E127: Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in conversation with the Besties

31:31So the cause of stables in this country is raised by 76 % in two years. And now they're cutting these food stamps and bailing out the same month, $300 million to Silicon Valley Bank. We got it. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. And having this kind of conversation, how do we screw the poor to make sure that we can, you know, we can milk them while we're doing all of this great. It's that this country is acting like the alcoholic who is behind on his mortgage and who takes the milk money and goes into the bar and buys rounds for strangers. You know, that's what you're dealing with. That's a pretty good analogy.

32:12Shots everybody. So let me ask a follow -up question on this debt ceiling fight, which is a game of chicken. And the country's economy might go off a cliff in the next month because Republicans Democrats can't agree. So Biden's position is I want a clean debt ceiling increase, no terms on it. House Republicans have passed a debt ceiling increase. but it contains things like a 1 % cap on spending growth. It clause back unspent COVID -19 relief funds and it would halt Biden's student debt forgiveness plan. So Robert, I guess the question to you would be, would you negotiate? Like what would your posture to house Republicans be?

32:58Would you be willing to negotiate? Because Biden is basically saying, I will not negotiate at all. So negotiate or not negotiate. I guess that's my question to you. You have to negotiate. I'm not sure if he's posturing or what. They have to negotiate. They have to work out something that's good for our country. And they're going to blow sides. You're going to have to give up something. We have to put our country first. It's insane to play this game of chicken with the stakes or so. There's been a lot of talk Robert about the deep state, the FBI, DOJ, CIA, your family, obviously having dealt with two tragic assassinations, your father and your uncle has dealt with his first hand in terms of just having the CIA information about these assassinations released.

33:52I'm curious your position on some of the most radical proposals people have, this election in the cycle of dismantling the FBI, CIA, DOJ, A .K .A, the deep state. Do you believe there's a deep state? And how would you, as president, deal with this intelligence operation we have? And then also personally, what are your personal feelings on it? Well, on the, you know, I have, you know, I have a pretty clear idea about how I would handle the intelligence agencies. And in fact, my father was thinking very deeply about that at the time. My father, who believed his, you know, first reaction on his brother was killed was that the CIA had killed him.

34:43and in fact the first three calls he made on that day. And I was home at the time. And John McComb, the CIA was right across the street from my house. And so John McComb was the CIA director. You would come to our house and swim every day after work during the spring and summertime. And my father called the CIA desk and talked to a desk officer and said, did your people do this? That was his first call. any called Harry Ruiz, who was a Cuban who was one of the Cubans who had remained friendly with my family. We were surrounded by Cubans growing up because who were Bay of Big Refugees, my father had got them freed after a year in the cashier's prison.

35:35My father and And mother spent a lot of time finding houses for them schools integrating them to the US military finding jobs. And so we were all raised very, very closely with the Cuban community, but gradually they turned away from my family. But this one Cuban who had been an engineer had fought with Castro and then turned against him when he can't become communist was very close friends with my father. The second call that he made was to a Harry Wu -Eason. and he said, did our people meaning the CIA people do this? And that was, and so my father was thinking very, very, very carefully about how to handle this CIA.

36:20He had been, you know, he had been essentially managing the CIA since he came into office. And he recognized that the problem, and you know, as I talked about my speech, I think David on this show mentioned this that during the Bay of Biggs invasion I uncle realized that he even lied to by Charles Bell and Alan Dulles and Richard Bitts all the heads of the sea as well as his joint chiefs and he came out in the middle of the invasion when it turned against them and he realized these these men were being killed on the beach and he said I want to take the CIA and shattered into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind.

37:00So he recognized that the function of the intelligence agencies had devolved and that they were, they had become captive of the military industrial complex and the military contractors and their function was essentially to provide our nation with a constant pipeline of new wars to feed the military industrial complex and the growth of surveillance state. And my father, when he ran for president, Pete Hamill, who was one of his favorite newsmen, asked him on the bus during two weeks before he died, asked him what he was going to do about the CIA. And he said, what we need to do is we need to remove the espionage division, and S .B .H .H.

37:52branch from the plans division. The plans division of the CIA is essentially the dirty tricks of the provision. That's the division, the action -prefid division. They do the assassinations, they fix elections, they do paramilitary operations, black ops torture, black sites, all that stuff. The S .B .H .H. division and CIA was originally set up by Cuba by Truman as an S .B .H .A. The SVNage means information gathering and analysis. It's not violence. It's about information acquisition. And unfortunately, the the the the the clandestine action division was wagging the SVNage dog. So the function, the SVNage division wisdom to provide new actions, things to do for the glendid side of vision and then covering up their mistakes.

38:50So there was never any accountability. And what my father understood is that the SVNI's division should not be working for the glendid side services. They should be overseeing them and particularly doing accountability. Uh oh, you know, what if the CIA looks the way that the CIA looks at the one Iraq is it was a success because we accomplished a mission of opposing Sodom who's saying. But, and you know, the CIA was George Tenet who lied to President Bush and said it's a slam dunk. So they got us to go in there and weapons of mass destruction. So as president, would you rethink it? And then just as a final question, as final follow up to that, do you believe they murdered or were involved in the murder of your uncle?

39:40What would have you come to personally? We asked they were definitely involved in the murder and the six -year cover -up. They're still not releasing the papers, legally they have to release. But I don't think there's any doubt if you look at this huge monumental mountain of evidence and confessions and so many people have confessed to their involvement. and we understand that if you look, I mean for anybody who has doubts about that, I would recommend a book, I Jim Douglas called The Unspeakable, because I think he's done a better job than anybody else that kind of assembling and distilling all of the millions and millions of documents that have been released over the past 50 years.

40:31And these things, these revelations are released incrementally and so nobody really takes notice of when you put them all together, the story is very close. So you would definitely rethink the CI, IVFBI, DOJ, the whole intelligence. At the minimization, I think what you're saying as well as maybe you would also release the documents that maybe would at least provide some more transparency. I just wanted to build on that because you had a very provocative tweet, part of what you're talking about is accountability and we need data and transparency to have that. There are people that have whistleblown, there are people that have leaked and I think it's fair to say that they've all been treated by the security apparatus in largely the exact same way.

41:15But you treated recently about your desire to see some of those folks forgiven and pardoned. Do you want to just take a few minutes just to talk about some of those folks that you think has allowed us to actually see the truth if we want to see and why you think that and what you think should be done with folks like that. I mean, Julian Assange is an example Julian Assange is a newspaper publisher. He published leaked documents. You know, why are we? I mean, if I was any newspaper publisher in this country, I would be worried about that. Now he can go to jail for life because he published leaked documents of great import to the American people of things that should not have been secret that we should have known about the revelations that affect our civil rights, affect our foreign policy, affect things that we ever write to know.

42:07And it's really, it's strange that there's any support for his imprisonment among the press. And I think the press is beginning to figure this out finally. The most controversial of those figures is Edwin Snowden. A Edward Snowden released documents that showed us that we were all being spied upon. And that's important for Americans to know. And in fact, it was so important that Congress passed laws based upon his revelations to protect the American people. So why are we punishing the whistleblower rather than punishing the people who were illegally least fine on us. That's what we should be doing.

42:51We shouldn't be jailing dissenters in our country. We shouldn't be jailing whistleblowers. We should be jailing the people who break the law. To keep this bipartisan, do you believe the deep state is acting to subvert the Trump presidency and that they are framing him on these three or four indictments that they are working on, some that have dropped, some that haven't? Do you believe there's a deep state conspiracy? controversy against Trump? Because you might be facing him. I don't use the word deep state. I mean, I've described how these bureaucracy's function. It's not so much a group of people that kind of deep state implies there's a group of people in black coats in a smokey room, pulling strings.

43:41but the corruption is systemic. All of these agencies are captive agencies. The CIA is ultimately working for industry, like the oil industry, the coal industry, and the military contractors. And they've always had that ties since the very beginning, you know, Alan Dallas, who had worked for Sullivan Gromwell and ended up doing coup d 'etat's. I have his former clients like Texaco United Fruit, Texaco and BP and Iran in 1953 is former client United Fruit, one Jacob Arbond and Guatemala tried to nationalize United Fruit, the CIA under dollars went over through the government to protect the interest of his former client.

44:31So there's always been these ties to the industry and the ties now and particularly the oil industry and the ties to the military industrial contractors really drive CIA action and CIA intelligence and we have to, you know, you have to stop. And this is systemic in all these agencies. I mean, USDA is run by Cargill Smithfield on Santo, Bob Pilgrim, John Tyson, EPA is run when we We got discovered documents that showed that the head of the Pesis -I division, Jess Rowland, had been secretly working for Monsanto for a decade. And you know, sending them back and forth with Monsanto directing them, you need to kill this study, you need to kill that study.

45:23And this unfortunately is not the exception. It is the rule. Most of the people who work for those agencies are good citizens, they're good Americans, they're honest and they're patriots, that the people who tend to rise in those agencies and occupy these very, very powerful keep -as -itions from decades or years like Anthony Fauci 50 years are people who are in the tank with industry. And what we need to do is unravel that across the government. And that's really what people say that's the deep state. That really is what is a systemic corruption within our agencies that is driven by agency capture.

46:04Can we actually just talk about the coronavirus maybe pandemic for a second and I just want to tie in two concepts. Sometimes again there's a lot of mainstream misinformation about it. There is a lot that came out about you particularly as it relates to vaccines. I just want to give you an opportunity to set the record straight just on what you think happened COVID all that corruption, your thought on vaccines, the efficacy of our programs, how we should change, what we keep the same, just maybe a chance to clear the ear so that we can get some of the gobbledy -gook on the internet set straight.

46:39I mean, it's hard to, you know, I wrote a 250 ,000 paid book about it, and I've written a couple of books, and so it's hard to summarize, you know, what went wrong in a second, but But essentially we had instead of a public health response to what public health crisis we had a militarized and monetized response that was the inverse of what of everything that you would want to do if you actually wanted to protect public health. We've known, you know, if you look at WHO protocols or CDC protocols, the EU, the NHS and Britain, all those, they all had protocols for how to manage the pandemic. They all said unanimously, you do not use lockdowns, mass lockdowns, you quarantine the sick, you protect the vulnerable, but you keep society moving because the consequences of not do off shutting down society will be cataclysmic beyond anything that the disease is gonna impose.

47:41Everybody knew that. And so, you know, we had these agencies that had drilled for years and years. this alternative militarized response. And instead of doing what you wanna do, which is to get early treatment to people, to have, I mean, we live in the Asian Internet, we should have had a grid that connected all 15 million frontline doctors every country around the world and figured out what are you doing that works in your country and then distilling that information and processing and getting it to other doctors. Well, we knew what was working. We knew Ivermectin and hydroxychloric and we're working.

48:24We knew that since 2004, because NIH did the study that said hydroxychloric and obliterates coronavirus. We knew what would work at that time. And what was the response? They, the response was they could not allow early treatment to occur. Why? Because there's a little non -federal law that says, Because if there is a drug that is shown effective against the target disease, it is a drug that is proof for any purpose. It is illegal to issue an emergency use authorization for a vaccine. So if they had admitted that a hydroxychloric one or a eye -vermectant worked against an antivirus, it would have destroyed their whole $100 billion vaccine enterprise.

49:11So they had to kill early treatments and they went after stuff that they knew worked. They, this was the first respiratory virus in history where people would go to the hospital and they would test positive for coronavirus and be symptomatic. They were sick. Hey, that's why they went to the hospital. And the hospital would say to them, there is no treatment go home till your lips turn blue and you can't breathe and come back and And we will give you two things that are going to kill you. Remdesivir and hydroxychromatine ventilation. So people still look at in this country, and Anthony Fauci is a era.

49:53We were doing things a couple of miles from me in Malibu. There were police pulling surfers out of the surf and giving them $1 ,000 tickets and telling them to go home. I'm out of the sunshine where coronavirus doesn't spread and lock him in their home where it does. And every time they sent one of these people home from the hospital sick, it was a super spreader event. Oh, you look at our record of coronavirus. And this is when nobody can explain who is, you know, defending Fauci, etc. We had the highest body count in the world by far from coronavirus. virus. We have 4 .2 % of the world's population.

50:35We had 16 % of the COVID deaths. How does anybody explain that? And you go to nations that didn't do what we told them. Nigeria. Nigeria is the highest malaria burden in the world. So everybody gets hydroxychloric once a week. They call it Sunday Sunday. Everybody in the country takes it on Sunday. They had the highest river winds burden. So I have the country's un -Ivermectin. Nigeria never had an epidemic. It had a death rate in Nigeria, a 14 people per million population. Our death rate, 3000 per million population, blacks in our countries were dying at 3 .6 times the rate of whites. Why were American blacks dying in Nigeria and blacks weren't?

51:21And then you go to Haiti. Haiti had a, and by the way, Nigeria had a 1 .3 % vaccination rate 80 at 1 .4 % vaccination rate and they had a death rate of 15 per pull per million population. These are the countries that Donnie Fauci and Bill Kade said, we got to get them vaccinated, we got to do whatever you can because they're going to get totally wiped out because they're poverty and guess what? They never had a pandemic across Africa that was a 10 % vaccination rate and guess what? They had a death rate of about 340. So some people think that the death rate here was overstated because of incentives to do that.

52:02Do you believe that as well? So maybe part of that death rate is it was over and said, but you believe looking back on this, that Fauci, as well as the pharma companies, Bill Gates investments in those areas, that led us down a path, if we'll call it the medical industrial, the pharma industrial complex. You believe the pharma industrial complex dictated our response to coronavirus and then free -break on that you jump in. But you believe that? That's the... I don't have any question. I believe this was... You know, as I said, it was a military response. I mean, looking who is running... The looking who is running...

52:45The coronavirus response. Wouldn't you think it would be a change as... Well, when they had one warp speed... had to present its declassified its organizational charts to show to the FDA committee called Verbaq when they demanded it. And Warp Speed went in and showed me organizational charts. The agency running Warp Speed and Pandemic Response was not HHS, it was NSA, the National Security agency. Avril Haines is the director of national intelligence. So she was running Operation Warp Speed. And who was manufacturing? It wasn't Pfizer Moderna. It was 140 military contractors, you know, headlines ready.

53:35And you say, you know, and you know, all of this clamped down on on civil rights that we saw the censorship on the closing the churches, the, you know, that the closing of the right to assemble the banning of jury trials against pharmaceutical companies, they crushed the seventh amendment, the first amendment, they closed down 3 .3 million businesses with no due process, no just compensation. They obliterated the fourth amendment right to, you know, to against more and less searches and seizures with all these intrusive, you know, you have to show your medical records to go out of your house Or to get into a public building.

54:16Freeberg, what is correct here? Do you believe in what is incorrect about Roberts? What's Roberts saying if anything? Well, look, I mean, there's obviously a lot of things I could say. By the way, I was on the executive team at Monsanto for a couple of years. So, you know, one thing I will say is I sat on the table facing the EPA and the USDA and certainly didn't feel like a very cozy relationship. And at least what I saw in the few years I was there, it was, it did feel like a very kind of independent regulatory and challenging, frankly, regulatory process that Monsanto had to manage and deal with and go through and releasing new products.

54:51You know, I don't think that this notion that there were kind of embedded parties that did our whims and wishes really place through at least for my experience sitting there. And I'm not a long time Monsanto executive. I built a software company, sold it to Monsanto and sat on the exact team for a few years after the acquisition. But I guess the more kind of, I think bigger framing question for you, Robert, is really around vaccines in general. I think your commentary around the COVID response and the influencing forces there didn't start with COVID, right? I mean, you've been a kind of outspoken voice on vaccines in general for some time.

55:34Is that a fair statement? because I think that that's part of the media narrative around your history and legacy is that you have been kind of outspoken on vaccines and the, you know, the risks and the effects that you consider to be kind of, I don't know if it's implied or explicit with respect to the use and wide adoption of vaccines over time. Maybe you could share a little bit about your broader perspective in the years leading up to COVID and how that then kind of informed your point of you specifically on COVID? Oh, my objective is not to vaccines. I'm not anti -vax. I fully vaccinated. My kids were fully vaccinated.

56:08I wish at this point that I had not done that because I know enough about them now. But my principal objective is that vaccines in the childhood vaccines are immune from pre licensing safety testing of the 72. When I got was a kid, I got three vaccines. And my children got 72 doses of 16 vaccines. And the vaccines are the one medical product that does not have to go through placebo -controlled trials where you test and expose, expose population, right, a licensor. And there's a number of historical reasons for that, the kind of military beginning is These vaccines were regarded as national security defense against biological attacks in our country.

56:58So they wanted to make sure the Russians attacked us with anthrax or some of their biological agents. They could quickly formulate and deploy vaccine at 200 million Americans with no regulatory impediments. So they call them biologics from medicines and exempted biologics from pre -liciting safety trial. I've litigated on the issue. Not one of them has ever been tested, realized, and so again. So nobody knows what the, you know, you can say that the vaccine is effective against the target disease, but you can't say that it's not causing worse problems. Now, I'll just summarize this story. In the vaccine schedule exploded in 1986, the vaccine industry succeeded in getting Ronald Reagan to sign a law and my uncle was also a group that was pressured by why it was losing $20 and downstream liabilities on every vaccine it made because it was losses for every dollar that it made.

58:02They went to Reagan and said, we're going to get out of the vaccine business and you're going to be left without a vaccine supply unless you give us full immunity from liability and Reagan reluctantly signed that. So today, no matter how negligence the company, no matter how grievous you're injury, no matter how reckless or conduct you cannot sue them, that caused it, gold rush. Because now you've got a product that there's no downstream liability, you're immune from that. There's no upstream safety testing, so that's a $250 million saving. And there's no marketing or advertising cause. So because the federal government's going to mandate this product to 76 million American children, where they like it or not.

58:48And there's no better product in the world. And so there was a gold rush. And instead of three vaccines, we quickly ended up with 72. And now we're going to, you know, toward 80 right now. And there's no end in sight. And a lot of those vaccines were un -nazardsary. They're not even for casual disease. Because these years, what happened in 1989, beginning in 1989, we experienced that chronic disease epidemic in this country. It is unlike anything in any history. We went from having 6 % of Americans affected by chronic disease to 54 % by 2006. And what do I mean by chronic disease? I mean, neurological disease that I never saw when I was a kid, 80 -DAD -HD, the special language like Tix, Taret syndrome, ASD, autism, narcolepsy, all of these sun -leap period.

59:39Autism rates went from 1 to 10 ,000 to 1 to 34. 1989 was the year this began. The allergic disease, peanut allergy, sun -leap period. Food allergies, eczema, sun -leap period, antifilaxis, and asthma, which had been around, but exploded and then autoimmune disease is like rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile diabetes. I never knew it. I had 11 siblings about 70 cousins. I never knew anybody with any of these diseases and son I wanted to find my kids of allergies. So then if you look at the manufacturer's inserts for those 72 vaccines. There's 420 diseases that have been associated with the vaccines that are listed, including every one of those diseases that went epidemic in 1989.

1:00:39And this is the country which the most heavily vaccinated, and this was happening here unlike any other country in the world. And so we have this, you know, and you know, it's good for the pharma. This pharma now makes 60 billion on the vaccines when I was a kid they were making 250 million now they make 60 billion a year plus 100 billion from COVID vaccine. Freeberg do you believe that these vaccines are over prescribed and are part of the rise in ADHD and all this litany of diseases. I'm just asking freeberg who's our resident scientist here do you do you believe this you know explicitly as a scientist, I'm curious.

1:01:20I don't think there's direct evidence supporting that relationship. I think that there's a lot of environmental factors that have been driving changes in the rate of problems with autoimmunity. It relates to our food products, our food system. It relates to environmental chemistry. Like Robert has talked about generally, I think there's a lot of environmental conditioning that's caused this rise in problems and human. And I interrupt for a second because I don't think it's solely the vaccines. Art children today are swimming around in a toxic zoo. But there's a timeline. And actually, a toxicologist that I've used in many of my lawsuits, probably the most famous in the country, Phil Landrigan, looked at the timeline of the explosion of all these chronic diseases.

1:02:09And he said, there's only a finite number of things that have caused it. you know, one is glyphosate. Things that went, became ubiquitous against it in every demographic beginning around 1993, 1989. One of them is glyphosate, NeoNicotoid, a patissite size PFOA, cell phones, ultrasound, and he made the whole list. And so it's a finite number. And the question is, and vaccines are part of that. And it is suspicious because the vaccine solicits all of these aside effects now. I've put together books, one of my books on this subject, on connecting these, as 1 ,400 references and 400 studies digested.

1:02:59So the science out there is pretty clear. But NIH refused to study these things because it knows that whatever they follow the dots, it's going to end up with a big shot. And so they simply have stopped studying them and they've turned themselves into an incubator pharmaceutical products and they don't do this kind of basic research. I want to just give you guys one example. The most common vaccine in the world is called the DTP vaccine, the Theriotetnusmptusis. We gave it in this country and beginning around 79. It was killing or causing severe brain injury and one out of every 300 kids who got it.

1:03:40UCLA studied funded by NIH that found it. So they got rid of it. That's what caused all the lawsuits and eventually precipitated the passage of the vaccine. We stopped it here, they stopped in Europe, but Bill Gates and WHO are still giving it to 161 million African children every year. is the most popular vaccine on Earth. Ilgate says publicly it saved 30 million lives. He went to the Danish government and said, we've saved 30 million lives, we'll use support this program. In 2017, the Danish said, show me the study that shows that it saved all those lives. He couldn't do it. So they went down and they conducted a study in West Africa with a Danes operator, all these health clinics, and they looked at 30 years of data.

1:04:24And as it turned out in a nation called Kinnie Bissau, half the kids in that country at the age two months had received the vaccine and half had not. It was a perfect natural experiment and they looked at 30 years of data and what they found was that the kids who received the vaccine were not dying of dipteria, tendus, and pertinences. But girls who received the vaccine were dying at 10 times the rate of unvaccinated girls and they were not dying of anything ever anybody ever associated with a vaccine. They were dying of Bill Arzia, Malaria, Anemia, minor cuts and scrapes and mainly pulmonary respiratory disease and pneumonia.

1:05:09And what the researchers concluded and this was a study funded by the Danish government and of an order which is a vaccine company and the scientists were all pro -vaccine. The day said, is this vaccine is killing more people than the disease ever were? Nobody knew it because nobody associated the people who were dying because they were dying all these different things. That would only be unvaccinated kids. So the vaccine had saved them from diphtheria, tendus, and potassium, but it had ruined their immune system so that they could not defend themselves against other diseases. And that's the danger of not having placebo controlled trials prior to introducing the product particularly when you're going to demand in a product for healthy people.

1:05:55Let's with our remaining time here move on to energy. You end the environment. You've got an incredible track record. I remember growing up in New York, the amazing work you did for the watershed project. And I'll let you expand upon that in a moment. But the only confounding thing I I found in your position, and I'm curious if it's changed or not, is that you spend decades trying to close the Indian point nuclear power plant in a time when clearly nuclear power has gotten safer and is clearly, I think the world believes, and certainly everybody who's on this panel believes nuclear is a key point in the transition to renewables.

1:06:34So what is your actual position, explain it to us, as basically as you can, on nuclear your power and do you regret or have you read thought your position on Indian point? No, I mean, any point is really leaving Tritium and the odds every day. I don't see how you can say it safe and you know they still haven't figured out what to do with the waste. They're now storing it, you know, it's 18 miles from Midtown Manhattan. If the shack where they were storing the fuel rods at the structural integrity of a Kmart terrorist attack against it would basically render New York in a haven uninhabited for the next 5 ,000 years or so.

1:07:28So to put something that risk is so closed and 10 million people doesn't make any sense. Now, nuclear power, I'm all for it if they can ever make it safe, or if they ever make it economical. And it's not me saying it's not safe. It's the insurance industry. They can't get an insurance policy. If they can't get an insurance policy, then I would say, I don't want it. But the New York American nuclear industry, I mean, you go look at what Fukushima, they're poisoning the Pacific every day with huge amounts of really deadly radiation and they end out their only solution to it is to suck the water out of the groundwater and store it in these big tanks.

1:08:11And if you just go on the internet and look at a picture of the Fukushima water tanks and they go on to the horizon and there's no end to it. Robert, can I just make a point? The thing with nuclear that's worth separating is it's not the fundamental technology there that's broken in either example that you use, but it's the profiting motive that caused both the industrial engineering of both plants to be subpar. Because Fukushima, for example, was engineered not to the seismic levels that you really needed. Or elevation. Even considering all that, here's what I would say is that in our country,

1:08:52nuclear is regarded as so dangerous and they can't get insurance. So the industry had to go to Congress in a sleazy legislative maneuver in the middle of the night and get the Price Anderson Ag pass so that to shift their accident burden onto the American public. So if their plan goes up, and I was 10 miles from that plan, then I'm going to have to pay for it. So I don't think that's free market capitalism. I believe in free markets and I can tell you this, there is no public utility on the face of the earth. Well, build one of those plants without massive public subsidies, not one. Nobody will ever do it.

1:09:33And then they have to store the waste for the next 30 ,000 years, which is five times the length of recorded human history.

1:09:46And if no way anybody do it. Number number two or three or four, whatever I've gotten to, it costs now between nine and sixteen billion dollars to build a nuclear power plant, just the construction costs. And then you've got to get the technicians and then you've got to get, you know, the waste disposal, the regular outage is in all of this. There's no way that it could compete in a free market. I believe in free market capitalism. I am a radical free market tier. I believe that our energy systems should reflect the marketplace. And right now you can build a solar plant for a billion dollars in gigawatt.

1:10:28You can build a wind plant for 1 .2 billion dollars in gigawatt. A coal plant will cause you about three and a half billion dollars in gigawatt and then you have to pay for the fuel. I cutting down the mountains of West Virginia, poisoning 22 ,000 miles of stream, burning, you know, putting mercury that gets into every fresh water fish in America, sterilizing the lakes of the Appalachians. If they had to internalize that cause, coal, which says is the, you know, it's for nuke, which says it's too cheap to mate or it turns out it's the most expensive way to boil a pot of water that's ever been deviled.

1:11:05I'm just trying to make the point that if you look at the levelized cost of energy now, what you're saying is exactly why solar and wind are winning. It's just so much cleaner. it makes so much more sense. There's not fuel cause and if the impediment is distribution is that we don't have a grid system that can effectively orchestrate of variable power. And that's what we... Let me provide a counter that maybe it's not about distribution but it's about scaling production capacity. So if you look over nearly any historical time scale since we've had industrial energy production on Earth, for every 1 % increase in GDP per capita you see a roughly 1 .2 % increase in energy consumption per capita.

1:11:46And so if you forecast out by the end of the century, the GDP per capita estimates in the US and around the world, we need to increase global energy production by roughly anywhere from 5 to 10x. And the current system of pulling carbon out of the ground and burning it up and pulling heat energy out of it doesn't scale, doesn't make sense, obviously. Put aside the carbon effect problem. And there appears to be a reasonable chance of a pretty serious material shortage for renewable sources by the middle of next decade. So what do you think is the right answer to long -range energy security and what sort of technology should we be embracing?

1:12:24And do you think that they scale fast enough to kind of allow us to have our economy grow in the way that it needs to to support the population demands over the next century? I mean, I'm agnostic about the energy sources, and I think you need a, you know, you have to be eclectic about it, and a lot of them are, are, you know, make sense locally, but we, we, I mean, we have enough energy, we have enough wind energy in North Dakota, North Dakota is the windiest place on earth outside of the Arctic. North Dakota, Montana, and Texas, we have enough wind energy to produce five times the amount of our entire grid.

1:13:04The problem is the North Dakota wind farmer cannot get his product to market because it dissipates in a, you know, we have an antiquity -dated grid system that simply will not efficiently move electrons across country. And we need a DC grid system that, you know, has off -ramps in the big cities, et cetera, that can do that. that in North Dakota, if you have an acre of farmland, it's worth about 300 bucks. If you put a wind turbine on it, it's worth about 32 hundred bucks. So every farmer in North Dakota wants to put wind turbines in their cornfields. And the problem is they cannot get that energy to market.

1:13:49That is the only choke point. And the same is true in, you know, We have great solar power in this country. We have an abundance of renewable energy in this country. And the problem is the incumbents were operating on rules under rules that were written by the incumbents to reward the dirtiest, filthiest, most poised, and most toxic fuels from hell rather than to cleat, cheap, clean, green, all some fuels from heaven. and we ought to reverse that and make them all competitive. It seems like technology and economics have reversed that in a way. Yeah, one last question on this. So as president, would you support initiatives that could advance and allow approval of safe nuclear fission production systems to be built here in the US?

1:14:46Well, I will, like I say, I have support new and new technologies of new that are safe, you know, we're the eight, but as long as they can compete in a marketplace, you show me, and by the way, I think we should be doing science even when there's no, you know, economic end to it. So we should be looking at this stuff, but I would not promote new if it's not competitive in the marketplace. And it's, you know, and that means, you know, cleaning up your mess after yourself, which, you know, is a lesson we were all supposed to learn in kindergarten. They have to show us what they're going to do with the ways how they're going to internalize their cause rather than what they're doing now, which is to exonerize their cause and internalize their profits.

1:15:28Okay, we have covered a lot of territory and I hate to get to controversial ones like culture wars, but it's going to come up in the presidential election. I personally don't think this is what's important in the presidential election. I think the fiscal stuff, the energy stuff, the wars and political stuff we've discussed today are much more important, but I'm curious your take on the issues around Disney, DeSantis, Trans, and this cohort of issues which have become an obsession, it seems, between certain members of certain political parties or both parties, the media, and certainly it's taken over a lot of discussions amongst the generation on social media.

1:16:12What's your take on all this? And when you get caught up in these debates and the presidential debates about trans athletes, as put one example, do you think a trans woman who was a biological male should be able to be put in a female prison? Do you think they should be able to play on a female basketball team and change with a bunch of 15 year old girls in a high school locker room? I've already said, first of all, when I say this, I think that people, I believe in bodily autonomy and that people's choices about what they wanted to with their body should be respected and people should not be ashamed.

1:16:52I do not believe that as somebody who was born a biological man should be able to compete later on in life whatever choice they made on a woman's team. I mean I am a niece who is playing soft all at BC, she has devoted her entire life to getting that scholarship and it's consumed her. And I've watched, you know, during my lifetime, women's sports go from essentially non -existent to equitable mainly with men's sports. And I think that's important. And I don't think that women should lose ground in any way. So I would, you know, I've said, I don't believe that that's the right thing, but I think everybody should be respected.

1:17:46Let me ask a question then about parents who are struggling with this issue. At what age should a doctor be allowed to perform gender reassignment surgery? on a individual. You believe adults. So at what age should you be able to have gender surgery? Because this is going to come up multiple times in this debate. I think I'll sort of have that choice. I don't think a child should have that choice except with, you know, certainly not without apparent parental permission. And I really don't, you know, I know that the, you know, it's a, and let's start by saying this, this is a difficult issue. And it's an issue that we should not be judging people on and we should not be hating people about.

1:18:39We should much, we try to solve people's problems and give people as much leeway as possible to and as much respect, as much leeway to exercise their choices and much respect those choices we possibly can. Within that framework, I don't believe that a child without their parental permission should be allowed to choose that kind of surgery because... What if their parents agree to it? Should a 15 -year -old be able to be? I think that's a very difficult question. I don't feel like I'm equipped to answer it. I'm not going to interfere. I think this panel agrees with this. This is a very difficult issue and people should be.

1:19:22What do you think about things like critical race theory? Maybe we can just use that as a way to just talk about the state of US education in general. Are we preparing our children for the task at hand? And what is the task at hand maybe in your eyes and how does it need to change, if at all? I think critical race theory, as much as I understand it, is, you know, though, listen, we should not be hiding from people. We should be honest people about the history in this country of genocide of racism and those things. So, you know, we need to be honest about that with each other, not sharing people, not to make people feel badly, not to make people feel guilty, to understand the milestones that we never want to go near again and to move forward with those things.

1:20:16In turn, I don't really understand the battle over a critical race area in schools, but to the extent, if somebody would say that this has to, that that theme has to dominate made all historical teaching, I would be against that. I think it's very, very important. You know, America, our country has done wonderful things in the world. We have a history of idealism. We have a history of moral authority and leadership. And we have a history of doing bad things too. But I think for children, for the sake of national unity, for the sake of, you know, we need to instill children with the sense of optimism and hope and love.

1:21:00and also a lot of history. I mean, I grew up learning history and learning, you know, kind of the heroic aspects of history, which I now understand or not the only parts of history. But it's really important for children to have role models to look up to and have an optimistic view of our country and to have understand what the shared values are and by values. I mean aspirational values. the things that our country is supposed to stand for. One, we are at our pass. For example, in San Francisco, we canceled advance placement classes because it made people feel bad. Do you think that was a good decision in the name of equity?

1:21:44No, we should be inspiring our children towards excellence. And we should be able to, as adults, give them measures of what we mean by excellence. And that inspires kids and inspires the best out of them. And we need to have those kind of metrics. So that doesn't make any sense to me. Then what's your view on, for example, just educational diversity in charter schools and your position on the teachers unions? I mean, my view is that we ought to be putting huge resources into public schools and making them the best schools in the world. And I think if we, you know, right now we're making just out of bombers for a billion dollars, that cannot fly in the rain.

1:22:31And I think if we just cut production of a couple of those, we can make all our schools, the best schools in the world. Do they need competition? Do you believe in vouchers? And parents getting to choose which school they go to because it does seem like there's not a lot of competition and that these teachers unions have a stranglehold on these schools. I have to look at that issue more. I mean, my inclination is that we should be putting resources into making our public schools, the best schools in the world. But you said you believed in free markets. With regard to energy, why not free markets in regard to education?

1:23:05Well, it has an appeal. I need to look. Okay, fair enough. Yeah, let's talk about censorship. Let's talk about the media. One of the things that happened during the COVID pandemic is that a lot of people group suspicious of the mainstream media, even more suspicious than they already had been. It seemed like the media was carrying water on certain issues. It was almost impossible for the media to take seriously the idea that the virus might have come from the Wuhan lab for example, people who put forward that I think reasonable explanation were called conspiracy theorists. The media didn't want to look into why, for example, this is an example, Fauci lifted Obamas moratorium on gain a function research couldn't get the media to really cover whether you know masking toddlers in Schools did anything positive and then you know when we found out that the mRNA Shots didn't prevent COVID the way they said they never even really asked The CEOs of Pfizer and these other companies when did you know this when do you know that the vaccines didn't do what you said?

1:24:10they're going to do. I remember at Davos you had a rebel news. It was this guerrilla media outfit that Acosta and Burla, the CEO of Pfizer, out on the street, and they were just asking him questions that the media is supposed to ask. Like, when did you know what was you know and when did you know it with respect to whether the vaccines prevented the spread? And you couldn't get the New York Times or any of the mainstream outlets to cover this at all. So it felt this guerrilla media outfit. So any event, that's a long wind up, but Robert, what's your take on the media? Why can't we get what seems to be on as media coverage?

1:24:50How does this fit into your theory of regulatory capture? Who are they sort of carrying water for and why? You know, in 2015, I wrote a book on Simon Arisle and there was a documentary that came out that time called trace amounts. It was a really good documentry on the mercury -based preservative that was in a lot of vaccines at that time. And it's been removed from most except for the flu vaccine now. But I took that. I had a very close relationship with Roger Ailes, who was the founder of Fox News. I had this weird relationship because when I was 19 years old, I spent three months in a tent with him in East Africa.

1:25:38And he started Fox News. He became like Darth Vader to me and we were in Anacetic Cullen. Every issue, but he was a very funny guy and very clever. He was also very loyal to his friends and he wouldn't make all of the hosts of Fox News put me on. So I was the only in farm Alice who was going on Hannity and Bill O 'Reilly and Neil of it, it said regularly, like weekly. And he made them do that. But I went to him with this, with this, this movie and showed it to him. And he found it compelling. And he had a relative who he believed as vaccine injured, a very, very close relative. And he bought, he believed what was going on and what the documentary, you know, the thrust of the documentary he was, but he said, I cannot let you talk about this on Fox News.

1:26:31I'm sorry. It was the first time he ever saw me this. And he said, if I let you, if any of my hosts let you want to talk about this, I would have to fire them. And he said, and if I didn't farm, I get a call from Rupert within 10 minutes. And he said to me at that time, that 70 % of revenues for his not on network news on a prime time were pharmaceutical ads and that that he said of 22 ad spaces that we sell on the network news on the evening news 17 of those are pharmaceutical. We cannot afford to offend our biggest funder, his advertisers and you know I had this interesting experience with Jake Tapper, where when I worked on my Rolling Stone article, Deadly Immunity, which was about this secret meeting that took place in Simpson, which Georgia by CDC and all of the vaccine companies and FDA, et cetera, where they decided to hide the autism effect from the American people.

1:27:42I got the transcripts for them and published in Rolling Stone. And Jake Tapper worked for 21 days with me on a exclusive story. And he was going to add simultaneously with Rolling Son Publishing it. And Tapper the night before he went on, he called me in total distress. And he said, it's been pulled by corporate all things gone. and never in my career as corporate killed one of my stories and I'm really angry. And then I called it back in XA, he's never spoken to me again. But, you know, there are consequences for these newscasters who depart from the orthodoxy. And they know it, you know, if you look at Anderson Cooper, he's got now probably a $13 million year salary.

1:28:32But if you actually do the math, probably around 10 million of that comes from Pfizer, which sponsors this show. So, you know, that's he's working for them. He's not working for us. And, you know, they know they're working for it. Expensive stuff. And I can't disagree with you as having been a publisher of my whole core here. There why why even why even have pharmaceutical ads on TV? I mean, only doctors can prescribe them. Yeah, it was illegal. Prior to 1997. So there's only two nations in the world that allow pharmaceutical advertising on TV. One is New Zealand and the other is the United States.

1:29:12We both have these huge pharmaceutical sales. We take three to four times the amount of pharmaceutical drugs as European tanks. We have the worst health results. We're 79th in terms of health impacts, health outcomes among all nations. Also pharmaceutical drugs are the third biggest killer of Americans after cancer and heart attack. So it is not helping me when they when FDA changed that rule um the AMA was against it like all the medical institutions said you can't do this it is going to destroy health in America and but you know they did it and the problem is that these that the pharmaceutical companies now know not not only can you know I have this platform for they're broadcasting their product, but they also control content on the answer.

1:30:06As far as I can tell, I think the left just to be blunt hates you more than the right.

1:30:15And so do you want to just comment on your ability to get the mainstream media to pay attention, particularly folks on the left and give you the air time so that you can get your message up? And how much the party matters in this process for you? I don't know that they're gonna, I mean, it was kind of traumatic what happened this week to them not to make, because I'm used to it, the ABC, you know, one of their, the person who describes herself as the journalist, journalist, and gave me a long talk when I got to ABC, that when I got to the green room that she was not somebody who had ever censored or cut and they're not working a cherry pick, because I said to her, I don't, I'm very uncomfortable doing it taped interview with you.

1:31:02I know where you guys do when I tape an interview, you cut it up, you cherry pick it, you die said, and you then you play things out of context. And she said, you won't do this. See that from me? I'm a journalist journalist. I'm going to take orders from anybody I do. And then she asked me, she says, you know, in the interview, I didn't want to talk about vaccine. I'm not going around the country talking about vaccines. If you see my speeches, I don't mention vaccines. But if somebody asks me about vaccines, I'm going to tell the truth. I'm not looking to talk about them. I know a lot about them, but I'm not leading with that.

1:31:38Because I'm interested in a lot of other issues. So she says, everything you've said about vaccines, about vaccines, notism has been debunked. And vaccines, it's cleared to not cause autism. them. What do you have to say by that? And then I said to my, oh, and then I went into a long diet trial where I cited the cases, the dates, the publications, and the studies of it show that, yeah, obviously it caused autism. And she cut out that whole section. And then, and then so she had her question, which stated the industry talking point. And then And she brackets the news report on me with something at the beginning that says, he's known to be a chronic liar and a disinformation spreader.

1:32:32And then the end, she said, we had to remove things he said because they were false. The whole thing was so weird that she has gotten criticism even from the left because you know, I mean, what is the news that Cass are supposed to do? or they're supposed to manipulate public information is their job to protect Americans from dangerous thoughts. Are they audiences? Do they have such contempt for their audiences? That the think that the audiences can't make up their own minds? And what is their whole vision about the traditional role of the American media as the guardians of free speech in the first amendment in this country?

1:33:09You can be sure our commitment to you is to not take out one sentence of anything you said there's some stuff I'd like in a takeout. I mean, I also found that a crazy decision for them to make. If you're, if they actually believe that what you're saying about vaccines, which they put on the table is incorrect, or what you said about autism or COVID is incorrect, they should be trained enough to robot it and have a thoughtful debate about you.

1:33:42I'll that you are this odd person, which is born and raised by the establishment, but raising a lot of very uncomfortable questions about the establishment. And I think that that's very complicated for people to deal with. And I don't think that folks will be very supportive of you in the mainstream. And I think the reason is because it'll cause them to question all these systems that they put a lot of trust into, that they work within. And so I'm not even sure whether they're trying to play Gacha journalism above vaccines, or which is a much bigger thing, which is, here is a guy that I do think it's very similar to Trump that says he came out of the house and told us what was happening in the house, and it actually turned out that was happening the Dave Chappelle quote from Saturday Night Live.

1:34:28I think you're a very different person than him, but that comment is very much the same. I think people are attracted to the truth and the confirmatory evidence about when they think that there's frankly corruption. And when it's laid bare in plain English, I think it's validating for those on the outside because we're like, we knew it. And then for folks on the inside, they're like, we need to bury it. And I think that that's what you're going to be up against this entire election cycle. So whether it's us, whether it's Rogan, folks that will give you the chance for you to just lay your case out for millions of people who can smartly and intelligently make up their decision.

1:35:04I think that's what it comes down to. So I really just want to say thank you for Giving us so much time and just being as honest as you were and transparent as you were sacks closing thoughts here with Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I think I think that's a great reference Jamoth to the chappelle quote I think that The ABC News interview was really telling because I think it's one thing if they had edited the interview for time And just cut certain things, but they didn't do that that, they cut out your side of the conversation and then declared you guilty of misinformation, but not letting the audience hear what it is that you said.

1:35:45They simply declared you guilty of it. And I think in that case, I think this is an example of how dissenting views are labeled as misinformation as really a suppression tactic. You know, they can't prove that it was misinformation. They didn't give you the chance to say your side of it. And I think this is a tactic now of the elite to declare certain inconvenient, truce or viewpoints out of bounds. They don't want them being considered. And I think what's very interesting about your campaign is you are going to force, I think, elites and, you know, various kinds for policy elites. Anderson Cooper.

1:36:25Political elites. Media elites. Financial elites. To consider views. Yeah. that you know whether you agree with them or not I think you've made them in a very articulate way and I know enough about Certain of your views like with respect to the origins of Ukraine war to say yeah, I agree with that I believe that's true. So I don't think they can dismiss you today's conspiracy There is sacks as we've talked about our tomorrow's polisers today's conspiracy There is our tomorrow's polisers go ahead Jama I really think that this is what's gonna be scary as if you're as its election kind of rolls forward, the contrast and compare on the democratic side is going to be very troublesome to the establishment.

1:37:03And I just encourage you to just keep sticking to it and telling people what you think. Freiberg any final thoughts as we wrap? Can I say one last thing? Yes, and my defense. And I want to, because it's such a great platform. What I've always said to be, you know, if I'm promoting misinformation, which I'm constantly accused of, show me what it is. Identify, don't just say I'm an misinformation promoter, show me the piece that you don't agree with or that, you know, I made a false statement. I would say that I have not promoted any misinformation, unless misinformation is just a euphemism for anything that departs from government orthodoxies.

1:37:48Every post I have probably the most robust fact checking operation in North America because I know these attacks are coming. So we have 300 and over 320 MD physicians, PhD scientists on my advisory board who see everything that goes out and everything that I posted on Instagram was cited or sourced for to a government paid database or peer reviewed publication. I don't know anything. And by the way, that doesn't mean I won't make a mistake at some point. But guess what? If I made a mistake, people would point it out and you know what I would do, I'd change it. And a public opinion in the face of new facts.

1:38:27Exactly. I just showed me fact that's the only thing that'll change my opinion. Show me facts and I will change it so fast. But you know, you need to show me facts. So just on on the competition between you and Biden for this nomination. I want to say that the Kennedy family has been involved in public life for decades and many Kennedys has served in public life. And I honestly don't remember one time with any Kennedy who served in public life where they've been accused of receiving money from a foreign government not once. And we're now up to 12 Biden's I think who've received to payment from foreign governments, potentially in this larger 100 buying scandal.

1:39:11Do you have a point of view on that? I mean, the fact that it appears that 100 buying and other members of the buying family receive payments from foreign governments is that? How do you interpret that? Is that something that you think is fair game in this campaign to talk about? I don't know enough about it. David, to be able to render judgment on it. I don't know the intricacies of those relationships. I think the optics are unfortunate. But I would leave it. I think it is fair game for people who are looking into it to criticize and question it. I don't know enough about. I'm not in the position to be able to do that.

1:39:52All right. On that, I would just like to say, I grew up in a Catholic like household Irish Catholic in Brooklyn, on the wall, in my grandmother and grandfather's dining room, with three people, Bobby Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Jesus Christ. It's been an honor to have you on the program, and thank you for giving us two hours of vibrant debate. We wish you well, and we'd like to have you on again. And perhaps if this platform allows for debates, and they will not host you on the debates, we will. here on the oil and podcast. I'll let you go. And on behalf of all the besties, thank you for giving us two hours and deeply engaging on these topics.

1:40:34I was like, thank you. I really enjoyed it. All right. This I think went spectacularly well. Let's go around the horn here and get immediate reactions. Friedberg, I want to start with you because I think you on the science issues maybe held back a little bit and let him speak. We didn't have much of a dialogue with him. We all had a few opening statements, but let him speak his mind. I don't know. We'll see how the episode plays with listeners. It was really him having a platform to speak his mind for the past two hours. It's interesting. Obviously, he's a candidate that's challenging the current sitting president for his own parties nomination.

1:41:16So, you know, really kind of, you know, interesting moment to participate in, but we did kind of give him the platform to kind of speak his mind. I think my observation is this guy, Robert clearly has a very deep rooted anti -establishment energy and that plays through in many of his points of view, anti -establishment kind of energy, I think manifests as both conspiracy theories, where, you know, as people have kind of classified some of his claims, which typically, you know, involves looking at call it correlation or circumstance, but not necessarily having the causality or the tie to demonstrate or have proof of point or evidence of point.

1:42:04And I think that that's really where he trips me up on a couple of points personally. Which ones would you say are the points that trip you most? Where were you like? I think the general statement that there are embedded interests in government is a good general statement. Then you start to try and tie together different correlations or circumstances and say that's evidence. It's not really, it doesn't resonate crew with me as someone who likes to kind of see empirical Truth kind of be demonstrated. I think some of these points around we know that PFOA is one You know one of these products one of these chemistries he talked about that's in the environment They're very damaging to the environment.

1:42:44They're very damaging the human health And there are others that he makes claims around that don't have that same level of evidence But they all get kind of bucketed together that all this stuff is bad that all nuclear is bad because they're you know is a facility that was built in the 1950s and 1960s that had some degree of bad engineering and what some might argue isn't necessarily a major hazardous radioactive leak but has above kind of standards of radiation leak and therefore all nuclear is threatening. Those are the sorts of things that kind of trip me up with him. That one can't have a little bit, yeah as well.

1:43:17The nuclear issue. The thing that matters to me, this is all just bullshit talking, rambling about social issues and you know like what the fuck are we going to do with education and wars. of course, none of it fucking matters. If we cannot solve the debt and budget crisis problem in this country, we are running into the ground. The United States is in a gigantic... I totally disagree with you. I know you do. I think the US is in a tiny... Let's unpack that then. You're a key issue. So for me, this is the thing that I told you guys, I'm focused on with every candidate, is how much do you think about the prioritization of the fiscal, the federal budget?

1:43:52How do you think about the debt level and how do you think about the boundary conditions? And it's clear that that's not really a concrete part of his platform, nor is it, by the way, for any other candidate that I've seen so far. I do, I do. So that's kind of where I sit. And it's very unpopular. Chimath, let's have your response here too. I think it's good to have your opinion. I just think that your opinion is an opinion. And you present it as this canonical fact, and that's what I have an issue with. I just think that's intellectually not accurate. So I respect the fact that you think that that's an issue, But I think there's a lot of smart people that would say that's not the issue that you think it is and there are other issues.

1:44:27Where did you find yourself, Tramoff, in this process, agreeing with him or disagreeing with him? All political candidates at some point have a fork in the road, which is that they're going to be a truth teller of their own truth, or they're going to be conformist to talking points to try to offend the least amount of people. Okay. And the first path is much riskier, but it actually has much larger discontinuous outcomes, i .e. Trump. The other path is a good antidote to the first path. When the first path is what's in power and you saw Biden take that path. So for me, I don't agree with some of the things that he said.

1:45:16In fact, there are things like nuclear, which I just think he's wrong about. Sure. But what do I appreciate is that there is a version of his truth that is researched and reasoned from his own lived experience as well as history and facts. And then he's also willing to say I just don't know enough about it so let me rethink it and then come back to you. I thought the comment about you know school choice was an example, right? And I think that that's healthy. So on balance, I would rather have candidates in that first bucket, which are truth tellers that have the potential to cause disagreement versus the playcaitors who say nothing.

1:46:01And this is where I do agree with Freeberg. Whatever the issues are that may be important. The point is placating doesn't work anymore and you need some kind of confrontation on hard topics for there to be any progress now. And so I prefer those kinds of people that are able to draw a hard line. Agitators, non -conforms. And I personally, I've always been and I have been very anti -establishment. The idea of tearing down all these institutions of power gives me glee. I find it gleeful. Sacks. When we look at this, this incredible, you know, almost two -hour conversation we had here, I think we did hold him and force him on certain issues more than you would normally get an in -in interview without being sensational.

1:46:49We didn't lead with vaccines. We didn't lead with culture wars. We talked about really important issues. Where did you find yourself in most agreement with him and where did you find yourself in least agreement with him well i want to make sure we see the forest for the trees here because i think you can disagree with this or that tree you can get lost down the rabbit hole of some of these very technical scientific debates but here's the forest is you've got this sion of wealth and privilege who comes from the most prominent famous democratic family and he was set in his life to go become an environmental lawyer who go fight against big corporate environmental polluters And somewhere along the way he realized it wasn't just big corporations is the problem.

1:47:31It was the agencies, the government agencies that were supposed to be regulating them. And he realized that there was a revolving door going on between industry and these agencies. And so he ended up litigating not just against big companies but against government agencies. I think that's a really interesting place for a candidate to come from. And what you heard him say or what I took away from it is that he has a very sophisticated a critique of regulatory capture. And it goes beyond just the environmental area, it goes also to big pharma, and it goes to the military industrial complex. When he's talking about all these unnecessary wars that the United States has gotten into, and who can doubt that after we spent 20 years and $8 trillion bogged down in forever wars in the Middle East?

1:48:18Who can doubt that the military industrial complex has played a malign role in our foreign policy? and we've got all these generals when they retire from the Pentagon, they go right onto the boards of these defense contractors. So there's enough right about his critique that I think you can't dismiss it. You can't just say this guy's a conspiracy theorist or a nut. He's saying too many things that I know would be true. And there's a lot of other areas where I don't know what the truth is, but he is making, I'd say, sensible arguments and he's presenting data and he's asking you to challenge him on the data.

1:48:51So in any event, I think he's got this very interesting critique of regulatory capture. What he's basically saying is that we have a ruling elite in this country that is managing the country for its own benefit, and that is screwing the middle class. And that critique actually is very similar to what Trump and DeSantis and people on the right are saying. The only difference is that I think people on the right are blaming ideology. They're saying that the ruling elite is following this woke ideology. what Kennedy is saying that is that the ruling class is following the money. But you know what, think of both be right.

1:49:25I think these critiques are very compatible. So look, you might disagree with this or that part of it, but I think that this overall critique, the forest, you know, forget about the trees. I think this forest could find purchase with the electorate, because I think people just feel like there's something true about this. What I will say is this is exactly how Trump got elected. And there was a great piece. I think it was in the Atlantic when he was running the first time around that talked a lot about the psychology of his appeal That he comes from wealth he comes from the system But he is the anti -system system product that he came out of this machine of wealth this machine of industry This machine of influence and he said this entire system needs to be torn down And by the way, the psychology that they highlighted and it speaks to Trump not necessarily to Robert But what they highlighted was if you look historically at the rise of authoritarian regimes Coming out of democracies.

1:50:24It's typically the folks that are come from an influence of from a point of influence and from the point of privilege And power and they then decided they wanted to tear down the system that produced them and you trust the bully that comes out of the machine versus the outsider who doesn't really know the machine and doesn't really have access. And that's partially why I think maybe he has a shot at being the anti -biden alternative, more so perhaps in this go -around than Trump is. Look, he's not a bully and he's not going to tear everything down. Yeah. Listen, I've heard him on other interviews and what he said is we need a peaceful revolution.

1:50:58We need to reorganize these government agencies. So he's not saying So maybe that's why he does win over Trump right maybe he becomes the less extreme. He's not the bully But he's like I know how to dismantle and and you know, he's like deals are quite They're incredible free speech supporting the rule of law burgeoning the middle class. I mean these are not things that are really controversial in the end And they're good moral right they're good values. He's very morally grounded I think my my concern is just the framework for how you kind of rationalize and make decisions if you're allowing kind of influence in UNDO and correlation be kind of the driving force instead of having, you know, make sure you just at least gather and sort the empirical evidence to make those decisions.

1:51:44That's what he's doing. He just reached a different conclusion than you. Yeah, he's just exactly because he's saying that the other conclusion is just the orthodox conclusion, which is nothing to see here. Yeah, by the way, I'm not an orthodox guy and I'm not like following sexes. Folks have said you're pushing RFK because you think he's a weaker candidate against the Republicans, your response. No, I don't necessarily think he'd be a weaker candidate. For all the reasons we're talking about, I think he'd be preferable to Biden in a lot of people's views. So look, for me, this is not like partisan.

1:52:18I just think he's really interesting. I think he is a breath of fresh air. I think there are many aspects of his critique of our system and the corruption of our ruling class that hit home. I think regulatory capture is a huge issue. I think a lot of these agencies do need to be reorganized. Well, it is the invisible hand that we don't know how to quantify well in all these other discussions that we have. And he does put his finger on this really ugly uncomfortable truth, which is there's a cloistered set of insiders for which there's a revolving door between power and money. And it's going to be very awkward for a small number of people to hear that message as he gets more attention Which is probably why the media industrial complex will not you know will do his best to prevent that message from getting out The media is gonna block this guy at every angle because you know what podcast could play a huge role Just like in 2016 social media broke through and played a huge role I think in 2024, I think that podcast could break through.

1:53:17Podcast will decide the way that unorthodox candidates get their message out. It could be the way it's interesting. It's get their message out because if after two hours of this, you don't want to learn more about him or you're not going to consider him more fully, I think it's impossible because he's so well spoken. As you said, he's got a moral compass. He's got a track record and he's got interesting thoughts. What he isn't saying is he's not just throwing bombs and there may be things that you You can debate with him about his interpretation of what he looks at, and that's very fair criticism, I think.

1:53:50But his critique is well reasoned. So you have to unpack the nuances of it to understand why he got to it, and also to try to prove him wrong. That is very powerful because it's not just him randomly screaming about how things aren't working. No. And the moments I thought were very important here, and especially for the listeners who making important decisions and want to maybe change the political system. There were multiple times on the issue of Trans surgery and I'm going to be very nuanced here with the permission of the parents. He said, I need to do more research on it. On Freeberg challenging him about spending, he said, I need to give that some more thought.

1:54:28But broadly speaking, I think we can take money out of the military budget and billion dollar planes that don't fly in the rain. There were many moments where he conceded, I need to give that some more thought. I need to be thoughtful about that. that's not something that you typically hear, but in a platform like this with the nuance that we've created on this platform having discussions, and the audience also being nuanced and having depth. We know the fans of this podcast are in a lot of positions of power. I'm sure 100 % or very high percentage of the people who listen to this podcast actually vote and are very influential within their own circles.

1:55:04I think this kind of platform, we have a very deep discussion. And somebody could say, you know what, I need to go deeper on that and think about it. When I asked him about weapons in Taiwan, and then I said, hey, why wouldn't you give an answer that you would defend Taiwan? Biden gave it. So I don't want to set my car, gee, wouldn't want to do that. That's a really good answer. By the way, the official policy of the United States towards Taiwan is strategic ambiguity, which means we don't say whether we'll defend it depends on the circumstances. That was a gap. And Biden, when he's now said multiple times that he would defend it and his own staff walked it back because they said we're not changing strategic ambiguity.

1:55:38So yeah, I mean, the policy he said in that case actually is the United States policy. So let me ask you guys a question. If he won the Democratic nomination and he's up against Trump, who do you vote for? Obviously. I guess RFK. Yeah, of course, I'm RFK. And I think Saks would have a hard time. He won't say who he's voted for previously. I think Saks would vote. Or if Saks is not going to say, Are you? Are you saying that? Sax doesn't like to say he's just a macho valiant. I'm a serving judgment on the general and tell you I know who both candidates are. Okay. Sax won't even tell us who we voted for.

1:56:10I would love for RFK Jr. beyond the ballot and have that choice for sure. And as possible, I would as possible. I would vote for him. It depends who the other person is. Isn't really because you wouldn't even tell us who you voted for or if you voted in the last election. Well, that's my right, Jason. I don't have to tell you. I just think it's intellectually dishonest since you talked about politics. so much that I do. I think you should tell us who you voted for. I talk about issues. I talk about issues. Now I decide to balance those issues because every candidate is a complex mix of issues.

1:56:41That's ultimately my decision. Give it for somebody who injects politics into everything to not just say. I'm not the one injecting. So to follow up on the question I asked, I would love to see Donald Trump come on the show and give him an opportunity to have a conversation and see Maybe if folks can have a different point of view coming out of that, as well as Joe Biden, and maybe some of the other candidates running for the Republican nomination. And I want to see if the points of focus for us can maybe match up with one or more of these candidates. So far, I still... Nikki Halley will come on, right?

1:57:19We think. Yeah. So Nikki Halley's in, and then Trump will do it, and then Biden will not. Trumple to it. I think you would do it because he somebody I mean he had he had he did something with barstool right Jason Do you want to do you want me to do the announcement on the the summit? Oh, please okay, so We are confirmed and signed on our venue and so we are confirmed for all in summit 2023 in Los Angeles September 10th through 12

1:57:54We'll put out the, and I think it's going to be really exciting because we'll have an opportunity to, at this point in the year, we have a lot of time to put together a really high quality agenda for conversations we each want to have with really amazing people. So I'm excited about that. We've kind of started to put together some ideas on what we want to talk about, who we want to invite to have those conversations with us, put out some invites. So very good job, by the way, and you'll be leading, you're the, this is your AI summit. So I'm handing everything off to you. I'm helping with the parties basically, but you're driving.

1:58:27Congratulations. Your team is exceptional. I just want to let the audience know. We're doing it together. And I mean, I'm stepping back and letting you drive. I consider this like your, I care very deeply about content. And I want to, you know, make sure that we get a chance of, yeah, and the experience. And have a chance to have the conversations we want to have with the folks we want to talk with. So it would nothing could be better than you building on top of the first one and then we just keep going from there Trim off and sax if they want to build on it from there There'll be three this is what everybody wants to know is tickets.

1:58:53There's gonna be three ticket tiers They'll still be a VIP one for 7500 that gets you into the dinners. Oh, sorry Yeah, that's that's an important point the VIP experience this year We got some feedback on the last go around That we needed to make sure there was a degree of differentiation so the VIP experience will include Special VIP dinners early access to the theater gift bags, special sections during the parties. So hopefully it elevates the experience a bit for folks that are able to pay the higher ticket fee which actually helps support the whole program. No bottle service. I mean bottle service you put your card but hopefully as a way to kind of support the overall program and keep the cost down for everyone else and then it's a $1 ,500 general admission pass which includes access to the parties and then we'll still have the scholarship class.

1:59:35Can I tell you guys a funny story? Yeah. When I joined the ownership group that bought the Warriors, I heard a rumor. which was that when we were competing, it was us versus Ellison to buy the warriors. And Ellison had an idea, I don't know if this is true or not, this is what I heard. That he had an idea for a new stadium. And he's like, he wanted to make it an ultra VIP stadium. And so there's only 5 ,000 seats. And they were like Singapore Airlines first class seats. So you go to the stadium to watch it, but it would be like, everybody would be like up close and you could touch. And outside they also had a thousand guillotines.

2:00:12So you could just, yeah, I mean, it's hard enough for a family to go see the real others. But I thought it was very funny. It's very crazy. It's crazy expensive now. It's like, it's crazy. It's a hundred dollars for nosebleed seats for the dictator, Tremoff Polly Haapatia for David Sacks who set up this episode. And Friedberg, the Sultan of Science, we hope you enjoy this. It's the first of many to come. We will still be doing regular dockets. We might have to go to two episodes a week on weeks like this who knows But give us your feedback share the show and we'll see you all at the all in summer

2:01:08Besties are gone, go thrifted. That's my dog, take it out. Wish you drive away. Sit next. Wait it off. Oh man, my hamster will meet me at once. We should all just get a room and just have one big hug, because they're all just like this sexual tension that we just need to release that out. What, you're B. What, you're B. You're B. B. What? We need to get merchies aren't there. I'm going, go, leave!

2:01:41Y The Upstart