RFK, Jr. To Reduce Number of Vaccine Skeptics
Trump names new unqualified dude, but foreshadows fight with "industrial food complex and drug companies"
Nov. 15: RFK Jr. contains multitudes … Key GOPer (a doctor!) non-committal on Health nomination … MAGA lovefest with Biden appointee … Resistance resisting MSNBC …
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For years, America has been plagued (har har) by a number of people who reject the science of vaccines. But RePresident-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a plan to change that.
Increasing the portion of a populace who recognize the value of vaccines is an important public-health priority in any country, the way it used to be in ours. As the future HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has developed a strategy for steadily increasing the rate of trust in vaccines by using the government to facilitate reduced numbers of skeptics.
Kennedy’s plan would dramatically reduce the number of people who oppose the mandatory school vaccines that have saved the lives and health of generations of American school kids. It would, however, take years to show substantial results such as horrific, needless suffering and death.
Ironically, Vice President-elect JD Vance has suggested that America needs more children, a goal that would be complicated by Kennedy’s ambitions.
After Trump fucking won somehow last week, Kennedy was interviewed by NBC as if he were a credible cabinet candidate because holy Jesus squat thrusts he suddenly was. Kennedy told NBC that if he’s running HHS he’s “not going to take [vaccines] away” but said that “people ought to have a choice.”
Which is like saying you’re not going to take away counterterror measures, but states ought to have a choice whether they license pilots from al Qaeda.
Kennedy is not getting the post as a diversity hire, of course. As a rich, white, male heir of a beloved politician, Kennedy had to earn his prominence and following based on merit being a Kennedy.
Based on being a Kennedy, Kennedy is now poised to oversee many programs that touch the lives of hundreds of millions of people but not yet in a creepy way, the way Kennedy has touched the lives of so many women whose names he then entered in his fuck diary like a normal person ought.
Kennedy will be in charge of Medicare, Medicaid, the Obamacare insurance markets, the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which might be important if somehow some kind of pandemic were to rehappen.
Critics have suggested Kennedy has no relevant training in public health, let alone in managing a $1.7 trillion agency.
But in fact, he has a long impressive record as a doctor medical researcher pharmacist drug executive dealer.
Kennedy has made headlines over the years not just as a drug dealer, but also as a juvenile delinquent, drug addict, sex addict, federal prosecutor, environmental advocate, husband who drove his wife to kill herself, vaccine crank, home-wrecker, his-home-wrecker, roadkill chef, dead-bear-cub-accident-scene fraudster, presidential candidate, Trump lickspittle, an embarrassment to his future ex-wife, an embarrassment to the Kennedy family which is saying something, past owner of a brain worm, instigator of a sexting tabloid scandal, and unwilling presidential candidate in states where he was too disorganized to get his name off the ballot in time.
He is, of course, a product of the prestigious Harvard University educational system.
But he is also a product of the American left. Along the way, Kennedy has been friends with and in some ways enabled by any number of rich Democrats.
For instance, Kennedy’s vaccination skepticism, which has its roots in the left, got its first extensive public outing not on Fox, but in the pages of Rolling Stone in 2005. It was widely debunked, but Kennedy was still enabled by rich Democrats. In 2006, that meant claiming a stolen presidential election, without proof.
HMMMM!!!
From the New York Times in 2006, complete with a nauseating checklist of liberal cartoonery:
Mr. Kennedy spent Christmas skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho, at the home of Ms. [Laurie] David and her husband, Larry David, the "Seinfeld" creator and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" protagonist. Mr. David urged him to read a book on the 2004 election by the news media critic Mark Crispin Miller.
Mr. Kennedy did, and a few days later he was skiing with the Rolling Stone publisher, Jann S. Wenner, an old friend and Sun Valley homeowner. Mr. Kennedy suggested that Mr. Wenner commission a story on the "stolen election." Mr. Wenner said he would, provided Mr. Kennedy wrote it. He had written a much-discussed and much-challenged story for Rolling Stone last year linking childhood vaccines and a rise in autism.
It’s impossible to overstate just how many of today’s dangers on the right have their origins in fucking skiing1. I mean, the left.
Kennedy had already left his Hyannis Port stank all over the legendary magazine with his poorly written vaccine shit and then the fucking publisher insists that only he alone, the son of a Great Man, must enlighten the nation about what he learned from a book given to him by a standup comic who uses his massive platform to take on social ills awkwardness.
Remember, this is all flowering in an entirely, caricaturishly left-wing greenhouse.
But, ironically/maddeningly, Trump’s post announcing the Kennedy nomination said nothing about advancing the Kennedy vaccine bullshit — which, again, sprang from the left. Instead, Trump’s focus on issues that should be important to the left were largely overlooked (including by this article, which felt compelled to start with the obvious shit but honestly probably shouldn’t have).
In defense of Democrats, stymied for years decades by Republicans, they often just stop even bothering to talk about shit. Specifically, shit like Trump talked about yesterday, when he practically sounded — if he lost the improper capitalizations — like Dr. Bernie fucking Sanders:
For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health.
But then things got even weirder. Because Trump laid out a massively progressive, anti-corporate agenda of the like that might have helped Vice Pres. Kamala Harris win:
“HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.”
I mean…yes! And what’s worse is, Democrats all agree with this. They just don’t say it or run on it because, um … WHY?!?
Sure, Trump might change his tune the minute Monsanto squawks. But…maybe not?
The only problem here is that Trump seems to have gotten his agencies mixed up.
Harmful chemicals, pollutants, and pesticides are regulated primarily by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Food and Drug Administration, and even the Dept. of Transportation.
Given Kennedy’s actually pretty impressive record as an environmental attorney and activist, he might conceivably have played a non-laughable role at EPA or the Energy Department. But, no, Trump being Trump, he put Kennedy in charge of the one single thing he does most negative-goodly.
In fairness, I think we all know the feeling of accidentally nominating a cabinet member to the wrong agency.
But what if Kennedy…teaches Trump how this shit works. And Trump actually acts on it? Sure, it’d be yet another case of “Only Republican administrations are allowed to do good things for America because anything a Democratic administration does is by definition bad for America.” But that only works because Democrats drop the fights for these things.
And, on vaccines, who knows, maybe public outcry and/or Republican resistance (insert understandable mockery of TFN’s adorable optimism) will persuade Trump to ensure vaccine regimens remain largely unfucked-with. And, because Kennedy is definitely not known for loyalty, there’s even a bit of a chance that Kennedy will speak out on issues like oil and gas, where Trump just last month said, “ I think we’re gonna have to keep him away from the oil and gas.”
First, though, Republicans have to confirm a literal Kennedy who spent most of his professional life fighting Republican shit in court. Once officially nominated, Kennedy would go before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) is expected to chair the committee once the Republicans control the majority. Prior to Trump’s announcement, Cassidy was non-committal about confirming Kennedy, but honestly there’s no reason to expect Republicans to get a sudden injection of integrity now.
FLASHBACK Trump’s virulent take on lying drug companies is especially interesting in light of his first term. Who was Trump’s first HHS secretary? Former Eli Lilly President Alex Azar.
In fact, there was a telling incident at the end of Trump’s first term. Trump bounced Azar as chair of some Covid thing, reportedly for not keeping Trump in the loop enough. The implication: Trump intends to keep Kennedy on a short leash. Which may turn out to be something Kennedy’s only happy about when it’s held by someone he’s cheating with.
Trump Cabinet Photo Gallery
Unless I’ve missed someone, I’m pretty sure RePresident-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet picks so far are all white folks, mostly male. Depending on future nominees, maybe your keeping-track-of-things TFN will make this a running thing, but for now we wanted to shared just two photos, the aforementioned Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose personal physique is being cited seriously on the right as a reason to make him HHS secretary, and Fox co-shot Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon nominee whose personal tattoo of the antisemitic, anti-Islamic Crusades symbol the Jerusalem Cross, was cited seriously by the military as a reason to disqualify him from inauguration duty in 2021.
Trump Already Winning War Against Vaccines
Then-Pres. Donald Trump was bummed that his base hated vaccines, and even complained on the campaign trail that he can’t brag about the Covid vaccines developed on his watch.
Dropping his advocacy for vaccines in the 2020 election, however, has had a noticeable impact. For four years, American measles inoculations for kindergartners have failed to miss federal targets.
And now measles are roaring back. An estimated 107,000 people — the vast majority of them kids — were killed worldwide last year by measles, a totally preventable disease. The number of cases total rocketed up 20% to 10.3 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization, neither of which have been banned yet.
Will Trump Outflank Dems on Monopoly-Fighting?
There are growing signs of what TFN and others have been flagging for a while: The possibility of RePresident Donald Trump governing from a more populist place than Democrats envisioned, let alone campaigned on.
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan was the subject of a half-assed TFN Save Lina Khan campaign. But she also has her fans on the far right, who like her zealous combativeness against (some) Big Tech companies.
Before the election, she got praise from JD Vance. Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) — whose attorney-general nomination amazingly has not been withdrawn yet — would oversee antitrust prosecutions by the Justice Department and he, too, is a Khan fan.
“I hope her work continues in the Trump administration,” Gaetz reportedly said.
And yesterday, Khan said, “I’ve been so grateful and appreciative of the bipartisan support for [our] work, including from Vice President-elect Vance and former congressman Gaetz.”
As TFN and others noted during the campaign, Vice Pres. Kamala Harris was alarmingly silent on whether she’d keep Khan, who’s hated by corporate Republicans and corporate corporations alike for fighting the kind of mergers that are killing us.
Yesterday, Khan seemed pretty happy about the possible scenario in which she of all people, after being abandoned by Harris, is the only Democratic appointee to make it past Jan. 20, 2025: “It’ll be really terrific for the bipartisanship around this work to continue.”
Nevertheless, The Resistance Not Persisting
Your Friday TFN is already late, so I’m just going to touch on this briefly right now, but hopefully will have more to fuck about this news in the near future…
Politico looks at the media/social-media space and sees The Resistance fading. “The Resistance Is Not Coming to Save You. It’s Tuning Out,” the headline reads.
It’s mostly a look at the post-election numbers for MSNBC and other outlets where the vibe was happening and progressives dutifully shut up or were shut up to avoid harshing the Kamala Harris house party.
There’s a picture, for instance, of people watching Steve Kornacki discussing polling numbers on Election Night, when MSNBC for the first time beat CNN. After Trump won, though, “MSNBC saw its audience plummet.”
It’s…not supposed to work this way!
I was working at MSNBC in 2012, when the fear was that ratings would fall after then-Pres. Barack Obama won. The thinking being, progressives will tune in more to hate-watch victorious Republicans, and cheer on their fan-favorite hosts beating up on the GOP.
So what’s going on? There are two possibilities here. Politico notes, fairly astutely, I think, the differences between now and 2016, when the left roared to life against Trump, sweeping MSNBC’s ratings along with them:
“This time, there’s no menacing foreign power to expose, archaic Constitutional provision to bemoan or bumbling FBI director to blame. And there’s no sense of anomaly, either. The people, in their wisdom, made Trump the legitimate president.”
Resistance viewers, in other words, are demoralized and have nothing to rail against. Your pollyannaish TFN would like to believe the other possibility: That viewers have seen the futility of TV-watching-as-revolution and instead are channeling (har har) their energies into actually doing something.
But TFN is probably wrong about that.
It’s also bullshit, though, simply to accept that losing, being in a minority, automatically means you lose viewers.
Look at Fox (don’t literally look, it’ll melt your brain). When they started off, they were wildly fringe. They didn’t give a shit. They believed in something and fought for it, cheerfully, while the networks first laughed at them and then marched to their tune.
I’ll have more thoughts in the future on what TV can and should do now. So stick around and FFS regardless of whether you check out of TV, don’t check out on the fight. We need you!
TCB
TFN is in this for the long haul. To help shape the future of journalism, provide the disheartened with community and emotional sanity checks, and try to focus on issues that actually matter where we can actually have an impact (see Khan, Lina).
It’s wild and so damn moving to see TFN growing so robustly in an environment that other media keep describing as challenging. Thank you, glorious Newsfuckers!
TFN has a ton of news and analysis on its to-fuck list, which hopefully TFN can focus on as the flood of Trump nominees fades to a trickle akin to the leaking oil pipelines Trump states are about to get.
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TAPPING THE SIGN It is TFN’s editorial policy that the vast majority of Americans are not evil and didn’t suddenly decide to vote for evil. We just need to figure out how to awaken enough good to sideline the fuckheads. Despair is not an option.
Go get ‘em, kids. And have a great weekend.
People still watch TV? That’s so adorable. Seriously. Who gives a rats ass about tv ratings these days when the only people who watch TV are going to be dead soon (based solely on demographics, not anything more nefarious, of course). There is plenty of resistance and there are resistance-minded people, if one chose to look for them. But, apparently the corporate media has lost the ability to find us since turning on the tv or checking tv ratings is so much easier than, say, having to learn how to navigate a whole new social media platform because the one we all used to hang out on is run by a literal fucking space Nazi. And anyone looking to the corporate scribblers and talking heads to “save us” from ourselves is living in an era we have officially left behind.
As someone who never stopped resisting after 2016, the idea of equating effective resistance to following mainstream media, even MSNBC, seems ludicrous. After eight years of the media sanewashing Trump, minimizing coverage of actual progressives and signally failing to carry out the responsibilities of a robust free press, they have successfully rendered themselves irrelevant. I look to a wide variety of independent sources for news, and the Times, WAPO and the TV news are peripheral at best.