EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,093 words- 0:02 – 2:04
Berenson’s Twitter ban and the tweet that triggered it
- ABAlex Berenson
(drumming) Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
- NANarrator
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- ABAlex Berenson
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays)
- JRJoe Rogan
(sniffing) Smell that? That's vindication.
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
You are the sweet smell of vindication.
- ABAlex Berenson
Not, not, not yet, my friend.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- ABAlex Berenson
Not yet.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not yet, but it's, it's definitely in the air.
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Has there ever been a person that has, uh, gone to court and got back on Twitter, besides you?
- ABAlex Berenson
There has not.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's pretty impressive. That's pretty impressive.
- ABAlex Berenson
Uh, s- (laughs) there's more common.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's more?
- ABAlex Berenson
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So explain the process. So you were, uh, what was the exact, uh, definition of what they kicked you off for?
- ABAlex Berenson
Oh, are, are we, are we live?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, we're live.
- ABAlex Berenson
Oh, oh, good, good.
- JRJoe Rogan
We're rolling.
- ABAlex Berenson
Okay, um, uh, all right. So, uh, it was almost exactly this time last year, Joe. It was August 28th, 2021. Uh, I, uh, wrote a tweet that began, "It doesn't stop infection or transmission." And they banned me. Um, I went on to say, uh, "This is not a vaccine, or don't think of it as a vaccine. Think of it as a therapeutic, meaning a drug, that has side effects, and that you have to dose in advance of illness." And then the last line was, "And we wanna mandate it? Insanity." Okay, I, I would say that that's been pretty well vindicated by events.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's...
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
That's vindication.
- ABAlex Berenson
So, so they banned me. That was, they said that was my fifth strike and that I was not allowed to tweet anymore, and my account was not available to anybody. All the previous tweets were gone. Uh, the 300,000 people, too bad. Um, so I sued them, uh, in December. And here's it gets, it gets interesting and tricky. Uh, so other people have sued Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, uh, and Wikipedia, actually, all these companies, um,
- 2:04 – 6:57
Section 230 explained: immunity, moderation, and how platforms expanded power
- ABAlex Berenson
and said, you know, "You've banned us." Uh, uh, you know, "I just wanna be able to use your platform. I haven't done anything wrong." And the companies say, "We can do whatever we want. We can ban you. We can, you know, attach labels to your tweets, this, that, and the other." Uh, and there's a law called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It's a federal law from 1998, I wanna say, maybe '96, uh, that basically was intended for two purposes. Purpose one was we don't want these companies to get sued over stuff that people are saying on them. So in other words, I go on and I say, you know, terrible things, defamatory things about Joe Rogan, or I say terrible things about my ex-wife, whatever, okay? Or I say, you know, "Go shoot the president." The, whatever it is that I'm saying, I'm saying something that's harassing or hateful or illegal. We can't expect, uh, a bulletin board or Facebook or, uh, or, or Twitter or whoever to police all that stuff. There's too much of it. It's not fair. So we're gonna give them complete protection from that. And that makes total sense, by the way, all right? You can't, you know, you can't have these people, uh, policing everything that's uploaded or downloaded. It's not, it's not within their capability, okay? The second idea was we want these folks to be able to give their users a better experience, and so we're gonna give them some protection, limited protection, to moderate the content that's posted, meaning let's say I'm posting tons of pornography and, you know, I'm posting it to a Christian website that, uh, that, you know, that's advertising itself as a family-friendly place. The idea was the, uh, 230's gonna allow me to take action against, uh, that user in good faith for harassa- harassing or objectionable content. So I'm gonna be allowed to ban stuff or to age restrict it. And, and that was really intended, when you look back at the statute, for porno- pornography especially. Okay. So what happened was the companies, with the help of the Ninth Circuit, which is, uh, the, the federal, uh, judges in, in California, which is where most of these companies are based, um, California and the West Coast, uh, managed to get bigger protection. And this really, this was happening for a while, and then it really happened in 2015. There was this case where a group of Sikhs, uh, uh, you know, an Indian minority group, the government of India went to Facebook and said, "We don't like these people. They're protesting against us. You gotta ban them. You gotta ban their, their group website." And Facebook said, "Okay," and pulled them. They sued Facebook. They said, "This is not right." And by the way, like, this was a classic example of a government telling, uh, you know, it's didn't, not wanting dissent, okay? They didn't... Facebook, uh, the, the Indian government didn't wanna deal with this group, so they told Facebook to ban it, okay? The Ninth Circuit said that 230 protection that allows you complete immunity if, if Alex Berenson says, you know, "Here's naked pictures of my, of my ex-girlfriend," that also allows you to ban whoever you want whenever you want. The, they called it first-party/third-party. They said there's no distinction in the statute between the immunity you get for, uh, you know, for, for this, for this defamation that Alex might be doing versus your own decision to ban these people who don't wanna be banned. And ever since then, 230's been a beast, and every time somebody has sued, the companies have said, "Look at Sikhs versus Facebook. We win."... and that's basically been how it's been. They've been allowed to do whatever they want. And so, uh, by the way, I know I'm not even talking about my case yet, but this is the legal background.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- ABAlex Berenson
So sometimes when conservatives say, "Hey, we need to ban 230. We need to repeal 230," I, that's actually not true. You just need to have the courts interpret 230 the right way, which is, you don't get to sue Facebook or Twitter for these defamatory or harassing or illegal posts that other people are putting up. But at the same time, they shouldn't have blanket protection for their own decisions. So they've had the best of both worlds. They call themselves publishers when they want, and as a publisher, I have the protection to publish who I like, not publish who I like. But I'm not a publisher for the point- from the point of view... I'm more like a telephone company if somebody does something bad over my airwaves. Does that make sense?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- ABAlex Berenson
That's how they've gotten.
- JRJoe Rogan
Okay.
- 6:57 – 11:47
Berenson v. Twitter: the contract-based strategy and the judge’s ruling
- ABAlex Berenson
Okay. All right. So fast forward, Berenson sues, Berenson v. Twitter. Here's what I had. I had conversa- uh, I had emails from a guy inside Twitter named Brandon Borman, who is a pretty senior executive, he was their Vice President of Communications, telling me explicitly, "Hey, we know what you're saying. We are in favor of encouraging debate about COVID." That was in 2020, and then in early 2021, he even went on to say, "We're encouraging debate about the vaccines, and we don't think you're doing anything wrong." So, so I said, "Not only are they violating my rights as a, you know, as an American, and, you know, the California Constitution actually has additional free speech protections, and I think they're violating those too." They're specifically... They made these promises to me. They made, they, they modified their contract with me, and there's a broader point that's important to everybody. When they say, "We have a COVID misinformation policy," or, "We have a election misinformation policy," or, you know, pretty soon they'll probably have a climate change misinformation policy. Whatever these policies are that, that govern what you can and can't say on their platform, they have to follow those. So even if they say their contract... And, you know, when you, you, you remem- you, you, you sign up for Twitter, you, uh, you know, you click on something at the end, and you've signed a contract with them basically, and that contract is written by their lawyers. It's very favorable to them, very unfavorable to you as the user. They're modifying that, okay? That was our argument. They're modifying that when they put out a COVID-19 misinformation policy. They don't have to have a COVID-19 misinformation policy. They could say, "Hey, we're Twitter, we're gonna ban you whenever we want for whatever reason." But they did have that policy, and our argument was they have to now follow it. And the judge, his name's Judge Wilso- William Alsup, he was in California, and he is not a Trump appointee, he's not a George Bush appointee. He is a Bill Clinton appointee, known for being a smart guy who kinda plays it down the middle. He in, in April of this year, just a couple months ago, said, "I think Berenson's got a case. I'm gonna allow this lawsuit to proceed. I am not gonna dismiss it." And that was a, that was a major event, uh, you know, in sort of the point of view of internet law. Um, because again, even though I did have these communications with Borman that other people, uh, don't have, this broader issue of who is... of, of whether or not these platforms when they tell you, "We're gonna have this strike policy. We're gonna do these things," do they have to follow that? That's the question. Again, if, if, if the, if the argument is, "I'm Twitter or I'm Facebook, I'm all powerful. I operate under 230, and I'm gonna kick you off whenever they want," they gotta tell people that. Instead, it's like, "Well, as long as you play within the rules and you color by our guidelines, it's okay." W- and then they don't even do that, now you can sue them.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you sue, and then did they settle?
- ABAlex Berenson
So, so I sue in December. In April, we get this ruling, and the judge doesn't allow everything to proceed, which from my point of view is sort of unfortunate. He didn't allow, uh, my big claims on the First Amendment or my California claims to proceed, and frankly, I still think there's a chance, uh, whether it's me or, you know, it's, or, uh, well it's not me, but whe- whether it's somebody el- somebody else going forward might be able to have a good claim on, on California constitutional law 'cause again, Twitter's based in California, and the California Constitution is even more protective of free speech than, um, than the US Constitution. It actually says, for example, the way it's been interpreted in California, the California Constitution, if you own a mall, you have to let people come in and protest. Even if they're, you know, like, from the Vietnam War on, even though that's a private facility, you, because you're running this place that's open to the public, and that a lot of people who, you know, go to, it becomes almost a public facility for the purposes of the California Constitution. And my argument, my lawyer's argument, uh, is Twitter is, Twitter is a huge public space. It's referred to itself as a public square many times. It should be forced to do the same thing under California law, and if the federal law, if 230 blocks that, now we have an issue of, uh, you know, does the federal law go too far and sort of hurt First Amendment protections? But put all that aside. Judge didn't allow any of that stuff,
- 11:47 – 14:48
Discovery leverage and settlement: reinstatement plus internal documents
- ABAlex Berenson
but what he did allow was my breach of contract claim to proceed, and he did something else, Joe. He, he said, "This guy's gonna get discovery." So discovery is a le- in, is a legal term. It means that the two parties have to exchange information in a civil lawsuit. So, so, and it's actually kind of amazing if you think about this, that this is how this works.... the, the lawyers for, you know, for Twitter were gonna go to Twitter and say, "You gotta give us all your documents that in- you know, that- where Alex Berenson is named, whether that's internal or whether that's, you know, Pfizer emailing about him or whatever it is, and we're gonna hand that over to his lawyers so he can help sue us." And I had to do the same thing. I mean, for me, it's not a big deal, you know, it's, like, me and my phone or whatever. But, but disc- and then he said, the judge said I would get to depose two Twitter executives, and that could be anybody. He didn't put any limits on it. So that could've been, like, Jack Dorsey, okay? So, if you're a big company, that's a nightmare for you. You do not want that. You do not wanna have to go through discovery. You do not wanna have to go through depositions. You just want, uh, you, you want a lawsuit to go away, okay? So- and my position was, look, the judge gave me this stuff. I'm not backing off. I want those depositions, I want this discovery, and I want the right to make it public. And so Twitter- I did not think we were gonna be able to settle, but Twitter, uh, and I- in June, we had these- th- this long mediation. And I can't sort of talk about how that went specifically, but I can tell you that at the end of J- well, July 6th, they, they, they reinstated me to the platform. We settled, they- I, I guess you could argue they didn't apologize, but they acknowledged they were wrong to have taken me off, uh, i- last August. And, and this is the really good part, since then, I've been publishing internal documents where Twitter says that they came under pressure from the federal government to ban me. So this, to me- so people said when I settled, and it was funny, it was actually people on the right, they said, "This guy, he took all this money to sue Twitter. He didn't care. He just wanted to get back on the platform. He just wanted to be able to tweet. He wanted some money from Twitter. That's what he got. He promised you he'd get discovery. He didn't get it. Nothing, nothing's ever gonna happen with this." Well, screw those people too, okay? 'Cause I've now been publishing documents that show that the White House wanted me banned, and that is the biggest part of all of this, okay? That's where the story is going now. That people
- 14:48 – 21:17
White House pressure claims and the next lawsuit target
- ABAlex Berenson
inside the White House, this is- and this is, this is Twitter employees talking to each other about a meeting that they had in April of 2021, before Twitter had ever done anything to me, where they said, they said that the White House said, "Why is this guy still allowed to tweet?" And at that time, they were saying to each other, these Twitter employees, "We think he's fine. We don't think he's doing anything wrong." Well, you fast-forward to July of 2021, just over a year ago, and Joe Biden says the vac- anybody who debates the vaccines, if social media platforms allow that, they are, quote-unquote, "killing people." And then less or barely a month after that, four hours after that, I should say, Twitter puts a strike against me. They begin the process of deplatforming me. Six weeks later, they deplatform me. So my position- and I'm gonna sue. I've said I'm gonna sue the White House and I'm gonna sue a guy named Andy Slavitt, who's named in these documents, who was working at the White House at the time. Uh, my position is that those- that there are people inside the Biden administration who violated my rights as an American citizen, violated my First Amendment rights, tried to get Twitter to suppress me personally. That's where this is going.
- JRJoe Rogan
And what was their basis? Like, when they said- did they have a very specific thing that they were accusing you of where they wanted you to re- remove from Twitter?
- ABAlex Berenson
It's not clear from the documents that they had anything specific. They- I mean, the term they use is misinformation, so vaccine misinformation, and in fact, they specifically said, um, acc- again, this is according to these Twitter employees who are talking about this meeting, that I was influencing persuadable people. So you gotta remember the- you gotta remember what the landscape was last year, okay? The beginning of the year, January through June, it was, "Hey, we're gonna vaccinate a lot of people. This is gonna go away." And yeah, there's people like Berenson who are out there talking about this VAERS data and they're talking about side effects and they're a pain in our ass, but ultimately, all those mouth-breathing anti-vaxxers, they're gonna see- you know, they're gonna see their buddies die and they're gonna see how well this thing works, and we're gonna get 90 or 95% of the country vaccinated, okay? We're gonna win. That was- that- a- and, and so there was pressure from the White House, but they felt they were in a really good position. Uh, there have been a- a lot of people have been vaccinated, uh, and, and it did look like w- I mean, it looked like the vaccines worked for a period of time in the spring. I don't know if you remember, but cases- especially in Israel, Israel was always the leader on this- cases in Israel went down almost to zero. They'd been in the thousands, uh, and then they went to zero. Deaths had been, you know, close to 100 a day in Israel. They went to zero. Okay. That was the spring. That was April. They were, they were upset about me and people like me, that- you know, disinformation, misinformation. To me, it's journalism, okay? If I'm pointing to you to government statistics and data and I'm saying, "Here's questions," and I'm saying, "Here's some questions about the clinical trial and how long it went and who was included in it and whether or not it actually shows the vaccines work as well as you've been told," that's journalism. One man's reporter is another, you know, is another man's disinformation specialist, okay? Just like one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, okay? So-That was April, May. Then something happened in June and July and August, the worst case scenario from the point of view of these people. What happened was cases started to go back up in Israel, in the UK, and then in the US. And they had known, if they had any sense, that the vaccines weren't gonna be permanently protective. But I guarantee you, they did not think that that was gonna happen in a matter of months, and that set them up to do two things. First of all, they were gonna start to push for boosters, okay? Now, maybe if all you watch is MSNBC, you could get convinced that boosters were, you know, that was always a part of the plan. But almost nobody who, who got a vaccine in, let's say, February or March or April thought that they were gonna need another one by the end of the summer or the fall, okay? So they knew, they knew that they were changing the narrative. Second, mandates. And this was really the worst part, Joe, right? This was, "We are gonna tie this to your job. We're gonna basically force almost every American adult of working age to get one of these who isn't self-employed or who isn't an i- you know, an illegal immigrant." Like, they don't have to get it, but most Americans who work are gonna need this for their jobs, and every healthcare worker and every government employee, and they, I mean, they, they pushed a lot of people last fall. And the anger they stirred was intense, and, you know, still intense. At that point, I was a problem for them. I'd been a problem in the spring, but I was a problem in the summer because it was starting to look like I was right, and it was starting to look like this wasn't gonna be something you could just... I don't know if you remember the shot and a beer, the lotteries. There was all this sort of quasi-coercive crap going on in the spring. By the summer of 2021, it was different. It was, "You wanna fly? Maybe we're gonna make you get vaccinated." They never did that, but they talked about it. And in Canada, they actually did do it. "You wanna work? You're damn well gonna need to be vaccinated. You wanna, you wanna go to a restaurant? You wanna go to a movie in New York City? You're gonna need to be vaccinated. You want your kids to go to school? Guess what? We're gonna make you get them vaccinated." That was talked about too. They don't even wanna pretend they said that, but everybody from Gazem- Gavin Newsom on down said that. So, so I was a problem for them, and, and Twitter cracked. Twitter had defended me, and they clearly internally, at least into April, did not think I was saying anything wrong. And I can tell you, I did not change my reporting standards. I did not ever say anything. I did not talk about, you know, magnetizing or any of that stuff. I always stuck to the data. Twitter cracked. They banned me, and now we know that the White House was leaning on them.
- 21:17 – 23:50
Narrative shifts: masks, vaccines, boosters, and mandate-era politics
- JRJoe Rogan
So, where do you go from here?
- ABAlex Berenson
Well, I'm back on. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. You're back on, and now, uh, I should point out that the things that you got in trouble for are now, uh, YouTube has amended their policy.
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs) They sure do.
- JRJoe Rogan
So now YouTube is allowing you to say that masks don't stop the spread. They don't protect you. They're also allowing you to say that the vaccines do not stop you from catching COVID or from spreading COVID.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yep. So, so it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause that's true.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yeah, 'cause that's true.
- JRJoe Rogan
And this is something that you said a year ago.
- ABAlex Berenson
A, a year ago. But unfortunately, now we're at a whole different set of questions, unfortunately. We're at, uh, so, so where do I go? Where do I go on Twitter and, and, uh, and the, and the Biden administration? Well, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna keep pushing. Um, I mean, I'm gonna sue. Uh, I have, I have my lawyer, James Lawrence, who I really like, who, uh, you know, who handled, who handled my lawsuit against Twitter, and we're gonna be putting together a case against, again, the Biden administration. The only question, you know, you gotta do it, you gotta make sure it's right, you gotta make sure it's nailed down. You know, we, we, uh, we, which documents do we include? What are our legal arguments? We have people, uh, very smart lawyers who wanna be involved in this and help. Um, you know, do we sue in New York? Do we sue in DC? Uh, there are a lot of different questions. But, but that's gonna happen. Um, and then, so that's A. But the, but the other question, unfortunately, we're done talking about whether the vaccines help infecti- or st- help stop infection or transmission. We know the answer to that. They don't. There's two big questions now. One is, do the vaccines actually increase your risk of getting Omicron, and do they increase your, or decrease your risk of serious illness if you do? And in some ways, because Omicron's pretty mild, and because we've all gotten it at least once, maybe twice, the, assuming nothing terrible happens to the virus itself going forward, in other words, assuming the virus doesn't somehow mutate again to become more virulent, it's gonna be what, what we thought it was gonna be two years ago, which is ultimately it winds up as a cold for everybody. It just, it's just another, you know, virus that you get from time to time. And eventually they'll stop counting the cases and they'll stop counting deaths, um, in part because they don't wanna admit the vaccines do nothing. So the easiest way to, to move past that is to just stop collecting the data. Um, and, and you can already see the data is being collected less frequently. It's certainly being publicized less. So that's question A, and I'm hopeful,
- 23:50 – 27:34
All-cause mortality and birth-rate concerns: the ‘hard questions’
- ABAlex Berenson
I'm hopeful basically that we will get to a point where, um, whether or not the vaccines do any good, the virus itself is essentially, you know, not a big threat. Not that it doesn't kill some people, but that it's not a big threat societally. Okay, but there's a bigger, even bigger issue that no one will talk about right now, and that is, what is happening to all cause of mortality and to birth rates in countries that use these mRNA and DNA COVID vaccines very heavily? Um, so essentially Western Europe, Japan, South Korea,... Australia, the United States, Canada. There is this, there's this notable increase in death rates, uh, in a lot of countries. And in the last couple of months, although the data is less clear, there's been a notable decrease in birth rates in some of them. Now, I don't wanna overstate this. I'm not talking about, like, deaths are doubling or tripling or births have gone to zero. When I say notable increase, I mean it looks to me, when you ... And I ge- actually just wrote a Substack on this, uh, that I posted, uh, Thursday morning, uh, uh, all-cause deaths might be up 10%. And when I say all-cause, I ... That's literally what it sounds like. It's like how many people died in, in Germany this week? How many people died in the UK this week? And other countries are better at collecting this data than we are. They collect it more rapidly. They publish it more rapidly. And then, you know, some people are still dying of COVID, a few, so how many ... When we, when you X out those deaths, and you just say, "If nobody died of COVID, would all-cause death still be above normal?" And the answer is yes. They'd be about 10% above normal. Now, I don't know whether 10% sounds like a lot or a little. To you, it's, you know, it's a-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sounds like a lot.
- ABAlex Berenson
It's enough that for COVID ... COVID caused a 10% increase. We shut down the world for that increase. Um, and I ... 10% in the US, really. Less worldwide. Um, with births, it's a le- the data's a little more kinda all over the map, but what's so striking is birth rates in some of these countries started dropping almost exactly nine months to the day after they started mass vaccinating women of childbearing age. Now, we know the vaccines can cause some menstrual irregularities, and it looks like they can cause a drop in sperm count. It's not clear whether that's temporary or not. Um, uh, it's possible that this is just sort of a temporary thing and births will come back to normal. Um, let's hope. So, but that's, that's where I'm going. On the data, that's what I'm pursuing. I'm pursuing w- w- ... Is this happening? It appears to be happening. Next question: why is it happening? And there's ... You can come up with plenty of explanations that don't involve the vaccines, okay? For example, you could say, "Well, I think deaths are increasing because, you know, during the lockdown, people didn't go to the doctor. They didn't get medical care. Um, uh, you know, maybe they didn't get exercise. They put on 20 pounds. That's increased their risk of a heart attack, and so now we're just seeing this downstream effect." You could say, "Well, I think deaths in people who are 30 are increasing because those folks, uh, you know, they were forced to be home. Now, they're making up for it by partying a lot more. They're doi- ... You know, they're doing drugs, or they're, you know, they're drinking and driving, and so those kinds of deaths are increasing." So, so there are stories you can tell that don't involve the vaccines to explain this. But my argument is we need to be talking about this, and the same people who were screaming about, you know, deaths during COVID need to be acknowledging this and looking into the reasons why.
- 27:34 – 39:24
Media incentives and coordinated narratives: from COVID to climate framing
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you make of these bizarre stories that you see, that get published, that are starting to blame an increase in heart attacks on climate change?
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs) Yeah. It's a joke.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's strange.
- ABAlex Berenson
I-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's strange because journalists are publishing these things-
- ABAlex Berenson
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
... in legitimate places.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, ABC had one the other day that was widely mocked because it's so crazy for them to say that.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yes. It's bizarre.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, how much climate change-
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... are we talking about? Shouldn't the sky be on fire? I mean, what the fuck are you talking about?
- ABAlex Berenson
Well, well, I will say this. It is true that when we have these extreme heat waves, especially-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- ABAlex Berenson
... in Europe where they don't have air conditioning-
- JRJoe Rogan
Sure.
- ABAlex Berenson
... some old folks-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ABAlex Berenson
... are just gonna die, basically, of ... Uh, you know, they're gonna be in their apartments, and they're just not gonna be able to get out of bed, and they're gonna die. But that, but that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about-
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- ABAlex Berenson
... these stories where it's like some 30-year-old had a heart attack-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- ABAlex Berenson
... and it's ... Yeah. No, that's ... It's, it's absurd. It's absurd.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is absurd.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But where do you ... Are they being influenced? Like, why is someone publishing a story like that? Like, what is going on? Like, w- h- ... What's ... What are the processes in place that would allow someone to p- to publish a story that's that ludicrous?
- ABAlex Berenson
S- so I see ... I'm glad you ... Uh, this is a good thing about talking to you, is you pull me back. 'Cause I can get lost in the weeds, in the details of, you know, this is what the deaths in, you know, Germany were last week. You get me ... Or you, you think sort of more wholistically. So, so here's what we're t- ... Here's what we've learned in the last couple years. We've learned that the media, uh, broadly, the, the elite media as I generally call it, but you know, it's The New York Times and it's CNN-
- JRJoe Rogan
Corporations.
- ABAlex Berenson
The corporations and ... But it, it's more than corporations. It's a group of people who all live in Brooklyn and DC, who are ... tend to be politically liberal, who all went to the same schools. By the way, one reason they hate me is 'cause I went to one of those schools, right? So I'm a traitor.
- 39:24 – 1:02:16
Fauci clips, accountability, and why ‘rewriting history’ won’t work
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, there was a, there was a smash cut of Fauci.
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs) Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you see that?
- ABAlex Berenson
Yes, I did.
- JRJoe Rogan
What he actually had ... See if you can find that, Jimmy. What, what he actually claimed he said versus what he actually said.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
You know, that he said he never said, "Shut anything down," and it's like ... I mean, but he's 81 or whatever he is. Like he's d- ... you know.
- ABAlex Berenson
Are we giving him a pass 'cause he's 81?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, but I'm saying maybe his memory sucks.
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs) No, his memory is fine.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think it's pretty good. I'm, I'm giving him a pass, I guess.
- ABAlex Berenson
Somebody, somebody-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm fucking around.
- ABAlex Berenson
Somebody, uh, referred to it as the Shaggy clip. It wasn't me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Shaggy?
- ABAlex Berenson
Yeah. You know that video?
- JRJoe Rogan
No.
- ABAlex Berenson
The ... Yo, you remember that song. Uh, it's the ... "It wasn't me."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- ABAlex Berenson
He gets caught by his girlfriend.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, boy. Oh, boy.
- ABAlex Berenson
"You even caught me in the shower. It wasn't me."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, right.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yeah. That's, that's Fauci. "It wasn't me."
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I think these guys operated in a day before the internet.
- ABAlex Berenson
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
And they became accustomed to these sort of patterns of just, like, b- repeating a narrative over and over again, and then, "This is the official story," and that's what they did during the HIV crisis. That's what they're doing now. It's the same thing. But now people will go back and pull up clips and make these little edits.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yes. He- here's why it's not gonna work though. Here's why. So, uh ... And I wa- I wanna ... I'm, I'm gonna give you this right now, and I'm gonna ... Uh, I'm giving it to you, uh, for a reason. This is a-
- JRJoe Rogan
Whiskey.
- ABAlex Berenson
This is a whiskey, um, and it's from a d- it's a distillery near where I live in the Hudson Valley of New York. Um, but the reason I'm picking it specifically isn't just that it's delicious whiskey. The guy who runs the place, uh, emailed me a few months ago. He said, "I'm on your side. Uh, can I ... I know it's been a long, uh, you know, 18 months. Can I send you some whiskey?" (laughs) And I said, "Please do." I said, "Send me the strongest stuff you got." (laughs) And so he sent me a couple bottles. Um, but that guy, he hasn't forgotten that they tried to make him get vaccinated. I haven't forgotten. You haven't forgotten. There's a lot of pissed off people out there. Let's play this.
- 1:02:16 – 1:25:07
Pharma influence, liability shields, and institutional reluctance to report injuries
- JRJoe Rogan
This is why I thought it."
- ABAlex Berenson
This is, this is-
- JRJoe Rogan
"This turns out to not be correct."
- ABAlex Berenson
... one reason, this is one reason cancel culture is such a... Uh, actually, you know, you did admit you were wrong back in January. But you were big enough, I mean, not just big enough in person, but, like, big enough, uh, and important enough culturally, they couldn't cancel you. They were trying to cancel you, and your apology meant nothing to them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's not about whether or not someone's wrong or right. It's about someone being inconvenient and someone being a problem. And the, the, the fact that my platform is not controlled by any corporations, so I can have a guy like Robert Malone on, who is... He owns the patent for nine, uh, nine patents in the, the invention of MRNA technology. I mean, he's a guy who fucking knows what he's talking about.
- ABAlex Berenson
Oh, yeah. He knows what he's talking about.
- JRJoe Rogan
And they tried to make him out to be a kook. I mean, this is a guy with a rock solid reputation outside of that. I mean...
- ABAlex Berenson
But, but, but back to you, right? Like, I don't remember the exact words that you used, but you admitted you'd made a mistake. You'd used a word that, you know, was not a good word. And unfortunately, it didn't satisfy the people criticizing you. That's part of the problem, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but that... You're always going to have people who hate you. They're always going to be there, and they're not gonna want to forgive you. That's just them. That's on them. Now, if I don't like someone, but someone comes out and says they made a mistake, I admire that because I think that's an admirable human quality. The, the ability to swallow your pride and also the ability to want to be forthcoming with, with truth and just say, "This is where I am. This is who I am. This is what I did. I shouldn't have done that, and I recognize that. And if I hurt your feelings, I'm sorry." Or, "If I misled you, I'm sorry. If I gave you information that made you act in a certain way or go and make a certain choice because you thought that I was informed and I was correct, I feel like you have an obligation if you're someone whose... your job is to distribute the truth." That's what you're doing if you're a journalist, if that's what you're doing, if you're a pundit, if you're someone on television, and you're speaking from a position where you supposedly have some sort of authority or at least some sort of, uh, like, uh, w- w- like, reasonable research basis to s- s- to say these things. You should come out and say it.
- ABAlex Berenson
I mean, look, I basically agree. Look, look, you know, I just said a few minutes ago, I think there's a case to be made the vaccines saved lives last year.
- JRJoe Rogan
I think there's a case to be made too.
- ABAlex Berenson
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But that... See, I'm not a black and white person. I'm not a one or a zero. I'm not binary on these things. I think it's a very messy situation, and I think part of the problem is that we were so indoctrinated with this propaganda. It was so shoved down everyone's throats that people were very reluctantly to abandon their earliest notions. And a lot of their earliest notions were based in anger on people who weren't doing the right thing, who weren't-
- ABAlex Berenson
Or doing what they're told.
- JRJoe Rogan
... spreading the right thing. Yes.
- ABAlex Berenson
Or doing what they're told.
- JRJoe Rogan
Doing what they're told. But they thought that doing what they were told was doing the right thing. And I think there's a lot of people that did it, you know, in... With noble intentions.
- ABAlex Berenson
So-
- JRJoe Rogan
I really do believe that.
- ABAlex Berenson
So here's what I would... Now we're actually pulled back again, right? Here's what I would argue. Even if the vaccines worked, even if they worked perfectly, the way that people like me were treated last year was wrong and are treated now.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ABAlex Berenson
It's wrong, okay? The fact they didn't work is just the icing on the cake.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- ABAlex Berenson
But when Joe Biden says, "A pandemic of the unvaccinated," and, "If you're not vaccinated, you're going to be sick or dying, and you're gonna fill our hospitals," it was, it was demonizing a lot of people for a personal medical decision.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- ABAlex Berenson
It's wrong. Not allowing No- Novak Djokovic to play in the, in the US Open 'cause he's not vaccinated, it's wrong.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's now.
- ABAlex Berenson
That's now.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right now, they're doing that-
- ABAlex Berenson
Yeah.
Episode duration: 3:01:19
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Transcript of episode UmUC3BolHa8
