The Media Research Center has long been a defender of Robert Kennedy Jr. for being convenient to its dishonest “censorship” narrative as well as a foil to Joe Biden’s re-election prospects. With Kennedy fully assimilated into the Trump borg to the point that he was nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services, the MRC — as a key component of Trump Regime Media — is now obligated to defend him for the Regime the way it has defended fellow nominees Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard. Jorge Bonilla embraced the trolling aspect of it in a Nov. 15 post:
The Regime Media’s shift into Resistance mode continues apace. The major media outlets uniformly melted down over President Elect Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Robert F. Kennedy to lead the nation’s public health apparatus as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Watch as NBC’s Lester Holt attempts to convey concern over the selection of Kennedy:
[…]One does not recall “head-turning” being used as a descriptor for any of the Biden Administration’s nominees to the public health agencies. No one ever questioned the qualifications of former California congressman and Attorney General Xavier Becerra, save his wielding of the levers of government power in service of abortion.
That’s apparently a reference to the right-wing narrative that Becerra, as California attorney general, purportedly persecuted a religious order called the Little Sisters of the Poor over abortion exemptions — as we pointed out, Becerra sued the Trump administration, and the Little Sisters of the Poor later filed to intervene and chose to become a party to the suit — and prosecuting anti-abortion extremist David Daleiden for breaking the law by secretly taping Planned Parenthood officials in an attempt to try and destroy the organization under false pretenses.
Bonilla went on to whine that other newscasts featured the “vaccine stuff” — as if Kennedy’s denial of established science by spreading falsehood about vaccines is a minor manner for someone aspiring to be the nation’s top health official is a minor issue — further huffing: “All of the reports had a heavy dose of the vaccine stuff, but none featured Kennedy’s efforts with our food supply, and it’ll be curious to see whether they do so going forward. If today’s performance is ani [sic] indication, the media have learned nothing this past week.” But there’s no reason to bring up his food-supply activism if he can’t be trusted to follow the science on vaccines.
The same day, Curtis Houck gushed over his favorite CNN right-winger, Scott Jennings, trying to make a case for Kennedy:
CNN senior political commentator and possible future White House Press Secretary Scott Jennings entered into Thursday’s CNN NewsNight — which could easily be referred to as the Thunderdome — to do battle with liberal host Abby Phillip and a team of fellow progressives over the lack of trust in public health and President-Elect Trump’s choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
The opening segment largely centered around Kennedy’s controversial claims about vaccinations and autism (which the study often cited to support this having been debunked), including Georgia Republican-turned-Democrat Geoff Duncan huffing that “there’s really no good reason why” Kennedy “should be HHS secretary” given that he has “no managerial experience.”
[…]Former CNNer-turned-failed Democratic congressional candidate John Avlon tried to interject and blame Kennedy and Trump for why so many people died from COVID-19, leaving Jennings to school him and an interrupting Phillip on how America “was drug through a bunch of condescending and heavy-handed mandates” during the pandemic “that all turned out to be garbage”
[…]Jennings made clear he hasn’t been “suggesting that agencies should be done away with,” but rather “reformed for the purpose of increasing public trust.”
The condescending Phillip lectured Jennings with what seemed as though was a demand to never question public health experts because it’s dangerous.
Thankfully, Jennings clapped back that “the doubts in the public health regime in this country were not made up out of whole cloth” and the economic impacts of lockdowns were scarring for so many.
Despite Jennings saying he strongly supports vaccines, Phillip again demanded we Trust the Science and deemed questions about public health bad faith[.]
In a Nov. 17 post, Bonilla cheered Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s attempt to play a lame round of whataboutism with “Meet the Press” (or, as Bonilla sneered, “Meet The Depressed”) host Kristen Welker:
One of the narratives around the Trump Cabinet picks, certainly the unconventional ones, centers around qualifications and experience. Welker tried to run this play while discussing the Kennedy nomination to HHS. Mullin, the former MMA fighter, stuffed it like it was a single-leg takedown.
Welker was left sputtering after Mullin cited the examples of Assistant HHS Secretary Rachel Levine and Sam Brinton, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy. Contrary to her claims, there was no scrutiny of these administration picks, certainly none equivalent to what we are seeing with these Trump picks.
It is worth noting that media scrutiny of Kennedy is focused on his stances on vaccines, while completely ignoring his positions on food safety, which are the centerpiece of the Make America Healthy Again campaign. Time spent trying to gotcha GOP members of Congress on vaccines is time spent away from FD&C Yellow #5, Red #40, and seed oils.
Bonilla offered no evidence that the qualifications of Levine and Brinton needed to be questioned; his real problem is that Levine is transgender and Brinton liked to cross-dress.