Name: Joe Rogan Experience #2461 - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Uploaded: 2026-02-27T18:01:18.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2461 - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #2461 - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-27. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #2461 - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
I like them, but if it's just me wearing them, it feels stupid.
Why do you wear them?
I like it because it locks me in.
It just locks me in.
The only thing I hear is that person's voice.
I can't hear Jamie's chair moving.
I can't hear anything else.
And it just, like, makes me really, like, focused on the conversation only.
I have ADHD.
I had 11 siblings, and I have seven kids, so I can work.
I can focus.
No matter what?
No matter what.
It's a skill.
It's a thing to learn.
You know, if you're the person that can focus without distraction, you're a
good person to be in the job you're at.
Yeah.
What is it like?
So, since you've been appointed, I haven't talked to you on a podcast.
I know.
Yeah.
It's the best job I could ever have.
I feel like I was designed for the job, and I just have so much fun.
I mean, it's a target-rich environment, so there's so many ways that you can be
effective and improve people's lives every single day.
And part of that is because the agency was just such a mess.
You know, it wasn't doing healthcare, it was doing sick care, and just managing,
you know, all of these perverse incentives.
And have us spending $5 trillion a year on two to three times per capita when
any other nation spends, and we have the sickest population in the world.
We have the highest chronic disease burden in the world, and you were the best
at medicine in this country, but that's when people get sick.
You'd rather get sick here than any place in the world, but you're more likely
to be sick here than any place in the world.
And, you know, and then it was just a big political patronage operation, and it
still is.
And, you know, we're putting an end to that now.
I mean, the amount of fraud that goes through that place, we lose just in
Medicaid and Medicare $100 billion a year.
And it's all just this really, you know, shocking, blatant fraud that's become
industrialized.
I mean, there's foreign nations like Russia.
Everybody's heard of Somalia, but also Cuba, has this operation in Florida
where it's – they open up these little – they open up these P.O. boxes for
durable medical equipment.
It's like knee braces and wheelchairs.
And then they don't have any knee braces or wheelchairs, but they have patient
identification numbers.
So they just claimed to be shipping them to people.
And we found one hotel.
It had like 129 rooms, and everyone was a different company that was selling
durable medical equipment.
And we go in and shut them down, and they immediately go back to Cuba.
The whole thing is apparently run by the Cuban government, but Russia is doing
the same thing with hospices.
Where do they get the patient ID numbers?
They get – they can buy those numbers, you know, they – on the black market.
Really?
Yeah.
And Russia does the same thing in Los Angeles with hospice care.
So there's more hospice care in Los Angeles than the entire rest of the country
combined.
It's all fraudulent, and we're just pumping hundreds of millions of dollars
into these fraudulent operations.
The same thing that the Somalis did in Ethiopia.
A lot of that money was going back to Boko Harang and, you know, terror groups
over there.
But they were – it was – a lot of it was based – the Medicare stuff is
different, and we're able to – we're going to be able to catch almost all of
that now.
Because we're using AI to do it.
It was never used before.
There was no effort at program integrity.
In fact, the Biden administration deliberately, purposely ordered them – they
ended the program integrity office.
So they went from hundreds of people to six people.
And they said, we don't want you doing program integrity.
We just want you doing enrollments.
And so we got all this fraud.
Most of it came from these waivers that the states got – all the states got
them – for home care and community care.
So, you know, 30 years ago, Medicaid, Medicare play – if you've got a hernia
operation, we paid for that.
And you could tell somebody got the hernia operation because they had the scar.
They used a licensed nurse.
They used a licensed doctor.
It was all documented.
But then they – some of the states said, you know, we're sending a whole lot
of people to the hospital, and we don't have home care providers.
So if you let us pay family members to do home care, the patient won't have to
go to the hospital.
They won't have to go to the emergency room, and we'll save a lot of money.
So it was well intentioned, but then what happened is people immediately
started abusing it.
So today, if you – these are services that are not normally played by family
members, performed by family members.
Buying groceries for your grandmother and bringing them home, you now get paid
for that.
Balancing your grandmother's checkbook, driving her to a – to a medical visit.
So then you had this, you know, organized fraud where – and this is what
happened in Minnesota.
These organized crime companies would come in and say, you designate this
family – you designate all your children have autism now, even if they didn't.
And we're going to now pay providers for each of them, and we'll give you a few
thousand dollars to do it.
But then they would collect all the money, and that's what was happening.
It's happening all over the country because there was no – it's very, very
difficult.
The guardrails on that system were very pervious, and anybody can defraud it.
If you are inclined to do fraud, this was – you know, this was an irresistible
opportunity.
How long was this going on for?
Like, when did this fraud begin, do you believe?
It really accelerated during the Biden administration.
We expected to pay for the – the Minnesota program just for autism care for
kids who have autism.
The kids need the care because, you know, they go to maybe a special school,
but then they come home from school, and the parents aren't there because they're
working.
So who's going to take care of them?
So in legitimate circumstances, you wouldn't want to pay for that.
But what happened is they just started this wholesale fraud.
We expected the cost of that program to be about $3 million a year in Minnesota,
in Minneapolis.
It got up in – over a three-year period, it got up to $400 million a year.
So they – you know, it was all fraudulent, almost.
I just don't understand.
So this accelerated during the Biden administration, but when did it begin?
Like, how long has it been going on?
Because they stopped doing program integrity.
They told – specifically, they told people in my agency, and I've talked to
them,
we don't want to do program integrity anymore.
We now just want to focus everything on enrollments.
In other words, enrolling more people in Obligare and the programs.
And, you know, you could say there was bad motives there because, one, the
states don't pay – the states pay a tiny fraction of it,
but it all goes to the federal government.
So the states don't really want to do fraud detection because all that money is
coming into their state.
And then every time you enroll somebody, you're registering them to vote.
And so, you know, they may have had ulterior motives, let me put it that way.
But, you know, right now what we're doing is we're saying to the states, we
have audited you.
We expect that – we believe that 50 percent of the program dollars you're
spending were fraudulent or possibly fraudulent.
You show us a corrective action that you're going to take or we're going to
withdraw that money the next time.
The money is not being withdrawn from individuals.
We're not reimbursing the state for it until like they told us.
Now, the red states have all said, yeah, we'll do it.
But Maine, Minnesota, California, and New York have said, no, we're not going
to – basically, they sent us corrective action that was just – you know, it
was ridiculous.
So is there a financial incentive?
Are these people that are making all this money from fraud, are they donating
to any specific groups?
Like, is there a direct turnaround?
Well, I like, you know, the Cubans in Florida and Florida, you know, they get
mad at Trump because they say, oh, all the states you're designating are blue
states.
That's just because the blue states refuse to cooperate.
But Florida is a red state and we're really going after them.
We're shutting down all durable medical equipment, reimbursements for the whole
state because it was all being run.
And it was probably being run by the Cuban government because this is –
But I don't understand how no one saw it.
No one from the government saw it.
And would there be a reason why they weren't looking for it other than they
just wanted – they were only thinking about recruitments.
But were they all – was anybody making money outside of these crime
organizations?
I would say no.
The money was not – the states were making money.
Right.
But there was a lot of talk online about donations to parties and donations to
NGOs.
Well, that is probably true, too, although I don't have any evidence of that.
No evidence.
Okay.
So it really just ramped –
And you wouldn't have – you know, even if you get those kind of donations, it's
not the kind of proof that I would talk about because you cannot prove that –
Right.
– that that donation, you know, motivated the bad behavior.
But it just – it really highlights how ideologically captured some people are,
that because it's the right wing going after this Medicaid fraud, that somehow
or another that fraud is okay.
And that fraud is not that big a deal that there's – I mean, like, what's the
all-told number that's been stolen from this stuff over the – if you had to
take a wild guess?
It's at least $100 billion a year.
A hundred billion a year.
Just from Medicaid and Medicare.
That anybody would not want to stop that kind of crime because it's attached to
the wrong party is – it just shows you how weird this country is right now.
Yeah.
I mean, I – listen, I was a Democrat my whole life.
And, you know, one of the things – and then I –
What are you now?
Now I'm kind of – first of all, I – it's illegal for me now to vote in any
state.
So, I don't really have a party affiliation because, you know, they – I was a
New York State resident when I was running.
They sued me and they said, oh, you don't really live in New York.
You live in California.
I said, yeah, but my driver's license is from New York.
My law license is from New York.
I have an address in New York.
My car is registered in New York.
My falconry license is in New York.
My hunting license is in New York.
My fishing license is in New York.
And I intend to return to New York.
And there were hundreds of cases, just black letter laws saying the only
measure is if you intend to return there at some point.
We got crooked judges and they said, no, you're not a New York resident.
I'd already said I'm not a California resident.
I don't intend to stay there.
So, now I'm not – you know, I'm not legally allowed to vote in any state.
But, you know, I saw this with a party.
My father hated partisanship because he thought it was dishonest.
And he said – he always said, told us, you should vote for the man, not the
party.
Or, you know, he said the man because at that time it was predominantly man.
But I saw this when Trump – you know, I grew up in a Democratic Party that
was very anti-NAFTA.
So, it was against working people and labor unions.
Then Trump said that he was anti-NAFTA.
All of a sudden, the Democratic Party was for NAFTA.
And that's what turned my head the first time.
And then, you know, when I was – then I saw how they – and Trump questioned
vaccines during the 2016 election.
The Democratic Party was – it was kind of that skepticism and the concerns
were spread evenly across the party.
My uncle, Ted Kennedy, was very much on the side of medical freedom.
And it was evenly spread.
But as soon as Trump said that, it became part of the dogma of that party.
And then, you know, whe