The Megyn Kelly Show - Dark Brandon Tries Again, with Andrew Klavan, and COVID Origins Deep Dive, with Dr. Alina Chan and Dr. Robert Garry | Ep. 426

Episode Date: November 3, 2022

Megyn Kelly begins the show with a deep dive into the origins of COVID-19 - was it from a lab leak, or from nature? On one side is Tulane virologist Dr. Robert Garry, who discusses why he says science points to COVID-19 originating from nature, the importance of the furin cleavage site, what was actually happening at the Wuhan lab, the experimentation with gain-of-function research, why Garry originally said it was not natural then changed mind, his personal conversations with Dr. Collins and Dr. Fauci, why he believes the wildlife market caused the "spillover," and more. Then Dr. Alina Chan, molecular biologist and MIT and Harvard scientific advisor, joins to discuss why she says science points to a leak from the Wuhan lab as the origin of COVID, what the reversal by scientists shows, the lack of transparency about the process, why Fauci and Collins would have wanted to clamp down on the lab leak theory, lack of evidence for both natural and lab origins, China's ongoing blame game, scientific naivete, why there might be suppression of data that could tell us more about the origins, and more. Then Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show and author of "A Strange Habit of Mind," joins to talk Dark Brandon's MEGA MAGA speech, Biden counting on dominance over our information, the changing media landscape to bring more independent sources, White House's deleted tweet after they were flagged for misinformation, the Supreme Court hearing an affirmative action case, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. Did you catch Dark Brandon's latest speech about the extreme MAGA Republicans last night? It's like change. It was extreme MAGA, it's ultra MAGA, and now it's mega MAGA, which I actually kind of like. I like alliteration. It was extreme MAGA, it's ultra MAGA, and now it's mega MAGA, which I actually kind of like. I like alliteration. It flows. Mega MAGA Republicans last night, he spoke to the American people about the threats to democracy just days before Americans cast their ballots in the midterm elections. And we're going to get into all of that when Andrew Klavan joins us in just a bit of The Daily Wire. But we begin today with a deep dive on a hugely important issue, and that is the origins of COVID. Did it come from a lab? Did it come from nature?

With millions dead, we've got over a million Americans dead now around the world, even more. Not knowing is not an option, right? How is it that we can't have a definitive answer by now? Today, we have two scientific experts with us who have completely different points of view on how it started. I'm going to be joined in a bit by Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and scientific advisor at MIT and Harvard. She wrote a book on why she believes the science points to COVID originating in a lab. But we begin today with Dr. Robert Gehry, virologist from Tulane University,

who now believes from his research that COVID did not originate in a lab, but instead came from nature. And he was somebody closely in touch with Dr. Fauci at the beginning of this whole thing before Dr. Gehry and others published a piece in Nature magazine saying this looked like it had natural origins. Dr. Gary, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here. My pleasure. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. All right, so let's just get into it because as I understand it, the best case, and forgive me because I am not a doctor, but the best case for this coming from a lab

is that it has something called a furin cleavage site in it. And that is something not in except in very rare cases seen in nature and that it's never been seen in in a coronavirus of this type ever before. This is it. And it just so happens to emerge in the very same city where there's a lab doing exactly this kind of research. Right. So what did you what how do you dismiss the fear and cleavage site? OK, so just to correct a few things, you know, fear and cleavage sites are not rare in coronaviruses at all. There are many coronaviruses that have fear and cleavage sites. So of this type, like SARS, like those types of coronaviruses? Okay. So the SARS-like coronaviruses, they're a specific subgenus of a genus in the coronavirus

family. There are lots of coronaviruses, okay? Okay. But is it true that there's never been a furin cleavage site in a SARS type coronavirus? Okay. So if you draw that line very narrowly. So let me give you an analogy here. Can you just answer and then give me my analogy? Because that way we can keep me understanding. So in the subgenus, this small part of this genus of the beta coronaviruses, there's not been another one with a furin cleavage site.

But let me tell you what that's like. So I've heard the analogy, okay. It's like finding a horn on a horse in one city. But that's not really looking for unicorns, right? So it's not really a unicorn. It's like finding a horn on a white horse. But there are lots of different colors of horses, right? So you've got black horses and brown horses and, you know, spotted horses and

the like, and all these brown and black and spotted horses, you know, they, you know, they could have horns, right? You know, and that that's if you're in cleavage site. So it's like saying, you know, there's just one small member of the family that, you know, has an unusual feature. And, you know, somehow or other, that's unusual. Okay. And there's a wide range of scientists who disagree with your assertion on that and say that it is highly unusual. There's a lot of other reasons, too, to think that that furin cleavage site is natural. It's a site in the virus where, you know, that changes very frequently, okay? It's a highly volatile site. There's nothing unusual about that furin cleavage site when you look at

it. You know, it's actually, if you compare it to other coronaviruses, the furin cleavage site, the nucleotides that were put in there are out of frame. And that probably doesn't mean much to many of your viewers, but it's very significant for a virologist to, you know, if you think that it was cloned in there somehow, there's really no reason for a scientist to put that in out of frame. And there's some other features of it too that look perfectly natural.

There is a reason for scientists to put it in there if they're researching bat coronaviruses and looking for ways to make them more dangerous or more contagious in humans, which is exactly what they were doing in this Wuhan lab. Well, you know, I don't think they were trying to make them more dangerous. They were trying to figure out how they, you know, cause disease in people. So there's a big difference between, you know, trying to do work that would, you know, create a bioweapon and one that's just, you know, trying to find out, you know, what kind of viruses are out there and what are potentially,

you know. Yeah. Okay. I accept that. But they definitely were looking at bat coronaviruses in this Wuhan lab in ways, I'll just go with your language, to make them more contagious. And the furin cleavage site was a way to, as I understand it, and this is how it's explained to me, to basically, you insert this in, it tells the cell, open up, I'm something you want. But it's a lie. It's not something the cell wants. It's dangerous. And then it tells the cell to manufacture more coronavirus. And then the cell complies. And then they go out and they attack other cells. And it's almost like a computer virus in the way it multiplies very efficiently. And that's what a furin cleavage site does. And that's why we don't really like furin cleavage sites

in viruses like this. Well, you know, a lot of coronaviruses have furin cleavage sites. I mean, there are two common cold coronaviruses that infect people that, you know, have furin cleavage sites. So it's not necessarily the, you of a gain-of-function research or anything along those lines.

It's just something that viruses occasionally pick up on. I'm just trying to explain what a fear and cleavage site does and why we don't like it and why it's a problem in the coronavirus. Lots of viruses happen, even these relatively mild. Well, you said that before, but then you already admitted not in the SARS family. And that's why people are suspicious of this one. But here's the thing. So we don't like the fact that it's got a furin cleavage site.

And there's a reason why the Wuhan lab and Peter Daszak's group, EcoHealth Alliance, which is funded by the United States, by Fauci's group, that they wanted to experiment with the furin cleavage site being put into a coronavirus very much like this one. They asked for permission. They wanted funding from the Defense Department, which the Defense Department said no to, saying it was too, they believed it would be too dangerous. Nonetheless, we believe this kind of work was being done at the Wuhan lab. Do you dispute it? Yeah. Well, I do dispute it. You know, I mean, I think that, you know, there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there that say that, you know, a U.S. lab, you know, and laboratory technologies that

were developed here were then, you know, somehow or other used to create the SARS coronavirus, the SARS-CoV-2. I mean, there's just really no evidence for that whatsoever. There's a lot more scientific evidence on the, you know, the fact that this virus emerged just like a lot of other emerging viruses do from nature, from the wildlife. Well, I concede to you there is no evidence that this coronavirus we've been dealing with, SARS-CoV-2, came from the Wuhan lab or from there's no evidence. There's no proof. Or from American technology.

And I think that's very important to point out. I mean, you know, that a lot of fingers have been pointed at some scientists in the U.S. like, you know, like Peter Daszak and some scientists at the University of North Carolina, for example, saying that they somehow or other engineered this furin cleavage site into SARS-CoV-2. There is absolutely no evidence for that. They didn't do that. I got you. And we're trying to make a distinction now between general coronavirus research, bat coronavirus research that may have included insertion of a furin cleaver site, and research that led to this coronavirus we've all been dealing with in this pandemic. And that second leap, there's no proof for that yet. There's supposition, there's circumstantial evidence, people have their beliefs. But I can see to you pointing conspiracy theorists like to do that. But, you know, it just didn't happen that way. Well, I don't know if that's true either. There's no proof to exonerate him either, but there's no proof condemning him. So so but on the first question of the research he was doing on coronaviruses and Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab, that is potentially problematic. And on the unicorn

example you just cited, they went to the Defense Department and said, please let us do research on how to get a horn on a horse. We really want to put a horn on a horse. Please let us. And the Defense Department said, we're not going to fund that. That seems dangerous for whatever reason. And then lo and behold, a horse with a horn started walking around Wuhan, China, right next to the very lab in which they wanted to do this very research. And the scientists say it's not unusual for scientists to go in and seek funding for something they actually already have underway. Well, you know, I mean, if you looked at other research grants, again, I just want to emphasize to your to your audience that there is no evidence that U.S. labs and scientists were involved in creating this virus. And, you know, the horn on the horse, the unicorn analogy, I mean, it really falls apart really quickly when you think, okay, it's just one, you know, this is a white horse.

But there are black horses and brown horses and, you know, a lot of other kinds of horses and, you know, donkeys and things like that, that have the furin cleavage site. So it's really not a, you know, it's really not the smoking gun for the, you know, for the lab leak proponents. In fact, you know, if you really look closely at the, at the site and, you know, how, how viruses acquire these furin cleavage sites, you can see that it's just been a perfectly natural process as to how SARS-CoV-2 got this spherine cleavage. Well, why did you originally think that it was likely from a lab? Because we've seen in your correspondence with Fauci and Collins that you initially took a look at this along with other virologists and experts and said things like, I can't think of a plausible natural scenario.

That was February 2nd, 2020, where you get a bat virus or one very similar to it, um, where you insert exactly these amino acids and nucleotides that all have to be added and so on. And then you said, um, I just spoke to Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins. And then within days, you completely reversed yourself and did a 180 and said it can't possibly be lab leak. It is nature. Yeah. So let me correct that a little bit. I mean, that was one email that, you know, I had sent to, you know, some of my colleagues that were looking at this. One email out of hundreds of emails and, you know, different kinds of Zoom calls and things like this, where we're discussing, you know, the possibilities about where this, you know,

where this virus might have come from. And, you know, my colleagues and I who wrote that paper in Nature Medicine, you know, when we took on this, you know, sort of trying to figure out where it had come from, you know, we told ourselves we need to be agnostic about all the different possibilities. We need to not let, you know, some of our priors and some of our, you know, previous experience, you know, really bias us. And, you know, if we would have come up with, you know, data and evidence that the virus had leaked from the lab, we would have been the first ones out there saying, you know, this virus leaked from the lab. So that one email that you just read is, like I said, hundreds of emails. I actually wrote it, you know, at an evening. I was

at a Mardi Gras ball here. I'm in New Orleans, right? So, you know, I was typing on my iPhone there and, you know, just got this question, you know, what's the evidence that, you know, this, you know, if you're in cleavage site is natural or not. And that's what I typed out. But, you know, as I, you know, got further into the, you know, the whole genome and looking at the virus, it came clear pretty quickly that, you know, this virus, you know, all these features that we were looking at were perfectly natural. So, you know, I, you know, there were some other people that I was dealing with, you know, you've heard the names, Christian Anderson and Eddie Holmes, and a few others, Andrew Rambo, that, you know, may have been a little bit more open to the,

the lab hypothesis early on until they started looking at it. You know, I was, I was, you know, always more of the, you know, on the, yeah, this is natural, you know, and I'm going to have to find something really, you know, unusual to make me think that it's going to be a lab. But forgive me, wasn't it just days, wasn't it just two days later that you reversed yourself and said, actually, no, okay, I forget what I said about it coming from a lab. I now say it's natural. It wasn't really a reversal. I mean, it's what scientists do.

You know, we kick around ideas, you know, we have, you know, private conversations. Sometimes you're playing devil's advocate. I mean, that's pretty much what I was doing in that one email. Well, what happened in those 48 hours? What changed? What did you see? Well, we looked at the genomes of the viruses more closely. I mean, in fact, at that time, too, there was another piece of data that came out, you

know, the famous pangolin coronavirus, right? And this virus, when we looked at the genome of that, and it happened all in that timeframe, you know, there's another site besides the furin cleavage site that we were focusing in on. It's called the receptor binding domain. And that receptor binding domain also, you know, was causing us a little bit of, you know, head scratching, you know, where did that come from? Because it was like, unlike any other, you know, receptor binding domain that we'd seen in any coronavirus anywhere. But, you know, what made the pangolin coronavirus so significant was is that its RBD or receptor binding domain, this little fragment of the spike protein that helps the virus attach to the cell,

was very similar to what was the RBD, the receptor binding domain in SARS-CoV-2. So, you know, that pangolin coronavirus was a natural virus. We knew that for sure. It wasn't a fake virus somebody just put onto the, you know, onto a website. How does that prove anything about SARS-CoV-2? I can see why maybe you maybe you say all right that requires further study how do you in 48 hours come out and publish a paper saying this is natural I mean because that what happened the thing that bothered me when I saw this go down was why didn't all these experts because it's very suspicious talk to Fauci talk to Collins who are on record as not wanting this to be a lab leak theory as saying this would be very

damaging if that's what comes out. And then suddenly all these virologists reverse themselves. And it's one thing if you can say, Megan, let me show you what I saw that proved to me it came, we found the pangolin. You know, that's why I'd say, gotcha. I get it. But there's nothing that proved this thing came from natural, from nature in those 48 hours. Nothing. What happened was there was a communication with Fauci and Collins. We saw that the receptor binding domain was natural because it was in the pangolin. And if you find that site as a natural thing, then it's logical to go to the next step and say, well, the whole thing is natural. And let me step back to something that you just said about Drs. Fauci and Collins.

They were agnostic about it, too. I mean, you know, I never got any impression from either one of them. Because we have their writings. I mean, you can, forgive me, because you can tell me what your conversations were with them. I'm just telling you what my impression was. You know, you can come to a different conclusion. But, you know, they didn't, you know, try to influence us when we wrote the nature paper or nature medicine paper, or, you know, even, you know, tell us, oh, you got to write it this way or any

way like that. They were, they were completely hands off on that. You know, they, they, they had just what, what that conference was about really that teleconference on February one that, you know, there's been so much air about it, you know, a lot of speculation, everything. I mean, really what happened was, you know, a lot of virologists were called together by Jeremy Farrar. He is, you know, the head of the Wellcome Trust in the UK. And, you know, he called his friend Tony Fauci, and Fauci also got, you know, his boss on there, Francis Collins from the NIH. And, you know, and a bunch of other virologists that, you know, had expertise in how viruses

emerge. And, you know, this is, I think, perfectly natural. This is what you want people that are, you know, advising, you know, the President of the United States and Congress and also, you know, the parliament in the UK. You want these people to get the best information that they possibly can. Okay, but let me jump in. Let me jump in. I accept all that, but this guy, Farrar, he's a Brit. He is the one who initially sent an email to Fauci and Collins expressing support for

the lab leak theory, citing you among others, saying Robert Gehry, quote, cannot think of a possible natural scenario, saying he, quote, this other guy, Farzan. He says he was bothered by the fear in sight and having a hard time explaining it outside the lab, saying Farzan favored the lab leak over natural origin 70 to 30 or 60, 40. And then Farrar, he wrote a book, actually, saying two other experts advising Fauci and Collins were strongly in the lab leak camp. Christiane Anderson, who I know you've worked with and gotten research grants with, he put the lab leak theory at 60 to 70 percent. Eddie Holmes of Sydney put it at 80 percent and so on. And so this is all the information going into Fauci and Collins. All these top experts, including yourself saying, I got it. I got it. I got it. You change your mind in 48 hours, in 48 hours. And what we do know, and I know, I understand Collins may not have said it to you, according to you, but he is on record as saying we must quote, put down this very destructive conspiracy theory, meaning the lab leak. So he didn't sound exactly open-minded. So let me put that quote in a little bit more context. I mean, and I remember this, it's not, you know, it's not well discussed, but, you know, there was actually a preprint that came out right

around that time, right before that teleconference that said that basically this SARS-CoV-2 was a hybrid or a chimera between, you know, some coronavirus and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. And that preprint was making a lot of, you know, rounds in the media and people were touting it, oh, this is like the smoking gun, this virus came from a lab and they engineered it, they combined the most dangerous parts of HIV, including that furin cleavage side into SARS-CoV-2. And this is really what I think, you know, Dr. Collins's quote is really addressing those dangerous conspiracy theories about, you know, the virus having been engineered and possibly, you know, put together with HIV. I don't

think he was making like general, you know, comments or anything like that. No, I don't think you're correct. He went on to say, first of all, wondering if there's something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy with what seems to be growing momentum. With a link to a segment done by my old pal Brett Baer at Fox News about sources being increasingly confident that the coronavirus outbreak started in the Wuhan lab. Then he goes on to say, I hope that that the Nature Medicine article that you participated in after the 48 hour shift on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this, but probably didn't get much visibility. Anything more we can do? Ask the National Academy to weigh in. He clearly wanted this to go away. Then Fauci chimes in. It's a shiny object.'re talking from is in April. I mean, most of the scientists that had looked at it by that time were saying, yeah, we've got to dismiss all these conspiracy theories about the virus having been engineered at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It's just there's no evidence for it.

Well, OK. I mean, that's my point, is that that's what Fauci and Collins were saying. Let's get rid of this theory about what was happening at the lab, that this came from a lab. I mean, the science was very clear then. It's very clear now. I mean, the virus, you know, they didn't have a virus like SARS-CoV-2 at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They didn't stick a purine cleavage site in it. You don't know that. You absolutely do not know that, actually. I mean, you know, based on all the science and the evidence that we've gathered, I mean, you know, it's just extremely unlikely that they had anything close. Well, that's different than no, that's it. Now you're now you're you're admitting that you're just positing this extremely unlikely is different from I know she didn't, do you deny that there was bat coronavirus gain of function research going on in the Wuhan lab between this woman who is referred to as the bat lady and EcoHealth Alliance?

I mean, there was research being done, but there was no research being done on a virus that could have been converted into SARS-CoV-2. They didn't have the backbone. They didn't have anything close that was, you know, 99.9%. Have you seen what they did, what they had? Cause we've asked the Chinese repeatedly, including from the start and they didn't provide it. So how do you know? I mean, they would have published on it before. I mean, you know, and you can't find, it's hard to find in nature. So, you know, how did they get it? And there's another thing. How do you know

they would have published it? What if they were doing it nefariously? They wouldn't have published on it. That's a possibility, no? I mean, yeah, we're diving into conspiracy theories there. No, it's not a conspiracy theory. It's a question. It's a question. You can't dismiss a legitimate question by labeling it a conspiracy theory.

That's a tactic. That's not science. You would have to postulate that there were all these people working like Dayzak and, you know, the University of North Carolina scientists and the people from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, you know, the most elite coronavirus virologist in the world, that somehow or other they got together and said, okay, we're going to cover up the fact all this time, you know, three years now almost that we were working on the virus and, you know, three years now, almost that, that we were working on the virus and, you know, and that we had engineered it. I mean, I, you know, that sounds to me like a conspiracy. Now, you know, if it's, if you don't want to call it conspiracy theory, I guess that's okay.

Why is it not possible that they were working on it in a low security lab? You would concede that level two lab where something like that should not have been worked on. And then they had a, oh, you know what moment when it got out and an international pandemic was begun. I have to reject the idea that people like Peter Daszak and Ralph Baric were involved in some conspiracy with Zeng Li Shi at the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create SARS-CoV-2. It just did not happen that way. I know there are a lot of people- Again, you're setting us a straw man. You'd do better if you would strongman my argument than strawman it. I'm not saying that they had a conspiracy to create this particular virus. I'm saying they were doing

bat coronavirus research, gain-of-function research that was very dangerous, and it was not properly supervised in a lab with adequate security, which is what has led many of us to think something went wrong. Right. But they would have had to, you know, they would have had to have a virus that was close to SARS-CoV-2 there. Now, I'm going to tell you something here. And, you know, the virus didn't emerge directly from a bat to a person. OK, it had to go through an intermediate animal. It had to enter some other mammal besides a bat in order to evolve into SARS-CoV-2.

And the people at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, they were working on bat coronaviruses. And so that's a whole different thing. And that's another piece of data, another piece of evidence that they didn't engineer this virus. Well, no, but they had mice with humanized lungs and they were using those mice to test how contagious they could make this, how they could improve the efficiency of the contagion. That's not true. They didn't have mice with humanized lungs. Yeah.

And those mice are available, you know, ACE2 mice, they're available all over. A lot of people do work on those kind of mice. So why are we pretending that there wasn't a way of making- The more popular now that we've got a pandemic coronavirus that uses that for a receptor. Yeah. And I'm just saying, of course, this is what people think, that there absolutely was a way of making the coronavirus more dangerous and more contagious in this lab. And if it happened in a natural origin, where's the intermediate animal? Where's the original animal? Where is even one pangolin?

There's not one with over 80,000 animals tested. It wasn't a pangolin. But, you know, we do have evidence. And, you know, we published these two peer-reviewed papers in Science Magazine, you know, several months ago. You know, they went through a lot of strident peer review. And we showed, I think conclusively, I mean, you can pick your modifier. It's dispositive. It's definitive. You know, I mean, the language that we used in the paper was pretty direct.

I mean, we showed that the Hainan market and we haven't mentioned that word before, but this wildlife market in the city of Wuhan was, you know, the epicenter of the outbreak. I mean, all the early cases were that it was that it may have been the epicenter of the outbreak doesn't prove that that was the source, that that was the original source of the outbreak. Well, there's other data. Moreover, well, here's the second point. Moreover, my understanding is you guys, many people had the theory that this is where it began, the Wuhan market. And therefore, that's where all the testing was done in the hospitals around the Wuhan market in order to support your own theories, as opposed to casting a wide net to figure out where else it might have shown up. Yeah, it's it's called the Hanan market. It's the South China, you know, seafood and wildlife market there. And it was one of only four places in the city of Wuhan, this, you know, this mega city, you know, 11 million people there, that one of only four places that sold wildlife that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2.

So, you know, this is where, you know, where all the early cases were centered, you know, and, you know, it's not ascertainment bias or anything like that. You'll probably hear that, you know, a little bit later on, I'm guessing. But this was actually a study that was done after the outbreak had started. They looked at all the different cases across the whole city of Wuhan, these 11 million people, and identified cases of SARS-CoV-2 in December of 2019. So about 170 cases or so. And it turns out that, you know, we were able to look at that data and show that those cases were centered, you know, not just in any place in this large city of over 500 square miles, but in a very tiny area that included, you know, at its very center, the Henan seafood market. So, and this included people, and this is important. So when you know, at its very center, the Henan seafood market. So, and this included people, and this is important. So when you talk, you know, about ascertainment bias about these cases, it included

not only the cases that were epidemiologically or, you know, by, you know, contacts linked to the Henan market, but also cases that were not linked, that the epidemiologists couldn't find any link at all. And it turns out that those cases too, you know, without the, you know, the link to the market were also, you know, very close in that same community around that the Henan seafood market. So what happened is, is the virus spilled over, you know, from the wildlife trade in that market. And it didn't happen just once. It happened twice because there are two different lineages of the virus, which is a whole nother piece of evidence.

Here's the question lay people are asking. Where's the animal? Show us one. One. Show us one. You know, I mean, the data that we looked at and we published in our science papers goes even deeper. You know, when they closed down that market and they closed it down on January 1st, they took environmental samples from the market. Now, all the wild animals had already been cleared out of the market, right? But there were still environmental swabs and things that they took. And they took them from, you know, from around the different parts of the market. And when those environmental samples were tested for the presence of the virus, most of those samples ended up being clustered in one the presence of the virus, most of those samples ended up being clustered in one particular area of the market, the southwest corner.

Well, it turns out that the southwest corner was where they were selling these wild animals that are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. But the truth is, Dr. Gary, let me follow up. The truth is, you don't know that those samples originated with animals as opposed to infected humans. Well, you know, technically, you're correct about that. But I'll tell you, the samples that were positive came from places in the market where they were selling the wild animals. One of the samples came from an iron cage that they kept the animals in. The sewer out in front of that stall where they were selling the wild animals turned out later to be positive for SARS-CoV-2.

So it's all in this just one tiny corner of this market that, you know, the west side of the market that's about the size of a, you know, a U.S. football field, maybe more like a soccer field. So you don't find it odd we haven't found a single animal that would be the source or the intermediary? No, I don't find it odd. I, you know, this is, and there's reasons for that. I mean, scientific reasons why I think that it's been difficult. You know, first of all, you know, they cleared all the animals out of the market. So, you know, I mean, call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I think that, you know, the Chinese government didn't want us linking the virus to the wildlife trade, because that's how the first SARS started, right? I mean, that, you know, it started from spillover, you know, and multiple spillovers from wild animals back in 2002 to 2004.

Okay, I accept that the Chinese had reasons to hide. So, you know, they cleared the market of those wild animals out and, and then, you know, okay. So the animals are gone and, you know, and then, you know, we, we have not been able to get any data or information from, uh, you know, the Chinese authorities there, you know, about what the supply chains were. But don't the Chinese have more of a reason to say it came from an animal than they do to say it came from the Wuhan than they do to say it came from

the Wuhan lab? I mean, I don't think so, because the Chinese I mean, let's let's be clear. When the virus emerged in Wuhan, the scientists did not share their database of the wildlife pathogens with the public or even with their American collaborators. They didn't do it. This had been created precisely to help scientists in the event of this kind of an outbreak. So why, when the pandemic finally hit, did they not share it? Why wouldn't we know where these viruses were and how they were kept in their database? And why have they been shared with the public? Why? Doesn't that cause you some concern? I think that's just another part of a. You know, a lot of conspiracy theories.

I mean, this. Stop saying that. It's a question. Tell me, what would be the non-conspiracy theorist reason for them not to share the data with us? Well, what they said was, is that they were going to try to modernize it and make it more accessible to, you know, to other scientists. It was basically an Excel spreadsheet. Well, we're three years into this now. It wasn't very modern, so they took it down so they could update it. And then,

you know, they got all the flack about it and they just said, no, we're not going to put it up. I see. So now they're being spiteful because they were going to do it, according to you. Originally, three years later, they're just ticked off and so they won't. Okay. Do you agree that this would have easily escaped from a lab that only had BSL-2 or BSL-3 security on it? If they were working on a virus like this, those levels of security are too low. You know, I agree that, you know, we should change those rules and work on some of these, you know, wild coronaviruses, wild-caught coronaviruses at BSL-3. I mean, I'm a virologist. I mean, my safety, my personal safety and the safety of my students depends on having good biosafety and biosecurity. So we're not opposed to that. I mean, the rules are not written down very well,

but it's a separate conversation that we need to have. I mean, just because you think there might have been unsafe conditions there at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and I don't think that there were. I think that they were operating at a very high level, doesn't mean that the virus leaked from there. That's an entirely different question. And it shouldn't be a separate- My problem is not, I'm not saying it does mean that I'm saying I'm concerned about your lack of curiosity and the lack of curiosity of others like you who originally said this looks like a lab leak. And then 48 hours after speaking with Fauci and Collins did a 180.

And it wasn't just you. You mentioned some of the others, Sir Farrar, who not only reversed himself, but started calling people racist for saying it was a lab leak. That's that's what concerns me, the absence of curiosity and open-mindedness to a full-throated investigation. Let me just say, I've been doing a lot of other things in my career, looking at other viruses besides SARS-CoV-2, but there have been very few other people besides me that have not been looking at this question so intently for three years. And I can assure you, if we had found any scintilla of evidence that the virus had leaked from the lab, we'd be out there, you know, sharing with people and showing that, you know, OK, that's that's happened.

But, you know, there's no scientific evidence. There's nothing. Let me ask you this. You said earlier that you did not feel pressured by Fauci or Collins to reverse your opinion from lab leak to natural origins. Did you have a conversation in which they expressed, either one of them expressed, that they thought this would be harmful to the scientific community if it looked like a lab leak? Never once. Neither one ever said that or suggested that in any way, shape or form to you? No.

Did anybody suggest to you that that was how they felt? I never heard it until I saw it on the news there. And I didn't think too much of that. So none of your fellow scientists told you that, like Fauci and Collins and or Collins or anybody at the NIH? Nobody put any pressure on us at all. No, absolutely not. That's not what I asked.

Yeah. Whatever your answer is, we didn't hear anything from Fauci or Collins that said, OK, it's going to hurt the national relations or anything like that. Nothing. OK, are you familiar with those? I mean, you know now that they've said that publicly and Collins is not. I mean, we published that paper in March of 2020. I think that quote that you read was from Collins sometime in April. That was the first time I heard about it.

I'm not sure if it was the New York Times or where it was, but, you know, or maybe it was when the, maybe it even was later, you know, but I never heard about it. I mean, it wasn't just them. It was some of your collaborators. It was Collins saying, we've got to tamp down the very destructive conspiracy about the lab leak theory. Otherwise, it would do great potential harm to science and international harmony. Then there was Dr. Ron Fauchier, whose group in the Netherlands researches how to make animal viruses more dangerous,

who said in an email, further debate about such accusations around the lab leak theory would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China, in particular China, which is America's biggest and most important collaborator in scientific research. This is why people believe that they're everyone, you, Fauci, Collins, Fosheer, all these people understood it is not good if we start pointing a finger at that Wuhan lab. Megan, it wasn't me. I didn't say that. I mean, I'm not a particular fan of the Chinese government. I think that they should be more open about these early cases and where the animals came from and a lot of other things. And so don't quote me on that. I never

said that. I can't speak for these other people. Well, you did say you thought it was natural. You did not think it was natural origin. You couldn't figure out how it was. That's from you. I said that in one email. I mean, you know, that was like, you know, amongst thousands. What do you mean? So did you lie in that email? Is that how you felt or isn't it? No, I didn't lie. I mean, yeah, this is how scientists, you know, work things out. You know, sometimes you take one side of the argument and sometimes you take the other side and, you know, that's what we're doing. And that's another reason why, You know, you, sometimes you take one side of the argument and sometimes you take the other side and, you know, that, that's what we're doing. And that, that's another reason why, you know, when we had this, you know, February 1 teleconference that, you know, I think the NIH

feels it's important to keep those confidential discussions private because, you know, people can cherry pick and that's what's happened. They cherry picked that one email from me and, you know, people can cherry pick and that's what's happened. They cherry pick that one email from me and, you know, said, OK, he's a lab leaker and he always was. And he changed his mind in 24 hours and and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, it's it's just not doesn't reflect what the actual discussions that were going on were, you know. I must say, though, it wasn't just cherry picked or leaked. As I pointed out, Sir Farrar wrote a whole book telling us what your positions were. So it's not just like some nefarious character got a hold of some notes. The whole books have been written about it. Your colleagues are on the records on this. that can be considered the original lab leakers. And we included the lab leak hypothesis in our Nature Medicine article. I mean, if you carefully read it,

it's not even, you don't have to carefully read it, it's right there. I read it. We considered it, you know, we considered it, but, you know, we had to look at the scientific evidence and there is no scientific evidence that the virus leaked from that lab.

Okay, here's the final thing I want to ask you about. You and another one of the early lab leaders. I haven't convinced you yet, have I? No, you haven't. But I appreciate you coming on and being so honest. I mean, I give you credit, Dr. Gary, because nobody else is willing to do this. And so just the fact that you're willing to sit here and take these tough questions makes me think more of you, makes me understand better your position. I've had tougher questions before. I'm sure you have. I mean, I'm not a scientist. I'm doing the best I can. And so I appreciate you giving me the time and my audience the time. I'm looking forward to that too. But here's the thing that, you know,

that also got a lot of attention that you and this Christian Anderson, who was also more in the lab leak. Say again. Christian, Christian, Christian. OK, sorry. Christian Anderson. You guys were both more in the lab leak theory originally and then reversed yourselves. Christian. Yes, not me.

Well, whatever. The record stands. It speaks for itself. And then within a couple of months in August of 2020, you guys received an $8.9 million grant from Fauci to study emerging infectious diseases. And Fauci is the guy who controls the purse strings when it comes to these federal grants on research. And this is why everyone in your community is so beholden to him. So do you deny that you felt some pressure to make Fauci happy? Yeah, I do deny it. I mean, and let me tell you,

yes, the grant was finally awarded in August, but that grant was written in the middle of 2019. And it was reviewed by peer-reviewed study section. So you knew it was under consideration when you had the conversations with him about lab leak theory? Tell me again, I didn't quite catch the first word. You're saying it wasn't granted until later, but you had the conversations with him about lab leak theory. Tell me anything quite catch the first word. You're saying it wasn't granted until later, but you had applied earlier. So what you're telling me is that when you had the conversation with Fauci about your belief, it was a lab leak theory. Initially your grant was under consideration. Nope. It was already, it had already been awarded, you know? And so you got it in August of 2020. What happened in August, 2020? I mean, you know, it takes a long time for him to

set up all these contracts and everything like that. And, you know, Dr. Fauci doesn't review these grants and he doesn't decide which grant is going to be funded and not funded. This Francis Collins. No, they don't. You know, you're suggesting that Dr. Fauci couldn't stop it if he if he wanted it, if he wanted to stop it, he could have. He's done it before. It would actually probably be hard for him to do it. There are people that could stop it, but I'm not sure that Dr. Fauci could actually stop it. There are others that could, but not him. But, you know, I mean, it's peer review.

I mean, you know, we competed against a bunch of other very, you know, good scientists and groups and things like that, wrote a good proposal. And, you know, good scientists and groups and things like that, wrote a good proposal. And, you know, the study section liked it. And, you know, it was reviewed by the scientific council at NIH, which is another independent group of scientists. And they said, yes, award this grant. I'm not saying it's a bad research grant. So it wasn't, it wasn't as some people have said, you know, and the name of the project is, the whole program is called CREED, Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases. It wasn't a CREED pro quo or anything like that.

That's just insulting. And the people that, you know, have made those accusations know that that's not true. They're just, you know, throwing out, you know, whatever they think might stick on the wall. It didn't happen that way. Dr. Robert Gary, you're a stand-up guy for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you for the robust back and forth. All right. Sure enough. Coming up, Dr. Alina Chan, who has been watching this entire interview and is ready to respond. Don't go away.

Now, Dr. Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and scientific advisor at MIT and Harvard, who co-wrote Viral, The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, a book that explains why she says the science points to COVID originating in the Wuhan lab. Thank you so much for coming on. I know you were listening to my exchange with Dr. Gary. And well, let me just start with this. What did you make of it? What did you think of it? I wish that we had been able to talk face to face because there's so many things I would have liked to put to him. We wanted that. That was not acceptable. Yeah. What did you make of his assertion? I mean, number one, he was saying that this type of virus has been seen. He conceded not in SARS type coronaviruses. Never

before was there this urine cleavage site, which, again, has been described by some as the smoking gun that tells us it came from a man in a lab or a woman. He says, OK, maybe not in the SARS type coronaviruses, but these do occur in nature and that we we have seen this type of thing appear in other type of coronaviruses. So the first thing I'll say is that without this cleavage site, without this feature, this virus would never have caused a pandemic. So without this feature, it is completely weak. It's very not transmissible and not very deadly. So the problem is that you have scientists in this one lab in Wuhan who in in 2018 said, we're going to put these types of features into cells like viruses. And boom, two years later, such a virus shows up in their city. So it's a very striking coincidence. And the problem is that when people say there's no

evidence they did that, that's because the evidence exists in lab records, emails and documents, things that we don't have access to and things we should be investigating. So I'm hopeful that next year, there will be an actual investigation where these documents are obtained from the U.S. collaborators and the EcoHealth Alliance that can shed light on whether or not it happened and whether or not the virus came from that lab. What did you make of the reversal of all those scientists in 48 hours? They all came out initially and had this conference call saying it looks like it came from a lab, cannot figure out how this could have been natural. And his explanation, which is the first time he's said it publicly about what changed his mind in the 48 hours.

So I think this paper, this Nature Medicine proximal origin letter is a case study in lack of transparency in scientific publishing. So they did not acknowledge that their scientific funders had been involved. They didn't say that, hey, we had this phone call, Farrar, Fauci, Collins were on it. And there was this long discussion with multiple other scientists, and we ruled out a lab leak. So they didn't acknowledge their involvement. And yet, months later, when Dr. Fauci was telling the media that this couldn't have come from a lab, he just whipped out this paper and said, hey, look at this paper. Independent scientists said it couldn't have come from a lab. So this is not very transparent. He claims that in that 48 hours,

the aha moment was looking at the virus appearing in another, forgive me, I think he was talking about another pangolin coronavirus thing that had a similar, I don't know if it's exactly a furin cleavage site, but something where he was like, ah, you see, it has occurred. And that was the game changing moment.

Yeah, so I was listening to that exchange and he is I think his stance is quite scientifically naive. So he said that from looking at the pangolin coronavirus, which has no furin cleavage site or any sign of intermediate in that site, he changed his mind. He said because parts of that virus look similar to the pandemic virus, we can assume that the rest of the pandemic virus is natural too. So how can you make that assumption that that doesn't make any sense from a logical point of view? So I don't accept this. I don't accept this excuse that they looked at the pangolin virus and within 48 hours, they changed their minds. They could not dismiss the most concerning feature to them, which was the furin cleavage site. What did you make of, you know, he says that he did not feel pressured or was not told and was not told by Fauci or Collins would be very helpful if you would reverse your

original position. To me, it just remains very suspicious that they all did, that they were all very strongly. I mean, we're talking about 80, 90% people saying that their position is 80% sure this could not have come from an animal. And then suddenly a 180 to the point where not only were they saying, actually, it did come from an animal, and you're racist to suggest it didn't. I mean, a real reversal. To me, that's very suspicious. But what do you think? So this is one reason why scientific journals say that scientists, when you write letters and you publish articles, you have to tell us if your funders were involved.

You have to declare it. But these guys did not declare that their funders were involved. So they were receiving funding from NIH, from NIAID, from the Wellcome Trust, and they did not declare that the leaders of these funding agencies were involved in their manuscripts. They had sent these manuscripts to them, drafts of it, to get their advice. They thanked them in emails for their leadership and advice. And again, the paper was cited to the media by these leaders as if they had no involvement in it. So this is not transparent. And I think it is actually very anti-scientific to come up with a letter and say, case closed, no need to investigate. We, the scientists, the virologists have decided for everyone that a lab leak cannot happen and we don't need to look into it. Yeah. And then as I pointed out to the doctor, you have Collins on the record saying, I really hope this nature medicine

piece would put an end to this. But the speculation goes on. What more should we do? And Fauci saying, oh, it's a shiny object. It's going to go away. The lab leak discussions after that Brett Baer segment that Collins was circulating around. So, I mean, it's very clear that they did have a plan, whether, you know, Dr. Gary knew about it is something the viewers can decide. But and he denies it. But it's very clear that Fauci and Collins were working together to do everything within their power to tamp down the discussion about a lab leak. I'll ask you right after this quick break, because Alina stays with us, but I got to get a break at the end of the hour. I'll ask you why were Fauci and Collins so determined to get people off of the lab leak theory, a position they seem to be in to this day.

Pick it up right there, right after this. Alina, thank you for being with us. Stand by. Let me pick up where I left off and ask you why you think Collins and Fauci were so determined to have the public narrative be natural origins. I want to make two points. So the first is that the science has been clear since day one, since early 2020 until today, is that there's no definitive, no direct evidence for either a natural or a lab origin. Although in my view, in my scientific opinion, I think that the circumstantial evidence that exists, it points towards a lab origin. And this is why we need to investigate both. And the second point I want to make is that as this pandemic has gone on, the states have gotten higher and higher with the death toll and the impact on the economy. So at the beginning, you know, infected a few dozen people in Wuhan, but now we're talking

about millions of people dead. And I think that scientists, journalists and investigators are rightly worried that if they dig too deep on this issue, they might find out that this pandemic came from research activities. So research that was a collaboration between the US and China and thus implicating a whole coalition of scientists across the world who are engaged in this risky research. And it's so much easier to point the finger at the nameless, voiceless market trader in Wuhan and say that the guy with the raccoon dogs did it, and he can't defend himself. And that way, you don't actually blame anyone. You don't need to blame anyone for this pandemic.

You don't need to do anything to prevent a future pandemic. And this is the real problem is that by failing to investigate how this pandemic started, we have left the door wide open for more of this high-risk virology research to continue. Although it's such a tiny fraction of virology, it has outsized consequences for humanity. Yeah, well said. Exactly right. And yet we just granted, Fauci just granted Peter Daszak's group another multimillion dollar grant to continue gain of function research. It's incredible to me, doctor. That is very shocking. So when I saw that news, I was thinking to myself, what have they done to investigate to make sure that the research they funded, that they funded through the EcoHealth Alliance, didn't result in this pandemic?

And what changes have they made? How have they made the research safer, more accountable, and more transparent? I have no idea. So we're just pouring more money into the type of activity that could start pandemics. Yeah, because Dr. Gary kept saying, oh, you know, there's no proof they engineered this in this lab. Yes, some people think this was an intentional act, but I think the vast majority of people who are thinking lab leak don't think this was intentional. They think that they were doing gain of function research in that Wuhan lab on bat coronaviruses to see how dangerous we could make them and how we might combat them. And that something went wrong, that there was a low level security in this lab.

Something went wrong. And while they didn't try to engineer this pandemic, that wound up being the consequence. Yes, I actually have a very charitable view of the research happening in that lab. So I don't believe that they were intentionally trying to make pandemic pathogens. They tried to do their work in very weak viruses, but I think by accident, they might have put in a pandemic feature that made all these weak viruses capable of setting a human pandemic. And the issue here is that they were doing a lot of this work in the years leading up to the pandemic at a very low biosafety level. So you had asked Bob Gehry, was it appropriate for them to do this type of research at BSL2?

And Bob said he thought it was a high enough level of biosafety. That is just not true. So you cannot be working with novel SARS-like viruses at BSL-2. If you do this for several years and you're working with hundreds of these SARS-like viruses, one day you're going to get unlucky. Right. So what about his point? He was saying all the cases originated around the Hunan market and that in that market, they found traces of the coronavirus in this particular section where the animals were kept. There are a few facts that need to be pointed out about this market. So the first thing is that this market is the size of about 10 NFL stadiums. Okay, 10 NFL

stadiums, the retail space in that market. And it's located in one of the most densely populated districts in Wuhan City, where most of the elderly people live. It's located right next to the Wuhan CDC and several hospitals, key hospitals in that city. It's also located next to the most highly trafficked metro train station in that city. So by the time the investigators went there, the entire market, 10 NFL stadiums had been plastered with virus. So Bob Gary says that he thinks that based on the available data, which is very little, he thinks that there's evidence of contamination near the wildlife stores. But if you look at it

closely, actually the washrooms and the toilets in that market are right there. So he and his collaborators on this peer review, peer review science where he's pointing to actually admit in the paper itself, we, Hey, we don't have the data, but we're going to make a bunch of assumptions that support our belief that this came from the market. And we're going to tell everyone that we've found the animal at this market. So I think this, those studies cannot stand if they were truly opened up for open peer review by other scientists. What do you make of his assertion? Because I said, where's the animal? Where's even one? You know, they tested 80,000 and they're not there. And he said the Chinese got rid of them, you know, in an effort to cover it up, but they didn't want the news narrative to be they came from a lab, which, you know, sorry, from from the Wuhan market. So I agree that China now has a stance that we, that they don't want any, any

evidence at all that this virus originated in China is anywhere but cure stance. So they're trying to blame it on lobsters from Maine. They're trying to blame it on cold chain from Southeast Asia. Uh, you're trying to blame on salmon from Faroe islands, you know, this kind of thing. Everyone who sees that knows it's a, it's a fast, right? So, um, but what, what Bob Gary is saying is that in all of the years, even everyone who sees that knows it's a farce, right? But what Bob Gehry is saying is that in all of the years, even before the pandemic, the scientists who have been studying the wildlife and the bats all around that area and other parts of China

have not been able to find any animals infected with SARS-2-like viruses, except for pangolins far down in South China. They have not found any bats in the area that carry this type of viruses. And so he's saying that all of that evidence must have been covered up, either that or we have been exceedingly unlucky that suddenly a virus with this furin cleavage site just pops up, boom, and leaves no trace across the rest of China in the years leading up to or after the pandemic. So it requires a massive conspiracy across tons of scientists, wildlife traders, hospitals, like the government. So I think that that conspiracy is

much, much, much less plausible than the lab leak theory. Well, let's talk about the lab leak theory now and explain to us why you believe. And I understand your initial point, which is there's no definitive evidence in either camp. There's circumstantial evidence and people will draw their own conclusions. But it really is outrageous that we're not having an international open investigation into this with so many people dead. I mean, millions of people dead, 10 plus. In any event, why do you believe that this came from a lab? So I think that the odds are extremely striking. So in the entire world, this was the only lab that was collecting all of these novel coronaviruses from not just bats, but wildlife in the wildlife trade, from even people in

the wildlife trade. So they're actively collecting samples from people who reported illnesses, mysterious illnesses, and they worked on wildlife trade, bringing all these samples up from Southeast Asia and China across eight countries up into Wuhan city. They had the ability to seamlessly engineer these and the lab genetically modified them in the lab, leaving no trace of detection. They also had this 2018 pipeline to put fearing cleavage sites into cells like viruses. So there's only this one lab in the world doing this type of work at not safe conditions, so at the low bio-safety condition, and two years later

this virus shows up in that city. So you have to investigate. And their behavior has really not been very forthcoming. So these guys said we're gonna put horns on horses, a unicorn shows up in their city, and they describe everything about this unicorn except for the horn. And they don't tell anyone about their plans to put horns on horses until late last year. Someone finally leaked the document from the US government showing that these guys had this plan all this time

and none of them said a word, not even the US collaborators. When you refer to the plan, are you referring to Peter Daszak's application to the defense, to the Pentagon, asking for funding to do exactly this kind of research, this kind of gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses? Yes, and other top virologists have looked at this document too and said this could have plausibly led to the creation of the pandemic virus. So my question is, why aren't we

investigating? Why aren't we asking the EcoHealth Alliance and other US collaborators on that grant? What other research happened under this arm of work? Did you actually start doing this work? What were the communications that you got from your Wuhan partners? Okay, and what about the defense of, well, the Pentagon rejected that. They did not fund that. And so what makes you believe it took place?

So this is another scientifically naive point that Bob Gehry made. He said said just because they didn't get the money, they couldn't do the work. That is, I think, incorrect on so many levels because the slam in Wuhan was extremely highly funded. They had so much money pouring in that not getting one grant from DAPA in the US would not have stopped them from doing any work, especially an idea that was very exciting, considered transgressive, most likely able to lead to a high impact publication. So, and a lot of scientists, when they write these

grants, they've usually done some preliminary work already. And the wording in this grant was so specific. It said, we're going to look in all of the viruses we've collected to see if there are any types of rare cleavage sites, and we're going to put these into cells like viruses in the lab. So I think that it is wishful thinking on Bob Garrett's part. He wishes that they had not done any of this work so that it could have just come from that market. And the thing that's really suspicious is the fact that this virus arrived in humans super efficient and great at, contagion. Great, great at it passing from one to another. And that's very rare as I understand it with these Corona viruses, SARS Corona viruses, the viruses typically take a long time to get this efficient, this, this good. Um, and that's why,

you know, I was asking him about the humanized mice in the lab, because that is how we understand they were doing it. They were using these humanized mice to make the virus more transmissible. So Gary and his co-authors, they make some fairly outlandish assertions. They claim that they know that the precursor to the pandemic virus was never worked with in that lab. And my question is, how do you know? Did you have access to their database and you're not sharing with us? Yeah, I asked him that. I asked him that. Yeah, there's usually a lag of a few years. Some labs even work on projects for 10 years before publishing. And we know that that Wuhan Institute of Virology had a very strict confidentiality

protocol. Some of their thesis had to be locked for 20 years. So someone's- You heard his answer on that. You heard his answer. They were originally going to do it. They're getting it together, but then they got ticked off and they were like, forget it. You're going to blame us. You're not getting anything. I don't understand what he means by modernizing an Excel sheet. Can't you just share the Excel sheet with your US collaborators? The people will give you millions of dollars over the years to to build this database to predict pandemics so this is another example where i feel like their behavior has been suspicious and not forthcoming illogical really uh and and so it it really is a oh sorry oh yeah yeah so if you can comment on the on the mice and

how we believe they were like because there's a reason that we find its efficiency and contagion so suspicious. Yeah, and Gary and his colleagues have also flip-flopped on that point a lot. So first, in Proximal Origin, they said this virus is very well adapted for humans. And then when I came up with the same idea, they attacked me saying, she's wrong, she's not qualified to comment. Then this year in their preprint, they said the same thing again. They said it's well adapted and that's why it caused such an explosion from two spill lowers at the market. So they can make up their minds.

But for me, it's quite clear that when a virus jumps from animal to human, it normally is not capable of causing a pandemic right away. It's like buying a lottery ticket. So if someone buys a lottery ticket for the first time in their life and they buy one lottery ticket and they win the lottery, that's kind of suspicious. It's not impossible, but it's very suspicious. Normally, for someone to win the lottery or for a virus to win the lottery,

it has to try many times. It has to keep hitting, keep infecting people, keep jumping until one day it gets quite lucky and it causes a chain of transmissions enough to adapt well and cause a large outbreak in humans. were unsatisfying. We've had the World Health Organization with Peter Daszak on the board, go over there to try to get answers, even 60 Minutes caught on to that and gave Peter Daszak a hard time and basically said, this is not to be trusted. Like what now? Because as I mentioned to Dr. Gary, the US and China are neck deep in collaborative research with one another. And as you point out, this is essentially the reason why our public health officials are so determined not to lift up the drape on this particular investigation and get real answers. So we're worried. We're worried about the next pandemic

and low security labs and more money going to Dasik. So I wish that at the beginning of this pandemic, the scientists would have, instead of calling a lab victory a conspiracy or racist conspiracy theory, I wish that they would have said, look, even the best scientists have accidents and we are all kind of responsible for this. And the responsible thing for scientists to do is to say, let's investigate and make sure this doesn't happen again. But that's not what happened. And so here we are three years later with no real investigation, with no credible investigation. That study tour that the World Health Organization had in Wuhan last year

was a desperate attempt to get data from the Chinese investigators. They did not get that data. So here we are. What can we do? I would say there is a lot we can do. There's data that exists here in the US that can be looked at, that can actually tell us when did this start. So there might be sequences of the pandemic virus predating December 2019. And that has not been looked at.

The database owners have not allowed scientists to go in and look. We have not subpoenaed for, unfortunately, we have to subpoena for emails and documents between the Wuhan scientists and the US collaborators to see did they actually start putting cleavage sites. Yes, the EcoHealth Alliance and the other US collaborators. So there's so many things we can look into. This is so infuriating. We just gave EcoHealth and Peter Daszak several more million dollars. He got one portion of it now and he gets more later. Why can't Dr. Fauci just pick up the phone right now and say, give it all to me? I don't know. I suspect that, again, there might be this feeling amongst scientists, especially top scientists, that they don't want to know the answer, that they would rather have these two science papers, they would rather have these two science papers, try to close the case

for the entire scientific community, try to tell everyone, don't worry, we did the analysis and we're telling you this came from the market. They would rather that happen rather than investigate. And so you're exactly right that this has led to continued funding, continued investment in this type of research that could start more pandemics and have a catastrophic effect on the rest of us. So more risk on the general population, more vaccination programs, more lockdowns potentially. It's just unthinkable that there's not been a proper investigation. That's the last question of the undermining in the public faith in our public health officials. It's been catastrophic, catastrophic. It trickles down to

vaccines and everything else coming out of the CDC and the NIH and Fauci's subgroup within the NIH. I mean, it's all connected to the unwillingness to be transparent and open and honest about how this thing got started. Am I wrong? So I believe that in this pandemic, the vaccines and therapeutics have played an immense role in reducing human suffering. I myself have taken all the vaccines and boosters. But I think that the scientific community has a responsibility not only to advocate the benefits of these countermeasures to pandemics, but to also say that, hey, when the pandemic starts in a city where there's this unique lab working with exactly the type of virus, we need to investigate so that in the future, we don't have more of these ambiguous outbreaks happening, more of these necessary conditions to have vaccines and

therapeutics on people. I think that we don't want another pandemic, right? There's no one who wants another one of this happening in the city before that minute again. It's, I mean, it's like seeing Fauci and Collins hiding the smoking gun and then turning around saying, trust me to keep you safe. Come in, dine at my table. I've got you. I've got, I'm going to make sure you're safe and you're well. And you're like, can we just talk about what I saw you do over there? Cause I, I don't know if I am safe in your hands and I've got questions. And so far, few real answers. Doctor, great to have you. Thanks for coming on. Alina Chan, everybody. To be continued. Coming up, our friend Andrew Klavan returns to the show with thoughts on Dark Brandon Part Two. That's next. Dark Brandon Part Two. He was at it again last night in front of union station of all places

in washington dc where stores are closing left and right in this economy we were joking yesterday with josh holmes why didn't you just do it in front of bagroom america air force base uh in afghanistan why well you know so many places if you wanted to highlight some of his administration's problems union station i guess fit the bill just fine. Here to discuss that and more, one of our favorite guests, Andrew Klavan, host of The Andrew Klavan Show and author of the newly released crime novel, A Strange Habit of Mind. And Andrew always keeps you turning the pages in his crime novels is what he does now. One of the reasons he's a household name. Great to have you back. How are you?

Good to see you, Megan. I'm doing great. What did you make of Dark Brandon Part Two saying this election is a battle between autocracy and democracy? If you vote for those Republicans, you're voting for autocrats. You're not a Democrat. You don't believe in democracy. Well, we're not just Republicans. We're now mega, mega Republicans. They're going to keep adding adjectives to this until it goes right off the page. You know, it's actually kind of an interesting moment. It really is, because not only did he accuse Republicans of taking a hammer to Paul Pelosi, try to link that horrible attack on Pelosi to the Republicans and to January 6th and to Donald Trump.

He basically says that the Republicans will destroy democracy by winning an election. And what's fascinating about this to me is that the media before the speech basically endorsed the speech, after the speech endorsed the speech, basically saying, yes, this is right. You know, this violence is coming distinctly out of the Republican camp. No violence from the Democrats, no 2020 riots, no, you know, holding George Floyd up as a hero, none of that. Just January 6th is the only thing that ever happened. They're counting on this media dominance that they've had for so many years in an age when the internet is stripping that dominance away. And that's why you're also seeing at the same time this fight with Elon Musk to keep him from lifting the censorship rules that

have silenced so many innocent conservative voices on Twitter. This is a fight about information. I mean, it's not just a fight about the election. Of course, it's a fight about the election. But what Biden is counting on is the old dominance that the left has had over our information systems and over our culture to uphold what is a lie. I mean, the idea that Republicans are somehow unique in denying the legitimacy of an election is ridiculous. Hillary Clinton denied the legitimacy of Trump's election. Adam Schiff did. They deny the legitimacy of George W. Bush's election. Stacey Abrams still thinks she's governor of Georgia, if not governor, emperor of her entire imagination. And they've called for violence.

They've said there should be more violence in the street. Nancy Pelosi herself said there should be violence in the street. So they're really depending on their power to communicate this lie and to silence anybody who says, hey, you know what, if you look on YouTube, you can see Democrats doing the same things that some Republicans do. And I just don't think it's working. The polls show that it's not working. The polls are looking pretty good for the Republicans and a bad, very bad map for the midterms. And that means that we have reached a paradigm shift. We have reached a moment when for all of our worries about information dominance, the right is fighting back and it's starting to win.

Now, that is fascinating. That's such an interesting take on it, that their whole plot is falling apart. The thing that always worked for them is not working. Because you're right, this January 6th thing is all they've got. They've been shoving that in abortion. That's all they've been shoving on us for months now, and it's not getting the job done. And so what does he decide to do? He decides to double down on one of those failed narratives. To me, it's interesting. First of all, a word on mega, mega, I was thinking, is it like mega, mega Trump? And then I'm like, what if they called me mega, mega? I'd be Megan, mega, mega. Like we like alliterate. Or maybe it'd be mega, mega, Megan. I don't know. So, so yeah, so he goes out there and he just doubles down on what's already not working.

And to me, it reminded me of we ran a clip up from MSNBC last week, where they got together a Democrat, a Republican and Independent, and they were asking them about the threat to democracy. And these three were like, eh, you know, the January 6th thing, like, anyway, back to inflation. And then Vox just had the same kind of reporting. They did this. They went out and talked to voters like, what do you care about? What about January 6th? They were like, eh, but the economy, yeah, let's talk. Right. And so what does he do? He goes out there last night and once again is back to Republicans mega maga. And as you point out, this really low moment with Paul Pelosi. Let's run that. It's sought for. the home asking, where's Nancy? Where's Nancy? Those are the very same words used by the mob when they stormed the United States Capitol on January the 6th, when they broke windows, kicked in the doors, brutally attacked law enforcement, roamed the corridors, hunting for officials, and erected gallows to hang the former vice president, Mike Pence.

It was an enraged mob. Wow. I didn't hear any mention of Steve Scalise, who was shot by a Bernie Sanders loving fan who wasn't even said to be a lunatic, who was said to just be this rabid, you know, murder, murderous man. I didn't hear any mention of Lee Zeldin, Republican candidate for governor in New York, who they attempted to stab on stage just two months ago. Right. Like it's all about what happened to Paul Pelosi, because he thinks because they yelled, where's Nancy at the January 6th riot? They can tie that to this guy going into Nancy Pelosi's house saying, hey, where's Nancy? OK. You know, there was a shooting outside Lee Zeldin's house and the press asked Zeldin to come out and talk about it. So he came out. And the first question is, why are you politicizing this incident? And I think that, you know, it reminds me of the last scene of Singing in the Rain,

where they pull back the curtain and you find out that the villainous woman actually has somebody dubbing her voice. That's the way the media has been all these years. It has been basically dubbing the voice of the Democrats. And it's gotten worse and worse as they've lost control of the narrative. I mean, you know, the Internet is like the invention of the printing press. It really is. It has spread information to places that the people in power don't want it to go. That's exactly what happened when the printing press came out. That's where the Reformation began. That's where all the religious wars began. And now we have this moment when not the dominant religion, but the dominant elite are basically being exposed. And they're being exposed for having their own agenda,

for propping up their own power at the expense of ordinary people. One of the things that always makes me laugh in a sort of morbid way is when Democrats specifically try to tell us that the economy is good. And, you know, you're sitting there trying to figure out how you're going to make your salary stretch to take in the inflation that they've caused with this fantastic narrative about climate emergency. So we have to get rid of our energy independence and become the slaves of oil-rich tyrants for this emergency that actually doesn't exist. The science actually shows that this is not an existential threat. And then when you can't afford to feed your kids, you can't afford to get them new clothes,

they come and tell you, no, inflation's fine. Don't worry about inflation. Worry about abortion. Go like, well, I have six kids. Abortion is not on the table. I just want to feed them. Yeah, but don't worry about that. They depend always on this kind of fantasy world that they were able to create for several decades by owning not just the news media, but also the entertainment media and the academy and the publishing industry. And all of that is just starting to tremble and shake. And that's why you're seeing this kind of hysteria on the left.

And that hysteria is, you know, it is the real threat of where violence comes from. If you have people who are telling the New York Times, don't tell us the truth about Biden's dementia. That happened the other day. The New York Times actually reported on the fact that Biden's difficulties with keeping the facts straight are getting worse and worse. And they were just excoriated by their own readers. Don't tell us this. Don't tell the truth when there's an election on the line. And so when you have all these people who are suddenly being exposed to ideas they've never heard before, you know,

the thing is, Megan, you and I know everything the left thinks because we're surrounded by them. We see them all the time. They don't even know we exist. They don't even know we have opinions that they might agree with. They don't even know that we have thoughtful, nuanced opinions, that we don't follow our leaders off cliffs, that we actually sometimes disagree with them. They have no idea because they never see us. They never see us on their media. They don't want to see us in the New York Times. They only see us attacked. And when that wall breaks down, there is going to be hell to pay. And it might be Tuesday. It might actually begin on Tuesday. But that wall is already becoming very permeable, that wall of information. This is a major thing. This is a major shift from one epoch

to a new epoch. And that's why everything's so unsettled. But I'm right now very optimistic, not just about the election, but about the age to come. Well, another example of what you were just discussing was what they did to Dasha Burns at NBC when she had the nerve to say, hey, I sat down with John Fetterman. And in the prelude to the actual interview where he didn't have the closed captioning thing, he really didn't seem to be able to understand any of the small talk. And the left just descended on her. That is a total appropriate, totally appropriate thing for a reporter to add. It's color. It's another way in to understand the candidate. I 100 percent would have done that with anybody. And they attacked

her. They said she was wrong. All these reporters came out and said, I interviewed him. Didn't happen. Didn't happen. Now they look like fools because we saw him at the debate barely being able to understand with the closed captioning dasha burns is vindicated she won't be getting an apology but yeah they do attack their own when any of them try to do honest reporting and to your other point andrew about the white house just continually telling us don't there is no economic problem you know first inflation was transitory it doesn't exist it's whatever it's just you worried about your soul cycle. I don't remember how they tried to dismiss it all the different ways. They they sent out a tweet,

this crazy tweet, I think it was yesterday on Social Security benefits. Now, because of the law, Social Security benefits go up when inflation goes up. That was that was passed back during President Nixon, I think. And so it's automatic because that's a fixed income. So the White House sends out a tweet that reads it was on Tuesday. Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden's leadership. So somebody there is a complete idiot. But here's the interesting thing. They took it back after because Elon Musk is now in charge of Twitter. He allowed readers to fact check it and to say that that's not the case. And that's

why they took it down. And that's why they're panicked. Now that it's Elon's Twitter, that Twitter added a quote, added context. This never would have happened under the old regime at Twitter. Added context disclaimer underneath the tweet, noting that the increase was not an intentional decision on the part of the president's quote. Seniors will receive a large social security benefit increase due to the annual cost of living adjustment, which is based on the inflation rate. President Nixon in 1972 signed into law automatic benefit adjustment tied to the Consumer Price Index. And then the White House deleted the tweet because they're just so dumb. They're just so dumb. And then Karin Jean-Pierre, who probably wrote the

tweet to begin with, was asked about it by a reporter. Here's how that went. Was it removed because of the addition of a note or was it removed because of concern about the raspy message? So it was, look, the tweet was not complete. Usually when we put out a tweet, we posted with context and it did not have that context. Once again, the tweet read, seniors are getting the biggest increase in their social security checks in 10 years through President Biden's leadership. That's not a context problem. That's what we call a lie.

Well, that's the other thing. Their big talking point is disinformation. This is the way they're trying to get control over the information flow is by accusing the right of disinformation. But we think back on what they've done on social media, calling the Hunter Biden laptop story Russian misinformation, what Dr. Chan was just talking about on your show, this suppression of the idea that our research, our partially funded research might have had something to do with the Chinese virus spreading, you know, all of these

things that they have done that are just lies and disinformation. And then they pick out some guy who's, you know, a conspiracy theorist who mouths off on the right, and they compare that to the United States government lying. It's not the same thing. And so really, again, it's this democratization of information that is driving them up the wall for one big reason, which is that their policies don't work. I mean, this is the thing. An election is essentially a job interview.

You know, a campaign is a job interview. And these guys have come into the room and said to the boss, yes, we're going to bankrupt your company. We're going to make all your employees hate one another. We're going to destroy your equipment, but we're in favor of abortion. So, you know, you should hire us. And any employer is going to look at that and think, you know, before we talk about abortion, let's talk about whether you can make my company any better.

Well, if the company is the United States and they're trying to run it, you've got to be competent enough to make things run. And they are not because their ideas don't work. It's really only since Obama that they have stopped changing their minds when the electorate tells them they're wrong. You know, remember Bill Clinton getting shellacked and saying, okay, we hear you. We're going to get rid of this healthcare idea. We're going to stop. We're going to move to the right. We're going to move to the center. Obama never did that. It was like he never changed. He was just an absolute engine moving forward.

And now Joe Biden has taken that on and he's not as talented a politician and he's not getting away with it. Well, I heard Gavin Newsom out there today or yesterday talking about how my party's getting killed on messaging. We're getting killed on message. We have the wrong message. This is how it goes, right? When they lose because for whatever reason, the voters vote them out or things aren't looking good for them in the polls. It's we were off on the messaging or the voters are as stupid. They're dumb. They're too dumb to know what's good for them. They're deplorables. Hillary Clinton revised that just the other day. They're deplorables who are too stupid to really be placed in charge of our republic. And so we need smarter voters. And by that, we mean elite Democrats. Right. So this is a messaging problem is the latest thing. Like if people would just only understand. So what what message should they be like? How are they going to explain the inflation away? Like that's their problem is they have no good message on that. Right. But notice, though, that that's what they think about because they've been doing it all this time. This thing about slandering

their opposition, which they've been doing now for 50 or 60 years, telling you you're racist. You know, even if you won't go to their stupid movies, they call you like homophobic or whatever, transphobic. Words that mean nothing, by the way. There's no such thing, for instance, as an Islamophobe. Nobody has an irrational fear of Islamic people. Nobody has an irrational fear of gay people or transgender people. We have questions and we have objections to things and to actions, and those things should be listened to and debated and talked about. Well, by the way, just to interject, nobody would accuse you of being anti-gay. Spencer, your son, who we both love, is openly gay in a gay marriage. And I am definitely not questions that I think should be talked about by people of goodwill. We don't have to sling hate at each other, but we can at least debate

these serious issues and these serious changes in our social structure. But no, it's always that we're phobic and we stink and our religion stinks and our country stinks and our country is racist. And then they wonder why they get Donald Trump. They wonder why people are angry. Why are those Republicans always so angry? You know, you kick people in the face for 50, 60 years. You demean their values, demean their lifestyle, demean their opinions. And then you wonder why they hate you.

And, you know, that is why they only want the elite Democrats to vote and why they think that if they lose, they have lost. Democracy is lost. The only people on earth who believe that democracy can be lost in an election. That is actually how democracy works. And sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Tom Cotton would say they're not afraid of democracy going away. They're afraid of democracy making them go away. That's exactly right. That is exactly right.

So they have been able to shame many Americans out of expressing their legitimately held viewpoints that are not racist or bigoted and so on, but they object to some of these things you mentioned. One area that they have not yet been able to take over has been the courts. The courts have been a pretty good stalwart, not entirely perfect by any means, but a pretty good stalwart against this woke agenda. And in particular, now we've got reason to believe in the Supreme Court, which is now 6-3 conservative Dem, conservative liberal. And it's amazing. I haven't seen a court like this in my lifetime. I'm, you know, even before I offered more of my positions publicly before I got this show, I was open about the fact that I was a more Federalist Society type lawyer. And that's the way I look at the law. You know, more originalist. Am I thinking more, you know, Thomas and Scalia than Ginsburg and Stevens?

In any event, that is one of the reasons why I have a lot of hope, because the Supreme Court is very conservative and it's very young and I'm excited about that fact. Well, that takes us to Monday's argument on affirmative action and at the university level, two big cases going up in which this group is saying you cannot, you've got to take race out of the consideration now in deciding who gets into these elite universities or any university. 25 years ago, the Supreme Court considered whether it was time then. And they said, it's going to be time. This is, you're right. This is not actually constitutional. We feel very hinky about it.

But we're going to find an exception and just say you can do it for like another maybe 20 years just to like right the wrongs of the past. But I mean, it was kind of a made up decision. But now the court has been asked to take another look at it. And they're going to strike it down. They are listening to that argument. It's going away. They're going to say you can no longer consider race as one of the factors in deciding whether somebody gets in. And one of the justices who was actually Katonji Brown Jackson was saying, well, I'm not comfortable with this because what about all the other factors that you can consider?

In fact, I think we have that soundbite. Do we have that soundbite? In any event, she was basically saying, you know, there's all these other things that you can consider when it comes to diversity. You can consider whether somebody's a veteran. You can consider, you know, whether they're in a wheelchair. Why wouldn't you be able to consider race? And really, the answer is because the Constitution says you can't like if I say to somebody, I think your veteran status is a plus for you. That's not diminishing somebody who's not a veteran. But if you prioritize one racial group, there's another racial group that is definitely being deprioritized. And that's not constitutional. That's a problem. In any event, people are getting very upset over this. And we're going to get the illegitimate Supreme Court

accusations once again. There was an amazing moment where Justice Alito asked the lawyers arguing to keep this legal about how does it work? Like a student comes in and says, I'm African-American or I'm Native American. Do you check? And the answer was no, we accept it's an honor system. He says, what if they say my grandfather, one grandfather was a member of protected class? Do you check? No honor system. What if they say my, my great grandfather, what did they say? My great, great grandfather. Like how do we figure out who's in a protected class, racial class that you would protect and you would favor that, you know, he was kind of get trying to get at this and then had this amazing reference to what was very clearly Elizabeth Warren

in Soundbite 10. Listen. It's family lore that we have an ancestor who was an American Indian. So I think in that particular circumstance, it would be not accurate for them to say. Well, I identify as an American Indian because I've always been told that some ancestor back in the old days was an American Indian. Yeah, so I think in that circumstance, it would be very unlikely that

that person was telling the truth. That's 100% of what Elizabeth Warren references, is it not? It's also, it's a great soundbite because it strikes at the fact that race is really a degraded and stupid way to regard other people, you know, to think about people in terms of their race. There are a few legitimate things you can say about racial differences, but very, very few, and we don't really know very much about it. And the things that we call races, like we have African Americans, that's not an actual race. And so it's so nonsensical and it strikes at the very heart of the American project. It always has. My journey from left to right began with the decision. I remember the day when they talked about affirmative action and I thought, well,

the left is really out of ideas. And the reason they're out of ideas is because they've poured an immense amount of money into great society programs that have made the lives of black people worse. And affirmative action makes the lives of black people worse. It puts black people into, black students into situations that they might not be qualified for simply because of the color of their skin and increases their rate of failure and increases the number of black students who get out of a difficult subject that they want to study and move into an easier subject in order to survive a school that they shouldn't have been in. Ones that don't pay as well. Ones that don't pay as well either. That's right. That's right. It is just like every other thing that pulls people out because of race.

It just damages the people it's supposed to help. And the third thing about this that drives me insane is, of course, it is just so discriminatory against Asian people. You know, Stanford University, I believe it was, just apologized to Jews for their discriminatory practices against them in the past, like 70 years ago, because they didn't want all those smart Jews coming in and taking all the places. Now, I'm glad they apologized just in time to start discriminating against Asians, because Asians are traditionally hardworking and intellectual, and they're coming in. I mean, my alma mater, Berkeley, is now heavily Asian. When I went there, I was startled by the Asian

population. They want that because they're thinking in terms of race. They want that to stop. And my feeling about this is like, you know what, if you can't see people like an American, that each person has his own life, his own individual, sacred, precious life that should be treated on its own. If you can't start to say merit is the thing that moves you forward, hard work is the thing that moves you forward, then go to some other country where they're racist. You know, I mean, this is a whole American project is to see if we can be a country based on an idea, based on a series of ideas that can take people in and turn them into Americans.

That has been our, you know, our standard idea really from the beginning, that we were not going to be a racist country or a racially based country. And all the stuff that went on, the slavery and the Jim Crow and all that stuff was wrong because it violated the American idea. This violates the American idea too. There is no such thing as good racism. There is no such thing as opposite racism. It's all bad. We are made in the image of God and almighty God. And the Bible doesn't say black people are made in the image of God or white people. It's all of us. And if we don't treat each other like that, the American project is over. Well said. There is no such thing as good racism. I think it was Elena Kagan who was saying, well, to be black in America means your chances of going to an underfunded and poor school at the elementary K through 12 level is much higher to have had certain disadvantages built in.

And I was higher making no distinction, by the way, between, you know, what about black immigrants? Do they do they get all the advantages? You know, what if what if you're black, but you're not descended from slaves? You know, like, no, OK, everybody's just consider presumed disadvantage based on the color of their skin. What if both of your parents are doctors? No presumed disadvantage based on the color of your skin. So she tried to get to basically economic disadvantage, which she tried to put as a label around all black people. Black people tend to be economically disadvantaged and therefore they need this leg up. Well, if that's your case, then you're talking about economic diversity. That's what you actually want to get to. You're not talking about what about the white kids? What about the Hispanic

kids? What about the Asian kids who grow up in very, very poor families? Should they be given a leg up? Because that's not the way Harvard's doing it. It's all about melanin. And this is what Clarence Thomas was trying to get to. And he was like, I don't really know what you mean when you say diversity that we do have at SOT 11. I've heard the word diversity quite a few times, and I don't have a clue what it means. It seems to mean everything for everyone. First, we define diversity the way this court has in its court's precedents, which means a broadly diverse set of criteria that extends to all different backgrounds and perspectives

and not solely limited to race. Tell me what the educational benefits are. The most concrete possible scenario is stock trading. And there are studies that find that racially diverse groups of people making trading decisions perform at a higher level, make more efficient trading decisions. And the mechanism there is that it reduces groupthink and people have longer and more sustained disagreement. And that leads to a more efficient outcome. Well, I guess I don't put much stock in that because I've heard similar arguments in favor of segregation, too.

So he says, give me an example. He says, it's not all about race. Okay, give me an example of what it means. Oh, here's one about race. This is the only one I have. And Thomas says, I don't find that persuasive because actually what you're talking about is segregation could actually lead to good results as well. But when they got pressed on the economic disadvantages some kids have and so on, they had no answer for it. And that's what the conservatives were saying, which is you cannot make skin color the ultimate thing. What they're doing right now, Andrew, is they're saying to the Asian kids who grew up poor, who grew up with no advantages, who went to crappy schools, but just worked very, very hard after school and at night. you're out because we have the secret personality test and we can downgrade you because of your ethnic heritage. Thanks to our personality test, we can say you suck as a person, but really it's because you're Asian. And then we can upgrade the people who happen to fall into racial classifications that we like people who happen to be black or perhaps brown. Those

are the ones we like. So they get up. I mean, this is insane. What we're actually doing is totally unconstitutional. Absolutely. And, you know, first of all, I have to say, I don't know what we did to deserve Clarence Thomas, but I hope we keep doing it because he is a gift, a gift from God. But the thing is, this is a question of failed policy all around, all around the bend. You know, the Black movement into the middle classes was faster before the Great Society was instituted. That's the thing that really destroyed the Black family and really made people dependent on government largesse and slowed the rise of Black Americans

into the middle class. And those Great Society programs provide lots and lots of money for Democrats to buy votes with. They do not want to look at what they're always talking about, the core problems. Where does the problem come from? What's what are the root causes? The root cause is the fact that the black family has fallen apart and fatherless children do very badly. And that really is the thing that they don't want to face because that is based on Great Society programs that basically paid people to have children out of wedlock. Before I let you go, A Strange Habit of Mind. Give me a couple lines on why I want to read it.

Oh, it's the sequel to When Christmas Comes, which was a USA Today bestseller. The hero Cameron Winter is fighting a social media billionaire whose opponents get canceled for good. And this is the first character I've ever wanted to make into a series. I have 30 years of crime writing. This is the first time I've had a character I want to make into a series. So I hope people will turn up for this book. The reviews have been ecstatic.

Take a look on Amazon. I think you'll really like this book. I'm into crime. It's a nice escape to read about somebody else's problems. That's, I appreciate it. It makes me feel better about my life. Andrew Klavan, a pleasure as always. Thank you for coming on. Great to see you. Thanks. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. you