RFK Jr. First Confirmation Hearing

This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.

Well, the correlation between boobs and.

Pizza, that's not what we were talking about.

It wasn't go on, but I understand where you go on.

I'm just saying I've had some pizza that I wish I could get back.

I mean, like not have had you know what I mean.

I don't think that you could think in your history of boobs like a pair you would have thrown back.

Wow, that's good.

It's all I'm going to say it. Did you hear about Greenland? Fifty six thousand people live on Greenland. I looked that up today.

Okay, eighty five percent of them. You can do the math.

Yeah, say forty something.

Forty eight thousand, something like that. Say they don't want anything to do with us.

Yeah, I get it.

They don't want to have America under the umbrella that they live under. Is Frederick the tenth their king or the king of tenths denmarkish?

I just saw that he was the monarch.

And I mean Wikipedia tells you a lot of things about Greenland, but that's we have a listen.

We got a lot going on today.

Everybody in the last I don't know four weeks downloaded the Watch Duty app right, and this is the app that compiles a bunch of information about He's a good looking guy in our case, who King Frederick.

It's a great app.

I mean it was files everything about the fires, the evacuation zones, the conditions of the fires, the number of crews on there, I mean everything.

You and I. This is what we do.

This is what we've done for years, where reporters are trying to get up to the date information as soon as we.

Get on the air.

While we're on the air, we want information as fresh as possible so that we can give it to you. And nowhere have I found as accurate and as quick as the Watch Duty app. H. I mean it was incredible, such a tool for for not just us but Firefight. Everyone is lotting this app. It's a nonprofit app. So we're going to talk to this CEO coming up later.

Also, our friend Ellen k from Coast one to three point five is going to join us. Tomorrow night is the fire Aid benefit concert that's taking place both in the Into It Dome down in Englewood and then across the parking lot on the other side of SOFI. It's going to take place at the key of Forum also, but if I'm not mistaken, both of those are owned by Steve Balmer.

Sounds about right.

So we'll talk about what kind of went into the planning for Fire Aid this huge benefit concert. Justin Warsham's going to join us, coming up in the eleven o'clock hour. We haven't talked to him in a few weeks. It'll be nice to get him back. And we have to say happy Birthday to him because it was his birthday at the other day.

Also, Gung hey fat Joy, Happy New Year. You're the snake. Today is the new Today is the New Year.

The day.

And Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins's coming up in this field.

Yes, motivation on God love it.

Yeah, really, yeah, he.

Does all those things.

I'm assuming so I wasn't wrong to just throw things out there and see what sticks.

Well.

I don't want you to. I don't want you to mistake him.

With Joel Oste, I know, I feel.

Like I've gotten two guys.

No no no, no, no, no no no no. Because I spent a lot of time watching Joel Ostein a lot of time, and I've never watched Tony Robbins. So I used to love Joel Ostein, and then I don't know, something switched for me. He didn't seem as genuine as I thought he once was.

I'm curious to know what that. I would love to know what that switch. When that switch flipped for you? Was it after you watch The Righteous Gemstones? It was Maybe it was somewhere in Middle America. I used to turn him on on Sundays while getting ready or whatever. He was a calm I mean.

He was calm.

He was. He made it religion light, he made it user friendly and palatable. He was in a good mood, good energy first thing in the morning. But then it felt total car salesman like to me. And I understand the people are throwing things at the radio, being like he was always that way. I get that, but it's it worked for me for the bite sized amount of religion I wanted at the time. And then maybe it

And not to say that Joelostein was a crooked hypocrite.

Characters looked too perfect. Well, and that was why that show worked so well. Yeah, because that was a problem. Yeah, I just saw that relationship. There's no way people are this perfect. There is a big deal going on in the Senate right now. One of the office buildings, I think it's the Dirkson Senate Building is the scene of Robert F. Kennedy Junior's confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services in front of the Finance Committee of the Senate.

Republicans are saying, hey, listen, we've sat down, We've listened to you again. This is a guy who, politically speaking, is diametrically opposed to Republicans and their pol he's in general, but he is getting so many more accolades from the right side of the aisle than he is from the left side of the aisle. And he has talked over and over again about, hey, I serve at the pleasure of the President. I hope, I hope I get confirmed, and he says, my job is to implement the policies

Bernie Sanders looks apoplectic.

I think it's because Kennedy was more of the independent and Bernie Sanders has always kind of thought of himself as the rogue libertarian and RFK Junior caved to the Republican Party essentially and caving to Trump.

Yeah, and that's I mean, that's the criticism that he's getting, and he's having a hard time fighting back because every nominee does that.

That's how you survive politically. Bernie Sanders doesn't know how to survive politically. Unfortunately, great ideas, you're not going to survive doing what he did.

Yeah, but he's been there forever.

I mean, granted, he's you know, he represents one of the most one of the most liberal states in the country.

But you've got to hoore yourself out and sell out to rise to the top.

Michael Bennett, Senator out of Colorado said this just a couple moments ago.

Is this the only choice we have? I hope my colleagues will say to the president, out of three hundred and thirty million Americans. We can do better than this.

Really, name three secretaries of Health and Human Services in your lifetime.

Just name three of them, and then you can make that argument like.

There's got to be someone better to head this very important that we suddenly care about.

Where were you when?

Let's go through who these people were, shall we? Because I don't know who the hell they were.

Those reports have claimed that I'm anti vaccine or any industry. I am neither. I am pro safety.

That was one of at least three protesters I think we've seen taken out of the hearing room. He went on to say that he is not anti vaccine, he's pro safety.

I am pro safety. I worked for years to raise awareness about the mercury and toxic chemicals and fish, and nobody called me any fish. And I believe that that vaccines play a critical role in healthcare. All of my kids are vaccinated. I've written many books on vaccines. My first book in twenty fourteen. The first line of it is I am not anti vaccine, and the last line is I am not anti vaccine.

It's very easy for people to put others in a box. Isn't it You say one thing, asking a question about vaccines, and suddenly your anti vaccine.

Right.

It's kind of like when I was at a recent family gathering for the holidays, go on, oh, you're a Republican. Everybody knows you're a Republican. If you listen to your show, you know you're a Republican.

It's like, what are you talking about?

What?

Because because I've said one thing that isn't that?

I mean, how could you possibly listen know me in real life for that long and just easily be able to label me as such?

Right?

I'm like Bernie Sanders. You can't put me in a box.

But like people, hear one thing and then they just stick a label on you and it's over.

You're done.

It's because we're all intellectually lazy.

We don't want to have the discussion of well, that's an interesting thought, because that sounds like something I would not have expected you to say.

Why do you feel that way?

Thank you?

What about wow?

Why did you be nice?

Why did your opinion of Joel Ostein change at some point?

What?

What was it about your life or your position, or your research or your conversations with other people?

That changed your opinion on issue A.

And when you come it's someone like that, it makes you not want to engage with them, right.

I mean we've said it before.

If people think you don't care about them, then I'm going to get this wrong.

You don't listen to people who you think don't like you.

It's a good one. Yes, thank you, that's the way to put it. Ron Wyden is the governor. Sorry, Ron Widen is the Senator from Oregon who is the ranking member, so he's the highest ranking Democrat, and he went after URFK Junior when it comes to I edit this now just to just to compress it.

A little bit, because it went on for a few minutes.

But he said, we researched all the things you said, and you are anti vaxxs.

The question before the Finance Committee this morning is whether Robert F. Kennedy should be trusted with the health and well being of the American people. Committee staff have examined thousands of pages, statements, books, and podcast transcripts in a review of his record.

Now he's going to quote one of those podcasts here, a comment that RFK Junior had made on a podcast.

Your testimony today under oath. You denied that you were anti vaccine, but during a podcast interview in July of twenty twenty three, you said, quote, no vaccine is safe and effective.

He asked me, are there vaccines that are saving effective? And I said to him, some of the live virus vaccines are, and I said, there are no vaccines that are saving effective. And I was going to continue for every person, every medicine has people who are sensitive to them, including vaccines, right, so he interrupted me at that point. I've corrected it many times, including on national TV. You know about this, senator wide, and so bringing this up right now is dishonest.

Let's be clear about what you've actually done. Then, since you want to deny your statements, for example, you have a history.

He goes on to say that one of the things that RFK Junior wanted to do was petition the Health Department to disallow COVID vaccines because they had made a recommendation that kids as young as six get the COVID vaccine.

And his argument back.

Was, yeah, but even the depart even Health and Human Services, even CDC and NIH have said there's zero effective basically zero effectiveness for a COVID vaccine in a kid at the age of six, because especially at a kid at the age of six has almost zero percent chance of being adversely affected by the COVID virus in the first place. That then was interrupted by yet another protester who said vaccines save lives, which is not something that anybody is really arguing.

About this hearing yet from that like this wasn't going to be brought up. Protesters storm different meetings and hearings because they think they're going to raise something novel, like, Oh, vaccines would have never come up with RFK Junior on Capitol Hill. Abortion would never come up. You think, what do you think you're doing. You're not getting any sort of notoriety. You just sound like a jackass who's unhinged.

I don't know if he's going to be confirmed because there are enough people who have disagreed with and there are a lot of arguments.

I mentioned.

The New York Posts came out with its editorial that said he shouldn't be confirmed, mostly because of his stance on abortion. He has been adamantly pro choice for his whole lot. He's a Kennedy. Everybody in the Kennedy family that's one of their biggest issues. But he has said he would serve at the pleasure of the President and promote the Trump policies when it comes to abortion, which in his case was saying is should be controlled by states.

Most people like RFK Junior, who fight to keep abortion available do not believe in shouting their abortions. They believe that, as he said this morning, abortion in every case is a tragedy.

I'm going to his words. He mentioned that.

I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy.

Now, but people keep pushing him on that and saying, yeah, but you have you know now you're saying that you are not pro choice.

He's like, no, no, he.

Can be pro choice and not be a shout your abortion person. Most people who are pro choice think it's awful. They don't want to talk about it. It's a tragedy. It's horrible. Do not look at the far left fringes and think that everybody who's pro choice is shouting their abortion on Twitter.

That's not reality.

You can hold that position that you believe in free access to abortion, but also that it is a tragedy for whatever reason, a breakdown, it can be true. All of that can be very true. So this hearing is going on for several hours right now. Maria Cantwell, Senator out of Washington State, is the one who was questioning RFK Junior. So as it goes on, any highlights or anything will definitely bring those to you into when the vote comes down later today, We'll see how it goes.

Stories we're falling for you today.

Did that upstart Chinese tech company deep Seek copy chat gpt to make the AI tech that shook Wall Street earlier this week? That is what chat gpt is suggest is suggesting. Of course, the maker is open Ai, along with US top AI advisor of Trump's. Neither has disclosed specific evidence of intellectual property theft, but the comments could lead to a re examination of some of the assumptions that led to this panic over Deep Seek's advancements using

Speaking of deep Seek was, of course the reason Wall Street was in the red earlier this week. Right now, the Dow, the S and P, and the Nasdaq all down, but just very very slightly less than the less than a percentage point. Also, the FED is expected to announce its latest interest rate decision about eleven o'clock this morning, our time.

Do you want just a little baby amount of AI mania?

I don't know.

A new report says advanced AI have the potential to create widespread job losses, enable terrorism or running a muck, Running a muck. It was an international report released this morning catalogs a range of dangers posed by AI. It's backed by thirty countries, including the US and China. Even though the two are battling over who's the best great, who's the best at creating the end?

The end? Who's going to usher in the end? Yeah? I have it installed on my phone. You have it on your phone.

It seems like everybody has installed the Watch Duty app over the last several weeks because of its ability to consolidate and disseminate good solid information about wildfires in southern California.

It has been invaluable for what we do here and for speaking for someone who is evacuated, for people that were in fire zones or potential evacuation zones that led to actual mandatory evacuation zones. John Clark Mills is the CEO and founder co founder of the Watch Duty app and joins us now. John, I feel like this is brand new, probably years in the making, but certainly glad to have you as a number one resource, especially in this part of the country.

Thanks for having me, folks. As you pointed out, it is not brand new. We've been doing this for four years and unfortunately Angelina has found out just exactly why we do what we do.

Yeah, explain the genesis of the app. You yourself were dealing with information about a potential wildfire and the threat to you and your family and home.

What's going on?

Yeah, I've been through a couple of fires up here in Cinoma County, and unfortunately it's been happening well before I moved here in twenty twenty, but it was pretty quickly after moving when I found out that I was not being alerted about disasters that were happening right in my backyard, including one that was a quarter off in my house where helicopters were flying over And there's no alert snow sirens, no noise, no nothing.

How does it work? As I mentioned, it is up to the date information. It involves fire radio, traffic. It involves scanner traffic. It seems like you have people at every command post. How were you able to reach out and get all of the different agencies to get on board with providing you information.

Well, not all the agencies are on board. Many are, but unfortunately we have to go about this our own way, and so that radio traffic from the fire ground is in clear audio and anybody can hear it. And in fact, many of the staff and volunteers have been doing this for a very long time, and so this is really where you find the most update. Information is actually from the firefighters and air attack themselves.

How do you safeguard against false alarms? The La County Emergency Services Division got in a lot of hot water for a couple of false alarm evacuation notices that went out county wide. What kind of safeguards do you have in place to make sure that watch duty doesn't put out bad information?

Yeah, I mean there's a couple of things. I mean, first and foremost is all of our folks permissions to post to watch duty have gone through background checks, extensive training. Many of them have been wildland firefighters, dispatchers, and people in the industry for quite some time. So that's number one, and then number two is we talk behind the scenes in flack and so our team is collaborating in real time, repeating each other. Did you hear this? Was that? Five?

How does the company work in terms of getting the information disseminating it? How big is the company?

Well, we're not profit organization. There's about two hundred volunteers or two hundred people in total, about one hundred and fifty of them more volunteers or more. We have about fifteen staff. Half of that staff are engineers and product and operations, and the other half of those fifteen are staff supporters.

And have you been inundated?

I feel like everybody was on this app. It spread, I mean, for lack of a better term, like wildfire. You know, It's like we were recommending it to people, people were recommending it to us. It just seemed like everybody knew about this app within forty eight hours of at least the palisades going.

Up, yeah. I mean it was definitely harrowing for not only the radio operators and reporters, but for the engineers as well. I mean, we were, you taking about one hundred thousand requests a second, about a couple million users every minute, and so it was all hands on deck. But we have been building this for years. We knew we had to build for scale, and we knew that we were going to get only bigger.

It is nice, among other things, that it's not collecting my information. There's no advertisements, there's no information like that to get in the way of the important information you find.

Nobody's like pouring themselves out when you're talking about life saving information.

But you can't go on forever that way, right, But.

John, has somebody come to you, Has anybody come to you and made you an offer and said, hey, we'll take this thing off your hands for a pretty pa and then throw some ads up there and start collecting information.

Well, I would never use the word fouring on the radio, but I appreciate your candor here, but you know, not particularly. I mean, we have people, you know, investors and whatnot who want to invest and they think that, you know, we should turn this into a for profits so we can make more money, etc. But you know, I don't really care about that, and neither to buy volunteers or staff.

It's wonderful what you do.

It's great to hear that as well, the philosophy and everything.

We really appreciate it.

John call Clark Mills, CEO and co founder of the Watch Duty app. It was, like I said, invaluable for everybody down here. We're both from up there too, from Petaluma and Nevado, so we know the Pnoma counting fires as well.

Well. Now we all know them too well. But thanks for your time, folks, and everyone stay safe and I wish I everyone is speedy recovery.

It's going to take some time here, it will.

Thanks John. We appreciate it again. You can download the watch Duty app watch Duty. You can also use it on your regular desktop. You just type in app dot watchduty dot org and it shows a map of where you are and you can scroll through the different fire areas, evacuation zones, and other information when it comes up. A federal judge has paused until next week an administration order that it would have frozen the issuance of existing federal

All right, we have a big recall that is pretty scary. It involves Lays potato chips. The recall has been classified at the highest risk level, and that consumption of Lays potato chips chips, not chips, Lays potato chips could cause death.

You guys, serious adverse health consequences or death.

This is a recall of thirteen ounce bags of freedom lay potato chips.

And what's the thing that may have contaminated said potato chips?

Undeclared milk?

Oh, what does that even mean?

Does that mean milk from across the border that nobody wrote down.

On the form?

No, it just means somehow milk got in the process and they didn't.

Talk about it.

So there's bad milk in your chip, not even bad milk, secret milk, and secret milk's gonna kill you. Well, those you've probably had some secret milk.

Those who have had or who have i should say, an allergy or severe sensitivity to milk to run the risk of a serious or life threatening allergic reaction if they can soon the recalled product.

I I have.

A couple of nephews as a matter of fact, who are shall we say not friends with lactose?

Ah, And.

You gotta make sure the bathrooms are free.

You gotta bring your bring your lactape.

Now what kind of flavors are we talking about? Are we talking about the original? Are we talking about the I mean I am a lace, sour cream and onion addict. I love those chips. I only eat them alone. Also, other lays chips that I'm an addict of are the barbecue flavored potato chips. Also only eat those alone. There's the flame in hot, there's the cheddar sour and cream. There's a vinegar. My dad love those. They don't get

Is it gonna kill me?

You don't have an allergy to milk or sensitivity to milk.

No, but if it's bad milk, it won't go down well.

We called chips are inflexible. Thirteen ounce bags just the little baby bags distributed in Oregon and Washington specifically thirteen ounce isn't a baby bag, is it? But it's not one of these bags. It's not one of the family size bags, which is by.

Bag is like what five six ounce?

I don't know.

Do you know there's a Dill chip flavored potato chip.

The affected bags have a guaranteed fresh date of February eleventh, They said, So if you have a Lai's potato chips and you have a milk or lactose sensitivity, this may be what they're talking about. It may be a sounding the warning for you, so be careful, be careful with them chips.

People.

Thirteen ounce is the party size, bro, that's like the super Bowl size?

Is it really? Yeah?

I'm you're not a big shopper.

Okay, here it comes again.

It's okay.

Are you in cahoots with my wife? Now I'll go to the grocery store.

We don't want you to. It's a waste of time.

Isn't it funny? Isn't it funny?

You're British now, isn't it fun British?

Now? You people?

You people, you people go shopping for something right and it takes you forever.

That is not true.

You go to the grocery store and you're like a stealth ninja, in and out. Nobody even notices you there. I might go shopping for something.

I'm in and out.

Me too.

I've always been like that with clothes. I'm not a big clothes I don't enjoy shopping for clothes.

But if I go to the grocery store, I'm up and down every aisle because you're you're compromised my head, Yeah, looked at my head.

Because there's something about the grocery store.

Maybe it's just because you don't go often enough to know where everything is.

We need to clean this up. We have a guest coming in.

Oh fine, we'll talk about it later.

We'll talk about the fire aid benefit concert that comes up.

Oh I will remember this.

We'll talk about the fire Aid benefit concert that's coming up tomorrow down in England at both the Into a Doom and the k Into a Dome in the Chia Forum. Gary and Shannon will continue right after that. You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap