Kennedy Got a Shot from Trump and Everyone Missed It
Trump outlined a path for America to get vaccines back ... even if it means sacrificing another Kennedy
It may not seem like it, but Thursday’s disastrous testimony by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., might not mean his position as Health and Human Services secretary is on life support. Or even that it should be. Bear1 with me.
The Beltway media are full of Democrats (rightly) smacking down Kennedy’s lies and fictions and insanity. And we heard about growing Republican skepticism toward Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism.
But the nuances of Pres. Donald Trump’s praise for Kennedy seem to have been missed. So was the subtext (hey, it’s possible!) of Trump’s weird but telling post about Kennedy last weekend.
The leading GOP Kennedy skeptic, actual doctor Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), started his session with Kennedy Thursday in a very telling way. Cassidy leveraged Trump’s leadership of Operation Warp Speed to box Kennedy into praising it.
That’s the same model of Kennedy-management I saw Trump deploying in his epic post on Sept. 1. In its full glory:
It is very important that the Drug Companies justify the success of their various Covid Drugs. Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree! With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW. I have been shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary, but they never seem to show those results to the public. Why not??? They go off to the next “hunt” and let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC, trying to figure out the success or failure of the Drug Companies Covid work. They show me GREAT numbers and results, but they don’t seem to be showing them to many others. I want them to show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS, one way or the other!!! I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as “BRILLIANT” as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why??? Thank you for your attention to this very important matter! President DJT
Trump’s flat-out rejecting vaccine skepticism. He’s saying he’s seen proof that Covid vaccines saved millions of lives and he wants everyone to see it.
To get himself off the hot seat of having to do something about Kennedy, and risking losing anti-vaxx Kennedy supporters, Trump’s pretending that an absence of data is ripping CDC apart, leaving Kennedy “trying to figure out” vaccines.
Trump’s explicitly laying out the steps he wants taken to resolve the fake problem he’s invented (to sidestep the real one of science rejection):
Drug companies release … something. The secret information. The Pfizer Pfiles!
The mess gets cleared up “one way or the other!!!” But which way might Trump want that to be…?
“I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as “BRILLIANT” as many say it was.” And if it’s not…?
“If not, we all want to know about it, and why???” In which case…
Someone has to dare explain to Trump in terms Trump can understand how his proudest achievement actually killed millions of people.
Now, why would Trump single out drug companies, the most conflicted entities possible, to provide this exculpatory data? Why not ask health-industry trade news outlets what we know? Or non-governmental and academic health associations and other institutions to clear up this MESS?
It’s a mistake to read this as a warning shot to Big Pharma. It’s actually a warning shot to the Big Phreak misrunning HHS. Trump can’t blast Kennedy. So he’s calling on Big Pharma to assist Kennedy with a fix that only Kennedy can provide.
At best, Trump is asking Big Pharma to provide a Big Phig leaf of “new” public data. That will give Kennedy an out, to say, “Oh, that data,” and reverse course on vaccines like Trump keeps doing on Big Tarriphs.
Trump’s telling Pfizer to supply Kennedy with enough wood (“GREAT numbers”), cardboard or even pfucking pfacking pfeanuts, for Kennedy to construct a Potemkin village in which everyone’s vaccinated and no one has goddam measles.
Trump’s telling Kennedy to play-act reading whatever bullshit props the pfrops department supplies him with and then risk sacrificing that Kennedy anti-vaxx cred to proclaim Operation Warp Speed a Nobel Prize-worthy achievement. (Which Kennedy literally did at Thursday’s hearing.)
How can we know this is all theater? Because obviously the drug companies have released massive troves of data already. Which didn’t stop them from reading their lines from Trump’s script.
Moderna played along. And, in the starring role, Pfizer:
“In response to President Trump’s request, here is a link to Pfizer’s website containing numerous published studies and updates on safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy data in an open and accessible manner. We will post additional information and studies by the end of the month.”
What a performance! So moving! Twenty-minute standing ovation at Cannes!
Gawrsh, Mr. President, your majestyness, you did it! We can be sure about vaccines now!
As Pfizer pfoints out, they already released tons of data and have for years. In April 2022 they released “Data from a subanalysis of 30 sera from a Phase 2/3 clinical trial of children 5 through 11 years of age show a 36-fold increase in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron neutralizing titers following a booster (third) dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.”
Are we supposed to believe that data’s not good enough for Trump? I mean, a 36-fold increase in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron neutralizing titers? How many more-fold increase in SARS-CoV-2 Omicron neutralizing titers does Trump need?
Not only did the government already have rooms filled with reams of Big Pharma’s vaccine results and information, the government is actually sitting on some of it. The Food and Drug Administration is fighting to keep secret a million pages of documents about the Pfizer authorization. (And, hey, just because the Pfizer dose worked doesn’t mean its authorization was free of chicanery.)
The government had enough data to take sweeping action. Trump purchased 200 million doses of Covid vaccine. Does anyone think Trump today really wants someone to come forward and prove he fucked up? No one gets a Nobel Prize for upfucking since Henry Kissinger died.
We also know this is theater because Trump also already has the proof he’s requesting that the vaccines saved lives. Estimates vary, but the International Vaccine Institute puts it at 20 million people saved globally — and says more could have been saved … with more vaccines.
A Commonwealth Fund study concluded that the Covid vaccines saved three million lives in the U.S. Without vaccines, America would have lost an estimated four million lives instead of one million, potentially killing enough voters to have cost Trump the 2024 election.
So if Trump already has all the information his intellectually voracious mind needs — to make a detailed quantitative analysis as he so often does — if the real issue isn’t Big Pharma information, what is the issue?
Remember what Dr. Demetre Daskalakis told the Wall Street Journal after he quit as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. Dakalakis said that Kennedy was never briefed by his center’s subject-matter experts. Those are the people with the information Trump says he wants Kennedy to see!
“He is getting his data and information from somewhere,” Daskalakis said of Kennedy. “I have some great ideas. Quite certainly it’s not coming from CDC.”
Wittingly or half-wittingly, Trump is telling Kennedy to look at whatever data will justify a cease-fire on the vaccine front lines. Even if that data comes from the CDC and drug companies.
Basically, Trump is transitive propertying himself and vaccines. We know Trump loves his vaccines and yearns to take credit for them; he’s said so privately. Here’s the Wall Street Journal about a fundraiser last month, before his post seeking drug information:
“Trump told donors at a dinner—who were paying $1 million to be there—that he wished he could talk more about Operation Warp Speed, the government program he initiated that helped expedite the development of the vaccine, attendees said. The guests included Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla, whose company developed one of the first Covid-19 vaccines.”
This ain’t rocket science. Or vaccine science. It’s barely fingerpaints.
Trump wants the vaccine mess cleaned up so he can throw himself a vaccine parade.
Which doesn’t mean we can easily see the strategic implications. Going hard at Kennedy as Democrats have might be exactly the right way to go.
But it might also be that the best thing for the country is to placate Trump’s ego and give Trump enough praise for vaccines that he’ll risk Kennedy’s support and decide he’s backing vaccines, with or without Kennedy.
Ironically, if Kennedy figures out what Trump’s telling him to do, his new vaccine panels might be in the same position he is: Having to spend their anti-vaxx cred on legitimizing vaccines.
And Cassidy put Kennedy on notice that he views those proposed panel members as compromised by the payments they get for testifying in lawsuits against Big Pharma. Cassidy wasn’t the only Republican publicly pushing back on the guy they confirmed despite knowing what they were doing.
Four GOP senators, including party leadership, went public challenging Kennedy. They cited the overwhelming number of Americans furious about compromising the nation’s vaccine regimens.
Now, according to The Hill, Kennedy is on “thin ice” with the GOP. That alone might move Kennedy, although it’s not clear he accepts the science of freezing water. But those Senate Republicans are just one stick Kennedy faces.
Trump is, potentially, another. And Trump’s approval — if Kennedy gets on board with vaccines — is the carrot. Which is healthy!
Pointedly, Trump’s praise for Kennedy’s testimony did not include praise for opposing vaccines. Asked whether he still has full confidence in Kennedy, in light of Cassidy pointing out how Kennedy is making vaccines tougher to get, Trump didn’t say yes.
“I didn’t get to watch the hearings today, but he’s a very good person. And he means very well. And he’s got some little, different ideas. I guarantee a lot of the people at this table like RFK Jr. And I do.
“But he’s uh, he’s got a different take. And we wanna listen to all of those takes. … And that has to do with medical and vaccines. But if you look at what’s going on in the world with health and look at this country, also with regard to health, I like the fact that he’s different. Ok?”
“He’s got some little, different ideas” is a warning shot: It was cute for a while now cut the shit.
Trump says he will listen to Kennedy on vaccines. But that’s not where Trump values Kennedy’s diversions from past norms.
If Kennedy’s willing to shelve his anti-science anti-vaxxery along with leeches and witch burnings, with Cassidy and others guarding the rails, Trump might even let — or tell — Kennedy to focus his creepy energies on legitimately worthwhile targets where he is uniquely positioned to do actual good in areas like processed foods and the environment.
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
Little road-kill joke, there.
Ugh- the mango Mussolini is such an ass. Years of real, difficult SCIENCE made operation warp speed work. Not some failed casino owner. (Who stole all the $$$??) And by denigrating those rational people who wore masks, he helped many, many people off this mortal coil. And Kennedy is just ridiculous, wrong, stupid & even more stupid.
*Bear with me.*
Noice! Whale of a joke!