The Michael Knowles Show - March 27, 2025


RFK Jr. & Michael Knowles： ＂Fight For Healthy America＂ ｜ White House Interview

Topics
obesity and diabetes crisis
Hosted by
Michael Knowles
Guests
HHS Secretary Robert White House Interview
Mentioned
Donald Trump Good Ranchers Robert F. Kennedy Biden Doge Maha
Ep. 1701 - UNHINGED： Democrat Rep MOCKS Wheelchair-Bound Governor Ep. 1703 - My Day at the White House with Four Cabinet Members

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

162.74

Word count

2,577

Sentence count

214

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Learn English with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, who is on a mission to make America healthy again. In this episode, Robert Kennedy Jr. talks about his vision for the agency and the need for it to focus on public health.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.500 The political order is shifting.
00:00:10.920 The crunchy hippies are now on the right.
00:00:14.480 Democrat presidential candidates are working for President Donald Trump in the administration.
00:00:20.560 And one of the key features of the administration is making America healthy again, which is
00:00:26.960 why I'm so pleased to be joined by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
00:00:32.040 Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for taking the time.
00:00:34.160 Thank you for having me.
00:00:35.160 So I come into the White House this morning.
00:00:37.840 I see breaking news.
00:00:39.140 You've fired 20,000 bureaucrats.
00:00:42.440 What is this move?
00:00:44.200 It seems like Doge meets HHS.
00:00:48.220 What does it mean?
00:00:49.220 Why did you do it?
00:00:50.220 How does it serve the Maha movement?
00:00:51.720 I mean, the agency, this is a $1.9 trillion agency.
00:00:55.720 It's the biggest agency in the government.
00:00:58.640 And during the Biden administration, President Biden increased its budget by 38 percent and
00:01:06.160 increased the workforce by 17 percent.
00:01:09.440 And by every metric by which we measure public health, health accelerated its decline.
00:01:16.340 Putting the money and the personnel in there is not alone going to solve the problem.
00:01:21.240 And what I found when I came to HHS was really a sprawling bureaucracy.
00:01:25.880 We have over 100 communications departments.
00:01:29.520 We should have one.
00:01:31.620 We have 40 IT departments, 40 procurement departments, dozens of HR departments.
00:01:45.900 And there's a lot of administrative ways.
00:01:47.620 What we want to do is make sure.
00:01:49.740 And that is where we're doing the cuts.
00:01:52.140 We're going down from 82,000 personnel to 62,000.
00:01:56.920 We're keeping the scientists.
00:01:58.140 We're keeping the frontline providers.
00:02:00.820 We're trying to do our best, not only to serve ourselves as stewards of the taxpayer money,
00:02:06.840 but also to make the agency more efficient.
00:02:09.260 We're cutting it down.
00:02:10.720 Many of these sub-agencies live in these kind of sides that they're not talking to each other.
00:02:19.340 They're in these siloed fiefdoms.
00:02:21.960 And they operate often at cross-purposes with each other with no sense of a unified sense of mission that we're here to protect public health.
00:02:30.600 They're checking boxes.
00:02:31.600 In many cases, they, for example, I found that some of these groups collect health data from America and have these big databases that are very, very valuable in figuring out what's wrong with our health.
00:02:46.800 But they won't give that data to other parts of the department that could actually, you know, make health better.
00:02:53.580 They sell it to them for, in some cases, very, very extravagant prices in order to support their own little fiefdom rather than public health as a whole.
00:03:05.100 And so we're cutting 20, and there's a lot of redundancy.
00:03:08.660 We're going to eliminate the redundancy.
00:03:10.660 We're going to streamline the agency so that we can inspire all the workers who work there.
00:03:17.660 And it's really, it's an extraordinary group.
00:03:20.660 Most of the people who work there are very conscientious, great public servants that want to do their job, but they're not able to because of perverse incentives and because of these, you know, the, because there's no overall mission for that agency that everybody wakes up every day and says,
00:03:37.420 My job today is to improve the health of the American public.
00:03:42.420 We're going to recalibrate the trajectory of the agency so that everybody knows we are going to end the chronic disease epidemic in this country.
00:03:50.420 We're going to study all the ingredients in our food.
00:03:53.420 We're going to eliminate the ingredients that are not keeping us safe.
00:03:56.420 We're not eating food today.
00:03:58.420 We're eating food-like substances.
00:04:00.420 And, you know, 10% of our SNAP program is going to soda drinks, sugar water.
00:04:07.420 Well, this just came up this past week.
00:04:10.420 There was a suggestion that maybe the federal government would stop subsidizing soda through various welfare programs.
00:04:17.420 And then, all of a sudden, I saw a social media campaign from big social media accounts, ostensibly even on the right, saying this is government overreach.
00:04:28.420 Actually, no, we need to continue to subsidize soda.
00:04:31.420 And they made all sorts of bogus arguments for it.
00:04:33.420 Well, the soda industry is very frightened, and they went out and paid all these influencers.
00:04:39.420 That's not been demonstrated, actually.
00:04:41.420 There was an active campaign.
00:04:42.420 But you can see the same talking points from each of these accounts.
00:04:46.420 And, of course, you know, why are we paying?
00:04:50.420 You know, listen, if you want a Coca-Cola, you ought to be able to get one.
00:04:53.420 And we have no objection to that.
00:04:55.420 Why is the taxpayer, you know, paying money that is supposed to be for food for poor children?
00:05:03.420 And we're giving them Coca-Cola, which is giving them diabetes, or other sodas, which is giving them diabetes, which then we have to pay for on the Medicaid program.
00:05:13.420 It doesn't make any sense.
00:05:15.420 We're creating a generation of sick kids.
00:05:18.420 Our obesity rate is now up to 50% in our children.
00:05:23.420 Our diabetes and prediabetes rate is 38% in teenagers.
00:05:27.420 When I was a kid, it was zero.
00:05:30.420 A pediatrician in my age, my youth, would typically see one case of diabetes in his lifetime over a 40- or 50-year career.
00:05:39.420 Today, more than one out of every three kids who walks through his office door is diabetic or prediabetic.
00:05:45.420 It's because we're giving them soda when they're kids.
00:05:48.420 Well, this is my question, then, even beyond soda.
00:05:51.420 You've obviously now, we've all encountered this massive special interest campaign to stop you from achieving your goal of making America healthy again.
00:05:59.420 What other sorts of special interests have you run up against since you took office?
00:06:04.420 Well, you know, I've been meeting with all the food companies.
00:06:09.420 I met with all the baby formula companies.
00:06:11.420 We launched Operation Stork Speed to make sure American mothers can get really healthy formula for their babies.
00:06:19.420 And, you know, we have a crisis in our formula providers.
00:06:23.420 One, because it's a very narrow market and there's not enough of it.
00:06:28.420 But also, it's not high quality.
00:06:31.420 And, you know, it's not well tested for heavy metals and other contaminants, which we're finding at it.
00:06:38.420 And then there's ingredients in there like corn solids, which are not good, particularly for creamies, and can make them very, very sick and even kill them.
00:06:54.420 So, you know, we need to do it better.
00:06:57.420 We're going to do a good job at FDA, at streamlining the regulations, at fast-tracking them, at doing everything we can to make sure that the formula companies can improve and maximize the improvement of their formulas as soon as possible.
00:07:12.420 Well, I know you've written at length about agency capture.
00:07:15.420 And so you're no stranger to the influence of lobbies and special interests.
00:07:20.420 So how do you practically fight against that?
00:07:23.420 Because it's not just you.
00:07:24.420 As you mentioned, there are 10 zillion HR departments at HHS.
00:07:27.420 You know, there is a deep state, to use a popular term.
00:07:32.420 You know, there's an entrenched bureaucracy here and a lot of interest.
00:07:35.420 So how do you?
00:07:36.420 Well, I think it's really hard to fight it from the outside, which is what I've been doing for 40 years.
00:07:42.420 But now I'm on the inside.
00:07:43.420 So, you know, I really have an opportunity to correct this.
00:07:47.420 And this is the purpose of my life.
00:07:49.420 That's what I'm going to do over the next four years.
00:07:51.420 I'm going to, you know, we're going to end the chronic disease epidemic in this country.
00:07:55.420 And we're going to do it by making sure that the food companies, you know, formula companies are no longer poisoning us.
00:08:03.420 They're giving us nutrition.
00:08:04.420 They're giving us real food instead of food like substances that are loaded with poison.
00:08:10.420 And we're going to make sure that our medicines are well tested, but that they're available and that we can fast track that testing.
00:08:17.420 We have the capacity now through AI to really shorten the length of clinical trials.
00:08:26.420 And we have really smart people who are in the agency.
00:08:28.420 We have people coming in through Elon and Doge who are, you know, people who are walking away from very, very important businesses just because they want to improve the government.
00:08:40.420 They're not there for position.
00:08:42.420 They're not there for prestige.
00:08:44.420 They're there because they want to fix America. 0.87
00:08:47.420 And so I'm very hopeful that we actually will be able to make a difference.
00:08:51.420 I think it's a unique generational opportunity that has not happened before.
00:08:56.420 And, you know, it's hard.
00:08:59.420 It's very difficult being part of a disruptive process because, you know, there's 20,000 people who are losing their jobs and that nobody likes that.
00:09:10.420 But, you know, at the same time, we have a responsibility to the American public and public health.
00:09:16.420 And, you know, my job is to achieve those goals of making America healthy again.
00:09:23.420 Yeah. There was an article in The Wall Street Journal, I think it was about a month ago, on innovation, specifically in biotech.
00:09:29.420 You know, are we at the brink of a sort of deep seek moment in biotech?
00:09:33.420 So it's great to hear you talk about, you know, innovation in health care because it seems like you have two tasks.
00:09:39.420 One is to stop abuses, to actually slow things down that have been fast tracked in HHS.
00:09:45.420 The other is to speed things up.
00:09:47.420 I know the question that you've been asked throughout your confirmation hearings, of course, was about the public's, I think, justifiable concern with the growth of vaccines.
00:09:57.420 And the senators asked enough questions about that, but I don't think you need to rehash a lot of it.
00:10:03.420 But for the people who are asking questions about whether or not they'll vaccinate their kids or whether they should vaccinate their kids, will anything change about vaccine policy?
00:10:14.420 Yeah, everything's going to change because we're going to have good information.
00:10:19.420 And, you know, none of the vaccines that are given, you know, people said to me during the hearing, oh, well, this link between autism and vaccines has been disproven.
00:10:31.420 None of the vaccines that are given during the first six months of life have ever been tested fraud.
00:10:39.420 The only one was the DTP vaccine.
00:10:41.420 And that one study that was done, according to the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Science, that found that there was a link.
00:10:49.420 They threw out that study because it was based upon CDC surveillance system, VAERS, and they said that system is no good.
00:10:56.420 It begs the question is why doesn't CDC have a functional surveillance system?
00:11:01.420 We're going to make sure they do have a functional surveillance system.
00:11:04.420 Right now, surveillance system is a system that because they don't do pre-licensing safety testing for vaccines.
00:11:11.420 They're the only product that's exempt.
00:11:13.420 So what they say is if there are injuries, we'll capture them afterward.
00:11:18.420 They have a system that doesn't capture them.
00:11:20.420 In fact, CDC's own study of its own system said it captures fewer than 1% of vaccine injuries.
00:11:27.420 It's worthless.
00:11:28.420 And everybody agrees it's worthless.
00:11:31.420 But why have we gone for 39 years and nobody's fixed it?
00:11:34.420 Without a functional system, right.
00:11:36.420 We're going to fix it and we have, you know, we have Doge, you know, knows how to manage data.
00:11:42.420 And so we're going to be able to get into these databases and give answers to the American public.
00:11:47.420 And we're going to fix the problems.
00:11:51.420 If there are problems, we're going to fix them very quickly.
00:11:53.420 But we're going to follow the science.
00:11:55.420 That's what we're going to do.
00:11:56.420 We're going to have gold standard science and we're going to follow the science.
00:11:59.420 We're going to publish all of our data sets, which CDC has never done.
00:12:03.420 We're going to do replication of all of our studies, which CDC has never done.
00:12:08.420 We're going to publish our peer review, which CDC has never done.
00:12:12.420 So people are going to have real answers for the first time.
00:12:15.420 That is marvelous.
00:12:16.420 Also, not flattery, just an observation, having watched the campaign into the transition.
00:12:23.420 Not only were you picked by President Trump, you ran for president.
00:12:27.420 You got a lot of support.
00:12:29.420 You campaigned on these exact issues.
00:12:31.420 President Trump campaigned with you on these exact issues.
00:12:34.420 I don't think it's overstating it to say that your presence was a significant part of the reason that President Trump was elected.
00:12:41.420 So it seems to me the wind is at your back.
00:12:43.420 And I wish you the best of luck, Mr. Secretary.
00:12:46.420 I mean, I'm really grateful to President Trump because I don't think, you know, a lot of people have criticism or problems with President Trump.
00:12:55.420 But I don't, you know, I've watched him in action.
00:12:58.420 I think the characters of him are absolutely incorrect.
00:13:02.420 And that, you know, I've seen somebody who genuinely cares about people and who wants to fix the situation.
00:13:11.420 You look at, you know, for the past four years, I've never heard a Democrat talk about all the deaths in Ukraine.
00:13:18.420 Yeah.
00:13:19.420 And every time that President Trump talks about Ukraine, he talks about the deaths that, you know, four million people have died, a million soldiers on both sides.
00:13:27.420 And saying, him saying, that's not good for any of us.
00:13:31.420 Nobody talks about that stuff.
00:13:34.420 And I think he genuinely cares.
00:13:36.420 And he has, he's not scared of these big institutions.
00:13:40.420 He's not scared to challenge them.
00:13:42.420 And, you know, I'm very, very grateful for him giving me, putting me in a position where I can actually make a difference.
00:13:50.420 Well, it's audacious.
00:13:51.420 I mean, even just to have a Kennedy in a Republican administration, it's audacious.
00:13:56.420 It's ambitious.
00:13:57.420 But then, isn't that the charge?
00:14:00.420 Isn't the charge to make America great again and healthy again?
00:14:02.420 I mean, we can't be a great country if we're a sick country.
00:14:05.420 If we want to be strong as a nation, we have to be strong as individuals.
00:14:10.420 And, you know, like I said, I've said before, President Trump promised to return the American dream to Americans.
00:14:18.420 A healthy person has a thousand dreams.
00:14:22.420 A sick person only has one.
00:14:24.420 And now we have 60% of our population that only think about one thing.
00:14:29.420 How do I make it through the day?
00:14:32.420 You know, how do I get myself better?
00:14:36.420 And we need to change that.
00:14:38.420 Mr. Secretary, thank you so much for your time.
00:14:40.420 Thank you.
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