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Dec. 5, 2024 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr
01:02:28
America’s Health Crisis: It’s Time to MAHA, Interview with Calley Means | TRIGGERED Ep.196
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Thank you.
Hey guys, welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
And today, we're going to do a deep dive into all things Maha.
Make America healthy again.
We'll be joined by Kelly Means, who you probably have seen on shows like Joe Rogan, etc.
He's been one of the biggest proponents of the efforts to overhaul the way we think about healthy food in this entire country and to actually reform our agencies and reform how we conduct oversight of the food and drug industry.
This is one of those episodes you're going to learn a lot from.
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Let's get it out there once and for all.
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And joining me now from the Birch Gold Group, Philip Patrick.
Philip, great to have you back on the show.
Let's hear about it.
My father is telling the BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, that they risk 100% tariffs if they proceed with the plans to create a new international currency.
Do you think that that will make the BRICs abandon their de-dollarization projects?
Look, it is very, at least we have an administration or an incumbent administration talking about what is the biggest economic problem.
So we haven't had that for four years.
We've had denial.
Your father clearly is making it a priority to address.
Look, I think tariffs in on itself or in on themselves won't do the job, right?
There's two reasons the world is de-dollarizing.
One is weaponization and the other is devaluation.
So I think This kind of reinforces the idea that the dollar is a yoke.
I think longer term, we're going to need carrots as well as sticks, and carrots will come in the form of a stable US dollar.
I think that will be the key to maintaining global reserve.
Yeah, so what can we do to ensure that the dollar retains its global reserve currency status?
Obviously, a lot of people don't trust China, the manipulation that they have, etc., etc.
What can we do?
Look, I think the key thing here is to try and curb the spending, and that's why the Doge department spending is a big priority for the incoming administration.
It's going to be a tough job, though.
What your father has inherited in terms of deficits is incredible.
Outside of that, there's two ways out of a deficit issue.
One is growth, And the other is austerity.
You know, Donald Trump is a businessman.
He's a growth guy, which is going to require spending.
The key here is the Republicans and the administration will spend more productively than the Democrats.
So the key here is that longer term GDP growth will outpace debt growth.
But I think it's going to take a long time to do it.
So the hope is the administration can lay the groundwork and sow the seeds so that we get there in the future.
Yeah, I mean, I think growth is so critical, but in light of these economic tensions, how should everyday Americans position their savings?
Look, I think we need to be looking at precious metals in this climate.
Anybody who has their retirement entirely exposed to the US dollar needs some measure of a hedge.
On top of that, inflation, although coming down, still very sticky.
Many economic indicators are suggesting, you know, Trump maybe handed a recession On day one of the administration.
So we've got a tough four years in front of us.
There's no better man to lead the country.
But I think precious metals will be a very useful hedge as we start to iron out the problems.
Well, Philip, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Again, guys, to get your free no-obligation info kit on gold, text Don Jr., my name, to the number 989898. It's real simple.
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So, Philip, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Look forward to seeing you soon.
Thank you.
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Again, that's TNUSA.com slash Don Jr. Joining me now, the founder of TrueMed, co-author with his sister of the book, Good Energy.
He's an expert on chronic disease policy.
He's unafraid, perhaps most importantly, to speak the truth, Callie Means.
Callie, thanks so much for being here.
I'm honored to be here, Don.
So, you know, a lot to get into, obviously.
This is a big thing.
There's so many people in our movement.
It was such a big part, frankly, I think, of this election, joining forces with Bobby Kennedy for all the things he was talking about.
But first off, you know, I'd like to get your thoughts on just how this Maha coalition, you know, came together.
I know you were a part of it.
I know I was back channeling a lot.
Would love to hear that.
How did this issue really, you know, come to a head?
Why did it take so long?
It feels like such a unique political moment.
So my story here is two things.
My sister was in the medical system, Stanford Medical School, NIH research, you know, surgical residency.
And she came to the conclusion after 12 years that, you know, everything we're doing hospital work on is interventions after people get sick.
95% of all medical spending is actually just basically profiting hospitals and pharma once people already get sick.
And she started asking, why are people getting sick?
So it had a big impact on me as a former food and pharma lobbyist seeing these companies rig the system.
And then for us, it was brought together with our mom, who abruptly gets cancer in 2021. Excuse me.
Yeah, 2021 dies 12 days later.
But she was on five other medications and it was unlucky that she got cancer.
But Don, especially among kids, cancer rates are exploding.
They're like five X up in the past 40 years.
Every chronic disease is going up.
So we had these personal experiences that brought us to really this political, I think, Realization we all have, which is that people are suffering out there.
People are getting sick.
American children are getting sick, as you talk so eloquently about.
And I think two things happen from my perspective.
You know, as my sister and I started talking with Tucker about this, talking with Megyn Kelly, going on the podcast, seeing it resonate.
We met Bobby Kennedy and Susie Wiles and Vince Haley from the Trump campaign, you know, more than a year ago reached out.
They said the president's focused on this.
We're thinking about it.
And my sister and I shared some talking points.
So many people don't know this, but your dad spoke extremely eloquently about this issue, about why kids are getting so sick throughout the campaign.
Actually, you know, worked with Vince and Susie, and they were really inspired by your dad's focus on this.
But he was saying that since the beginning, that we've got to figure this out.
And then got to know Bobby as well.
Obviously, Bobby, to me, he was hitting on a ma-ha-maga message.
I mean, to me, there were two candidates in this campaign that were talking about a much wider thing than partisan politics, but really just the corruption of our systems.
And what Bobby did really well is talk about this incentive of kids to be sick and how that's actually representation of the swamp.
So there was a moment after the Butler shooting I was actually talking with Tucker.
And I've become really, Tucker, as you probably know, is really focused on this issue.
And we had an idea of, you know, maybe Bobby and your dad, maybe that was the moment where they could talk.
So I was able to facilitate that connection to talk about unity right after the Butler shooting.
Had a small insight into those discussions.
And Don, you know, you were much closer to this, but from my limited vantage point, it was pretty inspiring just seeing them connect on this emotional level about why so many kids have prediabetes, about Why we have the most obese country, particularly among kids in the world, about why we spend three times more on healthcare but have, you know, six years less life expectancy.
They really talked about these issues.
And then I think what you saw with this MAHA movement, I mean, when Bobby Kennedy came out there on the stage in Phoenix, it was the loudest cheer I ever heard.
And the way the MAGA movement embraced Kennedy was not surprising to me, but certainly I think a shift in American politics.
Yeah, I felt the same thing.
So, you know, one of my closest friends is, you know, very close friends with Bobby's son, who's like, you guys actually would get along great.
You should actually meet, because you're actually talking about so much of the same thing.
And it felt like, you know, the Democrats were trying to basically split that vote.
I'm like, why don't we get them together?
Trump's, you know, obviously would be great on XYZ. Bobby on the health stuff, just...
It has gone so far down the rabbit hole in a positive way.
I mean, you know, you guys, you and your sister especially, I mean, her coming from literally medicine, you coming from the lobbying side.
I mean, you guys know how the sausage is made.
You understand how bad it is that a country of America's prosperity and wealth could still have these terrible results.
What are the values that drive your mission in the Maha movement to make America healthy again?
You know, it really is the tie between Maha, MAGA, and frankly, DOGE. And let me explain that.
So, to me, my read on why your dad is the seminal historical figure of our time is because he's tapped into, I think, the most important societal dynamic of our time, which is that Our institutions are really rigged against us.
I mean, we have a military-industrial complex that's making us less secure.
You know, education we spend more and more on, but teachers and unions make sure kids are less competitive.
You could just go down the list, right?
And I think what your dad, for me, has done and why, you know, I think this was the most important election in our lifetime is because he's put his finger on this frustration people feel.
It's actually, I think, this unleashed dynamism of America.
if we can kind of get this swamp out of the way.
So the central premise of Maha to me is anti-corruption.
It's really what your dad has been talking about for so long.
And I think Americans want to be healthy.
If we can just get these incentives out of the way, and the problem that Bobby and your dad have talked about is we have co-opted institutions, that every institution that touches our health profits when an American is sick.
You go into our regulatory agencies – Why is the FDA 75% funded by pharma to approve drugs?
We know bureaucracies are built to grow.
Vivek and Elon talk about this.
They grow when the pharma industry grows.
Why are NIH grants, you know, 80% of them go to someone with conflicts of interest.
Why are we not studying why we're getting sick but just doing pharma R&D at the NIH? Why is the CDC, which has a mandate for all disease, only focused on infectious when 92% of deaths are on chronic?
You know, the narrative that's being put together is that chronic disease, which is bankrupt in the country, which is the biggest part of the U.S. federal budget, is chronic disease management, right?
Which is destroying human capital, where a kid in the United States is three times more likely to be pre-diabetic, obese, have cardiology issues than a kid in almost any other developed country.
These are the things that are destroying our budget, destroying our soul, I think.
Don, I mean, you see inside a child's classroom and what kids are dealing with, with both physical and mental health.
But the reason that's taken hold is not because the American people want it, is because, you know, our fundamental institutions that regulate our health have been co-opted.
The last thing I'll say, and this is something that Bobby's, you know, looking at, you know, with Dr. Oz at CMS. CMS is kind of this boring department.
It's a bigger budget than the Defense Department, our Medicare and Medicaid services.
And we bureaucratically have outsourced our medical codes.
To the American Medical Association.
This is not in a law.
It's just what bureaucrats have decided to do over the previous decades.
And the American Medical Association is a pharma lobbying group.
That's what it is.
So we have outsourced, on a bureaucratic level, the biggest part of our economy to a pharmaceutical lobbying group that just demonstrably profits when people are sick.
So that, to me, Don, is what the big promise of Maha is.
Before we get into any bans or any type of real policy change, we don't need to talk about Obamacare.
Let's just get the corruption out of our scientific, regulatory, and government bodies, you know, hopefully working close with Vivek and Elon.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I obviously talk a lot about corruption inside the FBI, inside the DOJ. You brought up the teachers unions, you know, the Department of Education, the Pentagon.
But you could argue that perhaps the gravest sin is really inside the swamp is just that crime of chronic childhood disease.
Could you put that, you know, more into perspective relative to perhaps the rest of the world, just so people understand sort of where we sit?
Absolutely.
And that's been, you know, really my dream in the past couple of years.
And I think was really what happened is that I think your dad's been talking about this since the beginning of political life.
But I think what really came into fruition during this campaign is that there's no better example of the swamp than sick kids.
And I'll just go through some of the stats.
And it's really harrowing.
And I think what woke a lot of people up.
But the childhood obesity rate in Japan is 3%.
In the United States, it's 50% of teens are overweight or obese.
We've got 20% of our teens in this country have fatty liver disease.
That was something that was unthinkable.
The USDA, they actually hid this report until after the election.
They just came out with the new numbers.
38% of teens between 12 and 18, 38% have prediabetes.
Prediabetes is our cells crying out for help.
40% of teens are on a pharmaceutical product.
And 40% of teens qualify as having a mental health disorder.
The United States is 4% of the world's population.
We produce 70% of the world's pharmaceutical profits and we're 60th in life expectancy.
This is where I think that what Elon and Vivek are talking about really come in is that when you look at what's really a threat to America, I think it is nuclear war or the fact that we're letting our population get sicker, more depressed, warm, fertile, and fatter at an increasing rate, you know, to totally historically abnormal trends versus the rest of the world while bankrupting our country.
We have to get this under control.
And I always look at Europe, right?
The life expectancy is six years higher in Italy, and they spend three times less per capita on healthcare.
And they have a socialist bad system.
This isn't about, you know, just nuances of health policy.
The problem is that our healthcare system is incentivized to manage chronic disease of people that are already sick.
So yeah, Don, I think it really ties to an anti-corruption message.
I think it's a huge opportunity.
And I can tell you there's a lot of energy around our friends to create quick wins for For your dad.
And I think there are quick wins to have here that really nobody disagrees with.
And the first is Jay Bhattacharya just working to get the research right of why this stuff is happening.
Well, because, I mean, it's easy to sort of blame some of the...
But how much of this is also our food?
Because it feels like, you know, when I go to Europe, you know, I'm kind of an eater.
Whether I'm here or abroad, I'm an eater.
But when I go over there, I feel like I can eat.
I don't come back.
You know, I feel like I look at American food and I get fat.
I can go to Europe and binge for a week and I don't feel sick afterwards.
I don't have the same sort of, you know, feeling.
I don't gain the weight.
It's definitely different.
This is where the medical standard of care comes in, in my opinion.
So we are getting sick, and instead of just drugging people who are sick, right, statin rates, antidepressant rates, metformin for prediabetes, they've doubled in prescription rates among high schoolers in just the past five years.
So basically, our medical system waits for people to get sick, takes that as a given, and then drugs them.
What the NIH, what we need to be doing is asking why we're getting sick.
And the key thing there, Don, we all know this.
It's just basic common sense.
But nine of the tinkillers of Americans are chronic lifestyle conditions, diabetes, heart disease, many forms of cancer, Alzheimer's, which is now called type 3 diabetes.
Alzheimer's is highly tied to blood sugar dysregulation.
Really?
I didn't realize that.
Yeah, so this is a Nobel Prize that might be won by this person.
If you don't have prediabetes or diabetes, you have a very small chance of getting Alzheimer's, which is now exploding and bankrupting our country.
Alzheimer's is downstream of diabetes.
Diabetes is downstream of food.
We didn't have a diabetes crisis.
30, 40 years ago.
And in European countries, it's much less pronounced.
It's almost non-existent in Japan.
So all of these things are interconnected.
So we need to start asking why.
Well, you just look at the basic pillars, obviously.
We look at our food.
70% of our food that a kid eats and what we eat in America is ultra-processed.
Now, nobody's trying to ban our sodas.
Nobody's trying to take anything away.
But it is worth asking, should we be subsidizing this stuff?
We subsidize it hundreds of millions of dollars.
Should we be recommending it?
The USDA actually issued a report just a year ago saying that a child's diet, 93% of ultra-processed food could be healthy, and they recommend added sugar as a healthy part of a two-year-old's diet.
So before we get into any questions of bans whatsoever, I think it's conservative, liberal, whatever, it's just common sense that we shouldn't be recommending or subsidizing.
When you talk about the subsidies, I think the number is now 18% of SNAP, our food stamp programs, which is actually the fourth largest government program, entitlement program after Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
It's a huge program.
18% of the entire program goes to sugary drinks.
No other country's doing that.
So we're basically subsidizing and recommending food that's made in a lab.
And my big point there, Don, is this is by design.
I mean, again, we're all free market people, but it's also incumbent to call this out.
The food industry was created by the cigarette industry.
In 1990, 40% of the US food supply came from two companies, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds.
As smoking rates declined, these cigarette companies bought up all the food companies, and they shifted very deliberately their tobacco scientists, their addiction specialists, to food.
So literally, and I mean this, any brand you can find in the store right now that your kids are probably trying to get, That was originally owned by tobacco industry holding companies.
And then in the 1990s, you saw just disease and chronic issues and ultra-processed food consumption spike because the tobacco industry made it more addictive.
So that's what I'd say, Don, is there's a real co-option of our food system.
When you look at the $4.5 trillion we spend, it's all going to drug the problem.
We could be incentivizing American farmers to reverse prediabetes and get people on better food programs.
It's not ideological to just ask, if people are sick, what's the best way to reverse why they're sick?
Drugging everyone is not the answer, but that's what we do right now.
I mean, can we grow enough crops, let's call it non-GMO stuff, to be able to feed our people?
Can we do it healthy enough in a way that's actually affordable?
Are the subsidies of one enough to sort of supplement the other so that we can actually get rid of the problem and not effectively starve?
Because obviously, there's a corollary to some of this.
Great question.
So we've got the devil's bargain between the food industry making us sick and the healthcare industry profiting.
I think, frankly, this could be a golden age for pharma and health innovation with deregulation, but there's going to have to be some conflicts attacking there.
When it gets to the food side, when it gets to your question, I think this is my message, Don.
We're on the verge of a golden age of American farming.
We are on the verge of a golden age.
No farmer's happy.
I'm speaking to the lead lobbyists for the Farm Bureau.
They're attacking Bobby, you know, publicly.
They all think, you probably talked to, nobody's really happy with what's happening to American farmers.
Yeah.
Whether you're a big farmer or small farmer.
So behind closed doors, everyone's kind of scraping for pennies with the current subsidy system.
But the farm bill, our subsidy system, again, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 85 percent of the budget is SNAP.
Right.
It's basically a subsidy department.
Right.
We have massive subsidy structures for food.
Nobody agrees that it's right.
So, you know, my personal vision with with Brooke Rollins and Bobby and various stakeholders in your dad's administration is is we can actually bring stakeholders together.
This is not brute force.
This is not.
Yeah, because there's so much nuance.
Right.
There's yeah, there's big ag and then there's like farmers and they're not the same.
And yet they're grouped the same.
And obviously the guys that can write the big checks to their lobbyists in D.C., you know, it's just different.
So, you know, it's hard to get through that nuance.
But, you know, the R.J. Reynolds sort of tobacco example is an interesting one.
Obviously, you know, kind of, you know, before my time or before I was really paying attention to it, there were huge class action lawsuits to the tune of, you know, then billions of dollars when that was...
Yeah, I guess a lot of money still.
These days, it feels like we blow that on an average weekend in Ukraine for no real reason.
But could the same thing, the same types of class actions be brought if they took the same marketing plan that basically got people to be addicted to cigarettes?
Could that be brought against sort of the food industry for utilizing those same practices and making our kids sick?
Yeah, so here's my thought on it, Don.
I think that definitely we should be letting the free market and the legal system work its magic.
And I think there's been really bad faith actions from food companies.
But my head goes to like, what's the optimistic message that we can have in the next year?
And I think generally, I think it's actually industry coming together on the food side.
It's food producers, it's farmers, it's big ag, it's small ag.
I think we've all been complicit, all of the industries, especially government, and this really dysfunctional subsidy system that's happened with food.
And frankly, a really dysfunctional FDA grass process where we've had misinterpretations of a law from the 1950s to have self-policing of the chemicals in our food.
So you've seen those graphics probably from Food Babe, right?
Where you have just demonstrably less healthy food with all of these, you know, crude oil-derived food colorings and stuff.
I think my pitch...
Would be that nobody likes this.
Nobody's happy.
Kellogg's isn't proud that they're demonstrably creating a less healthy product and the same item for Americans than Europeans.
So maybe we could get together.
I think there's been calls to maybe do a one-year extension of the farm bill and just think about how to change the incentive and regulatory system.
The fact of the matter is we have a rigged market right now with hundreds of billions of dollars of agriculture incentives.
You know, the Bobby Kennedy vision, what President Trump's talked about, is actually redefining healthcare to get to the root cause.
I actually think more healthcare dollars could go to food.
You know, we actually have to support American farmers.
When you start peeling the onion, and Don, I talk to members of Congress, sinners, they don't even understand this.
A lot of our meat processing is coming from China.
Most of the pesticides we spread in our crop are coming from China.
You know, there's really dark forces here that nobody's really that happy with.
So as long as the message is let's support American farmers, the simple inescapable reality is that we've got to rethink about the subsidies.
And my pitch there would be absolutely we should hold that actors accountable.
But I think we need a forward-looking agenda where we kind of have some grace looking backwards on how we got here.
I think that's right.
I've been eating this stuff my whole life.
It feels like there's some that are kind of obvious.
Some of the dives, that they're clearly linked to all these issues.
I don't know.
I get it.
It's marketing.
You want the thing to be brighter, but do you need it?
That's when you sort of lose the good faith argument.
I understand that not everything's going to be...
You know, whatever level of, you know, nothing's going to be perfect, but there does seem to be things that are there purely for a marketing element that we know you would make our kids sick.
And, you know, again, I'm a total believer in the free markets, but like you think that there'd be a benefit in the market for people to actually do the right thing.
And, you know, their cereal may not quite be as neon yellow.
Yeah, and I think, again, when you get into tactics there, where my head goes, grass standards, I encourage everyone to look them up.
They make no sense.
It's not conservative or liberal or free market that we have self-policing of our chemicals and our food.
I think I'm optimistic that actually a lot of stakeholders are going to come to the table and just self-police themselves and say we shouldn't be having some of these toxic ingredients.
And then I know, Don, you're excited about Jay Bhattacharya.
I think I cannot overstate how important having a fearless leader at the NIH is.
Because before we get into bans, before we get into any policy discussion, let's just get a report on glyphosate, right?
It's being phased out of other countries.
If people want to continue it, but pretending that there's not an issue is sort of where I have my issue.
Let's just figure out the truth.
If people want to do that, like, transparency.
And this is where it ties into all the other areas.
I think it's all this message you've been the warrior on and your dad.
It's just like free speech is the first part.
And when it comes to science, what I think some bad actors have learned is that when you control the NIH research and Harvard Medical School, there's nothing higher up in society.
You know, I assume, right?
Leaders sitting in the Oval Office.
You have an NIH report come down.
I don't know.
Are you going to go against that, right?
It's like there's nothing much above that as far as trust.
And it's been totally broken.
They're not even asking the questions.
There's totally corrupted with DEI and various woke ideologies that's being used, I think, to just cover up real scientific inquiry.
So having someone come in Just before any policies, just like, hey, can we figure out what's going on with the pesticides?
Hey, can we figure out what these 10,000 chemicals are doing?
Getting the truth then changes the policy options.
So I think J and NIH is an absolutely transformative move that's going to impact policy in the years to come.
So, Kelly, how do all of those elements, the elements of my father's political movement, his cabinet picks, the entire shebang in his next administration, they all intersect in some way, shape or form.
But how does that work within all these different agencies?
And how do you sort of streamline that so you don't just sort of get those roadblocks that you hit into so often in the political process?
I think the biggest opportunity, and I think it's why there's, I think, record optimism in America, is that there's more things in the Overton window of what to discuss.
I think, you know, we still talk to old healthcare hands.
Well, you can't do that.
Congress is going to get upset about that.
We're getting a ton of heat from various people saying that Bobby's ideas are going to hurt the healthcare economy.
It's like, no, no, no.
We're fighting for kids.
President Trump talked about fighting for kids.
Yeah.
I think just being able to talk about it, just being able to talk about these things, being able to talk about the incentives, what are we talking about here?
We're talking about the foundation of how medicine is practiced.
We're talking about how it's actually just wrong that we silo 42 different medical departments.
If you have diabetes, heart disease, depression, there's separate doctors, separate drugs for life.
We're actually talking about a real, real new revolution in science and understanding interconnectivity.
I mean, Don, I know, you know, you think it's so important for health and mental health to go outside to be in the sun, you know, to be curious about these things.
It's like that could be more part of our scientific kind of inquiry and our disease reversal strategy.
So there's this spiritual vein, I call it spiritual, that I think your dad hit.
And I think Maha ties to the Justice Department and just getting truth there.
And it ties to unblocking education.
It ties to getting our border in control and getting our country under control.
I think there's just like honestly almost this spiritual vein that was hit of like, we've lost our way a bit.
We're going to get these broken institutions instead of out of our way.
So what my hope, and I think is really happening, and as Bobby said, your dad has kept every single promise he's made, and he is so committed to this issue.
It's just having his light on the issue, having him say the words childhood chronic disease crisis, it gives an ability.
We've heard from senators who are really excited.
It's just like almost like they can blame him for like maybe going its farm a little bit and maybe changing the paradigm a little bit.
His focus on these macro big issues is paradigm shifting.
So that's where I think the opportunity is.
And what the long-term goal is?
The long-term goal is we have a healthcare industry that's not incentivized for Americans to be sick.
That doctors are talking more when a child's depressed about going outside and exercising and eating healthy.
That we're working closer with small and large farmers to make American food the most nutritious in the world and change our subsidy system.
Yeah.
People criticized and made this comment that I think was the biggest lie of the campaign for me, which is that your dad's not talking about big ideas.
I don't think there's been a campaign in my life where big ideas were more front and center.
I mean, the big, big, big concepts here.
So, Don, I think that's the key thing.
We just have an opportunity to, I think, change paradigms.
Yeah, no, I mean, I was actually with Bobby earlier today, briefly, and it's great to actually see that, because I was one of those guys, again, behind the scenes, like you were, and then Tucker and I got together to, you know, really try to solidify that relationship and make it happen, and they got along great, and then I'm sitting there like, okay, now I made a promise.
I made a handshake, like, you're going to be, like, in this thing, and, like, and he is.
So it's not like one of these, you know, like we see in politics, you know, so much where you make a promise and then you have no intention of delivering, right?
I'm not going to pardon Hunter Biden.
Of course you're not, before an election and then two weeks after the election.
It's like, well, now it's not, you know, going to affect the election, so I'm going to do what I was going to do and everyone knew it anyway.
You know, the long-term vision I love, what can Maha, Kayleigh, look like in the first hundred days?
And, you know, how do you expect the big, you know, whether it's big pharma, big ag, you know, big food, you know, to engage in this new administration?
Because I agree with you.
I think there's a way that everyone can win if we just sort of align the incentives correctly.
You know, will they try to make nice or are they going to resort to sort of the usual unimaginable dirty tricks?
There's certainly going to be dirty tricks.
But again, I'll tell you, there's conversations happening with all stakeholders.
And although there's going to be a lot of dirty tricks, a lot of fighting, I think everyone in their heart understands the trajectory we're on where we're bankrupting ourselves from healthcare costs that are leading to the sickest country in modern history is really a problem.
But here's how we think about it.
Here's how I'm thinking about it.
Is we've got to deliver on impeachable wins for the Trump administration in the next in the first hundred days.
And I call the goal of the of the next four years as changing consciousness.
The biggest win is that we basically this kind of Maha feeling.
I think you've had it so many voters have had it.
They've been brought in the fold.
They just feel like something isn't right.
And if we can change.
really can't go back to this sick care system, but really have a health care system and incentives that prioritize health will be in a victory.
So what can we do?
What can we do immediately?
I think it starts with getting the research right and getting the conflicts out.
And those are two principles we're talking about that were talked about a lot in the campaign.
So I'm just going to Obviously, Bobby and his team and President Trump's team are working on the specifics, but I'll just give a couple ideas.
Like, why does the CDC have a nonprofit that allows pharma to bribe that agency hundreds of millions of dollars that can be cut immediately?
Why does the FDA and NIH have the same nonprofit that you can bribe it?
Right?
Why does the USDA, as I said, allow their Nutrition Guideline Committee members to receive money from food and pharma companies?
Why does the FDA guidance panels that approve our drugs have no conflicts of interest rules to speak of at all?
Why is there no revolving door where a lot of people from the first term, you know, who are telling your dad probably that they're going to fight the good fight and fight the MAGA way, they go straight to industry.
You can actually just close some of these loopholes.
And I can't stress this enough.
If you change the incentives of these industries, there's no bigger swamp than healthcare.
HHS is the largest and most expensive and fastest growing department budget in the government.
This is the center of the swamp.
The second I'll just reiterate is the NIH. Before talk of major – people are like, oh, is Bobby going to be doing some bans?
Well, some of this stuff frankly probably – it's not the free market that this stuff is even in our food.
I mean I think correcting a broken market is an anti-free market.
But like before even any talk of that … Let's have Jay Bhattacharya shift the NIH budget to answer the simple question your dad asked during the campaign, why are we getting sick?
That was really powerful.
I almost was brought to tears when I saw your dad say that in front of Bobby.
Why are kids getting sick?
Now, that's a simple question, but the NIH, 90% of their budget right now goes to pharmaceutical, basically, R&D. It's basically saying everyone's getting sick, but we're going to figure out this Band-Aid for Alzheimer's.
We're going to figure out this Band-Aid for diabetes.
Pharma is great.
They can do their own R&D. What Jay is talking about doing is he's going to steer the entire agency to answer that question.
And then, you know, there's these hot topics and, you know, get into the food.
Is it the open prescription of pharmaceuticals?
Is it, you know, is it our sleep?
You can do studies and actually get definitive statements on why we're getting sick.
What's going to happen, Don, is people go, oh, that's anti-science to even ask that question.
We've settled that issue.
It's all these people that have already made the dietary guidelines, they've already made the pharmaceutical guidelines.
So I think one thing Bobby and Trevor are saying is like, listen, we're not trying to take any drug away, we're not trying to take any, but we should get to the truth.
Like, that's a principle we should have unbiased.
But Don, you know how this works.
When a government bureaucrat or a deep state agency has already made a recommendation, There's huge institutional pressure to not embarrass them.
It could even open them up to liability, right?
Well, and half these guys then, it's no different than the military, right?
Half these guys vote on a budget, then they go serve on the board of Raytheon.
It's like, I'm sure they're going to try to save money.
I'm sure they're going to try to do it right.
I'm sure they're going to try to prevent war.
That's the off-ramp.
I'd love to stop all of these people serving in government from then going to work at these agencies that they were funding for so long, because it just seems like a recipe that's ripe for corruption.
That's right.
And it's just basic conflicts of interest.
And then with the science, it's just basic insistence that we're going to do foundational science on why people are going to get sick.
The other thing, Jay, and this is getting into weeds, but I think it's very important and it can happen day one, is establish a center at the NIH to just do replicability studies.
50% of studies that underlie drug approvals in this country can't be replicated.
They can't redo the study.
It's basically, we have an epidemic.
This is Jay and others who talked about this, a fraudulent science.
So, you know, your dad is attacked, and I'm sure in many cases, for being anti-science.
And I'll tell you, Don, from my limited vantage point behind closed doors, I have never heard an ideological statement ever uttered in a Kennedy meeting or a meeting with the Trump staff.
It is literally People trying to figure out how to get back to foundational science.
It is literally trying to figure out with the NIH budget how to arm the best scientists in the world and unburden them from any restrictions on academic freedom to get to core questions.
There's so much bureaucracy right now preventing that from happening.
And it truly is.
It's getting back to science.
Because I think the enemies hide in complexity.
And the enemies hide in, you know...
I think all these EI rules in science that you have to study certain areas and study certain...
We should just figure out why we have a 50% childhood obesity or overweight rate, things like that.
So you've got NIH. You've got FDA corruption.
CMS is huge.
Dr. Oz is working with a lot of people.
He gets it.
And that's the biggest part of the federal budget, that department.
So just figuring out how to basically change the standard of care to where your kid, if you have a kid in high school, you probably see this, right?
That doctor's going quick to the prescription pad, right?
You probably see with your high school, right?
It's just like SSRIs prescribed like candy, statins.
You know, it's just like that's because of CMS. That's because of Medicare, Medicaid, which then goes to private insurance.
And It all comes from the standard of care.
So when you have the right research, I don't know, maybe that kids are getting obese because they're eating too much ultra-processed food, and then you have more standards of care.
Okay, instead of jamming a Zimpik into a kid's arm who's obese, maybe we can put them on a dietary intervention.
Maybe we can put them on an incentivized exercise.
You can start then changing the standards of care.
So that's really important.
And the last thing I'll say, the other major agency, the CDC, can't stress this enough.
Infectious disease is important.
Infectious disease is important, but that's 8% of deaths, right?
92% is chronic.
They have a mandate on chronic disease.
The chronic disease, and their mandate is infectious and chronic disease.
So, of course, having the best standards on infectious disease and being prepared for future pandemics is important, but steering the overall posture of the CDC and our overall health authorities to reversing the chronic disease crisis as a general policy emphasis, that will have a big impact as well.
So, you know, on this show, we talk a lot about sort of, you know, we look deeply at the VA hospitals.
Is the model you're talking about something that you can use to improve quality of care there as well?
I mean, it seems like in all these departments, there's just huge opportunities to really just improve people's quality of life.
But they're siloed, and they're bureaucratized, and it just creates something that just feels like wasteful and inefficient.
Yeah, you've hit on this a couple of times.
I think there's a great – from my limited vantage point, Bobby, there's great discussion happening with this incredible reformer cabinet slate.
And I think a lot of evil and a lot of corruption hides in this disaggregation of all the different departments.
So I know Bobby's team is talking to the VA. Frankly, there's better regulations inside baseball.
There's more you can test there more quickly.
But we're totally letting down our veterans.
I mean, rates of chronic disease are much higher for them than the general population.
It's still part of the sick care system.
So yeah, I mean, I can't stress this enough.
If you can get the science right and then do innovative things with CMS codes, that's jointly collaborated with the VA. Potentially due to some regulations, you can test it more quickly.
I mean an example I'm particularly passionate about, and I don't know whether this is right or wrong, but there's a mental health epidemic among veterans.
I mean it's an absolute disaster.
Biden's panel assessing MDMA as a potential treatment for PTSD for veterans was stacked with pharmaceutical executives.
Total conflict of interest.
You know, again, we need to see the data and let the science run its course.
But, you know, by all accounts that I'm hearing, that's been a real transformative intervention for Navy SEALs who are on the verge of suicide.
I'm doing a podcast with one in a couple weeks.
I mean, this is a transformative intervention.
That was shot down.
That was shot down by the FDA. So I think this idea of deregulation, this idea of, frankly, a more libertarian mindset, a less corrupt mindset, letting people experiment more, we have a mandated one-size-fits-all medical system where if you're a depressed soldier, you're getting that SSRI. So that's just an example of how we can all kind of work together.
So, you know, speaking of sort of mindsets, I guess in the past, things like, you know, organic foods have been more linked to the left as sort of a, you know, hippie living, but on a more philosophical level, like how is organic food, you know, And dealing with all of that, it's sort of become a big part of the conservative movement now.
You look at sort of the food pyramid, turned out it was upside down.
And, you know, it's sort of interesting that this has changed.
And, you know, what do you see going on there?
You know, I'm curious your thoughts after this, Don, because I know you're doing things that were, you know, I know you're outdoors a lot and talking a lot about nature and even environmentalism, I consider it.
I mean, just respect for our land.
I mean, this is how I look at it.
I consider myself a conservative, and the foundation of that is the individual autonomy and human flourishing.
And through corruption and through corporate capture, we're systematically poisoning our kids.
We talk about this in our book, but it's multifaceted.
But force-feeding kids basically alter processed food, having the American Academy of Pediatrics accept 90% of their funding from pharmaceutical and food companies, and then in some cases say formula is better than breastfeeding.
Say that ultra-processed food is the first food that they should be eating, right?
Basically say ultra-processed food diet's fine.
You know, you basically just have all of these affronts to a child's cell.
I mean, I was just with a friend who has chickens, and they turn the lights on in the chicken house.
They lay two times more eggs just with the light on.
This isn't ideological, but what's happening to our sleep, our circadian rhythm, light, movement, chronic stress, which is a huge issue, every kid having a cell phone.
These are basic things every parent's worried about, but these are changing our hormones.
They're changing our metabolic health.
They're changing our cells.
I don't think any of us would want to give back light and modern amenities, but these have had an impact.
That's the basis of our health crisis.
Again, not ideological.
It's just true.
I think we all kind of know that.
There's environmental toxins.
We're not spending enough time outside.
Our body is accustomed to these natural inputs, and our cells require them.
So that's kind of what Casey's much more eloquent talking about and what our book's about.
I think what's resonated, what resonated on her Tucker interview is like, it's kind of this basic thing we all know.
And yeah, I think that's an anti-conservative, frankly, corrupt arms of these captured industries that are profiting from us being sick.
I mean, I think it's that simple.
And I think before any kind of policy argument Man, if kids are going to die younger than their parents, if we have a mass infertility crisis where we're having trouble reproducing as a species, where truly I think we have a societally catastrophic mental health crisis among kids, it's like this is kind of the base of the pyramid, honestly.
And again, Don, I'm curious how you see it, but I think The political win, which is vital, we need to get called.
You can't do anything without a win.
To provide that to the MAGA. I think it falls very well under the core thesis your dad's been making, which is the American people want to thrive, but it's this corruption in the way.
It's another proof point of exactly what your dad's been saying, is I think the argument that was really made well during the campaign.
Yeah, you know, I mean, you bring up some good points.
It's not just the food.
You talked about your circadian rhythm.
I put out a tweet, what was it, last week?
Daylight savings time time.
I was like, can we please leave daylight savings time?
Because there's nothing more annoying than coming out of a meeting and it's dark at 5.30 when I can get an hour of sunlight.
A couple of people are probably much more knowledgeable than me.
No, we've got to leave standard time because of the daylight and what it does to your act.
I don't know if that's right.
I don't know if the hour is enough to make a difference.
But I imagine all of these things certainly add up.
I'm sure to various levels of detriment, but I imagine it all does add up and we do have to get back to sort of a natural cycle.
It all adds up.
And, you know, this gets the Doge stuff.
It's like we're spending $4.5 trillion to clean up the mess, right?
So it's like this is going to bankrupt the country.
The fastest growing industry in the United States is not AI or tech.
It's healthcare.
So the healthcare costs at the current rate of growth is going to be 40% of our GDP in about 12 years.
And it's not slowing down right now.
So the question is...
We're currently spending $4.5 trillion.
Can we incentivize a better system?
Again, I think it's wild.
I don't know if you saw this, but Biden gave a nice Christmas present to Pharma on his way out the door and said that on Medicare, we need to cover – the taxpayers need to foot the bill for Ozempic.
Now, we're not an anti—it's not an anti-drug, you know, kind of Luddite, head-in-the-sand thing.
But what this ruling does is it says anybody that's obese or overweight—it's indicated for overweight as well—so that's 80% of people on Medicare immediately get government-funded Ozymbic $1,600, okay, a month.
And the key thing is it wasn't like wait and see after dietary.
The guidance literally says no food.
It needs to be the first line defense.
And then once it gets approved for Medicare, it goes to Medicaid, which is kids.
It's being studied on six.
So you're going to have government-funded obesity jabs, lifetime.
And it's like, just as a thought experiment, what could you do with that $1,600 more effectively?
Your dad and the Republican platform talks about benefit flexibility, this idea of giving people choice.
I think that's a core to the Maha message.
It's like maybe the drugs are good for some people, but I guarantee if you give a family that $600 for their obese child, they're probably going to be going other directions first.
And I think that's kind of a core – we're kind of mandating – Yeah.
Put the kid in jujitsu and let's see what happens first.
By the way, I know guys that were 400 pounds that lost 200 pounds on Ozempic.
I'm sure it was actually beneficial to them if they couldn't do it a different way.
I'm not going to be a purist on the subject.
I think it's probably the cost-benefit analysis.
I'm sure there's side effects, but the side effect of being 400 pounds is probably worse than whatever the other side effect is.
But, you know, but you're right.
You know, just arbitrarily sending it to anyone who's gained three pounds, probably not, you know, and it probably not a great lesson for life where just, you know, sort of discard all discipline, discard all accountability.
Just, you know, there's a shot or a pill for that, you know, probably not a great example.
But there is confusion sort of with what's out there for so much.
I mean, I guess, you know, we talked a little bit about sort of, you know, the interesting notion of You know, sort of, you know, healthy food actually being commandeered the switch to sort of, you know, conservatism where, you know, we took over sort of healthy foods and, you know, a protein-based diet.
And I guess we was always probably there, but it wasn't really a political issue.
But when you talk about, you know, organic or non-GMO, whatever other, you know, else the label might say, what should people be on the lookout for in our everyday lives?
You know, I see it with, you know, there's salmon, then there's, you know, Wild salmon, and then there's a different kind of salmon, and then there's this, and you're like, half the labels sound like it's the right choice, but when you look at what they're actually feeding, this is the garbage that they're shoveling off a boat into a net.
It has to be wild-caught, not just wild, because wild is like, it's in the wild.
I mean, it's fine.
It's in a net in the wild being fed ultra-processed tiny krill, I guess.
But how do you do that?
How do you differentiate that?
How does the everyday person, without becoming a doctorate...
Yeah, totally.
How do you do that?
Well, yeah, and you brought that point up again.
Highest level, let's get to that question.
I think it's great that you can't differentiate a Trump rally from what a Berkeley hippie was saying 10 years ago.
I think it's amazing, actually.
I think we have a generational opportunity on this issue because, actually, most people agree with it.
And I think the core thing for me, why I think this election is so important, is it's not left-right anymore.
It's just common sense and getting corruption out of the way.
So that, I think, is a great thing.
Yeah.
That you basically have hippie stuff at your dad's rally talking about food toxins, organic food.
It's great.
Okay, what do we do?
So this is not, let's get out of, this is not policy.
This is just from our book and what we really believe.
I think seed oils, there's a lot of talk about seed oils.
Let me explain why seed oils I think are important.
It's like they're industrial products.
Like engine lubricant.
It's lubricant.
And then there's lobbying after World War II and it's cheap, but it's engine lubricant.
And now what we're hearing as it's become the top source of American calories, a disgusting process that involves bleach and all these chemicals to even make it edible.
I mean, then we're told and we're jammed over our head.
That we need human randomized control studies and it's anti-science to even question these things.
So it's kind of you jam these things into our food supply through a totally corrupt lens.
The American Heart Association, their biggest donor decades ago when these oils were recommended was Crisco, was Procter& Gamble.
OK, so you just can trace it.
It's not like a conspiracy theory.
It's just it's just true.
Like like Procter and Gamble wrote the research the American Art Association said was true to promote Crisco.
It's just like this is all documented.
So and now it's like, you know, you probably see on Instagram.
It's like it's like people.
Oh, we don't have enough.
It's like, do we need a peer-reviewed study to know whether 30% of our child's diet being engine lubricant is healthy?
I've heard that we need studies on microplastics.
It's like 0.5% of a child's brain weight right now is plastic in America.
It's like a peer-reviewed study on that.
It's probably a problem.
I believe that seed oils, if you can actually just not eat those, You're actually doing 67% of the work because the processed food that contains seed oils is the worst processed food.
So if I could give one tip to a family and experiment, actually look at the labels.
And even if you're eating food out of a box, don't eat seed oils.
Do olive oil, do coconut oil, do butter, do avocado oil, fats like that, but avoid canola, safflower, cottonseed, you know, Oils like that, seed oils.
You can Google the list.
There's eight.
I guarantee you, and I hear this time and time again, and people write us with the book.
We thought it was so basic putting that in the book.
I've received hundreds, maybe thousands of messages.
That one tip has changed people's lives.
So that's number one.
Added sugar, I mean, it's so basic.
And then highly processed grains, wheat.
This gets another thing where we're hit over the head with the research, but you talk about going to Europe and eating a bunch of pasta and losing weight.
I think there's something really problematic with how we do grains in this country.
We use a lot more pesticides.
I think they're causing a lot of issues.
They turn into hidden sugar.
The processing of the grains takes the fiber off, which is the nutritional value.
I think it's not a universal ban on processed grains, but avoiding enriched flour, wheat would be a good thing.
So that's the unholy trinity.
Seed oils, added sugar, and highly processed grains.
You're going to get 80% to 90% there if you can get those ingredients out.
The last thing, Don, I'll say, and this is key, and this I think should be a center of health care, is there's five biomarkers.
Your weight...
Your HDL, your triglycerides, your blood sugar, and your blood pressure.
We get these for free.
And if you can get those five biomarkers for you and your kids in line, you almost by definition don't get nine of the ten killers of Americans, almost by definition.
And those are all gameable metrics.
So I think we go over this in the book, but like those five biomarkers, really study what those mean.
Those are signs of metabolic dysfunction.
And I think the national kind of health policy for the country should actually be getting those biomarkers under control because if Those are basically the biomarkers for chronic disease, and we should all be playing a game to get those under control.
And that's interesting because, again, as an outsider who doesn't spend his life studying this, tries to do reasonably well, but maybe have a little high cholesterol, but reasonably good shape for an old man.
It feels like it's so much more complicated than what you just broke it down.
I mean, these are things you can look for fairly easily.
I mean, there's obviously sort of the no-brainer things that you can enjoy, and you can probably, you know, I jokingly put that Picture that got Bobby in a little bit of trouble of all of us eating McDonald's at 3 o'clock in the morning coming back from UFC. I was like, gotta do it, man.
I'm sorry.
I love it.
I love how that just made all the people we don't like.
I think it's like my most liked Instagram post ever.
It was like, you know, it was like the guy got his hand caught in the cookie jar and it was like, you know, yeah, we're judging you, Bobby.
We're judging you.
But yeah, and again, I think you could probably do these things once in a while.
You don't have to live this.
Oh, no.
No, totally.
But you can't make it a staple of everyday life.
No, no, no, no, no.
Americans are the best.
This is like a...
But you tell me, Don, you're out there with the Americans.
Do you see people wanting to be sick?
Do you see people wanting their kids to be sick?
Do you see people motivated to...
I just think there's this lie that we're somehow lazier in America.
No, no, no.
This country, there should be cigarettes.
There should be McDonald's.
There should be soda.
I actually think more drugs should be legal.
We should have...
This is America, the land of the free.
But we are recommending and subsidizing this crap.
And that's the big differentiator.
And it's just that simple.
And it's just like, you know, I always go to this.
You know, Americans listen to doctors.
And the Surgeon General...
I don't think many of us would disagree that the Surgeon General reports saying smoking isn't great.
Probably, you know, that wasn't.
That led to a plummeting of smoking, right?
That led to various policymakers to make decisions.
We haven't banned it, but it's led to, and that was just one government bravery.
You know, the food pyramid.
Our diet radically changed when the government said to eat more carbs and sugar.
It went up 20% in the next 10 years.
So I can't emphasize it enough with Jay and with Marty at the FDA and with this day one Um, initiative your, your, uh, uh, dad's talked about with the chronic disease reversal panel, just bringing attention to this issue and actually just giving the right guidance.
I'm telling you, if Dr. Fauci or ever, you know, people like that stood up during COVID with the head of the NIH and Harvard medical school, and they said, we're dying at 16%.
Well, Kelly, give us the name of the book so everyone can check it out for those who want it.
I mean, obviously, you know, it's a big deal with our people, and I'm glad it's a big deal with our people, finally.
You know, that's a huge thing.
Would love them to check it out and really appreciate your time.
Don, thank you.
And just we've got a generational opportunity here.
The book's called Good Energy.
It lays out this multifaceted thesis.
I just ask everyone to keep up the good vibes for Bobby and your dad.
I think we have this positive, just incredibly optimistic vision on health and just so grateful to be a small part of knowing Bobby and the Trump team and seeing them just absolutely crank on this issue.
Well, hopefully you and your sister become a big part of that team.
And I think that'd be awesome.
I really appreciate the time and everything that you're doing.
Thanks so much for joining us.
That was actually really awesome, man.
Thank you.
Thanks, Tom.
Callie, thank you so much.
That was absolutely awesome.
Guys, thank you so much for tuning in.
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