#2578 - Calley Means

Calley Means is a health advocate, author, and former senior advisor to the United States Department of Health and Human Services. He is also a co-founder of Truemed and co-author of the book "Good Energy" with his sister Casey Means, MD.www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/727184/good-energy-by-casey-means-md-and-calley-means/www.calleymeans.com Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at https://pplx.ai/rogan. Don’t miss out on all the action this week at DraftKings! Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up using https://dkng.co/rogan or through my promo code ROGAN. onX Hunt - Use code JRE for 20% off your membership Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience. Training by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 0:12Joe Rogan?

  Good to see you.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Good to see you.

• 0:15Joe Rogan?

  How are you doing?

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Well, I just recently resigned from my job.

• 0:20Joe Rogan?

  How was that?

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Um, you know, two years ago, when Bobby Kennedy joined President Trump, it was one of the greatest, I think, political miracles in history. I think we were all so excited. It showed that there was a real political animation about a Democrat dealing, working with a Republican. I think it showed the country that the Trump administration was going to fight not just partisan stuff, but special interests and the swamp. I helped set that up, came in, dropped everything I was doing, came in, was a senior advisor at the White House, led Maha implementation, fought really hard, and I was optimistic because I'm a realist. And things get done in politics two ways. One is there's special interest in money.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  That's how a lot of things get done. That's why we spend three times more than any other country on healthcare. That's why we have such high housing prices. Like, a lot of the things we're complaining about and dealing with are because the systems have been rigged on the inside, we all know that. But the other way things get done is real public pressure and real public shame on the political system. And what Bobby Kennedy and President Trump did is showed that there's a lot of voters that care about American health. And I was optimistic we could use that coalition to bust through the DC swamp to get some things done. And we did get some things done, but all of them were through public shame, you know, the psychedelic thing. That was being totally blocked, full directive from the top that we were going to slow that down and not do it.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  And your call to President Trump, you know, President Trump, whenever there was an issue which was on his radar, he's like, "Let's get it done, let's go hard." He said, "We need to get this done, get this on my fucking desk in the next week." And it busted through the system. You know, I was able to engender a coalition to get that same dynamic happening with things like dietary guidelines, the food dyes, getting those out of the system. These were all, just the system of DC does not want any change to happen. And the fact that we had a voter coalition and could use that and say, "This coalition, you, other people are going to be pissed off if we don't get things done." We were able to get things done. But the simple reality in why I left is that there is a very concentrated group of people

• 2:29Speaker 01

  in the Trump administration that are antagonistic to what people voted for and are frankly, and I think it's very clear, doing things for other reasons, particularly in many cases to enrich their families.

• 2:44Joe Rogan?

  Oof. So, walk us through this. So, you get in there, you have your first days on the job. When did you realize it was going to be an issue? And you were very hopeful at first, right? It's very exciting. A lot of people were very excited about the coalition. They felt like this, it was one of the main things that I was excited about with Trump getting into office was that Bobby Kennedy was going to be in there. And there was a lot of these things that you just discussed, a lot of these things about peptides and stem cells, for sure, the psychedelics, and then just making people aware of like additives in food that were completely unnecessary, that were ruining people's health.

• 3:28Joe Rogan?

  So, there's all this promise. Everybody was very excited about it.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  It was electric two years ago. I mean, we remember it. It was absolutely electric, and that compared to what we felt this week, right? That's the real issue. Like, there was a real sense, every single person in the first day of the Trump administration thought we were working for a presidency that would be absolutely historic. We thought Trump was going to be better than George Washington. The energy was, we felt like we were in the most consequential moment in American history, we were going to go hard, and we were going to be able to channel what voters voted for. I cannot express to you how electric it felt in there in the early days.

• 4:02Joe Rogan?

  So, what was the process like where you felt like it was off the rails?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I want to get into specifics. We all know things are corrupt and bad, but I'll just get right into specifics. What I learned, and I don't think anyone would dispute this, the way the White House, this White House is set up is the most centralized control up to the Chief of Staff office of any administration in American history. So, I'll just get into details about who runs the White House. There's a picture I have of the key people. But the White House, Susie Wiles is the most powerful Chief of Staff in modern American history, and she has taken a stranglehold on any policy decision. No policy decision gets done without her office giving it the okay. And it's absolutely systematic.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  So, every single cabinet secretary, they're spending meetings constantly worrying about how to get on Susie's good side and how to win favor with her. She has a couple deputies. The deputies are, it was James Blair, another guy named Walker Barrett, and another guy who recently came in named Richard Walters. These are the most powerful people in the country.

• 5:19Joe Rogan?

  All right, we're back.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:21Joe Rogan?

  We had a glitch.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  These are the most powerful people in the country. And let me just go through dispassionately, just factually, who these people are. Susie Wiles, the Chief of Staff, before she joined the Trump administration, was one of the top lobbyists in the country. She spent her career taking money from Benjamin Netanyahu, who she was a top consultant for, the pharmaceutical industry, the pesticide industry. So, just passionately, just as a statement of economic facts, Susie Wiles, her career has been taking money from the industries and foreign governments who would pay her the most money. That's what she did, nobody disputes that. James Blair, who was the head of political operations, is her friend from Florida and

• 6:05Speaker 01

  a long-term political consultant, has taken a lot of money from industries like the sugar industry, but that's been his career, running some campaigns, taking money from special interests. She brought him along and really propped him up with Trump. Tony Fabrizio is one of the most powerful people in the country. He's Trump's chief pollster, very good friends with Susie. He is on the outside the whole time, and every single policy issue goes through him because he tells the team whether it's politically appropriate to do or not based on his polling. As he's been working in the Trump administration in this extremely powerful role, where every single cabinet secretary is trying to get on his good side, he is, and this is actually on his website, he takes money from Pepsi, he takes money from pharmaceutical companies,

• 6:50Speaker 01

  he takes money from almost every single industry we're fighting against right now, to this day. So, he's taking money at the same time. I don't even know if President Trump fully knows that. But as we were fighting things like school lunch reform and getting an ultra-processed food definition, 90% of the country wants this, we're going to define ultra-processed food, 70% of a child's diet's ultra-processed food, we need to define it, we need to figure out what to do there. It's a widely popular promise from the administration. He is getting paid by Pepsi and giving political analysis that the juice isn't worth the squeeze on doing policies like that, as simple as school lunch reform. So, that's Tony Fabrizio. Every single issue goes through him, goes through James. Tony and James were also in charge of the midterm efforts, so James left the White House to be in charge of the midterm efforts, but still very involved.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And the key thing Susie did is from almost day one, we made the midterm strategy, the policy strategy. So, they would often say that we can't do certain things because that would hurt special interest configurations for the midterms. Walker Barrett is Susie's neighbor in Florida, junior guy, but extremely powerful. He was a congressional staffer for a long time. Richard Walters is a kind of mid-level fundraiser. His whole career has been consulting and fundraising. He came from a lobbying firm in the past year that lobbied for pesticides, lobbied for pharma. Richard was, for a while, the most powerful person in the country because as Susie was

• 8:17Speaker 01

  out getting cancer treatment, Richard was effectively Chief of Staff. And Chris Lessavita ran the campaign with Susie, he's been on the outside. He's a lobbyist consultant, getting paid a lot of money by special interests. And the other thing I note, Susie's daughter...

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Became a lobbyist. And I don't know if you have the graph Continental Strategies, but this is really interesting. Suzy's daughter went to a lobbying firm and it was an open discussion in the White House. If a company hired Suzy's daughter, then that was getting a high priority. And there's this chart that shows Continental Strategies, the group Suzy's daughter worked for, had almost zero in revenue before the Trump administration shot up to 30-ish million dollars a year in revenue. So if you're a special interest and you want to get something done, the secret's out, you pay Suzy's daughter. And it was openly

• 9:17Speaker 01

  discussed when they had a client. So this is what happened to Continental once Suzy's daughter worked there. Then Chris Lesavita's daughter, again, the person who ran the Trump campaign, if you go to Checkmate, the person who ran the Trump campaign and is highly influential in various policy decisions. It's the same graph. The firm didn't exist before the Trump administration shot up. And then Suzy worked at a firm called Ballard Partners. Ballard Partners has become the highest revenue generating lobbying firm in history. And when Ballard, it's just an open, everyone knows this, if you hire Ballard, you get a meeting with Suzy

• 10:00Speaker 01

  and you can get things done. And their revenue went from middling to the highest revenue lobbying firm ever. So I'm just trying to state facts. That's who these people are. That's their background. You know, everyone's, this is Ballard, just go to the 2026, you know, 98 million dollars. And the key thing I'd say here is, you talk to any lobbyist, that 98 million is what's reported. That's the down payment. That's then Ballard advising people on how to shift money to other dark money groups. So you probably put a 10x multiple on that. Ballard basically helps then pay other groups, pay other people to...

• 10:43Joe Rogan?

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• 12:50Joe Rogan?

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• 13:06Speaker 03

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• 13:28Speaker 01

  To get things done. So, and Ballard, again, the secret's out in DC. You have to pay Ballard to get something done. And they've generated more revenue than any other firm in American history. That's who these people are.

• 13:43Joe Rogan?

  Is this normal?

• 13:44Speaker 01

  This is the key point I want to make. And I think it's very important as we decipher the election. I want to go into specifics to explain how this works. This is how it works for 30 years. It is a massive mistake. I don't think President Trump knows about most of this. Like, he can't be everywhere at once. It is absolutely true that his administration has been infiltrated by the very people that he energized voters to say he would get out of DC. And what I'm going to talk about today, and the specific things I'm going to talk about, are not idiosyncratic to the Trump administration. This is how DC works. It is impossible to describe to you how demonic this culture is. Before I went on, I actually

• 14:28Speaker 01

  spoke to some of my friends who are top lobbyists. I'm like, is this right to you? Like, we are at a precipice in American history. Like, this is like civilizational, like Americans are going to have social unrest and rebellions. Like, we're robbing the American people, like, right? And they're like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, well, why are you doing this? I don't have any interest. It's the game. I have a good career, good life. Like, everyone, like, this is how DC works. You know, Chuck Schumer gave a speech to the hospital lobbyists two weeks ago, saying, you know, I'm going to have your back. He went around to all the lobbyists, saying, we're going to help you out. You know, Jeffries and Schumer, all their people became lobbying firms. Their lobbying firms are going to get this type of money. That's

• 15:08Speaker 01

  already happening. Every firm and every company in DC is shifting to Schumer's former staffers or Jeffries' former staffers. This is how it works. And if we, this is a core point, we need to grasp as Americans, it's not one party that, we're playing this shell game, right? When Congress and the Senate, I don't think they've passed a bill in the past 20 years that's significantly taken on special interests. This is a game, at the end of the day, debating partisan politics or having the delusion that this is a Trump problem or a Democratic problem. This is a structural problem. Americans did not vote for Trump or, frankly, the Democrats recently, who are basically copying Trump's messages against

• 15:49Speaker 01

  the swamp. They didn't vote to have people like this, that are accepting money from foreign countries while they're running the midterm strategy, have their kids working at lobbying firms that are making tens of millions of dollars. You know, and really having the most populist president ever elected, Donald Trump, have a centralized policy process that is, you know, entirely dictated, not by voters, but by who's paying Ballard. At one point, you know, I was arguing for, I think, school lunches or this no-brainer policy to Tony Fabrizio. And I said to him, I said, you know, President Trump really galvanized a lot of voters with Bobby Kennedy. I know, you know, Joe Rogan's listeners would really

• 16:32Speaker 01

  love to see some, you know, getting healthier school meals. The processed food companies might like that. And he said, it's not a big part of our strategy. He said, you know, those voters kind of dismissed me bringing up your listeners, who I felt like I was advocating for. He said, that's not really, and Mahalo's not really a big part of our strategy. So I, you know, had...

• 16:52Joe Rogan?

  What did he say the strategy was?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  They were obsessed with, they were obsessed with a highly, kind of surgical strategy of redistricting. They were obsessed with redistricting. And...

• 17:09Joe Rogan?

  Explain that to people.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So James Blair and Tony Fabrizio and Suzy, their entire strategy to win the midterms was to gerrymander various states, to change the congressional maps so they're more favorable to Republicans. And that's all they cared about. With the midterm strategy. And then, yeah, I can't speak to exactly what's in their head. But everyone has their own biases, right? When you come from this world where you're being paid at the current moment by Pepsi and other these other companies, all your friends are lobbyists, you know, everything, you kind of convince yourself that politics all rests on money. And Susie and James and other people said this a lot.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Susie said to me many times, we need money for the midterms, Kelly. We need money for the midterms. So when you convince yourself that money's the most important thing for the midterms and for the future political dynamics, and this was the narrative in the Trump administration by Susie from almost the beginning, then you can justify almost anything. And what Tony Fabrizio did with this polling is that, oh, people don't really care about the food issues, people don't really care about the pesticide issues, people don't really care about the taking on farm or whatever. So that's the big shell game, I think, that happened, is everything in the political strategy was based on getting enough money for the midterms, not actually doing the things that would then energize voters enough.

• 18:34Joe Rogan?

  Well, what do they think people do care about? If they don't think people care about the very things that they voted for, that they were excited about with this whole coalition with Maha, what do they think?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, James and the political team was really obsessed with these gimmicks. You know, they gave a presentation to the entire cabinet and Susie said, Tony Fabrizio is smarter than anyone in this room, listen to him, he's driving our strategy. And he talked about how, you know,

• 18:59Joe Rogan?

  That must feel good for him.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he talked about how, as a central campaign message, in the midterms, we need to talk about no tax on tips and affordability and the tax cut that we got from the one big beautiful bill. And my opinion is that, you know, you look at recent polls, and this is Pew, this is CNBC, this is Fox News, they ask Americans what the biggest issue in the country was, and it's the same in every poll, it's corruption. It's money in politics. And I think Americans feel spiritually, and this is what helped get Trump elected, is, you know, American competitiveness does not rest on whether we pass no tax on tips.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  I don't think Trump got shot in the face, you know, and almost killed, and has gone through everything he's gone through to run on these gimmicks. It's because we have corruption. It's because we have a broken system. Like, it is a joke that we're going to actually address big issues without institutional reform, which is really what Trump ran on, but they pushed these gimmicks. They were obsessed with this, you know, the only thing on healthcare was that we lowered drug prices, we had some drug price negotiations. So it was very like targeted things instead of, you know, big, bold ideas.

• 20:17Joe Rogan?

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• 21:05Speaker 03

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• 21:48Joe Rogan?

  So when he got into office, how do these people become a part of the cabinet? Is it simply that you have? Because I understand like that first administration that he had back in 2016, it was a giant issue that he had brought, he thought he was draining the swamp, he was bringing in the swamp to try to drain the swamp.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:06Joe Rogan?

  This time, supposedly, he had learned from the mistakes from the first administration, and that things were going to be different. Did he get duped? Like, what do you think it is? Do you think there's like, there's 100-plus jobs to fill, there's no way he can micromanage all of them and sit down with every individual person and go in-depth on their resume, what their plans are, what financial ties do you have?

• 22:29Speaker 01

  I think that he, just the first thing, I'll say it, there are a lot of good people in the administration. Like, Bobby Kennedy is a hero. There's a lot of other cabinet secretaries that want to go hard. But those cabinet secretaries are often talking about how exasperated they are by these dynamics, by these baller dynamics, and by the absolutely centralized control and paralysis that Susie's driven. So, you know, it's frustrating. But Susie, I mean, just the history is, she ran Trump's campaign, then was chosen as the chief of staff, and then, I know, she brought these other people in based on her word.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  I think Trump was right to learn lessons from his first term, but I'm just saying what the reality is right now. Like, Americans did not vote to have a group of lobbyists from Tallahassee be slowing down every policy that people voted for. And often saying that's because we need to get special interest money. I mean, that is not what people voted for, and it's a real, serious problem.

• 23:40Joe Rogan?

  And when she was running his campaign, was it that the campaign was successful, he became president, so he said, okay, I'm just going to make you chief of staff?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, her reputation has been that she's a steady hand, that she's, you know, an adult in the room. That was kind of her reputation. There was a big force to get her in as the chief of staff, and I was really excited about that. And, you know, I worked with her and with Bobby, and worked to get the Maha agenda through. But, you know, I think we're at a pretty consequential time in American history. I think frankly, and we can get into specific stories, but I think what's happening is a case study, not just what's wrong with Trump, but what we need to exercise from the system in general.

• 24:24Joe Rogan?

  So when, so you get in,

• 24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:29Joe Rogan?

  And when do you start realizing what these issues are, and how does it unveil itself?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I can go into what happened with glyphosate.

• 24:36Joe Rogan?

  Yes, please, because that's a big one. Because, I mean, I really love Bobby, he's a great guy, but when he was on here, he seemed so dejected when he had to explain how they got blocked.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:49Joe Rogan?

  Tell me.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Let's just set the table.

• 24:53Joe Rogan?

  Let's just set the table about glyphosate in general.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, let me set the table about glyphosate in general. American children are the sickest children in the developed world. We're hitting puberty much younger than we did 50 years ago. Two to three years. The New York Times recently did an article that said, nobody knows why. We have the highest rates of autoimmune conditions, hormone conditions, cancer, pediatric cancer, diabetes, you know, every kind of disease you can think of. We have the highest rates among kids of any society in human history. So, you know, I definitely think that solving that was a major voter promise. So, you know, obviously, what we're spraying on our food is very important.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  And the United States, we're 4% of the world's population. By some measures, we use 20% of the world's glyphosate and herbicides and pesticides. So our system is addicted to these chemicals. It's also interesting to me, when you look at us versus other countries, we actually spend half as much of our national income on food than Europe. They spend double the relative amount on food, but we spend three times more on healthcare. So we've got this real issue. We're eating, we have these incentives for the cheapest possible food riddled with these chemicals. And that was a big issue. You know, Tony Fabrizio did a poll, 92% of Republicans want to regulate pesticides.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a universal issue and a real mandate for the Maha movement. When Trump, President Trump, during the endorsement ceremony, he said specifically, we are going to look into pesticides, we're going to clean up the pesticides. This is a top issue. So, kind of, in the administration, the first thing we had was the Maha report, which was just basically listing what President Trump said he wanted to look into, such as pesticides. And it was the greatest fight I've ever experienced up to that time in my life to have the word glyphosate in that report. And the amount of almost violent reaction against that from industry, calls to Susie,

• 27:08Speaker 01

  calls to everyone, to have that word, not even have it in the report, not even have a government report mention that this could potentially be a problem, was the biggest policy battle I had seen up to that time. Just a word, just a word.

• 27:22Joe Rogan?

  But it's very clear, the health dangers of glyphosate.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  There is no, I would say there is actually no medical disagreement on that. But you have to understand, the EPA hasn't reviewed glyphosate in close to 30 years. And they currently say that it does not cause cancer. Now, five years ago, it was up for review, and they were going to review it, and they said, no cancer. Then it came out in court that Bayer, the maker of glyphosate, ghost-wrote research for the EPA report and bribed EPA officials. So Bayer, right now, is running PR campaigns, saying, attacking Bobby, saying, we can't have a misinformation, we're the pro-science company. Literally, the last review of glyphosate was thrown out because they ghost-wrote research.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  The amount of pressure, and this is the first thing I realized, the pressure was not even on policy on glyphosate and pesticides. They didn't want any inquiry. And this is where bipartisan senators come in from agriculture states. There's tremendous pressure on the NIH not to study it. I'm saying, like, people are threatening appropriations if we even look into it. Like, the amount of aggression to not legitimize this topic, and it hasn't been legitimized. The Maha report, literally saying that glyphosate might be a problem, was the first time the US government has actually ever recognized even that potential reality. But it was totally watered down. So that's the first step.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  The industry is very concerned because there have been lawsuits that have been settled for billions of dollars that prove that this chemical gives people, especially kids, in many cases, cancer. Those lawsuits are threatening Bayer. And the top issue for them was getting those lawsuits off their back. So they worked to go state by state and pass laws, jam laws through, giving them legal immunity, basically enabling, making it the second product after vaccines in America that you can't sue for.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  And even in most deep red, very agricultural states, this was a step too far. So they had trouble passing these bills in the states. Then they tried to jam something into the farm bill in Congress, and there was such a Maha uprising, including from Republicans, that this just doesn't make any sense, they were having trouble getting it through Congress. So I knew, you know, being at the White House as the Maha person, I knew that this was a politically explosive issue because it's obviously bad politics if the administration looks like they're putting their thumb on the scale to provide a product that has been proven to give kids cancer legal immunity. Obviously, that's a massive political loser.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  So I chatted with Susie's team, I chatted with the USDA leadership. I'm like, we agree, the administration, at the very least, should not be weighing in on this. We should not be putting, that's a political disaster. Time goes on, and I was called into a room, and Susie's person, Walker Bayer, is there. And he puts an executive order down on the desk, and he says, please review. And it was the glyphosate EO that says it's a national security issue, we need to have

• 30:55Speaker 01

  glyphosate, and alluded to liability protection, using national defense reasons.

• 31:00Joe Rogan?

  National security.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, national security.

• 31:02Joe Rogan?

  To make sure that we have glyphosate use.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  And I will tell you, the Secretary of War, the major generals, they don't see our lack of glyphosate on US farms as a national security issue. And the EO was all about farming, all about glyphosate. Nobody in military leadership sees this as a national security issue. So Walker put that on the table. I read it. I said, this is a political disaster. You know, we need to talk about this. And he said, this is final, it's national security, it's coming out tomorrow, and all the people in the room. And he said, please inform Bobby, and this is not up for discussion. And Bobby should not be calling the president or calling anyone, this is not up for discussion.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Susie then called Bobby's office and said, we're not discussing this. I went and informed Bobby, and it was announced the next day. Around the same time, the Supreme Court was deciding whether to take a case that revolved around liability protection for glyphosate. I, again, over previous months, had talked to many people and said, this is a political disaster because the Trump administration had a decision of whether to weigh in on that case. So the Supreme Court probably wasn't going to take the case, and when the Trump Department of Justice, when the president's Department of Justice weighs in, they can basically weigh in and say, please take this case. And it was basically hinging on whether the administration weighed in and said, please

• 32:34Speaker 01

  take this case. And the administration can weigh in on cases. The Biden administration chose not to. So I'm like, we just follow suit. This is a political disaster. Heidi Overton, who now is, who's Susie's, you know, person, who's now up for the FDA Commissioner, worked with the Department of Justice to construct a legal argument about why the Supreme Court could take the case and why they should be supporting liability protection for the pesticide makers. And she did not consult Bobby Kennedy on that.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  And the Department of Justice brought in a lawyer named Sarah Harris to the Solicitor General's office. Sarah came from the law firm that is Bayer's main law firm, and she wrote an opinion saying that the Supreme Court should take the case and give liability protection to Bayer. And that came out. So both of these things were completely done without Bobby Kennedy throughout any policy process.

• 33:44Joe Rogan?

  So did they get the liability protection?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Supreme Court ended up siding with the case, which they wouldn't have taken without that brief and urging from the administration to take it.

• 33:54Joe Rogan?

  How is that possible? That something that gives people cancer, that's known to give people cancer, gets liability protection?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  It's indefensible.

• 34:03Joe Rogan?

  We've talked about it on the podcast before, but the idea that your food system, in order for it to function, it relies on poison, is really insane, especially when you realize that that's not being used in other countries.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Well, here's what I'd say, Joe, it's even, you know, again, I'm not, I'm a realist. You know, I wasn't in there to argue for unreasonable things. We have a very complicated interconnected economy. I even buy the argument, right, that we can't ban this stuff tomorrow. You know, 99% of corn is sprayed with it, 98% of soybeans. It's used in other countries, it's a lot less.

• 34:41Joe Rogan?

  But it's also used in wheat, which is really crazy.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  And they use it for post, yeah, the desiccation.

• 34:47Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, which is really insane. Have you seen, there's a case of a young man who had glyphosate spilled on him and his neck, and everything swole up, and he had like this huge, this insane reaction that a lot of people saw online. They thought it was fake. They thought this was like, oh, this is either AI, or this is like, you know, someone put prosthetics on this young guy. But no, this guy, there was some sort of an accident, and glyphosate spilled on one side of his face. So you could find it, Jamie.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  I'm only seeing it in memes, someone try to find a non-meme source.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Okay. What I was gonna say is, this wasn't a crazy stance to ban anything. It was about whether people could sue if they get cancer. And in a free market, like that, to me, that's a perfect dynamic. Like, we're not banning it, but there needs to be, in a free market, recourse if it's causing harm for the externalities. So it actually was a perfect situation that we had the legal system taking lawsuits and adjudicating. And by cutting that out, it's actually an assault on the market. Because I was actually happy with that's happening. The Maha's putting pressure on glyphosate, there's lawsuits, which is appropriate, and they're gonna invest and they're gonna figure out something different. And that's happening to a large degree.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  There's been a lot of success with the Maha movement. Like, every boardroom in America realizes that, like, people are pissed off. But to take the legal recourse out, to make it the second product after vaccines, where, I mean, what does that say to moms whose kids have cancer? You can't even sue.

• 36:25Joe Rogan?

  So this is the young man, Tennessee teen drenched in, oops, Tennessee teen drenched in glyphosate, spent next seven years fighting massive alien tumor. Just months after being completely doused by glyphosate while working on a cell tower maintenance crew, Tennessee teenager Arden Allison developed one of the worst cases of Hodgkin lymphoma his doctor had ever seen. Arden and his mother told chd.tv how the seven-year battle transformed them into outspoken advocates pushing to get this disgusting poison out of our food supply. Look at him on the left, look at the side of his face. That is fucking insane.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  We're hitting a precipice right now because, you know, the top issue in Iowa right now is that they have the highest cancer rates in the world. So, you know, this is happening.

• 37:22Joe Rogan?

  Iowa has the highest cancer rates in the world?

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Of any geographic location in the history of human civilization across the world. Iowa and Kentucky and other US farm states had the highest cancer rates of any location in the world.

• 37:37Joe Rogan?

  And the, this substance just got legal liability, just got liability removed?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  After paying, after paying Ballard a ton of money.

• 37:52Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  If you pull up Courtney Nupp, K-N-U-P-P, soybean.

• 37:59Joe Rogan?

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• 39:58Speaker 01

  Well, this is what's really interesting.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  I, seeing this work out, had a strong suspicion that this was happening under his nose. And we had a meeting with him and Bobby and some other folks. And a farmer who was there, a regenerative farmer, brought it up. And President Trump reacted to the Supreme Court decision, saying it's a terrible idea. How the hell did this happen? Had no idea the Department of Justice.

• 40:31Joe Rogan?

  Jesus Christ.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  And I think it's emblematic. And I will say, certainly what I saw, when President Trump heard about an issue, his inclination was right. And the people around him, I think, treat him horribly. They treat him like, they talk about him like a baby. And they say it's because we're, you know, the political experts. But, you know, Trump wanted to go hard on investigating vaccines. Tony Fabrizio got paid by pharma and did a poll saying that it's not a popular issue. And Susie and Tony Fabrizio and that world put a full halt for a year on any vaccine inquiry. The president busted that up, just like he did with the psychedelic thing.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  The president did not know about the Department of Justice memo?

• 41:18Joe Rogan?

  He didn't know about the Supreme Court ruling on glyphosate.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And he didn't know that the administration supported it. And his initial, his reaction was that that's a terrible decision.

• 41:28Joe Rogan?

  Did he investigate and find out who was responsible?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  I can't speak to that, but I can, listen, the president, I'm not making, he has a lot going on.

• 41:35Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, obviously.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  And, and, and this is like, I've never seen him be presented an issue on the Maha stuff, and I'm going to speak to the Maha stuff, and not his inclination not to go hard. It is clear that the glyphosate example is a case study of what is happening throughout the Maha agenda and the health agenda, but also throughout the entire government.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  But, but, but, but, let me, let me, did Americans vote for this extremely, you know, not transparent process where we have immunity for pesticide makers be jammed down our throats with no public discussion? You know, at the very least, I think they voted for Bobby Kennedy with me and others at the table with whoever's arguing for the liability to have a discussion, for the Chief of Staff office to level that up to the president if there was an impasse, you know, and a real discussion. But, but what they, what they frequently did is they tried to take Bobby out of the discussion.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  I mean, again, Susie's person sat me down, put the EO on the table, and said it's not up for discussion. Bobby was put in a really tough place.

• 42:57Joe Rogan?

  It is just extraordinary to me that people who were not elected can have that kind of power, where they can push something through the Supreme Court where the president doesn't even know about it. And it's something that the mass percentage of our country that doesn't have a vested financial interest would not want to happen. Like, that, that is something, especially the legal liability protection, there's, there's a, I don't, if you had a vote, just, if you, we just had a wide-scale country vote, I think it would be like, off the charts.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  95%. We have polls. We have polls.

• 43:38Joe Rogan?

  And the 5%, like, who the fuck are those people? Like, this is not something that is necessary. It's something that's necessary with the way the current system is structured. It doesn't mean that this is the only way to do it. It's not like this is the only way to grow food. People have been growing food throughout human history. The idea that the only way that we can grow food in the United States of America, the greatest country the world has ever known, is we have to grow food with poison. Because there's some corporations that profit off of this and that use this.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  This system does not want us to know the truth, and they don't want us to talk about this stuff openly. Again, the other massive pressure from the industry was just not studying the issue. It, like, like, when you have, listen, in order, we, everyone agrees corruption's a problem.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Polling says it's the number one issue in America. Like, you have to identify what the problem is before solving it. And there's a lot of forces that don't want us to identify it. Like, I, I feel like it is vital to identify what the problem is specifically and how this works.

• 44:54Joe Rogan?

  Well, I agree with that 100%. I just, I don't understand how this can be happening right under his nose.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  There's so much going, this is, glyphosate is just one.

• 45:07Joe Rogan?

  But I mean, getting it to the Supreme Court and having, and how, how did the Supreme Court agree on this?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  There's 15, there's 15, you know, there's, the government's millions of people. The DOJ is one part of it. The DOJ, one bureaucrat could write a memo saying that the Supreme Court should, could take this case.

• 45:24Joe Rogan?

  But why would they agree to that? That's what I don't understand. Why would they agree to removing?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  There's, it gets into legal complexity in a law that's rigged, saying that the EPA should have preeminent authority over regulation. So they go by, the Supreme Court went by the law, which mentions that EPA should be the dominant force. And not, and it's not really the Supreme Court's job to note that the EPA is rigged to the point that glyphosate hasn't been reviewed in 30 years, and the last review was thrown out for a ghostwriter in research and bribery to EPA officials. So, so the law itself says stuff about EPA supremacy.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  You know, the, the case was kind of technical, you know, and they went off what the laws are. But the administration and the memo from the DOJ to take the case made them take the case, and we would not have had it if they didn't.

• 46:14Joe Rogan?

  Jamie, do me a favor and put this into perplexity, please.

• 46:19Joe Rogan?

  Ask, what is the amount of money spent on glyphosate in this country annually?

• 46:29Joe Rogan?

  What do you think that is?

• 46:30Speaker 01

  You mean like by farmers, like in farms?

• 46:31Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, farmers, you know, all that stuff. All the Roundup sales, all that shit. I mean, because it's, it's available commercially as well for, for consumers, right? You can still buy Roundup, can't you?

• 46:45Speaker 01

  It's being limited more, but yes.

• 46:48Joe Rogan?

  Let's guess. What do you think the amount of money we're talking about here is that's in use by farmers? Callie, what do you think it is?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I, I don't know what the fraud numbers are. I know this, our agriculture system is dependent on it. It's 99% of US corn.

• 47:04Joe Rogan?

  And they're dependent upon it as an herbicide?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:08Joe Rogan?

  And?

• 47:09Speaker 01

  And the seeds are genetically modified to, for it not to kill. So, so a corn farmer, soybean farmer, puts the seeds down, gets in their tractor, sprays, and then it kills everything but the seed.

• 47:20Joe Rogan?

  Here we go. Worldwide, annual spending on glyphosate-based weed killers is roughly $7 to $12 billion.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Seems low.

• 47:30Joe Rogan?

  Is one universally agreed total. Global market insight estimates $6.8 billion. Insight 8 estimates $9.3. Transparency market research estimates $12.4.

• 47:44Joe Rogan?

  These are commercial market estimates, not an audited tally of everyone's purchases. So there's not a clear number. But either way, we're talking about billions.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what the, what the, what the industry does, first off, they're, they're an aggressive lobby. I mean, you talk about, when you're looking at the firms I mentioned, they're backing up the truck. Richard Walters, who, who came in and de facto Chief of Staff for a while, his former firm, FSG Global, was, was paid by Crop Life right before he left. So they're backing up the truck on traditional lobbying. The other thing that they have is, is that the large agriculture companies feel like it's existential to maintain their lead in low prices, to have, you know, copious amounts of, you know, limited regulated pesticides and herbicides. So they've bought off the senators from farm states.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  You have an interesting dynamic where, because each state gets two senators, the small agriculture states are actually overrepresented. And a lot of this strategy was highly coordinated with those agriculture senators.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  It's changing, though, and I think a positive sign is my friend Zach Lane, he lost, but he ran as a Republican governor candidate in Iowa, and his chief message was, we're going to figure out what the hell is going on with Iowa's cancer rates. And the number one issue in Iowa for the election was water quality, because their water in Iowa is undrinkable with all the crap in the water from all the runoff. It's the number one issue in the state. And actually, both the Republican, this guy really led on the issue, and the Democrat who won, both ran on opposing liability protection and really figuring out what the hell is going on with the cancer rates. So even in Iowa, the epicenter of this, you've got people pissed off, you know, which is a point I made to, you know, the political folks at the White House.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  It's, you know, this is clearly a political loser to do. And I don't even think it's right on the politics of the farmers. Like, farmers don't like cancer, and this is not banning anything. Like, again, I can't stress this enough. This is literally whether there should be a legal recourse. That's it. 95% issue. But it's one case study. But Joe, you're, the problem, there's thousands of these issues. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of these things.

• 50:12Joe Rogan?

  And they're all very similar in that way?

• 50:15Speaker 01

  This, I'll talk about more stories, but I can give stories from my, and I, you know, I think more people should have the courage to say what's going on. I think there's way too much of a culture, you know, of just like going along with the system. Like, I mean, you tell me, like, are we at a time right now where it feels like we're just going to be status quo for the next four years? I'm worried about, I'm worried about socialists taking over, because I think unless the Republican Party actually has an anti-corruption plan to actually fix this, Americans are going to vote for a different solution. They're going to vote for something different than whatever's defending the current, you know, Republicans are, you know, responding to social, oh, we, you know, we support free markets. It's like talking points from 20 years ago. We don't have a free market in healthcare. We don't have a free market in agriculture. We don't have a free market in housing.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Like, we don't have that. If the Republican Party does not listen to what Trump said during the campaign, stop trying to subvert him, but actually, you know, try to do what he said and resonate with voters on, we're screwed. Before you have a free market, you have to fix this structural problem. And it's actually what President Trump is saying is very similar to what the people on the left are saying, to what AOC, El-Sayyid are saying. You know, they're saying, like, there's mass uniformity here. Like, Americans don't want this. But it is, it is absolutely how it works, and I'm, you know, happy to get into...

• 51:37Joe Rogan?

  It's just amazing that a small handful of people in the White House can have this kind of an impact on the entirety of the population.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  I don't think anyone would dispute that Susie's created with her team, a historic amount of top-down control. I don't think anyone would dispute that. And I don't, I don't think many would dispute what I'm saying about the general culture that's engendered. I'm speaking, I'm speaking for many staff members and cabinet secretaries in the Trump administration right now.

• 52:09Joe Rogan?

  Now, what is the support like for her from the President? Does he understand this?

• 52:17Speaker 01

  I think he was caught off guard by the fact that Susie approved the two, her two top deputies to go collect hundreds of thousands of dollars from a foreign government. I think he was caught off guard by that, and I don't, my intuition would be that information's been protected so much, he doesn't fully understand all of these micro-stories, nor could he. I'm giving a couple of stories out of thousands, and this is the culture that has been created. I mean, it's why we lost the midterms. We have been discordant from what was run on two years ago, that I believe President Trump, President Trump wants to be a great president. I think that actually there's a massive opportunity to correct the course and frankly, take some

• 53:01Speaker 01

  of the Democrats at their word that they want to fix corruption and fix the swamp. Like, I think there's huge opportunity. We've got more time, he's the President, you know, for longer, and I think his inclination is to go hard. I think his inclination is to be a historic figure, that he's suffered greatly and wants to do that. There's still time. But Joe, like, you know, I don't think anyone would say that I wasn't one of the most effective internal patient policy advocates in the White House. I got a lot done. I worked well with people. You know, Susie sent me a text, you know, saying how much she admired me when I left, and asked me not to, not to speak negatively of her. You know, but, you know, it was praise, praise by the USDA, praise by the White House, praise by HHS.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Like, I tried, and I feel like the most important thing we can do, again, it's either, they've got the corporate money, they've got the complete and utter stranglehold of the DC, you know, environment, which is demonic. It's demonic. We have you. We have truth getting out there, like, and shaming the system. Shame works. Like, the truth getting out there actually works, changes culture. We have to get the truth and have real conversations in America. We have to have some bravery. That's what I believe.

• 54:14Joe Rogan?

  Even if he removed the people that are responsible, is, are there people that could replace them that would change course?

• 54:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:24Joe Rogan?

  Or is it, no?

• 54:25Speaker 01

  No. There has to be, we, Americans need to understand that if they are getting whipped up and excited about policy promises through our existing structure, they are being duped and gaslighted and lied to. We need to have systemic reform. We should not have it legal to have government advisors, influential government advisors, taking money from foreign governments. I think 95% of people would agree that we need a constitutional amendment. Why do we have this? Why do we have corporations able to totally rig the system? You know, the founders, I've been reading the Federalist Papers, you know, I don't see what I'm saying as a pessimistic thing. Like, America wasn't founded on idealism.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Like, the Federalist Papers are like deeply skeptical of human nature. Like, the entire founding of our country and Constitution was based on the premise that humans are corrupt, humans are really bad, like, their motivations are bad, and they created sets of checks and balances for that. The administrative state, and the kind of what's happened, has gotten out of control. I think the founders would be shocked that we have had so few amendments and structural changes to our system as we've modernized, and we have to do simple things that 90% of people agree with. The hardest things to get done, actually, are not the partisan issues, but the things actually most people agree with, because the swamp doesn't want that. And I cannot express to you how broken the Senate and Congress are. Like, they don't go against special interests. So...

• 55:52Joe Rogan?

  Why is that?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  Senators spends 90% of their time fundraising. Senators spends 90%.

• 56:00Joe Rogan?

  90?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, in the original founding, the Constitution, senators weren't directly elected. They were appointed by state legislators. So you voted for your state legislator, and then they would appoint a senator. So there wasn't, there was actually a little bit of a buffer, and you, you know, you had to rely on your state legislator. During the populist era, the 17th Amendment passed, which did direct election. I think that's a disaster. I think we should go back, because a senator's 90% of their time is not being spent with voters, it's being spent on this, and I think it's a little bit of a game, where everyone in DC convinces themselves that money is more important than voters. Again, that's the Susie Wiles premise, directly. "Callie, we can't do this, I need sugar money." Direct quote.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  "I need the money from the sugar people to win the midterms." So, so, so, I think it's a lie. You know, Trump has won elections with much less money. I think the message and actually what you're promising and what you're doing matter a lot more. What, what, what gives me hope, we will, we will get nothing out of Congress, nothing. You, like, you are deluding yourself if you think Congress is going to pass some major bill to constrain themselves or structural change. There's an incentive for a presidential candidate to really run on reform, because they are trying to be popular to the mass base of people. And I do think there's an effort for President Trump, for additional presidential candidates, to run on actual structural reform to blow up DC. Why do we have super PACs? Can we pull that? Do Americans want super PACs?

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Do Americans want Bayer rigging the political system? Do, like, why, can we have a conversation about just flat-out corporate money and politics? Other countries don't do that.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Like, like, why can't we have a one-page constitutional amendment to start structurally changing these things?

• 57:51Joe Rogan?

  What would that entail? Like, how, how would that be passed? How would you get people on board that are already compromised?

• 57:58Speaker 01

  You have to have the president run on it as a mandate, as a central campaign promise, and say, this is my central campaign promise. We are going to have this simple document passed. The document needs to be 100% bipartisan. It, it has to go after corporate money versus the same amount they go after union money. It needs to be totally up the fairway.

• 58:21Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  90% issue about corruption in politics and structural reform of money in politics. They pulled that. It's the number one issue in America.

• 58:30Joe Rogan?

  Right, but how would you?

• 58:31Speaker 01

  And then, and then they win on that issue, and then they run. It's so important what a president runs on, right? And that's, I think, the disconnect with the people being frustrated in the past two years. The president, the president has a lot of power on what they marshal the country's attention to and run on. This is the number one issue in America. So they run on that. They should say, this is going to Congress the day I get into office, and I'm not signing a fucking bill until Congress passes this. And if you vote for me, this is a mandate to actually pass structural reforms. And they hold Congress's, and shame, it's shame. They shame Congress to do it. That's the only way it will work. Congress will never originate it themselves. It needs to be a very popular president with a mandate to get this thing passed. And it needs to be extremely simple, one-page, start and chip away at this.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 59:17Joe Rogan?

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• 59:59Joe Rogan?

  And new this year, in-app location sharing, so you know where your buddies are in real time. The best hunters are prepared. That's what this app does. It turns guesswork into a plan. I use it every time I hunt. Before your next hunt, get on OnX Hunt. Download it today. Use code JRE for 20% off your membership at onxhunt.com. I think a part of the problem is, most people are not aware of how significant all this is. Most people are not aware of how deep this web goes. Like, what you're saying right now, that you're so eloquently articulating, most people do not have this information available to them.

• 1:00:43Joe Rogan?

  And most people have very, um, idealistic narratives as to what their party represents and what their politicians represent. And I don't think they really, truly understand the extent of the influence that money has. It's almost like a vague notion that we have to take money out of politics, right? Sure. But do they, do they actually understand the extent of how intertwined it is and how difficult it would be? And just imagine the resistance a presidential, presidential campaign would receive from, whether, whether it's Congress, or whether it's lobbyists, or whether it's, all this

• 1:01:24Joe Rogan?

  money, if they knew that this guy's gonna get in, or this woman's gonna get in office and kill the gravy train.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  It's, but it's hard, it's hard to have that pressure when you're saying something that's demonstrably obvious and everyone agrees with. That's what I tried to do with Maha, right? I tried to focus on the big things first. I tried to focus on issues which made people like Susie and Tony look stupid for disagreeing with. I mean, they were going to battle on school lunches. They were going to battle on-

• 1:01:49Joe Rogan?

  And what were they saying?

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Uh, there was dozens of meetings and calls saying that taking junk food out of school lunches would hurt, uh, the companies, uh, who make junk-

• 1:01:59Joe Rogan?

  That sell junk food.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, and when I left, the day I left, the stocks of the major junk food companies went up 8%.

• 1:02:06Joe Rogan?

  Oh, that's so dirty.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  So, no, no, but these, and, and my, I, I thought we were operating on a rational, again, I'm not a zealot, I'm not, you know, immune, or, or I'm not, um, blind to DC dynamics, right? Having the right argument in DC doesn't matter, but it's, it's, we have Bobby Kennedy's coalition, it's popular, it polls well, and we look really stupid for not improving school lunches, or getting the ultra process-

• 1:02:40Joe Rogan?

  I think Bobby's coalition is probably the only thing that's still supported.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  It's the most popular part of domestic policy for Republicans. Bobby Kennedy is the most popular figure by far in the Republican Party. Um, yeah, I think Democrats are stupid, uh, to be attacked, they're saying they want to impeach him. Like, Bobby Kennedy, you look at Ballard's, uh, money that they're paying for the special interests, um, it's all against Bobby Kennedy. Like, like, he, he's, he's fighting what everyone wants to fight, uh, and would gladly work with people across the aisle, uh, and is the most popular, he's actually the most popular, according to Harvard-Harris Poll, the most popular public official in America, uh, today. Um, so, there was a tremendous energy, uh, to diminish his impact on the election, to diminish him.

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Um, um, I think based on some of these dynamics we're talking about. Like, the Republican Party is not going to exist unless we listen to what Trump said during the campaign, you know, and become a anti-corruption party. You cannot have a free market without fighting corruption first.

• 1:03:48Joe Rogan?

  Do you think it's possible, this deep into the administration, here we are, it's November 2026, just after the midterms, do you think it's possible to course correct now?

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  I think it's possible for President Trump to exercise the Tallahassee lobbyists from the White House, um, and-

• 1:04:03Joe Rogan?

  And replace him with who? This is the point earlier, like, is it possible-

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  There's some, there's some, there's some good people in the White House. There is a lot of people that are very frustrated. There are people that would not sell him under the bus for a foreign government.

• 1:04:14Joe Rogan?

  Okay, but if he did remove these people that we just, that you highlighted, that you say are the issue, are there people that you could get into place that would not immediately be compromised?

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  You need, you need to, you need to, you, we have to get to a moment in America where presidents are running on true institutional reform. The only, there's two, there's two ways that you can drive institutional reform in this country. One is, as I mentioned, the president jams it down as their top priority. There's actually a second route in the Constitution where states can create a constitutional amendment without Congress at all. It's never happened, but if 2/3 of states actually vote to have a constitutional convention, they can meet all 50 states and pass amendments without the federal legislature. Um, it's actually an issue that I think a lot of people should look into that's very interesting. But, but those are the two routes we can have institutional reform.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  My thesis is, I think Trump, President Trump can save this presidency, can change staff, and get back on more of, you know, an America-first fighting position against the swamp, uh, and get a lot done, and maybe even get some things done with Democrats. I believe that. I think President Trump, uh, wants to be a historic figure and realizes that, uh, it's gone off course. For true reform, my argument is, we are deluding ourselves. We're playing this game where we're just ping-pong back and forth between the parties with an absolutely broken system, um, in Congress. Again, can you, can anyone name a bill that's really took, taken on special interest that's actually been really populous in the past 20 years? It doesn't happen. It will not happen.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Um, so, you know, we've got to bring this to the top of the conversation, and I think that's primed, because these are the most important issues in America. To your point about Americans and what voters think, I, my intuition is that actually Americans get what's going on. Um, I think we can all feel that we're entering a consequential moment in American history, and things are really fucking broken. Um, and I think people can buy into this idea that we're not gonna have some silver bullet policy solves without real institutional reform. And the institutional reform, again, starts simple. Should we have super PACs? Should we have the ability for corporations to completely buy off, uh, the political process?

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Should senators be spending 90% of their time fundraising? Should 90% of generals leave and immediately go become military contractors? Is that appropriate?

• 1:06:47Joe Rogan?

  Is that really what the number is?

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  90%. We're talking about, we're talking about war, and, you know, we're talking about these bad incentives, oh, why do we have such a healthcare cost? Because the 20 people I worked with at HHS, I, I did, I laid them out, 19 out of 20 will be lobbyists for the interests that we're trying to fight the day after they leave.

• 1:07:06Joe Rogan?

  And they're aware of this? And this is the golden parachute?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  100%. I mean, it's just, these are things we learn about in 6th grade civics class, but, like, everyone has motivations. Every single person that Bobby Kennedy works with on healthcare policy, almost to the person, maybe one or two exceptions, will be working for the industries that Bobby Kennedy's trying to fight the day they leave.

• 1:07:32Joe Rogan?

  And do you think that there's direct communication with these people to try to stop things? Or do you think there's an understanding, that there's an incentive to, to do things that are beneficial for the industry because you're gonna be leaving and entering into the private sector as soon as you get out of public office?

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  One of my first couple of months in DC, um, I was invited to a dinner with Dave Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly. Um, he's in DC every week. He's in DC all the time. And he practically lives in DC. And I'm like, this is interesting. I don't know if he knows who he's dealing with. I'll go to this dinner. Another White House staffer was there, a mid-level staffer. I could see very clearly, he comes to DC, he invites the staffers to dinner. I expressed to him the opinions of Maha voters to pharmaceutical incentives and how we have a real problem that Americans are lashing out about, which is that our healthcare system is incentivized for Americans to be sick.

• 1:08:30Speaker 01

  He rolled his eyes, talked to the other person we were having dinner with. She ended up leaving the White House and becoming a lobbyist. He feels people out. These CEOs are having dinner all the time with the mid-level White House staffers, all the time.

• 1:08:45Joe Rogan?

  And they're just figuring out who's gonna play ball.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Dave Ricks, the CEO of the largest pharmaceutical company, is in DC all the time having dinner with mid-level staffers. You go to the Ned Club in DC, the special club there, I mean, it's just staffers having dinner with lobbyists and CEOs.

• 1:08:59Joe Rogan?

  Jesus Christ.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Pull up Courtney Nup, Courtney Nup, I sent you Courtney Nup soybean. So, you know, on the glyphosate thing, this wasn't generals or Pete Hegseth saying, "We need a EO on glyphosate." You had this woman, Courtney Nup, who was a staffer at the National Security Council. This, you know, congressional staffer who became, you know, national security for agriculture. She, with Susie, drove the EO. She's at National Security. She then left and became the CEO of the Soybean Board, which is, the Soybean Board is a glyphosate lobbying group.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  This doesn't even get attention, but that's who I was dealing with.

• 1:09:51Joe Rogan?

  She currently serves as the Director of Global Supply Chain at the National Security Council, USB's Board of Farmer Leaders, representing more than 30 states, ratified the decision at its July board meeting in Indianapolis.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, I, you know, I think at these meetings, right, with her and with Susie's people, I think about all the advocates, all the people that come on this podcast. It's like, all the people that like, care about like, this issue, like people dying of poisoning. And it's like, these are where it happens, and people like her are really, really, really powerful.

• 1:10:31Joe Rogan?

  And for these corporations.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  And they just don't give a shit about, like, what, you know, you know, so many people have advocated, you know, left and right, you know, and, and they just, there's hatred, like, I don't think it's in their brains fully, in their hearts, but there's like, a hatred in the system to like, voters. It's crazy. Like, it's demonic. Like, like, she, like, got this fake national security argument through, and then goes and probably makes millions of dollars, right, lobbying for them, so...

• 1:11:07Joe Rogan?

  But I don't even understand the national security argument.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  There's not one.

• 1:11:11Joe Rogan?

  But how do they write it? How do they write it out?

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  It was written by, it was written by, I mean, I assume it was written by Bayer.

• 1:11:20Joe Rogan?

  But did you see the language? Like, what is the language? How do you...

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  Oh, they argued that the phosphorus, like, something about phosphorus, which is a component to glyphosate, is needed for munitions. But the EO was all about how...

• 1:11:34Joe Rogan?

  The fuck does it have to do with using it on corn?

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:11:38Joe Rogan?

  "Promoting the national defense by ensuring an adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides." This is the presidential actions from whitehouse.gov. Wouldn't it be possible to have a supply chain of phosphorus outside of this mandate of...

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  This was lobbied, right, to send a, like, middle finger to Maha and Bobby. Like, they could have, the Department of War could have easily issued a guidance to shore up supply chains of phosphorus, right?

• 1:12:08Joe Rogan?

  Right, I mean, it's not...

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  But then you go down, there's all this stuff about glyphosate, too.

• 1:12:13Joe Rogan?

  It's not mutually exclusive. So, "Elemental phosphorus is also a critical precursor element for the production of glyphosate-based herbicides, which play a critical role in maintaining America's agricultural advantage by enabling farmers to efficiently and cost-effectively produce food and livestock feed." Boy, this is, the way this is phrased is so crazy. And the, this is so nuts.

• 1:12:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, it starts to talk about weapons, and then quickly moves on to farms.

• 1:12:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I see. Yeah. "So it's a critical component for manufacturing semiconductors that are central to numerous defense technologies, radar, solar cells, sensors, optoelectronics, increasingly important in modern lithium-ion battery chemistries." Boy. And so, when Trump was passing this, did you discuss this with him?

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  No, this was Susie Wiles person sitting me down, saying that this is final, do not have Bobby push anyone, Susie calling Bobby's office, saying, "Don't litigate this", and that this was getting out the next day, and it was signed, there was no public signing. So I can't speak to whether Trump, President Trump, knew about this.

• 1:13:31Joe Rogan?

  But doesn't it seem like you can sufficiently supply phosphorus?

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  Oh, of course, of course. It's not even worth, it's a joke, it's a joke. That's a joke. This was, this was Ballard.

• 1:13:46Joe Rogan?

  How many countries are using glyphosate for their agriculture?

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  So, this, again, this gets to the cool point. We are not arguing to ban it tomorrow. The system, unfortunately, over the past several decades, has become addicted to this chemical. And Europe is aggressively trying to, and uses much less of it, and is trying to get it out of their system, but is on the process of phasing it out much higher than America. Also, other major regulatory authorities have, have recognized the cancer link. It is so notable that the EPA, right, and the review's coming up. And HHS, I just will say this again, was extremely pressured in the run-up to the EPA

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  review not to study glyphosate. Like, by senators and other people, like, like, people talk about, like, pro-science, like, trust the science, like, like, I'm telling you, like, leading nutrition policy, like, leading food policy in the United States government, like, we cannot trust what we're hearing. Like, we can't. It's broken.

• 1:15:02Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. If you're thinking about building a website, you should try Squarespace. I know because I use it. That's right, joe rogan.com is powered by Squarespace. It has all the features that you need to create a standout website, like, an AI-enhanced website builder, SEO optimization tools, and seamless checkouts with mobile pay links. Head to Squarespace.com/rogan for a free trial, and when you are ready to launch, use the offer code ROGAN to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by Visible. As fall hits, we enter another season of change.

• 1:15:44Joe Rogan?

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• 1:16:29Joe Rogan?

  and save $10 on your first month with promo code ROGAN. Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. Has there been a single study by our government or others to come up with strategies to figure out a way to remove glyphosate and still maintain the food supply?

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, this is where I don't even think it's that complicated. The market does work if it's a functioning market.

• 1:17:02Joe Rogan?

  So if people get sued...

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. Like Bayer's argument to, you know, the Ballard argument, was, "We're getting so screwed by these lawsuits, we need to get these lawsuits off our back." That's a bad argument. Like, you should be figuring out, like, that creates an incentive to create a better solution.

• 1:17:24Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  And, you know, the market works in that respect.

• 1:17:28Joe Rogan?

  Especially if these lawsuits have merit.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:17:31Joe Rogan?

  And they do.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Settle for billions of dollars.

• 1:17:33Joe Rogan?

  And you were saying that Iowa's drinking water...

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  Is the number one issue in Iowa.

• 1:17:38Joe Rogan?

  So, people in Iowa, they can't drink out of the tap?

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  There's probably articles on this, but, oh, like, out of every issue in Iowa, it's the number one issue in Iowa.

• 1:17:49Joe Rogan?

  So it's like Flint, Michigan?

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:52Joe Rogan?

  Same sort of deal?

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  It's a massive issue, and Iowa has the, it's the second highest cancer rates in the country, which means the world.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  If you look at a map of where glyphosate is used and then a map of cancer in the United States, it's almost identical.

• 1:18:07Joe Rogan?

  What has the first highest?

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Kentucky.

• 1:18:10Joe Rogan?

  And that same thing?

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're like the same.

• 1:18:12Joe Rogan?

  Farmerland?

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's all, it's all the farm states.

• 1:18:14Joe Rogan?

  God.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:16Joe Rogan?

  And is it a specific type of cancer, or is it just?

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  No, I think it's non-Hopkins lymphoma is a big one.

• 1:18:23Joe Rogan?

  Just like that young man got on his neck.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Joe Rogan?

  Good lord.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  It's evil. And again, like, like, and this is what farmers are starting to realize, right? We had this monolith of like, farmers don't want any touching of pesticides. It's like, we polled it, like, farmers want to know why they're getting cancer. You know, can't we just be honest?

• 1:18:44Joe Rogan?

  Who was the regenerative farmer that you guys met with in the White House?

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  We brought several regenerative farmers, John Lundgren, Will Harris.

• 1:18:52Joe Rogan?

  Will Harris?

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Who I, you know, Casey and I met through.

• 1:18:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  After reaching him out on your show, some of those guys.

• 1:18:59Joe Rogan?

  That guy spent 20 years converting his family farm from an industrial-based farm to regenerative?

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  It's possible.

• 1:19:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  And, and, and, you know, our policy was, you know, let's, let's not remove the, let's have the legal route, and let's really promote regenerative farming, and try to incentivize it. There was several billion dollars that moved from the USDA, and, and I will say, you know, Brooke, Brooke at the USDA, you know, has been, she was game, she dug in with us on, on trying to get some of this done, she has her constituency, but, you know, I would say there's a lot of people, you know, that kind of want to move harder on things, but feel kind of constrained right now, but, you know, we, I don't, I don't want to take away from this, like, I think Maha and like, a lot of what we've done is nudging this forward, but we're not getting real change without institutional reform. It's too much.

• 1:19:51Joe Rogan?

  So let me take you back to the cabinet. What would be, like, I want you to imagine that Trump hears this podcast and says, I want to talk to you, tell me what we should do. What do you tell him?

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  I would recommend, I would recommend that he clear his house, and I think he's getting there, and, uh...

• 1:20:15Joe Rogan?

  You do? What makes you?

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  I, I, I would, it's fully my intuition. I hope he's getting there. I would say, Mr. President, you have suffered, you've been shot to drive significant change, you've been dealing with a lot of things, a lot of great things have happened, we have had crime go to an all-time low, we have secured the border, we have combated the woke mind virus, which is very important, like, there's a lot of cultural accomplishments that we've made, but he still has an opportunity to do what he wants to do, which is go down as a great president, by really combating special interests, combating the swamp, combating the real institutions of DC that he knows is broken.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  He should not be trying to make friends with John Thune anymore, who's a demon, like the majority leader of the Republicans, like, he knows, he knows these people are broken. He needs to go to war with Congress, go to, go to war with the Senate, you know, take, take some of the new lefties at their word that they are not taking corporate money and really want to drive institutional reform, meet with them. I think the best chance the president has to get things done is meeting with Barney, meeting with Al Sayed. They ran on a Trump message. Like, like, if you close your eyes and listen to what the socialists are saying, that they're, oh, no, we don't want to, we don't want to do socialist stuff, we don't want to do DEI stuff, we want to help the middle class, we want to combat the swamp, like, they, they are running as Trump.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  So there's an opportunity for the president to get back to basics, I, I'm not going to name names, but I, on this one, but there's, there's people in that administration, and people that have left that will come back, that want to drive historic reform. Like, at the mid-level, like, there's a lot of people that joined to, to drive historic reform, so this is not over.

• 1:22:06Joe Rogan?

  But it just seems like, from your description, that all of these elected officials are contacted, and most of them are in one way compromised.

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  The next president's going to win by running against the Senate and Congress, and this is why I'm optimistic. The president is unique because they are, they're the only person elected by everyone, so they have an incentive to say what's widely popular. They have an incentive to say what's widely popular, and the most widely popular thing you can do right now is actually run on blowing up DC. So I, I actually do, just from an incentive standpoint, I actually have a lot of optimism that we're going to get there on a true, like, reform agenda, and I'm trying to jam this out of the ecosystem. We all need to get together in America to realize, you know, people can complain about President Trump, people can complain about the Democrats, the foundational issues are structural, and I think we all can feel that.

• 1:23:00Speaker 01

  And unless people are talking about real structural reforms, if the rules of the game are rigged, we're just going to keep getting a rigged outcome, and the rules of the game are rigged, and this is not what the founders wanted. Like, we are not taking into account what the founding documents said. The founders would be shocked that we haven't reformed more. So we've got to have structural reform, and I think there's a serious incentive to, to, to have that more in the conversation. And I think the president could frankly inject that into the conversation. I, I think that there's an opportunity for him to do great things in the next two years, and I think he wants to, I really do. I think he wants to empower Bobby more, I think he wants to empower the change makers in the administration more.

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  I, I believe, just my intuition is that he wants that, and I think that'd be a good thing.

• 1:23:49Joe Rogan?

  And what is stopping him from doing that?

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  I think, um...

• 1:23:57Joe Rogan?

  Like, he's the president.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's got a lot going on.

• 1:24:01Joe Rogan?

  I understand that, but obviously, there's some things that have made his administration deeply unpopular with some of the American people.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  This isn't to make an excuse, but, you know, I, I spend every day with Bobby Kennedy, who is my hero. I, I left with more respect for him than ever. I'm never, just full integrity, never seen him do, you know, anything that wasn't in the best interest in his mind for the American people. But I spent a lot of time with him, he's got a 90,000-person agency. He's surrounded by demons who want him out and want him just destroyed. That's his staff.

• 1:24:40Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:42Joe Rogan?

  It's that bad?

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Trump's sitting at 2 million people.

• 1:24:44Joe Rogan?

  So his staff is all completely compromised?

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like, for the most, especially the whole infrastructure. They were sending around a memo, a CIA manual, about how to be a bad bureaucrat and, and subvert an institution from within, that's like, sent around by all the career officials.

• 1:24:57Joe Rogan?

  A CIA memo?

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  They hate President Trump, yeah, about how to be a bad bureaucrat and subvert from within by being incompetent.

• 1:25:02Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  So, so just like, taking that what I know, it's like, like, it's kind of, I'm not making excuses for anyone, but it's like, it's kind of crazy, right? It's like, what the hell do I do? This is an unruly government, and the president has orders of magnitude more than that. So, yes, I do think it's possible for him to recognize that there's frustration over the past two years of not aggressively moving on the policies that he ran on that are widely popular, that there's been a severe consolidation of power, using the fact that he's very busy

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  to slow many policies down, and I, speaking for many cabinet agencies when I say this, I'm going to give my, and I'm happy to give more specific stories, but yes, he can make a change to his staff. The president knows who the people are that are not going to sell him out to a foreign government. The president knows the people around him that will try to go hard to really drive some compelling change, to have an impact on the country that he wants to have. And I think there's actually opportunity, there's opportunity in the fact that the president ran on saying the same thing that people on the left are saying, which are actually not partisan. There's actually, there is an opportunity to, to get some things done that are not partisan,

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  but, but, but anti-institution, like, like, like, reform the institution, I believe that.

• 1:26:40Joe Rogan?

  I know there's been an incredible amount of resistance from the people that I worked with to meet with him at the White House about Ibogaine and psychedelic use for veterans, for people with addictions, and all the things that we talked about during that historic meeting. He signed the executive order, and everyone that's involved in it on my side is saying it's, it's unbelievably bogged down.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  Um, I would say that the psychedelic is moving more positively than almost any other issue because the president is very engaged on it. But you have an infrastructure that is trying to wait us out and bog down everything. But out of all the issues, I am optimistic. We've got, I won't even name them now, but just to protect them, but we've got people, I think you know, people that are good people that are still in there, I'm communicating regularly with, that are flagging issues and making sure this goes through. But it is an interesting issue, right? It's like one small issue. It is a massive issue because it's an issue for you. And it's just like, we shouldn't need that. Like, we're using that.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  I was using that a ton. Get this fucking done right now. Like, the president wants this. The problem is, most issues don't get to that level. But, like, Oliva State didn't. But, um, I mean, to me, to me, you know, the fact that Heidi Overton is now going to be the FDA commissioner, was trying to block psychedelics without understanding what they were, it's like, it's just a representation of, like, the demonic nature of DC. I mean, this is one of the great things the Trump administration's going to do. I promise, like, I promise you that there's people in there, and me still, we're going to do whatever possible to make sure that gets out. Which means, you know, that there's a path to have some of the drugs reviewed, that there's fast-tracked on the research, that this stuff gets out of the box. It has to happen.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  It's going to be one of the greatest accomplishments of the Trump administration.

• 1:28:38Joe Rogan?

  I think so as well, because I think it's going to change mankind. I really, genuinely believe this. I know people think I'm naive, or that I have some very idealistic and utopian view of what this stuff can accomplish. But we have a gigantic problem with people who have drug addictions in this country. And it's one of the most effective things that's ever been studied, by far. And I don't understand what the resistance is. So can you give me some information about that? Like, what and who is trying to slow this down and put the brakes on it? And why?

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is what I've been dealing with, the chatter you're getting. I would say, I think this is moving pretty well right now. It's been unblocked. You always have to be vigilant for institutional blockages, but all I'm hearing until my last day is that things are moving about as well as they can. Psychedelics was interesting, because it wasn't a widely lobbied issue. I think there was a little bit from pharma, because I do think it's very disruptive to have a substance that can be potentially one-time and just transformative. It's not the usual pharma business model. But it was just institutional resistance to doing anything new.

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  You know, the top people at the White House, Heidi Overton included, didn't have a full understanding of what they were, no interest, right? She talked about these in the same class as street drugs. I'm like, people aren't doing recreational ibogaine. Like, that's not how it works. And it was just-

• 1:30:11Joe Rogan?

  What was the conversation when she talked about in the same class as street drugs?

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  Oh, that's how her and other people, that, oh, the president's anti-drug, this is just putting another drug, like, on the street, referring to it like a street drug, that there's going to be some, that was a mass White House talking point that got out from Heidi.

• 1:30:26Joe Rogan?

  And this is after I'd contacted him about it?

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, this is before.

• 1:30:29Joe Rogan?

  That was this before?

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  So when you contacted, this was something we ran on, this was something the president said, "Good." This had a halt from Heidi, Susie, this had a halt. You know, Susie, Heidi at one point, you know, got very frustrated with the FDA commissioner me saying that, you know, this just was going to be stalled, there's nothing we can do about it. You know, invoking, everyone invokes the president, actually, when they invoke Susie, you know, invoking the president. So it was being stalled. There was a huge, there was a huge just paralysis to getting anything innovative or new done. And to me, this was demonic, right? This was, this was something, I believe this will be one of the great accomplishments of our time, getting this out. I mean, I mean, you know, it's something, it's something that I think we don't understand

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  how societally impactful it can be if done right. So you called. People were very pissed about that call, kind of the cadre of White House people. At one point, a person said to me, "This is an end run. This is an end run of the policy process." And I said back that you calling the president is not an end run. You represent a lot of people, you have your finger on the pulse, you help the president, you have every prerogative to call the president. And that is not an end run in the process, and the president doesn't only need to meet with Ballard lobbyists. He actually can talk to people like Joe, and the president can take that into account and make his own opinion.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  But they were very upset that an external force came in to push that.

• 1:32:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I felt that.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's how I try to operate throughout, again, it's either money or shame, you know, with the dietary guidelines, with taking soda off SNAP, with, you know, we've gotten a lot of major food policies. You know, the top item on food stamps is soda.

• 1:32:24Joe Rogan?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  Soda, we took that off.

• 1:32:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  30 states. You know, we had landmark food safety reform. So we've gotten a lot of that-

• 1:32:32Joe Rogan?

  What are the 20 states that didn't go along with that?

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  California's the one.

• 1:32:35Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  California's one. Texas did it.

• 1:32:39Joe Rogan?

  Super healthy California.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  Texas, Governor Abbott, they were flying private jets of food companies, telling not to, he did it.

• 1:32:47Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, Florida, blue states did it, but mostly red. But every state should do that. I mean, if Democrats are running, saying that they're going to be more Maha than Republican, that every single state should do that. I mean, that is, that is unexcusable, that we're, you know, Coca-Cola is making, you know, $8 billion or whatever it is, from taxpayer money to give soda to kids, who are then on Medicaid and bankrupt the system, and like, 38% of teens have free diabetes. I mean, it's like, so we got-

• 1:33:18Joe Rogan?

  What? Say that number again.

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  38% of teens in the United States have free diabetes.

• 1:33:23Joe Rogan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it's dark.

• 1:33:29Joe Rogan?

  Holy shit. That's crazy.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  But for each of those things-

• 1:33:37Joe Rogan?

  Oh my god, 38% of kids have pre-diabetes. So you're talking type 2 diabetes that's sugar-induced, correct?

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Pre-diabetes, yeah, pre-type 2 diabetes, yeah.

• 1:33:48Joe Rogan?

  Oh my god.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  That's recent USDA statistics. It's, it's the biggest issue in the country. And it's directly from incentives. You know, this is what was so popular, this is what's still popular. You know, Republicans, we believe in free choice, but when 38% of kids have free diabetes, 45% of teens are overweight or obese, 20% of young adults have fatty liver disease, almost 80% of American adults are obese or overweight, we're beyond a personal choice issue. We have a systemic breakdown, and it's obvious. We have SNAP that's 15% of Americans depend on. It's number one item is soda, number two, three item is candy, top item is potato chips. No other country does that. So we're force-feeding, then they're lobbying, right?

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  And we got the SNAP through, but again, it's public pressure that I used. I would, I would threaten a lot, right, that, you know, various people would get mad, that we get bad press, like, that works. And sometimes it had to happen. But that, that's all that moves anything. Nobody gives a shit. Like, nobody gives a shit about these things. Like, you don't have meetings in DC and talk about those statistics, and people say, "We better do something." Nobody cares. Like, I cannot express to you how strong that is. Nobody gives a shit. All that matters is special interest money, or that they're going to get a bad article about them.

• 1:35:13Joe Rogan?

  Oh my god.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  That's it. So that's what Maha did. We had this, we had this, you know, they were, people were worried that, you know, we might disappoint the voters, or have influencers get upset. And I tried to use that as much as possible. And Bobby, we got a lot done. But, but like, but like, the ecosystem wants to expel any of this. Like, expel.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  And, you know, I wish, I wish Democrats and Republican, everyone would just kind of see it's what Trump actually, you know, talked about during the campaign, like, this is wider than partisan, it's just like a structural problem. But there's, you know, can get into another story or two that's just specific, because I think the specific stories are, are helpful.

• 1:36:00Joe Rogan?

  Okay, sure.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Another issue that was very unsettling was childhood vaping. Are you familiar with that issue? Vaping with kids?

• 1:36:13Joe Rogan?

  Sure, yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  You might see with, it's rampant in high schools. There's a study from one of the leading groups that they asked kids, how many of your friends vape, you know, by all the best statistics, about 50%.

• 1:36:26Joe Rogan?

  50?

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:29Joe Rogan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  So this survey asked, this is actually pertinent, it asked, do you vape? It's like kids answering a survey, they're like, you know, it was like 5%. Like, what percentage of your friends vape? 50%. So I think any parent with high schoolers sees that it's a huge, huge issue and it's, you know, disastrous health impacts. Also, on the surveys, it's clear that it's all about the flavored vapes. So flavored vapes are very appealing to kids and like 70% of kids said that people wouldn't vape if there weren't flavored vapes. So some of these folks I put up earlier, there's significant money flowing around

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  to some of the folks that I mentioned from the vaping industry. It's a massive, massive industry. And it's also the big tobacco guys are really getting into this and funneling a lot of money to Ballard. So it was well known at the White House, I don't know if, I think it's Ballard, but one of the top, one of the top firms, but it was well known, this is a tagged issue, that this was, this is a big one. These guys are donating to the, you know, to the various causes, they're, they're hiring the right people, you know. It was the single, in my opinion, the single most prioritized issue at HHS among any health issue for James Blair, who's, who's really has a stranglehold on policy, policy has to

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  go through him. So like, I'm talking like Medicare, you know, health access, food, you know, anything at HHS, this was the top issue for the White House. And the issue was to get a better pathway for fruit flavored vapes.

• 1:38:08Joe Rogan?

  Oh my god.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  And there's a law that says that, this is from Congress, that says, before any FDA approval, you need to have a study saying that this isn't harmful to kids. And Marty McCary, who was, who was fired, was pounded on this, pounded on this, like, like, meeting after meeting, West Wing. Like, he wasn't getting called up to, you know, talk about, you know, our dietary guidelines reform, or healthy food, or, you know, anything Bobby Kennedy talked about. And, and James and the other people, they said, and this is where the, these guys, you know, being kind of immersed in this world and then being

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  the gate on policy, but also the midterm strategy, he would argue that approving vapes was a core midterm issue. That, that, that young men, that your listeners, I guess, really want their kids, you know, that really want their fruit flavored vapes. And this was an emphatic argument. So this is what, this is the problem, right? When you have these people in charge of the polling, in charge of the policy, and they're using the midterms as a reason to jam vaping. And I'm like, I'm thinking, I'm like, well, jeez, I, okay, I helped.

• 1:39:20Joe Rogan?

  I never heard that once.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  The number one issue?

• 1:39:24Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  The, like, I'm not, this is the top issue among these people for all of health. So, so I remember, I'm like, thinking, I'm like, huh, I was pretty involved in the campaign. I connected Secretary Kennedy and President Trump and, you know, was a top advocate and, you know, put together the whole policy plan for the Maha and polling. And I, I don't remember vapes being, approving vapes being a top issue, but that was, that was their argument. When I brought up how we really need to cater to your audience, who I felt like I was fighting for, and, and Maha voters, and, you know, fast track some of these ultra processed food definitions and other things, James told me that, you know, we really got to be careful, because these guys have played by the rule, by the rules of the food industry,

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  we don't want to beat up on them too much. And then Tony Fabrizio in other meetings said the juice wasn't worth the squeeze on some of those policies. But on vaping, no, no, this was a very important midterm issue. So Marty stood his ground and, and worked with, worked to kind of create some solution, but stood his ground. He was later fired. And when he was, when he was fired, Heidi Overton, you know, who really, you know, just kind of did whatever Suzie, that's how you get ahead in DC, did whatever Suzie wanted, she wrote up a policy to relax standards on fruit flavored vapes. They released that,

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  got sued by various people, the American Heart Association, noting the law, that you need to have studies saying this isn't harmful for kids. And still to this day, it is a top issue. James left, still very involved in it. I've heard, I can't substantiate this, I have heard that he's currently taking money from the vaping industry, he can deny that, I don't know. That's what I've heard, I'm not making that statement factually, I'm trying to be very specific. But Richard Walters, who replaced him, it's, it's his top issue. I mean, he's, he's pounding, trying to find whatever possible way we can approve more fruit flavored vapes for the specific, and it's, it's, it's not defensible, like, this is, this is so, those are on the market and kids buy them. So.

• 1:41:32Joe Rogan?

  I want to be in the room when that guy's pushing that as the number one thing.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  The thing is, it's like normal. It's like, and I think, I think, you know, I won't name everyone, but like, there's people, one thing I'd say, these people just, and I don't mean this like in a really dismissive way, these aren't the best and brightest, these staffers. They have tremendous power, though. But they're just like DC, you know, they play the game. And, yeah, it's crazy. It is crazy. But this is happening on every issue and it's so antagonistic to, you know, the sin for me is it's not even good politics.

• 1:42:12Joe Rogan?

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• 1:43:39Joe Rogan?

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• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Like, it's just, it's bad. It's just, it's just, it's just total co-option.

• 1:44:20Joe Rogan?

  Total co-option. I mean, this is, it's personal benefit, 100%. There's no way, shape, or form, you could convince anybody in this country that vaping was the number one thing in the midterms.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  But this was, this is, like, from my perspective, like, this is the issue that that orbit was most.

• 1:44:37Joe Rogan?

  Freedom to vape.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so, so, and, and, you know, it, it has ramifications for millions of children. Also around that time, that Marty was, was in the hot seat, the FDA sent a, basically sent an application back on the Moderna mRNA flu vaccine. Did you ever talk about, do you remember that? Okay. So this was a big uproar among some of the Maha folks. But Moderna was using their mRNA technology to create a flu vaccine.

• 1:45:12Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  They had a joint venture with, I believe, Blackstone, you know, hundreds of millions into this, into this drug. And the FDA reviewed it, and there were two major issues. One is that the study, you know, you, you always want to compare the drug to whatever the best standard of care is currently. So like, whatever the best flu vaccine is. And they used, purposely used a antiquated old one to make it look better. And they got a warning, basically a letter from the Biden administration, saying this isn't a great study design, they've been warned on it. So that was one issue. The second is it didn't work. It had a 0.8% absolute risk reduction, which is almost nothing, and a significant side effect profile

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  based on the clinical trials. So they weren't even comparing it to the standard of care, even though they rigged the study. I want to be careful with my words, in my opinion, rigged the study, but, you know, I think that's safe to say, given that they purposely used not the standard of care for what it would be compared to.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  Very, very low, based on that study, risk reduction, like, almost negligible. And then massive side effects.

• 1:46:22Joe Rogan?

  And what were the side effects?

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  So, it can't be definitively said, but there were deaths.

• 1:46:30Joe Rogan?

  From the trial?

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. There were deaths in the trial group.

• 1:46:35Joe Rogan?

  Oh, God. From the flu?

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  There were deaths in the trial group. And, you know, a host of other issues.

• 1:46:44Joe Rogan?

  And they were still trying to push it through.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  So Marty said, it didn't even reject it, said, "Push it back, we need to do another study." Unrelenting, unrelenting pressure, you know, from the Ballard world and all that. You know, if any special interests is watching, and you're trying to rig the system, unless it changes, pay Ballard, pay Continental, Susie's daughter, pay Checkmate, Chris La Cervita's son, that's another one that shot up, and, you know, pound Susie with the nations and calls. Everyone knows this playbook. It's an open secret in DC. But that's what they did, they followed the playbook, the playbook's out.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  And I remember, yeah, the new FDA nominee, Heidi, who was basically like Marty's intern, like Marty mentored her, Marty like helped her whole career at Johns Hopkins, you know, was her advisor. I remember she was sitting with Marty and me, and she basically said, you know, "This corporate pressure is getting so much, like, I don't know what I can do for you anymore." And I'm like, "Okay, this place turns you into demons." Like, this place just turns you into a demon. Like, she was breaking with Marty, because he refused to bend on something that clearly, like scientifically, he did the right thing.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  Heidi wasn't reading studies, or like, you know, doing any science.

• 1:48:15Joe Rogan?

  She was just responding to corporate pressure.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  And this is a vaccine that's gonna go out and be called safe and effective.

• 1:48:22Joe Rogan?

  And kill people.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  And Marty was fired, Heidi drove the jamming through of a re-review, where they set up a sham advisory committee of, you know, run by this guy, the head of the Vaccine Center, Caslow, was the head of vaccines for Merck. He has a license plate that says "Vaccinate," wears an N95 mask.

• 1:48:53Joe Rogan?

  Wait a minute, he wears an N95 mask all the time?

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 1:48:58Joe Rogan?

  That guy must be fun. What kind of cars he driving?

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  I don't know, it's nice, he's very wealthy.

• 1:49:03Joe Rogan?

  I bet he is.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  So, so he's in charge of vaccines, so, you know, his group puts together a sham advisory committee, says, "Oh, this is perfect." And now it's approved. Now that vaccine is safe and effective. And, you know, I was attacked by some of the Maha people for not, like, vaccines weren't my issue. I'll tell you, like, we need to grapple with this, and I'll just speak to everybody, right? Like, this is how it worked, nobody was looking at studies. Like, the study was not good. And due to political pressure, and the former head of Merck Vaccines, who's running the Vaccine Center, who's never seen a jab he doesn't like, waving it through, like, "We have a vaccine in the market that the FDA did not think was appropriate, or at least needed more studies."

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  Like, that's how it fucking works, and we need to grapple with that. Like, the Democrats are saying they wanna trot Bobby in and talk about his vaccine decisions, I would love that. Like, we need to have a real conversation here. But, you know, it's damn right people have questions about this stuff. And I can tell you, I have very little confidence, again, from being very close to the center of this. Like, we can't say with a straight face, "These processes are legitimate."

• 1:50:15Joe Rogan?

  And it's a real problem in this country, where the liability protection has coincided with an ideology. And that ideology is that vaccines, it's like, if you just have a product, and you call it a vaccine, it immediately gets respected.

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  Ninety percent of Americans distrust the pharmaceutical industry, right? But there used to be good, vaccine actually trust is declining, but, but like, vaccine, okay, that polls well. There's a huge effort among pharma to label as many things that they can a vaccine. It's this weird thing, right?

• 1:50:49Joe Rogan?

  Because of liability protection.

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  For liability protection, and because vaccine sounds, once you're labeled that, you know, it's like you can't question it. So, so it's this weird thing, which is, and I think the left is actually gonna change on this, and frankly, the left used to be leaders on this issue, but, you know, I think they've really kind of lost the vaccine debate. They tried to bully Bobby into not talking about it, but he kept doing it. The president has been amazing at this. Again, Tony Fabrizio put a block on any study, like, anything on vaccines, block. Direct White House order, block. Trump, the president unblocked that.

• 1:51:25Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 1:51:27Speaker 01

  Tony Fabrizio put a block, and he takes money from pharma. It's on his website, his website, I mean, Pfizer's on his website, right now, today. So...

• 1:51:36Joe Rogan?

  Look at that. Corporate Public Affairs, New York Post.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  This is his website.

• 1:51:41Joe Rogan?

  Penn National Gaming.

• 1:51:42Speaker 01

  This is the most.

• 1:51:43Joe Rogan?

  Pfizer Pharmaceutical, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing of America, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, RJ Reynolds Tobacco, Vaping, Heritage Foundation. Wow.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  Most powerful, one of the single most powerful people in the country.

• 1:51:59Joe Rogan?

  Dow Chemical.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  Full veto on any policy. Every cabinet, every cabinet leader in the Trump administration is working to get his approval.

• 1:52:10Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  And he's taking that money today. I don't know if the president knows that. But, yeah, so, that's the mRNA. I've got another one.

• 1:52:26Joe Rogan?

  Give me another one.

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  You know about kratom?

• 1:52:29Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:52:30Speaker 01

  What do you think of?

• 1:52:32Joe Rogan?

  Well, I have a story. I've told this story, if you've heard it before, I apologize, the listeners. There's this guy that I had on my podcast, nice guy, and he had kratom, and he was telling me how great it was, he's had previous addictions. And I go, "Well, what does it do?" "Oh, well, at low doses, it acts as like a mild stimulant, like coffee, at higher doses." And then this guy's had problems with addictions. And I go, "Okay, how much should I take?" Well, he says, "Well, when you're, you know, about to do a podcast or something, take two." So I take two of these little capsules. And I'm like, "Hmm, that's kinda interesting, all right." There's something going on, it does something, a little bit of a stimulant. And then I tell him, I go, "Yeah, it's kinda cool." I go, "What do you take?"

• 1:53:17Joe Rogan?

  And he goes, "When I work out, I take 10." So I go, "10?" I go, "You take 10?" I go, "What does that do?" And he goes, "Oh, it's great, I don't have any problem with it." I go, "Really? 10?" So, you know, I'm a crash test dummy, I'm like, "I'll take 10." So I took 10, and I was like, "Holy fuck, dude, I'm like, you're high." And I talked to him, and I said, "Hey, man, you're not sober, this is not sober." I'm like, "It was a weird high. It wasn't affecting my motor skills, it was really interesting, it wasn't affecting my, which is why I understand, I guess he lifts weights on it, it wasn't affecting my ability to like, control my fine motor skills. But I was 100% in some way, shape, or form intoxicated.

• 1:54:02Joe Rogan?

  I don't know what part of the opiate receptors it works with, but it's not that simple." And then there was a bunch of these feel free drinks that were going around the club, and like Duncan kept drinking them, he was drinking them like incessantly, and I was like, "Man, I don't know about these fucking things." And then I started seeing all these lawsuits, and I started seeing all these people that like, got really addicted to them, and then we had a guy come in and did an episode of the podcast, and someone had sent us some kratom stuff, and it was sitting on the countertop next to the coffee machine. And he just immediately points, he goes, "Do not take that." And I go, "Really?" And he goes, "Dude, I am so addicted to that shit, I can't get off of it, and it's fucking horrible." He goes, "It's a horrible high, and I can't get off."

• 1:54:47Joe Rogan?

  I'm like, I go, "Really?" I thought it was like, a safe alternative to people that were addicted to opiates. And I have heard that from other people that are very functional, and they said they've had problems with Oxycontin, and Oxycodone, and all these pills in the past, but now they're taking kratom, and they're fully functional. And I'm like, "Okay, well, I guess, for them, maybe, but it seems like it's addictive, at least for some people."

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  It's an opioid.

• 1:55:15Joe Rogan?

  Just straight up?

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  It's a straight up opioid.

• 1:55:18Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  It's very, it's called gas station heroin, it is an opioid, period. It is a legal gray zone, and I don't think many people know about this, but this is a, like, $3 billion industry.

• 1:55:33Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  This is massive, billions of dollars.

• 1:55:36Joe Rogan?

  Just in the United States, or?

• 1:55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:39Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 1:55:40Speaker 01

  That's my understanding.

• 1:55:41Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 1:55:42Speaker 01

  This is rampant right now in America. Many, many people probably do know about this. But this is an opioid, and it comes from a leaf. You can concentrate the 7OH, which is the molecule, but it's through a legal gray area, has been able to be put into products that are sold at gas stations, you know, stores.

• 1:56:03Joe Rogan?

  Juice shops?

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:05Joe Rogan?

  That's where I first encountered it, was at a healthy juice shop in Los Angeles.

• 1:56:09Speaker 01

  It's an opioid, and it's causing devastation. So, people that have been coming off of, you know, drug addiction, end up taking it, going right back on the wagon, it's causing deaths, it's causing devastation. It is an opioid. This is a just black and white, you know, area we've been behind on. And it's, you know, there's no real discussion among anybody in public health, that this is a disaster. So, this seemed like, you know, no-brainer, right? The president, you know, is trying to, you know, push on opioids, it's devastating his voters. And Marty, you know, had an amazing initiative and press conference

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

  where he was going to take this on. And he stood with moms who've lost sons, and it was cross-government. I mean, this is like, okay, great, this is early on, it's like, okay, this is a no-brainer, let's just keep doing this stuff. The amount of lobbying on this was unrelenting. So, you have these like vape shop, you know, people, and, you know, these companies that are, you know, it's these, it's these guys that just got in and just like rode this wave. I mean, we're selling heroin, you know, it's pretty addictive.

• 1:57:25Joe Rogan?

  Well, not only that, this has been a long time going on. Like, so, this was before the pandemic, because I saw it in Los Angeles.

• 1:57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:33Joe Rogan?

  And I think I even bought it there before. I think I even bought it, not only that, but those little bottles, there's supposed to be two doses.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:57:40Joe Rogan?

  And it's, you can't see through the bottle.

• 1:57:43Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:57:44Joe Rogan?

  Right? It's a dark glass. And so, when you're drinking it, like, how do you, how you measure out two doses?

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  So, this is the key, this is the key thing. So, what the FDA and DA and everyone did early on in the term was put a extremely high tolerance limit on the amount of the compound, a 0.05% concentration of the, of the 7OH, of the core opioid compound. So, because people still sometimes have drinks with the kratom leaf, which has a trace amount, and 0.05% is a very low amount. You'd have to drink like 20, or 30, or 40, like, a ton of the bottles to like get a high, right? So, that went through, was a big victory.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  Unrelenting lobbying happened. And this Susie world, huge pushing, huge, huge pushing, meetings, pushing from the West Wing to relax the standards. And the administration, again, I don't think Trump even knows about this, they increased the tolerance 20x.

• 1:58:53Joe Rogan?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:58:54Speaker 01

  So, so, 20x versus what the recommendation was. And that's cleared then, and everyone knows the game. That's that, you know, maybe you have to buy two bottles, you know, or three, and chug them, to get the high. But everyone knows the game there, right? So, then it's exactly why they lobbied to do that. And that, that happened. So, we have vaping, you know, 50%. And, you know, you know, again, it's, it's, it's...

• 1:59:24Joe Rogan?

  How big is the vaping industry? Like, what is the money?

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  It's massive. It's, so, it's, it's becoming the whole tobacco industry. They're all getting away from cigarettes, and, you know, the Reynolds, you know, Altria, the, the big players are now all in on the vaping. So, there's, they're, you know, hiring all the lobbyists, doing a lot. So, it's a, nicotine is a very big business.

• 1:59:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but see, like, there's something uniquely addictive about, wow. Well, e-cigarette vaping industry is estimated at 24 billion in 2026. This is global. Can we get it on the United States? Is that available? US tracked retail, 6 billion in 2025. US electronic cigarettes and vape shots, 8 billion in 2026. Fuck. That's crazy. That's so much money.

• 2:00:23Joe Rogan?

  Wow. This kratom opiate effect, why is it so different than, I mean, I haven't done OxyContin's or anything like that, but I did get an operation once on my knee, and they gave me a drip of morphine, which is also an opiate. And I remember thinking, this is crazy. This stuff is nuts. It was so potent, it was so intense. And I could totally understand why people get addicted to it. It was like one of those things, like, if you felt pain, you could press a button. So, I was pressing that fucking button. Like, I had a reconstruction of my knee, so it was like, who cares, let's get high. But the, the kratom thing seems different, right? Like, what is...

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  The high was different?

• 2:01:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's weird. You're functional, which is, just felt so strange to me.

• 2:01:12Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe if you took more, you would, I don't know.

• 2:01:14Joe Rogan?

  Right. I only took 10. I don't even, I don't even know. I mean, these are capsules that this guy's company was making. I don't even know, like, what the dosage was.

• 2:01:22Speaker 01

  I can't speak to the impact of it, or the differences, but, but, but it is an opioid.

• 2:01:28Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:01:29Speaker 01

  I mean, that's not a dispute. It's, it's, it's a huge problem right now of people that have opioid addictions using this. It's a massive problem. It's, the reports to authorities and, and incidents are skyrocketing in the past year. You know, it's a real societal issue. You go into any of the, you know, blue collar states, and this is a real problem. So, you know, it's a multi-billion dollar industry, and it's, it's, it's a loophole for an opioid, that you can buy at gas stations. And, and, you know, you have this, 20x increase into what Marty solidified, which is going to cause death. I mean, it's going to cause

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  nothing good.

• 2:02:15Joe Rogan?

  And this is all lobbyists?

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Oh, unrelenting, yeah. I mean, again, the playbook, the playbook is out, right? And, and I don't, again, I just, I don't, you shouldn't fault him for the, I don't think the president fully understands. Like, I'm telling what I know and saw. This is happening everywhere. Like, everywhere. Like, totally, totally unconnected parts of the government. Like, this is what cabinet secretaries, like, complain deeply about. It, it's, it's a real, real problem.

• 2:02:55Joe Rogan?

  Give me another one.

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  I sent you David Kessler's petition thing, the 60 Minutes clip. Do you have that? This is a cool one, or a cool policy. You know, the whole promise of Maha is that we build bridges and really solve, you know, no-brainer issues. So, I really worked to, you know, build bridges with Democrats and, you know, left-wing groups, because this really, this is an issue, these issues have been talked about by everyone. One guy that was a great ally was David Kessler, who was the FDA commissioner during Clinton, who really took bravery and put his job at risk by taking on the cigarette industry. This

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  is, this is the initiative, this is just a little bit about him, I think it's, it's just...

• 2:03:45Speaker 05

  Kessler was commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration during the 1990s, when he helped expose how the tobacco companies manipulated nicotine levels to hook consumers.

• 2:03:57Speaker 06

  I am here to provide you with actual instances of nicotine control and manipulation in the tobacco industry. If you raise your right hand.

• 2:04:08Speaker 05

  He was a driving force in bringing tobacco executives before Congress, and turning public attention to the industry. He's now aiming to do the same with the food industry. In terms of a public health crisis, how does this compare with tobacco?

• 2:04:27Speaker 06

  It's as large, if not larger.

• 2:04:29Speaker 05

  It's that significant?

• 2:04:32Speaker 06

  The scale of this, this affects everybody. Understand, not everybody smokes. But look at the number of people who consume ultra-processed food. It touches all of us.

• 2:04:45Speaker 01

  So, so, this is a guy that's a Democrat. He came to us, he came to Bobby. He said on that 60 Minutes profile, which also interviewed Bobby, that Bobby Kennedy will be a historic figure, that he supports Bobby Kennedy on this issue. Like, it was real bridge-building. And what he did was he submitted a petition to the FDA, which would basically compel the FDA to ask about the amounts of sugar and refined carbohydrates in our diet from a real scientific area, like, kind of with the tobacco industry, and actually start investigating in a real scientific way whether this explosion of these simple things like sugar and refined carbohydrates in our diet have had an impact on children's health. Like, the most no-brainer thing imaginable. You know, we would, we would do an FDA initiative with him, you know, potentially have some of these food companies, you know, do, answer

• 2:05:29Speaker 01

  some questions. And his mechanism that he found was really interesting, because, you know, as you might know, the FDA, up until we just closed it, did not know what's in our food, doesn't know. It's been a full self-policing from the food industry, where they are able to self-certify, both in the ingredients, and importantly, the amount of the ingredient having an impact or not. So, you have all these things marketed to kids with high sugar. They're actually legally responsible for having studies showing how the amount of sugar that they're recommending for, you know, daily use for kids, actually doesn't harm kids. I, I would imagine they don't have that, they're legally required to have that. This would open up the door to start that conversation, getting the truth out. Not, not, nothing regulatory. We did a 60 Minutes, we got full White House approval, we went through the inter-agency process, and we were going to do a big initiative

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  on basic food safety, asking whether the amount of sugar in a children's diet was appropriate. And that's where Susie told me, we can't do that, I need the sugar industry money.

• 2:06:29Joe Rogan?

  Need the money for the midterms?

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:31Joe Rogan?

  Okay, the midterms are over. Now what?

• 2:06:34Speaker 01

  Well, the point I would consciously make is why the hell aren't we doing these now? Because these are the highest polling domestic policy issues that the administration has in many cases. I mean, these things pull off the charts, obviously. And why would we be making deals with special interests and then stab the special interests in the back right after the midterms and we don't have a political reason to do it? That was my question. Like, there was a political reason to do it before the midterms. We have no political reason to do it now. So I never understood the argument to wait till after the midterms.

• 2:07:05Joe Rogan?

  Well, it doesn't make any sense anyway.

• 2:07:06Speaker 01

  They would say sometimes, I think, but they would, I assume behind, that I don't understand the political calculations they're having to measure. These are core, core, central campaign promises of Maha.

• 2:07:19Joe Rogan?

  Not only that, but clearly, it didn't work. Like, whatever they're thinking about how you don't understand how the political system works, and we need to win the midterms, they got destroyed.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, historic.

• 2:07:33Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  And fully from the strategy of James Blair and Tony Faunce and Susie.

• 2:07:37Joe Rogan?

  And the war.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  And the war.

• 2:07:43Joe Rogan?

  Jesus.

• 2:07:46Joe Rogan?

  It sounds so daunting.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  But the strategy, like, I'll just hit it again.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  When you buy into the belief that money for campaigns is more important, is the most important thing, you can excuse anything. And I don't even think it's true. Like, I think, I think there's kind of this lie around DC. Like, it was clear to me that the money, this is not a money campaign. We're in a huge moment in America, like, a disruptive moment. Like, Trump, the Trump campaign wasn't about money. It was about him going out there, letting it rip. That's what, that's what won the election. I was really surprised, you know, how kind of dismissive this world was to President Trump. You know, explained to me that, you know, that your, you know, coalition that you brought in, or maybe, you know, impacted, didn't matter, that Maha didn't matter.

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  You know, that the real populist messaging didn't matter much. It was really about the micro-targeting. It was about getting the money for, you know, the targeted ads. It was about the redistricting. Like, it felt very wrong to me and very against what President Trump ran on. And that, that construct, which I don't think any cabinet secretary would really, could, could possibly dispute this. That midterm kind of paralysis impacted the administration about six months after the term started. And it became the dominant guiding force. And I think it's based on a lie. I really, politically, it's based on a lie. But, you know, you have to go into the motivations of people, right?

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  And I don't want to assume what people are thinking. I can just, you know, look at what they've done in their lives. Look at where they're probably going to work after. Assume that they are motivated by getting money for their family and, you know, look at where their children are working.

• 2:09:38Joe Rogan?

  Clearly, and also if that's the narrative, that the whole thing is just about money. And that's the most important aspect of it.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it, that's, that's, it's like, you can't imagine how accepted that belief is. You know, the 90% of Senator time being fundraising. It's just like, this isn't right. Like, can we step back and just ask, do we think senators should be spending 90% of their time fundraising from corporate donors? Like, is that a good thing?

• 2:10:09Speaker 01

  Like, like, like, we kind of just have, like, honestly, like, I feel like there's gaslighting about, like, preventing Americans from just having common sense discussions that, on things 90% of people

• 2:10:21Speaker 01

  care about. If I, you know, if I was, you know, driving a strategy, it'd be like, we're actually going to take a hold on, like, policy for a year if we have a new administration. Like, we are gonna, like, take on Congress, take on the Senate, take on DC, and demand structural reform. So we actually have more of a terrain where we can actually get some things done. Like, unless we fix that, we're not getting anything done. Like, this place is demonic. It's demonic. And, and I'm not here, I'm not here to just beat up on Susie or James. These are, these are case studies, right? They're totally bipartisan. The Dems are doing the exact same thing right now.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  The Dems have done it before. Like, I'm trying to share specific stories from where I was leading to kind of color this. We were talking a while ago, and you're like, how does this corruption actually work? It's like, we need to identify what the problem is.

• 2:11:21Speaker 01

  But, but, yeah, the president needs to exercise these people from the administration. But that's not the root cause.

• 2:11:29Joe Rogan?

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• 2:13:40Joe Rogan?

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• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  Of the problem.

• 2:13:50Joe Rogan?

  Okay, got some more? Give me some more, just like, so we can hammer this down and let people know this is not just a few things. Like, this is all going to get out there. It's going to be all clipped up. This is kind of important that we lay out as many of these as possible. Revealed how Susie Wiles kept Trump in the dark about looming GOP disaster.

• 2:14:11Speaker 04

  This is an article I saw today. If you Google her name, there's tons of articles in the last 24 hours saying she should resign now and...

• 2:14:20Joe Rogan?

  So was she gaslighting him about the polls?

• 2:14:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, this says that they were going to win.

• 2:14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:27Joe Rogan?

  White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in particular would often shut down conversations regarding a likely onslaught of oversight probes into those operating at the highest levels of the administration. One of the advisers said, believing it could pull focus away from the campaign.

• 2:14:40Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no.

• 2:14:41Joe Rogan?

  She would always say, we are going to win. We're going to put all our energy into winning. The adviser remarked of Wiles' attitude in the months leading up to the midterm elections. How did she think they were going to win? No one thought they were going to win.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, Susie and her team, in my opinion, right, they're leaking machines. And they're now aggressively, it actually happened before, I was shocked before the election. There was an article with quotes from Susie and James Blair.

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  And the article is quasi-blaming the president for the race and saying how brilliant their strategy was. Like, quotes from them before the election even happened. You know, during the campaign in 2024, you know, James had pinned tweets, and it was all about his political strategy. I'm like, dude, you, you, you guys managed the ship. You guys did not win this election. President Trump ran this, won this election. But they're in, they're in crisis mode. There's a lot of people in crisis mode to basically blame the president, which I think is, is, is wrong. You know, I, you know, I've...

• 2:15:38Joe Rogan?

  For the midterms, you mean?

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:40Joe Rogan?

  But don't you think he takes some responsibility?

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Of course he's the ultimate responsibility.

• 2:15:44Joe Rogan?

  The war in Iran is deeply unpopular.

• 2:15:47Speaker 01

  I think that there's a lot institutionally happening under his nose. I'm not here...

• 2:15:50Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. It's not just that.

• 2:15:52Speaker 01

  It's very complicated.

• 2:15:53Joe Rogan?

  The cryptocurrency thing, there's a lot of stuff. It's deeply unpopular.

• 2:15:59Speaker 01

  True.

• 2:15:59Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  And there's a mass effort among staffers right now, senior staffers, to throw him under the bus. When there's many finger-pointing go-to-round. What you just said is completely right. I believe that there's still an opportunity to get stuff done in the next two years. And I believe that President Trump wants to be a historic president and do big things. I believe that, and I think there's an opportunity to do it.

• 2:16:24Joe Rogan?

  So what else are you on?

• 2:16:27Speaker 01

  There was one interesting thing on the COVID.

• 2:16:31Speaker 01

  I actually thought Vinay Prasad, who got pushed out by Susie, who's a hero, and, you know, leading the vaccine stuff, and Marty, I thought they had a really elegant solution for the COVID vaccine, where, when they re-approved Pfizer's model, they required that they do a test, like, they haven't done a safety test in like, a long time. And they required that they have to do like, like, an immediate new study showing, and that the approval was contingent on doing that study, and that study showing efficacious benefit.

• 2:17:07Speaker 01

  And they asked for a real study. So Pfizer agreed to that for their condition of their approval.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  And Marty then got fired. And then, just recently, they, you know, the FDA and kind of the deep, the deep arms of, of that world told Pfizer they don't have to do the study. So we were gonna have a real, like, actual, like, study, and I, I, I think my opinion is they didn't do the study because they knew it would show bad things. But they, they waited out, they pushed for Mark to get fired, and now, and now they don't have to do a study. I don't think that's been talked about enough, but that was a precondition of them continuing to give the COVID vaccine. And I thought it was kind of an elegant solution.

• 2:17:54Joe Rogan?

  So how did the requirement to do the study get dismissed?

• 2:17:59Speaker 01

  The FDA let it happen. And nothing, I, I don't have personal view, like, like insight, but nothing, nothing like that happens without directive from the top.

• 2:18:12Joe Rogan?

  Oh, God.

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  And I think there was a huge, there was a huge effort by Pfizer to not want the results of that to come out.

• 2:18:25Joe Rogan?

  (sighs)

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  But I'll say again, you know, and just reiterate on the vaccines, like, I've never seen Bobby put his finger on the scale for anything. I mean, he legitimately was just, like, begging people to just have, like, studies, science, like, real studies, like, the, it's like, it's like the pesticides, people just do not want to know anything. And sordid on that at every step, and the president's been the real ally on that. But, but just, just, just, you know, the other thing about DC is this machine is so complex and Byzantine. You know, these creatures that have existed there for 20 years just know how to operate it. But, but it's just frustrating to me that, you know, we actually would have

• 2:19:15Speaker 01

  had a real win there, where we would have had a really legitimate study have to be conducted by Pfizer, and, and they, they did a ton of, a ton of work to get out of that. Again, these guys, these CEOs are talking to everyone. Like, they're, they're communicating with people all the time, deep into the FDA, you know, "Oh, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta beat up on these, these compounders a little bit," you know, like, "They're, they're giving us some trouble." It's, it's all relate, like, huge relationships deep. And these people, again, the vaccine guy, work for Merck, they'll work again. I mean, it, it's that simple.

• 2:19:54Joe Rogan?

  Good lord.

• 2:19:56Speaker 01

  So it will not be changed by a, some stupid bill. Like, I do, I, I do think we can, we, we, we are at the, it's a question for Americans. Are, are we at the moment of, like, fiddling around on incremental change, or are we entering an interesting time? Like, we at least have to take the possibility of what some people are saying with AI, that we're entering the most disruptive period of human history in the next four years. I mean, Elon thinks we won't be working soon. I mean, I don't know, but we're entering a very interesting time. Like, inequality is not going down, social anxiety is not going down. Like, like, we're, how, how far along? I think we're actually institutionally,

• 2:20:41Speaker 01

  like, pretty far along. Like, are we gonna have a serious conversation or not? And to me, that, like, I am optimistic, because I think Americans want this. I think there's an incentive for political leaders at the presidential level to actually start jamming this in the conversation. But I, I, I think Americans should be intolerant of any leader that does not talk about actually how to fix the rules of the game, instead of just bullshit policies. Policies are bullshit. Obamacare, Obamacare. Like, like, that's one of the biggest policies in the past 20 years, written by the insurance industries. Insurance premiums have gone up 1.5X since then. Like, we, it's now 25% of the US economy is healthcare. It was written by the insurance industries. It created a thing where you can

• 2:21:23Speaker 01

  raise premiums and get 15% of a larger and larger pie, created a direct incentive, and the stocks of insurance companies have gone up 15X. Like, like, like, that was the great liberal popul-, it was, it was a worst, worst law in American history. It exploded healthcare costs. We spend three times more than any other country today on healthcare, any country in the world, and live less than any other developed country. Like, the policy process is broken. It has to be fixed structurally. It's simple, but money in politics is a big fucking deal. And the leaders of the government, not President Trump, that I've seen, but, you know, Susie Wiles, and she's the same as many others, left, right, use this importance

• 2:22:08Speaker 01

  of money as an excuse to basically be antagonistic to what voters said, and, you know, help gas station heroin, help vaping, help, you know, pharma companies, help glyphosate. Those are, those are, like, that's the issues that was being pushed down from the White House. It wasn't healthy food. At all.

• 2:22:35Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:22:37Speaker 01

  I had to fucking bulldoze that stuff.

• 2:22:40Joe Rogan?

  What was the last draw for you? What you had, what you wound up leaving?

• 2:22:47Speaker 01

  I had a huge issue that the administration had agreed to release an ultra-processed food definition. This is important because the, the processed food definition is super simple. You know, it's, it includes a color, it includes a non-nutritious sweetener, it includes one of these factory-derived chemicals that there's an FDA list on. You know, I, I, I worked with left, right, and center. I, I purposely worked with every academic I could find, these people that did not like President Trump. And I had every academic group that I could find, Harvard and Tufts and everywhere, aligned on the definition. I had the American Heart

• 2:23:32Speaker 01

  Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, all these groups that are, like, suing the Trump administration and other things. They're like, "We'll stand at an event with you, we'll say this is the most important public health issue in the country, ultra-processed food consumption." Again, 70% of a child's diet in the US is ultra-processed food, and it's 10% in Spain. That's the problem. That's the problem. And we, we incentivize it. So we define it. Now, what was so interesting to me is that this was simply a definition, not even tied to regulation. But the amount of vitriol and lobbying on this, just, just having a simple definition out. Because the food companies don't want people to know the truth. They don't want people to have transparency. Even

• 2:24:14Speaker 01

  just a definition would come out, people would be able to look on apps, you know, maybe they could do voluntary labels, and maybe there'd be some momentum eventually to have this on a label, where states could pass laws to restrict it in school lunches, things like that. But it would, it would continue the momentum. And they lobbied aggressively. The, the lobbyist, you know, and I, and I met with everybody. This was six months. I met with Coca-Cola, Mondelez, everyone. The Oreo lobbyist for Mondelez, he just told me, he's like, I'm like, "Do you have any scientific, you know, feedback on this?" They're like, "We don't want it done. This'll hurt our business." And I'm like, "Well, we have a mandate behind us, this is an administration priority, we're gonna get it done." He's like,

• 2:24:59Speaker 01

  "I'm gonna call Mark Pylett, I'm gonna call Susie, I'm gonna call..." And he talked about these people at the White House like they were extensions of him. He's like, "Fuck you, I'm gonna call them." And he called them. And this policy that Brooke Rollins at the USDA, who has a lot of constituents who don't want it, she agreed to it, everyone agreed to it, we had a meeting, and then it got delayed, delayed, delayed. And Bobby and I went to Susie, she's like, "Oh, you guys are doing great, I don't know about any special interest concerns." Lied to us to our face. Then I heard her complaining, you know, about, about us after that meeting, and talking about how we need to do something about Maha, and that's what I heard.

• 2:25:43Joe Rogan?

  And do something about it because of what?

• 2:25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, do something about me, and do, just, just, just that they were being annoying. That's what I heard. Yeah.

• 2:25:50Joe Rogan?

  Getting in the way of them making money.

• 2:25:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. And, and I'm like, if, and then, and then tied into this was, and I just couldn't, right, school lunches. Like, this school lunch reg I worked for six months on, full alignment throughout the entire government, the full policy process, right? You know, the OMB, the USDA, HHS, every stakeholder, the National Economic Council, hundreds of meetings. And this isn't everything I wanted, but, you know, it's, it's, we, we don't require protein at breakfast. Do you know what the number one breakfast in, for schoolchildren is in America?

• 2:26:26Joe Rogan?

  What?

• 2:26:27Speaker 01

  Donuts and sugary pastries. We have tens of millions of donuts and sugary pastries going, government-funded to kids every day, destroying their metabolic health. It's ain't a fucking scusable. And there's no protein requirement. So we said, "You can't have sugary desserts for breakfast, and we're gonna put a protein requirement at breakfast, so maybe people can have some eggs." You know, there, we raised protein a little bit. We put that we, you know, you should prioritize whole food proteins, instead of, you know, a menu right now, you look at a school, it's pizza and fried chicken nuggets. I mean, it's disgusting. It's a national embarrassment, what's happening with school lunches. It's not even a money issue. We spend more than any other country on school lunches. You compare us to Japan,

• 2:27:12Speaker 01

  it's a national embarrassment. And the industry comes in on this issue that's central to Bobby Kennedy, central to a political coalition, so popular, and impactful, quite frankly. And they say it's gonna hurt our sales. And I'm like, if we're gonna block school lunches and a, and a quarter-page definition of ultra-processed food that doesn't even have a regulatory impact, when Bobby Kennedy is the most popular figure in America, this is the most popular part of the domestic policy, not to mention that it's just critically important for the

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  future of America that we continue the trend away from ultra-processed food, which is literally destroying our country, and, and just hearing, just, just a lot, like, lying to my face, you know, I'm like, the journey's still going. I mean, my, my goal, I, I think we're in early stages, I'm actually optimistic, but I did what I felt was the best thing to do at the time, and I think when this type of subversion is happening, maybe the best thing you can do is tell the truth.

• 2:28:28Joe Rogan?

  I agree. Listen, man, thank you for being here. Thank you for sticking your neck out. Thank you for all this information. It's really sobering. It's, it's very, I, I was aware that it was a huge issue, but I didn't know, I didn't know to the extent. And I think a lot of people listening to this are gonna have the same feeling after this podcast.

• 2:28:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:28:52Joe Rogan?

  So thank you. Bye, everybody.