Latest / The Kinzinger Report / Who's Watching Your Food? | Trump Hollows Out the FDA as Recalls Hit the Highest Risk Level — August 20, 2026

Transcript

Who's Watching Your Food? | Trump Hollows Out the FDA as Recalls Hit the Highest Risk Level — August 20, 2026 · The Kinzinger Report

• 0:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Adam Kinzinger, and you're listening to the Kinzinger Report, where I bring you top stories and analysis on current events and the growing threats to our democracy.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: After serving over a decade in Congress, I hope you know what's true and what really matters so that we can all work to save this country that we love so much.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, hey, everybody, good afternoon or good evening.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Or if you're watching it tomorrow, good morning.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for being here.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, the top story today.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: The food on your table is getting more dangerous, and the Trump administration is making it worse.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Outbreaks are spreading, recalls, are hitting the government's high risk level, and the agencies that are supposed to protect us have been gutted.
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, what did Trump do this week?
• 0:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: besides golf, he picks someone to run the FDA who's only real qualification is loyalty because that's all he cares about.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: We're also going to get into some huge news in the fight against cancer.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: The army killing its own cutting edge drone unit, the New York Times revealing the PXS wife is helping run the Pentagon, cool, and Donald Trump admitting out loud that
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: you heard that right by the way.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: To be a favorite like this video, share it with someone who needs to see it, subscribe so you never miss an episode and you're the most well-informed person over beers tonight.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's get to it.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: So we're gonna start with the food on your shelves because the outbreaks keep growing while the people whose job it is to stop them are being shown the door.
• 1:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: Since May more than 11,000 Americans have been seconded by a nasty parasite from contaminated lettuce.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: The former head of food safety at the FDA called it a record setting outbreak.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: The biggest she's ever seen in this week brought another warning.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: The FDA just upgraded a recall of frozen blueberries in eight states to class one, which is actually a tious level over E. coli contamination.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the category of the FDA reserves for products that can cause serious harm or death.
• 2:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now outbreaks happen under every administration, but under Trump, the FDA has lost about a fifth of its staff.
• 2:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: The CDC used to have 11 scientists tracking food parasites, now it has three.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: A federal early warning system that tracked eight dangerous foodborne pathogens, now only tracks two.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And a rule that would lead investigators trace contaminated food back to the farm,
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: was delayed until 2028.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: So with all that going on, who did Trump pick this week to run the FDA, some smart person who knows this, he picked Dr. Heidi over 10, a White House aide and loyalist.
• 3:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Who's never managed a large organization in her life, but stood proudly beside the president, while he signed last week's executive order carving up the childhood vaccine schedule.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: As always, Loyalty's the qualification.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm sure she thought January 6 was a hoax or something like that.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: But don't worry, everyone.
• 3:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Senator Bill Cassidy has concerns.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: This week, Cassidy put out a statement on over teen, over 10 criticizing her experience and calling her role and that vaccine order almost disqualifying.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: let me repeat that.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Almost disqualifying.
• 3:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: Does that sound familiar to you?
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I will go back.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is not a black or white decision.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: That is wrong and no American should be targeted by the law, but no American should be above the law.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that frankly, almost weighed to vote no.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you're just hoping it you had to accept it.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's always almost with no capacity.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: You don't make a difference by saying you have concerns, by the way, you make a difference by growing a spine and standing up for what you know is right.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's not going to get that opportunity, if at all again, and he's going to have to live with that the rest of his life, I hope he finds peace, because I sure wouldn't be able to.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And while this administration walks away from science, science just delivered one of the biggest breakthroughs in years.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yesterday, Moderna and Merck announced that their personalized mRNA cancer vaccine succeeded in a large-scale stage trial.
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Patients who had melanomas surgically removed got the vaccine alongside a immunotherapy drug, and it kept the deadliest form of skin cancer from coming back.
• 4:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: In an earlier trial, the same combination cut the risk
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: of recurrence or death by 49% over 5 years.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Doctors are calling it a game changer opening the door for vaccines against other types of cancer too.
• 5:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Let's see what Maga says, vaccine, right?
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here's how it works.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Scientists take the mutations from your specific tumor and they build a custom vaccine that trains your immune system to hunt the cancer down.
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's American science at its absolute best.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: built on decades of federally funded mRNA research.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: But for some reason that is exactly the type of research this administration is trying to cut.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: Last year, RFK Junior canceled 22 mRNA research projects worth half a billion dollars calling the technology in effect.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: The New York Times is documented out Trump's cuts are quietly shutting down the war on cancer across the country with grants, frozen and labs going dark, and it's not just Washington.
• 5:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Ken Paxton, Trump's pick for Senate, voted against creating his own state's cancer research institute back in 2017.
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: That institute has since detected more than 58,000 cases of cancer and made Texas actually a world leader in the fight.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: Paxton also helped to block the HPV vaccine requirement, the shot that prevents nearly all cervical cancer.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: These people are freaking jacked up guys, listen, it, I, whatever.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Here's the bottom line in this though.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: This breakthrough happened because America spent decades funding the science through every administration no matter who was in charge, while we get our Democrat.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's the deal that made us the envy of the world.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: RFK Junior is breaking that deal over a grudge.
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the cares your family might need someday are at risk because of it.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Over at the Pentagon though, the Army is killing its own drone unit and squeezing the independence out of its own newspaper.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: The Wall Street Journal reports that the Army is phasing out the drone assault battalion that it stood up in Europe just this past January.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: That unit had a one job and it was a really important one.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Learn the lessons of Ukraine where cheap drones have rewritten modern warfare and figure out how America fights the next war.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: The battalion was the signature project of Army Chief that Army Chief that Hagseth pushed out in April.
• 7:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: His replacement, a general closely aligned with Hagseth, is ordering to return to what he calls the basics.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: As someone who flew missions from the military, let me tell you the enemy does not go back to basics they had dapped.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like, god, of course.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now let's talk about what our military is doing to their own newspaper.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Max Letterer, the publisher of Stars and Stripes for 19 years, announced his retirement this week.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Writing that his philosophy of leadership and his understanding of the paper's value and mission differ in fundamental ways, from where the Pentagon is taking it.
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: That follows the fiery and an April of the paper's on-buddhmen, the one-person Congress charged with protecting its editorial
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: You're ready, you're ready for this one.
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: They need to refocus away from woke distractions.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, stars and stripes, super woke.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: What are those distractions exactly?
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So stars and stripes was one of the first outlets to report on the families of sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, confronting Navy leadership over the nine month deployment.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's not woke.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: that's journalism about the people who actually serve.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: And CBS News reports that Pentagon officials even discussed firing letterer before he could retire on his own terms.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: Stars and stripes are reported for the troops independent of the chain of command since World War II.
• 8:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: The people serving this country can handle real news, but of course this administration has to have its feelings protected,
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: and they can't handle a critical story in the troops' own newspaper.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they say that they're alphas.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if you're wondering who actually runs the Pentagon that answer might surprise you, or maybe it won't.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yesterday, the New York Times published a deep dive on Jennifer Hexath, the Defense Secretary's wife and former producer at Fox News, until very recently she held no government possession or security clearance status is actually unclear, but according to the reporting, she's become her husband's most influential advisor at the Pentagon, and she has no military experience.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: She prepses appearances.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: She sets in on as meetings with journalists.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: She even interviewed candidates for Pentagon jobs.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it gets worse, believe it or not.
• 9:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: She was also in the infamous Huity Strike Signal Chat.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Remember that chat that a newspaper editor was added to unaccident?
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: She sat in on sensitive meeting, a sensitive meeting with British officials,
• 10:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: about intelligence on Ukraine, she pushed to kick out Pentagon reporters that she felt covered her husband unfairly.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: All without holding any position at all.
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Until the White House finally named her chair of the president's military spouse commission this month.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: Important job, I guess, but not exactly one that puts you anywhere near the situation room.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: By all accounts, Jennifer's good at what she does, but
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Just like her husband, what she does is produce television.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: In every video they post, the lighting is great, the makeup is flawless.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: But running the Pentagon is much more than just looking the part.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: And if it unqualified and unvetted advisor is helping call the shots, this country's left safe, there's period, there's no doubt about that.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And finally, the president may have just explained why the economy is struggling.
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: He wants it, too.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yesterday Trump was asked about the bond market, which is in shambles, by the way.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: Instead of his usual bragging, he said this.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very sad.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every time we do great, we announce great numbers, the interest rates go up.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And they go up because they want to stop inflation.
• 11:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: They should go down because the country is strong.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I have to tell you, we have a wonderful chairman.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think he's doing a great job.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: The problem is he has a board.
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it's a political board and so they vote to raise interest rates, I don't know if they're doing it because they think they're doing a good thing or because they like the politics of it.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, every time I hear a country's doing well, I say, it's too bad because they lift up interest rates.
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, if you need to back up the video, you can, but you did hear that right.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: The President of the United States hoping for bad economic news.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: Remember those numbers aren't just numbers, they're layoffs hiring freezes, the rays
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: And why is he so desperate for lower rates?
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Trump has been hounding the Fed for years across two chairman two terms.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: through good data and bad data.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: When this president wants something that badly, it usually means one thing.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: There's something in it for him.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: So last fall, Forbes ran the numbers.
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: Turns out, Trump holds hundreds of millions and bonds that jump in value when rates fall.
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: His real estate empire benefits too in a single point drop pushes his property values up by over $100 million.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: And his office towers carry variable rate debt,
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: by millions of years.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_03]: Even as golf resorts and crypto tokens rise, when rates come down.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Look, we often ask why Trump keeps doing things that hurt the economy.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's certainly bad politics hurts you.
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Hurts mean, hurts voters across the country, but maybe we've had it backwards.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe the manoruning for bad numbers isn't actually failing.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Weak numbers mean rate cuts and rate cuts help the Trump portfolio, because he's going to get rich no matter what.
• 12:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And for this
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's literally all that matters.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's it.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's show for August 20th.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: Listen, if you're listening on the pod and you're watching on YouTube or you're on my sub-stack, thank you for watching.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: It means a lot.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would appreciate it if you shared it.
• 13:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: Subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
• 13:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: Send it to someone who needs to see it.
• 13:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: And follow me on those other platforms.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you're not on YouTube, follow me on YouTube.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you're not following me on sub-stack, it's AtomKencinger.com.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: Do it there.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: It really helps getting this message out and it's had a huge impact.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: So with that, I bid you all a nice Thursday.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: We'll catch you back tomorrow.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: Take care.