It will never make sense, but people believed Donald Trump when he lied—about Vice President Kamala Harris, about President Joe Biden, about the economy, about immigrants, about trans people, about his accomplishments.
Yet, when he told the truth about what he would do if elected, people didn’t believe him.
But it’s not just regular voters who are shocked, mind you. So are the high-paid lobbyists who supposedly do this for a living.
Industry lobbyists claim to be “stunned” at the pick of anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head up the Department of Health and Human Services, according to Politico.
“One health industry leader, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the appointment, acknowledged they were caught off guard—they had thought Trump would pick former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal or former Surgeon General Jerome Adams—and hadn’t had any strategic conversations about opposing Kennedy,” reported the publication.
Mind you, as far as I’ve found, Trump never publicly floated Jindal or Adams for the role before or after the election. What he did do was openly promise to let Kennedy “go wild” on health care. And Kennedy’s allies happily discussed the idea that Trump would nominate Kennedy for this very position.
Passages like this from the story are laughable: “A number of industry leaders and lobbyists have expressed concern privately to Trump transition officials and lawmakers about a [Make America Healthy Again] agenda, arguing that it runs counter to Trump’s deregulatory instincts.”
What “deregulatory instincts”? Trump stands for nothing other than what’s good for Trump. If he doesn’t care about something (like health care or food safety), he’ll happily hand off the responsibility. And in this case, he’s handing it to Kennedy. After all, Trump is otherwise occupied. Fox News isn’t going to watch itself.
Sure, Trump has racist and misogynistic instincts. But those have nothing to do with HHS.
Meanwhile, corporate America is scrambling for lobbyists to carve out loopholes to Trump’s tariffs.
“The threat of tariffs has alarmed retailers and a wide range of other U.S. businesses,” David French, the senior vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation, told CNBC. “Our members have been working on contingency plans since President Trump secured the nomination.”
Apparently, those contingency plans involve flooding Republican-connected lobbying firms with calls desperate for their exemptions.
If you think it’s a recipe for corruption and influence peddling, well of course it is. What they shouldn’t be is surprised.
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