Dr. Oz, Cardiac Surgeon and Host of The Dr. Oz Show is here for his daily update on COVID-19. Dr. Oz is now providing a COVID-19 daily minute, which you can find on Hannity.com. Plus, how does the country open up when things start to turn around with COVID? Sean and team have some ideas...The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
I'm watching all that's going on here, and I'm like, oh I got it.
We're 204 days away from election day.
Oh, you have to see everything through that prism when you watch, you witness, you you you watch, I mean, the level of panic and hysteria and fear, not about the virus necessarily, but those that see that Donald Trump's reaction to everything has uh has been dead on.
He's he's dialed in.
Whether you you know media doesn't want to cover his press conferences, they're full of lies.
He's a liar.
Um, as a means of not covering during a national emergency, the president was giving out useful information.
How many masks have we secured?
Respirators, gowns, uh, shields, gloves, ventilators, let's talk about hydroxychloroquine, what are the dangers?
What is this?
I mean, they don't want to run any of this.
And it is, it's just a part of this to me is sad.
Um, but I know where it's all coming from.
I know who they are, I know what they're about.
I mean, you know, in the middle of this whole thing, you know, the predictable group of people that have hated Donald Trump for all the three plus years he's now been president are out there, and yes, they're using follow politics, and it was it's it just there's a certain facts in this in this that they can't get around,
and it's driving them nuts, but it's not going to stop them from advancing a narrative that they want to advance no matter what the truth is, because they so hate Donald Trump, it's so clear and it's so obvious.
And it's the groups of people, the mob is is ratcheting up their hysteria, their bludgeoning of Donald Trump every day, and the Democratic Party, similar things going on with them.
And meanwhile, we're trying to navigate our way through a pandemic that frankly took a lot of people by by surprise, uh, including Dr. Fauci, who I happen to have the highest respect for.
This guy has spent served six presidents now and has spent a lifetime saving lives and dedicating his life to informing the public and and coming up with treatments and coming up with vaccines and coming up with it cures, etc.
for for different viruses at the time, the pandemics, etc.
So he was way off on his early predictions as well, but it doesn't matter.
He was doing the best he could do.
Um, and and things on the ground sometimes change.
And it did in this case.
And it doesn't matter how wrong the media was, where they're really like I watched the New York Times, which is nothing.
Look, this is a garbage newspaper at this point.
You gotta understand.
This is not anything that has any credit credibility or should have any credibility with the American people.
It just doesn't.
And all throughout this whole thing, they've been out there and and they've politicized this, and we've chronicled a lot of it, and I can go over it again if you want, but he could have seen what was coming.
This is their this is their headline.
It's like it reads like war and peace.
You can't get through this thing.
It bores you to tears with their with their unnamed source after unnamed source, examination reveals the president was warned about a potential pandemic, but internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response.
Well, um, they can say it, they can think it, but it doesn't make it true.
And this is now part of what is a never-ending informational crisis we have with the media.
They're doing a disservice to the American people.
And if you look at their timeline, it's pretty atrocious.
If you look at the Washington Post timeline, they're even more atrocious.
You know, we did timeline in this sense matters, although you got some of the blame of not getting understanding it early is because of China itself, which nobody wants to talk about.
But I mean, if you look at when did we first notice a virus with pneumonia-like symptoms in Wuha province in China?
Well, that was December 30th of last year.
It's not that long ago now, is it?
It was first identified as coronavirus January 7th.
The first known case in the U.S. was January 21st.
And, you know, the president they can't get around this either.
They can't say, well, the president's he thought it was a hoax.
Well, if he thought it was a hoax, why did the president of the United States then put in place a travel ban 10 days after the first identified case in the United States?
Why is it that we're in the middle of a national emergency?
The mob, the media, they don't want to take the president's coronavirus task force press conference that is offering information about the economy, about displaced workers, about equipment that is being sent to the front lines.
I mean, in their eyes, there's nothing Donald Trump could ever do that is ever going to be acceptable to them.
And their coverage seems to get more extreme as the models are predicting far fewer deaths than was originally planned or originally thought with the models originally thought uh showed.
Anyway, so you can't get away from the president's very important decision, January 31st, against the advice of many to go forward with the travel ban.
That matters.
He thought it was a hoax.
I doubt he would have done that.
What were the Democrats?
They were they were doing their impeachment shift show on Capitol Hill.
That's where their heads were at.
And, you know, where was the rest of the media, Washington Post, you know, they were how our brains make coronavirus seem scarier than it is.
And this is uh Eric Popped the Pimples paper, the Washington Post, why we should be wary of an aggressive government response to coronavirus.
I can go through everything with the Daily Beast and the New York Times, and you know, look at, for example, you know, Anderson Cooper.
I don't think Anderson meant anything by this, but March 4th was saying if you're all freaked out about coronavirus, you should be more concerned about the flu.
Now, there were legitimate flu comparisons in this sense.
You know, you have to have some perspective.
Unfortunately, you know, uh Joe Biden is out there with his plan, and it's like, yeah, where you been, Joe.
And his plan for reopening the country is weak, and his lectures to Donald Trump fall on deaf ears, and he's the one that was saying it was hysteria, uh, xenophobia, and it was fear mongering of putting in place the travel ban, and even the media is trying to cover for that, but CNN's Anderson Cooper, you're all freaked out about the coronavirus.
You should be more concerned about the flu.
The the context or texture to anybody that had mentioned a flu comparison, for me anyway, at the time, was that we lose tens of thousands of people with the flu.
You know, to bring up the media never acted this way with N1H1 to quote Joe Biden.
They didn't there was never any type of thought of mitigation efforts like this.
Did they know for sure that that couldn't have become the greater pandemic?
It was a pandemic.
They found out in April of 2009, Obama himself didn't say national emergency until uh what, late October that year.
He was praised by the media by that time.
A thousand Americans had died, hundreds of thousands of Americans ended up being hospitalized.
We lost 17,000 Americans with that pandemic and hundreds of thousands hospitalized, many hundreds of thousands.
So, you know, it's you know, see it how many people in the media were saying coronavirus spreads, fear is fueling racism.
Wow, nation saying the nation newspaper, Republican xenophobia is going to make the pandemic much worse.
Let's call it the Trump virus, the New York Times called it on February 26th.
If you're feeling awful, you know who to blame.
Six days after the president's travel ban, the New York Times writing a piece who says it's not safe to travel to China, adding the coronavirus travel ban is unjust and doesn't work anyway.
I don't think anyone agrees with that anymore.
Um, but what he what do you mean he could have seen what was coming?
Well, I'm I'm not sure.
Now, I know that everybody in the media they love Dr. Anthony Fauci.
And let me let me just point out here.
This is not meant in any way to be a criticism of Dr. Fauci, and I mean that.
It is, it it is it illustrates, though, this was an evolving issue, even for somebody who's smart, intelligent, bright.
There's no better expert than Dr. Fauci on that, on the these issues.
That's why we first had the first known case of coronavirus in the country, that was January 21st.
Well, I had him on my uh television show January 27th.
I had a team of doctors on January 28th.
That's even before the travel ban.
January 21st, Fauci said he was unclear whether the virus can spread person or person.
We didn't know yet at that time.
But still, the president went with the travel ban anyway.
Journal of American Association podcast, he said it is unprecedented, no chance we could do that citywide shutdowns.
He says, No chance we could do that in Chicago or New York.
That's what he said in January.
You know, Fauci praised China as being quite transparent in late January.
He didn't know because the Chinese were lying to us.
He didn't think they were lying.
You know, he said the United States was very, very low risk on January 26th.
Very low risk.
And you could take him through the different briefings that he had.
He was saying the same thing on January 31st, the day of the travel ban.
Uh, February 10th, uh, he was on with me, and we had an interview um on this show or on TV.
I think it was on TV.
And he, you know, was also gave an interview with the Washington Post, said no, corona's low risk.
This is February 10th.
Not every American should wear a mask.
Uh, by the 17th of February, he said the danger posed by coronavirus is just minuscule.
He said that to USA Today in an editorial board.
February 19th, Fauci offered a hopeful message.
Far more people recover than actually get into trouble.
February 29th, White House briefing.
The country as a whole still remains at low risk.
And with regard to the particular area that's involved now in Washington, meaning Washington State and the country as a whole, because we get asked all the time, it still remains at low risk.
All right, he said the Wuhan efforts were draconian.
He said to me March 10th, about 80% of the people infected will do well.
So it went late.
March 3rd, there was very few people in the mob and the media that were all about coronavirus.
Um and timelines in that sense matter.
Now, is this a criticism of Dr. Fauci?
Not at all.
Because in part the Chinese lied to everybody.
But it does show the seriousness with which the president took uh in terms of the virus because it was fairly controversial.
He was attacked brutally for it.
And here's the next part of it.
We can't even begin to calculate it is incalculable how many tens of thousands of Americans likely would have contracted the virus and exponentially how many others might have died, likely thousands.
How we would not have had the time we ultimately had to understand it more so the response could be appropriate.
You know, I talked to somebody in New York over the weekend.
He goes, Cuomo's done a great job.
I said, Yeah, what do you do?
Well, he brought the put the Navy ship up.
I'm like, Trump did that.
He said, Well, that they built the hospitals at the Javitt Center.
They built, I said, Army Corps of Engineers did that, and they staff it.
And then he said, Well, all the ventilators, I said he didn't buy them.
All the ventors that he needed, he got from Donald Trump.
And it is amazing.
Nobody in the media talks about the 2015, November 2015 task force that said it is a foreseeable threat and one that we should react on.
And you got big fights working uh working its way through between the Blasio and Cuomo right now, dumb and dumber.
That's ridiculous watching all this.
We're gonna get into some civil liberties questions that are emerging in this.
Um Joe Biden came out of hiding.
He has a plan.
He's a little late, like everything else.
Um we'll get to that.
Uh, we have our facts without fear.
We have our medical update with Dr. Oz, and we have a uh deep state update that is very, Very interesting.
It's all coming true.
So the mob in the media, as insane as they are.
So they can't be critical of Trump.
They can they tried.
They tried to say he's he he treated it as a hoax.
Well, the travel ban negates that ten days after the first known case.
He could have seen what was coming.
Okay, well, that newspaper was telling people in early February it's safe to go to China.
They've so politicized it, they were calling it the Trump virus, and if you're feeling awful, you know who to blame.
The coronavirus outbreak risks reviving a stigma for China.
That's what they were saying.
They gave perspective.
Uh that the flu kills 35,000 Americans uh every year this season.
It's already sickened an estimated 15,000.
Well, Hannity, you made a comparison of the flu yourself.
I said, but it's just for perspective.
I wish, and I also said I wish nobody died.
Ever.
I wish we had a cure for every disease.
You know, they're claiming the flu was was just as if not more than the coronavirus.
You know, it doesn't matter that the president put the travel ban in place.
That was xenophobic, fear-mongering, racist, and stigmatizing by the media.
But then it's but he didn't treat it seriously.
How much how much faster could he have acted when in late February Anthony Fauci, who is so highly respected, February 29th is saying uh low risk by February 29th, March 4th, the same or March 2nd.
Andrew Cuomo saying the same thing.
Anderson Cooper saying the same thing.
And it's all over the place.
I'm not even being critical because people didn't know.
But now you well, now they had projected what?
We could have lost 2.4 million Americans, then it was 250,000 Americans, then it was 80,000 Americans, now it's 60,000 Americans, and Trump built the hospitals in New York.
He staffed the hospitals in New York, sent the Navy ship in New York, sent, you know, seven, six thousand ventilators to New York, sent hydroxychloroquine to New York, gloves and masks and everything they didn't prepare for in New York, they should have prepared for.
And what are the you got the governor of New Jersey and the cowardly corrupt chef?
Um diving deeply into the warnings ignored by a coronavirus.
Well, the first person that'll be his witness is Anthony Fauci.
We have his timeline.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, 800 nine-four one.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
I just see it.
I know what it is.
It's easy to identify.
It is unfortunately a continuation, same people, same actors, same outlets, same mob, same media, same Democrats, all up to the same old nonsense.
I mean, even in the midst of a national emergency.
Why would we take the president's press conferences and during a national emergency?
They're all lies.
So when you look at the president's real timeline, it's kind of hard for them to beat back the narrative, especially when they were complaining it's racist or stigmatizing China or xenophobic or fear-mongering or hysteria.
That ten days after the first known case of coronavirus in the United States was January 21st, and 10 days later, the travel ban, followed by the quarantines, followed by the numerous and subsequent travel bans that nobody in the media mob wanted.
You know, the idea that they're gonna now claim he could have seen what was coming.
Really?
Uh well, and again, this is not a criticism of Dr. Fauci.
We were all lied to by China.
Just a fact.
Nobody understood how the World Health Organization just echoed Chinese propaganda.
The communist Chinese gave them information that he just echoed it.
We pay for that bad information, about 450 million dollars a year.
You know, but up till like even February 29th, you have Dr. Fauci saying, yeah, the country at a whole still very low risk.
You know, what they did in the efforts in Wuhan province were draconian.
We're never going to do that here.
Something we would never be able to do here, he said.
And so it's again, it's not a criticism.
It was it was something that evolved over time, and and I would even give the media pass, but they're trying to now say that the guy that took it the most seriously, that was the most ahead of the curve, was Donald Trump, and they won't ever give him credit.
And now that you see the death toll predictions and models now below 60,000, you know, uh-oh, we gotta beat the crap out of him and say he should have seen what was coming, even though he was the first to see it coming.
I mean, it's kind of nuts, but that's who they are.
That's what they do.
Um Joe Biden was wrong.
It took him two months and three days to catch up to the president on the travel ban.
That was supposed to take seriously as weekend op-ed and what he would do to deal with the pandemic.
It's it's a joke.
Nobody, you know, the early predictions as we were heading into peak week last week in New York, were all dire.
They were all, we're not gonna have enough ventilators.
Andrew Cuomo, I need 30,000.
Nobody in the media talked about his recommendation to buy 15,783, and that he didn't buy it because he'd rather spend 750 million dollars on a on a what is it, solar factory in upstate New York that flopped,
and 600 million on a microchip factory that flopped, and ninety million on a light bulb factory that that flopped instead of buying the ventilators that his own task force said they had a responsibility to buy because it was a foreseeable threat.
And they even went into detail how the federal government will not be able to fill this gap for you.
It's your responsibility.
He gets a pass.
President built, let's see, brings in the Navy hospital.
They barely used it.
Like 20 patients.
I don't, I think it was their height, they had 100.
The Javett Center never filled up.
There was a hospital that the Army Corps of Engineers built in Washington State.
Donald Trump built that too.
The Javit Center, the largest hospital in the country, 3,000 beds.
They weren't supposed to take COVID-19 patients.
They started taking them, but most of those beds are empty.
And it's staffed by Donald Trump.
All of the ventilators New York had for the most part came from Donald Trump.
They never had anywhere near a shortage of ventilators in New York.
They got the N ninety five respirators up and running.
They got the gloves and the gowns and the needed equipments, you know, in time.
Thankfully, you would think everybody would be glad.
Instead of politicizing it, Donald Trump should have seen what was coming.
You'd think they'd be happy.
Apparently they're not.
Why?
Because that would be Donald Trump acting out of an abundance of caution before they did.
And of course, you know, that that doesn't play well for uh, you know, anybody that that has a desire to see him lose in 204 days.
That's a sad political reality.
Why they wouldn't, you know, why this isn't an all hands on deck.
We all get along, let's get through the pandemic.
Then we'll have plenty of time for the election.
It's unfortunately not it's not possible.
As I watch and I listen and I read, and I'm the more I know and that I see it is repulsive.
It is sickening what people are doing.
The same predictable people that never took ownership of their lies for three plus years on Trump Russia collusion that never materialized.
The same people that said there was a quid and a pro and a quo, even though the one fact witness denied there was ever such.
And just because hearsay and opinion witnesses, you know, made guesses, that's that's not even admissible under the federal rules of evidence.
They didn't talk about that.
Uh they ignored quid pro quote Joe, you're not getting the billion unless you fire the prosecutor investigating my zero experienced son being paid millions.
They covered for that, just like they're covering for Cuomo on the fact that he had a clear recommendation to buy the ventilators.
You don't read it up, read about are you gonna run for president?
Are you going to replace Joe Biden?
That's the basically the hard questions.
And now Cuomo's in a pissing match with Comrade de Blasio who said New York City public schools are closed for the rest of the year.
Cuomo says uh not so fast, that's my decision.
We want to reopen as soon as possible.
That's a, you know, but there is, you know, news in New York.
I can tell you right now, we'll show you these charts on television tonight.
The change in patients being hospitalized is on a real downward slope from a high of 1,427 on the second of April.
Here we are the 13th of April, as low as 53 uh two days ago, 118 yesterday, 85 the day before that, but it's been on a constant decline.
We now have uh we we were putting people that we had a high of 395 uh ICU admissions uh on any given day.
That was the third of April.
That's now down to uh where we took 42 people out of ICU.
So we're not having ICU admissions.
Now people, fewer and people, fewer people.
Now people are leaving the ICU.
The death rate, which is Cuomo rightly, I think said was always the lagging indicator, is now showing the downward trajectory as well.
And that's taken a while, and and we want, you know, as few people to be sick to contract the disease and and as many people healthy as possible, as I said very early on.
I wish we had a cure for cancer and heart disease and everything else in between.
But then you get the people immediately, the governor of New Jersey calling for a post-mortem coronavirus investigation.
Okay, why didn't he prepare better?
Because everything he wanted and Gavin Newsom wanted, and Governor Insley wanted, and Governor Cuomo wanted was provided by Donald Trump who went all in.
Well, you close the country down.
Now the next thing, watch what they do.
They're gonna they're already blaming him in the New York Times in spite of them being wrong the entire way.
They were wrong the entire time.
I mean, for the New York Times, I mean, it really takes a lot of uh Hutzpa on their part to do it.
But, you know, we've chronicled how wrong the New York Times has been.
January 26th, they politicized it.
Oh, the Trump virus, if you're feeling awful, you know who to blame.
Wow, coronavirus outbreak risks reviving stigma for China.
Well, that was the New York Times, too.
Uh after the travel ban in February, early February.
Oh, yeah, who says it's not safe to travel to China?
That's what they were saying.
It's kind of sick, it's sad, it's predictable, though.
And you have the same people that got it wrong on Russia, the same people that pushed impeachment in Ukraine, but ignored quid pro quo Joe.
Those same people are all the same cast and characters now, you know, just with a with a certain sense of purpose and urgency, just trying to destroy Donald Trump when everything they wanted was provided.
All of the gowns, gloves, have ventilators, respirators, he provided an unprecedented shift.
Now we got challenges moving forward, opening up the country, but Democrats who were impeaching the president when he was putting the travel ban in place now shift.
I am diving deeply into the what warnings Trump ignored on coronavirus.
Well, I guess witness A is going to be Anthony Fauci, who said we're at low risk on February 29th.
That's a month after the president put the travel ban in place.
You know, CNN uh their morning show ripping the president for criticizing Fauci.
That's not what he was doing.
It wasn't criticizing Fauci, and he's not going to get rid of Fauci.
He's only pointing out that, okay, this was the leading medical task force member who has served six presidents who saved lives.
The guy should be credited for being a foremost renowned expert.
He's done, I disagree that he wants clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine based on the doctor that we found in Cedar Sinai in California and others, and that says it's what's that?
No, not that guy.
Um, the one at Cedar Sinai, that yeah, Dr. Wallace.
This guy's 42 years of prescribing hydroxychloroquine.
No risk.
He said nil.
Those are his words.
Um, but that's where the media is, you know, over there at fake news CNN.
People are dying because Trump is acting like a fool.
Well, if we if he didn't put the travel ban in effect, how many more Americans would have died?
The one they didn't want that said was stigmatizing people in China.
You know, it's the New York Times doesn't care.
They're not a newspaper.
They're not news.
They're agenda-driven and extension of the radical extreme Democratic Socialist Party.
It's sad.
You know, they don't, they're not even in the in the White House briefing room.
Now they're complaining that they have to be coronavirus tested before they get in.
Barbara Streisand, another predictable cast in this uh the you know, this hate Trump rage And psychosis.
20,000 dead because of Donald Trump.
Oh, you think Donald Trump is responsible for manufacturing with Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine inside a laboratory somewhere.
Acosta whining that they they have to be tested for COVID 19.
I think it's in everybody's best interest.
You know, just you got uh what's his name over at the Baltimore paper that hates Baltimore's son, David, whatever his name is, unleashing on Trump's coronavirus response.
People are dying because of his foolishness.
Uh travel ban, and everybody got the ventilators they needed and all the other equipment.
What else did you want?
Now he does face challenges as it relates to opening the country.
I've laid out what I think is going to be the answer.
I think, look, the country never fully closed.
That's what closed, which is why you're you're able to buy groceries.
Because of farmers and truck drivers and the entire, you know, food chain is in existence up and running.
The reason that you're able to get uh medicines at your pharmacy is because that part of the economy is running.
The reason that we have all this equipment being made is because that part of the economy is running.
Now, it'll be less challenging in less densely populated areas around the country, which is a big part of the country.
But when you get to a metro area, I very simply, to me, if you want to open New York City, you gotta accept that there's going to be new normals.
Companies will probably have to accept that non-essential workers get to work from home for a period of time.
You have to accept that social distancing, even in the office will have to be practiced.
Masks worn and gloves worn, and a lot of Pure L. Then I think testing is going to be the next big part of that.
Abbott's five-minute test and six and a half hour test combined, if we can mass produce them with the Defense Production Act.
I think that gets us closer to opening up the economy fully, and that has got to be where the focus is.
Everybody already they want to spend more money.
In part, I'm I'm listening to the likes of Cuomo and Nancy Pelosi and others.
It sounds like they want to take the deficit that they have in New York and fill it with taxpayer dollars, which I don't think is a good idea.
You know, we're not even looking at some very disturbing questions as you have some very extreme measures and civil liberties.
Now, if we're gonna have testing, you gotta have medical privacy issue maintained.
You got to respect civil liberties and constitutional rights.
There can't be any government database.
If a place of employment finds out somebody's COVID-19 positive, unfortunately, you're not gonna be able to follow them unless you want to do what some countries have done, and that is your tracking or adapting cell phone tracking data.
I don't think we want that here.
I don't think we we want, for example, the Slovakian parliament passing a law that allows the government to access location data and cell phones.
I don't think that's gonna fly.
Italy adopted similar measures.
Hungary, the parliament there suspended new elections.
Um, you know, there's uh articles of all over the weekend in Michigan.
Governor Whitner is now facing a backlash for her stay-at-home order.
California town has uh coronavirus mask order.
A lot of complaints there.
You have people ticketed 500 bucks each after attending a Greenville drive up church service.
Um we're gonna shred the constitution, we can't let that happen.
Then you've got this whole voting component.
You have the Virginia governor now signing legislation that would drop any voting restrictions.
In other words, no longer would you need any voting ID.
Well, that's not good.
Apparently, Michelle Obama signed on to that.
You have a judge allowing drive-in Louisville church services because the mayor criminalized drive up prayers with your preacher at a distance.
You had people ticketed 500 bucks each attending that Greenville drive-in church service.
You have talks of people taking down license plate numbers if if people go to their church and ask for a prayer on Easter.
I mean, it's pretty nuts.
That's where we start getting into really dangerous territory.
It's got a medical privacy, civil rights, uh constitutional protection, civil liberties all have to be protected here.
You know, why did why why would a mayor criminalize Easter drive-in church services?
That doesn't seem like a risk to me.
You got a passenger dragged off a Philadelphia bus by ten cops for not wearing a mask.
How about a reminder?
Hey, you know, we're we're asking everybody to cooperate.
Can you help?
And if you don't have a mask, we'll give you one.
How about something like that?
All right, Clad you're with us hour two, toll-free, it's eight hundred nine four one.
Sean, you want to be a part of this extravaganza?
Uh the governor of New York announcing just yesterday, for example, that there were th fifty-three new COVID nineteen admissions to the hospital, which was the lowest number since they started doing the charts.
He also said officials were following the new number of new hospitalizations closely because the great fear was always overwhelming the raw capacity of the hospital system, about eighteen thousand seven hundred people hospitalized with coronavirus in New York.
These numbers never got above a third of what they had originally been predicting at different times.
If you look at the change in in people hospitalized, there's one barometer.
If you look at, for example, the change in ICU admissions, there were forty-two fewer patients in ICU units around the state.
And now that curve, what Cuomo was calling the lagging indicator, is now tipped topped off and now heading down in terms of coronavirus uh deaths in New York.
But the hospital situation is uh eighteen thousand eight hundred and twenty five total hospitalizations, net change from the previous day, but overall appears to have flattened and now on the decline, net decrease of forty-two ICU admissions, and now the lowest number in two weeks in terms of new COVID hospitalizations.
Uh here's medical facts without fear, our medical aid team Dr. Oz is back with us.
If we kept saying if the trends hold, this is what we expected a leveling and then a dramatic decline, and it seems like the leveling has certainly happened and the decline is beginning.
And remember, although the number of cases should decline as fast as it went up, the number of people in the ICU, including the number of people who die, is not going to come down quite as quickly because there's a lag time.
And the better we are at keeping people in the ICU alive, the less quickly it's going to decline because they're going to survive long enough to benefit from longer care.
So it's good news though, across the board what you're sharing.
I was just uh listening to uh an interview my the president of our hospital, New York Presbyterian gave, Steve Crowwin, he did a nice job of articulating some of the challenges, and they're taking the put the Columbia University football field and putting a field hospital there so they're prepared.
And I think a lot of hospitals around the country are thinking this, and I know you've been laser focused on how we reopen the nation.
We were gonna have to build the capacity so it doesn't happen as an emergency again, in case we have cases that increase, you know, six months from now, we'll be prepared and won't have to pull the plug on on our society.
Let's talk about the reopening.
All right, so today is the thirteenth, seventeen days away from the thirtieth, eighteen days away from May first.
Um I think um and correct me if I'm wrong, those uh well, first of all, the economy never fully shut down, and we know because the food supply chain is up and running because we go into our grocery stores in New York, and everyone I've been to is pretty full except for paper towels and toilet paper, which for the life of me, I don't know one understand why that's the first to go.
Um, but it's full.
Uh our pharmacies are full for the most part.
You get everything you want, every medicine that you would need.
Uh we know a lot of industries never shut down, and certainly the manufacturing of ventilators and respirators and gowns and gloves and masks and everything in between, that that now is continuing at a very high level.
So there are certainly are our sectors of the economy and regions in the country where we could probably open tomorrow, right?
Is that fault you know, is that wrong thinking on my part?
No, it's right thinking.
One caveat is in order to open up parts of the country, you should uh be thinking, okay, here's an opportunity for us to learn.
So just let us open up and see what happens, because we know how that worked out the first time around.
Can we open them up with appropriate testing, especially this Abbott five minute test that we've been talking about?
And if not that at least this, you know, the overnight test, but not a test that takes a week to get back.
And then can we build a mod, you know, a tool system so that a governor in a state which has not been hard hit, knows what he's dealing with, has a game plan of what to do when there's a little brush fire here and there, so you can actually take aggressive steps to stop shut it down before it becomes a force fire.
at the same time to the point I made earlier about New York Presbyterian, make sure hospitals are have the capacity to expand and accommodate patients in case we miss our target.
Otherwise we're going to not be training ourselves because whatever works in these first couple counties or states that open and you know go back to relative normalcy.
We want to copy that in the more challenging environment of a bigger city.
All right so let's now let's get a couple of facts on the table.
It's not if there's going to be a rebound there will be a rebound correct?
100% I just don't see I I've never talked to anybody who I respect in the space who doesn't feel there's going to be a rebound.
It hopefully won't be like this but there's no reason to think that it won't be significant.
There was this data that came out over the weekend from the CDC on infectiousness and you know the the common flu uh if you if you go through five cycles of me contaminating people I'll I'll get about nine people sick.
So that's a you know I take nine people down with me.
That's pretty meaningful.
With this virus if these new estimates are correct, we take over a thousand people down with each of us.
So it's really infectious and what we're doing now is brought the number way down so it's more like the flu, but we got to do that without you know putting the emergency break.
So recognizing how infectious it is and recognizing that we got a year to do it and then you know we'll have the vaccine but in that year we're going to have to assume it's coming back and we can't every time it happens resort to what we did this time.
So we're going to want to have a very robust mechanism of tra tracking people, helping them do the right thing and while of course you're getting smarter and smarter about social distancing and all those other things, you know build a society they can do that for a year.
All right so here's based on your statement and I agree with you and all the experts seem to have consensus on that there will be a rebound.
All right now let's get to a more densely populated area.
Let's let's go to the most densely populated area the smallest geographical area which is what eleven million people New York City to me we're we're gonna have to accept that there are new normals and the new normal would be in my opinion and you tell me if the Hannity plan works for you I would say that nonessential work workers need to stay home for the foreseeable future.
Make sure they're working there's ways you can you can calculate that so maybe we're at fifty percent capacity in the city if you if half is uh viewed as essential personnel.
So the new normal would be that the testing has to occur with every building inside of New York City which is a a massive undertaking you have the five minute test you have the overnight test you have a week test.
I I would like to think that maybe the six hour test might be the sweet spot people come in get tested comes back negative uh you you get to get in the building and they they put like a a green go uh sticker on your license or something but we've got to protect civil liberties you can't have a database you've got to protect medical privacy and I I I hear what you're saying about contact tracing but I I think that's gonna have to almost be on an honor system and people are going to have to do it on their own.
You can't force them to do it.
We don't want to adopt you know some of the more draconian measures of tracking people that show up COVID 19 positive we can't do that in this country.
No but can I say one thing I I the main reason not to do the more draconian forced approach is because you can hack the system.
I could just claim I'm positive and then all of a sudden tons of people get notified they have to go to go home for two weeks and people aren't going to like that.
And I I do it's for me it's not about about enforcing the law it's about helping people do the right thing.
How many people listening in right now right millions of people listening how many of you really know how to manage yourself if you're feeling a fever and a cough and you're at work I mean what what do you do?
What don't you do do when you if you're diagnosed, how do you get home without contaminating 30 people?
How do you tell your co-workers what they're supposed to do I mean my goodness I've given tons of discussions as a favor to friends who work in large corporations who are just trying to figure out these rules.
So why would we leave that to chance?
We should educate people and the best way to educate someone is while they're going through it.
So we should have a helpline that you honest to goodness as soon as you're diagnosed, don't don't do anything just sit right here.
We're gonna get you home safely tell me about your home situation.
Are you going to contaminate 12 of your closest family members when you get home?
What are you going to do to make sure that they don't contaminate themselves with what you did this morning when you got up to go to work how do you get your work people taken care of I mean this is stuff.
But you can do this and still maintain medical privacy and you can do this without a a federal database correct?
Of course all that's possible.
But but but can I the the the first step I and this is something it's delicate to talk about, but you're good at this stuff, so let me just raise it right here.
Yeah, get Hannity in more trouble.
The rest it's not bad half the world hates me already.
Go ahead.
Just drag me down.
It's only half.
The here's the the challenge.
Ninety percent of the hospitalized people have core morbidities, in particular high blood pressure, which has for a bunch of reasons extra risk factors to it.
Some of them are just biologic.
If you have high blood pressure, you tend to have some more of these receptors in your nose, that's where the virus gets into you.
Okay.
That's just let's just trust the CDC data that 90% of people get and who end up in the hospital have core morbid conditions.
How do we gonna get those folks not to swim in the same stream that everyone else is going into?
Because what you're describing is nice to have, but it's I I don't get as nervous about it for 28-year-old kids taking a break from college.
I get very nervous about it when they go home to grandma or if grandma's or granddad's doing what you're talking about.
So is there a strategy we have as a nation to protect uh the more the more the more mature members of our society so they don't get the infection?
That dramatically would reduce the disease burden on the hospitals.
The the moral dilemma shrinks dramatically because the penalty you pay isn't as great.
It's so darn infectious that it's it's gonna infect a lot of people.
They might as well be healthy people.
But let me let me let me hone in on this a little deeper.
If if the we'll call it for the sake of discussion, the Hannity Plan, which is okay, there's got to be there's a new normal.
The new normal is okay, half your workforce that is deemed uh non essential can work from home when possible.
Yeah.
So the other half of the workforce is coming in.
Now, because it will be less crowded, you're naturally having more social distancing.
You might want to include gloves and masks as part of a protocol for a period of time.
Now the question is, would a temperature check where they don't even, you know, they could just hold it up to your forehead, which I've had done.
Would that be enough?
Or do you really need the full-on test of anybody before they're allowed entrance into a building, say in New York City?
No, I don't think you should do the full test.
We don't have enough and it's inefficient, and plus you'd have to repeat it every day.
I think the temperature test, maybe a smell test.
I'm going to remind you that there's this great study from A from Europe, 12 major uh centers that concluded 85% of people lose their sense of smell and taste as they get the virus.
They just didn't check for it before.
So we these are automated systems.
So fast, high flow, you know, 15 seconds of temperature, maybe I don't know how long it takes, a minute for the for the for the uh smell uh test, and then if you're t if you pass, you go on in.
If you don't pass, come on over here.
We're gonna test you real quick, easy to do, and we'll get your results back in a few minutes.
But there are going to be people that contract the virus under even under these circumstances.
How how quickly would you advise based on what we know now that people can start going back to New York City jobs?
I I d I don't think it's wise to do New York City until we get a little bit of data from the other counties where there's the virus just has not hit us that hard.
I mean, we the things that I'm describing to you are theoretical because we haven't done them in this country.
They've done them in Germany and South Korea, and they've used technologies and techniques that to your point we wouldn't allow here.
Uh, because uh understandably our the American psyche is different and uh people aren't gonna want to be audited like that.
So let's let's develop an American model that works.
Give it you know two weeks of trying it out.
We're we're I'm my hospital is still packed.
I mean, admittedly the admissions are down, but we gotta get the rest of the patients out.
It's gonna take a couple weeks.
In the meantime, I don't even know if we have to wait until May 1st.
It'd be great to get a couple of these counties that are bristling anyway.
Take Texas, for example, where they you know they're gonna open anyway, and then start doing this experiment.
Let's find out what works.
That's that's put in uh in charge of of somebody who is used to doing these kinds of big mobilizations, enough people to actually learn what works.
And there's an ex you know, these experiments take place in all the states that don't have significant disease burden, so the ones that do can learn.
So we talked at length last week about politicizing medicine.
Now uh I read the New York Times this weekend, and it's like he could have seen what was coming behind Trump's failure on the virus.
And I'm like, wow.
Uh this is the guy that put the travel ban in effect ten days after the first known case in the U.S. Um I think he was taking it pretty seriously, followed by subsequent uh subsequently by a quarantines and then subsequent travel bans.
Um so obviously he was taking it seriously, and and he was called a lot of names for for doing that.
Then, you know, I um and again, I'm not being critical.
I think Dr. Fauci in many ways is a hero.
I mean, he's he's devoted his entire adult life, served six presidents, saved lives throughout his entire career, but even as late as February 29th was saying the country as a whole still remains at low risk.
Now that's information that the president's making decisions on.
But even still, the president, we didn't run out of ventilators in New York or respirators.
You know, we hung on.
It ended up being less than what was predicted.
And now they're even predicting that maybe instead of 2.2 million or 250,000 or 81,000, now as low as 60,000 deaths in the end.
I don't want to lose one life, Dr. Oz.
I want everyone to live.
But um it seems that the mitigation efforts worked, and that everything that could possibly be done was done based on what we knew when we knew it.
I am laser focused on one issue.
Why didn't we have testing?
Because without that, I don't think it's fair to anybody, governor, mayor, the task force, anybody to start trying to predict what could have happened because any of us in that room looking at a you know a few itty bitty data points would have had trouble making decisions.
And to me, look, again, I I don't mind looking in the rearview mirror, but right now we are in the middle of the year.
You want to focus on Yeah, we gotta win the war.
I agree.
I don't want to stare at my rear view mirror.
I mean, there'll be plenty of time to litigate this.
Right now, let's just find some answers that work, but we have opportunities.
At this point, I think there's a clear enough path to where we need to head that if that if if we don't execute on this, then shame on us.
We we have a pretty good idea what to do, and we know you know, keeping the country shut down is not the option that most folks in the bottom half the socioeconomic pyramid are going to thank us for in the future.
So, how do we do the things we must do to allow folks to earn a livelihood again?
All right, Dr. Ozar, medical aid team.
Thank you, sir.
We'll see you on Hannity tonight.
We'll update everybody.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, 800 941 Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
And you know, I um you have six people on this byline, you know, in the New York Times this weekend.
He could have seen what was coming.
He could have seen it.
The world didn't see it until December 30th.
What are they talking about?
Then we didn't have a case of coronavirus in this country till didn't have a name till January 7th.
Didn't have a case in the U.S. till January 21st, ten days later the travel ban and the quarantine and the subsequent travel bans, but he should have seen what was coming.
You know, the reason that I bring up Dr. Fauci and where he has been on this, and again, I'm saying this with nothing but respect for Dr. Fauci.
Dr. Fauci has saved lives.
Dr. Fauci's dedicated his life.
He's been a public servant medical expert professional.
And he has dealt with pandemics, and he's been he was in the forefront of finding treatments and and saving lives with HIV.
The guy's been amazing.
He has been a incredible um pioneer in a lot of this stuff.
But the the purpose for just understanding, you know, look, everyone's got the little timeline game going on here.
The real I don't I know the reason why I took it seriously, because I'm just I find these things I just know medicine and all my friends are doctors, and I hear too much of this talk, and I kept asking very early on why are all these asymptomatic people it they seem to be shedding the virus and and people are gonna contract this thing left and right,
and that's why I put up the timeline on on my uh my website, and I was even asking him, you know, about that very specific issue very early on.
And at the time I first interviewed him, which was January 27th, he says fortunately we're able to handle them appropriately with when identifying them, and more importantly, what's likely to happen with that first person.
This is six days after the first known case in the U.S. that was infected was not really recognized, and there was a period of time that there was a spread of the infection, and they saw a cluster of cases which had essentially assigned to a fish market, this wild animal market, I guess what we now call wet markets.
I never had heard that term before, but whatever.
And they felt that, And I guess in China they like these exotic animals, and apparently they eat them.
But uh we have a situation where widespread throughout China, still focused on the Wuhan province, the epicenter, but essentially all 30 provinces had cases all traveling from Wuhan province.
The same thing in the United States.
It's not surprising at all that we have five travel-related cases.
Fortunately, we were able to handle them appropriately by identifying them, isolating them, and doing contact tracing, and the report we heard is correct.
It's a low risk.
That was he told that to me on my TV show on January 27th.
Um the day the president put in the travel ban, January 31st, when Joe Biden said it was hysteria, xenophobia, uh hysterical xenophobia and fear mongering.
Fauci said that day that we still have a low risk to the American public, but we want to keep it a low risk.
That's what he was saying the day of the travel ban.
When I interviewed Fauci next on February 10th, you know, I started talking to him about these asymptomatic people.
And we've gone into detail about what that conversation was, right?
But he was still saying on February 29th that the country as a whole still remains at low risk.
And he said that on the, I believe it was the Today Show at the time.
And um, you know, so in other words, if if the foremost expert who has been responsible for saving so many lives didn't fully understand.
Now, part of this is China's fault because they lied.
They were never forthcoming.
And, you know, now they're trying to make this into a big thing.
That the president, because of this New York Times piece, tweets out, uh, well, Dr. Fauci also said this.
He actually had retweeted somebody else saying it.
Well, that's a legitimate point to be made, considering the media loves to use Dr. Fauci.
I mean, I mean, it's so deceptive.
He goes on fake news CNN, and well, if we would have put mitigation efforts in into place earlier, lives would have been saved, right?
Yes, of course, if you started it earlier, but they don't give the context that he didn't he did not call for that at that time.
And so it's a and and not that he was necessarily wrong.
He was using information and data that was available at the time for him.
But, you know, so I I've noticed what's happened now.
You you see an acceleration here in the media and the mob, and that is he could have seen what was coming.
Coming from the same people that a week after Donald Trump is put to the travel ban in effect.
Well, they were actually saying, Oh, it's what do you mean?
It's fine to travel to China.
You know, you're I'm like, really, we're gonna get lectures from them.
It's kind of ridiculous.
But it's predictable.
Why is it predictable?
Because this is a political season, and there was nothing that Donald Trump was ever going to do that was going to be acceptable to a media that had an agenda.
And then you see it in the rest of the media mob, and you see it with the Democratic Party.
I mean, here you have shift.
We're still in the middle of a national emergency.
We're trying to get the people that need help, all the help that they have, and he's already diving deeply into what warnings Trump ignored on a coronavirus.
He wasn't paying attention to coronavirus.
Trump was on January 31st.
He was advancing his shift show from the House impeachment to make the case in the United States Senate, and that wasn't resolved until February 5th.
So all the Democrats were missing in action.
Now I'll tell you, in retrospect, that one decision by the president was crucial to preventing much uh a much worse pandemic in this country.
As bad as it has been.
You know, for all the talk about ventilators, respirators, gowns, and masks and shields and hydroxychloroquine and treatments, everything that New York needed, it was provided to them.
The hospitals that the president has built all over the state of New York were never utilized to like not even 20% of what their capability was.
Um, which is a good thing.
That means it was less severe than what just a few weeks ago we were being told was going to be happening in the city of New York.
You know, now he's getting lectures from everybody over at MSDNC and the New York Times, of course, it's like they they speak in one voice.
The New York Times says it, they're gonna go after it.
You know, though if somebody points out the truth that Dr. Fauci is great as he is, you know, it didn't occur to him on day one this would be what it became through no fault of his.
Well, the right-wing media is trying to make him the fall guy.
It's not make him the full guy.
It's you know, he was the lead guy advising the president.
But you can't say that, I guess.
Some I why why up why why bring that up?
You know, the media protected Joe Biden, they protected Hillary Clinton.
You know, they think about all that they do here.
You have now irrefutable evidence that it was all likely Russia misinformation and propaganda in terms of the dirty Russian dossier she paid for.
That dirty dossier full of Russian lies, unverifiable, multiple warnings used to get the FISA application on Carter Page, and then subsequently spy on a presidential candidate, his transition team and deep into his presidency.
Well, they protected Hillary the whole time.
But clearly, new evidence is suggesting that, yeah, if it was Russian disinformation, that would mean that the Russians were feeding Christopher Steele lies, knowing that that information was going to Hillary, likely to help Hillary, which is the opposite of what the New York Times and CNN and MSDNC were saying to the American people.
They got that wrong.
Four investigations, Trump Russia collusion later, there's nothing.
Then they have the Ukraine matter, a phone call.
They had one fact witness in the shift show.
One.
The rest of them were opinion witnesses, hearsay witnesses, like the hearsay non-whistleblower whistleblower.
And the one fact witness said, nah, he said I don't want to quid pro quo.
Okay, then why were we there?
But to get there, they had to take on breathtaking hypocrisy.
And the hypocrisy was clear.
You know, ignore Joe Biden saying, uh, I'm not giving you a billion dollars of taxpayer money until you fire the prosecutor that is investigating my zero experienced son Hunter, who's being paid millions.
So he can continue to be paid millions.
You got six hours, son of a bee, they paid it.
They protected Joe.
And now I think you can say the same thing here.
You know, Donald Trump actually is able to build out hospitals in New York, man the Navy ship comfort, man the biggest hospital in the country, the Javitt Center, you know, then send all the ventilators because Cuomo didn't listen to his own health task force that said this is a foreseeable, predictable threat.
You're gonna be 15,783 ventilators short on peak week.
That was last week, and ending kind of now.
And, you know, thankfully we didn't need the 15,783.
Could have gone that way.
It absolutely could have.
And but he's screaming at Donald Trump, I need 30,000, 40,000 respiratory uh ventilators.
Why didn't you buy the ones when they said the federal government will not be able to provide them for you?
Um, you know, the New York Times has an agenda.
They've always had an agenda.
They write something and it gets picked up by all the predictable people that hate Trump that protected Joe that protected Hillary, ignored the biggest abuse of power corruption scandal in history, all because they are agenda driven.
You know, really Barbara Streisand, 20,000 people are dead because of Donald Trump.
That's how much they hate him.
Now, part of the thing is that Donald Trump's mitigation efforts, his early recognition that this could be really bad, his taking on tremendous political incoming with the travel ban, then having to transform how this country deals with pandemics and bring it up to the modern era.
I mean, he ended up changing everything to the point where, you know, we have with Donald Trump, you have the hospitals built, you had the hospital's man, you have the ventilators sent.
He has 49 other states he's got to take care of also.
They never even sent out all the ventilators because they didn't need them all.
They're waiting day by day.
How much how many more do you need?
We will get you what you need.
But we got to have enough for Connecticut and enough for New Jersey.
But they want to, you know, just bludgeon this guy.
You would think when you thought that, well, if Donald Trump didn't do this, maybe, you know, another hundred thousand dead Americans, and if he didn't do the mitigation, and if he Had failed on respirators and failed on ventilators, you know what it would have been like.
But then you everyone, the same predictable people that protected Hillary and protected quid pro quo Joe, that screamed Trump Russia collusion, Ukraine quid pro quo.
And now, you know, this is where the politicizing the virus is real, but politicizing it and bludgeting, you know, New York should be thanking Donald Trump for all these these things that he provided for this state.
Probably with no chance to win any election in 204 days, but he did it because it was the right thing to do, and that's his job to help where they fail.
And they failed.
Now Cuomo's saying we're on a path to normalcy.
Well, how do you open up New York?
That becomes a problem in and of itself.
I think that it's it's that we're gonna have to accept a new normal, but understand what I mean here, and that is you're going to have to somehow non-essential employees are gonna have to continue working from home as many as possible.
Uh if you cut the workforce in half, that means social distancing is definitely more possible and likely and needed.
Masks and Pure L and respirators and testing and temperature taking, that's all part of the new normal.
You know, you gotta still protect patient privacy, civil liberties, constitutional rights, that's gonna be a part of it.
Getting a little bit worried about where we are in terms of that.
I mean, you know, you see some of the most extreme um measures during this this lockdown.
I mean, I'm looking at we we don't want what they're doing in Slovakia, where the parliament there passed a law allowing the government to access location data and cell phones and track the movements of citizens.
We don't want that.
We don't want a government database for health issues.
We we believe in health privacy, we deserve health privacy.
I think companies ought to be the ones that not only do the testing, but they do it anonymously, and they make sure information about contact tracing and how to keep stay safe now that you know that you're positive, that has to be adopted.
Italy and and Israel even have adopted similar measures.
Israel has um adapted a cell phone tracking data program meant to combat uh terrorism into tracking the whereabouts of COVID-19.
And then you have other people now saying, Well, we we need to in this in the Commonwealth of Virginia, no longer will voters be required to show any photo ID.
None whatsoever.
And they're gonna make election day a state holiday.
Michelle Obama's joining that effort.
Why, if you don't have to check anybody's ID, what does that lend itself to?
That would lend itself to corruption, possible corruption.
You have a judge had to overrule a mayor in Louisville, uh, who said that you know, he was criminalizing the communal celebration, drive-in Sunday church services for Easter.
That wasn't necessary.
It's drive-in, social distancing.
It's Easter.
That would have been okay.
They're ticketing people at a drive-in church service in Greenville.
I'm like, what?
$500 fines.
And they're talking about taking down the license plates of individuals that drive to church.
I think Governor Huckabee was right when he said that, you know, quarantine enforcement and this type of treatment of religious uh services that are obeying the rules.
And then in Philly, you have a situation where they they literally uh go after a guy, uh a person, a passenger, drag the person off the bus, person's crime, not wearing a face mask.
Maybe the guy didn't have one.
Maybe they should have said here, if you don't have one, we'll give you one.
Or if they don't have one, well, you're not gonna be allowed on this.
You already have to drag them out.
I'm sure there's other ways to do it.
Anyway, opening up is gonna be a very critical next step, and doing it safely, and doing it knowing there'll be a rebound.
You need some new normals here because we can't shut the country down again like this.
You can open up parts of the country now, but we got to do it safely.
President is very frustrated.
I think you you obviously know that uh about Andrew McCabe's he believes that people like McCabe and others just were able to basically flout laws and so far with impunity.
I think the president has every right to be frustrated because I think what happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history without any basis.
Uh They uh started this investigation of his campaign.
Uh, and even uh more concerning, actually, is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president.
Uh so I uh to sabotage the presidency.
And uh I I think that uh, or at least had the effect of sabotaging the presidency.
Sabotaging the presidency.
That was the interview that the Attorney General Barr gave with Laura Ingram last week, news roundup information overload hour.
He also said in that interview very clearly that Durham was not about a report, that Durham was deep into looking at specific potential crimes that were committed.
We know now beyond any doubt, with the IG report and all that we have gathered, all the information we have that yes, premeditated fraud on a FISA court for the purpose of spying on then candidate Trump transition team Trump and deep into the Trump presidency happened.
They used as the basis for the warrant, even though they were warned numerous times ahead of signing the warrants, they were warned numerous times that in fact Hillary paid for it.
It's unverified and really unverifiable, and Christopher Steele has an agenda.
Now we know more.
As of Friday, Charles Grassley, Senator Iowa, Ron Johnson, Senator Wisconsin, that they have now pointed out newly declassified evidence shows there was a a quote, a direct Russian disinformation campaign in 2016, and there were ties between Russian intelligence and a presidential campaign.
The Clinton campaign, not Trump's campaign.
FBI crossfire hurricane team investigating the Trump 2016 campaign received multiple indications that former British spy Christopher Steele, one of their key informants in their investigation was part of an elaborate Russian disinformation campaign, according to newly declassified footnotes from I.G. Michael Horowitz's report on FBI misconduct.
It goes on from there.
It is ironic that Russia collusion, Russian collusion narrative was fatally flawed because of Russian disinformation.
Charles Grassley and Ron Johnson, who had pushed for the declassification, said in a statement of Fox News on Friday, these footnotes confirm there was a direct Russian disinformation campaign in 2016.
And it goes on, and it was the Clinton campaign.
One of the footnotes stated, according to a document circulated among crossfire hurricane team members and supervisors in early October 2016.
Person one had a historical contact with persons and entities suspected of being linked to Russian intelligence.
The document described a report redacted the person one was rumored to be a former KGB SVR officer.
In addition, in late December 2016, Department Attorney Bruce Orr told SSA, FBI agent, that he had met with Glenn Simpson and Simpson had assessed the person was a RIS officer who was central in connecting Trump to Russia.
Friday's declassification suggests Steele's sources were part of a Russian interference effort, was immediately highlighted by Trump allies, et cetera, et cetera.
Now, just the news.com, John Sullivan has put together a column, 13 revelations showing the FBI never really had a Russia collusion case to begin with.
Greg Jarrett, Greg Jarrett.com.
Clinton funded the Russian disinformation, drove the witch hunt against Trump.
Now it's beginning to unfold.
And anticipation over attorney John Durham's investigation is building, and the FBI ignored the early warnings that debunked the anti-Trump dossier was Russian disinformation.
Pretty sick.
Anyway, Greg Jarrett is with us, uh author of the New York Times bestseller witch hunt, John Solomon, Fox News contributor, investigative reporter, and now the editor-in-chief of just the news.com.
Welcome both of you.
John, let's talk about what we're learning.
And on top of that, we know that there was exculpatory information as it relates to Papadopoulos and Papadopoulos was saying, uh, no, nobody's colluding with Russia.
What the hell are you talking about when being set up by Professor Misfrit?
Well, just think about what we know now.
Before they launched the FISA, before they launched the FISA.
We now know the FBI had in its own Delta file, its own intelligence control file for Christopher Steele, warnings that he was susceptible to being fed disinformation from Russian intelligence.
That warning came in because of 2015 contacts he had had with Russian oligarchs.
We now know that before the FISA was uh submitted, both George Papadopoulos and Carter Page made multiple exculpatory statements that undercut the very allegation that the FBI was about to present the FISA court.
And in none of those cases did the FBI stop, even though their training says stop.
When you have information that runs contrary, don't proceed until you figure out what's going on.
They blew through those warning signs and they filed a false FISA and they allowed an investigation to go on for two and a half years, and my column today goes through thirteen different things the FBI knew were wrong about their case and still proceeded.
Unbelievable.
Greg Jarrett, you know, we were right all along.
The mob in the media that now the ones that are, you know, trying to excoriate Donald Trump, who pretty much did everything they said he shouldn't do, and literally it's incalculable how many less people contracted coronavirus in the U.S. because of his travel ban, his quarantine, his subsequent travel bans, and all his mitigation efforts and all of his efforts to build hospitals all around the country and take care of states that were ill-prepared, especially New York.
Well, don't expect the mainstream media ever to issue an apology or a meia culpa for misleading the American people in this damning Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
Uh as I write in a column today, that's not how they operate.
The media uh their currency is lies, not credibility.
But it's amazing.
You have long called for, and so have I and John, the declassification of valuable information, hats off to Richard Grinnell, the acting director of national intelligence.
He unmasked this classified information.
What did we find out?
That the whole Trump-Russia collusion set of accusations were nothing more than the product of Russian disinformation, fabrications and lies.
And James Comey and the FBI knew it.
That's what this declassified information shows.
And instead of telling the truth to the American people, to Congress, to judges on the FISA court, to the president, instead they buried that information.
They concealed it, and they accelerated.
Comey accelerated his investigation of Donald Trump to batter him politically in hopes of evicting him from office.
And so the Attorney General was absolutely right when he said this is one of the greatest travesties in American history, as I call it in my book, Witch Hunt, the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
The question is now, and the attorney general said uh no, he's not focused so much on a report, Durham.
He's more focused, John, on uh whether crimes were committed.
Now, to me, if it's an unverifiable dossier, and you were warned repeatedly, uh, and the top of a Pfizer warrant says verified, and you abuse your power and do it anyway, knowing that you shouldn't do this, uh why wouldn't every person that signed those warrants, including Comey and McCabe and and a bunch of other people whose names we know, Rod Rosenstein, uh Sally Yates and others, why wouldn't they be held accountable for the signatures on documents that were false that they were warned were false?
That's every uh that's the question every smart person in Middle America asked, and the question that Greg has asked in his book for two years, right?
Here's here's I want to point to two things that the attorney general said in the interview, because they're very important to look at his words.
The first was there was no basis for investigating Trump.
That is a profound statement.
There wasn't even a basis to open the investigation, never mind everything else that came after.
But he also said if we're gonna bring crimes, if we're gonna bring charges, we have to be able to prove it.
And I think that's the process they're going through today.
Let me give you one example from the declassified notes that show you the sort of trouble that DOJ is gonna have.
We know the the file existed and that all this dirt on steel and his possible Russian disinformation was available to the FBI.
But the two people who were most responsible for looking at it said, we don't think We looked at it.
Those are the sort of things that complicate a jury and a grand jury in an effort to get people indictment.
And so Durham has to weed through that stuff and figure out is that person lying?
Did they really overlook it?
Was this incompetence?
Was it intentional, willful blindness?
And it's going to take some time.
But I think the important words to focus on are we're going to bring charges if we can prove them.
Well, um, to me, it's irrefutable.
You're the lawyer here, Greg.
To me, it's uh, you know, open and shut case.
It's a slam dunk.
They were warned.
They they were told not to trust Steele.
They were told specifically Hillary paid for it.
They we now know Steele never stood by his own dossier.
Now we're getting more details that the information likely came to Russia and that the people involved in this at the highest levels, they knew.
And they kept it going anyway.
I mean, it's the it's the it's a bigger boomerang than I ever thought.
Yeah, you know, the I I wrote in my book that um either the dossier was invented completely or it was fed uh by Russians to a gullible uh ex-British spy being paid by Hillary Clinton, and they must have laughed at their handiwork.
Uh and and but when Comey discovered this early on in the investigation, he and his confederates, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and others at the FBI.
They lied.
They lied to the uh FISA court, and they perpetrated a fraud on the court, that's perjury, and it also appears that the information they were giving to Congress was also equally untrue.
Uh, you know, a series of lies.
But we've known a lot of this for a long time.
Now we just even know more than we do.
Right.
And now the question is how is it that the charges haven't been filed?
Well, it's something that Barr said is very important.
He said this was more that this was not sloppiness and and mistakes.
This was something more than that, which means criminal activity.
Are you both more inclined, John?
You've been dubious of the idea that people will be held legally accountable.
Does this give a signal that they're serious about enforcing the law?
Well, I've always said I thought laws were violated, and I thought there would be a small number of indictments.
And whether those numbers become larger depends on who flips on who, right?
It's just like the mob or any other criminal case.
You got to flip witnesses on other people to roll up on the top chain.
I think the thing to keep it.
Why do we have to flip?
James Comey put a signature on three of them.
We know McKay put a signature on one.
We know that Rosenstein put a signature on one.
We know Sally Yates did.
And they knew it was a little bit of a.
They all signed a false document.
Uh whether they can prove that they intend it to sign that false document intent, uh, and you whether you can prove it.
What do you mean whether you prove it?
It says verify it at the top.
I think criminality occurred.
Yeah, what if James Comey says, you know what?
I just trusted the people who prepared the FISA warrant when I signed my name to it.
Well, yeah, I just trusted my tax attorney when I saw filed a false tax return.
I'm sure Hannity gets a pass, right?
Yeah, and that not exactly when it comes to taxes, but criminal law.
Which I never do because I'm not stupid, but go ahead.
Criminal law in terms of lying to a court is is different.
You have to show knowledge and intent.
And so Comey will do what he always does does.
He feigns amnesia and says, gee, gosh, you know, I don't really remember.
I don't think I read this.
I just signed my name to it.
Same thing with Rosenstein.
He's already suggested that in his congressional testimony.
So these guys are going to pretend that they were trusting others and didn't really read the documents they signed.
I guarantee you that's their defense.
Sean, I think it could be one very important thing that may go towards the question of intent.
I have reason to believe that one of the things Durham is looking at is whether the uh FBI used the media to leak false information to make the investigation look stronger than it is.
If you can prove top people approved bad leaks, false leaks, it may go towards the uh question of intent.
If they knew they were leaking false information, they were trying to sustain an investigation that was not sustainable.
That is gonna be an area to watch very closely in the next few weeks.
I agree with that.
All right, thank you both.
Greg Jarrett, John Solomon, we're staying on it.
We promised you we would.
It's just been a while since we've updated you, but it is getting very interesting.
And everything we told you was right.
They were wrong in the mob again.
Just like Donald Trump does everything You know, he could possibly do, and they're still saying, well, what he could have done earlier.
Meanwhile, they're the ones that were saying, oh, travel to China.
How ironic.
All right, so reopening safely is a big challenge.
Protecting civil liberties, a big challenge.
Patient privacy, constitutional rights, big challenge.
As of this week, the Department of Treasury has announced that this week over 80 million Americans will receive economic impact payments in their bank accounts this week.
Now, a lot of people have been concerned.
Look, it's he can't turn on a switch and just say, here, 80 million people.
Somewhat complicated, but that'll happen.
My understanding, too, is that for people that are getting tax refunds from the IRS, they're going out fast as well.
I think the SBA program had some glitches getting up and running in the early days.
Apparently, that has been resolved.
I know two friends of mine, small businesses that they have uh navigated successfully through the site after some early frustration, but you know, what do you, you know, it doesn't surprise me.
Um, you're talking about an awful lot of people here.
What I'm having a hard time understanding is we don't even know yet what the impact of this is going to be.
We don't know.
We we have a meeting the 2.2 trillion, the 4 trillion that has been announced and available by the Fed in loans, and then you've got, well, we're gonna add another 350 million or 250 million to the PPP.
Democrats are saying, no, that's not enough.
They want, you know, more money to you know, what they're really trying to do here is get the money to bail out these states that overspent.
New York was already in a huge hole financially.
So they're gonna say, well, we're gonna get all this that's not what this money is supposed to be appropriated for.
It's supposed to be for workers in need, small business, large corporations, and hospitals.
That's it.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour, 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravagance.
All right, let's get to our phones here.
I know a lot of you have been very, very patient.
Uh, we do have a couple of updates on hydroxychloroquine.
Um, we have the leading French health experts now have endorsed what Dr. Oz has now been telling us for over a week.
Well, actually, going back further, because there was a smaller study, microbiologist, this guy named Ryolt, well published guy, breaking through research, hydroxychloroquine.
Um, but anyway, Science Magazine points out that he has found some high-level support in the medical world, an online petition in support of hydroxychloroquine started by a cardiologist, uh former Minister of Health and France's candidate to lead the World Health Organization.
Apparently, Macron met with this researcher for about three hours.
South Dakota has now announced the first statewide trial of hydroxychloroquine.
This is uh Governor South Dakota Governor Christy Gnome announcing that.
Uh, a Republican, and by the way, she's talking about opening up her state sooner than later.
President uh, in a series of tweets today, dealt with the issue of opening up the country for the purpose of creating conflict, confusion.
Some of the fake news media is saying that it is the governor's decision to open up the states, not that of the president of the United States and the federal government.
Let it be fully understood.
That is incorrect.
It is the decision of the president and for many good reasons.
But with that being said, the administration and I are working closely with governors.
This will continue.
Um, so anyway, that's the latest on that on that.
Look, to me, that this debate on hydroxychloroquine ended with this board certified rheumatologist, Cedar Sinai.
His name is Daniel Wallace.
And in 85, he inherited the largest lupus practice in the U.S. He has over 2,000 patients that he currently cares for.
Majority of those patients are taking hydroxychloroquine.
He's authored over 400 peer review papers and written the principal lupus textbook, past chairman of the Lupus Foundation of America, the rheumatology research foundation, the American College of Rheumatology, currently on the board of directors of the Lupus Research Alliance and Lupus Therapeutics.
And he has also authored many numerous articles on anti-malarials.
I mean, you're not going to get a more renowned expert.
His words, not mine.
Hydroxychloroquine, uh plaquinel, Same thing is a very safe drug.
It has been given to tens of millions of individuals in the world since its approval 65 years ago in 1955 and has not been associated with any deaths in the recommended dose of 42 years of practice.
No patient of mine has ever been hospitalized for a hydroxychloroquine complication.
The risk of taking 400 milligrams of hydroxychloroquine a day following a single 600 milligram hydroxychloroquine loading dose for 30 to 60 days, which by the way, nobody is using that therapy, that longer therapy.
Uh, he said the risk is nil unless one has an allergic rash or upset stomach from it, about five percent.
And uh, you know, I'm just looking at this guy.
Now, should you take it?
That's not for me to decide.
That's for you and your doctor to decide.
What would I do?
Well, I've already answered that question.
I'm on the side, you know.
I I find this fascinating too.
It the fact that the president mentioned that, and he was not being critical of Dr. Fauci.
You know, they had to release a statement.
The media chatter is ridiculous.
The president's not firing Dr. Anthony Fauci.
And it's not even really criticism.
The president is merely pointing out a fact that he acted earlier in spite of the New York Times writing over the weekend, he could have seen what was coming behind uh Trump's failure on the virus.
Now, again, like everything else, it's full of the predictable, you know, non-sources, uh, unnamed sources, over 20 of them, and it's you know, but it doesn't negate the fact it was sort of like this whole thing, well, the president called it a hoax.
Guys like Hannity called it a hoax.
No, he didn't.
I said that they're bludgeting the president and politicizing a virus.
Why?
So they can hurt the president politically.
You see this now, it is ratcheting up to a point of hysteria again, just like Russia hysteria, Ukraine hysteria, impeachment hysteria.
It's the same people.
It's it's sad.
I mean, in the middle of a pandemic, why would the mob be arguing whether to carry a president's daily coronavirus task force briefing full of information for the American people?
You know, I guess maybe they don't like the fact that he's going to point out that he sent a Navy ship to California hospital ship, and he sent another one to New York Harbor, and that he built the largest hospital at the Javit Center, and not only built it, but he manned it like he's manning the comfort.
Uh, he's not going to mention that, you know, in spite of Governor Cuomo taking credit and doing photo ops and everything, though New Yorkers can thank Trump for all of that, including the hydroxychloroquine that he still won't allow to be dispensed from pharmacies.
And if you want it, if your doctor thinks you should take it, you have to go to a hospital to get it.
If you test COVID-19 positive, that's stupid.
You know, and then to listen to the lectures of the New York Times, it is it is breathtaking hypocrisy, but it's predictable, unfortunately.
It's who they are.
I mean, this is a paper paper that was out there, and you know, they they didn't support the travel ban.
They thought it would stigmatize people.
I mean, they went full-on Joe Biden uh on this whole thing.
They're now attacking the president.
But they said, oh, coronavirus outbreak risks reviving stigma for China.
Uh, the travel ban was how many Americans did not contract coronavirus because of the travel ban.
That was only 10 days after the first known case in the U.S. You know, the Times comparing the virus to the flu, which apparently was uh it's an illegal act.
If you're giving perspective, I don't want anybody to die.
But we do lose tens of thousands of people to the flu every year.
And cancer and heart attacks and other things.
Now, and then bringing up the issue of Dr. Fauci.
I'm not critical of Dr. Fauci.
I think Dr. Fauci was lied to like everybody else by China.
I also think that he didn't see like nobody else saw this coming.
Andrew Cuomo, our hospital system, I don't mean to be an arrogant New Yorker, March 2nd.
We're not gonna have these problems that they're having in other places around the world.
We have the best, the best, the best.
Well, he didn't really have the best and Donald Trump had to quickly build the hospitals, man the hospitals, get the ventilators, get the respirators, get the gowns, get the masks, get the gloves, and everything in between.
But he doesn't get Craig.
It's a barely an acknowledgement by Cuomo, who should have listened to his own health care task force in November 2015.
He didn't.
But he was telling everybody it wasn't going to be bad either.
And the fact that Anthony Fauci, you know, was saying on March 9th, if you're young and healthy, you can go on a cruise ship.
The fact that the New York Times in late February was out there saying it's the Trump virus.
If you're feeling awful, you know who to blame.
That's politicizing it.
Just like the same thing when they told people it's safe to travel, believe it or not, that's what they were saying after the travel ban.
Oh no, it's okay for you to travel to China, no problem at all.
You know, a week after the president put the travel ban into effect.
Well, they were wrong there too.
And Joe Biden was wrong also.
Now he comes up with his plan.
Now we got quid pro quo choose plan.
Two months, three days too late, as it relates to the travel ban.
By the way, Democratic Socialist Party says they will not endorse Biden.
Uh Bernie Sanders has endorsed Biden.
There is a woman accusing Joe Biden of pushing up against her, pushing her up against the wall, grabbing her genitals, and worse.
Her name is Tara Reed.
She worked on the staff, but you know, she filed a police report against Joe Biden.
But the New York Times is running defense for her in this particular case, and I haven't heard from a single I believer in the Kavanaugh case.
Now, unlike them, I'm not going to be a hypocrite.
I don't know if this is true or not.
That's not the other the only person that has made Allegations against Biden.
Just saying.
But if it was Trump or Kavanaugh or anybody else, you know, facts don't matter.
Innocence before guilt, not presumed.
It's jump on board, I believe.
But they don't do it if it's a Democrat.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
Uh, let us say hi to Alex in Maryland, a retired surgeon.
How are you, uh, Alex?
Glad you called.
Hey, thank you very much for your call.
Oh, something very quick.
While I was on hold, they talked about arrhythmias with uh hydroxychloroquine, but one has to understand that both hydroxy.
That's true, by the way.
That is a that is one we've talked about it, one of the side effects.
If you get arrhythmia, you've got to be careful.
You gotta be in contact with your doctor.
But see, erythromycin or azithromitzman given intravenously, even have to have him on a cardiac monitor.
That's a well-known complication.
So I'm sharing your own.
Oh, you think it comes from the Z Pack, not the hydroxy?
Very possible.
Because see, you have to give that IV if a person's on a ventilator, he can't swallow it, obviously.
And intravenously, you technically would even want to have him on a cardiac monitor while you're introducing it.
So you get ready for that.
But I'm a little more frustrated with Dr. Fauci, and I'm gonna tell you why.
Back in the 1980s and and in the early 90s when we were trying to do age research, Dr. Fauci and other colleagues published antiviral uh medicine data without clinical trials.
And these were medicines that were not really as proven as the hydroxychloroquine.
Now, why?
Well, because the gay community was all over them about finding a cure for AIDS, and so they rushed medicines in.
Let's go 40 years ahead now to right now.
We have 500,000 coronavirus cases.
And it manifests its disease within two weeks of having it.
Now, cancer takes five years, so you have to follow people for five years.
So why in the world can't we have a clinical study in two or three weeks that tells us the effectiveness of medications which have been used for 80 years?
Hydroxychloroquine has been around since 65 years.
Listen, I I really believe that this Dr. Wallace, I mean, is are you gonna get anybody with more knowledge of hydroxychloroquine than that guy?
Well, that's the whole point.
So when you talk about political, it was very political to introduce non-clinically trialed medicines in the 1980s and 1990s for HIV because of the political consequences of discrimination against the gay community.
Now we're talking about the fact that it's very politically expedient not to have a treatment so that we can sit around in our houses all day.
Listen, it's just a disagreement.
Doctors are always what I've learned is you doctors are all gonna disagree, just sort of like the political world, I guess.
But at the end of the day, what is it?
Do no harm if the if the preeminent doctor that has been prescribing this medicine and points out millions of millions of doses for 65 years, says there is nil risk.
Nil, zero.
And that he's never had a patient in 42 years of practice, and he's at the top of his field.
400 peer-reviewed uh uh documents that this guy has written.
Then I would say that it if doctor again, I would never I'm not uh I'm not a doctor.
But in consultation with your doctor after everything I've read, I know what my decision would be.
And what I would advise my close friends and families to do.
Um I know people who have taken it and recovered faster because of it.
This is what Dr. Oz has been pointing out, too.
But if you if you don't want to listen to it, I think the evidence is now beyond anecdotal.
I think Dr. Oz is right.
I think you should be able to take it.
And I don't think you should don't you agree that you shouldn't be sending people to uh hospitals to get it like they're doing in New York.
It's stupid.
Absolutely.
But don't forget, anecdotal issues.
For example, in my field, if someone has an access, and I don't say to them, hmm, maybe I won't drain that.
Let me see how you do.
We don't do clinical trials on that because we've known for hundreds of years that it works to drain an abscess.
We don't do a clinical trial on that.
Your anecdotal experience is what you experience in your life as you look the patient in the eyeball and say, boy, I'm gonna drain this.
I'm not gonna un drain it, not drain it, and then I'll wait for another guy to come along and I'll drain his and see how you both do.
We all work like that.
Well, I want to thank you for what you're doing.
I think you make great points.
We don't have time.
And Dr. Oz's example is you go to the Army with the Army you have, not the army you wish you had.
All right, stay right there.
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They're about to begin the coronavirus task force briefing here.
Uh we'll cover it in total when we take a well, is that the president coming out now?
I'm looking.
I can barely see.
The little box in the corner.
Looks like a lot of activity.
Thank you very much.
Trying to make the right call.
Up here we go.
Let's go to the president.
Before I begin, I'd like to offer my condolences and best wishes to the people all across our great South.
Whoever you're talking about.
Stations along the Sean Hannity Show Network, we're continuing this through the end of the program.
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
My administration will do everything possible to help those communities get back on their feet.
We're speaking with the governors and representatives.
FEMA's already on its way, and they got there as soon as we heard the word, I said, get out there.
So FEMA's there, and you don't you know the great job that FEMA does.
It's really something very special.
So uh we just want to say uh warmest condolences and and uh we're with you all the way.
It's a tough deal.
That was a bad, bad uh level five.
That was a bad group.
That's as high as it gets.
It was a bad grouping of tornadoes, something that's uh something credible.
The power, the horrible destructive power.
America is continuing to make critical progress in our war against the virus over the weekend.
The number of daily new infections remain flat.
Nationwide flat.
Hospitalizations are slowing in hot spots like New York, New Jersey, Michigan, and Louisiana.
This is clear evidence that our aggressive strategy to combat the virus is working, and that Americans are following the guidelines.
It's been incredible what they've done.
Uh you looked at the charts, and the charts are and the models uh from early on predictions where 100 and 120,000 people looked like if they did well, they were going to unfortunately perish.
And we're going to be hopefully way, way below that number.
So that will be a sign of people doing things right, but it's still just a horrible thing all over the world.
184 countries.
This is all a tribute to our wonderful health care advisors and experts who have uh been with us right from the beginning.
We appreciate it so much.
In fact, uh Dr. Fauci's here.
Maybe I could ask Tony to say a few words before we uh go any further.
Thank you very much.
Tony, please.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Just one a couple of things, and then I would just want to make a comment about something that happened yesterday.
You're gonna hear from Dr. Burke soon about the numbers that we've been talking about, how things are starting to balance off.
And I think the more as we go by each day, I think we're gonna see, and again, I never like to get ahead of myself or uh of Dr. Burks.
But it looks like even though we've had a really bad week last week.
Remember when I was speaking to you before, I was saying this was really a bad week, uh, there's still gonna be a lot of deaths, but we're starting to see in some areas now that kind of flattening, particularly in a place that was a hot spot like New York.
That's the first thing.
The second thing is that I had a really very, very productive conversation with the Congressional Black Caucus uh this morning uh for about an hour, and they really wanted to know what exactly are we going to be doing in the immediate as well as the long range about the health disparities and the discrepancies both in infection and in poor outcome in the minorities in general, but specifically African American.
And I mean, I made it very clear to them that what we have to do is focus on getting the resources where the vulnerable are to be able to get testing done to be able to get the appropriate um uh uh identification where proper and we're appropriate to isolate and contact trace if we can, but also to help mitigate in a community that is is suffering and suffering much more disproportionately.
So I just wanted to get that out of the other point I wanted to make is that I I I had uh an interview yesterday that I was asked a hypothetical question.
Uh and hypothetical questions sometimes can get you into some difficulty because it's what would have or could have.
The nature of the hypothetical question was if in fact we had mitigated earlier, could lives have been saved?
And the answer to my question was, as I always do, and I'm doing right now, perfectly honestly, say, yes.
I mean, obviously, if you mitigation helps, I've been up here many times telling you that mitigation works.
So if mitigation works and you instigate it and you initiate it earlier, you will probably have saved more lives.
If you initiated it later, you probably would have lost more lives.
You initiated at a certain time.
That was taken as a way that maybe somehow something was at fault here.
So let me tell you from my experience, and I can only speak for my own experience, is that we had been talking before any meetings that we had about the pros and the cons, the effectiveness or not of strong mitigations.
So discussions were going on mostly among the medical people about what that would mean.
The first and only time that Dr. Burks and I went in and formally made a recommendation to the president to actually have a quote shutdown in the sense of not really shut down, but to really have strong mitigation.
We discussed it.
Obviously, there would be concern by some that in fact that might have some negative consequences.
Nonetheless, the president listened to the recommendation and went to the mitigation.
The next second time that I went with Dr. Burks into the president and said, fifteen days are not enough.
We need to go 30 days.
Obviously, there were people who had a problem with that because of the potential secondary effects.
Nonetheless, at that time, the president went with the health recommendations, and we extended it another 30 days.
So I can only tell you what I know and what my recommendations were.
But clearly, as happens all the time, there were interpretations of that response to a hypothetical question that I just thought it would be very nice for me to clarify because I didn't have the chance to clarify.
Thank you.
You know, I to be honest with you, I don't even remember what the date was.
But I can just tell you the first and only time that I went in and said we should do mitigation strongly, the response was yes, we'll do it.
And what did you do?
Is that the travel restrictions?
No.
The travel restriction is separate.
That was whether or not we wanted to go into a mitigation stage of 15 days of mitigation.
The travel was another recommendation.
When we went in and said we probably should be doing that, and the answer was yes.
And then another time was we should do it with Europe, and the answer was yes.
And the next time we should do it with the UK, and the answer was yes.
In this interview, you said there was pushback.
Where did that push back come from?
No, it wasn't, and that was the wrong choice of words.
You know what it was when people discuss, not necessarily in front of the president, when people discuss, they say, Well, you know, this is gonna have maybe a harmful effect on this or on that.
So it was a poor choice of words.
There wasn't anybody saying no, you shouldn't do it.
