Any plans for the weekend?
— Andy Slavitt 🇺🇸💉 (@ASlavitt) October 23, 2021
Eric Trump headlines an indoor anti-vaccine rally in Tennessee today in case you’re looking for something to avoid at all costs.
This is true. The Daily Beast's Will Sommer reported on it last month:
Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump will give the keynote speech next month at an anti-vaccine conference....Trump told the Beast that he's vaccinated and plans to talk about his father, not about vaccines. But many of the speakers -- you can see the lineup here -- will clearly be there to tell attendees that vaccines are bad. Among them are Andrew Wakefield, whose now-withdrawn, fraudulent 1998 paper in The Lancet kickstarted the modern anti-vaxx movement; Dr. Judy Mikovits, the discredited virologist who's a central figure in the conpiracy documentary Plandemic; Mikki Willis, one of the producers of Plandemic; and Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, who famously announced at an Ohio legislative hearing that COVID vaccines make vaccinated people magnetic.
Trump is set to speak at the Truth About Cancer Live! convention between Oct. 22 and 24 in Nashville, joining a speakers’ lineup that includes some of the most prominent promoters of disinformation about vaccines, as well as leading figures in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement.
The conference is the brainchild of Ty and Charlene Bollinger, two major promoters of anti-vaccine disinformation who have made tens of millions of dollars promoting both alternative health cures for cancer and vaccine fears. The Bollingers have dubbed the coronavirus vaccine “that abominable vaccine,” according to a Center for Public Integrity report, and sell a $200 video series promoting vaccine fearmongering on their website.
... In posts on Telegram, a social media app popular on the right, the Bollingers have called the vaccine a “SHOT OF POISON!” and the “COVID kill shot.” The Bollingers have also attacked vaccines more broadly, claiming in social media posts that vaccines cause autism.
Wikipedia has more on co-host Ty Bollinger:
Bollinger is a former bodybuilder and has no medical training....And here's the Trump connection:
The couple's main website is The Truth About Cancer, established in 2014. It promotes misinformation about cancer, notably that chemotherapy doesn't cure the disease, and functions as a merchandising platform for their numerous instructional videos, as well as food supplements, alternative health books, and treatments....
Bollinger also branched out into anti-vaccination, selling a new video series, The Truth about Vaccines from their website, with a supporting Facebook group....
A study by NewsGuard ranks the Bollingers' Facebook page as one of the largest superspreaders of COVID-19 misinformation as of April 2020. The study found the page repeated many of the common COVID-19 false claims, including that the pandemic was planned, that the virus was built in a laboratory, and that COVID-19 is transmitted by 5G wireless technology.
Bollinger spoke at a "Stop the Steal" rally in Nashville on November 14, 2020, repeating accusations of election fraud....I'd say it seems Oedipal that Donald Trump boasts of his role in getting the vaccines to market while Eric speaks at this conference, but the Bollingers clearly don't hold the elder Trump's support for vaccines against him, and the ex-president clearly doesn't seem to want to press the issue anymore, so what Eric is doing really isn't a symbolic murder of his father.
The couple played a significant role in organizing the pro-Trump demonstrations that culminated in a riot at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.... They coordinated with leaders of the Stop the Steal movement to bring their supporters to the demonstrations. They introduced speakers to their crowd of supporters and according to Darlene, Ty joined the demonstration outside the Capitol; both afterward condemned the violence that took place at the event.... The Bollingers have been using QAnon hashtags in 2020 and promoted some of the movement's common conspiracy theories.
Please note that this crowd will have access to the First Family if Trump wins the 2024 election. We thought all the pathologies in the world converged in the Trump presidency that ended in January, but version 2.0 will be even worse.
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