Hour 3 of NMN, Brian Wilson + Fauci

Wednesdays with Wilson. One of my favorite times of the week. Brian Wilson joining us. Hello, Brian. How are you? It's just one of your favorite times? I would think this would be like the highlight of your week, right? I'm sorry, Brian, but, you know, Friday at like 855, that's really my favorite time. By the way, real quick, I don't know if you heard my conversation with Jack Johnson or the discussion that followed. about Chicago, but I made some snide comments about Chicago. And apparently, 9835, I have, Brian, I have offended the delicate sensibilities of 9835. You ready? On the text line. Okay. Yeah. And idiots like you are the source of those rumors. Rumors. about Chicago, okay? So I got that, but then I got a note from Chicago, because, you know, people hear me on like Red Eye or whatever, and so they listen to the local show here. So from Chicago, he says, oh, 994, and he says, hey, it's Michael in Chicago. My wife and I were in Franklin last week looking to come back. He says, we lived there here for 10 years. He says, I grew up here in Chicago, wanted to come back, but now it is time to leave again. It's a great city, but you never know where major trouble is going to pop up. He says that you never know what's going to happen in Chicago. And, you know, you talk to people from Chicago, they'll tell you that there's a lot of stuff that happens. And oftentimes it's not good. One guy telling me, oh, you're just making up a whole bunch of rumors about Chicago. Literally, I'm hearing from a guy in Chicago who says, I live in Chicago, then Franklin, move back to Chicago. Now we're coming back to Tennessee because Chicago just is not our cup of tea. So anyway, there we go. I sort of get the impression that Chicago is very much like D.C. was before they cleaned it up. I mean, in D.C., in the downtown area, what we call the monumental core of the city, you would be okay, you know, if you stayed, you know, because there's a lot of park police and there's, you, you would seem fairly safe. But if you got off a couple of blocks. it took a wrong turn here that you didn't you know and you got a little lost you could find yourself in pretty rough neighborhoods in dc pretty quickly and and i think that's i think that's sort of what's going on as well in chicago there are you know There are places where I think you'll be pretty safe. But if you make a wrong turn, the next thing you know, you're in trouble. It's a rough town. And it's interesting that the roughest towns are the ones that have the strictest gun laws. Odd how that works out. Isn't it, Brian? It's funny how that always works out, you know. All right. Let's talk about Donald Trump. So he and John Thune in the Senate, everybody's going back and forth.

I can't believe with so much work that needs to be done, i.e. the SAVE Act, they've decided to go on August recess. Yeah. You know, it's hard to tell a senator who's running for re-election. Yeah, you're not going to be able to go out there and run for re-election. And remember, a third of the Senate is always up for re-election every two years. And you've got people like Susan Collins, you know, as much as we cuss Susan Collins as being a rhino because she has an R after her name, it helps us control the body. And so we need to protect Susan Collins in order to protect the Republican control of the Senate. And so, you know, she needs to get out there. I don't know. It is maddening. It's maddening that we can't get this SAVE Act passed. And what I'm trying to figure out is, you know, who is it on the Republican side that's absolutely standing in the way? And why aren't we going after those people? Well, I think those people are people like Susan Collins of Maine, for one. Lisa Murkowski. Lisa Murkowski. Thom Tillis. Yeah. And where the hell is Mitch McConnell? Who knows? We don't know. Isn't he out of the hospital? I've, like, lost interest in the story. I think he's out of the hospital, but he's still going through rehab. And the governor of Kentucky, who's a Democrat, he's poking the bear. Excuse me. Where is Mitch McConnell? Well, where is Senator? Of course, you know, he wants to point out that. He's incapacitated. It's to his advantage politically to do that. But, but, you know, again, where is Mitch McConnell on this issue of the SAFE Act? I don't know. But when you hear John Thune say he doesn't have the votes, that means even under this process where you shove the SAVE Act into the budget matter and you just need 50 votes instead of the regular 60 votes, he says he doesn't have 50 votes. No, and Mitch McConnell has been against the SAVE Act. So I, but he hears the. deal number one on the Mitch McConnell thing then we'll move on but all Mitch has to do is give like an interview and he hasn't done that so the I think there's a lot of people that are wondering okay so is he mentally incapacitated did he have a stroke and he's not able to speak think whatever so there's some legit concerns oh no I agree I think the people of Kentucky I don't know, call me old-fashioned. I think people of Kentucky ought to know whether or not they have a senator who's capable of conducting the work of a senator. Yep, no, you're right. And, you know, people say, I have talked to him on the phone and he sounds great and he's sharp as attack. Well, okay, maybe that's true. Excuse me, just a second.

Maybe that's true, but here's the thing. We heard that about Joe Biden too, you know. And so we know that turned out not to be. I think we have an obligation to tell us, you know, what's going on with them? I do. Even if it's not really to our benefit, the people of Kentucky have the right to know, is their senator, you know, able to be a senator? One of the interesting things about what's going on right now is that... You do have, of course, with the conversation about the SAVE Act, you also have the conversation about the filibuster and nuking the filibuster. Interesting that John Fetterman, who Democrat, has come out now and says that he is supporting the filibuster. He's in support of keeping the filibuster in place. And here's what I'm going to say this again, and everybody will say I'm crazy, but I don't think I am. I think I'm spot on with this. There are a great number of senators on both sides of the equation, both Democrat and Republican, who support the filibuster and the concept of the filibuster and would be against getting rid of the filibuster. He doesn't have the votes. He doesn't have 51 votes to change the filibuster if he wanted to. It doesn't have 50 votes and you need 50 plus the vice president. He doesn't have it. and so as well then we hear people say well okay then you know the democrats if they get to control of the body you know they're going to do it they don't have it either i don't think uh and and and the betterment coming out and putting this on the record sort of demonstrates that the filibuster i think is here to stay And again, the senators understand, even though they want to keep the filibuster in place, they're not anxious to be put on record about it. Right. Because they know how unpopular it is. So I don't know. I don't know if you were shocked. It wasn't as shock to me, though, Brian, that Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Messino is stepping down. I wonder if we need to put air quotes around stepping down or has she been shown the door? No, she's been shown the door, and apparently they're trying to make it friendly. She'll be here through, you know, middle of August to answer any questions and make sure that there's a smooth... No, she's packed her bags, and she is out the door. And this is a perfect example of two things. Number one, the old adage that woke is broke. Yes, again, another indication that when she tried to do this big woke rebrand, it didn't go well. and she ended up having to cancel the whole thing. And it just, it really irritated the base of people who go. And I think somewhere around 20% of their business just disappeared overnight after this whole big controversy with the Cracker Barrel CEO. Her name was Julie Felds, I think it was. All right. So, you know, we got all that. Got a new guy coming in. But the other thing it teaches us is, And how many times do we need to remind people of this? If something ain't broke, don't fix it.

You know what I'm saying? New manager? Oh, we got new management coming in. They got to fix something because, you know, it's because I'm a new manager, I've got to put my fingerprints all over something, whether it needs to be changed or not. There was a lot good about what was going on with Cracker Barrel. But when she came in, she said, well, we have to put our fingerprints on it. And when she did, she found out very quickly, people don't like change sometimes. Kind of sounds, Brian, like in... radio or TV when a new manager comes in. Oh, yeah. I would, hmm, hmm. I'll take the fifth on that one. No, no, but it's true. I think, and everybody's better. And no matter what business and you get a new boss in and guess what they do? Well, they got to do something, you know. They got to put their fingerprint. They got to put their imprint on it. Yeah. The best, you know, there was a period of time when I worked in a newsroom and over a course of, I think it was 12 years. I had nine different news directors. and you know and they came and they went and i got along with about you know almost all of them i got along pretty well uh but you know you never knew and every single you know the best ones were the one who came in and said you know look around here There's a lot going on here that's right. I'm not going to mess that up. I'm going to touch very lightly. Yeah. And those were the best managers, those who kept the very light touch and said, you know, we're not going to just blow things up just for the sake of blowing them up. I mean, the joke was, well, we've got a new news director. I guess we'll have to repaint the set now. Every news director would come in and hate the colors of the set. And so you had to paint them. And we went through purple sets and we went. through brown sets and we went through beige sets and we went through red white and blue sets. We had all kinds of sets. We had crystal sets at one point because every news director came in had to change the set somehow. So, you know, that's just the way it is. And I think it is that way in a lot of business. It is. I've never, I didn't know about you, Brian. I've never worked and then I'm going to move on, but I've never worked in anything other than radio. But from what I understand, it's the same thing in like journalism it obviously as you just said television as well so i mean it's probably in all businesses uh Anthony Fauci is going in front of um it really it's it's he's going in front of a senate committee but really he's going in front of ran paul yeah and this is going to be an interesting showdown and uh and he you know ran paul you know i remember back during cove everybody i said oh Rand Paul's just being a crank you know he's just being ran paul that's just the way he is he's just a cranky old man and he doesn't know what he's talking about well you know what

We owe him a big apology because he knew exactly what he was talking about. And by releasing the diaries of Anthony Fauci who, you know, remember he's the voice of science. Yes. Yeah, he represents science. Yeah, well, yeah, I've got that right here. I represent science. You got that right there on a button. Yeah, he represents all science. And now we're finding out that the things he was writing in his private diary were varying the things that he was willing to admit to his diary. were very different than the things that he was telling the American people at the time. Yep. And Rand Paul has been proven right on this one, and we owe him a debt of thanks for sticking it out, and it's going to be a very interesting hearing today on Capitol. Well, and one of the things, you know, I, there's two parts to... the diaries of Anthony Fauci, right? There is the, oh, the world is talking about me. They want me on dancing with the stars. I got to speak to Barbara Streisand, right? There's a lot of folks that are, you know, focused on that. But, you know, to me, it's like when he wrote that the Wuhan wet market was an amplifier of the virus, not the origin, but it continued that narrative for a long time. We all knew that it came from the lab. I mean, there's a lot of things. He was worried about his grant maybe funding the gain of function of research that COVID came from. So that's why he really hit the wet market story hard. So I guess the question is, and there's some people that are saying, and I've got some audio on this in the next hour, but, you know, the big question is ultimately going to be if he lies, if he, because he's going to be under oath and if he commits perjury. Is he covered by the Biden auto pen pardon? There are some people, James Comer, has come out and said, no, he will not be protected. Others have come out. Analysts have said, no, if he lies under oath, then that is not covered by Biden's auto pen. I mean, I'll let... the legal experts, you know, battle that one out. But I don't know. What do you think? I think you can't lie to Congress under oath no matter what. And I don't think that would be covered. I mean, you know, lying to Congress under oath, actively lying to Congress on oath, I don't think that. I think he's got real problems here. And but I mean, is. Really, honestly, think about this. I mean, we now know, you know, that he knew that exactly what he was doing and knew exactly that what he had done would not take responsibility for it, kept claiming, oh, there was no gain of function research going on when he knew full well that there was. Yep. The man has got some, it's got to have some kind of legal, it would seem. You've got to be in some kind of legal danger from all of this. And I just don't see that developing under that protection he got from the pardon. So, I mean, there are legitimate questions here about all this. And is there any bigger story? I can't think of one. Think he's going to plead the fifth? I think he might. I wouldn't be surprised. Well, that would be a disappointment.

Yeah. Because everybody wants to see Anthony Fauci just get hammered by Rand Paul. I mean, there's a lot that he has said that, you know, obviously looking back, the lockdowns and how he was so proud that he convinced Gavin Newsom and de Blasio to lock down their cities and their states. He was very proud of that, even though we now know. what those lockdowns did to children. So, you know, I think one of the things that we look back at that, I think it's how lucky we were to have, you know, a governor who looked at it. Now, look, I mean, in the early going, yes, maybe everybody overreacted a little bit because we didn't really know exactly what we had and we were still trying to figure it out. And in an abundance of caution, maybe we overreacted in the early going. But our state figured it out really quickly. as these things go, and they loosened up the statewide requirements, and eventually, you know, Nashville had to follow suit because everybody else was, you know, loosening up their thing. And I think we took the right action. When you look back at it, we had it right, and it was all these nervous Nellies who overreacted that had it wrong. And, you know, if we were to have another something like this, another kind of virus that everybody became concerned of, I'm pretty sure we're going to handle it differently than we did last time because I think we made a lot of huge mistakes in the way that was all handled. Well, and Brian, you talk about the Nervous Nellies as we wrap this up. I mean, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, you talked about going back to Maryland for a time long after COVID and long after we were open here in Tennessee. And you were talking about how, my God, they're still, if I remember right, there was still in the midst of some restrictions and mask wearing. You could. You still had to have a mask everywhere you went. And you could not go to, even then, long after Tennessee restaurants and bars had reopened, you couldn't go to a restaurant. When I got there, I was shocked when I got there that it was still the case that you could not find. Restaurant for, I mean, it was months and months after we'd opened it up in Nashville. It was still closed in parts of Maryland right outside D.C. We're going to have a bit of a debate over Chicago. Is that right? Yeah, because Dwight, Illinois, has now checked in. And he says that I'm married into a White Sox family. And he says, my wife and I go to games on the south side and I hold my breath out of fear every single time. Wow. That's what I've heard. I've heard that Wrigley is on the nice side of town. Yeah. Rigley's on the north side. And the socks is on the south side. And the socks are on the south side. And, you know, that's why. That's why the Savannah bananas held their game at Wrigley and not the Sox Stadium. Well, you know, I don't know if you notice, but, you know, Obama's presidential library thing. The trash can? The big trash can. They had to make it out of that material because it's apparently maybe bulletproof.

I don't know if that's true, but I thought it would be a funny joke, but apparently not. Anyway. Oh, that was a joke. You know what? It could be bulletproof for all we know. I mean, look at the thing. Are people going to that, by the way? Like, has attendance been? I don't know. Whatever. Anyway, so I listen. Who do you believe when you, you know, when you find out those numbers, like? The Obama Library, whatever, would be releasing the numbers of the number, you know, the number of people. The same people that were counting COVID deaths. Yes, yes, yes, yes. 3,400 people visited the museum during its first two days. Because, you know, when they were counting COVID deaths, remember way back when Anthony Fauci's going to be testifying. So, you know, a guy would get into a motorcycle accident and die. But if he died with COVID, if he tested positive for COVID, they counted that as a death. That's what I mean by that. So, Anthony Fauci, I got to tell you, he is going to have a hard time today. And somebody, the haters were out in about this morning, Joan. One guy said, well, Madness if you would stop suggesting to Anthony Fauci that he, you know, plead the fifth. That's like, I like, he's really listening to me right now. You know what I mean? By the way, I love, we talked about this a little bit. Earlier, you know, President Trump, who does not like Anthony Fauci in any way, shape, or form, he posted Anthony Fauci's infamous first pitch. We talked about this in the 5 o'clock hour. And if you're watching on Super Talk TV, he posted a video of Anthony Fauci's first pitch. How ridiculous does he look for people listening on the radio? He is in the middle of Nationals Park, and he's wearing a mask. on the pitcher's mound with literally no one around him. That's how insane it got back then. Y'all remember the debates. It's almost like wearing the mask in the car when you're by yourself and the windows are up. We still see those people, Joan. Yes. We still see those people. And this first pitch was so bad. It was, he threw it to the right of the catcher. And it was so far to the right. that it almost hit the dugout and it was such a weak throw, actually, that it didn't even hit the chalk of the baseline. You know, I'm actually really impressed with the president here. He says Anthony Fauci told everyone he was a great basketball player, so I assumed he would be easily able to throw a ball to home plate. It turned out that he was a phony on that, just like he was a phony on everything else. He says he was a terrible athlete, and this is by far the worst throw I have ever seen in years of watching first pitches, President Donald J. Trump. And he's clearly right. He could have. There's actually some really great... videos of Donald Trump throwing out the first pitches at a lot of games over the years, going back to his TV days and whatnot. And he did the humble thing, and he didn't stitch it together for the purpose of the post. He just let it stand by itself. I've never seen Donald Trump throw out a first pitch. I know he was an athlete, though, wasn't he? I believe so. I think he played some sports. Didn't he play some sports? I think he did. Anyway, whatever. So...

Suffice to say, Anthony Fauci, not good at throwing a baseball and not good at his job. One of the things that... And I'm going to, I've got some video here as well, if I could get that. President Trump was talking about Anthony Fauci yesterday. He was on Fox and Friends talking about his thoughts on Anthony Fauci. And basically, one of the questions they asked, the president is, would you have fired Dr. Anthony Fauci if he knew how much of a crook Anthony Fauci was? Listen, you know, personally as a person, but. I didn't agree with what he was saying or what he was doing. And when Biden came in, he inherited him, and he gave him a tremendously high position. And then he gave him a pardon. He did indeed. And, you know, I think we all thought there was a lot of science behind what he was saying, and maybe not so much. But, Mr. President, if you would have known then what you know now, would you have fired him. Well, I would have fired him, but again, I didn't listen to him. So when he was with Biden, he was like the God. When he was with me, he wasn't even close, and I wasn't very close to him. I dealt with him very little. I didn't agree with many of the things he said. No, he wanted to close up everything. Look at all the states that remained open. Those states remained open. He wanted everything closed. And it just turned out that closing wasn't so good because, you know, it's very interesting. Some of the states that fared the worst in terms of the spread were actually closed. Okay, explain that. Nobody could explain that one. He did more damage than anybody else. They did a lot of damage in a lot of different ways. Yep, that is President Trump talking to Fox and Friends. One of the things, because, you know, Trump at the time. He was caught in this weird space because he's having to listen to Anthony Fauci. And Trump's not a scientist. He's a real estate developer. He does construction, that kind of thing. So President Trump did advocate for temporary guidelines to stay home. But after a few weeks, he began saying things like, the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. And he was absolutely right. Then you started seeing states like Florida, although I want to say that Georgia was first in reopening back up. I think Georgia was first. Florida, I think was second. But the bottom line is that Trump basically said, you know what, we're going to leave it up to the governors. And that is exactly what they did. So one of the big questions about today, and we talked about this yesterday as well, is the auto pen and the auto pen pardon from Joe Biden for Dr. Anthony Fauci. Now, one of the questions is if he perjures today in front of, you know, Rand Paul in the Senate, then can he go to prison?

Because they've got the diaries and they've got, you know, all of these, you know, questions for him where, for example, you know, they're going to ask him no doubt about the mask mandates where he said, we need to have mask mandates. We need to have mask mandates. Oh, look, they found an email that he was on where they basically said masking is not helping the situation. It's not preventing the COVID. Then why did we have to continue to wear the masks? I wonder if they're going to ask him about one of my biggest issues with Dr. Anthony Fauci was where you had all of these very incredibly respected scientists who were calling into question the lockdowns. And basically... backing up what Donald Trump said, which was the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself talking about the lockdowns. And, you know, we, if you've heard me talk about the Great Barrington Declaration before, there was a whole bunch of scientists really, really respected. And they started calling out the lockdowns and really, frankly, going against everything that Anthony Fauci was trying to sell. And Dr. Anthony Fauci systematically destroyed. each and every one of those scientists' reputations. And that was basically what Anthony Fauci would do, is if you had legitimate criticisms and concerns, he would shut you down. And everybody was afraid in the scientific community, everybody was afraid of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Now, the question is, If he lies today, if he perjures himself, if they compare, for example, again, if they compare what is in the diaries and what's in the emails to what he said to Congress before, and then they ask him about that, and they'll say, well, when were you lying? Why is there such inconsistencies? Can he be hit for perjury? So legal expert, John, you or Wu, Y-O-O, is that Wu? Y-O-O, I think that's you. Whatever. Anyway, he was on Fox News. I've interviewed the guy, and for whatever reason, I always shank his name. But anyway, he was on Fox News, and he says that, yes, Dr. Anthony Fauci can be criminally prosecuted if he commits perjury in front of Rand Paul. Listen. Expressed by well-known virologists go down and down. He's either lying then, or is he lying to his diary? Who is it? And tell us now. And you're... Right, Brian. He can't claim that the pardon would cover any of his answers now. You can only be pardoned for lying to Congress from before the pardon. If he commits a lie before Congress now, he'll be committing a federal crime and could be prosecuted. I mean, he's saying, you know, I didn't shut anybody down. I never shut any schools down. And then we find out in his diary, spoke with Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, convinced him, based on what I was saying publicly in my conversation, to shut down New York City schools. had a similar call with Ann O'Leary and Governor Gavin Newsom of California between our conversations and our TV appearances. He shut down the school. So what are you saying you had nothing to do with the shutdowns and in retrospect were totally unnecessary and kids were never in danger?

Look, he's obviously running from this. This is one of the greatest public policy disasters in the history of the American Republic, where experts like him overreacted to the virus, shut down the economy at cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, interfered with the everyday lives of every single American, and infringed on all of our individual freedoms. And so now, of course, he's trying to pretend he had nothing to do with it. But as you say, in the diary, he records pretty meticulously all these governors, mayors, Mayor de Blasio in New York, Gavin Newsom in California, urging them to shut down bars, restaurants, schools, and now he's pretending he didn't do that. So if you're a senator, you were saying, were you telling the truth in public when you said you had nothing to do with it? Did you lie your diary? What did you actually, what was actually true in your mind? Tell us the truth now. And if you lie, you're committing perjury and could go to jail for it. Yeah, we'll see what happens. John, you again on Fox News, a lot of people saying James Comer, another one, House Oversight, saying that if Anthony Fauci commits perjury, he's going down and he'll go to jail. Now, you know, Joan, I always say these things, and I know that you agree. that oftentimes these kinds of hearings, they're a dog and pony show. You get, you know, these folks that are up there and they get their pound of flesh, they get their five minutes to monologue, and then everybody goes along their merry way. And ultimately, nothing happens. So I want to do, Sam, if I could, let's do a Daily Dan poll. Do you believe? Did I do this yesterday? Do you believe that Anthony Fauci will go to jail? Did I do this yesterday? I think we may have, actually. I don't remember. Well, let's do it again. Let's do it again. You know, Joan, they say the mind is the first to go. I've heard that. For whatever reason, that keeps coming up today. I don't know why. Maybe because my mind is going. Anyway, 752 on Super Talk, 997 WTN. By the way, watch us on YouTube, if you would please. Watch us on YouTube, Facebook, 997WTN.com. You can listen to us anywhere. You can download the podcast after the show. You can watch us on YouTube after the show if you want my 5 o'clock hour. Joan, I believe, is always my best hour. It is sadly the least listened to because people are still sleeping. So what you can do is you can go back at your own leisure and go listen to the five o'clock hours. So lots of ways to catch Nashville's morning news during the day, during the actual broadcast. And we would really appreciate if you, what is it, Chris Hand says? smash the like button is i think what what the you said that was such confidence i did did well i think that's great hey you know what smash that like button if you would it sounds a little bit more pep need a little bit more hey smash the like button you know what can i just say it this way can you just say can i just say it this way i'd really appreciate if you if you liked it because i personally joan i need the the the reinforcement

Of the likes. That's what I need. Oh. For people that missed it, the old man here left his mic on when he was going to the bathroom. And that's what we all heard.