US Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday was not only a squalid, disgraceful performance of contempt, disrespect and mendacity. It revealed a lexicon of doubt and dogma reflecting RFK Jr’s long experience leading a band of naturopath fearmongers, supplement grifters and anti-establishment conspiracy theorists.
Trying to overlook how Kennedy was continuously lying, denying he had said things that were clearly recorded in news interviews, waffling, interrupting and provoking senators while refusing to answer basic questions, he employed a cunning precision of language directed to his MAHA base. As a trial lawyer, RFK Jr was taught to be precise with his vocabulary. Browsing through some of his MAHA army reactions on social media, they got his message loud and clear.
What are some examples from the RFK Jr “Grifter’s Lexicon?”
“They’re all lying to us!”
Kennedy used the “L” word so many times that even I began to doubt if anyone in government had integrity. Liars were everywhere, like CDC experts, the former boss of the CDC, Susan Monarez, whom he had fired for “being untrustworthy” after just one month in her post, and a large percentage of the scientific community. He painted a picture of some Big Pharma agenda where government scientists then push products while they “pretend it was science-based”.
Against this wall of mendacity, RFK Jr positions himself as the one person to stand up to defend the little guy who is paying the price of all of the lies and greed. During the testimony, Kennedy recounted how there was a paper that suggested how certain vaccines affected black babies differently, an argument Andrew Wakefield promotes, and CDC scientists were ordered, he claimed, to “kill the paper”. In the real world, scientific papers are not killed but evaluated for their quality, and those with weak methodologies and poor data are excluded or given less influence in the decision-making process. It is a basic step in any literature review, but for a conspiracy theorist like RFK Jr, this case was just one further example of government scientists lying to us (on behalf of Big Pharma).
In the Grifter’s Lexicon, anyone who speaks against RFK Jr is lying (and in the pocket of Big Pharma).
“They’re all captured by Big Pharma!”
When Senator Bernie Sanders tried to use a letter from the American Academy of Pediatrics that reacted strongly to RFK’s actions, he simply brushed them off claiming that all of their members, thousands of doctors and researchers, are captured by Big Pharma. Senator Sanders was astonished by this, then asking if everyone in this room, in Washington and in the medical community are in the pocket of Big Pharma. “Yes!” Kennedy exclaimed, adding afterwards, “Except me”. He also presents himself to his MAHA constituency as the only person in Washington who does not lie.
How does RFK Jr convince himself such claims are true? Any doctor who writes a prescription or administers a vaccine, must be captured by Big Pharma. Industry sponsors conferences they attend. They have probably been given free samples or received questionaires from researchers to follow up on drug developments. During the testimony, Kennedy regularly repeated this claim of captured doctors and scientists, interchanging the verbs: “coopted by Big Pharma” or “corrupted by Big Pharma”. This wasn’t just word vomit.
But the worst abusers are the politicians and regulatory scientists who seem to be bought and sold by Big Pharma on the daily. During Senator Elizabeth Warren’s questioning, Kennedy tried to interject how much she has received in Big Pharma campaign contributions but she wasn’t going to let him play that game. Argumentum ad hominem is a key tool in the activist playbook to avoid having to deal with any pesky facts.
Ten years ago, Kennedy’s crowd had advanced the argument that every single regulator and scientist was paid off by Monsanto to keep glyphosate on the market and killing Americans. RFK Jr still believes it and tends to overlook the millions he has earned from suing Monsanto, and later, Bayer. In the Grifter’s Lexicon, industry is evil, continuously lies and is only concerned with profits and poisoning children. Every religion or cult needs its source of evil, and industry has fit perfectly into the naturopath cult’s polemic.
Every time RFK Jr incants “Big Pharma'“, he lights up his base.
“My mailbag is bigger than yours!”
When Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, referenced the number of letters he had received from concerned constituents (patients, doctors and medical staff) about many of the decisions and policies of the HHS secretary, Kennedy merely replied that “my mailbag is bigger than yours”. For Kennedy, the thousands of letters from MAHA Moms, organized by social media attention hounds like Vani Hari or Zen Honeycutt, have a higher value than letters by medical practitioners (who, once again, have been bought off by Big Pharma).
This is a common tactic to avoid issues of facts and evidence by citing the number of petition signatories or letters as stronger than science or expert advice. Scientific facts are not democratic (you can’t vote on whether gravity works) unless you live in a world where the experts have all been discredited and fired (a process slowly unfolding at the HHS).
In another exchange, RFK Jr dispelled a scientific study, countering it with one that agreed with his personal views. Anti-vaxxers are regularly pumping out papers in predatory, pay-to-play journals so Kennedy feels confident that in a “my scientists versus your scientists” pissing contest, he has the higher ground (especially as he now controls NIH research funding).
Any scientific study that challenges him is tied to industry funding and threatening the health of Americans. The Grifter’s Lexicon has been expanded by what RFK Jr continuously refers to as “Gold Standard Science”. This is a clever term since it excludes any research with potential conflicts of interest (ie, every scientist except RFK’s friends … and, apparently, ChatGPT). But it also sets a few caveats (traps) that make evidence selective. A Whitehouse Executive Order sets impossible conditions on Gold Standard Science:
When using scientific information in agency decision-making, employees shall transparently acknowledge and document uncertainties, including how uncertainty propagates throughout any models used in the analysis.
Naturopaths, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists always rely on the “we just don’t know if it is safe” line to cast doubt on any medical or chemical product. Since you cannot prove with certainty that, for example, a vaccine is safe, it will not meet the definition of Gold Standard Science.
My science (that casts doubt) is better than your science (that tries to save lives).
“There is no reliable data”
This Grifter’s Lexicon line should be qualified: “There is no reliable data … unless the data confirms my agenda”. This is a key principle of activist science: start with the conclusion you want and then go back and find the data. RFK Jr started his testimony saying Americans are the sickest generation ever, with 76% suffering from some form of chronic illness. This claim from a study sounds terrifying, even when an activist says it, but the data needs qualifications (definition of chronic illness, aging populations, lifestyle issues…) that the HHS secretary chose to omit.
RFK also claimed that a greater percentage of Americans died from COVID-19 than in other countries (because Americans are far sicker). Interestingly, later in his testimony, Kennedy seemed to be arguing with himself, saying he did not know how many Americans had actually died from COVID-19 (because the data was so bad). Did the COVID vaccine make a difference? Once again, there is no good data available (because the CDC did not do its job). But the Health and Human Services secretary believes he has enough data to confidently claim that more people died from the mRNA vaccine than from COVID (because he read a report on the Stop World Control website - a literal one-stop shop for conspiracy paranoia).
For a grifter, data is there to manipulate to fit the agenda and Kennedy’s double-speak not only goes unnoticed by his followers, it rallies them.
During his testimony, Kennedy was voraciously defending a contractor he directed to work on the upcoming MAHA report on autism, despite his questionable credentials, explaining he is the only one who can access the real data (what the government has been hiding from us). RFK’s data will prove his agenda, but if it does not, he’ll either find other data or declare the data unreliable.
“Government agencies are all cesspools of corruption”
Conspiracy theorists always point to government complicity either for allowing the alleged conspiracy or leading it. So what happens when a conspiracy theorist suddenly finds himself in control of many important government agencies? Can he temper his contempt?
Into the eighth month of his post, RFK Jr admitted that he has not once visited the CDC headquarters in Atlanta. This is stunningly irresponsible, even if Kennedy feels, as he reconfirmed at this Senate hearing, that he thinks the CDC is the worst agency in America. He referred to it, at one time, as a “cesspool”.
This situation gets even more disturbing. On August 9, the day after an alleged vaccine-harmed gunman shot 500 rounds into the CDC’s Atlanta offices, killing a police officer, RFK Jr not only did not cut his fishing trip short to tend to this crisis, he also posted on X photos of the fish he had caught. No expression of “thoughts and prayers” for what had just happened to his employees or the family of the victim.
It comes as no surprise that the CDC staff have been speaking out against their boss, signing letters criticizing his behavior and cheering on their directors who publicly resigned in protest to RFK’s behavior.
Kennedy claimed at his testimony the CDC director was fired because, among other things, she was not going to fire a list of CDC staff. Kennedy is adamant that the only way he can “clean up” the agency that has “not been doing their job” is to fire them. In the Grifter’s Lexicon, this means he plans to shut the agency down.
Americans don’t need agencies full of scientists and experts to be healthy. All they need to do is eat organic, take a large number of supplements and buy suits that protect them from 5G and chemtrails. Everybody knows that … we have all those petitions and letters.