Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses with Clay Travis. Clay talks
Speaker 1: with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Speaker 1: Now here's Clay Travis. Welcome in Wins and Losses Podcast.
Speaker 1: I am Clay Travis. I hope all of you are
Speaker 1: having a fantastic time wherever you may be across this
Speaker 1: great country or this great land. We are joined by
Speaker 1: a guy that I think has been doing incredible work,
Speaker 1: a warding off Team Apocalypse, as he sometimes says it.
Speaker 1: He is Alex Barnson, a former New York Times reporter
Speaker 1: who has been focused on the coronavirus and the response
Speaker 1: of our government. Obviously, we talk a lot about politics
Speaker 1: and the intersection of sports as it pertains to the
Speaker 1: return of sports, and so I thought he was gonna
Speaker 1: be and is a perfect guest for us. So welcome in, Alex.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you joining us. For people who may not
Speaker 1: have followed you on Twitter or been reading the books
Speaker 1: that you have put out that are available on Amazon.
Speaker 1: What is your background? Kind of introduce yourself to our
Speaker 1: audience as best you can. Sure, So, I worked for
Speaker 1: the New York Times from until two thousand and ten.
Speaker 1: I was a reporter. I've been a reporter since I
Speaker 1: graduated college in ninety four and uh to ten. I
Speaker 1: mainly did investigative reporting, business really business investigating. Before I
Speaker 1: covered the drug industry, a lot of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And then in two dozen six, I wrote uh, a
Speaker 1: spy novel because I've been in a rack in a
Speaker 1: two three and oh four for The Times, not not
Speaker 1: for that long, but for a few months, and I
Speaker 1: and I wound up writing the spine novel called The
Speaker 1: Faithful Spy about a CIA operative who converts to Islam
Speaker 1: and get sent back to the United States and al
Speaker 1: Qaeda doesn't really trust him because they know he's American,
Speaker 1: and and the CIA doesn't really trust him because they
Speaker 1: know he converted. And that book did pretty well. Actually,
Speaker 1: it became a number one New York Times bestseller in
Speaker 1: paperback in two thousand and eight. And so writing these
Speaker 1: spine novels or took over my my life for a
Speaker 1: number of years, um uh and uh. And I left
Speaker 1: The Times in two thousand and ten um and to
Speaker 1: to become a full time novelist um. Which is interesting
Speaker 1: because because I really think of myself more. And even
Speaker 1: when I was writing these books, I thought of myself
Speaker 1: more of a journalist than a novelist, and sometimes I
Speaker 1: kind of wish that I had been able to, you know,
Speaker 1: express my imagination more freely, because I think that can
Speaker 1: make a really great novel. And sometimes I felt like
Speaker 1: I was a little bit bound by my desire to
Speaker 1: write authentic fiction rather than doing stuff that was a
Speaker 1: little bit more magical. But that's that's a that's a
Speaker 1: total side issue. But but it is interesting to me
Speaker 1: that I went then went back to journalism, so I
Speaker 1: found I wound up after um, after a number of
Speaker 1: years writing these spine novels in two dozen nineteen was
Speaker 1: really two seventeen eighteen, I wrote the book, but in
Speaker 1: two nineteen it came out. I wrote a book called
Speaker 1: Tell Your Children, which is about cannabis and um and
Speaker 1: the dangers that it may present for some people. And
Speaker 1: I wrote that, sorry, I hope that this is not
Speaker 1: too big a digression, but I sort of want people
Speaker 1: to understand my whole career because sometimes people say, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just trading on his you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: he worked for the New York Times for a little while, um,
Speaker 1: when in fact I worked for the Times for ten
Speaker 1: years but the reality is I've been a journalist almost
Speaker 1: my whole life. Um uh. In any case, this book
Speaker 1: called Tell Your Children I wrote because my wife is
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist who deals with the criminal mentally ill, and
Speaker 1: she would tell me about all these terrible cases she'd
Speaker 1: seeing where what the people had in common who had
Speaker 1: come to her you know, attention or people she was treating,
Speaker 1: um was that they were really heavy cannabis users. And
Speaker 1: I actually didn't believe that. Okay, I did not believe
Speaker 1: this was a real problem, and I and I kind
Speaker 1: of pushed back on her. But you know, she's the psychiatrist.
Speaker 1: She's the one with the many years of medical training.
Speaker 1: She's the one who actually sees these people. She's the
Speaker 1: one who, um, you know, who got you know, who
Speaker 1: got all this training. And she told me, you know, essentially,
Speaker 1: after a year or more of listening to me talk
Speaker 1: about stuff about which I didn't know what I was
Speaker 1: talking about, she said, why don't you go read the papers?
Speaker 1: So I went and read this stuff and realized, of
Speaker 1: course she was right. She knew exactly what she was
Speaker 1: talking about, and I wanted to realizing that there was
Speaker 1: a book here, not just in the idea that people, um,
Speaker 1: you know, that cannabis is a real risk to people's
Speaker 1: mental health. Not everybody, but some people. But also the
Speaker 1: fact that nobody knew this and there were sort of
Speaker 1: marching towards uh full legalization of this drug and no
Speaker 1: one really had any idea of the risks, and then
Speaker 1: it was actually being sold to people of medicine. So
Speaker 1: that book became to tell your children, and that came
Speaker 1: out in early twenty nineteen. Uh. And that's directly relevant
Speaker 1: to this because because as soon as I wrote that book,
Speaker 1: essentially I became a cast out from the world of journalists,
Speaker 1: certainly in the world of the elite uh New York
Speaker 1: slash Washington academic you know a slash New York Times
Speaker 1: slash uh you know, Ivy League pedigree journalism. I became
Speaker 1: a traitor to the class. So so you know, I
Speaker 1: went to Yale, I worked for the New York Times.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that people who who who work at those places,
Speaker 1: you know, work at the New York Times lotion puss
Speaker 1: like less than somebody who who work there, And doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, play in the sandbox. And by saying that
Speaker 1: you know that cannabis is actually kind of a dangerous
Speaker 1: drug for some people, and that you know, by the
Speaker 1: way you hear that, you know that there are millions
Speaker 1: of black people in prison for for you know, for
Speaker 1: having one join in their pockets, and that's completely untrue.
Speaker 1: You can you know, you can look at what the
Speaker 1: statistics are and they're completely not that. Um. You know
Speaker 1: when when I when I pointed that out, people hated
Speaker 1: me and uh, and it became very hard for me
Speaker 1: to get of national publicity for this book, aside from
Speaker 1: Fox and some other conservative outlets. And that was when
Speaker 1: I really saw for myself that polarization in the media
Speaker 1: just how deep it is. So fast forward to March
Speaker 1: of this year. Um, and again I apologize for the
Speaker 1: length of but but but it really doesn't form what
Speaker 1: I've been doing the last six months. March of this year,
Speaker 1: you know, really January, we all start hearing about this virus.
Speaker 1: There's this terrible videos coming out of China, very scary stuff.
Speaker 1: The hospitals are being overrun. We hear it's going to
Speaker 1: spread all over China. It's going to be completely impossible
Speaker 1: to stop. Um. You know, the the there's a travel
Speaker 1: band from China. There's an argument about what it's going
Speaker 1: to make any difference. February, nothing really happens for a
Speaker 1: little while, and then the hospitals in parts of northern
Speaker 1: Italy start getting overrun. And then and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it's here, the the the the Stars Cove
Speaker 1: two is in Seattle, it's in New York. It's here.
Speaker 1: And suddenly, in a matter of days, we shut down
Speaker 1: not just the United States, we shut down the whole world.
Speaker 1: And and I certainly was nervous. I think, I think
Speaker 1: anybody where you know where the pulse was nervous at
Speaker 1: that time. UM. But I but I started to you know,
Speaker 1: I started to read everything I could find about um,
Speaker 1: about what the prediction war, and why we had taken
Speaker 1: such a drastic and dramatic action. And more than anything else,
Speaker 1: there was one paper from a place called Imperial College, London,
Speaker 1: which works with the World Health Organization, that drove this
Speaker 1: incredible action in mid March, and the paper said two
Speaker 1: million people in the United States might die if there's
Speaker 1: a lockdown, uh, you know, half million people. And I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: if there's no lockdown. A half million people in Britain
Speaker 1: might die if there's no lockdown. We have to we
Speaker 1: have to take incredibly uh dramatic action and so um
Speaker 1: and so I read that paper and this was in
Speaker 1: mid March, and I'll never forget. You know, I'm in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, at home reading this on my computer and
Speaker 1: I realized, wait a minute, the vast, vast majority of
Speaker 1: deaths that are predicted here are in people over over
Speaker 1: eighty and seventy really really eighty, but you know, and
Speaker 1: then an affair number in the seven eight band. This
Speaker 1: just doesn't look at that tame interest to people under seventy.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say it's not real. It's not
Speaker 1: to say it's not dangerous. It's not to say it
Speaker 1: can't hurt people. But but but my impression of this,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people have been, this is going
Speaker 1: to be the Spanish flu. This is gonna kill pregnant women,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna kill children, and it's gonna kill healthy adults,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's there's gonna be people dropping dead
Speaker 1: in the streets. And all of a sudden, I realized
Speaker 1: that's not what this is at all. This is this
Speaker 1: is this is a virus that really affects people who
Speaker 1: are at severe risk because of their age or because
Speaker 1: they're really severely ill with other conditions, and and it's
Speaker 1: like the scale self from my eyes. And ever since then, UM,
Speaker 1: I've been trying to trying to talk, trying to get
Speaker 1: people to talk reasonably about what the risks are and
Speaker 1: what we should be doing. And that doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: should be doing nothing. It means that we should stop
Speaker 1: pretending that everybody's an equal risk here. Everybody's that you know,
Speaker 1: anything near equal risk here, And maybe we should be
Speaker 1: trying to protect the people are the most vulnerable. But
Speaker 1: why on earth are we letting this destroy our society?
Speaker 1: Who we have? And everything that I've reported practically in
Speaker 1: the last five months has only served to make me
Speaker 1: feel more strongly about this. And I'll just give you
Speaker 1: one example and then and then I'll stop talking. Let you,
Speaker 1: you know, ask questions. UM. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: talk in two thousand seven about what if another um,
Speaker 1: you know, bad flu hits uh. You know, there's been
Speaker 1: the Antwracks attacks in two thousand and one. George W.
Speaker 1: Bush was very concerned about bio terrorism. There had also
Speaker 1: been the stars scaring you know three, there had been
Speaker 1: a swine flu scare you know five, And so we
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time back then really thinking about this.
Speaker 1: Very smart people, um, you know, in government, outside government, uh,
Speaker 1: people who have been experts on pandemics uh, and they
Speaker 1: all basically reached the same conclusion, which is a big
Speaker 1: lockdown is not a great idea like this is, even
Speaker 1: even if it's really serious, even if it's on the
Speaker 1: order of the Spanish flu. What you want is you
Speaker 1: want to encourage sick people to stay home. You may
Speaker 1: want to temporarily close schools, you know, maybe for maybe
Speaker 1: for a few weeks. Maybe you encourage people to telecommute,
Speaker 1: maybe you encourage people not to use you know, mass
Speaker 1: public transportation at the height of this. But the idea
Speaker 1: that that this that the correct response to a pandemic,
Speaker 1: even a really severe pandemic, would be to shut down
Speaker 1: the world, with all the pain that that would cause
Speaker 1: our economy and all the pain that would cause people working,
Speaker 1: and all the pain it would cause children not to
Speaker 1: be able to go to school, not to be able
Speaker 1: to see their friends, some of those children at very
Speaker 1: severe risk you know, being an abusive homes uh, you know,
Speaker 1: or or children with special needs who really are are
Speaker 1: you know need need people who are who are well
Speaker 1: trained to take care of them, and it's very, very
Speaker 1: difficult for their parents to take care of them. Seven.
Speaker 1: All of that was considered and and people said, let's
Speaker 1: not panic when this happen. Let's have a bunch of rules,
Speaker 1: reasonable rules that we're going to follow. And and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: when the moment came this March, we threw all of
Speaker 1: that away and we have been suffering for it ever since.
Speaker 1: So much to unpack there. I'm Clay Travis's wins and losses,
Speaker 1: and we're talking with Alex Barrenson, former New York Times
Speaker 1: employee who has been covering the coronavirus since March. As
Speaker 1: you heard him say, Okay, I'm gonna unpack, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go back in several different directions. You mentioned this expert forecast,
Speaker 1: this Nile Ferguson I believe is his name, at the
Speaker 1: Imperial College of London. Why did he get it wrong
Speaker 1: so badly? And why did so many people believe his
Speaker 1: forecast to such an extent Because there were a lot
Speaker 1: of forecasts out there. What I've been saying is the
Speaker 1: fear porn lad the media to adopt the worst possible forecast.
Speaker 1: How what happened there? That that particular forecast became, for
Speaker 1: lie of a better term, viral and the central lynchpin
Speaker 1: of many decisions to lock down around the globe leading
Speaker 1: to disastrous consequences. I believe what was it about that
Speaker 1: forecast that so captured the public's imagination and the media's imagination.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a great, great question play. And
Speaker 1: and you know, in in in in the law. So
Speaker 1: I've written these two booklets as you, as you were
Speaker 1: kind enough to mention, And the second one is about
Speaker 1: the lockdown. The first one is really about death and
Speaker 1: what a worst case projection might be in the US
Speaker 1: and howard counting death and has there been overcounting all
Speaker 1: of those questions. The second one is about lockdown and
Speaker 1: and so and so it is fascinating that that Neil Ferguson,
Speaker 1: the Professor Ferguson Um, became the authority on this because
Speaker 1: he's not a doctor, okay, and he's not a virologist.
Speaker 1: He's a physicist by training, and his specialty is making
Speaker 1: these epidemiologic models, which he has actually failed that tremendously
Speaker 1: in the past. Right, you are exactly right, he has
Speaker 1: failed tremendously at those models. And at one point he
Speaker 1: said the two d million people might die from from
Speaker 1: swine flu, you know, five and you know, I mean
Speaker 1: that number was a joke, okay, But but nobody ever
Speaker 1: seems to remember the mistakes that he's made. So so
Speaker 1: a couple of other are a couple of issues. The
Speaker 1: first is you need to know how lethal the viruses,
Speaker 1: and it appears that the virus is less lethal than
Speaker 1: we thought it was, uh in you know, in in
Speaker 1: January through March. Now, there's a couple of reasons for that.
Speaker 1: First of all, the data from China, nobody really knew
Speaker 1: what to make of it. Nobody really knew if we
Speaker 1: could believe it. But there's a much even more serious
Speaker 1: and deep problem than that, which is you need to
Speaker 1: know how many people are being infected. And with this virus,
Speaker 1: it appears that there are a tremendous number of people
Speaker 1: who are infected who basically don't know it. They're either
Speaker 1: asymptomatic or so lightly symptomatic that if they were not tested,
Speaker 1: they would never know it. And because of that, this
Speaker 1: is actually much less lethal than we thought it was
Speaker 1: back then, okay, And it appears that there may be
Speaker 1: a significant number of people who never can get it
Speaker 1: at all, and we don't know how many that is,
Speaker 1: but there, but there. But there's been a big and
Speaker 1: ongoing argument in the scientific community about what's called T
Speaker 1: cell cross reactivity, which, by the way, the New York
Speaker 1: Times finally wrote about. They wrote about today literally as
Speaker 1: we're talking about this, they wrote, we're talking about this
Speaker 1: for people out there who are listening. Who knows when
Speaker 1: they'll be listening. Officially, we're talking on Monday, uh, the
Speaker 1: seventeenth of August. And there's an article today about that
Speaker 1: in The New York Times, about the fact that there
Speaker 1: may be a ton of people who have immunity to
Speaker 1: this virus and trying to figure out why Suddenly, for instance,
Speaker 1: in New York the infection rate just fell off a
Speaker 1: cliff And as you imagine, I've seen as well, the
Speaker 1: same thing now is happening in the South. Indeed, Florida
Speaker 1: Governor Ron de Santis just came out and basically said
Speaker 1: the bottom has fallen out of the outbreak in quotation
Speaker 1: marks in Florida as well. Well, good for him for
Speaker 1: saying it, because it's true and he's been he's been
Speaker 1: better on this, and uh, you know, they're more forward
Speaker 1: thinking on this than anybody else, and the media hates
Speaker 1: him for it, and he has not benefited politically for it.
Speaker 1: He clearly is only doing it because he believes that
Speaker 1: he's doing the right thing, and and good for him
Speaker 1: for that. Um uh, you know, But to your point,
Speaker 1: your point is here, I think a good one the
Speaker 1: death rate and the number of infections. If you don't
Speaker 1: know those two numbers, then whatever epidemiological expert forecast you
Speaker 1: create is essentially valueless because your numerator and your denomic
Speaker 1: nator are both have issues. So it's almost impossible to
Speaker 1: come up with a reliable, predictive forecast that is exactly correct.
Speaker 1: That is that, so if a thousand people have died,
Speaker 1: who know, a thousand people have died, and we think
Speaker 1: ten thousand were infected, that's a ten death rate. Okay,
Speaker 1: that means one person at ten who got it has died.
Speaker 1: That's terrible. Okay that that you know, that would mean
Speaker 1: you know, thirty million people in the U s would
Speaker 1: die if everybody got it. Okay, But if the truth
Speaker 1: is that a million people have already gotten in, not
Speaker 1: ten thousand and one thousand people have died, that's a
Speaker 1: death rate of one tenth of one percent. It's one
Speaker 1: one what I just said, Okay, And that would mean
Speaker 1: that three hundred thousand people in the US would die
Speaker 1: if if everybody got it. Okay, Well you know, and
Speaker 1: that's so you could say thople with a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But that's because the US is a big country. Okay.
Speaker 1: Smoking preventably killed half million people in the US every year,
Speaker 1: So we get big numbers when you have big countries.
Speaker 1: But so so Ferguson made this estimate, and you know,
Speaker 1: and that people around him made this estimate and they
Speaker 1: didn't really know what the numbers were. Okay, that is forgivable,
Speaker 1: by the way, it's early in an epidemic. You are
Speaker 1: you are, you're guessing. You're going with you know, sort
Speaker 1: of dirty data from China. You don't really have much
Speaker 1: from a western countries. Yet it is forgivable. What is
Speaker 1: not forgivable is when more data comes in and you
Speaker 1: update not to tell people the truth. And Ferguson and
Speaker 1: this was the tweet actually that got me noticed more
Speaker 1: than any other. This was this was about ten days
Speaker 1: after that first paper came out. So Ferguson, who had
Speaker 1: gotten the coronavirus By this time, Umu was testifying remotely
Speaker 1: to a British parliamentary committee and he said, oh, you
Speaker 1: know how I said half a million people might die
Speaker 1: from the coronavirus if we didn't do anything in the UK.
Speaker 1: Let's make it and you know there will be no
Speaker 1: There will be a spike and it will be over
Speaker 1: by mid April or late April, and after that I
Speaker 1: think it's going to be Okay. That was basically what
Speaker 1: he said. Okay, it was a It was a monumental
Speaker 1: change in his forecast that he that he that he
Speaker 1: tried to pass off as well, this is just kind
Speaker 1: of an adjustment here, and this is because we locked down.
Speaker 1: It's not true. Okay, he made a monumental change in
Speaker 1: the forecast, and the media used to acknowledge it or
Speaker 1: or or ask him what had happened, or call him on.
Speaker 1: And that was when I realized, this is just like
Speaker 1: how your children, only the steaks are much much bigger.
Speaker 1: This has become a politicized issue already. This is about
Speaker 1: people who want us to be in lockdown. They want
Speaker 1: to push us there, um you know, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: because they're genuinely afraid, or because you know, they have
Speaker 1: other uh, you know, they have other motivations which which
Speaker 1: are not necessarily obvious to me at this time. But
Speaker 1: but there's going to be a fight here and it's
Speaker 1: not only going to be about science. And that was
Speaker 1: and that was something that I knew could happen because
Speaker 1: of how your children be sure to catch live editions
Speaker 1: about kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days at
Speaker 1: six am Eastern, three am Pacific. Why did and this
Speaker 1: is becomes a fascinating question. We're talking with Alex Brinson.
Speaker 1: You can go read his two different books that he's
Speaker 1: published on Amazon, which I'm gonna get to you here
Speaker 1: in a moment. But you've elucidated one of major issues
Speaker 1: that I think has gone with the coverage of the
Speaker 1: coronavirus from the get go. And I'm curious, as a
Speaker 1: member of the former New York Times media establishment, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better phrase, how you would analyze this.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that there are anecdotal outlier cases
Speaker 1: which have driven the coverage of the coronavirus since this started.
Speaker 1: In other words, thirty five year old person dies, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, pregnant woman's got it, her baby's got it
Speaker 1: now and when we actually look at the raw data,
Speaker 1: the numbers tell us a different story, and a much
Speaker 1: more calming story. And so, for instance, Uh, it seems
Speaker 1: to me that emotion has totally overtaken the way that
Speaker 1: this story was covered. And I thought it was crystallized
Speaker 1: when the New York Times, on I think it was
Speaker 1: Memorial Day weekend writes like a hundred thousand deaths and
Speaker 1: incalculable lost as their headline with just a bunch of
Speaker 1: different names on it. What has happened here? Why has
Speaker 1: a motion overtaken the media? Why has logic and probability
Speaker 1: and all of these things not taken route? Because I
Speaker 1: keep and I'm just gonna put this out, a lot
Speaker 1: of people will be listening from a sports perspective. Uh,
Speaker 1: kids driving to college campuses are more likely to die
Speaker 1: driving to their college campus in a car accident than
Speaker 1: they are from the coronavirus. They're more likely to die
Speaker 1: of the flu murder. Uh, They're more likely to die
Speaker 1: of drug overdose. They're more likely to die of drinking
Speaker 1: too much alcohol. All of these are more dangerous threats
Speaker 1: if you're a parent with a college age student. Yet
Speaker 1: right now, sports are being shut down in the Big
Speaker 1: ten and the Pack twelve because of this overwhelming fear
Speaker 1: porn which people still can't escape. Why did the media
Speaker 1: fail so much talking to the public about this story
Speaker 1: and fail so much by the way that they almost
Speaker 1: managed to destroy their own business because you know, like
Speaker 1: fear maybe well lead, but the advertising market destroyed when
Speaker 1: you shut down the economy, It's like your ratings may
Speaker 1: go up on MSNBC and CNN and Fox News as
Speaker 1: well to a certain extent, but also nobody can buy
Speaker 1: anything because the economy is collapsed. It's like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people more watched, but you almost destroyed the entire country
Speaker 1: in the process. Why did they get it wrong? How
Speaker 1: did this happen? Another great question? So there are several
Speaker 1: factors to play here. First of all, don't underestimate the
Speaker 1: amount of real raw here that there was in mid March,
Speaker 1: late March, yes, even in early April, especially even among
Speaker 1: people who are media members who should be more analytical
Speaker 1: at least in my mind, and less emotion base. They
Speaker 1: gave into it as well. Well. I wouldn't you know.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's better people in the media have
Speaker 1: cool heads. Yeah, maybe there's a few war reporters out
Speaker 1: there who have cool heads. But you know, you don't
Speaker 1: you don't get you get into media because you like,
Speaker 1: you like action and controversy and something new every day. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily something that leads to to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of like you know, reasoned analysis exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: But but so remember it was bad in New York
Speaker 1: for a few days. Okay, there were there were you
Speaker 1: know that the the the bubble of excess death was real.
Speaker 1: What happened at Elmhurst was real. Now, where are things
Speaker 1: that we didn't understand at that time, including that, you know,
Speaker 1: the rush to put them up people on ventilators was
Speaker 1: killing a bunch of people, and that the quality of
Speaker 1: care at some of these hospitals, unfortunately, probably was not
Speaker 1: very good. You know, these some of these some of
Speaker 1: the city's municipal hospitals. You know, they struggle at the
Speaker 1: best of times, and these were not the best of times.
Speaker 1: But but but but the fear, the fear was real. Okay,
Speaker 1: and so and and people very very quickly decided to
Speaker 1: blame Donald Trump. You have failed us, and it is
Speaker 1: your fault that people are dying. And that became a
Speaker 1: very comforting narrative for people in the media, and it
Speaker 1: is not it is not giving anything away to say
Speaker 1: that outside of Fox, Donald Trump is not just not light,
Speaker 1: but that he is despised by many people in the media,
Speaker 1: and so and so. So they started as a genuine
Speaker 1: fear of the unknown. Okay, And and then and and
Speaker 1: but you know, I was in the city in March. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't I I you know, my uh my mother
Speaker 1: and brother live in New York City, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was in to see I was in to
Speaker 1: see them a bunch and it was it was scary,
Speaker 1: you know, do not not because of what was happening,
Speaker 1: but just because of the emptiness of the streets and
Speaker 1: this feeling that, you know, the end is upon us. Okay.
Speaker 1: So that was That's not five months ago, though, Clay.
Speaker 1: So what's happened since then? Well, unfortunately a couple of
Speaker 1: things in that. First of all, people in the media,
Speaker 1: for the most part, there are exceptions, but are not
Speaker 1: good at math. Okay, they're not good at statistics. They're
Speaker 1: not good at math, and they and they haven't ever
Speaker 1: put this in context, either for themselves or for anybody else. So,
Speaker 1: so Clay forty five children under the age of fifteen
Speaker 1: died of coronavirus as of August first had died of
Speaker 1: coronavirus in the United States. And and you know, forty
Speaker 1: five children. That that's had like a lot of children,
Speaker 1: and obviously slowly five children, slowly, five children too many.
Speaker 1: But thirteen thousand children in that age group have died
Speaker 1: in the United States in the last six months. So
Speaker 1: that's one in three hundred. More children have died of
Speaker 1: drowning and in car accidents and um and of and
Speaker 1: of abuse and neglect and of cancer and of many
Speaker 1: many other things. So but journalists have never put these
Speaker 1: numbers in context. I don't think they. I don't think
Speaker 1: they understand them. And I think the handful who do
Speaker 1: understand them, for the most part politically, are not interested
Speaker 1: in offering context. Another thing that happened with the media
Speaker 1: is that the media quickly realized, and this is you
Speaker 1: can see it, okay, it's it's overt on places like
Speaker 1: CNN and MSNBC, that this was the perfect issue to
Speaker 1: beat Donald Trump over the head with because Trump, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm a registered political independent, Okay, um, you know,
Speaker 1: my core political philosophy if it's anything is It's impossible
Speaker 1: to be too cynical about our politics these days, really,
Speaker 1: But but the media, the media saw that Trump's sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, his his arrogance and his bluff and his
Speaker 1: desire to make a joke out of things that played
Speaker 1: incredibly badly when it came to this, and and so,
Speaker 1: and they realized it, and they have and they have
Speaker 1: nearly destroyed him with it, and so that's been very
Speaker 1: very effective for them. So so to me, what happened
Speaker 1: in March and April is forgivable. Okay, it's forgivable that
Speaker 1: a bunch of people panicked, and some of us recognized
Speaker 1: earlier than others that this wasn't all it was made
Speaker 1: out to be, and that this was going to be manageable,
Speaker 1: and that the hospitals are not going to be overrun,
Speaker 1: and it really should be something that we as a
Speaker 1: society should just should just try to go about our
Speaker 1: business and let the medical system handle this as as
Speaker 1: has happened now in places like Florida and Arizona, and
Speaker 1: some people didn't realize as quickly. But everything that's happened
Speaker 1: since has been to a greater or lesser extent politically
Speaker 1: driven and that makes it very hard for me um
Speaker 1: to accept. This is also fascinating to me. So let's
Speaker 1: go back to uh, let's go back to Florida and Arizona,
Speaker 1: which you just mentioned. Florida and Arizona as we speak.
Speaker 1: On August seventeen, effectively, again, Ron de Santis came out,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna read some of the data points that he
Speaker 1: just tweeted, and frankly, he had to tweet it because
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody would cover it otherwise, which goes
Speaker 1: into the media coverage of this on a straightforward basis.
Speaker 1: So I'm reading directly from front. De santiss tweets earlier
Speaker 1: today he said Florida's reporting the lowest number of cases
Speaker 1: and sixty since mid June. Emergency room visits for COVID
Speaker 1: like illness or down sixty percent since July seven. Hospital
Speaker 1: admissions for COVID are down sixty since July. The number
Speaker 1: of COVID positive patients currently hospitalized is down fort since
Speaker 1: July one, and they have twenty six point four percent
Speaker 1: of all hospital beds available in the state. Of all
Speaker 1: ICU beds, the pre pandemic percentages, by the way, twelve
Speaker 1: point six percent available nine point three percent of ICU
Speaker 1: beds available. So the worst case scenario basically happen for
Speaker 1: as you would call it, team apocalypse in Florida and
Speaker 1: in Arizona, and we handled it without really a substantial
Speaker 1: loss of life. Now, nothing like what happened in New
Speaker 1: York and in New Jersey. As we look forward with
Speaker 1: the data now they're from Florida in Arizona, does anything
Speaker 1: change or are people so committed to the idea that
Speaker 1: the coronavirus is, uh, you know, the most devastating thing
Speaker 1: that's going to happen in anybody's lifetime, that there's no
Speaker 1: ability to acknowledge that we can start to get back
Speaker 1: to normalcy now. I mean, so that's a that's a
Speaker 1: political question. I don't have the answer that I've been
Speaker 1: leaving for for the reality shed in you know, for
Speaker 1: three months plus now, and you would think that you're
Speaker 1: you're right, Like the worst case happened, Okay, the states unlocked.
Speaker 1: There was rapid, uncontrolled spread all over the sun Belt
Speaker 1: and and and nothing terrible and the fraction of the
Speaker 1: deaths of New York and New Jersey as a result,
Speaker 1: that's right, I think, you know, if the Florida peak
Speaker 1: death day might have been three hundred. Um you know, Texas,
Speaker 1: I think around three hundred. Also, you know, this is
Speaker 1: a fraction of New York and and and it looks
Speaker 1: like death or death in Arizona are definitely trending down. Okay,
Speaker 1: Florida Texas have been a couple of weeks behind Arizona,
Speaker 1: So they may be they may be still on the
Speaker 1: flat part of the plateau, or they may be trending
Speaker 1: down too. But it is going to be harder and
Speaker 1: harder to argue that this that this is not over. Okay,
Speaker 1: if it's if it's certainly in the sun Belt, and
Speaker 1: that and that we didn't do anything. Those states really
Speaker 1: didn't do anything. So you're hearing somehow that the masked
Speaker 1: mandates made the difference, or closing bars made the difference.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is nonsense. First of all,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in the states were wearing masks
Speaker 1: before the mandates. And second of all, bar closings like
Speaker 1: that's that's what stopped this this incredible, once in a
Speaker 1: lifetime epidemic. We closed a few bars for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. I mean, I mean, you know, people are
Speaker 1: saying stuff with a straight face. So here's here's here's
Speaker 1: what I've wondered. I've wondered how long it will take
Speaker 1: for the media to acknowledge reality, and then I've wondered
Speaker 1: how long it will take from that reality to percolate
Speaker 1: into the people who are so afraid still right now,
Speaker 1: And it does seem to me like the divide is
Speaker 1: getting sharper, The divide between people who are afraid and
Speaker 1: not afraid is getting sharper, and I and I don't
Speaker 1: know what fixes that. We're talking to Alex Berenson. You
Speaker 1: can follow him on Twitter. I'll tweet out the link
Speaker 1: to his profile. He's had incredible data analysis from the
Speaker 1: get go. Okay, what made you willing to question the
Speaker 1: overriding narrative. I've obviously done it in the world of sports,
Speaker 1: and it's astounding to me how many members of what
Speaker 1: I call the blue checkmark brigade in sports media have
Speaker 1: been buying into these apocalyptic theories from the get go,
Speaker 1: such that they get their furious at me for sharing
Speaker 1: any kind of positive news, for suggesting that sports can
Speaker 1: be played. I've labeled them all Corona bros. In the
Speaker 1: sports media. It's like they're rooting for the worst possible outcome.
Speaker 1: Right the minute that an athlete tests positive, they're the
Speaker 1: first ones to run to Twitter and be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god. You know, look at what's happened with the
Speaker 1: Miami Marlins. A bunch of healthy guys are testing positive
Speaker 1: for a virus they never would have known they had
Speaker 1: unless we were testing them aggressively, right. I mean that's
Speaker 1: the reality, and so it's crazy. In my universe, there's
Speaker 1: hardly anybody sharing actual facts and combating what I would
Speaker 1: call the fear porn, which tries to make it such
Speaker 1: that sports can't be played, that your son can't play
Speaker 1: little League, that your daughter can't play soccer. All these
Speaker 1: things are certainly get to schools, which I want to
Speaker 1: get to in a moment. Why do you think that
Speaker 1: that the media? And I'm curious on this perspective from you.
Speaker 1: It used to be you said, you know, be cynical,
Speaker 1: be skeptical. I would say that in general, I am
Speaker 1: a skeptic. I tend to be skeptical of every and
Speaker 1: any and everything. Maybe that's my legal background, maybe that's
Speaker 1: my natural persona. But it seems to me that the
Speaker 1: media completely abandoned that natural skepticism and not only abandoned
Speaker 1: the natural skepticism, but severely policed anyone who did it
Speaker 1: by into the overriding narrative of complete danger, instead of
Speaker 1: being rebels, or instead of being people who pushed back
Speaker 1: against the tide, which I think is what you would
Speaker 1: hope journalists would do. When did journalists become the people
Speaker 1: who are out there enforcing what opinions people can have?
Speaker 1: And how has it impacted you? In what I'm imagining,
Speaker 1: You're now the black sheep of the New York Times fraternity.
Speaker 1: You're completely ostracized. So so you know, it fascinates man.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how much you hate you get
Speaker 1: I I'm engine you get a lot of too, yes,
Speaker 1: Like I want their grandmas to die, right, That's the
Speaker 1: thing I get the most. Like you don't care about
Speaker 1: old people dying, and I would saying no, I wish
Speaker 1: everybody was immortal, right, I wish? But you know, two
Speaker 1: point eight million people die every day in this every year,
Speaker 1: in this country, undred a day. Everything has to be
Speaker 1: balanced contextually. This idea that the coronavirus has to dictate
Speaker 1: every decision that we make as social policy for the
Speaker 1: entire year is crazy to me. It's a childlike understanding
Speaker 1: of nuance and complexity. Yet I see people who value
Speaker 1: their own knowledge of nuance and complexity fully embracing it,
Speaker 1: and I just wonder what in the world is going
Speaker 1: on in their brains. Yeah, so, I mean, look, look,
Speaker 1: I mean I could call associated parent. You know, people
Speaker 1: people tell me, people have told me, you know, not
Speaker 1: not the blue checks so much. I hope some of
Speaker 1: the checks said they hope I die. Yeah, yeah, people
Speaker 1: people regularly blue check Margargade regularly. They remembers saying I
Speaker 1: hope you get this and I hope you die. They
Speaker 1: even some of the people out there, have you even
Speaker 1: taken a step further. I've got three young kids and
Speaker 1: they're in school now, and you know when I mentioned that,
Speaker 1: they're like, I hope your kids get sick and die.
Speaker 1: That would serve you, right, Like whot children to die? Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is crazy to me, That's right, It's crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know, my, my somebody and somebody
Speaker 1: somebody said, well, Fauci says he's getting death threats. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, you know the old joke, if you
Speaker 1: ain't cheating, you ain't trying at this point, if you
Speaker 1: ain't getting death threats, I get death threats every day,
Speaker 1: come on all the time, right, So so you know, look,
Speaker 1: there's Trump that the Trump hatred is enormous, and the
Speaker 1: and the sort of innumeracy of the media is enormous,
Speaker 1: and I guess, I guess you know, the group think
Speaker 1: is enormous, okay, and and people and it's unfortunate because
Speaker 1: it means that you know, there there are there are
Speaker 1: many social media making it worse. Is social media making
Speaker 1: group think worse? In your mind? As somebody who worked
Speaker 1: at The New York Times in a pre basically so
Speaker 1: media era. Oh absolutely, it's made it much worse. And
Speaker 1: there's something else that's happening which is not much discussed,
Speaker 1: but which has definitely been a real problem at the
Speaker 1: New York Times. And I think it's a problem at
Speaker 1: workplaces in general, which is so texting makes it possible
Speaker 1: to run conspiracies. And I mean, and I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean a real conspiracy in a way that you
Speaker 1: couldn't before another There can be five people in a
Speaker 1: room and one of them has an opinion that the
Speaker 1: other four don't like, and the other four are able
Speaker 1: to have a conversation about that fifth person in front
Speaker 1: of him without him knowing, okay, And that makes it
Speaker 1: easier to ostracize. It makes it easier to drive people
Speaker 1: out because all of a sudden you say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tweet this, and everybody else like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's you know, let's do it, let's jump in, or
Speaker 1: or you know, it isn't even quite that over, it's
Speaker 1: I'm going to tweet this, and you send it around
Speaker 1: to the other three people who don't like the last
Speaker 1: person in the room in there, and they just jump off.
Speaker 1: So so there's been there's you know, I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard it. Uh, you know it's called pilot, right, So
Speaker 1: don pil is when you know a thousand people tell
Speaker 1: you that you should never speak again. Yes, okay, And
Speaker 1: you have to be a certain kind of person to
Speaker 1: decide I don't care, right, and which you are? And
Speaker 1: I think I am too, like I just I genuinely
Speaker 1: don't care. I mean again, I don't see this as partisan.
Speaker 1: I don't see it as democrat. I don't see it
Speaker 1: as republican. You said you're a registered independent. I worked
Speaker 1: on Al Gore's presidential campaign. I wasn't particularly political. I've
Speaker 1: never voted for a Republican president. But I look at
Speaker 1: all this and I'm like, you know, I'm a First
Speaker 1: Amendment absolutist, and I love rigorous debate. And to me,
Speaker 1: and I want to get to the analogy you've made
Speaker 1: to me, I say, the decision to go to war
Speaker 1: in Iraq is the biggest failure in the twenty first
Speaker 1: century prior to our response to the coronavirus from a
Speaker 1: social policy perspective. You've gone even further back and said
Speaker 1: you think in years to come, we'll look back on
Speaker 1: our response to the coronavirus as the worst decision in
Speaker 1: American policy since the Vietnam War. Uh. That's fast an
Speaker 1: eating to me, because what it would require is analysis
Speaker 1: and recognition from so many people that they misdiagnosed and
Speaker 1: misresponded to this instance in the Vietnam War because the
Speaker 1: opposition was liberal. It seems like the media was willing
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that because they were like, hey, we got
Speaker 1: this one right. I think predominantly liberal media is not
Speaker 1: going to be willing to acknowledge it with the coronavirus
Speaker 1: because it wasn't the people who were liberal who were
Speaker 1: leading the charge necessarily on Oh my god, this response
Speaker 1: is totally ludicrous, right, No, it's gonna be very very
Speaker 1: hard to get people to admit that. And and you
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen is the people who don't
Speaker 1: want to admit it are just gonna say a hundred
Speaker 1: eight wherever it is that we we top out on
Speaker 1: this again without acknowledging that that half those people were
Speaker 1: in nursing homes and had a life expectancy in months,
Speaker 1: and that a significant portion of the rest, we're really
Speaker 1: very shick. Okay that that that In other words, if
Speaker 1: you look ahead to next year, for instance, the death
Speaker 1: rate may well be down or even at the end
Speaker 1: of the months of this year, depending how on how
Speaker 1: things go, because the people who got the coronavirus and
Speaker 1: died may have died a month or two earlier than
Speaker 1: they otherwise were. But we're not talking about, as you said,
Speaker 1: kids under fifteen. When you look at the total number
Speaker 1: of years loss of life, we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: massive amount because the average person dying of the coronavirus
Speaker 1: is older than the average age of person dying of
Speaker 1: all causes. That's right, And at the same time, they
Speaker 1: will be unwilling to admit the damage of the lockdown,
Speaker 1: which has been so enormous. And this is something you know,
Speaker 1: I think I might see list, you know as much
Speaker 1: as anybody, because people email me who are in pain.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, this is a funny thing about Twitter.
Speaker 1: People feel that they you know, that they that they
Speaker 1: know me and that and that they and that they
Speaker 1: want to and that they want to open up to me.
Speaker 1: And there are people who are in awful pain. Now.
Speaker 1: Now look, I'm not gonna say that, you know, these
Speaker 1: people were perfectly happy before this happened, and you know,
Speaker 1: coronavirus is the only problem in their lives. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is that if if you have some kind
Speaker 1: of you know, psychiatric or psychological weakness, the last five
Speaker 1: months had been terrible for you for a lot of
Speaker 1: people of people out there, alex have young people, according
Speaker 1: to a recent study that I saw, have considered suicide
Speaker 1: and suicides and drug overdoses and everything else. Is we've
Speaker 1: taken away people's ability to go to work, to go
Speaker 1: to school, to go to church, to go to things
Speaker 1: that connect them to the larger fabric of society. They
Speaker 1: have fallen apart as well, and we're not talking hardly
Speaker 1: at all about that. We're not talking about it at all.
Speaker 1: And just the sheer turn that some people feel from
Speaker 1: I mean the way people have behaved and the way
Speaker 1: people with children who haven't let their children out of
Speaker 1: the house for for months months, that's some people have
Speaker 1: done that. Some people haven't done that. And so you know,
Speaker 1: people you can find stories on Twitter without trying too hard.
Speaker 1: A will proudly saying I haven't left my apartment since March.
Speaker 1: What like, what are you doing? I don't care. If
Speaker 1: you have a ten percent risk of dying from this thing,
Speaker 1: what are you doing to yourself? And you don't, I mean,
Speaker 1: you have a you have a you know, one one
Speaker 1: percent risk if you're you know, forty year old guy
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, if the risk is miniscule. But
Speaker 1: but people, people have wrenched themselves into terror about this,
Speaker 1: and as a society, we are tearing ourselves up over it.
Speaker 1: And you know, and and here's the thing about lockdowns. Okay,
Speaker 1: you either lockdown too early or too late. Here's your choices.
Speaker 1: You lock down like Britain when it's already spread all
Speaker 1: over the place, in which case you still have uncontrolled
Speaker 1: spread in nursing homes and and and you know, as
Speaker 1: a result, the UK is the worst death rate anywhere
Speaker 1: of any country in the world, any major country. And
Speaker 1: they locked down very hard, but late, or you locked
Speaker 1: down really early, like New Zealand, in which case you're
Speaker 1: living in fear of the stupid things forever. And whenever
Speaker 1: there's a case, you have to side whether or not
Speaker 1: to walk down again. Or you treat it like what
Speaker 1: it is, a manageable respiratory virus, and you go on
Speaker 1: with life like the Swedes did. And yes, some people
Speaker 1: will die and then you'll be done and life goes on.
Speaker 1: How important is it for schools to be open? In
Speaker 1: your mind? I've got three kids, twelve, nine and five.
Speaker 1: Come Monday, all three of them a week from today
Speaker 1: when we're talking, all three of them will be an
Speaker 1: in person school on Monday, August where I live so
Speaker 1: so so our kids are going back to school. Uh.
Speaker 1: One week later, they're going back on September. One we before.
Speaker 1: My kids are you know, a little bit younger than yours. Uh.
Speaker 1: And for you know, we're in New York. We actually
Speaker 1: seriously considered moving this summer. And I'm glad we didn't
Speaker 1: because you know, places we thought we might have moved to.
Speaker 1: They're now saying the schools are gonna be closed at
Speaker 1: least through November. But fortunately they're at a little you know,
Speaker 1: they're at a little private school, um, you know, in
Speaker 1: New York State, and they'll be able to have five
Speaker 1: day a week school, which is a uh you know,
Speaker 1: which is so important for their mental health, for their learning,
Speaker 1: for their socialization, for their understanding that life goes on,
Speaker 1: for their physical growth. It's so vital that schools be open.
Speaker 1: And it is so wrong that that the teachers unions
Speaker 1: are refusing this and are fighting about this. It couldn't
Speaker 1: be more wrong of all the things we've done. It
Speaker 1: is the absolute worst, and and all over Europe, by
Speaker 1: the way, schools are reopening. All over Asia, schools are
Speaker 1: reopening this if they're if you want proof of anything,
Speaker 1: or if you want proof in a way that they're
Speaker 1: you know, the best possible proof that this is just
Speaker 1: a totally political issue at this point. Look at the
Speaker 1: fact that many jurisdictions are saying we're going to reopen
Speaker 1: or consider reopening in late October early November. You know,
Speaker 1: the right what what's happening in early November that might
Speaker 1: cause that to happen. And by the way, if you
Speaker 1: really cared, you'd want them open now because it's before
Speaker 1: flu season. Instead, we're going to reopen as flu season
Speaker 1: is coming back. Fox Sports ready has the best sports
Speaker 1: talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows
Speaker 1: at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live.
Speaker 1: We're talking to Alex Barrens and I'm Clay Travis. This
Speaker 1: is the Wins and Losses Podcast. Um, there's so many
Speaker 1: things here that continue to amaze me. Uh, why do
Speaker 1: you think your social media feed has been so filtered
Speaker 1: with Why do you think your books which went up
Speaker 1: on Amazon have in many ways not been distributed like
Speaker 1: they would? Why is Fox News the only place? I
Speaker 1: think you've talked with Paul Feinbaum on his radio show.
Speaker 1: But by and large, I would imagine you know the
Speaker 1: quote unquote mainstream of the media. Many people have have
Speaker 1: ignored you. I know the New York Times did a
Speaker 1: piece I think Ben Smith, if I'm not mistaken, I
Speaker 1: read a piece there. But why do you think you
Speaker 1: have become persona non grata If you had been the
Speaker 1: person out there saying we've got to shut down everything.
Speaker 1: If in other words, if you instead of being the
Speaker 1: guy who has said, hey, I think we're overreacting, if
Speaker 1: you had been the overreact or, you would be lauded
Speaker 1: by the media. It's wild to think about, right, same
Speaker 1: thing would be true for me if I had been
Speaker 1: the keing of shutdowns, lockdown sports can never play again.
Speaker 1: My media colleagues in sports media would have been like, oh,
Speaker 1: how brave of him, when the reality is saying what
Speaker 1: you or I are saying is infinitely more brave than
Speaker 1: following the herd. Yeah, I mean, it's just accurate. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean a lot of people agree with us
Speaker 1: but won't say it publicly because they're worried about the
Speaker 1: consequences or the ostracization. Because I'm sure you've heard from
Speaker 1: a lot of people in your industry as I have,
Speaker 1: who have said, hey, keep saying what you're saying, but
Speaker 1: they don't want to say it themselves. Yep, I get that,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad to hear you get it too. I mean,
Speaker 1: although it's not a surprising, why do you listen? Look, people,
Speaker 1: I've been saying to a lot of people. Uh, you're wrong,
Speaker 1: You're wrong about this. Yes, you don't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. And I've been saying and you know, and
Speaker 1: I won't back down and you can't shut me up,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to keep pointing to facts and statistics.
Speaker 1: And I don't care if you think I used to
Speaker 1: be a good journalist and I'm not anymore, because I'm
Speaker 1: exactly the same journalist I would when you liked me.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying something you don't like and people people
Speaker 1: can't stand it, and um, you know again, I think,
Speaker 1: as we have found, it takes a certain kind of
Speaker 1: personality to be willing to say this stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: easier just to shoot the messenger. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that I've discovered actually recently on Twitter is that
Speaker 1: there are people out their media, people, um, who just
Speaker 1: blocked me preemptively, people I never know. Yeah, that happens
Speaker 1: to me all the time. Yes, And it's like, what
Speaker 1: do you think you're gaining from this? They are so
Speaker 1: upset by having their narrative challenged that for people out
Speaker 1: there who don't recognize what you're saying. People who are
Speaker 1: in media, like I will like cape people I've never
Speaker 1: interacted with. This happens to me all the time in sports.
Speaker 1: They'll have a tweet out somebody else, so retweet it
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, oh, that's interesting, I'm curious what
Speaker 1: they said, and I'll go to read it and I'll
Speaker 1: realize that they blocked me. I've never interacted with him,
Speaker 1: I've never in any way, you know, like debated any
Speaker 1: issue with him, and then boom, they've got me blocked. Yep.
Speaker 1: I mean, the media is incredibly hyperpartisan right now. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing. At Fox they know they're partisan. Okay,
Speaker 1: the New York Times and CNN they're still pretending they're not.
Speaker 1: Now that has sort of fallen away, but it's still
Speaker 1: it's still there to some extent. And and um, you know, look, Paul,
Speaker 1: Paul find out he's a really good guy. I'm really
Speaker 1: glad he's had me on. Okay, but basically, aside from
Speaker 1: Fox and One America another conservative outlets, he's the only one,
Speaker 1: you know, I was. I was supposed to go on
Speaker 1: CNBC several times. I had confirmed interviews, and they canceled
Speaker 1: on me. CNN and Paul and Paul, by the way,
Speaker 1: knows me from the novels which is why he you
Speaker 1: know why, He's like, he's kind of a fan of
Speaker 1: my novels, and that's why he had me on to
Speaker 1: begin with. But you know CNN Aaron, you know Aaron Burnet,
Speaker 1: she's a fan of my novel I was going to
Speaker 1: go on with her a couple of months ago. That
Speaker 1: got canceled, never rescheduled. So yeah, so there is clearly
Speaker 1: a media blackout. And and look, I really am glad
Speaker 1: to have the chance to talk to you. I'm glad
Speaker 1: to have a chance to talk to Tucker Carlson and
Speaker 1: Laura and and everybody else on Fox. But Fox does
Speaker 1: that leached the whole country because that's also siload and
Speaker 1: people need to hear what you and I have to say,
Speaker 1: even if they think we're wrong, it would be better
Speaker 1: for them to know that there's another side to this
Speaker 1: and that you can debate it. And that goes to
Speaker 1: a larger question. I'm sure you get this all the time.
Speaker 1: I went to law school. It's interesting you made a
Speaker 1: living as a novelist. I went and got an m
Speaker 1: f A. At Vanderbilt. I've got to advanced graduate degrees
Speaker 1: from Vanderbilt, all right, And prior to that, I went
Speaker 1: to g W. You can like me or dislike me.
Speaker 1: They're decent academic credentials for me. You went to Yale,
Speaker 1: you worked at the at the New York Times for
Speaker 1: a decade. One of the things I think that offends
Speaker 1: people out there is we're part of their ruling class
Speaker 1: of elites, whatever you want to call it, and we're
Speaker 1: not succumbing to their story. But how you respond to
Speaker 1: people out there who are listening to us? And I'm
Speaker 1: sure people will pop in as soon as I tweet
Speaker 1: this out. Oh, let's go listen to those guys. They're
Speaker 1: not doctors, they're not lawyers. When did you get your
Speaker 1: degree in virology? Are you an epidemiological expert? How would
Speaker 1: you respond to that segment of Twitter that believes that
Speaker 1: because you and I do not have medical degrees aren't
Speaker 1: epidemiological pH d s, do not have advanced degrees in virology,
Speaker 1: that we're not allowed to talk about this. So here's
Speaker 1: what I say. I try to avoid talking about the
Speaker 1: practice of medicine. And I stated far away from you know,
Speaker 1: the h c Q debate, and there are people other
Speaker 1: who want the same thing for me. By the way,
Speaker 1: there are people more knowledgeable inside of hospitals and talk
Speaker 1: about that. I've just looked at the data. But continue,
Speaker 1: that's right, so so so so so. You know, medicine
Speaker 1: is something that you get a degree, you know, and
Speaker 1: you practice. That's between doctors and patients, and you know
Speaker 1: how exactly the spike protein you know, enters the cell
Speaker 1: and how the virus replicates. Those are difficult technical questions
Speaker 1: I don't and to know anything about. But here's here's
Speaker 1: what I can do. Okay, I can look at a model.
Speaker 1: It says they're gonna be sixty five thousand people in
Speaker 1: hospital beds in New York, New York State on April five,
Speaker 1: And it is April five, and there are sixteen thousand
Speaker 1: people in hospital beds in New York State that day,
Speaker 1: and the models off by a factor of four, even
Speaker 1: though it was only made a week ago. And I
Speaker 1: can say, what on earth is going on here? Why
Speaker 1: is this so wrong? How did you get this so wrong?
Speaker 1: And what does it mean that it's so wrong? Okay?
Speaker 1: Is it because you know little green men have taken
Speaker 1: all those people out of hospital beds? Or is there
Speaker 1: something wrong with the model. And if there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with the model, what does it mean? What does it
Speaker 1: mean about lockdowns? What does it mean about what our
Speaker 1: response should be? And I can say to people, what
Speaker 1: does it mean that you know fifty of the people
Speaker 1: who died are in nursing homes? And why aren't we
Speaker 1: talking about that all the time? And why aren't we
Speaker 1: trying to protect those people instead of shutting schools when
Speaker 1: kids aren't no risk? You do? And I always say
Speaker 1: no risk, And I have to say there's there's obviously everything.
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing that would tie in with
Speaker 1: that to Alex, and I'm Clay Travis. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Wins and Losses with Alex Barrinson as we finish up here,
Speaker 1: here's the other thing that matters a great deal. Those
Speaker 1: forecasts being wrong, actually, I believe led to a much
Speaker 1: elevated death rate in New York and New Jersey because
Speaker 1: they sent all those patients back into nursing homes because
Speaker 1: they believed those forecasts that they were going to need
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand plus hospital beds, when in reality, I
Speaker 1: believe it peaked at nineteen thousand instead of a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty thousand like the forecast. So the forecasters being
Speaker 1: so wrong literally cost probably tens of thousands of additional
Speaker 1: lives of people that would otherwise have survived because of
Speaker 1: the overreaction. I mean, I don't think we can prove
Speaker 1: that yet, but I think there's a there's a case
Speaker 1: to be made there. Look, if there was one thing
Speaker 1: I was good at as a journalist or you know,
Speaker 1: you know a couple of things I was good at.
Speaker 1: I was good at finding stuff in documents that people
Speaker 1: didn't want me to find. But what I was really
Speaker 1: good at was saying to people, Hey, you said X yesterday,
Speaker 1: and you're saying why today, what what's changed? Why? Why
Speaker 1: is it that you're that that that what you said
Speaker 1: yesterday isn't what you're saying today and what's on the
Speaker 1: ground is really z okay? And I don't need to
Speaker 1: be an epidemiologist to ask those questions. I just need
Speaker 1: to be able to look at the data myself a
Speaker 1: little bit okay, And I don't claim to be an epidemiologist.
Speaker 1: But but I challenge anybody to go back and look
Speaker 1: at my my, uh my reporting for the New York
Speaker 1: Times and say either that I'm some kind of you know,
Speaker 1: right wing person, or that you know that my reporting
Speaker 1: is an air tight Um, and you know even Ben
Speaker 1: Smith and that piece, you know that let's not even
Speaker 1: talk about the piece. You know, he said, like I
Speaker 1: this guy was a good journalist at the New York Times.
Speaker 1: And you know I will, I will, I will, I
Speaker 1: will fight that battle to my grave. Uh. Final question
Speaker 1: for you for people out there who have enjoyed our conversation,
Speaker 1: we might need to have another conversation because I think
Speaker 1: people are gonna absolutely love this. I've been talking with
Speaker 1: Alex Barrenson, I'm Clay Travis wins and losses. How would
Speaker 1: they find you? How can they read what you have
Speaker 1: written on Amazon? How would you instruct them to be
Speaker 1: able to to consume more of the content that you
Speaker 1: were putting out there? Sure? So, I mean Twitter has
Speaker 1: been my main outlet, and I will say, you know,
Speaker 1: Twitter has been pretty good to me. I've been concerned
Speaker 1: that they you know, they had they do seem to
Speaker 1: have a commitment to freak speech. And um, you know
Speaker 1: my audience has grown, you know, from fewer than ten
Speaker 1: thousand almost two hundred thousand in the last few months. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's just alexperience and on Twitter and just you know,
Speaker 1: just my A L. E X B. E R E
Speaker 1: N S O m UM. And then I have these
Speaker 1: two booklets out which you can get on Amazon or Apple.
Speaker 1: You can download them to UM. You know, I I
Speaker 1: there's another one I need to put out actually really
Speaker 1: about masks and schools, because as we've talked about, the
Speaker 1: school thing is crucial. Masks we haven't really talked about. UM.
Speaker 1: I think the mask issue is very interesting. UM. But
Speaker 1: but you know, if we have another conversation, we've talked
Speaker 1: about masks. But that's that's really it. You know, occasionally, UM,
Speaker 1: I write something that you know, Fox News will pick
Speaker 1: up or other outlets will pick up. But as we
Speaker 1: talked about the places like the New York Times op
Speaker 1: ed page or the Wall Street Journal OpEd page, UM,
Speaker 1: where I used to write, you know I've had I've
Speaker 1: had pieces published on both of those pages in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. I'm not sure they're open to
Speaker 1: me anymore. UM. And that that's really disturbing. Again, you
Speaker 1: can think I'm totally wrong, and you're totally wrong, but
Speaker 1: people should hear us. They should hear that there's another
Speaker 1: side to this. Amen. And by the way, you've always
Speaker 1: got an opportunity if you want to write out kick.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have ten million readers this month. One reason
Speaker 1: we're blowing up is because I think people want debates,
Speaker 1: they want real discussion of issues, and so you're always
Speaker 1: welcome to check out out kick dot com and right
Speaker 1: for us anytime. We'd love to have it. All right,
Speaker 1: it's been a great pleasure. I I hope I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, talk too much about about you know, the
Speaker 1: Cannabis book or that's but I do think people should
Speaker 1: know that that this my my contrarian views on this
Speaker 1: don't come out of nowhere. They come from serving understanding, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: of what the media has become, uh, you know, in
Speaker 1: the last decade. Amen, I appreciate you. I keep up
Speaker 1: the good work. I love the fact that you're not
Speaker 1: bending to the will of the masses. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again. That's Alex Berenson. Go follow him on Twitter,
Speaker 1: read his books on Amazon. I am Clay Travis. This
Speaker 1: has been wins and losses. Be sure to catch live
Speaker 1: editions about Kicked. The coverage with Clay Travis weekdays at
Speaker 1: six am Eastern three am Pacific