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Delaware MAGA Group Aiding RFK Jr. On Ballot Access

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scrambling to get on the 2024 ballot in enough states before a critical deadline. And in at least one state, he's counting on former President Donald Trump's loudest supporters to reach his goal.

The Daily Beast reported recently that in President Joe Biden's longtime home of Delaware, the Kennedy campaign has been in close contact with the Independent Party of Delaware (IPD), which has the ability to put its own candidate on the First State's presidential ballot this fall. At least one member of the IPD's leadership was in Washington during the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

"So I was there Jan 6th," tweeted Phil Dyer, who is vice chairman of the Independent Party of Delaware, in 2022. "I left after hearing Trump because everything was peaceful. Never thought he made any threats. Never thought the Capitol would be stormed." And earlier this year, Dyer tweeted excitedly about "Jan 6 part 2."

In addition to Dyer, others in party leadership are also hard-right Trump supporters. Chairman Donald Ayotte has insisted publicly that the 2020 presidential election was stolen by Democrats despite ample evidence disproving that claim. IPD treasurer Kathy DeMatteis has tweeted similar sentiments.

As the Beast reported, RFK Jr.'s entreaties to MAGA don't start and end with his IPD outreach. In May, the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and Democratic political scion spoke in New York at an event hosted by a group with deep MAGA ties. The Constitutional Coalition of New York State, which hosted the event, has also dabbled heavily in propagating the Big Lie (that Trump is supposedly the rightful president).

RFK Jr.'s MAGA alliances are likely an thorn in the side of the former president, who has publicly attacked the independent candidate after polls suggested he had appeal to Republicans. In a post to his Truth Social account, Trump told his millions of followers that a vote for RFK Jr. would be a "wasted protest vote."

"His Views on Vaccines are FAKE, as is everything else about his Candidacy," Trump wrote in April. "Let the Democrats have RFK Jr. They deserve him!"

The RFK Jr. campaign is trying to get ballot access in enough states in order to meet CNN's qualifications to appear onstage at the network's June 27 presidential debate alongside President Joe Biden and Trump. The network is requiring that Kennedy get on enough ballots in enough states whose Electoral College votes add up to at least 270, and has a deadline of June 20 to qualify. Kennedy also has to register 15% support among voters in at least four national polls, which he has also not done.

The Associated Press reported last week that while Kennedy claims that he's on enough ballots to meet the threshold, his petition signatures have not yet been certified in several states. The campaign said that it had qualified for 19 state ballots constituting 278 total electoral votes, though CNN said it won't consider states that haven't certified his petition signatures.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kennedy Can't Resist The Adulation Of His True Political Base: Online Cranks

Robert F Kennedy, Jr. cannot help himself. In his quixotic bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, he initially sought to distance himself from the 15-year crusade against vaccines that has defined him as a public figure. But this week he reverted to form, making outrageous claims during a panel discussion that he convened with fellow antivaxers and advertised on his campaign channels.

“I do not believe that infectious disease is an enormous threat to human health,” Kennedy said on the livestream, a bold statement in the wake of more than a million excess deaths in the US in its first two years. Kennedy also pledged to target medical journals and defund epidemiology if elected, according to Rolling Stone.

And that was just the beginning.

He falsely claimed that vaccine research created HIV, the Spanish flu, and Lyme disease. He has previously insinuated that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, and that the only reason all reputable scientists think it does is because his nemesis, White House covid czar, Anthony Fauci nixed funding for research into alternative theories.

When Kennedy threw his hat into the ring, many observers were surprised that his campaign website was silent on the vaccine issue, as the candidate sought to rebrand himself as a normal Democrat who criticizes corporate power while reminding boomers of his dead relatives.

The reputational rehab was never going to be easy.

Kennedy made his name as an antivaxer by doggedly promoting the debunked link between vaccines and autism. The pandemic dramatically raised Kennedy’s profile as an opponent of public health measures and vaccine mandates. He published a bestselling book that spins an elaborate and baseless conspiracy theory about how Fauci knowingly denied Americans access to effective covid treatments because the vaccine couldn’t be authorized if treatments were available. In fact, Kennedy’s pet therapies were tested and found worthless and had there been an effective drug treatment for covid, it would have made no effect on the vaccine’s approval process.

Vanity Fair dubbed him “the antivax icon of America’s nightmares.” A well-earned moniker, given that Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the most influential antivax group in the country. CHD stoked panic about the measles vaccine in Samoa and helped cause an outbreak that killed about 50 babies and toddlers.

During the pandemic, Kennedy became notorious for likening vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. Kennedy is also a prolific spreader of conspiracy theories, including the rumor that 5G networks are being used to “harvest our data and control our behavior.” What’s more, former Donald Trump advisor Steven Bannon keeps bragging about how he convinced Kennedy to run to spread the antivax gospel.

Despite his aspirations to court normie Democrats, Kennedy can’t resist the adulation of his real base – online cranks.

The pandemic made Kennedy a superstar on the right and he prefers the fawning attention of conspiracy-minded podcaster Joe Rogan to the slightly tougher questions of the beltway media. Kennedy’s antivax antics on the campaign trail ramped up sharply after his appearance on Rogan’s show. The candidate also got drawn into a bizarre harassment campaign of vaccine scientist Peter Hotez, who declined to debate Kennedy on Rogan’s show, on the grounds any debate with Kennedy would devolve into the Jerry Springer Show. Billionaires like Elon Musk rushed in to defend Kennedy and smear Hotez. Hotez was deluged with abuse online and antivax YouTubers even showed up at his home.

This week Kennedy got the band back together, convening a panel on public health featuring some of the antivax movement’s most notorious figures, which he promoted through official campaign channels. Kennedy’s guests included fellow members of the Disinformation Dozen, a rogues gallery that’s collectively responsible for the majority of online antivax content. One of his guests, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, testified before the Ohio state legislature that Covid vaccines make people magnetic and create “5G interfaces” to link our bodies to cellular networks.

"You can put a key on their forehead, it sticks,” Tenpenny told Ohio legislators in 2021, “You can put spoons and forks all over and they can stick because now we think there is a metal piece to that."

Perhaps Kennedy is returning to his antivax roots because the rest of his program is at odds with the Democratic base. He rejects common sense gun reform and instead blames school shootings on antidepressants; he dismisses US defense aid to Ukraine as a NATO proxy war against Russia; he refuses to criticize Donald Trump and says he’s proud the former president likes him.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

It Is Fauci's Accusers -- Not The Good Doctor -- Who Are Guilty

Good-bye, Dr. Fauci. You did your job while under attack from the worst sort of people.

You devoted more than 50 years to public health. As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, you led us through HIV/AIDS, Ebola, COVID, respiratory syncytial virus and, every year, seasonal flu.

You say your "proudest moment" was your work with President George W. Bush on the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. PEPFAR is credited with having saved 20 million lives. (START ITAL)Twenty million lives.

That doesn't include the lives saved from your work in the late '70s and early '80s developing treatments for inflammatory and autoimmune-related diseases. Several that would have previously been death sentences are now in high remission.

And there was, of course, your guidance on dealing with COVID-19. Many who followed your advice during the initial outbreak with hand-washing, mask-wearing and social distancing are alive because of it. Many who mocked you are not.

When the COVID vaccine came along, you never tired of urging Americans to obtain it. Over a million Americans died from COVID, but an estimated 234,000 of those deaths could have been prevented if everyone had gotten their shots.

We wonder how many people died because Donald Trump and assorted lowlifes downplayed the disease, peddled phony cures and cast doubts on the vaccine. They may have had fun owning the libs, but they were also killing many of their followers. Why was never clear.

The sickest abuse came from the senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, who perversely accused you of being responsible for millions of deaths. When you told a Senate hearing that this claim led to threats against you and your family, Paul looked back blankly.

Brooklyn tough, you never backed down. That you served seven presidents from both parties didn't impress the jerks. You let the barrage of boobery splatter all around you as you went about your mission.

But let's give a respectful hearing to the argument that your recommendations caused harm by hurting the economy. Certainly, the social isolation tied to the shutdowns created its own problems.

I, for one, thought that once a vaccine became widely available, many places stayed closed longer than necessary. Schools, especially, could have resumed in-person learning sooner than they did.

But these decisions were made mostly by state and local governments, not you. Meanwhile, fear of a disease that spread easily, clogged emergency rooms with dying patients and left many of those afflicted with long-time illness was itself enough to empty stores, theaters and libraries.

Your harshest critics clearly didn't share the value you place on life. You said your saddest period was back in the '80s when you were treating people with HIV/AIDS and there was no effective therapy.

"We were taking care of very sick, mostly young gay men who were healthy," you said in a recent interview. "You see every single one of them dying or going to die soon." All medicine could offer back then was comfort.

Approaching your 82nd birthday and about to leave public service, you still can't take your eyes off current and new threats.

"We can do things that are very important to mitigate against at least two of them," you said. That would be COVID and seasonal flu. As we know, there are vaccines for both of them.

We know your first name is Anthony, but you can't blame us for thinking it's "Doctor." And, by the way, you looked great on your farewell interviews.

When the documentaries, movies and operas are written about the COVID era, you will be portrayed as the hero and those who attacked you as creeps. Where should we put your monument?

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Fed Pick Moore ‘Joked’ About AIDS, Mangled Corpses, And Abused Wife

Stephen Moore, Trump’s recent choice for the Federal Reserve Board, is unbelievably unqualified. He’s also a repugnant person who makes light of AIDS, “jokes” about threatening his kids with pictures of mangled bodies, and more.

Vetting is not the strong suit of the Trump administration, but Moore is an especially bad candidate. The most recent skeletons in his closet weren’t even terribly well-hidden. Back in 2003 and 2004, Moore wrote what he clearly thought were humorous columns for National Review Online. They were anything but.

In his 2003 column, a mock family Christmas letter, he “joked” that he toilet-trained his son by putting a photograph of Hillary Clinton in the toilet, resulting in his son achieving “perfect accuracy.”

Regarding his older sons, he explained that his “ingenious child-rearing technique” for them included posting pictures of the mutilated bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons and telling them “this is what happens to kids that grow up to be Democrats.” Hilarious.

In that same letter, he also managed to throw in a gratuitous insult against French men, saying that they all need a few extra doses of testosterone. This is what passed for conservative humor in the era of “Freedom Fries.”

The 2004 version of the family Christmas letter wasn’t any better. There, he said his family was “devastated” to learn his toddler, David, had low muscle tone, saying the doctor “might as well have told us that he has AIDS.”

Another thigh-slapper: a “joke” that another of his children wrote an essay proposing to “round up all blue state liberals, sterilize them, disenfranchise them, and place them into reeducation internment camps.”

These columns are entirely in keeping with Moore’s behavior elsewhere. He also makes racist “jokes” and kisses women without their permission. He’s a tax cheat, he doesn’t pay his child support, and he subjected his ex-wife to so much psychological abuse she fled their home.

Moore has no qualifications whatsoever that justify putting him on the Fed. He’s even admitted he doesn’t understand what the job entails. All he’s got is a cruel streak a mile wide.

No wonder Trump likes him so much.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Delaware MAGA Group Aiding RFK Jr. On Ballot Access

Kennedy Can't Resist The Adulation Of His True Political Base: Online Cranks

It Is Fauci's Accusers -- Not The Good Doctor -- Who Are Guilty

Fed Pick Moore ‘Joked’ About AIDS, Mangled Corpses, And Abused Wife

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