The following is a conversation with Robert F, Kennedy jr. Candidate for the president of the United States. Running as a Democrat, Robert is an activist lawyer and author who has challenged some of the world's most powerful corporations seeking to hold them accountable for the harm. They may cause I love science and engineering. These two, Pursuits are to me the most beautiful and Powerful in the history of human civilization. Science, is our journey. Our fight for us.
Uncovering, the laws of nature and leveraging them to understand the universe. And to lessen the amount of suffering in the world. Some of the greatest human beings have ever met, including most of my good friends are scientists and Engineers again. I love science, but science, cannot flourish without epistemic, humility without debate, both in the pages of academic journals, and in the Public Square in. Good faith, long-form conversations.
Agree or disagree. I believe Roberts voice should be part of the debate, to call him a conspiracy theorist and arrogantly dismiss everything. He says, without addressing it diminishes, The public's trust in the scientific process. At the same time, dogmatic skepticism of all scientific output on controversial topics like the pandemic is equally if not more dishonest and destructive.
I recommend that people read and listen to Robert F, Kennedy jr. His arguments and his ideas, but I also recommend as I say in this conversation that people read and listen to Vincent rocking yellow from this week. In virology, Dan Wilson from debunk, the funk, and the Twitter and books of Paul offit, Eric Topol and others who are outspoken in their disagreement with Robert, it is disagreement not conform.
Artie, the bends. The long Arc of humanity toward truth and wisdom. In this process of disagreement, everybody has a lesson to teach you, but we must have the humility to hear it and to learn from it.
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Option and now dear friends, here's Robert F Kennedy, Junior.
It's the fourth of July Independence Day. So, simple question, simple. Big question, what do you love about this country? The United States of America?
I would say there are some things I love about the country on a, you know, the Landscapes and the waterways and the people etcetera. But on the kind of a, you know, the higher level, you know, people argue about whether we're an exemplary nation and the that term has been given a bad name.
Particularly by the Neo cons, the actions, the neocons. And in recent decades who have turned that that phrase into kind of a justification for forcing people to adopt American systems or values that at the barrel of a gun. My father and Uncle used in a very different way and are very proud of it. I grew up very proud of this country because we were the exemplary nation in, in the sense that
We were an example of democracy all over the world. When we, when we first launched, our democracy, in 1780, we were the only democracy on Earth and by the Civil War by 1865. There were six markets, these. Today, there's probably a hundred and ninety, and all of them in one way or another are modelled on and on the American experience. And it's kind of extraordinary because we are
First contact, with our first serious, and sustained contact with European culture and continent was in. 1608 1, John went through came over with his Puritans in the Sloop Arbella and Winthrop, gave this famous speech where he said, this is a sinking to be a city on a hill, this is going to be an example for, you know, all the other nations in the world and he warned his fellow Puritans.
They were, you know, sitting at the, this great expanse of land. He said we can't be, we can be seduced by The Lure of real estate or by the carnal opportunities of this land, we have to take this country as a gift from God and then turn it into a an example for the rest of the world of God's love, God's Will, and
And wisdom and it and you know, to 200 years later, 250 years later, they a different generation there. Mainly dies are people who had a belief in God but not so much. I love of particularly religious cosmology. He's, you know, the framers of the Constitution leaves, we work.
Creating something that would be replicated around the world. And that it was an example, it would in democracy, there would be this kind of wisdom from the collective, you know, that. And the word wisdom means a knowledge of God's Will. And that somehow God would speak through the collective in a way that that he or she could not speak through, you know, through totalitarian regimes. And I'm, you know, I think,
That's something that even though I went through, it was a white man and a Protestant that every immigrant group, who came after them, I kind of adopted that believe and I know my family when you know are for my family, came up, all of my grandparents came over and 1848 during the Potato Famine and they saw this country as unique in history as something. That now that was that was part of
And of a broader spiritual Mission. And so I'd say that from a 30,000 foot level at, you know, that's, I grew up. So proud of this country and believing that it was a greatest country in the world. And for those reasons,
well, I immigrated to this country and one of the things that really embodies America to me is the ideal of Freedom, Hunter Thompson said, freedom is something that dies unless it's used, what does freedom mean to you to me?
Freedom does not mean you know chaos and it does not mean an archaic. It means that it has to be accompanied by restraint if it's going to live up to its promise in the self-restraint, what it means the capacity for human beings to exercise and to fulfill their their creative energies on
Restrained as much as
possible by government. So this point a hunter estas has made is dies. Unless it's
used the agree with that. Yeah I do agree with that and I think I thought he'd he was not unique and saying that you know Thomas Jefferson said that the tree of Liberty has to be had be watered with the blood of each generation and what he meant by that is that it's you can't live off. We can't live off The Laurels, the American Revolution.
That, you know, we had a group, we had a generation where between 25,000 and seventy thousand Americans died. They gave their lives, they give their livelihoods, they their status, they gave their property and they put it all on the line to give us our Bill of Rights. And that, but those Bill of Rights, the moment that we signed them. There were forces within our society, I'm that began trying to chip away at them and that, you know,
happens in every generation and it is the obligation of every generation to safeguard and protect those freedoms. The
blood of each generation. You mentioned your interest your admiration of Albert Camus of stoicism perhaps your interest in existentialism Camus said I believe in myth of Sisyphus. The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. What do you think he means?
That I suppose the way that Camus viewed the world and the way that the stoics did and a lot of the existentialists it was that it was that it was so absurd and that the problems in the tasks that were given just a live a life or so insurmountable that. The only way that we can kind of get back in the gods for giving us this, you know, this this
Is impossible, task of living life was to embrace it and to enjoy it and to do our best at it. I mean, to me, I, you know, I read camo in the particular in the myth of Sisyphus as a as kind of, as a parable, that and it's the same lesson that I think he, he writes about in the plague where we're all giving these insurmountable task in our lives.
But that by doing our duty by being of service to others, we can bring meaning to a meaningless chaos and we can bring order to the universe and you know, Sisyphus was a was kind of the iconic hero of the stoics and he was a man, because he did because he did something good. He delivered a gift to humanity.
He angered the gods and they condemned him to push a rock, up the hill every day. And then I would roll down. If I got to the top, it would roll down and he'd spend the night going back down the hill to collect it and then rolling it. But back up the hill again, and the task was observed, it was insurmountable, he can never win, but the last line of that book is one of the great lines which is, which is something to the extent that you know, I can picture Sisyphus smiling.
Because camos belief was that even though he hissed house was insurmountable that he was a happy man, and he was a happy man because he put his shoulder to the stone. He took his duty, he embrace the test and, you know, and the absurdity of life and he pushed the stone up the hill and that if we do that, and if, you know, if I find ways of being service to others at is, you know, Theo
Ultimate, that's the key to the lock that says solution to the puzzle. Each individual
person in that way can never rebelled against absurdity by discovering meaning to this whole messy thing
and we can bring Ray meaning, not only to our own lives, but we can bring meaning to the universe as well. We can bring some kind of order to life and, you know, that those the Embrace of those tasks and they and the commitment to service.
Resumes out for most of the rest of humanity in some in some way.
So you mentioned the plague by Camus, there's a lot of different ways to read that book but one of them especially given How It Was Written. Is that the plague symbolizes Nazi, Germany? And the Hitler regime. What do you learn about human nature?
From figure. Like, at off Hitler that he's able to Captivate the minds of millions, rise to power and take on pulling the whole world into a global
war. I was born nine years after the end of World War Two and I grew up in a generation that was Vic, you know, with my parents who were fixated on that and you know what happened and my father at that time, the
the, you know, the kind of the resolution in the minds of most Americans, and I think people around the world is that there was there had been something wrong with the German people that, you know, the Germans had been particularly susceptible to this kind of demagoguery, and following a powerful leader and and to industrializing Cruelty and and and and murder and my
Are always different with that. My father said, this is not a German problem, this can happen to all of us were all just inches away from barbarity. And the thing that keeps us safe in this country are the institutions of our democracy. Our constitution, it's not our nature or Nature has to has to be restrained and it and that comes through self-restraint. But it also
you know, the beauty of our country is that we developed. We devised these institutions that are designed to allow us to flourish, but at the same time on not to give us enough freedom to flourish, but also create enough order to keep us from collapsing into barbarity. So, you know, one of the other things that my father talked about from, when I was little, you know, he would ask us this question if
If you are the family and and Frank came to your door and ask you to later, would you be one of the people who hit her right wrist, your own life? Or would you be one of the people who turned her in and of course we would all say well of course we would hide and Frank and take the risk. I'm but, you know, that's been something of a lesson. A challenge that has been that is always been near the Forefront of my mind. That if
If a totalitarian system ever occurs in the United States, was my father thought was quite possible. He was conscious about how fragile democracy actually is that. When I be one of the ones who would resist the totalitarianism, or would I be one of the people who went along with it, when I be one of the people who has at the train station and you know, krakauer or
Or you know, even Berlin and saw people being shipped off to camps and just put my head down and pretend I didn't say it because talking about, it would be destructive to my career, maybe my freedom and he even my life. So, you know, that has been a challenge that my father gave to me and all of my brothers and sisters and it's something that I've never forgotten a lot of us.
Would like to believe who
would resist in that situation, but the reality is most of us wouldn't and that's a good thing to think about.
That human nature is such that were selfish, even when there's an atrocity going on all around us
and we also, you know, if the capacity deceive ourselves and all of us tend to kind of Judge ourselves by our intentions and our actions,
what have you learned about life from your father, Robert F? Kennedy.
First of all I'll say this about my uncle because you know I'm going to apply that question. My uncle and my father, my uncle is asked when he first
Jackie Bouvier later became Jackie, Kennedy, she was a reporter for a newspaper and she was doing, she had a kind of column where she's do these, these kind of hippie interviews with with both famous people and kind of man on the street interviews. And she was interviewing him and she has them what she thought. What he believed his best quality was, isn't it?
His strongest virtue. And she thought that he would say courage, because he had been a war hero, he had, he was the only president who and this is when he was Senator, by the way, who received the purple heart and, you know, he had a very kind of famous story of him as a hero in World War Two and then he had come home and he'd written a book on car on moral courage, among American politicians and one bullet surprise that book Profiles in Courage.
And which was a series of incidents where American political leaders made decisions to to embrace principle even though their careers were at stake and in most cases were destroyed by their choice. She thought he was going to say courage but he didn't he said curiosity and I think you know looking back at his life that the best that that it was true and that was the
quality that allowed him to put himself in the shoes of his adversaries. And he always said that, if you if the only way that we're going to have bees is, if we're able to put ourselves in the shoes are adversaries understand their behavior and their contact eye contact. And that's why he was able to
You know, during the he was able to resist the intelligence apparatus and the military during the Bay of Pigs. When they said, you've got its end in the Essex, the aircraft carrier and he said no, even though he'd only been in month, two months in office. He was able to stand up to them because of because he was able to put himself in the shoes of both Castro and Khrushchev and understand there's got to be another solution as and then during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He was able to into on the narrative was okay, Khrushchev acted in a way and as an aggressor to put missiles in our hemisphere, how dare he do that? And Jack, and my father were able to say, well, wait a minute, he's doing that because we put missiles in turkey and Italy that were right on, you know, the Turkish ones, right, on the Russian border and they then made a secret deal with debris.
Even with Ambassador dobrynin and you know, with Khrushchev to remove the missiles in in Turkey if he moved the Jupiter missiles from Turkey if a so long as Khrushchev remove them from from Cuba. Every there were 13 men on the executive on the end, what they call the and Kang committee which was the group of people who were deciding, you know, what the action was what what they were going to do.
To end the Cuban Missile Crisis and virtually I end of those Madmen. 11 of them wanted to invade and wanted to bomb and invade and it was Jack and then later on my my father and and Bob McNamara who the only people who were with him because he was able to see the world from khrushchev's point of view of all of you, he believed that there was another solution and then he also had the moral courage. So
My father, in order to get back to your question, famously said that moral courage is the most important quality, and it's more. It's more rare and courage on the football field or courage in battle than physical courage. It's much more difficult to come by, but it's the most important quality in human being,
you think that kind of empathy that you referred to that requires, moral
courage. It certainly requires moral courage to
Act on it, you know, and particularly you know and you know any time that a nation is at War, there's kind of a momentum or inertia that says, okay, let's not look at this from the other person's point of view and that's the time we really need to do
that. Well, if you're going to apply that style of empathy, just out of curiosity to the current war in Ukraine. What is your understanding of why?
Why Russia invaded Ukraine? In February, 20, 22 Vladimir Putin could have avoided the war in Ukraine. His invasion was illegal, it was unnecessary and it was brutal. But I think it's important for us to move Beyond these kind of comic book depictions of a you know of this insane avaricious.
Russian leader, who wants to restore the Soviet Empire. And that, that's why and it was I who made it unfolds, unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine. Whoo, he was provoked. And we were provoked him and we were provoked him for word since 1997. And it's not just me that's saying that, I mean, when, when and I am before right before, but never came in, we were provoked.
In Russia, the Russians in this way. Unnecessarily and to go back that time in 1992, when the Russians moved out of when the Soviet Union was collapsing, the Russians moved out of East Germany and they did that, which was a huge concessions and they had 400,000 troops in East Germany, at that time. And they were facing NATO troops on the other side of the wall. Oh Gorbachev made this huge concession where he said to George Bush. I'm going to move all of our troops out.
And you can then re unify Germany under NATO, which was a hostile Army to the to the, so it was created to, you know, with hostile intent to where the Soviet Union.
And he said, you can take Germany, but I want your promise that you will not move NATO to the East and James Baker, who was his secretary of state. Famously said, I will not move NATO, we will not move. Nato, one inch to the east. So then five years later in 1997, zbigniew Brzezinski, who is kind of the father of the neocons who was a Democrat at times served in the in the Carter Administration. He said he
Published a paper, a blueprint for moving, NATO, right up to the Russian border, 1,000 miles to the East and, and taking over 40 Nations. And at that time, George Kennan, who was the kind of the deity of American diplomats. He was probably arguing them. Arguably the most important Diplomat in American history, he was the architect of the containment policy during World War Two.
And he said, this is insane and it's unnecessary. And if you do this, it's going to provoke the Soviet. I mean, the Russians do violent response and we should be making friends with the Russians. They lost the Cold War. We should be treating them. The way that we treated the our adversaries after WWII, like, with the Marshall Plan, to try to help them incorporate into Europe and to be part of the Brotherhood of, you know, of man and of Western Nations, we shouldn't continue to be treating him as
Enemy and particularly surrounding them at their borders. William Perry. Who was then the Secretary of State of Defense under Bill Clinton threatened to resign. He was so upset by this plan to move NATO to the East and William Burns. Who is then the US ambassador to the Soviet Union who's now at this moment. The head of the CIA said at the time, the same thing, if you do this, it is going to provoke the Russians toward a military response.
The we moved it, we moved all around Russia. We moved to 40 Nations 1,000 miles to the East, and we put Aegis missile systems into Nations and Romania and Poland. So we did what, you know, what the Russians had done to us in 1962 that a vote would have provoked. An invasion of Cuba, we put those missile systems back there and then we walk away. Unilaterally walk away from the two nuclear missile treaty is the intermediate nuclear mess.
So treaties that we had with the Soviet Union with Russia and when neither of us would put on those metal systems on the borders, we walk away from that and we put ages missile systems which are nuclear-capable. They can carry the tomahawk missiles, which have nuclear warheads of the last country that they didn't take was the Ukraine and the Russian said and and effect Bill Perry said this or William Burns said it. So now they had a CIA
It is a red line. If we go into, if we bring NATO and Ukraine at is a red line for the Russians. They cannot live with it. They cannot live with it. Rush as been invaded three times through the Ukraine. The last time it was invaded, we killed whether Germans killed one out of every seven Russians. They destroyed my uncle described what happened to Russia in his famous American University speech. And you know in nineteen sixty Three Sixty.
Years ago, this month or he's our last month, 60 years ago, in June June 10th 1963, he told that to speech was telling me or can people put yourself in the shoes? The Russians. We need to do that. If we're gonna, if we're going to make peace and he said, all of us have been taught, you know, that we won the war, but we didn't win the war. The Russians, if anybody wanted the war against Hitler, was the Russians, their country was destroyed they
All of their cities and he said, imagine if all of the cities on the east coast of Chicago were reduced to rubble and all of the fields Burns, all the force Burns, that's what happened to Russia. That's what they gave so that we could get rid of Adolf Hitler and he had them put themselves in their position. And you know, today there's none of that happening. We have refused repeatedly to, to talk to the Russians. We've broken up there to treaties the Minsk.
Events which the Russians were willing to sign and they said, we will stay at the Russians didn't want the Ukraine, they showed that when they when the donbas region voted 9210 to leave and go to Russia Boons. And now we want Ukraine to stay intact but we want you to sign a Minsk Accords to you know, they the Russians were were very worried because of the u.s. involvement in the coup in Ukraine in 2014.
And then the oppression and and you know, and the killing of 14,000 ethnic Russians and Russia, hasn't had the same reason the same way that if Mexico would Aegis missile systems from China or Russia on our border and killed 14,000 expats American, we would go in there. Oh, he does have a national security interest in the Ukraine. He has an interest in protecting the rush.
And speaking people of Ukraine. Yeah, I think Russians and the Minsk Accords did that it left Ukraine as part of Russia and left him as a semi-autonomous region that could continue to use their own language, which is essentially banned by the couth, by the government. We put in in 2014 and, and we wouldn't get, we sabotage that agreement. And, and we now know, an April 20 22, so the Lansky and
Inked a deal already to another peace agreement and that the United States and Boris Johnson, the neocons, the White House and Boris Johnson over to the Ukraine to sabotage that agreement. So what do I think? I think this is a proxy war. I think this is a, you know, this is a war that the neocons in the White House wanted. They've said, for two decades, they wanted this war and that they wanted to use Ukraine as a pawn in a proxy war between
The United States and Russia the same. Then as we used Afghanistan and they in fact they say it, this is the model, let's use the Afghanistan model that was said again and again, and to get the Russians to overextend their troops and then fight them using, local Fighters and Us weapons. And when President Biden was asked, why are we in the Ukraine? He was honest. He says to depose Vladimir Putin regime change for Vladimir Putin. And when his
Defense, secretary Lloyd, Austin and April 20. 22 was asked, you know, why are we there? He said to degrade the Russians capacity to fight anywhere on the hood to exhaust the Russian army integrate, its capacity to fight elsewhere in the world. That's not a humanitarian Mission. That's not what we were told. We were we were told this was not unprovoked Invasion but and that were there to bring humanitarian relief to the ukrainians, but that is the opposite that is war of attrition.
Attrition that is designed to chew up a turn this little nation into an abattoir of death for the flower of Ukrainian youth in order to advance a geopolitical ambition of certain people within the White House. And I, you know, I think that's wrong. We should be talking to the Russians. The way that, you know, Nixon talked of ration have the way that bush talked to Gorbachev the way the my uncle talked to Crews Chef. We need to be talking with the
Since we should and and negotiating and we need to be looking about how do we end this and preserve peace in
Europe? Would you as president sit down and have a conversation with Vladimir Putin and volodymyr zalenski separately and
together Moshe a piece? Absolutely.
What about Vladimir Putin? He's been in power since 2000. So as the old adage goes power, corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely do you think he is
Has been corrupted by being a pow for so long. If you think of the man, if you look at his mind listen I don't know. Exactly. I can't say because I just I don't know enough about him or about, you know, pipe my the evidence that I've seen is that he is Lamas Idol. He kills his enemies or poisons them and you know, the reaction I've seen to that.
To hit those accusations from him. Have not been to deny that but to kind of laugh it off. I think he's a dangerous man and that of course, you know, there's probably corruption and his regime but having said that it's not our business to change the Russian government and anybody who thinks it's a good idea to do regime change in Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than we do is I think
Think irresponsible. And you know bladder mere Putin himself has said, you know, where we will not live in a world without Russia. And it was clear when he said that that he was talking about himself and I and he has his hand on a button. I could bring, you know, Armageddon to the entire planet. So, why are we messing with this? It's not our job to change that regime, and, and we should be making Fair friends with the Russians. We shouldn't be treating him as an enemy. Well, now we've pushed
them into the camp with China. That's not a good thing for our country. And by the way, you know, what we're doing, now does not appear to be weakening Putin at all Putin. Now, you know, if you believe that the poles they're coming out of
Russia,
they show him that, you know, the most recent polls that I've seen show him with that 89 percent popularity that people in Russia, support the war in Ukraine and that and they support him as an individual. Oh, and I understand there's problems with polling and, you know, you don't know what to believe, but the polls consistently show that and and I, you know, it's not America's business.
To be the policeman of the world and to be changing regimes in the world that's illegal or not. We shouldn't be breaking International laws, you know, we should actually be looking for ways to improve relationships with Russia, not to, you know, not to destroy a show, not to destroy night, and not to choose his leadership for them. That's up to the Russian people not us.
So step one is to sit down and empathize with the leaders of both Nations to understand their history of the
And their hopes just had to open the door for conversation, so they're not back to the corner.
And I think the US can play a really important role and a u.s. president can play a really important role by rep reassuring. The Russians that were not going to consider them an enemy anymore that we want to be friends and it doesn't mean that you have to let down your guard completely the way that you do it, which was the way President Kennedy did. It is you do it one step at a time, you take baby steps. We
Do a unilateral move reduce our, you know our our hostility and aggression and see if the Russians reciprocate and and that's the way that we should be doing it and you know we should be easing our way into a positive relationship with Russia. We have a lot in common with Rajah and we should be friends with Russia and with the Russian people. And you know, apparently there's been three hundred fifty thousand ukrainians
Who have died at least in this war and, and there's probably been 60 or 80 thousand Russians and that should not give us any Joy. It's should not give us any, you know, I saw,
Lindsey Graham on TV saying, you know anything, we can something to the extent that anything we can do to kill Russians is a good use of our money that it is not, you know, those are those are somebody's children there, you know we should have compassion for them on this war is an unnecessary War. We should settle it through negotiation through diplomacy, through statecraft and not through
weapons. Do you think this war can come to an end?
Purely through military operations?
No, I mean, I don't think there's any way in the world that the ukrainians can be the Russians. I don't think there's any appetite in Europe. I think Europe is now, you know, in having severe problems. In Germany, Italy, France, you're seeing these riots, there's internal problems in those countries. There is no appetite in in, in Europe, for sending men to die in Ukraine and the ukrainians do not have anybody left.
Ukrainians are using press gangs to to, you know, to fill the ranks. Their armies men military. Men. Aged men are trying as hard as they can, to get out of the Ukraine right now to avoid going to the front the front. You know, the Russians apparently have been killing ukrainians and a 7 to 1 ratio, my son fought over there and he told me it's an art, you know what, our till he had. He had firefights with the Russians mainly at night.
But he said, most of the battles were artillery wars during the day and that the Russians. Now out, outgun the NATO forces, 12:50 and artillery, they're killing at horrendous rate. Now, you know, my interpretation of what's happened so far is that the Putin actually went in early on with a small Force because he expected to meet somebody on the other end of the negotiating table. That once he went in.
And and that one, that didn't happen. They did not have a large enough force to be able to mount an offensive. And so they've been building up that Force up till now, and they now have that force. And even against this, all original Force, the ukrainians have been hopeless, helpless all of their offenses have died. They've now killed, you know, the head of the Ukrainian Special Forces which was the
Lee arguably, by many accounts, the best Elite military unit in all of Europe. The command common dance. The commander of the at Special Forces Group, as gave a speech about four months ago, saying that 86% of his men are dead or wounded and we'll cannot return to the front. He cannot rebuild that Force.
The and you know the the troops that are now headed there. Now filling the gaps of all those three hundred fifty thousand men opened lost our are scantily trained and they're arriving green at the front. And many of them do not want to be there. Many of them are giving up and going over the Russian side. We've seen this again. And again, again, including platoon size groups that are defecting to the Russians. And I'm
I don't think it's possible and anybody you know, I saw of course I've studied World War Two history exhaustively, man. I saw hey there's a new, I think it's a Netflix series of documentaries that I highly recommend to people there. It's there. Colorized versions of the black and white films from the battles of World War Two, but it's all the battles of World War Two is. I watched it on grad the other night and
and you know, the willingness of the Russians to to fight on against any kind of ads and to make huge sacrifices of Russians, the Russians themselves who were making the sacrifice with their lives. The willingness of them to do that. For their motherland is almost inexhaustible. It is in comprehensible to think that the that Ukraine can can beat rush and a war. It would be like, Mexico.
In the United States, it's just it's impossible to think that it can happen. And you know, Russia as has deployed, a tiny tiny fraction of its military so far and you know, now it has China with its mass production capacity supporting its war effort. It's just, it's a, it's a hopeless situation. And we've been lied to, you know, where the present our country and our government are just are just you know, promoting this lie that
They're the real ukrainians are about to win and everything's going great and that Putin's on the run. And there's all this wishful thinking, because of the Wagner group, you know, the the girls are Goshen and the Wagner group that this was an internal poo and it showed descent and weakness of Putin and none of that is true. I was a how that Insurgency which wasn't even an Insurgency only got four thousand of his of his men to follow him out of 20,000. And they
Quickly stopped and nobody in the Russian military, the oligarchy, the political system, nobody supported it. You know. And by were being told, oh yeah, it's the beginning of the end for blue Putin. He's weak and he's wounded. He's on his way out. And all of these things are just lies. That we are being fed
language back on a small aspect of this team kind of implied. So, I've traveled to Ukraine and one thing that I should say similar to the Battle of Stalingrad. It is just not is not.
Only the Russians that fight to the end. I think, ukrainians, a very young to fight to the end in the morale. There is quite High. I've talked to nobody, it's just a year ago in August with her son. Everybody was proud to fight and die for their country and there's some aspect where this war unified the people to get gave them a reason and an understanding that this is what it means to be a Christian and I will fight to the death, to defend this
land. You know, I would agree with that and I should have
Said that myself at the beginning but you know, that's where the reason. My son went over there to fight because the, you know, he was inspired by The Valor of the Ukrainian people and the, you know, this extraordinary willingness of them and I think Putin thought it would be much easier to sweep into Ukraine and he found, you know, a stone wall of ukrainians, whether ready to put their their lives and their bodies on the line. But that to me, makes the the whole episode even more tragic, is that, you know, I don't believe.
Why Ino? I think that the u.s. role in this I'm has been, had, you know, that there were there were many opportunities that's not all this war and the ukrainians wanted to settle it for the latter marriages and Lansky when he ran in. 2019, here's a guy. Who is a comedian? He's a, he's an actor, he had no political experience and yet he won this election with 70% of the vote. Why he wanted a piece platform
Anyone promising to sign the Minsk Accords and yet something happened. When he got in there. That made him suddenly pivot. And you know, I think it's a good, guess what happened? I think he was, you know, he came under Threat by Ultra natural, a nationalist within his own Administration and the insistence of neocons like Victoria nuland in the white house that you know, we don't want peace with Putin. We want a war.
Do you worry about nuclear war?
Yeah, I worry about it. It's
seems like a silly question but it's not, it's a serious
question. Well, the reason it's not, you know, the reason it I might it's not. It's just because people seem to be in this kind of dream state about. That'll never happen. And yet, you know, we're here, it can happen very easily and it can happen at any time. And you know, if we push the rush
Russians to fart, you know, I don't doubt that Putin if he felt like his regime wasn't for his Nation.
Was in danger that the United States was going to be given a place, you know, a quisling on, you know, into the Kremlin that he would use nuclear and, you know, Torpedoes and you know, these these strategic weapons that they have in, that could be the beginning. Once you do that, you nobody controls the trajectory. By the way, you know, I have very strong memories of the
Cuban Missile Crisis and those 13 days when we came closer to nuclear war. Well, you know, and particularly, I think it was when the you two got shot down over Cuba that you know, and nobody in this cut there's a lot of people in Washington d.c. who at that point thought that they very mellow and may. Well, may Wake Up Dead that the world may end at night, 30 million Americans killed, 130 million Russians.
This is what our military brass wanted. They saw war with Russia nuclear exchange with Russia is not only inevitable but also desirable because they wanted to do it. Now while we still add up the superiority,
can you actually go through the feelings you've had about the Cuban Missile Crisis? Like what, what are your memories of it? What are some
interesting kind of in the middle of I was going to school in Washington, d.c. to
Our Lady of Victory, which is in Washington DC. So we were, I lived in Virginia across the Potomac and we would cross the bridge every day and to DC. And during the crisis US, Marshals came to my house to take us. I think around a ate, my father was spending the night at the White House. He wasn't coming. Um he was staying with the excomm committee and sleeping there and they were up you know, 24 hours a day. They were debating and fate trying to figure out what's happening.
And but we had US, Marshals, come to our house to take us down. They were going to take us down, to White, Sulphur Springs, and in Southern Virginia. And the in the Blue Ridge Mountains with the were, there was a, there was an underground city. Essentially a bunker that was like a city and apparently, it had McDonald's in it, and a lot of other, you know, it had, it was a full City for the u.s. government and their families.
US Marshals came to our house to take us down there. And I was very excited about doing it. And this was at a time, you know, when we were doing the drills, we were doing the duck-and-cover drills once a week at our school where they would tell you, if they think that, you know, when the alarms go off and you, you put your head under the table, you take the show. Remove the Sharps from your desk. What them inside your desk, you put your head under the table and you wait and the initial blast will take the
The windows out of the school and then we all stand up and and file in an orderly fashion into the basement where we're going to be for the next six or eight months or whatever. But, in the basement wherever, you know, we went occasionally in those corridors were lined with freeze-dried food canisters off to this if from floor to ceiling. So people were, you know, we were all preparing for this and it was, you know, Bob McNamara, who is my was a friend of mine and, you know, it's my father one of my
His close friend, the Secretary of Defense.
He later called massai causes and my father deeply regretted participating in the bomb shelter program because he said it was part of a, you know, a psychological siop Trek, the treat him to teach Americans that nuclear war was acceptable, that it was survivable. My father. Anyway, when they when the marshals came to our house to take me and my brother Joe away. And with we were the ones who are home at that time.
My father called and he talked to us on the phone and he said, I don't want you going down there because because if you disappear from school, people are going to panic.
And I need you to be a good soldier and go to school now. And and he said something to me during that period, which was that, if a nuclear war happened, it would be better to be among the dead and the living, which I did not believe, okay. I mean, I had already prepared myself for the, you know, for the, the dystopian future. And I knew I could I spent every day in the woods, I knew that I could survive by catching crawfish and, you know, cooking mud puppies, and
What to do whatever I had to do but I will felt like okay I can, I can handle this and I really wanted to see this at Uptown and, you know, this underground city. But anyway that was, you know, part of it for me my father was away and you know, the last days of it?
My father, got this idea because Khrushchev had sent two letters, he sent one letter, that was conciliatory and then he sent a letter that after his Joint Chiefs ended the war mongers around him to saw that letter and they disapproved of it. They said another letter that was extremely belligerent and my father had the idea, let's just pretend we didn't get the second letter and reply to the first one and then he went down to do, bro.
Lenin, and who was he? Met do Brennan and the justice department and to Britain was the Soviet Ambassador and they, you know, they proposed this settlement which was a secret settlement Veracruz Chef would withdraw the missiles from Cuba crucified, put the missile Cuba because we had put missiles, you know, nuclear missiles in turkey and Italy and my uncle secret deal was that if he if Khrushchev remove them as
From Cuba within six months, he would get rid of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. But if Khrushchev told anybody about the deal, it was off. So if if news got out about that secret deal, it was off that was the actual deal and grew Chef complied with it and then my uncle complied with
it, how much of that part of human history turned on the decisions of one
person.
I think that's one of the, you know, because that, of course, the perennial question, right? But it is history. Kind of an eye on an automatic pilot and, you know, human decisions, decisions, leaders really only have you know, marginal or incremental bearing on what is going to happen anyway. But I think that is the and historians argue about that all the time. I think that that is a really good example of play. I've up.
Place in human history. That that literally, the world could have ended if we had a different leader in the White House. And the reason for that is that there were as I recall 64 gun emplacements, you know, missile missile and placements. Each one of those Miss emplacements had a crew of about 100 men and they were Soviets
Oh, it were. And they we didn't know whether we had a couple of questions that my uncle asked Alan duk or asked the CIA and he asked a Dulles was already gone but he asked the CIA and he asked his military brass because they all wanted to go in. Everybody wanted to go ahead and my uncle said my uncle asked to see the aerial photos and he examine those personally in this Y is important to have it.
Leader in the White House who can push back on on their bureaucracies.
He and then he asked them.
You know, are those whose Manning those missile sites and are they Russians? And if they're Russians and we bomb them, are they isn't it going to force Khrushchev to then go into Berlin?
And that would be the beginning of a Cascade of fact that would you know I like that and a nuclear confrontation and the the military brass said to my uncle. We don't think you'll have that. You know, we don't think he'll have the got the guts to do that. So he was my uncle was like that's what you're betting on and you know they all wanted him to go in and wanted him to bomb the sides and then invade Cuba and he
If we bomb those sites, we're going to be killing Russians and it's going to force its going to provoke, Russia into some response and the obvious response is for them to go into Berlin. Oh, the with the thing that we didn't know, then we didn't find out until I think, you know, there was a it was like a 30 year anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Havana,
and what we learned then was that from the Russians who came to that event, was like a symposium where everybody on both sides talked about it and we learned a lot of stuff than and ever nobody knew before, one of the insane things, the most insane thing that we learned was that the weapons were already, the nuclear warheads were already in place, they were ready to fire and that the authorization to fire
Fire was made was delegated, the each of the gun rub. A gun crew commanders, so that we're 60 people who had all had authorization to fire if they felt themselves under attack.
So you have to believe them, he's one of them would have launched and that would have been the beginning of the end and you know, if they, if anybody had launched, you know, we knew what would happen. My uncle knew it would happen because he asked again and again, what's going to happen and they said 30 million Americans will be killed but we will kill 130 million Russians so we will win. And that was a victory for them.
And my uncle said later said, he told he told Arthur sighs jr. And Kenny. O'Donnell. He said those guys. He called them the salad. Brass the guys, with all of this stuff on their chest and he said, he said those guys, they don't care because they know that if it happens if they're going to be in the charge of everything, they're the ones who are going to be running the world after that. So for them, you know it was there was an incentive to kill 130 million Russians and 30 million Americans by my uncle.
He has this corresponds with Khrushchev, they were secretly corresponding with each other and that is what saved the world is that they had. That both of them had been Men of War. Eisenhower famously said, it will not, it will not be. A man of war, will not be a soldier who starts World War 3, because a guy is actually seeing, it knows how bad it is and my uncle, you know, had been In the Heat of the South Pacific. He's already been cut in two by a Japanese Destroyer.
His men, even three of his grim and a big killed one of them badly burned. He pulled that guy with a lanyard and his teeth, six miles to the island in the middle of the night and then they hid out there for ten days, you know. And and you know he came back like I said he was the only president knighted states that are in the Purple Heart. Meanwhile Khrushchev had been at Stalingrad which was the worst place to be on the planet, you know, probably in the 20th century.
Other than you know, an Auschwitz are one of the death camps. It was you know it was it was the most ferocious horrific war with people. Starving people, you know, committed cannibalism. You know, eating the dog's the cats eating their shoe leather, freezing to death by the thousands etcetera. Oh crew, Chef did not want the last thing he wanted was a war in the last thing, my uncle wanted to reward and they but the the CIA did not know anything about group chef.
And the reason for that is the sit, there was a mole at Langley. So that every time the CIA got a spy in the Kremlin, he would immediately be killed so they had no eyes and the grandma. You know, there were literally hundreds of Russia of Russian spies Who had who were who had defected the United States and word in the Kremlin who were killed during that period? They had no idea anything about Khrushchev.
About how he saw the world and they saw the Kremlin itself as a monolith. You know, that this is kind of, you know, the same way that we look at Putin today that you know it's all they have this ambition of world conquest and that's it's driving them and there's nothing else. I think about there are absolutely single-minded about it but actually there was a big division between Khrushchev and, and his Joint Chiefs and his intelligence apparatus and they and they both have
One point discovered, they were both in the same situation. They were surrounded by spies and military personnel who were intent on going to war and they were the two guys resisting it. So when my uncle, my uncle had this idea of, you know, being the piece present from the beginning, he told Ben Bradley his one of his best friends who, you know, was running the publisher of the Washington Post.
But the editor-in-chief of that time he said, I'm Ben Briley asked him. What is, what do you want on your gravestone? And my uncle said he kept the peace. He said, the principal job of President United States has to keep the country out of war and and oh, when he first became president, he he actually agreed to me Khrushchev in Geneva to do with Summit and
By the way, eyes and Howard wanted to do the same thing, Eisenhower wanted peace but his and he was going to meet in Vienna, but that peace Summit was blown up. He was going to try to do, you know he was going to try to end the Cold War. Eisenhower was the last year of his of his in May of 1960. But that was torpedoed by the CIA during the you to crash as well. You know, they sending you to over the over the Soviet Union.
Got shot down and then they told and then Allen Dulles old, Eisenhower deny, that we had a program, they didn't know that the Russians had captured Gary Francis powers and so one and and that blew up the peace talks between Eisenhower and Khrushchev. And so, you know, they and there was a lot of tension, I Uncle wanted to break that tension. He agreed to meet with.
With Khrushchev in Vienna early on this term. He went over there and Khrushchev snubbed him crucified lectured him imperiously about the you know the the terror of American imperialism and and rebuff any you know, they did agree not to go into Laos, they made an agreement that kept the United States. Get my uncle from sending troops allows, but it had been a disaster Vienna.
So then we had a spy that used to come to our house all the time. I cut Georgie bullshit going and he was this Russian spy. My parents had met at the embassy. They had gone to a party or reception that Russian Embassy. And he had approached them, and they knew he was a, he was a GRU agent and KGB he was both. Oh, he used to come to our out. They really liked him, he was very attractive. He was always laughing and joking.
O King, he would do rope climbing contest with my father. He would do push-up contest with my father. He was, he could do the Russian dancing, the Cossack dancing, and he would do that for us. And teach us that he was and we knew he was a spy too. And this was at the time of, you know, the James Bond films were first coming out. So it was really exciting for us. Have a actual Russian spy in our house. The state department was horrified by it now. But anyway, when Khrushchev after Vienna
On and after the Bay of Pigs, I'm Khrushchev had second thoughts and he sent this long letter to my uncle and he didn't want to go through his and his State Department or is Embassy he wanted to end run them and he was friends with poster boy. So he gave Georgie if the letter and Georgie brought it and handed it to Pierre. Salinger folded in a New York,
Times. And he gave it to my uncle. And it was this beautiful letter, which he said, you know, he my uncle had talked to him about the children, who would play, you know, I we played 29 Grand children were playing in his yard and he say, what is our moral basis for making a decision that could kill these children. So they'll never write a poem. They'll never participate in election. They'll run ever run for office. Wow. Can we make how can we can we morally make a decision that is,
Going to eliminate life for these beautiful kids and on he had said that 22 crew chef and Rusev wrote in this letter back saying that he was now sitting as this daksha on the Black Sea and that he was thinking about what my uncle jacket said to one of the Anna and he regretted very deeply not having taken the olive leaf that jacket off for him. And then he said, you know, it occurs to me now that we're all on a narc.
And that there is not another one and that the entire fate of the planet and all of its creatures, and all the children are depending on the decisions we make in you, and I have a moral obligation to go forward with each other as friends and immediately after that this was a, you know, he said that right after the Berlin crisis in 1962 General Curtis, LeMay tried to had tried to provoke a war.
War with a an incident at Checkpoint Charlie, which was the myth. The the entrance, the entrance and exit through the Berlin Wall in Berlin and the Russian tanks is come to the wall. The US tanks had come to the wall and there was a standoff, and my uncle had had sent a message to Khrushchev then through dobrynin sang. The my back is at the wall. I cannot have no place to backed, please back.
Off. And then we will back off and Khrushchev took his word act his Tanks off first and then my uncle or d'almeda back. Ian Lemay had mounted, bulldozer plows on the, on the front of the tanks, to plow down the Berlin wall and that and the Russians had come. So it was just, you know, it was the right. It was the his generals trying to provoke a war.
and I'm
But they started talking to each other and then when he after he wrote that letter, they agreed that they would install hotline so they could talk to each other and they wouldn't have to go through intermediaries. And so it attacks house on the cape. There was a red phone. We knew if we pick it up. Crucifer dancer. And there was another one in the white house. Yeah. And that but they knew it was important to talk to each other, you know? And you just wish
That we had a kind of leadership today. I can, you know, the just understands our job. Look I know, you know a lot about a I right and you know how dangerous it is potentially the humanity and what opportunity is it also you know offers but it could kill us all mean Ilan said force is going to steal our job and it's gonna kill us. All right. Yeah and it's probably not Hyperbole and actually you know if it follows the laws of
Logical Evolution which are just the laws of mathematics. That's probably a good end point for it, you know, a potential and point. So we need it's going to happen but we need to make sure it's regulated and it's regulated properly for safety in every country. And and that includes Russia and China and
Iran right now, we we should be
putting all the weapons of war aside and sitting down.
With us guys and say how we doing, how we going to do this, there's much more important things to do. We're going to this stuff is gonna kill us if we don't figure out how to regulate it. And, and Leadership needs to look down the road at what, what is the real risk here? And the real risk is that, you know, a I will well, you know, enslave us for one thing and, you know, and then destroy us and do all this other stuff and how about biological weapons
We're now all working on these biological weapons and we're doing biological weapons from Ebola and and you know, Dengue fever and, you know, all of these other bad things and we're making ethic bioweapons a bioweapons that can only kill Russians. I weapons that the Chinese are making that, you know, can kill people, who don't know who don't have judge Chinese jeans. So all of this is now Within Reach were actively doing it.
It.
And we need to stop it and we can easily. I logical weapons. Treaty is the easiest thing in the world to do. We can verify it, we can enforce it and everybody wants to agree to it. It only insane people do not want about want to continue this kind of research, there's no reason to do it. So they're these existential threats to all of humanity. Now out there, like Ai and volatile biological weapons. We need to start stop fighting each other start competing on.
Game fields Playing Fields instead of military playing fields, which will be good for all of humanity. And that we need to sit down with each other and negotiate reasonable Treatise on how we regulate, Ai, and and biological weapons and nobody's talking about this in this political race right now, nobody's talking about it a government. They get fixated on these little Wars and you know, and these comic book depictions of good versus evil. And, you know, and
And we all go you know and and go off to and give them the weapons and it rich you know the military industrial complex but were we're on the Road to Perdition if we don't end this. And some of this requires that of this
kind of
Phone that connects Khrushchev and John F Kennedy. That Custer all the bureaucracy to have this communication between heads of state. And in the case of a, I perhaps heads of tech companies, we can just pick up the phone and have a conversation, because a lot of it, a lot of the existential threats of artificial intelligence, perhaps, even by weapons is unintentional, it's not even strategic and actual effects. So you have to be transparent and honest about especially with AI the
Might not know what? What's the worst that's going to happen. Once you release it out into the wild and you have to have an honest communication about how to do it. So that companies are not terrified of Regulation over reach regulation and then government is not terrified of tech companies of manipulating them in some direct or indirect ways. So like there's a trust that builds versus a distrust that seems to. So basically that old phone or kruschev can call
All John F Kennedy is needed.
Yeah. And you know I don't think they're not. Listen, I don't understand. Hey I. Okay, I dunno. I can see from all this technology and how it's this kind of TurnKey totalitarianism that. Once you put these systems in place, you know, they can be misused to enslave people and they can be misused as in worse and, you know, to subjugate to kill to do all of these
He's Pat things and I don't think there's anybody on Capitol Hill who understands this. You know, we need to bring in the tech community and say tell us what these regulations need to look like, you know, so that there can be freedom to innovate so that we can milk a i for all of the good things but not you know, fall into these traps that are gonna you know that that are these existential threats to their bows existential threats to humanity.
It seems like John F Kennedy's a singular figure in that he was able to have the humility to reach out to Khrushchev and also the the strength and integrity to resist. The what did you call him? The the solid solid brass and institutions like the CIA. So that that makes it particularly tragic that he was killed to what degree was CIA involved or the various bureaucracy involved in his death the evidence?
That the CIA was involved in my uncle's murder and that they can that they were subsequently involved in the cover-up and and continue to be involved in the cover-up. I mean, there's still five thousand documents that they won't release 60 years later.
Is I think so insurmountable and so, you know, oh, mountainous and overwhelming that. I it's beyond any reasonable doubt. Including, you know, dozens of confessions of people who weren't involved in the, in the, in the assassination. But you know, all of every kind of document and and, you know, I mean, it came as a surprise recently, do most Americans, I think,
The release of these documents in which the, the the press, the American Media, finally acknowledged that. Yeah. Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset. He was recruited, you know, in 1957, he was on Marina working at the attitude of the Air Force Base and which was the CIA Air Force Base in, you know, with a U2 flights which is was a CIA program and that he
He was recruited by James Jesus Angleton. It was the director of counterintelligence, and then sent on a fake defection to Russia, and then brought back, you know, to, to Dallas and people didn't know that even though it's been known for decades, but then the in ever percolated into the mainstream media because they have such a, you know, there they have such a an allergy to anything that
That challenges the Warren report and when Congress investigating my uncle's murder.
And the and the in the 1970s, the church committee did and they didn't, you know, two-and-a-half year investigation and they had many many more documents and much more testimony available to them than the Warren Commission had in this was as well as a decade after the Warren Commission. They came to the conclusion that my uncle was killed by a conspiracy and there was a division where essentially one guy on that committee believed
It was primarily the mafia, but Richard Schweitzer the center head of the committee said, you know, straight out. The CIA was involved in the murder of the president United States. Oh. And and the, if I've talked to most of the staff on that committee and they said, yeah, I'm and the CIA was stonewalling us the whole way through and the actual people that the CIA appointed, George Johanna, teas, whoo-hoo the CIA appointed as a liaison to the committee they brought
Him out of retirement, he had been one of the masterminds of the assassination.
Oh, there's no I mean it's impossible to even talk about a tiny, the fraction of the evidence here and what I suggest to people there are hundreds of books written about this that you know, assemble this evidence and mobilize the evidence. The best book to me for people to read is James, Douglas is book, which is called the Unspeakable and he Douglas does this extraordinary is an extraordinary scholar and he does this
Just an amazing job of digesting and summarizing and mobilizing all of them, you know, the probably a million documents. And, you know, the evidence, from all these confessions that have come out into a coherent story and it's riveting to read. And, you know, I recommend people who do not take my word for it, you know, and don't take don't take anybody else and word for go ahead and do the research yourself and one way to do that.
Is probably the most efficient ways to read douglass's books. He has all the references there, so if it's true
that CIA had a hand in this assassination, how is it possible for them to amass, so much power? How is it possible for them to become corrupt and is it individuals, or is it the entire institution?
No, it's not. The entire Institute. You're my daughter-in-law. Who's right? Helping. Run my campaign was a CIA guy, you know, in the clandestine services.
Services for all their career, she was a spy and weapons of mass destruction program in the Middle East and in China. And there's 22,000 people who work for the CIA probably 20,000 of those. Her, you know, our patriotic Americans and really good public servants, and they're doing important work for our country. But the institution is corrupt and because the higher ranks, the institution and in fact, Mike Pompeo said,
Something like this to me. The other day was the director of the CIA said, when I was there, I did not go to do a good job, cleaning up that agency, and he said, the entire upper bureaucracy of that agency are people who do not believe in the institutions of democracy. There's what he said to me. So I don't know if that's true, but I know that, you know, that's a significant, he's a smart person and he ran the agency, and he was the Secretary of State.
I'm but it's no mystery how that happened. We know the history, the CIA was originally. First of all that was great reluctance in 1947 that we had it for the first time. We had a secret spy agency in this country during World War Two called. The OSS that was disbanded after the war. Because Congress said having a secret spy agency is incompatible
With a democracy, secret. Spy agencies are things that like the KGB Stasi in East Germany, Suffolk and Iran and Peep, and chili it, whatever, you know, all over the world. And they're all have to do with totalitarian governments, are not something that you can have that, it's antithetical democracy to have that, but
in 1947, we created Truman signed it in, but it was an initially,
And that's been our agency, which means information gathering which is important. Its to get to gather. And consolidate information, many many different sources from all over the world and put those and reports of the White House. The president can make good decisions based upon valid information evidence based, you know, decision-making, but Allen Dulles, who was the essential?
Only the first head of the agency made a series of legislative match Nations and political medications that gave additional Powers the agency and opened up the what they called. And the plans division which is the plants division is the dirty tricks. It's the Black Ops fixing elections murdering what they call Executive action, which means killing foreign leaders. And, you know,
Small Wars and, and bribing, and blackmailing people stealing elections and that kind of thing. And the reason at that time, you know, we're in the middle of the Cold War and Truman and Eisenhower did not want to go to war. They didn't want to commit troops, and it seemed to them that, you know, this was a way of kind of fighting the Cold War secretly without, and doing it at minimal cost. I
By changing events sort of in visibly, and so it was seductive to him. But everybody, you know, Congress when they first voted in and plays Congress, both political parties that if we create this thing, it could turn into a monster and it can undermine our, you know, our values and today they, it's so it's so powerful and the nobody knows what it's budget is plus it has its own investment fund.
In-q-tel which is invested, you know made I think 2010 Assessments in Silicon Valley so it has ownership of a lot of these tech companies and you know and the a lot of the CEOs, those tech companies have signed State secrecy agreements with it CIA, which if they even reveal that they have sign that they can go to jail for 20 years and have their assets removed etcetera. The influences, the agency has the capacity to influence events at every
Evelyn. Our country art is really frightening and then for most of its for most of his life, the CIA was banned from propagandizing Americans, but we learned that they were doing it anyway. So, in 1973 during the church committee hearings, we learned that the CIA had a program called operation Mockingbird, where they had at least 400 members leading members of the
United States, press Corps and the New York Times The Washington Post ABC, CBS NBC etcetera who were secretly working for the agency and and steering news coverage to support CIA priorities and they agreed at that time to disband operation Mockingbird and 73. But there's there's indications they didn't do that and they still the CIA today's the
As founder of Journalism around the world. Most the biggest funder is through usaid. I'm the USA. The United States funds journalism in almost every country in the world, you know. It owns newspapers and I has journalist Hunter thousands and thousands of journalists on his payroll they're not supposed to be doing that in the United States but you know, in 2016 President Obama changed the law to make it legal now.
Now for the CIA to propagandize Americans and I think you know, we can't look at the Ukraine war and how that was, you know, has been how the narrative has been formed in the in the minds of Americans and say that the CIA and nothing to do with
that. What is the mechanism by which to say influences The Narrative? Do you think it's indirectly through the Press indirectly through the presser directly by funding the Press directly
through key.
Ma'am. I mean there are certain press organs that have been linked, you know, to the agency that the people who run those organs things like The Daily Beast now rolling stone, you know, editor of no trolling, so no, no, it's lachman as deep relationships with the intelligence Community uh, salon dailykos
on but I wonder why they would do it. So from my perspective, it just seems like the job of a journalist is to have an Integrity were European cannot be.
influenced or bought,
I agree with you but I actually think that the entire field of Journalism has as you know really ashamed itself in recent years because just today, it's become, you know, the principal newspapers in this country and the television station and the Legacy Media,
Have abandon their, their traditional, their tradition of, you know, which was when I was a kid, was, my house was filled with the greatest journalists alive at that time. People like Ben bradlee, like Anthony Lewis, Mary mcgrory Pete, Hamill, Jerry Jack Newfield. Jimmy Breslin and many, many others. And after my father, after my father died, they started the RFK journalism Awards.
Who recognize integrity and courage. You know, journalistic, integrity, and colors, but courage, and for that generation of Journalism, they they thought they believe that the, that the function of journalists was to maintain this posture of fear, skepticism toward any aggregation of power and including government Authority. May, you always that people in Authority lie, and that we, they always have to be questioned and, and that their job was to speak, truth to power
And to be Guardians of the First Amendment right to who free expression. But if you look what happened, during the pandemic was the inverse of that kind of Journalism where the, the major press organs in this country were instead of speaking truth to power, they were doing the opposite. They were Broadcasting.
Propaganda. They became propaganda. Organs for the government agencies, they were actually censoring the speech of disaster anybody who descends of the powerless. Oh, and in fact it was it was an organized conspiracy, you know? And it was the name of it was The Trusted news initiative and you know some of the major press organs in our country signed on to it and they agreed not to print stories or facts that on that departed from government Orthodoxy. So
The Washington Post was the signature of that UPI, the AP and then the the for Media or the for social media groups, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, all signed on to the trusted news initiative that was started by the BBC organized by them and the purpose of it was to make sure nobody could print anything about government. That departed from come in, Orthodox is a way it worked, is the UPI, the ape
And they which of the news services that provide most of the news news around the country and the Washington Post would decide, what news was permissible to print, and a lot of it was about covid but also honor binds laptops where you it was impermissible to suggest that those were real or that, you know, they had stuff on there that was compromising.
And and we, you know, and by the way, this is what I'm telling, you know, is all well documented and I'm litigating on it right now. So I'm part of a lawsuit against the dni. And so I know a lot about what happened and I have all this documented and people can go to our website. There's a letter on my sub stack. Now to Michael share of the Washington Post that outlines all this and gives all my sources.
Because Michael share accused me of being a conspiracy theorist when he was actually part of a conspiracy. A true conspiracy to suppress anybody who is departing from government orthodoxies, by either censoring them completely or labeling them, conspiracy theorist. I mean, you can understand the intention
And the action, the difference between this we talked about you can understand the intention of such a thing being good at a time of a catastrophe, the time of a pandemic, there's a lot of risk to saying untrue things but that's a slippery. Slope that leads into a place where the journalistic Integrity that we talked about is completely sacrificed and then you can deviate from truth,
if you read, their internal memorandum, including the statements of the, the leader of
Of The Trusted news initiative. I think her name's Jessica Jennifer to Cecil and I, you know, you can go on our website and see her say men. And she said, she says, the purpose of this is that we're now actually, she says, when people look at us, they think we're competitors, but we're not the real competitors are coming from all these alternative news sources. Now, all over the net Woodland and they're hurting public trust in us and they're hurting our economic model.
And we have to, they have to be choked off and crushed. And and the way that we're going to do that is to make an agreement with the social media sites. That if we say, if we label their information misinformation, the social media sites will wildy platform at or they will throttle it or they will Shadow ban it, which destroys the economic model of those alternative competitive sources of information. So that that's true. But and but the point you make,
Egg is important point.
That the journalists themselves who probably didn't know about the TNI agreement? Certainly I'm sure they didn't. They believe that they're doing the right thing by suppressing information that May challenge, you know, government proclamations hunk of it. But, I mean, there's a danger to that and the danger is that, you know, once you appoint yourself, an Arbiter of what's true and what's not true. And there's really
No, and the power that you have now assumed for yourself because now your job is no longer to inform the public. Your job now is to manipulate the public and if you end up manipulating the public in collusion with powerful entities and you become the instrument of authoritarian rule on the rather than the, you know, the opponent of it and it becomes the inverse of
of Journalism and a
democracy.
You're running for president as a Democrat. What do you are the strongest values that represent the left-wing politics of this country?
I would say protection of the environment and the commons, you know, the air, the water Wildlife Fisheries by the glands, you know, those assets, they cannot be reduced to private property ownership another, the Landscapes are purple mountains Majesty. The protection of the most vulnerable people in our society people which would include children and minorities are the restoration of the
Class, you know, that and and protection of Labor, dignity, and, you know, decent pay for labor bodily, autonomy, a woman's right to choose or an individual's right to and or unwanted medical procedures piece. You know, the Democrats have always been any war that refusal to use fear.
here as a governing tool, FDR said that, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself because he recognized that tyrants and dictators can use fear to disable critical thinking and and an overwhelmed that the desire for personal Liberty, the freedom of government from untoward influence,
By corrupt, corporate power.
That's the end of this grub merger of state and corporate power that is. Now I think Tom and hating our democracy what Eisenhower warned about
When he warned against the emergence of the military-industrial complex, and then I prefer to talk about kind of the positive for a vision of what we should be doing in our country and globally. Which is, you know, I can see that the corporations are commoditizing us are poisoning, our children or strip mining the wealth, from our middle class and and treating
America, as if it were business liquidation, converting assets to cash as quickly as possible. And, you know, and creating or exacerbating this, this huge disparity in wealth in our country, which is eliminating the middle class and creating you know, kind of a Latin American style feudal model. There's a these huge aggregations of wealth above and why it's better, spread poverty below. And that's a configuration that
Is too unstable to support democracy sustainably, you know, and we're supposed to be modeling democracy but we're losing it. And I you know, I think we have ought to have a foreign policy that restores our moral Authority around the world rust or restores America as the embodiment of or authority and which it was when my uncle is President and as a purveyor of Peace rather than, you know,
Warlike Nation. My uncle said he didn't want people in Africa and Latin America and Asia to think of when they think of America to picture a man with a gun and a bayonet. He wanted them to think of a Peace Corps volunteer and he refused to send combat veterans abroad. Comment soldiers brought he never sent a single soldier to his death, a broad on and Hindi, you know into combat. He said, six
Thousand. He resisted in Berlin and 62. He resisted in Laos and 61 he resisted. And, and Vietnam, you know, Vietnam they wanted him to put 250,000 troops. He only put 16,000 advisors, which was fewer Puma fewer trips. And he sent to get James Meredith into the into the universe to Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi one black man.
He said sixteen thousand a month before he died in order them all. Help me actually I think it was October 2nd 1963. He heard that a Green Beret had died and he asked his aid for a combat for list of Kombat fatalities, and the aide came back. And there were 75 men had died in Vietnam at that point and he said that's to Maddie. We're going to have no more any ordered, he signed a national security order to 63
And ordered all those men all Americans home from Vietnam by 1965 with the first thousand coming on by December 63. And then in November, he, of course, just before that evacuation began. He was killed and a week later, I'm President Johnson remanded that order and then a year after that the Tonkin Gulf resolution. We said 250,000, which is what they wanted my uncle to do, which he
used. And then and it became an American war and then Nixon, you know, topped it off at 560 thousand fifty, six thousand Americans, never came home, including my cousin, George skakel, who died at the Tet Offensive and we killed a million Vietnamese and we got nothing for it.
So America should be the symbol of peace.
And you know today my my uncle you know, really focused on putting America on the side of the poor.
Instead of our tradition of, you know, of of fortifying oligarchies that were any communism that was our, you know, our major criteria if you'd said you were against communist and of course, the people were with a rich people or Aid was going to the rich people in those countries. And they were going to the military Junta has our weapons were going to the hunt does to fight against the poor and my uncle said, no, you know, America should be on the side of the poor. And so he launched the
Alliance for progress and usaid which were intended to bring Aid to the poorest people in those and build middle classes and and take ourselves away. In fact, his most, his favorite trip. He his two favorite trips while he was President, his most favorite trip was to Ireland.
This is incredible. Emotional homecoming, for all of the people of Ireland and his second favorite trip was when he went to Columbia in with the Latin America. But Columbia was his favorite country and we're I think that what two million people came in to, Bogota to see. I'm this vast crowd and they were just Delirious cheering for him and the president of Colombia yet. It's got him out of go. I'm said to him, do you know I they love you and my
I said why and he said, because they think you've put America on the side of the poor against the oligarchs. And, you know, when my uncle after he died today, there are more Avenues and boulevards, and hospitals, and schools named after and statues were named after in commemorating and Parks commemorating, John Kennedy in Africa and Latin America than any other president, the United States.
States and probably more than all the other presidents combined. And it's because, you know, he put America on the side of the poor. And that's what we ought to be doing. We ought to be projecting Mill, economic power abroad, the Chinese have essentially stolen his Playbook and you know we've spent eight trillion dollars on the Iraq War and it's aftermath of wars and Syria, Yemen Libya, you know, Afghanistan, Pakistan and what do we get for that? We got nothing.
That money eight trillion dollars we got we killed more active than Saddam Hussein Iraq today is that is a matte worse much worse off than it was when Saddam was there. It's a it's an incoherent violent war between Shia and Sunni death squads we pushed Iraq into the Embrace of Iran, which has now become essentially a proxy of Iran. Which is exactly the outcome that we were trying to prevent for the past, you know, 20 or 30 years.
We created Isis, we sent two million refugees into Europe, destabilizing all of the nations in Europe for Generations were now seeing these riots in in France. And that's a direct result from the Syrian war that we created. And the, our creation of Isis brexit is another, you know, result of that. So, we prefer a trillion
Dollars. We wrecked the world and during that same period, that we spent eight point one trillion dollars that bombing Bridges ports. Schools hospitals that are the Chinese men. A point one trillion dollars, building schools ports, hospitals Bridges, and Anna, and universities.
And now you know the Chinese are outcompeting us everywhere in the world. Everybody wants to deal with the Chinese because they you know they come in they build nice things for you and they and there's no strings attached and their Pleasant to deal with. And you know as a result of that Brazil is switching the Chinese currency Argentina is switching, Saudi Arabia, our greatest partner that you know we put trillions of dollars into protecting
Our oil pipelines there and now they're saying we don't we don't care what the United States. Think that's what my mama been solemn said. He said we don't he, you know, they he dropped or oil production in Saudi Arabia, in the middle of a US.
Inflation. Spiral. They've never done that to us before, aggravate, the inflation. Spiral, and two weeks later and then a signed a deal unilateral. Peace deal with Iran which has been the enemy that we've been telling them to you know be a bulwark against for 20 years and two weeks after that he said we don't care what the United States thinks anymore so that's what we got for spending all those trillions dollars there, we got short-term friends and the
States, you know, policy abroad, and we have not made ourselves safer, leave made Americans, we put Americans in more Jeopardy all over the world. You know, you have to wait in lines to get through the airport. You have to, you know, the security state is out and causing us 1.3 trillion dollars. And America is unsafe ER and poor than it's ever been. So you know we're not getting we should be doing what? President Kennedy said we ought to do and
What what China the policy that China has now adopted?
So that's really eloquent and clear and Powerful description of the way you see us should be doing geopolitics. And the way you see us should be taking care of the poor in this country. Let me ask you this question from Jordan Pederson that he asked when I told him that I'm speaking with you given everything you've said. When does the left go too far?
I suppose he's referring to cultural issues identity politics. Well, you know,
Jordan trying to get me to bad-mouth the laughs all time I was and I have really enjoyed my, my, my talk with him. Yeah. He seemed to have that agenda where he wanted me to, you know, say bad things about the left. I just um, you know,
That's not what my campaign is about. I want to do the opposite, I'm not going to bad-mouth the laughs they try. I know, I was on the show this week with David remnick from the New Yorker and he tried to get me to bad-mouth Donald Trump and, you know, and Alex Jones and a lot of other people just and and baiting me to do it. And of course, there's a lot of bad things I could say about all those people, but it doesn't, you know, I'm trying to find, I'm trying to find.
Use that hold us together and we can share in common rather than to focus constantly on these disputes and these issues that drive us apart. Some me sitting here, bad-mouthing the left or bad-mouthing. The right is not going to advance the ball. I really want to figure out ways that you know, what do these groups hold in common that we can all you know have a shared vision of what we want this country to look like.
Well that's music to my ears.
In that spirit, let me ask you a difficult question. Then you wrote a book harshly, criticizing Anthony fauci. Let me ask you to steal, man. The case for the people who support him. What is the biggest positive thing? You think, Anthony fauci did for the world? What is good that he has done for the world especially during this pandemic?
You know, I don't want to sit here and speak on Charlie by saying the guy didn't do anything.
But I I don't I can't think of anything. I mean if you if you tell me something that you think he did, you know, maybe there was a drug that got license while he was in NIH that you know, benefit of people, that's certainly possible. He was there for 50 years and I in terms of his of his principal programs of the AIDS programs and his covid programs. And I think that the harm that he did vastly outweigh the
You know the
benefits you think he believes he's doing good for the
world. I don't know what he believes in fact in that book which is I think 250,000 words. I never try to look inside of his head. I deal with facts, I do it science. Oh, and I read every factual assertion in that book is cited and source to government database or peer-reviewed Publications. And I don't I try not to speculate about things that I don't know about her. I can't
Move. And I do not. I cannot tell you what his motivations were. I mean, all of us. He's done a thing. A lot of things that I think are really, very, very bad things for Humanity. A very deceptive, we all have this. I'll this capacity for self-deception. As I said, at the beginning of this podcast, we judge ourselves on our intentions rather than our actions and we all
Have an almost infinite capacity to convince ourselves.
That what we're doing is is right and I'm you know, not everybody kind of lives an examined life and it is examining their motivations in the way that the world might experience their professions of goodness.
Let me ask about the difficulty of the job he had. Do you think it's possible to do that kind of job? Well, or is it also a fundamental flaw of the job of being? The central centralized, figure that supposed to know
scientific Casino,
No, I think he was a genuinely bad human being, and that there were many, many good people in that department over the years, huh? Bernice Eddie is a really good example, John Anthony Morris many people whose careers he destroyed because they were trying to tell the truth one after the other, the greatest scientists in the history of NIH, were run out of that organization out of that agency.
But, you know, people listening to this is, you know, probably, you know, will and hearing me say that will think that I'm bitter or than I, I'm doctrinaire about him. But, you know, you should really go and read my book and I, it's hard to summarize a, you know, I tried to be really methodical to not call names that. I just say, what
happened. You are the bigger picture of this
is you're an outspoken critic of pharmaceutical companies. Big Pharma
What is the biggest problem with big Pharma and how can it be fixed?
The problem could be fixed with regulation, you know, on the problems. But the pharmaceutical industry is
Is I mean I don't want to say because this is going to seem extreme that I criminal Enterprise but if you look at the history that is an applicable. Describe our characterization, for example, the four biggest vaccine makers sanofi, Merck, Pfizer and glaxo for companies that make all of the 72 vaccines that are now mandated Forum area, effectively, man,
It for American children, collectively those companies have paid 35 billion dollars in criminal penalties and damages in the last decade. And I think since 2000 about 79 billion. So these are the most corrupt companies in the world and the problem is that their cereal felons they you know they do this again and again and again so it did fire.
Sighing, you know, Merck did vioxx, which vioxx, they, you know, they killed people by falsifying science and they did it. They lied to the public. They said, this is a headache medicine and arthritis pain killer, but they didn't tell people that it also gave you a heart attacks and they knew, you know, we've found when we sue them and they're in other memos from their Bean counters saying, we're going to kill this many people, but we're still going to make money.
They make those calculations and those calculations are made very, very regularly. And then, you know, when they, when they get caught, they they pay a penalty and I think they paid about 7 billion dollars for vioxx, but then they went right back that same year that they pay that penalty. They went back into the same thing again with Gardasil and with all white of other drugs. So the way that the system is set up the
The way that it's sold to doctors the way that nobody ever goes to jail, so there's really no penalty that. It all becomes part of the cost of doing business.
And you know, you can see other businesses that if they're not, if they don't, if there's no penalty, if there's no real. But I mean, he's look, he's the companies that gave us the opioid epidemic, right? So they knew it was going to happen and we, you know, you go and see there's a documentary, I forgot what the name of it is, but it shows exactly what happened and you know, they corrupted FDA. They knew that this that oxycodone was addictive, they got FDA to
Tell doctors that it wasn't addictive. They pressured FDA to lie, and they got their way and they've so far, they let this year, you know? Those they got a whole generation addicted to oxycodone and now, you know, when they got caught and they made it, we made it harder to get oxycodone. And now all those addicted kids are going to offend no and dying and this year killed a hundred and six hundred six thousand that's twice as many people.
Who were killed during the Vietnam era NG the 20-year Vietnam War but in one year twice many American kids and they knew it was going to happen and they did it to make money. So I don't know what you call that other than saying that's, you know, a criminal
Enterprise was a possible to have within a capitalist system to produce medication to produce drugs at scale in a way that is not corrupt.
The hobbyhorse. It is how through, you know, through a saw
Regulatory regimen where drugs are actually tested with our, you know, I mean the problem is not the capitalist system, the capitalist system I you know I have great admiration for them. That love the capitalist system as the greatest economic engine engine ever devised, but it has to be harnessed to a social purpose. Otherwise it's going to look at leaves us, you know, down the trail of oligarchy and ferment.
Destruction and, you know, and commoditizing poisoning and and killing him and beings. That's what it will do. And in the end, they're the right. You need a regulatory structure. That is that he is not corrupted, I entanglement Financial entanglements with the industry.
And we've set this up the way this is that the system is set up. Today has created this system of regulatory capture on steroids, so almost 50% of fda's budget. Comes from pharmaceutical companies, the people who work at FDA are, you know, their money is coming. Their salaries are coming from Pharma half their salaries so there, you know, they know who their bosses are and that means getting those drugs done cat.
Getting them out the door and approved as quickly as possible, it's called fast-track approval and they pay 50%. 50% of fda's budget goes about 45% ago, actually goes to fast-track approval. Do you
think money can buy Integrity?
Oh yeah. Of course. Again and the right reg. Yeah, I mean there's that's not something that is that that that is controversial. Of course it will. So
and then when controversial to me, I would like to think that science
was, that would make it about your integrity.
About population-wide, I'm not talking about individual,
but I'd like to believe that scientists. I mean, in general career, a scientist is not a very high-paying job. I'd like to believe that people that go into science that work at FDA, that work at. NIH are doing it for a reason. That's not even correlated with money,
really? Yeah.
And I think probably that's why they go in there, but scientists are corruptible and, you know, I the way and the way that I can tell you that is that I brought over 500 losses and almost all of them involve scientific controversies and there are scientists on both sides in everyone. When I say, when we sued Monsanto, there was on the Monsanto side, there was a Yale scientists at Stanford scientists, and Harvard scientists, and on our side, there was a Yale Stanford, Harvard scientist, and they were toys hanging.
Exactly the opposite things. In fact there's a word for those kind of scientist who take money for their opinion. And the word is by hasta Toots. And they are very, very common and, you know, and I've been dealing with with the my whole career and I think is Upton Sinclair's at that. It's very difficult to persuade him and of a fact, if the exists that fact will diminish his salary and I think that's true for all of us.
If they, you know, we find a way of reconciling ourselves the things that are two truths that actually, and worldviews, and actually benefit our, our salaries now, NIH NIH has probably the worst system, which is that scientists who work for NIH and IH itself, which used to be the premier. Gold standard, scientific agency in the world. Everybody looked at NIH that
Today it's just an incubator for pharmaceutical drugs and and you know, that is that gravity of economic self-interest because if you're if NIH itself, collects royalties they have margin rights for the patents on all the drugs that they work on with the moderna vaccine, which they promoted incessantly and aggressively and IH on. 50% of That vaccine is making billions and billions of dollars on it.
And there are four least four scientists that we know of and probably, at least six at NIH, who themselves have Marchin rights for those patents. So if you are a scientist who work at NIH, you work on a new drug, you can get Marchin rights and you're entitled to royalties for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. Forever from that forever, your children, your children's children as long as that products on the market you can collect royalties. So you have you know moderna vaccine is paying
Are the top people at NIH, you know, some of the top Regulators, it's paying for their boats, it's paying for their mortgages paying for their children's education. And, you know, you have to expect that the that in those kind of situations, the regulatory function would be subsumed beneath the Mercantile Ambitions of the agency itself and the individuals.
Those who stand to profit enormously from getting a drug to Market. Those guys are paid by us a taxpayer to find problems with those drugs before they get to Market. If you know that drug is going to pay for your mortgage, you may Overlook a little problem and that were even a very big one. And that's the problem.
You've talked about that. The media Slanders You, by calling you on anti-vaxxer. And you've said, that you're not anti-vaccine your pro safe vaccine.
In difficult question, can you name any vaccines that you think are
good? I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably saw hurting more problems than they're causing. There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective. The, in fact, big words.
What about those holy words? Can we talk about the,
here's the, here's the problem. Yes, look, yeah. Here's the problem, the pole.
We have a vaccine contained a virus called Simian virus 40. Sv40, it's it's one of the most carcinogenic materials that is not two men. In fact, it's used Now by scientists around the world to induce tumors in rats and guinea pigs in Labs, but it was in that vaccine 98 million people who got that vaccine in my generation, got it. And now you've had this explosion of soft tissue cancers in our generation, that kill many, many, many, many, many more.
People then polio ever did. So if you say to me did he you know the polio vaccine was effective against polio? I'm going to say yes if I say if you said to me, did it kill more people that it did ever caused more deaths than ever heard. I would say, I don't know because we don't have the data on that. So but let's talk. Well, you know, so it's gonna have to narrow in on,
why is it effective against the thing is supposed to
fight? Well, a lot of them are, let me give you an example. The most popular vaccine in the world is the dtp vaccine
X in diphtheria tetanus and pertussis. It was used in this kind of introduced in this country around 1980 That vaccine caused, so many injuries there Wyeth, which was the manufacturer was said to the Reagan Administration, we are now paying $20 in Downstream liabilities, for every dollar that we're making in profits and we are getting out of the business, unless you give us permanent immunity from liability. So the vaccine companies and were given
And by the way Reagan said at that time. Why don't you just make the vaccine safe?
And why is that? Because vaccines are inherently unsafe, they just said unavoidably unsafe. You cannot make them safe. And so, when Reagan wrote the Bill and passed it, the bill says it's preambles because vaccines are unavoidably unsafe and the Bruce Woods case which was a Supreme Court case that uphold about that bill use that same language. Vaccines cannot be made safe, there unavoidably unsafe. So this is what the law says. Now, I just want to finish this
Story because this illustrates very well, your, your question that the dtp vaccine was discontinued in this country and it was discontinued in Europe, because that so many kids were being injured by it. However, The Who and Bill Gates, gives it to 161 million African children, every year and Bill Gates went to the Danish government and ask them to support this program saying we've
If 30 million kids from dying from diphtheria tetanus and pertussis, the Danish government said, can you show us the data and he couldn't. So, the Danish government paid for a big study with Novo Nordisk, which is a Scandinavian vaccine company in West Africa and they went to West Africa and they looked at the DPT vaccine for 30 years of data. And they they hire they retain the best vaccine scientist in the world. These kind of dead.
He's of African vaccine program. Peter aab Sigrid Morgan sent in a bunch of others and they looked at 30 years of data, for the dtp vaccine and they came back and they were shocked by what they found. I found the vaccine was preventing kids from getting diphtheria tetanus and pertussis. But the girls who got that vaccine, were 10 times more likely to die over the net. Sick next six months and then children who didn't, why is that? And they weren't dying from anything. Anybody ever associated with?
Acts in a river dying of an amiable heart, CI, malaria, sepsis, and mainly pulmonary and respiratory disease, asthma pneumonia, and it turns out this with the that this is what the researchers found who were all pro-vaccine. By the way, hey said that this vaccine is killing more children and diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis prior to the introduction of the vaccine over 30 years.
Has nobody ever noticed it the vaccine was providing protection against us Target illnesses but it had ruined the children's immune systems and they could not defend themselves against random infections that were harmless to most
children, but isn't it nearly impossible to prove? That link is
maybe. Yes, prove the link. Usually all you can do is for any particular interest you get illness or death. You can't prove the link but you can show statistically that there is that if you get that vaccine you're more likely to die.
Die over the next 6 months than if you don't and those studies unfortunately are not done for any other vaccines for every other medicine.
In order to get approval from the FDA, you have to do a placebo controlled trial prior to licensure where you look at Health outcomes, among a value among unexposed group group that gets it and compare those to a, similarly situated group. It gets a placebo. The only medical intervention that does not receive that does not undergo placebo-controlled. Trials for idolizes. Her vaccines are one of the 72 vaccines.
That are now mandated for our children have ever gone. They're gone a placebo, controlled
trial prior to licensure. So I should say that there's a bunch on that point. I've heard from a bunch of folks to disagree with you. Okay? Leading Polio, I mean, in that test testing is a really important point before licensure placebo-controlled randomized, trials.
Polio received just that against the saline, Placebo control.
So it seems unclear to I'm confused. Why you say that that would they don't go through that process? It's not a lot. A lot of them do. Here's the thing is that I was saying that for many years because we couldn't find any. Yeah, and that in 2016 in March I met President Trump ordered dr. Fauci to meet with me and dr. Fauci and Francis Collins. And I said to them during that meeting,
You have been saying that I'm not telling the truth when I said not one of these has undergone a prior pre-licensure. Let's save it Ctrl and the polio may have had one post licensing. Most of them having the bullet. You may have. I don't know, but I said the our question was prior to licensure, do you ever test these and freon for safety? And I'm, and by the way,
I think the polio
vaccine
did undergo a saline, Placebo trial, prior licensure, but not for safety, only for efficacy. So I'm talking about safety trials. Now, I'm fauci told me that he would, he said, I can't find one. Now he had a whole tray of files. Are he said, I can't find now and now, but I'll send you what I said just for any vaccines and we won.
Any of the 72 vaccines, he never did. So we sued the HHS and after a year of stonewalling us HHS, came back and they gave us a letter saying, we have no pre-licensing saved route for any of the 72, vaccines and that the letter from HHS.
Which settled our loss against them because we had a foil lawsuit against them is posted on CH to his website. So anybody can go look at it. So if CH D and if HHS had any study, I assume they would have given it to us and they can't find one.
Well, let me zoom out because a lot of The Details Matter here pre-licensure what is placebo-controlled mean. I just know this is this probably requires a
Rigorous analysis. And actually at this point, it would be nice for me, just to give to shout out to other people. Much smarter than me that people should follow along with Robert F, Kennedy Jr. Use their mind, learn and think. So, one really awesome Creator. I really recommend them is Doctor Dan Wilson. He hosted the debunk. The funk podcast of insurrection yellow. Who host this week in virology? Brilliant guy, I've had them on the podcast. Somebody you've been bad.
Link with is Paul off it. Interesting, Twitter, interesting books, people should read to understand understand and read your books as well. And Eric Topol has a good Twitter and good books and even Peter hotez, I'll ask you about him
and people should because I pull off and published a sub stack reason lead to bunking. I think my my discussion with
with Joe Rogan and and we have published at the bunk of his de bonking and you know, so if you read his of you should read both. Yes you should read and I would love to debate any of these guys.
So Joe Rogan proposed just such a debate which is quite fascinating to see how much attention and how much funding and it garnered the debate between you and Peter, hotez. What do you think?
Peter rejected the offer.
I think it's either. I you know again I'm not going to look into his head but what I will say is if you're a scientist and you're making public recommendations based upon what you say is evidence-based science, you ought to be able to defend that ought to be able to defend it in a public forum and you ought to be ever defended against all, you know, all Commerce and you know so I can you know if you're a scientist Science is based on
On is rooted in logic and reason, and if you can't use logic and reason to defend your position. And by the way, I know almost all the studies of being I've written books on them. And we've made a big effort to assemble all the studies on both sides. And so I'm prepared to talk about the studies and I'm prepared to submit them in advance, you know, and I for each of the points.
And by the way, I've done that with Peter hotez, you know, I've I've actually because I had this this kind of an informal debate with them, several years ago with them referee at that time and we were debating, not only by phone but by email and on those emails every point that he would make I would cite science and he could never come back with science. You can never come back with Publications. You would give Publications that we had nothing to do.
For example, thimerosal in vaccines Mercury, based vaccines, he sent me one time, 16 studies to to rebut something. I'd said about thimerosal and not one of those studies they were all about the MMR vaccine, which doesn't contain thimerosal. So, it wasn't like a real debate where you're, you know, you're, you're using reason and isolating points and having a, you know, a rational discourse. I don't think that he, I don't blame him for not debating.
Maybe because I don't think he has the science,
are there aspects of all the work you've done in vaccines. All the advocacy of done that you found out that you were not correct on that, you were wrong on it, that you've changed your mind
on.
Yeah, there many times over time that I, you know, I found that I made mistakes and we correct those mistakes. You know, I run a big organization and I do a lot of tweets, you know, I'm very careful. For example, my Instagram I was taken down from it for misinformation, but there was no misinformation on my Instagram, everything that I decided on Instagram was cited or source to a government database or to be reviewed science. But, for example, the defender, which was our
I'm our organizations newsletter we summarize. Scientific reports all the time. That's one of the things. The services that we provide, we watch them, you know, PubMed and we watch the peer-reviewed Publications. We summarize some when they come out, we have made mistakes. When we make a mistake, we are rigorous about acknowledging, it apologizing for it and changing it. That's what we do. I think we have one of the most robust fact-checking operations anywhere in
Um, today we actually do real science. And, you know there, listen, I've put up on my Twitter account and I, there's there numerous times that I've made mistakes on Twitter and I apologize for it. And people say to me, you know, oh, that's weird. I've never seen anybody apologized on Twitter and I think it's really important that the only, of course human beings make mistakes. My book is, you know, two hundred and thirty or forty fifty thousand words.
Gonna be a mistake in there. But you know what I say at the beginning of the book, if you see a mistake and here, please notify me, I give a way that people can defy me, and if somebody points out a mistake, I'm going to change it. I'm not gonna dig my feet in and say, you know, and I'm not going to acknowledge this.
So some of the things we've been talking about, you've been an outspoken contrarian and some very controversial topics. This has garnered some
Some Fame and recognition in part for being attacked and standing, strong against those attacks. If I may say for being a martyr, do you worry about the, this drug of martyrdom that might Cloud your judgment
first of all? Yeah, I don't consider myself a monitor, and I've never considered myself a victim. I make choices about my life and I, you know, and I'm content with us choices and peaceful with them. I'm not trying to be a martyr here or anything else. I'm doing what I think.
Is right because I want to be peaceful inside it myself. But the only guard I have is just is you know fact base reality. If you show me a scientific study, that shows that I'm wrong. For example, if you come back and say look Bobby, here's a polio, here's a style. Safety study on polio that was done, pre-licensure and use an array.
Real saline solution. I'm going to put that on my Twitter and I'm going to say I was wrong. There is one out there, so you know, but that's all I can do.
All right. I have to ask you are in great shape. Can you go through your diet and exercise routine?
My I do intermittent fasting. Oh, I eat between, I started my first meal at around noon and then I tried it stopped beating at 6:00
or 7:00
and then I hike every day
morning evening
and the morning, I go to a meeting first thing in the morning 12:7 meeting and I go hike heard and I uphill her
Mile and a half up in Mile, half down with my dogs and I do my meditations.
And then I go to the gym and I go to the gym for 35 minutes. I don't, I do it short time and I'm exercising for 50 years and what I found is it sustainable? If you know, if I do just a short periods and I do for different routines at the gym and I never relax at the gym. I go in there and I have a very intense exercise. I lived in, I mean II could tell you what my routine is but I do I do backs one day.
Back at just one day legs and that a miscellaneous and I do 12. My first set of everything is so I try to, I try to reach failure at 12 reps and then my fourth set of everything is a strip set. I do, I take a lot of vitamins, I can't even list them to you here because I, you know, I couldn't remember them all. But I take a ton of lad vitamins and nutrients
I'm on an antiaging protocol from my doctor and includes on testosterone replacement and but I don't take any steroids, I'll take any anabolic steroids or anything like that. And let the DRT I use is is bio identical to what my body
produced. What are your thoughts on hormone therapy in general?
I talk to a lot of doctors.
About that stuff, you know, because I'm interested in health and I you know, I've heard really good things about it but I don't know. I'm definitely not an expert on it
about God. You wrote God talks to human beings through many vectors wise people. Organized religion, the great books are religions through ART music and poetry, but nowhere was such detail, and Grace, and joy, as through creation, when we destroy nature, we diminish, our capacity to sense the divine.
What is the relationship and what is your understanding of God? Who is God?
Well I mean God is incomprehensible. You know? I mean I guess the most philosophers would say we're in, you know, we're inside the mind of God. I'm and so it would be impossible for us unders and you know what actually would, you know, what God's form is better. But I mean for me, I have a
Let's say this, I had, when I was, I was raised in a very, very deeply religious setting. So, we went to church in the summer, often times twice a day morning mass and we went to, we definitely went every Sunday and we and I went we prayed in the morning we prayed before and after
Every meal we prayed at night, we said a rosary sometimes three rosaries a night and my father read us the Bible. I'm when it whenever he was home. He would read us you know we don't get the bed and he'd read as the Bible stories I and I went to Catholic schools or went to judge which schools. I went to the nuns and I went to a quaker school. One point when I lie became a drug addict when I was 15 years old about a year after my dad and I was addicted to drugs for 14 years.
Years during that time, when you're an addict, you're living against conscience and when you're living and I never, you know, I was always trying to get off the drugs, never able to, but I never felt good about what I was doing and um and when you're living against conscious, you kind of push God to the peripheries of your life. Oh call me. He
Get receipts and get smaller. And then when I, when I got sober,
I knew that I had a couple of experiences. One is that I had a friend of my, brother's one of my brothers, who died of this disease of addiction, had a good friend who had used to take drugs with us and he became a money. So he, he became a follower of Reverend silence done young, man, and he at that point his compulsion, he had the same kind of commotion that I had, and yet,
It was completely removed from him.
And so and he used to come and hang out with us, but he would not want to take drugs, even if I was taken right in front of him. He was, he was immune to it. He'd become impervious that impulse. And I'm I when I was in, when I first got sober, I was, I knew that I did not want to be the kind of person who was, you know, waking up every day and white-knuckling sobriety and just, you know, trying to
Is it? This resistor will power. And by the way, I had I had an iron willpower as a kid. I gave up candy for land when I was 12 and I didn't eat it again. Till I was in college. I gave up, I gave up desserts the next year for Lent, and I didn't never eat another dessert till I was in college, and I was trying to bulk up for a rugby and for sports. So, I felt like I could do anything with my willpower, but
somehow
this particular thing,
You know, the addiction was completely impervious to it and I was cunning, baffling, baffling, and comprehensible. I could not understand why I couldn't just say no and then never do it again. Like I did with everything else.
And so I was living against conscience and I thought about this guy and I, you know, reflecting my own prejudices at that time in my life, I would say, I said to myself, I didn't want to be I didn't want it be like a drug addict, who was wanting a drug all the time and just not being able to do it. I wanted to completely realign my myself so that I was
You got up every day and just didn't want to take drugs, never thought of him. You know, I guess the wife and children and went to work and was never thought about drugs all day. And I knew that people throughout history at done that. You know, I read the lives of the Saints. I knew st. Augustine had a very, very dissolute Youth and and you know, I had the spiritual realignment transformation. I knew the same thing had happened to Saint Paul, you know, Damascus. The same thing had happened st. Francis in France is also a
to add a dissolute and fun-loving youth. And, and had, you know, had this this deep spiritual realignment and I I knew that that happen to people throughout history. And I thought, that's what I needed, you know, something like that. I had the example of this random mine and I used to think about him and I would think this again, reflects the bias and, you know, the meanness of myself at that time, but I said, I'd rather be dead than be a Muni.
But I wish I somehow could distill that power that he got without becoming a religious nuisance. And I'm an app that time I picked up a book, by Carl Jung, called synchronicity and young, he was a psychiatrist contemporary of Freud's. He was a, I'm afraid with his mentor and and Freud wanted him to be his replacement of Freud was never about atheist.
And young was a deeply spiritual, man. He had these very intense and genuine spiritual experiences from when he was a little boy. From at least three years old, that he remembered his biography is fascinating about him because he remembers them with such a detail. And on, he, he was, he had ridden. He was always, he was interesting to me, because he was very faithful scientist. And I consider myself a science-based person from when I was little and yet he had this spiritual Dimension to him.
Which Infuse all of his thinking and really I think made him, you know, it is a branded his form of recovery or of treatment. And he thought that he had this experiment experience that he describes in his book, where he sitting up on the third, he ran one of the biggest sanitariums in Europe in Zurich, and he was sitting up on the third floor of this building and he
Into a patient who added it was, talking describing her dream to him, and the fulcrum of that dream was a scarab beetle which was the insect that is not is very, very uncommon if at all in northern Europe. But it's a and figure in the iconography of of Egyptian hieroglyphics on the on the walls of the pyramids Etc. And I'm he and he while he was talking to her, he heard this Bang Bang
Being on the window behind him and he didn't want to turn around to take his attention off her. But finally he does it, he's in exasperation he turns around, he throws up the window and a scarab beetle flies, and lands in his head. And he shows it to the woman and he says, is this what you were thinking of is this what you were dreaming about? And he was struck by that experience experience which was similar to other experiences had like that. And that's what synchronicity means. It's a it's a an instant, a coincidence.
Like if if you're if you're talking with somebody about somebody that you haven't thought about in 20 years and that person calls on the phone that synchronicity. Oh, and he believed it was a way that God intervened in our lives that broke all the all the rules of nature that he had set up the rules of physics, the rules of mathematics or the, you know, to reach in and sort of tap us on the shoulder and say I'm here. And I'm and so he
He tried to reproduce that in a clinical setting and he would put one guy in one room in another guy in another room and have them flip cards. And then guess what? The other guy had flipped and he believed that if he could beat the laws of chance as a mathematics, and he would have proved the existence of its of an unnatural lost Supernatural on. That was the first step to proving the existence of a God, he never succeeds in doing it. But he says, in the book, even though I can't prove use empirical in scientific tools, the
Since of a God, I can show through anecdotal evidence, having seen thousands of patients come through this institution that people who believe in God get better faster and that the recovery is more enduring than people who don't. And for me hearing that was more impactful than if he had claimed that he had proved the existence of God, because I wouldn't have believed that. But I was already at a mindset where I would have done anything I could do to improve my chances.
Chance of never having to take drugs again by even one percent. And if believing in God was going to help me. Whether there's a God up there are not believing in one, a self at the power to help me. I was going to do that. So then the question is, how do you start believing in something that you can't see or smell or hear a touch or taste or acquire with your senses and young provides the formula for that? And he says, he says act, as if he faked it to him again. And
That's how you know what I started doing. I just started pretending there was a god watching me all the time and kind of life was a series of tests and Egypt. There was a bunch of moral decisions that I had to make every day and each one, you know, these were all just little things that I did, but each one now for me at moral Dimension, like, when I, you know, when the alarm goes off, do I lay in bed for an extra 10 minutes with my endless thoughts or do I jump right out of bed? Do I add? Do I make my bed?
Ed, most important decision of the day. Do I hang up the towels? You know, do what do I do? I, when I go into the closet and pull out my blue jeans, and a bunch of those wire hangers fall on the ground, do I shut the door and say, I'm too much. I'm too important to do that. That's somebody else's job or not. And so, do I put the water in the ice tray before I put in the freezer, like with your shopping cart, back in the, you know, place and that it's supposed to go in the parking lot.
Of the Safeway. And if I make a whole bunch of those choices, right?
That I maintain myself in a posture of surrender which keeps me open ^ to my higher power. Like the my God. And when that when I do those things, right? When I, you know, so much about addiction is about abuse of power, abuse of all of us have some power, whether it's hard, you know, good looks or whether it's, you know, connections or education or our
Family, or whatever. And there's always attempted a temptation to use those to fill fulfill self-will. And the challenge is, how do you use those always deserve instead, God's will and, you know, the good of our community. And that to me, it's got kind of the struggle. And when I do that,
I feel I feel God's power coming through me and that I can do things. I much more effective as a human being at that gnawing, you know, anxiety that I lived with for so many years and like, God, that it's gone and that I can kind of, like, put down the oars, and always the sale. And, you know, and the wind takes me and I can, I can see the evidence of my life.
and, you know, the big thing from, you know, the Temptation for me is that
when all these good things start happening in my life and the cash and prizes started flowing in, you know, how do I maintain that posture of surrender? How do I stay surrender? Then? When I, my inclination is to say to God. Thanks God, I got it from here. Yeah, and drive the car off the cliff again and I owe, you know, I had a spiritual awakening and my desire for drugs and alcohol was lifted miraculously and it to me, it was as much a miracle.
Well, as if I had, if I'd been able to walk on water because I had tried everything earnestly sincerely and honestly for a decade to try to stop and I could not do it under my own power, and then all of a sudden I was lifted effortlessly and, you know. So I saw that evidence early evidence of God in my life and I'm not the power and, and I see it now, you know, every day of my
life. So adding that moral
And to all of your actions is how you were able to win. That Camus battle against the Absurd.
Exactly. Place with the Bold is all the same thing. It's the battle to just
to do the right thing. Now Sisyphus was able to find some
happiness. Yeah.
Well Bobby, thank you for the stroll through some of the most important moments and in recent human history, and for running for president and thank you for talking today.
Thank you, Lex.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Robert F. Kennedy jr. To support this podcast, please. Check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from John F. Kennedy. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Instead, let us accept our own responsibility for the future. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
