Rand Paul has become just
the most recent US politician to
be embroiled in a scandal about
their stock activity when we found
out just yesterday that his wife
bought stock in Gilead Sciences,
which makes the antiviral drug
known as remdesivir,
which is used to treat COVID-19.
I'm sure that you've
heard about it.
She bought back on February 26
2020, before the threat
from the coronavirus was fully
understood by the public and before
it was classified as a pandemic
by the World Health Organization.
So of course, there's supposed to
be disclosure of the stock
purchases within a relatively
constrained time of about a month.
So that was February of last year,
so I think that we've broken that.
Yes, it's more than a month,
in fact, it's a year and a half.
But he just made a mistake man,
he thought that he had sent it in.
And probably the fact that he
didn't report it probably had
nothing to do with the fact that
Perdue and Loeffler last year
were embroiled in this scandal
about the purchasing of coronavirus
sensitive stocks.
Then there was this big
investigation that seems
to have been very damaged to them.
And after all, both ended up losing
their re-election bids in Georgia.
But yeah,
he was potentially privy to
a sensitive information as a member
of the Senate Health Committee.
In January, they hosted Trump
administration officials for
a briefing on the coronavirus.
I'm assuming that had no effect
whatsoever.
Anyway, we're going to have a lot
more details about what money might
have been made,
the actions that he took.
But Ben, as I alluded to, this is
just the most recent of any number
of different instances where I
think the public is right to worry
that senators might be using the
privilege information they have.
What are your thoughts about
this whole thing?
>> Yeah, most definitely.
I mean, so to me, it's especially
telling because it's investing in
a company that makes an antiviral.
Because antivirals are a,
notoriously difficult to make, and
b, so usually if you have something
like influenza, right?
They won't even give you
an antiviral because the time that
it would take for the antiviral to
really be effective, usually you've
already got past the infection.
So if you're at the point
where you need an antiviral,
you're already at the point where
you're like, snap,
this is going to be a big thing.
And it's probably going to be
an infection that lasts a week or
two and take a decent chunk of
time to recover from.
And so an antiviral really is when
you've got very serious infections.
Usually as a general rule,
it's not always true.
But in this case, I feel like it's
pretty telling because COVID is
a pretty significant infection that
leads to a couple weeks of being
sick and potentially dying.
And so to say, my goodness,
this is something we might need
an antiviral for is particularly
significant in my humble opinion.
>> Yeah, well, to believe you know
what, this might be a big thing,
we should get some of this stock in
February.
Overall, how would you characterize
the way that Rand Paul has talked
about COVID?
Is he talking about it as a thing
that's so
serious that we might need some
sort of emergency antiviral?
>> Well, no, of course not,
they keep running this game where
they're literally not putting their
money where their mouth is, right?
They're getting vaccinated.
They're being quiet about it.
They're sheltering away in their
mansions and they're like, I'm not
going to go visit those random
people and get myself infected.
And then they turn around and
get on TV, and
when they're on Fox News from their
Zoom conference, they're saying,
don't worry, it's it's no big deal.
And it's just this ridiculous lie
where they're trying to gaslight
people and say, no, there is no war
in Ba Sing Se, right?
There's no pandemic,
don't worry about it, it's nothing.
>> Yeah, and look,
I don't personally believe that
they should be able to own any
individual stock at all.
But at least if they were going to
having their corrupt privileged
information lead to them purchasing
stock in things that would pay off
if we did well in the pandemic,
theoretically bothers me less than
investing in what we'll do
well if we fail.
Now if you random person watching
this, if you purchase stuff like
that, I get it, you don't have any
control over the outcome.
But he has been seemingly
advocating for COVID for a year and
a half.
So if you also have a financial
incentive for us to desperately
need things when we fail,
that really does bother me.
But again,
the overall issue is that they
can't buy individual stocks at all.
And I know that some,
including representative
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez,
they've tried to get this outlawed,
but so far we're not there, Ben.
I get why it's difficult to get
people to stop themselves a path
to making money.
But I don't understand why so
many people tolerate this,
tolerate the personal ownership.
Any final words?
>> I mean,
imagine if he was investing in
funeral homes, right?
How grim would that be?
Where it's like, we're definitely
not going to do anything about this
because look, think about how
much money we could make with our
funeral home investment here.
It's really that scale and
I think people really need to
understand that that is the scale
that it's at.
>> I agree.
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