E306 Robert F Kennedy Jr
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 8 minutes
Harmful content
Misogyny
15
sentences flagged
Toxicity
116
sentences flagged
Hate speech
44
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, environmental attorney, author, and president of the Children s Health Defense, Dr. Michael Bloomberg talks about the importance of pigeons and their impact on our world. He also talks about how pigeons have been around for a long time and how important it is to keep them alive.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Today's episode is brought to you by Magic Mind.
00:00:16.060
Go to magicmind.co, use promo code Theo to get 10% off.
00:00:24.900
author, and president of the Children's Health Defense,
00:00:35.640
He's like, I mean, he's just like wandering through a library.
00:00:58.880
We didn't have, like by us, we had a lot of cranes, you know.
00:01:16.920
I actually thought about you a couple weeks ago.
00:01:18.760
It was my first time going to this place called Jaskolowski.
00:01:24.460
It's down like, like the fishing villages off of like New Orleans.
00:01:31.640
because I think it's like super Polish, the word or something.
00:01:34.400
It starts with like a couple of different whys.
1.00
00:01:36.800
And so it's like, it's kind of hard to pronounce.
00:01:46.780
because I know that you care about the animals so much
00:01:50.200
Well, I've spent a lot of time in the Atchafalaya,
00:01:59.700
Yeah, and that's one of the biggest staging zones
00:02:07.480
and, you know, a lot of the other migratory birds
00:02:12.960
I think it's actually the biggest wetland in North America.
00:02:19.940
But we started talking, you and I started talking about this
00:02:51.300
That's the first time he ever hit anybody.
1.00
00:02:56.300
But he's a pigeon fancier and I grew up with pigeons.
00:02:59.380
I started racing, homing pigeons when I was seven years old.
00:03:03.640
Because I remember, I went to the Spy Museum one time in Philadelphia
00:03:06.220
and they had pigeons that had like a little briefcase on their arm.
00:03:10.400
You know, they had pigeon, I'll have like a little,
00:03:13.740
They'll have pigeons that even will have like a little backpack on,
00:03:16.200
you know, and they used to use them for spy work.
00:03:21.220
And in fact, they used them for, well, of course,
00:03:28.500
because they would use them to communicate, you know,
00:03:33.400
And in fact, they used them right up until World War, World War I.
00:03:43.480
Like if you do it, like what can you tell a pigeon and he'll go?
00:03:46.020
Well, you can't tell him anything, but you can,
00:03:48.640
the pigeon will always go back to the first place that he saw daylight.
00:03:58.820
if you get an adult pigeon, you buy a pigeon at a pigeon auction.
00:04:03.700
And, you know, a really big Homer, a classic these days,
00:04:13.720
Oh, if you're a thousand mile bird, you know, you're worth a lot of money.
00:04:18.760
Back when I was a kid, we would, you know, pay a couple.
00:04:25.340
And those are Hungarians, which is the kind that I used to raise.
0.99
00:04:32.760
And we would put them in a train and the train was all the other,
00:04:37.200
you know, we had a pigeon club and all the other people
00:04:40.580
would put them in a train right outside of my home in Virginia.
00:04:47.640
and the conductor would then release them all at once.
00:04:52.980
you would take his band off and run down to the post office
00:04:57.660
And that's how they would, you know, that's how they would do the races.
0.90
00:05:04.200
So the first place it sees daylight is the place it'll always come back to?
00:05:08.960
So if you buy a pigeon at an auction or whatever,
00:05:12.960
you have to keep that pigeon locked up for the rest of his life.
00:05:15.720
Because if he ever gets out, he'll go back to the place where he was born.
00:05:23.640
In the military, they taught them how to go to a,
00:05:35.060
so that the pigeon would learn to find the coop.
00:05:39.260
So he's not going back to a, you know, to a stationary barn.
00:05:52.160
which I moved to falconry when I was about 10 years old.
00:05:59.900
And there happened to be a guy who lived near me
00:06:04.360
who was one of the pioneers of American falconry.
00:06:17.420
who is a British author, who is also a falconer.
00:06:24.140
They later made it into a Disney, you know, movie
00:06:38.240
And as it happened, there was a guy who had been
00:06:49.440
And he was one of the pioneers of American falconry.
00:06:55.280
he worked as a designer of jets at the Pentagon.
00:07:05.680
And one of the things that the State Department knew about him,
00:07:11.400
because whenever they were visiting Arab dignitaries
00:07:25.840
So falcon is, I mean, so when you moved up to falcons,
00:07:30.400
were you just, I mean, I can imagine if you were leaving pigeons,
00:07:34.500
Well, actually, pigeons remain, are kind of part of the sport of falconry.
00:07:39.960
You use pigeons and all in different parts of the sport.
00:07:46.640
I had pigeons all my life until really until I moved to California six years ago.
00:07:52.560
But I still have hawks at, you know, back in New York.
00:07:57.600
I have my falconry license out here, but I never brought them out here.
00:08:01.060
I got involved in surfing and, you know, a lot of other stuff,
00:08:09.520
But, yeah, so this guy, I apprenticed under this guy, under Alvin.
00:08:23.860
They passed regulations in 1973, and then you had to get a license.
00:08:28.420
And, you know, I actually wrote the test at Falconer's Take in New York State
00:08:36.060
and elsewhere to get their license, and I've been involved in it my whole life.
00:08:40.600
So would you compete, like, once you have this knowledge in this,
00:08:43.220
so you're learning, and, like, what is the man teaching you
00:08:45.680
when you learn from Mr., what was his name again, Smith?
00:08:49.560
He's teaching you how to trap the hawk, how to care for it,
00:08:56.900
and, of course, how to train it and then hunt with it.
00:09:02.600
Take, I fly mainly Harris Hawks, and I've flown every kind of hawk,
00:09:15.040
They seem to be, you know, what you and I would interpret
00:09:17.980
as affectionate towards humans, and they're almost like dogs.
00:09:21.660
So when you take them to hunt, I mean, I grew up raising hamsters.
00:09:27.620
No, it's fascinating, man, because, so let's see a Harris Hawk.
00:09:35.680
And now when you take them to train or something, what do they do?
00:09:39.100
When you take them to hunt with them, like, they're in a cage or on your arm?
00:09:46.660
No, actually, they'll ride on the backseat of the car.
00:09:54.940
If I look like that, man, I'm definitely, you know, I'm not driving.
00:10:03.060
When you get to the place where you're hunting, you let them out of the car,
00:10:07.740
and they'll usually jump up and sit for a second and orient on the roof of the car.
00:10:12.700
And then as you start walking through the woods, they'll follow you.
00:10:21.120
So I have a couple of dogs who will be, you know, looking for rabbits and squirrel
00:10:28.780
And when they, and when something moves, they'll chase it.
00:10:34.580
So if you say, when you're walking through the woods, they'll what?
00:10:38.580
They know that you're their owner the whole time?
00:10:43.960
And they know that you're going to kick up game.
00:10:47.260
So, you know, they know, they learn, and they learn.
00:10:52.060
Like, the bird that I was flying until recently, I had for 24 years.
00:10:57.320
And then every year, I would breed that bird and get some eggs and babies out of them.
00:11:02.820
And, you know, those birds are now all over New York State and all over the, at least all
00:11:09.240
You're working at the grassroots level of helping the environment if you are breeding birds.
00:11:13.820
Like I said, you know, it was a passion for me from when I was really little.
00:11:20.840
Man, yeah, because we, I grew up, I used to sell hamsters when I was growing up.
00:11:26.760
And we used to, you know, the big ones around us were the Roborowski hamsters.
00:11:35.600
And we used to sell hamsters and guinea pigs or G-pigs, they used to call them.
00:11:41.560
They call them gues in Latin America and Ecuador.
00:11:45.300
Oh, you get down to, oh, you get down to Ecuador, bro.
00:11:47.300
You take a gerbil anywhere south of Paraguay and it's a wrap, you know?
00:11:52.720
I mean, Nicaragua, you show up with one of these bad boys, they think it's Thanksgiving,
00:11:57.840
But we have a different affinity for animals now.
00:11:59.840
I feel like if it looks cute or if it's been marketed as cute, it becomes not a food anymore,
00:12:14.940
And I, you know, when I, when I, I spent a lot of time in Ecuador and I lived in Peru for
00:12:20.220
a while and I ended up eating a lot of guinea pigs, I went to a restaurant.
00:12:24.740
I took Cheryl to a restaurant where they were selling them for food and they had them, you
0.96
00:12:28.600
know how the, um, when you go into a seafood restaurant in New England and they have all
00:12:33.340
the lobsters in the tank and you can pick the one and they're alive in there.
00:12:38.400
Well, they had one of those with a, they had this really cute guinea pig house and you
00:12:44.680
could pick the guinea pig you were eating and, you know, Cheryl is just.
1.00
00:12:55.820
So, so, so very similar to the lobster in the tank, they just had these guinea pigs just
00:12:59.360
like in a big, like kind of a children's like playhouse or something kind of little deal.
00:13:02.300
It was a multi-storied playhouse with little balconies on it and it looked like an apartment
00:13:08.980
building for guinea pigs and there's no way they look like little people in there and
00:13:13.940
there's no way that you would ever eat one of those.
00:13:17.020
But some people are rolling in and being like, oh, that's the one.
00:13:24.420
People that have like, my sister's family will grill up anything that's dead.
00:13:35.720
No, they'll have like yard chicken, just chickens that they've raised in their yards.
00:13:39.180
I'm trying to think of what else that I've had that was probably, you know, kind of unique
00:13:43.760
Sometimes somebody, I used to work on a farm for a couple of years and people would kill
00:13:47.340
And somebody, sometimes if somebody had enough time, they would cook it at lunch.
00:13:51.500
You must have eaten alligator because that's on all the menus down there.
00:13:55.680
Frog was really, you know, when I was young, it was fun to give a kid some frog, you know.
00:13:59.840
At the restaurants, they used to have a lot of these kind of singing.
00:14:04.460
They had like this kind of black group of gentlemen that were like a quartet and they
0.99
00:14:09.280
And then at the end of the thing, they would give all the kids a little bit of frog, you
00:14:12.320
It was just like something like fancy kind of restaurant we would go to, like when my
00:14:16.480
parents were having an anniversary or something.
00:14:21.360
I've never met anybody that knew how to hunt with a hawk.
00:14:26.040
And do hawks have, or with a falcon, does a falcon have an arch nemesis?
00:14:38.560
And then at night, they get eaten by owls because they can't see anything at night.
00:14:43.440
And that's why you put a hood on them because once it gets dark, they just get calm because
00:14:50.340
Their eyes are adapted for seeing both microscopically and telescopically during the daytime.
00:14:56.060
And, but they're almost incapable of seeing anything at night.
00:15:01.380
But a lot of the Western falconers, when they, you know, they hunt sage grouse and they have
00:15:09.340
to hunt early in the morning because their birds will get eaten by eagles.
00:15:12.920
When the bird goes down on a sage grouse, the eagle will see that from miles away and go
00:15:18.700
down and eat both the grouse and the hawk.
1.00
00:15:24.240
Do you know, 80% of hawks die during their first year.
00:15:27.880
However, they have, it's hard for them to figure out how to hunt and they, you know, only the
00:15:47.100
So you guys, so take me back also to the pigeon thing.
00:15:49.700
So you would take a pigeon, you would let it go, you would put it on a train.
00:15:56.620
So everybody have a pigeon, they put it on the train, it goes to somewhere, maybe down
00:16:00.600
to the beach or somewhere, wherever it takes it, Myrtle Beach or something.
00:16:06.740
Like maybe a hundred miles, the really good pigeons would go two or three hundred miles.
00:16:13.880
If you, you know, if you had a 500 mile homer, that's what you would brag about.
00:16:21.120
That's like having like one of those big marbles that does like a steely marley.
00:16:27.560
So, so now whoever got theirs back first, did they kind of win the contest?
00:16:39.100
Because I think I would not have enough trust in my heart that I would believe that that
00:16:43.240
It must have lifted your spirits when it got back.
00:16:44.500
You don't take them a hundred mile away the first time you do it.
00:16:47.860
I would take them to the school in the morning and let them go and go on the weekends farther
00:16:54.460
and farther away and, you know, make sure that they come back.
00:17:00.940
So when I picture like, you know, they didn't have any Kennedys on our street growing up.
00:17:05.340
And so I picture, if I ever thought of a Kennedy, you know, I thought of like, you know, you
00:17:11.040
guys have like really nice dishes, like nice, you know, cupboards, silver, crabs, you know,
00:17:21.900
I picture like people constantly like just dancing in the yard.
00:17:34.160
And, you know, I had a very, very, you know, I had a wonderful life.
00:17:43.840
My parents would lock us out in the morning and we weren't allowed to come in until the
00:17:48.780
And we spent a lot of time, particularly in the summer.
00:17:51.700
I had, you know, I had my 11 brothers and sisters, 29 cousins.
00:17:57.000
And, you know, there was a lot of mayhem, a lot of laughter and just outdoor, you know,
00:18:14.480
And would the older kids teach to the younger kids?
00:18:25.860
Cause I guess I just always thought about it as, and did it feel like you guys were like
00:18:30.920
Cause they were living in like a, more of like a political world.
00:18:33.360
No, everything was, you know, we, we felt, we were included in everything.
00:18:38.760
I was, you know, I, the first time that I came to California was for the 1960 convention
00:18:44.680
and I saw my uncle get inaugurated and then I flew back on the airplane with him and sat
00:18:54.160
But my father would, you know, my home was in Virginia, but at that time you could get
00:19:00.000
to the justice department in about eight or nine minutes if you were driving fast.
00:19:05.140
And so my father would come home at night and he would talk about integrating the University
00:19:11.740
of Alabama or, you know, whatever the issues of the day was.
00:19:16.000
And he, you know, we were always included and then we visited him, the white, and at the
0.94
00:19:20.040
justice department, I, one day my uncle invited me to spend the morning with him in the White
00:19:29.660
We were, you know, we were part of all of the, I sat behind a couch during the Cuban
00:19:38.960
Missile Crisis and, you know, listened to my, our house was kind of a satellite white house
0.80
00:19:47.960
because my father was the attorney general and he was the president's chief advisor.
00:19:52.260
We were a mile away from the CIA headquarters in Langley and my father at that time was,
00:19:59.600
you know, was involved with trying to get the CIA to behave.
00:20:05.500
And so all of that, you know, there were Green Berets at our house, there were Cuban refugees,
1.00
00:20:10.740
there was, you know, the entire milieu of that period was...
0.99
00:20:19.060
I mean, it just has, you know, it's like, it just sounds like so much going on.
1.00
00:20:25.360
It was every Friday when we were at the Cape, there would be three helicopters that would
00:20:30.760
land, Marine helicopters that would land on our lawn every Friday.
00:20:40.940
My uncle, Sarge Driver, who was the director of the Peace Corps.
00:20:43.740
My uncle, Ted Kennedy, who was in the Senate already at that time.
00:20:48.040
And my uncle, Steve Smith, who was chief of staff.
00:20:52.380
And the White House would move to our house for the weekend.
00:20:57.300
And, you know, there was always interesting people there.
00:21:01.140
And we had, after 1962, my uncle developed this very close relationship with Khrushchev.
00:21:09.420
And the CIA was baffled by Khrushchev because they had never been able to get a spy into the Kremlin.
00:21:22.720
And every time they got a high-level spy in the Kremlin, he would immediately be killed
00:21:28.020
because the mole at Langley was telling him who it was.
00:21:31.560
So they really had no clue what Khrushchev was like or whether it was a monolithic,
00:21:38.860
whether the Kremlin was monolithic and everybody was thinking the same, which was kind of the assumption.
00:21:46.080
He never visited us, no, but he exchanged letters with my uncle secretly.
00:21:52.640
He didn't want the KGB or the GRU to find out he was writing my uncle.
00:21:59.840
And he and my uncle was, again, they both figured out that they were both at war with the military and intelligence apparatus with which they were surrounded.
00:22:14.180
So it's like they didn't know they could trust.
00:22:18.320
He had run the defense of Stalingrad under Stalin.
00:22:22.960
Stalin had actually tried to purge him at one point.
00:22:25.940
And the only reason he didn't was because Khrushchev was running the defense of Stalingrad.
00:22:36.420
You know, when Hitler was trying to attack Stalingrad, which was one of the worst battles,
00:22:40.300
one of the most brutal battles in human history,
00:22:42.440
and one of the most expansive battles in terms of human life.
00:22:49.600
His first meeting with my uncle was about a month after my uncle took office and they met at Geneva.
00:22:55.820
And my uncle went into that meeting with very high hopes that he could make peace
00:23:00.900
and they could begin dismantling the nuclear arsenal on both sides.
00:23:07.280
Khrushchev had met him very pugnaciously and had been bombastic
00:23:11.140
and had given him a lecture about imperialism and said that he was ready for war.
00:23:18.340
And my uncle went home from that meeting very depressed.
00:23:22.140
And then a year and a half later, there was a confrontation
00:23:26.300
when the Soviets were building the wall in Berlin because they were hemorrhaging people.
00:23:31.580
Everybody was trying to get out of East Germany and come on to the western side, which the U.S. controlled.
00:23:40.960
And his Joint Chiefs of Staff saw this as an opportunity.
00:23:46.960
They believed that at that point in history, we had the nuclear advantage.
00:23:54.240
So the President's Chief of Staff wanted to go to war?
00:23:56.740
Well, his Joint Chiefs did, which was the military.
00:24:00.280
And the leaders at the CIA wanted to – they wanted – they saw war as inevitable
00:24:08.420
and that the sooner the better because the U.S. was at a big military advantage
00:24:16.320
And my uncle – and Khrushchev's Joint Chiefs were basically in the same position.
00:24:27.460
My uncle, who was also a veteran and had seen his men die,
00:24:34.800
had three of his men on his PT boat killed when it was run over by a Japanese destroyer.
00:24:41.100
And then, you know, he had been lost at sea for 10 days hiding out on a little island
00:24:53.580
He had been lied to by Alan Dulles at the very beginning.
00:24:57.120
He knew Dulles had lied to him and fired Alan Dulles
00:25:00.180
and fired the top three guys at the CIA and no longer trusted his military.
00:25:05.840
And he realized that he was in the same boat with Khrushchev.
00:25:16.220
And one of Jack's generals, Lucius Clay, mounted bulldozer plows on the front of tanks
00:25:27.180
And the Russians met him on the other side at Checkpoint Charlie
0.86
00:25:34.680
And my uncle sent a secret message to Khrushchev at that point saying,
00:25:41.480
And I promised that when you do that, we will withdraw within 20 minutes.
00:25:51.520
And my uncle and father believed that there would be,
00:25:55.400
that they lived for a lot of their administration,
00:25:58.980
believing that the military may commit a coup against them.
00:26:06.960
Because they believe that, yeah, right, exactly.
00:26:17.020
said that it was, you know, that the atmosphere in the Pentagon
00:26:25.040
that they believe that the fact that my uncle had not gone into Cuba
00:26:35.940
And then he did not bomb Khrushchev during that confrontation at Berlin.
00:26:44.300
And that was evidence that he was committing treason against the United States.
00:26:48.880
So they were really war happy at that time, huh?
00:26:52.000
And your uncle came in and that's when your father was attorney general
00:26:55.400
and they were a little bit more on the peaceful side of things, huh?
00:27:02.080
In fact, my uncle said when he was asked by Ben Bradley,
00:27:06.260
who was one of his best friends, who was the editor of the Washington Post,
00:27:09.560
what he wanted as his epithet on his tombstone,
00:27:18.240
And he often said that the president's principal job
00:27:24.880
Who was a better peacekeeper, you think, your uncle or your father,
00:27:31.080
I mean, my uncle really did not want to go to war.
00:27:38.940
Yeah, there's a lot of famous pictures of him and stuff when he was running.
00:27:52.000
So you would, if you, do you, because in your life,
00:27:59.480
did you ever have presidential hopes where you would be running for president
00:28:10.060
I was thinking about, oh, well, when are people usually presidents?
00:28:34.020
and occupied the seat that my father had occupied.
00:28:36.380
I had come close to running for that seat in the previous election,
00:28:41.760
decided not to, and then Hillary came in and ran for me.
1.00
00:28:52.060
I had personal issues that I was dealing with and family.
00:29:01.540
I needed to pay attention to what was going on there.
00:29:04.360
And I like my life, too, as an environmental advocate.
00:29:11.900
And then when Hillary left two years later to go to the White House,
1.00
00:29:16.540
the governor of New York, David Patterson, called me,
00:29:19.980
and it was his job to appoint somebody to Phil Hersey.
00:29:25.700
So I could have at that point chosen to be U.S. senator
00:29:32.800
But again, for personal reasons, I didn't do it at that time.
00:29:37.840
And, you know, I kind of live my life like you do one day at a time
00:29:42.860
and try to make, you know, keep doing the next right thing.
00:29:46.740
And at that point, it was clear to me that the decision for me
00:29:54.800
And so I don't look back on that with any regret
00:30:04.660
And Trump almost gave you a position or whenever he became president.
00:30:07.860
Wasn't there talk of that and then it kind of went away?
00:30:12.040
Well, what happened was he, in 20, over the Christmas vacation,
00:30:23.180
And then obviously the election isn't in November.
00:30:26.160
So I was skiing in with my kids in Colorado over a Christmas vacation
00:30:34.160
and I got a call from his chief of staff saying
00:30:43.780
So, you know, I've been an activist on trying to get safer vaccines
00:31:22.540
And those lawsuits were about two or three years apart.
00:31:35.240
He contributed to my brother who was then in Congress.
00:31:39.660
And I had a cousin who was a congressman from Rhode Island.
00:31:53.240
I had, as I said, about a two-hour meeting with him at that meeting.
00:31:56.560
And people were coming in and out of that meeting.
00:32:12.000
And Jared Kushner and both of the president's sons
00:32:19.580
But I had a lot of time alone with President Trump, too.
00:32:23.980
He said that he believed that vaccines were making people sick.
00:32:30.640
Specifically, he had three women friends who were mothers.
00:32:46.640
And the children never were the same after those visits.
00:32:50.160
They all had been subsequently diagnosed with autism.
00:32:53.660
And he believed that it was linked to vaccines.
00:32:58.100
And, you know, because he had been open about that during the campaign,
00:33:05.440
the same thing that happened to me that got me into this,
00:33:08.080
you know, this career-killing advocacy vaccine safety, obviously.
00:33:16.620
You know, people start coming up to you and saying,
00:33:42.300
Yeah, and now he's living in a freaking tent at the circus every afternoon.
0.90
00:33:48.780
They have, I mean, the stories were eerily all identical.
00:33:56.420
they lose all of their capacity to social interactions,
00:34:12.700
And does it seem serious when he's saying that?
00:34:21.100
whether I would run a vaccine safety commission.
00:34:28.300
I don't think you have to do a big political lift.
00:34:30.960
All I think you need to do is open up the databases
00:34:38.680
Because the HMOs have all the vaccine data down to batch
00:34:48.280
So all you have to do, in fact, you can do now,
00:35:13.520
The allergic diseases, food allergies, peanut allergies.
00:35:27.840
on the vaccine inserts as vaccine side effects.
00:35:41.560
You still can sue them if they know of an injury
00:36:02.680
that it's actually being caused by the vaccine.
00:36:10.400
unless FDA believes it's being caused by the vaccine.
00:36:46.460
and they're the ones who decide on the licensing.
00:37:06.480
CDC used to be called the Public Health Service
00:38:01.680
we're going to have to do double-blind placebo testing.
00:39:13.880
that does what people think vaccines ought to do,
01:53:26.960
room at cdc and then to destroy the evidence
0.98
01:54:22.060
to subpoena thompson and then he wouldn't do it
01:54:29.680
he wouldn't do it i talked to daryl isa who i think is a
01:55:00.380
from the not just the democratic party which is terrible on this issue but the
01:55:06.860
oh and that's a sad thing was did was there any was there ever a chance that
01:55:11.300
trump was like this this alternate piece that could have brought down the whole
01:55:14.940
system yes and you know when i first met i because i wanted trump and bernie to be on
01:55:20.460
the same ticket that's what i wanted because then i thought why do vi why do you just get to pick
01:55:25.740
your vice president why don't you have to why don't you that's what they used to do it was a
01:55:31.020
separate election for was it really yeah yeah because then why don't you have a different type
01:55:35.040
of person as your vice president then you have to argue about everything you know yeah
01:55:38.940
it seemed easy to pick some guy well that's not how we do it so but doesn't the president just pick
01:55:46.460
the vice president he picks them yeah well they they have to be nominated by the party oh i see
01:55:53.740
okay oh uh but anyway going back to that um yeah what i think a lot of people thought that trump
01:56:01.260
was going to be okay there's this huge cyst this clock that's running and i'm going to throw this
01:56:05.900
fucking wrench into it and watch it crumble was that ever a possibility yeah i think it was a
0.92
01:56:12.860
possibility for a short time but i think what i heard was that after we um we left the um that
0.96
01:56:27.660
there were people within the administration including hope hill kelly ann conway and i think
01:56:36.060
one of their husbands is a pharmaceutical lobbyist and um and rents previous who had just told him
01:56:45.020
you can't do it and then they took the money from pfizer and you know we were alive for a while through
01:56:51.820
we were alive from january when he takes the oath of office through march and everybody in the agencies
01:56:59.020
was terrified of us we were going to the agencies and we were questioning them and making presentations
01:57:05.900
and having the boys with france francis collins and then at one point mid-march you know the lobbyists
01:57:15.420
came in azar and gottlieb and all those guys came in and we got a note from francis collins just basically
01:57:22.140
you know it was like a big bird like you know we don't have to listen to you anymore so stop talking
01:57:28.380
to us and now and then the white house went dark do you feel like with uh with uh biden uh that with
01:57:37.820
the new um president or well first of all do you feel like the election was fair do you feel like they
01:57:42.540
will have any what do you feel like the outcome will be from that do you feel like i think you know
01:57:46.060
you know listen they'll go through the judicial process my feeling is that um that the courts are
01:57:52.860
gonna uphold the election um i don't think you know i don't have any doubt about that the in terms of
01:58:00.940
biden's you know biden has made a lot of statements that are very disheartening about you know mandating
01:58:08.540
masks you know really coming down hard on the lockdown really you know it's become part of
01:58:15.980
the weirdly of the liberal ideology of just you know getting rid of civil rights
01:58:21.900
and you know religious exemptions so all the rights of the first amendment the censorship
01:58:26.540
they're supporting that you know the religious independence they're supporting the end of jury
01:58:30.540
trials which is um you know were abolished for vaccines um and and and public assemblies and the
01:58:39.020
right to petition politicians and all of these things that have been been part of the liberal tradition
01:58:44.060
in western democracy but particularly in the united states the the liberals the traditional liberals
01:58:52.700
um in my party are have just walked away from them in the weirdest most surrealistic way now is there
01:59:01.260
any do i have any hopes for biden um biden has appointed to his covid committee a number of hacks who are just
01:59:11.900
part of vauci's network but he also brought in david kessler who is the used to be the attorney general
01:59:20.620
i mean the surgeon general and david kessler is the one person that i think gives me hope because he is
01:59:27.980
an independent thinker he he's an enemy of pharma he understands that you know that there's a problem
01:59:37.340
with the vaccines and so i think you know for those of people in this audience who um want to uh
01:59:46.700
encourage that that you know he's a guy that people should should write letters to and should
01:59:52.620
you know should contact and say express all of us need to express hope in kessler that a lot of people
02:00:00.380
are are hoping that he will break with the orthodoxy that i think is taking us down this
02:00:07.100
dark road in our country it's getting dark man here's a beautiful young fellow right here who has
02:00:13.100
something to ask you what up theo what up mr kennedy that feels so cool to say uh matt from north carolina
02:00:20.620
here just sitting here at work like an american shout out to theo for that hitter appreciate it
02:00:26.300
nice merch man that's a beautiful one so my question for robert personally i'm a huge advocate
02:00:32.220
and fan of uh jfk uh i'm sure he was probably the coolest uncle ever um but my question is a little
02:00:40.060
bit personal like what are the last moments or memories or maybe your favorite moments and memories
02:00:45.820
that you had of uh uncle johnny um appreciate you taking the time for my question much respect gang gang
02:00:53.180
you know i'm sure you always get a question about your uncle huh um you know i listen my i have a
02:01:01.420
lot many many great memories of my uncle i mean i think probably one of my what did y'all eat did y'all
02:01:09.100
eat what clam chowder did you really of course we yeah we did eat a lot of clam chowder man that's nice
02:01:17.980
um but uh you know boston beans but clam chowder um hot dogs you think hot dogs well hot dogs popular
02:01:26.780
when you were a kid yeah of course hot dogs hamburgers um i when i was i think eight or nine
02:01:36.220
years old i wrote a letter to my uncle that i still have um and asking him because i was worried about
02:01:45.500
the environment about pollution and i wrote him a letter um saying that i wanted to talk to him
02:01:52.140
about it and he he had me come into the oval office and i spent uh a morning with my brother the night
02:02:00.860
before i caught a salamander big spotted salamander that'd come out you know in the spring to of course
02:02:06.860
you know what they are right yeah oh yeah i know what they are yeah like a land snake
02:02:10.620
so um and i brought him one of those and i went my my home had just switched from well water to
02:02:20.300
municipal water and you're upset about that i was because the chlorine killed the salamander
02:02:26.700
and but i was in denial about about him being dead and i brought him in a vase
02:02:34.380
and i and gave him to my uncle and he was poking him with a pen i have these pictures too and saying you
02:02:39.660
know i don't think he looks well and i was saying no he's just sleeping he's okay and then he took me
02:02:46.860
out and we released him in the rose garden fountain um but he uh he arranged ultimately for me to meet
02:02:54.060
with rachel carson who came to our home and i and his board i mean in in virginia at hickory hill
02:03:01.420
and had dinner at our house and um and also with stewart udall who was the secretary of the interior
02:03:07.020
and so that was pretty cool but you know he came to our house he rode we rode every morning um horses
02:03:14.860
my dad would take us riding every morning and my uncle sometimes would come um i went to the
02:03:22.940
hearings when they were um when they had the mafia when they had sam giancana jimmy hoffa
02:03:30.940
um all the big mafios uh my dad this before the white house when he was still in the senate
02:03:37.900
and i went attended those hearings when i was a little kid and you know we looked at all these
02:03:42.940
gangsters and we sat in the front row and um and then you know so our family was a was a very very
02:03:51.340
close family and um and they landed with the helicopters every weekend he would after he
02:03:59.580
landed he would go up and he would kiss my grandpa and they would talk my grandpa had had a stroke by
02:04:06.220
then he would talk to my grandpa and tell him what happened that week then he would come down
02:04:11.740
from the porch and he we would all pile into a golf cart that was a souped up golf golf cart
02:04:17.900
with 20 kids on it and he would give us a ride around the compound at very fast speeds and so
02:04:25.740
yeah it was a typical uncle behavior huh yeah it was uh it was a really it was a magical um
02:04:33.020
um god it sounds like it we used to ride behind the mosquito truck and get that free gas
0.91
02:04:37.980
yeah it would come off of it you know when you spray for mosquitoes yeah the ddt oh dude nose up bro we
02:04:43.900
just literally be just biking until we couldn't even take anymore you know i mean i wouldn't see
02:04:49.260
i didn't see a mosquito for about six years we would have war games behind them because it was you know
0.99
02:04:53.820
that fog that stayed on and hugged the ground yeah it was good and uh we thought it was good for us
02:05:00.060
back then yeah we sure did it was a different time um battling the uh the environment on the outside of
02:05:08.140
us and on the inside of us uh bobby thanks for coming in today i really appreciate it thanks
02:05:13.420
for having me yeah anything else nick any other questions um yeah thank you so much man appreciate
02:05:19.180
it good to see you man yeah you too always a pleasure man always you're always welcome back
02:05:24.060
now i'm just floating on the breeze and i feel i'm falling like these leaves i must be cornerstone
02:05:34.860
oh but when i reach that ground i'll share this peace of mind i found i can feel it in my bones
02:05:43.660
but it's gonna take a little time for me to set that parking brake and let myself unwind
02:06:23.100
now i've been moving way too fast on the runaway train with a heavy load of my
02:06:33.660
and these wheels that i've been riding on they're once so thin that they're damn they're gone
0.59
02:06:43.100
ladies and gentlemen i'm jonathan kite and welcome to kite club a podcast where i'll be
02:06:48.140
sharing thoughts on things like current events stand-up stories and seven ways to pleasure your
02:06:53.260
partner the answer may shock you sometimes i'll interview my friends sometimes i won't
02:06:59.660
and as always i'll be joined by the voices in my head you have three new voice messages
02:07:05.980
a lot of people are talking about kite club i've been talking about kite club for so long longer
02:07:11.580
than anybody else so great hi sweetheart he's a deal anyone who doesn't listen to kite club
0.96
02:07:19.260
is a dodgy bloody wanker jermaine hi i'll take a quarter pounder with cheese and a mcflurry
0.95
02:07:26.140
sorry sir but our ice cream machine is broken
0.99
02:07:30.940
i think tom hanks just butt dialed me anyway first rule of kite club is tell everyone about kite club
02:07:37.100
second rule of kite club is tell everyone about kite club third rule like and subscribe wherever you
02:07:43.820
listen to podcasts or watch us on youtube yeah and yes don't worry my brad pitt impression will get better