0:03

The Fifth Circuit Court ruled recently that the

0:05

White House, the FBI, and the CDC

0:07

likely violated the First Amendment when they

0:09

pressured social media companies to censor

0:12

posts related to COVID. The ruling

0:14

means the Biden administration is barred from communicating

0:16

with platforms like Facebook and Twitter

0:18

or X. In response, the White

0:20

House has filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme

0:23

Court, and the outcome is pending.

0:25

For this episode of Morning Wire, Daily Wire

0:28

culture reporter Megan Basham interviews

0:30

Stanford epidemiologist Dr. Jay

0:32

Bhattacharya, one of the plaintiffs in the

0:34

case. I'm Georgia Howe

0:36

with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley.

0:39

It's September 24th, and this is your

0:41

Sunday edition of Morning Wire.

0:49

The following is an interview between Daily Wire

0:51

culture reporter Megan Basham and Stanford

0:53

epidemiologist Dr. Jay Bhattacharya.

0:56

Well, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Bhattacharya.

0:59

Oh, it's my pleasure to join, Megan. Well, many

1:02

of our listeners are going to be aware of the Great

1:04

Barrington Declaration, which of course at the

1:06

height of COVID offered some alternative

1:08

medical opinions on how the government

1:10

could approach the pandemic. And

1:12

of course, in particular, it argued against

1:15

widespread lockdowns. Now, I think

1:17

a lot of people are aware of the Twitter

1:19

files and what they revealed regarding

1:21

government involvement in those content moderation

1:24

decisions. But for those who have not been

1:26

specifically tracking this lawsuit,

1:28

can you review how federal agencies

1:31

were involved in censoring you? I

1:34

mean, it's really shocking what we found. So

1:36

this lawsuit, this Missouri versus Biden case,

1:38

we in the court proceedings managed

1:41

to get permission to depose a

1:44

dozen federal employees, including

1:46

Tony Fauci himself, including people in the White

1:48

House. And we also got to read emails

1:51

between the White House and

1:53

of these social media companies. What

1:55

it showed is a pattern of

1:58

essentially threats by the White House.

1:59

House where they would say things

2:02

like, in effect, if you don't take

2:04

down these posts, if you don't censor

2:06

these people, then your

2:08

company is going to go kaput. I mean, we're going to go

2:11

use regulatory action against you. And

2:13

even when there was like a friendly interaction, the implied

2:16

threat was there. And the

2:18

reason it's so concerning is because

2:21

it didn't matter if the

2:23

White House was trying to suppress actual

2:25

false things on the web. They wanted

2:27

to suppress even true statements as long

2:29

as it contradicted the government's

2:32

pandemic policies, the White House

2:34

thought it was fair game to get rid of even true

2:36

facts, you know, facts like that you actually have

2:38

some, you know, substantial immunity after COVID

2:41

recovery. I mean, that's a fact that

2:43

the fact that the vaccine doesn't stop you from getting

2:45

COVID. That is a fact. These are the kinds

2:47

of things the White House told social

2:49

media companies to suppress or vaccine

2:51

injuries, you know, like they Facebook suppressed

2:54

vaccine injury groups, where patients would

2:56

talk to each other and provide consolation for each

2:58

other and advice for each other. They

3:00

took those down at the express force

3:03

of the White House.

3:04

I think I saw that the Fifth Circuit

3:07

Court actually sort of, you know,

3:09

gently but compared the White

3:11

House to the mob. They

3:13

did. They compared it to the Al Capone. I

3:15

mean, that's better than what the district court

3:17

did, which was they compared the White House to

3:20

the Orwell's Ministry of Truth in 1984. I

3:23

mean, I think these kinds

3:26

of like analogies are not flattering to

3:28

the White House. And I just I wonder if they

3:30

understand that what they did was so at

3:33

odds with the American commitment to

3:35

free speech. I never thought in my life

3:37

that this would become a part of an issue.

3:39

Did it surprise you to see the list

3:42

of agencies? Obviously, the White House

3:44

was included in that that were involved

3:47

in this content moderation. I mean,

3:49

it was very long. I mean, I

3:51

did not expect to see the FBI on that list.

3:53

I did not expect to see the State Department on that list.

3:56

I did not expect to see even

3:58

the White House itself. I mean, this is a pretty. a pretty broad

4:01

government effort, all of government effort, from

4:04

all across the federal government to suppress

4:06

American speech. So I am shocked

4:09

that the American government of any political

4:11

stripe would engage in this kind of behavior.

4:14

The American First Amendment, I thought, was

4:16

something that every single American agreed with.

4:19

It's part of the American civic religion, I think, that

4:21

we are committed to free speech. I mean,

4:24

in some ways, the extent of American

4:26

support for free speech makes us different than many, many

4:29

other nations. And so it

4:31

stunned me that there would be a government that would

4:33

so brazenly decide that free

4:36

speech wasn't important. That, in fact, they knew

4:38

science so well that they

4:40

could suppress people who were putting

4:43

forward opposing ideas. The

4:45

First Amendment protects both true and false speech.

4:48

It's not a question of whether it's true or false. I

4:50

mean, no American government should ever act

4:52

this way. The irony is that,

4:55

in fact, what the government was doing was suppressing

4:58

true speech simply because it was

5:00

inconvenient to the policies that the government

5:02

itself wanted to put forward.

5:03

So you're a highly

5:05

credentialed American citizen, but an

5:08

average American citizen. You find

5:10

yourself in these Twitter files,

5:12

you find that these

5:14

massive bureaucracies, these

5:17

authorities, the DOJ is taking

5:19

an interest in what you're saying. Is that intimidating?

5:22

I mean, I guess I still

5:24

have this naive faith that things like

5:27

that eventually America corrects

5:29

itself. Like, we do have a history where

5:32

governments have overreached on this. Like, you

5:34

can go back and read Sidney Hook's diary

5:37

memoirs from anybody reminisces

5:39

about the restrictions of speech during World

5:42

War I. Of course, the most famous

5:44

thing is probably the suppression of

5:46

speech by the House Un-American Activities

5:49

Committee and Joseph McCarthy saying,

5:51

you know, like, were you ever a communist? Those

5:53

kinds of suppression of speech

5:55

in American history have generally been rejected

5:58

by Americans looking back. I

6:01

still, I guess I still have this naive faith in

6:04

America that we will reject this kind of overreach

6:06

and history will judge them very, very poorly.

6:09

If you could sit down in a room

6:11

with Dr. Anthony Fauci,

6:13

Dr. Francis Collins, Surgeon

6:16

General, Vivek Murthy, what

6:18

would you tell them about how this impacted

6:21

you professionally, personally, to

6:24

have your medical, very valid

6:26

medical opinions censored in

6:28

this way?

6:29

I mean, the kinds of activities they engaged in,

6:32

in effect, what it did is it made it

6:34

impossible for me to get a fair

6:36

hearing in the scientific community, even

6:38

though many of the things I was saying were absolutely

6:41

correct and important for COVID policy.

6:44

And in fact, personally, what it did is it engaged

6:46

a whole group of people that didn't know scientific

6:49

evidence very well, but that were certain

6:51

that what I was saying was so dangerous that I shouldn't

6:53

be allowed to say it. You know, after I wrote

6:55

the expansion declaration, and this propaganda

6:57

campaign started up by Tony Fauci,

7:00

I started getting death threats. For the first time

7:02

in my life, I got emails of essentially racist

7:05

emails saying, you know, go back to your home country.

7:08

It made my life very, very difficult.

7:10

I mean, there was a lot of stress around that. But

7:13

the other thing that I saw happen, and

7:15

I knew this because a lot of scientists were writing

7:17

to me, so they were thanking me for keeping on speaking,

7:20

but they were saying that they couldn't speak because they were afraid

7:22

for their careers. And they saw

7:25

the example of what me, Martin Koldorf

7:27

from Harvard and Synetra Gupta, the three of us who wrote the great

7:29

pension declaration, what we were going through. And

7:32

they didn't want to go through that. I mean, completely

7:34

reasonably, like who wants to go through that. And

7:36

so they stayed silent.

7:38

And in fact, the purpose of this was

7:40

to silence everybody, not just me.

7:43

To make an example of me, it's not

7:45

made my stupidity was I kept talking. If

7:48

I just stayed silent, they wouldn't have gone after

7:50

me. I think it's just the kind of thing

7:52

that's very in cities. Censorship isn't just

7:54

like, okay, I'm going to stop you from speaking.

7:57

The purpose of censorship is to silence other

7:59

people. people and then to destroy

8:02

the reputations of people that are speaking against

8:04

what the government wants so that no

8:06

one would speak in it and even the ideas themselves,

8:08

even if you can get it in front of the public, people

8:11

will say, Oh gosh, it's that weird fringe

8:13

guy speaking. It's the kind of thing that

8:15

you would see an authoritarian country do,

8:17

but never you would think that an American government

8:20

would engage in it. But that's exactly what happened.

8:22

In this country, in this United States during

8:25

the pandemic, the American

8:27

government acted to make sure that outside

8:30

critics of their policies, scientific critics

8:32

with credentials couldn't speak up,

8:34

wouldn't seek up. Have you ever

8:35

seen anything like this before

8:38

in your scientific background?

8:41

Never. This is unique. I mean, I never imagined

8:43

it would be possible. And I never imagined

8:45

that this kind of suppression could happen. Of

8:48

course, not in the United States, but also just just generally

8:50

within science, science works because

8:52

of freedom of speech. If a scientist

8:55

can't say what their ideas are, then you

8:57

can't have science. Science operates by people

8:59

making hypotheses that contradict current

9:02

ideas. Science operates by people

9:05

collecting data and then discussing it with other

9:07

scientists and they disagree with them about the interpretation

9:09

of the data. If you don't have free speech,

9:11

if you have a preferred position, you're a

9:13

narrative that has to be said no matter what,

9:15

whether you agree or disagree, well, you don't have

9:18

science. What you have is essentially a return

9:20

to a dark age where you

9:22

have a high pope of science like Tony Dauchi

9:25

dictating from on high. This is true. This

9:27

is not true. If you say something that contradicts them,

9:29

well, you're not simply contradicting a man, you're contradicting

9:32

science itself, as he actually said in an interview.

9:35

And what that means then is that you are

9:37

not a scientist. You're something else altogether.

9:40

Well, so what do you think then about the

9:42

Fifth Circuit narrowing the scope

9:45

of the district court's injunction to

9:47

allow SISA to continue

9:50

flagging posts for review

9:52

on social media?

9:54

Yeah, I think that's problematic. I mean, I think it's

9:56

what SISA, this Department of Homeland Security

9:59

group does. is it engages

10:02

with nonprofits, including for instance, the

10:04

Stanford Internet Observatory. What

10:06

these nonprofits do is that they

10:08

get paid based on grants from the government, they

10:11

identify things that they call misinformation.

10:14

In this case, they're identifying things that were even true. It's

10:17

just a government hit list of ideas they interlight.

10:20

Then that sets the agenda

10:23

for the censorship regime. I think

10:25

that the government should not be engaging

10:27

these groups. I think it should be prohibited

10:29

activity. I'm disappointed with the district court

10:32

that it sort of carved that part of it out.

10:35

But what the district court did do

10:37

is they said, look, that hit list, five

10:40

can't then go to the companies,

10:42

the Facebook, to Google, to whoever, and

10:44

say, look, you have to censor these people

10:46

and these ideas on this hit list which we've

10:48

developed, or we've gotten through

10:51

our engagement with these nonprofits. So

10:54

at least the piece of it is that they

10:56

can't actually use that as an official hit list.

10:58

They can still put it out. They can still say, we think

11:01

these people are misinforming. I mean, they can essentially launder

11:04

decimation by these groups,

11:06

which is unfortunate. I think that that should not

11:08

be something the government should be permitted to do. It's kind of

11:11

within the range of things that limit speech

11:13

that I think the First Amendment should protect against. So

11:16

hopefully that'll either get fixed by legislation,

11:18

which legislation would say to the government, look,

11:21

this is not the kind of thing we're going to do. We're not going to launder decimation,

11:23

generate hit lists that are aimed at figuring out

11:26

who should speak, who shouldn't speak online.

11:28

But this is still an important ruling. The ruling

11:30

basically says that they can't go to the companies

11:33

and threaten them. The companies now can

11:35

just go tell the government, go pound sand, go

11:37

away. We're not going to listen to you. And there's nothing

11:39

government can do about it now.

11:40

So what do you say to the

11:42

White House when they say, and I think this

11:45

is part of their statement, we have

11:47

an interest and a responsibility to protect

11:49

the health and safety of our citizens. So

11:52

that is what we were doing.

11:54

Yeah, they do have a responsibility to protect

11:56

the health and wellbeing of the citizens. And the way you do that is

11:58

by free speech. The censorship

12:00

ended up killing people. I mean, I

12:02

don't mean to be overrodden at this. I mean, I literally

12:05

mean that. Like I think we adopted policies

12:07

that both in the short run and the long run will

12:10

have harmed the health and wellbeing of our populace.

12:12

Just to take one example, the school closures

12:14

in, especially in blue states lasted way,

12:16

way, way too long. Far out of line with, for instance,

12:18

what was happening in Europe or Scandinavia. And

12:21

far out of line with the scientific evidence was saying that

12:23

you weren't really allowed to, if you said that,

12:25

you know, my colleague Martin Koldorf would post

12:28

back the evidence from Scandinavia about

12:30

school closures and his post would get

12:32

suppressed. He would feel like he got some caution

12:35

when he posted about math, again, consistent

12:37

with what the scientific evidence was saying. The

12:39

effect of that school closure is,

12:41

according to the scientific question from before the pandemic,

12:44

keeping kids out of school is very bad for their

12:46

long run and short run health. The

12:49

evidence from, you know, for instance, some states

12:51

in the 20th century would increase

12:54

the number required to use the schooling from age 15

12:56

to age 16 or something. People will

12:58

look and say, okay, if you look at the states that are bordering each

13:00

other with different policies for that, what happens

13:02

to the kids that are required to stay in

13:04

school longer? Well, turns out they live longer

13:07

lives. They live healthier lives. They're

13:10

less likely to be poor. Schooling

13:12

is absolutely essential in the longer health and

13:15

wellbeing of our kids. And so, because

13:17

we were not allowed to speak, these schools stayed

13:19

closed far beyond what the scientific evidence was

13:21

saying. And as a result, our kids

13:23

are gonna suffer, especially poor kids, especially

13:26

minority kids. The

13:28

censorship allowed bad policies to continue,

13:31

harming the health and wellbeing of Americans. And the

13:33

government itself, by engaging in it, is

13:36

responsible for these bad health outcomes.

13:38

Okay, last question then. Is there

13:41

anything I haven't specifically asked you about Missouri

13:43

v. Biden and how this

13:46

tech censorship impacted you that you

13:48

think our listeners should know about?

13:51

Well, I think the key thing I wanna get across

13:53

to listeners, it's not just about the

13:55

plaintiffs in the case, not just about me or Martin

13:57

Koldorf or Aaron Cariotti or Louisiana

13:59

Health. freedom groups, it's about all

14:01

Americans. This is the kind of thing

14:04

that should never have happened in the United States.

14:07

And every American's rights were

14:09

violated. If you posted something on Facebook

14:11

and got tagged as misinformation,

14:13

or if you were afraid to post something on

14:15

Facebook because you were afraid that, well, what if somebody

14:18

tags this and you were seen by your friends as

14:20

posting misinformation? If you felt this sense

14:22

of dread that you couldn't say what you wanted to say

14:25

during the pandemic, you weren't imagining

14:27

it. And it was explicit

14:29

government policy that made

14:31

that happen. It's an environment

14:33

that generally you might find in an authoritarian

14:36

country, not in a free country like the United States.

14:39

And it is entirely at odds with what should have

14:41

happened in the United States. And I hope

14:42

that every American listening to this knows

14:44

that this case is for you. It's not primarily

14:47

about us. Very well stated.

14:49

Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Bhattacharya.

14:52

We very much appreciate your time. Thank

14:54

you, Megan.

14:55

That was Daily Wire culture reporter Megan

14:57

Basham interviewing Stanford Medical Professor

15:00

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. And this

15:02

was your Sunday edition of Morningire.