This – you will note, was inevitable, no matter how easily it might well otherwise have been avoided. The MAGA movement has elements turning in on itself over President-elect Donald Trump nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the potential Secretary of Health and Human Services. The fight is circling around one of the very few issues that you would otherwise think is a deal-breaker, whether MAGA remains anti-abortion. Were that not enough, there is also a problem with RFJ Jr. supporting that whole “universal healthcare” thing, heretofore anathema to the Right. It is almost as if elements of all that’s “MAGA” are purely transactional with no inner conviction as to what they believe, almost like “If he’s our guy, it doesn’t really matter what else… ”
Erick Erickson has a long and troubled past as a Trump-supporter. Indeed, as one of the founders of “Redstate” – the right’s answer to many liberal blogs, he was one of the first “Never-Trumpers.” Yet by 2019 the “never” thing had gone out of style and Erickson came around. He is certainly pro-Trump and pro-MAGA now. Few are celebrating Donald Trump’s win with more gusto.
And yet Erickson has always been staunchly anti-choice, a position that had always been considered an entry-level requirement, it certainly was when it came to SCOTUS nominees. But that standard got in the way when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threatened Trump’s voting bloc such that MAGA had to subsume RFK Jr. for electoral safety. In doing so, knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or not – it also took in Kennedy’s staunch abortion advocacy with a dash of universal healthcare thrown in.
To the extent that MAGA wants to hold its ears and pretend that everything is just fine so long as Dr. Fauci eventually gets “owned,” Erick is here to rip that scab open and force the community to deal with what the nomination means. As he said during his broadcast yesterday (Below) and in an email to supporters covered by JoeMyGod, Erickson wants the Senate to block RFK’s nomination and did not hold anything back:
“There are plenty of individuals as committed as Kennedy to making America healthy again, without the world view of a privileged, hedonistic, serial adulterer, abortion advocate whose overall world view is progressivism tinged with hedonistic contrarianism. Kennedy is not a skeptic. He is a professional contrarian. His views on vaccines overall are not grounded in science. He has repeatedly been caught lying about vaccines and medicines to advance his views.
Now that is almost quaint. It truly is grounded in concerns that Kennedy may not be quite accurate on certain topics, may not beholden to scientific truth. And that will happen when someone with no medical training whatsoever tries to tell the world’s leading immunologists how to vaccinate the public, never mind how to provide a safe food supply. (As an aside, no one is arguing that big-Corp – big Ag doesn’t have a major major major health problem in food production, indeed – it is actually good to have that conversation. But as Erickson notes, let’s have it with someone who is trained to actually see what it is Big-Ag is getting away with, and where the real problems lie).
But then Erickson got personal because, well – because RFK is truly a terrible person if any of the below is true:
“Kennedy is not just a progressive pro-abortionist. He is also not a good person. His sexual escapades are widely attributing to his second wife’s breakdown and ultimately to her suicide. Before she hanged herself, Kennedy’s wife found his journal documenting his sexual escapades with 37 women.
It actually goes on even further but I’m going to hold up right here because it’s impossible for us to verify exactly what Kennedy did – we can only see the fight as it plays out in front of us. We don’t need to get further into what appears to be a gut-wrenching personal tragedy of the most extreme type. We cannot put a former spouse’s death squarely on RFK without verified facts from other sources. We can see what some in the MAGA movement are saying and doing in considering the pick.
Given that Donald Trump chose to nominate Matt Gaetz, the fact that a nomination will be scandalous must not restrain anything. But again, you might think that the abortion issue – along with a Health and Human Services Secretary that advocates for universal healthcare – would be a big red line. Perhaps it is for some – see Erickson. But his post below garnered a ton of vitriol in response:
At their own risk. Fuck around and get primaried
— FudgeTosser (@FudgeTosser) November 18, 2024
The above is merely demonstrative of many others – all basically saying that it is not their issue. All of them dumping on Erickson – very few supporting his point about abortion, though I did find one out of fairness:
Erick calls them as he sees them – fairly rare these days. It is a point that merits debate. Perhaps RFKJr should run a division at HHS to reimagine health, while leaving the rest to a proven conservative administrator of large organizations.
— Mike Paranzino (@mikeparanzino) November 18, 2024
This is what happens when a movement is so transactional as to have few real principles with which it simply won’t break. There are plenty of health “skeptics” (To put it with extreme charity) who would otherwise have argued MAGA’s views on public health while remaining staunchly anti-abortion. But none of those people had the ability to poach 10-20% of the vote out from under Donald Trump. But RFK Jr. did have that ability and so accommodations had to be made.
To the extent that they are beginning to turn on each other, it is telling to see the people who do remain “loyal” to certain principles – whether we hate them or not – versus loyalty to the movement itself as the only principle. When a key Trump cabinet member can support liberal pro-choice policies while also advocating for universal healthcare, and doing so as a particularly repugnant character – it says a lot about what the movement stands for.
Itself. Nothing more.
God Bless:Â I can be reachdd at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak and on Blue Sky @jasonmiciak.bsky.social
Seems like the words “serial adulterer and hedonist” apply to others as well. What about the resident-elect?
An engima, isn’t it? One doesn’t even have to write it, now. Baked in.
jason
“(As an aside, no one is arguing that big-Corp – big Ag doesn’t have a major major major health problem in food production, indeed – it is actually good to have that conversation. But as Erickson notes, let’s have it with someone who is trained to actually see what it is Big-Ag is getting away with, and where the real problems lie).”
Oh, please. Erickson isn’t the least bit concerned with getting “someone who is trained to actually see what it is Big-Ag is getting away with” or those “real problems.” Erickson’s choice is going to be someone who’s just as beholden to the interests of “Big-Ag” as every other GOP administration (including Trump’s LAST administration) has been. I mean, Trump’s previous head of HHS was Alex Azar (who had been with Eli Lilly before eventually being tapped for HHS and, during his time at that company, he never once turned down an opportunity to raise insulin prices).
I was only saying that the discussion might be worthwhile, not that Erickson or Trump were the people to lead it – nor Kennedy, obviously.
jason