320: The Fauci Files

Summary

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Conspirituality Podcast

Episode 320: The Fauci Files

Hosts: Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
Release Date: August 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this incisive episode, the hosts dissect the latest political and conspiratorial onslaught against Dr. Anthony Fauci, focusing on the release and public interpretation of his so-called "diaries" and the recent Senate hearings where Fauci was interrogated, berated, and thrust once more into the spotlight. The discussion traverses how Fauci—a lifelong public health servant and scientist—became a scapegoat for COVID misinformation, analyzes the nuances of the lab-leak theory vs. zoonotic origins, unpacks the politicization and weaponization of scientific language, and explores how this spectacle fits into broader themes of disinformation, authoritarianism, and the war on expertise within conspirituality and alt-right spheres.

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Breakdown of Key Discussion Points

1. The Nature of Fauci's Diaries and the Senate Hearings

• Rand Paul’s Document Dump:
  Rand Paul released 1,141 pages presented as "Fauci's diaries," purporting to reveal discrepancies in Fauci's public and private stances.
  Quote (Julian Walker, 05:32):
  "It's not like Rand Paul is the nosy parent gaining access to the locked personal journal… Rather, he appears to have unearthed a tranche of Fauci's personal notes and observations in the professional public health context…"
• RFK Jr. & Conspiracist Collaboration:
  RFK Jr. spent months scouring 11 servers to piece together these documents and worked with senators like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson to push the narrative of contradiction and malfeasance by Fauci.
  Quote (Derek Barris, 06:23):
  "This isn't really about getting to the bottom of COVID… Kennedy admits to having spent eight months and searching 11 different servers to piece together these diaries."

Notable Segment:

[03:35] Derek summarizes the line of interrogation at the hearings:

"There's a lot to unpack in that opening volley thrown by Senator Rand Paul at Anthony Fauci during last week's show trial."

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2. The Lab Leak Theory vs. Zoonotic Origin

• Mainstream Science & Evidence:
  The podcast thoroughly explains why the overwhelming scientific evidence points to a zoonotic origin (from animal to human), particularly in light of peer-reviewed studies linking the initial outbreak to the Wuhan seafood market and specific susceptible animals.
  Quote (Julian Walker, 10:43):
  "Precisely zero evidence has emerged since 2020 for the otherwise totally plausible lab leak hypothesis… evidence has continued to steadily accumulate for the viral leap from animal to human hosts…"
• Incoherence of Conspiracy Theories:
  The hosts lampoon the logical contortions required for the lab-leak theory to plausibly explain such geographic and zoological specificity.
  Quote (Matthew Remski, 11:48):
  "The lab leak would have to explain… how the virus leaks from the lab and then sort of embeds itself in all of these animals that are just like… feeding at the same trough in the same stall… seems strange." Julian Walker (12:28):
  "You start to get like the famous conspiracy theorist bullet from JFK's assassination. Like it's making a lot of twists and turns. Right?"

Relevant Segment:

[14:35] Julian succinctly summarizes:

"All the scientific evidence that is verified by multiple people… all point in one direction and only in one direction. There's not a single piece of evidence that points in the other."

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3. Weaponization of "Gain of Function" & Grant Funding

• Funding Reality vs. Narrative:
  The hosts explain that the NIH’s small grants to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (and similar labs globally) were a fraction of normal pandemic research, not evidence of nefarious intent or reckless gain-of-function “bioweapons” work. Quote (Matthew Remski, 16:45):
  "So when Rand Paul makes it sound like Fauci signed a personal check over to the Wuhan lab… that has very little to do with participation in this fairly wide reaching research fund…"
• "Gain of Function" Semantics:
  They clarify there are two meanings to the term—one broad (standard in virology), one narrow and highly regulated (potential pandemic pathogen creation). Fauci has consistently, and accurately, denied funding the latter.
  Julian Walker (19:43):
  "The funding did not support experiments that NIH determined were reasonably expected to potentially create an enhanced pandemic pathogen…"

Important Clarification:

[21:01] Remski recaps the distinction and the media confusion:

"…the grants themselves are $600,000 and $200,000 over six years… Fauci is saying that none of that money over six years was going to that second, more tightly controlled level. Did I get it?"

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4. The Media Environment & Public’s Scientific Illiteracy

• Narrative vs. Nuance:
  The show underscores how narratives like “China bad, deep state scientist causes leak” are stickier in the media and social feeds than the real, nuanced, qualified processes of science communication. Quote (Derek Barris, 23:44):
  "But a true crime narrative like China bad leak virus from shady lab funded by deep state American scientist is so much more compelling… in a social media dominating media environment that banks on a scientifically illiterate audience, that shit is gold mined for the right."
• Host Frustration:
  The hosts admit science communication will always struggle with public trust and the weaponization of uncertainty. Derek Barris (25:09):
  "Science Communication will always be challenging, as will public health, because you need to qualify statements… The currency are the people who are confident and say things with conviction."

Key Segment:

[26:27] Barris justifies calling the Senate spectacle a "show trial":

"That's why I called it a show trial in Monday's bonus episode, because that's all it really is. It's an opportunity for the conspiracy theorists to corner the person they want…"

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5. Fauci as Scapegoat: A Historical and Conspiritual Pattern

• Origins of Fauci as a Villain:
  The hosts argue that conspiracy media (notably "Plandemic" by Mickey Willis) and activist figures manufactured Fauci’s status as nemesis, recycling older anti-vax and anti-science playbooks. Derek Barris (32:31):
  "You could say Andrew Wakefield is responsible for this hearing, right? There's always some further point back in time."
• Fauci’s Real Legacy:
  The podcast reviews Fauci’s decades of public health leadership from HIV/AIDS (including PEPFAR) to Ebola, Zika, and other global crises—contrasting his record with how he’s mischaracterized in conspiracy rhetoric. Julian Walker (34:13):
  "All of these conspiracy theorists during COVID were pushing for… alternative cures… Meanwhile, that's exactly what was going on during the HIV AIDS crisis…"

Powerful Segment:

[35:27] Derek highlights PEPFAR’s success vs. current dismantling—a meaningful contrast to conspiracy claims about Fauci’s harm to public health.

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6. Mistranslation, Distortion, and The “Pulmonary Infarction” Controversy

• Kennedy’s Claims:
  RFK Jr. and others allege Fauci’s diaries contain admissions of vaccine injury and celebrity obsession—often distorting, omitting context, or outright falsifying their interpretations.
• Fact-Checking in Real Time:
  Derek Barris points out flaws in Kennedy's claims about a Fauci vaccine injury entry—originally redacted by Rand Paul and later clarified, revealing that COVID (not the vaccine) is a primary risk factor for pulmonary infarction, not the vaccine.
  Quote (Derek Barris, 42:33):
  "You know what is a risk factor for pulmonary infarctions? Getting COVID-19..."

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7. The Broader Project: Authoritarian Strategy and Suppression of Science

• Co-opting Anti-Science Narratives:
  The hosts link the attack on Fauci to a broader, recurring historical strategy where authoritarian, anti-expertise movements motivate public distrust, diminish scientific collaboration, and scapegoat experts. Quote (Derek Barris, 53:05):
  "A Chinese lab leak is a perfect distraction for the anti-China Trump administration. It takes so much attention away from Trump's God awful handling of the pandemic and puts the onus on a foreign adversary…"
• Comparative Authoritarianism:
  They cite global precedents, from Soviet purges of scientists to modern Russia, Turkey, Iran, and even China’s initial silencing of whistleblowers, demonstrating a pattern of governments targeting scientists to consolidate power and wag the dog.
• The Fauci Files as Political Theatre:
  The episode ties the Fauci trial into a series of recent US congressional “show trials” targeting perceived enemies (tech, media, science, public health), none of which have resulted in substantive conclusion but have stoked disinformation and radicalized public discourse.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Weaponization of Uncertainty:
  • Derek Barris [25:09]:
    "You never say, it's definitely this. And that's just not currency in our media environment. The currency are the people who are confident and say things with conviction."
• On the Distortion of Grant Funding:
  • Julian Walker [17:16]:
    "...the framing is so dishonest because it's to make Fauci seem like this all powerful reckless villain. Like he's signing the checks, he's saying where the money goes. He's hiding the fact that it's for gain of function research. Scary stuff."
• On Authoritarian Patterns:
  • Julian Walker [59:15]:
    "Low information voters have elected low information officials and we get low IQ political theater hearings that accomplish nothing except the false perception of validation amongst conspiracy theorists, many of whom now hold the gavel."

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 02:05 – Introduction to the "Fauci Files" and summary of Fauci’s pandemic leadership
• 03:35 – Breakdown of Senate hearing and Rand Paul’s confrontational tactics
• 05:32 – Explanation of Fauci’s “diaries” and their misunderstood context
• 10:43 – Summary of scientific evidence on COVID’s zoonotic origins
• 14:35 – Clarity on the absolute lack of lab-leak evidence
• 16:45 – Breakdown of NIH grants and funding to Wuhan/other labs
• 19:43 – Explanation of "gain of function" semantics
• 23:44 – Why simplistic narratives trump nuanced science in social media
• 32:31 – Origins of Fauci scapegoating in conspiracy and wellness spheres
• 35:27 – The positive legacy of Fauci’s work in HIV/AIDS and PEPFAR
• 42:33 – Fact-checking claims of vaccine-derived injury in Fauci’s diary
• 46:05 – Fauci’s contemporaneous notes highlight science, not politics
• 53:05 – Host analysis of authoritarian motives and historical parallels
• 59:15 – Assessment of political theater and the weaponization of oversight hearings

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Tone and Style

The hosts maintain their trademark blend of sharp skepticism, political critique, cultural analysis, and exasperated humor. Their engagement is thoughtful, research-driven, and sometimes passionate, but also leavened by sarcasm and candid incredulity at the absurdity of certain conspiracy claims. They leverage scientific sources and historical parallels to bring depth and seriousness to their analysis, while also humorously lampooning the bad faith “show trial” theatre of the Fauci hearing and similar public spectacles.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Heard the Episode

This rich, engaging discussion offers a comprehensive primer on:

• How and why Fauci remains targeted by anti-science conspiracy movements and why those narratives persist;
• The real, evidence-based origins of COVID;
• The importance—and difficulty—of science communication amidst disinformation;
• The playbook authoritarians use to scapegoat experts and undermine institutional trust.

Expect a relatable, clear-eyed breakdown that’s both informative for non-experts and rewarding for those wanting to understand the intersection of science, media, and conspiracy in today’s culture wars.

Transcript

[Julian Walker]

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[Matthew Rimsky]

So there's no.

[Derek Barris]

No, no Buyer's remorse.

[Julian Walker]

More like Buyers rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out.

[Derek Barris]

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[Julian Walker]

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[Derek Barris]

Hey everyone. Welcome to Conspirituality where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. I'm Derek Barris.

[Matthew Rimsky]

I'm Matthew Rimsky.

[Julian Walker]

I'm Julian Walker.

[Derek Barris]

You can find us on instagram and threads conspiritualitypod as well as individually on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok. We're all over. You can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on [e-mail] conspirituality. You can also grab our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate support.

[Julian Walker]

Conspirituality 320 the Fauci files During an extraordinary career, Dr. Anthony Fauci led the federal response to HIVAIDS, SARS, H1N1, Ebola and Zika. He always advocated funding for pandemic preparedness, vaccine development, immunology and pathogen research. Then came COVID 19, which unlike outbreaks past, was trapped in a politicized online disinformation and conspiracy mongering stew. As he was pushing 80, Fauci rode the dragon of a novel coronavirus pandemic that was leaving piles of bodies in Italy, India and New York. He served as the interface between scientists, government and the public, all while learning about the virus in real time. Like any good public health communicator, he sought to save lives using the best available knowledge. Like any good scientist, he kept an open mind about what was not yet known. But the pandemic grievance industry made him the face of a conspiracy theory that can't quite seem to make up its mind. Did he cause a catastrophically deadly pandemic or decimate American freedoms and ruin the economy over a largely harmless flu? Today we discuss the release of his diaries and tune into last week's Senate hearings where crackpots bullied, berated and slandered the 85 year old public servant.

[Derek Barris]

The American people would like to understand your reasoning, your rationale for why you chose to fund the research in Wuhan. There have been, you know, intelligence agencies, the CIA, the FBI, the DOE have all come to the conclusion that more likely than not, the virus came from the lab in Wuhan. And so we'd like to know what was the rationale, what was the discussion, how, you know, what went behind the decision to fund the research in Wuhan. How did you come to the conclusion that a totalitarian country would be capable of doing this in a VSL2 lab, a lab that lacked the security? What was the reasoning? And are you sorry basically for making the decision? Would you, you know, like, given another chance, say, well, gosh, circumstances now, as I know, maybe it wasn't a wise thing. Can you explain to the committee why you chose to fund this dangerous research in China? There's a lot to unpack in that opening volley thrown by Senator Rand Paul at Anthony Fauci during last week's show trial.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah, and I love how the opening evidence comes. Agencies that are now all commandeered by Trump faithful. I think that's a real clue to open up with.

[Derek Barris]

But, you know, everything that went wrong with the pandemic is not Trump's fault. As RFK Jr said on Sunday, we'll, we'll circle around to that. You've likely seen a number of clips floating around by now, including Fauci pleading the fifth hundreds of times, which makes absolute sense in the context of what was happening, but played right into the right's hands in terms of media exposure, this idea that he was covering up what he did. We're going to get into all the parts of why Paul's question is disingenuous. But let's backtrack to what led to Fauci's appearance during the Senate hearings in the first place.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So over the weekend of July 25, Senator Rand Paul published 1141 pages of what is being characterized as Dr. Anthony Fauci's diaries covering December 2019 through December 2022. I said charact characterized because it's not like Rand Paul is the nosy parent gaining access to the locked personal journal in which their teenage child has written their most private and personal agonies and longings. Rather, he appears to have unearthed a tranche of Fauci's personal notes and observations in the professional public health context of his daily duties. Excuse me, his daily duties, his meetings, travel and media appearances and overall work trying to understand and manage the COVID pandemic while offering some personal reflections at how wild everything was that he was experiencing.

[Derek Barris]

And quick note on that. We'll hear a clip in a bit from RFK Junior's interview with Laura Ingram the night before the first day of the hearings. During this, Kennedy admits to having spent eight months and searching 11 different servers to piece together these diaries. So right off the bat, you know, this isn't really about getting to the bottom of COVID In the hearing, Fauci said Paul has an unhinged obsession with him, and that absolutely extend to Kennedy as well. Both Paul and Kennedy have repeatedly stated that these diaries contradict how Fouchy managed the pandemic, but has, as someone who has now read through hundreds of pages of them, this is absolutely false. They're just banking on people not reading them as well as the way that Paul presented them, which we'll get into in a bit.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You know, and let's just underline that Bobby's doing all of this instead of his job

[Julian Walker]

and may not be a bad thing.

[Matthew Rimsky]

And that always he has been a digger. That's been part of his sort of investigative, you know, technique, especially as a, an environmental lawyer tackling corporations. But I can only imagine that this investigative jag is provoked by, you know, vengeance over how much legitimate journalism has actually dug into his, Sorted his actual sordid history.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, and let's not forget both of these guys have books that they've published and promoted that slander Fauci and throw all of this muddying of the water disinformation about COVID into the mix. So within the context of these diaries, Fauci, as I said, is at times candid about his thought process, his professional discussions and his personal experience of being thrust into the intense spotlight and interacting therefore with several famous people while trying to get his arms around both an historic medical crisis and being the top public health communicator about that crisis under an anti science administration. Because contrary to what the Republicans tried to frame it as, the initial phase of the pandemic happened under Donald Trump for Rand Paul and fellow Republican senators like Josh Hawley and Ron Johnson, though, who've had Fauci in their crosshairs for years, the hearing focused largely on the so called lab leak theory. Did COVID 19 originate as a result of the Wuhan Institute of Virology's research funded by the US through NIH grants? And did that research constitute the kind of gain of function work that Fauci has long denied funding or endorsing? They and a host of other contrarians and conspiracy theorists believe that the answer to that question, to both of those questions, is yes, that their own intuitions about the Wuhan lab have turned out to be right. And the mainstream narrative about zoonotic origins of of COVID 19 via the exotic animals for sale in the Wuhan wet market is all part of a cover up. And so many public figures like Barry Weiss, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Brett Weinstein have acted over the years as if somehow holding onto their belief in the lab leak origin counted as it turning out to be true. Jon Stewart even had his famous moment on Stephen Colbert show where he ranted into the camera about the lab leak theory was to be true, and Colbert actually handled that really well. But here's the thing. Precisely zero evidence has emerged since 2020 for the otherwise totally plausible lab leak hypothesis, which Anthony Fauci has repeatedly said he had an open mind about as a possibility. However, on the other side, evidence has continued to steadily accumulate for the viral leap from animal to human hosts, which is why most scientists come down on this side of the argument. In September 2024, the journal Cell published an article showing that researchers analyzed an extremely exhaustive set of genetic and environmental samples that were collected at Wuhan's Hunan Seafood Market in early 2020. And they found SARS COV2 alongside DNA from wildlife species known to be susceptible to the virus, including raccoon dogs, civets and bamboo rats. They found this material, particularly around stalls where live mammals were sold. They gathered hundreds of samples from carts, stalls, drains and cages. You can imagine all of the different kind of material that would have been gathering there. And they did metagenomic sequencing, which showed clear presence of SARS CoV2 and DNA from susceptible animals. And they even narrowed all of this down to being heavily concentrated at one particular particular wildlife stall in the market. Now, this, combined with the geographic clustering of early cases in proximity to the market, and then another 2022 article in Science showing two distinct early viral lineages, all strengthens the case for two zoonotic spillovers as the most likely origin of the pandemic, rather than one which would have come accidentally from the lab.

[Matthew Rimsky]

As the non science guy on staff, I'm going to ask a couple of basic questions throughout this episode and one of guess I'm realizing by listening to this narrative is that if there's all of this very solid evidence that circulates or emanates from this one particular wildlife stall, the lab leak would have to explain that would have to explain how the virus leaks from the lab and then sort of embeds itself in all of these animals that are just like, I don't know, feeding at the same trough in the same stall. I haven't really thought about that particular paradox, but that seems strange.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, that's a really excellent point. Right. That it would have escaped the lab. So what are we saying now?

[Matthew Rimsky]

But then gone one place.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, it escaped the lab, it jumped to humans, then it went to animals, then it came back to humans. Like it's, it's, you start to get like the famous conspiracy theorist bullet from, from JFK's assassination. Like it's making a lot of twists and turns. Right?

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

I cut a video about RFK Jr. Saying that Lyme disease was created by gain of function research. Gain of function research, which is a long standing conspiracy theory. Lyme disease has been discovered in a mummy that's. Or a skeleton that's 5,300 years old. So they're not really concerned about those sorts of details, Matthew. It just makes for a compelling narrative. And you know, Julian, a minute ago you said, you know, Fauci was open to the evidence of a lab leak. And if longtime listeners will know, you and I have done multiple episodes on the Lab Week. We've both always said we're open to it too. Like it's just where the evidence points. But if something overturns it, that's what science actually constitutes. And what Paul and Kennedy are doing are not science because they've already concluded what they want to conclude and now they're just moving backwards. And listeners, if you are interested in going really deep into this about, you know, Julian covered a couple of the articles that are out, but in October 2025, our friends over at Decoding the Gurus hosted Philip Markelin, who is an excellent science communicator based in Switzerland, and he holds a doctorate degree in translational biomedic. He's also the author of Lab Leak Fever, which is a book that resulted after he hosted a documentary called Blame, in which he traveled around the world, including to Wuhan to talk to scientific experts about the lab leak theory. You can purchase the book and support his work if you'd like. I put that in the show notes, but he also made the entire book free via his substack and I've linked to that as well. He spends a good 10 minutes on the podcast going deep into every nook and cranny and then he sort of summarizes his year long, his years long findings. And that's what I'm going to run right now.

[Julian Walker]

Let me just summarize to say that all the scientific evidence that is verified

[Matthew Rimsky]

by multiple people, multiple studies, that is

[Julian Walker]

internally consistent and coherent with everything we know about viruses, virology, genetics, engineering, whatever, all point in one direction and only in one direction. There's not one, there's not a single piece of evidence that points in the other. On the laboratory side, we have no supportive evidence as all. We have a lot of evidence that contradicts it scientifically.

[Matthew Rimsky]

We have a lot of human testimony

[Julian Walker]

and human intel that contradicts it. And all we have on this side at best is speculations and what if, like, you know, what if, you know, allegations.

[Derek Barris]

So Philip talks a bit about the value of gain of function research as well during the episode, but I know you're going to touch on it now. Julian.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, so what about this gain of function Wuhan lab stuff? Let's look at the background of these persistent questions and why at this point, having talked about all of this in the past openly, Dr. Fauci pleaded the fifth in the pre2025 normal course of global Science Cooperation, the NIH provided grant money to an organization called Ecohealth alliance, which since 2010 had been focused on emerging infectious disease and pandemic prevention. Ecohealth alliance was involved in dozens of projects across over 30 countries, but in keeping with Trump 2.0's policies, it was defunded this year. Between 2014 and 2020. However, the sub grantees who received this specific research funding from EcoHealth included at least seven other institutions alongside the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Those facilities are in Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, North Carolina and China. They were part of a network studying zoonotic diseases which can jump from animals to humans. And according to government oversight records, the aforementioned Wuhan Institute and the Wuhan University School of Public health received around 600,000 slightly less and 200,000 as part of a grant titled Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Okay, so when Rand Paul makes it sound like Fauci signed a personal check over to the Wuhan lab while personally ignoring the risks. That has very little to do with participation in this fairly wide reaching research fund which is going to seven other places. And it's also doling out amounts that, I mean, $600,000 and $200,000 is a lot to us, but I mean these are fairly minor, like operating cost grants. Is that, is, is that fair to say?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, we're talking about over a six year period. And again, it's part of a global initiative to understand the dangers of these kinds of viruses that, that more and more probably due to climate change, are jumping from animals that are finding their way down into areas that they wouldn't normally have been in, into human beings. So yeah, it's just, it's part of the, the normal course of stuff that most people didn't know anything about unless they were nerds for this kind of science prior to 2020. And the, the framing is, is so dishonest because it's, it's to make Fauci seem like this all powerful reckless villain. Like he's signing the checks, he's saying where the money goes. He's hiding the fact that it's for gain of function research. Scary stuff. Let's get into the distinctions here. Anthony Fauci has always openly acknowledged the NAIH funding, but he has also always denied the characterization that the money was directed towards something called gain of function research as defined by US government agencies is how he says it. And of course those kinds of caveats make him seem dishonest to people who are conspiracy minded. The crux of this controversy is that scientists generally dislike using the term gain of function without any qualifiers, as it can mean two specific and different things. The broader meaning basically describes most research on infectious disease and microbiology. You modify viruses and study their genes, as well as how those might escape antibodies. You might engineer them to carry fluorescent markers so as to allow tracking over, you know, time and over large surface areas. This helps scientists to understand how to effectively combat these viruses with vaccines or medicines by gaming out their mutational possibilities. And that's all totally normal. But there's another more narrowly defined type of gain of function research which is subject to stronger funding review processes. This has to do with the risk benefit assessment around the likelihood of creating an enhanced potential pandemic pathogen. That's a technical term that's abbreviated to eppp. That type of research is covered under something else that is called P3CO, which stands for potential pandemic pathogen care and oversight.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Okay, so that second application sounds like it applies to military defense. Is that right?

[Julian Walker]

Only indirectly, because this is all still civilian health and Human services classification in a framework around levels of necessary oversight. It's just like, does it meet the requirements for this kind of oversight in terms of it being potentially risky, or is it within the normal range of what scientists are doing all the time? When Fauci says that the Wuhan lab was funded by nih, but clarifies that this was not for gain of function research as defined by US Regulations, he means that. He means something specific. The funding did not support experiment experiments that NIH determined were reasonably expected to potentially create an enhanced pandemic pathogen requiring that special P3CO oversight. I'll include a citation for all of this in the show notes, but suffice it to say that Fauci is not lying or dodging when he does this. Rather, as biosecurity scholars Gregory Koblenz and Rocco Casagrande point out, gain of function isn't actually the term used by federal oversight frameworks. The US Policy instead regulates only a much narrower category of research involving enhanced potential pandemic pathogens. So the framing of the question is already a trap. And that sums up the proceedings of the hearings altogether.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Okay, just one more clarifying question. So, the grants themselves are $600,000 and $200,000 over six years. And I'm assuming that only a small portion or a portion of that money would go to that first level of gain of function research, which is kind of like a generalized term for how you really study pathogens and how they travel. And Fauci is saying that none of that money over six years was going to that second, more tightly controlled level. Did I get it?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. I mean, the money is specifically designated toward research that still falls within that classification within the framework. And gain of function is a term that's been weaponized and politicized by people who go after Fauci and who have these theories about COVID in a way that is ultimately dishonest. Because if you think about it, it sounds really scary. You've got the. It's like a science fiction movie trope. You've got these reckless scientists in a lab creating mutant viruses that are so incredibly dangerous, and then they get unleashed upon the population. Does. Do lab leaks happen? Yeah, they do. But. But the, the. The whole way that this is positioned to make it seem nefarious, I think, is. Is the real problem here. And, and, and what? The reason why I included that citation is that people from within the scientific community understand the nuances of what the language really designates.

[Derek Barris]

So it's not just Paul Kennedy. Many others in this sphere regularly treat Fauci's involvement with any sort of gain of function as if it's some secretive, shadowy endeavor, when in reality it has always been in the open. People just don't know the language or they don't know where to look, as Julian just explained. And it goes back to the fact that that people generally pay so little attention to public health specifically and science generally, that when something like a pandemic happens, they're thrown for a loop. I'll be reviewing an excellent new book called how the Internet Disrupted Science on the next Conspirituality Book Club that'll be next Saturday. But this quote jumped out because it perfectly fits what's happening writ large with Maha and politicians in relationship to COVID

[Matthew Rimsky]

19 One study examined how confident members of the public were with their scientific knowledge after reading a claim written in domain expert jargon versus one simplified for them. Not surprisingly, they were much more confident after reading the simplified version. The researchers also found members of the public underestimated what it takes to be an expert.

[Derek Barris]

And that is an understatement given how much of an expert Kennedy constantly claims himself to be. But it speaks to the lab leak story overall. Philip Marklin in Dakota on decoding the gurus took 10 minutes to explain the nuances of his research, and it still requires a somewhat sophisticated understanding of the scientific process to even wrap your head around. But a true crime narrative like China bad leak virus from shady lab funded by deep state American scientist is so much more compelling. Yeah, we'll get to the incentives for why that story works, but in a social media dominating media environment that banks on a scientifically illiterate audience, that shit is gold mined for the right.

[Matthew Rimsky]

So my question here, this might be premature is like what's. Is there an answer? I mean, like Derek, I remember this is years ago, you gave perhaps several solid introductions to the topic of reading a scientific paper, and I think all of that stands up as good instruction and, and somebody like me will follow it when I have to for whatever research I'm doing. But there just isn't enough time in the day for me to not rely on institutional trust, which is what is being further destroyed in a hearing like this. So I mean, that's the biggest question, I guess maybe it's premature in the episode, but what do you think?

[Derek Barris]

It's very challenging and this is something I talk to and the science communicators I follow is that science Communication will always be challenging, as will public health, because you need to qualify statements. I always say this. When you're talking about any virus. You say, this is the best answer we have right now. You never say, it's definitely this. And that's just not currency in our media environment. The currency are the people who are confident and say things with conviction. And I don't really have an answer. And most science communicators, all they can say is we can just keep doing the best we can to simplify things in a way that honors science, but also adding the fact that there is more research. There's always more research to be done. So right now, this. That's why I called it a show trial in Monday's bonus episode, because that's all it really is. It's an opportunity for the conspiracy theorists to corner the person they want to make him plead the fifth 110 or 119, however many times and say, see, he can't speak to it. We have the truth here. And if you're in that sort of situation as. As a science communicator, you. You don't have an out. Given that the public is not going to understand what you're saying, I think

[Matthew Rimsky]

that show trial is a great hook for this entire thing. But I just want to point out, too, that it's not a trial. Right.

[Derek Barris]

Like, nothing's actually.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Nothing's actually happening, like.

[Derek Barris]

Right. But it kind of is, I suppose, public opinion. In public opinion, of course, legally, it's not a trial, but in public opinion, it absolutely is. And that's what. That's why. That's how.

[Matthew Rimsky]

That's why they're doing it.

[Derek Barris]

It. Yeah, yeah.

[Julian Walker]

That's why they're holding the hearings like that. And it's not a trial. But Fauci is pleading the Fifth so many times because he knows he can be held up on perjury charges if they can find some way to show that something he said in his diary over here doesn't comport with what he then says in his testimony. So, yeah, along those lines, Rand Paul has long exploited the public's lack of familiarity with how science works. In 2021, he said Fauci should be criminally prosecuted for lying to Congress. He published a book in 2023 called Deception the Great Covid Cover up, alleging that Fauci and others concealed the true origins of the pandemic and suppressed scientific dissent. The scientific community and public health officials dispute the claims in the book, which have led to no criminal proceedings whatsoever. Now, put a pin in that because we'll come back around in a little bit to how this Congress functions. The hearing turned out to be largely an opportunity for Democratic senators to point out the ludicrousness of the proceedings and for Republicans to take turns berating bullying and trying to trap Fauci into somehow perjuring himself. All of the old hobby horses are there masks, social distancing, lab leak theories, vaccine efficacy. Why do his private reflections sometimes contain candid observations that don't match up with his communication to America and indeed the world from his professional podium? Why was he honest in those notes about the pressurized yet gratifying experience of suddenly being so famous and being fated by celebrities? Sounds very self obsessed. So it becomes an ad hominem attack, right? As we said, the good doctor cited his Fifth Amendment rights over a hundred times, which makes him look guilty to those who salivate at the chance for opportunistic vengeance over their entitled Covid grievances. But those grievances, and how they then smear and seek to punish Anthony Fauci require either denial or ignorance of science in these two ways. First, because the evidence is simply not on their side, and second, because they demanded unrealistic certainty and accuracy all down the line from him during the real time unfolding discovery of knowledge generating evidence under the high stakes stress of a novel and global medical emergency.

[Derek Barris]

And third, well, we'll get to that soon. Because as with everything under Trump, the lab leak supports supports both his administration's goals as well as Kennedy's own perverse incentives.

[Julian Walker]

Honey, what are you listening to?

[Matthew Rimsky]

Mom?

[Julian Walker]

Your teen might not share everything with you, but teens share everything with each other. And certain everyday behaviors like sharing food, drinks or kisses, could mean sharing bacteria that can cause meningococcal disease known as meningitis. Although meningitis is uncommon, about 1 in 10 who develop it will die. Ask your teen's doctor about missing meningitis vaccinations. Learn [e-mail] Vaccination may not protect all recipients. Sponsored by GSK. Did you know Sam's Club isn't a store. It's actually a club with cool finds and like a whole community.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Community.

[Derek Barris]

It's a club.

[Julian Walker]

Of course, Jason.

[Derek Barris]

It's in the name.

[Julian Walker]

Sam's Club.

[Derek Barris]

Oh yeah. Come join us.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Sam's Club.

[Derek Barris]

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading

[Julian Walker]

random articles from across the web to

[Derek Barris]

Bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to

[Julian Walker]

hold your attention, and then your mind

[Derek Barris]

lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Anthony Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and infectious diseases from 1984 until his retirement in 2022. During this time, he advised seven presidents on matters of public health. While a lot of people didn't know his name until COVID 19, his most consequential legacy is the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. We've covered this before because it plays a big role in Mickey Willis's hatred of him, who now claims his brother died because of Fauci. Specifically, his brother tragically died of AIDS early in the crisis. But pinning it on Fauci is a distraction yet convenient origin story for what would become plandemic in 2020, which is

[Matthew Rimsky]

where our entire like project begins. And so now I have to ask, like, is it fair to say that Willis is primarily responsible for spotlighting Fauci as a scapegoat? Like, I mean, obviously this movement needed somebody like this. Willis cast him in that role. He had a personal hook into it. And for whatever reason, Fauci seems to have the bureaucratic and affective vulnerabilities to be an effective focal point. Like, is Willis responsible for this hearing?

[Derek Barris]

Guys, you could say Andrew Wakefield is responsible for this hearing, right? There's always some further point back in time. I'm interested because you bring up a really good point. At what point in his anti vax crusade did Mickey Willis tie Fauci to his brother? Because that happened. I don't think it happened previously. And then the vaccines came along and he was like, oh, there's Foushee again. I've been on him for years because earlier in his career, I've never seen anything of Willis berating Fauci specifically that seems to have just come along post Covid. So. But I would say he's absolutely one of the reasons being responsible for this broader mess we're in.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Right.

[Derek Barris]

With. With with these trials. Absolutely. Fauci was one of the first researchers to publish on aids, and he later shifted his agency's focus towards AIDS research and treatment. Access drive development of the Antro retroviral antiretroviral drug combinations that turned HIV into a manageable chronic condition. And for this, many public health officials and doctors rightfully treat Fouchy as a hero. Criticisms from people like Willis occur because that drug combination hadn't magically been arrived at during the first attempt when they were experimenting on the drugs. And sadly, many people did die until the exact dosage and combination was discovered. And, and I believe that's what happened to his brother. Viruses move faster than science, however. And this is also exactly what was happening in the early days of COVID 19.

[Julian Walker]

And the big irony of this is that all of these conspiracy theorists during COVID were pushing for, we want to use all of these off label alternative kind of cures because we believe they're going to be better than a vaccine. Meanwhile, that's exactly what was going on during the HIV AIDS crisis. Oh, my God. There's a risk benefit analysis. We think this might work. It's very promising. Let's give it to people who are in real danger from this thing that's spreading like wildfire through these communities. And yeah, this is part of what happens as we take those, make those kinds of calculations.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Well, Willis really froze the character of Fauci with the freezing of the scientific process in repeating this sort of constant claim that, you know, his brother was killed by a cocktail of poisonous medications as though that's all AIDS treatment ever was, that it never developed, that it, you know, like it wasn't, it wasn't. He, he wasn't living at a particularly difficult time in that historical process and wasn't able to enjoy the benefit of it having like, you know, ascended towards

[Julian Walker]

the level of management and also as if he didn't have hiv. Aids.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

Which is, you know, the, the, the, the real determining factor.

[Derek Barris]

Right. In 2002, President Bush sent Fauci to Africa to assess the continent's needs. Fauci became the principal architect of pepfar, which stands for the President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and that launched the following year. In 2003. PEPFAR is credited with saving more than 26 million lives and preventing nearly 8 million babies from being born HIV positive.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Amazing.

[Derek Barris]

Also, I didn't put this in the script, but I remember this distinctly. Like Reagan is famous, infamous for bumbling aids. It was Fauci who came in and cleaned up his mess.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

So when they, when they say he Foushee fucked up aids, they're, they're missing, they're missing the rights God who didn't give a. About gay people or what was going on at the time. Now, thankfully, PEPFAR was not part of usaid, which Elon Musk decimated. That said, Trump has not left it alone. PEPFAR has lost funding and is going through restructuring. And some nations like South Africa are Experiencing a full drawdown. Last week, PBS reported that 1700 treatment sites across Africa have now been shuttered. A report from 22 neonatal clinics discovered a 50% increase in HIV rates as well as an over 300% jump in women who can no longer access treatment. Thanks, Elon. The man who said 0.0 Africans have died because of what he's done. Now back to Fauci. Under his leadership, Na Niaid's budget grew by 17x, reaching $5.5 billion by fiscal year 2019. Fund research spanning HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and emerging threats like Ebola, Zika and COVID 19. His work on PEPFAR earned him the Presidential Medal of freedom in 2008.

[Matthew Rimsky]

There's so many threads that come together here, like PEPFAR aside, I guess I just didn't realize until now that Fauci was also such a major player in these programs that drew the racist disgust and vengeance of the Doge program.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, someone commented on one of my Instagram videos for the pod that I made made about the show trials and they just said, I don't go on Twitter often, only when I absolutely have to find like a Kennedy video. Yeah, and they said that they were just. The vitriol and hatred expressed towards Fauci is just off the charts right now. And obviously that's Musk's site. So it all does just blend together and he becomes a perfect villain. As. As Julian flagged earlier. Now, as you can imagine, with over 1100 pages published of his diary and more that actually went unpublished, Fauci wrote down a wide range of thoughts, from personal and scientific to cultural and political. Maha Media, unsurprisingly, has hyper focused on certain aspects and entirely ignored and even lied about other aspects. As I mentioned in segment one, RFK Jr. Was interviewed the night before the Senate hearing by Laura Ingram. Just like Kennedy's publisher and lackey, Tony Lyons, Kennedy claims that everything in his book the Real Anthony Fauci has now been proven true. Yet this moment reveals some something enlightening and troubling about the entire situation.

[Julian Walker]

And we produce these. You know, it took us about eight months to dig these out of 11 separate servers where they had been sequestered and secreted. And we handed them over this week to Rand Paul and Ron Johnson because they already have ongoing investigations and should see this. But the, I think the starkest impression that you get from reading these diaries is this massive dichotomy between what he was saying private, privately, and what he was simultaneously saying publicly.

[Derek Barris]

Talk about privacy invasion. I mean, sequestered and secreted. How is Kennedy, first off, able to access 11 different servers to discover his private writings? Like, the way this is framed is here's his diary that, you know, he was handwriting while he was planning the destruction of the world, and yet this is just gathered from all of these different places where he left notes. That's. That's it. And that gets back to the point of hiding it of the narrative. Yeah.

[Matthew Rimsky]

You know, what he should have done? He should have done what Bobby did in 2005, which is to write this beautiful children's book about St. Francis of Assisi while also writing in his diaries about how many women he was cheating on. Mary Robinson was as her mental health declined and as she headed towards dying by suicide. I think that if that split had been that clear, then I think Kennedy would be less outraged. He'd understand it a little bit better.

[Derek Barris]

Kennedy is split, that's for sure. I mean, he just keeps. He keeps repeating that Fauci contradicts himself. And having read through so many pages, and he absolutely does not. But Kennedy, like many wellness influencers we've covered over the years, depends on his followers not doing their own research. They just want the public to trust them. And sadly, as parasocial relationships dictate their followers, his followers often do. Here's a moment from that same interview that highlights exactly this fact.

[Julian Walker]

He got vaccinated. A very, very public press conference in January of 2020. And then five months later, he had. And this is the first time that we knew this from the diary. He had a pulmonary infarction, which is one of the adverse events that nih, cdc, and FDA said are expected from the vaccine.

[Derek Barris]

After watching this interview, I searched the entire diaries for proof that Foushee said he had a pulmonary infarction. And it's not mentioned in there. And I actually made a video on our social media feed pointing that out. And then a follower directed me to a Snopes article. I'm very grateful. And I did take the video down after this, because Foushee did write about it six months after receiving the vaccine. Yet Rand Paul redacted that entry in the document dump, which is why I couldn't find it. But it's rather strange because this is one of Kennedy's smoking guns, and yet Paul didn't make it public. So then I took the video down. But then reading the Snopes article that again, the listener shared. Thank you. This line jumped out, though.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Kennedy said pulmonary infarction was a known side effect of COVID 19 vaccinations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not list this condition as a common side effect of any approved COVID 19 vaccines used in the U.S. okay,

[Derek Barris]

but you know what is a risk factor for pulmonary infarctions? Getting COVID 19, which.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Which Fauci had a number of times. Right.

[Derek Barris]

I don't know how many. At least once. Absolutely. But he might have had a few times. Yeah. So besides that claim, Maha fans have focused on Fauci's writing about celebrities. He's suddenly thrust into a world as a long, lifelong bureaucrat. Now he's meeting with or hearing from from Barbra Streisand, Brad Pitt, Elton John, Julia Roberts, many others. He's become a media darling. And here's one often cited entry.

[Julian Walker]

Big front page article about me, appeared in the Washington Post. Very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It's not hyperbole to say that today I'm the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable people people in the world.

[Derek Barris]

On one level, I understand the ick factor. You know, just bragging about celebrities is always going to be sort of eye rolling. But again, this is a personal diary. It would bother me if Fauci was touting his celebrity friends.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

When he's behind the podium during a pandemic. But he was not doing that. Yeah, he kept that inside voice quiet, which, ironically is something Kennedy and Maha never do. They tout celebrity relationships all the time. Kennedy regularly posts photos of himself skiing or hanging out with actors. Recently, he played up collaborations with Kid Rock, Mike Tyson, Tony Robbins. The main Maha influencers regularly lean on the fact that they have celebrity clients. I watch Tony Lyons is his publisher and friend. Kennedy's weekly broadcast for Maha Action.

[Matthew Rimsky]

And.

[Derek Barris]

And he's always playing up celebrity endorsements. So the pot kettle dichotomy here is thick. But that's what they have to lean on when it comes to the Fauci files, because there's plenty else that they want to ignore.

[Matthew Rimsky]

And we should say that, like a key aspect of McCarthyism is the endless guild by association obsession with entertainment and celebrity as being necessary for brainwashing the American public. And all of this rides on, on disgust, not only for the moneyed elites, but also the entertainment elites. And both are usually coded or assumed to be Jewish, by the way. And these are people who are said to be responsible for an internal moral rot. And the general affect is they are laughing at us. They're having a high old time. Watch Them drink their cocktails at this fancy soiree, they're decadent and so on. And you know, of course it's nearly always the opposite. That's the truth. Like McCarthy was a terminal alcoholic. RFK Jr jokes about how many skeletons he has in his closet, but Anthony Fauci is not allowed to have internal thoughts at all.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah, and as I said, he was a lifelong bureaucrat and you know, he received accolades for his work. But being famous in the clinical world is orders of magnitude different from mainstream attention. Most of his diary is the day to day grind of dealing with a pandemic. And despite what Kennedy and Stan's claim, is very much rooted in trying to do good public health. Here's February 27, 2020.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Got phone call from Tom Bossert, former deputy national security adviser to Bush and national security adviser to Trump until John Bolton forced him out. Tom saw the press briefing on TV last night and was appalled, appalled by the denialism of the problem by Trump. He wanted to know if I was trying to bring in some reality testing. I told him that this was difficult. I emphasized that we should be testing thousands of people and not just a few hundred. With the first community case in California, it is clear that there are other infected people out there in the usa.

[Derek Barris]

Oh, smoking gun. He was trying to kill people. Later in that same entry, he came. Continues.

[Julian Walker]

Big Surprise was at 10:35pm Tonight I got a phone call at home from President Trump who wanted to chat about the coronavirus situation in general. We spoke for 20 to 25 minutes. I encouraged him not to underplay the seriousness of the situation since if it turns out bad, it would look like he's covering up. I even spoke to him from a political standpoint that his chances for re election might be more damaged if he downplayed the potential spread of virus in the USA than if he said we may face serious problems and even if the stock market goes down further, he was at least honest and the country would respect him for it. I thought he heard what I said, but the next day he again underplayed it. Man, the strategy, huh?

[Matthew Rimsky]

It sounds like he did a really great job. He had really good instincts with regard to what Trump actually cares about. It's wild to imagine him having to reason and persuade with that guy.

[Derek Barris]

Impossible. I couldn't even imagine trying it. And which you get in his writings is the real time evolution of the conspiracy thinking that dominated the early days of the pandemic. Here's Fauci. On March 28, when the full quarantine was already in place where you and I lived at the time. Julian Los Angeles. Turns out New York was not fully locked down yet. And just want to note that T F stands for Task force here Today

[Matthew Rimsky]

Trump tweeted that he was considering quarantining the New York Tri state area, New York City, New Jersey, Connecticut. This triggered triggered a major news buzz. Governor Cuomo called me. I was in my NIH office getting ready to do the Saturday task force meeting from the NIH scif. Cuomo asked me to help dissuade the President since he Cuomo would have to forcibly push back on this and would defy National Guard troops sent to enforce the queue.

[Derek Barris]

Jump ahead to May 6th when Fauci realizes Trump has had no many streams of consciousness duds as he calls them. This entry gives some insight into why someone like Kennedy loathes Fauci so much.

[Julian Walker]

Begin day with uncertainty about the fate of the TF as well as the fact that there is great discord in the country regarding opening abruptly versus continued careful mitigation. It's clear that Trump and advisers are concentrating only on opening and saving the economy for the election in November. To be fair, we should consider that there are unintended consequences in my area of health. Had conversation with Bob Redfield last night about the fact that less than 1 million children worldwide have missed their measles vaccinations because of the shutdown. This is terrible and needs to be addressed since on the basis alone there could be far, far more excess deaths from measles among children than coronavirus deaths among children. I need to bring this up at the task force meeting.

[Derek Barris]

This is one of the entries that Kennedy weaponized too and in his interview with Dana Bash where where he actually says the reason we have a measles outbreak right now in America is because of Foushee's lockdowns. That's what he says and it comes from that entry specifically. And you hear Foushee being like this is a problem. Now Kennedy is making the assertion that children were the anti vax. Kennedy is making the assertion that children did not get vaccinated in 2020 and so in 2020, 2026 were having a measles outbreak because of it. Yet I looked it up and clinics started opening in late 2020 and in 2021 and 22 the various health agencies had catch up vaccine drives and initiatives for children to get the measles vaccinations. Ironically in 2024, which is the last year we have data, we are at lower levels of measles vaccinations than we were in 20, 20, 20. Why is that, Kennedy? Could it have been the weaponization of vaccinations? So he, he just, again, he just distorts. Because what I just read or what Julian just read, there are hundreds of examples of writing like this, but the right got ahead of anyone actually reading these diaries to say that Fauci contradicts himself between his interpersonal and public guidance. And again, again, that's just false.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yeah. And also, I mean, that passage is this very kind of. I mean, it's very moving to me to see how many things he has to juggle. And he's actually considering this problem that, you know, you keep people home, the kids aren't going to get vaccinated and measles is going to be a problem and we've got to fix that. Like, to use that against them is just so deplorable.

[Derek Barris]

Well, this has all been a distraction from people actually digging into the diaries in any depth. And of course it works. It's worked before. Or we'll get into that in the next segment.

[Julian Walker]

Teens share everything that may include the bacteria that can cause meningococcal disease known as meningitis. Even if your teen's been vaccinated in the past, they could still be missing meningitis vaccinations. Ask your teen's doctor or visit meningitis.com today sponsored by GSK. Did you know Sam's Club isn't a store? It's actually a club with cool find

[Derek Barris]

lines and like a whole community. It's a club.

[Julian Walker]

Of course, Jason. It's in the name Sam's Club.

[Derek Barris]

Oh, yeah.

[Julian Walker]

Come join us, Sam's Club. Hey, do you have trouble sleeping? Then maybe you should check out the Sleepy podcast. It's a show where I read old books in the public domain to help you get to sleep. It was the best of times, it

[Matthew Rimsky]

was the worst of times.

[Julian Walker]

Sometimes it was the age of wisdom. Classic stories like A Tale of Two Cities, Pride and Prejudice, Winnie the Pooh. Stories that are great for kids and adults alike. So whether you have a tough time snoozing or just like a good bedtime

[Matthew Rimsky]

story, fluff up the cool side of

[Julian Walker]

your pillow and tune into Sleepy. Unless you're driving, then please don't listen to Sleepy. Find Sleepy wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Sunday. So we dreams.

[Derek Barris]

We've been covering the lab leaks since very early in this podcast. And as Julian flagged, it's been discussed by many figures that we regularly cover. Now let's pull out a little bit and consider where it fits in the broader conspiracy theorizing fields in American culture. While Trump was suggesting shooting light into your body and drinking bleach, Fauci is there, as you heard, weighing the risks of lockdowns, who versus the measles vaccines and catching up there. Yet the picture being painted of him by Maha right now is the devil incarnate who joyously locked down the nation, children be damned, in an insane quest to vaccinate everyone and deny the Wuhan origins in a laboratory of this plan. Demic Here we arrive at the third key that I had flagged at the end of segment one are really keys to understand why the right is obsessed with this story. And again, I'm going to ping the interview with Philip Marelin as he ties these threads together. I'll be more brief in this A Chinese lab leak is a perfect distraction for the anti China Trump administration. It takes so much attention away from Trump's God awful handling of the pandemic and puts the onus on a foreign adversary. It doesn't help that China's track record on both scientific experimentation and rewriting history with faulty information is shady as fuck. But the the way this sort of Project 2025 fueled administration has exploited that fact speaks volumes to their corruption and their goals. Then the second one For Kennedy and his crew of anti vax bandits, this lab leak is a gift. It allows him to end gain of function research, which happened in 2025 thanks to Executive Order 14292, all federally funded research meeting the administration's own definition of dangerous gain of function research was immediately paused and this fits into Kennedy's broader anti vaccine, anti pharmaceutical anti research framework. And it gives him cover to rearrange his agencies however he sees fit. Which is exactly what Kennedy has been doing. I know it sounds reductive, but this all reflects the activist playbook obsessively focus on individual health over public health in your messaging. Do everything in your power to shift money from public health products programs to your industry friends. And as I've covered in recent weeks, Kennedy is actively promoting the chiropractic and peptides industries right now, elevating associates in those fields and giving them positions or stage time in dc. Whether or not Kennedy actually believes in the lab leak is beside the point, but honestly, it wouldn't shock me. Whether or not he's taking advantage of that narrative to continue to foment distrust in institutions and use it to his own benefit is obvious and just pulling out. We we also have Plenty of historical presidents precedents for why governments prosecute scientists, especially when they have authoritarian agendas. You have physicist Andre Socarov, who helped build the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb before criticizing the government's human rights abuses and their invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. He was stripped of his titles and he was exiled for six years. And this was nothing new in that country because geneticist Nikolai Vavilov died in prison in the 40s for attempting to expose Lysenko's pseudoscience closer. Today, Russia has brought at least 10 treason cases against scientists working on hypersonic weapons technologies. And this is just in the past decade. Putin's government cites espionage, while the scientists argue it's simple international collaboration which authoritarians do not look like. For example, the Trump administration has greatly reduced international collaboration across the sciences. And that I we explored two weeks ago in the the Office of Management and Budgets new policy proposal which would basically end as much international collaboration as possible. Then we go to Turkey. After a failed coup attempt in 2016, Erdogan's government fired more than 4,800 academics. And then all other estimates put it above 8,000. And this was all part of a post coup academic purge. In early 2018, Iran's Revolutionary Guards arrested more than a dozen conservation scientists, accusing them of using wildlife camera traps to spy on missile sites for the US and Israel. One sociologist died in custody while other researchers described torture and threats of execution during investigations. And then pertinent to today's story, Dr. Li Wen Liang was the Wuhan ophthalmologist who flagged a SARS like virus in a private WeChat group in December of 2019. On January 3rd, 2020, he was detained by police and reprimanded for spreading rumors. And then sadly he died of COVID 19 weeks later. And then we have Kennedy. I flagged his interview with Dana Bash on CNN this past Sunday. He basically berated and talked over her in a misinformation filled 21 minute interview. During that time he blamed the measles outbreak on Fauci. As I said, he said I take no personal responsibility for it. He said that Covid, RSV and Lyme disease were all caused by gain of function research, which as I flagged is bullshit. And he refused to take responsibility for any public health failings. He put the onus everything evil that's ever existed on Fauci's shoulders. So Kennedy fits quite well in the list of bureaucrats and autocratic leaders that I just mentioned.

[Julian Walker]

Is that the same interview? I've seen a clip Floating around of where he says, you wouldn't understand this because you're not a scientist.

[Matthew Rimsky]

Yes, classic.

[Julian Walker]

Because I'm a scientist.

[Derek Barris]

Well, Dana, I, I will say this. Dana did a really good job job at handling the man child because she immediately shot back, neither are you. And then he just tried to move on from that.

[Julian Walker]

So yeah, historically Derek, as you just ran down, this is how authoritarianism undermines science, but also journalism and justice. And since Trump's return, these are the times we're living through. Low information voters have elected low information officials and we get low IQ political theater hearings that accomplish nothing except the false perception of validation amongst conspiracy theorists, many of whom now hold the gavel. We've had the Twitter files, as you know, part, part of this sort of litany of, of unfolding examples of this. And then the ensuing hearings on the so called censorship industrial complex as part of the bogus committee on the weaponization of the federal government in which Republicans are painted as the victims of an evil conspiracy between big tech companies, woke university think tanks and government intelligence agencies. The Twitter files allegation is that this collusion led to the silencing of anti vaxxers, fact checking of election fraud, also being silenced, immigration apocalypse claims being being suppressed, and transgender medical care claims on social media, as well as suppressing lab leak, Covid origins, and of course the big fish preventing the Hunter Biden laptop story from sealing a Trump victory in 2020. Now, did any of these very serious sounding hearings result in prosecutions as they got to the truth? No, because it's all just for show. And it gives crackpots like Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger their day in the sun and a doorway into their next round of podcast interviews. While serious professionals like Renee Diresta, who've been actively involved in protecting the country from malign foreign disinformation campaigns and online terrorist recruitment, have their careers derailed of this. Then we had all the hullabaloo about releasing the Epstein files, resulting in a dump of 3.5 million documents for conspiracists to use for some kind of apophenia based twister game of narrative construction. But that led to prosecutions, right? Nope, all for show and heavily redacted, presumably to protect Trump. Then we've had this wave of hearings about UFOs. I mean UAP, featuring a rotating cast of History Channel and Gaia TV crackpots and grifters with shows, promote and books to sell, based almost entirely on anecdotes and extremely ambiguous material evidence. I should say almost entirely on anecdotes, except when they have extremely ambiguous material evidence. And that's it. This is exciting for the enthusiasts, including those in Congress who've watched way too many X Files reruns. But were there any revelations that might change the minds of skeptics? No, none. Exposure of actual government secret programs and then holding officials to account for high hiding the truth? Of course not. What we are dubbing here, the Fauci files is just the latest in this list of embarrassing misuses of taxpayer dollars and government time, serving only to continue the ever deepening derangement of post truth public discourse. Sleep Number's new collections are designed to adapt to the changing nature of your life and your sleep needs. Whether it's the personalized comfort of the Comfort Mode mattress, the targeted pressure relief of the Comfort Next mattress, or the Climate collection that actively cools or warms to help you fall asleep and stay asleep.

[Derek Barris]

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