Trump cabinet choices and other appointments

Trump picks Brendan Carr to lead FCC — calls him ‘warrior for Free Speech’

https://nypost.com/2024/11/17/us-ne...o-lead-fcc-calls-him-warrior-for-free-speech/

 

lefty petulance is tiresome

 

related

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-dem...e-mandate-b209a0d8?mod=hp_opin_pos_2#cxrecs_s

The Democrats Made RFK Jr.
The left revered him until the Covid pandemic made his aversion to vaccines much more pertinent.
By Allysia Finley
Nov. 17, 2024 at 4:28 pm ET

Donald Trump likes to troll his opponents, and maybe that was his goal in nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Health and Human Services Department. Just as Democrats propelled Mr. Trump’s White House comeback with their lawfare, they gave flight to Mr. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

Mr. Kennedy gained political prominence in the 1990s as an environmental lawyer and activist. Democrats cheered his crusades against coal plants, hog farmers, chemical producers and other liberal villains, despite his well-known vaccine skepticism.

In November 2008, Politico’s Mike Allen reported that Barack Obamawas “strongly considering” Mr. Kennedy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. “The selection of Kennedy would be a shrewd early move for the new presidential team,” Mr. Allen wrote. It would “raise the profile of the EPA, which would help endear Obama to liberals.”

Progressives were unperturbed by his unscientific methods. Only during the pandemic did Mr. Kennedy and Democrats have a falling-out. He then began to attract a larger following among Americans fed up with government shutdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and efforts by the left to squash contrarian views.

Health officials repeatedly dissembled about the scientific basis for their policies, which failed to control the virus and gravely damaged the economy and livelihoods. Americans sensed that officials were lying to get people to do what they wanted. The public didn’t like being manipulated.

Then came the vaccines. Officials overstated their benefits and played down potential risks. People who claimed to have experienced adverse events were shunned. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was late to warn of myocarditis as a side effect. U.S. public-health authorities still haven’t acknowledged some rare side effects that European counterparts have, such as temporary facial paralysis and abnormal skin sensations.

In fall 2021, the government dumped the news that Americans would need booster shots—and that if they weren’t vaccinated, they wouldn’t be allowed to work. These moves fueled suspicions that the government was in league with big pharma.

The Food and Drug Administration further eroded public trust by stonewalling a Freedom of Information Act request for data it relied on to approve Pfizer’s Covid vaccine. The agency also green-lighted shots for children, who were at low risk for Covid, a recommendation based on shoddy data, as I noted at the time.

Why were public-health officials working so hard to foist vaccines on people? Because liberals and the scientific clerisy always think they know best and don’t want to let people make their own decisions. Electric vehicles won’t save the planet and may increase CO2 emissions, but liberals insist people buy them anyway. Mr. Kennedy’s tale of corruption resonated. People latched onto it as an explanation for the government’s attempts to suppress contrarian views on alternative remedies and natural immunity.

There’s also a kernel of truth in a lot of what Mr. Kennedy says about a lot of things. Take his assertion that the increase in mass shootings has “nothing to do with the number of guns.” That’s true, but he wrongly blames antidepressants. He’s correct that such drugs can cause suicidal thoughts and are overprescribed. But the real problem is rising levels of mental illness, which often goes undiagnosed and untreated in today’s atomistic society.

He’s also right that Americans would be healthier if they ate less processed foods and exercised more, which are better ways to lose weight than taking drugs. But calorie-rich foods, not additives, are what’s causing an increase in chronic illnesses and obesity. All-natural, non-GMO Häagen Dazs won’t make Americans healthy again.

Mr. Kennedy is also right to criticize government climate subsidies and regulation as manifestations of “crony capitalism.” In April he aptly compared the left’s climate and pandemic policies: “When you start clamping down controls on people, they rebel,” he told Politico. “Americans had enough of that during Covid, of people using the crisis—that many people believe now was manufactured—in order to clamp down totalitarian controls and shift wealth upward. And they see a mirror of that in climate.”

His climate apostasy spurred former green bedfellows, including the Sierra Club and the Sunrise Movement, to denounce him. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not an environmentalist,” a dozen green groups wrote in an open letter. “He is a dangerous conspiracy theorist and science denier whose agenda would be a disaster for our communities and the planet.”

By invoking phony science to promote their political agenda and lambasting anyone who disagrees with them as a “science denier,” liberals have undermined actual science and created a vacuum of distrust. To many Americans, RFK Jr.’s ideas about vaccines sound less crazy than the left’s supposedly scientific claims—say, that there are 74 genders.

Mr. Kennedy’s appeal can best be summed up by Newton’s third law of motion: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Appeared in the November 18, 2024, print edition as 'The Democrats Made RFK Jr.'.




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