I hope Walz hasn't retired the word, because I think he's the perfect person to take on this guy, who might be the weirdest person in MAGA Nation (a very high bar to clear):
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intends to end his independent presidential campaign and endorse former President Donald Trump, according to two sources familiar with the plans....Tim Walz is actually a hunter, so I'd really like to hear what he'd say about the bizarre incident in which Kennedy, a dilettante pseudo-outdoorsman, found a dead bear on a road north of New York City, packed it in his trunk with (he says) plans to skin it and eat it, then somehow remembered that he was meeting friends for a meal at a steakhouse (in Brooklyn), after which he'd be taking a flight (from an airport in Queens), so he changed his plans and dumped the bear in Central Park (in Manhattan).
Kennedy’s campaign announced he will hold the event in Phoenix on Friday. Trump, meanwhile, is also set to host an event on Friday night, in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb.
That was weird in a way that didn't hurt too many people, apart from the blue-collar park workers who had to clean up the mess left by the spoiled rich kid. But it seems likely that Kennedy could do untold amounts of damage to America if the reported quid pro quo he seeks from Trump in return for his endorsement actually happens. NBC reports:
For weeks, Kennedy’s campaign has floated his interest in a Cabinet position in a future Trump White House while publicly denying he would accept it....And what would Kennedy do as HHS secretary?
On Tuesday, Kennedy’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, told an interviewer the campaign was weighing whether to “join forces” with Trump and suggested that Kennedy would do an “incredible job” as secretary of health and human services. Trump later told CNN that he “probably would” appoint Kennedy to some role.
HHS oversees 13 agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. On the campaign trail, in podcasts and in news interviews, Kennedy has described wanting to dismantle those offices and rebuild them with like-minded fringe figures.Let me repeat that last sentence.
The agencies have become “sock puppets” for the industries they regulate, Kennedy told NBC News in an interview last year, in which he laid out his plans for public health if he were elected president. Faced with another pandemic, Kennedy said, he wouldn’t prioritize the research, manufacture or distribution of vaccines.
Faced with another pandemic, Kennedy said, he wouldn’t prioritize the research, manufacture or distribution of vaccines.Bird flu? SARS? COVID? Mpox? If we have a worldwide outbreak of any of those diseases, Trump's HHS secretary will discourage a ramped-up campaign of vaccination.
“The priority should be finding treatments that work and building people’s immune systems,” he said, falsely adding that “vaccines have probably caused more deaths than they’ve averted.” He mentioned ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine as treatments — which he says worked against Covid, even though numerous studies say they didn’t.And last November,
he said he would stop the National Institutes of Health from studying infectious diseases, like Covid and measles, and pivot it to studying chronic diseases, like diabetes and obesity. Kennedy believes environmental toxins, a category in which he places childhood vaccines, to be the major threat to public health, rather than infectious disease.Emphasis added.
Although he's denied it, Kennedy has a problem with all childhood vaccines. In July of last year, he said as much on Lex Fridman's podcast:
Fridman, July 6: You’ve talked about that the media slanders you by calling you an anti-vaxxer, and you’ve said that you’re not anti-vaccine, you’re pro-safe vaccine. Difficult question: Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?Again, let me repeat that last line.
Kennedy: I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably averting more problems than they’re causing. There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.
There’s no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.Even the polio vaccine? Here's Kennedy on that same podcast:
... if you say to me, “The polio vaccine, was it effective against polio?” I’m going to say, Yes. And if you say to me, “Did it kill more people ... did it caused more death than averted?” I would say, “I don’t know, because we don’t have the data on that.”And can we talk about the time Kennedy encouraged a measles outbreak?
Appearing in Shot in the Arm, a 2023 documentary about vaccine opposition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was asked about the deadly measles outbreak that occurred in Samoa in 2019 and claimed the lives of 83 people, mostly children. Kennedy, a leading anti-vaxxer who had visited the Pacific island nation a few months before the outbreak, replied, “I’m aware there was a measles outbreak...I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa. I never told anybody not to vaccinate. I didn’t go there with any reason to do with that.”Tim Walz talked a lot last night about freedom. How about freedom from preventable diseases? It's weird to be against that.
Kennedy was being disingenuous, sidestepping his connection to that tragedy. Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit anti-vax outfit he led until becoming a presidential candidate, had helped spread misinformation that contributed to the decline in measles vaccination that preceded the lethal eruption. And during his trip to Samoa, Kennedy had publicly supported leading vaccination opponents there, lending credibility to anti-vaxxers who were succeeding in increasing vaccine hesitation among Samoans. Moreover, in early 2021, Kennedy, in a little-noticed blog post, hailed one of those vaccination foes as a “hero.”
If Walz does go after Kennedy, there's a risk that Kennedy will target
Walz's son. I wouldn't put it past Kennedy to do an armchair diagnosis of Gus Walz (who has ADHD, anxiety, and non-verbal learning disorder) and conclude that these are all the result of childhood vaccines -- Kennedy's one-size-fits-all conclusion whenever someone has health issues in childhood. It's also possible that Kennedy's running mate, billionaire Nicole Shanahan, will criticize the Walzes for conceiving their two children via intrauterine insemination, a fertility process similar to in vitro fertilization. For years, Shanahan has denounced IVF, calling it “one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today,” while advocating crackpot science to prolong women's fertility:
... she has also been a vocal proponent of and financial backer for unconventional research into the possibility of helping women having children into their 50s and exploring no-cost interventions to help women conceive, such as exposure to sunlight.Weird.
“I’m not sure that there has been a really thorough mitochondrial respiration study on the effects of two hours of morning sunlight on reproductive health. I would love to fund something like that,” Shanahan said at the 2023 panel that she had pledged to donate $100 million to the cause of “reproductive longevity.”
... The statement was met with chuckles, “Yeah, let’s do it,” she added. “I just have an intuition that could be interesting and maybe work.”
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