Remembering Pope Francis’ Life and Legacy, Reality of Trump’s Tariff Policies, and Media Lies, with Kevin O’Leary and David Zweig | Ep. 1053

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Megyn Kelly Show – Episode 1053

Title: Remembering Pope Francis’ Life and Legacy, Reality of Trump’s Tariff Policies, and Media Lies, with Kevin O’Leary and David Zweig
Host: Megyn Kelly
Guests: Kevin O’Leary, David Zweig
Release Date: April 21, 2025
Channel: SiriusXM Channel 111

---

1. Remembering Pope Francis: Life and Legacy

Announcement of Pope Francis' Passing
Timestamp: [00:00]
Megyn Kelly opens the episode with the shocking news of Pope Francis' death at age 88. She reflects on his prolonged battle with double pneumonia and chronic lung issues, noting his last public appearance on Easter Sunday in a wheelchair.

Legacy and Impact on the Catholic Church
Timestamp: [02:15]
Kelly delves into Pope Francis' election in March 2013, highlighting his role as the first Pope from Latin America and his progressive stance within the Church.

"Pope Francis moved the church in a leftward direction, no question, and away from some of the more divisive issues within the church." – Megyn Kelly [02:45]

Clash with President Trump
Timestamp: [06:30]
The conversation shifts to Pope Francis' opposition to Trump's immigration policies, specifically Trump's focus on building walls versus the Pope's emphasis on building bridges.

"A person who thinks only about building walls and not of building bridges is not Christian." – Pope Francis [06:50]

Future of the Catholic Church: The Conclave
Timestamp: [12:20]
Kelly outlines the forthcoming conclave to elect the new Pope, detailing the stringent protocols cardinals must follow, including seclusion and prohibition of external communication.

---

2. Reality of Trump’s Immigration Policies

Public Support and Challenges
Timestamp: [14:31]
Kevin O’Leary presents data showing increased public support for deporting all undocumented immigrants, citing a rise from 38% in 2016 to 56% in 2025.

"The majority. The American people have come a long way on this issue, much closer to Donald Trump." – Kevin O’Leary [14:31]

Implementation Hurdles
Timestamp: [20:10]
Discussion on the Trump administration's efforts to deport approximately 18 million illegal immigrants, facing significant obstacles from the ACLU and judicial rulings.

"It's starting to look like we're actually really going to have to provide hearings in each case." – Megyn Kelly [20:30]

Legal and Logistical Barriers
Timestamp: [24:38]
O’Leary emphasizes the Supreme Court's rulings against the use of the Alien Enemies Act, severely limiting deportation efforts.

"Due process, that's what everybody calls it." – Kevin O’Leary [24:38]

---

3. Trump’s Tariff Policies and Economic Impact

Economic Volatility and Tariffs Explained
Timestamp: [31:54]
O’Leary breaks down the complexities of Trump’s tariff policies, particularly focusing on the trade war with China and its ramifications on American businesses.

"This is like squeezing a teenage pimple. That's what's going on here." – Kevin O’Leary [36:45]

Impact on American Entrepreneurs and IP Theft
Timestamp: [38:06]
Kelly highlights real-world consequences of tariffs through the story of Beth Benneke, CEO of Busy Baby, who faces crippling costs due to increased tariffs.

"That's an astonishing number." – David Zweig [38:22]

Strategies for Resolving Trade Conflicts
Timestamp: [40:22]
O’Leary advocates for reciprocal tariffs and leveling the playing field with China to protect American intellectual property and market access.

"I do business in China and I've been royally screwed. And I'm tired of it." – Kevin O’Leary [40:22]

Future Outlook on Tariff Negotiations
Timestamp: [43:24]
Discussion on the inevitability of resolving tariff disputes, with optimism that economic pressures will compel China to negotiate.

"There's no scenario where Xi can outlast the American consumer." – Kevin O’Leary [43:24]

---

4. Media Lies and COVID-19 Policies with David Zweig

Introduction to David Zweig’s Book
Timestamp: [53:35]
Megyn Kelly introduces David Zweig and his new book, An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus and A Story of Bad Decisions, which critiques the COVID-19 response in the U.S.

School Closures and Their Impact
Timestamp: [56:01]
Zweig discusses the rationale behind prolonged school closures, highlighting the disproportionate impact on low-income families and children with disabilities.

"Healthy kids, we barred healthy children from school." – David Zweig [56:34]

Failures in Public Health and Media Collaboration
Timestamp: [62:34]
Zweig critiques the collaboration between public health officials and the media, arguing that flawed models and unchallenged authority led to misguided policies.

"What we were given was just following the science. There was no following the science." – David Zweig [78:58]

Media's Role in Shaping Public Perception
Timestamp: [70:37]
Discussion on how U.S. media amplified hysteria around COVID-19, ignoring positive data from Europe where schools reopened without adverse effects.

"The American media was unique in its dialing the knob up to 11 for hysteria over this." – David Zweig [72:44]

Consequences of Policy Decisions
Timestamp: [84:17]
Zweig outlines the long-term damages of pandemic policies, including learning loss and increased vulnerability among children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

"Millions of children were back to school in Europe and nothing has happened. It's fine." – David Zweig [72:23]

Final Thoughts on Public Health Leadership
Timestamp: [102:48]
Zweig reflects on Dr. Anthony Fauci's role, criticizing the overstatement of evidence and lack of accountability in the pandemic response.

"Anthony Fauci was the figurehead... they overstated evidence over and over again." – David Zweig [102:48]

---

Notable Quotes

• Megyn Kelly on Pope Francis:

  "Pope Francis moved the church in a leftward direction, no question, and away from some of the more divisive issues within the church." [02:45]

• Kevin O’Leary on Public Support for Deportations:

  "The majority. The American people have come a long way on this issue, much closer to Donald Trump." [14:31]

• Megyn Kelly on Legal Challenges:

  "It's starting to look like we're actually really going to have to provide hearings in each case." [20:30]

• Kevin O’Leary on Tariffs:

  "This is like squeezing a teenage pimple. That's what's going on here." [36:45]

• David Zweig on Media and Public Health Failures:

  "What we were given was just following the science. There was no following the science." [78:58]

---

Conclusion

In this episode, Megyn Kelly navigates through a tapestry of pressing issues, starting with the profound impact of Pope Francis on the Catholic Church and his contentious relationship with President Trump. The conversation then transitions to the complexities and challenges of Trump's immigration and tariff policies, featuring insights from business magnate Kevin O’Leary. The episode culminates with an in-depth discussion with David Zweig, who critiques the U.S. pandemic response and media's role in shaping public perception, drawing attention to the long-lasting consequences of these decisions on American society.

Listeners gain a multifaceted perspective on the intersection of religion, politics, economics, and media, underscored by poignant quotes and real-world implications that resonate beyond the immediate topics discussed.

Transcript

[Megyn Kelly]

Three distinct all electric Cadillacs. Some drive them for the performance, others drive them for the range. And some drive them because it's the only way to make an entrance. Three different ways to turn every drive into an occasion. Whatever your reason, there's never been a better time to say, let's take the Cadillac. The all electric Cadillac family of vehicles. Escalade, IQ Optic and Lyric. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon East. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to the Megyn Kelly show and happy Monday. We begin today with news from the Vatican. Pope Francis dead at age 88. It was kind of shocking to wake up to, even though we knew he was not in good health. He had had double pneumonia and been hospitalized for some five weeks in mid February. I mean, we knew he wasn't doing that well, but it seemed like he was past the worst of it and maybe was getting a little better or at least on the road toward getting a little better. And then Cardinal Kevin Farrell somberly came out this morning and stated at 7:35 this morning, the Bishop of Rome Francis returned to the house of the Father. There's no official cause of death released as of now, but as I said, he's been suffering from these chronic lung issues. And then beginning in February, he was in the hospital for some 38 days with these respiratory issues. Amazingly, you've seen this maybe by now, yesterday, just yesterday, he appeared in his wheelchair in like the back of the Popemobile. I don't know what that is. I'm not exactly sure. The vehicle on Easter Sunday. Look at that. It's kind of amazing. In St. Peter's Square. And one of the last people to meet with Pope Francis was Vice President J.D. vance. Pretty incredibly, the Vice President had a brief meeting with the Pontiff yesterday where the pair exchanged Easter greetings and gifts. Mr. Vance telling Pope Francis he prays for him daily. Watch. I know you've not been feeling great, but it's good to see you in better health. Pray for you every day. God bless you. You'll find us a lay on your Jordan because you're La Benedica. Grazia. Santa. Happy Easter. Wow. Pretty extraordinary. This Pope was elected Pope in March of 2013 after the shock resignation of Pope Benedict. No Popes resign. They just don't do it. The first Pope Benedict, sorry, Francis from Latin America, first ever. Can you believe that? Given how Catholic Latin America is, he was our first Pope from there. And Pope Francis immediately jolted energy and enthusiasm into the church. He was a Jesuit. He was a little bit more progressive, and this got a lot of people excited. Many people thought the church had gone too hardcore, though. We stood by some traditional things like an all male papacy and celibacy, among other things, the church's stance on abortion, which people are kidding themselves if they want the Catholic Church to amend. But this is what we hear from young progressives within the Catholic Church. Okay, good luck with that. Maybe we could get, you know, I guess you can still have priests who come to the church married. Like you can become a priest after having been married, that is, at least, and having, like, children, but you cannot enter the priesthood. They get married. That's just. Anyway, here's Pope Francis's first appearance as Pope on the balcony of the Vatican. Wow. It's always a sight to behold, right? He was born Jorge Morello Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, where his mother hoped he would become a doctor. But just before his 17th birthday, he paused in front of the Basilica of St. Joseph and later recounted. He felt like someone grabbed me from the inside and took him into the confessional right there. He said, I knew I had to be a priest. His mother evidently was upset he would not become a doctor. But he said, quote, I'm going to study the medicine of the soul. Can you imagine? And then he went on to become the Pope. It's incredible. Pope Francis moved the church in a leftward direction, no question, and away from some of the more divisive issues within the church. As I mentioned, he did not focus that much on abortion, but he didn't change the stance. Homosexuality, shifting its emphasis to global problems like climate change, poverty. And he was very big on migration. He clashed with President Trump over Trump's immigration policy, saying before the 16 election that a person who thinks only about building walls and not of building bridges is not Christian. That's. This is why he was controversial amongst, in particular, a lot of Christians here in America who tend to be more conservative. The Trump campaign responded by pointing out that the Vatican is surrounded by walls. We saw that exact thing happen a couple of weeks ago where once again, he was ripping on Trump's policies when it comes to immigration. And once again, we had Tom Homan coming out and saying, my response as a lifelong Catholic to this pope is that the Vatican has walls. Why is that? Ahead of the 2024 election, the pope declined to say whether people should vote for Trump or Harris, merely urging people to choose the lesser evil according to their conscience. But in a letter to US Bishops in February, Pope Francis wrote that mass deportation, quote, damages the dignity of many men and women and of entire families and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness, unquote. Now, look, this is the problem because not only is that the church's official stance, but the church has been participating in getting immigrants here and then finding them housing and helping them stay here, irrespective of the fact that they're here illegally. And Pope Francis didn't have to deal with that. You know, and it's caused a lot of us in the Catholic Church to wonder what exactly we're donating toward on Sunday. It really does. It's one thing if you want to help support your priests, make sure that they're well taken care of, make sure your church is well taken care of, make sure it's got flowers on the altar for Easter Mass. But funding illegals coming into the country, they're all. They're not all upstanding Catholics. And, you know, a lot of us who are Catholic but lean right, felt this tug of war going on between the Pope's messaging and what he wanted us to believe were, you know, deep Catholic teachings and what we understand as Americans who are watching our citizens murdered in the streets by these people to be true. Anyway, look, it's. On a day like this, you pray. You pray for the loss of the Pope and for a very obviously holy man who was the leader of the Catholic Church, who had enormous challenges on him and pressures on him. And, you know, the church is very political, too, especially at the top. It's such a really interesting organization. And then also, you look at the messaging and you try to understand how he could so misunderstand somebody who is our leader here, our political leader here, and the reason President Trump is so devoted to getting rid of these people who Pope Francis just looked at as vulnerable and defenseless. Well, you know, who was vulnerable and defenseless? Lake and Riley. You know, it's like, I wish I could have gotten to talk to the pontiff about it. I really do wish I could have had an interview with him where we talked about things like that. I'm sure he would have had nothing but empathy for those killed by these illegals. But that's the problem in part with, you know, the Catholic Church and its approach toward this issue. No church is going to satisfy its constituents across the board. This one didn't. Pope Francis didn't. But unquestionably a good, decent, honorable, holy, loving man. And President Trump, for his part, was very gracious. In the wake of the news today, Posting on Truth Social. Rest in peace, Pope Francis. May God bless him and all who loved him. Now, a public viewing for Pope Francis could take place as early as Wednesday. And then a conclave. This is such a big deal whenever this happens. I don't know if for our younger viewers, you may not have seen it, but I will never forget when we were on the air at Fox and Shepard Smith said that he said, he said the pope had died. When the pope hadn't died, that was it. I guess I will forget because my details are somewhat fuzzy. But we were waiting. It was like the pope was sick and we were waiting to see if he had died. Anyway, he got that wrong. And it turned off to be a big, turned out to be a huge deal. We covered these things at Fox News like they were presidential elections. And so they're gonna go through this process now, the conclave where they choose his successor. The 120 cardinals will gather. They say this typically be between 15 and 20 days after the papal office becomes vacant. So call it two weeks from now or thereabouts. We can expect to see they had actually have a good write up today in the Daily mail about it. 120 cardinals behind closed doors. If you saw the movie Conclave, you know, where the pope turns out to be intersex, spoiler alert. Then you have seen a refresher. But this article pointing out some differences. In real life, you will not have somebody coming out and briefing the media while the process is underway. And in real life, anybody who did that would face excommunication for that offense. You're not allowed to talk to the outside world while the cardinals are in the conclave, nor are they allowed to make pacts with the other cardinals who are voting. Nor, they say, would a dead pope ever be allowed to be swarmed over by priests, nuns and officials, nor laid out in his pajamas, they say in the real world, the chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church declares a pope to be dead in the presence of the papal master of ceremonies and a handful of other members of the papal household. Nine days of mourning are then declared in which the body of the late pope will lie in State in St. Peter's Basilica. It will be at least 15 days before the conclave. And then the cardinals, though, are no longer physically locked in a building until they've made their decision. But they will stay at a guest house within the Vatican's walls known as St. Martha's House, where they'll have the services of cooks and housekeepers, plus two doctors, one of whom is a Surgeon. And, you know, many of these are old guys. And then they will walk daily in their blue cassocks and red sashes to the Papal palace or the Sistine Chapel where the voting will actually take place. They will not be allowed to read newspapers. It's like being a sequestered jury access radio, TV or at the Internet. They'll not be allowed to send or receive any kind of messaging to or from the outside world. And they could be there for some time. The longest in history lasted 34 months. Good gracious. Back in 1271. In modern times, none has lasted longer than the five days it took in 1922. The conclave to elect Pope Francis lasted just two days. This is from this Daily Mail piece. No firm procedure for the multiple ballots which are likely to be held. The Conclave will determine its own procedure. If a candidate receives two thirds, majorities, majority of the votes, that should be it. And then when they have the next Pontiff, they will blow white smoke up, up the chimney. Black smoke indicates no decision has been made. Good luck to them. This is a big decision. We've never had an American Pope, but I'm voting for Cardinal Dolan. I hope they get behind him. It'd be great to have. We had one from the Americas, this Pope. Latin America. Haven't had an American. Would be amazing if we did. And Cardinal Dolan is just the best man you could ever hope for, for the job. An inspirational leader. It's brilliant. It's just, I mean, all the knowledge you could ever want in a church leader and a man of the people. Somebody who can inspire working class and elites alike. Somebody who knows how to talk to people in a language they can understand. And just an all around, dear man, he's. You know, we've got Catholic radio on Sirius xm. He's. He does a show every Christmas. He has one. I was on it a couple years ago. Wouldn't it be amazing if we had a Pope who had a Sirius XM radio show? Be fantastic for Sirius. They'd be so psyched. In any event, prayers with all of the men who will make this new decision and with the one who becomes the next Pontiff. It's a big responsibility on the subject of illegal immigration. I'm going to bring in my guest in a minute, but I just want to start with this. What an incredibly frustrating series of events that we have been through legally over the past six weeks since Trump started implementing his reforms and the ACLU became his co president in batting them down one by one. It is one Step forward, two steps backward for the Trump administration when it comes to fulfilling the people's wishes to deport not a few, not some, but all, all of the illegal immigrants in the United States right now. That's what the people want. Harry Enton took this on late last week on cnn. You know, their data guy. Let me just show you the numbers. Okay, look, look at SOT 15, deport all undocumented immigrants.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Voters favoring the government trying to deport all 11 million of them. Back in 2016, just 38% of voters wanted the government to try to deport.

[David Zweig]

All 11 million undocumented immigrants compared to where we are in 2025, 56%.

[Kevin O'Leary]

The majority. The American people have come a long way on this issue, much closer to Donald Trump.

[David Zweig]

And I think that's a big part.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Of the reason why Americans are increasingly saying the country is on the right track when it comes to immigration policy and why Donald Trump's net approval rating.

[David Zweig]

On that issue is in the positive.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, so it's a clear majority who want all of them gone. All of them. Not just the ones who committed additional crimes, but all of them. They want all illegal immigrants in the United States to be deported. Now, that number, how many is that? It was said in 2020 or so to be about 10 million. Between 10 and 11 million. That was 2020 when Trump left office. How many have come in in the four years since? You go to the center for Migration Studies, they'll say it's only 1.7 million were added so that we're only up to 11.7 million. Bullshit. Bull. That's. That grossly underestimates the millions who swarmed into this country under Biden. He was letting in 300,000amonth. 300,000amonth, people. It's estimated by House Republicans and Customs and Border Patrol, which is in a position to know to be closer to 8 million under Joe Biden. 8. Okay, 10 in 2020 plus 8 under Joe Biden gives us almost 20 million. 18 million total in the country. Illegals. You don't think that has an effect on the American economy? So Trump's got to get rid of 18 million people. That's what a clear majority of Americans want. 18 million. How are we doing? You've seen Tom Homan out there doing his level best. ICE is out there doing their level best, and they're doing yeoman's work at the southern border. The trickle back into the country has been stopped. It's all been stopped. It's been stopped as much as you can Stop without having an airtight wall, which he's also said he's going to work on. But in any event, they're doing a great job now, stopping the flow. But how are we doing on the deportations, on the removals of those already here? Well, in February, for the month of February, Trump deported just over 11,000. You. You've never had an administration more devoted to rounding them up and shipping them out. He is doing everything within his power. He has expanded his right of rights of removal when you encounter somebody at the border, like immediate removal. He's expanded that to basically cover the all of the United States. He's using the Alien Enemies Act. He, as you know, has been getting hit by the courts left and right for not providing these people enough due process. And even with Trump's, you could call it, you know, cut corners, he's only gotten 11,000 out in February. I haven't seen the March numbers, but you can assume it's around there. So let's say it's double if you add March in there. So let's say it's 22,000 that we've gotten out. But I think it slowed down in March. All these sanctuary cities trying not to work with Tom Homan. You've got these whistleblowers calling up the illegals, saying, Homan's coming. We saw some of that. And keep in mind, Tom Homan said that they were going to start with the worst first. And that means those who have committed additional crimes beyond illegal entry are overstaying their visa. Well, how many of those are there? Out of that? Call it 18 million. ICE told Congress last year it was about not quite half a million. 435,000 illegals who have criminal convictions who are not yet in U.S. custody. All right, so we're starting with the worst of the worst. Worst first, 435,000 here illegally, and maybe this. Since Trump took office, we've gotten out what. Let's call it 22,000. 25,000. You round up for the couple of weeks of January and April that we have going here. Let's just call it 25,000. That doesn't even get us down to 400,000 of the illegals who are still running around who have also committed crimes. And you haven't even cracked a million of the 18 million. This is not a rip on Trump. He's trying. Tom Holman is trying. Tom Holman's jumping up and down saying, I need more money because I don't have the resources to do this. And on top of that, I don't have the facilities to store them, even though even the numbers he's getting, there's no place to put them. Just, just today we have this long article about how now the ACLU is complaining that the ICE facilities aren't nice enough, that there some, some female migrants are having to sleep on maps mats on concrete floors. Okay? They're complaining that some of the lunch tables don't have enough seats. I mean, really, Then get them out. Go home. You know where they have seats and mattresses back in your home countries. Get out. Okay, but it's all on us. It's all on Trump. It's all on Tom Homan. It's all on them to find them all, overcome the sanctuary city's objections, overcome these mayors who are undermining them, overcome the whistleblowers, whatever you call them, the leakers who are telling illegal groups when Homan's groups are coming. And now biggest and most importantly, overcome the aclu, which at every turn is going into court and challenging the deportations, saying you can't expand expedited removal. You can't use the Alien Enemy's Act. And they just had a huge victory. Late Friday night Into Saturday at 1:00am the Supreme Court in a 7:2 ruling, unsigned, but we know that it was Thomas and Alito who were in the dissent, stopped him from deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act. And buses that were seen leaving the ICE detention centers said to be full of Venezuelans had to stop and turn around and put them back in there. We're only at maybe 25,000 deported out of 18 million. And now you've got these courts saying they want due process. That looks like it's going to be akin to the due process you get when you're charged criminally. How much due process do we have to give each one of these people individually? Individually, we. No due process afforded American citizens as 18 million of them came in, as some half a million committed crimes against us, stealing from us, raping our women, murdering us along with our children, child molestation. Did they have due process? The American people have any due process at all? No. Now, for each one, we have to have due process before we deport them to El Salvador or anywhere else. And it's starting to look like just a peppercorn will not be enough to steal a phrase from another area of law consideration. It's starting to look like we're actually really going to have to provide hearings in each case. Allow these people, they're upset, their notices that they could challenge it weren't in English. Who. That's your problem. Like now what are we going to have to have a translator for every single language? If we got like somebody in there who only speaks Arabic, we got to make sure it English is the official language of the United States. You don't understand your language. Too effing bad. So the Supreme Court for now has shut down the use of the alien Alien Enemies act and the ACLU does nothing but file challenges to every single attempt to deport these people. And Pam Bondi's got up to her neck, up to her chin now in ACLU legal filings, not to mention the offense that Trump is trying to play legally with things like trying to get open anti Semitism to stop on campuses like Harvard. Okay? That's where we are today. Here to help us unpack this and much much more is Kevin O'Leary. He's chairman of O'Leary Ventures and Beanstalks and you probably know him as Mr. Wonderful on ABC's Shark Tank. With longer daylight hours, you might be spending more time away from home giving burglars more opportunities to strike. Ever think about that? FBI crime data shows that break ins are more likely during daylight hours than at night. What? Protect your home with Simplisafe's proactive security designed to stop threats before they happen. Millions of Americans trust Simplisafe for the new standard in home security and enjoy greater peace of mind every time they arm their system. Whether heading out in the morning or locking up at night, traditional security systems only react after a break in occurs which is too late. Simplisafe's active guard outdoor protection helps prevent break ins before they happen. AI powered cameras backed by live professional monitoring agents watch your property and detect suspicious activity. SimpleLife offers a 60 day satisfaction guarantee or your money back with no long term contracts or cancellation fees. Visit simply that's S I m p l-I safe.com Megan to claim 50 off a new system with a professional monitoring plan. 50? I said 5 0% off and get your first month free. That's simply S I M P L I safe.com/megan, there is no safe like Simplisafe. So Kevin, it's not exactly a legal debate I'm looking for with you. It's I, I want to talk about the frustration of this scenario as I've just laid it out. And, and what, how we're ever supposed to get ahead on any of this. You know when the, the beat down against everything they try to do is constant and there are so Many enabling judges who will work with the ACLU same as enabling media. Who will work with his left wing critics on the tariffs, which defended him on. It's just at every turn, these same establishment types that got us into this mess are doing their level best to keep us there.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Due process, that's what everybody calls it. I think the bigger picture, though, is to go back to the mandate that came out of the election and that data that you pointed to earlier. 56% of people want this issue dealt with. It's one of the reasons that Trump got his second term was illegal immigration. And so I anticipate this will twist and turn through the courts. Some good decisions will be made, some bad. It depends which side of the equation you're on. I've come to the realization now, as I deal with all kinds of issues around the administration, that 50% of the people I deal with internationally, too, have what I call or has been termed Trump derangement syndrome. And what I mean by this is it's kind of useless to litigate why he's back in the White House. As I point out to people saying, look, I don't shill for politicians, Trump included, I shill for policy, and I have to deal with the policy. So why do we have to keep reiterating why Trump's in office? I don't care at this point, because he is. And now we deal with the outcome, now we deal with the policy, now we deal with the environment we're in and we want to move forward. Particularly for me, as an investor, I care about the policy coming out of the White House. So tariffs is a big deal for me. Obviously, I invest internationally. And so the narrative I want to have in foreign countries is, look, forget about Trump. He's not leaving the White House. He's going to finish off his second term. Get over it. Let's deal with the policy. That's how I look at it. And that tends to be working. It's almost like I have to bring psychiatrists with me. People really get crazy with the Trump stuff.

[Megyn Kelly]

You know, if, if the shoe were on the other foot, you know, and the Trump administration or, or Trump's supporters were using lawfare to stop the Joe Biden agenda on green energy. At every turn, we'd be getting all these discussions about how, if the Supreme Court gave them a decision, Trump, they're illegitimate, right? But now, now suddenly they're fine with these courts and probably even this Supreme Court because they've gotten these late night rulings saying, okay, we're going to stop it. I don't, I think we do have to abide by the U.S. supreme Court ruling. I, I think that's very clear. You cannot delegitimize the U.S. supreme Court. There's a rule of law in this country and it must be upheld. But we're, we're heading toward a serious Crisis, Kevin, where 56% of the country wants all of these illegals out. And when we're only some 20,000 into the deportations, it's basically been shut down. The main tool for deporting most of them, the most dangerous, has been shut down. And you're, that's what's going to push us toward a crisis where the, the executive branch doesn't listen to the article. Three courts.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Yeah, but there's other ways to deal. I mean, your numbers are. Let's, let's, let's round it out. Let's say it's 20 million total illegal immigrants, of which 500,000 have been charged with crimes. Everybody would agree that they should go first. And I think that's where the focus will be. There's a really interesting narrative, Megan, going on right now in small business in America, where 62% of jobs are created. These are companies, 5 to 500 employees. Many of these illegal immigrants that have not broken the law are employed in these businesses, particularly in agriculture. And those business owners are asking, is there any other way to deal with this where we can legitimize their residency here because they're actually productive in terms of being workers for some jobs a lot of Americans don't want. You've heard that narrative. These are the people that are not been charged with any other crimes. They came into the country illegally. Yes. But they actually found jobs that are being paid by American companies. This is a difficult situation because if you just took 18 or call it 20 million people, including the 500,000 that have done crimes, and they should, everybody agrees they should be gone. I mean, they're here illegally and they.

[Megyn Kelly]

Not everybody.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Well, I mean, most voters think that's a double whammy. That's almost three strikes and you're out. I think the Trump administration will focus really hard on those 500,000, and one way or another, they'll be gone because they are illegal and they did break the law. So they're either going to end up serving time in an American prison when they're caught, or they're going to go somewhere else, back to their native homeland. We'll see how that works out. But the dilemma for the rest of them is Is there a process by which they can apply legally if they have a sponsor? Now, this, this same issue occurred in Europe years ago when they brought workers in, into places like France where they found a way to give them employment because they were willing to sponsor them. I don't know if we're going to get to that place here, because you made the numbers very clear. If Trump got to a million deportations a month, he still wouldn't get it all done before his term's over. Think about.

[Megyn Kelly]

And there's zero chance he's getting to even 100,000. Never mind.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's even realistic. I mean, you'd have to take the commercial airlines into account. You'd need to be booking seats on every aircraft in America. I just don't see that happening, so. However, I do see the half a million that have broken the law. And he has got a clear mandate from the voter. And by the way, I think this is a bipartisan issue. I don't think there's a lot of Democrats saying, yeah, this is a murderer that came in illegally. Let's keep them here. That doesn't even make any sense.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's what they're fighting over right now. He started with the worst. He's starting with the ones he understands to be in gangs. And the left is trying to pick every single one whose gangs affiliate, gang affiliation they question. Oh, was he really in the gang? Oh, you didn't have all the proof that he was in the gang. He's here illegally. He can be deported. Like, I don't even know. We're wasting time trying to argue about the extra crime because it's better, it sounds better. We don't have to prove any of that. You're here illegally. You can be deported. Goodbye. That's it.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Yeah. You're making. Look, that point is probably on a bipartisan basis by a majority of, you know, if you check 10 people, you're going to get six of them saying, I agree with this, how it gets worked out. I mean, the administration is, it's not just Trump. The whole administration has to do battle. But you cannot go against the Supreme Court. I mean, I mean, there's no way we can ignore that ultimate decision.

[Megyn Kelly]

You ignore the Supreme Court, you become a Democrat, you become aoc. We can't, we can't let them, you know, make us become the things that we can't stand. The ridiculous morons who've been talking about packing the court and delegitimizing the court. That's not going to fly. We, we have to. We on the right must abide by the U.S. supreme Court rulings, period, while being extremely critical and doing what we can to find the right legal cases, to make sure the right cases get tested.

[Kevin O'Leary]

That's just the way it is that Trump is dealing with. It's an issue, but it's not the only one that people are concerned about right now. As we talk, the market's down a thousand points. There's a lot of volatility in people's net worth.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why?

[Kevin O'Leary]

Tariff ripping through. There's a lot of stuff on his plate right now.

[Megyn Kelly]

Can we talk about the tariffs, Kevin? I don't understand them. I never purported to understand. I hear, of course, all of the Trump deranged people tell me he's an idiot. He's doing it all wrong. Market volatility. Then I hear his defenders say he's playing the long game. It's chess. You don't get it. I don't know. I will tell you this. A dear friend of mine who is at a very important hedge fund, who I really do trust, said that everything is so unpredictable, that people are at their wit's end who are in the market. And that's one of the reasons why we're seeing such volatility. They can't stand the uncertainty and the unpredictability. And that dovetails with what Maria Bartiromo was asking Trump about face to face. So can you speak to that? The uncertainty and where are we with the tariffs? Have. Have we settled in a good place right now as we're in, like, a pause for almost everyone but China and renegotiating?

[Kevin O'Leary]

Yeah. I think what you're going to see from a pragmatic point of view, against leaving out Trump derangement syndrome and just saying, where are we at with the current policy on tariffs? If you look at the big blocks, which is the European Union, Switzerland and England, which are not part of that union, but also trading partners Canada and Mexico, that's about 70% of what trades, you know, what Trump is looking at and what he's saying. If you leave out all the bombastic statements, and I always say this about Trump, you gotta forget about the noise. You gotta focus on the signal. Because if you don't understand that after 12 years of Trump, you never will. So the noise is all the volatility in the market. The signal is this, what he wants and what his administration wants, Lutnick wants and Burgum wants and all the rest of them working on this stuff is reciprocal tariffs. Including zero. So if you think about this, take car parts in Germany, I always use that example. They had outrageous tariffs on car parts going into Germany and American companies want to compete on the componentry of all kinds of cars and they can't because they have some crazy tariff. So Trump is saying, I'm going to throw on the same crazy tariff on car parts from Germany coming into the United States right away, rational minds would say, well that's not going to work for both of us. It's kind of dumb. Why don't we take that down to 10% or zero and then going to end up. This is why I'm an optimist with these giant trading partners at zero tariffs. So we'll open up the border to Mexico and Canada and have free trade there eventually after this gets worked out, because there'll be no tariffs in either direction. It's no one nobody's benefit. The case in Canada right now, there's an election on the 28th, so it's very close. After that gets done, they'll be negotiating. Germany and England and lots of other ones have already stated openly, I'm willing to go to zero to get a deal done. So all of these things will get worked out. And during this period, lots of volatility. Because it's not just tariffs today, it's Trump beating up on the Fed. And this is an old game that's been going on for every administration, including bipartisan. The executive always beats up on the Fed because the Fed is independent and you can't jawbone them into making decisions about interest rates. The Fed is working, worried that these tariffs stay on too long, particularly with China and they're inflationary. Inflation right now is still north of 2%. So if I were the Fed, I wouldn't drop rates either because I'm going to look like an idiot in 90 days when inflation's going up because of tariffs, not down. So that's a different issue that adds volatility. But my point is all the tariffs are going to get worked out except for China. China's a different deal. We are really getting to the point and everybody realizes this now, that we are in an economic war with. They want to become the supreme economy. They want to do it by stealing IP from everybody, including American ip, lots of that. They don't play by the rules of the World Trade Organization and they haven't since 2000. They just don't give a shit. And everybody's figured that out. And the only way to change their behavior is to show consequence and we haven't ever done that. Well, this administration has decided there are consequences to stealing IP and not playing by the rules and not giving access to markets and using our capital markets by not playing by the rules of Gap. And all of these things are coming to a head. I mean, I hate to use this analogy, but it's a good one. This is like squeezing a teenage pimple. That's what's going on here. And they're going to keep squeezing until the acne is gone. And it's going to get ugly, but it's going to get resolved because China can't afford not to have access to the world's largest economy. They just can't otherwise everybody be unemployed there. But it's sort of a nasty situation. But I'm frankly happy that we're finally doing this. As a guy, I've said this countless times. I do business in China and I've been royally screwed. And I'm tired of it. I'm just sick of it. And I speak for millions of entrepreneurs that have been screwed in China for 20 years. We're done. Fix it. I'm okay with this volatility. I'd like to get it fixed. I want the other tariffs to get worked out because there's a lot of trade going on there. It's going to happen. But China.

[Megyn Kelly]

Squeeze the pimple there. There was a gal who was on Shark Tape, Shark Tank not long ago. And you did not invest, but she had an idea for a silicone placemat for like a baby's crib. I mean, I mean, not crib, high chair. And she wound up getting this project off the ground. And she has her product made in China. And the New York Times's daily podcast called the Daily featured her last Monday. We pulled a sot. She's trying to be there. They're using her as their real life witness. And how bad these Chinese tariffs are hurting Americans. Here it is. Take a listen.

[David Zweig]

I shudder to ask this. What happens to the tariff cost you would bear once the tariffs go from 104 to 145%?

[Megyn Kelly]

$229,000. Just the tariff you would pay on.

[David Zweig]

$158,000 worth of product.

[Megyn Kelly]

And we would have to come up with that in the 30 to 40 days it takes for the product to get to the U.S. wow. And I don't. I can't get any more loans. I'm fully leveraged. I have my house on the line already. I can't get more loans. Yeah, I mean, that's, I can't come up with that kind of money.

[David Zweig]

That's an astonishing number.

[Megyn Kelly]

I'm not okay. I'm scared for my friends. I'm scared for myself. Like, they don't understand. This is certain death for us. That's Beth Benneke, founder and CEO of Busy Baby. So what do you make of that?

[Kevin O'Leary]

I'm familiar with the deal. I'm familiar with the situation. I probably had that podcast sent to me 2000 times already as a member of investors on Shark Tank. But we also have stories of hundreds of companies that have been on Shark Tank that also manufactured their product in China. As soon as it gets to 5 million in sales domestically, the same factories that are making it there knock it off and sell it at a 40% discount because they never have to recoup the R and D that the company put into making the product in the first place. And they get wiped out a different way. They get wiped out by China. They just totally ignore the IP and they can't go back and litigate. The crazy thing, Megan, is Chinese companies use the American legal system to sue American companies after they've knocked them off. Why is that? Okay? Then they go, so in other words.

[Megyn Kelly]

You are over here as an American company, you come up with a design. You do all this R and D to make sure it's a safe product, it's an effective product, and then you bring it to market here and in China. And here, you'd be protected by certain copyright laws or whatever you're using to protect your iPad. But over there, you don't have the protection. So they just knock it off and they start selling it for cheap. That's what you're saying? That there's no respect for your ip?

[Kevin O'Leary]

Well, it's worse. Maybe when they're young, they're taught this is completely fair to do this, you steal, you cheat. It's part of the psyche of how you build your economy. It doesn't matter that it wasn't your idea or that you spent millions of dollars in R and D to create it. They simply don't give a shit. And that is what we have to fix. Because if they want to play with the big boys, including trading in Europe and everything else, stealing everybody's IP and then selling it back into those markets and flooding the markets with the exact same product, that usually a 30 to 40% discount with no consequences is going to end up in a very bad place for everybody because they can't sustain that forever either. And then, look, everybody wants to do business. China, I want to do business in China. All I'm asking for, and I don't think I'm being unrealistic in this request, is give me a level playing field. Let me use their courts to litigate trade disputes and resolve them just like they use ours.

[Megyn Kelly]

Can you not do that?

[Kevin O'Leary]

No, you can't. And I mean, just to. Just to give you a sense of how crazy it's gotten, there's a law on the books that says for Chinese companies, when they want to raise capital in America, they can go to the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, form a company, issue shares to Americans that aren't real shares, they're shadow shares. And what's incredible about this, they don't even comply with gaap. And so what this law said was, it was Rick Scott, who originally got the momentum, the senator out of Florida on this deal and said, look, we'll give them three years to comply. That's a long time. And then they can stay listed on the exchange. And while Gensler was the head of the sec, he didn't enforce this law. But a new guy, a new sheriff's in town named Paul Atkins just got confirmed last week, and he has made a public statement saying, okay, I've had enough of this, too. Every Chinese company that is listed right now that is not complying with gaap, I'm going to delist them. That could be as much as $800 billion of market cap that should happen, because why is it fair for an American company to have to pay for compliance and be compliant with all the regulators here in America to stay listed, which cost millions of dollars in some case, and they're competing with a Chinese company right next door to them that doesn't have to. Why is that okay, under what scenario is that fair? And I think that's the kind of question that people like me are raising their hand and saying, enough, let's fix this problem once and for all. And yes, there's going to be stories of that poor woman's situation, but these tariffs are not going to be forever. This is a game of chicken. Two economies colliding with each other. One, cheating and stealing, one not. At some point, you got to resolve the issue. And I think at some time in the near future, she is going to call Trump and say, okay, where do you want to meet? You want to go to Geneva?

[Megyn Kelly]

Is he? Because whenever you're hearing somebody talk about this, who knows China, who knows Xi knows Chinese culture, they say he'll never call, Never. Like they. He cannot lose face I mean, any communist country leader would be this way, and that includes him. That they just can't. He can't lose face. That's the last thing he'll do. And now Trump has to find a way of going to him. But, you know, Trump's kind of like that himself as well.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Well, I can assure you within the Communist Party of China, there is a bunch of narrative going on about how long do they want to do this? Because the only reason you stay in power in a communist society as a supreme leader is everybody's fed. They could take care of their families, and they have jobs in factories. Now, what you could do, even though they're not making rubber mats anymore because they're all sitting on the water, no one's going to buy them. You can't. There aren't enough markets big enough to replace the American consumer. There just aren't. So at the end of the day, you got to start asking yourself, okay, if I'm cheap, do I print money so that I can pay these workers and then have hyperinflation where a loaf of bread, you know, goes up a thousand percent, the Venezuelan model? Or do I work something out with Trump so all this stuff we've made can get back into the market, including that woman's rubber bib. I mean, somebody's got to buy that. There's not enough people around the world to buy that, except you got to have the 39% of the consumers are sitting in America that's going to sell the product. That's why I would think at some point, because I'm a pragmatic guy again, I look at the policy. I know there's a lot of politics here, but if I'm chi, I'm thinking, okay, how do I save face on this deal? What do I do here to get things going again? So the stuff on the boats gets to America with no tariffs on it. All the Europeans have made. The guys in England right now today are saying, okay, let's drop our tariffs on agriculture so we can start shipping grain in both directions, whatever they want out of ag, German car parts. We talked about that. All of these guys are working this out. She has to do that, too. Now, is it going to take two weeks? It's going to take two months? I don't know. But I guarantee you there's no scenario where Xi can outlast the American consumer, because that's really what you're talking about. Megan, at the end of the day, can he really cut himself off from the largest consumer market on Earth. No. And so I'm on the camp that says, okay, let's see how long this game of chicken lasts. But would I like to resolve this thing once and for all? Let me speak on behalf of millions of investors and entrepreneurs in America. Yes, I want to do business in China. I'm willing to compete with Chinese on a level playing field, and I want to open the markets up. Yes, I have nothing against the Chinese people. I don't like their government. I don't like their policy. And if you're not going to change the government, then let's cut a deal to have a reciprocal tariffs or no tariffs, but definitely access to the markets and definitely got to play by the rules. I would like to raise money in Hong Kong. I would like to approach their markets. I don't want to. You have my IP stolen. I don't want a 51% Chinese partner. We don't force that on Chinese companies here. But I'm telling you, it's time to clean this mess up once and for all. And, yeah, it's uncomfortable and the ebb and flow and the volatility, but I say to everybody, chillax. Let this administration get this thing done and let's move on. Because the last 20 administrations never dealt with it. This one is, you may hate Trump, you may have Trump derangement syndrome. I feel your pain for that. I don't care, because that's not what matters. It's the policy.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, let me ask you about the tariffs and the effect on some of our international friends up in Canada. We'd all. We were all watching Pierre Poliev, who's a Conservative, who was the guy eating the apple in that great clip where he was just stone cold against the liberal journalist, trying to get him with the gotcha questions. And I think we were all kind of rooting for him. And then came the tariffs, and suddenly he was losing a race. He was winning and now is like something like 20 points behind in the polls to the Liberal. And so it looks like. And some are directly stating that it's the tariff war we're having against Canada that's going to lead to Justin Trudeau 2.0 when they elect their new prime minister, instead of doing what they need, which is putting Pierre Poliev at the top. Are you, are you Canadian? Do you have dual citizenship? You've got some connection with Canada?

[Kevin O'Leary]

Yeah, I have multiple citizenships. But I'll tell you, and I've got. I'm in a very interesting situation because I invest in Canada, too, and I'm very close to the polls there. I get private polls every day because I have a massive project in Alberta, the world's largest data center being built there. So it really matters to me how this goes. Let me give you some data you'll find interesting that I don't think your listeners have had any information about the first polls opened in Canada, early polling two days ago. And all of the electorate, they're all electric. Canada has an official department for elections and they also hire a lot of volunteers. In the history of Canada, never ever have they ever seen such turnout ever since the beginning of the Confederation. Something's going on. Nobody knows what it means. There are lineups up in Toronto, Canada, the largest city, fourth largest city in North America, around city blocks of people voting early. Now, this may look just like the American election did three weeks before when everybody said the seven swing states were going to go to Harris. Didn't happen. There may be a highly motivated group of people who are so pissed with what happened to them over the last decade. Basically, 25% of the Canadian population is now living on or below the poverty line based on the failed mandate of Trudeau in the last five years. Trudeau's advisor was Mark Carney. So Mark Carney comes in with blood on his hands and he has tried to tell every Canadian over the last 36 hours, don't look at my track record, please. Don't look at that. Look at the shiny bead south of the border named Donald Trump. Only I can save. I can save you from that horrible shiny bead. Don't look at me. Don't look at my party. Don't worry that I left. All of the old people that killed you in the last 10 years still in their seats. Freeland, the Finance Ministry, still there. She's still in the Cabinet. All of those people, they're still there. They killed the Canadians. Look at Trump. Don't look at my track record. And please, when you're voting, remember, only I can save you. And I think the Canadian people, based on what I've heard, we'll see, are calling bullshit.

[Megyn Kelly]

The actual day of the election is 428. Carney's up by six points. He has erased what was a 20 point lead by Poliev. That's a very interesting theory. I can't wait to find out whether that's actually what's happening. It would be a miracle to see Conservative leadership there again.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Kevin O'Leary, before the Trump election, you said the same.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, but his odds weren't quite as long I mean he, I don't know but you're, you may be right. I don't, I don't know Canada that well, but I'm certainly hoping you're right. It's a pleasure to see you. Thanks so much for being here.

[Kevin O'Leary]

22% down to 6 in basically 36 hours. I think the trend is going to be a very tight race, but I smell something going on and I think it's people calling bullshit and they don't want more liberals. They're done.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah, they, they should be because my God, you think about, you know, what was happening with the, the swim meet up there, the, the, the otters where they have 50 year old men pretending to be women swinging, swimming against and changing in the same locker room as 12 year old girls. Like somebody needs to take Canada by the helm and it needs to be a strong, right leaning leader. Kevin, talk to you soon. Thanks so much for being here. Don't go away. Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, believes that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts with purpose. By honoring your career calling, you can impact your family, friends and your community. Change the world for good by putting others before yourself. Whether your pursuit involves a bachelor's, master's or doctoral degree, GCU's online, on campus and hybrid learning environments are designed to help you achieve your unique academic, personal and professional goals. There's the NCAA tournament, which they are in again this year. With over 340 academic programs as of September of 24. GCU meets you where you are and provides a path to help you fulfill your dreams. The pursuit to serve others is yours. Let it flourish. Find your purpose at Grand Canyon University. Private, Christian, affordable Visit GCU.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Hi everyone, this is former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. We all know that Americans are still recovering from the record inflation of the past four years. Now some in Congress want to make cuts to Medicaid, a program that provides critical health care to 72 million struggling Americans, including veterans, people with disabilities, kids, and your friends and neighbors. 40% of American births are actually covered by Medicaid. And Medicaid covers health care costs for a third of children with cancer. Working families rely on this program. It has 77% support. Nearly 9 in 10Americans oppose Medicaid cuts. Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to protect Medicaid. As president, he's still promising to love and cherish Medicaid. Did you know that 12 million Medicaid families live in rural communities. Many of these people voted for Donald Trump and they didn't vote for this. If Congress cuts Medicaid, a lot of.

[Megyn Kelly]

Rural hospitals could close and a lot.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Of rural families will be hurt. No matter how you look at it, cutting Medicaid just doesn't make sense. Stand with President Trump and tell Congress not to cut Medicaid.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's been five years, I mean, actually five years since schools closed in an effort to curb the spread of COVID a policy that had devastating ramifications that are still being felt to this day. Well, my next guest, David Zweig, has a new book out tomorrow that is a thorough account of the faulty decision making process behind the school closures. It's right here. I have it in hand. And the book is called An Abundance of Caution. American Schools, the Virus and A Story of Bad Decisions. A story of bad Decisions. Man, that's perfectly put. David's here to break it all down for us. Welcome back to the show, David. So one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you was you're the guy. Like, you are. If I think back on the whole Covid misadventure, who were like, there's a couple, only a couple of people who all along were like, that's bullshit. No, that's not true. No, I've done the underlying research and they're wrong about that too. And for me, you were number one. Alex Berenson was another. He was great. I'm sure I'm missing one or two. But, like, for me, you were it. And so I know, like, we don't like going back over Covid. People don't like it. I think it just brings up too many triggers. It's like, I wish I hadn't gotten that vaccine. Some people feel like I wish they hadn't gotten it for their kids. They wish they had fought harder against the nonsense. You know, we all kind of feel like we're human lab rats now walking around with weird stuff inside of us thanks to these fucking fauci. Sorry. So that we do need, but we do need an accounting of what was done. And even Team Trump just last week changed the Covid.gov website, the one that YouTube's referring everybody to. It's supposed to be like, oh, that's where like Foushee and Deborah Burks are going to give us all of their nonsense. Now it's officially Team Trump saying it was a lab leak. That's obvious. They're saying all this stuff, which is going to send Everybody who depended on that into a meltdown. But that's kind of what you're doing here, which is like, now that the dust is settled, let's just count the score and let's figure out how we made so many terrible decisions and maybe how we can not do that the next time. So let's just start with this. Of all the terrible decisions and there's so very many, what was the worst one, what stands out?

[David Zweig]

Well, my entire book is focused on, or at least it's the launch point on the long term school closures and then sort of all the decisions that followed in the wake of that. The mask, mandates, barriers on desks, six feet of distancing, all this kind of.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's the picture on the front. That. To the, to the audience. Again, I don't. Did your kid ever get subjected to this where they have these weird little barriers on the desks that did absolutely nothing? But my kids had this too.

[David Zweig]

Nothing at all. I mean, in the. And these have opaque sides. So the kids like horse blinders.

[Megyn Kelly]

So you can't see anybody next to you. Yep, they had that too. And you. And you launched a podcast called Silent Lunches, right? A substack, right?

[David Zweig]

Yep, yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Called Silent Lunches because they had to sit here, like during the lunch period, not speak to anybody, lest their breath infect somebody.

[David Zweig]

That's right. You could eat, but you weren't allowed to talk. So we had children. And meanwhile, at the same time, adults, you know, right down the block from the school were dining at a restaurant. You could go to a bar. I mean.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right. Alcohol kills the virus, right?

[David Zweig]

I mean, yeah, but yet children weren't allowed to speak during lunch. In New York City, some of the schools, the kids were sitting in the winter on concrete outside. I mean, this is a good sort of launch into discussing this. When we talk about it, you sort of kind of laugh. Looking back, this was so radical, so absurd, the idea that children, that's if they were in school, but millions of them were not even allowed, didn't set foot into a school building for over a year. Healthy kids, we barred healthy children from school. While at the same time, malls were open, bars, restaurants, casinos, adults who were actually at higher risk than children, they could carry on. But kids were barred from school. I mean, kids in California, they were, except for the governor's children, they were in school and private school. But everyone else, this is such a wild, wild circumstance that I don't think it's been fully reckoned with how insane that is. And at the time it seemed insane, but a lot of people went along with it. And the reason I wanted to write the book was, and this is years of research was to try to create a historical record. And the book is not a cataloging of these are all the harms that happened to kids. I touch on that. Of course it's important. The book is like an anatomy of decision making. How is it that such an insane decision like that and all the ones that followed after, how did that happen? And that's what the book does. I try to kind of pull the curtain back and show this is how politicians, this is how health officials, this is how the legacy media made its decisions to create a culture where something like that actually happened.

[Megyn Kelly]

School closures caused real damage, real damage. And look, they damaged all kids across all stratospheres, all classes, all whatever. But the kids who are at the lowest end of the socioeconomic scale got hurt the most. They didn't, their parents didn't have private tutors. They weren't already at these toity, you know, private schools where they're learning level. And the challenges and the opportunities were probably advanced to begin with. So some loss would only bring them down to average. They were already struggling, just struggling just to hit average. And they haven't made it back. That's, that's clear from everybody who's taken an honest look at it. You put, you reveal in this book that loss, I mean like all of it may have originated with the idea of a 14 year old girl.

[David Zweig]

That's right. So I, I go back and show the, the CDC created these guidebooks or playbooks for how to handle a pandemic. And there were a series of them, but two of them in particular were very, very important. One of them came out in 2007 and then there was a revision in 2017. These books were mentioned by officials from the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic. So there's no ambiguity that these were very important and influential. These are the guidebook on. Here's what you do when a pandemic comes. And one of the astonishing things about these books is they were built on these models and people hear the word model and they might not know what that means. A study is something that actually happened. A model is a prediction. It's, you know, you see a graph where the lines are going to do this over time. It's based on various inputs. The researchers get to decide whatever inputs they want go in. So you plug the things in and then out comes your model saying whatever it is you want. It to say if you don't like what it says, well, you'll just change the inputs until they show what you want it to show. One of the people who was involved in creating some of the models in these guidebooks by the cdc, his daughter did a science experiment in school where she talked about it was supposed to simulate the flow of our transmission of a disease within a school. And like all this stuff was made up. And I go through detail showing how. And even beyond her, this guy's daughter, even beyond Robert Glass, beyond her, his daughter, were more august people at places like Imperial College of London and ihme. These like very, very esteemed institutions, public health institutions. Their models were deeply flawed. And because I'm a crazy person, I actually go in and read all of the models and I'm reading the supplement, you know, 35 pages in, in tiny print. And one of the things I found was they had had this figure, something like 35% of, of transmission. They thought or something to that effect was coming from schools. I'm like, where did this number come from? So I look through, there's a citation, I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Then that citation goes to another citation. You go eight layers deep and they're in the supplement. It says this number was chosen arbitrarily.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh my gosh.

[David Zweig]

So people need to understand, remember at the beginning of the pandemic, Megan, they had the flatten the curve meme. Everyone, they show, if everyone just follows our orders, then it'll go down and then you don't have to worry about the hospitals being overwhelmed. And they had all these models saying 2 million people will die within the next X number of months if you don't do exactly what we're told. And they show you the graph. So a regular person, oh my God, look what happens with the cases if we don't listen. But if we follow directions, then this will happen. And part of those directions was closing schools. In part this was based on made up figures.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, Deborah Birx kind of admits that, doesn't she, in her book?

[David Zweig]

One thing she does admit, she sort of touches on that. One thing she does admit is that the 15 days she never had an intention of stopping there, she purposefully didn't tell the president or the American people. And she admits this candidly.

[Megyn Kelly]

That was to get us on the hook.

[David Zweig]

Yeah, let me just like reel them in once they're already locked into, you know, it's like the frog in the pot. They're not gonna, oh, we'll just go on so that 15 days, people may forget.

[Megyn Kelly]

15 days to slow the spread.

[David Zweig]

15 days, slow the spread. Then it. They added another 30 days on right at the end. And it was if the.

[Megyn Kelly]

And you know, same with the gatherings.

[David Zweig]

Yes, we can touch on this. I mean, but a huge part of my book is, Is about the media. It's really a work of media criticism. Imagine this, the entire like master switch for our country is shut down. We have 15 days. Everyone's like, okay, let's. Let's all do this together. This is a scary new virus. At the end of 15 days, they're like, we're gonna make it 30 more days. Where was any of the questioning from the media? Where it was crickets. They just were. Let's keep going.

[Megyn Kelly]

Precious few.

[David Zweig]

There was very. There were some, but yes, it was very few.

[Megyn Kelly]

Not mainstream.

[David Zweig]

No. And that's a large part of my book was this sort of conjunction between the media and the health establishment and how the media, which normally supposed to be skeptical and normally, particularly when you think of the liberal media of which I used to count myself a part of, where their entire thing here was throughout time. What's a journalist's job? It's to be skeptical of those in power. The government, the Defense Department, the church, you know, all these large institutions, big businesses, yet that evaporated in the, in the pandemic. So you had this circumstance where you had these bogus models that we were told, if you do these things, it's going to affect cases in such and such manner. And everyone's like, oh, that looks official. It's from these fancy colleges. Deborah Burke, she's wearing a nice silk scarf. She looks like she's smart. I'll listen to her.

[Megyn Kelly]

She looks a school mommy.

[David Zweig]

Yeah. Foushee is telling us this, you know, oh, we'll listen to them. But no one bothered to really investigate what was the underlying information, what was the underlying data that fed into these various models.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's. Well, that's how you became a star. That's really. Because you started publishing articles after having done that. And those of us who just knew instinctively that this is this not right, we started paying attention. And then, you know, if you find a real data hound, it's a gift. A couple of things I wanted to follow up on what you just said. Why. Why wasn't the media more skeptical of these claims?

[David Zweig]

So I spend a lot of time on this and in the book and what I believe that I show persuasively is that unfortunately, this all comes down to tribalism. That political tribalism. We had such an. And I shouldn't use past tense, had we have such an acrimonious political environment in our country. And the fact of the matter is, most of the legacy or prestige media outlets are left leaning. Almost everyone there, most of the people within public health also share that political persuasion. And what I show is that. But time and again, there's a zillion examples of this, that it was this sort of what I call like Newtonian physics. With every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. When Trump said open the schools, that was it. He basically ensured that they would be closed.

[Megyn Kelly]

You write about the American Academy of Pediatrics, by the way. The book is called An Abundance of Caution by David Zweig, spelled Z W E I G. You write about the American Academy of Pediatrics and its recommendation that schools be opened. It was the. It was July of 2020, and it was saying, when we get back to September, these schools need to open. That's what's best for children. And then.

[David Zweig]

That's right. So the American Academy of Pediatrics comes out with this guidance early on saying, no matter what, let's get kids in school. And on top of that, they said, don't worry about six feet of distancing. If you can do it, great, but if you can't, let's just get the kids in school. This is the most important thing. It was unambiguous what they meant. Shortly thereafter, Trump tweets in all caps with like a million exclamation points, as is his way, schools need to open in the fall. Within days, the American Academy of Pediatrics reversed its guidance. It was so stark, it was so crazy. The reversal that even NPR had reported on at the time. Gone was any mention of, you know, don't worry about distancing. That was out. Gone was the idea of no matter what, get kids in school. That was out. Instead, the new statement was listen to the experts.

[Megyn Kelly]

Oh, God.

[David Zweig]

And on top of that, something that was missing in the earlier guidance, we need money and lots of it if you want to open these schools. And here's the last thing that's interesting about the revised statement. It's not what's in the statement, but it's who authored the statement. And it wasn't the American Academy of Pediatrics by itself. It was coauthored with the two largest teachers unions in the country.

[Megyn Kelly]

Is there a bigger villain in the COVID story than those teachers unions?

[David Zweig]

I think public health and the media are the bigger villains because ultimately the teachers unions couldn't have made this outlandish list of demands that they did in so many places without having the COVID of the media and public health saying these things. And I recount all sorts of stuff in the book.

[Megyn Kelly]

In other words, they're hacks who behaved like hacks. But there should have been a higher, an establishment that was devoted to a higher purpose that didn't buy into it and enable it.

[David Zweig]

Had Anthony Fauci and everyone else within the public health establishment said, hold on, none of this stuff is true. That they're demanding. I have a whole long section in there about these claims about needing HEPA filters and H VAC upgrades, all these. No one was challenging that. And believe me, Anthony Fauci was in front of a camera every single day, gave a zillion interviews and tons of public health pundits. You know, there was this one emergency medicine physician who I talk about in the book quite a bit. She gave hundreds of interviews constantly on the, you know, speed dial at the New York Times and other places. Even though she had no particular expertise in infectious diseases or any of these interventions, she was now an expert. She was on speed dial. None of these people said a word that this, that this is completely bogus. And the most important part that I mentioned in the sort of chronology is that in late April and early May, many, many countries throughout Europe, 22 countries began to reopen their schools. Millions of children. We're not talking about like a little school somewhere in Tibet with 12 kids. Millions of children were going back to school in Europe. And later that month, in May, the education ministers met in the eu and in that meeting they announced, we have observed no negative impact from opening schools here. A month later, same meeting, same announcement, here it is. Yet a whole another month later, we haven't noticed any. We haven't observed any negative impact of opening schools. Millions of children, 22 different countries. No one in the American media reported on this. I did, ultimately, but when this initially happened, I was so astonished. I kept re clicking the link for the, you know, for the video because I was like, how can this be? How is it possible that no media outlets. This is, this wasn't in a blog. This wasn't, you know, some random or obscure medical journal. This is the meeting at the eu and they said, millions of kids are back in school and nothing has happened. It's fine. This was ignored. To me, this is kind of one of the original sins that I point out that happened once. We ignored that or waved it away. And we can go through this, Megan, the various Excuses. They gave, well, that's Europe, that's different, that doesn't count. And they gave this list of reasons which were all made up. None of them were.

[Megyn Kelly]

It makes no sense anyway. I mean, the United States of America for the most part has way more land and way more expansive facilities than the, than France does, where they're on top of each other.

[David Zweig]

No one, no one in Europe, or very few. This was not the norm. They didn't have HEPA filters in all their schools. I've spent enough time in Europe. I know people. The schools there are not all these glistening oasis of HEPA filtered air. Many kids weren't wearing masks. In fact, the ecdc, that's like Europe's version of the cdc, recommended against kids in primary schools wearing masks. Where in the US they wanted kids as young as 2 years old to wear masks all day. They weren't doing distancing. In many instances it was 3ft or like what they would say 1 meter or no distancing required at all. A list of things that we kept being told by these public health experts, well, don't look at Europe. It's almost like a magician. Look away, don't look there. That's because. And then they would list the things they controlled, the virus, they did all these things.

[Megyn Kelly]

I still am struggling to figure out why. Because if you look at take wokeism, you know, Europe is as woke as we are. They're gone. And truly like the UK is gone, so is France, Italy, I mean Ireland gone, Italy's not as bad. So I was thinking maybe it's just this knee jerk safety ism that we've embraced here in the United States. Now your safe spaces, your trigger warnings, you can't discuss certain things, you can't say certain terms, but they're just as bad as we are over there when it comes to that stuff. So they're I think, just as sort of safety conscious. And I mean that in the most negative sense possible as we are. So I don't get it. Why, why over there were there authorities still willing to look objectively at data? And over here ours weren't. And also the entire media establishment wasn't either.

[David Zweig]

Right? I mean, one of the things to your point that's really important is this was so coded politically within our country that opening schools or wanting to go to work or go to the beach even, or a child playing at a playground, that was coded as right wing. And to want to, you know, and it was virtuous and left wing, if you stayed home, it's Part of Trump.

[Megyn Kelly]

Derangement syndrome is what you're saying.

[David Zweig]

It's. It was tds. Yeah, because those countries, which are far more progressive than the United States, they sent their kids back to school. And then you have other countries with more conservative governments where they were doing the reverse. There was no correlation between the political leaning of a particular government in their countries and with whether things were open or locked down. There was no correlation. So the idea. But in America, people were living within such a bubble of our own sort of world here that anyone who went against Trump was virtuous and anyone who agreed with him was this horrible monster. What are you, some right wing, you know, asshole? You're trying to do your own research. So you had this situation that was so divisive in America. And again, it comes down to. We go back to that American Academy of Pediatrics reversal, where it was so clear that what was happening was this had to be a sort of reaction against Trump. And one of the things that I talk about in the book is that after I started writing my articles, which were some of the only articles in sort of what we might consider legacy.

[Megyn Kelly]

Media or mainstream media, New York Magazine, that was shocking. It was like, I'm actually getting value at a New York magazine in the.

[David Zweig]

Atlantic and other places and in Wired, which is, you know, ostensibly non political.

[Megyn Kelly]

No, they are left. And it's very annoying.

[David Zweig]

Right? So, okay, somehow I've managed to get my contrarian pieces in these publications and people have asked me why and how did that happen? Because I've had other journalists who sort of shared some of my views. How did you do it? I said, because I provided evidence. I think that's what it comes down to. But one of the things that I talk about is once these articles started coming out, I started getting emails from doctors around the country and regular people, too, and former CDC officials. And these were doctors, not just necessarily some random pediatrician in a suburb somewhere. We're talking about people at elite university hospitals at some of our top institutions. And they would write me and say, I want you to know I agree with you. I think what's going on is crazy. There's no evidence of closing schools is going to be beneficial. This is terrible. Having little, you know, toddlers wearing masks, whatever it was, they said, I want to agree with you, but this all has to be off the record. I can't talk about it publicly. And I, you know, and I was like, why? How is this happening? Because one, they knew it was. The environment was so clear. People aren't Stupid. That they self censored. And number two, they were overtly censored. Many people were admonished by their superiors, some, you know, administrator at the hospital saying, don't ever talk about this again. And I have a couple stories of that where people spoke out. So there was this environment where no one, no one could be seen, including, you know, a university hospital as an institution, none of them could be seen as agreeing with Trump.

[Megyn Kelly]

It makes perfect sense because you look at what happened with the Great Barrington Declaration in the spring of 21 in J. Bhattacharya, now the head of NIH, praise God. I was there with Jay and Martin Koldorff, and I'm forgetting the name of the female. Yeah, right. From our top, top universities, they come out with this and what happened immediate, immediately they got smeared by Fauci and Collins, like immediately as fringe. That like there was absolutely nothing fringe about them. They were as establishment and respected as a doctor can get in the United States. And I'm sure that they were the example.

[David Zweig]

You know, we're maligned.

[Megyn Kelly]

Everybody else is looking. If you can do that to them. Oh yeah, you can do that to.

[David Zweig]

Me from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford. Oh, if they're maligned, if they're called fringe, I don't stand a chance against this. So there was no way that. And look, I'm sympathetic toward if this is someone how they're making their living, you know, taking care of their family, they've spent the last 20 years studying in order to work in medicine. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the idea that they didn't want to get fired because.

[Megyn Kelly]

Fauci had his hands in everything Fauci had. He controlled all the money. I didn't think, I didn't realize that before COVID that how many of these university research programs are funded by his.

[David Zweig]

Group, NIAID and NIH more broadly.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's right.

[David Zweig]

When you control the purse strings. But I would say, Megan, even beyond the sort of any sort of explicit thread of withholding funding, people were social creatures. And most people are not really inclined to be in the out group. And I talk about this in the book, is that if you think about medicine, it self selects generally for a certain type of person, a really hard worker, someone who's smart. These are great traits in a doctor, hard worker and smart. But it also selects for rule followers. It doesn't select for iconoclast. You go in, you do your residency, you have to listen to the attending. You're not gonna start challenging them. They got there by following the rules, these are people who. Their general nature is not to be an outcast. So they don't want to be cast out of that social group. And I would argue the same thing is within the sort of prestige media outlets. How do you get to the New York Times? Well, you got straight A's in school growing up, then you went to Brown, then maybe you went to Columbia Journalism School, and now you're at the Times. I'm not saying every reporter there is like this. There certainly are plenty who are excellent reporters and who are doing important independent work there. But nevertheless, the broader type of person who gets into an institution like that is the same type of person who's going to get into, you know, Columbia University, you know, medical center, and these types of places. It self selects for people who got to where they are, became successful by being part of an in group. So you have these two institutions, health and media, that were controlling the narrative within our country, yet the people within those institutions or a certain type of personality. And I'm not saying this was nefarious even. This is just kind of a human nature. And then you had the small group of them who are coming to me off the record saying, hey, I don't like what's going on. This is wrong, but I can't say anything about it. So it's really important for people listening and watching this program to understand. And hopefully they'll read my book and get a deeper understanding.

[Megyn Kelly]

The book is called An Abundance of Caution, American Schools, the Virus and A Story of Bad Decisions by David Zweig. Keep going.

[David Zweig]

Hopefully they'll have an understanding of how. What I try to show is how narratives get created. And it's sort of the, like, how. How did the gears turn within our society? And like, how is it, you know, it's almost like Plato's cave. Like, who's looking at the shadows? Who's creating those shadows? And how do you actually get out of the cave? And a lot of the book is about evidence. That's the way that we really can arm ourselves to be aware. It's sort of like a media literacy that you can even bring to your doctor. I suspect you, Meghan, when you go to the doctor, they're not like, here's what you need to do. And you're like, yes, doctor. You know, this isn't anymore, right? This isn't 1955, where you just do what people say. And this doesn't mean that we should ignore what, quote, experts say. It doesn't mean that we should dismiss it out of hand. But it does mean that you should bring your own skepticism with you and you need to think about evidence. Ultimately, my book really, I think, is about kind of what we might call like epistemology. It's like, how do you know what is true? How do you know that this thing is true? And over and over again in our country, and we still do this now, and is every topic under the sun. But when I show what happened in the pandemic with such horrible consequence is that the experts repeatedly told us things without providing any evidence behind what they were telling us. And then the media regurgitated the same information without providing evidence. And within philosophy, that's called what's known as a logical fallacy. This is, it's an argument from authority. Just because a person is saying something doesn't mean it's true. And they never pushed back and said, well, wait a minute, I know you're saying that they need HEPA filters and we can't open a school until they get the HEPA filter. What's the evidence behind this claim? What is the evidence for this? No one bothered to push back a.

[Megyn Kelly]

Couple of things on it. I feel like there's another element to the journalistic failures and I think it has to do with elitism. I think it has to do with the fact that like you look up and down that lineup on CNN and MSNBC and all those people are millionaires or close to it, and they were enjoying the pandemic. Their kids were home, they had a tutor, or they had some private school that was basically taking care of them. They knew they'd be fine, their lives were easier. They got to go to work via Zoom. They got to be out east in the Hamptons with all their friends. They got to start drinking wine at 1pm instead of 4pm which is a big sacrifice to wait. And they didn't want it to get back to normal.

[David Zweig]

I think one of the most important and remarkable things that happened in the pandemic that we need to reckon with as a society is that this was one of the most classist, you know, class based policy endeavors that had ever occurred in America. It's quite remarkable. The people who made the rules coincidentally fared the best during the pandemic. So you have what, you know, what people today might call the laptop class. Who do you think works at the cdc, the nih? Who are these, you know, who are these people on television and working at these elite media outlets? By and large, these people are making six figure salaries or seven figure. Their lives are very different from the people, millions and millions of people in our country who their policies and their guidelines were affecting. And that includes, I mean, there were kids who were sitting in a parking lot of a Taco Bell to try to get wifi signal so they could do their, you know, fake remote learning. There are children who are in homes that are unsafe. One of the crazy things that happened was there was a drop in claims of child abuse early on. And you might think, oh, that's great. Child abuse went down. It's so heartbreaking. What they found was it's not that it went down, it's that teachers and educators are the most important line of defense for a child who is in danger at home. Now, those kids had no one to talk to and some of them were left home with a monster. You had kids who didn't have their final year. This was their chance to get into college. Maybe they were a football player, maybe there was someone who was a wonderful actor or an artist. All those things were canceled. You're not going to get recruited for the football season to play in a college and get recruited there if there is no season. So all these things were happening to kids around the country. And I haven't even mentioned learning loss, which obviously is the most overt that people, rightfully so, are continuing to talk about. There are so many things that we're affecting and it's not a small number. Millions and millions of kids, including, we can touch on kids who have learning disabilities. And it's something like 7 million of them, I think, get an IEP, which is like a special program that they're required to get by law. And some of these things require them to have physical therapy. You can't do that through a computer screen. Children with severe autism, children with all sorts of physical and variety of neurological challenges and disabilities. These kids, unless you lived in a very wealthy family, they were screwed and they still haven't come back from it.

[Megyn Kelly]

And that's why it's so infuriating when you saw those Chicago public teachers unions, union teachers dancing, using the dance to try to show us how inappropriate it was to send them back into schools. Like, these are totally able bodied, mostly young females.

[David Zweig]

Like the TikTok videos of everyone.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yes. Just dancing about to try to show they're upset about having to do their damn jobs. And that's why I really think like they're right up there. I agree with you. Fauci and Brooks, they're up higher. Fauci's number one. And by the way, to your point about the fact that these people at the CDC, they weren't going into the office. I was at FDA last Thursday with Marty McCary and we were walking around. It's a, a huge complex. It's in Maryland, it's not in D.C. and even to this day it's largely empty. And he's, he's right now saying, everybody get back in here. It's 2025, it's been five years. They pieced out, thanks to Covid, they were never made to come back in. They were all loving it. There was a built in incentive to say, it's not safe. We need to keep this rolling in the name of safety. Because they were loving it. These teachers, they don't usually get to teach from home or do the stupid zooms. That's easier. They're in their pajamas, I think.

[David Zweig]

Yeah, I don't know. It's in the mind of all the teachers. Some of them definitely appear to have taken advantage. Others, I think genuinely were frightened by a media that, you know, if it bleeds, it leads. And I talk about this in the book. The American media was unique in its dialing the knob up to 11 for hysteria over this. And there was some research out of Dartmouth where they sort of do like a content like tone analysis. And the US was off the charts in the way we covered this phenomena that was happening. Whereas, and I talk about this, there was an article in the New York Times that came out on the very. That was like hysterical about if schools open, this is what could happen, you know, and there's like, you know, flames, you know, practically shooting out of, out of the screen. If you're reading the article. On the very same day an article came out in what's known as the bmj, it's the British Medical Journal. And the title was something like Kids are not super spreaders. Open the schools. The dichotomy on this one day of these two articles couldn't be more stark and more emblematic of the difference of how we were experiencing the pandemic here in America versus other places. It's not to say that they were flawless outside the United States, but there was something uniquely hysterical about the responsibility response in America. We are a country that was ill equipped to function under duress. And I understand why people felt that Trump had poisoned the well to such a degree that, that ultimately they had to react in this manner. But those are reasons, not excuses. That is not like the idea that someone, he was so odious to them, such tds, as you were saying that it didn't I mean, Trump could say, I love puppies and vanilla ice cream. And they would say, I hate puppies, I hate vanilla.

[Megyn Kelly]

That's right.

[David Zweig]

It didn't matter. So he. There was such an environment created that all of these people were terrified. Only a very small portion had the courage, like Martin Kaldorf and others, to come out and say, you know what? Trump is right. He's right on some. He may be. You know, even a broken clock is right twice a day, even if you disagree with him on everything. But they couldn't do it. The media just couldn't bring itself to possibly agree with this, even on something that he was so clearly right, that millions of kids in school in Europe, it didn't matter.

[Megyn Kelly]

They were too busy pumping stories like, two teachers have already died of COVID thanks to the reopening of the schools. Meanwhile, then it would come out, they died of COVID That they got in their communities before the school had even opened. Like you're trying to suggest, the children gave it to them. But that's how stories were being styled and presented by places like cnn. That was a cnn, er, across the media. I mean, the New York Times is still that. I mentioned that website that Trump has got up now, that Covid.gov, and they're still, even after the New York Times wrote that ridiculous. We were misled on Covid a couple of weeks ago, like a month ago, saying, oh, the authorities, they misled us. They had this long column on it. Even even though they're now coming to terms with they were misled, they're writing an article about that website being like, oh, there are a lot of experts, a lot of experts who still believe this was not natural origin. They, they believe that this did not come from a lab. Like, they can't let go of their little darlings, David.

[David Zweig]

They can't let it go. And the idea that, that they were misled. But your job as a journalist is.

[Megyn Kelly]

To ask questions, to not be misled, and when it happens, to let it.

[David Zweig]

Be infrequent, to not allow to, to simply quote an expert, so to speak, an expert on something without asking them, well, wait, what's the evidence behind that claim? Or if you don't ask them, then go report it out yourself and dig into it. And that's what I started doing from the beginning. I was like, I thought it was so strange. We kept being told all these things. School is dangerous. The kids, they might spread it to everyone. And all these various claims, I'm like, well, wait a minute. Is that true? And I couldn't speak to people in the United States, so I started talking to experts in Europe, and I'm like, let me find someone, anyone, who knows what's going on. And I was like, well, wait a minute. This is all bullshit. Everything they're saying is made up. I know there might be some listeners or viewers who are thinking that I'm overstating things. They might think that, like, this is hyperbole. I'm telling you, if you read the book, it's deeply destabilizing, but I hope, also really instructive to see how wildly off so much of the information we were given was. And it's easy for the media to make these claims. Trump. You know, Trump said plenty of crazy things himself where he, oh, the virus is just gonna go away. And, you know, and there was. They. They misquoted him about the bleach thing and whatever else. There are plenty of crazy things. It's not hard to find something from Trump or from QAnon or whatever. And that's where the media kind of dug its hooks in. But what. But what no one was doing was looking, of course, with the mirror at themselves. And it's much more upsetting when the experts. I don't listen to QAnon. I don't take my, you know, guidance on how to conduct myself or what's happening. But I used to listen to the cdc. I used to listen to the nih, and what I show is that these people deeply, deeply let us down.

[Megyn Kelly]

I will defend Trump on that. It's just gonna go away because I have a doctor who is an infectious disease doctor that's just my primary care physician happens to be, and he's one of the most respected infectious disease doctors in the country. And that's what he said in the beginning, too. The history of this kind of disease suggested that when you got to the warmer weather, it would kill the virus.

[David Zweig]

Seasonality.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah. And that's what a lot of people believed. And I think that's what Trump was advised early on. Obviously, Trump wasn't just making that up. He was getting that from doctors. And then, of course, things changed. But I remember when he said it being like that dovetails exactly with what my doctor said. And I didn't. I didn't think anything of it, you know. Now. Now, in retrospect, it's used against him by his detractors, but at the time, it dovetailed very well with a lot of what we knew. All right, standby. There's more to go again. It's called an abundance of caution with the yellow tape, it's actually quite well done by David Zweig. Don't go away. Spring is here and summer is around the corner. With sweatpants season finally over, it's time to swap those winter sweats for outfits that turn heads when you are looking to refresh your wardrobe. Daily look has you covered. It's a fantastic personal styling service for women. With Daily look, you get your own dedicated stylist to curate a box of clothes based on your body shape preferences and lifestyle. These are real personal stylists, not an algorithm. And you get the same stylist every time. You start by filling out their style quiz and sharing your price range and your lifestyle preferences. And then they Send up to 12 hand picked items straight to your home. You try them on, you keep what you love, send back the rest. And the best part is Daily look covers shipping both ways. Whether you need something chic for the office or you want to upgrade from last year's sundress, Daily look has you covered. Head over to DailyLook.com to take your style quiz and use code Megan for 50 off your first order. That's DailyLook.com for 50 off. And make sure you use my promo code Megan so they know I sent you DailyLook.com promo code M E G Y N the Internet's flooded with money saving hacks. You know, like slicing up sponges and turning them into air fresheners. Well, turns out there's a better way to grow your savings. Introducing Verizon and Open Bank Savings, a new high yield savings account available only to Verizon customers. Grow your savings with a top tier APY and shrink your wireless bill by up to $180 a year. Learn how to start saving today at verizon.com startsaving account applications subject to approval by Open Bank, a division of Santander bank and a bank member, fdic. All deposits are held at santanderbeg and Avorizon and its affiliates are not FDIC insured institutions. Three distinct all electric Cadillacs. Some drive them for the performance, others drive them for the range. And some drive them because it's the only way to make an entrance. Three different ways to turn every drive into an occasion Whatever your reason, there's never been a better time to say let's take the Cadillac. The all electric Cadillac family of vehicles, Escalade, IQ Optic and Lyriq. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of the Megyn Kelly show on Sirius xm. It's your Home for open, honest and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal and cultural figures. Today you can catch the Megyn Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. Great people like Dr. Laura, Ben Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey and yours truly, Megyn Kelly. You can stream the Megyn Kelly show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are. No car required. I do it all the time. I love the SiriusXM app. It has ad free music coverage of every major sport, comedy talk podcast and more. Subscribe now. Get your first three months for free.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Go to SiriusXM.com MKShow to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com MKShow and get three months free offer details apply.

[Megyn Kelly]

My guest today, David Zweig, the author of An Abundance of Caution, a new book. It's not really about COVID exactly. It's about how deeply we were betrayed by our public health officials and the media. And it's got all the lessons so that we can fight them better the next time. I mean, there were some of us who were fighting them and some people who fought them at every turn. But it was very hard because part half the battle was trying to figure out what was true. And you just stayed to an evidence based approach. Now the problem in doing that is that you had a whole government apparatus that didn't like your information. And even when you, David Zweig, were citing the CDC's own studies, like unmasking and how it didn't do anything in schools, that they didn't listen, they buried the studies, they moved on. They tried to diminish people like you. And I was mentioning during the break the great movie Contagion, which I really enjoyed with Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon, which was made years ago, but clearly they used the CDC's blueprint for what they would do in a pandemic. Was really telling. And they even had this like sort of citizen journalist played by Jude Law. Now he wasn't like you or Alex Berenson. This guy wound up hawking supplements and trying to make money off of the pandemic. But they did sort of use him as like the one detractor, the one lone voice pushing back. And in that movie it's very interesting because he's, they demonize him, right? Like you shouldn't believe the Doubting Thomas, right? Because he's, he's a, he's a hack who's trying to make money off of you. He's Got some angle. He's the one person you shouldn't listen to.

[David Zweig]

Right?

[Megyn Kelly]

You should listen to the authorities that the studies show that there is no.

[David Zweig]

Proof that forsythia works. Who conducted the studies? What defines works? Against what strain of the virus?

[Kevin O'Leary]

Did you know about the studies when we met the last. Last time? We can get in a lot of trouble.

[David Zweig]

You really think this Dr. Hextall CDC person is Jesus in a lab coat? The government rushed the trials. The lawyers indemnified the drug companies. Maybe it causes autism or narcolepsy or cancer 10 years from now. Who knows?

[Megyn Kelly]

You.

[Kevin O'Leary]

The.

[David Zweig]

The swine flu vaccine killed people back in 1976. Nerve disease. So we're all guinea pigs starting from today.

[Kevin O'Leary]

Just wait.

[David Zweig]

They'll start listing side effects like the credits at the end of a movie.

[Megyn Kelly]

And that's what they try to do to Alex Barons. That's what they try to do to you, they try to do to Tucker, right? Like try to just ignore or in some cases, actively diminish or fringe or ban on Twitter in Alex's case. Right? They didn't like these contrary voices or the Great Barrington people like fringe try to, you know, tramp down on them so that. That people looking for good information either couldn't find it, it had been stifled, it had been censored, or had, like, a sense of worry in taking it in from the outliers because we've been told this is a fringe person. This is the weird Jude Law character I'm not supposed to listen to.

[David Zweig]

I had written one of the articles challenging one crazy rule or another, which all of my work, none of it's been retracted, as far as I'm aware. There was no giant corrections in any of them. This doesn't mean I don't make mistakes, but directionally, everything I wrote was true. And one of the articles, I remember, my wife was talking with a friend of hers about it. And I think at this point, I started writing for the Free Press, or maybe it was on my own substack, but I had written for the Atlantic and the New York Times and New York, plenty of these types of contrarian pieces. And she said, well, where's the article? Where's it coming out? And my wife said, it may have been my substack or the free pass. She said, well, if it's not in the Atlantic, then I don't believe it. And she said, but it's David. You know him. He's the same reporter. He wrote other things. And she was like, yeah, I'm not interested. So to have that like imprimatur of these certain institutions meant everything.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah.

[David Zweig]

And this, the problem is the idea that like most, I think regular people, at least some of them, or particularly on the left saw these things are like, it made intuitive sense. It's like, well, of course if you close schools, all those snot nose kids, that's going to help. Or mask, I think maybe having something in front of my face. The problem is, and I give all these like crazy examples through history, our intuitions are often wrong. And that happens especially within medicine. That's why we need randomized studies. That's why we need actual like a structured, what's known as evidence based medicine. But instead during the pandemic, over and over, we were just told it's basic physics that masks work, but that's not how human beings work. A child might pull it off. It doesn't stay glued to your face. They were using studies done on mannequins where the masks were glued to their face. And this is the stuff that the CDC and other people were citing as evidence that everyone needs to wear a mask. Our intuitions are wrong all the time, but yet we didn't actually look at science. We were told we're just following the science. There was no following the science.

[Megyn Kelly]

It's bad enough when we are, are seriously hurting children when we're not being allowed to say goodbye to our loved ones who are dying in nursing homes alone and isolated. And then came like the final insult, which was the deceptions around the vaccine and the total unwillingness to discuss the actual side effects that were happening to people, including most importantly to me, the myocarditis, because that was killing young people, that was hurting young people. You know, everybody's life matters, but it's, there's a different value in somebody who's 90 versus somebody who's 15. And they were seeing actual myocarditis heart infections happen to teenage boys as a result of the vaccines. And you were basically not allowed to talk about it even now. Even now, YouTube's gonna slap a warning video on this video because I said that and it's a fact. And yet they still still want to bill it as though it's somehow misinformation. I always thought that if there's something that wrong with the vaccines, the, the vaccine makers will come back and fix it. They'll own it and they'll fix it. These are the biggest, most rich vaccine or drug companies in the world. I never anticipated that they would just deny, deny, deny, deny and let people suffer and even die.

[David Zweig]

I mean, I was, I believe, the first journalist in a mainstream publication to interview Jerome was the Israeli physician who initially found the signal of myocarditis in young males. And, you know, again, this is just completely radioactive. Like, you can't. It doesn't mean that the vaccines weren't necessarily beneficial for old people and those who are vulnerable. I'm not making that statement. I'm not talking about that one way or the other. What is true is that there is this effect from the vaccine, particularly for young males, not exclusively to them, but they were affected far more than any other group. And there's reasons for that we don't need to get into. And this was essentially ignored and kind of like buried by the CDC when the signal came out. And I give examples of that. I mean, the thing that's interesting is setting that aside, how these sort of danger signals were buried, teachers were prioritized for vaccines in much of the country, in many locations, yet they still didn't go back to school in many locations, even after that. So they were put ahead of sometimes more vulnerable people. And you can look this up. This isn't me making this up. This isn't a conspiracy theory. You can see the different levels of sort of priority that the CDC and, you know, various health governing bodies put out. They prioritize teachers in many occasions. Okay, I got it. You want to be protected. And they still didn't go back to school. But meanwhile, and this goes back to what we talked about in the very beginning, how class based the whole entire pandemic response was.

[Megyn Kelly]

I only have a minute left. I gotta interrupt you final thoughts on Fauci and what his legacy in all this should be.

[David Zweig]

Well, he's pardoned, so there's that. I don't suggest that there was criminal behavior. I don't know enough about those angles. What I would say is Fauci was sort of the figurehead. He was the face of the response in our country. And Anthony Fauci, along with many, many others, overstated evidence over and over again. And they said kids couldn't go back to school until it was safe with a contrived list of reasons, and that there was never any support behind them. And not only was there not support for them, we had an enormous amount of evidence right across the Atlantic showing millions of children in school without consequences, without doing any of this stuff.

[Megyn Kelly]

He funded Ecohealth alliance, which very well may have been behind the research that caused the pandemic.

[David Zweig]

Very possible.

[Megyn Kelly]

He appears to have lied repeatedly to Congress while under oath that's why he needed a pardon. And, yeah, he's villain number one, in my view, but there's so many to choose from. Don't forget to buy this book. It's called An Abundance of Caution, American Schools, the Virus, and A Story of Bad Decisions. David Zweig. Z W E I G. Great to see you.

[David Zweig]

Thanks, Megan.

[Megyn Kelly]

Okay, tomorrow on the show, Steve Bannon and Nancy Grace. There's a combo. Thanks for listening. Listening to the Megyn Kelly Show. No bs, no agenda, and no fear.