Jan. 29, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
01:01:49
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Goan of New Jersey. | |
| Tell us who you're with. | ||
| I'm with New Jersey Public Health Innovation Political Action Committee in New Jersey. | ||
| And why are you here? | ||
| I'm here to support Bobby because he supported New Jersey for almost a decade. | ||
| And I wouldn't be any other place because he's always come to New Jersey when we've called him. | ||
| And as everyone knows, in 2019, 2020, we preserve the religious exemption and we're forever indebted to him, as well as all the advocates who showed up. | ||
| Thank you so much, Melanie. | ||
| So I'm here with Jill Perez and... | ||
| And Amy Lezeski. | ||
| And Amy Lezeski, also from New Jersey. | ||
| We are. | ||
| So why are you here today? | ||
| Because we're Bobby. | ||
| He was very supportive of us in Trenton in 2019. I feel like he's done so much good for the environment. | ||
| And I just think he will hopefully make some major changes in a very good direction. | ||
| Well, tell us a little bit about the Battle of Trenton. | ||
| What was that about? | ||
| So the Battle of Trenton, December 2019. Many of us remember it so well. | ||
| We were there every Monday and Thursday as the legislators met. | ||
| We were there in January. | ||
| We really were quite frightened we would lose our religious exemption. | ||
| I sat in the assembly as I watched us lose in the assembly. | ||
| And then we just continued to show up and pray. | ||
| We know that we weren't going away and that we have this right and it should never be taken away. | ||
| And why is the religious exemption, why was that important to you? | ||
| Well, we've had it. | ||
| So why should it be taken away? | ||
| The timing was also quite suspicious. | ||
| But, you know, I'm an educator. | ||
| And my own children would have been threatened with the potential of being kicked out of school, right? | ||
| So we should always know what's going on in our bodies and we should always have that choice. | ||
| And we have it now. | ||
| And we thank him for that. | ||
| Thank you, Jill. | ||
| Come to the line when you can. | ||
| Okay, Wednesday, 29 January, in the year of our Lord 2025, you're in the war room. | ||
| Today, ladies and gentlemen, history on Capitol Hill, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The son of the slain Bobby Kennedy, the brother of Jack Kennedy, is there for his confirmation hearing, and it's going to be a wild one, as we've told you and prepped you. | ||
| We're going to need people at the Ramparts today. | ||
| 202-224-3121 is the Senate main switchboard. | ||
| Also, Grace Chung, the queen of the trolls, is going to be putting out Bill Blaster. | ||
| We want to get to those local offices also. | ||
| You're going to have to stiffen some spines here. | ||
| There's no doubt about that. | ||
| And today, so for the next, I don't know, 48, 72 hours, we're going to have Bobby Kennedy today. | ||
| And then tomorrow, doubleheader, Tulsi Gabbard, Cash Patel. | ||
| So it's manned the ramparts. | ||
| And all three of these, Cash probably being the safest, but we can't take anything for granted. | ||
| Pam Bondi just came out of committee, voted out of committee 12 to 10 at a judiciary. | ||
| They're trying to expedite this. | ||
| Thune and Senator Thune, we've got to get on this. | ||
| So folks, you might want to call John Thune to start off with. | ||
| There's a backlog because Democrats are playing games, and quite frankly, we're not forcing the issue. | ||
| We need to get these people up, up, up to the floor, through committee, up to the floor. | ||
| We need our team. | ||
| Russ Vogt, OMB, you see this situation yesterday with the funding. | ||
| Federal judge stepped in. | ||
| Right now, and we're going to cut live, obviously, to the Senate hearing when Robert F. Kennedy begins his opening statement. | ||
| The rest of it would kind of be, maybe I'll tell you when the minority, if I ask my crack production team here, when we look at the Democrat, when they start reading, they're going to start reading Bobby Kennedy, the riot act. | ||
| So the co-head, the ranking member on the Democratic side, let me go and we'll cut right to that. | ||
| Not the Republican. | ||
| So today's a work day. | ||
| Natalie Winters. | ||
| Is that the White House? | ||
| We're going to get heard this afternoon when we have more to report on how the White House is driving the Kennedy nomination. | ||
| Senator Rand Paul is scheduled to join us here momentarily. | ||
| We wanted him. | ||
| We thought he was the perfect pick to talk about this. | ||
| Senator Tommy Teverbill will be in the 11 o'clock hour, even maybe if we can get time. | ||
| Senator Rand Paul joins us right now. | ||
| Senator Rand Paul, thank you for coming to the war room today of all days. | ||
| First off, sir, could you give him perspective since you're a doctor? | ||
| Walk through Bobby Kennedy's credentials. | ||
| I mean, he's getting lit up overnight. | ||
| These Democrats are coming from every different direction. | ||
| I think people look to you on the Republican side as a safe pair of hands of what's right. | ||
| You're the guy that led the fight against Fauci, which we'll get to in a minute. | ||
| Give us your perspective, sir, of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of HHS. You know, I think he's a disruptor, but I think it's necessary to disrupt things. | ||
|
unidentified
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We've got it wrong in public health for so long. | |
| I mean, we've actually recommended the wrong kind of food to eat, the pyramid's been upside down, the food pyramid. | ||
| So much about public health has been wrong, and I think we need somebody new to come in. | ||
| I think when people meet Bobby Kennedy and have a conversation with him, and I've heard this from other senators, they're impressed with his breadth of knowledge, his ability to discuss the specifics. | ||
| But ultimately, the things he's for shouldn't be that controversial. | ||
| Transparency, open discussion of risks and benefits. | ||
| Look, everything has risks and benefits, and some of it depends on your age, some of it depends on your weight, some of it depends on your lifestyle. | ||
| There are all kinds of things that go into deciding whether to take a medication, to take a vaccine, to take chemotherapy. | ||
| I mean, there are all kinds of questions that should be answered. | ||
| This is what you want from your doctor and from your government is objectivity. | ||
| And I think what's happened over the last few years is that the government has been dishonest with us and it has led to a great deal of distrust of government. | ||
| The only way they get back is to have a truth teller who believes in transparency. | ||
| I think Bobby Kennedy is that. | ||
| I think people are pretty shocked when someone like you says the government's been dishonest. | ||
| So let's leave Fauci aside. | ||
| Where have you seen and experienced, actually, the health apparatus, the big pharma health industrial complex, in sworn testimony or in things in the government where they should be honest and straightforward and transparent with the American people? | ||
| Where have you seen them be dishonest in the past, and what should people be looking for? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, particularly with the COVID vaccine, I think that they were dishonest in the sense that there's a difference depending on how old you are, whether or not the risks exceed the benefits. | |
| So, for example, if this was March of 2020 and people were dying, a significant amount of people were dying in March of 2020, my advice would be if you were in the risk category, I'd take your chances with the vaccine. | ||
| I still think that the disease was worse than the vaccine for people probably over 60, over 65, particularly if you're overweight. | ||
|
unidentified
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But for people under 40 or under 30 in particular, or even under 20 who are thin and healthy, the risks of the vaccine actually exceed the benefits of the vaccine. | |
| And this is absolutely true. | ||
| And when the government said that everybody should be taking not just one, not just two, but also three COVID vaccines for six-month-olds... | ||
| People don't believe that. | ||
| And it's interesting if you look at the statistics. | ||
| I think people are smarter than you give them credit for. | ||
| Over age 65 in our country, 97% of people chose to get the vaccine in 2020 or 2021 when it came out. | ||
| If you look at under age 20 today, it's about maybe 5 or 10% are giving their 5 and 10-year-olds this vaccine because people are smart enough to know their kids aren't dying from COVID. Their kids aren't going to the hospital. | ||
| They can't even tell when their kids get COVID. And the virus is actually much... | ||
| It's less dangerous now. | ||
| So it's really not about being anti-vaccine or pro-vaccine. | ||
| It's a nuanced position that I'm pro-freedom. | ||
| The government should give you honest information and then you can decide. | ||
| If you're a worrywart and you want to vaccinate your five-year-old with COVID vaccine, the harm is not real common, but there's about four to six chances in 10,000 they could get a significant enough heart inflammation. | ||
| That they would present to the emergency room with chest pain and elevated heart enzymes. | ||
| If you're okay with those risks, do it. | ||
| But that's what happens in a free country. | ||
| We give you the information. | ||
| And I think because of the dishonesty over the COVID vaccine, because of the mandates, because of the hysteria, because of them being wrong on six foot of distance, being wrong on the mask, everything they told us was actually incorrect and actually led to more danger for us. | ||
| I think because of that... | ||
| People are now distrusting virtually anything the government says. | ||
| And while I think a healthy dose of distrust is good, I think we also need transparency to bring back some trust. | ||
| Senator, I just want to go back to that. | ||
| Were they wrong or they actually knew and they lied to us? | ||
| I think it's the latter, but I'd like to hear your opinion. | ||
| I remember you drilling and we covered, remember here at War Room, we covered those hearings wall to wall. | ||
| It turns out, I think, they had facts. | ||
| And they thought the American people were too stupid. | ||
| And so did they lie to us? | ||
| Did they get it wrong? | ||
| Or they knew what they were doing and they lied to us? | ||
| What did they do? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, let's take masks. | |
| If you take masks, for example, we studied masks for probably 20 years preceding this. | ||
| And we knew for the 20 years preceding this, and it was accepted by almost everybody, even in governmental pandemic circles, all the people always wringing their hands and wanting to be prepared, they acknowledged that masks didn't work. | ||
| When they came on, initially the only time Anthony Fauci was honest is actually in private. | ||
| He told his co-workers, you know, they don't work. | ||
| You don't need to wear them. | ||
| But within a couple of months, he was wearing two and three masks. | ||
| But where it's a real disservice is by telling people that cloth masks work. | ||
| Let's say you're 75 years old and you go into your spouse's bedroom and they have COVID and you're going to feed them and you really don't want to get COVID from them. | ||
| Wearing a cloth mask is... | ||
| It's a disservice to tell you that that's safe. | ||
| So he actually told you things that were unsafe to do and led to unsafe behavior. | ||
| The same way with six foot of distance. | ||
| You would say, well, I'm at risk. | ||
| I'm overweight. | ||
| I have diabetes and my spouse has COVID. I'll just stay six feet away from him. | ||
| No, if you sit in the same room with them and it's a small room for 30 minutes, it travels across the entire room and throughout the house. | ||
| So if you really were at risk, he gave you bad advice there too. | ||
| But did they know the truth? | ||
| I think for the most part they did know the truth. | ||
| In fact, some people point to this as sort of a platonic lie or a noble lie in the sense that Anthony Fauci felt that the hoi polloi, that people are too stupid to make decisions for themselves. | ||
| So he would make the decisions even if it weren't true. | ||
| He thought, well, maybe there might be some net benefit for society even though what I'm telling them isn't true. | ||
| And I think that's a terrible approach to take and why he should be harshly judged and I think will be by history. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| As a Roman Catholic, he's got a little bit too much Jesuit training. | ||
| Senator Paul, Bobby Kennedy's a disruptor. | ||
| You're the strongest voice, the strongest pro-freedom kind of libertarian voice in the United States Senate. | ||
| Together, what can you two do together? | ||
| What would be your recommendation to him to do one or two big things against the pharma-medical-industrial complex? | ||
| Because quite frankly, let's be blunt, it owns this town. | ||
| MSNBC would be a test pattern if you took Big Pharma's advertising off there every night. | ||
| The Big Pharma and Big Medical own this town. | ||
| They own the lobbyists. | ||
| They own big law firms. | ||
| They've got the media on their side. | ||
| They particularly got the left media. | ||
| That's been a flip. | ||
| The left media, MSNBC, is cheering this on, cheered it on during a pandemic. | ||
| And you see, you know, 80% of their ads in prime time are related to Big Pharma. | ||
| So what can the disruptor, Bobby Kennedy? | ||
| I think we need to try to separate pharmacy companies from writing their own regulations and funding their own regulations, and that's been a real problem. | ||
|
unidentified
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In recent years, it's gotten even worse. | |
| So, for example, the patent on the mRNA vaccine for COVID is shared by Moderna, Pfizer, and the government. | ||
| Through lawsuits, the government has said, oh, we own a portion of this patent. | ||
| So Moderna gave them $450 million at the behest of the court, and then Pfizer, I think, gave them $800 million. | ||
| And you say, well, that's only fair. | ||
| The government scientists helped develop this. | ||
| Yes and no. | ||
| The problem with so much money going directly back to them is, do you think that in the future, decisions about Pfizer or Moderna drugs will be objective, or based on the fact that they bring in over a trillion dollars to the FDA? So I think what has to happen is that money, if it is appropriate to go to the government or back to the government scientists, shouldn't go directly into the NIH's pool of funds. | ||
| It should go back to the Treasury, and then the people's representatives should decide how to disperse it. | ||
| But if you give people the incentive to gain more money from a certain company by having better behavior, you will get that kind of crony behavior, that crony capitalism, which is really what's been going on for decades. | ||
| So I think he will be very good on this. | ||
| What I'm surprised is that there are people on the left who are somewhat skeptical of big corporate influence in government like Bernie Sanders. | ||
| I would think he would leap at the chance to support Bobby Kennedy, and we haven't heard that. | ||
| I'm still hopeful that some of these people who have been critics from the left would support Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| If he can get a few Democrats, it'll make his journey to the nomination a lot easier. | ||
| So I know he's talking to Democrats. | ||
| I'm hoping some of them will come on board. | ||
| But many of the things he says are consistent with that. | ||
| On food, I think the number one thing we can do with food is the government should quit subsidizing bad food. | ||
| So, for example, we have hundreds of millions of dollars every year, hundreds of billions of dollars, well, millions, I guess, each year spent on food stamps. | ||
| We shouldn't have full strength. | ||
| Pepsi, Coke. | ||
| We shouldn't have chips. | ||
| We shouldn't have Twinkies and Ding Dongs. | ||
| All these bad foods shouldn't be provided by the taxpayer because the biggest problem we have among the poor is actually overweight, obesity, and diabetes. | ||
| And we certainly shouldn't be subsidizing that. | ||
| That's something I've talked to all the nominees about, including agriculture, because food stamps come out of agriculture. | ||
| And I'm hoping the Trump administration can do something dramatic on what kind of food the government subsidizes. | ||
| Senator Paul, you've been the tip of the spear about Anthony Fauci. | ||
| We are banned on all platforms, not just for the election, our correct call on the election of President Trump won in 2020, but also because of us going after Dr. Anthony Fauci. | ||
| We're banned on every major platform, although we're still the second biggest podcast for politics in the country. | ||
| Fauci, the pardon. | ||
| Tom Fitton's recommending from Judicial Watch is recommending to the president that the Justice Department do not effectuate Those pardons. | ||
| What are your thoughts about Fauci? | ||
| You've been the biggest voice and the most reasonable voice, the most knowledgeable voice, let me say, going after Fauci, exposing his lies to the public. | ||
| And quite frankly, you caught him in, I don't know, two or three hundred perjury traps during your testimony. | ||
| What is your recommendation about Anthony Fauci? | ||
|
unidentified
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You know, I can say that we're not done with him or the investigation. | |
| There's something very specific that I'm looking for. | ||
| Anthony Fauci said that his people told him it was not gain-of-function research that happened in Wuhan, wasn't dangerous, and didn't need to go to the safety committee. | ||
| For three, four years, I've been asking for the deliberations. | ||
| I want to see the arguments that happened on why they skipped the safety committee. | ||
| I want to know who was in the meetings, and I want to know if the notes or the meeting was approved by Anthony Fauci or Francis Collins. | ||
| But interestingly, I haven't gotten one piece of paper in four years that indicates any of the deliberations that went on on this research, which makes me think that there is something there. | ||
| If Anthony Fauci or Francis Collins is connected to this approval process, Now, whether or not he goes to jail or not, I think he's tainted for all time now. | ||
| I think history is going to judge him harshly. | ||
| And by accepting this open-ended pardon for what have you, we're going to fill in the blank of what have you. | ||
| And filling in the blank is basically he is culpable for, you know, the millions of deaths through the pandemic. | ||
| And he won't escape that in history because he will now have been pardoned basically for that. | ||
| Done, in the sense that people who are pardoned also cannot take the Fifth Amendment when asked about those particular issues. | ||
| So we will bring him back in, and I don't believe he'll be able to plead the Fifth Amendment to us. | ||
| So we'll see what happens. | ||
| But we're moving rapidly on this. | ||
| I issued 14 subpoenas in the last week. | ||
| We are rapidly going after this information. | ||
| Are you talking to John Ratcliffe at CIA? You've had two big leaks coming to the CIA, or not even leaks, statements. | ||
| Number one, the lab leak theory, which, remember, we shifted to war room pandemic in mid-January of 2020 off of war room impeachment. | ||
| We were the first ones to break this story. | ||
| We were the first ones to talk about Wuhan, because I'd been to Wuhan. | ||
| Is Ratcliffe's... | ||
| Saying now the CIA believes it was a lab leak theory and they withheld that information and now the second shoe to drop, they actually think the Chinese Communist Party may have on purposely released the gain of function, the powered up virus into the population. | ||
| Are you coordinating with him? | ||
| Are you sitting down with intelligence? | ||
| Are you going to get the intelligence brief to see how deep this goes into the U.S. government and the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA? Yes, I've subpoenaed documents from the CIA. We've gotten a production in the last couple of days from them. | ||
|
unidentified
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I've talked this over with Ratcliffe in his nomination process. | |
| The interesting thing is we had a whistleblower six months, nine months ago come to us from the CIA and say that the scientists there had met internally and voted that they believed that the source of the virus, the source of the pandemic, was the lab. | ||
| And then they were overruled by superiors. | ||
| We're still gaining information on that debate, but in the process of asking for that information, surprisingly, the previous CIA director instituted a re-evaluation two months ago, and the conclusions came out actually under the Biden administration, but then were released by Radcliffe. | ||
| So transparency is what we're really looking for. | ||
| We voted unanimously in both the House and the Senate to declassify all of this material, and so I think Radcliffe is going to help us to put shine light on it. | ||
| and CIA all saying it came from the lab. | ||
| So what we need to make sure is that this never happens again. - Yep. | ||
| Senator Paul, we're gonna jump to Bobby Kennedy's live testimony. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| Where's your social media? | ||
| Now that Sergio's in the White House and not with you, we've got to make sure that people can track you down and catch you all the time on social media. | ||
|
unidentified
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Paul.Senate.gov is good. | |
| We're on Facebook. | ||
| We're on X. We're on Instagram. | ||
| We're on wherever people go on the Internet, you can find us. | ||
| Senator Rand Paul, thank you so much for joining us this morning. | ||
| I appreciate you. | ||
| Let's go live to Bobby Kennedy's confirmation hearing. | ||
| Chairman Grapeau, ranking member Wyden, and members of this distinguished committee. | ||
| I'm humbled to be sitting here today as President Trump's nominee to oversee the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. | ||
| I want to thank President Trump for entrusting me to deliver on his promise to make America healthy again. | ||
| I also want to thank Cheryl and Kick and Bobby and all my other children. | ||
| who are here today and all the many members of my large extended family for the love that they have so generously shared. | ||
| Ours has always been a family that has been involved in public service and I look forward to continuing that tradition. | ||
| My journey into the issue of health began with my career as an environmental attorney. | ||
| Working with hunters and fishermen and mothers in the small town in the Hudson Valley and along the Hudson River, I learned very early on that human health and environmental injuries are intertwined. | ||
| The same chemicals that kill fish make people sick also. | ||
| Today, Americans' overall health is in grievous condition. | ||
| Over 70% of adults and a third of children are overweight or obese. | ||
| Diabetes is 10 times more prevalent than it was during the 1960s. | ||
| Cancer among young people is rising by 1 or 2% a year. | ||
| Autoimmune diseases, neurodevelopmental disorders, Alzheimer's, asthma, ADHD. Depression, addiction, and a host of other physical and mental health conditions are all on the rise, some of them exponentially. | ||
| The United States has worse health than any other developed nation, yet we spend more on health care, at least double, and in some cases triple, as other countries. | ||
| Last year we spent $4.8 trillion, not counting the indirect costs of missed work. | ||
| That's almost a fifth of GDP. It's tantamount to a 20% tax on the entire economy. | ||
| No wonder America has trouble competing with countries that pay a third of what we do for health and have better outcomes and a healthier workforce. | ||
| But I don't want to make this too much about money. | ||
| It's the human tragedy that moves us to care. | ||
| President Trump has promised to restore America's global strength and to restore the American dream, but he understands we can't be a strong nation when our people are so sick. | ||
| A healthy person has a thousand dreams. | ||
| A sick person has only one. | ||
| Today, over half of our countrymen and women are chronically ill. | ||
| When I met with President Trump last summer, I discovered that he has more than just concern for this tragic situation, but genuine care. | ||
| President Trump is committed to restoring the American dream, and 77 million Americans delivered a mandate to him to do just that, due in part to the embrace and elevation of the Make America Healthy Again movement. | ||
| This movement, led largely by Maha Moms from every state, and you can see many of them behind us today, and in the hallways and in the lobbies, is one of the most transcendent and powerful movements I've ever seen. | ||
| I promised President Trump that if confirmed, I will do everything in my power to put the health of Americans back on track. | ||
| And I've been greatly heartened to discover a deep level of care among members of this committee to both Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| I came away from our conversations confident that we can put aside our divisions for the sake of a healthier America. | ||
| For a long time, the nation has been locked in a divisive health care debate about who pays. | ||
| When health care costs reach 20%, there are no good options, only bad ones. | ||
| Shifting the burden around between government and corporations and insurers and providers and families is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. | ||
| Our country will sink beneath a sea of desperation and debt if we don't change the course and ask, why are health care costs so high in the first place? | ||
| The obvious answer is chronic disease. | ||
| The CDC says 90% of healthcare spending goes toward managing chronic disease, which hits lower-income Americans the hardest. | ||
| The President's pledge is not to make some Americans happy again, healthy again, but to make all of our people healthy again. | ||
| There is no single culprit in chronic disease. | ||
| As much as I have criticized certain industries and agencies, President Trump and I understand that most of their scientists and experts genuinely care about American health. | ||
| Therefore, we will bring together all stakeholders in pursuit of this unifying goal. | ||
| Before I conclude, I want to make sure the committee is clear about a few things. | ||
| News reports have claimed that I am anti-vaccine or anti-industry. | ||
| I am neither. | ||
| I am pro safety. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll have order. We'll have order. | |
| Please proceed, Mr. Kennedy. | ||
| I am pro-safety. | ||
| I worked for years to raise awareness about the mercury and toxic chemicals in fish, and nobody called me any fish. | ||
| And I believe that vaccines play a critical role in healthcare. | ||
| All of my kids are vaccinated. | ||
| I've written many books on vaccines, my first book in 2014. The first line of it is, I am not anti-vaccine, and the last line is, I am not anti-vaccine. | ||
| Nor am I the enemy of food producers. | ||
| American farms are the bedrock of our culture, of our politics, of our national security. | ||
| I was a 4-H kid, and I spent my summer working on ranches. | ||
| I want to work with our farmers and food producers. | ||
| Remove burdensome regulations and unleash American ingenuity. | ||
| Maha simply cannot succeed without a partnership, a full partnership of American farmers. | ||
| In my advocacy, I've often disturbed the status quo by asking uncomfortable questions. | ||
| Well, I'm not going to apologize for that. | ||
| We have massive health problems in this country that we must face, honestly. | ||
| And the first thing I've done every morning for the past 20 years is to get on my knees and pray to God that he would put me in a position to end the chronic disease epidemic and to help America's children. | ||
| That's why I'm so grateful to President Trump for the opportunity to sit before you today and seek your support. | ||
| And partnership in this endeavor. | ||
| I will conclude with a promise. | ||
| The members of this committee, to the president, and to all the tens of millions of parents across America, especially the moms who have propelled this issue to center stage. | ||
| Should I be so privileged as to be confirmed, we will make sure our tax dollars support healthy foods. | ||
| We will scrutinize the chemical additives in our food supply. | ||
| We will remove financial conflicts of interest from our agencies. | ||
| We will create an honest, unbiased, gold standard science at HHS, accountable to the President, to Congress, and to the American people. | ||
| We will reverse the chronic disease epidemic and put the nation back on the road to good health. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Kennedy. | |
| Mr. Kennedy, I will begin. | ||
| Each of us will have five minutes to ask you questions, and then at the conclusion of the hearing, if there are further questions... | ||
| Okay, here's what we're going to do. | ||
| We're going to go back as we normally do. | ||
| The Republicans are going to ask him, I don't want to say softballs, we'll ask him questions. | ||
| It's the Democrats are going to come after him. | ||
| I think it's quite important. | ||
| I want this to be a teaching moment. | ||
| One of the things we're focused on here is the established order and how the established order runs the deal in the United States. | ||
| There's not really a difference between Republicans and Democrats. | ||
| The two sides of the same neoliberal neocon coin to wit, the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch. | ||
| I haven't seen Paul Gigiux. | ||
| I can say this. | ||
| Paul G. Joe has a person he hates more than Steve Bannon, and that is Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| The Murdoch apparatus is all in on a takedown of Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Now, we start off this with Wyden. | ||
| Wyden, Senator Wyden. | ||
| You remember Wyden from Scott Besson. | ||
| Just give me a heads up. | ||
| We'll go back to Bobby live as soon as he gets asked a cheap shot question. | ||
| You remember Wyden with Scott Besson, and Scott Besson did what we recommend to everybody. | ||
| When a guy like Wyden asked a wise guy a question, take a deep breath, Scott adjusted his glasses, very professorial, and that's a tell with him. | ||
| And then in a very calm manner, he just lit up Wyden about what a moron he was in a very gentlemanly way. | ||
| And that sent a message. | ||
| You never saw really a tough question coming from any of the other Democrats the rest of the day. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because Scott showed him right there that he knows ten times more about the topic than they do. | ||
| And if you want to be made a fool on global television, we're right here to do it. | ||
| Wyden had that opportunity today. | ||
| He's the ranking member. | ||
| Remember the structure you have? | ||
| We control the committee. | ||
| Okay, let's go. | ||
| We're going to go back live. | ||
| I'll continue this lesson. | ||
| Let's go back live to the Senate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
...afflicting stories about vaccines. | |
| You say one thing, and then you say another. | ||
| In your testimony today under oath, you denied that you were anti-vaccine. | ||
| But during a podcast interview in July of 2023, you said, quote, no vaccine is safe and effective. | ||
| In your testimony today, in order to prove you're not anti-vax, you note that all your kids are vaccinated. | ||
| But in a podcast in 2020, you said, and I quote, you would do anything, pay anything. | ||
| To go back in time and not vaccinate your kids. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy, all of these things cannot be true. | ||
| So, are you lying to Congress today when you say you are pro-vaccine? | ||
| Or did you lie on all those podcasts? | ||
| We have all of this on tape, by the way. | ||
| Yeah, Senator, as you know, because it's been... | ||
| Repeatedly debunk that statement that I made on the Lex Friedman podcast was a fragment of the statement. | ||
| He asked me, and anybody who actually goes and looks at that podcast will see this. | ||
| He asked me, are there vaccines that are safe and effective? | ||
| And I said to him, some of the live virus vaccines are. | ||
| And I said, there are no vaccines that are safe and effective. | ||
| And I was going to continue for every person. | ||
| Every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines. | ||
| He interrupted me at that point. | ||
| I've corrected it many times, including on national TV. You know about this, Senator Wyden. | ||
| So bringing this up right now is dishonest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's be clear about what you've actually done then since you want to deny your statements. | |
| For example, you have a history of trying to take vaccines away from people. | ||
| In May of 2021, you petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to not only block Americans from having access to the COVID vaccine, but to prevent any future access to the life-saving vaccine. | ||
| Are you denying that? | ||
| Your name is on the petition! | ||
| We brought that petition after CDC recommended a COVID vaccine without any scientific basis for six-year-old children. | ||
| Most experts agree today, even the people who did it back then, that COVID vaccines are inappropriate for six-year-old children who basically have a zero risk from COVID. | ||
| That's why I brought that lawsuit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't want to-- Mr. Kennedy, the facts... | |
| The committee will be in order. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And to the audience. | ||
| Senator, I'm not against vaccine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you'll hold off for a second, Mr. Kennedy. | |
| To the audience. | ||
| Comments from the audience are inappropriate and out of order. | ||
| And if there are any further disruptions, the committee will recess until the police can restore order. | ||
| Please follow the rules of the committee. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy, you may proceed. | ||
| I also want to point out that your recitation of what happened in Samoa is absolutely wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll get to that in a moment. | |
| Right now, we're talking about the petition that you filed to block Americans from having access to the vaccine and to prevent any future access to the vaccine. | ||
| Those facts are on the record. | ||
| My third question to you is... | ||
| You made almost $5 million from book deals, mostly promoting junk science. | ||
| In 2021, in a book called The Measles Book, you wrote that parents had been, quote, misled into believing that measles is a deadly disease and that measles vaccines are necessary, safe, and effective. | ||
| The reality is measles are in fact deadly and highly contagious, something that you should have learned after your lives contributed to the deaths of 83 people, most of them children, in a measles outbreak in Samoa. | ||
| So my question here is, Mr. Kennedy, is measles deadly, yes or no? | ||
| The death rate from measles historically in this country in 1963, the year before the introduction of the vaccine, Was one in 10,000. | ||
| Let me explain what happened in Samoa. | ||
| In Samoa, in 2017 or 2015, there were two kids who died following the MMR vaccine. | ||
| And the vaccination rates in Samoa dropped precipitously from about 63% to the mid-30s. | ||
| So they've never been very high. | ||
| And in 2018, two more kids died following the MMR vaccine, and the government of Samoa banned the MMR vaccine. | ||
| I arrived a year later when vaccination rates were already below any previous level. | ||
| I went there, nothing to do with vaccines. | ||
| I went there to introduce a medical informatics system. | ||
| I would digitalize records in Samoa and make health delivery much more efficient. | ||
| I never gave any public statement about vaccines. | ||
| You cannot find a single Samoan who will say, I didn't get a vaccine because of Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| I went in June of 2019. The measles house break started in August. | ||
| Oh, clearly I had nothing to do with the measles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not only that, Senator, not only that, if you let me finish. | |
| You have had some time and I'm going to respond. | ||
| If you let me finish, Senator. | ||
| If you let me finish. | ||
| 83 people died when the tissue samples were sent to New Zealand. | ||
| Most of those people did not have measles. | ||
| We don't know what was killing them. | ||
| The same outbreak occurred in Tonga and Fiji, and no extra people died. | ||
| There were seven measles outbreaks in the 13 years prior to my arrival. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, I just would like to get my time back. | |
| The nominee wrote a book. | ||
| Saying that people had been misled into believing that measles is a deadly disease. | ||
| He's trying now to play down his role in Samoa. | ||
| That's not what the parents say. | ||
| That's not what Governor Green says. | ||
| It's time to make sure that we blow the whistle on actually what your views are. | ||
| At least we're starting. | ||
| We need to move on. | ||
| Senator, I support the measles vaccine. | ||
| I support the polio vaccine. | ||
| I will do nothing as HHS secretary. | ||
| That makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Anybody who believes that ought to look at the measles book you wrote saying parents have been misled into believing that measles is a deadly disease. | |
| That's not true. | ||
| We need to move on. | ||
| Senator Grassley. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
| Let's take it back. | ||
| Grassley could get interesting. | ||
| We'll check in there in a second. | ||
| Wyden... | ||
| It's providing air cover right now for Big Pharma. | ||
| This is why I think in this town, as I say, Republicans and Democrats, the labels, mean nothing. | ||
| You're either a populist nationalist or you're a globalist elite. | ||
| You either believe in America first, American citizens first, or you're a neoliberal neocon. | ||
| Two sides of the same coin. | ||
| Who's coming after Bobby Kennedy today in defending Big Pharma is the Murdoch enterprise. | ||
| Particularly the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Paul G. Joe and these guys are off the chain and coming after Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| Now, you just see right there, Wyden was softballing his kind of opening. | ||
| And he's getting lit up. | ||
| Still on social media, he's getting lit up as a defender of... | ||
| And this is a Democrat. | ||
| This is a ranking member. | ||
| He's getting lit up as a defender of Big Pharma. | ||
| And Bobby Kennedy... | ||
| And this is one of the things we want to make sure that everybody understands. | ||
| Because these... | ||
| These hearings provide two things if you want to do a blocking. | ||
| Number one, excuse me, you can vote them down, and because of your efforts, that's not going to happen. | ||
| That's not going to happen. | ||
| Or you can get them off the one or two things, this is why we asked Rand Paul, the one or two big things that you want to accomplish. | ||
| Let's go back in time to Matt Gaetz. | ||
| Remember the day that Matt Gaetz went to Capitol Hill with J.D. Vance and they walked around and met certain senators. | ||
| And then, later in the day, it was leaked that Matt Gaetz had to promise what? | ||
| Not to go after MSNBC, not to go after Fauci, not to go after the people who came up with the president. | ||
| He had committed this in the room. | ||
| Now, I didn't believe it, but you could see what's already happening. | ||
| They want to box in. | ||
| If they can't defeat a Trump nominee, they want to box it in. | ||
| They want to box it in. | ||
| And that's what you're seeing right now. | ||
| The force Bobby Kennedy to say, I support the polio vaccine. | ||
| I support the measles vaccine. | ||
| I'm not making, I'm not opining whether that's right or wrong or not. | ||
| I'm telling you the kind of statics and dynamics of how these things work. | ||
| They actually believe, ladies and gentlemen, that they can defeat Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| There was a time they thought some Democrats might vote for him, but I think right now they think the momentum has shifted back. | ||
| They think it's shifted back to... | ||
| To actually, this thing could be a coin flip. | ||
| And so this is all about performance of Bobby Kennedy today and going through this. | ||
| And this could be a tough one. | ||
| Of course, a lot of the war, some of the war room posse is already in the room. | ||
| There was a huge line outside today. | ||
| And Clara Dooley, the great filmmaker, was out there doing interviews. | ||
| The Children's Health Defense was out there. | ||
| Mary Holland, who's the president, they were out doing interviews of people in the crowd, in the line. | ||
| Tons of supporters. | ||
| But you can tell. | ||
| There's some non-supporters also in there. | ||
| I think some people maybe even a little even farther and more of a disruptor than Kennedy. | ||
| Both type of disruptors. | ||
| Like I said, we will go back to all the Democrat questions because that's where the meat and the sustenance is going to be. | ||
| Just to put it in perspective, we might try to get Senator Tuberville in here momentarily. | ||
| Don't know if we're going to be able to pull that off in our particular where the hearing is going. | ||
| Carrie Lake, I think we're going to bump her this afternoon. | ||
| We're going to go to the White House live for Natalie. | ||
| So much going on. | ||
| Overnight, so two memos came out yesterday in the deconstruction of the administrative state. | ||
| Number one was this, hey, we're stopping all funds flow until we get a handle around it. | ||
| I believe this came because if you saw the executive orders or executive actions, President Trump's taken the last... | ||
| 48, 72 hours about USAID, about WHO, things that are very high in the war room posse's agenda, right, of shutting down and making sure they're gone. | ||
| There would be reports afterwards of things like EPA and the Green New Deal. | ||
| And we showed you that headline from the Financial Times last week to talk about $300 billion. | ||
| Remember that, quote-unquote, carved back by President Trump or impounded. | ||
| Remember the word impoundment. | ||
| Write that one down because that's... | ||
| It's going to be a major issue. | ||
| This is where Congress has authorized it, appropriated it. | ||
| Remember, appropriations is a law. | ||
| They've appropriated money. | ||
| But the theory of the case is that's the ceiling, not the floor. | ||
| That's the ceiling and not even a hard target. | ||
| The president, by executive action, can carve back on that. | ||
| That is quite controversial. | ||
| I think that that might actually go to the Supreme Court if the opposition can get standing. | ||
| So what happens over the last 72 hours is two things. | ||
| Number one, they put out basically an OMB directive to say, full stop. | ||
| No transfers, no grants. | ||
| Essentially how everything in the government is essentially financed except stuff that's direct. | ||
| And there was a firestorm. | ||
| I believe this exercise was to show where the money's going, but also with the feedback you saw last night, particularly on MSNBC, they go through... | ||
| Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of programs. | ||
| And people start to ask the question, we fund all this? | ||
| Because remember, to deconstruct the administrative state, and particularly to cut spending, which does has to do with OMB, you're going to have a fight, and you're going to have to have an unpleasant conversation. | ||
| You're not going to, this discretionary spending, and even the Medicaid spending, hasn't gotten where it's gotten. | ||
| Without both parties being cool with it. | ||
| This is the controlled opposition of the Republican Party. | ||
| So this will... | ||
| Part of it was, I think, to expose that. | ||
| A federal judge, an Obama appointee, one of the most radical judges in the D.C. Circuit, and you know how bad they are given J6. She's put a temporary restraining or a stay on this until Monday when both sides are going to get in there and... | ||
| And argue it. | ||
| Although, I think she even said, hey, I've got to see some specific damages from potential plaintiffs to see if this is just not government action. | ||
| Now, the case that other people are making is saying, hey, Johnson, this is all in the CR that you just kicked the can down the road. | ||
| This is a Republican House, the Speaker. | ||
| What's your beef? | ||
| You're Republicans. | ||
| You're guys. | ||
| You're telling them it doesn't know where the money's going. | ||
| This is the heart of the matter. | ||
| This also gets back to this theory of the unified executive. | ||
| He's the chief executive officer. | ||
| He's the commander-in-chief. | ||
| He's also, wait for it, the chief magistrate and the chief law enforcement officer. | ||
| So you'll give me a heads up when Bobby's back with a Democrat. | ||
| So, the question with Trump is, hey, I see where the appropriations bill is. | ||
| I see where this has gone. | ||
| It doesn't mean... | ||
| That we're not going to think through how we cut this from the executive branch point of view. | ||
| And we've got OMB. That's why. | ||
| And remember, please, this is why Russ' vote is so important. | ||
| Now, Russ' vote has not been confirmed. | ||
| This gets back to our situation with Thune. | ||
| The number is 202-224-3121. | ||
| Today, you can take two actions. | ||
| Number one, call John Thune's office. | ||
| Allow his staff to know that it's quite important that we expedite. | ||
| We expedite the hearings and the votes at a committee. | ||
| We break cloture and we get to the floor. | ||
| That it's taken too long to get Pam Bondi. | ||
| It's too long for Russ's vote. | ||
| We don't want to wait for Cash Patel or Tulsi Gabbard, particularly Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| We've got to get on with it. | ||
| It's only a handful of people have been approved. | ||
| So we've got to get on with that. | ||
| So 202-224-3121. | ||
| Make sure you call Thune and be polite but firm. | ||
| We've got to get on with this. | ||
| And people should be working all night. | ||
| I don't know why they're knocking off over there. | ||
| I don't know why they're not working all weekends. | ||
| You know, this was committed to the president. | ||
| Trump right now is all gas, no brake. | ||
| It's all pedal, no brake, as it should be. | ||
| So that's number one. | ||
| This was huge, right? | ||
| Could have been done a little tighter. | ||
| Hey, maybe. | ||
| You know, people are rolling hard. | ||
| Like I said, there's a dozen major things every day. | ||
| It's flood the zone. | ||
| You don't want the enemy, the people, the mainstream media cannot get a grip on this. | ||
| There's a half a dozen, I said yesterday, a half a dozen to ten things every day. | ||
| They get a blip on the Associated Press. | ||
| They get a blip on the Hill. | ||
| But nobody even does any in-depth research because it's just too much. | ||
| They're too overwhelmed. | ||
| Of course, the other thing big, besides the 17 inspector generals and the 160 detailees getting sent home, all types of structural things, then last night another bomb, and I believe this is coming from the Doe. | ||
| So one was OMB, right? | ||
| Working with Stephen Miller, and what I will do, Bobby's still filibustering. | ||
| We haven't gotten to a Democrat. | ||
| Bobby's going to filibuster the hell out of this thing, right? | ||
| It's Cornyn? | ||
| Yeah, I don't... | ||
| Cornyn's fine. | ||
| He's a... | ||
| I was down in Texas. | ||
| Cornyn's going to have a big issue in this re-elect. | ||
| The grassroots down there, they got Cornyn target. | ||
| The other big thing, this came from Doge. | ||
| So one came from OMB, and this was massive. | ||
| The massive, hey, stop all the three trading. | ||
| We want to see where all the money is. | ||
| People are shocked. | ||
| I think the president's shocked about every program, every funding, all the NGOs. | ||
| I've got it up on Getter. | ||
| I think I gave it to Natalie. | ||
| I think Alex Jones put it up, too. | ||
| There's an amazing infographic of the thousands and thousands of NGOs that are all supported by this. | ||
| Remember, it's a racket. | ||
| It's a total racket. | ||
| So part of that was a learning exercise. | ||
| Number two, the other big one, and this came, I think, from the Doge guys. | ||
| This is another blockbuster. | ||
| They kind of put the administrative state on notice. | ||
| They said, hey, you've got a date to return to the office to come back, number one. | ||
| Number two, we're going to give every employee an option by, I think it's February 8th. | ||
| Today's January 28th. | ||
| This was yesterday. | ||
| By February 8th, we need you to make a decision. | ||
| If you want to stick around, there's a new sheriff in town. | ||
| There'll be new rules and regulations. | ||
| You've got to work from office, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Or you can take a buyout. | ||
| Now, a buyout, people in media companies know this. | ||
| Buyout, particularly in restructurings or turnarounds or like in a failing company like most media companies today, mainstream media. | ||
| They offer buyouts, which really they give a... | ||
| Okay, I'm going to get back to this. | ||
| Let's go back to the Senate floor. | ||
| Bobby Kennedy, take another incoming from a Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This morning here in the U.S. Senate, and this committee is being asked to fulfill a really important responsibility, which is to decide whether to confirm Mr. Kennedy to one of the most important health care... | |
| Jobs in America. | ||
| And the reason I think it's so important is for many of the reasons you said in your opening statement, which is that we live in the richest country in the world and we have some of the worst health outcomes of any industrialized country in the world. | ||
| We live in the richest country in the world and we have some of the lowest life expectancy rates of anybody in the industrialized world. | ||
| I was a school superintendent before I was in this job, Mr. Chairman, and I can tell you that Mr. Kennedy's right, you know, that when I look at the kids in the Denver Public Schools, if we don't change the way we eat in this country, 40% of them are going to suffer adult diabetes as a result of their... | ||
| Diet. | ||
| And we're, as I said, spending more than any other country in the world, and our families, every single person's constituents in this Senate are facing chronic shortages when it comes to health care. | ||
| My friend from Texas, Senator Cornyn, has been a champion on mental health care. | ||
| We have an epidemic, as he knows, across this country in mental health care, partly because of what the The massive social media platforms that were sitting behind the President of the United States have inflicted on our children for their profit in the last decade or so. | ||
| So we have no shortage of challenges to confront, and I even agree with some of the diagnosis of Mr. Kennedy. | ||
| What is so disturbing to me is that out of 330 million Americans, We're being asked to put somebody in this job who has spent 50 years of his life not honoring the tradition that he talked about at the beginning of this conversation, | ||
| but peddling in half-truths, peddling in false statements, peddling in theories that, you know, create doubt about whether or not things that we know are safe are unsafe. | ||
| Not that every vaccine in America is unsafe, not that you can't possibly have an adverse reaction, but that parents and children in my old school district and school districts all over this country would be better off not getting vaccinated than getting vaccinated, unlike his own children. | ||
| Unlike the people he invited to his house in Los Angeles for their party who were vaccinated. | ||
| For everybody else, it's about peddling these half-truths. | ||
| And he says it with such conviction that you want to believe him. | ||
| And Mr. Kennedy, I just have some, there are many, many things in the record, but I hope that you could answer these questions, yes or no. | ||
| I've tried to ask these in a manner that's faithful to what you actually said, because I didn't want to have a debate about whether you actually said them. | ||
| So I'm asking you yes or no, Mr. Kennedy. | ||
| Did you say that COVID-19 was a genetically engineered bioweapon that targets black and white people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people? | ||
| I didn't say it was deliberately targeted. | ||
| I just quoted an NIH-funded, an NIH... I have to move on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you say that Lyme disease is highly likely a materially engineered bioweapon? | |
| I made sure I put in the highly likely. | ||
| Did you say Lyme disease is a highly likely? | ||
| I probably did say that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I want all of our colleagues to hear it, Mr. Kennedy. | |
| I want them to hear it. | ||
| You said yes. | ||
| Did you say that exposure to pesticides causes children to become transgender? | ||
| No, I never said that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, I have the record that I'll give to the chairman, and he can make his judgment about what you said. | |
| Did you write in your book, and it's undeniable, That African-AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS. Yes or no, Mr. Kennedy? | ||
| I'm not sure if I may. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'll give it to the chairman, Mr. Kennedy. | |
| And my final question. | ||
| Did you say on a podcast, and I quote, I wouldn't leave it, abortion, to the states. | ||
| My belief is we should leave it to the woman. | ||
| We shouldn't have the government involved, even if it's full term. | ||
| Did you say that, Mr. Kennedy? | ||
| Senator, I believe that every abortion is a tragedy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did you say it, Mr. Kennedy? | |
| This matters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It doesn't matter what you come here and say that isn't true, that's not reflective of what you really believe, that you haven't said over decade after decade after decade, because unlike other jobs we're confirming around this place, this is a job where it is life and death. | |
| For the kids that I used to work for in the Denver Public Schools and for families all over this country that are suffering from living in the richest country of the world that can't deliver basic health care and basic mental health care to them. | ||
| It's too important for the games that you're playing, Mr. Kennedy. | ||
| And I hope my colleagues will say to the president, I have no influence over him. | ||
| I hope my colleagues will say to the president, out of 330 million Americans, we can do better than this. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We need to move on. | ||
| Senator Cassidy. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy, President Trump has sworn to protect Medicare. | ||
| Republicans are exploring reforms to Medicaid that could help pay for Trump administration priorities. | ||
| With this context... | ||
| What will you do about dual eligibles? | ||
| About dual eligibles? | ||
| Well, dual eligibles are not, right now, served very well under the system. | ||
| Those are people who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare. | ||
| I suppose my answer to that is to make sure that the... | ||
| That the programs are consolidated, that they're integrated, and the care is integrated. | ||
| I look forward to working with you, Dr. Cassidy, on making sure that we take good care of people who are too eligible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And how do you propose that we integrate those programs? | |
| Does Medicare pay more, Medicare pay less, Medicaid pay more, Medicaid pay less? | ||
| How do we do that? | ||
| I'm not exactly sure because I'm not in there. | ||
| I mean, it is difficult to integrate them because Medicare is under fee-for-service. | ||
| It's paid for by employer taxes. | ||
| Medicaid is fully paid for by the federal government, and it's not fee-for-service. | ||
| I do not know the answer to that. | ||
| I look forward to exploring options with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Republicans, again, are looking at ways to potentially reform Medicaid to help pay for President Trump's priorities, but to improve outcomes. | |
| What thoughts do you have regarding Medicaid reform? | ||
| Well, Medicaid is not working for Americans, and it's specifically not working. | ||
| Or the target population. | ||
| Most Americans, like myself, I'm on Medicare Advantage, and I'm very happy with it. | ||
| Most people who are on Medicaid are not happy. | ||
| The premiums are too high. | ||
| The deductibles are too high. | ||
| The networks are narrow. | ||
| The best doctors will not accept it in the best hospitals. | ||
| And particularly, Medicaid was originally designed for a target population of the poorest Americans. | ||
| It's now been dramatically expanded, and the irony of the expansion is that the poorest Americans are now being robbed. | ||
| Their services have dramatically decreased, even though we've increased the price of Medicare by 60% over the last four years. | ||
| The target population is being robbed. | ||
| We need to figure out other options. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Obviously you've thought about that, and I appreciate that. | |
| What reforms do you recommend, again, that would improve services, I suppose, but also make it more cost-efficient? | ||
| President Trump has given me the charge of improving quality of care and lowering the price of care for all Americans. | ||
| There are many things that we can do. | ||
| I mean, what we want to, the ultimate outcome, I think, is to increase transparency, to increase accountability, and to transition to a value-based system rather than a fee-based system, rather than a service-based system. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Medicaid in particular, can you just kind of take those kind of general principles and apply it to the Medicaid program? | |
| You know, listen, I think that there are many, many options with telemedicine, with AI right now. | ||
| And, you know, there's a, including direct primary care systems, we're seeing that movement grow across the country. | ||
| There is a... | ||
|
unidentified
|
So going back to Medicaid, though, and speaking of these specific advances, what reforms are you proposing with these ideas vis-a-vis Medicaid? | |
| Well, I don't have a broad proposal for dismantling the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course not saying that. | |
| I think what we need to do is we need to experiment with pilot programs in each state. | ||
| We need to keep our eye on... | ||
| The ultimate goal, which is value-based care, which is transparency, accountability, access. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And one more thing, going back to Medicare, you mentioned you're an MA. You mentioned earlier the Medicare fee-for-service. | |
| Do you have any kind of thoughts as to whether or not patients on fee-for-service should move into MA, or how should we handle that? | ||
| Whether patients... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who are on Medicare fee-for-service. | |
| Traditional Medicare. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| That's their choice right now. | ||
| I mean, I think 32 million Americans, or 30 million Americans on Medicare, on traditional Medicare, and then another 34 on Medicare Advantage. | ||
| Roughly half and half, and I think more people would rather be on Medicare Advantage because it offers very good services. | ||
| But people can't afford it. | ||
| It's much more expensive. | ||
| In answer to your first question, there are all kinds of exciting things that we can be doing, including cooperatives, which President Trump has supported, including health savings accounts, which President Trump has supported. | ||
| All of these things to make people more accountable for their own health. | ||
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And so we'd bring the cooperatives and the health savings accounts into Medicare and Medicaid? | |
| Exactly. | ||
| We try to increase the use of those and to direct primary care to continue to transition into a value-based program that is private. | ||
| Americans don't, by and large, do not like the Affordable Care Act. | ||
| People are on it. | ||
| They don't like Medicaid. | ||
| They like Medicare. | ||
| And they like private insurance. | ||
| We need to listen to what people, they would prefer to be on private insurance. | ||
| Most Americans, if they can afford to be, will be on private insurance. | ||
| We need to figure out ways to improve care, particularly for elderly, for veterans, for the poor in this country. | ||
| And Medicaid, the current model, is not doing that. | ||
| I would ask, you know, any of the Democrats who were chuckling just now. | ||
| Do you think all that money, the $900 billion that we're sending to Medicaid every year, has made Americans healthy? | ||
| Do we think it's working for anybody? | ||
| Are the premiums low enough? |
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