Trump’s $200 Million Party Palace, RFK Jr. Shreds Vaccine Research, and Hollywood Declares War

Trump wants a ballroom that would make Gatsby jealous, RFK Jr. torches half a billion in pandemic preparedness, and 2,300 Hollywood writers—from Spike Lee to John Waters—sign an open letter taking direct aim at the President.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Callaroga Shark media from Washington, d C. Where we need
more ballrooms? This is valley, that's right. What if someone
wanted to hold a party after releasing the Epstein files?
Where would they even have it? Hi? I'm Patrick Gutfield
and President Trump has embarked on his most ambitious White

(00:24):
House renovation project yet, a two hundred million dollar ballroom
that will apparently solve the pressing national crisis of not
having enough room for really big dinner parties. Trump was
spotted last week strolling the White House roofline with an architect,
presumably checking whether the building can support the weight of
his entertaining ambitions. The president has long been frustrated by

(00:45):
the current setup, which requires erecting what he calls an old,
broken canvas tent for events with more than two hundred
and fifty guests, So naturally, his solution is to build
what amounts to a presidential party palace that would make
Jay Gatsby jealous. Trump has promised the project will be
privately funded and that he'll release a list of donors,
though a senior White House official admitted that no private

(01:08):
donations have actually been locked in yet, so we're essentially
looking at a two hundred million dollar ballroom funded by
the presidential equivalent of a Go Fundme campaign. The National
Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to review the project at
a single public meeting on September fourth, which is lightning
speed for a government body that spent nearly two years
and five public meetings just to approve a security fence.

(01:32):
They took four years to carefully consider fence picket thickness,
and spacing, but apparently a massive ballroom edition gets the
express lane treatment. The American Institute of Architects has raised
concerns about the rush timeline, urging officials to put this
national treasure through a more rigorous review process. They're essentially

(01:52):
asking for the architectural equivalent of measure twice cut once,
except in this case, it's review extensively, build two two
one hundred million dollar ballroom once. One tourist outside the
White House summed up the contradiction perfectly. Even if Trump
pays for it himself, it's not his. It belongs to
the American people. He was immediately deported, but hey, at

(02:15):
least future presidents will never again have to suffer the
indignity of hosting state dinners under canvas. That's progress, right.
Health Secretary Robert of Kennedy Junior has canceled nearly five
hundred million dollars worth of mRNA vaccine research contracts because
apparently we've decided that being prepared for the next pandemic
is overrated. This comes after the Department of Health and

(02:38):
Human Services already revoked a six hundred million dollar contract
with Moderna in May to develop a bird flu vaccine,
So in total, Kennedy has now canceled over a billion
dollars in vaccine research. That's not budget cutting, that's budget
demolishing for those keeping track. RNA vaccines are the technology
that helped end the COVID pandemic. The work by instructing

(03:01):
your body to produce a fragment of a virus, which
triggers your immune response. Unlike traditional vaccines that take years
to develop, mRNA shots can be created in months and
quickly modified as viruses change. The technology even won the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in twenty twenty three,
but Kennedy has called COVID shots the deadliest vaccine ever made,

(03:23):
which is quite a claim from someone who apparently skipped
the chapters on smallpox and polio in medical history. Rick Bright,
a flu expert who was ousted from the government during
Trump's first term, said cutting mRNA development undermines our ability
to rapidly counter future biological threats. He called it a
huge strategic failure that will be measured in lives loss
during times of crisis. One immunologist called this a bad

(03:47):
day for science, but that might be understating things. This
is more like science getting fired, packing its desk and
being escorted out of the building by security. We're essentially
telling future pandemic, don't worry, We'll be ready for you
with technology from nineteen twenty four. So. Cheryl Hines, Larry

(04:09):
David's TV wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm and real life
wife to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior, just announced
she's writing a memoir called Cheryl Hines Unscripted, and the
timing couldn't be more interesting, considering her husband just canceled
five hundred million dollars in vaccine research. Hines made the
announcement on social media, saying she'll be sharing stories about

(04:32):
the twists and turns I've experienced through the years and
calling it a wild ride given that she's married to
a guy who thinks mRNA vaccines are deadly and has
been dismantling pandemic preparedness, that might be the understatement of
the century. Now, I am going to tread lightly here
because longtime listeners may recall the previous host openly had

(04:54):
a crush on Cheryl and was trying to get her
to leave RFK for him. And then one day the
guy just disappeared and was never heard from again. More
than two thoy three hundred writers just signed their names
to what amounts to a declaration of war against Donald Trump.
The Writer's Guild put out an open letter calling Trump's
actions an unprecedented authoritarian assault on free speech. And when

(05:17):
writers get this mad, you know someone's really stepped in it.
The letter reads like a Greatest Hits compilation of Trump's
media feuds. There's the sixty million dollars settlement with sixty minutes,
the Late Show with Stephen Cole Bear getting canceled, the
defunding of PBS and NPR, Trump calling for the View

(05:37):
to be taken off the air. It's like someone made
a bingo card of ways to piss off creative types.
And Trump said challenge accepted. The signatory's list looks like
the credits of every movie and TV show you've ever liked.
Spike Lee, Alfonso Coron, David Simon, Mike Shure, John Waters.

(05:59):
These aren't just any These are the people who actually
make the stuff Trump watches when he's not busy threatening
to shut it down. The letter makes a point that's
pretty hard to argue with. We don't have a king,
we have a president, and the president doesn't get to
pick what's on television, which sounds like something you'd think
would be obvious, but here we are having to spell

(06:20):
it out. The letter ends with this ominous warning. This
period in American life will not last forever, and when
it's over the world will remember who had the courage
to speak out. Hopefully history will fondly remember a wise,
cracking host with jokes written by AI and just wanted
to use humor to get the Epstein files released by
a coward who refused to do it.