CLAY: We bring in now Alex Berenson. For those of you just listening right now, Buck is out. He is preparing for his wedding. Alex, how old were you when you got married?
BERENSON: I was 36.
CLAY: All right. So, did anything stun you about the wedding apparatus and all the details involved? I don’t know what kind of wedding you had.
BERENSON: Uh, did anything stun me about the wedding apparatus? It wasn’t a super huge wedding. I mean, everything is more expensive than it’s gonna be. My wife, fortunately, was not a Bridezilla type in any way. No, you know, ’cause I was kind of old, and I’d seen other people get married. So, I wish I had a good story for you, but I don’t.
CLAY: Yeah, Ali just told me off air, our producer, she’s been a bridesmaid 15 times. So, I think I’ve been in weddings about 10 times. So, that is a big undertaking. All right, Alex. Let’s dive right into a couple things. One, I saw a New York Times story, and I was laughing about it, on Sunday. And it was: Why isn’t anybody getting the covid shot for their kids? I don’t know if you saw that article.
BERENSON: I did. I did.
CLAY: And essentially, I’m summing it up by saying, “Only, 5% of parents of 6-month-olds to 5-year-olds and only like 30% of 5- to 11-year-olds…” I’m sure you have the data.
BERENSON: Yes.
CLAY: — parents are overwhelmingly rejecting the covid shot. And the New York Times is like, how in the world is this happening? Which to me is indicative of how out of touch all of those people at the New York Times are. But to me the lesson here is quite clear. Parents with the thing that they value most, which is their children’s health, are choosing not to get them the covid shot, which is as large of an indictment of the covid shot as could possibly exist.
BERENSON: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. You know, I wrote a Substack about that article a few days ago on my Stack because I thought, you know, it’s so striking. You see some of these public health people — some of them who are sort of somewhat more honest or somewhat more reality based — acknowledging this fact. But they won’t admit what it really means. So, you know, the piece started…
There’s a line in there, “Oh, you know, possibly there’s been some miscommunication from, you know, public health advocates about the shot,” when what they should be admitting is that, you know, basically this is a complete rejection of them, and it’s — you know, as you say — the most powerful evidence we could have that everybody knows that the shot, you know, just doesn’t work at all. And, you know, people may not be willing to admit that publicly, but if they thought it worked, wouldn’t they get it for their kids?
CLAY: Are you surprised that the New York Times has not covered any of…? Let’s dive into some of the specifics of your situation now. You essentially have the receipts to prove that the Biden White House and their top covid advisers were trying to get you banned on Twitter for what you were saying and sharing there. You published those receipts. They’re easily reviewable.
I believe the Wall Street Journal covered it. The New York Times didn’t. If the Washington Post did, I haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen it on CNN. I haven’t seen it on MSNBC. But, in particular, you worked at the Times for a long time. Are you surprised that the Times has not covered what you have proven was going on between Twitter and the United States government?
BERENSON: I’m a little surprised, frankly, at this point. You know, and I stacked about this yesterday too. I mean, you’re… It’s funny, like, we’re talking about all this stuff. It’s feen top of mind for me and I’ve been writing about it. So look. You know, I sue Twitter. Everyone says I’m gonna lose. You know, nobody who’s filed a ban lawsuit — or lawsuit over a ban — none of those suits have gone anywhere, this guy is just wasting, you know, his time and your money.
He’s gonna embarrass himself. Okay. Fine. In April, the judge, who was a good judge, not a — you know, not a super-hard right winger. He is actually a Clinton appointee, but he looked at the facts. He said there’s a real lawsuit here. This can move forward. Okay. Nobody writes about that. There was one story on Politico about that. Okay. I sort of expected that. It wasn’t —
CLAY: We wrote about it at OutKick, by the way, and we’re getting pretty big, but yes.
BERENSON: There you go. You wrote about it.
CLAY: We gave you respect. We talked about it certainly on this show. But, yes, you’re right. There were hardly any articles written about it.
BERENSON: Hardly any articles. Then I get back on. Okay, that’s kind of a big deal in that —
CLAY: Yep.
BERENSON: — nobody who’d filed a lawsuit had ever been able to get back on before. So Twitter settles with me; I get back on, and they make a statement saying that be I shouldn’t have been thrown off.
CLAY: Yep.
BERENSON: Which my lawyer, frankly, thought… He’s more naive. He’s a really good guy. He’s more naive about the press than I am. He said, “They’re definitely gonna have to write about that and the statement,” and I said, “James, we’ll see.” Okay, that was last month. Fine. Now, though? Now this has gone beyond me versus Twitter, okay? It’s gone beyond me being on or not on Twitter. It’s about whether or not the First Amendment matters to the Biden administration.
And what you’re seeing is that it doesn’t. They had a narrative about the vaccines; they wanted everybody to be vaccinated. Now, we can argue about whether that’s good public policy or not. I obviously don’t think it is. You know, you don’t think it is. Other people think it really is. It doesn’t matter. We, as Americans, have to have the right to talk about and debate that — and we do have that right.
And Twitter may be a private company, but when the Biden administration starts leaning on them to get me thrown off, that is state action. And that’s what happens, okay? I’ve already shown that much, and I’m gonna show more, okay? This is not over by a long shot. And I told people, “I’m going to sue the government.” Okay. Now, you can say, “Well, I didn’t file yet.” But you know what? I said I was gonna sue Twitter.
And I sued Twitter. I said I’m gonna sue the government. I’m gonna sue the government. This is worthy of press attention. And I’m not saying it because it’s me. If this were somebody else, I would say that. Objectively this is now a big story. The Times, it’s too embarrassing for them, both because it’s about the Biden administration and because it raises questions about the vaccines. So these places won’t cover it. But you know what? It’s bad for them, and it’s bad for their readers when they become this openly ideological.
CLAY: Dr. Fauci announced he was retiring. You, me, Buck, we all predicted that that would happen before the midterms to try to lessen some of the pressure that he’s under when Republicans have more control of Congress and can push him on the origins of the virus, the NIH’s taxpayer dollars and how much that was involved, did Fauci cover up many of the details surrounding all of those things.
And you certainly have covered this to a great degree. What is Fauci’s legacy like 10 years from now, 20 years from now? Fauci’s 81. You know, 20 years he’d be over a hundred. The likelihood of him still being around is low. You know as well as I do that history often takes a long time to render accurate verdicts, and sometimes — frequently, even — those verdicts don’t come down until the people who are involved are long since passed. What is Fauci’s legacy as we come into the future, 20 years from now, ten years from now? When does the full truth come out, and what is history’s verdict of Dr. Anthony Fauci?
But, so, here’s what I think. Let’s give Fauci some credit, okay? I am not in the camp that says he made — you know, he killed tons of people with HIV. Okay? He may have made some mistakes, but HIV was very complicated, and if you… You know, if you believed that the gay-advocacy groups in the eighties and the nineties, you know, were fighting for gay men with HIV, those groups came around to be big supporters of his. So to me that suggests that, you know, ultimately he…
You know, he did some good. He made some good decisions about HIV. He didn’t… You know, he didn’t find any of the medicines, but he helped lead the fight. Let’s give him some credit for that. I’m not — again, I’m not — RFK Jr. I don’t believe that, you know, that there was some miracle cure for AIDS in 1985 that Anthony Fauci sat on. That’s not what happened. But now we talk about covid, it’s much, much more complicated, right?
And there’s three things we need to know: How connected was he with the people in China while doing the research that probably, you know, led to the creation or modification of covid-19? We don’t know that yet, and he’s done everything possible to hide that. Why didn’t he do more — or why didn’t he consider more than just covid when he was talking about lockdowns? Why didn’t he think about the whole country and not just covid, not just people who were at high risk from covid?
Why didn’t he think about school kids? Why didn’t he think about, you know, the business owners? Why didn’t he think about people who had problems with addiction who couldn’t go to a recovery meeting because they were locked down in March and April of 2020? Why didn’t he think about all those things? And, you know, we don’t have that answer, either, right now. And then the third issue — the third issue — is, what did he know about the vaccines, right?
Why didn’t he…? Why wasn’t he more cautious? Okay. Even if the vaccines had proven to be the greatest medical invention in history of science, which they clearly aren’t, rolling them out to everyone in the world after a couple of months of testing was a very risky strategy. And what clearly should have happened is there should have been a phased rollout where the people who were at the most risk from covid were offered these. I’m talking about people 70 and over, 75 and older.
CLAY: Which is what Florida did, Ron DeSantis did?
BERENSON: Well, yes, and, I mean, but nobody really did it properly. Right?
BERENSON: Nobody really did that. And then once it became clear that they weren’t gonna work for very long, which was clear by a year ago, right? We — you and I and Buck — were talking about this stuff in the summer of 2021. Why the push for boosters? Why the push for mandates? And what role did Tony Fauci play in all of those decisions? And right now, we just don’t have those answers. So I would say…
I would say we’re gonna have to wait. You know, look, the good… Here’s what’s good about Tony Fauci. He definitely helped — helped — solve the AIDS crisis. He did. Here’s what’s bad about him. He’s a megalomaniac. Okay? He’s a megalomaniac. He’s not very good at dealing with dissent, and he doesn’t seem to be doing very good in the last couple of years at processing sort of information as it came in and realize that there was a lot of complexity here.
But the three things that I outline — the question of the lab leaks and what role he played; the question of what happened in 2020, you know, as he was pushing for lockdowns and why he pushed so hard, didn’t consider, you know, sort of a less aggressive strategy; and then, most importantly of all, the vaccines and why we insisted on essentially forcing these on a billion people and what the long-run effects are gonna be — we don’t have the answers yet.
CLAY: We’re talking to Alex Berenson. Last question for you, Alex. You mentioned your Substack, and I’d encourage everybody to go check it out. Type in Alex Berenson on Google. I think it still shows up if you put the Substack in. You now have not only receipts from inside the Biden administration proving that they were trying to censor you for what you were posting on Twitter.
You’ve also now got media — members of the media — including a guy who’s at CNN and is ostensibly a big supporter of the First Amendment, Oliver Darcy, where he’s asking Twitter directly, why are you being promoted, given that you’re a, quote, “anti-vaxxer,” I think, if I saw it in the email correctly?
BERENSON: Yep. Yep.
CLAY: How many media members do you expect to end up in this sort of entanglement, and did it surprise you that these media members were also advocating for your silencing?
BERENSON: It surprised me a little bit that people were going directly to Twitter and trying to, you know, hurt me. It’s one thing to debate me on Twitter or elsewhere. But, you know, first of all, these people won’t have me on their shows and, you know, I can’t get on CNN, you know, to save my life or MSNBC — and I’d go on, okay? I’d go on if it’s live. Ask me any question. I’ll do any of that.
CLAY: Yeah.
BERENSON: And if you want to debate me on Twitter, a lot of them won’t do that either anymore. They’re afraid because they know in the end, you know, I know the data and the science better than they do. But for you to try to essentially cut my livelihood by going secretly to Twitter and, you know, and essentially encouraging them, whatever the language specifically is, to ban me, that’s wrong, I think.
And look. I don’t expect anybody… I don’t expect Oliver Darcy or anybody or anybody else I write about to pay any price for it, but I think it’s important to have it out there. And I think it’s important that people understand, you know, this lawsuit against Twitter that, you know, I’ve now settled. Like, I said I was gonna get discovery, and I got discovery. And I’m gonna keep publishing stuff.
CLAY: Alex, I look forward to that lawsuit. Please let me know when it is filed.
BERENSON: (laughing)
CLAY: I guarantee you that we will write about it at OutKick even if many other places will not, and we certainly will talk about it on Clay and Buck and have you on. Thanks, my man.
BERENSON: Always a pleasure, sir.
CLAY: That is Alex Berenson.
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