Trump Loses Top Staff as Everyone Suddenly Quits on Him

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2:00Michael Popok:The Trump administration is the worst administration we have ever had for public health. Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die or have died from infants up to seniors because of the policies of the Trump administration. Directly cause and effect. And now we're watching three or four worlds collide, including a new set of whistleblower complaints coming out from the top doctors and top scientists of the National Institute of Health. You know, the group that Fauci, Dr. Fauci once run, which calls out this administration for defunding research, making us unsafe, minimizing the deaths of children, thousands of children dying from bird flu because they're not getting the proper vaccines and we don't have the proper vaccines available for them.

2:48Michael Popok:This is an administration that's run by a guy, Donald Trump, whose own failing health has become a crisis. Is he dead? Is he alive? If he's alive, why does he look like he's dead? And he put RFK Jr. to, in his own words, quote, run wild, this non-scientist, non-doctor, anti-science, anti-medical research, anti-vaccines guy, to run roughshod over our public health. Yes, he was grilled by the Senate Finance Committee, and he may be losing his job. But in the meantime, we're losing all of the respected researchers and scientists and doctors to make us safe. Donald Trump doesn't believe in global health and global health crises.

3:31Michael Popok:Where does he think pandemics and epidemics come from? Idaho? They don't come from Canada. They come from overseas. They come from China. They come from Africa. They come from India. And so we got to be in the game doing the research to prepare for the next pandemic. We are not prepared for the next pandemic. I know it because the two whistleblowers, the two top doctors and scientists just said so. We just lost, with a whistleblower complaint behind them, Dr. Gene Marazzo and Dr. Kathleen Neuzel. Dr. Gene Marazzo was effectively the Dr. Fauci in the National Institute of Health for the Trump administration until two days ago.

4:12Michael Popok:Dr. Kathleen Neuzel was NIH's Global Health Center director. So Trump has taken us out of the game of being a leader in global health, meaning things that come to our shore from overseas, we are not prepared for. In combination for all that, RFK Jr., just in the last 90 days, has cut$500 billion for a rapid vaccine program research. $500 billion, canceled the program. Sure, we don't need a rapid response to vaccines. I thought this was the president that used to brag, Trump, about Operation Warp Speed, in which he got the COVID vaccine developed in less than a year instead of 10 years. Yeah? Well, his RFK Jr.

4:58Michael Popok:just killed the$500 billion program to do that again in the face of the next pandemic. He fired RFK Jr. 17, all 17 members of a vaccine advisory board, because he didn't like the advice that he was given, which was, we got to have vaccines for measles and smallpox. We got to have developing vaccines for flu and the flu season. We got to be ready for the next pandemic. Fired, fired them. And then on top of that, he said in his Senate confirmation hearings to get the Republican votes, RFK Jr. said, I will never stand in the way of anyone getting a vaccine or undermine their decision making related to it.

5:35Michael Popok:I just want a conversation. Well, apparently the conversation is a direction and an order because he's doing exactly that by interfering. You and I can no longer, as of today, go to a pharmacy and get a COVID-19 vaccine because of RFK Jr. and Donald Trump. Thank you. You can thank them for that, for people that are dying from COVID this season. Now you got to go to your doctor. You got to make an appointment. You got to have a consultation. You know people aren't going to do that. That's one. Two, he completely wrecked the recommendations for childhood immunology and vaccines. It's all discretionary now.

6:11Michael Popok:It's all voluntary. It's all optional. Smallpox is not optional. Smallpox and measles are not optional. They're happening. They're infecting children. And then on the basis of that, you got states like Florida that say through their crazy quack of a doctor, surgeon general in Florida, we're getting rid of all mandatory vaccines for children. It's all optional. Is it optional? It's like if I need surgery and I, is it optional? Like I shouldn't get it? Because, you know, my choice is the same as the doctor's recommendation. This is the world we've now created. And here's what Dr. Noisel said in her whistleblower complaint, that if we don't continue to do the science, then we won't have the future advances.

6:58Michael Popok:We won't make vaccines better. We won't be able to quickly have vaccines against new and emerging infections. Hundreds of children have already died from bird flu because of Donald Trump's policies. That's also part of the whistleblower complaint. We also have this statement from Dr. Marazzo, effectively the Dr. Fauci of the Trump administration. We have seen in the U.S. and abroad the devastating effects of not being prepared to fight these infectious diseases. The derailment of promising vaccine research killed off by Donald Trump and RFK Jr. is putting us at such a disadvantage and doing such a disservice to the American people as far as maintaining their prospects for good health.

7:41Michael Popok:She really means their prospects to stay alive. Now, they're blaming Dr. Matthew Mamoli, who was the acting director of the National Institute of Health, who is a RFK Jr. henchman, for cutting the grants to the universities. Billions of dollars. I mean, Harvard just got its$2.2 billion grant reinstated by a federal judge. But remember, there was research that they were in the middle of that they had to pull up their pencils and take off their lab coats and stop doing. Meaning we're less safe because there goes the next medical breakthrough. There goes the next vaccine. There goes the next cancer cure.

8:18Michael Popok:There goes the next flu cure or COVID cure or the next pandemic cure. While Donald Trump fights it out in court with ordering the NIH to defy court orders, Even though courts ordered them to reinstate the NIH grant process and stop slowing it down, Mamoli, according to the whistleblower complaint, told them to put on the brakes and make it hard, hard to protect human life is what we're talking about at the end of it. um and so i i you know there's so many moving parts here but i wanted to pull it all together you know a week two weeks ago you got dr susan monterey who was the head of the cdc for less than three weeks took one look around at what rfk jr was doing and said i'm not going to rubber stamp uh quackery pseudoscience uh anything that's not science-backed and an anti-vaccine administration.

9:13Michael Popok:And so she quit. They say they fired her, but she quit. And four others followed right behind her who were all adults in the room that we needed to make ourselves safer. And who were they replaced by? Who's the nominee now by Donald Trump? A Peter Thiel private equity investment banker in California who's a buddy of J.D. Vance and J.D. Vance's mentor. We now have a businessman who's anti-vax in charge of the CDC. Not a doctor, not a scientist, not a PhD holder, just a business guy who's friends with J.D. Vance. You know, sometimes when I'm listening to the news cycle spin out of control, I look over at my cat and I think, yep, the news and my cat have a lot in common.

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11:02Michael Popok:Again, that's promo code LEGALAF for 60 % off your first order plus free shipping at Smalls.com. Now, J.D. Vance is also at the center of the whistleblower complaint because it looks like the NIH, based on J.D. Vance's relative waiting for a heart transplant, didn't want to get the COVID-19 vaccine that the hospital in Ohio required her to have. And Dr. Mamoli got involved and said, we shouldn't be linking the vaccine to the transplant requirement. And the doctors who quit with the whistleblower complaint said, what are you talking about? You know, there's strong medical research that links the two things together, that she has to be healthy with a COVID-19 vaccine in order to get a transplant for it to be successful.

11:49Michael Popok:But J.D. Vance, again, anti-science. and why are these people making decisions for our health with no medical background it's not like we elect it's not like donald trump's business before was a doctor you know he's not a surgeon he's not a doctor he's a failed businessman and real estate developer at best jd vance wrote a book once that's it that's it he's not a scientist why don't we leave the science and medicine and medical breakthroughs and everything to the scientists and medical people, right? Like, I don't get onto an airplane and tap the pilot on the shoulder and say, let me give it a whirl.

12:32I don't scrub in, you know, at a local hospital and say,

12:37Michael Popok:let me give this heart surgery a whirl that I've, you know, I've done DIY research on YouTube. I don't do that. Why don't we defer to the experts, right? When you need to go to court and win a case, you hire a great lawyer, right? When you need a doc, my mother always said, you need a great doctor in life, a great lawyer in life, and a great tailor, right? Don't do all those, don't do those things yourself. Unless you know what you're doing. And this is the administration that we have. That's why RFK Jr. got his ass handed to him yesterday during confirmation here, during the grilling by the Senate Finance Committee, because he lied to the Republicans that supported him, like Bill Cassidy and Tom Tillis and others.

13:24Michael Popok:I'm not going to stand in the way of science. I'm not going to stand in the way of vaccines. That's exactly what he's done. He's done everything he can. And the difference is I wouldn't care if this was like a tabletop exercise. Like, wouldn't it be interesting if we cut all the funding from the NIH to major universities, if we pull the plug on all the research that America's doing, if we pulled ourselves out of global health if we pulled ourselves out of the ability to generate vaccines at warp speed to address the next pandemic, I wonder what that would do to public health. If we also denied people the ability to get vaccines, told children they didn't have to get vaccines, take away the COVID-19 vaccine and do that all at the same time.

14:04Michael Popok:What would that do? We're not doing a computer simulation and a model. This is my life you're dealing with. This is the public's life, you know, voters. And that's why the midterms is going to be a referendum, among many things, about the Trump administration's approach to public health. You know, and you can just make, I mean, if the Democrats can't make this case, then they don't deserve to win. You've got$3 trillion from Medicare, Medicaid being pulled out, which means we have 20 million more people now without health insurance at all in America because of the underfunding and the undercutting of Obamacare.

14:43Michael Popok:by the Trump administration in the first seven months. 20 million people are hoping they don't get hit by a truck or get sick in this sick Trump administration world. That's one, right? Two, you got Donald Trump doesn't care about his own health. So who is he to direct me? Three, you've got the undermining of every aspect of public health that makes us safer. I never wanted to think about public health. Why did I have to think about public health? I just assumed there were people who knew what they were doing, who were giving the right recommendations and guidelines, who were developing the right vaccines, who were out doing the right research for the future advances.

15:22Michael Popok:I just assumed that was happening. Now you can kiss all that goodbye. So this is a referendum on public health and the failing public health. And the Democrats should hold up the numbers of the estimate of the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans who will die from now to the midterms because of Donald Trump's policies. and hold that up and put up cardboard tombstones in a field somewhere demonstrating how big that number really is, that's going to be one of the referendums against the Trump administration. The failing economy, which is linked to it, is another one because he's not going to be able to turn this around in time for the midterms because his economic policies are flawed and failing, just like his health.

16:10Michael Popok:So I'm here to cover it. I'm Midas Touch and Legal AF. I'm Michael Popok. Follow me on all things Legal AF, including on the Legal AF YouTube channel and Legal AF Substack. Until my next report, I'm Michael Popok. Can't get your fill of Legal AF? Me neither. That's why we formed the Legal AF Substack. Every time we mention something in a hot take, whether it's a court filing or a oral argument, come over to the Substack. You'll find the court filing and the oral argument there, including a daily roundup that I do call, wait for it, Morning AF. What else? All the other contributors from Legal AF are there as well.

16:43Michael Popok:We got some new reporting. We got interviews. We got ad-free versions of the podcast and hot takes. Wear Legal AF on Substack. Come over now to free subscribe. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. so I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills but it turns out that's very illegal so there goes my big idea for the commercial give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch upfront payment of$45 for 3 months $90 for 6 months or$180 for 12 month plan required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy see terms uncovered windows can make your home feel up to 20 degrees hotter stay cool and save up to 45 % off custom window treatments during the Summer Black Friday Mega Sale at blinds.com.

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