Ask Dr. Drew - Vivek Ramaswamy (2024 Presidential Candidate, Biopharma Company Founder & “Woke Inc” Author) LIVE – Ask Dr. Drew – Episode 237

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy is an entrepreneur and Republican candidate for the 2024 US Presidential Election. He joins Dr. Drew for a LIVE interview about his campaign, his opposition to “woke” policies, the recent Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action in colleges, and his experiences as the first Millennial Republican to run for president. Vivek Ramaswamy founded the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences in 2014. He is the NYT bestselling author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam”, “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence” and “Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn’t Vote For”. Find out more at https://vivek2024.com and follow him at https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy 「 SPONSORED BY 」 Find out more about the companies that make this show possible and get special discounts on amazing products at https://drdrew.com/sponsors • PRIMAL LIFE - Dr. Drew recommends Primal Life's 100% natural dental products to improve your mouth. Get a sparkling smile by using natural teeth whitener without harsh chemicals. For a limited time, get 60% off at https://drdrew.com/primal • 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 • BIRCH GOLD - Don’t let your savings lose value. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Claim your free, no obligation info kit from Birch Gold at https://birchgold.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal 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. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome, everyone. It is today's been an interesting day. We are delighted to welcome Vivek Ramaswamy to the program. He, of course, is an entrepreneur and Republican candidate for the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. He has very kindly agreed to come in here for a little interview, and we are delighted to have him. I'll tell you more about him. He needs very little introduction. If you're not aware of Vivek, you must be living under a rock or something. You can learn more about him, if you wish, at Vivek, V-I-V-E-K, 2024.com, Vivek2024.com. Let's get right to it. Our laws as it pertains to substances are draconian and bizarre.

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G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash D-R-E-W. So let's get on with this. As I said, Vivek Ramaswamy coming in here, Republican candidate. He is, in addition to being an entrepreneur, having founded a biopharmaceutical company. He is a best-selling author, Woke Inc., Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam, Nations of Victims, Identity Politics, The Death of Merit, and The Path Back to Excellence. Also, Capitalist Punishment, How Wall Street is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn't Vote For. Vivek2024.com,

find more. You can also follow him on Twitter, Vivek G. Ramaswamy. Vivek 2024.com find more you can also follow him on Twitter Vivek G Ramaswamy thank you for joining us really appreciate it it's good to be Andrew it it feels to me like one of your uh main I don't say preoccupations but uh messages is sort of embodied in the death of merit uh in the sense that you sense that when I hear you speak, I hear you talk about wanting to get back to basic principles upon which this country is founded. But within that is that ability to thrive as a human and to achieve and to be rewarded for your merit.

Is that a core principle for you? It's a foundational principle for me. It's what allowed me to get ahead in this country. My parents came to this country with almost no money a little over 40 years ago. I've gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies. I'm now 37 years old. I'm the youngest candidate I think ever running seriously, at least for president, self-funding my campaign. That's the American dream. And I think that what I'm worried about is that that American dream doesn't exist for my kids, not their generation. They're taught to see themselves as victims rather than people who actually conquer their hardships. And I think

that's a cultural progression in our country. That's an assault on merit itself. My dad had a saying when we were growing up, it's sort of My dad had a saying when we were growing up. It's sort of a cheesy dadism when we were growing up, but there's actually a lot of truth to it. You know, I was growing up as the kid of immigrants, funny last name. My dad had an accent growing up in Southwest Ohio. My mom was a psychiatrist.

My dad was an engineer. And, you know, what he used to say is, you know what, if you're going to stand out, you might as well be outstanding. And as trite as that might have sounded, that was actually my ticket to get ahead in this country. Excellence was my path as an American. And I think that is the American way. mean is it's just a system where anyone, no matter who they are, gets ahead on the basis of their own God-given potential, they can maximize it. Whether it's on a sports field or a classroom

or as a musician, you're able to maximize your own God-given potential without any man or man-made system getting in the way. And you're right, that is a core, I would go so far as to call it over the last several years, preoccupation of mine. Yeah. I see that sort of infecting many of the opinions you have. What would you tell people who've lost faith in that phenomenon? They either feel that there's something about the system that's rigged against them, or they've been taught that that's the case. What do you tell them? What I tell them is, have we been perfect in living up to our ideals as a meritocracy in the United States? We have not.

But as a nation, I do think we're the last best hope for meritocracy on planet Earth. It is why the immigrants who come to this country, including people like my parents, come here like magnets. When you open the doors, the flow is going in this direction rather than the other one, in part because people come here to this country to get ahead based on their hard work and commitment and dedication. Have we fallen short? Yes, we have. Great. Let's level up and fix that. You know what? It starts at a young age. For example, a lot of the very students who struggle later in life did not have access to high quality early education. That's why I'm an unapologetic proponent of universal school choice in this country. So every parent, regardless of the zip code that their kids are born in, still have an opportunity to send their kids to the

best possible school so they can maximize their potential. We can talk about other ways we create the conditions for true pursuit of excellence and true meritocracy. But I think the fact that we've fallen short of our ideals is no reason to abandon those ideals in the first place. In fact, I think our worst hypocrisies versus those ideals are still our best evidence that we have ideals at all. It's interesting how nobody will call China or Iran or Pakistan, for that matter, a hypocrite. To be a hypocrite, you had to have ideals. I think that's why you, as the United States,

we should be proud to have ideals that are so aspirational that yes, as human beings, not gods, we will fall short of them, but it's our job to keep pursuing them. And this is the country on earth where I think we're most able to do that. You know what I worry about? I worry about what I'll just sort of put under a large heading of intergenerational transmission of trauma. And it just seems to me, i don't know if you get this into your your victim book unfortunately i have not read that one yet uh but people start to feel like victims usually came from highly traumatic backgrounds not necessarily they themselves but their family

systems and that's i feel like that's where people are asking us to sort of understand or pay attention or try to figure out what that is. There's Woke Inc. up on the screen right now. It's your current book. But for instance, this is sort of a roundabout way or a meandering way to get to this question. And I'm not even sure if it's a question. I just want your thoughts on it. I feel like a major issue in the African-American community is reconstruction.

That the violence perpetrated really by the governments of the states and the South during reconstruction was so profound. Frederick Douglass spoke to that explicitly. He kept saying, we've given up the lash for the shotgun, that people are being killed indiscriminately. And that period of history was so vicious and so awful and so traumatic. I believe we've watched that from our consciousness and we have a bunch of people walking around with the traumatic remnants of that on their sense of who

they are and what they're trying to do in life. Do you have any thoughts about that? I do have thoughts on that. I understand where you're starting with that. I might have a slightly different view on it, which is that actually I think that we're seeing something else happen in the country where people are seeing themselves more as victims today than they did even at points in our history in the past when we were less perfect at offering equal rights. So when we actually were victimizing, when we actually were victimizing people. Yes, exactly. Actively victimizing people. Okay.

Exactly. So I'll go to the black experience in a second, but first I'll start first personally where I see this in the Indian American or Asian American community, where my parents were the members of the generation that actually took real risk, that packed their bags, went halfway around the world

without a dollar or very few dollars in their pocket, came to this country, different language, no cell phones back then, different culture, different acceptance of immigrants and foreign cultures than even today. They went through hardship. They taught my generation, I grew up in this country under simpler circumstances than they did, but still, you know, wasn't born with a silver spoon. We were taught to believe that hardship is not the same thing as victimhood. That's what my parents taught me. You're going to go through hardship. Hardship is not a choice. Victimhood is a choice, and you should choose the other thing. Now, what I'm seeing is in my kids' generation, and my kids are young, but I'm talking

about nieces, nephews, and the other peers in the next generation, second generation. So you got the immigrant, you got the first generation, and the second generation, second generation. So you got the immigrant, you got the first generation and the second generation. That's actually the generation that's now taught to see themselves as victims. To call themselves now in the Asian American community, you see this term popping up. I'm a person of color. And what is a person of color taught to be low on the totem pole of the victimhood hierarchy. Why? It's because we've turned victimhood into a currency in its own right. So in a certain sense, they have an incentive to see themselves as victims. I think there's something similar going on in the black community as well. But, you know, I think that I'm going to talk about it from the first personal experience that I see.

In a certain sense, our national history of success is what begets the victimhood psychology. In a certain sense, you have the wheels of history turning, right? Success breeds entitlement. Entitlement breeds a certain kind of laziness, if we're honest about it. And then victimhood fits laziness like a glove. So it becomes a justification for the sloth of a society that's already in some ways living in an embarrassment of riches. And I think the irony is that the people who in many cases see themselves as victims today weren't the product of that very hardship. I was on a, you know, I've had a little bit of, I haven't been able to engage her directly in debate, but she talks about me a lot on her show. Someone, Joy Reed, some MSNBC host who has brought me up a couple of times on her show. She talks about how after the affirmative action ruling came down from the Supreme Court, how she wouldn't have gotten into Harvard without affirmative action. I believe that's true. I think

she would not have gotten into Harvard without affirmative action. I agree with her. But the interesting thing is her parents, like my parents, were also immigrants to this country. So they were not the descendants of slaves. And so what you're seeing is actually many people who are not at all the descendants of slaves trying to reinvent their identity through the lens and prism of victimhood so they can wield it like a chip, because it's true, you do get ahead on the basis of wielding your victimhood status today, often even more so than exhibiting hard work and commitment and dedication, regardless of the color of your skin. So in some ways, I don't even blame the so-called self-fashioned victim.

I'm not blaming the victim or the victim pretender. I'm blaming a system that we've created in this country that rewards victimhood as a currency. And that's why I think we look ourselves in the mirror, we should, as leaders, as institutional leaders, as persons-led companies now running to lead this country, to say, how do we actually reward excellence? How do we actually reward hard work and commitment and dedication over genetically identifiable victimhood. And I think that's what's going to be better for our country to move forward out of the existential malaise that we're in today. And my sense is you do not back away from challenges or from opportunities to debate or reach out. Have you reached out to the African-American community? Are they willing

to debate you? Yeah. I mean, the first thing I would say is that there is no one African American community, just as there is no one Indian American community. And what I found is that there's, who would have ever thought, a diversity of perspectives amongst people who have the same shade of melon. That being said, in the sense that you're asking the question, absolutely. I was on the Breakfast Club earlier this week, not exactly a place where Republican presidential candidates traverse, right. Three black hosts, all of whom are liberal. I'm wondering if you, I imagine you learn stuff. I imagine you learn stuff when you go into those environments. Yeah, I think so. I mean, I learned stuff in every environment I go into, but I didn't grow up in the same environment that

a bunch of evangelical Christian farmers in Iowa grew up in either. I learned something from those environments that's different than the one I grew up in. Same thing when I went to the south side of Chicago. Again, not a place where even Democratic politicians go, let alone Republican ones. I visited the south side of Chicago to the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, to the podcasts and radio programs that we go on. We reach as many communities as we can. I'm not running to lead a political party or an identitarian faction. I'm running to lead a nation and hopefully what we will still call the United States of America. I believe we can be united, but in order to be united, I think we have to be able to see the shared cultural challenges we face with clear eyes, to grapple with those challenges,

to look ourselves in the mirror, ask ourselves what role each of us played in creating the conditions of deep-seated division that we suffer in the country today, and reckon with that. And I think the path isn't around that. It is through that reckoning. That's a big part of what I'm trying to lead in this campaign. I was interested to learn that you're married to a head and neck surgeon. So I'm sure you hear the woes of medicine every night at the dinner table or when you guys try to watch TV at night. But I may get into that in a second. I could regale you with that all day.

But I want to hear more of some ideas that you're promoting that I think the average listener will be interested in. Ukraine, you have a plan for that? I do. It's part of a broader foreign policy vision of achieving our top objective as the United States, which I think should be to deter China from going after Taiwan without going to war over it, at least as it relates to foreign and military policy. That's a top objective. I think we can end ukraine war on terms that better advance that objective

here's how the top military threat that the us faces today is actually the china russia alliance these are two nations that are in a military partnership with one another not very well appreciated and rarely discussed in either political party so what i've said is we need to pull that alliance apart if we can because together together, China and Russia outmatch us. Russia has the largest nuclear stockpile in the world, hypersonic missile capabilities ahead of both the U.S. and China. China has the second largest economy. It's a contiguous landmass, naval capacity in the South China Sea that's ahead of that of the United States. That's a real military risk. They had a 2001 treaty of good neighborliness and cooperation. They called it 2022 and no limits partnership. This is a problem. So what I've said is I would end the Ukraine war through a negotiated settlement that freezes the current lines of control, a Korean war style armistice agreement. I would go further and make a hard commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO, which is what Putin actually asked for before he invaded, just a matter of months before

he invaded Ukraine. But in return, we get something more valuable. Putin has to exit his military alliance with China. That's the most important part. And some additional things I demand as well. Move the nuclear weapons out of Kaliningrad, the region of Russia that borders Poland. Get any Russian military out of the Western Hemisphere, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and so on. That actually is pro-stability in the world. It moves from a bilateral international order now that favors China to a trilateral one where none of the three major nuclear superpowers are allied with one another. And right now, Xi Jinping, his confidence to go after Taiwan is that Russia's in his camp, because his calculus is that the U.S. will not want to go to war with two different allied nuclear superpowers at the same time. And maybe he's right about that. But the key is, if Russia's

not in his camp, he's actually going to have to think twice before invading that island. Why is that island more important than Ukraine? It's because we depend on Taiwan, unfortunately, the reality coast of China in the South China Sea. And my view is that we cannot take the risk of having China squat on that island, but we also can't take the risk of going to war with China. I think that's not gonna be good for us and it's not gonna be good for the world. Most importantly, it's not gonna be good for Americans. So how do you do that? I think ending the Ukraine war on terms

that pulls Russia out of that partnership with China is my vision for getting this done. I have high confidence in my ability to deliver this because Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping's little brother. This is a deal that he would do. And yet the mystery to me is that nobody, neither the Republican Party or the Democratic Party, is offering, let alone a solution, even identifying that as a source of the problem. It's part of why I think it will take an outsider to get this job done. I am an outsider. I think that's what it's going to take in order to deliver peace on terms that advance our interests. Let me just take that one step further and say, I'm guessing you're a game theoretician. The game theory was something you

had to practice on a regular basis as an entrepreneur. Let's say you were applying to me for the job of negotiating these incredible geopolitical treaties, let's call them. How would you evaluate yourself? Why should you get that job? Yeah, I'm interviewing with you and everybody who's watching this and every American across this country. That's exactly what this is. So I think I have the deepest understanding of anyone who has run for president in the last generation to do a few things. Not a lot of things, but a few things. One is how to shut down the administrative state here at home, how to restore three branches of government in this country, not four. And if you share my perspective that that is a grave threat to constitutional liberty and to the three branch system of government that we have in this country, then you'll appreciate that shutting down the administrative state is an important function that no Republican has in 40 years risen to the occasion of actually delivering on. I could talk to you about why, but I have the deepest understanding on statutory and constitutional grounds of how to actually get

that done. I think the same goes for how we declare independence from China in a way that does not harm us economically here at home. I would reenter the trade relationships with Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, much of Southeast Asia, Australia, and have a clear vision of how to do that in a way that breaks apart the orthodoxy of onshoring exclusively to the United States versus continuing to stay in bed with China, there's a third way. I think I also have a deep understanding and I've spent much of my recent years after my post-business career, thinking deeply about how we revive national pride in the next generation of Americans. I'm the first millennial ever to run for U.S.

president as a Republican. It is both my job and my capability to reach that next generation of Americans with that sense of civic identity, civic pride, national pride that they're missing. I think every high school student in this country should pass and should be able to pass the same civics test that every immigrant has to pass in order to become a citizen of this country. I think that in one of the ways we deliver national pride is that people tend to be more proud of a country where they're making more money in that country. And in terms of delivering economic growth, that's not a message you hear from candidates in either party today. I understand how to unlock GDP growth from less than 1% this year to over 4%, where it'll be by the end of the first term. Unlock American energy, put people

back to work by stopping paying them to stay at home, reform the U.S. Federal Reserve, make the dollars stable, make that the sole mandate of the Federal Reserve, and then shut down the administrative state, as I said, the regulatory state that shackles most businesses. So that much I know how to get done. And so if you believe those are important objectives, and that's crucial, that you have to believe that the administrative state is a problem. You have to believe with me that China and our dependence on China is a problem. You have to believe with me that national pride is worth reviving, especially amongst young Americans. You have to believe with me that economic growth is worth pursuing. that I think I'm the single presidential candidate who both understands how to get these things done

and to do it not just as an academic, though I do have an academic side to my career. I've written three books just in recent years. I read a bunch of the articles, et cetera, I've published and educated in ways that will empower me to do this as a visionary, hopefully, but not just as somebody who has a vision, but who also knows how to execute. I've built multi-billion dollar businesses from scratch. I did not inherit my wealth. It was through hard-earned living of the American dream. Not one time over, but several times over. Roivant, the biotech company that I led that has five FDA-approved medicines that I personally oversaw that the rest of pharma had actually really lost the plot on.

We got those medicines approved in a way that the rest of pharma would not. Strive Asset Management, actually competing with the largest financial institutions in the world, built that from scratch to compete against the likes of BlackRock and State Street and Vanguard. So I've done this time and again. I know how to execute and get things done, but I'm not just an executor. I'm running not just on my biography. More importantly, I'm running on my vision for this country and my understanding on constitutional grounds and statutory authority of how to actually get it done. And you say the administrative state. I hear regulatory state when you say that. I think

that's what you mean. And you're one of the first people I heard talk about the capture or the cozy relationship between corporate and government and that that needs to be disentangled. Then I heard that theme again from RFK Jr. I am persuaded that that is a much more pervasive and serious problem than we can even imagine and really won't know until we start unraveling it. Is that something you're going to go at right away? Absolutely. I mean, one of the things I've said is that on day one,

I would issue an executive order requiring every government bureaucrat in that administrative state, that regulatory state, the three-letter agencies in Washington, D.C., to at least make public through sunshine, the public can see it, any time they have pressured a private company or private actor to do something that the government could not legally accomplish on its own. We need to roll that log over and see what crawls out. Tell the truth again in government. Government officials haven't told the truth for a very long time. My campaign slogan is one word, truth. And that is the way I will govern is the first step to fixing the corruption is to see it. We got to roll that log over, not only see what crawls out, but I'll be bringing the pesticide. But that's something that I'm very focused on. I've written

two of my three books about exactly this merger of state power and private power to together accomplish what neither can on its own. One area where we see it is on internet censorship, where the government can't censor speech directly. So what do they do? They do through the back door what government couldn't do through the front door. They pressure and they give carrots and sticks, use both carrots and sticks to get companies like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter to be able to silence speech that the government couldn't directly. We now know that government officials were pressuring executives at Twitter specifically to silence the account of one individual who is

critical of the government's policy of its handling of COVID-19. Whether or not you agree with the government's policy handling of COVID-19, we do not and should not want to live in a country where government officials can silence the critics of government. If the First Amendment was created to protect against anything, it is that. Same thing with respect to the so-called ESG movement, environmental, social and governance factors in capital markets. What do we see? You have a Green New Deal that couldn't pass through Congress. Well, Biden's climate czar, John Kerry, is now effectively has boasted about it, worked with banking CEOs to get them to sign a sort of climate pledge, a North America net zero agreement instead. That's not democracy. That's not a constitutional republic. That's not capitalism. It's a form of, and I use this word intentionally in the sense,

in the strict sense that Mussolini first used this word. It's a kind of fascism, a merger of state power and corporate power to accomplish what neither could on its own. It's what I, in my first book, called the woke industrial complex. But really, this isn't a left-wing or a right-wing issue. This is a fundamental American issue. We fought a revolution in 1776 to say that we, the people, decide how we settle our political differences through free speech and open debate in the public square where everyone's voice and vote counts equally. That's how we were supposed to do things in America, not to have it done through the back door where a bunch of business

elites and labor elites and church leaders get together behind closed doors in the old world and decide in the back of palace halls how the rest of society ought to be governed. That is not how we do things here in America. That was a 1776 moment, a revolution in 1776. I think we live in a sort of 1776 moment today where we would do well to remember those ideals of self-governance over aristocracy. This dream that our founding fathers had, frankly, a dream that I have as a citizen today, that the people who we elect to run the government should be the ones who actually run the government, not the people in the three-letter agencies who were never elected and not the people who they're deputizing now in the private sector

to do their dirty work instead. So that's a central part of my vision. You're right to point it out. And we have a new threat to that rising above sovereign voted sovereign authorities that have been voted in place, which is the World Health Organization has a massive plan for usurping control over all governments. It's the most astonishing document I've ever seen in my life. And yet there seems to be little concern in our government about this. To me, it feels like one of the biggest threats ever.

Are you familiar with this? I am, and I think that we should stop funding organizations that are fundamentally hostile to our sovereignty. If the US stops funding the WHO, so goes the WHO. And so it should go, in my opinion. Yeah, that would be the end of that. I'm guessing by what you, just your comments you just made, that you were as shocked by the Twitter files as many people. Are you shocked that people weren't shocked by the Twitter files? That to me was one of the most shocking aspects of the Twitter files. I'm actually going to be very honest with you. I wasn't shocked. And the reason I wasn't shocked is I was writing about this two years

earlier. So in January of 2021, I wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. There were already enough breadcrumbs putting the pieces together. I co-wrote it with a former law professor of mine from Yale, where we said that it was clear that the government was using a combination of threats and inducements to get private companies to do through the back door what they couldn't get done through the front door. And at the time, what I said was dismissed roundly as a conspiracy theory, so much so it was beyond the pale that I was still CEO of my biotech company at the time. Three prominent advisors to my biotech company ceremoniously resigned on the back of that op-ed.

Can you believe that? So it's interesting. So then years later, right, it becomes what I, you know, and Jed in that piece clearly identified as there was enough breadcrumbs to be clear this was the essence of what was happening. Years later, what do we know?

We see it. What surprised me was how much more pervasive and regular it was. But the fact that it was happening, this was evident to me two years before it had even been unveiled. But I think that that's important because one of the things that happens is in a society, once your rights get taken away, at first you should be appalled by it. But when you start getting dulled to that reality, that's really when the danger for fuller totalitarianism sets in. History teaches us that time and again, and so we should be appalled. I'm sorry to say as a citizen, and partly because this is because I have been living, eating, breathing this set of threats to our liberty. Yes, I did spot that, So I personally wasn't surprised. But I think it's important for people to have that sense of shock and dismay, because if they don't, that's just the beginning of the end of accepting the loss of our liberty.

And that's a one-way slide once we're further down that road. Yeah, it's that part that I found so astonishing, which was that people didn't understand that's what it was. They seemed to, I mean, your clairvoyance was fascinating. But in terms of looking at this as just government officials doing their job, it's like, you have got to be kidding me. This is not my lifetime.

I've never seen anything like this. And again, the entirety, so many things, so many scales fell from my eyes as a result of COVID. And so in a strange way, that whole experience did us a great favor. Vivek Ramaswamy is here with me. I'm going to take a little break, do some business.

Again, you can find out more at vivek, V-I-V-E-K, 2024.com. And we'll talk a little bit, maybe you and I, more about pharma and the cozy relationship with the FDA and what you learned as a founder of a biopharmaceutical company. Great. Be right back. I suspect you've seen Susan and I gushing over Paleo Valley products. We love the taste and how well they fit into a paleo-based nutrition regimen. They're delicious and we use them for travel all the time. But there is more.

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Vivek Ramaswamy, entrepreneur, Republican candidate for 2024 U.S. presidential election. The books are Woke Inc., Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam, A Nation of Victims, Identity Politics, The Death of Merit, and Capitalist Punishment. These are all very interesting books.

Woke Inc. particularly I enjoyed. And Vivek, we were talking before the break about your experience as a uh as a entrepreneur biopharmaceutical company i did not realize how cozy the relationship was between uh pharma and the fda uh i saw something what i thought was just hysterical and inappropriate but hysterical marjorjorie Taylor green was interviewing Rochelle Walensky and just said, which pharmaceutical company are you going to work for when you leave this job at the CDC? And I thought inappropriate, but hysterical that we're there, you know, where that's the way people think about the people that are in these regulatory bodies. What did you learn working with the FDA?

You said you had four FDA approved medication. Yeah. You went through that in five. And you see you've been through that process from whether the molecule comes off the shelf, or I know what stage in the development you got into it. But obviously getting it approved on average cost about $800 million if I'm getting my numbers correct. Probably more than that.

Yeah, above that. Yeah, yeah. 1.2 billion. It.2 billion billion if you count the failures but you're dead on with this with this relationship it's this weirdly codependent relationship between the fda and pharma funny little fact not a lot of people know this even the organizational structures of the pharmaceutical industry and big pharma is an industry that irritates me like none other. It behaves like a government in its own right. In many ways, the bureaucracy is itself like down to the job titles modeled on the equivalent counterpart titles at the FDA. So it's an industry built on a government granted monopoly. That's what the patent system is. But combine that with actually a regulatory, highly regulated industry where it's

not just the final step that, okay, you submit your application, the FDA approves the product or not. No, that is not how it works. They have say over every micro step you take along the way, and they apply the standards pretty much capriciously. It has nothing to do with science, everything to do with effectively a political decision masquerading in the veneer of science. If you need any better proof of that, look at the fact that they say that drugs, even the ones I've developed, and other vaccines, I haven't worked on vaccines, but in my tenure, what I was focused on were small molecules and biologics, but the same can be said of vaccines. It takes 10 years and X amount of

cost to be able to do it. But somehow in the COVID-19 pandemic, it was perfectly acceptable to say that on one hand, you cannot get a product and we cannot trust the safety or effectiveness unless we have this 10 plus year cycle. And we're going to regulate that in a painful way, in an encumbering way at every step. But now we're going to have a vaccine that's developed in a year or less than a year and be so confident in its risk benefit proposition that not only are we going to prove it, but be part of a government that mandates its widespread usage. You cannot believe these two things at the same time, which shows it is just literally arbitrary and capricious. And I use that standard intentionally. It's a concept from administrative

law that says if a government agencies are literally arbitrary and capricious, as so many government regulations are, including those from the FDA, that means they're unlawful, means they're unconstitutional. And I think that the Supreme Court today is thankfully a Supreme Court that's slowly waking up to that. West Virginia versus EPA held accordingly in the more recent case that struck down the student loan forgiveness program that the Department of Education took upon itself. Most regulations passed by the administrative state, I think, are fundamentally unconstitutional, unlawful. And the same goes for the FDA as well. But you know who gives them cover, of course, are the people that they regulate. See, the people that they regulate are big pharma, who will come back and say, no, no, no, this is exactly how it has to be, which adds credibility to the FDA because they'll say that,

oh, well, even the people who are regulating, see, they're saying how necessary this is. It's a classic. It's the oldest trick in the book. If you're a big incumbent, you want that regulator because it actually makes it harder for new competition, which allows you to actually wield the price control that you already have or the market power that you already wield. So it is incestuous. You're right to point it out. It's discouraging. As an entrepreneur, there were certain aspects of that that created inefficiencies that allowed me to develop medicines in areas that pharma had almost systematically abandoned. Came at great time and cost and risk,

but thankfully that is a multi-billion dollar company that I developed. And the good news is I'm proud of a lot of the work that I did that many other innovative biotech companies have done. One of the therapies that I worked on is a therapy in kids for a rare genetic disease where 20 kids a year are born with this genetic disease

that 100% of them die by the age of three if they're untreated. A majority of those kids live lives of a normal duration if they're treated. That's a heartening story. I developed a drug for prostate cancer, a number of other diseases that I oversaw the development of medicines on that are approved products today. So there's a lot of good that can come from it. So it's not that it's like you. You're a physician.

My wife's a physician. I trained as a molecular biologist. We stand on the side of science and advancement. But in the name of science, there's actually a culture of crony capitalism in that incestuous relationship between the FDA and pharma that has nothing to do with science and everything to do with advancing the self-interest of the people who are on either side of that relationship. And I understand that better than most because I've lived it. But now I'm also going to be unapologetic and calling it out. Yeah, so true and quite accurate. I'm just curious. I work with an organization called the Prostate Cancer Foundation. We fund a lot of crazy.

I'm sure some whatever you were. What did you develop? Well, really, Golix was the single therapy. But actually, the reason I mentioned the prostate cancer, it's a therapy for an earlier stage prostate cancer in men, not for the metastatic prostate cancer later on. But my father-in-law is actually one of the top prostate cancer surgeons in the country as well, who's also been involved with that.

He's the chair of urology at Mount Sinai. And so I've gone to prostate cancer foundation events in the past as well yeah oh well i'll look for you there out on long island or something they've got some yeah so i'll look for you there that's been a great amazing i'm surprised so sick and and i and i uh i'm i am so delighted to be a part of their organization i mean they're just they're really handing over significant sums of money to brilliant young researchers and saying, just do what you want. And there's almost nothing like that.

The other part now you, you just, this is in the weeds a little bit, but you express your frustration with the face with, with big pharma, but they're the ones that get stuck with, with funding and executing the phase three trials. Don't they? I mean, no one has the money and the size and the reach to do that. I once talked to the cabinet level HHS director and I said, what are we going to do with that? He did not have a good plan. Do you have any way of sort of getting at that? Is computer modeling going to be a... What do you think when you sort of sit down and think creatively about that issue?

So first of all, the number of phase three trials often required is just totally arbitrary and capricious by FDA. In many cases, you would only need one, but they require two, which is laughable because in certain other cases, if it's a COVID vaccine, somehow, you know, they'll be fine with it, even if it doesn't meet a normal phase three standard, right? So I think that in many cases, the double phase three trial standard is actually just a literally duplicative cost when a single phase three study, especially when that comes after phase two, could have done the job. You're right. Mostly it's big pharma companies that only have the capacity to do those phase three studies. That's why I actually, in building the company that I did, Roivant, that did develop, I think Roivant's run upwards of 10 phase three studies, most of which have been successful, but I had to raise billions of dollars as an entrepreneur to do it, to break over that barrier to entry. And it was frustrating that many of those involved two

phase three studies when it could have just been one. Just from a societal perspective, it's a little bit of a dead weight, if not waste, pretty close to waste of funds that effectively end up passed down to the consumer. Yeah. Yeah. And I understand why we ended up with a vaccine that was brought out before it was sent through the usual mill of determining its efficacy and safety. It was an emergency. They rolled it out in an emergent way and took lots of risk. The astonishing thing to me,

the mystery to me is, why are they not going back and doing the studies they should have done in the first place? There are a lot of questions still. Why are we not doing that? Why isn't somebody asking them to do that? Yeah, I mean, on myocarditis

and other issues in particular, but my point is even, like before getting into the sort of the political nature of that, pointing out an obvious disconnect, saying that for these for other vaccines and there are still people dying of a wide range of diseases, you know, for other medicines, other urgent conditions that medicines could make a difference on to say, no, it has to be a 10-year cycle, whereas here it was perfectly fine not only to be approved, but even to be mandated on the back of a one-year cycle. You can't consistently believe both those things at the same time without at least some element, Drew, of humility. And I think that was the missing element of this. It's one thing to say that we are not sure, but in an emergency circumstance, we're going to tell you the facts. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't, and empower you to make your choice.

But the so-called noble lie, I think if there's one lesson from the COVID experience that we had to take away, two lessons maybe. The path to truth, including the scientific method itself, depends on free speech and open debate, not silencing dissent. And the second thing is there's no such thing as a noble lie. People will not believe you even when you tell the noble lie. Every lie is ignoble. And that's actually what we need to learn is there was purposeful lies told, and even in the interest of supposedly helping the public. And those have to be two of the big lessons from that entire experience.

Yeah. I sometimes think the truth, I know you have some other ideas about founding principles, and I'm going to get to that in a second. But I sometimes think the truth may be the thing that could reunite us because the lies just just are pernicious in terms of their effect and you may not remember this you're a little younger to but there was a movie called a few good men i think it was a cooper of course you can't handle the truth yeah and uh yeah jack nicholson was the villains those those words came out of a villain's mouth.

You can't handle the truth. That's right. And by the way, as somebody who was relatively liberal at the time, and there was a lot of liberal people that took that as the example of why their side was right, because they made an effort to be open and honest and would never take the position that somebody in authority knows best and you can't handle the truth. I love that. I love that. You need me on that wall. It's a great Jack Nicholson quote. It's made the avatar of Anthony Fauci and the administrative state today. So listen,

Drew, I love this. I think your team may have been aware of this. I had a hard, I got to actually run, but hopefully this is the beginning of more conversations that we have. I love your thoughtful approach. I applaud you for it. I appreciate it. I'll look for you at a Prostate Cancer Foundation event sometime soon. I know you do a hundred of these a day and I appreciate you spending a little time with us. So thank you so much. It's an honor. Thank you for having me. Take care. Honor is ours. Thank you, Vivek Ramaswamy. Again, Vivek2024, as we can find more, vivek2024.com. Twitter, Vivek G. Ramaswamy. Susan, I think you have the Twitter spaces on. She's putting it on right now.

I'm going to see if anybody has their hand up, wants to take any call, ask any questions. I was locked out. Here we go. Drew has a way of getting locked out of TikTok and Twitter, so I have to give him my phone. Yes, I've got her phone now that used to be my phone. Long story, I dropped to give him my phone. Yes, I've got her phone now that used to be my phone. Long story, I dropped

a phone in the shower. I'd be interested in what you guys thought of what he was saying. You're welcome to just raise your hand here over the Twitter spaces, and I will call you on up to ask a question. I think you got censored on TikTok, though. We got censored on TikTok? Yes, that's what it is. Oh, before.

Yeah, I'm having trouble getting on TikTok. There is a little cartoon about how you get on to be a questioner here. You just click on that button at the lower left-hand corner. And again, remember to unmute yourself. We are well aware there's a little delay there. And so this is... He was fabulous.

Yeah, you liked him? Good. Of course. Lay deplorables. Oh, and you took your hand you took he says everything that we say well he look he's a brilliant dude uh i didn't have a chance i know he had to go i wanted to get into the first principle ideas he had we were sort of skating around some of that and what i wanted to ask him was what he would say to someone who says that these first principles that were developed by the founding fathers and some great thoughts and great statespersons, great statesmen, aren't relevant anymore.

Because it was created by old white men who were slave owners, and that's that. Therefore, we shouldn't listen to any of it. Tom Cigar says he's sensible. Let's cancel him. Joking. You bet. Well, that kind of thing happens. Again cancel him joking you bet well that's that kind of thing happens again none of you have your hand up that i can see i'm happy to ask other questions

answer other questions i think we took everybody by surprise there i see people i see people you might you might just let me i see a hand waving i see caleb can pick somebody i see lots of other things but i don't see the the. Caleb's actually in charge. Let him do it. Yes. I am the doctor. Yeah, I'll pick someone right now. All right.

See, Brandon. Brandon, I'm going to put Brandon on. Tell me who they are. OK, Brandon. I hear a child in the background. Brandon, what's happening there? A little delay and you have to. Hello. Thank you. There you have to unmute the, uh,

I just want to ask the presidential candidate, um, how do you plan to change the economy so that it works for the majority of Americans, uh, in the United States? And that we don't have a recession that occurs, um, under your leadership because the president is ultimately responsible for the economy. That's a big factor. Yeah, Brandon, I'm going to interrupt you. You may not be aware that he has left. That's why we've gone to the phones. But he did address that about two-thirds of the way through. Maybe it was

more like a halfway through. He talked about stabilizing currency. He talked about how what his plan would be for 4% growth. He would dismantle the regulatory state. I can't remember the very specifics but he and there were not a lot of specifics given he was just sort of in broad strokes talking about how he would get to that how he would get to that 4% growth rate from the 1% we're at right now. And we can keep going there, Caleb. I'm pulling up the next one right now. Yeah, just so everybody knows, he's gone, so don't ask questions for him. I mean, we can discuss together some of the things he said.

Yeah, I wish he could stay. Drew, this isvis coming on now travis okay travis and he was he was clear that you know before he sat down that they do a hundred of these a day they said and that he is really busy so i'm i'm pleased he's got his he's got this is a brilliant guy he went to yale law school let me be clear not anybody goes to yale law school it's a it's a elite crowd intellectually and he was a a he studied genetics essentially we used to call it molecular biology when he was in college at harvard and then he ran a biotech firm and that this is this is really uh you know um rarefied air individual in terms of his intellect travis i got you there to unmute that microphone and ask your question.

Oh, there we are. There you are. Can you hear me? Yep, I got you. Great. Thanks for having me on. You bet. I had a question. I missed the first part of Mr. Ron Suwanee's space,

but I'll have to lift it later. But I guess my question would be to you and him both, as far as the state of Washington, I live in and Jay Inslee and the attorney general during COVID not allowing doctors to prescribe ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and even monoclonal antibodies. My grandmother had COVID. We tried to get that stuff for him.

Uh, her doctor said if he prescribed it, he'd lose his license. And then it took them a week to even offer monoclonal antibodies, which at that point was too late and and um and then as soon as she got in the hospital because you know they wouldn't give her anything as soon as she got in the hospital they gave her um remdesivir which i'm hearing later on is something that caused people's organs to shut down and her organs shut down within like four days of her being in the hospital. And then my dad was, I appreciate that.

Um, and then my dad was, you know, in the same boat and I called doctors all around and finally was able to get ivermectin for him from a place in Texas. And it he ended up and it's not just ivermectin you know i'm sure as well as you know it's not there's not one drug that's gonna be the savior of anything right you know we got him that's right a bunch of stuff but he was better with the the fact the one of the you probably not it seems like you've not been on these uh streams before but

um we've been talking about this for two years yeah two years which is yeah the fact that physicians were prevented from practicing medicine autonomously as they've always done and used their their ability to improvise and do what they think is in the best interest of that patient sitting in front of them is criminal and the fact that if they had been, and by the way, some of the physicians were duplicitous in this, in the sense that they just said, go home, come back when your PO2 is 82. We should have been using steroids. We now know that fluvoxamine, there were things we could have done just following up. Just, I mean, we've lost track of the fact that just paying attention to a patient has massive effect on the outcomes of

an illness all right my dad was an old family practitioner he always said you never get in trouble seeing your patient too often i'll never forget that and so i've sort of made that a policy of mine no there's so many things about this my friend that make that are just disgusting uh it just was uh it can never happen again and the fact fact that the world's health organization is asking for the authority to do it all over again, and maybe on a larger scale with greater authority, this is what we must be talking about all the time. I did bring all that up with him and he was not in, not in favor of it.

Let's say. Great. Thanks Travis. I'll have to listen to that. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. We didn't get into the specific, but I'm so sorry that all happened here. Sorry. I am. And listen to that. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, we didn't get into the specifics. I'm so sorry that all happened. Yeah, sorry. I'm new to Twitter. And let me tell

you this. I'll tell you one more thing, which is I was on a Twitter spaces the other day, and Aaron Cariotti is somebody you ought to follow. He's a psychiatrist who lost his job as a head of bioethics at UC Irvine in California. And he lost his job as the head of bioethics because he felt it was unethical to have a vaccine mandate for college age students where the risk benefit was not clear. He lost his job for walking the walk of a bioethicist. And now he's become quite a champion of all these things. And he said the one thing that should happen is this, are the regulators certainly, your government officials in the state of Washington, and those of us that are physicians who'd apologize. And I am ashamed of my profession.

I'm ashamed of the way we behaved, and I apologize. I'm disgusted by it, and it can never happen again. Thanks, Travis. I would like to say I heard you on the space. This is the other guy that does the big spaces you were on and you did apologize i appreciate yeah mario yeah that was the only time i had done that you're you're reminding me of that it's the only other time i had done it explicitly was on that spaces and i've never i'm on a stream here on multiple platforms and this is the first time i've done it here and and i i have no problem apologizing for what is reprehensible. It wasn't my behavior. I don't think it's your job to apologize, though, really.

Well, it is my job because I'm a member of this profession. My profession is to apologize. And I think it could go a long way if we made every effort to do so. Even though we individually, as a member of this profession, may have not been guilty of some of this, we still can share in the apology and we should do so to help. We got to restore faith in my profession somehow. And that is the start of when we are trained as physicians, when we make a mistake to apologize immediately, swiftly, and surely to reduce the risk of malpractice. We are trained on that. And yet here we are in a large scale with a major, call it what you will, a malfunction at least, if not malpractice. We should be apologizing. Swiftly, surely, certainly.

Seems to me. Humbly. Well, I can tell you firsthand. I was dating a gal that her brother, two of her brothers are doctors here. And, you know, it's just straight out of fear. I mean, he could have prescribed something, know it's just straight out of fear i mean he could have prescribed something but it's just fear you know you have this lifestyle that you're used to and then they're using the pressure of okay what happens if he loses i mean that's like

my friend the pilot he loses his pilot license he can't fly for laska airlines anymore you know and they have this lifestyle that they're used to. So that's scary. Well, Travis, and yes, I'm sure the money is an issue. Well, the money is an issue, but I got to tell you more so I can tell you that your very identity gets tied up in being a physician. And so when people threaten that, it's almost a, it becomes a mortality kind of thing. It becomes something that you fight against. Susan, you seemed to want to say something.

I see you kind of leaning in. What? Physicians don't want to lose their license. Then there's so much threat. There was like, I'm going to take your license for offering ivermectin. I mean, even on Twitter, like got attacked constantly for just saying anything. I'm not a big advocate of that. I didn't see any evidence that it was a good thing.

We got censored on YouTube. We were running from the law. It was bizarre. Running from the law. Doctors are very logical people, but they also wanted to do their best to continue their service. They have groupthink, too. people, but they also wanted, you know, well, they're also people and they get scared their best to continue their service.

They have group think too. It's a cult. I mean, it says all these, all these tribes, all these tribes, uh, are, are, are the source of many of our ills right now. And there's a right tribe and a left tribe. There's a physician tribe and there's tribes within medicine. And politics and medicine do not work together. So that was always what I was saying is like just stop listening to the the politicians and let

the doctors do their freaking job fire today how about that let's bring up china and then watch susan go nuts so so so one more call china and russia don't get me started i'm gonna invite a chinese national chinese national chinese um immigrant who is a very funny comedian i interviewed today with adam and i thought she'd be great in this show to really for susan for you to ask a bunch of questions of her and she is hilarious she was miss universe in china and in and in china they call it that's a big deal they call it queen of the universe oh yeah and that's like being like a figure skater you know yeah yeah and she said that uh she had a terribly abusive tiger mom and all that stuff and she has a whole story to tell

so it's very very interesting very funny okay and now she's a comedian and of course the mom says not only have you shamed her she shamed the mom you put a put a bullet in Mao's head. Put a bullet in everybody in China. Oh, yeah. One more. Michelle? Michelle. Is that a Michelle? Michelle.

Hey. Hi, Dr. Drew. I really just first want to appreciate the fact that he could ever gain the popular vote. Do you? You know, it seems to me the voting public seems so capricious now. I have no idea. I hope, what I hope is we have some really interesting candidates this time. And for me, Vivek and RFK, I don't think are going to be our next president, but I believe strongly they are stirring things in a very positive way. They're bringing up a lot of things that people are just, have been silencing. Like what the hell? Well's i i don't know but i i i i'm sorry i am i like i'm so moderate i'm independent i sit right in the middle though i'm contemplating uh switching to democrat which

i've been over the years to be able to vote vote in the primary for r RFK Jr. really just because he's raising so many interesting ideas. Well, let's be vague. You can vote for him. That's what I was thinking, too. Yeah, it would be lovely to have that sort of... No, I live in Kansas, and we're very conservative here, but just his conversation just seems so real, and so here's what I would do.

And I'm not finding that in some RFK. I would agree with you there. He has some interesting thoughts as well. I just don't know that he would have a snowball chance. Although, versus a brain-dead gentleman, certainly he would have a much better chance, I would think. Well, I just think that the conversation is elevated these days. It's better. It's more interesting things are being proposed that have never been contemplated and and it's people are stirred by it i think it's

engaging people better and it's making people think about things a little more i i don't know i think it's i think it's very very very positive i if you know in my perfect world rfk would really pick up on some steam so people would have to address some of the things he's raising. And then who's president? I, you know, I don't have to switch to California. Emily Barsh says, oh, is that true? Or you get to vote in the primaries as an independent. It seems like I wasn't voting in the primaries.

Also, what can I don't even know what I'm registered anymore. You can do it in California. You can, you can, you can re-register every 10 minutes, every minute. I haven't voted in like 10 years. What's that, Caleb? Also, just keep in mind that the host of The Apprentice got 75 million votes. So everything is possible now. Like anything is possible.

Imagine the debate stage though. Imagine the debate stage with some of these candidates. I can't wait for that. That's what I want to see. Yeah, I'm with you on that. That's the part I'm excited about. But I was around in a day when people were like, an actor is going to be the president. An actor is running for president. Can you imagine that? What kind of world do we live in where an actor runs for president? My parents were so

excited. Because he had been governor. Yeah. Well, Michelle, thank you so much. Thank you, guys. Thanks so much. Take care. Appreciate you listening, you too. And everybody, thank you all for being here. We appreciate it. Let me head over to the restream and quickly look at what's going on over there. Geez, they picked up on your brain-dead comments.

Yeah, well, I'm apolitical. I just like rational people. It seems like you're getting very anti-China. I'm just observing his abilities. I'm not saying whether or not. You are not a political person, but you have developed some feelings about all this stuff. I'm not right.

I'm not left. I may be libertarian. I don't even know. Well, talk to your friend Kat Tempf. Maybe I am registered libertarian i can't remember i can't i'm old i can't remember okay well i don't see anything i want to comment over on the restream you guys been very active there we appreciate that uh zalinski is an actor as serena points out which is true and a comedian comedic actor i believe uh yeah there's so much

going on in the ukraine i don't know if you guys are keeping track of that. Oh, there's the upcoming guest. Let's talk about something positive. The Ukraine thing has me very concerned. And Russia, yeah. I think they're more dead than we even... Well, France. We're going to France in a couple of weeks. I was going to ask you, if you think about France, too.

We're going to interview... I don't think we really have a lot to... I've asked our producer to book a guy who I heard on Twitter Spaces who was very articulate about the French situation and seemed to have a good grasp of it, so I'm going to get him in here soon. And he was saying that the French government needs to be, not overturned, but restructured as the republic. It was a republic, much the way we need to really think about we are not a direct

democracy though in california we are whether we like it or not we are but we were designed as a republic and uh direct democracy was always one of the things that the founding uh or folks the founding fathers uh feared the most because they always broke down they They always, in history, they just studied history and they looked at what worked and they applied it. Let me go back to the what's coming up. Kat Lindley and her mom, Dr. Kelly Victory, joins us, of course. I believe we are moving to Friday from Thursday. Susan, is that correct?

Yep. We have Chef Gruel coming in. I saw him interviewed by Viva Friday. And Kat Timpf is going to co-host. Oh, no kidding. That's Friday? She's here. She'll be here in the studio. We'll try to widen the lens a little bit. And Kat Timpf. He's going to co-host. Oh, no kidding. That's Friday? She's here. She'll be here in the studio.

We'll try to widen the lens a little. That'd be great. Have somebody cute in here. Oh, she's hilarious. We'll do a libertarian. Hilarious. She just did a great job. She did a great job on After Dark.

Well, we're not really supposed to say. You can. And Dr. Rancourt in here with Kelly on the following Wednesday. Mark McDonald, psychiatrist, outspoken dude. Speaks about mass formation and other things. He'll be in here on July 13th. And you can see all the other guests up there that we had just listed. Thank you all for being here. We appreciate seeing you on the restream.

We love you being there on the Twitter spaces. We appreciate the participation. Do tell a friend about this stream show, dr.ru.tv. Please sign up there to get a blast when we go on. And look back on some of the shows we've done. We've been doing these for a while now. We have interviewed

some very interesting people. And although I have not agreed with everyone I've interviewed, I've learned something from every single one. We are putting the pieces together of what we have all been through and we've learned something about ourself, our government,

our public health system, and why things were so bizarre during covid and uh how important it is we all commit ourselves to not letting anything like that ever happen again it's a relinquishing of our of our civil liberties that was on a scale that is unthinkable and and did nothing except cause a mental health crisis so we will leave it at that thank you so much for being here and uh we will see you on friday no tomorrow tomorrow's wednesday tomorrow's wednesday will be your tomorrow three o'clock tomorrow's july fourth oh no i'm going to bring that up with vivek and i completely forgot about it we will be back so yeah we're in new york so i'm all screwed up on time zones and days and everything you've been having way too much fun fourth of july

tomorrow everybody enjoy that holiday. And we'll see you on Wednesday with Dr. Kelly Victory at three o'clock Pacific time. See you then. Ta-ta. Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Caleb Nation and Susan Pinsky. As a reminder, the discussions here

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