Tag Archives: Donald Trump

The new White House ballroom won’t cost taxpayers anything. That is, as long as you don’t value the east wing. Or, Surprise! Trump lied.

23 Oct

Yes, this is a different topic than typical for this blog. But, let’s consider a simple and obvious lie by our president: the

As is typical for this president, this project involves multiple lies. Here are but two. First, the White House would not be changed itself. Just added to. As noted in a recent PBS (yay, PBS. You guys rock) article:

The president and his chief spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said over the summer that the White House itself would remain intact as the ballroom was going up.

“It’ll be near it but not touching it,” Trump said. “Nothing will be torn down,” Leavitt added.

Near but not touching. Yeah. From the same PBS article, here’s a photograph showing demolition of the East Wing of the White House

Also from the PBS article is a statement that the project wasn’t supposed to cost any money.

Trump says the project will be paid for with private donations and that no public money will be spent on the ballroom. 

I will try to find the exact wording, but, yes, we taxpayers are paying for the project. The East Wing is an asset of the people. Our property. Demolishing it is a cost. Plain and simple.

Also plain and simple: Trump lied. Not surprising. But he lied. Imagine if any other president, especially a Democrat, had torn down part of the White House without plans or discussion. Let’s make the usual comparison: Obama wore a tan suit and conservatives and conservative media couldn’t stop criticizing it. The demolition of the East Wing isn’t even on the front page of Fox News as I type this. Which is to point out–they aren’t journalists. They are cheerleaders.

But the failings of Fox News isn’t the point here. Just an observation. Our president lies. Lies repeatedly. To the detriment of Americans. If you think this is OK…well, you are wrong. Let’s just say it bluntly.

By Matt Carey

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Want the Nobel Prize for Warp Speed, Mr. Trump? Fire Kennedy.

6 Sep

The same people who might value your efforts with Operation Warp Speed will also be able to do the simple math in their heads that says Mr. Kennedy’s approach is going to kill people.

Mr. Trump, there is a lot of chatter about you wanting the Nobel Peace Prize. OK, I know you’ve publicly stated you don’t want it, but just in case that’s just you being modest, let’s assume you actually do.

Even Robert Kennedy, a man with few to no good words to offer on vaccines, stated publicly that he believes you should get the Prize. Which may make you think, “good guy, Bobby. He’s going to help me get that Prize!”

Well…not so much. You may be thinking that I’ll point out the fact that Mr. Kennedy, as Senator Cassidy pointed out, says things like, “the vaccine killed more people than COVID”. You may be thinking that I’ll point out that he is likely getting people to generate “gold-standard science” that will claim the vaccine doesn’t work and kills people. Which he probably is doing.

Nope. Here’s an even bigger point I want to make: Mr. Kennedy’s policies are taking America back to a time when children die of vaccine preventable diseases. For example, we just had a large outbreak of measles, and Mr. Kennedy’s response was so lackluster that it certainly was a factor in how long it lasted. Two American children died. Needlessly. I called that outbreak “large”. It is nothing compared to what is in store for America under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership. Florida is moving to removing vaccine mandates for schoolchildren. That will lead to larger outbreaks. And not just among children. Florida is a state with a large retiree population.

The same people who might value your efforts with Operation Warp Speed will also be able to do the simple math in their heads that says Mr. Kennedy’s approach is going to kill people.

My guess is that if Mr. Kennedy is already telling you in private: “Solving the ‘autism epidemic’ will be even bigger than Operation Warp Speed. They will have to give you the Nobel then.” He even has ‘studies’ by some really bad and unethical people he can use to support his idea that vaccines are the cause. And, no doubt, more are on the way from David Geier and others. This is one of those times you need advisors who are both competent and free to speak their mind. People who actually understand science which, frankly, Mr. Kennedy does not. Because he is playing with people’s lives. Children’s lives. And that’s a lot more important than the Nobel Prize.

I am the parent of a young autistic adult. My kid grew up during the time Mr. Kennedy has been running his campaign against vaccines. I am a scientist. A researcher. Not in medicine, but I understand the studies. Focus on that last–not in medicine. I have no conflicts of interest other than this topic is very important to me. I don’t want children to die because Mr. Kennedy used my kid as a weapon against vaccines. I just don’t want children to die needlessly. I have been speaking out to counter Mr. Kennedy for 20 years because I saw the danger he posed.

Mr. Trump, I think you don’t want children to die and that is probably a bigger motivation than the Prize. But, do the simple math. Anyone on the Peace Prize Committee who values public health to the point of considering you for your efforts with the COVID vaccine program will see the dangers your administration–with Robert Kennedy running HHS–poses.

Do it for the children. Do it for yourself. Fire Robert Kennedy.

By Matt Carey

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Report: The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist

29 May

If you haven’t read this yet, surf over to this article on NOTUS: The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist. The subtitle is very clear, but it’s worth the full read.

The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.

I have to agree with Tara Smith over on Facebook that this looks like they used some LLM AI which created fake citations:

So looks like Kennedy used chatGPT or similar AI to write his MAHA report, as multiple citations are hallucinated. Others are cherry- picked or don’t support his claims (exactly as he did in “The Real Anthony Fauci”). One example:

“Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed in the MAHA report as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her this week, she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn’t write the paper listed.

“The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS via email. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.””

Mr. Kennedy has been trying to brand his work as “Gold-Standard Science”, which is basically a way to slam research he doesn’t agree with. The above report would be laughable if this weren’t so serious. The Secretary of Health and Human Services released a report with fictitious citations and misinterpretations. This sort of behavior could get a professor fired. This sort of behavior can lead to people dying. Think about it–a person we all rely upon to make important health decisions for the entire country believes that he can create what amounts to scientific propaganda, label it “Gold Standard”, and use that to defend his decisions.

By Matt Carey

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“if you’ve been involved in good science, you have got nothing to worry about” Why did you lie, Mr. Kennedy?

7 Apr

We have recently seen a huge layoff at HHS. It’s amazing to think that just 2 months ago, Robert Kennedy was saying this wouldn’t happen.

On February 14, Robert Kennedy promised that people involved in good science would have nothing to worry about in terms of losing their jobs. He had a “generic list” of people who should be let go, but people working on good science were safe.

“I have a list in my head … we have a generic list of the kind of people that — if you’ve been involved in good science, you have got nothing to worry about,” Kennedy said during an appearance on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle” Thursday night.

“If you care about public health, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re in there working for the pharmaceutical industry, then I’d say you should move out and work for the pharmaceutical industry,” he added.

Shortly after that, he started indiscriminately firing people. It’s so bad he’s admitting he made a mistake and has to bring people back. That’s not “you’ve got nothing to worry about”.

One area that affects the autism community directly is the Administration for Community Living.

The Administration for Community Living, which coordinates federal policy on aging and disability, was gutted – 40% of staff there lost their jobs, according to Alison Barkoff, the former head of the agency who says she learned this by talking to multiple members of her former staff. The ACL funds programs that run senior centers and distributes 216 million meals a year to older and disabled people.

These are not people doing science, but they are definitely people who care about public health who are not working for the pharmaceutical industry. It’s hard to see gutting this organization as being within Mr. Kennedy’s comments on FoxNews. At all.

Which is why I ask: did you know you were lying at the time, Mr. Kennedy? Or did you just not have the guts to stand up and defend good people doing good work when you were told to cut them?

Having watched Mr. Kennedy for decades, I never expected him to have a backbone when he got into power. Sacrificing the jobs of people who directly help disabled people in order to keep his job, yes, that’s in line with what I expected. Mr. Kennedy hired a staunch anti-vaccine pseudo-scientist, so we know where his priorities lay.

By Matt Carey

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James Terence Fisher: RFK Jr., autism and long-debunked theories

7 Apr

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has an article by James Terence Fisher: RFK Jr., autism and long-debunked theories. If I start quoting, I’ll copy the whole article. So, I’ll just recommend you follow the link and read the article in place.

Prof. Fisher mentions “Autism families of a certain vintage”. I am of that vintage. I’ve watched his son grow up through blog posts over the years. I too saw Robert Kennedy over decades and David Geier promote bad science and bad medicine. The harm they have caused is real and it can only get worse with them in positions of power. Prof. Fisher gives another perspective on the history, from an autism father’s point of view.

By Matt Carey

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RFK Jr’s Pee Wee Herman moment

4 Apr

This would be funny if Mr. Kennedy weren’t playing games with one of America’s greatest assets: our public health system. What specifically this time, you may ask?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Mr. Kennedy plans to reinstate many fired employees (RFK Jr. Plans to Reinstate Some Federal Workers, Programs). Which is a very good thing. Except they (and the rest) should never have been let go in the first place. Per the WSJ:

“Some programs that were cut, they’re being reinstated,” Kennedy said Thursday. “Personnel that should not have been cut were cut. We’re reinstating them.”

But here’s where it becomes a Pee Wee Herman moment: he meant to do that. No, seriously, he’s saying he always meant to make mistakes and bring people back:

“That was always the plan,” he said, referring to fixing mistakes and the Department of Government Efficiency’s approach to making federal cuts. “Part of the DOGE—we talked about this from the beginning—is we’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes.”

Because that’s what a good manager does. Fire a whole lot of people and then ask the good ones to come back and not be pissed off and spend their time looking for a new job. Right?

Seriously, these are people’s lives you are dealing with, Mr. Kennedy. You don’t just tell someone, “pack your desk. We didn’t even give you the respect you deserve” and then, “please come back. We meant to do that to you. But don’t be disgruntled or anything.”

I didn’t go to management school, or business school, but even I can tell this is a bad management and bad business move. We don’t need amateurs running billions of dollars of America’s assets. Especially ones who can’t even admit mistakes.

This is a Pee Wee Herman “I meant to do that moment”. Don’t do it again.

By Matt Carey

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Robert Kennedy and Radical Transparency? My ass.

2 Apr

I wonder what the Kennedy clan think now. I wonder what people in his father’s generation would think of a Kennedy actively working to hide information from American citizens. I can’t say. I can say this is not the type of act I think of when I admire the Kennedy family. Not even close.

Robert Kennedy promised to be a good guy. An outsider who wasn’t tainted by Washington. Someone who fought for the little guy and wouldn’t let big government get away with things like making decisions in secret without any transparency.

Big surprise: it was a lie.

His catchphrase was “radical transparency” Sounds really cool, don’t it? This will be a new era when Government works for the people! Like this press release:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are committed to promoting radical transparency to make sure all Americans know what is in their food.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Kennedy planned to be radically transparent. That the government would be radically transparent. Let’s be clear Radical transparency is for other people. Not Mr. Kennedy. Who is now consolidating his position as a DC power broker.

One of the backbones of transparency in the U.S. government is the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA. This allows people outside the government, people like Mr. Kennedy only a few months ago, to ask the government to provide information on what it is doing. It’s based on the idea that we the people are the government and the information they generate belongs to us.

That was when FOIA served Mr. Kennedy’s purpose. Those days are now gone. FOIA will stand in the way of Mr. Kennedy, so it’s being gutted. Per Rolling Stone (Health Secretary RFK Jr. Promised Radical Transparency. Now He’s Closing FOIA Offices)

Or they did until Tuesday, anyway. Officials at the FDA and NIH have confirmed that many civil servants who work on FOIA in those offices have been let go, while the CDC’s FOIA desk has been completely eradicated, according to the agency’s chief operating officer. An email from Rolling Stone to foiarequests@cdc.gov returned an auto-reply that read, “Hello, the FOIA office has been placed on admin leave and is unable to respond to any emails.” Emails to several other addresses for FOIA requests at HHS agencies – to check whether they are still active – did not receive immediate replies.

For those of us who have followed Mr. Kennedy and his anti-vaccine community for decades, his dishonesty comes as no surprise. I didn’t expect his hypocrisy to be so blatant so early.

We’ve already seen the Kennedy family distance themselves from Robert Kennedy on numerous occasions. Here’s a recent quote on that:

No prominent Kennedy has publicly endorsed RFK Jr., and the list of those who have shunned him politically is a Who’s Who of the Kennedy family: Caroline Kennedy, Joe Kennedy III, Victoria Ann Kennedy, Patrick J. Kennedy, Rory Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg, the son of Caroline Kennedy.

I wonder what the Kennedy clan think now. I wonder what people in his father’s generation would think of a Kennedy actively working to hide information from American citizens. I can’t say. I can say this is not the type of act I think of when I admire the Kennedy family. Not even close.

I wonder about the hypocrisy of his supporters. People who decried the lack of transparency in the government. Will they stand against this move by their hero? Smart money says no.

By Matt Carey

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How RFK Jr. could add $100B a year to the debt

31 Mar

If autism were a vaccine injury, i.e. if it was legitimate to add autism to the vaccine injury table, I would say, “change the schedule now and pay however many families deserve it, no matter the cost.” But autism is not a vaccine injury. I will note that if Mr. Kennedy truly believed autism is a vaccine injury, he wouldn’t have hired David Geier to do the studies. Having Mr. Geier run an autism study is the equivalent of using loaded dice in a game of craps. Mr. Kennedy is buying the outcome he wants to see. If he wants to do more autism/vaccine studies, let the science speak, to quote Mr. Kennedy himself. He’s not doing that.

Robert Kennedy is (rightly) getting a lot of attention for his vaccine related actions. Just last week he pushed out the FDA’s top vaccine official (Top US vaccine official forced to resign, reports say). I will suggest it’s past time to stop reacting and start looking ahead–ask ourselves what is going to happen and what will the fallout be? That said, if we’ve learned anything from Mr. Kennedy, it’s that one should be careful and not fall into the conspiracy theory trap. So I’ll be careful and conservative as I predict what I think Mr. Kennedy is planning.

One Kennedy goal that seems obvious to me (and many others): get autism recognized as a vaccine injury. Get autism added to the vaccine injury table* to allow families to obtain compensation from the vaccine program. Perhaps he’s made this statement outright. I wouldn’t be surprised. But even if he hasn’t, I doubt many who have followed Mr. Kennedy’s words and actions would argue that this is a likely goal for him.

Let’s say he’s successful. What would be the result? Specifically, what would this cost? The vaccine court, after all, awards monetary compensation. It’s a pretty simple calculation:

$17B is a lot, but it’s not the $100B in the title of the article. Where did I get that? The support needs for an autistic person vary greatly, but, I would argue, they are higher than the average vaccine injury recipient. Also, we are talking about very young autistic children here, so there will be a lot of uncertainty projecting the lifelong needs and the court may be convinced to provide payouts on the higher end of the scale. Often in the past, I saw payments of about $1m to provide support for a lifelong disability awarded by the court, so I chose that number when I wrote the title of this piece. If we take 104,000 autistic kids being awarded $1m a year, we get $104B a year in vaccine court awards.

Let’s state the obvious: that’s a huge amount of money. That’s about 8 aircraft carriers a year. If Elon Musk found $104B a year in savings, believe me, we’d be hearing about it.

To put this more in context, the vaccine program has a trust fund of about $4.3B. This would be gone in the first year (potentially the first month) of autism cases being handled as a table injury. Technically, the vaccine court would have no money after that, and the awards should stop. This would put congress in a tight spot: allocate more money, or tell their constituents that that they voted to deny compensation to disabled children. I suspect they would vote to allocate funds. So we are talking about somewhere between $17B and $100B a year added to the budget, which would be directly added to the national debt.

I will admit that this is a very rough estimate of the financial cost. We could argue how much the average award would be. We could argue that not all autistic kids would get awards, even if autism were added as a table injury. So, maybe the total would go down. However, I also would argue that more kids will be diagnosed as autistic should autism be added as a table injury. Many more. How that balances out in the end can be debated, but I think a reasonable person can see that the answer will be billions of dollars a year and very likely many billions of dollars a year.

If autism were a vaccine injury, i.e. if it was legitimate to add autism to the vaccine injury table, I would say, “change the schedule now and pay however many families deserve it, no matter the cost.” But autism is not a vaccine injury. I will note that if Mr. Kennedy truly believed autism is a vaccine injury, he would not have hired David Geier to do the studies. Having Mr. Geier run an autism study is the equivalent of using loaded dice in a game of craps. Mr. Kennedy is buying the outcome he wants to see. If he wants to do more autism/vaccine studies, he would let the science speak. To quote Mr. Kennedy himself. He’s not doing that.

As I stated at the outset, one has to be careful of relying upon conspiracy theories. I believe I’ve stayed away from that here. I’ve made assumptions of what I think Mr. Kennedy wants to accomplish, but I think those are valid assumptions. And the cost analysis is very simple and I’ve laid it out very clearly. No chance to hide some trick in the math. I could be off by a factor of 10 and the conclusion would be the same.

One could and should ask why I am focusing on the financial cost and not the human cost. First, because autism is not a vaccine injury, we aren’t talking about a real human cost. Second, the financial cost is what will get the attention of Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk and congress. Sad to say, but I believe that to be the case.

The most logical outcome of adding autism to the vaccine injury table, in my opinion, is that congress and the president would be forced to choose between keeping autism on the vaccine injury table and ending the infant vaccine program. End the infant vaccine program and many people in Mr. Kennedy’s community (possibly including Mr. Kennedy himself), will say “mission accomplished.”** Pull autism off the table and the net effect is pretty much the same. The idea that vaccines cause autism will be accepted and vaccine uptake will drop. Many states will stop mandating infant vaccines. The infant vaccine program would be effectively dead.

Either way, Mr. Kennedy will be able to say, “See, I’m not anti-vaccine. I didn’t direct the infant vaccine program to end. They just followed the “science” (that I directed be created when I hired David Geier).”

By Matt Carey

* The vaccine injury table lays out injuries that are presumed to be caused by a vaccine. For example, if one develops paralytic polio within 30 days of getting the oral polio vaccine, it is assumed to be caused by the vaccine. If you haven’t heard of this, that’s because the U.S. doesn’t use the oral polio vaccine anymore.

** Recall that one of the people at Mr. Kennedy’s “Children’s Health Defense” is JB Handley (Vice Chair in 2018). Recall that Mr. Handley once wrote: “With less than a half-dozen full-time activists, annual budgets of six figures or less, and umpteen thousand courageous, undaunted, and selfless volunteer parents, our community, held together with duct tape and bailing wire, is in the early to middle stages of bringing the U.S. vaccine program to its knees.”

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Donald Trump: Disabled Americans “Should Just Die”?

25 Jul

Fred C. Trump III has an article in Time Magazine out: “My Uncle Donald Trump Told Me Disabled Americans Like My Son ‘Should Just Die’” The article is an excerpt from an upcoming book, “ALL IN THE FAMILY: The Trumps and How We Got This Way“.

What is the context of this quote, “Should just die”? I’d strongly suggest reading the article, but it comes down to this: Donald Trump’s nephew was able to get a White House visit to for a group of disability activists to speak with officials in the White House. This included Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar. Again, I’d encourage you to read the article, but here’s one section that stands out:

Azar was still in the Oval Office when I walked back in. “Hey, pal,” Donald said. “How’s everything going

“Good,” I said. “I appreciate your meeting with us.”

“Sure, happy to do it.”

He sounded interested and even concerned. I thought he had been touched by what the doctor and advocates in the meeting had just shared about their journey with their patients and their own family members. But I was wrong.

“Those people . . . ” Donald said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.” 

I truly did not know what to say. He was talking about expenses. We were talking about human lives. For Donald, I think it really was about the expenses, even though we were there to talk about efficiencies, smarter investments, and human dignity.

I turned and walked away.

We already know Mr. Trump is no friend to the disability communities. From mocking a disabled reporter (and then being spineless and denying that’s what he did) to disparaging disabled veterans (“A person that did not want to be seen in the presence of military amputees because ‘it doesn’t look good for me.’ ), the pattern is clear. But, this was his own family. And Trump thinks his own grand nephew should, “just die”.

It’s hard enough to get support for people with disabilities in America. Can we really afford another Trump presidency? Pick and issue that’s important to you. If you are disabled or love someone who is disabled, what issue could mean more to you than disabled people should just die?

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By Matt Carey

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Imagine Mr. Kennedy working in a Trump administration.

17 Jul

Donald Trump was be very bad for America and very bad for the autism communities in specific and would be worse in a second term. Robert Kennedy would be very bad for America and very bad for the autism communities in specific. But it can get worse. What if Donald Trump were elected and put Robert Kennedy in a position of authority? Mr. Kennedy asked Mr. Trump for a job as some sort of “vaccine commissioner” before Mr. Trump’s first term.

A leaked video shows Robert Kennedy speaking with Donald Trump. Media outlets are focusing on Mr. Trump playing to Mr. Kennedy’s anti-vaccine sentiments. A Trump/Kennedy conversation exchanging vaccine fearmongering is, frankly, not newsworthy in my opinion. The fact that a call happened is not either, to be honest. It would be appropriate for Mr. Kennedy to speak to Mr. Trump following the assassination attempt. We don’t have the full conversation in the video, so we don’t know who initiated the call or why. Mr. Kennedy says the main message was “national unity”

But here’s the part that I worry about:

Trump also appeared to appeal to Kennedy, though it’s unclear for what exactly. “I would love you to do something,” Trump said, without offering further context. “And I think it’ll be so good for you and so big for you. And we’re going to win.”

Allow me to sidestep the “I would love you to do something” comment and focus on what Mr. Trump means by “so good for you and so big for you”. Most likely it’s Mr. Trump offering vague and empty promises. That would be very on-type for Mr. Trump. But, this will read to Mr. Kennedy’s followers as a possible open door to some sort of appointment in a Trump administration. They have speculated in the past about Mr. Kennedy running FDA or CDC. Which again would be very on-type for Mr. Trump’s planned second term: replacing people with competence with loyalists. Mr. Kennedy is unlikely to be a fierce loyalist, in my opinion. But, as a “burn it down” appointee, Mr. Kennedy might serve Mr. Trump’s vision well.

I am just amazed that Donald Trump is a viable candidate. His performance his first term was…bad. His disregard for the foundation of democracy should be undeniable, but denialists abound. The idea that Mr. Trump could appoint Mr. Kennedy to some post shouldn’t be the tipping point in one’s vote. Mr. Trump is bad enough as it is. But, seriously, Kennedy + Trump is worse than Trump alone.

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By Matt Carey

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