The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 349. Tyranny Through Weaponized Bureaucracy | Dr. Scott Jensen

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson and Dr. Scott Jensen walk through his accomplished professional life in family medicine, as well as his successful run as a Minnesota senator, all before having his reputation in both fields dismantled for what may be purely political reasons. Six investigations across nearly five years and numerous allegations without cohesion, proof, or relation have amounted to nothing, save for the clarification of Dr. Jensen's newest goal: to take on the medical board that had no justification for its actions. Given the parallels between Dr. Jensen and Dr. Peterson’s experiences, this interview was not only inevitable but paramount. Dr. Scott Jensen has practiced family medicine in Carver County, Minnesota, for 35 years. Jensen then served in the Minnesota Senate (2017-2021) and was vice-chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, as well as the Republican Governor candidate in the 2022 election. He has served many organizations as a board member or chair including the Waconia School Board, numerous Rotary and Lions clubs, several Chambers of Commerce, and bank boards. He is an avid pilot and writer, publishing his first book in 2015, “Relationship Matters” and his second book, “We’ve Been Played” in 2022. In 2001, he founded Catalyst Medical Clinic which now has offices located in Watertown and Chaska. Dr. Peterson's extensive catalog is available now on DailyWire+: https://bit.ly/3KrWbS8  - Links - For Dr. Scott Jensen: Website: https://drscottjensen.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/drscottjensenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrScottJensenYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ScottJensenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/drscottjensenmn/Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/DrScottJensen Read these books by Dr. Scott Jensen “We’ve Been Played: Exposing the Triad of Terror” https://drscottjensenbook.com/ “Relationship Matters” https://www.amazon.com/RELATIONSHIP-MATTERS-FOUNDATION-MEDICAL-FRACTURING-ebook/dp/B014JX46H6/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1681494801&sr=8-1 

Dr. Scott Jensen has practiced family medicine in Carver County, Minnesota for 35 years. This is also where he and his wife, Mary, a small animal veterinarian, raised their three children, Christie, and anesthesiologist Matt, and a state attorney, and Jackie, a family doctor. Dr. Jensen also served in the Minnesota Senate from 2017 to 2021, and he was vice chair of the Health and Human Services Committee. Good morning, Dr. Jensen. Good morning, it's good to see you, Dr. Peterson. Good to see you.

I understand it's three in the morning there. I'm in Rome right now, so I guess this is the best we could do in terms of scheduling. So thank you very much for agreeing to do this today. Well, you're very welcome. I'm actually in Chaskham, Minnesota, and I'm right across the street from the Catholic Church. So we do have something in common. Right, right, right.

You're symbolically near Rome. Amen. Yeah. Okay, so let's get into this. Let's first of all start by letting everybody know who you are and then we'll move into what has happened to you right from the beginning in relationship to your entanglement, let's say with what's supposed to be

your professional governing body and it's supposed to be professional governing body. And so let's walk through the details of your employment first. So... Well, Dr. Peterson, again, thank you for having me on. I'm a small town kid. I grew up in Southern Minnesota and a town named Sleepy. I, pretty typical upbringing.

It takes a village to raise a child. My mom was my best friend. My dad was my hero. I had village to raise a child. My mom was my best friend, my dad was my hero, I had three brothers and a sister. I went to the public school and graduated as valedictorian of the class, but that's not such a big deal when you only have 65 kids in your class. I went to the University of Minnesota and was going to be an orthodontist, but when I got into dental school, I found out that I did not have a love affair with teeth. So I left dental school and went to the seminary for a year.

And at the time, I'd been dating this really wonderful lady. And so that year in the seminary, I made the decision to ask her to marry me. And we've been together for 45 years. I also made the decision to go into medicine. So I went into family practice, went to the University of Minnesota Med School, did my residency. And my wife is a veterinarian. We have three wonderful children, our two daughters, our physicians.

We're not exactly sure what happened to our son, but he's an attorney, but we love him just as much. And we've had one. Well, there's four physicians, probably need one attorney. He says that he has to keep the rest of us out of trouble. So that's where we're landing on him. So then I've been practicing medicine

for about 37 years in the Chasco Watertown area. And about eight years ago, I was encouraged to run for the Senate in Minnesota. This had not been one of my bucket list items. So I was leery about it, but after a couple of months of being recruited, I made the decision to run for Senate. I ended up winning and receiving more votes than any other Republican Senate candidate in Minnesota. During the first three years of my Senate career, I have to confess that I was disillusioned with the process. I was surprised at how easily gridlock

was the order of the day. I felt like really genuine fired up intellectual curiosity just wasn't a part of the equation. And that frustrated me quite a bit. At the same time, my wife was having some health issues and she was gonna have a need for multiple surgeries. So I made the decision to not run for re-election. A few months later, COVID hit.

COVID hit hard. It hit everybody hard. But I think I like so many other people suffered from certain personality traits. I'm somewhat skeptical and medical school taught us to be skeptical. I've always been sort of addicted to context. And I've always thought that if we don't have the context of what we're seeing, we can't really digest what we're dealing with. And I had access to more information than many people did because I was vice chair of the Health and Human Services Committee in the Senate. And so I was aware of much of what was going on. And then in the early days of April of 2020, when I received an email from the Department of Health with a link to the CDC, advising me as a physician

that they were going to adjust the way death certificates were completed skeptically at that. And I said, what's going on here? And without meaning to be any kind of grand whistleblower, I ended up making comment about this on a local TV program that I'd been on the news for. And that traveled. What did it just, what did it just death certificates mean?

Basically, in the Minnesota Department of Health communication to the physicians, they said, if you believe that COVID-19 may have contributed to the cause of death, you can go ahead and put it down as the cause of death. And that's not right. The CDC for decades has said that our job as physicians, when we complete a death certificate, is to try to identify the initiating event that started the process of demise for the patient. So, for example, if I have a heart attack tomorrow, and a month later I have congestive heart failure, and we find that the heart attack was so substantial that I've lost the ability to effectively pump blood. And we learned that I'm not a candidate for transplant and there's no remedies for my situation.

And over time, I falter and become more and more frail. And perhaps I go on hospice knowing that I have end-stage heart disease. If on my last 48 hours of life on earth, I get exposed to COVID-19 without ever being tested or even having any symptoms of it. When I die, I died of a heart attack. The underlying cause of death would be coronary artery disease and that led to a heart attack which led to congestive heart failure. But it should not say that COVID-19 was the cause of my death. We were being encouraged to go ahead and they said in this document, if you think that

COVID-19 was a contributing condition, you can put it down as the cause of death. And I said, no, there's a box too on a death certificate called contributing conditions. That's where you put contributing conditions. If it's emphysema, if it's asthma, influenza, we put it in the contributing conditions box. We were being told, with this disease, we could put it as a cause of death. I raised a ruckus and said, this isn't right. I did not get any response from the Department of Health.

Instead, I was asked to be on numerous national TV programs. I was asked to be on the Anger Mangle and subsequently, Rush Limbaugh came to my defense, and we had Tucker Carlson show on inviting me. But the bottom line is this was April of 2020. And in June of 2020, I received a letter with red letters stamped confidential from the Board of Medical Practice advising me that for the first time in my career, my license was under investigation.

So the CDC suggests the physicians that they alter their death notification practice in the case of COVID. Listing, as you pointed out, contributory cause of death as a primary cause of death. And so this begs three questions. The CDC reconstruction of the guidelines. First of all, why in the world would they do that in the case of COVID? Second, who would do that? And third, what does that do to the reliability of the death statistics that are used to calculate the virality and lethality of COVID?

Those three questions are frankly the critical ones and they're interrelated. The first one has to why the CDC would do this, it felt to me like there was a movement or a strong motivation to, if you will, elevate the seriousness of the COVID pandemic. I think that it was already elevated substantially and that troubled me deeply. I raised that question early on. I said, I think we're making an epidemic of fear as much as we're responding from a public policy perspective.

So when the CDC did that, it felt to me like, they wanted to ensure that they got our attention and that there would be numbers to support that. As to who would do that, I think later on we found out that some of the major characters were people that were indeed in charge of the public policies that were gonna govern the world, if you will, for the next three years.

Specifically, you had people like Dr. Tony Fauci, you had Dr. Deborah Berks, you had some of these people who had, if you will, high-placed positions from which to speak, they literally had absolute power. And I'm a big believer that absolute power corrupts. And I think the third question is probably the most important one, Dr. Peterson. What impact would this have on the reliability of our federal registrar in terms of cause of death? For instance, every year in America, the United States, we have approximately 650,000 people die of heart disease. We have approximately 600,000 people die of cancer. people die of heart disease. We have approximately 600,000 people die of cancer. If those deaths are recorded instead of cardiac causes and putting it down as COVID, numerous things happen.

One is we might get a false impression that we're making headway on heart disease when we're really not. You might see pharmaceutical companies coming to the fore saying, see, we told you, if you take our drugs, if you prescribe our drugs, put more people on lipitor, we will reduce the heart cause of deaths. And that would be not true. That would be a corruption of the actual data. There would be all kinds of nefarious opportunities for people to grab a hold of corrupted data and make a case for something that wasn't real. And when I raised that point, I didn't get a legitimate discussion.

There was no robust questioning. It was your spreading conspiracy theories and you're having the audacity to cause or to compare COVID to influenza. And those were a couple of the first allegations. So let me ask you, let me ask you a nasty question then to play the devil's advocate. So we walked through your career and really very, very briefly your life. And it's a real American fairy tale life, small town American fairy tale life. And so a skeptic would say, especially a skeptic who's arguing from the other side, let's say, would say, well, you missed the line light.

There we go, because you were no longer involved in the political scene. And you got a little bit of attention because you complained about a perfectly reasonable request from the CDC to be, what would you say, hyper-careful in relationship to the lethality of COVID, then a bunch of right-wing conspiratorialists like Rush Limbaugh and Tucker Carlson rushed in, and you got some attention on the national stage, and that went to your head. And so it was in your best interest to cast aspersions on the motivations of people who

are only trying to benefit public health. And this is on you, which I presume is the tack that the governing board of your profession essentially took when they came after you with this confidential letter. So what sort of soul searching did you do when this first came up? And how do you protect yourself against those sorts of insinuations and allegations and even doubts?

That's a good question. I think it's important to look a little bit at the timeline. It was in the summer of 2019, which was well in advance of the COVID pandemic that I had made the announcement that I was done with politics. My wife's health was at an issue and she was gonna have multiple surgeries.

So I had already announced that I was not running for re-election. So in 2021, the COVID hit. I was serving my last year as a senator. I was vice chair of the Health and Human Services Committee. I carried a large insulin bill through and worked with Democrats to get it done and Governor Walls signed that. At that point in my life, I had made it pretty clear that I was not interested in being in the limelight.

I was interested in stepping away from politics and being there for my family. My wife's health was an issue, but I'd also been blessed with five grandchildren within the span of about two or three years, and they were all under the age of, I believe, four at the time, or perhaps even under three. So it was time for me to continue to practice medicine, take care of my wife, and be a grandpa. And I was very content with that. So in terms of some underlying, deep-seated desire for fame and infamy, I would say that that's almost ridiculous because the

slings and arrows, the slings and arrows I ended up taking were hurtful. I had never been in a situation like that. Right. Well, you also had some limelight politically speaking already, the fact that you'd run a political campaign, you'd been out in public, and you had a reasonable share of public attention, but you're also interestingly well-situated because you are a physician of long-standing, and also you were a senator and was it Vice Chairman of the Health Services Committee? Yes. And the other thing, so you'd think that you would have demonstrated, you'd think that all of that would have demonstrated your qualifications to speak on such matters.

Dr. Peterson, when I was a resident, I was named one of the 15 top residents in the country through Amid Johnson award program. In the late 1990s, I was awarded a Bush Fellowship to study leadership, computers, and plastic surgery techniques. In 2016, I'd been named the Family Physician of the Year in Minnesota. I've had a wonderful career. I feel at times a little bit like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life.

There was no reason for me to put all of that at risk and put myself in a position where people would ridicule me literally monitor every word I said in order to try to play that gotcha game and hit me with something. It was tough on my wife. During that last year in the Senate, the first year, the pandemic, 2020, it was a painful year. I'm not gonna deny it. We had schisms within my own family.

We had plenty of tears and an axed. And it would have been fun to not have to go through that. People have asked me. They said, they said, they've said, Dr. Chancin, what was that like? How did you know all this was gonna happen? And I've told people, I didn't know. Quite frankly, I feel a little bit like Jonah

in the Old Testament, where he was asked to do some tough duty in Nineveh. And he said, no thanks, I'm gonna take a cruise on the Mediterranean. That's what I feel like. But then this whale got in the way, swallowed me up and spit me out on this pathway of ridicule. And if you will, focus on everything about my background. And it was tough to go through.

Yeah. I know when I spoke with Jay Bada Cheria recently, he went through a similar experience at Stanford, very similar. He's an outstanding physician and an extremely reputable person. And he expressed some extreme skepticism about the COVID hysteria and Stanford basically turned its back on him and he lost 35 pounds in three months and it just about killed him. I mean, I've talked to probably a hundred people now who've been in the situation that you were in, the situation that I've been in a number of times. And virtually all of them were pushed to the limits of their psychological

and physical tolerance by that process of cancellation and mobbing and exclusion. You know, and some of the people I know quite well who are as stable of personalities as you'd ever hoped to encounter were driven right to the edge of madness by this insane mob-inspired persecution. And I actually think that the degree to which that affects you is proportionate to some degree to your moral integrity in that a person who is highly conscientious and hardworking, diligent, detail-oriented, all of that, is also tends to be somewhat guilt-prone in that any accusation of abdication of duty strikes a person like that to the heart because they are, in fact, beautiful. Now, if you're

a person like that to the heart because they are, in fact, beautiful. Now, if you're incompetent and unconscious and parasitic in your fundamental orientation towards others and someone accuses you of not doing your duty, you don't ever, you have never regarded that as a necessity or a virtue in the first place. And so those criticisms fall on deaf ears, but if you've been gone after having checked off all the proper boxes, let's say, both practically and morally, then it can be incredibly damaging. And it also does produce this internal schism in family, because of course it's easy for people to think, well, you know, if you are at least for people to fight about the issue of, well, maybe it would have been better had you just never said anything rather than having exposed yourself and others within the family to risk.

And, you know, there is an argument to be had about that because it's not obvious what you should just shut the hell up and keep on struggling forward because you know every bureaucracy and has its inadequacies and you can't complain about everything and when you finally have to stand up and say something and of course that is going to cause tensions within families especially if you're also under other forms of stress. By this time, had your wife recovered from her medical trouble? Mary had gone through two surgeries and then had a third surgery. She'd had her neck fused.

She'd had a new joint put in. And so she was recovering. But while she was recovering, unfortunately, a lot of the conversations that two of us would have at home while she's convalescing seemed to always come back to COVID-19. So that was, it was a challenge. And you're exactly right, Dr. Peterson. There was a real underlying question for me is, why didn't I just keep my mouth shut? And ultimately, I think what happened was

through the recurrent investigations that I was put through, I think that I became somewhat morally protected. I felt like the words of Esther 414, have you considered you're in the position you're in for such a time as this? They really rang true in my life. And I felt a little bit like a pit bull with a pork chop in my mouth.

And I wasn't going to let anybody take that pork chop of truth out of my mouth. I had access to information people didn't have. I absolutely was doing my responsible duties. I was doing my due diligence. I was reading two, three, four hours a day trying to keep current on all the issues going on with the Minnesota Senate, the COVID pandemic worldwide, and trying to hold my family together as well. And in the end, I felt that I was absolutely entrusted to be a voice, to watch out for those encroachments on our liberties, to say, no, we're not going to let government

expand willy-nilly just because they can. And I found myself getting tenacious. And I remember someone very close to me said, well, why is it so important to be right? And I said, I don't think it's about being right. I think it's about being fearful of what I was seeing. When a rubber band is stretched beyond its capacity, it never returns to its normal shape and configuration. That's what I'm worried about with the United States, Canada, nations across the globe.

We've seen something happen over a three-year period that prior to those three years, most of us would say couldn't happen. If it had been put in a movie, we would have said someone's been watching too much grade B fiction. But the bottom line, it was happening right in front of us and we were stunned. All right, so you picked up this letter. It had red confidential written over it. And well, so here's a couple of questions about that damn letter.

So the first is you'd think that if and what's the what's the precise name of the board that sent you the letter? This is the governing board of physicians in Minnesota. This is the physician's regulatory agency regarding licensure and it's called the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, MBMP. Board of Medical Practice.

Okay, so you get a letter from the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. Now, here's some mysteries about that. So the first mystery is, why in the world did they think that you were gonna be a credible target? I mean, look, you've got a stellar reputation on the educational front,

and you have a stellar reputation as a physician as attested to by multiple forms of achievement and recognition. Plus, you'd be a senator. And so, you'd think that just procedurally, the people who were sitting on this board would have been wise enough to think that barring self-evident malfeasance,

you were probably someone best left alone. So that's an interesting question. Why they would actually be clueless enough to target you without a smoking pistol. And then the next question is, what exactly did they claim in their first attempt to discipline you? I think in fairness to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice individuals who serve on that board, their collective perception of what they're to do is that their mission is to investigate all complaints that come forward. So in Minnesota, you can go on the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice webpage, scribble out a complaint.

You have no obligation to do any due diligence. Your personality, your vital information about who you are will remain anonymous. The person you accuse has no way of getting your name. You will be protected by anonymity. You will not be identified. So it's relatively easy to make a complaint. You don't have to know the person you're complaining about.

You don't have to ever have received a healthcare service from them. But the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice has taken the position if there's a complaint will investigate it. So I think- Right, but that doesn't mean, but in Canada, and tell me if it's the same in the United States. So it's exactly the same situation that you just described with regards

to the regulating board of psychologists and Ontario. Anyone anywhere in the world can submit a complaint for any reason. Now, the Ontario Board of Psychologists, is legally obligated to investigate every complaint, which means at least to consider the complaint, but they are not obligated to pursue the investigation if they believe that the complaint was frivolous or vexatious. And that's obviously a necessary corollary when the accuser is given the protections that

you just described, which is that there is no pressure incumbent upon them to even provide documentation of the validity of their complaint nor any requirement to have had any even second-person contact with you. So it may be the case that the board members felt that it was necessary for them to consider the complaint, but that does not mean that it was necessary for them to consider the complaint, but that does not mean that it was necessary for them to pursue you. They decided to pursue you, and that doesn't follow logically from the mere fact of the complaint, especially because you had practiced for, you said, 37 years without any complaints and also in an obviously stellar manner. So there's

something more going on than the mere proclivity of the Minnesota Board of medical practice members to do their duty. The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice in their first investigation of me pointed out that there had been allegations that I had spread conspiracy theories and else providing reckless advice by comparing influenza to COVID, which, by the way, is exactly what Dr. Fauci and other leading speakers to the narrative had done. But I think the pattern of behavior by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice attests to your concerns, Dr. Jordan. Investigation number one came at me with allegations, and I responded and received a letter it was dismissed.

Investigation two was similar. Investigation three, I was never advised that there was a pending investigation or that there were allegations on the table, I was simply sent to letter by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, indicating, oh, by the way, further allegations have come in, they have been dismissed. I was not even provided an opportunity to respond. Investigation four went back to the first two where they investigated me, I responded, they dismissed them.

But investigation number five is where it gets interesting. That came into being. Okay, so how many over, how many, over what span of time did these five investigations occur? And what that mean in terms of disruption to your practical life, your psychological state and the stability of your family and your practice. The recurrent Minnesota Board of Medical Practice investigations had a devastating effect in my life. While I was in the Senate, I felt hamstrung. In my personal life with my family, I felt the tension of differing viewpoints. And as I mentioned earlier, people wondering,

why is it so important to Scott Jensen to be right when I was trying to advocate, this isn't about being right, this is about something being terribly wrong, and that we cannot stand for it. I think this took place from June of 2020 to November of 2021. So that's a 15 to 18 months span of time. By then, I would have any idea how many allegations had been, how many allegations had were levied against

you that you had to respond individually to and did you require legal counsel during that entire time? And what sort of expense was that? The first four investigations, I elected to treat them like any regular family doctor in the trenches would do so. So I read the allegations, I responded to the best of my ability. I provided a narrative explanation, and I, if you will, substantiated what I had to say with articles and references. So I did that myself, and that took literally hundreds and hundreds of hours with each investigation. The fifth investigation was put forth in November of 2021. I was in the middle of a governor's election race.

I was one of the leading candidates for the Republican Party. And when I received that investigation, I was asked to respond, I did. And that time was the first time I was asked to provide patient records. That made me very nervous, violating patient confidentiality. So I was meticulous to making certain that I de-identified whatever I sent to them. The other thing that went with that was I had made the comment that I had used off label medications for a handful of patients when asked to do so in exceptional situations. That really seemed to change the nature of what was going on. At that point in time, the Board of Medical Practice

came back to me and said, okay, we're not sure that we like where you're at here. We asked for a response, you gave it to us. We've asked for more information as well as patient records. I submitted those. They said to me, we've received your records and as well as patient records. I submitted those. They said to me. We've received your records and that's where it stopped and it stopped there for a full year. All the other investigations. I want to interject here for a minute for any professionals,

medical professionals who are listening. So one of the reasons that you do get a lawyer very quickly in these circumstances, despite the expense and the potential self-admission perhaps that or the risk of a parent admission of wrong doing is that once an investigation of this sort commences and you provide additional information. You open up a whole rat's nest of additional potential avenues for persecution. And so the first time the college of psychologists came after me, the allegation they ended up nailing me for, this was back in 2017, had virtually no resemblance to the initial complaint. It emerged as a consequence of the need for boards of this type, especially once they've started to go down a particular rabbit hole repeatedly, to convince themselves

that they were justified in their initial inquisition by any means whatsoever. And so, if you hadn't done the wrong thing that you were accused of, well, obviously, the fact that you'd been subject to four investigations and multiple allegations means that there's fire where there's smoke. And if we can't get you on, the fire on the left side of the furnace will you know, the fire on the left side of the furnace will get you on the fire of the right side of the furnace and a good lawyer can help you provide minimal information to boards of investigation of that sort so that you're less likely to lay out traps for yourself to step in. And then there's this issue of turning over patient records, you know, by the end of my

private practice as a clinical psychologist, I was taking at best, extraordinary minimal formal notes, because I knew that the probability that I would be required at some point to break client confidentiality, which might even be more important for psychologists than for physicians, although it's a toss-up, was virtually certain. I could no longer trust the inviability of my records to inappropriate and paranoid board of governance screening.

And so that's also an awful situation for professionals to find themselves in, where the notes they take to ensure that they're on top of their patient's health can now be used as a means of what would you say, breaking the privacy walls surrounding the patient, which is the issue of critical importance, but also as endless fodder for the continuation of Kafka-esque, expensive punitive, pointless, and punishing investigations, especially those that are politically motivated. So if if this happens to professionals who are watching, I would recommend,

and maybe Dr. Jensen can give his opinion on this, you should get yourself lawyer, damn quick. And then I've got a couple of things to say about lawyers, too, is that there is nothing more expensive than a bad cheap lawyer. So don't just get a good lawyer, get a, or don't just get a lawyer, get a good lawyer because a good lawyer who will be expensive, is way less expensive than a bad lawyer who makes mistakes. So to your point, Dr. Peterson, To your point, Dr. Peterson, you're spot on. I think the first four investigations, I had to deal with that age-old question. Do I stuff it to the side and try to keep it private or do I come public with it? And I made the decision on the first investigation at the recommendation of several close friends

and colleagues to go public. I was told that if I don't go public with it, literally, I would at some point in time be placed on defense and I would never be able to get around that. They said, you've got to go on offense. And that's what I did. But I did make, I probably made a mistake with the first four investigations by believing that if I was just responsive, thoughtful, measured, balanced, that they would dismiss these allegations, which is what happened the first four times. But at some point, it changed.

And at that point in time, I think I had to give up my normalcy bias. I, in my brain, I thought, this can't be happening to me. This happens to other people. You read about it in the newspaper. But this doesn't happen to this small town kid from Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, who's had the life of Jimmy Stewart in its a wonderful life. And I kept, I think, I was unable to really get my arms around that this was happening to me in real life, real time. And my license, each, each investigation was more and more at risk.

So with the fifth investigation, when it went on for a full year, then the election took place. And I lost. And two months later, I got a letter from the Board of Medical Practice providing additional allegations based on exactly what you said, based on my response to the fifth investigation, including patient records.

Now I was being accused of having handwriting that wasn't always as legible as some reviewers would have liked. Now I was being accused of, well, you also did this and you did this and by did this and you did this. And by the way, you did this. And at that point in time, they said, we're not accepting your written responses as good. We're now asking for a notice of conference. That meant we're going to meet with you.

And at that point in time, I said, I probably need to get into attorney. And I got a good attorney out. Mr. Greg Joseph is an attorney in Minnesota who's done a lot of different kinds of law, but is really landed on understanding, I think the nature of that line between professional conduct as it relates to patient care versus free speech. Now in the United States, I don't believe that that line has been determined with precision.

And that's one of the remaining questions regarding my situation is recently we did have that conference with the Minnesota Board of Medical practice. And I don't mean to get ahead of myself, but 18 allegations were being addressed at one time. They were from soup to nuts. It had to deal with masks. It had to deal with vaccines. It had to deal with comparisons of COVID and influenza.

It had to do with how we complete death certificates, how we remunerate hospitals and doctors based on diagnosis codes used. It ran the gamut. But in the end, when the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice says, we're dismissing all of the allegations. At that point in time, we still don't know that critical question. Where's the line between professional conduct and free speech? Because I would submit that physicians get to be wrong. If we say on a Monday that this is what we think,

perhaps we say something like this, eggs have cholesterol, you have high cholesterol, you should not eat eggs. And maybe four days later, we come across material that says, gee, eggs aren't so bad. So I tell my patient, you know what? You can eat eggs. Now, is that news information?

Perhaps, is a disinformation? Certainly not. But the bottom line is, as a physician, if I make those comments in the exam room physician, if I make those comments in the exam room, or if I make those comments on stage at a meeting, a rally, or perhaps a church event, either way, I get to make those comments. There's a more ominous element to your story as well that is still implicit in what we've discussed.

So I'm going to pull some of that out now. Now, you had been in the Senate and you decided to pull out of the political life, but now you're running for governor and while you're running for governor, these investigations are happening. So the first thing we should clear up for everyone is that given that you had decided to make an exit

from the political stage, why did you decide to return? The next issue is, were you credible as a candidate for governor? And then the third question is, why the hell did the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice presume that it was appropriate ethically to conduct an investigation into the conduct of a physician in the middle of a political campaign. Because if you can't see how that raises evil specters of possibility, you're not thinking. Because what it means is that the investigative process, which puts all the power in the hands of the accuser, can obviously be weaponized for political purposes.

Now, it is being, and it has been, in many cases, and that's going to get much worse before it gets better. But in your situation, it's particularly egregious because you were a physician with an actual credible political career, and you were running for the highest office in your state. So what do you think about the fact that the investigations ramped up while you were running for governor? What do you think that implies for the stability and sanctity of the political process. And what effect do you think the investigations into your conduct and the public element of that

had on the outcome of the governatorial race? 2020, my last year in the Senate was obviously the first year of the COVID pandemic. The pandemic and the public policies that came with it really were like this powerful magnetic pull for me to not leave the political, if you will, field. I had thousands of people reach out to me and say, Dr. Jensen, you've been a courageous voice offering hope and reasonable analysis of what's going on. You've been deeply embedded in context. You've been a skeptic. You've access to information. You've done your due diligence. You've taken seriously that you've been entrusted with a voice to speak for thousands and thousands of Minnesotans and people across the globe,

that collectively is what really pulled me into the race. I think, again, I'm a faith-based individual, and the words of Esther 414 for such a time as this, joined with the words of Hebrews 414 hold fast to the beliefs you profess, just did not seem to give me an out from politics. So I stepped into that arena with my wife's blessing. Was I a credible candidate? We accomplished more as a conservative candidate running in Minnesota than had been accomplished in decades in some situations ever.

We received more votes than any Republican governor candidate has ever received in Minnesota. We raised more money than any Republican governor has ever raised in the campaign committee itself. We had over 100,000 people join our email team. We had 40,000 unique donations. We had approximately the same percentage of voters in the election that Governor Tim Polenti had in 2002 when he won.

We went against six other candidates and prevailed in getting the endorsement and then going to the general election. So from that perspective, we created a movement and that movement was born of energy, conviction, and Americans, everyday Americans that were horrifically concerned about what is going on in our world. So then the question is, okay, you've got the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice holding this gray cloud over his head, over the campaign, for literally the

majority of the campaign. It had a devastating effect. I knew that everywhere I went, I was being tracked and recorded. I knew every word I said didn't just enter the political speech. It was going to be filed and indexed and forwarded to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. There was no relief from the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. I reached out to them in 2022, asking a question, I don't want to do something that's not up to the standard of care. If I prescribe certain off-label drugs, is that problematic for you or not?

Is that the standard of care or not? And I was given a short answer from an administrative staffer that said, we don't create the standard of care. We can't tell you that, but if you do it and we get a complaint, we're gonna investigate you. They were basically saying, you wanna know the standard? That's how they do it. You wanna know what the standard of care is we're not telling you,

but if someone says you didn't meet the standard of care, we're coming after you for that. You're right. This was a definite of this. The care for these investigative boards is, well, we don't really know what we're doing, but we'll sure whack you if we have any suspicions that you do something wrong post-hawk.

I mean, I've had exactly the same experience with the college of psychologists and Ontario trying to get them to clarify their policies around certification of new practicing psychologists, for example. And there isn't a chance in the world that they'll clarify their stance a prior priority. This is part of the reason you need a lawyer when they come after you. It's because it's not as if the standards are well defined and it's certainly not as if the practitioners on these boards are sufficiently credible either professionally or ethically to be doing what they're doing. The rules are basically watch yourself and if you make

a mistake look the hell out and the mistakes are defined after the act. And so, I'm stressing that for the professionals who are listening, is do not make the mistake that Dr. Jensen made of assuming that you are dealing with a process that's going to treat you reasonably. That is not the situation you're in. You're in a little bit of Kafka hell and you'll be lucky if you escape from it with your skin intact. And so you can dispense with any niceties about your presumption that this is

going to be mere rational discourse between merely rational people. If you're innocent and you have had a stellar reputation and you're being investigated for fundamentally political reasons, you're way outside the rubric of anything that you might have regarded as Jimmy Stewart normality. And the faster you realize that easier it's going to be for you." Well said, I think that without question, that tendency for me to say, this can't be happening. That power of what is my bias towards what's normal sort of dictated my behavior until it didn't. And it was the fifth investigation. No, that's a trauma response, say, just, you may know this as a physician.

One of the hallmarks of traumatic experience is the sense of de-realization that accompanies the experience. And de-realization is the recurrent sense, partly thought, partly perception, that there's no way this can be happening. In fact, the more intense that sense and the longer its duration, the better the chance that post-event there will be post-traumatic symptoms. That makes a lot of sense, it does. And I honestly think that, while perhaps Scott Jensen was a microcosm of that phenomenon occurring, I think that from a population standpoint on a macro level, we're seeing

the same thing. We're seeing a derealization for Americans across the land saying, well, no, that couldn't be happening. I mean, we're seeing it with physicians. I think physicians over the last three months have come out and said to me, Dr. Jensen, we feel so bad that we haven't stood with you more strongly. We should have been there for you,

but we were scared for our jobs. We were scared for our livelihoods. We knew that there would be hell to pay. And so I think there's been a lot of that where you literally have to dispense with your own strong internal sense of what's normal, what's gonna happen, what would reasonable people do. And as you said, you've gotta say, all bets are off.

This is a different place and I've ever been before. I'm not gonna be able to do it. I'm not gonna be able to navigate my way through it by simply being reasonable, providing resources and justification for what I was thinking because that isn't going to carry the day. One of the things my attorney shared with me, Greg Joseph, Dr. Peterson, was, when we first met, and this was to deal with the fifth and the sixth investigations, he said, Scott, you didn't hire me to be a yes man, and I'm not going to be.

I'm going to tell you what you've been doing, and I'm going to tell you why it was wrong. And I was all ears. And he said, Scott, you're trying to make a perfect snowball. You're in a snowball fight, and you're trying to make the perfect snowball so that you can win the snowball fight. But let me tell you two things. One, there should be no snowball fight. Two, there is no perfect snowball.

You're not going to find the perfect article that's going to convince the medical board that, ah, Dr. Jensen was sane and reasonable and rational and right. You're not going to find that snowball. So quit trying to make it. We should not be in this snowball fight and we we're going to tell the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice exactly that they don't have jurisdiction over your speech. Yeah, yeah, well, that's good. It does sound like you got a good lawyer. I mean, one of the advantages, and this is also for the professionals who are listening, if you're an agreeable person, and that means you're fundamentally compassionate and caring,

you don't like conflict, you like to put other people at ease, you're likely to go along to get along. Well, that might have been one of the reasons that you entered especially family medicine because that's a branch of the profession that tends to attract caring people. Now the problem with being a caring person is that of that sort an agreeable person is that you don't like conflict, you're going to always assume the best of others and it's going to be difficult for you to say no

when you need to say no. And what no means, by the way, just so that everyone who is listening is clear know when you say it to someone means, if you don't stop doing that, something you do not like will happen to you with 100% certainty. That's what no means if you dare utter it. And so if you're an agreeable person, that's difficult. And so if you're an agreeable physician, and you want people to like you, and you don't like conflict, and you're caring, you need a disagreeable lawyer. Because a disagreeable lawyer has been

through this sort of thing many, many times, and has the thick skin for it, but is also perfectly capable, willing, and might even enjoy saying no when the circumstances demand it. And a good litigator in particular, litigators tend to be quite disagreeable, but a defense attorney can, and attorneys in general tend to be relatively disagreeable, especially if they're effective. So there's definitely a time when you need someone of the temperament that your lawyer appears to be. And it's useful to develop that side of your character too,

the part that can bite back when bitten, you know, not to, not more than necessary, but certainly not less than necessary. And so, so what, you have to dispense with your presumption that you're in a territory where rationality prevails and you have to dispense with the presumption that the people who are coming after you or the forces that are arrayed against you are of the sort that's aiming up, let's say. Okay, so you have physicians. Now, physicians are what coming to you behind the scenes and saying that they wish they would support you.

Are these friends, these are colleagues? And did anybody actually speak out from the medical community in your support? The great majority of the voices of the medical community were opposed to me. I was roundly criticized. There were ad-hoc groups of physicians getting together, holding press conferences, ridiculing me. The Minnesota Medical Association has been not friendly to my position.

But quietly, behind the scenes, physicians have reached out to me. And these are not friends. These are colleagues, many of whom I've never met. I've received numerous letters even in the last two weeks from physicians saying, we've been watching from afar. We have got to stay quiet. We don't dare come out. But we so appreciate what you've done. We respect your character, your integrity, the thoughtful, measured

manner in which you've dealt with these slings and arrows. And we want you to know we appreciate it, respect it. Oftentimes within the notes, there's almost an underlying sense of confession, almost an effort to seek absolution. And I've oftentimes responded to my colleagues and said, I get where you're at. I was in a different place. I'm not young. I'm 68. I think these partisan activists who you who decided to weaponize the Minnesota Board of Medical practice to shut me up. They didn't know me. They may have seen me as that person who was always going to be approval seeking in that. But I think I do have the ability, perhaps I'm a little slow on the draw, but I do have

the ability to say, no, that's the line in the sand will go no further. And I did do that. And I think when I did that, I did it in part because I have a shield of success in my career. I'm 68. I'm not dependent on their approval, nor am I dependent on the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for my Rizone de Toa, my reason for being, I know exactly why I'm here. And that's not going to stop or change. I'm not going to flinch. And so I found it rewarding to have so many colleagues, nurses, first responders reach out and say, Hey, Doc, thanks.

Appreciate it very much. Would have loved to have been there standing right by your side, but I just couldn't do it. And I get that. So this, okay, so this fifth investigation is occurring while you're running for governor and you think it had a devastating effect, well, a devastating effect on you as part and parcel of this ongoing process. Do you think it had a determining effect on the election?

That's an interesting question. Whether or not the investigation had not been going on, let me say that again. I think the deep-seated nature of being investigated by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice was utilized by my opponents repeatedly. I was accused of participating in the big lie by some journal nationally. This was used against me over and over again, and it forced me to take positions on issues in a way that I would have liked to have not head to.

It made me, in in some situations go farther right in order to convince a certain group of people that no, I'm not some whack job. I'm a credible thoughtful physician who's at a wonderful career, and you should ignore these slings and arrows. Last night, I got an email just before midnight that was from a journalist who's gonna be interviewing me

and she said, what do you think about these kinds of documents that are circulating on social media that just denigrate your character? And so I looked at some of the documents and there's a two page index document totally eviscerating me saying that this is a quack doctor and it's from the the opposing party and it was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and this was used during the campaign and some of the substance of it did relate back to the fact that I was being investigated by the

Minnesota Board of Medical Practice on some of these same issues. So did it have a determining loss? So it's also, you know, even when I, and this has happened to me repeatedly, you know, because I've interviewed a lot of people who've been pilloried and canceled. You know, and when I was ill a while back, and when I sort of reemerged into the podcast sphere after a couple of years, the first person I interviewed was Abigail Shryer, and she just written a book called,

Your Versible Damage, about this absolutely god-awful catastrophe on the transfront that physicians and psychologists are collaborating and producing, and much to our shame, let's say. And in Oabigale had been pilloried by all the usual suspects and Tardin feathered and with the brush of disgust and contempt.

And even though I've been through this and known many people who've been through it, every time I pick another one of the deplorable people to interview like you, there's a part of me that goes along with that unthinking mob mentality such that once the accusation has been made, I'm forced to confront my suspicion that, well, where there's smoke, there must be fire, you know, that, well,

Dr. Jensen, I mean, you haven't been investigated just once and not even twice. You've been investigated. What is it seven times now? Six times. Is it seven? Six times. Is it seven? Six times. And so you're really telling me that you're in your guilty of all charges in six separate investigations over multiple years? Well, it's a hell of a lot easier to believe that no, you know, even though maybe you're technically innocent on some of the charges, there's something you're up to.

And it's easy to put you in the basket of people who shouldn't be validated at least. And you know, it's partly because there's a lot of people. And if anyone is disgraced, it's easy to put them in the basket of people you shouldn't interact with. And that means this accusatory power that we've put in the hands of anonymous trolls and allowing them to take the grip of the controls of boards with as much power as the Minnesota board of medical practice is what it's a power that's extraordinarily deep and far-reaching and can easily destroy people's lives. And there's something that's truly awful about that, and it's not surprising that people move away from you

once you've been tarred by that brush. During the course of the campaign, a large thrust of my opponent's strategy was to paint me as extreme. And you're spotlighting that exactly correctly. I think that human nature is such that when something adverse happens to someone else, the human mind looks for some justification.

Well, that person maybe did this or maybe that person could have done this and didn't or maybe that person had it coming. And that kind of underlying subconscious part of all of us does color the way we look at that person. So I had that where we even do that to ourselves. We do. We do it to our loved ones. we do it to friends. We look for that justification because when we find it or if we can conjure it up, then we can say, that's why it didn't happen to me. And so when I was running for governor, I think there was a tremendous skepticism thrown

around my character. Could that have been determining in terms of the outcome? Absolutely. One of the things I've heard from people after the governor's race was they said, Doc, the real you never got transmitted to the everyday masses of voters who never had a chance to meet you. They don't really know who you are. They see you as this demonized villain that the Democrats had said he's a part of the big lie. And I think you're absolutely right. Human nature is to look for the justification as to why someone else is suffering and you're not. And generally, there'll be some overhanging residue that even as we try

to thoughtfully look at the situation, we cannot escape that residual, well, maybe he or she had it coming. Yeah, in some manner. Yeah, well, it's an easy default position. It's very difficult to fight over that. And to, well, that's why the presumption of innocence in the legal systems in civilized countries is such a complete bloody miracle. Because I also noticed as a clinician, you know, that I was often dealing with people

who had been accused in one way or another, often by themselves of some malfeasance. And I always took the case that my role as a counselor was to begin with the presumption of innocence and to investigate based on that presumption, but also to help my client even in regards to themselves to start with the presumption of innocence. So if someone was feeling very guilty and was depressed, for example, which is a very, that's a situation where the adversary is within and is eating you, eating your soul, so to speak,

you have to mount a strong defense. And, you know, that means that you should take a very careful look at your weaknesses and your transgressions, but you should do that from the presumption, from the initial presumption of innocence. And so, and that's a hard thing to learn too when you're being prosecuted in the manner that you've been prosecuted

because in order to withstand that without falling prey to the trauma associated with de-realization, you have to get your ducks in order so that you can justify to yourself your own claims of innocence. And that means you also have to learn to do that without a kind of careless self-righteousness and also without that proclivity to move toward more extreme views, which does also lurk as a temptation under such circumstances. I recall vividly when I used to do work with chemical dependency patients, one of the steps of the A.A. alcoholics anonymous was to take that ruthless inventory of ourselves.

And I think you're absolutely right. That ability to take a ruthless inventory of your shortcomings comes in conflict with the need to presume that you yourself are innocent. So oftentimes, the guilt is deep, it's hard to remove. And I think when I went through the trauma of my 30-year-old brother committing suicide, one of the things that troubled me most in the aftermath was that as a physician, I wasn't evidently able to help him navigate a path through that guilt, inventory, kind of process that his life was taking him on. And so in the end, some element of justification within him said, it's okay for me to end this because I'm not making my way.

And the world would be better, I would be better, not here. And I'll never forget that, that that indeed is the case, that we don't always presume that we're innocent, we're doing that ruthless inventory, even if we want to cut ourselves some slack. It's tough. Yeah, yeah, cut ourselves some slack, it's tough. Yeah, yeah, it's a very, it's a very, and that's especially, I would say, true again, for a conscientious person, because you're going to take yourself, there's going to be a tendency to take yourself to task very harshly. And that can easily be weaponized by people who don't

have that proclivity and would like to use it against you. The woke guilt-mongering left have become absolutely expert at this, much to the chagrin and danger of competent and hardworking people everywhere. Okay, so now you're in your fifth set of investigations with 18 allegations in the middle of a gubernatorial race, and despite the fact that there's 18, they're all dismissed. And yet, they investigate you a sixth time. So let's go to the sixth time. The fifth investigation started in November of 2021 and was literally put on hold during the course of the campaign. So that was present for about 12 months of the campaign. When it was resurrected in January of this year, a sixth investigation was initiated with additional allegations being put forward.

That was literally combined into a fifth and sixth investigation together, which culminated in our meeting last week with the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. And it was at that meeting where the fifth and sixth combined investigations with its commensurate 18 allegations were completely dismissed. It was very brief. The letter I just received a couple of days ago was these allegations have all been dismissed. It was very brief. The letter I just received a couple of days ago was these allegations have all been dismissed. This case is closed. Okay, so let me ask you some questions about that. So now, how many allegations in total

do you suppose have been levied against you by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice. It was difficult to tell. They've said, Yeah, I know. Now, because one, two, three, four, five, and six, and it seemed that with the sixth investigative letter, they were dredging up allegations that had already been addressed and dismissed. So, as I read through the document, it says there's 18 allegations.

I could find nine, real clearly, then I could find some other comments that may have represented an allegation, but I never saw a list of, these are the 18 allegations that Dr. Jensen has been accused of. So it was a little bit... That makes the Kafka-esque nightmare perfect because now you don't even know what precisely it is that you're accused of. That makes defense a lot more difficult. So I said that after...

That's the point. During our conference, I was asked something about a conspiracy theory. And I said, could I please know what conspiracy theory I am purported to have advanced? Someone would ask me a question about an off-label medication. And I can say, can I please know which medication we're talking about? Someone would say that, well, your writing wasn't very legible on this chart note. Can you please show me which word you couldn't read? It was extremely difficult.

In fact, during the course of the conference, I did at one point in time say, this feels like gulash. I don't know what to respond to because the generalities are so vague. How can I possibly know what you want me to say? I said, I've given thousands and thousands of speeches, comments on the Senate floor during the campaign, in podcasts, on videos, and someone says, you did this.

Show me. Just show me. Perhaps one of the most compelling things I did at the end of the board of medical practice conference, I looked at my accusers and I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and I said, I did nothing wrong. And I stopped. Why do you think that was effective? And I stopped. Why do you think that was effective? Well, my attorney was nervous about it because he felt that the tenor of the meeting was moving towards a desire to resolve the issue and not have it be

disagreeable or contentious. And when I made that comment, he told me later on, he said, Scott, he said, you made me flinch. I was concerned that that was going to be to bowl the statement to in your face, I did nothing wrong. But he said, I think it worked out perfectly because I think it did give the Board of Medical Practice members a clear sense that I do care about the standard of care. I do care about not doing things wrong,

and I don't think I did anything wrong. Earlier in the meeting, I had made the challenge to the board. I said, I think it's critically important that people understand the difference between misinformation and disinformation. I said, disinformation is the deliberate attempt to mislead with false or deceptive information. Misinformation is simply someone's truth on a Monday being demonstrated on a Friday that it's not the situation. Well, I think that the terms misinformation and disinformation This information and disinformation are unary markers that the person who is using them has already become entirely confused about what constitutes the manner in which the world operates. I mean, first of all, who's to say who's wrong about what when the issues are contentious?

There's not some board of overseers that has unerring insight into what constitutes the appropriate facts of that at hand. The world would be a very straightforward place if it was that simple. And I've seen the rise of these terms, misinformation and disinformation over the last two or three years and watched that with Dawning horror because the whole semantic substructure of that classification system is based on the presumption that the dividing line between fact and fiction or fact fiction and lie is obvious to anyone with the proper objective stance. And the question is always begged, well, just who is this wizard that can see so clearly through all the merc, especially not post hawk?

And as soon as you even allow those terms to exist, misinformation and disinformation, you're already going to find yourself in an extraordinarily dark place. And so, so, do you think, have you received anything approximating an apology, and do you think that or a hint of culpability on the part of the people who are sitting on this board, and do you think that there's any chance that they'll leave you alone? that there's any chance that they'll leave you alone. I've not received any kind of apologetic overture from the board and I don't expect to.

I believe that those members believe that they are carrying out the mission of their regulatory agency to the best of their ability. As you indicated earlier, often times. Why do you leave that? Look, man, they've gone after you. Look, if they'd gone after you once and you defended yourself, and then they came after you again and you defended yourself, and that was all cleared up, I would say,

hey, they might've been a little on the overzealous side, but twice, that's within the realm of forgivable willful blindness. Three times, that's a pattern. Six times, that's not a pattern. That's absolute 100% proof. And so if they're still believing that what they were doing was undertaking their sworn duties as appropriately behaving members of the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, they have their heads in the sound. Because six man, six is too many. Three is too

many. But six is definitely too many. So that's why I was wondering also about any nature of public statement, because you would presume, if you still thought you were in the domain of the vaguely rational, that what the Minnesota Board of Medical practice would do would put out a press release saying, Dr. Jensen has been the subject of numerous investigations now extending over numerous years, including a variety of allegations. Some uncountable number apparently, but let's say 18. He has demonstrated his innocence in all cases, and we would like to ensure that everyone

knows that and the case is closed. That's minimally professional responsible, as far as I'm concerned, minimally, because you've been dragged through quite a lovely form of hell. Maybe you lost an election because of it, and in some sense, that's too bad for you. But in a much deeper sense, that's too bad for the citizens of Minnesota, whose electoral process was hijacked by an inappropriate investigation. And that's not forgivable. And as far as I'm concerned, that's on them.

And so I don't think that it's reasonable to presume that after the sixth failed investigation, especially in a high-stake situation like this, that what the board members were doing was just within the realm of their appropriate, what would you say, domain of professional responsibility. It's like three times, guys, you're pushing it. Six times, you're way beyond the pale, especially when there's as much political context, muddying up the circumstance as there is in your specific case. So I would love to receive a letter, as you just mentioned, but I think that through this process,

I perhaps moved a little bit from a naive optimist into somewhat more of a cynic when it comes to regulatory agencies. I think that what I went through is something that virtually anybody could go through. If it happened to me, it could happen to you. If you're subject to any regulatory agency, I don't care if you own a hair salon, a restaurant, a pub, a dental clinic, if

you're subject to a regulatory agency, what we have seen is they are able to be weaponized. The board of medical practice does not believe that they were weaponized. I indicated to them. I don't think the individuals were, but I think the agency collectively was. I think that, frankly, how did they justify their claim that they weren't weaponized? How in the world could they be wrong 18 times? 18 is a lot of times to be wrong. You know, that's a pattern too. So how did they claim that they weren't weaponized? I think there's an underlying sense within many regulatory agencies and perhaps the Minnesota Board of Medical Practices one is that, as you said earlier, anybody that has 18 allegations

against him, there's got to be some element of he should be discredited. And during the course of our meeting, there was a point in time where I was uncomfortable where I said, are you going to discredit anybody that doesn't perceive the situation as yourself? And I mentioned people like Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Buttigieg and Dr. Harvey Riech. And there was an absolute willingness to dismiss those people as either discredited and irrelevant or whatever. I mean, I remember the first time. There's nothing no one less credible

than Jay Boudicharia after all. I mean, oh yeah, I've always looked at his record as an academic to understand very deeply how much credibility he lacks. I was proud of the fact that I believe I was one of the first physicians to sign on to the Great Barrington Declaration way back in 2020, I believe it was. I thought that it was a brilliant document, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of what public health could do.

The lockdowns weren't working. The locking in of the nursing home patients to die horrific, lonely deaths. The locking out of students. All of this was problematic at a deep level. So when we saw this document come out and say, listen, we know where this virus wants to hit. We know who's particularly vulnerable. Let's provide laser focus protection for those people and recognize that we have an economy to maintain, we have a mental health responsibility, we cannot damage our children for decades to come.

And yet all of that was thrown aside in part because there's this contest going on where my experts are more important than yours. My champions are more soundly rational than yours. There's this constant. Right, so with the great, with the great barrington declaration, which is something that Bada Chiria initiated, we now have a total signature volume of a million people, it's 936,000. 47,000 of those are medical practitioners. So when you go in front of the Minnesota Board of Medical practice, you can say, well, 47,000

medical practitioners worldwide tend to agree that my misinformation was accurate. And so on what grounds do you stand? And the answer is, well, the answer I get from places like the Ontario College of Psychologists is we don't have to answer questions like that, which is, so at the moment I'm, as you know, I'm in a situation that's pretty similar to yours, although it didn't destroy my political career. It certainly did in my clinical career. That's for sure. Much to the chagrin and damage of my clients, by the way, some of whom I'd had ref what I

had a relationship with that spanned years and sometimes decades, which all burned up in an instant. And they're hauling me in front of their... They've threatened to haul me in front of an interview because I told them to go to hell with their insistence that I be reeducated, interminably, by their experts, according to their standards for a duration they choose. And so now I'm supposed to face the same sort of in-person examining board that just grilled you over the coals, but they're delaying and delaying and delaying because, um, well, and delaying and delaying because, well, why not, I suppose. I think they're suffering from the extreme delusion that if they leave this hornet's nest alone, the hornets will

leave, but that's definitely not going to happen. So I've been calling on them publicly in Canada rather repeatedly to get on with the inquisition, but at the moment they're hiding behind a variety of bureaucratic idiocies to make the case that they have the right to delay the investigation beyond the statutory limitations for it that they've even imposed upon themselves, right? Because there's a 150-day period within which, if I understand correctly, within which these are supposed to be brought to something, approximating a conclusion once they've been initiated, so that you're not hung out to drive forever. But, you know, there's always a reason for bureaucrats to get around their own bureaucratic

limitations. And that's certainly happening in the Canadian situation. But did they give you the sense that you better continue to step lightly, Dr. Jensen, because with your reprehensible history of six investigations, it's only a matter of time until you say something else cataclysmically inappropriate. And we haul you in front of ourselves again. Or do you think maybe they've gone back into their

layer to find someone else to torment? I think there was a clear understanding that there were a couple things that were really problematic for them, and that if I would once again engage in that kind of activity, I would very likely appear before them again. I think specifically- So what would those be? Yeah. I think specifically utilizing off-label medications for the treatment of COVID-19.

Physicians do that all the time. Physicians do that all the time. I pointed that out to them. I pointed that out that many pediatricians would have more than 50% of their prescriptions would be off-label. But specifically, the off-label use of Ivermectin was very problematic for them. And I know how dangerous is Ivermectin if you look at the various reports. If you look at the history of the medication, the FDA data and the various data, I think Ivermectin

for a five-day course is extremely safe. Now, whether or not you're... Looks like it's about as safe as water, right? I don't think you'd have to scour the medical literature long and hard before you found a drug with as low a proportion of side effects to benefit as I've remarked it. There's been millions of doses given and the side effect reporting is so remarkably low that it's a kind of miracle.

So if you're going to administer agent off label, it's hard for me to see how you could do something that would bring about less likely harm than Ivermecta. Do you think that's a reasonable position? I think Ivermecta. Do you think that's a reasonable position? I think Ivermecta is very safe. I think a lot of people don't realize that it's available over the counter in topical forms. I think there's a medicine called Sclyce that people can purchase on their own. But I think that the Board of Medical Practice made it clear that this was a big deal. I think they also made it very clear that what they perceive the standard of care to be, they often talked about the minimum standard of care.

They asked me, what do you think the minimum standard of care is? And I said, I've never really thought about the minimum standard of care because that's never what I've aspired to provide. I've always thought that I wanted to provide the best quality of care and I think that that's what I've done. So in terms of going forward, your question is extremely pertinent. Is there going to be a seventh investigation? And someone from the public going to say, we're going to keep making Dr. Scott Jensen's life a living hell until he shuts up.

I'm going to guess that's going to happen. That's why I keep coming back to the point we do not have a clearly defined line that we need to have between my rights of First Amendment speech and the Minnesota Board's obligation to make certain that my professional conduct, as it pertains to the practice of medicine, is above the minimum standard of care. To me, that's what needs to happen yet. And so I don't think we could possibly be done with this issue in America. I think we need the courts to weigh in and say, listen, if states have put together statute language that violates the Constitution, it's unconstitutional. If regulatory agencies are stepping beyond their bounds, thinking that they get to do this and this and this,

and it's unconstitutional. It needs to be declared that because if there's one thing that COVID-19 has done, it has put a spotlight on regulatory agencies that can go after you, me, the hair salon person, the pub owner, the restaurant runner, everybody. We are all at risk. a pub owner, the restaurant runner, everybody. We are all at risk. Frankly, Dr. Peterson, that's why I wrote my book. We've been played because I said, we need to make certain that we're seeing what's going on in our world.

The world of big tech and big pharma and big government colluding and having a similar mission, it's happening right in front of our eyes. And I'm saying that people like you and me, we have an obligation to expose that. We saw big government protect big pharma. We saw big pharma and big tech scratching each other's back. We saw the DOD in the United States provided more money to Pfizer in 2022 than they did to Boeing. The Department of Defense spends more money paying Pfizer than they spend Boeing, which is going to make

weaponry and aircraft that will protect our nation. We've gone upside down and we need to stop this. We've gone upside down and we need to stop this. Well, Dr. Jensen, that's a pretty good place to end, I would say. Yeah, well, and for all of you professionals who are listening, you're living in a fool's paradise if you don't think this is coming down the pipes for you. And what do I mean by that? It's like, you know, you might not be investigated,

although I wouldn't rule that out. I would say, if I was advising a young professional now, I would say, you better make the presumption and prepare for the likelihood that at some point, someone with the delightful intrinsic nature of an Eastern European KGB and former of the 1970s is going to target you for some resentful reason and the board of regulators, regulators of your profession is going to make your life hell. So you better bloody well prepare for that because that's coming along. But I would also say that even if you're not unfortunate enough to have that happen, and you will be, but even if you're not, you're in a situation now,

whereas a licensed professional, you're going to have to live in a certain amount of fear with regards to the freedom of your tongue. And that's going to make you much less secure and happy person publicly. It's going to make you much worse professional. Because if you can no longer say what you think as a professional with the attendant risk of being wrong, you're no longer of any use to your patients or clients or customers. And so that's a pretty damned dismal outcome. The right outcome here is for the

weaponized boards of regular Dory practice to be scuttled because they've been corrupted beyond repair, they've been weaponized partly by easy access to the complaint process electronically, they failed to update themselves with the times, they put all the hands in the power of idiot vengeful accusers and they pose a far greater threat to the public than they do a defense. And the legislators who are listening, especially on the Republican side, the more conservative side, should wake up and understand that this is a catastrophe, because it's not just Dr. Jensen.

It's all physicians, it's all psychologists, it's all teachers, it's all lawyers, even more ominously, because the equivalent boards that regulate legal practice are perhaps even worse, and that's really saying something. And so we're not in Kansas anymore. And it's not 1947 with Jimmy Stewart. I don't know where the hell we are, but that's not it. And all of you professionals who are listening, you, it would be better for you in the medium and long run that you

wake up and smell the coffee, and that when someone like Dr. Jensen with his stellar record is being attacked by your idiot boards of regulation, that silence is not in your best interest. And so, well... One of the things I've shared with many audiences is I've said, the words of Martin E. Moller in the mid-1940s when he wrote, when they came for the trade unionist, I didn't speak up because

I wasn't a trade unionist. When they came for the communists, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. When they came for the Jews, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. And when they came for me, there was nobody left to speak up. I don't know that there is any essay or poem written that could be more compelling than that is we have to speak up, we have to stand at your side, we have to stand at my side, we have to recognize that we're not in Kansas anymore, that we should not be threatened with the idea of being sent to a reeducation camp simply because we express our heartfelt perspective on a given situation. Amen to that. So well, we'll see how the college in position in Ontario rolls itself out. They came after me with 13 allegations in the last round.

And you know, I mounted my defense, which has been an extraordinarily expensive undertaking and has all the complexities that you described. But they seem to be at a little bit of a stalemate at the moment in relationship to their continued persecution. And as far as I'm concerned, this is a no holds barred all out war. And so I'm actually looking forward to being brought in front of the disciplinary committee because as I understand it, they videotape it.

And I'm going to put the videotape on YouTube after I'm done. And we'll see who inquires into the conduct of who. So, Dr. Peterson, to that point, when the Minnesota Port of Medical Practice introduced themselves in our meeting last week, they advised me that it was going to be recorded. So I asked if I could have a copy of the recording,

and I was told I would not be able to have a copy of the recording unless our proceedings advanced along a pathway whereby legal statute would allow me to have a copy. But otherwise, I would not have a copy of that. And I thought that was interesting. I thought that it was interesting that they were going to record it.

I would not get a copy unless potentially we went to another step where I would formally and make a legal request for that. So I did find that interesting as well. Yeah, well, it should be the case that these, it's necessary now for these to be, these, especially the final stages of these inquisitions, to be a matter of public record. And in my case, one way or another, they're going to be a matter of

public record. So I requested that any more meeting, I requested that our meeting not be zoomed. I wanted it face to face. I wanted it Facebook live streamed and I wanted it open to the public and I wanted a copy of the recording. And the only one I got was I did get a face to face meeting. Right, right, right. Well congratulations on your newfound freedom, so to speak. It's good to see that you've managed to come through this more or less intact and that you're not down for the count because plenty of people, I've really been struck to my

soul, I would say, watching what this has done to people, the people that I've encountered who've been dragged through the mud in this manner. It's, there's almost nothing you can do to someone who's strived hard to put forward a credible professional career and made the sacrifices necessary to ensure that that occurs then to denigrate their reputation

and to accuse them of professional malfeasance. It's an unbelievably effective weapon. And when wielded properly, it wreaks tremendous havoc on people's lives, of course, including the lives of the people who are being served by that professional upon whose reputation at minimum, a Paul has now been cast and faith, what shaken even under the best circumstances. And so it's good to see that you're bloody but unbout, so to speak. And I hope the bastards leave you the hell alone

from here on in, but they probably won't. So forearmed is fore, what is it. So, forearmed is forearmed. What is it? Forewarned is forearmed. And so I guess you've been through this enough now to know what to do the next time it, the snake comes around and inject some more venom. Good talking you, Dave, sir.

Thank you, I appreciate it very much. I do. Hello, everyone. I would encourage you to continue listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com.