CAMERON SMITH INTERVIEW 7-29-26

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Second hour now of Yaffe Live. We are here on Talk Radio 102.3. I am Tennessee's voice of reason in a world that yes is sometimes beyond reason. I see this headline from Fox News where it says Anthony Fauci's attorney was ejected from the Senate hearing after what's being called a chaotic exchange. It says you are not recognized. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing with Anthony Fauci, excuse me, on Capitol Hill, got off to a rocky start Wednesday morning with Senator Rand Paul, ordered one of Anthony Fauci's lawyers removed after he repeatedly refused to stop disrupting the proceedings. So we've got to talk more about this right now with Cameron Smith. He is a columnist for the Tennessean. You can read his stuff at Tennessean.com. Cameron, how are you, sir? I plead the fifth. You plead the fifth. Oh, no, you're going to do this. It seems like everybody's doing that today. He's going to do this with every question. It's all the rage, guys. You got to try it out. You just don't have to answer any questions about your diary. Okay. I mean, if I don't ask you about your diary, Cameron, will you answer other questions for us? Yes, if I consult my attorney who's been ejected. Everything will be fine. Don't worry. You know, Cameron, in my line of work, my former job, we call that evidence when you write stuff down like that. Yeah, it confirms what we already knew, that Anthony Fauci is indeed a narcissist who saw himself as somewhat of a star in the middle of a pandemic. And instead of communicating clearly and truthfully with the American people, he was contemplating his own fame. So it's not a good look. I don't know if this administration could prosecute Anthony Fauci. If they had a legal case against him, they would be prosecuting him. So my take on it is that this hearing, the... Engagement with Anthony Fauci is more a, hey, you created mistrust with, frankly, scientific expertise itself. And in doing so, harmed a lot of Americans because they no longer trust medical experts. And these are people that have a lot of knowledge, have a lot of expertise. These are people that can save a lot of lives, but because you've failed to communicate. truthfully and timely, what you knew in a very serious situation. We have folks that won't take vaccines. We have folks that don't trust doctors. And that's a huge problem for our country. I don't know that the... realities for Anthony Fauci will change a lot after this hearing. Is that because of the pardon? You think? I mean, you're a lawyer. They were saying that maybe he could perjure himself here, so that's why he wanted to plead the fifth, because if he perjing himself here, that wouldn't be included in a pardon. But now they're holding him in contempt because they say you still have to answer questions. What do you think about all that?

The argument is that he does not have, that he must answer questions because he received a blanket pardon. Therefore, he's in no jeopardy for his prior actions. Any lawyer worth his salt is going to say they're trying to trap you here. They're trying to catch you in an error so they can prosecute you. So I understand why he's pleading the fifth. The argument that the... The Rand Paul and other folks will make is the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply to here because there's nothing for you to incriminate yourself on previously because you have a blanket pardon. I don't know what the legal outcome will be from that reality if they try to hold him in contempt and prosecute him. But the bottom line is Anthony Fauci is an old retiree at this point. The issue here is more of frustration than, hey, this is a ongoing threat that needs to be dealt with. And it's just sad for our country that the pandemic was not handled better, that it was folks didn't know. the truth sooner. And still, there's a sort of a fog around it. We still don't really know, hey, where's this thing come from? We have ideas and thoughts and some conspiracies, but it was not a great set of years. We all know that. And Anthony Fauci certainly, not fame, but infamy is how he will live out the rest of his days. You know, you say that, but I still wonder if half the country will defend him. The Democrats and a lot of those in the press, I mean, there's still some Democrats at the hearing were pretty much defending him, you know? So when you say he lives in infamy, I mean, do you think history will judge him in the long run pretty poorly? Yeah, and I think the judgment of history will ultimately be he bungled the communication during COVID-19. Did he try to follow the science, as he said? Yes, but the narcissism that says, I am the science. That's not a good look, no matter. who you are and what party you're from. But this is just typical politics right now. If the right hates Anthony Fauci, the left feels an obligation to defend Anthony Fauci, I simply hope that Anthony Fauci goes away. You know, it's interesting, too. That was one of the major problems during the pandemic. Because, you know, in the beginning, I think most people are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. You didn't know everyone was doing their best. But it started to drag on for months to the point where wearing a mask was virtue signaling, right? It wasn't really about the science anymore. It was about I'm a good person because I'm wearing this mask. And the other side, they're bad. They want grandma to die. It kind of shows how.

the divisiveness in our politics and media, you know, it had a reaction there during the pandemic. It sure did. And the biggest challenge for me is, you know, I'm somebody that I'm not anti-vaccine. Vaccines have prevented a lot of preventable illnesses. I mean, they, we've kept data on them for a very, very long time. And the issue of a pandemic when a vaccine has spun up very quickly, I understand people who were concerned and said, I don't know if this thing's been appropriately tested like, you know, a smallpox vaccine or something that's been around for a long time. I get that. But. The biggest failure for me is that we did not weigh. things that were radically important, but not directly related to the virus itself. For example, the impact of masks on the development of children, the impact of social distancing and remote stuff for growing adults who are trying to learn how to interact with one another, we didn't put appropriate weight on the scales as to how important those things are, and we're living with the effects of... those choices as well. And that's on Anthony Fauci to say, hey, as we were kind of making decisions, as we were advising the president, we probably didn't put the right weights on the scales. We put some, and we got the outcome that we did, and we did make it through. But, man, it was rough. Yeah, that's a really good point. I remember saying that at the time. You know, if you're looking in the Dr. Anthony Fauci's of the world, we're looking at it purely from an epidemiological, if I could say that word, a standpoint, you know, from a disease standpoint. But we didn't look at it from an economic standpoint or a social standpoint or a political standpoint. And you have to look at it through all those things, right? Yeah, and I think if we're looking at it from a medical standpoint, you must include the developmental harms to children. Right. That is not simply an economic or social. That is a developmental harm that children face, and that we now know is quite real. We did not fully appreciate it or maybe consider it at the time. But that's the job of medical experts, is to have the expertise to consider the things that lay politicians are not figuring out, that they don't know, and to advise them appropriately. And I think my family was blessed because we were in Tennessee at the time. We were in a homeschool community that was, you know, we're going to do what we can to.

meet as regularly as we can to have contact where a lot of the rest of the country was not. And so my kids, they weren't developmentally stunted. But there were scads of folks in places like New York where you had all these children that were masked up and remote. And that was just devastating to them and their development. Speaking with Cameron Smith, he is a columnist for the Tennessean. I do want to kind of talk about a different subject here real quick. I saw you post about it on X. So I have one question for you. Should we bring government run and owned grocery stores to Tennessee? Should we copy New York and put some of those in Nashville, maybe Chattanooga? What do you think about this? So if I were a socialist, the one thing that I would tell my fellow socialist was, guys, we can't have bread lines. Like Soviet breadlines. That's really bad. We can't do that again. And Zohran Mamdani is like, hold my beer. Here is our socialist grocery. And I'm like, guys, do you all just remember Tucker Carlson going over to Russia and talking about how awesome their government groceries were that had like nothing in them? I mean, this is just ridiculous. And I... I am so glad right now. When I look at the midterms and I look at the map and I look at the different elections, President Trump is so far underwater, he's drowning. The winds are against Republicans. But then we have Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York. fighting as desperately as he can to make sure Republicans stay in office because he's an actual socialist advancing actual socialist policies and Democrats are like, yeah, that's our guy. So I hope he keeps, I hope he just calls it a breadline grocery. Because if he continues down this road, Republicans are not only going to hold the Senate, but they're going to have a fighting chance at the House because he's such a high-profile Democrat. If I were Republicans right now, and I'm their campaign manager, the one thing that I would tell them is, above all, point to that guy and say, if you decide you don't like Trump, you don't like the way that he's handled Iran, you don't like the economy, whatever. You're going to like it a lot less under the leadership of that guy. And you might want to just kind of stick with us until you can figure out something better because he is far and away the best campaign ad Republicans have right now. Oh, I would agree with that completely. I mean, all you have to do is play part of his little speech where he said, I want to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, but I can't, right? I mean, this guy really is a radical socialist. We should believe him when he calls himself a socialist. Yes, and he actually makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look kind of reasonable, which should tell you something. Right. And that to me is what's happening in New York right now with the rise of socialism. I have a column that's coming out that you guys got to check out. The argument that I'm making is a little bit different about our national debt. It's that socialism in America is going to take a path straight through our national debt.

And if you don't think national debt's a problem, like you're fine, like he's drunk, telling you, when we start to run out at the Highway Trust Fund, when Social Security checks get cut, they're going to blame the capitalist. They're going to blame corporate greed. And then socialism, which hasn't worked anywhere ever. is going to get a much more significant foothold than it already has. So those of you conservatives who've decided that we can spend like we're drunk, you need to think again if you don't want to be a socialist. Send me that column in you. When you end up getting that out there, because I definitely want to read that because I think you're exactly right. I mean, we see it now. We see the cost of housing and health care, and they blame the capitalist, but it's really big government policies that created those things. But now it's all expensive, so they blame the capitalists in the capitalist system. Yeah, I mean, March got it. You know, there's a, there's a road from capitalism to surfdom. and socialism and ultimately communism and and it's predictable and we are we are in the stage where we've come democratic socialist we don't want to admit it but we're democratic socialist and the way this we spend our social safety nets all that sort of stuff and then when everything hits the fan um which you could and they have bubble popping for example it hits the fan It is the corporate greed. It is the capitalist that have caused all the pain. Government will save you. And boom. We are a European-style socialist democracy. Cameron Smith, he's a columnist for the Tennessean. Read all this stuff. The latest column at Tennessean.com. Cameron, appreciate it. As always, we'll talk to you again next week. Thank you, Abby. All right, there you go. Unfortunately, I think he is exactly right on what he said there. Maybe talk more about that coming up next. We also have some breaking news on the economy as well. So we'll get to that here on Yefee Live.