Can RFK Jr. Win? With Special Guest Nicole Shanahan
Tech entrepreneur Nicole Shanahan burst into the American political scene when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr announced her as his running mate in what may be the most significant third-party run in recent memory. She joins today's Liberty Report to discuss the ideas that animate her campaign and the hurdles faced by "outsiders" in the duopoly called the American political system.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, welcome to the program.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Very well, thank you.
We have an exciting program today, a special guest.
Yes.
And we'll introduce her in a few minutes, but I want to tell you a little about her.
She was at the Libertarian Convention for a special reason because she's working very closely as a vice presidential candidate with Robert Kennedy.
So we had a visit there, and now she has joined us on the Liberty Report.
But her name is Nicole Shanahan, and Robert Kennedy, the candidate, is an independent, although Kennedy usually spells Democrat.
But Democrat is sort of like not only are they independent-minded as well, which is good.
And somebody mentioned, they say, yeah, but Nicole doesn't have political experience.
She hasn't been in office.
And what about that?
It sounds like a good idea to me.
That's not a good place to learn what truth is all about, is going to Washington and having a fancy job.
But anyway, Nicole Shanahan is with us here.
She's had a fascinating professional career, very, very impressive.
And one thing about Nicole is she has very interesting that she lists in our bio, a very modest and very challenging early life.
So she wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth.
And she's one thing when I read stories about individuals that, you know, sort of pull themselves up and become successful, but they haven't had an exceptionally, you know, sensational, very young life and not many challenges.
And I think the thing that makes a difference is whether individuals like Nicole don't decide they're going, they decide against being a victim.
And why that happens, whether it's built into them or the family or whatever.
And I don't think she ever saw herself as a victim.
It became very, very successful.
So Nicole, we're delighted to have you with us today.
And welcome to the program.
Thanks, Dr. Paul, and thanks for having me, Daniel, as well.
I'm really excited to be here with you.
Very good.
And Daniel is with us as well, and we'll get him to start off.
Sure.
Well, I'm going to toss you a softball, Nicole.
Okay.
Because why not?
But actually, I'm quite interested, and we talked about it a little bit off camera, but my guess is you've been logging a lot of miles these past few weeks and a couple of months.
And I'm just kind of wondering, what do you think you've learned about America traveling the country as a candidate?
Seeing the country this way is such an incredible blessing because there's this natural invitation in the United States when you're running for representative office to go out and listen and connect.
And, you know, there's one thing about going into rally's existing support base where everyone's very supportive and enthusiastic and happy to see you.
It's a whole nother thing to go to bipartisan environments and talk to people who really want to get into a debate about the issues.
And what I've learned just in the few months of being out there and campaigning across the country is that this is a nation where people, even if they're feeling disenfranchised by their parties, care very, very deeply about their country.
This is a country full of incredibly rich lived experiences, incredible stewards of the land, people that have immigrated here for reasons that are palpable when you connect.
And those reasons are our Constitution, the reasons people leave their homes of origin to seek liberty.
And Dr. Paul said, you know, there's something about not having this victim mentality when you come from a tough start.
I can say that this country is full of people who don't feel like victims for the sole reason that they get to wake up in this country every single day.
Wonderful.
And that has been so inspiring to me.
Now, we'll try to go over several issues, and I will have a couple here marked down that we can reach out to, but we won't have any trouble finding things to talk about.
Because we are concerned as well as you about what's going on with our national debt.
I know a lot of people are politically concerned about the immigration problem.
There's no doubt about that.
A lot of people are concerned about the several wars that we're putting up with.
And then we're also still concerned about issues like what was going on with COVID and pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical industrial complex.
So all of those are big.
But you know, if you had to pick one, you could pick the national debt because you've got to get the money someplace.
How do you do it?
Do you print the money?
Do you tax people?
And why do you need the money?
It includes everything.
And we as a country, of course, did pretty well over many, many years getting by with the means that we have.
But there's something going on right now.
And I think Bobby Kennedy recognizes this.
This is the national debt problem.
And the big question is, what do you think that answer is?
And what has Bobby been saying about this?
How are we going to reduce it?
I think Bobby's genius in this moment is signaling out corporate capture of our government and the corruption.
It would be one thing if we were racking up debt and people were becoming healthier, wealthier, more inspired, more joyous individuals.
But the opposite is true.
We're racking up debt and there's this sense of crushing corruption in our country.
Number one, day one, top priority is addressing the spending.
Where is it going?
Why is it going to the military-industrial complex, which goes into the hands of these private military manufacturers?
Big Pharma is another one.
If you look at how much money was spent during the lockdown and who is leading it, who is on the Vaccine Safety Commission, they were Pfizer lobbyists.
So where is this money going?
How is it being spent?
What are the policies that are guiding it?
You've said it best in your career, Dr. Paul, that when you have a government of this size, inevitably you're going to have corruption overflowing from every end of the transactional receipts.
And that's the piece that I think once we start addressing agency by agency, we're going to see this country getting healthier, not just from a fiscal standpoint, but from a biological standpoint as well.
And we're going to see it in our land, in our economy, in our soils, in our people, in our foreign policy.
Once we start weeding out this corruption, we're going to see balance return back to this country.
Daniel.
Okay, you mentioned pharma, so let's talk a little about pharma.
I was just looking at something this morning, the bird flu scare.
Now, the CDC has just released some information saying that one of the main symptoms of the bird flu is no symptoms.
So that's interesting.
But that Moderna is working on a vaccine anyway and that production of the vaccine is being underwritten by the U.S. government.
Are they at it again, Nicole?
Are they going to try to do this to us again?
It certainly feels that way.
You have the media lined up with a very similar rollout, quoting very similar experts, and the science is really being over, it's being used in a way that doesn't resound with much reason in this moment.
And of course, a bird flu outbreak would be something that we all need to be vigilant about.
However, we need to ensure that all qualified expert voices are being brought to the forefront and media is giving fair representation to every epidemiologist, not just the ones that are aligned with the big pharma narrative, not just the ones that are behind the Moderna mRNA vaccine, claiming that it is very, very easily deployed amongst all animals,
and we should be preemptively injecting animals with the mRNA vaccine.
We know now after COVID-19 that rushing to deploy mRNA, which is more of a gene therapy than it is a true inoculation, we know it doesn't necessarily stop transmission.
We know that there are side effects and there are things that we actually don't know about the long-term impact of mRNA in our food supply.
So my greatest concern right now is that we see a similar oppressiveness of narrative and action and it's hitting communities who have already been crippled by regulation, our farmers.
I spent all day yesterday with a rancher from Montana hearing about how the government speaks to ranchers in this country and how it feels to be a rancher right now in this country.
He shared with me that there's been a war on saturated fats for the last 50 years and that's crippled the ranching industry.
And just now the science shows that cholesterol is necessary for all biologic function in the human body and that the body metabolizes saturated fats incredibly effectively and it's actually seed oils that are causing some of the metabolic issues that we're seeing today.
So if you go back and you look at how science has been used to control industry in this country, it hasn't been effective and it's actually led to greater health issues, not gains.
So as we're watching bird flu come out, I'm making sure that all of those scientists that were censored during COVID-19 are getting access to their communities that they're hoping to reach and that they're being heard.
You know, there's a lot of problems that we're facing and we mentioned a few already and the big question in politics is which is the most important?
Which one will sway the voter and what are the answers for it?
And of course, the one that's in the news all the time and it's getting very noisy about is the immigration problem.
And it is difficult.
And the way I see this is that I experience a deep humanitarian concern for the tragedies of all the people who want to come here.
And the world is a mess.
But I also look into that a little deeper.
Most of the time I say, how'd the government mess it up so badly that we have so many people suffering?
So there's the humanitarian instinct.
But then the challenge is, is that the solution?
Where does the money come from and the help come?
Can you bring a million people in?
And I think it's understanding the humanitarian concern and how to handle it without sacrificing the personal liberties and the property of the places where the immigrants are going to.
So I see it as a tremendous problem.
And one thing, and sure, we said a little thing about debt, but just adding more debt on it might sort of tie people over for a little bit.
But that is not the answer to the immigration problem.
It's been gross negligence, the handling of the border.
The lies that have been told about why the policy has been the way it has been.
There's no excuse.
These are blatant lies coming out of the White House right now, blatant lies around President Biden's, quote, inability to do anything about the crisis up until now.
We're three years into this.
And when Biden took office, he issued over 90 executive orders that effectively incentivized these massively organized cartels predominantly located in Mexico to sell access to our country.
And rather than doing the responsible thing, the thing that you would expect of your government, a basic duty of your government is to maintain borders.
Instead of doing their job, they've done quite the opposite.
They've set up perverse incentives for individuals to risk their lives to be human trafficked.
We are aiding and abetting the cartels in this moment because we are actively providing a policy around insecure borders, conflating it with a immigration policy.
But what country ever has conflated a weak border with a path to immigration?
This doesn't make any sense at all.
It is a complete betrayal.
It's a betrayal to everyone who's come here to this country legally, who put it all on the line to save up money, to wait, to apply, to work.
For all of those individuals that are here legally, watching what President Biden has done to our borders really guts us and it really makes us scared that the American dream is under attack.
And it's coming from within.
It's this almost internal suicide of immigration policy because we are effectively by we, I mean, President Biden has effectively said to the world, you know, we don't respect our own borders.
We don't respect our own citizens.
And, you know, come on in.
Why Small Mid-Sized Growers Matter00:05:49
We'll take care of you.
But you're not going to be able to work for a while and you're going to have to sit around and you're going to have to figure things out and some cities will help you out.
But just come on in anyways.
It's been a message that has been parlayed so broadly across the globe.
And meanwhile, the average American citizen is sitting here watching this, infuriated, infuriated that everything that they've put into this country is being thrown out the window.
And it's, again, day one in office, it's going to be the thing that Bobby's going to address respectfully, responsibly, and with great integrity.
Daniel.
Well, Nicole, I know that you and RFK are very passionate about something very near and dear to my heart, which is food freedom.
Now, back when I worked for Dr. Paul in Washington, D.C., we had to illicitly bring our unpasteurized milk from Pennsylvania because it was illegal for me to give my kids fresh milk.
And the same was true with vegetables and other things in farming.
Now, I'm wondering, just for example, and I don't want to put you on the spot, but if you're familiar with some legislative moves, for example, Thomas Massey's Prime Act, which would really revolutionize the way we produce food in this country, it simply means that small boutique butchers are allowed to, within each state, are allowed to handle the process for ranchers and farmers rather than having them have to ship these animals, sometimes hundreds of miles to a USDA facility.
Sometimes if you have very high standards, the USDA facility doesn't meet your standards.
I'm wondering what you think about that bill and others like it.
I learned so much about how the infrastructure for meat processing in the United States has utterly been ripped apart.
And if you're a rancher with less than a thousand head herd, you're unable to reach an economies of scale that allows you to even break even.
So small, medium-sized ranching operations in the United States are incredibly arduous.
The barrier to entry is so high.
And I just want to really explain why I think it's important we bring back small mid-sized ranching in this country.
And I think Thomas Massey has been an incredible thought leader in this space.
Cow meat is, it turns out, incredibly healthy for you.
And it's one of the most efficient ways to bring nutrient-dense food to the table.
The arguments, I've looked at all the science around climate change activists coming after ranchers and claiming that beef is bad for climate.
If you actually look at the real data, American-grown grass-fed beef is not only carbon neutral, but in some cases is incredibly effective at drawing down carbon into the soil.
With really good land stewardship practices, ranchers might be our biggest partner in fighting ecological and climate issues.
The arguments around methane, if you look at different pieces of counter evidence, it actually becomes a very, very weak argument.
And if you look at the scientific models, it shows that there's this balance that can be reached in which the amount of carbon sequestered compared to any of the methane released from small and mid-sized farming, it is, you know, the argument is really for small and mid-sized farming.
And then you look at the amount of produce this creates, the amount of bio-available nutrition, how we can really combat a lot of issues even related to obesity with some of these healthy meats raised in the United States.
You can solve so many of our nation's greatest issues.
So I just want to say, you know, it is so important right now for us to pay attention to food freedom.
One of the things that makes me alarmed is that the bird flu scare, the first industry the bird flu scare is going after is small, medium-sized growers.
And I think that this is as suicidal as you could can get in terms of a policy.
We should be doing everything in this nation to support our small and mid-sized family farms.
Our policy should all be aligned around that form of land stewardship here in this country.
You have 900 million acres of agricultural land.
Most of it right now is being mismanaged in part because our policies favor large agrochemical businesses and have utterly gutted the infrastructure from processing facilities to regulatory hurdles to lack of financing to the cost of land.
I mean, none of this makes any sense at all that we haven't put this as a top priority in this country as it relates to the economy and wellness of our people.
Sounds like you've been reading our good friend Joel Salatin a little bit as well, I think.
I can check a little bit of Joel.
Anyway, so.
Yeah, okay.
You know, when you talk about the milk and the issue we're talking about now is more complex than just milk being transferred across state lines.
People will say, well, why are you doing all this?
The Slip Into Tyranny00:14:18
You know, the government shouldn't be involved and the government can do this and that.
But I think the misinterpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause has caused a lot of our problems when it comes to the issue, say, of milk and some other products, because that opens up the door to the interpretation now is that they can regulate anything and do anything they want across state borders.
And it complicates the marketplace and that makes things a lot worse.
The Interstate Commerce Clause was to make sure that you could cross state lines and trade.
And I think once the government gets in to manage it, then I think they can satisfy some of the big companies and the people who pay the lobbyists the most money.
So that's one thing.
But I do want to go on to another subject, and that happens to be the Department of Justice.
You know, a lot of people, right, left, center, and a bit of all over, are think there is no justice in this country.
And there's a lot of reason to be concerned about this.
You know, I sort of expected and have written a little bit about this, that there's been a coup in this country.
And that may be an extreme thing, but I say that in a way in the Department of Justice and how we handle law and punishment has been a takeover of the Justice Department.
It's been done nationally.
It's been done through our educational system.
But one thing that I think really undermined our judicial system was the terrible events of the 1960s.
I was a medical residence and looked at the Vietnam War was drafted, a lot of other things.
But the other things were that the three major assassinations involving the Kennedys as well as Martin Luther King.
And I said, then the real coup occurred with who did it, when and why, and what are the answers.
And I said, if you control the judicial system, you might end up with a judicial system messing around with the election, registration, counting the votes, and all the rest.
And so I see the big picture as there has been a coup and we don't have a justice system that was designed a long time ago and people are struggling to understand this.
I wonder if you have a comment.
I've been watching very closely the fortitude of the justice system and it is actually quite a big and dynamic justice system.
I'm an attorney in California.
One of the things that I have have kept my faith up is watching the justice system in the Ninth Circuit and there was one as well, a federal circuit case, in which there was systematic upholding of the Constitution.
One of them had to do with a religious exception to the COVID-19 vaccine and that was held in a very positive way.
And then more recently, the Ninth Circuit declared that the COVID-19 vaccine wasn't a true inoculation, therefore wasn't a true vaccine, and should be classified as a treatment.
So I don't want to be completely hard on or I don't want to send a completely depressing message out about the Department of Justice.
I still think that there's very high integrity people and high integrity courts out there.
However, it has been under attack and certainly has been used and manipulated by politicians and political parties.
And that's the piece that is very, very alarming and scary.
Trump has been on the receiving end of it.
Bobby Kennedy and I have been on the receiving end of it.
Most recently, yesterday I got in the mail from New York a ballot petition challenge and they threw everything at us.
They don't know what's going to stick, but they're using it as a form of creating chaos and discord and also a way to economically disadvantage us in this moment.
So now seeing it firsthand, experiencing it firsthand, seeing my name written on these court documents claiming that somehow the signatures we submitted were breaking various ballot signature petition rules and knowing that we had an entire team designed to make sure that all of these rules were followed very closely.
Watching, of course, the Trump conviction was very troubling as well.
The way it was celebrated by members of the Democratic Party and really like gleefully with joy.
It's troubling to me that our Justice Department as it relates to politics has been turned into a tool.
It's been turned into almost a game.
And that's really pathetic because when you look at the history of our Department of Justice, it was very intentionally designed to uphold what is moral, what is sacred, and what is ethical.
There is an intellectual root in our Department of Justice that has been able to evolve with humans as humans evolve.
It's the thing that is the last line of defense often.
And when that last line of defense is something you can't trust, it very much makes you feel that we have slipped into this overbearing tyranny in this country.
And I think that people like you going out there and being brave enough to say there was a coup in the 60s, that the assassinations and the secrecy around it are the greatest evidence of that.
And you haven't dropped that narrative and showing the importance of that understanding, especially in this moment.
I mean, why is it coming up in this moment?
Because we as a country are being tested as to whether or not we're going to put up with this coup anymore.
Okay.
Daniel?
Have you got another one?
Yeah, one last question.
Sorry, but this is going back to the campaign a little bit.
And I know that you and RFK are looking to appeal to libertarians.
And there are a lot, I talked to a lot of libertarians, and there are a lot of libertarians that have been attracted to a lot of what you said.
But I'm wondering what you might say to those libertarians who are concerned about some of RFK's foreign policy.
You know, we've seen about 40,000 civilians now slaughtered in Gaza with American bombs and American money.
And a lot of libertarians I talk to, they say, I'm sorry, that's just a killer for me.
I just can't support the campaign given RFK's one-sided support for the Israeli side that's doing the slaughtering.
Now, we all condemn October the 7th and all of this and that.
However, you have a sense of disproportionality that really is turning off a lot of potential voters.
And I know it's probably difficult to discuss, but I'm just wondering what you would say to those people who are still open-minded.
This is the topic that Bobby Kennedy and I debate most regularly.
And I just want to make it clear.
Bobby Kennedy is anti-war.
He is looking for a solution to peace in the region.
This is an area that everyone who is around him is aligned around that peace in the region and in an expeditious way is where all of our energy should be when we are discussing what is going on in the Hamas-Israel war.
I can speak to what I believe and what I'm seeing internally in the campaign is really isolating these two efforts.
One, the hostage rescue operations, which he and I are aligned on.
I do believe that Hamas has broken international law by not allowing the Red Cross in to see these hostages.
First of all, they have broken so many international laws as it related to what happened on October 7th.
So we're aligned there.
The other piece that we need to talk about is the war itself, this desire of Israel in this moment to put an end to Hamas's leadership in Gaza.
And those two efforts have been combined.
And I think because of that, it has appeared to be a disproportionate response to October 7th.
So the thing that I think we need to look at as a really important moral and intellectual exercise right now is this piece of, is this the moment that the United States should be supporting Israel in the ending of Hamas as an organization in the region?
I believe that given where things are, most people would say that perhaps Israel will not be successful in completely bringing an end to Hamas in this exact moment.
That being said, the United States and Israel can work together for a solution in the region that will need to involve very, very strong foreign policy and coordination in the Middle East and with its allies in the Middle East,
which includes these parallel normalization efforts, A Marshall Plan, advancement of the Abraham Accords, and also an acknowledgement that there is a direct line between Hamas and the United States' involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I think all of us agreed that the United States had no business going into Iraq and Afghanistan and staying there as long as they did.
Very good.
Okay.
I'm going to follow up with a foreign policy question as well.
I hope it's not as complicated, but you know, when I listen to the news now, because the Ukraine war is still going on and it's still very, very serious.
And we here at the Ron Paul Institute worry about it spreading.
And it seems like it's very vulnerable for that.
But if you listen to the mainstream media, the major media, the thing that probably 90-something percent of the American people get their news, anytime this subject comes up, they talk about when Russia started this war by invading Ukraine.
And that, from my viewpoint, is overly simplified because it's a little more complicated than that.
And even if he gave both sides, you know, some blame, it would be Russia and NATO both have some blame to be placed on them.
But we often talk about the coup that the Americans participated in in 2014, throwing out one dictator and ending up with this mess over here.
So that one to me is very difficult.
Have you been able to answer that and pick a side or say, you know, well, Russia did invade them and therefore it justifies everything that we have done?
Part of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a direct response to the United States' ongoing multi-decade involvement in Ukraine and specifically involvement in Ukraine's presidential elections.
It's very clear that there has been ongoing aggravation and the United States has been actively involved in that.
I mean, there's videos of McCain as a senator going out to Kiev and giving speeches.
This is, you know, arguably we're in 2024.
I don't think the average American wants to see its leadership, its elected leadership here in the United States going overseas and getting involved in other nations' political processes.
And there's a difference between being supportive of democracy and peace and being skilled in the work of foreign policy.
There's a difference between that, which I think the average American would say, yes, we want our leaders to be skilled in foreign policy, but I don't think the average American will say, well, we want our elected leadership to actually be policing and managing and controlling foreign political parties.
Right.
And so this is where we are today as being really a party to this proxy war in Ukraine.
And there's, you know, general sentiment in Ukraine that they don't want this war either.
It could have very much easily been avoided.
So I think that if the United States can pull itself together, get its act together and engage in successful foreign policy and negotiate a solution in the region for which, you know, Bobby Kennedy has written extensively on this topic.
He understands the dynamics of the region.
He understands the goals of Russia as it relates to access to the Black Sea.
This is, I believe, for the first time, an American president that is going to be capable of ending this war very, very quickly in the first few months of taking office.
Close The Podcast00:02:00
Very, very good.
We're going to have to close now for we've had our time is up.
It's been great, Nicole, having you on.
So would you like to give out an address or a way for people who are looking at our film today can get in touch with your campaign?
Well, thank you so much, Chiboth, for having me on today.
You know, Dr. Paul, beating you at the Libertarian Convention was very emotional for me seeing how you've held your beliefs up against every single possible odd.
And it has turned out that you have been warning us and you've been warning the country of what happens when government grows to the size that it has, that inevitably there's going to be immense corruption.
You have been so correct in your lifetime of work.
I know you've also been a doctor and you've worked with pregnant women in the past as an OB.
And I just wanted to say thank you so much for being such a strong voice of moral ethics and goodness in this country.
I would love to extend an invitation to everyone today listening to go to teamkennedy.com, check out our policy positions, give us a listen on our podcast.
Bobby has a podcast.
He's often on podcasts.
I have one as well called Back to the People.
And, you know, we have an opportunity right now in this country to really accept the truth that there was a coup in the 60s, as Dr. Paul has said, and it's coming up again.
All of the issues are coming up again.
And we have a real opportunity to fight back and bring our country back to We the People.
Very, very good.
I want to thank you, Nicole, for being with us today.
And I'm sure our viewers were held to close attention.
And we appreciate very much you coming on the program.