The Highwire with Del Bigtree - FLUORIDE HARMS HIT THE MAINSTREAM

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

Jefferey Jaxen’s reporting last week on the historical EPA ruling on fluoride in drinking water made its way into corporate media with a slurry of misinformation to help sway the election. At the same time, governments worldwide continue to use the term misinformation as a way to control free speech.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

I grew up doing theater as a kid. One of the things they always used to say is like never let your understudy go on. Or if you're in a football, you're a quarterback, don't let your, you know, the second string quarterback go on. Because you may never have a job again. That may be in the works for me because I let Jeffrey Jackson take over the show last week. And he was so spectacular and did probably one of the most dynamic shows we've ever seen with a story that went absolutely viral. I am so proud of Jeffrey. No, I'm not walking away from the show.

You better back off, Jeffrey, but this is what I'm talking about. Take a look at what happened. Definitely did not expect to be asking you about fluoride and water two days before the election. I was a little shock that one of their closing arguments for Donald Trump was take the fluoride out of water. He's going to have a big role in health care, very big role. He knows it better than anybody. We haven't talked about this at all in the last 700 days, but suddenly the thing. that's been normal in this country for 80 years.

It's like, we're gonna get rid of that on day one. In the tweet last night, on January 20, the Trump White House will advise all US water systems to remove fluoride from public water. He also linked to a site that features outlandish health claims, conspiracy theories like HIV-like viruses are in vaccines and widely debunked medical claims.

This is a tweet from you. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fraction, is bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease. Of course, fluoride is in water, has been known to keep your teeth healthy, prevent cavities. It is safe. It's not toxic.

There are some rocks to be thrown, frankly, at RFK Jr. About this stuff, because some of it actually is just straight up dangerous. 23.5 million people thought it was pretty great. The news media hated it. I was running around, Jeffrey, and I watched this thing break loose, and really, you know, It was amazing. I had no idea. I wasn't even around Robert Kennedy Jr. when he got involved in this. But take us through. How did this story break out the way? I mean, because it was an incredible interview you did. But how did this whole thing, 23 million views and made it became headline. I mean, I actually got, if you want, got RFK Jr.

into a lot of hot water and President Trump into a lot of hot water. They tried to use this story to, you know, shut down an election. So how did it all come together? Sorry, guys, this is what happens when you report the truth. Well, when I got the call that I needed to take over that show, the first call I made after that was to Michael Connett. He's the attorney at the forefront of the recent court win that has told the EPA go back to your headquarters and figure out a way to get fluoride out of water. And I thought, listen, this is the biggest story right now, the biggest public health story that I've probably ever seen. and it's about to burst because the media covered this, which is so fascinating because just two months ago, we were covering this. This is what the media looked like when they were covering

this story. This is, I think, the Guardian. It says end of fluoridation in U.S. water could be in sight after federal court ruling. Wow, that's interesting. No word about Vax Kennedy, nothing. They were actually reporting the truth. And then the Hill, just a month later, talks about this. U.S. agency links high fluoride exposure to lower IQ in kids. No problem with that headline, but now we're going to get like, you know, this is where the corporate media is just, it's been thrown into a universe and has no idea what to do in. And we saw it with the political reporting. They had no idea. Kamala Harris and Trump are neck in neck. It's going to be close. It wasn't even close. But now they're in a universe of health reporting and medical reporting, which they've been so used to having their narrative control and the regulatory agencies give them these sound bites. these safe and effective little sound bites to report and nothing else. And they've been reporting to audiences that have huge bandwidth because of this new media explosion,

these long format interviews that we do. And so when this topic came onto my desk, I thought it's more than lowering IQ. This is, there's over 80 years of evidence showing that this affects people at every age, arthritis, bone cancer, calcifying your pineal gland, on and on. I mean, you guys can go, everybody can go to this interview and watch it. I sat down with Michael for like an hour. But you can see they're like deer in the headlights reporting on this. It's in what tell us about Florida?

It's in water. It's good for your teeth and stuff. I mean, just elementary level reporting. And so this goes back to what you were saying at the beginning of the show. The corporate media paradigm is over. In fact, the first thing I did when I saw the election results on Tuesday morning, when I woke up, I wrote this article. It's on the high wire.

Everyone should go read it, I think, today, this was yesterday, marks the official day corporate media influence ended. Yeah. So their narrative controls over and we're seeing them stumbling in now. So this fluoride story, as they're saying, where did this come from? It came out of nowhere just a couple days before the election. They're stumbling into a space that this was a test. This was a beta test on how they're going to be trying to report on what happens with whatever RFK Jr. does. whatever Trump does, whatever public health agencies are reorganized or whatever public health

tools are looked at with a full spectrum of science, you're starting to see this reporting now. So here's New York Times. They're starting to stumble into this space, how public health could be recast in a second Trump term. They're starting to work it out in public view. Here's another one. What will the CDC, FDA and CMS look like after the election? But here's one that's interesting. This is from nature.

Remember nature was the journal that brought us proximal origins telling us that SARS-CoV-2 was not laboratory, constructor, a purposely manipulated virus. So go back to sleep. That was when it first came out. Now they're saying, we need to be ready for a new world. Scientists globally react to Trump election win. Well, I have news for the corporate media. I have news for science communicators. You're not going to be in a new world. You're in it now. And you better start learning because your viewership is over. It's gone. And it's come over to people like us at the highwire because we've given long format discussions with the actual science. But Dell, it's not it's not just about this free and open internet that's underpinning this new media paradigm. There's only one artery

that's keeping like this beating heart of free speech alive. We're seeing this also in academia, an American academia. And here we have the next generation. We're prepping these students for the next generation to take the helms of this country. And what's happening there? Well, we're not prepping them very well because this is a student survey that just came out. Free speech is under attack everywhere. Harvard, Columbia, Penn, top list of worst universities for free speech. And what's that look like? Let's look over to Harvard. How does that communicate it? Cancel culture is free speech, Harvard professor claims. These are, this is the way we're equipping our next generation to not debate, to not be able to talk freely about what they're passionate about. What kind of country are we

creating at this point? So this is the free speech paradigm. And I know we talked about a lot about health, but really the conversation also moving into this next four years is how is free speech going to be not only protected but amplified. And it's not just happening on American campuses or through science communication, but we're seeing it through people like NSA director Jake Sullivan. He just recently held a fireside chat. And what he said should be chilling to Americans. Take a listen. How can we enhance our capabilities using influence AI to both identify disinformation and create our own narratives. And since you just talked about breaking down silos,

what do you think about the idea of having sort of an information czar maybe at the National Security Council or another actor that will have sort of an overall view on protecting information resiliency in our domestic environment? Thanks. It's a good question on the information's art. One challenge just to be straightforward is that

a lot of these questions around information operations, around public diplomacy, around the voice that America uses to speak to the world, bleed over into questions of propaganda or politics. And so the question is, should the White House be the central locus for this effort, or should it actually be distributed to an agency? Should this be a case where you have a lead agency model? One agency is in charge, and they're sort of running it, but it's kept one step removed from the White House. I think on the czar, that's something we've been grappling with and thinking about. You know, across the national security enterprise and under NSM2, most decision-making does get kind of brought into the NSC process, but this may be an area where actually elite agency model is a more effective way of setting up for long-term success

that insulates this from the twos and froze in politics on both sides. That's not just, by the way, about the election interference issues. It's about the larger question of how we decide messages we communicate, how we decide what messages we come back. I mean, just to jump in, this really piggybacks on what I was opening with Jeffrey is, you know, the Harris administration, we've played the clips. John Kerry, Tim Walts, Hillary Clinton, Kamala herself, saying, you know, free speech does not allow you to spread misinformation, which is what this is all about, building departments that have AI that shut down your. speech that flag you. In Europe, some people are getting arrested over these things. And then

when you look at the clips I just played where clearly they don't see what they're doing is misinformation, which is crazy. Like, you're pushing absolute propaganda. You're almost putting words in people's mouth. You're making up stories about what they said. You're taking things out of context to make a point. And when you look at

fluoride, as you pointed out, they were positive on this story when it was their story. But it's like, oh my God, RFK is Trump? Well, they'd use it. Everything is like, Use it to take them down. It doesn't even matter if they loved the story a week ago. If they find any way to take someone down, that's what they're doing. So imagine that that's what your government, your press is doing,

and then you're building a department to stop anyone else like us saying, hello, that's a lie. We can prove it. And I think what was really scary to, you know, cap this off, there was real conversations about Section 230 from the Kamala Harris campaign saying, they were looking at, you know, withdrawing that protection, that 230 protection on social media, says you're not responsible for what people are saying to each other. That's their conversation.

And therefore, you can let it happen. If you pull the 230 away, the section 230, what they end being left with you is you can be sued and you're responsible for every conversation that's happening on social media. That would be the end of social media. That's what Elon Musk was saying. They want to shut down X. Rachel Maddo said that she thought X should be shut down. So we just survived an attack on free speech. And maybe, hopefully, I know this was just happening a week ago, hopefully this new administration will stop this because this is the same danger. And we're going to keep our eyes closely on it. I'm not going to just sign off because we think we like the administration that's in there.

Exactly. And Sullivan there is saying, we don't want this, you know, coming from the White House may be problematic. This is exactly what happened during COVID. The White House was directing social media to censored people. The CDC was sending spreadsheets of people to censor on Twitter. So no mention of that. But it's interesting. It starts out.

And the whole conversation of maybe we should have an information is there. Sorry, we tried that. Look like this. Information laundering is really quite ferocious. It's when a hoax to take some lies and makes them sound precocious by saying them in Congress or a mainstream outlet so. Disinformation's origins are slightly less atrocious. It's how you hide a little, idle, a little, I'd lie. It's how you hide a little, idle, a little, lie.

It's how you hide a little hide a little bit of a lie. I just don't see how that didn't sweep the election. I'll be happy if I never hear that clip again. So, all right. So this is what's happening, obviously, in the U.S. You're talking about AI for censorship. You're talking about another disinformation's are. But over in Europe, in Ireland, we have something that just passed in late October.

It snuck through not much media attention to it. This was the incitement to violence or hatred and hate offenses Act of 2024. Ireland's online hate crime law passes sparks major future free speech concerns. Now, this was something that the Irish minister said that they weren't going to pass. In fact, Reuters said that just a couple months ago. This was the headline here. Ireland drops plans for hate speech law. We come in peace.

Put down your weapons. I mean, this is the tactic. Everyone kind of pulls back because there's so much to focus on and they sneak it through. Now, in fairness, it did take out the you are guilty until proven innocent clause, which is great. But it still has in there distributing what they can. called threatening, abuse of insulting or obscene materials carries a fine and imprisonment of up to six months. So it does not say what really distributing is. And that's along the lines of gender, nationality, sexual preference. So anybody that feels a little hatred coming their way

or offended by something someone distributes could make this happen. And even Trump's pick for Vice President, J.D. Vance, while they were actually trying to push this bill, in Ireland, he came out and he sent a letter over to some of the heads in Ireland. This was the headline at the time. This was over the summer. Trump VP pick J.D. Vance hits out at Ireland proposed authoritarian hate speech laws. He said, look, if this was happening in Russia or China or these other nations, we call them totalitarian and we threaten economic sanctions. So be careful what you're doing. So now, I mean, the whole the whole system has changed now and there's a little bit of a new paradigm with speech. So it'll be interesting to see what

what kind of legs this Irish hate speech law gets, or if they're going to start adding to it, because that's another, once they get the nose under the tent, they'll start adding these clauses to it. So this is something that can happen. Amazing, yeah, and we should watch it because I always say it's like the ghost of Christmas forward. That's where we could be.

I mean, when I was just in Switzerland, when we were protesting WHO treaty, so many European journalists came up to me and said, wow, Del, we can't even do the stories you're talking about. We're all in, we're, you know, we follow you, we love the work that you're doing, but we're way ahead of you. our borders were being breached 10 years ago.

They're just letting immigrants flow in. We're not allowed to tell the story. We're, you know, we're being shut down the stories. We're bringing the newspapers. So, you know, when you look at those nations, they're not that far away. And, you know, that's what I think, and I think, look, honestly, I think what's just happened in this country this week, thank God enough people realize that, you know? Right.

And I'm back to this whole conversation about media. These small, insultingly small slogans and narrative control that corporate media has been so used to pushing they've really gotten a little lazy. The audience is, is they know a lot of the times they know more than the corporate media allows them to know. They can actually report better than the corporate media. And they do in often cases.