You're listening to The buck Sexton Show podcastle make sure you subscribe to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome everybody to the buck Sexton Show. I have with me the author of Charade, the COVID Laves that Crushed a Nation, and a general columnist the closest thing that West Virginia has right now to Ernest Hemingway, Mister David Marcus is with us for this episode. David Marcus, good to see you, sir.
Thanks for having me. Mat It's nice to see you.
You know, somebody asked me the other day this, I'm just wondering what you think what would happen if we had another, let's just say, a really bad flu season. Would you know, because you wrote your book on COVID, do you think that most of what was done before would be done again? You think they go back to it, not.
Exactly in the same way. I think that. I think the American people have become a little too suspicious for that, especially sort of in red states. I mean, are there are parts of in Park Slope, Brooklyn if like the Democrats were like put your mask on, stay inside.
Yeah, I mean they would love that. They would, you know, feel Marley superior again and it would be great. No, don't. I don't think it would work out exactly that way.
But I do, you know, to the rest of your question, I do worry that COVID was a kind of dress rehearsal, whether intentionally or not, to sort of see ken society operate if everyone just stays home. And as I wrote in a column recently, sadly, the answer was sort of yes.
And that's pretty scary looking forward.
I mean, I will say that, you know, for me, I wasn't married, I didn't have kids during the pandemic. So now when I when I look at things, I look back at it. I mean, it was remarkable in so many ways, but there were parts of it where I was like, well, I guess I just get to stay home, not socialized, not go anywhere, and order food and watch Netflix and play video games. Like I took up PlayStation again because I had a lot of time on my hands when I wasn't doing radio.
There was a moment I remember, like in the first week or two, because I believe I had gotten my son like a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, like a couple months before and there was like a run on Nintendo switches. Do you remember that, Like everyone everyone ran out because like this was the device that you could have that would like you know, oh, it was awful.
You remember zoom Cocktails? Was that anything?
Is there ever been a worse social event than the history of mankind than zoom Cocktails?
It was so horrible And in Jumane it was a.
Horrible book, we were told that we would never shake hands again. You remember this like that, like they were like, ah, handshaking is gone, and you know what's remarkable. I was doing I'm doing some research for a book. It's not a COVID book, but I was looking back at some of the stuff that happened in twenty twenty for it people.
I don't think people even remember this that there was a period where they were actually telling everybody that first of all, they said don't get masks, which you remember there was that don't buy masks. So they told that everybody stop it. And Fauci's like doesn't really work. There was even CNN was doing stories in February of twenty twenty.
Masking actually might make it more likely for you to get COVID because you'll change your risk parameters for what you're willing to do, thinking of more protection than you do, and you'll touch your face. And it went from that to, as we know, the complete insanity of like, if you're a good person, that means when you're hiking the rocky mountains alone, you mask up. You know what I mean?
Miss step? No, you missed a step buck.
There was a step in between, because obviously they were completely reversing themselves and or being like utter hypocrites about it. So remember how they explained that they said, oh well, we were actually wary of having you masking because we were worried we were going to run out for first responders, so don't leave.
Remember that.
Oh no, they had to lie to explain why they were lying, because the actual truth is, as I think people have started to figure out what they said initially was the case, which is that masks were a joke and weren't going to do anything. But then when they decided that masks had to be real, and they had already said, you know, had to be mandatory, and they
said that they had changed their minds on this. They would rather light their credibility on fire than go against the religious ritual of masking that was created for really just mask compliance and mass conditioning. So no, man, I'm I feel like there's only a few of us who really Maybe it's the people that fled New York. I mean, you live in uh Am, I allowed to say on the air, do you tell people where you are? Just like he's in West Virginia. Yes, So that's pretty that's
pretty free. I'm down in Florida, which it was a very common choice people fleeing New York. And I think the New Yorkers who fled more than anybody else because we got the brunt of it in the beginning too. We are all still traumatized by the other sides lunacy, not by COVID. Like I was fine with COVID. I was audi. I wasn't even worried about COVID. I was like, I don't even understand whatever it's so freaked out about.
Pretty early on, like April of twenty twenty, I was like, I don't get it, But my god, people lost their minds and here we are. It hasn't been that long we forget all about it. So I don't know. I don't think the lessons have really been learned that's mine. That's the thing that upsets me. That's why I still talk about it. One there's no accountability now a book.
And I hear you, you know, I listen to you guys when I'm picking my kid up from school, and I appreciate the fact that you do that. It's really the reason that I wrote the book, and it's reason that I wrote the book in real time. I mean, the book only goes from February of twenty twenty to write after the twenty twenty election, because I was writing it as I was covering the story for the Federalists,
and I wanted it to be that fresh. And it's funny, like I'm now talking to a couple of people about maybe trying to do something in another realm with the book, and so I've been having to go back through it and just like you said, like there's so many of these things that like I just forgot happened, and I'm really glad that I wrote them down at the time, because I think we kind.
Of want to forget.
Yeah, And I also sense that there's and this is a little bit of what I'm I'm what I'm chasing down in the research that I'm doing these days for a project I'm working on, and it's just it's clear that there was something that the whole COVID phenomenon for people, and the way they responded to it, it became it was filling an emotional space for them, like an emotional
psychological space, a deeply attached to emotional space. Because otherwise the people who were telling me, this is the thing that's always so remarkable to me, the people who were telling me you're a horrible person, your advice is killing people. Why are you so stupid? And there were thousands of them over the course the pandemic, you know, tweeting at me. I mean, do you know how many of them have sense?
And even for things like schools need to be open, you know, like September twenty twenty, I'm like, the school should be open. This is insane, even those people, whatever the issue may be, vaccines don't stop the spread, which I think you can probably I don't know why you kicked off YouTube for that. They still pretend like that's not that is a fact. That is a hundred as
we all know, one hundred percent of fact. Not a single person that I can think of e seeing not a single person has come back to me since then, online, email, whatever and said, wow, you're right, I'm sorry.
Not one well well look I mean but you I mean, you answered your own question there book. The reason that you're not going to get that, at least not in the next twenty years is exactly what you said.
That there was so much emotional investment, almost.
Religious investment, and living by these precepts, living by these rules. This is the right and moral and just thing to do. You know, wear your masks, stay inside social distance, you know. And I think that especially for people on the left who lack any kind of like actual religion, this became something really valuable in their lives and really powerful that could, you know, for better or worse, attach them to something bigger than than which is a noble goal.
It just in this case it was it was quite wrong headed.
I want to also ask you, David, about the news of this week, which was the Hunter Biden plea deal, which you may have seen on off, on off now off as we speak, and how this factors into people really having Here's I don't want you to answer this question yet because I have to have a word from our sponsor, but I want to put the question out there for everyone to think about, for you to think about.
People approach me now listeners, they approach me and and they have a seething disdain for a whole range of institutions in this country. And I'm increasingly in a position where I can't even never mind defend them, which I really can't and don't, but I kind of just say have at it, you know, like I just I feel more and more and I wanted you to take that on in a second. But first up, for everybody at home, the data on your computer is worth more than the
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Plans start less than seven dollars a month. When you use promo code buck at iDrive dot com, you get ninety percent off. All right, what do you think, David institutions, things like the FBI, the c the d o J, the CIA, the EPA, the good on the list defensible? What do we do about these places?
These are very hard questions. I want to say.
In the fall of last year, I had just started writing for The Daily Mail, who I write for fairly regularly now, and they reached out to me after I'd only written there a couple of times, and one of my editors was like, do you want to write an article a column basically saying like, maybe it's time to get rid of the FBI? And I thought, boy, that's an awfully big thing. To say, I don't know, like, can we talk this through? And we talked it through.
And there was the Trump raid at Mara Lago, and how different that was from how the Bidens have been treated. There was you know, spying on Catholics. There was taking down license plate numbers at school board meetings where parents were asking perfectly reasonable questions about their children's education and whether they're being exposed to appropriate material at school. Long story short, I wound up writing the column because when
I tabulated at all, I said, this is not sustainable. Now, look, I hope it can be fixed. I mean, I think we do need some form of federal law enforcement. But there's no trust in the FBI right now, and the FBI hasn't earned any trust, So what are we supposed to do about that?
I do think it's also interesting when you look at the support that RFK Junior has gotten in this election cycle, it's a little bit tight in what we're talking about with how we now are as a country supposed to pretend that all the COVID stuff and FAUCI and the mandatory shots and the vaccine passports and the you know, Biden administration mandating everybody has to get the shot in the Supreme Court having to overturn it him. What an
absolute disaster, What a monstrosity they really engaged in. But our FK. Junior goes beyond that because he's he's really taking it to the FDA as well as the CDC and the NIH and all the rest of them. And you know, when you can't trust that health authorities in a country that feels like a whole I feel like that's a level beyond right, like it used to be that everybody trusted their doctor.
I mean, look, it is, and I think that it's a very similar story to the FBI and to the Department of Justice. You know, there was this whole sort of like post Watergate idea in regard to at least DOJ and these things like, Okay, there has to be a firewall here, right, nobody from the elected administration is allowed to have any influence over the Attorney general whatsoever. And we then applied that to doctor Fauci and the NIH, and it never made any sense. And it's not constitutional, frankly.
I mean that's we don't elect people to hand their powers over to chosen experts who are in bed with all kinds of different organizations international and domestic right and that's what we did. And so you know, one of the things that I like about the thing that I hear Ron DeSantis in particular talk about al I think Favek has talked about this significantly as well, is that we need to break that model. These are not independent agencies that just get to do whatever they want regardless
of what voters think. There has to be accountability and hopefully if more Republicans get into power, will see that.
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use my name buck at checkout. That's Chalk cchoq dot com and use my name buck when you go to check out for thirty five percent off. Dave, where are you on UFOs.
Man? I don't know. I mean I was a big X Files fan. Love that show.
Does it hold up?
Like?
Can I go back? I tried to watch The Matrix with the wife, usually because she had never seen it. I've seen it like twenty times. I think the Matrix movie is phenomenal even to this day, like it's still really really good. Could you go back and watch the X Files? You think?
Yeah? No, I mean I have no I do think. I mean in part, I just think because it was so.
Smartly written and there's good performances and those are those are things that sort of carry through.
But I don't know UFOs, I.
Think that Wait, can I just tell everybody at home before? I mean, they're having hearings on Capitol Hill about this and people are testifying under oath, like, so this is the thing I'm not I don't do There are other shows that they're like, oh, like Bigfoot and UFOs, like,
that's not this show, it's not me. But when they're having depositions or hearings on Capitol Hill and people are swearing under oath that they saw something that the uf like, you know what I mean, we got to deal with it, I think, so anyway, go ahead?
Yeah, I mean, look, I.
Don't know, Like most of what I've heard independent from news stories are the things for people who I've known in the military. And I don't know if you've heard these stories, but like I've known, you know, guys who were in the Air Force or you know, guys who are you know, sort of stationed at different places where they saw weird things that like they couldn't explain. I
don't know. I think that that, you know. I mean, I don't know, Buck you were in the CIA, right, I mean, there's there's things.
We have don't talk about, and maybe we don't know if it's a UFO or not. Is a good way to not have to.
Talk about this thing that like and maybe the government shouldn't be talking about.
I just don't know, man.
Interesting, you take almost an agnostic position on the UFOs, right, Like you're not. You're not saying yes, you're not saying no no.
And I'm also I've always been dubious about intelligent life on other planets, you know, for a couple of reasons.
I mean one, you know, I guess as a Catholic, it would it would.
Throw some kind of monkey wrench into at least the most basic understanding of Christian theology, although the Catholic Church has always been very good at being able to bring things. I mean, it was a Jesuit who came up with the Big Bang theory, so science and the Catholic Church
coexists very well. The bigger reason for me is just to me, it seems like such a bizarre confluence of events that led to human intelligence that it doesn't strike me as particularly likely that even in a universe as big as ours, those precise things happening over millions and millions of years all led to someone who I can you know, have a conversation about with the Yankees or something.
Yeah, I think that I also take this maybe different for sophical point of view on this from a lot of people, just you know, so I am very skeptical. Clay on a radio show as a believer, So we're Scolder and Mully or Mulley and Scolder or whatever. And I'm in the skeptic category here, and the audience that at least that writes in is overwhelmingly, you know, outrage
that my skepticism over UFOs. And I sit here and I just say, I don't think that we need to think that there are UFOs and little green men to think that the world that we live in is still so far beyond beyond our comprehension understanding, and you know, I don't know, like I just think that it almost makes it seem it's a simplification of what's out there in my mind to think that all there just must be like people like us out there well no, or
you know, little green men, whatever it is. But beyond that, we face such interesting questions and quandaries here in the known world still that I don't think that we have to enter into like intergalactic travel for things to be interesting. I don't know. That's just mine.
The best, the best, the best evidence I've ever seen for the existence of aliens is Leo Messi. You know, I've watched Leo Messi do things on a soccer field that sometimes make me think Okay, he can't be a human being, but I mean that's aside from that.
Yeah, I'm skeptic.
Yeah, he's the Miami resident. Now he's joining the revolution down in Miami. So it's interesting stuff, Dave. I'll get you on on one more thing here, But before we get to it, are we going to see a big change in currency in our lifetime? Some people think so,
So what's going to happen? Well? Former Wall Street insider Tika to Wai follows our nation's economy, writes about it regularly, and he believes that our federal government could announce a mandatory recall in the US dollar and exchange it with a new digital version. How different would that be from using debit or Apple pay or whatever. Well, he's got a lot of thoughts on the subject, which you can
see he's put online for everybody. It's an interesting perspective one I think you should at least be familiar with, and perhaps you want to take some preparation based on Go to Dollar recall dot com to see this video with all the details. Our government doesn't want you to think about this stuff, but you should think about it. You should be aware. Go to Dollar Recall dot com paid for by Palm Beach Research Group. So David, you know, what do you spend most You're just like a thoughtful guy.
What do you spend your time thinking about? A lot these days? Like what's just like a top of mind thing for David Marcus to consider for the world.
I've been given a lot of thought to the future of social media and especially sort of what I'm saying on Twitter.
I think I sort of have the reputation of being an Elon.
Musk basher, and I'm really not I applaud Musk for what I think he was trying to do with the platform. I really think that he thought that he could come in and say, Okay, we're going to have a really small, discrete set of rules and other than that.
Let free speech rain.
And I think, you know, advertisers kind of made it that that wasn't going to work for them. You know, the Government of Australia is threatening to find Twitter or I guess it's X now five hundred thousand dollars a
day if they find too much hate speech on it. So, I mean, all this stuff was sort of stacked up against him, and now we have this rebrand and now we have this notion of like he says he's going to do like an app of everything I guess modeled on the we chat app in China, where now this is going to involve your finances and your banking And these are questions that Americans and concernable conservatives, Americans in general need to think about, because what happens when your
bank account starts interacting with content moderation, right, whether it's Must or anybody else, Like what happens when you've misgendered someone too many times and the bank decides, well, you don't have access to your money anymore. And we've seen it in Canada, we've seen it in the UK. So that's the kind of thing that really scares me these days, and I worry that, you know, it's the thing that
happens with conservatives. We saw this with Kanye We've seen it a couple of times where it's like some influential celebrity says, wow, you know, conservatives are kind of cool, like they're okay, and conservers like, I love this guy,
this guy's great, he's our new leader. Let's pay And it's like you got to slow your role on that, because it's not always the case, and I do worry that that Musk is asking us to accept some things in regard to censorship, to accept some things in regard to content moderation that I think conservatives need to be pretty skeptical of, even if he's going to give us all, you know, twenty five thousand dollars for posting on a site, which of course I won't take.
But to take my point, well, when we share out this interview on Twitter, just make sure that Elon knows that I think he's amazing. So I don't get banned. But good luck to you, my friend.
Good luck to be honestly buck And and I'll you know, I'll say this.
It's it's something that you run into.
It's something that I've run into in trying to write about this story, is that he's a player in the media now. So this is always a challenge for journalists who cover the media because look, there's just a lot of people in a position right now who don't want
to cross Elon Musk. And as a writer, who's you know, look, my mantra is, if you're in power, I'm skeptical of you, I'm going to be critical of you, and you're never going to get a free pass, and it's been a challenge for me to cover Elon Musk because I think there are a lot of people who don't want to cross him right now.
Fair point, David Marcus. Everybody follow him on the social media platforms that you have, and also look for his stuff in the Daily Mail and check out what's the name of the book again.
David Charade, the covid Lies, the qust Nation.
Good to see you, sir, Thanks for hanging out, Thanks for
Having me a book