The Highwire with Del Bigtree - RFK JR. NOMINATION HEADED TO SENATE FOR FINAL VOTE

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

The first round of voting has concluded for HHS Secretary confirmation of Robert F Kennedy, Jr. with speculation putting the final vote some time next week. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

Things are ramping up. You can feel the tension and the excitement all across this country as President Donald Trump is in action in ways we've never seen it before. And while that's going on, incredible confirmation hearings are taking place. And of course, the one that most of us that are here at the High Wire and those of you watching the High Wire are the most focused on, of course, the confirmation of Robert Kennedy Jr. Well, this week he was finally had the vote. from the Finance Committee that he had sat before just over a week ago in some grueling multi-hour sessions, both with the Finance Committee and then the Health Committee. But the Finance Committee is the only one that gets the opportunity to vote for Robert Kennedy, Jr. to go to the floor for the full Senate vote. And this is what that looked like. Mr. Kennedy, if confirmed, we'll have the opportunity to deliver much-needed change to our nation's health care system. He has spent his career fighting. to end America's chronic illness epidemic,

and has been a leading advocate for healthcare transparency, both for patients and for taxpayers. Mr. Kennedy has given us no reason to believe there'll be anything other than a rubber stamp for plans to gut Medicaid and rip health care away from the American people and be a yes man if ordered by Musk or Trump to take an illegal action. At a rally a few months ago, Donald Trump said that he was going to allow Mr. Robert Kennedy to quote, go wild. Of all the things that I can think of that I'd like to see

a Secretary of Health and Human Services do, Go Wild is not on the list. I hope he goes wild. And instead of having the discussions that we have had for the 10 years that I've been in the Senate of making Medicaid work and making people on Medicaid healthier, I hope he goes wild on food safety discussion so that we can actually improve our food safety supply. I hope he goes wild on the health care supply chains to make sure that drug prices go down instead of bludgeoning pharmaceutical companies get everybody in the room and make sure that we do this right the clerk will call the roll mr grassley i mr grassley i mr cornett mr corny mr thune mr thun mr scott i mr scott i mr lankford mr lankford i mr daines i mr young mr y mr barassow sir scott i mr lankford i mr lankford i mr dain's i mr young i mr barassau

Mr. Brassau? Aye, Mr. Johnson. Aye. Mr. Johnson. Aye. Mr. Tillis. Aye. Mr. Blackburn?

Aye. Mr. Marshall? Aye. Mr. Widen? No. Mr. Wyden? No. Ms. Kahnwell?

No. Ms. Kahn? No. Mr. Bennett? No. Mr. Warner? No. Mr. Warner?

No. Mr. White House. Mr. White House? No. Ms. Hasson. Ms. Hasson? No. Ms. Kortez Masto.

No. Ms. Warren? No. Mr. Warren? No. Mr. Sanders. No. Mr. Sanders, no.

Ms. Smith? No. Mr. Lujan. No. Mr. Loonan, no. Mr. Warnock, no. Mr. Walsh. Mr. Welch, no.

Mr. Welch, no. Mr. Chairman, no. Mr. Chairman, no. Mr. Chairman, the final tell you was 14, 13 A's. The vote was 14.13. The nomination is reported. Well, a very exciting moment. Also, lots of tension in the room. I was in the room, but I had not seen Cassidy, who I guess had tweeted out just before that,

meeting that he had come to some understandings with Kennedy and I think President Trump. And so I guess a lot of people knew where he was going to go, I didn't. I was waiting with bated breath to see how that vote went. And as was really expected, I guess, it came down party lines, which means history will tell that every Democrat, at least so far in the Finance Committee, was a voting against making America healthy again. As I said last week, they all admit that we have a broken health care system, that we have corruption inside of our regulatory agencies. They admitted that our kids are the sickest we've ever seen them, that we're the sickest nation in the world.

They said, we agree with you. We've got to get the chemicals out. We've got to get the corruption out, but not you. You're not the one to do this. And basically, and we just saw in that vote. So very interesting. One of the things that I want to talk about, we'll talk about some of the issues around. this moment and vaccines and and and you know is autism and vaccines are the related is the science

settled I'm going to talk to a doctor that's in the middle of that because he works with autistic patients and developmentally disabled patients all the time dr. James New and Schwander coming up a little bit later in the show we're going to talk about where the science is actually at what you can say what you can't say at least from maybe a slightly more open-minded perspective in medicine but the big thing big question right now. One of the things I saw posted right afterwards and people were, you know, writing to me, Del hooray, he's HHS Secretary. He did it, you know. And I've even, I saw a couple posts go out and said, ooh, no, he just got out of finance committee and is now up for a Senate

floor vote. Now, there's a lot of questions. A lot of people out there asking, so when is it? Many of you thinking, if you want to go to Washington, D.C. and be a part of this historical moment, when is it? There's speculation it's Tuesday. The speculation it's Wednesday. I want to explain to you something that I was, while I was in Washington, D.C. just a couple days ago, it was explained to me. And I can tell you this. We don't know what day it is. And here's why.

Let's just go ahead to the official record so you understand how this works. None of us, I assure you, study this in high school or probably college. Senate procedures to confirm nominees. This is exactly what is going to happen. Absent unanimous consent. so we know there is not unanimous consent. The steps to confirm a nomination include the Senate votes on a non-debatable motion

to proceed to executive session to take up a nomination on executive calendar. So they're going to basically put it on the calendar. The majority leader or his designee files cloture on the nomination. The Senate must wait two session days before voting on closure, absent unanimous consent to alter this ripening.

period. They call it a ripening period. The Senate can conduct other businesses during these two days and it usually does. Leave that up for a second. So let me make this really clear. The majority leader has got to vote for this cloture on the nomination. But the Senate must wait two full session days, meaning if today is Thursday, they have to wait through Friday and then Saturday would be the first time that they could actually begin the cloture vote. And then we go on. We go on. And then we go Two days of session later, the Senate votes on cloture. The rule requires that the vote to invoke cloture be a roll call vote. If a majority of senators voting support cloture, then cloture is invoked and further consideration of the nomination is limited.

The Senate conducts post-closure debate on the nomination for all but the highest ranking nominations. The maximum time for consideration of a nomination after cloture is invoked is two hours. Whence cloture is invoked on a matter, the Senate can consider other business during the post-closure period only by unanimous consent. After post-closure debate time expires, or when no senator seeks to discuss the nomination further, the senator votes on the nomination. Confirmation requires majority support. The motion to reconsider the confirmation vote is routinely by unanimous consent considered made it laid upon the table. This final parliamentary step prevents the possibility of a re-vote on the nomination, and immediately, returns the approved nomination to the president. So essentially here's what's about to happen.

Tomorrow we understand that many of the representatives are leaving town. So there is no, nothing happening in D.C. tomorrow on Friday, which means their weekend begins after tonight. So what has to happen today is this vote to move towards cloture. If that boat happens today, there's the ripening period of two full session days. So they have to skip a day and then the next day, they could vote for cloture. Since we're going into a weekend that can ripen over the weekend is my understanding, which means if they invoke this vote for cloture today and they all agree it begins today, the ripening period happens over the weekend. And then on Monday, they can vote for cloture. and then there's a 30 days of talking about it.

I mean 30 hours, in 30 hours, they can have the final Senate vote. So the soonest this vote can take place is somewhere around Tuesday night. If there's a Monday morning cloture vote, 30 hours later, they can have the final Senate vote. So that the earliest that will happen would be Tuesday night. Now, if they don't manage today, and so far as I know, we haven't heard that they haven't called, for this cloture voter to begin this this this ripening period if they don't do that today that won't happen until monday which means on monday they'll call for this two-day ripening period which means tuesday will have to pass and then wednesday they can vote for cloture and 30 hours after that

as soon as thursday night into friday would be the final senate vote i hope that clears it up it is a really weird system for those of us that have never looked at it, but it's sort of two chunks. There has to be two days and then 30 hours. And so hopefully, I think we're all hoping, I'm sure, the Trump administration is hoping that today we get to that call foreclosure and move into that ripening session over that ripening period over the weekend. So there it is. I hope we got that right. I'm pretty sure we did. Someone will probably write in and say, No, Delle, you messed it up. But that's my understanding of it. I think so the earliest we're looking at, at Tuesday night and look if they could keep pushing this down the road that

means they there has to be the sort of beginning of the vote to move it