RFK Jr. The Defender - IRS: Pro-Pharma Anti-Health

Robert Krieger is an advocate for changing the incentives of the healthcare system, and he s the founder of TruMed, a company that enables tax-free spending on food and exercise. He s also a co-author with his sister, Dr. Casey Means, of Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, which is coming out next year and available for pre-order. Earlier in his career, he was a consultant for the food and pharmaceutical industries, and is now exposing the corrupt practices that those industries use to weaponize our regulatory agencies, our press, and our other institutions of trust. He s a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School, and I m really happy to meet him. I m embarrassed to say I had not heard of him before I saw him on the Tucker Carlson show. I was blown away by some of the stuff that he was saying, and how aligned it is with the things I ve been doing over the past 20 years in exposing the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry for their corrupt practices. I m proud to have him as a guest on the show today. This is a must-listen for anyone who wants to know what's going on in the world of health and wellness, and wants to be a foot soldier in the fight. If you don t know who he is, then you re in for a real treat. You ll have to listen to this one. -Tucker Carlson, host of The Weekly Hacking Podcast - Subscribe to his newest podcast, "Tucker's Place" wherever he is listening to his favorite shows on the airwaves, wherever he can get the most of his best listening to the most authentic and most authentic content. Subscribe to Tucker's newest episodes on the most influential podcasts on the internet. Enjoyed the show? Subscribe on iTunes? Subscribe on Podchaser? Learn more about your ad choices? Leave us a review and tell a friend about what you think of the show on social media using the hashtag and we'll be giving him a shoutout in next week's episode on the next episode of his new podcast, on Tuesday s episode of "Outnumbered" on Outnumbered. Thank you for listening to Tucker Carlson's Outnumbered? and Good Energy! Timestamps: 5:00 - What's your favorite thing you've listened to in the past week? 6:30 - What s your favorite food or exercise supplement? 7:00 - How do you think about your healthiest meal? 8 - What are you looking forward to in 2020? 9 - What do you would you like to hear in the future? 10 - What kind of food you're going to eat next? 11 - Which is your favorite meal or exercise plan?

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, I'm really happy today.

00:00:02.000 My guest is Kelly Means.

00:00:03.000 Kelly is an advocate for changing the incentives of the healthcare system, and he's the founder of TruMed, a company that enables tax-free spending on food and exercise.

00:00:13.000 He's also a co-author with his sister, Dr.

00:00:16.000 Casey Means, of Good Energy, The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.

00:00:22.000 Which is coming out next year and available for pre-order.

00:00:25.000 Earlier in his career, he was a consultant for food and pharmaceutical industries and is now exposing the corrupt practices that those industries use to weaponize our regulatory agencies, our press, our other institutions of trust.

00:00:41.000 And he's a graduate of Stanford and Harvard Business School.

00:00:44.000 Callie, I'm really, really happy to meet you.

00:00:47.000 I'm embarrassed to say I had not heard of you before I saw you on the Tucker Carlson show.

00:00:53.000 I was blown away by some of the stuff that you were saying or working on and how aligned it is with With the things that I've been doing over the past 20 years in exposing the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry.

00:01:11.000 And anyway, I'm really proud to have you on the show.

00:01:14.000 Put soldier in your fight, Robert, and it's great to be here.

00:01:17.000 So this week, the IRS has considered by the time this podcast airs, the IRS presumably will have approved the A new policy that favors treatments with Ozempic over actually eating good food, which is the root of all of these chronic diseases that we have.

00:01:43.000 So talk to us a little bit about that.

00:01:45.000 Robert, so many Americans have come to, I think, again, be foot soldiers in your fight through different routes.

00:01:51.000 Mine was my mother.

00:01:52.000 My mom was on the chronic disease treadmill. 1.00

00:01:55.000 For 40 years, it was one pill after the next.

00:01:57.000 High cholesterol, oh, no problem, here's a statin.

00:02:00.000 High blood sugar, no problem, here's metformin.

00:02:03.000 High blood pressure, ACE inhibitor.

00:02:06.000 Every single time this is a drug deficiency, no problem, just take the pill.

00:02:10.000 Three years ago, she's hiking in Northern California, gets a pain in her stomach, goes in, gets a scan at stage four pancreatic cancer.

00:02:16.000 She's dead 13 days later.

00:02:19.000 And the reason I'm in this fight is because if one of those doctors, instead of prescribing her another pill, said, I'm going to write you a note with a detailed dietary plan. 0.98

00:02:27.000 I'm going to write you a note with an exercise intervention.

00:02:30.000 We're going to get control of this metabolic dysfunction that these indicators are representing.

00:02:34.000 This is not a statin deficiency or metformin deficiency.

00:02:36.000 There's clear metabolic dysfunction.

00:02:38.000 Robert, this is the majority of Americans.

00:02:39.000 94% of Americans are metabolically dysfunctional.

00:02:43.000 The fight I'm in is steering medical dollars.

00:02:46.000 This is actually taking what you're saying and actually how do we operationalize that?

00:02:49.000 Well, with HSA, FSA accounts, these tax-free accounts, $150 billion that Americans have to make qualified medical expenses with their physicians, those can go to drugs.

00:02:59.000 But the IRS for the past 40 years has been clear.

00:03:02.000 If the doctor writes a note for exercise, for dietary intervention, for supplements to reverse or prevent conditions, those tax-free funds can go to that.

00:03:11.000 And through my company and nonprofit, we've been evangelizing that.

00:03:14.000 What's that?

00:03:15.000 They cannot go to that.

00:03:16.000 No, no, no, no.

00:03:18.000 It can.

00:03:20.000 The IRS has been clear for 40 years that actually if a doctor specifically recommends food, exercise, supplements, it actually can.

00:03:29.000 The American people didn't understand this, and I have been evangelizing this, that when we have an obesity crisis, 80% of Americans that are overweight or obese, 66% of Americans pre-diabetic.

00:03:39.000 Doctors can and should actually be writing medical notes.

00:03:42.000 And through our work, through my nonprofit and my company, we've been evangelizing this.

00:03:46.000 Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been going to their doctor and working on dietary plans and actually steering tax-free dollars to that.

00:03:52.000 About $100 million by our account in the past couple of months.

00:03:55.000 The IRS today is literally saying...

00:03:59.000 Before we talk about the IRS, how do Americans take advantage of that?

00:04:04.000 How do you get the tax deduction?

00:04:06.000 Yeah, so there's no definition, Robert, in any laws, despite pharma's best efforts, that medicine is a pill developed by Pfizer.

00:04:15.000 Medicine is what a doctor and a patient determine what can prevent or reverse a condition.

00:04:20.000 And there's significant case law since the 1950s that if food is medically recommended, if supplementation, for instance, omega-3s, DHA, 1,000 milligrams has been shown to be more effective than an SSRI in reversing depression.

00:04:37.000 So if you tie a supplement intervention, vitamin D deficiency to many metabolic disorders, or if you can tie exercise, which exercise, as Mark Hyman has said, is if you put an epilabetic, a blockbuster, you can actually, the doctors actually can work with patients and write down an intervention.

00:04:53.000 And with that doctor's note, you can then use your medically advantaged dollars instead of waiting to get sick and buying drugs, which those funds are often used for it.

00:05:02.000 You can actually buy your gym membership.

00:05:04.000 You can actually buy supplemental food.

00:05:06.000 You can buy supplements.

00:05:07.000 Again, if you work with your doctor, my sister, my best friend, Stanford Medical School.

00:05:11.000 And you could talk to your gym membership.

00:05:14.000 The IRS has been explicit about this.

00:05:18.000 If medically recommended, they've said explicitly, and this is deep in their documents, IRS Publication 502, that you can use HSAFSA funds for your gym membership if a doctor can substantiate that exercise can help prevent or reverse a condition.

00:05:34.000 So this is...

00:05:34.000 You don't know about it.

00:05:36.000 Nobody knows about this.

00:05:37.000 We've been evangelizing this.

00:05:38.000 There's nothing up until today...

00:05:41.000 That said, medicine is a synthetic pill or injection.

00:05:44.000 As we both know, food and exercise is medicine.

00:05:47.000 And what I'm in this fight for is today, 95% of, as we know, medical interventions are after someone gets sick.

00:05:55.000 They're pharmaceutical and other sick care procedures to manage chronic disease.

00:05:58.000 There is a tool right now that we've been evangelizing very clearly that with an obesity crisis, doctors can write recommendations for exercise and food interventions instead of Ozempic.

00:06:11.000 So that brings us up to today, but that's been something I want everyone to know.

00:06:15.000 We'll talk about the IRS guidance, but the guiding principle, the guidance that is still the law is that you can go to your doctor.

00:06:24.000 If you're pre-diabetic, if you're dealing with heart issues, if you're dealing with obesity, you can actually get a medical letter from your doctor with a detailed dietary plan if Our company, TruMed, works on that too.

00:06:36.000 And you can use your HSA, FSA dollars to go to metabolically healthy items instead of getting on a pharmaceutical path like my mom, where it's just pill after pill after pill, not addressing the root cause.

00:06:49.000 Yes, that's what we've been evangelizing, Robert.

00:06:52.000 But the IRS, we can talk about that, but they had something to say about it.

00:06:55.000 Let's talk about what they said about it.

00:06:58.000 Well, just to give some inside baseball, a literal pharmaceutical lobbyist who was upset with what we were doing tipped off the IRS, and the IRS called the Washington Post.

00:07:08.000 And this will be out by the time this podcast is out.

00:07:11.000 And they said, quote, food is not medicine.

00:07:13.000 They said that in very rare cases that food and supplements can be appropriate medicine.

00:07:19.000 This is absolutely a negligent comment.

00:07:24.000 This is under context where, as I said, 80% of Americans are obese or overweight, where Ozympic is on track to be the most prescribed drug in America, where 40 plus percent of men over 40 are statin, where 25% of women are on SSRI.

00:07:39.000 The IRS, for the first time I can find in its history, says food is not medicine.

00:07:44.000 So they're commenting on what a doctor can and should recommend to their patient for the reversal of our chronic disease crisis.

00:07:52.000 And they actually, shockingly, Robert, they commented on the scale of the recommendations.

00:07:58.000 They actually said supplementation, vitamin D, omega-3s, etc., things we're very deficient in, can only be made medically in, quote, rare cases.

00:08:07.000 So let's be just really clear what the IRS is saying.

00:08:10.000 They're saying that it is easier and clearer and less scrutiny if you're obese to get a prescription for a Zempic than to work with your doctor to get a detailed food supplement exercise plan and use your own money, your tax advantage money with a doctor recommendation, with a doctor's plan. your tax advantage money with a doctor recommendation, with a Use that money, as has been elucidated over decades of case law, use that money for root cause interventions.

00:08:31.000 decades of case law, use that money for root cause interventions.

00:08:35.000 And I want to be really clear here, the operationalizing of your policies to me is the money.

00:08:40.000 The American people are not trying to be sicker, fatter, more depressed, more infertile.

00:08:46.000 As I saw working for food and pharma, we're pushing people into that system.

00:08:50.000 We're pushing trillions of dollars of incentives for kids to eat poisonous food, eventually get sick, and then get on a pharmaceutical treadmill.

00:08:56.000 Where the rubber hits the road, what's disruptive is steering medical dollars to actually helping people be healthy, exercise, food, supplements.

00:09:05.000 There was that road in the HSA, FSA policies.

00:09:08.000 And the second that starts getting attention, through my work on Tucker and evangelizing that you can actually use your medical dollars for root cause metabolic items, the IRS is not speaking about the overprescription of Ozempic or Stans or SSRIs.

00:09:21.000 They have made a statement today, quote, food is not medicine.

00:09:25.000 Do you think they did that in reaction to your interviews?

00:09:29.000 They told the Washington Post specifically, they've actually, I've heard that they said, quote, that when a benefit gets out, it's hard to take back in.

00:09:38.000 And they were complaining that all these folks are reimbursing gym memberships.

00:09:42.000 And it's just an explosion of people getting medical dollars for exercise.

00:09:46.000 They said it's happening way too fast.

00:09:48.000 Now, the fact that people hear about this, they can work with their doctor for an exercise prescription and more people are doing it is not a statement on us.

00:09:55.000 It's a statement on the broken system.

00:09:57.000 It's a statement, frankly, on the moral failure of doctors who have 66% of adults and 33% of teens coming into their office with pre-diabetes and they're prescribing pills instead of writing a note for exercise, instead of writing a note for better food interventions, instead of writing a note for supplementation.

00:10:14.000 The IRS has said explicitly this is happening way too fast.

00:10:17.000 Too many people are getting doctor's notes for food.

00:10:20.000 Too many people are getting doctor's notes for exercise.

00:10:24.000 It recently came out, I saw on Twitter, and in a very short period of time, SSRI prescriptions have doubled.

00:10:30.000 Stands are off the charts.

00:10:32.000 Adderall, 15% of US high schoolers are on.

00:10:35.000 There's no statement about the IRS. This is all being driven through tax-advantaged spending.

00:10:41.000 Billions and billions and billions of dollars of HSA, FSA dollars are going to that without a thought.

00:10:45.000 The first time the IRS, in recorded history that I could find, is commenting on the degree to which doctors should be recommending to their patients is today on food and exercise.

00:10:56.000 It's so crazy.

00:10:58.000 I mean, one of the things that you said that I've used again and again, so I didn't know this data point that, for example, when I was a kid, that typical pediatrician might see one juvenile diabetes in his career.

00:11:11.000 And today, 33% of the kids who walk into his office, one out of every three is pre-diabetic or diabetic.

00:11:19.000 That is stunning.

00:11:20.000 And that we're spending more on diabetes today than the defense budget.

00:11:25.000 That's right.

00:11:26.000 And nobody's asking why this is happening.

00:11:29.000 There's no political debate.

00:11:32.000 It's not part of the debates, the Republican debates.

00:11:35.000 Of course, we don't have Democratic debates.

00:11:38.000 Nobody is asking this question.

00:11:40.000 Why are kids so sick?

00:11:42.000 Why are we the sickest nation in the history of the world from chronic disease?

00:11:48.000 Well, let's get into it because I worked for these industries and I got an answer for you.

00:11:52.000 And again, I've been learning a lot from you, so excuse me if I'm repeating some of the stuff you've been evangelizing better than anyone, but I'll tell you from my perspective, it is happening for a very simple reason, that the largest and fastest industry in the United States, the healthcare industry, again, largest and fastest growing, it's hard to wrap your head around.

00:12:11.000 Every lever of that industry makes more money when kids are sicker and loses money when they learn metabolically healthy habits.

00:12:17.000 The insurance industry, through the 15% medical loss ratio, they can only take their 15%.

00:12:21.000 They have an incentive for costs to go up because they can raise premiums to get their 15%.

00:12:26.000 So they actually want people to be sicker.

00:12:28.000 Hospitals make money on interventions.

00:12:30.000 Pharma has created the greatest- I was trying to figure this out at one point because I was trying to meet with insurance executives and say, look, I can show you that these particular medical interventions, certain of the vaccines were actually causing higher costs in the long run.

00:12:49.000 And that the insurance companies were incentivizing people to take them.

00:12:54.000 And I went to them with data and an insurance executive said to me, listen, the truth, because I thought naively that And insurance companies would make more money if their clients were healthier.

00:13:08.000 They'd have to pay less costs.

00:13:10.000 And I thought, this is the one industry that could save us from pharma.

00:13:13.000 Because pharma, of course, obviously wants us all sick.

00:13:17.000 The regulatory agencies want us all sick.

00:13:19.000 Because they get more powerful.

00:13:21.000 But you'd think the insurance industry would counterbalance that.

00:13:25.000 Because they have to pay more money when people get sick.

00:13:28.000 And this insurance executive said to me, He said, listen, we get richer the sicker people are.

00:13:33.000 And I said, how is that possible?

00:13:36.000 And he said, well, if you're Lloyds of London and you insure against shipwrecks, is it better for you if there's one shipwreck a year or is it better for you if there's 500 shipwrecks a year?

00:13:48.000 And I said, one.

00:13:49.000 He said, no, it's 500.

00:13:51.000 Because they're making money on the premiums and on the friction.

00:13:54.000 And the more catastrophes there are, the more paid in premiums into that system.

00:13:59.000 And that's where they make their money.

00:14:01.000 So it's actually better for the insurance industry that all of our kids are sick.

00:14:05.000 And that's one of the, you know, contributors.

00:14:08.000 100%.

00:14:08.000 I think even public health experts, as we both talk to, still don't understand that fundamental incentive.

00:14:15.000 You know, still I hear very smart people from Harvard with a Harvard degree saying, oh, insurance, they'll be an ally.

00:14:20.000 No, they're not an ally.

00:14:21.000 So I really, when I say every institution, I literally mean every.

00:14:25.000 Well, go through all the institutions.

00:14:28.000 Well, well...

00:14:29.000 Insurance companies, hospitals make more money on interventions.

00:14:32.000 They make more money when kids are chronically ill coming in again and again and again for interventions, eventually leading like my mom and the majority of other Americans to something seriously life-threatening.

00:14:43.000 Pharmaceutical companies have created the greatest profit-maximizing engine in human history, which is chronic disease.

00:14:51.000 Chronic diseases, as you point out regularly, are just a beautiful invention economically because the person stays sick for their lives.

00:14:59.000 They don't die, but they live a much more tortured, much more depressed, much more infertile life, racking up many comorbidities.

00:15:06.000 When a mom at 70 years old was on five medications before a cancer diagnosis, her primary care provider said she was healthy.

00:15:12.000 She was on five medications less than the average 70-year-old, and she was actually complimented by her doctor.

00:15:18.000 So this idea, right, it's beautiful that you just rack up the chronic conditions.

00:15:24.000 And unfortunately, the dynamic, and this is not emotional.

00:15:28.000 This is not conspiratorial.

00:15:29.000 This is just a plain statement of economic fact.

00:15:32.000 The best possible thing economically for the pharmaceutical industry is for a kid to get metabolically unhealthy and get metabolically unhealthy early.

00:15:40.000 Because then you've got them, you know, they're popping out statins like crazy now in high schools.

00:15:44.000 They're popping out SSRIs like crazy.

00:15:46.000 They're popping out Adderall like crazy.

00:15:48.000 Now, of course, the American Academy of Pediatrics, we can get more into this, but the American Academy of Pediatrics is aggressively saying that Ozipic needs to be the frontline defense for 12-year-olds, that not after dietary...

00:15:58.000 That is a criminal organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, because doctors actually believe them, so they're extremely dangerous, and the doctors don't know that they just work for the pharmaceutical companies, and they work for the food industry.

00:16:13.000 Explain how that works.

00:16:16.000 Well, I'll take it to when I was an early in my career consultant for the food and pharma industry.

00:16:22.000 The American Academy of Pediatrics actually did partnerships with Coke.

00:16:26.000 You wouldn't even believe this, but the American Diabetes Association took millions of dollars from Coke.

00:16:30.000 I helped funnel it.

00:16:32.000 Diabetes, which is literally caused by the weapon of mass destruction for blood sugar issues, liquid sugar.

00:16:39.000 They didn't denounce Coke.

00:16:40.000 They took money from them.

00:16:41.000 So these groups are going to play pharma subsidiaries.

00:16:46.000 That'd be fine, I guess, but the problem is they have statutory authority in the United States, quasi-governmental authority to make the standard of care.

00:16:55.000 So if you're a doctor and you go against the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics, you could lose your license.

00:17:01.000 If you go against the guidance of the American Diabetes Association, you could lose your license.

00:17:05.000 As Robert Lustig, a former hormone disorder leader at UCSF, has pointed out, the American Diabetes Association until 2018 did not have dietary recommendations whatsoever for diabetics as long as they took their medications.

00:17:18.000 They said you can continue eating as much sugar as you want as long as you took your medications up until 2018 when they were ashamed to adjust that slightly.

00:17:26.000 So these groups fundamentally are organisms of pharma, which are fundamentally incentivized for more people to get diabetes, for more people to get heart disease, for more people to become obese, for more kids to be sick.

00:17:42.000 That's just a raw statement of economic fact.

00:17:44.000 And the thing we need to unwind, and I know you're going to unwind, is these groups cannot be trusted to create the standard of care.

00:17:51.000 That is why, right, the first-line defense for chronic conditions for kids is a prescription pad.

00:17:58.000 It's not getting that kid on a—or incentivizing— Or using the $4.5 trillion we spend on healthcare to actually incentivize that kid to exercise, to fix our broken food system that's jamming poison down that kid's throat and destroying their microbiome and leading an average kid to have a 65% of their diet ultra-processed food.

00:18:19.000 The American Academy of Pediatrics is not speaking out about that.

00:18:22.000 They're not speaking out about the rise of ultra-processed food and, frankly, the poisoning, and I would actually call it genocide of our younger generation.

00:18:30.000 They're not...

00:18:31.000 Denouncing Coke, when I worked for Coke 12 years ago to rig the food stamp program to make Coke the number one item bought on food stamps, SNAP, the program the 15% of lower income Americans depend on.

00:18:44.000 There was not a word from the American Academy of Pediatrics on that.

00:18:48.000 But now, because their main funder, or one of them, Is Novo Nordics, the most valuable company in Europe, a Danish company that is the maker of Ozempic, the weight loss cure, because they funded the American Academy of Pediatrics, they've now said again, and I can't stress this enough, the first line defense, a weekly injection for life.

00:19:10.000 You are not supposed to go off of Ozempic.

00:19:13.000 They are signing up.

00:19:15.000 50% of 12-year-olds are overweight or obese.

00:19:18.000 Right near that number.

00:19:20.000 They are jamming them into an injection for the rest of their life.

00:19:25.000 An injection that was approved based on a 68-week study that did not take into account muscle mass, which is getting depleted by this drug.

00:19:33.000 A study where the panel that approved it at the FDA was paid by Novo Nordic itself.

00:19:37.000 A study that with pharma as the top funder of news ads has been unquestioned on the mainstream news.

00:19:43.000 This is what I helped do and this is what's happening.

00:19:48.000 Pharma and the health care industry is the top funder of politicians, the top funder of the media, the top funder of med schools, the top funder of research, the top funder of civil rights groups, the top funder of every single group that we trust.

00:20:02.000 Pharma funds and that that was my big takeaway from working with them and what I'm trying to unwind.

00:20:06.000 And frankly, as you know, these groups just hide in complexity.

00:20:11.000 They hide in the cocktail parties with their IRS friends.

00:20:15.000 And there's just ways and all these levers to what leaves the IRS saying food isn't medicine.

00:20:20.000 You've got to use Ozipic.

00:20:22.000 Well, talk about NAACP and Oprah Winfrey because you talked about genocide.

00:20:28.000 During COVID, black Americans were the highest demographic in the world of people who died from COVID. And blacks in Africa were dying at one-tenth to one-two-hundredth the level of American blacks.

00:20:43.000 Blacks in Haiti, one-two-hundredth the level of American blacks. 0.95

00:20:47.000 Because although they're starving, they don't have chronic disease. 0.80

00:20:50.000 But today, you know, Black Americans suffer more from diabetes, more from cardiac illnesses, more from obesity and chronic disease than any other demographic because so many Blacks are living in food deserts and they can't afford to go to Whole Foods. 0.90

00:21:07.000 As you pointed out, poor Americans live 15 years less than Shorter lives than rich Americans. 0.80

00:21:15.000 We're literally poisoning them to death and giving them these miserable, tortured lives of being devastated by chronic disease.

00:21:25.000 And because of that, they had the highest death rate from COVID because people who died from COVID, according to CDC, The Americans who died from COVID had an average of 3.8 chronic disease.

00:21:37.000 That's why we have the highest, one of the reasons we have the highest COVID death rate on earth of any country.

00:21:43.000 We had 16% of COVID deaths.

00:21:45.000 We only had 4.2% of the globe's population.

00:21:48.000 Oh, and it's because we're the sickest people in the world. 0.97

00:21:52.000 Nobody's talking about this, but talk about, and Blacks, Black Americans were the highest, and then Hispanics. 1.00

00:21:59.000 Devastated by it because they're eating the crap food. 0.99

00:22:02.000 They're eating the potato chips and drinking the gallon, the liter five bottles, and they're being force-fetted on food stamps. 0.99

00:22:11.000 I think 10% of food stamps go to buying sugar drinks.

00:22:16.000 That's right.

00:22:16.000 So talk about the role of the NAACP and Oprah Winfrey, who has tried to get us all healthy at one point.

00:22:23.000 So sitting in the room with farm and food companies, these are not very impressive people, and it's not that difficult to rig the political hot topics that animate both the left and the right.

00:22:32.000 And time and time again, social justice issues and hot button issues on the left and the right are weaponized.

00:22:39.000 To keep us sick, to keep us addicted, to keep us in fear is rig our dopamine, which is very profitable.

00:22:44.000 So we at the food companies rigged an idea on the left and literally went into the NAACP, paid them millions of dollars.

00:22:52.000 The American Beverage Association and soda companies paid the NAACP about 11 years ago, millions of dollars.

00:22:58.000 And we said, you know, they're taking away a Coke from poor kids.

00:23:02.000 They're going to, you know, there's a bipartisan effort to not have our Low-income nutrition program, subsidized sugar water. 0.98

00:23:08.000 That's crazy.

00:23:08.000 And the NAACP and all their allies went out and said it was racist.

00:23:12.000 It was racist to take away coke from kids.

00:23:15.000 And this idea that happens time and time again, happens often to you, happens to anyone who sticks their neck out.

00:23:21.000 These PR executives in D.C. figure out how to call you racist, call you sexist.

00:23:25.000 That was just very, very calculated.

00:23:27.000 And what's clear here and what's that led to, right?

00:23:30.000 It's just led to the food deserts.

00:23:33.000 Coke lobbies to keep food stamps spending low.

00:23:36.000 And because they lobby to have what is 75% of food stamps go to ultra-processed food.

00:23:42.000 And then they hired thousands of scientists from the tobacco companies and literally rigged this ultra-processed food to be addictive.

00:23:50.000 Literally food companies are one of the greatest employers of scientists in the world.

00:23:54.000 We have the smartest minds in science working to make that ultra-processed food addictive.

00:23:58.000 That's why ultra-processed food, one reason it's so terrible, is because these are science experiments to hijack our evolution, to hijack metabolism.

00:24:06.000 So we've slotted lower income people into where that's all they can afford, where they get addicted to it.

00:24:11.000 And we effectively have an addiction crisis at the lower income and higher income levels.

00:24:16.000 We are exhibiting all the signs of this, I believe, societal addiction and denial with the fact that we've gotten addicted to these drugs.

00:24:25.000 Again, it's just weaponizing the core items.

00:24:31.000 I would just say real quick, once we've weaponized on the left, we go to the right.

00:24:35.000 So we go to think tanks on the right and we say taking away coke is nanny state. 0.99

00:24:39.000 So the groups in the think tanks that are pay to play on the right are saying that it's a nanny state operation to overregulate and take away the coke.

00:24:47.000 What's being lost in debate is it's not the free market when the system's been rigged.

00:24:53.000 It's not the free market when the pharma industry pays five times more than the oil industry on lobbying and rigging the system, and then pay think tanks on the right to say it's over-regulation to even ask a question about that.

00:25:04.000 So you've got just the hot topics on the left and the right being strategically pulled with money.

00:25:09.000 And then you just have massive amounts- On the right, they're going to the Heritage Foundation.

00:25:14.000 That's right.

00:25:15.000 Yeah.

00:25:15.000 And then the American Council for Science and Health.

00:25:21.000 I think that was one of the industries that over the years that I've ended up litigating against a lot.

00:25:29.000 And then, you know, and then Harvard University, the medical school has been hijacked by the food industry.

00:25:34.000 My sister, who's my hero, who was top of her class, Stanford Med School, head and neck surgeon. 0.90

00:25:40.000 She quit 11 years after training when she was doing her third sinusitis surgery of the day and didn't know why the patient below her had so much inflammation that they had to get surgery.

00:25:51.000 She did not learn in 11 years at Stanford Med School what causes inflammation.

00:25:54.000 She only learned how to cut it out and she put down her scalpel and has become an advocate too.

00:25:59.000 But when she traced the money, 50% of Stanford med school's funding somehow touches pharma.

00:26:04.000 At Stanford med school, 90% of my sister's classes focused on pharmacology, not a single class on nutrition. 0.55

00:26:11.000 Doctors are trained at Stanford, Casey says, from the first day of medical school.

00:26:18.000 They are told that the American patients are lazy, that they're going to be addicted to their ultra-processed food, that they don't want to exercise.

00:26:24.000 They're basically inoculated with this idea that their only job is to stand ready with the scalp and the prescription pad when these lazy American patients come to them, and it's inevitable that people are going to get sicker and sicker. 0.93

00:26:37.000 That's shameful.

00:26:38.000 That's shameful.

00:26:39.000 This has only happened, as you said, it's happened uniquely in America, and it's only happened in the past 50 years.

00:26:44.000 The differences, as you alluded to, between what's happening in America and other countries, it's not marginal.

00:26:49.000 The childhood obesity rate in Japan is 3%.

00:26:51.000 It's well over 20% here.

00:26:54.000 In overweight or obese, it's close to 50%.

00:26:55.000 As you said, COVID was a foodborne illness.

00:26:59.000 COVID preyed on our immune system.

00:27:01.000 If you were metabolically healthy, you had almost a 0% chance of dying of COVID. But you and Joe Rogan and others who got on our microphone and said maybe we should be exercising, maybe we should be eating healthy, leaked emails from the NIH say that you guys are enemy number one for saying that.

00:27:15.000 Why is that such a disruptive message?

00:27:17.000 Why is it a disruptive message that nine of the ten killers of Americans...

00:27:21.000 Are fundamentally metabolic conditions that are entirely preventable and almost entirely reversible with food and exercise?

00:27:28.000 Why do we have a world where it's anti-science when that's the case, which I don't think any doctor would even disagree with when pushed, that the only scientific intervention is a shot in this chronic disease because it's profitable?

00:27:41.000 And that's just the point I'm really trying to make.

00:27:43.000 There is a world where, and Europe does this, quite frankly, a lot more.

00:27:47.000 If you're diabetic, In Europe, you actually get a subsidized keto diet.

00:27:52.000 We can do that here.

00:27:54.000 People don't want to be sick.

00:27:56.000 My mom wanted to meet her grandchildren.

00:27:58.000 Fathers who are chronically getting heart disease want to walk their daughter down the aisle.

00:28:02.000 Americans don't want this, but that's trained to doctors, this cynicism about the American patient, which is, again, very convenient for the system.

00:28:11.000 I read that there's something like 1,600 food chemicals in our foods that are banned in Europe and Japan and other countries.

00:28:22.000 That's right.

00:28:23.000 Recently, the CEO of Kellogg said that it's a great thing for the country and his company that Americans struggle with inflation are now eating cereal for dinner.

00:28:34.000 Kellogg's is running a national ad on children's television where a family is sitting around a table about to have chicken, and Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam pop out of the closet and say, give that chicken a rest.

00:28:46.000 Let's have Froot Loops for dinner tonight, and everyone celebrates.

00:28:49.000 Fruit Loops have neurotoxins that Kellogg in Europe has actually admitted are neurotoxins that they do not include in any other country that are being marketed to kids and in the most popular cereals today.

00:29:04.000 It's being pushed by...

00:29:06.000 And not only Kellogg itself...

00:29:08.000 I've been drawing a lot of attention.

00:29:11.000 Joe Hogan tweeted a year ago something I did on this and the NIH and Tufts got really mad.

00:29:17.000 But the NIH came out with guidance saying that dozens of cereals were recommended and that Lucky Charms were healthier than pasture-raised beef and that Honey Nut Cheerios were healthier than eggs.

00:29:28.000 Again, going to...

00:29:30.000 Why that happens in working for the food companies, you said it.

00:29:34.000 Harvard, Tufts, these elite academic institutions, they are nothing more than public relations entities, I believe, particularly when it comes to pharma research and for nutrition research.

00:29:44.000 The food industries pay these schools.

00:29:47.000 They also get grants to the NIH. They can put the NIH seal on.

00:29:51.000 They say Lucky Charms were healthier than eggs.

00:29:53.000 And then those studies are taken to Congress to confuse the issue on nutrition guidelines, and they're taken to school boards to say that you can just stock the cereal with the neurotoxins in it instead of eggs.

00:30:04.000 So that's how it all ties.

00:30:07.000 Weaponizing institutions of trust, using that to impact public policy, using that to impact funds.

00:30:12.000 We did an analysis that showed that I'm most alarmed by pediatricians because, you know, I grew up with 11 siblings.

00:30:21.000 I had something like 70 first cousins on both sides of my family.

00:30:27.000 And, you know, I never saw chronic disease when I was...

00:30:31.000 I never saw it in my classmates.

00:30:33.000 I never saw it in my friends.

00:30:36.000 So when I started seeing all these kids now appearing suddenly with autism, which I'd never heard of as a kid, I was raised on the spear tip of the movement for rights for people with intellectual disabilities.

00:30:50.000 I worked in Special Olympics from before it was founded, from when it was still Camp Shriver.

00:30:55.000 My aunt, Una Shriver, founded it.

00:30:57.000 My cousin, Anthony Shriver, founded Best Buddies.

00:31:01.000 I worked for 200 hours and was a home for the retarded when I was in high school. 1.00

00:31:05.000 I never saw kids with autism.

00:31:07.000 And then suddenly they started appearing in the mid-1990s.

00:31:10.000 And then now we went from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 34.

00:31:14.000 We saw food allergies suddenly appear at the same time.

00:31:18.000 I never knew anybody with a peanut allergy or a And they're in every classroom now.

00:31:23.000 Autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile diabetes, ADD, all these neurological diseases suddenly just exploded in the mid-90s.

00:31:31.000 And pediatricians, about 50% of the typical pediatrician's office funding comes from the vaccines.

00:31:41.000 Right.

00:31:41.000 And it's not just from giving the shot, but it's also from, and this is something you point out, from the guaranteed traffic.

00:31:48.000 Because when I was a kid, I went to a pediatrician when I needed stitches, which was fairly often.

00:31:54.000 But, you know, that's the only time I went.

00:31:57.000 That's the only time I went.

00:31:59.000 But today, that traffic is guaranteed because they have to come in.

00:32:03.000 10 wellness visits.

00:32:05.000 And that makes up a huge part of their, and they're incentivized by the insurance companies.

00:32:11.000 They're given huge bonuses if they make sure that every kid is vaccinated.

00:32:16.000 And I have to think that, you know, I don't want to say pediatricians are mercenary because I think almost all pediatricians get into that job because they love children and they want to help them.

00:32:27.000 Absolutely.

00:32:28.000 But they're so blind to what's happening to this generation of kids and none of them seem to ask the basic questions that I was asking.

00:32:36.000 What the heck is happening to our children?

00:32:39.000 And really trying to figure it out and make people healthy.

00:32:45.000 Well, doctors are getting, I think, screwed in this deal, too.

00:32:47.000 I mean, they have the highest burnout rate and highest suicide rate of any profession.

00:32:51.000 And missionaries aren't committing suicide at epidemic rates.

00:32:54.000 I think the problem is the US system, one of the many dysfunctional parts about the US health system is we take the best and brightest who get into the system for the right reasons.

00:33:04.000 We saddled them with debt.

00:33:05.000 Societal expectations, and then they realize, as my sister did, that they're in a system that's not making patients better.

00:33:13.000 On the kids' front, I just want to ram home that point, and it's the reason I'm in this fight.

00:33:19.000 Genocide's a strong word, but I don't know what else to call it.

00:33:22.000 I mean, we have 25% of young adults having fatty liver disease, which is something a doctor would never see, the 33% prediabetes rate, the 50% overweight or obese.

00:33:32.000 Everything is going up at once.

00:33:34.000 We have cancer exploding among kids.

00:33:36.000 The New York Times recently does study saying puberty rates are plummeting and nobody knows why.

00:33:40.000 We know why.

00:33:42.000 And I just want to be clear.

00:33:44.000 I think sperm counts have gone down 50% since 1970.

00:33:47.000 Sperm count.

00:33:48.000 Yeah.

00:33:49.000 American health.

00:33:51.000 You know, I was a political...

00:33:54.000 I'm an idealistic guy.

00:33:55.000 This was never my issue of nutrition, but I think it's clear to anyone, frankly clear to a lot of people.

00:34:00.000 You said people aren't talking about this.

00:34:01.000 Thanks to you and thanks to independent media, people are talking about this.

00:34:04.000 I think people are waking up.

00:34:06.000 The mainstream media that's paid for 60% by pharma isn't talking about this, but everyone else is.

00:34:10.000 And I think you have to agree this – and I think anyone thinking about this has to agree this is the biggest issue in the country.

00:34:17.000 It's an existential issue, not only from a moral perspective and a human capital perspective where we have a generation right now of young people who are going to be diabetic and, frankly, infertile.

00:34:27.000 Our literal reproductive systems are shutting down almost at a – almost – Just an alarming, almost genocidal rate.

00:34:35.000 It's also an economic catastrophe because you're signing a check for that kid who has metabolic dysfunction to just explode costs with the healthcare system when you could take them off of the rolls.

00:34:45.000 The only way we're going to curb healthcare costs is for people to be healthier.

00:34:48.000 We talk like more access and more drugs and we're going to drug our way out of the problem.

00:34:52.000 That hasn't worked.

00:34:53.000 We have to get kids healthier.

00:34:55.000 I mean, my pitch...

00:34:56.000 Robert, and what we've been working on is how to operationalize your ideas.

00:35:00.000 And I think there is an opportunity for the next president to have bold executive orders.

00:35:03.000 I think this is worthy of a state of emergency, quite frankly.

00:35:06.000 I think if there's one state of emergency much more important than the COVID, it's what's happening to children's health.

00:35:12.000 It is the definition of an emergency.

00:35:15.000 And, you know, I think if there's one issue to take decisive action on, it's that.

00:35:20.000 I will declare a state of emergency when I get in there.

00:35:23.000 And because we need to act dramatically to make sure that this is over.

00:35:28.000 And it's costing us $4.3 trillion a year that's bankrupting us.

00:35:33.000 We're destroying our country.

00:35:35.000 It's existential, as you said.

00:35:36.000 When my uncle was president, 6% of the GDP went to health care.

00:35:40.000 Today it's 22%, 20-22%.

00:35:43.000 It's almost three times our military budget.

00:35:46.000 And we're the sickest country in the world.

00:35:49.000 So, you know, all these huge expenditures are just making us sicker and sicker and sicker because we're spending it on the wrong thing.

00:35:57.000 We're spending it on the pills and the potions and the powders rather than on actually getting people healthy, building their immune systems.

00:36:06.000 And we, you know, as I said, we have the highest death rate by far of any country from COVID. And nobody's answering that question.

00:36:14.000 People are getting awards.

00:36:16.000 Fauci got a million dollar award for managing it.

00:36:20.000 It literally was the worst record of any health ministers, health regulators on earth.

00:36:26.000 It's weird that nobody is talking about it.

00:36:29.000 We have an existential event.

00:36:31.000 And what's so...

00:36:33.000 What's so frustrating is that this can be solved, as you point out, so quickly.

00:36:38.000 If Dr.

00:36:39.000 Fauci, if the president, if the head of Harvard Med School, if the head of the IRS stood at Congress and said, we must reduce ultra-processed food, we must shift spending from Band-Aids like Ozempic to food and exercise interventions,

00:36:57.000 we can Filter Medicaid money to diabetic folks to incentivize them to exercise, to fix our food system, to invest in regenerative agriculture, to get control of the situation where we are fundamentally poisoning kids and then profiting our largest and fastest growing industry by pilling people and jabbing them for the rest of their lives.

00:37:17.000 This is not a way to build a Can make that statement tomorrow, and there are very straightforward policies to pass.

00:37:29.000 We, right now, the USDA recommends sugar to two-year-olds, up to 10% of the diet.

00:37:34.000 The USDA recently came out with a study funded by food companies as well, saying a child can have 91% of their diet ultra-processed food and be perfectly healthy.

00:37:42.000 The FDA is 75% funded by pharma and fundamentally an entity that's built for the growth of pharma.

00:37:47.000 These things can be unwound.

00:37:49.000 With the stroke of a pin, as you mentioned, we can cut pharma ads and stop being one of only two countries that allow pharma ads that not only allow that to impact consumers, but allow them to buy the news itself.

00:38:00.000 The pharma ads and the 60% of the fact that we allow that is why CNN and MSNBC and major networks have no curiosity about why 33% of young adults have prediabetes.

00:38:11.000 What could possibly be a larger story than that?

00:38:13.000 No curiosity.

00:38:14.000 It's why they censored any kind of dissent during COVID. Because it was all about promoting the pharmaceutical narrative without question.

00:38:22.000 Nobody who questioned it, you know, Jay Bakhtaria and all these extraordinary scientists who were saying, wait a minute, slow down here, this is going in the wrong direction.

00:38:31.000 They were banned from television.

00:38:33.000 Dr.

00:38:34.000 Jay is a hero, yeah.

00:38:36.000 All right, my friend.

00:38:37.000 I'll see you.

00:38:37.000 Robert, thank you so much.

00:38:38.000 We're working on those executive orders.

00:38:42.000 We're just trying to operationalize what you're saying and be ready for you.

00:38:46.000 Be ready.

00:38:47.000 If the world's going to change.

00:38:50.000 Thank you.

00:38:51.000 Whatever we can do to help, we're proud to be in the fight with you.

00:38:54.000 You know, I was hiking with Mark Hyman this morning.

00:38:57.000 Oh, good.

00:38:58.000 So, he's one of my best friends.

00:39:01.000 Oh, he's our hero and our first investor.

00:39:03.000 Very close with what we're doing, yeah.

00:39:05.000 Oh, good.

00:39:06.000 I didn't know that.

00:39:07.000 He didn't tell me that.

00:39:08.000 But we were...

00:39:08.000 Oh, shoot him a text.

00:39:10.000 We were chatting last night.

00:39:11.000 We're very close.

00:39:12.000 He's a hero.

00:39:13.000 He's written the front cover of our book.

00:39:15.000 He's, like, very close.

00:39:17.000 Yeah, he and I did this.

00:39:20.000 We did a kayaking trip down the Yampa River and we were on rafts and we brought a bunch of Ute Indians and some Hopi Indians with us and they were all diabetic. 1.00

00:39:33.000 And Mark, one of them went on a hike with us and he, one of the chiefs, and he was vomiting on the hike and then he was vomiting on the boat afterward.

00:39:40.000 And Mark said to him, you know, you can cure your diabetes with diet.

00:39:46.000 And he said to him, he said to Mark, well...

00:39:50.000 Hey, Mark.

00:39:51.000 Hey, Mark.

00:39:52.000 I want to put you on FaceTime for a second.

00:39:55.000 I'm getting my brain...

00:39:57.000 Oh, you are?

00:39:59.000 Oh, yeah.

00:39:59.000 No, I wanted to show you I'm here with Cali Means.

00:40:04.000 That's what I'm doing.

00:40:06.000 How are you doing, man?

00:40:07.000 How are you doing, Mark?

00:40:08.000 Cali Means.

00:40:09.000 I know, Cali.

00:40:10.000 You're a good friend.

00:40:11.000 You had a podcast with him?

00:40:13.000 Yeah, we just did a podcast.

00:40:14.000 We're talking about you, Mark.

00:40:17.000 We're talking about how much we love you.

00:40:20.000 Enjoy your brain scan, and I'll talk to you soon.

00:40:23.000 Okay, bye.

00:40:25.000 I mean, my sister read his books and radicalized her, said one book taught her more than Stanford Med School.

00:40:31.000 And then we both become, my sister and I both have startups.

00:40:35.000 Mark has been close with both of them.

00:40:38.000 He's been a hero for us.

00:40:39.000 Yeah.

RFK Jr. The Defender - March 13, 2024

IRS: Pro-Pharma Anti-Health

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