The Truth About MAHA: Media Censorship, Big Pharma & What Comes Next! Brigid Rasmussen | Ep. 44

Opening MAHA and health ad critique 0:00

Some of these ads that are like Lex Pro will save your life and it's someone like running through a field with a dog and they're all happy and sunny. And then this may increase your risk of suicide. This may increased your. Risk of heart failure. Or this. May increase. Your risk. Of your hair falling out. It's like how sick and twisted can you be? Some patients experience sudden death. Yeah. What? We're thrilled to have Bridget Rasmussen, COO of Maha Alliance and Maja Action with her extensive experience in leadership and strategic operations.

Bridget has been at the forefront of impactful initiatives and advocacy efforts. Let's dive into her insights and experiences. Why is America so unhealthy? Because we've prioritized corporate interest and profit over the health of our people. 70 to 80% of medical schools do not require a class on nutrition. That's crazy. We need to help our most vulnerable people thrive. It's our patriotic duty to be healthy. And health has just become dead last in this legislative priority, which until now. Recently TikTok has been going crazy about the Maha movement.

Candice Owens decided to go with the podcast and I listened to the podcasts also. This has like nothing to do with Maja. The only thing that she said was that the rabbi is controlling RFK Jr. So I want to clear the narrative here. Why do people think the maha is gone and that it's been hijacked? What I will say is Welcome to another episode of a Healthy Point of View podcast. I'm your host, Sam Tahata. As you guys know, we're always bringing experts from all over the world to talk about things that are related to health, wellness, and beauty.

And yeah, you guy are probably wondering, why is Sam wearing a hat? He never wears a head. He always has a fresh haircut, which I do. But today this podcast is about making America healthy again. And that's why I'm wearing the merch. So today we have former chief of staff for RFK Jr, currently chief operating officer for the Maha movement. We have Bridget Rasmussen. Welcome. Thank you for having me, Sam. It's great to be here. Love the sunny state of Florida. Hey, Florida, this is what we call paradise, right?

It is absolutely paradise. I was in the ocean earlier this morning while on a Zoom call. So, yeah, happy to be here. With that natural frequency coming in, the salt water. Oh, it's the best. The ocean is the most healing thing on the planet. It's incredible. I'm happy to have you here because the thing is, everyone's been hearing about this whole MAHA movement. You know, it's being everywhere. And you obviously are a huge intricate part of it, of developing a lot of these events that are happening, helping raise money to get the word out there.

So, Chief Operating Officer, let's start off with Chief of Staff of what you used to do. How did you get involved in all of this? Yeah, so before I started working for Bobby or Secretary Kennedy's campaign, I was in clinical social work working toward my licensure. I were seeing clients that were on and off the streets on Skid Row.

Bridget Rasmussenu2019s background and campaign origins 3:00

in Los Angeles and I was just starting to feel incredibly fed up with this system that was designed to fail and was design to keep people sick, keep homeless, and keep hopeless essentially. So I would see a lot of clients who grew up in pretty turbulent environments, didn't have access to good food, don't learn about nutrition or exercise. And then as they grew up, they either became addicted to drugs or on and off the streets, in and out of poverty, on SNAP programs. Many of them really wanted to get better.

I think there's this terrible stigma about people that are homeless that they want to be on the street or they chose this path. But we have a system that's designed to keep people sick and the American dream has been totally lost. I knew I wanted to do something more to help shape policy that would actually help people rather than, you know, one-on-one support was really all I could give them. So I slept and prayed on it for a while, and through a series of crazy, divine interventions, I met Bobby Kennedy.

I've always loved his work, what he's done for kids, how he has always emphasized people over corporate profit. And so I joined his campaign very early on, had never been involved in politics. I grew up a Republican Catholic in San Francisco with a very conservative family, but all of my peers were very liberal. First time Trump won the election, I think my senior year of high school, we had the day off from school to process. So meanwhile, my parents were at home celebrating. So I kind of just avoided politics because to me, it was just too much conflict, too polarizing.

But of course, I found myself, you know, joining his campaign early on. It was always just this very intimate kind a startup family feel to it. Many, many people coming into politics for the first time, people who had worked on conservative campaigns, on Democrat campaigns coming together all for this one incredible human being who just wants to see a healthy, thriving country. So as we progressed, I was kind of managing more of our teams as expanded projects, really thinking outside the box. and creatively how we could help an independent candidate win.

And it was, I mean, do believe he won. This is really just exactly what I believe Bobby was meant to do. So that's sort of, yeah, loosely how I got involved. Maha, now's our time. So what a process, and going through that campaign with everything that he was out there preaching about, to try to get the votes, what was that like? I wanna get deep into it, because you saw stuff that most people are not gonna see. You're gonna how the media took a play into this whole mix, you're going to see the stressors that people on the team are having to trying to the message out, how was it?

Yeah, there were definitely a lot of hurdles and a lotta challenges. I will say with every challenge came a silver lining. It's much easier to see that now. So the biggest challenge was getting Bobby on the ballot in all 50 states. As an independent candidate, you don't have this party committee backing you and putting you on every state's ballot. You have to go and collect a certain amount of Signatures in each state. Each state is very unique. There's not a centralized database of how many signatures you need to collect, how big the petition sheet needs to be, even like what color ink you can use when you're gathering signatures is different.

So it takes a lot of resources. both financial and just, you know, in terms of time and effort, just to figure that out and how we were going to collect all these signatures within certain windows. Every state has a different window. Some states require that the person signing puts their address, some don't. There were many, many challenges the DNC brought forward to try and remove Bobby from the ballot after we had collected the necessary amount of signatures We won pretty much all of those cases, but again, more financial resources and energy that could have been spent campaigning, getting the word out, creating content, you know, Getting volunteers out at conventions to speak on behalf of Bobby, that kind of thing.

But the silver lining in all that was it forced us to get our ground game, meaning our grassroots supporters, engaged really early on. So by the time Bobby's campaign ended, we had 100,000 plus active volunteers on the ground. It was like their full-time job. One time I was driving through Colorado, the middle of nowhere, on a random Saturday afternoon. And I look up and there's a group of maybe a dozen volunteers holding an RFK Junior for President sign over the freeway, handing out buttons and stickers to people.

We had people in the freezing cold in Utah gathering signatures ahead of the deadline. People in 120 degrees. In Vegas like out getting signatures spreading the word people in New York City that wasn't very friendly to Bobby Tabling and on the Upper East Side, you know handing out merchandise just talking about about this candidate and why they believed in him so We're now channeling that grassroots army into our our next task Which is really to help Bobby fulfill this this mission to make America healthy again How big did he grow that army to?

Well, we had 100,000, roughly volunteers, but our supporters. A hundred thousand? Yeah. Wow. And that was, you know, people that were very, very involved. They were on their state Zoom calls every week. they were taking these pre-written like kind of templated comments and going on social media and responding to helping spread actually the truth because the media was doing us no favors. So they would go and take rewritten things and respond to comments and say, well, actually, that's not true. Here's what Bobby actually said.

here's, what he actually wants. Read the full script. Don't just read the headlines. They were so helpful. I mean, more passion than money could ever buy. We had that working in our favor and Bobby was pulling up to 20%. So he really did succeed and we really see this openness to an independent candidate

Ballot access battles and grassroots volunteer growth 10:00

that we haven't seen before, at least not in my lifetime. And when he decided to actually pull out of it, how did you feel? I felt great. I mean, I really don't know how else to describe it. It was ultimately between Bobby and God, and like he said when he announced that he was suspending his campaign, he and President Trump realized that in order to save our country and save out children, we have to love our kids more than we hate each other. And so to me, all of that work, I remember somebody asking me are you bummed that all that of work was for nothing?

And I was like, oh no, that was not for anything, not in the slightest. I don't see it as a loss at all. And saw it the most beautiful alliance between two candidates that we've never seen before. The closest thing to a unity ticket, then Tulsi Gabbard jumping on board too. And in my mind, the next task was, okay, how can we help President Trump win? So looking back at it, it was kind of like a little bit of a mind puzzle going from trying to figure out how to beat someone to how actually use your voters to help them win.

So going back to ballot access, It was funny, once Bobby endorsed President Donald Trump, they wouldn't let him off the ballot. You worked so hard to put him on and now we're not, Yeah, and that is I mean election interference at its finest like you can't choose you Can't just the DNC their whole strategy was like let's just pull Bobby off the ballot. Oh wait now He's supporting this other guy. Let's make him stay on because he's pulling more votes from Trump. It was just so That's not how a democracy should function.

So in my mind, it was how do we just get all of these voters that we've worked so hard to get and make sure that they know that if they want to see Bobby really carry out this mission to make America healthy again, they need to go out and vote for President Trump. Um, so we shortly after that event in phoenix where he got on stage shook hands with president trump and said don't you want a president that's going to make america healthy again We formed the maha alliance super pack. Um With that one goal of getting all of bobby's voters over to trump in, you know, the eight weeks or so until the election So the brand maja didn't come until after he basically, uh got himself out and started supporting Trump, right?

Yeah, we had a merch that said, make Earth great again, which did really well throughout the campaign. Don't know why we didn't have Make America Healthy again but it was, it just, again it spoke to the beauty of that moment where nobody knew Bobby was gonna go up there and say that. I think he said to someone that he didn' have a speech planned. That morning so nobody knew what he was gonna say when he got up there, but he said don't you want a president? That's gonna make America healthy again and from by the end of the day.

It was like people were I Mean and it's just something that It's common sense, it's become this whole politicized thing and that's what we're working to unravel. But it really is, if everybody's eyes were closed and there was no red or blue or right or left or purple or whatever and we were all just in one united front, we would all agree, make America healthy again completely makes sense. It shouldn't really matter what side you're on. it doesn't matter if you on the left to the right. why not live a healthy life?

Why not get these toxic things out of our food, our environment? So it's just, I find it mind boggling, the people that are against it, right? I remember when I got exposed to the whole Maha movement, and I saw that whole Make America Healthy Again, And I started looking into it. I was like, i've been in the functional medicine space for about two decades. And this is the stuff that we've talking about for year after year, after a year. And I started sharing this stuff with a lot of the doctors.

I was like, hey, I think this is our like our chance to actually change the course of medicine, you know, where we could actually take more of a proactive approach, actually focus on getting toxins out of people's bodies that are causing gene expression change and all this other stuff. And when the doctor started seeing this, like well, we got something here, because for the longest people that I've think that medicine is going to change. Right now, it's in a good position for things to Absolutely, now it has this popular movement behind it and all of a sudden it went from this, okay, these people are crazy talking about how pharma might not be the best thing for them and they're crazy, they are talking GMOs and pesticides and things like that to now, it's this thing that's just taken a national stage and become a nation priority and we've already seen Secretary Kennedy take so many leaps toward that goal and actual, you know tangible movement and it's just incredible, but we cannot lose sight of the people and the providers who have You know gone through fire to get to this absolutely this point the vision I'm gonna ask you the question that a lot of people probably ask.

You why is America so unhealthy? Well, that's a big question. I think America is so unhealthy because we've prioritized corporate interest and profit over the health of our people. These pharmaceutical companies are literally profiting off keeping people sick, creating these forever customers where they're eating junk food. dependent on federally funded programs like SNAP and school lunches that are filled with chemical additives and sodas and sugars and all kinds of bad stuff. And then they're sick, they don't feel well, so they go see a doctor.

70 to 80% of medical schools do not require a class on nutrition. That's crazy. And the ones that do, it's like a 25-hour course. I have more hours in nutrition classes by doing a GE in college on Nutrition. It's just crazy. So then they're going to the doctor who has no nutritional background or, you know, knowledge really, and they are just getting prescribed, prescribed prescribed something that's, leading to other side effects. And then there's more pills. They're sicker and sickier. Then they go into a hospital and then their in debt.

41% of Americans have some sort of medical debt It's insanity. So I think there's the profit side of it. And then I there has just been a complete lack of emphasis on any sort of proactive healthcare, preventative medicine. We don't have a healthcare system. Right now we have sick care system that's so reactive. Our regulatory agencies have not made it easy for functional medicine to actually reach as many people as it needs to. In order to really move the needle, we need to make this kind of medicine available for people.

So I think on the profit side of things, We need think about people over corporate interest. And then on just this kinda cultural shift,we need emphasize preventative medicine. Food is medicine, that's a huge part of it. We're seeing tons of legislative strides to make it easier for people that depend on, you know, SNAP and school lunches and even hospital food, like that's a whole nother topic. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that. Because that something that, my business partner, Dr. Christopher Davis, who's an interventional cardiologist, he talks about it when he was in traditional medicine and he in the hospitals putting caths in

Why America is unhealthy and the case for prevention 18:00

people and everything else. One of the things that got him very frustrated and made him shift into functional medicine as a cardiologist was he would do these surgical procedures and stuff for patients with cardiovascular disease. And the first thing afterwards that they would bring him in the hospital, the food, was exactly the stuff that caused him to have heart problems. Right. It's crazy. it's like Mountain Dew. Its like these potato waffle things that look like cardboard. its like pudding with like a tiny cup of pudding that has 70 calories has like 40 ingredients.

39 of which you can't even pronounce. Like why are we giving our most vulnerable people, people you know that are not economically stable, people who are sick, why are we just setting them up to fail? It's creating this, yeah, forever customer that's dependent on the system. So, on, the hospital side of things, we've also seen some progress. Tampa General, for example, has made a ton of efforts to swap out some of their vending machines with healthier snacks and things like that. And so, I think overall in all of these different programs, we have the federal government that is clearly making this a priority.

40 states currently have bills passing through their committees in the Senate that are related to nutrition and creating new standards. For example, in Texas, there's one right now that would require physical education for kids in elementary schools again, which is crazy that that's like, gone. And in Arizona, we were just at the Capitol last week, testifying on the removal of soda from SNAP programs and also the removing of chemical additives in school lunch programs. Many other states have have followed.

So we're seeing this legislative support, and that really is because the people have put pressure on the government to really take action. You know, when you look at people that are in a lot of these assisted programs, right, the food stamps and everything else. And when they're allowed to buy a lots of unhealthy foods, it's almost like you're sponsoring, you know the governments sponsoring them being unhealthy. Correct. That's a scary thing. It is really scary. And if you think about the ability to thrive, like we want to help people get off of SNAP programs so they're not dependent on them to make their own money, to succeed in their job, be able to provide for their families.

How can we do that if 20% of what people buy with SNP benefits is soda and sugary drinks? I don't know about you, but every time I drink a soda, which thankfully has not been for a while, I just have this crazy crash headache. Like, it's just not, It's not good. We need to set people up for success. Need to help people, our most vulnerable people thrive. It is our patriotic duty to be healthy. And health has just become dead last in sort of this legislative priority, until now. I agree. How important is education throughout this process for the individuals?

So I was born in the Dominican Republic, came here as an immigrant, and youngest out of four. And I lived in an inner city. We didn't have much money. So it's kind of like you lived on survival food. But you really ate whatever was kind given to you. It wasn't until I started going from my adolescent age to becoming an adult in understanding the power of nutrition and what is healthy and you know early on in my early 20s I decided to start doing bodybuilding and that's really why I just like started understanding nutrition even more than you started at the fire department at age 20 a lot of the firefighters were into like eating healthy I was like man I've been doing it wrong all these years so you don't For me, education's important, right?

So how do you guys see education from the top, where RFK Junior's at, we're getting this information to the people who just don't understand what eating healthy is? Yeah, I think it's very, very important, especially for kids. I thing that there should be mandatory nutrition classes, cooking classes. You know, some schools that are doing it really well have gardens and they're teaching the kids how to grow their food and cook their foods. Not that everyone will grow up to be a farmer growing their own food, but just having having more of an emphasis on nutritional courses, instead of just ignoring it and just hoping for the best, 30 million or so kids have the bulk of their calories come from school lunches.

So I think not only banning all these bad things from the school-lunch programs, but actually creating a good nutritional, the absence of bad is not gonna create good. Better school lunches, more nutrition classes, physical education programs. The link between more PE and exercise and the declining rates of depression is so tremendous. And for some reason, that's just totally been ignored. Getting rid of PE is just crazy to me. So I think it's not only just teaching in a classroom, but it also the interactive component.

teaching kids from an early age that when they're eating better and moving around more and just kind of aware of what they are putting in their bodies is super empowering and very integral in building confidence and better habits and you know the personal autonomy piece too is I think something that you people feel like they don't own their own health like somebody else owns it like their doctor owns or you know, their healthcare system or It's really theirs and we should teach kids from an early age that they have the power within them to make good choices for themselves so they're not developing chronic diseases by the time they are 10 years old.

I agree and when you think about these kids, letting them know what's good, I mean it's important for them what is bad as well too. Being able to read those labels and understand, oh this has red 40, maybe I shouldn't eat this. Because I, you know, there's a lot of things out there that kind of cover it up. And I want to know your thoughts on this. Like I look at a lots of cereal boxes, and the cereal box have other organizations that are reputable, right? These statements are approved by the American Heart Association.

This is a heart healthy, you know, Froot Loops or whatever the heck is out there. Captain Crunch, American heart association approves the cereal. And we all know by looking at the ingredients, it's like, well, how the hell is this? Why are they putting that label on it? Yeah, it's crazy. First of all, needs to be much more oversight as to what is allowed to considered a heart healthy food. I mean, the American Heart Association has historically said that seed oils are good for you. You know, anyone who says otherwise is misinformed.

Seed oils or essential in the american diet. That kind of thing, I think, part of teaching kids how to read food labels is, you know, we're not going to expect a five-year-old to be able to, or even a 10- year- old to see natural flavors and think that's bad. It's so misleading. Natural flavors, when something has natural flavor in it, it can have a hundred different chemical additives, preservatives, all of that kind thing. So, from a legislative perspective, food manufacturing companies and and packaging just is way more transparent people don't have time to read through you know a hundred words on the back of a cereal box to find that one thing that isn't even relevant right even things like vegetable oil is a little misleading like I I played volleyball in college and I I did sports all my life, all kinds of different sports.

My mom has a degree in nutrition. You know, so I was a pretty healthy, aware kid. I remember my freshman year of college going to the grocery store and I had, you know my babysitting money to get some groceries and snacks. And I remembered seeing vegetable oil and it was so much cheaper than olive oil.

School lunches, nutrition education, and food labeling 27:00

Okay, that's good, it's vegetables, It has to be good. You know, like that is crazy. So I think the transparency piece is also really important because we can't expect people to know everything. It's not their job to every tiny little thing, what every single ingredient means. First of all, just holding these food companies accountable. If they're approved by the American Heart Association, but they are ingredients include things that are linked to all kinds of adverse conditions, then it should not be allowed to be on there.

So things like that that set people up for success. So part of the Maha movement is also holding a lot of these food companies accountable. And it's not just food company that are selling the foods at the grocery stores. You're talking about food companys as well that have restaurants. Something as simple as Starbucks. If you go to other countries, they make the same Frappuccino, but a whole different set of ingredients. But here in the US, where they're from, They're giving us the poison. Why? I mean, again, I think it goes back to the profit model of all of this.

We're spending significantly more on health care than any other comparable nation, yet our life expectancy is much lower. You know, that's a really good question. Why is that? Why have we put health last? why is it that these companies are allowed to poison us and actually profit off it? And then these American, you know health care, sick care companies, are then making more and more money. I think it's really time to start asking those questions. And I Maha has has become so well known and has finally gotten the presence in the media that it deserves that people are starting to ask these questions and they're way more conscious of what they are eating and even you know noticing things like even if they don't know what every ingredient is they asking questions like why is yeah like a cup of yogurt or pudding why does it have 100 different ingredients and chemicals in it or like I was on the plane the other day and the woman sitting next to me turned over those like Southwest pretzels they gave you they give you and it's like a tiny bag of pretzel But it has all of these ingredients like and she was like, huh, that's so that so funny So we started talking and you know, people are talking about this.

So I think it really putting a lot of pressure on on these food companies and then at the state level and you know, we're seeing legislation go through that requires different labeling on packages, all kinds of different bills that are getting a lot of support, cross-partisan support. And I think it's going to force food companies to make a change because as soon as four, five, six, seven of their states that they, you Provide for are then saying no, you need a different label. You need more they're gonna have to say wait a second This is screwing up our entire supply chain chain manufacturing process like we're going to you know Have to hold ourselves accountable or we are not going be able to function.

Yeah, so Yeah and just the the pressure from the people the consumer I think has been really successful with the support of people like Bobby in government Absolutely. I mean, you guys have had some really strong influencers out there, speaking and supporting. We've got Bonnie with the Food Babe. Yeah, she's amazing. She's got a loud mouthpiece. Oh, yeah. And she she is not holding back. You know, the Kellogg's. she did the kellogg rally, which is such a incredible example of this whole grassroots legislative advocacy and how it leads to real lasting change.

She had hundreds of people join her in the middle of nowhere Michigan and the freezing cold and delivered like 200,000 I think petition signatures to have Kellogg's look at their food ingredients. It was an incredible amount of petitions. Yeah, it was incredible. And then the FDA took action in the next six weeks or so. Things like that, they get a lot of attention in media. They put pressure on these food companies, one, and they also put on pressure lawmakers to actually create and pass and support or oppose laws that depending on the best interest of the people.

Absolutely. Then you have Casey Means, right? Yeah, and Cali means brothers and sisters, right? Yeah. Brother and sister, they're, I mean, just so knowledgeable and they've brought They've played such a crucial role in the unifying aspect of Maha. They brought all of these people, many from the left, some from right, that have been talking about food, GMOs, pesticides, chemical additives, all kinds of things. they've brought that group of people in with people and this medical freedom movement that Bobby's cultivated for so many years to create this Maja movement where it's People kind of come in through different funnels, some because they're a small farmer and they've been totally run out of business by these, you know, foreign imports of produce that are running, they can't compete with.

Some come and because their wondering why there's a hundred different ingredients on their airplane pretzels. Because they have a vaccine-injured child or they themselves are vaccine injured. some because they were put on an SSRI when they're 16 years old and became suicidal, some who have lost a child to addiction. They're coming in through different funnels for personal reasons a lot of the time and then learning more and more, and playing a huge role in this growing movement that is unifying people from all sides.

And so Casey and Callie bringing in kind of these food enthusiasts, for lack of a better word, and just people who care about their health more broadly has been super, super helpful. Amazing. What do you think is the biggest roadblock that you guys are hitting with really reaching the level of success that we want with the Maha movement? That's a good question. I think, well, for the longest time, I would say the biggest hurdle was the media and how the medium covered Bobby's campaign, how media just totally neglected to talk about these very real cases of vaccine injury.

Now we're seeing the medial cover more. More Maha topics. So that's good. That's a step in the right direction. They don't want to offend any of their sponsors? Right, exactly. It's crazy. It is what it is, but I get on the news quite often, and there's always a briefing document before you go, even if it's live, you kinda know what you're gonna talk about. And me being in the functional medicine space, there are a lot of times where it just like, nope, we can't talk that. They won't let me. Wow.

What kinds of things usually is it? A lot things about preventative health, like if I'm gonna to talk any certain type of medications, how they're used alternatively or whatever. If it's something that any of their sponsors, pharmaceutical sponsors specifically, I'll just say how it is. Pharmaceutical sponsors are gonna get offended by it in any kind of way, they won't even touch it. They won' let me talk about it, you know? And if I bring it up during live TV, They'll never have me back. So I gotta be quiet about.

But that's how it shows you like how the media is. It's a little twisted. Totally. Yeah, it's corporate capture of our regulatory agencies. Its corporate, capture our science and corporate captured our media that people look to for the truth. And you take that away and then where are people going for that truth? Yeah, so that's a major hurdle. The New York Times just put out a piece that was more on the positive side and we've been on our team just really working on these relationships with reporters and media, you know, not being afraid to speak to them or in front of them, or answer their questions.

held several press briefings on different topics now. So we're seeing more and more coverage, which is good. I think in order to really move the needle, Bobby will continue to expose corruption on the inside. And it's our jobs to really educate people and just say, hey, look, this is why, you know, rather than lecturing them like this, is you're making terrible decisions for yourself. It's not even like a decision people are making a lot of the time. They're just like, well, I go to the doctor and the doctors supposed to help me.

You know? It is how they were raised. That's all they know. A doctor is supposed help their patient. So I think just giving people the facts and then, you know, informed choice and informed consent is super important. So we're not telling people don't go to the doctor. We're telling not people get a vaccine or don t get on a medication. It's just here are the fax. Here's what's actually in your children's cereal. Uh, here's, what s actually is soda. These are some of these addictive additives in soda that are similar to the addictive properties in cigarettes, and then letting them decide for themselves.

Yeah, yeah. And I tell you, in my head right now, I'm just so stuck about how the media, it's just like, they censor so much. I actually remember I flew out to New York. It was on one of the news stations out there. One of things that I told my publicist that wanted to talk about, this is when the election was happening. So I want to tell about the Mahat movement. I'm vibing, we gotta talk about this. It's all over the place. And everyone's hearing it, it's over social media. My publicist is just like, Sam, most of these news stations are liberal stations.

They're not gonna cover it. No, they have to. Who doesn't wanna live healthy? Who wants toxic chemicals in their foods? They would not let me talk it about it? Crazy. Just because it was under Trump and everything else. And you look at their sponsors and they depend on an industry that is not telling people the truth to fund this supposed to be truth telling media.

Media bias, pharma ads, and better science 38:00

It's crazy. Yeah, so something that's been floated and has gained a lot of support is banning of pharmaceutical ads. which I think is a step in the right direction, but that's not just ads you see on TV when you're watching the news. It's paying influencers to promote really negative medications or medications that have negative side effects. It's paying influencers to talk about, you know, why they need to go out and get a vaccine, things like that. There's all of these different, it's like, Google ads, like you search wellness near me, and often, the first thing that comes up is a pharmaceutical company.

Even like when I'm listening to Spotify. The amount of pharmaceutical, you know, I don't hear anything else besides, so I think like blades, beads, for washing your laundry. But the rest of them are like all these pharmaceutical commercials like, man, this is crazy. Like I didn't wanna take a drug, but now I'm gonna go research and see what the heck this thing is. So it's, it, they got the money, right? So they're spending it to try to increase their business, But it definitely not keeping people healthy.

I think it's comical really like some of these ads that are like, you know, Lex Pro will save your life and it someone like running through a field with a dog and they're all happy and sunny and then, they are required to list all the side effects. And then it is like this may increase your risk of suicide, this might increase the risk heart failure, and this will increase risk your hair falling out. You know like just all of this while this person is happy. Well, it's like, how sick and twisted can you be?

Some patients experience sudden death. Yeah. What? Right. And and the fact that I mean, It's good that they're required to disclose those. But even some of these on the market when they are the research. shows that it increases the risk of suicidality in teenagers, you know, and they're just pointing to the one study that someone on their inside team did that, it's crazy. There's just no oversight. there needs to be better science. It's not the absence of science, It is just unbiased science that isn't, You know you can't have a research study.

That's okay. I need to make it show me. I need to make it seem safe. So I'm just going to hide this part of it or I am going do it over and over again until it's safe." There just needs to be way better science. Yeah, I agree with that. It's interesting, when you were talking about the commercial, you brought up that there was a dog running. When I was going through medical school to become a paramedic, one of my buddies was like, hey, if you ever notice on pharmaceutical commercials, specifically the diabetic ones, they always have a dogs, and typically it's like a golden retriever.

So if any of the listeners are questioning it, Think about the next commercial, pharmaceutical commercial and you'll see there's always a dog. And there has got to be some kind of psychological component to make people feel like, oh, fuzzy, you know, little puppy, whatever. So it's interesting that you said that. Right. It's like they're using dogs to makes something seem like a good idea. Like it is good and happy. Yeah. That's the same with like Burger King, using like women and bikinis and dogs and happy things or a car.

Like it's like, yeah, it is a psychological thing. You don't even think about what they're saying because you're looking at this like happy picture, you know, the happy music. It's, like totally twisted. Yeah, It is. And that has to stop. That's part of this whole movement as well, too. Now, Bridget, recently this weekend, TikTok has been going crazy about the Maha movement. Some moms are whining about it. Oh, it's not gonna happen. Candace Owens decided to go with her podcast. You heard about, right?

And I actually was like, what the heck is everyone ranting about? I listened to the podcast, I was just like this has nothing to do with the maha. The only thing that she said was that, that the rabbi is controlling, you know, RFK Jr. So, I wanna clear the narrative here with what's happening because it's like all over the place. People are sending me text messages and videos. I'm like, why do people think the Maha movement is gone and that it has been hijacked? I mean, yeah. truthfully do not know where on earth that came from.

What I will say is Bobby has never worked in the interest, financial or otherwise, for anybody else but the good of the people. Bobby is never taken the road less traveled because there's a financial incentive. Bob has ever done anything because of some bribe or I mean he is the has the most pure incredibly humble beautiful heart out of anybody I've ever known he's so selfless so I didn't even listen to the episode because somebody told me about it and I was like what on earth I just So in my opinion, I feel like she was very emotional throughout the whole hour, Candace Owens, which obviously she's a conservative.

It's like, listen, now you're kind of dividing your own. And we all know from history, divide and conquer. Do you really want that to happen to your home? I think it's nonsense. She's responding based off emotion, right? And it was an emotional, she felt like I thought it an an emotion attack to RFK Jr. In my professional opinion. And her big thing of why it was hijacked, she said, oh, there was a comment that he did through HHS about we need to make our communities healthier by preventing the anti-systemic stuff, I guess, like the Jewish.

which all of a sudden, he needs to stay in his own lane with things that are health related. And I'm thinking to myself, that's like severe mental health issues for people if they have to deal with that. That's health. How is that not staying in your own way? right right and yeah i don't even know why that comment could have gotten taken to that well i think it's because that rabbi like i said a lot of crazy stuff about candace owens so yeah all of a sudden you know right? and so then you bring in bobby to the conversation i just don' understand how bobbi got i thought it was an argument between candice owen and jessica reed kraus who supports Bobby and covered his campaign.

That's part of it as well, with the articles and all that other stuff. But yeah, to me it was just like a bunch of nonsense where it just got so blown out of proportion. And I wanted to bring it up to you, kind of hear your opinion on it, but for me, it doesn't make any sense. I feel like there's other narratives that are being written for no reason. Which, you know, the focus here is, let's make America healthy again. Exactly. And I think we have way bigger fish to fry than trying to, this infighting, like, a house divided cannot stand.

We have to stand together if we're really going to make American healthy and unravel decades of Corruption that has you know led to the most rapid public health decline in recorded history I mean, it's so I just heard like bits and pieces of that and I Don't truthfully don't know what that's about but I will say that it seems like a lot of unnecessary drama that we should not focus on just given the strength of this movement and how Yeah, we need to stand together as not even just like a sort of conservative group, because I don't see it as that, but just as these people that have been pushing for truth and pushing an honest media and that kind of thing.

Yeah we can't stop the momentum. And that's my biggest thing with this. A lot of this stuff is going to become a distraction. At the end of the day, the one thing I'll say to Candace Owens is she decided to be in the middle of politics. So she's going have a heck of a lot people that are not going like her. She's got to stop with the emotional attacks against other people. Learn how to meditate, figure something out. If you don't know how meditate I'll hook you up with someone who'll give you guided meditation.

But this whole thing of trying to kill our momentum to try to make people healthy is a bunch of BS. I just really don' understand. It baffles me how Bobby got dragged into this argument. you know, is in West Virginia with the governor historically, creating a historical movement to get food dye out of school, artificial food, dye, out-of-school lunches. And then this is happening on the side, like kind of like a buzz, bug in your ear. It's like, why are we talking about this? Because, you, know initially she was just like so like pro the things that he's developed, like oh yeah, he had the only website that really talked about vaccines that allowed me to actually make an educated decision for my children if I wanna vaccinate them or not, which she didn't, based off of what she read on the website.

But then all of a sudden it's like, and it was, with all the stuff that was happening on social media, it blowing so out of proportion, because when I watched this thing, It was a whole hour long, right? And it was literally probably only five, not even five minutes out of the episode. where she actually brought his name up and the rabbi and whatever. And I'm thinking to myself, I just wasted an hour of my life. Someone put me through this funnel. You're the second person who said that to me. Whole infighting and drama and buzz about some kissy face emojis or whatnot is, yeah, it's not gonna save our country and I think it just distracting from all of the work that Bobby is trying to do.

and has been doing and all of the work that we, as this kind of outside of government movement is trying to achieve, people are, I think people just love gossip and love this weird stuff and kind crazy like, oh, this is gonna be, you know, exposed so much. It's like what is? Talk about exposure. Look at what Bobby's exposing. The real stuff that matters. Yeah, definitely. And that's kind been my theme all along with just the media and not covering Bobby or any of his policies or his incredible research and work,

Candace Owens controversy and staying focused on MAHA 49:00

but only covering things like a bear in Central Park and a quote unquote brain worm that didn't exist. Things like that that are, you're trying to take somebody down by pointing out the randomest, weirdest, not even true most of the time. things instead of just because they knew they couldn't attack him. My theory is they know they can attack them on his policies and his reasoning behind each of those policies. And his agenda, as you know, when he was running for president. So they just picked at him in the strangest ways.

Yeah. You know what it comes down to are the views, the likes. Everyone's trying to get them. Candice Owen, same thing. This was a whole click bait thing here. She got an hour of my life that I'll never get back. I could have just like watch one reel and get the information that I needed. And I sat there and I listened to it and. I'm waiting and that's going through like about five different sponsored commercials that she has on her podcast, by the way, which is just, like, man, she is like really raking it in.

Talk about for the money. So, and I've always liked Candace Owens because she's kind of like, you know, speaks from the heart about things. She's got strong moral values and everything, but this one was just kind like I didn't agree with it because it was all, she responded based off her emotions. And being in that leadership powerful position that she is in where she was very influential, You can't respond like that, especially taking somebody down on your own side. That's not cool. Yeah, so I think that that brings up a good point, you know, as things like podcasts and independent journalism grows, we also need to hold ourselves accountable and to the same standard that we expect for mainstream media, not creating something out of nothing or a flashy headline just to get clicks.

Like our job is to tell people the truth. and that needs to go above all else. So yeah, I think like that, things like, that just, you're right, it's like an hour, but you are the second person who's told me it is an hours of their lives, they won't get back, there wasn't really any substance to it. Meanwhile, Bobby's doing all of this incredible work, MAHA is growing, we're seeing just historical victories in states like West Virginia, West Virginia has the highest obesity rate of any other state.

It's traditionally just had the kind of worst health outcomes of its residents, and West Virgina being the first to announce that they're banning these harmful chemicals from school lunches is so huge. And I think many states right and left will follow suit. Those are the victories and the strides that Journalists should be talking about them. That's taking things that you know, the steps that are taking in the right direction. Mm-hmm. So Totally. Yeah, I do that and that that's where it's like we got to have more of our own media channels Spreading that type of message that the type news And I think there's gonna be a lot more that as well to different news networks that I'm going to be more for it That are not going be tainted by a of the other crap that is out there Totally.

Yeah, it's so important, you know, covering things like Bayer Monsanto trying to get legal immunity from anyone who says that their Roundup-like products cause cancer. 21 states, they're trying get that passed. Why not talk about that kind of thing? You know we've seen an incredible increase in cancer rates and they've already had to pay out billions of dollars in settlements because people that use their products and that were exposed to them at a high rate died. So why not cover things like that?

It's our job to tell people the truth and to inform people as to what's going on in their states because the state legislatures are way more powerful than we think and they can move really quickly. Since the beginning of January, we've seen Tons of these, you know, soda snap bills go through, school lunch bills, things about vaccine side effects and sort of more on the informed consent side of things, food labeling, Utah banning fluoride and drinking water. We see things that just can move so quickly, but that also means bad things can really quickly too.

So it's our job to keep people informed, to empower them. I think for so long they didn't want you to know that you can actually go into a Senate building and talk to your lawmakers. They work for you. We are literally paying them, they work us. Empowering people, we have on our website, people can put in their zip code, figure out how to email, call their senators, go into their offices, people can access what bills are active in their state, why Baja supports or opposes certain bills. Like I said, 40 states currently have bills related to nutrition, which is huge.

I don't know that we've ever seen that before. And I think anybody has really talked about these things before, like five years ago, I'd say, 99.9% of people that walking down the street could not name who our HHS secretary is right now. It's different Yeah, it's so different now we have like college students like young males and females talking about Bobby and how he can do a hundred push-ups at once and a 100 pull- ups and They're talking about things like food dyes, they're taking about drinking water and getting sunlight and exercise and community and addiction.

People are talking these things. They've never talked about it before, so we need to channel that. Support that, amplify the people that are making spectacular moves, both on the legislative side and just people on-the-ground. And listen, you're a big part of it. So when you see that, pat yourself on the back. Because that's something that is important. And to me that huge. The more people that are talking about it and that change is happening, that how we make America healthy again. Absolutely.

What's the next big thing for the Maha team? Yeah, so, I mean, a lot. Let's see, every time there's a hearing on any of these bills on the state level, we're sending our team. So we are getting people to testify in front of senators, either in person or some states are offering virtual sessions, which is really cool. People can join from wherever they are. They don't have to miss work or school and go and testify on behalf of a certain bill. any sort of vote or hearing where our team is there. Whether it's our volunteers, whether it is our Maha moms, or whether its college students.

We've been really building out our college programs.

State-level wins and how to get involved 56:00

So finding these Maja ambassadors that really want to educate their peers and kids in their communities on what health actually means, you know, tips to stay healthy while you're in college, that's a big one. You know it doesn't have to be rocket science, we don't to create some crazy new vehicle to get to Mars, We just have go back to basics. We have just to go to back PE programs. So we just go have back simpler food ingredients. Just have have got back supporting local farmers and getting resources from local sources.

It's really just going back the basics, So yeah, building out college programs, continuing to inform people on what's going on in their state. We have a podcast with Dell Big Tree, our CEO, that's doing well and we're getting people from all sides of the aisle to speak on different Maha topics. We're doing a lot of media, online press conferences, we just did one yesterday on this glyphosate issue and why it's so important. We had 8,000 people tune in in the middle of the day on a Monday. I guess yesterday was Monday!

We are doing fundraising events. having, yeah, more of a social media online presence just to educate people and reach people where they're at. We're also working on different expert committees. So one on food and creating, like, what does a good nutritional standard actually look like? I really think that it's going to come down to each state and their resources. You know, you can't have The problem, I think, from speaking on a federal level on all of these things is that people in Texas don't have the same resources or the palette or appetite or needs as the people of Hawaii or Idaho.

We have to focus on the states. Um, we're working with other nonprofit organizations that have been working really hard to change school lunch programs and to educate kids and provide better health care for veterans, that's another bing. We've had a lot of different veteran health organizations approach us wanting to work with us on just amplifying this topic, like why are our veterans coming in dead last in terms of health priorities and who we help, you know. People who are fighting for our country we we've got to support them.

So Yeah, different expert committees of food mental health veterans Doing a ton of events. Like I said at Capitol buildings anytime there anytime. There's a major Announcement from HHS. We want to be there covering it talking about it commenting getting getting the public support behind Bobby and also just communicating to people why these laws are so important and why Bobby's doing what he's Doing and just why this issue is so dire and Why we can't just focus on these alarming stats. We actually have to find solutions Absolutely.

So Bridget if there's one person out there listening or viewing the podcast right now and they want to know exactly how they can help how They can participate. How is it? So they can go to mahaaction.com and put in their zip code and find all relevant MAHA bills in the state. They can sign up to volunteer, they sign for our newsletter every week. We send out a really long newsletter on not only the legislative work we're doing, but what Bobby accomplished that week, what that means for American health.

college students can apply for internships. We have a number of interns working within our organization now who many will become our Maha ambassadors and start chapters on their campuses and go out and educate their peers on how to talk to lawmakers and how live a healthy lifestyle. They can reach out to events at mahaaction.com if they want to get involved or volunteer at events. handing out hats and tabling and that kind of thing. So I'd say our website is definitely the best way to get involved.

Awesome. You guys got the new merch store that came out, right? Yes, so mohaaction.com. Plenty of merch, more will be coming out soon. But yeah, that's another big thing that we did with Bobby's campaign. I mean, I would seldom go out and see people wearing a Harris or a Trump hat even. More Trump hats than Harris hats, but People were Kennedy for president March like every single day I mean it was every time I was at the airport I'd see someone and now with my hot people recognize it in there they're either like oh my gosh that's awesome where do I get one of those or and then you strike up a conversation and learn about them and why.

You know how they healed their child from autism by eliminating seed oils and then you have that connection and there's another supporter, there is another ambassador. Or somebody says make America healthy, is that different than make america, what is, and you explain it to them and pretty soon you now their eyes and ears are open to this topic and then they see it and they speak to it, and it's just this ripple effect. Another thing we're doing is Maha sort of book club type groups on the ground where each week people will get together in their communities just creating their own event on our website.

This is something we did with Bobby's campaign where any given week we had hundreds of events, self-organized events on ground that people would put together. Hikes, potlucks, races, you know, tabling at a Fourth of July parade, that kind of thing. So we're bringing that back with Maha to, just bring this community support. And also, when you have a group that's meeting weekly, like a book club or even monthly, and then somebody brings their sister who's not really sure, but then they're like, oh my gosh, this makes sense.

Then they are going and talking to their families and their schools. So with going back to Bobby's campaign, we just saw the power and the and a huge role of community and grassroots efforts So we're carrying that on and yeah, I would love for so many different people to get involved amazing and listen on my side You know, one of my goals is to bring you know the health part to the minority community, right? That's been missing the black and brown community. So however I can help with my team to be able to help you do that, we're here.

Absolutely, would love that. Los, who's behind the scenes, he's very dialed in in the world of entertainment. He's got a lot of big hip hop stars that he works with. However we can to bring this to the masses, were here Absolutely, would love that. That's a huge priority as well, bringing healthcare to minority communities, urban communities or rural communities. We want to have task forces for each of them and really implement change really quickly. I love it. Yeah. Well, Bridget, it was a pleasure having you on the podcast.

If people want to find you, how can they find? They can find me at MahaAction.com. They. Can find. Me on Instagram. Bridgid Rasmussen. I won't. It took me a while. Yeah, or Bridget at MahaAction.com is my email. I don't go to bed until I've read and hopefully responded to every single email, so yeah, I love it. This is, you know, we're so blessed and fortunate to have this audience and this brand and just I'm so fortunate and blessed to work for something that's so important. Amazing. Vision, thank you for being on the podcast.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome. Maha. So guys, you heard it from one of the leaders herself on how to make America healthy again. It's a movement. We have to be loud. It can't just be one or two people being loud, so make sure you share this podcast. Make sure subscribe. Follow Bridget and her team on all of the different links that are down below, and let's make America healthy again. Until the next one.