09:06 CNBC, who I believe, you know, their, I don't know, how are their ratings go? I don't, CNBC, their ratings don't really fluctuate that much, do they? No, they're just a bunch of, no, they don't fluctuate. As far as I can tell, they never fluctuated. It's a solid, it's a small audience, but it's a very important audience of stock people. Solid, solid, steady audience. of people who want to be told to buy. That's all that is always bought. Buy this, buy that. Or of course we all tune in to look at inverse Jim Cramer because whatever Jim Cramer says do the opposite. Buy, buy more. Jim Cramer literally at $99,000 a Bitcoin said you need to buy and it went straight down the 90. That's why Horowitz shorted it. He knows, he knows the Jim Cramer curse. He knows. Anyway, talking about big pharma.
09:57 Who's our guy that comes back on the Squawk Box on CNBC? Come on now. Yes, Scott. Yes, there has been a lot of big news in healthcare over the last few days. President Joe Biden proposing expanding Medicare and Medicaid to cover obesity drugs. That's a move that could impact millions of Americans. Meantime, President-elect Donald Trump has made all of his picks for the health related team and joining us right now to talk about all of this and what it means to the sector is Dr. Scott Gottlieb. Of course, he is the former FDA commissioner under the last Trump administration. He's also a CNBC contributor and Scott you're still a board member at Pfizer as well? That's right. Okay and a board member at Pfizer. Yeah, a board member at Pfizer. Now before you play the rest of this clip let's remind people something that is not being brought up by anybody but I'm gonna bring it up and once you hear it then of course you want to bring it up too which is that we have to always remember
10:53 that it was Pfizer and Borla who held back the news that the vaccine was done and ready to go during COVID and the warp speed project that Trump was so proud of, and they pulled the information and left it until after the election to screw over Trump. Trump, who supposedly has these grudges, he has to have a huge grudge against Pfizer and nobody's bringing this up. Scott Gottlieb is not bringing it up, but he knows He and Pfizer's a target and Kennedy's getting in by hook or crook. Yeah, he's gonna open up the vaults. It's a RICO case. It's all coming out and President-elect Trump should be thanking Scott Gottlieb and Borla on his knees.
11:37 Yeah, well, because that's a twist that was unexpected and he's really keen. Yeah, but that's beside the point. Yeah, I'm just saying. They still tried to screw him over. They did. Let's go. Well, let's jump into this and why don't we start with... Let's dive into this, shall we? The incoming administration's choices. Because there's been a lot of consternation, a lot of people who have said, wait a second, with RFK Jr. heading things up. What do you say? As somebody who served in the last Trump administration. Look, while I have deep concerns about Kennedy's stated intentions to roll back core public health protections, particularly as it relates to childhood vaccines, he's brought in a very experienced team, a lot of lawyers from the Children's Defense Fund, which is his anti-vax organization. These guys- Wow.
12:20 He calls that an anti-vax organization. Right there, right there the CNN lady or the CNBC lady should have said, they do a lot more than that, don't they? I mean, they're not just anti-vax. In fact, they're not anti-vax. They are pro-safe vax. No, they're not at all. Yeah. No, this is a lie. He said a lie on CNBC. She didn't do it. Of course, what do you expect from NBC News? They can't, I mean, they're taking $500,000 bribes. And what's his name still on the air as far as I can tell? Al Sharpton, yes. And so it's a corrupt organization at this point. It's corrupt! The whole thing is corrupt. I can't believe that they're still... I mean, should pull the plug. That's amazing! They're still on the air. Cut the cable! Cut the cable! Very experienced team, a lot of lawyers from the Trolls Defense Fund, which is his anti- There's no license for cable. ...vax organization. These guys are capable. I think they're deadly serious, have been very clear about their intentions. And I think sometimes you have to take people at their word. And just to sort of level set where we are right now, we're gonna
13:16 We had 5,000 cases of pertussis last year. We're gonna have 30,000 cases this year. Pregnant women for the first time in a very long time now need to think about- Time to buy pertussis. I hear it's going, I hear it's skyrocketing. Pregnant women for the first time in a very long time now need to think about pertussis as a risk during pregnancy. And if you look at vaccination rates for MMR, there are states that really are the tipping point in terms of reduced vaccination rates. Herd immunity is achieved at a level of about 95% coverage. If you look at Idaho, it's at 79%. You look at Alaska and Wisconsin, 84% minus- Hold on, hold on. Herd immunity, I think this is a little contradiction in terms here. He says herd immunity is achieved at 90% vaccination rate.
14:02 First of all, what we've always been told and what is now, there's a lot of backpedaling on, well, vaccines, you know, they kind of work, but only works if everybody has them because they're not really 100% effective. And herd immunity, the way I've always understood it, was if you've had the infection. And if 95% of the people have had the infection, now herd immunity is being pushed into vaccination status. Am I missing this? Am I misreading this? No, I don't think you are, but I think they've tried to, they're moving the goalposts around. And also, it was supposed to be 60 or 65 percent. Now it's 95 percent you achieve herd immunity. I was always under the impression that if you had a disease that had, and you, yes,
14:50 You start vaccinating people at like, I would say smallpox. You get it down so low that it can't be really transmitted much because the people that were vaccinated won't catch it and and won't pass it along, unlike the COVID shot, which doesn't do anything. All right, we continue. Pregnant women for the first time in a very long time now need to think about pertussis as a risk during pregnancy. And if you look at vaccination rates for MMR, they're states that really are the tipping point in terms of reduced vaccination rates. Herd immunity is achieved at a level of about 95% coverage. If you look at Idaho, it's at 79%. You look at Alaska and Wisconsin, 84%. Minnesota, 87%. Florida, Colorado, Oklahoma, Georgia, and Utah at 88%.
15:36 When I was at FDA in 2018, 2019, all those states were in the low 90s. If we lose another 5%, we're going to be in a position where we see distributed outbreaks of measles and that could easily happen in the next few years. Measles! Yes, measles. We're all going to die from the measles. We have to remember about 12 years ago there was a series of, for about a year, all we heard was about measles. And it was on the TV shows. I had actually ran a series of clips back then, measles, caused by measles. And it was like law and order. Dun dun. And so, oh, what happened is she died by measles. Well, she didn't, her kid didn't get a shot, so there we have to sue her because the other kid got measles and died. Right. Remember these stories? Yeah, yeah. This is what they're aiming for.
16:22 Well, let me talk about the percentages here for a moment because Sir Chris, who was one, the level of knowledge in our producer base, you and I even had an email, quick email exchange about this. The level of sophistication of information on certain very specific topics in our producer base is sometimes scary. Drill downs, yeah. I mean, we really have people who know their stuff. So listen to this. I want to send you a note about incentive payments paid to pediatricians for giving vaccines to their patients. As we had this conversation, I said, I don't think they're given specific incentives. Well, Sir Chris sets me straight.
16:57 You mentioned in episode 1715 that you didn't think that pediatricians were given bonuses, but I can assure you they absolutely are bonused based on the percentage of patients that receive various treatments. These are often called physician group incentive programs or the less transactional sounding value partnerships. For pediatricians specifically, I like a value partnership, value partnership sounds good. For pediatricians specifically, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan in 2016, pediatricians can receive a $400 payment per eligible patient if the percentage of children who have had the following immunizations by their second birthday exceeds 80%.
17:41 I'll just go through the list it's diphtheria, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hep B, HIV, hemophilius influenza type B, varicella, zoster virus, the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, hep A, rotavirus and influenza, the flu vaccine. The percentage-based calculation is the nefarious part and why pediatricians will kick patients out of their practice. So they can keep their percentage. Yes, if you have 100 patients and only 79 of them are meeting the metrics, you can kick one that isn't out of the practice and magically exceed the 80% threshold. So when he's talking about thresholds here, this is a signal. This is a signal to a whole bunch of people whose income is based on this. Oh, yeah, it's 70%. Well, we're not going to get our bonuses. Imagine you got a thousand kids in your practice.
18:42 400 bucks per patient. That's golf dues right there. No, I believe his wife is a pediatrician. I think that's where he got this information. If he said that, I took that out of the show notes. I'd have to look that up. He has background. He has credibility for this. Yeah, I completely believe it. I completely believe it. So this is part of the money making scandal. This is a scandal. Where's the mainstream media on this kind of thing? Well, this is scandalous. This is illegal. He's sitting right there at CNBC, the mainstream media. Let's talk about the road map. But you warned about this when you were at the FDA. You said because of vaccine hesitancy in this country because of concerns about the COVID vaccine.
19:34 You worried about what that would mean for all of these other related diseases and the vaccines that we have. Which vaccines should we be getting, which should we not? Because RFK Jr. has softened his stance. If you go back and look at what he said back to 2013, he talked about how vaccinating children and trying to cover up any problems from it is, he likened it to abuse by the Catholic Church, sexual abuse of children. He said that what the CDC was doing- Did we have that clip? I missed that clip. I need to find that one. To abuse by the Catholic Church, sexual abuse of children. He said that what the CDC was doing in 2019 with COVID vaccines was vaccine. He's talked about jailing vaccine scientists in the past. Good point from the troll room. His history with vaccines specifically was using mercury as an adjuvant.
20:24 That's always been his case. That's how he got interested in vaccines. I don't think mercury was ever used as an adjuvant. It was used as a preservative. No, I think it's used as an adjuvant. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. Preservative. Mercury. Let's ask Chad GPT. Because I trust that. They're going to tell you nothing. I trust that more than anything. Let's see. I believe, no, I really do believe, I do believe. You can believe all you want, doesn't help. Yeah, because I remember us only calling it a preservative. Is mercury used as an adjuvant in vaccines? Isn't it fun listening to me type? Okay, here we go.
21:09 No, mercury, this thing is wrong, obviously. Screw chat GPT. Okay. Oh, thimerosal. That's what I'm thinking of. Thimerosal. Yeah, that's a preservative. Okay, let's continue. Scientists in the past. Now he sounds a little less strident in some of the comments that he's making, but you don't believe. Well, I don't think he's less strident. Look, this is a post COVID environment, no question about it. And I was against the mandates. We talked about this on this show. I was against the COVID vaccine mandates because I worried that it would. This was baffling to me. This is bull crap. I don't ever remember Scott Gopley, Gopley, Gopley,
21:49 ever got the late I don't remember him ever being against mandate anything we follow this guy pretty closely this is a post-covid environment no question about it and I was against the mandates we talked about this on this show I was against the covid vaccine mandates because I worried that it would breed vaccine hesitancy I think we are seeing now is people coming into the political spectrum preying on that And they're deadly serious about the policies they're going to implement. So what could RFK do? And he's committed to this. He's committed decades of his life to this. He's not going to back away. They could disband ACIP, the advisory committee to the CDC, and issue new recommendations that are non-binding to states, giving states cover to move away from the childhood immunization schedule.
22:32 they could frustrate the vaccines for children's fund which backs in spruce percent of all kids in the country basically for example tying states that want to use that money to vaccinate kids to certain reporting requirements like reporting on immigration status or religious that status what children those are you know i think they could do it is a now is just talking hypotheticals now is to say they're going to use that to make sure you're not here illegally the way i hear him speak this this guy i don't know you hear that i just hear a bunch of bullshit For example, tying states that want to use that money to vaccinate kids to certain reporting requirements like reporting on immigration status or religious status for children. Those are easy things they could do administratively and that would make it very hard for states to take the money. I'm not laying out their roadmap.
23:17 They know their roadmap and this is their roadmap. I've been in policy I know what these agencies can do and I know what they intend to do. I'm not saying it's their roadmap I don't know the road map, but this is the road map. Believe me. I'm Scott Lee Godly gop leap I am board member of Pfizer couple I got a couple more quickies here Who have you spoken with in the Trump administration at this point or in the incoming administration? You are somebody again who served in a Trump administration? What what have you had to say to them about that? I've been clear about them. I've had certain conversations. I talked to President Trump about vaccines in my first term. I don't think that these policy efforts reflect his views as well. I don't think the president wants to see a resurgence of measles, wants to see a resurgence of whooping cough in this country. God forbid we have cases of polio in this country. He does not want to see that. I think he understood the importance of the child immunization schedule.
24:06 I'm not so sure that people really understand how Kennedy's intentions are going to translate into policy and how serious he is. There was an article recently where one of his confidants, Del Bigtree, who's going to be probably brought into HHS, said he didn't get inside the castle to forego his long-held beliefs. They're going to follow through on these. But his long-held beliefs are so incredibly well known that just making it up, his beliefs are about safe vaccines. He wants the efficacy data, the safety data, which we all deserve. This is what this guy is combating here. And oh, one of his Del Big Tree. Okay, so fine, Del Big Tree. Boo, I'm so afraid. Well, you should be afraid because it's going to cost lives. RFK has to be confirmed, right?
24:53 Are you urging Republican senators to not confirm him? Look, I think that there's skepticism in the Republican caucus. More than I think the press is reporting right now. There's going to be ag state senators that are concerned about his impact on food prices. There's going to be principled pro-lifers who are concerned about his positions on abortion. There's going to be a number of public health minded senators who have deep concerns about his position on vaccines. If you were talking to a Republican senator, would you say that the appointment of RFK could cost lives in this country? I think if RFK follows through on his intentions, and I believe he will, and I believe he can, it will cost lives in this country. You're going to see measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination rates go down. And like I said, if we lose another five percent, which could happen in the next year or two, we will see
25:41 He goes into his long tirade about how it's going down. So it's going down with or without Kennedy. So how's it going to go? So now he's contradicting himself as far as I'm concerned, the way he's presenting his logic. I was just looking at the Pfizer stock price and now I understand why he's on the program. I took a little dump. Let me see. To be, let me see. Uh, yeah, November 5th it really started to tank. I mean, tank is... what? Three... Well, for a company with that sort of market cap, it doesn't take much. Yeah. I see measles, mumps, and melt... Where tanking is moving down two points. Well, three. Vaccination rates go down, and like I said, if we lose another 5%, which could happen in the next year or two, we will see large measles outbreaks. For every 1,000 cases of measles that occur in children, there will be one death. And we are not good in this country at diagnosing and treating measles. If you look at the outbreak in Ohio, 30%... What? Wait a minute!
26:42 You got red dots, you got measles. Boom! Is this an indictment of the medical community that he just promoted? I think so. The doctors of America are so stupid that they can't spot measles. Measles of all things. Yes, measles. Measles, red dots. ...diagnosing and treating measles. If you look at the outbreak in Ohio, 30% of the kids were hospitalized. You look at the outbreak in Minnesota, 20% were hospitalized because we don't diagnose it quickly because doctors are not used to seeing it. Have we lost the ability to do it? We lost the ability to diagnose it because doctors aren't accustomed to seeing it and we don't know how to manage it in health care systems. Wow! Wow! We've lost the ability to diagnose it because they weren't used to seeing it. You got red dots. Let me look in the book. Seems like measles to me.
27:31 We need a doctor to check in with us on this because this is very unbelievable. This is an indictment of the medical profession. The doctors of this country shouldn't be putting up with this crap. They're getting pushed around and manipulated and that the pediatrician report we had earlier is a good example of being manipulated because of the always to make some extra money. They're mostly checklist doctors and most of the systems we have today, they check, they go check out. They always ask you the same questions about Did you get your shot of this and that and you tell him yes or no? I mean it's just this the medical community has gone down to tubes. We need Kennedy. Let's check in with this Dell Big Tree guy. What's he gonna do? Remember the CDC appointee is someone who's a very committed anti-vaxxer and I don't say that in a pejorative way. I think he would own that label. Well why are you saying it? Wait a minute. I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm just...
28:23 If he says he doesn't mean it in a pejorative way, does he mean it in a complimentary way? What other way is there? Who is Trump's appointee for CDC? You have to look him up. Another horrible person that's going to stop vaxes. Dave Weldon. Demands people actually check to see if these things work. Or how about this? Take the liability away so they don't, they're not free of liability for their lousy products that are poorly manufactured. If you put dog shit in the vaccine and it says vaccine, you can't be sued. I mean, give me a break. This has to stop. Remember, the CDC appointee is someone who's a very committed anti-vaxxer. And I don't say that in a pejorative way. I think he would own that label very proudly. He was a congressman when I was at FDA in the early 2000s.
29:09 He sponsored multiple bills to withdraw the current MMR vaccine. He sponsored bills to do away with the liability protection that allows companies to bring these vaccines onto the market. He forced FDA to reformulate the existing MMR vaccine to take some of the preservatives out that we use, which ultimately led to an increase in costs of those vaccines and probably reduced vaccination rates. So he is very committed to this too. The guy sounds like a prince. He wants to make sure these things are tested, he wants to make sure that you can be sued for producing a crappy product, he wants to get the mercury out of the vaccines and the preservatives, and so he's a bad guy. I'm looking to see if he had...
29:53 He's a doctor, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah, yeah. During his time in Congress, Weldon raised concerns about the safety, the safety of the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines, as well the safety of Gardasil. He's not an anti-vaxxer. He raised, and this is Wikipedia, believe me, if he had had... Right, which is left-wing, left-leaning, always. Yes, if there was any anti-vax talk, it would be in here. But, you know, really, what does it matter, Scott Gottlieb? Because according to you, Pfizer is not even in the child vaccine business. GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Sanofi, there are other companies doing this. You literally make the COVID vaccines and advocated for it to be given to kids under six years of age and even pregnant mothers. How is that not in the child vaccine business? Said the CNBC lady never.
30:59 CNBC people are just pathetic. They just let these guys ramble. This is of course CNBC, everybody who's a stock investor knows that when they watch CNBC they're getting crap. It's interesting but it's still crap when it comes down to actually getting to the nuts and bolts of things. They won't do it. We'll leave this with the final clip about what we should do about this horrible Trump and his appointees. You mentioned President Trump doesn't support a lot of these policies, or at least you don't think he does. What are the guardrails, whether it's Congress, whether it's other cabinet members, that could prevent all of these from happening to the degree that, let's say, RFK Jr. does? Look, I don't think there are guardrails. I don't want to speak for the president. I think I understand his ethos, and I think he has a strong public health ethic as well as the people around him. So I don't think they fully understand how Kennedy is going to translate his actions into policy.
31:54 I think some in Congress right now who are deeply skeptical think that they can manage this through things like appropriations for riders. That's not going to be successful because like I said, RFK can go in there with a stroke of a pen, disband ASIP, reconstitute it with like-minded people, issue a whole new bunch of recommendations. He can frustrate the ability to take the money from the Vaccine for Children's Fund. which would impede a state's abilities to vaccinate children. There's a lot of things that they could do day one very easily, administratively, and I don't think there's a thing Congress can do. And that is dependent upon Congress getting bills through on appropriations bills that would actually tie the hands of CDC and
32:31 Kennedy and I'm not sure that will in Congress is there to do that. Have you spoken with the individual senators about this? I've had conversations and I've raised my concerns and I'll continue to raise my concerns. Yes, I've signed a few checks, a couple of Pfizer checks to make sure. A couple good dinners. Yeah, a little trip here and there on the Pfizer Gulfstream. A couple of Gulfstream trips. Yeah, it's all good. A little shopping spree in Dubai, that's always fun. To me, the way I hear this, Trump's strategy or RFK Jr's strategy really would be, let's go in wrecking ball style right away and get rid of as much of, get as much out in the open as possible.
33:18 which is what these guys are really afraid of. It's the information that's not so much about, I don't think Kennedy is going to defund the state's child vaccination money. No, he's not going to do anything like that. I think you're exactly right. This is what he said he's going to do. And those clips that you played three or four shows ago, which I like so much, including bringing out all this data that's being hidden from the public and showing transparency, that everyone talks a big game about transparency, but then when Kennedy threatens transparency, all of a sudden he's a bad guy and an anti-vaxxer. Should we review? You want to review those three quick things? Yeah, I think all three of them should be replayed. Oh, the first one is the advertising piece. I'm not intimidated by the agencies. I know how they work and I know how to change them. And most of those changes you do not need Congress for. The president, President Trump, could have done it, had the power to do it himself. And President Biden has the power to do it himself. And I'll give you an example.
34:16 With a stroke of the pen, you can change back the rule. that allows pharmaceutical advertisers to do direct-to-consumer ads on television. That's one of the big problems. That's why one of the reasons we have this Entrance Agency Capture, not only of Congress, because they control the airwaves, they control the evening news. 75% of the revenues for those evening news shows are, you know, Anderson Cooper is coming from Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies. So And those companies are dictating content on those shows and they dictate the official narratives. And they're able then to exercise huge control over Congress. So Congress is terrified of them. But with a stroke of a pen, you can say this is not good for the health of our country, which it isn't. We spend three times more than any other country for pharmaceutical drugs because of all this advertising. You notice that Gottlieb used the stroke of a pen phrase as well. So his and I think
35:15 Stroke of the pen is only mentioned in these three clips regarding advertising. This may be one of the biggest fears. that Gottlieb actually has, not for patients, not for children. But dude, if we can't advertise on TV, we can't control the media, we can't control the narrative, we're gonna have to advertise on podcasts. Or whatever. Or whatever. There was a, we, early on this show, I think around 12, 14 years ago, we played it, this clip is, we couldn't find this clip if we wanted to, although it's always a challenge for you, you're gonna start looking. Yes. There was a clip that of one of the first guys who, the initial...
35:56 prescription drug advertisement that was done on television for some screwy drug. I can't remember what it was, but the guy who had initiated the whole thing was being interviewed. He was the guy and everyone in the pharmaceutical business was skeptical that, what are we going to... There's not that many people that have this disease. Why are we going to advertise this? This is a bad idea. I don't think we should do it. And so he had to fight it, this guy, because it became legal to be able to do this, to advertise prescription drugs. And so they rolled out the advertisement and the sales skyrocketed to such an extreme that he was like the toast of the town for quite a while after that. And he was bragging about how this just changed the whole landscape
36:39 of the pharma business and he went on and on about it. It was just like they didn't expect it when it happened and they just took over the place and it captured everything. They've captured media, they've captured news, the news business is gone. The actual stories about news and the actual stories about health. Everything. And you're right about one thing, I can't find that clip. It would be a tough one. Now we may be actually a lost clip now. Yeah, but the transcripts might be able to find something, but that's for a different time. So now we go to the second most dangerous thing he's going to do on day one, which is open up the vaults, open up the databases. Let's get the information out of the, you know, the 75 years they wanted to lock up some of this data. I think that was Pfizer, in fact. Yep. So that would be kind of
37:33 Embarrassing. and the medical claims for 10 million Americans from the top 10 HMOs. You can look in there and overnight you can say, oh, this vaccine is associated with diabetes, this one's associated with peanut allergies, this one's associated with ASD, neurological tics or whatever. That database, CDC keeps it in a lockbox like Fort Knox and makes sure no scientist is allowed in there.
38:17 Well, I'll open up that database on day one. You know what? I would advocate for not just opening up the database, put it online so we can run our own SQL queries. Yeah. Well, if you put, if you get this stuff out, there's plenty of statistical analysis freaks and everybody in between that will be, we'll have more medical discoveries than ever if they can do this. And this is, I think one of, All three of these clips address a certain issue that have a targeted, where you have a group of people that see that one thing as, oh my God, this is gonna ruin us. Well, this last one is a doozy for the industry. And you know, I'll also bring all the medical journals. The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA.
39:14 into the Justice Department, as soon as I appoint an AG. And I'll say to them, you guys are part of a racketeering syndicate. You're collaborating with these pharmaceutical industry, lie to the American public about the efficacy and safety of these products, and you're causing enormous harm, and we are gonna sue you both civilly for damages, and we're gonna sue you criminally, unless you come up with a plan right now as to how you're gonna stop doing that. So I have, like, I have, hundred things that I'm going to do immediately. A hundred things? Woo! We only heard three of them. Ninety-seven more. And all three of them are deadly. We're waiting. Yeah, this is going to be a rough go. I mean, they have to, Trump may have to do it. It's going to be great for the show. It's going to be great for us. I can just imagine. Well, yes, unless they find some way to, you know, like you said before, kill Kennedy. Well, then we always have Dell Bigtree.