← Zero Hour with James Poulos
Zero Hour with James Poulos
Ep 73 | How Trump’s Victory Proves That Legacy Media Is FINISHED I Sharyl Attkisson
00:50:36
Sharyl Attkisson, a five-time Emmy-winning journalist and talk show host, joins James Poulos to discuss the future of independent journalism and the direction that it will head in the coming years.
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- [00:01]
James Polis
Looking for a pickup truck to get just about anything done.
- [00:04]
Cheryl Atkinson
Look no further.
- [00:05]
James Polis
The Chevy Silverado EV isn't just the most powerful Silverado ever with next level towing capability and technology. It also offers game changing versatility with the available multiflex midgate and tailgate. Which means Silverado EV helps you carry large, bulky and oddly shaped items up to nearly 11ft in length.
- [00:23]
Cheryl Atkinson
Chevrolet Together, let's drive.
- [00:26]
James Polis
Visit Chevrolet.com to learn more. Cheryl Atkinson, she's followed the science and lived to tell the tale right here, right now. I'm James Polis. Welcome to Zero Hour. Cheryl Atkinson, a five time Emmy award winning journalist and investigative reporter. She's also the author of Follow the How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures and Prevails. Welcome Cheryl.
- [01:16]
Cheryl Atkinson
Thank you for having me.
- [01:18]
James Polis
Say it ain't so. They prevail in the end.
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Cheryl Atkinson
Well, I think the sickness that we suffer today as a society of chronic illnesses, despite the fact we're spending more on insurance and health care than ever before, is a result of the fact that big Pharma has prevailed with these uncomfortable partnerships with big media, including the news media, political figures, government in general, and our doctors and our medical establishment and their resulting I posit in this and with good evidence, I believe in the book, this is part of the reason we're suffering and declining in health as a society because of these conspiracies together, these powerful groups conspiring together.
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James Polis
You've got the book with you. I think you said in the pre show that it's the first copy off. The press is pretty much go ahead and hold it up so everyone can see.
- [02:05]
Cheryl Atkinson
Grabbed it on the way to the airport.
- [02:08]
James Polis
Yep, there it is. Well, look, we're gonna dig into all the details here, but let me start out with this. A lot of memes going around these days where it's sort of like normal person 2014 and fully radicalized war paint ready to tear everything down 2024. So many Americans have gone through this kind of 10 year, you know, roughly 10 year experience. Your show's been on the air for about 10 years. It's been a hell of a 10 years. And many people feel that they've been just profoundly radicalized by a whole sort of system that has really come off the rails and taken us to a place that no one really could have imagined.
- [02:47]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, I focus on the relative handful of entities that are controlling our medical system and follow the science and working in these conspiracies that I discuss. But in the bigger picture, and I've written about this in the past, this is happening in every facet of our life. Any form of information that can be controlled is being controlled. And these powerful groups have figured out how to do it. And things like the Internet made it all the easier for them to control things. Because now you have a people funneled to an information source, or the box, as I call it, maybe your computer, your phone. And if they can just get control over these few things like Google and Twitter and Facebook that so many people use, then their job is much easier than it used to be in terms of trying to saturate the information landscape with their narratives and their propaganda.
- [03:38]
James Polis
So much easier. And of course, AI is just the next step, or a lot of people want it to be. Was there a moment for you over the past 10 years or so when you felt yourself being radicalized where you felt like, no, sorry, I want to break out of the box. What we're being presented with is either not real or is a reality that requires us to really step outside of the frameworks that a lot of us grew up with.
- [04:01]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, because of the place where I've sat for the past 40 years, but particularly during the time period you're talking about as an investigative reporter, I was seeing these trends developing on the front end in the news industry as our information started to be controlled and manipulated by outside forces. And so I guess instead of being subject to it, I recognized it was trying to fight back. Pretty early on, I was arguing with the attorneys at CBS News who had prove my stories and my investigations for air. I was arguing at the investigative journalism conferences that I go to that if we don't pay attention to what's happening in this realm, and if we don't firewall ourselves as news organizations from these special interests who are trying to control thought and control the news, that we're going to be in a world of hurt. And there was very little interest on the part of the people I spoke with in addressing and attacking this. This is something that needed to be attacked 20 plus years ago. It's not something, I think the ship can't be turned quickly now. But, yeah, I think I saw it happening, I would say, in a big way in the early 2000s. I'm sure it was to some degree happening before then. But that's when it became easier with the advent of the Internet and social media, for these narrative shapers to shape the information. And I guess as a camel peeking their nose under the tent in the news departments, what do you think was.
- [05:22]
James Polis
At the heart of that unwillingness or that disinterest that you're describing, Is it a feeling of it's too late or what can we do, or we're just going to get stepped on if we try? What do you think?
- [05:33]
Cheryl Atkinson
It's hard to figure out, I think when it became controversial to say things like that, because your sponsors, you're basically implicating as a news division in some respects, your corporate sponsors. Because the pharmaceutical industry was on the leading edge of figuring out how to manipulate and control news information. And they had forged an uncomfortable partnership with the news media, lobbying for direct to consumer ads to be legal on tv, which didn't used to be. You know, we're one of the only countries that allow prescription drugs to be advertised on tv. This makes billions and billions of dollars for the drug companies as well as the news media and the media in general. And it's very uncomfortable to then say out loud as a journalist, that the people you know who are sponsoring your news and your companies are responsible for shaping improperly news and information, and that there should be a firewall. They don't want to hear that because they know there could be financial repercussions. I argued all along if we had developed a firewall on the front end, then when advertisers would call, as they did when I was at CBS News, to try to stop my reporting on prescription drugs, for example, if the bosses could simply say, we have a policy. I can't talk to you. If you have a complaint, put it in writing and here's where it goes, then that protects us. That gives us a great excuse not to let, let that infiltrate the news division. But instead, it was very squishy. There were no firm policies. Calls were made back and forth. I learned about some of them later, after the fact, to try to shape reporting. And I think it's that way with all the news divisions and not just broadcast, abc, NBC, CBS and so on, but print as well.
- [07:18]
James Polis
For a long time, we've all watched those ads. We've all seen them. They really took over Fox News. At some point I started to wonder, you know, how effective are these ads? How many people are they really driving to sort of get up off their couch, pick up the phone, like call their service provider or whatever, go to the. Go to the doctor, ask them for, you know, ask your doctor today. How many people actually do that? And then at some point I started to think, you know what? These ads can be so effective even if no one gets off the couch, because it's ultimately almost like a form of Propaganda where you come to see them so often that you think, this is really what life is all about. This is what defines our lives. Everything's a medical issue. Every problem that we have can ultimately be treated, medicalized in a certain way. There's a drug for everything. And all I have to do is figure out what's really wrong with me or go to someone who can tell me what's really wrong with me, and then they'll just, you know, they'll write me a prescription and they'll put me on something, and that's just what everyday life is gonna become.
- [08:16]
Cheryl Atkinson
I think you've really hit the nail on the head. There are many goals accomplished. Even if people. You see these niche ads for conditions that I think. And you must think when you see the ads, not that many people could have that condition. How are they affording to buy all these advertisements? How many people are they really driving to use the medicine?
- [08:35]
James Polis
And the side effects just sound, you know, worse than the problem.
- [08:38]
Cheryl Atkinson
But a couple things are accomplished. It focuses you on treatment rather than root cause. The root cause of a lot of these disorders. Through my research, I've become convinced and probably a lot of people listening already knew some of this. They are things that have to do with the adulterated food and the policies that allow us, and in some cases force us to drink food with toxins and chemicals and pesticides in it, and water that's bad and medicines that's causing side effects and vaccines that could be creating chronic immune disorders in our population that we're suffering from now. But by showing these treatments, you're not looking at what's causing it. You're saying, I can make these things better. These things are kind of normal to have, and we can take care of them. And it makes them money in the meantime. And then the second big thing it accomplishes, even if it doesn't drive people to use the medicine, it owns the media. The media basically gets so much money from these ads, whatever they're advertising at the pharmaceutical industry, that the media becomes beholden to the companies and is less likely or in some cases, I think, unlikely at all, to do stories that uncover negative things about prescription drugs or the root causes behind diseases, which sometimes can be tied back to the pharmaceutical industry through the chemicals they make and drug side effects and so on.
- [09:52]
James Polis
All right, so let's get into the book. It's called Follow the Science. That means that there's a beginning point somewhere in there. You can walk it back and figure out, how did we get into this mess in the first place, is there a sort of origin story to the predicament that we've placed ourselves into with giving Big Pharma so much control, creating bioweapons that run amok like Covid has? Where does it all start?
- [10:13]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, I'm not sure I can tell you the day that it starts. But what I try to do in the book, if people have followed my reporting, some people probably have never heard of me. But for those who have, they may view me as a skeptic investigative reporter who looks skeptically at everything and has discovered certain things. But what I wanted to do in the book was start by some examples out of thousands and thousands that show how I became a skeptic on issues of the medical establishment. I didn't start that way and I want people to understand. I started like a lot of people. My dad's a doctor, brother's a doctor. Believing doctors in general that what they say must be true, that studies that are published must be factual.
- [10:54]
James Polis
Why would they lie?
- [10:55]
Cheryl Atkinson
Right? That a study conducted on kids, for example, that a researcher would never, you know, mislead on the consent form or do something that could hurt somebody. I just didn't believe any of those things could be true. But I'm giving specific anecdotes that are well documented that the publisher thought were really fascinating over the years that brought me along the journey to where I am today that showed in every case doctors can't always be trusted, that medical groups and even med schools have been co opted and taken over by special interests, that your doctor doesn't know a lot of stuff that you may be able to find out about if you do your reading that he's not doing that. The collusion between the media and the industry is out of control. I mean, all of these things I discovered along the way. So I think one of my earliest stories on my journey goes back to about the 2001, 2002 time period. After 9 11, the government was going to restart the smallpox vaccine program. And I covered that for CBS News. And I learned controversies about vaccines which I had never known. My child fully vaccinated. I never even knew to ask questions about it and learned that the smallpox vaccine is considered so relatively dangerous. That's why we don't give it today, the disease is considered eradicated. But we also had to measure that the vaccine is considered relatively risky as well. They restarted the vaccine program and first inoculated some first responders and military had some terrible reactions with blood clots and heart inflammation. Sound familiar? They eventually stopped the program. But what I caught them doing, them being government establishment figures, they were not well tracking all the injuries. Even though they were tracking enough that they pulled the smallpox vaccine program, they were still in my view, covering up adverse events that were happening with soldiers that were getting this shot and others. And in particular a story I'd never told before. NBC's David Bloom. I don't know if you're too young to remember, he was an important reporter for NBC and embedded as a war correspondent and died. I was embedded for CBS with the Air Force. He was with the army on the ground in Iraq and he died of a blood clot. And I guess I was the only person on the planet that pursued the question based on research I'd done for the smallpox vaccination that linked the blood clot possibility to the vaccines that he'd had, including smallpox and anthrax. And I discovered and broke the news that the government did not properly report his death as a potential adverse event which was required under the program, this experimental program for the vaccines. And as a result of my reporting, they eventually did report him as a potential adverse event from the vaccines. But I saw efforts to not have that be said. NBC didn't cover it, the medical journal and science journalists didn't ask the question. And I started asking why am I not a health reporter, the only one that seems to be asking one of the most obvious important questions about this and kind of took off from there, kind of going down the rabbit hole on vaccines?
- [14:07]
James Polis
Well, you know, this is territory where some fear to tread and it's easy to understand why. I mean, how much of this medicalization of everyday life, the explosion of big pharma, the cartelization of drugs, how much of that ultimately do you think has origins in this kind of shadow war that's been playing out for so long and can, you know, you can roll it all the way back to around on 9 11.
- [14:29]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, it's a very well organized campaign. It makes a great deal of money to, you know, all the corporations that you think of that make money from making medicine. And certainly I'm not here to say that medicine and vaccines have never done good. I certainly take medicine, I'm over vaccinated because when I traveled with the military for CBS News and embedded, they just shoot you up with whatever they want to give you, even if you've already been vaccinated. And I'm not here to say that medicine is bad. There's certainly many life saving medicines that have been out there. But I think it'd be difficult to argue we haven't gone overboard. And that the proliferation of medicine without a proper examination and tracking of the side effects and what it's doing on a population basis is responsible in part for this broad. The epidemics we have of chronic disorders and immune disorders in this country, and some cases mental disorders, which are nothing more than medical, physical health disorders of the brain. Some people think, oh, that's a behavioral thing that's caused by things outside of the control. You know, how you were raised. Well, there's some relationship to that, but the evidence is very strong that the mental disorders that so many of our young people are suffering from also have potential roots in the medicine we take and the chemicals and the pesticides and the stuff that's in our food and. And all the rest of it.
- [15:50]
James Polis
Yeah, There was one of my favorite books, a sort of weird entry into the canon I keep in my head. Thomas Pynchon, the great novelist, had a little detective story came out 2015, about 10 years ago called Inherent Vice. And the conceit of the novel was that there was a sort of diabolical syndicate of dentists that was a front for a kind of global conspiracy that involved the heroin trade out of Vietnam. It was set in the. In the late 60s out of Vietnam into California in order to get the young generation hooked on heroin and then to take those heroin addicts, get them into the dentist's office to have all the dental work that you need done if you're heroin addict. And so, you know, it was kind of with a wink and a nod, but it was also making serious point that what could be more powerful, a more powerful way of locking people into a system that is terribly unhealthy for them than to create the problem for them and then offer what's supposed to be the solution, you can get them coming and going.
- [16:58]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, fascinating observation, and I think that there must be some truth to that. I looked in the book at the transgender trends and examined. When I went to Europe to cover some news a couple years ago, they were having the same discussions. And a left leaning politician MP over there said to me from Scotland, you know, this was not even the transgender thing, was not even on the plate in the last election we had. And he says, this time you can't get elected if you don't talk about it. And he was just marveling at how quickly it had surfaced. And same here in the United States. And I ended up doing a report where I tried to follow the money, because there's always a money trail when narratives suddenly explode onto the scene, you know, everybody's writing about the same thing, and you're not supposed to feel a different way. And all of that comes from somewhere. And I discovered a couple of things, but simultaneously, I interviewed a Berkeley professor who more than 20 years ago, was researching a chemical called atrazine for a company called Novartis, a drug company. Chemical company. And they hired him to see if Novartis, you know, to prove that it's safe, because he, the EPA was going to be doing sort of an oversight on it. And it's very popular chemical used in corn. We're all drinking some of it in our drinking water. Pretty much. It's everywhere. And unfortunately for him, his studies for the company found that it turns, among other things to say it's simply boy frogs into girl frogs. And as he discovered more about it, and eventually they didn't want him to publish that. And they control the terms of the contract. Whoever hires you, people don't know. Studies are not pure and honest anymore, typically because the drug companies fund them at the universities and control the terms under which they can be published. To his credit, he quits Novartis. He completes the studies without Novartis funding so that he can publish and talk about them. This has been expanded and built upon with hundreds of other studies over the years as the companies try to destroy him and the methods they used to spin people that if they would try to Google this topic, what they would find and how they tried to hurt and stop him are fascinating of their own. But at the end of my interview with him that I did recently, I asked, do you think this has anything to do with these transgender trends? Because this is just one chemical. I've reported on another medicine called Risperdal that causes can cause boys to grow female breasts. And these young boys, age 5, are getting mastectomies for growing female breasts and feeling like women. So what is the artificial component to the transgender trends? And he agreed. He said, you know, this is one chemical he has no doubt has some impact, although there's many things that could be working together in our bodies. And he pointed out There are over 10,000 chemicals that we know very little about. And we're, you know, so by treating the problem and by the system that's set up for doctors to come in and not look at the root cause, we're effectively not figuring out what's causing it in the first place. And we're ensuring a steady stream of money making patients for the rest of their lives. And therefore, you want to normalize the transgender trends instead of saying, hey, let's obviously have empathy for these people, but let's find out what's causing it. If there's something artificial, we're supposed to just say, this is brilliant, and then give them treatments like Lupron, which is a drug that is typically given to children. And then to close the loop, Lupron is made by a company that heavily funds the transgender agenda. So it benefits, on the one hand, from normalizing transgenderism and not, I would say, looking for root causes. And then, on the other hand, it's making millions or billions of dollars treating people who think boys, who want to be girls and so on.
- [20:47]
James Polis
Yeah, you know, I want to pull on this thread a little bit more because there's so much here. You know, you can look at the sacklers, you can look at all kinds of people when you're trying to figure out who the big players are here. But something seems to be especially wrong with, like, the upper Midwest, the kind of, like, northern Great Plains, Minnesota, North Dakota, the Dakotas. Whether it's, you know, like a Tim Waltz kind of guy or even, you know, like Christy Noem, like, this is really ground zero for some of the most powerful and insidious stuff going on where big pharma and, like, big trans are interrelated. Can you shed any light on that?
- [21:24]
Cheryl Atkinson
What's going on up there geographically? I have no idea. I suppose if you were to dig and look, you might find some chemical and pharmaceutical ties that are very big industries there. Or let's say just a theory, one of many that you could examine. Big corn producing states that use that rely on this chemical to make cheaper corn, to grow corn better and cheaper and faster. And then in some sense, they're lobbied heavily by the makers of the chemical, and they listen, because the makers of the chemical are giving so much money to the politicians, and they're so integral to the corn industry, it's hard to know. And I haven't looked at the geographic angle.
- [22:07]
James Polis
I agree with you. I haven't gotten to a place personally where I'm thinking medicine is bad. You see, medicine run away. But. But when you look at corn, I mean, this thing is heavily genetically modified by now, Big ag and big Pharma, it's so intertwined now. And people know that there has been a significant change to the effects that food that most people in America eat have on their bodies. People are becoming aware of this. Do you think that corn has crossed over from a category where it was like it used to be? Oh, if you're a corn fed American, that's good. Do you think corn is now evil?
- [22:44]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, I wouldn't say evil, but I am now. I've grown suspect based on my research, particularly in the COVID era, because this stuff bleeds over Covid bled over into so many other topics with our food and medicine. I'm suspect of a lot of the food that we're sold at our stores, the way the government makes us eat it. And I resent the fact that if I were to choose to feed my child unadulterated food or food without chemicals or as many chemicals are produced a different way, the government makes it virtually impossible or unaffordable for you to do that. I'm doing a story on raw milk and Amish produced and small farm produced foods that the government's heavily cracking down on under the auspices of supposed safety. But I found it's very questionable. You know, they argue about pasteurized milk versus unpasteurized milk and raw milk. I learned a lot about what's happened and studies to back it. Not just people saying so, but what's happened to our milk is it's become ultra pasteurized. What's happened to our health as a result? And you know, the government arguing that we have to be force fed the milk that is probably less healthy and for some people, dangerous, and that we're not to be permitted to drink the unadulterated milk that in some instances may be far safer and healthier for some people is pretty shocking. And I've become suspect of a lot of the food that I say that we're being force fed to eat.
- [24:12]
James Polis
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- [26:32]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, you talk about, you know, how we're forced to believe and forced to read and forced to eat certain things. And I tried to follow the trail on some of these studies with specificity that I think were put out there, I suspect, as propaganda to fight something else that the government commissions studies during COVID to try to disparage true facts that they didn't want the public to know about. And one of those cases was a small study that I believe aimed to show the COVID vaccines didn't cause neurological problems, which they do, you know, on occasion. That's well documented. But at the time, I think they wanted to try to act like that wasn't the case. So a government funded study was done through Columbia University. The outcome was only, I believe, like 113 patients. So it's very small studies, observational. And the study authors concluded that all the hospitalized patients that came with nerve problems after the COVID vaccine had preexisting factors that could be pointed to, oh, you know, maybe they had a heart issue, nerve and heart issue. Well, their grandfather had such a thing. So they rule out the vaccine, and they did that with each patient. And I, as a casual observer, saw the obvious, that just because someone has a preexisting condition or perhaps a genetic predisposition doesn't exonerate the vaccine. In fact, any scientist should know that can make you more susceptible to the vaccine side effects. That's what should be studied. Not saying that, oh, the vaccines are clearly safe because all of these people could be. Their illnesses could be traced to something else. And I wrote the journal and I wrote the scientists and come to find out, long story short, the government has figured out a way to fund what I see as propaganda and then legally launder the funds to a private university like Columbia and therefore not have to turn over the data, not have to talk about who the peer reviewers were, not have to give any information on communications between the scientists and the government. So you can never find out, even though this was funded with our tax money, what was really behind the study and who was pushing it. I did the same thing with an Amish study that was pushed out after the Amish seemed to fare much better with their approach to Covid. A study was commissioned, paid for, by the government that tried to disparage that. When you dug into the stats, it didn't. It actually proved the point, but it was spun differently. And when I tried to find out why it was spun differently and to get some corrections on some of the mistakes they made in their article, again, I was told that we couldn't have the data and that the peer reviewers are secret, that for their own protection, they can't be told. So our money's being used to fund national propaganda for the government in ways that we can never even. We're not allowed to dig into.
- [29:19]
James Polis
Yeah, the science won't let you.
- [29:21]
Cheryl Atkinson
Right.
- [29:22]
James Polis
Okay, let's talk about maybe some solutions or at least ways of ameliorating this. You just got back from Europe where the sort of populism wars are in full swing. We're going to talk about that a little bit, but let's start right here at home. Is there a populist solution to this problem?
- [29:38]
Cheryl Atkinson
I think the closest we have come in the last couple years was Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Someone who's outside, whose fate did not rest with the establishment political system. In other words, they didn't get funded on the way up by. They didn't sell their souls to the industries that have elected everybody else. That's what makes them so dangerous. I mean, that's. That's exactly why, in my view, Donald Trump became such a target. It's not because he writes mean tweets. That's the excuse given now. But it's because he's such a threat to the establishment, both left and right, Democrat and Republican, and the pharmaceutical industry. Now, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Who understands everything we're talking about today and much more, they cannot let him have a position in government. That is like the scariest thing he said to me, and I believe him. He knows exactly the names of the people he would fire. He would walk into CDC if he were elected in Atlanta and get rid of the corrupt officials and rework everything. I mean, CDC needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up. Nobody's going to do that except a Robert F. Kennedy type person who understands what's going on.
- [30:47]
James Polis
For those reasons, do you think that he is ultimately going to endorse Donald Trump or that he should?
- [30:53]
Cheryl Atkinson
I think something could be. From the. From the viewpoint of what we're talking about, I think there could be something positive. He can't get elected because of the way the system works. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. If he were to have an important position under Donald Trump and be allowed to do some of what he wants to do, that could start to nick away at the things that we're talking about in a way that very few people understand. He is a lawyer who's practiced law against these companies and had cases against them and understands how they work. He's been attacked and targeted by them. That could make some inroads in exposing and digging, digging at this problem that we're talking about.
- [31:30]
James Polis
So it sounds like the populists need at least a couple champions at the top in order to really make a dent in this problem.
- [31:36]
Cheryl Atkinson
But there's an epic battle to try to make sure these people. And by the way, populist in Europe, I learned, is a disparaging term. Those who are being called populist don't agree. They're populist because the definition they're using is you don't have real policies. You're just appealing to emotion and sentiment. And, you know, you're.
- [31:55]
James Polis
It's like demagoguery.
- [31:56]
Cheryl Atkinson
Yes. So I see it differently. They're popular figures. Popular because they believe the political figures that they're serving the will of the people versus the establishment politicians who have forgotten who they work for and are serving some other master. That's kind of how I see the division. But I have to be mindful. When I asked the president of Poland about being a populist, and he went on for quite some length of time about how he is not and explained why I came to understand how it's been used as a term of derision by those who don't want to see these figures advance.
- [32:29]
James Polis
Sure. Well, okay. And so moving on to Europe, I mean, it's been tough over there because you have parties that are at least nominally to the right of center that put up these candidates. The people get really excited. Oh, Georgia Meloni, or you look at the uk, a couple other countries, there's this wave of hope that maybe this kind of system that you are covering and this kind of anti populist elitist system, there's an opportunity to maybe crack it or to slow it down or maybe even stop it or reverse it. The person I'm just beating up on Maloney because she's such a clear example, they get elected and the rhetoric slowly melts away. And what you end up with is, well, okay, maybe we'll just allow all the immigration anyway. That whole kind of agenda just begins to fade back into the soup of EU bureaucratic globalist population terraforming. You were in Poland and you were in the uk. What did you see thematically in Europe? Where does the hope rest right now, if anywhere?
- [33:37]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, like in South America and other parts of the world, they're having their epic battle between the establishment politicians and the populist figures. And I don't know how it ends, but I do believe the entrance of the populace in the field to some degree does impact the agenda of the establishment political figures. And one way in which that may be seen as a positive by people who care about some of the things we're talking about today, their illegal immigration problem in Europe is arguably worse than ours. It doesn't get a lot of coverage here. It's horrible. And because the populists have really taken the public sentiment and run with it and made a big issue of it, even the left in Europe now acknowledges, and I interviewed all figures from all sides, there's nobody saying something doesn't need to be done about it. So that has pushed the establishment political figures to respond in a way that they might not have done because popular sentiment has gotten to be so outraged by the effects of the illegal immigration there. You know, in Poland, they've built a wall. They've authorized, in some cases, shoot to kill orders for people that are crossing the border illegally. They're doing things that again, is not reported over here. But they're desperate to try to get some sort of control over this massive wave of illegal immigration. They've had in the past 10 years or so, and they're responding to it. So I don't know what the outcome is, but I didn't speak to one political figure on any side of the fence when I was there that didn't agree something serious has to be done to stop the illegal immigration.
- [35:12]
James Polis
Well, you look at a place like Germany, and there the party line is, for the sake of our sacred democracy, we have to consider banning the political party that's responding the most to these concerns.
- [35:22]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, I think Germany's such an interesting case because they began, I think it was around 2016, saying, welcome, welcome, come here. We'll take millions. And pretty quickly, within a couple of months, they had a series of three or four terrorist attacks in a row from the illegal immigrants who had come there. Then it got to be a bigger thing with the economic pressure to take care of them. But even more importantly, I think the culture clashes. And I interviewed a professor in London who I thought hit the nail on the head when he said it's not that, as many like to portray it, people either anti Muslim or anti immigration or pro. In fact, he says it's people who are comfortable with quick change and people who are not comfortable with quick change and plopping down millions of people from a different culture overnight next door. Where they then discovered, for example, in Denmark and Sweden, they opened their arms to some of these Muslim people who are not assimilated, but came in overnight, opened their arms to their ways, and then were told by some of the radical Muslims, we're going to burn the Bible. You can't look at the Bible. And they were so shocked, like, what? We love you. We've opened our arms to you. These culture clashes that are occurring have bubbled up all across Europe and made people think twice about obviously whether this was a good idea. And Germany, as you may know, shortly after opening its arms, basically shut the door and started sending people back and telling them quit coming. And for some reason, Germany is their destination. They seem to think that's where the jobs are. So a lot of them come in and head to Germany. And Germany is basically trying to say to stop that.
- [37:02]
James Polis
Well, there was that whole wave of Turkish immigration which was not even related to kind of this more Arab and African wave. So they've been getting hit with this a couple times. And at a certain point you have to ask, at what point does the immigration, the migration become so overwhelming that the character of those countries just fundamentally changes and you can't get it back?
- [37:24]
Cheryl Atkinson
I think we're there because one of my stories, as it happens, we're like on the same wavelength here that I'll be doing this fall in full measure that I was shooting is called the Changing Face of Europe. And I asked the question, is the face of Europe fundamentally changed by a massive, sudden, really relatively sudden wave of immigration? People used to immigration happening over a fairly long period of time, not big, you know, big chunks of them, the way it's been happening in the past 10 years or so. And I think it has fundamentally changed. And many would argue for good, and some would argue not for good, and a lot would argue that they're not economically posited to absorb what they've had to absorb. But I don't think there's any going back. And I do wonder in the United States as well, with. Even with Donald Trump promising mass deportations, you and I know how long that will last. The first person with a tearful child or a tearful person who's put on, you know, a bus or something with cameras rolling, that's not gonna last forever.
- [38:22]
James Polis
They'll be the next George Floyd.
- [38:23]
Cheryl Atkinson
Yeah, I don't think we can dial it back. That's the tragedy of the past four years. Even though majority of the public agrees this should not have happened and we shouldn't be where we are as long it's still coming in today. As long as that's going, that's pretty irreversible, I think.
- [38:39]
James Polis
And it's not just a country here and a country there. I mean, no offense to Denmark, but if Denmark falls, life goes on. We're talking about the whole West. We're talking about all of Western Europe, we're talking about all of the United States. And then you look at a place like the UK and we're not just talking about Europe, we're not just talking about the West. We're talking about Five Eyes, the core national security establishment of the United States and its very closest allies. You know, we're really starting to cut into bone here where what you see on the streets of the uk, you see the UK government's response. Think before you post. You know, really just nakedly anti rule of law, anti free speech. I know they don't have a written constitution, but that's really no excuse. And you're watching these things fall apart, and, you know, their equivalent of the nsa, gchq, is basically the same organization. They've got total open, free information sharing between those two organizations. Whether that's constitutional is an interesting question. But when you have a country that and it's not just the uk We've seen New Zealand and Australia and others sort of drifting or sometimes plummeting in this direction raises really basic questions about what is the west, what is the national security situation of the United States? It isn't just about, oh, there are a few too many people in these countries that speak a different language or have a different religion. This is really reaching to the fundamental character of that post World War II order. How long can it last?
- [40:10]
Cheryl Atkinson
And we have slowly slipped into a state here in the United States where we're debating the question about our First Amendment rights and our free speech. I think if you just said 20 years ago, you know, there should be limits on free speech, people would have, like, been out of their minds. But now we're sort of used to it, and they've been giving ideas as to why speech should be limited. And, you know, social media has been censored and we're having to argue against it. And there's misinformation maybe that shouldn't be. We're now in a situation where we're debating the very things that the country was founded on to prevent and avoid. And it was kind of frightening to hear in when I was in the UK a week or so ago. The news media, when they're doing stories, they're arguing and analysts who appear on there for more government control and more censorship, they're saying, oh, our intel agencies need to have more power to crack down on social media misinformation that's probably coming from these foreign entities. So it's done under the guise of national security. That's kind of how it started here. We have to censor things because it could be the Russians. And in fact, it's not. Most of the time what they're censoring has nothing to do with foreign interference, but they take the power that they build under those auspices and apply it against the public in ways that we shouldn't be standing for. And the media used to be the news media. I felt like you could count on us to be a bit of an equalizer. So that if politicians were conflicted or there were corporations trying to take control in inappropriate ways, at least the media could be someone speaking for the people and calling them out. And now we've become totally part and parcel of the process. And once the media's on board with all the other stuff that's happening, who is it that can stand up and say, you know, with clear eyes, what's happening?
- [41:55]
James Polis
Well, obviously, Elon Musk is making a bit of A splash in this area.
- [41:59]
Cheryl Atkinson
I just was thinking that when I.
- [42:01]
James Polis
Asked the question, you know, he's got a lot of. A lot of fans, a lot of simulation, a lot of critics, a lot of haters. He's becoming more polarizing. He's inviting that kind of divide, and he's becoming more bold. I don't think there's any question about that. And he's not perfect. None of us are. But things would be a lot different, and not for the better if x was still. Twitter.com recently among his spicier posts. And I think this was a reply in response to the situation in the uk. He said civil war is inevitable. Do you think he's right?
- [42:39]
Cheryl Atkinson
I mean, I hope he's not. And the main reason I would say civil war is less likely than it would seem is because the bad guys have made it clear to be laying the groundwork for that to be impossible. I think January 6th was part of that. There was nothing wrong with a great part of what happened on January 6th. And in fact, I think the people, the defendants who were not blocked from entering, and, you know, you weren't at the front, there were no police lines, and you were allowed in. You're allowed in the People's House whenever Congress is in session. And I heard they had suspended that rule for the day, but there were no signs saying, you're not allowed. The people have a right. I don't know if anybody knows. Whenever Congress is in session, an American citizen can go there and say, even if it's closed, I want to go in and watch. And they're allowed to. I think the defendant should have argued. The peaceful defendants who did nothing but enter the building, if they were not prevented from entering, should have argued, I had a right to be there, as I do anytime Congress is in session. This is the People's House. And I think the whole point of January 6th was to, in some respects, not just smack down Donald Trump supporters for next time. So he couldn't say, look at all the people that came out. You know, the narrative would be for that day instead of. I mean, it was a tremendous crowd. As a journalist, it's almost impossible to find pictures of the whole crowd because they don't exist. Like no one wants to show them. You can't buy them on Getty. They're very hard to find. It was a huge crowd, and that's just a fraction of the people who supported him and thought that the election was unfair. This was to say, the plan was to say forevermore instead of that being the narrative for Donald Trump that day, the narrative would be that there was violence and that anybody who took part would have to risk their jobs and their family and their reputations. And when these types of things happen, yes, it makes a lot of people think there might be people who would fight to the bitter end if they thought that a civil war were truly necessary for some reason. But most people won't. They can't. You know, they have families and lives to leave and money to earn and kids in college. So how do you. How would you do a civil war, even if one were somehow determined to be warranted in the minds of people, how would that be fought with a government that's already figured out how to suppress even peaceful. Peaceful demonstrations?
- [44:56]
James Polis
Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to ask you if the U.S. is facing another civil war, but relative to the U.K. i mean, look, they don't have guns. Their cops are confiscating spoons. Right? Spoons, knives, forks. Dangerous weapons. They throw you in jail if you post the wrong emoji onto X relative to that, in the US we still have our guns. We're a very big country. A lot of people supported President Trump, and maybe a lot of people didn't. But deep down, they really would rather the government not become this kind of digital despotism. Are you optimistic about whether it's the election or the next four years or just kind of the foreseeable future? This is a resilient country. There are still a lot of people who love America and love what it's always been. Do you think that hope for us at least, is justified?
- [45:48]
Cheryl Atkinson
I try to be optimistic because I don't see any value in being pessimistic. So I'm always trying to look for little points of light in the future. I don't see a lot, but one thing that could be seen as a positive, I feel like we are dividing ourselves up by states. That's something that people are still free to do. Let's say you don't like your state's policies or the turn that it's taken, or the leaders that are in control there. You can go to a state where things are friendlier, whether you're left or right. You can go to a place where it's run more like you wish the nation were run as a whole. And I think people are fleeing some states and going to others, and I think that may not be a negative trend. And it's those states that people flee to if they continue to be successful fiscally and in other Ways will that be where the states they leave are less successful and they don't have the resources and the money and crime goes up and it starts to become something where they have to change? I don't know. I think this whole idea of we're dividing ourselves up by states is not necessarily a negative trend. And that's something positive.
- [46:55]
James Polis
Yeah, I think so. And this is delicate, but I think it's important. There are people who have become so frustrated by the way that the ratchet has only moved our political and social and economic and cultural system in one direction that they start to think in terms of like, well, you know, if you only stand for slowing down the rate of change, then you're always going to lose and everything's just going to keep drifting left until we wake up one day and it's communism all over again. But if you look at kind of a more spiritual standpoint, much of the wisdom of the ages suggests that, no, you can't transform things all at once. And the temptation to try and transform things all at once, it usually results in catastrophe or failure. And if you really want to turn things around, you have to start small and you have to be patient and you have to work a little bit at a time and grow from there. And one thing the states can do, I think, is in that kind of salutary way, allow people to sort of deleverage or slow things down or begin to make that change without having to really march on the nation's capital and overthrow the government and kill the. I mean, that's the predicament that Europe has been in. It's been very hard to get real lasting change, political change, reform in Europe without everyone, march to the Capitol, kill the king, kill whoever's sitting in the throne, kill the usurper. And that kind of dangerous cycle of political instability has been so bad for Europe. I don't think they've really still found a way out. And here in the US I think we're very blessed and very fortunate to have these kinds of other ways of diffusing that tension so things really don't end up exploding.
- [48:35]
Cheryl Atkinson
Well, one positive thing, and this happened in a big way during COVID I think those who are manipulating and controlling our information in inappropriate ways became so audacious. They did it with Donald Trump when he ran the New York Times admitted they were going to suspend their normal ethics, rules and standards to cover a president in a way they've never covered him before. And then everybody thought that was like free time to do that, which huge mistake. If there's ever a time to follow your ethics rules and standards, it's with a figure that you don't like. Why even have the rules and standards if they only apply to people you like? But likewise with COVID the establishment got so audacious in their censorship and the clampdowns and the lack of tolerating dissent and actual good science that was contrary to what they wanted you to think, that it opened a lot of eyes. And I think it made activists out of people that never saw themselves as activists because they didn't care that much. Nothing had really plucked at them in such a strong way. Suddenly it's their family's health or something that their job, something that means a lot to them. And I think it. It made people more engaged and woke a lot of people up that might have not really been paying attention to this.
- [49:49]
James Polis
Cheryl Atkison. The show is Full Measure. The book is Follow the Science. We're rooting for you, and we look forward to seeing you prevail. Thank you so much, and thank you out there. That's all the time we got. At least until next time around. I'm James Folis. This is Zero Hour. May God have mercy on us all.
- [50:07]
Cheryl Atkinson
Sa.