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And there's an inhalation port in the device. They're showing up at our borders. And what we have been doing is just sending them back. And so the Chinese manufacturers are just sending it to another port.
It's called port shopping. And they all get in. They're laughing at us. So that's going to stop in this administration. We're not going to allow these devices to get in.
We're going to confiscate them. I'll tell you, I just loved the feeling, the spirit, the friendship, the camaraderie that I saw at HHS with management last night at Brett Baron Special Report. One of the hardest to get confirmed was Bobby Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., because he didn't have the background in medical, in medicine, obviously not a doctor.
But the other thing was he's got some views that were counterculture and maybe on vaccines got people nervous. And the main person that he had to sell on his competency was Senator Bill Cassidy, who really asked a lot of pertinent questions and even talked offline with with the now HHS secretary. And joining us now is Senator Bill Cassidy himself of Louisiana. Senator, welcome back. Hey, Brian, thanks for having me. Good to be with you.
Good morning to the listeners. First off, I have to comment on what Dr. Marty Makary was saying last night about what China is doing with the vaping and the addiction. I mean, did you know this was going on?
I did not. Yeah. China is sending a lot of stuff here that we know hurts our people and hurts our small businesses.
Sometimes they are ripping off intellectual property, selling something online that's just a knockoff that one takes away income from a small business, but is not made in a way that respects U.S. safety laws. Sometimes it's obviously the fentanyl. And then Marty talked about that. There's there needs to be an aggressiveness about this, a pushing forward on this. I've actually passed legislation to go after these counterfeit goods being sent. The president's going after the fentanyl. I like the attitude Marty had about confiscating these goods coming to the border right here. Here's more here's more what they said about something else. I'd love to get your take on RFK Junior's got a huge problem with pharmaceutical companies advertising on television. We're one of the few that allow it.
But listen, cut 29. You know, I met with pharmaceutical companies yesterday and had a very frank discussion with them about ways to limit TV commercials. When you advertise a pharmaceutical product, it's the government that is most likely going to pay for that product. You're advertising products that people aren't going to pay for, but they're going to go buy it.
And you get a tax deduction to put that ad on TV so that federal taxpayer is paying for the, you know, for the ad than they're paying for the product. And we use more. We use 70 percent of the pharmaceutical products in the world are sold to our country.
We only have 4.2 percent of the world's population. Your thoughts about this whole matrix, because, look, I'm on a channel that has a lot of pharmaceutical companies spending a lot of money on advertising. So first, first, as regards their ability to do that, it is the Supreme Court has ruled that is a first that has the First Amendment right for them to to advertise. On the other hand, we've seen that the Trump administration and use the bully pulpit to alter behavior, even when even when it's legal to do something.
And he's absolutely right. Just because it's legal does not mean that it has to be tax deductible. And that's one of the things we'll probably be looking at in the reconciliation bill, the tax deductibility of this advertising. Now, I will also say, though, that I'm a big believer in giving the patient the power. And so if the patient knows something more about drugs and can go ask her doctor about it, I actually don't have a problem with it.
I just want to make sure that the drug advertising is accurate. It doesn't pretend that someone's going to be cured of cancer when actually what it's doing is extending their life for three months. That's important, but also don't don't don't don't make it sound as if it's more than it should be. There's a lot in there, but I appreciate the Trump administration leaning into it. And I think the tax deductibility is something that we can look at here.
How's he doing so far in your view? I know you had worries as a traditional doctor might on vaccines. I heard what he said last night. They talked about measles. And so one of the reasons is in the Mennonite community, they don't do vaccines. So I encourage everyone to get a vaccine.
So just hearing that in an interview after he already got confirmed, that must have made you feel good. It does. And Secretary Bobby Kennedy has on numerous occasions now said that people should be getting their measles vaccine. There's still vaccine hesitancy. And we've had more people die of measles or as many people die of measles related to death in the last two months, as had in the previous three decades.
And so clearly that has to change. We've had people, young children, infants die of pertussis and of flu. And so we need to have an effort to make America healthy again by making sure that children don't die from vaccine preventable diseases. And there's been clearly a convergence of scientific proof that these are safe, they don't cause autism, and that if you want to make America healthy again, get your child vaccinated. But you do think we should explore autism, correct? I mean, those numbers, do they alarm you?
Absolutely. I suspect we'll have a hearing in the health committee, the committee I chair, Health Education, Labor Impeachums on autism. I will say that the convergence of scientific evidence is that vaccines have nothing to do with autism. And if we further investigate that, we're taking money away from actually looking at what could be a cause. So I'm very kind of like, oh, my gosh, don't go down this one more time trying to prove that there's a link with vaccines, because that's been disproven. But let's go at the actual causes so that we can give these parents hope.
And frankly, that's where the bulk of the parents of the autistic children, that's where they are, too. Let's start looking at things that could reasonably be an issue, not things that have already been disproven. Were you ever open to vaccines being the reason? Well, this has been established probably now 10, 15, 20 years ago. That's when all the studies were done. And it was very important to do the studies to establish just what we know, that vaccines are safe and not linked with autism. So that's been done. So my point is now, don't just kind of keep on studying that which has already been studied where the convergence of scientific evidence has taken us.
Rather, let's look at new things. There are genetic abnormalities that are seen in these children that end up with autism. Now, something appears, there seems to be some environmental exposure that triggers somebody with a certain genetic profile to become autistic as opposed to someone with the same profile not.
It may be that it's an environmental exposure when the child is in the mother's womb. That would be something to look at and that's perfectly consistent with RFK's background of looking at environmental exposures. Do you believe the pharmaceutical companies are combining, are in it to keep people hooked on their drugs, their daily drugs in order to keep America sick? Are they looking to keep America sick so they make more money?
I don't think that. We have a lot of chronic disease. What's a chronic disease? Hypertension. Hypertension is blood pressure out of, you know, high blood pressure. It's a chronic disease. If you stop taking your blood pressure medicine, it's going to go up.
You're going to have a stroke and a heart attack. Most chronic diseases are chronic diseases like diabetes and now you can argue that the drugs, the anti-obesity drugs we have now are making people lose weight. They no longer have diabetes, their blood pressure gets better, the risk of heart disease gets better. So the innovations of the GLPs or the anti-obesity drugs are eliminating a major source of chronic disease.
I've just mentioned some like I've mentioned others. So the nature of being chronic means you take medicine chronically but now we're seeing curative therapies for obesity and that's driving most of our chronic disease. I'd say that's kind of evidence that they're trying to cure chronic disease. Believe me, pharmaceutical companies have issues but I don't see a conspiracy there.
Okay, so we know this. When it comes to the big beautiful bill, Medicaid could be the breaking point because nobody wants to take healthcare away from anyone. I thoroughly believe that but Medicaid has been expanded to the point where it is way past its charter. Obamacare flooded millions to states that wanted it and they said we'll pay for it if you expand it. And now it's up to Trump to continue it and I think 90% of all Medicaid expenditures are from the federal government, supposed to be state aid and the amount of people eligible has expanded to the point where the money is just out of control.
And some states are abusing it like New York, the one I'm in. Where does Medicaid funding and reform, where does it stand with you and the big beautiful bill? Hey Brian, I just like the way you frame it. First, let me say my background is as a physician taking care of the uninsured and the Medicaid patient in a hospital dedicated for the uninsured and the Medicaid patient.
That's where I spent 20 years of my life. This matters to me. But what you can't help but notice, as you point out, is as the federal government has increased their funding, states have been pulling their dollars out. States have used the federal taxpayer to balance their budget, to cut taxes, to spend money elsewhere except where they're supposed to be on the state's share of the Medicaid budget. And the federal government can put more and more and more money in there and states will just continue to pull their dollars out.
This is like trying to keep air on one side of a screen door. You can't do it without some sort of reform. Now when I speak to Medicaid providers, the people who do it right, they say there's so much money sloshing around that certainly you could do some reforms. Patients would maintain their benefits, but you could run a tighter ship.
Makes sense. If you look at the improper payments in Medicaid, it's in the tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions of dollars. So our goal is to preserve benefits for the beneficiary to make sure the dollars are going where they need to be going, but at the same time keep the federal government from going into bankruptcy, if you will, from having a debt crisis because of out-of-control spending. We can do that. I've got ideas how to do that.
And first thing, keep the patient front and center. All right, Senator, you're as outraged as I am about what's happened at Brooklyn yesterday with the anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic riots and encampments, and then we saw the takeover of the library on Wednesday. 62 of the 100 rioters were women.
We have all their names, all their IDs. What are you calling on Columbia to do? I think Columbia responded well. I think President Trump acknowledged that they responded well. They limited it. They brought in security.
When they needed help, they brought in NYPD. And keep in mind, these protesters, they talked about the others in the library. It is just before finals. People were in there studying for finals. There are other professors grading papers, and protesters came on and disrupted the academic mission. They put up graffiti and posters and they put on masks so you couldn't see who they were, which means to say that they were ashamed.
And so all that was responded to quickly by the administration. There needs to be more of that. You should not be disrupting the educational experience of those students to make your point. And so now, let's find out which of them were students and which of them were paid protesters. There's a lot of evidence that there's outside money flooding to get paid protesters to come in. That needs to stop.
I hear you. And by the way, I think they should be expelled. I don't care if they're going to graduate in a week. If they did that at that library, they should be expelled. They should not get a degree.
Get their money back, whatever it needs. Senator, I know you're running for re-election. NBC is reporting that a former governor might be getting into the race. I want you to hear this report.
Cut 50. And attention to New Orleans and Louisiana at all times. But John Bel Edwards is such an interesting figure in that state. Could he make a run of it in a state that is widely seen as red, as pro-Trump? And of course, Bill Cassidy cuts an interesting profile here, too, because he's someone who voted to convict the president on those impeachment charges when it came to January 6th. I mean, what might that race look like if Edwards gets in?
It's a good question. And Cassidy has a primary, too. So if he loses, could Democrats have maybe a little bit better shot at it? And of course, it's not surprising that Schumer is looking at Bel Edwards here. But it is worth noting that governors sometimes struggle to make that Senate switch when the state is so lopsided in the other direction. Well, you're looking at a primary challenge from John Fleming, the Republican state treasurer, and possibly a general against the former governor. How do you feel you match up?
I match up fantastically. Right now, in the first Trump term, I supported President Trump 90 percent of the time. In this Trump term, he's got two cabinet secretaries that he would not have unless Bill Cassidy had gotten them through. I continue to enable his agenda, his positive agenda. Now, I can promise you, and I've worked hard over the last 10 years to bring things to my state that benefit my state.
So the primary challenge, we take that. As regards the former governor, he is going to support Chuck Schumer and vote against Donald Trump 90 percent of the time. I'm not going to support Chuck Schumer, and I'm going to support the president 90 percent of the time. And so I feel pretty comfortable that our state's going to return a conservative Republican, and that conservative Republican will be me. Have you spoken to the president since he got back in office? I just had a press conference. I was one of four senators invited talking about economic development across the nation, but mentioned three projects in Louisiana. Gave me a big shout out whenever you announce somebody from Louisiana.
I was the one guy out there applauding. So we have absolutely connected. Well, put it this way. If he held grudges, you wouldn't have Vice President J.D.
Vance, who was an opponent of his. Senator, I hope it works out. I think you're a real asset to the country. We love having you on the show, and thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate it, man.
