HHS is the Department of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of protecting the health of all Americans. Among other things, it includes the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid; oversees the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and works to prevent disease outbreaks and ensure food and drug safety. So the idea of letting Kennedy “control” such a department is actually insane, and if you’re wondering why, a quick reminder that Kennedy:

Is a huge anti-vaxxer

Penned an article titled “Deadly Immunity,” published in Rolling Stone and Salon in 2005, in which he alleged that the government had covered up a link between vaccines and autism. (Both outlets later retracted the piece, and the Salon editor who worked on it said that after it went up, “we were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data…. It was the worst mistake of my career. I probably should have been fired.”)

Wrote a foreword for a book that claimed COVID-19 vaccines caused sudden deaths among healthy young people; the book featured on its cover a 12-year-old who’d never received the COVID-19 vaccine and had died as a result of a malformed blood vessel in his brain

Has been accused of stoking fears about vaccines in the run-up to a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people

Once implied that Anne Frank, she of Holocaust fame, had it easy compared to what anti-vaxxers go through

Has more than once suggested that chemicals in the environment can make children gay and trans

Declared, “I am not a church boy,” following a sexual assault allegation

Admitted to staging an elaborate bear-murder scene in Central Park because he didn’t have time to eat said bear’s flesh

Sawed a dead whale’s head off, according to one of his daughters, and strapped it to the roof of the family’s car, causing his children to have to wear plastic bags on their heads to avoid the “whale juice” that was “pour[ing] into the windows”

Said in a 2012 divorce deposition that a worm “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”

      • MyOpinion@lemm.ee
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        8 days ago

        This process started years ago with Rush Limbaugh. He provided alternative news and spent years disconnecting people from “mainstream media”. Now many only listen to right wing news that is disinformation. Not sure how we come back from a party that embraces the destruction of democracy and authoritarian leaders.

        • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          I think Trump has been such an emotional white knight in shining armor for them, that they don’t actually believe he could be a risk to democracy, national security, or the global world order that has American military power as the basis of its stability.

          He gives his supporters, humor, a safe space, a big smile, and unflinchingly accepts their moral short comings… So they do the same for him in return.

          • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)@badatbeing.social
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            8 days ago

            Except he has more disdain for his supporters than anyone else, even the “radical left” that he puts on a show about disliking. But his cult are the ones he lies to, grifts away all their money on a deluge of just garbage with his “brand” on it, and just thinks they are the dumbest and most useless people. He has made comments about them not having lives and being unstable.

            “I saw him when the cameras were off … Trump mocks his supporters. He calls them basement dwellers. On a hospital visit one time when people were dying in the ICU, he was mad that the cameras were not watching him.”

            She continued: “He used to tell me: ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, Stephanie, say it enough and people will believe you.’”

            – Stephanie Grisham, Donald Trump’s former press secretary

            Source: Trump calls his supporters ‘basement dwellers’, says former press secretary

            • barsquid@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              That’s correct. It is irrational. But he did give them permission to be bigoted in public, and they really like that.

          • Soup@lemmy.world
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            8 days ago

            Except that regularly calls many of them garbage and they seem to like that kinda thing.

            • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              He’s got plenty of credit with them to burn, and if he burns it right, they like him more.

              Like when people have plastered their vehicles with your name, and they follow you from place to place in convoys flying flags like something out of a mad max movie? You can call them whatever you want and get a way with it a bunch of times without any consequences what so ever.

              • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                It’s like burning plastic. It’s toxic garbage destroying their lungs but somehow addicting

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      This mother fucker literally had worm eat his fucking brain, due to eating undercooked bear meat. He also cut the fucking head off a whale and hauled it around as it drop blood and guts on him. This man needs to be put away in a mental institution not in control of our health care. Please fucking vote because if Trump wins this man will be responsible for what treatments you get.