The Manosphere Report

0:12I like them, but if it's just me wearing them, it feels stupid.

0:15Why do you wear them?

0:16I like it because it locks me in.

0:18It just locks me in.

0:19The only thing I hear is that person's voice.

0:23I can't hear Jamie's chair moving.

0:25I can't hear anything else.

0:26And it just makes me really focused on the conversation only.

0:33I have ADHD. I had 11 siblings, and I have seven kids, so I can

0:38work. I can focus. No matter what?

0:42No matter what. It's a skill.

0:44It's a thing to learn.

0:46If you're the person that can focus without distraction, you're a good person to be

0:53in the job you're at.

0:54Yeah. What is it like?

0:56So since you've been appointed, I haven't talked to you on a podcast.

1:01I know. Yeah. It's the best job I could ever have.

1:07I feel like I was designed for the job, and I just have so much

1:12fun. I mean, it's a target -rich environment, so there's so many ways that you

1:17can be effective and improve people's lives every single day.

1:21Part of that is because the agency was just such a mess.

1:26You know, it wasn't doing health care.

1:29It was doing sick care and just managing, you know, all of these perverse incentives.

1:37I'd have us spending $5 trillion a year on two to three times per capita

1:42when any other nation spends, and we have the sickest population in the world.

1:47We have the highest chronic disease burden in the world, and you were the best

1:52at medicine in this country.

1:55But that's when people get sick.

1:57You'd rather get sick here than any place in the world, but you're more likely

2:01to be sick here than any place in the world.

2:04And, you know, and then it was just a big political patronage operation, and it

2:11still is. You know, we're putting an end to that now.

2:15I mean, the amount of fraud that goes through that place.

2:20We lose just in Medicaid and Medicare $100 billion a year, and it's all just

2:26this really, you know, shocking, blatant fraud that's become industrialized.

2:32I mean, there's foreign nations like Russia.

2:35Everybody's heard of Somalia, but also Cuba.

2:38There's this operation in Florida where it's – they open up these little – they

2:46open up these PO boxes for durable medical equipment.

2:52It's like knee braces and wheelchairs.

2:56And then they don't have any knee brace or wheelchairs, but they have patient identification

3:03numbers. So they just claim to be shipping them to people.

3:08And we found one hotel.

3:10It had like 129 rooms, and everyone was a different company that was selling durable

3:16medical equipment. And we go in and shut them down, and they immediately go back

3:22to Cuba. And the whole thing is apparently run by the Cuban government.

3:26But Russia is doing the same thing with hospices in – Where do they get

3:30the patient ID numbers? They can buy those numbers.

3:34You know, they're on the black market.

3:37Really? Yeah. And Russia does the same thing in Los Angeles with hospice care.

3:45So there's more hospice care in Los Angeles than the entire rest of the country

3:52combined. It's all fraudulent. And we're just pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into these

3:58fraudulent operations. The same thing that the Somalis did in Ethiopia.

4:04A lot of that money was going back to Boko Haram and, you know, terror

4:08groups over there. But they were – it was – a lot of it was

4:13based – the Medicare stuff is different.

4:15And we're able to – we're going to be able to catch almost all of

4:19that now because we're using AI to do it.

4:22It was never used before.

4:24There was no effort at program integrity.

4:27In fact, the Biden administration deliberately, purposely ordered them – they ended the program integrity

4:34office. So they went from hundreds of people to six people.

4:38And they said, we don't want you doing program integrity.

4:40We just want you doing enrollments.

4:45And so we got all this fraud.

4:47But most of it came from these waivers that the states got – all the

4:54states got them for home care and community care.

4:57So, you know, 30 years ago, Medicaid, Medicare play.

5:02If you've got a hernia operation, we paid for that.

5:06And you could tell somebody got the hernia operation because they had the scar.

5:12They used a licensed nurse.

5:13They used a licensed doctor.

5:15It was all documented. Then they – some of the states said, you know, we're

5:19sending a whole lot of people to the hospital.

5:22And we don't have home care providers.

5:25So if you let us pay family members to do home care, the patient won't

5:33have to go to the hospital.

5:33They won't have to go to the emergency room and we'll save a lot of

5:37money. So it was well -intentioned.

5:40But then what happened is people immediately started abusing it.

5:44So today, if you – these are services that are normally played by family members,

5:51performed by family members. Buying groceries for your grandmother and bringing them home, you now

5:58get paid for that. Balancing your grandmother's checkbook, driving her to a medical visit.

6:06So then you had – Is it, you know – Or – And this is

6:12what happened in Minnesota, these organized crime companies would come in and say, you designate

6:20this family, you designate all your children have autism now, even if they didn't.

6:27And we're going to now pay providers for each of them and we'll give you

6:31a few thousand dollars to do it.

6:32But then they would collect all the money.

6:34And that's what was happening.

6:35It's happening all over the country because there was no – it's very, very difficult.

6:41The guardrails on that system were very pervious and anybody can defraud it.

6:48If you are inclined to defraud, this was an irresistible opportunity.

6:56How long was this going on for?

6:57When did this fraud begin, do you believe?

7:00It really accelerated during the Biden administration.

7:04We expected to pay for the Minnesota program just for autism care for kids who

7:11have autism. The kids need the care because, you know, they go to maybe a

7:17special school but then they come home from school and the parents aren't there because

7:21they're working. So who's going to take care of them?

7:24And so in legitimate circumstances, you wouldn't want to pay for that.

7:30But what happened is they just started this wholesale fraud.

7:34We expected the cost of that program to be about $3 million a year in

7:39Minnesota, in Minneapolis. It got up in over a three -year period.

7:44It got up to $400 million a year.

7:46So, you know, it was all fraudulent, almost.

7:49I just don't understand. So this accelerated during the Biden administration?

7:54Yeah. But when did it begin?

7:55Like how long has it been going on?

7:56Because they stopped doing program integrity.

7:57They told – specifically they told people in my agency and I've talked to them,

8:03we don't want to do program integrity anymore.

8:06We now just want to focus everything on enrollments.

8:10In other words, enrolling more people in Obamacare and the programs.

8:14And, you know, you could say there was bad motives there because, one, the states

8:21don't pay – the states pay a tiny fraction of it, but it all goes

8:25to the federal government. So the states don't really want to do fraud detection because

8:33all that money is coming into their state.

8:36And then every time you enroll somebody, you're registering them to vote.

8:40And so, you know, they may have had ulterior motives, let me put it that

8:44way. But, you know, right now what we're doing is we're saying to the states,

8:50we have audited you. We expect that – we believe that 50 percent of the

8:57program dollars you're spending were fraudulent or possibly fraudulent.

9:03You show us a corrective action that you're going to take or we're going to

9:08withdraw that money the next time.

9:11The money is not being withdrawn from individuals.

9:14We're not reimbursing the state for it until they told us.

9:17Now, the red states have all said, yeah, we'll do it.

9:20But Maine, Minnesota, California, and New York have said, no, we're not going to –

9:27basically, he sent us corrective action that was just – you know, it was ridiculous.

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10:15So, is there a financial incentive?

10:18Are these people that are making all this money from fraud, are they donating to

10:23any specific groups? Like, is there a direct turnaround?

10:27The Cubans in Florida and Florida, you know, they get mad at Trump because they

10:31say, oh, all the states you're designating are blue states.

10:35That's just because the blue states refuse to cooperate.

10:38But Florida is a red state and we're really going after them.

10:42We're shutting down all durable medical equipment, reimbursements for the whole state because it was

10:49all being run. It was probably being run by the Cuban government.

10:52But I don't understand how no one saw it.

10:55No one from the government saw it.

10:57And would there be a reason why they weren't looking for it other than they

11:02just wanted to – they were only thinking about recruitments.

11:04But were they all – was anybody making money outside of these crime organizations?

11:10I would say no. The money was not – the states were making money.

11:14Right. But there was a lot of talk online about donations to parties and donations

11:19to NGOs. Well, that is probably true too, although I don't have any evidence of

11:25that. No evidence. OK. So it really just ramped – And you wouldn't have –

11:31you know, even if you get those kind of donations, it's not the kind of

11:35proof that I would talk about because you cannot prove that – Right.

11:39That donation motivated the bad behavior.

11:43But it just – it really highlights how ideologically captured some people are, that because

11:48it's the right wing going after this Medicaid fraud, that somehow or another that fraud

11:54is OK. And that fraud is not that big a deal that there's – I

11:58mean, what's the all -told number that's been stolen from this stuff over the –

12:03if you had to take a wild guess?

12:06It's at least $100 billion a year.

12:09$100 billion a year. Just from Medicaid and Medicare.

12:13That anybody would not want to stop that kind of crime because it's attached to

12:17the wrong party is – it just shows you how weird this country is right

12:21now. Yeah. I mean, I – listen.

12:25I was a Democrat my whole life.

12:27And, you know, one of the things and then I, you know, now I'm kind

12:32of, first of all, I, it's illegal for me now to vote in any state.

12:37So I don't really have a party affiliation because, you know, they challenge.

12:42I was a New York State resident when I was running.

12:47They sued me and they said, oh, you don't really live in New York.

12:50You live in California. I said, yeah, but my driver's license is from New York.

12:56My law license is from New York.

12:57I have an address in New York.

12:59My car is registered in New York.

13:01My falconry license is New York.

13:03My hunting license is New York.

13:05My fishing license is New York.

13:07And I intend to return to New York.

13:09And there were hundreds of cases, just black letter laws saying the only measure is

13:15if you intend to return there at some point.

13:17We got crooked judges and they said, no, you're not a New York resident.

13:22I'd already said I'm not a California resident.

13:25I don't intend to stay there.

13:26So now I'm not, you know, I'm not legally allowed to vote in any state.

13:35But, you know, I saw this with a party.

13:41My father hated partisanship because he thought it was dishonest.

13:45And he said, you should, you should, he always said, told us you should vote

13:48for the man, not the party.

13:50Or, you know, he said the man because at that time it was predominantly man.

13:55But I saw this when Trump, you know, I grew up in a Democratic Party

14:01that was very anti -NAFTA.

14:04So it was against working people on labor unions.

14:08Then Trump said that he was anti -NAFTA.

14:11And all of a sudden the Democratic Party was thrown NAFTA.

14:14And that's what turned my head the first time.

14:17And then, you know, when I was, then I saw how they, and Trump questioned

14:24vaccines during the 2016 election.

14:27The Democratic Party, it was kind of that skepticism and the concerns were spread evenly

14:33across the party. My uncle Ted Kennedy was very much on the side of medical

14:38freedom. And it was evenly spread.

14:42But as soon as Trump said that, it became part of the dogma of that

14:46party. And then, you know, when I ran, we were, you know, it was, I,

14:51one of the things I ran against was the Ukraine war.

14:54And, um, and the Democrats were always the anti -war party.

15:00But as soon as Trump questioned that war, they became the pro -war party.

15:04And they invited the CIA director to speak at the Democratic Convention.

15:08And it just is, it's the, the, the party's only agenda is we hate Trump.

15:15And anything he says, we're going to do the opposite of it.

15:18And I, it makes me very sad for the party.

15:22And I don't think it's a sustainable way to, you know, to operate.

15:27No, there, there, there has to be some sort of an appeal to people in

15:32the middle that left when things went crazy.

15:34Just let us know you're not crazy anymore.

15:37Let us know you've abandoned a lot of this crazy stuff.

15:39And also, like, recognize what's good for everybody, right?

15:44Hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud is not good for any of us, the

15:47whole country. So we should all be together on this one thing.

15:51Like, this is terrible. This is stealing from your tax money.

15:54All of our tax money.

15:56Us, American citizens. We should all be united on stopping any kind of fraud.

16:01Forget about who, who's the fucking president.

16:03And what, what's, who's going to get responsibility for it.

16:06Who's going to take, who's going to get the accolades.

16:09Like, who cares? Stop fraud.

16:11Stop, we're all together. You shouldn't have criminals from other countries living here just stealing

16:17money from Medicaid. That seems like that should be a bipartisan issue in a rational

16:22society. Yeah. And, you know, on the, you know, I saw this, the craziness when

16:31we did the, the Tylenol findings.

16:35Because, you know, the science is really clear that, and there were, there are dozens.

16:41I read 76 studies over a weekend.

16:44And, and when, you know, when we were looking at this, and the, the studies

16:50that support Tylenol safety are very weak.

16:52And they have huge holes in them.

16:54There's overwhelming science that says you shouldn't take it particularly, you know, it's okay normally.

17:01You shouldn't take it during pregnancy, and particularly the last days of pregnancy, or in

17:07the perinatal period, perinatal period, which is immediately after pregnancy.

17:12You don't want to take it because the association with Tylenol usage at that point

17:18and neurodevelopmental disease is very, very high and, and, and pretty clear.

17:25And so we issued a warning.

17:28We didn't ban Tylenol. We just sent a letter out to all doctors saying be

17:32careful about, we, we didn't want to ban it during pregnancy because as bad as

17:38it is, it's the best thing.

17:40It's better than taking ibuprofen or, or aspirin.

17:44Why, why is aspirin bad?

17:45We have, because of Reyes syndrome.

17:48It has a clear association with Reyes syndrome, and they all have problems.

17:51What is that word, Reyes syndrome?

17:52Reyes syndrome, R -E -Y -E -S.

17:55What is that? It's, um, I'm not sure exactly what it does.

18:01Put that into our wonderful sponsor, perplexity.

18:04And if you put aspirin use in Reyes syndrome, you'll, you'll see the, like.

18:08So is this just with pregnant women or with people in general?

18:10Yeah, for pregnant. Only for pregnant women.

18:12Or young children. Oh. So baby aspirin?

18:15Didn't they always used to have children's hospital?

18:17Yeah, I don't know if they do it anymore.

18:19Reyes syndrome is a rare but serious condition causing sudden brain swelling and liver damage,

18:23primarily in children and teens recovering from viral infections like flu or chicken pox, become

18:29very rare due to reduced aspirin use in kids.

18:31Wow. Aspirin. I always thought of aspirin as, like, the most natural and healthy out

18:38of all those things. that you take for pain.

18:40Oh, I think it is pretty safe, but it's...

18:44Avoid aspirin and... What's that word?

18:47You say it. L -A -S -I -A.

18:50What is it? L -A -S -I -A containing meds.

18:52L -A -S -I -A containing meds in children and teens with flu, chickenpox, or

18:56cold. Use acetaminophen or ibuprofen instead.

19:00Vaccinate against flu and chickenpox and screen newborns for metabolic risks.

19:05So acetaminophen is the issue in Tylenol, right?

19:07Yeah. Because I read this terrible story about a lady who died during COVID because

19:12she... Not from COVID, from Tylenol.

19:14She just kept taking Tylenol.

19:16Well, Tylenol shuts down your liver if you take enough of it.

19:19That's what happened to her.

19:20What I was saying is, you know, when we issued this warning, it was immediately

19:25condemned by the Democrats. Oh, you know, here's Trump and Kennedy doing, you know, weird

19:32science again. And then you had all of these videos, these viral videos on TikTok

19:38of pregnant women eating Tylenol.

19:42Yeah, to say fuck Trump.

19:43Yeah. It's crazy. I hope they didn't really do it.

19:46I hope they were pretending because that's so dumb.

19:49It's just so stupid. Why would you even want to risk that?

19:51Like, how is that not a thing that you just abandon all party affiliation and

19:57go, the health of my child?

19:58This is science. They're not saying don't take Tylenol.

20:02Like, you could still buy Tylenol.

20:03It's a good thing to know that if you take too much of something, it's

20:08bad. There's a lot of things that are fine if you take one or two

20:10pills. But if you're that poor lady with COVID, if you just keep taking it

20:15over and over and over again, you'll die.

20:17We should know that. It doesn't mean you shouldn't take aspirin or you shouldn't take

20:21Tylenol. It just means know when to take it and when not to take it

20:25and know how much to take.

20:27Like, that's all information that everybody should want to be out there.

20:30The fact that people want to connect that to Trump and I'm going to take

20:33ass – I'm going to take Tylenol while I'm pregnant.

20:35Like, is this – like, imagine the aliens watching us and going – they're not

20:41ready. They're not ready for sophisticated time -traveling technology.

20:44These fucking dopes. Like, what are they doing?

20:47They're fighting over nonsense. You know, and it's like it's all heavily accelerated by social

20:53media. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the algorithms just amplify that polarization.

21:02Yes. Because they're just telling you what you want to hear and validating your worldview

21:07all the time. And also just outraging you, just outraging you all the time.

21:12I've been off it for a while now, and it's like it frees your brain.

21:17It's like all the weirdness of thinking about nonsense in the world just – you're

21:23aware of it peripherally, but it's not in your face all day, which I think

21:27most people are dealing with a lot more even than I was.

21:29And they're just bombarded by sensation, bombarded by anger and frustration and angst.

21:38It kind of liberates the darkest impulses of the human spirit.

21:44I mean, I don't use it either, but, you know, I post stuff, but, you

21:49know, if I started reading my comments and taking them seriously – No, it's terrible.

21:55I genuinely thought when you joined forces with Trump and then Tulsi did as well,

22:02I was like, okay, maybe this will unite us more and make more people realize

22:08that there's a lot of people that are being left out that are in the

22:11center of all this. And we can all come together and work together.

22:16That's what I thought naively.

22:18You know, obviously once you guys got in there, it was you guys were MAGA

22:22and, like, health is bad and don't stop the dyes.

22:28Like, no matter what it was, people were ideologically opposed to you being correct about

22:34anything because now you're connected with Trump.

22:36So it's like I was watching liberals, the people that are always worried about food

22:41ingredients, just dismissing all of this talk about preservatives and glyphosate and red dye and

22:48all these different things. And it is just an ideological thing.

22:52Yeah. I mean it's dogma and it's part of – it's tribalism.

23:01It's these connectors in our brain that evolved over millions of years living in these

23:11little tribal communities. And, you know, now you've got – now you've got machines that

23:18can activate those parts of the brain and, you know, they're being manipulated all the

23:23time. Yeah. And then there's a bunch of people that are commenting that aren't even

23:27real people. There's that too.

23:29There's a lot of manipulation that's going on on social media where who knows who's

23:33doing it. There's a bunch of different groups doing it.

23:35But they're not real people that are outraged.

23:38They're not real human beings that are saying these things.

23:40And they can kind of shift a narrative into a certain direction sometimes.

23:44It's a fascinating time to be alive, you know.

23:48As far as what you thought this job was going to be before you get

23:53in – before you got in and what it became, what was your expectations when

23:59you got in? Like did anything really surprise you?

24:06I mean, you know, I try to go into every part of my life without

24:10expectations and just focus on really narrowly on what I'm doing day by day.

24:18And that actually makes me a lot more resilient because if you don't have expectations,

24:22you never get disappointments. And so you can never get crushed.

24:28But I would say that, you know, I had not spent a lot of my

24:36life hanging out with Republicans.

24:39And what I imagined that they were talking about is exactly the opposite of, you

24:46know, now I'm in an administration that is surrounded by immensely talented.

24:53people. And they're immensely idealistic.

24:57And, you know, nobody – I always imagined the Republicans would get together and they'd

25:01be thinking about how do we screw the poor and how do we, you know,

25:05reduce the tax on the rich.

25:07And all their – they're just narrowly focused on how do we solve these big

25:12problems and how do we make our country work.

25:15And the level of idealism that I see at every level in the White House

25:20and, you know, in my agency is inspiring.

25:27And then the level of the capabilities, just the, you know, the competence of the

25:32people who I'm surrounded with.

25:35I think the thing that shocked me most was how bad the agency was, how,

25:40you know, just how inefficient, how nobody seemed to care that people were getting sicker

25:47and sicker. Nobody was taking accountability of the fact we're the health agency and yet

25:52we have the worst health and the richest health agency in the world.

25:57You know, I think HHS is the sixth biggest country in the world if you

26:02look at its budget. It's got the biggest budget in the federal government, bigger than

26:08the defense budget. And yet we are absolutely miserable at what we did.

26:15I mean, you know, we're literally presiding over this cliff where every American is getting

26:23– where people are just – 77 percent of American kids can't qualify for military

26:28service. And nobody's asking why is that happening.

26:33We've gone – when I was a kid, the typical pediatrician would see one case

26:41of juvenile diabetes over a 40 - or 50 -year career.

26:47Today, 38 percent of teens are diabetic or pre -diabetic.

26:53So one out of every three kids who walks through his office door.

26:56Why isn't anybody noticing us?

26:58The autism rates have gone from 1 in 10 ,000 in 1970 and people knew

27:03what autism was. They knew what it looked like in 1970.

27:06They did the biggest epidemiological study in history to answer the question, what is the

27:12percentage? And they came up with 0 .8 per 10 ,000.

27:16So less than 1 in 10 ,000.

27:18And today it's 1 in 31.

27:20In California, it's 1 in 19.

27:23And 1 in 12 .5 boys.

27:24That's crazy. We are, you know.

27:27That's so crazy. 1 in 12 .5 boys is crazy.

27:31And when my uncle was president, you know, I was a 10 -year -old boy.

27:36We spent zero on chronic disease.

27:39Zero. And today we spend $4 .3 trillion a year.

27:44And it's the fastest growing item in the federal budget.

27:48And it's existential. We can't sustain it.

27:53And the Republicans and Democrats have been arguing for years about whether we do the

27:56single -payer Obamacare, this or that.

27:59It's all about throwing money.

28:02Who gets to keep the money?

28:04And we're throwing it in a system that's completely broken.

28:07It's not a health care system.

28:08People just keep getting sicker and sicker.

28:09Yep. It's like changing deck chairs on the Titanic.

28:13Why is nobody focusing on how do we get people healthy?

28:17Because that's how you solve the health care cause problem.

28:20Right now, 40 cents out of every dollar that you spend in federal taxes is

28:25going to health care. And about 90 percent of that is chronic disease.

28:32So, you know, it's clear.

28:35And Americans don't want to be sick.

28:37You know, they're being made sick.

28:39They're being... The obesity rates have gone from 5 percent in kids when I was

28:44a kid. Now, close to 20 percent.

28:48And in adults, 70 percent of adults are obese or overweight.

28:52That was not true when we were kids.

28:54And it's not because Americans got indolent or lazy or hungry.

28:59It's because they were being mass poisoned.

29:02And, you know, the vested interests that are making money on keeping...

29:09Everybody makes money on keeping us sick.

29:12The food companies make money on getting us sick.

29:15But pharma makes money on keeping us sick.

29:17The insurance... You would think insurance would want to keep you well, but it doesn't.

29:21It actually makes more money if more people are sick.

29:27The hospitals... How does the insurance company make more money if people are sick?

29:30Well, I mean, think of it this way.

29:33If you're Lloyd's of London, do you want one ship...

29:39And you're insuring all the ships in the ocean.

29:42Do you want one ship to sink a year or do you want a thousand

29:47to sink? If a thousand sink, everybody's going to be paying you premiums to insure

29:52themselves against that eventuality. And you're making money on the friction.

29:58So you're making the money that comes into this.

30:00You're making your money on the money that comes into the system.

30:04So the more that you pump up that volume of money, the more you make.

30:08So, you know, nobody is interested.

30:12Nobody is economically incentivized to make people well.

30:17And we are not going to get well until we align those economic incentives with

30:22the health outcomes that we want, which is nobody gets sick.

30:25We end the chronic disease epidemic.

30:27And that's what we're doing now.

30:29We're trying to realign all those perverse incentives that reward you.

30:34For example, the medical system pays out on fee -based service.

30:41That means that the more tests the doctor orders for you, the more drugs he

30:46prescribes you, the more contact he has with you, the richer he gets.

30:54So he is not incentivized to get you well.

30:59We ought to be paying him a flat fee at the beginning of the year

31:02and saying anything, any cause from this patient, the rest of the year, come out

31:07of your - pocket. And then he's like, okay, how do I get this guy

31:10from getting sick? And he starts studying nutrition books.

31:14And, you know, that's actually an interesting idea.

31:17It seems so captured at this point.

31:19It's going to be difficult to unravel all that.

31:22It's difficult, but it's not impossible.

31:24And we're doing it. About three years from now, you're going to see a different

31:28healthcare model in our country.

31:30Talking about it has a big impact because most people are just not aware of

31:35how the whole system works and what is actually wrong with it.

31:39You know, most people just hear about it.

31:41Healthcare, people are sick. They need healthcare.

31:44Why would they cut healthcare?

31:45Cutting healthcare is bad. That's what they would just immediately think.

31:48And I think most people, they think of the fraud stuff and they want to

31:51dismiss it. Like I've heard all these people dismiss this Nick Shirley kid and what

31:56he exposed in Minneapolis. But the reason why is because it's the wrong party.

32:02If this was a Democrat that was exposing Republican fraud, then they would be all

32:07into it. They would be, it would be on every newspaper, but instead they're trying

32:10to dismiss it as not, you know, not relevant.

32:13Yeah. And to me, it's weird because I know Democrats are human beings and they

32:20care about the same things that I do.

32:23I've known all of these guys, almost all of them for many of them for

32:2640 years. Bernie Sanders, I've known them for 40 years.

32:30Their only solution is more money to the system, a system that is broken, that

32:34is making us sicker and sicker.

32:36And what president Trump wants to do is he wants to fix the system.

32:40Stop. Most of that money is not going to the patient.

32:43It's going to the insurance companies and the PBMs and all of these middlemen that

32:47are, you know, are milking the system.

32:51And that's why president Trump says, you know, the answer is to not pay the

32:55insurance company. It's to pay the consumer directly and put him, make him the CEO

33:04of his own health care so that he can spend money.

33:07He's now incentivized to do prevention and to maybe do holistic medicine or take vitamins

33:14or, you know, take vitamin D, which, you know, is, as you know, it's kind

33:19of miraculous, or to, or to do alternatives, you know, to do preventative care.

33:29And he wants to say, he's going to want to save money.

33:33Right now, you, nobody, nobody is in that position of accountability.

33:38We need to make them the CEO of their own health so that they have

33:42responsibility and they're going to pay the cause if they get sick.

33:46Government pays, but they then decide to allocate that, how to allocate that money.

33:51And then we need to make the system transparent.

33:54And that's, you know, one of the things that we're doing.

33:57We're, during his first term, Trump passed a transparency bill, but because Trump had passed,

34:03everybody wanted transparency. If you, if you're a woman, you're pregnant, you want to know

34:10how much it's going to cost you to have that baby.

34:15There's no way you can find that out for most of them.

34:18You can go nine months on a phone every day, how much it's going to

34:21cost, and you'll never get a straight answer.

34:24And so, you know, in New York, for example, what we're doing now is we're

34:30going to make all of the hospitals and all the providers post a menu of

34:34their prices so that are available to everybody and that are available on a website

34:39that we're creating. So, if you want an MRI and there's 40 places around your

34:45home that offer MRIs, you can't right now figure out what they cost.

34:50Now, you're going to be able to go and look at them all on a

34:52single page and figure out what the cheapest one is.

34:55If you go to a restaurant, the price are on the menu.

34:59If you go to buy a car and the guy said to you, yeah, you

35:04can buy the car, but I'm not going to tell you how much it costs

35:07until after you bought by it.

35:09Nobody would operate that way, but that's how our medical system operates.

35:13So, I looked at, we have a mock -up of this website.

35:17We're right now, during the Biden administration, because Trump had passed that law, the Biden

35:23administration just refused to enforce it.

35:25So, we're in the same position now where there's no transparency.

35:29We're changing that now. We sent out, we've sent out over a thousand letters to

35:35hospitals, you know, warning letters.

35:38He said, you got to post them right now and we're going to, and we

35:40just finalize new regulations. If they don't do that, they're going to pay a huge

35:46fine. So, I saw the mock -up of the website and I said, I asked

35:54the question, how much does this cost in the hospitals within a mile of Manhattan

36:00have a baby? One of them was, there were about 30 hospitals that you guys

36:05could visualize on one page.

36:07One of them was $1 ,300.

36:11That was the lowest. The highest was $22 ,000.

36:15In Detroit, it is the cheapest place to have a baby is about $5 ,000.

36:26And the most expensive is $60 ,000.

36:28And it's the same service, the same quality care.

36:32Nothing changes except that price.

36:35Why do we have that information chaos?

36:37We have it because the industry wants to hide what it's doing.

36:42And so, there's no market.

36:44There's no ability for people to make good choices.

36:47And when, you know, the, I met, I was staying with Dr.

36:52Oz during the transition at his house in Florida.

36:55And one day, Prime Minister Rudd, who was the former Prime Minister of Australia, came

37:01by. And he had, after he was Prime Minister, he had been appointed to run

37:05a commission to reduce healthcare costs and improve quality.

37:09And they were very successful.

37:10But he said the number one thing that they did, that changed everything, was price

37:16transparency, was showing people the price of what they're going to pay.

37:21So... So... We're now going to do that, and people will be able to shop.

37:27And, you know, now we also have to shift all of that money away from

37:33the insurance companies and put it in the hands of, you know, of the public

37:39so that they are incentivized, maximum incentivized to make good choices.

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38:53So as far as making good choices with, like, food, I like what you guys

38:58did. I love what you guys did with the food pyramid.

39:00You essentially flipped it on its head, which is kind of crazy, that for the

39:04longest time, we are being told that the most important things, the primary diet should

39:09be grains and rice and wheat.

39:11And now it's things that we've known for a long time.

39:15It's whole food, actual real food.

39:17That's what you're supposed to be eating.

39:19The problem is getting people to change their habits and change their ways.

39:23And if people don't start eating good food and if people don't start taking care

39:28of their body, how – what other things can you even imagine would shift this

39:34trend? Well, here's what's going to happen.

39:37First of all, the food pyramid.

39:39I inherited a food pyramid from the first week.

39:43I was – I came into office one year and two weeks ago.

39:48A week after I got in, I was handed the food pyramid that the Biden

39:52administration had. It wasn't even the food pyramid.

39:55They got rid of that.

39:56They just were doing the dietary guidelines.

39:57So it was the recommendations that would go and be reflected in the food pyramid.

40:02It was hundreds of pages long and it was incomprehensible.

40:07And it was driven by all the mercantile impulses that had corrupted the food pyramid

40:12for 50 years. And it was written by lobbyists.

40:17It was written by the food industry lobbyists and the same impulses that put Froot

40:22Loops at the top of the food pyramid, which isn't even a food.

40:26Froot Loops were at the top of the food pyramid?

40:28Froot Loops were at the top recommendation of the food pyramid.

40:30You can ask them to look up the old food pyramid.

40:33I need to see where Froot Loops stand.

40:36Don't they throw some vitamins on Froot Loops?

40:38Isn't it like vitamin enriched?

40:40Oh, yeah. As if that's good for you.

40:42It's good for you. They add vitamins.

40:45Do they even add vitamins?

40:46You add vitamins to cyanide and it's not going to make it any better for

40:49you. No. No, I'm joking, obviously.

40:52But it was a ridiculous – so how did – So then what we did

40:58is we got the best nutritionists in the country.

41:01We got Mark Hyman and we got the nutritionists from the best universities in the

41:06country and we put them all in a room.

41:08And I thought it was going to take a month.

41:10It took 11 months because they fought over every recommendation and everything is cited in

41:14source so that we know we have good science.

41:16But, you know, some of the stuff – because of regulatory malpractice all these years,

41:22some of the studies simply haven't been done.

41:23So there are knowledge gaps which we should not have.

41:30So now we have a food pyramid and because of the old food pyramid, people

41:36didn't like the food on it and they were going to ultra -processed food, which

41:41was OK on the food pyramid.

41:43So now 70 percent of the food that our kids eat is ultra -processed food,

41:4770 percent of the calories they get, and it's just poisoning them.

41:50And they took off the good stuff like whole milk, which is nutrient -dense, which

41:55is feeding their brain. We have two generations of kids that grew up without milk,

41:59without the proper nutrients for their brain.

42:02We have the first country in the face of the earth that has chronic obesity

42:08and in the same people malnutrition.

42:10So you have immensely obese people and they're malnourished.

42:15They're medically malnourished. It's because the food pyramid was so messed up.

42:22So what's going to happen now, Joe, is that we are going to be able

42:27to drive that. We're going to be able to change dietary culture.

42:30Just the food pyramid is going to change dietary culture.

42:32And here's how. Brooke Rollins, who's an incredible USDA secretary, she administers $405 million a

42:44day. She gives out food subsidies for school lunches, the WICS program, the SNAP program,

42:52Indian Health Services, and all of these other programs.

42:57And so those programs now are going to get good food because the dietary guidelines

43:03dictate what they can and cannot feed kids.

43:06The military and the VA also are changing.

43:10Now, this week I met with a guy, Chef Robert Irvine, who is a television

43:17chef. He's been hired by Pete Hegseth to come in and change all the military

43:22meals. Military, and he's already on five bases.

43:27By the end of this month, he'll be on 20.

43:29What he's done is the food that we give our military is so bad, they

43:35won't eat it. So they're going.

43:36They're going. out and they're spending their money on fast food.

43:41And fast food is not cheap.

43:43A Big Mac meal costs $12 to $14.

43:46It's not a cheap meal.

43:48You can get a really good food for that price.

43:50You could feed yourself the whole day for that price with good food.

43:55Mark Hyman's new book has a diet, $10 a day diet, three meals, great food.

44:00Anyway, Robert Irvine has gone into these places and he gives them all fresh food,

44:06almost all of it locally sourced.

44:08As it turns out, it's cheaper.

44:11The military is spending $18 a day for three meals for each soldier.

44:17He's spending $10 a day and giving them real food, good food.

44:22And the lines now are around the block and nobody's going to fast food.

44:26Everybody's fighting to get in.

44:27And what he says is it doesn't cause more.

44:31We don't need any more money.

44:33We just need to buy smarter and to be smarter about how we do it.

44:37And, you know, we're going to be able to do that.

44:41One of the things that we're doing with the dietary guidelines is the SNAP program.

44:46SNAP, we have 20 states now that have applied for SNAP waivers and have been

44:51granted so that you can no longer get candy on SNAP.

44:54You can no longer get soda.

44:57That was 18 % of SNAP purchases.

45:00So we are taking the 63 million poorest kids in our country, giving them taxpayer

45:06-funded diabetes, and then 78 % of them end up on Medicaid.

45:12Many of them are being treated for diabetes.

45:13So we're paying to give them the disease and then we're paying to treat them

45:17for the rest of their lives.

45:18And we're changing that. And one of the things that Brooke is doing is she's

45:22going to require that any retailer that accepts food stamps has to double the amount

45:27of real food in their establishment.

45:30We're working with farmers. We're working with entrepreneurs to make sure every American can get

45:36high -quality food that is affordable.

45:39I don't know how anybody would be opposed to that.

45:41That all sounds fantastic. It's weird that they are.

45:44How could you, the way you just laid it out, how could anybody be opposed

45:47to that? That all sounds great.

45:48I mean, especially for the soldiers.

45:50The fact that they were getting terrible food that they didn't want to eat is

45:53just, that's really offensive. You know, you think about what you're asking of them and

45:58then you're giving them garbage that they don't even want to eat.

46:01Like, what do they, how do they feel that you care about them?

46:04Well, and you know, one of the things that Robert Irvin, the chef, told me,

46:11he said, you know, it costs $9 to get a frozen salmon.

46:15It costs $6 to get a fresh salmon.

46:17So, you know, food, food, good food is actually, if you cook yourself at home,

46:25the good food is much, much less expensive.

46:28The problem is Americans have forgotten how to cook.

46:32And so, and cooking is really important because it's not a, it's important for family

46:37cohesion, for a sense of community.

46:40It's a daily, it's almost sacred ritual.

46:44And, and, you know, taking that away from our lives has, has amplified the spiritual

46:50malaise that we're in. And one of the things we're going to do is to

46:54start sending federal workers out to teach people how to cook.

46:58They don't have the implements.

46:59They don't have the cutting boards.

47:01They don't have, you know, they don't know how to buy groceries.

47:05And, you know, you can go into any, any big grocery store in this country.

47:09If you go and buy a steak, it's still pretty expensive.

47:13But if you buy the cheaper cuts, it's great meat and it is very, very

47:19affordable or liver or, you know, all these alternatives.

47:22Chuck Rose. You said, you know, how can you be against that?

47:27I told you 20 states have applied for the SNAP program and we've granted them

47:32SNAP waivers. Why would you want taxpayer, if you want to drink a Coke, you

47:37ought to be able to.

47:38We live in the United States.

47:39We're not going to take anything away from anybody.

47:42But the taxpayer shouldn't be paying for it, particularly when we're paying for it on

47:46the other hand and diabetes.

47:48So this just makes sense to anybody.

47:51But 20 states have applied.

47:54Only two of them are blue states.

47:56Why? Bernie Sanders has been fighting for this for years.

48:01But Vermont won't apply for one.

48:03And it's all partisanship. And they're putting their hatred of Donald Trump ahead of their

48:11love for their own children.

48:12And until we learn to stop doing that, this, you know, the health care in

48:17this country is not going to improve, at least in those states.

48:20So what strategies, if any, could you ever imagine that could be implemented that would

48:26kind of unite people on these things and get them to stop being so partisan

48:30about one of the most important aspects of being a human being is staying healthy.

48:36It's, you know, it's like love and health.

48:39They're all, those are the top ones that we all want.

48:43It just seems insane that we would choose this as a battleground.

48:48And it seems insane that it's connected to one party or another.

48:52It shouldn't be. It's a, it should just, we should all be united on at

48:56least this. And I think if people were a little healthier and they were a

49:00little more fit, they'd probably have a lot less anxiety, probably a lot less conflict

49:05when it comes to political disagreements.

49:08Things could probably be worked out more amicably, especially among friends.

49:13It's like having good health improves virtually every aspect of your life.

49:18Yeah. I mean, I would say, I would say two things.

49:22The food ties directly into your mental health.

49:26Yes. And we now know that it's so well documented that there's a gut brain

49:30connection and that, you know, depression, ADHD, Chris Palmer up at Harvard is dramatically reducing

49:39the symptoms of schizophrenia simply by changing people's diets.

49:43He's using a keto diet.

49:45There are dramatically like what, what kind of percent losing 30 % of their symptoms.

49:50Really? Just from ketones? From keto.

49:54What about, have they done anything with like...

49:56The same thing is true.

49:57I mean, you know, there are now, there's a big paper about to come out

50:01on losing a bipolar diagnosis, kids who lose a bipolar diagnosis simply by changing their

50:09diet. We know that ADHD is driven by all these food dyes and stuff, and

50:13that's very well documented. But there's all of these, you go on the internet and

50:20you look for studies that show what happens when you change the food in prisons

50:28and juvenile detention facilities. And they, you know, they'll put it in one wing of

50:35the prison, they'll put good food, and then they'll put the standard food in the

50:39other. And the level of violence goes down by 40, 45, 50 percent.

50:45The use of restraints in juvenile detention facilities goes down 75 percent.

50:50The number of incidents dramatically drops.

50:54And so it's a public safety issue in the prisons.

50:57And, you know, I've been meeting now with all the prisons.

51:00Prisons have a real problem because they're allocated, the state prisons are allocated to 60

51:05cents a day to feed the prisoners.

51:08And it's all, for them, it's all about shelf life.

51:13So they're just feeding them the worst kind of poison that you could possibly, it's

51:18all just chemicals. Oh, my God.

51:20But, you know. Well, we've kind of given up on the idea of rehabilitation.

51:25It's just all about punishment.

51:27And then. But this is also public safety.

51:29It's guard safety. Of course.

51:31Everything else. And the other thing, in the answer to your first question about how

51:36do you sort of, you know, mitigate the polarization, I would say the only way

51:41that you do that is by getting people to start talking to each other.

51:45Yeah. Because that, you've got to be able to find common ground with other people.

51:50And if you don't talk to them, you don't see their humanity.

51:53Right. And, you know, that's one of the things that you do that is so

51:56great, which is you bring a lot of people on here who you disagree with

52:01and you have a civil conversation about them and you show your curiosity about them

52:06and you, you know, you get to hear their rationale.

52:10And a lot of times I'll listen to somebody on this show.

52:13I'll say, I don't like this guy.

52:15And then I'll listen to his rationale and I'll think, oh, actually, he's making a

52:19lot of the sense and we have to stop hating people because of the label

52:25on them and start, you know, listening.

52:28And it's really important we do that now because these algorithms are designed to drive

52:35us all apart. Yeah. And, you know, we've always had political polarization in this country.

52:41I mean, I grew up during the 60s and, you know, there were bombs going

52:45off and people being shot and, you know, all it was very, very.

52:49It was violent and vitriolic when my dad was running and the polarization probably was

52:56the worst since the American Civil War.

53:00But today, when it is amplified by the algorithms, it's hard to see where it's

53:07going to end up in a good place unless we start learning to talk to

53:10each other. It's not just the algorithm.

53:12It's just that it's also the method of communication.

53:14When you're you're only talking to people through, like, angry tweets back and forth with

53:19each other, you were saying, like, sit down and talk to people.

53:22That's no one's doing that anymore.

53:24Very few. There's a few FaceTime conversations going on.

53:27You see your friends if you go out with them.

53:29People are not talking that much anymore and they're not sitting down and talking.

53:33And when you do, everyone's distracted.

53:35Everyone has their phones out.

53:37Everyone's checking text messages. I'll tell you one of the most important things that we're

53:40doing right now as part of the Maha legislation from my agency.

53:45We're going state by state and we're asking them to do bell to bell legislation

53:51so that and 26 states have now already done it.

53:55So more than half the states of that kids can't use cell phones in schools.

53:59I went to a school in Loudoun County the other day and the states love

54:03them. I went to Loudoun County and, you know, they had the students that fought

54:10and fought against this, against getting their cell phones.

54:15So the way they do it, all of the schools, school districts and states do

54:20it differently. But in that state, they can bring their cell phone to school, but

54:24they have to leave it in their backpack.

54:27And if the parent calls and needs to talk to them, they can do it.

54:31But I walked into the cafeteria, 600 kids in that cafeteria, and they're all talking

54:37to each other. They're sitting across the table.

54:39Nobody's looking at their laps.

54:41The parents, the parents came, you know, that day.

54:45I polled the students and I said, how many of you think this is a

54:48good idea? And they all put their hands up and they said, we all hated

54:51it for the first two weeks and now we love it.

54:54The parents said, it's the best thing that ever happened.

54:58And my kid is not driving with their cell phone in the car anymore because

55:01they know they can live without it.

55:03They're eating dinner with the family and we're actually having conversations.

55:08And then the teachers in the schools love it because the disciplinary problems go down

55:12and the test scores go through the roof because they're focusing on work.

55:18So it's just like a no brainer.

55:19But again, it's the blue states that, you know, are the hardest to convince to

55:25do it because they see it as, you know, as a Trump part of the,

55:31you know, the demonization of, you know, Trump being the tyrant or whatever.

55:36It's just so stupid to not recognize the kids are distracted.

55:40Like what? It's just one of those things.

55:43Why does that have to be a right or a left issue?

55:46It's stupid. This is a United States issue.

55:49The best way to have a group of people that succeed in this world is

55:54make it as clear a path for them as possible.

55:58And as soon as you allow them to use their phone all day, it's too

56:02addictive. No one can put them down.

56:04No, you're going to lose 30.

56:06percent of your concentration or more easily i would imagine the fact that that would

56:10be a partisan thing is just nuts it just shows how goofy we are i

56:15don't i don't know how you get people to talk though i mean other than

56:18i mean i do it on a podcast but that's my job i don't know

56:26how many conversations i'd be having with people who i was politically opposed to or

56:30ideologically opposed to or just didn't see eye to eye with them and wanted to

56:34know how they think i i don't know how many opportunities i would ever even

56:37get to do that what you're doing is so important and now you know there's

56:41a thousand people imitating you many really good podcasts but um it's teaching people to

56:50have conversations i mean you are the best teacher mentor on that and people admire

56:56you so they you know and not my i have seven kids and they grew

57:01up with with devices and stuff and i would look you know i'd slap them

57:07out of their hand and i and also they couldn't concentrate on long you know

57:12long points long conversations they're like get to the point you know i only got

57:16five seconds you got to make your point and then i see them sitting for

57:22three and a half hours and listening to a rogan podcast that was a cultural

57:26phenomenon that was a cultural change this generation of kids i have so much hope

57:32for because they grew up with that and you know they want it so i

57:37do have a lot of hope that we're going to be able to do this

57:39and then you know i think charlie kirk did that too was an example to

57:44a lot of those kids because whether you agree with him or not and he

57:48had very strong opinions that people you know consider terrible but the one thing that

57:53he really did is he talked to people he didn't agree with and he always

57:58gave them the microphone and allowed them to amplify their voice and then he had

58:03a civility and he talked to them and he used logic a lot of times

58:07destructively but not in an angry way yeah and so i think you know he

58:13was teaching people uh to how to have conversations again you're teaching people how to

58:20have conversations again and it's you know i think that's uh you know one of

58:25the big hopes that i have for the future that people learn to talk to

58:28each other with whom they did with with people with whom they disagree it would

58:33be nice but there's also a real genuine problem today in the marketplace of outrage

58:40and that a lot of people um a lot of their podcasts are just focused

58:46almost entirely on on outrage and of uh like having arguments and screaming matches with

58:53people and you know putting people down and not having civil discourse but trying to

58:58win trying to dominate someone in an argument you know trying to squash people and

59:04i guess in a sense some of that is really good because it exposes bad

59:07ideas but it just encourages that kind of discourse where if someone's ideologically opposed to

59:13you they are the enemy and you want to destroy them and i'm like okay

59:17they're just a human being like find out why they got to where they are

59:22that is a different perspective than you have and why you got to where you

59:26are and try to figure out if there's a middle ground in there like what

59:28what do you believe like why do you believe that and find out why and

59:32and ask them and don't don't cut them off let them talk let them express

59:36themselves help them if you can try to figure out what makes someone actually think

59:41instead of just thinking that your ideas are a part of you they're just ideas

59:47like they're not you like some ideas you can hold in your mind and they're

59:53bad for you they're bad you haven't examined them you're acting on them like their

59:57doctrine and then you're stuck with that idea because you've already espoused it so many

1:00:01times you don't want to be a flip -flopper and so people get mad and

1:00:05you you get this weird cycle of shitty communication and nobody ever breaks out of

1:00:10it and nothing ever gets done and there's no common ground is ever achieved and

1:00:14the only way you're going to ever break that is to stop talking to people

1:00:17like that you gotta just talk to them just instead of talk to them like

1:00:22they're the enemy just talk to them like they're a fellow human being about some

1:00:26ideas and just treat them with respect talk to them like a person that you

1:00:32know in any other circumstance maybe even could be your friend just talk to them

1:00:36people can do that it's possible it just takes discipline you have to learn how

1:00:40to do it took me a while took me a long time to learn how

1:00:43to talk to people better but it can be done and it's technique but as

1:00:48prevalent as you know that kind of vitriol is on in the podcast world right

1:00:54it's it is incomparable to what's happening on television because there are no conversations on

1:01:02television right that's more of what i was getting at honestly is there's some shows

1:01:06that do that but like some of these cnn shows it's just these crazy ideological

1:01:10battles and yet also guys pro tip you can't have fucking six people at a

1:01:16table all yelling out for seven minutes you don't have enough time to get a

1:01:20real point across and it becomes a battle of like who's got the best prepared

1:01:23sound bites or who's got the best uh snarky quip it's stupid it's a stupid

1:01:29way to talk about things you know i mean cheryl went on uh the view

1:01:33yeah the view and it was that it wasn't like uh um like you say

1:01:41you know like let's have a congenial conversation with people and allow them to uh

1:01:48to express themselves and to be fun and funny and yes yeah well just have

1:01:53a conversation with someone if you disagree with them about certain things like they disagree

1:01:58with her it would have been far more productive to have a one -on -one

1:02:01conversation instead of this gaggle of hand squawking all at her it's just like you

1:02:06see it over and over again when they oppose somebody it's like they're all chiming

1:02:10in and it's just not the way you could ever like thoroughly cover a subject

1:02:15and they're limited by their format that format is very limiting it's a shitty format

1:02:20Where you go to a commercial at predetermined times, period, no matter what.

1:02:25Like, maybe you got a little leeway here or there, but you've got to get

1:02:28that commercial in. And that's crazy, because if you're in the middle of talking, a

1:02:32lot of points take a long time to flesh out.

1:02:35Like, just think about all the stuff you just explained about Medicaid.

1:02:38Imagine if you try to do that.

1:02:40You can't. You can't. You can't do it.

1:02:42And they would try to stop you.

1:02:45You're too in the weeds.

1:02:46No one's going to pay attention to this.

1:02:47It's like, I don't think that's true.

1:02:49And I think we've learned that because of podcasts, because there was no production.

1:02:53There was no executives. There was no one there.

1:02:56People were just putting on a webcam and talking.

1:02:58And so we realized, like, well, people actually do like conversations still.

1:03:03They just don't get a lot of them, not real ones.

1:03:06You know, you get interviews where someone has, like, a sheet of questions.

1:03:09You know, you get where someone is, you know, playing a role.

1:03:13You're playing a role of a person who interviews people.

1:03:17You don't really give a shit about what this person has to say.

1:03:19But people do want connection.

1:03:21They still do. And the fact that we don't get it from social media but

1:03:25most of our time is in social media is just accelerating this detachment we have

1:03:30from each other. And that's what people have to get past.

1:03:33I don't know how to do it.

1:03:36You know, you and I were talking before we came in here about Larry King.

1:03:40Yes. He did that. Oh, yeah.

1:03:42There were a lot of people in the 70s and 80s.

1:03:46David Suskind and, you know, all of these other people who were actually having conversations.

1:03:53Yeah, Larry King was great at it.

1:03:54Dick Cavett. I love when he asked D .J.

1:03:57Khaled, how did you gain all the weight?

1:03:59I was like, what did he say?

1:04:01He said, I ate too much.

1:04:02What do you want me to say?

1:04:04That's such a crazy question.

1:04:06How did you gain all the weight?

1:04:07Like, what, Larry? What are you talking about?

1:04:10That's crazy. That's a wild question to ask someone.

1:04:12But, you know, he would just have a conversation with you.

1:04:15You know, and I think people have a hunger for that.

1:04:18And a lot of this infighting comes from no face -to -face communication.

1:04:23I think when people get a chance, especially if it's not performative, that's part of

1:04:27the problem, like the Charlie Kirk stuff or some of the other things that people

1:04:30do in front of a crowd.

1:04:31Things become very performative where there's a bunch of people watching and cheering and then

1:04:36you know how the audience feels and you play to them a little bit.

1:04:39Like, that's probably not the best way to talk about stuff.

1:04:43And I think human beings naturally understand one -on -one conversations.

1:04:47We've had them for all of human history.

1:04:50And so when you get a chance to hear people talk one -on -one for

1:04:55hours at a time, it expands your understanding of the world.

1:04:59Like, now I know how you feel about things.

1:05:01I know, at least for this brief three -hour conversation, I get more of a

1:05:06sense of how you approach things.

1:05:07And then people put that into their own mind and go, maybe I should approach

1:05:10things a little bit differently.

1:05:11Maybe I should think about things a little bit differently.

1:05:13And we miss that. You know, we're missing that.

1:05:16And social media robs you of that.

1:05:19It gives you the exact opposite of that.

1:05:22Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, what Charlie Kirk was doing, you're right, you know,

1:05:28it was less of a conversation and more of a...

1:05:33Sometimes it was conversation. It was like in the ring.

1:05:36You know, it was like being in the ring.

1:05:38But it's a lot better than what's happening elsewhere, which is just blanket censorship of

1:05:44people and not any willingness to just shutting people down and canceling them.

1:05:49Yeah, 100%. Well, that's another weird thing that that's a Democratic Party impulse because it

1:05:56was the opposite of the Democratic Party I grew up with, you know, which was

1:06:00unafraid of any debate. My uncle, my father said, we should be able to debate.

1:06:05We should be able to win these debates in the marketplace of ideas.

1:06:09If we can't, then we need to examine ourselves.

1:06:11It was a core tenet of the Democratic Party.

1:06:13Yeah. And, you know, the unfortunate shift in that, it's just like, you know, I

1:06:20remember during the Bush administration when the FCC was going after Howard Stern.

1:06:24It was this huge thing.

1:06:26They were trying to close down Howard Stern because Howard Stern was very critical of

1:06:29Bush. And it was like he was the guy out there fighting for free speech.

1:06:34And they were getting fined, like enormous fines, enormous fines for things that he had

1:06:39said, you know, they deemed to be obscene, you know.

1:06:42And that was a right -wing thing.

1:06:44And we always thought of it as a right -wing thing.

1:06:47And when you see what's happening today, just like any – the wanting silence of

1:06:55your political opponents is the dumbest way to cut off your own hand.

1:07:00It's so dumb because if you can't see that this could be used against you

1:07:04if someone else gets a new position of power, if all of a sudden some

1:07:07enormous right -wing corporation buys these social media platforms and only pushes right -wing agendas

1:07:13and silences all left -wing agendas, like do you know how fucking crazy that is

1:07:17to just give that kind of power willingly to an anonymous group of people that

1:07:22you supposedly align to because you're in the same tribe?

1:07:25It's the dumbest thing ever.

1:07:26And the fact that people on the left weren't outraged when they read the Twitter

1:07:32files and found out how much involvement there was in silencing real information and removing

1:07:38people who were from Stanford and MIT.

1:07:40Well, the White House ordered me to be removed from Instagram.

1:07:42I lost a million followers.

1:07:44Insane. 37 hours after he got – after he took the oath of office swearing

1:07:51to uphold the Constitution, they were ordering Mark Zuckerberg to take me down.

1:07:55And then you look at what's happening in England now, you know, with people going

1:07:59to jail for Twitter posts.

1:08:0212 ,000 people this year.

1:08:0512 ,000 in the last year.

1:08:06And the Magna Carta was, you know, written and now there's – now it's just

1:08:12a – it's just a dictatorship.

1:08:14Well, they got rid of trial by jury except for murder and rape and a

1:08:18couple other things. Now it's just a judge.

1:08:20So, you know, whatever it is, if it's a social media infraction, if it's –

1:08:24there's no reasonable, you know, judge by a jury of your peers.

1:08:29No, you're getting judged by a judge.

1:08:33And that's nuts. It's the Soviet system.

1:08:34It's like Kafka. I just can't believe how quick it happened.

1:08:38When you look at the social media arrests, they were always disturbing.

1:08:43Like if you go back even four or five years, they had quite a few

1:08:46of them a year. But it really ramped up, really ramped up over the last

1:08:50year or so. And it's just insane to watch.

1:08:53And a lot of it is criticism of immigration, like legitimate criticism of immigration and

1:08:58legitimate criticism of crimes that have been committed.

1:09:02And people outraged, which is completely normal.

1:09:06But instead of like doing anything about that, they want to arrest people from complaining.

1:09:11And it's just really weird to watch.

1:09:17It's going to get worse with the AI.

1:09:26It's scary. Well, it's just strange that they couldn't do anything to stop that from

1:09:32happening. And that anybody with anybody that's reasonable would be willing to let that happen

1:09:37because their side is imposing it.

1:09:40That seems like an existential threat to all critical thinking, all communication and debate.

1:09:47As soon as you start arresting people for opinions, that's crazy.

1:09:52You're getting nuts. Like anything that you deem might incite violence or like outrage.

1:09:58People are outraged. They have a right to be outraged.

1:10:01If you can put them in a cage because they're outraged, that's nuts.

1:10:07That's really nuts. Now they have a pub law.

1:10:09Do you know this one?

1:10:10Oh, find that, Jamie. They're trying to pass this thing.

1:10:13I don't know if they passed it.

1:10:15Where someone's – I don't want to speak out of turn.

1:10:19I don't want to fuck this up.

1:10:20Because it was disturbing enough without me misinterpreting it.

1:10:26But the idea was to stop people from saying things on social media that you

1:10:31get arrested for. Stop them from saying those kind of things in pubs.

1:10:36Where is this? In England?

1:10:38Yes. See if you can find it.

1:10:40I know I saved it, but it will take me too long to pull it

1:10:43up. Did you find anything like that?

1:10:45I'm trying to make sure it's – Legit?

1:10:48Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't imagine it's not – I mean, it's not outside the

1:10:54realm of what they're capable of doing if they're arresting 12 ,000 people a year

1:10:58for social media posts. I mean, if that was happening in America and they were

1:11:04only arresting Republicans, I don't think you'd hear a peep out of the Democrats.

1:11:07I think they think it's important.

1:11:09We have to stop misinformation.

1:11:11Yeah. It passed? No, I don't think it passed.

1:11:14You don't think it passed?

1:11:15I don't think it's going to find out if it passed or not.

1:11:18Okay. So what is the – what were they – It was legislation aimed, blah,

1:11:22blah, blah, but it says you're still free to converse, know the law, not place

1:11:26the system. I don't know.

1:11:28What was the – what were they trying to – okay, point – free speech

1:11:32in UK pubs, employer responsibilities.

1:11:35It requires employers to take reasonable steps to prevent staff from experiencing harassment by third

1:11:40parties such as customers. Well, that's normal, right?

1:11:44You don't want to be harassed by a couple.

1:11:45Concerns have been raised that debates on, for instance, gender identity or political matters could

1:11:51lead to staff complaints resulting in patrons being asked to leave if the behavior is

1:11:56deemed aggressive or harassing. It should not be misinterpreted as a ban on lawful, polite

1:12:04or controversial speech. Who's to decide what's controversial though?

1:12:08Third -party harassment legislation focuses on addressing harassment rather than banning specific topics of conversation

1:12:14entirely. Just any regulation of conversation is nuts.

1:12:19If – it's one thing you're harassing the staff or – I mean the pub

1:12:22owner – I've never known a pub owner who would allow people to come in

1:12:28and harass his staff. He already has an economic and management incentive to not allow

1:12:34that. Right. It's not the kind of thing you need to legislate.

1:12:37But to say that someone doesn't feel safe if people are having a civil conversation

1:12:40about gender identity, you don't feel safe if you work there and that you're getting

1:12:44harassed by people's opinions that you don't agree with.

1:12:47Well, that's where things get weird because then you – as we've seen, there's a

1:12:52lot of people that get – they get really triggered about a lot of things

1:12:54that are pretty normal for most folks.

1:12:57You know, microaggressions, dumb shit.

1:13:00There's a lot of people that just want to be offended and if this is

1:13:03a law, that could lead to a lot more problem.

1:13:07It's just a slippery slope and they're not going in the right direction and I

1:13:10don't know how they course correct if they've fallen this far that quickly.

1:13:1412 ,000 arrests is crazy.

1:13:16That's a crazy amount of people go to jail for social media posts.

1:13:22And it encourages self -censorship so you don't get a real sense of what people

1:13:26want or don't want. Because people don't want to be involved.

1:13:29They don't want to go to jail.

1:13:30They don't want to take a chance.

1:13:34The framers of the Constitution – free speech was everything for them and they put

1:13:38it in the First Amendment because they knew all the other rights and guarantees were

1:13:44dependent on it. If you have a government that can silence its opponents, it has

1:13:51a license for any kind of atrocity.

1:13:55It's just shocking that all other Western nations haven't adopted that.

1:14:00Well, most of them don't have constitutions.

1:14:04It's so crazy. It's just so ridiculous.

1:14:08It's so ridiculous that free speech, which is like – we all agree, especially in

1:14:12America. It's one of the most important things.

1:14:14It's the only way to find out what's real and what's not.

1:14:17You got to let people talk it out, you know?

1:14:20I mean when you're living in a world where the government has the power to

1:14:25dictate what's real and what's not real and they don't have an obligation to be

1:14:29correct, you got a real problem.

1:14:31And if there's no consequences for them being incorrect and they've silenced correct speech, they've

1:14:37gotten away with something that's real slippery and real dangerous.

1:14:40And when there's a lot of money involved and a lot of businesses involved –

1:14:43I typed it into perplexity and this gives a little context on it because the

1:14:49– pubs were the same the pub thing reverses a 2013 removal of third -party

1:14:54harassment liability making pubs liable if staffs overhear comments deemed harassing based on protected characteristics

1:15:01like sexual race critics call it a banter ban fearing landlords landlords will police conversations

1:15:08to avoid lawsuits chilling speech in social venues that makes it sound like if someone

1:15:13was doing that the business was getting in trouble versus the person who was saying

1:15:18it right so uh they removed a third -party harassment liability so they removed the

1:15:25pub owner being in trouble they removed that because it says it passed when i

1:15:33was looking it up said it passed a couple months ago so that makes pub

1:15:36owners liable again uh so removed a 2013 removal of third -party harassment liability made

1:15:44them liable i don't think i think it's back to reverses that reverses making them

1:15:48liable no no no no it reverses the removal of the third -party harassment liability

1:15:54so they removed the liability now making pubs liable so it now makes them liable

1:16:00if they overhear comments so what this does is it encourages the pub itself to

1:16:05censor people which makes sense i mean if you all of a sudden can now

1:16:09sue a pub that you went into and you didn't like this conversation about gender

1:16:14identity that was taking place next to you you have the basis of a lawsuit

1:16:17now yes so now the incentive is the pub owner to go out and police

1:16:23all the conversations so that if anybody if anybody crosses a guardrail you know the

1:16:29pub owner now has to go in and interrupt them and which is not a

1:16:32good thing if you weren't a charitable person you could imagine that there are certain

1:16:36groups that would have people go to places have conversations and set up a lawsuit

1:16:43yeah you could just you could commit fraud if the pub is liable what do

1:16:49you pay some kook to go in there and start yelling about transsexuals and then

1:16:53next thing you know you collect the lawsuit that's not outside of what i think

1:16:58a shady person would do if you think about what you've just talked about what

1:17:02all the medicare fraud and all the other fraud that we know has happened in

1:17:05the world like this is a this is a giant loophole this is a giant

1:17:10loophole for people to come in and sue people and silence everybody's speech and the

1:17:14fact that this is uh not being recognized is it's very disturbing that people don't

1:17:19understand human behavior it's very weird they're willing to accept this kind of stuff when

1:17:27you um look at the challenges of getting things done what has been the most

1:17:32frustrating in terms of what you wanted to get done and what you were actually

1:17:36able to get done or in the process of getting done i mean i've been

1:17:42surprised by how much president trump has supported me on this stuff because i you

1:17:48know i'm going after the the biggest you know big pharma big insurance um the

1:17:56and some food big food and um and these have all been you know those

1:18:03were all taboos for every administration democratic republican there was little incremental things that you

1:18:08could do under democratic administrations but nothing like this has ever happened you know i

1:18:14mean the the agreement we made with the pharmaceutical industry could not have happened any

1:18:20under any other president the mfn agreement the most favored nation and the way that

1:18:26that worked is you know we've been paying for the last 40 years the highest

1:18:31price in the world for medicine and so um we we have 4 .2 percent

1:18:38of the world's population here and uh over 70 percent of pharmaceutical profits and revenues

1:18:43come from the united states why is that we do buy more drugs than anybody

1:18:48but it's because we pay higher prices we pay two to three to five times

1:18:54what they're playing in europe for example and president trump likes to talk about this

1:19:02osambic the list price was 1350 in america you could buy the same drug in

1:19:09any pharmacy in london for 88 and it's made in the same factory in new

1:19:15jersey and the reason that was allowed to happen is the europeans just said we're

1:19:21not going to allow we're not going to pay anymore for it they would set

1:19:24the price and that was the maximum there's a lot of drugs they don't have

1:19:27there's a lot of cancer drugs they don't have in europe because they just wouldn't

1:19:31pay the price and um and so uh president trump you know every president has

1:19:38vowed to stop this clinton tried to stop it uh obama bush all of them

1:19:47tried and by all said we're gonna get rid of the mfn price and none

1:19:51of them did anything on it and president trump literally called me sometimes once a

1:19:58day called late at night 11 30 at night and you know say where are

1:20:04you on mfn and we ended up getting the assumed to me even it seemed

1:20:10insurmountable but he said i'm going to use tariffs i'm going to force the europeans

1:20:16to raise their drug prices and because he didn't want to he didn't we had

1:20:22enough leverage on the pharmaceutical companies because of our medicaid medicare programs and we could

1:20:29pretty much force them to lower their prices but he would put him out of

1:20:33business so and he didn't he wants us to continue to be the center for

1:20:38innovation in this country and he also wanted the companies reach or or that all

1:20:44their productions so that we're making all the drugs here and they're not making it

1:20:47elsewhere in the world and so we sat down with them for months and uh

1:20:52we came to agreements with 16 of the 17 pharmaceutical companies now americans are getting

1:20:59the lowest prices in the world if somebody lowers the price in europe we get

1:21:03that price you or lower and people can get that today on trump rx they

1:21:08can go for you know the most popular medications and get the cheapest price in

1:21:11the world and not only that but the pharmaceutical industry because we gave them certainty

1:21:17and because president trump forced the european countries to raise the price that their citizens

1:21:22pay for drugs we the the companies actually did well they they increased stock values

1:21:29by 1 .3 trillion among them and they've all agreed to ensure their production so

1:21:36lily is building six plants here new plants including one of the biggest api facilities

1:21:41in the world as the api are the um the the pharmaceutical ingredients that you

1:21:48know we ran out of during covet we need to be making them here because

1:21:51otherwise other countries can blackmail us fyser merck they're all building um big facilities here

1:21:58and drug production is now going to come to the united states we are going

1:22:02to be the center of the world in terms of drug production and those negotiations

1:22:07were very very tough and they were extraordinarily complex we were you know we have

1:22:14a really good suite of of um talented individuals high caliber individuals who've left billion

1:22:22dollar businesses one of them is a guy called chris klump who's immensely talented he

1:22:28walked away from a uh company that does data management for 85 of the hospitals

1:22:34in this country and he's you know he walked away from a billion dollar company

1:22:37divested lost a lot of money to come just because he wants to improve things

1:22:42he ran the negotiations and the uh the pharmaceutical companies fell in love with him

1:22:48because they realized they could trust him and we worked out this extraordinary agreement where

1:22:53now americans have gone from paying the most in the world for drugs to the

1:22:58least in the developed world for drugs and that's going to change everybody's experience can

1:23:03i ask you how that applies if someone is it the same if someone has

1:23:06insurance or if they don't have insurance like it is how does insurance bill it

1:23:11versus how does someone buy on their own it if they um it's going to

1:23:18lower price for everybody anybody can go on trump rx or they have insurance or

1:23:22not and they can get it there and they would buy it themselves yeah and

1:23:26so it'd be at a substantially lower price than they would have had in the

1:23:30past exactly they buy themselves but what if people are just getting it through insurance

1:23:34do they again you know then there's insurance lower it as well or do they

1:23:38the copay is lowered okay and you know we had the first woman to buy

1:23:44a drug on it the first customer was a woman who has been trying for

1:23:50years to do ivf and the drug cost four thousand dollars and now i think

1:23:55it costs uh uh you know something like six hundred dollars really uh so and

1:24:01it's gonna allow you know women uh one out of every three women in this

1:24:06country does not have as many children as she wants and she can't have more

1:24:10and ivf is going to be really important because our birth rates just dropped i

1:24:15mean dramatically this year they dropped to 1 .75 so yeah people don't understand that

1:24:21you know we've had a few conversations on this podcast about population decline and people

1:24:26just most people are not aware of it they just see how many people are

1:24:30on the highway they think we're overcrowded they don't understand this replacement number that we're

1:24:35going to need unless i mean the u .s is in a different situation than

1:24:41other countries japan is in total crisis right china is in an existential crisis because

1:24:47uh you know its population is going to drop dramatically south korea yeah um but

1:24:54you know people want to immigrate here so we can make up the deficit through

1:24:58immigration and it's going to you know uh and that we have that advantage but

1:25:04we you know it's still the birth rate has dropped it dropped one and a

1:25:08half or um it dropped from uh 1 .9 this year to 1 .75 and

1:25:16that affects social security it affects you know it it makes it so that the

1:25:21cliff for social security was pushed ahead by another year because that uh drop in

1:25:27birth rate so it's um it's not a good thing and you know american women

1:25:32want to have babies and a lot of a third of them cannot have as

1:25:35many children as they want um what was the pushback when it came to things

1:25:41like removal of dyes the removal of dyes uh again we were i think because

1:25:52of president trump's leadership we were able to convene the industry and talk to them

1:25:59about it and a lot of them came in and said yeah you know we

1:26:03know we got to change really yeah the only one did you ever ask them

1:26:07why did you do it a long time ago well they didn't have options and

1:26:12what we did but didn't most of them like for cereal for example didn't they

1:26:16have to have no unnatural dyes when they sent it to canada yeah the ones

1:26:22in canada but in our country we hadn't approved a bunch of them so we

1:26:27only had one or two vegetable days marty mccary who's done a fantastic job at

1:26:34fda has now fast -tracked it this year five new or seven new ones so

1:26:40we're working with the industry to make sure they have the dyes and they're supposed

1:26:43to get rid of all the dyes by the end of this year and that's

1:26:47gonna you know so instead they'll use just food -based dyes yeah just yeah vegetable

1:26:52and vegetable and mineral -based dyes and that's you know another thing that we did

1:26:57again through convene two things that we did through convening industry because of president trump's

1:27:03convening power um we fixed the prior authorization so one of the most frustrating things

1:27:10that um that people go through when they encounter the health care system is is

1:27:17that they have to wait for prior authorization from the insurance company.

1:27:21So you go in, your doctor tells you you need a knee replacement, and then

1:27:26it takes you six months for the insurance company to approve the surgery.

1:27:34And it was infuriating for people and really devastating and heartbreaking for a lot of

1:27:41them. And we got the biggest insurance companies representing 80 % of the American public

1:27:48all voluntarily agreed to eliminate prior authorization for almost all their procedures.

1:27:53It's a very small number now.

1:27:55I think 15 % of the procedures still have it.

1:27:58And those are procedures we want prior authorization because there's a potential for abuse, for

1:28:04example, with spinal surgeries. A lot of people don't need the surgery.

1:28:09And Medicaid and Medicare wants to make sure that they actually need that surgery, and

1:28:13it's beneficial to them. But for all the other ones, you will now know at

1:28:18point of care whether or not you're insurance.

1:28:21So you go to your doctor.

1:28:22He says you need a knee surgery.

1:28:24Before you leave his office, he'll know whether the insurance company approves it or not.

1:28:28And that's going to dramatically change the medical experience.

1:28:31Another thing that we did, again, through convening industry is we originally got 63 top

1:28:40tech companies together, and then we ended up final agreement with 405 of them to

1:28:46agree to stop information blocking.

1:28:49So your medical records are owned by you, but you can't get access to them

1:28:56a lot of times, most of the time.

1:28:59The data company won't give them to you.

1:29:03And so we've got them all to agree to stop doing that.

1:29:06So by the end of this year, every American will be able to get their

1:29:09medical records on their cell phone.

1:29:12And that's going to dramatically change the medical experience.

1:29:14It's going to save lives because if you get hit, you know, you live in

1:29:18New Jersey, you get hit by a car in Portland, Oregon.

1:29:21You go to the hospital and you spend the first two hours while you're bleeding

1:29:25out, you know, making out clipboards.

1:29:28Now, or you come in unconscious and they don't know what to do with you.

1:29:31They don't know anything about you.

1:29:32Now your medical records are on your cell phone.

1:29:35They can see if you have allergies.

1:29:37They can see what your blood type is.

1:29:38They can look at all of your previous medical records and make good decisions about

1:29:45how to treat you. And also you're going to be able to sync that with

1:29:53food purchases apps so that you'll be able to go into a grocery store and

1:30:00the app will tell you this one is bad for you.

1:30:05You know, this choice is bad for you and I'll offer you a better choice,

1:30:10et cetera. And there's an app like that, Yucca, now, but there's a lot of

1:30:13them coming online now. What is it called?

1:30:16Yucca is the one. I think 50 % of the people in France use Yucca.

1:30:20Can you spell it? I think it's Y -U -C -C -A.

1:30:23Okay. Or Y -U -K -A.

1:30:26I don't know. You can look it up.

1:30:29We use it. My wife used it.

1:30:31You go into the grocery store.

1:30:34You go into the grocery store and you put it on the barcode.

1:30:40And it rates each of the products about whether or not they're, you know, whether

1:30:45it's good or a healthy one.

1:30:46And then it makes you a recommendation for a healthier one if it's bad for

1:30:50you. And that is going to change the food culture in our country because the

1:30:56company is already changing their ingredients so that they can get better scores from the

1:31:01Yucca app and from other apps that are like it.

1:31:04It's not the only one out there.

1:31:05But what about preservatives in processed foods?

1:31:09They're always going to exist, right?

1:31:10You're always going to have a certain amount of preservatives in processed foods.

1:31:14Well, I mean, first of all, we're not going to take processed foods away from

1:31:20people. But we're going to – I think we're going to change the amount of

1:31:24processed foods. One is by April, we will have a federal definition of ultra -processed

1:31:33foods, first time in history.

1:31:35And as soon as we do that, we're going to do front -of -package food

1:31:39labeling. So every food in your grocery store will have a label on it.

1:31:44It will have maybe a green light, a red light, or a yellow light telling

1:31:48you whether or not it's going to be good for you.

1:31:50Oh, wow. And that – you know, and it's going to evaluate all of the

1:31:54ingredients, et cetera. So, you know, I think we're not going to change this overnight,

1:32:01but we're going to change it pretty quickly.

1:32:03And if you want to be healthy, we're going to give you the information to

1:32:08take control of your own health.

1:32:09If people just don't want to be healthy and don't care, there's not much you

1:32:13can do about it. Most Americans want to be healthy.

1:32:16And they are – you know, we've seen that when they're allowed to make a

1:32:19healthy choice, they do not want to be eating this poison.

1:32:22Yeah, and ironically, the people that don't want to be healthy, they feel that way

1:32:25because they're not healthy. If they wanted – I agree.

1:32:28If they were healthy, they would want to stay healthy.

1:32:30They're just – part of the reason why they're feeling this way is because they're

1:32:35unhealthy. You get demoralized. That's why they don't care, yeah.

1:32:37Well, it's also like the mountain is so big.

1:32:40If you're 300 pounds, you're like, oh, my God, it's so much work to do

1:32:44something about this and not fall back on the old behaviors.

1:32:48And I don't know, other than by example, how you can get a large group

1:32:52of people to go along with that.

1:32:54You know, when someone like Jelly Roll loses, like I think it's close to 300

1:32:58pounds, when someone like that does that, you know, that's going to help a lot

1:33:01of people. So that's some kind of an example of a guy who just completely

1:33:04changed his lifestyle around, changed what he eats.

1:33:07And he did it without GLPs.

1:33:09Yes, he did. It was pretty amazing.

1:33:12Which brings me to peptides.

1:33:13Like where are we at right now on peptides and getting them regulated and making

1:33:18sure it's not this weird gray area?

1:33:20Because we know they're effective, but we also know that there's a lot of pushback

1:33:25on peptides. Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of peptides.

1:33:28I've used them myself and used them with really good effect.

1:33:32Um. You know, on a couple of injuries, what happened was there were 19 peptides

1:33:41that you can just so people understand that there's a there was a law written

1:33:49that to allow compounding pharmacies to make compounds that were part of approved drugs.

1:33:59So, you know, part of approved ingredients of approved drugs to make them individually for

1:34:06patients who could did not have access to the particular formulation that they needed to

1:34:17fit them, maybe if they had an allergy to the commercial brand or whatever.

1:34:21And the compounding pharmacies and peptides was part of that group.

1:34:25There were 19 peptides that were widely formulated by compounding pharmacies during the Biden administration.

1:34:33They illegally move those to category two, which says do not formulate.

1:34:39It was illegal because they're not supposed to do that unless there's a safety signal.

1:34:45And they didn't have a safety signal.

1:34:47They're not allowed to look at efficacy.

1:34:48They're not allowed to say, well, we don't believe these are efficacious or whatever.

1:34:54They can only look at safety.

1:34:56They move those to category two, which means do not formulate.

1:35:00Well, what happened? There was huge demand for peptides.

1:35:04And so a black market came out.

1:35:06And the black market is run by companies that say that they're making the peptides

1:35:14for animal use or for research purposes.

1:35:17And that peptide now basically completely replaced the legal market.

1:35:24The legal market for peptides, the pharmacies, the compounding pharmacies, are getting those peptides from

1:35:37FDA -inspected facilities. And some of them in India and China.

1:35:41But they were the same one that the pharmaceutical industries are buying them.

1:35:44And we inspect those. You know you're getting a good product.

1:35:49You know you're getting what you bought, what was advertised.

1:35:55With the gray market, you have no idea.

1:35:57And a lot of this stuff that we've looked at is just, you know, is

1:36:00very, very substandard. Oh, I'm very anxious to move probably not all of those peptides.

1:36:07Some of them are in litigation.

1:36:09But about 14 of them back to making them more accessible.

1:36:16And FDA is in the middle of I think within a couple of weeks we

1:36:23will have announced some kind of new action.

1:36:27And, you know, my hope is that they're going to end up with – they're

1:36:31still looking at the science.

1:36:34My hope is that they're going to get moved to a place where people have

1:36:37access from ethical suppliers. That's ultimately the problem with all this black market stuff, right?

1:36:44A lot of people are getting bogus peptides.

1:36:47Yeah. They don't have any idea how – if they work, whether to test them.

1:36:51They just take a chance.

1:36:52They take a risk. They get a little flyer in their email or something.

1:36:56And they hear from somebody else.

1:36:57I got it from this place.

1:36:58They don't even know. And they try it.

1:37:00And you're getting nonsense, bogus peptides.

1:37:03I mean we created the black market.

1:37:05Yeah. Which we do with everything.

1:37:06And it's a very dangerous black market.

1:37:08Which they've done during Prohibition.

1:37:09They're doing it right now with everything else.

1:37:12It's unfortunate. I know there's been some talk about psychedelics.

1:37:20And I know that in particular Ibogaine, what's going on in Texas with the Ibogaine

1:37:26initiative where former Governor Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard have been helping a lot of

1:37:32veterans, a lot of people with like serious opioid addictions.

1:37:35And this is the plan to have this and run some programs where you have

1:37:41this very effective way of getting people off addictions that we have for some reason

1:37:46banned in America up until these initiatives.

1:37:50And I think there's some stuff that can help a lot of people.

1:37:54I mean how many people are addicted to opioids in this country?

1:37:57It's pretty high. How many people are alcoholists?

1:37:5948 ,000. 48 million. Have you looked into the Ibogaine stuff?

1:38:03Yeah. What's your thoughts on it?

1:38:06I don't know enough and I don't think it's well documented enough about whether it's

1:38:11long -term impact on addiction.

1:38:13But in terms of just sort of the field of psilocybin and MDMA, there are

1:38:23lots and lots of good studies now that clearly demonstrate that or strongly suggest that

1:38:33it is effective against PTSD.

1:38:39PTSD. PTSD. Yeah, PTSD, sorry.

1:38:43And, you know, also some forms of depression, et cetera.

1:38:48And so I would say everybody in my agency and over at VA, at Doug

1:38:55Collins' agency, is very anxious to get a rule out there that will allow these

1:39:03kind of studies, will allow access under therapeutic settings, you know, particularly to the military.

1:39:12Soldiers who have suffered these injuries to get access to these products, we're working through

1:39:17that process now. And, you know, you have from Marty McCary.

1:39:23I mean, we're all working on it and trying to make it happen.

1:39:27It would be great to extend that to police officers, too, probably.

1:39:30Yeah. You know, I mean, a lot of the same type of PTSD they experience,

1:39:35it just doesn't get brought up as much.

1:39:38And, you know, if you can treat depression and, you know, without using SSRIs, putting

1:39:46somebody else. Lifetime sentence to SSRIs, you can treat them.

1:39:51There's a number of things, not just psychedelics, but a number of interventions that we're

1:39:55looking at that are rapid interventions, are more transformative than the way that psychedelics seem

1:40:01to rewire your brain. And so we're looking at that as an entire category of

1:40:07interventions that people ought to be able to study, ought to have good access to,

1:40:14and we should get it out to the public as quickly as possible.

1:40:17What would be the hurdles to something like that?

1:40:23I think that we're going to get it done.

1:40:26So how would that be implemented?

1:40:27Would it be implemented in a clinical setting?

1:40:30Would it be somewhere that...

1:40:32Well, for some of them, you know, for some of them, it would be that

1:40:37you can do, you know, to encourage more clinical trials.

1:40:41Now, there would be very strong guidelines.

1:40:46I mean, this is what we're envisioning, so I can't tell you exactly what we're

1:40:49going to do. But very, very strong guidelines for therapeutic guidelines.

1:40:55So how they're applied, what kind of follow -up, because a lot of these things

1:40:58rewire your brain. I mean, if you don't do follow -up, it doesn't work, you

1:41:04know, or you have a failure rate.

1:41:06So, you know, those kind of protocols are all stuff that we've been developing and

1:41:11studying. And we're, you know, I think most of the people in the administration are

1:41:15anxious to make this happen as quickly as possible.

1:41:17And I know Doug Collins over at the VA already has, I think, 21 studies

1:41:23going over there. And they're, you know, they're very, very promising.

1:41:26And what are they using at the VA?

1:41:29I think they're using combinations of MDMA and psilocybin, maybe using epigame.

1:41:37And, you know, I think they're looking at a number of things, including ayahuasca and

1:41:41epigame. They shot down something fairly recently in California where they were going to decriminalize

1:41:48where they're going to decriminalize psilocybin or they were going to allow it for clinical

1:41:54use. But I think the problem that they had was they didn't shut.

1:41:59They didn't say we're completely opposed to it.

1:42:01They said there's no guidelines in terms of, like, how is it going to be

1:42:04clinically applied? Who are going to be the people?

1:42:06What's the dosage? Yeah. You need those guidelines because you don't want to make the

1:42:11wild west. Exactly. You can have horror stories overnight because people, as you know, you

1:42:17know, some people can have very, very bad experiences on that.

1:42:21Also, some people are on medications and they should be very aware that this medication

1:42:25would go really badly with X amount of whatever the substance is.

1:42:31So, I mean, you know, we're looking at ways to get it done so that

1:42:34it's in a very controlled setting.

1:42:35And so would you envision a place like that, like once it's implemented, where someone

1:42:41who's suffering from depression or PTSD, regardless of whether they're a soldier or cop or

1:42:47just a regular person, could be able to go to a place like that and

1:42:51get treatment? For me, you know, personally, I would like to see that.

1:42:57But, you know, we need to move in baby steps with this because you don't

1:43:02want to create a situation where people are getting hurt.

1:43:06And you don't want to create a situation where mentally unstable people snap, which can

1:43:12happen. Which can happen. Yeah, that's a, that is a, these are very powerful tools

1:43:16you're working with. It's a, it's like everything else.

1:43:19You can do it wrong.

1:43:22But it just makes sense that if you had less depressed people, more happy people,

1:43:26more people connected, more people that can kind of let go of whatever traumatic experience

1:43:31they went through and just live a more joyful, productive life, which many people that

1:43:37have taken these substances have experienced.

1:43:39Like it's, it's not a cure all for everything.

1:43:42It's not going to fix everybody.

1:43:43It's not even for everybody, but you should deny people access.

1:43:47You shouldn't have a soldier who has given everything for the country, who has suffered

1:43:53terribly, who has to go to Tijuana to get these treatments, who has to leave

1:43:57our country in order to get the treatments.

1:44:00It doesn't make any sense.

1:44:01No, it doesn't, especially when so many of them have come back with these stories.

1:44:06Guys like Sean Ryan, a bunch of, a bunch of my friends have done it.

1:44:09And, uh, I had a good friend who, uh, my friend, Ed Clay, who runs

1:44:14the CPI down in Tijuana, the Cellular Performance Institute, which is an amazing stem cell

1:44:19clinic down there. Uh, he went down there because he hurt his back and he

1:44:22got on pills and he couldn't get off them.

1:44:24Did Ibogaine got off them?

1:44:25He's like, Oh my God, like more people have to be aware of this.

1:44:28This is, this really works.

1:44:29This is a thing that has been shown.

1:44:31I think it's in the 80 % range when you do one treatment of where

1:44:37people don't relapse and it's in a 90 % range with two treatments.

1:44:41I mean, it's incredibly effective.

1:44:42There's nothing like it. And yet we've been denied.

1:44:45It also has like no chance of you being addicted to it.

1:44:48It's a terrifying experience apparently, or at least very, very uncomfortable.

1:44:52It takes 24 hours. Nobody wants to hop in and do it again.

1:44:55It's not like, Hey, let's party and take Ibogaine.

1:44:58Like that's all it's an ordeal.

1:45:01It's an ordeal. Exactly. And that ordeal is extremely beneficial to people, but also like

1:45:06severs the impulse of addiction in a lot of people.

1:45:10Like it's very successful at it.

1:45:13Yeah. I mean, um, I had a family member whose life was transformed by it.

1:45:19And, you know, I've been in recovery for 43 years.

1:45:24So, and I go to a meeting every day.

1:45:26Oh, it's pretty hard to convince me that you can fix what's wrong with you

1:45:31by taking something outside of you.

1:45:34So, but I have seen so much, uh, overwhelming anecdotal evidence, but also clinical studies

1:45:43at a test who, you know, to the effectiveness under some circumstances with some people

1:45:50or these, um, these medicines.

1:45:54Oh, you know, and I think you've got Jay Bhattacharya at NIH and Marty McCary.

1:46:00He, um, at... FDA, who are all, you know, doing whatever they can to make

1:46:07this happen. Yeah. Well, I sincerely hope that more people consider it.

1:46:12And I think one of the big hopes that we have is when you have

1:46:15someone like former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who's a Republican, looking at this instead of

1:46:20from like, for the longest time, that was a left wing perspective, right?

1:46:25Legalized marijuana, legalized psychedelics. You didn't hear about it from former Republican governors like Rick

1:46:31Perry. But when he sees the benefit that it has with veterans, which he cares

1:46:36very deeply about the veteran community, he's like, no, this is not something to ignore,

1:46:40just because it's connected to hippies.

1:46:43You know, I don't know if you remember this, but Hunter Thompson, during whatever election

1:46:49he covered in fear and loathing on the campaign trail, it's when he put out

1:46:55that rumor that Ed Muskie was addicted to that game, that the Brazilian witch doctors

1:47:00were coming in and giving him ibogaine, and it ruined that guy's career.

1:47:07But it's so funny that he chose that drug, because it's like, no one's addicted

1:47:11to that. It's got, that's not the risk.

1:47:14The risk is heart attacks.

1:47:16The risk is you have to have your heart monitored while you're doing it.

1:47:18It's like, it's very stressful for a lot of people.

1:47:21But on a clinical setting, it's shown to be incredibly effective.

1:47:25And I don't think we should ignore these things.

1:47:27I think it's foolish. And I think that is one that seems to have a

1:47:30bipartisan agreement on, because a lot of people on the left have always been in

1:47:35favor of some kind of psychedelic therapy, just based on experiences they've had that were

1:47:40positive. But seeing it from the right is very, very encouraging, because I think it's

1:47:46something for human beings. It's not for everybody, but it's something, it's a tool that

1:47:50I have seen benefit many, many people.

1:47:53And we should use every tool that could help us be healthier and happier, period.

1:47:58That shouldn't be a right or a left issue.

1:48:00That's just silly. It's just dumb.

1:48:04Agreed. Yeah. I mean, it's shocking that that is an unusual perspective.

1:48:09But I think we've been propagandized for so long, particularly on certain things like, you

1:48:16know, just the blanket term of drugs, that all of them fall into this category

1:48:22of you trying to escape reality.

1:48:24And this one is literally the opposite.

1:48:27It's like you confronting reality and finding out why the pathways to certain destructive behaviors

1:48:32were set in your life, and how to correct it.

1:48:36I think that'd be great for everybody.

1:48:39I agree. Yeah. You've got, you're already a year in here, plus.

1:48:46And, you know, is it going as fast as you'd hoped, like some of these

1:48:51reforms? Is there, what are the main frustrations that you have to deal with?

1:48:56Well, I mean, I didn't know what to expect.

1:48:59And, you know, I didn't know when I came in, I didn't know the president

1:49:03that well. So, you know, but from the beginning, he, he was empowering me.

1:49:11And, you know, I never made an agreement with him about anything.

1:49:15But the first time he asked me whether I wanted to be HHS secretary, I

1:49:19said, I don't think so.

1:49:21I wanted to do some, I wanted to be maybe a health czar in the

1:49:24White House. And then I thought about it for a while and thought, no, I

1:49:29really won't be effective if I, unless I'm in this agency and can actually, you

1:49:34know, get into the weeds and it has 82 ,000 employees and the biggest budget

1:49:43in government. And that would actually give me the power to change the system.

1:49:48And so then I went back to him and I said, you know, I want

1:49:51HHS. And he said, fine.

1:49:53And then he allowed me to appoint all of my sub, you know, agency heads,

1:49:59which no president has ever done with an HHS secretary in history.

1:50:03He allowed me to appoint Marty McCary, choose Marty McCary, an FDA, Jay Bhattacharya, Dr.

1:50:10Oz and CMS and everybody else below them.

1:50:15So nobody's ever been able to do that.

1:50:18And then he, you know, he gave me a very prominent job on the transition

1:50:21committee to set this all in motion.

1:50:25And then once I got in, he supported me on everything.

1:50:29And that I think was, um, allowed me to do things more during, I, I

1:50:35think, I mean, I, I don't want to say it sound like, you know, vain

1:50:41or something, but because of the great team that we have, and because of the

1:50:46support of the president, we've been able to accomplish more in one year than I

1:50:50think any other HHS secretary has done in history in four years.

1:50:55Oh, I'm pleased with what we've done.

1:50:57But there's still, I mean, it's the, it's 20 % of our economy.

1:51:04And so it's a huge agency.

1:51:06And there's, you know, it's in everything.

1:51:09And there's a lot to do.

1:51:12But I I would say, yeah, if you put this on the table and said,

1:51:21you can have this, you know, the first day I got into office, I would

1:51:24snatch it off and say, I'll take it.

1:51:26But I mean, I could only imagine staring at that mountain when you're at the

1:51:30foot of it and realizing what a climb this is going to be.

1:51:34But that's not how I approach it.

1:51:36I just did it one thing at a time.

1:51:38And there's something to fix every single day.

1:51:41And I have the smartest people in the country working with me.

1:51:47And, you know, we meet every day, me and Oz and Jay and now Chris

1:51:53Klomp and Marty. We have a meeting every morning and we talk about what we're

1:52:01doing and about where we need to help each other.

1:52:05And, you know, it's a really it's a very, very congenial team.

1:52:10We all feel like family with each other.

1:52:12And we vacation together. And, you know, it's and it's literally all the time.

1:52:15So you know, man, this is going to be a pretty high school and I'm

1:52:15going to go in one of those.

1:52:15And we'll have a great day.

1:52:16So you know, you know, I think because of that, in former times, the HHS

1:52:20secretary has always been at odds with his departments and, you know, under Biden and

1:52:27even under the previous Trump administration.

1:52:31Why do you think that was?

1:52:34Because I think part of it is personalities.

1:52:37They're all kind of, you know, alpha people.

1:52:40They have different ideas. And then they, I don't know.

1:52:45I mean, we, I think a lot of that is just personality and struggling for

1:52:53power and influence and all of that kind of stuff.

1:53:01You know, you want to run your own agency and you don't want interference.

1:53:05And we've been able to do it in ways that are very, very collegial.

1:53:12I wanted to ask you about pesticides.

1:53:14So what was the recent ruling on glyphosate?

1:53:18I was on an EO, which is an executive order from the president saying that

1:53:24we're going to make the ingredients for glyphosate in this country and for elemental phosphorus.

1:53:35And, you know, I've, listen, I've spent 40 years fighting pesticides.

1:53:41It was, you know, I was part of the trial team on the Monsanto case,

1:53:45which was the team that, you know, we won three cases in a row and

1:53:50then got an $11 billion settlement with Monsanto, which is now Bayer.

1:53:56By the end of our trial, Bayer owned Monsanto.

1:54:00So, but, you know, pesticides are poison.

1:54:02They're designed to kill all life.

1:54:05It's not a good thing to have in your food.

1:54:07So, but I also, so it's not something that I was particularly happy with.

1:54:14Let me put it that way mildly.

1:54:16But I also understand the president's point of view.

1:54:19The president didn't create the system.

1:54:21He's dealing with a problem that was created long before over the past 60 years

1:54:28when, you know, through federal policies and subsidies and the management of farming in this

1:54:36country, the agricultural management. And we have addicted our farmers to these pesticides and particularly

1:54:43glyphosate. Glyphosate is the foundational pesticide of our food production system.

1:54:49So 97 % of corn in this country is produced with glyphosate and can't be

1:54:56produced without it. 98 % of, you know, you could do it.

1:55:01You could change it. There's organic corn producers in this country.

1:55:05It's like 3%. 98 % of soy is produced with glyphosate.

1:55:13If you ban glyphosate overnight or if you got rid of it or if somebody

1:55:17else cut off our supply, it would destroy the American food system.

1:55:23How crazy is that statement?

1:55:25The American food, the entire system is based on using poison.

1:55:31Right. Farmers don't like it.

1:55:33You know, let me just explain what the EO did.

1:55:38Right now, according to the industry reports, 99 % of our glyphosate comes from China.

1:55:46Oh, the Pentagon and others said this is an extreme national security vulnerability that China

1:55:52controls the U .S. food system.

1:55:55And we can't afford to let that happen if we got it in some kind

1:55:58of tangle with them. It could literally cut off our food supply overnight and cripple

1:56:04the country. And so that's what the president was responding to.

1:56:08But we all know we've got to transition off of glyphosate.

1:56:12We all know that. And the farmers hate it.

1:56:15One, you know, they're now starting to see these chemical resistant weeds so that that

1:56:24can't be treated with glyphosate.

1:56:26Now it's predictable. Two, they hate the inputs.

1:56:29It's cost them a lot of money.

1:56:33Three, the foreign countries won't allow them to export.

1:56:38Like Europe doesn't allow. Most European countries don't allow the export of our crops to

1:56:42their countries. Well, how are they doing it?

1:56:47They use less glyphosate than we do.

1:56:49But they... Or they use some.

1:56:52They use it. But, you know, our system is all Roundup Ready corn and Roundup

1:56:59Ready soy. Right. And so they don't, you know, they don't use it like we

1:57:03do over here. Ideally that we would transition away from that, right?

1:57:07Yeah, and it's also, they know, it's destroying their soil.

1:57:10And they're all suffering from runoff.

1:57:13You know, it destroys the microbiome and the soil.

1:57:15And because of that, the soil can't...

1:57:19You don't get water infiltration in the soil.

1:57:24And so the soil then runs off.

1:57:27And, you know, it's destroying their farms.

1:57:30It's not sustainable. Everybody knows that.

1:57:32We had Will Harris from White Oak Pastures on here.

1:57:34And he showed us the literal line in the river between his organic farm and

1:57:39the next door neighbor's farm.

1:57:40We could see this clear line where all the runoff is going into the river.

1:57:45Yeah, but Will Harris will also tell you the same thing that I said, is

1:57:49that what he did is, you know, is very hard.

1:57:54And it's not... Took him 20 years.

1:57:55What? Took him 20 years.

1:57:57It took him 20 years.

1:57:58And it's not applicable to every farmer.

1:58:00Right. You know, he understands the problem, too.

1:58:04We all understand that this is a huge problem.

1:58:06So the president was dealing with national security.

1:58:08And they did something that I really don't like, which is to support there's a

1:58:14lawsuit about that's now before the Supreme Court.

1:58:18But in the lower court, they supported it as for federal preemption.

1:58:23So that would mean that if the if the federal label.

1:58:32It says that this is safe, that these state lawsuits now cannot be brought.

1:58:38So it would throw out a lot of the state lawsuits, and it effectively gives

1:58:41them immunity from liability, which is, you know, to me, it's not good to give

1:58:49any company immunity from liability.

1:58:52It takes away all incentive for them to make the product safer.

1:58:56Again, the president is dealing with bigger issues, which is the company that's making this

1:59:01has paid $11 billion to, you know, in my lawsuit.

1:59:06They're just about to sign another $7 .6 billion settlement.

1:59:10There's 65 ,000 cases out there, and they've said, we're getting out of this business,

1:59:15you know, if we don't get relief.

1:59:18So the president is hearing that, the farmers are hearing that, and they're saying, you

1:59:24know, this is a temporary fix.

1:59:27We're putting huge amounts of money into studying the impacts of glyphosate right now in

1:59:32my agency. I'm doing that.

1:59:34And we're doing – and the president has made a big commitment, a billion -dollar

1:59:40commitment, not only to regenerate farming, but also to developing new ways of chemical –

1:59:49of dramatically reducing the amount of chemicals in our agriculture.

1:59:54I met this week with three farmers from – who are using this new system

2:00:00of lasers, which is now the cheapest way to control weeds in the vegetable fields.

2:00:07So, you know, vegetables, lettuce, celery, all of these vegetables now, they're using a lot

2:00:15of them. You know, you're going to see a very quick transition.

2:00:19It's an attachment that is dragged by a tractor.

2:00:24It kills the weeds at every stage of their life.

2:00:27It identifies their species and kills them instantly all the way down through their roots

2:00:31by exploding them with this laser.

2:00:34And, yeah, here is one of those.

2:00:37This is what it looks like?

2:00:38Yeah, that's what it looks like.

2:00:40And this guy – Can I ask you this?

2:00:44Yeah. Does this have any negative effect whatsoever on the food?

2:00:47No. In fact, you get a 30 percent increase in productivity of the farm.

2:00:53And the growing season is short – it shortens by three weeks for onions.

2:00:58So – and that is a huge economic boom.

2:01:00Does that the weeds? It pays itself back in – for some of these farmers,

2:01:04it pays itself back in nine months.

2:01:10It's a million dollars. That's a million -dollar machine.

2:01:13But it pays back. In fact, they're paying vegetable field – this onion producer in

2:01:18South Texas, the biggest onion producer in Texas, she has 8 ,000 acres.

2:01:22She was paying $1 ,500 per acre for pesticides for mainly glyphosate and for manual

2:01:31labor. And now with this machine, it's $300.

2:01:35She's saving over $1 ,000 an acre.

2:01:37Is this showing how it does?

2:01:38It's got 8 ,000 acres.

2:01:39So it's a million -dollar machine, which sounds like a lot.

2:01:42But you've got 8 ,000 acres and you're paying $1 ,500 an acre per growing

2:01:46season. I missed one. And, you know, now they're making them on drones.

2:01:52Maybe it was a crop.

2:01:53Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. There's all these kind of new, exciting technologies that give us a

2:01:58light at the end of the tunnel to transition.

2:02:00And it could be very, very fast.

2:02:02What the president wants to do is accelerate that.

2:02:04But he says, yeah, we've got – we can't allow the company to go bankrupt.

2:02:11We can't allow foreign interference.

2:02:13But we've got to get off of this stuff.

2:02:15We've got to give these farmers an off -ramp so that they can get off

2:02:19it because they don't want to be on it and nobody wants to be on

2:02:21it. Without crashing the food system.

2:02:22Without crashing. So this is a bridge.

2:02:24This is a bridge to an ultimate path you think would be technologies like this

2:02:28for weeds. What about for bugs?

2:02:30You know, it's harder. These systems are more difficult.

2:02:36They're not yet economic in the cornfield, the row crops.

2:02:43They're economic for organic corn.

2:02:45And I talked to an organic corn farmer who is in love with his machine.

2:02:49But, yeah, they can do it for bugs too.

2:02:52So they just zap the bug?

2:02:53They zap the bug. They identify them and zap them.

2:02:56But in the row crops, you know, these guys, the vegetable crops are paying $1

2:03:01,500 an acre. The row crops are $50 an acre.

2:03:07And so to get economically to their level, they have to scale enormously.

2:03:12So that is, you know, how do we help them do that?

2:03:15How do we bring Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and billionaires in to start investing really heavily

2:03:21in these kind of technologies?

2:03:22And let's get off of this stuff.

2:03:24What are the primary health concerns about people that consume too much glyphosate?

2:03:29Or is there a threshold?

2:03:31Like I know there's like a safe level that's supposed to be detectable in your

2:03:36blood. Like what does that mean in terms of it?

2:03:38I don't know if there is any safe level.

2:03:40I don't know. You know, I don't think.

2:03:42I shouldn't even say there is a.

2:03:43That is what we are trying to figure out right now.

2:03:46And it's associated with non -alcoholic fatty liver disease.

2:03:52It's so, you know, there's a scientific association, but it's not strong enough for people

2:03:58to litigate on. The litigation was all about non -Hodgkin's lymphoma.

2:04:04Only that. Yeah, because that's the one thing that they had a critical mass of

2:04:09scientific studies supporting. Now, what about when they use it at the end of production?

2:04:15It definitely disrupts it. Sorry, your gut biome.

2:04:19Yes. It's the advantage of glyphosate is unlike the other poisons.

2:04:27It doesn't harm organic tissue, but it goes after plants, not animal tissue.

2:04:33Well, your stomach microbiome is plants.

2:04:37And so, you know, there's, you know, it may contribute to this.

2:04:46Celiac disease and all these gluten allergies, it was coterminous with that.

2:04:51You know, the introduction of glyphosate of Roundup Ready corn, you know what Roundup Ready

2:05:00corn is, right? It means that you can spray the field and everything green dies

2:05:05except for the corn, which is immune to glyphosate.

2:05:09That's why it's so advantageous to them.

2:05:11It saves huge labor costs and it allows them to, you know, to sell the

2:05:16corn at a price that people could afford.

2:05:21You know, one of the most controversial uses is a desiccant.

2:05:25And that means that there is no Roundup Ready wheat.

2:05:30So normally they weren't using this in the wheat field.

2:05:33But around 2003 they started using it to dry out the wheat just before harvest.

2:05:39And that way they can harvest it without getting fungus on it and without getting

2:05:43mold on it. And for the first time they were spraying it right on food.

2:05:49And so that is real, you know, the major factor for getting into human beings.

2:05:54And, you know, around 2003 is when you started seeing these explosions and celiac disease

2:05:59and gluten allergies. There's no clear scientific evidence that it's related.

2:06:04But, you know, there is a – you know, there's some signals out there that

2:06:08now we're looking at it.

2:06:10HHS for the first time.

2:06:12They should have been looking at this 30 years ago.

2:06:15And – but, you know, they're not – but we're doing it now.

2:06:19Well, there's a lot of anecdotal stories about people going to Italy or Spain and

2:06:24France, eating bread over there, not having any problem with it at all and being

2:06:28so confused. And then also people coming from Europe and eating in America and getting

2:06:32sick. And I don't know whether that – there's no telling whether that's glyphosate or

2:06:37other pesticides or whatever. But it's just something.

2:06:41I have a son who had chronic eczema from when he was a kid, a

2:06:46disease I never heard of as a kid and everybody's got it now.

2:06:50And he would get it any time that he ate spaghetti or bread or, you

2:06:54know. And he went to the University of Bologna.

2:07:00He went to Brown and then he took a year at the University of Bologna

2:07:03and he ate spaghetti three meals a day and had no problem.

2:07:07And so – and you hear – there's, you know, there's hundreds of stories like

2:07:11that that we've all heard.

2:07:13I feel different when I go to Italy.

2:07:14When I go to Italy and I eat over there, I feel different.

2:07:17I feel different if I use – there's a restaurant that I called Gaetano's in

2:07:23Las Vegas in Henderson and they use all Italian flour.

2:07:27They import it all from Italy.

2:07:28It tastes different. It feels different.

2:07:30You don't feel terrible after you eat it.

2:07:33Something's wrong with our food.

2:07:34And everybody knows it. And the fact that it's become a left -wing or a

2:07:40right -wing issue is one of the dumbest decisions we've ever made as a country.

2:07:44And I know that a lot of it is, again, a lot of propaganda, a

2:07:48lot of these narratives trying to push people into thinking that things aren't dangerous because

2:07:52right -wing people believe in them and that it's nonsense.

2:07:55And it's just – I don't know what that pathway is.

2:08:00When you're dealing with monocrop agriculture and you have these enormous farms and you say

2:08:0498 percent is based on glyphosate use or whatever it is, like how do we

2:08:08get those people to ultimately transition?

2:08:12And if they do, could they even produce enough of their product to stay viable?

2:08:19I can tell – I mean I've met with over 100 farmers in developing the

2:08:22food guidelines, our team. And, you know, I've been doing agricultural issues for 30 years.

2:08:29I can tell you, farmers are the most hardworking people that I've ever met.

2:08:34They are good people. They want to produce the healthiest foods.

2:08:40And they don't – the inputs are killing them.

2:08:42They're – you know, seven out of ten years farmers lose money.

2:08:48And there's no young people moving to the farm country anymore.

2:08:51So, you know, we really need to do what we can to make sure we

2:08:55don't lose any more farms in this country.

2:08:57And that's what the president is worried about.

2:09:00That has to be his priority.

2:09:01But he also wants to make sure that we accelerate the off -ramps, the development

2:09:09of off -ramps, that they can transition off of this.

2:09:11And we're putting huge amounts of money into regenerative agriculture, people like, you know, Mr.

2:09:17Harris and, you know, and meeting with him, Brooke Rollins, meeting with these guys all

2:09:25the time, trying to figure out how do we help you?

2:09:28How do we help other farmers to do what you're doing?

2:09:31And, you know, that is a priority for the administration.

2:09:37Do you envision a possibility, a real possibility of a country that is all regenerative

2:09:43agriculture with no pesticides? Is that even possible, that we could get to a point,

2:09:49whether it's a decade from now or two decades from now, where we've completely eradicated

2:09:53the uses of these harmful chemicals?

2:09:55I mean, I think that's going to happen.

2:09:57You know, I think technology is going to allow us that to happen.

2:10:03But, you know, you're going to have a lot of robotic farming happening.

2:10:07And that's another question. But yeah.

2:10:10But well, that's robotic with these lasers.

2:10:13That's actually what you're doing.

2:10:14Yeah. Yeah. So that would be the solution.

2:10:18And you're going to have drones doing this.

2:10:19You know, you'll have drone swarms over farms killing insects.

2:10:24What about industrial fertilizer? What would be the solution to that?

2:10:28And that's a little more difficult, particularly in some parts of the country.

2:10:32You know, you need nutrients in the soil.

2:10:36But there's ways of growing.

2:10:40And, you know, Harris has shown this, where you can dramatically reduce the amount of

2:10:46petroleum -based fertilizers that you're using dramatically, almost eliminates them.

2:10:52Sure, but the scale of his farm and the scale of the production in comparison

2:10:57to these monocrop agriculture places that produce corn.

2:10:59I mean, these people are dealing with enormous amounts of crops.

2:11:04The question is, could that be scaled regeneratively?

2:11:07Could you get it to a point where you have organic farms only?

2:11:14I think with technology, you're going to eliminate a lot of the pesticides and the

2:11:20herbicides. I think that it's going to be much slower when you talk about fertilizers.

2:11:30But is there a pathway for that?

2:11:32I hope so. But you haven't?

2:11:34No. No. Is it so far off?

2:11:38Yeah. I mean, that's going to be after my three years before that happens.

2:11:43Do you, I mean, if someone else wins and they want you to stay, are

2:11:47you going to stay? Do you have a thought of that or do you want

2:11:51to do as much as you can in four years?

2:11:53Well, whatever happens, because you can't tell what's going to happen in the election.

2:11:57And I will, I'm going to, I'm going to act as if I got three

2:12:02years to do everything. And if I, you know, get more time, then I would

2:12:07probably take it. How many days a week are you working?

2:12:13Well, I work. I mean, I'm working, when I'm home, I'm working.

2:12:19It doesn't, it doesn't stop.

2:12:20It's just your life now.

2:12:21And then we have a president who has, you know, never stops working.

2:12:25And he's up till 11, 12 at night, you know, which you can get a

2:12:28call at that point. Yeah.

2:12:31He says, were you sleeping two o 'clock in the morning?

2:12:34Yeah. No. No, of course not.

2:12:36I was working. Oh. He's an interesting guy to work for.

2:12:42Yeah. He's got a lot of energy for an old guy.

2:12:44He's got an incredible amount of it.

2:12:45I've never seen anything like it.

2:12:47And particularly with the food he eats.

2:12:49Yeah. I don't know how he does it.

2:12:51He's still eating mostly, I mean.

2:12:53I've never seen it. Well, let me put it this way.

2:12:57When he's on the road, he eats, like, fast food because he trusts it.

2:13:03He doesn't want to eat in some local place where, you know, he gets food

2:13:08poisoning or something. But when he's at home at the White House or Mar -a

2:13:15-Lago, it is the, you know, it's all, like, locally sourced incredible food.

2:13:21Oh, that's good. So he eats well, but he still drinks.

2:13:26Dana White told me that he's known him for 20 years and he's never seen

2:13:29him drink water. Just drinks Coca -Cola?

2:13:32What does he drink? Diet Cokes, right?

2:13:34Diet Cokes, yeah. Doesn't he, you know, I just had Michael Malison here.

2:13:37He was talking about how he got off aspartame and how his brain fog just

2:13:40completely cleared up. He's drinking Diet Coke every day.

2:13:43That is a really sleazy saga about how that got into our...

2:13:48We talked about it the other day.

2:13:50Yeah, we brought it up.

2:13:51That was... Donald Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld.

2:13:54Yeah. And there was a really good FDA commissioner back then named David Kennedy.

2:14:01No relation, but he was a guy from Stanford.

2:14:06I think he was the president of Stanford for a while.

2:14:09And he was really good, had total integrity.

2:14:12He was like David Kessler, another really great FDA head.

2:14:17And he banned aspartame. And then Rumsfeld came in there and just overruled him.

2:14:24Rumsfeld had owned Searle, you know, which was making it.

2:14:30And that's how it worked.

2:14:33Well, that's why this time with you in office has been encouraging.

2:14:39I mean, you doing the things that you wanted to do was to me the

2:14:43most interesting thing about this administration going in.

2:14:46And because I knew your conviction, I had read your Fauci book, and I'm like,

2:14:52if anybody could do something about this, it's you.

2:14:55And I'm kind of amazed at how much you have been able to do and

2:14:59also, you know, watching the struggle, the difficulties of getting things pushed through that should

2:15:05have been pushed through easily with rational thinking.

2:15:09It's a fascinating time because we are in a time of change.

2:15:13Some of it's good. Some of it's bad.

2:15:15But we're definitely in a time of change.

2:15:17And that's not something you could say about every administration.

2:15:20It's definitely not something you could say about everybody that's been the head of the

2:15:23HHS. I mean, you're the first guy that gave me hope when you got in

2:15:27there. I'm like, OK, maybe we'll see some meaningful change with some things that are

2:15:31really important for people's health.

2:15:34I think we're doing it.

2:15:36I think you are. I think you're doing that.

2:15:38Is there anything else you want to talk about?

2:15:40Any other subjects you want to cover?

2:15:41Why don't you ask me about immigration because I know that that's something that's just

2:15:45to hurt you. Well, what are your thoughts on immigration and what's going on?

2:15:51Well, you know, here's the background of my kind of assumptions.

2:15:56During the last 10 years of his life, I worked very closely with Cesar Chavez.

2:16:02And I worked with – he had two issues.

2:16:04He had pesticides, which were a huge issue with him.

2:16:07And that's what I worked with him on, on the dangers that, you know, his

2:16:11workers were experiencing from pesticides.

2:16:14And the other issue he had was immigration.

2:16:17He wanted to shut down the border because he saw the way that it was

2:16:23impairing this huge influx of illegal immigration across the border.

2:16:30It was impairing his ability to get – to bargain, to leverage good wages and

2:16:35conditions for his workers. And when I grew up, the Democratic Party was against immigration

2:16:41and it was the Republican Party who wanted it because the big corporations wanted cheap

2:16:46labor. The Chamber of Commerce was firmly embedded in the Republican Party and they were

2:16:52all about open borders. Today, the Chamber of Commerce is with the Democratic Party.

2:16:58And so it's one of these switches that is kind of inexplicable to me.

2:17:02But I think, again, it happened because President Trump said, I'm going to fix it

2:17:07with a wall. And that became – you know, it suddenly became open borders, suddenly

2:17:11became a calling. for the Democratic Party, but there's a reason, you know, and I

2:17:17see it in my agency, the cause that it's imposing on our country and, you

2:17:24know, on health care, diminishing health care for Americans and housing and jobs and all

2:17:31of these places where it hurts that we need workers in here and we need

2:17:37legal immigrants in here, but they should come in legally and every country has to

2:17:42do that. President Trump ran on this issue.

2:17:46He's now, and he ran that he's going to enforce and deport particularly the bad

2:17:51people. This is what you don't hear.

2:17:53Seventy percent of the people that they've arrested are, have criminal records.

2:17:58What the Democrats are always saying is only 14 % of them have been convicted

2:18:02of a violent crime. Well, they've been convicted.

2:18:05A lot of them, the other ones have been arrested and they just haven't been

2:18:09convicted yet because they jumped, you know, bail or they, or they, you know, they

2:18:13jumped their, their, their warrants.

2:18:16The other 30%, a lot of them are gang members.

2:18:20When they go looking for an immigrant, they're not just randomly searching, you know, restaurants.

2:18:26They're going after particular people who they've gotten their names from local law enforcement and

2:18:33from others. During the Biden or during the Obama administration, President Obama deported more people

2:18:40than President Trump did, the most in history.

2:18:43Nobody cared. And there were 76 people shot during that process, during the Biden administration.

2:18:52None of it made headlines.

2:18:54About half of those people were killed.

2:18:57None of it made the news.

2:18:58Now, because it's Trump doing it, you have the entire Democratic Party in the media

2:19:05establishment saying, oh, look at the horrible things.

2:19:07He's a dictator, but he's doing what he promised to do to the American people.

2:19:12It's, it's very disturbing watching what you see on TV.

2:19:17The thing that makes it most disturbing is because there's so much interaction with protesters,

2:19:24which is weird that the Democrats are telling protesters to go out there and stop

2:19:29law enforcement from doing its job.

2:19:32If you, that's not how protests usually work.

2:19:36If you don't like U .S.

2:19:38drug policy, which you don't, you know, and a lot of people don't, a lot

2:19:41of people don't like the war on drugs at all.

2:19:44They think it's counterproductive. You wouldn't send people to try and interfere with people who

2:19:50are, who are, who are arresting a drug dealer.

2:19:54And when you have thousands and thousands of people doing that, there's going to be

2:19:59thousands of interactions. And some of those are going to end patently because you have

2:20:03armed people doing dangerous things.

2:20:06And when you have crowds doing that, it's going to blow up.

2:20:10And so, you know, I, I, I see this, you know, I, nobody is happy

2:20:18with the way that things have looked, particularly in Minnesota.

2:20:21But a lot of it is because of this capacity, the press to take, to

2:20:27take Trump derangement syndrome and amplify it into public outrage and, and set up a

2:20:36situation. I mean, if you were, you're a dad, I wouldn't send my kids out

2:20:41to interfere with law enforcement operation.

2:20:44There's other ways to protest.

2:20:46But, um, so I think that, you know, I, I think now they're pulling out

2:20:51of Minnesota and they're going to do this, you know, in other States where they're

2:20:55not going to get that kind of crowd interaction.

2:20:58Um, but a lot of the people that they're arresting are not, you know, they're,

2:21:03they're people who are actually, you know, have, like I said, 70 % of have

2:21:08criminal records. Uh, yeah, we've, we've actually covered that here.

2:21:12And then there's also the issue that this is the first time in history that

2:21:15the border has been wide open for four years.

2:21:17It's a different thing. It's a different thing when you have at least 10 million

2:21:22people, they don't even know how many for real.

2:21:24Yeah. It could be 20 million.

2:21:25They don't know. And that's a lot.

2:21:28And to have that happen all at once, it's pretty crazy.

2:21:31Um, what I think what, what disturbs people is, uh, again, obviously these violent interactions,

2:21:37what should disturb them as that these are not organic protests.

2:21:42So these protests are organized and paid for.

2:21:44And that's crazy when you find that out and you find out that people can

2:21:48actually be paid to protest and that they provide them with signs.

2:21:53They tell them what they do.

2:21:54It's organized. They have signal chats.

2:21:56There's been a lot of people online talking about being paid to protest in certain

2:21:59places. And that's kind of insane that that's even legal, that you can organize a

2:22:04mob and pay them to go and make a bunch of noise.

2:22:08It's like the color revolution.

2:22:10Right. Exactly. And that it happened.

2:22:11They're doing it here. Just happened to take place in the place where hundreds of

2:22:16millions of dollars of fraud was being exposed.

2:22:18So then the narrative completely shifts away from the fraud and onto this unnecessary violence

2:22:23with ICE. And then there's the natural thing that people have, this distrust of people

2:22:29wearing masks. They don't like that.

2:22:31They don't like officers wearing masks, but on the other side, they have to wear

2:22:36masks because they're being doxxed and their families are being threatened and you're filming everything

2:22:40they do and you're these organized instigators.

2:22:44So if it wasn't for organized protest, I wonder if those particular interactions would have

2:22:51even happened, would have even taken place.

2:22:55And I know you're saying that they don't, that they're targeting specific people.

2:23:00They're going after bad people, but also they're showing up at Home Depot and just

2:23:04grabbing people too and trying to find out if someone is a bad guy or

2:23:09a good guy. So there's probably a lot of people that are just people that

2:23:13got duped into coming to this country thinking they're going to be welcomed.

2:23:16And then they come over here and they're trying to get jobs and now they're

2:23:18getting arrested and deported. You know, it wasn't their fault that they were encouraged and

2:23:24brought into this country, but they did break the law.

2:23:26And I understand. I understand that perspective.

2:23:29But it's kind of insane that no one is pointing the blame at the fact

2:23:34that they let at least 10 billion people or 10 million, excuse me, people into

2:23:38this country over the last four years, at least being charitable.

2:23:42It's kind of not. I was down at the border.

2:23:45And, you know, I was on when I during my presidential campaign, I went down

2:23:49there and went down a bunch of times.

2:23:51But the first night I went down there to Tucson and I couldn't believe what

2:23:58I was saying. It was like the Boston Marathon, the beginning of it, just the

2:24:02sheer number. And they were, you know, they all had a plan.

2:24:05Cartels were all, you know, running the whole thing.

2:24:08They were advertising all over the world and bringing people in.

2:24:13And everybody was, the Border Patrol was completely demoralized.

2:24:18And they were told, don't arrest anybody.

2:24:21Just fingerprint them. If they're a criminal, turn them back.

2:24:25But, you know, most of these people, they couldn't figure that out.

2:24:29And and otherwise put them on a bus or plane to anywhere they wanted to

2:24:33go in the country. So it was just.

2:24:35And at the same time, you have legitimate people that are doing it the right

2:24:38way, that have to go through a long and difficult, lengthy process to get attained

2:24:42citizenship and to come here or get a green card and come here.

2:24:45The whole thing was crazy.

2:24:47And that, you know, one of the complicated issues that you have now, a bunch

2:24:51of sanctuary cities and sanctuary states.

2:24:54And it used to be that if somebody who was an illegal immigrant was arrested

2:24:59for a crime and put in the local jail, they ice was notified.

2:25:07So ice would then come and they local law enforcement would transfer it to ice

2:25:11in the sanctuary cities. They don't do that.

2:25:14They just let them go.

2:25:16And, you know, it's not.

2:25:18How is that legal? That seems insane.

2:25:21That seems like it's a violation of law.

2:25:23It was just a policy would, you know, that law enforcement always cooperated with each

2:25:27other. Now, because Trump's in there, they're saying, OK, we would rather take the, you

2:25:34know, the side of, you know, a criminal.

2:25:38And I take the side of the president.

2:25:41So they're all they're choosing sides.

2:25:42And it's part of it's like the other day during the during the State of

2:25:49the Union speech when President Trump said he was talking about immigration.

2:25:53And he said, please stand up if you think that law enforcement should protect the

2:25:58American people over illegal immigrants and not a single Democrat stood.

2:26:04Yeah. How can you how can you do that?

2:26:07Well, that's what we were talking about earlier.

2:26:08What you were saying. It's just they're they're ideologically captured.

2:26:12Yeah. I mean, that should be something.

2:26:13If you want to be taken seriously, you're a reasonable person.

2:26:16You stand up for that.

2:26:17Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It just it really disturbs people when you see masked people grabbing

2:26:24people. Oh, yeah. Arresting people.

2:26:26And a lot of them turn out to be American citizens.

2:26:28You know, that's part of the problem, too.

2:26:31But I did look at a chart recently because I thought it was fascinating.

2:26:34The number of American citizens that were arrested, what percentage during what Obama did versus

2:26:40during Trump. It's actually, I think, higher.

2:26:44More American citizens were arrested during this Obama thing.

2:26:48You just never heard about it.

2:26:50Also, if you hear Obama talk about immigration, if you hear Hillary talk about immigration

2:26:54or if you hear Bill talk about immigration, you would swear they were running for

2:26:59president as a Republican. Like, if you listen to the things they were saying back

2:27:04then, it was very much the Republican perspective.

2:27:07Well, that was the Democratic Party always was, you know, against an open border.

2:27:13Yeah. Bernie even said it's like open borders are that's a Republican idea.

2:27:17They want cheap labor. Yeah.

2:27:20So. All right. Anything else?

2:27:23Before we wrap this up, listen, thank you very much for all your hard work.

2:27:27And it's really it's very exciting for me to have someone like you doing what

2:27:31you're doing, because I do know that you really want to push for meaningful change.

2:27:35It's genuinely going to help.

2:27:37And I think, you know, so far you're on a good path.

2:27:40So I hope we can get all the other stuff done, too.

2:27:43Well, thank you, John. Thanks for the conversation.

2:27:45Thanks for all of your conversations.

2:27:48My pleasure. Thanks for being here.

2:27:49All right. All right, buddy.

2:27:53All right.

#2461 - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.