The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Makes it Official, and Defeating the Censors, with Alex Berenson, Michael Brendan Dougherty, and Jason Miller | Ep. 436

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Michael Brendan Dougherty, senior writer at National Review, and Jason Miller, CEO of GETTR, to talk about Trump's subdued announcement that he's running for president in 2024, the over-the-top media reaction, Rupert Murdoch turning on Trump and what that means for Fox News, the New York Post and more, what the mainstream media will do now about covering Trump, the looming DeSantis vs. Trump battle ahead, the Trump faithful that will never vote for another GOP candidate, Ukraine's spin about a missile in Poland, and more. Then Alex Berenson, author of "Unreported Truths," joins to discuss what we know now about COVID and masking, vaccines and myocarditis, "with" vs. "from" COVID deaths, Berenson's lawsuit against Twitter that got him un-banned from the platform, the forces he found out that were trying to get him banned in the first place, how the White House pressured Twitter to take action against Berenson, the MBF and FTX implosion, 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. Coming up in just a bit, Alex Berenson will be back with us. Oh, there's a lot to go over with him. I'm looking forward to that interview. Including the new study that calls for masking children to combat racism. All right. If the actual combating COVID doesn't work, there's always combating racism. The media getting a tiny bit more honest about the risks of myocarditis. The vaccine companies have now been forced to actually study this. And what Alex has learned about the efforts many took to get him kicked off of Twitter.

All right. It wasn't just Twitter's decision. The White House had a hand in it. And our old pal Scott Gottlieb had a massive hand in it as well. And boy, oh boy, is Berenson ready to fight back. We'll get to all of that. And we'll also get to his warning that the unraveling of FTX and its founder, Sam Bankman Freed, is far worse than Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. First, though, former President Donald Trump has made it official, formally announcing last night he is running for president. We will get to some of the key moments from his speech, plus the media's reaction, with two first-time guests on the podcast.

How is that even possible? I listen to Michael Brendan Doherty and read his stuff every day over at National Review. This is the first time on his show on this show. He's a senior writer at National Review. And Jason Miller, my old pal from Fox News, he's the CEO of the social media platform Getter. And in 2016 and 2020, he served on Donald Trump's presidential campaigns. Guys, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So this is there's so much to go over. This is a great day to have you both. I'll just give you my sort of back of the envelope reaction to Trump last night. I was looking forward to watching it. I you know, Trump never disappoints, but he kind of did disappoint a little last night, not to be too hard on him. but I know he was trying to do presidential and he was trying to not screw anything up for Herschel Walker, but he did seem a little low

energy. I was slightly bored. I'm not going to lie. I did fall asleep before the end of the hour. Now I'm getting old and my kids wake me up early, but I did doze off. And that's just unprecedented for a Trump rally or a Trump. And I have to think, Jason Miller, you got to tell me, like, there must have been a decision on his part not to be his normal freewheeling off-prompter self for some reason. Well, I think there are a couple of things that go into it, Megan. First off, you only get one introduction speech. Of course, in 2015, he had the iconic come down the escalator moment. But the kickoff speeches or kickoff interviews haven't always gone well for certain candidates. Go back to Ted Kennedy, 1980, for example.

So coming out and laying out the clear case of why you're running is critical. It's one of the, as you remember, the old adage, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Now, the reason why that's important is because President Trump hasn't really had an unfettered access to go and get his message out on something that's coming across and say the mainstream media, even Fox News, NBC, probably going back to convention in 2020. This was his chance to come out and lay down that marker. So number one, he needed to make sure that not only his base, but the sometimes Trumpers or the independents who swing back and forth each time got a sense of really where it was coming from. Make sure that was clear. Make sure it was forward looking. Let's put some of the attention back on Joe Biden. So he had his objective that he wanted

to reach, and I think he hit it. Michael, one of the things I did think was in his favor was it was pretty powerful to listen to him list the accomplishments of his administration, you know, and take you through some of the problems with the Joe Biden administration. It was like, you know, you listen to the actual plus column for him and minus column for Biden. It was good. It was powerful. And, you know, Trump's always a good, relatively good spokesperson for it. He just didn't have the normal fire. And Trump on prompter is just nowhere near as good as Trump good spokesperson for it. He just didn't have the normal fire. And Trump on prompter is just nowhere near as good as Trump off prompter.

Right. I mean, I looked at the speech last night as like, and I don't mean to trivialize Donald Trump at all by saying this, but it felt like a standup comedian who is getting a new set of material together again. And that by the time he takes this material out on the road, tests lines, incorporates new current events that haven't occurred yet into his jokes, it's going to improve greatly from what we saw last night. I mean, by the end of the 2020 campaign, in his last rally in rural Pennsylvania, I mean, by the end of the 2020 campaign in his last rally in rural

Pennsylvania, I mean, he was a master showman. And so I think you're right that he's starting with this base of here are my accomplishments as president. Here's what's happened in the years since I left office. And where do you really stand, right? We have 10% inflation. We have a war going on in Ukraine that's potentially dangerous that, you know, he implies wouldn't even be happening under his watch. And so he's presenting a compelling case to that independent swinging voter that Jason talked about. But he's only just beginning to reconnect with the deep Trump voter. I think the other thing that is working for him, and maybe others won't see it this way, is that we're almost back in 2016 again, or in 2015 again, with a lot of the Republican establishment aligning against him and aligning

behind a popular Florida governor, with the media kind of all gathering against him. And I think he and his hardcore supporters thrive on that united opposition. I think that that's when he kind of does his best work and when he makes himself most credible to his core base of supporters as i am the only one standing up for you in this position uh and so in a sense like his his weakness is his strength right the the kind of divorce people are trying to effect between him and the republican establishment that's actually going to work for him going forward. This is reminding me of the movie Jumanji with Kevin Hart's character going, how is strength my weakness? Also, kick makes me explode.

It's two of the greatest lines in that movie. So the thing is, Jason, the media did some interesting things last night. OK, now the left wing media, you won't be surprised. It was insane. They were trying so hard to outdo each other in their summary descriptions of Donald Trump. You know, if you wanted to write a fair summary of Donald Trump in a paragraph, maybe you'd say, you know, something about the fact that he appointed three Supreme Court justices. He pushed through the Abraham Accords, pushed through criminal justice reform. You know, you could pick a lot, but by GOP and some Dems and did some things

that were condemned by most Dems and Republicans. This is how NPR went. Breaking. Donald Trump, who tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and inspired a deadly riot at the Capitol in a desperate attempt to keep himself in power has filed to run for president again in 2024. The liberal blue checks went nuts. They loved that one. Okay, here's Washington Post. The twice impeached former President Donald Trump, 76, who refused to concede in the 2020 election and is the subject of multiple criminal investigations, is running again in 2024, increasing the likelihood of a potential rematch with President Biden. New York Times got in trouble with some of its liberal followers for only using the following lead line. Donald J. Trump, whose historically

divisive presidency shook the pillars of the country's democratic institutions, on Tuesday night declared his intention to seek the White House again. That wasn't angry enough for the liberals following that. And on it goes. So to Michael's point, I mean, this is catnip for Trump's base. They love this stuff. Well, it is. And I have a unique perspective in that 2016, I was actually working for and supporting Senator Ted Cruz in the primary and then joined President Trump in the general election. So I saw it from the other side. And the thing that was not clear to us immediately, it should have been, but this was kind of President Trump's superpower, so to speak, is that the more that there was a piling on from whether it be the Washington establishment or the media, then he just seemed to grow in strength. It's like the energy guy in Spider-Man, where the more you attack him, just the bigger and stronger he gets. And to see the out-of-control, unhinged reaction from the media, you know, Megan, you read the headlines, but if you look at NewYorkTimes.com or NYTimes.com right now, literally, I think it's seven out of the first nine stories are anti-Trump leads.

It's so over the top and so crazy. There's a certain snapback effect that many of the sometimes Trumpers, when they see those attacks from the media, they're like, wait a minute, why are they attacking our guy? We need to fall into the position of supporting President Trump. Or even as we saw with Michael, which at the time, the initial publication with National Review, they had the essays against President Trump and that only bolstered him and he got stronger. I think even beyond the media, I think even when you look at some of the donor heavyweights who come out, the Ken Griffins, the Steve Schwarzman's in the last couple of days, those are not exactly the poster children of the Republican base that you want out there cheering either for your side. I mean, those are the people you're President Trump's kind of running against. So it's good. I do have to say, though, because, Megan, I'm usually pretty tough on the media.

I do have to say that I thought the Wall Street Journal's news story today I thought was very fair. Probably the best of the mainstream outlets. I think Alex Leary is a very fair journalist. And CNN, believe it or not, actually did cover the first 20, 25 minutes of President Trump's speech last night. And so I got to give credit where it's due because I do beat up on these guys quite a bit. Okay. But what did you make of the New York Post? The headline, the front of the cover was about something else. And then there was a little line at the bottom that read, Florida man makes announcement. The story about the announcement is deep inside on page 26. And I'm going to read it for the audience because it really says something. It's just a singular column on the left side of

the page called been there, done that. With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement Tuesday night that he was running for president in a move no political pundit saw coming. Avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and classified documents library. Trump, famous for gold plated lobbies and for firing people on reality television will be 78 in 2024. If elected Trump would tie Joe Biden as the oldest president to take office, his cholesterol levels are unknown, but his favorite food is a charred steak with ketchup. He has stated that his qualifications for office include being a, quote, stable genius. Trump also served as the 45th president. The author was post-Staff. Wow. Wow.

Megan is a mutual friend of ours, likes to always say no such thing as conspiracies, but also no such thing as coincidences. Clearly, there's been an order, the vertical integration of here's what you're supposed to write that's been delivered. And we're seeing that in the post there are a lot of really fine journalists who are at the post a lot of really good columnists who i really like but if you go in the time machine just about two three months back the post was tripping over themselves to praise president trump and now the switch to basically trying to cut into the daily news space i don't think that's going to work well curious what it'll do with their readership base uh but it's it's too much of a flip flop in such a short amount of time. I don't think most people are going to buy it.

What do you make of that, MBD? It's fascinating to see the post really coming down on him. And the journal's been unkind to notwithstanding what Jason says about today, clearly. And there's also a report out that that Rupert Murdoch has given the word directly to Trump, don't run again. We don't want it. We won't back it. And actually, if you run again, if it's against anyone other than Joe Biden, we might actually back the Democrat. If you run and the nominee on the other side is Joe Biden, we might just stay neutral. But in no event will we be supporting you. He, of course, owns Fox News. He owns the Journal. He owns the New York Post. He owns HarperCollins Publishing and so on. I think Rupert Murdoch has tremendous influence. We're seeing it now. I think it's an open question for a lot of media outlets. There was something very surreal about the way Fox News covered the speech last night. I mean, I was watching the speech and like you, Megan, I was saying this is not the best material.

And it's kind of like looking over at Twitter to see what the reaction was. And suddenly before the speech was even over, Fox was, you know, Sean Hannity was cutting to Mike Huckabee. And Mike Huckabee was saying, if Donald Trump sticks with this message, he's unstoppable. And then he's cutting to other commentators who are saying, like, this is the greatest message. This is what he has to stick with. You know, basically a kind of commentary saying, don't talk about the 2020 election. Talk about Joe Biden's record. But the speech was still going on

in a corner of the screen um and you know there there was a kind of so like i said there was a surreal quality where they're saying this is the most amazing speech but we're not showing it to you uh in certain sections i was like where do i find it i found it finally on newsmax i'm like i'm awake i want to hear what he has to say. Newsmax took the whole thing. But yeah, it was strange. I will tell you, this is a rule of Brit Humes that I learned from him young in my career. Never put a little box of a talking head on the screen while the anchor is on the screen talking with another guest because it only leads the audience to be like, well, what's that little box saying? Why are they showing me that little box? If you're showing me the box, let me hear the box. It's annoying. Clearly, there had been an order on how for him to do that. I just can't imagine a world in which Hannity voluntarily cut away from Trump mid-speech. But also, and it continued on in the next hour. Then suddenly, Laura Ingraham is giving highlights of earlier in the speech while the speech hasn't concluded yet. Like we're already nostalgic for the speech that hasn't finished.

And then, so, so Fox news is coverage was odd, but of course I think one of the biggest, you know, because we're doing, we're basically doing it over again. We're going to do everything like it was in 2016,

but knowing how 2016 played out. And so the other thing is in 2015 and 2016, Jeff Zucker at CNN made the very deliberate decision of we're carrying Trump's rallies end to end, right? From beginning to finish, most of them that put pressure on Fox and even MSNBC to do the same. And I remember running into Lawrence O'Donnell in the back of MSNBC once, and he was livid and basically said, we're going to end up making this guy president just by following what Jeff Zucker is doing. That had a tremendous effect on Trump's campaign.

It made him kind of omnipresent feature. It made him the only topic of conversation in news media during the entirety of his campaign. And I don't think they're going to do it again. And I think we saw the evidence of that last night. And that is going to be a huge obstacle that Trump has to overcome, right? That the road is not paved for him the way it was in 2016, right? Because after the election, when he won, you know, a lot of these news executives thought that they were undermining the Republican Party by getting, by helping Trump get the nomination and undermining Trump by showing

him all the time. They think, oh, he's going to expose himself as a crazy person. And instead, you know, he won narrowly. And afterward, only then did they begin regretting their coverage decisions. But this is, but we're already seeing that it's going to be very different field that he's playing on in the next two years. I really wonder what they're going to do, because I lived that firsthand. We at the Kelly file, watch Trump and it you and you can see the minute by minute ratings. You can see your every 15 minutes how you did. You can see minute by minute if you ask for it. And you'd see some huge spike in your minute by minutes. And you're like, what's that? You go back and look.

Invariably, it was Trump. Trump speaking extemporaneously is like heroin to viewers. At least it was back when he was running the first time. And so it was no surprise to me that CNN wound up taking them wall to wall because they were hemorrhaging viewers. They had nothing interesting going on. They couldn't put numbers on the board. And all you had to do was turn the cameras on the man and sit back and watch. You'd get record numbers. And I remember we at the Kelly File had a long talk behind the scenes about how we would not be doing this for Scott Walker, who is not that exciting on television. We certainly wouldn't be doing it for Hillary Clinton. And we can't do it

for Donald Trump as much of the catnip as it might be. We can't. And so we didn't. We treated him the way we treated everybody. But we were not in the majority amongst our friends at Fox or across the media landscape. However, Jason, when he became president and they realized he was powerful, the media changed. They would cut away from him while giving a presidential press conference. The president of the United States, they turn off the cameras and go back to their anchor for some fact check on some COVID line or what have you. But the thing is, the ratings are once again terrible for CNN and MSNBC. And so I really do wonder how they'll handle it now. What do you think? You know, it's a really good question. Short answer is I don't know. But much of the media, and you saw this starting with the Sunday shows and then even going into last night, they're a bit bipolar in how they want to approach it because they don't want to talk about Trump.

But then they do want to talk about Trump because he's writing gold. But then with Joe Biden, there's a bit of a catch there. They don't want to spend a lot of time talking about Joe Biden because they know just how underwhelming he is for the Democratic base. You saw Anita Dunn on the Sunday shows and her tortured answer about if Joe Biden is going to run again in 2024. And of course, Joe didn't have a very good week, whether it's at COP 27, the climate change conference or G20 in Colombia and Cambodia. I mean, you know, everyone mixes those two countries up. It happens to the best of us. They can't go out there and say, but we love Joe Biden because, I mean, to say he's a fossil is

probably kind of being nice to him. So they're in this thing. Do they want to cover President Trump? Do they not want to? Do they want to? But if they cover Joe Biden, do they just kind of feel the narrative that he's not up for the job in 2024? That's a big question. Where I think they're going to land is they're going to pick or choose. I think if President Trump, if he's hitting, if he's forward focused and he's taking it to Biden, I think he's going to have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. If it's 2020 retrospective grievances, then I think he's going to get a lot less coverage. He'll be less likely to go and pick it up. So I think it's going to be kind of feeling our way around in the dark here as we go forward in the next few months. That's a good point. So National Review has a piece today,

Michael, that says National Review, no, N-O, period, with a great line. To paraphrase Voltaire after he attended an orgy, once was an an experiment twice would be perverse. This is not an endorsement of Donald Trump, and it's quite a clever way of saying no more. I know that you guys would much prefer to see somebody like DeSantis or even Youngkin in the lead role. role, but how do you reconcile the challenge that lies ahead for DeSantis in taking Trump down? That's the only way forward. Trump is running. How do you see him doing that with that incredibly strong and loyal Trump base? Well, here's the key thing. uh desantis cannot run and cannot be seen to be running as if he is the tool of the establishment to try to purify the gop of this trumpist obsession

right that will never work if if he runs as a kind of revenge tour against populism against trump uh that will fail miserably and i think he knows that uh desantis's path to the nomination is i can unite this party we have a problem right which is that there's 10 of the Republican Party doesn't want to vote for Carrie Lake. But that 10% of the party can't dictate to the 25% or 30% or 40% of the party that loves a Carrie Lake, you know, who the nominee is going to be. But we all agree on Ron DeSantis, right? That's why he won by 20 points. That's why he won in districts in Florida that Republicans haven't won in two decades. That's why he's increasing his margin with independent voters and with Hispanics.

It's something that all people on the right and basically everyone who dislikes Joe Biden, we can all agree on Ron DeSantis. That's sort of his sweet spot, but it's going to be very difficult because Donald Trump has star power, like we were just talking about, star power that affects the decisions made in newsrooms by heads of news networks, by heads of global media empires. Ron DeSantis does not have that. What Ron DeSantis has, though, is he has a very substantive record in Florida. He talks about that. He gives a very good speech on Florida as a model. is the loyalty of people that were radicalized during the pandemic, which is Ron DeSantis seemed to be leading people who were skeptical of lockdowns at a time when Donald Trump was criticizing Brian Kemp for reopening Georgia too soon. Ron DeSantis made Florida safe for people who had questions about the vaccine or doubts about the vaccines and basically saying, like, in Florida, you can live a normal life here.

We're going to restrict businesses from imposing vaccine passports on you. a medical decision that's up to you and that is private and that you may have perfectly reasonable reasons to, to choose a different way. So, you know, I think a lot of people are waiting for Ron DeSantis to stand up and say, Hey, you didn't fire Anthony Fauci. Why not? We, we got rid of his influence in Florida and we thrived. That day may come, but I think Ron DeSantis would be well advised to wait. Let Trump get out there for a while. Let's see if he really has the spark that wasn't there last night. Let's see if he really can get the crowds going again. And then take your time. you know, wait until the legislative session is done in Florida in May. And then you're, I mean, Ron DeSantis already has

GOP mega donors behind him. So he can play this slow. But I think that's his plays. I can unite this party after Trump and Trump can no longer unite this party. Just a sample of some of the tweets and the reaction from the speech. There, Josh Green tweets out, Jeb Bush could win Twitter right now with a low energy tweet. Let's see then some of Trump's fans and the Trump is formidable, but this is not the look of an invulnerable candidate. That's from David Drucker of the D.C. Examiner. Paul Begala, if I'm a strategist for Ron DeSantis, Florida, nothing I saw from Trump tonight would scare me in the least. So what about that, Jason? That, you know, Michael's raising some good questions about COVID and how Trump handled it that I hear from

Trump's faithful to people who like him are mad. They don't think those vaccines are as wonderful as some say. They remember that Trump was pro-lockdown for a period. He didn't fire Fauci. Those are all points for DeSantis, no? No. And look, Governor DeSantis has done a great job with the state of Florida, and I think he will be a formidable opponent if he gets in the race against President Trump. I do want to point out one detail here that the challenge for Governor DeSantis is that his pathway forward, his strategy relies on hope. It relies on third party individuals or third party events to really open up that path. If President Trump continues to deliver speeches like he did last night, I believe he's going to be very tough to beat. In many ways, you could say that President Trump is in a sense running against himself right

now. Because Governor DeSantis is not yet known on the national stage, keep in mind that his aura, his figure is largely based on what people see. They see a little bit of the news reports, but much of it is built on effectively the sense of could it be President Trump without the warts or President Trump without the shortcomings. At a certain point, he will be in the spotlight. That might seem a little bit trivial. I'm not saying that there'll be the Gary Hart nonsense or something of that, but getting out there on the stage when you start going toe to toe really starts to open up some changes. You know, Michael made a really good point that Governor DeSantis does not want to become the candidate of the establishment. And that's where I think is a real tricky situation with the Ken Griffins and the Schwartzmans

and folks like that, because keep in mind, Governor DeSantis was always essentially the proverbial club for growth candidate. He very much is someone who would oppose all tariffs on China and the much different position when it comes to trade. Some of the international relations aspect that you don't have pop up as governor of Florida, that those then do become front and center if you go to run. So I think in many ways right now, President Trump is effectively running against himself. But hope is not a strategy and relying third-party individuals or events to open up that lane for you, that can be real tough. Why now?

Why do you do it now, Jason? Yeah. So I asked him that exact question. A couple of things coming off the midterms. He said that he wants to go and infuse some energy into the party. He said it because people know that he wants to run again. He's been chomping at the bit. It's been no secret.

I've been watching his rallies over the last couple of months. He said he's ready to get going now and start raising money. And let's go and put the focus back on what we did in our four years versus Joe Biden. And there's something to be said there with 2020 and the way it played out that you have the powers to be. You have the social media guys all come together and say, we're going to shut down the Hunter Biden story. We're going to change the rules of the game and start kicking people off platforms and censoring. You have the media, which I think it's a very fair usage of the word collusion with what they did in 2020. But the establishment, the insiders, the media elites kind of got the candidate they wanted. And Joe Biden, it's been a pretty disastrous last two years. And President Trump's point was,

Joe, this is a perfect time to go and draw the contrast with Joe Biden. He is at a low point. Democrats do not want to talk about Joe Biden. Let's go and take it to him. And it certainly sounded like at least at one point of the speech, he was trying to draw a contrast between himself and DeSantis as well, talking about this is not the time for a conventional candidate. Let's pick it up there right after this quick break. More with MBD and Jason Miller as we go to break. I will let you hear that soundbite to SOC 3. Our country is in a horrible state. We're in grave trouble. This is not a task for a politician or a conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage,

confidence, and the spirit of the American people. This is a job for grandmothers and construction workers, firefighters, builders, teachers, doctors, and farmers who cannot stay quiet any longer. It's a job for every aspiring young person and every hardworking parent, for every entrepreneur and underappreciated police officer who is ready to shout for safety in America, the police are being treated so badly. This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign. All right, back to the guys in one second. So MBD, one of the biggest problems DeSantis has is the fervent, deeply devoted Trump base, right? The people Trump got off of their living room couches to vote who had not voted before.

The Democrats who had never voted Republican before in their lives, who crossed over because of him. And, you know, just finger in the wind. How did those people react to the speech and to the back and forth with DeSantis yesterday? DeSantis, as we closed out the show, we told the audience about his comments about one of the things I've learned when you're leading, when you're getting things done, you take incoming fire. That's just the nature of it. But look at the scoreboard. All right. Look at the scoreboard from last Tuesday night.

Here's just a sampling of Trump's base. USA! USA! USA! He has plenty of time to gain wisdom. Trump or death. Well, good morning, patriots. Do you know what time it is? Do you know what time it is? Do you know what time it is? I've been dying to say this.

Trump 2024, motherfuckers. We have come this far because of President Trump, because of his tenacity and ambition to not bow down to anyone, to not be politically correct and to put Americans first. Let's not forget who brought us here. This is disgusting what we are seeing. I'm not saying you got to walk around and worship the man. I'm not in a cult and I'm not I'm not asking anybody to behave that way. What I'm asking is to remember where you came from and how you got here. I don't know. I wouldn't put them in the category of persuadable, MBD.

No, listen, populist leaders don't just go away. They die or they're assassinated. I mean, they don't just disappear from the scene or fade away. Or pass the baton. Yeah. So, and listen, Donald Trump's strength is that he is more than a Republican, right? And that's why his midterm choices can't replicate his magic, right? Like, it doesn't matter if you think

the 2020 election is stolen. It doesn't matter if you think the 2020 election is stolen. It doesn't matter if you're willing to say wild stuff and provoke the libs the way Trump is. Because, you know, Doug Mastriano doesn't have Melania as his wife, doesn't have a billion dollars in a bank account, and doesn't have his name on buildings in almost every city in the country, and on golf courses around the world, right? There's a special magic that Trump brings. And that's also why, you know, Republicans did better in the 2020 congressional races because Trump was on the top of the ticket, right? Basically, the political dynamic for Trump has always been i'm gonna let hillary clinton

unite the traditional republican party and then i'm gonna reach beyond that party and get all these rural voters that republicans don't normally get uh all of these populist voters they don't get all the people who feel like they haven't been heard on trade in the Rust Belt, and I'm going to add them to the Republican Party that Hillary has united. So that is his dynamic strength. And that is why I still think he is the odds-on favorite to win the nomination, because he has this devoted base, and it's hard to see it dropping below 30 or 35 percent in any of those early states. And in a multi-candidate field, that's enough to get runaway momentum. And the minute he gets runaway momentum again, the people you just featured in that video, like their special bond with Donald Trump is that nobody believed he could win except me. All of the smart people on television, all of the high paid pundits, the people at National Review, the political consultants, they all doubted him, but I saw something in him.

And in a sense, his victory was theirs, right? It was showing, it was almost biblical, right? That the first shall be last and the last shall be first. And so this period of the next cycle, they're going to experience it as Trump is being tested and we're being tested. And I want to come out passing the test with my faith in him. That's a dynamic that is, I would say, beyond normal politics. And it's going to be very difficult for, as Donald said, a normal politician to challenge him because, frankly, Donald Trump is playing a slightly different game, a deeper game. Yeah, and has a much longer, more intense relationship with the GOP core base than any other person in America, than any other politician, certainly, but than any other person in America. But now what they're saying, Jason, is, well,

he's old, right? He's a lot older. He's 76 now. When he announced back in 15, he was 69. We've already dealt with a very old president it hasn't gone particularly well he could only be a one-term president so we're going to go through all this you know and even the best case scenario for the republicans they only set themselves up for for one term and then we're back to square zero for the second you know like these are the thing and desantis is young he's new he's shiny he's only 44 he also has the beautiful wife. He also fights the woke. He's combative. He doesn't tweet. You know, you can see how the other thing looks so shiny and why so many donors and non-Trump devotees are like, let's just end the crazy drama

and turn the page. Well, to which point I would say that's why last night's speech was so important, because obviously they're the 10 percent never Trumpers who are just never going to find a way to supporting him. But you have that sizable block of the sometimes Trump supporters. And when people say about turning the page what they like hearing, they're the parts of last night's speech about reversing American decline, fixing our economy, those messages. They remember the gas being less than $2 a gallon, all the accomplishments, which were pretty powerful, as you pointed out. There are a number of things from the speech last night that really went to also speaking to that base of the always Trumpers, the supporters. And it's not always just issues. I think this is where pollsters and a lot of the pundits blow it when they say it's purely about trade or it's purely about taxation or where do

things stack up in rankings. A lot of it also is the sentiment. It's the emotional connection with the candidate. Some of the rhetorical devices the president used last night, whether talking about, say, this isn't my campaign, this is our campaign. I'm going to be your voice. The line that you highlighted earlier about it's not going to be a conventional candidate, that applies to both the primary and the general election, because people realize this is much more in 2016 of us against them, taking on Washington, taking on the elites. Interestingly enough, there was a lot more content from the speech last night. This was by design to come across as more anti-establishment and to remind people of his street cred about taking on the insiders. Some of the biggest applause lines from last night,

believe it or not, term limits. It was literally a standing ovation line from his speech last night as he was going through and highlighting a number of these other things, taking away the ability for members of Congress to trade stocks and to make money off of that, not allowing members of Congress to be lobbyists after Dunn being in office. These are things that maybe might not show up on a top pollster level, but makes people realize this guy's going to fight for me. He's not going to fight for the fat cats. He's going to go and fight for me. So yes, you have the folks who are motivated by specific issues. Other people, it's more of an emotional connection. What I would say, Megan, just kind of comically, it was good to see several people who I'd

consider friends in that highlight video. Also good getter users, RealTina40, Sean Farosh, who also does the great trumpet impressions. The fact I knew about half the people on that highlight reel, I guess you guys did a great job of putting that segment together. Shameless plug, but why not? So let's talk a little bit about policy and news of the day. One of the things that Trump commented on last night was the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and what's happening in Ukraine. And the latter is very much in the news today. Let me just play you the soundbite and then we'll talk about the latest.

This is Satwan. The United States has been embarrassed, humiliated, and weakened for all to see. The disasters in Afghanistan, perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, where we lost lives, left Americans behind, and surrendered $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world, and Ukraine, which would have never happened if I were your president. Now today, of course, there's been plenty of back and forth over these two missiles that were fired that have landed in Poland. And the question is, where did they come from? I guess it was maybe one, one. Originally, it was two. And now the Polish president says there's no proof that the missile that landed in NATO territory, meaning Poland, was fired by Russia.

No indication this was an intentional attack on Poland. Joe Biden came out last night and said something which seemed pretty responsible, saying it is unlikely that it was fired from Russia. But we'll see. Meanwhile, you've got Zelensky jumping up and down, trying to blame the whole thing on Russia. And I think one of the top U.N. officials said it was from Russia. And I mean, if it came from Russia and it was intentionally fired into Poland, it's disastrous. I mean, it's very, very high stakes consequence because of the NATO agreement that will defend any NATO country as though it's an attack on us. And Russian President Vladimir Putin or his top guy, Dmitry Peskov, came out today praising Joe Biden for exercising some caution on this, trying to turn resisting the urge to turn what appears to have at best been a mistake or or potentially

even just been a ukrainian missile that was misfired into world war three uh what do you make of the whole thing michael well i mean the ukrainian ukrainian military has made mistakes previously in this war there were some adult moldovans who were killed and and and some state outlets in ukraine tried to blame that on Russia. And it was the Ukrainian misfire. This may have been another misfire. But what's interesting is you've seen in the last couple of weeks, Joe Biden start to create some distance between himself and Zelensky in Ukraine. And it might be a sign

that the United States is looking at the disposition of Germany and France and maybe even of the incoming Congress and deciding that now is a better time than later for Ukraine and NATO and Russia to get around a table and begin talks to end this conflict because Ukraine's economy is destroyed. Russia is training reinforcements and the war may not get better for Ukraine. This may be a high tide mark for Ukraine absent a tremendous amount of support from the West that is starting to trickle to a few drops as far as more military aid from Europe itself. So we may see a move here, I think, by the Biden administration to try to end this conflict. And this may be another little sign to Europe that you don't just want to give so many weapons to Ukraine when they

clearly, you know, don't know how to control all of them. Yeah. And then we're very brash in their demands for international condemnation of Russia and its missile strike. I mean, they seem to do everything within their power to propagandize anything that happens to tempt us into getting more involved. Am I wrong, MBD? No, their media war has been very helped by the United States and by outlets here. I mean, Ukraine has withdrawn the visas from top level New York Times and Washington Post

reporters over stories that weren't perfectly flattering to the Ukrainian cause. And the New York Times and Washington Post don't make a loud protest about this. We actually, Ukraine is a little bit of a black box as far as news goes. We don't know how many casualties they've suffered, what the condition of their military is, what the condition of their domestic economy is, how much coercion they have to exercise to keep fighting age men in the country. In one way, you can say that's a huge success for Ukraine's military operation, that it has the media so under control inside and outside of its country. But on the other side, it makes you question the wisdom of the United States' utterly massive investments in this conflict. Where's it going? I mean,

there's already even some reports of weapons escaping Ukraine and heading into Western Europe to be controlled by gangs in Sweden. I mean not we're not talking about uh high mars or anything like that but we're talking about guns that normally you know aren't available in western europe or small munitions uh and this has been a problem uh of a weapons trade going from the balkans in the past to gangs in sweden and norway uh we may see that getans in the past to gangs in Sweden and Norway. We may see that get worse in the coming months. Just to round out what I was saying, the Ukrainian foreign minister called for NATO members to convene an immediate summit to bring tough measures against Moscow following the reports

that Russian missiles had landed in Poland. A collective response to Russian actions must be tough and principled and goes on from there. You know, it's just like, just whoa, Nelly, let's take a seat. Turns out not to have even been a Russian missile. And this whole thing underscores the dangers of our role over there right now. Jason, I got to ask you quickly before we go. Alex Berenson is going to come on in a bit. We're going to talk about a lot of different things. One of the things is what Twitter did to him with the cooperation of the White House. And it turns out Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, you've got a social media platform. What's happening over Twitter right now on the Elon, it's not going so well.

There's actually talk of potential bankruptcy declaration. They're losing something like $4 million a day. Advertisers have fled en masse because they're like, oh, it's a cesspool now with Elon running it. I know you're a competitor, but do you think what's happening to him right now is fair? Great question, because as someone who, yes, is a marketplace competitor, he might not view me yet as a marketplace competitor, but I'm trying to get there. I'm definitely working on it. But anyone who supports free speech should be supportive of what Musk is trying to do. He's trying to bring some normalcy to Twitter. Here's the thing I think gets lost in the swirl is whether his being on Twitter, maybe a little bit more than he needs to, or the news about the bumpy road to the merger, things like that. It all comes down to the user experience. If people are excited about going to the platform, if there are functions that they

want to use, if there's content that they want to follow, then people are going to come. But if there's nothing that's innovating, if there's nothing that's drawing people back in, they're not going to come. That's why the daily active user count is as low as it is. And Musk is saying he needs to quadruple it to get it to a strong place for monetizing. So I think that's the bigger problem for Musk. It isn't so much that maybe they're trying to figure out the exact model for monetizing. It's that Twitter hasn't innovated in the way that, say, Instagram or TikTok or some of the other platforms have. It's basically the same user experience as it was 10 years ago there really isn't much to

change that's the problem musk is actually being an innovator is the thing that's his strength but it all goes back to the user experience it kind of reminds you that all this time you know jack dorsey with the big long beard and his liberal cohorts over there were enjoying running this social media platform is just this liberal bastion where they could talk with all their friends and promote the viewpoints they wanted and forgot to run it as a business. Now you got a guy in there who actually wants to make money and you can feel his oh shit moment happening.

Like, oh my God, what's been going on? It's going to be fascinating to watch. You guys, thank you so much. This was the conversation we needed today. It's been a pleasure talking to you both. Thank you so much. All right. And as I mentioned, we're going to be right back with Alex Berenson. So much to go over with him. He's got deep thoughts on FTX as the New York Times guy who investigated Bernie Madoff, not to mention what Twitter did to him and the latest on the

reporting on vaccines and myocarditis. OK, don't forget, in the meantime, you can find the Megan Kelly show live on Sirius XM triumph channel one 11 every weekday at noon East and the full video show and clips by subscribing to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly. We appreciate you going over there and subscribing. That thing has been really, really strong. And it's thanks to all of you. My next guest has been at the forefront of the entire COVID saga, getting banned for nearly a year from Twitter over his questions and reporting about issues like masking and vaccines. Now he says he is planning to sue the people who tried to silence him and he has a whole lot of information on

exactly who was behind it. We're going to get into that in detail and so much more. Alex Berenson is a journalist. His sub stack is unreported truths. Alex, great to have you back. How are you? I'm good. I'm glad to be on with you. All right. Let's before we get to the lawsuit, and I'm very into this whole thing, what you discovered. Let's just deal with a couple of the latest quote studies from the quote experts on COVID related things like masking. Scientists at Harvard and Mass General, the Boston University School, and so on, have published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. I'm saying all the most fancy things that

are supposed to make us believe that it's real and we need to pay attention and they have determined that masking works it works in schools in particular and not only does it prevent uh covid spread it actually prevents racism as. They actually said that it's going to decrease racism and it's going to decrease COVID. And what do you have that could make me question the renowned scientists from Harvard and mass general, the Boston university school and so on. So, uh, so that was an interesting study. Um, uh, it didn't actually, they didn't actually count the number of kids wearing masks or the number of teachers wearing masks. What they did was they looked at schools that had mask mandates, okay, and which, and in Massachusetts, you know, certain schools dropped. It was earlier this year, they dropped mask mandates.

In, you know, in Boston, they didn't. And then in a lot of the surrounding towns, they did. And so the idea was this was a sort of natural experiment where what happened in the districts that dropped mask mandates, what happened in districts that didn't drop mask mandates. And they found that months later during sort of the spring or early summer Omicron surge, the districts that didn't drop mask mandates, Boston essentially again, did better in terms of the number of positive tests than the ones that did. So if you dropped your mask mandate in February, you had more positive Omicron tests in June. So again, the most important thing to understand about this study is they didn't actually count who was wearing masks. So there's no way of knowing, you know, it's Boston, right? Like, it may have been that, you know, that in the inner city schools in Boston, kids were less likely to wear masks than in the sort of fancier districts around Boston with or without a mask mandate, right? Mask mandates might not

have actually changed masking behavior in any way. I mean, I know having, you know, three little kids that mask man, you know, who last year and the year before, since we live in the Northeast, were mandated to wear masks in school that by, you know, certainly by the middle of last year, everyone had their masks around their chins anyway. So it didn't really matter. So I think that's probably the best critique of this study is that you're not actually, you don't have any idea whether having the mandate or not actually changes masking behavior. Here's what I will tell you. Masks are useless. We have a tremendous amount of evidence that shows that certainly that the kind of surgical masks or cloth masks that kids wear are completely useless against respiratory viruses. That's COVID, that's the flu. You know, they don't do anything.

And kids don't wear them properly anyway. So this, and there's been very good studies, for example, in Spain, there was a paper done comparing, I think, five-year-olds and six-year-olds, and the six-year-olds were supposed to wear masks, and the five-year-olds didn't have to wear masks at all. And there was no difference in the rate of infection between the five-year-olds and the six-year-olds. This is from several months ago. And there was a very good randomized controlled trial of people wearing masks versus not wearing masks. This is adults. This is, this was sort of the study that really should have put this to bed. And it's now two years old showing that, that again, surgical masks didn't do anything. This was in Denmark. It was several thousand people. There's just, we just know that masks don't do anything. Sorry. Maybe if you wear an N95,

maybe if you wear it properly and you have the discipline to wear it all the time and you change it every, you know, six hours so it doesn't get too damp and you, you know, really stick it around your face tightly. Even then, there's still some viral particles that are going to get through. But these masks, you know, less effective masks and worn by children don't do anything. So this study doesn't change that reality. It's just a nice artifact if you, for some reason, like putting kids in masks that you can use. But the reality is we have a tremendous amount of evidence on the other side here. And so this study has to be wrong, basically, because because there's so much other evidence that contradicts it. So the question is, why is it wrong? And the answer probably is, they didn't actually check masks, they just check mask mandates.

It was just observational, which the left has said over and over. Well, that can't be the standard on the studies that show that the masks don't work. They're the first ones to say, oh, observational, you have to dismiss it. And now that this one's observational, it says what they want. They're touting it in the New York Times like it's the Bible revisited and it will be used by these zealots running some of these schools to mask up our kids. I swear this will never happen to my children again. They will not be putting masks on their faces. It's just too infuriating. All right, let's move on to NBC now reporting that there may be a link between myocarditis and vaccines, and there could be some, but very, very rare and very, very unlikely myocarditis lasting damage from all of this.

Here's what they say. The vast majority of the cases occur in young men, 16 to 24, citing the CDC. Then they say, hold on, I want to get my numbers. A study by Canadian researchers published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that men younger than 40 who got the Moderna vaccine had the highest risk of heart issues, usually within 21 days after the second dose. Back at study two was observational. They said the scientists found incidents of myocarditis following a booster dose of Pfizer or Moderna were higher than after the first dose, but still lower than after the second, concluding that it's that second dose that really could potentially endanger you. According to a vaccine expert at Kaiser Permanente,

the vaccine-related illness is usually milder than the viral type, like if you just get myocarditis not related to a vaccine. And most people with the condition make a full recovery. Like how they know that two years into this vaccine regimen, I don't know. Have they tested all of these hearts fully and on an ongoing basis and they can tell that they're 100% back to normal? Maybe they can. I don't know. But they are basically acknowledging that there's somewhat of a risk and suggesting that it's really only after that second dose, um, and that the myocarditis you would get from a vaccine will be far less damaging potentially than the myocarditis you would get from just a regular infection.

What do you make of it? So, uh, so this is a complicated issue on a couple of levels. Uh, look, you can get myocarditis after COVID or the flu or any other viral infection. Um, it's probably pretty rare. Uh, it's certainly very rare in, you know, in young men, uh, to, to, to wind up with myocarditis. Look, there's a broader issue. And the broader issue is this. The vaccines definitely cause myocarditis in some young men and young women, by the way, or in young men, but also in young women. The broader issue is that the benefit profile of the vaccines for anybody healthy under 50, certainly under 30, is not there. Okay. And the reason for

that is that if you're a reasonably healthy person, I don't mean that you're like a triathlete or something. I just mean, you're not morbidly obese. You're not, you know, you don't have cancer, you know, some terrible chromosomal condition. If you're, if you're a reasonably healthy person under 30, really all the way up to 50, but let's say 30 and under for these purposes, you're not going to get notably sick from COVID. And you're certainly not going to get notably sick from Omicron, right? You probably aren't even going to know you have it unless you test for it. Under those circumstances, there's no reasonable way to force people or even encourage people to take this

vaccine, which isn't a vaccine at all because it doesn't work for more than a couple of months. Okay. And against Omicron doesn't really appear to work at all. So the risk benefit on these quote unquote vaccines for anybody under 30, 40, 50, who's reasonably healthy, is not there. And that is what many other countries, not, you know, sort of like poor countries that don't have a decent, you know, regulatory apparatus. I'm talking about wealthy countries in Europe and Australia and other places in the world have moved away from recommending these vaccines at all for people under 50. Okay, they're they're not recommending the boosters in Australia for people under 50. They're not recommending the boosters in Australia, or I'm sorry, in Norway for people

under 65, with some exceptions, and there's other countries too. Okay, they countries all over the world have realized that for anybody reasonably healthy, who's not elderly, these vaccines don't make a lot of sense. And myocarditis is just one aspect of this. And we, I don't know why, I assume it's political. I assume it's because the Biden administration is so invested in this and we've spent so much money on these and, you know, and Pfizer's an American company, Moderna's's an american company we are not being honest about where we now stand on this it's um it's disturbing to me that this is how they begin the article of the hundreds of millions of covid vaccine doses given in the u.s since late 2020 there have been around 1 000 reports

of vaccine-related myocarditis or pericarditis in children under 18, primarily young males, according to the CDC. I don't believe that. There is no way there were only 1,000 reports of vaccine-related myocarditis or pericarditis. They're lying, okay? It's not hundreds of millions of doses given to people under 18. They're taking the whole sample of everybody up to age 110 who got the vaccine, who got the shots, and then saying of people under 18, it's a thousand. Maybe, I don't know what the exact number of doses given to people under 18 is, but it's not in the hundreds of millions. These are So these are the games that, you know, NBC, that the New York Times, that the Washington

Post, that CNN, certainly they're all playing these games. They will not acknowledge what the real denominator is. They will not acknowledge that probably a lot of cases are not, you know, going reported. They just won't tell the truth. And it is, it is, it has been devastating to public health and trust in public health in this country. That's right. That's the thing. There are other vaccines out there that have a much better safety profile, and they are

destroying trust in those. That's right. So they go on to quote in this piece, Dr. Leslie Cooper, the chair of the Department of Cardiology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Cooper joined an expert advisory panel formed by Moderna to monitor its COVID vaccine safety. It is unknown how many people with vaccine-associated myocarditis will experience cardiac scarring, said Cooper, noting that about 20% of people with myocarditis linked to viruses go on to experience heart failure. It could be 2%, it could be 0%, it could be 20%, he said, referring to the percentage of people with

vaccine-associated myocarditis who could experience long-term heart consequences. We don't know the answer. So this is the guy they're using to try to defend their vaccine, but he's acknowledging that it could be 20% or more, they don't know, who go on to experience long-term heart consequences, including cardiac scarring. Dr. Vinay Prasad interviewed a similar doctor, I ran this on my show a couple weeks ago, acknowledging that the pictures of the hearts in the children who develop myocarditis months and months after would be very troubling to any parent. So we're supposed to shrug our shoulders and be like, OK, so I'm risking cardiac scarring and myocarditis in up to, what, 20 percent more of our children for this negligible benefit, as you point out. And yet they continue to tout the vaccine. The CDC still recommends that all the children get it. And millions and millions of parents are opting for this. want to keep coming back to this, Megan, that we are now the outlier, okay? It's not, you know,

some like red state that, you know, that the rest of the world and, you know, in France and in, you know, Norway, Denmark, Germany, all these other countries, they're so smart and we're so dumb. Somebody in, you know, in Georgia or whatever is too stupid. It's the other way around. The blue states are the outliers increasingly on this issue. Most of the, you know, sort of advanced countries that use the mRNAs are moving away or have already moved away from recommending them, certainly for children, for teens, and as I'm telling you, up to 30, in some cases up to 50, and in the case of Norway, up to 65 for people who are healthy. And so that's what people need to understand. They are being essentially lied to

by places that are telling them that this is the norm now. It is not the norm now. Now, I had this discussion with a friend of mine who's a doctor. She's not my doctor. She's just my friend who happens to be a doctor. And she's a great anesthesiologist. And she was in the midst, you know, if you arrest in the hospital and you need to be resuscitated, they call the anesthesiologist. It's a person who's really responsible for saving your life. Same thing during a surgery, of course. She was talking about the number of people in her hospital who died during the peak of the covid spreading.

And she was saying, OK, the ones who did not have the vaccine, like the ones who were dying to a person had not gotten vaccinated. And that was anecdotal. But that was her observation about why it is worth getting vaccines and boosters and so on. And I have heard you say and I heard R heard RFK Jr. who came on the show a couple of times say that you believe, and forgive me if I'm not phrasing it right, but that the vaccines are not preventing increased death or severe illness, that they're not preventing severe illness or death from happening. And so I'd love to know what you think about that, because I just pulled just to set the record from the CDC side. They say that during Omicron, for example, COVID-19 associated hospitalization rates increased for all adults, regardless of vaccination status, but that the

rates were 12 times higher among adults who were unvaccinated compared to those who had received a booster or additional doses. In other words, if you have no vaccination in you at all, not even one shot, you have a much better chance of 12 times more likely chance of winding up in the hospital. So do you seem to contest that? Yes. So, so this is very complicated epidemiologically for a number of reasons. And, and I don't want to, I don't want to sort of go into too much detail. I don't want to bore you too much, but let me just, let me just point two things out. Okay. There's a period of time, as certainly last year, there was a period of time when the vaccines actually

worked as promised. Okay. It was a short period of time. It was in the spring and the summer of 2021. People who had been vaccinated had very high level of antibodies and were very unlikely to get infected. Okay. Not just, not just forget the severe illness part for a second. Okay. They were unlikely to get infected. And you may remember that there was talk about, you know, we're really going to eliminate COVID. It's going to, I mean, Anthony Fauci, none other than Anthony Fauci in May of 2021 said, I think we can eliminate this illness basically in the United States. Okay. There may still be a pace here and there, but we're going to eliminate it. Okay. That was wrong. That was, I don't think anybody would

disagree. That was wrong. The vaccines failed. They created two, they created the, our bodies sort of rejected this very, very high level antibodies they created. We cleared out the antibodies. Once that happened, people were open to infection. Okay. And there's some evidence that in the case of Omicron, you're actually more likely to be infected if you've been vaccinated than not. But that aside. I've seen that too. So the question then became the secondary issue, an important issue, but a secondary issue. Even if the vaccine stopped working against infection and transmission, as they did, as everyone agrees they did, do they still prevent

severe disease and death? Okay. And this is a very, very complicated question scientifically. And the reason, there's a half dozen reasons, but maybe the most important reason is that people who are vaccinated tend to be healthier than people who are not vaccinated. They have better access to health care. Maybe they pay more attention to their health. They, in the case of COVID, maybe they took more lockdown measures. So they, for a period of time, might have been actually less likely to get infected aside from the vaccine, and they were healthier at baseline. And then there's this very small group of people, Megan, who can't be vaccinated at all, essentially because they're too close to death. Okay, they're too sick. Doctors aren't going to do it. Their family members don't care. They don't care. So when you factor out those groups, it gets much, much harder to see a benefit of vaccination in stopping severe

disease and death. Okay. So if the vaccines are stopping you from getting infected, they're definitely stopping severe disease and death. Because if you're not infected, you can't progress to severe disease or death. Once they fail on that, it's much harder to make the case cleanly that they stop severe disease or death. Once they fail on that, it's much harder to make the case cleanly that they stop severe disease and death. And so what happened was in the fall of last year, we boosted people. But what happened when we boosted people? We briefly, again, protected them from infection.

We gave them a lot more antibodies again. And so that started the cycle again, where there was this group of people who was temporarily protected from infection and thus from severe disease and death. So what I'm telling you is that when the CDC says that, you must understand that the case is much, much more complicated than most people. Most people who understand this will admit, they won't admit the truth about this. And when I say to you that 90% plus of people in Britain and Australia and places where they disclose the data accurately are vaccinated, who are dying of COVID, I am telling you the truth. You can find those numbers for yourself. Okay. And here's the other thing. We are now almost two years into this vaccination campaign in places in the United States, in Europe, people are still dying of

COVID with COVID. There's still a lot of mortality related to COVID. Again, it's nearly all in vaccinated people. It's not because there's some huge group of people in Denmark who love Donald Trump and won't get vaccinated. It's because the vaccines don't work nearly as well if they work at all at this point, as the CDC and other people are saying. It's amazing we don't have a cure. All that effort, all Operation Warp Speed, why couldn't we have focused on a cure? Nature is hard. That's why nature, like we don't have a cure for the flu. The flu has been around forever. It's, this isn't, the lie wasn't like the, the mistake wasn't, Hey, we, we weren't good enough to fix this. The mistake was lying about what we could

do. Hmm. Gosh. I mean, while it's important to stay fit, not let yourself get obese, you know, try not to smoke. Like there are things that you can do to reduce your risk. And of course, back to the racism thing, this is really kind of what they say that, um, certain populations had an increased death rate and that doesn't take into account their lifestyle. How did they write? So it's like none of this stuff, if it doesn't fit the narrative, it gets ignored. All right, let me move on because before we leave COVID, I wanted to ask you about a column you had a post on your sub stack on November 4th. Very interesting. Veteran medical examiner who reviewed 4,000 COVID deaths explains how many were really

from COVID. How many were actually from COVID? That's been the big question, right? Like so many deaths get chalked up as a COVID death from COVID as opposed to with COVID. And the CDC didn't care to distinguish between those two things at all. They seem to weirdly want to just ratchet up the numbers. And this column takes a deep dive into why some people do want to ratchet up the numbers and what this one intrepid medical examiner did and what he found. Can you tell us about Brian Peterson?

Sure. So Brian Peterson, really interesting guy. He's conducted almost 12,000 autopsies. Medical examinations are his life. He's been doing this for close to 40 years. So he decided when COVID hit, he was the medical examiner for Milwaukee, that he was going to personally review every case before, you know, he put COVID on the death certificate. Now, these were not all autopsies for the most part.

They were medical records reviews. And, you know, because of the volume of them, he wasn't necessarily looking at every document, but he's very skilled and experienced. And what he found was of the 4,000 cases he reviewed, about 20% in his mind had essentially no connection to COVID at all. And then there was another 20% of people who were really at death's door, essentially at hospice or their last days, and they got COVID and maybe COVID pushed them over the edge. And then the other 60%, he would classify those as really COVID deaths, meaning this person was not imminently in danger of death and they got COVID, he or she got COVID and he or she died. But what was fascinating to me was I said to him about those 60%,

how many of those people were healthy? And he said, essentially none. And I pushed him on that. I said, I said, really, how many? You know, you reviewed 4,000 cases. You're telling me 60% of those, that's about 2,500 people died, you know, from COVID. He said, he said, dozens, meaning, you know, 25 or 50 maybe, were, you know, under, let's say, 60 and reasonably healthy people. And I said, do you remember any of those cases? He said, well, there was, and you can read all about this, by the way, on the Unreported True Substack, which is my substack. You know, it's certainly worth taking a look at, you know, if you're interested in the topic at all. He said, you know, there was one teenager I remember.

I thought to myself, a teenager? That's terrible. And then he said, well, he had leukemia, this teenager. I thought, he had leukemia? And he said, well, yes, but, you know, people with leukemia, young people with leukemia, it's treatable. And in my mind, this young man was being properly treated and might not have died at all if he hadn't gotten COVID.

So that was the one case of the 4,000 that he reviewed that really jumped out at him, a young man with leukemia. And again, this just comes back to this issue. COVID targeted really unhealthy people. As you say, it was people who were obese you know, obese, people who, you know, might have had diabetes. It was, you know, we have a lot of unfortunately unhealthy people in the United States. And instead of telling the truth and saying to people, hey, you know what, a little exercise might be good for you. We have, you know, we try to medicalize everything. We, you know, we spend enormous

amounts of money, whether it's on vaccines, on treatments, we never and we never say to people, hey, you know what, it might be simpler if you could if you could try to lose 10 pounds like that, that would be a good place to start. One last point on this, by the way. So, so Brian Peterson, his his number is 60%, 60% of the deaths from COVID, you know, reported with or from COVID were actually from COVID. Amazingly, a Finnish medical examiner, who I believe reviewed every death in Finland, which is, you know, on the order of Milwaukee, I think it was like 6,000 or 7,000, gave the exact same estimate. 60% of the deaths in Finland that were reported as COVID were actually COVID

deaths. So maybe worldwide, we're overstating the number of deaths by 40%. I mean, which, which by the way, still would mean that a lot of people died from COVID. But it would mean that instead of a million point, you know, 1.1 million people dying over the last two and a half years, maybe the number is really 650 or 700,000. And look, that's still a big number, but it's also a big difference. Well, and the other thing is Brian Peterson got forced out of the Milwaukee County's coroner's office and forced to resign. And one of the reasons what he was doing was so controversial, yes, it undermined the narrative, but also your piece, and people should read it for themselves, go to the sub stack, is that the Biden administration's

American Rescue Plan, you point out in the piece, included government reimbursements of up to $9,000 for funeral expenses for COVID deaths. And so it was to your advantage to have your relative's death deemed a COVID death because the feds would pay the funeral costs so people were getting upset that this medical examiner was overruling what a doctor in the hospital had said oh died from covid and he was like actually this wasn't from covid because it did change their financial outlook i mean just another one of the weird perversions of how the feds have handled this thing from the start all right let me squeeze in a quick. Yeah, I'm really glad you pointed that out, because that that was a big part of this. And, you know, it's the federal government on that slide, you could see they've

spent more than $2 billion on this program. This has not been a small program. Several hundred thousand people have gotten money from this program. And, you know, you can look the hospitals made more money if they were treating a COVID patient. And, you know, if can look, the hospitals made more money if they were treating a COVID patient. And, you know, if you're a family member, you know, it was a way to get your funeral paid for. By the way, it was never clear to me, it remains unclear to me, why somebody dying from COVID should be privileged this way. But it certainly did help push the numbers up. Right. Like, why didn't the government help people dying in other ways with their funeral expenses? It's not like the government, unless the government knows that it caused COVID, maybe the government has some information about what happened in the Wuhan lab.

Now we're in a different territory legally. All right, standby. Quick break. So much more to get to with Alex, including his discoveries about Scott Gottlieb, Twitter, and the White House. Okay, so let's start with your lawsuit. You actually filed against Twitter, right? I mean, you won that one. I'm just trying to get my legal procedure straight. But now you've discovered a lot since the Twitter ban that kept you off Twitter for a year. There you are back on video. Yay. You've discovered a lot about who else had their hand

in silencing you. And it's fascinating. Tell us. So So yeah, so last year in, in August 2021, Twitter banned me. And that followed, you know, I've been speaking out against the mRNA vaccines, I always distinguish that because I you know, I wasn't I wasn't speaking out against the mRNA vaccines. I always distinguish that because I wasn't speaking out against all vaccines or even necessarily all COVID vaccines. But the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that we used in the US, I thought there were issues about whether myocarditis or other stuff. And you may recall that in July of 2021, President Biden said that social media know, social media platforms allowed debate about the vaccines. They were, quote unquote, killing people.

Shortly after that, Twitter began to. We have that, Alex. Let me just play that for the audience. Let me play that so that they let me play this so people can hear that themselves. Not 12 quickly. What's your message to platforms like Facebook? They're killing people. I mean, it really

felt, look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people. Keep going. So that was a lie. It was a lie then. It's a lie now.

Again, the vast majority of people who die of COVID now are vaccinated. Back then, that was not necessarily true, but there in a somewhat unique position because Twitter, I'd been in touch with an executive at Twitter who's now left, when the vaccines came out, I said, look, I think I'm going to probably have some questions about this too. I didn't realize how ultimately, you know, concerned I would become. And he said, you know, that's great. We, you know, we think we were sort of happy to have some debate. And so when they kicked me off, I thought, look, I have a plausible claim here, both that they suppressed my free speech rights and that they breached their contract with me, which was a claim that other people might have had a harder time making. But I had these specific representations from somebody. of 2021, my lawyer, a guy named James Lawrence, who's in North Carolina, is a really nice guy. And we sued in California, which is where Twitter is based, the Northern District of California, San Francisco, in federal court. And we did that because that's where your agreement with Twitter says you have to sue. And we thought we had a real case. We didn't want to get bogged down

and fighting over where it was going to be heard. We didn't want to get bogged down and fighting over where it was going to be heard. We just figured, let's go forward there. And we got a judge named, a Clinton judge, not a Trump or a Bush appointee, named William Alsop, who heard our arguments and who heard Twitter's arguments. And basically, Twitter's arguments are these social media companies believe they have basically complete protection to do whatever they like. It doesn't matter what they say publicly. It doesn't matter what the terms of their contract are. There's something called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was passed in 1996 and has basically been, to my mind, misinterpreted by many judges to give these companies complete protection if they want to ban users.

They can do whatever they would like is how this law has been interpreted. And so they, to my mind, Twitter's lawyers were overconfident. Twitter was overconfident. In April of 2022, Judge Alsup ruled that I did have a viable claim on breach of contract that he was going to allow this lawsuit to move forward. Well, as you surely know, big companies don't like discovery. They don't like being sued. And so we engaged in some settlement discussions. And it was very, very important to me that I get the discovery and discovery is a legal term, meaning basically that in a civil lawsuit, the person you know, this is why you breached your contract with me,

they've got to provide those documents to me showing the pressure they might have felt from the Biden administration, or from the World Health Organization, or from Pfizer, or from whoever. And I was not going to settle this lawsuit without getting that discovery and without the ability to publish that discovery. So in July of 2021, I did settle with Twitter. By the way, this is sort of the back, you know, this is as Elon Musk is saying he's going to buy Twitter and he's going to try to restore free speech to Twitter. That was all off to the side on some level. The lawsuit was its own thing. And so in July, they put me back on the platform. We settled. And then since then, I have published some of the discovery I got. And the two most important bits of that are in late July, I think it was late July, I published something showing that the Biden White House in the person of a guy named Andy Slavitt, and other people too, but Slavitt was essentially, he was a senior

advisor to the Biden administration's COVID response team. He's a, he's a, he's sort of a democratic healthcare bureaucrat, who ran Medicare, actually, for a little while under Obama, and who's best known, I would say, by Democrats for helping fix the Obamacare.gov platform, you know, the platform where you signed up for Obamacare. There was a problem with it in 2013, 2014. It didn't work that well. Slavitt got famous among, you know, healthcare people for fixing that. And so Slavitt did not like me. He wanted me gone from Twitter. I had made fun of him in 2020 because I thought he was sort of over the top. And he'd said things like, we need to shut down 90% of the country. We need to stop food production. He actually said that. And, you know, I thought this stuff was insanely over the top. So he didn't like me. And when he was at the White House, which he was from January to June of 2020, 2021, I should say, he pressured the Twitter to kick me off. And let me just jump in here. You posted these to your Twitter account. And here's an example of an exchange with the White House internally. how how was white house is the question and the answer is overall pretty good they had one this is the white house they had speaking about

them they the white house had one really tough question about why alex berenson hasn't been kicked off from the platform otherwise their questions were pointed but fair these are twitter employees and mercifully we had answers so you absolutely have the White House, a government agency, interfering with the private speech or the speech of a private citizen on Twitter. This is what the First Amendment is all about. This is when we always say like, oh, it's got to be government silencing. That's what they were trying to do. They were trying to silence you by going to Twitter to tell them to shut you up. Then there's another question.

Any high level takeaways from the meeting? Anything we should keep an eye out for? Response, thanks. And yes, they really wanted to know about Alex Berenson. Andy Slavitt, the guy you mentioned, suggested they had seen data that, let me see, that he had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outward to the persuadable public.

And right after this, what happened to you? So, yes. Well, it's interesting. Right after this, nothing happened to me because Twitter didn't think that they could take any action against me. That's when Scott Gottlieb came in. You can see that. So this is all... That's interesting. Right after this, nothing happened to me because Twitter didn't think that they could take any action against me. That's when Scott Gottlieb came in. You can see that. So this is all.

That's right. That's right. So that's April. And this is all on the unreported truths on my sub stack, which and, you know, again, you can see the documents for yourself. No one's questioning their authenticity, which they can't because they are totally authentic. And you can see the Slavitt story, and then you can see the other story. And I'm really glad you highlighted that because it's very clear that Twitter felt that I was being targeted, right? They say, and they distinguish between the other questions that they were asked. And they say mercifully.

So when people say, oh, well, the White House didn't demand that Alex be banned. They just asked, I say to you, when the cop says, sir, can you please get out of your car? Is that a request or is that a demand? How much leeway do you feel you have? Okay. Right. But here's the thing. Twitter still didn't want to take action against me. And then, so that was a private conversation in April of 2021. But then in July of 2021, the White House takes it to another level. They go public. Biden says what he says. The Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says what he says. They're putting a lot of pressure on Twitter and Facebook against people who are questioning the vaccines.

And Twitter starts taking steps against me. They start giving me these strikes. And the way the Twitter policy worked and works is if you get five strikes, they can ban you. OK, I got to four strikes and then that was in late July. And then in August, they let me back on the platform. And I knew and they knew that one more strike would be the end. Okay. And so and so I was pretty careful about what I said I tried to be. And I tried to sort of still talk about the vaccines, but do it

in a way that I wasn't going to give them any chance to ban me. Even though I believed everything I'd said was correct before, I wanted to just really make sure they chance to ban me. Even though I believed everything I'd said was correct before, I wanted to just really make sure they couldn't ban me. Well, most of August went by and then a guy named Scott Gottlieb. Now, Scott Gottlieb is a very, he's a very important person in sort of drug industry politics. He was the head of the Food and Drug Administration. He was a prominent Republican. He was actually a friend of Andy Slavitt's too. He was the head of the Food and Drug Administration. He was a prominent Republican. He was actually a friend of Andy Slavitt's, too. He was advising some governors about COVID response.

He was advising both the Trump and the Biden White House about COVID response. And most importantly, Scott Gottlieb is a board member for Pfizer, which is the number one profit maker from the COVID vaccines in the world. They've sold $70 billion with a B dollars of COVID vaccines in the last two years. And so Scott Gottlieb goes to Twitter and says, hey, this guy is dangerous. He's when he writes stuff, Tony, meaning Tony Fauci, is at risk. And lo and behold, less than 24 hours after Scott Gottlieb, the Pfizer board member, has a conversation where he's accusing me of all kinds of stuff or, you know, about being a security risk, which banned me. And that is going to be the subject of the new lawsuit, which will be against the Biden administration and Andy Slavitt, but also against Scott Gottlieb

and Pfizer. This was a sort of broad conspiracy by both government actors and a private company to destroy my First Amendment rights and to interfere with my contract with Twitter. And it succeeded temporarily. They banned me. But guess what? I'm back on and I'm not going away. And just like, you know, that first lawsuit move forward, I believe we have a really good case with this one. And I'm going to, you know, and James Lawrence and I and, you know, and other lawyers, you know, they're going to push. We was no actual facts. And it didn't go particularly well for him. And when it was over, he said to my staff, I am an authority. I'm an authority. Like, as if I'm supposed to just defer to his messaging because he has this title. Well, I didn't. And you didn't. And now we see the type of vindictiveness that people in these circles have for people who question the regime. I would love to have it. You and I need to have an off air conversation about this because that's very, very interesting to me and sort of fits with other stuff that I've heard about, Scott. But let's let's have that conversation all figured out. But yes, he's a contributor to CNBC.

He was on Meet the Press. I mean, in some ways, he was sort of the shadow COVID czar. He was everywhere. And he would always sort of parrot the conventional wisdom, whether it was about masks or vaccines. And, you know, he's too smart and too smooth to, you know, to really push Pfizer openly. That wasn't that wasn't his job. His job was more to say, yeah, I think the vaccines are really, you know, they're really great.

And here's how we're going to encourage people to get at them. He's a real on air anyway. He's a very smooth guy. How he behaves when the camera's not on him. That's a conversation I'd love to have with you. Okay, done. In the three minutes we have left, I got to get your thoughts on Sam Bankman-Fried and this FTX implosion. Just the latest news, just breaking a class action has been filed. I'm sure it won't be the last against FTX, against not just them, but a bunch of celebrities, including Tom Brady, Giselle, Steph Curry, Shaq, Larry David, others who promoted FTX. And I get it, right? Because the common man

sees Tom Brady out there promoting this thing. And they're like, I trust Tom Brady, I'll buy it. So they cast a wide net. Don't see that against the celebrities going far. But you've also been saying that's one of the things that made this alleged fraud so disturbing. Yes. I mean, so, you know, look, if you look at Madoff, which was sort of the last big financial fraud, which when I was at The New York Times, I was one of the people who was, you know, covering that that scandal. Madoff really people who was, you know, covering that, that scandal. Madoff really was looking for, you know, institutional investors, big private investors, most people did not know, they'd never heard of Bernie Madoff, he certainly wasn't hiring,

you know, Tom Brady or Gisele to advertise for him on the Super Bowl. And so this FTX, they, they, it looks like, you know, we will see what comes out, but it certainly looks like they just essentially were getting money from retail investors. And then at some point, we don't know when they basically just started stealing it. They had losses in a hedge fund that was affiliated with FTX called Alameda. They couldn't pay that money back. And they just, they did something that, you know, it's not even close. I mean, it's way over the line. It's illegal. They just stole their customers' money. You know, it'd be like if you, you know, you have an account at, you know, at Fidelity, and one day you woke up and discovered that the Fidelity executives had just taken all

your money out to, for whatever reason you they can't do that it's your money it's not their money um look there's a lot of complexities here there's a lot of complexities around crypto uh but but at its simplest this looks like just theft of customer deposits and um and by the way sam beckmaned was one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party in 2020 and 2022. And he said he might spend up to a billion dollars to support Democrats in 2024. And, you know, that would have been an unthinkable number. It would have made him by far the largest donor. And, you know, he was this quote unquote effective altruist.

So there's a lot of stuff that makes him like appealing to people on the left in the media. And he, you know, so far, the stories that have been written, the investigative stories have, I think they've gone light on him. And I wonder if that is part of the reason why. They have the New York Times, you pointed out a couple of pieces have been just so coddling and pathetic compared to the way they would cover anybody else. One has to wonder why and hope that they'll step it up and hope that there really are honest financial journalists left maybe over the journal who will take a deep dive into how this guy got away with it for so long. Alex Berenson, I could spend another hour with you. Thank you so

much for coming on and please come back. A real pleasure. I hope people will check out Unreported Truths. And please, we need to talk about Scott Gottlieb all fair. It's happening. No problem. We'll do it today. Don't forget to tune into the show tomorrow. Guess who we have? Doug Brunt. It should be really fun. We're going to talk about his new podcast and all things in the Kelly Brunt household. Maybe we'll take your calls. That'll be fun. Anyway, tune in and enjoy. We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.