253) Day 21 -- Reason #21 to revolt against Predatory Capitalism: Political Corruption, Part 4 -- Trump's Even-Crazier Picks for his Administration
This is the final part of looking at Trump’s nominees (for now anyway; who knows what’s going to happen in the future of his chaotic tenure?). Today we look at two more, Trump’s #1 best people for running the United States. And again, we ask ourselves, what are his motivations? Competence? “Freedom”? Or…dictatorship?
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Secretary of Health and Human Services
There is no doubt that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is competent….at being an environmental lawyer. He has, for decades now, been incredibly successful at winning victories against the very biggest Earth-killing companies in the world, the likes of Monsanto, the Ford Motor Company, DuPont chemicals, ExxonMobil, and many others. He has worked with Native groups fighting to protect their lands, from Canada to Chile, Ecuador to Mexico. As a central figure in the Waterkeepers Alliance, he has successfully sued municipal governments and industries all over the place for their pollution of waterways, and has fought to stop mountaintop removal by the coal industry, the construction of massive dams, and a host of other environmental issues. Waterkeepers has expanded to operate in at least 44 different countries, fighting for the environment all over the world. He was even nominated by Public Justice, in 2007, as “trial lawyer of the year”.
His politics have also, for most of his life, been decidedly “left-wing”. He supported many Democratic presidential candidates, including Al Gore, John Kerry, and *gasp* even Hilary Clinton! He has publicly supported Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’ “Green New Deal”, has raised awareness against the Koch brothers’ network of Earth-killing enterprises, the Military-Industrial Complex, and has had scathing opinions of Donald Trump. Specifically, he has said that Trump’s environmental policies are “a cataclysm”, and in 2016 called Trump’s supporters “belligerent idiots” and some of them “outright Nazis”. He has said that Trump is a “bully”, and “a terrible human being”, a “discredit to democracy”, and “probably a sociopath”, literally comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler. He has publicly stated that his and Trump’s policies “could not be further apart”, as he has fought AGAINST economic inequality, AGAINST tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, AGAINST US interference in foreign countries’ democracies, and AGAINST the last several decades of Republican policies in general. Widely considered one of the most left-wing people in politics, Kennedy publicly stated his opposition to Trump many times, unequivocally.
You would think Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. would therefore be a staunch opponent of Trump’s 2025 Administration. And yet, he’s been nominated to one of its top positions, as Secretary of Health and Human Services. What happened? How did such a bizarre turnaround happen?
Well, COVID. As with so many people, the experience of COVID and the rampant conspiracy theories surrounding it seemed to hijack Kennedy’s agenda, taking his already-existing health-conspiracy-theories and ramping them up to Level 1000: Crazy-AF. Always a skeptic of “the powers-that-be”, Kennedy’s values twisted into something more resembling QAnon than, say, Al Gore. Long a critic of Big Pharma, Kennedy bought hook-line-and-sinker into the anti-vaxxer narrative, and became a champion of the anti-vaxxer movement and so-called “Freedom community”.
And thus, a man who spent decades fighting against the environmental harms of the billionaire-owned Military-Industrial Complex, went to work for them. After his own presidential ambitions failed in the most recent primaries for Presidency, Kennedy very suddenly flipped his own script, and started cheerleading for Trump, a man who, just before that, he thought was a sociopath, and “like Adolf Hitler”, for god’s sake.
The un-healthiest Health beliefs in the entire history of Secretaries of Health
Kennedy’s qualifications to lead the Department of Health and Human Services are precisely ZERO. In fact, the opposite. His conspiracy-fuelled beliefs are in direct contradiction to virtually every genuine medical expert out there, every health agency — in short, everyone who has actually been educated in medicine. So egregiously absurd are his beliefs that, following his nomination, in December 2024, more than 75 Nobel Laureates urged the U.S. Senate to oppose Kennedy’s nomination, saying he would “put the public’s health in jeopardy.” Over 17,000 doctors signed an open letter urging the U.S. Senate to oppose Kennedy’s nomination, writing, “RFK Jr. has spent decades undermining public confidence in vaccines, spreading false claims and conspiracy theories”. Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health, said putting Kennedy in charge of a health agencies would be like “putting a flat earther in charge of NASA.”
Even Kennedy’s prominent family has spoken out against him, saying that he spreads “dangerous misinformation” and that his work has “heartbreaking” consequences.
Indeed, Kennedy’s health-related opinions are numerous, and…frankly insane. For example, he believes that:
Fluoride is bad, mmm’kay? So Kennedy believes that fluoride should be removed from the public water supply, despite it being (in addition to vaccines, go figure) one of the biggest advances in human health in the past century.
AIDS is apparently not caused by HIV. Who knew? Only Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Gee, he should be Secretary of Heath or something! The public needs to know!
Kennedy campaigns with the “Children’s Health Defense” against lots of things that are ubiquitous in our world now, like acetominophen (i.e., Tylenol), and wireless communication, buying in wholesale to the paranoia around “5G” and the horrible things it will unleash on the world….
Kennedy is also very concerned (as late as 2024), about “chemtrails”, which are more accurately called “contrails”, the vapour trails left by jets flying at high speeds and high altitudes, leaving those white streaks across the sky. The conspiracy world, however, believes that these vapour trails are evidence that the government, or Deep State, or fuck I don’t know — Satan? — is wide-scale spraying the population for purposes of mind-control, or perhaps population control, or whatever-else Satan might be up to, who knows really?
In 2023, on a podcast with one of the right-wing’s favourite disseminators of bullshit, Jordan Peterson, Kennedy claimed that a host of “issues” with children, including gender dysphoria, may be due to atrazine in the water supply. The evidence? An oft-cited study from 2010 by Hayes, that claimed that acute atrazine exposure causes “chemical castration” and “feminization” in frogs, leading some to become hermaphrodites. (Seriously, what is it with the conspiracy world and frogs? Google Alex Jones whole deal on frogs turning gay, if you don’t know what I’m referring to.) And Kennedy suggested that there was research indicating similar effects on humans.
There was a huge outcry against this, such as Andrea Gore, a professor of neuroendocrinology, who said, “I don’t think people should be making statements about the relationship between environmental chemicals and changes in sexuality when there’s zero evidence.”
YouTube removed the video based on its misinformation policies. Kennedy and Jordan Peterson countered, of course, that they were being “censored”.
Anti-vaxxer Crusade
In addition to his grab-bag of health conspiracies, Kennedy is best known (as if the previous weren’t enough), for his anti-vaccine activism. The guy is a literal hero of the anti-vax movement. Because, science!
Kennedy seems to, as of recent years, believe that no vaccines, none, zero, are “safe and effective.” We’re not just talking the COVID vaccines here, which admittedly were rapidly tested due to the urgency of the pandemic, but no, we’re talking vaccines as tried, tested and true as the polio vaccine, which Kennedy believes should no longer be given to children. Yes. Polio. He has even linked (in his mind), the peanut allergies of his own child to…drum roll please — Vaccines!
He’s a big proponent of the repeatedly-debunked and disgraced theory that vaccines cause autism. In fact, Kennedy has appeared online with the universally-discredited former doctor, Andrew Wakefield, who published the initial, now-retracted, false studies that first linked vaccines to autism. But despite the mountain of research that now refutes the original fake research, Kennedy still believes that vaccines cause autism, and campaigns widely to spread this false belief. So strongly does he feel about this that he likens the autism rates in society to “a Holocaust”. In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified Kennedy as one of 12 people responsible for up to 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter.
Weirdly, back in 2015, Kennedy’s views were more moderate, arguing quite reasonably that “People who advocate for safer vaccines should not be marginalized or denounced as anti-vaccine. I am pro-vaccine. I had all six of my children vaccinated. I believe that vaccines have saved the lives of hundreds of millions of humans over the past century and that broad vaccine coverage is critical to public health. But I want our vaccines to be as safe as possible.” But by 2023, as with many of his opinions, he had become a hard-line conspiracy theorist, claiming “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective”, and as noted above, even speaking out against the polio vaccine. Clearly, something happened to the guy over that decade-or-so, to the point that he rails against COVID vaccines as some kind of conspiracy, a “medical experiment” being undertaken on “Black people” (for some reason), and in “documentary” videos, Kennedy directly tells the public to ignore information dispensed by health authorities and doctors. Cuz what do doctors know anyway?As with so many of Trump’s inner circle, not only is Kennedy anti-vaccine, but when it comes to COVID, he has amplified the ridiculous, science-disproven claims that Ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug, is an effective cure. It isn’t. There isn’t a single remotely credible (i.e., not industry-funded) medical agency in the world that supports the use of Ivermectin as a COVID treatment, and a mountain of evidence now debunks the belief. But Trump’s buddies seem not to care. (Don’t forget that Matt Gaetz even SELLS IT, now that his political career has stalled. He knows, if nothing else, that the medically-uneducated Trump supporters will buy it….)
So extreme are Kennedy’s anti-vax views that he spreads beliefs that the “vaccine cartels” are like a shadow government (the Deep State maybe?) that insidiously controls our society. At times, this rhetoric becomes outright disgusting in its extremity. During an anti-vax rally in 2022, Kennedy said: “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in the attic like Anne Frank did. Today the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run, none of us can hide.”He was widely lambasted for this; for e.g., the Auschwitz Memorial organization responded (on Twitter), “Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany—including children like Anne Frank—in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay.” Even Kennedy’s wife spoken out against his comments, tweeting that the reference to Frank was “reprehensible and insensitive”.
So, there are still reasonable people in the world with good judgement. But it appears Robert F. Kennedy increasingly isn’t one of them.
Most troubling though, his experience in environmental law has made him an effective persuader, especially to a public not well schooled in medicine, or science. An infectious disease specialist, Michael Osterholm, has said that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine disinformation is effective “because it’s portrayed to the public with graphs and figures and what appears to be scientific data. He has perfected the art of illusion of fact.” But, “this is about people’s lives. And the consequences of promoting this kind of disinformation, as credible as it may seem, is simply dangerous.”
Indeed, back in 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg’s transformation into a Trump-ist hadn’t yet fully occurred and his organizations still had a shred of ethics, Kennedy’s Instagram account was deleted “for repeatedly sharing debunked claims” about COVID vaccines. (NOTE: Now that Zuckerberg has abandoned fact-checking in Meta, his social media platforms will have no mechanism to prevent the flood of bullshit and conspiracy-beliefs that are guaranteed to ensue.)
Because, yes, there are real consequences for spreading misinformation and ignoring science. Obviously, there are the hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths that public health researchers have traced directly to Donald Trump’s misinformation. And Kennedy has participated in this mass death toll. As just one example, in 2018 two Samoan infants died after being vaccinated. Kennedy went on the offence, widely disseminating information that the vaccines caused these tragic deaths. Even though research uncovered that it wasn’t the vaccines, but a muscle relaxant that was mistakenly given to the infants, Kennedy’s vaccine misinformation led to a climate of fear and vaccine hesitancy in Samoa; in 2019, a measles outbreak swept the area, killing more than 70 people. So, 2 tragic deaths due to a mistake, amplified by Kennedy’s bullshit, led to dozens more people unnecessarily losing their lives.
This guy should be Secretary of Health!
Kash Patel — Director of the FBI
And now we come to the final person we’ll look at (for now), the pièce de résistance, the icing on the cake, the cherry on top. Here we go from the corruption and right-wing-ism of people like Pam Bondi, through the disgusting immorality of people like Pete Hegseth, through the absurd anti-science bullshit of people like Kristi Noem and Robert Kennedy, and we end with — gee, honestly, what do you even call this — how about “crazy motherfucker?”
Kash Patel has been a very close accomplice of Donald Trump for many years, advising Trump in his first Presidency on portfolios that he was not involved in and had no particular expertise in, most notably Ukraine. Trump liked his misinformed advice so much that, multiple times, he tried to endorse Patel to head the FBI, but these suggestions were resoundingly shot down, including from Trump’s own Attorney General, William Barr, who wrote in his memoir that Patel would become FBI director only “over his dead body”. In his last weeks in office, Trump tried to appoint Kash Patel as CIA Deputy Director, but direct interventions from Vice President Mike Pence and the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, prevented that from happening. Why? Because, “crazy motherfucker.”
Not only is Kash Patel a shameless grifter, marketing bullshit products under the logo “K$H”, such as supplements that he claims will “detoxify” the body of the harmful effects of the COVID vaccine, and not only has Kash Patel promoted pro-Trump conspiracy theories on extreme-far-right podcasts, and not only does Kash Patel sit on the board of the Trump Media & Technology Group, which owns “Truth Social”, Trump’s megaphone for his insanity, Kash Patel is a full-blown QAnon cult believer.
Yeah, remember QAnon? The internet movement that brainwashed the gullible into believing that the Democrats were pedophilic Satanists, who kidnapped babies and tortured them in secret facilities so they could extract “adrenochrome” from their brains and use it to achieve IMMORTALITY??? Remember that? QAnon fuelled literal murders, the now-infamous “PizzaGate”, elevated people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and her “Jewish space lasers” theories into Congress, and radicalized millions of people into believing they were Holy Warriors of the Light, fighting “the Deep State” and forces of evil. Yeah, THAT QAnon.
Kash Patel is a well-known adherent to the QAnon alternate universe of reality, a universe in which Satan runs the show and doctors are all in a giant conspiracy, and climate change is a hoax, and the Chinese are poised to attack us at any moment, and the wildfires of the West coast of North America are literal smokescreens that hide the military activities of the Chinese army (or sometimes Indian army…..who knows? Maybe both!), and….etc.etc.etc. — [insert the dumbest shit you can possibly think of here]. Kash Patel even wrote a whole-ass book about it, in which he, apparently, exposing the members of the Deep State, including, of course, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hilary Clinton, Merrick Garland, Bill Barr, Robert Mueller, James Comey, and basically a whole ton of people that have at one point or another stood up to Donald Trump.
And what does Kash Patel want to use the FBI for? What are his goals for heading up the Federal Bureau of Investigation? You know, getting revenge on the “internal enemies” that Trump is always talking about. Patel has publicly said that, when Trump is elected, “We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media … we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections … We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice, and Steve (Bannon), this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators … Because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”
In other words, his goal for the FBI is to form the 21st century American Gestapo. THIS is fucking terrifying.
And he has lots of experience defending Trump against the most immoral, national-security threatening activities Trump has ALREADY DONE. For example, in 2021 the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), discovered that boxes worth of highly classified government documents were “missing”. The FBI eventually found them, by getting a warrant to search Trump’s home. Yes, Trump STOLE government secrets and kept them at home. Gee, why would he do that? Well, he claimed he had “declassified” them, which is impossible, because Presidents do not have the power to do so. It is ILLEGAL.
Kash Patel defended Trump’s illegal bullshit, all the way to court, where he “testified” before a federal grand jury on the matter. Except, he didn’t actually testify, because he just invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. In other words, “I won’t answer the court on this illegal matter on the grounds that it might incriminate me”. And thus, Trump “defended” himself. Which is….fucking ridiculous.
Kash Patel’s endorsement of QAnon is public, well-known, and vigorous. He has publicly endorsed QAnon on dozens of podcasts, has posted Q-messages and memes himself, has talked about how Truth Social is trying to adopt QAnon into its “overall messaging scheme”, has signed copies of the CHILDREN’S BOOK that he wrote, “King Donald”, with “WWG1WGA” — a QAnon slogan — and uses the hashtag “#WWG1WGA” on Truth Social.
So, Donald Trump’s pick for the person who will lead the FBI, is a QAnon activist, rampant conspiracy theorist, and full-blown zealot who wants to use the powers of the FBI to “root out the Deep State” and go after American citizens who Trump says are his “enemies”.
And this is all I have to say, currently, about Trump’s incoming Administration (unless they are stopped, which, so far, doesn’t seem to be the case). If this isn’t a red-flag factory that reeks of corruption, then literally nothing is.