HHS is the Department of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of protecting the health of all Americans. Among other things, it includes the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid; oversees the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and works to prevent disease outbreaks and ensure food and drug safety. So the idea of letting Kennedy “control” such a department is actually insane, and if you’re wondering why, a quick reminder that Kennedy:
Is a huge anti-vaxxer
Penned an article titled “Deadly Immunity,” published in Rolling Stone and Salon in 2005, in which he alleged that the government had covered up a link between vaccines and autism. (Both outlets later retracted the piece, and the Salon editor who worked on it said that after it went up, “we were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data…. It was the worst mistake of my career. I probably should have been fired.”)
Wrote a foreword for a book that claimed COVID-19 vaccines caused sudden deaths among healthy young people; the book featured on its cover a 12-year-old who’d never received the COVID-19 vaccine and had died as a result of a malformed blood vessel in his brain
Has been accused of stoking fears about vaccines in the run-up to a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people
Once implied that Anne Frank, she of Holocaust fame, had it easy compared to what anti-vaxxers go through
Has more than once suggested that chemicals in the environment can make children gay and trans
Declared, “I am not a church boy,” following a sexual assault allegation
Admitted to staging an elaborate bear-murder scene in Central Park because he didn’t have time to eat said bear’s flesh
Sawed a dead whale’s head off, according to one of his daughters, and strapped it to the roof of the family’s car, causing his children to have to wear plastic bags on their heads to avoid the “whale juice” that was “pour[ing] into the windows”
Said in a 2012 divorce deposition that a worm “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”
This process started years ago with Rush Limbaugh. He provided alternative news and spent years disconnecting people from “mainstream media”. Now many only listen to right wing news that is disinformation. Not sure how we come back from a party that embraces the destruction of democracy and authoritarian leaders.
I think Trump has been such an emotional white knight in shining armor for them, that they don’t actually believe he could be a risk to democracy, national security, or the global world order that has American military power as the basis of its stability.
He gives his supporters, humor, a safe space, a big smile, and unflinchingly accepts their moral short comings… So they do the same for him in return.
Except he has more disdain for his supporters than anyone else, even the “radical left” that he puts on a show about disliking. But his cult are the ones he lies to, grifts away all their money on a deluge of just garbage with his “brand” on it, and just thinks they are the dumbest and most useless people. He has made comments about them not having lives and being unstable.
Source: Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary
That’s correct. It is irrational. But he did give them permission to be bigoted in public, and they really like that.
Except that regularly calls many of them garbage and they seem to like that kinda thing.
He’s got plenty of credit with them to burn, and if he burns it right, they like him more.
Like when people have plastered their vehicles with your name, and they follow you from place to place in convoys flying flags like something out of a mad max movie? You can call them whatever you want and get a way with it a bunch of times without any consequences what so ever.
It’s like burning plastic. It’s toxic garbage destroying their lungs but somehow addicting
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