Episode #57 Deep Dive – Trump's Health Problems Won't Stop the Grift
A deep dive into this week's episode of Paging America
Be sure to watch Dr. Rob Davidson administer a cognitive test to journalist Jim Acosta HERE!
››› Michigan ballot proposal to get corporate money out of politics submits signatures
Yesterday, the group “Michiganders for Money Out of Politics” or MMOP turned in over 562,000 signatures. They will need 356,958 valid signatures in order to put the measure on the November ballot. If voters approve it, it will prohibit public utilities and large state government contractors from donating to political causes. The Committee to Protect Health Care has been working to help secure enough valid signatures and was on hand for their delivery in Lansing. Committee Member Dr. Aisha Harris spoke at the event. From reporting by Michigan Public:
Dr. Aisha Harris is with one of the coalition groups behind the measure. She said she has seen the influence-peddling system take a real-life toll.
“When insurance companies and corporate interests can spend enormous amounts of money influencing the political system, what is best for the patients is too often pushed to the sidelines. That creates a system where lawmakers hear more from lobbyists and donors than from physicians, nurses, and people struggling to afford care,” Harris said during a press conference Wednesday.
Aside from limiting political giving, the ballot initiative would also expand policies that require outside groups spending money on Michigan campaigns to reveal their donors.
››› Trump’s multilevel grift is bigger than we realized
Last week, we talked about how Trump appears to have engaged in a bit of insider trading when he traded stocks on the blockbuster weight loss drugs that his administration has been promoting through favorable policies and on his discount prescription drug site TrumpRx.
This week, we’re learning there was more. This from reporting by Becker’s Payer Issues:
President Donald Trump’s portfolio managers traded seven health insurers’ stocks as 2027 Medicare Advantage payment policies were being ironed out.
The U.S. Office of Government Ethics released disclosures in May laying out thousands of trades in the first three months of 2026. President Trump’s portfolio traded UnitedHealth Group, Humana, Molina Healthcare, Centene, The Cigna Group, CVS Health and Elevance Health. Other than Cigna, all of these payers offer MA plans.
In late January, CMS proposed almost flat MA payments for 2027. Just weeks later, President Trump’s portfolio sold between $1 million and $5 million in UnitedHealth shares Feb. 10. The president’s portfolio also sold between $100,001 and $250,000 in Humana shares that same day, ahead of some smaller sales throughout the rest of the month.
Trump’s self-dealing is multilevel, however. In addition to insider trading, he is simply collecting checks from others who do business with the federal government – what most of us call a bribe. For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been discussing the FDA’s decision to approve fruit-flavored vapes under the Orwellian excuse that it would tamp down on underage use of e-cigarettes.
We speculated then that there was some sort of quid pro quo involved and, sure enough, The New York Times is reporting that a Big Tobacco company made a $5 million donation to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC just before the FDA announced its decision:
The tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5 million to a super PAC backed by President Trump last month, about one week before his administration rolled out a new policy that could prove lucrative to the tobacco industry.
The donation, which came through a Reynolds subsidiary and brings to $8 million the total donated by the subsidiary to MAGA Inc., the Trump-backed super PAC, was revealed in a campaign finance report filed Wednesday night.
The Times says two days after the donation, Trump had lunch with several tobacco company executives where they complained about how the FDA was regulating them. “Mr. Trump interrupted the conversation to call Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner,” the Times reports. When Makary didn’t pick up, he called RFK Jr. and Dr. Oz to share the Big Tobacco exec’s complaints with them. The decision on the fruit-flavored vapes came days later.
The Brennan Center for Justice reported on similar self-interested corporate donations to Trump’s super PAC last August with United Healthcare contributing $5M. Their previous largest political contribution was just $200k in 2022.
››› Hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks continue to reveal cracks in the US response
As we have discussed previously on this podcast, the recent hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship has shown failure of the US public health system to respond quickly and effectively. As the Ebola outbreak in Africa has grown to be the third largest in history, more evidence of this is becoming apparent.
In the middle of it all, the acting director of the U.S. NIH’s infectious disease institute has quit.
Rather than dealing with Americans infected with Ebola in our own country, the Trump administration is preventing them from coming here. The New York Times reports that, unlike in previous outbreaks where patients were repatriated to be treated, this time around they’re being sent to Kenya. At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “The number one priority of our foreign policy is to protect the American people. We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola into the United States.”
The situation has shown the hypocrisy of members of the Trump administration when it comes to dealing with a global health crisis.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, CDC acting director and NIH director Jay Bhattacharya was highly critical of lockdowns and quarantines. He was a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, along with Bond villain Martin Kulldorff and Sunetra Gupta. The Great Barrington Declaration advocated lifting COVID-19 restrictions and letting the disease spread wildly to create herd immunity through widespread infection (with apparent magic thinking that they could keep vulnerable people safe from the lethal virus.)
Now Dr. Bhattacharya has significantly changed his tune. Last week, citing public health laws, he issued quarantine orders for two passengers from the stricken cruise ship who wanted to leave a Nebraska quarantine facility and isolate themselves in their home states. “I think it’s incredibly ironic that Jay Bhattacharya signed the quarantine orders himself, given how much of a devotee he has been to the notion that people should feel free to do what they want if they are sick, regardless of who may be harmed,” one biosecurity expert said.
››› Understaffing at NIH is prevalent from top to bottom
STAT is reporting that 15 of 27 NIH institutes are being led by acting directors:
Across the Department of Health and Human Services, top leadership positions are being filled with acting directors. There is no permanent director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or at the Food and Drug Administration. President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general is yet to be confirmed, and HHS’ top spokesperson resigned last week.
The National Institutes of Health may appear to have more stable leadership, with Director Jay Bhattacharya and his deputies holding their positions. But just below the surface, a leadership vacuum has persisted for months, with 15 of the 27 institutes being led by acting directors. The dearth of permanent leadership at the institutes, which oversee research in a specific topic area, means that the institutes are unable to plan long-term projects, or offer reassurances to a research community that is seeing unprecedented changes in federal funding priorities.
Here’s more from reporting by NATURE:
A staffing shortage is making it difficult for the NIH to spend its $47-billion budget by awarding research grants.
It is missing dozens of staff members, called grants management specialists (GMSs), who are crucial to handling the business and administrative aspects of issuing grants. Many GMSs either resigned or were laid off in 2025 by the administration of US President Donald Trump as it sought to downsize the federal workforce. Nearly 20% of the NIH’s employees left last year.
At least one of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centres has lost so many GMSs that it has asked early-career researchers, including postdocs and graduate students, who work in the NIH’s own labs to consider working temporarily as a GMS on a volunteer basis, according to internal documents, meeting notes and e-mails that Nature has obtained. The institute, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), projected in March that it would be able to issue only about 5% of the new awards it gives out in a typical year because of the personnel shortage, the documents reveal.
››› Turns out Trump’s pick for Surgeon General is a grifter, too…
Dr. Nicole Saphier, Trump’s latest pick for Surgeon General – not to be confused with his new acting Surgeon General, that’s Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos (wife of Congressman Mike Haridopolos) – should fit in just fine with all the other grifters in the administration. Saphier exploits a tax loophole intended for New Jersey farmers to lower her property taxes despite publicly saying, “The reality is, I’m not a real farmer. I just kind of pretend like I am.”
From reporting by POLITICO:
Saphier’s farmland designation is being met with skepticism. Jack Curtis is a member of the State Farmland Evaluation Committee, which oversees part of the farmland program. Upon seeing photos of Saphier’s 16,000 square foot home — which was purchased for $5.8 million in 2023 — he said that her estate was the “poster child” for what he viewed as abuses of the law.
“If you want privacy and you want 10 acres of land surrounding [your] estate, great — good for you,” he told POLITICO. “But pay your taxes. That’s all.”
In her application for the tax break, Saphier reported “$1,000+” in “anticipated” farm income on just 0.15 acres. That’s a “farm” that measures about 80 feet by 80 feet..
››› “Chickenpox parties” are back.
Those of us of a certain age may remember the “chickenpox parties” held by our parents, usually our moms, where neighborhood kids would gather for a play date to be exposed to the virulent virus by one or more of their friends. The idea was that, in a time before a chickenpox vaccine, it was almost a certainty that their children would get it so they wanted to do it in a controlled environment at a prescribed time.
WIRED reports that, despite the availability of a highly effective vaccine, chickenpox parties are back:
“Hey mamas,” TikTok creator Hannah Grabau Kugel joked about a post she’d seen on social media. “Any other grass-fed, free-range mamas interested in hosting a chickenpox party with me?”
Her tone was ironic, but the subtext is not—it’s reflective of something real that people are noticing pop up in some parenting groups on Facebook. Last year, the owner of a children’s indoor activity center in the UK was tipped off about one of these parties happening at her venue, the BBC reported. She put a stop to it, and labeled the idea “shocking and selfish.”
The anti-vax movement, and the idea that “naturally” acquired immunity is preferable, persists.
The problem with all of this, of course, is that it can be deadly. More from WIRED:
While varicella-zoster is usually a mild, self-limiting disease in children, it can be much more severe—and sometimes life-threatening—in adults.
“I had an otherwise healthy adult patient who died of chickenpox pneumonia when I was first practicing,” [associate dean of clinical research and public health at Creighton University in Omaha Maureen Tierney says]. “You never forget those scenarios.” [...]
While the majority of children who develop chickenpox feel well again within a week or two, around three in every 1,000 infected experience a severe complication such as pneumonia, serious bacterial skin infections, encephalitis, or meningitis.
“Some kids get really, really sick,” says Jill Morgan, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and an expert in pediatric health. “The problem is, if you had these parties, you didn’t know which kids would get over it and be OK, and which kids would end up in the hospital.”
››› The weekly “RFK Jr. does weird things” segment
RFK Jr. the head of the world’s largest health agency, is in the news for doing weird stuff again this week. This time, he captured a pair of non-venomous southern black racer snakes on the patio of Dr. Oz’s home. He was bitten during the encounter, prior to knowing what kind of snakes they were. You can watch the video HERE.
He was also back on the “circumcision causes autism” beat again this week, telling the attendees at a Trump cabinet meeting that there are “many, many…confirmation studies” proving the link, saying it’s “highly likely” it’s because they were given Tylenol. Trump backed him up saying he’s studied circumcisions for a long time. You can watch that exchange HERE.
››› This week Trump had his second annual physical in less than a year
This week, Trump had what the White House called an “annual preventive checkup”, his second one in just 7 months and his third doctor’s visit in the past 13 months. The three-hour visit went entirely unexplained other than Trump himself declaring that, “Everything checked out PERFECTLY” on Truth Social.
Trump, who turns 80 years old in June, is the oldest person to take the oath of office and he is the second oldest president in U.S. history after President Joe Biden. His age, swollen ankles and bruised hands have sparked repeated questions about the president’s health and fitness.
Trump’s last annual physical examination was in April of last year. Shortly after, the President told reporters he “aced” the cognitive test and the White House released a memo reporting that Trump was in “excellent health.”
A few months later, he went back to Walter Reed for a “scheduled follow-up” in October — which sparked renewed concerns about his health.
By December, the White House revealed that Trump received a CT scan to further assess his “cardiovascular and abdominal health.” White House physician Capt. Sean Barbabella said the president “remains in excellent overall health.”
Links for a deeper dive on Episode #55
Michigan Public: Petition drive to get “money out of politics” submits signatures for ballot campaign
Becker’s Payer Issues: Trump’s portfolio traded 7 health insurer stocks amid MA rate discourse
The Hill: FDA approves some flavored vapes after reports of Trump pressure
The New York Times: A $5 Million Donation From Big Tobacco Preceded F.D.A. Vape Decision
Brennan Center for Justice: Unprecedented Big Money Surge for Super PAC Tied to Trump
Reuters: Acting head of US NIH infectious disease institute has left, senators say
The New York Times: Trump Administration to Send Americans Exposed to Ebola to Kenya
The Hill: Key takeaways from Trump’s Cabinet meeting: Iran, Ebola, midterms
Wikipedia: Great Barrington Declaration
MedPage Today: CDC Chief Orders 2 Americans to Quarantine Over Hantavirus Concern
The New York Times: Health Experts ‘Stunned’ by Trump Officials’ Strict Quarantine Measures
STAT: NIH behind in filling top roles, with 15 of 27 institutes led by acting directors
NATURE: NIH staffing shortage could slash number of new grants issued this year
The Hill: GOP House rep’s wife to perform duties of U.S. surgeon general
Nicole Saphier’s Instagram post saying she’s only pretending to be a doctor is HERE
RFK Jr.’s post showing him catching snakes is HERE
Video of RFK Jr. at Trump cabinet meeting talking about circumcision again is HERE
MedPage Today: After 3-Hour Medical Visit, Trump Says ‘Everything Checked Out PERFECTLY’
Trump on Truth Social referencing his medical visit is HERE
NPR: Trump to get ‘routine annual’ medical exam 7 months after last visit to Walter Reed
Dr. Rob Davidson administers a cognitive exam to Jim Acosta HERE
The Jim Acosta Show on Substack is HERE