Tony's Diary Package — page 888

PRESS: MSNBC "Morning Joe" with Joe, Meka and Willie; NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt; NBC with Lester Holt for "kids"; Interview with Ed Young as part of "The Atlantic Festival"; Podcast with Alec Baldwin. Sept. 29, 2021 - Global - 232,600,000/4,800,000; USA - 43,200,000/691,500 Had a very tough and ridiculous interview with Hugh Hewitt. Hugh, who usually is a reasonable, albeit very conservative person, was extremely aggressive with me in an interview in which he kept insisting that people are not getting vaccinated because I am telling them to get vaccinated and strongly suggested that I step down and retire since I am the obstacle to people getting vaccinated. He quoted a survey saying that middle to right people want me to retire and are not getting vaccinated because I'm the messenger telling them to get vaccinated. Truly an incredible train of thought on his part. He said we need fresh faces telling people to get vaccinated and if we had fresh faces then people would get vaccinated. I countered by saying we do have fresh faces in the form of Rochelle Walensky and Vivek Murthy. And so does he consider that although all three of us are saying to get vaccinated including two new fresh faces that people are not getting vaccinated merely because I'm one of the three people telling them to get vaccinated?? I have never heard of a more distorted train of thought. This conversation triggered in me some serious thinking about several things including when I actually would want to retire from the untenable situation that I am in of having 10s of millions of people hate me because I stand for the truth. Also, this nonsense about conflating the discussion about gain of function with the lab lead theory is preposterous and totally distracting and draining of everyone's energy. Richard Ebright with his gain of function obsession is a total asshole who is pushing this theory because he "wants to be somebody". I am terribly disappointed with Jesse Bloom and David Relman for doing somewhat of the same thing. they have been pushing to stop any gain of function research for a long time and I believe that in some respects they are pushing for an even hoping that this was a lab leak , which the molecular analysis of the viruses that we used in the lab compared to the virus SARS-CoV-2 clearly indicate that it is molecularly impossible for the viruses under the auspices of the NIH grant to have been manipulated into or evolved into SARS-Cov-2. The opposition to me is part of the "big lie" - "Lock her up"; Trump won the election; January 6th was really a friendly visit to the Capitol; "the China virus" and Trump was correct, "Fire Fauci" since he was wrong all along and so let's discredit him, and so on. Quite frankly , I am finally coming to the realization that our democracy is truly threatened and that it is possible, even likely, that our democracy will crumble with the 2024 election. If trump wins , we are finished . If trump loses, his far right lunatics will likely try again to overthrow the election. And with the attempts to have state legislators (Republican) validate the electoral votes, I am really afraid that they might be successful. Having said all of this, there is no way that I am going to retire before this outbreak is under control.