BONUS: MAHA's First 90 Days

From our Patreon feed, we're catching up with RFK Jr. and his cadre of "Make America Healthy Again" influencers.

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Thanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!

Transcript

[Maintenance Phase theme]

Michael: What tagline us, tack it, tack it. The podcast with rotting teeth because there's no fluoride in the water anymore. 

Aubrey: No, no, no, no. I got it, I got it, I got it. 

Michael: The podcast, do it, do it, do it. 

Aubrey: Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that is banned in the EU but somehow allowed in the United States. 

Michael: [laughs] That's really good actually. That also might be true at some point, although the opposite way around. [Aubrey laughs] We might be banned in America but allowed in the EU. 

Aubrey: I'm Aubrey Gordon. 

Michael: I'm Michael Hobbs. 

Aubrey: If you would like to support the show. You're already doing that. Thank you so much. 

Michael: Or are you?

Aubrey: Or are you? 

Michael: So as part of our effort to both address what is going on in the country, but also not to lose our minds and also not to make, mega bummer episodes for the rest of our lives, we are going to start doing these kind of periodic check ins on the health grifters in office. That is the point of this episode. Officially it's a bonus episode, but we're going to put it in the main feed because we think that this stuff is important and people should know about it. 

Aubrey: We want everyone to be aware of precisely how bleak it is. 

Michael: Yeah. We want to put our most bummer episodes free to the public.

Aubrey: It's so emotionally crushing to exist in the news landscape that we exist in right now. 

Michael: Yes.

Aubrey: And I think there are ways in which it feels like both really important and oddly sort of refreshing to just go, “Okay, here are the moving parts, here's what's moving forward, here's what's not.” Rather than just like the wave of emotions crashing over us all the time. 

Michael: For this episode, I just went on the HHS website and pulled every single press release and we're going to talk chronologically about what RFK Jr. has done with effectively the first two months that he's been in power.

Aubrey: In my end of the research for today, which is some profiles of some public figures who are supporters of MAHA stuff.

Michael: Yeah, Aubrey's our comic relief for this episode. [laughs]

Aubrey: It's not very comical and there won't be relief. [Michael laughs] But there was one of the people that I looked into had a quote that was like, “I'm fully supportive of RFK Jr.’s quest to find the cause of autism. And the way that they put it was “To really get to the bottom of what's going on there.”

Michael: Yeah, this is another fucking thing. Yeah. 

Aubrey: As a queer person who lived through the 90s, I absolutely remember the quest for the gay gene.

Michael: This just gets into it because the first thing we're going to do is an audiovisual element. So, on February 13, RFK Jr. was confirmed. That's where our story starts. Like, the minute he takes power, he deleted all of his previous tweets from before this date. One of the first thing he tweets is a public statement of, “Now that I'm in power, this is what you can expect from me” and I wanted to do this privately with you because our brains are broken in exactly the same way, but we'll just do it on the show. 

Aubrey: Michael, I would like to dispute that our brains are not broken in exactly the same way. I watched 10 hours of Montana State Legislature floor session yesterday. [laughs]

Michael: I think you were going to talk about how your brain is broken in the true crime way, which mine is not broken. [laughs] 

Aubrey: That's also true that my brain is also broken in the true crime way. 

Michael: Okay, I'm going to send you this link. This is RFK Jr.’s little statement, and we are going to make little ding sounds every time there's a conspiracy dog whistle.

Aubrey: Can this be our sound for when there's a-- [crosstalk]

Michael: Wait, what do you have? 

Aubrey: [drumming]

Michael: No, that's too happy. That's too happy. 

Aubrey: That's too happy. 

Michael: We need The X Files Theme to play. 

Aubrey: Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on. I got another one, I got another one. Michael, I have a few of these. [Michael laughs] We could do this every time [music].

Michael: [laughs] Dude, [music]I'm going to put on the rap air horn, hang on. 

Aubrey: We should remix the two together. 

Michael: It's going to end up happening because there's going to be so many of these. 

Aubrey: Ruh, ruh, remet.

[laughter]

I was about to tell you not to tell anyone I did that, but then I realized I did it into a microphone.

Michael: [laughs] To many, many people.

[laughter]

Okay, here's this. Did you get it? 

Aubrey: So, wait, what are we-- remind me what we're dinging.

Michael: Dog whistles for conspiracy theories.

Aubrey: Okay, ready? 

Michael: All right, do it. 

[Audio starts]

Robert: Hi, I'm Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on my first day at work here at HHS, I want to take this moment to say a few words both to my supporters of the Make America Healthy Again movement, but also to all of the American public. I could read you a list of statistics proving that Americans suffer far higher levels of chronic disease, obesity, addiction, cancer, infertility and depression.

Michael: Infertility. [air horn sound]

Richard: And ever before in history, and more than any other country in the world. You already know that it's pretty obvious that something has gone terribly wrong with our health. [air horn sound] I’m also not going to tell you the reasons for this decline, why? Because neither I nor anyone else could be certain.

Michael: See. [air horn sound]

Richard: But what I will tell you is that we are going to find out and we're going to do something about it. 

Aubrey: No one else was trying to-- [crosstalk]. 

Richard: My commitment to you is that we're going to make chronic disease our top priority. [music] In our first hundred days, we're going to examine every possible contributing factor to the epidemic. 

Michael: Every factor. 

Aubrey: Every possible factor.

Richard: We will leave no stone unturned. We're going to listen to the experts and to the dissidents.

Michael: And the dissidents. 

Richard: We're going to listen to insiders and to the whistleblowers. 

Michael: Whistleblowers.

Richard: We're going to listen to the doctors and we're going to listen to the moms. 

Michael: Moms.

Richard: We will examine our food, our medicine, [music] our water, our lifestyles and our environment. [music] Everything that goes into Americans bodies. [Michael laughs] We have to find something we care about more than being right, more than political advantage, and more than financial profit.

Michael: Financial profit. [music]

Richard: The health of our children is a higher calling for all of us. And here's another promise. We're going to usher in a new era of transparency in all of our health agencies [air horn sound]. There's going to be no more hidden conflicts of interest, no more secrecy, no more profiteering [music] on the substances that we're supposed to be regulating. 

[Audio ends]

Aubrey: That's why we're going to deregulate them. 

Michael: Dude, I hate this thing because it makes me realize what a like tinfoil hat person I sound like. Because if you took the transcript of this and you were like, “Oh, a normal politician said this, most of it, I'd be like, yeah, fine, chronic illness is a problem in America. And yeah, we should have government transparency.” A lot of the stuff he's saying on the surface sounds fine, but also when you know, the way that he spent his career and when you know the fucking anti-vax talking points, this stuff about like, we're not going to cave in to Big Pharma, the infertility stuff, we're finally going to have a conversation where we listen to the dissidents. Oh, we're finally going to hear from people outside of the expert consensus. It's all conspiracy nonsense.

Aubrey: Well, and if you're not good at making your extremism sound reasonable, then you're not very good at your extremism. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good way to put it. So, to get into the meat of this, because I think if you're someone who doesn't follow this very closely, this can all sound reasonable like, why are people like Mike and Aubrey, why are they trying to block this guy who like, all he wants to look at is chronic illness, right. But the minute you go half an inch below the surface, you find, I'm not talking about conspiracy talking points. I'm talking about actual misinformation. 

Aubrey: I do like that you're like, “Hey, you might be thinking, I've never listened to this show before. Why do these people.” 

[laughter]

Michael: Yeah, why do? What's going on? 

Aubrey: Hey non-listeners of our show. [laughs]

Michael: These bad faith people.

Aubrey: Hey, people who aren't listening. 

Michael: So, one of his first acts in office was to have what's being known as like the MAHA executive order, like the statement of purpose of like, here's what we're going to do as like the make America healthy again movement. And so we are going to read some excerpts from it. 

Aubrey: Section one, purpose, American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries with pre-COVID 19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years. Six in ten Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in ten have two or more chronic diseases. An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness.

Michael: In a vacuum all of these statistics are roughly true. Then we get to the next paragraph. 

Aubrey: These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe. Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next highest rate. Further, from 1990 to 2021, the United States experienced an 88% increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated.

Michael: So, this is straightforwardly false. America does not have the highest cancer incidence in the world, and we've seen a significant decrease in cancer incidence and cancer mortality over the last 30 years, according to the American Cancer Society. This is not true. That like, every single thing that he's talking about is getting worse. 

Aubrey: The thing that gets left out of the conversation about stuff like this is actually how much treatment has progressed of all of these things. How much detection has progressed of all of these things?

Michael: Yeah, if you look at the league tables published by the World Cancer Research Fund, the country with the highest cancer incidence is not America, it's Australia. And that's mostly skin cancer. And part of that is because Australia is close to the hole in the ozone layer and is full of white people who are susceptible to skin cancer. But it's also because Australia has very sophisticated systems for detecting skin cancer early and treating it. So, the fact that Australia has high cancer incidence is in some ways actually good news. It means that they're catching it early. And if you look at the year, he's citing 2021 data. But that's a perfect illustration of this concept because in 2020, we had an almost 10% drop in cancer incidence, which is like totally unprecedented, like you never get a fall in cancer that dramatic.

But of course, it's not because cancer fell by 10%. It's because all the hospitals were closed because of the pandemic. And then of course, cancer incidence skyrocketed in 2021 because people were getting screened again. This is the problem with the whole muddy way that he's presenting this, that high cancer rates aren't necessarily bad news and a drop in cancer incidents isn't good news. It could be less cancer, but it could also just be less cancer screening. 

Aubrey: Yeah, there's a real bizarre sort of arrogance to well, two things. One, there's a real bizarre arrogance to assuming that because we don't have answers that are like definitive and set in stone, that means no one's trying. 

Michael: Yeah, exactly. 

Aubrey: That's a really, really strange, only I can fix it kind of attitude. And why does shit keep leaving my brain, Michael? 

Michael: I love it when you do two things one and then you forget your second thing. 

Aubrey: I fucking hate. [Michael laughs] I hate it so much. 

Michael: This is why, as a person in my 40s, I never say two things one, because I know I'm going to forget the second one. [laughs]

Aubrey: That needs to be left behind in my 30s. 

Michael: I've noticed this when I'm editing too. They'll be the real problem is A and then I talk and I just never get to B. I'm like, I'm just going to cut out me saying A. 

[laughter]

Aubrey: Our listeners don't need to know how broken our middle-aged brains are. 

Michael: [laughs] I'm just going to cut out this part. 

Aubrey: Yeah, I mean, it's really strangely arrogant to assume that because we don't have hard and fast answers that no one's looking. And it also feels like there is this sort of—[crosstalk]

Michael: You have no idea where you're going with this. [Aubrey laughs] It's okay, Aubrey. We can just move on. 

Aubrey: It was back. I had it and it was back. 

Michael: We have so many more excerpts. You'll get there. It'll come back. 

Aubrey: I know. I know it will. I'm so sorry. 

Michael: Just read this excerpt. 

Aubrey: Okay. I'm reading an excerpt. 

Michael: All right. I'm sending you a thing about chronic conditions. 

Aubrey: This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life. 77% of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.

Michael: You're always talking about this. You're always like, “Young people aren't qualifying for the military.” And I'm like, “Aubrey, we can't do a whole episode about it.”

Aubrey: This is actually like one the big anti-fat talking points in the 2000s. 

Michael: I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, i

Aubrey: It nuts.

Michael: We're not going to be able to invade Canada because people are too fat. I'll be like, okay [laughs]-– [crosstalk] 

Aubrey: How are we going to annex Greenland when we're all this fat. [Michael laughs] 

Michael: I am like, “Oh, oh well, that's a sacrifice I have to make, so be it.” 

Aubrey: Nobody, tell them about fat dead lifters. [Michael laughs] 90% of the nation's $4.5 trillion in annual health care expenditures is for people with chronic and mental health conditions. In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively.

Michael: So, this is a talking point that he returns to over and over again. This is what's crippling the country is that, we're spending all this money on these chronic conditions that can easily be prevented through lifestyle. This whole concept is completely bunk, though, because the definition of a chronic condition is just anything which affects your daily functioning and anything that lasts for more than a year. And so, this document itself even mentions earlier, roughly 60% of Americans have one chronic condition or another. So, I have one. I have carpal tunnel syndrome. That's something that's been going on for more than a year. If you have back pain, one of the other ones that's mentioned is tooth decay. Most of this is just people getting diagnosed with things and also people living longer.

So, among people over 65, 95% of them have a chronic illness. The thing about 90% of our healthcare spending goes to people with chronic conditions is mostly just a function of the fact that the vast majority of healthcare spending is spent on older people. Older people happen to be sicker and when you're sicker, you require more money to get care. 

Aubrey: And also, older people are the only people who get nationalized health care. 

Michael: Well, that's the thing. A lot of people have numerous conditions and the fact that the healthcare system is spending money on them is an indicator that people are receiving healthcare. A healthcare system that only responds to acute issues like, you get hit by a car and you break your shoulder. That's not a real health care system. A healthcare system is going to focus on longer term care and it's going to spend money on care. This is actually evidence against the thing that [laughs] he's talking about. It's actually evidence that the entire medical system does in fact care about chronic conditions already.

Aubrey: It's really maddening. I think you see a similar thing when you look at the numbers around like diabetes, for example. Age-based prevalence of diabetes, goes like through the roof for seniors, right?

Michael: Yeah. 

Aubrey: There is a bunch of stuff that is, to your point, all stuff that is like an outgrowth of living as long as we now live.

Michael: Right. 

Aubrey: It's really easy to see those as remedial problems that we have somehow brought on ourselves and not actually like in the scheme of things, good new problems that are like, “Oh, people aren't dying at 30 anymore.” [laughs] 

Michael: Yeah, we're addressing the issues that people actually have. 

Aubrey: It doesn't mean that there aren't still issues to address, but it doesn't necessarily mean that we've been like fucking it up real hard.

Michael: Yeah. 

Aubrey: It also definitely doesn't follow that someone acknowledging the prevalence of chronic illnesses is therefore equipped and qualified to find solutions. 

Michael: Right. 

Aubrey: This is the other piece that feels like it's big here, is that like when we have this sort of like, “Ah this thing is important and uh-oh, we don't know what to do about it yet,” there are two things that can swoop in to fill that gap. One is worldview. Right?

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aubrey: And I think RFK Jr's worldview is swooping in a big way. And the other is marketing. And we'll get into this with the influencer side but like the marketing side is alive and well, right. Like a bunch of the influencers who've attached to the MAHA stuff have done so I would argue because there is such an opportunity to like get boosted to a new level of audience and to get to sell your products.

Michael: This is yet another theme that emerged in a lot of the HHS stuff that I read is that he has like the worldview and the orientation of a fucking influencer, not a person of science. 

Aubrey: Yep. 

Michael: Right. Because a person of science would be familiar enough with statistics not to like lie in the third paragraph of their flagship executive order. And also, this thing of like, “We're finally going to study it and like, “Oh, we're going to listen to the whistleblowers and stuff.” This is what people say on TikTok who like don't actually know anything and aren't familiar with the science. Like, you don't want people like this running things. [laughs] 

Aubrey: I want to be precise about something which is like the chances are that RFK Jr. is not personally sitting down and writing this executive order. Maybe he is, probably not. I think it's also an issue is not able to hire and supervise in such a way that they can actually accurately fact check.

Michael: It's an institutional problem. 

Aubrey: It is an institutional problem. And you could absolutely see this guy, like you could imagine this guy sending something back because it's not the numbers that compare with his worldview, rather than that it's not accurate numbers.

Michael: Right. Even though the vast majority of like chronic conditions in America are among older people, he then switches to chronic childhood conditions. Because this is yet again, the way that you market your thing of like, we're finally going take care of children. I looked this up. Around 30% of kids have a chronic condition. But things like learning disabilities and ADHD are considered chronic conditions for kids. So, if you look at like the sort of distribution, it's primarily ADHD, learning disabilities and asthma. Around 10% of kids have asthma. More kids getting diagnosed with learning disabilities, I think is a good thing. I think if kids need help and they're getting the help that they need, it's now about 8% of kids have a learning disability of some kind or another. I don't think that's like a crazy high number. 

We're not talking about like 96% of kids have a learning disability. That doesn't indicate over diagnosis to me. And like, some kids do have fucking ADHD. And like, it's really great that people are also getting diagnosed with asthma early. 

Aubrey: Right. I also think, it's easy to forget what the cultural dialogue was around ADHD in the 1990s and 2000s. It's all made up. Psychiatrists are pushing these medications on your kids who don't need them. It’s over diagnosed and the medications themselves might be the issue. And I think you can see some of that peeking through here as a core assumption. The thing that makes me so profoundly uncomfortable with so much of his rhetoric is the assumption that neurodivergent kids are a problem to be fixed. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: We have to find out the cause of autism so that there are not more autistic kids. But to find out the cause of ADHD, food dyes? 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: It's so sort of divorced from the science around those things. And it so speaks to the sort of like, panic around those issues and also a likely discomfort with people. [laughs] 

Michael: He's also so obsessed with the statistic that 1 in 31 kids have autism now. Experts say that it's more like 1 in 36, but that's 3% of kids. And that doesn't sound nuts to me. [laughs] I'm just like, “Yeah, around 3% of kids have this thing that is relatively rare but is also a real thing in the population.” Like, is 3% the wrong number? That seems okay. [laughs] 

Aubrey: It's like, claiming to care about these conditions while, pretty overtly increasing the stigma facing people who have those conditions. And that's the thing that pisses me off. And also, I just feel like I know a lot of people who are struggling with that stigma part. And I'm like, “This isn't helping.” 

Michael: Okay, final excerpt. Aubrey, get your slide whistle out. 

Aubrey: Oh.

Michael: The ostensible purpose of this executive order is to set up this commission that is going to study, “Finally study these issues.” And so, I'm going to read you a couple excerpts from the purpose of, the commission and what it's going to do. And I want you to use your little slide whistle when you hear a conspiracy talking point.

Aubrey: I now, all of a sudden have test anxiety where I'm like, “Oh, no, am I going to fail?”

Michael: Just use it the whole time, Aubrey. Just as background noise. [slide whistle sound] Okay, so this is the purpose of these assessments that it's going to produce. One, identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries. 

Aubrey: Great. 

Michael: Two, assess the potential overutilization of medication, [slide whistle sound] certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures posed to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanism of disease. Assess the prevalence and threat posed by prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, [slide whistle sound] antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight loss drugs. Identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles. He also has a thing earlier in the document where he talks about electromagnetic radiation. 

Aubrey: I do have to say it was very funny to go through that whole thing and just silently, soberly slide whistle. 

Michael: That's what these updates are going to be from now on. Just Mike reading and [Aubrey laughs] Aubrey with her slide whistle. 

Aubrey: A 21-slide whistle salute. 

[laughter]

Michael: So, this is, again, the thing that I will never stop shouting about. All of these people saying that, “Oh, he just wants to make Americans eat better or whatever. Have to grapple with the fact that what he is saying is full of fucking misinformation.” This thing of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors is making kids have autism or whatever has been looked at. It's not fucking true. I mean a lot of this stuff is just like, “Whack job, blogosphere shit.” 

Aubrey: And I think it plays to this sort of like, oddly Luddite undertone, which is just there are new medical treatments. They must be witchcraft. Right.

Michael: I don't know why weight loss drugs is on here too. That's interesting because he always talks about obesity and then he throws in. He's like, “We need to look into the influence of weight loss drugs.” 

Aubrey: Yeah. No, he's very anti-Ozempic, very anti-everything. He wants his wellness farms instead. 

Michael: Yeah. I think that's the whole thing is lifestyle. He thinks that lifestyle can cure every single illness.

Aubrey: Right. Which is what you think when you have relatively good health. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: When your health care has always been provided to you and when you've been taught that health is a meritocracy and you get out of it what you put into it, which is not true of almost anything in this life. 

Michael: To me, it's like, it's fundamentally hierarchical. It's like, there's a good way to live and there's a bad way to live. 

Aubrey: Yes. 

Michael: And if you're fat, it's because you're living in the bad way. And if you live in the good way, you won't be fat. 

Aubrey: Yeah. And like, listen, my good bitches, if that is not extremely conservative sort of fascistic thinking. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. 

Aubrey: I can look at you and know everything I need to know about you. If someone is willing to dehumanize anyone, there is a good chance they are willing to dehumanize lots more people than just that group. 

Michael: Speaking of dehumanizing, Aubrey.

Aubrey: No, what a transition.

Michael: The other first hundred days, my first action in office thing that RFK Jr., does is he joins the Trump administration's other ongoing witch hunts. So, on February 19th, he puts out guidance saying HHS takes action on President Trump's executive orders defending women and children. This is the garbage about how, there's only two genders. And like, we're finally going to go back to only having two genders. And I just want to read a quote from RFK Jr., because I think there's still like, a little bit of residue of, “Well, he's a Kennedy and like, he ran as a Democrat and like, maybe he's not so bad.” So, here is a quote from him. He says, “Actually, I'll send it to you.” 

Aubrey: This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government. The prior administration's policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.

Michael: So, no point in going into this in any more depth. We've done like a million podcasts about it. But this is of course a deranged, bigoted moral panic. But I just want to emphasize that “RFK Jr., is like a piece of shit on trans rights, the same way that every other fucking Republican is a piece of shit on trans rights.”

Aubrey: Also, people will argue he's not a Republican. I would argue you accepted a position with the Trump administration, I don't know- [crosstalk] 

Michael: Whatever.

Aubrey: -what is more Republican than that, right? 

Michael: Immediately after this, he rescinds a Biden executive order, basically saying that gender-affirming care is fine, and attacks on gender-affirming care, banning a form of fucking health care by law, all of this is illegitimate. The Biden administration put out this executive order. HHS rescinds it.

Aubrey: Fuck off, asshole. 

Michael: He also launches an investigation of Maine for allowing trans kids in sports. The governor of Maine is a Democrat. And then now the Trump administration is quite just openly, illegally threatening to revoke all federal funding from the entire state over this. So, this is like an ongoing legal battle. And then this is just last week, he announced that there's going to be an online portal run by HHS where “Whistleblowers can submit a tip or complaint regarding the chemical and surgical mutilation of children to the HHS Office of Inspector General.” 

Aubrey: Jesus fucking hell. 

Michael: So, this is again, just classic fascist shit. They set up these fucking hotlines. They had one under the first Trump administration about immigrant crime, right? What they do is they cast this net super wide. They get a million reports. A lot of them are really bad faith. Like, all the school nurse is doing surgery on kids or whatever. And more people get caught up in this insane dragnet of deportations, getting disappeared off the street. This is very, very like classic authoritarian stuff. Gender-affirming care for kids is like, you can go to hospital websites and be like, “What do you offer? When are appointments available?” This is not like a clandestine secret thing. This is like a part of healthcare and studies about it are published in peer-reviewed journals. The idea that we'd have like a whistleblower hotline about it is absurd. It's like whistleblowers about, knee replacements or something. It's like a normal part of healthcare. 

Aubrey: The concept of whistleblowers is the idea that you would blow the whistle on internal operations of a company or institution that is systematically breaking the law. 

Michael: Right, exactly. 

Aubrey: Or committing unethical acts.

Michael: Which, again, we have no evidence of in gender-affirming care. 

Aubrey: No, we have evidence of is patients who want care, seeking out that care, and sometimes being denied that care. Like, if there's a problem here, it has much more to do with denials of care than it has to do with, it's run amok or whatever. 

Michael: The other witch hunt that he's joining is the administration's crackdown on, “Antisemitism.” 

Aubrey: Oh, no. 

Michael: So, on February 5th, the HHS announces that it's initiating investigations of four medical schools for antisemitic incidence at their commencement addresses. And I was like, “I haven't heard of this.” Like, were people throwing things? Like, was-- [crosstalk].

Aubrey: No. Someone fucking wore a Palestine flag pin or some shit? 

Michael: Aubrey. [laughs]

Aubrey: It's going to be nothing. 

Michael: I'm sending you the link, I'm sending you the link, I'm sending you the link. So, I Googled this. I was like, “commencement, medical schools.” It's a very specific thing, right? And the HHS press release doesn't name the schools or what happens. I was like, “Where are they even getting this? “This goes to one article called Medical Schools 2024 Commencements and Antisemitism: Addressing unprofessional behavior. This is like this random academic article. Scroll down, Aubrey, to figure one. It's in a different color than the rest of the text. 

Aubrey: It's images of different scarves that people are wearing with their graduation robes. Some of them are wearing keffiyehs, some of them are wearing Palestinian flag scarves. That's it. 

Michael: It's not antisemitic remotely to do that. These are not antisemitic incidents at commencement addresses. Like, they're just not. 

Aubrey: It's so fucking frustrating because the antisemitism is a super real thing. And it's wild to watch this administration just appropriated as a way of quashing political speech. 

Michael: Oh, also, you can scroll down to figure two if you want, which is like, right down there. 

Aubrey: I don't want, but I will. 

Michael: And these are like antisemitic slogans that the students were holding allegedly. 

Aubrey: One of them says, stop bombing hospitals. 

Michael: This is like, misinformation or something. This group is being falsely accused of something like this is happening. [laughs] So, to say that this is a fucking antisemitic slur and that somehow how this kid, which like I think is relatively brave for putting this on at their fucking commencement, this person is the problem rather than the bombing of fucking hospitals. 

Aubrey: There's another one that is someone crossing the stage to presumably accept their degree and unfolding a banner that says and genocide, apartheid, Zionism and something, something, something that I can't read and then free Palestine. 

Michael: It says end your complicity. 

Aubrey: End your complicity free Palestine. 

Michael: The core problem is the idea that we need some exotic explanation for why young people would be offended at like entire cities being razed to the ground and like children starving.

Aubrey: Why doctors would not want hospitals to be bombed.

Michael: I don't need an alternate explanation for this. Like, “Wow, why are people doing this like totally irresponsible thing?” I think very straightforwardly, people are offended by images of children starving. The idea that we're casting around for what are their real motivations is fucking insane. So, anyway, this article as far as I can tell is like the only place previous to this HHS press release where this like antisemitic incidents at commencement addresses like thing was put forward. So, we don't know what the consequences on these schools will be. But this is becoming a real thing that people with power are wielding. 

Aubrey: Yeah. And when you line that up with trying to rescind the tax statuses of universities, trying to poll grants and funding, like there's just so much very clearly politicized manipulation happening here. 

Michael: So, there's also one we won't get as into it, but there's also one about DEI. There's a deranged article in the Washington Free Beacon about UCLA medical school. They're giving in to woke DEI and that they don't have as many white students anymore or something, something-- [crosstalk]. 

Aubrey: Finally, someone is looking out for white medical students. 

Michael: I'll finally have a white doctor in my life. The article itself has statistics indicating that this has not happened. It says that they've appointed this mega DEI president of UCLA medical school and it has statistics. Basically, there's the same number of white people from 2020 to 2024, but there are now fewer Asian people and more Hispanics. So that has shifted. But the idea that there's no merit-based admissions, this is just classic right wing moral panic garbage. But of course, HHS is now joining this and is like investigating UCLA. So again, we see this Pipeline from, bad faith, right wing tabloid nonsense into actual government policy. 

Aubrey: God damn it. 

Michael: Okay, now that you're all pissed off, let's talk about influencers. Let's talk about influencers. 

Aubrey: It's not going to get better. 

Michael: Well, I'm excited, though, anyway. 

Aubrey: Do you want to know who our first influencer is? 

Michael: Katy Perry in space. 

Aubrey: Jillian Michaels. 

Michael: Oh, yeah. [laughs] Who we talk about off the show, like, pretty frequently, but we finally get to talk about her on the show. 

Aubrey: Everybody wants a mean lesbian, but then she shows up. 

[laughter]

Michael: It's all fun and games when she's on White Lotus, but in real life. 

Aubrey: [laughs] So, Michael, while you were looking into the official MAHA agenda thus far, I was looking into some of the public figures that have lined up behind RFK Jr., in particular. And one of his biggest champions is Queen Gremlin herself, Jillian Michaels.

Michael: Friend of the show, Jillian Michaels. 

Aubrey: Enemy of the show [laughs] Jillian Michaels. For folks who are unfamiliar, Jillian Michaels was the trainer on The Biggest Loser. Mike, are there any particular memories that you have of you did our Biggest Loser episode? 

Michael: All I remember is her lying down so she could yell at someone closer to their face when they were doing pushups. [laughs] That's the image that has burned into my mind of like, it's not enough for me to be shitty to you from, like, three feet away. I need to be like six inches away. [laughs] 

Aubrey: I will say, as someone who recently rewatched some Biggest Loser episodes, I thought she was awful. And then I went back and watched those episodes and I was like, “Oh, my brain has been going easy on Jillian.” 

Michael: Oh, really? 

Aubrey: She's so much worse when you go back and rewatch those old episodes than you can even imagine one of the big ones, and we talked about this on our episode, was her shouting at a fat person on The Biggest Loser who was on a treadmill and was like, wheezing and saying, “I can't actually do this. I need to take a break.” Jillian Michaels screaming at them at the top of her lungs. The only way you're getting off that treadmill is in a body bag.

Michael: Nice. It's just a thing that you say to people just as an adult. A thing that you say to other adults. 

Aubrey: It is just like a super novel. Well, it's motivating, Michael. And you say it because you care. 

Michael: I'm actually, like, a really good person for being a huge piece of shit to you.

Aubrey: In what I would argue is the least surprising turn in human history. Jillian Michaels is now a regular on Fox News. She is also on News Nation she recently wrote an op-ed for the Daily Mail about how being trans is the result of social contagion and because people are just doing it because it's “fashionable.” 

Michael: You're not even an athlete, Jillian. You just work out. You're just good at working out. 

Aubrey: She also has a podcast called Keeping It Real.

Michael: What it's not even like a pun. It's not like Biggest Losing My Mind.

Aubrey: If you go to Apple Podcasts right now and you pull up her podcast, there will be three recent guests just on the same screen without even like load more. Those guests include Candace Owens, Bill O'Reilly and Alan Dershowitz. 

Michael: So, she's in. She's not like one of the reasonable ones. She's a full-on psycho. 

Aubrey: She's in. She just started popping up on these shows five to ten years ago. Part of it is she had this program called Healthy Wager. She still runs it. The idea is you place a bet against yourself. 

Michael: Oh, we've already talked about these. These are such garbage. Yeah. 

Aubrey: And throughout all of this, I think this is really interesting. This came up with a couple of the lady influencers that I looked into for this. They're continuing to be platformed by entertainment news and women's media. So, E News keeps giving a platform to Jillian Michaels. 

Michael: That's H2 E News. [laughs] 

Aubrey: Yeah. Wither Fashion Police. It's really notable to me how many of the folks that I started to look into on this MAHA and started out with some level of weight loss content. And I wanted to just lift up that like people who have strident anti-fat views, people who devote their time to making sure that other people look a way that is acceptable to them are people who also buy into healthism and ableism in a really big way. 

Michael: It's very similar to this. All this garbage about like anti-trans stuff, but also just like I had a purple-haired barista at Starbucks and somehow that's like an imposition on my rights. It's just like a hatred of difference. 

Aubrey: I think you're right about a core discomfort with difference and a core disdain for difference. I think the thing--

Michael: Two things. One-- [crosstalk] 

Aubrey: The direction [laughs]

Michael: Two things. What's the second thought?

Aubrey: Leave all of it [laughs]-- [crosstalk] 

Michael: What is the second thought. You said one. Where's two? Where do you think its going?

Aubrey: [laughs] No, the thing I was going to say about Jilian Michaels is that the core complaint that she has about a number of things, she is also very skeptical of Ozempic, she is also very skeptical of weight loss surgery. On The Biggest Loser, she refers to it as, and I “Taking me easy way out.” Which I would encourage you to just pilot that. Just see how that goes over with anyone who has had or performed weight loss surgery. 

Michael: Also, just leave people alone. 

Aubrey: The core assumption there is that if fat people don't want to be treated badly, they should just not be fat, but also don't be fat in the ways that I want you to not be fat, which totally erases Jillian Michaels own behavior from that equation. It totally absolves anyone who is treating fat people like shit of having to think about their own behavior. And it's thinking that shows up in a lot of conservative politics. If that person didn't want to be sexually assaulted, they should have dressed differently or they shouldn't have been there. It is all of this sort of thinking that is like, “There are no aggressors. There are only foolish people who make themselves prey, right?” 

Michael: Right. 

Aubrey: That is the canary in the coal mine for a lot of people that their politics might not be as, rock solid and they might not be as deeply empathetic. 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: As they might want you to think. Although Jillian Michaels, in fairness, never wanted anyone to think she was deeply empathetic. That was never the message. 

Michael: She's mean as hell, but now she's just mean as hell in a specific way. 

Aubrey: So that one's just like a little like, where are they now? And the answer is they've gone from yelling at fat people to yelling about trans people and immigrants on Fox News. 

Michael: My next little section of RFK Jr., stuff is the decent things that he's done or borderline decent things. So, maybe this will lift us back up, maybe this will lift our spirits. 

Aubrey: We’re talking about pharma ads? 

Michael: No, we are talking about the measles outbreak. This is moving very fast. It's now in many states. There are two deaths so far. On March 3rd, the HHS releases a press release called Measles Outbreak is a Call to Action to All of Us. And this is written, sort officially written by RFK Jr. The sub-headline is MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly Disease. 

Aubrey: Genuinely stunning coming out of an administration run by this guy. 

Michael: I was happy to see this. There were various things going on in social media of like, “RFK Jr. defends Measles Vaccine.” And I'm like, “Okay, great.” Like, “lowest imaginable bar. He cleared it. I'm happy about that.” However, if you read the full public statement, he also says some slightly more out-of-pocket things. So, here is a paragraph from later in the press release. 

Aubrey: Shocking. It is also our responsibility to provide up to date guidance on available therapeutic medications. While there is no approved antiviral for those who may be infected, CDC has recently updated their recommendations supporting administration of vitamin A under the supervision of a physician for those with mild, moderate and severe infection. Studies have found that vitamin A can dramatically reduce measles mortality. Boy, oh, fucking boy. 

Michael: So, out of one side of his mouth he's like, get the vaccine. And then out of the other he's like, “But also you need vitamin A because like vitamin A, that's like miracle.” 

Aubrey: Take it from a guy who had an eating disorder. Vitamin A is in fucking everything. 

Michael: There is some data that vitamin A can in an inchoate way help strengthen your immune system when you have measles. It can help you recover a little bit more quickly, although it's not like necessary in any way. It's like, “Eh, this might help.” But also, people are now taking it as a prophylactic because they think that it will prevent measles and there's no fucking evidence of this. And taking vitamin A, in large doses regularly is really bad for you. So, parents in Texas are giving their kids vitamin A regularly and kids are coming into the hospital fucking sick. 

Aubrey: Michael, this is the reason that Pete Evans kids cookbook got pulled from the shelves-- [crosstalk] 

Michael: For vitamin A?

Aubrey:  Was because there were recipes with mega doses of vitamin A that were designed for like toddlers and the infants.

Michael: Dude.

Aubrey: That's why we all don't have a copy of Bubba Yum Yum by Pete Evans. [laughs] 

Michael: There's also this, the following paragraph. 

Aubrey: Tens of thousands died with or of measles annually in 19th century America. By 1960, before the vaccine's introduction, improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles death. Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses. Vitamins A, C, and D and foods rich in vitamins B12, C and E should be part of a balanced diet. 

Michael: Notice the conspiracy language here. Tens of thousands died with or of measles annually. People did not die with measles. That's like a COVID conspiracy myth, right? 

Aubrey: Yes, absolutely. They had Covid when they died. But that doesn't mean that's why they died. And it's like, “Oh my God.

Michael: Yeah, oh, if you die in a car accident, but you have Covid it's listed as a Covid death, which wasn't fucking true. But this goes around conspiracy circles, and it's especially ridiculous with measles because most people who died of measles were fucking little tiny kids. So just straight up misinformation and this whole thing of, like, “Well, by 1960, we basically didn't even need the vaccine because sanitation and nutrition got so much better. He's implying that the vaccine didn't matter because everything the vaccine achieved, we achieved with lifestyle beforehand, which is not true. So, it's like, even when he clears the lowest imaginable bar, he still throws in conspiracy garbage and fucking vaccine hesitancy talking points. 

Aubrey: Yeah. It's maddening also. Do you want to look at life expectancies before 1960, my guy?

Michael: Yeah, for little tiny kids, there's another. We now have outbreaks of whooping cough too. And, whooping cough used to kill hundreds of kids a year. And it's coming back. It's really dangerous stuff because people are refusing to get vaccinated. I had to go update mine because my parents didn't vaccinate me because [laughs] they saw that documentary. 

Aubrey: Are you fucking kidding me? 

Michael: Yeah, I had to go get it, a couple months ago. Yeah. 

Aubrey: I had a friend who admitted to me recently that he did not have his kids vaccinated until I think they were teens or whatever. And he was just like, “Yeah, man.” I was just in like crunchy, lefty spaces where people are like, “That's what the government wants you to do.” 

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: And he was just like, “So, I just went along with that and whatever else.” 

Michael: It's just really wild, I think, especially on the MAHA stuff, to just think about how many people I know who are like, “Well, they are poisoning our food.”

Aubrey: Right, right, right. 

Michael: The number of people I know who talk about endocrine disruptors without actually having any sense of what that means or how it would function. 

Michael: Yeah. 

Aubrey: And I think it's just been really striking to me how much the people who think they are least vulnerable to this stuff are actually most vulnerable. I think that's my point here.

Michael: Also. Like, full amnesty for anybody who was previously antivaxxer or whatever. Like, “If you come to the party late, I'm not going to yell at you for how late you are. I'm going to be happy that you're here.” So, good for your friend, good for my parents. It's much better to sort of destigmatize people who change their minds on this stuff and be like, “Well, that's great, you got vaccinated.” I think that's good, however people get there. 

Aubrey: Yeah, 

Michael: But this stuff actually leads to the next little string of RFK Jr., initiatives. So, at HHS, he's also done a lot of stuff about food additives. So, on March 10, he announces that the FDA is going to close the loophole by which food companies can assess that their own ingredients are generally regarded as safe. I don't know if you remember this from our Daily Harvest episode. 

Aubrey: Yeah, grass. 

Michael: The grass stuff. So, the idea is that in 1958, Eisenhower passed a law that basically established the modern food system and said that like, every chemical that goes into food has to be tested and has to be safe. However, because there was already an existing food supply, you had to have a little exception for existing ingredients. So, the one they always use is olive oil. Lots of foods had olive oil. And you can't just like, “We'll take all the olive oil out of the food and we'll test it and make sure that it's safe.” You can say like, “Well, it's generally regarded as safe or like baking soda.” So, this makes sense in its inception, since this time there's now a process where food companies can self-certify that their ingredients are generally regarded as safe. And this isn't necessarily check. 

There's two different ways of doing this. And one of the ways of doing it is like you have to submit an affidavit of research. And then the FDA can be like, “Okay, we're not going to contest this and then it goes forward.” But there's also a way that you just like notify the FDA and the FDA is like, okay. Since the 1950s, we've had more than 750 chemicals enter the US food supply and only 10 of them have gone through the process of like being tested as chemicals. 

Aubrey: Oh my God.

Michael: So, this is an actual thing and like left wing think tanks have like also written reports about this. We talked about it in Daily Harvest episode. It's like a real genuine problem. This loophole in the FDA, this is worth closing. However, this also is like one of the sub, sub, sub bad reasons why you shouldn't have conspiracists running things is because I don't fucking trust RFK Jr., to like run this process. 

Aubrey: If we leave it to him, then fucking measles is going to end up on the grass. 

Michael: Exactly. Just like a vial of measles and like your lucky charms.

Aubrey: Yeah. Absolutely. 

Michael: So, again, there are people who are like, “Well, I think we should give him credit for doing this.” And like, “Maybe, but we haven't seen the outcome of this.” And I do not trust a person who has no fealty to like basic facts and who has a bunch of conspiratorial beliefs to run a fucking process like this. I don't think the outcome of this is going to be positive. 

Aubrey: Right. It required like a level of-- If I'm thinking about redesigning a system like this, right from a policy standpoint, this would require years and years of public engagement, years and years of buy in building.

Michael: Exactly. 

Aubrey: Such high levels of transparency that would be really difficult for someone who has never held office before.

Michael: It also requires not firing thousands of people, tens of thousands of people from fucking HHS, which is one of the other first things that he's done. They've gone from 82,000 employees to 62,000 employees. And just this morning I saw that the NIH put out another report showing even more fucking cuts. So again, any serious effort to make Americans healthier and to like address chronic illness would not have mass fucking firings. It would have a huge increase in the capacity of the government to do stuff like this. 

Aubrey: And then the people who stay get to stick around for staff meetings where he's thrown around the R word, apparently. 

Michael: Yeah, I know and then, yeah, yeah. 

Aubrey: We are just like Jesus God. 

Michael: He also in that same speech said that the deep state is real and shit. He's such a completely off his rocker. 

Aubrey: Yeah, he was like, it's real and it's not just Soros or whatever. And I was like, “Oh, God help us.” 

Michael: It's literally Elon Musk though. [laughs] 

Aubrey: We got to do something about antisemitism while I blame a high-profile Jewish person for being the deep state. 

Michael: The last thing we're going to talk about is he has in late March, until now, effectively embarked upon the MAHA tour where he is visiting different states. And in the HHS announcement it says Senator Kennedy will celebrate new state laws that ban ultra processed foods and dyes in public schools restrict SNAP purchases of candy and soda, and ban the addition of fluoride to public drinking water. So, he's basically celebrating these right-wing efforts to do right wing food shit. The thing again, removing dyes from school lunches. This is legislation that was just passed in West Virginia. It's an empirical question how big of a deal this is. The idea that there's a chemical additive that is harming us is plausible to me. But also, that's like, we need to actually look at research. There's also a fear mongering component of this. 

Aubrey: The thing to know about the food dyes stuff is that when you ask people, like, “What's the issue?” They will tell you it's hyperactivity in kids. What they won't tell you is that the core question that most frequently gets researched is, “Do food dyes exacerbate existing symptoms in kids who already have ADHD?” But because we're all playing one giant game of telephone about this shit that has turned into it causes ADHD. So, it's leaning really hard into straight up proud ableism. 

Michael: The really bad one is this stealth effort that is happening in numerous states now to ban soda and “candy” from food stamps. Have you heard about this? This is nationwide effort to take soda off of food stamps? 

Aubrey: Yeah. It's just an attempt to make food stamps inaccessible to as many people as possible and to make them as confusing as possible and to make them as unappealing as possible. It's the hostile architecture approach to public support programs, right? 

Michael: Of course, it's also perfect for them because they can say, like, “Oh, well, soda is very bad for you, and we care about the health of Americans and we're just trying to improve the health of Americans.” But of course, what this amounts to is just a further restriction on food stamps. So, 15 states have proposed bills to do this. And actually, when he was running for president, RFK Jr., published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that said that he wants to exempt not only soda, but also processed foods from food stamps, which is significantly worse because soda there's some issues with, like, how to define soda. But processed foods is just, no one knows what the fuck. [laughs] Everybody has a completely different definition. And so exempting, “processed foods” could be a small category or could be like a massive category. 

Aubrey: There is almost no food that you could argue is entirely unprocessed, right?

Michael: Exactly. There's also the question of why is this happening all of a sudden? If 15 states are doing something at the same time, that means that there's a push from an outside actor. So, this entire wave is being pushed by a think tank called Foundation for Government Accountability, which is very open about the fact that it wants to basically gut every form of welfare. So, Biden expanded food stamps, like, quite significantly, during the pandemic, this organization has published op-eds arguing to roll that back. The FDA also uses a specific, basket of goods when they're calculating food stamp amounts. It's based on the prices of various foods. And there's like, different ways you can do that. There's the thrifty bucket. There's the enough nutrition bucket. There's too much nutrition bucket. There's different ways of doing this. 

And this organization has pushed for an even lower threshold to be used. People should be eating even shittier and cheaper food than they are now. So, this is an organization that wants to cut food stamps. That's not like a he said, she said thing. 

Aubrey: All of these are designed as entry points into a larger set of movement values and like, policy objectives. And I think we get so far into wanting to give everything a fair shake and wanting to both sides everything that we turn off our critical brains and just allow ourselves to get got by some of this stuff. 

Michael: Luckily, I don't think this would make that much of a difference, honestly. I mean, people are not spending that much of their income on sodas anyway, because soda is super cheap. But on the other hand, why the fuck are we even doing this? There shouldn't be food stamps. There should just be money that you get. [laughs] The whole idea that there's right now food stamps, you can't buy hot food with food stamps. You can't buy like, paper towels and stuff with food stamps. 

Aubrey: Dude, in most states, tampons and pads are not covered by food stamps. Where you're just like, “Great. Cool.” 

Michael: Is like a single mom with three kids supposed to go to the grocery store and get raw broccoli and then make nice roasted broccoli with olive oil for her kids. Well, A, she doesn't have the time. B, broccoli's expensive as fuck. 

Aubrey: Right? Like, even if you agreed to the premise that actually lifestyle is at the root of everything, he also doesn't want to do the things that would make those lifestyle choices possible. 

Michael: Yeah, it's a thing that you say so you can get your weird, conspiratorial, antivax garbage into polite society, it's not something he actually has any interest in doing. If you look at the history of this man's life, like, “What has he sent the last three decades doing?” You find no evidence of doing anything for low-income people or doing anything about chronic disease. You find a bunch of antivax garbage. 

Aubrey: Right. And a bunch of rhetoric that actively makes life harder for people who have chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, neurodivergence, all of that kind of stuff. 

Michael: Yes. So that is our bleak RFK Jr. update. [laughs] 

Aubrey: Calgon, take me away. Send me to the wellness farm. 

Michael: No one is still with us, Aubrey. Nobody. Everyone “Dude, I feel like this is too much.” [laughs] 

Aubrey: This is a death march. I hate it. [laughs] 

Michael: I want you to say two things. One, and then say something. And then the episode ends and it's a cliffhanger and people have to tune in next time for the second thing. 

Aubrey: Next time on 40-year-old woman's brain.

[music]

[laughter]

[Transcript provided by SpeechDocs Podcast Transcription]