July 27, 2023 • 29 mins
Simone Gold, a former ER doctor, is the founder of a non-profit called “America’s Frontline Doctors,” known for spreading misinformation about COVID. After she was arrested for taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection, she received millions of dollars in donations. And that’s when the feuding within her organization began.
You can read Joel Stein’s Financial Times story, “How a squad of MAGA warriors flush with cash turned on each other” here: https://www.ft.com/stream/3264fe6d-3997-493c-9f77-e565bd75eb1a
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, it's Stole Stein.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This episode is going to be a little bit different
from our other ones, So get excited or scared.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I don't know how you feel. Writing is hard.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
trying to be Joe Stein? So it turns on a
mike maybe the twiddles a knop because a journalist friend
has got in that youble job harditories single story. Just
listen to smart people speak, conversation, film with information. It's
(00:58):
the story of the week.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Every episode I hear that theme song mocking me, telling
me I'm not a real journalist. So I was shamed
into spending the last six months reporting out my own
story of the week, which just ran as the cover
of the Financial Times weekend magazine. It's about this woman
named Simone Gold, who sacrificed a pretty sweet job as
a doctor during the pandemic because she was convinced the
(01:34):
hydroxy chloro queen would.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Save us all.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I was going to interview myself for this episode, but
I'm way too lazy to both parts of his interview,
so I asked our producer Nishavenka to interview me. I'm
pretty sure they said yes in order to take out
a lot of long simmering resentment towards me.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
God help me.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Joel Stein, Hello, you wrote Mega Maga meltdown for the
Financial Times and it's the story of the week. Thanks
for coming on.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I had no choice. I'm contractually obligated to be here.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Well.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Who is Simone Gold?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Simone Gold is a doctor from Long Island and she
graduated high school early and then she signed up for
this program that allows you get your undergrad and your
medical degree in seven years. She became a doctor at
a very young age. Was difficult for her because patients
would see her and not want to be treated to
her luck. The show Dukie Hauser came out while she
(02:33):
was first working as an intern at a hospital. Everyone
knew Dukie Houser. She would explain herself that way and
people were more comfortable.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And so she graduates and then she decides to do
something else entirely, which is go to law school. What
was her time at Stanford Law School? Like, do you
get the sense that she was one of those really
hard partying Stanford kids or was she a loser with
a humor column?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
She was not social at all, so she was not
a hard partier. She was actually working as a doctor
while she was at Stanford Medical School, so a lot
of people there do not remember her.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
At all except this one guy.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, she was trying to tell me what her social
life was there. All she could remember was one guy
named Casey Cooper who asked her out to the dining
hall for a date and then asked her out for
a real day and she said no. And that seemed
to be the extent of her entire social life there.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Okay, if someone asked me out on a date to
the dining hall, I would say no, Like that's an
automatic strike. Come on, come on, dining hall.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Look, Stanford's a huge campus. Palo Alto is super expensive.
You have limited options.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
No, I'm with Simone. That's the first strike. Casey Cooper
could have never come back from that. So what happens
after her law school days?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So she went back to practicing medicine. Wow, and she
particularly focused on emergency room medicine, which I didn't realize
is one of the most lucrative forms of medicine now.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
So she takes this highly paid er job and then
meets a guy, moves to Ala, has two kids, and
then gets a divorce. What's her first reaction when COVID hits.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
She's stoked, she'd told me. I think that's the word
she used. She's totally stoked. And then when I clearly
made a face that was horrified, she said, that's exactly
how you want your er doctor to be. If you've
been trained your whole life to do something and you
finally get to do it, it's very thrilling. And I
think that's how she felt about COVID.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
It sounds like being in the army, like your purpose
is here.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Right, Yes, very much so.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And then when COVID hit, she was prescribing, like many
many doctors were a hydroxtechloroquine because they thought it would
help with COVID because it's an aminosuppressive drug that's used
to treat malarias, think it's used for lupus. So a
lot of doctors were trying it, and doctor Gold was
one of them, and she had a lot of success
(04:52):
with patients with it because she'd give it to them
and they'd get better.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Right, But COVID is also the kind of thing that
gets better on.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It, right, So that's what so exactly, So, yeah, you
could get COVID and watch Tiger King and get better.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But it's not because of Tiger King, and.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
That's what was going on with hydroxychloro queen and the
idea of prescribing it massively to people.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
And so she's spending a lot of time with her
patients prescribing them hydroxychloroquine, and then the FDA cracks down
and says, Okay, this doesn't work, stop prescribing it. What
does she do.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It's very upsetting as a doctor if you're doing something
that seems to work and then you're told you can't
do it anymore. This happens all the time to doctors.
She gets really pissed. So she organizes a bunch of
doctors who feel the same way, and they write an
open letter to I think the Trump saying that he
should do something.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
About this and let doctors prescribe it.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
She organizes a smaller group of doctors who feel even
more passionately with the help of the Tea Party, and
they're going to fly to DC and hold a press
conference and try and meet with some government officials about
making them okay the use of hyjocic coorquin.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And in this group of doctors is a pediatrician, an ophthalmologist,
a neurologist, and a pediatrician. They're endorsing hydroxy chloroquin is
a treatment for COVID and this group is called what
America's Frontline Doctors, right.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
This is America's frontline doctors. They go on the steps
of the Supreme Court and make speeches about needing to
use hydroxychloro queen, and Breitbart News is all over this
and they film it and it takes off online. I
think Trump retweets it, and I think maybe seven million
people view this thing in just a few hours, and
(06:39):
everyone strips it down. It gets taken down from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,
everyone just pulls this thing as disinformation. But meanwhile, while
they're doing that, she's meeting with Mike Pence, who meets
with this group and talks to some other US representatives.
Why because Trump Trump is taking hydroxy chloro queen prophylactically,
(07:00):
He's downing a.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Like vine like tags.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
The next day, after she goes to the Supreme Court steps,
she is invited as a guest Stuntucker Carlson, and she
also is told by her hospitals that she has to
stop prescribing it. She refuses and she can no longer
work at those hospitals. Oh my god, her life makes
a big change in just.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
A few days.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
That's crazy. So what is this period like for her personally?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
She's getting calls and emails telling her how awesome she
is and being asked to go on TV shows. You know,
there's a whole world that's taken her in, but not
her kids and not her mom who who don't go
along with this and don't think she's right, although they
don't by any means disowner. They're still talking to her,
but they're not going out into the world like she
wants them to.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
But then, you know, the conservative movement kind of like
embraces her with open arms, and it's like, here's this doctor.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Oh right, right, she's got a new family.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Yeah yeah, instead of like a queer chosen family, it's
like a red pill chosen family. It's kind of your're.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So many families out there, so many families.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
So she gets fired from being an er doctor, and
what happens to her like nonprofit with the four doctors
and the two pediatricians that she's formed at this point.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So she forms a five oh one c three nonprofit
organization and they start taking in donations to fight the government.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Who's donating to her nonprofit?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Though most people are giving like twenty nine dollars. I
talked to one guy, John Strand. He gave her seventy
five dollars. He barely had seventy five dollars. He was
like a CouchSurfing you know, model singer in Beverly Hills
who just felt so strongly he sent her seventy five bucks.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Why are people resonating with this so strongly?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
People are pissed if you remember about lockdown. Oh yeah,
we were still pissed about lockdown. It really shook their
lives and it also depended on your political bent. It
depended on your community. But you could just see the
amount of people who moved to Florida.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Yeah, why she's so convincing to so many people? Like,
what is it about Simone that's galvanizing this whole movement.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
One interesting thing with a lot of the people that
convinced a lot of people in this movement was that
they were against the establishment, but they had.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
The credentials of the establishment.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
So she was a successful doctor who also went to
Stanford Law School. She had twice the credentials that you
needed to impress people. Yeah, and yet she said the
whole system was corrupt. You know, when you call something
out from the inside, it's very.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Powerful, right, So she's like an inside operative. That is
super interesting. What does she do with all of this
money that comes rolling in.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
She uses it to file a lot of lawsuits against
the government. She uses it to put a lot of
you know, her version of news releases, to tell people
what's going on and what kind of crime the government
is committing. So information and lawsuits mostly, and to organize doctors.
I mean it is America's frontline doctors. She gets a
lot of doctors organized who feel the same way that
(09:54):
she does.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Wow. So eventually she ends up at this conservative conference
called Ampfest in October twenty twenty. And at this conference
she meets someone named Joey Gilbert. Now, who is Joey Gilbert?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Okay, So Joey Gilbert lives in Reno. And when I
got off the plane at the Reno Airport, one of
the first big ads you see on the wall is
a guy holding his fists up to the camera because
he's a boxer, but he's also a lawyer and he'll
handle your diuis Oh my god. So Joey Gilbert got
a little bit famous because he was kind of the
(10:32):
most beloved character on a NBC reality show called The
Contender that Sylvester Stalloane and Sugar Ray Leonard hosted, and
so he was a kind of a reality show star,
slash boxer, slash DOUI lawyer who super into hydroxy clerk.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Wait, how did he join this movement?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
His father called him one day, who also lives in Reno,
and said, can I use your sauna? I'm not feeling great.
This is a March of twenty twenty, and guy comes over.
They go in the sauna. Joey leaves the sauna. Next
thing he knows, he's looking for his dad in the
house and he's passed out on the floor.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
He's so sick.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It turns out he got COVID really early, and Joey
had done some research and he's like, you got to
prescribe yourself hy drotic color queen right now, which he
did and got better quite quickly. And so Joey then
became a real believer in hydrostic cor queen.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
So do Gilbert and Gold get along when they meet?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yes, because Gilbert had seen Gold on the Supreme Court steps,
and hence she was a bit of a.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Hero to him as well. She was to a lot
of people in the movement.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
She saw him at Ampfest and was like, this guy
is a fighter, both literally and figuratively, and I need
him on my team because this guy can take on people.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
So she puts him on her team like her board.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Eventually she puts him on the board.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And so in December twenty twenty, a model named John
Strand asks him on Gold to speak at a protest.
And who's John Strand?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Again?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Well, she doesn't know this until much later, but he
had cent her seventy five dollars. He's the model who
is couch surfing. You can Google image search him. He
has like an eight pack, He's an amazing shape. He's
naked or nearly naked. On the cover of romance novels,
there's a novel called.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Howel for It? I've not read What was that?
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Again?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It's called howel for It? I have not read it.
I can't tell you if it's good enough. But the
cover is excellent and is often called an underwear model,
which I did not do in my story because I
thought that was cheap. But he has done underwear modeling.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
You've totally read how for it, You've totally read hell
for it.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I have not read hell for it, like now I
want to.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
For the record, Joel is beat red right now. So
why does Simone say yes to Strand's request to speak
at a protest?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I know from living in la It was so shocking
because it's such a liberal city. But there were these
massive protests in the middle of Beverly Hills against the lockdown,
and John Strand and this other person we're both organizing it.
And it was blocks from where Simone Gold was living.
So they kept trying to get her to come, and
she kept not coming, and eventually she said yes. And
(13:19):
that's where she meets John Strand, who's dreamy ooh yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Does she have a little crush.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
On him totally? She asks him to work with her,
uh huh as like some kind of like organizer slash
security because he had apparently done some kind of security
stuff before.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And then she asked him out on the date.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
What does he say?
Speaker 1 (13:40):
He says, no, she's quite a bit older.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I mean, not that that's the reason said no, he
wasn't that into it, but they continued to work together
and then she asked.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Him out again.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Oh persistent, yeah, at which point he said yes, because
his entire life had fallen apart. He's a very very
Christian evangelical guy, but all his friends were liberal and
he kept all his conservative thoughts to himself until now,
and so he had lost a ton of friends and
(14:09):
he was feeling very lonely and it was locked down.
So he's like, I'm not sure I'm ever going to
get to date anyone again in the near future.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
So they went for it.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
They wound up like working together all day and then
cooking a little dinner in her place, and that was
their date.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Oh that's adorable. It was very millennial.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
He introduced her to some music that she didn't know,
like he put some death Cab.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
For Cutie on and then oh that that's millennial.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, and then they kissed it.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Yeah, all, okay, Why am I like actually in love
with their love story. I'm gonna write some fan fiction
after this, Just kidding.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I'm not, but eventually all for it too.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Hell for it too. I'm currently howling for it. So
eventually gold and Strand and Gilbert they go to DC
in this like weird Thrupple kind of setup. But Gilbert
and Gold are meant to speak at a rally for
health freedom. But this isn't just any rally because Joel,
what day is it?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
It's January sixth.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Twenty twenty one, the day of the insurrection.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
And they go to work the rallies supposed to be
and they find it empty because people are storming the
capitol and what do they do?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
They follow them and Gilbert, who's with his dad, get
to the steps of the capitol and then Gilbert says
that his dad was like, this is getting crazy. We
can't go in there, and then he and his dad leave.
But Simone Gold is stoked and she and Strand follow
the crowd go inside, and she is prepared a speech.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
So search a valedictorian.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
There's pictures of her standing with Strand behind her. He
looks like the Michael Jackson of the insurrection is. He's
got like fingerless gloves and a leather jacket and they're
standing on this statue of Dwight Eisenhower and she's got
a bullhorn. Someone's hand at her and her papers and
she's reading the speech and she looks insane because she's
(16:01):
giving a speech to no one, I mean everyone there
is breaking things and stealing things and smearing feces on things.
And then in fact, later on you can see her
with her like reading glasses perched on her head, with
her papers out, walking around the rotunda reading this speech
that zero people are listening to. She told me she
thinks she was temporarily insane.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Is gold afraid of being arrested for what she did?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Not at all?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
No, she's a lawyer, so she doesn't think she did
anything wrong. And then she goes to dinner with some
friends that night and they're like, we saw this on
the news. We're afraid people are gonna get in trouble,
and she's like, no, never, never. But then what happens, Well,
then she and Strand are in their apartment at some
point and they hear some pounding on the door, and
they hear FBI, FBI, FBI, and she for some reason
(16:50):
assumes that this is someone else tricking her to get
into her apartment, because she's like, if her the FBI,
they would call like this, there's no reason.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Of course has a battering ram and they burst through
her beverly Hills apartment and they've got guns out, according
to her, and then they arrest her and Strand.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
After the break, Simone Gold ends up with way more
money than she knows what to do with, and John
Strand buys a lot of bubbly water. But first, our
advertisers are going to try to sell you one weird
trick doctors. Hey, that knocks COVID out within a day.
(17:34):
So she gets arrested, which is not a great look
for a nonprofits president, I imagine.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I think it was a great look.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You know, if you're a J six martyr, you wind
up getting a lot of donations. At some point after
she's arrested, the America's Frontline doctor starts getting a million
dollars a month in donations.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Really yeah, people like it?
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Does John Strand get any money out of this?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
After he finally gets released on bail, he puts up
a website that says, from Gucci to guilty, that's great
talking about his career, and he gets a decent amount
of donations to help hire lawyers to fight his case.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Okay, so and taking notes get arrested.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
At some point, John Strand is given house arrest and
he has to write down where he's living, and he
doesn't have a place to live, so he's gonna write
down his friend's place. And this is the real meet
cute of January sext. Someone goals like, well, we need
to work together, so why don't you write down my place?
So she's under house arrest with her.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Right dinner and death cab forever.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It's the story of the week.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah. Yeah, So the Feds are now on her tail,
and she's a little bit worried that all of this
money is going to get seized because she's getting like
millions of dollars. So what does she do.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
She's paranoid about the government. She's worried, like, if they're
arresting me for walking into the capitol, are they also
gonna take all my Foundations money? So she moves it
from her name to Joey Gilbert and then she.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Decides to do something else with her money, which is
buy a house. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So, one thing that's important to the story is people
are being paid quite a bit of money who work
for this organization. I believe Simone Gold's getting about six
hundred thousand dollars a year to run this group that
they're taking from the donations. They're all getting paid a
lot to be on this board, and they're racking up
quite a bit in expenses, and they have so much
(19:30):
money leftover. They don't know what to do with it,
and they need to put it somewhere. They could keep
it in the bank, but as Simone Gold says, there's
buyed inflation, so she doesn't want to do that. So
they think about ways to invest it, and one thing
Simone Gold suggests is that they buy some property, and
she doesn't want to do it in California. She wants
to move to Florida, and she chooses Naples, Florida, which
(19:53):
has become like Trump is Dan. They buy her the
house America's Frontline doctor ad Buysory, a three point six
million dollar house that she and Strand live in together.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Simone Gold has this house that's paid for by America's
frontline doctors. But she doesn't just get a house paid for.
What are some of the amenities that come with the package.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
She's got a Mercedes benz Van, a Hundai Genesis, a
gmc denale, all of which America's Frontline Doctors bought her.
They've been expensing five thousand dollars a month in housekeeping
fees and twenty thousand dollars a month for security.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
While she's awaiting trial, she also decides she wants to
try to reform the healthcare system in the US. And
how does she want to do that.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
She has a for profit company she's starting called gold Care,
in which she would get all these this network of
doctors that she's built up with America's frontline doctors, organize
them into kind of like, you know, the right wing
version of Kaiser Permanente, and they wouldn't take health insurance
and they would have their own board that was like
their own version of the CDC. So is this whole
(21:00):
alternative healthcare system she's trying to build called.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Gold Care, and is she biting off more than she
can chew?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Like?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Can she do this along with America's frontline doctors?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Well, she thinks she can do them both within the
same organization, of course, And she brings the idea to
the board and they quickly say that, you know, having
a for profit inside a nonprofit is a legal issue,
so we shouldn't do that, So they should be two
separate things. So she says, okay, well, then I will
leave America's frontline Doctors. But in order to do so
(21:32):
and start this organization, I'm gonna need a one point
five million dollar payout of seed money plus since I'm
giving up my six hundred thousand dollars in salary, I'll
take it as a consultant for America's frontline Doctors. And
she presents that to the board. They don't go for
that idea, at which point she says, well, then I
don't quit the board, and they say, well, you've already
(21:52):
quit the board.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
But she has bigger problems than even this, right because
she's literally going to court about the January sixth stuff,
and she decides to plead guilty.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Actually yeah, So she and Strand are co defendants. Her
model boyfriend and her lawyers tell her that she should
plead guilty, go a misdemeanor of trespassing and probably won't
serve any time for trespassing and they won't take away
her medical license. So she does that, but they tell
(22:23):
her she shouldn't tell Strand. Oh no, the government will
like that. So she and stand are zoom call when
she pleads guilty, and he's kind of heartbroken because he
will not plead guilty because he's a very religious person,
and he believes this is what God intends, and he
won't lie because he doesn't feel.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Like he did anything wrong.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Does this break them up?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
No? No, that they work their way through this.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Okay, how for it too? Still on good to know.
So she pleads guilty and who's the judge?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Well, that's a crazy thing. So her lawyer tells her
that she's very lucky because she got assigned a really reasonable,
smart judge named Christopher Cooper.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And why is that name so familiar?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, that's the thing. It's a fuliar smong gold. She's
just like, great, it's a good judge. And but then
she starts looking him up and she's like, oh my god,
it's Casey the guy who asked me out.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
At Stanford Lost, the dining hall guy.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And she's like, maybe that works in my favorite because
maybe he's got some positive memories of me because he
liked me back then, or maybe just Stanford loyalties.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
And does Casey Cooper decide to do her solid or what? No.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Casey Cooper is disgusted by what she did on January sixth,
and more disgusted by the fact that she's taken in
all this money to promote anti vaccine theories with money
based on her being involved in January sixth, So he
hits her somewhat hard considering she played guilty for a
(23:46):
misdemeanor and she gets sixty days in prison. She runs
up in a pretty serious prison, and in fact, she
winds up in solitary for a bit, because that's how
they were handling COVID. They would just put you in
solitary for a couple weeks to make sure you have COVID.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
So simone goal is in prison. And now Joey Gilbert
has to run the company right And what is the
first thing that he decides to do while she's out
of the picture.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Drops are off in prison and goes to the three
point six million dollar house and he gathers everyone together
and zoom on zoom, and he says, there's a new
sheriff in town. Everyone, throw away your credit cards. You've
all been spending way too much, especially you John Strand.
Oh no, it's no longer acceptable.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Yeah, John Strand, what's he spending money on?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Well, Gilbert has accused gold and Strand of expensing basically
their whole lives on company credit cards. He especially accuses
Strand of expensing bubbly water.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Bubbly water.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Gilbert winds up suspending Strand, and then Strand uses a
credit card anyway, and then Gilbert fires him. This is
all while Gold is in prison all while.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
So she comes out eventually and finds out that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
She comes out in these amazing braids.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
You can see video of it.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And there's a congress person there to greet her and
give her a beautifully folded up flag from the Capitol
that she had stormed to thank her for her service
and being a martyr for January six.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
But you know, she has bigger problems than just her
weird braids. Her boyfriend got fired from his job at
America and.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Is about to be on trial for January six.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Oh my god, what does she do? She gives Gilbert
a phone call. What does she tell him?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
She calls Gilbert and she said, I've looked at your
expenses and they're outrageous. You're you've flown you and your
daughter first class on America's frontline doctor money. And she's
quite upset at his spending and wants a yet rid
of him.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
And then they sue each other a bunch.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
He starts to sue her, she countersues him, he drops
his case, and they wind up going to court in Arizona.
See who runs America's Frontline Doctors? Because he says that
she quit the board. Oh and she says no, this
is her organization. So they have a fight over that,
and then it becomes quite ugly.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Oh no, it's like a messy divorce.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Well, Gold says, it's like a divorce, except Joey doesn't
care about the kid.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
So what's happening with the kid in question? America's Frontline Doctors.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
There's two separate boards. There's Simone Gold who's back in
her three point six million dollar house running zoom meetings
with all of these doctors. And meanwhile, Joey Gilbert has
this separate board that claims to be also running America's
Frontline Doctor which has access to some of these bank
accounts that she gave him, and so they have millions
(26:43):
of dollars And what they're mostly doing is working on
the case against Simon Gold.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
So like, where where are we right now? With the lawsuit?
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Brand has been sentenced to quite a bit of time
in prison, which he's leaving for very shortly.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Guilty.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, he's appealing but he's going to prison for quite
a bit of time.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
God, So everything kind of implodes spectacularly.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And there's still this money that this parallel board that's
run by this guy that Joey Gilbert picked has it
is still using to pay himself and these other people
that are taking on Simone Golds. So she's got these
people who still have the money that she raised, you know,
filing lawsuits against her with that money.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
In the end, what do you think was really motivating
Gold throughout all of this?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I mean, I think she believes. I think she truly believes.
And you know, it's easy to tear things down, it's
harder to build things up. So you have a bunch
of people who believe they have a corrupt system, but
then when they organize themselves, I think things are more difficult.
And I think that's what leads these people to fall
(27:54):
prey to corruption themselves, because they think corruption is everywhere,
and so it's in some ways okay, and then they
wind up attacking each other for being corrupt.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Do you believe in Simone Gold's mission?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Which part? What do you mean own.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Gold convince you? Is what I'm asked?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
No, no, no, I'm not gonna be signing up for
gold Care.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Okay, here's my take as a first time host of
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
I'm ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
It's pretty fun to do what you do and get
producers to feed you along list of questions instead of
actually reading this story. Yeah, I could get used to this.
Your job is way easier than mine.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Well apparently except for writing an outro.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
You got me there, you got me there. We're just
gonna go straight to theme.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
At the end of the show. What's next for Joel Stein?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Maybe you'll take a.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Nap, a book a round online.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Our show today was produced by Kate mccauliffe and Nisha
Vankot and was hosted by me Nisha Vankot. It was
edited by Lydia Jane Kott. Our engineer is Amanda kay Wang,
and our executive producer is Catherine Giordeaux. Our theme song
was written and performed by Jonathan Colton. To find more
Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(29:14):
wherever you listen to them. I'm not Joel Stein and
this is story of the week. Do you think you
could take Joey Gilbert in a fight?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Absolutely not. Joey I've been to Joey Gibbert's office. He
has he has belts, he's won belts. Yeah, no, he's
he's a boxer. No, of course not
Pushkin. Hey, it's Stole Stein.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This episode is going to be a little bit different
from our other ones, So get excited or scared.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
I don't know how you feel. Writing is hard.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Who's got that kind of time when you're already busy
trying to be Joe Stein? So it turns on a
mike maybe the twiddles a knop because a journalist friend
has got in that youble job harditories single story. Just
listen to smart people speak, conversation, film with information. It's
(00:58):
the story of the week.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Every episode I hear that theme song mocking me, telling
me I'm not a real journalist. So I was shamed
into spending the last six months reporting out my own
story of the week, which just ran as the cover
of the Financial Times weekend magazine. It's about this woman
named Simone Gold, who sacrificed a pretty sweet job as
a doctor during the pandemic because she was convinced the
(01:34):
hydroxy chloro queen would.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Save us all.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I was going to interview myself for this episode, but
I'm way too lazy to both parts of his interview,
so I asked our producer Nishavenka to interview me. I'm
pretty sure they said yes in order to take out
a lot of long simmering resentment towards me.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
God help me.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Joel Stein, Hello, you wrote Mega Maga meltdown for the
Financial Times and it's the story of the week. Thanks
for coming on.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
I had no choice. I'm contractually obligated to be here.
Speaker 3 (02:06):
Well.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Who is Simone Gold?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Simone Gold is a doctor from Long Island and she
graduated high school early and then she signed up for
this program that allows you get your undergrad and your
medical degree in seven years. She became a doctor at
a very young age. Was difficult for her because patients
would see her and not want to be treated to
her luck. The show Dukie Hauser came out while she
(02:33):
was first working as an intern at a hospital. Everyone
knew Dukie Houser. She would explain herself that way and
people were more comfortable.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
And so she graduates and then she decides to do
something else entirely, which is go to law school. What
was her time at Stanford Law School? Like, do you
get the sense that she was one of those really
hard partying Stanford kids or was she a loser with
a humor column?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
She was not social at all, so she was not
a hard partier. She was actually working as a doctor
while she was at Stanford Medical School, so a lot
of people there do not remember her.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
At all except this one guy.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, she was trying to tell me what her social
life was there. All she could remember was one guy
named Casey Cooper who asked her out to the dining
hall for a date and then asked her out for
a real day and she said no. And that seemed
to be the extent of her entire social life there.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Okay, if someone asked me out on a date to
the dining hall, I would say no, Like that's an
automatic strike. Come on, come on, dining hall.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Look, Stanford's a huge campus. Palo Alto is super expensive.
You have limited options.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
No, I'm with Simone. That's the first strike. Casey Cooper
could have never come back from that. So what happens
after her law school days?
Speaker 2 (03:49):
So she went back to practicing medicine. Wow, and she
particularly focused on emergency room medicine, which I didn't realize
is one of the most lucrative forms of medicine now.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
So she takes this highly paid er job and then
meets a guy, moves to Ala, has two kids, and
then gets a divorce. What's her first reaction when COVID hits.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
She's stoked, she'd told me. I think that's the word
she used. She's totally stoked. And then when I clearly
made a face that was horrified, she said, that's exactly
how you want your er doctor to be. If you've
been trained your whole life to do something and you
finally get to do it, it's very thrilling. And I
think that's how she felt about COVID.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
It sounds like being in the army, like your purpose
is here.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Right, Yes, very much so.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
And then when COVID hit, she was prescribing, like many
many doctors were a hydroxtechloroquine because they thought it would
help with COVID because it's an aminosuppressive drug that's used
to treat malarias, think it's used for lupus. So a
lot of doctors were trying it, and doctor Gold was
one of them, and she had a lot of success
(04:52):
with patients with it because she'd give it to them
and they'd get better.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Right, But COVID is also the kind of thing that
gets better on.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
It, right, So that's what so exactly, So, yeah, you
could get COVID and watch Tiger King and get better.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
But it's not because of Tiger King, and.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
That's what was going on with hydroxychloro queen and the
idea of prescribing it massively to people.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
And so she's spending a lot of time with her
patients prescribing them hydroxychloroquine, and then the FDA cracks down
and says, Okay, this doesn't work, stop prescribing it. What
does she do.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
It's very upsetting as a doctor if you're doing something
that seems to work and then you're told you can't
do it anymore. This happens all the time to doctors.
She gets really pissed. So she organizes a bunch of
doctors who feel the same way, and they write an
open letter to I think the Trump saying that he
should do something.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
About this and let doctors prescribe it.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
She organizes a smaller group of doctors who feel even
more passionately with the help of the Tea Party, and
they're going to fly to DC and hold a press
conference and try and meet with some government officials about
making them okay the use of hyjocic coorquin.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
And in this group of doctors is a pediatrician, an ophthalmologist,
a neurologist, and a pediatrician. They're endorsing hydroxy chloroquin is
a treatment for COVID and this group is called what
America's Frontline Doctors, right.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
This is America's frontline doctors. They go on the steps
of the Supreme Court and make speeches about needing to
use hydroxychloro queen, and Breitbart News is all over this
and they film it and it takes off online. I
think Trump retweets it, and I think maybe seven million
people view this thing in just a few hours, and
(06:39):
everyone strips it down. It gets taken down from Twitter, YouTube, Facebook,
everyone just pulls this thing as disinformation. But meanwhile, while
they're doing that, she's meeting with Mike Pence, who meets
with this group and talks to some other US representatives.
Why because Trump Trump is taking hydroxy chloro queen prophylactically,
(07:00):
He's downing a.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Like vine like tags.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
The next day, after she goes to the Supreme Court steps,
she is invited as a guest Stuntucker Carlson, and she
also is told by her hospitals that she has to
stop prescribing it. She refuses and she can no longer
work at those hospitals. Oh my god, her life makes
a big change in just.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
A few days.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
That's crazy. So what is this period like for her personally?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
She's getting calls and emails telling her how awesome she
is and being asked to go on TV shows. You know,
there's a whole world that's taken her in, but not
her kids and not her mom who who don't go
along with this and don't think she's right, although they
don't by any means disowner. They're still talking to her,
but they're not going out into the world like she
wants them to.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
But then, you know, the conservative movement kind of like
embraces her with open arms, and it's like, here's this doctor.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Oh right, right, she's got a new family.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Yeah yeah, instead of like a queer chosen family, it's
like a red pill chosen family. It's kind of your're.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So many families out there, so many families.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
So she gets fired from being an er doctor, and
what happens to her like nonprofit with the four doctors
and the two pediatricians that she's formed at this point.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
So she forms a five oh one c three nonprofit
organization and they start taking in donations to fight the government.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
Who's donating to her nonprofit?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Though most people are giving like twenty nine dollars. I
talked to one guy, John Strand. He gave her seventy
five dollars. He barely had seventy five dollars. He was
like a CouchSurfing you know, model singer in Beverly Hills
who just felt so strongly he sent her seventy five bucks.
Speaker 4 (08:37):
Why are people resonating with this so strongly?
Speaker 2 (08:40):
People are pissed if you remember about lockdown. Oh yeah,
we were still pissed about lockdown. It really shook their
lives and it also depended on your political bent. It
depended on your community. But you could just see the
amount of people who moved to Florida.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Yeah, why she's so convincing to so many people? Like,
what is it about Simone that's galvanizing this whole movement.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
One interesting thing with a lot of the people that
convinced a lot of people in this movement was that
they were against the establishment, but they had.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
The credentials of the establishment.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
So she was a successful doctor who also went to
Stanford Law School. She had twice the credentials that you
needed to impress people. Yeah, and yet she said the
whole system was corrupt. You know, when you call something
out from the inside, it's very.
Speaker 4 (09:24):
Powerful, right, So she's like an inside operative. That is
super interesting. What does she do with all of this
money that comes rolling in.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
She uses it to file a lot of lawsuits against
the government. She uses it to put a lot of
you know, her version of news releases, to tell people
what's going on and what kind of crime the government
is committing. So information and lawsuits mostly, and to organize doctors.
I mean it is America's frontline doctors. She gets a
lot of doctors organized who feel the same way that
(09:54):
she does.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
Wow. So eventually she ends up at this conservative conference
called Ampfest in October twenty twenty. And at this conference
she meets someone named Joey Gilbert. Now, who is Joey Gilbert?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Okay, So Joey Gilbert lives in Reno. And when I
got off the plane at the Reno Airport, one of
the first big ads you see on the wall is
a guy holding his fists up to the camera because
he's a boxer, but he's also a lawyer and he'll
handle your diuis Oh my god. So Joey Gilbert got
a little bit famous because he was kind of the
(10:32):
most beloved character on a NBC reality show called The
Contender that Sylvester Stalloane and Sugar Ray Leonard hosted, and
so he was a kind of a reality show star,
slash boxer, slash DOUI lawyer who super into hydroxy clerk.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Wait, how did he join this movement?
Speaker 2 (10:53):
His father called him one day, who also lives in Reno,
and said, can I use your sauna? I'm not feeling great.
This is a March of twenty twenty, and guy comes over.
They go in the sauna. Joey leaves the sauna. Next
thing he knows, he's looking for his dad in the
house and he's passed out on the floor.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
He's so sick.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It turns out he got COVID really early, and Joey
had done some research and he's like, you got to
prescribe yourself hy drotic color queen right now, which he
did and got better quite quickly. And so Joey then
became a real believer in hydrostic cor queen.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
So do Gilbert and Gold get along when they meet?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Yes, because Gilbert had seen Gold on the Supreme Court steps,
and hence she was a bit of a.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Hero to him as well. She was to a lot
of people in the movement.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
She saw him at Ampfest and was like, this guy
is a fighter, both literally and figuratively, and I need
him on my team because this guy can take on people.
Speaker 4 (11:53):
So she puts him on her team like her board.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Eventually she puts him on the board.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And so in December twenty twenty, a model named John
Strand asks him on Gold to speak at a protest.
And who's John Strand?
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Again?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Well, she doesn't know this until much later, but he
had cent her seventy five dollars. He's the model who
is couch surfing. You can Google image search him. He
has like an eight pack, He's an amazing shape. He's
naked or nearly naked. On the cover of romance novels,
there's a novel called.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Howel for It? I've not read What was that?
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Again?
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It's called howel for It? I have not read it.
I can't tell you if it's good enough. But the
cover is excellent and is often called an underwear model,
which I did not do in my story because I
thought that was cheap. But he has done underwear modeling.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
You've totally read how for it, You've totally read hell
for it.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
I have not read hell for it, like now I
want to.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
For the record, Joel is beat red right now. So
why does Simone say yes to Strand's request to speak
at a protest?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I know from living in la It was so shocking
because it's such a liberal city. But there were these
massive protests in the middle of Beverly Hills against the lockdown,
and John Strand and this other person we're both organizing it.
And it was blocks from where Simone Gold was living.
So they kept trying to get her to come, and
she kept not coming, and eventually she said yes. And
(13:19):
that's where she meets John Strand, who's dreamy ooh yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:23):
Does she have a little crush.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
On him totally? She asks him to work with her,
uh huh as like some kind of like organizer slash
security because he had apparently done some kind of security
stuff before.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
And then she asked him out on the date.
Speaker 4 (13:39):
What does he say?
Speaker 1 (13:40):
He says, no, she's quite a bit older.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I mean, not that that's the reason said no, he
wasn't that into it, but they continued to work together
and then she asked.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Him out again.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Oh persistent, yeah, at which point he said yes, because
his entire life had fallen apart. He's a very very
Christian evangelical guy, but all his friends were liberal and
he kept all his conservative thoughts to himself until now,
and so he had lost a ton of friends and
(14:09):
he was feeling very lonely and it was locked down.
So he's like, I'm not sure I'm ever going to
get to date anyone again in the near future.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
So they went for it.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
They wound up like working together all day and then
cooking a little dinner in her place, and that was
their date.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Oh that's adorable. It was very millennial.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
He introduced her to some music that she didn't know,
like he put some death Cab.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
For Cutie on and then oh that that's millennial.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, and then they kissed it.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Yeah, all, okay, Why am I like actually in love
with their love story. I'm gonna write some fan fiction
after this, Just kidding.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I'm not, but eventually all for it too.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Hell for it too. I'm currently howling for it. So
eventually gold and Strand and Gilbert they go to DC
in this like weird Thrupple kind of setup. But Gilbert
and Gold are meant to speak at a rally for
health freedom. But this isn't just any rally because Joel,
what day is it?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
It's January sixth.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
Twenty twenty one, the day of the insurrection.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
And they go to work the rallies supposed to be
and they find it empty because people are storming the
capitol and what do they do?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
They follow them and Gilbert, who's with his dad, get
to the steps of the capitol and then Gilbert says
that his dad was like, this is getting crazy. We
can't go in there, and then he and his dad leave.
But Simone Gold is stoked and she and Strand follow
the crowd go inside, and she is prepared a speech.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
So search a valedictorian.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
There's pictures of her standing with Strand behind her. He
looks like the Michael Jackson of the insurrection is. He's
got like fingerless gloves and a leather jacket and they're
standing on this statue of Dwight Eisenhower and she's got
a bullhorn. Someone's hand at her and her papers and
she's reading the speech and she looks insane because she's
(16:01):
giving a speech to no one, I mean everyone there
is breaking things and stealing things and smearing feces on things.
And then in fact, later on you can see her
with her like reading glasses perched on her head, with
her papers out, walking around the rotunda reading this speech
that zero people are listening to. She told me she
thinks she was temporarily insane.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Is gold afraid of being arrested for what she did?
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Not at all?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
No, she's a lawyer, so she doesn't think she did
anything wrong. And then she goes to dinner with some
friends that night and they're like, we saw this on
the news. We're afraid people are gonna get in trouble,
and she's like, no, never, never. But then what happens, Well,
then she and Strand are in their apartment at some
point and they hear some pounding on the door, and
they hear FBI, FBI, FBI, and she for some reason
(16:50):
assumes that this is someone else tricking her to get
into her apartment, because she's like, if her the FBI,
they would call like this, there's no reason.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, it does.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Of course has a battering ram and they burst through
her beverly Hills apartment and they've got guns out, according
to her, and then they arrest her and Strand.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
After the break, Simone Gold ends up with way more
money than she knows what to do with, and John
Strand buys a lot of bubbly water. But first, our
advertisers are going to try to sell you one weird
trick doctors. Hey, that knocks COVID out within a day.
(17:34):
So she gets arrested, which is not a great look
for a nonprofits president, I imagine.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
I think it was a great look.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You know, if you're a J six martyr, you wind
up getting a lot of donations. At some point after
she's arrested, the America's Frontline doctor starts getting a million
dollars a month in donations.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Really yeah, people like it?
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Does John Strand get any money out of this?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
After he finally gets released on bail, he puts up
a website that says, from Gucci to guilty, that's great
talking about his career, and he gets a decent amount
of donations to help hire lawyers to fight his case.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Okay, so and taking notes get arrested.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
At some point, John Strand is given house arrest and
he has to write down where he's living, and he
doesn't have a place to live, so he's gonna write
down his friend's place. And this is the real meet
cute of January sext. Someone goals like, well, we need
to work together, so why don't you write down my place?
So she's under house arrest with her.
Speaker 4 (18:30):
Right dinner and death cab forever.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
It's the story of the week.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah. Yeah, So the Feds are now on her tail,
and she's a little bit worried that all of this
money is going to get seized because she's getting like
millions of dollars. So what does she do.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
She's paranoid about the government. She's worried, like, if they're
arresting me for walking into the capitol, are they also
gonna take all my Foundations money? So she moves it
from her name to Joey Gilbert and then she.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Decides to do something else with her money, which is
buy a house. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So, one thing that's important to the story is people
are being paid quite a bit of money who work
for this organization. I believe Simone Gold's getting about six
hundred thousand dollars a year to run this group that
they're taking from the donations. They're all getting paid a
lot to be on this board, and they're racking up
quite a bit in expenses, and they have so much
(19:30):
money leftover. They don't know what to do with it,
and they need to put it somewhere. They could keep
it in the bank, but as Simone Gold says, there's
buyed inflation, so she doesn't want to do that. So
they think about ways to invest it, and one thing
Simone Gold suggests is that they buy some property, and
she doesn't want to do it in California. She wants
to move to Florida, and she chooses Naples, Florida, which
(19:53):
has become like Trump is Dan. They buy her the
house America's Frontline doctor ad Buysory, a three point six
million dollar house that she and Strand live in together.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
Simone Gold has this house that's paid for by America's
frontline doctors. But she doesn't just get a house paid for.
What are some of the amenities that come with the package.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
She's got a Mercedes benz Van, a Hundai Genesis, a
gmc denale, all of which America's Frontline Doctors bought her.
They've been expensing five thousand dollars a month in housekeeping
fees and twenty thousand dollars a month for security.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
While she's awaiting trial, she also decides she wants to
try to reform the healthcare system in the US. And
how does she want to do that.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
She has a for profit company she's starting called gold Care,
in which she would get all these this network of
doctors that she's built up with America's frontline doctors, organize
them into kind of like, you know, the right wing
version of Kaiser Permanente, and they wouldn't take health insurance
and they would have their own board that was like
their own version of the CDC. So is this whole
(21:00):
alternative healthcare system she's trying to build called.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Gold Care, and is she biting off more than she
can chew?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Like?
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Can she do this along with America's frontline doctors?
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Well, she thinks she can do them both within the
same organization, of course, And she brings the idea to
the board and they quickly say that, you know, having
a for profit inside a nonprofit is a legal issue,
so we shouldn't do that, So they should be two
separate things. So she says, okay, well, then I will
leave America's frontline Doctors. But in order to do so
(21:32):
and start this organization, I'm gonna need a one point
five million dollar payout of seed money plus since I'm
giving up my six hundred thousand dollars in salary, I'll
take it as a consultant for America's frontline Doctors. And
she presents that to the board. They don't go for
that idea, at which point she says, well, then I
don't quit the board, and they say, well, you've already
(21:52):
quit the board.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
But she has bigger problems than even this, right because
she's literally going to court about the January sixth stuff,
and she decides to plead guilty.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Actually yeah, So she and Strand are co defendants. Her
model boyfriend and her lawyers tell her that she should
plead guilty, go a misdemeanor of trespassing and probably won't
serve any time for trespassing and they won't take away
her medical license. So she does that, but they tell
(22:23):
her she shouldn't tell Strand. Oh no, the government will
like that. So she and stand are zoom call when
she pleads guilty, and he's kind of heartbroken because he
will not plead guilty because he's a very religious person,
and he believes this is what God intends, and he
won't lie because he doesn't feel.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Like he did anything wrong.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Does this break them up?
Speaker 1 (22:43):
No? No, that they work their way through this.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Okay, how for it too? Still on good to know.
So she pleads guilty and who's the judge?
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Well, that's a crazy thing. So her lawyer tells her
that she's very lucky because she got assigned a really reasonable,
smart judge named Christopher Cooper.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
And why is that name so familiar?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, that's the thing. It's a fuliar smong gold. She's
just like, great, it's a good judge. And but then
she starts looking him up and she's like, oh my god,
it's Casey the guy who asked me out.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
At Stanford Lost, the dining hall guy.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
And she's like, maybe that works in my favorite because
maybe he's got some positive memories of me because he
liked me back then, or maybe just Stanford loyalties.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
And does Casey Cooper decide to do her solid or what? No.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Casey Cooper is disgusted by what she did on January sixth,
and more disgusted by the fact that she's taken in
all this money to promote anti vaccine theories with money
based on her being involved in January sixth, So he
hits her somewhat hard considering she played guilty for a
(23:46):
misdemeanor and she gets sixty days in prison. She runs
up in a pretty serious prison, and in fact, she
winds up in solitary for a bit, because that's how
they were handling COVID. They would just put you in
solitary for a couple weeks to make sure you have COVID.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
So simone goal is in prison. And now Joey Gilbert
has to run the company right And what is the
first thing that he decides to do while she's out
of the picture.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Drops are off in prison and goes to the three
point six million dollar house and he gathers everyone together
and zoom on zoom, and he says, there's a new
sheriff in town. Everyone, throw away your credit cards. You've
all been spending way too much, especially you John Strand.
Oh no, it's no longer acceptable.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Yeah, John Strand, what's he spending money on?
Speaker 2 (24:29):
Well, Gilbert has accused gold and Strand of expensing basically
their whole lives on company credit cards. He especially accuses
Strand of expensing bubbly water.
Speaker 4 (24:41):
Bubbly water.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Gilbert winds up suspending Strand, and then Strand uses a
credit card anyway, and then Gilbert fires him. This is
all while Gold is in prison all while.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
So she comes out eventually and finds out that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
She comes out in these amazing braids.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
You can see video of it.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And there's a congress person there to greet her and
give her a beautifully folded up flag from the Capitol
that she had stormed to thank her for her service
and being a martyr for January six.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
But you know, she has bigger problems than just her
weird braids. Her boyfriend got fired from his job at
America and.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Is about to be on trial for January six.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Oh my god, what does she do? She gives Gilbert
a phone call. What does she tell him?
Speaker 2 (25:30):
She calls Gilbert and she said, I've looked at your
expenses and they're outrageous. You're you've flown you and your
daughter first class on America's frontline doctor money. And she's
quite upset at his spending and wants a yet rid
of him.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
And then they sue each other a bunch.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
He starts to sue her, she countersues him, he drops
his case, and they wind up going to court in Arizona.
See who runs America's Frontline Doctors? Because he says that
she quit the board. Oh and she says no, this
is her organization. So they have a fight over that,
and then it becomes quite ugly.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Oh no, it's like a messy divorce.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Well, Gold says, it's like a divorce, except Joey doesn't
care about the kid.
Speaker 4 (26:17):
So what's happening with the kid in question? America's Frontline Doctors.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
There's two separate boards. There's Simone Gold who's back in
her three point six million dollar house running zoom meetings
with all of these doctors. And meanwhile, Joey Gilbert has
this separate board that claims to be also running America's
Frontline Doctor which has access to some of these bank
accounts that she gave him, and so they have millions
(26:43):
of dollars And what they're mostly doing is working on
the case against Simon Gold.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
So like, where where are we right now? With the lawsuit?
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Brand has been sentenced to quite a bit of time
in prison, which he's leaving for very shortly.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Guilty.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, he's appealing but he's going to prison for quite
a bit of time.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
God, So everything kind of implodes spectacularly.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And there's still this money that this parallel board that's
run by this guy that Joey Gilbert picked has it
is still using to pay himself and these other people
that are taking on Simone Golds. So she's got these
people who still have the money that she raised, you know,
filing lawsuits against her with that money.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
In the end, what do you think was really motivating
Gold throughout all of this?
Speaker 2 (27:34):
I mean, I think she believes. I think she truly believes.
And you know, it's easy to tear things down, it's
harder to build things up. So you have a bunch
of people who believe they have a corrupt system, but
then when they organize themselves, I think things are more difficult.
And I think that's what leads these people to fall
(27:54):
prey to corruption themselves, because they think corruption is everywhere,
and so it's in some ways okay, and then they
wind up attacking each other for being corrupt.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
Do you believe in Simone Gold's mission?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Which part? What do you mean own.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
Gold convince you? Is what I'm asked?
Speaker 2 (28:11):
No, no, no, I'm not gonna be signing up for
gold Care.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Okay, here's my take as a first time host of
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
I'm ready, I'm ready.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
It's pretty fun to do what you do and get
producers to feed you along list of questions instead of
actually reading this story. Yeah, I could get used to this.
Your job is way easier than mine.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Well apparently except for writing an outro.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
You got me there, you got me there. We're just
gonna go straight to theme.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
At the end of the show. What's next for Joel Stein?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Maybe you'll take a.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
Nap, a book a round online.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
Our show today was produced by Kate mccauliffe and Nisha
Vankot and was hosted by me Nisha Vankot. It was
edited by Lydia Jane Kott. Our engineer is Amanda kay Wang,
and our executive producer is Catherine Giordeaux. Our theme song
was written and performed by Jonathan Colton. To find more
Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
(29:14):
wherever you listen to them. I'm not Joel Stein and
this is story of the week. Do you think you
could take Joey Gilbert in a fight?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Absolutely not. Joey I've been to Joey Gibbert's office. He
has he has belts, he's won belts. Yeah, no, he's
he's a boxer. No, of course not
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