🌊 America's Wrongest Man

You’re receiving this edition of our new premium newsletter — We the 66 — because you’re a RocaNews subscriber. 66 stands for the 66% of Americans who do not trust the news media. If you believe in nonpartisan news and the importance of free speech, receive all our articles and support our mission by becoming a premium subscriber.

If you’re a new reader, you can subscribe free here!

What’s it like to sue the president?

The Atlantic called Alex Berenson “The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man.” Others consider him prophetic.

Berenson has a standard elite pedigree: Born in New York City, he attended an elite prep school and then Yale before landing at the New York Times in 1999. He spent a decade there, covering the pharma industry, war in Iraq, and the Bernie Madoff scandal. He moonlighted as a spy novelist until he became successful enough to quit journalism altogether in 2010.

Several years later, Berenson became alarmed by stories his wife – a psychiatrist who treats the criminally mentally ill – was telling him about patients who were high at the times of their crimes.

“I thought well, yeah, sure they dropped acid or they were using meth or whatever,” Berenson told Roca. “But no, she said they were all using cannabis.”

That led Berenson to publish the 2019 book, “Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana.” The book – which challenged the growing pro-legalization consensus – struck a nerve.

“Alex Berenson's Tell Your Children is wrong on marijuana,” headlined Vox; “The return of ‘reefer madness,’” wrote the Washington Post. But the attention elevated Berenson’s profile.

Almost exactly a year later, Berenson struck a nerve again.

In March 2020, before lockdowns had even begun, Berenson was accusing the media of over-hyping Covid. In the following weeks, he accused their fear mongering of triggering rampant fear and irrational policies. The media responded by putting a target on his back.

Among countless negative stories, Vanity Fair accused him of peddling “health misinformation,” The Atlantic headlined a story, “Alex Berenson: The Pandemic's Wrongest Man,” and the Washington Post accused him of hosting Tucker Carlson’s “most dishonest and dangerous” segment ever.

So what was Berenson saying?

In essence, that the media was overstating Covid’s threat to young people. He’d later say the same about the vaccines’ safety and efficacy.

In April 2020, he wrote to Vice, “Although SARS-2-COV is a real virus that appears to pose a serious threat to the elderly and some people with chronic conditions, we have increasing evidence that its risks have been overstated – certainly to the general population under 50 and especially to anyone under 30, and that the draconian lockdowns we have undertaken may have economic, educational, and societal effects far more serious than the virus.”

Today, many people would undoubtedly agree with Berenson’s assessment. Then, it was heresy.

In June 2020, Amazon banned an anti-lockdown book written by Berenson. A year later, now-public documents show the Biden Administration pressured Twitter to ban Berenson.

Hours after Biden accused the social media companies of “killing people” in 2021, Twitter suspended him. The next month, they banned him altogether for a tweet that read, ​​"It doesn't stop infection. Or transmission. Don't think of it as a vaccine. Think of it - at best - as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity."

Berenson responded by suing and for what appears to be the first time, Twitter settled and agreed to let him back on. As part of the lawsuit, Berenson accessed internal Twitter documents that showed how government and Pfizer officials pressured Twitter to silence him.

That has led Berenson to sue none other than President Biden, along with other officials and Pfizer executives. The resulting case – Berenson v Biden – is currently in the federal court system.

As you can imagine, we had a lot of questions for Alex. He’s the guest on our new episode of We the 66. Listen now on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple and let us know what you think!

Sincerely,

–Max F and Max T

RocaNews Co-founders

If you believe in nonpartisan news and the importance of free speech, receive full access and support our mission by becoming a premium subscriber.