All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Nov. 11, 2021 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:33:59
20211111_explosive-rittenhouse-trial-moments-and-covid-test
|

Time Text
Kyle Rittenhouse Vigilante Trial 00:02:44
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and happy Veterans Day.
We begin today with the extraordinary developments in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, a case that has captured national attention.
The now 18 year old stands accused of intentionally murdering two people and trying to murder a third at a Black Lives Matter riot in August 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
That riot took place in the wake of the lawful police involved shooting of Jacob Blake, a man resisting arrest who pulled a knife on cops, who was then shot seven times by an officer.
Days later, then 17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to protect the city from the planned riot, burning, and looting.
He was given an AR 15 by a friend in Kenosha and was heard on tape saying he wanted to help act as a medic and to keep the peace.
Chaos ensued, and Kyle shot three people.
For over a year, the media has condemned this kid as a vigilante domestic terrorist who went on an unjustified killing spree.
No open mindedness to his claim of self defense, nor the videotapes that clearly back that up, or to his story that he went to Kenosha that evening to stop the lawless behavior of others when police would not or could not.
Here's a sample of that media coverage Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 year old vigilante.
Kyle Rittenhouse, the vigilante.
Kyle Rittenhouse, the armed teenage vigilante.
The 17 year old vigilante.
Arguably a domestic terrorist picked up a rifle, drove to a different state to shoot people.
Kyle Rittenhouse, a guy who's deeply racist, went with weapons to a Black Lives Matter protest, looking to get in trouble.
He did.
He murdered a couple of people.
Rittenhouse, the 17 year old kid, just running around, shooting and killing protesters.
You see, the 17 year old who was radicalized by Trumpism took his AR 15 to Kenosha and became a killer.
A white Trump supporting MAGA loving Blue Lives Matter social media partisan, 17 years old, picks up a gun, drives from one state to another with the intent to shoot people.
A 17 year old boy who drove across state lines with an AR 15 and started shooting people up, including a guy with a skateboard.
There's so much misinformation and that butted soundbite, I don't even know where to begin.
I don't even know where to begin.
Kyle Rittenhouse's former lawyer was on the show yesterday saying there will be libel lawsuits, more than one.
Likely to Provoke Violence 00:09:42
The Rittenhouse trial began on November 2nd, and it has been an utter disaster for the prosecution.
Rittenhouse does not deny shooting the three men in question, two of whom died, one of whom was severely injured in the arm.
Instead, he argues that he acted in self defense.
Self defense is an absolute defense, and it is up to the prosecution to disprove it.
Here, the prosecution is trying to do that by arguing that Rittenhouse Provoked the attacks upon him, thus rendering the claim of self defense unavailable.
First, a brief primer on the relevant law.
In Wisconsin, a self defense claim generally will not prevail if the man raising it provoked the attack in the first place.
Now, there are two kinds of provocation intentional, for example, goading someone you want to kill into attacking you so that you can murder him.
That's not what happened here and doesn't seem to be what the prosecution is arguing, though with this DA, we cannot.
Entirely rule it out.
But then there's unintentional provocation, okay?
Unintentional provocation, which can, but doesn't always, prevent a defendant from claiming self defense.
That's at the heart of this case.
Unintentional provocation is where a man engages in unlawful conduct that is reasonably likely to provoke a violent response.
Unlawful conduct that is reasonably likely to provoke a violent response.
If you do that, you might lose your ability to claim self defense.
That's what the DA says Rittenhouse did here.
He says the unlawful conduct was Rittenhouse carrying a rifle while under 18, which is a misdemeanor.
In Wisconsin.
This quite simply is a joke.
All right.
First of all, just carrying a gun illegally is not likely to provoke a violent response.
Do you know how many people were carrying illegal firearms that night in Kenosha?
Why didn't each one of them provoke a violent response?
The mere carrying of a gun, illegally or not, is not by itself a violent provocation.
Second of all, there are real questions.
About whether the Wisconsin law applies to long guns like the one Kyle had, and still more questions as to whether the law in question here is too vague to withstand constitutional muster.
Andy McCarthy's got a great piece about this on National Review, which you should read.
But let's assume for now that Wisconsin's gun law will be upheld and that Kyle was breaking it.
And further, let's assume that the prosecution can convince a jury or this judge that a reasonable person would have known that unlawfully carrying an AR 15.
Was likely to provoke violence.
Okay, already we are in legal la la land, but let's do it.
Let's go there.
Rittenhouse still, still would have the right to claim self defense if the violent response that did happen was an attack on his life.
The law recognizes that.
In other words, a man doing something unlawful that provokes someone to attack him need not simply sit back and let himself be killed.
The law recognizes that.
That's Rittenhouse's argument that he was not breaking any gun laws, that even if he was, doing so by itself was not likely to provoke a violent response just by carrying a gun that you didn't have the lawful right to carry, and that even if it was, Rittenhouse still had the right to defend his own life when the violent response was attempted murder.
So, does the evidence support Rittenhouse's claim that his life was threatened?
By each of the men he shot?
The answer is clearly yes.
And this case, in my legal opinion, should never have been brought.
By the way, all of this, the facts and the law are impeccably spelled out by Andrew Branca over at Legal Insurrection.
And my thanks to him for his thorough analysis and reporting in this case.
He's been great.
So let's take them one by one the three men who were shot.
Number one, Joseph Rosenbaum, 36.
Rosenbaum was a convicted child molester on medication, only recently released from a mental facility.
None of which the jury will hear because it's not technically relevant since Rittenhouse didn't know it at the time.
Still, it helps us understand Rosenbaum's behavior that night, which was erratic and threatening.
Now, Rittenhouse testified yesterday that Rosenbaum chased him and threatened to kill him.
This is all on tape.
Rittenhouse says he was trying to retreat from Rosenbaum, yelling, friendly, friendly, friendly.
If you watch this later on youtube.com, you can see the video that is playing while I speak.
But he says Rosenbaum continued pursuit.
That's when Rosenbaum's friend, Joshua Zeminski, fires a shot in the air, causing Rittenhouse to turn.
He sees Rosenbaum charging at him, yelling, fuck you, and trying to grab Rittenhouse's gun.
Listen.
And as I'm turning around, Mr. Rosenbaum is, I would say, from me to where the judge is, coming at me with his arms on in front of him.
I remember his hand on the barrel of my gun.
So you turned around?
Yes.
And as you see him lunging at you, what do you do?
I shoot him.
And how many times did you shoot?
I believe four.
That exchange was witnessed by, among others, Daily Caller video journalist Richie McGinnis, who took the stand in this case and testified as follows.
And you've already established that after the shooting, Mr. Rosenbaum never says a word, correct?
Correct.
You don't know, as you sit here today, what Mr. Rosenbaum was thinking, do you?
You mean at the time of the shooting?
Yes.
Or at any point in his life?
I mean, you have no idea what Mr. Rosenbaum was ever thinking at any point in his life.
You have never been inside his head.
You never met him before.
You don't know.
I've never even, I've never exchanged words with him, if that's what your question is.
So your interpretation of what he was trying to do or what he was intending to do or anything along those lines is complete guesswork, isn't it?
Well, he said, fuck you, and then he reached for the weapon.
Rittenhouse, now the focus of an angry mob after the shooting of Rosenbaum, begins to run.
He says he was heading for a police barricade to surrender himself to the cops, but that the incensed mob followed him, threw things at him, and may have pushed him.
The videotape shows Rittenhouse fall.
Watch it here if you're watching this on YouTube later.
The videotape shows him fall.
Rittenhouse says just before he went down, a man named Anthony Huber swung his skateboard at Rittenhouse like a bat and that it did hit Kyle.
Once Rittenhouse is down, which you can see right here, you can clearly see him being attacked.
From multiple flanks.
An unidentified man in heavy work boots tries to jump kick him in the face, but misses.
Rittenhouse fires his gun at that man, but Rittenhouse misses too.
And that's when Anthony Huber, the second man killed, appears on tape with his skateboard and begins to beat Rittenhouse for what Rittenhouse is the second time now with that skateboard, this time over the head.
Rittenhouse described this exchange on the stand yesterday.
As I'm running, at first I'm in the sidewalk.
And Mr. Lakowski, Jason Lakowski, is in the sidewalk, and I stopped to talk to Mr. Lakowski for a brief second.
I remember telling him that I just shot somebody and I need help to get to the police because the crowd, there was not a crowd, a mob was chasing me.
And did Mr. Lakowski offer you any help?
I don't remember.
What do you do then?
I continued to run after hearing people say, people were saying, Cranium him and get him, kill him.
People were screaming, and I just was trying to get to the police running down Sheridan Road.
What I remember is running past Anthony Huber, and as I'm running past Mr. Huber, he's holding a skateboard like a baseball bat, and he swings it down, and I block it with my arm, trying to prevent it from hitting me, but it still hits me in the neck.
Mr. Huber, immediately after I'm kicked in the face, runs up as I'm sitting up.
To try to get up and get to the police, I'm on my back, and Mr. Huber runs up.
He, as I'm getting up, strikes me in the neck with his skateboard a second time.
Then what happens?
He grabs my gun, and I can feel it pulling away from me, and I can feel the strap starting to come off my body.
And what do you do then?
I fire one shot.
Huber then takes a final few steps off to the side and dies shortly thereafter.
Within seconds of the Huber attack, Rittenhouse is attacked by another man, Gage Großkreuz.
Justifying Deadly Force 00:15:33
Gage had a loaded handgun.
It was concealed without a valid license, a charge the state has opted not to pursue.
Gage appears to first raise his hands and surrender as he sees Rittenhouse with his rifle.
Rittenhouse does not fire.
Then Gage charges Rittenhouse.
Gage Points his own handgun directly at Rittenhouse from just a few feet away, and only at that point does Rittenhouse fire his weapon, wounding Gage's arm.
When you were standing three to five feet from him with your arms up in the air, he never fired, right?
Correct.
It wasn't until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him with your gun, now your hands down, pointed at him, that he fired, right?
Correct.
This is all clearly self defense.
It's classic self defense.
That was made clear during the prosecution's own case.
In my view, there was no need for the defense to put Kyle Rittenhouse on the stand.
But when they did, the prosecution floundered time and time again.
First, Kyle was humanized.
As I pointed out, the media has painted this kid as a monster in front of the jury pool and the country.
This is really just a kid, one who's been through hell this past year thanks to an overzealous prosecutor, a dishonest media.
And public figures who don't care at all about facts appearing to smell blood in the water.
Yesterday, it all seemed to catch up with Rittenhouse, who broke down on the stand.
As I take that step back, I look over my shoulder, and Mr. Rosenbaum, Mr. Rosenbaum was now running from my right side.
And I was cornered from in front of me with Mr. Zeminski.
And there were people right there.
This is not some career criminal.
This is a kid that made the wrong decision that night, who felt frustrated by the lack of police presence and the ongoing destruction of property and decided to do something about it, which is not the way.
I mean, you can understand why, but it's not the way.
He knows that himself now, whose life has been completely upended.
Yes, two men are dead, but you can see why it happened.
You can see how it happened.
So, in the wake of that testimony, did the media or these know it all activists do any self reflection?
You tell me.
LeBron James just tweeted out, What tears.
I didn't see one.
Man, knock it off.
That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court.
Good gracious, where's your humanity?
Hakeem Jeffries, the head of the House Democratic Caucus, tweeted, Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key.
Do you know anything about law, about criminal law, anything at all?
Have you bothered?
To look into it even a little?
Have you followed the trial at all before you decided to make a public comment from that post?
Disgusting.
Dishonest.
And the natural product of what happens when the false ideological social justice crew meets actual fact based courtroom justice, where truth and fairness still matter.
Joining me now to discuss it all is Rob Gruhler, a criminal defense attorney and founding partner of RR Law Group.
Rob, thank you so much for being here.
So, what do you make of my assessment of this case?
First of all, Megan, thank you so much for having me.
I absolutely think it was brilliant.
I agree with you completely.
I've been following this case since August of 2020 when it happened.
And I agree with your assessment that this case should have never been brought in the first place.
We covered the probable cause statement, the original documentation that was supposed to justify the charges.
And when we read through that paragraph by paragraph, a lot of the evidence that you just sort of revealed to your audience was in that document.
We heard from Richard McGinnis, even, who was sort of, he wasn't shot, but he was the reporter.
Who was running behind Rosenbaum?
And he came out and confirmed a lot of the same things that we heard from other government witnesses that Rosenbaum was the aggressor, that he was using the N word, screaming that at people at supposedly a BLM protest, that he was the provocateur, he was the ultimate aggressor.
And that set in sequence a series of events that led to the subsequent shootings.
And so when you just break this down individually, you look at every alleged victim, whether it's Rosenbaum or Grossquitz or Huber.
It seems pretty consistent that Kyle Rittenhouse in every instance was defending himself.
And so, for people like me, I'm a defense attorney.
I was able to sort of watch this at day one and see these facts clearly and communicate them on my YouTube channel.
I was very frustrated by what I heard from the media.
As you described, you said a lot of people were commenting on this case and characterizing it in a completely erroneous legal way that made it difficult to have a serious conversation about it.
And this isn't some hardened criminal, like you said.
Kyle Rittenhouse, at the time he was 17 years old, he was frustrated with his environment in the middle of what many officers, if even in this trial, Pep Moretti was an officer who came out and testified in the government's case in chief that they were in the middle of a war zone.
And so, yet not ideal for a 17 year old young man to be over there, but he was there.
And the fact that he was assaulted, attacked by multiple individuals, in my humble opinion, justifies him in his use of self defense.
And I think that what Thomas Binger has been doing throughout this trial has been really underhanded to sort of Set in motion this caricature that he's this lawless, reckless maniac running around Kenosha just trying to shoot people.
Yeah, he made it sound like I'm trying to find this.
I think it's soundbite number five.
Like he, that Kyle Rittenhouse went there wanting to kill, intending to kill.
Listen to the DA, soundbite five.
Good morning, Mr. Rittenhouse.
Good morning.
Everybody that you shot at that night, you intended to kill, correct?
I didn't intend to kill them.
I intended to stop the people who were attacking me.
By killing them.
I did what I had to do to stop the person who was attacking me.
By killing them.
Two of them passed away, but I stopped the threat from attacking me.
By using deadly force.
I used deadly force.
That you knew was going to kill them.
I didn't know if it was going to kill them, but I used deadly force to stop the threat that was attacking me.
You intentionally used deadly force against Joseph Rosenbaum, correct?
Yes.
You intentionally used deadly force against the man who came and tried to kick you in the face?
Yes.
Correct?
You intentionally used deadly force against Anthony Huber, correct?
Yes.
You intentionally used deadly force against Gage Grossquartz, correct?
Yes.
I mean, that's not in dispute that he intentionally used deadly.
That's not in dispute, but trying to get him to say he wanted them to die.
I mean, what a swing and a miss.
Well, you just saw it.
Yeah, that wasn't a good attempt.
And we saw a lot of this with Thomas Binger throughout this trial.
It was a lot of filler, just a lot of attempts to sort of ask the same question five, six different ways.
And I think that the jury really starts to get sort of tired of that.
I mean, I got tired of it listening to it.
I'm a lawyer, I sort of geek out about this stuff.
And, you know, that sequence of questions was asked sort of in different permutations.
All throughout the trial.
Wait, let me show them that.
Let me hold the second part of your thought because I'd love to get the audience to hear what you're talking about.
Here's the prosecution going at it again, soundbite six.
Mr. Rosenbaum was chasing me.
I pointed my gun at him, and that did not deter him.
He could have ran away instead of trying to take my gun from me, but he kept chasing me.
It didn't stop him.
Mr. Rittenhouse, you're telling us that you felt like you were about to die.
Right?
Yes.
But when you point the gun at someone else, that's going to make them feel like they're about to die.
Right?
That's what you wanted him to feel.
No.
You wanted him to get the message from you that if you come any closer, I'm going to kill you.
That's why you pointed the gun at him, right?
I pointed the gun at him to deter him from.
I pointed the gun at him so he would stop chasing me.
It's amazing.
Kyle Rittenhouse is smarter than this DA.
I mean, that's every exchange.
This is what I wind up thinking.
This kid is smarter than this DA.
He does.
He's got a ton of courage.
I was really impressed with him yesterday.
You know, I mentioned, or you mentioned, that maybe you'd have some questions about putting Kyle Rittenhouse on the stand, but he did an outstanding job.
There were some areas where I think his attorneys maybe could have jumped in to, you know, object and protect him a little bit more.
But by and large, I mean, Kyle Rittenhouse, think about this young man.
And I was communicating about the stressors and the pressures that exist upon anybody in the criminal justice system, but not to mention an 18 year old young man who is facing decades in prison.
Who is dealing with homicide charges, who's looking at a jury panel of now 18 people, all judging him.
He's got a year of the media beating up on him for a year and a half.
I even think some people in the Biden administration used his image as a white supremacist.
And so, you know, you have this discussion about whether he should have taken the stand and the pros and the cons, and you can get into that till the end of the earth.
But he did.
He took the stand.
I think a big part of it is he wanted to clear his name.
He wanted to make sure that he could rebut all of the allegations that were coming his direction, even if they weren't necessarily.
Criminal legal charges, they were still, you know, accusations his direction, and he cleared a lot of them up.
And he did so, you know, masterfully.
I think that the defense gave the prosecution sort of an opportunity on a silver platter, and they totally blew it.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
To get him on the stand and to be that inept as the prosecution in your cross examination, it's embarrassing.
We're going to talk next about why the defense has filed a motion for a mistrial with prejudice.
They want this thing kicked and in a way that it could not be refiled.
And why now some are coming after the judge as racist.
Much more with Rob right after this.
Fiken presenter et super enkeldremskaufprogramme for all the Rheinskaufsgreine, the bedriftenden.
That would enkeld?
Fiken et super enkeldremskaufprogramme.
So, one of the other, I mean, there were so many bad moments from this DA, the Assistant District Attorney.
Thomas Binger to choose from.
But one of the other areas in which it fell flat that the audience can hear for themselves is where he was questioning Rittenhouse about whether Rosenbaum, the first man killed, Ever said he would take Kyle's gun?
This is soundbite number eight.
Listen to how this ends.
What was the risk to you of death or great bodily harm at the moment you killed Joseph Rosenbaum?
If I would have let Mr. Rosenbaum take my firearm from me, he would have used it and killed me with it and probably killed more people if I would have let him get my gun.
Mr. Rosenbaum never said anything.
To you about taking your gun, did he?
He didn't say anything, but he tried to take my gun.
And whoever's got that gun is a threat to everyone else?
If he would have taken my gun, he would have used it against me.
He didn't say anything to me about taking my gun, he just tried to take it.
It's been very strange to try to tease out what Mr. Binger's acceptable standard of self defense would be, because we've already heard from a number of the different alleged victims in this case.
That they've done something that is sort of aggressive, a little bit provocative.
Again, we heard from Rosenbaum physically chasing Rittenhouse, but apparently that doesn't qualify.
We heard about Anthony Huber, who was swinging a skateboard over the head and hitting Kyle Rittenhouse in the head.
Apparently that doesn't justify self defense.
And then we saw from Gage Grosskruetz that he actually pointed a gun, his hands were up, but then actually re engaged Kyle Rittenhouse, who then used self defense at that moment as well.
But every single time that Thomas Binger asked Kyle Rittenhouse about this, he sort of makes it appear that that was totally unreasonable.
And so it's, you know, we're sort of joking about this on the internet and on LawTube and LawTwitter that the only time that it would actually be justified is maybe if Kyle actually was shot or actually got stabbed or was in the middle of an actual physical assault taking place.
Maybe then Binger would be okay with self defense.
Yeah, that's right.
So, and by the way, what's with Binger asking all the open questions, right?
You don't do that on cross.
You only, it should be yeses and nos on cross only.
That's it.
You drive the dialogue.
You don't let the witness drive the dialogue.
Okay, so the judge and Binger, the ADA, got.
Into it yesterday.
And let me just set up this soundbite.
So basically, Binger did two things that ticked off the judge and the defense counsel.
Number one, he tried to bring into evidence Kyle Rittenhouse saying a couple of weeks prior to this incident in watching some sort of property damage.
I think he just watched it online, right?
He wasn't even there.
I wish I had my gun so I could like shoot these guys.
It's just like bullshit rhetoric, right?
Fill me in on that, Rob.
Fill that out.
Yes.
It's a 17 year old kid who's just, you know, it's kind of body talk.
And there was a prior incident.
Back in August, where Kyle Rittenhouse was in the area in the vicinity, there was a CVS video where apparently he was outside of CVS, and there's somebody recording footage of him watching shoplifting happening and saying something to the effect if I had my weapon, I would be able to stop this from occurring.
And so, what Thomas Binger wanted to do is bring that in as evidence and sort of show that Kyle was acting in conformity with that prior statement.
And so, the way he fleshed this whole thing out, it was very underhanded, in my opinion, but he started to walk down a line of questioning.
With Kyle Rittenhouse about property and about property defending property, and says, You know, you can't shoot Rosenbaum to protect property, right?
You can't use deadly force in order to save Car Source, which is the property that we were talking about there.
And so he gets Kyle to agree a number of times that, yes, I agree, you can't use self defense to protect property.
So then he says, Well, then why did you say that in that earlier August 17th or 15th date to that person who was recording you outside the CBS?
Judge Rules on Mistrial 00:13:38
And that at that moment, there was, An objection from the defense, and the judge had already known that this was an issue that was discussed during the pretrial proceedings.
That this shouldn't have been considered to be a wide open door for the prosecution to just walk through.
Judge wanted Binger to give him some acknowledgement that this might be coming so the judge could issue a ruling.
And when Binger didn't do that, the judge really scolded him aggressively.
Right.
Because the judge in the pretrial motions had said, I don't think I'm going to let that in.
And when that is said to you as a lawyer, that means if I try to get it in, I got to get the judge's approval before I go here.
I can't just spring this in front of the jury because I've already been admonished by this judge.
He doesn't think it's coming in.
And that's what the judge got so mad about.
That was one.
And the second sin committed by Binger was he said as follows to Kyle Rittenhouse.
He basically questioned his Fifth Amendment right not to testify.
So Binger comes up and says to him, This is the first time you've told your story since August 25, 2020, isn't it?
And you've had the benefit of seeing countless videos of your action that night and hearing the testimony of 30 some witnesses who have testified in this case.
And the defense attorney, Mark Richards, objected.
That was sustained.
And the judge was mad.
Why?
Well, because that's sort of the rule number one you don't comment on a defendant's right to remain silent.
I mean, it's in the Constitution, it's a pretty sacred right.
And it's one of the first things that I would, I've never been a prosecutor, but I would imagine they tell you when you're going to trial practice as a lawyer, you know, don't cross those sacred constitutional boundaries.
And Thomas Binger is not an inexperienced attorney.
The DA's office over there in Kenosha is not very big.
I think we did a count of all the different county attorneys there, something like nine to 12 different attorneys.
And so, You could presume that if a case of national importance comes across their desk, they're going to give it to somebody who they consider to be highly litigious, somebody highly competent who's been doing it for a while.
And so that presumably was Thomas Binger.
And Thomas Binger gets out there and, in front of the jury, starts commenting on the right to remain silent and a defendant's constitutional protection in that regard.
Then starts to even thread the needle a little bit further by trying to get that other evidence admitted from the CBS video that took place earlier in August.
And so the judge is just seeing.
A very experienced trial attorney looking like they might be intentionally trying to cause a mistrial or straddle that line in a way that is not permissible.
Yeah, so that was some speculation that the DA was trying to cause a mistrial, because normally a mistrial is the case gets dismissed in the middle of the trial without prejudice.
So you get a second try.
And I mean, normally it's the defense attorney who wants a mistrial because you get the advantage of seeing the prosecution's whole case and then you get another bite at the apple, right?
You're better positioned in trial, too.
But right now, the defense doesn't want a mistrial because they're winning.
If they want a mistrial, they want it with prejudice, which they did ask for at the end of yesterday's proceedings based on the things that you just mentioned.
But just here is some of the judge.
This is leading up to now the accusations that this judge is some sort of a racist.
This well respected judge, he's, I think, the most senior judge in the Kenosha Circuit Court.
So he is calling Binger to task for those two errors that you just outlined.
Here's some of that exchange.
First of all, Your Honor, this was the subject of a motion.
I'm well aware of that.
And the court left the door open.
For me, not for you.
Why would you think that that made it okay for you, without any advance notice, to bring this matter before the jury?
You are already, you were, I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendant's post-arrest silence.
That's basic law.
It's been basic law in this country.
for 40 years, 50 years.
I have no idea why you would do something like that.
And it gives, well, I'll leave it at that.
So I don't know what you're up to.
He's acknowledged that he's used this gun to protect.
Property.
He's also just acknowledged that he knows he can't do that.
I am attempting to impeach him now with the prior august 10th incident 15 days prior, involving the same gun, where he is threatening to use that gun to protect property.
It goes, your honor.
He is saying he wished he did so he could shoot people.
You know there's a lot of difference between commenting about something when you haven't got a gun and threatening someone when you do.
Just hours ago I said I had heard nothing in this trial to change any of my rulings.
So why?
Pardon me?
That was before the judge's testimony.
Don't get brazen with me.
You knew very well.
You know very well that an attorney can't go into these types of areas when the judge has already ruled without asking outside the presence of the jury to do so.
So don't give me that.
I thought, this is my good faith explanation to you, and if you want to yell at me, you can.
My good faith feeling this morning after watching that testimony was you had left the door open a little bit.
Now we had something new, and I was going to probe it.
I don't believe you.
There better not be another incident.
I'll take the motion under advisement.
And you can respond.
When you say that you were acting in good faith, I don't believe that, okay?
Let's proceed.
Everybody in good faith.
Not a good day for the prosecution.
Not at all.
Not at all.
To be fair, I don't believe him either.
I think that he was intentionally trying to kind of squeeze that one through.
If you did listen to the pretrial proceedings in a little bit more depth, then you would have seen that they discussed a lot of this stuff.
And the judge is a little bit different than some other jurisdictions.
So, for example, if you say this judge, compare him to Judge Cahill that we saw in Chauvin, just a little bit of a different demeanor.
He's a little bit more loose, sort of likes to hear stuff on the fly.
We didn't have a lot of resolutions on the pretrial proceedings, a lot of these motions in Lemonade.
And so he did say, Yes, at a later time when the evidence comes up, when the time is right, you need to flag this for me, Mr. Prosecutor, Mr. Defense Attorney, so that I can make a decision about where this line of questioning goes or where this evidence should, whether it should be admissible or not.
And from my watching of it, it felt like there was a pretty clear understanding that that was going to be how this was going to work.
It's you ask for permission when you get there, you don't just get to decide, well, the judge didn't make a ruling on this, so I'm just going to try to skate this one through.
And you might excuse a prosecutor for.
Making a mistake if they're a first year prosecutor or this is not a case of national importance.
But this is Thomas Binger.
This case has been in national news for almost 18 months now.
And so it's something that I think the judge is exactly right to presume that maybe there's something else going on here.
Not in evidence yet, but it does feel underhanded.
Because the judge said, pretrial, I'm predisposed not to allow this.
And you know very well, as a lawyer, you have to ask permission.
It's not your courtroom, it's the judge's courtroom.
He or she gets to set the rules.
You're just there to follow them.
And the last thing you want to do is tick off the judge.
So the judge is getting guff for being tough on the prosecutor.
The prosecutor provoked it.
When I talk about provocation, he provoked that.
So, what now specifically is the defense basing its motion for a mistrial with prejudice on?
Was it the Fifth Amendment thing, the attempt to get that other CVS comment in, or both, or more?
It's the idea that the prosecution might be intentionally trying to cause a mistrial.
There was a break later that afternoon, and defense attorney Corey Chirafisi went out and did some research with his defense team and came back.
He cited a case.
I don't remember what it was, but he says Judge, there's two things that you need to consider here moving forward.
Number one, whether the government, the prosecutor's conduct was intentional.
So, you know, did they intend to do these things?
Was this a mistake?
Was this an accident that they commented on this or tried to get this evidence introduced?
Doesn't feel like that to me.
I think you can probably check the box on that.
That even Prosecutor Binger said, I want to ask him about this.
It's sort of the next line of questions in his notes.
And he was going barreling ahead right into those without ever getting permission from the court.
So, was it intentional?
Maybe yes or no.
But if that element has been met, then you can move on to the second element, which is that the court finds, the judge makes a finding.
That the government may have been doing this or was in fact doing this to cause a mistrial.
You know, it's such sort of a boneheaded mistake that when you're in the middle of a trial, in particular, a middle of the defendant's testimony, where you start to try to, you know, walk along those constitutional lines, not so that it's a direct violation where you get in trouble, you get a bar complaint, you lose your law license, nothing like that, but enough that it just kind of crosses that line so that the case is tainted and you have to have a mistrial.
And if The court makes that finding that maybe these highly experienced prosecutors were trying to tip the scale so that they can get a do over.
As you mentioned earlier, they know that they're losing.
And so if they lose, they can't get a do over.
But if they get a mistrial, they can.
And if there's that little bit of sort of underhanded nefariousness there, if the court makes that finding, that would justify a motion to dismiss with prejudice so that they cannot bring this back.
It would be the end of the case for Kyle Rittenhouse.
Oh my gosh, that would be huge for the defense.
Do we know how the judge is feeling?
He's announced to the jury he thinks the case will wrap up, I think he said on Tuesday.
The fact that he didn't grant a mistrial right then and there, does that mean it's not going to happen?
So he did take it under advisement.
I still think that it's probably unlikely that it does get granted.
A lot of people are saying the fact that he took it under advisement is a good thing.
Oftentimes a judge will just say no and make a ruling right there on the record.
So at least he is thinking about it.
He is considering it.
And if you compare that with a lot of the other Clips that we have seen and testimony from the trial, the judge has been very unhappy with this prosecutor consistently.
Even in some of the clips you played here today, he said, I warned you about that this morning and you're continuing to do it again.
Don't let it happen again.
But I still think it's probably a little bit of a long shot just because this judge has made multiple statements saying that he wants to make sure this is done the right way.
He wants to make sure the jury is considered to be the fact finder.
So I don't think that the judge politically wants to take this away from them.
I think he wants to.
So, allow the process to work itself out without causing anything that would derail this long process because it has been a long one.
Especially in a case this carefully watched to take it away from the jury and say it can't be refiled.
I mean, that would just be incredibly bold.
And I would say, in the prosecutor's defense, it was a sin.
I don't think it was a dismissal with prejudice level sin.
I know other lawyers disagree with me.
I just think if he had sort of gotten all over Kyle and said, you know, you didn't testify, you didn't say anything because.
You knew you were guilty.
You didn't want to take a position that now we're talking.
But, like, just sort of this is the first statement you've made since the beginning.
It's not okay, but it's not that bad.
Yeah, it was Weasley.
It was not kind of the right thing to do.
He had, I think, some plausible deniability there.
He could go back and reference the judge's prior statement and said, Well, you left the door open.
And the judge did.
And, you know, this is sort of the downside of having a little bit of a looser format in your courtroom where you don't have all of the motions and lemonade.
Ironed out before the trial even starts.
So, you know, Thomas Binger, I think, was exploiting that to some degree.
I think that if you're going to be an aggressive litigator, you're always sort of, you know, pushing the envelope a little bit, not doing anything unethical, but you're trying to win.
That's the sort of point of being a strong advocate you're using the tools that are in front of you.
I don't excuse anything Binger did, but I'm just saying, like, I don't know that it rises to the level of the trial goes away immediately and can't be refiled.
But I will say, you know, you're in there as a prosecutor.
You're supposed to be on the side of justice.
You're actually not supposed to be on the side of get a conviction.
It's supposed to be on the side of justice.
And you're representing the state and its interests.
And so he has sort of a higher calling, and he's not living up to it.
You're not supposed to behave like that.
Listen, that exchange and some others now.
Are bringing some fire on this judge, a very well respected guy, I guess his longest serving circuit court judge in Wisconsin.
And there was a moment where his cell phone rang and it played a certain tune.
And that's going to play into these accusations that he's some sort of a racist.
We're going to pick it up right there after I squeeze in this quick break.
More with Rob right after this.
And remember, folks, you can find the Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon East.
And the full video show.
Which you really should watch today.
Go ahead and subscribe if you haven't, because you can see all the videos along with my monologue at the opening and some clips too.
When you subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.comslash Megan Kelly.
If you prefer the audio podcast, just go ahead and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And now you'll find our full archives that have over 200 shows.
Schrader Plus One Decision 00:04:39
So this judge, his name is Bruce.
It's written Schroeder, but it's pronounced Schrader?
It is, yeah.
And Schrader, I think, sounds a lot more.
Tough.
Like Shredder.
Yes.
That's what I call my little Strudwick, Shredder, because that's what he's doing to everything, destroying it.
My puppy, sorry, it's a longstanding issue.
So the judge has made a bunch of pretrial rulings, one of which was you may not refer to the three men shot, two of whom died, one of whom did not, as victims, but you may refer to them as looters, rioters, or something else.
Can you just expand on that?
Because this is now at issue.
Yeah, causing a lot of contention for a lot of the commentators out there.
But the idea being that the word victim has some negative connotation to it.
It sort of implies that somebody was wronged at the outset, at the conclusion of a crime.
And it is also legally significant.
It means that somebody was the actual victim of a crime.
So it's got sort of this public perception of being a negative word and a legal connotation to it as well.
And so when you're talking with a judge about a criminal defendant, Who has not been adjudicated or convicted of anything yet, has not been found guilty at all, that person is still innocent.
They still retain the presumption of innocence.
And so, even though it might make the prosecution feel good to start labeling Gage Grosskruetz and Anthony Huber as the victims, they have not been legally found to be the victims yet.
Kyle Rittenhouse still maintains the presumption of innocence until that's disproven.
It's not fair.
It's not right to call them that because it's not legally accurate.
Right.
We're trying to figure out who the real victim was here.
So, the judge in the midst of how long is the sound bite with the phone?
We don't have much time.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Listen.
Listen to this.
His phone rang, and here was the sound.
The actions that I had talked about were done in bad faith.
It's like the Queen was proud to be an American.
Now, listen to what Ellie Mistel, he's a justice correspondent for the nation, Harvard undergrad, Harvard Law School, his summation of this judge, and we've heard this elsewhere.
Take a listen.
So, if you look at all the decisions that Bruce Schrader has made, they have been heavily balanced and weighted towards Rittenhouse, towards his defense.
I see very few neutral decisions.
In his history, what we have is a judge who, from my perspective, has prejudged the trial in favor of Rittenhouse and has decided, again, even at the pretrial stage, to use every bit of his power to put his thumb on the scale towards Rittenhouse's side.
Not just saying that these people can't be called victims.
Look, legally speaking, they were victims of homicide.
That's just a fact, but fine.
You want to say they can't be called victims because of the nature of the self defense?
All right, you can kind of defend that.
Decision.
But then he says they can be called looters, rioters, and arsonists, which is ridiculous.
The surviving victim hasn't been charged with looting, rioting, or arson.
So calling him a victim is just factually inaccurate.
So calling him a rioter is just factually inaccurate.
So you see what I'm saying?
When you put the one and one together, you end up with two.
When you put one plus one plus one plus one plus one together, you end up with five.
And that's what Schrader is.
He has made a series of decisions.
Each one perhaps may be individually defensible.
But in totality, lead to the impression of a biased, racist judge with his Trump rally cell phone that is trying to get Rittenhouse a walk.
Wow.
Your thoughts on that?
Well, when you start to lose the argument, I think you just start to cry foul.
You start screaming about racism and bigotry and all sorts of biases and prejudices.
I don't see that from this judge at all.
This judge has talked about the Constitution a lot, he's talked about the Roman era, and he's got a lot of depth when it comes to.
The way the Constitution works and how it was assembled.
And so I don't think that some of his comments in favor of the Constitution are anything to consider to be racist.
I think he's just being a good judge.
By the way, apparently he has a longstanding rule of not allowing prosecutors to refer to people as victims before his juries.
He thinks that that's something the jury gets to decide.
So this is not a Kyle Rittenhouse thing.
This is a judge with a longstanding practice.
Vaccine Caused Brain Damage 00:08:57
We'll continue to follow it.
We really appreciate your expertise, Rob.
Keep an eye on the trial and keep an eye on sources like Rob and this show.
If you want honest analysis, because the mainstream media, you heard how they're going to spin this and they will write through the verdict.
All the best, Rob.
Hope we can talk again soon.
In our next hour, we're going to start talking COVID, the vaccines, the new therapeutics.
Don't go away.
Joining me now is Brian Dressen.
He's a chemist based in Utah, and his wife, Breanne, took part in a U.S. conducted trial.
Of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine with disastrous results.
And now they're speaking out about it publicly.
Hours after taking the very first dose, Brianne began to feel dizzy and her symptoms continued to worsen, eventually leaving her unable to walk.
When the trial information was released, her participation in the trial, to the Dresden's surprise, Brianne's data was not accounted for.
It wasn't in there.
They didn't mention what happened to her.
They say the CDC knows about the severe symptoms that some people are experiencing and the harm to vaccines.
That the vaccines pose to children.
And now they're fighting to share her story and the story of others like her.
Brian, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
This is a nightmare.
You guys testified before the FDA panel when they were considering the vaccine for five to 11 year olds.
And your wife did take place in this trial for AstraZeneca.
And she was living a healthy, robust life prior to this.
She wasn't somebody who had some sort of chronic illness or psychological issues that continued to make her feel ill at every turn.
She was fine.
Yeah, she was absolutely fine.
Healthy, hiking mountains, you know, taking care of the kids, rock climbing, skiing, all of the things that we love to do.
So she decides to take place in the trial of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is widely used in Europe.
Why?
Why did she decide to do that?
So, me being a scientist, we're a science loving family.
We were concerned about COVID.
We wanted to protect our family.
We wanted to further the science.
We wanted to help end the pandemic.
And so she was presented with the opportunity to partake in the trial and chose to sign up.
She was so confident in the vaccines being developed that she would.
Be able to get a vaccine potentially and then not have to experience COVID herself and help protect her family and her community.
So, when did she take place in the trial?
So, she had her first dose November 4th of 2020, so just over a year ago.
Okay.
And what happened?
So, right after she got the shot, we're driving home and she said something doesn't feel right.
She had tingling down her arm where she got the shot.
She started to notice that her vision was changing.
Her ears became very, very sensitive to sound.
Her eyes were so sensitive to light, she had to put on the darkest sunglasses.
Later that night, she had the typical vaccine response that they tell you to expect you know, the fever and all of those things, but that had resolved by morning.
However, she experienced new symptoms that next morning.
She couldn't really walk properly.
Her left foot was sort of slumping, she calls it.
She was walking into doorways.
The sound and light sensitivity were severe.
She was still experiencing the numbness and tingling.
And the symptoms just Kept progressing and getting worse.
We called the test clinic.
They didn't respond for a couple of days.
Finally, they responded, brought her in, did an exam, said, You know what?
There were a couple of instances of transverse myelitis and MS in the previous trials.
You might have MS and you should go see a neurologist.
Oh, my Lord.
So we ended up in the ER three days later.
They did all of the tests that they could, ruled out any of those pre existing type conditions, and essentially said, We don't know what's going on, but Best of luck to you and sent her home to continue to decline.
We went to the ER two more times and then a fourth time, and she was finally hospitalized.
At this point, she couldn't walk.
She was incontinent.
She was peeing her pants.
She still had to wear earmuffs to be anywhere that wasn't a dark room.
She had extreme sensitivity to sound.
You couldn't touch her.
She couldn't brush her teeth.
I mean, it was just a hellacious experience.
How old is she at this point?
She's 39 years old at this point.
Oh my goodness.
Now she's 40.
So, who do you go to specifically, the people running the clinic?
Like, who do you call to say, you need to know this happened?
Right.
So, each of the clinical trials, you know, they're essentially performed by all these trial sites in all of the different states and cities.
And so, we call the test clinic.
That's what they call these.
So, they're the ones who administer the shots and, you know, collect the data and then send it on to, in this case, AstraZeneca.
And so that's what we called the doctors at the test clinic to say, you know what, something's not right here.
Something's going on.
And they didn't offer any help to you.
You were on your own in dealing with the fallout from it.
And then it seems like the other shoe to drop was when you saw her negative outcome was not included in the results of the clinical trial.
Right.
So the clinical trial report wasn't released until last month.
But I was a little bit suspicious given that the test clinic sort of didn't seem super interested.
The feedback we were getting from AstraZeneca was essentially we need a diagnosis, we need a diagnosis, anything that would essentially.
Absolve them of any responsibility.
So I was concerned in January.
So this happened in November.
In January, I reached out to the NIH to see if they had any thoughts on this.
And to my surprise, they actually responded really quickly.
We had a telehealth visit with doctors at the NIH.
They wanted to bring her out for testing and possible treatment.
However, this was January, and the NIH is located in Maryland.
And around this time, we had a lot of Civil unrest and other things going on, they weren't sure with the inauguration if they could safely bring her out.
And so they weren't able to bring her out at this time.
They offered to talk to her doctors locally to try and get them to perform the proper tests to come to a proper diagnosis.
But even with their involvement, our local doctors were still incredulous.
And because none of the test results would come back, you know, abnormal, they just said, well, this might be all in your head.
It's probably just anxiety.
You can't walk because you have anxiety.
Oh my gosh.
So, I mean, did anything show up on any test?
Because one of the things I read was that she started to suffer severe brain damage and was obviously advised by those running the trial not to get the second dose.
Was that something that manifested in a CT scan or something?
No.
So, all of the adverse reactions were essentially symptomatic until we actually were able to go to the NIH and get proper testing done.
And so, All of these symptoms, you know, the neurological decline and everything else was very, very concerning, but nobody really knew what to do with it because when you do the, you know, the CT or the MRI, everything looks normal.
All of her testing essentially was coming back normal.
So, did you ever make it to the NIH?
We did.
We went to the NIH in June where they did a whole battery of testing and she was eventually diagnosed with a bunch of vaccine caused injuries.
So, the NIH acknowledged that.
Yes.
So, how does it wind up that as recently as last month, her negative vaccine caused injuries are not in the report?
Exactly.
So, in a clinical trial, essentially the participants are given an app on their smartphones where they report any of the side effects.
However, the only side effects you're allowed to report is a bulleted list of selected adverse events the things like fever, muscle aches, injection site pain, headache, you know.
Tiredness, things like that.
There is no free form where you can write, you know, I can't walk anymore, or I can't be in bright light, or my ears are so sensitive, or any of the other things that she experienced.
You have to call the test clinic, explain to them what's going on, and then it's up to them to report up the chain, right?
With potential reporting and clinician bias, you know, the adverse events.
Media Censorship of Risks 00:02:51
And they didn't.
It would appear not.
When they said it's a vaccine caused injury, Did they explain what the injury is that's causing all these symptoms?
So, their hypothesis is that it's an immune mediated response to the spike protein that in certain individuals results in severe neurological injury.
Oh my gosh.
So, you here's a I know you connected with Senator Ron Johnson and Senator Mike Lee, and your wife gave some testimony before a Senate committee about what has happened to her.
We've got a clip of that so we can see Brianne here.
Watch.
We all suffered the same constellation of symptoms.
And we reached out to our elected representatives, both blue and red.
We reached out to the COVID committee.
We then reached out to the media, being repeatedly told.
That we can't make the vaccines look bad.
We reached out to our state health boards, our state health departments, all of them persisting in the narrative that if this was really happening, the CDC and the FDA would have said so.
We are completely on our own.
We need the CDC to acknowledge us.
They know about the issues with the clinical trials, they know about the deaths, they know about the lack of follow up on VARES, they know about the injuries to children.
They know about the suicides as the results of months long suffering.
They know about the aggressive censorship.
They know about the media censorship.
They know about the scientific censorship.
They know all of it.
Oh my gosh, that is literally chilling.
I got the chills listening to that.
Why don't we hear more of it?
Why are they stifling these stories and any discussion of them on places like Facebook?
I think they're afraid that any discussion or if any word got out, it would lead to vaccine hesitancy.
Right?
They want everybody to get a shot.
And if you tell them that some people aren't doing well with it, you know, it would increase the number of people who might not get the shot.
And you're not, you're actually not vaccine hesitant.
Is it true you actually got vaxxed after this happened to your wife with a different vaccine?
That is true.
I was vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine in March and then the second dose in April.
So five months into her injury.
This is crazy that they wouldn't allow you to tell your story because I understand you've, Formed a group, you found other people who are suffering similarly.
And is it true that you continue to be censored by places like Facebook?
Oh, definitely.
I mean, we had that event in DC just a few weeks ago, the beginning of November.
And immediately following that event, several of the support groups were shut down.
Need for Full Consent 00:15:18
As soon as they become aware, they hunt them out and shut them down, which really limits people's ability to find support.
I mean, these are people who are very, very Injured, they're suffering greatly.
A lot of them are suicidal, and the only support they have is through the other injured.
And so, cutting them off from that, we don't know what harm comes from that.
That is immoral.
That is immoral.
And it's supposed to be informed consent to getting these vaccines.
You can't give informed consent if you don't understand the full panoply of risks, including from somebody like you who's not anti vax.
I mean, you're not telling people not to get it, you're saying you should know what the risks are.
And so, you tell me what you think.
Do you guys have kids?
We have two kids, yes, a seven and nine year old.
So, what do you think now about the, you know, because now they've approved it on an emergency basis for five to 11 year olds.
Already we have an approval for 12 and up.
And now, in more and more places, they are making and will make it mandatory for kids as young as five.
Right.
So, I actually spoke in the advisory committee meeting for the FDA's review of the Pfizer data for the five to 11 year olds.
I have significant concerns in the amount of data that was actually collected.
They only used approximately 3,100 kids in the trial.
To put that in perspective, the standard clinical trial usually involves 30,000 to 50,000 people and lasts like two years.
So, this was a trial that was significantly underpowered, and the safety subset was only followed for two and a half weeks, not nearly long enough to determine if there's any adverse events that persist.
You know, it's not a large enough sample size.
They don't follow them long enough.
And in Pfizer's own data, they were unable to determine that there was a medical benefit to vaccinating this young of an age group.
So they chose to model what the risk benefit analysis would look like.
So they chose five scenarios.
And they had what the rate of COVID spread was, the assumed vaccine effectiveness, as well as one risk, which was myocarditis, which we know is an actual risk to these vaccines.
And it seems to increase in probability the younger the people are that receive it.
And so they did these models, and only in one of those scenarios did the benefits appear to outweigh the risks.
And that was when COVID was assumed to be spreading very, very rapidly.
In all of the other scenarios, the risks outweighed any benefit to the vaccine.
And this was in the FDA's model of the Pfizer data.
Oh, my.
I saw a written report to this effect the other day.
And the population is some 28 million, right?
Of kids in that age group.
So you're talking about 3,000 kids, and the population is 28 million.
And we're supposed to believe, I mean, it's wonderful when the doctors reassure us that it's safe, it's safe, it's safe.
But the truth is, they actually don't know more than you just said.
Right.
Yeah.
We don't know what the long term safety aspects of these vaccines are.
Science just does not know.
And do you believe that our public health officials, I mean, the NIH, I'm encouraged that they had you out there and actually did the testing and concluded what they did.
But do you believe that they're complicit in, for lack of a better term, the cover up of these cases and this data?
Interestingly enough, the NIH was very communicative from January on.
And we've actually had meetings, Zoom meetings with the heads of the FDA.
And after we had those meetings and brought up the NIH information, the NIH has since gone dark.
They will no longer talk to any of the injured.
My wife wasn't the only one that went out there.
There were approximately 50 to 60 vaccine injured individuals who went out to the NIH for testing and treatment, and none of them are getting any more response from the NIH.
Is it all AstraZeneca?
No.
No, this is AstraZeneca wasn't approved in the US.
Right.
So the vast majority of the vaccine injured in the US are from the other brands, and the injuries are all the same.
Of this neurological time.
Okay, let me ask you: having met them, having met the other people, is there reason to believe these are kooks?
These are people, you know what I mean?
Because that's what a lot of people think.
They're just psychosomatic.
They needed attention.
They found a way of creating this sort of injury so they could, whatever, have more time at home.
These are the things you hear.
Right.
No, absolutely not.
I mean, these are real people with real stories, real moms, real sisters, real dads, real children.
You know, that they're real people and they're suffering and they're doing it alone.
Would you tell people to get the vaccine for themselves, for their children?
I think that we need full and informed consent.
So I think all of the information needs to be provided and then you can make that choice for yourself.
If you believe that you're in a risk category where it makes sense, I would say that yes, you should get the vaccine.
However, for most healthy young adults and certainly children, the risks.
Begin to outweigh any benefit of the vaccine.
And I know they told you don't give it to your kids because obviously what happened with Brianne.
And now, of course, your kids will not be given an exception to go into the restaurants in New York or San Francisco because they have a legitimate medical exemption.
No one cares.
And these schools, the LA, they've gotten rid of recognition a lot of these places of even medical exemptions.
That includes our school, where the only medical exemption they'll give you for your child is if he or she, not the parent, had an.
Adverse reaction to the first shot.
You have to stick the needle in them and see how they do.
It's insane that you guys would be in that position too.
So, how's Brienne doing now?
She has made some improvement.
She can walk again, she's able to be around.
The family, the sound sensitivity has reduced, the light sensitivity, those sorts of things.
She still has this electrical sensation throughout her whole body 24 7.
And then the other symptom that's most plaguing is what most people describe as internal vibration, as if you had like a whole mess of cell phones inside your body or a massager that is just sort of vibrating all the time.
Gosh.
Oh, please send her our love and best wishes for a full recovery and.
I mean, I just applaud your courage in speaking out.
You were trying to help.
You're pro vaccine.
You volunteered so that you could get this thing approved and help everybody.
And this is the thanks you get a cover up, no return phone calls, even though they've acknowledged it's a vaccine injury.
This is dreadful.
Brian, thank you for speaking out and all the best to you and your family.
Thank you for having me.
My gosh.
Wow.
That's unbelievable.
We're going to continue the discussion next when we're joined by Dr. Michael Minna, an immunologist, epidemiologist, and physician at the Harvard School of Public Health.
We'll talk about this case, we'll talk about the new COVID antiviral pills, and how he says at home testing can put an end to this pandemic.
Oh, still so moved by my last guest and that story.
And joining me now to discuss it more is an immunologist, epidemiologist, and physician at the Harvard.
T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Dr. Michael Minna.
Dr. Minna has been a champion for COVID testing, testing I say, since the beginning of the pandemic.
He thinks it is the key to keeping us out of future lockdowns, making your holiday plans safe, saving lives, and potentially helping us take those masks off and ending all the vaccine mandates too.
Thank you for joining us, Dr. Minna.
What do you make of Brian's story?
I mean, I found him very credible and I find the whole thing really disturbing.
Well, when we're talking about potential adverse effects of vaccines, we have to always place Those in the context of what would happen otherwise if you got infected.
I've spoken long before COVID, I have spoken with many, many groups over the years about concerns around vaccines, around vaccine safety.
And I think that it is absolutely right for people to have personal concerns about vaccine safety because this is something, it's one of the few things that we actually put into people when they're healthy and to protect them in the future.
And so, when we're talking about potential inflammatory effects like we just heard, we have to recognize that they might occur associated with the vaccine, but they also occur associated with the infection.
And I think oftentimes that piece is lost.
And so, from a public health perspective, it becomes which I will distinguish from the personal choice, but from a public health perspective, we have to weigh the costs and benefits at a whole aggregate community level.
And sometimes that means that we have to recognize that despite having potential, and I say potential because we're not sure, adverse effects of a vaccine, sometimes the risk of that is so much lower, even though they might be real, than the risk of the actual infection and those exact same types of effects happening after somebody gets infected, that it just makes it clearly pushes the balance towards the vaccine.
But that's not to say that these types of That these types of events don't exist.
I think they do.
But I do not believe, from a public health perspective, that they would warrant a rethinking of whether or not the vaccine is appropriate to give to individuals at a public health level.
What about doesn't this totally undermine the mandates, though?
I mean, there are a lot of people out there going to hear that story deemed by the NIH to be a vaccine injury and say, I don't think it's worth the risk for me.
And I should be, what if there's a woman sitting at home right now who says that to herself and she's forced to get the vaccine or lose her job, right?
By, let's say she's a New York City cop, right?
Something like that.
Shouldn't it be her choice?
Well, I have.
I mean, when it comes to that, I would argue for myself here that I am not a bioethicist.
You know, vaccine mandates have to be looked at through many angles.
And I look at it through, you know, one or two angles.
And the president of the United States looks at it through different angles from me.
And I do think that there are arguments to be made on both sides.
There's personal choice about whether or not you need to have something put into you that.
Could protect you, but could also have a very, and I want to emphasize, very minimal risk, but a real risk, even if it's extremely minimal.
You know, that should probably be somebody's choice.
But the question is does society deem that the population level risk of not mandating a vaccine overwhelm the risk to individuals, to the small minority who do end up having some sort of adverse reaction?
And that is really, I would argue that it's really for.
It's for society to choose.
And, you know, I can speak about biology and medicine, but whether or not, you know, when it comes to freedoms and liberties, I think I can give my own end of one opinion, but I don't think it's worth very much.
How do we know it's minimal risk when you have the people who run the clinical trials and the drug makers keeping results like Breanne's out of the public eye?
How many more Breanne's are there?
Well, so it's a really good question.
On the one hand, we have the clinical trials that occur initially.
And then we have, especially with these vaccines, a massive, massive post market ongoing evaluation.
And what I can say is we haven't seen the number of adverse effects becoming so significant that we actually start to think that it's a real reason to recommend against vaccination.
But what's the data?
What data are you looking at?
I mean, I'll tell you just anecdotally, but I can speak to this firsthand.
Female friend of mine of childbearing age, when the first thing broke about Johnson Johnson and you know, causing blood clots, and they said there are six women who have had blood clots.
She had a blood clot right after getting JJ, she got it in her finger.
She called the doctor, she's like, What do you think this is?
And I said, It blew up like a red balloon after I got the vaccine.
He was like, Get to the hospital right now.
So she went and they did all these therapeutics on her.
They wouldn't use heparin because I guess you can't have that after you just had the JJ vaccine.
So they used all these sort of homeopathic things on her.
She had about 12 doctors taking care of her because they really didn't want a negative effect from the JJ or any other vaccine.
She was not one of the six.
She wasn't counted.
And this is, it had happened prior to them announcing we've had six.
So I just, there's reason to question these numbers.
And I have the vaccine and I would recommend the vaccine.
I advise her.
But these are some of the reasons why I question the mandate.
And I really question it when it comes to children who don't need this vaccine.
Yeah, I do think, I mean, we have, like, just to be very clear, we have given.
Millions and millions and millions of vaccines.
And the problem has always historically been with vaccine adverse effects.
And again, I do not want to pretend like they don't exist, I do want to be clear that they're rare.
But the problem with them is that because vaccines are one of the only medical interventions that we actually give to people during a period of health, we have almost no tolerance for error and for any sort of adverse effect, which is good.
But what is often lost is that side effects from a vaccine rise to the top very quickly and become compounded in the media.
But what is not discussed very much is that those identical side effects.
Do occur when somebody gets the infection itself as well.
And so that is often lost.
And so it's very easy to talk about the side effects from a vaccine while pretending like the side effects from the actual infection don't exist because they're not side effects.
They're, you know, we think of them as real effects of the infection that we're trying to avoid.
But I guess this is the way that I balance it.
And I do want to, like, I don't, I personally don't ever pretend to think that anyone's side effects are not real.
I believe that they are the anytime we initiate an infection.
Inflammatory response in somebody's body, we cannot pretend that that doesn't come with a risk.
But the way that I look at it is that that same inflammatory response or a much worse one does also occur with the infection.
Natural Immunity Exemption 00:16:35
And I think it's not as clear cut a story, but when it comes to mandates, I think it's absolutely reasonable to be having this discussion 100%.
I think we should all be having the discussion.
And it's not wrong to talk about it and try to figure out what is the best path forward for society.
A news item to our listening audience.
And then I want to ask you about testing and also these new therapeutics, which, you know, maybe those two things are the answer to vaccine hesitancy and all of this.
But just an update on the news California, this is according to a Wall Street Journal article, is increasingly scrutinizing doctors who are providing medical exemptions to parents for their children, right, who are subject to the vax mandates.
One doctor's in trouble for, quote, considering parental input.
On the risks to their child.
That's crazy.
Who else are you going to listen to?
It's like the kids, my kids have no idea what their medical history is.
A judge recommended that this one doctor, that her license be revoked, the one who listened to parental input.
And so more and more doctors who give you a medical exemption are coming under scrutiny for giving them to you.
That's disturbing, right?
Because it's like, like I said, Brian and Brianne, if they were at my school, their kid would have to take the vaccine, even though their kids clearly should not take the vaccine, given what's happened to their mom.
So it's crazy.
Okay, so let's talk about alternatives that are now more and more in the news and potentially becoming available.
Let me just start with the therapeutics before we get to the testing.
So, Pfizer has got one now, and Merck has got one now.
Pfizer is going to seek approval.
I guess they haven't yet, but apparently they had such great results, they're no longer taking new patients in their clinical trial due to the overwhelming efficacy, they say, of their new therapeutic, an experimental pill that treats COVID.
They say it could cut hospitalization rates by nearly 90%, they say, in the clinical trial.
It prevented death in 100% of the cases.
You have to start it within three days of symptoms.
So you've got to get to it fast.
I don't know what the Merck one requires, but Scott Gottlieb, former FDA commissioner, says the pandemic could be over by January.
And he's on the board of Pfizer, we should point out, but thanks to the Pfizer and Merck therapeutics.
So what do you make of those?
Yeah, I think that this is a tipping point or at least a real game changer in this pandemic.
The fact is, what we really want to avoid during the pandemic is Are severe outcomes.
And if we have therapeutics that can limit and potentially prevent the most severe outcomes, then it really changes the balance of the overall risk of this pandemic to society.
But one of the most important pieces here is what you mentioned, which is that these drugs have to be started very fast.
They generally have an EUA that says that they need to be started within three days or three to five days.
But the reality is, the benefit does start to fall off quickly with each passing day.
And so, the quicker that we can get people diagnosed and get them a therapeutic, ideally delivered to their door, and we can talk about what I call tests to treat.
Is going to be crucial.
And that's also where we'll also discuss rapid tests and how we can use testing and greater availability and access to fast tests to our major advantage here when we consider that we now have therapeutics coming down the pipeline that are really going to be life saving entities.
All right.
So let's talk about testing.
I confess I haven't really been paying attention to the status of testing, at home testing, since the beginning when it was impossible to get a test and people were like, unless you knew or related to Andrew Cuomo.
How has that come along?
Where are we now in terms of testing and its availability?
And what would you like to see?
Yeah, I mean, I think testing in the US has been one of the greatest failures of this pandemic.
We've done it all wrong, and what I would argue has been wrong.
We focused on the wrong metrics around the test at the expense of focusing on the metrics that would actually curb transmission.
And so, all of 2020, we had a real focus on Laboratory PCR testing for the most part.
And even when tests were taking 7, 10, 12 days to return, we were still recommending, you know, we, the scientific community, were still recommending that people got tests to limit transmission.
But when you have a test that's taking 5, 7, 10 days, it is essentially absolutely pointless from a public health perspective.
You need a test result that's going to be given very fast so that if you're infectious, you know your results before you go out and In fact, other people.
And you need that test to be accessible.
A test once a month or a test once you're feeling symptomatic isn't sufficient if your goal is to stop transmission.
And so, given that backdrop, something I've been calling for since really April or May of 2020 has been to increase accessibility in the United States to rapid tests, tests that people can have in their home.
So that the moment you start to feel symptoms or the moment your friend calls you and says, Hey, you know, I just turned up positive and we had dinner last night together, you might want to test yourself.
There's no barrier to entry for somebody to get tested.
We need inexpensive tests to just be at our disposal, similar to band aids.
We don't go out and buy band aids when our child gets a cut.
We have them in our cupboard already so that we can put them on and stop the bleeding when it's necessary.
And it's the same thing with COVID tests.
If we can put these fast, accessible, simple tests into people's homes, then we can really do a good job at stopping transmission, even in the era of vaccines.
Do they exist?
Obviously, they do exist.
I know you can go into the clinic for a rapid test.
Yeah, so they do exist now.
It's been a very long slog to try to work on how to encourage scientific bodies and the FDA and such to understand these tests.
As I think of them as transmission indicating tests, or they're tests that turn positive when you're infectious.
And they don't turn positive when you're not infectious, unlike a PCR test, which stays positive for way too long.
And these tests do exist now, but as people have noticed, they're very hard to get.
They go to Walmart or CVS and they find That they're sold out over and over and over.
But finally, the government is trying to increase accessibility and scalability of these.
Tests, but it is taking time.
And, you know, I've been probably the world's greatest advocate for trying to improve testing access in this country and globally.
But there is a part of me that's starting to wonder, you know, is this too little, too late?
I don't think so.
But, you know, I am frustrated that these tests were not in every individual's home, you know, a year ago.
Yeah.
Did we put any of that money, you know, that we put towards finding vaccines and so on behind this?
Not really.
You know, the U.S. has been, has generally historically been very, very poor.
At recognizing what are appropriate uses of money when it comes to public health, where we have a very biomedical centric enterprise when it comes to how we allocate funds.
And so, if it's something you can inject into you, great, we'll dump all the funds into it.
But if it's something that really is designed to stop transmission and work at a public health level, the public health strategies themselves are generally underfunded.
And that's why, for example, when the vaccines finally did come about, it was like a shock to the system.
Nobody knew how to really allocate them and actually distribute them in the states.
Know it's kind of a surprise that we put all this money into developing the biology behind it, but then the logistics and the real public health part of it was sort of short sighted and not really developed enough.
Like, why wasn't Fauci talking about this?
Because this is an easy sell.
I mean, even the most vaccine hesitant wouldn't be opposed to testing and making sure they don't have it, even if they don't want a vaccine, especially with these new therapeutics coming out.
They would 100% get a test and probably get a pill to stop hospitalization or death.
So, I mean, why don't Why don't we put more energy into this?
I don't know.
It's been interesting.
And I've talked to both sides of Congress, Senate, the White House, both administrations.
This is one of the most bipartisan efforts that could be in place.
We've published on it an enormous number of times the last 18 months.
It appeals to everyone because, like you say, everyone is happy to know if they're testing, especially this can be a test that is done in the privacy of your home.
So, those folks in the country who don't want the government involved, you can use a test at your own counter and nobody has to know the result.
That's right.
And then you at least don't go outside.
I know a lot of people who are like, I don't want the government knowing I have it.
So, fine, you know, in the privacy of your own home.
And then, of course, unless you're just a complete jerk, you would not go out in public and start breathing on a bunch of people.
So, what about antigen tests and antibody tests?
Do we have those at all readily available?
And how could they play into it?
Getting all of this over with faster?
Sure.
So, the fast tests that I'm talking about now are the antigen tests.
And an antigen test is a test that detects the protein, which is called an antigen in scientific terms, of the virus.
And so, the antigen tests are existing.
Those are the ones like the Abbott test and the Quidel and the Illum that was just recalled.
These are antigen tests.
Antibody tests are different, and they are the tests that look at the person's immunological response to the infection or The vaccine.
These tests also exist.
There was a slew of these tests that were really poorly created and just not accurate back in early 2020.
And these were fast antibody or immune tests.
And that kind of put the whole FDA and the government, everyone kind of like pushed down antibody tests.
Antibody testing and understanding immunology of pathogens is what I normally do in my research.
And so it's been frustrating to see that even these.
Antibody tests have been sort of downplayed, but now we're starting to see that they are becoming more available.
There's one company that does it with just a swab of your gums.
You take a swab of your gums and you can get a good antibody result.
And I think we're underutilizing those.
Because what we could do is we could say, hey, do kids really need two vaccines to be, or does any person really need two vaccines to be considered fully immunized if they've already been infected and have a strong antibody response?
Maybe what we could do is we could take these fast antibody tests.
And when somebody goes to get their first vaccine, they also take an antibody test.
And if the antibody test is positive, then they get one vaccine because they've already been infected based on the antibody positivity.
And then they are considered fully vaccinated without or fully immune without having to get their second dose.
You know, that type of efficient public health thinking just has more or less been absent.
And I don't know why.
You know, it's as though the scientific and policymaking bodies have decided or deemed that we can't trust immunity from infection.
But when we have perhaps half of all Americans having been infected, we should at least leverage that.
And we can't turn back time.
I don't want people to go out and get infected so they only have to get one dose of a vaccine.
But the fact is, many people have been infected, and we can't undo that.
So we may as well utilize it to our benefit.
And I think that there's a real role there, but we haven't really brought it forward.
Kids in particular, because the negative effects of the COVID vaccine on young teenage boys tend to come after a second shot, like the myocarditis and so on.
So, what if you could avoid that altogether?
If you have to get a shot, you have to get vaccinated.
Perhaps you could at least avoid the second shot if you've had COVID in the antibody show.
But I'm sure a lot of my audience out there is saying, why do you need?
Even one shot, if you have the antibodies, you know, you've got natural immunity.
That Israel study showed it's 27 times more effective at preventing infection, reinfection, as the vaccines.
And this is why a lot of people say we, like some countries in Europe, should be counting natural immunity already as an exemption to these vaccine mandates.
Yeah, I do think that we should at least be considering it.
You know, do I, am I going to get up here and say, To you that I don't think we should give a single dose vaccine for people who are immune?
Probably not.
The reason I would say that is because we do know that the vaccine kind of supercharges the immunological memory for people who have been infected.
Do I want to say that maybe we don't need both vaccine doses?
Absolutely.
I think there's good data to support that.
But I think going to say that people who have any antibody level don't need to get a vaccine, you know, that's not, I would say that the data is less robust to suggest that.
But I do think we should absolutely be considering it, you know, and especially we should really be looking at what are called immune correlates of protection.
So, can we come up with quantitative values, quantitative antibody values that would say whether somebody who has been infected actually has sufficient immunity that they don't need any vaccine or not?
And what's this called?
What's this test called again?
Well, these are, this is just an area of sort of medical research called correlates of protection.
We look at trying to say, You know, just I'll give fake numbers for a moment.
But if you have above 100 antibody levels, maybe you're protected, you're very well protected from infection.
And if you're below, you're not.
And we've done this for a long time with measles titers, for example, for healthcare professionals.
Every few years, healthcare professionals get a measles antibody titer drawn.
They look at the amount of antibody people have and they say, your antibody levels have fallen too far below.
We'll give you a booster.
That is so brilliant.
That puts an end to this whole debate about whether the vaccine gives you better immunity or the COVID infection.
It's like, well, let's just see what your immunity is.
Let's just look at it.
Okay.
Like, we don't have to.
Prioritize one over the other.
Let's just see what it is, and then you can make the decision what to do from there.
Because I don't think most people want COVID, especially seeing what it does to older people and so on.
But they don't also want to be ordered around by Uncle Sam and what to do with their healthcare.
All right, listen, I want you, if you're willing to stick around, because I know our audience is calling in.
And folks, you can call in right now.
It's not too late.
Call in right now because our doctor friend Michael is staying with us, Dr. Minna, 83344 Megan, 8344 M E G Y N, which is 446 3496.
Call us right now and free medical advice.
No, it's not medical advice, but just thoughts on your questions next.
We've got physician Dr. Michael Minna, and he's got thoughts on your questions.
We're going to kick it off with Mike in Arkansas.
What's your question for Dr. Minna?
I called my doctor and asked about the testing to see what my antibody level was, and she said that she's not a big advocate for it because it's only about 40% accurate.
So that's really what my question is how accurate are they, and what does it actually mean?
Go ahead, Doc.
Yeah, so that's the question that we're trying to figure out.
I wouldn't say that 40% accurate.
I'm not quite sure where your physicians come in with that number.
But what I would say is we're still trying to understand how to interpret what the results of somebody's antibody test actually mean.
But in general, if you're looking at just a positive or a negative, if somebody says, yes, you're positive for antibodies, what you don't know, given the tests that are available right now, is it low positive, high positive?
And so we need to keep developing the technology a bit more.
But in general, you can assume that if you are positive at the very least and you've never been vaccinated, it means you've been exposed.
And if you have been vaccinated, it means you probably have, you clearly have some immunity from it.
Tracking Antibody Levels 00:03:09
But how immune and how protected is still something we're trying to work out those new tests for.
We got to work, we got to figure that one out.
Thank you for the call, Mike.
Let's go to Natalie in North Carolina.
Natalie, what's your question for our doctor?
Hey guys, so I had COVID in November of 2020.
And around August of this year, I went into my local doctor's office and had the antibody test done, and my antibodies or the immunity level was 1500.
So, my question is how often should you take the antibody test to check your level?
Yeah, so it's a similar ish question, but I can't speak to that particular number.
The interesting thing with antibody Values is it's really like 1500.
I can't interpret if that's high or low without knowing more about the exact test.
But what I can say is that one thing we should be thinking about doing, and that I've advocated quite a bit for, is that we should offer people antibody tests every few months.
And the idea there is that some people retain their immune memory very well, and some people do not retain their immunity very well, just like people's regular memory.
Some people have good memories, some people have bad memories.
One thing we could do is we could say, hey, here's a, you know, do this test, you know, once every three months for nine months and see if your antibody levels are staying flat and high or if they're dropping off really quick.
And we could actually use that to determine maybe who needs a booster, who doesn't, who will be protected next year, who won't be.
And I think we have a lot of ways that we could be using these antibody values and the numbers that we're not currently doing.
But I would say every few months is probably if you're wanting to track your antibodies, it's not a day to day thing.
It's more like, Test today, test again in three months, and see where you're at.
You don't have to do it every week, for example.
What could this testing do in terms of our treatment options?
How could it change them?
Yeah, so testing, I would argue that testing with the antigen test, the tests that actually look for the virus, can be one of the most powerful tools we have today now that therapy is coming around.
So we talked earlier about how it needs to be started fast.
So I have this idea what if Medicare or however positioned these tests in every person's home who's high risk and just said, here's three tests.
If you use them, we'll send you more tests.
And anytime somebody felt symptoms, especially somebody who's at risk of severe complications with COVID, they just pull out a test and they do a proctored test, you know, a telehealth proctor test where you actually get on, you scan in your test and up pops a proctor.
They watch you do the test.
And the reason you want that is because then if you're positive, you can immediately get a prescription.
And within 12 hours, you could have a therapy show up at your door that you could start, you know, we could actually be in a world where we start treatment.
Home Testing Strategy 00:00:47
Within 12 hours of first having symptom onset, it could totally greatly eliminate the need for hospitalization.
And of course, especially these numbers from Pfizer are true, right?
100% reduction of death is pretty good.
Dr. Minna, thank you.
We appreciate your expertise and we appreciate our viewers calling in.
Tomorrow we've got comedian Jim Brewer.
He's hilarious.
Don't forget to check us out on youtube.comslash Megan Kelly and download the show.
Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no fear.
Export Selection