QAA Podcast - New Disinformation and Old Diseases feat. Anna Merlan (E328)

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

Hundreds of people have been arrested in Los Angeles after days of protests, which are in response to aggressive immigration raids ordered by President Trump. When people took to social media to make sense of the events, they were confronted with fake, AI-generated videos of the protests and real photos that were labelled as out-of-context by AI. Thus breaking new ground in worthless, deceitful slop. Plus, we speak to Anna Merlan at Mother Jones about her recent reporting on the RFK Jr.-connected “MAHA Institute.” That organization’s head, Leland Lehrman, has pushed extremist ideas for decades, including endorsing the conspiracist fraudulent text "Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” RFK Jr. himself is evidently embracing a genuinely anti-vax agenda in his role as Health Secretary by firing and replacing the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP). We've seen the future. And the future is an AI chatbot telling you to treat your latest typhus infection with apple cider vinegar. We've seen the future. And the future is an AI chatbot telling you to treat your latest typhus infection with apple cider vinegar. Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: https://patreon.com/qaa /// Anna Merlan on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/annamerlan.bsky.social The Head of a New RFK-Backing Group Promoted 9/11 Conspiracy Theories and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/leland-lehrman-make-america-healthy-again-institute-antisemitism-september-11/ Flaming Hydra https://flaminghydra.com/ // Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com) https://qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast. REFERENCES Bricks from Malaysia and New Jersey misrepresented amid LA unrest https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.49XW2T2 FACT FOCUS: A Craigslist ad is not proof of paid protesters in LA. It was posted as a prank https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-los-angeles-paid-protesters-prank-48792aa47dcc2d8eeb9547d79d530037 Fake videos and conspiracies fuel falsehoods about Los Angeles protests https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-videos-conspiracies-falsehoods-los-angeles-protests/ Los Angeles protests: How AI and chatbots are feeding fake news https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/truth-or-fake/20250610-meet-bob-the-ai-generated-national-guard-soldier-sparking-misinformation AI Chatbots Are Making LA Protest Disinformation Worse https://www.wired.com/story/grok-chatgpt-ai-los-angeles-protest-disinformation/

Keep in the way. If you're hearing this, well done, you have found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, episode 328, new disinformation, and old diseases. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakatansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View. I've seen the future, and the future is an AI chatbot telling me to treat my latest typhus infection with apple cider vinegar in InfoWore supplements. Hell yeah. Today we're going to be talking about the viral lies that are spreading about the recent and ongoing protests against the ice rays in Los Angeles and how AI is making it worse

because it generates realistic but fake videos and claims that real images are fakes. There's no us in AI. Just I. What's that? No, please. Tell me what? Well, it's sort of like a scared sound. Oh, okay.

Yeah, definitely. You know? Yeah, that's how people do it. Or like, hey. That's how, that's scared as well? That's like, it almost is kind of like, don't do that, you know, don't do that. Yeah, it sounds like you have an amazing grasp of automatopoeia. Like, I can't wait to hear, I could just give you scenarios and you would give me.

I've been called a master of sounds before. Okay, what about someone having an orgasm? To make that sound? Yeah. um what depends on what kind i mean there's all sorts of different kinds there's you know the one that like i'm probably the most used to which is no no wait you know you know the self-deprecation era of rocantzky has begun yeah i think we're done Travis take it away from here for the second half of this episode we're going to be

joined by journalist Anna Merlin about her recent reporting on Health Secretary RFK Jr. and the people close to him. As Anna recently reported, the head of the RFK Jr. linked Maha Institute is someone who has openly endorsed the classic anti-Semitic conspiracist text, Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Mmm. Yeah. Old school. Delicious. Yeah, classic literary achievement. I can't wait to hear about the Turner Diaries in a Trump speech. So hundreds of people have been arrested in Los Angeles after days of protests, which are in response to immigration raids ordered by President Trump. The demonstrations began on Friday, June 6th, after it emerged that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Officers were carrying out raids in areas of the city with large Latino populations. Some of these raids targeted day laborers at a Home Depot parking lot and workers at the Ambience Apparel Clothing Manufacturer.

Relatives and protesters arrive to confront the federal agents wearing camouflage and bulletproof vests. During the ensuing protests, police clashed with crowds of protesters and fired less lethal munitions to disperse them. Yeah, I love that. Less lethal. Yeah, these are the nice ones that just like take out an eye or give you a bruise the size of a volleyball. Yeah, they're nasty. They can maim or kill you. This is why the preferred term, now, they used to be called non-lethal, which is not an accurate term. Mm-hmm. Less lethal. Nice alliteration in there as well. I can see why they went with that. Trump has deployed a total of 4,000 National Guard members and mobilized 700 U.S. Marines, triggering a conflict with California Governor Gavin Newsom and other politicians in the state.

This is actually the first time that the National Guard has been activated without the request of the state's governor since 1965. Great. I can't wait for another Kent state. I believe in us. We can turn back the clock. and make America great again. People who check social media in order to better understand what is happening in Los Angeles were confronted with a barrage of disinformation. Travis, I've been exposed to some TV reports, and let me tell you, it's fucking trash, too. It's incredible to me how this is being covered. This country has learned nothing.

Don't you know that every single one of your rights, all of them? Everything that you have is because someone went out there and did violence. He's not wrong, folks. Yeah. What are the TV people saying? Just the usual stuff. It's okay to protest when it doesn't affect anything, doesn't block any streets. But as soon as you start blocking streets or you tag a building or you burn a little waymo just for fun, it makes you a criminal and it's wrong and it's actually not covered by the First Amendment and you should be beaten into a pulp by a guy with like a handkerchief on whose ex-wife has a restraining order against them.

So if I'm understanding correctly, they're basically like, do the kind of protesting that where it gets nothing, nothing done whatsoever. Don't disturb the machine. Don't disturb anything, but register your discontent in a meaningless way. It's like Charlie Chaplin said, you know, we must put our bodies just adjacent to the cogs and as such not be ground at all and also not stop the machine. Yeah, got it, got it. Some of this disinformation was promoted by President Trump himself.

In a speech given at Fort Bragg for the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, he absurdly claimed that Governor Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass were paying agitators. That's awesome. Yeah, it's interesting. The mayor must have taken some time off from increasing the police budget to increase the agitator budget. In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor of Los Angeles. They're incompetent, and they paid troublemakers, agitators, and insurrectionists. They're engaged in this willful attempt to nullify federal law and aid the occupation of the city by criminal invaders.

That's what it is. They're invaders. No different. Guys I sent to the Capitol that actually invaded the Capitol, not criminals. Well, and that's also how the word insurrection. He got into his lexicon, and he had January 6th not happen. Once again, he's done judo in these dumbass libs. I know.

I always, I was blown away the way, the way he managed to do that with, like, fake news. That was like that started as like a lib concept. It's like there are all these websites that are promoting fake news that are just attached from reality. And some of it is for profit. Some of it is for like political agendas, but it's fake news. And then he owned that phrase. It was quite rhetorically quite impressive. No, it's awesome.

I think we should keep calling our enemies pedified. and terrorists and traitors, that can't possibly be turned against us. Now, many of the false claims were the kinds of claims that appear at every protest. And they relied on like old school techniques for deception, such as like taking an innocuous photo and then attaching a sinister story to it. For example, commentator David Harris Jr. posted a photo of a pile of bricks on Facebook, and he added this caption. Soros-funded organizations have ordered countless pallets of bricks

to be placed near ice facilities. to be used by Democrat militants against ice. Haven't we already done this? We did this already. We've done this. We've done this with the pallets of the bricks. No, no. We're going to do it every time.

Every time? The bricks? Really? In 2025, we don't have better projectiles? Listen, when you have brain damage, bricks are happening the first time every time. And then look at this. This got over 500 shares and 1,000 comments.

Pretty easy. Well, where did this photo come from? This stack of bricks sort of like with sort of wrapped together. So the news agency AFP actually found that the photo of the brick pile did not come from an L.A. protest, but rather a Malaysian hardware and construction dealers page. Oh, we can't even get our JPEGs in America anymore. All of our JPEGs actually come from Malaysia. And it's actually not even from Malaysian protests and we're using their pallet of brick photos.

It's they're using the bricks for construction impossible. You know, as somebody who's in real estate, real estate, who claims to have built buildings, you know, the idea that bricks are, you know, are primarily used for violence is really, I mean, that's just kind of like, you know, you kind of think he would know better. Let me tell you something. Trump's hand has never touched a brick. Well, metaphorically, maybe. That's, we're, we're dealing in facts here. Hard facts. Okay. This is Travis's podcast. We're just along for the ride. A brick of cocaine, you think? I don't think so, no I don't think he's ever

touched a brick of cocaine What about like a brick of onion rings from like hackies or something like that? Maybe, I don't know if you'd call that a brick I mean he's being

bricked up before Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly yeah, bricked up Yeah, that's what I mean metaphorically bricked But yeah But picking one up And you know

Doing anything with it Yeah, I agree, never touched No It seems like what this guy did Is that you just Googled like pallet of bricks posted that photo and just said, these are the Soros Bricks,

got like 500 shares and moved on. Well, actually, I am looking closer, and the bricks do have kind of a hooked nose. They are rubbing their hands together. Some conspiracists who believed in this paid protesters narrative pointed to an L.A. Craigslist ad titled Looking for the toughest badasses in the city. That ad said this.

Seeking extremely tough, brave men from new crew on building. Compensation, $6,500 to $12,500 per week. We are forming a select team of the toughest dudes in the area. This unit will be activated only when the situation demands it. But you get paid every week no matter what. High pressure, high risk, no room for hesitation. We need individuals who do not break, panic, or fold under stress on our basically all-around kick-ass dudes.

So obviously not legitimate that. It's actually a prank. Specifically, it was a prank posted by a man named Joy Lafleur for the live stream prank show GoofConn One. You don't think that like the working class has plenty of tough guys who would probably respond to this. 6,500 to 12,500 a week. Do you even understand what this is like, this is like, you know, when like a rich person doesn't know the price of an apple or something? I mean, this is, yeah, this is this is probably a high demand job. Yeah, to say the least. Goof-Con. Goof-Con one? That's what the show is called. So LaFruheur later said this. I literally had no idea it was ever going to be connected to the riots.

It was a really weird coincidence. After screenshots of the ads spread on social media, LeFruer posted about the confusion on his Instagram story multiple times saying this. Accidentally goofed the entire nation on the latest goofcon one. I don't really know what to do with any of this. I guess get on newsmax or something. If I get on newsmax, that could be funny. I feel like if you're going to be a prankster or a hoaxer,

you should be prepared for the possibility that people are going to take your hoaxes and pranks very seriously. That's always a possibility. Yeah, but this is exactly what a goof guy would say. You know what I mean? Like, this is the brand you want to, you don't want to be like, I guess so. Ha, I know.

I did it again, folks. You know, you want to be like, whoops. Whoopsy Daisy. Oh, fuck off. I like that there are like varying degrees of alarm, like, towards like goof and goof con one being the most you know we're at the most serious levels of goof yeah you started goofcon three goofcon two and then but when you go to goofcon one this is where they're breaking out you know sort of like fake craigslist posts with unbelievable salaries

promise to people who reply so yeah you learn something new every every day i spend most of my time in like goofcon four you know not nothing too serious i've rarely i rarely see it go down to goofcon I think we should go to goofcon one on all these ice agents. Yeah, sure, goof them up. We could just go we could goof them. We could goof them up. We could goof them down. A common source of disinformation with just old videos taken, put in this new context.

One widely shared video depicted vandalized police cars set ablaze, which was posted by a far right conspiracist Alex Jones and Senator Ted Cruz. Oh, cool. I know. just like he's such a fucking moron. So they claimed that this was from the recent protests in L.A., but the video was originally from news coverage of protests in May of 2020. Another widely spread video showed people setting a Jeep on fire.

Social media posts described the video as undocumented immigrants pouring gasoline over vehicle in Los Angeles on Saturday. However, the footage dates back to a street takeover in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood in March of 2024. Yeah, get your burning car dates right, please. I love how, like, the best they can come up with for their shitty-ass propaganda is like, look, it's a beautiful vehicle burning. Like, guys, you're talking about, like, you're talking about, like, jackbooted thugs, like, taking children from, like, families, like, taking, taking people's dads and shit. And they're like, but did you see how they burned a Jeep? And then even that's not even real. It's just so fucking pathetic.

God, this country is such a bunch of fucking bootlickers. And there are good people. But you know what? Maybe all Americans are bastards. I sure feel like one. The fact that we can't even get a current car torching video that they got to reach back to March of 2024 to find the proper, you know, to find the proper video. And from something that was completely apolitical, it was just kind of, you know, a street celebration, if you will. Yeah.

The guys doing the donuts and stuff. Let's spread this new thing, man. Ab. That's also what. Jake thinks it sounds like when I come, so. Yeah, well, I mean, close enough. You're right. You know it. Yeah, close enough, but.

Yeah, but it's not like that. When you experienced it, it was a little bit different. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was a little bit. It was a lot different, actually. You started singing show tunes. It was really weird because I know you hate musicals. So very, yeah, yeah, yeah. Moving on.

Yep. But all of that's really just the kind of disinformation techniques that we've seen, you know, multiple times over the past several years. It's like it's tried and true. We're entering into a new high-tech world in which disinformation is enabled by AI tools. One notable example is a TikTok video of a National Guard soldier

who identified himself as Bob and it garnered more than a million views. But the video was totally fake. The soldier has seen smiling and offering kind of like a behind-the-scenes look at troops preparing for deployment to quote unquote gas protesters. And then there's another video that features Bob during the clashes, decrying the throwing of oil-filled balloons at law enforcement.

Yeah, what you need to do with Molotov cocktails is make them like way less useful by putting them in balloons. And if you can swap out the alcohol for something sweeter, cold foam, whipped cream, you know, anything like that. Hey, everyone, Bob here on National Guard Duty. Stick around. I'm giving you a behind-the-scenes look. and how we prep our crowd control gear for today's gassing.

Hey, team, Bob here. This is insane. They're chucking balloons full of oil at us. Look. Okay. That's AI. Yeah. So the video appears to have been generated by the Google V-O-3 AI video generator, which just became available three weeks ago. Nice. Now, there are lots of clues that the video is not real.

The National Guard actually issued a press release describing what these issues are. Red flags indicating a face. The uniform name tape reads Bob. His rank reads E6, and there is gibberish where U.S. Army should appear. In one video, the AI-generated man, quote-unquote, even eats a burrito through a mask. I like that the National Guard is like, we would like say all this stuff and we do believe everything this AI-generated guy believes. But like, come on, guys, this is not, you know, it would be a real one of us. Yeah, we'd really be eating.

You'd have to pull the mask down to eat the burrito. Yeah, we eat our burritos once the mask is down. No, no, guys, guys, guys, no, it's like the name tape says the last name, not the first name. Yeah, that's awesome, though. That's good. That is awesome. And they had no comment, it seems, about anything about the gassing of civilians or... No, that's something we definitely do. It's just not Bob E6. We would never let the word U.S. Army be gibberish. But I think a bigger clue That the video was fake

Was that the account that posted the video Was called maybe not quite real Maybe though Maybe so there's a chance So appears that this account has been since removed from TikTok Can't even have fun anymore Can't even goof I know what I love about this is that it just shows that

Like it's like if you make a fake that's good enough No amount of telling people This is not real And efforts to make it that it's something you should take as fiction, as fun, we're going to fall flat because people are just going to believe it. I mean, you know, I met a person very recently in this facility who told me that Trump had already put out an arrest warrant for Gavin Newsom. And then he checked himself out within 48 hours of arriving. He didn't look great. So, you know, America's doing good. Well, he wanted to go see,

maybe he was going to hope to, you know, attend the arrest. Yeah, you need a fucking my-time in one hand and a second might tie in the other. So we get, you know, fakes that people are believing, but we also get the flip side, too, where legitimate photos are accused of being not real and then AI affirming that it's not real, even though it is. So what happened was that Governor Newsom criticized the Trump administration for not being properly prepared for the National Guard deployment to L.A. And to illustrate this point, he posted photos of National Guard's been sleeping on the

floor. They didn't have like cots to sleep anywhere or anything like that. But some social media users accuse the photo of being fake or being taken from an earlier event. One Twitter user said this. Fire your social media manager. Your AI is as deplorable as your leadership. Oh my God. They're still using the Hillary word. They put like little arrows in the in the photo of the real photo to indicate where it might be AI but doesn't doesn't mean anything. It's like maybe he's pointing at, you know, natural sort of like photographic artifacts he saw. It's, it is incredible that, like, people don't believe that the LAPD is capable of beating the hell out of and gassing civilians without any help.

Guys, have some confidence in your, in your police force. But the photos that Newsom posted are real. They were originally published by the San Francisco Chronicle, and then CBS News independently confirmed that the images of the sleeping guardsmen were taken from the loading dock area of the Robert Young Federal Building. Definitely real photos, definitely recently taken, definitely in context of the National Guard deployment to L.A. This is like the least imaginative furry cuddle pile I've ever seen.

But herein lies, I think, a foreboding sort of message, which is that now AI is starting to get so good that people are taking real pictures and saying, no, there's AI. And it's not even just that it's a feeling that they get, at it, they're actually drawing arrows as if they've discovered something. And really, they're just pointing to, yeah, photo artifacts that the image is like pretty low red, you know, low res when you zoom in. So yeah, there's a lot of weird pixels that seem

out of place or whatever. But yeah, you've got people who are doing fake pictures and saying that they're real and then real pictures and saying that they're fake. It's just another layer of dog shit smeared on top of all of the other ways in which people want to do away with reality that's inconvenient to them. Who knew that using the term disinformation and misinformation could lead to a world in which everyone thought anything that their perceived enemies post as disinformation or misinformation? Also, this has been happening for a while, I'd say, because I remember being with Jake

in real life outdoors, and he said, today the graphics look great. He was looking at a sky. Yeah, nice skybox animations. Good lighting. They even have weather cycles. And then Jake proceeded to poop through his pants. Yeah, that's a bug. That's a bug. He locked me in a cage.

No, it's a bug. He locked me in a cage and he said, when you learn to not, you know, lose the tamed dinosaurs that I have taken painstaking time in this fucking game to tame, then you can get out of the cage. Nobody wants to play arc with me anymore. All of this is very confusing. People couldn't quite figure out, like, what is real and what is not.

So some people on social media tried to make sense of all this by fact-checking with AI. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. And this, of course, proved to be disastrous. As David Gilbert from Wired first reported, when people tried to fact-check whether the image of Guardsman was real using GROC, which is the AI chatbot on the platform formerly known as Twitter, they were given bad information. Here's what one response from Grock said, completely inaccurate. The photos likely originated from Afghanistan in 2021 during the National Guard's evacuation efforts

in Operation Allies' refuge, a claims linking them to the 2025 Los Angeles deployment lack credible support and appear to be a misattribution. No definitive source confirms the Los Angeles connection. Okay. I believe. that we can live in a near future in which we accuse each other's AIs of being shitty

like, oh, GROC you use GROC, more like crock of shit and then they're like fucking lib Google VO3 The saddest thing is that the only thing that could potentially save us which is like shutting down the internet

is the thing that makes and generates the most money and allows companies and massive corporations to be the most lazy. So the very thing that could save us is also the very, is like the last thing that the powers will relinquish.

So there's really no end in sight. The AI is just going to get better and better and better and eventually we'll all be AI. In fact, I already am. That's awesome. So the AI got really good, but then it also is doing a robot voice.

Yeah, yeah. That's to, yeah, that's, you know, mask off. mask off to let you know that I... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, but that's GROC. That's Elon's AI. Ah, see? He's doing it.

Travis is doing the thing I just said they would be doing. Uh-huh. What about ChatGBT BT, the most popular chatbot? So that one got it wrong too. Oh, cool. When a self-described OSINT citizen journalist named Melissa O'Connor asked ChatGBT to review the photo, the AI claimed that the photo was taken in Kabul Airport in 2021 during former President Joe Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal.

So not true, not true. So, hey, the two most popular kind of AI systems, both completely wrong in trying to fact check whether an image is real or not. Ocent, misinformation, disinformation, we're doing good, folks. So, I mean, let's just review the state of things. So we have fake videos that people are believing, and they're getting pretty good. And, you know, just better than I thought they would. But, man, in the last, like, month or two, basically the last month, they've been really, really harder and harder to detect this fake.

And then we have real photos that people don't believe are real because they could be AI. This is what, this is interesting. It's like just the fact that AI exists gives people permission to reject reality. Oh, my God, it's like a new Rokos bascalisk, basilisk, bath, bath I take. What? I am begging. the tectonic plates beneath our feet to create the big one, but not just for the San Andreas fault, you need to swallow an entire country.

Hey, man, that's all of us. Yep, I'll go with it, if that's what it takes. I just think we need, like, a snake pliskin to, you know, like, parachute into or surf into San Francisco and, like, take down, you know, like take, he's basically shut off the internet. like one final mission be like i got it the president's daughter has asked me to shut down the internet once and for all and save humanity like can you imagine i would be like just leave multiplayer games alone that's good i think there's a jake story here where all the internet gets shut down but just they leave

they they they value my one request because i like playing games online with friends but i don't like anything else i don't like email i don't like chat i don't like chatting there would be like a handler and you would kind of be guiding the Snake Pliskin, and then your voice would just kind of interject once in a while. But don't forget, Snake, don't forget to leave up the multiplayer. And then the handler being like, I don't know who that is.

Do not ignore, ignore that second voice. I don't like streaming. I don't like YouTube. I like TikTok, kind of. Yeah. Maybe leave that one. No, definitely not. Dude, we need to care.

That social media needs to go for us. Okay, you're right. You're right. Social media, social media all goes. Is there anything we would leave besides multi- player online gaming? That would go too. No, no. If I had my way, that would stay. But no email, we could get rid of email. I don't like that. I think the only thing on the internet should be snuff videos. Oh, good point. You could leave some of the porn. Nope, none of that either. Nothing

pleasant, nothing enjoyable, just horror and carnage so that the only time anyone would go on the internet is to then recoil in horror and back away as if from a hot plate. It sort of used to be like that. I remember in college when... Don't tell us the story about you seeing the decapitation and how you lost a part of yourself again. Oh, I was going to tell the story about a guy shared, like, a video of, like, a horse and a woman having sex. No.

Come on. How is it worse? This was 2001. This was right when, like, horrible videos. That's what young college people. That's what we looked at. But we would recoil in horror and, yes, lose a part of ourselves. And then we would, like, go outside and, I don't know, do drugs or something with, you know, community members.

It's, you know, that was healthy and good. But back of the day, when you went to rotten.com, you could be assured that the horrible gore you're watching was totally real. That's true. Correct. That's true. Unless they were trying to pass off one of the scenes from faces of death. Or a scene from Cannibal Holocaust. Yes. Oh, yes. Or cannibal Holocaust. Yes. Or, what's the other one?

Men Behind the Sun about the, uh, the, uh, the. Japanese, like, torture scientist? That's another one. Yeah, Travis. Don't you know the entertainment industry used to provide the fake videos for us? All right, we got to move on. All right. Yeah, so I just find it startling that AI has created a situation where people are totally turned around about what is real and what is fake. And so what do people do? They go to the poison for the cure. They go to these AI tools in order to determine what is true and what is fake and then the AI tools make it worse by telling them that authentic images are like misplaced or miscontextualized or fake or something. It's a real fuck situation. This country needs to

attend imagery anonymous. Maybe internet anonymous. We should create that. I feel like that would be a booming business. See, look at how fucked I am. I'm already thinking about how to make it into a business. Yeah, that's the whole thing with those support groups is that they aren't a business. That's The only good thing about them, but I'm glad you already wanted to take that away. Yeah, I'd like to monetize my help. Also, I think the internet addiction one is like, is a thing. There's probably, I don't, I don't know what the name of it is, but I'm almost certain we're going to receive an email. Yeah, you can direct that to me. I deserve it.

I do not have much confidence in the people guiding public health policy in the United States, mostly because their worldview is shaped by baseless conspiracy theories, grievances, and the agenda of alternative health. And with each passing week, there is increasing evidence that, despite my rock-bottom expectations, I actually underestimated the level of delusion and malice that fuels Health Secretary RFK Jr. and his closest associates. At least, that's the feeling I got when I read a recent report in Mother Jones, headlined the head of a new RFK backing group, promoted 9-11 conspiracy theories, and the protocols of the elders of Zion. Here to talk about that and other recent hijinks at the Department of Health and Human Services is that report's author Anna Merlan. Anna

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Again, it's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Your articles are always very good to read, but this one really, really struck me in the heart because, I don't know, just the level of just, you know, insanity that is sort of swimming in the minds of the people closest to the people of the highest halls of power

who are responsible for some very serious matters. Well, it disturbed me a bit. Yeah, it's an interesting time. To say the least. Your report concerns a man named Leland Lerman, who last month was named as the executive director of the Maha Institute. First of all, what exactly is the Maha Institute? Right. So the Maha Institute is a new kind of policy and advocacy organization, and it's made up of people who campaigned for and raised money for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

That's kind of like the short version. It's two co-presidents or two kind of big-time Kennedy fundraisers, Tony Lyons, who's the publisher of Sky Horse Publishing, that's published a lot of Kennedy's books. And then Mark Gorton, who's the co-founder of Limewire, who's now like a big Kennedy backer. And so the Maha Institute says it's going to be amplifying Maha wins for President Trump's Secretary Kennedy in the cabinet, advising elected officials, and finding and attracting Maha allies to work in government. So they're basically saying that they're going to be a pipeline between kind of the true believers in the Maha movement and the administration. Boy, lime wire, huh? Now, I mean, I feel a little guilty. You know, I feel like all millennials who pirated music in college maybe feel a little guilty for contributing to this.

It's super interesting. Mark Gorton is also a big bike and safe streets advocate, just an interesting, interesting detail. So, you know. So your report draws on another report from the Institute for, research and education on human rights. So what did their research uncover about Leland? Why is he so concerning? Yeah. So the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights is like a think tank that studies extremism. It was founded by this guy Leonard Zeskind, who just died in April, and I really recommend reading his obituary as a really interesting researcher who

started warning a very long time ago about the ways in which the far right was rising in sort of prominence in the United States. And at the time, people thought he was being paranoid. So, but basically, they started looking at Mr. Lerman because he is the new head of this Maha Institute, and he was actually on stage at the inaugural Maha Institute conference talking to Sarah Brenner, who's the principal deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration. So he's interviewing people who are really high up in government. They started looking into his background and realized that he had promoted, obviously, COVID denialism, which, like, of course he did.

That's kind of a, that's not surprising. And prior to that, promoted both 9-11 conspiracy theories and one that is way more exotic, which is he was a very strong advocate for claiming that the protocols of the elders of Zion are real, which is not a thing I say very often. Yeah. Fantastic. Yes. So for people who are not aware, the protocols are a very old anti-Semitic forgery.

They first appeared around 1903. They have been debunked for almost as long. They essentially claim to be the meetings of this, like, you know, secretive, the minutes of the secretive meeting of Jewish leaders talking about world domination. And they are the basis for a lot of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories throughout the, you know, 20th and 21st centuries, they are not real. So Mr. Lurman, writing this series of articles about how they are real and their evidence of a criminal conspiracy is, um, is very unusual.

Yeah. Yeah, it's really, really shocking for, you know, anyone to endorse the, um, the protocols in the 21st century as if it's legitimate. It's like you mentioned, this was like, it's a, this forged document that was like debunked over a hundred years ago. I mean, it's one of the earliest sort of sort of like conspiracist texts that sort of influenced conspiracists in the 20th century. Yeah. I really only got legs amongst conspiracies more widely after Henry Ford endorsed it and reprinted it under his international Jew publication. Yeah, I mean, in in 2025, there are so many better anti-Semitic conspiracy theories with better graphics, better gameplay, you know, multiplayer.

There's just, there's, there's so much more. It's very funny to me that people would be reaching back to the most ancient of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which I don't know what that says about them, but maybe, you know, they should broaden their horizons a little bit. Yeah, there have been so many innovations. And of course, Mr. Lerman primarily made these claims in like 2007. So we corresponded briefly the email, and my main question was, like, if he still believes this to be true. And he did not ultimately answer that question.

He didn't ultimately answer any questions. So, you know, if he doesn't believe this anymore and his thinking has changed, like, I would love to hear about it. Right. But, I mean, with a guy, Leland Lerman sounds like a neighbor on the Simpsons. You know what I mean? Like, I don't trust this. I don't trust this guy to do anything not hilarious. I think a lot of us have the primary association with the name Leland is from twin

peeks. So maybe that's very true. That's what's going on for us. I was, yeah, he actually is the, I believe, great-grandson of the Rite Aid founder. And his dad is of Jewish heritage, though his dad very, very publicly converted to Catholicism in like the 80s. So Mr. Lerman has made a lot of his Jewish heritage when he is talking about the supposed Jewish conspiracies afoot in the world. Sounds about right. That tracks us Jews. We, you know, we don't like ourselves sometimes. And we're busy. We're real busy. Yeah.

And he had a lot more to say about that that we can get into. But yes, he has called many times upon his Jewish heritage. Yeah, your report also highlighted this 2005 interview that Leland did with Jeff Rents, who is this far right radio host. Well, first of all, what's Jeff Rents' deal? So Jeff Rence has been on the scene for a long time and has primarily promoted the work of people like David Duke, you know, his site and his, I guess it's not a podcast. Yeah, it would be a radio show has been the repository for a lot of racist and

anti-Semitic thinkers. So one place you probably don't want to be writing editorials if you don't want to be having these conversations would be Jeffrens's website. That would be, that's not ideal to begin with. No, I mean, this is one of those cases where it's just his extremist connections are just so blatant. And, I mean, it's unsurprising that they would be so evasive because There really is no sensible answer to that.

I mean, besides maybe a repudation, you know, I think maybe that would be a good strategy, but they didn't even do that. They just sort of like ducked your questions when you asked about it. Oh, yeah. I heard back from Tony Lyons, who, you know, the Sky Horse publisher, who's the co-president in the Maha Institute, and he told me that five of the six most senior people at the Maha Institute are Jewish, but that shouldn't get in the way of a good hit piece. And then he didn't respond to any follow-up questions.

Is he doing the thing like, well, I've got. Jewish friends, so I couldn't possibly be anti-Semitic. I had some follow-up questions. I, first of all, I'm curious if Mr. Lerman is one of the senior Jews. I just, just out of curiosity, just for my own edification, I asked if he had read his writings. I didn't, I didn't get an answer to any of that. So it doesn't seem like it's going to be an obstacle to remaining at the Maha Institute.

Sure, sure. When your institute sounds like something you'd order at like Long John Silver's, every time I hear maha, all I can think of is like mahi, mahi, everybody's got these hilarious acronyms, maga, maha, what's next? Mamma Mia? I don't know. So, yeah, here is what Lerman said in that radio interview. The reality is, is that high-level Jewish Illuminists or Lucifer Worshippers have most certainly collaborated with the Lucifer Worshippers and all the other sects, like Nazism, like high-level Freemasonry, they have most certainly collaborated in the development of this New World Order plan.

And the reason why the protocols of Zion is important is because it is a terrifically well-elucidated encapsulation of all the methods and techniques that have been used to bring about the new world order. are being used. Wow. I mean, pretty bonkers, but also as a conspiracist, he's kind of like a living fossil, because this is the kind of stuff that, like, emerged at sort of the beginning of modern conspiracism and the aftermath of the French Revolution when people thought that the

revolution was sparked by a plot between Jews, the Illuminati, and the Freemasons. Yeah, totally. That's good historical context. Yeah. Even more amazing is that Mr. Lerman got into this through 9-11, Obviously, he eventually concluded that Mossad was behind 9-11. And in turn, he got into that because he was campaigning for Dennis Kucinich in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and was, like, planting yard signs and claims he met a former captain in U.S. Army intelligence who proved to him that 9-11 was an inside job, which is just such an incredible sequence to go from Dennis Kucinich Yard signs to 9-11 conspiracyism to eventually the protocols. It's like getting on a very, like an express bus.

Yeah, well, I noticed, like, on the graphics that were displayed during the interview, obviously the listener couldn't see him. But there was, like, a picture of Hitler with Paius, which is the curly sort of sideburns. And it was like, Hitler, founder of Israel. And in my head, I was like, are these guys so anti-Semitic that they actually hate Hitler because he was part Jewish? Like, are they that deep into the well? It's so, yeah, it's so interesting.

And, of course, Lerman denies being anti-Semitic, like denied being anti-Semitic. like denied being anti-Semitic this whole time during all of these conversations and essentially is just saying, you know, that this was a small group within like the body of Judaism, you know, kind of like a malignant whatever, but at the same time couldn't stop talking about this Jewish Luciferian New World Order, you know, like teaming up with Nazis and other, you know, sect like freemasonry. And so he just, he kind of couldn't, he couldn't quite maintain the like, it's not all Jews line of thinking. I see. I see. I see. Yeah. I mean, that's also just, it's just a classic sort of like anti-Semitic two-step where they talk a lot about like, I don't know, or anti-Semites talk about, well, no, it's like the fake Jews or it's like a certain sect of Jews or a certain kind of Jewish mafia. But it's like, it's always, obviously, it's a pretty thin cover for what they really believe.

Yeah. They're like, I love Jonah Hill and I love Mel Brooks. They're like, it's not though, it's not my neighbor who I grew up with, who I I hate. It's the lying Jews. They're like, it's the ones who are actually like pretend Jewish as a cover so that they can rule the world. It's like this we, I've never understood that sort of thinking to sort of, uh, McGiver themselves out of sounding like they do, but I've heard it so many times and seen it in so many forums that it, that really is a, you know, a defense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but at the same time, he wrote, you know, that the protocols were not a forgery and that, quote, they fit neatly into the context of Jewish supremacist doctrine found in the Old Testament, the Talmud and the Zohar, and that they represent evidence in a criminal case that

involves leadership and doctrinal matters. So essentially, yeah, again, that, you know, that they were evidence that whatever, Jewish leadership was involved in this New World Order plot. So, you know, you can take it from that, which you will. I mean, it's like, it's just bizarre to me that he would deny being anti-Semitic, while also perfectly aligning himself with just the archetypical sort of. of, like, textbook Jewish canards that he was endorsing. Yeah, it's a, it's a choice.

And again, you know, I would love to know how he looks back on this period of his career in activism in public service, because while this happened, while this was going on, he also then in 2008 ran for Senate in New Mexico and made 9-11 truth like a center of his platform, not the, not the protocol stuff so much, or at all, as I'm aware of. I don't think he talked about that during his Senate campaign. And it's really wild. It's like I feel like there was a time before when like someone got into a well-connected position and they were, it was exposed that they endorsed some really odd or extremist views when like years ago. And then there was some sort of reputation. There was there or there was some sort of like attempt to distance themselves from their past comments. They would talk about how they have grown and how they don't believe that anymore or they would, you know, do the kind of things that like a PR crisis management person would like. like recommend for them. But it seems like they have totally given up on that strategy. Now they're just sort of like just shrugging their shoulders and calling you fake news and saying that it's

outrageous to even make this accusation. And then they move on. It's not a thing anymore. I wrote about Kingsley Wilson a few months ago. It was like a 26 year old mega enthusiast who's now like a deputy press secretary at the Pentagon. Actually, after my article, she got a promotion. I believe she's now one of the main press secretaries there. But anyway, she had these really nutty far right tweets. Some of them were about Leo Frank, who's, again, a Jewish lynching victim from the early 1900s, claiming that Leo Frank was actually guilty of the crime for which he was lynched by a mob, which he was not. She was tweeting about making Kosovo, Serbia again, which is a pretty crazy thing to tweet if you are working in the U.S. government. And again, like, not only did I

not get a response back from the Pentagon about this, no one did, including, you know, some of the congresspeople who are like calling on her to resign. Yeah, now it is much more common, especially with Trump administration stuff, to ask about something really outrageous in somebody's public record, to have them tell you that you are, yeah, fake news, that you are running a smear campaign, some other thing, and then to just never hear back about it ever again, you know, and certainly it doesn't have like professional consequences of any kind. Sure.

Well, if like the guy at the top, you know, if the guy at the top of the latter, you know, sort of began his political career by ignoring calls to step down. or address horrible things that he said, it's taught everybody else that like, oh, all I have to do is not say anything. I can just pretend like these people never reached out to me and nothing will happen to them. Yeah, it's much more possible to either ignore it

or hit back with like a, you know, a smear or name calling and then move on. Yeah, it's really interesting. It's a really different approach. But yeah, certainly having these kinds of views does not put you behind in mega politics anymore, it seems. Even though, obviously, the Trump administration is claiming to be fighting anti-Semitism in a really direct way. They have a task force.

They say they're investigating anti-Semitism at universities. They have made supposed anti-Semitism, like a big policy issue for their administration. It's interesting, yeah, they don't sort of distance themselves from their past remarks, but they don't, like, openly embrace them either. They don't come back and say, yeah, I said that, and I still believe it. What are you going to do about it? Right. They just respond by attacking rather than, you know, sort of like owning what they said. Right.

Attacking or ignoring, which then, I guess, gives you some plausible deniability if you decide at some future point that wanting to make Kosovo, Serbia again, or believing in the protocols would be, like, bad for you in some way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they don't want to, they don't want to, like, go back on anything horrible, they said, because there's hope that the world might get worse. And those horrible ideas from six months ago or two years ago or whatever are now a

you know, desired policy, and you want a record that you were one of the first calling it out. So, yeah. Makes perfect sense to me. There's also, you know, there's also a possibility that these beliefs will become a liability, even though they aren't much of one right now in their position. Yeah, it's really hard to say, isn't it? It's hard to see some of this stuff, like, reversing itself, you know? I mean, this is the thing, right, that conspiracists and extremists of all kinds have been celebrating

of late is that the Overton window has moved really far. And the kind of stuff you can say in public, even compared to 2016, is really, really, really different. Even just the level of outrage that greets a particularly crazy statement is so much less. You know, I mean, they kind of wore people out with being just the constant perpetual outrages. And it, you know, in some cases, seems to have worked. Yeah, because, you know, for most people interacting with politics, you know, reading 100 social media posts that say, you know, can you believe what this person said? It just does nothing, and it's, it's effectively meaningless at this point. It's, so you can, you know, sort of look and go, yeah, I, I think they're crazy too.

But in, in terms of affecting that politician's career or that person, it's nothing. I mean, at this point, people have said so many horrible things over the last, God, 12 years, you know, 12 years. And it's just like, you know, they're still, they're more powerful now than they ever have been. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting.

sort of refusing to be, like, accountable to your past actions, refusing to be ashamed, essentially is what it is. Like, there's no, there's no such thing as, like, public shaming anymore. I actually saw this happening years ago with the Me Too movement also, like, at first, being accused of sexual misconduct was enough to make people go into crisis mode. And then over time, it turned into, like, yeah, not responding to it or, you know, issuing this very kind of, like, boilerplate statement and then just kind of moving on. Like, I think we've seen, we've seen this particular set of tactics get used.

in all kinds of ways. But certainly, yeah, the Trump administration is just like, yeah, what of it. I also wanted to get your stance, Anna, about some other recent moves happening at the HHS, because I think there was a hope. However, dim, the RFK Jr. wouldn't actually push a vaccine skeptic agenda in his role once he actually got power. But that hope became even dimmer recently after he fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization. practices. So this is the committee that advises the CDC on vaccine matters. RFK Jr. was confirmed after assuring senators who had not altered this committee, and now he has done exactly that. Yep.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, RFK Jr. argued that this dramatic move was necessary because the vaccine regulatory apparatus was, in his estimation, plagued by conflicts of interest in skewed science. He wrote this. A clean sweep is needed to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science. In the 1960s, the world sought guidance from America's health regulators who had a reputation for integrity, scientific impartiality, and zealous defense of patient welfare. Public trusts has since collapsed, but we will earn it back. Now, I don't really think his reasoning is very sound, or at least he's not operating in good faith, due to the fact that he has replaced this panel with some vaccine skeptics, including

a Restiff Levi, Robert Malone, and Vicki Pebsworth. Right. So, yeah, I mean, there's someone who is, like, who's covered RFK Jr. Pretty extensively. What do you, I mean, what is the ultimate goal of this move? So I'll start with the scariest thing first, which is my colleague, Kira Butler, and I have both covered RFK for a long time. We're working on a story together about what's going on with vaccines.

And the last few weeks, what everyone has been saying to us is, well, thank God, at least he hasn't messed with Aikip yet. Like, things are so bad, but at least he hasn't messed with Akept yet. so this is in a lot of ways like the worst kind of the worst case scenario well no it's not that's that's still to come but um so the reason why this matters at all um is because akep obviously like advises the CDC and one of the things that can happen is if you for instance stack the deck with a bunch of vaccine skeptics who will argue that every vaccine is unsafe and should not be brought to market will people still be able to get those vaccines yes if they're FDA approved but your insurance

will not pay for them, probably, unless, you know, like the CDC decides to go against Akip's guidance, which they usually don't. But the effect that this will likely have is slowing the approval process for vaccines to actually get to people and making vaccines more expensive. You know, if your flu shot is not covered, it goes from being, like, free to being, you know, a hundred bucks or whatever drug manufacturers decide. The other thing that this is going to do is it's going to start confusing people about whether or not vaccines are safe, whether they are tested, whether they go through a process, which is like, vaccines are one of the safest and most tested medical products in the world.

They go through incredible, like, pre-market and post-market surveillance. Like, they are very, very, very, very safe. And so once we start having this, coming from this body that's supposed to be super independent and, you know, giving the best advice, like, there is a real danger that people will start to be like, oh, well, I'm not sure if I trust any of this or won't know or will not know how to access vaccines or won't be able to pay for them. So it's really not good. No.

I wish the CDC would take a page from the MAGA book and, you know, they would, you know, they would say, hey, you guys got to do this. And the CDC would be like, all right. And then not address it for a little bit and then just ignore them and do nothing. Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's like, I don't even know, I don't even know how this is going to go. It's part of what's so interesting is talking to public health experts and physicians and stuff right now is they're like, we really are in weird, weird.

weird, uncharted territory right now. And the kind of stuff that's going to be said in government meetings is just going to be, oh, it's going to be so wild. It's going to be so outrageous. But, you know, if you haven't gotten, you know, like, for instance, your latest COVID shot or, you know, you have a parent who needs to get a shingles vaccine or something, you know, now is a great time to see if you're up to date on everything you should be. You know, hell, even if you need a tetanus shot, you'll probably obviously still be able to get tetan shots, but just go, just go do that as soon as you can. Yeah. Right. Fantastic.

I feel like right now, we are like generations away from the people who really appreciate just how much disease ruled people's lives before 20th century medicine. Like it was, it was like at one point, like it was, and I read that, there was interesting stat from a Vox article that said that in 1900, more than a third of all deaths were caused by infectious diseases. And it dropped down to 5% by 1950. You know, this is a real modern miracle we get to live with. And I don't think people really fully grasp what it means if all of that progress were to backslide. Yeah, we have a like presumption of safety in this country around medication, food. You know, we have really good surveillance systems to let us know, for instance, when there's like an E. coli outbreak or something. And we're going to start seeing what happens when those systems are either gone or they're stretched to their breaking point.

And I think it's going to be a, it's going to be a difficult moment for people. But we also have this hyper individualistic view towards health in this country, right, where we forget that a lot of our health is due to public health, medicine, sanitation. And, you know, if you are somebody who loves taking supplements promoted to you by Alex Jones and or the liver king, this is a great moment for you and you're going to feel really safe and really comfortable. Yeah. Yeah, I think a lot of these folks, they're upset that modern medicine has taken away a lot of God's powers. you know, they think, you know, God has been sort of crippled, you know, his diseases don't work

quite so well to strike down those who should be punished. And so I think that, yeah, they're really just trying to give, they're trying to give him some of his power back. They want people to be wiped out through large plagues and diseases and just, yeah, generally take us back to a more biblical time where science didn't have as big a say. And I think we're moving towards that and we'll continue to move towards that. And sadly, of course, by the time, you know, as we learned with COVID, by the time people decide that maybe this wasn't such a good idea, it'll be too late. Yeah.

Well, the other kind of key detail here is that a lot of the people involved in this conversation don't believe in germ theory. Like on a basic level, I'm completely serious. I'm so sorry, I know. So Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed a skepticism about whether germs cause disease. if you read The Real Anthony Fauci, there's a bunch of stuff in there essentially promoting miasma theory, which is like the idea that diseases are caused by dirty air, essentially. And so has Leland Lerman from our earlier discussion.

He told a reporter Owen Higgins, I'm not 100% convinced that the germ theory is typically described as true, which means not only do I not believe that the so-called coronavirus is causal of the current malaise in the world, but I also don't believe that many of the so-called disease agents are causal. I generally consider toxic environment, poor food, lifestyle, and water access to be the major causes of disease, end quote. So basically, a lot of these guys are going to argue, guys and women, are going to argue that if you get sick, it is because your terrain, your body is not healthy and you need to shore yourself up through better food and sunlight and, you know, that illness is ultimately your fault. Yeah, you know, so like when they

say like, you know, make America great again, there was those questions, like, how far back are you going? In this case, we're talking about going back to like the 1850s, you know, when disease, which was a much more mysterious phenomenon than it is now. Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely reentering an interesting time. So I am super curious who the first person is who's going to talk about, like, miasma theory or question germ theory, like from, I don't know, an ACIP meeting, like some kind of CDC press conference. So that's personally the thing that I'm waiting for. So at least that hasn't happened yet. At least the worst part hasn't happened yet. I feel like that's kind of a theme of this show. Yeah. But maybe we're so stuck into it that the worst is happening and we just don't,

we just don't realize it because we're so stuck inside of it. Yeah. Who knows? I mean, my personal theory is that we were like in the wrong timeline, you know, that we like jump the tracks at some point. literally, like, living in the wrong timeline. At this point, that seems like a good, that seems like a good argument. I just think it's funny that, like, these guys are basic, the guys who are in charge of the entire country's, like, health, sort of health crisis, I would say, are basically using the same tactics that I did when I was a camp counselor as a teenager. If a kid would, like, fall and skin his knee, I'd be like, oh, you go, why don't you go, why don't we

go get a drink of water from the water fountain? You'll feel a lot better. Now that works. Now, that works on, you know, six and seven-year-olds with skin knees, but, you know, adults with infectious diseases, I, you know, I don't think, I don't think going to the water fountain is going to be the cure anymore, so. Well, luckily we're not dealing with a historically huge measles outbreak or potential fears of avian flu.

We haven't stopped, you know, tracking disease surveillance and milk because of shortages at the FDA because Elon Musk had everyone laid off. off because of Doge. At least none of that is happening. No, none of that. And the planes are doing great. They're flying better than ever. Yeah, it'll be like the 18th century and that we start taking boats everywhere again.

I just want to get Travis one of those cool crow masks. You know what I mean? Like one of the-clayed mask. Yeah, exactly. I think that would look very cool on you with your hair and everything. It would be sweet. What's going to happen to me? I guess I'm like part of the new world order.

I guess I'm running things, you and me, Anna. Yeah, it's great news, right? I get informed so frequently that I'm part of things. I'm part of things. As a Jewish person and, you know, as a member of the media, and it's just, it's really exciting to hear that because, you know, this has not been great for, we have not had a lot of great press.

No, our time is now. Our time is now down here right now. Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait to see what I do. Yeah. Can't wait to get diphtheria in my canal boat. Yeah, I mean, it's like, all right, everybody, like, if you want to learn about what the future's going to be like, boot up Oregon Trail, you'll learn about all sorts of things that are coming our way. Yeah, the number of RFK meets Oregon Trail memes that I've started seeing on Instagram is so concerning to me.

Just the fact that a bunch of my, like, non-journalist friends are now texting me questions about RFK and whether he really said something is very concerning. You should not have to know who he is. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I want to ask you about that, too, about reporters who cover, you know, stuff like science and health and public policy. In my estimation, I think they actually, they are at best, like, vaguely familiar with, like, conspiracism and extremism, which is not a criticism. I think that normally if your beat covers like HHS, there's no reason to be familiar with the history of the protocols, right? Those things don't normally overlap, but it seems like those kinds of topics are increasing.

overwhelmingly overlapping. You mentioned a miasma theory. But I mean, like, is there anything else that you think these kinds of reporters should like watch out for in order to like better identify when these sort of like fringe views are influencing federal policy? So another kind of big sign that you are entering like conspiracist ideas about public health is when people start talking about placebo testing for vaccines and saying that there's no placebo testing and we need to have, you know, people. in control groups who don't get vaccinated and people in non-control groups who do, which is, again, another thing that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has now said that he's going to do for, like, the next round of COVID vaccines is require placebo testing. This is, like, a very deep anti-vax idea. And there's, like, a big reason why, like, every version of a flu shot doesn't require placebo testing is because that was done, like, way back in the day and we don't have to do that anymore. So there's stuff like that where you can tell that you're coming from deep within the

anti-vax world. But, you know, like in general, I guess public health reporters and public policy reporters now have to be listening for variations of phrases like the new world order, the one-world government, you know, like they have to, I guess, learn to identify when that stuff gets brought up. You know, they have to start checking info wars for, you know, new appointees for the Trump administration, see if they've ever appeared there. But yeah, you're right. That a lot of times the overlap between the public health stuff and the stuff that I cover is not that great until now when it is the same people. It's a perfect circle. Fantastic. Yeah. As you were talking, I could feel this like ball in my chest just start to get like tighter and tighter as I like start to

comprehend the implications. Because we're just in year one. This is year one. We're just, you know, six months into a four year. So, oh. Yeah, it's going to be a long few years. So, okay, the things that I have to say that might make people feel better. Good, yeah, me, for me. Right, sorry.

This is the part that I always forget to do. It's why I never get invited back onto like a panel. You know, I speak at these like future of democracy things once and they're like, oh, fuck, never call her again, which is true. Hey, we don't get invited anywhere either, so you're in good company. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think any of us do. Okay, so the first thing.

thing, obviously, is that a lot of, like, Doge and the Trump administration's moves keep getting blocked or overturned by courts. Like, we still have court systems, which is obviously why, like, Elon Musk, for instance, was so mad about activist courts that, you know, there's a reason for that. The second thing is obviously, like, as we saw the first time around, there is so much infighting in the Trump world that it creates its own kind of barrier sometimes to getting things done. it's going really well this time for them like generally speaking but this you know fight last week between elin musk and donald trump was another reminder that these people are constantly like at each other's throats um and they are not quite the like world dominating force that they present themselves to be

so one of the reasons why the maha institute exists at all is that they have claimed that they're all these anti-maha forces within the government trying to get in their way by which they mean like checks and balances and like public servants who've been there for a long time probably but so like one of their key things is like we have to we have to protect secretary kennedy from all these evil forces within the government so like we do still have checks and balances we do still have a system that is meant to work and weed out like the worst ideas and the more you know about what's going on the better choices you can make for your health or your family or you know getting a second passport um if you can find citizenship somewhere else great time to marry a nice

canadian lady if either of you are you know in the market for that So, you know. No, we are both married already, unfortunately. Oh, well, see. Married to a, married to a filthy American. Yeah, same. It's really, we've really all made bad choices there. But, you know, maybe some of your listeners can consider marrying abroad.

Folks, it's not too late, okay? If you've got a Canadian chat friend, you're talking on AOL instant messenger, now's the time to reach out and go for the gold. because here, down here, the United States is not so good. Things are going really bad, and they're going to get mostly worse. My fault, of course, but I'll never admit it. In fact, I think I'm doing quite good. So call that Canadian girl, that boy, or non-binary person,

and let them know you'd like to spend the rest of your life with them. Although Canada might be ours one day, so maybe you should escape further. to be determined. Wow, that was chilling. I'm getting really good at it. It's a problem in my life. Yeah, it's a problem in my personal life. Wow, that's horrible.

Yeah, I can't imagine your wife likes that. No, no, no, no, no, it's bad. Well, Anna, thanks so much for joining us again. Yeah, go check out her reporting on Mother Jones. It is really essential if you want to have better understanding of the world and you don't feel like there's enough dread in your life. So, Anna, where else can people find your work? I'm mostly using Blue Sky now to share my work, and I'm also a contributor at Flaming Hydra,

which is a collective of writers and journalists and photographers, and I write dumb stuff there. That's my safety valve for the stuff I cover Mother Jones. So, like, I went to Disneyland. I wrote about going to Disneyland. So, you know. Hell yeah. Yeah, like big endorsement for Flaming Hydra if you want a break, though a lot of people are also writing about the fascism there.

So I can't guarantee a break every day. But sometimes we write about other things. Yeah, we had Miles Cleon. He talked about Flaming Hydra as well. Yeah, very fascinating stuff. Yeah, it's always great when, you know, when writers really choose topics and explore things that are really personal to them, really self-motivated.

And, yeah, it's really, really good stuff. Yeah, he's great. You just listened to another episode of the QAA podcast. I wonder if you have subscribed. Have you subscribed? Have you gone to patreon.com slash QAA and subscribe for five bucks I'm on? Why would I want to do something like that? Well, Jake, you wouldn't because you're one of the hosts of the podcast. Oh.

You're on the other end of this equation. But if someone wasn't one of the hosts of the podcast, like you, they could get, like, the entire archive of premium episodes in the second episode every week. And, you know, it's a pretty good deal. You know, it's like, hey, much like imagery dealers, we're audio dealers. So don't attend audio anonymous. Instead, pay five bucks a month to us for a second episode, if you liked the first. We gave you a taste. This was a taste. You're in a back alley. It's dark. You're approached by a man with beautiful long golden hair.

He's wearing a trench coat. He opens his trench coat, revealing hundreds of MP3 files hanging from the inside. He asks you, what's your poison? Misinformation, disinformation, disinformation, loony tunes. You go, I don't know. The three types of MP3s. Thank you, Jake. Thank you, Jake. That's patreon.com slash QAA. Go sign up if you haven't already. And if you're ready, dude, thank you so much.

Thank you. I love you so much. For everything else, we've got a website, QAApodcast.com. Listener. No. Listener, until next week, I thought you were going to interrupt me again.

May the deep dish bless you and keep you. Listener, until next, we may the deep dish bless you and keep you. We have auto-keyed content based on your preferences. 97% of the people on the committee had conflicts of interest. This is a committee that has... We've gone up from 11 vaccines in 1986. Today, children get between 69 and 92 vaccines before they're 18. Not one of those vaccines.

is ever really high. Those are not all mandatory. Those are all mandatory. And the reason there is 69 to 92 is some of the brands require three doses. Some of them require four. But none of them have been safety tested, except for the COVID vaccine. The only vaccine on the schedule that has gone through placebo controlled trials prior to licensure was the COVID vaccine. So nobody has any idea what the risk profiles are on these products. And we don't know whether they have anything to do with the epidemic of chronic disease. Almost all the chronic disease, the auto, I mean, these are products that are designed to deregulate your immune system, to change your immune system for life.

And we are now having an epidemic of immune dysregulation in our country, and we don't have an idea, but we have to investigate to see whether that has anything to do with it. Thank you.