The Second Term of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America

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At a May lunch at the president’s golf course in northern Virginia, President Trump asked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., why he wasn’t doing more to probe the alleged connection between vaccines and autism, according to people familiar with the matter. The health secretary had the yips, Trump told Kennedy, according to one of the people.

Kennedy was taken aback. Even though he has long been known to be skeptical of vaccinations, he had been asked by White House political advisers to tone down his vaccine efforts ahead of the midterms, the people said.

Now, it was the commander in chief who was pushing to make the study of vaccines and autism more of a priority. The president steers nearly every conversation with his health secretary back to the issue, some of the people said.

Chief among the president’s desires: Do more to reduce the number of shots that federal guidelines recommend for children, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the president hopes to then see autism rates drop, even if any such effect could take years.

Trump has long mused publicly and privately about whether vaccines cause autism, despite reassurances from scientific advisers in his first term that they don’t and the widespread conclusion among scientists that there is no valid reason for concern.

The issue has been an ongoing point of tension between the two men. In a mid-June meeting in the Oval Office, the president vented to Kennedy that he wasn’t doing enough, people familiar with the matter said.

www.theguardian.com

Trump reportedly pushing RFK Jr to cut vaccines more aggressively

White House has halted changing vaccine schedule as it is unpopular, but anti-vaxx Trump set on ‘alleviating autism’
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Not the gotcha that Paul thought it was

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Anthony Fauci's newly released diary is turning into a pretty rough own goal for the republicans who leaked it, because instead of exposing him as some deep state villain, it mostly shows a scientist working the phones, trusting the evidence, and quietly rolling his eyes at donald trump's chaos while trying to keep the country safe.

Senator Rand Paul released more than a thousand pages of Fauci's private notes from 2019 to 2022, and Fauci testifies before Paul's committee this week. Paul has framed the release around the idea that what Fauci wrote privately and what he told the country were two different stories.

Paul's biggest headline claim does not hold up well under scrutiny. He points to a diary entry where Fauci allegedly acknowledged early on that the virus did not originate at the Wuhan wet market, while publicly backing a paper that pointed to natural spillover from that market, and Paul is using the gap to argue Fauci covered for a lab leak.

But the entry Paul is citing actually shows Fauci complaining that conspiracy style letters from members of Congress were an amazing and unbelievable waste of time, which reads like frustration, not confession. A Dartmouth virologist told NPR that scientists being less certain in private than in public is normal, and that solid evidence exists for two separate viral lineages emerging, which actually supports natural spillover.

Paul has also repeatedly alleged, without evidence, that NIAID funded gain of function research in Wuhan caused the pandemic, a claim Fauci denies both publicly and in the supposedly damning private diary itself. If Fauci were really hiding something, you would expect the private version to admit it. Instead it says the same thing as the public one.

What actually comes through in the diary is a guy trying to steer a president who kept wandering off topic. Fauci repeatedly described trump's public comments as rambling, noting at one point that trump would drift into talking about TV ratings while Fauci tried to keep him on track. That is what a competent official sounds like when the man in charge cares more about ratings than case counts.

The timing of this outrage cycle is not an accident either. While cable news spends the week over a diary that mostly makes Fauci look diligent, RFK jr is overseeing the worst measles comeback in a generation. The CDC reported 2,318 measles cases in 2026 alone, more than all of 2025 and far beyond the 283 cases in 2024, with the number still climbing.

Not to mention the ever increasing outbreak of diarrhea lettuce.

So dig through Fauci's diary if you want. What you will mostly find is a professional doing his job under an erratic boss, and a senator whose greatest hits don't survive contact with their own footnotes.

SOURCE with comments
 
Shiftless2 said:
"Not the gotcha that Paul thought it was" #3,702
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Without much if any logical justification I liked doctors / senators Paul.
Problem is the Paul family interpretation / application of "conservatism" may mystify genuine conservatives.

Making life difficult for Dr. Anthony Fauci is an automatic demerit. Thank you for your impressive public service Dr. Fauci.
 
Shiftless2 said:
"The anti science death cult" #3,705
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This term bears the standard characteristics of exaggeration.

Apparently, it is not the quotation which is extreme.
It is a characterization of the Trump administration.
- anti science ? Anti-vax to be sure.
- death cult?

cult
noun
ˈkəlt
1: a group (such as an organization or religious sect) with tenets and practices regarded as coercive, insular, or dangerous

O M G :eek:
 
Shiftless2 said:

"Serve or resign" S2 #3,708​

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Wiki lists Governor Beshear's party affiliation as Democrat.
My initial reaction is it's more divisive partisan politics.

But with sadness I also recognize, Republicans prioritize their own partisan loyalty ahead of their own patriotism. They're Americans. They're Republicans. But apparently they deem themselves Republicans first.
We can't know for certain. But perhaps if Republicans prioritized their own citizenship ahead of their partisanship, it would have been a Republican to urge McConnell [R-KY].
 
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