Commentary
When given the opportunity, Trump-hating Democrats regularly take advantage of a hearing or a news program interview to criticize the president.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing this week, they attacked Trump by attacking a Trump cabinet member.
Democrats were successful in keeping Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. off presidential ballots in 2024, and they’re now out to get him to resign or get fired as Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary.
Appearing before the committee, Democrats, one by one, attacked him, primarily with speeches, not questions, but when they did ask a question, they insisted on a yes or no answer, which was impossible. But Kennedy did manage to put down Oregon’s wimpy Sen. Ron Wyden.
The high-handed Wyden accused Kennedy of putting children in “harm’s way” with his policies and argued Kennedy has shown no regrets about doing so. “This is about kids being pushed into harm’s way by reckless and repeated decisions to get scientists and doctors out of the way and allow conspiracy theories to dictate this country’s health policy, Wyden said.
“I don’t see any evidence that you have any regrets about anything you’ve done or plans to change it. I hope that you will tell the American people how many preventable child deaths are an acceptable sacrifice for enacting an agenda that I think is fundamentally cruel and defies common sense, he added.
As Wyden’s time was up, Kennedy asked, “Do I get a reply?” With no response, Kennedy continued saying, “Senator, you’ve sat in that chair how long? Twenty, 25 years while the chronic diseases of our children went up 76 percent, and you said nothing. You never asked the question why it’s happening. Why is this happening?
In a sharp exchange with Sen. Mark Warner, who asked how many Americans died of Covid 19, Kennedy truthfully responded, “I don’t think anybody knows that, because there was so much data chaos coming out of the CDC and there were so many perverse incentives.” During the Pandemic, we learned that people, who died in a hospital were routinely charted as a Covid death because hospitals then benefited financially. The lack of data is one reason Kennedy has been cleaning house at the CDC.
Of course, the grandstanding Warner knew that but wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity to criticize Kennedy and said, “So, Mr. Chairman, the Secretary of Health and Human Services doesn’t know how many Americans died from COVID doesn’t know if the vaccine helped prevent any deaths, and you are sitting as Secretary of Health and Human Services? How can you be that ignorant?”
The New York Times, reporting that Kennedy was “remarkably salty and dismissive” with senators throughout the testy three-hour hearing, noting that as Wyden, the committee’s ranking Democrat, made his closing remarks, “Kennedy scrolled through his phone”, and when asked if he had closing remarks of his own, Kennedy replied, “I think I’ll have mercy on everybody and let us adjourn.”
The president’s criticism of high crime in Democrat-run cities and states gave Trump haters another opportunity to challenge his agenda causing most of us to wonder if they think what is basically a pro-crime position will help them in the midterms.
With the president ‘s constant reminder of crime in Chicago, Illinois Governor Pritzker imagined living in President Trump‘s head rent free. You might say that’s a fair trade since Trump has resided in Pritzker’s head rent free since 2015.
While Pritzker is trying to turn the tables on Trump by citing high homicide rates in Republican-led states, he fails to recognize that Chicago is the nation’s third most populous city, a city that last Monday reported 58 people being shot, with seven of them killed.
Citing the “tyranny” of the Trump presidency, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a seven-page executive order stating that the president’s threat to send federal law enforcement members to his city would “violate the City’s sovereignty, threaten civil liberties, and risk escalating violence rather than securing the peace” among the “historically underserved residents and vulnerable populations, including Black and brown communities.”
In announcing the order, Johnson called Trump “the biggest threat to our democracy that we’ve experienced in the history of our country.” Really?
AND FINALLY, away from politics … Most of my readers may recall that I am a Michigan Wolverines football fan. And while I will not be making any predictions for the season or this week’s trip to Oklahoma to play the Sooners, as a writer who prides himself in accuracy, I need to correct this statement on Monday in an Internet On3 report:
“Both teams are coming off of disappointing 2024 campaigns.”
How soon they forget Michigan ‘s wins over Alabama and Washington to win the National Championship, ending the season with a 15-0 record.
May God continue to bless the president and the United States of America.
