LEFT & RIGHT OCTOBER 28, 2020

 

In the left chair for this show sat John Burroughs, MD. He calls himself centrist, is politically independent, and “looks at every policy on its face.” As the show went on, I saw nothing that would contradict that self-assessment. The first cold question from our producer asked if we were concerned that, because newly-sworn Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared with the president at the White House, she would be a pawn of the president. John said he wasn’t concerned. He said Barrett was certainly conservative, very much against abortion as a Catholic, and “Barrett’s primary loyalty is not to the president, but to the law.” He said nothing with which I would disagree. Interestingly he believes Barrett would not vote to overturn Roe V Wade, and suggested she might recuse herself as a Catholic because she had done that earlier as an appellate judge in a capital punishment case which the church opposes. Second question from the producer listed several right-wing groups and asked if we thought voters would be put in danger from those and some left-wing groups. I said that there are very few paramilitary right-wingers who might cause damage like the Oklahoma City bombing, but there are far more left-wing groups like BLM and Antifa who, though they would cause comparatively little damage to people with their tactics, they would cause far more overall damage to property. Right wing groups tend to be made up of former military people who have been trained to kill, and they’re more dangerous that way. BLM and Antifa will through Molotov cocktails at police cars and burn down buildings. John said both groups like creating chaos, unrest, and violence more than making political statements and that’s their commonality. They like imposing their views on the public at large because “they believe their personal values transcend the rule of law.” He says Donald Trump is dodging questions about whether he would incite violence through such groups should he lose the election. I asked him if he thought Democrats wink at violence by BLM and Antifa. He said both parties wink at extreme behavior by their respective radicals. As we discussed possible election outcomes, John mentioned the Safe Harbor Deadline, with which I was not familiar. The Electoral College sets a date by which states must report to the Electoral College the results of voting within their state. Our producer then printed some documents John read setting the date this year as December 8th. If there are challenges to the vote count they must be resolved within each state by that date. [SIDE NOTE: These procedures will now be playing out. This show was taped six days before the election, but now the results are being challenged in lawsuits by President Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Trump is demanding a recount in Wisconsin. Arizona may not have gone for Biden as reported and not all the votes are counted as of this writing the afternoon of November 5th.] Given that we didn’t disagree on topics we covered, and this wasn’t a pure Left & Right show, I decided to pick his brain about medical issues, asking why he believed masks are effective with the Covid virus. He said they inhibit spread but don’t prevent it entirely and cited examples. I then asked him about two organizations of doctors, one in the US called the “Frontline Doctors” and the other an international group who signed “The Great Barrington Declaration." Both disagree publicly with various policy recommendations by our NIH and CDC. And, both groups had been censored by Twitter and Facebook as a result. John had not heard of either, but it turns out he agreed with the Great Barrington Declaration, which states that economic and school shutdowns do far more harm than good and are unwarranted. About the Hunter Biden laptop, John believes it’s a hoax perpetrated by the Russians. I brought up Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s recent statement that there’s no intelligence to back that up. John, however believes more in a committee report by Senator Chuck Grassley supporting his assertion, which I had not read. At the end, he agreed to come onto future shows and explore other topics like Roe V Wade.