June 4, 2021 • 32 mins
A recent surge of emails from a high ranking expert leads to a treasure trove of material for investigative journalists to explore.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
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old republic a sole fashion of fairness. He treats track
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Break three for something special. Fifth Hour with Ben Maller
(00:24):
starts right now in the air everywhere. We are back
at it again, another weekend in the Magic podcast Box.
He're good to have you hanging out. We'll have podcast
every single day. We do is eight days a week.
Today obviously the Friday podcast, but we have on Saturday
we will take a look at some random things that
(00:48):
pop up. Whatever is on the Saturday podcast and the
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west of the four oh five making his way down
east of the four oh five, David Gascon on the
fifth foul h. It's a nice little bag of fun
(01:13):
that we have over the weekend. And of course I
dip my hand into the deep end of the pool
and pull out guests that is unsuspecting to those that
listen to our show, do not pull the muscle here
patting yourself from the back. I will not. I will
not do that. I will not do I U. I
don't have any fan boys like you that do that
(01:33):
for me either. I do not. I do not have
fan boys. I have supporters. I have people that are
believers in the Mallard Militia cause and support what we
do here. But yeah, every Friday. Now. Last week we
had the big radio story, so we didn't have anyone
on because the big Clay Travis replacing Russia INMBOSS story
was a big, big deal in our world, so we
(01:53):
didn't end up putting anybody on. But this week the
big story. It's not a sports story, although guests on
will argue it is a sports it's it sampled our
occupation for quite a while. Yes, the world, we know
the music stopped in the world. We know there were
no no games, no games for you, no games for you.
(02:18):
The sporting world shutdown for a hundred and thirty four
days as a result of the COVID and the whole
world shut down, working from home and whatnot. So I
bring this up because BuzzFeed News, through a freedom of
information requests, they had to file a lawsuit here. They
(02:40):
tracked down not all but a large number thousands of
pages of email from Dr Fauci, the man running the
COVID nineteen crisis in America. And as you might imagine,
the reaction to these emails has been over the top,
split down party lines of some But I think this
(03:00):
is nothing, and there's other people who think, my god,
this is the smoking gun. And it's it's like a
jury trial where you put two people into a room
and you give them the same evidence and they look
at it differently. It's like my it's like my minor
investment into a MC stock. It is pretty volatile at
the moment. Fair to say, right is it up or down?
(03:22):
It's up right now? I don't know. It depends did
I short the market or did I find I don't know.
I see the problem is when to It's like being
a gambler. You gott know when to hold it and
you gotta know when to let it go. Yeah, And
that's the tough thing about the stock market. That's the
interesting thing about this story, though, is is when when
was information I guess discovered and what was it released
(03:45):
to the public, And then of course what happened between
I don't want to say enemy lines, but for all
intensive purposes. You're you're working with a foreign adversary. So
a lot of these things that are happening with the
coronavirus have been upening on foreign land. And you know,
BuzzFeed obviously looking into this heavily. It's uh, it's a
(04:08):
mountain of information. Yeah, it's a it's it's an interesting story.
I didn't get through a fraction of the emails. I
did look through some of them, but I read the
story that was on BuzzFeed News and and it's it's
it's like I used the analogy all the time. We
do this in sports, but in politics, it's a political term.
You have a public position and you have a private position.
(04:29):
And so with Dr Fauci, you know, the way you
read these emails, you could interpret them that he had
a public position that he was telling the American people,
and privately he thought this was a lot of stuff
he was saying was bullshit based on based on what
we were reading in some of those emails. That's that's
my takeaway from it. But let's talk to the one
of the people to put this story together, one of
(04:49):
the reporters at BuzzFeed News joining us. He's a up
and coming reporting star. You're gonna hear a lot from
this woman here over the next few years. Imagine. Natalie
Bentendorff is her name. She was one of the writers
there at BuzzFeed to put the story together and went
through all Dr Fauci's emails there. So, uh, Natalie, welcome,
(05:11):
thank you for joining us here on the fifth hour.
And in your opinion here, what was the most interesting
thing that you uncovered from these thousands of emails from
Dr Fauci. Yeah, so I think that the thing that
I took away was really what we see is the
content of these emails. Right. There's a lot of interpretations
(05:33):
as to what some of these emails mean, what this
Faucci Um, what he's thinking at the beginning of this pandemic,
where is it going? But if we're looking at the
actual content and his words, I think the thing that
struck me the most was really this email where you know,
an ABC reporters asking him early on of last year
in you know, what do you think the death toll
(05:55):
is going to be from COVID nineteen and he responds
um with the number that the report has given him,
which is five K, and says, you know what I
think that's way too high, um. And just reading that exchange,
you know, it's a short sentence in reply to the
reporter saying that he thinks that death told too high.
And we're here, right, we're well past five hundred thousand
(06:17):
deaths from COVID in this country. And I think it
really is a telling um thing about Fauci, which is
that you know, he's a human, right, he's the physician
who a lot of us have turned to in pandemic,
but he also didn't understand how much of a force
this virus was going to take our country by, um,
(06:37):
And so I think a lot of those emails actually
showcase that. Right from January until June, I mean, we
didn't know how long this thing was gonna last, even
Sauci didn't, and he didn't know how how many lives
it would claim, and it's a really devastating thing to see,
but it's very enlightening to see how much we've learned
from that point. So I think that's what I really
took away from a lot of these emails. Yeah, I
(07:00):
love the fact that they were like regular people, and
you mentioned in that were like emailing, and he was
writing back to like regular people. I think it's amazing
to me because you know, most people are like, I'm
just gonna lead that, why would I write back? But
he hes a number of times right and right back exactly. Yeah.
I mean he was revered as a celebrity. I mean
(07:21):
we all know, we were all laughing right about just
kind of the the fourth of nature that it became
with Sauccia's um, you know, creating all these this merchandise
right around him with his name everywhere and these touchy
sucks and saucy doughnuts and his face on T shirts. Um.
And it's so interesting seeing actually in these emails, UM,
(07:44):
how uncomfortable it was for him to actually see all
of that, like the same and kind of this these
people being obsessed with him, um, and revering him to
this state of you know, he's just regarded so highly. Um,
he's not super comfortable with that. I mean, science and
health is what he specializes in, and he it just
(08:05):
blew up so quickly. UM. So it's really interesting seeing
his responses to a lot of those. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.
And and also now it kind of walked me through
you're part of the team there that you're you're talking
about tons of email. I mean, this is a lot
to go through, Like what's the process like, like how
you know, how did you guys work your way through
(08:26):
tons of data? He is is an amazing Yeah, it's
really cool. I like sharing kind of the process behind
UM stories, Right, the story behind the story is really
fun to talk about because there's so much that goes
into especially putting out a story of this size. Now,
as we stayed in in the article, UM, what made
(08:47):
this possible was for your request, right, So that's the
Freedom of Information Act, and that actually allows us to
get documents from government agencies. Right, It's legal to put
in those requests and basically the government agency is supposed
to turn those over. Now, we sent these in obviously
to the National Institute of Helps UM, and we were
(09:09):
able to obtain um plus pages of these emails. And
this request was one that Jason put in. This was
actually probably UM starting in March and then you know
went into the summer. But the way that works is,
you know what we do to actually speed up the
process because obviously to get all of these emails is
(09:32):
a really long process. And sometimes what happens is, you know,
very often actually the government agency won't respond or they'll
just kind of say, hey, this is too much to
get back to you. And so BuzzFeed actually ended up
biling a lawsuit UM. And really all that does is
just speed up the process, right because they have to
get these We had documents to us a little bit
(09:54):
quicker UM, and so what we did is we asked
for all emails text sent and received by Dr Fauci
mentioning or referring to COVID nineteen coronavirus, and any and
all internal studies on COVID. So that was our specific request,
and we had to send in multiple UM to just
(10:15):
really keep expanding the time period. So that's really how
we got these documents. And then kind of the last
five months is what Jason and I have been working on,
which is the article itself of how do we really
write an article that is going to sum up what
these UM documents are saying? Right, so not all people
are going to see these documents and read all three thousand,
(10:37):
two hundred pages of these, but we want to pull
out what's the important parts of these and what are
the things that people really need to know? What are
we learning there's no crazy smoking guns, in here, Right,
it's really what we're seeing from a broader you know,
stepping back, what is Fauci's communication style and what were
some of the things of the points of discussion from
(10:59):
early on in the pants mix. So that was kind
of the process of how we got this thing out there. Yeah,
I mean, I'm sure you've seen the reaction here and
it's um some of these I mean it's been picked
apart some of the emails and and right not in Uh,
what is your take here on the the reaction As
everything in the country, it's divided on party lines, right,
(11:19):
people have strong opinions on each side. Something this makes
Dr Facci, as you said, look more human. Other people
think that we know, wait a minute, he was saying
one thing privately and there was something else publicly. So right, right, Yeah,
it's it's a good thing you discussed. And something you
know that we did at BuzzFeed is we said, you
know what, it's important for us to release all of
(11:41):
these documents. And that's something that differs from the article
that the Washington Post wrote. Right, they obtained um eight
hundred pages of these emails, and we had, you know,
several thousand of them, and we actually released all of
them instead of kind of summing them up and releasing
a few of the ones that we mentioned like the
post did. Obviously, what comes with that is people create
(12:03):
their own interpretations of what these emails say, right, without
actually maybe reading all of the pages or getting all
of the contact. And so that's the thing that comes
along with releasing this entire batch to the public, for
them to really just do what they will with them. UM.
And so you know, the things that we've heard a
lot about UM and seen response wise is a lot
(12:26):
of stuff about the email where Fauci is referring to
masks um not really being effective, right, and this is
in back in February UM, and so people have really
grabbed onto that and said, you know, this is proof
that you know this masks are helping or fout she
knew and kind of these very um like making these
(12:49):
statements that that's you know, generalizing um what thought she
was thinking about that? But to be frank, I think
that that shows what I was stating earlier, which is
that we've really grown scientifically of what we know about
this virus, and it's just showing that you know, Facci
doesn't know everything about this virus. No physician in the
world knows everything about um COVID nineteen and how it
(13:09):
overtakes the human body and what works and what didn't.
And this was you know, before the who actually declared
COVID nineteen pandemic. We did not know at this time
that people needed to wear masks for this airborne virus.
So that's an example of something that you know, people
are grasping onto us this could mean this, or this
could mean that. But I think as a as a
(13:31):
journalist's important for us, and when we were reading these
emails is you know, it's not something that we can
do where we can read these emails and actually interpret
and guess you know what Sauchie meant? Well, what was
STOUCHI like really saying like, let's read between the line.
You can't do that as a journalist when you're reading
these documents. You have to take it up face value,
and then you have to look at the bigger picture.
(13:53):
And so I think that's what gets really dangerous is
when people start making these assumptions and bigger interpretations onto
what found she could have meant, or what this means,
when it's really going beyond the words on the page. Yeah,
and then I saw his quote the other day here
he said he did say his emails he thought were
taken out of context there and he kind of like dismissed.
(14:16):
The reaction was just kind of like what you're saying, right,
But it really is that's like, that's like a jury
trial right now. I mean, that's one of the things
about the court system. You know, people look at the
evidence and they have different opinions on the evidence, and
so that's that's where we are right now. Uh, totally
with this. And I also saw I saw the White
House they said they did not want to comment. What
(14:36):
was your reaction to that they wouldn't comment on your story? Yeah,
I mean I think that there's you know, one of
the big things that we had in our article was
addressing the political pressure right that fell onto Sauci. And
obviously that expands because now we're in a different um
administration that's in the White House than was when we
were actually filing these Foyer requests and reading through these documents, UM,
(15:01):
and so it's really interesting to see the responses. I
don't see any of these kind of you know, UM
Fauci didn't comment on our story. Also, UM for the record,
and you know, I don't see that necessarily as a
good or bad thing when I'm reporting on this stuff, right,
So my job, um, and Jason's job is really to
(15:21):
obtain these documents and see, you know, whoever we are
mentioning or getting in touch with as a source for
the article is to just see, you know, reach out
to them, Hey, we have your name in here. You know,
we wanted to know if you'd like to comment, would
you like to add anything? Um? And obviously the White
House is mentioned in their fauci has mentioned in there.
(15:42):
Other people who have written emails to Faucier mentioned, and
so it's important for us to reach out to those
people and ask for comment. I think that information is important,
whether they comment or not. And I can't be the
judge of what that means or what that says. But um,
it's important for the public to know that the White
House didn't have anything to add. Thought she didn't have
(16:03):
anything he wanted to add to our story. UM. And
that you know, people will do with what they will. Natalie,
you mentioned him a couple of times, but Jason, Jason Leopold,
he's obviously the colleague of yours. Can you give us,
and for those that don't follow BuzzFeed, can you give
us a little bit of background on Jason and what
he actually does for the company. Yeah. So Jason Um
(16:25):
has been a great mentor to me. Actually, So he is,
you know, someone who I've learned a lot about UM
document reporting and really what Foyer requests are UM. And
he is the senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and
he was previously at Al Jazeera and Vice News as well. UM.
(16:46):
And he did some really fantastic work with the Finson
Files that came out a few years ago. And so
his beat really is he is a fantastic reporter when
it comes to filing Foyer quests and really getting into
the nitty gritty when it comes to the government and
getting those documents and publishing them. That is his UM
(17:09):
strong suit and what he's really fantastic at. And so
he you know, was a two thousand eighteen Pulitzer Prize
winner UM and he was the recipient of the IRA
two sixteen fl I Award UM. And he's gotten you know,
many many awards for his reporting and this deep investigative work.
Because it's time consuming stuff UM to read through documents
(17:31):
and to put these stories together. But he's been a
fantastic person to learn from. UM. I'm more of an
early career reporter and who's really interested in investigative work.
And I've just been blown away and really impressed with
um how much I've learned on this project, especially so Yeah,
Jason's great. The gravity involved in this is obviously one
(17:52):
for a generation and generations UM. I think Ben and
I have talked about this at good length in the past,
just because profession were in UM we oddly enough how
to bear down when sports weren't going on for a
long period of time. And I think the biggest thing,
and they're not just for us, but I think Americans
and a lot of people across the world as a whole,
(18:14):
like we're looking for not only information but now accountability,
and so looking at Foucci's emails and the correspondence that
he's had with a lot of people, I mean, the
mask issues is one thing, but the other thing is
just the relationship with Foucci, the Wuhan Lab and the Chinese.
(18:35):
And you know, oftentimes you're taught, even when you're young.
If you don't know the answer to a question, typically
the answer is always money and and so that is
the biggest thing for for me, and what you and
Jason are doing right now is that you're connecting a
lot of different dots. So where does this lead or
where do you feel like this is leading? And have
(18:56):
you looked under the I guess the Christmas tree that
is the the Chinese government because obviously there's a lot
of things underneath that thing. Yeah, I think that you
know again what I said about just like what we
were able to extract from these right, because this is
something that Jason and I were thinking about the whole
time while reading through these documents, is what's the bigger
(19:19):
picture here and what are we really grasping from his
correspondence thouts correspondence with foreign officials. I mean, it's really impressive, Um,
how many emails there are from you know, different health
authorities and physicians all around the world who thought she
has been able to make connections with Um with his
(19:41):
work from the AIDS crisis in the nineties and working
through different epidemics, right and just building this network of
physicians all around the world. Right, So we saw this
correspondence and specifically with some of those Chinese health officials too,
and so I think that you know, one of the
emails that people are really circulating is one from April
(20:04):
eighteen in and that was UM from Dr Peter Dazac
and that was UM, you know someone who got he
made very he was acquaintances with, right, And so they
actually were corresponding about UM the origins. Right. This is
obviously something that they discussed early on in UM. But
(20:25):
I think people have really pulled that part of it
and saying you know, UM, where Dr Dazak says, from
my perspective, your comments are brave and coming from your
trusted voice, will help disturb the myths being spun around
the viruses origins and so UM. I think the thing
that you know is on the top of all of
our minds is what was covered up, right, like where
(20:49):
did this virus come from? UM? Was it from a lab?
And I think that these emails actually don't give as
much of you know, UM, as many ants or as
we might hope to that question about where the virus
came from if it came from a lab. UM. It
really is just showing that this was a discussion that
(21:09):
was happening among health officials very early on in maybe
even you know, before many people had come up with
different conspiracies at this point, right. So I think that
for me, like Jason and I really didn't spend a
lot of time looking into you know, what do these
emails confirm, rather than what are the discussions that were happening.
(21:32):
I don't think that there's anything that can be gleaned
from that. Um. But as you mentioned, I mean, like
really Sauci has addressed that and said that, you know,
he feels his emails are being taken out of context
and um, that there's a lot being pulled out and
kind of words put in his mouth from words that
weren't said. And so I think that, you know, out
(21:54):
of fairness and out of you know, the ethical practices
of journalism, we really can't say anything definitively about the
viruses origins and if the emails really say anything about them.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Be
sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller Show
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(22:17):
Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Yeah, I
think the biggest thing though, and something like this is
that your job and that kind of capacity, especially since
it is so unique, is you have to ask those
questions and not be afraid of challenge. And absolutely, yeah,
the relationships that Dr fouch has had throughout the years, Uh,
what those relationships comes power and influence And from what
(22:42):
you guys have actually unfolded with these emails in the
f O I A that you've had Mark Zuckerberg come
into play. And I find that fascinating because a Washington
Post article was recently edited that had Senator Tom Cotton
talking about the origin of the coronavirus and prior to
(23:02):
that it was a conspiracy theory. Now it's just an alleged,
you know, hypothesis. But Zuckerberg comes into play, and he's
got things that are tied into the political atmosphere, voting wise,
and now this and so we've seen doctors, we've seen
people that have had information squash on Instagram and on Facebook.
(23:27):
And so I guess my question comes down to this,
are you and Jason looking into the relationships that Dr
Fauci has from these email correspondence. That's a great question.
And honestly, absolutely, because you know something that's important is
that this is UM an ongoing investigation. Right, We're gonna
(23:47):
keep getting more documents, and we're gonna keep reading these
documents UM. You know the foyer requesting basically the way
it UM works as that because we put in so
many requests, right, we'll still get some of these emails
trickling in from later and later, or maybe ones that
were miss that will just be getting in the mail.
So yeah, we're going to keep investigating that. And for
(24:08):
the question about you know, the relationships that Dr Duchy
has with these people, is it is really important UM
for our reporting because you know, as much as I'm like,
you know, we need to take these emails at face
value and really look at that. It does kind of
feel like being a detective right when you're doing this
kind of work, because you know what Stout she's saying
(24:29):
to a regular person who is just asking, you know,
a health question about how does having COVID affect UM?
You know, my grandmother or my grandfather or someone who
is a celebrity, who's who's saying, how can I use
my platform to UM spread information about COVID and help
people get to better resources. You know, we do have
(24:52):
to evaluate those relationships and who's reaching out to him,
who is stoutily choosing to respond to, who's the choosing
to ignore are and who is he getting really familiar with? UM?
So those are That's a great question because that's absolutely
something that like we have to consider, is how is
Sauchi relating to these people and who is he um
(25:13):
what tone is he using with each of these individuals
because of their position? And so I think that's something
that we're just continuing to investigate and something that people,
you know, members of the public, you and I can
just look at these emails and glean for ourselves too,
is um You know, it's so easy to do a
Google search of anyone's name and be like, are they
in the health community? Are they kind of just a
(25:35):
regular person who is just asking for health advice, who's
worried about their family, who's maybe harassing Dr Fauci too
because of political pressure, Right, So those relationships are essential
to understanding UM facties communication style as a whole totally. Yeah.
And Natalie, when you were going through the emails there,
and you know how much I do see some things redacted?
(25:57):
I mean how much basically how much of that stuff
was covered up where you couldn't read it. I know
the email addresses obviously were, but there's there's some of
these emails I'm looking at were like large chunks of
them are not not available. So one of the sensitive
stuff was not allowed for you to to view. That's
a good question. I actually don't know like the percentage
(26:19):
of it. But basically how FOIA work is that there
are exemptions from FOIA and what that means is there
are things that are redacted from government documents. If it
has something to do with um national security especially that's
a big one. So if there's something in the government document, right,
not everything can be declassified because there can actually be
(26:40):
something that poses either a national security risk or there's
just you know, more stricter privacy around people's private information,
right That can be sometimes other health information, which is
probably very pertinent in some of these emails, right because
people are talking about their own health talking about other
people's health around COVID, So that could be a big
(27:01):
reason things are redacted. We published the emails as we
saw them, so we didn't take anything out. You know,
the emails that are redacted. We didn't get to see
people's emails. Um, you know, so you're looking at the
emails that Jason and I saw just as they are. Um.
So there are different reasons why things are redacted. So
that's something that Jason and I really have to go
(27:21):
through and see. Um. But it's impossible to guess, right,
It's impossible to guess what's behind that black box. Um,
And we just kind of have to work around it.
It's definitely definitely like you know, doing a puzzle, because
you just gotta work with what you have, the words
that are on the page. Um. But yeah, those are
some different reasons as to why things are redacted, but
usually it has it falls under, you know, one of
(27:42):
those few categories. And Natalie, what's the approach that you
and Jason have and going on on something like this,
Because the reality is is that doesn't matter the publication.
You know, BuzzFeed and has not been immune to this,
But it doesn't matter the publication, you're going to take
fire from one side of the political aisle or the
there right, how do you try to be not only
(28:04):
as transparent but as as open ended as possible when
it comes to this research and information? Yeah, yeah, that's
something we we talked about a lot from the beginning,
what Jason really was advising me to do is just
read through these documents because obviously there's thousands of pages
of them, and just get familiar with them. You know.
(28:25):
He'd tell me to, you know, read through as many
as I could for a week, take notes, take screenshots
of ones that were pretty outstanding or things that I
wanted to save and save for later, to go back
to UM, and then just take a break, step back
from them, and then go back in right. And so
basically are for the first few months that we were
working on the actual article, we were just reading these
(28:48):
documents and just getting really familiar with the content. UM.
We would identify people over and over again, like maybe
some of Guti's team members, his staffers who he was
emailing a lot more frequently. UM. So that was the
first step of it, and that was our approach UM.
And so I think that helped set up the rest
of the process and kind of my mindset about reporting,
(29:08):
because I was really thinking, you know, I'm taking this
UM kind of just being as unbiased as I could,
and just being really open to whatever these emails were
going to hold. You know, obviously, when you get this staff,
you get really excited of these documents where you're like, man,
I really hope something in here is like juicy and
good and we're just gonna like find a huge secret, right.
(29:29):
But that's not always the case, UM, with doing document reporting. UM,
A lot of these emails are pretty standard, pretty boring,
you know, just back and forth administrative stuff. UM. And
so I think that kind of put me in the
mindset of just getting used to pouch to style UM.
And I felt like it was once I got in
that mindset, it was easy to take away this kind
(29:51):
of like if there was any sort of political bias, UM,
because ultimately my number one job is to just report
what is in these emails, would do it as accurately
as possible, UM, and in an unbiased way, but also
be really frank and transparent with UM, my audience and
the people who were writing this for who want to
(30:13):
know more about Faucci as a person. UM, Be frank
about his relationship with the Trump administration, that it was
tents at times, and that they did clash, right, So
we do have to be, um, you know, really transparent
and honest around those very real relationships and the political
relationships around UM. You know, Sauci and his community and
(30:34):
really what influenced a lot of that. So, um, it's
really taking that into consideration. But I think when it
comes down to it, me and Jason were really prioritizing
this idea of just being open to whatever we saw
in these emails and just reading it as if we were,
you know, someone just reading both feed News, not as
an editor or not as a reporter. What would we
(30:55):
find interesting that we'd want to share with other people.
So that's kind of the approach we took. Yeah, well,
it's a great story. Natalie can congratulation. I know you're young,
you're young reporter, your USC Trojan, I understand and all that.
So is this is this your future you? I'm sure
we'll hear from you many more times over there. Do
you want to be a this is this what you
(31:16):
would like to do? If we would go twenty years
from now looking back at your career as a journalist
is twenty as far away. I have been into journalism
since I was fourteen years old, um, and I can
definitely see myself sticking on this path. I mean, investigative
journalism gives you a rush like nothing else, at least
(31:36):
that's how I feel and this has definitely been the
biggest story I've worked on, and so it's really fantastic
to see, um, kind of what this might be like, right,
and get the exposure to what doing political reporting on
a national scale like this looks like. Um, so you
might see a couple more pieces for me, I think
in this realm. So um yeah, no, I really appreciate it,
(31:57):
and that you took the time to read through our
piece and wanted to get this, you know, piece out
to your listeners as well. I'm so excited. That's great,
that's I'm excited. I'm looking forward to seeing what you
guys you do next in particular, So thanks for coming
on you. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
(32:19):
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific on
Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app.
If you thought four hours a day, minutes a week
was enough, think again. He's the last remnants of the
old republic a sole fashion of fairness. He treats track
heads in the ghetto cutter the same as the rich
pill poppers in the penthouse to clearinghouse, some hot takes,
Break three for something special. Fifth Hour with Ben Maller
(00:24):
starts right now in the air everywhere. We are back
at it again, another weekend in the Magic podcast Box.
He're good to have you hanging out. We'll have podcast
every single day. We do is eight days a week.
Today obviously the Friday podcast, but we have on Saturday
we will take a look at some random things that
(00:48):
pop up. Whatever is on the Saturday podcast and the
mailbag on Sunday. So very exciting. Joined by the man
west of the four oh five making his way down
east of the four oh five, David Gascon on the
fifth foul h. It's a nice little bag of fun
(01:13):
that we have over the weekend. And of course I
dip my hand into the deep end of the pool
and pull out guests that is unsuspecting to those that
listen to our show, do not pull the muscle here
patting yourself from the back. I will not. I will
not do that. I will not do I U. I
don't have any fan boys like you that do that
(01:33):
for me either. I do not. I do not have
fan boys. I have supporters. I have people that are
believers in the Mallard Militia cause and support what we
do here. But yeah, every Friday. Now. Last week we
had the big radio story, so we didn't have anyone
on because the big Clay Travis replacing Russia INMBOSS story
was a big, big deal in our world, so we
(01:53):
didn't end up putting anybody on. But this week the
big story. It's not a sports story, although guests on
will argue it is a sports it's it sampled our
occupation for quite a while. Yes, the world, we know
the music stopped in the world. We know there were
no no games, no games for you, no games for you.
(02:18):
The sporting world shutdown for a hundred and thirty four
days as a result of the COVID and the whole
world shut down, working from home and whatnot. So I
bring this up because BuzzFeed News, through a freedom of
information requests, they had to file a lawsuit here. They
(02:40):
tracked down not all but a large number thousands of
pages of email from Dr Fauci, the man running the
COVID nineteen crisis in America. And as you might imagine,
the reaction to these emails has been over the top,
split down party lines of some But I think this
(03:00):
is nothing, and there's other people who think, my god,
this is the smoking gun. And it's it's like a
jury trial where you put two people into a room
and you give them the same evidence and they look
at it differently. It's like my it's like my minor
investment into a MC stock. It is pretty volatile at
the moment. Fair to say, right is it up or down?
(03:22):
It's up right now? I don't know. It depends did
I short the market or did I find I don't know.
I see the problem is when to It's like being
a gambler. You gott know when to hold it and
you gotta know when to let it go. Yeah, And
that's the tough thing about the stock market. That's the
interesting thing about this story, though, is is when when
was information I guess discovered and what was it released
(03:45):
to the public, And then of course what happened between
I don't want to say enemy lines, but for all
intensive purposes. You're you're working with a foreign adversary. So
a lot of these things that are happening with the
coronavirus have been upening on foreign land. And you know,
BuzzFeed obviously looking into this heavily. It's uh, it's a
(04:08):
mountain of information. Yeah, it's a it's it's an interesting story.
I didn't get through a fraction of the emails. I
did look through some of them, but I read the
story that was on BuzzFeed News and and it's it's
it's like I used the analogy all the time. We
do this in sports, but in politics, it's a political term.
You have a public position and you have a private position.
(04:29):
And so with Dr Fauci, you know, the way you
read these emails, you could interpret them that he had
a public position that he was telling the American people,
and privately he thought this was a lot of stuff
he was saying was bullshit based on based on what
we were reading in some of those emails. That's that's
my takeaway from it. But let's talk to the one
of the people to put this story together, one of
(04:49):
the reporters at BuzzFeed News joining us. He's a up
and coming reporting star. You're gonna hear a lot from
this woman here over the next few years. Imagine. Natalie
Bentendorff is her name. She was one of the writers
there at BuzzFeed to put the story together and went
through all Dr Fauci's emails there. So, uh, Natalie, welcome,
(05:11):
thank you for joining us here on the fifth hour.
And in your opinion here, what was the most interesting
thing that you uncovered from these thousands of emails from
Dr Fauci. Yeah, so I think that the thing that
I took away was really what we see is the
content of these emails. Right. There's a lot of interpretations
(05:33):
as to what some of these emails mean, what this
Faucci Um, what he's thinking at the beginning of this pandemic,
where is it going? But if we're looking at the
actual content and his words, I think the thing that
struck me the most was really this email where you know,
an ABC reporters asking him early on of last year
in you know, what do you think the death toll
(05:55):
is going to be from COVID nineteen and he responds
um with the number that the report has given him,
which is five K, and says, you know what I
think that's way too high, um. And just reading that exchange,
you know, it's a short sentence in reply to the
reporter saying that he thinks that death told too high.
And we're here, right, we're well past five hundred thousand
(06:17):
deaths from COVID in this country. And I think it
really is a telling um thing about Fauci, which is
that you know, he's a human, right, he's the physician
who a lot of us have turned to in pandemic,
but he also didn't understand how much of a force
this virus was going to take our country by, um,
(06:37):
And so I think a lot of those emails actually
showcase that. Right from January until June, I mean, we
didn't know how long this thing was gonna last, even
Sauci didn't, and he didn't know how how many lives
it would claim, and it's a really devastating thing to see,
but it's very enlightening to see how much we've learned
from that point. So I think that's what I really
took away from a lot of these emails. Yeah, I
(07:00):
love the fact that they were like regular people, and
you mentioned in that were like emailing, and he was
writing back to like regular people. I think it's amazing
to me because you know, most people are like, I'm
just gonna lead that, why would I write back? But
he hes a number of times right and right back exactly. Yeah.
I mean he was revered as a celebrity. I mean
(07:21):
we all know, we were all laughing right about just
kind of the the fourth of nature that it became
with Sauccia's um, you know, creating all these this merchandise
right around him with his name everywhere and these touchy
sucks and saucy doughnuts and his face on T shirts. Um.
And it's so interesting seeing actually in these emails, UM,
(07:44):
how uncomfortable it was for him to actually see all
of that, like the same and kind of this these
people being obsessed with him, um, and revering him to
this state of you know, he's just regarded so highly. Um,
he's not super comfortable with that. I mean, science and
health is what he specializes in, and he it just
(08:05):
blew up so quickly. UM. So it's really interesting seeing
his responses to a lot of those. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah.
And and also now it kind of walked me through
you're part of the team there that you're you're talking
about tons of email. I mean, this is a lot
to go through, Like what's the process like, like how
you know, how did you guys work your way through
(08:26):
tons of data? He is is an amazing Yeah, it's
really cool. I like sharing kind of the process behind
UM stories, Right, the story behind the story is really
fun to talk about because there's so much that goes
into especially putting out a story of this size. Now,
as we stayed in in the article, UM, what made
(08:47):
this possible was for your request, right, So that's the
Freedom of Information Act, and that actually allows us to
get documents from government agencies. Right, It's legal to put
in those requests and basically the government agency is supposed
to turn those over. Now, we sent these in obviously
to the National Institute of Helps UM, and we were
(09:09):
able to obtain um plus pages of these emails. And
this request was one that Jason put in. This was
actually probably UM starting in March and then you know
went into the summer. But the way that works is,
you know what we do to actually speed up the
process because obviously to get all of these emails is
(09:32):
a really long process. And sometimes what happens is, you know,
very often actually the government agency won't respond or they'll
just kind of say, hey, this is too much to
get back to you. And so BuzzFeed actually ended up
biling a lawsuit UM. And really all that does is
just speed up the process, right because they have to
get these We had documents to us a little bit
(09:54):
quicker UM, and so what we did is we asked
for all emails text sent and received by Dr Fauci
mentioning or referring to COVID nineteen coronavirus, and any and
all internal studies on COVID. So that was our specific request,
and we had to send in multiple UM to just
(10:15):
really keep expanding the time period. So that's really how
we got these documents. And then kind of the last
five months is what Jason and I have been working on,
which is the article itself of how do we really
write an article that is going to sum up what
these UM documents are saying? Right, so not all people
are going to see these documents and read all three thousand,
(10:37):
two hundred pages of these, but we want to pull
out what's the important parts of these and what are
the things that people really need to know? What are
we learning there's no crazy smoking guns, in here, Right,
it's really what we're seeing from a broader you know,
stepping back, what is Fauci's communication style and what were
some of the things of the points of discussion from
(10:59):
early on in the pants mix. So that was kind
of the process of how we got this thing out there. Yeah,
I mean, I'm sure you've seen the reaction here and
it's um some of these I mean it's been picked
apart some of the emails and and right not in Uh,
what is your take here on the the reaction As
everything in the country, it's divided on party lines, right,
(11:19):
people have strong opinions on each side. Something this makes
Dr Facci, as you said, look more human. Other people
think that we know, wait a minute, he was saying
one thing privately and there was something else publicly. So right, right, Yeah,
it's it's a good thing you discussed. And something you
know that we did at BuzzFeed is we said, you
know what, it's important for us to release all of
(11:41):
these documents. And that's something that differs from the article
that the Washington Post wrote. Right, they obtained um eight
hundred pages of these emails, and we had, you know,
several thousand of them, and we actually released all of
them instead of kind of summing them up and releasing
a few of the ones that we mentioned like the
post did. Obviously, what comes with that is people create
(12:03):
their own interpretations of what these emails say, right, without
actually maybe reading all of the pages or getting all
of the contact. And so that's the thing that comes
along with releasing this entire batch to the public, for
them to really just do what they will with them. UM.
And so you know, the things that we've heard a
lot about UM and seen response wise is a lot
(12:26):
of stuff about the email where Fauci is referring to
masks um not really being effective, right, and this is
in back in February UM, and so people have really
grabbed onto that and said, you know, this is proof
that you know this masks are helping or fout she
knew and kind of these very um like making these
(12:49):
statements that that's you know, generalizing um what thought she
was thinking about that? But to be frank, I think
that that shows what I was stating earlier, which is
that we've really grown scientifically of what we know about
this virus, and it's just showing that you know, Facci
doesn't know everything about this virus. No physician in the
world knows everything about um COVID nineteen and how it
(13:09):
overtakes the human body and what works and what didn't.
And this was you know, before the who actually declared
COVID nineteen pandemic. We did not know at this time
that people needed to wear masks for this airborne virus.
So that's an example of something that you know, people
are grasping onto us this could mean this, or this
could mean that. But I think as a as a
(13:31):
journalist's important for us, and when we were reading these
emails is you know, it's not something that we can
do where we can read these emails and actually interpret
and guess you know what Sauchie meant? Well, what was
STOUCHI like really saying like, let's read between the line.
You can't do that as a journalist when you're reading
these documents. You have to take it up face value,
and then you have to look at the bigger picture.
(13:53):
And so I think that's what gets really dangerous is
when people start making these assumptions and bigger interpretations onto
what found she could have meant, or what this means,
when it's really going beyond the words on the page. Yeah,
and then I saw his quote the other day here
he said he did say his emails he thought were
taken out of context there and he kind of like dismissed.
(14:16):
The reaction was just kind of like what you're saying, right,
But it really is that's like, that's like a jury
trial right now. I mean, that's one of the things
about the court system. You know, people look at the
evidence and they have different opinions on the evidence, and
so that's that's where we are right now. Uh, totally
with this. And I also saw I saw the White
House they said they did not want to comment. What
(14:36):
was your reaction to that they wouldn't comment on your story? Yeah,
I mean I think that there's you know, one of
the big things that we had in our article was
addressing the political pressure right that fell onto Sauci. And
obviously that expands because now we're in a different um
administration that's in the White House than was when we
were actually filing these Foyer requests and reading through these documents, UM,
(15:01):
and so it's really interesting to see the responses. I
don't see any of these kind of you know, UM
Fauci didn't comment on our story. Also, UM for the record,
and you know, I don't see that necessarily as a
good or bad thing when I'm reporting on this stuff, right,
So my job, um, and Jason's job is really to
(15:21):
obtain these documents and see, you know, whoever we are
mentioning or getting in touch with as a source for
the article is to just see, you know, reach out
to them, Hey, we have your name in here. You know,
we wanted to know if you'd like to comment, would
you like to add anything? Um? And obviously the White
House is mentioned in their fauci has mentioned in there.
(15:42):
Other people who have written emails to Faucier mentioned, and
so it's important for us to reach out to those
people and ask for comment. I think that information is important,
whether they comment or not. And I can't be the
judge of what that means or what that says. But um,
it's important for the public to know that the White
House didn't have anything to add. Thought she didn't have
(16:03):
anything he wanted to add to our story. UM. And
that you know, people will do with what they will. Natalie,
you mentioned him a couple of times, but Jason, Jason Leopold,
he's obviously the colleague of yours. Can you give us,
and for those that don't follow BuzzFeed, can you give
us a little bit of background on Jason and what
he actually does for the company. Yeah. So Jason Um
(16:25):
has been a great mentor to me. Actually, So he is,
you know, someone who I've learned a lot about UM
document reporting and really what Foyer requests are UM. And
he is the senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and
he was previously at Al Jazeera and Vice News as well. UM.
(16:46):
And he did some really fantastic work with the Finson
Files that came out a few years ago. And so
his beat really is he is a fantastic reporter when
it comes to filing Foyer quests and really getting into
the nitty gritty when it comes to the government and
getting those documents and publishing them. That is his UM
(17:09):
strong suit and what he's really fantastic at. And so
he you know, was a two thousand eighteen Pulitzer Prize
winner UM and he was the recipient of the IRA
two sixteen fl I Award UM. And he's gotten you know,
many many awards for his reporting and this deep investigative work.
Because it's time consuming stuff UM to read through documents
(17:31):
and to put these stories together. But he's been a
fantastic person to learn from. UM. I'm more of an
early career reporter and who's really interested in investigative work.
And I've just been blown away and really impressed with
um how much I've learned on this project, especially so Yeah,
Jason's great. The gravity involved in this is obviously one
(17:52):
for a generation and generations UM. I think Ben and
I have talked about this at good length in the past,
just because profession were in UM we oddly enough how
to bear down when sports weren't going on for a
long period of time. And I think the biggest thing,
and they're not just for us, but I think Americans
and a lot of people across the world as a whole,
(18:14):
like we're looking for not only information but now accountability,
and so looking at Foucci's emails and the correspondence that
he's had with a lot of people, I mean, the
mask issues is one thing, but the other thing is
just the relationship with Foucci, the Wuhan Lab and the Chinese.
(18:35):
And you know, oftentimes you're taught, even when you're young.
If you don't know the answer to a question, typically
the answer is always money and and so that is
the biggest thing for for me, and what you and
Jason are doing right now is that you're connecting a
lot of different dots. So where does this lead or
where do you feel like this is leading? And have
(18:56):
you looked under the I guess the Christmas tree that
is the the Chinese government because obviously there's a lot
of things underneath that thing. Yeah, I think that you
know again what I said about just like what we
were able to extract from these right, because this is
something that Jason and I were thinking about the whole
time while reading through these documents, is what's the bigger
(19:19):
picture here and what are we really grasping from his
correspondence thouts correspondence with foreign officials. I mean, it's really impressive, Um,
how many emails there are from you know, different health
authorities and physicians all around the world who thought she
has been able to make connections with Um with his
(19:41):
work from the AIDS crisis in the nineties and working
through different epidemics, right and just building this network of
physicians all around the world. Right, So we saw this
correspondence and specifically with some of those Chinese health officials too,
and so I think that you know, one of the
emails that people are really circulating is one from April
(20:04):
eighteen in and that was UM from Dr Peter Dazac
and that was UM, you know someone who got he
made very he was acquaintances with, right, And so they
actually were corresponding about UM the origins. Right. This is
obviously something that they discussed early on in UM. But
(20:25):
I think people have really pulled that part of it
and saying you know, UM, where Dr Dazak says, from
my perspective, your comments are brave and coming from your
trusted voice, will help disturb the myths being spun around
the viruses origins and so UM. I think the thing
that you know is on the top of all of
our minds is what was covered up, right, like where
(20:49):
did this virus come from? UM? Was it from a lab?
And I think that these emails actually don't give as
much of you know, UM, as many ants or as
we might hope to that question about where the virus
came from if it came from a lab. UM. It
really is just showing that this was a discussion that
(21:09):
was happening among health officials very early on in maybe
even you know, before many people had come up with
different conspiracies at this point, right. So I think that
for me, like Jason and I really didn't spend a
lot of time looking into you know, what do these
emails confirm, rather than what are the discussions that were happening.
(21:32):
I don't think that there's anything that can be gleaned
from that. Um. But as you mentioned, I mean, like
really Sauci has addressed that and said that, you know,
he feels his emails are being taken out of context
and um, that there's a lot being pulled out and
kind of words put in his mouth from words that
weren't said. And so I think that, you know, out
(21:54):
of fairness and out of you know, the ethical practices
of journalism, we really can't say anything definitively about the
viruses origins and if the emails really say anything about them.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific. Be
sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller Show
weekdays at two am eastern eleven pm Pacific on Fox
(22:17):
Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app. Yeah, I
think the biggest thing though, and something like this is
that your job and that kind of capacity, especially since
it is so unique, is you have to ask those
questions and not be afraid of challenge. And absolutely, yeah,
the relationships that Dr fouch has had throughout the years, Uh,
what those relationships comes power and influence And from what
(22:42):
you guys have actually unfolded with these emails in the
f O I A that you've had Mark Zuckerberg come
into play. And I find that fascinating because a Washington
Post article was recently edited that had Senator Tom Cotton
talking about the origin of the coronavirus and prior to
(23:02):
that it was a conspiracy theory. Now it's just an alleged,
you know, hypothesis. But Zuckerberg comes into play, and he's
got things that are tied into the political atmosphere, voting wise,
and now this and so we've seen doctors, we've seen
people that have had information squash on Instagram and on Facebook.
(23:27):
And so I guess my question comes down to this,
are you and Jason looking into the relationships that Dr
Fauci has from these email correspondence. That's a great question.
And honestly, absolutely, because you know something that's important is
that this is UM an ongoing investigation. Right, We're gonna
(23:47):
keep getting more documents, and we're gonna keep reading these
documents UM. You know the foyer requesting basically the way
it UM works as that because we put in so
many requests, right, we'll still get some of these emails
trickling in from later and later, or maybe ones that
were miss that will just be getting in the mail.
So yeah, we're going to keep investigating that. And for
(24:08):
the question about you know, the relationships that Dr Duchy
has with these people, is it is really important UM
for our reporting because you know, as much as I'm like,
you know, we need to take these emails at face
value and really look at that. It does kind of
feel like being a detective right when you're doing this
kind of work, because you know what Stout she's saying
(24:29):
to a regular person who is just asking, you know,
a health question about how does having COVID affect UM?
You know, my grandmother or my grandfather or someone who
is a celebrity, who's who's saying, how can I use
my platform to UM spread information about COVID and help
people get to better resources. You know, we do have
(24:52):
to evaluate those relationships and who's reaching out to him,
who is stoutily choosing to respond to, who's the choosing
to ignore are and who is he getting really familiar with? UM?
So those are That's a great question because that's absolutely
something that like we have to consider, is how is
Sauchi relating to these people and who is he um
(25:13):
what tone is he using with each of these individuals
because of their position? And so I think that's something
that we're just continuing to investigate and something that people,
you know, members of the public, you and I can
just look at these emails and glean for ourselves too,
is um You know, it's so easy to do a
Google search of anyone's name and be like, are they
in the health community? Are they kind of just a
(25:35):
regular person who is just asking for health advice, who's
worried about their family, who's maybe harassing Dr Fauci too
because of political pressure, Right, So those relationships are essential
to understanding UM facties communication style as a whole totally. Yeah.
And Natalie, when you were going through the emails there,
and you know how much I do see some things redacted?
(25:57):
I mean how much basically how much of that stuff
was covered up where you couldn't read it. I know
the email addresses obviously were, but there's there's some of
these emails I'm looking at were like large chunks of
them are not not available. So one of the sensitive
stuff was not allowed for you to to view. That's
a good question. I actually don't know like the percentage
(26:19):
of it. But basically how FOIA work is that there
are exemptions from FOIA and what that means is there
are things that are redacted from government documents. If it
has something to do with um national security especially that's
a big one. So if there's something in the government document, right,
not everything can be declassified because there can actually be
(26:40):
something that poses either a national security risk or there's
just you know, more stricter privacy around people's private information,
right That can be sometimes other health information, which is
probably very pertinent in some of these emails, right because
people are talking about their own health talking about other
people's health around COVID, So that could be a big
(27:01):
reason things are redacted. We published the emails as we
saw them, so we didn't take anything out. You know,
the emails that are redacted. We didn't get to see
people's emails. Um, you know, so you're looking at the
emails that Jason and I saw just as they are. Um.
So there are different reasons why things are redacted. So
that's something that Jason and I really have to go
(27:21):
through and see. Um. But it's impossible to guess, right,
It's impossible to guess what's behind that black box. Um,
And we just kind of have to work around it.
It's definitely definitely like you know, doing a puzzle, because
you just gotta work with what you have, the words
that are on the page. Um. But yeah, those are
some different reasons as to why things are redacted, but
usually it has it falls under, you know, one of
(27:42):
those few categories. And Natalie, what's the approach that you
and Jason have and going on on something like this,
Because the reality is is that doesn't matter the publication.
You know, BuzzFeed and has not been immune to this,
But it doesn't matter the publication, you're going to take
fire from one side of the political aisle or the
there right, how do you try to be not only
(28:04):
as transparent but as as open ended as possible when
it comes to this research and information? Yeah, yeah, that's
something we we talked about a lot from the beginning,
what Jason really was advising me to do is just
read through these documents because obviously there's thousands of pages
of them, and just get familiar with them. You know.
(28:25):
He'd tell me to, you know, read through as many
as I could for a week, take notes, take screenshots
of ones that were pretty outstanding or things that I
wanted to save and save for later, to go back
to UM, and then just take a break, step back
from them, and then go back in right. And so
basically are for the first few months that we were
working on the actual article, we were just reading these
(28:48):
documents and just getting really familiar with the content. UM.
We would identify people over and over again, like maybe
some of Guti's team members, his staffers who he was
emailing a lot more frequently. UM. So that was the
first step of it, and that was our approach UM.
And so I think that helped set up the rest
of the process and kind of my mindset about reporting,
(29:08):
because I was really thinking, you know, I'm taking this
UM kind of just being as unbiased as I could,
and just being really open to whatever these emails were
going to hold. You know, obviously, when you get this staff,
you get really excited of these documents where you're like, man,
I really hope something in here is like juicy and
good and we're just gonna like find a huge secret, right.
(29:29):
But that's not always the case, UM, with doing document reporting. UM,
A lot of these emails are pretty standard, pretty boring,
you know, just back and forth administrative stuff. UM. And
so I think that kind of put me in the
mindset of just getting used to pouch to style UM.
And I felt like it was once I got in
that mindset, it was easy to take away this kind
(29:51):
of like if there was any sort of political bias, UM,
because ultimately my number one job is to just report
what is in these emails, would do it as accurately
as possible, UM, and in an unbiased way, but also
be really frank and transparent with UM, my audience and
the people who were writing this for who want to
(30:13):
know more about Faucci as a person. UM, Be frank
about his relationship with the Trump administration, that it was
tents at times, and that they did clash, right, So
we do have to be, um, you know, really transparent
and honest around those very real relationships and the political
relationships around UM. You know, Sauci and his community and
(30:34):
really what influenced a lot of that. So, um, it's
really taking that into consideration. But I think when it
comes down to it, me and Jason were really prioritizing
this idea of just being open to whatever we saw
in these emails and just reading it as if we were,
you know, someone just reading both feed News, not as
an editor or not as a reporter. What would we
(30:55):
find interesting that we'd want to share with other people.
So that's kind of the approach we took. Yeah, well,
it's a great story. Natalie can congratulation. I know you're young,
you're young reporter, your USC Trojan, I understand and all that.
So is this is this your future you? I'm sure
we'll hear from you many more times over there. Do
you want to be a this is this what you
(31:16):
would like to do? If we would go twenty years
from now looking back at your career as a journalist
is twenty as far away. I have been into journalism
since I was fourteen years old, um, and I can
definitely see myself sticking on this path. I mean, investigative
journalism gives you a rush like nothing else, at least
(31:36):
that's how I feel and this has definitely been the
biggest story I've worked on, and so it's really fantastic
to see, um, kind of what this might be like, right,
and get the exposure to what doing political reporting on
a national scale like this looks like. Um, so you
might see a couple more pieces for me, I think
in this realm. So um yeah, no, I really appreciate it,
(31:57):
and that you took the time to read through our
piece and wanted to get this, you know, piece out
to your listeners as well. I'm so excited. That's great,
that's I'm excited. I'm looking forward to seeing what you
guys you do next in particular, So thanks for coming
on you. Be sure to catch live editions of The
Ben Maller Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific.
Be sure to catch live editions of The Ben Maller
(32:19):
Show weekdays at two am Eastern eleven pm Pacific on
Fox Sports Radio and the I Heart Radio app.
Host
Ben Maller
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