Peter Hotez

It's not our business to change the Russian government. And anybody who thinks it's a good idea to do regime change in Russia, which has more nuclear weapons than we do, is I think irresponsible. And Vladimir Putin himself has had... We will not live in a world without Russia and it was clear when he said that, that he was talking about himself and he has his hand on a button that could bring Armageddon to the entire planet. So why are we messing with this? It's not our job to change that regime, and we should be making friends with the Russians. We shouldn't be treating him as an enemy. Now we've pushed him into the camp with China. That's not a good thing for our country. And by the way, what we're doing now does not appear to be weakening Putin at all. The following is a conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr, candidate for the President of the United States, running as a Democrat. Robert is an activist, lawyer and author who has challenged some of the world's most powerful corporations seeking to hold them accountable for the harm they may cause. I love science and engineering. These two pursuits are, to me the most beautiful and powerful in the history of human civilization. Science is our journey, our fight for uncovering the laws of nature and leveraging them to understand the universe and to lessen the amount of suffering in the world. Some of the greatest human beings I've ever met, including most of my good friends, are scientists and engineers. Again, I love science, but science cannot flourish without epistemic humility, without debate, both in the pages of academic journals and in the public square, in good faith, long form conversations.

It's the 4th of July, Independence Day. So simple question, simple, big question. What do you love about this country, the United States of America? I would say there's so many things that I love about the country, the landscapes and the waterways and the people, et cetera. But on the higher level, people argue about whether we're an exemplary nation, and that term has been given a bad name, particularly by the neocons, the actions, the neocons in recent decades who have turned that phrase into a justification for forcing people to adopt American systems or values at the barrel of a gun. But my father and uncle used it in a very different way, and they were very proud of it. I grew up very proud of this country because we were the exemplary nation in the sense that we were an example of democracy all over the world. When we first launched our democracy in 1780, we were the only democracy on earth. And there was Civil war, by 1865, there were six democracies.

Well, I immigrated to this country. And one of the things that really embodies America to me is the ideal of freedom. Hunter S. Thompson said, "Freedom is something that dies unless it's used." What does freedom mean to you? To me, freedom does not mean chaos, and it does not mean anarchy. It means that it has to be accompanied by restraint if it's going to live up to its promise in self-restraint. What it means is the capacity for human beings to exercise and to fulfill their creative energies unrestrained as much as possible by government.

The blood of each generation. You mentioned your interest, your admiration of Al Albert Camus, of Stoicism, perhaps your interest in existentialism. Camus said, I believe in Myth of Sisyphus, "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." What do you think he means by that? I suppose the way that Camus viewed the world and the way that the Stoics did and a lot of the existentialists, it was that it was so absurd and that the problems and the tasks that were given just to live a life are so insurmountable that the only way that we can get back the gods for giving us this impossible task of living life was to embrace it and to enjoy it and to do our best at it. To me, I read Camus, and particularly in The Myth of Sisyphus as a parable that... And it's the same lesson that I think he writes about in The Plague, where we're all given these insurmountable tasks in our lives, but that by doing our duty, by being of service to others, we can bring meaning to a meaningless chaos and we can bring order to the universe.

So you mentioned The Plague by Camus. There's a lot of different ways to read that book, but one of them, especially given how it was written, is that The Plague symbolizes Nazi Germany and the Hitler regime. What do you learn about human nature from a figure like Adolf Hitler, that he's able to captivate the minds of millions, rise to power and take on, pull in the whole world into a global war? I was born nine years after the end of World War II, and I grew up in a generation with my parents who were fixated on that, on what happened, and my father. At that time, the resolution in the minds of most Americans, and I think people around the world, is that there had been something wrong with the German people, that the Germans had been particularly susceptible to this kind of demagoguery and to following a powerful leader and just industrializing cruelty and murder. And my father always differed with that. My father said, "This is not a German problem. This could happen to all of us. We're all just inches away from barbarity." And the thing that keeps us safe in this country are the institutions of our democracy, our constitution. It's not our nature. Our nature has to be restrained, and that comes through self-restraint.

Well, if we're can apply that style of empathy, style of curiosity to the current war in Ukraine, what is your understanding of why Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022? Vladimir Putin could have avoided the war in the Ukraine. His invasion was illegal. It was unnecessary, and it was brutal, but I think it's important for us to move beyond these kind of comic book depictions of this insane, avaricious Russian leader who wants to restore the Soviet Empire, and who made unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine. He was provoked and we were provoking him and we were provoking him since 1997. And it's not just me that's saying that. And before Putin never came in, we were provoking Russia, the Russians in this way unnecessarily. And to go back that time in 1992 when the Russians moved out of... When the Soviet Union was collapsing, the Russians moved out of East Germany and they did that, which was a huge concession to them.

By the way, I have very strong memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and of those 13 days when we came closer to nuclear war. And particularly, I think it was when the U-2 got shot down over Cuba. And nobody in this country... There's a lot of people in Washington, D.C., who, at that point, thought that they very well may wake up dead, that the world may end at night. 30 million Americans killed 130 million Russians. This is what our military brass wanted. They saw a war with Russia, a nuclear exchange with Russia as not only inevitable but also desirable because they wanted to do it now while we still had superiority.

It seems like John F. Kennedy is a singular figure, in that he was able to have the humility to reach out to Khrushchev, and also the strength and integrity to resist the, what did you call them, the salad brass and institutions like the CIA, so that makes it particularly tragic that he was killed. To what degree was CIA involved, or the various bureaucracy involved in his death? The evidence that the CIA was involved in my uncle's murder, and that they were subsequently involved in the coverup, and continue to be involved in the coverup, I mean, there's still 5,000 documents that they won't release 60 years later, is I think, so insurmountable and so mountainous and overwhelming, that it's beyond any reasonable doubt, including dozens of confessions of people who were involved in the assassination. But every kind of document, and I mean, it came as a surprise recently to most Americans, I think, the release of these documents in which the press, the American media, finally acknowledged that, yeah, Lee Harvey Oswald was the CIA asset, that he was recruited in 1957. He was a Marine working at the Atsugi Air Force Base, which was the CIA Air Force base with the U2 flights, which was a CIA program. And that he was recruited by James Jesus Angleton, who was the director of counterintelligence and then sent on a fake defection to Russia and then brought back to Dallas.

And then for most of its life, the CIA was banned from propagandizing Americans, but we learned that they were doing it anyway. So in 1973, during the Church Committee hearings, we've learned that the CIA had a program called Operation Mockingbird, where they had at least 400 members, leading members of the United States press corps, on the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, CBS, NBC, et cetera, who were secretly working for the agency, and steering news coverage to support CIA priorities. And they agreed at that time to disband Operation Mockingbird in '73. But there's indications they didn't do that. And they still, the CIA today, is the biggest funder of journalism around the world. The biggest funder is through USAID. The United States funds journalism in almost every country in the world. It owns newspapers, it has journalists on it, thousands and thousands of journalists, on its payroll. They're not supposed to be doing that in the United States. But in 2016, president Obama changed the law to make it legal now for the CIA to propagandize Americans. And I think, we can't look at the Ukraine War and how the narrative has been formed in the minds of Americans, and say that the CIA had nothing to do with that.

You're running for president as a Democrat, what to you are the strongest values that represent the left-wing politics of this country? I would say protection of the environment, and the commons, the air, the water, wildlife, fisheries, public lands, those assets, they cannot be reduced to private property ownership, the landscapes, our purple mountain majesty, the protection of the most vulnerable people in our society, people which would include children and minorities, the restoration of the middle class, and protection of labor, dignity, and decent pay for labor, bodily autonomy, a woman's right to-

So that's a really eloquent and clear and powerful description of the way you see US should be doing geopolitics and the way you see US should be taking care of the poor in this country. Let me ask you a question from Jordan Peterson that he asked when I told him that I'm speaking with you. "Given everything you've said, when does the left go too far?" I suppose he's referring to cultural issues, identity politics. Well, Jordan trying to get me to badmouth the left the whole time I was in, I really enjoyed my talk with him, but he seemed to have that agenda where he wanted me to say bad things about the left and that's not what my campaign is about. I want to do the opposite. I'm not going to badmouth the left. I was on shows this week with David Remnick from the New Yorker, and he tried to get me to badmouth Donald Trump and Alex Jones and a lot of other people, and baiting me to do it. And of course there's a lot of bad things I could say about all those people, but I'm trying to find values that hold us together and we can share in common, rather than to focus constantly on these disputes and these issues that drive us apart.

Well, that's music to my ears. But in that spirit, let me ask you a difficult question then. You wrote a book harshly criticizing Anthony Fauci. Let me ask you to steelman the case for the people who support him. What is the biggest positive thing you think Anthony Fauci did for the world? What is good that he has done for the world, especially during this pandemic? I don't want to sit here and speak unfairly by saying the guy didn't do anything, but I can't think of anything. If you tell me something that you think he did, maybe there was a drug that got licensed while he was at NIH that benefited people, that's certainly possible. He was there for 50 years. And in terms of his principle programs of the AIDS programs and his COVID programs, I think that the harm that he did vastly outweighed the benefits.

The bigger picture of this is you're an outspoken critic of pharmaceutical companies, big pharma. What is the biggest problem with big pharma and how can it be fixed? Well, the problem could be fixed with regulation. But the pharmaceutical industry is... I don't want to say because this is going to seem extreme that a criminal enterprise, but if you look at the history, that is an applicable characterization, for example, the four biggest vaccine makers, Sanofi, Merck, Pfizer, and Glaxo, four companies that make all of the 72 vaccines that are now effectively mandated for American children. Collectively, those companies have paid $35 billion in criminal penalties and damages in the last decade. And I think since 2000, about 79 billion. So these are the most corrupt companies in the world.

All right. I have to ask, you are in great shape. Can you go through your diet and exercise routine? I do intermittent fasting. So I start my first meal at around noon, and then I try to stop eating at six or seven. And then I hike every day.

About God. You wrote, "God talks to human beings through many vectors, wise people, organized religion, the great books of religions, through art, music and poetry. But nowhere with such detail and grace and joy as through creation. When we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine." What is your relationship and what is your understanding of God? Who is God? Well, God is incomprehensible. I mean, I guess, most philosophers would say we're inside the mind of God. And so, it would be impossible for us to understand what's actually God's form is. But I mean, for me, let's say this, when I was raised in a very deeply religious setting, so we went to church in the summer, oftentimes twice a day, morning mass. And we definitely went every Sunday. And we prayed in the morning, we prayed before and after every meal, we prayed at night, we sent a rosary, sometimes three rosaries a night. And my father read us the Bible. Whenever he was a home, we'd all get in the bed and he'd read us the Bible stories. And I went to Catholic schools, I went to Jesuit schools, I went to the nuns and I went to a Quaker school at one point. I became a drug addict when I was about 15 years old, about a year after my dad died. And I was addicted to drugs for 14 years.