Aug. 14, 2025

Trump’s $200 Million Party Palace, RFK Jr. Shreds Vaccine Research, and Hollywood Declares War

Show Notes
Transcript

Trump wants a ballroom that would make Gatsby jealous, RFK Jr. torches half a billion in pandemic preparedness, and 2,300 Hollywood writers—from Spike Lee to John Waters—sign an open letter taking direct aim at the President.

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Callaroga Shark media from Washington, d C. Where we need

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more ballrooms? This is valley, that's right. What if someone

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wanted to hold a party after releasing the Epstein files?

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Where would they even have it? Hi? I'm Patrick Gutfield

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and President Trump has embarked on his most ambitious White

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House renovation project yet, a two hundred million dollar ballroom

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that will apparently solve the pressing national crisis of not

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having enough room for really big dinner parties. Trump was

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spotted last week strolling the White House roofline with an architect,

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presumably checking whether the building can support the weight of

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his entertaining ambitions. The president has long been frustrated by

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the current setup, which requires erecting what he calls an old,

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broken canvas tent for events with more than two hundred

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and fifty guests, So naturally, his solution is to build

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what amounts to a presidential party palace that would make

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Jay Gatsby jealous. Trump has promised the project will be

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privately funded and that he'll release a list of donors,

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though a senior White House official admitted that no private

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donations have actually been locked in yet, so we're essentially

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looking at a two hundred million dollar ballroom funded by

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the presidential equivalent of a Go Fundme campaign. The National

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Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to review the project at

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a single public meeting on September fourth, which is lightning

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speed for a government body that spent nearly two years

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and five public meetings just to approve a security fence.

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They took four years to carefully consider fence picket thickness,

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and spacing, but apparently a massive ballroom edition gets the

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express lane treatment. The American Institute of Architects has raised

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concerns about the rush timeline, urging officials to put this

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national treasure through a more rigorous review process. They're essentially

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asking for the architectural equivalent of measure twice cut once,

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except in this case, it's review extensively, build two two

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one hundred million dollar ballroom once. One tourist outside the

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White House summed up the contradiction perfectly. Even if Trump

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pays for it himself, it's not his. It belongs to

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the American people. He was immediately deported, but hey, at

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least future presidents will never again have to suffer the

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indignity of hosting state dinners under canvas. That's progress, right.

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Health Secretary Robert of Kennedy Junior has canceled nearly five

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hundred million dollars worth of mRNA vaccine research contracts because

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apparently we've decided that being prepared for the next pandemic

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is overrated. This comes after the Department of Health and

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Human Services already revoked a six hundred million dollar contract

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with Moderna in May to develop a bird flu vaccine,

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So in total, Kennedy has now canceled over a billion

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dollars in vaccine research. That's not budget cutting, that's budget

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demolishing for those keeping track. RNA vaccines are the technology

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that helped end the COVID pandemic. The work by instructing

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your body to produce a fragment of a virus, which

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triggers your immune response. Unlike traditional vaccines that take years

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to develop, mRNA shots can be created in months and

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quickly modified as viruses change. The technology even won the

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Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in twenty twenty three,

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but Kennedy has called COVID shots the deadliest vaccine ever made,

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which is quite a claim from someone who apparently skipped

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the chapters on smallpox and polio in medical history. Rick Bright,

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a flu expert who was ousted from the government during

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Trump's first term, said cutting mRNA development undermines our ability

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to rapidly counter future biological threats. He called it a

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huge strategic failure that will be measured in lives loss

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during times of crisis. One immunologist called this a bad

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day for science, but that might be understating things. This

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is more like science getting fired, packing its desk and

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being escorted out of the building by security. We're essentially

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telling future pandemic, don't worry, We'll be ready for you

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with technology from nineteen twenty four. So. Cheryl Hines, Larry

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David's TV wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm and real life

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wife to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior, just announced

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she's writing a memoir called Cheryl Hines Unscripted, and the

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timing couldn't be more interesting, considering her husband just canceled

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five hundred million dollars in vaccine research. Hines made the

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announcement on social media, saying she'll be sharing stories about

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the twists and turns I've experienced through the years and

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calling it a wild ride given that she's married to

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a guy who thinks mRNA vaccines are deadly and has

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been dismantling pandemic preparedness, that might be the understatement of

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the century. Now, I am going to tread lightly here

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because longtime listeners may recall the previous host openly had

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a crush on Cheryl and was trying to get her

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to leave RFK for him. And then one day the

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guy just disappeared and was never heard from again. More

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than two thoy three hundred writers just signed their names

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to what amounts to a declaration of war against Donald Trump.

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The Writer's Guild put out an open letter calling Trump's

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actions an unprecedented authoritarian assault on free speech. And when

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writers get this mad, you know someone's really stepped in it.

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The letter reads like a Greatest Hits compilation of Trump's

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media feuds. There's the sixty million dollars settlement with sixty minutes,

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the Late Show with Stephen Cole Bear getting canceled, the

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defunding of PBS and NPR, Trump calling for the View

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to be taken off the air. It's like someone made

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a bingo card of ways to piss off creative types.

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And Trump said challenge accepted. The signatory's list looks like

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the credits of every movie and TV show you've ever liked.

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Spike Lee, Alfonso Coron, David Simon, Mike Shure, John Waters.

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These aren't just any These are the people who actually

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make the stuff Trump watches when he's not busy threatening

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to shut it down. The letter makes a point that's

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pretty hard to argue with. We don't have a king,

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we have a president, and the president doesn't get to

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pick what's on television, which sounds like something you'd think

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would be obvious, but here we are having to spell

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it out. The letter ends with this ominous warning. This

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period in American life will not last forever, and when

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it's over the world will remember who had the courage

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to speak out. Hopefully history will fondly remember a wise,

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cracking host with jokes written by AI and just wanted

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to use humor to get the Epstein files released by

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a coward who refused to do it.