LIVE: Some Guy Burping At The Senate About How Sautéed Whale Semen Cures Loneliness?
Hope he doesn't put any baby chicks in a blender. :(
So listen!
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is having his first confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He has to go before more than one committee, and today is the Senate Finance Committee. Is it going to be B ? Oh yeah.
When Democratic Senator Patty Murray met with Kennedy, she said:
“I came out of my meeting with RFK Jr. stunned,” she told The Washington Post this week. “I have never left a meeting with a Cabinet nominee as disconcerted and troubled by their words in my entire career.”
Cool!
Caroline Kennedy has sent a letter to senators about her cousin, calling him a “predator.” Specifically, she said, “It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator.” And that is just the beginning.
She says his antivax bullshit is “dangerous and willfully misinformed,” but says really, it’s who he is as a person that makes him uniquely and horrifyingly unqualified to be “in charge of the health of the American people.”
She talks about how it was he who got many of his family members addicted to drugs. Surprise, that includes some allegations of sick and weird animal cruelty:
“I watched his younger brothers and cousins follow him down the path of drug addiction. His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
She says Kennedy is “addicted to money and power,” and talks about exactly how he preys on parents of sick kids while totally vaccinating his own:
“Bobby preys on the desperation of parents of sick children — vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs. Even before he fills this job, his constant denigration of our health care system and the conspiratorial half-truths he has told about vaccines, including in connection with Samoa's deadly 2019 measles outbreak, have cost lives.”
And so much more. How Kennedy is profiting off his antivax bullshit. How sickened she was to see how he tried to run for president based on his family name, when his father and uncle would be grievously ashamed of everything about him. How embarrassing it is that he immediately started sucking Donald Trump off begging for a job. (Our words, not Caroline Kennedy’s.)
Also, by the way, if you haven’t read it yet, that Samoa thing was so much more fucked up than we even knew.
As the Washington Post explains, lots of people are creeped out by this creepy motherfucker, including conservative types. Mike Pence hates him because he loves abortion so much. Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor, is like HMMMM I DUNNO.
Meanwhile, the editorial boards of all Rupert Murdoch’s rags agree that Kennedy is a freak who belongs nowhere near HHS. Here’s the Wall Street Journal and here’s the New York Post. Excerpt from Post: “No Republican can vote for this guy. No senator should.” They say he needs a straitjacket.
Meanwhile there are rumblings that a couple Democrats might even vote for this guy, including maybe possibly Sheldon Whitehouse, because they were law school buddies, to which we respond DEMOCRATS, WE SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD, WE ARE GETTING TIRED OF SAYING IT, BUT WE WILL MAKE SURE EVERY ONE OF YOUR FUCKING ASSES GETS PRIMARIED, AND THIS IS WONKETTE, NOT THE GODDAMNED DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA, WHICH SHOULD GIVE YOU SOME PERSPECTIVE ON HOW WIDESPREAD THIS SENTIMENT IS AMONG LITERALLY ALL DEMOCRATIC VOTERS.
Sick of your shit.
And now we liveblog!
10:00: OK, we’re about to get going. This is going to be some creepy shit. The crowd is full of cultists cheering, of course, for the guy who looks like a child tried to sculpt a man and it went poorly.
10:03: Replaced video, other one was fucking up.
10:05: Why does his face look like that, always crooked on the left side? Is the dead worm in his brain curled up on that side? Is it heavy? Is it a heavy dead worm?
Anyway, Mike B made an opening statement, it was blah blah. Now Ron Wyden making his opening statement. Old white Democrat man. Opens by saying RFK has embraced quacks and conspiracy theories, especially on vaccines, and has made lots of money off it. (cf. Caroline Kennedy’s letter above)
10:09: What is that sound, is it the worm in Robert F. Kennedy’s brain breathing? Is it not dead? Does he just heavy breathe like Jabba the Hutt? Does he have the leaky brain? (He believes WiFi gives people a condition he made up called “leaky brain.”) Is this what leaky brain sounds like? Has he been near internet connectivity lately?
10:17: Kennedy opening statement. Introduces whichever family members who don’t think he’s a disgusting predator.
10:18: Hahahaha, GROSS, why is Megyn Kelly there over his burping right shoulder?
Vile sickos and freaks everywhere.
10:23: Kennedy lies and says he’s not anti-vax. Some people, probably from Code Pink, ineffectively starts yelling and saying he’s lying. Nothing about the result of the hearing will change as a result. He just lied again, and again. Keeps saying he’s not anti-vax.
10:25: Kennedy says he gets on his knees every morning and prays for God to help him make America’s children healthy or something. Guess he doesn’t do that prayer for Samoan kids with measles.
10:28: Hey y’all remember when Michelle Obama tried to get America’s children to eat one green bean per week and the Republicans branded her as an angry Black woman communist devil?
Kennedy says people should be able to get Big Macs and Twinkies, but they should know they are unhealthy.
Mission accomplished!
Anyway, Wyden, now bringing receipts on how freakishly anti-vax Kennedy is, times he’s said “No vaccine is safe and effective.” Kennedy is trying to explain how all the times he’s said that in the past don’t count and are lies.
Wyden: “You have a history of trying to take vaccines away from people.”
(He tried to take the COVID vaccine away.)
Another yeller from one of America’s least effective protest organizations starts yelling.
10:33: Kennedy is mad because apparently we all have it wrong about the evil he committed in Samoa. (Link above.)
10:34: WYDEN: Is measles deadly, yes or no?
KENNEDY: I will now explain how I exploited a tragic situation in Samoa for my own sicko conspiracy theory reasons. You’re all wrong! It’s all lies!
We note that it’s easy to get RFK to act : craaaaaaazay. We are like six seconds into this hearing.
10:37: KENNEDY: I love vaccines! I love the measles vaccine! I love the polio vaccine! I love vaccines so much if vaccines were a dead whale I would put them on the roof of my car!
WYDEN: People should probably read your shitty measles book.
Now it’s Chuck Grassley’s turn to tell us if he knows where he is.
10:40: This is just a five-minute Grassley monologue about his Corn Concerns. No questions.
10:42: Kennedy affirms that he agrees with the five minutes of Corn Concerns.
We skip Maria Cantwell because she’s not there yet, or we skip to Republican John Cornyn.
10:44: Why do Republicans think 320,000 migrant children are missing and being sex trafficked in the United States, and is that true? You will be shocked to learn that um not really.
Anyway, Kennedy is going to find them.
10:47: It’s funny that John Cornyn is talking about how awesome PEPFAR is, considering how Donald Trump’s little “delete the US government” stunt canceled distribution of HIV medications worldwide, and they only fixed it because of the screaming outrage from literally fucking everyone. (Reminder: screaming outrage works.)
10:50: Michael Bennet, Democrat, is talking about we don’t know what. Says Kennedy has spent his life “peddling half-truths, peddling in false statements,” but Jesus it’s boring, can we get some new fucking Democrats?
Can somebody give them a class on how to humiliate one of these motherfuckers in the first hour before everybody turns off the TV?
10:51: BENNET: Did you say COVID was a bioweapon that targets Black and white people but spares Ashkenazi Jews?
KENNEDY: I was just reading science!
BENNET: Did you say Lyme Disease is a bioweapon?
KENNEDY: Probably!
BENNET: Did you say pesticides make children transgender?
KENNEDY: No!
BENNET: We’ll enter it in the record! Did you say African AIDS is different from other kinds of AIDS?
KENNEDY: Ummmmm (He has extremely weird views on HIV/AIDS.)
BENNET: We’ll enter it in the record! Do you love abortion?
KENNEDY: Every abortion is a tragedy!
BENNET: Fuck off.
OK, that was MUCH better than what we were just bitching about in your last update. Bennet is yelling at this freak. And that quick pivot to how much he loves abortion was fun for fucking with Republicans.
11:00: Bill Cassidy tries to make it like this is a normal hearing about “Medicaid” and “Medicare.” Kennedy lies and says people don’t like the Affordable Care Act or Medicaid, but that they love private insurance. (Hahahahahahahahahahaha, is that what they love?)
11:01: Mark Warner makes a joke about how if Trump was going to replace the ACA with something, we might have seen it by now. Kennedy tries to answer, Warner tells him to fuck off.
WARNER: Was your campaign grifting off of Trump’s government freeze?
KENNEDY: Burp burp campaign no exist!
WARNER: Sombody’s grifting for you LOL.
KENNEDY: Heavy breaths.
11:04: WARNER: You said you want to get rid of 2,200 people from HHS. Which parts of it do you want to cut?
KENNEDY: The same ones Joe Biden did or something!
Mark Warner definitely actually boring, not landing punches, also keeps collaborating with the Nazis by voting for Trump appointees.
11:09: Republican James Lankford, probably will ask boring questions or just filibuster to make it seem like Kennedy is normal. Oh, they are talking about abortion. Kennedy says again that “every abortion is a tragedy,” and that we can’t have a moral nation if we have all these abortions every year. Babbles the conspiracy theories Trump believes about “late-term abortions.”
Basically Kennedy has decided he’s an anti-abortion activist because that’s the direction his burp-grifting has taken him these days.
11:13: Lankford now bitching about the Biden administration changing rules on “the chemical abortion drug” — AKA, the extremely safe drug Mifepristone. The point is that Mifespristone is safe. Lankford is insinuating conspiracy theories that say otherwise. Kennedy is totally willing to go along with this bullshit.
Here comes Sheldon Whitehouse. Let’s see what he does, since they were law school buddies.
11:16: WHITEHOUSE: “You frighten people.” Says if he wants to have people’s trust he’s going to have to disavow literally everything he’s ever said about vaccines.
11:19: Whitehouse is listing all kinds of senseless and stupid CMS bureaucracy problems, which is all cool but is that a good use of these five minutes? Kennedy looks bored. Whitehouse did not ask one question.
We repeat our call for new Democrats who aren’t old white men.
11:22: Steve Daines, one of the lowkey dumbest members of the Senate. Let’s see what he babbles about.
11:26: Daines is also lying and making false insinuations about the safety of Mifepristone, because this is they’re going to fuck this chicken until it’s dead. Kennedy agrees that he will go along with whatever anti-abortion bullshit chickenfucking, but just says he will do whatever Donald Trump says.
11:27: Maggie Hassan. Reminds Kennedy that people love Medicaid and are alive today — including people struggling with addiction — because of Medicaid.
Moves on to Kennedy’s conspiracy theories, talking about how vaccines are great, says she’s worried he will “exploit parents’ natural worries” and convince them not to vaccinate their children. “There is no reason for any of us to believe” that he’s changed what he’s believed for 25 years.
Hassan says she’s glad Kennedy loves abortion so much, just like she does. Pulling out receipts of all the times Kennedy has said nice things about abortion.
Hassan says it’s great that all her pro-life Republican colleagues are so excited to vote for such an abortionista.
11:31: Kennedy starts babble-burping again that “every abortion is a tragedy.” Says it twice. Hassan’s question is when he sold out and started licking Trump’s taint on this.
Hassan holds up a stack of a million studies showing that Mifepristone is safe.
11:33: Hassan notes that Trump’s freeze halted funds for curing cancer in children. So that’s just yet another consequence of deleting the government and trying to replace it with fascism!
Catherine Cortez Masto starts out, wants to know what Kennedy will do about states where people who need medically necessary abortions can’t get them because of fascist state laws. Does federal law provide for that? Does federal law preempt state law? He ain’t know, because he’s a moron.
Can he as HHS director make sure hospitals getting money from Medicare will provide emergency abortion care? (She’s talking about EMTALA. He doesn’t know what EMTALA is.)
11:43: Whole bunch of babbling about how RFK, who has no medical training and really no discernible medical knowledge, definitely no expertise, has been asked by Trump to end the chronic disease epidemic. The mouthbreather supporters in the room cheer for him. He thinks bumblefucking his way around this issue is his only job at HHS.
11:47: Second stupidest senator in human history, Ron Johnson (Tommy Tuberville is first) begins. He is appalled that Democrats won’t support RFK’s work in solving All The Problems. Also he is appalled that Democrats won’t support this Totally Normal Guy From The Left named Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to find out what causes autism.
Is it whale semen? Or is whale semen the cure for autism? Why did China invent autism in a lab in the year 2019? Ron Johnson holds up a bunch of letters from what we guess are some total wingnut “medical” organizations who support giving Kennedy a stethoscope and a rectal thermometer to diagnose America’s problems.
Something something “Dr. Fauci’s emails.” The end.
His only question is “Will you make HHS transparent and be nice to Congress?” That’s it.
11:52: RFK will unite the Left and Right together to find out which vaccines cause peanut allergies. “There’s nobody who will fix it the way I can,” he said. He doesn’t need this job. He doesn’t need you. He’s got this dog on a cob and
Oh thank God here’s Elizabeth Warren.
11:56: Warren bringing receipts on how Kennedy gets money from a law firm that sues over vaccines. He doesn’t plan on divesting himself from that, by the way.
“You’re making me sound like a shill!” says Kennedy, upset at Elizabeth Warren’s very unfair insinuation that he is a … LOL.
“You’re asking me not to sue drug companies, and I’m not going to do that!”
(That’s not what she asked, she’s talking about him financially benefiting by it.)
12:00: Kennedy is just fucking lying and saying Warren is asking him not to sue drug companies. She’s yelling at him. It’s literally all about him grifting off this shit and “keep cashing in” on his antivax work as HHS secretary.
WARREN: Will you say you won’t make money off what you do as secretary of HHS?
No.
Mike Crapo cuts in to say RFK has promised to be very “ethics,” how extremely dare you suggest any Trump appointee will not be extremely very “ethics”!
12:03: Oh good, here is Thom Tillis. If anybody has any allegations of Kennedy abusing women — and oh boy, there are allegations! — you should not tell Thom Tillis, because he’ll say it matters if you come forward and then he’ll vote for the white fascist anyway.
TILLIS: Are you a conspiracy theorist?
KENNEDY: That’s a pejorative that people say to make me not Just Ask Questions!
Kennedy starts babbling about fluoride, Tillis quickly cuts him off to protect the white Republican fascist nominee from accidentally making a viral clip.
12:08: It’s amazing how Republicans just start believing their own conspiracy theories as gospel and totally forget that they pulled them out of their assholes. Apparently social distancing didn’t work at all, and masks were all bad.
Anyway, Bernie Sanders now. Should we guarantee healthcare as a human right? RFK cannot say “yes” or “no” to that. RFK starts babbling about smokers who get cancer being takers.
Does RFK agree that we shouldn’t be paying more than other countries for “the same damn drugs"? RFK says “in principle” we should end that.
Bernie Sanders says climate change is real, and it’s a healthcare issue. Trump thinks it’s a Chinese hoax. RFK says he and Trump agreed to disagree on that, and his job is only to Make Americans Healthy Again.
12:15: Bernie says he’s never seen anybody flip so fast on an issue as Kennedy did when he started eating Trump’s ass. Kennedy once again burps out his line that “every abortion is a tragedy.”
“They are selling what’s called onesies!” Bernie yells, about onesies on the website for Kennedy’s Children’s Defense Fund, which he founded. The onesies are anti-vax and say things like “No vax, no problem.” Will he stop selling them? He says he has no power over that.
Marsha Blackburn, a home ec major with zero to contribute to any conversation, reassures Kennedy that he will be confirmed and will be so great.
12:25: Maria Cantwell wants to know if Kennedy understands that real science research saves lives, that we did as well as we did with COVID because of real scientists doing real research. Kennedy says he LOVES science!
Also is babbling about how you don’t even need fetal tissue for stem cell research, because he’s not allowed to say stuff about how much he loves abortion anymore.
12:29: We’re actually getting closer to the end — six senators left — and Democrats want a second round. Clearly, like they did with Pete Hegseth, Republicans don’t want to give a second round the most unacceptable and batshit and bugfuck and loser nominees. It’s bad for the American people to be able to see people like this in the flesh.
12:30: Ben Ray Lujan asks Kennedy if he knows how many babies’ births are covered through Medicaid. He says he doesn’t know so he just randomly makes up a number, which is 30 million.
12:32: Kennedy insists people hate Medicaid, but he promises he doesn’t want to cut it, but he won’t answer whether he would support cutting it if Trump wants it.
12:38: There is a five-minute bathroom break right now, guess somebody needs to take a dump. Probably Marsha Blackburn. “I have to take a dump,” said Marsha Blackburn, possibly, if it was she.
12:44: Wow, everybody finished taking a dump really fast.
Anyway, Roger Marshall cannot believe none of the Democrats are asking about diabeetus. Why are they focusing on how Kennedy believes a secret gem inside wombat buttholes both causes and cures cancer? How is that fair? Shouldn’t they ask about diabeetus?
12:51: LOLOL stupid weird freak Roger Marshall says God has a “divine plan” for RFK to Make America Healthy Again. These midwestern Republican senators are COWFUCKIN’ stupid, y’all.
12:53: RAPHAEL WARNOCK: You have said the CDC is like Nazi death camps and child sex abusers. Is that a thing you said?
RFK: No I never said!
12:59: Warnock wants to know if RFK believes in Trump’s illegal tyrannical Hitler scam to try to force federal employees to take buyouts in exchange for retiring, so he can replace them with bootlicking mini-Hitlers. RFK says he can’t imagine anybody would resign who wants to Make America Healthy Again! So Warnock is like yeah you agree with it.
1:03: TINA SMITH: Do you still think antidepressants cause school shootings?
RFK: I never said that!
SMITH: You did.
RFK: Maybe they do!
SMITH: Do you still think people who take antidepressants are addicts who should be sent to “wellness farms”?
RFK: I don’t think they should be forced!
(His plan is so fucking sick.)
1:12: LOL Todd Young, a Republican, is lecturing us all on the fact that actually, COVID is not over. Thanks for your helpful information, fuckface.
1:22: Uh oh! Peter Welch was talking to RFK about how it’s illegal for the president to impound money that Congress has appropriated, and RFK said A SIN, which is that he will uphold the Constitution. We’ll see if Trump pulls his nomination for that one.
Also the Trump administration just rescinded its freeze on all government grants. They were just kidding, you guys! DERP DERP DERP DERP.
The Democrats are taking a couple extra minutes, and we’re about to be done.
Sheldon Whitehouse wants to take another minute to note that “late-term abortions” are actually horrible situations, most often a “childbirth gone wrong.” Democrats need to call that bullshit every time.
1:28: Elizabeth Warren wants to know if RFK will accept any responsibility for all those children’s deaths he contributed to in Samoa with his antivax bullshit. Of course not. She’s gonna just make sure it’s all in the record what he did.
1:30: Tina Smith clarifies that RFK wants to devote resources to fighting bird flu, since it’s literally happening now, and that he understands that it’s caused by the avian influenza virus. You know, since he’s written in the past about how maybe germs aren’t real or something? We can’t find it on the internet, but we did find a health expert saying he needs to be nailed down on whether germs cause sickness. He is like no! I did not say that!
Anyway, Warnock said something, but we missed it and the senators are rushing off to vote.
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Tomorrow we have like nine confirmation hearings. We will be liveblogging at least Kash Patel and whatever else we can, but uuuuuuuughhhhhhh yeah.
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I was thinking a bit about that story on the cruelty of putting animals in a blender and how that’s straight- up sociopathic. Along with the fascination of dismembering bears and whales, Kennedy is showing serial killer behaviors. Which makes me wonder if he wants to have control over the US healthcare system for the express purpose of causing harm. Sure would be an effective way to serial kill large swaths.
My granddaughter was born this morning! Her name is Lucy Jane. Lucy because they like the name, and Jane for my father, whose first name is John.
Daddy was doing much better even before hearing the news; the doctor is very pleased with his progress.