Jan. 29, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
57:57
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Senator Warner. | ||
| Well, I've got to tell you, for literally hundreds of thousands of Virginians, Medicaid is what prevents them from health crises on a daily and weekly basis. | ||
| And some imaginary new plan. | ||
| And if there was a new plan that would be the basis of what Trump was going to do in repealing Obamacare, I would have thought by now we'd have seen it. | ||
| I've got to tell you. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy, I got questions. | ||
| I appreciate our visit. | ||
| I know you take your views seriously. | ||
| And I don't reflexively vote. | ||
| I voted for four of President Trump's nominees already. | ||
| Got a lot of grief from folks on this panel. | ||
| But I got to tell you, I saw an email that you put out Monday night, or your campaign did, and a funding... | ||
| Fundraising email, your presidential campaign celebrated that the freeze on all new regulations, guidance, and announcements is a way to protect unelected bureaucrats from further undermining our health freedom. | ||
| Then you ask your donors to help pay for your campaign debt. | ||
| Did your campaign and you put out that? | ||
| I don't think my campaign exists anymore. | ||
| Listen, I've got to tell you this. | ||
| Somebody's out there soliciting money for it. | ||
| Maybe you ought to find out who is. | ||
| So the fact that you celebrate this freeze, do you think that was a good idea to put all of this on hold for 90 days? | ||
| Funding and any kind of further work? | ||
| NIH research? | ||
| As Chairman Crapo pointed out... | ||
| I'm not asking for... | ||
| I love Mike Crapo. | ||
| I'm asking you. | ||
| You're up in a very important position. | ||
| As he pointed out, Senator, the portals that were closed were not closed as a result of the Trump administration. | ||
| Let me just tell you... | ||
| I'd like you to explain to a domestic violence center in Richmond that's saying because this freeze they may have to close down. | ||
| Where are those battered women to go? | ||
| Or a rural non-profit I've got in the Chennault Valley who's saying that freeze is going to potentially shut down their ability to operate. | ||
| So I guess if you deny or don't know what your campaign's sending on, you don't know if you raise a lot of money Monday night. | ||
| I'm saying that a Trump administration has. | ||
| You don't know if you raise. | ||
| A lot of money. | ||
| The Trump administration has made clear that it does not want to freeze benefits for any Americans under Medicaid or Medicare, and I do not want to... | ||
| The freeze is affecting beyond Medicare and Social Security. | ||
| I would hope you would have known that to be able to answer some of this. | ||
| Now, you've said publicly, you want to immediately get rid of 600 NIH workers on day one. | ||
| When we had our meeting, you said you'd actually like to get rid of 2,200 people from HHS. Which offices are you going to start cutting and riffing these 2,200 workers from? | ||
| Senator, there's 200 political appointees that are changed during every administration. | ||
| So if you got rid of those 200 political appointees, you're not going to replace them with your political appointees? | ||
| Well, President Biden this year changed 3,000 employees at HHS. 3,750 at NIH. You're 2,200. | ||
| What departments are you going to pick them from? | ||
| Well, the same as President Biden did when he changed 3,000 out. | ||
| I'm down to a minute, minute 30. The chairman's been generous with colleagues on both sides and may have to go a couple minutes over. | ||
| But let me just say, so let's just answer, this would be, I hope, since you're asking to become the top healthcare official in the United States in terms of HHS, Huge ramifications. | ||
| And part of this job is to be the senior advisor to the president on health issues. | ||
| So when we're looking at this purge and we're looking at laying off workers, when we're looking at potentially the president's illegal offer to try to buy out federal employees, which I would say to any federal employees, think twice. | ||
| Has this individual in his business world ever fulfilled his contracts or obligations to any workers in the past? | ||
| But if you are in this position, will you pledge that you will not fire federal employees who work on food safety, work on trying to prevent things like Salomino? | ||
| Senator, there are 91,000 employees. | ||
| That's a simple yes, and I'm going to take that as a no. | ||
| I take that as a no. | ||
| Actually, we talked about protecting Americans from cyber criminals. | ||
| Something we need to do a lot more on. | ||
| Will you commit not to fire anyone in the health arena who currently works on protecting Americans from cyber attacks in their healthcare files? | ||
| I will commit to not firing anybody who's doing their job. | ||
| Based on your opinion? | ||
| Based upon your opinion or your political agenda or Mr. Trump's political agenda? | ||
| Based upon my opinion. | ||
| I guess that means a lot of the folks who've had any type of views on vaccines will be out of work. | ||
| Will you freeze grant funding for community health centers? | ||
| Will you freeze federal funds for community health centers, the way the current administration is done? | ||
| The White House has made clear. | ||
| And no funds are going to be denied to any American for benefits in any program. | ||
| Do you know what happens at community health centers? | ||
| Those are direct... | ||
| Are you talking about the Indian health centers? | ||
| No, I'm talking about community health centers across the country. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| So you're going to excuse Indian health centers, which is good, but others are not? | ||
| They're going to get their funds frozen? | ||
| I strongly support community health centers, as does the president. | ||
| So does that mean you're not going to freeze the funding that is currently frozen? | ||
| The White House has made clear that none of that funding is supposed to be frozen. | ||
| Sir, the direct payments are different than how the government operates. | ||
| We fund the federal government down to community health centers. | ||
| As a former governor, there's Lots and lots of state programs that are related to health care that come from the federal government, they come down to the state, then it goes to local programs. | ||
| All of those don't directly pay out a dollar at a time, but they come from federal funding. | ||
| They are all, you know, even though they keep changing the guidance on a minute-by-minute basis, based upon 945 or 1030 or 1045, whatever time it is today, those funds are still frozen. | ||
| Sir, I just honestly, I want to give you a fair shot, but I don't feel like you approach this job with the knowledge and candidly your willingness not to commit, try to recommend to the president to make sure these funds are unfrozen and that people's lives were at stake is a very disappointing answer. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Senator Lankford. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. Chairman, thank you. | |
| Mr. Kennedy, it's good to see you again. | ||
| We had some great visits in my office. | ||
| We've done some follow-up calls to be able to go through. | ||
| You and I have talked about... | ||
| A hundred different issues and backgrounds and things. | ||
| You've been able to address a lot of them today and just different questions to be able to clear up social media rumors and the things that are out there on it. | ||
| So I do appreciate that. | ||
| We've talked about pharmacy benefit managers. | ||
| We've talked about the nursing home rule the Biden administration put down. | ||
| We've talked about your views on agriculture and commercial and row crop agriculture. | ||
| We've talked about food issues, and you've made it very, very clear you're not going to tell Americans what to eat, but you do want Americans to know what they're eating. | ||
| And I think that's a pretty fair perspective on that. | ||
| I do want to talk to you about some areas that you and I have talked about as well. | ||
| We have some disagreements, you and I, on the issue of life. | ||
| And when life begins on that, you've been very outspoken on that. | ||
| And we've had some good opportunities to be able to talk about that. | ||
| Title X is specifically in the HHS area. | ||
| This has been an area that has been interpreted for a long time. | ||
| And President Trump in the first administration interpreted that rule to say that his administration will prohibit the performance, referral for, or promotion of abortion. | ||
| As a part of the Title X program. | ||
| He made that very clear in the first administration. | ||
| Obviously, that's his decision to make again on that, on how he wants to handle that, and he's made a lot of public statements on that. | ||
| The Biden administration not only reversed that, not only rescinded that rule, but they went one step the other direction. | ||
| In my state in Oklahoma, as you and I have talked about, the Biden administration cut off funding to the state of Oklahoma for AIDS testing. | ||
| For breast cancer screening and for other areas of poverty, healthcare, because my state didn't promote abortion. | ||
| It wouldn't provide. | ||
| If my state wouldn't promote abortion in the state, we got cut off for federal funds. | ||
| For AIDS testing and for other things. | ||
| My simple question to you is, how are you going to handle Title X on that? | ||
| I saw how President Biden handled that in the punitive measures that came on my state for those that are in rural health care. | ||
| How are you going to handle Title X? I'm going to support President Trump's policies on Title X. I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy. | ||
| I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions a year. | ||
| I agree with him that the states should control abortion. | ||
| President Trump has told me that he wants to end late-term abortions, that he wants to protect conscious exemptions, and that he wants to end... | ||
| Federal funding for abortions here or abroad. | ||
| That's Title X. I serve at the pleasure of the president. | ||
| I'm going to implement his policies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for that. | |
| President Biden, when he came in, immediately closed down the Office of Civil Rights and Conscience Protections within HHS. There's a statement that's come out recently that he's going to reopen that office again to be able to protect the civil rights of Americans. | ||
| One of the things that Javier Becerra did immediately when he came into HHS was conscience protections. | ||
| For medical professionals that were being compelled against their conscience to perform medical procedures that violated their conscience, Javier Pesera stepped in immediately into HHS and withdrew that and said, no, the federal government will tell you what you believe about these issues. | ||
| You don't have conscience protections anymore. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I'm here with Senator Tommy. | ||
| Tuberville's in the neighborhood. | ||
| Drop by. | ||
| Are you feeling any better, Coach? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, a lot better. | |
| It's been seven days. | ||
| I think everybody got it. | ||
| This bug going around is bad, bad, bad, bad. | ||
| I don't want to say it's a Chinese bioweapon, but maybe I'll ask Kennedy that question. | ||
| First off, your assessment, Bobby Kennedy, they've been coming after him pretty hard this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He got a little angry early, and he probably should have, and let the Democrats know he's going to fight back because he needs to fight back. | ||
| What do you mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, they're just trying to upset him about things that's not true about the vaccine. | |
| And, you know, he's made his statements all clear. | ||
| He came by and visited you one-on-one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| What's your takeaway? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Awesome. | |
| And he's doing it for the right reasons. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I mean, he's doing it to help. | |
| And he understands the whole picture. | ||
| You know, he's not going to run the show, Steve, by himself. | ||
| He's got four or five people, the CDC director, NIH, all those people. | ||
| But he'll set the scenario. | ||
| Now, I've told my colleagues on the right, the worst mistake we would ever make is not confirm this guy, because he brought millions of young people to the table for us as Republicans that weren't going to vote for us early. | ||
| They believe in health and the future of the country and better food and all those kind of things. | ||
| Make America healthy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, exactly. | |
| The whole thing. | ||
| And look at the guy they had the last four years. | ||
| Most people, 99% of the people in the country didn't know who the HHS director was for Biden. | ||
| And he was a damn lawyer that lived in California. | ||
| From California, terrible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that lived there. | |
| He didn't even work here. | ||
| Didn't even come back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| He just took a paycheck. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Didn't make one decision. | ||
| Me being on the health committee, I think he came one time to a hearing and it just got awful. | ||
| Tell the audience, why is the health committee not the organizing committee for HHS? Why is he at finance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, he's at finance. | |
| He comes to us tomorrow. | ||
| But they will bring him out of committee for some reason. | ||
| I've asked that same question. | ||
| Why didn't I start health day one and then finance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It should be that. | |
| It should be that. | ||
| You're with me on that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But for some reason, it was passed in the rules in the Senate years ago that the finance would bring out because I think there's so much money involved in HHS. So they wanted the Finance Committee to have the final say. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Is tomorrow going to be just because tomorrow we get day two of Bobby. | ||
| We also have Tulsi and Cash. | ||
| Tomorrow is game day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, it'll be nonstop tomorrow. | |
| And, of course, you'll have the same crazies after RFK, but, of course, they're after Patel and Tulsi big time. | ||
| I mean, they're looking for blood. | ||
| Before I get to that, I want to go back to it. | ||
| How does a senator from the great state of Alabama, I would argue, the railhead of MAGA? Be supportive of RFK Jr., who a lot of people would say is a screaming left-wing Democrat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, because of his policies of what I told you earlier. | |
| I've got a 30- and a 28-year-old, two boys. | ||
| And this time last year, they were on RFK's side. | ||
| He was still running for president. | ||
| They were on his side for president. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because of podcast. | |
| Dad, you have to listen to this podcast. | ||
| You know, quit getting your news from some of these newspapers that you read or Fox News or CNN. | ||
| You can see it then. | ||
| Your sons can see it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have to start listening to podcasts where people actually lay their soul on the line to tell exactly what they believe. | |
| Who's the senator? | ||
| Let's cut in for a second. | ||
| Let's cut in on Senator Whitehouse, the question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Recantation of what you have said on vaccinations, including a promise from you never to say vaccines aren't medically safe when they, in fact, are. | |
| And making indisputably clear that you support mandatory vaccinations against diseases where that will keep people safe. | ||
| You're in that hole pretty deep. | ||
| We've just had a measles case in Rhode Island. | ||
| The first since 2013. And frankly, You frighten people. | ||
| Two, I want to air harms that Rhode Island has experienced from a remorseless, senseless CMS bureaucracy. | ||
| CMS has for years maintained a reimbursement system that the bureaucracy could never explain, never justify That persistently pays Rhode Island providers less than neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut providers. | ||
| A differential of 23 and 26 percent in our regional health care market. | ||
| The pending ahead program can begin to remedy this, at least for value-based care, and it must. | ||
| There has to be payment parity. | ||
| In the region, Rhode Island's health care system is bleeding out because we aren't paid what neighboring hospitals and doctors are paid, and the one act CMS took on this years ago was to make it worse. | ||
| The CMS bureaucracy has also attacked one of the best accountable care organizations in the country, Rhode Island's Integra Family Doctors. | ||
| Tried to throw them off the shared savings program because they said Integra, years ago, briefly, fell 137 patients short of the 5,000 patients that ACOs need. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| We're going to come back with Senator Toto. | ||
|
unidentified
|
CMS wouldn't listen. | |
| As soon as Bobby Kennedy responds, let me know. | ||
| We're going to go right back to it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't you just love these dissertations? | |
| It's a damn hearing. | ||
| Ask him a question and let him answer it. | ||
| They're giving the question and the answer. | ||
| It's really unfair. | ||
| But they have seven minutes, I think, of this round, and we've been clocking. | ||
| The Democrats take about three and a half or four minutes on the speech, the mini-speech, and position themselves, and don't give Kennedy any time to answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have their talking points from Big Pharma. | |
| And so they've got to get that in. | ||
| In the old days, it was the liberals that were against Big Pharma. | ||
| This shift, you've seen it here. | ||
| I keep saying MSNBC, 80% of the ads in prime time are Big Pharma. | ||
| There would be a test pattern. | ||
| How big does Big Pharma own the Democratic Party? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first of all, if we would ban drug advertisements on television, probably like we should, there would be an uprising. | |
| Well, first of all, you'd have 70 Republican Senate seats. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| How far down the road were we to get in that past? | ||
| I'm a huge advocate. | ||
| Bobby Kennedy's an advocate of that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's been talked about, but at the end of the day, you've got several on the right that are taking a lot of money from Big Pharma. | |
| Big Pharma, they own the lobbyists, the law firms. | ||
| How powerful are they in this city? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Doctors, hospitals. | |
| In this city, how powerful are they? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, huge. | |
| If you had to rank order defense industrial complex, Big Tech Industrial Complex from Silicon Valley and Big Pharma. | ||
| Rank them. | ||
| What's the most powerful, the second, and the third? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Big Pharma. | |
| Big Pharma's number one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no doubt, because it touches so many people. | |
| You know, Big Tech is just, now, ten years from now, we probably have a different attitude toward that. | ||
| But, you know, Big Pharma touches everything in almost every committee, you know, that's going to have something to do with either drugs or medical care. | ||
| I was in a VA hearing yesterday about our veterans and healthcare. | ||
| We spend billions and billions, and it's getting worse. | ||
| Do your colleagues ever get on you or leadership ever get on you for being so plain-spoken? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I wouldn't listen to them anyway. | |
| It is what it is. | ||
| I just tell what I see and what I hear. | ||
| Talk to me about... | ||
| We're going to go back to Bobby Kennedy as soon as he's answering the dissertation. | ||
| He's not going to have a time to answer. | ||
| He's still asking the question? | ||
| He's still going? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, he's still going. | |
| Yeah, we'll go right to... | ||
| Tulsi and Cash, they're obsessed with both of these. | ||
| And Tulsi's supposedly on the bubble, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your thoughts? | |
| Okay, let's go to Bobby Kennedy, his answer. | ||
| Tyrannical. | ||
| Insensate bureaucracies and stupid rules, and I will work with you to make CMS responsive to the needs of Rhode Island and to remedy those disparities that you talk about. | ||
| I am familiar with the Integra Health Plan, and it is a template for what we ought to be doing. | ||
| It's a value-based plan. | ||
| And I look forward to you to making sure that we create pilot programs like this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, one of the things I've learned in my tenure in the Senate is that a nominee saying that they're willing to work with me amounts to exactly zero. | |
| We need to get this fixed. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Well, I guess at that point then we will move on to Senator Daines. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, thank you. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy, I'm glad to see you here this morning. | ||
| Right there. | ||
| White House was so long, he never got the vaccine answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, no, exactly. | |
| He just wanted to make the statement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's getting his narrative over. | |
| And, you know, he's told pretty much what to say. | ||
| And it's pretty much scripted. | ||
| And the whole side of the Democrats, we don't get together as Republicans and say, okay, what direction do we want to take here? | ||
| Oh, you guys don't. | ||
| You don't sit down. | ||
| The staffs don't sit down. | ||
| It's all independent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All independent. | |
| Talk about your state and what you believe in. | ||
| Ask the questions pertaining to your state. | ||
| But you can tell Pete Hexeth, all orchestrated. | ||
| Let's talk about that. | ||
| Hexeth, Rubio, others came out with kind of, in their opening statements, and what they had was substance. | ||
| Pete's revolutionary military affairs instilling the warrior ethos back into the Pentagon. | ||
| Rubio at the end of the post-war international rules-based order. | ||
| On Hexeth... | ||
| The Heritans didn't ask any questions about that. | ||
| They're tacking him on the personal foibles all day long. | ||
| Was that coordinated and organized? | ||
|
unidentified
|
100%. | |
| And it was mostly the ladies on the armed services that went after him personally. | ||
| Why does the Democrats have nine women, it seemed like? | ||
| Why do they have all the women on armed services? | ||
| What is that about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I couldn't tell you, but they do. | |
| They've got a lot more than we have. | ||
| Does that strike you as a little odd? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well... | |
| Yeah, but if you look at all them, Duckworth was military. | ||
| Gillibrand was military. | ||
| Rosen, I don't know about her. | ||
| The young lady from Michigan that just got in. | ||
| CIA. Yeah, Slotkin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, I don't know. | |
| It's hard to keep up with our side. | ||
| What did you think about their questions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it was just a personal attack. | |
| They wanted to make a point. | ||
| Can he do this job with all the personal problems that he has? | ||
| And it was great that his wife stood up with him. | ||
| It was just unfortunate that late in the day before the vote, this sister-in-law comes out with some... | ||
| And then the sister said, I don't know what she's talking about. | ||
| And we had one senator, I think, that was a Republican senator, was involved in some of that. | ||
| No, our audience worked their phones on that Friday afternoon because it looked like it could be on the bubble right there, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It came down the last vote. | |
| But you asked about Patel. | ||
| I'll go back to Hexa for a second. | ||
| You have been the leader in the Senate. | ||
| I'm saying, hey, this DEI thing's out of control. | ||
| The war fighting's out of control. | ||
| We don't know how to fight anymore. | ||
| You stood in the breach for 18 months and took incoming. | ||
| We have you in here, man. | ||
| The people were coming after you hard, the left, right? | ||
| You held up everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's travel abortion. | |
| Right. | ||
| Well, to be straightforward, you were also, your observation is that you were not totally impressed with the quality of what you were seeing coming up in field grade officers. | ||
| Tell me about Hexeth. | ||
| Is Hexeth going to get the job done here? | ||
| Are you confident of that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That was my first question. | |
| We have to have somebody closer to the age of the warfighter, somebody that has recently been in the warfighting, not somebody that's been out of it as a general, been out of any kind of contact with the recruiting in the last 30 years. | ||
| We have to have new blood, new ideas, and he was perfect for that. | ||
| He will speak his piece. | ||
| And he'll tell you what he believes in. | ||
| He's not going to change his mind. | ||
| And I've liked the way he went about going to the other senators. | ||
| Now, he didn't go to a lot of Democrats because, as he'll tell you, a lot of them weren't going to meet with him anyway. | ||
| But hang on. | ||
| You know the difficulty in stepping into a football program and changing your culture and turning around. | ||
| And as monumental as that is for us at Love College Football, when you compare it to the Pentagon, it's relatively, you know, it's at a certain scale. | ||
| You're asking Pete Hegseth, with a lack of organizational training, to step into the biggest bureaucracy in the world that is adamantly opposed to America First, adamantly opposed to getting any control of cost, and you're asking Pete to step in and really change around the biggest industrial complex in the world to get back to America First policies and warfighters. | ||
| Can he do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My example was exactly what you said, Pete. | |
| You're taking over a huge football team. | ||
| And right now, the Democrats have created such division within ranks. | ||
| Transgenders, gays, women. | ||
| You've made some points about that. | ||
| You're going to have to talk your way into people trusting you if you're going to get this job. | ||
| But he understood that... | ||
| He's got to take out the DEI, the woke, the social justice, and bring people together. | ||
| That it's not about black, white, gays, lesbians. | ||
| It's not about that. | ||
| It's about building a war machine that's going to fight for our country. | ||
| And he's doing that as we speak. | ||
| He's trying to pull that all together. | ||
| Because if he went in and didn't change any of that scenario... | ||
| He'd be out there in a year. | ||
| You mean change the culture? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've got to change the culture and how people think. | |
| But the warfighter is actually on his side. | ||
| You know, as I've told you before, generals had told me, you know, Coach, we're spending more money on transgender restrooms than we are covering up our $100 million airplane. | ||
| Okay, you just told this audience that in the three big industrial complexes in this country, that Big Pharma controls this more. | ||
| Is the second one the military industrial complex or big tech? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think you can put those hand in hand. | |
| Their industry could be linked. | ||
| This is why Amazon and all those guys are all over Pentagon City, right across the street. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're all moving into the military complex. | |
| Let's go back to a Democrat. | ||
| We'll return to Senator Tuberville in a moment. | ||
| Concerns I have, and just briefly, on Medicaid. | ||
| States share in the funding of Medicaid. | ||
| Millions of disabled children in this country are alive because of Medicaid. | ||
| Millions of people with addiction in this country are in recovery because of the services provided to them by Medicaid. | ||
| And millions of chronically ill people who until Medicaid expansion was enacted. | ||
| Who couldn't get health care and therefore couldn't work because they were too sick, got health care through Medicaid expansion, then went back to work, and now they're on private insurance. | ||
| So those are some facts about Medicaid that you might want to brush up on. | ||
| Now, I'm also extremely concerned about your endorsement of radical fringe conspiracies that have implemented at HSS. Doge and there's a $900 billion. | ||
| So Pete's got two. | ||
| He's got the cultural issues of turning people to warfighters. | ||
| He's driving that. | ||
| But then you have this massive bureaucracy of the arms makers and one of the most profitable businesses in the country. | ||
| You just approved a $900 billion NDAA, which I still don't think gets to the heart of the Chinese Communist Party taking down the CCP effort. | ||
| With $900 billion, has the Doge guys come to see you and walk through? | ||
| Because if you don't touch defense... | ||
| You're not going to get any social programs, and you'll never get the ability to talk to the American people about entitlements years from now. | ||
| Somebody has to, and I realize President Trump does all this stuff about a rearmament program, but it's $900 billion with nobody around the world pitching in. | ||
| President Trump just said the other day, you've got to pay 5% GDP. These guys all passed out, right? | ||
| They don't pay the 2% they committed to. | ||
| I'd say the 2%, it's all lies. | ||
| When you look at it, it's all women's health care and Green New Deal and, you know, green scams, etc. | ||
| They're not paying for combat, and they're not paying for interoperability, and they're not paying for joint maneuvers, none of it. | ||
| So, as the second part of the culture of defense, could you see Elon or those working with your committee to actually say, we've got to look at this, and we have to change the mentality of the arms manufacturers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the only way they're going to be able to get anything done, especially with the armed services, is... | |
| They have to go through committee. | ||
| Doge has to, once they get everybody in place. | ||
| Now, there's a lot of people, you know, the deputy, DexF, all those people have to be put into place. | ||
| Haven't been confirmed. | ||
| They're not confirmed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, we're probably a month away before anything like that happens, but, you know. | |
| We say a month away, but memory serves me that on March 20th of this year, the United States government runs out of money again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| So are we going to do, and I saw the thing, is it going to be a year CR? I saw Josh Hawley, you know, he was on here last night. | ||
| Is it a year CR? Are we going to have appropriations bills? | ||
| What's the heads up for the American people? | ||
| What's going to happen? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I heard yesterday for the first time they were talking about that. | |
| Susan Collins, who's appropriations chair, they were starting to talk about a year CR. I can't imagine us doing that. | ||
| You mean a year CR? Yeah. | ||
| They're running that up the flagpole and see if Tommy Tuberville salutes right now and see if you're on board with that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve, we haven't done a budget for 25. We need to be working on a budget for 26. We've got two or one reconciliation bills to do. | |
| I actually had this conversation with a senior member of the administration this morning, say, the 25 budget, like, we haven't done that yet. | ||
| And it's like, that train's left the station because we're hurtling down towards... | ||
| Here's my point. | ||
| One or two reconciliations bills... | ||
| A CR that you have to... | ||
| The government runs out of money on the 20th. | ||
| We don't have the individual appropriations bills run out. | ||
| You got the Doge guys here, the OMB guys here. | ||
| When is somebody going to put the whip hand to this and say, we got to get organized and look, this has to be a critical path. | ||
| Instead of piecemeal Susan Collins saying something and somebody else leaking something, this is a massively complex. | ||
| And if we're going to get our arms around spending and cuts... | ||
| It has to have some organization to it. | ||
| Do you think that's going to happen, or we're just going to stumble through this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, most of us are going to have to come from the White House. | |
| This is how we're going to do it. | ||
| And then President Trump, in his credit, he's been meeting with the House. | ||
| He's meeting with us next week as senators. | ||
| Bring us all together. | ||
| But hang on. | ||
| But we just had him live. | ||
| Look, we are hammering on this every day. | ||
| Two reconciliations bills. | ||
| If you have one big, it's going to be an omnibus. | ||
| It won't be until August. | ||
| We think the process will be a disaster. | ||
| President Trump, who hasn't backed our play on this, he wants one beautiful bill. | ||
| He goes to Doral and gives a great talk, and he's in details on policy, but never mentions. | ||
| And I hear he tells these guys, he says, you figure it out. | ||
| So the White House, at least right now, is saying it's back to the Senate and back to the House. | ||
| And we hear guys in the Senate are saying, Lindsey Graham and these guys commit that they could actually have a draft of the one for immigration, for the border, for energy sometime in mid-March. | ||
| But I think the White House essentially said, guys, you tell us what you want to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, a lot of what's happening right now with all these nominations, they're dragging it out where we can't really get anything done. | |
| We have got to get more people confirmed. | ||
| No OMB. We just got Treasury last night. | ||
| So Russ Votes not there. | ||
| And I hear Russ Votes, and the vote may not come to Sunday or Monday. | ||
| And none of the Deputy Secretaries of Treasury, of Defense. | ||
| There are dozens and dozens of people that have to be confirmed besides the top guy, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Because they've got to be in on the conversation. | ||
| It is a massive undertaking. | ||
| The Democrats left this country in such a mess because of debt limit. | ||
| You know, obviously no 25 budget. | ||
| They wanted to do an omnibus. | ||
| And they said, well, if y'all don't want to do that, fine. | ||
| We'll just do a CR to March and just put President Trump in a bind. | ||
| The biggest hawks that we have on deficit is the House Freedom Caucus. | ||
| We know those guys very closely. | ||
| They put out a proposal to the president. | ||
| They sent a memo last week. | ||
| And they say in the memo, they've got all these cuts they want to do. | ||
| And I keep telling guys, don't give me 10 years. | ||
| I want to see this year. | ||
| I want to see next year. | ||
| This is a turnaround. | ||
| They give a proposal in the debt ceiling that says they will agree to the president, kick it past the 26th midterm, which we hate, but kick it into January 27. And lift $4 trillion. | ||
| So I do the math and go, gosh, that's $2 trillion deficit this year and $2 trillion deficit next year. | ||
| And CBO just said the other day $2 trillion. | ||
| So just to have a frank conversation with the American people, and those are the biggest deficit hawks we got. | ||
| Everybody else wants to do unlimited. | ||
| Are we telling the American people that essentially we can't get control of this thing and that we're going to have $2 trillion minimum deficits? | ||
| The foreseeable future. | ||
| And we're just going to figure out, Scott Besson's going to have to figure out some way to finance. | ||
| $38 trillion, $40 trillion, $42 trillion. | ||
| Is that where we are? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the people driving the car right now are the ones you just talked about in the House, you know, the Freedom Caucus. | |
| They're going to decide what's going to happen in the next couple of years, whether we're going to cut or we're going to have a deficit of $50 trillion here in about 10 years. | ||
| Why do you say that? | ||
| Why do you tell the audience that? | ||
| I believe that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because they're not going to change their mind. | |
| I mean, there's a lot of people in the Senate, and some people in the House will change their mind. | ||
| These guys are set. | ||
| I mean, they're going to fight. | ||
| And they're in districts that the people will back them in the South. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, people are going to back them. | |
| And most of them are in the South. | ||
| What about if President Trump says, hey, I need more leeway. | ||
| I need more on the debt ceiling. | ||
| Look, President Trump strategically is talking about a hemispheric defense. | ||
| From the Panama Canal, which we're taking back. | ||
| The Chinese are actually leaving right now, all the way to Greenland and the Arctic. | ||
| The hemispheric defense, he also talked and mentioned the other day, an Iron Dome. | ||
| Now, let's assume that that can technically work. | ||
| That's another $2 or $3 trillion. | ||
| He also says he wants a stronger military, and a military that's up-leveled from weapons. | ||
| We're at $900 billion. | ||
| That doesn't include the $2.5 trillion to build Iron Dome, if we can build it. | ||
| Where does it stop on defense spending? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we're spending two-tree in upgrading our Minuteman missiles. | |
| So you can throw that in. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're 50 years old. | |
| 50 years old. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Where does it stop? | ||
| And people look to you as kind of the... | ||
| Your credentials as a hawk are unquestioned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| In common sense. | ||
| Your dad was a D-Day. | ||
| Your dad came up shortly after as a tank guy for Patton. | ||
| People know where you are, but you're also prudent about the budget. | ||
| What do we got to do? | ||
| Because if we don't get our hands around defense, you're never going to cut discretionary, and you're never going to eventually have a conversation with the American people about entitlement, because they're going to sit there and go, screw you. | ||
| You're out of control right now. | ||
| When can we have a rational conversation with people who want the defense of this country and are patriots and have served in the military and come from families to say, this is what we have to do? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And you didn't bring it up that I live in a state that we're almost all military. | |
| We have 1,000 defense contractors in Huntsville, Alabama, Redstone, Arsenal. | ||
| And we employ a lot of people. | ||
| But we also understand that as we cut, Steve, there's not going to be a lot of wars like you're seeing right now in Ukraine. | ||
| I mean, it's going to be missile wars. | ||
| It's not going to be landfault. | ||
| AI with missiles and drones and cyber warfare. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're behind on ships, but ships aren't going to last too long with all these long-range missiles that are being invented as we speak. | |
| We're into drones now. | ||
| This is the revolution in military affairs. | ||
| This is what actually Rumsfeld wanted to try to do 20 years ago before he got taken away to the war on terror. | ||
| Is that something serious that people are thinking? | ||
| Because you don't see it in the defense budget. | ||
| I love the Navy. | ||
| I'm a naval guy. | ||
| And Trump's strategy is a naval strategy. | ||
| Very Mahanian. | ||
| They're talking about another $2 trillion upgrade to the surface warfare and fast attack submarines. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, because of China. | |
| Because they're building, and we think we have to build. | ||
| And we probably do. | ||
| I've listened to these Indo-Pacific commanders for the last four years. | ||
| And, you know, they're very, very... | ||
| Understanding how far we're behind in China. | ||
| We fought these 20-year wars. | ||
| We didn't do anything with the Navy. | ||
| Terrible. | ||
| We put them in the back burner. | ||
| So we're going to have to upgrade the Navy. | ||
| And President Trump's exactly right. | ||
| Okay, this is a deeper conversation. | ||
| I know you've got to bounce. | ||
| Your staff's giving a stink eye right now. | ||
| Thank you for doing this. | ||
| Thank your staff for setting it up. | ||
| Real quickly, Tulsi Gabbard in cash tomorrow. | ||
| What are you looking for? | ||
| And how can this audience help support the President's nominees? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Call your senators. | |
| I'm telling you, that helps. | ||
| Light those phones up to your senators. | ||
| Both of them are two in each state. | ||
| I don't care if you think that they're going to get a vote or not. | ||
| And the local office is important, too, right? | ||
| Not just here at the thing. | ||
| When you get a call in the local office, they pay particular attention? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And here's the deal about these three. | ||
| They're out of the box. | ||
| And I think that the people across the country want this. | ||
| They want people that have a different idea of how this country should run. | ||
| RFK Jr., Cash Patel. | ||
| I mean, here's a guy that, you know, our FBI is out of control. | ||
| It's almost extinct in terms of doing their job. | ||
| People in Alabama would support a major restructuring. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So you've got the patrons in Alabama say, I'm all in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've got to remember, half of the FBI is in Huntsville, Alabama now. | |
| We spent $3 billion building new buildings for cyber, of FBI, and all those things, you know, over the last, what, five years. | ||
| Yeah, Tulsi Gabbard is perfect because she's out of the box. | ||
| They don't like her because she went to Syria and some of these things. | ||
| Come on, folks. | ||
| They're leaking that she's not on top of the material. | ||
| Do you find that she's on top of the material? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| We talked to her several times. | ||
| Talked to her on the phone. | ||
| She has your stamp of approval. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh yeah, 100%. | |
| That's all the audience needs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, because you look at the people that she's following. | |
| She's following people that are totally different than she is. | ||
| And she is very opinionated. | ||
| And I like that from somebody that's going to be over at intelligence age. | ||
| She's not going to be quiet. | ||
| She's going to speak out of what she thinks is good or bad. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Senator Tuberville. | ||
| By the way, your social media is at Sen Tuberville. | ||
| We'll put this up. | ||
| S-E-N, your name, Tuberville. | ||
| That's on Twitter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Every time I come on your show, it just explodes. | |
| So we appreciate that, Steve. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're a big favorite of this audience. | ||
| They love you. | ||
| Be straightforward with them. | ||
| Thank you very much, Senator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I appreciate you. | ||
| Let's go back to the hearing. | ||
| Let's go ahead and cut right back to Bobby Kennedy. | ||
| Our 60% increase in Medicaid over the past four years is the biggest budget line now, and it's growing faster than any other. | ||
| And no other nation in the world has what we have here. | ||
| No other nation has a chronic disease. | ||
| We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world. | ||
| We had, during COVID... We had 16% of the COVID deaths in a country. | ||
| We only have 4.2% of the world's population. | ||
| We had a higher death count than any country in the world. | ||
| And when CDC was asked why, they said it's because Americans are the sickest people on earth. | ||
| The average person who died from COVID, American, had 3.8 chronic diseases. | ||
| This is an existential threat economically to our military, to our health, to our sense of well-being. | ||
| And it is a priority for President Trump. | ||
| And that's why he asked me to run the agency. | ||
| And if I'm privileged to be confirmed, that's exactly what I'll do. | ||
| Senator Barazzo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Kennedy. | |
| Thank you for taking time to visit with me in my office prior to today's hearing to talk about a lot of the important issues affecting health care in my home state. | ||
| I appreciate your willingness to serve our country. | ||
| During our meeting, we discussed the challenges that health care providers and patients are facing in rural America. | ||
| Financial obstacles facing rural hospitals, workforce shortages, issues of OBGYN, and then new regulations that are painful that have come out of the Biden administration, hurting our ability to provide nursing home staffing. | ||
| So let me start, if I could, with rural hospitals and the closures of hospitals like that. | ||
| There are a lot of challenges facing hospitals in rural communities and frontier areas. | ||
| We have 33 hospitals in Wyoming. | ||
| 26 are really located in various locations, often hard to get to. | ||
| Weather impacts them. | ||
| Six of the hospitals are at risk of closing. | ||
| Two are at immediate risk of closing in the next two years. | ||
| Ten have had to cut available services. | ||
| And this is a concern of rural hospitals in both Republican and Democrat states. | ||
| Either way, bipartisan. | ||
| Critical that the workforce challenges, financial challenges that we're facing are addressed. | ||
| Can you commit to working with us on a plan to address the critical nationwide issue of rural health care? | ||
| Yes, Senator. | ||
| And I would say that during my visits, I visited almost 60 senators so far. | ||
| And the most common... | ||
| The unifying, I would say, issue among both Democrats and Republicans, there were two. | ||
| One was BBM reform, and the other is rural hospitals. | ||
| And, you know, our nation made a commitment over 100 years ago to put a hospital within 30 miles of every American. | ||
| We generally succeeded in doing that. | ||
| It's absolutely critical. | ||
| It's lifesaving. | ||
| And rural hospitals are closing at an extraordinary rate right now. | ||
| They not only provide important health care for the localities, but also they're economic drivers for localities all over this country. | ||
| President Trump is determined to end the hemorrhage of rural hospitals, and he's asked me to do that. | ||
| Through use of AI, through telemedicine, which these are innovations that I saw the other day at Cleveland Clinic, has developed an AI nurse that you cannot distinguish from a human being that has diagnostics as good as any doctor. | ||
| And we can develop, we can provide... | ||
| Concierge care to every American in this country, even those in the remote parts of Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, etc. | ||
| We also have opportunities at HRSA and at the GME to finally live up to GME's mission of providing personnel to rural hospitals. | ||
| And I intend to use all of my power because I've seen the... | ||
| The priority that is given by both Democrats and Republicans on this committee, I intend to make that a priority if I'm privileged to be confirmed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I appreciate it, because often with financial strains on a local hospital, one of the common services to be cut. | |
| In rural hospitals and maternity services. | ||
| So now we have women in Wyoming having to drive over 100 miles to access care. | ||
| 13 counties in Wyoming don't have access to OB. And we're talking counties larger than the states of Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware. | ||
| Counties larger than those whole states. | ||
| So will you commit to working with my office to find solutions to help address these specific maternal health challenges in rural America? | ||
| Yes, Senator. | ||
| I look forward to it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Another issue we specifically spoke about was this harmful Biden administration rule that had really been bad for our rural nursing homes. | |
| And it's a rule that would triple the registered nurse requirements in nursing homes. | ||
| There just aren't enough registered nurses in our state to be able to comply with this. | ||
| This would lead to nursing home closures across our state. | ||
| state, will you commit to working with me to fix this serious problem that it was a result of a rule that came out by the Biden administration who clearly doesn't understand rural America? | ||
| Yes, Senator, I think the rule was well-intentioned. | ||
| But as you've said, and I've heard from many rural senators, it will be a disaster for their states. | ||
| Some of the nursing homes, these are staffing rules that require 24-hour staffing by medical professionals. | ||
| Some of the nursing homes in rural areas simply do not have the available personnel or the economics to be able to do that. | ||
| It will mean the closure of nursing homes in rural areas across our country, which means the parents, the elderly parent, will be moved a great distance from the local community and their family. | ||
| And we know that the single greatest driver of high-quality nursing home care Is the involvement, the proximity of family members. | ||
| When you move that nursing facility away from the community where the kids live, you're going to get much worse care. | ||
| So the intention, although it was noble, was in reality, for rural areas at least, it is going to be a disaster. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator Johnson. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy, welcome. | ||
| Thank you for being here. | ||
| Thank you for your decades-long advocacy for a clean environment, for children's health. | ||
| I can't say as I'm surprised by the hostility on the other side. | ||
| I'm highly disappointed in it. | ||
| I don't know if you remember when you called me up and you were contemplating setting your political differences aside. | ||
| Joining forces with President Trump on an area of agreement. | ||
| Addressing chronic illness. | ||
| Trying to find the root cause of all these problems facing this nation. | ||
| My first response was, Bobby, this is an answer to my prayers. | ||
| We need to get to the answers of this. | ||
| But even more, we need to heal and unify this divided nation. | ||
| I'm not necessarily the most optimistic guy because we've got enormous challenges facing this nation, but I thought, wow, here's somebody from the left, somebody I don't agree with on many issues politically, coming together with President Trump and focusing on an area of agreement, something that the American people desperately want. | ||
| Finding out the answers. | ||
| What has caused autism? | ||
| What is causing chronic illness? | ||
| Ms. Kennedy, I know, I think I've come to know what's in your heart. | ||
| I think I know the personal and political price you've paid for this decision. | ||
| I want to say publicly, I thank you for that. | ||
| I truly appreciate what you're doing here. | ||
| Can't we come together as a nation and do this? | ||
| Can we do it? | ||
| Aren't you getting tired of this? | ||
| I'm getting tired of this. | ||
| So again, Mr. Kennedy, I need to enter in the record. | ||
| These are just 11 letters of support signed by 63,000 people, thousands of doctors. | ||
| From the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Independent Medical Alliance, the North Carolina Physicians and Freedom Group, Governor Jeff Landry from Louisiana. | ||
| These are Americans, nonpartisan. | ||
| A lot of these people, I know because I've advocated with you, a lot of them are Democrats. | ||
| They put their political differences aside. | ||
| So, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter this in the record. | ||
| Without objection. | ||
| I also do want to, Mr. Kennedy, as long as I have you here, I've written over 70 oversight letters to the federal health agencies under the Biden administration. | ||
| I've virtually gotten squat out of them, okay? | ||
| What I get is we get, for example, 50 pages of Anthony Fauci's emails redacted. | ||
| By the way, the latest one was 17 pages. | ||
| Instead of issuing a health alert on the myocarditis... | ||
| Myocarditis they knew was impacting young men. | ||
| Early in 2021, instead of issuing an alert on the Health Alert Network, they developed 17 pages of talking points. | ||
| This was given to the public under a FOIA request. | ||
| They had to go to court. | ||
| They've got a new way of redacting. | ||
| They don't black things out. | ||
| They just give you white pages. | ||
| So you don't even know what they have redacted. | ||
| So again, I've issued a subpoena now to cover the information I've requested in 70 oversight letters. | ||
| My question to you is, as Secretary of HHS, will you honor these requests from Congress, and will you make HHS transparent? | ||
| Yeah, my approach to HHS, as I said before, Senator, is radical transparency. | ||
| Democrats and Republicans ought to be able to come in. | ||
| And get information that was generated at taxpayer expense that is owned by the American taxpayer. | ||
| They shouldn't get redacted documents. | ||
| Public health agencies should be transparent. | ||
| And if we want Americans to restore trust in the public health agencies, we need transparency. | ||
| I want to say something about what you first said. | ||
| When I launched my campaign, it was about uniting Americans, Democrats, and Republicans. | ||
| There's no issue that she's united us more than this chronic health epidemic. | ||
| There's no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. | ||
| These are our kids. | ||
| 66% of them are damaged. | ||
| I know what a healthy kid looks like because I had so many of them in my family. | ||
| I didn't know anybody with a food allergy growing up, peanut allergy. | ||
| Why do five of my kids have allergies? | ||
| Why are we seeing these explosions in diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, neurological diseases, depression, all these things that are related to toxic in the environment? | ||
| Why can't we just agree with each other to put differences about so many issues, intractable issues aside, and say, we're going to end this? | ||
| I don't think anybody... | ||
| is going to be able to do this like I have because of my peculiar experience because I've litigated against these agencies. | ||
| When you litigate against them you get a PhD in corporate capture and how to unravel it. | ||
| I've written six books about these agencies. | ||
| I know a lot about them and I know how to fix it and there's nobody who will fix it the way that I do because I'm not scared of vested interest. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| I'm not here because I want a position or a job. | ||
| I have a very good life and a happy family. | ||
| This is something I don't need. | ||
| I want to do this because we're going to fix it. | ||
| And the other thing is we are attracting now a caliber of people to HHS like never before in history. | ||
| And they're entrepreneurs. | ||
| They're disruptors. | ||
| They're innovators of immense talents that are walking away, many of them, from growing concerns. | ||
| They're not coming there. | ||
| They're coming there because they want to save our country. | ||
| And they're from across the political spectrum. | ||
| And all these Democrats are opposed to me for partisan issues. | ||
| They used to be my friends. | ||
| Agreed with me on all the environmental issues that I've been working on for my whole career. | ||
| Now they're against me because anything that President Trump does, any decision he makes, has to be lampooned, derided, discredited. | ||
| Marginalize, vilify. | ||
| We need to move on. | ||
| Senator Warren. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| So, Mr. Kennedy, I want to start with something that I think you and I agree on, and that is that big pharma has too much power in Washington. | ||
| You said that President Trump asked you to, quote, clean up corruption and conflicts. | ||
| Sounds great. | ||
| You've said that you will, quote, slam shut the revolving door between government agencies and the companies they regulate. | ||
| That also sounds great. | ||
| So here's an easy question. | ||
| Will you commit that when you leave this job, you will not accept compensation from a drug company, a medical device company, a hospital system, or a health insurer for at least four years, including as a lobbyist or a board member? | ||
| Repeat the last part of the question. | ||
| You're not going to take money from drug companies in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| Who? | ||
| Me? | ||
| Yes, you. | ||
| I'm happy to commit to that. | ||
| That's what I figured. | ||
| I said it's an easy question to start with. | ||
| And I think you're right on this question. | ||
| I don't think any of them want to give me money, by the way. | ||
| Let's keep going. | ||
| You're right because to say yes. | ||
| Because every American has the right to know that every decision you make as our number one health officer is to help them and not to make money for yourself in the future. | ||
| So I want to talk more about money. | ||
| I'm looking at your paperwork right now. | ||
| In the past two years, you've raked in $2.5 million from a law firm called Wisner Bomb. | ||
| You go online, you do commercials to encourage people to sign up with Wisner Bomb. | ||
| To join lawsuits against vaccine makers. | ||
| And for everyone who signs up, you personally get paid. | ||
| And if they win their case, you get 10% of what they win. | ||
| So if you bring in somebody who gets $10 million, you walk away with a million dollars. | ||
| Now, you just said that you want the American people to know you can't be bought. | ||
| Your decisions won't depend on how much money you could make in the future. | ||
| You won't go to work for a drug company after you leave HHS, but you and I both know there's another way to make money. | ||
| So, Mr. Kennedy, will you also agree that you won't take any compensation from any lawsuits against drug companies while you are secretary and for four years afterwards? | ||
| To that, while I'm secretary, I do want to clarify something, because you're making me sound like a shill. | ||
| I put together that case. | ||
| I did the Science Day presentation of the judge on that case to get it into court. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy, it's just a really simple question. | ||
| You've taken in $2.5 million. | ||
| I want to know if you will commit right now that not only will you not go to work for drug companies, you won't go to work suing the drug companies and taking your rake out of that while you're a secretary and for four years after. | ||
| I'll commit to not taking any fees from drug companies while I'm secretary. | ||
| I'm asking about fees from suing. | ||
| Will you agree not to do that? | ||
| You're asking me to not sue drug companies. | ||
|
unidentified
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No, you can sue drug companies as much as you want. | |
| I'm not going to agree to not sue drug companies or anybody. | ||
| So let's do a quick count here of how, as Secretary of HHS, if you get confirmed, you could influence every one of those lawsuits. | ||
| Let me start the list. | ||
| You can publish your anti-vaccine conspiracies, but this time on U.S. government letterheads, something a jury might be impressed by. | ||
| I don't understand that. | ||
| You can point people to the CDC vaccine panel who share your anti-vax views and let them do your dirty work. | ||
| You could tell the CDC vaccine panel to remove a particular vaccine from the vaccine schedule. | ||
| You could remove vaccines from special compensation programs, which would open up manufacturers to mask torts. | ||
| You could make more injuries eligible for compensation, even if there is no causal evidence. | ||
| You could change vaccine court processes to make it easier to bring junk lawsuits. | ||
| You could turn over FDA data to your friends at the law firm and they could use it however it benefited them. | ||
| You could change vaccine labeling. | ||
| You could change vaccine information rules. | ||
| You could change which claims are compensated in the vaccine injury. | ||
| OK, Stephen K. Bannon, War Room. | ||
| We're going to shift over to Charlie Kirk. | ||
| They're going to be watching this at 5 o'clock tonight. | ||
| Scheduled, Megyn Kelly, Natalie Winters from the White House, Carrie Lake. | ||
| We're going to be packed this afternoon. | ||
| We'll see you back here live. |
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