2025-06-03 posted. Covid. Ron Johnson on Bret Weinstein (DarkHorse)

Hey folks, welcome to the DarkHorse Inside Rail. I have the honor and privilege of sitting with Senator Ron

Johnson this morning. Many of you who are followers of the podcast will know that Ron Johnson has been the tip of the spear

in the medical freedom movement. He has been digging into the malfeasance of

COVID in a way that only he can with the powers that a senator has.(…) And I

would say we know a tremendous amount more about what happened to us during the so-called pandemic than we would if you

had not been doing what you’ve been doing. So welcome to the podcast. So I’m not quite sure where to start

because the opportunity of talking with you at this odd moment in history is

tremendous. You have a position with

which to view the power structure that most of us have to guess at and you also

have been cataloging and unearthing the

many crimes of COVID in a most unique way. So can you tell me how it is?

Obviously if you are in the Congress you

have to play a delicate game where you balance your desire to see certain things

happen with your need to be pragmatic and that does not seem to have limited you in terms of your pursuit of the truth

regarding COVID. How did you end up there? First of all I don’t play a very delicate game. That’s great.

I’m not a bomb bastard. First of all don’t over estimate the power of a member

of Congress or a senator. We have a platform.(…) We can provide a platform for others that’s

primarily what I’ve done. But my background is quick. I’m an accountant. That’s my

educational training. Ran a manufacturing plant for 30 years. I

eventually bought it and owned it. Never never thought I’d get involved in politics. I was interested in national

international affairs but it was really the Tea Party movement. I still consider

myself more Tea Party than Republican Party. I see the flaws in both.

Not a real fan of either quite honestly. (…) I’m a fan of our Constitution.(…)

What our flying fathers gave us and what is our duty to preserve for future

generations. That’s that’s now I ran in 2010 because we were mortgaging a children’s future. I ran because I knew

Obamacare would not work and it hasn’t. I ran primarily on you know I would

literally do parades in 2010 showing the freedom.

That’s my platform. Freedom. I mean that is the essential ingredient to this country. It’s what allowed you know our

forebears to dream and aspire and build and create this model of a country that it’s our job to preserve. So again when

that’s when that’s what you’re fighting for and you realize more than a million Americans who’ve died fighting for that same thing.

People say you’re so courageous. No I’m just unbelievably frustrated and you know

I’ve got that platform and so I’ve used it and my eyes were opened up during COVID. You know what like millions of

other Americans. I ran 2010. I literally ran and my campaign consultant said never

say that again but I ran defending big pharma. So what am I the only guy that wants a new drug a new life-saving drug.

But then I saw the capture the corruption big pharma of not only our federal health

agencies but also of the media and the social media.(…) And yeah that just

started very early on in the process you know early in 2020 when they sabotaged early treatment and it’s just followed

all the way through. Fascinating. I have to ask in passing what did you manufacture.

Well plastic sheet primarily for food but mostly medical device packaging. So I’m

well aware of the medical device industry of ISO certification standards for manufacturing.

So again I made money the old-fashioned way a couple cents a pound. Yeah okay so that’s very interesting. I

will just say one of the things that I really appreciate about what I would call

the unity movement and what you’ve been doing is how open people are to

partnering with those that ordinarily they would not find themselves in

alignment with. You’ve been very welcoming to me.(…) I grew up died in

the wool liberal Democrat but I will say that there’s a heart.

Right and and that really this is this is the beautiful discovery and in fact I

remember that my first maybe my first inkling of this was the recognition that

the Tea Party which ultimately got captured by some things that weren’t terribly positive was effectively the

mirror image of the Occupy movement which got captured by something that was not

particularly productive and the reflection that people on both the left

and the right(…) were being motivated by the pervasive corruption of our system

to you know to demand change and the fact that those two movements got captured is

irrelevant. It was the the aligned motivation of these two groups that was

really telling the deeper story. So first of all I come from the private sector and one of my first insights when

I was elected as a senator is in politics dividing people works. In private sector

you focus on areas of agreement. You don’t get very far in business arguing all the time. You got a product I want to

buy it or vice versa that will haggle with price.(…) So that’s a very

destructive part of politics. The other I think just absolute truism is Lord Acton

said power corrupts and so I viewed the root cause of our problem is literally government. Government provides people

the power that they are able to then corrupt.(…) And so you know the genius

of our fine fathers was they came from tutorial monocres and other regimes.(…) They knew if we didn’t want to live in

anarchy and chaos we needed some government but didn’t establish government to solve our problems. They

primarily established government to protect our freedoms. The basic things defend the nation protect us keep us

safe. Some basic rules the world but rules the road but that’s basically where government should have remained but we

have so busted out of the constitutional constraints for big government and again

when you have these agencies that regulate businesses. I mean businesses aren’t stupid.

They try and make sure that they can continue to survive so they figure out a way to make that regulation work for them

then once they figure out well I’m able to do that maybe I can actually get these

agencies and help them write regulations that benefit benefit me disadvantage my

my competitors you know not particularly be kind of consumers although I will defend businesses in general they want to

be good to consumers. I don’t know if a business wants to create a product that harms their customers. It’s really bad

for business to have airplanes follow the sky. So again I generally come from the the

private sector thinking you know you know business isn’t evil but large businesses can certainly be corrupted by the power

they can seize by capturing these agencies. I think that’s you know that’s really the lesson of COVID. I saw it with

the big pharma Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex but that’s really I think probably across the

board in all these agencies there’s always gonna be large corporate interests they have the power have the smarts to

figure out how to capture those agencies. I mean the revolving door of personnel between agencies and those businesses and stuff and that’s where we are here in

2024 and to me that’s I am hoping you know Golly Bobby Kennedy has you know

fully understands that and hopefully can help Donald Trump and Elon Musk and Vivek

Ramaswami figure out how to bust up that that corruption within you know big

business and government. Fascinating a number of threads I want to pick up on there.

In hearing your description it occurs to me I’m a complex systems guy and it

occurs to me that business as you describe it is positive sum you’re

creating wealth that politics is zero sum

which explains many of its defects and government is negative sum in a sense it

is the cost we pay and it makes sense only to pay that cost where the benefit

that it generates in the private sector is greater than the cost we spend to do it which is something we’ve lost sight

of. Government has grown out of control and frankly many of us intuit that what

was true and what Elon Musk proved about Twitter is true of government also that a

large fraction of what’s being done there isn’t actually good for anyone it produces nothing you know Twitter at best

was a cryptic job cryptic jobs program for a lot of people who it turns out were

entirely unnecessary to its functioning. Is that where you see government?

Yeah but also remember that vast majority of people who are working in government they’re good people you know they’ve got

a job they have an assignment you know same thing in business again you go back to just the basic dynamic that power

corrupts and so any entity that provides people power in some way shape or form is

going to get corrected. We’re not angels and that’s where our founders understood we’re not angels and so you do need some

controls you need some regulatory authority you need some form of government to rein in the non-angel

portion of human behavior. Beautiful all right so let me pick up on

a couple other of your themes here. I’ve long hypothesized that when you look

at something like our government and I’m under no illusions about it haven’t been

for decades this is I think of it as a malignant entity and I worry that

conservatives sometimes infer from the malignancy that government itself is bad

rather than we have a pathogenic version of it but when I look at it I imagine

there must be three groups of people in it there must be people who will do the

right thing irrespective of the cost to themselves and others there are people

those people must be few and far between although I think I’m sitting with one of them there must be people there who will

do the expedient thing irrespective of the harm that it does to the public or to

the Republic and then there must be a large number of people who would probably prefer to do the right thing but will do

the expedient thing because the system only really allows that and so one of the

things that I imagine for this administration is that it has to do the

impossible it has to take a bunch of agencies that are working to the benefit of the people are supposed to be

regulating to take one case and it has to recapture them so the way to do that

would surely be to get rid of the group of people who will do the expedient thing irrespective of the harm and to basically

deliver an ultimatum to the people who would rather be living in a good system

but will do whatever the system demands of them and get them to turn the ship of state around so I would agree with your description

except you’re leading up the fourth group and that’s the group that is smart enough

and corrupts the system I mean they’re not just doing the expedient thing because you know I mean they literally

have figured out how to capture that power to their own it to their advantage

yeah and again and I think it’s even more dangerous in today’s world is now we have you’d be bad enough that power held

within individual countries and nation states probably more dangerous when it’s

being held in a superpower like the US but now go above and beyond that now you

have these international organizations and I keep I keep asking people as you

were talking about these things you know who are they who are the puppet masters it sure seems like him trusted news

initiative I mean what happened in the pandemic this just seemed like this was well thought out they were holding you

know events you’ve got to a one is one example but you know in Bobby Kennedy is his book he you know points out a number

of these things you see Rick Brighton Anthony Fauci at the Milken Institute a couple weeks before to 201 but mowing the

fact that we don’t have a universal vaccine program you’re probably take a pandemic to enforce it on well they got

their pandemic you know and they forced an mRNA completely experimental injection

on the world population again I don’t know why made no sense to me I don’t know

my first always was well how do you treat this which is why I hopped on the cart

right away with the hydroxychloroquine great I mean I don’t care what it was and they’re literally a number of generic

available safe drugs that that were being used successfully but the powers to be

they didn’t want to happen they sabotage their treatment I know I’m kind of veering into that specific example but I

mean again that’s what opened up my eyes and I kept asking you who who’s running the show here who’s

pulling the strings yes I I had that same awakening moment

specifically I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t understand hydroxychloroquine

right away it took me a little bit but I did understand well the eye for whatever

reason the ivermectin story was more intuitive to me I think frankly the fact

of Trump having jumped on hydroxychloroquine confused many of us

and I’m embarrassed that I was confused by it but the hydroxychloroquine story was so obvious so early if you just

scratched the surface you discovered that this story didn’t add up and I think the

American public still has no idea you know in part because among other things

they were very successful at making hydroxychloroquine no making ivermectin

almost impossible to get so it became a pure abstraction right if people had had

access to it then we would have a lot more stories of people who had discovered that it actually worked very well we

would have discovered the public would have discovered that actually you could predict that it would work very well and

in fact they did they knew that it worked on SARS-1 they knew it worked generally across mRNA viruses and so it would be

shocking if it didn’t work on SARS-CoV-2

of course Trump mentioned it and they shut it down but I was in my concern about hydroxychloroquine is who we have

enough right and can we have do we have the manufacturing capability that I know Peter Navarro was on the same wavelength

as that so I contacted the CEO Novartis they were one of the manufacturers of it

they’d actually donated 30 million doses to the national stockpile which wasn’t

being released so we first had a log jam there but I was talking to that CEO all the way through April and he was really

excited about this and they had all kinds of trials scheduled that they’re gonna get the results by you know mid-may or

whatever at the end of April he went dark it’s like they turned to switch and said

no no no we’re not going to treat this illness we’re gonna wait till we have a vaccine okay I’m now in touch with

because I’ve read in one of the sub stacks which by the way is a great platform platform okay you’re getting

detailed information but I read about an attorney who represented families of

individuals who you know were in hospitals they were begging the hospitals

to give ivermectin and by the way that’s the one that works better throughout the course hydroxychloroquine really I think

needs to be given pretty early on but regardless and I know it actually works there are thousands probably tens of

thousands of stories of where it absolutely works but then you know they had to sue the hospitals right and this

attorney this these are the exact figures I’m hoping to have a hearing with this guy but it basically he let’s say he sued

200 families it’s about the right numbers half of the lawsuits he won half he lost

of the the hundred or so that he won so those the hospitals were forced to

administer ivermectin these other things only two or three people died yeah of the

hundred or so that he lost they all died and I’m reading book right now you know

what the nurses saw and you know we had early on I was talking to nurses and you

know they were they were doing you know they were fulfilling their oath of advocating for the patients and they were

completely shut down of course you know the people that I gave a platform to their careers were destroyed they are

still being sued they’re still being decertified they’re still you know fighting that and let’s face it didn’t

take many doctors and nurses to be destroyed and I mean literally destroyed

where the rest of them who have you know two three hundred thousand dollars of student loans outstanding that want to

take care of their family that have put a dozen years into their training they want to be able to practice medicine to help

people to just shut up and be quiet and try and get through this mess you know

basically what happened well I must tell you I don’t remember the exact numbers but the piece of Pierre

Corey’s book on the war on ivermectin that stopped me in my tracks was the

description of the natural experiment of this lawyer who had sued lost half his cases those patients died and then it’s

the pattern is unarguable and the

implication which you state flat out but still it’s going to be hard for people to

accept it is that somebody decided to let

Americans die for their own reasons whatever those reasons might have been

but the and the way I see it now after I

sometimes say that I got a graduate education in covid and a lot of other topics virology and

epidemiology along the way but one of the things that I learned was that what you

had was a disease it had a kind of severity to it it’s an absolute tragedy

for humanity not because of the severity of the disease itself but because of the

fact that we are now apparently permanently stuck with it how many years of life will be lost to people being sick

again and again with new variants of this disease we apparently will not never be rid of but the the fact is if medicine

had been allowed to function the way medicine is supposed to function without the coup that was staged by public health

for what reason we don’t know then what would have happened is we would have very quickly discovered that this disease was

effectively entirely manageable in all but the most in firm patients this would

have been a minor blip certainly not a pandemic by any traditional definition

certainly not justifying of the injection of a absolutely radical medical

technology that hadn’t been properly tested yeah we did I held my second hearing first I had

with the Scott Valley and thought out we did we don’t have we don’t do precursors chemicals for drugs and we don’t have the

you know active pharmaceutical ingredients as a national security threat that was in February by May I had heard

of Johnny and Edith’s study on the Princess cruise yeah that was a perfect crucible perfect test case okay so okay I

think some some of the 700 passengers and if you were elderly you were vulnerable as elderly always are vulnerable in flu

and cold season or if you have certain comorbidities again as people with comorbidities always are vulnerable when

you have some kind of respiratory virus so we knew right there so I held a hearing with Johnny and Edith’s just

trying to calm everybody down so this isn’t Ebola I mean it sure sounded like Ebola in China when they had moon suits

you had these doctors going in there you see the picture of this young doctor and you know suddenly dead three days later you know you know I mean let’s say we

were all scared you know well okay that’s no doubt about it yeah and I always think it was that a psyops by on the part of

China set that aside so we knew early on that this wasn’t going to be Ebola MERS

or SARS 1 you had the Center for Evidence-based Medicine Oxford they were

predicting this early on infection fatality rates somewhat similar to maybe a bad flu season okay so yeah get the

hospitals ready hospitals always have problems in flu season so don’t freak out

about this so I held that hearing in May and of course it wasn’t covered at all because we were in full skiving out of

people yeah and that’s that’s what they did that’s what they did and I’m still

wondering who are they well I know who the tools are right I know Fauci’s one of

the tools he may be one of the leading henchmen but there were plenty of you know Bobby in his book I think he did the

Wuhan cover right because I read a bunch of those so yeah he just lays out you know what happened in Germany also

happened in Japan and how the medical community participated and that’s to me

you know my daughter was saved my daughter was born very serious conjunge heart defect transpositions great

arteries first day of life a wonderful pediatric cardiologist came in performed procedure on her saved her life eight

months later where her heart was the size of small plum they rebaffled the upper chamber of her heart her heart operates

backwards today she’s 40 years old a couple kids through surrogacy you know

she’s led a perfectly normal life just wrote and produced a play in Los Angeles had a six-week run and she I I am so

grateful to doctors and nurses and what we have developed in terms of medicine and maybe that’s what hit me the hardest

it’s actually why I ran for US Senate when I heard President Obama denigrating doctors saying they’ll take our set of

townships or amputate a foot because there’s degree you know so offensive to me but fast-forwarding to COVID I’m

saying speak up just stick up for your stick up for yourself and this is

actually what I want to say when I first started this filibuster the root cause

again is government because doctors should be at the top of the treatment pyramid is doctors have the

responsibility of the patient instead doctors are now crushed at the bottom and you’ve got the felchies the world

dictating how again it was all it’s all this transfer from independent doctors

into hired hands of hospital associations and you know those hospitalization

associations are you know they’re regulated by government and again they’ve captured those regulatory agencies so

that when they write the CARES Act they give us a little bump for putting people

on ventilators for okay you want us to run desk great that’s you know three

thousand bucks what cut do we get out of that oh and plus we get another 20% oh we get an extra 20% for calling buddy

somebody COVID patient you know that guy just you know coming in here gonna die

from his motorcycle accident he had COVID so all the financial incentives were

there I mean the corrupt financial incentives again of course written by somebody to my great shame I voted I

didn’t want to I held my nose and voted for the first carriage CARES Act because I knew we had to do something significant

and fast so that Marcus wouldn’t collapse the only reason I did that CARES Act started out like 750 billion dollars and

within a week or two that was upward two trillion and I just I mean I helped that was the last program lead package I voted

for though because I saw the corruption of it but I didn’t I didn’t know the nobody knew nobody knew and that’s how

this works okay you’ve got smart people that know how to insert the sense they

want and they’ve been doing it over decades developing this power base so

they could implement it once they finally engineer their pandemic well I agree with you completely there is

obviously a Vay people like you and me apparently don’t know who it is we can see certain nodes that are

visible but we have no idea who they are I think a lot of them go to Davos if you had to try to round them up

somewhere I would start looking there yeah something something is at Davos but something gamed medicine and it used

various tools that as you point out had been sort of installed over time to do that one of them is the public health

apparatus which in theory provides a justification in order to protect people

at the population level to intervene at the medical level the level at which

doctors and patients interface but the whole thing was done in a way that I mean

it absolutely captured medicine and I’m as you are quite disturbed that the

doctors didn’t stand up then I’m maybe even more disturbed they’re not standing up now because now it’s quite clear

yes I

know on the other hand you and I I mean

you and I are old enough to remember the echo of Nuremberg right the point is this

is a lesson that we actually explicitly wrote into the collective consciousness

for this moment right

which if there’s anything that should tell you that this is some moment in history where extreme and terrible things

are afoot it’s that you can’t discuss Nuremberg in the context where informed consent is obviously central and not on

people’s minds but one thing that I think I’ve realized very late in this process

is that one of the ways that doctors were gamed was exactly those videos that came

out of China that actually the virus was already circulating in North America much

earlier than we thought but what doctors (…) imagined based on the information

they were being given was they imagined a terrifying virus with a high case

fatality rate that was about to jump an ocean couldn’t be stopped and that there

was something known from their colleagues abroad about what to do about it and the

thing you know watching people collapse the moon suits all of that had them work

themselves into a frenzy before the cases that they were going to be allowed to understand were a manifestation of this

phenomenon showed up in their offices so when those people did show up they were worried for themselves they thought they were going to be on the

front line of a battle right the reason they were banging pots

and pans in New York for doctors and nurses is God bless you people for having the courage to your

passion to treat these folks right so that that courage to treat those

folks led them to behave in this triage mentality which then caused an

artificially high case fatality rate they killed a lot of people with ventilators which they never should have put the

people on both because they were protecting themselves and because they thought it was the only way to save them they’re talking about the 30,000

ventilators that Komo you know demanded in New York without any respiratory therapists to go along with them right

and as Pierre Corey talks about I mean that is the last step in Jimmy you want

to avoid putting someone ventilated because people don’t get off it’s just so destructive you put a person on a

ventilator without the incredibly skilled respiratory therapists you need and the

problem is that I think a dispassionate

analysis says that that was not an error that for whatever reason we were led to

believe that a disease with a high case fatality rate was headed our way and then we were given an artificially high yeah

and so the whole thing said in motion the panic that then overtook all of us and it

took a couple of years for us to work our way out of that and we’re still not

completely done I mean most of the public does not understand that the repurposed drugs actually work and could have

managed the entire crisis you know almost perfectly

here yeah I don’t think it’s necessarily diabolical I think it’s just sort of the

national course of sort of economic development where you had you know just a

natural progression of one hospital buying another and another and another and again without any kind of diabolical

purpose all of a sudden you’ve got these larger healthcare organizations that are hiring doctors who kind of nice you know

eight hour 12 hour shift and not having to worry about getting called three o’clock in the morning you’ve actually got other doctors taking that shift and

it’s a lot easier lifestyle from that standpoint not saying it’s easy but then

all of a sudden you’ve got this structure and they are the ones are just smart enough to realize this is evolved into

this this is how we can take advantage of it that’s that’s kind of I guess my

assumption what’s happened here again I I know I’m being I’m always accused being

conspiracy theorist but things just sort of naturally evolve but there’s there’s always smart people to figure out again

when you create something that large that’s that thing has power and I go

right back to Lord Act and power corrupts and the whole point of a free market

capitalist system and what government does need to do is keep things at a

smaller level diffuse not allow those combinations that in the end result in

monopolies or closer monopolies and give economic or any entity the kind of power

to to harm consumers to harm our society and that’s that across the you know I

come from you know plastics industry where when I when I started my business in 1979 I probably had very specially

plastics probably a couple hundred customers it’s probably been whittled down to a couple dozen and that’s

happened in industry after industry after industry is again the smart people you know I said I’ve made my money deal

fashion way you know a couple cents a pound I mean the smart people do that leverage you know they borrow somebody

else’s money of course that’s what bankers do they use fiat currency saving their money they loan it but again so the

financiers you know how to buy these businesses on something borrow somebody else’s might turn them over keep turning

them over into larger and larger and larger entities till we end up with what I consider now the mess on our hands right now

well I agree with you I want to be cautious I think I hear this in in what

you’re saying it’s not that there was nothing diabolical here it’s that the structure that got gamed evolved

naturally in the market there may have been some diabolical thing but there’s not some master plan I don’t

think anybody’s ever that smart but once it’s there I mean wherever they’re

centers of power there’s always gonna be somebody that’s gonna be smart enough smarter the rest of us and go yeah I know

how to I know how to play that game and and that’s what I think happened is a system that had evolved for its own

reasons got got played by somebody very effectively and actually this reminds me

of something else you of course are maybe you knew Zev Zelenko I did Dr. Zelenko

true hero died of cancer during the

pandemic but he was a very early node he was he minced no words and let us know

just how dangerous the shots were(…) and I I had the pleasure of one very long

conversation with him before he died and we were talking a little bit I was

confused by the fact that the Israelis had so thoroughly vaccinated their

population which seemed very strange to me because this is a population that’s very sensitive to anything that you know

has the hint of genocide to it so I was shocked that they would have you know blundered their way into into those shots

at that level and he told me he said you’re misunderstanding their leadership

and he told me something I didn’t know which is that Netanyahu had apparently destroyed a warehouse of

hydroxychloroquine that they had at the ready at the beginning of the pandemic

which so to me there is the public

there’s the business sector which had its own defects and vulnerabilities but then

there is something diabolical you know there are some folks who view us as you

know pawns on the chessboard well I

agree and and this is one of the things that I think is so important about the

unity movement and the medical freedom movement at the moment is that it really is people we’ve got this malignant

governance structure that is frankly I think unarguably doing massive harm

almost across the board and what we’ve learned to do in part because social

media accidentally provides us the tools to do it is to bypass that layer and

we’ve started talking to each other and in so doing we’re actually we are more

informative than the news right we provide actual information it’s noisy we

make mistakes but but in in decentralizing the process of sense making we’re actually now out competing

these monoliths they don’t know what to do about it so their first instinct of course is to silence us you know to take

people’s licenses to punish them to to you know quietly drive them off of these platforms but it’s not working

when Bobby decided to run for president you know you made the saving this would

be the first presidential election that will really be determined by podcasts now when he said that that’s a little

fanciful in the end it was correct it

didn’t turn out for him I mean he because he was the guy who used the podcast but

in the end you know with Donald Trump then going on you’ll feel on and Joe world and that type of thing work the

public could see him on varnish this is who this is who he is and there is doesn’t look that evil actually pretty

engagement cares me pretty funny okay yeah so that again from my standpoint

what I love about it you know going doing a lot of media you get you know five minute hit the whole starts about two to

two and a half minutes you talk about two and a half minutes and you got to condense everything to sound about versus coming out of a platform like this where

you can actually discuss an issue you can do it thoughtfully you can do it in depth

and I think this is what we talked about sub stacks the same thing yeah now as

opposed to you know information controlled by whether some New York Times or Washington Post or whatever now you

have this explosion of people and again you have to be discerning I mean there is

misinformation on all sides and you’ve got to be very careful yeah I’ve got a

certain bias and I look at something and whoa look at this I shoot that I always shoot out to my staff then my staff goes

this is this is bunk so I’m I tried to be very careful that way because we all like

that I remember this is a total side my kids went to the University of Wisconsin

Madison so that was the home of the onion and I’ve never heard of the onion and my daughter brought home one time and this

was during Clinton’s presidency and they have this article about Bill Clinton and

I thought it was real I’m reading the same just I can’t this guy you know dad

that’s parody right so it just shows you we are all prone to accept as truth what

we’re biased to accept when may not necessarily so but again when you the

brand I said the solution for wrongful

speech or false speeches is more speech not less hundred percent and you know the fact

that podcasts did change the landscape is incredibly hopeful and in fact it is

there comparatively low production values that is their charm because when somebody

right of paper cup and yeah

well I mean you know the fact is you actually you

do oh I don’t yeah it does it also holds a lot of other things but the the

plastic oh that’s right well

actually this is this is the degree to which those of us who started out with a

kind of reason from some part of the political spectrum have now found each other and found very little to disagree

over is I think incredibly hopeful and so in some sense you’re discovering the

wisdom of the precautionary principle when it comes to complex systems and you know chemistry and unfortunately

you know these groups just come out but

but if he does get confirmed I hope his primary focus would be on bringing back

to scientific research remember Eisenhower his farewell address military industrial complex we haven’t he did that

warning but the second warning was government funding of research yeah how

that would produce a scientific and technological lead to drive policy I would say corrupt research and it has so

you get a fauci out there for four decades billions of dollars of research funding he got the results you wanted

pharmacy companies big egg you know they pay for the research they get the results

they want with that over to climate change yeah people know this is a result

that my father’s want and they’re gonna give it to him right so we have that’s

gonna be a tough task but if he constrain some man I think if that’s what he communicates to US senators this is not

I’m not gonna go out and things first we have to get the science uncorrupted bring

integrity back to research and then we’ll look at the research

yes so this is I would say my top issue

is that we science is a very powerful process it can discover what is true it

has the unique capability to self-correct but it is a very fragile process it is

not in any way robust to market forces it needs to be insulated from market forces

in order to do what it does correctly and if you don’t insulate it what happens is

exactly what we’ve got which is a pseudo scientific apparatus that tells us what

the the funders want to hear and there’s nothing more dangerous than that you’re better off not knowing anything and going

on intuition than being told something as if it was science that really isn’t right

which is not anybody who’s been through peer review knows how corrupt that that

system is there’s nothing in any way let’s put it this way I always say peer

review is not the same thing as review by your peers I’m in favor of review by your peers but the point is that is not

inherently an anonymous system in which you’re right the joke

in academia is it’s peer preview right they get to see it and if they don’t like it they get to kill it which of course

kill it or steal it which means that young people who are learning this system

can’t afford to do anything that contradicts the the received wisdom of

their field because in order to get into a permanent position you’ve got to play by the effective rules and by the time

people get there they’ve just been so steeped in whatever wrong ideas are powerful that they can’t escape them so

we have field after field it’s just stuck it’s a it’s yes it should be Bobby’s top

priority and I do think whatever I don’t know who we are exactly but we have to

get him confirmed it’s it’s actually essential to rescue in the Republic

yep when it comes to chronic illness and

looking at this this is completely nonpartisan yeah completely nonpartisan me I think one of the reasons i ran I

want a very narrow race in wisconsin 2022 was you know I I I try to convey to

people this is this is the truth to me I gave platforms for the vaccine injury I talked about early treatment. I gave

platforms for McCulloch and for Pierre Correa. And I think there were enough

Democrats from Wisconsin that appreciated that and went to the ballot box. So again, this is, the public is behind

this. I think my colleagues see that. It’s interesting. I’m kind of doing the unofficial whip count. And whether it’s Republican or Democrat,

the conversation always starts. Boy, I love a lot what Bobby’s doing and talking

about and advocating for. But, you know, there’s a laundry list of things that concern him. I think manly because they

have done everything they can to destroy him. Because again, what’s at stake,

if we find the root cause, in my last event with Bobby and Casey Means of these

judicial experts, we had Dr. Chris Palmer, a psychiatrist, does a lot of work on nutrition and mental health. And of all the excellent

testimony, his little snippet where he said they don’t want to discover the root cause. Right.

Because let’s say you discover that X chemical,(…) X herbicide or pesticide

or X vaccine,(…) if that is the cause, (…) that disrupts a multi-billion dollar

business model. But again, we’re talking billions. When you look at coal, that’s when people say, well, this is all about

billions of dollars, pharma companies understand the absurdity of that. I mean, the pandemic cost us trillions and forget

the cost. I mean, the human life. I mean, how many hundreds of thousands just in America lost their life because they

didn’t have access to early treatment? Not to say how many have been damaged permanently because the vaccines or lost

their lives because those vaccines. Yeah. OK, so it’s it’s sick to think that a few

individuals with an economic motive to get in our economic times, a few billion

dollars is not much. It sounds like a lot, but it’s not not in the general scheme of things. And that’s that’s what

government should be protecting us against is those narrow economic

interests that could put a couple billion bucks in somebody’s pocket. But it’s costing society.

Well, this is this is the key failure. And it’s actually what those of us, I

think you and I would agree that liberty is individual liberty is actually the key

objective of the system. I would argue it’s the only value you can afford to maximize because it integrates all of the

other values in order to be free. You’ve got to address these. It is the essential ingredient. It is the essential ingredient. So the

concern that I have and that you’ve just described is that a vast fraction of our

economy is actually composed of things that destroy wealth, but enlarge the

slice that is owned by some industry or company and that that should not that

should be something that we stamp out. It’s what we should want is a market in

which you’re free to do anything that generates wealth. But anything that destroys net wealth

should not be profitable. So to change gears to a different

subject, we address this point and I’ve just flat for my idea. But one thing that would be helpful on this is in our taxes

right now, you know, see corpse, the big ones, they’re about five percent American businesses, 95 percent of businesses are

passing, which means the business income passes through to the individual or in his tax that level.

The result of all this is 75 percent of C Corp income is never double taxed. OK, we

dropped tax rate, I think way lower than we had to for C Corps, put them in a huge economic advantage to pastors. Their tax

rate now is what we call permanent and pastors automatically going to get a tax increase in 2026.

What I was arguing back in 2017, I call it a true Warren Buffett tax, is convert C corps to pass remedies, tax all

business income at the ownership level and make the owners pay the tax and do it

once and be done with it. What’s what’s happened with C corps is because you have

75 percent escaping the personal income tax. That’s how Jeff Bezos you just lock

up all this money inside these C corps. The stock value grows. You end up with

the uber wealthy that would be as uber wealthy if they were forced to pay tax on

the income at the progressive individual rates. And again, I’d like to see a flat tax, but I actually support a progressive

tax rate. I think wealthy people can afford to pay a higher percentage. So I know that’s kind of veering into tax

policy. I’m hoping, you know, as we go through reconciliation and we avoid this, God be the number one goal, we can’t have

a massive tax increase on the American economy and the American public. I hope we simplify and rationalize our tax code.

That would be one rationalization. Yeah. That would be fair.

So I have long felt who was it Forbes? I

can’t remember who proposed the flat tax. I mean, there’s fair tax, flat tax. There’s all kinds of

stuff. We all talk about it. Right. When we get the opportunity, they’re not even discussing. So that’s like I well, I

got incentive finance so I can start talking to my colleagues and try and inspire them. Come on. We always talk about it. What you want like to be part

of the process? Let’s try to stop a sentence. We talk about his confirmation. I mean, wouldn’t you like to be part of

the process? We didn’t do in twenty seventeen. Let’s let’s take our time and

try and simplify and rationalize our tax code this time. So that’s that’s the separation is flat

tax is very simple, but it is not the only simple tax structure you could come

up with. You could have a progressive tax in which there was just, you know, very little machinery to be gamed.

But anyway, let’s leave that aside for the moment. That gets into the next podcast. OK, great.

Although most people could care less about taxes. Well, it’s one of those things, whether you do the details of it.

Right. Hearing about it. So I want to talk a little bit about the political landscape and where we’re about to find

ourselves as we have confirmation hearings and the like. And I wanted to

address two questions. One is.

I certainly voted for Trump. I’m enthusiastic about him. I literally

believe there is not another human being who could have done what he did and

therefore any complaining about details of the man is he is you is beside the

point. He basically defeated the duopoly single handedly. Right. Both parties,

which is an amazing feat and a necessary one. So I’m rooting for him and I’m looking to be helpful.

I’m of course concerned that he’s going to be handed a lot of ticking time bombs.

It’s going to be a big mess. It’s going to be we didn’t find this fiscal year that we’re in. We’ve got a death ceiling.

No, it’s going to be a mess. It’s going to be a mess. Do you are you hopeful that the puzzle is solvable?

I’m not the world’s greatest optimist. Me either. This is giving me hope. Yeah. I don’t think Trump gets enough credit

for a realigning politics. We’re now the party I’m involved in. I’m you must have

more tea party than Republican. But OK, you’ve got to pick a side. So I think Republicans now really represent the

working men and women of America. 100 percent. And this coalition that again I give both

Bobby and Trump credit for. Remember Bobby called up both candidates. One picked up the phone.

Yep. One didn’t. Yep. And that was Trump. And you know, as I’ve I’ve read what

Trump said about Bobby and vice versa. Yeah. And yet they were able to get it.(…) Washington’s a very collegial place.

Don’t think we’re fighting like cats and dogs. That’s the same. People realize at this level it’s like it’s politics. OK.

You say this kind of. So they’ve set those differences aside and they’re focusing on this area.(…) And again

that gives me hope. Because not only does it show how you solve a problem like you do in business.

I don’t care what your politics is. You want to buy my product. But it also demonstrates because I think the greatest threat to this nation right

now is how horribly divided we are on purpose by the way. Right. That’s what identity politics about

critical race theory I would say transgenderism. I’m sorry. What are we doing. OK.

But I think demonstrates this is how you heal a very divided nation. And that’s

what we need to do. So to me as much as I support Bobby for doing what he needs to

do.(…) He just he needs to be confirmed. Yeah. Kim Strauss was she’s

coming after him. OK. And I. I tried to convey to get because I really talked to him. OK. I tried to convey to

him. Just give him a chance. You know. (…) Because I just think it’s so

important what that represents. So yeah. They don’t agree on everything. You’re Trump’s missing. No you’re not

going to touch you know the liquid gold. OK. You’re not going to come anywhere near that policy wise. But we need people

of goodwill coming together and start fixing these. Mega problems we have 36

trillion dollars in debt again this administrative state is again when government grows our freedoms receive is

a direct relationship. I remember when I first ran I said you know under Ronald Reagan for a brief moment in time we were

72 percent free because our income tax rate was 28 percent. There you go. 20

you’re giving up liberty when you’re paying 28 percent. Yeah. And the same thing through government. So listen I’m

optimistic from that standpoint if if Trump can adhere to that if you know

Republican colleagues will give you know Bobby a pass on whatever he may have said

that they disagree with and realize what’s more important is what that represents. And again I’m talking about

the body. He’s not. I don’t think he’s going in there bearing all this stuff and putting risk all these industries that

Kim Strauss writes about in today’s column.(…) I think he’s going to be thoughtful. You know he’d be very very

thoughtful very intelligent and one step at a time. Let’s let’s fix scientific

research. Let’s see what the data is. That’s the that’s the only way to proceed

because in the end what is our greatest weapon is truth.(…) Again

truth is hard and discern. I think there is something called

absolute truth but trying to get there is difficult and the best we need to pursue.

And it is powerful and it is truth that gets the public on your side.

So let me just say I know Bobby pretty well. I’m a huge fan. I am embarrassed to

say that the slander campaign against him initially had me cautious and not knowing

what to think about him until I spent some time talking to him in detail. And I will say five minutes.

Yeah it was five minutes before you know the story about him is just wrong. But in my case I’m in the fortunate position of

being a scientist biologist and in a position to talk to this person who does

not have a science degree about these topics where he represents a position

that is effectively about biology. And I find him incredibly careful and

insightful. And every time I’ve heard him say something that sounds like it can’t possibly be true and I’ve gone and

checked it turns out that he’s actually right in spite of the incredibleness of the claim. So I am a great fan of

Bobby’s. I believe that just like Trump was the only person who could defeat the duopoly. Bobby is the unique person who

knows how the business structure works. He understands the law and he understands the science very well. And so

we need to get him confirmed. So also the story and you probably know it better than I and I hope I don’t get

this wrong. But how he got involved with the childhood vaccines.(…) He didn’t want to. Right. He understood the danger

but he’s giving these speeches on the environment and the moms would show up and they’d want to talk to him. And you

know he kept him at arm’s length for a period of time until one found his house. (…) Came to him with the staff of

research that I’m not leaving till you read it to his credit he did. And because he can read science he understands that

his eyes were open.(…) He couldn’t close his eyes and I think that’s that’s what’s true of I guess our movement is

once your eyes were open it’s again that’s that truth. I mean once you understand the truth you’re not going to

close your eyes to it and he didn’t turn his back on them. Even though smart guy he knew the thicket

he was walking into and he did it again that’s that’s what I mean just hearing

that story is what I like. This this this is personal courage and political courage and what he did which I mean obviously

you know probably harmed his family relationship obviously severed his from

the party that is really his namesake really the Democratic Party. That all

takes political courage which we don’t have enough of in this country political courage and an

incredible kind of integrity. So whatever you can I mean he’s lived a

larger than life existence his errors have been larger than life. His father the age of 14 right so I loved

it when you would obviously skeletons could could vote. Could vote. Yep very

very genuine and there is a symbolic way in which the tragedy of his life the loss

of his father and his uncle is our national tragedy. It’s you know it’s still an open wound in many regards and

so seeing him ascend at the point that he couldn’t win the presidency joining

forces with Trump there’s something poetic and important about the story. And I do think I worry as you do that

everything will be thrown at him to prevent him from being confirmed but I would point out if podcasts are able to

rearrange the dynamics of our political landscape such that a win like the one

that has just occurred can happen. That’s also the key to this question right they

can use their official channels to throw all kinds of slanders at Bobby but the

fact is it can’t work if we can hold their feet to the fire out here in public

in our you know low production values alternative venues. So it’s hard when you’re living history

to understand where’s the hinge point. But if I were to predict the first hinge point started with Elon Musk buying

Twitter and saving free speech. Yep.

Then I think it really was you know Bobby Kennedy right for president down Trump assassination attempt where he stands up

and shows that what did Zuckerberg say there’s the most badass thing he’s seen.

Yeah. Okay which I think rallied a bunch of people around Trump. Bobby made a very

difficult political decision to join forces with Trump. I mean these are all things that occurred in a pretty short

period of time that I really do believe can be and I hope end up being in history.

From a standpoint of conservative who wants to really limit government the way

our founders intended. I mean the fact that we’ll have the bullhorn of Elon Musk.

Yeah. Now all these other podcasters that are supportive of the effort. I mean I think we’re all recognizing the government is

you know got too big for its bridges. I’m a numbers guy right. We spent four

point four trillion dollars in 2019. Last year we spent six point nine trillion fifty five say increase while population

grew 2 percent. And we’ve just grown spending by population plus inflation which was massive. Maybe five point seven

trillion dollars. The amount of money that we spent above that common sense growth baseline is eight point eight

trillion dollars and five years. Now again there’s going to be screens and gnashing teeth as we try and cut more

than two and a half trillion dollars of that. There shouldn’t be. So hopefully with that bullhorn that Elon Musk and

others have.(…) We can overcome all the sob stories because anytime you threaten

a program you’re going to try it out a little you know child and the widow and we’re going to starve these people. No

we’re not. We’re very compassionate society. We all want to help folks like that.(…) We have to be concerned about

the fact that we’re more generic children’s future and how that’s going to destroy all of us.

Beautiful. I wholeheartedly agree. One last question before I let you go.

We have heard rumblings from.(…) I hesitate to say President Biden because

of course I don’t really believe that the power structure. You know I see him at the moment as a preposterous figurehead.

But we have heard intimations of pardons and in fact a trial balloon came out I

think last week that there was a pardon for Anthony Fauci being considered.(…) Now.

Personally I believe there is I believe pardons are very important. There are

some people that I really believe deserve to be freed from tyranny by a

presidential pardon at the moment. Roger Vere being one such person. Julian

Assange.(…) But the. The thing that I want.

To be clear on. Is if Anthony Fauci were to get a pardon

or anyone else in a position where they have presided over the covid debacle.

I think it is important that we get clear in our minds that that shouldn’t change our need to get to the bottom of covid.

This is not a personal story. This is not a soap opera. And while it is true that

people need to be held to account and in our country that means that they should

face punishment when they’ve done harm.

That even if that is off the table it doesn’t change our need to understand what happened to us so we can prevent it

from happening in the future. And so I think we should commit ourselves to pursuing the truth of Anthony Fauci

irrespective of whether or not he is outside of the range of punishment. Am I

seeing it correctly. I mean the. I could turn my back. But the main reason

I ran in two thousand twenty two for a fair term said I was going to do two.

I’d be happy to go home. Was because nobody else was advocating for the vaccine. And I knew if I won and we gained the

majority I’d become chairman of the permanent subcommittee on investigations. Yeah I was chairman of the full committee

but I didn’t have as strong of subpoena power as I will have as chairman of the permanent sub-committee of the investigation. As the ranking member I’ve

written over 60 oversight letters to the federal agencies that just basically give me their middle finger. So no I am

absolutely committed to uncovering and

exposing the truth.(…) Now if he gets a pardon he has no fifth amendment rights

so he’s got no excuse for not answering our questions. I think I’ve actually said

this publicly. Trump really needs to appoint a secretary of information extraction. My guess is the shredders the

you know the the disk drive erasers are working overdrive but today’s world it’s

hard to erase records. I mean we you know my staff found the famous emails with David Rans talking about I’ve got this

gal who knows how to avoid FOIA requests. You know not from the federal health

agencies one of the people on that email chain that did provide us.

So it’s very dangerous for these for these individuals when they have you know we’ve sent out letters of you know

preserve your records. Yeah your demands if those emails aren’t around and we’ve

got them from other sources and I’m getting putting you on notice we have emails from other sources. OK so you

better not destroy records because that’s criminal act. Yeah it is. Yeah it is.

Do I think Anthony Fauci is particularly evil man I do because I’ve read Bobby’s books. OK. Do I think he deserves

probably jail time. Yeah. Is that my primary goal. No my primary goal is exposure and accountability. Let’s let’s

destroy whatever reputation he has because he should have nothing but an awful reputation. And so to me it’s

always been the same case. It’s you know in politics exposure and accountability is the first.

Punishment and probably the most important because it deters other people

from that’s the whole purpose of punishing from my standpoint is to turn others from doing the same type of thing.

Yeah there’s certainly there’s certainly a role for actual punishment or else I mean like jail time because that’s a real

deterrent as well. But Anthony Fauci was an 80 some year I don’t care see him in jail but I want him fully exposed.

Yeah I wholeheartedly agree and I would point out that the destruction of a man’s

reputation especially somebody who has lived on their reputation is a punishment

and it’s an organic one. There is a reason that human beings are sensitive to this and it’s because it matters and in some sense you know having

to do something like create a prism to disincentivize is really the consequence

of a large anonymous society in which many people don’t really even have a reputation. But reputation or not there’s

every reason to get to the bottom of this and I agree with you if if Anthony Fauci is actually innocent. Great. Let’s figure

that out. But he he he sure doesn’t look that way. Yeah.

Right. He would tell back just wouldn’t say yeah user again same thing. He wanted vaccine.

So don’t allow a treatment that they knew worked. How many patients died when there

was something that actually worked. Yeah. He just repeated it. I agree with you. And this was one of the

mind blowing things about Bobby Kennedy’s not his most recent book who on cover up

with the one before the real Anthony Fauci is the discovery of the fact that

actually covered was a rerun. Many of us were learning this in real time but the fact is he’d been through it once and

it’s shocking the parallels and he escaped the accountability for it too. I mean there was one point the AIDS

community was always the guy I don’t know how to repair that. Yeah. My guess is through grants.

Right. I got billions of dollars now. I’ll repair that damage by doing out grant money.

Yeah. He’s a master of gaming the system. Well Senator Johnson it’s been a real

pleasure and I wish you the best of luck in the upcoming fights and I’m happy to

do anything I can to help you. I know you’re on the right track. But listen I appreciate the opportunity and this is what is very helpful.(…)

Keep doing this. Keep having on great guests like all these other podcasters do. People are watching this and people

are learning. That’s the most important (Music)