November 20, 2024 • 36 mins
Mia and Gare discuss the incalculable damage RFK Jr. will do if allowed to head the Department of Health and Human Services, home of the CDC, NIH, and other vital medical institutions.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/politics/robert-kennedy-jr-chemicals-water-children-frogs/index.html
https://time.com/7177027/rfk-jr-hhs-secretary-trump-public-health/
https://www.additudemag.com/adderall-shortage-dea-stimulants-adhd-medication/
https://futurism.com/neoscope/rfk-jr-adderall-labor-camps
https://thehill.com/homenews/4993660-robert-f-kennedy-trump-health-human-services/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/rfk-jr-war-vaccines-could-213751533.html?guccounter=1
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/11/15/nx-s1-5191947/trump-rfk-health-hhs
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to It Happened Here, a podcast where it has
happened here. I'm your host Mia along with me as gare. Hello, Ger,
how are you doing this accursive day? Oh I'm feeling
very healthy. I'm up on my vaccines. I'm doing pretty good.
Just had a nice bowl of cereal. Hell yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, you're you're doing better than the country is about
to be doing.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Because this one, this one's bad, folks. So a couple
of days ago, we promised that RFK Junior was getting
his own episode, and he's getting eighty five ninety percent
of his own episode. There's one other guy we're going
to talk about, but unfortunately former presidential candidate Robert F.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Kennedy. I don't know what the F stands for Fitzgerald.
I'm assuming Fitzgerald. Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Has been nominated by Trump to lead the Department of
Health and Human Services. I first off need to note
that RFK Junior has been credibly accused of sexual assault,
and when asked for comment by The Washington Post, he said,
and I quote, I said in my announcement speech that
I have so many skeletons in my closet that if
they could all vote, I could run for king of
(01:19):
the world. Now, legally I cannot make an interpretation of
how you want to piece together those sets of facts.
But he was accused of it, and that's what he
said when the Washington Post acted for comment. So you know,
that's great.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Between that and like all the sexual misconduct allegations against
Musk and like everyone else involved in Trump's orbit, Matt Gates,
Vince McMahon and his wife, the whole like me too
era feels kind of dead, and it kind of has
been for a while. But really, the general voting public
does not care at all.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, it does not seem to. It's very bleak.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's not even remote leads the bleak ist part about
this appointment though, So.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Oh no, he's that for so many reasons.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Holy shit.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So I think if you are like most people listening
to this, I don't think people tend to have an
understanding of how many fucking departments there are, like under
the Department of Health and Human Services, just how many
different organizations there are. I originally I had listed them
all out, and then I was like, I can't do this.
(02:30):
It's too long to read in the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
So here are the important ones for our purpose.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Nic.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
This isn't even all the important ones, but here are
some of the important ones. So under the Apartment of
Health and Human Services is the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, the Centers from Medicare and Medicaid Services, the
Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the
Office of Inspector General, and the Office for Civil Rights.
So we've just put probably the US's most famous anti
(02:59):
vaxery charge of all of these organizations. And I say,
we've just put He still has to get confirmed, and
there is some chance that he doesn't make it.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
We it would be much better for everyone on Earth
if he fucking doesn't get appointed.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
But it's still very up in the air. Yeah, if
any of these guys are going to get pushed in
through recess appointments, or whether the Senate will just completely
cave to Trump. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, And I mean, you know, and we'll get to
part of this later.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
There is real political opposition to Trump in parts of
the Republican Party base, especially the Senate. Yeah, he is
about to fuck with the money, and sometimes you can
do that and it's fine, and sometimes you can't and we.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Simply do not know yet.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And so I think before we get into how again,
an anti vaxxer leading the US is like health services
is going to just obliterate us all, I think it's
actually worth taking a look at what this means politically
in terms of Trump's base, in terms of sort of
the power compon.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Positions of it.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Because in twenty twenty, the last time he was running,
he had a real problem with the anti vaxxers because,
you know, on the one had, Trump like did a
bunch of anti vax stuff. On the other hand, he
did spend a bunch of money to develop the vaccine,
and this pissed off an incredibly large number of people.
You have, like your Alex Jones is yelling about how
he was like tricked into making the vaccine. And there's
(04:23):
a kind of split in his base between the people
who are anti vaxxers and people who think that COVID
was like designed in a lab as a bioweapon. Because
those people in theory, if you're following this coherently right,
the people who think that COVID was creating a lab
as a bioweapon, you should also want a vaccine then,
because that could stop the bioweapon.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Well unless the bio weapon was invented so that people
would get vaccinated, and the real dangers the vaccines. See me,
you gotta be thinking one step ahead with these people.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
But there's another thing too, which is you also have
to simultaneously argue that COVID is pretty mild, because that's
another thing that all these people believe because you have
to be anti lock down, and to be anti lockdown,
you have to believe that COVID is mild. So what
the chain of things you have to believe? And there
are like, I don't know, like a third of the
population of the US believes some variants of like COVID
was made in a lab as bio weapon, it either
(05:15):
escaped or was deployed. It's also mild. And also the
vaccine is trying to kill you, So this is bad.
And Trump has kind of papered over this issue with
his base by again just handing all of the fucking
health departments over to RFK JR. And a sign of
what RFK Jr's tenure is going to look like, assuming
(05:37):
he gets appointed, is that he has been putting together
list of people he wants to head all of these agencies,
and chief on that list is Jay Banachaira, who's he
wants to be the head of the National Institute of Health.
Jay is an anti lockdown maniac whose thing was that
he thought that the lockdowns were bad and that we
should have just sent everyone back to work in this
(05:57):
sort of absolute peak of the pandemic before we had vaccines,
and he thought that like only forty thousand people were
going to die because of COVID, and that if you
just sent to everyone back, everyone would get COVID and
this would create like quote unquote herd immunity, and then
the disease would be okay, yeah, yeah, and that's nonsense, right.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
That that did not happen. We can actually save for sure. Yes,
more than forty thousand people died. It wasn't just a flu.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
And also you know there were countries I think Norway
tried this where they tried to like easelock dew restrictions
early and it just killed a bunch of people and
you didn't get an immunity benefit because then the thing
about herd immunity, right, So herd immunity is this concept
and this is kind of this is important for the
vaccination angle of this. It's this concept that there are
there are some people in a population who medically cannot vaccinated.
(06:43):
You know, there's like actual health reasons right for this
that aren't just like anti vax shit. But if enough
of the rest of the population is vaccinated, then it
doesn't matter because there's not because there's enough immunity in
the entire herd that it's hard for the disease to spread.
And the way you're supposed to do this again is
with vaccines, right, But there was a whole crowd of
people who wanted to try to do this not with
vaccines but just by giving everyone COVID. And these are
(07:06):
the people that RFKID Junior wants to like put in
charge of the nation's health services. Now, the political response
to this from our side is also really complicated because
you know, the way that the battles already playing out
in the media is RFK Junior versus Big Pharma. And
the problem is, no one likes big Farmer unless you're
being paid by them, Like we don't like big Farm,
(07:26):
but these companies suck shit. They're really bad. They're like
parts of the reasons why no, you can afford your
health care. But also the reason they're evil isn't because
they make vaccines.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And this is a this is a complicated sort of
tension to manage. And if you read a lot of
the media coverage of this so far, NPR has a
just fawning article over RFK Junior.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
That's like, Oh, he's gonna like cut through the bureaucratic
red tape with his controversial things and like help treat
chronic disease. And no, he's an anti vaxxer. He's very
hardline anti vaxxer. I also want to read this absolutely
insane thing that he said about COVID being a I'm
(08:09):
just gonna read this. I don't know how to preface this.
COVID nineteen, there is an argument that is ethnically targeted.
COVID nineteen attacks certain races disroportionately. COVID nineteen is targeted
to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are
most immune are Oscanazi, Jews and Chinese. Oh, we don't
know whether it was deliberately targeted or not, but there
are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic
(08:31):
different impact.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Oh oh no, that's that's not what those papers are
trying to say.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
No, And I will also say this, one of the
things that you can just you know something very bad
is about to happen is when someone uses the word
Chinese and noun you were about to hear the most
racist shit you've ever heard in your entire life.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Well, not to mention as Kanasi juice.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Oh yeah, yeah, And so you know what those actually whatever,
which to briefly talk about what those studies were actually saying,
is like, well, there were certain communities that were hit
worse by COVID, and there's certain communities that were hit
less by COVID, And that largely has to do with
things like income and how much you're forced to like
go work, read the plague.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Living conditions, class, poverty, where you live, gentrification. There's lots
of aspects.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
How strong your anti vax movement is sure definitely another one.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Not to mention, just like medicalized racism, which is a
massive problem in the American health care industry.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Oh yeah, and RFK Junior not going to make that better.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
No, I don't have an inkling that's going to be
on the top of his priorities beyond nationalizing essentially chicken
pox parties instead of vaccines.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, okay, So RFK Junior has been playing the world's
most obvious shell game with the media, which the media,
I don't know, a lot of press outlets are just
sort of rolling over for Trump right now. And so
he's been playing this game where he's been telling the press, oh,
I'm not going to take vaccines away from everyone, from anyone,
and it'll be fine. And like we know that he
(09:59):
thinks in fact, scenes cause autism, Like he just says
this all the time.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
He has promoted books about that.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. Yeah, so like you know, we know that he
is anti vax that here he spreads anti vax propaganda.
We know that he spent a bunch of money doing this,
specifically also in minority communities. So there's a lot of
dangers here, some of which we're going to get into
more when we go into what specific agencies can sort
of fuck with stuff. But one of the biggest dangers
(10:26):
in the very short term is that he is now
in control of what is effectively the US's medical science apparatus,
and he can use this to spread all of the
anti vax horseshit that has been spreading through like less
official channels before this. I think it's worth remembering that
this whole anti vaccine craze started with one guy getting
(10:49):
one shitty paper published in the journal Lancet, and the
reporting on that in the media frenzy around that was
enough to turn the ACTI vaccine movement from like ten
people into a worldwide movement that has killed unbelievable numbers
of people. And the reason that's true is because if
an official authority tells you like that this vaccine isn't safe,
(11:10):
people will believe it. And he's going to be able
to use the National Institutes of Health, He's going to
be able to use the CDC, is going to be
able to use the journals that they publish. He's going
to be able to fill these people with his coronies.
It's going to take a lot of fighting, but he's
going to be able to use this to push anti
vaccine bullshit with even just leaving aside his regulatory abilities,
just the ability to like legitimize this complete horseshit as
(11:34):
actual science. Is going to do incoculable damage to this
country and is going to do incoculable damage to the
world because also one of the things that's under Health
and Human Services is the US's like international medical and
healthcare programs and sort of prevention programs that we do internationally.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
So this is all very bad. Do you know what's
not very bad?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Oh? All of the ads that are going to play
right after I stopped talking. Surely none of them could
be slightly problematic.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
And we are back. Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
So when I was first writing this in the halcyon
days of last week, right, I had a whole thing
written here about how one of the other effects of
this is not just going to be the attack on vaccines,
It's going to be the destruction of basic virological research, right,
Like our basic research on viruses and on diseases is
going to be destroyed, you know. And this is because
the people that are of Kajunior is surrounding himself with
(12:39):
are the Lablik Truther people. And the Lablik Truthers have
convinced themselves to anyone who does any kind of research
with a virus is actually like creating a giant a
bioweapon that can at any moments like break containment and
kill the entire population. And you know, so I was like, okay,
I was putting together all this stuff, and then he
just straight up said that when he gets in charge,
(13:00):
he's going to go to the NIH and stop studying
infectious diseases for eight years first week.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
And I'm gonna call all the division heads and I'm
gonna call all the bureau chiefs, and I'm gonna say,
we're going to give drug development and infectious disease a break,
a little break, a little bit of a break for
about eight years, and we're gonna study chronic disease.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
He's just saying, straight up he's gonna try to stop
all infectious disease research for eight years.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Now'll think about diseases, right.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I talked to a virologist beforehand, who will will remain
nameless for security purposes, but their response was, hold on,
let me, let me, let me let me read this exactly,
because it's extremely funny. I would love if pathogens would
decide to give it a rest for eight years. Sadly,
I do not think pathogens will get the memo because
they're random micro organisms. That the big issue here, right is, Okay,
(13:57):
so we're stopping all infectious disease research. Now, you know
we're already I mean, we're still in like we we
gave up trying to end for the first pandemic that
like that would happen on the Trump administration, right, we
were our solution to this, And this is also part
of the problem of the decay of these institutions even
under Biden, was that, you know, we we gave up
(14:19):
trying to stop COVID. We're we just we just just
like maascer, it too much work. So you're all going
to die now, have fun.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Well, luckily there won't be another global pandemic anytime soon
because these things really only happened once a century.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
No, but you know, the consequent with this, right is
when the next pandemic hits, we're going to have an
administration that is sort of broadly anti vax who's everyone
around them is anti vaccine, and we're going to have
just destroyed our capacity to do invecious disease research.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Well and specifically this was a joke about the bird flu.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well the thing is right, So the next one could
be that fucking bird flu strain that's bluing, but it
could be something else too.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
We don't know, there could be other ones.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
We you know, so like if you go into like
the actual sort of causes of these things, which have
to do with things like factory farming and like increasing
human they call it human zoological contact, but it's like
humans going into places where there weren't people before and
there are a bunch of animals and coming in in
like increasing contact with the animals. Right, that's all stuff
(15:20):
that they're driven by by structural elements of the economic system,
and like our constant needs to develop land and the
way we've set up our meat agriculture, and that's not
stuff that like RFK Junior gives a shit about like
actually attempting to deal with. So instead we're gonna just
do whatever this infectious disease research stop is. And I
think this also aligns with a lot of the stuff
(15:41):
that all of that that you know, Trump's cabinet pointees
broadly have been talking about, right, which is this this
desire to just sort of kneecap and you know, sort
of purge the American bureaucracy.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
And I've been I've been seeing some very very.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Optimistic people going like, oh, well, you can't really do
a purge because like what competent people are good? Are
you gonna replace them with it's like no one. That's
the problem. That's the problem. Three there replaced with no one,
or they're gonna be replaced with like one of the
like hundreds of millions of weird anti vaccine freaks these
people have found have like cultivated over like a giant
global international network. Right, they have so many crank doctors.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
We're not gonna be like governed by like a conspiracy
theory cabinet, which is kind of what it's looking like. Yeah,
you're just gonna be governed by the Fox and Friends
weekend host segments team.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
And oh boy, yeah, And I will say, you know,
this is all going to be very bad. I do
want to do a little bit of panic calming, which
is I've seen some people freaking out about the potential
of Urca Junior just sort of destroying the American food
system by just implementing a total ban on fertilizers and pesticides,
(16:52):
And could he do that in theory maybe, but that
one I don't think is really likely to happen because
if he does, if he tries to do this, he
is immediately going to face like one of the most
ferocious lobbies in the entire history of American politics, which
(17:12):
is the American like, I guess you would call him
the farm lobby, but really it's the American big ag
like big agricultural lobby.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, it's the agricultural lobby. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
And like you are about to face like the power
of fucking Bayer Monsanto.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
They are.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
They are a ferocious opponent. If you try banning their pesticides,
they are going to come through. They already hate him
because he's already he's like has sued them over a
bunch of stuff over the years. And the thing about
the combination of companies that make chemicals for stuff and
also the giant farming conglomerates who who run most of
America's food production, is that unlike, for example, the farmer lobby,
(17:48):
the farmer lobby is very powerful, but his power is
sort of dispersed over over a.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Broad geographic area.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
It's it's not like centralized very well, which which makes
them sort of weaker in an attempt to like stop
our junior. The thing about the farm lobbies that they're
not There are a lot of plane states. We're just
straight up their senators and it doesn't matter which party
you elect. Your senator is just a cutout for like
the agricultural lobby. Yeah, and those people work together, right,
Like they have worked together, they will work together. They
(18:15):
caucus together all the time in order to get agricultural
subsidies and stuff. And these people are unbelievably powerful. They
are united political block in the Senate, and they can
bring the entire US governments screaching to a halt. So
that's not a fight. I don't really think that he
can win. But I mean there's still some kind of
(18:35):
chance that he tries to do something like this. But
on that one, and I've seen a lot of people
panicking about it, I think that one will probably be Okay.
That said, we're giving a guy who one of his
big things is that like the government's been like repressing
raw milk, and we're giving this guy control of the FDA.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Oh the raw milk people, Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Well, and luckily there's been no FDA related fiascos this year,
which has led to thousands of food recalls that are
incredibly challenging to keep up with. And now the joke
here is that there actually has been massive FTA fuck
ups which actually has led to thousands of food recalls
which actually are pretty challenging to keep up with because
(19:18):
oh boy, our whole regulatory state was kind of got
it the past eight years and it is still recovering.
And the deregulations have led to massive food foreign illness
failures in the production scene. So yeah, that's that's been happening.
I'm sure one of you has been affected by this.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, And you know, I think there are some people
who tend to read the way that RFK Junior talks
about like we need eliminate like toxins from the food
supply or whatever, and read that as, oh, he's gonna
like try to do more agriculture regulation and oh, all
rain has been eaten by worms, like that is his
brain is a bunch of conspiracy theories matched together. Like
(19:59):
that's not going to be how this plays out, unfortunately
for us.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, and I really think this is something to keep
in mind. Is anyone who is treating.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
This guy as like some kind of serious reformer of
US health policy, do not trust anything that they say,
right Like, keep notes of what fucking media outlets are
saying this right now, because with RFK Junior, a man
who says one absolutely like I said a thing earlier
about suspending research for infectious diseases.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
He said that like Friday.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Last Friday, at an anti vaccine conference, he was on
on like Zoom.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
He says this shit literally all the time.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And if you're a sort of journalist and you're treating
him as like a semi serious guy and not this
person like, you are not sort of qualified for the
task of covering what's going to be happening in this administration.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
I mean, really, the worst thing about RFK in my opinion,
is that he has ruined the Kennedy conspiracy search results.
If you google Kennedy conspiracy, it sucks now. Now it's
just RFK can spiracy theory beliefs that he has terrible.
It's ruined one of my great hobbies, which is trying
to find new JFK conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
You know what else is ruining JFK conspiracies?
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Probably these ads, because my god, the more time I
have to spend looking at advertisements is less time I
could be reading about how JFK was secretly Okay, we
are back, miya. I would love to learn more about
(21:37):
RFK Junior if possible, or maybe some other random guy
who's also bad. What else do you have for me here.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Oh boy, we have from here adderall.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Oh wow, one of my favorite prescription drugs. That's not true. Actually,
I'm actually not on stimulants. Everyone thinks just because I
talk fast and sound like this, I probably am on stimulants.
This actually isn't true. This is me completely sober. So
just to imagine how worse it would be if I
was on adderall.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, So okay, let's do adderall first and then we'll
talk about antidepressants. So, okay, if you've had to get
adderall and I'm actually not on it, somewhat miraculously, I
don't know, not miraculously whatever.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
It's not my favorite thing, not being on this.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
But you know, if you've tried to attain adderall or
something like viavants or one of the other sort of
treatments for ADHD, you have probably noticed that there's just shortages.
And there's two explanations for the shortage. If if you
read the stuff the Food and Drug Administration says, they're like, oh,
it's because of labor shortages at drug.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Manufacturing plants, and that's like not really the reason.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
The actual thing that's going on here is that so
these are technically like retricch to substances, right, in order
to produce substances like this, the DEA sets like a
quota of the amount of these drugs you were able
to produce in a year, And the DEA became absolutely
obsessed with like the fact that people were like getting
hold of other people's adderall and this made them absolutely
(23:00):
lose their fucking mind to start imposing these unbelievably draconian
production quotas on these stimulants, which is why there's been
a fucking shortage of them for like three years now.
It's it's worth noting. On the one hands, you know
that the FDA has kind of been trying to fight
the DA on this because the FDA is looking at
this and it's like, okay, so we just have a
(23:21):
bunch of people who have ADHD who can't get their mets,
and that can just straight up destroy your life. Like
getting getting taken off of one of these things immediately
is really really bad for you. And also like not
having executive function is real bad. But we have the
mild upside of the fact that DA isn't technically going
(23:42):
to be under RFK Junior's control, but.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Is it going to be under Christy Nomes Control.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, it's it's just this departments.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Okay, so it could maybe Gates. Well, maybe maybe Gates
because we have we have since learned that that Trump
has conceded that Gates might might not make it through
a Senate confirmation hearing. So we will still see if
these recents appointments are actually going to happen.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, so we don't know who's going to be running
the Department of Justice.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
But Comma, what we do know about RFK Junior is
this quote from futurism quote, I'm going to create these
wellness farms so they can go get off illegal drugs,
off opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs if
they want to to get off SSRIs, to get off bezos,
to get off adderall, and spend as much time as
(24:34):
they need three or four years if they need it,
learning to get reparented, to reconnect with communities. So, as
a lot of people, including futurism have pointed out, he
is framing this as if it's voluntary. But what this
is is instead of treating people for like mental health issues,
you send them to a labor camp to do organic
(24:54):
farming for the government and that's very bad.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
And it's also worth.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Noting that these programs are be qute unquote voluntary, have
this sort of nasty way of suddenly becoming involuntary at
the moment someone's actually in power. So the worst possible
read of this, like the most bleak and dystopian read
of this, is that this is going to be implemented
as a method of solving the the indescribable human cost
(25:20):
of evicting tens of millions of people. One of the
things that will do was just absolutely obliterate our labor
supply for agriculture, right, because it turns out that the
people who actually know how to do agriculture work is
not the white planters who fucking own the farms. So
this is the thing that could be used to try
to replace that labor.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Right, I.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Don't know how much I think that specific one is
going to happen. It's unclear how you could use the
power of the state to do this, right, There's not
a direct path.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah, this seems this seems really this seems really goofy.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Frankly, Yeah, Like I've seen some panic over it, and
it's like, I, I mean, maybe that's a like I
don't know. Thing that's like a like I don't know.
We're in like year six of the Trump of the
second Trump administration, and like.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Yeah, I really don't see how they can even get
anywhere close to the numbers for like a voluntary drug
like rehab program that puts you into like agricultural farm work,
that that's not going to replace any of the missing
farm labor.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
No, no, it won't work.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Right even if you could do the compulsory labor thinking
there's not just simply aren't enough people right to do it.
And also agricultural labor is skilled work, right, like, yeah,
you actually have to know what you're doing. But comma,
I will, I will mention you know, as this is
kind of this isn't unlikely but technically possible thing to happen.
The thing that's more likely to happen is that this
(26:46):
is a good time to mention that one of the
organizations that's under how the Human Services is the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and there are a
lot of ways using this administration and also just cooperating
with the because again we have to remember this, the
DA is just unbelievably pissed off at the thought of
like a single person getting their prescription. So I don't
(27:07):
think it will be hard for RFK Junior to find
his allies in the Justice Department to intensify the crackdown
that's already been happening on on things like on things
like adderall and on things like the antidepressants, because you know,
there's a whole other range of conspiracy theories that when
we've covered this on the show, right that I have
to do with, like people who think that, like, oh,
all all the mass shooters are on antidepressants or whatever,
(27:28):
and that kind of stuff is that kind of thinking
is incredibly powerful, and there's a real chance that we
are about to see a bunch of people who believe
that shit suddenly in control of a bunch of the
agencies they are supposed to be doing drug regulations. There
are other things that we can see him do. He's
going to have some authority over approving new vaccines, which
(27:48):
is real bad. It's gonna be hard for him to
just like I don't like, he can't just like do
a vaccine ban. But what he can do is you
can also fuck with people's insurance covering vaccinations, and he
can fuck with like to what extent they're recommended by
the government.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
This is really a upsetting for the potential like HIV
vaccine that's oh like nearing its completion.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
We're going to get to that that. Hold on, give it,
give it one second, because we're getting too that.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
No, okay, so before we get to the fact that
our FI Junior is an HIV AIDS denialist, we need
to point out one more thing he can do, which
is that he can use the Office of the Inspector
General as a weapon to you know, I mean it
is the Office of the Inspector General. And like the
regular the legal and regulatory capacities of the other agencies
under Health and Human Services, are they supposed to be
(28:34):
a thing that you can use to go after drug
companies for like making vaccines. No, will he be able
to do it, probably because we are about to enter
a a era of like law fair and like what
is it isn't considered legal? That is going to make
the past like eight years seem like the most functional
(28:55):
democratic regime the world has ever seen. So we're probably
going to see that, and we're all going to see
the effects of RFK Junior's HIV AIDS denihilism, and this
shit is so I don't know if people even remember this,
but there was a whole like one of the earlier
kind of anti VAXX conspiracy movements was about HIV not
(29:19):
being the cause of AIDS. And it's been so long
since this has been a public thing that I think
most people have sort of forgotten about it. I think
Dave Gruel is probably the most famous one of these guys,
but he was in this camp of people who thought
that like AIDS was cosmy malnutrition. OURFKG junior not in
that camp RFKA junior, in an even worse camp of
(29:39):
people who were just like, oh, yeah, no, it's because
like gay people were doing poppers.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
That like that's his actual thing, right, he thinks that
you think it was poppers?
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, he thinks it's because of just literally like quote
the gay lifestyle is why HIV. Haven't this kind of
shit wiped out in entire generation of query people. Our
best hope here is that he's forgotten about most of
this and is on to more and new, like just
gets sidetracked on his other conspiracies. Then it's just gets
(30:10):
obsessed with raw milk or whatever. But yeah, this this
could be really, really fucking bad for if he actually
decides that this is one of the issues he's going
to focus on. Right, He's now in charge a bunch
of the of a bunch of the agencies that like
helps people fucking deal with this, right because agv aids now,
you know, getting it is on a death sentence, Like
you can live, you can live a perfectly functioned, normal
(30:31):
life as long as you have the right medical care.
And there's as as Garrett was talking about earlier, there's
there is a pretty promising vaccine that could fucking stop
this shit. Right, But if this is something that he
remembers and he focuses on it, there's a real chance
of him using his power to fuck with it because
he is a kind of homophobic that like up until
(30:52):
really two or three years ago, had kind of like
mostly vanished from like the mainstream, even from sort of
like the heart, like the homophobes tended to have different
homophobia now than like this shit.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Yeah, this is like a classic eighties nineties homophobia.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And at this point also we need to mention that again,
one of the officers that he's now in charge of
is the Office for Civil Rights, the OCR which is cool.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Like we've talked about.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
On our episodes about transpolicy, He's I don't know. RFK
Junior is kind of one of those people where it's
like it's not clear to me if like his heart's
really in the anti trans stuff. He says all of
the most hideous anti transshit, right, But that's also like
it's also a pretty recent position that he's adopted.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
You mean, yeah, same thing with Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah, but now that might not matter, right, Sure.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
I'm just saying that these are more recent changes from them. Yeah, yeah,
it kind of reflect a growing shift in politics for
like the GOP and their and their base. Yeah, whereas
like historically Trump has has felt fine sexually harassing trans
women yep, yep, because of their women, because of misogyny,
you know, yeah anyway.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
But you know, but our issue here is that the
Office of Civil Rights is the office that you're supposed
to that that's supposed to be the thing that stops
discrimination in healthcare. Oh okay, And in fact, this is
the organization that the Biden administration had just left trans
people to them, Bracy of where I like, if your
healthcare got band, you're supposed to like submit a complaint
to the ocr so like it's not like an incredibly
(32:19):
functional agency right now, right, but it's about to get
a lot worse. There's a couple other things that I
should mention before we close out here that are I mean,
you could do a full episode on in and of themselves,
but there's just so much shit here. One of them
is that he's also like anti fluoride in drinking water.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Yes, yes, yes, Now.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
This is one where I don't know how much power
is gonna have to do this because a lot of
fluoride stuff is done at the local level.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Well luckily for our friends of Bortland, and this won't
affect them at all because there already is no fluoride
in your drinking water yep.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
So our dental health is just fucked because of this.
He's probably going to use. This is gonna be another
bully pulpit thing where he uses his position to push
anti fluoride shit. And I think the last thing I
want to end on is just one of the like cruel,
petty things that he's probably going to be able to do.
Is one of the like bugbears of the right is
that like people on food stamps aren't eating healthy enough food,
(33:15):
and so we're probably gonna see a bunch of these
just really hideous restrictions out of what you can buy
with with snap benefits.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Well, and the rest of these guys also just want
Snap benefits and welfaret to also just like go down
the toilet entirely.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
So yeah, so they're trying to make them as unusable
as possible. And again it's like, okay, so like if
you can only buy on like fresh fruit with this
and you live in a food desert, yeah, because you're poor,
what the fuck you?
Speaker 4 (33:39):
You know, right, It's just it's just compounding classism.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, And the general trend of this is things are
either going to get monumentally worse or merely sort of worse.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
I do love those two options.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, when your best chance is your hope, you're hoping
the brain worms ate the part of his brain that
remembered this specific conspiracy, you're in real trouble.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
I mean, RFK Junior is so emblematic of like the
type of like democrat, kind of wingnut hippie environmental guy
who then slowly has been pivoting to like the right
wing conspiracy sphere. Like you see this with a lot
of like you know, like hippie moms from like the
nineties right who had very like you know, fluoride beliefs,
vaccine beliefs, like all this type of stuff that was
(34:23):
kind of more associated with this like kind of like
slightly conspiratorial wing nutty section of like the left. And
how much that entire sphere has been totally eaten by
the right and now it's a pretty like successful and
reliable voting block for them. And this has only become
more the case under Trump's first term. Yeah, and now
we are seeing it again with these types of guys
(34:45):
not just on like Facebook comments sections, but now actually
like heading up entire departments of state.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
And it's also worth mentioning that part of the reason
this stuff happens is because it's really profitable. The anti
vaccine lobby, and it is a lobby, has an unbelievable
amount of money. You see a lot of people pivot
towards it. I'm going to close this out by yelling
at there's a media organization called grey Zone, which if
you've been involved in anti Palestine activism you've probably seen
some of their reporting. They are also like pivoted into
(35:13):
this kind of anti vaccine stuff. And you know, you
remember remember at the top what I talked about Jay Badachaira,
who's that anti lockdown fanatic who's going to be in
charge of the National Institutes of Health. He is a
guy that, like Grey Zone, interviewed on their fucking website
and put out a bunch of articles in support of
his anti lockdown stuff. Right, And so this is something
(35:34):
that we've been seeing for the last four years, is
a lot of people who are supposed to be leftists
pivoting towards anti vax stuff. To be door is another
example of this. Yes, yes, literally purely because it makes
you a lot of money. And now that now these
grifters just have their guy in office, and all of
us are going to have to live with the consequences
of it unless unless we stop this jackass from being
(35:56):
put into office, which is not impossible. It's it's it's
not without hope. This guy has a lot of enemies,
both among like the people and also in corporate America.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
So and also in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
That's true, that's true. He has many enemies. The families
of the dead carcasses he draws around.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Well, and the families of the microbials in those carcasses
which have warmed their way literally into his brain.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, it could happen Here is a production of cool
Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit
our website fool zonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome to It Happened Here, a podcast where it has
happened here. I'm your host Mia along with me as gare. Hello, Ger,
how are you doing this accursive day? Oh I'm feeling
very healthy. I'm up on my vaccines. I'm doing pretty good.
Just had a nice bowl of cereal. Hell yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Well, you're you're doing better than the country is about
to be doing.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Because this one, this one's bad, folks. So a couple
of days ago, we promised that RFK Junior was getting
his own episode, and he's getting eighty five ninety percent
of his own episode. There's one other guy we're going
to talk about, but unfortunately former presidential candidate Robert F.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Kennedy. I don't know what the F stands for Fitzgerald.
I'm assuming Fitzgerald. Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Has been nominated by Trump to lead the Department of
Health and Human Services. I first off need to note
that RFK Junior has been credibly accused of sexual assault,
and when asked for comment by The Washington Post, he said,
and I quote, I said in my announcement speech that
I have so many skeletons in my closet that if
they could all vote, I could run for king of
(01:19):
the world. Now, legally I cannot make an interpretation of
how you want to piece together those sets of facts.
But he was accused of it, and that's what he
said when the Washington Post acted for comment. So you know,
that's great.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Between that and like all the sexual misconduct allegations against
Musk and like everyone else involved in Trump's orbit, Matt Gates,
Vince McMahon and his wife, the whole like me too
era feels kind of dead, and it kind of has
been for a while. But really, the general voting public
does not care at all.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
Yeah, it does not seem to. It's very bleak.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's not even remote leads the bleak ist part about
this appointment though, So.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Oh no, he's that for so many reasons.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Holy shit.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
So I think if you are like most people listening
to this, I don't think people tend to have an
understanding of how many fucking departments there are, like under
the Department of Health and Human Services, just how many
different organizations there are. I originally I had listed them
all out, and then I was like, I can't do this.
(02:30):
It's too long to read in the podcast.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
So here are the important ones for our purpose.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
Nic.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
This isn't even all the important ones, but here are
some of the important ones. So under the Apartment of
Health and Human Services is the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, the Centers from Medicare and Medicaid Services, the
Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the
Office of Inspector General, and the Office for Civil Rights.
So we've just put probably the US's most famous anti
(02:59):
vaxery charge of all of these organizations. And I say,
we've just put He still has to get confirmed, and
there is some chance that he doesn't make it.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
We it would be much better for everyone on Earth
if he fucking doesn't get appointed.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
But it's still very up in the air. Yeah, if
any of these guys are going to get pushed in
through recess appointments, or whether the Senate will just completely
cave to Trump. Who knows.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, And I mean, you know, and we'll get to
part of this later.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
There is real political opposition to Trump in parts of
the Republican Party base, especially the Senate. Yeah, he is
about to fuck with the money, and sometimes you can
do that and it's fine, and sometimes you can't and we.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Simply do not know yet.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And so I think before we get into how again,
an anti vaxxer leading the US is like health services
is going to just obliterate us all, I think it's
actually worth taking a look at what this means politically
in terms of Trump's base, in terms of sort of
the power compon.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Positions of it.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Because in twenty twenty, the last time he was running,
he had a real problem with the anti vaxxers because,
you know, on the one had, Trump like did a
bunch of anti vax stuff. On the other hand, he
did spend a bunch of money to develop the vaccine,
and this pissed off an incredibly large number of people.
You have, like your Alex Jones is yelling about how
he was like tricked into making the vaccine. And there's
(04:23):
a kind of split in his base between the people
who are anti vaxxers and people who think that COVID
was like designed in a lab as a bioweapon. Because
those people in theory, if you're following this coherently right,
the people who think that COVID was creating a lab
as a bioweapon, you should also want a vaccine then,
because that could stop the bioweapon.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Well unless the bio weapon was invented so that people
would get vaccinated, and the real dangers the vaccines. See me,
you gotta be thinking one step ahead with these people.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
But there's another thing too, which is you also have
to simultaneously argue that COVID is pretty mild, because that's
another thing that all these people believe because you have
to be anti lock down, and to be anti lockdown,
you have to believe that COVID is mild. So what
the chain of things you have to believe? And there
are like, I don't know, like a third of the
population of the US believes some variants of like COVID
was made in a lab as bio weapon, it either
(05:15):
escaped or was deployed. It's also mild. And also the
vaccine is trying to kill you, So this is bad.
And Trump has kind of papered over this issue with
his base by again just handing all of the fucking
health departments over to RFK JR. And a sign of
what RFK Jr's tenure is going to look like, assuming
(05:37):
he gets appointed, is that he has been putting together
list of people he wants to head all of these agencies,
and chief on that list is Jay Banachaira, who's he
wants to be the head of the National Institute of Health.
Jay is an anti lockdown maniac whose thing was that
he thought that the lockdowns were bad and that we
should have just sent everyone back to work in this
(05:57):
sort of absolute peak of the pandemic before we had vaccines,
and he thought that like only forty thousand people were
going to die because of COVID, and that if you
just sent to everyone back, everyone would get COVID and
this would create like quote unquote herd immunity, and then
the disease would be okay, yeah, yeah, and that's nonsense, right.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
That that did not happen. We can actually save for sure. Yes,
more than forty thousand people died. It wasn't just a flu.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
And also you know there were countries I think Norway
tried this where they tried to like easelock dew restrictions
early and it just killed a bunch of people and
you didn't get an immunity benefit because then the thing
about herd immunity, right, So herd immunity is this concept
and this is kind of this is important for the
vaccination angle of this. It's this concept that there are
there are some people in a population who medically cannot vaccinated.
(06:43):
You know, there's like actual health reasons right for this
that aren't just like anti vax shit. But if enough
of the rest of the population is vaccinated, then it
doesn't matter because there's not because there's enough immunity in
the entire herd that it's hard for the disease to spread.
And the way you're supposed to do this again is
with vaccines, right, But there was a whole crowd of
people who wanted to try to do this not with
vaccines but just by giving everyone COVID. And these are
(07:06):
the people that RFKID Junior wants to like put in
charge of the nation's health services. Now, the political response
to this from our side is also really complicated because
you know, the way that the battles already playing out
in the media is RFK Junior versus Big Pharma. And
the problem is, no one likes big Farmer unless you're
being paid by them, Like we don't like big Farm,
(07:26):
but these companies suck shit. They're really bad. They're like
parts of the reasons why no, you can afford your
health care. But also the reason they're evil isn't because
they make vaccines.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
And this is a this is a complicated sort of
tension to manage. And if you read a lot of
the media coverage of this so far, NPR has a
just fawning article over RFK Junior.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
That's like, Oh, he's gonna like cut through the bureaucratic
red tape with his controversial things and like help treat
chronic disease. And no, he's an anti vaxxer. He's very
hardline anti vaxxer. I also want to read this absolutely
insane thing that he said about COVID being a I'm
(08:09):
just gonna read this. I don't know how to preface this.
COVID nineteen, there is an argument that is ethnically targeted.
COVID nineteen attacks certain races disroportionately. COVID nineteen is targeted
to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are
most immune are Oscanazi, Jews and Chinese. Oh, we don't
know whether it was deliberately targeted or not, but there
are papers out there that show the racial and ethnic
(08:31):
different impact.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
Oh oh no, that's that's not what those papers are
trying to say.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
No, And I will also say this, one of the
things that you can just you know something very bad
is about to happen is when someone uses the word
Chinese and noun you were about to hear the most
racist shit you've ever heard in your entire life.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Well, not to mention as Kanasi juice.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Oh yeah, yeah, And so you know what those actually whatever,
which to briefly talk about what those studies were actually saying,
is like, well, there were certain communities that were hit
worse by COVID, and there's certain communities that were hit
less by COVID, And that largely has to do with
things like income and how much you're forced to like
go work, read the plague.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Living conditions, class, poverty, where you live, gentrification. There's lots
of aspects.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
How strong your anti vax movement is sure definitely another one.
Speaker 4 (09:19):
Not to mention, just like medicalized racism, which is a
massive problem in the American health care industry.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Oh yeah, and RFK Junior not going to make that better.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
No, I don't have an inkling that's going to be
on the top of his priorities beyond nationalizing essentially chicken
pox parties instead of vaccines.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, okay, So RFK Junior has been playing the world's
most obvious shell game with the media, which the media,
I don't know, a lot of press outlets are just
sort of rolling over for Trump right now. And so
he's been playing this game where he's been telling the press, oh,
I'm not going to take vaccines away from everyone, from anyone,
and it'll be fine. And like we know that he
(09:59):
thinks in fact, scenes cause autism, Like he just says
this all the time.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
He has promoted books about that.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Yeah. Yeah, so like you know, we know that he
is anti vax that here he spreads anti vax propaganda.
We know that he spent a bunch of money doing this,
specifically also in minority communities. So there's a lot of
dangers here, some of which we're going to get into
more when we go into what specific agencies can sort
of fuck with stuff. But one of the biggest dangers
(10:26):
in the very short term is that he is now
in control of what is effectively the US's medical science apparatus,
and he can use this to spread all of the
anti vax horseshit that has been spreading through like less
official channels before this. I think it's worth remembering that
this whole anti vaccine craze started with one guy getting
(10:49):
one shitty paper published in the journal Lancet, and the
reporting on that in the media frenzy around that was
enough to turn the ACTI vaccine movement from like ten
people into a worldwide movement that has killed unbelievable numbers
of people. And the reason that's true is because if
an official authority tells you like that this vaccine isn't safe,
(11:10):
people will believe it. And he's going to be able
to use the National Institutes of Health, He's going to
be able to use the CDC, is going to be
able to use the journals that they publish. He's going
to be able to fill these people with his coronies.
It's going to take a lot of fighting, but he's
going to be able to use this to push anti
vaccine bullshit with even just leaving aside his regulatory abilities,
just the ability to like legitimize this complete horseshit as
(11:34):
actual science. Is going to do incoculable damage to this
country and is going to do incoculable damage to the
world because also one of the things that's under Health
and Human Services is the US's like international medical and
healthcare programs and sort of prevention programs that we do internationally.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
So this is all very bad. Do you know what's
not very bad?
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Oh? All of the ads that are going to play
right after I stopped talking. Surely none of them could
be slightly problematic.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
And we are back. Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
So when I was first writing this in the halcyon
days of last week, right, I had a whole thing
written here about how one of the other effects of
this is not just going to be the attack on vaccines,
It's going to be the destruction of basic virological research, right,
Like our basic research on viruses and on diseases is
going to be destroyed, you know. And this is because
the people that are of Kajunior is surrounding himself with
(12:39):
are the Lablik Truther people. And the Lablik Truthers have
convinced themselves to anyone who does any kind of research
with a virus is actually like creating a giant a
bioweapon that can at any moments like break containment and
kill the entire population. And you know, so I was like, okay,
I was putting together all this stuff, and then he
just straight up said that when he gets in charge,
(13:00):
he's going to go to the NIH and stop studying
infectious diseases for eight years first week.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
And I'm gonna call all the division heads and I'm
gonna call all the bureau chiefs, and I'm gonna say,
we're going to give drug development and infectious disease a break,
a little break, a little bit of a break for
about eight years, and we're gonna study chronic disease.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
He's just saying, straight up he's gonna try to stop
all infectious disease research for eight years.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Now'll think about diseases, right.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I talked to a virologist beforehand, who will will remain
nameless for security purposes, but their response was, hold on,
let me, let me, let me let me read this exactly,
because it's extremely funny. I would love if pathogens would
decide to give it a rest for eight years. Sadly,
I do not think pathogens will get the memo because
they're random micro organisms. That the big issue here, right is, Okay,
(13:57):
so we're stopping all infectious disease research. Now, you know
we're already I mean, we're still in like we we
gave up trying to end for the first pandemic that
like that would happen on the Trump administration, right, we
were our solution to this, And this is also part
of the problem of the decay of these institutions even
under Biden, was that, you know, we we gave up
(14:19):
trying to stop COVID. We're we just we just just
like maascer, it too much work. So you're all going
to die now, have fun.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Well, luckily there won't be another global pandemic anytime soon
because these things really only happened once a century.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
No, but you know, the consequent with this, right is
when the next pandemic hits, we're going to have an
administration that is sort of broadly anti vax who's everyone
around them is anti vaccine, and we're going to have
just destroyed our capacity to do invecious disease research.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Well and specifically this was a joke about the bird flu.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well the thing is right, So the next one could
be that fucking bird flu strain that's bluing, but it
could be something else too.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
We don't know, there could be other ones.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
We you know, so like if you go into like
the actual sort of causes of these things, which have
to do with things like factory farming and like increasing
human they call it human zoological contact, but it's like
humans going into places where there weren't people before and
there are a bunch of animals and coming in in
like increasing contact with the animals. Right, that's all stuff
(15:20):
that they're driven by by structural elements of the economic system,
and like our constant needs to develop land and the
way we've set up our meat agriculture, and that's not
stuff that like RFK Junior gives a shit about like
actually attempting to deal with. So instead we're gonna just
do whatever this infectious disease research stop is. And I
think this also aligns with a lot of the stuff
(15:41):
that all of that that you know, Trump's cabinet pointees
broadly have been talking about, right, which is this this
desire to just sort of kneecap and you know, sort
of purge the American bureaucracy.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
And I've been I've been seeing some very very.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Optimistic people going like, oh, well, you can't really do
a purge because like what competent people are good? Are
you gonna replace them with it's like no one. That's
the problem. That's the problem. Three there replaced with no one,
or they're gonna be replaced with like one of the
like hundreds of millions of weird anti vaccine freaks these
people have found have like cultivated over like a giant
global international network. Right, they have so many crank doctors.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
We're not gonna be like governed by like a conspiracy
theory cabinet, which is kind of what it's looking like. Yeah,
you're just gonna be governed by the Fox and Friends
weekend host segments team.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
And oh boy, yeah, And I will say, you know,
this is all going to be very bad. I do
want to do a little bit of panic calming, which
is I've seen some people freaking out about the potential
of Urca Junior just sort of destroying the American food
system by just implementing a total ban on fertilizers and pesticides,
(16:52):
And could he do that in theory maybe, but that
one I don't think is really likely to happen because
if he does, if he tries to do this, he
is immediately going to face like one of the most
ferocious lobbies in the entire history of American politics, which
(17:12):
is the American like, I guess you would call him
the farm lobby, but really it's the American big ag
like big agricultural lobby.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
Yeah, it's the agricultural lobby. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
And like you are about to face like the power
of fucking Bayer Monsanto.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
They are.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
They are a ferocious opponent. If you try banning their pesticides,
they are going to come through. They already hate him
because he's already he's like has sued them over a
bunch of stuff over the years. And the thing about
the combination of companies that make chemicals for stuff and
also the giant farming conglomerates who who run most of
America's food production, is that unlike, for example, the farmer lobby,
(17:48):
the farmer lobby is very powerful, but his power is
sort of dispersed over over a.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Broad geographic area.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
It's it's not like centralized very well, which which makes
them sort of weaker in an attempt to like stop
our junior. The thing about the farm lobbies that they're
not There are a lot of plane states. We're just
straight up their senators and it doesn't matter which party
you elect. Your senator is just a cutout for like
the agricultural lobby. Yeah, and those people work together, right,
Like they have worked together, they will work together. They
(18:15):
caucus together all the time in order to get agricultural
subsidies and stuff. And these people are unbelievably powerful. They
are united political block in the Senate, and they can
bring the entire US governments screaching to a halt. So
that's not a fight. I don't really think that he
can win. But I mean there's still some kind of
(18:35):
chance that he tries to do something like this. But
on that one, and I've seen a lot of people
panicking about it, I think that one will probably be Okay.
That said, we're giving a guy who one of his
big things is that like the government's been like repressing
raw milk, and we're giving this guy control of the FDA.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Oh the raw milk people, Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
Well, and luckily there's been no FDA related fiascos this year,
which has led to thousands of food recalls that are
incredibly challenging to keep up with. And now the joke
here is that there actually has been massive FTA fuck
ups which actually has led to thousands of food recalls
which actually are pretty challenging to keep up with because
(19:18):
oh boy, our whole regulatory state was kind of got
it the past eight years and it is still recovering.
And the deregulations have led to massive food foreign illness
failures in the production scene. So yeah, that's that's been happening.
I'm sure one of you has been affected by this.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah, And you know, I think there are some people
who tend to read the way that RFK Junior talks
about like we need eliminate like toxins from the food
supply or whatever, and read that as, oh, he's gonna
like try to do more agriculture regulation and oh, all
rain has been eaten by worms, like that is his
brain is a bunch of conspiracy theories matched together. Like
(19:59):
that's not going to be how this plays out, unfortunately
for us.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, and I really think this is something to keep
in mind. Is anyone who is treating.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
This guy as like some kind of serious reformer of
US health policy, do not trust anything that they say,
right Like, keep notes of what fucking media outlets are
saying this right now, because with RFK Junior, a man
who says one absolutely like I said a thing earlier
about suspending research for infectious diseases.
Speaker 5 (20:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
He said that like Friday.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Last Friday, at an anti vaccine conference, he was on
on like Zoom.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
He says this shit literally all the time.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
And if you're a sort of journalist and you're treating
him as like a semi serious guy and not this
person like, you are not sort of qualified for the
task of covering what's going to be happening in this administration.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
I mean, really, the worst thing about RFK in my opinion,
is that he has ruined the Kennedy conspiracy search results.
If you google Kennedy conspiracy, it sucks now. Now it's
just RFK can spiracy theory beliefs that he has terrible.
It's ruined one of my great hobbies, which is trying
to find new JFK conspiracies.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
You know what else is ruining JFK conspiracies?
Speaker 4 (21:14):
Probably these ads, because my god, the more time I
have to spend looking at advertisements is less time I
could be reading about how JFK was secretly Okay, we
are back, miya. I would love to learn more about
(21:37):
RFK Junior if possible, or maybe some other random guy
who's also bad. What else do you have for me here.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Oh boy, we have from here adderall.
Speaker 4 (21:47):
Oh wow, one of my favorite prescription drugs. That's not true. Actually,
I'm actually not on stimulants. Everyone thinks just because I
talk fast and sound like this, I probably am on stimulants.
This actually isn't true. This is me completely sober. So
just to imagine how worse it would be if I
was on adderall.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, So okay, let's do adderall first and then we'll
talk about antidepressants. So, okay, if you've had to get
adderall and I'm actually not on it, somewhat miraculously, I
don't know, not miraculously whatever.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
It's not my favorite thing, not being on this.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
But you know, if you've tried to attain adderall or
something like viavants or one of the other sort of
treatments for ADHD, you have probably noticed that there's just shortages.
And there's two explanations for the shortage. If if you
read the stuff the Food and Drug Administration says, they're like, oh,
it's because of labor shortages at drug.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Manufacturing plants, and that's like not really the reason.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
The actual thing that's going on here is that so
these are technically like retricch to substances, right, in order
to produce substances like this, the DEA sets like a
quota of the amount of these drugs you were able
to produce in a year, And the DEA became absolutely
obsessed with like the fact that people were like getting
hold of other people's adderall and this made them absolutely
(23:00):
lose their fucking mind to start imposing these unbelievably draconian
production quotas on these stimulants, which is why there's been
a fucking shortage of them for like three years now.
It's it's worth noting. On the one hands, you know
that the FDA has kind of been trying to fight
the DA on this because the FDA is looking at
this and it's like, okay, so we just have a
(23:21):
bunch of people who have ADHD who can't get their mets,
and that can just straight up destroy your life. Like
getting getting taken off of one of these things immediately
is really really bad for you. And also like not
having executive function is real bad. But we have the
mild upside of the fact that DA isn't technically going
(23:42):
to be under RFK Junior's control, but.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Is it going to be under Christy Nomes Control.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Yeah, it's it's just this departments.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Okay, so it could maybe Gates. Well, maybe maybe Gates
because we have we have since learned that that Trump
has conceded that Gates might might not make it through
a Senate confirmation hearing. So we will still see if
these recents appointments are actually going to happen.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, so we don't know who's going to be running
the Department of Justice.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
But Comma, what we do know about RFK Junior is
this quote from futurism quote, I'm going to create these
wellness farms so they can go get off illegal drugs,
off opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs if
they want to to get off SSRIs, to get off bezos,
to get off adderall, and spend as much time as
(24:34):
they need three or four years if they need it,
learning to get reparented, to reconnect with communities. So, as
a lot of people, including futurism have pointed out, he
is framing this as if it's voluntary. But what this
is is instead of treating people for like mental health issues,
you send them to a labor camp to do organic
(24:54):
farming for the government and that's very bad.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
And it's also worth.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
Noting that these programs are be qute unquote voluntary, have
this sort of nasty way of suddenly becoming involuntary at
the moment someone's actually in power. So the worst possible
read of this, like the most bleak and dystopian read
of this, is that this is going to be implemented
as a method of solving the the indescribable human cost
(25:20):
of evicting tens of millions of people. One of the
things that will do was just absolutely obliterate our labor
supply for agriculture, right, because it turns out that the
people who actually know how to do agriculture work is
not the white planters who fucking own the farms. So
this is the thing that could be used to try
to replace that labor.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Right, I.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
Don't know how much I think that specific one is
going to happen. It's unclear how you could use the
power of the state to do this, right, There's not
a direct path.
Speaker 4 (25:51):
Yeah, this seems this seems really this seems really goofy.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Frankly, Yeah, Like I've seen some panic over it, and
it's like, I, I mean, maybe that's a like I
don't know. Thing that's like a like I don't know.
We're in like year six of the Trump of the
second Trump administration, and like.
Speaker 4 (26:08):
Yeah, I really don't see how they can even get
anywhere close to the numbers for like a voluntary drug
like rehab program that puts you into like agricultural farm work,
that that's not going to replace any of the missing
farm labor.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
No, no, it won't work.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Right even if you could do the compulsory labor thinking
there's not just simply aren't enough people right to do it.
And also agricultural labor is skilled work, right, like, yeah,
you actually have to know what you're doing. But comma,
I will, I will mention you know, as this is
kind of this isn't unlikely but technically possible thing to happen.
The thing that's more likely to happen is that this
(26:46):
is a good time to mention that one of the
organizations that's under how the Human Services is the Substance
Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and there are a
lot of ways using this administration and also just cooperating
with the because again we have to remember this, the
DA is just unbelievably pissed off at the thought of
like a single person getting their prescription. So I don't
(27:07):
think it will be hard for RFK Junior to find
his allies in the Justice Department to intensify the crackdown
that's already been happening on on things like on things
like adderall and on things like the antidepressants, because you know,
there's a whole other range of conspiracy theories that when
we've covered this on the show, right that I have
to do with, like people who think that, like, oh,
all all the mass shooters are on antidepressants or whatever,
(27:28):
and that kind of stuff is that kind of thinking
is incredibly powerful, and there's a real chance that we
are about to see a bunch of people who believe
that shit suddenly in control of a bunch of the
agencies they are supposed to be doing drug regulations. There
are other things that we can see him do. He's
going to have some authority over approving new vaccines, which
(27:48):
is real bad. It's gonna be hard for him to
just like I don't like, he can't just like do
a vaccine ban. But what he can do is you
can also fuck with people's insurance covering vaccinations, and he
can fuck with like to what extent they're recommended by
the government.
Speaker 4 (28:01):
This is really a upsetting for the potential like HIV
vaccine that's oh like nearing its completion.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
We're going to get to that that. Hold on, give it,
give it one second, because we're getting too that.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
No, okay, so before we get to the fact that
our FI Junior is an HIV AIDS denialist, we need
to point out one more thing he can do, which
is that he can use the Office of the Inspector
General as a weapon to you know, I mean it
is the Office of the Inspector General. And like the
regular the legal and regulatory capacities of the other agencies
under Health and Human Services, are they supposed to be
(28:34):
a thing that you can use to go after drug
companies for like making vaccines. No, will he be able
to do it, probably because we are about to enter
a a era of like law fair and like what
is it isn't considered legal? That is going to make
the past like eight years seem like the most functional
(28:55):
democratic regime the world has ever seen. So we're probably
going to see that, and we're all going to see
the effects of RFK Junior's HIV AIDS denihilism, and this
shit is so I don't know if people even remember this,
but there was a whole like one of the earlier
kind of anti VAXX conspiracy movements was about HIV not
(29:19):
being the cause of AIDS. And it's been so long
since this has been a public thing that I think
most people have sort of forgotten about it. I think
Dave Gruel is probably the most famous one of these guys,
but he was in this camp of people who thought
that like AIDS was cosmy malnutrition. OURFKG junior not in
that camp RFKA junior, in an even worse camp of
(29:39):
people who were just like, oh, yeah, no, it's because
like gay people were doing poppers.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
That like that's his actual thing, right, he thinks that
you think it was poppers?
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Yeah, he thinks it's because of just literally like quote
the gay lifestyle is why HIV. Haven't this kind of
shit wiped out in entire generation of query people. Our
best hope here is that he's forgotten about most of
this and is on to more and new, like just
gets sidetracked on his other conspiracies. Then it's just gets
(30:10):
obsessed with raw milk or whatever. But yeah, this this
could be really, really fucking bad for if he actually
decides that this is one of the issues he's going
to focus on. Right, He's now in charge a bunch
of the of a bunch of the agencies that like
helps people fucking deal with this, right because agv aids now,
you know, getting it is on a death sentence, Like
you can live, you can live a perfectly functioned, normal
(30:31):
life as long as you have the right medical care.
And there's as as Garrett was talking about earlier, there's
there is a pretty promising vaccine that could fucking stop
this shit. Right, But if this is something that he
remembers and he focuses on it, there's a real chance
of him using his power to fuck with it because
he is a kind of homophobic that like up until
(30:52):
really two or three years ago, had kind of like
mostly vanished from like the mainstream, even from sort of
like the heart, like the homophobes tended to have different
homophobia now than like this shit.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
Yeah, this is like a classic eighties nineties homophobia.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And at this point also we need to mention that again,
one of the officers that he's now in charge of
is the Office for Civil Rights, the OCR which is cool.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
Like we've talked about.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
On our episodes about transpolicy, He's I don't know. RFK
Junior is kind of one of those people where it's
like it's not clear to me if like his heart's
really in the anti trans stuff. He says all of
the most hideous anti transshit, right, But that's also like
it's also a pretty recent position that he's adopted.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
You mean, yeah, same thing with Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah, but now that might not matter, right, Sure.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
I'm just saying that these are more recent changes from them. Yeah, yeah,
it kind of reflect a growing shift in politics for
like the GOP and their and their base. Yeah, whereas
like historically Trump has has felt fine sexually harassing trans
women yep, yep, because of their women, because of misogyny,
you know, yeah anyway.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
But you know, but our issue here is that the
Office of Civil Rights is the office that you're supposed
to that that's supposed to be the thing that stops
discrimination in healthcare. Oh okay, And in fact, this is
the organization that the Biden administration had just left trans
people to them, Bracy of where I like, if your
healthcare got band, you're supposed to like submit a complaint
to the ocr so like it's not like an incredibly
(32:19):
functional agency right now, right, but it's about to get
a lot worse. There's a couple other things that I
should mention before we close out here that are I mean,
you could do a full episode on in and of themselves,
but there's just so much shit here. One of them
is that he's also like anti fluoride in drinking water.
Speaker 4 (32:37):
Yes, yes, yes, Now.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
This is one where I don't know how much power
is gonna have to do this because a lot of
fluoride stuff is done at the local level.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Well luckily for our friends of Bortland, and this won't
affect them at all because there already is no fluoride
in your drinking water yep.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
So our dental health is just fucked because of this.
He's probably going to use. This is gonna be another
bully pulpit thing where he uses his position to push
anti fluoride shit. And I think the last thing I
want to end on is just one of the like cruel,
petty things that he's probably going to be able to do.
Is one of the like bugbears of the right is
that like people on food stamps aren't eating healthy enough food,
(33:15):
and so we're probably gonna see a bunch of these
just really hideous restrictions out of what you can buy
with with snap benefits.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
Well, and the rest of these guys also just want
Snap benefits and welfaret to also just like go down
the toilet entirely.
Speaker 2 (33:29):
So yeah, so they're trying to make them as unusable
as possible. And again it's like, okay, so like if
you can only buy on like fresh fruit with this
and you live in a food desert, yeah, because you're poor,
what the fuck you?
Speaker 4 (33:39):
You know, right, It's just it's just compounding classism.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, And the general trend of this is things are
either going to get monumentally worse or merely sort of worse.
Speaker 4 (33:50):
I do love those two options.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, when your best chance is your hope, you're hoping
the brain worms ate the part of his brain that
remembered this specific conspiracy, you're in real trouble.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
I mean, RFK Junior is so emblematic of like the
type of like democrat, kind of wingnut hippie environmental guy
who then slowly has been pivoting to like the right
wing conspiracy sphere. Like you see this with a lot
of like you know, like hippie moms from like the
nineties right who had very like you know, fluoride beliefs,
vaccine beliefs, like all this type of stuff that was
(34:23):
kind of more associated with this like kind of like
slightly conspiratorial wing nutty section of like the left. And
how much that entire sphere has been totally eaten by
the right and now it's a pretty like successful and
reliable voting block for them. And this has only become
more the case under Trump's first term. Yeah, and now
we are seeing it again with these types of guys
(34:45):
not just on like Facebook comments sections, but now actually
like heading up entire departments of state.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
And it's also worth mentioning that part of the reason
this stuff happens is because it's really profitable. The anti
vaccine lobby, and it is a lobby, has an unbelievable
amount of money. You see a lot of people pivot
towards it. I'm going to close this out by yelling
at there's a media organization called grey Zone, which if
you've been involved in anti Palestine activism you've probably seen
some of their reporting. They are also like pivoted into
(35:13):
this kind of anti vaccine stuff. And you know, you
remember remember at the top what I talked about Jay Badachaira,
who's that anti lockdown fanatic who's going to be in
charge of the National Institutes of Health. He is a
guy that, like Grey Zone, interviewed on their fucking website
and put out a bunch of articles in support of
his anti lockdown stuff. Right, And so this is something
(35:34):
that we've been seeing for the last four years, is
a lot of people who are supposed to be leftists
pivoting towards anti vax stuff. To be door is another
example of this. Yes, yes, literally purely because it makes
you a lot of money. And now that now these
grifters just have their guy in office, and all of
us are going to have to live with the consequences
of it unless unless we stop this jackass from being
(35:56):
put into office, which is not impossible. It's it's it's
not without hope. This guy has a lot of enemies,
both among like the people and also in corporate America.
Speaker 4 (36:08):
So and also in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
That's true, that's true. He has many enemies. The families
of the dead carcasses he draws around.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
Well, and the families of the microbials in those carcasses
which have warmed their way literally into his brain.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, it could happen Here is a production of cool
Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit
our website fool zonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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