Latest / Pod Save America / The Making of America's Most Prominent Anti-Vaxxer

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The Making of America's Most Prominent Anti-Vaxxer · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 4: Thank you.
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  Speaker 4: Thank you.
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  Speaker 5: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Alex Wagner. You might
• 1:51
  Speaker 5: know RFK Jr. as the nation's Secretary of Health and
• 1:54
  Speaker 5: Human Services or as the loudest anti-vaxxer in American politics.
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  Speaker 5: Maybe you know him as the conspiracy theorist, the raw
• 2:01
  Speaker 5: milk evangelist. That guy in the Trump administration who had
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: a worm in his brain and left a dead bear
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  Speaker 5: cub in Central Park and maybe had an affair with
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  Speaker 5: journalist Olivia Newsy? Or more formally, the heir to the
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  Speaker 5: Kennedy legacy. At 71, it feels like RFK has lived
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  Speaker 5: several lives. But in this current one, his actions are
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  Speaker 5: causing far more harm than good. We're recording this on Friday,
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  Speaker 5: December 5th, and just today, a federal vaccine committee recommended
• 2:27
  Speaker 5: delaying when most infants receive the hepatitis B vaccine. It
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: is a stark reversal of decades of guidance that newborns
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  Speaker 5: receive a dose within the first 24 hours of their birth.
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  Speaker 5: This is a huge win, and I say win in
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  Speaker 5: quotation marks, for RFK Jr., who has sought for decades
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  Speaker 5: to overhaul the childhood vaccine schedule. And it doesn't even
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  Speaker 5: scratch the surface of the chaos. Since he took the
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  Speaker 5: helm at HHS, Kennedy has ousted the CDC director for
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  Speaker 5: refusing to rubber stamp vaccine changes that lacked scientific backing.
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  Speaker 5: He's moved to slash roughly 25% of the HHS workforce,
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  Speaker 5: laying off thousands of people, and he has pulled $ 500
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  Speaker 5: million in funding for mRNA vaccine contracts.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Robert F.
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  Speaker 5: Kennedy Jr. was not always like this. He started off
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  Speaker 5: as an environmental lawyer who sued polluters, and he founded
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  Speaker 5: a worldwide movement devoted to protecting waterways. He was a
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  Speaker 5: committed Democrat, in line with his family's views and legacies,
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  Speaker 5: campaigning for both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. So what happened?
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  Speaker 5: What happened between now and then? How did Robert F.
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  Speaker 5: Kennedy get so chummy with Donald Trump that he created
• 3:40
  Speaker 5: his own MAGA spinoff franchise? make America healthy again? And
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  Speaker 5: most importantly, was he always this goddamn weird? To help
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  Speaker 5: me understand the complex history of RFK Jr. and how
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  Speaker 5: his reign as the head of HHS has impacted the
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  Speaker 5: health and safety of all Americans is Atlantic staff writer
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  Speaker 5: Michael Scherer. Michael, it's like any excuse to talk to you,
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  Speaker 5: my friend. Thank you for doing this podcast.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 5: Thanks for writing a really enlightening piece, a cover story
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  Speaker 5: in The Atlantic. And I guess that's like maybe the
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  Speaker 5: place to start, right? There's some news that is happening
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  Speaker 5: right now concerning HHS, which we'll get to in a second.
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  Speaker 5: I you've studied Kennedy up close. You've studied the creature
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  Speaker 5: in the wild and your piece traces kind of his evolution.
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  Speaker 5: And I think a lot of people who remember the
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  Speaker 5: Kennedy part don't understand what happened to a guy who
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  Speaker 5: is like. I know he started as an environmental lawyer.
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  Speaker 5: He was a sort of committed Democrat in the mold
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  Speaker 5: of the rest of the Kennedy clan. He campaigned for
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  Speaker 5: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. And then all of a sudden,
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  Speaker 5: he's like the most prominent anti-vaxxer in the country, working
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  Speaker 5: in lockstep with Donald Trump on Air Force One, sitting
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  Speaker 5: in front of a table of like McDonald's takeout. So what, like, huh?
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  Speaker 5: What happened?
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  Speaker 4: Well, so that was exactly the whole premise of this story.
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  Speaker 4: You know, there's every day, there's another story about Robert F. Kennedy.
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  Speaker 4: And Most of it is real shorthand. It's like anti-vaxxer,
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  Speaker 4: brain worm, sex scandal, heroin addict. I mean, there's like
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  Speaker 4: all these things that people- Which is a lot. Which
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  Speaker 4: is a lot. No, and there's many more. I can
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  Speaker 4: keep going. The bear, the whale. I mean, you can
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: just keep going.
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  Speaker 5: We're going to get to that.
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  Speaker 4: We're going to get to that. And I had gotten
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  Speaker 4: to know him in 2023 when he started as a
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  Speaker 4: Democratic candidate and had kind of followed him closely. And
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  Speaker 4: we had tussled a bit with the story I wrote.
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  Speaker 4: And then after that story- And it struck me that
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  Speaker 4: like no one had really tried to explain how this happened,
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  Speaker 4: like how this guy had gone from being a sort
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  Speaker 4: of prince of not just the Candy family, but then,
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  Speaker 4: you know, we're talking the 1990s, early 2000s, the Democratic Party.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, magazine covers, the next senator from New York,
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  Speaker 4: you know, the environmental savior, hero of the planet. And
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  Speaker 4: now he's, you know, obviously not that. And he's found
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  Speaker 4: a way to make the journey to stand next to
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  Speaker 4: President Trump. And so that was the premise of the story.
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  Speaker 4: I went to him. I said, look, I want to
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  Speaker 4: spend time with you. I want to talk a lot.
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  Speaker 4: And let's explain this. Let's figure this out. And his
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  Speaker 4: initial response to me was, OK, I'm willing to do it,
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  Speaker 4: but I don't think I should because I think you're
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  Speaker 4: going to burn me. I think you're going to screw me.
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  Speaker 4: All these liberal journalists come in and they say sweet
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  Speaker 4: things to me and then they burn me in print.
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  Speaker 4: And so the actual experience of reporting the story was
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  Speaker 4: an experience of negotiating that distrust.
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  Speaker 5: Which was constant. It sounded like it was a constant
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  Speaker 5: back and forth. He's constantly semi-litigating issues with you, putting
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  Speaker 5: you in these strange positions.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And I think, I mean, to answer your question, like,
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  Speaker 4: how does he make this journey? This is a man who,
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  Speaker 4: you know, in 2003, 2004, is writing articles about how
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  Speaker 4: George W. Bush is a fascist.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And who now believes President Trump, who all his liberal
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  Speaker 4: friends from 2003 to 2004 now call a fascist, is
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  Speaker 4: probably the, you know, the greatest president since his uncle,
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  Speaker 4: John F.
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  Speaker 5: Kennedy.
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  Speaker 4: And he has made that journey for a number of
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  Speaker 4: complicated reasons. On the political front, It was opportunism. He
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  Speaker 4: was given a chance to do what he has always
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  Speaker 4: wanted to do, which is to change how we approach
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  Speaker 4: medical policy in this country, particularly around vaccines. And he
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  Speaker 4: took it and he convinced himself that Trump was not
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  Speaker 4: the malignant narcissist that he would describe him as before.
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  Speaker 4: During the campaign, he'd said, this is the man who
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  Speaker 4: appeals to the darkest forces of our nature. He now
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  Speaker 4: basically says Trump is a brave populist, someone who's really
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  Speaker 4: to take on the powers that be. And then he
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  Speaker 4: has convinced himself also that he has not changed. The
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  Speaker 4: liberalism of his family, the liberalism of his environmental work
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  Speaker 4: is still what he believes he's doing. And his argument
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  Speaker 4: is that the Republican Party has taken all the best
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  Speaker 4: issues of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party has
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  Speaker 4: lost its way. And so it's an enormous journey he's taken.
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  Speaker 4: Almost no one's come along with him. And and he's
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  Speaker 4: had to face enormous backlash from that. And I think
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  Speaker 4: his willingness to do that, you know, to lose his family,
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  Speaker 4: basically to lose his, you know, his friend group, to
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  Speaker 4: lose much of the environmental community, to to earn the
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  Speaker 4: derision of the entire medical establishment, the Democratic Party. I mean,
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  Speaker 4: you just go on and on and on. helps explain
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  Speaker 4: actually why he is doing this. And it's a particular
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  Speaker 4: drive that I try to describe.
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  Speaker 2: In the story.
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  Speaker 5: Well, you kind of like, to that last point, you
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  Speaker 5: talk about the way, I mean, you suggest and maybe
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  Speaker 5: lay out the case that his years combating environmental polluters
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  Speaker 5: and chemical corporations served as kind of a gateway for
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  Speaker 5: a more florid paranoid conspiracy about American institutions. And now
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  Speaker 5: we see that in full bloom at HHS, where his
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  Speaker 5: leadership has literally been defined by distrust of medical science
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  Speaker 5: and medical institutions, and that this is just kind of
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  Speaker 5: like the most extreme endpoint of a kind of worldview
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  Speaker 5: that actually informed the work for which he was celebrated
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  Speaker 5: in the last 20 years. Can you elaborate a little
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  Speaker 5: bit on how he that sort of turn from activist
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  Speaker 5: to full-blown conspiracist?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: So there are a lot of consistent threads there. He
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  Speaker 4: grew up in the 1960s and was literally a child
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  Speaker 4: of the 60s. He's first doing acid at the age
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  Speaker 4: of 15 in 1969. So he's like- Followed quickly by meth, right? Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: followed by meth. quickly by- He just goes hard. He's
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  Speaker 4: hitting it hard. The greatest conspiracy of the 1960s, the
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  Speaker 4: murder of his uncle, John F. Kennedy, you know, it's
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  Speaker 4: clear now. I don't know, you know, exactly who was
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  Speaker 4: behind the The Satisfaction of John F.
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  Speaker 2: Kennedy.
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  Speaker 4: But I think it's also clear that the Warren Report
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  Speaker 4: and the investigation that immediately followed was not all up
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  Speaker 4: to snuff. I mean, things were being hidden from the
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  Speaker 4: American people. So there were real conspiracies. The Pentagon Papers
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  Speaker 4: was a real thing that happened. All those helped form him.
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  Speaker 4: Then he becomes a trial lawyer. The dynamic of being
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  Speaker 4: a trial lawyer is you're basically exposing what occurs to
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  Speaker 4: you as evil. These are companies that are choosing to
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  Speaker 4: poison people for profit. And so that idea that there
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  Speaker 4: is good and evil and that my role is to
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  Speaker 4: fight in an almost like mythical sense between these powers
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  Speaker 4: is given to him in the 80s. And then the
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  Speaker 4: other through line here is that his environmental work was
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  Speaker 4: always about contamination. It was about contamination of rivers, contamination
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  Speaker 4: of the air. And in the early 2000s, he's giving
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  Speaker 4: speeches about the environmental lawsuits he's bringing. He's, you know,
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  Speaker 4: taking cases about pesticides, things like that. And mothers start
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  Speaker 4: showing up and saying, well, you're missing the big contamination
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  Speaker 4: scandal that no one's talking about. And that is, at
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  Speaker 4: that point, the concern was thimerosal, a type of mercury
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  Speaker 4: in vaccines. And in his telling, he dismissed this. He said, no,
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  Speaker 4: I don't think that's a big deal. But then he
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  Speaker 4: starts reading, and then he becomes entirely convinced that there
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  Speaker 4: is a grand conspiracy at work here And that much like,
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  Speaker 4: you know, mercury poisoning of lakes and rivers because of,
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  Speaker 4: you know, coal pollution or, you know, General Electric dumping
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  Speaker 4: stuff in the Hudson River. He comes to believe that
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  Speaker 4: pharmaceutical companies are knowingly seeding our health system with things
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  Speaker 4: that are hurting kids.
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  Speaker 5: And making us sick. And then there's the whole pharmaceutical
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  Speaker 5: infrastructure to keep us dependent on big pharma.
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  Speaker 4: Well, no, and I think that's another complication of the story.
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  Speaker 4: He's taking that vaccine view, which is very controversial, and
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  Speaker 4: merging it with a much less controversial view, especially after COVID,
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  Speaker 4: which is that the U.S. medical system is kind of broken.
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  Speaker 4: You know, if you ask a poll of Americans, is
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  Speaker 4: the medical system primarily about making us healthier or primarily
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  Speaker 4: about making insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies profits? It's like
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  Speaker 4: seven in 10 say the latter. So that's a broad
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  Speaker 4: bipartisan view that there is something rotten about the way
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  Speaker 4: we care for our health. There is enormous broad bipartisan
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  Speaker 4: concern about our diet, about rising rates of chronic disease.
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  Speaker 4: And I think one of the real innovations of last
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  Speaker 4: year for him was to take what started as like
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: an anti-COVID vaccine campaign combined with this other vaccine activism
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  Speaker 4: campaign and then broaden it to incorporate all these other concerns,
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: which actually are bipartisan. I mean, you know, it's remarkable
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  Speaker 4: when I was reporting the story, I'd be up on
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  Speaker 4: the Hill watching a hearing and Bernie Sanders and Robert
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  Speaker 4: Kennedy are, you know, cheering each other on because they
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: both want to stop pharmaceutical advertising, for instance. So there
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  Speaker 4: are a lot of crossover issues here.
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  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, and the environmental piece is obviously supported broadly
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  Speaker 5: by Democrats, if not Republicans. We're going to get to
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: that in a second. I mean, you mentioned the RFK
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: and JFK of it all. And I wonder if you
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  Speaker 5: could talk a little bit about how beyond his paranoid worldview,
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  Speaker 5: how much the Kennedy legacy hangs with him, how much
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  Speaker 5: the rejection by his family in no uncertain and very
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: public terms has informed his zealotry. I mean, he fancies
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: himself a young King Arthur, right? Am I getting that right?
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  Speaker 5: Was that the character? Yeah. He thinks of himself as
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: on a solo quest, but I do... He had 10
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: brothers and sisters. He's one of, part of the most
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: storied family in modern American history. And I wonder if
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: you could just talk about how much the Kennedy legacy
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: is something he's constantly reacting to, like against in his
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: latter day career and was, and informed his sort of
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: earlier years on the side of activism and trial law.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. So he's nine years old when his uncle is
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: killed and the president Kennedy's killed. He's 14 years old
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: when his father is killed. And between those two major
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: events in his life, his father gave him his first
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: red-tailed hawk, and he named it after a character in
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: Once and Future King, the story of King Arthur, who was,
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: of course, the orphan king. He doesn't know when he's
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: a child that he's part of royalty, and he goes
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: out into the woods and he studies with Merlin and
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: then discovers the wonders of nature.
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  Speaker 5: Is Trump Merlin in this story?
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  Speaker 4: No, I think, I think in this one, it would
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: have been the education he had in his teen years.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: So I think Trump comes later. Uh, yeah, I don't
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: know who Trump would play in this. Um, but there
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: was always, I mean, so Bobby Kennedy senior raised his
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: kids in a sort of classic machismo literature, you know,
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: reading Gunga Din and heroic tales. And, you know, you
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: should go out and adventure in the woods. And, you know,
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: Bobby Kennedy was known for taking these long hikes and,
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: and things like that. And, uh, His son inherits all
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: of this, but then is hit with these enormous traumas,
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: like losing his father. His mother has 11 children. He's
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: basically unparented for a while, and he falls deeply and
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: very quickly into hard drug use, like not just marijuana
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: or something like that, but hard, heavy drug use at
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: the age of 15. And his heroic tale is diverted.
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: He goes deeply into darkness. And when we talked about this,
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: I asked him how much his recovery has to do with,
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: you know, what he does now, who he is now.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: He said everything. He said that he told me a
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: story of a article he remembers reading in the Village
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: Voice in which a writer said that heroin addicts have
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: a unique opportunity for redemption because they've literally been to
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: hell and returned. And Kennedy truly believes that about himself,
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: that there is something that he has imbued with him,
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: that he has learned a power he has because of
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: the darkness he has experienced. And he is actually not,
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: he doesn't, I mean, he's not transparent about all his
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: demons and not always forthcoming about all his demons, but
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: he is, he also doesn't try to sort of gild
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: the lily on that stuff. Um, I read him, you know,
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: Carolyn Kennedy, when he was up for his nomination, um,
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: wrote this, you know, brutal letter opposing it. And, you know,
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: a lot of, you know, there's a paragraph in there
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: about his teen years and how much damage he had
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: done to people around him by sort of luring them
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: into this drug world and, you know, described his basement
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: as a scene of despair and darkness. And I read
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: that to, to Kennedy and he, he didn't dispute it.
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: You know, he, he, he sees that as, as, uh,
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: as like a core part of his story. He comes
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: out of that in the 1980s. And I think the
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: rest of his life can be understood as trying to
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: reclaim the birthright, right? Like he blew it. You know,
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: these horrible things happened. There's a horrible trauma. He didn't
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: know how to deal with it. He went into drugs.
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: He came back and everything since then has been trying
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: to reclaim it. And there is a fierceness about him
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: that is rather unusual and extraordinary. And it explains this journey.
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: It explains why you would end up here, why you
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: would decide that you have these pieces of wisdom that
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: everyone in the medical establishment is saying isn't true. It's
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: just not true. There's no evidence for it. It's not real.
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: But he maintains that, no, it's here and continues to
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: argue that case.
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  Speaker 5: I want to talk a little bit more about the
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: relationship he has with Donald Trump, who he recognizes initially
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: as a force of evil and darkness. There is news
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: today that HHS is changing the schedule or is trying
• 19:56
  Speaker 5: to change the schedule for hepatitis B vaccines for newborns.
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: there's the bonkers announcement that Trump makes from the White House.
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: Let's just take a listen to that for people who
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: have forgotten. This is about pregnant women taking Tylenol.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that the
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: use of acetaminophen.
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: Is that okay?
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Which is basically commonly known as Tylenol during pregnancy can
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: be associated with a very increased risk of autism. So
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: taking Tylenol is not good. I'll say it.
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: It's not good. Okay, so there's that announcement. There's Kennedy
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: ending federal funding for mRNA vaccines, which of course were
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: the foundation for Operation Warp Speed, which developed the COVID vaccine,
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: which is inarguably the greatest thing Trump has ever done
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: as president.
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: Well, Kennedy would argue, but yes. Right.
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: Okay, fine. Fair enough. Like Trump has both Kennedy, I mean,
• 21:11
  Speaker 5: in this, in my retelling, Trump is a useful idiot
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: for Kennedy's end game. But it's such a weird relationship.
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: And I wonder if you got any insight into that.
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: how these two men work together and whether it's like the,
• 21:25
  Speaker 5: first of all, Trump doesn't, can't even pronounce acetaminophen. Like,
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: it's not like he's been a particularly, you know, public
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: anti-vaxxer or anti-vax crusader, even as a candidate, but he's
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: adopted Kennedy's issues as his own. He's gotten further out
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: there on something like Tylenol than even Kennedy suggested. Is
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: it Kennedy's glow of Kennedy that attracts Trump to him?
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: And like the, there's mutual admiration. How did that happen?
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: And what does it look like now?
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: Well, so if you go back to the summer of 24,
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: early in the summer, Kennedy is now running an independent campaign.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: He's fighting it on ballots across the country. It becomes
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: pretty clear that this isn't going to work. I mean,
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: he's spending a lot of money. He's going to be
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: on the ballots, but there's no real chance of him
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: becoming president. And he and his campaign manager begin to
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: make sort of outreach to Democrats they know to see
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: if they can cut a deal with Biden, to see
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: if they can open a conversation with Biden, to sort
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: of trade something. Kenny at that point is trying to
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: figure out what he can do with what he's done
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: for the last year and a half and try and
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: get something out of it. And the Democratic response is silence.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: They won't meet with him. They won't talk to him.
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: They've been very hostile. The DNC has been very hostile
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: to him all year. Similar things starts happening with Trump.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: And it begins the night after Trump is almost assassinated
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: in Butler, Pennsylvania. Kennedy goes on, I think News Nation
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: does a hit about the horrors of assassination and how
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: we need to lower the temperature. A friend of his
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: connects him with Tucker Carlson, who connects him with Donald Trump.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: And that night, just hours later, they're talking. And Trump
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: at that point wants to make a deal. I mean,
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: he's there to make a deal. He's like, come on,
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: let's meet, let's talk. We can figure out, you know,
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: what you can do. Days later, they're meeting in Wisconsin
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: right before the Republican convention. You know, according to Kennedy,
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: he's telling the conversation is broad. He thinks he might
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: even have a chance at that point of being VP
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: for Trump. I mean, Trump is like sort of laying
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: it on at that point. It ends up going south.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: I mean, that part of the negotiation ends poorly for
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: the two men. But Kennedy comes away from that interaction thinking, wait,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: I can actually, he's a man who feels he has
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: a destiny, who feels Providence is guiding him. And he
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: begins to believe that Providence is guiding him now towards Trump.
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: Because if he partners with Trump, he will be able
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: to accomplish not all the things he wanted to do
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: when he started running for president, but a lot of them,
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: particularly around this vaccine work and taking on the regulatory
• 24:08
  Speaker 4: deep state at HHS. Um, Kenny told me that his
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: relationship with Trump is like when you're dating a girl
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: and you realize you start liking them more and more.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: And he said that he, uh, he had to realize
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: he had to decide that the defining feature of Trump's politics, um, was,
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: was not this sort of radical Republicanism, but was populism
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: in a way that he could identify with. as a
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: sort of liberal Democrat who thought the.
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: Democratic Party was. $ 300 million ballroom is totally mad at
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: the people. But anyway, I digress.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: I'm telling you his explanation. And they basically woo each other.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: I mean, Kennedy's a very charming man. Trump is a
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: very charming man. They're very good at wooing each other.
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: And they woo each other. And they actually have a
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: very strong relationship to this day. You know, on that
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: Tylenol example, the clip you played, I talked to Kenny
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: a few weeks before that, and I had talked to
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: him about the Tylenol discussions he was having. He was
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: meeting with all kinds of scientists. He met with the company.
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: He said one weekend he read 70 studies about Tylenol
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: and neurodevelopmental disorders, and And he came out of that
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: process with a pretty nuanced conclusion. And when he went
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: initially to Trump to talk to him about this, Trump's
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: initial response to him, according to Kennedy, was, let's just
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: tweet it out. Tell people not to take Tylenol. And
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Kennedy said to him, no, you can't do that. Don't
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: tell people not to take Tylenol. Like, this is more
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: nuanced than that. And the reason is that Tylenol is
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: really the only fever reducer available to women who are pregnant.
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: Oh, don't I know.
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because other ones are out there. And no one
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: disagrees that. that high fevers during pregnancy can be very
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: dangerous for the mother, for the unborn child. So this
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: is a very delicate place to be. And if you
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: read what the FDA put out at that conference, when
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: Trump begins to read that and he says the FDA
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: is going to say this, what they say is there
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: are studies that show correlation, but there's no studies that
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: show causation. Fevers are very dangerous for pregnant women. But
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: our advice to doctors right now is that if you
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: can avoid Tylenol for low fever, so not a serious case,
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: it's better to. Just be aware of it. The recommendation
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: that came out of FDA was we're gonna look into
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: this more. There's a possible thing going on here. We
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: don't know for sure. And in the meantime, Don't take
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: more Tylenol than you need to. That was basically the recommendation.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: And then you hear what Trump comes out with.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: And you can even hear Trump make the switch. He
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: reads the paper. Yeah.
• 26:45
  Speaker 5: And then he's like, just don't take it.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: And then he's like, I'm going to tell you my way.
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: That was what he wanted to do initially, which is,
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: you know, Kennedy now finds himself in that position trying
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: to rein in the president of the United States.
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: Good times. Good times. Glad they get along so well.
• 27:02
  Speaker 5: You talk about Kennedy being a charming man, and we're
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: going to get to the people he's worked his charm
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: on in a minute. But you've spent time with him.
• 27:13
  Speaker 5: And I wonder if you could just give me a
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: sense of what he's actually like as a human being
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: and the degree to which the sort of mythic story
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: he tells himself about himself is evident in his normal
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: everyday interactions and his sort of crusade against medical malpractice
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: and corrupt institutions and And his interest in sort of
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: an alternative lifestyle, at least health wise, is is tangible
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: in his, you know, just in his day to day.
• 27:47
  Speaker 5: I was struck by this one anecdote, which is, in
• 27:50
  Speaker 5: my opinion, really gross, but you have. He's situated on
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: Air Force One, and we're going to get to why
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: he was on Air Force One in a second. But
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: National Guard stewards hand out reheated chicken quesadillas, which Kennedy
• 28:01
  Speaker 5: declines in favor of the quart of plain organic grass-fed
• 28:05
  Speaker 5: yogurt his body man had secured for him, which he's
• 28:09
  Speaker 5: eating with a spoon. He later puts the spoon down
• 28:11
  Speaker 5: in order to finish... His yogurt engulps directly from the container.
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: Fucking disgusting. Man, just eating quarts of plain grass-fed yogurt.
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: I want you to tell me more. I wanted to
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: know more about what this, like, I know that we
• 28:27
  Speaker 5: almost crossed paths at the gym once. RFK was wearing
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: jeans and working out in jeans, and that also seemed
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: disgusting to me from just a bacteria standpoint. But what
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: is he actually like, this crusader in the flesh?
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: Uh, well, so yes, there are a bunch of different
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: parts of that. Yeah.
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: Sorry.
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I think on the, on the, on the diet
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: and health stuff, he is enormous and ripped. He's a
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: guy in his seventies who looks like a comic. I
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: describe him as like a comic book character from a comic,
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: you know, like a superhero character. His, his, he's enormously ripped.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: He takes a testosterone replacement therapy, which helps, uh, grow
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: the muscles, but he works out every day deeply into
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: weight training. He has a very peculiar diet, uh, You know,
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: his wife has talked about how he will travel to
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: restaurants with sauerkraut, which is a, you know, to eat sauerkraut.
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: It's great for the biome.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Gut bacteria.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: Also, you know, reduces your hunger. So it helps you.
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: It does?
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Vinegar will reduce your appetite. So I think that's
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: the reason, you know, the fact that he was eating
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: the plain yogurt whole, like with nothing. I mean, I'm
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: a fan of plain yogurt, so I'm not knocking plain yogurt.
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, so am I, but I don't gulp it
• 29:36
  Speaker 5: from the container. Oh, my God.
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: But he also pops in, regularly, so he takes the
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: nicotine pouches. Right. You know, he tans.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: He's a very darkly- He artificially tans. Like, this is
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: another thing he and Trump have in common.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I asked him about the nicotine and the tanning,
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: and he kind of got defensive. He said, look, I
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: don't tell people to do what I do. I just
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: tell people to get in shape. He told me he
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: doesn't share his workout routines, although he does, you know,
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: social media stuff of him doing pull-ups and things like that.
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: But he doesn't, like, go into detail about his own thing.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: And I think all this, like, he's got a very
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: peculiar- day-to-day way of living, which is almost like a
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: devout way of living. He's going every day to a
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: 12-step meeting. No matter where he is in the country,
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: he's been doing it for years. He's taking calls in
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: addition to his job from people he's mentoring in that program.
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: On the how is he, like the hero's journey thing,
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: I think, so I try and describe it in the story,
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: but he's a curious person. He's very well-read. He's constantly
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: quoting other things and sort of trying to demonstrate how
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: well-read he is about philosophy, about ideas, about the enlightenment.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: I mean, all kinds of things like that. But then
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: also in my interactions with him, and I don't know
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: if this is typical of other people, it was very
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: hot and cold. Sometimes he'd be incredibly warm and joking
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: and friendly with me. And then the next day he'd
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: text me and say, I want to talk again. And
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: he'd kind of berate me about how I was tricking
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: him and going against him. And so it was the
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: process of going through my text messages, like we'd be
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: having very pleasant text exchanges about particular issues or ideas.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: And then the next one, I send him something, he'll say, no,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: you're basically, you know, you're screwing me on this and,
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: you know, start attacking me. And then I have to
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: sort of walk it back. And actually, this is what
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: I'm doing. So I think that I describe it as
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: like a ferocious drive. I think that translates into how
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: he deals with other people as well. And he clearly
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: had a goal in mind of our interactions of, he
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: wanted to win the argument. He wanted me to describe
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: in the magazine that he had won the argument. But
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: he also wanted to protect himself from being, I mean,
• 32:05
  Speaker 4: he described me as the scorpion and the scorpion and
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: the frog story at one point of being tricked. during
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: the process. And so at times it was very tense,
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: at times it was very friendly. And I think that's,
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: you know, I think in some ways there is a
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: similarity to Trump who, in my interactions with him, it's
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: also been very similar. Like sometimes incredibly warm and gracious. Oh, hi, Michael.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: So glad you called, you know, that kind of thing.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: And the next moment he's sending out a truth social
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: about how I'm a liar. And then the next moment,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: You know, he's warm again. And there's a transactional quality
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: to that.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: I think we call that an abusive relationship, Michael Scherer.
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: But anyway.
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: So this is a professional relationship. I don't mind being
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: yelled at.
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: Well, you know what I mean. Like that kind of erratic,
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: like very charming, warm one minute and cold and combative
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: and like emotionally.
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: If my wife was treating me like that, I would
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: be upset.
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: It would not be a healthy relationship.
• 33:11
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• 34:18
  Speaker 5: You talk about how he wants to win the argument
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: and he wanted the magazine, The Atlantic, to say he
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: won the argument. And I want to bring to the
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: fore this question, this quote. He told you the entire
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: purpose of science is to search for existential truths. It's
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: not subjective. It should be objective. I believe science is
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: a place where you can find unity if you can
• 34:38
  Speaker 5: get a conversation going.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: But does he actually want unity? It sounds like he
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: wants capitulation. It sounds like he wants... you to agree
• 34:46
  Speaker 5: with whatever he thinks. I mean, that seems to be,
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: that was the feeling I got. It's not that he
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: genuinely wants a conversation. I mean, and he keeps saying,
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: I'll debate these doctors and scientists, and then they say, well,
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: but no, he's the one that won't debate us. Like,
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: he actually has his little sheaf of bunk science and
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: doesn't actually want to be challenged with real data. I mean,
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: do you think he genuinely actually wants to find unity?
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: That's a really complicated question. There has been a breakdown
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: recently generally, I mean, we've been covering politics a long time.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: The political debate has eroded and collapsed over the last
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: 20 years. And that is happening at a much more
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: rapid rate right now in the medical community. The peg
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: for it was COVID, the thing that made accelerated everything,
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: like the enormous anger about the trauma we all went
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: through in COVID and how some of the advice, the
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: official advice may not have been ideal at the time.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: But there is a total collapse of like that most
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: basic conversation that makes science work in the scientific community.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: And what's essentially happened is the established scientific community, which
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: is mostly the science, scientists, right? You know, the PhDs,
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: the universities, the people who've run public health have kind
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: of thrown up their hands and said, we can't deal
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: with these people. And the sort of group of dissident
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: scientists and trial lawyers like Kennedy, who have different ideas
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: about these things, have said, deeply offended, are deeply aggrieved
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: by that. And instead of actually these two groups of
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: people meeting and trying to work it out, it's gotten worse.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: And Kendi has a lot to blame for that. I mean,
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: Kendi's been going around the CDC firing people who disagree
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: with him. He's not trying to have the conversation. At
• 36:28
  Speaker 4: one point I said to him, look, if you want
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: to have this conversation, you run the CDC, like go
• 36:33
  Speaker 4: to the CDC and sit down with these people. They'll
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: meet with you. You employ them. And his response would
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: be to say, well, a lot of them are biostitutes,
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: which is.
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: A term he uses for- Bioprostitutes.
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, bioprostitutes. You know, just before I came on here,
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: I was watching the Vaccine Advisory Committee hearing that's going
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: on right now at the CDC. And they just had
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: like a 30, 40 minute testimony from a lawyer named
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: Aaron Siri, who's very close to Kennedy, shares his views
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: on vaccines. And there was nobody else presenting before the
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: committee against Siri. So it's an again, and some members
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: of the committee were really upset about that. And the
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: organizers of the committee said, well, we invited these two people,
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: they didn't come. But to this day, there's just a breakdown.
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: And I can sympathize with both sides in terms of
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: where they've been mistreated, but I do think And if
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: I had a message for the story, like the purpose
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: of me sitting down for seven or more hours with
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: Kennedy in conversation was to try and demonstrate that this
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: is our way out. The thing you didn't say is
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: that when I was on the plane with him, it
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: wasn't Air Force One, it was another charter. While we
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: were in the air, we found out Charlie Kirk had
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: been shot. And it was just such a bizarre thing.
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: And moments before we found out Kirk had been shot,
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: Kennedy had been describing to me how his own security
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: had come to him recently and said, like, the levels
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: of threats against you are a whole other level. He
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: said it was above the threshold of lethality. I don't
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: know exactly what that meant.
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: What does beyond lethality mean?
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: Don't know.
• 38:17
  Speaker 5: Metaphysical, anyway.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it was just, it just meant worse.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: You know, that like the threats were getting worse.
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: Well, it seems about as bad as it could get. Anyway,
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: we're not, we're not, we're not a secret service.
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: But like that is the context in which all these
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: conversations were happening. Almost everyone I talked to for this
• 38:34
  Speaker 4: story had had death threats against them. And many people
• 38:37
  Speaker 4: had said they had, I got called vaccinologists. They said,
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: you know, they threatened to kill my kids.
• 38:41
  Speaker 5: Well, but that's what I guess it's like. I understand.
• 38:45
  Speaker 5: We don't want anybody to get death threats. But the
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: targeting of scientists, the targeting of Anthony Fauci began with
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: one side in particular. You know, it may have metastasized
• 38:54
  Speaker 5: to become a sort of like bipartisan desire to execute people.
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: But the real suggestion that public health officials were out
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: there and co-opted and were doing bad things to the
• 39:05
  Speaker 5: American public and should pay for it with their lives
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: came from one side.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I think that is true. There are radicals
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: on both sides. So it's not like it's, you know,
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: it's not blameless on any side now. But my point,
• 39:21
  Speaker 4: I guess, is that that's less important now than trying
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: to figure out a way to listen to each other again. Well, right,
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: if we're.
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: Going to have any scientific consensus on anything. give the American.
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: There are two paths forward for us as a country here.
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: We're stuck together right now, right? So either we head
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: towards more civil conflict and violence, or we try and
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: understand our differences. We don't have to agree. We have
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: to understand where each other are coming from. We have
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: to understand what the actual specifics of the arguments are.
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: You know, I spend 2000 words in the story going
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: through specific studies to wrestle with some of Kennedy's ideas
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: about vaccines. It's a little more laborious, but I think
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: it is far more useful than just saying, oh, that
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: guy's anti-vax. Because there are facts he brings to bear
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: and you have to understand what those facts are. And
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: then you have to present the alternate facts. And then
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: you have to weigh the value of these things. You
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: have to understand where there are gaps in the science,
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: which there are gaps in science right now. and why
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: those haven't been investigated further. And I guess the thing
• 40:23
  Speaker 4: I was hoping to accomplish with this story was to
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: make the point that that conversation that's broken down, everyone
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: is not to blame equally. I'm not saying that, but
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: the only path forward is to try and re-engage.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: In a way.
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: But do you think he really wants to do that?
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: I think that that was the suspense of the story.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: At the end of the story, I say to him,
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: Not to give away the ending, but at the end
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: of the story, I say- Spoiler alert.
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: Everyone go read it.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: Right. But I say to him, what if you're wrong?
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: What if you spend, he tells me he's going to
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: spend billions of dollars investigating first year vaccines and their
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: connections to autism and other neurodevelopmental chronic diseases. I said,
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: what if you do all that and you don't find
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: the thing you're looking for because it's not there? And
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: if in the interim, because you've been doing all this,
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: because you've been redoing the vaccine schedule and telling people
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: vaccines may be dangerous without the evidence, people stopped taking
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: vaccines and more people are dying from bacteria and viruses
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: than before. What if you're wrong? And his answer to
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: me was, I would listen. We would listen, which was
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: the answer I was hoping for the whole time. But
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: then immediately he said, but here are the reasons I'm
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: not going to be wrong. And then he started listing
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: off the other five or six other points that he
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: was making about it. So The answer, no one's like.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: But that's not going to happen. I won't be wrong.
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's not going to happen. So, no, there's
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: not an easy solution to this. But I do think, like,
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: there is a, at least on the surface, a willingness
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: to listen. And I think... We have to engage each
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: other on these things.
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: Respectfully, I've watched him on the Hill. I've watched him
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: when he's challenged. Nobody likes being backed into a corner.
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: Nobody likes being publicly humiliated. Nothing about his behavior and
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: what he said on the record thus far suggests to
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: me someone who's genuinely curious to look at the data
• 42:17
  Speaker 5: that the medical profession and the scientific profession have amassed
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I mean,
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: he just seems.
• 42:24
  Speaker 5: Too far gone from that. And so much of his
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: ego is tied up in being a crusader that if
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: the thing he's crusading against turns out not to be
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: an evil power, that undermines his entire vision of his
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: life and himself. So I feel like.
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: There's so many.
• 42:39
  Speaker 5: There's.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: Enormous stakes for him riding on whether he's right or not.
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: I agree with that. And I also totally agree. I mean,
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: I've been to a number of those hearings on the Hill.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: They're humiliating for everyone involved. I mean, to see him go,
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: he just yells at senators and calls them names and
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: calls them ridiculous. And then they say he's killing kids.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: And he says, no, you're killing kids.
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: Well, but I think this is the issue. And this
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: is why it's hard to find some sort of like
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: liminal space in which people can present their ideas in
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: a non-confrontational way, because we're talking about issues of life
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: and death.
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: Like it's not, it's not tax policy. Though economics are important,
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: this is literally like, do I protect my child from
• 43:16
  Speaker 5: this deadly disease or this deadly virus or not? And
• 43:20
  Speaker 5: I wonder, you know, because it's not as if Kennedy
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: struggled with autism among his own children, at least as
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: I know. From your article, it sounds like a group
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: of activist mom's whose children dealt with or deal with autism,
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: came up to him, basically kept at it and kept
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: advocating for this sort of link between autism and vaccines,
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: that he eventually takes this up. But why is he
• 43:45
  Speaker 5: so singularly focused on autism at the expense of these
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: life-ending or life-threatening diseases that could roar back into existence
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: if and when we stop vaccinating people to get herd immunity.
• 43:57
  Speaker 5: I mean, does the prospect of mass death from measles
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: or hepatitis B not bother him in the same way that,
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: I don't know, the exploding rates of autism do?
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: So his answer to that would be, and I'm not
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: endorsing this, but.
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: His answer to that would be- Yeah, no, I know.
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: I'm sorry, I'm not trying to shoot the messenger, Michael.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. His answer to that would be, you are
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: not accounting for the enormous harm being done that is
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: not being measured right now, that we don't know about.
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: that has not been directly ascribed to the things we've done. Like,
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: he does not accept the idea that you said at
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: the beginning, which I totally agree with, that the COVID
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: vaccine saved lots of lives and obviously had an effect
• 44:40
  Speaker 4: on the reduction of hospitalizations, you know, at the end
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: of that pandemic. He doesn't accept that as a fact.
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: He says, like, we don't know, you know, we don't know.
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: The data is chaotic. You have all these confounding things
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: you have to look at. Um, and so a lot
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: of these arguments end up being in that, in that
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: space of having to wrestle with what, what the study said,
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: what were the methodologies of this study? What does it mean?
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: I think the other thing you have to say about
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: candy though, is that like a key part of his
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: job as a trial lawyer, uh, uh, his, his other
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: public work in this was always being the person. And
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: this is also kind of, I think gets back to
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: the King Arthur tale. who saw a truth that other
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: people didn't see and then was willing to courageously pursue it.
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: So he's a guy who's written that Skakel, his cousin
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: who was accused of murdering a woman and later released
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: from prison was innocent. He wrote a whole story about that.
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: He's argued that Sirhan Sirhan, the person who shot his
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: father was not the sole shooter and that the shots
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: that hit his father were actually shot by somebody else
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: in the room. based on the autopsy. He's raised the
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: possibility the CIA was behind the shooting of Kennedy. I mean,
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: there are a number of these. I mean, after the
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: 2004 election, he wrote a long story for Rolling Stone
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: about how the election had been stolen in part by
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: voting machines in Ohio, which was then a liberal cause.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: I mean, that was a liberal democratic cause at the time.
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: But all of these things have in common the idea
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: that there is a truth out there that he perceives
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: And that his role then is to bring it to
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: the masses, that his role is to then share it
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: with the rest of America and to fight courageously for
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: that truth. And there is a sort of Kennedy-esque vibe
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: to that, right? And I think that is for him
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: trying to embody what I call the birthright, like the
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: childhood he was born into that was then sort of
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: stolen from him.
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: I was so... horrified by this conversation you have with
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: Paul Offit. Because you do it, you're put in a
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: ridiculously complicated position with Kennedy, right? Like on one hand,
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: you're trying to better understand him. And the relationship between
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: you two goes from, I mean, it's an unusual relationship
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: where he's asking you to sort of mediate these vaccine
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: debates in a way. And you both have his trust,
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: but you're also an antagonist, depending on what day of
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: the week it is. And you're also talking to the
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: scientists who are, I think, in many ways, paying the
• 47:19
  Speaker 5: price for Kennedy's crusade at HHS. So you talk to
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: Paul Offit, who's a pediatrician who helped invent a rotavirus
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: vaccine that's been massively effective around the world and who's
• 47:30
  Speaker 5: been a frequent subject of attacks, courtesy of RFK and
• 47:34
  Speaker 5: death threats. And you ask Offit if he sees a
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: way to reverse the public's distrust in science, which is
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: only growing exponentially while Kennedy's at HHS. And he says,
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: I don't think there's any way to regain that trust
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: other than have the viruses do the education and the
• 47:51
  Speaker 5: bacteria do the education. And then people will realize they
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: paid way too high a cost. To that, I say,
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: fucking yikes. Is that where we are at? Like, basically,
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: people have to die or get very, very ill before
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: they realize this guy was a charlatan.
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: Yes, the experiment is happening now. I mean, Florida has
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: said that they're no longer going to require vaccines for schools.
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: Idaho has passed similar rules. The rate of non-medical, non-religious exemptions,
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: I think it's actually non-medical exemptions for vaccines that parents say,
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: I don't want to have my kids take this vaccine.
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: They can come into kindergarten has been ticking higher. Senator Cassidy,
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: a Republican senator from Louisiana, who was the deciding vote
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: for Kennedy, but is now really tangling with him behind
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: the scenes and in public, very unhappy with where Kennedy
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: is taking things. His office is tracking Pertussis cases, whooping
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: cough cases around the country. And they have a theory that,
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: and I think the data is still too early to tell.
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: So I say that in the story, I want to
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: say that very clearly now. We don't know that this
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: is the case, but But Cassidy's working hypothesis is you're
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: going to have a greater increase in whooping cough cases
• 49:03
  Speaker 4: among kids in red states, states that Trump won, than
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: in states that Harris won in the last election. So
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: I think we're very much in a real experiment going forward.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: They just decided this week to.
• 49:21
  Speaker 4: The Vaccine Advisory Committee recommending that what has become the
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: standard procedure that as soon as a baby is born
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: in the US, they get a hepatitis B vaccine, that
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: that is no longer recommended. And almost certainly HHS is
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: going to So CDC and HHS is going to confirm that,
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: and that will be the official federal recommendation. We don't
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: know how that will change behavior. It doesn't mean that
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: mothers can't get their babies vaccinated on the first day
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: they're born or in the hospital when they're born. But
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: it will likely lead to fewer babies being vaccinated. And
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: the concern is that some mothers who have tested negative
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: for hepatitis B or are family, other family members will,
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: will infect the baby. And, and we have seen because
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: of the hepatitis B vaccine, a real reduction in liver
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: problems and hepatitis for, for Americans. And at that rate,
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: we'll start going back up. And, and, you know, if
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: you listen to the vaccine advisory committee hearing, there's a
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: debate about what's going to happen. You know, the people
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: voting to get rid of this think it's going to
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: be a good thing. The people voting against it think
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: it's going to be a bad thing. But we're going
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: to find out because it is happening, right? All this
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: stuff is happening right now.
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: Quite a fucking roll of the dice, Michael. Quite a
• 50:37
  Speaker 5: fucking roll of the dice. We're going to jump to
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: a quick break. But before we do, we got some
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: quick housekeeping. The Trump administration is using the tragic shooting
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: of two National Guard members to justify an immigration crackdown
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: and shutting the door on refugees and asylum seekers. Really,
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: just a wholesale reinvention of American immigration policy. at a
• 50:57
  Speaker 5: time when millions are seeking safety here in the United States.
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: And so on the latest episode of my new show,
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: Runaway Country, I unpack what is actually happening on the ground.
• 51:08
  Speaker 5: I speak with an Afghan aid worker who helped the U.S.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: for years on the ground in Afghanistan and then escaped
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul and came to America
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: on a green card for which he was vetted for months.
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: And now, thanks to Trump, may get deported and sent
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: back to the Taliban. His entire life and his family's life,
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: everything is at stake. And then I sit down with
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: my friend and former colleague Joy Reid to get into
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: the MAGA playbook. Here is a hint. It doesn't end
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: well for black and brown people. If you want to
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: understand how all of this is shaping the direction of
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: the country, don't miss this episode. Tune into Runaway Country
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Posse of America is brought to you by Bombas. This
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• 53:33
  Speaker 5: I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: the bear carcass. This is what's known in the podcasting
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: industry as a hard pivot. The whale head, the brain worm.
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: I mean, what was... When you asked him about that stuff,
• 53:49
  Speaker 5: and you don't need to go into each one, but
• 53:51
  Speaker 5: sort of how does he think that this is just
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: like a smelly trail that keeps following him from room
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: to room? Does he have any in the way that
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: he owns his dark period and adolescence that Carolyn Kennedy,
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: his cousin, so publicly brought up? I mean, does he
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: what does he say about the strange, abnormal, distressing behavior
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: that he's exhibited as an adult?
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: Well, I think the first thing he would say is
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: that all those stories which have been used to define
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: him are an effort by the media to disqualify him,
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: to distract from his arguments about science. So that's the
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: first thing he would say. The second thing I think
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: is that he doesn't, I mean, he is an unusual guy.
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: He has an unusual relationship with animals. When he sees
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: a whale on the beach, his thought is, let's bring
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: it home, you know, or when he sees a bear- Yeah,
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: a bear on a country road that's been hit by
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: a car, he thinks, oh, it would be funny if
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: we put it in Central Park. Those aren't disputed stories.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: He has lots of stories that are very strange. He's also,
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: I think we should mention, someone who doesn't claim to
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: be cured of his addictions. I mean, he said that
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: his brain is sort of like a formulation pharmacy, by
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: which he meant that He can turn things like rock
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: climbing or sex into a drug. And then he's kind
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: of compulsive about chasing after them. I mean, there's a
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: reason he's going every day to a 12-step meeting. It's not,
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: this is a current constant struggle for him. And he's,
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: Had enormous success. I mean, much more success than most
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: heroin addicts of 14 years and sort of rebuilding his life. Right.
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: You can look at him through the prism of being
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: a Kennedy or being a heroin addict. And your estimation
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: of his accomplishments, I think, is probably inversely proportional depending
• 55:41
  Speaker 5: on which prism you look through.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: That's right. And you haven't mentioned the biggest story of
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: the last few weeks.
• 55:45
  Speaker 5: Well, I was about to. You gave me that. You
• 55:48
  Speaker 5: mentioned his addiction to sex.
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 55:51
  Speaker 5: And I know your colleague at The Atlantic, Helen Lewis,
• 55:54
  Speaker 5: read Olivia Newtsey's book. Olivia Newtsey is a journalist who
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: reportedly had an affair. Well, I guess we don't have
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: to say reportedly because she sort of owns up to
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: it in her own book. And Helen in The Atlantic
• 56:07
  Speaker 5: writes of the book and of the love triangle between
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: Olivia Newtsey, her ex-fiance, Ryan Lizza, who has populated his
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: sub stack with various installments of his version of what happened. Um,
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: and RFK jr. She writes the only person in this
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: story with real power is RFK jr. And he is,
• 56:28
  Speaker 5: I cannot believe I am typing this sentence, maintaining a
• 56:31
  Speaker 5: dignified silence. Um, what, what do you think you're about
• 56:37
  Speaker 5: to give me your thoughts on this scandal? I were
• 56:40
  Speaker 5: just like, well, or whatever you want to say about it.
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: I mean, I know you weren't interviewing him at the
• 56:44
  Speaker 5: time that this broke.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mentioned to him while we were talking that
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: I was going to put in the story stuff about
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: some of the sex scandals around him. I was going
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: to mention the alleged affair with Nuzzi and the fact
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: that she lost her job with the New York Magazine.
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: I mentioned also something that came out in Vanity Fair
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: last year. A former babysitter of his, 20 or 30
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: years younger, said that of his children, none of his,
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: said that, you know, he had sort of propositioned her
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: and groped her inappropriately. He apologized to her in a
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: text message at the time. I think the, and the
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: other thing I want to say is that even if
• 57:31
  Speaker 4: I had known the details of what Lizza and Nuzzi
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: had written, have written since when we were doing these interviews.
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: I don't think I would have focused on them so much.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: That wasn't the curiosity I had. I do think the
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: fact that he still struggles with addiction, including sex addiction,
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: is a central part of who he is. And I
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: do mention that. And so I think that's the way
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: to understand it. I mean, this is a guy who,
• 58:00
  Speaker 4: you know, he describes himself as having returned from hell.
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: which is an unusual thing for someone to say. And
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: I think the demons are still very present, right? In
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: a way that you and I probably don't have to
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: struggle on a day-to-day basis, he does have to struggle.
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: And so I asked him before we published if he
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: wanted to comment on the Nazi stuff, and I think
• 58:28
  Speaker 4: he has not commented at all. I mean, she says
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: he talked to her about it last year, and sort
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: of urged her to keep it quiet.
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: I need you to take a bullet for me, I think.
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: Right. And Liz says he had a conversation with Kenny.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: So it's not that he's never talked about it, but
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: his policy on this is just to keep going. And,
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: I mean, he said in his announcement speech when he
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: ran for president in 2023, I have so many skeletons
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: in my closet that if they could vote, I'd be
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: king of the world.
• 59:01
  Speaker 5: I wasn't a choir boy, yeah.
• 59:03
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: I wasn't a choir boy. So that is true. Uh,
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: and that is still true. And, and, you know, once
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: upon a time, if you had that many skeletons in
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: your closet, you didn't get to be in public life, but.
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: Well, unless you were Kennedy, I was going to say, yeah,
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: I mean, they got away with it.
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: Although their skeletons weren't public at the time they came
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: out later. Right. Right.
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: Private life.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: I should say who knew, who.
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: Knew what would have happened if, you know, Marilyn Monroe
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: had given a press conference.
• 59:28
  Speaker 5: And Or written a book called American Canto.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: It would have been a different world.
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he's returned from hell and is now bringing us
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: to a hell of his own creation. I mean, I
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: do think it's an important story. First of all, it's
• 59:45
  Speaker 5: a great story. It's so well reported. Hats off to
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: you on doing a very complicated thing. But it's also
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: really important because when we look at the legacy of
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: the Trump administration, it's going to have a long tail.
• 59:56
  Speaker 5: And I think the distrust... the paranoia, the erosion of
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: belief in our institutions is going to be one of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: the longer lasting ones. And what this is doing to
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: medical institutions and science and facts and the central role
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: RFK is playing in all of this is going to
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: have a profound effect both in the near term in
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 5: terms of the health of Americans and on our body
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: politic in terms of whether half the country decides to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: believe what the federal government and its related institutions are saying.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: It's just, he is a linchpin in this overhaul of
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 5: the way we think about institutions writ large. So, you know,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 5: understanding him and how he grapples with it. And I
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: guess the piece he's made in this crusade with actors
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 5: he previously understood to be bad actors is like, I
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: guess it's the work we need to do as citizens
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: and voters and journalists.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: The only thing I would add is I think we're
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: still early innings here. I mean, we're still in the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: first year of the second term. I think he plans
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: to stay. He doesn't have the same problems as some
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: of the other cabinet heads have right now. So there's
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: no sign that he's leaving. The Republicans really do want
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: to use this make America healthy again thing in the
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: midterms next year. It's not clear at all to me
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: how it's going to play, but they're going to lean
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: into it. They're not going to lean away. And Kennedy
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 4: has many more plans. to continue specifically on the vaccine stuff,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: which is the most, I mean, he's dismissed or fired
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: or pushed out a quarter of the workforce at HHS.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: So that's a big thing. There's a lot of cut
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: funding at NIH. I mean, there's other things we haven't
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: talked about that are transforming the way medical research is done.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: But on the vaccine front, I think we have just
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: begun to see this changes that he intends to make
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: over the next couple of years.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: Yeah. God help us all. You know where I am
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: on this side of it. Michael, it is, like I said,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: it's a complicated thing to try and get the trust
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: of the subject without necessarily cosigning on what the subject is.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 5: espousing the views he's espousing. And I think you do
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: a really masterful job of giving, you know, a good
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 5: look at a very central player in American life. So
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: thank you for taking this time to chit chat with
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 5: me about all of it and put the visual of
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gulping down a quart of plain yogurt.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: It's just a matter of course. Thank you. Thank you
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 5: for helping us understand that visual.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: Thanks for highlighting the story. Go to the Atlantic.com and
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: read it.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 5: Oh, it's so good. Everyone should read it. It's like,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: it's very, it's a very good read. Um, thanks for
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 5: your time, Mike. It's great to see you.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 5: That's our show for today. Thank you to Michael Scherer
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: for joining John, John and Tommy. We'll be back in
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: your feeds on Tuesday.
• 1:02:58
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