Triggered by the WaPo

I have developed a rather deep-seated reflex to certain types of reporters

Yesterday afternoon, I was going about my daily business, in the middle of recording yet another podcast (Tom Woods), when the cell rang. As usual when broadcasting, I reached over and clicked the text message button, “Sorry, I can’t talk right now”. Once Tom and I were through, I returned to that text message.

Apparently, the call came from an unknown reporter with the usual sense of urgency and entitlement. I had received no recent email inquiry from the press, so this could be yet another phishing operation. Lately, I have been getting a lot more of these. Usually, some variant of “Hi there, how are you, did you forget about me?” and when I write back “who is this” I get a bizarre response demonstrating that this is just some random bot trying to get me to engage. But this particular inquiry had the veiled threat frequently used by junior journalists- translated from the journalese, it reads, “call me back and answer my questions or we will publish a hit piece on you anyhow.” So I punched the call-back button.

A chirpy female voice self-identifies, “This is Lauren Weber with the Washington Post”. I respond - “Hello Lauren, this is Robert Malone, I assume you are preparing some sort of hit piece on me?” She responds “Well, not from my point of view.”

Uh, yeah. Sure. Here we go, just as I anticipated. Lesson learned over the last four years: when a corporate news reporter engages like this, what is going on is that their editor has told them that before they publish a smear article, they are supposed to get a comment from the target.

At this point, the smear is essentially already written, and this is their lip service effort at “fair and balanced”. You are going to get smeared, whether you answer their questions or not. If you don’t, they will publish that they attempted to get a response, but that you did not reply. If they do get you to reply, they will selectively edit whatever you say to help make their point. These are the rules of today’s “gotcha” version of journalism.

I then asked Lauren Weber to what email address she had sent her “questions” for me to answer. Response - “your substack email”. Which I check pretty much never. I have many email accounts and was not really aware that this included a “substack” email address. With about 360,000 subscribers to this substack, I can hardly imagine how much email traffic that address generates. I can hardly keep up with my (historic) GMail and (current) Protonmail accounts!

I asked her to send her questions to my GMail address. This is what I received-

Now, this is a tell. This reporter is indeed fishing (or phishing). Because the answers to each of these questions were clearly stated in the previously published article that triggered Lauren Weber to contact me. She began her questioning by asserting that these two young girls were measles deaths. Right then I knew what I was dealing with - a corporate news narrative reinforcer.

So, who is Lauren Weber?

“accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation.”

Yup, intuition confirmed, smear incoming.

Turns out it is a classic wrap-up smear, based on a primary smear article that some obscure reporter named Pooja Salhotra (of the “Texas Tribune”) wrote in which she accused me of the crime of “misinformation”, repeating (yet again) the NY Times published accusation of reporter Davey Alba; “news of Daisy’s death came from the highly-charged writings of vaccine critic Dr. Robert Malone, a physician once labeled by The New York Times as a “Covid misinformation star.” Alba, previously employed by the NYT as a mis- and dis-information specialist, had extremely detailed knowledge of CIA affairs, and left the NYT immediately after the hit piece.

Alba, Salhotra, and Weber are examples of the current foot-soldier caste of narrative enforcers employed by the censorship-industrial complex. For some reason, this new sector of that growing industry seems to be staffed mainly by young women, usually recently minted journalism school grads with virtually no scientific or medical training. Which appears to be a feature, not a bug. Ignorance of the subject matter at hand apparently makes it easier to swallow whatever the promoted narrative of the day is.

Relevant to today’s discussion is that the Washington Post derives a large fraction of its 174 million dollar advertising budget from the Pharmaceutical industry (down from 190M$ total last year). As to the “Texas Tribune”, this is an entirely on-line, subscriber-based outlet that does not publish its circulation. One website ranks it #9 out of the top 10 Texas “newspapers” by circulation. The next largest Texas newspaper has a daily circulation of approximately 6,878 (a little over 200,000 per month), so one can infer that the “Texas Tribune” has a lower circulation. At best, an obscure regional niche on-line outlet. Just for contrast, Malone News has a daily circulation of between 300,000 and 600,000 (views) and a monthly circulation of between 9 and 10 million views.

Returning to the subject of the article that is the source being used for “medical disinformation” reporter Weber’s WaPo wrap-up smear…

In a sense, Salhotra had already published a wrap-up smear attacking me for the crime of being the first to report the truth of the unfortunate death of young Daisy Hildebrand, the second young girl from the Mennonite community that was the epicenter of the recent West Texas measles outbreak. In my brief experience trying to communicate with these two, both Salhotra and Weber seem to have been professionally offended that I was first to have the story of the true cause of death for the unfortunate Daisy Hildebrand, and obsessed with how I came to know about this. Salhotra labeled me as a “vaccine skeptic” in her headline, and implied that I was somehow at fault for not speaking to the father prior to publication. Why should Malone get the scoop? Well, perhaps because he is a licensed physician with a reputation for being an honest broker of truth willing to speak and write against approved medical narratives? Perhaps a better question would be why would a medical whistleblower want to contact the “Texas Tribune” or the Washington Post?

Salhotra knew that I had never spoken to the father, but rather had spoken to a physician involved in outpatient management of Young Hildebrand, who had dictated to me the facts of the case as he knew them. She featured the “Malone did not talk to the family” narrative at the top of her article, and buried the fact that I had actually spoken to a key physician with detailed knowledge of the case far down in her article. A detail much more relevant, from a medical information point of view, as opposed to the uninformed and ignorant medical disinformation being pushed by corporate media that this and the preceding death were due to Measles. After interviewing the outpatient treating physician, I concluded that this was not an example of an extremely rare death from measles, but rather yet another example of alarmingly common death from medical mismanagement.

As unfortunately was also the case with the previous young girl from this same community, who actually died from a misdiagnosed and mismanaged microbial pneumonia (mycoplasma, the most common cause of “walking pneuomonia”) in the context of this particular outbreak - but was incorrectly identified as a “measles death”, my assessment of the facts related by the physician was that young Hildebrand died of a medically mismanaged bacterial pneumonia, not from Measles. Not what either Salhotra nor Weber wanted to hear. Apparently because it does not fit the promoted narrative that Measles is a highly lethal disease and two unvaccinated children had already died.

At this point, you should be asking yourself “Who or what organization would benefit from promoting the medical disinformation that Measles is a very lethal disease? Is there some company that produces an FDA-authorized pharmaceutical cure (answer= no.) Is there some company that markets some sort of preventative pharmaceutical, for instance, a vaccine (answer = yes, Merck Vaccines) that would profit from promoting fear of Measles? Or is there some political party or constituency that might benefit from raising concerns about a current government official (such as HHS Secretary RFKjr)? Answer = yes.

According to various studies, medical errors are estimated to cause between 250,000 and 440,000 deaths annually in the United States. One study published in the BMJ in 2016 estimated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical errors in the U.S., making it the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer.

Historically, from 2001 to 2022, among the 4,056 measles cases reported in the United States, 727 (18%) were hospitalized, and only three deaths were reported.

The real story here, for any “journalist” with an ounce of insight or integrity, was that there was a concerted attempt to position these tragedies as rare “Measles” deaths, when, in fact they were yet another example of the shockingly common category of medical error deaths.

Corporate media, even including the modest on-line “Texas Tribune”, has chosen to spin the unfortunate deaths of these two Mennonite children as rare “Measles Deaths”, when the actual culprit was much more common “medical errors”. Both of these young girls died of “medical errors” rather than Measles. Both had contracted measles, but that was not what killed them. What killed them was a failure to recognize that they had microbial pneumonia (Mycoplasma in the first case, hospital-acquired multidrug-resistant E. coli in the second case). These facts have been confirmed by careful review of the actual hospital medical records in both cases by a highly experienced emergency room physician.- Dr. Pierre Kory. Calling these unfortunate deaths “Measles Deaths” is true medical misinformation. And if this was being done to support a political agenda, then that would meet the criteria for "Medical disinformation”, which Lauren Weber is clearly an expert in, although not in the way she pretends to be.

I talked to reporter Pooja Salhotra about the apparent political agenda at play here, and her reporting from that detailed conversation was as follows;

“There are statements that RFK was somehow responsible for the outbreak,” said Malone, who Kennedy has defended against criticism. “This is political propaganda.”

Pootra played into this narrative, writing;

It’s the latest skirmish in an ongoing war for control over the narrative around the measles outbreak, how the public should respond to it and the people who have lost children to the disease. Local public health officials, the state health department and leading epidemiologists have been encouraging vaccination to prevent measles' spread, while vaccine skeptics and the nation’s health secretary are downplaying the effects of the illness and platforming unconventional therapies.

Now lets examine the track record of “medical disinformation” reporter Lauren Weber, who has precisely zero training in medicine. From her perch as “accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation,” Lauren Weber of the Washington Post seems to have a particular obsession with “reporting” on the current Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This is not objective “reporting”. At best these essays belong on the op-ed pages of the Washington Post. This is transparently political propaganda, cloaked as “advocacy journalism”. It appears that Lauren Weber is really just another hater, seeking intel from disgruntled HHS employees who do not like the changes coming at them like a tidal wave.

I alerted Lauren Weber that I had previously sued the Washington Post for calling me a liar when I stated (on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a large crowd) that the COVID genetic “vaccines” were not working because they were not stopping infection or death, and the WaPo called me a liar.

You can find a transcript of that speech at the following link. I invite you to read it. Did I lie, or was that just another WaPo defamation and delegitimization campaign? Judge for yourself.

Weber responded by saying she would discuss this with her editor and would I agree to her recording our further conversation. I then punched through her questions - and no more. As mentioned before, each had already been answered if she bothered to read the “Texas Tribune” article.

How did you publish about the second measles death before anyone else?

Because I received an anonymous tip about this case.

The family of the girl who died said they had not spoken to you — how did you know about her medical care?

Because I spoke to a physician who had been involved in her outpatient care, but wished to remain anonymous.

Why do you believe medical mismanagement is to blame?

Because in both this and the prior case of death due to pneumonia, the hospital physicians failed to recognize and diagnose a common microbial pneumonia, as documented in detail by Dr. Pierre Kory after reviewing the hospital records.

And with that I said good bye to the WaPo Medical Disinformation specialist Lauren Weber, who actually has no training or experience in either science or medicine.

What do I really think happened in these two West Texas hospitals? Why did the managing physicians apparently misdiagnose life-threatening mycoplasma or E. coli pneumonia as Measles pneumonia? There is a good chance that the press hype about the Measles outbreak biased their thinking and observations. There is a pretty good chance that at least part of the reason these two girls died was due to the constant drumbeat of promoted fearporn narratives (or psychological bioterrorism) about Measles as a highly lethal disease that was being circulated at that time.

The only Medical Disinformation currently being spread here is coming from the corporate media, the “Texas Tribune” and apparently the WaPo, which seek to label both of these unfortunate deaths as due to Measles, when in fact they were due to medical mismanagement and failure to properly treat with antibiotics either Mycoplasma or multidrug-resistant E. coli pneumonia.

If they did not learn their lesson with COVID and the overdiagnosis of COVID death, when will they ever learn the humility to recognize that the determination of cause of death is complicated, and best left to pathologists and coroners, rather than hospital PR people, medically unqualified “factcheckers” and inexperienced “journalists”?

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In closing, let’s get back to the “triggered” part of the title of this essay.

After dealing with this entitled, ignorant, biased “reporter”, I was cranky for the rest of the day. Repeatedly snapped at Jill without justification. Withdrew and buried myself in doing physical chores. Good news is that I got the beehive set up - it needed to be done before leaving on the current trip down to the Florida meeting of the Council on National Policy. I woke up from a restless sleep at 4:15 AM today so I could catch a 8:30 AM flight from Dulles airport.

And suddenly it hit me.

That call with WaPo Medical Disinformation “reporter” Lauren Weber had triggered a PTSD response. I knew I was being set up for more defamation and efforts to delegitimize me, and there was nothing I could do about it. Because, the Washington Post can hire great lawyers, and the Supreme Court has established (Sullivan vs NYTimes) that journalists can essentially slander and defame at will.

I know PTSD when I feel it. I was diagnosed with PTSD due to the abuse I received at Salk Institute/UCSD subsequent to the “mRNA as a Drug/vaccine” work and discoveries I had way back in the late 1980s when I was in my late 20s.

I refuse to play the role of a victim. The left loves self-victimization. I reject this. And yet, there it was. People often ask me how I have been able to tolerate all of the hate and attacks (particularly from corporate media) that have been thrown at me during the COVIDcrisis for speaking out about truth - to the best of my ability. I always shrug it off. But to be honest, from time to time it would really get to me. I dealt with it by just suppressing and denying the feelings, knowing that if I let my anger out, it would just be weaponized against me.

But this morning I encountered the truth. I have PTSD from all of the promoted hate.

I apologize to Jill and anyone else I was cranky to yesterday. And thank you, the reader, for allowing me to give voice to these feelings and observations. I am reminded of the advice I often offer to others. The world is not fair. Get over it, and get back to work.

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If you wish to share your own personal opinion of Lauren Weber, her Medical Disinformation agenda, and her work product, I invite you to contact her directly either via “X” ( @LaurenweberHP), email at Lauren.Weber@WashingtonPost.com, or via her QR code link:

The Washington Post has eliminated the position of Ombudsman, so that option is no longer available.