Maintenance Phase - BONUS： What's New With RFK Jr.？

00:00:00.000 you know my first thought when i was like looking at the election results i was like oh we're gonna 0.98

00:00:04.880 have to keep talking about this fucking guy for the next four years yeah you're correct i was like 0.93

00:00:09.540 i i want to make this about me the guy who works from home i know the literal luckiest person who's 0.99

00:00:17.100 like literally living his dream as a journalist has to talk about obnoxious people i absolutely 0.93

00:00:22.720 had a conversation last night with a family friend who was fucking fluoride pilled and i was like i 0.96

00:00:28.740 can't i can't i can't do it i can't do it well here we are listeners we love you we miss you 0.96

00:00:38.180 are you tagging us in what are we i guess i mean are we even tagging for this i don't know

00:00:42.280 i don't really know what the approach is i mean i guess we should just say welcome to maintenance

00:00:46.200 phase the podcast that will eventually start recommending raw milk and stuff because 0.78

00:00:49.940 otherwise this this administration is going to put us in fucking jail the onion bought info wars 0.95

00:00:55.680 but we bought the supplement business surprise get your brain force from us i'm in so many group 0.99

00:01:02.760 chats where people keep posting links and i just keep replying with we live in hell i don't know 0.53

00:01:07.380 what else to say i don't even click on the links anymore i'm just like we live in hell i'm aubrey 0.59

00:01:10.540 gordon i'm michael hobbs let's get this over with let's just let's get this over reasons that we

00:01:14.480 don't want to be on november 14th 2024 donald trump officially announced rfk jr as his nominee

00:01:23.580 for HHS secretary. We did a follow up on RFK Jr. when we thought he was sort of riding off into

00:01:31.660 the sunset. And this was going to be the last time we had to talk to him. It's so painful to

00:01:35.440 think in those terms. Sweet Aubrey, sweet Michael. We are releasing that bonus episode onto the main

00:01:41.720 feed today. And before we get into that, we're going to talk a little bit about what has happened

00:01:48.620 since rfk jr's nomination and about how folks in the u.s can impact this nomination so the

00:01:55.740 announcement of rfk jr's nomination leads to a bunch of really weird politics makes for strange

00:02:05.280 bedfellows sort of moments oh yeah and a lot of those feel to me as someone who's been making

00:02:12.720 this show with you for several years now like uh we're getting the band back together yeah i know

00:02:18.600 On November 19th, Michael Pollan tweets a link to a piece from the American Conservative called They're Lying About RFK Jr.

00:02:29.400 Wait, what? I didn't even know this.

00:02:31.620 Yes. Pollan has since clarified that he's not endorsing RFK Jr.

00:02:36.620 But like, oh, no.

00:02:38.320 Come on, man.

00:02:39.540 Regardless of whether or not he feels like that was technically an endorsement,

00:02:43.140 he did tweet out something that ostensibly reads as strong support right yeah or at least like he's

00:02:50.140 being falsely accused of things which is not the thing to focus on right now he's also being

00:02:54.560 correctly accused of like promoting anti-vax beliefs children have died of measles outbreaks

00:02:59.860 that he has been connected to so like that's the stuff that people are upset about he's writing so

00:03:05.700 hard right now on like rts do not equal endorsements in his bio or whatever or you're just 0.98

00:03:12.420 like come on man is everyone so dumb why is everything so dumb all the time jared polis 0.96

00:03:17.280 the democratic governor of colorado tweeted his excitement about rfk jr as hhs secretary we live 0.99

00:03:24.400 in hell i'm just gonna keep saying it on november 19th pete evans got on telegram

00:03:31.420 to announce that his new cookbook healthy food for healthy kids is being published by rfk jr's

00:03:39.780 Children's Health Defense Organization. This is getting billed as they're writing a book together

00:03:46.800 like they're co-authors. Right. That's not quite it. It's being published by an organization that

00:03:51.780 RFK Jr. is the board chair and founder of. I'm sure the actual recipes are like, uh, we'd like

00:03:57.100 to feed your children a bowl of the measles virus. Just a large green bowl of goop just

00:04:02.560 entirely consisting of viruses suspended in pure vitamin a yeah so that's what i wanted to do next

00:04:10.640 is talk through what rfk jr has specifically said he's going to do in office as hhs secretary right

00:04:20.480 one of the clearest sort of mission statements that we've gotten from rfk jr came to us of course

00:04:27.000 via twitter in a tweet on october 25th 2024 uh he wrote the following he says fda's war on public

00:04:36.240 health is about to end this includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics peptides stem cells

00:04:42.740 raw milk hyperbaric therapies collating compounds ivermectin hydroxychloroquine vitamins clean foods

00:04:50.340 sunshine exercise nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can't be

00:04:56.660 patented by pharma pharma capitalized if you work the fda and are part of this corrupt system i have

00:05:02.720 two messages for you one preserve your records and two pack your bags well if they're if they're 0.99

00:05:08.020 leaving robert what's the point of preserving their records hey future staff i fucking hate 0.94

00:05:14.060 you but please help me achieve my goals also i'm sick and tired of you suppressing sunshine i love 0.96

00:05:20.560 that it's just a list of things which are not suppressed yeah again hydroxychloroquine and

00:05:24.660 ivermectin have been extensively studied and the results indicate that they don't work for covid 0.92

00:05:30.520 vitamins are something your doctor has fucking told you about go out and get exercise and get

00:05:35.540 some sunshine completely establishment advice from like every public health agency it's like 0.98

00:05:41.440 this is just things that are not suppressed and then it's mixed in with things like raw milk

00:05:45.800 where it's like yeah it's actually good to like kill bacteria you don't want tb milk

00:05:49.820 you're not into it oh my god he's also against the suppression of nutraceuticals 0.95

00:05:57.500 nutraceutical is a fucking marketing term and that's a huge benefit to corporate interest too 0.97

00:06:03.400 that you're basically going to allow companies to market their products with whatever like oh 0.99

00:06:07.100 this will like cure cancer and then they can sell it at fucking whole foods or whatever right he's

00:06:10.840 not against industry involvement in health care he's against regulated industry exactly exactly 0.87

00:06:17.720 right yeah he keeps using the language of like i'm gonna stand up to these industries and i'm

00:06:23.920 gonna stand up to blah blah blah yeah and you're like no you're gonna open the door for them and

00:06:28.580 show them in you want it to be even easier to lie to us in america like i don't get enough scam

00:06:33.000 phone calls you want me to get more i mean i think this is very similar to what he says and has said

00:06:38.140 about vaccines right yeah he keeps saying he just wants the data yeah but safety data and long-term

00:06:44.180 research are publicly available and have been for a really long time. The funniest possible outcome

00:06:49.100 of this would be that he takes charge and he calls a press conference and he's like, you know,

00:06:53.860 we looked into it and Fauci was actually correct. Yeah, I told you I just wanted the information.

00:06:58.920 Now I have the information. Turns out everyone's trying their hardest and now we'll move on on

00:07:04.560 that basis. So essentially on the vaccine front, there are a couple of things that he can do

00:07:11.380 around vaccines. It's pretty unheard of to revoke the approval of a drug or a, you know, vaccine.

00:07:18.600 And that would be exceedingly difficult since so many states have state level mandates for

00:07:23.000 children to be vaccinated. Good, good, good. He can sort of shape the kinds of clinical trials

00:07:29.020 that are required of drug companies. Right. He can slow down the review of those trials and the

00:07:35.880 approval processes right there's stuff that he can do to just sort of gum up the works right but

00:07:42.340 in terms of like broad mandates that like no one's getting a vaccine like that kind of stuff

00:07:48.720 is much much much trickier to pull off and a lot of it doesn't live at the federal level although

00:07:55.200 uh a friend of mine is a public high school teacher in seattle and had his first student

00:08:00.660 with pertussis this year which is the p in the uh d tap vaccine yeah but now people are not getting

00:08:07.880 the vaccine so we're getting whooping cough we're we're making whooping cough great again he has

00:08:12.160 also said that he wants to defloridate all u.s water supplies this is a future mega episode for

00:08:20.060 us yeah i know you've been working this for months his views on this counter the cdc's own

00:08:24.560 long-standing recommendation which lauds water fluoridation as one of the greatest public health

00:08:30.640 victories of the 20th century yes he could issue recommendations and like suggest to local

00:08:38.740 governments that they should defluoridate but he doesn't actually have the power to flip a switch

00:08:44.680 right yeah and actually defluoridate water what would need to happen is that congress would have

00:08:50.020 to ban fluoride nationwide or the epa would have to put fluoride on a dangerous chemicals list

00:08:57.620 neither of those are in his control solely but they are in control of the people who

00:09:02.500 run all three branches of government and the epa he keeps saying like on day one we're gonna

00:09:06.700 defloritate the and it's like no you're not you can't do that it'll be like day three or four

00:09:11.060 don't worry everybody many of the changes that we've talked about here would require a process

00:09:16.220 called rulemaking in the u.s changing federal rules which are like the guidelines on how to

00:09:23.320 implement the law requires a lot of public disclosure and public comment. So there will

00:09:30.520 be these long, like 30 or 90 day public comment periods that are opportunities to publicly push

00:09:38.580 back to organize and to arm staff within those agencies with some additional reasons that

00:09:45.120 X, Y, or Z is a bad idea or a great idea or whatever. I would argue that is where a ton

00:09:51.560 of stuff is going to happen at HHS. So I, I think all of us just got to get better at paying

00:09:58.300 attention to federal rulemaking and being prepared to like submit comment on stuff and all of that.

00:10:03.460 Right. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about what happens next, where we go from here.

00:10:07.460 I can already lose their minds slowly and just become just a series of vowel sounds.

00:10:11.480 You think this, what we've been recording today has been slow in order to be confirmed

00:10:16.840 as HHS secretary, RFK Jr. has to be confirmed by the Senate. If you are in the U.S., you actually

00:10:25.540 can impact this process. You can call the Capitol switchboard directly and tell them whether or not

00:10:31.720 you think RFK Jr. should be confirmed. That phone number is 202-224-3121. This is a thing that people

00:10:43.060 tell you to do a lot. The reason that they tell you to do it a lot is that it really matters.

00:10:48.100 Yeah. It's easy to get fatalistic about this kind of stuff, but it's important to remember that this

00:10:53.080 is not actually a done deal. Yeah. When you call the Capitol switchboard, when you get in touch

00:10:58.600 with your senator, there is a staffer who is literally sitting there with a tally sheet for

00:11:05.140 how many calls they get in favor and how many calls they get opposed. Right. And there's also

00:11:10.240 things like, you know, giving money and there's also local things that you can do. I mean, I think

00:11:14.580 I think everybody's really worried that everyone's so fatigued from the previous Trump administration

00:11:18.740 that no one's going to engage. I try not to make predictions as part of my journalism career. I

00:11:22.740 have no idea what's going to happen. But I think complacency is one of the ways that authoritarian

00:11:27.160 regimes flourish is when everybody gets tired. And I also get it if people just really can't

00:11:32.020 fucking do it at this point. But if you are somebody with the ability or with the finances 0.76

00:11:35.720 or with the time or whatever,

00:11:37.500 it's really important to engage

00:11:39.120 to the extent that you can.

00:11:40.320 So that's what's happened

00:11:41.600 since we recorded this bonus episode.

00:11:44.960 Like two weeks ago.

00:11:46.060 Will now sound unbearably lighthearted.

00:11:50.080 God, I know.

00:11:51.060 Compared to where we are.

00:11:51.420 And also so naive.

00:11:52.320 We're like, maybe we'll never have to talk

00:11:53.480 about this guy again.

00:11:54.380 But it's like, nope.

00:11:55.400 LOL, nope.

00:11:56.420 We will have to talk about him

00:11:57.300 for the rest of our lives

00:11:58.880 until we die of measles.

00:12:00.520 Which I think is about a 50-50 chance at this point.

00:12:05.720 hi everybody and welcome to maintenance phase the podcast where for halloween we're zombies

00:12:19.000 but we only eat brains worms that had so much potential aubrey and then it just it just didn't

00:12:27.740 land that's me booing myself brains worms i'm aubrey gordon here to disappoint you

00:12:39.460 i'm michael hobbs here specifically to disappoint you michael i feel like i have a broad sense of

00:12:46.260 what we're in for but i have generally like not done a deep dive into the rfk junior updates

00:12:54.160 what i'm aware of involves animal carcasses dude uh sexual assault allegations yeah and a suspended

00:13:03.200 new york magazine reporter the the body count both animal and human of this episode is deranged and

00:13:10.240 hhs secretary rumors every time we talk about him i'm like thank god we never have to talk about 0.82

00:13:15.840 this fucking guy again but this is gonna be the rest of our lives so content warning there's some 0.99

00:13:20.380 domestic violence stuff there's some sexual assault stuff and there's some suicide stuff 0.99

00:13:24.160 in this episode we apologize for the kind of person uh that rfk jr is and associates with

00:13:29.940 boy michael if there's one thing i've learned in therapy you gotta stop apologizing for other

00:13:34.380 people's behavior so okay this we come to you with with great reluctance this we we did our

00:13:46.640 last rfk jr episode on i checked august 1st 2023 and since then there have been numerous

00:13:53.520 developments in the rfk jr story robert f kennedy jr and we've gotten a million a million uh 0.70

00:14:03.500 requests to talk about like what's been going on with rfk jr because he keeps fucking popping up

00:14:08.540 in the news and like there's always weird animals involved there's like an emu thing that like i 0.92

00:14:14.700 skipped i was like there's too many fucking animals like we can't do emus there's like a 0.74

00:14:19.100 sea creature one too there's a bear a whale and a worm this simply must be a fever dream so i 0.97

00:14:27.600 basically i went on the new york times website and i did a search for rfk jr and i opened every 0.80

00:14:34.240 single story they have published since august 1st 2023 and i was like i'm just gonna fucking

00:14:40.220 read all of these and put a timeline together and then i did some like extra research and stuff 0.74

00:14:44.260 And so we're just going to go through it, like basically chronologically, like what has this man been up to?

00:14:50.720 OK, we we have to start with just talking about like his presidential run.

00:14:55.860 So this is kind of ongoing. So it's difficult to put it in kind of chronological time.

00:15:00.860 But as of August 1st, 2023, when last we discussed RFK Jr., basically he's running this presidential campaign.

00:15:07.960 But the presidential campaign is weird because he originally was running as a Democrat.

00:15:12.580 But then he switches and he's running as an independent, like a third party guy.

00:15:17.920 What that actually means in practice is that you have to get on the ballot in all 50 states.

00:15:24.220 And the process we're getting on the ballot is completely different in every single state where you have like in some states you have to get like 42,000 signatures on a petition.

00:15:32.540 And in some states you need like 10,000 signatures and then you have to file them by this date.

00:15:36.620 And then there's a whole weird subplot where his signatures get thrown out.

00:15:40.920 I can't even remember which state, but they get thrown out because he didn't have the vice president listed on the petition. 0.78

00:15:47.320 There's all this weird technical stuff to get on the ballot, which honestly is like kind of fucked up.

00:15:53.040 Like, I think it should be easier, but also it's RFK Jr., so I don't know how much I care.

00:15:57.220 It is a super complicated process.

00:15:59.600 And usually there's a team of people in every state and a director of states is a position that is usually part of the like a presidential campaign.

00:16:08.620 Speaking of which, this is what, this is exactly what I wanted you to read.

00:16:12.520 So we have our first excerpt is from a really interesting New Yorker article.

00:16:17.700 This is like the main theme of this episode and something that I don't think I got across 0.95

00:16:22.200 in our like episode episodes is how much of just a piece of shit RFK Jr. is just like 0.98

00:16:28.800 as a person. 0.98

00:16:29.880 So here is a paragraph from this New Yorker article about him staffing up his campaign.

00:16:36.120 Kennedy ultimately appointed Nick Branagh, a former national political outreach coordinator for Bernie Sanders and the founder of the progressive group, the People's Party, to run his ballot access operation.

00:16:49.280 Two years earlier, Branagh had allegedly tried to force himself onto a female colleague. 0.99

00:16:54.800 Holy fuck. 1.00

00:16:56.140 Yeah. 1.00

00:16:56.900 An accusation that was corroborated by a woman who had walked in on the scene.

00:17:02.340 Branagh has said that the allegation is, quote, false and politically motivated.

00:17:07.220 The campaign and its super PAC have spent millions of dollars working with firms associated with a ballot access consultant named Trent Poole.

00:17:15.460 In May, Poole was arrested in New York City for choking and punching a woman.

00:17:21.660 A lawyer for Poole called it, quote, a completely unjustified prosecution.

00:17:27.360 So far, Kennedy has got his name on the ballot in about a dozen states.

00:17:31.380 this is the kind of person that he surrounds himself with it's it's people who seem to have

00:17:35.520 kind of crashed out of more traditional politics and kind of can't get hired there is a kind of

00:17:42.760 person who gets drawn to short-term large-scale campaigns it's not every person who works on

00:17:51.240 them not by a long shot but it's an environment it's like a little petri dish that allows them

00:17:56.120 to thrive. Yeah. And those are people who will do anything to get their way. Oh, interesting. Okay.

00:18:02.820 And to win their thing. Right. Because when you're running a short term campaign, that's a year or

00:18:09.360 less, which a lot of these, you know, styles of campaigns are, you're not really accountable to

00:18:16.340 a community of people. You're not really accountable to like a lasting board or anything

00:18:21.820 like that right you have one job and your one job is to win right and if you win whatever you did in

00:18:29.960 the course of winning will be sort of forgiven by your side is sort of the understanding that's a 0.97

00:18:35.000 good point in some ways it's like uniquely bad because it's fucking rfk jr so of course it's 0.94

00:18:41.880 worse but it's only like five percent worse no it's not five percent it's more than five percent 0.91

00:18:47.420 but it is just sort of like it's like glengarry glen ross but of elections you know i mean whatever

00:18:52.380 you gotta do yeah always be groping breakworms are for closers but i mean this this leads very

00:18:58.680 well into like the next little chapter of this so there's two aspects of of getting on the ballot in

00:19:03.780 all 50 states so one of them is you sort of start from scratch in these various states you have to

00:19:08.080 get x number of signatures whatever and so you usually hire a firm to do that there's like

00:19:13.800 companies that will go and get 100,000 signatures for you. It's very expensive, but like this is

00:19:18.180 just part of kind of running a campaign. So over the course of the campaign, there start to be

00:19:22.960 questions about the kinds of firms that he's hiring and the kinds of tactics that they are

00:19:27.360 using. So I'm going to send you the first two paragraphs of an article from the New York Times.

00:19:35.440 Amy Bernstein, a traffic court judge in Brooklyn, was heading home from work one night in late

00:19:40.160 april when a young man carrying a clipboard approached her on the subway platform asking

00:19:45.560 if she would sign a petition to help place independence on the ballot in new york the top

00:19:51.460 of the petition was folded underneath itself uh-huh uh-huh so that the names of the candidates

00:19:56.900 were not visible ms bernstein said she asked for more details and told the man she was a judge at

00:20:02.940 which point he yanked the clipboard away and asked am i going to get in trouble so they're like do

00:20:08.820 want to sign this petition you're like what's the petition for and they just like turn and run away

00:20:12.400 this new york times article is really funny because you can tell how it came about so after

00:20:21.040 it tells the story of the judge it says more than a half dozen new york city residents including two

00:20:26.600 who are journalists at the new york times and were approached randomly oh have described similar

00:20:31.520 encounters with signature gatherers to mr kennedy so basically like new york times reporters get

00:20:38.100 these people come up to them and they're like wait what the fuck is this and people won't explain

00:20:42.440 what the petition is actually for one guy these are not new york times reporters but one guy 0.95

00:20:46.740 says uh this is a petition to get biden on the ballot jesus christ this is after the primary

00:20:51.980 he's like what right but before biden dropped out so it's not that wild a swing as it might

00:20:56.760 rfk jr says we the of course the campaign says like denies anything like oh we must have hired

00:21:03.300 the wrong third party contractor we're very disappointed rfk jr says we take ballot access

00:21:08.040 voter rights and truthfulness extremely seriously around here mr kennedy said it's the very substance

00:21:13.580 of what motivates us to fight the establishment parties in the first place so the guy who uh says

00:21:19.320 that there's mercury in the vaccines uh is very very concerned about truthfulness here's the thing

00:21:24.340 that blows my mind about rfk jr among other things he is an attorney and like law is figuring out how

00:21:32.880 of color in the lines right in a lot of ways and it's also figuring out how to build like a

00:21:37.260 persuasive argument for something and i think the thing that i find stunning about rfk jr is how

00:21:42.080 unpersuasive he is for an attorney well to keep in mind aubrey he was never really an attorney

00:21:48.780 right okay sorry right sorry he was fired in disgrace like he's not a real attorney and when

00:21:56.460 he was like quote unquote an environmental lawyer he was mostly like a figurehead who was good at

00:22:00.400 getting funding from rich people i love that you're like counterpoint don't forget he's bad

00:22:05.880 at it he is fake that is technically his job but he is bad at it your last shred of good faith

00:22:13.420 that you're bringing in this episode i was really holding out hope yeah you're like what a conundrum

00:22:19.520 it's like until this moment just the lifelong failure is also failing at this yeah so one

00:22:26.380 like thread of his campaign is this kind of starting from scratch thing where you need to

00:22:30.940 get a bunch of petitions to get on the ballot. Another threat is he's convincing existing

00:22:35.520 political parties to name him as their candidate. So this is another thing that, you know, when you

00:22:40.840 get the ballot, there's the like make Seattle safer party. They run a candidate every year.

00:22:46.400 And this is like a weird tangent, but I was not aware of the fact that in California specifically,

00:22:51.580 the third largest political party bigger than the libertarians bigger than the greens is something

00:22:57.920 called the american independent party oh my god michael do you know about this i can't tell you

00:23:05.320 how much i know about and resent wait you know about the independent party yes so listen one of

00:23:12.660 the campaigns that i worked on oregon was one of the very first states to create truly automatic 0.98

00:23:18.880 voter registration right yeah there was one political party that threw real shit fit

00:23:24.300 about automatic voter reg uh and that was the independent party oh really because before it

00:23:29.880 was republican democrat independent so they were essentially like people were like getting confused

00:23:34.860 and they thought that independent meant unaffiliated and they were accidentally

00:23:38.320 registering with a party dude this is exactly the thing in california so the reason it's the third

00:23:43.140 biggest party is not because people want this to be members of this political party right they

00:23:48.060 they endorsed Kanye West in the last election. They're bad guys. We don't do this in Washington

00:23:54.000 but like in other states you sort of register as a Democrat or a Republican. People see the choice

00:23:59.900 of you can register as a member of the American Independent Party and they think that means oh

00:24:04.180 I'm an independent voter. Yes. They don't actually want anything to do with this party. So apparently

00:24:09.480 there's been like a whole celebrity campaign to get people not to take this box including

00:24:14.440 the actresses emma stone and demi moore have both been fooled by this and have like come out

00:24:21.520 and a bunch of other i read a whole article about this of like other prominent people who are like

00:24:27.080 i i accidentally ticked the box you guys yeah yes secretaries of state also should have been saying

00:24:35.700 that can't be the name of your party look we do this with vanity plates we should be doing 0.92

00:24:39.600 political parties look if my friend can't get a vanity plate that says two dykes 1.00

00:24:45.260 and has to go to court for it she's dutch she's just talking about infrastructure water 0.99

00:24:53.960 infrastructure she specializes in fluid flow engineering well i guess kind never mind it's 0.99

00:25:00.240 below sea level i feel like you really missed my fluid flow lesbian joke oh see i don't know

00:25:05.900 the lesbian jokes there's no way just give them as a as a genre of joke on this show aubrey give

00:25:12.400 up fluid is flowing that's all okay so that is like the logistics of the campaign there's also 0.51

00:25:19.780 the content of the campaign people are so mad we're not talking about the bear and the whale

00:25:24.240 right now but we're going to talk about the actual political issues at play so one thing that i think

00:25:30.040 is interesting like looking over old articles is that rfk jr at the beginning of his campaign

00:25:35.240 sort of tried to appeal to more left-wing people and you know because he's a kennedy and he ran as

00:25:40.880 a democrat and stuff he was explicitly saying that like oh i'm you know i'm a democrat but i'm like

00:25:45.500 the better kind of democrat so we are going to read a relatively long excerpt from a new yorker

00:25:51.280 interview where i am going to be rfk jr you are going to be david remnick who is asking the 0.89

00:25:58.600 questions do like a npr podcast voice i have a podcast voice mike oh wait shit sorry

00:26:05.200 i sometimes forget that we're not just like talking okay yes wow you'd be good on a podcast

00:26:12.300 what a voice for a podcast so here is the first excerpt we're starting with you you're running as

00:26:20.020 a democrat for president and i wonder who in the democratic party do you feel is kindred to you

00:26:25.860 obviously not joe biden but aoc or joe mansion or are you something new entirely how would you

00:26:33.600 define your ideology? I'm something old. I'm a Kennedy Democrat. I believe in labor unions. I

00:26:38.780 believe in a strong, robust middle class. I believe in racial justice and policies that are going to 0.56

00:26:43.460 actually help the lowest people on the totem pole. I don't think Joe Biden would disagree

00:26:47.660 with any of that. Well, then why did he do the lockdowns? What? Sir? I love it. This is like 30

00:26:56.720 seconds into the interview wow remember remember the plandemic lady how she how she was just they're 1.00

00:27:06.040 like are you an anti-vaxxer she's like no but fauci's killed millions just like zero to 60 0.59

00:27:12.100 so okay that was excerpt number one i believe in labor unions that's why i've partnered with

00:27:20.660 Donald J. Trump!

00:27:22.560 Okay, this one is even longer.

00:27:25.760 I'm finding it curious, and maybe even disturbing,

00:27:29.080 that some of your early admirers include Trumpists like Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone.

00:27:35.560 Do you welcome that, or do you think maybe, just maybe,

00:27:38.860 someone like that is delighted that a strong Democratic opponent will wound Joe Biden

00:27:43.880 and in the long run help Donald Trump?

00:27:46.500 I'm trying to unite the country, David.

00:27:48.440 I'm not going to do what you do, which is to pick out people and say that they're evil.

00:27:52.120 They should be canceled or whatever.

00:27:53.920 I'm a Democrat.

00:27:54.760 I know what my values are.

00:27:55.940 I've always spoken to Republicans my entire life.

00:27:58.380 During all the years that I was a leader of the environmental movement,

00:28:01.840 dubious, I was the only environmentalist who regularly went on Fox News.

00:28:06.040 And when Tucker Carlson recently did a special on endocrine disruptors,

00:28:09.400 and he was condemned by the left, I thought that was crazy.

00:28:12.800 I think what we ought to be doing is inviting people into our tent without changing our values.

00:28:17.820 I think the kind of tribalism that you're advocating is poisonous to our country.

00:28:21.680 I think it's toxic.

00:28:23.080 At what point do you say, with respect, that this is not about tribalism or cancellation

00:28:27.800 or the terms that you're using, but just an insistence on a certain level of decency

00:28:33.040 and principle?

00:28:34.320 Somebody like Alex Jones comes forward and he has nice things to say to you.

00:28:38.840 At what point do you say, you know what, Alex Jones, with all due respect, I don't want

00:28:43.160 your support?

00:28:44.160 I'm not a cancel culture guy.

00:28:45.780 Good.

00:28:46.000 Okay, good.

00:28:46.980 Yes.

00:28:47.360 it's not funny, but it's like, this is the weird ideology of this guy.

00:28:54.480 This thing of cancellation, which no one can quite define, of course.

00:28:58.840 Of course.

00:28:59.400 It is like the number one issue for him.

00:29:01.700 It's just a really weird, clear sort of front for some like bad political action.

00:29:08.100 And it's a place for people to put their feelings.

00:29:10.760 And I think that's part of what I think is happening here with RFK Jr.

00:29:15.980 is he's like i'm not a cancel culture guy because he i suspect feels like he has been canceled or

00:29:23.420 is being canceled yeah now dude people are just judging you based on your beliefs and actions

00:29:29.040 i don't know what to tell you here so this actually leads into the the final excerpt from this which

00:29:35.640 is rfk jr just like very explicitly talking about his resentment so here's this i think i start this

00:29:41.820 one. Yeah. He says, this is the first administration in our history that has colluded with the press

00:29:47.360 to censor Americans directly out of the White House, including me by name. How are you being

00:29:52.460 censored out of the White House? The White House was ordering the social media sites to censor me.

00:29:57.440 You're everywhere in the press. You're in what you call mainstream media. You're on Joe Rogan.

00:30:02.780 Who censored you? I am, since I declared for president. But before that, I was deplatformed.

00:30:07.680 I was deplatformed completely.

00:30:09.880 800,000 followers were taken away from me on Instagram at the behest of the White House.

00:30:14.760 What?

00:30:15.920 Citation.

00:30:16.720 Citation needed.

00:30:17.880 I don't think the New Yorker bothered being like, this is not a real fact.

00:30:22.620 I don't think the White House cares.

00:30:24.840 Honestly, 800,000 followers isn't even that many followers.

00:30:27.960 This could absolutely be like the text of a conversation between like an influencer who

00:30:34.200 got locked out of their account and like she in.

00:30:36.560 god i don't want a presidential candidate who sounds like that i also think what's so interesting

00:30:43.440 too is that like it feels very clear to me that this whole thing is driven by resentment

00:30:47.140 but it's not even like fact-based resentment right he's basically mad that like his his account got 0.83

00:30:52.880 taken away or taken down or whatever for like posting deranged anti-vac shit but that has 0.91

00:30:57.440 nothing to do with the white house companies have terms of service you can't post you can't post 0.98

00:31:02.380 like isis beheadings and shit on social media they'll block you and so he's mad at the terms 0.85

00:31:07.840 of service of instagram ultimately right if you start a fight at a bar and the bouncer kicks you 0.95

00:31:13.020 out they're not like censoring you exactly they're like you can't fight here and also they're not

00:31:17.520 they're not following orders from like the mayor yeah totally that didn't mean the president told

00:31:23.260 him to do that yes so this is i mean this runs through the entire campaign he's just like a

00:31:27.880 vessel for all this resentment and it's really that that sort of leads us to the next couple

00:31:32.800 chapters of this so over the course of the campaign he starts to drift right i'm not going

00:31:40.300 to go through every single issue but one of the things that i remember from researching the first

00:31:44.900 couple rfk junior episodes was that he he maintained like a shred of integrity so he would

00:31:52.220 go on these like super right-wing podcasts and talk about like fauci should be locked up and all

00:31:55.600 like anti-vax garbage. But then every once in a while, one of these right-wing hosts would be 0.90

00:32:01.140 like, oh, and the Democrats are lying about climate change. And then RFK Jr., because he was

00:32:05.760 an environmental guy for so long, he'd be like, oh, actually climate change is real. That one I'm

00:32:11.480 actually, I happen to be with the Democrats on. It was like he had this one thing, but then

00:32:16.720 starting like this summer, he appoints a climate denier, like an open climate denier as one of the

00:32:24.260 managers of his campaign. And then he starts talking about like, oh, he wants to have climate

00:32:29.740 policy, he says, that makes sense to skeptics and activists alike. And then when people ask him

00:32:35.160 about specific climate policies, he can't name a single thing that he would do to rein in fossil

00:32:41.260 fuels. So it's like his one issue, the thing that he dedicated his life to, he just completely sold

00:32:46.740 out to like get right wing votes, basically. There's something so like, I don't want to say

00:32:50.540 sad because I have no sympathy for this man, but it's just like kind of pathetic. 0.86

00:32:53.300 it's also interesting because normally the way that you do things if you're like we're gonna

00:32:57.600 appease everyone and therefore do nothing is usually what that is right is like you make

00:33:03.100 like a blue ribbon commission yeah and you delay delay delay that is the number one thing that

00:33:09.440 climate change activists will absolutely not tolerate at this point it's like what if we just

00:33:14.940 talk about it some more we also in march and april start getting more signs of his like right

00:33:23.140 wing ideology and like flirting with the right in april he gives an interview where he he says

00:33:29.400 this is the reality that every american citizen faces from ed snowden to julian assange to the

00:33:34.840 j6 activists sitting in washington dc jail stripped of their constitutional liberties

00:33:40.920 What?

00:33:42.380 He then goes on Tim Poole's podcast to say that he's against this move to, like, take down the Confederate statues.

00:33:50.880 Good Lord.

00:33:51.660 This is a masterpiece of a paragraph from a New York Times article.

00:33:54.440 It says, while defending the statues, Mr. Kennedy also said there were, quote, heroes in the Confederacy who didn't have slaves, comma.

00:34:02.860 though when he later picked an example of a confederate whom he idolized he singled out

00:34:07.400 robert e lee a prominent general in the rebel army who owned slaves when you're that writer

00:34:13.280 and you get to write that paragraph i have to imagine that you're like in your office just

00:34:20.020 quietly going like lebron james you know exactly what you're doing absolutely it's the best day

00:34:29.000 your week if not your year so okay but then this is aubrey bait so we now get to the aubrey bait 0.89

00:34:35.060 section as he does more of these fucking podcasts he keeps bringing up obesity great you know for 0.64

00:34:41.020 all that we bitch about the framing of this issue it hasn't really been an election issue yeah 0.89

00:34:45.140 this isn't something that comes up in like presidential debates and so he he makes it

00:34:49.160 kind of like the cornerstone of his campaign he's always talking about chronic disease etc and he's

00:34:53.840 like you shouldn't take medications you should like eat foods you know this whole like food is

00:34:57.400 medicine thing i mean that's what he means right yeah if you really don't want to get measles eat

00:35:00.640 blueberries like whatever the fuck he's talking about right so this is an excerpt from i believe 0.97

00:35:06.900 an interview with chris hayes oh jesus fucking hell it's so boring it's so boring we're paying 0.98

00:35:14.800 more now chris for diabetes than for our defense budget so when i was a kid a typical pediatrician 0.96

00:35:22.140 would see one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime. Today, one out of every three kids who

00:35:28.960 walks into his office has juvenile diabetes, and nobody is talking about it. It is costing us $4.3

00:35:36.020 trillion a year, three times our defense budget. Okay, so question. Oh, no, it's not.

00:35:45.940 not a question but proceed proceed governor this is fucking garbage and like it's not 0.99

00:35:54.920 fucking true it's not one of every three kids does not have diabetes this i mean honestly this 0.99

00:36:02.260 is like a quasar of misinformation basically every single thing that he says is false here so 0.96

00:36:08.480 we do not spend more on diabetes than our defense budget the defense budget is around 900 billion

00:36:15.280 a year. The actual spending on diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association, is about

00:36:20.000 $300 billion a year, so one-third of the defense budget. But that is one of those statistics that

00:36:24.360 is like massively inflated. They're basically saying that like all heart attacks, all strokes,

00:36:30.340 because they're kind of downstream effects of diabetes, they're throwing in all this extra

00:36:34.980 stuff and saying that's like the cost of diabetes. So we don't really know, but even the high-end

00:36:40.320 estimates are one third of the defense budget. So that's just like not true. He says one in three

00:36:45.920 kids has juvenile diabetes. We talked about this on our zombie statistics episodes, that that's

00:36:51.080 one in three people will eventually at some point in their lives be diagnosed with diabetes,

00:36:57.000 which is also not true because the population as a whole, 11% of people have diabetes in America.

00:37:03.380 and among kids it's 0.35 percent and most of that is type 1 diabetes like type 2 diabetes rates are

00:37:11.680 rising among children but they're very very small as an absolute percentage I feel like people get

00:37:17.800 things like mixed up in their heads and I think the alarm around kids getting type 2 diabetes is

00:37:22.880 based in an outdated understanding of type 2 diabetes right we have this idea that type 1 0.67

00:37:28.620 is the blameless kind and type two is the like you fucked up so hard you got diabetes kind oh 0.56

00:37:34.520 are you about to say that the type one people need to be blamed as well we're coming for the 0.99

00:37:38.200 type one people yeah they've had it too good for too long sorry guys it's time for you to suffer

00:37:44.020 with the rest of us it calls up a series of images and i think he knows that he's doing that

00:37:50.060 right oh yeah he's weaponizing he's weaponizing all this existing stigma yeah i mean he's not

00:37:55.160 gonna propose anything that makes anybody healthier right what he wants to do is get rid of

00:37:58.580 vaccines he's not actually gonna like improve school lunches or anything right gross so that

00:38:04.340 was gross we now get to the more comedic elements of this story on may well actually this one isn't

00:38:10.600 comedic uh well we'll get there so on may 8th we get an article in the new york times called

00:38:16.420 rfk jr says doctors found a dead worm in his brain colon the presidential candidate has faced

00:38:22.220 previously undisclosed health issues, including a parasite that he said ate part of his brain.

00:38:27.640 So this is exactly what it sounds like. They find court filings from 2012 where he says,

00:38:35.560 I have a worm in my brain. And he says he got it from a trip to South Asia where he ate some

00:38:43.200 contaminated food. And then the little worm swam up to his brain and then ate part of his brain

00:38:49.420 and then died. And when a little worm dies in your brain, it creates like a little calcified

00:38:54.820 little thing, kind of like a tumor. And that can affect your cognitive abilities.

00:39:01.760 What's funny about this is like, it makes him look quite bad. But like, he's exaggerating how

00:39:07.820 bad it is. So they actually investigate. And like, people getting parasites is relatively

00:39:12.500 common in the world, right? And like, there are literal brain worms. And this does, in fact,

00:39:18.080 happen and it can spread through diet. So the fact that he got a brain worm is actually not

00:39:22.560 that weird, right? And most people who get parasites never have any symptoms. They live

00:39:27.880 the rest of their lives. So in the New York Times, they say it is unlikely that a parasite would eat

00:39:33.020 part of the brain. They also, they also, like there's different kind of type, you know, there's

00:39:37.800 like tapeworms that like sit in your intestine or whatever, and they can be like a foot long. It's

00:39:41.800 like so fucking gross to think about. In the article, they say, unlike tapeworm larva in 0.99

00:39:47.120 the intestines those in the brain remain relatively small about a third of an inch but that sounds 1.00

00:39:53.060 really big to me i don't want so i don't want a third of an inch worm in my fucking brain 0.99

00:39:58.900 god i just absolutely caught a chill oh it's so nasty there is one funny element of this 0.99

00:40:05.980 that i kind of like this was the one aspect of the research for this episode where i was like

00:40:10.600 all right, Robert, I'll give you this one. So it says in the article,

00:40:16.600 on Wednesday afternoon, hours after this article was published, Mr. Kennedy posted a comment on

00:40:21.280 his Twitter profile. I offer to eat five more brain worms and still beat President Biden and

00:40:26.480 President Trump in a debate. That's actually pretty good. Good job, social media manager.

00:40:34.700 Okay, but then it's about to get sad. So the actual context of this is this is from a 2012

00:40:40.140 legal case where he's him and his wife are divorcing and she's trying to get child support

00:40:48.060 and the reason he's doing this is he's saying my cognitive faculties were impaired therefore i have

00:40:55.420 lower earning potential therefore she's entitled to less child support oh the way that this article 0.91

00:41:01.100 is framed in the new york times is as like a political fucking horse race story they're like 0.95

00:41:05.260 oh the candidate has emphasized his fitness for office and he's done push-ups on camera 0.99

00:41:09.580 but actually he has a brain worm and he's clearly lying about the extent to which the brain worm has

00:41:14.800 affected his cognition he also says that he has mercury poisoning something he hasn't mentioned

00:41:18.760 anywhere else he's lying so that his wife does not get any money and this happens so he he doesn't

00:41:25.560 have to pay any child support as we discussed in our previous episode his wife ends up killing

00:41:29.260 herself jesus hell you know you never want to attribute it to one cause but like this this

00:41:34.180 kind of ruined her life right right it's not helping yeah it's not helping this whole story

00:41:38.860 he's like really sad it feels like the more you sort of scratch the surface with this guy

00:41:44.120 the more you're like oh he's less like a comic sort of political side character and more just

00:41:54.500 like a standard issue garbage dude who's like trying to avoid paying alimony and it's like 0.99

00:42:01.520 sexually harassing or sexually assaulting people allegedly despite all of the you know 1.00

00:42:08.400 bear heads and whale carcasses and brain worms of it all yeah he is just like yeah you're fucking 1.00

00:42:15.840 your friend's shitty ex-boyfriend yeah no you're like oh todd's back fuck yeah yeah no kidding 1.00

00:42:22.160 he's dennis from 30 rock yeah this feels very classic maintenance phase oh did you come here 0.99

00:42:29.180 to laugh about the brain worms just kidding it's real sad i actually i don't know why i did this

00:42:33.560 but i actually have a list of late night jokes about the worm do you want to hear some of them

00:42:37.280 oh sure let's do some worms jokes so this is from the daily show i don't know what's worse

00:42:43.500 that rfk jr had a worm that was eating his brain or that his brain is so poisoned that it killed

00:42:48.700 the worm that's pretty good that's good uh steven colbert said cause of death starvation

00:42:54.260 which i kind of like so we then in july get a vanity fair like a big long investigative feature

00:43:03.120 by vanity fair where they interview a million people who knew him and this produces a series

00:43:06.860 of like sub scandals so we're gonna talk about two of them the first is do you remember the dog

00:43:12.400 allegations the dog eating no what and send you i was gonna send you a link but that will spoil it

00:43:20.480 for you so i'm gonna send you a little screenshot hang on there's a new york post headline that

00:43:27.140 says unsettling photo appears to show rfk jr with barbecued carcass of dog it's a picture of robert

00:43:35.680 f kennedy jr and a person with long hair and their face mostly censored holding like a big

00:43:43.660 sort of rotisserie like spit that has a roasted animal carcass of some kind like of some kind

00:43:51.200 roasted animal of some kind on it i'm guessing that's not a dog he says this is a photo of him

00:43:59.540 in the Chilean Andes and it's a lamb. And the minute people look into it, they're like, oh yeah,

00:44:06.180 this, it sort of looks weird the way that it's on the spit. Like it looks untraditional,

00:44:10.180 but it's like, you can find a million photos on Flickr of people doing this like a traditional

00:44:14.280 way to cook goat and lamb and various other things. So this is just like a normal thing

00:44:19.820 that they do in Chile. But then again, this photo, whatever, the context of it is so much worse.

00:44:25.860 so the reason we know about this is that he texted this to a friend and said it was like a friend

00:44:31.960 who's like i'm on my way to asia like a completely whatever normal text and so he texts this friend

00:44:37.420 back and says like well you're gonna have to eat a bunch of dogs there because they eat dogs in asia

00:44:42.780 and so here's me eating a dog oh it's just him making a shitty racist joke it's just like a 0.58

00:44:47.500 racist joke that he made neat so the other thing that comes out of this vanity fair article is the 0.92

00:44:52.780 sexual assault allegations there's a weird thing where there's one paragraph in the article and

00:44:58.760 this gets no play in like secondary media that when he was married to his second wife

00:45:06.000 he allegedly would send nude photos of the women he was sleeping with to his friends

00:45:12.240 oh god it says those friends assumed kennedy himself had taken the pictures but they didn't 0.54

00:45:17.520 know whether the subjects had consented to having their genitalia photographed let alone shared with 0.84

00:45:23.040 other people weird that a kennedy would have issues with women no huh so this the sexual

00:45:31.080 assault allegations are around a 23 year old babysitter who lives with kennedy and his wife

00:45:38.120 in the fall of 1998 there's there's three incidents of harassment so in one they're having

00:45:45.260 dinner and he starts like rubbing her leg under the table she then writes about it in her diary

00:45:51.220 and then a little while later she comes into her room and he's like in her room and her diary is

00:45:57.140 like on the desk and she's like whoa like kind of confused like what is he reading my diary but we

00:46:03.020 still don't really know what the fuck happened there but he has his shirt off and he's like

00:46:07.420 can you rub this i think it's like sunscreen on my back or like lotion on my back and she's like 0.90

00:46:12.600 this is just really weird he was in his 40s at the time and then the third one is she's like in

00:46:19.220 the kitchen doing something chopping vegetables or whatever and he comes up behind her and just

00:46:24.600 like gropes her and like rubs her like butt like up her body yeah this is somebody who basically

00:46:30.960 was interested in like working with him because she wants to be part of the environmental movement

00:46:35.560 she's someone who's like really into environmentalism and after this she like

00:46:39.380 leaves the environmental movement yeah you know when contacted by vanity fair and when the story

00:46:43.980 comes out he doesn't really say anything about these specific incidents but he just says like 0.81

00:46:49.320 i've got a lot of skeletons in my closet what a deeply weird fucking way to talk about yeah having 0.97

00:46:55.580 yeah god damn it but then also this this woman the victim gets a text from him after the story 0.98

00:47:03.120 comes out that says i have no memory of this incident but i apologize sincerely for anything 0.98

00:47:08.060 I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt

00:47:12.040 your feelings. I never intended you any harm. And if I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly

00:47:17.700 for doing so. If you feel comfortable, I'd like to tell you this by phone and preferably face to

00:47:22.960 face. I recognize that this might not be possible. I have no agenda for sending this text other than

00:47:27.800 making the most sincere and earnest amends. And her name is Eliza Cooney. This is from the New

00:47:33.600 York Times. It says, Ms. Cooney did not respond to his outreach and did not welcome it, she told

00:47:38.460 the Times. Sending a text at 12.33 a.m. is not considering his actions affect on someone else,

00:47:44.440 me, she said. At that time, on 4th of July weekend, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to him.

00:47:49.780 He claims to have no memory of not one, not two, but three examples of his predatory behavior.

00:47:55.880 He expects a societal pass and forgiveness for saying that he's no church boy. I have paid the

00:48:01.180 cost for his sexual misconduct for decades so like fuck yes eliza cooney correct was just like 1.00

00:48:08.800 i don't know what the fuck you're doing but i have no interest in talking to you about this 0.99

00:48:12.480 boy i it's been a while since i felt such an immediate strong allegiance to someone yeah 0.98

00:48:18.640 exactly i'm like hell yeah spell it out eliza absolutely we then enter august which is a very

00:48:25.260 packed month for rfk jr so on august 4th 2024 we get the story of the bear are you familiar with

00:48:33.000 this uh jeremy allen white what we're not doing yes chef how dare you think that i would get a tv

00:48:39.820 reference i know you only get video game references exactly and i only get tv references and never the

00:48:46.460 twain shall meet give it to me in tekken 3 then i would get the bear reference you're he's oh this

00:48:51.760 is he took it home and he was like you're allowed to take it home for meat aubrey i've read so much

00:48:56.260 about whether or not you're actually allowed to take it home for me i really hate that i know so

00:49:01.400 much about like department of fish and wildlife protocol in new york state now so we are going to

00:49:07.920 watch his telling of this this is in preemptive response to the new yorker which is writing a long

00:49:18.420 feature profile on rfk jr they're doing the same thing they're sniffing around his life they're

00:49:22.700 interviewing a bunch of people who knew him the fact checker contacts him right before the story

00:49:27.520 is set to publish and is like we're gonna say this thing about the bear so to get ahead of it

00:49:31.940 rfk jr posts a video of him telling the full story so i'm gonna send you a link to a tweet

00:49:39.660 wow looking forward to seeing how you spin this one at new yorker so is this the text of this

00:49:47.920 week makes no fucking sense we're going to watch a brief part of this and then we're going to pause 0.73

00:49:52.800 and we're going to talk about fish and wildlife regulations so i know i hate this 0.98

00:49:58.480 that's what's making me laugh okay dumb okay 0.83

00:50:06.020 i was taking a group of people

00:50:09.740 up in Goshen, New York, up in Hudson Valley, and I was supposed to meet them there at like

00:50:17.180 maybe eight or nine. I was driving up maybe, you know, really early, like seven, and that

00:50:23.180 woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it, a young bear. So I pulled over and

00:50:33.100 I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear,

00:50:37.300 and it was very good condition and i was gonna and put the meat in my refrigerator and you can

00:50:44.120 do that in the york state you can get a bear tag for a roadkill bear

00:50:48.420 i have to say i love the cutaways to the face of the person he's telling the story do you know who 1.00

00:50:57.360 that is who is it it's roseanne barr what isn't this so weird she's like a deranged right winger 0.96

00:51:04.440 i went to her twitter profile it's dark i mean like i knew she was deranged i stopped paying 1.00

00:51:09.180 attention to her but i just wasn't uh accustomed to her current like blonde ringlets yeah and like

00:51:16.980 this is just all surprising and even her who like appears to be a friend of his or something like a 0.95

00:51:22.880 sympathetic listener she has this look on her face of like what the fuck is this totally she's doing 0.88

00:51:28.540 the full jim halpert at the camera so this is the story that he tells he's driving around 0.99

00:51:36.600 jesus state the person in front of him hits a bear not him and then it is legal to pick up roadkill

00:51:44.740 and like eat and use roadkill as long as you notify the authorities there's a lot of like

00:51:51.620 weird fact checking of this a lot of people say that this is false but it appears to be

00:51:57.860 that this is true you just have to notify the authorities it's not he says like you can get a

00:52:03.620 tag for the bear and there's this weird thing where it's like there's something like local

00:52:08.380 paper it's like a hunting license does not apply to roadkill but if you have roadkill and you want

00:52:15.360 to eat it you can call the fish and wildlife people and they can like approve of you eating

00:52:20.640 the roadkill this whole thing seems very weird to me but apparently a lot of fish and wildlife

00:52:25.000 departments around the country kind of want people to eat roadkill like people find it really

00:52:28.840 disgusting but it's like these animals are just going to sit there and rot on the side of the

00:52:31.720 road if somebody doesn't yeah totally this is like a wastefulness thing yeah and uh like every

00:52:36.620 government department is understaffed and they're like hey could you do that for us that'd be great

00:52:42.240 it's a little bit of a moot point because he didn't notify the authorities as far as we know

00:52:45.760 so it's sort of like he's he's like oh it's okay to do this as long as you notify the authorities

00:52:51.040 which i did not do yeah yeah but we'll just go ahead and watch the rest of the clip together

00:52:54.520 and so then i we went hawking and i had the bear in my car and then we had a really good day and

00:53:04.400 we went late we were catching a lot of game and the people really loved it so we stayed late and

00:53:10.180 instead of going back to my home in waschester i had to go right to the city because there was a

00:53:14.740 dinner i had peter lucar's steakhouse and at the end of the dinner it went late and i realized i

00:53:22.280 couldn't go home i had to go to the airport and the bear was in my car and i didn't want to leave

00:53:26.820 the bear in the car you know at that time this was the little bit of the redneck in me there'd

00:53:35.360 been a series of bicycle accidents in new york they had just put in the bike lanes and saw people

00:53:40.380 a couple of people got killed and it was every day and people had gotten badly injured i wasn't

00:53:46.940 drinking of course but people were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea and i said

00:53:53.420 i had an old bike in my car that somebody asked me to get rid of it i said let's go put the bear

00:53:58.080 in central park and we'll make it look like he got in by a bike it'll be fun and funny for people

00:54:03.680 so everybody thought that's a great idea so we went and did that and we thought it would

00:54:09.720 be amusing for whoever found it or something the next day it was like it was on every television

00:54:18.760 station it was the front page of every paper and i turned on the tv and there was like

00:54:23.540 mile of yellow tape and there were 20 hog cars

00:54:26.400 once again it's so bless this editor for the cutaways to roseanne's face i know like when

00:54:36.780 your judgment is being questioned in real time by roseanne also it's so funny to me that he tweets

00:54:47.440 this with looking forward to seeing how you spin this one it's like this is a deranged weird story

00:54:53.920 there's no spin required it's also like a couple of things there's a point at which he says

00:54:59.740 something about like i guess that's a little redneck in me and i'm like you're a kennedy

00:55:03.480 it's so weird it's such a weird like caricature of a rich villain thing to be like it'll be so

00:55:12.300 funny to dump this bear carcass in central park why would someone think it's funny to find a dead

00:55:19.140 bear he's like oh they they might get a kick out of it what right and the other thing that he 0.97

00:55:23.900 doesn't appear to be clocking here is he's like oh my god it was on the news a that's a wild ass

00:55:29.600 thing of course the cops were called and b if it wasn't on the news for there being a dead bear in

00:55:36.360 central park from question mark question mark origins there would be eventually a story on

00:55:41.900 the news that was like a kennedy put a dead bear in central park dude this was always going to be

00:55:49.820 news also aubrey i am incandescent that you have not mentioned his slander of bicyclists this is

00:55:58.100 what jumped out to me about it he's like i'm gonna make it seem like a cyclist killed the bear

00:56:03.540 yeah a that wouldn't even really happen you'd have to you'd have to be a really fast biker 0.99

00:56:09.120 to kill a fucking bear yeah and secondly why the fuck would you frame a cyclist god's chosen 1.00

00:56:15.360 creatures that is another weird underscore of his like unrelatable rich dude shit where he's like 1.00

00:56:22.860 these cyclists are always yeah that is such a weird shitty guy who's been driving a giant 0.98

00:56:31.020 and expensive car for a very long time take one thing i did actually find kind of cathartic about 0.79

00:56:37.520 this is that i went back to the original coverage of this like the ap stories and new york times

00:56:41.460 stories that were published in 2014 when they they found a bear in central park and the reason it was 0.86

00:56:46.200 a big deal is because there are no fucking bears in new york there's no bears in the zoo in new 0.97

00:56:50.140 York. So it's like, how the fuck did a bear get into Central Park? So like, of course it was a 0.99

00:56:54.540 news story. They do an investigation and immediately clock it. They're like, oh,

00:56:58.680 somebody hit this with their car elsewhere and drove it here for some reason. Oh God.

00:57:02.200 Nobody falls for this fucking stupid prank. This is from the AP story in 2014. It says, 1.00

00:57:08.200 the initial details of the case were clear. A woman was walking her dog in Central Park when

00:57:12.860 she noticed the dead bear cub, which was lying under some bushes, partially concealed by an

00:57:17.800 abandoned bicycle. There's a bicycle on top of this bear for some reason. This is from the New

00:57:22.220 York Times article. Florence Slatkin, who lives near the park, said that she and a friend were

00:57:26.100 leaving when her friend's terrier spotted something near a bicycle lying on the ground.

00:57:30.700 At first, we thought it was a bag of clothes or maybe a dead dog, she told the Associated Press.

00:57:35.100 But then, as they got closer, they realized it was a very small bear with its mouth wide open

00:57:39.740 and scratches on the side. The cub's head was on top of a back bicycle wheel, Slatkin said.

00:57:44.640 it was terrible and it was the strangest thing she added why was the bike there

00:57:49.020 so he seems to have just like put this bear in central park and just like

00:57:54.880 thrown a bicycle on top of it to act like i like i'm a cyclist i'm biking through

00:58:00.840 central park i hit and kill a bear and i leave my bike

00:58:04.860 this plan has all the sophistication of those like the like chick-fil-a billboards that are just

00:58:13.580 cows holding signs that say like eat more chicken yeah he's just very bad at framing people

00:58:20.600 oh my god mike when do we get the ripped from the headlines law and order episode

00:58:25.940 one tiny thing about this video that i would not have clocked except that this video shows up in

00:58:34.980 my thread with you right next to the picture of the quote-unquote eating a dog oh yeah is that

00:58:40.580 this whole video is filmed while he's sitting in front of a giant hotel pan of beef ribs no i know

00:58:46.480 it's like these giant ribs like huge like flintstones meat i get it you like meat so that

00:58:52.920 story comes out august 4th there's all this discourse about the bear starting in july and

00:58:58.240 through august we start to get stories of how his campaign is running out of money basically

00:59:05.100 There's also this thing in Arizona where they get – like they can't get enough signatures for the ballot.

00:59:13.040 They're supposed to have 42,000.

00:59:14.280 They can only get 9,000.

00:59:15.960 And then out of nowhere, this like kind of sketchy PAC delivers 110,000 signatures to the secretary of state.

00:59:23.780 And you're not supposed to coordinate – this is the whole Citizens United garbage thing where it's like you can't give money to candidates, but you can give money to super PACs. 0.92

00:59:30.240 But the super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with campaigns, which we all know they fucking do all the time.

00:59:34.640 And this, according to election law, may count as an in-kind donation to the campaign because

00:59:41.360 this PAC was basically doing work for the campaign and that may count as coordination.

00:59:46.180 So this may be illegal.

00:59:48.180 So even before RFK drops out, he drops off the ballot in Arizona because there's all

00:59:53.200 these like legal questions and like legal challenges.

00:59:54.880 And he's like, oh, this looks really bad.

00:59:56.300 So he's already off the ballot in Arizona.

00:59:58.860 In mid-August, we start to get reports that he's speaking to the Harris and the Trump campaign.

01:00:06.380 It seems like he tried to get a bunch of meetings with Harris of like, what are you going to give me if I drop out?

01:00:10.700 And the Harris campaign was just not interested.

01:00:13.240 Speaks highly of them.

01:00:14.820 Good job. 0.95

01:00:15.340 And then the weirdest fucking cameo in this is that we start getting these sort of like anonymous source quotes about him in like detailed weeks long talks with Donald Trump's campaign. 0.95

01:00:27.720 brokered by tucker carlson oh he then on august 23rd he announces that he's dropping out 0.97

01:00:36.080 annoyingly he's still in the fucking media so he's still around so on september 16th we get 0.77

01:00:43.640 the story of the whale the whole thing is basically it's a clip from like an old obscure documentary 0.98

01:00:49.900 where his daughter is talking about they're in some fucking house in long island or martha's 1.00

01:00:54.620 and you're just some bullshit. And a whale washes up on the beach, a dead whale. And RFK Jr. sees 1.00

01:01:01.140 this and immediately runs to the garage, grabs a chainsaw, runs down to the beach and chops its

01:01:06.980 head off. And then like drives it back to his other house and like, I guess like mounts it on

01:01:11.340 the wall or does, I don't know what the fuck he does with it, but he does that. This is also 0.88

01:01:15.300 illegal. So Noah is investigating this. Who knows, whatever, he might have like pay a fine or

01:01:21.940 something and then the final chapter of this which i really should not have spent this much

01:01:28.940 time on it is the ballad of robert and olivia oh this one makes me sad this one's just a huge bummer

01:01:37.500 it's such a bummer we're not gonna go super into this one this is the only story i've ever looked

01:01:43.940 into for this like for any podcast that i'm like i want to know less about this i i think everyone

01:01:49.400 should know less about this this is just so weird i started to read about it and then i was like

01:01:54.960 i don't feel good knowing these things anyway we're both we're both deep into this so we're

01:02:01.540 we're previewing it but this is the story of a political reporter for new york magazine named

01:02:07.540 olivia nutzi who's sort of like a rising star on the political scene she's one of these like 30 0.88

01:02:12.840 under 30 people i don't know how these people get on these fucking lists boy spoken like somebody 0.78

01:02:17.880 who wasn't on a list there's no me too there's no 40 over 40 people who are somehow keeping it 0.99

01:02:25.000 together despite their back hurting yeah where's the anemic 40 year old gay man i feel like i would

01:02:30.000 at least be like number seven on that list okay so she works for new york magazine in october of

01:02:36.000 2023 she flies out to california to meet with rfk jr they go on a hike we're not gonna go too far

01:02:45.720 into this i'm actually i i went down like a deep rabbit hole of her work and i think me and peter

01:02:50.400 are gonna do a bonus episode about just sort of the this type of journalism that is all based on

01:02:56.540 access like she flies all the way to california she spends the day with rfk jr she goes hiking

01:03:02.360 with him and yields no useful insight it's like he strode up the trail strongly he said oh there's

01:03:09.940 a bird in the distance or whatever and you're like yeah he likes birds yeah you don't need

01:03:14.500 like going hiking with him is so that you can brag that like oh i went hiking rfk jr it's not

01:03:20.520 about getting any actual useful information like this whole form of journalism is like a 0.99

01:03:25.200 self-aggrandizement like he's written numerous books you're gonna read his fucking books if you 0.88

01:03:29.160 want to know what he believes it seems like the like allure is the like she knows everybody yeah 0.98

01:03:35.580 yeah no totally that's the selling point rather than the like oh there's an insight here that i

01:03:40.520 find useful or there's analysis here there's context nothing or there's history or there's

01:03:45.360 anything no no it's just like yeah can you believe she has so-and-so's yeah this person

01:03:51.140 on speed dial yeah i don't think speed dial exists anymore i'm gonna star six nine 0.97

01:03:55.700 so this we're just gonna go quickly through this i hate this shit apparently they start 0.96

01:04:02.800 after this story comes out, he is unhappy with it. He later characterizes it as a hit piece, 0.98

01:04:07.120 which it is not. It's way too nice to him. And then they start like dealing with stuff over text.

01:04:13.100 This text becomes flirtatious. This becomes apparently like a sexting thing. They then

01:04:19.540 have like FaceTime sex or whatever. And it's also a really weird story in that neither one of the

01:04:28.860 participants in this affair are like really talking about it so all of the quotes are from

01:04:34.260 like friends of theirs like anonymous quotes from friends of theirs like talking to the new york post

01:04:38.040 and shit but then of course these are biased actors because they're only getting a depiction

01:04:42.760 of the relationship from the people involved right so all of his friends are like she threw 0.99

01:04:48.420 herself at him he had to block her because like she couldn't stop texting it definitely wasn't

01:04:53.360 this serial sexual abuser exactly who's had like numerous affairs right allegedly yeah and like

01:05:00.380 maybe that is true but also he's not a remotely reliable narrator nor are his friends remotely 0.53

01:05:05.160 reliable there's one of his friends who's like another like anti-vax weirdo says this had nothing

01:05:10.540 to do with romance he was being chased by porn wow which is not a real thing there's also something 0.92

01:05:17.620 about this that just sort of sucks from a like media representation of lady journalists thing

01:05:23.620 which is like part of the reason there was like an undercurrent of the freak out about spotlight 0.83

01:05:30.360 being such a great movie that was lady journalists who were excited that it was a story about a lady 1.00

01:05:37.000 journalist who didn't get the story by sleeping with a source whenever people are yelling and 1.00

01:05:41.900 making fun of a woman on the internet there's always an under threat of misogyny to it that 0.93

01:05:46.000 just like makes me uncomfortable and like a weird sex shamey element to it and like even if she

01:05:51.940 deserves a lot of criticism whenever it's a woman it like the criticism just goes to 11 really

01:05:56.740 quickly yeah and it goes to a place that it's like it goes from deserved critique to totally

01:06:02.900 undeserved and personal like weird in the blink of an eye i also when i first heard about this

01:06:08.740 i didn't like look too much into the details and i just thought like well obviously they had some

01:06:12.320 like trist but like they never actually met yeah it was all virtual right yeah it's all just like

01:06:17.440 phone stuff yeah she was engaged at the time he was married the her engagement has now been broken 0.86

01:06:24.200 off and they're filing restraining orders against each other in court and it's all fucking weird

01:06:29.120 she is accusing her fiance of leaking the story we still don't know who went to the media with

01:06:35.340 this story it's sort of weird that we know this right it could have just been an employment issue

01:06:40.000 with New York Magazine, which has now put her on leave.

01:06:42.860 But like the fact that we know about this

01:06:44.340 and also the fact that her boss found out about it,

01:06:46.520 somebody had to tell him, right?

01:06:48.240 So we don't really know who that person is.

01:06:49.980 She says it's her fiance.

01:06:51.100 Her fiance says that it's not him. 1.00

01:06:52.460 It's a whole big, ugly, dumb thing. 0.99

01:06:54.400 That's another one of those things where I'm like, 1.00

01:06:56.420 I don't feel like I should know this

01:06:58.420 about your relationship.

01:07:00.000 The court filing, I was like trying to get the PDFs

01:07:02.420 of the court filings between her and her fiance.

01:07:05.400 And then I was like, what is my life?

01:07:07.080 What am I, what am I doing? 1.00

01:07:08.440 I don't want to know this shit. 1.00

01:07:09.840 100 percent i think this is someone who exercised unbelievably poor judgment i think whatever 0.99

01:07:16.900 happens between her and her fiance really isn't any of my business and whatever happens between 0.99

01:07:20.820 rfk jr and his wife also none of my business he's also a piece of shit due to what he does in public 0.98

01:07:25.680 for real there's a really fucked up article in the new york post during like when his diary is 0.99

01:07:32.840 coming out and when this whole like really ugly divorce case is going on that says like he basically 0.96

01:07:38.180 has the phone habits of like a middle-aged gay man so it says that he has 43 like women like

01:07:46.880 mistresses or whatever saved in his phone it says in the post at the time it appeared kennedy had 0.74

01:07:52.600 a woman in almost every city including at least five in toronto one in paris others in palm beach

01:07:58.220 and pensacola alaska aspen colorado miami montreal and cleveland one of the women had the note

01:08:04.380 airplane after her name while another was denoted with farm and a third with teacher

01:08:10.160 yet another was only cryptically referred to as z and apparently he saved them all under the letter

01:08:17.940 g for gumar which is remember in the sopranos that means like you're you're like girl on the

01:08:24.680 side right don't make me do that again i think maybe you should i should probably cut that that

01:08:30.960 was bad that was quite bad that was my that was my along with us talking about it basically

01:08:37.940 miserable but also it's like there's something darkly funny about the fact that he just has like

01:08:43.660 susan airplane his phone was like everyone i know does this yes they're like steve lawyer

01:08:50.480 todd seattle like yep because everyone's on the apps now and it's like it's not specific enough

01:08:57.180 to be like jessica hinge there's like three jessica hinges

01:09:00.620 like i was looking through my phone the other day deleting people and i have david bicep

01:09:06.420 i know what that means yes you do i don't know who any of these people are weirdly rfk jr's

01:09:14.860 ringtone was just the rambler that's from the 60s i'm the type of guy who likes to roam around

01:09:22.420 No, that's The Wanderer. I love that song.

01:09:24.180 Oh, The Wanderer. Excuse me.

01:09:26.620 It's the original I've got hoes in different area codes. 1.00

01:09:29.320 Yes, absolutely. 1.00

01:09:30.960 I want to end with a really good quote.

01:09:32.800 This Vanity Fair article is actually quite good.

01:09:35.420 Just like about him.

01:09:36.940 I think for the love of God,

01:09:38.580 I hope this is the last time we have to talk about this person.

01:09:41.260 This is a good conclusion.

01:09:42.640 So here's this.

01:09:44.080 Kennedy's personal history is not dissimilar to Trump's.

01:09:47.340 a bottomless well of scandal that, over time, has immunized people against its real-world

01:09:53.580 consequences. The Kennedy name, the fantasy and celebrity of it, is its own shield,

01:10:00.180 blinding people to the fine details of Kennedy's actual beliefs and thereby making him an appealing

01:10:06.000 and easy vessel for discontent with Biden and Trump. Quote, like all the rest of us,

01:10:12.280 Bobby grew up feeling that being a Kennedy, you could do virtually anything you wanted.

01:10:17.340 Kennedy's cousin, Chris Lawford, told the authors of The Kennedys, an American drama,

01:10:23.740 quote, it was good because you got away with things other people wouldn't dream of.

01:10:28.320 It was bad because it destroyed your sense of what was worth doing. Bears in Central Park.

01:10:35.220 Dude, I know. Bears in Central Park.

01:10:37.460 Whale heads everywhere.

01:10:39.220 Whale heads. Whale heads.

01:10:40.560 If you think about Kennedy, I mean, we kind of already talked about how he's essentially this like fairly mediocre dude

01:10:45.380 who has, like, failed upwards into these prestigious institutions his entire life.

01:10:49.920 It's a real classic fail-son scenario.

01:10:52.740 It's a huge fail-son thing, right?

01:10:53.620 Spoiled kid eventually makes good because he has this 85 layers of safety nets below him, right?

01:10:59.360 But then you look at what he leaves behind, right?

01:11:01.120 You've got this babysitter who left the environmental NGO.

01:11:04.640 You've got his wife who killed herself.

01:11:06.760 You've got this outbreak of measles in Samoa that we barely even got to talk about 1.00

01:11:10.220 where 83 fucking people died, partly because RFK Jr. promoted a bunch of anti-vax garbage. 0.99

01:11:15.380 It's like you've got this wake of damage behind him. 1.00

01:11:18.980 And yet he himself has only become wealthier, more prominent. 0.99

01:11:23.380 And it just like sucks. 1.00

01:11:24.880 We need to not have so many fucking mediocre ass people in American life who just never leave. 1.00

01:11:30.580 You can't see it, but I'm Roseanne Barr grimacing at the camera. 1.00

01:11:35.360 You have a giant plate of ribs in front of you. 0.61

01:11:45.380 We'll see you next time.

01:12:15.380 You

Maintenance Phase - December 20, 2024

BONUS： What's New With RFK Jr.？

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