pandemic. steve: except the devastation wasn't inflicted by the pandemic but inflicted by the government starting with the cdc which catastrophically bungled testing so it was impossible to contain the virus here in the way the place like south korea and hong kong did. never forget how the media's precious cdc failed us about one month after germany developed their tests, the cdc finally built hours except it did not work and had to be recalled. precious weeks went by and university labs in the private sector were begging to make a test and the fda said no. finally, at the end of february only after president trump intervened with the red tape was swept away. that vital moment when it might still impossible to contain america's outbreak the cdc arrogance and incompetence were fateful. having allowed the virus to spread uncontrolled for months they then moved to the next disastrous blunder. instead of designing a strategy for the specific characteristics of this virus, clearly known by the early as last january that the virus was highly contagious, high level of a sum to medics bread and overwhelmingly caused a problem for the elderly our public health bureaucrats starting in california with santa clara county sara cody dusted down a playbook developed in the wake of 911 for a bioterrorism attack effecting everyone equally. they pushed government to seat unprecedented emergency powers, to lock everyone down, not just a small proportionate serious risk but business is closed, schools close, churches closed and they told them when we could leave our homes, play sports, go to the park, go to our own family members bedsides and hospitals and their funerals and here we are not 15 days to flattened the curve later but one year later and they are still infecting their lockdowns on us. tens of millions of jobs lost, hundreds of thousands of businesses closed, lives and dreams destroyed thanks to their lockdowns, families torn apart by mental illness, suicide, drug abuse, dusting violence, child abuse thanks to their lockdowns and it didn't even work on its own terms. we now have the data courtesy of stanford medical professor michael leavitt who crunched the numbers from the cdc and the human mortality database. the best measure is age-adjusted excess deaths. the extra deaths caused by the pandemic taking account of the age of the population. here are states in america and countries on the world ranked from the worst on the left to the best on the right. if lockdowns worked the places with the strictest ones would all be on the right but here is the actual data. there is no correlation at all. now let's put into places which did not have strict lockdowns, places like florida and sweden showing they are in yellow. lockdowns made practically no difference to the pandemic toll but they inflicted a massive toll on our society and economy. one we will be paying for decades. we were among the first to warn about this at the time. last march one year ago, you know that famous phrase the cure is worse than the disease? that is exactly the territory we are hurtling towards. we laid out an alternative, protect the vulnerable, focused testing and ppp on the elderly, keep them safe but allow healthy americans to live normally and we were attacked for putting lives at risk but guess who now admits we were right? unbelievably the wretched cdc. look at the guidance they published this week. they say vaccinated people should continue to wear masks and social distance in public places presumably because they think that even vaccinated people could still spread the virus but despite this they say that vaccinated people can see on vaccinated people with no masks and no social distancing if they are at low risk. that is most people. by the cdc's own admission, anyone could have gotten close to anyone else at low risk for the past year but instead we had one year of utter madness, unscientific and in direct contradiction of the data. the cdc, anthony fauci and the idiots in the media recklessly pushing misinformation that terrified americans into thinking that getting infected was a guaranteed death sentence. they condemned trump when his disruptive business like action gave us the single thing that would actually end of the pandemic in the historic vaccine achievements of warp speed and they bond over biden with all the good news he touts is actually thanks to trump and biden's own response, judging from that address to the nation the other night, is a rambling incoherent mess. no surprise there. if you are listening to anthony fauci who says maybe it is summer before we get back to normal or maybe christmas and maybe next year. more likely never. they love the power and they love the control over our lives and they love being the center of attention. no, we must not let them turn this into a permanent pandemic and never ending lockdown. we need a clear endpoint. declare the b-day victory over the virus and that should be when every american over the age of 65 has had the chance to be vaccinated and at that point all restrictions must end. as we mourn the dead and pick up the pieces of a devastating year let's be clear, all this pain and suffering was not caused by a natural disaster like a hurricane or earthquake but the cruel counterproductive lockdown strategy and maybe even the pandemic itself as you will see in a moment was a man-made disaster or more precisely, a government may disaster in more precisely still, a disaster made by the very people in our government who were supposed to protect us. the people running our public health bureau after millions are dead, economic devastation, social destruction, we need honesty and accountability, not to point fingers or to cast blame but to make sure that this never happens again. follow us at steve hilton x and share this message when we posted. joining me now, author of firebrand, florida congressman matt gaetz and fox news contributor tammy bruce. matt, it seems to me that there is zero interest actually in looking back on the past year and evaluating the government response and the cost and the benefits and having a proper investigation and everyone wants to just ignore what they did and nancy pelosi has this 911 style of education into what happened on junior asics and johnny think the least we could do is look into whether the lockdown strategy was effective? >> in conducting that inquiry, steve, we need to rely on the data as you have done one the best analyses i've seen of the impact of the virus versus the lockdowns was in revolver news where they talked about the consequence in terms of life years. in that analysis we see this virus that china unleashed on the world and then china is a benefiting greatly from the unilateral disarmament of the american economy in places like new york and california. i'm glad florida was the ultimate example and when i talked with governor ron desantis he will lamented that the problems that the cdc and anthony fauci really erode the trust that exists between the people in any public health officials. think about it, any relationship that you are in someone is constantly changing the rules you trust them less and you see anthony fauci and the cdc time and again moving the goalpost and the american people are fed up with it. doctor anthony fauci reminds me of every bad weatherman. frequently wrong but never in doubt. steve: tammy, this lack of any interest in pursuing accountability, given the momentous consequences of these decisions and it's all fine to say right at the beginning no one knew what was happening and so on but these mistakes went on all through the year and when are the public officials who made them going to be held accountable? >> well, as we have seen even with the russian dossier hoax never, unless we take control when it comes to a course elections and sending messages to both california and new york are doing because both this stars of the democratic party knew so man cuomo for a variety of reasons are in trouble but i would say also due to your great reporting and other news that we had is that in fact we did know that this existed, as you noted even in your monologue. we did know what was happening at the wuhan lab and we knew what was being developed and there is anthony fauci, the man supposed to be in charge of this particular issue, infectious diseases for decades the expert, the man who would know and yet that department, the cdc were unprepared, even —- this was not a surprise. it could not have been. we have seen it something like it over the years, sars et cetera and we knew this was possible and being prepared is at least one thing we thought our tax dollars were paid for and the man who would oversee it all, completely choked and now his relevance remains ironically and grotesquely, the money, the million-dollar prizes, the magazine covers relies on the pandemic remaining rate of what would anthony fauci do if there was no pandemic? i think it is like an addiction. he began to like the attention and the politicians love the attention and this is what we have to think about but when it comes to punishment and the honesty about what is happened here, voters will have to do that and we will have to get another president who is not afraid of the swamp and will want the truth. steve: that's right. biden promoted anthony fauci and i just want your quick comment on one part of what tammy just said and we will pick it up with morgan ortagus who is at the state department but the role of the wuhan institute and more significantly, i think, the role of our own government potentially in funding the dangerous risky research, doctor anthony fauci finding that research and i know you've been active on that issue as well, matt gaetz. >> yes, i wrote a letter to the president asking him to pull funding from the wuhan institute of virology. he did and then the mainstream media went crazy and they said that this was harming the front-line researchers and scientists that were finding the next round of cures and since that time we've learned more and more but the virus is very unlikely to have jumped from a [inaudible] and way more likely to come out of the bat virus lab that was in wuhan where the outbreak occurred and that is so obvious i can't even believe i have to say it out loud but tammy is right and morgan will illuminate this and just moments but we cannot get trump with a deep state at the fbi or deferment of justice or the state department that my gosh, it turns out the most power-hungry people in our government were working at the cdc and tammy is right. there is a political realignment going on right now in our country but the number one question isn't even taxes or spending but the number one question is freedom, will you support the right of a family to earn a living, send their kids to school and live as prosperous americans or do we all have to accept this new state where we are lockdown like chinese leakers. steve: well put. that is what is driving this. >> the answer is no to that. steve: that is what is driving this rage against gavin newsom during the recall. great to see you both. we will see you later on in the show but as mentioned it is not just for the destructive risk response that we need to hold government accountable but as we laid out it is looking increasingly like our government is responsible at least in part for the virus itself and we have new information to bring you this week in our pandemic origins investigation. this support in politico went into more detail that we've seen before on a crucial part of the story. it was written by josh rogan, who first reported on the fact that in 2018 u.s. diplomat visited the wuhan institute and sent cables back to the state department warning about the labs and safety weaknesses. when the people who wrote those cables told him quote, i have to admit i thought it would be may be of sars like outbreak if i knew it would turn out to be the greatest pandemic in human history i would've made a bigger stink about it. former secretary of state mike pompeo said this,. >> we know with near certainty that this came from wuhan and there is substantial evidence of what was taking place inside that laboratory and there were certain facts that made it strongly indicated that this came out of that laboratory through what was likely an accidental leak. steve: when we first reported on this, the lab leak hypothesis with the chinese regime is desperately trying to discredit was dismissed as a conspiracy theory but in the past few weeks especially as people have seen how the who's so-called investigation was basically part of beijing's cover up the lab leak idea is becoming the mainstream consensus. that is the first part of the story but the second part is that even more troubling because it involves our own government and the question is what where they're working on in the wuhan lab and why? the evidence we have assembled and shown you over the past few weeks points to a frightening possibility that the virus that leaked was part of the function research project funded by her own government, by doctor anthony fauci niaid part of the nih. we contacted one of the worldly experts doctor richard e breit at rutgers university and told us categorically that the projects renewal in 2019 represented functional research of concern and his words, should have been flagged for review. it's hard to imagine a more serious question, not just for america but for the whole world and still we have no response from the nih, it's boss or anthony fauci itself. he's all over the media where there's a chance to bask in the uncritical adoration of fawning anthony fauci fan boys and girls like rachel maddow this week but when his questions about the risky virus research that an independent and world-renowned expert has told us was cause for concern nothing. you who report is expected this coming week and we will be watching to see how seriously they take what looks like the most likely origin of this pandemic, risky research commission and funded by our own government. joining the now former state department spokesperson morgan ortagus. morgan, great to see you again. it has been a while. i just want to —- >> thank you for having me back. steve: just comment on the safety issues around the lab and the confidence with which your former boss, former secretary of state pompeo was speaking then about the idea that the virus leaked from the lab? what can you add to that from your perspective having been inside the state department? >> so, secretary pompeo wrote about this in the maastricht journal and we learned that one of the safety directors at the lab, at the wuhan virology institute talks about his concern and he was in charge of the level for lab and talked about his concern of the lack of proper procedures and protocols and if you look at the cables that josh rogan wrote about mike pompeo wrote about them in the journal and part of what the state department diplomats do, part of their job is to right back and assess and say we have u.s. government funding going into this lab and we are concerned about a number of safety problems. that is a point so the position we are now is what you are doing, steve, which is asking questions. we had government funding into these labs and because we know that the chinese are never going to seriously give the world access. it's a joke if you think they ever will pray they should any of the moral response ability and they should but because they never will we have to note do we have, as the u.s. government, do any of the entities of the u.s. government nih whom ever have an ability to know what was going on in that lab and to maybe discover the origins of the virus and i'm doubtful that we ever will unfortunately and we don't know if it was the lab and we don't know if it was the chinese septal is maybe it came from poison food and the chinese have told us that he must from the u.s. army and they've also talked about coming from bats and others details but we don't know and that's because they had destroyed reportedly destroyed the evidence and refused to allow access to independent estimators to determine the cause of this. what happens in the future? we will never be able to crucially solve for future pandemics and to understand the words and discipline until the chinese are transparent and forthcoming but all they do is stymie these investigators and keep saint look, frozen foods, look at the bats but don't look at the labs. steve: yes, actually there's a growing chorus of around the world of people saying we just don't believe a world word about the chinese are saying here but the part i'm interested in is the state department has been active and that's helpful for all of us to understand but what about the health bureaucracy side of this and we just don't hear anything and there is no pressure on the nih and doctor anthony fauci's in the part from seems to us but how do we get that ball rolling so we can see what it was exactly that we were funding, not just the lab but what was the work we were funding and could have led to this pandemic? >> steve, i think doing the right thing and responsible members of the media need to be asking these questions. listen, if we have american taxpayer money going into these labs around the world then we need to have as many answers as possible. on the positive side we have members of the cdc that are in u.s. embassies around the world but keep in mind that one year ago we are in march and one year ago secretary pompeo and i were on a television around the world talking to her counterparts publicly and in private meetings saying exactly what the world is starting to ask and discover one year later. we certainly took a lot of grief for that. look at the australians. remember it was one year ago that the australians simply said we need an independent investigation because the chinese aren't lending them in and when they did that china basically tried to start a trade war with the australians because how dare you ask questions, how dare you challenge this narrative that we spun to the planet. steve: great point. that australia excites example i've cited that before as well be it that's a powerful circumstantial evidence that they are trying to cover something up. morgan, all we have time for tonight. hope to see you soon. >> yes, thank you for having me back. steve: coming up, when donald trump was president the democrats and their media servants never stopped calling to invoke the 21st amendment ♪ ♪ the chevy silverado trail boss. when you have a two-inch lift. when you have goodyear duratrac tires. when you have rancho shocks and an integrated dual exhaust. when you have all that, the last thing you'll need... is a road. the chevy silverado trail boss. ready to off-road, right from the factory. this is a tempur-pedic mattress. and its mission is to give you truly transformative sleep. so, no more tossing and turning... or trouble falling asleep. because only tempur-pedic uses proprietary tempur® material that continuously adapts and responds to your body, to relieve pressure... so you get deep, uninterrupted sleep. all night. every night. during the tempur-pedic luxe event, get your best sleep, and save $300 on our most premium mattresses. learn more at tempurpedic.com it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, and save $300 on our most premium mattresses. jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? 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