Bizarre Trump Oval Office Event May Upend Childhood Vaccines | Morning Shots

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Bulwark Takes – Bizarre Trump Oval Office Event May Upend Childhood Vaccines | Morning Shots
Date: August 11, 2026
Host(s): Sam Steinman (subbing for Bill Kristol), Andrew Egger

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Overview

This episode centers on two major and deeply intertwined stories in the political and public health space:

1. The renewed right-wing campaign against Dr. Anthony Fauci, pushed by new (and misleading) interpretations of old COVID-era texts regarding vaccine safety, especially with respect to pregnant women.
2. Donald Trump’s announcement of an executive order breaking up the combined childhood vaccine schedule, bolstered by anti-vaccine rhetoric and featuring a surreal Oval Office event reminiscent of a “Wes Anderson” film.

The hosts dissect the origins and dangers of fresh misinformation outbreaks, the mainstreaming of debunked anti-vaccine talking points, Trump’s history of anti-vaccine sentiment, and the deepening politicization of basic public health expertise.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Fauci “Smoking Gun” Messaging Scandal

Background and Outrage [02:05–03:26]

• Andrew Egger expresses deep frustration at the persistent demonization of Dr. Fauci, noting that right-wing figures like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson have resurrected debunked conspiracy theories.
• Egger: “It has really hit a new level recently... The remarkable stuff they are laying at his feet just goes beyond basically anything I've ever seen.” [02:19]

Dissecting the Texts and the Data [03:44–08:52]

• The Incident:

  • Newly released texts from January 2021: Fauci flagged the possibility, as a theoretical risk, that vaccines could cause miscarriages due to cytokine storms and fever.
  • Sam Steinman emphasizes, “He doesn’t say, I have proof. He acknowledges that there is a concern out there and...that they're going to properly test it.” [04:36]
  • Fauci, days later in public, said no red flags had yet been observed among roughly 10,000 vaccinated pregnant women.

• How It Was Twisted:

  • Right-wing commentators claim Fauci privately knew of an “80% miscarriage rate” and covered it up.
  • Egger clarifies this “80%” comes from a debunked, misread study on a specific subset of pregnancies, not a real population-level effect.

• Notable Explanation:

  • Egger: “What we are seeing right now is these senators...are mainlining and mainstreaming a completely discredited anti vax quack talking point that was...for the craziest, most lunatic parts of the right wing Internet five years ago.” [11:23]

The Media and Political Mainstream [12:30–15:51]

• Press and Social Media Virality:

  • This narrative was amplified by a New York Post story and then spread across right-wing Twitter (X), with memes and viral tweets from Katie Pavlich, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, and others.
  • Highlights include inflammatory language like “effectively an abortion shot” and explicit calls to prosecute Fauci as a mass murderer. [13:45, 25:38]

• Contemporary CDC Policy:

  • Irony: At present, the CDC under Trump’s administration still clearly recommends the COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy, citing no increased risk and significant protection from severe COVID illness. [15:36]

Why the Misinformation Sticks [16:44–19:49]

• Public Health Messaging Challenges:

  • Debate: Should Fauci have disclosed all hypothetical adverse events before they were substantiated?
  • Egger: “These people live in a fantasy land. [...] The idea that what responsible public health messaging looks like is for Anthony Fauci to get up there and say, we are carefully monitoring this ... and then rattle off a list of nightmare scenarios...” [17:20]
  • The real reason for the proliferation of these attacks? Not institutional trust issues, but “straight up malicious lying” in the discourse. [19:11]

• Notable Quote:

  • Egger: “It's...disconcerting to realize how much just straight up malicious lying drives discourse in this country.” [19:11]

Anti-Vax Narratives: Old and New [19:49–22:18]

• Linking to Autism:
  • Steinman draws the parallel with the long-debunked connection between vaccines and autism, noting bad actors stoking doubt for decades and then blaming public health experts for distrust.
  • Egger uses a “serial arsonist” metaphor: “What we are seeing from these, like, Fauci people right now is like...some people who were saying that [about forest fires] were also, like, serial arsonists. Like, they're going around actively lighting all these forest fires...” [20:55]

Even the Skeptics Push Back [22:18–23:50]

• Odd Bedfellows:
  • Even committed vaccine critic Alex Berenson calls the new 80% miscarriage claim “fiction,” noting it would mean an observable collapse in birth rates, which never happened. [22:18]
  • Steinman notes Berenson’s pushback got only 70,000 views, while viral misinformation surpassed 4.5 million impressions. [23:50]

2. Trump’s Executive Order on Childhood Vaccines

The Policy and Its Justification [27:34–30:44]

• What Happened:

  • Trump signed an order to “break up” the combined childhood shot (MMR etc.), requiring five separate shots rather than the combined dose—citing concern about “a vaccination thing looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body.” [28:30]
  • Egger and Steinman lampoon the bizarre visualization and note Trump expresses typical anti-vax themes about “too many shots,” associated with autism.

• Practical Effects:

  • Unlikely to survive legal and logistical challenges, since single-shot versions often aren’t manufactured anymore.
  • Nevertheless, the messaging is likely to embolden state-level anti-vaccine activists and further erode public trust.

The Political History and Motive [32:05–35:08]

• Persistence of Anti-Vaccine Beliefs at the Top:
  • Hosts observe that Trump’s long-standing skepticism predates RFK Jr.’s current prominence; Trump has obsessed over vaccines and autism for years.
  • RFK Jr. briefly held sway in Trump’s administration but was sidelined by advisors—yet both men remain fixated on the issue, and White House insiders confirm Trump’s personal belief in the autism-vaccine connection still drives such moves.

The Surreal Event [35:39–38:53]

• Event Tone and Memorable Moments:
  • The announcement featured surreal optics—Trump slumped over, a “robotically bobbing” vaccine-skeptic mom, RFK Jr. clutching papers—described as having a “Wes Anderson vibe” and resembling a Renaissance painting. [36:40–38:50]
  • The hosts take a humorous approach, noting “you have to try to find some slivers of joy in these dark moments.” [38:53]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Fauci and Misinformation:

  • Egger (re: Mike Lee): “...maybe what Foushee was actually up to was like sort of rubbing his hands in this sort of gleeful, sinister way that he was going to trick a lot of women into miscarrying their babies. That just is so fucking evil and bad. Right?” [25:57]
  • “It's completely fabricated. It's like eight lies stacked, you know, standing on each other's shoulders wearing a trench coat. And everybody believes it now.” [23:23]

• On the Anti-Vax Machine:

  • “You are. It is very possible, even, even likely that on the ground there's going to be very little impact to, to, to the way you take your kids in to get vaccine. But...if they actually try to... use the levers of government to go after the company that manufactures the current MMR vaccine... then, you know, we don't know yet whether they're going to do that. But... you could see this as a prelude to that. That would be real, I think.” [31:32]

• On Trump’s Event:

  • Steinman: “...the event was both alarming, but it was also equal parts surreal.” [35:39]
  • Egger describing the scene: “This one is a Renaissance painting. Let's have fun.” [38:50]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:05] – Egger outlines Fauci as a right-wing villain and the fresh attacks.
• [04:33] – Breakdown of original Fauci text, the data gap on pregnant women & vaccines.
• [08:52] – How the “80% miscarriage” myth spread; why the study was misread.
• [12:30] – Right-wing Twitter pounces; mainstreaming of anti-vax talking points.
• [16:44] – Debating what public health messaging is responsible vs. fantasy.
• [22:18] – Even Alex Berenson rebukes the “miscarriage bombshell.”
• [27:34] – Trump announces EO breaking up childhood vaccine schedule; his rationale.
• [32:05] – Machinery, politics, RFK Jr., and the White House’s internal debates.
• [36:40 & 38:50] – The odd vibe and comic relief from the Oval Office vaccine event.

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Tone & Language

The episode’s style is analytical, conversational, occasionally exasperated, and often shot through with dark humor to cope with the absurdities described. Both hosts are informed, brashly critical of public misinformation and the cynical political actors driving it, and maintain an approachable, accessible tone even while digging into complex public health and political dynamics.

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Conclusion

This Morning Shots episode highlights a dangerous crossroads:

• Debunked anti-vaccine rhetoric is no longer fringe, but being weaponized at the highest levels of American politics.
• Efforts to discredit credible scientists like Fauci are now not just social media fodder, but serving as justification for actual federal policy changes that could have serious, real-world public health ramifications.
• The hosts close with gallows humor, but the undertone is one of real alarm at how rapidly medical pseudoscience is converging with government action in the Trump era.

For an unfiltered, in-depth look at the collision of vaccine disinformation, partisan warfare, and surreal moments at the highest levels of government, this episode is essential listening.

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Transcript

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[Sam Steinman]

n hey everybody, it's me, Bill Crystal. I'm with Andrew Egger and this is Morning Shots Live. Do I look like a younger Bill? I don't know. I don't know what you'll look like. I'm Sam Steinman of the Bulk. I'm subbing in for Bill, who gets a well deserved day off. I'm joined by Andrew Egger, author of Morning Shots. We're here to talk about a lot of things, but first we got to talk about Anthony Fauci because Andrew is really worked up. Andrew normally hosts the show, but he's so fired up that I felt like he should just cook and I can set it up for him. Andrew, why don't you set the stage about why you're so fired up?

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, this is sort of strange because on one level, Anthony Fauci has been a villain of the online right for many years. He's one of the boogeymen. There's been a lot of lying about him, a lot of attributing, basically laying all of the sins of any lib coded person anybody saw saying anything they didn't like about the pandemic online, all through the pandemic at Fauci's feet, it has really hit a new level recently. And it's been the last few weeks with Rand Paul and Ron Johnson, these senators trying to bring Fauci back into the public consciousness, ginning up a new two minutes hate against him. And we've written about this, we've talked about this. What came out yesterday was some of the most just shocking and cynical and misleading and grotesque disinformation from public officials. Maybe setting aside the stop the steal stuff and just stuff that Trump does personally and his own sort of psychotic inability not to lie, but just from anybody else, the stuff that they are accusing Fauci of now and the remarkable stuff they are laying at his feet just goes beyond basically anything I've ever seen. So, yes, I'm a little worked up about it. Should I, should I, should I just kind of set the stage or what?

[Sam Steinman]

No, I'll set the stage and I'll let you cook. That's how this is going to work today.

[Andrew Egger]

Perfect.

[Sam Steinman]

And folks, if I interrupt Andrew, it's only because he's just, I need to cool him down a little bit. It's.

[Andrew Egger]

We talked about love, we talked about this. Usually I host the show. If I hosted the show today, I do not know how Sam would get a word in. So this is, yes, the way it needs to be.

[Sam Steinman]

Don't get mad at me in the, in the comments. I'm just trying to make this train stay on the tracks. All right, so long story short, Foucher obviously hauled in before Senator Raw's committee. He pled the fifth. In the process of these investigations, they also obtained Fou's work cell phone and they now have access to the text that he was sending in and around the COVID pandemic. And you know how this goes usually, which is they find the most contextless bits of texts that he was sending and they're going to triple them out and put them out there for the right wing commentary and the twitterati to go nuts. And so yesterday they put out a text from Fauci and I think it was what, winter of 2021, roughly?

[Andrew Egger]

January 2021. Yes, very beginning of that year.

[Sam Steinman]

So beginning of the year, the, the vaccine for Covid had just kind of come online a little bit. There was concerns, uncertainty around it. Like, what were the side effects? You know, they, they obviously rushed this into existence. And you can't test these things on pregnant women. Right? Like, you can't, you're not ethically allowed to do that. So Fauci exchanged a text where he more or less says, yeah, there is concerns out there about whether or not this vaccine may cause elevated instances of miscarriage. But that's all he says. He doesn't say, I have proof. He acknowledges that there is a concern out there and he sort of suggests that they're going to go and properly test it and make sure that that's not the case. And lo and behold, they did that and they tested it, they made sure it wasn't the case. There's real world data, there's, you know, investigations into this. Turns out that COVID vaccine is perfectly safe for pregnant women. But this did not stop the online right. From acting as if he had basically, and I'm not even sure what they're, they're basically saying he knew that it was going to cause something like 80% mortality or, sorry, miscarriage rate for pregnant women. And then he just went with it anyway.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, it's, it's what it is. What it is is it's misreadings stacked on top of misreadings stacked on top of misreadings stacked on top of just like insane, insane assertions about the way the world is right now. Here is the text from Anthony Fauci. This is January 25, 2021. I'll just.

[Sam Steinman]

We have it. Can we pull it up or no?

[Andrew Egger]

I don't know if we have a picture. I'm going to read it. Since many people have significant cytokine storm and fever after the second dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the first trimester. This comes in the middle of a conversation, text conversation he's having with a couple of other honchos at the CDC about possible avenues for, for like theoretical avenues for side effects that they will need to be watching out for as they test this vaccine data. As you mentioned a minute ago, Sam, it is sort of a quirk of the way that we test vaccines and any medications in this country that typically the earliest tests exclude pregnant women. They're just not part of the tests. There are some people who say that is a wrong headed approach and that pregnant women should be tested for exactly this reason. We end up with this data gap for brand new medications.

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah, but obviously the flip side of it is that you don't want to endanger babies.

[Andrew Egger]

There are good arguments on both sides of this and we don't necessarily need to get into that right now. But factually this is what had happened. Pregnant women had been excluded from the earlier testing. So there was this data gap. The CDC had rolled out these vaccines, they had just gotten their emergency authorizations and most people were now sort of gradually being phased in for eligibility for these things. But, but because of this data gap, the CDC had a lag time in their recommendations for pregnant women. The CDC at this moment in time was not recommending that pregnant women be vaccined, be vaccinated with the COVID shots. They weren't recommending against it either. There was a little bit of a dust up that the World Health Organization had said these shots have not yet had sufficient testing on pregnant women for us to make a recommendation. So we are actually recommending against pregnant women getting it. The CDC had, had, had gone a different path. They had said it's available, you should talk to your health care provider about it. We don't have any reason to believe that this will lead to miscarriages. But there is this, this sort of question mark in the data because of what we've seen so far at this moment in time in early January, that was already starting to go away. And this is one of the things that, that these guys are pointing to as a supposed smoking gun because Foushee got up on a public Q and a few days later and he said I, I want to be careful, but we have now seen about 10,000 pregnant women get this shot. We have not yet observed any red flags about miscarriages. And this is the, again, the supposed smoking gun here is that they look at that text message where he mentions a theoretical association of miscarriage. They misread that just on the grounds of what it is saying. Exactly. They pretend that what he is saying is that there is good reason to believe that this shot will lead to miscarriages. And then they point to what he said a few days later that they have yet to see that in the data. And they say, well, Anthony Fauci is saying one thing in public and, and another thing in private. Again, that part even, even just that far, it's not true. It has already.

[Sam Steinman]

How did they get to 80%? How did they get to figure.

[Andrew Egger]

That's the other thing I was just going to say because this is where it goes from just wrong to like the most insane thing you've ever heard in your life. There was one study that was circulated and specifically one sort of tendentious interpretation of one study that was circulate circulating already among genuine anti vax cranks throughout 2021 where there was a specific study that looked at, you know, a couple hundred women who had had adverse events happen in their pregnancies that they, they, they basically said, it's actually hard to explain because it gets kind of technical here, but basically they looked at a specific cohort of first trimester women. They said, hey, of all these women who have completed their pregnancies, actually lots of these women, as many as 80% of this small cohort of women in this cohort of data had miscarriages. That seems really high. The problem was that the cohort of women they were looking at were women who had completed pregnancies. If a woman in that cohort had had a healthy pregnancy that had not ended in miscarriage or premature birth or something like this, that that pregnancy would not have yet have been completed. These women were still pregnant. It was not yet six to nine months on. So you're looking at a data set of pregnancies for which something has gone wrong and you're saying, wow, most of these pregnancies had something go wrong. Just a quirk of data. This was already debunked, you know, months after this. There were PolitiFact articles and these sorts of things coming out in like late 2021 about this particular talking point. More to the point, not just was this one argument debunked, but we got, you know, pounds and pounds and reams and reams of new, better data because millions and millions of pregnant women got these vaccines, you know, slowly at first because of this, this lag time in these recommendations. But some did and then more did, and then more did and then more did. Meanwhile, all this data is being stringently monitored by public health authorities. They keep looking at it, they keep kicking the tires on it for possible connections to, to adverse events like miscarriage. And good news, there isn't any. We're all very happy to report. They keep saying the data looks good, the data looks good, they're looking for it, they're looking at it and it's fine and, and it's good. And we should all be, so, we should be happy. It was an amazing thing. It was a miracle that we got these shots and they worked and they, and they did what it said on the tin and they didn't have these, these horrible events. I mean, like the.

[Sam Steinman]

Let's.

[Andrew Egger]

Yes, okay, but let me just say one other thing about this because. I know, I know, I know, I know, but, but, and one other thing. I'll say a lot.

[Sam Steinman]

Going to cook.

[Andrew Egger]

So. Yes, but I mean the fact that this talking point was already out there is, is so important in all of this because it's not like some new thing that these senators turfed up in the data where they're like, my gosh, this is like a smoking gun. And that now you can kind of be like, I see where you got that. It's wrong, it's unreasonable, here's why. But I guess I see how you got there. Genuinely, what we are seeing right now is these senators in an attempt to get Foushee and make him look bad and accuse him of crimes of mass murder of a bazillion unborn babies in this country. And in order to do that, they are mainlining and mainstreaming a completely discredited anti vax quack talking point that was in, that was reserved for the craziest, most lunatic parts of the right wing Internet five years ago that is driving right wing discourse on these matters today.

[Sam Steinman]

So let's talk about how this starts. So it starts with an article or with a tweet from one of the centers. But really the main article that came up that sparked this was a New York Post piece headline, fauci privately warned of miscarriage risks linked to COVID vaccine while publicly claiming no issues. Newly released text show this then gets picked up and just like wildfire, spreads around the Internet predominantly on twitter.com x the everything platform. I think we have a little montage, a little collage of some of the most offensive ones. Here we go. Okay, so we have. Where does that. My eyesight is really bad. I gotta get glasses. Katie Pavlich, who says the mandated and doctor recommended COVID 19 shot for pregnant women was effectively an abortion shot, according to new documents just released by senators Johnson and Paul. Again, Andrew's debunked the 82% point already, but she just repeats it. Was it mandated? I don't recall it being mandated, but I check my history. I don't know.

[Andrew Egger]

There were a lot of efforts under Biden to get as many people to take it as possible. They tried to get OSHA to require it, things like this. Right.

[Sam Steinman]

There's been recommended parts. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Egger]

Years later, years later, once we had much more reliable data, there were. There were a lot of attempts to mandate this. Maybe some of those went overkill, whatever, but. But go ahead.

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah. Okay, here's Nick sorter. Holy crap. Dr. Fauci was covering up data showing a miscarriage rate of over 80%. Again, Andrew's sufficiently debunked it. In pregnant women who received MRNA Covid vaccines in their first trimester, it was effectively an abortion shot. This is murder. Rand Paul retweeted Him we have down in the bottom right, Mike Lee, not the most sane senator on Twitter for Fauci and other Marxists, was the likelihood of widespread fetal demise a feature or a bug? We have Ron John up there tweeting as well. I mean, this was. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. I mean, this is everywhere. If you, if you dare to click on one of these tweets, your algorithm was going to be absolutely overwhelmed with this stuff. And it was completely devoted context. The thing that sort of struck me is like, it wasn't just that they, you know, were kind of whistling past all the. All the other, you know, data and contemporaneous developments that were happening time, literally. And this is what we got into your piece was that the current cdc, the current Trump cdc, recommends that pregnant women get the COVID shot. I mean, it's right there on the website. It doesn't take much to just research CDC vaccine and Covid and pregnant women. Sorry. And you'll see right there at the second to last bullet point, it says, COVID 19 vaccination during pregnancy has not been linked to increased health risk for pregnant women or babies. It helps reduce the risk of severe illness from COVID 19. That last point is sort of something I want to talk about a little bit. Covid getting Covid carries risks. If you're pregnant, it does. Like, it does carry risks. Is that just not factoring into this conversation online, Andrew?

[Andrew Egger]

None of it is factoring in. I mean, like you. You say. You say that I, you know, you read a couple of those. You're like, Andrew has sufficiently debunked this, but I feel like I have barely.

[Sam Steinman]

No, you've not.

[Andrew Egger]

Surface of all of the stuff that's crazy.

[Sam Steinman]

It's you and Mehdi Hassan just basically pushing against an avalanche of disinfecting online right now.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, I mean. I mean, have these people walked outside a day in their life? I mean, like, do the. Do any of these people remember even slightly what it was like to live through the pandemic and the insane moving target that all of this stuff was? I mean, like, the thing that really, like, just. Just makes me berserk about this story is that what those texts from Fauci show in that moment is that, in fact, the public health authorities were doing exactly what. What these people supposedly wanted them to be doing? It's exactly. They were. It shows them doing exactly what they're being accused of not doing. It shows them carefully monitoring the data. It shows them, you know, thinking up any potential risk to pregnant women, to. To, you know, fetuses, to unborn babies that any particular potential risk that could be out there, anything they can think of, they're like, we have to be watching for this. We have to be watching for this. There's this concern out there. There's that.

[Sam Steinman]

Pause for a second. Pause for a second. Because one of the arguments I've heard, not just from the cranks on the right, but from leftists, is that, well, Pasha should have publicly disclosed that this was something he was looking into. And I'm like, why would he do that? There was no data to support it. You got to actually test run these. These accusations and these theories before you come out. And, you know, the risk, obviously, is you come out and say, look, we're looking into the possibility that this vaccine might have adverse effects, cause miscarriages. And then suddenly, like, you. You've actually spread the information that is erroneous.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah. These people, I mean, they live in. These people live in a fantasy land. I'm sorry. The idea. The idea that what responsible public health messaging looks like is for Anthony Fauci to get up there and say, we are carefully monitoring this. This vaccine for any potential adverse effects we can think of that it could could, in theory, have some things we've imagined that it could maybe do, we don't know, include miscarriage. Maybe it'll kill you. We don't know that's possible. We're going to watch out and make sure it doesn't. Like, they're going to rattle off, you know, a list of nightmare scenarios that no data has ever suggested is a link between. At a time when like. Like people. People throw. Throw around the idea that, like, these guys are encouraging vaccine uptake. Vaccine uptake, as though that's some kind of dirty thing. I'm sorry. This vaccine ended up lifting us out of the pandemic without these side effects. It was good that they were encouraging vaccine uptake. It was also good that they were monitoring the vaccine to make sure that no bad things were going to happen. Alongside of that. I mean, I. Look that. That impulse. That impulse, the thing you're mentioning, it's not just some leftist people. There's some kind of institutional right, the sort of normie Republican types who do this thing too, where they're. Where they're basically saying, you know, ultimately, this sort of mass distrust and all this disinformation and misinformation and stuff, you have to lay it more or less at the feet of these institutions and the human failures you've seen from these institutions. And I get why people say that. I guess I'm sympathetic to that on some level. It is insane whistling past the graveyard about this particular thing. And in this instance, it's. It's like. It's like a psychological crutch. Because if. Because it. It is nice for people to be able to.

[Sam Steinman]

I think you're being too generous. I don't, I don't like, look at. We'll get to this topic.

[Andrew Egger]

Hold on.

[Sam Steinman]

You've talked a lot. You've talked.

[Andrew Egger]

You're going to 80% of the way through my point. It's nice for these people to say, I'm not going to steamroll you a lot, but let me just say this. It's nice for these people to be able to believe that if only Anthony Fauci had, like, done this slightly better or that other thing slightly different, that this giant wave of lying about him wouldn't be happening. And because it's. Because it's. It's like, it's disconcerting to realize how much just straight up malicious lying drives discourse in this country. People don't want to think that. They want to think, well, if. If Fauci had behaved better, this wouldn't be happening to him. But it's wrong. It's misguided. It's. It's like baby thinking. It's just not. It's stupid. I don't like it.

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah, grow up with people. I agree with you and I. But I think you're being too kind because I don't think it's fair at all to, To. To argue that Fauci has this responsibility to just open the books everywhere at all times to make sure that, like, you know, your wild conspiracy is something that he's looking into. The. The thing. And we'll get to this later because I still want to stick with Fauci and the COVID storyline. But, like, the, the thing that really gets me angry is around autism and vaccines because here you have a group of people who've basically taken up this debunked theory decades long, debunked theory. And they're, you know, constantly just raising questions about whether autism is caused by vaccines. And, you know, they're not. They're not doing, like, the placebo trials and all this stuff. And then they're like, well, you know, it's really the CDC's fault for the lack of trust in vaccines because they're just not transparent enough. It's like, no, you guys have been sowing this distrust for decades. You're the ones who caused it. And then you turn around and say, well, it's up to the CDC to really show us the books to make sure that my crazy theory is not true.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, this works. Yeah. I mean, like, like, like, hopefully this is not, like, an insane example. Donald Trump has these theories about forest fires, right? He's like, we mismanaged the forests. We should have cleared out more brush from before. You know, these forestry practices are partially to blame for all the stuff that we have going on. What we are seeing from these, like, Fauci people right now is like, if, if. If some people who were saying that were also, like, serial arsonists, like, they're going around actively lighting all these forest fires, you know, for years and years, while also saying, you know, it's really this big forestry issue, you know, they. They really have nobody to blame but themselves. Like, that's. That's where we're at with this stuff. And by the way, I don't want people to get the wrong idea. I do not agree that. That, that mode of analysis, that, like, you know, clean up your own house, institutions thing. I understand that as an argument. I think it applies for some elite institutions. I think there are places where that argument has been fair to make against, you know, the media at times or, you know, higher education at times. Whatever. It does not apply here in the Fauci situation. It's never applied here in the Fauci situation except on a couple of little things, like that one early masking recommendation that people have been dining out on ever since. And, like the fact that he pooh, poohed the lab leak theory too much. I'm sorry, these are small ball compared to all this other stuff. These are not the reason why people are saying that 80% of vaccinated women miscarried after they got these shots.

[Sam Steinman]

How. Two things, and then we can move on. First, I want to put up the Alex Berenson tweet, because if you don't know who Alex Berenson is, oh, my God, this is for sure. Alex is one of the great Fauci critics of our time. He was an early skeptic around CDC protocols, and he's been a very big critic of MRNA vaccines. And he. You talked about dining out. He has dined out. Even he saw through this one. This is in response to Katie Public's tweet about the COVID 19 shot causing miscarriages. He writes, this is fiction. If it were. If it were true, the birth rate in Mr. RNA countries would have dropped to near zero in 2021 in 2022. Please don't lie about this. It's too important. So that just gives you sense. Kudos to Alex, I suppose.

[Andrew Egger]

Sure. But he's spitting in the wind, right? 70,000 views on that tweet. I mean, like millions and millions. And it's how much are on Katie's 7 million? Last time I looked.

[Sam Steinman]

I'm gonna look it up. You talk. You haven't had any problem talking. Let me look it up. You talk.

[Andrew Egger]

I mean, that was the only thing I was going to say is just like, this has become a new conventional wisdom on the right in, like, overnight, it took 24 hours for this to congeal as a thing that everybody knows about Anthony Fauci, that he lied about these shots and he caused all these women to miscarry. And this is just. It's completely fabricated. It's like eight lies stacked, you know, standing on each other's shoulders wearing a trench coat. And everybody believes it now.

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah. So Katie's tweet has 4.5 million. Slight disparity between her and Alex. She also is retreating people who are pushing back against Alex, including someone named. I don't know who this is, Ashley Moore, who's responds Alex with the exact same point that you talked about. Respectfully disagree. Any skepticism by public health officials should have been disclosed so pregnant women could make more of an informed decision. They didn't have the data. What are we supposed to do? Oh, my God.

[Andrew Egger]

I mean, it just flies in the face of like. Like the whole point of these apparatuses is that these people are trying to be the public face of Fauci's text

[Sam Steinman]

should have been live operation Fauci's tech should have been live streamed to the public.

[Andrew Egger]

You should have had no problem have some. Some hidden gnostic knowledge about what these shots do and don't do. What they have is a scientific method for good, reasonable accrual of data, analysis of data and dispersion of data. The fact that. The fact that Fauci imagined that this. This connection could exist should and did mean nothing to anybody unless it was later backed up by some data. And they should have been kicking the tires on that data, and they were kicking the tires on that data again, it just. It all went the way it was supposed to go. But, like, people imagine that. It's weird because, like, public trust in these authorities is the lowest it's ever been. But in a weird way, it's all predicated on this. This understanding that these people are all knowing that they have it all you know, like, like that.

[Sam Steinman]

That gets me to my question for you. Like, what is the actual. If you extend this logic to the. It's like if you extend this to this logical end game. Do they believe that Anthony Fauci was kind of this bloodthirsty, satanic figure who was like actively trying to kill babies? Like, is that really what they think?

[Andrew Egger]

I don't know about who they is here. I'm sure there are a lot of

[Sam Steinman]

people who are saying, prosecute the guy, jail the guy.

[Andrew Egger]

You know, I'm sure a lot of people would say, well, no, I'm not going to go that far. But plenty of them are. I mean, that was that Mike Lee tweet. That was that Mike Lee tweet where

[Sam Steinman]

Mike Lee's like, is this a feature or bug you have? People are like, prosecute Fauci, jail him. He needs to be behind bars. You know, worse.

[Andrew Egger]

Like, yeah, think about the. This. Just not to put too fine a point on it, but that, that bit of though, is it a feature or a bug? The suggestion there from sitting US Senator Mike Lee is that Anthony Foushee, the guy who, you know, he didn't single handedly pull us out of the pandemic or anything like that, but he worked very hard to land the plane of the US Pandemic response with great success. He is just speculating, I guess, kind of as a joke that, that maybe what Foushee was actually up to was like sort of rubbing his hands in this sort of gleeful, sinister way that he was going to trick a lot of women into miscarrying their babies. That just is so fucking evil and bad. Right? I mean, just like his brain is rotting out and falling out of his ears and, and his soul is, you know, long since departed from his body. I don't know, I. What do you say? What do you say about it? These, these, the, the other thing and another thing. I don't know, I don't know.

[Sam Steinman]

I was just. My point is merely that if you take Mike Lee's logic, he believes that Anthony Fauci actively wanted to see the deaths of, you know, fetuses.

[Andrew Egger]

Yes, Millions, millions of them. Because he's a Marxist.

[Sam Steinman]

Why, why would you want that?

[Andrew Egger]

Marxists are evil. I don't know. There's no, there is no why to like, none of these things have any deeper substructure. They're just doing a two minutes hate against one of the approved villains of the day. I don't know what to say about it. It's just that's that's, that's all it is.

[Sam Steinman]

All right. We gotta move everywhere.

[Andrew Egger]

It's everywhere.

[Sam Steinman]

We gotta move. We are 25 minutes in, which is great. I thought we'd go 40, but I'm being told we need to move on because we have other topics. Luckily, it's the same kind of topic, though. Yesterday. Yesterday, Donald Trump had an event at the White House where he unveiled an executive order, long rumored executive order, effectively breaking up the childhood vaccine schedule. You usually get one shot that's combined five shots. Trump decided he's gonna break it up, although it's not clear that he actually can do this. We'll get into a little bit where he wants to just have five individual shots for your children. We can play the video of Trump talking about the reasons why, but it more or less comes down to he thinks there's a lot of liquids going into the baby at once, and he just doesn't think that you should put a vat of liquid in the baby. So let's, let's listen to our president talk about vaccines in a very educated and light way. At one year, you should have five

[Andrew Egger]

separate visits for vaccines all in the same day. And I saw this early on, and I've seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination thing looks like the size of a bottle of soda poured

[Sam Steinman]

into a little child's body.

[Andrew Egger]

And bad things happen in many cases, in too many cases, because this is an extra explosion. This is an epidemic. Sam, you have some kids, you've probably been to some pediatrician appointments in your time. You ever, you ever see any of this, you ever get any of this soda bottle vaccines at any of those visits?

[Sam Steinman]

What kind of soda bottle are we talking about? Because there's different sizes. That's what first came to mind. I mean, are we talking about a can? I don't think he said can. Like, that's, That's a can. He said bottle, which is bigger. Either way. No, you don't have that much liquid.

[Andrew Egger]

No, no.

[Sam Steinman]

It's idiotic. I don't think he's ever gone and seen his kid get vaccinated. I don't think he knows what he's talking about. I think this is highly damaging for obvious reasons. Now, let's just step back. They had tried to do this already. The courts intervened and stopped them from doing this. This is sort of their attempt to get around the court decision. It's not clear how you can do this. Obviously, the states are going to fight it. They're not going to, like, say, oh yeah, okay. I guess we have to like spread out these vaccines. And then on top of that, it's not clear that even if they wanted to do it that they can do it because. And Jonathan Cohen's going to write about this for the breakdown. Subscribe to the breakdown. Subscribe to Org they don't manufacture single shots of the mmra. Sorry, mmr, the measles. But yes, I'm getting my vaccines confused. They don't make single, they don't manufacture factor single shots at these things. So that said, it's damaging. I mean, he is spreading distrust and vaccinations. There's plenty of people who look at this and say, oh my God, the President says I shouldn't do this. I'm not going to get my kid vaccinated. And we're already in the biggest measles outbreak in a long time. I think the last two years have been the most whatever since we got the vaccine in place. So the real deal, there's real damage that's going to come from this.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, as far as the actual practical effects, hopefully they will not be large. I mean, like we have already seen a willingness from, in the past. These sorts of recommendations from the CDC were extremely important and they tended to drive actual policy on the ground because the major medical associations and the doctors and things knew this was like gold standard research, gold standard recommendations. They would tend to follow them. We've already seen a rupture here because these guys know these agencies are right now run by cranks and crackpots. We do not want to actually set our policy this way. So the major, major medical associations have gone a different way from the cdc, from the President of the United States. You are. It is very possible, even, even likely that that on the ground there's going to be very little impact to, to, to the way you take your kids in to get vaccine. But, but I will say that the potential danger is if they, if they try to treat this as more than a messaging, messaging thing, which, which is already bad enough. But if they actually try to, the way they have tried to really push the envelope on a number of other policy things, if they really try to use the levers of government to go after the company that manufactures the current MMR vaccine to try to force that off the market or something like that, then, you know, we don't know yet whether they're going to do that. But, but you could see this as a prelude to that. That would be real, I think.

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah, I think that's one Real problem. The other real problem is there are states where that have wanted to do just this and they've been stimmied, but now they can turn around to the court, say, hey, look, there's an executive order. I got to follow it. And then you're back in. In this situation. I think Idaho is one of those states, for instance. It does. You know, I was, you put this in, in Slack too. But we have been talking about it. I think Conan and I have been talking about it separately, which is, you know, we've been so focused on RFK as this anti vax lunatic force that we had forgotten that Trump is also, you know, a believer in this stuff, especially around autism. He's been a long time, like he's long time freak out about autism and rising autism rates and especially around childhood vaccinations, which he's been perplexed at how much fluid is going into the child. And this really just underscores it because they did this. I mean, this was at Trump's behest. This is an executive order at Trump's behest. I will also note they waited until they got the CDC director confirmed by the Senate, like literally days after so that she didn't have to deal with this. They know it's bad, so why do it now? Like, they know it's bad politically, but Trump's just obsessed with this stuff. And so, hey, 84 days before the midterms, let's just have a vaccine conversation.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, I mean, the other thing they got was one more really important vote out of Bill Cassidy to confirm Todd Blanche. Right. I mean, that was just days ago. That's true. That was the last thing they really needed out of Cassidy, at least for a little while. So you could, you could make the argument that perhaps there was some strategic, strategic thought to this too. But yeah, this is the thing Trump has been jonesing about forever. Right? I mean, like this was what brought him and RFK Jr together as political figures. I mean, people forget Kennedy thought he was going to get the, a really top vaccines related post in Donald Trump's first term. And then Trump kind of kicked him to the curb at the last second.

[Sam Steinman]

But Trump didn't kick him to. The advisors told Trump to kick him to the curb. They thought it was way too much. I think the recording was that Trump wanted it and he just got talked out of it.

[Andrew Egger]

Yes, yes, yes. But, but then this is also what we have seen this, this time around where, you know, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Came out of the gate so hot on vaccines. And he was maximally disruptive. He fired everybody on the different vaccine advisory committees. He was getting in there, promising to unearth the cure for autism within a number of months or to unearth the causes between vaccines and autism within a number of months. Monkeying with the vaccine schedules. Already last year, White House advisors told him to cool it, and he did. We have not heard so much from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This year, and that comes specifically from the White House. But we have since gotten reporting. I believe this was in the Wall Street Journal, but maybe I'm wrong about that. But good reporting that suggests that is how the White House's political operation feels about all this stuff. It's not how the President feels at all. Even though RFK Jr has scaled back on some of his, you know, really public facing efforts to chip away at America's pediatric vaccine schedule, the President has been saying, what the heck, Robert? Bobby, where's my, where's my vaccine? Autism stuff?

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah, he does bring it up when Bobby's there. He's like, why is it taking so long?

[Andrew Egger]

It's like a piece of reporting that Trump has told advisors that if, that if Kennedy does not unearth the connection between vaccines and autism, his tenure as HHS secretary will have been a failure. That's how the President feels about it. And this order yesterday, of course, was not Kennedy. Kennedy was there, but this was an executive order. This is coming right out of the big house. The President believes incorrectly that vaccines cause autism. And when he's not busy screwing up other stuff, he makes some time, carves out some time to screw up this issue too.

[Sam Steinman]

I want to play a little. So the event was both alarming, but it was also equal parts surreal. There was a video Trump appeared to just completely pass out at one point during it. And then, I mean, that's true. Like, I, I'm not actually a believer that Trump passes out and these things. I think he just gets tired, closes eyes. But he's kind of awake in this one. It looks like he actually is asleep at various points. And then there's this woman who was there. I think her name is Jamie Franklin. She was a mom who was concerned about vaccines. She was invited there. She's wearing a nice scarf, she looks nice, but she's bob around like, honestly, a robot. I, I don't, I don't want to begrudge her. It's a weird situation to be there, but she's bobbing like a robot. And this whole thing ended up having this very Wes Anderson vibe to it. We'll play this video. I'm gonna probably demand that we play it a couple times, but let's play first. No, it's really funny. You have to find. I have to find humor in these moments.

[Andrew Egger]

No, I agree. I'm not even sure I've seen.

[Sam Steinman]

We don't find humor in these moments. If we don't have humor, what do we have? Andrew? All right, let's watch the video. What you have given is parents a choice, autonomy, a decision making over how they want the vaccines given to their kids. I mean, I believe fundamentally that many vaccines are important. I said measles, for instance. The measles vaccine is important if we wanted to take control of the measles outbreak. But at the same time, we shouldn't be keeping kids out of school because they have made different decisions than other parents. Our European colleague. Okay, that even wasn't. Wasn't even the best one. There was a better one where I. I gotta find it. But can we play. Can we play our girl bobbing a little bit more too? We have that video. What you have given is parents a choice, autonomy, a decision making over how they want the vaccines. Their kids, I believe.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, it's funny.

[Sam Steinman]

No, no, no. One second, one second.

[Andrew Egger]

All right.

[Sam Steinman]

I put it in our. In our production channel. There's a specific video I want involving rfk. Even if even the screen grab of it I would take. But as. As that gets ready for a debut. If you have thoughts on Donald.

[Andrew Egger]

It's a funny. It's a funny picture. It's a funny picture. I don't know this woman from. From Adam. I don't. I don't know the first thing about her. I hesitate to make her. Maybe I'm just so mad at everybody else that it's like, oh, I'm not

[Sam Steinman]

fine with like, Bob. She can. Bob. That's fine. Okay, here's the real video. Hold on. This is the real one. I wanted to play diseases universally recommended for vaccines from 17 to 11.

[Andrew Egger]

Okay.

[Sam Steinman]

And establish a distinct category recommendations based upon the scientific evidence. Our assessment video for people. Keep the. Keep the thing up for people, because obviously we're. This is both on audio form, too. Here's arbor F. Kenny Jr. Holding a stack of papers, trembling tremendously. Trump is totally sledged over. His head is just completely off to the side. He's bored out of his mind and he's tired. And Jamie is just absolutely bobbing. She's having the time of her life bobbing. And it does create a bit of a Wes Anderson vibe.

[Andrew Egger]

Yes. This one is a Renaissance painting. Let's, let's have fun.

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah, that is, that is very much a Renaissance painting. And look, you have to try to find some slivers of joy in these dark moments. All right, we got to go to break. On the flip side, we're going to be talking about pretty remarkable New York Times. Sorry. Washington Post story. Washington Post story about Donald Trump jetting off his jet in a catering truck, leaving reporters and White House staffers as decoys, potentially getting hit by Iran. It's all coming up after the break. This ad is brought to you by the New York Times. The amount of money that the Trump family has made since Donald Trump's gone back to the White House has become a defining feature of Trump's second term. This week, the New York Times investigative reporter Ross Buettner published a piece on yet another example. So this summer, Gurren Bobby Zhao, who's a foreign national, came out of nowhere and bought about $100 million worth of tokens from Trump's World Liberty Financial. Who exactly is this guy? Well, Russ filed the money, he searched through confidential documents and court records and conducted dozens of interviews to help uncover who exactly Bob Zhao really is and what he was really doing investing in Trump's cryptocurrency. The reporting you depend on like that is what this show depends on. And it starts long before the headline. It's not just the Times, it's The Journal, it's ProPublica, it's your local newspaper. Anywhere reporters are still working a beat. They gather all the facts, they find the story, they talk to all their sources and they distill it all down so you can learn what matters most in just minutes. And that's what journalists do to keep us informed. So wherever you seek it out nationally, locally, support fact based reporting. Do you support fact based reporting?

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, I like this new thing where we have ads with news in them. Like, I feel like I, I think I missed that particular New York Times headline a couple days ago. So I learned something from the ad and it wasn't just about like a pocket hose or something like that.

[Sam Steinman]

You know, I'm, I'm upset you mentioned pocket hose. A little bit, A bit of a diversion. They haven't been advertising with us all that much recently. And I'm sad about it because as everyone knows, I'm a huge, I'm a huge pocket hose fan. And in fact, I need a new pocket hose because the one I've had for like four or five years now, it broke finally, which is good Just, just to be clear, hose, the life of a hose is not indefinite. Like, they break. And, you know, when your kids are pulling them a lot, sometimes it breaks. I, I've, I've loved my pockets. All right.

[Andrew Egger]

You don't need to give them a whole other ad. I think. I think I'm just saying, if they're

[Sam Steinman]

watching, if you're watching, send me a new one. Okay.

[Andrew Egger]

Like, imagining that boardroom meeting where we're like, that's Sam Stein, really enthusiastic pitch man, but I feel like he's sort of becoming the center of attention here. We need a slightly more boring guy to advertise the pod.

[Sam Steinman]

He's too into us. Can't take this. All right, let's talk about this story. So the Post breaks this insane bombshell story. Basic gist. Donald Trump, when he's flying back from it was. He was in Turkey, and he gets a threat from there. There's a credible threat that Iran is going to target Air Force One. He's already on the Qatari one, like the new one that he's been gifted. He's going to switch to the former Air Force One, which is just sort of the actual Air Force One. But then in a little bait and switch, he gets off the plane while no one is paying attention, boards a food truck, a catering cart that had, like, kind of gone up to the level to just sneak him out on the other side, and goes into a smaller military aircraft, leaving everyone behind. Unbeknownst to them, they all assumed he was on the plane, including the reporters. And there's like, a bunch of different elements to this that we can unpack. But to me, I mean, the deception is crazy. Obviously, the, the inability of this Qatari jet to be up to snuff so that the President can use it is obviously a scandal. But, like, I can't get over the fact that the White House and the Secret Service were like, okay, there's a huge credible threat to Air Force One. It's so serious that we cannot let the President fly in Air Force One, but we'll let the reporters in the White House staff fly in Air Force One.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah. Do we have. Do we have that video of. I don't remember. Should we play that real quick?

[Sam Steinman]

We could play. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Egger]

There wasn't a security concern.

[Sam Steinman]

No, no.

[Andrew Egger]

Why would you.

[Sam Steinman]

Do you know why they had us

[Andrew Egger]

close our window blinds?

[Sam Steinman]

That was not usually. Well, yeah, because you're probably on a dangerous flight.

[Andrew Egger]

Because if the sleaze bags that we

[Sam Steinman]

have to deal with, I think that Iran was Possibly taking charge.

[Andrew Egger]

Well, I mean, if they asked you to close your windows, probably they'd feel that way. They didn't ask me to close mine, but if they did, I would have done it. Were you aware of any credible threat by Iran against your. Well, I have a threat all the time. I'm number one on their list before you. But if I go, you go.

[Sam Steinman]

Right.

[Andrew Egger]

Perhaps someday when it changes professions.

[Sam Steinman]

The, the ease of which he lies is amazing. If I go, you go.

[Andrew Egger]

Actually, no.

[Sam Steinman]

In this case, it's just us going, and then also the window closings. That doesn't. In real. In retrospect, it made no sense whatsoever. What are they, like, looking through? They got, like, binoculars and, like, looking through the windows for the right one to hit. Like, didn't make any sense.

[Andrew Egger]

I don't know. I do not want to weigh in on any of these specific elements just because I don't know anything about this stuff. Right. It doesn't seem. I will say it does not seem to me crazy to think that maybe there's a threat here that doesn't rise to the level of we can't let this plane take off. But that's sort of like a precautionary thing where you move the president, you fly him out of the country in a way that, I mean, that seems fair. At the same time, obviously, it's, it's not exact. I mean, Donald Trump never been. Been sort of notorious for his human sympathy toward journalists or the people who work for him, any of this stuff. Those comments there are insane. I like the video. I mean, it's just so surreal because there is actually video footage of the moment.

[Sam Steinman]

Yeah, we can play that, too.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, like, like, let's, let's, let's just do that because he gets into this. What do you call it, like a catering.

[Sam Steinman]

It's a catering cart. Let me just be clear, because Andrew's right. I don't begrudge Trump for switching planes. Like, absolutely have to switch planes if you feel there's a threat. I think it would have been a national calamity and a huge emotional, psychic and political shock, civic shock to the country if something horrible had happened. I think people are, Don't. Should not cavalierly dismiss that. All right, so, like, that. That's all true. I just, like, I feel like the reporters probably deserved a little bit more information. We're talking about, like, revealing information of risk. This is like, a little bit. This one seems to hit. Hit them.

[Andrew Egger]

I do not, I do not think. I mean, like, again, we, we know no we know nothing about what the nature of the threat was other than what's been reported. But I do not think they take that plane off if they think there's a genuine strong chance that somebody shoots a missile at it. With a bunch of White House staff and reporters on board. I mean, like, just. They would keep the plane grounded, right? Like, am I. Am I insane?

[Sam Steinman]

No, you're probably right. It just seems also, they didn't reveal, but they didn't. Yeah, well, whatever. Let's play the video, because the video is kind of interesting of Trump trying to get the cart. All right, so there he is. For those watching, He's. He's already boarded Air Force One, the old Air Force One. He's walked up those stairs, and you can see they've put a square on the cart truck, the catering truck, which is on the other side of Air Force One. Meanwhile, the media is boarding on the other stairs, which are at the back. The catering truck is pulling away from the plane. Unbeknownst to them, Trump's on that bad boy. It's still going to. And then it's pulling up at the rear of the military aircraft. No one can see. Let's play one more time. It happens so fast. Trump, let's play one more time, please. Okay, here we go again. Trump, he's boarded. He's going on the plane. Door closes. Catering truck is right there on the other side of the plane. It's got. It's elevated so he can get onto it. Now, as the media is boarding in the back of Air Force One, the truck is pulling away from Air Force One, and it's driving to the military aircraft. What is your vision of Trump in a catering truck?

[Andrew Egger]

This is what is so magical about the story to me, because it actually does seem like on the merits, this was the right thing to do. I think it's. I think it's good that we have these sorts of procedures in place to protect our top people, you know, when they're traveling in dangerous areas. You know, kudos to the Secret Service. Kudos to everybody for coming up with this. This plan. And at the same time, it's just so funny to imagine Trump, like, in the back of that thing, you know, like, screaming, squeezed in between the chafing dishes, you know, like, you think he

[Sam Steinman]

was sampling the food? Yeah, I bet he was.

[Andrew Egger]

Maybe it probably shouldn't be food left on it, right? They just use that truck to stock Air Force One. But maybe. Maybe they left him a little goodie bag. Who knows?

[Sam Steinman]

I suppose. I bet they Had a few snacks on there. Probably Diet Coke for the big guy, just in case he knew he needs it. He does need. He loves his Diet Cokes. The other. So there's two other things to talk about with respect to the story. One is that just coming up, right? Like it's been a month since the NATO summit, which is where he was and he's flying back from. And they just kept it secret like they never disclosed any of this. Don't they have. I feel like they have an obligation to disclose it. They should disclose it. You don't. Why?

[Andrew Egger]

Team's fine. I don't know. Like every, every strategy you use to keep the President safe, you, you use it once and then you burn it by telling everybody about it. I don't know. It seems fine to me.

[Sam Steinman]

Okay. Some reporter you are.

[Andrew Egger]

All right, Two, he shouldn't have reported the story. It's a great story. It's an amazing scoop.

[Sam Steinman]

The reporters generally. Reporters generally like to have as much public information out there as possible on the locations and the threats against the President and the possibility that their own colleagues. Lives may have been in danger. Just.

[Andrew Egger]

I think it's a good scoop. I'm, I'm glad they reported it. But you were, it sounded like you were saying that they had like some obligation to say after the fact.

[Sam Steinman]

Yes. The American public deserves to know how. The American public absolutely deserves to know if the President had to get out of the. His own jet for safety precautions.

[Andrew Egger]

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. It's also two minds about it.

[Sam Steinman]

Air Force One is not his jet. You know. Okay. Like, this stuff actually does matter. Bering Bubba absolutely deserves to know that. All right. Secondly, is the Qatari jet. That bad boy is just not ready for prime time. Like, what the hell?

[Andrew Egger]

Which is fine, right? I mean, like, as far as he's concerned, like the President, what Trump really cares about is getting to have it forever. Right. And it doesn't have to actually be outfitted to serve the President's needs to sit there looking cool in his presidential library later.

[Sam Steinman]

But that's not the one. Didn't you see that? I thought Eric Trump said that. That's not the one that's going to be in the President.

[Andrew Egger]

Really? Oh, I didn't see that.

[Sam Steinman]

Huh? Let's pull it up if we can, as we talk. I believe Eric Trump told NBC News that he. That they were not going to put the Qatari jet in the library, that they were going to do the. One of the original Air Force ones, which makes no sense to me unless they're leaving the Qatari jet for the next president.

[Andrew Egger]

But that doesn't make sense either. Like what's, where does that jet go? They're just going to liquidate it? Are they going to.

[Sam Steinman]

I think he's going to. Legitimately. I legitimately think they plan on Trump just using it on a post presidential basis. Wouldn't it would, it would be a remarkable. Here we go. Okay. Look at Matt. He's just pulling up plans. Seemed as clear cut as unorthodox. After he leaves. President Donald Trump said the Qatari gifted plan that he has used, his Air Force One, will be displayed at his new presidential library. But that idea appears to be scrapped. President's son Eric Trump told NBC News in a text message Tuesday that the plane that Qatar donated to the Defense Department this year for president travel isn't the one that will go to the library complex in Miami once Trump leaves office. No, quote, quote. No, that's not the plan at the moment for Miami, Eric Trump wrote. His comments are a twist in the saga of the lavish plane Trump has deemed as an appropriate emblem of American prestige in which the tractors see as an unseemly exercise of presidential power. So either there's one of two options here or there's three. I suppose Eric Trump's just totally misinformed and has no idea what he's talking about. Can't rule that out. Two is they take the Qatari jet and don't put it on display and he uses it. And then three is Trump will display an old Air Force One as a library, which Matt says is actually going to happen. And then we don't know what happens with the Qatari jet. This is wild.

[Andrew Egger]

That's psychologically so interesting. I don't know whether this is true. This is just like a possibility that popped into my mind. It is kind of funny to imagine that maybe after all of this, Trump finally gets his hands on the Qatari jet and then it becomes kind of this embarrassing thing. You know, he has plainly been aggravated that like he's speaking been flying it and then he's been realizing as they're flying it that there are these security features that it's missing and he's had to switch back to the other one. Maybe some of the shine has come off the Qatari jet for the president. Maybe that's my theory thinking that the, that the old Air Force ones are actually the cooler, more prestigious ones. Yeah, I'm not putting no two bit, you know, Kmart Qatari jet in my presidential library. I'm Getting one of the real ones. And you people hear me out.

[Sam Steinman]

Hear me out. Maybe this is what happened. Just hear me out. Maybe he looked around, he said, wait a second. The Qatari jet doesn't have a door on the other side. If I need to get into the catering.

[Andrew Egger]

He's excited. The man's addicted to, like, sneaking around in the back of a catering truck. Now he had the time of his life.

[Sam Steinman]

I want my catering card off ramp. What the. I thought this came with the retrofitting. All right, before we go, we have one more thing I want to talk about, and we'll do it briefly because we're getting long here. Story dropped this morning that the Office of Office of Legal Counsel, which is the White House Office of Lawyers, has put together a new memo around executive privilege of presidential communications. And more or less what they're doing is they're saying that presidential communications, executive privilege will now apply with private advisors so long as the communications relate to official presidential decision making, involve or reflect communications with the President or his direct advisors, and are confidential. This is a, I think, underappreciated eo, if that's what it is, because. And Chuck Todd was right to point it out. I don't know if we have Chuck's tweet, but Chuck says so. The White House is trying to extend executive privilege to private citizens that communicate with potus in the White House. Legally dubious, for sure. But the mere existence of this memo is the White House acknowledging a future which. With congressional subpoenas targeting the private sector, who did, quote, unquote, deals with Trump and his family and friends. And I think Chuck absolutely nails it. The White House does not want Congress sniffing around all these companies that donated to all these shady accounts or that gave trump, you know, 12 karat gold, you know, microphones or whatever the. Is adorning the White House. And we'll see if this. We'll see if this is enough of a cover for those companies. They. Nah, we're not doing it.

[Andrew Egger]

I'm glad they're thinking about this stuff. I'm glad they're in a little. You know, it is.

[Sam Steinman]

I hear you. Because it's. They know that their time's up and they see the writing on the wall is that it's coming. Shit's coming, and it should. Okay, we got a hot egger today. I'm so glad I got to harness this. You know, we should harness this could, like, fuel a couple data centers in and around the country. So we need to figure out a way to convert people.

[Andrew Egger]

Are Ready for my data center.

[Sam Steinman]

I don't want it. I've done 53 minutes. I'm. I'm exhausted enough. All right, Andrew, Pleasure as always, my brother.

[Andrew Egger]

Hey, let me say so much. Thanks, Sam, for coming on because. Because I. I shanghaied Sam into this because Bill's off today, so we had a good one. Thanks, Sam.

[Sam Steinman]

I appreciate it. It's always a pleasure. And folks, we make promises all the time to do crazy stuff. If you subscribe to the feed and YouTube the other one. The other day I said I would wear my Riesling hat. I'm a big fan of Riesling wine. I don't know if you knew this about me, Andrew. If we got to. What was it? 250 subs off the video. We did not reach 250, but if you want to try 250 for this one, just hit that subscribe button and we're monitoring the data. And if we get to 250, I will wear my reselling hat on air. It's a really important hat. You'll love it.

[Andrew Egger]

Supposed to be, like, excited.

[Sam Steinman]

I don't.

[Andrew Egger]

What kind of a stretch.

[Sam Steinman]

I don't know. I was thinking about the things to offer them. That's all I had. I'll come up with better prizes. All right. If not, subscribe to our substack, which is where you get great writing from Andrew and others. It's really, honestly, a great deal. And you support mission oriented journalism and you become part of an incredible community that has conversations just like this. Till then, take care of.