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- [00:00]
Dave
The Epstein files have blown up in Donald Trump's face. For the first time since he took office, Republicans are openly rebelling. And it's not just a couple of them, it's over a hundred. And they're doing it on the one topic that Trump is most terrified of, Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats have released another batch of documents where Epstein says Trump knew about the girls. Epstein says Trump has early dementia. Epstein says he gifted him his ex girl girlfriend. Can you imagine? The White House is in full panic mode. Trump is melting down on Truth Central about the Epstein hoax. And meanwhile, Caroline Levitt is saying none of it is worth anything. And she's still not telling us why Donald Trump got that mri. Reporters are shouting Epstein questions at Trump and he's walking away. We're also going to speak to Dr. Zachary Rubin about the Maha movement and the politicization of health. We'll talk Tylenol, we'll talk autism, we'll talk about all of it. And also, where is the jobs and inflation data? It's gone because it's probably not very good. So they're simply not publishing it anymore. All of that and more as we continue raising money for Feeding America. Every first membership payment this month, whether it's monthly or yearly, will be donated to Feeding America to help hungry people. If it's a substack premium subscription, the same applies. I'll have updated fundraising totals for you soon. Let's do a show today. Why not? Every year there are only a certain number of days of massive political significance. I believe today, yesterday, this week, is one of those periods we have to talk about what's happening with the Republican Party. This is unprecedented. Trump is now facing the biggest rebellion from his own party since taking office. It is all about Jeffrey Epstein now. The timing is a disaster for Trump. He just had this brutal week. Last week, his party got destroyed at the polls. The Supreme Court seems very skeptical of about his blanket tariffs. We just ended a 40 plus day government shutdown. And then Wednesday happens. House Democrats released documents showing Epstein said Trump knew about the girls that Epstein was trafficking. In another email, Epstein calls Trump a maniac with early dementia. We're going to get to all of the emails a little bit later, but the big story here is that at least 100 Republicans are expected to vote to release all of the classified Epstein files. Why would they do this? Well, they would do it because they might see the inevitability of the files coming out and they want to be seen as not on the side of those accused of sexual assault and worse. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, said the vote is going to happen next week. We now have 218 signatures on the discharge petition thanks to the swearing in from finally of our friend now Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva. The Republican defections keep coming. Warren Davidson and Don Bacon, Tim Burchett and I could give you the list. They're signaling we are going to vote yes on this. And so they're going to join Thomas Massie and Nancy Mace and presumably Lauren Boebert, although there is now an effort to shut her up. Marjorie Taylor Greene and others. Some Republicans are holding to defending Donald Trump and they're attempting various propaganda distractions. Here is Congressman Buddy Carter along with Fox host Maria Bartiromo saying all of this Epstein stuff is just a deflection from the real problem, which is Democrats are the problem.
- [04:05]
Bev
Democrats are getting an assist from the media because the media, I mean yesterday I was flipping around, it was around five, six o' clock at night. They were literally voting in the Senate. I mean they were literally voting in the House, rather, pardon me. And they would not even talk about the government shutdown coming to an end on cnn. They were wall to wall on Jeffrey Epstein. They would not discuss the fact that the Democrats in their eyes caved. And that's the way CNN saw it, that the Democrats caved. I mean this is really activist media. It's unbelievable.
- [04:40]
Dr. Zach Rubin
It is unbelievable and it's really sad because the American people who believe that they're being misled, we all know that, look, the Epstein part is just them trying to deflect away from the real problem. The real problem here is that the Democrats, the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, John Ossoff, they voted 14 times to keep the government closed.
- [05:03]
Dave
That's the real problem, guys. Not that after denying that he barely even knew him and certainly didn't have contact with him them over the last 10 years and the emails reveal that that is not true. The real story is it's a distraction because the government was closed. Trump is freaking out. He went on Truth Social calling this to ship the Jeffrey Epstein hoax and that only very bad stupid Republicans would fall for this. Well, they all seem to be falling for it, or at least many of them. And the White House panicked and brought Lauren Boebert in reportedly to try to get her not to go forward with this Trump calling her a couple days ago, phone tags. She refused, but her signature stayed in. Now what is in these files? Well, so far we've seen less than 1% of what the Justice Department has which is 20,000 emails. Trump's name is all over it. We're going to look at some emails later just from what's been released. Trump's name is all over this thing. And in that critical email we looked at yesterday from 2011, Epstein wrote about Trump. He is the dog that hasn't been barked. And that one of the victims spent hours at Epstein's house with Trump. Thomas Massie kind of nailed it. And he says the deal for Republicans here is that if you vote the way Trump wants, he'll protect you, but otherwise you might get hit with a primary. Let's listen to that.
- [06:29]
Dr. Zach Rubin
And how many Republicans you think will vote for this on the floor?
- [06:32]
Thomas Massie
Well, I've already had a couple Republicans to tell my office privately that they're going to vote for it. And I think that could snowball. You know, the deal for Republicans on this vote is that Trump will protect you if you vote the wrong way. In other words, if you vote to cover up for pedophiles, you've got cover in a Republican primary. But I would remind my colleagues that this vote is going to be on your record for longer than Trump is going to be recorded. President.
- [07:01]
Dave
Right.
- [07:01]
Thomas Massie
And what are you going to do in 2028 and 2030 when you're in a debate either with a Republican or a Democrat and they say, how can we trust you? You covered up for a pedophile.
- [07:12]
Dave
Now, Thomas Massey is of course, correct. This goes on your permanent record. I don't want to be pedantic and do one of these, actually, I do think that a lot of these people are using the word pedophile wrong. My understanding is that pedophile is an attraction to prepubescent people. That's not what's being alleged here. These, these were underage girls, but they were not prepubescent. It's such a technicality. I just, I do think we should be precise. And so I've avoided using the word pedophile because it just doesn't seem to be accurate. But I understand what they mean. They're talking about underage girls. Don Bacon said this is a self inflicted wound by the White House. He says, I'm for transparency. Now, if the House passes this, it does need Senate approval and it does need Trump's signature, and he could veto it. But imagine the optics of vetoing transparency about your relationship with a sex offender. Only 40% of Republicans approve of how Trump has handled the Epstein files. 90% of Republicans approve of Trump overall. So this is an issue that is really bothering them. So the question is, is this it for Trump? When 100 members of your party publicly defy you? That is a structural problem. And the Republican Party is choosing, some of the Republicans are saying, I'm going to choose transparency and my constituents over Trump. Trump's power is built on loyalty and fear. And so this is devastating. The vote presumably coming next week is going to be massive and the rebellion seems real. I don't think I've ever seen Trump's grip on the party slip to the degree that it has today. But the biggest cowards in the Republican Party are the ones who are now going to vote to release the Epstein files because of the pressure, but who previously tried to block the petition. They wanted to run cover. But now that they see we may just not have the numbers, let me scramble to see if I can get on the right side of history. So that's what's going on with Republicans. Let's talk about what's going on at the White House. CNN's Dana Bash reported yesterday that the White House scheduled an unscheduled emergency meeting with Trump aides scrambling to figure out how the hell do we control this Epstein fiasco. This is not about messaging. This is crisis management inside the White House. You Here is the report from CNN and Dana Bash.
- [09:44]
CNN Reporter
Breaking news. CNN has learned there will be a meeting today inside the White House as aides try to manage a potential House vote on the release of the Epstein files. This comes, of course, just hours after Democrats on the Oversight Committee released emails from Jeffrey Epstein himself mentioning Donald Trump by name multiple times. I want to get straight to CNN's Kaitlyn Polina. Caitlin, what are you learning?
- [10:07]
Kaitlyn Polina
Well, the House is releasing these files, but it's not everything that the federal government has, Dana. There's additional files still held by the Justice Department that some Republicans on Capitol Hill are in support of releasing. And so that is causing a political response inside the White House right now where there is a meeting planned, or was a meeting planned today about the House effort to try and force a vote to get the Justice Department, the Trump administration, to release the rest of the FBI files, the Justice Department files, everything from years of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and others, things that have not seen the light of day yet. What one source tells me, we have multiple sources confirming that this meeting is happening. But what one source tells me is that this meeting was planning to include some key figures from the Justice Department, the FBI director, Cash Patel, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanch, and then one of those Republicans in support of transparency, Republican Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado. So what might happen at this meeting if Boebert could be swayed in a different direction?
- [11:19]
Dave
All right, so we now have reporting that Boebert was not swayed. But this is so emblematic of the panic that's taking place right now. And here's why. Trump assumed Republicans were going to quietly make this thing go away and that Trump's use of loyalty and fear was going to get the job done for him. But once the emails came out yesterday, Epstein saying Trump knew about the girls, has early dementia, he gifted him an ex girlfriend, all of this stuff, Republicans started heading for the hills. And now the White House is staring down what I believe is the most dangerous vote Donald Trump has ever faced. This is not a symbolic vote. If the files come out, 20,000 emails, logs, schedules and correspondence where Donald Trump's name appears again and again. Less than 1% is public so far, and that 1% has set off alarms. What does the Trump White House do? They deny everything while quietly freaking out behind the scenes. And so what took place is this kind of panic meeting. Who can we call? They tried Boebert reportedly. It didn't work. Who can we strongarm? How can we buy time? How can we delay? How can we stop Republicans from putting Trump's Epstein record on the floor for the entire country to see? The part they don't want you to notice is that you don't call an emergency meeting for something you think is harmless. If they believed the Epstein files are inconsequential to Trump, they're harmless. They would not be doing this. They are behaving as if this is a five alarm fire, because it is now. Meanwhile, the public line is nothing to see here. And Caroline Levitt tried to pull that. We'll look at that later. Inside the building, staffers are probably counting votes, drafting statements, planning damage control for a scenario where the files drop. And the kicker is that Trump seems to be losing control of his own party. Boebert reportedly won't pull her name. Nancy Mace won't pull her name. Thomas Massie is not playing ball. And so when some of maga's loudest foot soldiers stop protecting you, the walls are closing in. They're not hiding it well. They are panicking. And just wait till you see the emails after the break. Holiday hosting can be stressful. Don't I know it. You should see what happened to my last Hanukkah brisket. But Wild Grain makes it so that you've got it handled. Our sponsor, Wild Grain is the subscription box that brings bakery quality breads, pastries and pastas straight to your freezer, which you can then bake from frozen in just 25 minutes or less. I had friends over. I served apple pie bites and cranberry pecan rolls from Wild Grain. Huge hit. People thought I made them from scratch. Did I disabuse them of that notion? I don't know. That's a question for a different day. I love how everything turns out consistently. Every loaf and roll is perfectly browned, soft inside, smells great. They also have plenty of plant based and gluten free option so everybody's covered. Wild Grain is one of those things you try once and you think why didn't I start doing this sooner? Whether you're gifting it or keeping it for yourself, Wild Grain makes it easy to have something special on the table at any time. Get $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life@wild grain.com pacman the link is in the description Donald Trump has already packed his second term cabinet with loyalists. He's threatened deportation as political punishment. He's expanded executive authority in ways we have not seen in modern history. These are real changes that are happening right now. And what's even more alarming is that a lot of the media is either glossing over the worst of it or they're reframing it. So it all sounds a little more palatable. And that is why I use Ground News. This is a news comparison tool. It doesn't just feed you headlines, it shows you here's how different outlets, left, right, center are covering the same story. And this is one of the few tools I know of that can really help you detect the political spin, the bias catch stories that your usual sources might downplay or not cover at all on everything from immigration policy to economic shifts. If you want to get a bigger picture, a broader picture of what's being reported, Ground News is an invaluable source to keep you informed. And Ground News is offering my audience 40% off their top tier vantage plan. You'll only pay five bucks a month. Go to ground dot news, slash Pacman or enter the code Pacman in the app to get started. The link is in the description Donald Trump absolutely exploded after this Epstein bomb implicates him so much more than he has been claiming. The walls do seem to be closing in around him and the emails are way worse than we. We are going to look at some of those emails in a moment, but Donald Trump's reaction tells us a lot. Donald Trump taking to Truth Social where he said, quote, the Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein hoax again because they'll do anything at all to deflect on how badly they've done on the shutdown and so many other subjects. Only a very bad or stupid Republican would fall into that trap. That's a critical line because what Trump is trying to do is saying, you may be part of my suck up sycophant cult right now, but if you fall for this, you no longer will be. You're not so stupid that you would fall for this, are you? The Democrats Trump continuing cost our country $1.5 trillion with their recent antics of viciously closing our country while at the same time putting many at risk. And they should pay a fair price. There should be no deflections to Epstein or anything else, and any Republicans involved should be focused only on opening up our country and fixing the massive damage caused by the Democrats. And then, as if it wasn't completely obvious what he was trying to do from that post alone, he also adds, quote, in other words, the Democrats are using the Jeffrey Epstein hoax to try and deflect from their massive failures and in particular their most recent one, the shutdown. You know, first thought, Trump yelling at people to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein does not seem to be working. Has he ever heard of the Streisand effect, where the more you try to cover something up, the more attention it actually puts on it? There was actually a very funny moment from Caroline Levitt's press briefing, which we're going to look at in more detail later. But Weijia Jiang asked, has the President spent hours at Jeffrey Epstein's house? As a factual question of what is in the emails, the answer would be yes or no. Caroline Levitt's answer does not exactly inspire confidence.
- [18:19]
Caroline Levitt
Thanks for being here, Bev. Weija, Caroline.
- [18:22]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Sure.
- [18:23]
Dave
I have your statement about the new.
- [18:25]
Kaitlyn Polina
Epstein emails that have been released by House Democrats. Separate from why you believe the emails were were made public, can you address their substance? Did the President ever spend hours at Jeffrey Epstein's house with a victim?
- [18:40]
Caroline Levitt
These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong. And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar A Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep. In this email you refer to with the name of a victim that was unredacted now and has since been reported on in this room. So I will go ahead and say it. Virginia Guthrie, and it was CBS, his own reporting Ouija that recently wrote that Ms.
- [19:14]
Dave
Listen carefully for whether there's a no.
- [19:16]
Caroline Levitt
In here Free maintained and God rest her soul, that she maintained that there was nothing inappropriate she ever witnessed, that President Trump was was always extremely professional and friendly to her. And so I think it's a question worth asking the Democrat Party and you should all go ask them after this briefing of why they chose to redact that name of a victim who has already publicly made statements about her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is in is unfortunately no longer with us.
- [19:42]
Dave
Yeah. What was notably missing from the answer, remember the question was, did Trump spend hours at Jeffrey Epstein's house with a victim? That's what's alleged in the emails. Nothing that Caroline Levitt said there is a no. Now, before we get to some of the emails, I am sort of trying to when you get new information, you revise sometimes your opinions or your conclusions. I excoriated the Democrats not for ending the shutdown per se, but but for start allowing a shutdown to start with demands that were predictably going to go unmet and then ending the shutdown while getting nothing. And so my view was this was a predictable outcome. I would have rather Democrats say, hey, you know what, we don't have the numbers. We're going to keep we're going to give Republicans what they want to keep government open because either way they're not going to give us what we want on health care. Either way, they're not going to to and there are so many people that will suffer if government closes. I would have preferred that than a shutdown for something you know you're not going to get and then opening without getting anything. However, however, if because now we have to consider the timing of the oversight House Oversight Committee releasing these emails yesterday, coinciding with the government opening at Alita, Grijalva being sworn in, the vote on the discharge petition and now the vote next week on Epstein files. If this, this is an if if Chuck Schumer and others knew that exactly this is going to be the timing and the outcome, it might be brilliant. It might be brilliant. I don't know. Ok. I don't know exactly who knew what and when, but this is shaping up to be the worst week for Donald Trump maybe of his entire presidency. First and second. And now onto the emails. The Jeffrey Epstein emails that are coming out look really bad for Donald Trump. Trump is all over those emails and he's all over them, not as a casual Distant acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein, but he's in there accused of specific things that are really, really bad. Example here we start with the first one. This is an email where we have Thomas Landon and Epstein writing back and forth. Epstein writes to Landon, would you like photos of Donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen? To which Landon says, yes. And Epstein says, Hawaiian tropic girl Lauren Petrella. And later with a Link says, My 20 year old girlfriend in 93 that after two years I gave to Donald. Epstein is saying that he gave. This is such horrible language. You gave a person. He's saying he gave a girl, a woman, a young woman, his ex girlfriend to Donald Trump. Dear God, these are bad. Another email. And Landon Thomas is a financial reporter, by the way, for the New York Times. Epstein writes, read the Buzzfeed regarding my airplane logs and Hawaiian Tropic contest. Have them ask my houseman about Donald almost walking through the door, leaving his nose print on the glass as young women were swimming in the pool and he was so focused he walked straight into the door. Not a casual acquaintance, if these emails are to be believed. Now let me do a brief interlude. If you are going to claim that this is all a hoax, you have to account for why, long before Donald Trump even declared his presidential candidacy, they would have created this presumably fake email trail. It doesn't make any sense. The simplest explanation is, is the most likely explanation, which is the emails are authentic and they reflect reality and they reflect Jeffrey Epstein's recollection of events. Emails reveal that Donald Trump spent his first Thanksgiving after getting elected president with Jeffrey Epstein in 2017. Here is a series of emails between Jeffrey Epstein and Faith Cates. Faith asks, when are you back in New York City? He says, next week. And then he says, when asked who is down there with Epstein, Epstein says, david Faisal Hansen, Trump. This email says, not Trump might be down here. Trump is down here. Another email from Epstein to Larry Summers where Epstein says at the top, recall, I've told you I have met some very bad people. None as bad as Trump, not one decent cell in his body. So yes, dangerous about Donald Trump. Epstein is saying, trump's the worst I've ever met. Think about what that implies about Donald Trump. And then finally another email from Epstein to Kathy Rummler in 2018 where Epstein says, you see, I know how dirty Donald is. My guess is that non lawyers, New York business people have no idea what it means to have your fixer flip. These are far, far worse emails than even I imagined and I imagine they could be pretty Bad. Although we didn't yet have that information, we didn't yet have that evidence. But Trump is not only all over the emails, the emails certainly suggest that Trump's relationship with Epstein did not end in the aughts around 2007, 2006, whenever Trump was hanging out with Epstein, even into 2017 at Thanksgiving. This is a red alert disaster for Donald Trump. Trump was asked some questions about this yesterday. You might not be surprised to hear that he declined to answer. Donald Trump held a signing ceremony late in the Oval Office last night to formally reopen the government. How patriotic, how lovely, how delightful. What a pleasure. And yet Donald Trump said nothing about what everybody really wanted to hear about, which was Epstein. At the end of this signing event, you can hear multiple reporters asking about Jeffrey Epstein. And you will notice that Donald Trump answers not a single one of these questions.
- [26:31]
Donald Trump
Okay, thank you very much. I don't know if you have questions. I think just. I think we really have a really great situation. We have a country that we love and we have a country that's in great shape. As you know, we have over now, it's over $18 trillion invested in our country by other people and countries. That's a record. There's never been a country that had so much and that money is going into also building new auto plants, new AI plants, new everything. We've never had a time like this. Thank you very much, everybody.
- [27:07]
Dr. Zach Rubin
Are you prepared to negotiate with Democrats.
- [27:09]
Caroline Levitt
Now, Mr. President, on January Epstein.
- [27:12]
Dr. Zach Rubin
Mr. President, can you respond to these Epstein emails that were released today?
- [27:23]
Dave
Trump congratulated on a great job. I think that was Mike Johnson for getting government reopened. As people yell, you're all over the Epstein files. Please answer something about these damn Epstein files. So that was Trump's total unwillingness to talk about Epstein. Now, I do want to just mention a couple of the things that were said. Trump also lied about the state of the price level in the United States.
- [27:44]
Donald Trump
The federal government will now resume normal operations. And my administration and our partners in Congress will continue our work to lower the cost of living, restore public safety, grow our economy, and make America affordable again for all Americans. Again, costs are way down. Energy is way down. Gasoline is at $2.50 a gallon.
- [28:08]
Dave
It is not.
- [28:09]
Donald Trump
Versus $4.70 for the Democrats. And we think we're going to hit pretty close to $2 a gallon. That's like.
- [28:18]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Yeah.
- [28:18]
Dave
Anyway, gasoline is the same as when Trump took office right around 305. Coffee is up 19%. Utilities are up 12%. Electricity is up 10%. Vehicles are up 11%. But Trump wants to tell you everything's good, everything's cheaper. On the issue of health care, we're finally getting an inkling of Trump's health care plan. It's totally nonfunctional. It's dead on arrival, a nonstarter.
- [28:43]
Donald Trump
You know, their stock prices have gone up by a thousand percent, in many cases a thousand percent over a short period of time because our country stupidly pays them so much money with this Obamacare scandal. So I want the money to go directly to you, the people, and you go out and you'll buy your own health insurance and you'll negotiate different plans and you'll get much better insurance and you will be an entrepreneur for yourself.
- [29:09]
Dave
Yeah, this will not work. An individual given money to go and buy an individual plan, you have no leverage. It just doesn't make any sense. Even within the Obamacare marketplaces, in a sense, you are just buying your plan. But these are negotiated plans that have to meet certain requirements thanks to the government getting involved. And say these are the minimum requirements for a bronze plan, a silver plan, gold, etc. And even those, they're slightly, the prices are rising slightly more slowly than other plans, but you still barely have any leverage. So imagine how absurd what Donald Trump is proposing is Trump also talking about the damage that Democrats caused with to the economy. But stocks are high. Everything's good, everything's bad. Depends who you ask, depends who you want to blame.
- [30:06]
Donald Trump
They caused tens of thousands of federal contractors and small businesses to go unpaid. And the total effect of the damage here antics caused will take weeks and probably months to really calculate accurately, including the serious harm that they did to our economy and to people and to families. So I just want to tell the American people, you should not forget this when we come up to midterms and other things, don't forget what they've done to our country. I also want to call for a termination to the filibuster so that this could never happen again. If we had the filibuster terminated, this would never happen again.
- [30:45]
Dave
And there's Trump, of course, saying giving me and my party the power to do whatever we want whenever we want would have made everything better.
- [30:53]
Donald Trump
Yet. We have another date coming up in the not too distant future. We can never let this happen again. And we should be able to pass great, really great legislation. Legislation. So I say terminate the filibuster because, by the way, the Democrats will do it immediately if they ever assumed office, which hopefully they won't. Today we had the highest stock market price ever in all of the.
- [31:17]
Dave
I mean, listen, given everything that Democrats are doing, I guess we have to thank Democrats for the record stock prices. It's all a mess. It's just a verbal inkblot. And then finally, Donald Trump trying to slip in this Walmart propaganda about Thanksgiving. I know some of you have heard this one and some of you have not. Let's hear it and then I'll, I'll debunk it for you.
- [31:38]
Donald Trump
And also I want to thank Wal Mart because they came up with a fantastic study. It was the cost of Thanksgiving coming up and the cost of Thanksgiving from a year ago under sleepy Joe Biden and with 25% lower this year year than we were a year ago. And it's a very inclusive report. So I want to thank Wal Mart. They've done it for many years.
- [32:02]
Dave
But yeah, you know, the thing is, it's a total ruse. Walmart's cheaper Thanksgiving meal contains 15 products instead of 21. And it also has more stuff from Walmart's store brand called Great Value, which without making any judgment as to whether it's better or worse than name brand products, they are cheaper. So it's a total ruse. Trump is going, oh, well, Thanksgiving meal is so much cheaper. It's cheaper because they took stuff out and replaced brand name products with store brand products. Your mileage may vary. You assess it. Trump is panicked about Epstein. He wants to answer no questions whatsoever and just you wait later until you see. When Caroline Levitt was asked about Trump's mri, it didn't go well. Many of us know all too well about the sticking, rubbing and chafing that you can get with traditional underwear. Our sponsor, Sheath Underwear, have created unique boxer briefs with multiple ergonomic compartments in the front, which prevents skin on skin. And that means everything stays separate, comfortable, dry and cool. You will have a boost of confidence when you're out and about. I've known so many people who were skeptical about those compartments. Friends who say, I heard that ad for sheath. What about those compartments? And then they try it and then they're amazed at the comfort and breathability when they finally try it. You will thank yourself. Plus, Sheath has brand new materials like bamboo and mesh for even more cooling comfort. They will be the most comfortable pair of boxer briefs you ever put on. No more sweatiness and chafing and readjusting, especially at the gym. It's a lifesaver. Give sheath underwear a shot. I've had a great experience. I think you will too. Head over to sheath underwear.com/pacman and get 20% off with code Pacman. The link is in the description. I spoke on substack live with Dr. Zachary Rubin. We talked about the Maha initiatives. Maha Maha Make America Healthy Again initiatives, including the Tylenol pregnancy stuff and vaccines and all of it. We also talked about what is the best way to get to everybody in the country having access to care they can afford that is of good quality. And we also are talking about an issue we haven't delved as much into, which are the cuts to research grants all over the country, NIH and other institutions. Really good conversation. You could have watched it live on Substack. We're including it here on the show.
- [34:36]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
It is great to be Speaking again with Dr. Zach Rubin. We have since we last spoke, in fact, so much has happened that there's sort of like where, where do we even start? But I always appreciate your time and it's good to see you.
- [34:50]
Dr. Zach Rubin
It's good to see you again. Yeah. I mean, there's so much going on right now, it's hard to keep track. But we'll do the best we can to cover as much ground in as little time as possible.
- [34:59]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Let's maybe just start with this entire Obamacare subsidy healthcare plan thing that's going on. You know, the. We've joked, but we're joking about something very serious that we seem to always be two weeks away from whatever is Donald Trump's plan for health care. And this started really in August of 2020 when he told Chris Wallace on Fox News, within the next two weeks, we're not only going to release, but we're going to sign into law my health care plan. That didn't happen. We learned during the debate last summer he has concepts of a plan but not a plan. To his credit, we finally have an inkling of what the plan is. And it's some version of give the money to the individual ins steward person to have them go out and buy a plan from the health insurance company. When I hear this, I hear there's absolutely no leverage for an individual to do that. And it would really, to work, require government involvement in negotiating, which is, I guess, what Donald Trump doesn't want because he says government should be out. It should just be free market. Tell us, like, why this fundamentally wouldn't work.
- [36:05]
Dr. Zach Rubin
Yeah. So I want to remind people even before we get into this that a lot of the reason why this has become unaffordable is actually from Trump's first term. So the way the Affordable Care act was meant to work is that if everybody pays in, just like with universal health care, you have diluted the risk pool to decrease premiums, right? You take healthy people and people with chronic conditions, you put them in the same pool, everybody's going to pay a fair share. And if you don't, there's going to be a penalty associated with that. And that penalty was fairly nominal. It depended on your income level and whatnot. But it'll be a few hundred dollars. And in 2017, with the tax and Jobs Cut act, he made that penalty zero. So that really disincentivized people to buy into the ACA marketplace, which shot up premiums at that time and has still been lingering. There's something called cost sharing reductions, which were discounts from the federal government put on insurance companies to pay for lower income Americans for things like co pays. He got rid of that as well. He also got rid of a lot of funding meant to help administrative costs to get people enrolled on plans. So there were a lot of people who were struggling with even just getting onto the Affordable Care act with the different types of plans that were available. So he already set it up for failure. He sabotaged it. I just want to remind folks that. And so what he has now set up is we just got out of this shutdown, which was over a specific set of subsidies that were put in place because of the pandemic, because costs were just going out of control with supply and demand issues, right? There's inflation going on. And so the federal government had to come in to put in a subsidy to decrease these premiums, which is set to expire. And he's saying, well, instead of taking that pool and just actually subsidizing your care, we're going to give that individual amount of money to each person and say, you go be the entrepreneur and go out and do something with it. Which I want to give an analogy for, folks, right? You got a Costco or Sam's Club membership, you pay a $50 fee, right? Something like that in order to get access to discounted bulk pricing. Well, a bunch of people put that $50 in to give a larger buying power so that Costco can go out and then negotiate a lower rate. So but if you give that money and say, nope, go to Costco, here's your $50. You can come in, but you've got to negotiate to get your bulk granola bar price down. You're not going to be able to do that. You can't, as an individual do that. It's the same thing with insurance. If you're an individual person, you go out and compete with a private, multi billion dollar health insurance industry that is for profit driven, they're going to laugh at your face and say, nope, we're not going to change anything. If not, in fact, we, we're actually going to increase the premiums, especially if you have a preexisting condition. It's going to go back to what happened pre 2010Pre ACA, where a lot of people couldn't even get access to health insurance. We're talking over 20 million people couldn't because of chronic conditions. And depending on the state you live in, you may be out of luck because a lot of states will turn to these models where you're going to have a wait list that if you don't enroll right away, you may not even get coverage and then there'll be lifetime maximums. These are all things that people don't remember were happening with, with a relatively broken system that the ACA helped. It's not perfect, but it was definitely sabotaged under Trump's first term.
- [39:25]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Yeah, the way I like to say it, when they would say, oh, the ACA is clearly not working because the Obamacare marketplace plans are getting more, they've gotten more expensive since 2010. It's like, well, yes, it has been 15 years and premiums going up is something that is happening inside and outside of these marketplaces. From the reports I've seen, the rate of premium increases within the marketplace has been slightly slower than outside of it. So it's like, it's a very, it's an, it's better, but the system is so broken overall that you really need an overhaul. And Trump's overhaul is. Sounds to me like it would not actually help much.
- [39:59]
Dr. Zach Rubin
No, it, it's not. He's trying to treat this as if health insurance can operate under a free marketplace, but with the way that the system's set up, that's nearly impossible. This is why, I mean, I'm in a small private practice, but there's very little of that left. That a lot of small offices have been bought up by these different corporations that you have private equity and these different large corporations buying these smaller practices up, consolidating it and then putting it in a model of saying, well, you're going to have only 10 to 15 minutes to see a patient. You've got to just see people like it's a mill and people don't get enough time with their doctors because of it. In addition, a lot of people left medicine because of the pandemic. And were just completely burned out or got really sick. There's a lot more disability now. And now with the one big beautiful bill, if you go to medical school, your federal loans are capped at about $100,000 or so. It's not nearly enough to offset the rising costs of medical education. So if you really want to overhaul the system, a lot of countries are already doing this. If you have a single payer system, you're cutting out all the middlemen. You're negotiating essentially with hospitals and saying this is what it's going to be. Here's the pricing. We're going to cut out a lot of the administrative paperwork. Yes, it may take a little bit longer to see a doctor, but it's going to significantly drive down the costs if everybody's paying into it from all.
- [41:20]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Of the different things that might be under the MAHA umbrella, Make America healthy again. The stuff that RFK and others have been pushing, what do you think from a public health standpoint has been most damaging? And just to remind people in the audience, we've heard about the Tylenol autism stuff, vaccine recommendations even for vaccines that aren't available in the US get the MM&R separately, which every doctor I speak to says, yeah, we don't, we don't have that. We can't get it. That's not even really a possibility. If you go through the whole list, what do you think is the most dangerous of it?
- [41:54]
Dr. Zach Rubin
So you know the popular catchy headline things are the ones that you talked about. But I think actually the one that's more damaging is the brain drain that we are experiencing in our research institutions like the NIH as an example because a lot of the researchers have been constrained with their ability to even just access funds out of their grants. Uh, my wife and I were in D.C. recently, I was giving a talk for a food allergy conference and one of her close friends is a researcher over there and she won't, I'm not going to name her name and keeping her her private and, and because of, you know, concerns about her safety and her job, she's not going to speak out openly. So I'm just making this as an anonymous source. But she sees all these different PIs, these principal investigators at the NIH who are just leaving left and right. Her personal boss left for St. Jude's and she was going to try to look at seven to eight other people to work with. They've all left. People are leaving because the leadership is so bad right now. It's so absent minded and so driven towards politics to decrease funding for DEI type initiatives for health disparities, that over 700 NIH grants had to be altered to change the language in order to get accepted. And even then when you have grants, sometimes they're not even able to have access to funds. And we did have the shutdown which stopped the ability for people to run their experiments. If you had something ongoing, except for basically feeding the mice as an example, you couldn't really do anything. And that ruined experiments. So a lot of people are leaving the states or they're going to private institutions and it's really, I think from a generational standpoint is going to have ripple effects that you, we're not going to see right away, but it's, it's devastating.
- [43:41]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
That makes a ton of sense and that, that's like a structural, structural thing that we, we have been talking about and seems extraordinarily damaging that that's taking place right now. As far as, even without delving super specifically at the micro level, one of the things that I found notable is that with a lot of the, the so called recommendations that have been coming out, someone will eventually always kind of couch it as, you know, you should talk to your doctor and only take medications when they're truly necessary. And what's funny to me about that is that's kind of always the situation. In other words, the idea that for no reason people are taking Tylenol or whatever. My approach has always been do I really need this thing? What am I trying, what symptom or condition am I trying to deal with? And what does my doctor say about it? They drop that in in a way, which makes it sound like a new part of this. But isn't that what really should be the approach to putting anything in your body?
- [44:39]
Dr. Zach Rubin
It's always been that way. I always tell my patients I try to do the most with the least amount of intervention. And this especially too, as somebody who specializes in allergic diseases, you don't want to over medicate, you don't want to do those things. And I go over the risks and benefits with all my patients. I'm lucky as a specialist and the way my practice operates that I have more time than potentially other doctors do. Primary care has really taken the brunt a lot of this by saying, you know, in order to keep the lights on, you gotta see patients every 10 minutes. That's really not doable. But that's kind of the system that we're unfortunately facing with. But when I have more time, I can explain to people why I don't do nearly as much testing as other people do. I don't recommend taking medications all the time, and I really follow them closely to really monitor what's going on. And that's something that I've always done. But what the administration is doing is they're basically giving this conspiratorial thinking that doctors are paid by big Pharma, that we're just pill pushers, that we don't look at the quote, unquote root cause when really we talk about it from terms of pathophysiology, which is the same exact thing. And we have a level of humility where we say, hey, I may not know the answer to this. We may need to follow this further. We may not have the answer to everything, but that's really how good medicine is practiced. And even with that, our systems, from a public health standpoint, are not set up to really support people, and doctors can only do so much. So if you live in a food desert that's hard to get access to healthy, nutritious foods, I don't see the administration really taking steps to improving healthy food access. Right. They were very much against food funding SNAP during the government shutdown. That made absolutely no sense to me. Right. I think from a, just a humanistic standpoint, you'd want to make sure that everybody can eat and not go hungry. It just, it boggles my mind that that was an issue. We don't have universal child care, we don't have universal parental leave. All of these are toxic stressors. We're not addressing enough of the climate impacts on our health. And these are things that you would think Maha would be aligned with removing pesticides from our foods. But they're not actually doing that. They're just hunkering down on old conspiracy theories that have been thoroughly debunked, like vaccines and autism as an example. And they keep shifting the goalposts to focus people on the wrong aspects or reinvigorating the population with beef tallow, which we know is not going to improve people's health. All these different things are distractions from the real systemic issues that our society faces.
- [47:12]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
I'm curious your thoughts on Dr. Marty Makary, because I, I read his book a couple years ago, I think it was, and there's some stuff in there that seems very evidence based about, hey, you know, appendicitis can be treated much more successfully with antibiotics than we thought. A lot of people that get an appendectomy, like me, for example, I, I might have actually been fine with the antibiotics or another example, are we too quick to go to C section in the United States, especially after a woman has had one C section already? And it seems like, yeah, that, that.
- [47:46]
Dave
May be a thing.
- [47:47]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
There may be better, better chances for vaginal birth after C section than maybe we thought. Stuff that when I would do independent research, seemed very evidence based. And then to see him standing up there with Trump and RFK and repeating some of this stuff, I don't know what, what do you make of it? Do you think his views have genuinely changed? Do you think he's been captured by the political environment in which he finds himself?
- [48:09]
Dr. Zach Rubin
No, actually he's already, he's always been on that side of things, actually, when you look at some of it. So on the one hand, yes, he talks about things that are advancing medicine in a positive way. He's not the one who is the one figuring this out though. This is stuff that a lot of other people were already looking into. But as an example, he famously talked about how medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. And that kind of put him to the forefront when that was taking things wildly out of context. You know, we're talking about hospital outcomes rather than, you know, the cause of death as a whole. It's cherry picked information. And that really sowed distrust with the medical community when he said stuff like that, which was very problematic. He's also somebody who said that we would reach herd immunity with COVID 19 back in the spring of 2021, which clearly a million plus people passed away after that point. So he was wrong with that. He's a surgeon and he has some good ideas. But then he'll also blame doctors for the only reason why there's a peanut allergy epidemic that's going on. And that's not the only reason that has caused that. I have a book behind me that I've written that goes into more details about those issues. But I think because he kind of balances the line between having evidence based information but then really having this hyperbole of information that over exaggerates risks and over exaggerates that the harms that doctors do, it doesn't create a balanced approach. You know, this recent announcement about removing the black box warning for hormone replacement therapy for treating menopause has a lot of merit to it, but he has people up there saying that, oh, you know, the reason why a lot of women are getting divorced is because they're not on hormone replacement therapies. Absolutely ridiculous. You know, so. So some of the messaging behind Things that actually have good science and, and advancing things often get lost in the kind of showmanship that he, he displays.
- [50:05]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Is the effect of what the, the Department of Health and Human Services is doing right now? Is the effect more tangible or ideological in this way? My friends in blue states say, hey, you know what, Our governors and our state attorneys general and state medical directors for the most part are all keeping everything, as far as the legal infrastructure goes the same. So even though at the federal government level they might go, oh, you know, a 40 year old no longer qualifies for the COVID vaccine, for example, a lot of states have figured out ways to say no, we're like, we're going to prescribe it to everybody. So you can just show up and get your COVID vaccine or whatever. So the question is, is the damage that's being done more about people who hear this stuff and choose to do something different versus what is actually accessible on a state by state level based on state leadership?
- [51:01]
Dr. Zach Rubin
And it's such a hard question. I think they're both damaging is the thing. The messaging is so mixed and confusing that you're going to get fringes of people who are going to go in opposite directions and actually create more distrust in the federal government. I mean, the CDC was once an institution that was considered the pinnacle of public health around the world. You know, they did such a great job when there was an ebola scare about 10 years ago, just completely stopping that in its tracks. There have been concerns about bird flu for a long time that they've been able to successfully address. They helped really address issues related to a swine flu pandemic that happened back in about 2009, 2010. So these are things that they have now actively dismantled the structural integrity and the funding that's in place and kicked out most of the career scientists where even if the state level they're doing everything they can to patch it up, there may not be enough funding to address some of these problems. I mean, one of the big problems right now is we're having all sorts of food recalls and safety issues with our food supply. One of the scariest ones right now is the fact that there's a formula company called By Heart that had recall all of their formula products because there was cases of botulism linked to that formula. We don't know all the details yet, it's an ongoing investigation, but there was funding through something called Foodnet that was meant to track things like botulism and listeria and things like that. And they cut so much of that funding at the cdc, that that's federal assistance for the states. And so there's both a messaging problem, a funding problem and a resource problem that's coalescing that yes, if you live in certain states you may be more protected, but by and large we all suffer because of this.
- [52:50]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
We are going to be modeling different healthcare systems from around the world, which we've done before. But it seems like a particularly interesting time to do it.
- [52:59]
Dave
And my view has been I, I.
- [53:02]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Think there are a number of different ways to make sure everybody has coverage and coverage that they can afford and that is of acceptable quality. Different countries around the world have taken different approaches. If you look at France versus Singapore, for example, or Switzerland versus Spain, there is not one system that achieves certainly good outcomes. Do you have a preference in terms of the way to get to the system you think is ideal or are.
- [53:30]
Dave
You sort of agnostic as to how we do it? As long as we do do it?
- [53:34]
Dr. Zach Rubin
Yeah. So there's some type of flavor of a centralized universal system that needs to be employed at this point in to cut out a bunch of the middlemen that are rising the costs of care. We have so much administrative bloat in our system, so much paperwork that is unnecessary and hoops to jump through that. You know, I'm all for a single payer system if that means I can spend two hours less of my day on paperwork or my nurses having to make all these different phone calls to get access to things. The downside though is that if we don't address some of the other systemic issues of getting people into health care to make it more affordable, it's not going to be sustainable. We have a, we have a physician in a nursing shortage right now that in some parts of the country it would be very hard to get access to certain doctors. And you know, I was just in Canada recently at a conference that I was speaking at and I was meeting with a bunch of other specialists like myself. And like in Newfoundland as an example, the entire province has five allergists for the entire province. Their wait list is anywhere between 12 to 24 months to get in for a routine issue to my specialty. So there is some risks of having long wait times. That is real, that's not fake. That's a real downside to this. However, people shouldn't go bankrupt if they have a medical emergency that it's unconscious of all to even talk about. It doesn't matter what your citizenship status is, everybody should be able to have access to care. It's a matter of how do we deliver that care that is equitable but also not going to cause burnout for, for the system itself, because a lot of physicians and healthcare workers are burnt out with the way things are going right now. And we need to find ways to support those individuals but also support society as a whole. And by having a single payer system, at least gives that bargaining power to decrease the costs and decrease the administrative bloat that leads to a lot of these issues. Now, some places will have that plus a private option which might be viable, but it's hard because we live in a unique kind of system where we have both federal and state issues. That's a large country. So there's so many different political interests and different ways that people do things that, you know, I wish we would be able to have it. I just don't know how that we're going to ever get a pathway to get to that.
- [55:51]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
That's the question. And I don't, I don't. It's certainly not going to be with what Trump was dangling in front of us just two weeks away for five years. We figured out that's not going to be the path. We've been Speaking here with Dr. Zach Rubin. If you're one of my Substack followers, make sure you're following him. I would be humbled if you're one of Dr. Rubin's followers, if you followed me on Substack as well. I know you've got a busy day ahead of you, so I'll let you go. But I always appreciate talking to you.
- [56:15]
Dr. Zach Rubin
Oh, it's a pleasure, my friend. And just have me back on your show. We'll. We'll chit chat more because we only scratch the surface with everything here.
- [56:22]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
All right, we'll talk to you soon.
- [56:24]
Dr. Zach Rubin
All right, take care, guys. Bye.
- [56:25]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Take care. Bye.
- [56:27]
Dave
Many VPNs claim they don't track you. Only one can prove it, and that's our sponsor, Private Internet Access. Private Internet access is the only VPN with multiple real world court cases showing that when law enforcement requests user logs, they don't have them because they don't log anything. Their software is open source. Anyone can inspect the code and confirm that there's transparency that you do not normally see in the VPN industry. You can use one account on unlimited devices, phone, laptop, tablet, even your router. Works with Netflix and YouTube and streaming services worldwide. It is like a secure tunnel between you and the Internet that nobody can see into. I've been using PIA for years. It's One of the few privacy or security tools I truly trust get 83% off just 203amonth plus 4 extra months free at PIA vpn.com/pacman the link is in the description. Caroline Levitt is the White House press secretary and she suffered what I can only colloquially describe as an acute psychotic episode losing her mind on live tv. She is trying to figure out how do I explain that we don't want to release inflation numbers and we don't want to release jobs numbers, we being the Trump administration for October, because they probably don't look so good. And so what Caroline Levitt came up with in consultation with what I assume is some kind of brain trust there at the White House, is that Democrats ruined the statistical system and therefore, thanks to Democrats, the release of data is now impaired. Wow. This is doing some reaching.
- [58:15]
Caroline Levitt
Economists, investors and policymakers at the Federal Reserve to receive clerks critical government data. The Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released. And all of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed flying blind at a critical period.
- [58:39]
Dave
Economists and can you imagine, can you imagine those darn Democrats? I mean, forget that Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Forget that any data that isn't exactly what they want they say is fake anyway. Forget all of that. Democrats have damaged our statistical system. Now then it got really interesting, which is that Caroline was asked if you want to be transparent. You know, you say this is the most transparent administration ever in the history of the universe. Just release the Epstein files. That's transparency. She goes, oh, we've done more on Epstein transparency than anybody transparency.
- [59:20]
CNN Reporter
Why not just go ahead, release the full files on Epstein, get this all over with.
- [59:25]
Caroline Levitt
We have. This administration has done more with respect to transparency when it comes to Jeffrey Epstein than any administration ever. In fact, this administration, the Department of Justice, has turned over to tens of thousands of documents to the American people. We are cooperating and showing support for the House Oversight Committee. That's part of the reason you are seeing these documents that were released today because of the House Oversight Committees and Republicans efforts to get these out to the public.
- [59:53]
Dave
What she doesn't mention is that a few Republicans got involved at the last minute because they saw they couldn't stop the runaway train and they haven't released the files. They could have released the files. That would really be the most transparent thing that they could do. Now then, the topic of this strong arm meeting with Lauren Boebert came up why, if there is nothing to hide, would you try to convince Lauren Boebert to vote against the release of files? Again, an answer that is not about transparency.
- [60:28]
CNN Reporter
Reagan in transparency, Caroline, why are White House officials then meeting with Representative Boebert in an effort to try and get her to not sign this petition?
- [60:36]
Dave
Right. You want to be transparent, but you're convincing someone to vote not to release the files. That's weird.
- [60:41]
CNN Reporter
Calling for the release of the files.
- [60:42]
Caroline Levitt
Doesn't it show transparency that members of the Trump administration are willing to brief members of Congress whenever they please? Doesn't that show our level of transparency?
- [60:52]
Dave
It's just a briefing.
- [60:54]
Caroline Levitt
Doesn't that show the level of transparency when we are willing to sit down with members of Congress and address their concerns? That, that is, that's a defining factor of transparency. Having discussions, having discussions with members of Congress about various issues. And I'm not going to detail conversations that took place in the Situation Room, in the press briefing room.
- [61:13]
Dave
You know, although I find Caroline Levitt morally deplorable and ethically despicable, there are issues on which I'm like, all right, she, she's doing her job well. She's come up with a good deflection or distraction. This is not convincing anybody. This, this is a total and complete disaster with regard to even theoretically justifying the behavior. We are being really transparent by meeting with members of Congress. We're just briefing them. Even though all the reporting is. The idea was to strong arm Boebert into voting to cover up the files. But I'm not going to share the contents of these meetings. That would be completely and totally inappropriate. Oh, okay. The next topic to come up was this deranged 50 year mortgage. If you haven't heard of this, Trump's latest idea is let's create, Instead of a 30 year fixed rate mortgage, let's create a 50 year fixed rate mortgage, which of course would actually drive prices up because by creating no new housing supply, it would make more people be able to afford a more expensive house. I use the term afford loosely because a lot of people shop for their monthly payment. It would actually have the opposite effect. We now have heard that Bill Pulte and others are like, this is a terrible idea. Caroline is asked about it and she goes, oh, I'm not going to weigh into that. Let's just. We're looking into it. We're looking into. And there's been some reporting that the White House is frustrated with Bill Pulte.
- [62:37]
Dr. Zach Rubin
And the rollout of this proposal for.
- [62:38]
Dave
A 50 year mortgage. Tell us if the White House is frustrated with that rollout and if the White House still supports the idea of.
- [62:45]
Thomas Massie
A 50 your mortgage for Americans.
- [62:47]
Caroline Levitt
This is a proposal that the president himself has commented on. I would refer you to the president's statements, and it's something that the administration is discussing and seriously looking into.
- [62:56]
Dave
Translation, this has turned into a political fiasco. They're probably not going to do it. And I'm going to say nothing more other than look at what Donald Trump has already said. And then finally, and I, I love this one. Caroline is asked about SNAP benefits because one of the things she said is, it's a good thing the government reopened so people can get their SNAP benefits. We need people to have their food stamps. Except the Trump White House went to court during the shutdown to try to prevent people from getting their SNAP benefits. How do you square that? She has an answer. It's pathetic, but she has an answer.
- [63:36]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
You said at the top that one of the costs of the government shutdown was that people missed their SNAP benefits. Can you explain then why the administration.
- [63:46]
Dave
Went to court to fight the funding.
- [63:48]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
Of food stamps and SNAP benefits?
- [63:50]
Caroline Levitt
So recipients missed their SNAP benefits because the Democrats shut the government down and they forced the administration to tap into a contingency fund that did not even fund the full entirety of this program? And so then you had an unhinged judge who is trying to dictate from the bench what the executive branch has to pay for and where that money has to come from. That is judicial overreach at its finest. And so that's why the administration pushed back on that. We can't have the judicial branch telling the executive branch that we need to rob the Children Nutrition Fund, which is what this judge was trying to do to pay for SNAP benefits.
- [64:27]
Dave
That's pathetic. Pathetic. She goes, they were trying to force us to use money on this. The money was there for exactly that. And she goes, it wouldn't even have covered all of the missing benefits. Well, but it would have covered roughly 3/4. These are pathetic answers coming in what I believe is the worst week this administration has had and we haven't even gotten to the MRI questions. Let's do that now. Caroline Levitt was asked, why did Trump get an mri? This is the second time that she has been asked this. Donald Trump has been asked twice. Caroline Levitt had been asked once, and now again, why did Trump get an mri? MRI are not routine. How many times are they not going to tell us what the MRI was of and why it was done? And what the results were. Well, you can add another tally to that list. Here is Caroline Levitt asked, you told us last time you would check on why the MRI was done. Why was it done? She says she has an update. You tell me whether there's any new information here.
- [65:30]
Host interviewing Dr. Zach Rubin
One more.
- [65:30]
Caroline Levitt
You recently said you check with President Trump about why you need to get.
- [65:33]
Dave
An MRI on his recent trip to Walter Rejuven.
- [65:35]
Caroline Levitt
Any more detail on that? I do, and I'm glad you asked. As stated in the Memo provided On October 10th, President Trump received.
- [65:42]
Dave
Wait a second. You have an update, but you're just telling us what a 33 day old memo says? That's a bad start to the answer.
- [65:49]
Caroline Levitt
Advanced imaging at Walter Reed Medical center as part of his routine physical examination. The full results were reviewed by attending radiologists and consultants and all agreed that President Trump remains in exceptional physical health, which I know all of you will see with your own eyes later this evening when he opens up his dinner to the press. And perhaps you will see him when he signs the bill to reopen the federal government. So stay tuned on plans for that. Thank you, everyone.
- [66:15]
Dave
Yeah, that's not an update, Caroline. An update would contain new information saying, I have an update and it's what I told you 33 days ago. That is not an update. Now, this is quickly becoming. You know, it's hard because there are massive competing scandals in a normal presidency. The withholding of food stamp benefits alone would be a massive crisis and scandal. The lack of explanation as to why the president got an MRI and being so obvious in your desire not to talk about it, that would be a scandal. And in the midst of it, we've got the Epstein bomb that has gone off. But let's just focus in on the MRI for a moment. By definition, advanced imaging is not routine and the results were not in the letter she references, she says, I do have more information. Well, it's not more information. It's the same information as before and there isn't actually an explanation there. It is disastrous and it is terrifying that the White House simply won't tell us what type of MRI was performed. In other words, like, what part of the body did they hit with the mri? Why was an MRI done at all? What did the MRI find? We do not have answers to any of those basic questions. It has been months and it has now been over a month since Donald Trump revealed he had the mri. And we do not have even the most basic answers, really. Think about if Joe Biden. Imagine if we learned Biden had an mri. It wasn't disclosed. That alone would be a scandal. Imagine if then Biden was asked, what's the deal with the mri? And Biden doesn't say. And he just goes, it was perfect. It was. It was a perfect mri. Okay. And then the press secretary is asked, why did he have the mri? Biden is the healthiest president ever. And then she is asked again, why did he have the MRI? I have an update. It's from 33 days ago. He's the healthiest ever. No one would accept that. And right wing media and much of legacy media is accepting it. What do we think the truth is? Why did Trump have an mri? I care about the COVID up and the scandal and the lack of transparency, but I want to know what's going on with the mri. I don't know if we will ever know. I do not know if we will ever know. What do you think? We've got a bonus show today that is phenomenal. We will talk about a lawsuit from Google against the text message scammers. I'll tell you some of the text message scams I've been getting hit with. Trans. Members of the Air Force are suing over losing retirement pay. And a viral TikTok experiment asks will churches step up to help families affected by snap delays. All of those and more on today's bonus show. Sign up@join pacman.com.