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May 12, 2025 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr
01:05:36
Lower Costs, Bigger Wins, Interviews with FDA Commissioner Dr. Makary & Reporter Luke Rosiak | TRIGGERED Ep.240
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Hey guys, and welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
I hope you all had a nice weekend and an incredible Mother's Day.
I'm doing this a little bit early this afternoon, doing it beforehand, because my oldest daughter, Kai, is turning 18, so I just want to let her know how proud I am.
I'm looking forward to having dinner with her, probably as this is airing, but I also can't believe that I have an 18-year-old.
It makes me feel really old, but Kai, I love you.
Congratulations.
And I'm just incredibly proud of you.
So, guys, the news is breaking by the second.
So we've got a lot to get into.
Trade deals, hostage rescues, lower drug prices, all happening one after the other.
And meanwhile, Democrats are spending their time trying to break into ICE detention facilities.
They're trying to break into them.
I don't know.
You asked me, if some of them got deported, probably wouldn't be the end of the world, but I imagine that's not quite going to happen.
So we'll get into all of it here shortly.
And we have a major story surrounding the blatant hypocrisy surrounding refugee resettlement groups who are changing their tune.
We'll explain all of it shortly.
Plus...
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary will be here along with Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak.
So we will be jam-packed today.
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And now, let's take a look at some of the top headlines.
And I actually want to start with a look at the blatant hypocrisy and the scam surrounding refugee resettlement groups called, namely, the Episcopal Migration Ministries.
Under Biden, they were the front lines, basically saying we need to take in as many refugees as we can.
And they're pretty much for open borders.
And they claim to be all about tolerance and protecting the most vulnerable.
But now, guys, they're changing their tune, announcing that they're terminating their partnership with the federal government to resettle refugees.
Huh.
They're citing.
Moral opposition.
You know why, guys?
Because the moral opposition that they're really upset about has to do with resettling white South African farmers who have been victims of discrimination and are now classified as refugees by the Trump administration.
Huh.
Interesting.
I mean, guys, it's almost like this group...
Doesn't really care about what they claim to care about.
I mean, it's almost like they're totally full of crap.
They're fine resettling accused criminal illegal alien gang members.
MS-13, Trendela, Ragwa, you name it, they'll resettle it.
But taking in a farmer, suffering from discrimination, you've seen what's going on in South Africa, it's crazy.
That's where they draw the line?
That's their hill to die on?
It's just another example.
Of these left-wing groups being nothing more than arms of the radical social justice wing of the Democrat Party.
And it's why their non-stop hysteria over anything and everything the Trump administration does, even when it's a resounding win, even when it's an 80-20 issue, never stops.
Which brings us, guys, to big news on trade, where stocks surged after the United States and China agreed to a 90-day pause, which each side agreeing to slash reciprocal, you got to remember it's reciprocal tariffs, by more than 100 percentage points, bringing China's duty rate down to just 10%.
Here's my father with more details from earlier today.
In addition, yesterday we achieved a total reset with China.
After productive talks in Geneva, both sides now agree to reduce the tariffs imposed after April 2nd to 10 percent for 90 days as negotiators continue on the larger structural issues.
And I want to tell you that a couple of things.
First of all, that doesn't include the tariffs that are already on, that are our tariffs, and it doesn't include tariffs on cars, steel, aluminum.
Things such as that.
Or tariffs that may be imposed on pharmaceuticals, because we want to bring the pharmaceutical businesses back to the United States, and they're already starting to come back now based on tariffs, because they don't want to pay 25, 50, or 100% tariffs, so they're moving them back to the United States.
I spoke to Tim Cook this morning, and he's going to, I think, even up his numbers, $500 billion.
He's going to...
Be building a lot of plants in the United States for Apple.
And we look forward to that.
I really do look forward to that.
But the talks in Geneva were very friendly.
The relationship is very good.
We're not looking to hurt China.
China was being hurt very badly.
They were closing up factories.
They were having a lot of unrest.
And they were very happy to be able to do something with us.
And the relationship is very, very good.
I'll speak to President Xi maybe at the end of the week.
We have some other things we're doing.
And guys, this isn't just about reorienting trade.
It's also about fentanyl.
Because for far too long, China has flooded our nation with drugs.
And it's cost hundreds of thousands of American lives.
Here's Treasury Secretary Scott Besant on why this matters.
This does not include any sector-specific tariffs that have been put across all of our trading partners.
And as the ambassador said, I think he would agree with me that the upside surprise for me from this weekend was The level of Chinese engagement on the fentanyl crisis in the United States.
They brought the Deputy Minister for Security for Public Safety, who was not traditionally part of the trade team or the negotiating team, and he had a very robust and highly detailed discussion.
All of the trade news followed by another historic actions from the White House as my father is putting real pressure on Big Pharma to lower the cost of prescription drugs and to end the status quo of Americans paying sky-high prices while simultaneously essentially subsidizing lower costs to the rest of the world.
In America, we pay X for drugs.
In the UK and...
Germany, other parts of the world, they pay a tiny fraction for the exact same drugs.
How has that ever happened?
How is that even possible?
Under the order, HHS, headed by Bobby Kennedy Jr., will facilitate direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical sales at most favored nation prices.
So what does that mean?
It means drug companies can't charge Americans more than the lowest drug price they sell abroad.
And it means we're not going to let Americans be ripped off any longer.
And it's yet another 80-20, frankly this should be like a 100% issue, but at least 80-20, because there's some Democrats who are insane and probably on the take, issue that Democrats want to be on the wrong side of.
And it's just another example of how the status quo is no longer the status quo in Washington, D.C. Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt breaking down the details.
So this pharmaceutical deal, I'm just going off the Truth Social post.
It says, it's a long one, but he says, I'm pleased to announce that today the White House at 9 o 'clock will be signing one of the most consequential executive orders ever.
They'll be reducing pharmaceuticals by about 80 percent.
Essentially, we are going to pay less than the country that's paying the least for pharmaceuticals from here on in.
How does that work?
First of all, it cannot be overstated how big of a deal this executive order that President Trump will be signing in a couple of hours is for American families, and especially our seniors, who have been ripped off by very large and rich pharmaceutical companies.
The United States of America is less than 5% of the world's population, yet we purchase 75% of big pharma's profits.
We pay an astronomical amount in comparison to other countries around the world.
So the president is signing an executive order today that is going to implement most favored nations' drug pricing and is going to reduce the cost of drugs in this country by more than half at least.
America is going to pay a better rate and a fairer rate to the rest of the world.
That's what the American people deserve.
This is huge news.
And also, I will add, we know that health care costs and drug prices were the number one driver of Biden's inflation.
So not only are we bringing those down, but we are ending Biden's inflation.
But guys, the major wins don't stop there, because we're also seeing the results all across the world under the Peace Through Strength Trump agenda.
For example, American citizen Eden Alexander is being released by Hamas after being held hostage since October 7, 2023.
Check this out.
Idun, in about two hours from now, or sometime today, let's say.
And again, they thought he was dead just a short while ago.
His parents are so happy.
They're so happy.
So it's, as you know, Idun's the only American citizen.
He's captured.
And held hostage by Hamas since October 7th, 2023.
And he's coming home to his parents, which is really great news.
I mean, to me, it's big news.
They thought he was dead.
So that's that.
So we'll be heading there and we'll be seeing three primary countries.
You know all about that.
Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar.
The news follows an announcement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the successful rescue of all hostages held by the Maduro regime at the Argentinian embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, in what was described as a precise extraction of the United States.
Meanwhile, it's looking like Russia and Ukraine will meet in Turkey this week, and my father is signaling that we're not going to spend endless amounts of time on a peace deal, and that the clock is ticking for both Putin and Putin.
And in between all of that, guys, Vice President J.D. Vance and the Secretary of State have negotiated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
Check this one out If you don't stop it, we're not going to do any trade People have never really used trade the way I used it that I can tell you and all of a sudden they said I think we're gonna stop and They have and that they did it for a lot of reasons, but Trade is a big one.
We're going to do a lot of trade with Pakistan.
We're going to do a lot of trade with India.
We're negotiating with India right now.
We're going to be soon negotiating with Pakistan.
And we stopped the nuclear conflict.
I think it could have been a bad nuclear war.
Millions of people could have been killed.
So I'm very proud of that.
I also want to thank Vice President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio for their work and efforts.
They worked very hard on that.
This is what real leadership looks like, guys.
The adults are actually back in charge.
The era of Biden appeasement is over.
No matter where in the world, America is no longer accepting managed decline.
We're not accepting it anymore, guys.
That's over.
And we're not going to be pushed around on the world stage by other countries, by rogue regimes, by corporate America, or anyone else.
And this applies to every issue, every sector, every department, especially on the issue of American energy dominance.
As Energy Secretary Chris Wright is revealing that the Biden administration pushed out $93 billion, okay?
$93 billion in green energy loans at the very end of 2024.
All while Biden and his auto pen enablers killed pipeline projects here while buying up oil from America's enemies and providing hard currency to rogue and often terrorist regimes.
But that's all over now.
Here's the energy secretary yesterday laying it all out.
A little over $40 billion was supplied in support through the loan program office in its 15 years of existence, a little over $40 billion, and then almost $100 billion in the 76 days after they lost the election and before President Trump's inauguration.
Like, if those were great ideas that were benefit to the America, why didn't they do it in the two and a half years after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed?
Why did they wait till they lost the election?
They changed terms in loan covenants.
They basically tried to set bombs to make it hard for us to unwind the mess they'd created.
That's just not a responsible way to treat American taxpayer money and to move our energy system forward.
So yes, we've stepped into a lot of mess, but this stuff's all fixable.
We've got an aggressive team going after it.
And you see already American energy prices are down, investments in America to bring jobs back are up.
So I think we're going the right direction, but yeah, we've got a lot to clean out.
Yes.
I mean, look, this has been a 25-year problem now.
Venezuela was a wealthy, prosperous society and a great ally of the United States and a huge energy producer.
Then they adopted, you know, they had Hugo Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro, two just awful, tyrannical leaders.
President Trump wants to use United States force or energy independence to force a change in Venezuela.
Chevron's a great American company, a little bit caught in the crossfire there, but we need to change the situation in Venezuela, not just for Venezuelans, but for all the gang members and refugees fleeing that country and millions of them ending out in the United States.
But I think peace through strength is going to be the winning strategy here.
But what are Democrats spending their time, guys?
What are they spending their time doing?
Well, they're apparently storming ICE facilities and getting arrested to stand up for their newest allies, their best friends, illegal immigrant gang members.
And that seems to be who the Democrat Party wants to support the most.
MS-13, Trendelaragua, bad people from bad parts of the world who've done a lot of bad things.
They want them living in your backyard.
Here was the scene last week at a Newark ice facility where the mayor of Newark was actually arrested for trespassing while Democrat members of Congress staged their latest political stunt.
Here was the scene outside the facility that day.
Here was the scene outside the facility.
Thank you.
If you're an American who wants lower drug prices, who wants violent criminals deported, who wants peace and prosperity, the Democrats don't have much to offer you.
But, guys, if you're a criminal, illegal alien, they will try to break into a federal detention facility at any length.
To defend you.
So we'll get into more of that in just moments with FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary.
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Well, guys, joining me now, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary.
Commissioner, thank you for joining us.
Great to be with you, Don.
Well, listen, obviously a lot going on.
I guess we'll start off with the breaking news on this order to lower drug costs.
Can you explain what specifically the order says and why it's so historic?
Yeah, this is a milestone day in health care.
You know, Americans have been getting ripped off massively on the price of drugs.
I mean, paying 10, 12, 15 times more than what they pay in other wealthy countries.
And it makes no sense.
And there's no reason for it, except that in the United States, nobody has really been standing up for everyday Americans.
So this executive order says that's going to stop.
This executive order starts with a request to these pharma companies to play ball and level the playing field.
Giving Americans the best prices that they offer for wealthy countries like Germany and France and in England.
And if they don't play ball, then we've got the full regulatory authority of this administration to use everything at the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Trade Representative, the DOJ looking at monopolistic pricing.
And at the FDA, we have a role as well, as well as Medicare, which is the biggest payer of these drugs.
So this is a comprehensive strategy that we've never seen before.
President Clinton talked about it a lot.
Obama talked about it a lot.
No one had the courage to do it until today.
So I guess the obvious question, Marty, and you sort of hit it on a little bit, is why are costs so high for Americans, but we're apparently essentially subsidizing low-cost drugs in the rest of the world?
How did we ever get to that point?
How has no one...
I mean, I can understand if they want to overcharge other countries because it's an American company, but if they're actually screwing the American taxpayer from American companies with American dollars, how did we ever get here?
Because we've been asleep at the wheel.
I mean, the same reason I think the instincts of the president...
Realize that we're getting a raw deal on NATO fees, on WHO membership fees, on tariffs.
And so when you actually look at it from the standpoint of the everyday American worker, it makes no sense.
When you look at it from the standpoint of large corporations, then the system's working kind of as broken as it's designed.
So I think politicians have come to Washington, D.C. and have said, you know, this doesn't look right, but in the end they have to make a decision.
Do they go with the lobbyist money or do they go with the interests of the everyday American?
And here's one where everybody has swam, has been swimming downstream.
And we've got now somebody swimming up current that says we're not going to do this anymore.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds so much like, I remember my father always told the story when he was sort of renewing the Air Force One contract.
You know, that's two planes, right?
So there's always a backup and whatever.
And, you know, he knows about planes.
He has a 757.
Those are obviously 747s.
And he was going through it, be like, how is it possible that two planes are, the contract was like $6 billion.
He's like, it needs to have a four on it.
And they were like, oh, wow, we can't do that.
And like a day later, they came back, okay, we can do it for four or whatever the exact number was.
But like, they took $2 billion.
And he asked like, well, how is it possible that you can do that?
If you could show me the line items, I can understand if it, you know, I'm sure there's...
You know, better communications and maybe some anti-missile defense systems or whatever it is, but not $4 billion worth or, you know, an extra $2 billion worth.
It didn't make any sense.
And basically, I think the response they gave them was like, oh, no one bothered to ask.
No one bothered to ask.
So you're right.
We were asleep at the wheel.
And I imagine it's not just this, but all the other stuff Doge has discovered and Air Force One.
Americans have been getting screwed.
I mean, I look at some of the prescriptions I have to fill, whether it's for me or for five kids every once in a while, and it's like, how is it possible that it's this expensive?
Yeah, I think because we've had middlemen that have basically said...
Look, keep your eyes off of what's going on here.
We're the experts.
We know how this works.
And you have all these middlemen.
It's not just pharma and their pricing.
All the middlemen along the way have been price-gouging everyday Americans.
And they don't sometimes feel it because it comes out of their paycheck.
It's a paycheck deduction for Medicare.
It's a paycheck deduction for employer-sponsored health care.
Until you realize, hey...
If you bought a Ford vehicle for $175,000 and found out it's $10,000 in London every day, all day long, you'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, can we have a talk with this company, with the car maker?
And can we have a level playing field?
And that's what's going on now.
It's exciting to be a part of it.
There's so much cool stuff.
That I did not expect in this job of being FDA commissioner.
Because we have free reign under this administration to do whatever makes sense.
And so we have incorporated AI last week for the first time in our scientific reviews.
We removed pharma members from FDA advisory committees wherever statutorily possible.
We're also creating a more user-friendly process.
So they can get more drugs and cures out faster.
We're reducing animal testing.
And that's just in the first few weeks.
So this has been great.
Yeah, I saw that the other day.
It was kind of a big one.
It's hard to believe they're still doing it.
But they're not going to test on beagles anymore.
I mean, who tests on beagles?
Isn't Snoopy a beagle?
We're really still doing it?
It's crazy that these things are still going on in practice.
You know, and it didn't work very well.
All it does is slow down cures to the American public.
Why does it take 10 years for a new drug to come to market?
Nobody has really asked that question before.
Why have we ignored our poisonous food supply and only talked about drugging kids at scale?
We had another company today sign on to our pledge to remove petroleum-based food dyes from the food supply.
We're going to keep going like this.
We are looking at every single thing in the U.S. food supply, every one of the root causes of our chronic disease epidemic, and we're going to keep going.
Yeah, I've had Bobby on the show, and we've talked about that.
Petroleum-based things in our food, it's wild.
Because, I mean, I go to Europe a lot, and you look at the same product, and the ingredients list is like a third the size, and you can actually pronounce these things.
How did we get to the point where all of those things got switched out?
When the rest of the world sort of acknowledges it as poison, and we're just like, eh, we just won't test it, so it's probably fine.
I mean, the notion of all that, whether it's seed oils or whatever, but basically things that were designed to be industrial lubricants during World War II.
We decided to start cooking with, I guess, military surplus lubricants.
How did that happen?
And again, I look at America, whether it's tech or militarily or so many other things, music and pop culture.
We're so much ahead of the world.
How did we get so far behind, quite candidly, even second and third world countries?
Well, I think the industry has captured some of our regulatory bodies.
You look at the FDA's history, OxyContin, for example, getting approved based on a 14-day study for chronic pain.
That was an illegal approval, in my opinion.
And then the regulator goes to work for Purdue Pharma immediately afterwards.
So we are doing a lot now to make sure we've got scientific integrity.
We're using common sense and gold standard science both.
When it comes to everything and when it comes to food, who really thinks we need a randomized controlled trial where we inject Half of the kids in the study with petroleum in their blood system and half without and then wait 10 years to see what happens.
We have to use more common sense at the FDA.
And that also means addressing rare diseases with drugs where there's a plausible mechanism that it works.
We've got to implement both the spirit and the letter of right to try in everything we do.
So I don't think there's been a lot of that common sense governing things like the grass standard where industry is...
It's just been able to say, hey, if we say it's safe, it's safe, and we're putting it in our food.
I mean, heck, yellow dye number five, tartrazine, was a coal ash byproduct from coal tar.
And somebody noticed it's bright yellow, and then they put it in fabric, thinking, oh, you know, it should work well in fabric.
And then they put it in food.
Yeah, because our Froot Loops absolutely have to glow in the dark to have the proper marketing effect on our children.
I mean, it's insane, but, like, I grew up eating Froot Loops.
You know, I'm sure, you know, I try to let my kids not eat this crap, but it's, you know, it's definitely, but, like, I honestly don't think that more kids or parents are buying Froot Loops because they glow in the dark versus being a slightly more natural hue of neon green.
I mean, it's crazy.
Glow in the dark, I love that.
Yeah, look, there's so many of these issues we've got to tackle.
It's just it's gotten out of control.
And nobody has really been courageous enough to look at it now until we've had this opportunity.
So we're doing it.
We're doing everything we can do.
And we've got the big Maha Commission report coming out next Thursday.
We're really excited about that.
One of the biggest pieces of misinformation the U.S. government's ever put out has been the food pyramid.
And so that's caused a lot of damage.
Yeah, we're turning it upside down.
It's totally upside down.
It always was.
And that's sort of crazy.
And the whole story about how...
You know, big tobacco, once they cracked down on them, basically became big food and used the same sort of, you know, addiction practices.
So I think it's such an incredible opportunity for America.
And I think this administration with you guys there, whether it's you, Bobby, so many people working at the FDA and HHS.
I mean, I think you have an opportunity for generational change that hopefully doesn't get overly politicized.
Because I think this is one of these, this isn't just an 80-20 issue.
This used to be like 100%.
You know, issue, but I guess I gotta ask, how is HHS and the FDA specifically engaging, you know, with the pharmaceutical industry and those companies?
Again, this is one of these 80-20 issues.
You see it, you see when people, you're watching TV, you see the reaction, like, wait a minute, that's happening?
And it's like, of course it's happening.
It's like, this is one of those across-the-aisle issues.
But you talked about lobbyists, you talk about the swamp, you know, it definitely has teeth.
How do you engage with these guys to get enough stuff done?
Not just through executive order, but to make sure that it's lasting.
That it's not like, okay, we'll do this.
We'll use up the surplus, and in four years we'll start our same old crap practices again.
The richest country in the world can also be the fattest and least healthy.
Well, we have more and more giant food companies coming out now and signing on to this pledge to remove all the petroleum-based dyes, not just one in three or four years, but all of them by the beginning of the school year next year.
That's our goal.
So that's going really well.
That's a big deal.
We're doing an inventory.
That's a big deal.
We've got more and more companies now interested in partnering with us on the ingredients in food.
And with pharma, we've got great relationships.
They know what's going on They've got kids They see what's happening, and they know that they have been gouging the American public with prices 10 times higher than prices overseas in some cases.
And so they recognize that there has been this disparity.
They recognize that people are onto it now, and they recognize now there's actually some action with some teeth on it.
So I think we're going to see good cooperation.
Look, I want American pharma companies to thrive.
I want to see companies that do business in the United States to thrive.
We're simply asking for a level playing field so they can thrive with a level playing field with other wealthy countries overseas.
Well, I mean, you bring up the overseas component.
I think that's an important one as well.
You know, what's your oversight scope in looking at these Chinese research centers that we're apparently funding, you know, and protecting our food supply chains?
You know, whether it's food supply or, frankly, you know, pharma stuff, where so many of our antibiotics and everything, I believe the number was like 93% are coming from...
China, who I imagine in a time of crisis or a time of war, is not going to be on our side on anything.
How do we handle that?
What does that all look like as well?
Well, you know, Don, when you come into these jobs like the job I have, there are things that shock you.
And one of the things that totally surprised me is that we have been putting American companies...
In terms of the inspections the FDA does on their manufacturing.
These American pharma manufacturing sites, we put them through the ringer and we let off these foreign sites easy.
For example, in the United States, we have surprise inspections of pharma manufacturing sites.
Overseas, they're scheduled.
Well, a scheduled inspection is no inspection.
I learned that limo drivers...
Paid for by the pharma companies, we're picking up our FDA inspectors overseas and taking them to the manufacturing plants to do the inspection.
Well, they know the exact ETA from the limo drivers.
I mean, it's a joke.
They've been laughing at us.
They've been laughing at us paying 10 times more for the same drugs, and it's really no different.
From, you know, us paying the disproportionate fare of WHO membership fees or NATO or anything else.
And so we are now moving to surprise inspections overseas.
Our inspections are not going to hang out for three and four weeks.
They're going to be in and out, and they're going to look for major stuff, and they're going to do more inspections.
How do we work about diversifying the overall supply chains?
Again, it seems like we're, you know, like with so many other things, we're so critically dependent on...
One actor, in most cases it's China, but whether it was semiconductors, it'd be Taiwan.
But Taiwan is 69 miles, 68 miles from China.
It doesn't seem like a great place to have all of our strategic reserves for semiconductors and other microchips vested in that place alone.
How do we encourage other countries to start picking some of this up so that we know we have a supply if we're not necessarily getting along with our allies or not so much allies?
We need to make it clear to manufacturing companies that if you manufacture in the United States, that includes medical devices, it includes food production, it includes drugs, that we're going to take care of you.
That's what we want, and you're in good standing with the FDA if you're moving your manufacturing to the United States.
We're going to cut the red tape, get rid of as much regulation as we can do within our safety limits, and we're going to encourage that.
Companies respond.
A number of large pharmaceutical companies have announced moving their manufacturing to the United States.
Now, it's going to take a couple years because these plans take a while to stand up.
But we're seeing a response to the call.
And we are doing, I mean, it is like the number one focus at the FDA is to remove this unnecessary red tape that stops this good stuff from happening.
Well, I think, listen, I think we really need a whole team who share that sort of same mission.
And we seem to be assembling the right people in the right places.
You know, again, Washington, D.C. has a lot of permanent people, people who are probably very well paid to make sure that some of these agenda items don't get rolled out.
Can you talk about how to combat that stuff internally?
Gosh, you know, we hear it all the time.
We hear, yo, well, this congressman's going to be upset or this senator might be upset.
Well, you can do two things.
You can either just play chicken, be scared all the time and do nothing.
Which is what most administrations do on these major moves.
Or you can be bold.
And so the only way you can be bold in a position like mine, like that of Mehmet Oz at Medicare, like Jay Bhattacharya at NIH, is if somebody's got your back.
And we have air support and cover that no one's had in these agencies.
And so we're going bold on every single thing we can.
That's great.
I guess I guess one last thing when we're talking about these is, you know, there's always the thing, you know, big pharma sort of gets grouped as big pharma and everything like that.
But you also have a lot of stuff in biotech.
And there seems to be a concern, you know, the guys that are actually coming up with some of this stuff, you know, investing a lot of money to come up with these next generation cures and everything.
And they sort of seem to be grouped together.
How do you handle the big pharma side of stuff to keep the cost down for Americans while simultaneously not...
What I hear from my friends who are either biotech investors, it's like, hey, China's just scooping up all the scientists because they pay them three times more.
There's no liability.
They let them do what they need to do.
It does feel like we don't want to give up our strategic advantage in ingenuity from the biotech side, which, again, I think gets grouped a lot with that.
How do we handle that?
Because it's actually a question that these guys are a little panicked about.
I'm like, it's actually a good question.
I was wondering if you knew.
Yeah, so we've got to modernize.
Last week, we had our first AI-assisted scientific review, and it went so well.
The reviewer said, the AI is helping me do in six minutes what normally takes me two to three days.
That was a direct quote from him.
We actually put it in the announcement.
So we've announced we're going to roll out this AI-assisted review agency-wide at the FDA for all scientific reviews by...
June 30th.
We're not messing around.
We've got a massive team that's coming in, some real geniuses.
And so we've got to modernize.
Right now, the FDA does really not know what to do with AI technology that we have to approve.
That is, separate from the AI we use to do our job better.
Wearables that come in with AI.
AI machines that help doctors and clinicians and CAT scan reads.
We don't know what to do with it because we have this system where you have to apply for an approval for every one of the 200 answers the AI can give you.
Well, it kills innovation.
So we've got to modernize and we've got teams working on all that stuff.
We can't be writing on stone tablets here in 2025.
Well, I really appreciate it.
I guess as we wrap up, We see all these joint research projects between even major corporations and American universities in places like China.
Does that also need a similar overhaul?
Is this the kind of place where we're funding it, but they're getting all the upside of our R&D dollars or stealing the IP and all of the usual practices that we've seen elsewhere?
Yeah, look, we are not going to tolerate studies that are done behind closed doors only in China where they're giving us results that are not believable.
So we've got to safeguard the American public against false claims.
And that means we want to see good, comprehensive gold standard science open in plain view.
And we want to use common sense as well.
We can do both.
Well, I really appreciate it.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marnie McCary, thank you so much for joining us.
Look forward to seeing all the stuff you're rolling out in the next few weeks, and we'll have to have you back on once that stuff is in process.
Good to be with you.
Thanks so much, Don.
Thanks.
And guys, coming up, more major investigations into USAID and the blob.
Investigative reporter Luke Rosiak will be here with us to tell us all about it.
But first, guys, speaking...
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Guys, joining me now, Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Roszak.
Luke, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
So you have a big story out about the fraud uncovered at USAID, and it's somehow even worse than what we've imagined.
I mean, you know, I knew it was going to be bad when this stuff started a few months ago.
You just knew that there had to be a lot there.
Then it's significantly worse than you ever imagined.
And it just keeps going.
What's the latest?
Well, so there's a little agency, sort of a little brother of USAID, called the African Development Foundation.
And when Doge tried to audit its books, the staff actually locked the doors and physically prevented them from entering.
I saw that story, yeah.
The administration only got in through the federal marshals forcibly opening the doors.
And so a lot of people heralded this agency for speaking truth to power and standing up for their principles and all this stuff.
But one of the things that Elon says is if people resist an audit, it's probably because they have something to hide.
And so I decided to look into this agency because I never heard of it, just like most people never did.
And it didn't take long to figure out, mostly by talking to the employees there themselves, that this thing was corrupt from top to bottom.
And the first thing that they did is obviously they're supposed to give money to Africa.
But what they would do is have the African entities give it back to them under the table.
So in some cases, they were literally just like paying, like wiring money into the bank accounts of bureaucrats in D.C. while Congress thought.
This is all money that's going to Africa.
I mean, what kind of money are you talking about here?
So the agency itself only has a budget of $45 million.
A lot of that goes to overhead as it is.
But then the portion that goes over to Africa, a lot of it was coming back.
We don't know the full amount.
I don't know the full amount.
But I know that numerous employees were receiving these.
I saw an invoice.
For $17,000 wired from an LLC in Nigeria into the bank account of the assistant of the president.
To be clear, this is the assistant of the president under Biden.
Just to be clear.
The CEO of this agency, the CEO and president of this charity agency.
And so, yeah, he was like a DEI.
Employee at the Peace Corps, and then he became under Biden, the CEO of this agency.
By the way, never paid his taxes for years until he took the federal job.
He had to finally pay his taxes to become head of this federal agency.
But the chief financial officer also was giving money to contracts, like contracts for travel during COVID when there was no travel.
So the USAID IG actually looked into that and found that he was receiving Secret Bank.
First of all, the company he was paying was his friend for decades.
And his friend was then paying him money every time he got a contract from this agency.
So it certainly looked like criminal kickbacks.
USAID was in court laying some of that out there.
But the guy was never arrested.
I don't know if that's still in the works or what.
So, yeah, what is the legal process here from this point on?
What's next?
Because, yeah, I mean, it to me seems just outright criminal.
There's not even like, there's no other way to imagine this, I don't think.
Yeah, so I think everyone's been placed on leave right now to be laid off.
But I think Congress needs to act to make sure this doesn't come back.
Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to abolish this agency permanently.
Yeah, whether there's criminal, certainly the CFO, I think, is, you know, there's a very credible criminal case against him, probably others as well, to ensure that there's accountability here.
We don't just put this behind us, but there's a deterrent effect for other people.
But I also think it's a lesson for, it is sort of a vindication of what people were saying about USAID and is this money basically being laundered to consultants in Bethesda.
This is very strong evidence that this is...
What was happening.
Another thing that I think is a lesson here moving forward is there's a racial component to this.
The general counsel basically turned whistleblower for this agency saying, I'm the top lawyer here and I'm saying you guys are constantly breaking the law with everything.
Personnel, procurement, all this stuff.
Ethics, you know, conflict of interest.
And basically, they tortured him for being white.
They put him on leave to prevent him from exposing his investigation.
And he actually has a sworn affidavit from a black staff saying, yeah, they straight up said we won't hire any white people.
But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rejected his complaint.
So there is an element of is there going to be a recourse for people who are white, who are discriminated against in federal employment?
Yeah, you actually found that.
I imagine that if it was anyone other than white men, It would be a serious problem.
And yet, in this case, like all things that are against MAGA or common sense or basic fairness, as long as it's not a white beneficiary, it's totally fine to just break the law, to disregard practices, and to have a whistleblower who, you know, I definitely remember all the whistleblowers against Trump were beyond reproach, even if they were basically criminals themselves.
That didn't seem to matter.
Here, it's the opposite.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I've done stories over the years about there was one story out of the Housing and Urban Development Department where this staff who was black claimed that her boss made some little rascals joke.
It was totally inoffensive.
It didn't really even seem racial to me.
But she claimed that it was racist and she was offended.
She got a million dollar payout for that.
So it's a total double standard.
But the other thing is sort of the lecturing and the moralizing that we often receive of if you want to shut down this government agency, You hate poor people or you hate Africans.
The people that we put in charge, they, in fact, didn't seem to care very much about Africans.
They cared more about themselves.
And so one of the guys on the board of this agency was CEO of Herbalife.
Herbalife is basically a pyramid scheme.
They paid a penalty for foreign and corrupt practices.
And basically, yeah, being this...
Unethical, multi-level marketing scheme.
So this African Development Foundation pushed Herbalife onto African peasants, which benefited its own board member.
So instead of helping African peasants, they're trying to make a buck off them.
Yeah.
Again, the other complaint I keep seeing this week, I guess it was Equinox, like the gym company, lost an almost $12 million lawsuit because there was a lady, I guess, of color who was fired.
And she said it was racism, even though, you know, she was late 47 times in the last year.
Like, you know, it definitely only seems to go one way.
But when it does that in these select venues, especially in liberal cities, you know, it's a handpicked jury that's just happy to administer, you know, some sort of level of, you know, social justice, even if it's nonsense.
They just don't care.
It's like it's someone else's problem.
No one wants to be seen as the person that could be somehow racist for firing someone for cause.
Yeah, that's right.
And I mean, they basically put this whistleblower through the ringer.
They actually framed him for making death threats.
And they just completely ruined his life.
And there was really nothing they could say that he did wrong other than the fake death threats.
They also said he was insubordinate for investigating them for breaking the law when they told him not to.
And so it's just such a flagrant case of wrongdoing.
And you see the left making this African aid agency into this David versus Goliath story where they're the hero.
And it is a case of the Democrats stepping on a rake.
It's always pretty funny when that happens, when they go all in on making this the case study of what government should be, when it's actually the exact opposite.
And it does make you wonder how often, how many other government agencies operate like this.
Obviously, I guess this is at DOJ, so hopefully there's...
There's at least some reasonable, open-minded people looking at this.
But I guess the process is, hey, in a Biden administration, everyone's a leftist.
Do it in D.C. They'll find there's no wrongdoing, even if there's flagrant wrongdoing.
And it's swept under the rug.
The guy's fired and his life is ruined, even if it is fraud, even if it is waste, even if he's just doing his job and they're breaking the law.
Yeah, I mean, I wonder about that a lot with the D.C. Juries, people talk about how well if the Democrats, you know, basically target people for their political beliefs, then the Republicans might do the opposite, and that's bad.
But the Republicans, I don't know, they could be thwarted by a D.C. jury who says, actually, it's totally okay to commit all kinds of crimes when you are a Democrat.
But realistically, I mean, these are people that were basically, it seems like they were swindling Africans and taking money that was supposed to go to poor Africans.
And using it for themselves to do luxury travel and to buy, you know, high-end suits and to get their next job.
And so I don't think they're really very sympathetic to anyone.
I think it really shocks the conscience for Americans of all political beliefs.
And, you know, the top guy, C.D. Glynn, I mean, he used government money to buy, basically put himself, pay money to this company that...
We'll get you on boards using DEI qualifications if you pay them money.
He used taxpayer money to pay for that, and next thing you know, he's in charge of the PepsiCo Foundation's board.
So he's in charge of $70 million right now.
So that's the kind of thing that happens a lot in D.C. is when people do bad things, you're looking for them to get punished, and instead they fail upwards, and they actually go on to do even more prominent things.
Yeah, I know that you found that federal prosecutors in D.C. say that a senior USAID contracting officer essentially created a fake company to steer himself money via the coronavirus bailout.
How deep does all of this go?
I mean, you know, we've been talking for five minutes, ten minutes, and it's like, here's seven examples of, like, how much, I mean, you know, again, hey, no one knows better than me just how rotten it is, but, like, even I'm shocked at just how bad it all is.
Yeah, no, I mean, I did a four-part series in the Daily Wire on this little agency, and that's way more than I normally do, but everywhere you turned, there was just...
Flagrant law-breaking.
And there was no recourse.
I mean, employees went to the Office of Special Counsel.
They went to the Equal Opportunity Employment.
They went to the USAID Inspector General.
They went to the Senate.
And nothing ever happened.
And so this is a case where this kind of thing went on and on for years.
And it wasn't until Doge came along that things finally changed.
And so some people are saying who worked in the agency, this is all totally true.
It really was corrupt.
But we think you should just go more go slow and don't be too radical.
And it's like, well, wait a minute.
The Democrats had years to fix these problems and they didn't.
And, you know, you brought up a great example there where they're they're using coronavirus.
I mean, the head of this agency.
So he said, look, I'm going to give you this grant to buy these COVID masks, and then you're going to subcontract it to the Aspen Institute.
And they were like, we already have COVID masks.
We don't need anymore.
And he's like, don't worry, just take the money.
So it really does raise a lot of questions about how how common this is in government.
And certainly the theme that I've seen is if left to their own devices, government agencies will devolve into something that is primarily just an employment center for the state.
Yeah, I mean, I think we've seen that.
You saw, you know, when Elon bought Twitter, and he fired 80% of the employees, and guess what?
Nothing changed.
Like, it actually got better.
I imagine the federal government is probably even...
Even worse than that.
I think we've covered four or five different sort of cases of what seems to me to be flagrant criminality.
Are all of these things being pursued?
Are these people going to be held accountable, in your opinion?
Yeah, I mean, the USAID Inspector General has been looking into it for years.
They've been getting tips from whistleblowers that were desperate for somebody to come help them since, like, 2021 or earlier.
I don't think they should have taken so long.
Some people feel like they were just sitting on it or not doing enough.
On the other hand, there are court documents indicating that they really did substantiate some very serious things here.
So they got something going on.
We'll see if they come through.
But we need inspectors general.
Those dudes have badges and they can throw you in jail.
So one of the things that I think would be cool that would happen is if inspectors general started to become more like Doge.
Like you can do the inspector general job in sort of an apathetic way or you can do it in a super aggressive way.
And it would be really cool if we just turned these inspector general things into just engines of just corruption fighting and just throw all these people in jail.
Yeah.
How much of this would ever actually come to light if, say, Kamala Harris had won?
I don't think any of it would.
And again, I mean, it's funny because the left is acknowledging a lot of problems now.
They'll be like, well, we admit that the government's very inefficient.
We just think you should go slow in reforming it.
It's like, wait a minute, you didn't admit that at all when you were in charge.
After you lost the election, you're saying, oh.
So, yeah, they weren't going to tell us about any of this.
The only reason I was able to dig up so much information about this little foreign aid agency is because the employees themselves had been desperately screaming into the void.
And they actually went to liberal media outlets and asked them to write the story about corruption.
And the media outlets wouldn't do it because they felt like it would help the Trump administration shut down U.S.A.
I mean, yeah, it's crazy.
And I guess it's also interesting.
I mean, the suburbs in D.C. have been some of the most expensive and highest income areas.
In America, I think by a zip code, probably the most.
How much of it was just the massive transfer of federal dollars to these NGOs, the kickbacks, and essentially taxpayer-funded gravy trains to enrich the so-called D.C. elites?
I mean, it all feels so completely artificial.
I've been asking that one for years.
I wrote books about it.
What do they create?
What do they do?
How are they so wealthy without...
Yeah, they don't do anything.
I mean, there's so many of these little government agencies.
I did something years ago on one called the Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.
And they put Hunter Biden's friend, Eric Schwerin, on it.
And he used it to steer money to a venture that he was involved in, I think.
And they were paying a lobbyist for a foreign country to be in charge of it.
And he was billing like $150,000, which isn't that much until you find out that he's only working like four hours a week.
And really, nobody can tell you what any of these people do.
So it really is incredible.
And I think to get back to your Twitter analogy, you could cut 80% of this and nobody would know that it's missing.
So on one hand, you talk about, we've got to...
Cut the deficit because we, you know, we just have to.
Are we willing to, even if we have to feel the hurt, it's something we got to do.
But honestly, there's so many things we could cut and nobody's even going to know the difference except for the people that are actually getting paid to be employed by it.
Yeah, you brought up the Hunter Biden thing.
I always find it so interesting because I see the amount of hit pieces that are like in process or written about me on a daily basis.
Like I've been a business guy for 25 years.
I've invested in American companies.
Like what's the same?
I'm like.
What are you talking about?
You guys were dead silent on this thing for years.
I wrote a book about it, Liberal Privilege, in 2020 about all of these things.
No different than Joe Biden's dementia.
It's like, oh, well now we're going to talk about it.
It's like, you're going to talk about it?
We didn't know it was going on.
I was like, you mean you didn't see the guy fall down the stairs day in and day out, forget where he was, stop mid-sentence, have to be guided around by the Easter Bunny?
It's not the same, guys.
It's not the same.
No.
And, you know, it'll be great to see what's going to come out of the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. Now, I mean, there was a case on Friday.
There was a USAID senior procurement official, this African guy that was in charge of giving out hundreds of thousands of dollars to foreign countries.
And it turned out that he himself defrauded the...
Pandemic Paycheck Protection Program by creating a fake company and saying he worked there and getting all this money.
And there was so many, you know, you read the indictment, there were so many obvious red flags and nobody ever checked this application before paying out this money.
The LLC didn't exist.
He didn't.
He actually worked for the government.
All the dates were wrong.
And so this is, again, the kind of thing that Doge is really coming in and using basic database skills, matching up two databases to see whether it even makes sense.
But yeah, I mean, this is just another...
There needs to be consequences for people that do it because if they're not going to...
There needs to be a deterrent effect.
So it'll be interesting what happens to this African guy.
Yeah, I mean, Luke, where can people find you so they can follow along?
Because, I mean, this is important work.
Again, it's not going to be covered on the nightly news.
It's not going to be covered in the mainstream media.
Honestly, mainstream conservative media may not even cover it because I'm sure, you know, I imagine the Democrats are the great beneficiaries of all of these things, but I'm plenty sure there's probably some people allegedly on our side with an R next to their name that are, you know, either okay with it or some sort of beneficiaries as well.
You know, where can people find you so they can keep up with what's going on?
Check it out on The Daily Wire, and I'm also on X at Luke Rosiak.
Very nice.
Well, Luke, thank you very much for joining us.
I really appreciate it.
Stay in touch, and as things break, we'll talk about them right here.
Thanks for having me, Don.
Be well.
Guys, thanks so much for tuning in.
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