bar travel from China. And then things shifted really quickly to where it was actually Trump that was being accused of not caring about this enough, not taking it seriously enough.

And that was just one example of the kind of back and forth in the flip-flopping from these bureaucrats. And I would say from the Democratic Party. But I also remember when Anthony Fauci did an interview towards the beginning of all of this, really kind of condescending the idea of wearing masks and saying that it was stupid to think that this could stop the spread of a virus and people might actually have negative consequences from it because they could gain a false sense of security from wearing. the mask. And then somewhere in there, that so drastically shifted to if you don't wear a mask, it's because you hate grandmothers and you all, you want them all to die. And it's because you're selfish. I'm a Christian. And so we heard a lot from Christians, including Francis Collins, by the way, that we hate people. We don't love our neighbor and we don't love Jesus if we're not wearing a mask. And what we were told is that the science changed. The science changed behind that. The data

changed to the point where we really had to start universal masking. I think it was about in late summer of 2020. And I know, again, we don't know the why, but, and that was actually, I think, before you came to the White House to help out. But can you talk about specifically masks? Like, what was behind that? Why did the public opinion? Why did Fauci's opinion change about masks?

From the kind of belittlement about masks to the dogmatism that we saw from him and the media about them? Yeah. I mean, you know, the mass, the whole mass scenario has a life of its own. And it's really going to go down historically as one of the most embarrassing failures of critical thinking and denial of fact during this entire era. And just to pick up on what you're saying before I answer the question, that's continuing today because we're now seeing some of these people who are posing as experts, particularly on CNN, there's some of the question. somebody on there who masquerades as knowledgeable about public health, who now says the science has changed, you don't need mass. There's been no change in the science. Zero. Zero change. They have

been lying or denying fact or not knowing fact. It's one of those three things. They either don't know the facts. They're denying the facts intentionally or lying. There is no in between the data showed before this pandemic even began really toward the beginning, all the clinical trials on mass showed that masks do not work to either protect the wearer or stop the transmission in the general public sense. This is published by the CDC, published by University of Oxford Center for Evidence-based Medicine. And then what happened was we saw the obvious evidence, which is that cases exploded with mask mandates in place, with mass usage in place. And I've put this all in my book.

But, you know, the studies came out then to corroborate that mass populated, a population-based masking did not stop the spread of the infection. And it did not stop people from getting the infection. The study was done, first of all, Denmark, published in, I think, November 2020, after months of trying to get it published. And finally succeeding, they took 6,000 people. It's a randomized clinical trial. It's the best type of clinical trial you can do. Half of them wore masks. Half of them did not wear masks. There was no statistically significant difference between getting infected in the two groups. None. By the way, that's not cloth masks. That's surgical

masks. There's another distortion being told to people. And of course, nobody has the time to go through all the studies themselves. It's the surgical mask also that were proven to have no significant impact. The next study was University of Louisville that was finally published in the spring of 2021 that proved that by analyzing all the states that the mask mandates did not reduce the spread and the mask usage, the mask usage, mask wearing did not reduce the spread of the infection. This is proven. It's not learned over the past few months. And so when we hear these people claim that masks work, you know, we see even in Florida,

if you talk about masking in schools, which of course is the most preposterous, let alone abusive thing that we've done to kids, kids do not have a significant risk, healthy kids from a serious illness of COVID. That's fact. That's proven all over the world. yet we're going to somehow double down and force them to wear masks. This is absurd. But when you look at the data in Florida, we have the data.

Some schools had masks in place on all children. Other schools didn't do the mask mandates and didn't have people wearing masks in school. There was no significant difference between the number of cases. So this is proven. It's not learned. And to hear them sort of try to, okay, back out of and say, oh, oh, cloth masks don't work. the science has changed. They're lying. They don't know what they're talking about or it's even worse than that. There's some sort of an intentional, you know, abuse of the public here in trying

to control people. I don't know. I have no idea what their motivation is, but we know this. The data is there that shows that widespread population maps do not work, period. That's known. That's proven. It shouldn't even be discussed anymore. Yeah, and the data is really accessible and available. This is not some secret where you have to have some password in order to get into the, you know, crypt of scientific data that shows that universal masking doesn't work. All you have to do is look at the states who have had mask mandates and the states that have not had mask mandates and just look at their case rates. You can even look at their hospitalization and death rates and there's no significant difference.

Now, the thing that, again, makes me wonder if there are some nefarious motivations behind this. is if you look at the two CDC studies that the CDC says proved that masking mask mandates at schools actually help stop the spread of COVID in Arizona and the state of Georgia, there are a lot of problems with that study. And they did not include all the findings of the study in the summary. It was David's Whig who wrote, I think first for New York Magazine and then for the Atlantic, analyzing these CDC studies and saying, no, these studies did not actually prove what the CDC said that they prove that masking has any significant impact whatsoever, especially when it comes to schools. And it's just so hard for me to understand, especially when it comes to masking kids

as young as two years old, including on flights. I mean, that's had a significant impact on personally on my family's life over the past couple of years. And I'm sure it has for a lot of other parents too. Can you speak at all to, I don't know if you have any insight into that specific decision masking two-year-olds on airplanes and elsewhere? Yeah, well, it's bizarre. It's the epitome of the lack of logic in what's been done here is actually the two scenarios we're talking about, schools and airplanes. Why do I say that? Because these are the two lowest risk environments that there are. I want to tell people something that they probably are not aware of about airplanes. There has never been significant outbreaks of COVID on airplanes.

I'm talking about way before mandates, way before vaccines. There is no basis. And in fact, there's a reason why cases were never really a problem on airplanes. That's because the air inside an airplane goes through 100% replacement. approximately every two minutes because of their filtration systems, et cetera. Airplane is the safest environment. There has never been significant outbreaks of this virus on airplanes. And so when you, and the same thing, schools where healthy kids have no significant risk really

from a serious illness or death that's proven all over the world. That's not arguable. Teachers have no higher risk than anyone else in the, in the world. world and any other occupation, that's not arguable. And that comes before any vaccines, before any omacron, anything like that. So these are the two, if I had to design a job, I would want to be a flight attendant. If I wanted to design a job that had no significant risk from COVID or low risk, I would want to work on an airplane or be a teacher. Because these are the lowest, yet we, what I'm trying to point out there is that we as a society have doubled down, focused in fact.

on regulating what you have to do on the two lowest, you know, environments, schools and airplanes. There is zero science, zero to insist on having mask wearing in an airplane. It is beyond ludicrous. You know, the CDC, I want to get back to this, you ask why. The CDC has totally lost trust of the public. they have published the most ludicrous. In fact, really distortions of what the data is, and they are the only Western nation's health agency who has denied the basic known, proven impact of immunity after recovering from infection. This is very important.

This is not just biology 101. This goes back centuries. it would have been a shock if you didn't have protection against serious illness from COVID after recovering from the illness. And yet they denied it. And now even when it's proven that natural immunity, meaning protection after you've recovered from COVID, is superior to a vaccinated person's protection who's never had COVID. It's superior. It's factually proven 27-fold less number of cases, one-eighth fewer hospitalizations. It's longer. lasting than the protection from the vaccine. So we are the only country, though, that doesn't count that

as protection. When you go to Europe and most of our pure nations, they count having recovered from COVID as having immunity, but it's actually better than vaccination. We don't even talk about our CDC. There is something beyond really explicable that they are denying this. It's the biggest sort of denial of science in modern history. And that kind of stuff, mandating vaccines for people who don't need them, like those recovered from COVID or children who have no significant risk, healthy children from this illness, yet we're supposed to inject an experimental drug in them. It's not just unethical. It is the reason why Americans have lost trust in these agencies. Yes, and have also lost trust in this idea of science because it seems like science has

turned into more scientism. It's turned into a kind of religion, a kind of ideology. I mean, you're talking about these so-called scientists not knowing the literature and not even feeling any shame over not knowing the literature or not having any scientific data to support their proposed policies. And I think we are the only country. And I think we are the only country. the world, maybe Canada, who is still masking two-year-olds. Not even the WHO recommends that our peer countries, as you mentioned, have taken other strategies to combat COVID. And one of those strategies has not been, for the most part, masking children, especially young children. It's very hard for me. And I'm not going to try to explore this question anymore because we'll probably,

well, maybe never know. It's very hard for me to understand the why behind that decision. I think politics are at play. Who knows whatever nefarious, prideful, selfish reasons are also at play here. But the masking of children and the masking of two-year-olds, the forcing of virtual learning, I guess probably pushed by the teachers unions. I don't even know if we can ever quantify the long-term consequences of all of this. And you can comment on, if you want to comment on that, you can. I do have another follow-up question. Do you have any thoughts on what I just said? Well, I would like to underscore what your basic point is, which is that there has been really a heinous, sinful abuse of our children by the United States of America, by the

leadership in government, by our teachers, by our university leaders who are applying not just pseudoscience, not just stuff against all the data, because healthy children have an extraordinarily low risk of serious illness from COVID, to inject an experiment, to require vaccination of our college students. I don't understand how any parent could accept that when their child has extremely low risk from the illness, when the drugs, the vaccines are experimental, because it takes five years or more to get real safety data, when we have known side effects in that very age group of college age people. I'm not sure what parents are thinking at this point to subject their kids to that. And not to mention the elementary schools, but to mask

kids, you know, one, the isolation of the lock, there's so many things to say. You know, one out of four college age kids in the United States thought of killing himself in June of 2020 from the isolation. Yeah. Okay. These are serious. There's been a tripling of. self-harm visits to doctors in teenagers. That means that these are teenagers in the U.S. putting cigarettes out on their skin, cutting their wrists. That's from the isolation. That's not from the virus. That's from the lockdowns. The weight gain I mentioned, we have a skyrocketing, depression, anxiety disorder. You know, it goes on and on. We had a significant rise, 50% increase, I think in teenage girls committing suicide from the isolation.

It's not the virus. It's the lockdown. These are man-made policies. And now we have people like Dr. Fauci talking about injecting kids under five with this vaccine. This is surreal. Yeah. This is this kind of discussion. It is immoral and unethical for anyone to mandate force.

or even administer a vaccine for COVID to a healthy young child. It is frankly inexcusable. I mean, I'm wondering, where are the ethicists that are supposed to sit in on these institutional review boards to even do these clinical trials? Where are the bioethicists? Where are the thinking? Where are simply the ethical doctors in this equation?

Are they that? thoughtless? Are they, are they just followers? Are they, are they, I don't, it's inexplicable. I understand why parents would go along with it because they keep hearing this over and over again, that it's important. But that's against the facts. And it's time that we stop saying, okay, oh, we excuse it for fear. No, I don't excuse anybody anymore out of fear. I'm sorry, but after two years, you ought to be a thinking adult. We have a social contract as human beings to protect our children. Okay, so that is broken right now in the United States.

Yep, we're actually sacrificing the well-being of children in order to protect. And I use that in scare quotes, older citizens. And that's actually the inverse of what you're supposed to do. I had Brett Weinstein on this podcast, and he was talking about, we were talking about the why, that you could attribute all of this to incompetence if maybe, you know, the people in charge were just kind of making. mistakes here and there. They missed the mark a little bit. But when you are actually seeing these public health bureaucrats suggest the exact opposite of what we should be doing,

if we wanted our population to be healthy and whole, then you start to get into the questions that we've explored today. Okay, what are the true motivations behind this? And a question that I have for you. As someone who I voted for Donald Trump, I recently interviewed Donald Trump about a lot of the successes that he had, I'm really disappointed that, I mean, he had people like you there. So he knew the wisdom. He knew the data because you were working really hard to present that to him and to Mike Pence, who was ahead of the COVID task force. Why? Why was Deborah Berks allowed to stay on? Why is Anthony Fauci still there? Did they not care? Did they not care that they were pushing policies? that were so destructive for the United States?

Why didn't he fire these people? That's a question that I've wondered many times. In fact, you know, we all know the reality. First of all, let me say this. The President Trump repeatedly said the lockdowns are destructive. We must open schools. We must open businesses. Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

But I just want to say he also threw Brian Kent, the governor of Georgia under the bus. when Brian Kemp tried to open the state back up. And so I don't know if he was really as strong as he should have done. No, I'm not. Yeah, but I didn't finish what I was going to say was really the following, which is that I heard several times in the time I was in the White House, not from the president or the vice president,

but from people high up that were the political advisors of them. Scott, don't rock the boat. Stop talking. There's an election coming up. And so, you know, politicians are politicians. And I think that's saying that actually is a criticism. It's not just stating a fact. I was nauseated at what I saw.

People were dying. Okay, this is not a game. It's not about getting elected. It's not about getting reelected. People were dying from the policies that were implemented and advised. by Birx and Fauci. People were killed, and they kept dying. And in fact, that's the reason I said I would help.

I wasn't in a political position. I was shocked that I was accused of being in a political position. I went because the country's in disarray, the policies were implemented that were not stopping people from dying, period. And they were against the science that we knew then, Not had to learn. We knew it then. So I view this as a moral failing of our politicians.

And again, I hate to be, you know, I'm not a perfect person. But some of this stuff supersedes any kind of political concern. These people should have been fired within weeks of them starting because they were grossly wrong. It was, again, I started working on the pandemic in March. of 2020 doing my own research, speaking out because what was implemented by the White House Task Force advice by the governors throughout the country was grossly wrong. People were being killed and it wasn't stopped. And it's not even stopped today. I mean, it is shocking to see Dr. Fauci named to be the main person in charge of the test of the COVID operation.

by President Biden. I just, it's inexplicable. Yeah, it really is. And we could explore the motivations and the why all day. Trump actually did admit in a recent interview that if he had fired Fauci, the left would have gone crazy. But as you point out, we're not talking politics primarily. We're not talking about elections.

We're talking about people's lives because of the misguided guidance of these bureaucrats. I mean, people's lives and livelihoods were ruined. and some of them taken. I mean, this is really consequential stuff. My last question. Now, and I can interrupt one thing briefly, which is we can't forget the governors implemented what they wanted.

Okay, we have a federalist system. The governors insisted on having their own policies and they implemented them. And how we know they had a choice of what to do? Because DeSantis didn't do that. Christy Noam didn't do that. There were governors that had the. clear thinking and the courage to say no, what Fauci and Birx are advising is wrong. And when we look at the data, it is proven that the lockdowns failed. It has proven. You know, people have been living normally

in Florida for almost two years. Does anyone notice this? Florida did better than most states. Florida did better than an analogous state, which is my state of California, without any of the massive harms of the school closures and the collateral damage of the lockdowns on people's lives. So the governors cannot just simply say, oh, that's what Fauci and Berks recommended. That is not what they're elected to do. The governors are elected to lead. They made a conscious decision to do what they did. And now that we see some of them lifting things like mask mandates, pretending that the science has changed, in my view, I'm very cynical about their motivation. They view the public as being tired of mass mandates. They claim the science. They don't

know what they're talking about because the science has not changed. So it's the governors that must be held accountable here. And I hope voters hold these governors accountable. Yeah. And that really answers my last question. We've seen a lot of people in the media change their tune in these Democratic politicians saying, oh, there's no need for the mandates anymore. We've actually seen countries around the world, roll back some of these mandates and restrictions. I'm cynical. It's hard for me to believe that they're doing this simply because they're finally following the science. And I guess your guess is that they're doing this because polling looks bad and that's basically it. Purely, I'm 100% sure of that. But on the other hand, the only way that we as citizens can

hold the people in charge accountable is by their political accountability. Okay, unless we're going to start putting these governors in jail, for, for instance, ordering COVID-infected people back into nursing homes and they're by killing people. I don't see that as happening if they're going to go to jail for that. But I do think that we need to be very vocal. In fact, I will say this. I was stunned by the power of the U.S. government to just stop everything, to confine people to their homes, kick them out of public spaces like parks and beaches, closed schools and businesses.

But I was even more shocked at the acquiescence of a very weak American public. We see protests going on for the last year and a half to two years all over the world, not in the United States. People protested the lockdowns. Think about this. We are the country that is hard. founded on freedom, individual liberty. Where was everybody here? Where were these tough New Yorkers? I grew up in Chicago. Where were these tough Chicagoans when they were confined to their homes and their children were being destroyed by school closures that were completely anti-scientific data?

They were acquiescent. Americans have been very, very weak, in my view, and other countries, not so much. You see Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria. you know, all over Western Europe, even in places like Australia where they've had very draconian things. Even in Canada, we see it now. Why are we not leading anymore for freedom? I wonder that. And I think it's very disheartening. In fact, it's very frightening.

And I happen to live in the state, which is the most off the rails of all. California, we have a governor who doesn't know the one plus one equal two about COVID. Right. And he's been granted this authority. And it's just shocking to me to see how weak Americans have been. I'm sorry to say that way. But I think at some point, you know, you have to think clearly and, you know, take control of your own lives.

Well, you're showing courage, and I appreciate that. Courage is contagious. So perhaps your bravery and your persistence in coming out and talking. about the truth behind this will create an even greater contagion. And that is one, not of COVID, but of courage. That's what I hope anyway. So I hope everyone goes out and gets your book A Plague Upon Our House. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Thanks for having me. Okay, guys, hope you enjoyed that conversation. We've got a bonus episode tomorrow on Friday. It's going to be a really fun episode. I just didn't have time this week to get in

everything that I wanted to talk about. And so we will do an episode. tomorrow, so make sure you tune into that tomorrow afternoon. I will see you guys then. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.