Alex Berenson
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In 2002, you may remember, all the smart people in Washington assured us, in fact, commanded us to believe that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, chem, bio, maybe nuclear. And the next year, on the basis of those claims, we invaded Iraq. But it turns out those claims were false. Saddam did not possess those stockpiles. But here's the interesting thing. The people who told us that, who commanded us to believe them, never apologized.

There was no contrition. There was certainly no punishment. And because there wasn't, those people continue to ascend the hierarchy within Washington. They now run the federal government. And as a result of that, these same unwise people have led us down the same unwise paths again and again in the 20 years since. So that doesn't work as a management strategy. Letting people get away with massive screw ups and then promoting them. You'd hate to see something like that happen after COVID.

You would hate to see the people responsible for the lockdowns and the vaccine strategy dividing the nation on the basis of medical status. You'd hate to see those people go unpunished, indeed be rewarded. And so in an effort to prevent that from happening, we're going to speak today to someone who called it right and was not rewarded for it. In fact, was reviled for it.

but hasn't stopped. His name is Alex Berenson. He joins us on set now. Alex Berenson, great to see you. Good to see you, Togra. I think the guilty should be punished, not mercilessly, but fairly in the way that you would spank a child, and that the virtuous should be rewarded. And on this topic, you are the virtuous. So I just want to frame this conversation around a conversation that we had in January of 2022,

And that conversation was described by the Washington Post as the most dishonest and dangerous segment ever to air on our show. Here's what it looked like. I have not said this to you before because I'm pretty careful and I'm pretty careful with the data. But these vaccines, these mRNA vaccines, the mRNA COVID vaccines need to be withdrawn from the market now. No one should get them. No one should get boosted. No one should get double boosted.

They are a dangerous and ineffective product at this point against Omicron. The spike that they make your body make that you then produce antibodies to is not the Omicron spike. And earlier today, Tony Fauci said, we're not going to give people monoclonal antibody products because the first generation products, because they don't work against the Omicron spike. The same logic applies to these mRNA vaccines and give

giving people boosters, even if in the very short term it knocks down infection rates, there's a boomerang effect. And that's what they're seeing in all these countries. Dishonest and dangerous. That was the Washington Post assessment of that clip right there. Given that it's been almost two years since you said that, how would you assess the accuracy of that statement? It was quite accurate.

It turns out that the overall picture is a little bit worse than I thought because even when you give people, you know, what are quote unquote targeted mRNA vaccines that are supposed to be targeted to the new variants, which is what we're, you know, the strategy we follow now, those don't really work very well in terms of making your body produce antibodies to the new variants either. So there's really no mRNA product that you can give at this point that is going to be useful for

probably at all, certainly for more than a couple of months. The mRNAs also come with side effects that look worse than they did at that time when I said that to you in January 2022. And there's something that we didn't know about at all, which is really the biggest, to me, long-term risk with the mRNAs, which is that they appear to make your body produce a kind of antibody

that it normally only produces in response to an allergen like B venom. There's a specific subclass, it's called the IgG4 antibody, that people who've been repeatedly given mRNA, it looks like three shots is sort of where the switch comes on. If they're then infected, a number of these people will produce

this IgG4 in volume. And frankly, I would say even immunologists and virologists have no idea what that means long-term. Now, I don't want to overstate the risks here because we don't know what they are. And Omicron is very mild in general for most people. Most people shake it off after a few days, certainly a couple of weeks, even if they're not particularly healthy. But this is a real risk.

Has there ever been an effective and safe mRNA product that you're aware of? No. No, I mean, these products were nowhere near reaching the market before COVID.

They were rushed onto the market supposedly as the answer to COVID in December of 2020 on the basis of large, let's acknowledge that very large clinical trials, but clinical trials that had only lasted a few weeks, only generated a few weeks of safety data after the second dose. They appeared to work in early 2021. They certainly do cause the body to make a lot of spike protein and thus a lot of antibodies to the spike protein. And in the short term, you get a decrease in infections

To me, the real, I'll say mistake, because I don't want to, you know, I don't want to sort of impute anything more than that. But let's say the real mistake was made in the summer of 2021, when it was very clear that the vaccines were not working as promised and infections were starting to go up.

And we saw this in, you know, we talked about this a lot in the summer of 2021. We saw this in Israel in the summer of 2021 before anywhere else because Israel had vaccinated more of its population more quickly than anybody else with the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. And so what happened was instead of everybody pausing and saying, you know what, let's take a breath here and let's see

what we might need to do next. Should we try a different type of vaccine? Do we need to move away from vaccines because this is a respiratory virus that mutates quickly and maybe that's not the, maybe an intranasal vaccine, maybe there's something we can do. The Biden administration and most of the rest of the world, but really led by the Biden administration, said two things. We're going to give people a third shot, a booster, which had not been

which had been tested on, I believe at that time, a couple of thousand people worldwide. And there was no, not even medium-term safety data about the booster. And that upset two of the senior scientists at the FDA who regulate vaccines so much that they announced their retirement within a few days after the Biden administration said, we're going to do this booster in mid-August. And the second thing, which to me is even more incomprehensible,

and wrong was they said, we're going to have mandates. We're going to force essentially all working age Americans that we can reach to be vaccinated. Once it was clear it didn't work. Once it was clear it didn't work as advertised. At best, you're going to get a few months of protection. So that's the point at which what I'm willing to believe was a mistake looks much more like a crime.

It was an aggressive policy decision. And one of the things that I've concluded is that one reason the Biden administration may have done this is because Uncle Joe, as I like to call him, looked so terrible in the aftermath of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.

So that's the other thing that's happening in the summer of 2021. We leave and a month later, the Taliban are in Kabul and there are Afghans hanging off of airplanes. And the United States looks as bad as it has since probably Jimmy Carter in 1980. So Joe Biden needs to prove he's doing something.

Now, the reason that I've reached this conclusion is let's take the Biden administration's theory about the vaccines at face value, which is not enough Americans are being vaccinated. And that's why we're having this Delta spike and the unvaccinated may be a danger to the vaccinated, which, by the way, is not a great argument for vaccines if it's true. But so you're the Biden administration. You think you've got to get Americans vaccinated.

Okay, who dies from COVID? Very old people and people who are really sick if they're younger. The vaccine mandates were workplace mandates.

They only covered Americans who were healthy enough to be in the workforce. Almost definitionally, those people are very, very low risk from COVID. The people making this policy were not stupid. They knew that. They had to know that even if the vaccines worked as advertised, which they knew they didn't work as advertised, you weren't going to be able to reach whatever tiny rump of unvaccinated elderly people there were with these mandates. And there were

few, very few unvaccinated elderly. That's one of the great lies of the elite media is that there were a lot of unvaccinated elderly people in red states. It's not true. The differential is in people mostly under 65. So even if the vaccines had worked as advertised and even if the mandates hadn't been unconstitutional and wrong, they wouldn't have reached the people. If you'd wanted to save people using the Biden administration's theory, it should have been if you want a social security check

you need to be vaccinated. That's what would have gotten whatever few unvaccinated elderly people there were. And so when you make a decision that's that bad, even taking your incorrect policy assumptions into account, there's got to be another reason for it. Do we know, before we get to what that other reason might be...

who made that decision? Who drove that decision? We don't. We don't. We know that for most of early 2021, the Biden administration was saying no mandates, no vaccine passports. There was this discussion of private vaccine passports, of state vaccine passports. A few states- Were they attacked? Anyone who suggested that they might institute, including me. I remember that very well. That's correct. Meanwhile, the states were sort of pushing them. There was this idea the federal government's going to be hands off and we're certainly not going to require mandates. I mean, Biden said that explicitly.

And at some point in July 2021, this started to be discussed. And in a matter of weeks, without a congressional hearing, without a policy roundtable, without anything, it went from, this is not something we're going to do. We're just going to give people a shot and a beer. There were all these sort of ridiculous theory, ridiculous incentive programs.

which to me were completely wrong too, because you're essentially trying to bribe people into taking a pharmaceutical product. But those are better than mandates. It went from, we're never going to do this, to we're doing it. We're doing it to... I mean, Biden didn't say punish, but he did say, I'm frustrated with the unvaccinated. It was a pandemic of the unvaccinated. He blamed Americans for a Chinese virus. Yes, he did that too. So he...

So, so in this period of weeks, this enormously important consequential policy decision, both from a health point of view and frankly, from a constitutional civil liberty, liberty's point of view, got, got pushed through with no public discussion at all. Biden just comes out on September 9th and says, I am going to impose workplace mandates. You think this was an effort to divert attention away from a foreign policy failure?

I think that's part of the reason why. I think they wanted to show him doing something. Something other than sitting at an empty table in the Situation Room looking at screens. Wouldn't it be better to do something constructive, useful, life-affirming? Is that how it works? No, but like, here's a massive screw-up in Southwest Asia. We're going to have a massive screw-up here so you don't think about it. It was also very popular, not just with the Democratic base, with the media, people. Remember,

For the previous six months, there had been the unvaccinated are stupid, the unvaccinated. Then it became the unvaccinated can get you sick. They're dirty. They can kill you. And they deserve to die. There were ethicists seriously arguing whether unvaccinated people deserve to be sort of pushed to the back of the triage line if the hospitals overflowed, which of course they never did. There were people who were denied organ transplants. A lot of them. I interviewed them. That is also true. Yes.

because they weren't vaccinated. So this was a popular decision, too. Never, you know, he got to do something popular. So now, I mean, it's almost hard to hear all this. Maybe that's one of the reasons most people aren't talking about it because it's so painful to hear it. But has there been any...

concerted effort by big media organizations to figure out what exactly happened and to look at this honestly. No, I'm laughing because for two years I've been saying to people, look, you don't want to be smeared the way I was smeared, fine. You don't even want to write about vaccine efficacy, fine. Here's a story you can write. Literally billions of vaccine doses, mRNA vaccine doses, were paid for and never used.

Billions? Billions. By my best guess, about 5 billion doses were made by Pfizer and Moderna and about 3 billion were used. And all those other doses were paid for or will be paid for when there may be a few more still to be delivered in the next couple of years to the EU. So that's 2 billion doses, probably about $40 billion just literally poured down the drain. Now, that's an estimate, but it's an estimate sort of based on the publicly available data. Because what happened was,

So remember, the initial course is two doses. In April of 2021, the J&J vaccine, which is a different delivery system, it's not mRNA, it's a different biotechnology, comes under pressure. It can cause this very unusual but terrible side effect where you get blood clots in your brain. No one wants blood clots in their brain.

So J&J, which was viewed sort of as an easier vaccine to administer, only one dose, didn't need to be refrigerated the same way. There was this idea for, let's say, for homeless people or for people who maybe you couldn't, you were going to have a hard time convincing to take a second dose.

or for poorer countries where the refrigeration was an issue, J&J was going to be a good alternative. J&J sort of came off the table after April 2021, and there was this huge push

we're going to get everybody in the world two mRNA doses. And then the booster, we're going to get everybody in the world three RNA doses. Even after it became obvious to me that this wasn't working, there were the fights in the fall of 2021 were, should the US get a booster before, you know, some African country gets its first dose, right? This is such a great technology.

you know, who's going to get these supplies. So the companies ramped up and they made a ton and they sold it. You know, they basically said to the governments that wanted it, if you want it, you've got to pay for it before we make it. You know, not like you have to cut the whole check, but you have to agree contractually. The down payment on your MRNA. Exactly. You want it. You agree that when it's done, we deliver it. You take it. And so...

That's what the governments agreed to, not just the US. This was the EU. And then there was this thing called COVAX where the companies sold vaccine to poorer countries that the US paid for in some cases or other organizations paid for. Okay, the point is after late 2021, after it became clear that the boosters had stopped working, demand basically fell off a cliff. People said, fool me twice, shame on you.

But I'm not taking a second booster. And ever since the spring of 2022, there's been basically, you know, outside of the like the deep blue states, even in Europe, there's very little demand. Pediatric demand, so low. So the point is these companies, they'd ramped up, they'd made it. And they said, we have contracts with you. You're going to pay us. And the government's paid. Why didn't the government say, I'm sorry, your product doesn't work? Well, that's not, that wasn't one of the contract outs.

So you're saying that all of this proceeded for a full year in the face of overwhelming evidence that it didn't work and that it harmed people because it was a political diversion. That may be true. I have no way of knowing. I do, however, have sympathy for the people who say, wait a second, there's something else going on here. I mean, and I know they're easy to mock, but like, this is a lot to take attention away from Afghanistan. Right. No, I mean, I wouldn't say...

I wouldn't say the evidence, the evidence that the vaccines don't work has been around since, you know, depending on, depending on how you want to argue it since the summer or fall of 2021, the evidence that they're dangerous.

you know it's slower to develop and the risks are more subtle than the people I knew someone who's died of a heart attack in January of 2021 and was told and his family was told by the doctors that that's vaccine death right there I know two other people who I'm really close to who had heart attacks after taking it and that's just my little world which is very small so like it was definitely out there so what people would say is people have heart attacks

Yeah, but not, I mean, I've lived here for 54 years. I've never had three people I know have heart attacks in like a short period of time, days after taking the vaccine. The reason that I push back on this is if the danger was more obvious, it would be easier to make the case that I'm making that this technology is not safe or effective, right? Like I don't, see, this is where I guess I'm a little different than

Maybe than you are. I don't believe that this entire regulatory apparatus would ignore screaming danger sign. And I don't believe doctors would.

I don't. I think that the problem is that the dangers are... But it seems like there are screaming dangers. I mean, maybe I'm just totally imagining it. I'm not an epidemiologist, but I mean, that's a lot for the small group of people I know. And moreover, it does seem like there has been a spike in unexplained death. So let me give you a counterexample.

Which is there's a military, you know, the military obviously was very highly vaccinated and the military reports its health care statistics by year, like, you know, at a pretty granular level. And I've looked at those, okay, because once I found that, I was like, wow, if there's a signal, it's going to pop out here. And it doesn't pop out.

Okay. By the way, I'm not saying that the vaccines can't kill people, that they don't have autoimmune, that they don't cause autoimmune problems in some people, that they don't cause strokes in some people, that they, we now have evidence they cause seizures in some little kids, which, which, which the, I wrote that story about three weeks ago in the, on my, on, on reported truths on my, on my website or, you know, on my sub stack.

and two about a week later the New York Times wrote the story and they quoted people saying, quoted doctors saying, oh well, you know, the vaccines are going to cause fevers in some kids. So we would expect this. You would expect this? You didn't tell any parents this until the FDA published a paper where everyone, where they had to admit it. So this is...

I mean, I guess I'm arguing against myself. Yeah, you are, pretty persuasively. But there are signals. There are things that have turned up. Let me just, so like, why would it fall to you to look at the data? Why would it fall to me to like make guesses about where is the national federally led effort to get to the bottom of the effects of these vaccines on the entire population? There isn't one. How can there not be?

I'm just a reporter. No, I'm serious. Like, where's the CDC? The CDC is promoting these. They're still promoting them for children.

for a virus that can't touch healthy children, that all kids basically have had by now. And when I say can't touch, I'm almost willing to say that with no, you know, again, one in a million, right? There's a slight, slight chance, but it can't touch healthy children. Every kid has had it. And we know now these vaccines can cause, or there's a strong signal that they can cause seizures. What are they doing? All over the rest of the world, they're not doing this. Okay. So

I don't know what we're doing. Okay? I don't. I think, I tend to believe policy gets set, people fall in love with it, they just won't admit they've made a mistake. So there are no ethical people at CDC? Like none?

I mean, because what you're describing, I'm just using your descriptions, which are highly informed since you do this for a living. You're describing like something that's horrifying and evil. And like, why doesn't just the facts that you stated? I'd say that's evil. So where are the CDC employees who are saying like, I'm not participating in this? So I don't know. I guess what they're saying is nobody, no kids are getting the shots anyway, so it doesn't matter. So we're just going to, here's what they say publicly.

which is, yes, we know there's a risk differential here. We know that this is much more dangerous to older people, COVID, I mean. But if we offer differential recommendations, that will confuse people because this they do think. They do think everyone is stupid.

So if we offer differential recommendations, it will make the old people less likely to take it. If we tell a two-year-old, the mother of a two-year-old not to have her kid get it, then it makes an 80-year-old less likely to take it. And we want the 80-year-old to take it. That's basically the excuse they use.

I admit it doesn't sound like a very good excuse. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. And you do feel like there's, again, something else going on here. What is this doing to the population's attitudes about vaccines more broadly? Interestingly, it's not changing as much as people on either side would say. Because Americans, I think, generally feel they've had good experiences with vaccines pre-mRNA. Now, of course, there's a group of Americans whose children developed autism and they blame that on the vaccines.

I don't see strong evidence there, but I know that's a very controversial topic. I will say I don't see strong evidence there. But in general, Americans

Again, despite what both the anti-vax community and the sort of vaccine fanatic community says, have been generally over the years pretty willing to listen to the CDC's recommendations. Now, there's some evidence that the mRNAs, what's happened with them has made overall vaccinations a little bit less common. But what it's really made is mRNA vaccinations a lot less common. So people, one of my core beliefs is that people are not stupid.

And people differentiate between these two new vaccines that came out from Pfizer and Moderna based on months of testing and were promised to fix COVID and didn't and everything else.

But people may not be stupid, but doctors obviously are. And unethical. Because I know for myself, I would never go to a doctor who pushed mRNA vaccines. What does that say about you? If you're a doctor, it's your job to know what these things do. You had no idea and you pushed them anyway. So how many people are deciding, again, I'll speak for myself, I'm not going to any doctor who did that. I have contempt for those people. I don't want to be around them. And it's totally changed my view of medicine. Are a lot of people reaching that conclusion or am I just like an insane 2%? I think there's been a...

It's hard for me to, I haven't seen data on this. I will say this, and my wife is a physician. I think, and she never liked these vaccines, but I think that doctors right now are not pushing these at all.

on but why is no one apologized that's what i don't understand why does no one ever apologize for anything tucker but nothing gets but this is science and science is based on truth period that's what it is it's the pursuit of truth and if we get something wrong we admit it immediately or else it's not science but they're not admitting it immediately therefore it's not science therefore it's like some weird witchcraft thing that i don't want anything to do with fair

So what these people would say is in 2021, the vaccines did some good. Since then, we don't know so much, but they'll point to charts. There's this one chart, it's the bane of my existence, that appears to show that vaccinated people die from COVID even now at much lower rates than unvaccinated people.

The problem with that is the two groups are not comparable. And I don't want to spend 15 minutes boring you and your audience with the science behind this, but the two groups are not comparable. The reason we do clinical trials, a clinical trial is an artificial experiment, but it generates the only data you can truly trust.

Okay. You take two groups, you take a group of people, you split them in half, you have a computer, make sure that the two groups are completely equal or as close to complete. So, you know, if, if you're in one, then, uh, you know, then, then, then someone who's just like you in terms of smoking status and age and gender and, you know, history of heart disease, whatever goes in the other group. Okay. You split, you take a big group, you split them up, you give,

you give one group the vaccine or the drug, you give the other group a placebo, a sugar pill or a saline shot,

you follow them, nobody knows who got what. And at the end, you can say, okay, this benefit came from the vaccine or this injury, this safety problem came from the vaccine. You need that data. The truth is we never really got that data about the mRNAs because we blew up the clinical trials much too soon. And so we're all arguing

on the basis of incomplete information. And the people who understand this are mostly on the pro-vaccine side. They mostly either indirectly or directly get money from Pfizer or the federal government or people with a giant stake in vaccines and vaccines.

And so I am arguing a lonely battle here. You certainly are. But where, okay, so leave the, and I should just remind our viewers who maybe haven't followed your career in the detail that I have, that you waited a long time before even addressing questions about vaccines. I mean, you originally were just pointing out the disparities between what they were claiming about COVID and what the data were showing, as I remember. Yes. I didn't even think you wanted to get into the vaccine stuff, but you kind of had no choice. Yes. So you were not like some anti-vaxxer going back with Bobby Kennedy 30 years. No. At all.

So, but one common sense question that no one's ever adequately answered in my view is why weren't physicians in the public health community encouraging people to be healthier? Especially when it became obvious like the first week that fat people were at a greater risk of dying. What could possibly account for their closing gyms, promoting obesity in the middle of the COVID pandemic? What is that? So the pandemic became an occasion for social scientists to try to

a lot of public health measures that they wanted to try. And one of those was sort of like, what signals are there that this is a serious illness? I mean, I think masking was a huge part of that, the push for masking. We don't want to stigmatize, right? Although it's okay to stigmatize people who choose not to be vaccinated. Yeah, or smoke cigarettes or whatever. That's right. We don't want to stigmatize

obese people, people who don't take good care of themselves. So we're going to lie about where the risks are. We're going to pretend that some 25-year-old is at real risk from COVID. And I think the other argument that they would make and did make at the time was, we think there's a real risk of hospital overrun. So if this spreads too quickly, remember, wait two weeks, flatten the curve,

One of the things that I think wasn't widely understood was the people promoting that weren't saying we're not all going to get COVID because at the time they didn't realize how quickly they could rush a vaccine to market. Of course, we all got COVID anyway because the vaccine didn't work. But the idea was we're going to get COVID over time so the, you know, when people, the hospitals won't be overrun. And like that was sort of the number one concern back in March 2020 was hospital overrun. So to do that, you had to convince everyone to stay home.

in their view. You had to lock down everyone. And so that meant you had to lie about who was at risk. That was the original sin. Yes. Right? The original sin of COVID was that. The original sin of the vaccines was pretending that they had been properly tested.

Okay, I get all that, but it went beyond that. I mean, they actively prevented people from getting in better physical shape, cardiovascular health. And then all the women's magazines, which are still influential, decided to put fat women on the cover and say, this is the new body ideal. And the soap companies and the makeup companies, this was clearly an orchestrated thing.

attempt to make people think it was okay to be fat in the middle of a pandemic that was killing fat people. So that's the point where I'm like, hmm, actually they are trying to kill people. Because like, what could, no, I'm serious. What could, if I encourage my children to smoke cigarettes, maybe I'm trying to hurt them. Or maybe you're trying to sell cigarettes. Maybe if 60% of the country is fat and you're dove, you want to sell soap.

Maybe, but they've never tried that before. There had never been a time like... Well, Philip Morris tried to sell cigarettes for a long time. Of course, but being fat, no woman wants to be fat. And all the women's magazines spent decades telling women, you shouldn't be fat. That's why they don't want to be fat. And then during COVID, it's like, no, no, be fat. At the exact time when being fat could kill you. I think that trend was happening before. I see malice. I think that trend was happening before. I do. I do.

The DEI stuff on obesity. Which I agree, obesity is terrible for people in general. I mean, even if it doesn't... Look, I personally am not judging fatness at all. I'm just saying... No, but physically it's terrible. It's not good for you, right? And for public health authorities to be promoting it and stopping people from getting on the treadmill...

I don't know if they were... They were literally discouraging people from going... Yes, they were closing gyms. But keeping liquor stores open. But keeping liquor stores open. And weed dispensaries. So that's the point where it's like, look, I'm not some kooky internet conspiracy guy, but how many signs do I need that you're trying to kill me before I say you're trying to kill me? I think people make bad decisions. Yeah, but they're all consistent. It's like they're all pro-death.

It's like, oh no, we're not going to spend any time working on therapeutics at all. Well, they did. They came up with one that didn't work at all, Remdesivir. But people were kind of trying all this different stuff and the media immediately jumped, you can't do that! How dare you try something other than the vaccine? And then, you know, I interviewed this gym owner, Ian Smith, 20 times. And he's like, I just want people to work out because that might help. Shut up, criminal! That's right. And so, I don't know, like...

I think it's important to be more like your dog. Your dog can't speak English. He has no idea what you're saying. He just watches you and then he knows your intent. I'm watching them and I can tell their intent, which is to kill me. What am I missing? Their intent is to make you feel good about yourself, even if it kills you. I don't see those as separate categories. They are, though. They are? Yeah. I don't know. Firing squad, opioid OD. One feels good, the other doesn't, but they both kill me, right? Yeah.

Again, you're not going to get me to say it. No, I mean... Because I don't really believe it. Look, I don't understand what happened during COVID at all. And the last thing I'm going to do is going to speculate or say anything that I can't say. You speculate all the time. I do, but on this, as to motive, it always makes me uncomfortable to speculate. Though, of course, I do do it and I regret it every time I do it because you can't know another person's motive. But you can watch what they do.

Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Now, I got something for you, Tucker. I'm ready. This is one of a kind. These are...

these are four of the great villains of corporate love that camera next time you're shooting you tell me what this says and what it means okay fauci and gottlieb and slavitt and borla now now everyone knows who tony fauci is the bottom guy's a veterinarian he is he's also the head of uh the world's largest or what was the world's largest in 2022 pharmaceutical company

Andy Slavitt was the senior advisor for COVID response under the Biden administration from in early 2021. And Scott Gottlieb is the former head of the FDA who left the FDA and three months, I believe three months of the day later, which was the earliest he could, joined the Pfizer board.

where he's a senior board member of Pfizer. He also is on CNBC all the time, where he always manages to say something good about Pfizer's products. So three of these four men, not Tony Fauci, are defendants in my lawsuit against the Biden administration and Pfizer for their unconstitutional efforts to silence me and get me thrown off Twitter in 2021.

So can I just, thank you for that. I will wear this with pride or without pants. But either way, I will have this on. It's one of a kind. It leads to my, to a question I've been wanting to ask you since we've had so many interviews over the years, but like two questions. One, you became very focused. I mean, you were a successful novelist.

Your books are in my shelves at home, actually. Former New York Times reporter, like you had this whole life that had nothing to do with any of this. And you just like basically threw it all away to go after this story.

Why did you do that? And what have the effects been? I did it because I didn't have any choice. Because it's like you take one step and one step and one step. I remember once being in Iraq. You don't have a choice. You go write your novels. No, no, you don't have a choice if you're a certain type of person or a certain type of reporter. I was once in Iraq in 2004. And like I'm not a particularly physically courageous person. But, you know, it's a war zone and like.

And I was talking to a colonel, a lieutenant colonel who is a tough guy. And we were sort of out there and he said, you know, this is just what you do. Like you just, all of a sudden you're in the middle of it. Like you just take a step at a time and then there's kind of no going back.

And I pursued the story and the truth to the best of my ability. But you weren't even a reporter at the time. You'd given up reporting and you were writing novels. I'd always been a reporter. Even the novels would be better if they were a little bit less reported and a little bit more flights of fancy. That's my one regret as a novelist is that I could never... I mean, I'm writing about Islamic terror and various... There are spy novels about modern events, but...

a really great novel, whatever the nominal category has some magic in it. And that's something hard for me to put in my novels. I'm very fact grounded. And so, so when, and I, you know, I write about this on unreported truths. Like we talked a tiny bit about, you know, the baby bus, which is something I'm now interested in. Um, uh,

because I look for stories that, you know, as an individual reporter who's not working for the New York Times, I can, you know, I can do in a credible, reasonable way. You know, it'd be hard for me right now to go to Israel because I don't have a big organization backing me up if I get shot in the head or something, right? So these are, COVID, believe it or not, is very data-driven and is a story that, you know, I could follow. I look for stories where I think, I

I think I can add something to the conversation because, because the mainstream media, usually for political reasons, doesn't want to report on it. And, and I look for stories that are important. And COVID obviously was the most important story. Do you look for stories that will make you super unpopular with everyone you've ever known during the course of your life? That's just an added bonus. Losing three quarters of my friends and messing up my marriage was just an added bonus.

But you kind of knew that. I don't mean to pick at an open wound, but you kind of knew that going in because anyone who asked... I mean, I remember the first couple posts you wrote on this were greeted with ferocity. People were very angry at you. I don't like being told what I can and can't ask. That's a spirit. By...

anybody and certainly not by the Biden administration or Pfizer. This lawsuit, we have filed our initial suit. They have filed a motion to dismiss all three of which are the federal defendants. Andy Slavitt is his own defendant and then Albert Borla who's again the chairman of Pfizer and Scott Gottlieb have their own lawyers. I guarantee you they're

I guarantee you this is a good day for the law firms, right? So they've tried to dismiss it. We've now filed a response to the motions to dismiss, which I think is very strong. And by the way, we're now asking for third-party discovery, meaning we want Twitter to turn over everything

that Pfizer or the White House said about me. And Elon, I'm hoping, Elon, you'll hear this and you will tell your lawyers to do this and not fight the third-party subpoena. But so if we can get past the motions to dismiss, and I believe we can, we will get the discovery on what the White House and Pfizer were saying to each other about me and possibly somewhat more broadly in the summer of 2021 about the vaccines. And that...

The world needs to know what was really going on, why everything changed, why the public attitudes towards vaccine skeptics got so much harsher, why there was a push for boosters, why there was a push for mandates. I'm not really exaggerating when I say that this lawsuit is maybe the only chance that we're ever going to have. Has anyone come up to you in your personal life to say, you know, congratulations, you've been vindicated? You took a lot of crap.

but you turned out to be right. One person in my town has said to me, you know what, you're right about the lockdowns. No one's ever said it about the vaccines. I think people just want to forget the vaccines, whether most people were vaccinated, obviously. And they certainly want to forget what they thought and said to unvaccinated people.

Yeah, there's a fascist strain right beneath the surface that I did not perceive until that moment. And it was very distressing. I mean, one thing my wife said to me, I can't remember when, and she was right. She said, you know, there's a large part of the country, must have been 2021, that if Tony Fauci said to them, this will just end if we just burn Berenson at the stake. Just burn him at the stake. That's all we got to do. Like, there would have been people with pitchforks on our doorstep.

And she's Canadian. I think she was, although the Canadians behaved terribly. Well, the Canadians are very easy to control. I mean, it doesn't take much. But Americans, well, you're from this country. You grew up here. Were you surprised? Yes. Oh, this is what I wanted to say to you earlier when we were talking about

Herd instinct. Okay. We, again, we were talking about the baby bust and how easy it is and why parents don't challenge, let's say, as you mentioned, you know, DEI stuff in classrooms that they might not like for their kids.

I mean, just go back 3000 years, okay, when somebody committed a crime, there were no prisons, right? So how did you punish that person? You left them. You left them on their own without the protection of the herd. And mostly those people died, right? We think we're lone wolves, but we're herd animals. And if you can get, you know, 60, 70, much less 80 or 90% of the population moving a certain way, it gets harder and harder to stand up. And so, I mean, I think

I think that force is overwhelming and it doesn't. And I think the U.S. actually has more people willing to stand up, but that doesn't mean it has a lot. So given that, what's the next iteration of COVID?

I mean, we're moving into flu season. Yeah. So I don't know what's going to happen with COVID. If Omicron stays this mild, you know, it'll just be something, you know, it'll run through nursing homes sometimes. It'll hurt some people. Assuming the IgG4 thing doesn't become a true problem. There will be people who will be sick. You know, I personally, I get, you know, I get flack from this from some areas. I think Paxlovid actually works. I think they will come up with some more antivirals. I mean, again, how do we get out of HIV? Not a vaccine. Right.

We got effective antivirals. And I think there will be some more antivirals for COVID. It should be manageable. The two big issues going forward actually are less to do with COVID and more to do with

Are they going to try to push mRNAs for other respiratory viruses, which they clearly are? That's Moderna's business. And Moderna's stock is down 85% since its peak, which was basically the same day as the Biden administration's mandate in September 2021.

but they still are in business. They're still a large, powerful company, and they want to sell you mRNA vaccines. Has anybody ever checked, I mean, has the SEC, for example, ever checked the buy orders from policymakers or their spouses who were aware that that mandate was coming? That's a great question. I don't know. I wonder if that's, it's probably not even visible, but it's a great question to ask. Do you think that we will ever have lockdowns again?

It would have to be way worse. I mean, there literally have to be people dying in the streets, I think. I think in general, there are a lot of people who are much more suspicious of the public health establishment. So we've been inoculated against that. As we should be. But here's the other thing. You say, well...

I won or my position won. It's not really true. The virology community continues to push gain-of-function research. They continue to push these wandering into caves looking for the worst possible virus. I mean, it's increasingly clear that virology is toxic and dangerous, at least this part of it, this emerging infectious diseases part of it, because you're much more likely to cause a pandemic than to prevent one.

either by messing with viruses in labs to make them more dangerous, which is really the most insane idea possible, or just going to these caves where the bats are not bothering anybody and looking for dangerous viruses. And here's, to me, one of the best pieces of evidence for this.

Let's pretend that the Chinese lab is not the source. By source, I don't mean that it was fully created there. I mean they were probably experimenting with it and it leaked. I want to be clear what I'm saying. But let's pretend that this didn't somehow escape from a Chinese lab. Let's pretend that people who say that this came out of a farm in Wuhan or a wet market in Wuhan. A pangolin, yes. A wet market in Wuhan are actually telling the truth. Yeah. Okay.

The best thing you can say then is that this effort led by, you know, Peter Daszak and, you know, funded by the U.S. government that Tony Fauci was aware of, that the Chinese were very invested in, that was supposed to help prevent the next pandemic, did nothing to prevent the next pandemic, even though the next pandemic happened under their noses.

That's the absolute best case for what happened in 2020. We funded a ton of research that did nothing to help us predict what the next problem would be or stop it when it happened. So what on earth are we doing? It's just like the vaccines, certainly at this point. All downside, no upside. The rational person stops gambling.

in that position. But go to a casino, Tucker. There are a lot of irrational people. But if you're promoting that and if you're at any point along the chain of COVID policy that I think inarguably got a lot of people killed,

and wrecked our economy and destroyed a generation of children who are now illiterate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Has anyone ever been punished for that? No, no, no, absolutely not. Has anyone not been rewarded for it? They all seem, so like what, can you tell us what these four guys are doing right now? Well, Tony is, you know, he's given talks, I believe at Six Figures of Pop. He's still a Secret Service protection. He's still a Secret Service protection. My neighbor in D.C. just took a picture of him in our dog park in Northwest Washington followed by Secret Service detail. Yeah.

Yes. No, he certainly does. Do you have Secret Service protection? I have a couple dogs that bark a lot. Yeah, perfect. So Fauci works at Georgetown. He's a millionaire. Yeah, Scotty Gotti is still... He has protection. Pfizer pays a couple hundred grand a year for his protection because he's so much at risk. Yeah.

Gottlieb has a security deal? He certainly does. You can find the details about it in the Pfizer proxy statement. He's on all the boards. He's on CNBC. He's never apologized for slandering me or anything else. He's doing just fine. Slavitt runs a healthcare-focused venture fund.

that funds things like getting trans medicines to people, to young teenagers in states where they aren't gonna necessarily need to be seen by a doctor. True story. That's one of the, and I may be exaggerating slightly, but that is the point of one of his venture capital investments. And Albert Bourla remains the chairman and CEO of Pfizer Incorporated.

And gets about $35 million a year. So all of them are fat, happy, and continuing to spread evil. Yes. By the way, these two gentlemen, Scott Gottlieb and Albert Borla, their lawyers accused me of being in it for the money. From your sub-staff? From my sub-staff, yes. Do you make more or less than $35 million a year on your sub-staff? It's close, but a little less.

So, yeah, so, oh, by the way, one, just to go back to the, you know, the 5 billion doses to 2 billion, you know, poured down the drain. The companies are paid for no reporter. Actually a few reporters in Germany, they've, they were whatever, for whatever reason, they're a little more interested in like the federal purse have noted that, you know, hundreds of millions of doses in Europe were wasted, but I've never seen a story like that in the United States.

And ironically, you know, you can find tons of stories about how Africa was going to be the next terrible wave, even into 2021, when it should have been clear to everybody that the, you know, the African demographic is so much younger that there is basically zero risk from COVID.

You can still find all these stories about how we have to get vaccines to Africa. The number of mRNA vaccines or COVID vaccines in general taken in Africa is near zero, certainly outside of South Africa. And my joke, it's not really a joke, this is the first time in history when rich white people have demanded to be the guinea pigs of

for an experimental medicine. - Well, national suicide. And speaking of, last question, but you alluded to this a second ago, your new interest or one of your new interests is in,

the population and its decline because people are not having kids. What's the overview? So, I mean, obviously this has been going on for a while. We've been below replacement birth rates in the U.S., maybe a little closer in the U.S., but, you know, in East Asia and Western Europe. But, you know, birth rates in general are trending down worldwide, too. You know, even Muslim countries, too, they're trending down. But COVID seems to have accelerated this process. And I first got interested in it because

My question was, are the COVID vaccines, are the mRNAs accelerating this fertility crisis? Because we know they can have an impact on menstrual cycles, and they seem to have at least a short-term impact on sperm. I don't know if it's production, but sort of production of healthy sperm. My conclusion right now is you can't really find an mRNA effect because this is happening in China, too, where...

which didn't use the mRNA. But all over the world, and certainly in the US and it's most visible in Europe and in East Asia, birth rates have suddenly gone off a cliff. I mean, the South Korean birth rate now is barely one third of replacement level. And there doesn't seem to be a bottom to this.

I mean, it's really stunning in that it's happening across every culture or every religion, every ethnicity. The only thing that the countries have in common, attitudes towards women are different in these countries. The only thing that these countries have in common is that they're wealthy. So you're saying, and now that I think about it, it's probably true, the birth rate in South Korea is lower than the birth rate in North Korea. That's a great question, but probably true. I haven't looked, but yes.

I wonder if there's a clearer indicator of the health of a society than its birth rate. I mean, it's certainly hard to square that with a healthy society or not a lot of anxiety among young people. And the idea that this is happening in wealthy societies, but it doesn't seem to be driven by economics because there's still pockets of high fertility for ultra-Orthodox Jews and various other religious sects. And those people are very rarely wealthy.

So it's not a problem of lack of abundance. It's caused by abundance. The richer you are, the fewer kids you have. Although at the very top, certainly in places like New York City, you see this where there is a little bit of kids as a luxury good at the very, very top. But not broadly.

So, you know, this is something I'm just beginning to explore. I know you want me to make some grand pronouncements about it, but I really, I find it fascinating. It's obviously fascinating to readers.

Because I wonder what's more important than reproducing. Right. Well, you know, I mean, my joke is it's the future of humanity at stake. Now, obviously, we're not going to get to zero anytime soon, but it's pretty striking. And somebody said to me yesterday, well, you know, it's about the Earth's carrying capacity. And that's just nonsense. I mean, we can support far more than 8 billion people. I wonder, though, you hear a lot of chatter about, you know, depopulation strategy, right?

I don't know if it's a strategy. I doubt it was hammered out at Davos or anything. But clearly, there's a depopulation instinct. Yeah, that's what's so bizarre, right? Clearly. Clearly. Just look at the effects. I mean, if you cared about your country, you'd want people to have kids, right? Do you want grandchildren? Of course. Because you love your children. Right. So if you loved your population, you'd want them to have kids. I mean, I agree. It seems like a very basic idea that a healthy society...

at least retains its population. And, you know, the countries in East Asia are already beginning to shrink, amazingly. Now, Taiwan is shrinking. I mean, it's...

And as Elon said to me, this was a few months ago, he said, you can make it very complicated demographically, but it's actually very simple. Multiply the current level of births right now by 85, and that's what the population will be in 85 years, assuming the trend doesn't continue. So for a country like Taiwan, they have 130,000 births this year. They have 23 million people. 85 times 130,000 is about 10 million.

So when I say they're not close to replacement level, I mean they're not close to replacement level. They're going extinct. Well, I mean, if that continued at that level, you would be, you know, you'd be down 90% in 100 years. I mean... That's...

It's pretty stunning. Look, these things can reverse. Look at the popularity of the baby boom. Post-World War II, there were tremendous growth in population in the U.S. and Japan and other countries. So these things can reverse, but there's no sign it's even stopping. Can I just throw one final thing at you? So the conventional view has always been, well, this is a result of birth control. It's become much more sophisticated and widespread in the past 50 years.

But if you look at the rate at which people are having sex, they're not having sex. They're not having sex. Young men not having sex? So, I mean, who saw that coming? Really?

But that's probably about the darkest thing I can think of. What is that? Right. That's part of this. I mean, you know, and it's funny, right? Because for a couple of years in the in the aughts, there was, oh, the Internet is, you know, it's going to like there's going to tinder. They're all they're all going to be screwing all the time. All the all the youth. It turned out that's exactly the opposite. Didn't happen at all. And and which is worse. The latter is worse. Not is worse. I think we were way worse.

Well, I just want to, first of all, thank you for the lovely sweatshirt, which I will wear this afternoon. All right. And also to congratulate you on being vindicated. Even if no one else notices. No one else notices, but I noticed. Unreported truth, my friend. Dishonest and dangerous. Alex Berenson, thank you very much. Thank you, Tucker.