Some More News - Even More News: Do Democrats Want Abdul El-Sayed To Win?

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Hi. On today's episode of Even More News, Kaveh Hoda joins Katy, Cody, and Jonathan to talk about Abdul El-Sayed's victory in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary, the GOP's inability to handle Muslim-sounding names, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr's virtually fact-free appearance on CNN.PATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/joinChapters:0:00 - Introduction/AES Wins16:57 - Republican Racism24:01 - Other Election Results29:03 - RFK Jr Crashes OutSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, hello. On today's episode, we talk about the results of Tuesday's primaries, the GOP's name confusion, and RFK Jr's cable news interview full of lies. Hey, hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. I'm Katie Stoll. Thank you for being Katie Stoll. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being. the host of the first and only news podcast. I'm your co-host, Cody. Ha-zah. This week, we're very, very excited to welcome back.

One of our favorite guests. He's a friend of the show, host of the podcast, The House of Pod. You know him. You love him. It's Kafei. Cody, Hazza. I actually makes you sound Persian. Like, Hazza.

It sounds like it could be a person. version name. So I am for that. I think you should go with that instead of Johnston. If I'm being honest, the Johnson thing's been done. Hazzah. Cody, haza, not so much. Jonathan's also here. Oh. Hey. Jonathan. What's going on in the news?

On Tuesday, there were some primary elections and some big ones. They're all big. but in Michigan, Dr. Abdul El-Said defeated Haley Stevens to become the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan. He's the more progressive. She was the more centrist, A-PAC backed by tens of millions of dollars. Tens of millions of dollars. The most money that had been put into a Senate campaign, on the Democrat side, at least in this cycle, you know, there's some differing opinions. one about his prospects in the general election. A lot of people have concerns.

And also there were some polls that came out a few days before saying that he was going to run away with this thing by 14 points or something, and it ended up being a narrow one point victory. So there's an election that's been going on and it's kind of like a poor election. And there's a problem with the polling? Okay.

Normal world. It's important to keep in mind how much money was spent against him in this and that he's still won. And I think that's really sort of the take home. I've been thinking about this, win a lot, listening to it a lot on CNN of the local news stations. And you would think from hearing the way that the media is discussing it, that this is a tragedy. Like it's subtle how they frame it, but they're very much like, oh, he's, they really frame him.

This is really on the Democrats right now. They really framed him as this one trick pony. The only thing he cares about is Israel and APEC. and they're missing the bigger picture, which is for him, he's like, no corporate money, no corporate sponsors, which is like, I think he was the only person in this, running against this giant machine.

And now it's on them to sort of peel that back. But that's part of why he was so close. I mean, no more, the most money that's ever gone into a Democratic primary run in this one. That's crazy. That's a lot of money. So much money. So much money.

And what's happening right now is so frustrating because, Well, it's bad faith, too, being hyper-focused on the fact that he didn't run away with it in the way that the polling, the famously bad polling that we all know shouldn't be deeply relied upon. They're focusing on that to make the case that he is not as electable. We all see him to be because he just won the election. And that is wild and frustrating as well as the chorus of people. moderate Democrats out there saying that they would never vote for him. These same people where had Haley Stevens won would be banging the drum about how leftists can't get, need to get their heads out of their asses and join the team.

It's interesting how it doesn't go both ways. And they are trying to create a reality where he does lose in the general. And the truth is, it's like, yeah, it'll be a tough fight. We knew that. We know that. We need all hands on deck to get the man elected. Good thing we have a party, an entire political party, to help get him elected and support him and not promote all the,

frankly, Islamophobic stuff going around about him and a lot of the racist stuff going about him. And they really boost all the attacks in a way that doesn't make it seem like they are on the same team. And, Katie, your point, there's a lot of people, there are a lot of people who are like, I'm never going to vote for them. And if it was reversed, they would be the exact opposite thing. And the reasoning behind it I've seen is like, well, like the left says it, but they don't mean it. Like the left is such hypocrites like they would be doing it.

And like they're using this principle against us as a cudgel. And it's like, okay, you can be annoyed by that. Maybe some people are doing that. But then it's not a principle of yours. If you're using like their behavior to have an extent. excuse to not do it, then it was never a principle you actually held to begin with. So nobody believes in anything. So I like what are you what are we arguing about? It's 2015, 2016, over and over and over and over and over again in a lot of ways really really

obnoxious. You know, Katie, you brought up though that's really been interesting to me is the you mentioned bad faith in this like I've never until recently noticed it as much. I'm I'm not you know me. I'm pretty moderate most things and simple minded. But like I've never But a simple country doctor. Just a little bumpkin. Never have I seen so much bad faith questioning than the last like a year or so. And Mondami gets it better more than anyone. And he handles it with a grace that I'll never understand.

Like he handles all these terrible bad faith questions and bad faith reporting in a way that is like Olympic level like generational talent when he does it. I don't think Abdul is going to be. white as good at it. He's doing fine. I think he's managing it well. But that's going to be the whole conversation going from here on now. Every interview is going to be, your Jewish voters are worried about you.

What can you say to calm them down? And he's going to have to address it again and again and again. And he just reinforces this narrative that that's all he cares about when it's not. I mean, he actually was, I mean, you guys know this, but he was the Wayne County Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services Director. He actually made Narcan widely available in Wayne County expanding Narcan vending machines, 100 vending machines, which I think is more than any city I've ever seen in a county. He bought and developed a program for free eyeglasses for the kids in Wayne County.

He's been trying hard to erase medical debt. They say 700 million, but that's not, hasn't really been the case. But, I mean, they're working their way. They're only 57 million of that debt has been erased. But at least they're working towards it. So, you know, public health has really been his focus. That's really the thing. But they keep painting this narrative that all he cares about is APAC.

And that's just not, I don't know. I'm hoping that gets changed as we can move forward with this. But I don't know how he's going to battle that and address that. There are all these attacks that are happening. And they're helped by the attacks that were happening during the primary and beforehand, like, by Democrats. And that's, like, such a frustrating thing. Like, if you don't have, it's similar to, like, the, like, Columbia protests and things like, and things like that where like you have all these centrist Democrats sort of going after these

students and calling them terrorist supporters and all this sort of stuff and then well now what now the Trump administration is going after them now the that framing has risen to the top where it's like this sort of bipartisan assumption that like well al-Saias is as anti-semitic this this is and it's very it's frustrating to see people who will like not just not see that that's what that's what's going on, that's what they're helping happen, but if it were reversed, they would just be, like, so, you know, vocal about it. I mean, it's like, we expect the Republicans to keep hammering the, he's a scary Muslim, he's anti-Semitic thing. Or, like, clipping a moment, like, oh, here he's mentioning A-PAC. He only talked about A-PAC. Well, you picked a clip where he does

that. And, but, like, the Democrats, as you pointed out, had multiple lines. They had that, and then they also had, like, he can't win the general, so vote for this other person. And now Like, I'm glad that they all were conciliatory, and Haley Stevens is like, we just need to focus on beating Mike Rogers. But it would have helped if a week ago she hadn't posted, everyone in America understands you want to blame all of your problems on Jewish Americans, which is a gross thing to say and completely untrue. And it's like, name one thing he's blamed on. Right. Had he blamed one thing on Jewish Americans, that'd be wrong. but he's like this idea of

not even one it's hard for you to now say like he has my full endorsement if you really believed that about him which I don't think you do well it's not hard for her to physically say it apparently but it is hard to believe that that's her intention

and moreover the damage has been done you have said this you have used this as your line of attack for very long time and unfortunately a lot of people out there just saying that they won't vote for him. You know, I said I wouldn't vote for Javier Becerra if he wins,

but I was whying, I guess. I don't know. I mean, you don't have to because he's going to win. I don't have to. It's a different situation. But ultimately, I'll probably will begrudgingly because I don't want Steve Hilton, but he won't win. You know, primary is going to get ugly.

and this isn't the first time and it won't be the last and you're attacking your opponent knowing that like well eventually we're going to have to be on the same team and that is becoming less and less the case in a lot of races there are some races where like the primary ends and the losers like fuck that I'm not going to help you at all like it's very very weird bad time I know that people are concerned will he have enough juice will this progressive candidate

be able to win in the general election I know that there are lots of people that, for whatever reason, are still moderate Democrats and hold firmly to that. We have to be able to work together, though, at this point. We actually, like, as much as begrudgingly, as much as I begrudge it, the fact that I have to compromise, I guess, when it comes to voting at the end of the day, in order to somewhat in just close. to what I consider is the best version of our future. I have to, I have to do that. And it means that in some places there's going to be a more progressive candidate. In other places, there's going to be a less progressive candidate.

But we need each other. And it's, it's so frustrating and that we are constantly put in the position where we're like, okay, we'll bite the bullet and we'll do it. But these other people want to just eject us from the party. And they'll say like, you know, oh, we, need to reject every one of the left and kick him out of the party but also bring some more... You don't have a party then.

Republicans and moderates into the party. That's what they would rather have. They open up the tent on the right side and they close it off on the left and that is just not, I don't know, we only have two parties. How are you get to, what's that going to look like? I do take issue with the way that it's framed to the conversation of like the radical left is just as bad as the radical

right or whatever. And I take issue with that. But let's step back from it a bit. The radical extreme are because people don't feel represented by their parties and that side over there, they have terrible ideas. But like obviously

it worked for conservatives. It has brought this new wave into their party and it's an ugly, terrible wave. But like they didn't kick them out and then they won, you know? And actually

it's, it's, if you were thinking a little bit more critically, you'd be saying, hmm, yes, there are moderate voices, but there are a whole lot of leftist voices that are speaking louder and louder because they are unrepresented and they are unheard.

And how do we incorporate that into our message? That is not the conversation at all. Well, many of them would rather MAGA win. I mean, they're outright saying it now. Like, if it's MAGA versus DSA, then I choose MAGA. Because the DSA is like, they're wacky, but like MAGA is like not a different kind of wacky in a non-specific way too like what about the

DSA platform do you not or they just don't like some of the stuff that Francesca Hong said years ago it's I think it's like it's like abolishing the Senate abolishing abolish the whatever um is always the thing that would definitely happen if they got elected that would be good for Democrats though the primaries are ugly and that happens and then there's sort of a coalescing they go on and go forth. And there's always this sense of like the leftists, they, they like shit on us and now they want to be on the team or whatever. And there's a sort of resentment. And that's going on the other direction now. But it's always like the far left or like progressives will criticize the Democratic party. It's because like, oh, you're too moderate or like this policy isn't good or this policy

actually like hurt people or we need to open up to this or like it's usually policy based. And that That can be like overcome with compromise and things. This, she said that he blames all of his problems on Jewish Americans. Those are like very, very different. And like it's just, it's telling that no one, no is ever like, okay, but like when we do it, it's about policy. When you do it, it's just racism. It's just this weird racism.

It's so bad faith. First off, he never said anything like that. But all of the criticisms right now is specifically about APEC and about Israel's actions and our support for Israel. It has nothing to do with. Jewish Americans. Right. No.

Nobody's willing to understand that. He's also made it really clear that he's just against PAC money at all. Like so, I mean, he tries to address that as much as he can. Corporate money and politics. It's a good idea. It is interesting that he's already started to make that swing to pull in some of the voters that they're worried about, the rural voters, the non-college educated white women. and particularly African-American voters,

he might be able to do a better job on that, though I did watch a couple of like these Instagram things that he's been in to try and bring that community in, and it's just not like, it has not worked great, has not landed yet. He does need to do some work there. That is true. But, you know, it's an uphill battle that's been created at this point.

And so now this is where the Democratic Party has to step in and prove that we can have a big tent, not just expanding to the right, but a big, we talked about, this last time with Hassan Piker coming in, we have to bring those people in. We are not going to win without both getting some of that rural vote and getting the college educated people who did vote for him,

Abdul, this time. So if the Democratic Party can't do this, it'll die. They have to be able to do this. So this is going to be a big test, I think. I'm really curious to see how it goes, because if they're able to pull this together, I think it bodes very well. It boads very well.

If they're willing to do the work, it's like a test case you know like can the Democratic Party actually get behind somebody who you know we should be able to there's theories about why his polling

didn't match up with the reality even though he still won it against all of that money we should be able to inshallah sorry I just got you guys I just got you guys on like a CIA list

for saying that on your podcast I apologize the AI's reading it and it's like yeah that's also something it's interesting don't like when leftists say that. We should talk about Michigan because I think that goes along with this conversation about whether or not we can pull this off. If Abdul al-Sayed can pull this off against his Republican opponent, because interesting things happened in Michigan. Yeah, the right has

their, the right has their own issues with the racism. So anyway, in Michigan's eighth district, there were three Republicans running in the primary, or three main Republicans running in the primary. Trump endorsed one of them, a guy who's a Navy veteran and a former federal law enforcement officer. So he got blown out by another guy, a small business owner who had suspended his campaign a month ago, who had not filed a campaign finance report because he couldn't figure out how to use the website, ultimately endorsed someone else, that other person came in third. And how did this happen? Trump endorses people they usually win.

Well, the small business owner who won was named Tom Smith, and the person Trump endorsed was named Amir Hassan, who is a Christian guy. But again, they did this to themselves. Jonathan, I need some clarification. So this Smith fellow, the one who couldn't figure out how to file his campaign finance reports. who apparently only raised like $1,800. Yeah, so he gets off the hook on that. Blew it out of the water, but he suspended his campaign. But now he's back in?

Can you just do that? Can you suspend and be back in? Because now he's going to the general election. What? You can do anything. No backsies. No backsies. That's double bad.

The reason is because, like, suspending your campaign is not pulling your name off of the ballot. It's already there. So it's kind of like what Janet Mills said. You're not campaigning anymore. He's like, I don't have. He just took a month long break. Yeah. It's still won.

It's a hard job campaigning, Katie. Come on. Take them. Everyone should be allowed to take a break, a mid-campaign break. I think that'd be fun. But he does expect, he says, I'm going to do it. He's going up against Democrat, Kristen McDonald-Rivit. And this is a winner.

He's a winner. They say this district is Leans Democrat. So in a wave year, you would expect whoever was the Republican nominee to, lose, but it's not like this is a D plus 30 district or anything. This could have been competitive in some respects. But now this guy is going to have to start raising money. He's going to have to start like, like, like, psych himself back up, be like, all right, I guess, okay. He'll run. I'm sure this guy believes chat how to upload his finance report. I'm sure this man believes horrible things, but this handwritten note to the FEC inspector. I don't. I don't. I don't

don't know how to turn on my computer, so I'm writing you a postcard. I hope this finds you well. Yeah, he's like, I only raised 1850, so I'm not going to file a report. P.S. I could not file this form electronically because I have had no success logging in and have not been able to get a response from the help desk. That can be frustrating. Put this person in charge of everything. This is what I mean. This is, this man just enough. He knows the struggle. He knows the struggle. It's hard to get a person on the phone. It's hard to log into stuff. Get that man. in the halls of Congress to solve whatever problem he had in this campaign. As much as I would like to think that Trump's influence has just waned so significantly that, you know, his endorsement means nothing.

It is, it is the racism. 100% the racism. It is the racism. Did you say the name of the third person who was running? Oh, no. His name was. You got it. I got it right here.

His name was Al Lemmo. and if you click here, I'll stop sharing. Nobody remembered him, so they couldn't do it. Well, we got to go to his page as well. So when you go to his page, the first thing you get is the endorsement from Tom Smith. And here I'll put the video. So this is Tom Smith, the guy who won. Hello, my name is Tom Smith, Republican candidate for Michigan's eighth congressional district.

I am announcing that today I am suspending my campaign and putting my full support behind Al Lemmo, Republican for Congress. Okay, and then you, that's a pop-up. Why is he standing like that? I don't know, that's not good. Do not know that that's the Republican stance? That's how they stand. And then you X this out and this is. Oh, that's L-L-L-L-L-Mo.

Look. Yeah, no, he looks like an L-Lemmo. I would remember that guy. Oh, Alamo, remember the Alamo. Thank you. Why is that not here? Remember the Al-Lemmo. That is just right there.

Because, you know, you're already in Michigan. That's the big thing. there, right? That's exactly. Before we move on, this, this connects to what happened in Vegas, baby Vegas recently. This was at a Trump rally and the guy who spoke before him wanted to acknowledge a fallen officer in Las Vegas. So I know Pastor Tice spoke about officer Abdel Nabi a few moments ago. No, no, we're not booing. We're not booing him. He's the officer that passed away here recently. And I asked if we had a moment of silence and he said we had not.

That was just the, wow, just the name, just the audacity to have an Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim-sounding name incited booze. It was just like a reflex. Yeah. It was. It could have known. Do you think it was just the sound of the name? Or was the guy not paying attention and then thought he was talking about Abdul al-Sayyad? Is that like a specific person or just like Muslim-sounding name?

I feel like it's just Muslim-sounding name, right? He's like, oh, you're talking about somebody I hate probably. I don't know. I don't have footage of the man is a person in question. I don't, you know, either way. Either way is not good. How about that? Either way is racist.

Yeah, you're right. It's both bad. But it is whenever, here's the thing is like they're so trained by, Republican attack ads that if they hear the full name, they assume it's a bad person. If they hear a full Muslim name, it's always Barack Hussein Obama and

Abdul, I don't know, Abdul is a full name actually, but like Abdul Rahman Muhammad al-Sayyad. They did the full name just to really really dig into it. So I think that's just they're trained. Oh yeah, they've been trained for, yeah, so long. There's a reason he says Hussein every single time

and it's for this to happen. It's for his endorsement to fail. because he has trained them to hate everybody with any name that isn't Tom Smith. God. So the idea is that I should infiltrate wherever their Republicans are running someone with a ethnic sounding name,

Jonathan Harris got to show up and just win 60% of the vote. Not a bad idea. Being there, they don't have to do anything. We would struggle without you. Before we move on from primary conversation, I do want to quickly touch on some interesting things from Missouri and Kansas. Missouri voters totally rejected an initiative that was championed by the Missouri State GOP,

their governor and the legislature, which essentially would have eliminated, not essentially, would have eliminated their state income tax and instead would have replaced it with more sales tax. I guess I was surprised that they rejected it and delighted. I think that that is interesting in a state like Missouri and also Kansas. So in Kansas, they rejected an amendment that Republicans also wanted to push through that would change the way the state's Supreme Court justices are selected. Right now, the governor selects from three that are given to them by a merit-based commission. and the governor of Kansas has been a Democrat for the last eight years, and they can probably thank that process in Kansas for abortions still being legal

because the GOP legislature wants to get rid of it. When they tried putting that on the ballot specifically, voters rejected it. So they say, okay, if we do this change, then we can just have people vote on the Supreme Court justices. They'll vote for the Republican. We'll get rid of abortion. and the voters rejected that amendment. So it will still be, it'll kind of go back and forth because, you know, Kansas, like many states,

like kind of wants to keep their state legislature in checks so they sometimes will have a democratic. Yeah, they'll do like sort of like opposites when they vote to try to balance it out. You know, they very well could lose the governorship this year. Well, what's also interesting about that is that Kansas have, they chose, I mean it's marginally more progressive,

but the more progressive populist type candidate to go to the general election. All of this to me is it, and she, yeah, she, Cindy Holshur, I don't know, sorry, I don't know how to pronounce her last names. Boo, boo. White names are so hard. No, no, she's a good one. She's moderately more progressive than the others. I just think all of this is interesting. A therapist once told me to be a little scientist and gather in,

And I think all of these primaries are gathering information. We're seeing more progressive wins. We're seeing even in Republican states surprising outcomes from some of these elections. I'm not saying that that's the way everything will go in the general. But I am saying there's room for hope. There's room to see like, huh, okay, slightly better than I expected. Let's see. I am choosing to look at these races from this week.

and extrapolate hope. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I'm all for it. Cautious optimism is, why not? Why not? Let's, you know, it's okay. I'm choosing in my life also to be as optimistic as I can in moments when I can. It doesn't mean we're not preparing for the worst.

It doesn't mean that we're not fighting the whatever fights we have to fight. But like, there's no harm in also being optimistic and not being miserable all the time. Because I looked at you saying this wonderful thing. and you've got the sweet smile on your face and behind you is that adorable cartoon character stuffy with just like a, ah, look at the face. You're like, yeah,

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Stream now. Pay never. There was a couple of topics that Jonathan had mentioned. There was topics about regulation, maybe, you know, talking about the golden age of diarrhea that we have entered. I'm losing my mind. I haven't had a salad in so long.

Losing a lot more than your mind, tell you what, right? Yeah. Because of the diarrhea. And also, can talk about RFK Jr. Probably, conservatively speaking, for 300 hours straight. We don't have that amount of time.

It's up to you, whatever you guys want to discuss. I'm happy to do both either. I tried to watch the full 21 minute RFK Jr. appearance on CNN earlier in the week. And I was like, oh, I'll just make notes of what he

says in fact check kind of in my mind. I'll make notes as we go. And I got four minutes in and had already done five things and written several hundred words. And I was like, I got to stop and we'll just pick a few. You're like writing an episode. Yeah. I'm like, we'll pick a few to do because he is just off the chain. Does the gish gallop fire hose of nonsense that comes out of that guy, of all the people in the Trump orbit, he is the one that bothers me the most. He bothers me the most. Let me first start by giving you a little bit of background of my thoughts about RFK Jr. When you hear

him speak. I try not to make fun of his voice because that's the one thing about him. That's not his fault. It's a real problem that people can have. But there's something else about his voice that I think is worth noting. It's that there's this anger in it. And it bubbles always, just underneath the surface. It's just there a little bit. And then all it takes is like a woman to question him. And this rage comes out. And it was a very contentious interview. And you could see he was kind of losing it. He accuses her at one point of being flustered, but clearly it seems like he was the most flustered.

I know you're flustered now, and it is. I don't, I'm not flustered at all. I am frustrated. The reason I'm frustrated is because I, you are the HHS. And what this interview does, other than showing how he gish gallops and just bullshits through everything,

he approaches public health through a lawyer's perspective, which is the worst way to approach public health. What he does is he has a point that he wants to make, just like a lawyer does. Lawyer has a side they have to argue. They find all the evidence that they can find to back that argument, whether or not it's good evidence, whether or not it makes sense in the setting of all the other evidence. And he'll use that. And he'll say things like, oh, you can Google it.

You can Google the study. And it's true. If you Google the words he said, you'll find a study that shows it. But what it doesn't do is show you the weight of the evidence. scientific consensus is not built on one interesting anecdote, one interesting study, it's built on the weight of evidence. And so you'll look up that one study, and it will be true, but it's ignoring all the other studies, the randomized trials that show the opposite of what he's trying to do.

And that's something that he does really well. And it's why you can't really platform him at all. Because like a lot of COVID revisionists, he just will spout so much stuff that even if you had all the data which Dan Bash did not have, at her fingertips, you wouldn't be able to counter it. It's just impossible. In this conversation, he ranged from everything from, you know, COVID, RSV, autism. So I wrote down some of the stuff.

Okay. Sorry. I get really upset about RFK Jr. I get just thinking about the. Your really upset face is very pleasant. It's also like really, like to highlight that the point you're making, like that is, that is his like, weirdly is his superpower of being able to like do this. This, what he's not the job that he has, but this job that he thinks he has. It's like, why when they have all these, like, reports, it's like, well, you just had chat GPT, like, take all the studies and, like, match them together, make up stuff because you're only there for the argument.

You're not actually there to, like, sift through the evidence and assess it honestly. It's just the, if the argument works. It's debate, internet debate stuff. I'll start with the thing that bothered me the most in case we run out of time. This is the one that bothered me the most of all his bullshit claims was he, at one point in this interview. and he's done this before, but this was the most recent time. He claims that there were empty ICUs across the country, including New York at the height of COVID.

They were hearing from hospitals saying that their ICUs were overrun and they needed some help while that was happening. Well, that's not true. That's just not true. But you're saying it's not true. No, they were doing it because Anthony Fauci was telling them from the top, you need to lock down. There were ICUs that were empty all over the country,

including in New York at the height. And this is like patently false. You can ask anybody who has worked in ICU, a physician, a respiratory therapist, nurses. The hospitals were overwhelmed. They were short on beds, staff and equipment. They were parking lots turned in to makeshift morgues. Trump actually even dispatched the U.S. comfort,

which is like a U.S. naval ship to basically act as like a floating plague ship at this time. It was terrible. And the things we saw or heard from our colleagues were absolutely the worst. Apocalyptic levels bad. If I'm being totally generous, he might mean he might have been referring to like emergency departments because there were periods where you would have relatively empty emergency rooms because all the people who are using emergency rooms for their primary care because our health care

system in this country is broken weren't going. So there were times for periods of times in between. when the emergency rooms would be a little bit more empty. Some places, usually not. But that may be what he means. Some places for a period of time, maybe. Or I can imagine I didn't live in my current address during COVID. I was in Los Angeles and it was a horror.

Maybe in this small town. Maybe it wasn't hit the same way. I can't speak to that. Probably not in March, April 2020, right? In April 2020, in New York. There were 24,687 deaths in New York City. That's all comers. 60% plus were in hospital.

And this number is at least 600% higher than the April's prior to that, April 2018, 2019. There was so much death in New York City. It's impossible. And in this dumb argument he makes, it even goes against his other argument. Because at other points, he's like, oh, we have the worst COVID deaths of anywhere in the country, which you mentioned already was Peru. It's not the United States. And there was like, we were 16.

There was lots of other people died before us and there's lots of other factors that go into that. But like, it doesn't even fit his own argument. If we really had the most deaths, why were the ICU's empty? In retrospect, what this makes me think, we never did this because in our training as doctors, we just, the concept of doing this is so antithetical to who we are,

but we should have been filming it. We should have literally like strapped a GoPro to an ER doctor's, head and just had him walk through the ER, seeing prone patient after prone patient, laying face down because that's a last ditch effort and they're about to die, showing like a guy on a respirator holding with a nurse holding like a face time to him so he can say goodbye to his wife as he's dying. We should have filmed that shit. And I know we would have lost our jobs for it, but at least then there'd be less of this bullshit about people.

Yeah. Well, and even of then, it would have been hard to predict, even. though we were already in the Trump era and everything, that, like, people would reject that that factually happened. Right? Like, they might, oh, the mask, all that stuff happened, but, like, you would reject that COVID happened

and people died of it. Unfortunately, we'll probably only get worse. I don't know what the answer is. Are we less prepared for things like this? Even worse than last time? Oh, listen, if nothing else, nobody is ever going to want to do Fauci's job again.

Fauci, was he perfect? No, he, He made some mistakes in the, like, but small ones. Overall, he did a really good job. And, like, no one's going to ever want that job again. He's being grilled, like, constantly on the things they say about him, the death threats, all that stuff. Nobody wants that now. I don't know how we're going to be.

Yeah, just because he got to meet Julia Roberts or whatever. That's the new update from the Fauci discourse is that he was voted in contempt of Congress. Well, they, and it's so, it's so silly. It's because it's all for show because even if the DOJ wants to. take this up, which they might not, because it's a loser. It has to go back to the Senate where like 60 people would have to vote for it. So that's not going to have. So it's really just Rand Paul's having fun. I guess he hates the guy. He just really, really doesn't like the guy because he lied to him about unclear. Just before we move on from other RFK stuff, I just thought I

would read and check with you, uh, call it on the factual nature. I have a lot of thoughts. This isn't even a doctor question, really. I think we all intuitively know the answer. The country was kept closed for another year and a half after Trump left office. Nope. Yeah, that's not true. Summer 2020, you could go to a restaurant. It wasn't even Al Dente or whatever we called it here in L.A.

Al fresco. Yeah. I like Al Dente. But it should be al Dente. It is delicious. Yeah, I know. It's just like a little bit. And then this is something you probably can weigh in on.

He says, quote, clearly COVID-19 and many other global pandemics that we have have come from gain of function research, the RSV epidemic that we have that is the biggest killer of kids in this country today, came from these kinds of experiments, and then Lyme disease as well. Okay, let's get into it real quick. What is the biggest killer of kids in this country? Is it red dye number six? It's guns. That's right, Jonathan. Guns are cars of my guess. Guns. And I've never heard him talk about that. I've never heard him talk about that. Now, this whole gain of function thing is also pretty maddening, too. So there has been research

you know, for a long time where you test a virus, you give it different functions so you can test it and see how it goes. That has actually been invaluable. And it's one of the reasons that Operation Warp Speed was able to work because there was years of data that went into it, some of which was this gain of function research. And that really helped us target the spike protein. If it wasn't for that, this whole thing that we had that Trump sometimes takes credit for sometimes doesn't, whatever, this vaccine. Yeah, depending on what he thinks will help him, like that wouldn't have happened. And the RSV thing is funny, so I had to write, I looked it up just to make sure, but RSV was discovered in 1956, okay? Decades before modern gain of function research ever happened, right?

And it is a big, it is, causes a lot of infant hospitalizations, but it's certainly not the leading death. Well, it was discovered in the 50s, but it exists, the virus existed for a long time before that, yes. Right, right. Yeah, in a lab. The Lyme disease thing is pretty funny. Do you guys know the story of the limel? What this conspiracy theory about Lyme diseases? I have a guess.

Does it involve Nazis? Oh, no. Because that's the conspiracy theory. Okay, then I'll back off. Sorry. Sorry, it was, the theory is that we brought over Nazi scientists, and they were so brilliant that before the technology was able to be done, they created gain of function, viruses, Lyme disease is one of them.

Like, it's insane. It's so insane. So the Lyme disease one, the RSV thing, there's no evidence. I mean, there was, I think there was like a reasonable discussion that you could have had at some point to say, did COVID come from a lab? There's a reasonable discussion there. But people, including my friend, Dr. Angie Rasmussen, have really clearly gone through this and worked it out to the point where it's abundantly clear to scientists that. it did not come from a lap. I mean, that is all the evidence now goes towards that.

I don't think that was an unreasonable discussion in a different time where you could have that kind of thing. But these other ones are just nonsense. Just nonsense. These are the gain of function conspiracies. To kind of circle back to like what you're saying about him, like it is this sort of like, it seems like he's got such a chip on his shoulder about like, you know, some like personal betrayals in his past and some like friction he's had during his career, uh, specifically like

with the left or whatever. And like it's just all waiting to like erupt and he's just like, this is his way to sort of get back at people in a way. It just, uh, it's a very, it's very weird interview. In all this is to to say like it's not just one interview that's a problem. This is the guy that's the head of our HHS. He's the, he is the top like medical science officer we have and this is where we're going. And then, you know, something else that Jonathan had mentioned talking about, we probably don't have time to, but I think is important to at least touch on is that this is all part of our deregulation. This is what I was hoping we would pivot to now. And it really is going to be a problem because this is the guy who doesn't believe

in it. And, you know, the evidence is really clear. If you don't have the people there to do the monitoring, if you underfund food safety and public health agencies, it's going to lead to measurable decreases in detection and increases in foodborne illnesses. And we saw this with the cyclosporiasis cases. And I looked up some of the numbers here. The 2026 budget actually proposes a 50% reduction in CDC funding. And that's from like 9 million to 4 million. HHS has already slash more than 12 billion in federal grants to states. The 15% of the CDC workforce has left. That's about 3,000 workers.

These are people who are field epidemiologists. These are people who are out there doing the work. The FDA has lost about one in six people. These are the people that are out there doing tough cases. And if you have something, for example, like the cyclosporiasis outbreak, that's a tough one to follow. Because when we have a patient with diarrhea,

We do stool tests, but the most common tests are not included are included to test for cyclospryosis. And so you need to have people who are on in the ground doing detective work. It is labor intensive. And we don't have those people anymore. And this is going to get worse. I mean, we don't have those people. And when this first was popping up and we were first being aware of it, I remember reading about how this periscite. Sorry, it was an issue decades and decades ago

until we implemented all of these procedures and the tracing. Like, it might happen, but we need to be able to squash it quick. We need to be able to trace it back. We need to be able to find where it started. And, oh, also, forgetting about the cows, the cows with the screw worm.

Screw worm to, you know, back. Same concept. But people also used to know how to handle with the screw worm. and because we have regulated things, now they don't. So now we're like starting over. But it's not just that we're having salmonella outbreaks.

And like some of this stuff would be expected. Like stuff happens. It would be expected. But Jonathan last night I also was doing deep drive just trying to compare. I'm like, is this like the FAA? We are all like, oh, all of a sudden there's all these stories of malfunctioning airplanes. And we'll circle back around to that. And it's like, oh, no, there's always been a certain amount of stuff that happens,

but it just doesn't break through the fray and get as much coverage. And then there's a trend and they push it. This is different. This is actually different. This is a significant increase across the board. Did you guys see this recent report that this is not really related, but it's also a sign of the general incompetence of the administration is that the Medevac plane that crashed into the Capitan Mountain?

in New Mexico because they were doing the Defense Department was doing some sort of like jamming, radar jamming drill. I don't know if you guys probably don't know this, but like to find nurses and paramedics who do that job is incredibly hard to do. I'm sure. It requires

really seasoned experience people who are comfortable working at altitude doing stuff that most people aren't able to do. Chest tubes, intubate, that sort of thing. It's just insane. We lost these four people, two pilots and two, one paramedic, one nurse, I think.

Yeah, they were on their way to a call. Like, this is how people in rural areas get help. And like, they were on their way to a call. And I guess the Department of Defense or whatever did a jamming thing and jammed their radar. And that's what they think led to this crash. And also, in suing wildfire because of the plane crash. Covering it up for a while. Like, we didn't.

this was in May yeah didn't know about it at the time I mean it's bad y'all it's real bad and they just love playing with their little toys and saying that everybody who works in the medical field is a I don't know heroes trying to trick you spend the no there's like it's like this weird like there's so right there's the sense of like so just like we fucking hate doctors now suddenly we hate all doctors we hate all nurses we just have no respect for for anybody who like works so hard to help people. They're getting rid of, they're almost out of people to hate.

Because they got teachers, they hate those, doctors, anyone else who has like a job that people generally feel good about that we can shit on. Seriously. Air traffic controllers. You know, be nice to have enough of them to do the thing that we need them to do. Before we wrap things up here today, Kavei, I hear that you've got something

that you've been working on. I got something. You can start promoting perhaps. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. First of all, thank you very much.

I do need 40 more minutes to talk about RFK Jr. Yeah, totally. Okay, we'll do that way. That's going to be our drinking podcast. We'll incorporate it. Let's do that. So there's two things.

I have a podcast called the House of Pod, which is a sort of humor adjacent, fun little look at public health and all the terrible things are happening to public. health and we'll make fun of wellness grifters and talk about things like RFK Jr. at length, so you should listen to us there. There is a new podcast that I am working on. I've been working for a while. I'm pretty excited about it. There is, I growing up did not have a great connection

to Persian culture, Persian history. And only as I got older did I learn more about like Persian contributions to the fields of art, medicine, science. You know, do you like neurosurgery, for example, that first Iran, beer, first fermented beer in the Zagros Mountains of Iran? High heels. Do you like high heels, Cody? No, I don't. That was, yes, that's why I asked Cody.

I figured someone. That, so all this cool stuff that, you know, largely the contributions of Persian culture, history have been sort of minimized or we've been written out. of history books and there's a new podcast I'm going to be doing to really sort of address that. Looking at people, famous people from history, famous times from history, we'll be bringing on maybe some historians to help flush out some of those details, bringing on maybe some more modern celebrities also to talk about things. I'm very excited about it. It's going to be called Persian of Interest, which I think is a pretty clever title. Come on, right? It's a pretty good title.

It's a pretty good title. Come on. Thank you. Thank you very much. I've been waiting the past hour to get to the title of your new podcast. Persian of interest and it should be coming out in September. What I recommend doing is following me, subscribe to House of Pod. You just have it there. Just have it there in your feed. So at least when you show your friends, your podcast that you listen to, you're like, look, I also do science stuff too.

I'm smart. And then we'll tell you from there when I'll probably put it the first episode or two into that feed, the House of Pod feed. And yeah, I'm excited. and I don't know how, but I'm sure I'll rope you guys into coming on to a person of interest as well. Crave, as always, for joining us for all of your insights. You're a delightful guest. Thank you, everybody at home who supports the show.

We have a Patreon. Cool. We encourage you to like and subscribe. Double cool, double great, even. Hey, can I tell you what somebody left on one of your YouTube comments? Someone compared me to a... Jonathan showed me this. someone compared me to Bruce Campbell, a young Bruce Campbell.

Yeah, that was cool. I was like, I take it. I'll take it. Live off of that for a while. That'll fuel you. Not like carrot top. I was stoked. And you know what, Coffey?

I bet you're going to get more comments just like that. This time. I'm worried now. Now that we've said it, yeah. No, I'm a little worried. Thank you so much. You guys are the best. You're the best.

Thank you. And you and how are also the best. And one more. More thing I just gotta say. We love you very much. Much. Much.