If you are a heavy consumer of legacy media, you probably believe that President-elect Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services was as shocking as it was dangerous. The legacy media, Big Pharma and some in the medical establishment have moved quickly to stop RFK Jr.’s nomination through a coordinated smear campaign.
Martha Raddatz, on ABC’s Sunday morning talk show “This Week,” brought on former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Richard Besser, who served as acting director of the CDC from January to June of 2009, to criticize Kennedy. Besser called Kennedy’s questions about the efficacy and risks of certain vaccinations “cruel” and claimed that Kennedy’s confirmation would “cost lives.”
Not mentioned by Raddatz during her entire interview, of course, is that Besser is the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Johnson is the same individual who founded the now $370 billion pharmaceutical powerhouse Johnson & Johnson.
It’s not just ABC News neglecting to mention obvious conflicts of interest. Dr. Kavita Patel, a former Obama appointee, penned a scathing opinion piece for MSNBC, claiming that “Kennedy’s appointment could undermine decades of progress in public health and put Americans at unnecessary risk.”
While the MSNBC piece notes that she is a former Obama appointee, a Stanford professor and an NBC News contributor, it fails to mention that she is a partner in New Enterprise Associates, a $25 billion venture capital firm that is heavily invested in pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.
I am certain that Drs. Besser and Patel........