Can a Man Who Is Like a Broken Clock Make America Healthy Again?
Regardless of what RFKjr claims, his agenda is set by Project 2025.
Robert F Kennedy, Jr has been named as Donald J Trump’s choice to lead Health and Human Services. He’s the nephew of a revered American president, and son of a liberal icon, and, most of all, a failed human being, who has used his ancestral legacy to mislead ordinary citizens who believe the system is broken. He presents himself as an agent of change, and, while not particularly popular, hawks the notion that he can fix things.
His ally in this, Donald J Trump, is also a failed human being, whose record reeks of privilege, corruption, and a complete lack of moral center. Experts of many political persuasions have decried the actions and intentions of both men, yet this does not disqualify them with a significant portion of the population.
The New York Times interviewed two dozen of the President-elect's supporters who described the cabinet nominees as “reformers” and “mavericks.”
“It’s pretty much a star cast,’’ said Judy Kanoui of Flat Rock, N.C., a retiree and lifelong Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump for the first time this month.
Democrats, and even some Republicans, worry that these nominees for top positions in government are inexperienced, conflicted and potentially reckless. But in interviews with almost two dozen Trump voters around the country, his supporters were more likely to describe them as mavericks and reformers recruited to deliver on Mr. Trump’s promise to shake up Washington.
In Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for health and human services secretary, Mr. Trump’s supporters see a crusader searching for new solutions to chronic illnesses, not a conspiracy theorist promoting questionable and debunked ideas about vaccines and fluoride.
Elsewhere in the Sunday edition, the paper normalizes Trump's picks as a generational stress test, proof that a man who has said “real power” is the ability to engender fear, means business.
“He has learned how to move the spectrum of outrage,” the article says.
What Trump’s nominees have in common is ambition and intentions packaged as a salve for the pain that many people feel, facts be damned. RFKjr may be a kook who dismisses science by seeming reasonable when he’s “asking questions,” but the fact that Big Pharma and a bunch of pompous senators oppose him gets him a pass.
He’s a “change agent” whose purported distrust of pharmaceutical companies, Big Ag, and other corporate interests parallels popular opinion.
To the nihilists of the right, his opinions don’t matter as much as his presence contributes to the notion of government being incompetent and, thus, an obstacle to freedom. (Defined as permission to exploit fears as a tool for personal enrichment.)
His inexperience in actually delivering on the promise of change won’t be as relevant to the Trump administration as the ability to put the needs of the ruling class over those of the American people.
Thus, focusing on what’s a foul excuse for a human being will not be sufficient to stop Kennedy and many of the incoming administration’s nominees. Bringing up what he’s being asked to do, as opposed to what people think he would do is a better path.
Democrats risk falling into the trap of being seen as defenders of the institutions the people believe need radical change. Trash RFKjr’s negativity on vaccines and risk being lumped as defenders of big pharma and a broken medical establishment, etc., etc.
The nominee for Secretary of the Health and Human Services department will have control of a $1.7 trillion budget, which funds programs affecting every citizen. That allotment represents the largest part of the non-defense budget and encompasses the vast majority of programs destined for the Project 2025 chopping block.
The American people are mostly wise to Project 2025’s injurious prescriptions, which are what RFKjr is being hired to implement.
Instead of the real consequences ahead we’re being infotained by the imagined battle between the Deep State and MAGA’s wannabe field commanders.
Politico reported on the conservative backers of Project 2025 “peeking back out of their metaphorical bunker” now that Trump won the election.
Two of Heritage’s visiting fellows — TOM HOMAN and JOHN RATCLIFFE, who were contributors to Project 2025 — have already been named to top Trump administration posts. That book from Roberts that was supposed to come out in September? It was released last week. The think tank even marked its reemergence with an event this past week welcoming back the Washington cocktail circuit to the group’s Massachusetts Avenue headquarters on Capitol Hill. It was a D.C. coming back out party, of sorts, for an organization that is easing its way back into influence in what’s soon to be Trump’s Washington once again.
I’ve read the game plan for running that department, written by people whose ultimate goals are the destruction of democracy as practiced in this country and the elevation of a wealthy elite who believe they have the right to rule over us peasants.
Here are just a few of the points made in the Project 2025 document:
Rename the Department of Health and Human Services as the Department of Life, underscoring a new Christian nationalist focus, with a “biblically based, social science-reinforced definition of marriage and family".
A primary task for the agency would be eliminating abortion as a means of women’s health care.
The Centers for Disease Control would research abortion risks and complications and publicize them.
Limiting or undoing vaccine mandates, which Project 2025 calls "irrational, destructive, un-American"
Gut the Affordable Care Act’s protections by expanding access to “junk” health plans, bringing back pre-existing conditions as a qualifier.
Medicare Advantage would become “the default enrollment option” for all beneficiaries, pushing the country toward a future of fully privatized Medicare.
Citing reported losses of $75 million, one health system in San Diego recently terminated the contracts of the Medicare Advantage (MA) plans of more than 30,000 beneficiaries.
From the Center for American Progress:
In 2023, “administration” (which includes exorbitant salaries and profit) made up an average of 13 percent of MA spending. Traditional Medicare, despite being labeled “the bureaucrat-driven fee-for-service system” by Project 2025, spends less than 2 percent on administration and doesn’t take any profit.
I’d think that an enterprising reporter or an inquisitive legislator could dig up some questions based on the Project 2025 agenda that should be answered during any confirmation hearings.
There are a litany of examples of RFKjr’s misdeeds and misstatements, ranging from his inability to keep his zipper zipped to his claims about 5G Wifi causing brain damage. His flaws as a human, once again, are considered assets in MAGA land.
As of late, Kennedy has been crusading on Fox News against prescription weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, despite clinical evidence showing their safety and effectiveness for weight loss with patients meeting certain criteria.
From CNN:
Those kind of confident but false or misleading assertions are Kennedy’s signatures, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. And they can be especially dangerous, he said, when applied to public health bedrocks like vaccines.
“He acts like he knows what he’s talking about when he doesn’t, and he says things with a definition that makes people convinced he has the data to support his statement,” Osterholm told CNN. “Trying to follow him and understand what he’s talking about is often like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”
The weak spot in this nomination is emphasizing what he’s expected to do. Say it: Kennedy = Project 2025.
Kennedy has invited the public to weigh in on people who could fill important roles within federal health agencies in the America’s Health” category of his “Nominees for the People” website. This was a terrible idea when it comes to public health because it invites bad choices. Thus with thousands of votes include Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, who claimed COVID-19 vaccines made people magnetic, and Dr. Simone Gold, the anti-vaccine Beverly Hills physician who plead guilty to unlawfully entering the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
Like so many other people advocating for magic solutions, the HHS nominee has an idea for gussied up concentration camps, something Mother Jones caught wind of last summer.
In a virtual event last week that was billed as a “Latino Town Hall,” presidential candidate and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled his plan to overhaul addiction treatment programs. Speaking during a live recording of the Latino Capitalist podcast, Kennedy described opioid, antidepressant, and ADHD “addicts” receiving treatment on tech-free “wellness farms,” where they would spend as much as three or four years growing organic produce.
The point in questioning RFKjr should be to show the public how his choices (or potential ones) will lead to worse outcomes for American families. His real purpose in that position will be to help Trump hang onto political power. Let’s see how long his egomania abides Trump’s demands.
RFKjr’s statements on issues of public health are sometimes worded in such a way as to confirm the bias of the people hearing them. Thus, he can go on network TV and claim that he’s not anti-vaccine and just wants more about vaccines to be made public. What anti-vaxxers hear is the distrust in the science surrounding the topic.
His claims about cleaning up the food we eat, telling the New York Times he never eats processed foods, and attacking chronic diseases sound credible until you see a picture of the man dining on McDonald’s fare with Trump & company.
What bothers me the most about his claims are the ones in line with his presumption that antidepressants are responsible for mass school shootings.
RFKjr’s taking a legitimate concern about the pharmaceutical industry’s profit driven programs and turning it into an excuse for Second Amendment fanatics to hide behind. He’s giving permission for others to ignore the fact the true cause of mass shootings is the limited degree of gun control in this country. IT”S THE GUNS, period.
Young people being treated for depression are being stigmatized. Mental illness is real and widespread these days, and the lack of hope existing in our culture is an underlying cause.
Are antidepressants helpful? The true answers are yes and no and we are still learning. But some medications do make the sadness and self-hate diminish to the point where patients can have fulfilling and productive lives.
I know. I’m one of those patients. I’ve been taking assorted pills for nearly three decades. I’ve had good and bad experiences. Depression enabled bad decisions in my life. Getting told I had a life ending disease three times could have gone a lot differently had I not been under the care of medical professionals. Living with a disability (I can’t speak) is an everyday challenge. But I’m in a much better place now than I have been for much of my life.
And Bobby Kennedy will have to pry my meds from my cold, dead fingers if he screws this up.