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do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to the Pekanana Show. Old friends return. Are you
doing Tom?
Speaker 2: Hey, Pete? Good to see you.
Speaker 1: Cool. Well, we're going to talk about your new book.
But let's get some stuff. I mean, this is literally
two days after inauguration days, so let's let's let's talk
about this a little bit. What are your impressions of
what you've seen so far?
Speaker 2: Well, I like a lot of these executive orders, but
I haven't actually had a moment because I was out
of town all last week, so I'm trying to catch up.
I haven't had a moment to go through them systematically,
but what I've seen in headline form looks pretty good
to me. And then, of course, you know, I really
was pulling for, you know, a pardon for Ross or
a commutation, and we ended up getting way better than that.
And on top of that, I thought, see, if I'd
been Trump, what I would have done is I would
have buried the Ross olbrick thing in a big pile
of other controversial things, so that the media wouldn't have
known what to do, they wouldn't have known where to start.
Whereas he singled it out, you know, apart from that
initial stack and even put out a big truth social
thing calling the people who prosecuted Ross scum, you know,
because I feel like Ross's story is not really one
that normanis are going to go for so I would
want to just you know, look, I'll shut up the libertarians,
I'll quietly do this thing. But I guess it Trump
just doesn't have it in him to do things quietly.
Speaker 1: Well, the way I look at it is, if some
hood gangbanger can get five years for killing two people,
Ross has done his time.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean, and that's that's true to like,
you don't even have to be like some radical libertarian
who wants all drugs legal to think there's something screwy
about the sentence, and then to come to find out
that the judge who imposed the ridiculous two life sentences
plus forty years with no possibility parole said that, yes,
this is going to be a harsher sentence than a
drug dealer in brook Brooklyn would have gotten. Because Ross
and his arguments are coming from a place of privilege,
Well screw that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that needs to be reversed. And that Yeah,
thankfully Trump did call it out like that. I mean, yeah,
I understan stand burying it because a lot of noormies,
especially on the right, will be like, well, I mean,
he was just facilitating the sale of drugs and everything
like that. But still, I mean it's like, come on,
when you look at you maybe people think that he
deserves the death penalty, but then well, I mean, if
you believe in the rule of law and you believe that,
you know these trials are supposed to work, all you
have to do is look at this trial. And note
was a kangaroo court. I mean, there was no the
judge was introducing evidence, my mic. I've had problems with
my mic staying staying connected, so now I'm talking through
my my camera mic. But no worries.
Speaker 2: It's just oh, that's because for a moment it was
repeating like a broken record, and I thought, well, I'm
going to sit here with a poker face on and
not let him know that I have no idea what's
going on, and then I'll wing it when he's done talking.
Speaker 1: You know, these things happen when you're when you're episodes
in and I'm over at thousand episode.
Speaker 2: Every possible thing has happened. You know what, By the way,
what one time I had a guest waiting for me.
I went downstairs to get a glass of water. I
came back, I had accidentally locked myself out of the
office and there's no key. There's no key.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of those things that.
Speaker 2: You have to like get like a bobby pin and
screw with the lock. So that's that's the least thing.
You're fine, PTE.
Speaker 1: But the well, what I was gonna say is, this
is a judge who used evidence in the sentencing that
wasn't even in the trial. Was like, oh, well he
did this and he did that. It's like, wait a minute,
did he get convicted of that? Was that even introduced
into evidence? No, it wasn't. But you're using all of
this and then you use you know, DEI type of language. No,
screw that, man, Yeah, screw that.
Speaker 2: No, forget that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the fact is it is impossible. And I will
get off this in a minute, because obviously there are
other things talking about, but it's impossible not to admire
Ross's mother. Who I mean, that's her kid and she's
going to defend him, come what may. But she did
so in a way that was so uncompromising and energetic.
But yet at the same time, she didn't come off
as a hysteric. She didn't yell and scream. She just
sounded like a grieving mom. And we all got to
meet her, because she went to everything because she wanted
to reach everybody and talk to everybody, and maybe by
some miracle, she'd make some contact who could make this
all go away. But boy, it's hard to make two
life sentences plus forty years plus no possibility of parole
goal away. There are only a handful of people who
can make that happen. And it was over ten years,
over ten year, eleven plus years that she spent going
traversing the country and talking and meeting people. And to me,
I'm in a way, I'm almost happier for her. It's
incredible because I remember thinking to myself, how could you,
how could you find joy in your life in anything,
knowing that you're son is rotting in a cage. You know,
you can't. You can't take pleasure in anything. You can't
have an authentic smile or a laugh without feeling guilty
about it. And now she has all that, and she
has him back, and it's just you know, Trump set up,
you know, famously said that you're gonna get tired of winning.
You know, I frankly, Pete, I'm tired of losing.
Speaker 1: I really am.
Speaker 2: So when when there is an unambiguous win like this,
I become like much more emotional than I think I
would otherwise be, because it is so rare to see
such an act of justice take place. Uh, and and
to see a broken heart mend it right in front
of your eyes.
Speaker 1: I'm having problems with your audio. Your audio is cracking
up a little bit. So it seems like we're having
problems on and I checked that. It's not my ear piece,
it's I checked it on an external speaker's and it's
it's cracking. So we're having all sorts of trouble with
this one.
Speaker 2: Well, do you want me to change my mic? I
can do the ambient mic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to do that, Go ahead, right.
Speaker 2: Let's give that a try. We're gonna use the eye
is not as bad, can you hear me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fine.
Speaker 2: It's not as bad as almost built in microphones. It's decent.
Speaker 1: So it's this way.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 1: I've known, Yeah, I've known Lynn for about ten years now.
And one of the things is that even if you
hate Ross, you cannot hate Lynn. Yeah. I mean, once
you meet her, it's you just see in her eyes
the pain and one of the joys of my life
was introducing people to her who had never met her
before and watching these like like my friend Aaron met her,
and Aaron's you know, this tall navy guy and everything,
and he meets her and like as soon as I say, Hi,
this is Lynn Albert, he just melts. You know. You
just everybody just knows, you know what she went through.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know she I've had her,
you know that I've done. And I had my biggest
event at the two thousandth episode that I did, and
it was, you know, twenty five hundred people there, and
I had her get up there and talk to them
about Ross. And at the end, she was saying, I
need my miracle. You know, there are miracles in the world.
She talked about because she was trying to explain it's
not pointless because there are people who've been in Ross's
situation who have somehow overcome it, but they overcame it
through a miracle. And she said to us, I need
my miracle. And so when I heard about this, you know,
I know a lot of people have her phone number.
I wasn't going to text her, but I did send
what I hoped was an unobtrusive email and at the end,
I said, you got that miracle that you asked for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and thank Trump. Yeah he kept the h Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I realized by the way that I was tweeting,
you know, about how great this was, but I hadn't
thanked him. I'm not like he's ever going to see it.
But it's still you do the right thing whether or
not somebody sees it. And somebody said to me, you know,
there is a guy who actually did this, And I said, oh,
you're right. So I said, you know, hey, look, let's
let's just come out and say it. Thank you Donald Trump.
I mean, especially because could you imagine a George W.
Bush or a John McCain or a Mitt Romney or
a Barack Obama or Joe Biden doing this. And the
thing is, Joe Biden could have taken this away from Trump.
He could have pardoned him last week and taken all
the wind out of his sales. But they're so bitter
and evil that they couldn't even do that for political advantage.
They just couldn't. They couldn't bring themselves to do the
right thing.
Speaker 1: Why do you think they all showed up to the inauguration?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting. I'm not all of them, like
I think Michelle Obama wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was a bigger pardoner, big Mike Michelle.
Speaker 2: Oh but I don't know. There might have been a
handful missing, but yeah, they all were there. I don't know.
I think I wonder if maybe it's that they thought
twenty sixteen was a fluke that they could just ride
out and it would go away. But now they they've
got their heads handed to them and they may realize
that this thing is staying here. And by this thing
they mean Trump and beyond, and at one point or
another we're gonna have to figure out what to do
about it, but we have to face it. I wonder
if it's that or I don't know. Do you have
a better answer.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe it seems like none of the ones has
showed up had been given pardons, So maybe they were
there to bend the knee and say, please don't throw
me in jail and put me in.
Speaker 2: Well, did you see I haven't seen it yet, but
you see that Eric Adams did an interview with Tucker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it yet either.
Speaker 2: I wonder what the purpose behind that is.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, there after him believe me. He
he went against the orthodoxy, that's for sure. Well let's
let's let's talk about something that Trump is a little
more infamous for and not on the on the good side,
you know it's not his fault. But you write a
book recently, and I would hold it up if I
didn't lend it. You know how you lend it to
You lend it to someone and you're never going to
get it back. You're never going to get it back to.
Speaker 2: Oh sheez, I got half a library lent out to
somebody who's never I got it right here.
Speaker 1: Though, Diary of a Psychosis. What's the subtitle?
Speaker 2: Subtitle is how Public Health disgraced itself during COVID Mania.
And if I may say a word about the cover design,
it is very stark. But this was my idea because
I've had some In fact, one of my books, actually one,
believe it or not, a National Book Award for how
beautiful the cover was, and it won no other awards.
And Pete, I can assure you I had nothing to
do whatsoever with the cover. I had only to do
with the contents. The contents won nothing but the cover.
So it's very unusual for me to have a stark
cover like this. But that was my idea because I
liked the idea of like the nineteen fifties typewriter font
really stark, like they're typing out somebody's like psychological evaluation
or something, because it it was kind of like a psychosis.
So I felt like that kind of cover fit the
subject matter.
Speaker 1: How is it structured? I mean, it says diary on
the cover, basically, what is it?
Speaker 2: I have to say that that title, Diary of a
Psychosis really is probably one of my better ideas in
terms of book titles, because it describes it so well,
because really it really is like a if not day
by day nevertheless is a chronological rendering of the story
because I was, as you know, writing I still do
write an email newsletter, and I would write that newsletter
about all kinds of topics, you know, anything from crime
to foreign policy to whatever. But during these years, everybody
was hungry for COVID information, So I started writing about that,
and so I started observing day by day what was
going on. And as the charts and graphs started to
come out, they weren't telling the story that the official
that the officials were telling us. And so I started
reporting on that, well, this doesn't seem to correspond with
what they're saying. The narrative being that if you're a
good person and you obey our rules, you're gonna get
good results, but if you're a bad person, you're going
to get what's coming to you. That kind of thing
that just didn't correspond to anything in reality at all.
So I wanted as many people as possible to know this,
and this gave me the biggest jump in subscribers to
my newsletter I've ever had, and doubled in a few
months because I started giving away things, like I had
written an ebook that I gave away for free called
COVID Charts CNN for God, so he knows. I didn't
have to say conservative or libertarian or right wing or
COVID charts CNN forgot. Everybody knows what that means, Like,
here's what's actually happening. So I decided to publish the
book kind of arranging these different observations that I had
so that you can observe this happening in real time.
There are some great books out there, and I have
featured their authors on what happened during those years, but
they'll typically be organized, like here's a chapter on the
lockdown period, and here's a chapter on masks, and there's
nothing wrong with that, But mine's different because you watch
it unfolding, and you watch it getting crazier, and you
watch my reaction as just a spectator observing events. And
I think there's something compelling about that because it, for example,
when younger people get older, there's gonna be no way
to explain to them what this was like unless you
put them in it. And that's what I'm trying to do.
It really kind of puts you back in it. And
the other benefit of that is that there are a
lot of little details that I would write about, you know,
on a particular day, that people might have forgotten three
weeks later. But I didn't forget because I've got all
these missives that I sent out, so little details like
Alachua County is where Jacksonville is where I live in Florida.
I don't live in Jacksonville, thank goodness, but I live
in Florida. And they put out this rule saying you
can have one person per thousand square feet in a
retail establishment, and then somebody wanted to know where they where?
Did you guys ever get that, by the way, where'd
you get that number? And the answer was, well, we
just thought it would be easy math for everybody to do.
So this is this is quote unquote science behind it.
So that's a small detail everybody one forgotten because it's
not it's not that big of a deal, but yet
it does tell you something you know about the character
this whole episode. So my book is filled with yes,
all the big things and all the dumb things they said,
but it's also peppered, you know, as as with a
Dick Cheney rifle, with all these little tiny details that
are that have been forgotten that I think collectively kind
of tell the story because I mean, Pete, we were
all talking to each other about crazy things going on
in our area that nobody else knew about in any
other area. I got all those, by the way, was
the first, not quite the first restaurant meal I had.
That first one was with Jenna in Georgia at the
at Morton's Steakhouse, shortly after they reopened. But while we
were up there, we had lunch with you.
Speaker 1: We had lunch on May first of twenty twenty at
at the what is it called Seasons fifty two Seasons fifteen.
Speaker 2: Was a great as chains go. That's a great one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My buddy marvelous Mark Walker came over from Birmingham
and we all sat there while the whole crew was masked,
and we sat there and we ate and we drank,
and we stayed there for a couple hours and we
took a picture posted it on I took a picture
and posted it on Facebook, and people were freaking out, like,
where are you guys out eating at Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh, can I tell you a quick story. So on
that trip, the reason we went up there was it
at the time, Florida still you still couldn't dine it
even in Florida. But Georgia Governor camp opened a little bit.
So we thought, we're going stir crazy. We're going up there.
We're going up there. We're gonna be like normal people.
We're gonna eat in a restaurant, Doug Hunt. So we
did that, and so that's when we met with you.
But one of the days we went for lunch and
had a sandwich somewhere and I posted that sandwich on Twitter,
just a picture of a sandwich Piet And I think,
at least at that time, that was by far the
biggest Twitter post I had ever had, the damn sandwich,
because the sandwich was a symbol of normality. And then
in June we visited Tom de Lorenzo in Delray Beach, Florida.
Now now things that started to open up a little
bit in Florida. So we visited Tom there and there
was an open air bar that had live music, and
we got a picture of the four of us and
posted that and realized that the number of people are
anywhere in the world enjoying live music in June twenty
twenty must have been vanishingly small, but we were part
of it. That was kind of how I the whole time.
In fact, by the fall, it was still forbidden in
many states to have more than a certain number of
people at your home or anywhere else for that matter,
for a gathering. Maybe it was fifty or whatever, depended
on the state. But I decided, and you've come to them,
but I decided to start having house parties at my house.
Speaker 1: There. I was, yeah, the first one, Yeah, the.
Speaker 2: First one for supporters of the Tom Woods show. And
so we put a little sign that was right next
to the name tag table that said, welcome to the
old normal. You know, because of this all this new normal,
just dystopian crap, and people were like thanking me, like
you wouldn't believe it. We haven't done anything in six months,
and I lived in a state where I could do
this and not be raided. But then the next month
I went and did something in a state where I
could have been raided. I went to here. I am
little mild mannered Tom Woods, but I actually in February
of twenty twenty one, I went out to California and
I did an event with Mark Skousen. And Mark Skousen,
you know, has one foot in libertarianism, in one foot
kind of in the establishment, so I really respected that
he put on a speakeasy event. We were absolutely not
allowed to have this event. This was a venue that
had been shut down because of the because of the
you know, because of the restrictions, but also it had
its liquor license revoke because it stayed open too long.
Well it was open and serving alcohol that day, and
we had hundreds of people there in complete defiance of this.
And as I walked around and introduced myself to these people,
it was the craziest thing. They were all thanking me.
I mean, like thanks like I've never received for just
coming out there and putting on an event.
Speaker 1: I remember the the Ron Paul event that he normally
has in uh In, Like Jackson in November that year,
you you gave a speech. Well, what I remember most
about that event was, well two things. While we were
sitting there, they announced it was a Saturday. It was
a Saturday after the election. The election was Tuesday. Saturday
was the election Saturday. They announced that Joe Biden won
while we were sitting there. And the other thing I
remember about that was it was a facility that doctor
Paul had never used before and he could only use
it because there were because the normal facility wouldn't have them.
And like everyone there who was working there was masked up.
But by the end of it, everyone was taking off
their masks, and you know, it was it was it
was almost like people needed to be given permission to
act normal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly what it's. That is such an interesting phenomenon, Pete.
That goes beyond COVID. Like Ron gave them permission. Ron
and Pap Buchanan gave conservatives permission to have a different
opinion on Israel, for example, you know, which they didn't
even some of them didn't even think about it one
way or the other. They just accepted the default. But also,
you know, on so on war itself, there were a
lot of people who were uneasy about it, but they
didn't want to you know, that that would put me
on the wrong team or something. Well, likewise, with the masking,
what I felt like would happen, And it turns out
on this I was right. I wasn't right about everything,
but on this I was right that once a certain
critical mass of people started taking the masks off, they're
all going to come off with the exception of a
handful of psychos. And that's more or less what's happened.
So yeah, that event, it was incredible. Was November twenty twenty.
We had this thing where we were all unmasked, as
you say, even the staff started taking them off, and
I gave a speech called the COVID Cult. And this
was one of these Mesas Institute events where it's a
one day event and they do really short talks, so
it was like twenty minutes. And this talk went absolutely
berserk on YouTube and on Facebook where it was embedded,
and it had about a million and a half views
before both platforms took it down, and then we got
the you know, the inevitable fact check. So I did
an episode of my podcast about the fact check and
whether the fact check was stupid. It was because I mean,
I kid you on one of the facts that was
checked was I was arguing that lockdowns were obviously overwhelmingly
and net minus, and the fact check was, well, some
people disagree. Okay, that doesn't mean it it take that
thing down. It was crazy. So it wound up on
Rumble and Bitch Shoot and everywhere else. People could still
watch it, but it was crazy, and it meant that
from that point on, it was no longer possible for
me to build a mailing list by offering on YouTube
to give away a free bit of information because that
video would never stay so it you know, it really
made me think that I'm now living in a place
that I don't recognize. I mean, it's younger people won't
remember this, but Pete, you you remember, fifteen years ago,
you could put anything on YouTube. You know, almost nothing
was taken off YouTube. Everybody you and I know were
on YouTube, you know, And so suddenly that just wasn't
wasn't the case anymore. Then the following year, the Visas
Institute did an event. I forget what Florida city it was,
but a very very nice hotel and dog gone at
The staff is still masked. Nobody in the in the
dining room was masked.
Speaker 1: And so I over twenty twenty. That was October twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 2: Oh so you remember this, okay. I was one of
the dinner speakers, and Pete this was like, you know,
if I can't be president of the United States, if
I can't have a Ronald Reagan tear down this wall moment.
My second second best was I made a nice thing.
I said, the the staff here at the Don Cissar
has been very very accommodating and charming and friendly and welcoming,
and we're very grateful for the hospitality we've received. However,
I do have one request from all the people in here,
and that is unmask these employees. That is what I said.
And there was huge cheer and the employee someone them
are waving at me. I mean, what, just an unbelievable
nut house. And then there's nothing, there's no you know.
At the beginning, again, I'm not I don't come into
this as a guy who had read the literature on masks.
You know, who would you know unless you're a specialist
in this, why would you So I didn't know anything
about that. So at the very beginning I even thought, well,
I don't know, maybe masks will help a little bit
to get its transitioning back to normal. I didn't know.
I never said that publicly, but I was thinking it.
So I waited on the masks, and then they obviously
have no effect that you could just look at. You
look at demographically identical populations right next to each other,
different masking regimens, but the same results. Well that means
the masks don't do anything. That's what that means. And
especially when it's repeated over and over and over again. Well,
it turns out that the literature on this is just overwhelming.
I mean it's absolutely overwhelming. If you're gonna find anything
that says masks work, it's always some dumb mannequin study,
or if they're rapolating or they're doing so or for example,
this is a great example. The CDC even touted this
study and it involved a couple of counties in Kansas,
one masked, one unmasked, and they said, look, the masked
county has much better health results, and they showed it
on the chart, and then they arbitrarily cut off the chart.
You wonder, I wonder what the phenomenon was after the chart.
How did those lines keep going well after the chart
and for much longer. Exactly the opposite result occurs. But
there's no clarification, there's no correction, there's no apology. This
was how the so called literature unmasking went, so there's
nothing to it at all. So today the people you
see on a daily basis who still wear them, you know,
I just my wife has to restrain me because I
want to work to them and say, what do you
think that's accomplishing? Like what study have you seen that
says people like you are healthier than people like me,
And she just, you know, she's trying to let me know.
There's nothing you can say to get through to somebody
like this. Don't disturb your own tranquility. There are enough
things in ordinary life doing that already.
Speaker 1: Well. One of the things I remember most about that
year was some of us were podcasting on it very early.
I think my earliest podcast was in the middle of
February talking about this. But I even had you and
Michael Bolden on early in like March, when they were
starting to talk about lockdowns and doing certain things, and
you know, we talked about nullification, and we talked about federalism,
and you know, it was funny because I think the
joke was we were making was if anyone would have
told us in January of twenty twenty that federalism would
have been a national debate, we would have liked. We
would have told you were nuts, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely, we would have. And I and I
admitted also that I had been wrong about how how
somewhat robust American federalism still is if only we decide
we want it, because because you know, believe me, I
am well aware of the problems with Ron DeSantis. But
at the same time, I would be an idiot not
to acknowledge that my kids had mostly normal lives thanks
to him, and I you know, I'm glad. I'm glad
for that. So yeah, so all that's true. I remember
those early days when we were all trying to figure
out where this was all going, what the endpoint was
going to be. Eventually, last year I had an opportunity
because I had written this book and by the way,
the website for the book. I am so proud of
it's diary off covid dot com. There's like a two
minute video on there, and it blows me away every
time I watch it. I could never make a video
like that if I had twelve lifetimes, but it summarizes
the insanity in about two minutes. Diary of covid dot Com. Well, anyway,
I had a chance to do a debate because our
friend Gene Epstein is on my case to do debates
because he runs a debate society. And he finally thought, well,
now I got woods. I know he wants to promote
his book. I'll get him to debate. So sure enough
we did that. And his thought was, and I think
this is true. If he has a let's say, a
medical guy debating, he looks for a medical, medically trained
debate partner. If it's a layman debating, he looks for
another layman. So that was how we did it. So
he found somebody named Brent Orrell from the American Enterprise
Institute who was going to argue that lockdowns had been
a good idea, lockdowns and masking and the whole thing.
And so I said, yeah, I'll debate that guy, and
I spent I mean, I put a lot of work
into my opening statement, which I'm very proud of. I
published it in I have a print newsletter for supporters.
I was very proud of that thing, and there is
a video of it. It turned out that the debate
didn't happen because his granddaughter, like four year old granddaughter
died like two days beforehand, and it was like a
horrible tragedy.
Speaker 1: It's horrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what ended up happening was he had written
out his opening remarks, so Jeane just read his opening
remarks and then I read mine, and then we just
had a Q and A with the audience. So, you know, okay.
But I remember, as I was prepping for this, thinking,
I've been on top of this for years now. I mean,
at this point, I I kind of know everything there
is to know. And I'm not saying that to brag.
It's just that I saw, I thought about, and it's
all I wrote about for three four years, and so I,
for the life of me, I could not anticipate what
could his arguments possibly be. So I remember actually saying
to Jenna as we were sitting there watching Gene give
the remarks, I was thinking. I said to her, I'm
gonna take notes, but I'm a little nervous. I mean,
maybe maybe he's got some things that I've never seen before. Pete,
you can look at the video for yourself. It was
the lamest opening statement you can imagine. It was all
hot air. It was. There was one chart that was
slightly challenging, but it didn't take that much to bat
it down. But the rest of it was was awful.
It was like nothing.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: By the time I looked down at my notes, I
hadn't written a thing. And I turned to her and said,
I can take care of this. And I went up
and gave my thing. And I had a ton of charts.
And I'm not usually the visual aid type. I want
to keep people spellbound on the strength of my speaking
skill alone. I don't want to have a PowerPoint presentation.
But for this you have to, because these charts are
just devastating. They are like a stake through the heart
of Dracula, you know, really, And so I've got this charge,
I said, Okay. One of these lines is the twenty
five most lockdown states, and the other one is the
most lenient states, which is which I mean we should
all be able to tell, right, if this was worth
destroying people's lives and hopes and dreams and jobs and
businesses and life savings and surgeries and health and mental health.
For surely we ought to be able to tell the difference.
And you can't. And so the present was just merciless
like drawing, drawing from this, just drawing from this, over
and over and over, merciless hammering away at this. So
I feel like I wish I hadn't been deprived. I mean,
obviously it's a terrible tragedy what happened to him, But
I wish we'd have been able to actually have the
debate because and what I also understand is he knew
I had written a book. He even quoted me at
one point in his opening statement, So he has to
know what my arguments are going to be, and he
anticipated none of them. And it made me think, because
because you know, sometimes even I, who spent so much
time and wrote I don't know, maybe a million words.
I don't know how many words I wrote on this,
even I think, well, you know, I can't read everything.
Maybe I missed something. Maybe the people in charge, if
they were debating me, maybe they would bring up arguments
that I never even dreamed of. You know, you doubt
yourself sometimes, and then I saw this and I realized,
no I had. I never had any reason to fear that.
Speaker 1: The Well, let's talk about this the book. I think
that if you where is it that you go to
the book? You can buy the book, and then you
can also get a bonus. What is the Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a Diary of covid dot com. I mean
you can get the book anywhere you want. You can
also get it a Diary of covid dot com and
there I sell it for cost plus shipping. No, there's
no profit in there. It's just cost plus shipping. I'm
not going to shift it to you as fast as
Amazon will, but it'll be a little cheaper. But whether
or not you get it from me, you can get
it on any other place. You can still go to
Diary of covid dot com and claim a couple of bonuses.
And the more significant of the two bonuses that you
get is a second volume, an electronic version, and it's
called Collateral Damage. Victims of the lockdown regime tell their
stories that so you can read that on an eReader
or whatever. But what I did. There was I recalled
some of the stories that people were writing to me.
People were writing to me because they were getting my
email newsletter, and their families thought they were crazy and
they had nobody to talk to. But they had had
some awful, awful tragedy happened to them because of this
lockdown regime, and they just needed to talk to somebody,
and so I was the person, and they would tell
me these stories. Now, some of these stories, you know,
have triumphant endings, some of them don't. But either way,
they just wanted somebody to listen to them, you know,
somebody who wasn't going to say, how dare you complain
about what our wise overlords are doing? What do you
want to have your grandmother die? I mean, you remember,
we couldn't even talk about suffering that people had because
of these measures. So I then approached all these people
and said, I'm putting together a collection of these stories
because as far as I know, there is no such
collection anywhere, and I'm pretty sure that's still true four
years into this, almost five years, there's no book of
stories of people who suffered from what Fauci did. That's
that's insane. So I put it together and you get
it as a free bonus at Diary of covid dot com.
Speaker 1: You know, I was as Trump is pardoning the j
six January sixth prisoners. Someone put out a tweet that was,
you know, heart wrenching, said, Trump pardoned posthumously these four
men who committed suicide while they were while they were jailed.
And that's on the scale of fifteen hundred. You know,
you have to wonder when you look at the scale
of you know, COVID, what the oh yeah, yeah, And
not only that, but the what the vaccine has done.
And I remember you and I, You and I were
having having a back and forth. I think it was
in June of twenty twenty, and the question the subject was,
how is there any podcaster doesn't have to be libertarian,
could be anyone not talking about this? How is this
not the only thing the only thing?
Speaker 2: You brought that up? Well, first of all, you and
I I won't say the name, but you and I
have a friend who lost his son because of this.
His son just couldn't go on in this dystopian world.
I mean, I I just absolutely.
Speaker 1: I just got a card from them the other day.
Speaker 2: Well, I started to doubt myself after a while, like
like bye bye. I don't know what the date was,
but I started to wonder should I be talking about
other things now? Like have I is this all worn out?
Should I in my news letter? Should I talk about
other things? And every time I would start to, some
other crazy bs would come up, and I, you know,
just when I thought I was out, they pulled me
back in Kenneth. That just kept on happening, and I
felt like, even after the whole thing is, you know,
quote unquote sort of over, it's not really over if
we haven't learned the right lessons from it. Because what
keeps happening in I guess in all of history, but
US history in particular, is that we have some terrible crisis.
Everybody draws the wrong lessons from it. The crisis ends,
another similar crisis occurs, and they try to apply of
the wrong lessons to that one. And like, I if
the lesson we're going to draw from this is that
whise public servants tried to navigate this terrible pandemic, but
a bunch of stupid heads got in the way because
they hate science, And next time we better listen to
them even harder. Then I'm sorry. I have to keep
talking about it, you know, until we get this right.
So I do still from time to time, even now
we have to talk about it because now they're talking
about bird flu whatever the hell else it is. But
I do think at least this time, if they ever
tried something like this, there would at least be a remnant.
Maybe that's the term of people who just from the
start are just not just not complying. But yeah, but
there's an organization in the UK called the Institute of
Economic Affairs, and you know, and I used to kind
of like them. They actually published a book on Catholic
social teaching that I contributed a chapter two on the
just wage, and so I kind of liked them, and
then they kind of liked me. And then during this
I remember one day I checked their Twitter feed, I
don't know why, and they were talking about like some
kind of trade agreement between the UK and Australia, some
kind of like secure thing, and this was like and
I was going back and back and looking at there,
and it was all about this or you know, or
about ticket prices on the train or some kind of
thing like that, and I thought, well, you know, if
the ticket prices are too high. I guess it's legit
to complain about that, but it seems like an odd
time to do that. And then you started to notice
a pattern, like the Libertarian Party in the US, you
would find them tweeting about civil asset forfeiture. Now, Pete,
you and I yield to no one in our agreement
that civil asset forfeiture can be abused, you know, and
it's a problem, But that is not what I'm talking about.
In twenty twenty, you know, it was really odd or
they would be annoyed with you. They would say it
would be like, well, I guess if you must, then yes,
they shouldn't force masks on you, but you should wear
them like that was the boldness we got from those people.
And yes, so people who couldn't figure out, as we
now say, what time it was were like some of
the most frustrating ones of all.
Speaker 1: What do you think RFK has planned? Oh?
Speaker 2: I wish I doug on, I wish I knew. I
have to say. So it's looking like he's gonna he's
gonna get confirmed. And I have a I have kind
of a source who we were talking about this and
and I said, and they were talking about the future
of health in the US, and I said, well, this
all assumes that rfk is could of get approved by
the Senate. And this person said to me, Oh, he's
going to get approved. You don't have to worry about that.
And I thought, oh, I wish I had I wish
I knew how you knew that. But but but sure enough,
it does look that way. I don't know, there's all
kinds of speculation. I mean, right now, I don't know
what this measure by Trump is all about. To you
about he put a halt to external communications from US
health agencies, so they can't issue press releases or reports
or anything until further notice. Did you hear about that?
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I mean I guess if anything to me,
you know, if if I was taking the white Pill
position would be that he's there going to be audited.
It would be a heavy audit, and they don't want
anything being leaked out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I think so, because I don't know what else to
conclude from that, or it's you know, it's it's because
I think there's going to be a whole new kind
of messaging going on, and they probably want to start
with a clean slate. But that was such a wild decision,
so out of the blue, I wasn't expecting. But as
far as RFK, I mean, I don't know if he's
going to go after high fructose corn syrup or not.
But I feel like maybe the emphasis on that and
I'm you know, I who am I I'm not even
qualified talking about this, but might be misplaced in that.
It's not like sugar is that much better, you know,
like we probably should be focused on the whole you know,
sweetener problem. But at the very least, even if all
he did, although I think he's going to go further,
even if all he did was change the messaging about
what you should eat, what you shouldn't eat, and it's
it's just absolutely the opposite of what we've been told.
That's a huge step forward. I mean, the bully pulpit
role of the president. I think I could imagine an
RFK being the most publicly visible HHS secretary maybe we've
ever had, because you're not going to shut that guy up.
He's going to be everywhere, speaking at every opportunity. So
so certainly for one thing, well, we're going to get that,
but I want Oh and by the way, did you
notice that I don't particularly care for it. But the
Steak Can Shake fast food chain announced they're going to
use beef tallow for their fries. Yeah that's now, that
didn't happen at random, you know, make America healthy again?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So so I think even just by example, some things
will change. He I bet you. You know, he'll probably
try to ban some things. But it wouldn't surprise me
if if he was trying to push he's not trying
to influence the research, but but encourage research into forbidden questions.
You know, he may say what he needs to say
to get in there about vaccination, but I wonder what
he'll what He will encourage researchers to look into.
Speaker 1: Who wrote the forward to year book and what is
his position in the new administration?
Speaker 2: Ah, this is like, you know, I'm supposed to be
like the obscure guy that everybody keeps at arm's length.
So I don't know what to do about this. But
Jay Badicharia wrote the forward to Diary of a Psychosis,
and he was smeared by Fauci and by Francis Collins.
You know, they wrote privately about him and what needed
to be done about him. For dissenting on the COVID response,
and he was named by name by the White House
as somebody they wanted whose voice they wanted suppressed on
social media. That was how much they didn't like him.
And at his home University of Stanford, he was treated
absurdly by a faculty he had been quite congenial with
for many years before COVID came along. He had never
so much as written an op ed for a newspaper.
He had never been on television. He never done any
of this, didn't want to. It's just a quiet guy
doing research. And then he said what you're doing is
barbaric and inhuman and you shouldn't do it, and just
all hell broke clues. So for him to go from
that position to now being the nominee for the National
Institutes of Health, the very institution whose head smeared him,
is one of the most amazing turnarounds ever. I mean,
it's like Ross gooing free. It's one of the most
unlikely outcomes imaginable. And he is a very good and
decent guy, like maybe too good and decent in some ways.
But but I you know, I wondered, I Jay's not
the sort to say, well, I'm overseeing forty billion dollars
in me medical research money, and I'm going to make
sure my enemies don't get any of it. He's not
that sort, but I do believe he will be the
sort to say, I'm overseeing forty million dollars in medical
research money, and if if any campus treats a faculty
member the way Stanford treated me, you can kiss that
money goodbye. And you know I'll take that. I will
take that as a as a middle of the road position.
So when I asked him to write the forward to
this book, this was well before he was you know,
will we even nobody even knew I Trump was going
to win, much less that he would be nominated. But
he was a distinguished, very well liked professor at Stanford.
In fact, the current professor of Harvard issued a nice
statement about him when the nomination when he came out
named to be the nominee for this because the two
of them have done a number of papers together, and
so Professor Alan Garber at Harvard said good things, and
he said, I'm sure he will serve with distinction. Okay, nice,
But I said to Jay, look, you and I have
very different styles, you know, I'm over the top, bombastic,
in your face, very tough, and you are the mild mannered,
scholarly type. And so I realized that if you put
your name on my book, you know, it's it's gonna
cost you a lot, and it's gonna gain It's gonna
gain me, but it's gonna cost you. And I was
listening all I actually I listed all the reasons he
shouldn't do it, and I said, so I have now
given you all the reasons you need to tell me no,
But if you do it, I'll pay you X dollars
and I'll be in your debt. And he wrote back
to me within minutes and said, not only not only
would it be my pleasure to write this forward for you,
but I refuse to accept one cent for doing it.
That's a good guy. That's just flat out a good guy.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the other guy, because he was given
a pardon for what? What could what did fact she
need to be pardon?
Speaker 2: Oh geez, you know they were there were rumors that
this might happen, and I remember thinking, I don't know,
maybe maybe not. You can't put anything past these people,
but some of it could be you know what He
he that he could allied about gain of function research.
Some of it could could have to do with that
very research. I mean, I think it could go. I
don't exactly know what the nature of the charges themselves
would have to be, but to my mind the issue
would be because I mean, I don't know you can
put him in jail for it. But he was pushing
vaccine mandates. In fact, he wanted it harsher than Biden
because Biden's thing was you could get tested every week,
and and Fauci said, we shouldn't have even given them
that out. It should have been you get the shot,
or you lose your job. So there was that, if
I bet, if I looked, I would find him to
have been misleading about the dangers involved in the shots,
the advice that young show or a pregnant women should
get the shots, when the information on that was not
what he was saying it was, or was at the
very least indeterminate at the time that he said it.
You know, the masking, the child masking. So there are
a lot of things, and the closed schools, so there
are a lot of things he did that he ought
to be punished for. But in terms of what the
legal punishment could be, well, some of it could be,
you know, lying under oath, I suppose, but I'm not
exactly sure how you would what you would bring against
him in terms of a legal point of view. But
morally and from the cause of truth, he was just
he was just all wrong, consistently through the whole thing.
And half the time he was contradicting things he had
said a couple of years earlier, or even months earlier.
I mean he said at the very beginning, nobody should
be walking around wearing a mask, and then it was
masks are protective, you know, any kind of mask, even
the piece of paper basically masks that people were wearing.
That later everybody admitted don't do anything. To the very end,
he claimed that they were so you couldn't rely on
a single thing, the guy said. And he went from
having an over ninety percent approval rating at the very
beginning because people looked at him. He was a sure voice, right,
he's this old man, he's been around forever, so.
Speaker 1: They liked him.
Speaker 2: But I forget how far into it it was, but
eventually there was a poll showing it was like forty
four to forty two percent negative, and ABC wasn't posing
him in a negative light The New York Times. Wasn't
that showed the power of independent media. How else did
people get a negative view of Fauci.
Speaker 1: I think some of it might have to do with
the fact too, that Bobby Kennedy wrote a book that
not only talked about what he did during COVID, but
oh in before co T and like the involuntary experiments
on orphans that they were doing in their ear.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think unfortunately the Statute of Limitations probably passed
on that. So in terms of getting him in trouble
for it, but he should be shamed for the rest
of his life for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well I know we both have heard outs now,
so this is the time when Tom Woods promotes what
he wants to.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the marketing gods say you should promote
only one link, and I'm going to I'm going to
be a heretic today and instead promote two things. So
one of them is Diary off covid dot com.
Speaker 1: That's where you.
Speaker 2: Can get the book. Can get the book anywhere, but
you can get it there for the cheapest and no
matter where you get it at Diary of coovid dot
com you can also get the bonuses. But the other
thing is just Tom woods dot com because if you
look down there, it's like everything I do. Everything I do.
I do a lot of different things and maybe you'll
be interested in one or two of them. So Tom
woods dot.
Speaker 1: Com appreciate it. Tom always can't wait to see the
next time. Thanks A.
Speaker 2: Milling, Pete