He lied and obfuscated and shouted
I’m no political expert, but I’ve lived inside the Beltway for the last 30+ years, worked briefly on the Hill as a mere child, and have had a backseat to a lot of what DC has to offer—I don’t think I’ve ever had a political experience quite like the RFKjr hearing today.
I couldn’t take a lot of photos because I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to kick me out for causing a disruption. Clips you may have seen on TV cannot possibly recreate the sheer extended bizarreness, dystopia, and surrealism of this event.
RFKjr has absolutely no respect for anyone at all, not even for FOTUS, the hand that feeds him. He is hell-bent on destroying medical research and scientific standards because, I suspect, his ego has been bruised by folks who’ve actually spent time, energy and effort studying, writing and practicing medicine or microbiology or organic chemistry or genomics. He’s using DHHS as his revenge tour.
He lied and obfuscated and shouted and told other people they were liars and confabulists and fearmongers. He called female senators “hysterical.” Unlike some other politicians who are masters of dissembling, he’s like a feral cat forced into a basket that jumps and yowls and scratches at the slightest provocation. No ability to keep his composure.
I often joke that, due to all Rob’s medical interventions, “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Well RFKjr couldn’t even play one on TV.
I couldn’t tell if he had any grip on reality, or if he had an actual brain condition that affected his short term memory and his cognitive filtering.
He claimed he never said things he’d just said 10 minutes earlier. He doesn’t seem to understand the job of being a cabinet secretary. He seems to think that anyone can get a Covid vaccine who wants one and said they were free. He doesn’t appear to grasp that when the CDC, on his orders, does not “recommend” the vaccine for people under 65 that that, in fact, prevents people from accessing the vaccine. When pressed, he told one senator that of course the vaccine was available to all Americans should they choose to have it, but that, no, he was not going to “recommend” a “product” that he didn’t believe in. Dude—you aren’t a spokesmodel for tanning beds or cleanses—you’re the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. You have the power to make rules and also to destroy stuff. He claimed no money had been cut from Medicaid—that the U.S. was pouring money into it.
He behaved like a person who didn’t, as he told Congress during his confirmation hearing, just want to allow more freedom of choice with vaccines—his words, tone, body language and pugilistic demeanor made it clear to all that he wants to force his own uninformed beliefs on the rest of us, whether we like it or not.
Great choice for the job, yeah?
Apparently at yesterday’s meeting even Republican Senators were getting pissed at him. Of course it was perfectly predictable how he would “perform” his duties, but with a couple of exceptions they voted for him anyway, so I have no sympathy for them now.
On a related note, if you haven’t seen it, Florida’s surgeon general says that vaccine mandates are just like slavery.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/09/03/florida-vaccine-mandates-ended/
Count me as angry at Danielle Smith, the premier of Alberta.
Covid vaccines are no longer free here.
I hope she dies slowly & painfully from Covid.
I understand the frustration at such an awful move by the premier of Alberta, but I’m not as kind as to wish death on her. I’d rather hope that she contracts a very nasty strain, gets extremely ill indeed, but survives to spend the rest of her life with M.E. and has to be highly dependent on others for everything.
Watch carefully. You are watching a country — a whole civilization, even — falling apart.
Watching it, breathing it, living it.
A rapidly creeping collapse of everything.
Paul Krugman has an interesting, and horrifying, talk with two scientists, Peter Hotez, a vaccine specialist, and Michael Mann, a climatologist, on the attacks on vaccines and what is happening with the climate, on his substack:
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/science-under-siege-a-talk-with-peter
They discuss, among other things, how big money and cynical politics have created the monster whereby if you decide that climate change is a hoax, you also believe that vaccines are dangerous and an attack on your personal freedom, and vice versa. I had often wondered why there is this nexus of ridiculous beliefs that those on the extreme right (including a Trump-supporting American academic I am acquainted with here in Japan) feel they have to espouse. I think the answer is rather well explained in this discussion.
Tim Harris, it’s sort of like on the left, as well. If you are progressive, you are expected to have approved views on gender identity, on Gaza, and so on.
Everything seems to contain a purity clause these days. I don’t plan to buy into that. I reserve the right to make independent decisions about independent issues, without being told what I must think. I can accept the science behind global warming, without buying into the TWAW nonsense. (Now that I think of it, that means I am going for science in both cases…perhaps I do have some consistency, even if not purity.)
I subscribe to the Fall of Civilisations podcast. They release episodes sporadically and the last one was December. I’m beginning to think that the next episode is our civilisation and they’re waiting to see how it goes before releasing it.