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it's not our business to change the Russian government. Anybody who thinks it's a good idea
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to do regime change in Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than we do, is irresponsible.
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Vladimir Putin himself has said, we will not live in a world without Russia. It was clear when he
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said that that he was talking about himself. He has his hand on a button that could bring
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Armageddon to the entire planet. So why are we messing with this? It's not our job to change
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that regime. We should be making friends with the Russians. We shouldn't be treating them as
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an enemy. Now we've pushed them into the camp with China. That's not a good thing for our country.
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By the way, what we're doing now does not appear to be weakening Putin at all.
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The following is a conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., candidate for the president
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of the United States, running as a Democrat. Robert is an activist, lawyer, and author
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who has challenged some of the world's most powerful corporations, seeking to hold them
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accountable for the harm they may cause. I love science and engineering. These two pursuits are,
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to me, the most beautiful and powerful in the history of human civilization.
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Science is our journey, our fight for uncovering the laws of nature and leveraging them to
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understand the universe and to lessen the amount of suffering in the world. Some of the greatest
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human beings I've ever met, including most of my good friends, are scientists and engineers.
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Again, I love science. But science cannot flourish without epistemic humility,
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without debate, both in the pages of academic journals and in the public square,
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in good faith, long-form conversations. Agree or disagree, I believe Robert's voice should be part
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of the debate. To call him a conspiracy theorist and arrogantly dismiss everything he says without
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addressing it diminishes the public's trust in the scientific process. At the same time,
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dogmatic skepticism of all scientific output on controversial topics like the pandemic is equally,
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if not more, dishonest and destructive. I recommend that people read and listen to
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., his arguments and his ideas. But I also recommend, as I say in this
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conversation, that people read and listen to Vincent Racanello from This Week in Virology,
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Dan Wilson from Debunk the Funk, and the Twitter and books of Paul Offit, Eric Topol, and others
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who are outspoken in their disagreement with Robert. It is disagreement, not conformity,
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that bends the long arc of humanity toward truth and wisdom. In this process of disagreement,
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everybody has a lesson to teach you, but we must have the humility to hear it and to learn from it.
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This is the Lex Freeman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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It's the 4th of July, Independence Day, so simple question, simple big question. What do you love
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about this country, the United States of America?
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I would say there are so many things that I love about the country, on the landscapes and the
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waterways and the people, et cetera, but on the higher level. People argue about whether we're
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an exemplary nation. And that term has been given a bad name, particularly by the neocons,
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the actions, the neocons in recent decades who have turned that phrase into a justification
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for forcing people to adopt American systems or values at the barrel of a gun.
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But my father and uncle used it in a very different way, and they were very proud of it.
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I grew up very proud of this country because we were the exemplary nation in the sense that
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we were an example of democracy all over the world. When we first launched our democracy in
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1780, we were the only democracy on earth. And by the Civil War, by 1865, there were six democracies.
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Today, there's probably 190. And all of them in one way or another are modeled on the American
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experience. And it's kind of extraordinary because our first contact with, our first
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serious and sustained contact with the European culture and continent was in 1608,
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when John Winthrop came over with his Puritans in the Slough-Arpela. And Winthrop gave this
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famous speech where he said, this is going to be a city on a hill. This is going to be an example
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for all the other nations in the world. And he warned his fellow Puritans. They were sitting at
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this great expanse of land. And he said, we can't be seduced by the lure of real estate or by the
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carnal opportunities of this land. We have to take this country as a gift from God and then turn it
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into an example for the rest of the world of God's love, of God's will and wisdom.
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And then 200 years later, 250 years later, they, a different generation, they were mainly deists.
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There are people who had a belief in God, but not so much a love of particularly religious
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cosmologies. You know, the framers, the constitution believed that we were creating
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something that would be replicated around the world and that it was an example. In democracy,
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there would be this kind of wisdom from the collective, you know, that, and the word
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wisdom means a knowledge of God's will. And that somehow God would speak through the collective
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in a way that he or she could not speak through totalitarian regimes. And, you know, I think that
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that's something that even though Winthrop was a white man and a Protestant, that every immigrant
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group who came after them kind of adopted that belief. And I know my family, when, you know,
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my family came over, all of my grandparents came over in 1848 during the potato famine.
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And they saw this country as unique in history as something that, you know, that was,
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that was part of kind of a broader spiritual mission. And so I'd say that from a 30,000 foot
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level, that, you know, that's, I grew up so proud of this country and believing that it was the
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greatest country in the world. And for those reasons.
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Well, I immigrated to this country. And one of the things that really embodies America to me is the
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ideal of freedom. Hunter Thompson said, freedom is something that dies unless it's used.
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What does freedom mean to you? To me, freedom does not mean, you know, chaos.
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And it does not mean anarchy. It means that it, it, it has to be accompanied by restraint. If it's
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going to live up to its promise and self-restraint, what it means is the capacity for
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human beings to, to exercise and to fulfill their, their creative energies
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unrestrained as much as possible by government. So this point that Hunter Thompson made is dies
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unless it's used. Do you agree with that? Yeah, I do agree with that. And I think, you know,
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he was not unique in saying that, you know, Thomas Jefferson said that the tree of liberty has to be
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had be watered with the blood of each generation. And what he meant by that is that it's, it's,
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you can't live off, we can't live off the laurels of the American revolution.
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That, you know, we had a group, we had a generation where between 25,000 and 70,000 Americans died.
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They gave their lives, they gave their livelihoods, they gave their status, they gave their property
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and they put it all on the line to give us our bill of rights. And that, but those bill of rights,
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the moment that we signed them, there were forces within our society that began trying to chip away
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at them. And that, you know, happens in every generation and it is the obligation of every
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generation to safeguard and protect those freedoms. The blood of each generation. You mentioned your
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interest, your admiration of Albrecht Camus, of Stoicism, perhaps your interest in existentialism.
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Camus said, I believe in myth of Sisyphus, the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become
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so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. What do you think he means by
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that? I suppose the way that Camus viewed the world and the way that the Stoics did and a lot
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of the existentialists was that it was so absurd and that the problems and the tasks that were
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given just to live a life are so insurmountable that the only way that we can kind of get back
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to the gods for giving us this, you know, this impossible task of living life was to embrace it
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and to enjoy it and to do our best at it. I mean, to me, I, you know, I read Camus and
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particularly in the myth of Sisyphus as a kind of a parable that, and it's the same lesson that
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I think he writes about in the plague where we're all given these insurmountable tasks in our lives,
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but that by doing our duty, by being of service to others, we can bring meaning to a meaningless
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chaos and we can bring order to the universe. And, you know, Sisyphus was kind of the
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iconic hero of the Stoics and he was a man because he did something good, he delivered a gift to
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humanity. He angered the gods and they condemned him to push a rock up the hill every day and then
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it would roll down. When he got to the top, it would roll down and he'd spend the night going
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back down the hill to collect it and then rolling it back up the hill again. And the task was
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absurd. It was insurmountable. He could never win. But the last line of that book is one of the great
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lines, which is something to the extent that, you know, I can picture Sisyphus smiling,
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because Camus' belief was that even though his task was insurmountable, that he was a happy man.
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And he was a happy man because he put his shoulder to the stone. He took his duty,
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he embraced the task and the absurdity of life and he pushed the stone up the hill.
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And that if we do that and if we find ways of being of service to others, that is the ultimate,
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that's the key to the lock, that's the solution to the puzzle.
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Each individual person in that way can rebel against absurdity by discovering meaning to this
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whole messy thing. And we can bring meaning not only to our own lives, but
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we can bring meaning to the universe as well. We can bring some kind of order to life.
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The embrace of those tasks and the commitment to service resonates out from us to the rest
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of humanity in some way. So you mentioned The Plague by Camus. There's a lot of different
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ways to read that book, but one of them, especially given how it was written,
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is that The Plague symbolizes Nazi Germany and the Hitler regime. What do you learn about
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human nature from a figure like Adolf Hitler, that he's able to
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captivate the minds of millions, rise to power and take on pulling the whole world into a global war?
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I was born nine years after the end of World War II, and I grew up in a generation that was
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with my parents who were fixated on that, on what happened. And my father, at that time,
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the resolution in the minds of most Americans and I think people around the world is that there
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had been something wrong with the German people, that the Germans had been particularly susceptible
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to this kind of demagoguery and to following a powerful leader and to industrializing cruelty and
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murder. And my father always differed with that. My father said, this is not a German problem.
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This could happen to all of us. We're all just inches away from barbarity. And the thing that
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keeps us safe in this country are the institutions of our democracy, our constitution. It's not our
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nature. Our nature has to be restrained. And that comes through self-restraint, but also
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you know, the beauty of our country is that we develop, we devise these institutions that
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are designed to allow us to flourish, but at the same time, not to give us enough freedom to flourish,
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but also create enough order to keep us from collapsing into barbarity.
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So, you know, one of the other things that my father talked about from when I was little,
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he would ask us this question. If you were the family and Anne Frank came to your door and asked
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you to hide her, would you be one of the people who hid her, at risk your own life, or would you
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be one of the people who turned her in? And of course, we would all say, well, of course,
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we would hide Anne Frank and take the risk. But that's been something, kind of a lesson,
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a challenge that has always been near the forefront of my mind, that if a totalitarian
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system ever occurs in the United States, which my father thought was quite possible, he was
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conscious about how fragile democracy actually is. That would I be one of the ones who would
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resist the totalitarianism, or would I be one of the people who went along with it? Would I be one
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of the people who was at the train station in, you know, Krakow or, you know, even Berlin,
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and saw people being shipped off to camps and just put my head down and pretend I didn't see
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it because talking about it would be destructive to my career and maybe my freedom and even my life?
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Um, so, you know, that has been a challenge that my father gave to me and all of my brothers and
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sisters. And it's something that I've never forgotten. A lot of us would like to believe
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we would resist in that situation, but the reality is most of us wouldn't. And that's a good thing
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to think about, that human nature is such that we're selfish, even when there's an atrocity going
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on all around us. And we also, you know, we have the capacity to deceive ourselves
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and all of us tend to kind of judge ourselves by our intentions and our actions.
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What have you learned about life from your father, Robert F. Kennedy? First of all, I'll say this
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about my uncle, because, you know, I'm going to apply that question to my uncle and my father.
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My uncle was asked when he first met Jackie Bouvier, who later became Jackie Kennedy.
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He was a reporter for a newspaper and she had a kind of column where she'd do these kind of
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pithy interviews with both famous people and men in the street. She was interviewing him and she
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asked him what he thought was his best quality, his strongest virtue. And she thought that he
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would say courage, because he had been a war hero. He was the only president who, and this one,
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he was senator, by the way, who received the Purple Heart. And, you know, he had a very kind
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of famous story of him as a hero in World War II. And then he had come home and he'd written a book
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on moral courage among American politicians and won the Pulitzer Prize. That book profiles in
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courage, which was a series of incidents where American political leaders made decisions to
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embrace principle, even though their careers were at stake and in most cases were destroyed
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by their choice. She thought he was going to say courage, but he didn't. He said curiosity.
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And I think, you know, looking back at his life, that the best, that that was true. And that was
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the quality that allowed him to put himself in the shoes of his adversaries. And he always said that
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the only way that we're going to have peace is if we're able to put ourselves in the shoes of our
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adversaries, understand their behavior and their context, that context. And that's why
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he was able to, you know, during the, he was able to resist the intelligence apparatus and the
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military during the Bay of Pigs when they said, you've got to send in the Essex, the aircraft
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carrier. And he said, no, even though he'd only been in two months in office, he was able to
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stand up to them because of, because he was able to put himself in the shoes of both Castro and
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Khrushchev and understand there's got to be another solution to this. And then during the
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Cuban missile crisis, he was able to do it. The narrative was, okay, Khrushchev acted in a way
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as an aggressor to put missiles in our hemisphere. How dare he do that?
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And Jack and my father were able to say, well, wait a minute, he's doing that because we put
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missiles in Turkey and Italy that were right on, you know, the Turkish ones right on the Russian
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border. And they then made a secret deal with Delbran and with Ambassador Delbran and, you know,
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with Khrushchev to remove the missiles in Turkey. If he moved the Jupiter missiles from Turkey,
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I think so long as Khrushchev removed them from Cuba, there were 13 men on the executive,
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on the what they call the Ancon Committee, which was the group of people who were deciding,
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you know, what the action was, what they were going to do to end the Cuban missile crisis.
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And virtually, of those men, 11 of them wanted to invade and wanted to bomb and invade.
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And it was Jack and then later on my father and Bob McNamara, who were the only people who were
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with him. But because he was able to see the world from Khrushchev's point of view,
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he believed that there was another solution. And then he also had the moral courage. So
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my father, you know, to get back to your question, famously said that moral courage is the most
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important quality and it's more, it's more rare and courage on the football field or courage in
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battle than physical courage. It's much more difficult to come by, but it's the most important
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quality in a human being. And you think that kind of empathy that you referred to, that requires
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moral courage. It certainly requires moral courage to act on it, you know, and particularly, you know,
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in, you know, anytime that a nation is a war, there's kind of a momentum or an inertia that says,
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okay, let's not look at this from the other person's point of view. And that's the time we
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really need to do that. Well, if we can apply that style of empathy, style of curiosity to
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the current war in Ukraine, what is your understanding of the fact that you're not
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the current war in Ukraine? What is your understanding of why Russia invaded Ukraine
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in February, 2022? Vladimir Putin could have avoided the war in the Ukraine. His invasion
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was illegal. It was unnecessary and it was brutal. But I think it's important for us
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to move beyond these kind of comic book depictions of this insane,
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avaricious Russian leader who wants to restore the Soviet empire. And that's why, and it was
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I who made it an unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine. He was provoked. And we were provoking
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him and we were provoking him for, since 1997. And it's not just me that's saying that. I mean,
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and before Putin ever came in, we were provoking Russians in this way unnecessarily.
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And to go back that time in 1992, when the Russians moved out, when the Soviet Union was
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collapsing, the Russians moved out of East Germany and they did that, which was a huge concession
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to them. They had 400,000 troops in East Germany at that time and they were facing NATO troops on
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the other side of the wall. Gorbachev made this huge concession where he said to George Bush,
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I'm going to move all of our troops out and you can then reunify Germany under NATO,
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which was a hostile army to the Soviet Union. It was created with hostile intent toward the
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Soviet Union. And he said, you can take Germany, but I want your promise that you will not move
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NATO to the East. And James Baker, who was the secretary of state, famously said,
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I will not move NATO. We will not move NATO one inch to the East. So then five years later in 1997,
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Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was kind of the father of the neocons, who was a Democrat at that time,
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served in the Carter administration. He said he published a paper, a blueprint,
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for moving NATO right up to the Russian border, a thousand miles to the East and taking over 14
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nations. And at that time, George Kennan, who was the kind of the deity of American diplomats,
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he was probably arguably the most important diplomat in American history.
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He was the architect of the containment policy during World War II. And he said, this is insane
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and it's unnecessary. And if you do this, it's going to provoke the Soviet, I mean, the Russians
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to a violent response. And we should be making friends with the Russians. They lost the Cold War.
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We should be treating them the way that we treated our adversaries after World War II,
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like with a Marshall Plan to try to help them incorporate into Europe and to be part of the
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brotherhood of, you know, of man and of Western nations. We shouldn't continue to be treating them
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as an enemy and particularly surrounding them at their borders. William Perry, who was then
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the secretary of defense under Bill Clinton threatened to resign. He was so upset by this
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plan to move NATO to the East. And William Burns, who was then the US ambassador to the Soviet
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Union, who's now at this moment, the head of the CIA said at that time, the same thing.
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If you do this, it is going to provoke the Russians toward a military response.
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And we moved it, we moved all around Russia. We moved to 14 nations, a thousand miles to the East
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and we put Aegis Missile Systems in two nations, Romania and Poland. So we did what,
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you know, what the Russians had done to us in 1962 that had provoked, would have provoked an
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invasion of Cuba. We put those missile systems back there and then we'd walk away unilaterally,
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walk away from the two nuclear missile treaties, the intermediate nuclear missile treaties that
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we had with Russia. And we, neither of us would put those missile systems on the borders.
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We walk away from that and we put Aegis Missile Systems, which are nuclear capable. They can
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carry the Tomahawk missiles, which have nuclear warheads. So the last country that they didn't
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take was the Ukraine. And the Russians said, and in fact, Bill Perry said this, or William Burns
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said it, so now the head of the CIA, it is a red line. If we go into, if we bring NATO into Ukraine,
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that is a red line for the Russians. They cannot live with it. They cannot live with it. Russia
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has been invaded three times through the Ukraine. The last time it was invaded, we killed, or the
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Germans killed one out of every seven Russians. They destroyed, my uncle described what happened
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to Russia in his famous American university speech in 1963, 60 years ago this month,
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or last month, 60 years ago in June, June 10th, 1963. He told that speech was telling the American
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people, put yourself in the shoes of the Russians. We need to do that if we're going to make peace.
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And he said, all of us have been taught that we won the war, but we didn't win the war. The Russians,
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if anybody won the war against Hitler, it was the Russians. Their country was destroyed.
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All of their cities, and he said, imagine if all of the cities
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on the East Coast of Chicago were reduced to rubble and all of the fields burned, all of the
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forests burned. That's what happened to Russia. That's what they gave so that we could get rid
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of Adolf Hitler. And he had them put themselves in their position. And today there's none of that
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happening. We have refused repeatedly to talk to the Russians. We've broken up. There's two treaties,
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the Minsk agreements, which the Russians were willing to sign. And they said, we will stay.
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The Russians didn't want the Ukraine. They showed that. When the Donbas region voted 90 to 10
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to leave and go to Russia, Putin said, no, we want Ukraine to stay intact, but we want you to
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sign a Minsk Accords. The Russians were very worried because of the US involvement in the coup
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in Ukraine in 2014. And then the oppression and the killing of 14,000 ethnic Russians.
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And Russia has a net the same way that if Mexico would Aegis missile systems from China or Russia
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on our border and then killed 14,000 expats American, we would go in there. Oh, he does have
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a national security interest in the Ukraine. He has an interest in protecting the Russian speaking
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people of the Ukraine. Yeah, I think Russians and the Minsk Accords did that. It left Ukraine
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as part of Russia. It left them as a semi-autonomous region that could continue to use
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their own language, which is essentially banned by the coup, by the government we put in in 2014.
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And we sabotaged that agreement. And we now know in April of 2022,
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Zelensky and Putin had inked a deal already to another peace agreement and that the United
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States sent Boris Johnson, the neocons in the White House sent Boris Johnson over to the Ukraine to
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sabotage that agreement. So what do I think? I think this is a proxy war. I think this is a,
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you know, this is a war that the neocons in the White House wanted. They've said for two decades,
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they wanted this war and that they wanted to use Ukraine as a pawn in a proxy war between
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United States and Russia, the same as we used Afghanistan. And in fact, they say it,
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this is the model. Let's use the Afghanistan model. That was said again and again,
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and to get the Russians to overextend their troops and then fight them using local fighters
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and U S weapons. And when president Biden was asked, why are we in the Ukraine? He was honest.
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He says to depose Vladimir Putin regime change for Vladimir Putin. And when his
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defense secretary, Lloyd Austin in April, 2022 was asked, you know, why are we there? He said
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to degrade the Russians capacity to fight anywhere to exhaust the Russian army and degrade its
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capacity to fight elsewhere in the world. That's not a humanitarian mission. That's not what we
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were told. We were, we were told this was an unprovoked invasion, but, and that we're there
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to bring a humanitarian relief to the Ukrainians, but that is the opposite. That is war of attrition
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that is designed to chew up, but turn this little nation into an abattoir of death for the flower of
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Ukrainian youth in order to advance a geopolitical ambition of certain people within the White House.
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And, you know, I think that's wrong. We should be talking to the Russians the way that, you know,
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Nixon talked to Brezhnev, the way that Bush talked to Gorbachev, the way that my uncle
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talked to Khrushchev. We need to be talking with the Russians. We should end negotiating and we
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need to be looking about how do we end this and preserve peace in Europe?
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Would you as president sit down and have a conversation with Vladimir Putin
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and Vladimir Zelensky separately and together to negotiate peace?
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Absolutely.
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What about Vladimir Putin? He's been in power since 2000. So as the old adage goes,
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power corrupts and absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. Do you think he has been corrupted
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by being in power for so long? If you think of the man, if you look at his mind.
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Listen, I don't know exactly. I can't say because I just I don't know enough about him or about,
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you know, my the evidence that I've seen is that he is homicidal. He kills his enemies or poisons
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them. And, you know, the reaction I've seen to that to hit those accusations from him have
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not been to deny that, but to kind of laugh it off. I think he's a dangerous man and that of course,
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you know, there's probably corruption in his regime. But having said that,
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it's not our business to change the Russian government and anybody who thinks the good
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idea to do regime change in Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than we do,
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is I think irresponsible. And, you know, Vladimir Putin himself has said,
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you know, we will not live in a world without Russia. And it was clear when he said that,
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that he was talking about himself. And I and he has his hand on a button that could bring,
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you know, Armageddon to the entire planet. So why are we messing with this? It's not our job
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to change that regime. And we should be making friends with the Russians. We shouldn't be
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treating them as an enemy. Now we've pushed them into the camp with China. That's not a good thing
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for our country. And by the way, you know, what we're doing now does not appear to be weakening
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Putin at all. Putin now, you know, if you believe that the polls that are coming out of Russia,
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they show him, you know, the most recent polls that I've seen show him with an 89%
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popularity that people in Russia support the war in Ukraine. And that and they support him
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as an individual. So, and I understand there's problems with polling and you know, you don't
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know what to believe, but the polls consistently show that. And, and, you know, it's not America's
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business to be the policeman of the world and to be changing regimes in the world. That's illegal.
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We're not, we shouldn't be breaking international laws. You know, we should actually be looking for
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ways to improve relationships with Russia, not to, you know, not to destroy Russia, not to destroy
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and not to choose its leadership for them. That's up to the Russian people, not us.
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So step one is to sit down and empathize with the leaders of both nations to understand
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their history, their concerns, their hopes, just to open the door for conversation. So
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they're not back to the corner. Yeah. And I think the U S can play
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a really important role and a U S president can play a really important role by reassuring the
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Russians that we're not going to consider them an enemy anymore, that we want to be friends.
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And it doesn't mean that you have to let down your guard completely the way that you do it,
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which was the way president Kennedy did it is you do it one step at a time. You take baby steps.
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We do a unilateral move, reduce our, you know, our, our hostility and aggression and see if the
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Russians reciprocate. And, and that's the way that we should be doing it. And you know, we should be
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easing our way into a positive relationship with Russia. We have a lot in common with Russia and
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we should be friends with Russia and with the Russian people. And, you know, apparently there's
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been 350,000 Ukrainians who have died at least in this war. And, and there's probably been 60 or
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80,000 Russians and that should not give us any joy. It should not give us any, you know, I saw
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a, Lindsay Graham on TV saying, you know, anything we can, something to the extent that anything
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we can do to kill Russians is a good use of our money. That it is not, you know, those are,
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those are somebody's children. They're, you know, we should have compassion for them.
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This war is an unnecessary war. We should settle it through negotiation, through diplomacy,
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through statecraft and not through weapons. Do you think this war can come to an end
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purely through military operations? No, I mean, I don't think there's any way in the world that
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the Ukrainians can be the Russians. I don't think there's any appetite in Europe. I think Europe is
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now, you know, in having severe problems in Germany, Italy, France, you're seeing these
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riots. There's internal problems in those countries. There is no appetite in Europe for
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sending men to die in Ukraine. And the Ukrainians do not have anybody left. The Ukrainians are using
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press gangs to, you know, to fill the ranks of their armies. Men, military age men are trying
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as hard as they can to get out of the Ukraine right now, to avoid going to the front, the front,
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you know, the Russians apparently have been killing Ukrainians that had seven to one ratio.
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My son fought over there and he told me it's an artillery. He had,
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he had firefights with the Russians mainly at night, but he said most of the battles were
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artillery wars during the day. And the Russians now outgun the NATO forces 10 to one in artillery.
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Oh, they're killing at a horrendous rate. Now, you know, my interpretation of what's happened so
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far is that Putin actually went in early on with a small force because he expected to meet somebody
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on the other end of a negotiating table that once he went in and, and that when that didn't happen,
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they did not have a large enough force to be able to mount an offensive. And so they've been building
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up that force up to now, and they now have that force. And even against this small original force,
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the Ukrainians have been helpless. All of their offenses have died. They've now killed, you know,
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the head of the Ukrainian special forces, which was the probably arguably by many accounts,
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the best elite military unit in all of Europe. The commandant, the commander of the,
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that special forces group gave a speech about four months ago saying that 86% of his men are dead
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or wounded and will cannot return to the front. He cannot rebuild that force.
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Um, the, uh, and you know, the, the, the troops that are now headed,
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that are now filling the gaps of all those 350,000 men who have been lost
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are, uh, are scantily trained and they're arriving green at the front. Many of them
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do not want to be there. Many of them are giving up and going over the Russian side.
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We've seen this again and again, again, including platoon size groups that are defecting to the
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Russians. And, um, I don't think it's possible to win. And anybody, you know, I saw, I,
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of course I've studied World War II history exhaustively, but I saw a, um, there's a new,
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I think it's a Netflix series of documentaries that I highly recommend to people. They're,
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they're colorized versions of the black and white, um, films from the battles of World War II,
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but it's all the battles of World War II. So I watched Stalingrad the other night and, uh,
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you know, the, the willingness of the Russians to, um, to fight on against any kind of allies and
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to make huge sacrifices of Russians, the Russians themselves who were making the sacrifice with
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their lives, the willingness of them to do that for their motherland is almost inexhaustible.
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It is incomprehensible to think that the, uh, that Ukraine can, can beat Russia in a war. It
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would be like Mexico beating the United States. It's just, it's impossible to think that it can
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happen. And you know, Russia has, has deployed a tiny, tiny fraction of its military so far. And,
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you know, now it has China with its mass production capacity supporting its war effort. It's just,
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it's a, it's a hopeless situation and we've been lied to, you know, we're the press in our
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country and our government are just, are just, you know, promoting this lie that the Ukrainians
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are about to win and everything's going great. And that Putin's on the run and there's all this
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wishful thinking because of the Wagner group, you know, the, uh, the pregogian and the Wagner
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group, that this was an internal coup and it showed dissent and weakness of Putin and none of
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that is true. I was a, that insurgency, which wasn't even an insurgency, he only got 4,000 of
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his men to follow him out of 20,000 and they were quickly stopped and nobody in the Russian military,
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the oligarchy, the political system, nobody supported it, you know, and by we're being told,
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oh yeah, it's the beginning at the end for Putin. He's weakened, he's wounded, he's on his way out
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and all of these things are just lies that we are being fed.
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So to push back on a small aspect of this, you kind of implied, so I've traveled to Ukraine
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and one thing that I should say, similar to the battle of Stalingrad,
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it is just not, it is not only the Russians that fight to the end. I think the Ukrainians are very
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willing to fight to the end and the morale there is quite high. I've talked to nobody,
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this was a year ago in August with her son, everybody was proud to fight and die for their
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country and there's some aspect where this war unified the people to give them a reason
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and an understanding that this is what it means to be Ukrainian and I will fight to the death.
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You know, I would agree with that and I should have said that myself at the beginning,
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you know, that's one of the reasons my son went over there to fight because, you know,
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he was inspired by the valor of the Ukrainian people and this extraordinary willingness of them
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and I think Putin thought it would be much easier to sweep into Ukraine and he found,
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you know, a stone wall of Ukrainians where they're ready to put their lives and their bodies on the
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line. But that to me makes the whole episode even more tragic is that, you know, I don't believe,
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you know, I think that the US role in this has been, you know, that there were many opportunities
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to settle this war and the Ukrainians wanted to settle it. Vladimir Zelensky, when he ran in 2019,
43:36.880 --> 43:44.880
here's a guy who's a comedian, he's an actor, he had no political experience and yet he won
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this election with 70% of the vote. Why? He won on a peace platform, anyone promising to sign the
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Minsk Accords and yet something happened when he got in there that made him suddenly pivot and,
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you know, I think it's a good guess what happened. I think he was, you know, he came under threat by
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ultra-national and nationalists within his own administration and the insistence of neocons like
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Victoria Nuland in the White House that, you know, we don't want peace with Putin, we want a war.
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Do you worry about a nuclear war? Yeah, I worry about it. It's...
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It seems like a silly question, but it's not. It's a serious question.
44:29.440 --> 44:36.400
Well, the reason it's not, you know, the reason it might, it's not, it's just because people
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seem to be in this kind of dream state about that it'll never happen. And yet, you know,
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we're, it can happen very easily and it can happen at any time. And, you know, if we push
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the Russians too far, you know, I don't doubt that Putin, if he felt like his regime was in,
44:57.120 --> 45:04.400
or his nation was in danger, that the United States was going to be able to place, you know,
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a whizzling on, you know, into the Kremlin that he would use nuclear, you know, torpedoes.
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And, you know, these strategic weapons that they have, and that could be the...
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Once you do that, nobody controls the trajectory. By the way, you know, I have very strong memories
45:28.400 --> 45:36.000
of the Cuban Missile Crisis and those 13 days when we came closer to nuclear war,
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you know, and particularly, I think it was when the U-2 got shut down over Cuba,
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you know, and nobody in this country, there's a lot of people in Washington, D.C. who
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at that point thought that they very well may wake up dead, that the world may end at night.
45:55.120 --> 46:01.360
30 million Americans killed 130 million Russians. This is what our military brass
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wanted. They saw war with Russia, nuclear exchange with Russia as not only inevitable,
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but also desirable because they wanted to do it now. We still had a superiority.
46:14.000 --> 46:18.560
Can you actually go through the feelings you've had about the Cuban Missile Crisis? Like what
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are your memories of it? What are some interests? You know, in the middle, I was going to school
46:22.720 --> 46:32.720
in Washington, D.C. to our Lady of Victory, which is in Washington, D.C. So we were...
46:32.720 --> 46:37.120
I lived in Virginia across the Potomac, and we would cross the bridge every day into D.C.
46:38.560 --> 46:45.120
And during the crisis, U.S. Marshals came to my house to take us, I think around day eight.
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My father was spending the night at the White House. He wasn't coming home. He was staying
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with the XCOM Committee and sleeping there. And they were up, you know, 24 hours a day.
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They were debating and trying to figure out what was happening.
47:00.480 --> 47:05.600
But we had U.S. Marshals come to our house to take us down. They were going to take us down to
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White Sulphur Springs in southern Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains where there was an underground
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city, essentially a bunker that was like a city. And apparently it had McDonald's in it and a lot
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of other, you know, it was a full city for the U.S. government and their families.
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U.S. Marshals came to our house to take us down there. And I was very excited about doing that.
47:34.240 --> 47:38.720
And this was at a time, you know, when we were doing the drills, we were doing the duck and cover
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drills once a week at our school, where they would tell you if they, you know, when the alarms go
47:45.600 --> 47:52.000
off, then you put your head onto the table. You take the, remove the sharps from your desk,
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put them inside your desk. You put your head onto the table and you wait. And the initial blast
47:57.680 --> 48:03.760
will take the windows out of the school. And then we all stand up and file in an orderly fashion
48:03.760 --> 48:07.200
into the basement where we're going to be for the next six or eight months or whatever.
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But in the basement where, you know, we went occasionally in those corridors,
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we're lined with freeze-dried food canisters up to the ceiling, from floor to ceiling.
48:18.240 --> 48:22.480
So people were, you know, we were all preparing for this. And it was, you know,
48:23.200 --> 48:28.320
Bob McNamara, who was my, was a friend of mine and, you know, was my father, one of my father's
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closest friend, the secretary of defense. He later called it mass psychosis. And my father
48:34.800 --> 48:40.320
deeply regretted participating in the bomb shelter program because he said it was part of a,
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you know, a psychological psyop trick to treat them, to teach Americans that nuclear war was
48:47.840 --> 48:54.400
acceptable, that it was survivable. My father, anyway, when they, when the marshals came to our
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house, take me and my brother Joe away. And we were the ones who were home at that time.
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My father called and he talked to us on the phone and he said,
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I don't want you going down there because, because if you disappear from school,
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people are going to panic and I need you to be a good soldier and go to school.
49:19.600 --> 49:25.600
And he said something to me during that period, which was that if the nuclear war happened,
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it would be better to be among the dead than the living, which I did not believe.
49:30.720 --> 49:36.480
Okay. I mean, I had already prepared myself for the, you know, for the dystopian future.
49:36.480 --> 49:41.920
And I knew I could, I spent every day in the woods. I knew that I could survive by
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catching crawfish and, you know, cooking mud puppies and do whatever I had to do. But I
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felt like, okay, I can, I can handle this. And I really wanted to see the set up down in,
49:55.600 --> 50:01.520
you know, this underground city. But anyway, that was, you know, part of it for me,
50:01.520 --> 50:08.800
my father was away and, you know, the last days of it, my father got this idea because Khrushchev
50:08.800 --> 50:16.480
had sent two letters. He sent one letter that was conciliatory. And then he sent a letter that after
50:16.480 --> 50:21.520
his joint chiefs and the warmongers around him to solve that letter. And they disapproved of it.
50:21.520 --> 50:27.520
They sent another letter that was extremely belligerent. And my father had the idea,
50:27.520 --> 50:31.440
let's just pretend we didn't get the second letter and reply to the first one.
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And then he went down to Dobrynin and who was, he met Dobrynin in the justice department.
50:40.320 --> 50:46.320
And Dobrynin was the Soviet ambassador. And they, you know, they proposed this settlement,
50:46.320 --> 50:53.360
which was a secret settlement. Khrushchev would withdraw the missiles from Cuba. Khrushchev had
50:53.360 --> 50:57.840
put the missiles in Cuba because we had put missiles, you know, nuclear missiles in Turkey
50:57.840 --> 51:06.320
and Italy. And my uncle's secret deal was that if he, if Khrushchev removed the missiles from Cuba,
51:06.320 --> 51:12.400
within six months, he would get rid of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey. But if Khrushchev told anybody
51:12.400 --> 51:19.280
about the deal, it was off. So if, if news got out about that secret deal, it was off.
51:19.920 --> 51:25.120
That was the actual deal. And Khrushchev complied with it. And then my uncle complied with it.
51:25.120 --> 51:29.920
How much of that part of human history turned on the decisions of one person?
51:31.440 --> 51:35.200
I think that's one of the, you know, cause that of course, the perennial question,
51:35.280 --> 51:43.440
right? But it is history kind of on an automatic pilot and, you know, human decisions,
51:43.440 --> 51:51.040
decisions of leaders really only have, you know, marginal or incremental bearing on what is going
51:51.040 --> 51:56.000
to happen anyway. But I think that is the, and historians argue about that all the time.
51:57.120 --> 52:03.440
I think that that is a really good example of a place in human history that,
52:04.320 --> 52:08.560
literally the world could have ended if we had a different leader in the White House.
52:08.560 --> 52:15.040
And the reason for that is that there were, as I recall, 64 gun emplacements,
52:15.040 --> 52:22.480
you know, missile emplacements. Each one of those missile emplacements had a crew of about 100 men.
52:22.720 --> 52:32.400
And they were Soviets. So they were, and they, we didn't know whether, we had a couple of
52:32.400 --> 52:39.520
questions that my uncle asked, or asked the CIA, and he asked, Dulles was already gone,
52:39.520 --> 52:45.520
but he asked the CIA and he asked his military brass, because they all wanted to go in.
52:45.520 --> 52:50.480
Everybody wanted to go in. And my uncle said, my uncle asked to see the aerial photos.
52:50.480 --> 52:56.000
And he examined those personally. And that's why it's important to have a leader in the White
52:56.000 --> 53:05.520
House who can push back on their bureaucracies. And then he asked them, you know, are those,
53:05.520 --> 53:11.680
who's manning those missile sites? And are they Russians? And if they're Russians and we bomb them,
53:12.160 --> 53:18.720
are they, isn't it going to force Khrushchev to then go into Berlin?
53:20.720 --> 53:24.480
And that would be the beginning of a cascade of fact that would,
53:24.480 --> 53:32.080
you know, highly likely to end a nuclear confrontation. And the military brass said to
53:32.080 --> 53:37.040
my uncle, oh, we don't think he'll have the, you know, we don't think he'll have the guts to do
53:37.040 --> 53:44.720
that. So he was, my uncle was like, that's what you're betting on. And, you know, they all wanted
53:44.720 --> 53:50.960
him to go in. They wanted him to bomb the sites and then invade Cuba. And he said, if we bomb those
53:50.960 --> 53:56.240
sites, we're going to be killing Russians. And it's going to force, it's going to provoke Russia
53:56.240 --> 54:03.120
into some response. And the obvious response is for them to go into Berlin. Oh, but the thing
54:03.120 --> 54:08.880
that we didn't know then, that we didn't find out until I think, you know, there was a,
54:08.880 --> 54:16.560
it was like a 30 year anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis in Havana. And what we learned then
54:17.200 --> 54:24.560
was that from the Russians who came to that event, it was like a symposium where everybody on both
54:24.560 --> 54:30.640
sides talked about it. And we learned a lot of stuff and never, nobody knew before. One of the
54:30.640 --> 54:36.800
insane things, the most insane thing that we learned was that the weapons were already,
54:36.800 --> 54:43.600
the nuclear warheads were already in place. They were ready to fire and that the authorization to
54:43.600 --> 54:53.280
fire was made, was delegated to each of the gun crew commanders. So there were 60 people
54:54.320 --> 54:58.160
who at all had authorization to fire if they felt themselves under attack.
54:58.240 --> 55:02.960
So you have to believe that at least one of them would have launched and that would have been the
55:02.960 --> 55:09.120
beginning of the end. And, you know, if anybody had launched, you know, we knew what would happen.
55:09.120 --> 55:14.800
My uncle knew what would happen because he asked again and again, what's going to happen? And they
55:14.800 --> 55:23.520
said, 30 million Americans will be killed, but we will kill 130 million Russians. So we will win.
55:23.520 --> 55:32.160
So we will win. And that was a victory for them. And my uncle said later, said he told Arthur
55:32.160 --> 55:37.040
Slesinger and Kenny O'Donnell, he said, those guys, he called them the salad brass, the guys with all
55:37.040 --> 55:43.920
of this stuff on their chest. And he said, he said, those guys, they don't care because they
55:43.920 --> 55:48.960
know that if it happens, that they're going to be in the charge of everything. They're the ones who
55:48.960 --> 55:54.000
are going to be running the world after that. So for them, you know, it was, there was an incentive
55:54.000 --> 55:59.680
to kill 130 million Russians and 30 million Americans by my uncle. He had this correspondence
55:59.680 --> 56:06.080
with Khrushchev. They were secretly corresponding with each other. And that is what saved the world
56:06.080 --> 56:12.160
is that they had that both of them had been men of war. You know, Eisenhower famously said, it will
56:12.160 --> 56:17.920
it will not be a man of war. It will not be a soldier who starts World War III because a guy
56:17.920 --> 56:23.040
who's actually seen it knows how bad it is. And my uncle, you know, had been in the heat of the
56:23.040 --> 56:30.720
South Pacific. His boat had been cut in two by a Japanese destroyer. His, many of his three of his
56:30.720 --> 56:35.760
crewmen had been killed, one of them badly burned. He pulled that guy with a lanyard in his teeth
56:36.800 --> 56:41.680
six miles to an island in the middle of the night. And then they hid out there for 10 days,
56:41.920 --> 56:46.640
you know. And, and, you know, he came back, like I said, he was the only
56:46.640 --> 56:51.760
president of the United States that are in the Purple Heart. Meanwhile, Khrushchev had been at
56:51.760 --> 56:58.160
Stalingrad, which was the worst place to be on the planet, you know, probably in the 20th century,
56:58.960 --> 57:05.440
other than, you know, in Auschwitz or one of the death camps. It was, you know, it was, it was the
57:05.440 --> 57:10.880
most ferocious, horrific war with people starving, people, you know, committing cannibalism,
57:11.440 --> 57:17.920
you know, eating the dogs, the cats, eating their shoe leather freezing to death by the thousands,
57:17.920 --> 57:23.200
et cetera. Khrushchev did not want, the last thing he wanted was a war. And the last thing my uncle
57:23.200 --> 57:29.440
wanted was a war. And they, but the CIA did not know anything about Khrushchev. And the reason
57:29.440 --> 57:40.640
for that is the, there was a mole in Langley, so that every time the CIA got a spy in the Kremlin,
57:40.640 --> 57:46.480
he would immediately be killed. So they had no eyes in the Kremlin. You know, there were literally
57:46.480 --> 57:53.360
hundreds of Russian spies who had, who had defected the United States and were in the Kremlin,
57:53.360 --> 57:59.280
who were killed during that period. They had no idea anything about Khrushchev, about how he saw
57:59.280 --> 58:05.040
the world and they saw the Kremlin itself as a monolith, you know, that this, this kind of,
58:05.040 --> 58:10.400
you know, the same way that we look at Putin today, that, you know, it's all, they have this
58:10.400 --> 58:15.200
ambition of world conquest and that it's driving them and there's nothing else they think about.
58:15.200 --> 58:22.880
They're absolutely single-minded about it. But actually there was a big division between Khrushchev
58:22.880 --> 58:28.720
and, and his joint chiefs and his intelligence apparatus. And they, and they both at one point
58:28.720 --> 58:33.920
discovered they were both in the same situation. They were surrounded by spies and military
58:33.920 --> 58:38.880
personnel who were intent on going to war and they were the two guys resisting it. So when my
58:38.880 --> 58:46.240
uncle, my uncle had this idea of, you know, being the peace president from the beginning, he told
58:46.240 --> 58:50.400
Ben Bradley, his, one of his best friends who, you know, was running the publisher of the Washington
58:50.400 --> 58:58.400
Post, or the editor-in-chief at that time, he said, Ben Bradley asked him, what is, what do you
58:58.400 --> 59:05.040
want in your gravestone? And my uncle said, he kept the peace. He said, the principal job of
59:05.040 --> 59:12.800
president of the United States is to keep the country out of war. And, and so when he first
59:12.800 --> 59:21.600
became president, he, he anxiously agreed to meet Khrushchev in Geneva to do his summit. And by the
59:21.600 --> 59:27.680
way, Eisenhower had wanted to do the same thing. Eisenhower wanted peace, but his, and he was going
59:27.680 --> 59:35.120
to meet in Vienna, but that peace summit was blown up. He was going to try to do, you know, he was
59:35.120 --> 59:41.600
going to try to end the Cold War. Eisenhower was in the last year of his, of his, in May of 1960,
59:42.560 --> 59:49.920
but that was torpedoed by the CIA during the U-2 crash. You know, they sent a U-2 over the,
59:49.920 --> 59:55.520
over the Soviet Union, and it got shot down. And then they told, and then Alan Dallas told
59:55.520 --> 59:59.840
Eisenhower to deny that we had a program. They didn't know that the Russians had captured Gary
59:59.840 --> 01:00:07.680
Francis Powers. And so, and, and that blew up the peace talks between Eisenhower and Khrushchev. And
01:00:07.680 --> 01:00:16.400
so, you know, there was a lot of tension. My uncle wanted to break that tension. He agreed to meet
01:00:16.400 --> 01:00:24.000
with, with Khrushchev in Vienna early on in his term. He went over there and Khrushchev snubbed
01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:32.640
him. Khrushchev lectured him imperiously about the, you know, the, the terror of American
01:00:32.640 --> 01:00:39.120
imperialism and, and rebuffed any, you know, they did agree not to go into Laos. They made
01:00:39.120 --> 01:00:46.080
an agreement that kept the United States, kept my uncle from sending troops to Laos. But it had
01:00:46.080 --> 01:00:52.960
been a disaster in Vienna. So then we had a spy that used to come to our house all the time.
01:00:52.960 --> 01:01:00.320
A guy called Georgi Bolshakoy. He was this Russian spy my, my parents had met at the embassy.
01:01:01.280 --> 01:01:05.840
They had gone to a party or a reception, the Russian embassy, and he had approached them
01:01:05.840 --> 01:01:13.520
and they knew he was, he was a GRU agent and KGB. He was both. Oh, he used to come to our house.
01:01:13.520 --> 01:01:19.280
They really liked him. He was very attractive. He was always laughing and joking. He would do
01:01:19.280 --> 01:01:24.400
rope climbing contests with my father. He would do pushup contests with my father. He was,
01:01:24.480 --> 01:01:30.560
he could do the Russian dancing, the Cossack dancing, and he would do that for us and teach
01:01:30.560 --> 01:01:34.800
us that. And he was, and we knew he was a spy too. And this was at the time of, you know,
01:01:34.800 --> 01:01:39.200
the James Bond films were first coming out. So it was really exciting for us to have an
01:01:39.200 --> 01:01:45.360
actual Russian spy in our house. The state department was horrified by it. But, but anyway,
01:01:46.320 --> 01:01:55.840
when Khrushchev, after Vienna and after, you know, the big pigs, Khrushchev had second thoughts.
01:01:57.040 --> 01:02:04.560
And he sent this long letter to my uncle and he didn't want to go through his, his state department
01:02:05.360 --> 01:02:09.440
or his embassy. He wanted to end run them, but he was friends with Bolshakoy.
01:02:10.240 --> 01:02:17.280
So he gave Georgie the letter and Georgie brought it and handed it to Pierre Salinger,
01:02:17.280 --> 01:02:22.800
folded in the New York Times. And he gave it to my uncle. And it was this beautiful letter,
01:02:22.800 --> 01:02:29.360
which he said, you know, he, my uncle had talked to him about the children who were played. You
01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:34.800
know, we played 29 grandchildren who were playing in his yard. And he's saying, what is our moral
01:02:34.800 --> 01:02:39.920
basis for making a decision that could kill these children? So they'll never write a poem. They'll
01:02:39.920 --> 01:02:44.960
never participate in elections. They'll never run for office. How can we make, how can we,
01:02:44.960 --> 01:02:51.600
can we morally make a decision that is going to eliminate life for these beautiful kids?
01:02:52.640 --> 01:02:59.280
And he had said that to Khrushchev and Khrushchev wrote in this letter back saying that he was now
01:02:59.280 --> 01:03:06.960
sitting as this dacha on the Black Sea. And that he was thinking about what my uncle Jacket said
01:03:06.960 --> 01:03:12.880
to him at Vienna. And he regretted very deeply not having taken the olive leaf that Jacket
01:03:12.880 --> 01:03:17.840
offered him. And then he said, you know, it occurs to me now that we're all on an arc
01:03:18.480 --> 01:03:26.320
and that there is not another one and that the entire fate of the planet and all of its creatures
01:03:26.320 --> 01:03:30.320
and all of the children are dependent on the decisions we make. And you and I have a moral
01:03:30.320 --> 01:03:36.640
obligation to go forward with each other as friends. And immediately after that, this was,
01:03:36.640 --> 01:03:44.400
you know, he sent that right after the Berlin crisis in 1962. General Curtis LeMay tried to,
01:03:46.240 --> 01:03:55.840
had tried to provoke a war with an incident at Checkpoint Charlie, which was the entrance
01:03:56.320 --> 01:04:03.360
and exit through the Berlin Wall in Berlin. And the Russian tanks had come to the wall,
01:04:03.360 --> 01:04:10.480
the US tanks had come to the wall and there was a standoff. And my uncle had sent a message to
01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:17.040
Khrushchev then through Dobrynin saying, my back is at the wall. I cannot, I have no place to back,
01:04:17.040 --> 01:04:21.840
to please back off. And then we will back off. And Khrushchev took his word,
01:04:22.720 --> 01:04:30.000
act his tanks off first. And then my uncle ordered LeMay to back, he had, LeMay had mounted
01:04:30.000 --> 01:04:36.960
bulldozer plows on the front of the tanks to plow down the Berlin Wall and the Russians had
01:04:36.960 --> 01:04:41.200
come. So it was just, you know, it was the, it was his generals trying to provoke a war.
01:04:44.720 --> 01:04:49.040
But they started talking to each other then. And then when he, after he wrote that letter,
01:04:49.040 --> 01:04:54.560
they agreed that they would install a hotline so they could talk to each other and they wouldn't
01:04:54.560 --> 01:05:02.320
have to go through intermediaries. And so at Jack's house on the Cape, there was a red phone
01:05:02.320 --> 01:05:07.920
that we knew if we picked it up, Khrushchev would answer. And there was another one in the White
01:05:07.920 --> 01:05:14.400
House. And that, but they knew it was important to talk to each other, you know, and you just wish
01:05:14.400 --> 01:05:21.040
that we had that kind of leadership today. That can, you know, that just understands our job.
01:05:21.920 --> 01:05:27.440
Look, I know you know a lot about AI, right? And you know how dangerous it is potentially
01:05:27.440 --> 01:05:35.200
to humanity and what opportunities it also, you know, offers. But it could kill us all. I mean,
01:05:35.200 --> 01:05:38.800
Elon said, first it's going to steal our job, then it's going to kill us. Right?
01:05:38.800 --> 01:05:39.760
Yeah.
01:05:39.760 --> 01:05:45.280
And it's probably not hyperbole. It actually, you know, if it follows the laws of biological
01:05:45.280 --> 01:05:50.400
evolution, which are just the laws of mathematics, that's probably a good endpoint for it. You know,
01:05:50.400 --> 01:06:00.240
a potential endpoint. So we, we need, it's going to happen, but we need to make sure it's regulated
01:06:00.240 --> 01:06:08.320
and it's regulated properly for safety in every country. And, and that includes Russia and China
01:06:08.320 --> 01:06:14.320
and Iran. Right now we, we should be putting all the weapons of war aside and sitting down
01:06:14.320 --> 01:06:18.640
with those guys and say, how are we doing, how are we going to do this? There's much more important
01:06:18.640 --> 01:06:24.240
things to do. We're going to, this stuff is going to kill us if we don't figure out how to regulate
01:06:24.240 --> 01:06:31.120
it. And, and leadership needs to look down the road at what, what is the real risk here. And the
01:06:31.120 --> 01:06:38.640
real risk is that, you know, AI will, will, you know, enslave us for one thing and, you know,
01:06:39.520 --> 01:06:43.600
and then destroy us and do all this other stuff. And how about biological weapons?
01:06:44.480 --> 01:06:48.960
We're now all working on these biological weapons and we're doing biological weapons from
01:06:50.240 --> 01:06:57.520
Ebola and, and, you know, dengue fever and, you know, all of these other bad things. And we're
01:06:57.600 --> 01:07:04.560
making ethnic bio weapons, bio weapons that can only kill Russians. Bio weapons that the Chinese
01:07:04.560 --> 01:07:09.840
are making that, you know, can kill people who don't, who don't have Chinese genes.
01:07:10.720 --> 01:07:17.280
So all of this is now within reach. We're actively doing it and we need to stop it. And we can
01:07:17.280 --> 01:07:23.920
easily, a biological weapons treaty is the easiest thing in the world to do. We can verify it. We
01:07:23.920 --> 01:07:30.000
can enforce it. And everybody wants to agree to it. It only insane people do not want to,
01:07:30.000 --> 01:07:33.040
want to continue this kind of research. There's no reason to do it.
01:07:33.680 --> 01:07:38.480
So there are these existential threats to all of humanity now out there like AI and
01:07:38.480 --> 01:07:42.720
biological, biological weapons. We need to start, stop fighting each other,
01:07:43.600 --> 01:07:49.840
start competing on economic game fields, playing fields instead of military playing fields,
01:07:50.720 --> 01:07:54.800
which will be good for all of humanity. And that we need to sit down with each other
01:07:55.760 --> 01:08:00.960
and negotiate reasonable treaties on how we regulate AI and biological weapons.
01:08:00.960 --> 01:08:05.760
And nobody's talking about this in this political race right now. Nobody's talking about it in a
01:08:05.760 --> 01:08:12.640
government. They get fixated on these little wars and, you know, and these comic book depictions
01:08:12.640 --> 01:08:20.400
of good versus evil. And, you know, and we all go, you know, and go off and give them the weapons
01:08:20.400 --> 01:08:26.320
and enrich, you know, the military and industrial complex, but we're, we're on the road to
01:08:26.320 --> 01:08:30.560
perdition if we don't end this. And some of this requires to have this kind of
01:08:31.920 --> 01:08:36.960
phone that connects Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy that cuts through all the bureaucracy
01:08:36.960 --> 01:08:42.560
to have this communication between heads of state. And in the case of AI, perhaps heads of
01:08:42.560 --> 01:08:47.120
tech companies where you can just pick up the phone and have a conversation because a lot of it,
01:08:48.080 --> 01:08:52.560
a lot of the existential threats of artificial intelligence, perhaps even bio weapons is
01:08:52.560 --> 01:08:58.000
unintentional. It's not even a strategic intentional effects. So you have to be
01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:04.240
transparent and honest about, especially with AI, that people might not know what's the worst
01:09:04.240 --> 01:09:08.240
that's going to happen once you release it out into the wild and you have to have an honest kind of
01:09:09.040 --> 01:09:12.800
communication about how to do it so that companies are not terrified of regulation,
01:09:14.000 --> 01:09:21.680
overreach of regulation. And then government is not terrified of tech companies of manipulating
01:09:21.680 --> 01:09:26.800
them in some direct or indirect ways. So like there's a trust that builds versus a distrust
01:09:27.840 --> 01:09:33.920
that that seems to basically that old phone or Khrushchev can call John F. Kennedy is needed.
01:09:33.920 --> 01:09:42.240
LW and you know, I don't think there's a listen, I don't understand AI. Okay, I do know I can see
01:09:42.240 --> 01:09:50.000
from all this technology, how it's this kind of turnkey totalitarianism that once you put these
01:09:50.000 --> 01:09:57.840
systems in place, you know, they can be misused to enslave people, and they can be misused in wars,
01:09:58.480 --> 01:10:02.240
and, you know, to subjugate, to kill, to do all of these bad things.
01:10:03.840 --> 01:10:07.600
And I don't think there's anybody on Capitol Hill who understands this.
01:10:08.160 --> 01:10:12.960
You know, we need to bring in the tech community and say, tell us what these regulations need to
01:10:12.960 --> 01:10:20.320
look like, you know, so that there can be freedom to innovate so that we can milk AI for all of the
01:10:20.320 --> 01:10:26.000
good things, but not, you know, fall into these traps that are going to, you know, that are
01:10:26.320 --> 01:10:29.840
existential threats to that pose existential threats to humanity.
01:10:31.840 --> 01:10:36.080
It seems like John F. Kennedy is a singular figure in that he was able to have the humility to
01:10:36.080 --> 01:10:43.680
reach out to Khrushchev, and also the strength and integrity to resist the what did you call them,
01:10:43.680 --> 01:10:51.040
the salad, salad brass and institutions like the CIA. So that that makes it particularly tragic
01:10:51.760 --> 01:10:59.200
that he was killed. To what degree was CIA involved, or the various bureaucracy involved
01:10:59.200 --> 01:11:08.080
in his death? The evidence that the CIA was involved in my uncle's murder, and that they
01:11:08.080 --> 01:11:13.360
can that they were subsequently involved in the cover-up and continue to be involved in the
01:11:13.360 --> 01:11:18.640
cover-up. I mean, there's still 5,000 documents that they won't release 60 years later.
01:11:21.120 --> 01:11:28.960
It's so insurmountable and so, you know, mountainous and overwhelming that it's beyond
01:11:28.960 --> 01:11:35.600
any reasonable doubt, including, you know, dozens of confessions of people who were involved in the
01:11:38.560 --> 01:11:46.640
assassination, but, you know, every kind of document. And, you know, I mean, it came as
01:11:46.640 --> 01:11:54.480
a surprise recently to most Americans, I think, the release of these documents in which the press,
01:11:55.520 --> 01:12:01.840
the American media finally acknowledged that, yeah, Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset,
01:12:01.840 --> 01:12:11.440
and he was recruited, you know, in 1957. He was a Marine working at the Addisui Air Force base,
01:12:11.440 --> 01:12:17.600
which was the CIA Air Force base, and, you know, with the U-2 flights, which was a CIA program,
01:12:17.600 --> 01:12:24.480
and that he was recruited by James Jesus Angleton, who was the director of counterintelligence,
01:12:26.000 --> 01:12:33.920
and then sent on a fake defection to Russia, and then brought back, you know, to Dallas.
01:12:33.920 --> 01:12:41.360
And people didn't know that, even though it's been known for decades, it never percolated
01:12:41.360 --> 01:12:48.000
into the mainstream media, because they have such a, you know, they have such an allergy to
01:12:48.000 --> 01:12:56.080
anything that challenges the Warren Report. You know, when Congress investigated my uncle's murder
01:12:57.360 --> 01:13:05.680
in the 1970s, the Church Committee did, and they did, you know, two and a half year investigation,
01:13:05.680 --> 01:13:12.880
and they had many, many more documents and much more testimony available to them than the Warren
01:13:12.880 --> 01:13:17.920
Commission had, and this was a decade after the Warren Commission. They came to the conclusion
01:13:17.920 --> 01:13:24.960
that my uncle was killed by a conspiracy, and there was a division where essentially one guy
01:13:24.960 --> 01:13:31.520
on that committee believed it was primarily the mafia, but Richard Schweitzer, the senator,
01:13:31.520 --> 01:13:38.320
head of the committee, said, you know, straight out, the CIA was involved in the murder of the
01:13:38.320 --> 01:13:44.160
President of the United States. Oh, and I've talked to most of the staff on that committee,
01:13:44.160 --> 01:13:48.160
and they said, yeah, and the CIA was stonewalling us the whole way through.
01:13:49.280 --> 01:13:55.520
And the actual people that the CIA appointed, George Johnides, who the CIA appointed as a
01:13:55.520 --> 01:14:00.560
liaison to the committee, they brought him out of retirement. He had been one of the masterminds of
01:14:00.560 --> 01:14:10.800
the assassination. Oh, there's no, I mean, it's impossible to even talk about a tiny fraction of
01:14:10.800 --> 01:14:15.440
the evidence here. What I suggest to people, there are hundreds of books written about this
01:14:16.400 --> 01:14:21.520
that, you know, assemble this evidence and mobilize the evidence. The best book to me for
01:14:21.520 --> 01:14:29.920
people to read is James Douglas's book, which is called The Unspeakable, and he, Douglas does
01:14:29.920 --> 01:14:36.800
this extraordinary, he's an extraordinary scholar, and he does this amazing job of digesting and
01:14:36.800 --> 01:14:43.360
summarizing and mobilizing all of the, you know, the probably a million documents and, you know,
01:14:43.360 --> 01:14:49.440
the evidence from all these confessions that have come out into a coherent story. And it's
01:14:49.440 --> 01:14:55.600
riveting to read. And, you know, I recommend people who do not take my word for it, you know,
01:14:56.320 --> 01:15:02.000
and don't take anybody else's word for it. Go ahead and do the research yourself. And one way
01:15:02.000 --> 01:15:07.360
to do that is probably the most efficient way is to read Douglas's book, because he has all the
01:15:07.360 --> 01:15:14.320
references there. So if it's true that CIA had a hand in this assassination, how is it possible
01:15:14.320 --> 01:15:19.200
for them to amass so much power? How is it possible for them to become corrupt? And is it
01:15:20.080 --> 01:15:25.200
individuals or is it the entire institution? No, it's not the entire institution. My daughter-in-law
01:15:26.160 --> 01:15:33.760
who's helping to run my campaign was a CIA, you know, in the Klandesign services
01:15:34.640 --> 01:15:39.360
for all of her career. She was a spy in the weapons of mass destruction program in the
01:15:39.360 --> 01:15:46.640
Mideast and in China. And there's 22,000 people who work for the CIA. Probably 20,000 of those
01:15:46.640 --> 01:15:52.320
are, you know, are patriotic Americans and really good public servants, and they're doing important
01:15:52.320 --> 01:15:59.200
work for our country. But the institution is corrupt, and because the higher ranks the
01:15:59.200 --> 01:16:05.280
institution. And in fact, Mike Pompeo said something like this to me the other day,
01:16:05.280 --> 01:16:09.760
he was the director of the CIA. He said, when I was there, I did not do a good job of cleaning
01:16:09.760 --> 01:16:16.160
up that agency. And he said the entire upper bureaucracy of that agency are people who do
01:16:16.160 --> 01:16:23.680
not believe in the institutions of democracy. This is what he said to me. So I don't know if
01:16:23.680 --> 01:16:28.720
that's true, but I know that, you know, that's significant. He's a smart person and he ran the
01:16:28.720 --> 01:16:34.960
agency and he was the secretary of state. But it's no mystery how that happened.
01:16:36.400 --> 01:16:43.120
We know the history. The CIA was originally, first of all, there was great reluctance in 1947
01:16:43.360 --> 01:16:48.800
that we had, for the first time, we had a secret spy agency in this country during World War II
01:16:48.800 --> 01:16:56.480
called the OSS. That was disbanded after the war because Congress said having a secret spy agency
01:16:56.480 --> 01:17:02.720
is incompatible with a democracy. Secret spy agencies are things like the KGB,
01:17:03.600 --> 01:17:11.040
Stasi in East Germany, SAVAK in Iran, and PEEP in Chile, whatever, you know, all over the world.
01:17:11.040 --> 01:17:16.320
They all have to do with totalitarian governments. They're not something that you can have.
01:17:17.760 --> 01:17:27.200
It's antithetical to democracy to have that. But in 1947, we created it. Truman signed it in,
01:17:27.200 --> 01:17:35.440
but it was initially an espionage agency, which means information gathering, which is important.
01:17:36.080 --> 01:17:42.320
It's to gather and consolidate information from many, many different sources from all over the
01:17:42.320 --> 01:17:50.240
world and then put those in reports. The White House, the president, can make good decisions
01:17:50.240 --> 01:17:58.800
based upon valid information, evidence-based decision-making. But Alan Dulles, who was
01:17:59.760 --> 01:18:07.040
essentially the first head of the agency, made a series of legislative machinations and political
01:18:07.040 --> 01:18:13.680
machinations that gave additional powers to the agency and opened up what they called
01:18:13.680 --> 01:18:19.040
then the Plans Division, which is the Plans Division is the dirty tricks. It's the black ops
01:18:19.920 --> 01:18:28.000
fixing elections, murdering what they call executive action, which means killing foreign leaders,
01:18:29.200 --> 01:18:36.880
and making small wars, and bribing and blackmailing people, stealing elections,
01:18:36.880 --> 01:18:41.760
that kind of thing. The reason at that time, you know, we were in the middle of the Cold War,
01:18:42.800 --> 01:18:48.160
and Truman and Eisenhower did not want to go to war. They didn't want to commit troops.
01:18:49.360 --> 01:18:56.640
It seemed to them that this was a way of kind of fighting the Cold War secretly without
01:18:56.640 --> 01:19:08.160
and doing it at minimal cost by changing events sort of invisibly. And so it was seductive to
01:19:08.160 --> 01:19:13.360
them. But everybody, you know, Congress, when they first voted it in place, Congress, both political
01:19:13.360 --> 01:19:18.960
parties said, if we create this thing, it could turn into a monster and it could undermine our,
01:19:18.960 --> 01:19:25.760
you know, our values. And today, it's so powerful and nobody knows what its budget is. Plus, it has
01:19:25.760 --> 01:19:32.720
its own investment fund, Incutel, which has invested, you know, made, I think, 2000 investments
01:19:32.720 --> 01:19:39.440
in Silicon Valley. Oh, it has ownership of a lot of these tech companies that, you know, and the
01:19:39.440 --> 01:19:45.280
a lot of the CEOs of those tech companies have signed state secrecy agreements with the CIA,
01:19:45.280 --> 01:19:51.200
which if they even reveal that they have signed that, they can go to jail for 20 years and have
01:19:51.200 --> 01:19:57.280
their assets removed, et cetera. The influence that the agency has, the capacity to influence
01:19:57.280 --> 01:20:08.160
events at every level in our country is really frightening. And then for most of its life,
01:20:08.160 --> 01:20:14.640
the CIA was banned from propagandizing Americans. But we learned that they were doing it anyway.
01:20:14.720 --> 01:20:22.160
So in 1973, during the church committee hearings, we learned that the CIA had a program called
01:20:22.160 --> 01:20:28.640
Operation Mockingbird, where they had at least 400 members, leading members of the United States
01:20:28.640 --> 01:20:37.280
press corps, the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, et cetera, who were secretly
01:20:37.280 --> 01:20:45.520
working for the agency and steering news coverage to support CIA priorities.
01:20:47.200 --> 01:20:53.920
And they agreed at that time to disband Operation Mockingbird in 73. But there's
01:20:54.640 --> 01:20:59.280
indications they didn't do that. And they still, the CIA today is the biggest funder of journalism
01:20:59.280 --> 01:21:09.360
around the world. The biggest funder is through USAID. The USA, the United States funds journalism
01:21:09.360 --> 01:21:15.680
in almost every country in the world. It owns newspapers, it has journalists on it, thousands
01:21:15.680 --> 01:21:19.920
and thousands of journalists on its payroll. They're not supposed to be doing that in the
01:21:19.920 --> 01:21:28.640
United States, but in 2016, President Obama changed the law to make it legal now for the
01:21:29.280 --> 01:21:34.800
CIA to propagandize Americans. And I think, you know, we can't look at the Ukraine War and how
01:21:34.800 --> 01:21:42.480
that was, you know, has been, how the narrative has been formed in the minds of Americans
01:21:43.600 --> 01:21:46.080
and say that the CIA had nothing to do with that.
01:21:46.880 --> 01:21:51.440
What is the mechanism by which the CIA influences the narrative? Do you think it's indirectly?
01:21:51.440 --> 01:21:52.080
Through the press.
01:21:52.640 --> 01:21:55.200
Indirectly through the press or directly by funding the press?
01:21:55.760 --> 01:22:02.080
Directly through, I mean, there's certain press organs that have been linked, you know,
01:22:02.080 --> 01:22:07.840
to the agency that the people who run those organs, things like the Daily Beast, now Rolling
01:22:07.840 --> 01:22:14.000
Stone, you know, editor of Rolling Stone, Noah Schlackman, has deep relationships with the
01:22:14.000 --> 01:22:21.520
intelligence community, Salon, Daily Coast. But I wonder why they would do it. So from my
01:22:21.520 --> 01:22:26.000
perspective, it just seems like the job of a journalist is to have an integrity where
01:22:26.000 --> 01:22:29.280
your opinion cannot be influenced or bought.
01:22:29.920 --> 01:22:34.320
I agree with you, but I actually think that the entire field of journalism has,
01:22:36.400 --> 01:22:44.240
has, you know, really ashamed itself in recent years because it's become, you know,
01:22:44.240 --> 01:22:49.360
the principal newspapers in this country and the television station, the legacy media
01:22:49.360 --> 01:22:57.040
have abandoned their, their traditional, their tradition of, you know, which was when I was a
01:22:57.040 --> 01:23:01.760
kid, listen, my house was filled with the greatest journalists alive at that time. People like Ben
01:23:01.760 --> 01:23:08.880
Bradley, like Anthony Lewis, Mary McGrory, Pete Hamill, Jerry, Jack Newfield, Jimmy Breslin,
01:23:10.800 --> 01:23:17.440
and many, many others. And after my father, after my father died, they started the RFK
01:23:18.240 --> 01:23:24.800
Journalism Awards to recognize integrity and courage, you know, journalistic integrity and
01:23:24.800 --> 01:23:32.240
courage. And for that generation of journalism, they, they thought, they believed that the,
01:23:32.240 --> 01:23:39.040
that the function of a journalist was to maintain this posture of fear, skepticism toward any
01:23:39.040 --> 01:23:44.560
aggregation of power, including government authority. That you always, that people in
01:23:44.560 --> 01:23:49.840
authority lie and that they always have to be questioned and, and that their job was to speak
01:23:49.840 --> 01:23:57.040
truth to power and to be guardians of the First Amendment right to, to free expression. But if
01:23:57.040 --> 01:24:02.320
you look what happened during the pandemic, it was the inverse of that kind of journalism where
01:24:03.360 --> 01:24:09.600
the major press organs in this country were, instead of speaking truth to power, they were
01:24:09.600 --> 01:24:16.560
doing the opposite. They were broadcasting propaganda. They became propaganda organs for
01:24:16.560 --> 01:24:22.000
the government agencies and they were actually censoring the speech of anybody who dissents of
01:24:22.000 --> 01:24:29.600
the powerless. Oh, and in fact, it was, it was an organized conspiracy, you know, and it was the
01:24:29.600 --> 01:24:34.080
name of it was the Trusted News Initiative and you know, some of the major press organs in our
01:24:34.080 --> 01:24:42.160
country signed onto it and they agreed not to print stories or facts that, that departed from
01:24:42.160 --> 01:24:48.400
government orthodoxy. So the Washington Post was the signature, the UPI, the AP, and then the,
01:24:49.120 --> 01:24:56.960
the four media or the four social media groups, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and Google,
01:24:56.960 --> 01:25:02.640
all signed onto the Trusted News Initiative. It was started by the BBC, organized by them,
01:25:03.600 --> 01:25:08.480
and the purpose of it was to make sure nobody could print anything about government that
01:25:08.480 --> 01:25:14.560
departed from government orthodoxy. The way it worked is the UPI, the AP, and the, which are
01:25:14.560 --> 01:25:20.320
the news services that provide most of the news, you know, news around the country. And the
01:25:20.320 --> 01:25:25.760
Washington Post would decide what news was permissible to print. And a lot of it was
01:25:25.760 --> 01:25:32.320
about COVID, but also Hunter Bynum's laptops, where you, it was impermissible to suggest that
01:25:32.320 --> 01:25:36.720
those were real or that, you know, they had stuff on there that was compromising.
01:25:38.000 --> 01:25:44.960
And, and, you know, and by the way, I, this, what I'm telling you, you know,
01:25:44.960 --> 01:25:49.440
is all well documented and I'm litigating on it right now. So I'm part of a lawsuit against the
01:25:49.440 --> 01:25:55.520
DNI. And so I know a lot about what happened and I have all this documented and people can go to
01:25:55.520 --> 01:26:02.560
our website. There's a letter on my sub stack now to, to Michael Scherr of the Washington
01:26:02.560 --> 01:26:09.440
Post that outlines all this and gives all my sources. Because Michael Scherr accused me of
01:26:09.440 --> 01:26:14.080
being a conspiracy theorist when he was actually part of a conspiracy, a true conspiracy,
01:26:15.200 --> 01:26:22.560
to suppress anybody who was departing from government orthodoxies by either censoring
01:26:22.560 --> 01:26:29.200
them completely or labeling them conspiracy theorists. I mean, you can understand the intention
01:26:30.560 --> 01:26:34.080
and the action, the difference between, as we talked about, you can understand the intention
01:26:34.080 --> 01:26:39.360
of such a thing being good at a time of a catastrophe, at a time of a pandemic,
01:26:40.240 --> 01:26:46.800
there's a lot of risk to saying untrue things, but that's the slippery slope that leads into
01:26:47.360 --> 01:26:53.040
a place where the journalistic integrity that we talked about is completely sacrificed.
01:26:53.040 --> 01:26:57.120
And then you can deviate from truth. If you read their internal memorandum,
01:26:57.120 --> 01:27:02.080
including the statements of the, the, the leader of the trusted news initiative, I think her name
01:27:02.080 --> 01:27:10.160
is Jessica, Jennifer Cecil. And I, you know, you can go on our website and see her statement. And
01:27:10.480 --> 01:27:18.960
she says, the purpose of this is that we're now, she says, when people look at us, they think we're
01:27:18.960 --> 01:27:23.840
competitors, but we're not. The real competitors are coming from all these alternative news sources
01:27:23.840 --> 01:27:29.760
now all over the network. And they're hurting public trust in us and they're hurting our economic
01:27:29.760 --> 01:27:35.520
model. And we have to, they have to be choked off and crushed. And the way that we're going to do
01:27:35.520 --> 01:27:41.920
that is to make an agreement with the social media sites that if we say, if we label their
01:27:41.920 --> 01:27:48.160
information, misinformation, the social media sites will, will deplatform it or they will throttle
01:27:48.160 --> 01:27:55.440
it or they will shadow ban it, which destroys the economic model of those alternative competitive
01:27:55.440 --> 01:28:00.960
sources of information. So that, that's true. But, and, but the point you make is an important point
01:28:00.960 --> 01:28:09.120
that the journalists themselves who probably didn't know about the TNI agreement, certainly
01:28:09.120 --> 01:28:15.520
I'm sure they didn't. They believe that they're doing the right thing by suppressing information
01:28:15.520 --> 01:28:21.440
that may challenge, you know, government proclamations on COVID. But I mean, there's a
01:28:21.440 --> 01:28:27.840
danger to that. And the danger is that, you know, once you appoint yourself an arbiter of what's
01:28:27.840 --> 01:28:36.160
true and what's not true, then there's really no end to the power that you have now assumed for
01:28:36.160 --> 01:28:43.920
yourself because now your, your job is no longer to inform the public. Your job now is to manipulate
01:28:43.920 --> 01:28:51.760
the public. And if you end up manipulating the public in collusion with powerful entities,
01:28:51.840 --> 01:28:59.200
then you become the instrument of authoritarian rule rather than the, you know, the, the opponent
01:28:59.200 --> 01:29:03.440
of it. And it becomes the inverse of journalism and a democracy.
01:29:05.120 --> 01:29:11.200
You're running for president as a Democrat. What to you are the strongest values that
01:29:11.200 --> 01:29:20.800
represent the left-wing politics of this country? I would say protection of the environment and the
01:29:20.800 --> 01:29:27.280
commons, you know, the air, the water, wildlife, fisheries, public lands, you know, those assets,
01:29:27.280 --> 01:29:32.400
they cannot be reduced to private property ownership. You know, the landscapes are purple
01:29:32.400 --> 01:29:39.920
mountain majesty. The protection of the most vulnerable people in our society, people who,
01:29:42.000 --> 01:29:48.720
which would include children and minorities, the restoration of the middle class, you know,
01:29:49.040 --> 01:29:56.720
and protection of labor, dignity and, you know, decent pay for labor,
01:30:00.800 --> 01:30:06.400
bodily autonomy, a woman's right to choose or an individual's right to endure
01:30:08.080 --> 01:30:14.720
unwanted medical procedures, peace. You know, the Democrats have always been anti-war.
01:30:15.680 --> 01:30:24.000
The refusal to use fear as a governing tool. You know, FDR said the only thing we have to fear
01:30:24.000 --> 01:30:30.960
is fear itself because he recognized that tyrants and dictators could use fear to disable critical
01:30:31.040 --> 01:30:45.600
thinking and overwhelm the desire for personal liberty. The freedom of government from
01:30:46.320 --> 01:30:48.880
untowardly influence by corrupt corporate power.
01:30:50.800 --> 01:30:56.400
That's the end of this corrupt merger of the state and corporate power that is now,
01:30:57.200 --> 01:31:01.520
I think, dominating our democracy. That's what Eisenhower warned about.
01:31:02.720 --> 01:31:06.480
When he warned against the emergence of the military industrial complex.
01:31:07.280 --> 01:31:13.040
And then I prefer to talk about kind of the positive vision of what we should be doing in
01:31:13.040 --> 01:31:21.040
our country and globally, which is, you know, I see that the corporations are commoditizing us,
01:31:21.040 --> 01:31:27.840
are poisoning our children, are strip mining the wealth from our middle class,
01:31:28.560 --> 01:31:36.160
and treating America as if it were a business liquidation, converting assets to cash as
01:31:36.160 --> 01:31:45.120
quickly as possible and, you know, and creating or exacerbating this huge disparity in wealth
01:31:45.120 --> 01:31:51.120
in our country, which is eliminating the middle class and creating, you know, kind of a Latin
01:31:51.120 --> 01:31:58.720
American style feudal model. There's these huge aggregations of wealth above and widespread
01:31:58.720 --> 01:32:06.000
poverty below. And that's a configuration that is too unstable to support democracy sustainably.
01:32:06.000 --> 01:32:09.360
You know, and we're supposed to be modeling democracy, but we're losing it.
01:32:10.160 --> 01:32:14.640
Um, and I, you know, I think we ought to have a foreign policy
01:32:15.520 --> 01:32:22.960
that restores our moral authority around the world, restores America as the embodiment of
01:32:22.960 --> 01:32:29.840
moral authority, in which it was when my uncle was president. And as a purveyor of peace, rather
01:32:29.840 --> 01:32:37.280
than, you know, war like nation, my uncle said he didn't want people in Africa and Latin America
01:32:37.280 --> 01:32:44.400
and Asia to think of, when they think of America, to picture a man with a gun and a bayonet.
01:32:44.400 --> 01:32:50.240
He wanted them to think of a Peace Corps volunteer. And he refused to send combat veterans
01:32:50.240 --> 01:32:57.840
abroad, combat soldiers abroad. He never sent a single soldier to his death abroad. Um, and,
01:32:58.480 --> 01:33:06.960
and, you know, into combat. Um, he sent 16,000. He resisted in Berlin in 62. He resisted in Laos
01:33:08.640 --> 01:33:17.520
in 61. He resisted, um, in, in Vietnam, you know, Vietnam, they wanted him to put 250,000 troops.
01:33:17.520 --> 01:33:24.640
He only put 16,000 advisors, which was fewer fewer troops. And he sent to get James Meredith
01:33:24.640 --> 01:33:31.920
into the, into the universe to Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi. One black man,
01:33:31.920 --> 01:33:36.480
he sent 16,000 and a month before he died, he ordered them all home. He actually,
01:33:36.480 --> 01:33:46.480
I think it was October 2nd of 1963. He heard that a green beret had died and he asked his aide for a
01:33:46.480 --> 01:33:52.640
combat, um, for a list of combat fatalities. And the aid came back and there was 75 men had died
01:33:52.640 --> 01:33:57.840
in Vietnam at that point. And he said, that's too many. We're going to have no more any order.
01:33:57.840 --> 01:34:05.280
And he signed a national security order to 63 and ordered all of those men, all Americans home
01:34:05.280 --> 01:34:14.320
from Vietnam by 1965 with the first thousand coming home by December 63. And then, uh, in
01:34:14.320 --> 01:34:20.960
November, he, of course, just before that evacuation began, he was killed. And a week later,
01:34:21.600 --> 01:34:26.640
president Johnson remanded that order. And then a year after that, the Tonkin golf resolution,
01:34:27.600 --> 01:34:32.000
we sent 250,000, which is what they wanted my uncle to do, which he refused.
01:34:33.040 --> 01:34:38.000
And then, and it became an American war. And then Nixon, you know, topped it off at 560,000,
01:34:39.280 --> 01:34:44.800
56,000 Americans never came home, including my cousin, George Schakel, who died at the Ted
01:34:44.800 --> 01:34:50.640
offensive. Um, and we killed a million Vietnamese and we got nothing for it.
01:34:51.600 --> 01:34:54.160
So America should be the symbol of peace.
01:34:55.040 --> 01:35:01.280
And, you know, today, my uncle, you know, really focused on putting America on the side of the
01:35:01.280 --> 01:35:09.760
poor instead of our tradition of, you know, of, of, uh, fortifying oligarchies that were
01:35:09.760 --> 01:35:14.000
anti-communism. That was our, you know, our major criteria. If you said you were against
01:35:14.000 --> 01:35:18.640
communists, and of course the people were with the rich people or aid was going to the rich
01:35:18.640 --> 01:35:22.560
people in those countries and they were going to the military hunt us, our weapons were going to
01:35:22.560 --> 01:35:29.200
the hunt does, uh, to fight against the poor. And my uncle said, no, you know, America should be on
01:35:29.200 --> 01:35:36.000
the side of the poor. And so he launched the Alliance for Progress and USAID, which were
01:35:36.000 --> 01:35:41.280
intended to bring aid to the poorest people in those and build middle classes and, uh,
01:35:41.280 --> 01:35:48.240
and take ourselves away. In fact, his most, his favorite trip, he, his two favorite trips
01:35:48.240 --> 01:35:55.360
while he was president, his most favorite trip was to Ireland. So this is incredible, um,
01:35:56.480 --> 01:36:02.160
emotional homecoming for all of the people of Ireland. But his second favorite trip was when
01:36:02.160 --> 01:36:06.400
he went to Columbia, he went to Latin America, but Columbia was his favorite country.
01:36:07.520 --> 01:36:13.360
And I think there were 2 million people came into Bogota to see him, this vast crowd and they were
01:36:13.360 --> 01:36:20.560
just delirious cheering for him. And the president of Columbia, Jerez Carmago, um, said to him,
01:36:20.560 --> 01:36:26.400
do you know why they love you? And my uncle said, why? And he said, because they think you've put
01:36:26.400 --> 01:36:32.640
America on the side of the poor against the oligarchs. And, you know, when my uncle,
01:36:33.200 --> 01:36:41.600
after he died today, there are more avenues and boulevards and hospitals and schools
01:36:42.720 --> 01:36:47.040
named after and statues named after and commemorating in parks,
01:36:47.040 --> 01:36:53.200
commemorating John Kennedy in Africa and Latin America than any other president in the United
01:36:53.200 --> 01:36:57.840
States. And probably more than all the other presidents combined. And it's because, you know,
01:36:57.840 --> 01:37:02.240
he put America on the side of the poor and that's what we ought to be doing. We ought to be
01:37:02.240 --> 01:37:10.880
projecting economic power abroad. The Chinese have essentially stolen his playbook and, you know,
01:37:10.880 --> 01:37:17.520
we've spent $8 trillion on the Iraq war and its aftermath, the wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya,
01:37:17.520 --> 01:37:23.840
you know, Afghanistan, Pakistan. And what do we get for that? We got nothing for that money,
01:37:23.840 --> 01:37:32.320
$8 trillion. Um, we got, we killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein. Iraq today is a, is a, is a
01:37:32.320 --> 01:37:38.480
met worse, much worse off than it was when Saddam was there. It's a, it's an incoherent violent
01:37:38.480 --> 01:37:45.280
war between Shia and Sunni death squads. We pushed Iraq into the embrace of Iran. It's now become
01:37:45.280 --> 01:37:50.320
essentially a proxy for Iran, which is exactly the outcome that we were trying to prevent for
01:37:50.320 --> 01:38:00.640
the past, you know, 20 or 30 years. We created ISIS. We sent 2 million refugees into Europe,
01:38:01.520 --> 01:38:06.560
destabilizing all of the nations in Europe for generations. And we're now seeing these riots
01:38:07.760 --> 01:38:14.240
in, uh, in France. And that's a direct result from the, uh, Syrian war that we created and,
01:38:14.240 --> 01:38:21.040
and that our creation of ISIS, um, Brexit is another, you know, result of that. So we,
01:38:22.240 --> 01:38:28.400
for $8 trillion, we wrecked the world. And during that same period that we spent $8.1 trillion,
01:38:30.400 --> 01:38:36.880
bombing bridges, ports, schools, hospitals, the Chinese spent $8.1 trillion building schools,
01:38:36.880 --> 01:38:44.720
ports, hospitals, bridges, and, and, uh, and universities. And now, you know, the Chinese are
01:38:45.440 --> 01:38:49.600
out competing us everywhere in the world. Everybody wants to deal with the Chinese because
01:38:49.600 --> 01:38:55.760
they, you know, they come in, they build nice things for you and they, and there's no strengths
01:38:55.760 --> 01:39:00.240
attached and they're pleasant to deal with. And, and, you know, as a result of that,
01:39:01.200 --> 01:39:07.760
Brazil is switching the Chinese currency. Um, uh, Argentina is switching Saudi Arabia,
01:39:07.760 --> 01:39:12.800
our greatest partner that, you know, we put trillions of dollars into protecting our oil
01:39:12.800 --> 01:39:18.080
pipelines there. And now they, they're saying, you know, we, we don't, we don't care what the
01:39:18.080 --> 01:39:24.160
United States think. That's what my mom and Ben Salam said. He said, we don't, he, you know, they,
01:39:24.880 --> 01:39:35.040
he dropped oil production in Saudi Arabia in the middle of a U S, um, inflation spiral.
01:39:35.040 --> 01:39:40.800
They've never done that to us before to aggravate the inflation spiral. And two weeks later,
01:39:40.800 --> 01:39:46.960
and then they signed a deal, a unilateral peace deal with Iran, which has been the enemy that
01:39:46.960 --> 01:39:53.120
we've been telling them to, you know, to be a bulwark against for 20 years. And two weeks after
01:39:53.120 --> 01:39:56.960
that, he said, we don't care what the United States thinks anymore. So that's what we got
01:39:56.960 --> 01:40:03.280
for spending all those trillions of dollars there. We got short term friends and the United States,
01:40:03.280 --> 01:40:08.240
you know, policy abroad, and we have not made ourselves safer. We've made Americans,
01:40:08.240 --> 01:40:13.280
we've put Americans in more jeopardy all over the world. You know, you have to wait in lines to get
01:40:13.280 --> 01:40:20.880
through the airport. Um, you have to, you know, the security state is now costing us $1.3 trillion.
01:40:20.880 --> 01:40:28.000
dollars. And America is on safer and poorer than it's ever been. So, you know, we're not getting,
01:40:29.200 --> 01:40:35.120
we should be doing what president Kennedy said we ought to do and what, uh, what China,
01:40:35.120 --> 01:40:39.920
the policy that China has now adopted. So that's a really eloquent and clear and
01:40:39.920 --> 01:40:46.480
powerful description of the way you see us should be doing geopolitics and the way you see
01:40:46.480 --> 01:40:50.640
us should be taking care of the poor in this country. Let me ask you this,
01:40:50.640 --> 01:40:56.480
a question from Jordan Peterson that he asked, uh, when I told him that I'm speaking with you,
01:40:57.920 --> 01:41:01.440
given everything you've said, when does the left go too far?
01:41:03.440 --> 01:41:09.680
I suppose he's referring to cultural issues, identity politics.
01:41:10.640 --> 01:41:15.760
Well, you know, Jordan trying to get me to bad mouth the left all the time. I would say,
01:41:16.880 --> 01:41:23.680
I really enjoyed my, my, uh, my talk with him, but he seemed to have that agenda where he wanted
01:41:23.680 --> 01:41:29.680
me to say bad things about the left. And I just don't, you know, that's not what my campaign is
01:41:29.680 --> 01:41:34.800
about. I want to do the opposite. Oh, I'm not going to bad mouth the left. They try, you know,
01:41:34.800 --> 01:41:42.400
I was on a show this week with David Remnick from the New Yorker and he tried to get me to bad mouth
01:41:42.400 --> 01:41:48.080
Donald Trump and, you know, and Alex Jones and a lot of other people just, and, and aiding me to
01:41:48.080 --> 01:41:53.600
do it. And of course there's a lot of bad things I could say about all those people, but it doesn't,
01:41:53.600 --> 01:42:00.880
you know, I'm trying to find, I'm trying to find values that hold us together and we can share in
01:42:00.880 --> 01:42:07.680
common rather than to focus constantly on these disputes and these issues that drive us apart.
01:42:07.680 --> 01:42:13.360
So me sitting here, bad mouthing the left or bad mouthing the right is not going to advance the
01:42:13.360 --> 01:42:19.920
ball. I really want to figure out ways that, you know, what do these groups hold in common that we
01:42:19.920 --> 01:42:26.480
can all, you know, have a shared vision of what we want this country to look like. Well, that's music
01:42:26.480 --> 01:42:32.240
to my ears, but in that spirit, let me ask you a difficult question then. Uh, you wrote a book
01:42:32.320 --> 01:42:38.640
harshly criticizing Anthony Fauci. Let me ask you to steel man the case for the people who support
01:42:38.640 --> 01:42:45.280
him. What is the biggest positive thing you think Anthony Fauci did for the world? What is good that
01:42:45.280 --> 01:42:51.920
he has done for the world, especially during this pandemic? You know, I don't want to, uh, sit here
01:42:51.920 --> 01:43:00.320
and speak uncharitely by saying the guy, um, didn't do anything, but I, I don't, I can't think of
01:43:00.320 --> 01:43:06.160
anything. I mean, if you, um, if you tell me something that you think he did, you know,
01:43:06.160 --> 01:43:11.440
maybe there was a drug that got licensed while he was at NIH that, you know, benefited people.
01:43:11.440 --> 01:43:18.560
That's certainly possible. He was there for 50 years. And I, I, in terms of his, um, of his
01:43:18.560 --> 01:43:25.680
principal programs of the AIDS programs and his COVID programs, and I think that the harm that
01:43:25.680 --> 01:43:30.960
he did vastly outweighed, uh, you know, the benefits. Do you think he believes he's doing
01:43:30.960 --> 01:43:37.520
good for the world? I don't know what he believes. In fact, in that book, which is I think 250,000
01:43:37.520 --> 01:43:43.680
words, I never tried to look inside of his head. I, I deal with facts. I deal with science.
01:43:44.240 --> 01:43:50.800
Oh, and I have every factual assertion in that book is cited in source to government databases
01:43:50.800 --> 01:43:56.720
or peer reviewed publications. And I don't, I try not to speculate about things that I don't know
01:43:56.720 --> 01:44:03.280
about or I can't prove. And I do not, I cannot tell you what his motivations were. I mean, all
01:44:03.280 --> 01:44:10.480
of us, he's done a thing, a lot of things that I think are really very, very bad things for humanity
01:44:10.480 --> 01:44:17.200
and very deceptive. We all have this, um, this capacity for self deception. As I said, at the
01:44:17.200 --> 01:44:22.320
beginning of this podcast, we, we judge ourselves on our intentions rather than our actions. And we
01:44:22.320 --> 01:44:31.360
all have an almost infinite capacity to convince ourselves that what we're doing is, is right.
01:44:31.360 --> 01:44:38.800
And, um, you know, not everybody kind of lives an examined life and examining their motivations
01:44:38.800 --> 01:44:43.680
and the way that the world might experience, um, their professions of goodness.
01:44:44.640 --> 01:44:49.440
Let me ask about the difficulty of the job he had. Do you think it's possible to do that kind
01:44:49.440 --> 01:44:56.000
of job well, or is it also a fundamental flaw of the job of being the central centralized figure
01:44:56.000 --> 01:45:02.240
that's supposed to know scientific policy? No, I think he was a genuinely bad human being
01:45:03.440 --> 01:45:10.960
and that there were many, many good people in that department over the years. Um, um, Bernice
01:45:10.960 --> 01:45:17.280
Eddy is a really good example of John Anthony Morris, many people whose careers he destroyed
01:45:17.280 --> 01:45:22.640
because they were trying to tell the truth. One after the other, the greatest scientists
01:45:22.640 --> 01:45:29.200
in the history of NIH were run out of that organization, out of that agency. Um, but you
01:45:29.200 --> 01:45:37.360
know, people listening to this, you know, probably, you know, will in hearing me say that will think
01:45:37.360 --> 01:45:44.240
that I'm bitter or that I, I'm doctrinaire about him, but you know, you should really go and read
01:45:44.240 --> 01:45:49.920
my book and I, it's hard to summarize a, you know, I tried to be really methodical
01:45:50.720 --> 01:45:58.560
to not call names, to just say what happened. Uh, you are the bigger picture of this is you're
01:45:58.560 --> 01:46:04.320
an outspoken critic of, uh, pharmaceutical companies, big pharma. What is the biggest
01:46:04.320 --> 01:46:10.240
problem with big pharma and how can it be fixed? Well, the problem could be fixed through regulation,
01:46:10.240 --> 01:46:22.400
you know, the problems, but the pharmaceutical industry is, um, is, uh, I mean, I don't want
01:46:22.400 --> 01:46:28.320
to say because this is going to seem extreme that a criminal enterprise, but if you look at the
01:46:28.320 --> 01:46:35.840
history, that is an applicable, um, descriptive or characterization. For example, the four biggest
01:46:35.840 --> 01:46:45.120
vaccine makers, Sanofi, Merck, Pfizer, and Glaxo, uh, four companies that make all of the 72
01:46:45.120 --> 01:46:49.520
vaccines that are now mandated for America, effectively mandated for American children.
01:46:50.480 --> 01:46:58.560
And collectively, those companies have paid $35 billion in criminal penalties and damages
01:46:58.560 --> 01:47:06.560
in the last decade. And I think since 2000, about 79 billion. So these are the most corrupt
01:47:06.560 --> 01:47:14.080
companies in the world. And the problem is that they're serial felons. They, you know, they do
01:47:14.160 --> 01:47:22.400
this again and again and again. So they did Viya, you know, Merck did Viyax, which Viyax, they,
01:47:22.400 --> 01:47:28.160
you know, they killed people by falsifying science and they did it. They lied to the public.
01:47:28.160 --> 01:47:35.200
They said, this is a headache medicine and an arthritis painkiller, but they didn't tell people
01:47:35.200 --> 01:47:40.320
that it also gave you heart attacks. And they knew, you know, we've found when we sued them,
01:47:41.280 --> 01:47:45.600
um, the, you know, the memos from their bean counters saying, we're going to kill this many
01:47:45.600 --> 01:47:50.880
people, but we're still going to make money. So they make those calculations and those
01:47:50.880 --> 01:47:56.960
calculations are made very, very regularly. And then, you know, when they, um, when they
01:47:57.680 --> 01:48:04.240
get caught, they, they pay a penalty and I think they paid about $7 billion for Viyax,
01:48:04.240 --> 01:48:08.560
but then they went right back that same year that they paid that penalty.
01:48:09.520 --> 01:48:15.040
They went back into the same thing again with Gardasil and with a whole lot of other drugs. So
01:48:16.160 --> 01:48:20.240
the way that this system is set up, the way that it's sold to doctors, the way that
01:48:22.160 --> 01:48:28.560
nobody ever goes to jail. So there's really no penalty that, uh, it all becomes part of
01:48:28.560 --> 01:48:34.640
the cost of doing business. And, you know, you can see other businesses that if they're not,
01:48:35.280 --> 01:48:38.160
if there's no penalty, if there's no real, I mean, these look,
01:48:39.040 --> 01:48:45.120
these are the companies that gave us the opioid epidemic, right? So they knew what was going to
01:48:45.120 --> 01:48:49.200
happen. And we, you know, you go and see, there's a documentary, I forget what the name of it is, but
01:48:50.560 --> 01:48:56.560
it shows exactly what happened. And, you know, they corrupted FDA. They knew that this,
01:48:57.360 --> 01:49:03.200
that oxycodone was addictive. They got FDA to tell doctors that it wasn't addictive.
01:49:04.160 --> 01:49:10.720
They pressured FDA to lie and they got their way. And they've so far, they led this year,
01:49:10.720 --> 01:49:15.760
you know, those, they got a whole generation addicted to oxycodone. And now, you know,
01:49:15.760 --> 01:49:20.400
when they got caught and they made it, we made it harder to get oxycodone. And now all those
01:49:20.400 --> 01:49:29.440
addicted kids are going to fend no one dying. And this year it killed 106, 106,000. That's
01:49:29.440 --> 01:49:34.000
twice as many people who were killed during the Vietnam, during the 20 year Vietnam War,
01:49:34.000 --> 01:49:39.040
but in one year, twice as many American kids. And they knew it was going to happen.
01:49:40.400 --> 01:49:45.120
And they did it to make money. So I don't know why you call that other than saying that's,
01:49:45.120 --> 01:49:46.640
you know, a criminal enterprise.
01:49:46.640 --> 01:49:52.480
Or is it possible to have within the capitalist system to produce medication,
01:49:52.480 --> 01:49:55.600
to produce drugs at scale in a way that is not corrupt?
01:49:56.400 --> 01:49:57.920
Yeah, of course it is.
01:49:57.920 --> 01:49:58.420
How?
01:49:59.060 --> 01:50:02.180
Through a, you know, through a solid regulatory regimen,
01:50:03.380 --> 01:50:10.500
where drugs are actually tested. You know, I mean, the problem is not the capitalist system.
01:50:10.500 --> 01:50:15.540
The capitalist system, I, you know, I have great admiration for the love for the capitalist system
01:50:15.540 --> 01:50:22.340
is the greatest economic engine ever devised, but it has to be harnessed to a social purpose.
01:50:23.220 --> 01:50:30.260
Otherwise it's going to, it leads us, you know, down the trail of oligarchy,
01:50:30.260 --> 01:50:37.540
environmental destruction, and, you know, and commoditizing, poisoning, and killing human beings.
01:50:37.540 --> 01:50:49.540
That's what it will do in the end. You need a regulatory structure that is, that is not corrupted.
01:50:49.540 --> 01:50:53.540
I entanglements, financial entanglements with the industry.
01:50:54.340 --> 01:51:01.220
And we've set this up the way that this is that the system is set up today has created this system
01:51:01.220 --> 01:51:10.180
of regulatory capture on steroids. So almost 50% of FDA's budget comes from pharmaceutical companies.
01:51:11.140 --> 01:51:15.140
The people who work at FDA are, you know, their money is coming,
01:51:15.140 --> 01:51:18.500
their salaries are coming from pharma, half their salaries.
01:51:18.500 --> 01:51:23.300
So they're, you know, they know who their bosses are. And that means getting those drugs done,
01:51:23.300 --> 01:51:28.100
getting them out the door and approved as quickly as possible. It's called fast track approval.
01:51:28.100 --> 01:51:36.100
And they pay 50% of FDA's budget. It goes about 45% actually goes to fast track approval.
01:51:36.100 --> 01:51:38.100
Do you think money can buy integrity?
01:51:38.100 --> 01:51:43.300
Oh yeah, of course it can. And the rate, yeah, I mean, there's, that's not something that is,
01:51:43.300 --> 01:51:48.260
that's not something that is, that is controversial. Of course it will.
01:51:48.980 --> 01:51:49.780
So and then-
01:51:49.780 --> 01:51:52.900
Slightly controversial to me. I would like to think that science that-
01:51:52.900 --> 01:51:56.980
It may not be able to buy your integrity. I'm talking about population wide. I'm not talking
01:51:56.980 --> 01:51:58.180
about the individual.
01:51:58.180 --> 01:52:05.860
But I'd like to believe that scientists, I mean, in general, a career of a scientist is not a very
01:52:05.860 --> 01:52:11.460
high paying job. I'd like to believe that people that go into science that work at FDA, that work
01:52:11.460 --> 01:52:17.220
at NIH are doing it for a reason that's not even correlated with money really.
01:52:17.220 --> 01:52:22.740
Yeah. And I think probably that's why they go in there, but scientists are corruptible. And,
01:52:22.740 --> 01:52:30.100
you know, the way, the way that I can tell you that is that I've brought over 500 lawsuits and
01:52:30.100 --> 01:52:35.140
almost all of them involve scientific controversies. And there are scientists on both sides in
01:52:35.140 --> 01:52:41.540
everyone. When I, when we sued Monsanto, there was, on the Monsanto side, there was a Yale
01:52:41.540 --> 01:52:46.020
scientist, a Stanford scientist, and a Harvard scientist. And on our side, there was a Yale,
01:52:46.020 --> 01:52:50.340
Stanford, and Harvard scientist. And they were saying exactly the opposite things.
01:52:51.460 --> 01:52:54.580
In fact, there's a word for those kind of scientists who take money
01:52:55.220 --> 01:53:02.180
for their opinion. And the word is buyostitutes. And they are very, very common. And, you know,
01:53:02.260 --> 01:53:06.980
and I've been dealing with them my whole career. You know, I think it was Upton Sinclair who said
01:53:08.020 --> 01:53:14.980
that it's very difficult to persuade a man of a fact if the existence of that fact will
01:53:14.980 --> 01:53:19.700
diminish his salary. And I think that's true for all of us. If they, you know,
01:53:19.700 --> 01:53:28.420
we find a way of reconciling ourselves to things that are, to truths that actually end worldviews
01:53:29.380 --> 01:53:38.580
and actually benefit our salaries. Now, NIH, NIH has probably the worst system, which is that
01:53:38.580 --> 01:53:45.380
scientists who work for NIH, NIH itself, which used to be the premier gold standard scientific
01:53:45.380 --> 01:53:50.980
agency in the world, everybody looked at NIH and said, hey, it's just an incubator for
01:53:50.980 --> 01:53:57.940
pharmaceutical drugs. And, you know, that is that gravity of economic self-interest.
01:53:58.580 --> 01:54:05.620
Because if you're, if NIH itself collects royalties, they have margin rights for the
01:54:05.620 --> 01:54:10.900
patents on all the drugs that they work on. So with the Moderna vaccine, which they promoted
01:54:10.900 --> 01:54:17.460
incessantly and aggressively, NIH on 50% of that vaccine is making billions and billions of dollars
01:54:17.460 --> 01:54:23.300
on it. And there are four, at least four scientists that we know of, and probably at least six
01:54:24.660 --> 01:54:29.620
at NIH who themselves have margin rights for those patents. So if you are a scientist who
01:54:29.620 --> 01:54:35.460
work at NIH, you work on a new drug, you then get margin rights and you're entitled to royalties of
01:54:35.460 --> 01:54:41.460
$150,000 a year forever from that forever. Your children, your children's children, as long as that
01:54:42.260 --> 01:54:48.100
products on the market, you can collect royalties. So you have, you know, the Moderna vaccine is
01:54:48.100 --> 01:54:55.540
paying for the top people at NIH. You know, some of the top regulators is paying for their boats,
01:54:55.540 --> 01:55:00.740
it's paying for their mortgages, it's paying for their children's education. And, you know,
01:55:01.620 --> 01:55:10.740
you have to expect that the, that in those kinds of situations, the regulatory function would be
01:55:12.420 --> 01:55:18.820
subsumed beneath the mercantile ambitions of the agency itself and the individuals
01:55:18.820 --> 01:55:24.900
who stand to profit enormously from getting a drug to market. Those guys are paid by us,
01:55:24.900 --> 01:55:30.100
the taxpayer, to find problems with those drugs before they get to market. But if you know that
01:55:30.100 --> 01:55:35.700
drug is going to pay for your mortgage, you may overlook a little problem. And that were even a
01:55:35.700 --> 01:55:41.380
very big one. And that's the problem. You've talked about that the media slanders you by
01:55:41.380 --> 01:55:48.660
calling you an anti-vaxxer. And you've said that you're not anti-vaccine, you're pro-safe vaccine.
01:55:50.420 --> 01:55:53.860
Difficult question. Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?
01:55:55.220 --> 01:55:58.500
I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably
01:55:58.500 --> 01:55:59.460
a-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so
01:56:28.500 --> 01:56:58.500
so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so-so
01:56:58.500 --> 01:57:01.500
I would say I don't know because we don't have the data on that.
01:57:01.500 --> 01:57:08.500
So, but let's talk well, you know, so we kind of have to narrow in on is it effective against the thing it's supposed to fight?
01:57:08.500 --> 01:57:11.500
Well, a lot of them are. Let me give you an example.
01:57:11.500 --> 01:57:16.500
The most popular vaccine in the world is the DTP vaccine, diphtheria tetanus and pertussis.
01:57:16.500 --> 01:57:21.500
It was used in this kind of introduced in this country around 1980.
01:57:21.500 --> 01:57:24.500
That vaccine caused so many injuries.
01:57:24.500 --> 01:57:29.500
That was the manufacturer was said to the Reagan administration.
01:57:29.500 --> 01:57:35.500
We are now paying $20 in downstream liabilities for every dollar that we're making in profits.
01:57:35.500 --> 01:57:40.500
And we are getting out of the business unless you give us permanent immunity from liability.
01:57:40.500 --> 01:57:43.500
So the vaccine companies then were given.
01:57:43.500 --> 01:57:48.500
And by the way, Reagan said at that time, why don't you just make the vaccine safe?
01:57:48.500 --> 01:57:49.500
And why is that?
01:57:49.500 --> 01:57:52.500
Because vaccines are inherently unsafe.
01:57:52.500 --> 01:57:54.500
They said unavoidably unsafe.
01:57:54.500 --> 01:57:56.500
You cannot make them safe.
01:57:56.500 --> 01:58:05.500
And so when Reagan wrote the bill and passed it, the bill says in its preamble is because vaccines are unavoidably unsafe.
01:58:05.500 --> 01:58:10.500
And the Bruceowitz case, which was a Supreme Court case that uphold upheld that bill.
01:58:10.500 --> 01:58:16.500
And the Bruceowitz case, which was a Supreme Court case that uphold upheld that bill uses that same language.
01:58:16.500 --> 01:58:18.500
Vaccines cannot be made safe.
01:58:18.500 --> 01:58:19.500
They're unavoidably unsafe.
01:58:19.500 --> 01:58:21.500
So this is what the law says.
01:58:21.500 --> 01:58:28.500
Now, I just want to finish this story because this illustrates very well your your question.
01:58:28.500 --> 01:58:37.500
The DTP vaccine was discontinued in this country and it was discontinued in Europe because so many kids were being injured by it.
01:58:37.500 --> 01:58:44.500
However, the WHO and Bill Gates gives it to one hundred and sixty one million African children every year.
01:58:44.500 --> 01:58:58.500
And Bill Gates went to the Danish government and asked them to support this program, saying we've saved 30 million kids from dying from diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
01:58:58.500 --> 01:59:01.500
The Danish government said, can you show us the data?
01:59:01.500 --> 01:59:02.500
And he couldn't.
01:59:02.500 --> 01:59:12.500
So the Danish government paid for a big study with Novo Nordisk, which is a Scandinavian vaccine company in West Africa.
01:59:12.500 --> 01:59:17.500
And they went to West Africa and they looked at the DTP vaccine for 30 years of data.
01:59:17.500 --> 01:59:22.500
And they hire, they retain the best vaccine scientists in the world.
01:59:22.500 --> 01:59:27.500
These kind of deities of African vaccine program, Peter A.A.B., Sigrid Morgensen and a bunch of others.
01:59:27.500 --> 01:59:35.500
And they looked at 30 years of data for the DTP vaccine and they came back and they were shocked by what they found.
01:59:35.500 --> 01:59:40.500
They found that the vaccine was preventing kids from getting diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
01:59:40.500 --> 01:59:47.500
But the girls who got that vaccine were 10 times more likely to die over the next six months than children who didn't.
01:59:47.500 --> 01:59:49.500
Why is that?
01:59:49.500 --> 01:59:53.500
And they weren't dying from anything anybody ever associated with the vaccine.
01:59:53.500 --> 02:00:02.500
They were dying of anemia, heart disease, malaria, sepsis, and mainly pulmonary and respiratory disease, pneumonia.
02:00:02.500 --> 02:00:10.500
And it turns out this is what the research has found.
02:00:10.500 --> 02:00:13.500
We were all pro-vaccine, by the way.
02:00:13.500 --> 02:00:21.500
They said that this vaccine is killing more children than diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis prior to the introduction of the vaccine.
02:00:21.500 --> 02:00:24.500
And for 30 years, nobody ever noticed it.
02:00:24.500 --> 02:00:30.500
The vaccine was providing protection against those target illnesses, but it had ruined the children's immune systems.
02:00:30.500 --> 02:00:36.500
And they could not defend themselves against random infections that were harmless to most children.
02:00:36.500 --> 02:00:39.500
But isn't it nearly impossible to prove that link?
02:00:39.500 --> 02:00:41.500
You can't prove the link.
02:00:41.500 --> 02:00:47.500
All you can do is for any particular interest you get, illness or death, you can't prove the link.
02:00:47.500 --> 02:00:55.500
But you can show statistically that if you get that vaccine, you're more likely to die over the next six months than if you don't.
02:00:55.500 --> 02:00:59.500
And those studies, unfortunately, are not done for any other vaccines.
02:00:59.500 --> 02:01:07.500
So for every other medicine, in order to get approval from the FDA, you have to do a placebo-controlled trial prior to licensure,
02:01:07.500 --> 02:01:19.500
where you look at health outcomes among an exposed group, a group that gets it, and compare those to a similarly situated group that gets a placebo.
02:01:19.500 --> 02:01:29.500
The only medical intervention that does not receive, that does not undergo, placebo-controlled trials prior to licensure are vaccines.
02:01:29.500 --> 02:01:38.500
One of the 72 vaccines that are now mandated for our children have ever undergone a placebo-controlled trial prior to licensure.
02:01:38.500 --> 02:01:41.500
So I should say that there's a bunch on that point.
02:01:41.500 --> 02:01:45.500
I've heard from a bunch of folks that disagree with you, including polio.
02:01:45.500 --> 02:01:52.500
I mean, in the test, testing is a really important point before licensure, placebo-controlled randomized trials.
02:01:53.500 --> 02:02:00.500
Polio received just that against the saline placebo control.
02:02:00.500 --> 02:02:09.500
So it seems unclear to me. I'm confused why you say that they don't go through that process. It seems like a lot of them do.
02:02:09.500 --> 02:02:17.500
Here's the thing. I was saying that for many years because we couldn't find any.
02:02:17.500 --> 02:02:28.500
And then in 2016, in March, I met President Trump, ordered Dr. Fauci to meet with me, and Dr. Fauci and Francis Collins.
02:02:28.500 --> 02:02:40.500
And I said to them during that meeting, you have been saying that I'm not telling the truth when I said not one of these has undergone a prior pre-licensure placebo control.
02:02:40.500 --> 02:02:47.500
And the polio may have had one post-license. Most of them haven't. The polio may have. I don't know.
02:02:47.500 --> 02:02:55.500
But our question was prior to licensure, do you ever test these for safety?
02:02:55.500 --> 02:03:10.500
And by the way, I think the polio vaccine did undergo a saline placebo trial prior to licensure, but not for safety, only for efficacy.
02:03:10.500 --> 02:03:22.500
So I'm talking about safety trials now. Fauci told me that he said, I can't find one now. He had a whole tray of files there.
02:03:22.500 --> 02:03:29.500
He said, I can't find now, but I'll send you one. I said, just for any vaccines, send me one. For any of the 72 vaccines.
02:03:29.500 --> 02:03:44.500
He never did. So we sued the HHS. And after a year of stonewalling us, HHS came back and they gave us a letter saying we have no pre-licensing safety trial for any of the 72 vaccines.
02:03:44.500 --> 02:03:58.500
And that letter from HHS, which settled our lawsuit against them because we had a FOIA lawsuit against them, is posted on CHD's website. So anybody can go look at it.
02:03:58.500 --> 02:04:07.500
So if HHS had any study, I assume they would have given it to us and they can't find one.
02:04:07.500 --> 02:04:13.500
Well, let me zoom out because a lot of the details matter here. Pre-licensure, what does placebo control mean?
02:04:13.500 --> 02:04:32.500
This probably requires a rigorous analysis. At this point, it would be nice for me just to give a shout out to other people, much smarter than me, that people should follow along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
02:04:32.500 --> 02:04:42.500
Use their mind, learn and think. So one really awesome creator, I really recommend him as Dr. Dan Wilson. He hosted the Debunk the Funk podcast.
02:04:42.500 --> 02:04:51.500
Vincent Recaniello, who hosts this week in virology. Brilliant guy. I've had him on the podcast. Somebody you've been battling with is Paul Offit.
02:04:51.500 --> 02:05:03.500
Interesting Twitter, interesting books people should read and understand and read your books as well. And Eric Topol has a good Twitter and good books. And even Peter Hotez, I'll ask you about him.
02:05:03.500 --> 02:05:20.500
And people should because Paul Offit published a substack recently debunking, I think, my discussion with Joe Rogan.
02:05:20.500 --> 02:05:36.500
And we have published a debunk of his debunking. So if you read his stuff, you should read both. And I would love to debate any of these guys.
02:05:36.500 --> 02:05:51.500
So Joe Rogan proposed just such a debate, which is quite fascinating to see how much attention and how much funding it garnered. The debate between you and Peter Hotez. Why do you think Peter rejected the offer?
02:05:51.500 --> 02:06:07.500
I think it's, you know, again, I'm not going to look into his head. But what I will say is if you're a scientist and you're making public recommendations based upon what you say is evidence based science, you ought to be able to defend that.
02:06:07.500 --> 02:06:22.500
You ought to be able to defend it in a public forum and you ought to be able to defend it against all, you know, all commerce. And, you know, so I, you know, if you're a scientist, science is based on is rooted in logic and reason.
02:06:22.500 --> 02:06:39.500
And if you can't use logic and reason to defend your position, and by the way, I know almost all of the studies. I've been, you know, I've written books on them and we've made a big effort to assemble all the studies on both sides.
02:06:39.500 --> 02:06:51.500
And so I'm prepared to talk about those studies and I'm prepared to submit them in advance, you know, and for each of the points. And by the way, I've done that with Peter Hotez.
02:06:51.500 --> 02:07:06.500
You know, I've actually because I had this, this kind of informal debate with him several years ago with a referee at that time. And we were debating not only by phone, but by email.
02:07:06.500 --> 02:07:15.500
And on those emails, every point that he would make, I would cite science and he could never come back with science. He could never come back with publications.
02:07:15.500 --> 02:07:30.500
He would give publications that had nothing to do with, for example, thimerosal vaccines, mercury based vaccines. He sent me one time 16 studies to, to, to rebut something I'd said about thimerosal and not one of those studies.
02:07:30.500 --> 02:07:44.500
They were all about the MMR vaccine, which doesn't contain thimerosal. So it wasn't like a real debate where you're, you know, you're, you're using reason and isolating points and having a, you know, a rational discourse.
02:07:44.500 --> 02:07:52.500
I don't think that he, I don't blame him for not debating me because I don't think he has the science.
02:07:52.500 --> 02:08:07.500
Are there aspects of all the work you've done on vaccines, all the advocacy you've done that you found out that you were not correct on, that you were wrong on, that you've changed your mind on?
02:08:07.500 --> 02:08:16.500
Yeah, there are many times over time that I, you know, I found that I've made mistakes and we correct those mistakes.
02:08:16.500 --> 02:08:29.500
You know, I run a big organization and I do a lot of tweets. You know, I'm very careful. For example, my Instagram, I was taken down for misinformation, but there was no misinformation on my Instagram.
02:08:29.500 --> 02:08:35.500
Everything that I cited on Instagram was cited or a source to a government database or to peer reviewed science.
02:08:35.500 --> 02:08:48.500
But for example, the defender, which was our, our organization's newsletter, we summarize scientific reports all the time. That's one of the things, the services that we provide.
02:08:48.500 --> 02:08:55.500
We watched the, you know, PubMed and we watched the peer reviewed publications and we summarize them when they come out.
02:08:55.500 --> 02:09:03.500
We have made mistakes. When we make mistakes, we are rigorous about acknowledging it, apologizing for it and changing it. That's what we do.
02:09:03.500 --> 02:09:09.500
I think we have one of the most robust fact checking operations anywhere in journalism today.
02:09:09.500 --> 02:09:21.500
We actually do real science and, you know, there, listen, I've put up on my Twitter account and I, there's, there are numerous times that I've made mistakes on Twitter and I apologize for it.
02:09:21.500 --> 02:09:27.500
And people say to me, you know, oh, that's weird. I've never seen anybody apologize on Twitter.
02:09:27.500 --> 02:09:37.500
And I think it's really important at the only, of course, human beings make mistakes. My book is, you know, 230 or 40, 50,000 words.
02:09:37.500 --> 02:09:45.500
There's going to be a mistake in there. But you know, what I say at the beginning of the book, if you see a mistake in here, please notify me.
02:09:45.500 --> 02:09:56.500
I give away that people can notify me. And if somebody points out a mistake, I'm going to change it. I'm not going to dig my feet in and say, you know, I'm not going to acknowledge this.
02:09:56.500 --> 02:10:05.500
So some of the things we've been talking about, you've, you've been an outspoken contrarian on some very controversial topics.
02:10:05.500 --> 02:10:14.500
This has garnered some fame and recognition in part for being attacked and standing strong against those attacks.
02:10:14.500 --> 02:10:22.500
If I may say for being a martyr, do you worry about the this drug of martyrdom that might cloud your judgment?
02:10:22.500 --> 02:10:27.500
First of all, yeah, I don't consider myself a martyr and I've never considered myself a victim.
02:10:27.500 --> 02:10:34.500
I make choices about my life and I, you know, and I'm content with those choices and peaceful with them.
02:10:34.500 --> 02:10:42.500
I'm not trying to be a martyr or a hero or anything else. I'm doing what I think is right because I want to be peaceful inside of myself.
02:10:42.500 --> 02:10:50.500
But the only guard I have is just is, you know, fact based reality.
02:10:50.500 --> 02:11:02.500
If you show me a scientific study that shows that I'm wrong, for example, if you come back and say, look, Bobby, here's a polio.
02:11:02.500 --> 02:11:09.500
Here's a study, a safety study on polio that was done pre-licensure and used a real salient solution.
02:11:09.500 --> 02:11:12.500
I'm going to put that on my Twitter and I'm going to say I was wrong.
02:11:12.500 --> 02:11:17.500
There is one out there. So, you know, but that's all I can do.
02:11:17.500 --> 02:11:25.500
All right. I have to ask you are in great shape. Can you go through your diet and exercise routine?
02:11:26.500 --> 02:11:40.500
I do intermittent fasting. So I eat between noon. I start at my first meal at around noon and then I try to stop eating at six or seven.
02:11:40.500 --> 02:11:46.500
And then I hike every day.
02:11:46.500 --> 02:11:47.500
Morning, evening.
02:11:47.500 --> 02:11:51.500
I go to a meeting first thing in the morning, 12, 7 meeting.
02:11:51.500 --> 02:11:58.500
And then I go hike and I hike uphill for a mile and a half up and a mile and a half down with my dogs.
02:11:58.500 --> 02:12:04.500
I do my meditations and then I go to the gym and I go to the gym for 35 minutes.
02:12:04.500 --> 02:12:10.500
I do it short time. I've been exercising for 50 years.
02:12:10.500 --> 02:12:15.500
And what I found is it's sustainable if I do just a short periods.
02:12:15.500 --> 02:12:20.500
And I do four different routines at the gym and I never relax at the gym.
02:12:20.500 --> 02:12:23.500
I go in there and I have a very intense exercise.
02:12:23.500 --> 02:12:34.500
I lived, you know, I mean, I could tell you what my routine is, but I do, I do backs one day, back just one day, legs and then a miscellaneous.
02:12:34.500 --> 02:12:41.500
And I do 12. My first set of everything is, I try to, I try to reach failure at 12 reps.
02:12:41.500 --> 02:12:46.500
And then my fourth set of everything is a strip set.
02:12:46.500 --> 02:12:51.500
I do, I take a lot of vitamins.
02:12:51.500 --> 02:13:00.500
I can't even list them to you here because I, you know, I couldn't even remember them all, but I take a ton of vitamins and nutrients.
02:13:00.500 --> 02:13:10.500
I take, I'm on an anti-aging protocol from my doctor that includes testosterone replacement.
02:13:10.500 --> 02:13:17.500
And, but I don't take any steroids. I don't take any anabolic steroids or anything like that.
02:13:17.500 --> 02:13:24.500
And the DRT I use is bio identical to what my body produced.
02:13:24.500 --> 02:13:27.500
What are your thoughts on hormone therapy in general?
02:13:27.500 --> 02:13:33.500
I talked to a lot of doctors about that stuff, you know, because I'm interested in health.
02:13:33.500 --> 02:13:37.500
And, you know, I've heard really good things about it, but I don't know.
02:13:37.500 --> 02:13:42.500
I'm definitely not an expert on it.
02:13:42.500 --> 02:13:52.500
About God, you wrote, God talks to human beings through many vectors, wise people, organized religion, the great books of religions, through art, music and poetry.
02:13:52.500 --> 02:13:57.500
But nowhere with such detail and grace and joy as through creation.
02:13:57.500 --> 02:14:01.500
When we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine.
02:14:01.500 --> 02:14:06.500
What is your relationship and what is your understanding of God? Who is God?
02:14:07.500 --> 02:14:11.500
Well, I mean, God is incomprehensible.
02:14:11.500 --> 02:14:18.500
You know, I mean, I guess most philosophers would say we're, you know, we're inside the mind of God.
02:14:18.500 --> 02:14:22.500
And so it would be impossible for us, Sanders.
02:14:22.500 --> 02:14:27.500
And, you know, what actually would, you know, what God's form is there.
02:14:27.500 --> 02:14:33.500
But I mean, for me, I have a, let's say this.
02:14:33.500 --> 02:14:41.500
I had, when I was, I was raised in a very, very deeply religious setting.
02:14:41.500 --> 02:14:49.500
So we went to church in the summer, oftentimes twice a day, morning mass.
02:14:49.500 --> 02:14:54.500
And we went to, we definitely went every Sunday.
02:14:54.500 --> 02:15:00.500
And we, and I went, we prayed in the morning, we prayed before and after every meal.
02:15:00.500 --> 02:15:05.500
We prayed at night. We said a rosary, sometimes three rosaries a night.
02:15:05.500 --> 02:15:08.500
And my father read us the Bible.
02:15:08.500 --> 02:15:14.500
Whenever he was home, he would read us, you know, we'd all get in the bed and he'd read us the Bible stories.
02:15:14.500 --> 02:15:18.500
And I went to Catholic schools, I went to Jesuit schools, I went to the nuns.
02:15:18.500 --> 02:15:21.500
And I went to a Quaker school at one point.
02:15:21.500 --> 02:15:28.500
When I, I became a drug addict when I was about 15 years old, about a year after my dad died.
02:15:28.500 --> 02:15:31.500
I was addicted to drugs for 14 years.
02:15:31.500 --> 02:15:35.500
During that time, when you're an addict, you're living against conscience.
02:15:35.500 --> 02:15:44.500
And when you're living, I never, you know, I was always trying to get off of drugs, never able to, but I never felt good about what I was doing.
02:15:44.500 --> 02:15:52.500
And, and when you're living against conscience, you kind of push God to the peripheries of your life.
02:15:52.500 --> 02:15:55.500
Oh, I'll call me he.
02:15:55.500 --> 02:15:59.500
He gets, recedes and gets smaller.
02:15:59.500 --> 02:16:11.500
And then when I, when I got sober, I knew that I had a couple of experiences.
02:16:11.500 --> 02:16:16.500
One is that I had a friend of my brothers, one of my brothers who died of this disease of addiction.
02:16:16.500 --> 02:16:25.500
I had a good friend who had used to take drugs with us and he became a Mooney.
02:16:25.500 --> 02:16:30.500
So he, he became a follower of Reverend South, the son of young Moon.
02:16:30.500 --> 02:16:39.500
And he's at that point, his compulsion, he had the same kind of compulsion that I had, and yet it was completely removed from him.
02:16:39.500 --> 02:16:46.500
And so, and he used to come and hang out with us, but he would not want to take drugs.
02:16:46.500 --> 02:16:50.500
Even if I was taking right in front of him, he was, he was immune to it.
02:16:50.500 --> 02:16:54.500
He'd become impervious to that impulse.
02:16:54.500 --> 02:17:05.500
And I, when I was in the, when I first got sober, I was, I knew that I did not want to be the kind of person who was, you know,
02:17:05.500 --> 02:17:11.500
waking up every day and white-knuckling sobriety and just, you know, trying to resist, resist through willpower.
02:17:11.500 --> 02:17:16.500
And by the way, I had, I had iron willpower as a kid.
02:17:16.500 --> 02:17:21.500
I gave up candy for Len when I was 12 and I didn't eat it again until I was in college.
02:17:21.500 --> 02:17:28.500
I gave up, I gave up desserts the next year for Lent and I didn't ever eat another dessert until I was in college.
02:17:28.500 --> 02:17:32.500
And I was trying to bulk up for rugby and for sports.
02:17:32.500 --> 02:17:44.500
So I felt like I could do anything with my willpower, but somehow this particular thing, you know, the addiction was completely impervious to it.
02:17:44.500 --> 02:17:48.500
And it was cunning, baffling, incomprehensible.
02:17:48.500 --> 02:17:55.500
I could not understand why I couldn't just say no and then never do it again like I did with everything else.
02:17:55.500 --> 02:18:07.500
And so I was living against conscience and I thought about this guy and I, you know, reflecting my own prejudices at that time in my life.
02:18:07.500 --> 02:18:18.500
I said to myself, I didn't want to be, I didn't want to be like a drug addict who was wanting a drug all the time and just not being able to do it.
02:18:18.500 --> 02:18:28.500
I wanted to completely realign my, my, myself so that I was somebody who got up every day and just didn't want to take drugs.
02:18:28.500 --> 02:18:29.500
Never thought of them.
02:18:29.500 --> 02:18:36.500
You know, kiss the wife and children and went to work and was never thought about drugs the whole day.
02:18:36.500 --> 02:18:39.500
And I knew that people throughout history had done that.
02:18:39.500 --> 02:18:41.500
You know, I'd read the lives of the saints.
02:18:41.500 --> 02:18:45.500
I knew St. Augustine had a very, very dissolute youth.
02:18:45.500 --> 02:18:54.500
And then, you know, I had this spiritual realignment transformation and I knew the same thing had happened to St. Paul, you know, Damascus, the same thing had happened to St. Francis.
02:18:54.500 --> 02:19:03.500
St. Francis also had a, had a dissolute and fun loving youth and had, you know, had this deep spiritual realignment.
02:19:03.500 --> 02:19:06.500
And I knew that that happened to people throughout history.
02:19:06.500 --> 02:19:11.500
And I thought that's what I needed, you know, something like that.
02:19:11.500 --> 02:19:23.500
But I had the example of this friend of mine and I used to think about him and I would think this again reflects the bias and, you know, probably the meanness of myself at that time.
02:19:23.500 --> 02:19:26.500
But I said I'd rather be dead than be a Mooney.
02:19:26.500 --> 02:19:35.500
But I wish I somehow could distill that power that he got without becoming a religious nuisance.
02:19:36.500 --> 02:19:43.500
And at that time I picked up a book by Carl Jung called Synchronicity.
02:19:43.500 --> 02:19:47.500
And Jung, he was a psychiatrist, he was a contemporary of Freud's.
02:19:47.500 --> 02:19:55.500
He was a, Freud was his mentor and Freud wanted him to be his replacement, but Freud was an avowed atheist.
02:19:55.500 --> 02:19:57.500
And Jung was a deeply spiritual man.
02:19:57.500 --> 02:20:03.500
He had these very intense and genuine spiritual experiences from when he was a little boy from at least three years old that he remembers.
02:20:03.500 --> 02:20:07.500
His biography is fascinating about him because he remembers them with such detail.
02:20:07.500 --> 02:20:17.500
And he, he was, he had written, he was always, he was interesting to me because he was a very faithful scientist.
02:20:17.500 --> 02:20:21.500
And I considered myself a science-based person from when I was little.
02:20:21.500 --> 02:20:36.500
And yet he had this spiritual dimension to him, which infused all of his thinking and really, I think, made him, you know, it branded his form of recovery or of treatment.
02:20:36.500 --> 02:20:48.500
And he thought that he had this experiment, experience that he describes in this book where he's sitting up on the third, he ran one of the biggest sanitariums in Europe, in Zurich.
02:20:48.500 --> 02:21:00.500
And he was sitting up on the third floor of this building and he's talking to a patient who had, who was talking, describing her dream to him.
02:21:00.500 --> 02:21:10.500
And the fulcrum of that dream was a scarab beetle, which was an insect that is not, is very, very uncommon, if at all, in Northern Europe.
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But it's a common figure in the iconography of Egypt and the hieroglyphics on the walls of the pyramids, et cetera.
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And he, and he, while he was talking to her, he heard this bing, bing, bing on the window behind him.
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And he didn't want to turn around to take his attention off her, but finally he does it.
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And he, in a exasperation, he turns around, he throws up the window and a scarab beetle flies in and lands in his hand.
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And he shows it to the woman and he says, is this what you were thinking of? Is this what you were dreaming about?
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And he, he was struck by that experience, which was similar to other experiences he's had like that.
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And that's what synchronicity means. It's a, it's an incident, a coincidence, you know?
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And like, if, if you're, if you're talking with somebody about somebody that you haven't thought about in 20 years, and that person calls on the phone, that's synchronicity.
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Oh, and he believed it was a way that God intervened in our lives that broke all the, all the rules of nature that he had set up.
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The rules of physics, the rules of mathematics, you know, to reach in and sort of tap us on the shoulder and say, I'm here.
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And, and so he tried to reproduce that in a clinical setting.
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And he would put one guy in one room and another guy in another room and have them flip cards and then guess what the other guy had flipped.
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And he believed that if he could beat the laws of chance, laws of mathematics, then he would approve the existence of a supernatural law.
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And that was the first step to proving the existence of a God.
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He never succeeds in doing it, but he says in the book, even though I can't prove using empirical and scientific tools, the existence of a God,
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I can show through anecdotal evidence, having seen thousands of patients come through this institution that people who believe in God get better faster and that the recovery is more enduring than people who don't.
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And for me, hearing that was more impactful than if he had claimed that he had proved the existence of a God, because I would not believe that.
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But I was already at a mindset where I would have done anything I could to improve my chances of never having to take drugs again by even 1%.
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And if believing in God was going to help me, whether there's a God up there or not, believing in one itself had the power to help me.
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I was going to do that. So then the question is, how do you start believing in something that you can't see or smell or hear or touch or taste or acquire with your senses?
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And Jung provides the formula for that. And he says, act as if you fake it till you make it.
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And so that's what I started doing. I just started pretending there was a God watching me all the time.
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And kind of life was a series of tests. And there was a bunch of moral decisions that I had to make every day.
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And each one, these were all just little things that I did. But each one now for me at a moral dimension, like when the alarm goes off, do I lay in bed for an extra 10 minutes with my indolent thoughts or do I jump right out of bed?
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Do I make my bad most important decision of the day? Do I hang up the towels?
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When I go into the closet and pull out my blue jeans and a bunch of those wire hangers fall on the ground, do I shut the door and say, I'm too important to do that. That's somebody else's job or not.
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And so do I put the water in the ice tray before I put it in the freezer? Do I put the shopping cart back in the place that it's supposed to go in the parking lot of the Safeway?
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And if I make a whole bunch of those choices right, that I maintain myself in a posture of surrender, which keeps me open to the power of, to my higher power, to my God.
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And when I do those things right, when I, you know, so much about addiction is about abuse of power, abuse of all of us have some power, whether it's good looks or whether it's connections or education or family or whatever.
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And there's always a temptation to use those to fill, fulfill self will. And the challenge is how do you use those always to serve instead God's will and you know, the good of our community.
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And that to me is kind of the struggle. And when I do that, I feel, I feel God's power coming through me and that I can do things. I'm much more effective as a human being at that gnawing, you know, anxiety that I lived with for so many years and my God, it's gone.
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And that I can kind of like put down the oars and hoist the sail and, you know, and the wind takes me and I can, I can see the evidence of my life.
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And, you know, the big thing for, you know, temptation for me is that when all these good things start happening in my life and the cash and prizes start flowing in, you know, how do I maintain that posture of surrender?
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How do I stay surrendered then when on my inclination is to say to God, thanks God, I got it from here and drive the car off the cliff again.
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And so, you know, I had a spiritual awakening and my desire for drugs and alcohol was lifted miraculously.
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And it to me, it was as much a miracle as if I had if I'd been able to walk on water because I had tried everything earnestly, sincerely and honestly for a decade to try to stop and I could not do it under my own power.
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And then all of a sudden it was lifted effortlessly.
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And, you know, so I saw that evidence, early evidence of God in my life and of the power.
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And, and I see it now, you know, every day of my life.
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So adding that moral dimension to all of your actions is how you were able to win that Camus battle against the absurd.
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Exactly. It's all the same thing.
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It's the battle to just to do the right thing.
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And now Sisyphus was able to find somehow happiness.
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Yeah.
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Well, Bobby, thank you for the stroll through some of the most important moments in recent human history and for running for president.
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And thank you for talking today.
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Thank you, Lex.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.