Gordon Duff Debates Kevin Barrett on COVID Data & RFK Jr.’s Speech

Which one of us is putting out COVID misinformation? You decide!

Watch the video

Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today, argues that there is no such thing as Infection Fatality Rate (IFR); that nobody has ever died from a COVID vaccine; that the so-called antivax movement is the creation of the CIA and right-wing Israeli-run think tanks which pay its leaders $50,000 a month (where do I sign up?); and that Reuters and the public health services of the UK, Denmark, Israel, Australia, and other countries are all lying when they say the vast majority of current COVID deaths are among vaccinated people.

Transcribed using Sonix and lightly edited for clarity by Kevin Barrett, Veterans Today Editor

Kevin Barrett: Welcome to Truth Jihad audio-video. Kevin Barrett here, doing this show since 2006, asking hard questions, and talking with interesting, provocative people who think outside the box. One of them is Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today, who has outraged many of us in the so-called anti-vax community by, well, insulting us from the other side of the fence. But I'm willing to talk to him anyway. So hey, welcome Gordon. How are you doing?

Gordon Duff: Yeah. And on this, it's the simplest thing. Steele came here to me before, Robert Steele, with tens of millions of financing. Now the issue was, it's pretty simple. We spent three days going through this. The initial tranche to fund anti-vax and including—I would have to change, you know, I'd have to stop because Trump apparently was very, very upset with me. I find that scary.

Kevin Barrett: Well, I guess the feeling is mutual because you often sound pretty upset with Trump, too.

Gordon Duff: Well, I just live my life. I have limited expectations. We live in a country full of—whatever the hell it is. We don't even need to go there. I can control where I am to an extent because I live in the middle of nowhere and am reasonably secure here, and I'm not financially dependent. Makes me very rare to that extent. Of all of you guys, I'm the only millionaire. Of all you guys. None of you guys are millionaires. I'm a millionaire. I don't need anybody's money. I didn't need Steele's money. He was offering a lot of money. Now the deal that hit me here is I was told that if I would jump in and back him on anti-vaxx with money, with either CIA or from right wing Israeli run think tanks or a combination of both...The issue is I was going to get $50,000 a month. He was going to get $300,000 upfront and then pay me fifty thousand out of it. And I have a list of emails from him dating back some time here where I'm saying...

Kevin Barrett: Well, maybe we should publish those just so you can back this up. Because number one, I'm not so sure if I trust what Steele says in the first place. I mean, I've talked to him and heard all kinds of crazy stories about money.

Gordon Duff: Why would I worry about backing anything up? I'm not an anti-vaxxer. Only anti-vaxxers—it's a very simple fucking thing here, Kevin. Any child can understand it. I live in Ottawa County, Michigan, right now. I have other homes,  but this is where I am stuck in my summer home and I've got a crew upstairs taking the house apart. I have a Frank Lloyd Wright home, by the way, which is, you know, cool, other than the fact that it's just a nightmare dealing with anything he ever built. But the primary issue I run into: I live in a Republican county. This is where Betsy DeVos lives. This is where so many of the big money Republicans live on the lake. As for my neighbors, I'm surrounded by right wing extremist billionaires. We've got a local congressman, Bill Huizenga. His dad is a friend of mine who's been a friend for many years. American Litho. Cousin is waste management, for instance, owns a couple of sports teams. So I've known these people forever. Used to work with him when I was with Starwood. We won't say what that is. But we have a local government, it's totally in Republican control, they totally control our health department here locally. It's, you know, tightly controlled by the most extreme version of the Republican Party. We are here ninety-six percent vaccinated Republicans, money Republicans. Ninety six percent. Our schools—kids in high school, we're running ninety six percent in our high schools. Here, East Grand Rapids, Forest Hills, Cascade and Ada. These are the communities, Republican communities, the big money. And East Grand Rapids is the single biggest donating Republican zip code. Ninety six percent vaccination. Our hospitals are currently filling here with people from rural areas of redneck, 40 percent vaccinated red areas. The math is really very simple. We have no record of anybody reacting to a vaccine whatsoever.

Kevin Barrett: Oh, come on. The VAERS data is up to something like twenty five thousand. Yes. Twenty five thousand deaths and over a million vaccine injuries.1

Gordon Duff: Oh no. Zero. Bullshit. Total lie.

Kevin Barrett: So you're denying—Ok, Gordon, stop. Let me just say that I'm going to be documenting every issue that we talk about in this. I'm going to have footnotes up the wazoo where people are going to be able to look at those footnotes and see who is right,

Gordon Duff: Footnotes from RFK Jr., who is, whose talk on the mall, I put up in an article here. It's like—

Kevin Barrett: Let's go over that talk.

Gordon Duff: I can I can certainly pull him up here and you can listen to him on video or just go to Veterans Today.

Kevin Barrett: All right. So RFK Jr.: The CIA hates him because he's the one in the family that's telling the truth about the murder of his uncle and his father. And so that's a good place to start. He's the guy who's telling the truth about that. But you think that for some reason, he's taking huge piles of money from the people that killed his father and his uncle to lie about vaccines? That's so insane. I can't believe that you're even saying such a thing.

Gordon Duff: He's a lunatic and fraud, having a father...and did you work for his dad? I did. Did you work for his father, RFK? I did. 1968. I worked for RFK.

Kevin Barrett: So is RFK wrong that Sirhan Sirhan is a patsy and that the CIA killed his father?

Gordon Duff: Most of us think that. Because he thinks what most of us think, that makes the crazy things he says that are scientifically insane—

Kevin Barrett: What do you mean, "most of us," Gordon? Nobody in the mainstream is allowed to say that! He's the only one in the mainstream putting a target on his back by saying it.

Gordon Duff: First of all, when you started depending on peddling books and then doing conspiracy theories, and as those conspiracy theories that became popular became right-wing neo-Zionist, you morphed over to right wing and neo-Zionist conspiracy theories. You know, we go back to where VT had our little issue in 2015 with Jade Helm. And when you were defending Fetzer, my issue with Fetzer—

Kevin Barrett: I wasn't defending Jim Fetzer. I won a bet with Jim Fetzer on Jade Helm.

Gordon Duff: Here's where you and I had a gentlemanly disagreement.

Kevin Barrett: About Jade Helm?! We did not! We (you and I) agreed about that.

Gordon Duff: Remember Campbell from the militias? We had Campbell, Stew, Webb, Preston James, and Fetzer on a on a podcast. At the time we were receiving pretty big numbers. And then we had Campbell come on with others.

Kevin Barrett: What does this have to do with RFK Jr?

Gordon Duff: Because it's much the same thing.  It has to do with credibility. When it was decided on this podcast that Jade Helm was real, that the army had invaded Texas, that they had set up secret prisons in the basements of Wal-Marts, none of which have basements...And then the the other one which I enjoyed: This was the other conspiracy theory that was like the anti-vaxx at the time that in the deep woods—this is the one from Infowars—suddenly, in the deep woods of Kentucky, that's a term they're using, massive warehouses filled with coffins were built, and they were tied to the underground tunnels that led from the Wal-Mart basements, and hundreds of thousands of dead were going to be stored in these massive foreboding black lung warehouses placed all over Kentucky...

Kevin Barrett: Gordon, Jim Fetzer had to buy me lunch because I said, "If we're locked up in Wal-Mart by September, I'll buy you lunch. If we're not locked up in Walmart, you buy me lunch." He bought me lunch. So I will buy you lunch, Gordon, if you can show me where RFK Jr. ever supported the Jade Helm conspiracy theory. I don't think so. I think he was on our side. You and I agree that Fetzer was out to lunch (on Jade Helm). And RFK Jr.—

Gordon Duff: You're trying to deflect. And deflection is a common tool of the cheap fraud.

Kevin Barrett: No, that's what YOU'RE doing here.

Gordon Duff: The idea here, of course, is in order to support, Oh God, who is that? The Governor? Abbott? Yeah, the guy in a wheelchair, the nutcase. Abbott was going to send the Texas guard. Do you know what the Texas guard is?

Kevin Barrett: No. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with RFK Jr. or vaccines.

Gordon Duff: Your point is that when these VT people who we removed pretty much immediately decided that loyal Americans needed to make chlorine gas bombs and start driving around the towns near air bases and look for our military bases and start throwing...And they explained how to make chlorine gas bombs. I'm not going to do it here.

Kevin Barrett: That was some kind of Stew Webb thing.

Gordon Duff: Throw them at military families shopping at stores. And that's what they said. You saw it. You saw the video. That was why—

Kevin Barrett: This has nothing to do with RFK Jr.! Gordon, there are lots of bad conspiracy theories out there. I know that. So do you. So let's forget about everything except for the facts, the facts about the vaccines, the facts about what RFK Jr. said.

Gordon Duff: That measles, the measles vaccine, causes autism. Yes.

Kevin Barrett: No, that was not in his speech. Let's talk about RFK Jr.'s speech on the mall last week and use that as a touchstone for our disagreements about COVID and vaccines.

Gordon Duff: Then what did he say on the mall? Did he make you say something about COVID vaccines?

Kevin Barrett: Let's see what he said about the COVID vaccines. First, he said that there is a very strong age-stratified risk. People who are over 78 are a thousand times more at risk as a group than people who are under 78. He said that children have a statistically zero risk. I believe that's essentially true. What do you think?

Gordon Duff: Of death. Of death. Death from what?

Kevin Barrett: From COVID alone.

Gordon Duff: Oh, and that's based on...what? Did he pull that out of his ass?

Kevin Barrett: No. I will be documenting it when we post this video so people can go and see the studies that support that.

Gordon Duff: But Kevin, what is the significance of that statement?

Kevin Barrett: The significance is that as RFK Jr. said, most Americans were led to believe that they were at vastly greater risk from COVID than they really were.

Gordon Duff: Oh, well, let's just look at this. So what's happened here...

Kevin Barrett: And I will document that. But the poll actually showed that Democrats in particular had a ludicrously exaggerated idea of what the risk of COVID was.

Gordon Duff: Hey, here's what I caught you doing. For months and months, you've been saying that the death rate of infected—these are people who test positive—was zero zero one two percent or less.

Kevin Barrett: Wrong.2 I was talking about the infection fatality rate (IFR). You kept trying to confuse everybody by slipping in that case fatality rate (CFR).

Gordon Duff: Kevin, you're lying.

Kevin Barrett: You're lying. Do you understand the difference between the IFR and the CFR? Either you don't understand it or you're pretending not to understand it.

Gordon Duff: The infection rate—here, let me let me pull up where it sits today here. I guess you have absolutely no background in science and less in statistics.

Kevin Barrett: An ad hominem. That doesn't win your argument.

Gordon Duff: Yes, on world meters nine hundred seven thousand one hundred and ninety (907,190), which is just fine because it's a low percentage. Seventy five million infected. Forty five million recovered. The death rate—let's go on the graph and see where the death rate versus infected is. What do you think it is? Give it exactly.

Kevin Barrett: The IFR, the infection fatality rate, has been best estimated as less than one half of one percent or one in two hundred people.

Gordon Duff: OK, as of January 13 2022, the death rate for infected is 1.99 percent.

Kevin Barrett: Is that worldwide or US?

Gordon Duff: That's United States. And it's many times what you're listing. You're lying, Kevin.

Kevin Barrett: Wait a minute, Gordon. Are you sure you're looking at the IFR, not the CFR?

Gordon Duff: What is a CFR?

Kevin Barrett: Case fatality rate. That's when they actually test for COVID. The infection fatality rate includes people who were infected who never tested. Like me. I had COVID for sure once, probably twice.

Gordon Duff: You mean imaginary people who were never tested who think they might have had COVID? Are you kidding?

Kevin Barrett: The great majority of people who get COVID never get tested because they hardly even know they have it, and others like me know we have it, so why bother to get tested?

Gordon Duff: Using the figure that you entirely pulled out of your ass?

Kevin Barrett: No, I'm using a figure from all kinds of studies, which, again, I will be documenting. Gordon, I will document everything I say. I'm going to go through here with a bunch of footnotes.3 People will be able to check the footnotes and find out who's telling the truth.

Gordon Duff: Tell me, how are you going to document people who are never tested who think they had COVID?

Kevin Barrett: Well, I'll tell you how, Gordon. By going around and testing people for antibodies. (John) Ioannidis did that at Stanford University, and he found a very large number of people who had antibodies for COVID. Something like four times or more the number of actual (tested) cases.4 As you know, COVID is asymptomatic in a great many people who have it. So even if you don't bother to test for antibodies—but I will cite the studies that did—you can still simply assume that a great number of people have COVID without even knowing it, and therefore they don't get tested.

Gordon Duff: Now, what is the significance of having had COVID?

Kevin Barrett: What is the significance for what?

Gordon Duff: That would only be significant if having had a asymptomatic case of COVID would make you immune to getting COVID again. That would only be significant.

Kevin Barrett: No, no, no. Wait, wait, you've got to stop changing the subject. The subject is CFR versus IFR. Go back to CFR versus IFR. Do you admit that I am right that there's a difference between the CFR and the IFR?

Gordon Duff: That's a fake acronym. It doesn't exist, it's not accepted by medical personnel anywhere. It's a totally subjective number made up by what, a one person Stanford study?

Kevin Barrett: No, lots of studies.

Gordon Duff: Show me the figure from the CDC or the World Health Organization. Show me a group of prominent virologists behind it that have peer review.

Kevin Barrett: I will. The difference between CFR and IFR is widely accepted by virologists with regard to all diseases, not just COVID.

Gordon Duff: Yet how can we have a million people dead?

Kevin Barrett: Because a heck of a lot of people caught COVID.

Gordon Duff: Oh, and they're still dying, how many people died yesterday?

Kevin Barrett: OK, Gordon, if two hundred million people in America have caught COVID, which is probably an underestimate, then if the IFR is what I say it is, which is zero point five percent, therefore, one would expect one million deaths. That's about what we've had.

Gordon Duff: We've had one million deaths. Those who have died were all tested and died of COVID. Now, on the other hand: Could it not be that we have lost hundreds of thousands of people who weren't tested? Now, what would they have died of? You know, I lost it, I lost a child a few months ago, thirty seven years old.

Kevin Barrett: Oh, sorry, sorry to hear that.

Gordon Duff: Well, you knew that anyway. But related to blood clots in his pancreas that impacted his liver. And because I'm vaccinated—we were filling our hospitals at the time—it was impossible, even though I went to everybody I knew, including the Saudi royal family, to try to get to Cleveland Clinic to give him a liver transplant. And we had live donors, but they had stopped all of those procedures. They would walk me through a COVID ward, taking me up to the implant or the transplant center, which I didn't like very much. It was weird. I mean, that's just the Cleveland Clinic, by the way. It's a nasty place. Don't go there, but...

Kevin Barrett: I'll try to avoid it.

Gordon Duff: Yeah. Well, where you live, you're awfully close to, what's that thing in Minnesota?

Kevin Barrett: The Mayo Clinic.

Gordon Duff: Yes, of course. They're all vaxxed people. Well, this is the easiest thing to figure out. We lost two thousand three hundred and seven people yesterday. OK. Now, of the 2307 people, 90 percent of them were unvaccinated. Now, the reason I mentioned you and I had a go around—

Kevin Barrett: I don't think that's true, but I'll accept that under advisement.

Gordon Duff: You know, we only have only unvaccinated people dying.

Kevin Barrett: Well, then I have a question for you, Gordon. Why is it that here in the United States, where we have lousy data, we have these claims that it's 90 percent unvaccinated people dying, but then in all of the countries where they have good data, where they have national health services that collect all the data, you find quite the opposite, as (crosstalk). Just let me finish. Let me finish. As you and I and Ian (Greenhalgh) went over the other day, Ian, our friend Ian in in the U.K., believed falsely that something like 97% of the COVID deaths in the UK were unvaccinated people. And in fact, I proved to him to his and your satisfaction, based on a Reuters attempted debunking of Alex Berenson, that that was far from the case. The vast majority of people in not only the UK, but in the other countries where they collect good data, including Denmark and Israel, the vast majority is vaccinated people who are dying of COVID. And the cases too are at higher rates—

Gordon Duff: That's not only a lie...

Kevin Barrett: I already pointed you guys to the Reuters article!

Gordon Duff: It's a total and absolute lie.

Kevin Barrett: Reuters is lying?

Gordon Duff: Your sources are all bogus.

Kevin Barrett: Reuters? A Reuters attempted debunking of anti-vaxxers?

Gordon Duff: You've become a shameful serial fabricator,

Kevin Barrett: And I'm going to post the link to the studies, and post the link to the Reuters article "debunking" Alex Berenson. It admitted that the vast majority of COVID deaths in all of those countries—well actually in the UK. in that particular article—were vaccinated people.

Gordon Duff: That's a total and absolutely lie.

Kevin Barrett: All right, we'll find out. Viewers will find out who's telling the truth. (Just click HERE. -KB)

Gordon Duff: This is where the Australian—did you read The Guardian article I sent you on this subject?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, what nonsense. It didn't cite statistics. It was vague, windy bullshit. (Retraction: I was thinking of another article—this one is factual but focuses on relative rates of hospitalization and death among vaxxed vs. unvaxxed rather than the raw numbers; it shows that while unvaxxed death/hospitalization rates are higher, the vast majority of deaths and hospitalizations occur among vaccinated people. But are the bad outcome rates higher entirely or in part because vaccinated people were a much healthier group already? That’s what Berenson suspects. See Meryl Nass’s discussion on my radio show. -KB)

Gordon Duff: What are you doing? You're providing a platform here for you to tell shameful, ludicrous lies. And the only reason you're doing this, Kevin, you became anti-vax because you have an audience...

Kevin Barrett: Gordon, Gordon, stop for a second and tell me precisely what's wrong with what I said, what was inaccurate. I said that the Reuters article said that the vast majority of COVID deaths in the UK were vaccinated people. That's what the Reuters article said. Is that true or is that not true? Yes or no?   

Gordon Duff: No!

Kevin Barrett: Ok, we will find out whether the Reuters article said that because I will post the link.

Gordon Duff: You mean Reuters? Is that the organization that does the videos—

Kevin Barrett: Reuters is in on the conspiracy?!

Gordon Duff: Kevin, you're a time wasting bullshitter. (hangs up)

- - -

1 Correction: It may not be quite that high yet, but was over 20,000 deaths and approaching one million adverse events on December 10th. VAERS data is underreported, possibly by a factor of 40,000% or more, which could put the actual vaccine death count into six figures. Personally I doubt it is that high, but check out Steve Kirsch for the maximalist argument.

2 I have never cited that number.

3 And links.

4 Which yielded a median IFR of .27%.