BENSON BYTE: "OUTSIDE HIS LANE" - Dr. Marc Siegel Breaks Down the Fauci Diary Drop Scandal

The following statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose tree cure or prevent any disease. The human brain is truly incredible. It has 100 billion neurons surpassing even the most powerful supercomputers. And it controls our thoughts, our emotions, and everything we do. And Previgen is designed to help keep it amazing. Prevagen also believes that good daily habits are a powerful part of any routine. Exercising regularly, eating well, getting good quality sleep, staying mentally active, and staying connected with friends and family are all great for your brain. And that's why so many people choose Prevagen, because it can help supplement those good habits, working alongside your daily routine to give your brain the care it deserves. Prevagen is powered by Apoachoran, originally discovered in jellyfish and designed specifically for your brain. Because when your brain is at its best, you can continue doing what you love with confidence. Try Prevagen for your brain today. The following statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose tree cure or prevent any disease. The human brain is truly incredible. It surpasses supercomputers with over 100 billion neurons that control our thoughts, emotions, and movements. Previgen wants to keep it incredible. Powered by Apoaquin that was originally discovered in jellyfish, Previgen is designed specifically for the brain to help keep it amazing so you can continue doing what you love with confidence. Try Prevagen for your brain today. Now it's time for another Guy Benson, Guy Benson Fight, where we bring you the day's most interesting interviews in a bite-sized package. For the full episode, visit Guy Benson.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Great guest upcoming on the Anthony Fauci issue. We have, my friend, Dr. Mark Siegel. You've seen them on the networks. He, on the network, excuse me, I want to get his exact title right. He is the lead medical correspondent for Fox News, and I want to mention this also because I went to the book party. He's the author of Miracles Among Us, how God's Grace plays a role in healing. That book has really taken off. It's been on the bestseller list. It's doing great, and it's doing great because it's a really uplifting work. So, Doc, thank you for being here. Paul, great to be with you. Great to be with you. So listen, man, I want to talk to you about this Anthony Fauci stuff. Now, you know, you were on the air a lot relative to it. And 2020 hindsight, I know all of those issues. But right now, Anthony Fauci is about to get the grilling of a lifetime. Let me ask you a very sort of broad question. Is it deserve it? Because I think it's going to be a rough week for him. Well, I look at this way. I'm like you. I look at the evidence and the facts of my own experience, and I have a little bit of a different take on it than you might expect. I know Anthony Fauci, and I knew him well during that period of time. And he came on my radio show a lot. Prior to that period of time, I interviewed him for TV a lot. And I think what I said at the time, not retrospect, but what I said at the time...

And this feeds into the issue of what his diary or whatever you want to call that was showing, was that I wondered why he was doing what I called stepping outside his lane, meaning that here's his lane. His lane is that he trained as an immunologist. And as a vaccine expert, he was one of the top in the country and in the world. No question about it, hands down. And I used to interview him on what he thought about the MRNA vaccines. And he was very cautious about them and before they ever came out. And he wasn't expecting them to be as successful as they were. And then he gradually got more interested in it. I mean, more believing in the vaccines. COVID, he was wrong a lot. He said he think it could become a seasonal virus only. That never happened. I mean, I think the biggest problem there was that he never, he didn't show enough. humbleness regarding that issue like what is this i don't where did it come from even even to this day he talks about much more likely came from nature keeping an open mind things like that but what but what be what we're learning here is beyond the idea that he spoke about things that he might not have been as much of an expert at like you know, public health lanes, let's bend the curve in two weeks, became, you know, two years. The idea of masking mandates, schools, closing, you know, he was, he said different things about that. On my show, one time he said school should remain open, another time he said not. I think it's the issue of Lane. But what we're learning from the diary, Paul, or again, whatever we call it, is that it was also an issue of glorification. I'm on TV now. Wow. They want me. I'm on TV so much. I'm really important. I'm reaching the public with a message that, as you know, trying to get things right all the time on TV is not easy. And it's a great responsibility. It's very humbling. And it's not, you know, you and I are similar that way. We're, like, we're proud and we're happy. We're on the air a lot, but we're not sitting there saying, wow, this makes me really important. So that's what's most disturbing about this, that it was. too self-clorifying for what the public really is. So if I'm hearing you right and you're 100% right, you're still a working doctor. You've got a big, big gig as a doctor, as we all know, outside of the network I'm talking about. I'm still working, guys. So, you know, that keeps you humble. You recognize that, you know, and I'm sure you have this. Somebody wants to take a selfie with you or something. You're at the airport. Whatever, I always say to myself, you want to take a picture with me? Why? You know, it still strikes me that way, and it doesn't happen that often. I don't want to guess, like... you know, the issue. But, you know, if I'm hearing you right,

You're saying that you think he got a little bit seduced by the fame, and it was fame. All right? I mean, he was really, really ubiquitous in the media. And he says that in his diaries. And do you think there's an element here that he was playing to what he felt, a segment of the media, the dominant media, the progressive media, let's just put a name on it? You think he was playing to the narrative that he felt they wanted him to deliver? That's what I'm getting from what I'm reading and hearing about. Exactly what you just said. And I also think it may have fueled him to do something that I noticed and also didn't like. And I never said this to him directly because it was too political for my way, which is that he took on the president of the United States. And that was his boss. And that surprised me because, you know, he didn't. He's supposed to answer to this guy, not educate him, not try to outshine him. When his job is to answer to him, and yes, if the president comes to him and says, I need to understand this better. And that's his job, too. But not some sense that he was the corrective for the president, because that president is a pretty bright guy. And, you know, he's not some idiot that you have to, like, teach, teach basic science to. I don't like that sense of it. And I didn't like at the time. I kind of liked at the time the idea of the team of rivals that... Hey, here's a guy who's publicly disagreeing with the president, but the president's not firing him. I thought that showed us something about Trump at the time. Yeah, I remember that. That's what Lincoln did. Lincoln assembled a team of rivals with a very famous story with Seward. Yeah. You know, the Secretary of State or that McCullough, I can't believe Lincoln walks into McCullough and McCullough, I wouldn't take an audience with him. And I got that same feeling about Anthony Fauci and Trump, but Anthony Fauci way outstep that, overstepped that. So you and I should educate the audience here a little bit. You are relying on your old sort of your previous, I should say, reporting chops because a lot of people don't realize they see on a network all the time. But you cut your teeth in the field, doing interviews in the field. having people on your show. And so you have a reservoir of knowledge here that I think a lot of people don't realize is there. And, you know, I have to say that I have to give what you've just said a lot of credence because you have some insight. You know, you get a lot of people when you're in the room with them, when you're talking to them, you can get a feel. And I got to say, you know, from outside the situation, what you are saying now really rings true. Because... You know, he became the all-knowing expert for all aspects of COVID. And we, you and I both know that it's a very, very, it was an unprecedented thing. And you have the origin issue. Then you have the issue of how to deal with it. How do we mitigate it medically? How do we mitigate it societally? And he all of a sudden was beyond talking about the origins of the virus or what would medically be efficacious. He's talking about...

closing down the schools. And he became realistically a sort of shadow president in my estimation, a lot of ways. He was, as you say, well outside his lane. Now, on that, just to show, as you point out, that he flip-flopped in many instances, I want to play a cut here. Guys, can we run 34, please? First of all, I didn't recommend locking anything down. You're asking me questions. You're talking about the CDC is the public health agency. that uses their epidemiologists and their science-based approach to make recommendations. It was a decision to make a recommendation to the president. It wasn't my decision that I could implement. And when it became clear that when we had community spread, I recommended to the president that we shut the country down. All right. That's what I mean by shadow president. He's telling the president of the United States to shut the country down. And by the way, he's just not being honest here. He did make those recommendations relative to the schools. What's your take on this? Is he just confused or is he just somebody who can't admit he was wrong? By the way, I do still do a lot of that reporting, and I still have my radio show where I'm interviewing people, not him right now. He's not going to talk to you now, Doc, forget him. No, no, no, no. And so I do continue to assemble assessments over time. I have so many examples of that, but I don't want to give those to you now because I want to stick on what we're talking about. But the only one example is George W. Bush, who I've interviewed multiple times, is extremely intelligent. and the media tried to paint him as a dope for years, but he's brilliant. So that's one example. Tony is rigid. I think you have that right. Not rigid in maybe slightly differently than you just presented it. I think he's dogmatic, and he sticks to what he believes his guns are, and he doesn't switch his position as much as he should. I remember Sanjay Gupta saying to me, the CNN, a medical correspondent, You know, COVID humbled all of us because we thought things that we didn't know. You know, we got at the very beginning information coming out of China, the 15% of COVID people got pneumonia. That was nothing. I mean, that was true. But we didn't get a lot of information. We were learning on the ground. We got overwhelmed. Where are these blood clots coming from? We learned on the ground. And, you know, just saying that, just saying, look, this is a new virus. We've not seen anything like it before. I'm learning on the ground. You know, I don't know if it's the lab. I don't know where this is coming from. I don't know. That would have helped him. But he, when he was outside his lane, and again, let me be clear on this lane part. He was the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH. His lane was infectious disease. His lane was vaccine. His lane was new treatments. We got some great ones, right? His lane wasn't what we should do with the schools. And I hate this word, but he flip-flopped on the schools. Sometimes he did talk about how schools should remain open.

He wasn't evolving with the emerging science as much as you should have in public health. But public health wasn't his area of expertise either, which is another problem. And again, trying to overshadow the president. I understand it was a public health emergency. But he had the president's ear. And the fact that there might have been conflicting voices, that's what you have in a government, isn't it? Of course it is. Of course it is. And you know... If you admit that you were wrong on something and you have to do it in public, you gain credibility. All right. You know, about a month ago, I got something wrong on X. And I had a cop to it. And rather than try to clean it up and hide it or anything else, it just because, folks, I got this one wrong. I had tweeted about something. I said, I got this one wrong, and I'm going to leave it up so you see me doing the corrective. Because that's the right. And then people know they can trust you. Now, I want to talk about, let's go to the, since you bring it up, the vaccines. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.., the Mahal Tsar. Has a storyline out there now that he gave in another interview. And I want to get this exactly right because he contends the following that Anthony Fauci was pushing and was dogmatic about the vaccines and now not allowing any other option medically because if he admitted that I got to get this right now, hydroxychloroquine or invermectin were effective. There is a law in the federal government that you can't use an emergency directive to put through something like the vaccine. If you have something else that is already effective. And because inframectin and the other one I just said could be effective, then you wouldn't get the emergency order for the vaccines. And according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that's a $200 billion enterprise, that vaccine. Are you buying the idea that maybe he protected the idea of the vaccine over other potentially effective treatments because there was so much money to be made in the vaccine world? I see that somewhat differently. Actually, I think that same question has come up about Pfizer or Moderna, whether they were doing that. I see this one differently. I think, though it's partly right, Paul, here's how I view it. At the beginning of the pandemic, we didn't have anything. And we were trying to develop treatments. And one of the ones that was used was hydroxychloroquine. And I actually... talked about it on the air on our 8 p.m. show about how my father took it and got better. Wow. I gave it to a lot of people. And he was saying, I'm not going to wake up. He was 96 years old at the time. And he lived to 102. He got better in one day. And I was giving it to a lot of people. Okay. And I felt that it was working. And to this day, I still feel it may have been working. And a rheumatologist who was an expert on lupus at our hospital.

who was researching hydroxychloroquine for lupus, which is what we used for, was saying, you know, it's got antiviral properties against SARS-CoV-2. It's got antiviral properties. To this day, I think it does. Ivermectin I'm less favorable about, but hydroxychloroquine, I still think this. And people will, you talk about X, people will say X all the time. How come Siegel was for hydroxychloroquine? And I put this in a book, too, and suddenly turned away from it. Well, it's the same point I'm making about Tony, which is a new drug came along, Paxlovid, which I feel was much better because it was a specific antiviral for SARS-CoV-2, and it's a phenomenal drug, and it came out of nowhere. That's a miracle that we got that. So it wasn't like I thought my initial idea was wrong. It's that something better came along. The vaccines... I don't agree with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. I think these vaccines are really good. I think the platform is really good. I think they have side effects. And I think his main point. is that the side effects were overlooked and they were submerged and they should have been emphasized much more. I agree with Bobby about that. But I don't think that they weren't useful. I think they're very useful. I think they're very effective. But they were also miscast. Oh, it'll keep you from getting COVID. Well, it didn't end up doing that, right? As COVID morphed, the vaccine was less effective and they needed to be more. forthcoming about that. They got that emergency use authorization and they continued to bludgeon people with it even when it was less affected and shouldn't have been mandatory. That's what the issue was. Unyielding, dogmatic, unchanging. I think that sums it up perfectly because we got to go. But that line that you just closed with, I think, is the moral of the story. Even doctors have to be willing to evolve with the situation and maybe sometimes say either I was wrong or, well, you know what? I got it right-ish, but we've got a better option now, and we're going to go to that, and it just doesn't seem to be an Anthony Fauci's character. And I think it could be his undoing, reputationalally, and who knows, maybe otherwise. Doc, we got to run. Always great to talk to. Now as yet another Guy Benson invite. For full episodes of Guy Benson, go to Guy Benson.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to the show ad free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music with your prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.