Even Republicans Mad At RFK Jr. Over CDC Mess, On Account Of He Sucks Donkey Balls
Better late than ne ... no wait, we can't say that.
We knew he was a crank. You knew he was a crank. Everybody with two brain cells to rub together knew that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a huge crank who had no business whatsoever in the job of Secretary of Health and Human Services. He has no medical background. He’s a conspiracy theorist and something of a eugenicist. This week he announced that he can tell that America’s children have a deficit of mitochondria just by looking at their faces in airports, an observation that had most scientists and doctors and medical professionals and people who aren’t dumber than a sack of lug nuts (admittedly a minority of Americans) asking the same important question: What in the fuck are you talking about? How often did Ethel Kennedy drop you on your head when you were a child?
The only people who pretended not to know that RFK Jr. is the worst thing to happen to American public health since yellow fever-carrying mosquitoes survived the Middle Passage were Republican senators. But after this week’s wave of firings, resignations and walkouts at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suddenly a couple of senators who voted to confirm Secretary Brainworms are pronouncing themselves shocked, SHOCKED WE TELL YOU, by Kennedy Jr.’s totally predictable and foreseeable stupidity.
Let’s start with Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the man who most publicly claimed he was wrestling with which way to vote on Kennedy Jr. in the early days of the Trump administration, about a thousand years ago in early February. Cassidy is a doctor by training, a gastroenterologist with a surprising (for a Republican) sympathy for low-income people who lack access to health insurance or affordable healthcare.
Or so it once seemed, once. Then Cassidy went to Congress and started agitating to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with magic pixie dust. Sure, helping low-income people by setting up clinics to treat the uninsured in Baton Rouge and vaccinating schoolchildren against hepatitis and the flu in the 1990s was good, but winning a Senate seat in Louisiana as a Republican in the 2000s is better, we guess.
Cassidy did a lot of hemming and hawing over RFK Jr.’s nomination. In the end, after much alleged wrestling with his conscience, he announced that Kennedy Jr. had made enough promises about following science and not throwing America’s entire vaccine regime into the ocean to earn his vote.
Then this week’s dustup between Kennedy Jr. and CDC leadership happened, and suddenly all is not well in Wingnutlandia. Cassidy is alarmed now that Kennedy Jr. fired CDC Director Susan Monarez for refusing to fire CDC leadership and disagreeing with his COVID vaccine policy and issued a statement:
On Thursday, Cassidy issued a call for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the CDC panel that determines vaccine recommendations, to postpone its upcoming meeting in September, saying in a statement that “serious allegations” have been made about the committee membership as well as the “lack of scientific process being followed” for the scheduled gathering.
Cassidy had previously publicly called out Kennedy Jr. for firing the entire ACIP board and replacing it with his fellow cranks, and for cutting grants into mRNA vaccine research. Kennedy Jr. and his people mostly ignored the senator, who has been reduced to putting out strongly worded statements while seemingly not doing a damn thing to rein Kennedy Jr. in.
Still, we suppose we could say of this apparent break between the two men, “Better late than never, Senator.” But we won’t, because FUCK YOU, BILL CASSIDY, YOU KNEW BETTER SIX MONTHS AGO AND VOTED FOR HIM ANYWAY, SO NOW THE SUFFERING ENDURED BY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HURT BY RFK JR.’S ASSAULT ON THE WELL-ESTABLISHED SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATIONS OF THE NATION’S PUBLIC HEATLH WILL FOLLOW YOU TO YOUR GRAVE AND BEYOND. YOUR DESCENDANTS WILL SPEAK OF YOU IN TONES NORMALLY RESERVED FOR THE DESCENDANTS OF SERIAL KILLERS. YOUR NAME WILL BE CURSED FOR A THOUSAND GENERATIONS.
The ship has not just sailed, Senator Cassidy. That ship has gotten halfway around the world, wrecked, left its crew marooned on a deserted island until a few of them could build a raft and paddle off looking for help, found that help, and returned to rescue the rest of their shipmates, but not before the ones left on that island resorted to cannibalism.
But maybe next time! If we’re not all dead from some reawakened 19th century disease that had been all but wiped out by modern medicine, of course.
You know who else is not happy with RFK Jr.’s actions this week? Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, normally one of the Senate’s most high-profile milquetoasts. Collins is famous for telling the public she is very “concerned” over this nominee or the effects of that bill while furrowing her brow and making a bit public showing of waffling this way and that, before she ultimately caves and does whatever Donald Trump and the Republican majority in Congress want her to do.
Well, hold on to your butts, because Collins has found even stronger words to express her feelings now:
“I am extremely alarmed at the firing of the CDC director,” Collins told reporters outside a breakfast for Maine sheriffs. “I know her. I have met with her several times and talked with her on the phone, and I see no basis for her firing. It is highly significant that her removal led to the immediate resignation of four other top officials who have served at the CDC for decades in some cases.”
Not just alarmed, extremely alarmed. For Susan Collins, this amounts to a hair-on-fire statement. She’s so upset, she’s learning new vocabulary words to describe herself! The brow furrowing is at DEFCON-1, people.
Collins also said it was a “bad mistake” for Kennedy Jr. to have fired everyone on the ACIP board in June, and that doing so was “extremely alarming.” Not alarming enough for her to have made an issue of it then, though!
Now, having pronounced herself more alarmed than usual, Collins will likely proceed with her usual course of action: doing absolutely nothing of substance to rectify the situation. May she get her ass kicked next year by the oyster farmer running for her seat.
As for the Democrats, Bernie Sanders demanded an immediate hearing. Patty Murray of Washington demanded RFK Jr.’s immediate firing. (Said Murray regarding the party line vote of Democrats against Monarez’s nomination, under the impression she would not stand up to Kennedy Jr. on vaccines, “Sorry I thought Susan Monarez would be bullshit, it turned out she was not bullshit.” Maybe not a direct quote.) But the award for most furious goes to Tina Smith of Minnesota, who is currently dealing with the tragedy that was the mass shooting of schoolchildren in a freaking church this week. RFK Jr. had immediately put the blame on another one of his crankery hobbyhorses, claiming that antidepressants might have contributed to the gunman’s depraved mental state:
Damn. You know it’s bad when that vaunted “Minnesota nice” gets tossed out the window and left on the side of the road.
We have been pleasantly surprised at how tough Democrats — Democrats, people! — have been on RFK Jr. when he has testified in various congressional hearings the last few months. Watch some clips, you can really feel the contempt just dripping off them in a way that we don’t always see no matter how contemptible the Trump official in front of them is.
The next step is Democrats filing articles of impeachment on RFK Jr. Sure, they won’t go anywhere in the GOP-dominated Congress. They should do it anyway, because that dude sucks exceptionally hard, even by the standards of Trump Cabinet members.
PREVIOUSLY AS IN THIS MORNING.
[NYT / NY Mag / NOTUS / Portland Press-Herald]
Support independent media by giving us money.
I dare that sentient ballsack to come tell me he knows what’s wrong with my kids by looking at them. I’ve got a LAUNDRY LIST of what’s wrong with him at first glance, number one being he’s a leathery asshole who refuses to grasp germ theory.
What truly blows about Cassidy is that he's the least worst in terms of Republicans down here in Louisiana. When he voted to impeach TACO, our other absolute nutbag Republicans smelled blood and went after him with all guns blazing. He's up for re-election next year so he's trying to reclaim his MAGA bonafides, which is pissing off the folks who used to tolerate him for being not a complete asshole. Right now, though, pretty much everybody hates him for one reason or another.