Ask Dr. Drew - Dr. Robert Redfield (Former Director of the CDC) Says RFK Is Right: Big Pharma Has Captured FDA & NIH; Pesticides & Processed Foods Increase Chronic Diseases – Ask Dr. Drew – Ep 416

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

“After more than 40 years in the public health arena, it might surprise some of my colleagues to know I think President Trump chose the right man for the job: Robert Kennedy, Jr.,” writes Dr. Robert Redfield, former Director of the CDC, in an earth-shattering op-ed for Newsweek that blames processed foods, pesticides, and pharma’s financial priorities for America’s chronic health epidemic. “It’s time to make America healthy again,” he continues. “Kennedy is right: All three of the principal health agencies suffer from agency capture… And as the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), I know the agency can be influenced by special interest groups.” Dr. Robert Redfield is a virologist, infectious disease expert, and former Director of the CDC. He served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force and Operation Warp Speed board. Previously, he co-founded the University of Maryland’s Institute of Human Virology, served as Chief of Infectious Diseases at UMD School of Medicine, and founded the Department of Retroviral Research in the U.S. Military. A Georgetown Medical graduate, he advised President Bush on HIV/AIDS and Governor Hogan on public health. Read more at https://gbmc.org/ Elizabeth Pipko is a Harvard and University of Pennsylvania graduate, author, and political advocate. She served as a staffer on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and later as a Republican National Convention spokeswoman. Pipko is the founder of Lest People Forget, the first digital Holocaust museum using decentralized technology. Her 2020 memoir ‘Finding My Place’ debuted as an Amazon #1 new release. A multilingual scholar, she speaks English, Russian, Hebrew, and has studied Mandarin for over a decade. In 2023, she was recognized on the Algemeiner Journal’s J100 list of most influential Jewish people globally. Follow her at https://x.com/elizabethpipko 「 SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS 」 Find out more about the brands that make this show possible and get special discounts on Dr. Drew's favorite products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors  • SPONSORED BY JUVENT – If you’re serious about optimizing your health and wellness — especially if you want to strengthen your bones and improve mobility — check out the JUVENT Micro-Impact Platform. Get $500 off your Juvent today by using code DREW at https://drdrew.com/juvent • FATTY15 – The future of essential fatty acids is here! Strengthen your cells against age-related breakdown with Fatty15. Get 15% off a 90-day Starter Kit Subscription at https://drdrew.com/fatty15 • CAPSADYN - Get pain relief with the power of capsaicin from chili peppers – without the burning! Capsadyn's proprietary formulation for joint & muscle pain contains no NSAIDs, opioids, anesthetics, or steroids. Try it for 15% off at https://drdrew.com/capsadyn • CHECK GENETICS - Your DNA is the key to discovering the RIGHT medication for you. Escape the big pharma cycle and understand your genetic medication blueprint with pharmacogenetic testing. Save $200 with code DRDREW at https://drdrew.com/check • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 Portions of this program may examine countervailing views on important medical issues. Always consult your physician before making any decisions about your health. 「 ABOUT THE SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We are very privileged today to have Dr. Robert Redfield join us today. He's a virologist, infectious disease expert, internist like myself. Served on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Operation WorkSpeed Board, former director of the Center for Disease Control. He was there when it was all going down. Those of you who were just watching that little tape, Paul Alexander was there serving at his privilege, I believe. He served as chief of infectious disease at his privilege, I believe. He served as

Chief of Infectious Disease at UMD School of Medicine. He is decorated. He's been on President Bush's HIV-AIDS team. He advised on these topics. There's a lot for us

to get into. We are very privileged to have him here today with us. A little later, Elizabeth Pipko stops by. She is an Ivy League-trained author, political advocate. She is an Ivy League-trained author, political advocate. She's got a lot to say about immigration. And I saw her active,

there she is with Trump. I saw her very active on X and just think she had some interesting ideas, and we'll hear her out. But right now, it is my profound privilege after the intro here to welcome in Dr. Robert Redfield. Our laws as it pertained to substances are draconian and bizarre. A psychopath started this. He was an alcoholic because of social media and pornography, PTSD, love addiction, fentanyl and heroin. Ridiculous. I'm a doctor. Where the hell do you think I learned that? I'm just saying, you go to treatment before you kill people. I am a clinician. I observe things about these chemicals. Let's just deal with what's real.

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capsidin.com slash drew to get a 15 discount plus free shipping that is c-a-p-s-a-d-y-n capsidin.com slash d-r-e-w and as i saididon.com, slash D-R-E-W. And as I said, Robert Redfield is going to join us in mere moments, former director of the CDC. You can follow GBMC.org. That's, I believe, where he wants us to go to find him presently. And Caleb has put together a cute little video series. I just want to say that the does not compute little insignia that comes up there is what Chris Cuomo is doing in response to what Dr. Redfield says. Are you explaining the joke? I am explaining the joke, so there is no misconception. We are not saying that Dr. Redfield doesn't compute.

It's Chris Cuomo is blowing a fuse because Dr. Redfield is dropping truth on him. So let's take a look at this video, and then we'll bring in Dr. Redfield. The vaccines that we developed for COVID do not prevent infection. But I think there was a decision not to do anything that made the vaccine sound like it didn't work. Wait a second. This is a natural. In 2014, this lab actually published a paper that they put the H2 receptor into humanized mice so it can infect human tissue. And then you learn that the new COVID, which came from bats, now can hardly replicate in bats. This was most likely come from the lab. Dr. Redfield, thank you for being here. Thank you. Glad to be here, Dr. Drew.

So I want to start with a couple things. How long did you practice just straight-up infectious disease? I'm just curious, because we're sort of from the same era, and infectious disease was a great interest of mine, particularly in the HIV and AIDS era, because the young physicians, we had to pick that up. That's who got that, and had to pick that up. That's who got that. And it was quite an interesting experience. Yeah, I started in 1980 and I'm

still practicing today. I do clinic two days a week. And so as a practicing physician, one of the things that we are called upon is to use our judgment, not just our knowledge base. And so in every call we make, do no harm rings in our head. And a risk-reward analysis is always the way we look at every intervention. I didn't think I was going to jump right to this straight off the top, but here I am. Were you as flabbergasted as I was to hear Francis Collins saying that there was no risk-reward considerations with the so-called non-pharmacological interventions that were being recommended during the COVID outbreak, that it was just to stop the virus regardless of the consequence? That kind of blew my mind. Is that really what was happening?

You know, Dr. Drew, it's very, very disappointing. And I share yours as someone that was on the inside trying to provide balance. For example, you know, I was not an advocate of vaccine mandates. I was definitely not an advocate of closing schools. I did believe from a public health point of view that closing the schools would cause greater public health harm to the children than keeping them in schools. I did believe from a public health point of view that closing the schools would cause greater public health harm to the children than keeping them in schools. I thought was the safest place they could be. I sure wasn't an advocate in closing our businesses. I thought we should take, I was more like a vice president Pence. I thought it was reasonable to take a knee for a week or two and evaluate different activities and see how can we modify those activities to maybe make them safer. But no, sadly, it didn't surprise me. It's very disappointing.

There was way too much emphasis put on the impact of the vaccine and not enough emphasis put on just common sense activities that we could have and there was way too much emphasis put on sort of arbitrarily requiring society to do x y and z you know very disappointing where did that come from my understanding is that was a complete abandonment of the original or the well thought out-out pandemic preparedness program. Yeah, there really was. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, I was going to say, and I, at the time,

as things were getting underway and I was watching panic evolve in the press, I kept saying, hey, look, just calm down. Listen to the CDC. They will give us guidance. They always give us guidance. We'll deal with this. And the CDC felt like at the time, and nobody knew where this was coming from, but it felt like things were being issued from on high as orders of how to behave, which CDC, I've never

had that relationship with the CDC in my practice of medicine. Yeah, it was very problematic as the guy that was the director, a couple things. If you read the pandemic plan, the person that was supposed to lead the pandemic response was the director of CDC. Right. Perfect. Yep. of Health made the decision that I was not to have independent access to the media. So how could I talk to the American public when they would not approve any of my appearances? So different networks would ask me to speak and it would be not cleared. Some people argue that it was done by the White House. It wasn't, in my view, done by the White House. I think it was done at the secretary's level, and he became more of a spokesman.

But then they anointed another spokesman. And although he's a colleague and friend of mine for years, he shouldn't have been the spokesman for the pandemic. And, of course, that was Tony Fauci became the spokesman. So immediately the CDC was no longer the spokesperson. I wanted to be out on the media every night with my experts explaining to the American public the pros and cons of different policies, but that really was negated. And I do agree with you as highlighting it. I think it was one of the biggest mistakes that we just didn't follow the pandemic plan. We didn't follow it. Yeah, it was abandoned whole scale. Completely, it's like they threw it in the trash.

And then there was a lot of too much credibility put, and I fought this. I didn't win this war, but too much credibility was put on two things one was the concept of herd immunity which i tried to explain as a virologist that there that wasn't operational for this coronavirus because i'd already seen patients by april that were getting their second episode of covid so i knew that natural immunity wasn't protecting them so i sure didn't believe that herd immunity was going to be operational. And I argued that herd immunity wasn't going to be operational. Unfortunately, Tony argued very strongly that herd immunity was going to be an operational phenomenon. I remember when he was asked how many people had to be immune before we got over the threshold of pandemic. Originally, he said 30 percent and then

later he said 50 percent and then later he said 70 percent and i remember reporters said what happened that you said 70 percent now because you know just a couple months ago you said 50 percent and tony said unfortunately for him he said well i told you 50 percent at that time because i didn't think you were ready to hear 70 i told t, let's just tell the American public the truth, that there is not going to be herd immunity. And, you know, the president was led to believe there was going to be herd immunity. And then that herd immunity was going to be amplified by a vaccine that they said was going to protect against infection. And it didn't protect against infection. It protected against disease and death, and I was glad we developed it.

I think it was really important. I think warp speed was a very successful thing. I think Trump deserves a lot of credit. But let's not say it prevented infection, because it didn't. And that's why it was not appropriate to mandate people get vaccinated, because whether they were vaccinated or not didn't prevent infection. It may have protected their life and let them make that choice, but don't mandate to other people when there was no evidence that our vaccine was going to protect

them. So a lot of mistakes in public policy there. And as you know, maybe you'll talk more about it or do more in your show over time. The real price of this is we've lost public trust. And you can't have an effective public health policy if we don't have public trust. And this is, you know, I'm hoping that we can begin to regain it, but it's going to be a big hurdle. It seems to me that the only way is with a unblemished, honest appraisal of what went wrong and mea culpa is where appropriate. I mean, we are trained that way in terms of minimizing our malpractice risk. You make a mistake, you claim it immediately, you apologize, you correct course, and you learn. How can we possibly learn and not make the same mistakes again that's why it's

go ahead go ahead i got a question make your comment that's why it's upsetting because it's not that difficult and i did try to tell i in my whole career i've tried to say this and i try to teach this to people that i teach and i tried to say this to f Fauci and others, there's no problem in saying I don't know the answer. I don't know the answer. There's no problem in saying, in retrospect, I was wrong. I'm very upset. Robert, I want to stop you because I said all the way through all the craziness, I kept saying the one thing that I would excoriate my residents for is when I asked them why they made a particular choice, if the answer was I had to do something, that is an inexcusable answer. That is how you harm patients. Do no harm. If you don't have anything to do, don't do anything. And that's that. And the fact that that was a band,

I never heard anybody say that. You just kind of said it. And it was so, so, so upsetting to me. We have a generation of physicians that didn't immediately stand up against that. That's shocking to me. And to add to that, Dr. Drew, at a different

level that I'm very involved in was the scientific community. Because my assessment as a virologist in January of 2020 was that there were two hypotheses for this pandemic. One was spillover, and one was a laboratory accident. And as we got into late January, you know, for me, the scales were tipping that this was a laboratory accident. And as we got into late January, you know, for me, the scales were tipping that this was a laboratory accident. And I tried to argue with Collins and Fauci about the need to have a very open, honest scientific debate about the two hypotheses. And all I know, they had a call, which I wasn't included in, in February with a small group of scientists and they immediately

coalesced around that anyone who thought like I did that it could have come from the laboratory was a conspirator their only answer to this was spillover they published that wedding announcement in in Lancet that Jerry McFarland helped put out which was a list of about 20 to 30 scientists signing it that there's only one explanation it's spillover and those of us that tried to make the scientific argument that this was a laboratory accident from gain of function research gone bad we all got ostracized and that is another real problem because guess what happens as a consequence of that because the american public knows better in 2024 the scientific community has also lost credibility and i well people have lost, look, because people were standing in the press advocating for

something they were calling science that had nothing to do with science. It was opinion, but it'd be that as it may. So I'm going to dial back. I've got to get through a few more questions I have for you. One was, you said that there is no prevention by the vaccine. And of course, there was also no transmission prevented by the vaccine, which was their big selling point. But there was even more question marks because in the FDA study, at least on their particular vaccine, their endpoints were hospitalization. They had lots of adverse events. They lost a whole crap load of patients in the first two weeks after vaccine. What did people do with those sorts of issues? Did they just not analyze? Speaking of the science,

did they just not look at the science? This is another reason. I've started to work, and a lot of people were surprised that I did. I've started to work and a lot of people were skeptical surprised that i did i've started to work with bobby kennedy because bobby kennedy is not anti-vaccine but bobby kennedy bobby kennedy wants to have an honest open transparent discussion about vaccines and you hit you hit a really important point about the covet vaccines i'm still i was on warp street's board i think we saved a lot of lives with them. I don't think we should have ever mandated them. I think they should have been prioritized for the vulnerable and really had nothing to do with the under 60-year children

because you're right to say that there is a prevention in them and they prevent death and illness, but they don't prevent transmission. All right? They prevent hospitalization. They prevent hospitalization, we knew at that point. At that point. And that's what they got in front of them, and that's it. Yeah, that's right. But I agree with you.

Well, EUA, whatever. And I agree. I agree that there was an emergency and Delta and Alpha were awful and we got to do something. I get it. We were doing the best we could. I get it. Why are they still mandating the same vaccine? And why haven't they come back and done their data?

And what's wrong with whole viral alternatives? Why are they using the pathogenic piece of the virus and insisting on reproducing that? Yeah, I think there's a lot of questions there. I happen to have changed my view. Again, I practice, you know, two days a week and much of my practice now is long COVID. And within that long COVID, there's a subgroup that are there because they had bad reactions to the mRNA vaccines. And I mean, really bad reactions. I've seen them. I've seen a lot of them. And they're real. Yeah, and they're real. Hell yes, they're real. Yeah. And they're real. Hell yeah, they're real. Of course they're real. It's very disappointing that the FDA hasn't been

more aggressive in opening this up and reevaluating it because I've moved from the mRNA vaccine, which, you know, turns my body into a spike protein factory, as you said, immunotoxic protein. And I don't know how much or how long. So I've moved to the killed protein, which is a Novavax vaccine, where at least I know how much spike protein you get, and I know you're not going to replicate. That's right. And I haven't really seen- So why, if they're going to, and Covaxin too, I don't know if you have feelings about that, but that to me seems like another alternative that they've been crushing for some reason. But if you're going to mandate something, you give people a choice.

I mean, what are we doing? I just can't believe what we're doing. Give them a choice and show them the safety data. I mean, the fact that they're not opening up the safety data, I heard they're trying to hold it back till 2026. Show the safety data. I mean, I will to hold it back till 2026. Show the safety data. I mean, I will tell you that I have- What is going on? I have a number of patients that their lives have been permanently changed because of the mRNA vaccine. Me too, me too.

And I've really moved everyone to getting a killed protein vaccine, But Novavax isn't out there advertising their vaccine may be a better alternative. The FDA is not out there reevaluating the safety profiles of the two different vaccines. The U.S. government's not trying to overpurchase the protein vaccine. They're overpurchasing the mRNA vaccines. I don't understand it. I really don't. I need you to educate me. Oh, you think? Go ahead. I want to hear you speculate on that.

You think? Go ahead, please. I just don't understand it. It's very, it's very bothersome for me. And it's nothing to say that we were wrong and didn't save lives with the initial vaccines, but we should reevaluate

the safety profile now and see is there a better alternative. And I think there is. Completely agree. Completely agree. Completely agree. But educate me. I don't understand why Covaxin isn't also in the running. Is there a reason?

Is there a problem with that vaccine that I'm not aware of? Help me a little. I'm a little ignorant. So help me explain to me a little. It's a essentially attenuated or killed virus from India. And it was doing very well over there. Yeah, I'm just not as familiar. Monica Gandhi was pushing that early.

I can look into it. I haven't looked into it. But I do think a whole virus vaccine, an activated whole virus vaccine, would not be unreasonable. It may actually, head-to-head, may be more beneficial because you're looking at multiple targets. Yes, and not giving us that massive spike exposure. Yeah, there's no magic to spike protein. We use it, but there may be other immunological targets.

So I'll look at that. I really haven't studied that. I should have, but I haven't. I've been more with the protein vaccine, and it may be that it's just not available here, and my international work has really changed since I left CDC, so I don't really have that international footprint that I used to have. But I would think an inactivated whole virus vaccine would be very reasonable to look at. Yes. The nucleocapsid protein is an important immunogenic protein. I think you're

right. I think you're right. I don't think we've characterized it. I mean, I think it's disappointing to me. Again, I'm a scientist and a clinician that, you know, in HIV, we dissected it. We knew everything about the virus. It's molecular mechanisms. And we know everything about the immunological response to all the different proteins. You know, we're five years into the COVID vaccine. We don't know Shinola. As you said, what's the immunoregulatory consequences of both humor and cellular activity against nuclear capture? Do you know what that is? I don't know what that is. Why don't we know what that is? That's right. Yeah. I was working for a company briefly that was trying to assess that and no one was interested. So there you go. But so my back to the international, you brought up the international issue. And early on, I saw you expressing some enthusiasm for the, in some materials you had or some interviews you did early. And obviously, a lot of our, all of our opinions changed as things moved along. But early on, you had an enthusiasm for the international discourse and coordination.

And I have my own sense of what happened there. What is your sense of why that also blew apart? Well, I think, you know, personally, you have to go back and look at the basics. You know, our international health regulation is not enforceable. All right. It's it. It really doesn't. It doesn't work. You know, when I tried to get Tedros to help me get into China in the first week of January, and I had a whole team to go in to help my friend George Gao who was the head of CDC China we'd work together I was going in to help him understand certain questions was

a human to human transmission yes or no was asymptomatic infection occurring yes or no both of which if I could have gone in with my team and figured out in the first couple weeks of January would have totally changed the public health response in America. Because I was told with certainty that there was no human-to-human transmission and there was no asymptomatic infection. And some of that was similar to what I saw in the first 14 cases of COVID that I worked up with the health departments around the country

that occurred in the United States in January and early February, we evaluated over 800 contacts, Dr. Drew, 800 contacts. And of those 800 contacts, only two were infected. So CDC concluded, I concluded, everyone concluded, this isn't a very infectious virus. But how did we evaluate those contacts? And both those contacts were spouses of husbands who came back from Wuhan, China. Well, the way we did it, when they came off the airplane, we asked people, are they sick? And if they said they weren't sick, we high-fived and they went in. So only if they were sick did we evaluate them and do testing for COVID. If we had done testing for COVID, we would have found very rapidly that this was worse.

So Debbie Burks and I, when the Princess Diamond happened, I was able to get a Japanese who cooperated with us. I was able to get CDC in on that ship. And we very rapidly showed about half of the ship was infected. And many of them had no symptoms at all. And so we said, wait a minute, this is a highly infectious virus, human to human. And it's also um frequently asymptomatic so our whole public health policy of finding sick people and contact contact tracing around them was null and void it wasn't going to work so that's how that all it it felt to me also like what was coming out of china was just the response of essentially the local communist leader

to impress Xi Jinping that he was going to get things under control. I mean, the idea of these chlorine trucks rolling down the streets, this is bizarre. This is all just propaganda. People dropping dead on the street. It was nonsensical.

I think you're right on that the problem with the Wuhan, you know, China, every thing is sort of separate. So that governor could kind of try to take control. We now know that the pandemic started somewhere in August and September of 2019. That's what bothers me about the whole thing about the wet market. George and I talked on New Year's Eve and he told me he had 27 cases of a new infectious disease causing a pneumonia, non-specified, wasn't COVID, wasn't SARS. I asked George for his case definition and he said it's people with a non-specified pneumonia that's not SARS or COVID that came from the wet market.

And I said, well, then George, I said, George, then by definition, everybody came from the wet market. Why are you trying to link it to the wet market? And I said, you need to go outside the wet market and look. And of course, he did. And two days later, he called me back and he said, Bob, we have hundreds and hundreds of cases and it had nothing to do with the wet market. But the U.S. scientist and the European scientist went on a rampage to say it had to be the wet market the proximal urgent paper the lancet wedding announcement which as you point out was in they both were opinion pieces they weren't science there was a set of setup to say this was the wet

market because they wanted to link it to sars they wanted to link it to mers and my view is they wanted to protect gain-of-function research. They didn't want any scrutiny that somehow this might have happened as a consequence of gain-of-function research, which obviously I believe that the COVID pandemic, which killed more than 20 million people, was a direct consequence of science. It wasn't a direct consequence of nature. And does the fact that there was this weird inability to have discourse about where this came from have anything to do with the fact that the National Security Council, rather than public health, began running and dictating some of the

pandemic policies and the Department of Defense seemed to have been very involved in something that had nothing to do with them? You know, Dr. Drew, I don't know for certain, but I can say the following. Clearly, the research done on the Wuhan lab, yes, it was funded by NAID, but this much. It was funded by the State Department and USAID and the Defense Department.

So a lot of our government was funding that research. All right. And I think the intelligence community was much more involved than meets the eye. All right. Even before we understood we had a pandemic, all right? And this is what has bothered me about the intelligence community not coming out clearly with a concerted analysis. And John Radcliffe, who I have a lot of respect for,

and he's seen all the classified data. I've seen probably 80% of it. And hopefully Biden will release all of it or the next president will. There's a lot of information in there that would remove a lot of people's uncertainty, what the origin of this was. And I'm disappointed in the scientific community because they should be seeking scientific truth. Instead, I think they're trying to protect science from becoming regulated. They don't want regulations on gain-of-function research. And the reality is I believe we need

regulations on gain-of-function research. I think the next pandemic is coming. You may want to talk about that later today, the great pandemic, which will be the bird flu pandemic. I think it's unlikely to come from spillover, although we're already in 27 different mammal species in the that later today, the great pandemic, which will be the bird flu pandemic. I think it's unlikely to come from spillover, although we're already in 27 different mammal species in the United States from the bird flu, H5N1. I think it's very likely that it will come from a laboratory escape. And then we'll have a pandemic of bird flu, which will be quite problematic, high mortality, and it will probably bring our nation to our knees and obviously the world in general.

So I do think there's a need to be more serious about regulating gain-of-function research. But it's very sad that the scientific community didn't approach this scientifically, openly. Beyond. If you don't like my opinion, debate me. Let's look at the data. We've always done.

Don't just say I'm a conspirator. We've always done. I'm a conspirator. Don't just dismiss me. I mean, I was only a virologist at Infectious Disease, the CDC director, and I was dismissed because I had an opinion that was different than the mainstream. Which I might have. The New York Times editorial board.

And the New York Times editorial board and the anchors on NBC News, who shouldn't even have had an opinion, let alone be having sway with their opinion. I will say that I think the test of time will affirm that our analysis was correct, unfortunately. It doesn't help, though, unless we respond to it in a way to have some type of policy impact that we prevent the next great pandemic. Yeah. Well, I want to talk about that after. I've got to take a little break here. We'll talk about it and get back. Before I do, though, is there anything more you can tell us about those classified documents that led you to conclude that all of us would be persuaded? Because we're living in the shadow.

Another article just came out by Christian Anderson and those guys where they essentially called raccoon dog poop and said, ah, we found it in the raccoon dog poop. Therefore, it came from the wet market. I was like, why are you? Yes, it was in the wet market, but it may not have started in the wet market, but go ahead. Anything you can tell us? I really have to, but I can say that

the stuff that's been declassified, we know that there was infections, obviously, that were occurring in August and September. We know that that laboratory, the Wuhan lab in September, did three things that I think were highly irregular. One was they changed the leadership from the civilian leadership to the military leadership.

The second thing they did, they deleted the sequences of the coronaviruses that they had researched for decades. They deleted them. And you know, who does that? And the third thing they did that I think is the most telling is they issued a new contract for a new ventilation system for the lab. So I think September was clearly when they recognized they had laboratory-associated infections.

They didn't have adequate containment in that lab. And the problem we had is most of the people have adequate containment in that lab. And the problem we had is most of the people that were working in the lab and most of the people there were young. So guess what? They didn't get very sick. They were asymptomatic.

And then they went to their home. And before you knew it, Wuhan had 20 million people infected. And when people fight me on this, and some really decent scientists do, I think Anderson and those guys really need to retract their papers. Because the proximal origin paper is just not accurate. The epidemic started months before that. So why are they doing that? Even the CDC director of China says it had nothing to do with the wet market based on his own data.

So why do they keep doing that? They keep doing that because they're trying to protect gain of function research. Right. And some of that is self-fulfilling because they want that, you know, those resources, that money, that fame that you and I used to be in. I was an academic for a long time. You know, the currency is publications and grants, okay? But they should be honest scientists and retract the papers because they're not accurate. I tell people. They're still trying to defend it. Yeah.

I know. They're still trying to defend it. And I think they're thinking. Go ahead. Sorry you tell you talk to christian you know you i asked tony the same question tell me why the current covet virus that came from bats and went into some animal that you haven't found yet right tell me why that virus no longer can infect efficiently bats how'd that that happen? Right. Right. That's exactly,

where did that fur and cleavage come from in a particular subtype of coronavirus? The whole family of subtypes has never seen anything like that. But okay. Be that as it may.

We got to take a little break here. When we come back, I do want to talk about bird flu and how people can prepare themselves. I also wonder if you have any thoughts on the impact of the Italian outbreak. I think that had more of an impact on us in terms of putting us over the waterfall of panic than we realized. But I'm suspicious about that. We'll take a little break.

You mean the Italian outbreak of COVID. The Italian outbreak of COVID. In Italy. Yeah. In Lombardy. Yeah. Be right back after this. The Wellness Company knows that taking charge of your family's health care is a top priority,

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or the equivalent Juvent will then donate two systems on your behalf. Just use the code HELENHELEN relief at checkout alongside the code DREW for that $500 off. So, we're speaking to Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the CCC. Susan's going to go use it. She's been recovering from some minoring stuff.

Though it doesn't feel minor if you're going through it, of course. And Dr. Redfield, let's bring him back in here. Is the only place you want people to go is that gbmc.org if they need to reach you or follow you uh the best place is to probably use my regular email which is rrrredfieldmd at gmail.com okay thank you for that uh and now back to the before we talk about the bird flu i wanted to talk about the lombard and i think it was lombardi, it's what it's called, outbreak in Italy. I saw that outbreak. I saw the lockdown.

I saw that they seemed to be fashioning their lockdown after some advice they were getting from China. And I noticed, I knew in my heart that this was an older population and that their intensive care services are not going to be what ours are here. But that somehow hit the news as this is exactly what's coming to our country. And it just was in China. We have to lock down. Now, I don't know if you know this. A guy named Michael Singer investigated what happened in Lombard. And it turns out there were two politicians there that determined the lockdown.

One of them was a Chinese Communist Party enthusiast who wanted to show how effective that government was in their policies and wrote a book about it that was instantly pulled from the market because it was such an embarrassment to the Chinese government. This is the book. This is our book that chronicles that. Of course, that yellow graph there above Xi Jinping's name is, if you see, that's what that local, I want to call them local Soviet, the local government in Wuhan claimed they did with the virus. That's the information they sent to Xi Jinping, which is, of course, insane. But I'll let you have at the Italian outbreak.

Well, I know when we saw the cases coming in Italy, they were quite disconcerting. You know, I mean, you saw the TV where you had, you know, literally patients that were in severe respiratory insufficiency that were being lined up in the hallways and really overwhelmed their critical care capacity pretty quickly. For me, it was a wake-up call because I was thinking unidirectly that people came from China to America. I wasn't thinking that people came from China to Europe to America. and you know I had went to see the president on January 31st and I told the president that I felt from a public health perspective we needed to curtail transportation between China particularly Wuhan and the United States and we needed to stop the transportation and there was some discussion with some of the other cabinet members that were in the room at the

time and you know some of the other cabinet members that were in the room at the time. And one of the things I liked about the president was that he was extremely decisive. He asked me a couple questions. And within 10 minutes, he basically said to Mick Mulvaney, we're going to shut down air travel to and from China. And then we started to see, I started to see some cases that were occurring that didn't have a China connection. I remember a lawyer and his family that were in New York that had come back from Italy. And then we had another, I think family that came back from France. And then, of course, Debbie Burks, who was in the White House at the time, started to see the Lombardi experience.

And it was clear to us that this virus was well established in parts of Europe, particularly Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. And that's when in March, we went ahead and just shut down air travel to and from Europe. These were not easy decisions. These were not decisions that were going to stop the potential for the epidemic to be in America. But we had hoped that they would slow the pace of the introduction of the epidemic to America. And we were hoping that that slowness would give us time to operationalize some of the prevention methods that we thought were important. And hopefully get the private sector really engaged in trying to develop countermeasures like antivirals and vaccines. But the Italy thing was a real wake up call.

You know, it's hard to believe. You know, I had the first case of COVID in the United States. I think it was January like 20th or January 21st. I know when I asked the president to shut down all air travel to and from China, I think there were less than 10 cases in America, no deaths. And again, this is where I respect his decisiveness. He didn't say, hey, wait, Bob, there's no deaths. There's no thing. It's only 10 cases. Why are we going to do this? He just asked me what my public health advice was and he really he followed it and i was very impressed with that decision i think a lot of other people would have got on the phone and ask a bunch of other people what they think before they made a decision he made a decision he was

decisive i also actually admired uh governor desantis when he pulled a group of people together and made his decision to reverse the lockdown and the mandates and all this stuff. People are able, some of our leaders are able to take information and make decisions. That's what we want them to do. We wish more governors had done that.

We wish more governors had done that. I know I went on to really ask governors not to shut down the schools. And very few governors listened to me. Only a couple did. I got an award here in Baltimore because the Catholic school system listened to me. And they kept their schools open. And they had the highest scores they've ever had on their standardized testing last year, whereas the public schools had the lowest.

It's very sad to see what's happened to our youth in terms of that terrible policy decision to shut down schools. And it's important because, you know, this isn't our last pandemic. You know, we need to learn from the mistakes. And you said it clearly. It would be really great if all of us that were involved, that I'm the first to admit the mistakes we made. It would be nice if everybody would just admit, hey, we made a mistake. That wasn't the right thing. It's wild. It's wild that we made a mistake that wasn't the right wild

it's wild that we're not doing that i just can't understand it but but um before we do get into the bird flu uh shoot there was something else so when oh what how did we go from oh we have a problem we need to take a knee uh it's more than we it's gotten out of the out of hand a little bit in europe how do we go from that recognition that at best we could slow things down maybe to zero covid where did that come from and one death is too many and people were saying insane things they were just not connected to reality yeah i think you know without getting names, since I was there and I know who were the advocates for a lot of this, I will say, obviously, very disappointing. Really not honest debate and discussion. An attempt to just make definitive statements that just weren't accurate.

I mean, I can remember hearing the president being told that when, you know, when herd immunity got to 30 to 50%, the pandemic was over. Right? Even though there was no evidence that herd immunity even existed. And so people just had a tendency to take the attitude that they had to tell the American people what they think they needed to hear. Whereas I tried to take the position, I'll tell you the truth. And if the truth is I don't know,

that's what I'm going to tell you. I don't know. I don't know the answer's what I'm going to tell you. I don't know. I don't know the answer. Yeah, of course. And to look back at HIV, we used a lot of fear back then too and I feel guilty for having done so. But, you know,

and, you know, remember if you have sex with one person, you're going to have sex with every person they ever had sex with. It's like, no, no, that was not true. There were a lot of things that were not true then and they use that same playbook

now, and it was inappropriate. But my, I would hope you would give us some names, either now or someday, so we know who not to listen to next time. We have to figure out who not to listen to. I was writing a book, and

I got pretty far along in it, and I got, you know, went out and had a good ghostwriter help me and went out and marketed it to the big groups. And all of the big groups finally rejected my book because they felt that it was inappropriate to give me a voice because I suggested the virus came from a laboratory. All the major, I'm talking about- Name names. Name names. We need to know. I would argue that we have a responsibility to alert people who we should not listen to. I thought I was going to get St. Martin's Press because I liked him. I worked with Randy Schultz and others when he did his AIDS books. I thought they'd really back me and get me to do it. The only group that said they'd publish me was Skyhorse said they would publish, but they didn't really have enough advance that I could

pay my ghostwriter, which I'm not the greatest writer. So I needed the ghostwriter to help put it into English. You know, you could capture my thoughts. Go back, go back to them. They've had a lot of success lately they might be able to in better position to really help you out i think they would love to do this book i know those guys because this book would be you know this is a there's a there's a real story here dr redfield god please you have a literary agent what's that caleb do you have an agent i did but that one that one failed so i'm open if you have a good one let's get yeah jay let's get him a lit agent because that yeah that'd be a big book caleb i know that like all

the guys are at sky horse they would they would kill to do this i'm sure they'll do whatever they have to do absolutely so sky horse would but yeah if you want to get a something going around absolutely an agent would sign right away yeah but that That would be amazing. I would love to read that book. He doesn't need to pay the 6% or 10%. Just go straight to Skyhorse. Forget it. But so again, the bird flu. So let's talk about preparedness. One of the great mysteries to me of the pandemic, when I had a nasty case of alpha or delta, I don't know which, and I sat in the windowsill of my bedroom every night in isolation doing Instagram Lives, talking to people about what things worked for me that were useful in dealing with a bad case of COVID. Including, of course, monoclonal antibodies, which really stopped the whole process for me.

I mean, that was just incredibly, like while I was getting the infusion i got better you know a week later however the government pulled the vans that were carting monoclonal antibodies around florida which to me was tantamount to killing people because you didn't like florida's policy but i don't know if you remember that episode that was one of the darker no i think i'd ever seen you know i think no i think desantis did the right thing where he really put a lot of emphasis on getting people treatment and monoclonal antibodies. And then the government, some of the government people, without going into names, were very upset by that. Florida was now getting more monoclonal antibody and yeah, they were using it and they were saving lives. And, you know, we should have gone into a crash scientific program right now and have accelerated approval based on process so that that monoclonal antibody could be changed, changed, changed, changed.

Instead, they basically shut the whole thing down and the virus changed. And it's really sad because monoclonal, listen, the president, I was involved in the president's treatment. You know, we got the president to Regeneron when it was still experimental. I mean, it probably saved his, I think it might have saved his life. Yep, yep, I absolutely agree. I was talking to Mehmet Oz about that. He was telling me the exact same thing. And so that was, so to me, the darker aspects of COVID,

I want to just correct that as we prepare for the next pandemic, was the lack of public health education about how to survive this illness. What do you do if you get sick? What are your treatment options? What are your risks? I mean, there was no public education around. Everybody was going to get COVID, and the public health said nothing

about what to do when you get sick except to come back to the hospital when you're blue, which were just mind-boggling to me. Well, and Dr. Drew, it was even worse than that. And maybe you'll react to this and say something. Cause I'm doing a lot of long COVID now. Okay. And treating a lot of people and some of them are really sick. Okay. And I'm using a lot of off label treatment. So the other problem was even physicians and patients that wanted to try off-label regimens were being badgered or in some cases threatened, in some cases their licenses being threatened. Because, and I know as a CDC director, I decided since ivermectin, no, it was hydroxychloroquine at the time, was being talked about, the president talked about it, I decided in the MMWR that I was going to publish everything we

knew about the use of hydroxychloroquine. I wasn't advocating it. I wasn't not advocating it. I was just telling the health, the medical community, what did we know? How was it used, etc.? You wouldn't believe the attacks I got, even from my own agency, saying how irresponsible it was for me to publish that. I said, I'm not advocating. I just think doctors should know what we know. I didn't do it for ivermectin because everybody knew enough about ivermectin, but we should never be restricting doctors' ability to use off-label medications with the consent of their patients. And that was a huge problem. Oh, my God.

It was just disgusting to me. But let me give you, I'll tell you one little hint about long COVID that I learned with an N of one, meaning moi. There was an article in Nature Aging recently entitled Proteomics Identifies Potential Immunologic Drivers of Post-Infection Brain Atrophy from Serious Illness. Now, what you and I know as adult medical doctors, that shrinkage is something that happens in older folk after a severe illness of various types, particularly if they're in the ICU. The pediatricians, who are many of the state public health officials,

freaked out at the observation that bad COVID causes some brain atrophy. That was driving some of the... Peter Hotez told me he was absolutely apoplectic about that issue. And I walked away and went, oh, he doesn't know that that just... We actually know the immunologic drivers for that.

But it turns out much of that with serious illness is in the temporal lobe. And I had a very distinct feeling with, I had terrible long COVID, fog, everything, fatigue. It was bad. But I had this feeling that if I worked on music or language, I would clear the fog. And we were going to take a trip to Greece that summer.

And so I thought, I'm going to learn Greek. And I spent i learned greek and in two weeks the brain fog cleared and of one i don't know same region of the brain very interesting pick up the piano again yeah it's like you know i i'm using i'm using a lot of uh actually one of the old hame medicines that i'm using uh for particularly brain fog or cognitive dysfunction. It's a Maraviroc, you know, trying to change chemokine pathways. And it's very interesting to see how patients improve. You know, it's very frustrating for these patients because they think they're never going to get better. The first thing I try to do is tell them they're going to get better.

But some patients I've tried to accelerate their healing i have one young woman and her cognitive dysfunction was so severe she couldn't talk in more than three to five word phrases because she couldn't remember the words after that and once i got her on treatment within about i'd say about three weeks, she was speaking normally. And then her pharmacy plan refused to approve her renewal of her drug because they didn't think it was indicated because it was off-label. And within 10 days, she couldn't speak again. And then I went through the rigmarole of getting her the drug again. And then within about two weeks, she's speaking normally. So I know there's a, just like your music, and I'll think about that to my patients because they're trying to give them something to do.

Learn a new language. Language. Language. Learn a new language and therapeutic. You know, I have patients that no longer can read because they can't concentrate. And I put them on some of these drugs. And I've gotten into their back reading books, and they're really doing well. But I like your idea of language. Uh of lang oh you cut out for some reason I know why Caleb is that

uh on his end your voice cut out press the mute button back the mute button must have been accidentally hit somewhere there your phone's telling you our time is up which is true okay but let me just finish I I was aware of Mravrac being used. There's other things I don't want to get into right now. Maybe I'll bring you back. We'll talk about it. So before I let you go, I've got my other guests I've got to get to in a second. But what I want to know is how do we prepare for bird flu? Bird flu does respond. There's a little bit of data on Tamiflu. There are other antivirals that have been useful in bird flu. How do we prepare? Yeah, I think it's really important that we, one of my big issues right now, and I'd love to come back and talk to you more about it, is I'm arguing that the most important national security threat

that the United States faces right now is not China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It's biosecurity. And we need to put in place a proportional response to the threat. Part of that is we have to invest heavily in the private sector platform technology, similar to what we have in the Defense Department for missiles and bombs and airplanes. We need to build that capacity. I'm involved in a publicly traded company right now where I'm chief medical officer. And we have a really exciting drug that is very, very, very active against H5N1. It's like one pill will cover you for 20 days. But it's in phase two.

If it's finished phase one, we're going to go phase two. But we should have a very broad, aggressive approach right now in antiviral drug development to prepare. Okay? Vaccines are not going to solve our problem. I love Okay. Vaccines are not going to solve our problem. I love vaccines, but they're not going to solve our problem. You know, with flu, the best they do is 50%. We need antiviral drug development. All right.

And we need an aggressive, expanded private sector capacity for antiviral drug development. And monofonals. Yeah. capacity for antiviral drug development. And monoclonals. Yeah, well, that's antiviral drug development, which is a countermeasures. Monoclonals could really help us a lot. You could just have a platform procedure where I don't have to go all the way back to the beginning. AstraZeneca could have an approved process where I just flip in the insert

for a new monoclonal and the FDAda should be able to approve it in 60 days it doesn't mean i have to start all over from the beginning again it's a big mistake uh so i really do think we have to really aggressively invest in therapeutics right now because that's what's going to make the difference when the bird flu comes as you mentioned tam, Tamiflu and Biloxivir, these are not very effective. They're not very effective. A little bit, a little bit. Not like your new one.

I know who I'm coming to if it comes. I'm calling you because that sounds amazing. All right, listen, we have to wrap this up. I hope you'll come back because I could talk all day with you about this. It's so wonderful having, it brings me joy to talk to you, frankly. Normally, I spend my time being frustrated

and just freaking my head like I can't believe what happened to our profession, our public health system, because nobody's doing what you're doing, which is assessing it, saying, sorry where I got wrong is what happened. And I look forward to the day you name the names that we should never listen to again.

We did know. The point is when people say, we didn't know, we didn't know. We did know. Some of us did know. Anybody who looked at data knew. We knew. And so this business of we didn't know

just does not fly and it will not fly next time. Dr. Redfield, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks, Scott. And thank you. Bring me back. I'd love to talk about the national security and bird flu. and I'd love any advice you have on literary

people to help me get my book out. We got to get that book going. We'll exchange it. Caleb, did you write down his email? He gave it out very publicly. Yeah, I have your info. Absolutely, yeah. God bless. Bye-bye. We'll see you soon. Cheers.

Okay, my next guest is Elizabeth Pipko she's an Ivy League trained graduate author political advocate she was a staffer on the Trump White House in 2016

in a campaign Republican National Convention spokeswoman she is founder of Lest People Forget a digital Holocaust museum and her 2020 memoir Finding My Place

was an Amazon bestseller. She is multilingual. She is a scholar, and she speaks English, Russian, Hebrew, easy languages, Mandarin, no big deal. You can follow her on X at Elizabeth Pipko, P-I-P-K-O. Please welcome Elizabeth Pipko. Welcome. Hi, thanks for having me.

Appreciate it very much. So your family emigrated from the Soviet Union. You were born in this country, is that correct? I was, yes. If you're wondering, I can be president. Okay, good. So that was what I was checking on. And for me, it's funny, my family was a part of a Russian diaspora as well.

But the diaspora from the turn of the 20th century. And much of that was out of Ukraine and Belarus. And I was always raised, you're Russian, you're Russian, you're Russian. Well, lo and behold, Ukraine. So I'm wondering, are you truly Russian or are you from the more Western provinces? I don't think I'm truly Russian. Nowadays, it's actually really bad, apparently, to be truly Russian or are you from the more Western provinces? I don't think I'm truly Russian. Nowadays, it's actually really bad, apparently, to be truly Russian. So luckily, I am not. My dad was actually born in Estonia.

My mom was born in Russia, but all of my grandparents, Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia, all around. So no, I'm not truly Russian. So that's my thing. I kind of have a feeling it was. Except Estonia, little known fact about Estonia, those are actually Finnish descendants, which is fascinating. When I tried learning Estonian, I realized how different it was and how it's not at all.

It's like Finnish. It's terrible. Yeah, it's terrible. Exactly, yeah. And sometimes I think that language is what sets populations up to be extra brilliant. So Hungarian's impossible. Estonian's impossible.

And guess what? Lots of smart people in those countries. My dad will be very happy to hear that. Okay. All right. So what I was digging into, the reason I was digging into this is that it's just so odd to me. Well, it's not odd. It's a matter of fact, but that we have plenty of people in this

country that have fled totalitarian, fled communist, fled socialist, watched horrors develop with any sort of centralized authority by government, and yet we seem to be going that way. What does that look like from your perspective or your parents' perspective? And let me just frame it. Your book is about making the most of the freedoms that are provided here in this country. Right. No, I mean, it's interesting to me because I didn't realize until a couple of years ago how much of an impact my parents' background actually had on me. I actually was mostly raised by my

grandparents here because my parents were always traveling and working. That's why I speak Russian. It was my first language. I was raised basically by my grandparents who taught me everything that I know. And I think only until I got to maybe college age, even a little bit older, I didn't realize how different I was from people my age. And then when I kind of developed my political views that I think are very different, at least for most young Jewish American females from New York City, I realized that my views come from the fact that I know what I want to avoid in this country. And I don't want to see in this country what I want to see is everything that my parents believed in when they came here, right? Both my parents gave up everything to come to this country.

My father actually lost his father in the process. He said goodbye to him, not knowing if he'd ever see him again. In the meantime, he tried for several years to save up the money and get back to a neutral country where he could see him. And only later on, after his third heart attack, when he died, the Soviet Union collapsed and my dad found the KGB file on my family. Did he find out how many times his father tried to get out to see him but was obviously stopped? attack when he died, the Soviet Union collapsed, and my dad found the KGB file on my family. Did he find out how many times his father tried to get out to see him, but was obviously stopped

by those that most people in this country will never understand, right? Because in America, if you're born and raised here, you usually don't know what it means to live under the kind of rule that people did in the Soviet Union, the kind of rule that actually still exists in our world right now. So I only realized very recently that if I did not have the upbringing that I did, my political views would probably be very different. My views in general would be very different. My values would be very different. So I do understand the lack of fear amongst a lot of people my age when it comes to issues

like communism and socialism and everything that you mentioned. But I wonder how much is a lack of the upbringing that I have and how much is just a lack of education. Maybe I want to get your perspective, this is why I was anxious to talk to you, on some of the enthusiasms that are out there. In other words, one of the egregious phenomenon I keep seeing, certainly in my profession, is over-centralization of decision making of authority rather than decentralizing, which I don't know if you're familiar

with Democracy in America, Alexis de Frenchman's book from the 1820s, who said, essentially, try to figure out why democracy worked in America. It's because of the local practices, because of the decentralization of our government. And now it feels like, originally in the name of civil liberties, I think,

things were brought to Washington, and now there's an enthusiasm for that. And I personally, I don't want to use too strong a language, but I'm alarmed by it and disgusted by it at the same time. Right, no, I totally agree. Isn't that the Reagan quote?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's if fascism ever arrives in this country, it'll come under the guise of liberalism. I think when there's a serious lack of education, that's exactly what happens, right? Because things might look good on the surface, but without any ability to think critically, people don't realize what that could actually result in.

I mean, when I see people my own age, I graduated last year with my master's. So about a year and a half, two years ago, I was in school at UPenn and people talked every single day about how great socialism is and how they will advocate and fight for socialism in this country until they die. And that's what they're going to live for. And that's what they believe will save us all. And I truly didn't even know where I was. It felt like I was in the twilight zone. Did you speak up at the time? I did not speak up. I learned very quickly in my university time

that you stay quiet, you write the papers, they will appreciate you, get your A's, you get your 4.0 and you get out unscathed. I was genuinely afraid. Now I realize how correct I was to be afraid. October 7th happened a couple months after I graduated. And the same school that I had just, you know, walked the graduation stage at was covered in Hamas flags. So I'm clearly, I was correct to be afraid. I'm very

glad now that I didn't stand up, but I also am scared to wonder what would have happened had I been in class when that happened. I would not have been able to stay silent if I saw swastikas and Hamas flags and everything that I've seen kind of take over college campuses, especially the ones that I graduated from in the last year. So I did not speak up because genuinely I was afraid. There's this kind of mob mentality in school and between the professors and the kids that you want to be, I guess, your friends or at least civil with you. You kind of learn to stay quiet. If anything, it made me stronger. I knew that when I got out, I was going to obviously be more vocal and here I am. But it's very difficult in those situations. And I think when you come from what I came from, when you have two parents to come back to and have those

conversations with, you're completely fine because my dad could dispel almost everything that I learned in class. But when you don't have that, I completely understand fine because my dad could dispel almost everything that I learned in class. But when you don't have that, I completely understand how people my age and younger, by the way, get brainwashed like they do in those universities because some of these professors I was actually extremely close to. And when you spend that much time with them and they try to fill you with this negativity, this hatred for America, this apparently need for socialism, you very quickly believe that they are correct. So I totally understand how that happens now. What is your agenda moving forward? I am right now, and we're what, 14 days out from election day, right? I am the national spokeswoman for the Republican Party. I somehow believe that this is not a political role. It's funny,

but I just think that I'm doing what I can for my country. I don't care for politics. I don't care to label myself in any way. I care to fight for this country in any way that I can. I was asked by the Trump family to take on this role. And I, as a daughter of immigrants, I don't think you can ever say no to a platform like the one that I have right now. I have 14 days to try and convince as many people as I can to vote for Donald Trump. From there, I'll see what happens. But convince as many people as I can to vote for Donald Trump. From there, I'll see what happens. But, I mean, my book was called Finding My Place, Making My Parents' American Dream Come True. And I think my agenda forever is simply to make my parents' work ethic, their fight, their sacrifice,

everything that they've done for their American dream, for my American dream, I want that to come true because they really, really did give up absolutely everything. Both sides of my family gave up everything. I don't know my grandfather, right? I have his last name proudly. I got married and I kept my last name because I feel so connected to the grandfather. I never knew the grandfather that stayed behind in the Soviet Union. So his future grandchildren that he never got to meet could live this dream, could be here with you right now, could advocate for this country and for all the freedoms that we unfortunately take for granted. So for me, it's about making my parents' dreams come true and making sure that as many people my age and younger, because that's where it's actually missing, understand what we have in this country. From that perspective, do you have any specifics for, say, a Kamala Harris enthusiast? Again, her policies are a little opaque, but are there ways you would try to reach people in that camp to convince them that maybe there's another way?

Yeah, I mean, it always depends who I'm talking to, right? But when it comes to young people, I think people don't really like to realize the fact that they've been lied to, right? People don't like to kind of look back and think, oh, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I've been repeating talking points that weren't true because people thought I was stupid and that I would just believe that and repeat that. So for me, it's not about yelling at people that they're wrong and that Donald Trump is the best candidate. It's about asking them why they think Kamala Harris is the best for the job, what they think is wrong with Donald Trump, because more often than not, what they tell me is actually not true. I can prove to them very quickly that it was untrue.

And then we have a conversation about why they actually believed it to begin with, where they got that information and what it means to be a critical thinker right now in one of the few countries in the world where we're actually allowed to be. Is that true? I always think about our European sort of analogs being, and even in certain parts of South America and Africa, being allowed to think critically feels more than here. No? Am I wrong? I don't. I don't think so. I think legally, maybe it's more than here, but I think it's one of the few places where it's still encouraged. I have a lot of friends in Europe who tell me they don't understand why in America we all just want to be unique, right? We want to be individuals. We want to think about ourselves. I don't think they like it. I feel like it's not in their blood, like it's in our blood. And I encourage that for everyone. I think that's almost the basic fundamental value when it comes

to liberalism too, right? Or it was at one point. And I think- Whatever liberalism is now, I don't know. Exactly. But I do think that people, at least my age and younger, they do appreciate that. They appreciate that fact and they appreciate that people on the right encourage that, even if it leads to a different outcome or a different political belief. Yeah, it is this strange phenomenology that is underway where centralization is considered good, doing things for yourself, byization is considered good, doing things for yourself, by yourself

is considered wrong or greedy, and that trying to create economies that raise all boats, which is historically, there's only one that has really done that, that somehow is not caring. So how do you convince people that creating a thriving economy is actually more effective and is in fact caring? Yeah. I mean, I think for me, I think that a good economy

or success in general, or the ability to create success for other people starts at home. I think there's a lot of people that don't realize that. I don't know if it came from my parents or if I just learned that. But I think until you can protect yourselves and protect your loved ones, you really shouldn't reach out and try to impact anyone else. I think in this country, people try to think with their neighbors. There's a lot of groupthink going on in general, and no one wants to see themselves as successful. But the fact is, I've always thought the best way for me to change the world, the best way for me to help those that are suffering is to be successful first as an individual, to be successful myself. And I think too many people forgot that. Too many people want to identify as victims. Too many people want to sit around and think, you know,

how bad their lives must be to think about how bad America is to think about all these negative things when in reality, we are living in the greatest country on the face of the earth in the best time that we could be living in it. And we have all the opportunity in the world to be the best versions, the most successful versions of ourselves. And only until, sorry, not until we are that version of ourselves can anyone else be helped. And if you try to help everyone, you end up helping no one. It's nice to hear that. Where do you want people to go? Where are you driving people right now? Honestly, right now, I want everyone to register to vote.

I want them to make sure they're registered, make sure they vote as early as they legally can, and make sure their friends, their family members, their neighbors, their teachers, their dog walkers, everyone else in between banks that early vote as well. Elizabeth, anything else you want to get into? Anything you want. whatever works for you. I mean, that's really it for me. I just wanted to hear what you had to say. I see you on social media and I see you in some of the commentary.

And I think this is, you're very interesting. And it interests me. I get very interested when Cubans run over here, when Russians come over here. And their point of view is so crystal clear. And I don't understand why people don't listen to people's lived experience. And so many bad things can happen when you, it's just, this is what this country was founded on,

not giving government authority. Like you mentioned Reagan a minute ago, you know, his famous phrase was, the scariest words in the English language are, I'm from the government, I'm here to help you. And the fact is, governments run amok. This is just, this is why the founding fathers created the system they did

to prevent exactly this from happening, from centralizing, taking our rights away. That's why the brilliance of the state system is in place, so it's not over-federalized, which we have now done. But we need to, I think, just get back to our basics. And unfortunately, the only people that pay attention to the basics are people that have come over here from somewhere where those things were taken away

or never given. Right, unfortunately, I think most of us are a little too privileged in this country. That's probably the best way to put it. A little too privileged, a little too happy. And I think until you experience some really, really bad things, do you then realize what you have here? And I think if, I mean, I lived one of the greatest lives that I probably could have. I had the best childhood, the best upbringing possible, but it wasn't possible without my parents' sacrifice. So I think until you've suffered a little bit, you probably don't know what you

have here. So if people would learn a little more and read a little more, maybe listen to my parents' sacrifice. So I think until you've suffered a little bit, you probably don't know what you have here. So if people would learn a little more and read a little more, maybe listen to my parents a little bit more, I'm going to get them to speak out too. Then they'd probably understand what they had here, work a little harder and understand what it means and the privilege that we have here when we have our own individual liberties. You can follow Elizabeth Pipko, as I said, on X and IG at Elizabeth Pipko. Elizabeth, thank you much for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate it. And for us coming up,

we have Cheryl Atkinson tomorrow. Dr. Autumn Smith is going to swing by again from Paleo. Viva Fry and Emily Kaplan is in here on Monday. We're going to have a Monday show next week. I have to do Gutfeld on Tuesday. Let's see. What am I seeing there? August 23rd, 25th. I guess Monday the 28th is Viva

Fried. Tuesday the 29th is the Gutfeld, right? Carrie Lake coming back with Jack Posobiec on the 30th. That should be very interesting. Debbie Lehman and Jillian Michaels is on the schedule for November 6th, and then Salty Cracker coming back on the 7th. We'll have a lot of post-mortem, I'm sure, with Salty on what happened in the elections or what should have or didn't or what we feel about it. It'll be a very interesting time.

So, Caleb, anything on your front? Everything good from your perspective? Very interesting show today, yes? Yeah, we got a lot of people. You need to go back and listen to this and listen between the lines to what Dr. Redfield was saying because we got some scoops in there that I don't think we've heard before. I was over here texting Emily like, wait, did I just hear what I thought I heard?

Oh yes, you did. And we need to get that book published. I would like to publish it myself. I would give anything to push it out there. I mean, but I think he wants to, the writer wants money and we'd have to figure something out. I guarantee publishers would jump for it.

Can you help push that forward a little bit for me? Absolutely. He's a former director of the CDC. Any publisher should be jumping for it. It's just getting an agent that understands it. That's what I'm saying. Or let's call the Sky...

I'm going to call the Skyhorse people and see. I'm going to literally let them an email right now and see if... He was right there. This is the guy. He was right there telling the truth now. He's going to name names if he gets his book published. So let's get this done, everybody. All right. So we are... I'm in here tomorrow. I have to do something.

I have to drive to San Diego tomorrow, of all things. And as I said, are, I'm in here tomorrow. I have to do something. I have to drive to San Diego tomorrow of all things. And as I said, Carol Atkinson in here tomorrow and we will see you at three o'clock Pacific time. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here are not a substitute for medical care, diagnosis, or treatment. This show is intended for educational and informational purposes only. I am a licensed physician, but I am not a replacement for your personal doctor and I am not practicing medicine here. Always remember that our understanding of medicine and science is constantly evolving. Though my opinion is based on the information

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