R.F.K. Jr. is nixing 22 projects that use mRNA technology, but that's the latest vaccine technology? That's like saying, kids, I'm turning off the GPS, we're going to make our way to Six Flags by using the stars and Daddy's sextant.
00:02:33.400It's Saturday, 9 August, Year of Our Lord 2025.
00:02:36.200Dr. Jay Bakhtaria joins us, the director of the National Institute of Health.
00:02:40.840Got a little heated this past week, doctor, particularly with people like Colbert.
00:02:46.860They're totally, obviously, crude and unacceptable, but it is what it is.
00:02:52.260Can you explain to us, really, because you were here with the Barrington Resolves and have been here at the beginning of this and had suffered professionally,
00:03:00.660exactly what happened this week, what brought it about, what was the analysis, why was the announcement, and what's the impact of this, sir?
00:03:07.680Sure. So what Secretary Kennedy did is he ordered that BARDA, which is an agency in HHS, Health and Human Services,
00:03:19.380cancel a whole bunch of contracts for the mRNA platform for mass production, essentially, of mRNA vaccines.
00:03:27.460The reason that he did that, and I think it's very important for people to understand,
00:03:33.340is that as far as public health goes, the mRNA platform, as far as public health goes for vaccines,
00:03:40.500the mRNA platform is no longer viable.
00:03:43.580If you look at the uptake of the recent COVID vaccines in kids, for instance,
00:03:48.780it's less than 5% of kids, kids under 5, I think, have taken it, less than 15% of kids between 5 and 12.
00:03:56.920Overall, less than a quarter of people have taken it, despite the fact that there's been relentless propaganda and pressure
00:04:04.460to take the COVID vaccines, the mRNA COVID vaccines forever, for a very long time, dating to the Biden administration.
00:04:12.200And so you can't have a platform where such a large fraction of the population distrusts the platform,
00:04:19.780if you're going to use it for vaccines, and expect it to work.
00:04:23.680And what you're seeing with Colbert and those insane clips that you just played for me,
00:04:29.100is frustration because they're no longer getting their way.
00:04:34.100They no longer control sort of the cultural high ground,
00:04:36.800where they can essentially bully people to take a product that people don't want.
00:04:42.200When people have lost trust in a product or technology like that,
00:04:48.200the only way forward is to be honest with people about what you know, what you don't know,
00:04:54.540and then give excellent evidence, reason with people.
00:04:58.320This kind of mocking and bullying has no place in public health.
00:05:03.800Colbert has done tremendous damage to public health, I think, for several years now,
00:05:08.440with this kind of relentless propaganda and then now bullying.
00:05:11.600I just, you know, it's very unfortunate.
00:05:15.440Now, that's what we played from years ago when he had the dancing needles up there,
00:07:11.900Almost everyone who had the vaccine has had COVID.
00:07:14.600I mean, I actually got the COVID vaccine in April 2021, and two months later, I got COVID.
00:07:20.920My experience was not unusual, to say the least.
00:07:24.880And so, as far as, like, the COVID vaccine itself, its ability to address the pandemic and stop the spread of the disease was severely lacking.
00:07:35.980Second, when you have a platform like the mRNA platform, what you're doing is essentially you're turning your body into an antigen factory.
00:07:43.200I mean, you're taking your cells, which are capable of taking the mRNA sort of programming, and turn out an antigen that you want to be produced there, right?
00:07:55.220So, in this case, it was some version of the spike protein.
00:07:58.800The problem is that the mRNA, when it's taking over the cells and having it produce antigens, you want to make sure that, first, you understand the dose of the antigens that are being produced.
00:08:09.560You want to control the dose of the vaccine.
00:08:11.760The vaccine really is the antigen, not the mRNA.
00:08:15.100Second, you want to make sure that the biodistribution, you want to make sure that it goes to the places you want it to go, not to other places you don't want to go to.
00:08:21.840And then third, you want to make sure that you're not creating off-target proteins.
00:08:26.340Now, the mRNA technology fails on all three counts.
00:08:31.120It's not – I don't believe that it caused – I mean, I've seen people claim that it caused large numbers of deaths.
00:08:37.820I'm not sure I agree with that in terms of the scientific evidence.
00:08:40.400I also don't agree with estimates that it saved – I think you played a clip that said 14 million lives.
00:08:47.160Those estimates, especially the claims of lives saved are based on modeling estimates.
00:08:54.240The NIH publishes, you know, vast numbers of scientific – links to vast numbers of scientific papers, many – most of which were not actually supported by the NIH.
00:09:03.600So I think those estimates, I think – you know, I don't – I actually don't know the answer.
00:09:08.560My general sort of – what I think happened is that it – very likely the COVID vaccine protected people that were older for a short period of time against dying from COVID.
00:09:20.760And for younger people, because the death rate from COVID, the risk from COVID, dying from COVID was so low, especially for children, that the mRNA vaccine in that setting didn't do very much good at all.
00:09:31.240And we know for a fact that it had some side effects, severe ones, including myocarditis in sort of an unexpectedly high rate in – especially young men.
00:09:44.060What led – what you're saying is that, hey, it could be promising, but it's going to take kind of years to figure this out.
00:09:55.160That is essentially what people do when they try to develop vaccines.
00:10:00.000They take, I don't know, an average of, what, 10 years or – in these efforts.
00:10:06.100Why did Fauci and the medical community – because I think in your great Barrington Declaration very early on, you and your colleagues, I think, highlight to people about what the problems are going to be here.
00:10:19.460Why did the public health – and particularly the most prominent schools, Harvard, all these other places – why did the public health officials in prominent medical centers and, you know, people on MSNBC every day would doctor this and doctor that, totally credentialized.
00:10:37.640Why did they jump so hard on top of this that it was a panacea and that you had to take it?
00:10:43.620And if you didn't take it, no one at the war room is vaccinated, right?
00:10:47.600We just totally, completely rejected it out of hand.
00:10:51.180But why were the professionals, and particularly people at the most credentialed places, why did they jump on this thing so hard to push it?
00:11:00.800I mean there's multiple reasons, Steve.
00:11:02.640And I think you can talk about, of course, the financial incentives.
00:11:05.600I mean there were tremendous financial incentives.
00:11:07.340As you could see, when Secretary Kennedy canceled the contracts, it was, you know, on the order of – you know, just a vast amount of money was at stake.
00:11:22.020I don't believe that's all of it, though.
00:11:23.260If you go back and put yourself in, say, summer of 2020, the fear and panic over the threat of COVID was so palpable that it led people to do really – I mean just – if you look in retrospect, really crazy things.
00:11:37.900So including closing our schools, including, you know, ostracizing people that – who were, you know, sort of taking risks.
00:11:48.960When I was a Stanford professor back then, I would – it was fairly sort of – I was out front saying that we shouldn't be closing schools.
00:11:57.960I got – I mean I just as a – I was reflecting what I saw as the evidence in front of me, and I got, you know, crazy death threats just because I would say that the closing schools doesn't make sense.
00:12:08.760After we wrote the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020 with a colleague of mine at Harvard and a colleague of mine at Oxford where we called for opening schools and for not harming the lives of young people, protecting older people better, but not harming the lives of young people.
00:12:23.480The former head of the NIH, a man named Francis Collins, who – he wrote to Tony Fauci calling for a devastating takedown over the premise of the declaration, which then led to, you know, again, more death threats against me.
00:12:36.440It was quite – it was quite something.
00:12:38.600So in that sort of feverish environment, I think people looked at this – the vaccine as a sort of panacea, and they invested a lot into try to get the vaccine technology out.
00:12:49.400I mean Operation Warp Speed in a sense made a lot of sense in that environment because Operation Warp Speed said let's try to accelerate the development of this technology that might address this threat.
00:12:59.780Now, I thought there were better ways to address the threat back then, but let's just – just as a matter of like, you know, sort of strategy, it makes sense to like invest all you can to try to address this threat as you see it.
00:13:12.520But when – after that happened, though, the evaluation of the evidence, I mean, it just involved a lot of wishful thinking.
00:13:21.040There was a clip of the then-CDC director in 2021, Rochelle Walensky, talking about how everyone was just filled with hope.
00:13:29.580That hope blinded the public health establishment to the facts about the vaccine, right?
00:13:36.120So it didn't protect you from getting and spreading COVID.
00:13:42.760I think that blind spot, really, that's the key thing.
00:13:47.560Doctor, can you hang on just – we're going to have a short commercial break, and we've got a few questions on the other side about how do we go forward?
00:13:56.580Secretary Kennedy promised platinum-level science and radical transparency at HHS.
00:14:02.660I think that is what the American people have wanted for a long time so we don't get caught up in some emotional situation when it comes to public health and science.
00:15:14.760It just cannot keep up with that demand.
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00:17:45.060To me, the key thing going forward, first, we have to be absolutely honest with the American people about what worked and what didn't work, right?
00:17:51.220We can't continue to try to paint a picture of everything's fine.
00:17:57.960Like, you know, in the Stephen Colbert approach of public health, that's a complete disaster, a nonstarter.
00:18:03.180This is almost tailor-made and designed to create lack of public trust.
00:18:06.960We have to be honest about what's known and what's not known, right?
00:18:10.180So I told you I don't know whether some of the claims that I've heard are right just because I have a – you know, as a scientist, I have to, like, have a skeptical view of almost any claim.
00:18:23.480So we have to be – we have to convey that, what we know and what we don't know clearly.
00:18:27.420Second, we have to invest in technologies that actually have a promise of working that have not lost the trust of the American people, right?
00:18:33.340So, for instance, at the NIH, at the behest of Secretary Kennedy, we've invested in a more traditional vaccine technology of whole virus-inactivated vaccines for viruses for treating the flu or for preventing the flu, sort of a universal flu vaccine.
00:18:51.100So you wouldn't necessarily have to get the flu vaccine every single year after year.
00:18:58.380I'll tell you if there's side effects.
00:18:59.660I'll be honest with you about what the scientific evidence says.
00:19:02.880I'm not going to use my platform to say, trust me.
00:19:07.160Instead, I'll show you evidence and I'll give you my honest assessment.
00:19:10.260I think that's really the only way forward.
00:19:12.640We have to pursue promising avenues, right, and pursue them with scientific rigor, and we have to be absolutely honest with the American people about what we find, including some of the things that we don't necessarily – haven't necessarily expected to find.
00:19:28.160I don't know any other way forward other than that.
00:19:30.000What is – to make sure we don't have problems like we've had in the pandemic and you don't have – this gets into emotions instead of just data and science.
00:19:43.080Going forward, are you going to address this more to the American people?
00:19:46.540Are you going to take a more prominent role in talking about what you guys are pursuing?
00:19:51.700Are the actual scientists you're giving grants to?
00:19:54.140Are you going to give them a higher public profile?
00:19:56.220I mean, how are people – just the average common citizen, right, that's bombarded by the entertainment industry like Colbert, how are they going to actually get access to this?
00:20:06.600Well, Steve, I'm not particularly good at PR, but I can tell you I have a podcast that I've started called The Director's Desk where I talk to scientists.
00:20:16.400I talk to – and we talk about hot-button scientific issues where we discuss sort of a level – at a level where people can understand what's known and what's not known.
00:20:27.780I think putting people – putting scientists actually thinking through their skepticism about things and expressing that publicly, I think that's one way forward.
00:20:40.580And I think we – just having like honest conversations – I mean, I was thrilled when you invited me on this show.
00:20:47.740Having honest conversations in places where scientists don't normally go I think is also going to really help connect with the American people.
00:20:54.840The mainstream media, I don't know, you know better than me, Steve, but I've had so much frustration in how the mainstream media has pursued its public health engagement.
00:21:06.240I think it's done great damage to public trust and public health.
00:21:10.020I still remember a clip from – I think it was MSNBC.
00:21:12.620There was some host that she was talking about how the COVID vaccine, every single time someone takes it, it stops the virus in its tracks and it won't move forward.
00:21:21.200And I knew the data at the time did not support that.
00:21:23.720And there she was on a prominent cable news channel telling – misleading the public seemingly with an eye toward propagandizing the public.
00:21:36.120A lot of the – a lot of – I mean, I don't know this for certain, but it looks to me like a lot of the money that comes from advertising for these mainstream sites comes from pharma, right?
00:21:48.500And so they have sort of a vested interest in this propaganda.
00:21:52.460How do we get people to understand that there's – that they should be listening to real science where the hallmark of it is skepticism?
00:22:16.660I mean, because there's no real randomized trials on that now for the new variant demonstrating the kind of result which we want in protection against severe disease and death.
00:22:31.400But for younger people, I wrote a piece in April 2021 for kids that said it made no sense to make the COVID vaccine available for kids back then because the likelihood of dying from COVID itself was so low and there was the possibility of side effects.
00:22:47.340I mean, this kind of nuance, this kind of discussion, an honest discussion where scientists disagree with each other, we have debate and open discussion, that's my strategy going forward.
00:22:56.840I'd love to get out more and talk with folks about this because I think that's the only real way to restore trust.
00:23:31.140So, you know, it's just like literally at NIH where you can see, like, we don't just do talk about vaccines.
00:23:37.960We have a whole wide range of science, of course, that we talk about.
00:23:41.940There's a director's desk podcast, which we're going to, you know, I mean, you can see I've done a few already.
00:23:48.760I'm going to plan to do many, many more.
00:23:50.960I'm going to start highlighting some really exciting findings.
00:23:53.380Like, for instance, did you know, Steve, that we now potentially have a cure for sickle cell disease,
00:23:59.480a genetic disease that affects, you know, many, many, especially black youths that I thought would never be cured, but we might have a cure.
00:24:09.380There are all kinds of exciting advances like this that I would love to highlight so we can start to, people can understand where this honest scientific process leads.
00:24:18.620And also there's I want to highlight places where there's ambiguity, where where I believe that that that ambiguity has been sort of suppressed that that so that director's desk will be a fun place to follow me.
00:24:33.840You should also know the worm is one of the leaders in helping this new group that's come together to try to stop all pharmaceutical ads from coming on television,
00:24:41.720because our theory of the case is that if you we monitor MSNBC and CNN 24 seven, if you took ads off MSNBC, it would be a test pattern.
00:24:51.220Doctor, thank you so much for coming on today.
00:24:53.780Really appreciate you taking time on the Saturday.
00:24:55.920We'll make sure we'll push out all of your information.
00:25:15.440Naomi, many years in the vineyard, you you fought and warned people and and and and put together the the Pfizer papers and had thousands of war and posse under your and Amy Kelly's great direction.
00:25:31.640What are your thoughts when you heard the when you heard the announcement this week and also the firestorm that came back from the Colbert's of the world and the mocking?
00:25:42.320Well, it was it was an important announcement.
00:25:44.400I mean, I've been critical of HHS and the leadership of Secretary Kennedy falling short, you know, so many times in so many ways of the centerpiece of why the Maha movement aligned with MAGA for this historic union of voters.
00:26:03.560And the centerpiece of that was getting rid of the mRNA injection that moms knew and dads knew by now has been so devastating and damaging.
00:26:14.220So I've got to credit Secretary Kennedy for a considerable amount of boldness.
00:26:24.080We can conjecture, you know, the headwinds internally, the, you know, many forces, lobbyists,
00:26:31.580different camps internally that would would want to prevent an announcement such as his, which defunded about half a billion dollars in funding for 22 mRNA programs.
00:26:47.800So that was I want to credit him for that, right?
00:26:52.420That said, like my headline today, especially, you know, now always, but listening to Dr.
00:26:57.620Bhattacharya, whom I admire so much, you know, whom I've known and respected since 2022.
00:27:04.160When I first interviewed him, I feel like they're such a huge announcement, right?
00:27:11.140And the predictable mockery, because you analyzed the battlefield so accurately, the predictable mockery for legacy media is largely because pharma pays for 70 to 80 percent of legacy media.
00:27:23.940So banning pharma ads in America the way every country that New Zealand bans pharma ads will indeed shake out the tree and, you know, guarantee journalists present.
00:27:36.700But I was just going to say, you know, my headline is that HHS doesn't have a working comms apparatus.
00:27:43.320And you see Secretary Kennedy, in my view, struggling much harder than he should have to.
00:27:48.360To J. Bhattacharya, even not being equipped with, you know, by a comms team with simple points and action steps that everyone can understand.
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00:30:45.320Talk to Natalie Dominguez and the team today.
00:30:48.420We cannot afford to have you not on the ramparts, particularly in the days and weeks ahead with so much work to do.
00:30:53.480Naomi, I want you to continue on, but I also want about the accountability.
00:31:00.180We started with a package with Dr. J about Colbert, who was on a tear this week,
00:31:08.100but also went back to the time he had the dancing needles.
00:31:10.520And, you know, he just said that he thought that people like Colbert did an immense damage to public health in the United States,
00:31:21.000and nobody would know that better than you, who they tried to shut up and de-platform and de-bank your daily clout and get rid of it, etc.
00:31:29.260So walk me through exactly where you think we are in promulgating this information, one, to the American people,
00:31:37.920so people have a full understanding of exactly where we are in this.
00:31:41.980And number two, what is your recommendation on how we hold people accountable that really damaged and hurt so many of our fellow citizens, ma'am?
00:35:17.960When you look at the press release for the mRNA, and I'm talking now so people will understand that a press release from a communications shop, right,
00:35:26.880which every agency is supposed to have, is the DNA of messaging from any successful administration, right?
00:35:36.660You know, there isn't a database of journalists that's getting press releases.
00:35:41.180And when you get the press release, say for the mRNA rollout, it's so convoluted, so bureaucratically written,
00:35:49.900and kind of sneakily phrased, which I wish they would stop doing, that you end up noticing, okay, well, they're defunding 22 programs,
00:35:58.980but they're reinvesting, you know, in something over there, and meanwhile, they're acknowledging there are still programs
00:36:07.700that they're not going to pull putting this mRNA injection in people's bodies because it's already taxpayer funded.
00:36:14.820So anyone with common sense who can make it through the language is going to be going, what?
00:36:22.300And, you know, also, with a rollout that important, which is going to get news coverage from certainly all the financial press,
00:36:30.060all the legacy media, why isn't there an op-ed penned by someone with, you know, RFK Jr.'s name on it,
00:36:37.580Dr. Bhattacharya's name on it, well, it would be RFK Jr.'s name on it.
00:36:41.160You know, in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, I mean, maybe the case for this was made,
00:36:50.780and I just overlooked it, but really, a functional comms team should have op-eds, USA Today, regional newspapers, you know,
00:36:58.320and they should have a battery of surrogates, right, who are equipped and trained, again,
00:37:04.300with these three message points and an action step so that they're all on the same page,
00:37:09.600which I will tell you, Democrats do it, you know, we're awful people, or, you know, I'm a former Democrat,
00:37:15.640but, you know, the opposition are awful, but they know how to get in line and send everyone talking points, right?
00:37:22.160And literally, I don't see surrogates, and there are many who would be willing, going out and carrying RFK Jr.'s message.
00:37:29.240He took half a billion dollars away from mRNA.
00:37:32.460Lastly, I just want to say there's no one, it seems, thinking through the emotional impact of what they're doing, right?
00:37:38.840So, you know, 70 to 80 percent of the American public, Steve, has taken this mRNA injection into their bodies once, twice, three times, a booster,
00:37:51.680and they were told for four years, safe and effective, safe and effective, you know, the dancing syringes, et cetera, on Stephen Colbert.
00:38:00.240Now, Secretary Kennedy, who already has been branded a lunatic by Legacy Media, stands up and tells them something very, very emotionally charged, right?
00:38:17.860That is scientifically and medically correct, and everyone who got that message should have been directed to all the studies that show that,
00:38:25.660so he's not standing out there by himself, unsupported, but it's emotionally traumatic to hear that.
00:38:32.440So they need someone in the comms shop needs to think through, this is going to be very difficult for people to hear.
00:40:15.260So this is why – it has to be a massive effort.
00:40:17.600In fact, I believe it's the most important thing that Secretary Kennedy has done and will have the most profound implications if properly managed, not just in the messaging side but the action side.
00:40:31.760Naomi, we've got to bounce, but I want everybody to go to your thing, but we'll have you back on.
00:40:35.900This thing is so massive that we're at the very top.
00:40:39.220And I want people to understand, just because Bobby Kennedy and the director of NIH and all these came together with the science with Hatfield and put this out and made a decision, this fight's far from over.
00:40:53.220Don't think the farmer thinks that they're going to lose this.
00:40:56.040They look at us as just a – they still look at this as a collection of just kind of marginalia.
00:41:01.580This fight is in, and if we want to win this and do what's right for science and do what's right for public health, hey, this is the opening salvo.
00:41:11.320This is so far from over, and people think you just put out a press release.
00:41:16.520It's not – that's not the way the imperial capital works, and that's not the way modern capitalism works, particularly when you're talking about the concentration of power that Big Pharma has.
00:41:27.660Naomi Wolf, an amazing job you did over the years.
00:41:30.260We'll get more to that about the Pfizer papers and what led to this.
00:41:34.380Where do people go over the weekend to get you, ma'am?
00:41:37.540Well, they should come on August 21st at 6 p.m. to the Republican Club, the Donald J. Trump Republican Club.
00:41:46.420That's me at the Republican Club, everyone.
00:41:48.840This day has come, and they can meet the candidates, this groundswell of amazing young candidates, former Democrats who have walked away, who are now running as Republicans to save Brooklyn and save New York.
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