By Charlie Harper
For at least the past 35 years, Americans who follow the nation’s political evolution have known in their hearts that the “system” that prevails in the nation’s capital is flawed, inefficient, increasingly unrepresentative and maybe even undemocratic.
Academics, scholars, pundits and many politicians have privately and sometimes publicly acknowledged this reality. Out of the range of microphones, some of them have conceded that it’s hard to see reform of such a system without some kind of revolution.
It is hard to overstate the subliminal concern about this. But it’s also hard to exaggerate the degree to which the current political class is committed to maintaining a system that works pretty well for them. Maybe what we are witnessing now is a cataclysmic series of events that will so roil the existing reality that it will be come to be called a revolution.
It’s hard to get our minds around the maelstrom that newly reelected president Donald Trump has unleashed. The political and economic establishment in the US is clearly trying to come to grips with the reality that confronts them, seemingly on an hourly basis.
If the American system needed a shake-up, it might be at hand.
The list of changes Trump and his many devoted associates have instituted is, and is certainly meant to be, mind-blowing. And the list is growing. The president clearly sees himself as a transformational change – and retribution – agent.
Here are some recent examples:
Trump almost immediately withdrew Secret Service protection from several prominent officials from his first administration who have criticised him. Some notables on this list include former CDC director and trusted public health adviser Dr Anthony Fauci; former chairman of the military joint chiefs of staff general Mark Milley; former national security adviser John Bolton, and others.
Milley and Bolton, as the result of their service in a first Trump administration and its overt hostility to the theocratic regime that controls Iran, are under death threats from Tehran. Public furor over Fauci and his stewardship of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic persists.
Career officials in the Justice Department who were supporting special prosecutor Jack Smith in his investigations of Trump for the January 6 riots and mishandling classified documents have been fired.
Trump, like most Republican presidents over the past half century, campaigned on a promise to reduce government. He’s taking this issue seriously, offering buyouts to thousands of federal employees. The US government employs about 2.4 million people, edging out Walmart and Amazon as the largest employer in the US.
This new American administration will clearly challenge job protections for additional thousands of federal employees. Many are members of public service unions. Court challenges to the new administration’s policies are inevitable and have already begun.
While all this “executive” activity has been going on, the US Senate has been dutifully considering Trump’s cabinet nominations. His choices for the Departments of Justice, State, Defense and Treasury have all been approved, sometimes by narrow partisan margins, but approved nonetheless.
None of these choices has yet been rejected by the Senate, though Trump’s first choice for Attorney General, former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, withdrew his candidacy.
Yesterday and today, the nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services is being reviewed by separate Senate committees. This particular choice bears watching.
To describe “Bobby Kennedy Jr” as a polarising figure is an understatement. He has achieved considerable notoriety as an “anti-vaxxer” opposed to many commonly recommended vaccines as public health menaces. Such a view directly contradicts established medical evidence. But Kennedy has developed quite a libertarian-leaning following by championing the issue.
This nomination is intriguing for several reasons, mostly due to the unusual diversity of opposition voices.
Kennedy, like his patrician family a lifelong Democrat, abandoned his futile independent candidacy for the presidency last summer and quickly endorsed Trump. But while Kennedy was still in the race, Trump wrote this about him: “Kennedy is a Democratic plant. He is an Extreme Environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers (Green New Deal supporters) look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Veteran.
“RFK Jr. called himself an independent, but he’s not,” Trump wrote. “He’s a Radical Left Lunatic.”
“No Republican can vote for this guy.”
This isn’t especially noteworthy; Trump reflexively doesn’t like anyone who opposes him. The following comments from Senate Democrats aren’t especially surprising either:
Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday that there has never been a health secretary nominee “more dangerous” than Kennedy.
Washington state senator Patty Murray, who sits on committees that will need to approve the RFK Jr nomination, said “I was appalled at his answers and his lack of knowledge and what he was pushing on the American people.” she said. “We need somebody in charge of this agency that is going to make sure that our kids and grandkids ... have the correct health care information, not misinformation.”
Caroline Kennedy, daughter of president John F Kennedy, spoke for her large, influential family in a letter to senators this week. She called her cousin a “predator” who “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children” and is “addicted to attention and power”.
“The American health care system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world,” she wrote. “US doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists, and caregivers are the most dedicated people I know … They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy – and so do the rest of us. I urge the Senate to reject his nomination.”
These comments are to be expected, given Bobby Kennedy’s political and familial apostasy.
But the New York Post has also joined the chorus of criticism. That’s significant, and bears close watching in the days and weeks ahead.
The New York Post is an American conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. As of 2023, the Post was the fourth-largest newspaper by print circulation among all US newspapers.
The newspaper was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist and Founding Father who was appointed the nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury by George Washington. The newspaper became a respected gazette in the 19th century.
By the mid-20th century, the Post’s owner developed the tabloid format that has been used ever since. This format was largely adopted from the British tabloid papers that have long set the worldwide standard for sensationalist (and generally commercially very successful) journalism. In 1976, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought the Post for $30.5 million, adding the Post to his growing media empire that also includes Fox News.
While the NY Post has not followed Trump down every single policy path he has blazed, the paper has clearly supported him. Like the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal, the Post is often scoured for hints about future Trump policies and closely inspected for the level of its support for Trump – and in this case, his cabinet choices.
On Tuesday, the Post absolutely eviscerated Kennedy’s candidacy. In an extensive two-page editorial, the newspaper strongly urged the Senate to reject RFK Jr. Amid the opposition to Kennedy, the paper’s enthusiastic support of the new president is also much in evidence. Here’s some of what they said:
“Trump has built an administration that will shake the establishment out of its complacency.
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are taking over departments that have spent the last four years prioritising virtue signaling over victories. They will stop settling for the way things have always been, and instead pursue what is best for the United States.
“Border czar Tom Homan and Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will clean up the Biden administration’s border disaster by enforcing our immigration laws and deporting criminals. They must stop the abuse of the asylum system, and cut off the flow of drugs and human trafficking by the cartels.
“In these departments and others, the mission is clear, and Donald Trump specifically chose the official who could best accomplish it.
“Not Robert F Kennedy Jr. Nothing has changed about Kennedy from last spring. He’s still a radical left lunatic who is anti-energy, a ‘big time’ taxer and completely incoherent about our nation’s health.
“No Republican can vote for this guy. No senator should.”
We’ll see how this unfolds. Kennedy certainly looks shaky now.
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