Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #2461. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding MAHA Initiative, Public Health Reform, and HHS Policy Shifts in 2026. Joe Rogan Podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan
Experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan Podcast by
night. All day. I like them, but if it's just
me wearing them, it feels stupid. Why do you
wear them? I like it because it locks me in.
Just locks me in. The only thing I hear is that
person's voice. And I can't hear Jamie's chair
moving. I can't hear anything else. And it just
makes me really focused on the conversation.
I have ADHD. I had 11 siblings, and I have seven
kids, so I can work. I can focus. No matter what?
No matter what. It's a skill. It's a thing to
learn. If you're the person that can focus without
distraction, you're a good person to be in the
job you're at. Yeah. What is it like since you've
been appointed? I haven't talked to you on a
podcast. I know. It's the best job I could ever
have. I feel like I was designed for the job,
and I just have so much fun. I mean, it's a target
-rich environment, so there's so many ways that
you can be effective and improve people's lives
every single day. Part of that is because the—
Agency was just such a mess. It wasn't doing
health care. It was doing sick care and just
managing all of these perverse incentives. And
have us spending $5 trillion a year two to three
times per capita when any other nation spends.
And we have the sickest population in the world.
We have the highest chronic disease burden in
the world. And you were the best at medicine
in this country. But that's when people get sick.
You'd rather get sick here than any place in
the world. But you're more likely to be sick
here than any place in the world. And, you know,
and then it was just a big political patronage
operation. And it still is. You know, we're putting
an end to that now. I mean, the amount of fraud
that goes through that place. We lose just on
Medicaid and Medicare $100 billion a year. And
it's all just this really, you know, shocking,
blatant fraud that's become industrialized. I
mean, there's foreign nations like Russia. Everybody's
heard of Somalia, but also Cuba has this operation
in Florida where they open up these little—they
open up— These PO boxes for durable medical equipment
is like knee braces and wheelchairs. And then
they don't have any knee brace or wheelchairs,
but they have patient identification numbers.
So they just claim to be shipping them to people.
And we found one hotel. It had like 129 rooms
and everyone was different. that was selling
durable medical equipment, and we go in and shut
them down, and they immediately go back to Cuba.
The whole thing is apparently run by the Cuban
government, but Russia's doing the same thing
with hospices. Where do they get the patient
ID numbers? They can buy those numbers on the
black market. Really? Yeah. And Russia does the
same thing in Los Angeles. With hospice care.
So there's more hospice care in Los Angeles than
the entire rest of the country combined. It's
all fraudulent. And we're just pumping hundreds
of millions of dollars into these fraudulent
operations. The same thing that the Somalis did
in Ethiopia. A lot of that money was going back
to Boko Haram and terror groups over there. But
they were – it was – a lot of it was based –
the Medicare stuff is different and we're able
to – we're going to be able to catch almost all
of that now because we're using AI to do it.
It was never used before. There was no effort
at program integrity. In fact, the Biden administration
deliberately, purposely ordered them – they ended
the program integrity office. So they went from
hundreds of people to six people. And they said,
we don't want you doing program integrity. We
just want you doing enrollments. And so we got
all this fraud. Most of it came from these waivers
that the states got, all the states got them
for home care and community care. So, you know,
30 years ago, Medicaid, Medicare, if you got
a hernia operation. We paid for that. And you
could tell somebody got the hernia operation
because they had the scar. They used a licensed
nurse. They used a licensed doctor. It was all
documented. Then some of the states said, you
know, we're sending a whole lot of people to
the hospital. And we don't have home care providers.
So if you let us pay family members to do home
care. The patient won't have to go to the hospital.
They won't have to go to the emergency room.
And we'll save a lot of money. So it was well
-intentioned. But then what happened is people
immediately started abusing it. So today, these
are services that are not normally played by
family members, performed by family members.
Buying groceries for your grandmother and bringing
them home, you now get paid for that. balancing
your grandmother's checkbook, driving her to
a medical visit. So then you had this organized
fraud, and this is what happened in Minnesota.
These organized crime companies would come in
and say, you designate this family, you designate
all your children have autism now, even if they
didn't. And we're going to now pay providers
for each of them. And we'll give you a few thousand
dollars to do it. But then they would collect
all the money. And that's what was happening.
It's happening all over the country because there
was no—it's very, very difficult. The guardrails
on that system were very pervious. And anybody
can defraud it. If you are inclined to do fraud,
this was an irresistible opportunity. How long
was this going on for? When did this fraud begin,
do you believe? It really accelerated during
the Biden administration. We expected to pay
for the Minnesota program just for autism care
for kids with autism. The kids need the care
because. You know, they go to maybe a special
school, but then they come home from school and
the parents aren't there because they're working.
So who's going to take care of them? So in legitimate
circumstances, you would want to pay for that.
But what happened is they just started this wholesale
fraud. We expected the cost of that program to
be about $3 million a year in Minnesota, in Minneapolis.
It got up in over a three -year period. It got
up to $400 million a year. So, you know, it was
all fraudulent, almost. I just don't understand.
So this accelerated during the Biden administration?
Yeah. But when did it begin? Like how long has
it been going on? Because they stopped doing
program integrity. Specifically, they told people
in my agency, and I've talked to them, we don't
want to do program integrity anymore. We now
just want to focus everything on enrollments.
In other words, enrolling more people in Obamacare
and the programs. And, you know, you could say
there was bad motives there because, one, the
states don't pay. The states pay a tiny fraction
of it, but it all goes to the federal government.
So the states don't really want to do fraud detection.
Because all that money is coming into their estate.
And then every time you enroll somebody, you're
registering them to vote. And so, you know, they
may have had ulterior motives. Let me put it
that way. But, you know, right now what we're
doing is we're saying to the states, we have
audited you. We expect that we believe that 50
% of the program dollars you're spending were
fraudulent or possibly fraudulent. You show us
a corrective action that you're going to take
or we're going to withdraw that money the next
time. The money is not being withdrawn from individuals.
We're not reimbursing the state for it until
they told us. Now, the red states have all said,
yeah, we'll do it. But Maine, Minnesota. California
and New York have said, no, we're not going to.
Basically, he sent us corrective action that
was just, you know, it was ridiculous. So is
there financial incentive? Are these people that
are making all this money from fraud, are they
donating to any specific groups? Like, is there
a direct turnaround? The Cubans in Florida and
Florida, you know, they get mad at Trump because
they say, oh, all the states you're designating
are blue states. That's just because the blue
states refuse to cooperate. But Florida is a
red state and we're really going after them.
We're shutting down all durable medical equipment,
reimbursements for the whole state because it
was all being run. It was probably being run
by the Cuban government. But I don't understand
how no one saw it. No one from the government
saw it. And would there be a reason why they
weren't looking for it other than they just wanted
it? They were only thinking about recruitments.
But were they also was anybody making money outside
of these crime organizations? I would say no.
The money was not. The states were making money.
Right. But there was a lot of talk online about
donations to parties and donations to NGOs. That
is probably true, too, although I don't have
any evidence of that. No evidence. Okay. So it
really just ramped. And you wouldn't have. Even
if you get those kind of donations, it's not
the kind of proof that I would talk about because
you cannot prove that that donation motivated
the bad behavior. But it just – it really highlights
how ideologically captured some people are, that
because it's the right wing going after this
Medicaid fraud, that somehow or another that
fraud is OK. And that fraud is not that big a
deal, that there's – I mean, what's the all told
number that's been stolen from from this stuff
over the if you had to take a wild guess? It's
at least 100 billion dollars, 100 billion from
Medicaid and Medicare. That anybody would not
want to stop that kind of crime because it's
attached to the wrong party is it just shows
you how weird this country is right now. Yeah.
I mean, I listen. I was a Democrat my whole life.
And, you know, one of the thing and then I, you
know, now I'm kind of first of all, I it's illegal
for me now to vote in any state. So I don't really
have a party affiliation because, you know, they
challenge. I was a New York State resident when
I was running. They sued me and they said, oh,
you don't really live in New York. You live in
California. I said, yeah, but. My driver's license
is from New York. My law license is from New
York. I have an address in New York. My car is
registered in New York. My falconry license is
in New York. My hunting license is in New York.
My fishing license is in New York. And I intend
to return to New York. And there were hundreds
of cases, just black letter laws, saying the
only measure is if you intend to return there
at some point. We got crooked judges, and they
said, no, you're not a New York resident. I'd
already said I'm not a California resident. I
don't intend to stay there. So now I'm not legally
allowed to vote in any state. But, you know,
I saw this with a party. My father hated partisanship
because he thought it was dishonest. And he always
told us you should vote for the man, not the
party. Time was predominantly men. But I saw
this when Trump, you know, I grew up in a Democratic
Party that was very anti -NAFTA. So it was against
working people and labor unions. Then Trump said
that he was anti -NAFTA. All of a sudden, the
Democratic Party was pro -NAFTA. And that's what
turned my head the first time. And then, you
know, when I was then I saw how they and Trump
questioned vaccines during the 2016 election.
The Democratic Party, it was kind of that skepticism
and the concerns were spread evenly across the
party. My uncle, Ted Kennedy, was very much on
the side of medical freedom and it was evenly
spread. But as soon as Trump said that, it became
part of the dogma of that party. And then, you
know, when I ran, we were, you know, it was one
of the things I ran against was the Ukraine war.
And the Democrats were always the anti -war party.
But as soon as Trump questioned that war, they
became the pro -war party. And they invited the
CIA director to speak at the Democratic Convention.
And it just is, it's the party's only agenda
is we hate Trump. And anything he says, we're
going to do the opposite of it. And it makes
me very sad for the party. And I don't think
it's a sustainable way to operate. No, there
has to be some sort of an appeal to people in
the middle that left when things went crazy.
Just let us know you're not crazy anymore. Let
us know you've abandoned a lot of this crazy
stuff. And also, like, recognize what's good
for everybody. Hundreds of billions of dollars
of fraud is not good for any of us, the whole
country. So we should all be together on this
one thing. Like this is terrible. This is stealing
from your tax money, all of our tax money. Us,
American citizens, we should all be united on
stopping any kind of fraud. Forget about who.
Who's the fucking president? And what's who's
going to get responsibility for it? Who's going
to take who's going to get the accolades? Like,
who cares? Stop fraud. Stop. We're all together.
You shouldn't have criminals from other countries
living here just stealing money from Medicaid.
That seems like that should be a bipartisan issue
in a rational society. We did the Tylenol findings
because, you know, the science is really clear.
And there are dozens. I read 76 studies over
a weekend. And when, you know, when we were looking
at this and the studies that support Tylenol
safety are very weak and have huge holes in them.
There's overwhelming science that says you shouldn't
take it particularly, you know, it's OK normally.
You shouldn't take it during pregnancy and particularly
the last days of pregnancy or in the perinatal
period, which is immediately after pregnancy.
You don't want to take it because the association
with Tylenol usage at that point and neurodevelopmental
disease are very, very high and pretty clear.
And so we issued a warning. We didn't ban Tylenol.
We just sent a letter out to all doctors saying
be careful about – we didn't want to ban it during
pregnancy because as bad as it is, it's the best
thing. It's better than taking ibuprofen or aspirin.
Why is aspirin bad? Because of Reye's syndrome.
It has a clear association with Reye's syndrome,
and they all have problems. What is that word,
Reye's syndrome? Reye's syndrome, R -E -Y -E
-S. What is that? It's—I'm not sure exactly what
it does. Jamie, put that into our wonderful sponsor,
Perplexity. And if you put aspirin use in Reye's
syndrome, you'll see the— So is this just with
pregnant women or with people in general? Yeah,
for pregnant and pregnancy or young children.
Oh. So baby aspirin? Didn't they always used
to have children's asthma? Yeah, I don't know
if they do it anymore. Reye's syndrome is a rare
but serious condition causing sudden brain swelling
and liver damage primarily in children and teens
recovering from viral infections like flu or
chicken pox become very rare due to reduced aspirin
use in kids. Wow. Aspirin. I always thought of
aspirin as like the most natural and healthy
out of all those things that you take for pain.
I think it is pretty safe, but it's... Avoid
aspirin and what's that word? You say it. What
is it? Salicyate -containing meds. Salicyate
-containing meds in children and teens with flu,
chickenpox, or cold. Use acetaminophen or ibuprofen
instead. Vaccinate against flu and chickenpox
and screen newborns for metabolic risks. So acetaminophen
is the issue in Tylenol, right? Yeah. Because
I read this terrible story about a lady who died
during COVID because she did not from COVID,
from Tylenol. She just kept taking Tylenol. Well,
Tylenol shuts down your liver. enough of it.
That's what happened to her. What I was saying
is, you know, when we issued this warning, it
was immediately condemned by the Democrats. Oh,
you know, here's Trump and Kennedy doing, you
know, weird science again. And then you had all
of these videos, these viral videos on TikTok
of pregnant women eating Tylenol. Yeah, to say
fuck Trump. It's crazy. I hope they didn't really
do it. I hope they were pretending. Because that's
so dumb. It's just so stupid. Why would you even
want to risk that? How is that not a thing that
you just abandon all party affiliation and go,
the health of my child. This is science. They're
not saying don't. take Tylenol. You could still
buy Tylenol. It's a good thing to know that if
you take too much of something, it's bad. There's
a lot of things that are fine if you take one
or two pills. But if you're that poor lady with
COVID, if you just keep taking it over and over
and over again, you'll die. We should know that.
It doesn't mean you shouldn't take aspirin or
you shouldn't take Tylenol. It just means know
when to take it and when not to take it. And
know how much to take. That's all information
that everybody should want. To be out there,
the fact that people want to connect that to
Trump and I'm going to take Tylenol while I'm
pregnant. Imagine the aliens watching us and
going – they're not ready. They're not ready
for sophisticated time -traveling technology.
These fucking dopes, like what are they doing?
They're fighting over nonsense. And it's like
it's all heavily accelerated by social media.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the algorithms. Just amplify
that polarization. Yes. They're just telling
you what you want to hear and validating your
worldview all the time. And also just outraging
you, just outraging you all the time. I've been
off it for a while now, and it's like it frees
your brain. It's like. All the weirdness of thinking
about nonsense in the world, you're aware of
it peripherally, but it's not in your face all
day, which I think most people are dealing with
a lot more even than I was. And they're just
bombarded by sensation, bombarded by anger and
frustration and angst. It kind of liberates the
darkest impulses of the human spirit. I mean,
I don't use it either, but I post stuff. But,
you know, if I started reading my comments and
take them seriously. No, it's terrible. I genuinely
thought when you joined forces with Trump and
then Tulsi did as well, I was like, OK, maybe
this will unite us more and make more people
realize that there's a lot of people that are
being left out that are in the center of all
this. And we can all come together and work together.
That's what I thought naively. Obviously, once
you guys got in there, it was you guys were MAGA
and health is bad and don't stop the dyes. No
matter what it was, people were ideologically
opposed to you being correct about anything because
now you're connected with Trump. So it's like
I was watching liberals. The people that are
always worried about food ingredients, just dismissing
all of this talk about preservatives and glyphosate
and red dye and all these different things is
just an ideological thing. Yeah. I mean, it's
dogma, and it's tribalism. It's these— Connectors
in our brain that evolved over millions of years
was living in these little tribal communities.
And now you've got machines that can activate
those parts of the brain and they're being manipulated
all the time. Yeah. And then there's a bunch
of people that are commentating that aren't even
real people. There's that too. There's a lot
of manipulation that's going on on social media
where who knows who's doing it. There's a bunch
of different groups doing it. But they're not
real people that are outraged. They're not real
human beings that are saying these things. And
they can kind of shift a narrative into a certain
direction sometimes. It's a fascinating time
to be alive. As far as what you thought this
job was going to be before you get in. before
you got in and what it became. What was your
expectations when you got in? Did anything really
surprise you? I mean, you know, I try to go into
every part of my life without expectations and
just focus on really narrowly on what I'm doing
day by day. And that actually makes me a lot
more resilient because if you don't have expectations,
you never get disappointments. And so you can
never get crushed. But I would say that, you
know, I had not spent a lot of my life hanging
out with Republicans. And what I imagine that
they were talking about. is exactly the opposite
of, you know, now I'm in an administration that's
surrounded by immensely talented people. And
they're immensely idealistic. And, you know,
nobody, I always imagined the Republicans would
get together and they'd be thinking about how
do we screw the poor and how do we, you know,
reduce tax on the rich. And all they're – they're
just narrowly focused on how do we solve these
big problems and how do we make our country work.
And the level of idealism that I see at every
level in the White House and in my agency is
inspiring. And then the level of the capabilities,
just the competence of the people who I'm surrounded
with. I think the thing that shocked me most
was how bad the agency was, just how inefficient,
how nobody seemed to care that people were getting
sicker and sicker. Nobody was taking accountability
of the fact we're the health agency, and yet
we have the worst health and the richest health
agency in the world. I think HHS is the sixth
biggest country in the world if you look at its
budget. It's got the biggest budget in the federal
government, bigger than the defense budget. And
yet we are absolutely miserable at what we did.
I mean we're literally presiding over this cliff.
Where every American is getting—people are just—77
percent of American kids can't qualify for military
service. And nobody's asking why is that happening.
When I was a kid, the typical pediatrician would
see one case of juvenile diabetes over a 40 -
or 50 -year career. Today, 38 percent. of teens
are diabetic or pre -diabetic. So one out of
every three kids who walks through this office
store, why isn't anybody noticing this? The autism
rates have gone from 1 in 10 ,000 in 1970, and
people knew what autism was. They knew what it
looked like in 1970. They did the biggest epidemiological
study in history to answer the question, what
is the percentage? And they came up with 0 .8
per 10 ,000. Less than one in 10 ,000. And today
it's one in 31. In California, it's one in 19.
And one in 12 .5 boys. That's crazy. We are,
you know. That's so crazy. One in 12 .5 boys
is crazy. And when my uncle was president, you
know, I was a 10 -year -old boy. We spent zero
on chronic disease. Zero. And today we spend
$4 .3 trillion a year. And it's the fastest growing
item in the federal budget. And it's existential.
We can't sustain it. And the Republicans and
Democrats have been arguing for years about whether
we do the single payer, Obamacare, this or that.
It's all about throwing money. Who gets to keep
the money? And we're throwing it in a system
that's completely broken. It's not a health care
system. People just keep getting sicker and sicker.
It's like changing deck chairs on the Titanic.
Why is nobody focusing on how do we get people
healthy? Because that's how you solve the health
care cost problem. Right now, 40 cents out of
every dollar that you spend in federal taxes
is going to health care, and about 90 percent
of that is chronic disease. So, you know, it's
clear. And Americans don't want to be sick. They're
being made sick. The obesity rates have gone
from 5 % in kids when I was a kid to now close
to 20%. And in adults, 70 % of adults are obese
or overweight. That was not true when we were
kids. And it's not because Americans got indolent
or lazy or hungry. It's because they were being
mass poisoned. You know, the vested interests
that are making money on keeping—everybody makes
money on keeping us sick. The food companies
make money on getting us sick. But pharma makes
money on keeping us sick. The insurance—you would
think insurance would want to keep you well,
but it doesn't. It actually makes more money
if more people are sick. The hospitals— How does
the insurance company make more money if people
are sick? Well, I mean, think of it this way.
If you're Lloyds of London, do you want one ship
– and you're insuring all the ships in the ocean.
Do you want one ship to sink a year or do you
want 1 ,000 to sink? If 1 ,000 sink, everybody
is going to be paying you premiums to insure
themselves against that eventuality. You're making
money on the friction. So you're making the money
that comes into this. You're making your money
on the money that comes to the system. So the
more that you pump up that volume of money, the
more you make. So, you know, nobody is interested.
Nobody is economically incentivized to make people
well. And we are not going to get well until
we align those economic incentives with the health
outcomes that we want, which is nobody gets sick.
We end the chronic disease epidemic, and that's
what we're doing now. We're trying to realign
all those perverse incentives that reward you.
For example, the medical system pays out on fee
-based service. That means the more tests the
doctor orders for you, the more drugs he prescribes
you, the more contact he has with you, the richer
he gets. So he is not incentivized to give you,
well, we ought to be paying him a flat fee at
the beginning of the year and saying anything,
any cause from this patient, the rest of the
year come out of your pocket. And then he's like,
okay, how do I get this guy from getting sick?
And he starts studying nutrition books. That's
actually an interesting idea. It seems so captured
at this point. It's going to be difficult to
unravel all that. It's difficult, but it's not
impossible, and we're doing it. About three years
from now, you're going to see a different healthcare
model in our country. Talking about it has a
big impact because most people are just not aware
of how the whole system works. And what is actually
wrong with it? You know, most people just hear
about it. Health care. People are sick. They
need health care. Why would they cut health care?
Cutting health care is bad. That's what they
would just immediately think. And I think most
people, they think of the fraud stuff and they
want to dismiss it. Like they I've heard all
these people dismiss this Nick Shirley kid and
what he exposed in in Minneapolis. But the reason
why is because it's the wrong party. If this
was a Democrat that was exposing Republican fraud,
then they would be. into it. It would be on every
newspaper. But instead, they're trying to dismiss
it as not relevant. Yeah. And to me, it's weird
because I know Democrats are human beings and
they care about the same things that I do. I've
known all of these guys, almost all of them,
many of them for 40 years. Bernie Sanders, I've
known for 40 years. Their only solution is more
money to the system, a system that is broken,
that is making us sicker and sicker. And what
President Trump wants to do is he wants to fix
the system. Stop. Most of that money is not going
to the patients. It's going to the insurance
companies and the PBMs and all of these middlemen
that are, you know, are milking the system. And
that's why President Trump says, you know, the
answer is to not pay the insurance company. It's
to pay the consumer directly and put him make
him the CEO of his own health care. Oh, that
he can spend money. He's now incentivized to
do prevention and to maybe do holistic medicine
or take vitamins or take vitamin D, which, you
know, is as you know, it's kind of miraculous
or to or to do alternatives, you know, to do
preventative care. And he wants to say he's going
to want to save money right now. Nobody is in
that position of accountability. We need to make
them the CEO of their own health so that they
have responsibility and they're going to pay
the cost if they get sick. Government pays, but
they then decide how to allocate that money.
And then we need to make the system transparent.
And that's one of the things that we're doing.
During his first term, Trump... passed a transparency
bill, but because Trump had passed, everybody
wanted transparency. If you're a woman, you're
pregnant, you want to know how much it's going
to cost you to have that baby. There's no way
you can find that out for most of them. You can
go nine months on a phone every day, how much
it's going to cost, and you'll never get a straight
answer. And so, you know, in New York, For example,
what we're doing now is we're going to make all
of the hospitals and all the providers post a
menu of their prices that are available to everybody
and that are available on a website that we're
creating. So if you want an MRI and there's 40
places around your home that offer MRIs, you
can't right now figure out what they cost. Now
you're going to be able to go and look at them
all on a single page and figure out what the
cheapest one is. If you go to a restaurant, the
price are on the menu. If you go to buy a car
and the guy said to you, yeah, you can buy the
car, but I'm not going to tell you how much it
costs until after you bought by it. Nobody would
operate that way. But that's how our medical
system operates. So I looked at we have a mock
up of this Web site. We're right now during the
Biden administration because Trump had passed
that law. The Biden administration just refused
to enforce it. So we're in the same position
now where there's no transparency. We're changing
that now. We've sent out over 1 ,000 letters
to hospitals, you know, warning letters. You've
got to post them right now. And we just finalized
new regulations. If they don't do that, they're
going to pay a huge fine. So I saw the mock -up
of the website. And I said – I asked the question,
how much does it cost in the hospitals within
a mile of Manhattan to have a baby? One of them
was – there were about 30 hospitals that I could
visualize on one page. One of them was $1 ,300.
That was the lowest. The highest was $22 ,000.
A baby is about $5 ,000. And the most expensive
is $60 ,000. And it's the same service, the same
quality care. Nothing changes except that price.
Why do we have that information chaos? We have
it because the industry wants to hide what it's
doing. And so there's no market. There's no ability
for people to make good choices. I was staying
with Dr. Oz during the transition at his house
in Florida. And one day, Prime Minister Rudd,
who was the former prime minister of Australia,
came by. And after he was prime minister, he
had been appointed to run a commission to reduce
health care costs and improve quality. And they
were very successful. But he said the number
one thing that they did that changed everything
was price transparency, was showing people. the
price of what they're going to pay. So we're
now going to do that. And people will be able
to shop. And now we also have to shift all of
that money away from the insurance companies
and put it in the hands of the public so that
they are incentivized, maximum incentivized to
make good choices. So as far as making good choices
with like food, I like what you guys did. I love
what you guys did with the food pyramid. Essentially
flipped it on its head, which is kind of crazy
that for the longest time we are being told that
the most important things, the primary diet should
be grains and rice and wheat. And now it's things
that we've known for a long time. It's whole
food, actual real food. That's what you're supposed
to be eating. The problem is getting people to
change their habits and change their ways. And
if people don't start eating good food and if
people don't start taking care of their body,
how – what other things can you even imagine
would shift this trend? Well, here's what's going
to happen. First of all, the food pyramid. I
inherited a food pyramid from the first way I
was – I came into office one year and two weeks
ago. A week after I got in, I was handed the
food pyramid that the Biden administration had.
It wasn't even the food pyramid. They got rid
of that. They just were doing the dietary guidelines.
So it was the recommendations that would go be
reflected in the food pyramid. It was hundreds
of pages long and it was incomprehensible. And
it was driven by all the mercantile impulses
that had corrupted the food pyramid for 50 years.
And it was written by lobbyists. It was written
by food industry lobbyists and the same impulse
that put Froot Loops at the top of the food pyramid,
which isn't even a food. Froot Loops were at
the top of the food. Froot Loops were at the
top recommendation of the food pyramid. You can
ask them to look up the old food pyramid. I need
to see where Froot Loops stand. Don't they throw
some vitamins on Froot Loops? Isn't it like vitamin
-rich? Oh, yeah. As if that's good for you. It's
good for you. They add vitamins. Do they even
add vitamins to cyanide? It's not going to make
it any better for you. No. No, I'm joking, obviously.
But it was a ridiculous— So how did— So what
we did is we got the best nutritionists in the
country. We got Mark Hyman, and we got the nutritionists
from the best universities in the country, and
we put them all in a room. And I thought it was
going to take a month. It took 11 months because
they fought over every recommendation and everything
is cited in the source so that we know we have
good science. But, you know, some of this stuff,
because of regulatory malpractice all these years,
some of the studies simply haven't been done.
So there are knowledge gaps, which we should
not have. So now we have a food pyramid. And
because of the old food pyramid, People didn't
like the food on it, and they were going to ultra
-processed food, which was okay on the food pyramid.
So now 70 % of the food that our kids eat is
ultra -processed food. 70 % of the calories they
get, and it's just poisoning them. And they took
off the good stuff like whole milk, which is
nutrient -dense, which is feeding their brain.
We have two generations of kids that grew up
without milk, without the proper nutrients for
their brain. We have the first country in the
face of the earth. It has chronic obesity and
in the same people, malnutrition. So you have
immensely obese people and they're malnourished.
They're medically malnourished. It's because
the food pyramid was so messed up. So what's
going to happen now, Joe, is that we are going
to be able to drive that. We're going to be able
to change dietary culture. Just the food pyramid
is going to change dietary culture. And here's
how. Brooke Rollins, who's an incredible USDA
secretary, she administers $405 million a day.
She gives out food subsidies for school lunches,
the WICS program, the SNAP program, Indian Health
Services, and all of these other programs. And
so those programs now are going to get— Good
food because the dietary guidelines dictate what
they can and cannot feed kids. Military and the
VA also are changing. Now, this week I met with
a guy, Chef Robert Irvine, who is a television
chef. He's been hired by Pete Hegseth to come
in and change all the military meals. Military,
and he's already on five bases. By the end of
this month, he'll be on 20. What he's done. is
the food that we give our military is so bad
they won't eat it. So they're going out and they're
spending their money on fast food. And fast food
is not cheap. A Big Mac meal costs $12 to $14.
It's not a cheap meal. You can get a really good
food for that price. You could feed yourself
the whole day for that price with good food.
Mark Hyman's new book has a diet, $10 a day diet,
three meals, great food. Anyway, Robert Irvine
has gone into these places and he gives them
all fresh food, almost all of it locally sourced.
As it turns out, it's cheaper. The military is
spending $18 a day for three meals for each soldier.
He's spending $10 a day and giving them real
food, good food. And the lines now are around
the block and nobody's going to fast food. Everybody's
fighting to get in. And what he says. is it doesn't
cause more. We don't need any more money. We
just need to buy smarter and to be smarter about
how we do it. And, you know, we're going to be
able to do that. One of the things that we're
doing with the dietary guidelines is the SNAP
program. We have 20 states now that have applied
for SNAP waivers and have been granted so that
you can no longer get candy on SNAP. You can
no longer get soda. That was 18 percent of SNAP
purchases. So we are taking the 63 million poorest
kids in our country, giving them taxpayer funded
diabetes. And then 78 percent of them end up
on Medicaid. Many of them are being treated for
diabetes. So we're paying to give them the disease
and then we're paying to treat them for the rest
of their lives. And we're changing that. And
one of the things that Brooke is doing is she's
going to require that any retailer. that accepts
food stamps has to double the amount of real
food in their establishment. We're working with
farmers, we're working with entrepreneurs to
make sure every American can get high -quality
food that is affordable. I don't know how anybody
would be opposed to that. That all sounds fantastic.
It's weird that they are. How could you, the
way you just laid it out, how could anybody be
opposed to that? That all sounds great. Especially
for the soldiers. The fact that they were getting
terrible food that they didn't want to eat is
just, that's... that's really offensive. You
think about what you're asking of them and you're
giving them garbage that they don't even want
to eat. How do they feel that you care about
them? Well, and you know, one of the things that
Robert Irma and the chef told me, he said, you
know, it costs $9 to get a frozen salmon. It
costs $6 to get a fresh salmon. So, you know,
food, good food is actually, if you cook yourself
at home, The good food is much, much less expensive.
The problem is Americans have forgotten how to
cook. And cooking is really important because
it's important for family cohesion, for a sense
of community. It's a daily, almost sacred ritual.
And taking that away from our lives has amplified
the spiritual malaise that we're in. And one
of the things we're going to do— is to start
sending federal workers out to teach people how
to cook. They don't have the implements. They
don't have the cutting boards. They don't know
how to buy groceries. And you can go into any
big grocery store in this country. If you go
and buy a steak, it's still pretty expensive.
But if you buy the cheaper cuts, it's great meat.
And it is very, very affordable or liver or,
you know, all these alternatives. Chuck Rose.
You said, you know, how can you be against that?
I told you 20 states have applied for the SNAP
program and we've granted them SNAP waivers.
Why would you want taxpayer? If you want to drink
a Coke, you ought to be able to. We live in the
United States. We're not going to take anything
away from anybody. But the taxpayer shouldn't
be paying for it, particularly when we're paying
for it on the other end in diabetes. So this
just makes sense to anybody. But 20 states have
applied. Only two of them are blue states. Bernie
Sanders has been fighting for this for years.
But Vermont won't apply for one. And it's all
partisanship. And they're putting their hatred
of Donald Trump. ahead of their love for their
own children. And until we learn to stop doing
that, this, you know, the health care in this
country is not going to improve, at least in
those states. So what strategies, if any, could
you ever imagine that could be implemented that
would kind of unite people on these things and
get them to stop being so partisan about one
of the most important aspects of being a human
being is staying healthy? It's like love and
health. Those are the top ones that we all want.
It just seems insane. that we would choose this
as a battleground. And it seems insane that it's
connected to one party or another. It shouldn't
be. We should all be united on at least this.
And I think if people were a little healthier
and they were a little more fit, they'd probably
have a lot less anxiety, probably a lot less
conflict when it comes to political disagreements.
Things could probably be worked out more amicably,
especially among friends. It's like having good
health. improves virtually every aspect of your
life for everybody. I would say two things. The
food ties directly into your mental health. Yes.
And we now know that it's so well documented
that there's a gut -brain connection and that
depression, ADHD. Chris Palmer up at Harvard
is dramatically reducing the symptoms of schizophrenia
simply by changing people's diets. He's using
a keto diet. There are— Dramatically? Like what
kind of percentage? They're losing 30 percent
of their symptoms. Really? Just from ketones.
From keto. What about—have they done anything
with like— If the same thing is true, I mean,
you know, there are now—there's a big paper about
to come out. On losing a bipolar diet, a bipolar
diagnosis, kids who lose bipolar diagnosis simply
by changing their diet. We know that ADHD is
driven by all these food dyes and stuff, and
that's very well documented. There's all of these.
You go on the Internet and you look for studies
that show what happens when you change the food
in prisons and juvenile detention facilities.
And they, you know, they'll put it in one wing
of the prison. They'll put good food and then
they'll put the standard food in the other. And
the level of violence goes down by 40, 45, 50
percent. The use of restraints in juvenile detention
facilities goes down 75 percent. The number of
incidents dramatically drops. And so it's a public
safety issue in the prisons. And, you know, I've
been meeting now with all the prisons. Prisons
have a real problem because they're allocated
– the state prisons are allocated 60 cents a
day to feed the prisoners. And it's all – for
them it's all about shelf life. So they're just
feeding them the worst kind of poison that you
could possibly – it's all just chemicals. Oh,
my God. But, you know – Well, we've kind of given
up on the idea of rehabilitation. It's just all
about punishment. But this is also public safety.
It's guard safety. And the other thing, the answer
to your first question about how do you sort
of, you know, mitigate the polarization, I would
say the only way that you do that is by getting
people to start talking to each other. Because
that, you've got to be able to find common ground
with other people. And if you don't talk to them,
you don't see their humanity. Right. And that's
one of the things that you do that is so great,
which is you bring a lot of people on here who
you disagree with and you have a civil conversation
about them and you show your curiosity about
them and you get to hear their rationale. And
a lot of times I'll listen to somebody on this
show. I'll say, I don't like this guy. And then
I'll listen to his rationale and I'll think,
oh, actually he's making a lot of sense. And
we have to stop. hating people because of the
label on them and start listening. And it's really
important we do that now because these algorithms
are designed to drive us all apart. And we've
always had political polarization in this country.
I mean, I grew up during the 60s, and there were
bombs going off and people being shot. It was
very, very violent and vitriolic when my dad
was... And the polarization probably was the
worst since the American Civil War. But today,
when it is amplified by the algorithms, it's
hard to see where it's going to end up in a good
place unless we start learning to talk to each
other. It's not just the algorithm. It's also
the method of communication. When you're only
talking to people through like angry tweets back
and forth with each other, you were saying like
… Sit down and talk to people. No one's doing
that anymore. There's a few FaceTime conversations
going on. You see your friends if you go out
with them. People are not talking that much anymore,
and they're not sitting down and talking. And
when you do, everyone's distracted. Everyone
has their phones out. Everyone's checking text
messages. I'll tell you one of the most important
things that we're doing right now as part of
the MAHA legislation from my agency. We're going
state by state, and we're asking them. to do
bell -to -bell legislation. And 26 states have
now already done it, so more than half the states,
so that kids can't use cell phones in schools.
I went to a school in Loudoun County the other
day, and the states love them. I went to Loudoun
County, and, you know, the students had fought
and fought against this, against getting their
cell phones. The way they do it, all of the schools,
school districts and states do it differently.
But in that state, they can bring their cell
phone to school, but they have to leave it in
their backpack. And if the parent calls and needs
to talk to them, they can do it. But I walked
into a cafeteria, 600 kids in that cafeteria,
and they're all talking to each other. They're
sitting across the table. Nobody's looking at
their laps. The parents came that day. I polled
the students and I said, how many of you think
this is a good idea? And they all put their hands
up and they said, we all hated it for the first
two weeks and now we love it. The parents said,
it's the best thing that ever happened. My kid
is not driving with their cell phone in the car
anymore because they know they can live without
it. We're eating dinner with the family and we're
actually having conversations. And then the teachers
in the schools love it because the disciplinary
problems go down and the test scores go through
the roof because they're focusing on work. So
it's just like a no -brainer. But again, it's
the blue states that are the hardest to convince
to do it because they see it as a Trump part
of the demonization of Trump being the tyrant
or whatever. It's just so stupid to not recognize
the kids are distracted. It's just one of those
things. Why does that have to be a right or a
left issue? It's stupid. This is a United States
issue. The best way to have a group of people
that succeed in this world is make it as clear
a path for them as possible. And as soon as you
allow them to use their phone all day, it's too
addictive. No one can put them down. You're going
to lose 30 % of your concentration or more easily,
I would imagine. The fact that that would be
a partisan thing is just nuts. It just shows
how goofy we are. I don't know how you get people
to talk though. I mean other than – I mean I
do it on a podcast but that's my job. I don't
know how many conversations I'd be having with
people who I was politically opposed to or ideologically
opposed to or just didn't see eye to eye with
them and wanted to know how they think. I don't
know how many opportunities I would ever even
get to do that. What you're doing is so important
and now there's a thousand people imitating you.
really good podcast, but it's teaching people
to have conversations. I mean, you are the best
teacher, mentor on that, and people admire you.
I have seven kids, and they grew up with devices
and stuff. And I would look, you know, I'd slap
them out of their hand. And also they couldn't
concentrate on long, you know, long points, long
conversations. They're like, get to the point.
You know, I only got five seconds. You got to
make your point. And then I see them sitting
for three and a half hours and listening to a
Rogan podcast. That was a cultural phenomenon.
That was a cultural change. This generation of
kids, I have so much hope for because they grew
up with that. And, you know, they want it. So
I do have a lot of hope that we're going to be
able to do this. And then, you know, I think
Charlie Kirk did that, too, as an example to
a lot of those kids. Because whether you agree
with him or not, and he had very strong opinions
that people, you know, consider terrible. But
the one thing that he really did is he. talked
to people he didn't agree with, and he always
gave them the microphone and allowed them to
amplify their voice, and then he had a civility,
and he talked to them, and he used logic a lot
of times destructively, but not in an angry way.
And so I think, you know, he was teaching people
how to have conversations again. You're teaching
people how to have conversations again, and it's,
you know, I think that's... You know, one of
the big hopes that I have for the future is that
people learn to talk to each other with people
with whom they disagree. It would be nice. But
there's also a real genuine problem today in
the marketplace of outrage that a lot of people
… A lot of their podcasts are just focused almost
entirely on outrage and of like having arguments
and screaming matches with people and, you know,
putting people down and not having civil discourse,
but trying to win, trying to dominate someone
in an argument, you know, trying to squash people.
And I guess in a sense, some of that is really
good because it exposes bad ideas, but it just
encourages that kind of discourse. where if someone's
ideologically opposed to you, they are the enemy
and you want to destroy them. And I'm like...
OK. They're just a human being. Like find out
why they got to where they are. That is a different
perspective than you have and why you got to
where you are and try to figure out there's a
middle ground in there. Like what what do you
believe? Why do you believe that? And find out
why and ask them and don't don't cut them off.
Let them talk. Let them express themselves. Help
them if you can. Try to figure out what makes
someone actually think instead of just thinking
that your ideas are a part of you. They're just
ideas. Like they're not you. Like some ideas
you can hold in your mind and they're bad for
you. You haven't examined them. You're acting
on them like they're doctrine. And then you're
stuck with that idea because you've already espoused
it so many times. You don't want to be a flip
-flopper. And so people get mad. And you get
this weird cycle of shitty communication and
nobody ever breaks out of it and nothing ever
gets done. And there's no common ground that's
ever achieved. And the only way you're going
to ever break that is to stop talking to people
like that. You've got to just talk to them. Instead
of talk to them like they're the enemy, just
talk to them like they're a fellow human being
about some ideas. And just treat them with respect.
Talk to them like a person that in any other
circumstance maybe even could be your friend.
Just talk to them. People can do that. It's possible.
It just takes discipline. You have to learn how
to do it. It took me a while. It took me a long
time to learn how to talk to people better. But
it can be done. It's technique. But as prevalent
as that kind of vitriol is in the podcast world,
it's incomparable to what's happening on television
because there are no conversations on television.
Right. That's more of what I was getting at,
honestly, is there's some shows that do that.
But like some of these CNN shows, it's just these
crazy ideological battles. And yet also, guys.
Pro tip, you can't have fucking six people at
a table all yelling out for seven minutes. You
don't have enough time to get a real point across,
and it becomes a battle of, like, who's got the
best prepared sound bites or who's got the best
snarky quip. It's stupid. It's a stupid way to
talk about things. I mean, Cheryl went on— The
View? Yeah, The View. And it was that. It wasn't
like— Like you say, let's have a congenial conversation
with people and allow them to express themselves
and to be fun and funny. Yes. Yeah, well, just
have a conversation with someone. If you disagree
with them about certain things, like they disagree
with her, it would have been far more productive
to have a one -on -one conversation instead of
this gaggle of hands squawking all at her. It's
just like you see it over and over again when
they oppose somebody. It's like they're all chiming
in and it's just not. The way you could ever
like thoroughly cover a subject and they're limited
by their format. That format is very limiting.
It's a shitty format where you go to a commercial.
predetermined times, period, no matter what.
Like maybe you got a little leeway here or there,
but you've got to get that commercial in. And
that's crazy because if you're in the middle
of talking, a lot of points take a long time
to flesh out. Like just think about all the stuff
you just explained about Medicaid. Imagine if
you try to do that. You can't. You can't. You
can't do it. And they would try to stop you.
You're too in the weeds. No one's going to pay
attention to this. It's like I don't think that's
true, and I think we've learned that. because
of podcasts because there was no production there
was no executives there was no one there people
were just putting on a webcam and talking and
so we realized like well people actually do like
conversations still they just don't get a lot
of them not real ones you know you get interviews
where someone has like a sheet of questions you
know you get where someone is playing a role.
You're playing a role of a person who interviews
people. You don't really give a shit about what
this person has to say. But people do want connection.
They still do. And the fact that we don't get
it from social media, but most of our time is
in social media, is just accelerating this detachment
we have from each other. And that's what people
have to get past. I don't know how to do it.
Tell everybody to start their own podcast. You
know, you and I were talking before we came in
here about Larry King. Yes. He did that. There
were a lot of people in the 70s and 80s, David
Susskind and, you know, all of these other people
who were actually having conversations. Yeah,
Larry King was great. Dick Cavett. I love when
he asked DJ Khaled. how'd you gain all the weight?
What did he say? He said, I ate too much. What
do you want me to say? That's such a crazy question.
How did you gain all the weight? Like, what,
Larry? What are you talking about? That's crazy.
That's a wild question to ask someone. But, you
know, he would just have a conversation with
you, you know, and I think people have a hunger
for that. And a lot of this infighting comes
from no face -to -face communication. I think
when people get a chance, especially if it's
not performative, that's part of the problem
with the Charlie Kirk stuff or some of the other
things that people do in front of a crowd. Things
become very performative when there's a bunch
of people watching and cheering and then you
know how the audience feels and you play to them
a little bit. That's probably not the best way
to talk about stuff. And I think human beings
naturally understand one -on -one conversations.
We've had them for all of human history. So when
you get a... chance to hear people talk one -on
-one for hours at a time, it expands your understanding
of the world. Now I know how you feel about things.
I know, at least for this brief three -hour conversation,
I get more of a sense of how you approach things.
And then people put that into their own mind
and go, maybe I should approach things a little
bit differently. Maybe I should think about things
a little bit differently. And we miss that. We're
missing that. And social media robs you of that.
It gives you the exact opposite of that. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, you know what Charlie Kirk was
doing? You're right. You know, it was it was
less of a conversation and more of a sometimes
it was like in the ring. You know, it was like
being in a ring. But. It's a lot better than
what's happening elsewhere, which is just blanket
censorship of people and not any willingness
to just shutting people down and canceling them.
Yeah, 100 percent. Well, that's another weird
thing that that's a Democratic Party impulse
because. It was the opposite of the Democratic
Party I grew up with, you know, which was unafraid
of any debate. My uncle, my father said we should
be able to debate. We should be able to win these
debates in the marketplace of ideas. If we can't,
then we need to examine ourselves. It was a core
tenet of the Democratic Party. Yeah. And, you
know, the unfortunate shift in that, it's just
like, you know, I remember during the Bush administration
when the FCC was going after Howard Stern. It
was it was this huge thing. They were trying
to close down Howard Stern because Howard Stern
was very critical of Bush. And it was like he
was the guy out there fighting for free speech.
And they were getting fined like enormous fines,
enormous fines for things that he had said. You
know, they deemed to be obscene, you know, and
that was a right wing thing. And we always thought
of it as a right wing thing. And when you see
what's happening today. Just like any the wanting
silence of your political opponents is the. dumbest
way to cut off your own hand. It's so dumb because
if you can't see that this could be used against
you, if someone else gets into a position of
power, if all of a sudden some enormous right
-wing corporation buys these social media platforms
and only pushes right -wing agendas and silences
all left -wing agendas, like, do you know how
fucking crazy that is to just give that kind
of power willingly to an anonymous group of people
that you supposedly align to because you're in
the same tribe? It's the dumbest thing ever.
And the fact that people on the left weren't
outraged when they read the Twitter files and
found out how much involvement there was in silencing
real information and removing people who were
from Stanford and MIT. The White House ordered
me to be removed from Instagram. I lost a million
followers. Insane. 37 hours after he took the
oath of office, swearing to uphold the Constitution,
they were ordering Mark Zuckerberg to take me
down. And then you look at what's happening in
England now, you know, people going to jail for
Twitter posts. Twelve thousand people this year.
Twelve thousand in the last year. And this was
the Magna Carta was, you know, written. And now
there's now it's just a. It's just a dictatorship.
Well, they got rid of trial by jury except for
murder and rape and a couple other things. Now
it's just a judge. So, you know, whatever it
is, if it's a social media infraction, if it's
there's no reasonable, you know, judge by jury
of your peers. No, you're you're you're getting
judged by a judge. And that's not Soviet system.
It's like Kafka. I just can't believe how quick
it happened. When you look at the social media
arrests, they were always disturbing. Like if
you go back even four or five years, they had
quite a few of them a year. But it really ramped
up, really ramped up over the last year or so.
And it's just insane to watch. And a lot of it
is criticism of immigration, like legitimate
criticism of immigration and legitimate criticism
of crimes that have been committed. And people
outraged, which is completely normal. Doing anything
about that, they want to arrest people for complaining,
and it's just really weird to watch. Yeah. It's
going to get worse with the AI. It's scary. Well,
it's just strange that they couldn't do anything
to stop that from happening and that anybody.
anybody that's reasonable would be willing to
let that happen because their side is imposing
it. That seems like an existential threat to
all critical thinking, all communication and
debate. As soon as you start arresting people
for opinions, that's crazy. You're getting nuts.
Anything that you deem might incite violence
or outrage. People are outraged. They have a
right to be outraged. If you can put them in
a cage because they're outraged, that's nuts.
That's really nuts. Now they have a pub law.
Do you know this one? No. Oh, find that, Jamie.
They're trying to pass this thing. I don't know
if they passed it, where someone's – I don't
want to speak out of turn. I don't want to fuck
this up because it was disturbing enough without
me misinterpreting it. But the idea was – To
stop people from saying things on social media
that you get arrest for, stop them from saying
those kind of things in pubs. Where is this?
In England? Yes. See if you can find it. I know
I saved it, but it'll take me too long to pull
it up. You find anything like that? I'm trying
to make sure it's... Legit? Yeah. I mean... I
wouldn't imagine it's not. I mean, it's not outside
the realm of what they're capable of doing if
they're arresting 12 ,000 people a year for social
media posts. If that was happening in America
and they were only arresting Republicans, I don't
think you'd hear a peep out of the Democrats.
I think they think it's important. We have to
stop misinformation. Yeah. It passed? No, I don't
think it passed. You don't think it passed? I'm
not going to find out if it passed or not. Okay,
so what is the act? What were they? Legislation.
What was the, what were they trying to, okay,
point, free speech in UK pubs, employer responsibilities.
It requires employers to take reasonable steps
to prevent staff from experiencing harassment
by third parties such as customers. Well, that's
normal, right? You don't want to be harassed
by a customer. Concerns have been raised that
debates on, for instance, gender identity or
political matters could lead to staff complaints,
resulting in patrons being asked to leave if
the behavior is deemed aggressive or harassing.
It should not be misinterpreted as a ban on lawful,
polite, or controversial speech. Who's to decide
what's controversial, though? Third -party harassment.
Legislation focuses on addressing harassment
rather than banning specific topics of conversation
entirely. Just any regulation of conversation
is nuts. It's one thing you're harassing the
staff. I've never known a pub owner who would
allow. people to come in and harass his staff
he already has an economic and management incentive
to not allow that you know it's not the kind
of thing you need to legislate but to say that
someone doesn't feel safe if people are having
a civil conversation about gender identity you
don't feel safe if you work there and that you're
getting harassed by people's opinions that you
don't agree with well that's where things get
weird because then And as we've seen, there's
a lot of people that get really triggered about
a lot of things that are pretty normal for most
folks. You know, microaggressions, dumb shit.
There's a lot of people that just want to be
offended. And if this is a law, that could lead
to a lot more problems. It's just a slippery
slope and they're not going in the right direction.
And I don't know how they course correct if they've
fallen this far that quickly. 12 ,000 arrests
is crazy. That's a crazy amount of people go
to jail for social media posts. And it encourages
self -censorship so you don't get a real sense
of what people want or don't want. Because people
don't want to be involved. They don't want to
go to jail. They don't want to take a chance.
The framers of the Constitution, free speech
was everything to them. And they put it in the
First Amendment because they knew all the other
rights and guarantees were dependent on it. If
you have a government that can silence its opponents,
it has a license for any kind of atrocity. It's
just shocking that all other Western nations
haven't adopted that. Well, most of them don't
have constitutions. It's so crazy. It's just
so ridiculous. It's so ridiculous that free speech,
which is like we all agree, especially in America,
it's one of the most important things, the only
way to find out what's real and what's not. You
got to let people talk it out, you know? I mean,
when you're living in a world where the government
has the power to dictate what's real and what's
not real, and they don't have an obligation to
be correct, you got a real problem. And if there's
no consequences for them being incorrect and
they've silenced correct speech, they've gotten
away with something that's real slippery and
real dangerous. And when there's a lot of money
involved and a lot of businesses involved...
I typed it into perplexity and it... This gives
a little context on it because the pubs were
the same. The pub thing reverses a 2013 removal
of third party harassment liability, making pubs
liable if staffs overhear comments deemed harassing
based on protected characteristics like sexual
race. Critics call it a banter ban, fearing landlords
will police conversations to avoid lawsuits,
chilling speech in social venues. That makes
it sound like if someone was doing that. the
business was getting in trouble versus the person
who was saying it. Right. So they removed a third
-party harassment liability. So they removed
the pub owner being in trouble. They removed
that. Because it says it passed when I was looking
it up. It said it passed a couple months ago.
So that makes pub owners liable again. So removed
a 2013 removal of third -party harassment liability.
Made them liable. I don't think – I think it's
back to – reverses that, reverses making them
liable. No, no, no. No, it reverses the removal
of the third -party harassment liability. So
they removed the liability, now making pubs liable.
So it now makes them liable if they overhear
comments. So what this does is it encourages
the pub itself to censor people, which makes
sense. I mean if you all of a sudden can now
sue a pub that you went into and you didn't like
this conversation about gender identity that
was taking place next to you, you have the basis
of a lawsuit now. Yes. So now the incentive is.
The pub owner to go out and police all the conversations
so that if anybody if anybody crosses a guardrail,
you know, the pub owner now has to go in and
interrupt them, which is not a good thing. If
you weren't a charitable person, you could imagine
that there are certain groups that would have
people go to places, have conversations and set
up a lawsuit. You could just you could commit
fraud if the pub is liable. You pay some kook
to go in there and start yelling about transsexuals,
and then next thing you know, you collect a lawsuit.
That's not outside of what I think a shady person
would do. If you think about what you've just
talked about with all the Medicare fraud and
all the other fraud that we know has happened
in the world, this is a giant loophole. This
is a giant loophole for people to come in and
sue people and silence everybody's speech. And
the fact that this is a... Not being recognized.
It's very disturbing that people don't understand
human behavior. Very weird. They're willing to
accept this kind of stuff. When you look at the
challenges of getting things done, what has been
the most frustrating in terms of what you wanted
to get done and what you were actually able to
get done or in the process of getting done? I
mean. I've been surprised by how much President
Trump has supported me on this stuff. Because,
you know, I'm going after the biggest, you know,
big pharma, big insurance. Big food. Big food.
And these have all been, you know, those were
all taboos for every administration, Democratic,
Republican. There was little incremental things
that you could do. under Democratic administrations,
but nothing like this has ever happened. You
know, I mean, the agreement we made with the
pharmaceutical industry could not have happened
under any other president. The MFN agreement,
the most favored nation. And the way that that
worked is, you know, we've been paying for the
last 40 years the highest price in the world
for medicine. We have 4 .2 percent of the world's
population here and over 70 percent of pharmaceutical
profits and revenues come from the United States.
Why is that? We do buy more drugs than anybody,
but it's because we pay higher prices. We pay
two to three to five times what they're paying
in Europe. For example, and President Trump likes
to talk about this. At Ozempic, the list price
was $1 ,350 in America. You could buy the same
drug in any pharmacy in London for $88. And it's
made in the same factory in New Jersey. And the
reason that was allowed to happen is the Europeans
just said, we're not going to allow, we're not
going to pay any more for it. They would set
the price. And that was the maximum. There's
a lot of drugs they don't have. There's a lot
of cancer drugs. They don't have in Europe because
they just wouldn't pay the price. And so President
Trump, you know, every president has vowed to
stop this. Clinton tried to stop it. Obama, Bush,
all of them tried. And Biden all said, we're
going to get rid of the MFN price. And none of
them did anything on it. And President Trump
literally called me sometimes once a day, called
late at night, 1130 at night, and, you know,
say, where are you on MFN? And we ended up getting
the, it seemed to me even, it seemed insurmountable.
But he said, I'm going to use tariffs. I'm going
to force the Europeans to raise their drug prices.
And because he didn't want to, he didn't, we
had enough leverage. on the pharmaceutical companies
because of our Medicaid and Medicare programs.
We could pretty much force them to lower their
prices. But it would put them out of business.
And he wants us to continue to be the center
for innovation in this country. And he also wanted
the companies to reshore all their production
so that we're making all the drugs here and they're
not making it elsewhere in the world. And so
we sat down with them for months. We came to
agreements with 16 of the 17 pharmaceutical companies.
Now Americans are getting the lowest prices in
the world. If somebody lowers the price in Europe,
we get that price or lower. And people can get
that today on Trump Rx. They can go for the most
popular medications and get the cheapest price
in the world. And not only that, but the pharmaceutical
industry, because we gave them certainty and
because President Trump forced the European countries
to raise the price that their citizens pay for
drugs, the companies actually did well. They
increased stock values by $1 .3 trillion among
them. And they've all agreed to ensure their
production. So Lilly is building six plants here,
new plants, including one of the biggest API
facilities in the world. The API are the pharmaceutical
ingredients that, you know, we ran out of during
COVID. We need to be making them here because
otherwise other countries can blackmail us. Pfizer,
Merck, they're all building. Big facilities here
and drug production is now going to come to the
United States. We are going to be the center
of the world in terms of drug production. And
those negotiations were very, very tough and
they were extraordinarily complex. We were you
know, we have a really good suite of of talented
individuals, high caliber individuals who've
left billion dollar businesses. One of them is
a guy called Chris Klump, who's immensely talented.
He walked away from a company that does data
management for 85 percent of the hospitals in
this country. And, you know, he walked away from
a billion dollar company, divested, lost a lot
of money to come just because he wants to improve
things. He ran the negotiations and the pharmaceutical
companies fell in love with him because they
realized they could trust him. And we worked
out this extraordinary agreement where now Americans
have gone from paying the most in the world for
drugs to the least in the developed world for
drugs. And that's going to change everybody's
experience. Can I ask you how that applies? Is
it the same if someone has insurance or if they
don't have insurance? How does insurance bill
it versus how does someone buy on their own?
It's going to lower price for everybody. Anybody
can go on TrumpRx, whether they have insurance
or not, and they can get it there. And they would
buy it themselves. Yeah. And so it would be at
a substantially lower price than they would have
had in the past. Exactly. They'd buy it themselves.
But what if people are just getting it through
insurance? Does insurance lower it as well? Yeah,
the copay is lowered. Okay. And, you know, we
had the first woman to buy. A drug on it, the
first customer was a woman who has been trying
for years to do IVF. The drug cost $4 ,000, and
now I think it costs something like $600. Really?
So it's going to allow women. One out of every
three women in this country does not have as
many children as she wants, and she can't have
more. And IVF is going to be really important
because our birth rate has just dropped. I mean
dramatically this year. They dropped to 1 .75.
Yeah, people don't understand that. We've had
a few conversations on this podcast about population
decline. And people just – most people are not
aware of it. They just see how many people are
on the highway. They think we're overcrowded.
They don't understand this replacement number
that we're going to need unless we want our population
to climb. is in a different situation than other
countries. Japan is in total crisis. China is
in an existential crisis because its population
is going to drop dramatically. South Korea? Yeah.
But people want to immigrate here so we can make
up the deficit through immigration. And we have
that advantage. But, you know, it's still the
birth rate has dropped. It dropped from 1 .9
this year to 1 .75. And that affects Social Security.
It affects, you know, it makes it so that the
cliff for Social Security was pushed ahead by
another year because of that drop in birth rates.
It's not a good thing. And, you know, American
women want to have babies and a lot of a third
of them cannot have as many children as they
want. What was the pushback when it came to things
like removal of dyes? The removal of dyes. Again,
we were, I think, because of President Trump's
leadership. We were able to convene the industry
and talk to them about it. And a lot of them
came in and said, yeah, you know, we know we've
got to change. Really? Yeah, the only one that
really stood. Did you ever ask them, why didn't
you do it a long time ago? Well, they didn't
have options. But didn't most of them, like for
cereal, for example, didn't they have to have
no unnatural dyes when they sent it to Canada?
Yeah, the ones in Canada. In our country, we
hadn't approved a bunch of them. We only had
one or two vegetable -based dyes. Marty McCary,
who's done a fantastic job at FDA, has now fast
-tracked it this year, seven new ones. So we're
working with the industry to make sure they have
the dyes, and they're supposed to get rid of
all the dyes by the end of this year. And that's
going to— And so instead they'll use just food
-based dyes? Yeah, just vegetable and mineral
-based dyes. And that's another thing that we
did, again, through two things that we did through
convening industry because of President Trump's
convening power. We fixed the prior authorization.
So one of the most frustrating things that people
go through when they encounter the health care
system. is that they have to wait for prior authorization
from their insurance company. So you go in, your
doctor tells you you need a knee replacement,
and then it takes you six months for the insurance
company to approve the surgery. And, you know,
it was infuriating for people and really devastating
and heartbreaking for a lot of them. We got the
biggest insurance companies representing 80 %
of the American public all voluntarily agreed
to eliminate prior authorization for almost all
their procedures. It's a very small number now.
I think 15 % of the procedures still have it.
And those are procedures we want prior authorization
because there's a potential for abuse. For example,
with spinal surgeries, a lot of people don't
need the surgery. And Medicaid and Medicare wants
to make sure that they actually need that surgery
and it's beneficial to them. But for all the
other ones, you will now know at point of care
whether or not you're insured. So you go to your
doctor. He says you need a knee surgery. Before
you leave his office, you'll know whether the
insurance company approves it or not. And that's
going to dramatically change the medical experience.
The top tech companies together, and we ended
up final agreement with 405 of them who agreed
to stop information blocking. So your medical
records are owned by you, but you can't get access
to them a lot of times. Most of the time, the
data company won't give them to you. So we've
got them all to agree to stop doing that. So
by the end of this year, every American will
be able to get their medical records on their
cell phone. And that's going to dramatically
change the medical experience. It's going to
save lives because if you get hit – you live
in New Jersey. You get hit by a car in Portland,
Oregon. You go to the hospital and you spend
the first two hours while you're bleeding out,
making out clipboards. Now – or you come in unconscious
and they don't know what to do with you. They
don't know anything about you. Now your medical
records are on your cell phone. They can see
if you have allergies. They can see what your
blood type is. They can look at all of your previous
medical records and make good decisions about
how to treat you. And also, you're going to be
able to sync that with food purchases apps. You'll
be able to go into a grocery store, and the app
will tell you, this one is bad for you. This
choice is bad for you, and I'll offer you a better
choice, et cetera. And there's an app like that,
Yucca, now. But there's a lot of them coming
online now. What is it called? Yucca is the one.
I think 50 % of the people in France use Yucca.
Do you spell it? I think it's Y -U -C -C -A.
Y -U -K -A. I don't know. You can look it up.
We use it. My wife used it. You go into the grocery
store. You go into the grocery store and you
put it on the barcode and it rates each of the
products about whether or not they're, you know,
whether it's good or a healthy one. And then
it makes you a recommendation for a healthier
one if it's bad for you. And that is going to
change the food culture in our country because
the company is already changing their ingredients
so that they can get better scores from the Yuck
app and from other apps that are like it. It's
not the only one out there. But what about preservatives
in processed foods? They're always going to exist,
right? You're always going to have a certain
amount of preservatives in processed foods. Well,
I mean … First of all, we're not going to take
processed foods away from people. We're going
to I think we're going to change the amount of
processed foods. One is by April, we will have
a federal definition of ultra processed foods.
First time in history. And as soon as we do that.
We're going to do front of package food labeling.
So every food in your grocery store will have
a label on it. It'll have maybe a green light
or red light or yellow light telling you whether
or not it's going to be good for you. Oh, wow.
And that, you know, and it's going to evaluate
all of the ingredients, et cetera. So, you know,
I think we're not going to change this overnight,
but we're going to change it pretty quickly.
And if you want to be healthy. We're going to
give you the information to take control of your
own health. People just don't want to be healthy
and don't care. There's not much you can do about
it. Most Americans want to be healthy. We've
seen that when they're allowed to make a healthy
choice, they do not want to be eating this poison.
Yeah, and ironically, the people that don't want
to be healthy, they feel that way because they're
not healthy. If they were healthy, they would
want to stay healthy. They're just part of the
reason why they're feeling this way is because
they're unhealthy. That's why they don't care.
Well, it's also like the mountain is so big.
If you're 300 pounds, you're like, oh, my God,
it's so much work to do something about this
and not fall back on the old behaviors. And I
don't know, other than by example, how you can
get a large group of people to go along with
that. When someone like Jelly Roll loses, I think
it's close to 300 pounds. When someone like that
does that, that's going to help a lot of people.
So that's kind of an example of a guy who just
completely changed his lifestyle around, changed
what he eats. And he did it without GLPs. Yes,
he did. That's pretty amazing. Which brings me
to peptides. Where are we at right now on peptides
and getting them regulated and making sure it's
not this weird gray area? Because we know they're
effective. But we also know that there's a lot
of pushback on peptides. Yeah. I mean I'm a big
fan of peptides. I've used them myself and used
them with really good effect on a couple of injuries.
What happened was there were 19 peptides that
you can – just so people understand, there's
a – there was a law written that to – allow compounding
pharmacies to make compounds that were part of
approved drugs. So, you know, part of approved
ingredients of approved drugs to make them individually
for patients who did not have access to the particular
formulation that they needed to fit them. Maybe
they had an allergy to the commercial brand or
whatever. And the compounding pharmacies and
peptides was part of that group. There were 19
peptides that were widely formulated by compounding
pharmacies during the Biden administration. They
illegally move those to category two, which says
do not formulate. It was illegal because they're
not supposed to do that unless there's a safety
signal. And they didn't have a safety signal.
They're not allowed to look at efficacy. They're
not allowed to say, well, We don't believe these
are efficacious or whatever. They can only look
at safety. They move those to category two, which
means not formulate. What happened? There was
huge demand for peptides. And so a black market
came out. And the black market is run by companies
that say that they're making the peptides for
animal use or for research purposes. Peptide
now basically completely replaced the legal market.
The legal market for peptides, the pharmacies,
the compounding pharmacies are getting those
peptides from FDA -inspected facilities and some
of them in India and China. But they were the
same one that the pharmaceutical industries are
buying them and we inspect those. You know you're
getting a good product. You know you're getting
what you bought, what was advertised. With the
gray market, you have no idea. And a lot of this
stuff that we've looked at is just, you know,
is very, very substandard. Oh, I'm very anxious
to move. Probably not all of those peptides.
Some of them are in litigation. But about 14
of them back to. making them more accessible.
And FDA is in the middle of, I think, within
a couple of weeks, we will have announced some
kind of new action. And my hope is that they're
going to end up with, they're still looking at
the science. My hope is that they're going to
get moved to a place where people have access
from ethical suppliers. That's ultimately the
problem with all this black market stuff, right?
A lot of people are getting bogus peptides and
they don't have any idea how they – if they work,
whether to test them. They just take a chance.
They take a risk. They get a little flyer in
their email or something and they hear from somebody
else. I got it from this place. They don't even
know and they try it and you're getting nonsense
bogus peptides. I mean we created the black market.
Yeah. Which we do with everything. And it's a
very dangerous black market. Which they've done
during Prohibition. They're doing it right now
with everything else. It's unfortunate. I know
there's been some talk about psychedelics. And
I know that in particular Ibogaine, what's going
on in Texas with the Ibogaine Initiative where
former Governor Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard
have been … Helping a lot of veterans, a lot
of people with like serious opioid addictions.
And this is the plan to have this and run some
programs where you have this very effective way
of getting people off addictions that we have
for some reason banned in America up until these
initiatives. I think. There's some stuff that
can help a lot of people. I mean, how many people
are addicted to opioids in this country? It's
pretty high. How many people are alcoholics?
48 ,000. 48 million. Have you looked into the
Ibogaine stuff? Yeah. What's your thoughts on
it? I don't know enough, and I don't think it's
well -documented enough about whether it's a
long -term impact on addiction. But in terms
of just sort of the field of psilocybin and MDMA,
There are lots and lots of good studies now that
clearly demonstrate that or strongly suggest
that it is effective against PTSD. PTSD. Yeah,
PTSD, sorry. And, you know, also some forms of
depression, et cetera. In my agency and over
at VA, Doug Collins' agency is very anxious to
get a rule out there that will allow these kind
of studies, will allow access under therapeutic
settings, particularly to the military soldiers
who have suffered these injuries to get access
to these products. We're working through that
process now. From Marty McCary. I mean we're
all working on it and trying to make it happen.
It would be great to extend that to police officers
too probably. Yeah. I mean a lot of the same
type of PTSD they experience. It just doesn't
get brought up as much. And if you can treat
depression without using SSRIs, putting somebody
on lifetime sentence to SSRIs. You can treat
them. There's a number of things, not just psychedelics,
but a number of interventions that we're looking
at that are rapid interventions are more transformative
than the way that psychedelics seem to rewire
your brain. And so we're looking at that as an
entire category of interventions that people
ought to be able to study, ought to have good
access to, and we should get it out to the public
as quickly as possible. What would be the hurdles
to something like that? I think that we're going
to get it done. So how would that be implemented?
Would it be implemented in a clinical setting?
Would it be somewhere that— Well, for some of
them, you know, for some of them, it would be
that you can do, you know, to encourage more
clinical trials. In other words, it would be
very strong guidelines. I mean, this is what
we're envisioning, so I can't tell you exactly
what we're going to do. But very, very strong
guidelines, therapeutic guidelines. So how they're
applied, what kind of follow up, because a lot
of these things rewire your brain. If you don't
do follow up, it doesn't work or you have a failure
rate. So, you know, those kind of protocols are
all stuff that we've been developing and studying.
And, you know, I think most of the people in
the administration are anxious to make this happen
as quickly as possible. And I know. Doug Collins
over at the VA already has, I think, 21 studies
going over there, and they're very, very promising.
And what are they using at the VA? I think they're
using combinations of MDMA and psilocybin, maybe
using Ibogaine. And, you know, I think they're
looking at a number of things, including Iowa.
They shot down something fairly recently in California
where they were going to decriminalize. Were
they going to decriminalize psilocybin or they
were going to allow it for clinical use? But
I think the problem that they had was they didn't
say we're completely opposed to it. They said
there's no guidelines in terms of like how is
it going to be clinically applied, who are going
to be the people, what's the dosage. Yeah. You
need those guidelines because you don't want
to make the wild west. Exactly. You're going
to have horror stories overnight because people,
as you know. You know, some people can have very,
very bad experiences on that. Also, some people
are on medications and they should be very aware
that this medication would go really badly with
X amount of whatever. Right. So, I mean, you
know, we're looking at ways to get it done so
that it's in a very controlled setting. And so
would you envision a place like that, like once
it's implemented, where someone who's suffering
from depression or PTSD, regardless of whether
they're a soldier or cop or just a regular person,
could be able to go to a place like that and
get treatment? For me, you know, personally,
I would like to see that. We need to move in
baby steps with this because you don't want to
create a situation where people are getting hurt.
And you don't want to create a situation where
mentally unstable people snap, which can happen.
Which can happen. Yeah. These are very powerful
tools you're working with. It's like everything
else. You can do it wrong. It just makes sense
that if you had less depressed people, more happy
people, more people connected, more people that
can kind of let go of whatever traumatic experience
they went through and just live a more joyful,
productive life, which many people that have
taken these substances have experienced. Like
it's not a cure -all for everything. It's not
going to fix everybody. It's not even for everybody.
But you should deny people access. You shouldn't
have a soldier. who has given everything for
the country, who has suffered terribly, who has
to go to Tijuana to get these treatments, who
has to leave our country in order to get the
treatments. It doesn't make any sense. No, it
doesn't, especially when so many of them have
come back with these stories. Guys, Sean Ryan,
a bunch of my friends have done it. And I had
a good friend who – my friend Ed Clay who runs
the CPI down in Tijuana, the Cellular Performance
Institute, which is an amazing stem cell clinic
down there. He went down there because he hurt
his back and he got on pills and he couldn't
get off them. Did Ibogaine got off them? He's
like, oh, my God. Like more people have to be
aware of this. This really works. This is a thing
that has been shown. I think it's in the 80 percent.
when you do one treatment where people don't
relapse, and it's in a 90 % range with two treatments.
I mean, it's incredibly effective. There's nothing
like it. And yet we've been denied it. It also
has, like, no chance of you being addicted to
it. It's a terrifying experience, apparently,
or at least very uncomfortable. It takes 24 hours.
Nobody wants to hop in and do it again. It's
not like, hey, let's party and take Ibogaine.
It's an ordeal. It's an ordeal. Exactly. And
that ordeal is extremely beneficial to people,
but also like severs the impulse of addiction
in a lot of people. It's very successful at it.
Yeah. I mean, I had a family member whose life
was transformed by it. And, you know, I've been
in recovery for 43 years. So and I go to a meeting
every day. Oh, it's pretty hard to convince me
that you can fix what's wrong with you by taking
something outside of you. But I have seen so
much overwhelming anecdotal evidence but also
clinical studies that attest to the effectiveness
under some circumstances with some people or
these. These medicines, you know, and I think
you've got Jay Bhattacharya at NIH and Marty
McCary at FDA who are all, you know, doing whatever
they can to make this happen. Yeah. Well, I sincerely
hope that more people consider it. And I think
one of the big hopes that we have is when you
have someone like former Texas Governor Rick
Perry, who's a Republican, looking at this instead
of from like. For the longest time, that was
a left -wing perspective, right? Legalized marijuana,
legalized psychedelics. You didn't hear about
it from former Republican governors like Rick
Perry. But when he sees the benefit that it has
with veterans, which he cares very deeply about
the veteran community, he's like, no, this is
not something to ignore just because it's connected
to hippies. I don't know if you remember this,
but Hunter Thompson, during whatever election
he covered in Fear and Loathing on the campaign
trail. 1973. When he put out that rumor that
Ed Muskie was addicted to Ibogaine. Brazilian
witch doctors were coming and giving him Ibogaine.
It ruined that guy's career. But it's so funny
that he chose that drug because it's like no
one's addicted to that. That's not the risk.
The risk is heart attacks. The risk is you have
to have your heart monitored while you're doing
it. It's very stressful for a lot of people.
But on a clinical setting, it's shown to be incredibly
effective, and I don't think we should ignore
these things. I think it's foolish, and I think
that is one that seems to have a bipartisan agreement
on because a lot of people on the left have always
been in favor of some kind of psychedelic therapy.
just based on experiences they've had that were
positive. But seeing it from the right is very
encouraging because I think it's something for
human beings. It's not for everybody, but it's
a tool that I have seen benefit many, many people,
and we should use every tool that could help
us be healthier and happier, period. That shouldn't
be a right or a left issue. That's just silly.
It's just dumb. Agreed. Yeah. I mean, it's shocking
that that is an unusual perspective. But I think
we've been propagandized for so long, particularly
on certain things like just the blanket. term
of drugs, that all of them fall into this category
of you trying to escape reality. And this one
is literally the opposite. It's like you confronting
reality and finding out why the pathways to certain
destructive behaviors were set in your life and
how to correct it. I think that'd be great for
everybody. I agree. Yeah. You've got, you're
already a year in here plus, and you know, Is
it going as fast as you'd hoped like some of
these reforms? Is there – what are the main frustrations
that you have to deal with? I mean I didn't know
what to expect and I didn't know when I came
in. I didn't know the president that well. But
from the beginning, he was empowering me and
I never made an agreement with him about anything.
And the first time he asked me whether I wanted
to be HHS secretary, I said, I don't think so.
I wanted to be maybe a health czar in the White
House. And then I thought about it for a while
and thought, no, I really won't be effective
unless I'm in this agency and can actually, you
know, get into the weeds. And it has 82 ,000
employees. the biggest budget in government,
and that would actually give me the power to
change the system. And so then I went back to
him and I said, you know, I want HHS. And he
said, fine. And then he allowed me to appoint
all of my sub agency heads, which no president
has ever done with an HHS secretary in history.
He allowed me to appoint Marty McCary, choose
Marty McCary. FDA, Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Oz and
CMS and everybody else below them. So nobody's
ever been able to do that. And then he, you know,
he gave me a very prominent job on the transition
committee to set this all in motion. And then
once I got in, he supported me on everything.
And that, I think, was allowed me to do things
more during. I think. I mean, I don't want to
say sound like, you know, vain or something,
but because of the great team that we have and
because of the support of the president, we've
been able to accomplish more in one year than
I think any other HHS secretary has done in history
in four years. Oh, I'm pleased with what we've
done. But there's still I mean, it's the it's
20 percent of our economy. And so it's a huge
agency, and there's, you know, it's in everything,
and there's a lot to do. But I think we're moving
really fast. So better than you'd hoped? I would
say, yeah, if you put this on the table and said
you could have this, you know, the first day
I got into office, I would snatch it off and
say I'll take it. But, I mean, I could only imagine
staring at that mountain when you're at the foot
of it and realizing what a climb this is going
to be. But that's not how I approach it. I just
did it one thing at a time. And there's something
to fix every single day. And I have the smartest
people in the country working with me. And, you
know, we meet every day, me and Oz and Jay and
Chris Klump and Marty. We have a meeting every
morning and we. talk about what we're doing and
about where we need to help each other and you
know it's a really uh it's a very very congenial
team we all feel like family with each other
and we vacation together and you know it's uh
i think because of that in in former times the
hhs secretary has always been at odds with his
departments and you know under biden and uh Even
under the previous Trump administration. Why
do you think that was? Because I think part of
it is personalities. They're all kind of, you
know, alpha people. They have different ideas.
And then they, I don't know. I mean, we, I think
a lot of that is just personality and struggling
for. for power and influence and all of that
kind of stuff. You know, you want to run your
own agency and you don't want interference. And
we've been able to do it in ways that are very,
very collegial. I wanted to ask you about pesticides.
So what was the recent ruling on glyphosate?
I was on an EO, which is an executive order,
from the president saying that We're going to
make the ingredients for glyphosate in this country
and for elemental phosphorus. And, you know,
I've—listen, I've spent 40 years fighting pesticides.
It was—I was part of the trial team on the Monsanto
case, which was the team that, you know, we won
three cases in a row and then got an $11 billion.
settlement with Monsanto, which is now Bayer.
By the end of our trial, Bayer owned Monsanto.
But, you know, pesticides are poison. They're
designed to kill all life. It's not a good thing
to have in your food. So it's not something that
I was particularly happy with, let me put it
that way mildly. But I also understand the president's
point of view. The president didn't create this
system. He's dealing with a problem that was
created long before over the past 60 years when,
you know, through federal policies and subsidies
and the management of farming in this country,
the agricultural management, we have addicted
our farmers to these pesticides and particularly
glyphosate. Glyphosate is the foundational pesticide
of our food production system. 97 % of corn in
this country is produced with glyphosate and
can't be produced without it. 98 % of, you know,
you could do it. You could change it. There's
organic corn producers in this country. It's
like 3%. 98 % of soy is produced with glyphosate.
If you ban glyphosate overnight or if you got
rid of it or if somebody else cut off our supply.
it would destroy the American food system. How
crazy is that statement? The American food, the
entire system, is based on using the poison.
Right. Farmers don't like it. Let me just explain
what the EO did. Right now, according to the
industry reports, 99 % of our glyphosate comes
from China. The Pentagon and others said this
is an extreme national security vulnerability,
that China controls the U .S. food system. We
can't afford to let that happen. If we got in
some kind of tangle with them, it could literally
cut off our food supply overnight and cripple
the country. And so that's what the president
was responding to. But we all know we've got
to transition off of glyphosate. We all know
that. And the farmers hate it. You know, they're
now starting to see these these chemical resistant
weeds so that that can't be treated with glyphosate.
Now it's predictable. Do they hate the inputs?
It's cost them a lot of money. Three, the foreign
countries won't allow them to export like Europe
doesn't allow. Most European countries don't
allow the export of our crops to their countries.
Well, how are they doing it? They use less glyphosate
than we do. But they— Or they use some. They
use it. But, you know, our system is all Roundup
Ready corn and Roundup Ready soy. And so they
don't, you know, they don't use it like we do
over here. Ideally, we would transition away
from that, right? Yeah. And it's also, they know
it's destroying their soil. And they're all suffering
from runoff. You know, it destroys the microbiome
and the soil. Because of that, the soil, you
don't get water infiltration in the soil. And
so the soil then runs off, and it's destroying
their farms. It's not sustainable. Everybody
knows that. We had Will Harris from White Oak
Pastures on here, and he showed us the literal
line in the river between his organic farm and
the next -door neighbor's farm. We could see
this clear line where all the runoff is going
into the river. Yeah, but Will Harris will also
tell you the same thing that I said, is that—
What he did is very hard. It took him 20 years.
What? It took him 20 years. It took him 20 years,
and it's not applicable to every farmer. He understands
the problem, too. We all understand that this
is a huge problem. The president was dealing
with national security, and they did something
that I really don't like, which is to support.
There's a lawsuit. about that's now before the
Supreme Court, but in the lower court they supported,
is as for federal preemption. So that would mean
that if the federal label says that this is safe,
that these state lawsuits now cannot be brought.
So it would throw out a lot of the state lawsuits
and effectively gives them immunity from liability,
which is, you know, to me, it's not good to give
any company immunity from liability. It takes
away all incentive for them to make the product
safer. Again, the president is dealing with bigger
issues, which is the company that's making this
has paid $11 billion to, you know, in my lawsuit,
they're just about to sign another $7 .6 billion
settlement. There's 65 ,000 cases out there,
and they've said, We're getting out of this business,
you know, if we don't get relief. So the president
is hearing that. The farmers are hearing that.
And they're saying, you know, this is a temporary
fix. We're putting huge amounts of money into
studying the impacts of glyphosate right now
in my agency. I'm doing that. And we're doing—and
the president has made a big commitment, a billion
-dollar commitment, not only to regenerate farming.
but also to developing new ways of chemical,
of dramatically reducing the amount of chemicals
in our agriculture. I met this week with three
farmers who are using this new system of lasers,
which is now the cheapest way to control weeds
in the vegetable fields. So, you know, vegetables,
lettuce, celery. All of these vegetables now,
they're using a lot of them. You're going to
see a very quick transition. It's an attachment
that is dragged by a tractor. It kills the weeds
at every stage of their life. It identifies their
species and kills them instantly all the way
down through their roots by exploding them with
this laser. And, yeah, here is one of them. This
is what it looks like? Yeah, that's what it looks
like. And this guy— Can I ask you this? Yeah.
Does this have any negative effect whatsoever
on the food? No. In fact, you get a 30 percent
increase in productivity of the farm, and the
growing season shortens by three weeks for onions.
And that is a huge economic boom. Is that the
way— It pays itself back. And for some of these
farmers, it pays itself back in— in nine months.
It's a million -dollar machine, but it pays back.
They're paying vegetable fields. This onion producer
in South Texas, the biggest onion producer in
Texas, she has 8 ,000 acres. She was paying $1
,500 per acre for pesticides, for mainly glyphosate
and for manual labor. And now with this machine,
it's $300. She's saving over $1 ,000 an acre.
Is this showing how it does it to me? She's got
8 ,000 acres. So it's a million -dollar machine,
which sounds like a lot, but you've got 8 ,000
acres and you're paying $1 ,500 an acre per growing
season. I missed one. And, you know, now they're
making them on drones. Maybe it was a crop. Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting. There's all these kind of
new, exciting technologies that give us a light
at the end of the tunnel to transition. And it
could be very, very fast. What the president
wants to do is accelerate that. He says, yeah,
we've got we can't allow. The company to go bankrupt,
we can't allow foreign interference, but we got
to get off of this stuff. We got to give these
farmers an off ramp so that they can get off
it because they don't want to be on it. Nobody
wants to be on it. Without crashing the food
system. Without crashing. So this is a bridge.
This is a bridge to health. Yeah, exactly. You
think would be technologies like this for weeds.
What about for bugs? You know, it's harder. These
systems are more difficult. They're not yet economic
in the corn field, the row crops. They're economic
for organic corn. And I talked to an organic
corn farmer who is in love with his machine.
But, yeah, they can do it for bugs, too. So they
just zap the bugs? They zap the bugs. They identify
them and zap them. But in the row crops, you
know, these guys, the vegetable crops are paying
$1 ,500 an acre. Row crops are 50 bucks an acre.
And so to get economically to their level, they
have to scale enormously. So that is, you know,
how do we help them do that? How do we bring
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and billionaires
in to start investing really heavily in these
kind of technologies? And let's get off of this
stuff. What are the primary health concerns about
people that consume too much glyphosate? Or is
there a threshold? I know there's like... a safe
level that's supposed to be detectable in your
blood? Like, what does that mean in terms of?
I don't know if there is any safe level. I don't
know. You know, I shouldn't even say there is
a. That is what we are trying to figure out right
now. And it's associated with non -alcoholic
fatty liver disease. It's so, you know, there's
a scientific association, but it's not strong
enough for people to litigate on. The litigation
was all about non -Hodgkin's lymphoma. Only that?
Yeah, because that's the one thing that they
had a critical mass of scientific studies supporting.
Now, what about when they use it at the end of
production? It definitely disrupts your gut biome.
Yes. The advantage of glyphosate is, unlike the
other poisons, It doesn't harm organic tissue,
but it goes after plants, not animal tissue.
Your stomach microbiome is plants. And so, you
know, it may contribute to the celiac disease
and to all these gluten allergies. It was coterminous
with that, you know, the introduction of glyphosate.
Roundup Ready corn, you know what Roundup Ready
corn is, right? It means that you can spray the
field and everything green dies except for the
corn, which is immune to glyphosate. That's why
it's so advantageous to them. It saves huge labor
costs and it allows them to sell the corn at
a price that people can afford. One of the most
controversial uses is a desiccant. And that means
that there is no Roundup Ready wheat. So normally
they weren't using this in the wheat field. But
around 2003, they started using it to dry out
the wheat just before harvest. And that way they
can harvest it without getting fungus on it and
without getting mold on it. And for the first
time, they were spraying it right on food. And
so that is real, you know, the major factor for
getting into human beings. And, you know, around
2003 is when you started seeing these explosions
and celiac disease and gluten allergies. There's
no clear scientific evidence that it's related.
But, you know, there is a, you know, there's
some signals out there that now we're looking
at HHS for the first time. They should have been
looking at this 30 years ago. But we're doing
it now. Well, there's a lot of anecdotal stories
about people going to Italy or Spain and France,
eating bread over there, not having any problem
with it at all and being so confused. And then
also people coming from Europe and eating in
America and getting sick. And I don't know whether
that – there's no telling whether that's glyphosate
or other pesticides or whatever. But it's just
something. I have a son. who had chronic eczema
from when he was a kid, a disease I never heard
of as a kid, and everybody's got it now. And
he would get it any time that he ate spaghetti
or bread. And he went to the University of Bologna.
He went to Brown, and then he took a year at
the University of Bologna, and he ate spaghetti
three meals a day and had no problem. And you
hear there's hundreds of stories like that that
we've all heard. I feel different when I go to
Italy. When I go to Italy and I eat over there,
I feel different. I feel different if I use –
there's a restaurant called Gaetano's in Las
Vegas in Henderson, and they use all Italian
flour. They import it all from Italy. It tastes
different. It feels different. You don't feel
terrible after you eat it. Something's wrong
with our food, and everybody knows it. And the
fact that it's become a left -wing or a right
-wing issue is one of the dumbest decisions we've
ever made as a country. And I know that a lot
of it is, again, a lot of propaganda, a lot of
these narratives trying to push people into thinking
that things aren't dangerous because right -wing
people believe in them and that it's nonsense.
It's just... I don't know what that pathway is
when you're dealing with monocrop agriculture
and you have these enormous farms and you say
98 percent is based on glyphosate use or whatever
it is. Like, how do we get those people to ultimately
transition? And if they do, could they even produce
enough of their product to stay viable? I can
tell. I mean, I've met with over 100 farmers
and developing the food guidelines, our team.
And, you know, I've been doing agricultural issues
for 30 years. I can tell you, farmers are the
most hardworking people that I've ever met. They
are good people. They want to produce the healthiest
foods. And they don't like the inputs are killing
them. They're, you know, seven out of 10 years,
farmers lose money. And there's no young people
moving to the farm country anymore. So, you know,
we really need to do what we can to make sure
we don't lose any more farms in this country.
And that's what the president's worried about.
That has to be his priority. But he also wants
to make sure we accelerate the off -ramps, the
development of off -ramps, that they can transition
off of this. And we're putting huge amounts of
money into regenerative agriculture. People like
Mr. Harris and meeting with him, Brooke Rollins,
meeting with these guys all the time, trying
to figure out how do we help you? How do we help
other farmers to do what you're doing? And that
is a priority for the administration. Do you
envision a possibility, a real possibility of
a country that is all regenerative agriculture
with no pesticides? Is that even possible that
we could get to a point, whether it's a decade
from now or two decades from now, where we've
completely eradicated the uses of these harmful
chemicals? I mean, I think that's going to happen.
You know, I think technology is going to allow
that to happen. You're going to have a lot of
robotic farming happening, and that's another
question. Well, that's robotic with these lasers.
That's essentially what you're doing. Yeah, yeah.
So that would be the solution. And you're going
to have drones doing this. You'll have drone
swarms over farms killing insects. What about
industrial fertilizer? What would be the solution
to that? That's a little more difficult, particularly
in some parts of the country. You need nutrients
in the soil. But there's ways of growing, and
Harris has shown this, where you can dramatically
reduce the amount of petroleum -based fertilizers
that you're using, dramatically almost eliminate
them. Sure, but the scale of his farm and the
scale of the production in comparison to these
monocrop agriculture places that produce corn,
I mean, these people are dealing with enormous
amounts of crops. The question is, could that
be scaled regeneratively? Could you get it to
a point where you have organic farms only? You
know, I think with technology, you're going to
eliminate a lot of the pesticides and the herbicides.
It's going to be much slower when you talk about
fertilizers. But is there a pathway for that?
I hope so. But you haven't? No. No. Because it's
so far off? Yeah, I mean, that's going to be
after my three years before that happens. Do
you, I mean, if someone else wins and they want
you to stay, are you going to stay? Do you have
a thought of that or do you want to do as much
as you can in four years? Well, whatever happens
because you can't tell what's going to happen
in the election. I'm going to act as if I've
got three years to do everything. And if I get
more time, then I would probably take it. How
many days a week are you working? Well, I work.
I mean, I'm working. When I'm home, I'm working.
It doesn't stop. It's just your luck. And then
we have a president who has, you know, never
stops working. And he's up till 11, 12 at night,
you know, which you can get a call at that point.
Yeah. He says, were you sleeping 2 o 'clock in
the morning? Yeah. No. No, of course not. I was
working. He's an interesting guy to work for.
Yeah, he's got a lot of energy for an old guy.
He's got an incredible amount of it. I've never
seen anything like it, particularly with the
food he eats. Yeah. I don't know how he does
it. He's still eating mostly, I mean. I've never
seen it. Well, let me put it this way. When he's
on the road, he eats, like, fast food because
he trusts it. He doesn't want to eat in some
local place where, you know, he gets food poisoning
or something. When he's at home at the White
House or Mar -a -Lago, it is the, you know, it's
all like locally sourced, incredible food. Oh,
that's good. So he eats well. I mean, but he
still drinks. Dana White told me that he's known
him for 20 years and he's never seen him drink
water. Just drinks Coca -Cola? What does he drink?
Diet Coke, right? Diet Coke, yeah. I just had
Michael Malice in here. He was talking about
how he got off aspartame and how his brain fog
just completely cleared up. He was drinking Diet
Coke every day. That is a really sleazy saga
about how that got into her. We talked about
it the other day. Yeah, we brought it up. Donald
Rumsfeld. Donald Rumsfeld. Yeah. And there was
a really good FDA commissioner back then named
David Kennedy. No relation, but he was a guy
from Stanford. I think he was the president of
Stanford for a while. And he was really good,
had total integrity. He was like David Kessler,
another really great FDA head. And he banned
aspartame. Rumsfeld came in there and just overruled
them. Rumsfeld had owned Searle, which was making
it. That's how it worked. Well, that's why this
time with you in office has been encouraging.
I mean you doing the things that you wanted to
do was to me the most interesting thing about
this administration going in because I knew your
conviction. I had read your – your Fauci book.
And I'm like, if anybody could do something about
this, it's you. And I'm kind of amazed at how
much you have been able to do. And also, you
know, watching the struggle, the difficulties
of getting things pushed through that should
have been pushed through easily with rational
thinking. It's a fascinating time because we
are in a time of change. Some of it's good. Some
of it's bad. But we're definitely in a time of
change. And that's not something you can say
about every administration. It's definitely not
something you can say about everybody that's
been the head of the HHS. You're the first guy
that gave me hope when you got in there. I'm
like, OK, maybe we'll see some meaningful change
with some things that are really important for
people's health. I think we're doing it. I think
you are. I think you're doing that. Is there
anything else you want to talk about, any other
subjects you want to cover? Why don't you ask
me about immigration because I know that that's
something that's just to hurt you. Well, what
are your thoughts on immigration, on what's going
on? Well, you know, here's the background on
my kind of assumptions. During the last 10 years
of his life, I worked very closely with Cesar
Chavez. He had two issues. He had pesticides,
which were a huge issue with him, and that's
what I worked with him on, on the dangers that
his workers were experiencing from pesticides.
And the other issue he had was immigration. He
wanted to shut down the border because he saw
the way that it was impairing this huge influx
of illegal migration across the border. It was
impairing. his ability to bargain, to leverage
good wages and conditions for his workers. When
I grew up, the Democratic Party was against immigration,
and it was the Republican Party who wanted it
because the big corporations wanted cheap labor.
The Chamber of Commerce was firmly embedded in
the Republican Party, and they were all about
open borders. Today, the Chamber of Commerce
is with the Democratic Party. And so it's one
of these switches that is kind of inexplicable
to me. But I think, again, it happened because
President Trump said, I'm going to fix it with
a wall. And that became, you know, suddenly became
open borders, suddenly became a calling card
for the Democratic Party. But there's a reason,
you know, and I see it in my agency, the cause
that it's imposing on our country and, you know,
on health care. diminishing health care for Americans
and housing and jobs and all of these places
where it hurts that we need workers in here and
we need legal immigrants in here. They should
come in legally, and every country has to do
that. As in Trump ran on this issue, he's now,
and he ran that he's going to enforce it and
deport particularly the bad people. This is what
you don't hear. 70 % of the people that they've
arrested have criminal records. What the Democrats
are always saying is only 14 % of them have been
convicted of a violent crime. Well, they've been
convicted. A lot of them, the other ones, have
been arrested, and they just haven't been convicted
yet because they jumped bail or they jumped their
warrants. The other 30%, a lot of them, are gang
members. When they go looking for an immigrant,
they're not just randomly searching, you know,
restaurants. They're going after particular people
who they've gotten their names from local law
enforcement and from others. During the Biden
or during the Obama administration, President
Obama deported more people than President Trump
did, most in history. Nobody cared. And there
were 76 people shot. During that process, during
the Biden administration, none of it made headlines.
About half of those people were killed. None
of it made the news. Now, because it's Trump
doing it, you have the entire Democratic Party
in the media establishment saying, oh, look at
the horrible things. He's a dictator, but he's
doing what he promised to do to the American
people. It's very disturbing watching what you
see on TV. The thing that makes it most disturbing
is because there's so much interaction with protesters,
which is weird that the Democrats are telling
protesters to go out there and stop law enforcement
from doing its job. That's not how protests usually
work. If you don't like U .S. drug policy, which
you don't, you know, and a lot of people don't.
A lot of people don't like the war on drugs at
all. They think it's counterproductive. You wouldn't
send people to try and interfere with people
who are arresting a drug dealer. And when you
have thousands and thousands of people doing
that, there's going to be thousands of interactions.
And some of those are going to end badly because
you have armed people doing dangerous things.
And when you have crowds doing that, it's going
to blow up. And so, you know, I. I see this,
you know, nobody is happy with the way that things
have looked, particularly in Minnesota. But a
lot of it is because of this capacity of the
press to take Trump derangement syndrome and
amplify it into public outrage and set up a situation.
I mean, if you were a dad. I wouldn't send my
kids out to interfere with a law enforcement
operation. There's other ways to protest. But
so I think that, you know, I think now they're
pulling out of Minnesota and they're going to
do this, you know, in other states where they're
not going to get that kind of crowd interaction.
But a lot of the people that they're arresting
are not. There are people who are actually –
have, like I said, 70 percent of criminal records.
Yeah, we've actually covered that here. And then
there's also the issue that this is the first
time in history that the border has been wide
open for four years. It's a different thing.
It's a different thing when you have at least
10 million people. They don't even know how many
for real. Yeah, it could be 20 million. They
don't know. And that's a lot. And to have that
happen all at once is pretty crazy. I think what
disturbs people is, again, obviously these violent
interactions. What should disturb them is that
these are not organic protests. These protests
are organized and paid for, and that's crazy.
When you find that out and you find out that
people can actually be paid to protest and that
they provide them with signs, they tell them
what they do, it's organized, they have signal
chats. There's been a lot of people online talking
about being paid to protest in certain places,
and that's kind of insane that that's even legal,
that you can organize a mob and pay them to go
and make a bunch of noise. It's like the color
revolution. Right. Exactly. And that it just
happened to take place in the place where hundreds
of millions of dollars of fraud was being exposed.
So then the narrative completely shifts away
from the fraud and onto this unnecessary violence
with ICE. And then there's the natural thing
that people have, this distrust of people wearing
masks. They don't like that. They don't like
officers wearing masks. But on the other side.
They have to wear masks because they're being
doxxed and their families are being threatened
and you're filming everything they do and you're
these organized instigators. So if it wasn't
for organized protest, I wonder if those particular
interactions would have even happened, would
have even taken place. And I know you're saying
that they don't – that they're targeting specific
people. They're going after bad people. But also
they're showing up at Home Depot and just – grabbing
people too and trying to find out if someone
is a bad guy or a good guy. So there's probably
a lot of people that are just people that got
duped into coming to this country thinking they're
going to be welcomed. And then they come over
here and they're trying to get jobs. And now
they're getting arrested and deported. You know,
it wasn't their fault that they were encouraged
and brought into this country, but they did break
the law. And I understand. I understand that
perspective, but it's kind of insane. That no
one is pointing the blame at the fact that they
let at least 10 billion people or 10 million,
excuse me, people into this country over the
last four years, at least being charitable. It's
kind of not. I was down at the border and, you
know, I was on when I during my presidential
campaign, I went down there and went down a bunch
of times. But the first night I went down there
to Tucson. And I couldn't believe what I was
seeing. It was like the Boston Marathon, the
beginning of it, just the sheer number. And they
were, you know, they all had it planned. The
cartels were all, you know, running the whole
thing. They were advertising all over the world
and bringing people in. And everybody was, the
Border Patrol was completely demoralized. They
were told, don't arrest anybody. Just fingerprint
them. If they're a criminal, turn them back.
You know, most of these people, they couldn't
figure that out. And otherwise, put them on a
bus or a plane to anywhere they wanted to go
in the country. So it was just— And at the same
time, you have legitimate people that are doing
it the right way that have to go through a long
and difficult, lengthy process to attain citizenship
and to come here or get a green card and come
here. The whole thing was crazy. And one of the
complicated issues that you have now, a bunch
of sanctuary cities and sanctuary states. And
it used to be that if somebody who was an illegal
immigrant was arrested for a crime and put in
the local jail, ICE was notified. So ICE would
then come and local law enforcement would transfer
it to ICE. In the sanctuary cities, they don't
do that. They just let them go. And, you know,
it's not— How is that legal? That seems insane.
That seems like it's a violation. Because it
was never a law. It was just a policy that law
enforcement always cooperated with each other.
Now, because Trump's in there, they're saying,
OK, we would rather take the side of a criminal
than take the side of the president. So they're
choosing sides. It's like the other day during
the— During the State of the Union speech when
President Trump said – he was talking about immigration
and he said, please stand up if you think that
law enforcement should protect the American people
over illegal immigrants and not a single Democrat
stood. How can you do that? Well, that's what
we were talking about earlier, what you were
saying. It's just they're ideologically captured.
Yeah. I mean that should be something. If you
want to be taken seriously, you're a reasonable
person. You would stand up for that. Yeah. Yeah.
It just it really disturbs people when you see
masked people grabbing people. Oh, yeah. Arresting
people. And a lot of them turn out to be American
citizens. You know, that's part of the problem,
too. But I did look at a chart recently because
I thought it was fascinating. The number of American
citizens that were arrested, what percentage
during what Obama did versus during Trump. It's
actually, I think, higher. More American citizens
were arrested during this Obama thing. You just
never heard about it. Also, if you hear Obama
talk about immigration, if you hear Hillary talk
about immigration, or if you hear Bill talk about
immigration, you would swear they were running
for president as a Republican. If you listen
to the things they were saying back then, it
was very much the Republican perspective. That
was the Democratic Party always was against an
open border. Yeah. Bernie even said it's like
open borders or that's a Republican idea. They
want cheap labor. Yeah. So, all right. Anything
else before we wrap this up? Listen, thank you
very much for all your hard work. And it's really
– it's very exciting for me to have someone like
you doing what you're doing because I do know
that you really want to push for meaningful change.
It's genuinely going to help. And I think, you
know, so far you're on a good path. So I hope
we can get all the other stuff done too. Well,
thank you, Joe, and thanks for the conversation.
My pleasure. And thanks for all of your conversations.
My pleasure. Thanks for being here. All right.
Bye, everybody.