Katie Miller Podcast - RFK Jr. on Dietary Guidelines, Vaccines, & Trump | KMP Ep.22
Aired: 2026-01-13
Duration: 48:48


=== Wild Week on Health (05:27) ===

[00:00:00]  If you would look at a young mother today and say, as Secretary of HHS, what would you currently recommend that I give my child upon birth?
[00:00:08]  You know, we've made our recommendations and as an agency, I don't give medical advice to individuals because I'm not a doctor and I'm not competent to do that.
[00:00:18]  But what I would say to people is do your own research.
[00:00:21]  What's the biggest roadblock in trying to make America healthy again?
[00:00:24]  I mean, the biggest roadblock is the power of vested interests, of pharmaceutical cartel, and of the, you know, big food and an economic system that, through nobody's particular fault, has rewarded very, very addictive foods.
[00:00:42]  How do you handle negative news stories?
[00:00:45]  The only people that I, whose opinion really matters to me is God, Cheryl, and President Trump.
[00:00:53]  And in that order, you know, the interesting thing about the president is that he eats really bad food and you don't know how he's walking around, much less being the most energetic person, you know, any of us have ever met.
[00:01:06]  He's incredible health.
[00:01:17]  Hi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.
[00:01:21]  We are live every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Eastern.
[00:01:24]  Today we're so excited to be at Health and Human Services in downtown DC, joined by the one and only Bobby Kennedy.
[00:01:31]  Good to be here, Katie.
[00:01:33]  You're my second favorite person in your marriage.
[00:01:35]  The other one, Cheryl, we already had on the episode, and she spilled some of your deep dark secrets, which include that you take sauerkraut with you out to parties.
[00:01:45]  I do.
[00:01:46]  Do you still take sauerkraut with you?
[00:01:49]  I went to dinner at the Ned last night, and I brought my sauerkraut.
[00:01:54]  Do you buy it at Whole Foods or do you make it yourself?
[00:01:58]  I do not make it myself.
[00:02:01]  I get it.
[00:02:02]  There's an extraordinary selection at Whole Foods and at some other places.
[00:02:07]  There's an entire wall of fermented vegetables.
[00:02:14]  I just pick and choose.
[00:02:15]  Do you go yourself?
[00:02:17]  Do I shop by myself?
[00:02:20]  My daughter does it for me.
[00:02:21]  It's very nice.
[00:02:22]  So this week has been a big week at HHS.
[00:02:26]  You've had two major announcements, which I think reshape global public health for decades.
[00:02:32]  And it's what the president ran on.
[00:02:34]  And importantly, when he selected you to be HHS secretary, he said, Bobby, go wild on health.
[00:02:40]  And I would describe this week as wild on health.
[00:02:43]  Would you agree?
[00:02:45]  Yeah, I mean, these are two major initiatives that I've been praying for for 20 years.
[00:02:53]  And one of them was to flip the food pyramid and actually tell Americans that they should be eating real food, which means whole foods, something that comes from the ground or the water or the air.
[00:03:07]  And to cut ultra-processed foods, refined carbohydrates, salt and sugars from their diet.
[00:03:14]  And that is kind of one of the principal changes and revolutionary changes that we really need.
[00:03:22]  The food pyramid was hijacked by the food industry.
[00:03:29]  You know, it's interesting.
[00:03:30]  One of the, like, this is the first time I got support from the American Medical Association and from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which I'm in litigation with on the vaccine.
[00:03:40]  Did you reach out to them before the dietary guideline announcements?
[00:03:43]  They reached out to me.
[00:03:47]  Actually, Robert McCullough, who's the head of the American Medical Association, sent me a letter the day that I took office and said, we want to work with you on some of these issues.
[00:03:58]  So that was very refreshing.
[00:04:00]  And he said, we're committed not to doctor's visits.
[00:04:03]  We're committed to making Americans healthier.
[00:04:07]  And he came to the announcement.
[00:04:09]  It was, you know, that was very gratifying for me.
[00:04:14]  But the one group that didn't, that has been critical of me has been the American Heart Association.
[00:04:21]  And the American Heart Association takes hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars from the processed food industry.
[00:04:28]  And one of the reasons that we had these dietary guidelines with fruit loops at the top of the food pyramid is, you know, they were, those guidelines were crafted by the mercantile impulses of those corporations.
[00:04:44]  And they got validation from the American Heart Association.
[00:04:48]  American Heart Association was telling people to eat carbohydrates rather than protein and saturated fats and vegetables and fruits.
[00:04:55]  They were fine with that.
[00:04:56]  And they didn't tell anybody that they were taking all this money from, you know, from, that they were in the tank with the ultra-processed food companies.
[00:05:08]  Coca-Cola and Pepsi are two of their biggest owners, which are big.
[00:05:12]  They don't just make soda.
[00:05:14]  You know, they make a whole range of ultra-processed foods.
[00:05:19]  And then the other announcement we made this week was about resetting the vaccine schedule.
[00:05:25]  And, you know, you know all about that.

=== Vaccine Safety Concerns (15:12) ===

[00:05:28]  When I was a kid, I got three vaccines.
[00:05:30]  Kids today get 80 vaccines, 80 doses of about 18 vaccines.
[00:05:37]  And in 1980, it was 23 doses of seven vaccines.
[00:05:43]  And this was all, you know, there was not good science behind the vaccine schedule.
[00:05:49]  We know that vaccines are effective in preventing disease, that many of them are.
[00:05:53]  Measles will prevent measles, generally speaking.
[00:05:57]  But we know very little about the risk profile of those products because vaccines are the only medical device or medical intervention that is exempted or pharmaceutical product that's exempted from pre-licensing safety trials.
[00:06:12]  So none of the vaccines on the schedule, with the exception of the COVID vaccine, none of them had ever been safety tested in a placebo-controlled trial.
[00:06:22]  Pre-licensor.
[00:06:24]  So, and then the surveillance systems, you know, what the industry and what the medical cartel will tell you is that, well, yeah, we're not safety testing them up front.
[00:06:37]  We have a very good surveillance system so that we'll be able to spot injuries if they happen and then we'll be able to recalibrate the vaccine.
[00:06:44]  As it turns out, that's not true either.
[00:06:47]  The surveillance systems for injuries are completely broken.
[00:06:53]  They have two.
[00:06:54]  One is the VARES system, Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, and that system is broken.
[00:07:04]  It was designed to fail.
[00:07:06]  Do you think doctors, when there is a vaccine injury or a mother calls into the overnight line to report that their child has a fever or isn't doing well post-vaccination, do you think those are grossly underreported?
[00:07:20]  I know they're grossly underreported.
[00:07:22]  And that CDC actually did a study of that question in 2010.
[00:07:27]  And the study was, the lead author on the study was Lazarus.
[00:07:30]  So you can look it up under Lazarus 2010.
[00:07:34]  And that study compared, it actually created a machine counting system that was very efficient in collecting all vaccine injuries.
[00:07:45]  And it compared the machine counting system in one HMO, Harvard Pilgrim up in Boston.
[00:07:53]  It compared the injury reports that were reported by a machine automatically reported to the voluntary ones.
[00:08:01]  And the conclusion was that fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries were ever reported.
[00:08:07]  So that is gross underreporting.
[00:08:09]  And the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, which is the ultimate arbiter of vaccine safety, has said that any study that's based upon VARS is automatically deficient.
[00:08:23]  And so the only system that CDC really has automatic, or the system for reporting vaccine injury is broken, their other system, which is called the Vaccine Safety Data Link, is also designed to fail.
[00:08:38]  And that's a system where the HMOs show about 10 HMOs share their data, about 11 million patients, and they're supposed to, the CDC is supposed to go in that data, look at the vaccinations those kids have received, look at future injury claims, and then do a cluster analysis.
[00:09:05]  And that system has been designed so that independent scientists can never look at it.
[00:09:11]  And the studies are very, very controlled to show no injury.
[00:09:16]  So, you know, we don't have a really, we have no idea really what the risk profile is for these products.
[00:09:23]  Well, I just think about this because when you made the announcement about changing the vaccine schedule and going to a lesser number and creating more optionality and choice for mothers, because, for example, one of my children had a severe, severe reaction to the rotavirus vaccine.
[00:09:39]  I did not give my other two children the rotavirus vaccine after that.
[00:09:42]  And I'm like, I've never even heard of rotavirus.
[00:09:45]  Why am I vaccinating my children?
[00:09:47]  And so as you become a mother, I think more people wake up, or more parents, I'd say parents, wake up to what is being pushed upon them in an office of what is just, this is status quo, this is what you do to have a healthy child in the United States.
[00:10:03]  And what I would say is when a parent calls a pediatrician's office and I say, my child's having an adverse reaction, I would be hard-pressed to think that that's ever reported into any of the two systems that you just described.
[00:10:15]  I think the pediatrician just says, okay, give Tylenol.
[00:10:18]  Let me know if it gets worse.
[00:10:19]  Yeah, they're not reported.
[00:10:21]  And what we found now from looking at the VARS system is that a lot of doctors will sign on to report, but it takes about a half an hour and it's very unwieldy.
[00:10:33]  And about 80% of them quit before they finish.
[00:10:37]  And then, you know, for many injuries that are long-term injuries, things like perhaps allergies or seizures, stuff that shows up, neurological disorders that aren't diagnosed for years, I would say that the chance of that ever being reported as vaccine injury is about zero.
[00:10:58]  And of course, a physician has a lot of disincentives about reporting.
[00:11:03]  One is the medical boards don't like a lot of reports and they make that clear to the physicians.
[00:11:10]  But also, if you're a doctor and a mother comes in and the baby gets a vaccine and then five days later it has a seizure, the doctor, you know, understandably does not really tell that mother, oh, that could be a vaccine injury, which I just gave your child saying it's going to help them.
[00:11:28]  And they'll say, well, seizures are just normal at that age.
[00:11:31]  So that, you know, I think that happens a lot.
[00:11:34]  It does happen.
[00:11:35]  It happened to us.
[00:11:37]  It happened to us.
[00:11:37]  And I would say that like what upsets me the most is that a doctor could say, I feel that this is tied to a vaccine.
[00:11:45]  And I can guarantee you what happened to my family was never reported.
[00:11:49]  And so if it's happening to my family, I can't imagine the number of people that it happens to across our country where, you know, the reason why I feel so passionately and I'm so grateful for the work you're doing here is because when it happens to you, you don't realize how bad it is.
[00:12:07]  And so I think a lot of moms, when the legacy media laughs at them or says, you know, we definitely need to give all of our kids the vaccines the same way we watched women guzzle Tylenol on TikTok.
[00:12:17]  You know, I think it's one of those things where you're saying, thank God that there's common sense restored.
[00:12:23]  You know, you mentioned the rotavirus vaccine.
[00:12:27]  And, you know, that's a good case.
[00:12:28]  The rotavirus, rotavirus, you know, I never heard of rotavirus until, you know, until I started doing this work.
[00:12:36]  Rotavirus does affect children in developing nations because diarrhea is a major cause of death.
[00:12:43]  It causes diarrhea.
[00:12:45]  In this country, the death rate from rotavirus prior to the introduction of the vaccine was about three kids a year.
[00:12:52]  And since the introduction of the vaccine, the data, you know, one of the studies showed that it's dropped to two deaths a year.
[00:13:02]  That means to, and we don't know whether that's a statistical anomaly.
[00:13:07]  Those numbers are so small, you can't really make any conclusions of them.
[00:13:12]  But if they, that means that you're giving 3 million vaccines a year to kids, and you're saving one life.
[00:13:22]  And what that means is if any of those vaccines are causing a death, that it completely cancels any benefit out of all of those vaccines that have been given to kids.
[00:13:36]  And as you say, there are injuries.
[00:13:39]  The first rotavirus vaccine that they approved caused interception at such high rates.
[00:13:46]  It was clearly much worse than the disease.
[00:13:50]  It was killing kids.
[00:13:52]  It's a very agonizing condition.
[00:13:54]  And so, you know, just even the idea that we needed it in this country was kind of crazy.
[00:14:01]  And the European countries don't require it.
[00:14:03]  And, you know, so we switched back.
[00:14:05]  I'll give you another example with hepatitis B.
[00:14:08]  I was just about to go there that we vaccinate 96.8% of the population who don't need it when they could easily just test a mother in the hospital for hepatitis B. Hepatitis B is transmitted through sexual activity, unprotected sex, and through intervenious drug use through sharing needles.
[00:14:27]  And then you can also, a baby can get, has a decent chance of getting hepatitis B if the mother is infected and traveling through the birth canal.
[00:14:43]  But mothers are supposed to all be tested when they go into an American hospital.
[00:14:47]  So those kids are kids that you should give the vaccine to.
[00:14:51]  But the rate of death in children from hepatitis B was about one in seven million.
[00:15:01]  The rate of chronic disease in children is probably around one in 60 or 70,000.
[00:15:08]  That means you have to give 70,000 hepatitis B vaccines to avert one case of chronic disease.
[00:15:16]  And if you give 70,000 vaccines, people are going to get injured, like your child was injured.
[00:15:24]  And so, you know, in some cases, some of these vaccines may be causing more problems than they're averting.
[00:15:31]  And we can't make that prediction because we don't know the risk profile for these products because we've never done safety testing.
[00:15:42]  The safety tests that were done, there's two hepatitis B vaccines allowed in this country.
[00:15:49]  one by GSK, the other by Merck.
[00:15:51]  The GSK version was tested for four days, safety tested.
[00:15:56]  That's all.
[00:15:57]  So if the baby died on the fifth day, it never happened.
[00:16:02]  If the baby got sick or died 10 days later, it never happened.
[00:16:08]  And the study group, I think for that vaccine was 343 kids.
[00:16:14]  This is a product you're giving to 3 million kids a year.
[00:16:18]  And there's nothing that you can tell from 343 kids.
[00:16:22]  Are you going to work to split the MMR vaccine into individuals?
[00:16:25]  Because in the EU, you can split them into two.
[00:16:28]  But here in the U.S., you still have to do as one combination.
[00:16:33]  Is that something you would take a look at?
[00:16:35]  It's something that we're looking at, and we actually looked at the feasibility of that and the availability.
[00:16:42]  You know, in Japan, they break it up, and they give three different vaccines.
[00:16:48]  So we looked at the feasibility and the availability in this country, and there's complications to it.
[00:16:53]  It's something that we're continuing.
[00:16:54]  The president asked us to look at that, so we're looking at it very closely.
[00:16:58]  So as a pregnant mother who have gone through various forms of vaccination for all three of my children, if you would look at a young mother today and say, as Secretary of HHS, what would you currently recommend that I give my child upon birth?
[00:17:15]  You know, we've made our recommendations.
[00:17:18]  And as an agency, I don't give medical advice to individuals because I'm not a doctor and I'm not competent to do that.
[00:17:28]  But what I would say to people is do your own research.
[00:17:31]  And, you know, this idea that you should trust the experts, a good mother doesn't do that.
[00:17:37]  A good mother, when you buy a car, you look at the Yelp reviews when you go, you know, or you go to consumer reports and everybody does research on those.
[00:17:47]  Well, the most important decisions you're making are about your children's health.
[00:17:53]  And when you buy a baby carriage, you make sure, or a baby seat for your automobile, you look at the consumer reports, you look at the Yelp report, you do your own research.
[00:18:05]  And, you know, mothers are worried about putting baby formula in plastic bottles.
[00:18:12]  You know, we worry about all of these things.
[00:18:15]  And so for somebody to tell you you should not ask questions about a major medical intervention that is designed to permanently alter your immune system for the rest of your life and for which there's no safety testing effectively and for which there's been no testing at all to look at the vaccines in combination.
[00:18:39]  You know, those are things that I advise everybody to do their own research on.
[00:18:44]  And we're trying to help mothers by putting detailed research on the website, not the old just blind assurances, everything's safe and effective, but actually the data from studies so people can make informed choices.
[00:19:01]  A lot's been said about the CDC and how HHS has sidelined medical professionals.
[00:19:06]  What medical professionals or which doctors did you use to help guide you to the new updated vaccine schedule?
[00:19:14]  How did that come to be?
[00:19:16]  Well, we used, we consulted with medical professionals across all the agencies, including not only political appointees at CDC, but career vaccine safety experts at CDC.
[00:19:30]  And those individuals at CDC, those scientists, one of whom has been there for, I think, 25 years and was a senior vaccine safety scientist.
[00:19:42]  They made comments in the report and those comments are reflected in the final report.
[00:19:47]  I want to flip just to the dietary guidelines that you briefly talked about and how important that is.
[00:19:53]  I've read a lot and a lot of praise for the dietary guidelines, but some pushback in terms of saying that you should not have processed sugar now going from age two to age 10, saying, is that really serious?
[00:20:04]  Our kids can't have a birthday cake till age 10.
[00:20:07]  What would be your response to saying that kids shouldn't have sugar now until 10?
[00:20:11]  And do you find it to be realistic?
[00:20:13]  We, you know, we make recommendations based upon health impacts.
[00:20:19]  So different people will have different successes complying with that.
[00:20:24]  You know, I've walked through the checkout counter with my kids in the shopping cart and having them reach for all that stuff that they put there.
[00:20:34]  And I know how hard it is to, you know, to deny your kids that stuff when it's right in front of them.

=== Sugar and Metabolism (04:57) ===

[00:20:40]  It's being forced on them all the time.
[00:20:43]  We recognize that.
[00:20:44]  But what we're telling parents is here's what you, if you're really concerned about your child's health, that's what you ought to do.
[00:20:52]  And people will comply as best they can.
[00:20:57]  You know, sugar was not available prior to the industrial age.
[00:21:03]  And, you know, now it's all around us.
[00:21:06]  And, you know, we've gone to eating pounds of sugar, you know, 10, 20, 30 pounds of sugar each American a year.
[00:21:13]  And that's not healthy.
[00:21:15]  In historical times, you would get sugar intermittently.
[00:21:21]  A fruit tree would blossom.
[00:21:23]  And you'd take it.
[00:21:25]  You'd find a bee's nest with honey in it, and you could get sugar in your diet.
[00:21:31]  And it was okay.
[00:21:32]  The human metabolic system can process it.
[00:21:35]  And they can process it better when it's in the food.
[00:21:39]  But processed sugar, there is no precedent for that in our evolutionary history.
[00:21:45]  It destroys them.
[00:21:47]  It destroys our metabolic system.
[00:21:50]  It feeds tumors.
[00:21:51]  It just is awful for you.
[00:21:53]  Do you believe in the 80-20 rule?
[00:21:55]  Which is...
[00:21:56]  Tell me what that rule is.
[00:21:57]  Okay, so it's like you do the best you can 80% of the time.
[00:22:00]  Steve, your husband decides which issues that we should go with.
[00:22:05]  It's, do you believe that you do the best you can 80% of the time and then like turn to blind eye like the 20%, right?
[00:22:11]  So for example, you're the young mother going through the checkout counter and you're like, my kids, as much as I'm home with them and I cook them a whole healthy meal, I try to stick to your very high limits now on protein.
[00:22:22]  And you know what, but they want the cookie that they're going to give me at the counter.
[00:22:26]  Do you just say, okay, it's the 20%.
[00:22:27]  I'm going to look the other way.
[00:22:29]  I mean, you can make any excuse for doing it, and we all do.
[00:22:32]  So I don't quantify how many times I fail aspirationally.
[00:22:39]  But, you know, what we're telling people, we're giving them an aspiration, and then you comply with it the best you can.
[00:22:46]  Was there any bit of controversy when you were writing the dietary guidelines or disagreement among the team on some of the guidelines?
[00:22:54]  Because they're all very specific, and I feel like some of you would want more things than others.
[00:22:59]  There was bloodshed on every recommendation.
[00:23:03]  It was full hand-to-hand combat.
[00:23:07]  What's the most controversial one?
[00:23:09]  I think saturated fats.
[00:23:12]  Because there just wasn't good enough numbers.
[00:23:15]  The science is not out there yet.
[00:23:19]  There's all kinds of controversy about relationship between carbohydrates, refined carbohydrates, and lipid production and whether lipids are actually causing cardiac arrest.
[00:23:31]  There's science that challenges that.
[00:23:33]  There's science that challenges everything.
[00:23:36]  What we did is we created guardrails and interpreting that science as best we could.
[00:23:45]  And we tried to be conservative and tell parents that, you know, we're not mandating that you can't eat this or can't eat that, but here's what you should shoot for.
[00:23:56]  What's the biggest roadblock in trying to make America healthy again?
[00:24:00]  I mean, the biggest roadblock is the power of vested interests, of the pharmaceutical cartel, and of the, you know, big food.
[00:24:14]  and an economic system that through nobody's particular fault has rewarded very, very addictive foods.
[00:24:24]  And, you know, a lot of that was deliberate.
[00:24:30]  In the 1980s, I was perfectly involved in the tobacco cases.
[00:24:35]  And during that period, the tobacco companies, the cigarette companies were the richest companies, the most cash-rich companies in the world.
[00:24:45]  And those companies saw the writing on the wall.
[00:24:47]  They saw that there was regulatory headwinds.
[00:24:49]  There was litigation.
[00:24:50]  The consumers were turning against them.
[00:24:54]  And they began to diversify.
[00:24:56]  And they bought food companies so that by 1993, the two biggest food companies in the world were Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.
[00:25:05]  And they shifted thousands of scientists who were making, whose job it was to make tobacco more addictive and cigarettes more addictive.
[00:25:15]  And they shifted them to food research to figure out ways to make food addictive.
[00:25:21]  And they did that by adding sugar, by adding softeners, by adding all kinds of chemicals that essentially hijack our brains and get us addicted to these products.
[00:25:32]  And the products don't have nutrients in them.
[00:25:35]  What's the worst product you could buy today?

=== Food Addiction Secrets (03:33) ===

[00:25:37]  Always hungry.
[00:25:38]  What's the worst product you could buy today, our food product?
[00:25:42]  I think probably the thing people should really need to look out for is sugar drinks.
[00:25:48]  Because that, sugar has no barriers in your body.
[00:25:54]  It goes immediately work doing bad things, subverting your metabolic system.
[00:26:01]  What statistic that you've read since you've been HHS secretary keeps you up at night?
[00:26:07]  I mean, I think 38% of our teens are diabetic or pre-diabetic.
[00:26:14]  And, you know, also 77% of American kids can no longer qualify for military service.
[00:26:20]  That, I think, should disturb everybody.
[00:26:23]  What's the most fun you've had in this job?
[00:26:26]  Every day in this job is fun.
[00:26:28]  I love this job.
[00:26:31]  I have fun with it every day because we're doing things that I have an incredible staff.
[00:26:39]  I have the highest caliber people who have ever worked for this agency.
[00:26:43]  Because of President Trump, we were able to recruit billionaires from the Silicon Valley who walked away from growing businesses and from millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars to come here for four years to change America.
[00:27:02]  And we have the best, the leaders in AI here.
[00:27:05]  Our department is going to lead all the other departments in implementing AI.
[00:27:15]  So I just, listen, I sued this department for 40 years on the freedom of information law.
[00:27:21]  We're going to lead all the other departments on revolutionizing the freedom of information law so that you can go on and it's going to be processed by AI.
[00:27:31]  You can go on a website.
[00:27:32]  You can get the documents you need instantaneously.
[00:27:35]  And we've got a really good website.
[00:27:36]  I saw the mock-up of it the other day and I'm very excited about that.
[00:27:41]  You know, as somebody who's been fighting from the outside for 40 years to be able to come on the inside and actually change the things.
[00:27:51]  And, you know, everybody said, oh, there's 80,000 people there who are all going to be against you.
[00:27:56]  And it has not been true.
[00:27:57]  There are pockets of people who are, you know, doing everything they can to subvert and undermine us.
[00:28:04]  By and large, I'm just very proud of the people who work, both the careers and the politicals who work for this agency who have fallen in line and are excited about making America healthy again.
[00:28:15]  What's the best day you've had?
[00:28:17]  The best day.
[00:28:20]  I think this week was the best day I had, you know, because these are two momentous reforms that, you know, that are really going to revolutionize the food culture in this country and return informed choice and freedom of choice to American mothers.
[00:28:40]  What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in?
[00:28:46]  Well, I believe that glyphosate causes cancer.
[00:28:52]  I believe that masks, that there's no scientific evidence that masks prevent the transmission of or inhibited all the transmission of respiratory illnesses.

=== Medical Price Transparency (02:15) ===

[00:29:10]  I don't think the COVID vaccine prevented transmission.
[00:29:16]  All of those were once, and, you know, I don't think social distancing worked.
[00:29:23]  All of those things were, you know, conspiracy theories at one point when I first started talking about them, and they're now pretty much validated and acknowledged by all of the power centers of our society.
[00:29:36]  One of President Trump's big push in the early days was price transparency for consumers.
[00:29:41]  Are you guys working on anything right now towards that end goal?
[00:29:45]  For price transparency?
[00:29:47]  Yeah.
[00:29:47]  I mean, we just adopted Transparency 2.0 where we're going to require every hospital and every physician in this country to provide their customers,
[00:30:05]  their patients, with a full price transparency prior to getting on site, prior to getting the procedure.
[00:30:21]  So if you go into a restaurant, you can see the price on the menu.
[00:30:25]  If you buy something on the internet, you know, before you know, before you press click on buy, you know what it's going to cost you.
[00:30:32]  And really the only place where that price is hidden is from consumers of medical services.
[00:30:40]  And the only people who are benefiting from that are the providers, the hospitals, and in some cases, physicians' offices.
[00:30:50]  Profits have been skyrocketing and at the same time by hiding the price from Americans.
[00:30:58]  How does that fit into the overall Maha agenda of giving consumers more choice?
[00:31:04]  The whole Maha agenda is about giving people choice and making every American the CEO of their own health.
[00:31:12]  You can only do that if they have good information.
[00:31:15]  And, you know, I talked to, during the transition, I spent a day with Prime Minister Rudd from Australia, who had been Prime Minister there.

=== Consumer Health Choice (11:38) ===

[00:31:25]  And then I was staying with Dr. Oas, and the two of us spent the day with him.
[00:31:30]  And he was the head of a commission in Australia after he retired as Prime Minister to lower health care costs in Australia.
[00:31:39]  And he said the most important thing that he did, which dramatically lowered healthcare costs, was to give patients price information before they did a procedure.
[00:31:50]  And they, you know, everybody began price shopping, and it helped them as individuals, but it also helped the nation in reducing health care costs.
[00:32:00]  Now we're going to flip to my favorite portion of the show called Cabinet Confidential, where your answer can only be that of another cabinet member.
[00:32:08]  Oh, God.
[00:32:09]  Besides you, who is the healthiest when it comes to food and fitness?
[00:32:16]  I mean, I would say Pete or Sean Duffy and Tulsi.
[00:32:23]  I'm trying to remember who else might be.
[00:32:26]  Oh, Scott Turner.
[00:32:28]  Really?
[00:32:29]  Yeah.
[00:32:33]  He won the Pete and Bobby Challenge.
[00:32:35]  Really?
[00:32:36]  Yes, he did.
[00:32:36]  Well, he's a former NFL player.
[00:32:39]  And he never stopped exercising.
[00:32:43]  The guy is like a rock.
[00:32:45]  Who has the most unhinged eating habits?
[00:32:49]  The president.
[00:32:53]  You know, the interesting thing about the president is that he eats really bad food, which is McDonald's and then, you know, candy and Diet Coke.
[00:33:05]  But he eats it, drinks the Diet Coke all times.
[00:33:08]  He has a constitution of a deity.
[00:33:11]  I don't know how he's alive, but he is.
[00:33:15]  And he's at Mar-a-Lago.
[00:33:19]  He says that the only time that he eats the junk food is when he's on the road and he wants to eat food from big corporations because he trusts it.
[00:33:30]  He doesn't want to get sick when he's on the road.
[00:33:32]  But when he's at Mar-a-Lago or at the White House, he's eating really good food.
[00:33:39]  So I think you get this, if you travel with him, you get this idea that he's just pumping himself full of poison all day long, and you don't know how he's walking around, much less being the most energetic person any of us have ever met.
[00:33:58]  But I think he actually does eat pretty good food usually.
[00:34:03]  He's incredible health.
[00:34:05]  Dr. Haas looked at his medical records and said he's got the highest testosterone level that he's ever seen for an individual over 70 years old.
[00:34:18]  I know the president will be happy that I repeat that.
[00:34:25]  Who would dominate in the presidential fitness test?
[00:34:28]  Well, we know that.
[00:34:30]  The answer to that has already been, that question has been answered.
[00:34:33]  And it is Scott Turner.
[00:34:37]  And then I would say Pete and me, for age, I probably beat them all.
[00:34:45]  And then Sean Duffy.
[00:34:47]  You know, Sean Duffy was a five-time national lumberjack champion.
[00:34:54]  Yes.
[00:34:55]  And he's still in amazing shape.
[00:34:58]  Who would you trust to cook you dinner?
[00:35:02]  Who would I trust to cook me dinner?
[00:35:06]  I would trust Howard Lutnick because I know that that guy eats the best food.
[00:35:15]  He's not cooking it.
[00:35:17]  He's not cooking it, but he'd be the guy that you'd want to eat dinner with.
[00:35:22]  Okay.
[00:35:23]  Who would accidentally break something fragile at the White House?
[00:35:27]  God, I think that would probably be me.
[00:35:32]  I don't know.
[00:35:32]  I'll take that one.
[00:35:35]  What's your daily routine right now?
[00:35:38]  My daily routine is I wake up at like six in the morning.
[00:35:44]  I go to a meeting.
[00:35:47]  I do meditations.
[00:35:48]  I go to a meeting, you know, a 12-step meeting.
[00:35:51]  Then I go to the gym and then I go to work.
[00:35:55]  And I usually, and then I eat.
[00:35:59]  I eat, you know, I'm on a carnivore diet, so I eat meat and fermented vegetables.
[00:36:06]  And then I usually go home around six, and then I work till maybe nine o'clock at night.
[00:36:14]  And then if the president calls, you're, you know, everything is topsy-derby.
[00:36:21]  What supplements do you currently take, if any?
[00:36:24]  I take vitamin D, and I take kerosene and zinc, and I take magnesium, and then I take a bunch of, you know, vitamin C and a bunch of other stuff.
[00:36:40]  What brand of vitamin do you take?
[00:36:43]  Well, I was taking Dr. Mercola, but I take all kinds of stuff.
[00:36:49]  I don't know.
[00:36:51]  I usually don't talk about that because I don't really want to offer myself as a role model for what people should be taking.
[00:36:58]  And my method is I read an article about something and, you know, and I get convinced that, oh, I got to have this stuff.
[00:37:09]  And then I get it.
[00:37:10]  And then six months later, I'm still taking it.
[00:37:12]  I don't remember what the article said.
[00:37:14]  So I end up with a big crate of vitamins that I'm taking.
[00:37:18]  I don't even know why.
[00:37:20]  It's like most people.
[00:37:21]  What's one health or diet trend that you think Americans should be skeptical of right now?
[00:37:27]  I don't know.
[00:37:31]  I mean, I would stay away from the carbohydrate diet.
[00:37:35]  Do you have a cheat meal?
[00:37:36]  Or does that concept not exist for you?
[00:37:38]  A cheat meal?
[00:37:39]  Like a cheat meal, like something where you're like, when you said, oh, we all mess up from time to time.
[00:37:44]  One of my favorite restaurants is Joe's Seafood.
[00:37:47]  Okay.
[00:37:48]  I love Stone Crabs.
[00:37:50]  And when I go to that restaurant, I'll eat the key lime pie.
[00:37:55]  It's really good.
[00:37:56]  Yeah, it's really good.
[00:37:57]  It's really good.
[00:37:57]  And Cheryl loves it.
[00:37:59]  That's her favorite dessert.
[00:38:01]  Mine too.
[00:38:02]  Okay, would you rather?
[00:38:05]  Would you rather eat only fast food for a month or give up your morning routine for a year?
[00:38:11]  What do you mean?
[00:38:12]  Would you rather- I don't eat fast food.
[00:38:14]  Right, but I'm asking you a question.
[00:38:15]  Would you rather only eat fast food or give up your morning routine?
[00:38:18]  You've got to pay for it.
[00:38:20]  If I had to eat fast food for a month, no, I would not give up my morning routine.
[00:38:27]  I would rather do that even if I was eating fast food.
[00:38:30]  And I would enjoy eating fast food.
[00:38:31]  I like the taste of it.
[00:38:35]  I don't think it's a good idea.
[00:38:37]  Which would you rather ban first nationwide?
[00:38:40]  High fructose corn syrup or artificial dyes?
[00:38:45]  I think I'm going to get in trouble for this because we don't have really good science on high fructose corn syrup, but I suspect that it's doing a lot of damage.
[00:38:58]  And again, that is, that's just an instinct for me.
[00:39:06]  It's not a scientific-based assessment, but I think it's a lot more entrenched than the food dyes.
[00:39:13]  It's easier to get rid of the food dyes.
[00:39:15]  Would you rather be trapped in an elevator with the entire cabinet or at a dinner party with every political reporter in DC?
[00:39:21]  Oh, I would like to be in the elevator with the cabinet.
[00:39:25]  That would be fun.
[00:39:27]  I like the cabinet.
[00:39:30]  I love this cabinet.
[00:39:33]  I think the funniest guy in the cabinet is Marco.
[00:39:38]  But all of them are entertaining to be around.
[00:39:41]  We're now like five for five on every single person saying Marco's their favorite.
[00:39:44]  We have yet to have one cabinet secretary on the show who says anybody but Marco.
[00:39:48]  He's the funniest for sure.
[00:39:50]  What's the funniest joke he's told you?
[00:39:52]  Or prank he's told you.
[00:39:54]  He says something funny every cabinet meeting.
[00:39:57]  He says something that puts people in hysteria.
[00:40:00]  I remember one time when Elon was talking about, he said there's 114, or he said there's 240,000 people that Doge had found who were over 114 years old who were collecting unemployment.
[00:40:22]  And Marco said, well, in their defense, it's hard getting a job after you're 114.
[00:40:29]  That's the kind of thing that you hear from them all the time.
[00:40:33]  Would you rather do a cold plunge every morning or drink green juice for every meal?
[00:40:38]  I really wouldn't mind either of those things.
[00:40:41]  Which one would you rather?
[00:40:43]  Cold plunge pretty much?
[00:40:44]  I guess that green juice would be a little less dramatic.
[00:40:50]  I'm not, you know, if I really thought, if I really saw some science that my kids do cold plunges, one of them every day, and tries to get me in it.
[00:41:01]  And Dr. Oz has one.
[00:41:03]  I know.
[00:41:04]  And he tries, you know, he's very persuasive and he tries to get everybody in that cold plunge.
[00:41:09]  And I don't always go because I'm just not convinced.
[00:41:12]  I am not convinced.
[00:41:14]  But, you know, maybe if I saw some peer-reviewed studies that it was actually extending my life, I'd happily do it.
[00:41:22]  Would you rather cure America's chronic stress or its chronic cynicism?
[00:41:28]  I don't know.
[00:41:29]  They're probably linked.
[00:41:30]  You know, if you think if you're cynical about everything, you're going to be stressed all the time.
[00:41:40]  What's one ingredient you'd ban from the food system forever?
[00:41:44]  Well, I already have banned food dies.
[00:41:48]  That's easy.
[00:41:50]  Who can do more pull-ups, you or Pete Hegseth?
[00:41:55]  I think I could do more in one, you know, at a time.
[00:42:02]  But he's pretty good.
[00:42:05]  He didn't, I maxed out when I did it with him.
[00:42:08]  I did 24.
[00:42:10]  And he deliberately cut it, I think, 15 or 20.
[00:42:14]  And he still had something, you know, he still had something left.
[00:42:19]  Are there any Democrats who have secretly told you that they agree with you but can't say so publicly?
[00:42:24]  Yes.
[00:42:26]  On which issues?
[00:42:28]  On foods.
[00:42:30]  What's the last book you read?
[00:42:35]  I'm actually reading a book right now on anti-Judaism, not anti-Semitism, but it's called anti-Judaism.
[00:42:49]  It's just a history.
[00:42:52]  What's been the hardest part of taking this job over the last year, either from a professional side or a personal side?
[00:43:01]  Hardest part.

=== Challenges in Washington (03:41) ===

[00:43:04]  I mean, there have been, you know, it was challenging moving my family to Washington and all of that.
[00:43:13]  But I really love this job.
[00:43:16]  So I, you know, everything about it I've enjoyed.
[00:43:19]  And Cheryl is very happy here in Washington.
[00:43:23]  So I'm happy.
[00:43:26]  How do you handle negative news stories?
[00:43:30]  I don't internalize them.
[00:43:33]  I know what my job is and what other people think about me or say about me is not my business.
[00:43:43]  The only people that I, whose opinion really matters to me is God, Cheryl, and President Trump.
[00:43:52]  And in that order, and as long as I'm you know, as long, and I don't really have control over anything except a little piece of real estate inside my own shoes.
[00:44:07]  And so I just have to get up every day and say reporting for duty, sir, and, you know, and go about my day and keep doing the next right thing.
[00:44:18]  And all of the screaming and the noise is, you know, is just noise.
[00:44:26]  And so it doesn't bother me.
[00:44:31]  What's it like being in DC, which is so storied for your family?
[00:44:35]  And is anything, I know you've been here a lot before, we've talked about this, but is anything different than you remember it being growing up?
[00:44:43]  Well, everything's different from when I was growing up.
[00:44:46]  I mean, the whole landscape's changed from when I was growing up.
[00:44:48]  I was raised across the Hudson and McLean before they built Dolly Madison Highway, which is 123 before they built the CIA.
[00:45:00]  And it was a very, very rural area.
[00:45:04]  There was no Tyson's Corners.
[00:45:06]  There was no Dulles Airport.
[00:45:09]  And, you know, it was a five-minute drive or maybe a 10-minute drive down the parkway to get to the White House.
[00:45:18]  There was very little traffic at that time.
[00:45:21]  And the city also has a lot of enduring characteristics that sort of never change, the political nature of the city.
[00:45:32]  Cheryl says that she loves it here because it's the most important city in the world.
[00:45:41]  And it's exciting to be here.
[00:45:44]  And we have a president who has a surprise every day.
[00:45:52]  And you never know what he's going to do.
[00:45:55]  And, you know, to me, the entire country has changed in the last year.
[00:46:02]  And there's a feeling of optimism.
[00:46:05]  There's a feeling around the world.
[00:46:07]  People respect our country again.
[00:46:10]  People love America.
[00:46:12]  And, you know, I think we've restored our leadership around the globe.
[00:46:18]  And Americans are optimistic about their future.
[00:46:21]  And I am optimistic, too, because a lot of the things that President Trump has done, the tariffs and, you know, are re-shoring all these industries, huge commitments of trillions of dollars that they're building, factories and facilities all over this country, that those are, over the next year, we're going to start to see the impacts of those.

=== Global Optimism Returns (02:02) ===

[00:46:45]  And so, you know, I really, I never wanted to go.
[00:46:50]  I moved away from Washington when I was 13 years old, 14 when my dad died.
[00:46:58]  And I never thought that I would live here again.
[00:47:00]  And, you know, I really love it.
[00:47:02]  I love living in Georgetown.
[00:47:04]  All right, last two questions.
[00:47:06]  What, if you were to follow one influencer or thing on the internet, you say you read a lot and you take a supplement.
[00:47:13]  And if you are someone who is Maha and cares about what they eat and how they do it, what would you follow or tell them where they can continue to get more information?
[00:47:22]  Like, who do you think is a good source for that type of stuff?
[00:47:28]  I would say the people that I think have the most interesting approaches are probably Peter Attia or Peter Attia, who is brilliant.
[00:47:45]  And then I like Andrew Huberman as well.
[00:47:49]  And then, of course, Mark Hyman.
[00:47:51]  Those are all people that I have talked to a lot.
[00:47:55]  I think the gold standard is Peter Attia.
[00:47:59]  All right, so the last question of the pod that we ask everybody.
[00:48:02]  If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's sitting at the table and what are you eating?
[00:48:10]  Well, is my wife at the table too?
[00:48:13]  She's part of the three.
[00:48:14]  She's one of the three.
[00:48:15]  Yes.
[00:48:16]  Okay.
[00:48:16]  Well, I mean, it would be her and, you know, it would be JD and President Trump.
[00:48:23]  What are you eating?
[00:48:25]  Steak.
[00:48:27]  She'd be eating vegetables.
[00:48:31]  Thanks, Bobby.
[00:48:32]  Thank you.
[00:48:33]  Thanks, Mr. Secretary.
[00:48:34]  Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.
[00:48:38]  Please don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and share.
[00:48:41]  Thank you so much to Bobby Kennedy for joining this week's episode.
[00:48:43]  We'll see you next week, Tuesday night, 6 p.m. everywhere you get a podcast.
[00:48:48]  Thanks.