September 11, 2025 • 42 mins
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell parses Trump’s allies trying to cope with Trump’s obvious ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Former HHS Secretary Xavier Beccera details the dangers of his former office being turned into a fever swamp of conspiracies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and oracles. Larry Ellison surpasses Elon Musk
as the world's richest person. Heartwarming. We have such a
great show for you today. MSNBC's own Laurence O'Donnell stops
(00:21):
by to talk to us about Trump's allies trying to
cope with Trump's obvious ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Then we'll
talk to former AHHS Secretary Javier Visserah about the dangers
of his former office being turned into a fever swamp
up conspiracies. But first, the stories the media is missing.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Mai.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
As we're taping this, we have news that we still
do not know the outcome of that is very, very disturbing.
That Turning Point USA's head Charlie Kirk, has been shot
in Utah and is in critical condition. Our hearts obviously
go out to his family. And this is really really disturbing,
(01:03):
disturbing stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Let me just say that violence is always bad, never good,
never ever ever ever ever good. No one should ever
engage in any violence for any reason. It's not a
solution to anything, and it doesn't matter who is being
targeted at left, right, center. Violence is never good, and
(01:26):
you know, this is so bad. This is so bad.
This is so bad because even if you don't agree
with Charlie Kirk, he is a human being with children
and parents, and we don't do that to other human beings.
But more than that, it's bad because there will be
consequences of this that we can't yet put our fingers on.
(01:47):
And so as much as this is terrible, just in
the face of it, because this is never okay, and
because he has these children who will now you know,
we don't know what's happened, but it's a trauma for
the entire family. Even if he survives, which we all
pray he does, it is just absolutely not okay. And
(02:08):
you know, political violence but gets more political violence. So
this is terrible. Our prayers are with his family, his wife,
his children, his siblings, his parents. This is just this
is just a horrendous, horrendous thing, and all of us,
you know, you cannot agree with someone and still desperately
(02:29):
want them to be okay, And that is how I
feel right now, is that it will be better for
everyone on this planet if Charlie Kirk is better and
comes out of this okay, and that we never ever
ever see political violence as a solution to anything ever. Again. Look,
things get heated, but at the end of the day,
violence is never, ever, ever ever the answer.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
This is really, really, really awful, and I hope for
the best for his family Somali. Of course, just as
Kavanaugh claimed that Americans could sue over encounters with ice,
and people are very bad about this.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, honestly, it's the way America should be. We are
a country filled with lawyers and lawsuits, and you know what,
Kavanaugh is right, if somebody hurts you, you should be
able to sue them. So today I'm going to go
along with my buddy justice by Kavanaugh and say good
for him. You know, if somebody hurts you, you should
be able to sue them. That is the American way. Bravo, Brett.
(03:33):
You are correct well.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Coming out of the RNC last year, a lot of
people felt like a lot of the rhetoric was almost
like that police would have impunity to just do whatever
they wanted. So this is one of those rare signs
where the court is comforting me and patting me on
my little head and saying, don't worry, little buddy, let's.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Make sure that lawyers make money.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Court reform be damped.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Here was what is dad court reform? So there is
money to be made in the law, and for that
I have a lot of respect for the Supreme Court. Lawyers, lawyers,
more lawyers.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
So by just one in four Americans believe the Trump
administration vaccine shifts are based on science. According to a
Reuter's ibsassible, that seems real, real, beat.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
It seems too high that twenty five percent of all
people think that what's happening in our federal government is
based on science. It ain't based on science, baby.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Can I give you a counter argument?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I always go back to the twenty two percent that
still thought George W. Bush was doing a great job
by the end of his term. That always just sticks
with me that this is somewhere near rock bottom.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Look like this is so bad. I want to talk
about why this anti vax stuff is so bad, because
what we're doing here is like it has taken decades
and decades to get people in America to understand that
science staves lives. And what has happened since COVID is
that that the exact opposite has been drilled into a
(05:04):
group of people from the right in such a destructive
way that like, it's hard to put the genie back
in the bottle here, and I'm not sure we actually can.
And this is going to be really, really bad, and
it's going to We're going to see a lot of
really just bad effects from this. And you know, we
(05:27):
talked to the head of HSS today, the Health and
Human Services HHS, the former head under Biden, secretary of
Bisera and secretary of Bissara, said that it was just
that we're going to see more people get sick, We're
going to see more viruses, and then there's this wild card,
a virus mutation. And when these viruses, like you know,
(05:50):
a virus like chicken pox or chicken pox not an example,
measles almost eradicated, so it wasn't going around, but now
measles is going around. So what happens, just like with COVID,
is that measles will then change, It will grow, it
will get better and better at being in different hosts
(06:10):
and getting people sicker, and it'll get more contagious and
more virulent, and we're going to have new strains of measles,
and just like with all sorts of other stuff, we're
opening the door to like a seemingly catastrophic pandemic. If
some people don't get vaccinated, it means that the rest
of us can get sicker, believe it or not, even
(06:30):
though the rest of us get vaccinated. So it's really bad. Also,
there are these insurance problems, you know, where people are
not going to have their vaccines paid for by insurance.
So this is all super bad. We're going to get
less healthy. And by the way, there's a very high,
non zero chance we see American life expectancy go down again.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
That sounds about right.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Laurence O'Donnell is the host of MSNBC's Lawrence o'donald's show.
Welcome Lawrence to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Thank you very much. This is the earliest I've been
on a video camera, and well, I guess since the
last time I did Morning Joe. But there, of course
there that comes with several pounds of makeup, so I
feel protected there when that happens.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But I wanted to ask you one of the things
that I thought was incredible this morning, which I'm very
curious to know your thoughts on. I was looking at
the It was actually in the morning, I went to
Morning Joe, and before I go I listened to these
two very obnoxious politics sort of B to B podcasts,
and then I listened to all of the Washington Post
(07:47):
because it's very ad it's basically all Ai narrated. So
as I was listening to it on my way, I
looked at the homepage and it had Israel striking Qatar
or trying to strike the negotiators and the peace talk,
and then it had Russia sending drones to Poland, and
(08:08):
I thought to myself, I thought Donald Trump was going
to end for all foreign wars.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, you know, this is funny because I was just
literally minutes ago I was thinking this that because of
exactly what you just said that it turns out no
one is afraid of Donald Trump. No one, you know,
no one out there in the world is afraid of
Donald Trump. And his whole sales pitch is you know,
I'm such a tough guy, and I'm an international tough guy,
(08:37):
and Putin will bend to my will on the first day.
On day one. Okay, so day one was when Putin
was supposed to just do whatever Donald Trump said, which Oh,
by the way, was Vladimir I want you to win
the war? How can I help you win the war
by abandoning Zelenski? And even with that willingness to go
(09:02):
all the way to the Putin side, nothing could happen
because even that wasn't enough for Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
And and and then you see, you know what Benjamin Nenna,
who's willing to do certainly knowing that the Trump administration
would oppose it.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
And so the way Netneou decides to do that is
apparently according to the news accounts so far, who knows
that this is true? But well, we just won't tell him,
you know, we we just won't tell him. We'll do it,
and then Trump will have to deal with it after
the fact. And because because Trump's a moron, uh, you know,
he'll he'll deal with it moronically. And and that's that's
(09:41):
your guarantee. Like, that's your guarantee. You know, if you're
Nah's nothing to worry about. He's a moron, so it
won't matter. Nothing matters with Trump. There is there there
are no gravitational forces and it and there are no consequences.
And this is what has changed so dramatically in American
(10:02):
government and now extending out into American life. The notion
that there are no consequences and if Trump says X,
and then why happens? There will be a consequence from Trump. No,
there won't, No, there won't. Or you know, if Trump
breaks the law, there will be a consequence. No, there won't.
Speaker 6 (10:24):
You don't.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
So you know, and it goes right down the road,
you know, And then this story. You know, if Jeffrey
Epstein gets arrested for you know, child trafficking and raping children,
that'll be the end of the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing.
And the answer is, no, it won't. Jp Morgan's gonna
hang in there because he only got arrested once, and
(10:45):
he only got convicted in Florida, and he only got
jail time where he didn't have to actually spend the
day at jail. He could go to his office and
continue to rape children and then just sleep at the
jail facility. I mean, that's not a world of concert quins.
And so you know, you've got an entire you know
generation coming up now in high school, you know, and
(11:09):
junior high school, high school, college who've lived through a decade,
you know, over a ten year period now of no consequence,
you know, I you know, Trump can say, you know,
John McCain was a failure, you know, in Vietnam because
he got captured, and there's no consequence to that at all.
And we all thought, I thought, you know, that's the
(11:29):
end of the Trump campaign, you know, twenty fifteen where
he said that about John McCain. By anyone's definition, you know,
someone who behaved heroically in war, that okay. In American politics,
there's a very big consequence for that. And the consequence
is your political career is over right, And so you
(11:50):
know this, imagine you know, being twenty five now, right,
you from age fifteen have been exposed to a constant
flow of no consequence with a with a parental structure
one hopes that's trying to impress you with the notion
of consequence, and with an educational structure that is trying
(12:15):
to impress you with the notion of consequence. If you
don't do your homework, you won't do well, you know,
in your future pursuits in life because of the following
sequences of consequence. Boy, I'd have a tough time if
I were in the child rearing business now or the
or the educational business. Now trying to impress on the
(12:38):
entering generation of voters that they live in a world
of consequence.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
With Biden world. He would struggle so much because it
felt as if Netnaho did not, would not cleave, would
not you know, Biden would say you can't do this,
and nen Yaho would do it, and you there was
a feeling that there was just enough, he had enough
political capital in America so that he could do stuff
that no other country could. Now Trump is aligned with
(13:08):
him as possible, and I mean, I don't know how
Trump continues to be a strong to appear even as
a strong man to the MAGA base while being so
humiliated by Nan Yahoo.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
You know, Justice Sonya Somoyer said something very important on
that very important public debate form the view I personally
love when the venues who were not created to bring
new wisdom actually do deliver it. I mean, one of
my favorite moments of I think my high school years
(13:40):
occurred on The MERV Griffin Show. And this is a
slight diversion.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I suppose IRV was a friend of my mom, so
I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
And by the way, kids look up the MERV Griffin show.
It was one of those Tonight Show style shows, but
it was really the most frivolous of them all and
kind of goofy with the goofiest set of guests, and
therefore or it had a possible chemistry that was really unpredictable.
But Carol O'Connor was on at the beginning of the
(14:10):
second season of All in the Family, and Carol O'Connor
Archie Bunker was the biggest TV star on planet Earth.
That show exploded in its first year.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
It was gigantic.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
So Carol O'Connor is telling MERV MERV Griffin, who is
Irish Carol O'Connor, who is Irish American, that Carol O'Connor
has spent the summer, the hiatus of his series, at
the Abbey Theater in Dublin doing a play, which is
where Carol O'Connor got a lot of his early training
(14:43):
as a young American actor in Dublin. And so MERV
Griffin says, Oh, it must have been the return of
the conquering hero. They must have been so excited for you.
It just must have been so incredible, And Carol O'Connor says,
IRV the Irish would always prefer you to come back
(15:03):
of failure. And in one sentence, my entire culture was
explained to me. I suddenly understood everything that surrounded me,
from little league, you know, to high school, to college
and beyond. It was like, oh, thank you, thank you,
(15:24):
Carol O'Connor, I get it. And so, you know, the
last place on Earth I expected to learn the single
most important thing that I hadn't yet learned and put
into words about my culture was right there. On the
murv Griffin Show Anyway, yesterday, Sonya Silamayor on the View
talked about the responsibility that voters have to educate themselves,
(15:50):
and she used the word educate. She talked about, you know,
read my descent, read the opinions that I'm dissenting again,
educate yourself. And she did not say educate yourself as
a voter. She left out the word voter, but we
can all insert that word there. And when you hear
(16:12):
what she says, you realize she's saying something hugely important
that the American political news media completely ignores, and that
is the simple fact that voters do not do that.
And she said very clearly there, it's your responsibility and
the founders thought it was your responsibility to do that.
(16:33):
They thought you would do that, and it's going to
be available to you, and you know, you can go
to the website now and read it all. And so
you have this country of completely uneducated voters, by which
I mean they are uneducated about what they are voting about.
And then we ask why do they think X, or
(16:56):
why do they think why? Or why do they think
Trump is tough? Or why do they think whatever it
is they think, And it's like it's like, you know,
standing there, you know, in a in a high school
math class and asking why the kindergarten students don't understand this?
You know, it's like, well, you know, they don't have
(17:18):
the capacity. And so it's very very clear, you know
that voters across the board don't do anything close to
the share of homework that was expected of them in
the creation of this kind of democracy, and that Sonya
so myr wisely said, you know, they should do. And
(17:39):
so you know, the explaining the Trump voter and the
loyalism to Trump is to me, you know, a pretty
uninteresting avenue that is statistically hopeless. You know, it's kind
of like explaining the consistency of cement. Well, you know,
it's it's pretty solid. It's not he's going to stay there.
(18:01):
It's not going to move, you know, and it's it's tragic,
you know, and it has tragic outcomes, you know, for
the country because because of the electoral College and because
of two senators per state, you live in a country
where stupidity can indeed rule, and currently does.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Mike Johnson you may remember him, he is technically the
speaker in the House of the House, but basically only
in name, had this incredible split screen that I want
to ask you about. So he says Donald Trump was
an FBI informant, something unbelievable to say for any number
of reasons. And then last night he said, oh, you know,
(18:46):
I got mixed. He sort of backed away from that.
We also saw him later yesterday say that he does
not think this signature that the birthday book is real.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Uh huh, you know, I mean, so, you know, this
is the great tragic decline of the Republican Party. And
it's and let's remember it's just the Republican Party. You know,
the Democrats don't do this. When you know, Robert Menendez
got arrested this second second time, by the way, but
(19:18):
when he got arrested and the gold bars were shown publicly,
you know that were found.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
You know in this house.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
You couldn't find a Democrat to stand up and say
those aren't gold bars, those are not gold bars. They
were not found in his house. That's not a Mercedes
Benz that you know his second wife got. You know,
that's not what that is. And so this is a
one party illness. It's unique to them. You know. There
were plenty of Democrats who were highly critical of Bill
(19:50):
Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal led to his impeachment,
and they were highly critical of him along the way
of the road to impeachment. And there were a number
of Democratic senators who voted the description of a vote
impeachment vote in the Senate. The verdict is misstated. But
(20:10):
they voted no on the question of the question that's
in front of them is the question to remove him
from the presidency. That's the actual question, and they voted no.
Not defending his conduct. They said what he did was wrong,
what he and his perjury was wrong. However, it doesn't
rise to the level of the need to remove the president.
(20:34):
Plenty of Democrats voted that way and made speeches that way.
There were other Democrats who were very defensive of Bill
Clinton all the way through completely. But what you saw
was this mixed bag of our democratic president is in trouble,
and there was a mixed bag of reaction among Democrats,
and people didn't condemn a Democrat for having a view
(20:56):
that was different from theirs, and the Republican view of
it was largely anti Clinton, almost entirely anti Clinton. Say
in the House, it was you know, the Democratic Party
there showed you that if you show them evidence in
the case of Bill Clinton, in the case of Department ends,
in other cases they have consistently shown you, they will
(21:17):
not deny the evidence that you have shown them. They
won't deny it. So these people will will simply say
to you, oh, that's not a signature on the birthday
on the birthday note, and it's like, well, I think
it is. And you know, by the way, you know
what a handwriting expert is, it's you, it's the humanod.
(21:38):
There's no such thing.
Speaker 6 (21:40):
There is no such thing.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
There are people who are presented in judicial processes as
handwriting experts, and what they do is they have to
take the witness stand and they get questioned extensively by
the lawyers on both sides and then by the judge,
and only at the end of about a half an
hour sometimes an hour of questioning does the judge declare
and accept that this person's opinion on handwriting will be
(22:05):
allowable as testimony. And and so that person is then
allowed to say, in my experience, this looks like that signature.
So we're all handwriting experts, so we're all allowed to
look at the at the signature, and I can look
at it and say, yep, that's exactly the same signature
that I got on a note from Trump in twenty sixteen,
(22:27):
where he signed at Donald one word, which is a
different way when he than when he signs his full name.
He extends out the final line, you know, of the
final the D in Donald in a peculiar way that
is present in the in the Epstein signature. And so
you know, there would have been you know, Thomas mass
he said, you know, well, the Republicans said, yeah, it
(22:48):
looks like a signature. Yeah, that's the same. That's that's
the same reaction to that, And you know, the Republican
Party has collapsed into this cultism. That's that's really tragic,
and uh, it's hard to see, you know, even with
when Trump leaves the scene, how they would come out
(23:08):
of that or why would they come out of that.
They have proven to their voters that they absolutely can
deny any fact they want to deny, and their voters
will hang on.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Lawrence. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I think I succeeded in not really responding to any
of the questions, and.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
You did it exactly exactly. Well there, you know, I want.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
To just I just want to say to the to
the audience, I just want to agree with you, those
of you who got lost in my answers. It's pretty
obvious that I did too, and so we share that experience,
audience and speaker together. That's our bond, is that when
I speak on this podcast, you the audience, and I
(23:50):
will both get lost together.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I think it's very I think that the historical information
about Bill that people don't you know, because we are
the United States of Amnesia. We know nothing, we remember nothing.
Even the smartest of us are the United States of Amnesia.
That's the best case scenario that this kind of stuff
is actually really important and it just got me thinking
(24:15):
about the senator. I wanted to go back and look
at who said what about Bill Clinton? Because I thought
that was interesting.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
I don't know if you go that far. Eric Adams, Democratic
Mayor of New York City. He gets caught. He gets
caught in this scandal where he's accused of bribery and
no Democrats defend them, and no Democrats lie about it.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, and he continues to be just a horrendous politician.
Believe it like that. Thank you so much. I really
appreciate you. Thank you, thank you. Javier Basarah is the
former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. Welcome
(24:57):
back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (24:59):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
This is an incredibly fucked up moment for American Health
and Human Service. I'd love you to talk first about
what you thought when they talked about putting RFK in
this job and your expectations of what would happen and
what happened, and sort of start with that.
Speaker 7 (25:18):
So, Mollie, I'd say the first thing that came to
mind was your guard goes up and will he actually
moved to undermine vaccines?
Speaker 6 (25:28):
And you have to believe that once you get in.
Speaker 8 (25:31):
The position as secretary where your job is to improve
the health of the country.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
Now you'll figure out what you do if you're not
a big fan of.
Speaker 8 (25:38):
Vaccines, but you won't deny them, you won't make them
more difficult to get, you won't disparage them in ways
that raise concerns and lower confidence. Unfortunately, all of those
things have gone in just the way we did want
to see them go. And today you see fewer Americans
vaccin eighty and fewer Americans having access to vaccines at
(25:59):
a time when COVID is breaking out at the highest levels.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
Perhaps of this year.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
You had this very same job. You manage many elements
of the federal government, from recommendations to research, and I'd
love you to sort of tell us what you think
the most important element of the job is. The thing
that keeps me up to night about what RFK Junior
is doing is actually the research, like the mRNA research,
(26:26):
because mRNA it could be a cancer vaccine and I
think a lot of us are going to get cancer
and I would like to be able to be vaccinated
so I don't die from it. What are the things
that are like really what you're watching this being like,
oh my odd?
Speaker 6 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (26:42):
So I will say two things first and perhaps foremost
the Department of Healthy Human Services, which has the responsibility nationwide,
as I said, to make sure Americans are healthy and
save Our first job is to do essentially what President
John F. Kennedy said when he talked about lifting all boats.
HHS is there to make sure that with fifty states
(27:03):
that control their healthcare, because federal government doesn't control healthcare
under the constitution, every state gets to do healthcare as
they want, so fifty different ways of doing healthcare. Some
do well, some don't do it so well, and so
you can have differing results. HHS is there to make
sure all boats are lifted and that you don't have
boats that lag behind because some states decide.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
Not to do it right.
Speaker 8 (27:23):
That's critical because when you've got something like a pandemic,
you can't afford to have thirty states doing vaccination and
prevention right and twenty states not, because those twenty states
will have major infection that will spread to the other
thirty states. So lifting all boats that's perhaps the most
important thing to do. The second thing that you touched
on't is that AHHS is there to make sure that
(27:44):
we're moving where we need to go for the American
people on health is it the next best medicine for COVID,
is it the next best cure for cancer? Is the
next best way to address suicides? AHHS collects all that
data from all the parts of the country and tries
to provide the best data to everyone so everyone knows
(28:06):
where to go. That's why, by the way, today there
are fewer suicides occurring than in the past four or
five years, dramatic drop because for the four years that
we were in we focused on trying to really prevent
suicides by providing more mental health coverage, by making the
nine to eighty eight Suicide and Mental Health Prevention Hotline
available to everyone. We went out there and knew that
(28:28):
there was mental health crisis in this country, so we
attacked it. And when you do on a nationwide scale,
you have nationwide positive results. And so that's what we
have to continue. Whether it's the next medicine to cure cancer,
or whether it's the next way to prevent somemilic from
committing suicide or overdosing. We get better figure out ways.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So what are the things that he's cutting that like,
For example, cancer research seems like a big one. As
you're watching this, what are the things that he's cutting well.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
When you take a trillion dollars out of the Medicaid program,
which is healthcare for principally children and seniors. Remember about
half of all the deliveries of babies in this country
are covered through Medicaid. More than fifty percent of nursing
home stays around the country are covered by Medicaid for
(29:16):
those families. When you take a trillion dollars out of
the Medicaid program, you're going to hurt people who are vulnerable.
Speaker 6 (29:23):
That is not a way you make America healthy again.
Speaker 8 (29:26):
When you see the reductions in research for life saving
treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, you name it, folks are going
to die or die earlier, and we can't afford to
see that. When you've got the CDC, which is our
canary in the coal mine to alert the fifty States
of what might be coming down the pike, whether it's
covid av and fluid measles. When you take into account
(29:49):
the roles that the NIH, the CDC, Food and Drug Administration,
it's losing some of its best experts. FDA is responsible
to make sure that any meta and any medical device
that gets out there to the market in the market
for Americans is safe and effective.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I'm going to pause because you speak like a doctor
and not like a television person, and so I get distracted.
As someone who had the job last, I feel like
you are the person to talk about this. So when
you fire people from the FDA, that means our food
is not being tested the way it was right correct.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
Our nursing homes are not being inspected the way they should.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
When you cut Medicaid, that's going to mean rural hospital closures.
It's going to mean and people kicked off the system.
What else is it going to mean.
Speaker 8 (30:38):
We've already seen rural hospitals closing in states like Virginia.
California just reported a closing of a rural hospital here.
They don't get their Medicaid funding, they have no choice
go close. That means people in those rural communities don't
have a place to go.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
So he cut off this mRNA vaccine testing stuff, that means,
like all those research funding stops.
Speaker 8 (30:59):
Right, it means we stop testing the most viable, the
best way to keep people healthy and save them from
the COVID infection. And if we're not ready for the
next variant, it could be very dangerous, right, We're.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Definitely not going to be ready for the next very
was it? Man, We're on the Titanic, and it's like,
we're not going to get a good seed. But mRNA
vaccine testing, Like, give me the nuts and bolts of that,
Like does this mean like Harvard loses money? Like are
their government laboratories? Like where's this money coming from? And
what kind of trials are they canceling?
Speaker 8 (31:30):
We have a coordinated system for vaccinations, for testing vaccines.
Niah hast some of the capacity in its lab. Sometimes
we're going to some of the best universities for their
labs to do the research. But collectively, we work together
and we come up with the best vaccines. And as
you know, everybody knows, COVID is constantly mutating. The flu
(31:50):
virus is constantly mutating, and so we have to be
ready for what's coming at us, not what came at
us two years ago. If you get rid of the
research money that gets you ready for the next very variant,
you're not going to be saving lives.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Now. We're deeply, deeply fucked here. I want to disassemble
here just how fucked we are. So Like, for example,
there's the mRNA stuff, which means shutting down like looking
at COVID vaccines. And but then there's also longer uses
for mRNA vaccines. Then there's the food testing, there's the inspections,
there's that kind of stuff. I want you to talk
(32:23):
about the crazy Florida vaccine thing with the kids, because
this seems like next level fucked.
Speaker 8 (32:31):
I don't know how you explain Florida and how they
can tell parents you don't need to vaccinate your kids,
and we're not going to make it easier for you
to vaccinate your kids when pediatricians around the country are saying,
don't follow that guidance, When family care physicians are telling you,
don't follow that guidance, when the best medical experts when
it comes to diseases and vaccinations tell you, don't follow
(32:53):
that guidance.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
If I'm in Florida, I wouldn't follow Florida's guidance.
Speaker 8 (32:56):
If you want to keep your kids safe, do with
the doctors the medical professions that the experts tell you,
and that is get them vaccinated.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So what happened was the Secretary of Health and Human
Services of Florida, right, is that what it's called.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
I'm not sure what their agency is called, and the
their surgeon general as well as the honest.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Right, the Florida Surgeon General said, you don't have to
vaccinate your kids. You're not going to have a recommendation.
So that means though I want to take that apart
for a minute, because it means first that you can
go to public schools without having been vaccinated, right, yeah.
Speaker 8 (33:27):
It means you also have to pay money out of
pocket to get those vaccinations, which otherwise would be covered
by insurance or by Medicare or Medicaid.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
So that means when children are born in Florida and
mRNA vaccine will not be free.
Speaker 8 (33:41):
There's a good chance that in Florida, you won't have
access to it, or at least not at a reasonable
cost for that vaccine. And for a lot of families,
the kid doesn't look sick, they'll say maybe I can
go without the vaccine this year, and they take a chance.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
You don't want to risk your child's life.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
We have mandated in this country mRNA vaccines. I'm talking
about like measles, moms, polio, these vaccines. I mean, how
much of the population do you think is unvaccinated right now?
Speaker 6 (34:06):
Well, think about it, for measles.
Speaker 8 (34:08):
Most of the population in the country had been over
the course of many years getting vaccinated. But now you
see this movement against vaccination, and we saw the outbreak
in Texas and other parts of the country where even
children die. We hadn't seen this level of infection on
measles in decades, and all of a sudden's popping up.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Right and now measles had been eradicated essentially before this. Yeah,
so isn't that measles outbreak still going?
Speaker 6 (34:34):
I've seen reported cases.
Speaker 8 (34:36):
The difficulty is most of these cases are people or
kids who were unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, chances are you're
not becoming sick.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
No, of course not. But explain to us what happens
when herd immunity breaks, because I don't think people understand
right now even these measles outbreaks are only really for unvaccinated.
If you're vaccinated, you might have a tiny something really not.
But what happens when the system breaks down when.
Speaker 8 (35:04):
You stop having the immunity to that particular disease, And
you can get that immunity through the vaccination process, through
a vaccine, or by getting ill and surviving and then
having naturally developed the antibodies. That's what we call herd immunity.
When the population generally is covered one way or the
(35:25):
other with some level of immunity, but new kids are
born every year and some of that immunity starts to
wane after a while, and so periodically you may need
to get re vaccinated, as we have scene with COVID.
Usually the measles, it's been a vaccine that you haven't
had to do it over and over and over all
the time, the immunity stays at scale. Unfortunately, for kids
(35:47):
who've never gotten vaccinated, they're very susceptible, and we sought
children die in Texas.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
What we're going to see, if I'm right, is that
as people stop being vaccinated, these measles outbreaks are going
to be dead and dead layer and not just for
unvaccinated people. Right because once you start having this exposure
to measles, if you're elderly and vaccinated, if you're a
baby and vaccinated, it may not matter. If you're very
(36:15):
sick and vaccinated.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
You become more susceptible.
Speaker 8 (36:19):
And the difficulty is these viruses don't stay the same.
They continue to mutate, and they could mutate into a
form that can sustain itself far more against any vaccine
or natural immunity you might have.
Speaker 6 (36:34):
So if you.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
Allow that disease, that virus to continue to mutate, it
could take on a form that can surpass the immunity
that you have.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
And that's the risk that we have.
Speaker 8 (36:45):
But if we continue to have that generalized immunization naturally
or through the vaccine, we continue to protect everyone and
no one becomes too susceptible.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, but that's not what's going to happen here, right,
I mean, I think we're on the Titanic here. We
had the time for like why public health matters is over.
We're in the find out period. In my mind, the
question is trioge, like, how do we keep ourselves safe?
How do we keep people who are saying safe? Because
I don't think that there's any way you're going to
be able to convince those other people to take a
(37:17):
vaccine that they think is poison one of the other things. So, like,
there's the effect that he's having on people who are
vaccine has an end. There's the effect that the cutting
research is having on all of us in the future.
There's the effect of like food safety, what other stuff
(37:38):
am I missing here that's going to be affected. That's
like a second order effect or even a first order
effect that I don't think about it. It's a huge
agency with huge tentacles in every part of our life.
Part of the federal government is you don't know how
important it is until it's not working. So what else
am I missing here in this story?
Speaker 8 (37:55):
We haven't talked about the drug price negotiation that this
administration has now taken over.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
We did it last year.
Speaker 8 (38:03):
We were able to decrease the price of some of
the most expensive pharmaceutical medicines by up to eighty percent.
Drugs that Americans rely on but that just are very,
very expensive.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Started with insulin, right, thirty five dollars.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
Insulin, Yeah, insulin at thirty five dollars.
Speaker 8 (38:18):
Then we negotiated on drugs that were far more expensive,
in some cases in the thousands of dollars for treatment,
and we were able to bring the prices of those
first ten top ten costly drugs down, as I said,
sent some cases up to eighty percent. The administration. This
administration is supposed to be announcing soon the results of
its negotiations on the next fifteenth very expensive drugs.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
We'll see how well they do.
Speaker 8 (38:42):
Do they keep that march going where they're trying to
decrease the price significantly. This administration is also undermined something
that we don't think of in terms of healthy human services,
but it's within our jurisdiction, and that's how it start
the program for children to get an fairly start before
kindergarten where some parents, hottest income families can otherwise afford
(39:03):
good childcare. They are dismantling head Start in ways that
are going to impact not just the head Start programs,
but the families that are trying to get their children
into a good head start school.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, I mean head Start, food Stamps, Medicaid, those are
crazy numbers.
Speaker 8 (39:20):
Right, It's awful for those families who depend on it.
Why would you cut meals on wheels for seniors when
they try to go to senior citizen centers if that
may be their only decent.
Speaker 6 (39:30):
Meal they're going to get. That was also something that
was on the chopping block.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Did they cut meals on wheels?
Speaker 6 (39:36):
I believe my recollection was that they did. You'll have
to check the numbers for that.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Unbelievable. Are you disappointed that more people aren't calling for
RFK to step down, and what do you think the
move there is.
Speaker 8 (39:48):
I'm amazed that we haven't had a reset at HHUS,
given everything that's going on. I am amazed that we
haven't seen more people leave the agency, given how asked
and furious this administration is taking HHS in the opposite
direction of improving health for Americans. I'm shocked at how
many people in Congress are permitting the agency to be
(40:11):
gutted and for americans health to be put in jeopardy.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
But Donald Trump's got a grip on all these guys.
Speaker 8 (40:17):
Unbelievably bad incompetence is governing right now, and that's going
to hurt people.
Speaker 6 (40:22):
We'll see it when people die.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
The nightmare scenario is that like the resistant whatever that comes, Like,
doesn't that worry you the most?
Speaker 6 (40:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (40:33):
Or that rural hospital that was the only facility in
the region for a long ways a way that is
now closing. So when you've got that emergency, how do
they get you to a place that can keep you alive?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, wonderful.
Speaker 6 (40:48):
I'm sorry, was late, Oh normally, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
The moment.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Jesse Cannon, So, Molly, I know we've done much podcasting
about Oh, Judge Barrett isn't as bad as we thought
in some ways. But these comments here, these are the
ones that we expected when we were all awaiting the
incoming justice handmade to come around on the scene and
say some real, real choice stuff. I'm going to let
(41:17):
you be the bearer of bad news of what she
said here, because I can't even bring myself to pull
it out of my mouth today.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
I have a hot take. I'm not convinced this is
as bad.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
My little baby had to sleep.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Please, she says, the twenty second Amendment says you can
only run for two terms, Bear says, and she says true.
And he says, do you think that's cut and dry?
And she says, well, that's you know what the amendment says.
FDR had four terms. Many online were concerned that Barrett
had left room for interpretation, but I don't agree. Fuck it.
You know, she said, that's what the constitution said. The
(41:49):
guy is I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole,
but I'm going to say one thing to our listeners now.
It is so important that we stay sane in a
period like this, when things are very emotional and there's
a lot of feeling and a lot of stress and
a lot of anxiety. Just it's okay. He's not going
to run for another term. The guy is going to
(42:11):
go to Florida and play golf. Let's not go down
this rabbit hole. There's enough, like real tangible stuff to
worry about. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear
the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
(42:32):
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and oracles. Larry Ellison surpasses Elon Musk
as the world's richest person. Heartwarming. We have such a
great show for you today. MSNBC's own Laurence O'Donnell stops
(00:21):
by to talk to us about Trump's allies trying to
cope with Trump's obvious ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Then we'll
talk to former AHHS Secretary Javier Visserah about the dangers
of his former office being turned into a fever swamp
up conspiracies. But first, the stories the media is missing.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Mai.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
As we're taping this, we have news that we still
do not know the outcome of that is very, very disturbing.
That Turning Point USA's head Charlie Kirk, has been shot
in Utah and is in critical condition. Our hearts obviously
go out to his family. And this is really really disturbing,
(01:03):
disturbing stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Let me just say that violence is always bad, never good,
never ever ever ever ever good. No one should ever
engage in any violence for any reason. It's not a
solution to anything, and it doesn't matter who is being
targeted at left, right, center. Violence is never good, and
(01:26):
you know, this is so bad. This is so bad.
This is so bad because even if you don't agree
with Charlie Kirk, he is a human being with children
and parents, and we don't do that to other human beings.
But more than that, it's bad because there will be
consequences of this that we can't yet put our fingers on.
(01:47):
And so as much as this is terrible, just in
the face of it, because this is never okay, and
because he has these children who will now you know,
we don't know what's happened, but it's a trauma for
the entire family. Even if he survives, which we all
pray he does, it is just absolutely not okay. And
(02:08):
you know, political violence but gets more political violence. So
this is terrible. Our prayers are with his family, his wife,
his children, his siblings, his parents. This is just this
is just a horrendous, horrendous thing, and all of us,
you know, you cannot agree with someone and still desperately
(02:29):
want them to be okay, And that is how I
feel right now, is that it will be better for
everyone on this planet if Charlie Kirk is better and
comes out of this okay, and that we never ever
ever see political violence as a solution to anything ever. Again. Look,
things get heated, but at the end of the day,
violence is never, ever, ever ever the answer.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
This is really, really, really awful, and I hope for
the best for his family Somali. Of course, just as
Kavanaugh claimed that Americans could sue over encounters with ice,
and people are very bad about this.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, honestly, it's the way America should be. We are
a country filled with lawyers and lawsuits, and you know what,
Kavanaugh is right, if somebody hurts you, you should be
able to sue them. So today I'm going to go
along with my buddy justice by Kavanaugh and say good
for him. You know, if somebody hurts you, you should
be able to sue them. That is the American way. Bravo, Brett.
(03:33):
You are correct well.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Coming out of the RNC last year, a lot of
people felt like a lot of the rhetoric was almost
like that police would have impunity to just do whatever
they wanted. So this is one of those rare signs
where the court is comforting me and patting me on
my little head and saying, don't worry, little buddy, let's.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Make sure that lawyers make money.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Court reform be damped.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Here was what is dad court reform? So there is
money to be made in the law, and for that
I have a lot of respect for the Supreme Court. Lawyers, lawyers,
more lawyers.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
So by just one in four Americans believe the Trump
administration vaccine shifts are based on science. According to a
Reuter's ibsassible, that seems real, real, beat.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
It seems too high that twenty five percent of all
people think that what's happening in our federal government is
based on science. It ain't based on science, baby.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Can I give you a counter argument?
Speaker 3 (04:31):
I always go back to the twenty two percent that
still thought George W. Bush was doing a great job
by the end of his term. That always just sticks
with me that this is somewhere near rock bottom.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Look like this is so bad. I want to talk
about why this anti vax stuff is so bad, because
what we're doing here is like it has taken decades
and decades to get people in America to understand that
science staves lives. And what has happened since COVID is
that that the exact opposite has been drilled into a
(05:04):
group of people from the right in such a destructive
way that like, it's hard to put the genie back
in the bottle here, and I'm not sure we actually can.
And this is going to be really, really bad, and
it's going to We're going to see a lot of
really just bad effects from this. And you know, we
(05:27):
talked to the head of HSS today, the Health and
Human Services HHS, the former head under Biden, secretary of
Bisera and secretary of Bissara, said that it was just
that we're going to see more people get sick, We're
going to see more viruses, and then there's this wild card,
a virus mutation. And when these viruses, like you know,
(05:50):
a virus like chicken pox or chicken pox not an example,
measles almost eradicated, so it wasn't going around, but now
measles is going around. So what happens, just like with COVID,
is that measles will then change, It will grow, it
will get better and better at being in different hosts
(06:10):
and getting people sicker, and it'll get more contagious and
more virulent, and we're going to have new strains of measles,
and just like with all sorts of other stuff, we're
opening the door to like a seemingly catastrophic pandemic. If
some people don't get vaccinated, it means that the rest
of us can get sicker, believe it or not, even
(06:30):
though the rest of us get vaccinated. So it's really bad. Also,
there are these insurance problems, you know, where people are
not going to have their vaccines paid for by insurance.
So this is all super bad. We're going to get
less healthy. And by the way, there's a very high,
non zero chance we see American life expectancy go down again.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
That sounds about right.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Laurence O'Donnell is the host of MSNBC's Lawrence o'donald's show.
Welcome Lawrence to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Thank you very much. This is the earliest I've been
on a video camera, and well, I guess since the
last time I did Morning Joe. But there, of course
there that comes with several pounds of makeup, so I
feel protected there when that happens.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
But I wanted to ask you one of the things
that I thought was incredible this morning, which I'm very
curious to know your thoughts on. I was looking at
the It was actually in the morning, I went to
Morning Joe, and before I go I listened to these
two very obnoxious politics sort of B to B podcasts,
and then I listened to all of the Washington Post
(07:47):
because it's very ad it's basically all Ai narrated. So
as I was listening to it on my way, I
looked at the homepage and it had Israel striking Qatar
or trying to strike the negotiators and the peace talk,
and then it had Russia sending drones to Poland, and
(08:08):
I thought to myself, I thought Donald Trump was going
to end for all foreign wars.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, you know, this is funny because I was just
literally minutes ago I was thinking this that because of
exactly what you just said that it turns out no
one is afraid of Donald Trump. No one, you know,
no one out there in the world is afraid of
Donald Trump. And his whole sales pitch is you know,
I'm such a tough guy, and I'm an international tough guy,
(08:37):
and Putin will bend to my will on the first day.
On day one. Okay, so day one was when Putin
was supposed to just do whatever Donald Trump said, which Oh,
by the way, was Vladimir I want you to win
the war? How can I help you win the war
by abandoning Zelenski? And even with that willingness to go
(09:02):
all the way to the Putin side, nothing could happen
because even that wasn't enough for Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
And and and then you see, you know what Benjamin Nenna,
who's willing to do certainly knowing that the Trump administration
would oppose it.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
And so the way Netneou decides to do that is
apparently according to the news accounts so far, who knows
that this is true? But well, we just won't tell him,
you know, we we just won't tell him. We'll do it,
and then Trump will have to deal with it after
the fact. And because because Trump's a moron, uh, you know,
he'll he'll deal with it moronically. And and that's that's
(09:41):
your guarantee. Like, that's your guarantee. You know, if you're
Nah's nothing to worry about. He's a moron, so it
won't matter. Nothing matters with Trump. There is there there
are no gravitational forces and it and there are no consequences.
And this is what has changed so dramatically in American
(10:02):
government and now extending out into American life. The notion
that there are no consequences and if Trump says X,
and then why happens? There will be a consequence from Trump. No,
there won't, No, there won't. Or you know, if Trump
breaks the law, there will be a consequence. No, there won't.
Speaker 6 (10:24):
You don't.
Speaker 4 (10:25):
So you know, and it goes right down the road,
you know, And then this story. You know, if Jeffrey
Epstein gets arrested for you know, child trafficking and raping children,
that'll be the end of the whole Jeffrey Epstein thing.
And the answer is, no, it won't. Jp Morgan's gonna
hang in there because he only got arrested once, and
(10:45):
he only got convicted in Florida, and he only got
jail time where he didn't have to actually spend the
day at jail. He could go to his office and
continue to rape children and then just sleep at the
jail facility. I mean, that's not a world of concert quins.
And so you know, you've got an entire you know
generation coming up now in high school, you know, and
(11:09):
junior high school, high school, college who've lived through a decade,
you know, over a ten year period now of no consequence,
you know, I you know, Trump can say, you know,
John McCain was a failure, you know, in Vietnam because
he got captured, and there's no consequence to that at all.
And we all thought, I thought, you know, that's the
(11:29):
end of the Trump campaign, you know, twenty fifteen where
he said that about John McCain. By anyone's definition, you know,
someone who behaved heroically in war, that okay. In American politics,
there's a very big consequence for that. And the consequence
is your political career is over right, And so you
(11:50):
know this, imagine you know, being twenty five now, right,
you from age fifteen have been exposed to a constant
flow of no consequence with a with a parental structure
one hopes that's trying to impress you with the notion
of consequence, and with an educational structure that is trying
(12:15):
to impress you with the notion of consequence. If you
don't do your homework, you won't do well, you know,
in your future pursuits in life because of the following
sequences of consequence. Boy, I'd have a tough time if
I were in the child rearing business now or the
or the educational business. Now trying to impress on the
(12:38):
entering generation of voters that they live in a world
of consequence.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
With Biden world. He would struggle so much because it
felt as if Netnaho did not, would not cleave, would
not you know, Biden would say you can't do this,
and nen Yaho would do it, and you there was
a feeling that there was just enough, he had enough
political capital in America so that he could do stuff
that no other country could. Now Trump is aligned with
(13:08):
him as possible, and I mean, I don't know how
Trump continues to be a strong to appear even as
a strong man to the MAGA base while being so
humiliated by Nan Yahoo.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
You know, Justice Sonya Somoyer said something very important on
that very important public debate form the view I personally
love when the venues who were not created to bring
new wisdom actually do deliver it. I mean, one of
my favorite moments of I think my high school years
(13:40):
occurred on The MERV Griffin Show. And this is a
slight diversion.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I suppose IRV was a friend of my mom, so
I'm sure.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
And by the way, kids look up the MERV Griffin show.
It was one of those Tonight Show style shows, but
it was really the most frivolous of them all and
kind of goofy with the goofiest set of guests, and
therefore or it had a possible chemistry that was really unpredictable.
But Carol O'Connor was on at the beginning of the
(14:10):
second season of All in the Family, and Carol O'Connor
Archie Bunker was the biggest TV star on planet Earth.
That show exploded in its first year.
Speaker 6 (14:20):
It was gigantic.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
So Carol O'Connor is telling MERV MERV Griffin, who is
Irish Carol O'Connor, who is Irish American, that Carol O'Connor
has spent the summer, the hiatus of his series, at
the Abbey Theater in Dublin doing a play, which is
where Carol O'Connor got a lot of his early training
(14:43):
as a young American actor in Dublin. And so MERV
Griffin says, Oh, it must have been the return of
the conquering hero. They must have been so excited for you.
It just must have been so incredible, And Carol O'Connor says,
IRV the Irish would always prefer you to come back
(15:03):
of failure. And in one sentence, my entire culture was
explained to me. I suddenly understood everything that surrounded me,
from little league, you know, to high school, to college
and beyond. It was like, oh, thank you, thank you,
(15:24):
Carol O'Connor, I get it. And so, you know, the
last place on Earth I expected to learn the single
most important thing that I hadn't yet learned and put
into words about my culture was right there. On the
murv Griffin Show Anyway, yesterday, Sonya Silamayor on the View
talked about the responsibility that voters have to educate themselves,
(15:50):
and she used the word educate. She talked about, you know,
read my descent, read the opinions that I'm dissenting again,
educate yourself. And she did not say educate yourself as
a voter. She left out the word voter, but we
can all insert that word there. And when you hear
(16:12):
what she says, you realize she's saying something hugely important
that the American political news media completely ignores, and that
is the simple fact that voters do not do that.
And she said very clearly there, it's your responsibility and
the founders thought it was your responsibility to do that.
(16:33):
They thought you would do that, and it's going to
be available to you, and you know, you can go
to the website now and read it all. And so
you have this country of completely uneducated voters, by which
I mean they are uneducated about what they are voting about.
And then we ask why do they think X, or
(16:56):
why do they think why? Or why do they think
Trump is tough? Or why do they think whatever it
is they think, And it's like it's like, you know,
standing there, you know, in a in a high school
math class and asking why the kindergarten students don't understand this?
You know, it's like, well, you know, they don't have
(17:18):
the capacity. And so it's very very clear, you know
that voters across the board don't do anything close to
the share of homework that was expected of them in
the creation of this kind of democracy, and that Sonya
so myr wisely said, you know, they should do. And
(17:39):
so you know, the explaining the Trump voter and the
loyalism to Trump is to me, you know, a pretty
uninteresting avenue that is statistically hopeless. You know, it's kind
of like explaining the consistency of cement. Well, you know,
it's it's pretty solid. It's not he's going to stay there.
(18:01):
It's not going to move, you know, and it's it's tragic,
you know, and it has tragic outcomes, you know, for
the country because because of the electoral College and because
of two senators per state, you live in a country
where stupidity can indeed rule, and currently does.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Mike Johnson you may remember him, he is technically the
speaker in the House of the House, but basically only
in name, had this incredible split screen that I want
to ask you about. So he says Donald Trump was
an FBI informant, something unbelievable to say for any number
of reasons. And then last night he said, oh, you know,
(18:46):
I got mixed. He sort of backed away from that.
We also saw him later yesterday say that he does
not think this signature that the birthday book is real.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Uh huh, you know, I mean, so, you know, this
is the great tragic decline of the Republican Party. And
it's and let's remember it's just the Republican Party. You know,
the Democrats don't do this. When you know, Robert Menendez
got arrested this second second time, by the way, but
(19:18):
when he got arrested and the gold bars were shown publicly,
you know that were found.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
You know in this house.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
You couldn't find a Democrat to stand up and say
those aren't gold bars, those are not gold bars. They
were not found in his house. That's not a Mercedes
Benz that you know his second wife got. You know,
that's not what that is. And so this is a
one party illness. It's unique to them. You know. There
were plenty of Democrats who were highly critical of Bill
(19:50):
Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky scandal led to his impeachment,
and they were highly critical of him along the way
of the road to impeachment. And there were a number
of Democratic senators who voted the description of a vote
impeachment vote in the Senate. The verdict is misstated. But
(20:10):
they voted no on the question of the question that's
in front of them is the question to remove him
from the presidency. That's the actual question, and they voted no.
Not defending his conduct. They said what he did was wrong,
what he and his perjury was wrong. However, it doesn't
rise to the level of the need to remove the president.
(20:34):
Plenty of Democrats voted that way and made speeches that way.
There were other Democrats who were very defensive of Bill
Clinton all the way through completely. But what you saw
was this mixed bag of our democratic president is in trouble,
and there was a mixed bag of reaction among Democrats,
and people didn't condemn a Democrat for having a view
(20:56):
that was different from theirs, and the Republican view of
it was largely anti Clinton, almost entirely anti Clinton. Say
in the House, it was you know, the Democratic Party
there showed you that if you show them evidence in
the case of Bill Clinton, in the case of Department ends,
in other cases they have consistently shown you, they will
(21:17):
not deny the evidence that you have shown them. They
won't deny it. So these people will will simply say
to you, oh, that's not a signature on the birthday
on the birthday note, and it's like, well, I think
it is. And you know, by the way, you know
what a handwriting expert is, it's you, it's the humanod.
(21:38):
There's no such thing.
Speaker 6 (21:40):
There is no such thing.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
There are people who are presented in judicial processes as
handwriting experts, and what they do is they have to
take the witness stand and they get questioned extensively by
the lawyers on both sides and then by the judge,
and only at the end of about a half an
hour sometimes an hour of questioning does the judge declare
and accept that this person's opinion on handwriting will be
(22:05):
allowable as testimony. And and so that person is then
allowed to say, in my experience, this looks like that signature.
So we're all handwriting experts, so we're all allowed to
look at the at the signature, and I can look
at it and say, yep, that's exactly the same signature
that I got on a note from Trump in twenty sixteen,
(22:27):
where he signed at Donald one word, which is a
different way when he than when he signs his full name.
He extends out the final line, you know, of the
final the D in Donald in a peculiar way that
is present in the in the Epstein signature. And so
you know, there would have been you know, Thomas mass
he said, you know, well, the Republicans said, yeah, it
(22:48):
looks like a signature. Yeah, that's the same. That's that's
the same reaction to that, And you know, the Republican
Party has collapsed into this cultism. That's that's really tragic,
and uh, it's hard to see, you know, even with
when Trump leaves the scene, how they would come out
(23:08):
of that or why would they come out of that.
They have proven to their voters that they absolutely can
deny any fact they want to deny, and their voters
will hang on.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
Lawrence. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I think I succeeded in not really responding to any
of the questions, and.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
You did it exactly exactly. Well there, you know, I want.
Speaker 4 (23:30):
To just I just want to say to the to
the audience, I just want to agree with you, those
of you who got lost in my answers. It's pretty
obvious that I did too, and so we share that experience,
audience and speaker together. That's our bond, is that when
I speak on this podcast, you the audience, and I
(23:50):
will both get lost together.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
I think it's very I think that the historical information
about Bill that people don't you know, because we are
the United States of Amnesia. We know nothing, we remember nothing.
Even the smartest of us are the United States of Amnesia.
That's the best case scenario that this kind of stuff
is actually really important and it just got me thinking
(24:15):
about the senator. I wanted to go back and look
at who said what about Bill Clinton? Because I thought
that was interesting.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
I don't know if you go that far. Eric Adams, Democratic
Mayor of New York City. He gets caught. He gets
caught in this scandal where he's accused of bribery and
no Democrats defend them, and no Democrats lie about it.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Yeah, and he continues to be just a horrendous politician.
Believe it like that. Thank you so much. I really
appreciate you. Thank you, thank you. Javier Basarah is the
former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. Welcome
(24:57):
back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 6 (24:59):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
This is an incredibly fucked up moment for American Health
and Human Service. I'd love you to talk first about
what you thought when they talked about putting RFK in
this job and your expectations of what would happen and
what happened, and sort of start with that.
Speaker 7 (25:18):
So, Mollie, I'd say the first thing that came to
mind was your guard goes up and will he actually
moved to undermine vaccines?
Speaker 6 (25:28):
And you have to believe that once you get in.
Speaker 8 (25:31):
The position as secretary where your job is to improve
the health of the country.
Speaker 6 (25:36):
Now you'll figure out what you do if you're not
a big fan of.
Speaker 8 (25:38):
Vaccines, but you won't deny them, you won't make them
more difficult to get, you won't disparage them in ways
that raise concerns and lower confidence. Unfortunately, all of those
things have gone in just the way we did want
to see them go. And today you see fewer Americans
vaccin eighty and fewer Americans having access to vaccines at
(25:59):
a time when COVID is breaking out at the highest levels.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
Perhaps of this year.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
You had this very same job. You manage many elements
of the federal government, from recommendations to research, and I'd
love you to sort of tell us what you think
the most important element of the job is. The thing
that keeps me up to night about what RFK Junior
is doing is actually the research, like the mRNA research,
(26:26):
because mRNA it could be a cancer vaccine and I
think a lot of us are going to get cancer
and I would like to be able to be vaccinated
so I don't die from it. What are the things
that are like really what you're watching this being like,
oh my odd?
Speaker 6 (26:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (26:42):
So I will say two things first and perhaps foremost
the Department of Healthy Human Services, which has the responsibility nationwide,
as I said, to make sure Americans are healthy and
save Our first job is to do essentially what President
John F. Kennedy said when he talked about lifting all boats.
HHS is there to make sure that with fifty states
(27:03):
that control their healthcare, because federal government doesn't control healthcare
under the constitution, every state gets to do healthcare as
they want, so fifty different ways of doing healthcare. Some
do well, some don't do it so well, and so
you can have differing results. HHS is there to make
sure all boats are lifted and that you don't have
boats that lag behind because some states decide.
Speaker 6 (27:22):
Not to do it right.
Speaker 8 (27:23):
That's critical because when you've got something like a pandemic,
you can't afford to have thirty states doing vaccination and
prevention right and twenty states not, because those twenty states
will have major infection that will spread to the other
thirty states. So lifting all boats that's perhaps the most
important thing to do. The second thing that you touched
on't is that AHHS is there to make sure that
(27:44):
we're moving where we need to go for the American
people on health is it the next best medicine for COVID,
is it the next best cure for cancer? Is the
next best way to address suicides? AHHS collects all that
data from all the parts of the country and tries
to provide the best data to everyone so everyone knows
(28:06):
where to go. That's why, by the way, today there
are fewer suicides occurring than in the past four or
five years, dramatic drop because for the four years that
we were in we focused on trying to really prevent
suicides by providing more mental health coverage, by making the
nine to eighty eight Suicide and Mental Health Prevention Hotline
available to everyone. We went out there and knew that
(28:28):
there was mental health crisis in this country, so we
attacked it. And when you do on a nationwide scale,
you have nationwide positive results. And so that's what we
have to continue. Whether it's the next medicine to cure cancer,
or whether it's the next way to prevent somemilic from
committing suicide or overdosing. We get better figure out ways.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So what are the things that he's cutting that like,
For example, cancer research seems like a big one. As
you're watching this, what are the things that he's cutting well.
Speaker 8 (28:56):
When you take a trillion dollars out of the Medicaid program,
which is healthcare for principally children and seniors. Remember about
half of all the deliveries of babies in this country
are covered through Medicaid. More than fifty percent of nursing
home stays around the country are covered by Medicaid for
(29:16):
those families. When you take a trillion dollars out of
the Medicaid program, you're going to hurt people who are vulnerable.
Speaker 6 (29:23):
That is not a way you make America healthy again.
Speaker 8 (29:26):
When you see the reductions in research for life saving
treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's, you name it, folks are going
to die or die earlier, and we can't afford to
see that. When you've got the CDC, which is our
canary in the coal mine to alert the fifty States
of what might be coming down the pike, whether it's
covid av and fluid measles. When you take into account
(29:49):
the roles that the NIH, the CDC, Food and Drug Administration,
it's losing some of its best experts. FDA is responsible
to make sure that any meta and any medical device
that gets out there to the market in the market
for Americans is safe and effective.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
I'm going to pause because you speak like a doctor
and not like a television person, and so I get distracted.
As someone who had the job last, I feel like
you are the person to talk about this. So when
you fire people from the FDA, that means our food
is not being tested the way it was right correct.
Speaker 6 (30:27):
Our nursing homes are not being inspected the way they should.
Speaker 1 (30:30):
When you cut Medicaid, that's going to mean rural hospital closures.
It's going to mean and people kicked off the system.
What else is it going to mean.
Speaker 8 (30:38):
We've already seen rural hospitals closing in states like Virginia.
California just reported a closing of a rural hospital here.
They don't get their Medicaid funding, they have no choice
go close. That means people in those rural communities don't
have a place to go.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
So he cut off this mRNA vaccine testing stuff, that means,
like all those research funding stops.
Speaker 8 (30:59):
Right, it means we stop testing the most viable, the
best way to keep people healthy and save them from
the COVID infection. And if we're not ready for the
next variant, it could be very dangerous, right, We're.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Definitely not going to be ready for the next very
was it? Man, We're on the Titanic, and it's like,
we're not going to get a good seed. But mRNA
vaccine testing, Like, give me the nuts and bolts of that,
Like does this mean like Harvard loses money? Like are
their government laboratories? Like where's this money coming from? And
what kind of trials are they canceling?
Speaker 8 (31:30):
We have a coordinated system for vaccinations, for testing vaccines.
Niah hast some of the capacity in its lab. Sometimes
we're going to some of the best universities for their
labs to do the research. But collectively, we work together
and we come up with the best vaccines. And as
you know, everybody knows, COVID is constantly mutating. The flu
(31:50):
virus is constantly mutating, and so we have to be
ready for what's coming at us, not what came at
us two years ago. If you get rid of the
research money that gets you ready for the next very variant,
you're not going to be saving lives.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Now. We're deeply, deeply fucked here. I want to disassemble
here just how fucked we are. So Like, for example,
there's the mRNA stuff, which means shutting down like looking
at COVID vaccines. And but then there's also longer uses
for mRNA vaccines. Then there's the food testing, there's the inspections,
there's that kind of stuff. I want you to talk
(32:23):
about the crazy Florida vaccine thing with the kids, because
this seems like next level fucked.
Speaker 8 (32:31):
I don't know how you explain Florida and how they
can tell parents you don't need to vaccinate your kids,
and we're not going to make it easier for you
to vaccinate your kids when pediatricians around the country are saying,
don't follow that guidance, When family care physicians are telling you,
don't follow that guidance, when the best medical experts when
it comes to diseases and vaccinations tell you, don't follow
(32:53):
that guidance.
Speaker 6 (32:53):
If I'm in Florida, I wouldn't follow Florida's guidance.
Speaker 8 (32:56):
If you want to keep your kids safe, do with
the doctors the medical professions that the experts tell you,
and that is get them vaccinated.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
So what happened was the Secretary of Health and Human
Services of Florida, right, is that what it's called.
Speaker 8 (33:09):
I'm not sure what their agency is called, and the
their surgeon general as well as the honest.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
Right, the Florida Surgeon General said, you don't have to
vaccinate your kids. You're not going to have a recommendation.
So that means though I want to take that apart
for a minute, because it means first that you can
go to public schools without having been vaccinated, right, yeah.
Speaker 8 (33:27):
It means you also have to pay money out of
pocket to get those vaccinations, which otherwise would be covered
by insurance or by Medicare or Medicaid.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
So that means when children are born in Florida and
mRNA vaccine will not be free.
Speaker 8 (33:41):
There's a good chance that in Florida, you won't have
access to it, or at least not at a reasonable
cost for that vaccine. And for a lot of families,
the kid doesn't look sick, they'll say maybe I can
go without the vaccine this year, and they take a chance.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
You don't want to risk your child's life.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
We have mandated in this country mRNA vaccines. I'm talking
about like measles, moms, polio, these vaccines. I mean, how
much of the population do you think is unvaccinated right now?
Speaker 6 (34:06):
Well, think about it, for measles.
Speaker 8 (34:08):
Most of the population in the country had been over
the course of many years getting vaccinated. But now you
see this movement against vaccination, and we saw the outbreak
in Texas and other parts of the country where even
children die. We hadn't seen this level of infection on
measles in decades, and all of a sudden's popping up.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Right and now measles had been eradicated essentially before this. Yeah,
so isn't that measles outbreak still going?
Speaker 6 (34:34):
I've seen reported cases.
Speaker 8 (34:36):
The difficulty is most of these cases are people or
kids who were unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, chances are you're
not becoming sick.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
No, of course not. But explain to us what happens
when herd immunity breaks, because I don't think people understand
right now even these measles outbreaks are only really for unvaccinated.
If you're vaccinated, you might have a tiny something really not.
But what happens when the system breaks down when.
Speaker 8 (35:04):
You stop having the immunity to that particular disease, And
you can get that immunity through the vaccination process, through
a vaccine, or by getting ill and surviving and then
having naturally developed the antibodies. That's what we call herd immunity.
When the population generally is covered one way or the
(35:25):
other with some level of immunity, but new kids are
born every year and some of that immunity starts to
wane after a while, and so periodically you may need
to get re vaccinated, as we have scene with COVID.
Usually the measles, it's been a vaccine that you haven't
had to do it over and over and over all
the time, the immunity stays at scale. Unfortunately, for kids
(35:47):
who've never gotten vaccinated, they're very susceptible, and we sought
children die in Texas.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
What we're going to see, if I'm right, is that
as people stop being vaccinated, these measles outbreaks are going
to be dead and dead layer and not just for
unvaccinated people. Right because once you start having this exposure
to measles, if you're elderly and vaccinated, if you're a
baby and vaccinated, it may not matter. If you're very
(36:15):
sick and vaccinated.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
You become more susceptible.
Speaker 8 (36:19):
And the difficulty is these viruses don't stay the same.
They continue to mutate, and they could mutate into a
form that can sustain itself far more against any vaccine
or natural immunity you might have.
Speaker 6 (36:34):
So if you.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
Allow that disease, that virus to continue to mutate, it
could take on a form that can surpass the immunity
that you have.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
And that's the risk that we have.
Speaker 8 (36:45):
But if we continue to have that generalized immunization naturally
or through the vaccine, we continue to protect everyone and
no one becomes too susceptible.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, but that's not what's going to happen here, right,
I mean, I think we're on the Titanic here. We
had the time for like why public health matters is over.
We're in the find out period. In my mind, the
question is trioge, like, how do we keep ourselves safe?
How do we keep people who are saying safe? Because
I don't think that there's any way you're going to
be able to convince those other people to take a
(37:17):
vaccine that they think is poison one of the other things. So, like,
there's the effect that he's having on people who are
vaccine has an end. There's the effect that the cutting
research is having on all of us in the future.
There's the effect of like food safety, what other stuff
(37:38):
am I missing here that's going to be affected. That's
like a second order effect or even a first order
effect that I don't think about it. It's a huge
agency with huge tentacles in every part of our life.
Part of the federal government is you don't know how
important it is until it's not working. So what else
am I missing here in this story?
Speaker 8 (37:55):
We haven't talked about the drug price negotiation that this
administration has now taken over.
Speaker 6 (38:02):
We did it last year.
Speaker 8 (38:03):
We were able to decrease the price of some of
the most expensive pharmaceutical medicines by up to eighty percent.
Drugs that Americans rely on but that just are very,
very expensive.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Started with insulin, right, thirty five dollars.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
Insulin, Yeah, insulin at thirty five dollars.
Speaker 8 (38:18):
Then we negotiated on drugs that were far more expensive,
in some cases in the thousands of dollars for treatment,
and we were able to bring the prices of those
first ten top ten costly drugs down, as I said,
sent some cases up to eighty percent. The administration. This
administration is supposed to be announcing soon the results of
its negotiations on the next fifteenth very expensive drugs.
Speaker 6 (38:40):
We'll see how well they do.
Speaker 8 (38:42):
Do they keep that march going where they're trying to
decrease the price significantly. This administration is also undermined something
that we don't think of in terms of healthy human services,
but it's within our jurisdiction, and that's how it start
the program for children to get an fairly start before
kindergarten where some parents, hottest income families can otherwise afford
(39:03):
good childcare. They are dismantling head Start in ways that
are going to impact not just the head Start programs,
but the families that are trying to get their children
into a good head start school.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Yeah, I mean head Start, food Stamps, Medicaid, those are
crazy numbers.
Speaker 8 (39:20):
Right, It's awful for those families who depend on it.
Why would you cut meals on wheels for seniors when
they try to go to senior citizen centers if that
may be their only decent.
Speaker 6 (39:30):
Meal they're going to get. That was also something that
was on the chopping block.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Did they cut meals on wheels?
Speaker 6 (39:36):
I believe my recollection was that they did. You'll have
to check the numbers for that.
Speaker 1 (39:40):
Unbelievable. Are you disappointed that more people aren't calling for
RFK to step down, and what do you think the
move there is.
Speaker 8 (39:48):
I'm amazed that we haven't had a reset at HHUS,
given everything that's going on. I am amazed that we
haven't seen more people leave the agency, given how asked
and furious this administration is taking HHS in the opposite
direction of improving health for Americans. I'm shocked at how
many people in Congress are permitting the agency to be
(40:11):
gutted and for americans health to be put in jeopardy.
Speaker 6 (40:14):
But Donald Trump's got a grip on all these guys.
Speaker 8 (40:17):
Unbelievably bad incompetence is governing right now, and that's going
to hurt people.
Speaker 6 (40:22):
We'll see it when people die.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
The nightmare scenario is that like the resistant whatever that comes, Like,
doesn't that worry you the most?
Speaker 6 (40:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (40:33):
Or that rural hospital that was the only facility in
the region for a long ways a way that is
now closing. So when you've got that emergency, how do
they get you to a place that can keep you alive?
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, wonderful.
Speaker 6 (40:48):
I'm sorry, was late, Oh normally, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
The moment.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Jesse Cannon, So, Molly, I know we've done much podcasting
about Oh, Judge Barrett isn't as bad as we thought
in some ways. But these comments here, these are the
ones that we expected when we were all awaiting the
incoming justice handmade to come around on the scene and
say some real, real choice stuff. I'm going to let
(41:17):
you be the bearer of bad news of what she
said here, because I can't even bring myself to pull
it out of my mouth today.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
I have a hot take. I'm not convinced this is
as bad.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
My little baby had to sleep.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Please, she says, the twenty second Amendment says you can
only run for two terms, Bear says, and she says true.
And he says, do you think that's cut and dry?
And she says, well, that's you know what the amendment says.
FDR had four terms. Many online were concerned that Barrett
had left room for interpretation, but I don't agree. Fuck it.
You know, she said, that's what the constitution said. The
(41:49):
guy is I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole,
but I'm going to say one thing to our listeners now.
It is so important that we stay sane in a
period like this, when things are very emotional and there's
a lot of feeling and a lot of stress and
a lot of anxiety. Just it's okay. He's not going
to run for another term. The guy is going to
(42:11):
go to Florida and play golf. Let's not go down
this rabbit hole. There's enough, like real tangible stuff to
worry about. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear
the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
(42:32):
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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