\n\tEveryone insisted it was a non-partisan revival where it was pure happenstance that Donald Trump\u2019s name received the loudest hosannas. Rob Schneider, an out-of-work actor, was the MC and entertained the crowd with his Saturday Night Live Mexican-stereotype character from the 1990s. There was someone called the Food Babe shouting \u201cLet\u2019s talk about Doritos\u201d and then spilling Froot Loops on the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tStill, this was serious business. There was a speech by Tulsi Gabbard<\/a> calling Kamala Harris a warmonger \u2014 no way that would come back to bite her in the ass \u2014 and Senator Ron Johnson told me he had a secret plan to rid Donald Trump of his McDonald\u2019s addiction.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe rally was organized by Bret Weinstein, a bushy-haired former biology professor turned frequent Tucker Carlson guest. Weinstein said he was risking his very life by organizing the rally and suggested everyone in the crowd was at danger. He opened the event with his theory that independent thought in America was being crushed by Goliath, an unknowable force made up of government officials, academia, the media, and mega-corporations. Yes, the Deep State was a Philistine.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt is the force that prevents all meaningful change in the biblical story. Goliath is a giant, a man, a large man, but a man all the same in our time,\u201d said Weinstein. \u201cGoliath, like everything else, has scaled way up. The force that wants us to be terrified to exercise our First Amendment rights in our own capital, that\u2019s Goliath.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tThen Weinstein smiled. The times were changing.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cNow look around you. Do you all see what I see? David has scaled up. We are David, we are mighty, and our time has come.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat was 18 months ago. David and Goliath changing places turned out to be the worst Parent Trap reboot ever. Where do our heroes stand today?<\/p>\n \n\tLet\u2019s quickly dispatch with Weinstein. He recently chatted with Carlson and was in \u201cjust asking questions\u201d mode and wondered about Israel\u2019s possible involvement in the murder of Charlie Kirk. He suggested that Bibi Netanyahu giving Trump a gold pager \u2014 in honor of Hamas personnel being blown up by Israeli doctored pagers \u2014 was not actually a tasteless joke but a veiled, deadly threat. (Weinstein\u2019s strategy is kind of flawless: when one of his theories is disproven, he suggests it was a Goliath misdirection play. \u201cTraps abound,\u201d says Weinstein.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd Rob Schneider? He is still unemployed and walking back this April 2025 tweet:<\/p>\n \n\tLast week, Schneider flip-flopped like a caught salmon on the deck of a fishing boat.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe must once again recommit ourselves to one Nation under God, indivisible,\u201d he wrote<\/a>. \u201cTherefore, we must restore the military draft for our Nation\u2019s young people. Each and every American, at eighteen years of age, must serve two years of military service.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tSurely, Schneider and Weinstein were lightweight outliers, right? Let\u2019s move on to someone with gravitas. Gabbard was introduced by Schneider at the rally as \u201csomeone who knows how to wear a white pantsuit.\u201d (She did not laugh.)\u00a0 Gabbard, a reservist, had far weightier things on her mind. She warned of the dangers of the Biden-Harris war machine.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe sit closer to the brink of nuclear war,\u201d said Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate. \u201cAccording to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, their doomsday clock is set to 90 seconds before midnight. We are one spark away from our demise, directly because of the policies coming from the Harris-Biden administration.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tShe continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cA vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for the military industrial complex. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for nuclear war.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn January 2025, Trump began his second term with Gabbard as his Director of Intelligence. The doomsday clock<\/a> now sits at, uh, 85 seconds to midnight.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cHow sick of a state are we as a country when our elected leaders celebrate death, war, and destruction and sell it to us, the American people, as an American jobs and economic plan,\u201d Gabbard said at the rally, speaking behind bulletproof glass. \u201cThis is Kamala Harris\u2019s opportunity economy, more war, more money for the military industrial complex.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tChecking the numbers, the Biden administration defense budget was $850 billion. Recently, Trump proposed a defense budget of $1.5 trillion. The $650 billion increase is just short of the annual GNP of \u2014 I am not making this up \u2014 Israel.<\/p>\n \n\tThe current American and Israeli war on Iran has left Gabbard in a pickle. The Hawaiian once marketed t-shirts reading \u201cNo War On Iran\u201d and long argued that presidents lie us into wars. In 2020, Gabbard bashed Trump for taking out Iranian military mastermind, Qasem Soleimani.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis was very clearly an act of war by this president without any kind of authorization or declaration of war from Congress, clearly violating the Constitution,\u201d said Gabbard on Fox News.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThis meant Gabbard\u2019s motherboard had to be completely rewired before her congressional testimony<\/a> two weeks ago. Describing Trump\u2019s unilateral action, she chirped, \u201cAs our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat \u2026 and whether to take action \u2026 President Trump concluded that \u2026 Iran posed an imminent threat, and he took action based on that conclusion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTrump World was spinning so fast that Gabbard was making about-faces in real time. Gabbard\u2019s written statement to Congress suggested Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities were nonexistent after Trump\u2019s June 2025 attacks on their facilities. Gabbard wrote the following:<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAs a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran\u2019s nuclear enrichment program was obliterated. There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability. \u2026 The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tTulsi Gabbard speaks during the \u201cRescue the Republic<\/a>\u201d rally on the National Mall near the Washington Monument, on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAl Drago<\/p>\n \n\tBut Gabbard zigged instead of zagging in her actual remarks. Notice the not-subtle tweak.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIran is trying to recover from the severe damage caused by Operation Midnight Hammer.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNo more obliteration and now Iran is recovering.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe comedy is that Gabbard has sold out her beliefs while, by all accounts, being frozen out of Trump policymaking. This tends to happen if your resume includes unsanctioned visits with Syrian mass murderer Bashard al-Assad. Meanwhile, Joe Kent, Gabbard\u2019s wingnut deputy, resigned from the Trump administration. Kent, a two-time congressional loser, twisted the knife by making the formerly Gabbardian point that Iran poses no immediate threat to the United States.<\/p>\n \n\tAloha.<\/p>\n \n\tRFK JR. SPOKE EARLIER than I expected at the Rescue the Republic rally. Maybe it was because a few hours later Kennedy and\u00a0 Russell Brand had an appointment at the Capitol Hill office of Gavin de Becker, security consultant to Jeff Bezos and other stars. Did they talk of the recent disclosure of Kennedy\u2019s alleged affair with journalist Olivia Nuzzi or the illegal moving of a bear carcass? Nobody knew.<\/p>\n \n\tKennedy\u2019s speech was the usual litany of anti-vax nonsense and persecution as campaign strategy. He proclaimed that the Covid pandemic was merely an excuse for corporate thievery.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey shifted money upward. They strengthened Big Tech institutions like Amazon and Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and Google, and they weakened Main Street and small business and the American worker,\u201d said RFK. \u201cAnd they shifted $4.3 trillion from the American middle class to this new oligarchy of billionaires.\u201d (The $4.3 trillion figure was actually the total amount of federal aid given to all individuals and businesses so they could survive the pandemic.)<\/p>\n \n\tKennedy was the most covered independent presidential candidate in American history and spoke insanely loudly that afternoon from the Washington Mall. Still, he insisted that his message was being stifled.\u00a0 He ended with a promise that the only one who could save America\u2019s health, freedom, and reputation was Donald Trump.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDo you want a president who\u2019s going to make America healthy again, and who\u2019s going to make America free again, and is going to make America once again the greatest nation and the moral authority around the globe?\u201d asked Kennedy. \u201cYou need to go to the polls and get your friends there and get Donald Trump and me into Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t(Trump was campaigning that day in Pennsylvania and suggested crime could be ended with \u201cone rough hour\u201d of \u201cviolent\u201d police action across America).<\/p>\n \n\tEighteen months later, America is in a dire place. We are waging a war against Iran, six months after Trump said previous air raids had left Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities \u201cobliterated.\u201d After Trump\u2019s threats to invade Canada, Cuba, and\/or Greenland, our allies have told us, diplomatically, to fuck off. Domestically, ICE agents are bashing heads on American streets.\u00a0 I thought of something RFK Jr. said that day that got little attention. Kennedy argued that governmental overkill during the Covid crisis was a violation of our constitutional rights.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThey then went after the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unwarranted searches and seizures, with all these track and trace requirements. \u2026 To take an airplane, we had to show our private medical records. They waived HIPAA. They made us disclose our private medical records, to virtually anybody who asked. They turned us into a tyranny.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFast forward to this winter. I\u2019m watching ICE pull over and interrogate residents of Shakopee, Minnesota, who happen to have dark skin. Thirty minutes away in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti and Renee Good are killed while legally protesting ICE\u2019s repeated violation of their fellow Americans\u2019 constitutional rights. The Fourth Amendment that RFK Jr. railed about? That\u2019s just something our kids will read about in history books.<\/p>\n \n\tBut that\u2019s just the vinegar, here\u2019s the arsenic. In January 2025 Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, a doctor, held Kennedy\u2019s confirmation in his hands. A \u201cno\u201d vote from a Republican physician might be enough to sink the nomination of the testosterone-flavored, toffee-colored Kennedy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCassidy was no hero. The fact than an actual doctor was considering confirming RFK Jr. \u2014 a man with no health care experience who once said Covid-19 was \u201ctargeted to attack Caucasians and Black people\u201d while \u201cthe people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese\u201d \u2014 was unfathomable, unless you realized Cassidy was hoping to get re-elected in 2026. He was willing to give RFK Jr. the benefit of the doubt in order to avoid the wrath of Trump and MAHA moms fueled on unpasteurized whole milk. He publicly mused on C-SPAN about RFK Jr.\u2019s capacity to show growth.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cDoes a 70-year-old man, a 71-year-old man who spent decades criticizing vaccines and is financially vested in finding fault with vaccines, can he change his attitudes and approach now that he\u2019ll have the most important position influencing vaccine policy in the United States?\u201d asked<\/a> Cassidy. \u201cWill you continue what you have been, or will you overturn a new leaf?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn the end, Cassidy voted for Kennedy and he was confirmed 52-48.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFriends, you will be shocked to learn that RFK Jr. did not turn over a new leaf but remained a particularly stubborn and toxic weed.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tRobert F. Kennedy Jr.<\/a> speaks during the \u201cRescue the Republic\u201d rally on the National Mall near the Washington Monument, on Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024 in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAl Drago<\/p>\n \n\tKennedy pledged to the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he would not change long-established vaccine schedules. A month after his confirmation, Kennedy changed the vaccine schedule. He ran the HHS on a diet of public pushups and chaos, firing two Trump veteran staffers early in his tenure. Last June, he canned all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) who oversaw vaccine policy. Kennedy declared the 17 were toadies of Big Pharma and replaced them with, well, 17 questionably credentialed toadies of the anti-vax movement. They were led by fellow Rescue the Republic speaker Doctor Robert Malone, who simultaneously claims<\/a> to have discovered the mRNA strand that led to the Covid vaccine and that the actual vaccine generated a toxic spike protein that could shut down organs. (Neither was true.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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