Truth in the Barrel | Devil’s Cut | Mother’s Day Edition w Dr. Marianne McGrath On this very special episode of Truth In The Barrel, Amy and Denver are joined by Dr. Marianne McGrath to talk about unqualified our President, Donald J. Trump and anti-vax huckster, Robert Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. Dr. McGrath discusses cuts to the Health and Human Services Dept, and the current culture of fear masked as defiance. Dr. McGrath also talks about being Amy’s mom. *This episode was recorded on May 5th,2025, and aired on May 13th, 2025 About Truth in the Barrel: Amy and Denver are both military veterans, political junkies, and whiskey lovers who sit on opposite sides of the aisle but have one thing in common: they love the United States of America. Truth in the Barrel was born of Amy & Denver’s commitment to country, the Constitution, and a well-curated collection of the world’s finest bourbon. Join them weekly for deep dives into timely topics, interviews with recognizable guests, and a dose of call-in fun. Visit Our Website: www.TruthintheBarrel.com Subscribe to Truth in the Barrel: https://www.youtube.com/@TruthIntheBarrel Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0JQcSj5mwVyGDJ8DcXwlu9?si=5f2bd1d1b0c64e6f Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/truth-in-the-barrel/id1804092329 Instagram, BlueSky, Facebook, TikTok: @TruthintheBarrel Wild Turkey Whiskey: https://www.wildturkeybourbon.com/ Silverback Distillery VA: https://www.sbdistillery.com/
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of Truth in the Barrel and what is this episode about?
Are we in America intentionally breaking our public health institutions? We've confirmed an anti-vaxxer to head the Department of Health and Human Services. We're cutting funding for research and public health initiatives. I'm Amy McGrath. I'm here with my co-host and friend Denver Riggleman. And this is Truth in the Barrel, Devil's Cut Edition, where we do a deep dive into one important topic.
I am so excited about this topic today. I hope people understand how committed we are, Amy, because I'm doing this from Dubai, as you can see with the skyline behind me and my nice, brightly colored shirt. But with this incredible content like Devil's Cut and everything that we're doing, people have to sign up. So you have to get on our podcast.
You got to download it wherever your favorite podcast station is. You have to subscribe on YouTube, you know, be there, be square and make sure you follow us on all our socials. I mean, we're everywhere, aren't we, Amy? We're even on True Social. We're brave. We don't care. We're here to, you know, push facts and truth. The TIB, baby. That's where we're at.
And that's why I'm doing it from Dubai, because it's that important to talk about what we're going to talk about today.
Chapter 2: What whiskey does Amy recommend and why?
Well, thank you, Denver, for being in Dubai and being with us. Since you're there, I'm going to be the one to talk a little bit about whiskey today. And I'm bringing this one to everyone's attention. This is called American Honey. It's part of Wild Turkey Bourbon here in Kentucky.
And the reason I love it, and for those people who are sort of whiskey bourbon snobs, they may look at things like American Honey, which is basically... Ja, genau. Because it's one of these things where it's really sweet. They'll probably like it. They can sip on it and enjoy some whiskey with you. And so I loved it.
This was for me a way to kind of get back into sipping and drinking whiskey again. So American Honey, check it out.
Wir haben eine Geschichte mit dem amerikanischen Honey Whisky. Also hat meine Frau tatsächlich ein paar der Honey Whisky probiert. Und du weißt, sie ist ein Whisky Trinker, wie du weißt, Amy, sie mag das Schwierige. Aber ich habe sie gedauert, ein Honey zu machen, das tatsächlich mit realem Whisky war.
Und so hat sie Blackback Honey Rye gemacht, der beste Whisky gewonnen hat, best blended, oder ich denke, irgendeine Kategorie wie das, das New Orleans Bourbon Festival, hat das unglaubliche Whisky, das du hast, ziemlich schlecht gewonnen, wirklich schlecht gewonnen. But I will tell you, it was because of those whiskeys that gave us the inspiration to go with our Blackback Honey Rye.
And it really is a gateway whiskey. And what Amy's talking about, you know, if you're going to do the hard stuff, like if you're like a hard druggie, you want to start with marijuana first, right? So our Honey Rye Whiskey is sort of like a gateway whiskey too. But what Amy has is a gateway whiskey. So everybody should go out there.
If you want to go to the hard stuff, the good stuff, start with the honey stuff. And I promise you, you will graduate to better and better whiskeys.
It tastes really good. It tastes really good. For those people that don't love whiskey, just try it. Have your spouse try it. Trust me.
That's right.
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Chapter 3: What are the concerns about current public health leadership in America?
Der Abgeordnete des HHS, ein Typ namens Jim O'Neill, hat gesagt, dass er Healthcare als freier Markt runten will. Und mittlerweile hat die Trump-Administration die nationale Top-Vakzine-Regulierung ausgeschlossen. who was responsible for helping to develop the coronavirus vaccine very, very quickly, pushing out these people and putting in these really unqualified crazies, that's number one.
Well, it's, you know, we had this Make America Great Again. This is ma-ba-wa-la. This is a Make America Bleed with Leeches again.
Und wenn man sich all diese Überzeugungen anschaut und all die Leute, die verantwortlich sind und wer ausgelassen wurde, und man spricht von jemandem, der sechs Jahre gedauert hat, um einen Degree von der American University in den Karibik zu bekommen, und hatte zu machen, wo sie ihren medizinischen Degree bekommen hat. Du hast Dr. Oz.
Und übrigens, Amy, ich meine, wir müssen, ich denke, wir müssen wirklich etwas über Oprah Winfrey tun, und wen sie eigentlich dem Publikum vorgibt. Du weißt, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, wirklich erstaunlich. Und dann, wenn du hochgehst, ich habe diese Theorie, Amy, es sind die kleinen Stalins.
Diejenigen, die unter dem bestimmten Leiter sind, sind meistens schlimmer, weil sie versuchen, ihren Leiter zu lieben. Sie versuchen, diese Person für die Upward Mobility zu lieben, ihre eigene Cynicism, ihre eigene echte Glauben, ihre eigene Fantasie, ihre eigene Art der Leben.
Amy, was du gerade gesagt hast, es gibt eine gelegene Idiotik, die die Politik für Gesundheitsanlagen weltweit orientiert und koordiniert. And we are going to be worse than third world countries as far as healthcare. It is hard to believe that right now we don't even know what the reaction is to bird flu, which is starting to jump to human beings right now, or what we're supposed to do.
We don't even have a policy about how to really tackle measles based on the fact that people don't believe in inoculations or vaccinations anymore. Think about this. There was a family, Amy. who had five or six kids. People need to look this up. One of their children died from measles and they were still okay. They said that's just the way it is and it's because of their religious beliefs.
I'm gobsmacked. I don't know how to get in front of this superstition tidal wave that's hitting us, Amy. I just don't.
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Chapter 4: What impact does Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership have on public health policies?
Well, two things. One, I want to talk briefly about measles because you just brought that up and that's super important. But then I want to get to the cuts that are going on right now to public health services. So the measles outbreak, people should know, you probably read about it in the news. We had right now 935 cases in 2025. We've had two deaths from measles.
And to give you some context for this, last year we only had 280 cases total in the United States of America for all of 2024. And we already have a measles vaccine, by the way, Denver. We've had one since 1963. So you can be vaccinated against this disease. It was a very contagious disease and deadly before it killed thousands of children every year before 1963. And so what's happening?
We have RFK Jr. as the HHS secretary. He has delayed communicating to people in America about the vaccine. He hasn't said much about it. His messages have been mixed. You know, he said at one point that the vaccine is effective and then turns around and says, well, it's not really all that tested very well. And that has an impact. It has an impact on the American population, right?
When your HHS secretary isn't fully behind the vaccine, a lot of people don't want to get it. He hasn't enlisted the American Academy of Pediatrics in trying to fight this disease right now. Where is this disease breaking out? Guess what? In places that have the lowest vaccine rate. So that's what's going on with measles at the moment.
There's a scientific term that I like to use for people that can't seem to grasp science. They can't seem to grasp facts. They seem to cling to superstition. I think if you look in I think there's a psychology manual. What is it? The DSM 5 TR, I believe. I have no idea. Yeah, the DSM, it's called a f***ing idiot. And I think that's the issue that we have right now, is that
Mit der DSM, die diese Art von Individuen definiert, gehen wir in der Zeit zurück.
Die Menschen müssen wissen, dass es gerade massive Zähne zu unseren öffentlichen Gesundheitsinstitutionen gibt. Die Trump-Republikaner planen, die CDC zu zählen, das ist das Zentrum für Krankheitskontrolle, das Nationalen Institut für Gesundheit. Sie haben bereits Kanzlerwissenschaften aus Plätzen wie Johns Hopkins gezählt. 33 Billionen Dollar wird vom HHS-Budget gezahlt.
Und das wird große Bedeutungen haben. Und es ist nicht nur Geld, Leute. Sie schneiden Programme für junge Forscher, um zu arbeiten, um die PhDs zu werden, die wir für die Zukunft brauchen, um einige dieser Krankheiten zu behandeln. Trump hat einen Exekutivstermin ausgeschlossen, um von der World Health Organization auszuweichen.
which has been, you know, it's not perfect, but it has been super important in fighting diseases around the world. We've decimated the Center for Disease Control's Worker Safety Center, the National Institute for Occupational Safety. I mean, all of these things are happening right now, and it's going to have long-term implications.
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Chapter 5: How are budget cuts affecting the Health and Human Services Department?
But we lived in such a very different time when I was a kid and when I became a mother and had my my children. It was simply a different world. You can't imagine, nor can anybody, I think, who's been born in the last 50 years, imagine a United States of America without any healthcare note. You know, when I was a kid, growing up,
Das ganze Konzept von Krankheit, das noch immer mit der Idee kämpft, dass Krankheiten, und übrigens, an diesem Punkt, in der Runde des Jahrhunderts und so weiter, der größte Mörder von Menschen in diesem Land und weltweit, war Infektionskrankheit. And yet, at that time, we were still trying to understand what was infecting things. So evolved what was at that time called a germ theory.
But we really didn't understand anything about the germs. We didn't know that there were different kinds of germs, bacteria, viruses, and that they acted very differently. They were found in different places. They were of different virulencies. All those kinds of things were totally unknown. And at the time,
When plagues, for example, killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, we knew that something was afoot or going around, but we really didn't understand it. And if you don't understand its beginnings and its cause, you certainly don't have any leverage to stop it. or treat it really in anything but the most superficial ways.
So, you know, when we were... So I feel like we've gone backwards, though. Like, we're supposed to know more right now, right?
I think in many ways we have gone backwards. Think about when I got polio, for example. I was 10 years old. At that time, at the... 1950, okay. In those days, that was the dreaded disease of the time. Why? Because it struck people. Oh, dear God, it struck children, but it struck adults too. And when it did, you were, if you lived, you were still out of commission most of the time.
I mean, you really were. Männer, die Familien zu unterstützen hatten, Frauen, die Häuser zu kümmern hatten, konnten nicht zurückgehen. Sie mussten gekümmert werden. Und so, du weißt, es hat wirklich Schmerzen verursacht. Und We didn't know what caused it. And so people developed all kinds of phobias.
For example, that year, my brother and I, who used to walk to a pool, you know, public pool, swimming pool, that was about a mile and a half, two miles away. We were, they closed the swimming pool because they didn't know That might not be the place that the polio germ resided.
But in those days, you know, I mean, it was kind of like the closest thing we've had is the worst of cities during the coronavirus. Okay. And even at that, rural areas that didn't see as much
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Chapter 6: What is the current state of the measles outbreak and vaccination efforts?
Wenn du die riesigen Billionen von Dollar siehst, die von diesen Programmen entfernt werden, dann muss es dir einfach die Schmerzen in deinem Gehirn geben, um zu wissen, dass wir vielleicht zurückgehen können zu mehr einer Ereignis von Überstürzung, weil wir einen HHS-Sekretär haben, der glaubt, dass Zellsignale Eierverlust verursachen. Und ich denke, das ist nicht eine tolle Sache, richtig?
Es ist wie nicht in den Swimmingpool zu gehen. Wenn du Eierverlust hast, wirst du nicht versuchen, ein Telefon zu nutzen. Das ist wahrscheinlich nicht das, was es verursacht. Du hast wahrscheinlich eine echte medizinische Krankheit. So what is your thought really, Marianne, on the lack of funding that's happening with HHS and NIH and where we're going?
Because I think with your background, I think you can actually speak to this better than just about anyone.
Well, I have to say, Denver, that it makes me cry. Literally, it makes me cry. For two reasons. One is the practical side. dass nichts, was heute passiert, als Breakthrough, heute passiert. Es ist über die letzten x-Nummer von Jahren passiert. Und ein Punkt des wissenschaftlichen Breakthroughs in jedem Bereich hat immer eine grundsätzliche Wissenschaft hinter sich.
Und es hat viele Leute in vielen Orten Jahre gedauert, um zu diesem Punkt zu kommen. And that was also true of the polio vaccine, but we didn't hear as much about it because people were so focused on the relief that they experienced when it came available to them. But today, those same things are taking years.
We've stopped not just the today, but taking that money away from the primary source of funding of the research has stopped everything in the pipeline. So not only today's findings, which could be earthshaking, just as earthshaking as the polio vaccine, but in other areas, are not the only things that have been stopped. All of the research.
And to go back to it in the same way, even a year from now, if that funding is truly stopped, is going to be extremely difficult, because you have to make up the things that you've missed in this time, and you may not have the same people to do it. Which means a whole new group of people have to be available in order for us to get there. Where are they going where they're not going to stay here?
I mean, scientists are already being recruited, highly recruited by other countries. Because they've got the funding for the research. And make no mistake, they will have the today's findings. Nicht nur uns.
Aber ich muss sagen, dass die andere Sache, was mich an all dem schmerzt, ist, dass ich glaube, dass wir als ein Land, das in der Vergangenheit die Wichtigkeit der Wissenschaft und der Entwicklung der Dinge erkannt hat, die die Menschheit helfen können. Und wir wurden erkannt. Und wir haben diesen Platz, denke ich, in der Welt der Observation gehalten.
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Chapter 7: Who is Dr. Marianne McGrath and what is her connection to public health?
You know, those kinds of things don't come in one step. They come in many steps that consist of basic research. And no for-profit company is going to spend 60 Prozent ihres Forschungsfonds und Zeit und Talent in der Basis-Recherche auf diese eine Sache, denn viele Male in der Basis-Recherche weißt du nicht einmal, was die praktischen Anwendungen davon sein werden. Das ist einer der Gründe.
Der andere Grund ist ganz ehrlich, dass wir the scientific research that's done to such an extent that it would be really wasted time and energy for many things that otherwise would develop out of a scientific and I have to say educational pursuit. Over the past 25, 30 Jahre in particular.
Research has gravitated to this lovely marriage of funding source, the National Institutes of Health and universities. And it makes a lot of sense for it to be there, because the universities not only develop a lot of the basic research, but develop the talent that does the basic research and is a pipeline for us to provide people to do this in the future.
That piece of university base is going to be moving out of the United States faster than you can blink an eye if we don't do something about this. And I'm very concerned about that.
So I do think that it's at this point in time the scope of the research necessary to continue to keep the United States in a number one position scientifically is so great that it really could not be handled by even a small coalition of private companies, drug companies for example. Yeah, well
Marianne, I mean, I usually get to end with a question and I don't want to start with a really hard question like your daughter, you know, as she tried to come up so hard. I mean, it's just really, really concerned me. But I have this, Marianne, I have to say this. Listening to you, your background, your expertise, I always tell people that stupidity is terminal.
But what you're saying, too, is that stupidity, personal stupidity of people in charge is terminal for others now and long term. And you wonder about how many people are going to be affected long term. So I didn't want to end with an awful question, but with your knowledge and if you're like Denver, how dare you? And then, you know, Amy can, you know, fire me off the show.
But here's what I want to ask. Here's what I want to ask. Looking into the future and when you're seeing the stupidity of this administration, a fantasist and conspiracy theorist is the HHS secretary. You see the funding cuts to NIH and HHS. You see the fact that we're going down this road regardless, right? And we have superstition, like you said.
We probably shouldn't be ingesting or injecting bleach. Probably ivermectin wasn't the number one cure for COVID, right? Or hydroxychloroquine, right? So here it is. Are we ready, Amy? Please don't be mad at me. Here we go. Are we ready? What do you think, as an illness class, or something that you see with your vast knowledge of illnesses and what you went through,
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Chapter 8: Why is there increasing pushback against vaccines according to Dr. Marianne McGrath?
You shocked me with the answer. It's dead on. Thank you. See, I told you it was easy, Amy.
I told you your mom had it. Well, I want to end on a little bit of a lighter question. I'm ready. I mean, because we've talked a lot of heavy stuff. And there's a lot to worry about right now. And you just talked about some of that Denver, you know, this conspiracy theories of people not believing in government, not believing in public health anymore. Mom,
Of all of your many years, and I won't say how many, there's been many, many years. Of all of those, in your experience, what makes you hopeful right now?
You. That is so sweet.
My greatest gift in life has been my three children. I am incredibly blessed with three wonderful children. They make me hopeful.
My seven grandchildren. They make me hopeful. Because in the midst of all that's going on, they still rise to the occasion. They still question. They still believe in what's good and holy.
und sie schreiben und sie sind immer noch tolerant genug von anderen Leuten, um mit ihren Glauben zu bleiben und zu erkennen, dass die Vorwärtsbewegung möglich ist.
Das macht mich hoffnungsvoll.
Ich kann das nicht bewegen, Amy.
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