Thanks to the fact that his wife is crooked too, he won’t have to report to prison until June. The judge wanted him to be able to attend her trial. That’s more generous than I would have been. Any day this guy spends walking free between now and the day he dies is an undeserved gift. He already got to walk free after that hung jury in a completely separate trial in 2017.
And Sen. Warren…
And Sen. Warnock (who i’m still pissed off at)…
Tap here for comic relief!
This was supposed to be his moment of redemption, his big I’m-not-actually-insane speech. Instead, it turned into a political demolition derby featuring protesters screaming that he was a liar and a killer, Bernie Sanders interrogating him about baby clothes, Elizabeth Warren asking if he planned to run HHS like a side hustle, and a surreal moment where Kennedy had to confirm that he probably said Lyme disease was a military bioweapon. By the end of the day, Capitol Police had forcibly removed more people from the chamber than a dive bar on St. Patrick’s Day.
Kennedy barely got through his opening statement before a woman exploded from the gallery like a jack-in-the-box filled with rage and science degrees.
“YOU LIE!” she screamed, holding up a sign that read VACCINES SAVE LIVES before being swiftly tackled and dragged out by Capitol Police.
Kennedy blinked rapidly, which is how you know he was hearing the voice of the worm that used to live in his brain whispering, Abort mission, Bobby. Abort mission.
A brief moment of peace settled over the room, and then it happened again.
“YOU’RE KILLING PEOPLE!” another protester howled, launching into a full-body rage spiral before security carried her out, legs kicking, like a screaming suitcase with opinions.
Kennedy took a deep breath and tried to regain his footing, but Senator Ron Wyden had been waiting for this moment like a prosecutor with a personal vendetta.
“Are you lying to us, Mr. Kennedy?” Wyden snapped, staring daggers at him.
Kennedy forced a nervous smile, but it came out looking like he’d just been told he had to fight a horse for a parking spot.
“That claim has been repeatedly debunked,” he said, attempting to sound reasonable despite an entire room full of people who were watching YouTube compilations of him saying the exact opposite.
Wyden wasn’t buying it.
“You signed a petition to restrict access to the COVID vaccine. Did you or did you not?”
Kennedy mumbled something about the petition being “misrepresented” as the air in the room thickened with sweat, bad decisions, and organic supplements.
Wyden was gearing up for a finishing blow when another protester detonated like a landmine.
“YOU’RE A FRAUD!” she shrieked as security dragged her away in a full-body lock.
Even the cops looked exhausted now.
Then came Bernie Sanders, a man who has not been in the mood for nonsense since 1972.
“Are you supportive of these baby onesies?” he demanded.
The room froze.
Kennedy’s brain crashed like a Windows 98 PC.
“Excuse me?”
Sanders lifted a printed-out photo of a baby bodysuit covered in anti-vaccine slogans.
“These are being sold by the Children’s Health Defense, the organization you founded.”
Kennedy looked like he had just accidentally eaten a ghost pepper and was trying to play it cool.
“I—I don’t have oversight over that organization anymore,” he mumbled.
Sanders cracked his knuckles like a man ready to fistfight a CEO and leaned in.
“Are you supportive of these onesies?”
Kennedy started sweating through his suit.
Laughter rippled through the room. A Republican senator actually covered his face.
Kennedy, now looking desperate for a fire alarm to pull, tried to pivot to his real passion: banning corn syrup.
Sanders wasn’t having it.
Then Elizabeth Warren took the mic, radiating pure prosecutorial energy.
“Will you commit to not taking money from pharmaceutical companies while serving as Secretary of Health?” she asked, in the tone of a woman who already knew the answer but was going to enjoy watching him squirm.
Kennedy grinned like a dog that just chewed up your furniture and is hoping you’ll laugh it off.
“I don’t think they’d want to give me money,” he chuckled.
Warren did not chuckle.
“Will you commit to not profiting from lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies while serving as HHS Secretary?”
Kennedy froze.
The color drained from his face.
“You’re asking me not to sue drug companies?” he said, voice rising.
“No, I’m not going to agree to that.”
Warren’s eyes gleamed like a hawk spotting a wounded rabbit.
“So you’ll be suing the same companies you’re supposed to regulate?”
Kennedy looked like he wanted to melt into his chair.
Then came Michael Bennet, a man who had been waiting patiently to drop a grenade into Kennedy’s lap.
"Did you say that Lyme disease was a militarily engineered bioweapon?” Bennet asked, deadpan.
Kennedy hesitated.
“I probably said that.”
The audience gasped.
Bennet cocked an eyebrow.
“Did you say that pesticides turn children transgender?”
Kennedy turned bone white.
“I don’t recall saying that.”
Bennet’s lip twitched.
“But you do recall saying Lyme disease was a bioweapon?”
Kennedy looked like he had been hit by a tranquilizer dart.
Even the Republican senators were staring at their desks, avoiding eye contact.
The hearing finally adjourned, but Kennedy is not in the clear yet.
His next grilling is scheduled for tomorrow, and there’s no telling how much worse it can get.
His opponents smell blood. His supporters are already crafting conspiracy theories about the deep state.
And if the vote ends in a deadlock, Vice President JD Vance will cast the deciding vote.
Yes, JD Vance—the political equivalent of a wet cardboard box—will determine if a man once partially controlled by a brain parasite will run America’s health system.
The nation waits in suspense. Pass the whiskey.
Step aside you fucking twit.
She doesn’t get one simple fact.
HE
DOESN’T
CARE
Jesus, still?! The only “common ground” you’re going to have is the ground the Republicans decide to bury you in. FIGHT BACK. If not for your constituents, for your own life. How can they not realize what awaits them?
They did, after their press conference this morning. They were denied entry.
https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/democrats-usaid-building-house-senate-protest
It took less than a week for, once again, the hard-right GOPers in the House to unravel the deal. They want more spending cuts, and Johnson has agreed to them, even though he knows that’ll sink any plan with the whole GOP caucus because, as Politico reports, there’s a portion of Republicans, in competitive districts, who are “wary of deep cuts to safety-net programs” and can’t afford to vote for them (and in fact, as I posted earlier, helped transmit opposition to Trump’s spending freeze for that precise reason.)
Remember, in a few days, the Republicans are going to have a 217-215 majority in the House. They need all the GOP to stick together, or they give away their leverage to the Democrats.
Meanwhile, the Senate is still saying only go for a smaller bill, one that leaves the tax cuts off the table for now, and they’re getting some support from other House Republicans, not part of this super-hard-right crew.
And, last, the Democrats are beginning to say louder and louder that if Trump wants their support to increase the debt ceiling in March, which he needs, Musk is going to have to go. They’re threatening to lose the leverage they have, which is considerable, given the hostility of some Republicans to increasing the debt ceiling at all.
Now, I should say here that Nathan Tankus, who is a very smart analyst of what Musk is doing, thinks hitting the debt ceiling may be just the thing that Trump needs in order to justify what Musk is doing, i.e., getting control over the deep financial data. This gets a bit above my pay grade, and involves all sorts of constitutional, legal, and budgetary questions that I’m not really sure about. But I’ll try to put all the relevant articles in the threads, so you can decide for yourselves.
In the meantime, I by no means think this is all over, and urge us to keep our eye on the various balls in the air.
A strongly worded letter in the form of a press conference…
