Big Pharma's Destruction of American Journalism

What the recent changes at Fox News say about the country.

One of my policies on this Substack is to avoid writing about subjects others are already covering—I have limited time to write, so I try to focus on things I feel will provide the most to others when they are covered.

Like many of you, I was astonished to hear that Tucker Carlson had been abruptly dismissed from Fox News. Since it happened, I’ve pondered if there is anything (ideally medically related) I can share on this topic others are not sharing. I now think there is, so this article will try to provide a broader context to Tucker's firing.

Tucker’s Final Broadcast

Tucker Carlson was abruptly dismissed from Fox News sometime between Saturday, 4-22-23, and Monday, 4-24-23 (likely closer to Monday). Many believe the ten-minute segment he made (on 4-19-23) caused Fox News to cancel the most popular news host on national television despite it significantly damaged the network's financial revenue.

Given the importance of what he said here, I hope his firing results in many more people seeing that segment, and I hope if this article speaks to your heart, you will help make that happen.

Note: Tucker was telling the truth here—in addition to typical pharmaceutical advertising money, FOIA documents showed hundreds of news organizations were paid off by the Federal Government to promote the vaccines. Additionally, this segment was immediately followed by a five-minute interview with RFK Jr. and his recent presidential announcement, which can be viewed here.

Following his firing, two respected public figures immediately shared their thoughts on it.

Note: Immediately following Project Veritas’s most successful bombshell in the 13 year history of the organization, its board made the decision to fire their founder and public face, James O’Keefe, which rapidly destroyed the organization. Many suspected this was a result of outside pressure from Pfizer, the organization exposed by that story.

Shortly after his final broadcast on 4-21-23, Tucker also gave an address to the Heritage Foundation. Since that time, Tucker has not stated anything publicly:

Oddly enough (when neither of them had any idea Tucker would be fired), due to the nature of Tucker’s speech, this was stated by the president of the Heritage Foundation in Tucker’s brief interview after his address:

[If] things go south at Fox News, there’s always a job for you at Heritage…We do that for a lot of people, very happily. We’re not called “America’s Outpost” for nothing.

Note: The videos in this section will be referenced throughout this article.

Telling The Truth

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

―George Orwell

In every society, there is always a balance between the intrinsic human yearning for truth and the desire of those in power to monopolize everything, including all information. The more that balance shifts towards the monopolization of information, as history has shown time and time again, the more the government switches towards an autocratic system, and all freedoms of the population are lost. 

The earliest example I know of for this phenomenon was shared by an archeologist decades ago who studied the plays of Ancient Greece. He told me there was a point when the plays started becoming more politically correct and no longer called things out for what they were. This in turn, was followed by the collapse of Ancient Greece's Democracy and led the archeologist to argue that if people cannot call things out for what they are, Democracies cannot function and will inevitably be taken over by tyrants.

The more freedom of speech and freedom from censorship of information is lost, the more risk anyone who publicly opposes what is happening takes on to speak out against what is happening (e.g., in many countries, political dissent results in your ending up in prison or worse). Similarly, studying the history of almost every evil government that comes to power reveals the same lesson. If you don't want to speak out against what is happening because it's uncomfortable, you have to because if you don't, it will be much harder to speak out in the future.

At the same time, as censorship and universal deceit increase, the more the public will yearn for someone who speaks the truth, and those who do will often go viral and garner public support most would never imagine possible. Consider, for example, the popularity Joe Rogan has achieved just by being honest with people.

Another important example of this was shared by RFK Jr. in his recent presidential announcement speech. His father, Robert F. Kennedy (JFK's brother) in 1968, decided to run for the Democratic Presidency. At the time, his candidacy was a long shot, but RFK felt compelled to do it because of the state the country was in and focused on bringing up politically unpopular subjects no one was supposed to discuss since he felt he needed to get those messages out. 

Instead of dooming his candidacy, it garnered massive popularity with the public, he became the leading candidate in the Democratic primary and was loved throughout the country, or to quote RFK Jr.—" He had succeeded in uniting America and building a bridge just by telling people the truth." Sadly, before RFK could clinch the nomination, like his brother, he was assassinated. To quote RFK Jr. :

When my uncle (JFK) left office in 19—, when he died in 1963, about 80% of Americans said they trusted their government. Today, 22% trust in the government and 22% trust the press. The lowest level ever. The media is at the lowest ever because we know the media lies to us now and everybody knows that. Problem is—and the problem is that when the sources of information that we’re always used to and that we need to rely on in democracy, and when they start lying to us, Americans look for other sources because they know they’re being lied to and they look for other sources of the truth.

And when the media and, you know, the corporate captive media and corporate captive government sees other sources of truth, they have to brand those misinformation because they threaten their paradigm. They threaten that orthodoxy. And of course, there is a lot of genuine misinformation. But as we know, a lot of the misinformation is just statements that depart from government orthodoxy. So, they have to either censor us or they have to lie about what’s true and what’s not true. And that amplifies the polarization. It amplifies the hatred, the fear, the insecurity, because, you know, you’re being lied to and you’re being silenced. Censorship doesn’t work from any point of view, though, and it’s very, very dangerous.

Let’s now consider what Tucker said at his recent speech:

I would say two things that I think we’re thinking about. The first is, you look around, and you see so many people break under the strain, under the downward pressure of whatever this is that we’re going through.

And you look with disdain and sadness as you see people you know become quislings, you see them revealed as cowards, you see them going along with a new, new thing, which is clearly a poisonous thing, a silly thing, saying things they don’t believe because they want to keep their jobs.

If there’s a single person in this room who hasn’t seen that through George Floyd and COVID and the Ukraine War, raise your hand. Oh, nobody? Right. You all know what I’m talking about.

The herd Instinct is very strong impulse. And you’re so disappointed in people. You are. And you realize that the herd instinct is maybe the strongest instinct. I mean, it may be stronger than the hunger and sex instincts, actually. The instinct, which again, is inherent to be like everybody else and not to be cast out of the group, not to be shunned.

That’s a very strong impulse in all of us from birth. And it takes over, unfortunately, in moments like this, and it’s harnessed, in fact, by bad people in moments like this to produce uniformity. And you see people going along with this, and you lose respect for them. And that’s certainly happened to me at scale over the past three years.

I’m not mad at people; I’m just sad. I’m disappointed. How could you go along with this? You know it’s not true, but you’re saying it anyway

Because I’m paid to predict things, I try and think a lot about what connects certain outcomes that I should have seen before they occurred.

And in this case, there is no thread that I can find that connects all of the people who’ve popped up in my life to be that lone, brave person in the crowd who says, “No, thank you.”

You could not have known who these people are. They don’t fit a common profile. Some are people like me. Some of them don’t look like me at all. Some of them are people I despised on political grounds just a few years ago. I could name their names, but you may not even know about their transformations, and I don’t want to wreck your dinner by telling you who they are.

But there’s in one case someone who I made fun of on television and certainly in my private life in vulgar ways, who was really the embodiment of everything I found repulsive, who in the middle of COVID decided, no, I’m not going along with this.

Like Tucker, I was quite interested to see who would break from the COVID narrative. I found most of the people who did had a combination of:

•Integrity behind their words (many people say they support things and use lots of flowery language, but you can tell they only support something because it benefits them at the time, not because they genuinely care about it).

•Courage.

•Tendency not to use the social proof heuristic (following the herd) when making decisions. Given how frequently the crowd proves itself to be wrong, it has always confused me how rare people like this are, but as Ed Dowd has pointed out, this is essentially an inherent law of the marketplace, so I’ve accepted 90-95% of people just will be like this. 

Because of my personal ties to both the Holocaust (detailed in the previous article) and the atrocities that occurred in China during and after World War 2 (which I believe were on a completely different scale from anything else that has happened in human history), I feel very strongly about speaking out against things I know are wrong that lead to bad places. Much of this is reflected by this famous poem from the era:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Note: although I boycott anything I do not feel I can ethically support and share many of my "controversial" views in private, I also must be honest and admit I pick my battles. I only directly challenge or publicly speak out on things where I think my voice matters—that way, the ability to speak out is maintained for when it can make the greatest difference.

The Mainstream Media

Since I have been a child, the mainstream media has always bothered me. This was because I could tell the people on it were lying, and I could feel subliminal things being done in the broadcast to manipulate my emotions, my state of mind and my beliefs. As I got older, my understanding of the media became more nuanced, and I became more able to recognize where they were likely to be lying and where they were likely to be telling the truth. Nonetheless, as soon as I had the power to, I made sure no household I lived in had a television (which was quite challenging but worth it due to their toxic effect on the home).

Although the media has always supported the military-industrial complex (which I believe is ultimately far crueler than the medical-industrial complex), previously, the media would criticize the pharmaceutical industry. Consider, for example, this report that aired on 60 Minutes about the 1976 Swine Flu vaccine fiasco:

For context, a false alarm was raised about a swine flu (which 1 allegedly died from and 13 were allegedly hospitalized by). A vaccine for it was rushed to market and given to approximately 25% of America. The vaccine ended up being linked to cases of Guillain–Barré syndrome in approximately 1/125,000 recipients, the vaccine was withdrawn from the market, the government received over a thousand lawsuits for personal injuries, and the CDC director was replaced. There are, however, a few things that are less known about this story. 

The first is that the injury rate was much higher and not exclusive to Guillain–Barré syndrome (e.g., it was linked to sudden heart attacks). Both I and colleagues had patients who were injured by this vaccine (e.g., one of my colleagues entered practice shortly before the vaccine was released and discovered he could treat many of the vaccine injured who showed on his doorstep with homeopathic remedies).

One of the most memorable stories from the time came from a patient, for example, who suffered lifelong complications from the 1976 vaccine cited them to me as the reason she would not fall for the government's sales pitch on the COVID-19 vaccines when they were first pushed upon the elderly. Similarly, many who were alive at the time know individuals who were significantly injured by this vaccine. All of those figures are not congruent with a 1/125,000 injury rate.

The second and more important one was Dr. Morris's warning. Dr. Morris was a chief vaccine government scientist who blew the whistle on the federal government covering up the dangers of vaccines. Instead of being fired, he was allowed to continue working due to his whistleblower status. 

When the 1976 swine flu outbreak happened, he worked within the FDA. As part of his job, Dr. Morris investigated it and stated that a mistake had been made in identifying the initial strain where the "outbreak" had originated (so it wasn't a dangerous virus requiring a vaccine). More importantly, Dr. Morris said that the vaccine design they were using to make a rapidly available emergency vaccine would be a disaster. This was because the vaccine strain had been hybridized with the 1918 influenza (which grew quickly, unlike the slow-growing swine flu strain they “needed” a vaccine for) so that it could grow fast enough to be ready for deployment. Dr. Morris felt strongly enough that he spoke out publicly, including on one of the most popular talk shows in America.

If you consider the full context of what happened, the 60 Minutes program on the vaccine was a bit of a coverup. Nonetheless, it was still remarkably candid in disclosing what happened, and nothing like it could air today. 

Take all of that in contrast to what has happened with COVID-19. A far more dangerous vaccine was pushed onto the market countless people tried to warn against. Not only was it pushed, it was mandated on most of the population, and the harms it caused were far greater. Yet, instead of receiving any coverage in the media, any dissent against it was aggressively censored, and only now that interest in the vaccine has dried up, are news reports on the widespread death and disability its caused are finally starting to trickle out (e.g., consider this recent post by Eugyppius about this happening in Germany).

When I look back and wonder how this happened, a few pivotal events seem to have transformed the media into a cheerleader for the pharmaceutical industry (all of which are discussed further here).

The first was that in 1997, Clinton legalized direct pharmaceutical advertising to consumers. There are a lot of issues with this practice (the USA and New Zealand are essentially the only countries that allow it), and one effect it had was putting financial pressure on networks not to air stories critical of pharmaceuticals once they had become dependent on their advertising revenue.

The second, discovered by investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson, was that in 2016, Barack Obama gave a speech at the private research university Carnegie Mellon where he argued that the internet had become too much of a Wild West and that some curating function (no one was asking for) would need to be created to protect the public from things online that were not the truth. 

A massive push against "disinformation" followed this, and it rapidly became much more challenging to get accurate or unbiased information off internet platforms (e.g., Google) where it had previously been very easy to. Similarly, this also marked Peter Hotez going on a public speaking tour. In that tour, he argued that anyone questioning vaccination was a danger to society and must be censored to save lives (since creating any doubt about the 100% safety and efficacy of vaccines is an unacceptable "public health" risk). I mention Hotez's tour because while much of what he absurd to the point of being comical, it helped create the framework for the deadly censorship we witnessed from all of Big Tech during COVID-19.

Looking back on the events, I now believe that Bill Gates and the pharmaceutical companies constructed a long-term business plan that followed four steps:

1. Create a merger with Big Tech so their interests would be aligned in pushing pharmaceuticals on the population. 

2. With Obama's help, buy out the Democratic party (which was already bought out by Big Tech) so they would be fully committed to pushing the vaccine agenda.

3. Use the Democratic party to push through childhood vaccination mandates nationwide at a state level.

4. Use the previous two to push through adult vaccination mandates once a suitable "emergency" could be found to do it.

Not surprisingly, the mainstream media was completely complicit in this as well (which may have been partly due to Bill Gates buying them out ahead of time)..

Tucker Carlson

As stated above, although I identified as a Democrat for most of my life, I have never liked the mainstream media and never listened to any news host (I thought most of what they said was meaningless partisan talking points meant to distract people from the real issues plus whatever talking points their corporate sponsors wanted to be promoted). What drew me to Tucker Carlson was that he would tell the truth on many topics no one else was willing to touch, particularly the military-industrial complex and the dangers of pharmaceuticals. 

Tucker thus put Fox News in an awkward position. He became the most popular news host on television, but he also covered many topics inconvenient for the network and its sponsors. This cycle has gradually escalated with Tucker being bolder in what he was willing to speak about and more and more unconstitutional demands from Democratic members of the government for him to be censored (e.g., AOC had just gone an air calling for this and not long before the senate majority leader had done the same).

Note: When I was younger, I supported socialism because there are significant inequalities that need to be addressed socialism often does address. As I got older, my views changed. This was partly because I realized everything was so corrupt that the freedom you are afforded in a free market system always trumps any benefits of socialism (e.g., consider the options that were available to people for treating COVID-19 who could and could not go outside the system—those stuck within it often had no choice besides remdesivir and a ventilator). 

However, the more significant shift was because I realized it’s very easy to pivot from socialism to communism. This matters because, while in the past it was different with some of the successful “socialist” labor unions, nowadays, every person who publicly promotes socialism enough to get a large following never has any integrity behind their words. So, like the communists, they give lip service to helping the poor and working class but do the opposite once they gain the power they sought.

AOC is a great example, as she ran as an ardent socialist fighting for the poor and is now funding the war in Ukraine and calling for censorship and imprisonment of her political opposition. Similarly, Bernie Sanders (who I stopped trusting after countless mothers reported he would silence them when they addressed him at rallies about their child’s disability following vaccination) has made a career advocating against the transfer of wealth to the upper class. Yet when the COVID lockdowns happened, which were the greatest assault on the poor and working class in American history, Bernie condoned them.

Because Tucker was willing to use his platform to speak truth to power, he covered a variety of things no one else has been willing to touch since the pharmaceutical industry bought out the media. These included:

•Hosting RFK Jr. on his show (before vaccines were a hot-button issue).

•The link between antidepressants and mass shootings.

•The highly concerning marketing campaign that every network participated in for COVID-19 vaccines prior to them entering the market.

•Numerous issues with the COVID-19 vaccines throughout their time on the market (e.g., Tucker played a pivotal role in creating the platform Alex Bernson used to bring public attention to the dangers of the vaccine).

•The epidemic of sudden deaths and disabilities the vaccines have caused.

Note: if anyone can link me to the other episodes I mentioned (that I had seen but could not find at the time of writing), that is appreciated, and they will be added to the article.

What is such a shame about all of this is that a few decades ago, Tucker Carlson would not have been an anomaly in discussing these issues (e.g., consider the previous 60 Minutes segment). Things have just become so censored almost no one will touch anything that threatens a vested corporate interest.

Media Monopolization

One of the many questions everyone has asked is why Tucker was fired now of all times. Since it immediately followed his directly attacking the media’s complicity in forcing the COVID-19 vaccines on the population, and his endorsement of RFK Jr., many suspect that was the reason (curiously the DNC also recently stated there would be no presidential debates indicating they too feel threatened by RFK Jr.). At this point, there are three leading theories.

The first, put forward by Bill O’Reilly, was that it was due to a variety of lawsuits Fox News was facing.

The second, as put forward by Glenn Greenwald above, was that Tucker was threatening the military-industrial complex by regularly criticizing the disastrous war in Ukraine. One point on this subject many do not appreciate is that Obama, Bush’s successor, pivoted once elected and adopted many of the warmongering policies his predecessor had. Because of this, when Trump became president (who campaigned on an antiwar platform and ended up being the first president since Carter not to start a new war overseas), a strong anti-war faction formed within the Republican party. In response to this:

An extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. The potential influx of military-intelligence personnel into the legislature has no precedent in US political history.

As a result, as Greenwald has pointed out, we are now witnessing many of the same policies we saw pushed forward two decades ago during the War on Terror. They are harder to recognize (since the other party is doing them, and they are cloaked behind all sorts of progressive euphemisms like “diversity”), but fundamentally they are the same. Many of the same players are also involved.

The third is the heavy monopolization of our media.

Note: I could not find a graphic that showed this accurately, so I modified the best one I could find.

This monopolization of the media is why we frequently hear the same message simultaneously disseminated on almost every news network (including the local “independent” ones). Thanks to the herd mentality instinct, this thus makes the lie of the day rapidly become a widely held belief throughout America, and it is honestly depressing to see the frequency at which the public is successfully tricked into believing each of them.

Note: one of the best examples I have seen of the simultaneous dissemination of a message across local media outlets can be found within this montage. It is not by any means the only example; it is just the only case I know of where someone put one together.

Sadly, the ownership of our media is not just confined to these five companies. As Robert Malone recently pointed out, the larger players who own the entire stock market also control our media (e.g., Blackrock owns 15.1% of Fox News). Because we live in such a monopolized media ecosystem, our Democracy cannot function without independent media. 

The corporatocracy and, sadly, the current political establishment are trying to eliminate any independent voices. This is why it is more important now than at any time in America’s history to support both the first amendment and media outlets that allow independent voices to be heard (e.g., that’s why I’ve put so much work into supporting Substack).

Conclusion:

Due to our highly polarized political climate, I’ve tried to avoid directly discussing and supporting a clearly partisan figure. Nonetheless, I felt I had to make an exception today for Tucker Carlson because of how much he has done to help the COVID-19 freedom movement and how many lives he has saved by bringing public awareness to the vaccine issue.

I do not agree with many of the viewpoints Tucker holds—rather, I agree with the fact he will allow both sides of an issue to be debated and his willingness to touch topics of national importance everyone else in the mainstream media shouts down and censors instead of providing a dialog for. This is really sad because, previously, Tucker’s conduct was the expected standard in journalism (I have family members who used to be journalists for premier organizations who are in disbelief with what has become of their profession). Instead, what we have now is simply an exercise in forcing you to hear a specific viewpoint everywhere you go until you submit to the social pressure of agreeing with them.

In this article, I cited the last speech Tucker Carlson may give for a while (particularly given that he has just retained a high profile lawyer following his unexpected termination). The primary reason I chose to utilize the speech was because of this line, which I believe speaks for itself.

And once you say one true thing and stick with it, all kinds of other true things occur to you. The truth is contagious. Lying is, but the truth is as well. And the second you decide to tell the truth about something, you are filled with this, I don’t want to get supernatural on you, but you are filled with this power from somewhere else.

Try it. Tell the truth about something. You feel it every day. The more you tell the truth, the stronger you become. That’s completely real. It’s measurable in the way that you feel.

And of course, the opposite is also true. The more you lie, the weaker and more terrified you become. We all know that feeling. You lie about something, and all of a sudden, you’re a prisoner of that lie. You are diminished by it. You are weak and afraid.

Drug and alcohol use is the same way. It makes you weak and afraid. But you look around, and you see these people, and some of them really have paid a heavy price for telling the truth. And they are cast out of their groups, whatever those groups are, but they do it anyway.

And I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration. I am paid to do that. I face no penalty. Someone came up to me [and said,] “You’re so brave.” Really? I’m a talk-show host. It’s like I give any opinion I want. That’s my job. That’s why they pay me.

It’s not brave to tell the truth on a cable news show. And if you’re not doing that, you’re really an idiot. You’re really craven. You’re lying on television. Why would you do that? You’re literally making a living to say what you think and you can’t even do that. Please.

Note: This mirrors a quote Robert Malone frequently references (“The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.” ― Augustine of Hippo).

Lastly, I apologize for the slight political direction I’ve been on recently. I have a few purely medical articles who are nearly ready for publication too. I know that is the focus many of you crave and it’s my own passion in writing too!

I’m trying trying to strike a good balance between having the information I want be out there and making a responsible use of this platform for the public good.

Postscript: Tucker recently provided a brief statement to the public. It does not divulge any specifics but echoes many of the themes present within this article and suggests he plans to continue trying to create a space for topics of national concern to heard by the public.