Joe and Mika Do the Trump Dance
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Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, Democrats prepare a new strategy to fight Trump and get ready to pick a new party leader. Joe and Mika kiss the ring at Mar-a-Lago while the new MAGA clique sits ringside at a UFC fight. Then NBC News' Brandi Zadrozny, one of the best source reporters on the RFK beat, talks to Tommy about what we know about RFK's plans for the medical care you get and the food you eat. It's funny that they're the best source. It's like,

She's talked to the worm. The worm, the whale, and the...

what was the other thing the bear source close to the bear rfk jr is a source close to the worm we we brandy and i talked she's also such a she's an expert in online disinformation misinformation too and we also talked a lot about the wellness space and how people who consume wellness content inevitably get to a lot of the things rfk jr is focused on not just vaccines uh and you know

misinformation he pushes around vaccines, but also the broader sort of Make America Healthy Again agenda, which includes food safety, et cetera, which I think is why he's very attractive to a lot of people. People like West Coast Moms and Jared Polis. I'm on the wellness algorithm road. For sure. So it's only, you know, right now it's vitamin C in the morning, but we'll see where it gets me. I'm excited. RFK Jr., very anti-Ozempic. Did you see that? Oh, well...

Okay. Yeah. From my cold, dead hands. Four years from now, I don't know what the future holds for this country, but I'll have Manjaro in one hand and Diet Coke in the other. You'll have to take it from me by force. We will also talk about how, like, there's some parts of what RRK wants to do that who disagree with, like, healthier foods or getting pesticides out of the environment, et cetera. But how is that going to work with the broader Trump's deregulation agenda? Well, yeah, because the people that used to disagree with it were all the fucking Republicans. Exactly. Mm-hmm.

All right. Well, stick around for that interview. But first, I regret to inform you that the news about Trump's cabinet picks has not gotten any better. Let's start with his nominee for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, who resigned his seat in Congress just before the bipartisan House Ethics Committee could release a report about his alleged illicit drug use and sex with underage women.

A lawyer for two adult women who already testified before the committee said that Gates paid them for sex and that one of them witnessed Gates having sex with a third woman who was then 17 years old at a house party in Florida. Democratic and Republican senators have said they want to see the committee's report before voting to confirm Gates, though Speaker Mike Johnson says it shouldn't be released. And apparently the ethics committee will meet on Wednesday to decide.

It seems unlikely to me that Gates gets confirmed without at least the Senate, if not the public, viewing this report. But what do you guys think? So John Cornyn was asked about this, and he said to reporters that the truth is that the information is going to come out one way or another. He also said, I think in order to do our job, we need to get access to the information also to protect the president against any surprises that might damage his administration. So John Cornyn is just looking out for number one.

who is Donald Trump. Yeah, I just I find it unlikely that we won't know most of what's in that report by the time we get to a vote, if we get to a vote. You got 10 members on the House Ethics Committee. Let's look at their website today. I saw 28 staffers. Apparently, all 10 members had access to the full report. So it's a lot of people. And apparently, the ranking Democrat, Susan Wild, just lost her race. So what does she have to lose by?

floating that thing to some nice media member. The email is hey at crooked.com. Hey, crooked.com. Listen, we won't, you know, remember when the Intercept posted that file and that poor person had to go to jail because they didn't get rid of the copy marks? Reality winner, yeah. We will not do that. We will protect your anonymity. Sidney Sweeney needs no more roles. We're certainly not asking for any classified information. That's actually something we're going to regret, Tommy. We're not soliciting any classified information. No, this is all public. Just everything that's public.

But you have to think all these Senate Republicans, they know Matt Gaetz is a sketchball, but they don't know the extent to which. You would want to know that information before you vote for or against him. The risk, though, the flip side is he might end up being attorney general and he can target whoever puts out information about him. So it's a scary situation. Yeah, I think there's no way that he gets confirmed or the nomination hearing goes forward without at least the senators on the committee knowing.

Or all the senators seeing the report. I can see reasons if you take like Matt Gaetz and the specific substance of this, these set of allegations out of it, why a House Ethics Committee like wouldn't publicize their reports. Because especially depending on what they found, if someone is innocent or whatever, you don't want like salacious allegations out there. But that said, probably leaks.

And also, if it doesn't leak, you could imagine Democrats on the Judiciary Committee just sort of redoing the investigation in public as part of the confirmation hearing. Yeah, it's also like we should try to get the report. You don't need the report to know Matt Gaetz is a scumbag. He famously would walk around the floor of the House showing photos and videos of his exploits to horrified or annoyed or somewhat disgusted correspondents.

colleagues, you know, as has been reported by members of the House. A U.S. Senator who will now vote on his nomination. Right, right. Mark Wayne Mullins was in the House when that was going on. Yeah. And the context here is normally all of these nominees go through an FBI background check, but that background check is requested by the White House.

not the members of Congress. So if Trump says, we're not going to request one this time, it might not happen, or maybe he'll use an outside firm. So I mean, the next chairman of the Judiciary Committee is going to be Chuck Grassley, spring chicken at 91 years old. He will likely work with Dick Durbin to structure these hearings. Presumably, Durbin will have some leeway to call witnesses who could be people who are also associated with this House ethics report, but they would have to be willing to come forward and testify. They couldn't compel them.

I will say these allegations are incredibly serious, if true, horrific.

I hope that they are not the primary focus of the confirmation hearings, just because the position of attorney general is so powerful. And I think a lot of people, you know, we all think it's pretty scary, the idea of Matt Gaetz being attorney general, but maybe most voters have no idea what they're in for other than Matt Gaetz seems like a scumbag because of these sexual allegations. But like, I hope they ask him about political prosecutions, civil rights, whatever.

following the law, maybe his position on sex trafficking, which I know is a big deal for his friends at QAnon. It's true. And also the Senate Democrats could also ask the Department of Justice to turn out over any relevant documents about their investigation into Metzger, which didn't turn into a prosecution, but they still could have found things in there that are politically relevant.

Yeah, the Gates folks are saying, well, Merrick Garland's Justice Department, you know, found him not guilty. It's like they didn't bring the case. That's a prosecutorial standard. This is something different. This is a political vetting. Yeah. And I agree with you. Like, it's hard. Right. Because and we'll talk about Hegseth. But like with Gates, right, these are disqualifying cases.

right? And they should be enough to make it so that we don't have to deal with someone like Matt Gaetz in Congress or as attorney general. Or someone like Donald Trump as president. Exactly. But these are the most sensational and interesting stories around these cabinet appointments. And what we are seeing is the most radical, unqualified group of people who are promising to do deeply unpopular things as leaders of the administration. And if the focus is on

just these stories, we will have missed this chance to talk about what Donald Trump will actually do as president. I do think like there's a way to talk about what these allegations represent and why they are so dangerous to have an attorney general who's been accused of these things or has been alleged to do these things, what it tells you about what he thinks about the law, who the law applies to, who the law doesn't applies to, who he respects, who he doesn't. I think there is like a story there you can use to talk about the broader reasons Matt Gaetz shouldn't be attorney general. But I have the same worry.

So it turns out Trump's pick for defense secretary is also facing sexual misconduct allegations. The reported incident involved an unidentified woman and took place in 2017 at a Monterey hotel where Pete Hegseth was speaking at an event. The Trump transition team apparently has a memo

which we haven't seen, but the Washington Post reports on. It says the woman, quote, didn't remember anything until she was in Hegseth's hotel room. And then the next day, quote, had a moment of hazy memory of being raped the night before. Hegseth says through his lawyer that there was an encounter, but it was consensual, that there's surveillance footage of the two walking back to his room, smiling with their arms locked.

and that the person involved has tried to, quote, blackmail him. Hegseth reached a settlement with the woman that apparently prohibits her from talking about it. Separately, concerns have been raised about a tattoo on Hegseth's bicep. It says, Deus Vult, which is Latin for God Wills It, a phrase that...

started with the Crusades, but has been used more recently by Christian nationalists in the far right. The tattoo was apparently why Hegseth was ordered not to deploy as a member of the National Guard to Biden's inauguration in 2021, an incident that has fueled Hegseth's complaints about the so-called woke military. Not to downplay the seriousness of these charges either, but in the context of a president who himself has been found liable for sexual assault and dined with white nationalist Nick Fuentes,

Do you think at least four Republican senators could care enough about these issues to tank Hegseth's nomination? I don't think we should spend a lot of time on the tattoos, but I think the assault allegations are very recent and very serious. And the Senate has an obligation to investigate them as Hegseth will be in a position of enormous power and he will manage hundreds of thousands, if not millions of women in his role as secretary of defense. And so I,

I agree. Like, it's very frustrating because Trump has managed to evade accountability on this set of issues over and over and over again. But that Teflon does not apply to everyone he nominates. And we've seen him jettison people that he views as politically inconvenient in the past. I do agree that much like with Gates, I think there's got to be a broader conversation here about just his utter lack of qualification. I mean, again, this guy...

This guy will run an organization. The next secretary of defense runs an organization that, that oversees employees well over 2 million people. What has prepared you for that weekend anchor? Uh, he, he personally lobbied Trump to pardon service members who had been convicted or accused of war crimes. Uh, Heg Zeth would be the primary point of contact for his counterparts in foreign countries at places like NATO, uh,

what like diplomatic experience does he have? He'll be the top advisor on defense policy and military and security issues. He'll oversee an $800 billion annual budget with a wildly complicated acquisition process underneath it. Two million employees. More. Yeah, I mean, it's insane. Two million. His biggest job was, I think he managed a nonprofit that had between 11 and 50 employees. Five zero. I will say that I have been, when we first, Dan and I first talked about this,

some of these cabinet picks last week. And I was talking about like, they don't have qualifications, they don't have experience. And I thought about it. That is actually like a benefit to a lot of Trump supporters and a lot of people who voted for Trump and a lot of people in the country. Like they want someone with not a lot of Washington experience or quality. Like they don't care. I do think that like the politicization of the military could be extremely dangerous. Right. And I would really want to zero in with him on questions of like, you know,

There's reports that Trump is drafting an executive order to, you know, fast track the purging of generals he doesn't like. He's talking about the woke military. Pete Hegseth had comments about doesn't think that women should be in combat roles.

People should ask him about Donald Trump and the Insurrection Act. Like if he if you have a military that is only filled with Trump loyalists, at least in the senior ranks, it's a real fucking problem. Yeah. The I want to talk about the stupidity of the focusing on the tattoo for a moment, because I saw people talking about the tattoo and then that that that it's this Latin phrase and it's a dog whistle for white supremacists.

And someone on Twitter pointed out that this phrase really wasn't in common use until it was the name of a video game expansion for a video game called Crusader Kings. And so then the phrase took off a little bit because it was associated with that video game. Also, the reason people used to talk about dog whistles, it was meant to signal.

that this was somebody that was, had secretly very dark motives, right? That they're, that they're not telling you the whole story, right? They're pretending to be normal, but then you see the dog whistle. He's got a secret white nationalist tattoo. These people are telling us what they're going to do and what they're doing is very terrible. Like the fact that he has a, a deus volt tattoo on it just doesn't fucking matter at all because we already know that what he has talked about, what he wants to do, whether it was, uh,

maybe being the person that gave Trump the idea for a preemptive strike in North Korea or talking about purging the military or whatever other heinous ideas he's bringing to the table, they're no longer worried about speaking at a tone only dogs can hear. And so the idea that, oh, he's got a secret white nationalist tattoo, it's not a secret. He's telling us what he wants to do. Yeah, he posts shirtless selfies. It's not secret at all. Yeah, I agree. It's a silly sidebar to me, and it's an easy thing that...

Republicans can use to make us sound ridiculous. - Yes. - But John, I also worry about like the qualifications trap that you're talking about. Because if I'm a MAGA person, I'm like, oh, you don't think this guy who has two bronze stars, served in combat, went to Princeton and Harvard

is qualified. But you think that all these four stars over there who kept us in endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and before that Vietnam and Korea, those people were qualified. Thousands and thousands and thousands of service members killed under those leaders. But my guy can't do it because he's a disruptor. That's a powerful rejoinder. And I agree with you that like even listening to my own kind of litany of questions about his qualifications, I feel like I'm

getting myself in a trap here. I know. And it's funny too because we...

A million years ago, we're in a campaign with Obama where Obama was hit with all of these same accusations, right? That he was like, he was a empty suit and didn't have a lot of experience. And our whole rejoinder was, yeah, he doesn't have Washington experience. He's going to shake up the system. Change. Right. Yeah. So, but there's plenty to focus on with like their views, these nominees and what the views are. And I think that's what we need to get at. And that speaks to the tattoo stupid thing that keeps everything else like, forget about

we've got to move away from just the offensive things these people might say or symbols or this or that or the other thing. It's like, what are their views? What are they going to do if they have power? And what is that going to mean for people? I agree. I agree with what you're saying with Hegseth. But with Matt Gaetz specifically...

He spent a couple years at a Northwest Florida corporate law firm before like Nepo babying his way into Florida politics. He's different. His only exposure, it seems to criminal law was his own potential prosecution. Like I do think a qualification argument with Gates specifically is worth making. I agree with you there. I totally agree. And although he's just a career politician, everyone hates career politicians. Hegzeth though, I think has these, these, you know, bullets on paper that look pretty good. Yeah.

Meanwhile, one major cabinet post that Trump has not yet filled is Treasury, which is reportedly causing a little intramegadrama. The soft consensus is that it's a race between Scott Besant, who heads up the Key Square Group hedge fund, and Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and chairman of Trump's transition team.

You might have remembered him from his interview with Caitlin Collins, where he said, of course, RFK Jr. is not going to be Health and Human Services Secretary. So finger on the pulse. But also where he was so charmed by RFK Jr., he came to become an autism vaccine connection guy, just based on that one conversation with RFK Jr., who must be the most charismatic man on the fucking planet. Dark. So Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that he thinks Besant is a, quote, business as usual pick and that Lutnick will actually enact change with RFK Jr. chiming in to say Lutnick would be great on crypto. Yeah.

There's also a vocal pro-Besson camp that includes a lot of Wall Street types and potentially Steve Bannon. What is the Trump world debate going on here actually about? How are these guys different from each other? Tommy?

I, you know, the scene in American Psycho where they're all comparing business cards and they're all just like white with black print, but it's just like, this is bone. The typeface is ceiling rail. You know, I feel like that's what we're looking at is for identical business cards, but there's a sense in Trump world that Besant is,

And another guy named Mark Rowan, who co-founded this massive investment firm, Apollo Management, they would make the markets happiest. They're the least true believer-y when it comes to putting in place massive tariffs on imported goods, especially goods from China. While Lutnik is seen as more of a true believer on tariffs and going hard at China and I guess supporting cryptocurrency, even if...

Maybe long term, there's a view that cryptocurrency could help displace the US dollar as the world's reserve currency and harm US power abroad. I also think there's some intrapersonal shit going on over here, though, as always with Trump world, like let Nick's the co chairman of the Trump transition, the bulwark reported

that there's a lot of people in Trump world who find him aggressive and thirsty for press coverage and annoying. And they feel like he's Dick Cheney himself into the role of treasury secretary. I remember when Dick Cheney famously helped George W. Bush find a VP and was like, aha, I found it. It's me. So that seems like there's some intra Trump fighting happening too.

Yeah. It's sort of, it's hard to really like, if you like dig down, like what is the actual policy dispute here? Right. Then like CNN put these side by side and I thought it was pretty instructive, which is like, okay, both these guys are going to execute Donald Trump's agenda. Yeah. Right. We know that. But Besant wrote, uh,

an op-ed and he said, tariffs are a means to finally stand up for Americans. But Lutnick at the speech at Madison Square Garden said, when was America great? 125 years ago. We had no income tax. All we had was tariffs. And it does seem like... Lutnick seems like he's the kiss ass. He's a style guy. Or I don't even know if Lutnick...

has those genuine beliefs about tariffs or his genuine belief is that he wants the job and will just say whatever Trump wants. And I feel like that you always get a leg up on everyone else unless you're very public about everything and then try to get too much news coverage then. So that's why he may not end up in the job. Yeah, but it's like the signaling that he's willing to say the crazy thing, whereas I think the money guys are like, listen,

we know that Trump is talking about tariffs, but he's not going to fuck with the markets. And we got to have somebody in there that knows how to speak the language of the markets because I look, we're all having fun here. This has all been a big fun joke, but nobody messes with our fucking money. Yeah. There's like tariffs as a threat or tariffs as a thing we do and potentially crater the economy. Same with deportations. There's deportations as a threat and there's actually throwing 20 some odd million people out of the country. And again, cratering the US economy. There's some reports that

that Trump may go another direction from either of those two, which I could get because one thing Trump doesn't like is getting pressured to do something and then actually doing it by either camp, right? And now that the pro-Bessant and pro-Lutnik camps are so public, if it's Bessant, then it looks like Wall Street wins, and Trump doesn't want that. And if it's Lutnik, it looks like Elon tweeted it, and I'm sure he doesn't like

the idea that he's going to be led around by Elon Musk. There's some, maybe a little drama brewing there too. Right, right. Elon Musk overstaying his welcome at Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? Like they've created now this, this choice wasn't actually a choice that was going to determine whether Trump was going to go hard on tariffs or be against crypto. But like it,

by making the choice now, it maybe removes some of his strategic vagueness that he loves to have. So I can see that. Yeah. Letnick was also accused by some in the Trump world of leaking the Rubio pick for Secretary of State to The New York Times. And maybe people think he asked Elon to lobby for him on Twitter. And that's just seen as a big no-no to pressure the boss publicly. I do think the big policy

implication here is like how serious Trump is about the tariffs. And I think they don't know yet because the tariffs in the first term were nothing like what he's proposing or what he has talked about for the second for this coming term. And it's one thing to have to impose targeted tariffs on, you know, aluminum or steel from China, one country. You're doing across the board tariffs on every single thing that's important from every country. Like,

not only is Wall Street not going to like that, but consumers are not going to like that. Talk about inflation and prices. I mean, it could be pretty bad. Last personnel thing we wanted to get into today is Trump's pick for FCC chairman. That's the Federal Communications Commission. The guy's name is Brendan Carr.

who literally wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025. Trump appointed him as one of the commissioners of the FCC in 2017. Right after Trump announced him on Sunday night, Carr tweeted, we must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans. He's also talked about going after the licenses of broadcasters like NBC per Trump's demand. Anything else to know about this guy? What do you think he represents in terms of policy change? And what can an FCC chairman do?

So two big things that I think are not getting the headlines but are pretty important. One is he may have the ability to drive a bunch of money towards Elon Musk and Starlink. The second, which I think is pretty important, is the FCC decides how restrictive the ownership rules are around local TV stations.

The last time Trump had the FCC, there was a lot of bluster on a lot of different issues. But one of the most impactful things they did was make it easier for there to be consolidation in the ownership of television stations, which has benefited right wing news organizations like Sinclair. Now that Trump has won, the head of Sinclair, Sinclair CEO said that it's

It feels like a cloud over the industry is lifting. We're very excited about the upcoming regulatory environment. The rule that stays in place right now is that no one company is allowed to own stations that would collectively reach more than 39% of US households, and no single entity can own more than one of the four largest stations in any single market, right? These are the kind of last rules preventing even more consolidation in the industry. Carr would like to lift those rules.

some right wing Republicans, organizations like Sinclair would like to lift those rules and have even more control over the local news that people get. And those to me are sort of the two biggest right now things that they can do with power. Beyond that, it's a lot of like bully pulpit and a lot of, look,

Look, news organizations are already squeamish, right? We saw that after Kamala Harris was on SNL, they gave Trump a free spot on NASCAR, right? Like they don't need to kind of bring the hammer down for news organizations and media companies to be afraid of the FCC chair and afraid of having a letter from the FCC chair or afraid of being called into Congress for hearing or being kind of investigated. And so that to me is the biggest concern. It's like these sort of regulatory changes, but also just someone like this having the bully pulpit.

He's a very hardcore conservative activist. He's exactly what you'd expect to come out of the Heritage Foundation. And he will know how the mechanics of the agency work to actually use it for power to implement the Trump agenda, whether that's punishing enemies in tech companies, whether it's punishing enemies in the media, whether it's steering money to Trump allies like Elon Musk. So he's one of those people that's not like a name brand MAGA type, but knows what he's doing. And I think that's the danger here.

It's interesting that he, in the Project 2025 chapter, he wants to ban TikTok. Big time. Which is interesting since now Trump is... One of many, actually, in the cabinet now. Since Trump has flip-flopped on that, so that'll be interesting. Yeah, he talks a lot about regulating tech.

Google and Meta aren't defined as communication services, so he doesn't really have the authority to do that. They would need to change the law probably with the FCC. The FCC is also prohibited from punishing television and radio stations for editorial decisions. So like you said, it's more bully pulpit than actual...

You talked about ownership, changing ownership so that people can, you know, an entity can own more. He also block mergers. The FCC can block mergers. So for, you know, communications companies and media companies that he doesn't like.

he could stop that. Yeah, but that also then it's like, okay, well, that depends what court that ends up in front of, right? And so like a lot of this is like how much power he ultimately has also depends on how much the right wing court is willing to step into the fray. And then more broadly, like this is part, there's like a, there's a, like a lot of this will be about what Congress does. Well,

Congress is enamored of the same right wing beliefs about the media that this guy is. And so, like, you know, there will be hearings and they will this guy will testify for Congress about the need to to stop the censorship provided by that caused by big tech and all the different ways in which the media is biased against conservative. Like this is part of a long term effort and they have been succeeding.

Big, big personnel news while we're recording, guys. Sean Duffy nominated to serve as the Secretary of Transportation. First real world Boston cast member in the cabinet. But maybe not the last.

Wow. Rachel Campos. Yeah. She might get in there too. Yeah. So we love reality TV representation in government. There's a lot of it, right? There's, um, there've been, there've been, uh, great people that have been on survivor that have run for office. Somebody to think about also some, some misses. Speaking of, yeah. Speaking of needing experience and qualifications.

You see Biden wandering off into the middle distance and then the Amazon, everyone is like, hey, were you there? Is that where a lot of tweets that said he looked like he's a tribal council? Yeah, for sure. Pod Save America is brought to you by Z Biotics pre-alcohol. Let's face it. After a night with drinks, you probably don't bounce back the next day like you used to.

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Stop wasting money on things you don't have. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash crooked. That's rocketmoney.com slash crooked. Rocketmoney.com slash crooked. Let's talk about what the Democrats are up to. There was an article in the New York Times on Saturday detailing the party's new battle plan against Trump, which basically involves Democratic governors and attorneys general using their power to protect people in their states.

One thing that was notable in the piece is that a lot of governors who seem to be on the Democrat shortlist for 2028 have not yet signed on to this. It's basically a Pritzker, Governor Pritzker-led, Governor Polis-led sort of

but there was no Gretchen Whitmer on it, no Josh Shapiro, no Tony Evers. What do you guys make of the plan and the fact that some big-name Democratic governors haven't yet signed on? Some of the plan is just common sense. You fight bad laws in courts. You pass what you can pass in state legislatures. There were other pieces in there that were a little weird. I wasn't sure if they were part of the broader plan, like someone pitching opposition research on the Murdoch family or on Elon Musk.

I can imagine why an elected official might want some distance from that. Like big picture, I imagine that every governor is doing what they can internally to quietly prepare for a second Trump term and have been for a while. But they don't want to signal that it's part of some resistance 2.0 or some big donor led thing.

effort and they're ultimately going to frame anything they do is fighting for the people who voted for them not as part of some broader democratic party thing that's my guess yeah pritzker's office said that um not all governors wish to be named publicly because of the potential for to be threatened by a new trump administration i was reading their release too it was a lot it was hard to find like what it actually is you know because there i mean the truth is

The big issue that they're going to face right away is sort of cooperation with the feds on potential deportations and whether local law, because here's the thing that, you know, ICE and the new ICE guy, Tom Homan,

has said that like, oh, I can do it with ICE agents alone. We don't need local police. But the truth is, it's a lot easier if they have cooperation with local law enforcement. And in some states, the law says that local law enforcement can refuse to cooperate. In some states, they don't have to refuse and they can cooperate. So I'm sure a lot of it is

probably figuring out what powers democratic governors attorneys general and local officials have and don't have that are currently on the books or not on the books and some legislatures are already thinking like do we need like I think in New York they're they're thinking about maybe passing new laws around immigration so I think it's a it's a lot of but it's a lot of like you know powers that they currently have yeah it's

It's like, what is the value of getting out in front and having a kind of branded response as opposed to like kind of just being ready for anything and fighting where you can? Like it is, I think, obviously like...

chilling that Democrats are afraid to say the ways in which they will want to fight against Donald Trump for fear of retaliation. We saw it during the pandemic that Democratic governors had to go out of their way to praise Donald Trump because they wanted to make sure they were getting the supplies and resources they needed. That is part of the menace that Donald Trump poses. But I also, like, I don't totally understand how the sum is greater than its parts of them all doing it together.

As opposed to just they're gonna be fighting these guys the way they fight them state to state and like beyond that I don't know. I don't know yet I feel like it's we're just in this space but where you know, Trump is not yet president the threat is Perspective we don't totally know what he's gonna try to do by the way. There are ways in which I am sure Trump and his goons would love to fight with New York about deporting criminals and

And I am sure that these governors, I'm sure the Shapiros and the Whitmers are very aware of the fact that they do not want to be drawn into one of their first public fights with Donald Trump over stopping deportations of people that they will point out are violent offenders like that as a fight they don't want. And so I think like it's just tricky. And so I think I'm like just sort of I I'm like concerned about what it means to brand it before it exists and what that gets you.

They really do want a reaction. They want to provoke a reaction. And Trump also confirmed today on Truth Social, because Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch was like, oh yeah, he's going to use the military to assist in deportations. And Trump said, true, which is, it's, you know, being treated as news today, but he said it, of course, all during the campaign and every interview he was asked. But you can tell that that's the kind of thing where they want to provoke the reaction and then to say, oh, actually, this person that we're deporting committed a violent crime. You know,

So Democrats are also trying to figure out who's going to represent them as the next DNC chair. On Monday, former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley became the first person to officially launch a bid. Other potential contenders include Minnesota Democratic Party Chair Ken Martin, Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wickler, former New York State Assemblymember Mike Blake.

and maybe even former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, although reportedly he seems less interested now. Despite being a decision made by less than 500 committee members, the race for DNC chair will serve as the first big public debate about the future of the Democratic Party. How fun. You guys have thoughts on this and what the role of a DNC chair at a moment like this should be? I know and like Ben. Yeah.

I mean, there's a couple of different forms. There could be, you're going to have to raise a ton of money. You're going to have to try to coordinate and create strategy for how Democrats get back on their feet and win elections and down ballot races starting pretty soon. You're a key spokesman and fundraiser for the party. You'll oversee the platform and the convention eventually, but by then there'll be a nominee running for president. So I don't know, there's different forms you can imagine. You can imagine someone who's more of a

classic organizer that's getting to the nuts and bolts and kind of trying to reshape and rethink how the committee operates. Or it could be someone that is a spokesperson and just raises a shit ton of cash. And I'm not totally sure what the Democrats want at the moment.

Yeah, sort of the we've like spent years of seeing endless sort of conspiratorial thinking about the power of the DNC and its role in determining in back rooms who the Democratic Party chooses and who the candidate is and whether, you know, they try to stop Bernie or or whatever it might be like.

We have to have a big conversation about the future of the Democratic Party. That's like an organizing conversation. It's a fundraising conversation. It's a policy conversation, a messaging conversation. And the DNC chair,

It can be somebody that is central to that conversation and like helping to lead it and think about it, that it can also be someone who is doing behind the scenes operating while that takes place in other forms. I just don't know. I like I don't I think like that's partly what this debate is about, like what the role of the DNC chair will be in the next couple of years. And I mean, the one thing I just...

Thinking about what happened after so one to two thoughts about this is one just that What we're saying right now how we're thinking about the future it will turn out to be wrong in some fundamental ways But like just things will change over the next couple years. We will be overtaken by events What happens with the Trump administration will kind of inform the politics of the next couple years? but I will say that like one lesson from 2004 that I've seen people talking about is that people took the loss of

has a need to reinvest in a 50-state strategy to think about how we win everywhere. And if there's one place I would like the DNC chair to be thinking about, it's how we build and organize everywhere across all 50 states, that that is only additive to all the other debates and strategy discussions that will be unfolding. I really agree with that. Like, I know that this will be seen and treated as this first big public debate over the direction of the party.

I think that this is, at this moment, this is not the role where you want someone with a strong ideological view of where the party should go or allegiance to one faction of the party or another. Like, I just think...

At the end of the day, the DNC chairman, of course, becomes a spokesman for the party, but they are seen as partisan. They go on TV, they give a message, and we're eventually going to have in the midterms a whole bunch of Democratic candidates, and we're going to have primaries for that. And then we're going to have a primary in 2028 where all of these debates should be worked out. And I just don't, I think that the DNC chair should be thinking about

organization, party building, like someone who knows that the key to winning is organizing everywhere and building relationships with voters all year round. So that's sort of what I think. And this is partly because of when we did this

In 2016, I remember, you know, we had a lot of the candidates on Paz de America when we just started Paz de America. And it did seem like it was going to be this big ideological debate about where the party was. And it's just like that ends up not being what the DNC chair is good for. It's not the role. It's not the role. And you'll have, look, in terms of spokespeople, you'll have congressional leadership that will be doing a lot of that. The midterms will be key, as you said. And look, the 2028 presidential primary started on November 6th.

So that will be revving up soon. And whoever wins is going to be, you know, going to fundamentally reshape the entire party. So it's not, it matters a lot who the DNC chair is, but for, I think the reasons that you were talking about, which is just the need to kind of rebuild and organize and get back to the grassroots and not, you know, it's less of a spokesperson job. Yeah. And look, I mean,

we're all biased. We love Ben Wickler. Um, and I do, and I worked with Michael Blake in Iowa a million years ago and he's been a vice chair. So there's a lot of like great candidates out there floating their names. We've worked for ROM in the white house. We've had that experience. Um,

Maybe, maybe what we need is someone to yell at us to win again. I'd like, I, you know, that maybe that look, no bad ideas in a brainstorm, maybe some more yelling. I'd like to hear more from O'Malley. Obviously, you know, we've known him for a long time just as a public figure. I don't know much at all about Ken Martin, but he apparently he's, he's not just the chair of the Minnesota Democratic Party or the DFL as it's called there. He's the DNC vice chair because he's also the president of the association of state democratic chairs. Um,

So he has a position at the DNC now and just long time in politics in Minnesota. So I would love to know more from him. Do you think that, you know, if Ben decides to do this, Wisconsin was the smallest swing towards Trump of any swing states in all but four other states? He has been organizing that state, leading that state for a long time. He's got a really strong record of winning that he can talk about. So that is that's that's one thing in Ben's favor. And he is.

He is liked by multiple factions. Yeah, we've talked about wishing we could replicate Ben Wickler. Yeah, that's my secret. And short of that, this is perhaps a way for us to get closer to that than we otherwise could. Yeah, and to Rom's sort of like the most divisive one of the names that's been floated out there, I think the credit to him is in 2006, he ran the DCCC and we won a ton of races and he deserved a lot of credit for that success. And then he was the White House Chief of Staff and he's...

went on to be mayor of Chicago. I think the record in Chicago in particular, though, is seen as divisive for a variety of reasons among Democrats. He's someone who greatly pisses off the left, often on purpose. So, I mean, I think the upsides for Rahm would be a track record of success. The downside would be some pretty obvious splits in the Democratic Party from the first minute.

It said in the report today that now his interest is maybe tepid because if Durbin decides not to run again, he could run for senator in Illinois. Or if Pritzker doesn't run for governor again, he could run for governor in Illinois. If I was Rahm, I would rather do that than come fucking BDNC chair. I remember one time in the White House, I can't remember what the speech was about, but I got called into Rahm's office and he just started like, you know,

he like yelled at me and I remember just being like, it wasn't like, I wasn't like, it wasn't like a, it was just loud. It wasn't, it was just, it was, and I remember saying something like,

Oh, you're doing the thing where you're yelling. Does this what is this supposed to do? Why are you doing the only person that's happened to? No, it was a funny thing. It was just sort of like, oh, my God, you're yelling at me like the famous thing that happens. Yeah. What? Why? What is this tone meant to convey? He did that all the time. All right. Before we go to Tommy's interview with Brandy Zadrozny about RFK Jr. Two quick notes on how our friends on cable news are reacting to a second Trump term.

On Saturday night, Trump went back to Madison Square Garden to see a UFC fight with his new MAGA pals. He had Elon, Vivek Ramaswamy, RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Johnson, who did not look like he belonged. They were also hanging out with Joe Rogan and Dana White.

CNN panelists didn't quite know what to make of this. Here's the reaction from the Bulwark's Mark Caputo. I mean, and it really looks like ancient Rome here. This is sort of the conquering Republican Caesar who's going into the Colosseum and everyone's cheering and he's got his political gladiators with him. That appearance isn't just about him enjoying the applause. He's sending a message to the Senate. For sure. Like, not only are you entertained, but these are my people and are you willing to fight because here's who I have.

Meanwhile, Trump's favorite on-again, off-again frenemies at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, revealed on Monday's Morning Joe that the couple made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago for a meeting with Trump that Mika compared to a kind of diplomatic summit. Joe and I went to Mar-a-Lago to

to meet personally with President-elect Trump. It was the first time we have seen him in seven years. And it's going to come as no surprise to anybody who watches this show, has watched it over the past year or over the past decade, that we didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues, and we told him so.

What we did agree on was to restart communications. And for those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back,

Why wouldn't we? Joe and I realized it's time to do something different. And that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump, but also talking with him. Feels like it's going to be a long four years at CNN and MSNBC. Do you guys see Trump's return as conquering Caesar in ancient Rome or more of a Stalin at Yalta situation? I saw those like guys.

At some point, we all just need to realize that sitting ringside at a fight and then flying home on a PJ while crushing McDonald's with the boys. That's cool. That's pretty cool. It's a fun time. That seems like a good-ass time to most people in this country. And I think that's what it's about. You don't think it was a message to Kevin Kramer and John Cornyn about the picks? No. And then, you know, like, I was watching football yesterday. Okay. You know? I'm kidding. Keep going. Okay.

I was watching football yesterday and then like you have all these players celebrating doing the Trump dance. John Jones, who was UFC fighter who won the fight that night that the fight Trump was at. He came over and kind of like kissed the ring with Trump like.

These guys all like him. They think he's cool. There's a huge swath of the culture that is just into Trump. And also, just to look at it aside, we worked for Obama. Obama was seen as being aloof and he didn't socialize enough, right? There was the famous, why don't you have a drink with Mitch McConnell thing. This is the absolute opposite of that, which is...

He names these weirdos and goobers to his cabinet and then he flies them all to a UFC event and allows them into his entourage for like the cool kid show. And you like dorky little Speaker Johnson who, you know, in his day job is setting up software with his son to monitor their masturbation is now like...

hanging out with Dana White. I mean, it's a brand of politics that combines the professional and the personal in a way that has to be pretty powerful. Didn't see Barack Obama taking Ray LaHood to the Wizards game. Yeah, probably should have. Yeah. I was trying to decide if that had happened. It's like a hit the Republican you put in his cap. Yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, like the dance thing too, it's like,

There's something about it that's like, it's not just like pro-Trump, but it's like anti-everybody that hates Trump. And it's like...

ha, you lost. You have no real power. Like we're done. We're done pretending. Right. And I do like it. That to me is what like sort of a striking about the whole thing, because it's like it's not like everyone suddenly loves Trump so much. It's like it's like Trump exists as like a fuck you. And like the dance is like part of this like big old fuck you. I will say, man, now, if you're going to I get why Mika and Joe went to see see Trump this week, because like.

Donald Trump, imagine getting president and basically getting acquitted of 5,000 felonies, like all in the same day. Like he must be the happiest guy he has ever been in his whole life. If there's ever a question you wanted to ask Donald Trump, this is the time. See, I was thinking...

a lot of the reaction to Mika and Joe going was like, oh, I guess all that, that Hitler rhetoric didn't mean much. I'm like, maybe they didn't really believe it after all. I was like, or did they believe it too much? Yeah. And that's why they went to go kiss the fucker like, hey, Mr. Trump, you don't, you don't crawl towards Kubla Khan because you think he won't kill you. Yeah.

Do you think it's just to like repair the relationship so they can have hard hitting journalism? No, they're fucking probably scared. Trying to get off of the Gates hit list. I look, I'm trying to take serious. We all should reach out more, try to understand the other side, interview them, talk to people who disagree with, et cetera. But like you don't host the kind of establishment show in Washington for decades without access. And that's what this trip was.

They're just trying to reestablish that remember Donald Trump almost was wanted to Do their wedding at the White House and then he called Mika a crazy psycho who was bleeding badly from a facelift rights on Twitter? I forgot about that the other culture Spent a long long eight years a lot of work actually if it's true is great work the other they're just watching this sort of swing on a cultural dime really is it's amazing to behold in 2016 people were

You know, a lot of them were ashamed of supporting Trump or they didn't tell people they didn't have Trump signs. But now, like, again, this NFL player named Nick Bosa plays for the 49ers. He wore a Trump hat during I think it was like a pregame or postgame interview and he got fined by the NFL. And, you know, the kind of narrative on the right is like.

Ha, he can do that in your face, free speech, whatever. A decade ago, it was black NFL players kneeling during the anthem and they were told that they were insulting the troops and you had Trump tweeting about them and how dare they bring politics into sports. And just like the pendulum has swung so thoroughly. It is head spinning. Yeah. You also see like right wing stories about like Trump.

you know, CBS censors the Trump dance. They don't want America to see the Trump dance. They're just like spinning it up because like, it's like they're making- They don't want people to see the double jerk off? Well, it's, it's just sort of like, it's like, it's, it's both like, it's like they are in power. Trump has won. They control all branches of government. Like showing your support for this is somehow both like, like,

you're embracing the most powerful forces in American life and it's like an act of resistance against the kind of like woke mob. And man, we gotta figure out, we gotta figure out a politics that's fun because this sucks. - Yeah, that is the key thing. Like those photos and videos of Trump walking to the UFC thing surrounded by goobers, it looks really fun. It looks like a party people wanna be a part of and we have to figure out how to emulate that. - It's time for Hakeem Jeffries to go to SUFs.

Suffs, get on the plane. We're all going to Suffs. I mean, the first step is not to fucking whine about it. Right. That is the first step to not like... Or pretend it's something that it's not. It's not like a threat. It's just a guy going to a sporting event. Well, it's like, once again, they want the reaction. I saw a bunch of like right-wing commentators on X being like...

the libs have been kind of silent since, since he won and they're not complaining and both like they, they exist to have the fight. They want the fight. They want the, they want the liberal tears. They want people to be right. Like, and if you don't give it back to them, they get pissed, you know? Um,

Okay. When we come back from the break, you're going to hear Tommy's conversation with Brandi Zadrozny about RFK Jr. and all the wellness and vaccine skepticism craziness that got us to where we are today. One quick thing before we do that. This week on Assembly Required, Stacey Abrams talks with historian Heather Cox Richardson to see how history can be our guide in charting our path forward. Together, they dive into strategies for countering disinformation and harnessing states' rights. And

And Stacey answers audience questions on getting involved. Listen to the latest episode of Assembly Required now or watch on YouTube. When we come back, Brandi Zadrozny.

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I am so excited to welcome to the show today Brandi Zadrozny. She's a senior reporter at NBC News. She specializes in misinformation, extremism, and the intersection of technology and politics. And as someone whose work I have read for a very long time. Brandi, it's great to see you. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for doing this. So I just wanted to start big picture. I mean, the context here is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now nominated to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Very big job. And I want to talk a little bit first about how we got here, because I

I imagine for some listening, Robert F. Kennedy's popularity is quite surprising. But for others, especially those who consume kind of wellness content on social media, the issues he's talking about are very familiar. Kids' foods being unhealthy, additives, dyes in food, fruit loops, how stuff we eat here is actually banned in other countries, etc.

corporate capture of regulatory agencies, et cetera. Can you just kind of describe for listeners the wellness media space and how you think that has helped Kennedy build an audience? Yeah. I mean, the wellness media space was, is really a woman's space in so many ways in terms of consuming. Right. And so, you know, we can talk about this in the, in the

frame of Kennedy himself. You know, the way that he became where he is now is truly a story of women. It's a story of women on the Internet who had babies who were sick and they didn't understand why. And so this was a real problem they were facing. They, you know,

No one had an answer for them. And then they came onto the internet and there was this really burgeoning community of wellness mamas, of autism moms, they called themselves, warrior moms, this Jenny McCarthy era that we remember pretty well, of women saying, there's no answers for us, so we're going to find some ourselves. And he became a champion of these women. You know, they literally came to his door with a stack of, you know, papers and data and said, see, the data shows this.

And it did not then, and it does not now, but he became their champion. And he went to spaces like churches in Harlem. He went to spaces that people who had real health concerns weren't being heard and said, I am your champion. I have an easy answer for you, as conspiracy theorists do, and gave them that answer. He grew his organization from one that was making less than a million dollars in 2015, 2016, to a

an organization that's making, you know, 20 something million dollars a year now. It's huge and it was a big movement anyway, even after, you know, we decided that, you

Jenny McCarthy's and that like whole campaign was no good. We didn't want it, you know, in public anymore. It was relegated sort of back to the Internet. But then COVID came along. And with COVID, that audience of like moms who were looking for answers for why their babies were sick, now was everybody looking for answers for what is this disease? What is this sickness? What causes it? We were all, you know...

I was taking wipes and wiping off my groceries. We just were all scared.

And so just his audience just exploded. And he has been saying the same thing that he was saying those moms. The world is sick. I know how to fix it. Yeah, I'll never forget like Clorox wiping every individual Clementine, knowing that I was going to peel that thing at some point. It seems stupid in hindsight, but that's how scared we were. But yeah, I want to get to this broader cause, the Make America Healthy Again cause. But let's start with vaccines because that has been Kennedy's focus, primary focus for, you know,

20 plus years now. He could be very evasive, though, when asked about what he really believes about vaccines or his claims about their efficacy or the harm that's caused. Can you just give us a bit of the backstory about how he kind of came to the vaccine cause and what he's been saying and how those claims have evolved over the years?

Yeah. So he came to the anti-vax cause in 2005. Again, he was giving these environmental talks and a couple of women who were at the forefront of the movement came to him and said, you know, you could be a great champion for us, basically. And so he wrote this book.

article that was really well received. He was on Morning Joe or whatever it was called at the time. He was John Stewart interviewed him because he wrote this article saying basically that the CDC in a secret meeting in Georgia determined that autism was caused by vaccines and that they weren't telling anybody. It was a big cover up.

That probably sounds like a familiar storyline for him now, even to people who aren't familiar with them. But that was the storyline. That has since been retracted by Rolling Stone and Salon. We learned that not only that,

piece that he wrote, but also the wider research that he based his piece on, including Andrew Wakefield's debunked study about the MMR vaccine causing autism. That has all been debunked at this point. He never backs down. He never says, oh, maybe I went wrong about that thing, despite the fact that he says he does that a lot. And I was still sort of reporting on the movement generally. But in 2015, I was working at the Daily Beast and

And this is an interesting story. And I'll keep it short. But I was working at the Daily Beast. And he came to my editor-in-chief at the time, John Avalon, and said, I have an essay that I want printed in the Daily Beast. And the headline was, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. And that was the moment where he was like – like wanted to sort of turn –

the story around. He was tired of being called an anti-vaxxer, and he's like, I'm not one, and he laid out this whole reason why. It was given to me to fact-check. And so I fact-checked it. He had tons of footnotes in the bottom. I called the people who had written the studies that provided the footnotes, and they were like, this person's crazy. No, that's not what my research says. And furthermore, don't put my name in this because I'm afraid that his minions on the internet are going to reach out and harass me. That was 2015. Yeah.

So he's been wanting to say that he's not an anti-vaxxer for a long time. He can say it forever, and it's just not true. When COVID happened in 2021, that was the first time that I had seen him saying, we don't have to hide anymore. Anti-vaxxer is fine. And so he said on a podcast, this thing that I think about all the time, he told people

These other people on the podcast, this is our moment. You know, we've been hiding in the closet as anti-vaxxers too long, afraid of our family disowning us. But COVID has now given us this big audience. People are believing what we're saying. And so now, he said, I go on my morning hikes and if I see a woman with a baby, I tell her, you better not vaccinate that baby. You better save that baby.

And so the idea that he could even claim to be not an anti-vaxxer is so wild. He says that no vaccines are safe and effective. And if you believe that, then...

It's curious to me, then why wouldn't he be an anti-vaxxer? Why wouldn't he own that label? And it seems clearly because he's in this space where he wanted mainstream acknowledgement. He wanted mainstream acceptance, whether running for president or now as this HHS secretary pick. Yeah. And just to dig in a little more to his claims. I mean, his primary claim for a long time was that an additive called thimerosal was causing...

autism because it was in vaccines. My understanding is I think thimerosal has now been out of basically all vaccines for decades, but rates of autism did not collapse when that happened. And RFK, as you just mentioned, has not since said, hey, sorry, I was wrong. What he does is he shifts the goalposts. And he says, well, actually, now the problem is that thimerosal is in the flu vaccines. Now, never mind the fact that

I think a little over half of kids aged six months to 17 years got the flu vaccine in 2023, 2024. That was down from pre-COVID levels, by the way. And the single dose flu vaccine, which is the most popular kind, doesn't have any thimerosal in it because it's a preservative that you use in multi-dose vaccines. But this is what he does, right? He just, when you call him out on a factual error, he just shifts the goalposts. And this is why he's so challenging to debate as a public figure.

And it's so nebulous. Like he he does this thing called the Gish Gallop, which I know that you're familiar with. It's, you know, just give this throwing spaghetti at you and, you know, seeing what sticks. He has a lot of facts and figures. He talks about like, well, in 1999, you know, the vaccine was increased to this many shots and that many shots. And so at the end of it, you're like, whoa, that man really sounds like he knows what he's talking about.

But in general, like I've interviewed him several times. I have read everything that he's written. I have watched every podcast I think that he's ever done. And the main idea of his worldview is actually so broad and nebulous. It's that it's that one vaccines don't work. So he's a vaccine truther. He doesn't believe that the polio vaccine, soft polio. He doesn't believe that vaccines have saved us at all. He thinks it's this like.

issue of sanitation, which of course makes us healthier. But his main idea is that vaccines don't work at all. And he may not. So now he's like, OK, maybe it's not thimerosal, though he does think that was dangerous and he was right at the time and has never said he was wrong. But he now thinks, well, it's some sort of environmental toxin or something else in the vaccine must be it. That's what you're talking about, moving these goalposts. And so there is no fact checking him there.

There is no like if we can just show him that this is wrong, then surely he'll change it. Just go on to the next thing. Yeah, actually, I came across this claim that the polio vaccine didn't work, actually, because I was watching Joe Rogan talk with some of his buddies about the Trump interview and sort of it was actually Rogan's frustration that.

Trump in that interview named polio as a successful vaccination campaign because in fact Joe Rogan did not think that was true and we don't have to belabor the audience here but to your points like this this goes beyond just the COVID vaccine they're they're questioning all vaccines but let's get back to RFK because I

If he's confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy would oversee the Food and Drug Administration, the Center for Disease Control, the National Institute of Health. He would advise the president on health policy. He would oversee the regulation of drugs and vaccines, biomedical research, HHS's massive budget.

Generally, I saw a quote from him the other day that if he gets the job, he's going to say to NIH scientists, bless you all. Thank you for your public service. We're going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years. I imagine that means R&D. But what kind of things do you think Kennedy could do with that power as Secretary of Health and Human Services that might impact drug or vaccine availability or usage in this country?

There's so much he could do. A former HHS secretary called the position a shocking amount of power with the stroke of a pen. And so on day there, I mean, I could we could talk about just this one thing forever. But the thing that people are concerned about that I talked to in the public health space are a couple of things. One, there's.

There's an advisory panel that basically of doctors and experts, public health experts that meet and they look at all the science around vaccines. They look at the safety signals. They look at the data and then they make recommendations for certain vaccines. Those those recommendations are then given to the states that make their recommendations and make their school policies, stuff like that. He could disband that tomorrow.

he's in power. And that would be really helpful to him, actually. And Children's Health Defense, his organization, often makes a big show of going to those advisory panel meetings and having their anti-vaccine activists make hay at those meetings so they get airtime and public comment, stuff like that. That's long been a target for them. So there's no reason to think that he wouldn't do that. If we don't have data and we don't have good people weighing in and we don't have

advice to give states, then that could hurt the public rollout of vaccines. Also, vaccines are like, it's not like it comes, it's a really complicated process, actually, to get vaccines into enough children that they have herd immunity in this way that they can, we can ward off diseases like the measles or whooping cough, which is rising now.

And what that takes is lots of public-private sort of partnerships working hand-in-hand, and a lot of that funding comes from HHS. He could say, tomorrow, all of this stuff, all of these, like, those partnerships, we don't need those. Let's turn off the lights there. He could do that tomorrow. I mean, you know, we could go on and on and on, but he did this interview with a colleague of mine recently, and he was asked, would you...

Would you stop giving people vaccines? And he said, no, no, no. I would not do that. If you want a vaccine, you can have a vaccine. But he could make getting vaccines very, very difficult. He could also... This is an important thing. He could also...

You know, vaccine makers have liability against lawsuits for because they were being frivolously sued in the 70s. Vaccines are not a huge moneymaker for drug makers. And if they're sued by, you know, people who have their child has an illness and they'd like to explain it with a temporal association and they get sued, they might say, which they were starting to do, this isn't worth our time. Right.

And so they have this liability. He could take all of the vaccines that currently enjoy that liability and he could erase them, basically. And so that would change quite a bit. And the last thing he could do that he's already signaled that he wants to do and not the last thing, that's a lie. But one other thing he could do is that he has said that he wants to look under the hood, basically, of all these departments and

and look at the data. And Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump's transition team, said on CNN the other day, he wants to look at the data so he can show that they are unsafe. This is not science. That's cherry picking. Yeah. And so what happens when the head from the government, the head of HHS, is giving us, giving the public misinformation that says vaccines are unsafe? You have a lot of people who aren't going to vaccinate because of that.

And you just need 10%, whatever it is, that threshold to say, not for me, to cause a public health crisis in this country like we have never seen. And just to give folks a real world example of such a public health crisis, can you tell us the story of RFK Jr. and anti-vax in Samoa? Because I think it's instructive. Yeah. So in 2019...

there was a measles outbreak in Samoa. And there was a measles outbreak because two babies had died after receiving a measles vaccine. Now,

There was space in between when those children died and learning why they died. And they didn't die because the measles vaccine is dangerous. They died because two nurses incorrectly mixed the vaccine. And so instead of mixing that vaccine with water, they mixed it with a steroid and it killed these babies. It's tragic. But in that space, when no one knew what was the cause, there was a lot of fear. And so people en masse stopped vaccinating.

They were supported by a couple of local activists and misinformation provided by Children's Health Defense, specifically from Robert F. Kennedy, who came to Samoa with his lovely wife and, you know, met with government leaders, met with anti-vaccine activists, and then came back and wrote a letter to the head of the government of Samoa saying, in effect, don't vaccinate.

Now, people started dying as they do, mostly small children and babies as what happens when you get a measles outbreak. And so I think in total, 83 or close to that, people have died.

The government reacted with an immediate vaccination campaign, but it was too late. And so a lot of people died. And more than that, too, a lot of people got sick. A lot of babies got sick. And I know you have a young child at home. I do. A lot, a lot of kids needlessly got sick, which is really sad, too. Like we don't want to pepper over that. Right. Or like skate over it.

And so after this measles outbreak happened, I asked Kennedy about this. He's been asked other places about this. But he denies that the measles killed those children and killed those 83 people and instead thinks that it has something to do with the vaccination campaign itself. Although he's been a little quieter on that conspiracy theory only because it's

linked to the deaths of these children. And he'd very much neither like him nor his organization to be linked with that.

He's just like, it's like the most, everyone's had a relationship with a friend or a partner or that person just will never concede an inch or ever say they're sorry or ever give you just like a little, like you just want, I want you to say sorry one time and then we can be friends again. And it just, they won't do it and it drives you insane. And that is Robert F. Kennedy. Stepping back from my weird psychobabble and away from vaccines for a second. There is this broader Kennedy agenda, the kind of make America healthy again agenda.

And I think it sounds very reasonable. I want my kids to eat healthy. I don't want my kids ingesting pesticides or chemical additives.

I think he's right that there is corporate capture of regulatory agencies, meaning it's more likely the corporations are telling the regulators what to do than vice versa. And people kind of siphon in and out, right? All of that is true. What I don't get, though, is how Kennedy is going to solve these problems when so much of the Trump agenda is deregulation. And you've got

Republicans getting, I think, $40 million from Koch Industries, for example, which does

You know, they have the chemical industry. They're in the ag industry. Trump got tons of money from the tobacco industry. So there's all these, you know, all these cross pressures and something's got to give. Right. I mean, how do you think Kennedy is going to be able to sort of exist in that ecosystem when you've got Lee Zeldin over at EPA, for example, who I'm guessing is not going to want to overly regulate pesticides? Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, I don't I'm shocked constantly. I'm constantly in a state of shock about like why people are doing nothing makes sense to me ever. So I don't I don't I can't like pretend to peek into the president elects brain and determine like why or how he would get this. And he wouldn't listen.

Kennedy says a lot of things that are not true. Kennedy says that he is going to go into HHS and figure out within two months, he says, what is causing the childhood disease epidemic, as he states it, you know, obesity, asthma, like literally everything that befalls children or that could. He's going to figure it out within two months.

And then within two years, he's going to fix it all. So, like, I don't know what he's going to do. I also don't know. People have asked me for over a decade whether Kennedy means it, whether he believes any of this stuff.

Yesterday, I saw him on a plane eating McDonald's and drinking a Coke. And I was like, wait, but I thought like this is I'm so confused. So maybe getting so close to the halls of power is enough to make him say, you know, I did what I could and not mess with things too much. You know, I do know that.

There are a group, a large group of people, these, you know, autism moms, this anti-vaccine movement that he's built that treat him like a god and that he could say basically whatever he wanted in terms of like what I tried, what worked, what didn't, and they would be fine. My concern is that

I just I have to believe or I still hold on to the fact that Trump in 2017 met with RFK, you know, signaled that he was going to do some sort of vaccine, whatever with him vaccine, make him a vaccine czar, have like a working group or something. And then better angels or smarter advisors came and said, don't do that.

And then that was squashed pretty immediately. I don't I don't if he gets confirmed. I don't know if he gets in. How long will he last before Trump says, actually, like, it probably wouldn't be a really good idea to spark a public health crisis on like many different fronts. Maybe people wouldn't like if I did that and got rid of him.

TBD. Yeah, TBD. And look, it's not just that we're hoping for better angels to get to Trump. It's also, I think there might be corporate interests that get to Trump that just say, this guy's not going to do it because it's going to hurt our bottom line. But I think you're getting at something that is

It's kind of hard to convey to people about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because it sounds kind of harsh and it sounds very partisan. But the reality is he's just incredibly dishonest. And I know he's a famous guy and I know he's named Kennedy. But like, you know, a year ago we had Jake Tapper on the show.

And Jake told us how back in 2005, around that salon Rolling Stone article that you talked about, the Kennedy row that was later retracted about vaccines and autism. Jake did a piece on it for ABC News. And he had this conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And the way RFK represented what they talked about was just like entirely fabricated, utter bullshit. And of course, you know,

the, the representation was that, you know, Jake called him and be like, look, man, I got to pull the plug on this thing because big pharma overlords are beaten down my neck. Right. Like just didn't happen. Nonsense. But RFK tells the story this way, including like a few months ago. And so I'm trying to understand how there's that reality. And then there's RFK juniors, popular appeal, but then also he has like supporters in big places, big tech,

Hollywood, sports, Aaron Rodgers, politics. I mean, you spend time with RFK. Where do you think his appeal comes from? And how have these lies not caught up to him really?

So the first line, I'm going to mess it up, but the first line in RFK's book, American Values, is something like, I knew very early that the world was made up of gods and monsters, good and evil. And I was like, no, no, it's not. Like, that's a really problematic... For me, as a person who knows that the truth is almost always found in nuance, that's a problematic worldview. And I think that it is...

Very intoxicating, especially for someone who's looking for an answer and not finding one. There are a lot of frustrated people out there that, like you said, I don't want crap in my kids' lunches. Like my kid has not a great lunch at NYC public schools. My kid who needs special education, they can't figure out the bus on time for him. Like COVID is scary. Wealth gap is real. Like

the money, I'm never going to buy a house. Like there's just all of these grievances that have no home politically, it feels like. And so when a person like Kennedy, again, is saying, I can fix it, I think it's very, very alluring. And it's not just health, right? He ran on this campaign of all of these sorts of issues and having these very, very easy answers for them. And I think that's

Having a person that knows all the answers is an intoxicating thing. Having him be a Kennedy is an intoxicating thing. We tell we are storytellers. We tell ourselves stories for everything. And I just he's he's a he's just a crazy.

a crazy alluring figure in that way. I think intoxicating is the perfect word because there is that time when you read something and you feel like you just learned like kind of the Rosetta Stone to solving like a whole worldview. And it's this amazing, empowering feeling. And before we started recording, I said, you know, I wanted to approach this conversation with empathy because I think these are understandable feelings. Every parent wants to protect their kids.

If your kid is harmed, you want to know why and you want to prevent it from happening again. A lot of the women you were talking about who sort of like getting these Kennedy messages were doing it at a moment of real emotional vulnerability and trauma. I know for my wife and I, we experienced a ton of pregnancy loss and all of a sudden TikTok knows and you're bombarded with information about potential causes or fixes or fucking snake oil. Um,

And then COVID, right, upends everything and pours gas on all these feelings. And I feel like actually raise some, it was a more legitimate conversation about vaccines that were relatively new and mRNA technology being new and vaccine mandates versus people's freedom not to take them, right? And so it just all got so much more complicated. But now it's like, I can't remember if it was in one of your stories or someone else's stories or something else I was reading. There was an effort to,

People were shown kind of anti-vax conspiracy theory video. And then as sort of a test, they tried to show them, these researchers, that video with kind of fact-checking below it. And in fact, the fact-checking actually hardened people's views about their belief in these conspiracy theories they were hearing. And it just made me want to wonder, okay,

What's the best way to talk to people in our lives about these problems? Like everyone has a family member or a friend or someone who is vaccine hesitant or anti-vaccine at this point. What do you think? What's the best way to approach that conversation? I mean, in terms of health misinformation, I don't know if...

you and I around the Thanksgiving table or whatever can make much of a dent in someone's belief in that way. Because like, it's like, again, health misinformation, if we zoom back has always preyed on the vulnerable and the vulnerable are new parents. Even if you have healthy kids, right. Where you're just like, I don't know what to do with this beautiful baby. Like, and it's all, it's literally life or death every second going a nap is life or death.

And so that's a very scary place to be in. And you're Googling all the time at 3 a.m. in the morning. And so like and like the same is true, you know, beyond this, Kennedy's also like a cancer truther. He's got like these wider ideas, too. So like, again, people that have cancer and it's not getting better with, you know, the doctor or whatever, they're looking for these other avenues. I sort of

One, I do think that empathy is always the way to go for anything. Like, I don't think being mean to people and making them feel stupid or, like, is ever going to make anybody sort of see your side of things. But, like, we have got to get to a place somehow where, like, experts are...

And the same places that these like influencers and who are chasing clout or cash or whatever it is. And, you know, that is Kennedy, too. Like where they're so available, their content is so quick. And, you know, we did that a little bit during COVID. There were, I think, doctors who were like, this is where we need to be. We need to be online and we need to be authentic. We can't be like, oh.

You know, we have to show them, show our homes. We have to show our own struggles. We have to be creators. And like that really works. I think sharing content from creators who are,

meeting these other creators where they are is really, really helpful. So like I have a host of doctors and creators that I follow like that. And you'll see in their comment sections people that have come from the wellness space, that have come from, you know, the Dr. Mercola's and the Kennedy's who were only talking about that. And now they have an answer to some of their questions from someone that they actually trust.

Because, and I'll just say one more thing is that, like, you know, Kennedy likes to talk about how nobody trusts Congress, nobody trusts government, nobody trusts the media. And he is the answer to that. But, like, Kennedy is a lawyer. I remember they were always the butt of the joke in terms of.

trust. Like we should not be trusting this man. And when you see these content creators up against Kennedy, I think that stands a real chance of breaking through. Well, yeah. And you and I both have sort of obliquely referenced this wellness scene a couple of times. I mean, can you just tell us a little bit more about that, how people are getting drawn in? And then is it a profit motivated scene or are these people who are true believers? Of course, probably a combination. But what's your sense?

I don't know. I really... Sometimes I think... Like, there are content creators that are so out there, like the woman who said that you could heal your eyes. Did you see that? There was one that said, like, you don't need glasses anymore. You can heal yourself. It's just big ophthalmology. Oh, well, she's right. Yeah. She's got it. She's got it. That's true. I mean, you don't have glasses and I do, so who's the real loser? Big glasses. That's me. But yeah, so, like, it really is, like, a spectrum. Yeah. And, like...

I like, again, like it's a big, it's a big movement of women, like again, driving sort of a lot of this content creation. And so like, it's, I like girly stuff. I like wellness. I like, you know, I'm a crunchy person. I'm a crunchy mom. And so like, it's a big industry that's like mostly fine, actually, like a lot of it's just fine content, mommy blog and stuff. And then it's, but it's that, that small portion that's just,

sort of insidious and gross and leads you to like these websites where they want to sell you, you know, lemon supplements to cure your cancer, which gets problematic. Right. Or like natural sunblock because the other sunblock doesn't work and you shouldn't wear it and it actually makes you burn. The one I really don't get as a pale person, I find that very offensive. I know. Um,

That's Nicole Shanahan's thing. Yes, it is Nicole Shanahan's thing. The RFK's former vice presidential nominee. The one I really just don't get is raw milk. Why do people want to drink raw milk so bad? Ew. I don't, like, have they never been to a farm? I just, it's so...

It's crazy that that's what you want to do. I don't know. I mean, I lived in Vermont for a while. I've seen lots of farms. Me too. I've seen a cow being milked, and you could not pay me to drink that. It's dumb. The milk stuff is pretty close to the poop stuff. You always want to keep that in mind. Do you think there were errors by the government or tech platforms when it comes to talking about COVID, vaccine efficacy, the kind of silencing of the they? Did that make it worse?

With a conspiracy theory, a pretty important part of making it bigger is being able to say – or just saying most of the time. But if you can say it and it's true, that's even better. That nobody wants you to know this. Yes. They. This is the answer they don't want you to hear. And so like –

That was a really big part in propelling some of this misinformation. So, like, that was a problem. I think that platforms should have a North Star generally. I think if you're going to be the steward of a public square –

Then you should probably, you know, make sure that your parks department keeps it clean of trash. You should probably make sure that, you know, if you have a naked person screaming, well, that's not good for kids. Like, let's get that guy out of here. And you don't want people just popping up booths and selling snake oil all the time. That would probably not be a fun place where, like, you'd want generally to come. And so, like, I sort of think the same thing of kids.

social media platforms, Twitter was not perfect. Like, yeah, it turns out probably shouldn't have stopped the Biden laptop from spreading. That was probably a huge mistake. Probably shouldn't have labeled so much just from what we know now from research, labeled so much COVID misinformation, probably should have knocked Kennedy off when he was

breaking the rules in 2018 and 2019 against, you know, targeted ads or misinformation around vaccines when we were having a measles outbreak. We knew about that then. So, like, I think you can get the worst actors off your platform. You can try to provide good information where you can, and you cannot get so in the weeds that it

Gets out of control, but like I'm you know, I'm I don't know how you say that cuz I don't know sports What are they quarterbacking armchair? Mm-hmm. Monday morning quarterbacking. That's me. So it's a hard job content moderation is really really hard and until

Musk fired them all. There were some really thoughtful people doing some really thoughtful work. Did they get it right all the time? No. But like my big take from the Twitter files was just that there were a lot of really professional people trying to keep their platforms safe. Yeah. You're not going to get it right 100% of the time. Yeah. I mean, I got to tell you, like I have a lot of people that say to me,

Which of these cabinet choices are you the most worried about? Is it Tulsi? Cause she's a Russian stooge, blah, blah, blah. I think we all should stop saying that stuff by the way. Or is it, you know, this person or Matt Gates for me right now, it's Robert F. Kennedy jr. Because as you mentioned, I mean, I have almost a two year old, I have a six month old, um,

I'm just worried about them being at physical risk, period, because of fear mongering, because of some step to limit access to medicines that they need. I mean, I think in like right now we're holding out hope that Republicans spike Robert F. Kennedy Jr. because he is pro-choice and they really want a pro-life nominee. That's where we're at. That's that's good news for us.

I I'm I'm not a political person. I'm just not. But like, it's such a dangerous, dangerous idea. And I talk to doctors all the time. I talk to pediatricians who've like cried to me just like hoping, hoping that this doesn't happen. Like when somebody says I want to dismantle public health. Yeah. We should believe them. Yeah, we should believe them. Brandy, where can people find your work?

NBCnews.com and I'm on Blue Sky. Oh, you're Blue Sky-er. I haven't gotten over there yet. I'm worried it's going to be a lot of like, you know, progressives either agreeing or telling me that I suck because I'm not far enough left.

That's what I hate about threads, actually. I find it just like, oh, insufferable. Everybody's like signaling how whatever they are. I just don't like it. Blue Sky has like very early Twitter feelings where it just feels like a fun place to be. And like, that's all I'm looking for in these dark, dark times. Maybe I'll check that out. Please do it. Brandi Zabrozny, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for all your great reporting on this. I think people should follow you because I do, you know, look at the...

Science is not a clean, easy process, nor is media or information gathering or combating misinformation. I think it's going to take lots of intensive work by people like you to, you know, build a body of evidence that this guy is just wrong and dangerously wrong. So hopefully we'll keep it up. I hope so. Thanks. Thank you.

That's our show for today. Tommy will be back in your feed tomorrow with guest host Liz Smith, one of the smartest Democratic strategists out there. You'll also hear Dan's interview with Senator Jon Tester on Democrats' problems in the heartland and how we can make our brand more appealing. Talk to everyone soon.

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