Is anybody shocked that Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are the top scalps the Democrats want to take?

Each of them presents a threat to the money and power centers the Democrats rely on to bully Americans and make big bucks. Gaetz will come down like a ton of bricks on the growing Stasi in the Justice Department, Gabbard will eviscerate the worst elements of our "intelligence community," and RFK Jr. is a threat to the big money raked in by Big Pharma and Big Food. 

Throw in Pete Hegseth, a threat to the military-industrial complex, and the transnational elite are running scared and looking for ways to fight back. 

“Democratic-aligned health care advocacy groups are putting together a strategy to fight Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be HHS secretary.”

Translation: Big Pharma and Big Food are spending big bucks to fight what I suspect is a futile fight. https://t.co/FN5rNCQqxg

— IT Guy (@ITGuy1959) November 19, 2024

POLITICO ran a story about a "war room" being set up by Democrat-aligned "health care advocacy groups" determined to smear RFK Jr. and block his appointment. 

Democratic-aligned health care advocacy groups are putting together a strategy to fight Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to be HHS secretary.

During an organizing call on Monday, the details of which have not been reported publicly, more than 200 people from several dozen of those groups, along with other advocacy organizations, discussed strategies to oppose Kennedy’s nomination. That included which Republican senators to target and the most effective way to talk to them, according to Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care.

“We’re nowhere near conceding he’s going to be the next HHS secretary,” he said.

On the call, Woodhouse’s organization launched a new “Stop RFK War Room” effort focused on persuading not only GOP moderates like Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, but others like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who survived polio, or Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is up for reelection in 2026. Normally, the group would be prioritizing its lame duck work, but it sees Kennedy as such a serious threat that it’s starting now and delaying its lame duck work until after Thanksgiving, Woodhouse said.

A few years ago, I might have been sympathetic to attacks on RFK Jr.'s "conspiracy theories," but in the wake of COVID-19, I have revised my opinions considerably. While I never took the word of Big Pharma without skepticism, I never would have imagined that a "science"-based industry would conspire against the American people for profit. I figured they spun things in such a way that they could make more money, but would avoid consciously doing any harm to people. 

No matter how cynical I am, it's not cynical enough. 

My new article with @KevinBardosh in @unherd. The medical establishment lost public trust over its covid failure. Now it smears @RobertKennedyJr because he threatens their interests. They should instead support reform to make medicine trustworthy again.https://t.co/BdL4XF2WsT

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) November 16, 2024

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, I started revising my opinions as I saw the most anti-science rhetoric and policies I could imagine. By the end of March 2020, I realized we were being gaslit, and by 2021, I saw that Big Pharma and Big Government were colluding to force Americans to accept terrible damage to expand their money and power. 

RFK Jr. may or may not be right about all his theories, but he is arguing something so obvious as to be uncontroversial in other matters: if you want to subject people to procedures in medicine, you should prove they are safe and effective; if you want to put things in food you should do the same. The presumption should be that unknown substances might cause unknown harm, not the other way around. 

There is a way to find out what is safe and what isn't, and what works and what doesn't: run experiments that are well designed by people without a dog in the hunt, and we don't do that now. And, whatever the cause, Americans clearly have not been getting healthier and nobody in our government has seemed curious about that. 

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of my favorite public figures, defended RFK Jr. against the smears directed at him. While not endorsing all of his theories, Bhattacharya made this essential point:

The rot, having accumulated over decades, was plain for all to see. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose annual budget is $45 billion, orchestrated under the leadership of Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci a massive suppression of scientific debate and research. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) exaggerated risk and issued policy guidance with little evidence in support of unprecedented vaccine mandates. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry meant vaccines and therapeutics were approved with little to no evidence, sometimes based on faulty modelling. And the Biden administration pushed all of this with orchestrated PR campaigns, spreading falsehoods and misinformation.

Clearly, the status quo is no longer tenable. Trust in American physicians and hospitals dropped from 71% to 40% between 2020 and 2024, according to a July study in JAMA. A Covid-era political realignment facilitated Trump’s electoral win last week, with a coalition that included disenchanted Left-liberals who rejected the centralised power of scientific bureaucrats and found an ally in Kennedy. Yet the officials continue to deny their own culpability, avoiding a long look in the mirror.

Kennedy can be that mirror. A successful environmental lawyer and erstwhile darling of the centre-left — so much so that Barack Obama floated him to lead the Environmental Protection Agency in 2008 — he is the most high-profile figure to tackle these problems head-on. His rebranding of MAGA to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) can carry broad appeal for Americans.

We need somebody at the Department of Health and Human Services who is clearly on our side, because the current crop of "leaders" clearly are not. For all the critiques of RFK Jr. being hostile to The Science™, more often than not in recent years The Science™ has deserved every bit of the skepticism aimed at it. 

The Science™ is not scientific; it is politics clothed in the appearance of science. 

America needs disruptors now, desperately. The current system has failed spectacularly, and Americans rightly don't trust the people in charge. The current crop of elites is falling back on totalitarian techniques such as censorship, propaganda, and smears. They wil try to deploy all three against Trump and RFK Jr., and the media will cooperate happily. 

I don't think it will work this time. Even with a well-funded "war room." That was the technique that they tried to sell Kamala to us with. 

It's time for them to go and to install Trump's Dream Team, which I hope includes Bhattacharya.