Arguments abound on today’s edition of The Editors when Rich, Charlie, Michael, and Dominic discuss the recent Senate confirmation hearings of RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
“I understand that we have, in the last four years, lived under some really terrible cabinet appointees,” says Charlie. “I don’t know why people keep telling me this because I didn’t vote for them or endorse them. But we have. But that doesn’t mean that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be good at Health and Human Services, which is 20 percent of the economy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could not answer basic questions.”
Charlie points out that this lack of knowledge is “fine for a layperson, but he’s not going to be a layperson. He’s going to be in charge of some of the biggest programs in the United States. . . . You need somebody who knows exactly what Medicaid is and does, how it works; exactly what Medicare is and does and how it works. . . . He doesn’t, and he’s not interested in learning it.”
MBD pushes back, saying, “My only case for RFK, or the strong case, is a political one, which is that I think we saw a big movement toward Republicans in this election. I think it was driven by several factors, and one of them was RFK Jr.’s endorsement of Donald Trump. And I think that that was the crowning moment of a small realignment that had been happening because of Covid, where people who are normally left-aligned skeptics of public health, of our food-supply system, of Big Pharma, etc., became extremely disenchanted with Democrats during the pandemic, extremely disenchanted with Fauci-ism, etc. And then RFK had . . . personal antipathies with Democrats from his career [which] kind of led him to this campaign for president against Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but then also was obviously going to incline him to endorse Trump if he dropped out. And that movement, I think, probably made the difference between a popular vote victory and a popular vote defeat for Trump.
“I think the phenomenon around RFK is very real.”
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