Before I get into the weeds on this, let me just offer the caveat: in no conceivable reality would Kamala Harris — or, rather, her handlers who would be running things, she being a potted plant token minority puppet — be any better on the biomedical totalitarianism front than Donald Trump; on the contrary, she is guaranteed to be far, far worse.
So I’ll thank you in advance for not levying the accusation that that’s what I’m implying.
With that established, Rogan let slip by a massive opportunity to press the former president on his vehement support and self-congratulation for the COVID-19 shots that he pushed through, obviously working with bad information slipped to him by industry hacks, during the last year of his administration.
Related: Trump Self-Congratulates, Brags About COVID Vaccines AGAIN
Of course, given his central role in Operation Warp Speed, Trump was very likely briefed by his team beforehand — as he has likely been for months now — not to touch the COVID vaxx scam with a ten-foot-pole.
But I expected better from Joe Rogan, who has made discussing the greatest medical scandal in world history a pillar of his podcast.
He’ll regularly bring up the vaxx/lockdown/masking/origin coverup issue with virtually anyone on his show, even guests who ostensibly have no expertise or interest in the topic — but not the man who is very likely to become the leader of the free world in about a week in what is likely to be the most-watched podcast of his career, at least until Elvis re-emerges from the grave for a postmortem interview?
The omission seems odd.
I tuned in for the whole thing when it first dropped, hoping against hope it would come up and Trump would have figured out a way to tell the truth about the shots while saving some face, which is obviously his main concern, as he is notoriously averse to acknowledging faults.
Related: SHOCKER: Bill Gates Met With Trump, Pressured Him Not to Investigate Vaccine Safety
Why it is exactly that Trump refuses to touch the vax issue — aside from the facts that he appears to believe in the inherent value of the pharmaceutical industry and that his ego won’t allow him to acknowledge mistakes — I can’t say for certain.
But I do know why virtually no Democrat and far too few Republican politicians (with notable and laudable exceptions like Sen. Rand Paul and Ron Johnson) are willing to take it on, and the answer boils down, as most thing in Washington do, to money.
Via Biospace (emphasis added):
The nonprofit transparency group Open Secrets tracks spending by pharmaceutical and health product political action committees (PACs), which have spent $12,009,986 on campaign contributions in 2023 and 2024. The 111 pharmaceutical PACs have given over $5.2 million to Democrats, while around $6.6 million has gone to Republicans thus far in 2023 and 2024.
The top lobbying client in the pharma manufacturing sector is the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which has a lobbying budget of over $16.9 million. Pfizer is second with $6 million available, followed by Merck, Novartis and Eli Lilly with $5.2 million, $4.6 million, and $4.4 million in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
Bear in mind that this is only the metaphorical tip of the iceberg — trackable, officially documented campaign cash funneled to politicians via PACs; the above figures don’t include dark money, board positions on the likes of Pfizer awarded “public servants” after they leave office, speaking engagements sponsored by the same, etc.
Unfortunately, the ship may have sailed to get any real concessions out of Trump vis a vis the nascent biomedical tyranny we are living under via electoral pressure. The time to have done that was back at least several months ago when the primaries were still relevant.
Now we have two choices: a guy who is, in the most charitable framing, not as militant as he ought to be about taking on the industry and the government “regulatory” agencies that act as its proxies, or an empty suit ladder-climber who will literally do whatever Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci tell her to do.
One is clearly better than the other, but neither is ideal — an indictment, perhaps, of the two-party system we have here. But that’s a conversation for another day.
Here’s hoping RFK Jr., Calley Means, and others in Trump’s orbit can apply the right kinds of pressure, make the right kinds of arguments, and keep the wrong people (pharmaceutical lobbyists and NIH goons, for example) out of the room to get some real business done in the next four years on behalf of the American people.
