Revenge of the Praetorian Guard
Brownstone Institute | July 9, 2023
There was no censorship, but it’s good that they censored misinformation.
Defenders of the Covid regime have adopted this Doublethink in response to Judge Terry Doughty’s recent injunction against the government’s collusion with Big Tech. As Orwell describes in 1984, they “hold simultaneously two opinions which cancel out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.”
Consider the language of the Biden administration’s call for an “emergency stay” of the injunction from Missouri v. Biden that stops the government from telling social media companies what they should and should not allow their users to post. The appeal says government is not censoring but must have the power to continue “working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Grave harm… from free speech!
Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe exemplifies this authoritarian advocacy. For decades, Tribe built a reputation as a legal scholar. He authored the country’s leading constitutional law treatise, advised presidents, and appeared on television as a legal commentator.
But age has a way of eroding veneers. Tribe is a defender of a political regime, a member of a Praetorian Guard comfortable with abolishing constitutional liberties when it advances his political preferences.
In the last three years, Tribe has argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin rigged the 2016 presidential election for “Thief in Chief, Donald Trump,” led the Justice Department to argue that the CDC eviction moratorium was constitutional, and successfully lobbied President Biden to unilaterally cancel student loans.
If he were on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Tribe might be accused of spreading misinformation and unconstitutional theories that threatened our democracy. Instead, he continues to serve as a mouthpiece for the country’s most powerful forces.
On Wednesday, Tribe co-authored an article with Michigan Law Professor Leah Litman attacking Judge Doughty’s injunction against the federal government’s collusive censorship of its political opponents. Their argument is notable for its false assertions of fact and improper implications of law. They remain obtuse to the allegations in the case, the principles of the First Amendment, and the historical ploys to overturn civil liberties. All the while, they maintain a posture of moral superiority that the Biden White House has mimicked.
A “Thoroughly Debunked Conspiracy Theory”
The professors begin their article with a false premise: “The impetus behind the case is the now thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that the government is somehow strong-arming Big Tech into censoring conservative speech and speakers in violation of the First Amendment.”
They don’t offer an explanation for this description. They fail to address the documented censorship of Alex Berenson, Jay Bhattacharya, the Great Barrington Declaration, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others. There is no mention of Facebook banning users who promoted the lab-leak hypothesis after working with the CDC, the Biden Administration’s public campaign urging social media companies to censor dissent in July 2021, or the Twitter Files’ documentation of the US Security State’s influence on Big Tech.
Instead, Tribe and Litman dismiss censorship as a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. They didn’t need to look far for examples – the opinion documents multiple instances of the coordination between Big Tech and the Biden White House in silencing opposition.
“Are you guys fucking serious?” White House Advisor Rob Flaherty asked Facebook after the company failed to censor critics of the Covid vaccine. “I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”
At other times, Flaherty was more direct. “Please remove this account immediately,” he told Twitter about a Biden family parody account. The company compiled within an hour.
His boss demanded Twitter remove posts from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., writing: “Hey Folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP.”
There are too many incidents to list, but it is clear that censorship was more than a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. Either Tribe did not read the decision, or his ideology blinded him from reality.
“A cesspool of disinformation”
The professors’ debunked conspiracy theory premise contradicts their position later in the article.
Like many of their peers, Tribe and Litman hold an incompatible set of views: on one hand, they argue that allegations of censorship are illusory. At the same time, they argue that the government is justified in suppressing speech because of the dangers of “disinformation.”
Censorship doesn’t exist, but it’s good that it does.
They write that the ruling incorrectly defends Americans’ right of “existing in a cesspool of disinformation about election denialism and COVID.” They hold that this is an incorrect application of the First Amendment. The natural corollary to their argument would be that the government is justified in censoring “disinformation.”
But the First Amendment does not discriminate against false ideas. Labeling speech “disinformation” or smearing it with associations about “election denialism” does not take away its constitutional protections.
“Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea,” the Supreme Court held in Gertz v. Welch. “However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries, but on the competition of other ideas.” Tribe and Litman wouldn’t defer to the conscience of judges and juries – they would leave corrections to unelected White House bureaucrats.
“Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation,” the Court held in United States v. Alvarez. The Framers knew the dangers of central government acting as arbiters of truth, so they banned that form of informational totalitarianism. Now, Tribe and Litman advocate to overturn that system of liberty.
It “will make us less secure as a nation and will endanger us all every day”
The professors resort to the familiar campaign of conflating dissent with danger. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes compared handing out leaflets opposing World War I to “shouting fire in a crowded theater.” The Bush Administration eroded civil liberties in the War on Terror through the false dichotomy: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Now, Tribe resorts to national security hysteria in defending the assault on the First Amendment. “If left standing,” he writes, the injunction “will make us less secure as a nation and will endanger us all every day.”
The professors explicitly accuse Judge Doughty of endangering Americans. So what does the judgment demand that calls for this accusation? Judge Doughty’s order prohibits government actors from communicating with social media companies to censor “content containing protected free speech.” The Biden Administration can denounce journalists, give its own press briefings, and take advantage of the friendly media environment; it just can’t encourage private companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.
“It is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish,” the Court held in Norwood v. Harrison. Judge Doughty applied that axiom to the digital age, and defenders of the regime have accused him of assaulting the republic.
The Biden Administration has adopted the same view as Tribe, writing in its appeal that the injunction hinders its ability to pursue “initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.” Again, the language mimics Orwell’s description of Doublethink: “to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.”
The appeal rests on the argument that the “immediate and ongoing harms to the Government outweigh any risk of injury to Plaintiffs.” Considering what Judge Doughty’s order prohibits, the Biden Administration is saying that the inability to work with social media companies to censor “content containing protected free speech” creates “immediate and ongoing harms” that outweigh Americans’ First Amendment liberties.
The Praetorian Guard
In sum, Tribe and Litman’s arguments are divorced from the facts of the case and the protections of the First Amendment. Their work is not legal scholarship; it is a defense of the regime. They advance unconstitutional agendas to pursue their political interests. More alarmingly, the White House has adopted their point of view.
Tribe is familiar with this tactic. He has promoted clearly unconstitutional programs related to the debt ceiling, student loans, and COVID because he agrees with their progressive aims. President Biden has enjoyed and followed Tribe’s advice in each initiative.
Tribe is not unfamiliar with the ramifications of censorship. “It would be a mistake to leave judgments about the ‘proper’ distribution of speech to politicians. Arming them with a roving license to level the playing field by silencing or adjusting the volume of disfavored speakers is an invitation to self-serving behavior and, ultimately, tyranny,” he wrote eight years ago. Now it is clear that he accepts, perhaps demands, tyranny provided it advances his political beliefs.
Maybe the tyrannical impulse is benign – Tribe may think abolishing the country’s constitutional guardrails would be best for the nation. The law, however, does not have a carve out for claims of moral pursuit.
In Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More asks his son-in-law, William Roper, if he would give the Devil the protection of the law. Roper responds that he’d “cut down every law in England” to get to the Devil.
“Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?” More asks. “This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down… do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
Tribe and the Biden Administration may think that they have a divine mission in censoring alleged misinformation, that the Devil’s reincarnation has taken multiple forms in the bodies of Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr., Alex Berenson, and Jay Bhattacharya. Woodrow Wilson had a devout certainty in his persecution of dissidents, as did George Bush in his War on Terror. The self-professed nobility of their missions, however, does not excuse violations of Constitutional rights.
None of us ever wanted to live in a country in which the ruling regime openly expresses opposition to core constitutional rights that many generations of Americans thought were guaranteed by law. The injunction of Missouri v. Biden does nothing other than remind the government of those rights. And this is precisely why the Biden administration so strongly objects.
Burning of the Quran and the counter-offensive: Why the West is panicking
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 6, 2023
Desecrating, then burning the Holy Quran in Sweden has, once again, raised a political storm of condemnation, but also of justification, if not outright approval.
Such acts are protected by law, top Swedish and EU officials have declared.
But why are the rights of those who oppose western agendas, colonialism, imperialism, Zionism and military interventions not equally protected by law?
The Palestine boycott movement, BDS, for example, is constantly fighting in western societies and institutions for the right to use certain language or merely challenge, though non-violently, Israeli occupation and apartheid.
Iranian media offices were shut down in some western countries, and various western-operated satellites removed Iranian Press TV, Lebanon’s Al-Manar TV and other anti-Israel occupation media outlets from their line-ups.
Thousands of Palestinian activists have been banned or censored on western social media platforms for daring to criticise Israeli war crimes in Palestine. The writer of this article is one of many others.
As soon as the Russia-Ukraine war began, western governments were asked to completely block Russia Today and other Russian media channels from operating in western capitals, leading to the shutting down of offices, social media channels, removal from YouTube, Google and other search engines and so on.
In February 2022, European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “We will ban the Kremlin’s media machine in the EU”.
For some odd reason, all this censorship is, somehow, morally and legally defensible from the viewpoint of the West.
But why is the right to insult Muslims so cherished, so sacred in the view of western governments and laws? And why burn the Quran now?
It is ‘sacred’ simply because Islamophobia exists at the highest levels of governments throughout the West.
Western lawmakers and politicians may argue that the law protects the rights of individuals to burn the Quran but, deep down – sometimes right on the surface – Europe’s ruling elites share the view of those who burn the Quran or desecrate Islamic symbols. Such hate is often blamed on the far right by many of us, but that is only part of the story.
Expectedly, once again, Muslims react by protesting en masse, storm western embassies and burn western countries’ flags. And when this happens, the very western political and intellectual circles that permitted or encouraged hate speech in the first place, take to the stage, juxtaposing, with unmistakable triumph, the West’s democracy and tolerance with Islam’s intolerance and authoritarianism.
How about the timing?
Notice how the Quran is often burned, Islam insulted, or Islamic symbols desecrated whenever the West is undergoing a crisis and is desperate to either ignite an anti-Muslim public frenzy or distract from its own failures.
This has happened numerous times throughout history, ancient and modern.
In the past, whenever Christendom descended into chaos, civil wars and revolutions, European kings, with the support of the Church, would mount one crusade after another in the name of ‘freeing the captive Holy Land from the hordes of the heathens and the Mohammedans’.
More recently, when the US invaded Iraq, or wanted to distract from its splendid failures in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else in the Muslim world, western provocateurs would rush to the streets to burn the Quran or would insult and ridicule Prophet Mohammed in their newspapers and magazines.
But what crisis is the West now trying to distract from? Ukraine, and the global paradigm shift underway.
NATO is failing to push back or even weaken Russia. The much-touted Ukrainian counter-offensive, featuring the most modern weapons the West has to offer, is a flop at best, a complete disaster at worst.
Moreover, the cracks of division among NATO and western countries are bigger than ever and are widening by the day.
The Wagner mutiny in Rostov which ignited hope among western governments and elites that Russia’s President, Vladmir Putin, can be taken down from within, has completely failed. In fact, it has backfired as the mercenary group has been exiled to Belarus and is now stationed at NATO’s own doorsteps.
Worse, Arabs, Muslims, and countries from across the Global South are moving even closer to Moscow and Beijing. Algeria has recently signed a major cooperation agreement with Russia – thus strengthening their influence over the gas markets – and a host of nations are lining up to join BRICS.
In the face of this strategic failure and the complete moral, political and military collapse of the West, a supposed lunatic appears before a mosque in Stockholm, with the made-up altruistic mission of burning the Holy Book of 1.8 billion Muslims. A Western media fanfare immediately follows.
But this individual, and others like him, have little interest in defending freedom of speech. His is a diversionary strategy and, at some level, the actual orchestrators are not lunatics, but clever men, with high paying jobs and political agendas.
Indeed, these blasphemous acts are part and parcel of a larger western agenda, the gist of which is that the West is democratic, tolerant and essentially good, and the rest are undemocratic, barbaric and essentially wicked.
This false maxim is just another take on the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief, Josep Borrell, when he said, last November, that “Europe is a garden,” while “most of the rest of the world is a jungle.”
The fact that Russia has recently passed laws criminalising the burning of the Quran, indicates that Moscow, like others, also understands that the issue is purely political – because it is.
Another Climate-Savior Alarmist Jetsets To South America – For Two Months Of Vacation!
Climate activist hypocrite of the month
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | June 30, 2023
Skipping classes, getting up at 11 a.m., gluing oneself to the asphalt and blocking streets with your mates all day to save the planet is a really tough and important job, climate activists believe. And so exempting themselves from the rules they want imposed on the rest of society is understandable. After all, they are more important than the rest.
So important, in fact, that activists like Max Voegtli of Renovate Switzerland believes flying to Central America by jet plane for a couple of months of R & R is totally okay. The working class, however, should not fly at all and freeze in the wintertime.
Dealing with the climate crisis is urgent, insists Swiss radical climate activist just before hopping on a jet plane to fly to Central America for 2 months of vacation. Image cropped here.
Last Tuesday, Swiss climate activist Voegtli appeared on TalkTäglich at TeleZüri, and passionately explained how urgent it is to deal with the “climate crisis” and demanded that the planet be saved.
Off to Mexico and Central America
Then, already on Thursday, he was photographed at Zurich airport, preparing to board a plane bound for Paris. But climate rescuer Voegtli’s flying would not end in Paris, reports AUF 1 : “Paris was not the activist’s destination, but there he only took the connecting flight to Mexico and Central America, where he wants to travel around for two months.”
A two-month vacation is a total fantasy for the rest of the working world, who struggle to make ends meet each month. And this traffic blocker goes unhindered for 2 months?
Climate Emergency Fund
So where does an unemployed activist like Voegtli get the money for such a holiday extravaganza? AUF 1 writes: “It is well known that some of the asphalt gluers receive a regular salary. Organization Renovate Switzerland is no stranger to lavish money: “The organization itself admits that it is financed by the Climate Emergency Fund of oil magnate heiress Aileen Getty.”
Activists cry they are being harassed!
Now that Voegtli’s hypocrisy has been exposed, the embarrassed activists justify all their globe-trotting by claiming they travel as “private persons” and so no one should be photographing them.
AUF 1 : “Spokesperson Cécile Bessire castigated the ‘media hounding against the climate movement and the people who campaign for it. I find it incomprehensible that citizens are following our activists and taking photos. These are private individuals.’”
At Twitter, the thin-skinned Voegtli defended himself: “Shows again how the @CH_Media cares more about feeding the hate media cycle further instead of talking about the crisis.”
Voegtli’s Renovate Switzerland group added: “Getting politically involved against the climate crisis often goes hand in hand with changing one’s own life. However, it is not a prerequisite to do so. […] No matter if you separate your rubbish, if your house is renovated, if you work for a bank, if you eat meat or if you fly. All you should do is wish for a livable future and get involved in the climate movement.”
AUF 1 summarizes the infantile behavior of the activists such as Voegtli: “It means the climate activists can demand anything from citizens without having to do it themselves.”
In a nutshell, according to the climate activists: it’s “incomprehensible” that citizens would take photos of activists at airports, yet it’s perfectly fine for activists to block major roadways and to harass people who are trying to make a living. That’s how they want it.
Leave Trump Alone (Because It Does Not Matter)
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | June 26, 2023
The narrative is set. Everything between now and November 2024, absent an actual alien intervention, is filler material.
Trump will ride his narrative to the polls, campaigning even if in hand cuffs and an ankle monitor. He is, he will make clear, the victim of a Democratic plot to weaponize “justice,” dating back to 2016 when Hillary was let off scot-free for her email shenanigans, followed by the FBI’s concocted Russiagate, two impeachments, and now a carousel of indictments. His opponent is Joe Biden, older than Yoda but presenting more like Jar Jar, crooked in cahoots with his scum bag son to hard suck bribe money out of eastern Europe. Sleepy Joe’s narrative is to count on the same FBI going after Trump with both barrels to shuffle its feet investigating him and Hunter through the election, with a final surge under the slogan “Oh who cares, I’m not Trump!” to wrap things up. It’s all a rich tapestry.
The problem is it is compelling; there is a lot of truth underneath the showmanship. There was David Petraeus, Obama’s CIA Director, who leaked secret docs to his girlfriend, and Sandy Berger, Clinton’s NSA Director, who stole secret docs. But it was Hillary who did get away with it all, at the FBI’s discretion (so much for one law for everyone) what Trump has been accused of in Mar-a-Lago. Hillary Clinton maintained an unsecured private email server which processed classified material on a daily basis. Her server held at least 110 known messages containing classified information, including e-mail chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level, the highest level of civilian classification. The FBI found classified intelligence improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s server “was compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign governments or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means.”
Clinton and her team destroyed tens of thousands of emails, evidence, as well as physical phones and Blackberries which potentially held evidence — obstruction as clear as it comes. She operated the server out of her home kitchen despite the presence of the Secret Service on property who failed to report it. A server in a closet is not as dramatic a visual as boxes of classified stored in a shower room, but justice is supposed to be blind. More recently, what of Mike Pence and Joe Biden, both of whom have escaped indictment so far on similar charges of mishandling classified information. Trump voters know if the FBI is going to take similar fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, it is partial and political. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.
The Stormy Daniels case, and the guilty finding in the Jean Carroll defamation case, reek of politics. Neither case would have seen daylight outside of Democratic hive New York, and neither could have held up outside a partisan justice system that permits it to ignore Jeffrey Epstein’s death in custody or a city in a crime tornado (New York in the past year reduced 52 percent of all felony charges to misdemeanors, opposite of what was done to Trump) while aggressively allowing the system to pursue a decades-old rape case of dubious propriety.
Witch hunt meet Hunter. New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office on the promise to prosecute Trump. He fulfilled a campaign promise and paid off his George Soros-connected backers. Bragg, in the words of law professor Jonathan Turley, had a “very public, almost Hamlet-like process where he debated whether he could do this bootstrapping theory [bumping misdemeanors up to felonies in the Stormy case.] He stopped it for a while and was pressured to go forward with it. All of that smacks more of politics than prosecutorial discretion.”
Calling it all a witch hunt is just a starting point. The point here is not innocence; it is whether the justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore one while aggressively pursuing another, risking being seen as partial and political. No matter which candidate wins or loses, credibility is tanked.
Still to come (at the least) are whatever judicial actions will emerge from the Special Prosecutor over Trump’s role in January 6, and legal action over the 2020 Georgia vote count (with another Democratic openly anti-Trump prosecutor.) Trump jokes in his stump speech nowadays every time he flies over a Blue State he gets another subpoena. He could easily head into the Republican convention to accept the nomination with multiple convictions and/or indictments on his shoulders. It won’t matter. The justice system is going to take fact sets and ignore some while aggressively pursuing others, partial and political plain as day. No matter which candidate wins, credibility is tanked. It grinds that most of the serious charges against Trump are under the hoary Espionage Act, seen by many as reviving the now-discredited trope Trump was a Russian agent.
Mostly overlooked for now is how much of the apparent evidence against Trump at Mar-a-Lago came from his own attorneys. Attorney-client privilege is recognized as one of the cornerstones of fairness in our system. In the Trump case, the Justice Department used the one major exception to privilege, when the communication is intended to further a criminal or fraudulent act, to compel Trump’s lawyers to give evidence against their own client. Justice asserted Trump lied to his own team about having no more classified documents, and that this constituted a crime of fraud and maybe obstruction, and thus privilege is not available and Trump’s lawyer can be made to testify against his client. The crime or fraud exception to attorney-client privilege itself has a long history, dating back to English common law. In the United States, the crime or fraud exception was first recognized by the Supreme Court in the 1840 case of United States v. Privileged Communications. But Trump’s supporters are unlikely to read deeply into the case law; all they’ll see is what looks like strong-arm tactics by the Department of Justice. No matter which candidate wins and loses, DOJ’s credibility is tanked.
The thing is no one has to work very hard to convince Trump supporters of the truth of what he is saying, that he is the victim. Trump support remained unmoved by the many investigations that plagued his presidency. Even during peak crises, views of him were static. Post-presidency polls continued the trend. Public opinion of Trump remains remarkably stable, despite his unprecedented legal challenges, and about half of Americans do not see his behavior as disqualifying, sharper if you divide along partisan lines. When asked if Trump’s legal troubles would impact their views of him, two-thirds of his supporters said it would not make a difference. That’s a committed bunch. Perhaps just as important, 57 percent of voters, including one-third of Democrats, said the indictment in New York earlier this year was politically motivated.
No one can say who will win in November 2024, but one loser is certain, faith in the rule of law by a large number of Americans. They will leave the polls certain the system was bent to “get” Trump, either saddened by the fall of blind justice or saddened that it did not work and Trump remined a powerful figure with a large movement behind him, either in or out of the Oval Office.
Peter Hotez: Why He Won’t Debate
Another Sign that We’re Winning
By Fed Up Texas Chick | Dr. Tenpenny’s Eye on the Evidence | June 24, 2023
“Peter, if you claim what RFK Jr. is saying is misinformation, I am offering you $100,000 to the charity of your choice to debate him on my show with no time limit.”
And the little worm squirmed.
The worm I am referring to is Dr. Peter Hotez, and the quote above is from Joe Rogan. At the writing of this article, Joe Rogan’s challenge to Hotez has been viewed over 25 million times on Twitter. The money is being crowdsourced and has grown to $2.6 million thus far. Apparently, a lot of folks want to see this debate.
It all started with a long three-hour podcast interview between Joe Rogan and his guest, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has done incredible work with the Children’s Health Defense and is an outspoken opponent of vaccines. If you missed it podcast, here is an unedited version.
RFK Jr. expressed all sorts of opinions, which is any American’s right, about autism, the COVID vaccines, and the CIA’s involvement in the murder of his father and uncle President JFK. In particular, he touted the use of the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID in lieu of the vaccines.
Apparently, Hotez took issue with this, which is very interesting, given that he is the dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston’s Texas Medical Center. His personal website says he leads a team that is “developing new vaccines for hookworm infection, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and SARS/MERS/SARS-2 coronavirus diseases.” Naturally, he promotes global access to vaccines, because he directly benefits financially. If anyone should know about antiparasitic and antimalarial drugs, it’s Hotez, right? Why wouldn’t he be able to hold his own in a debate on tropical medicine?
Hotez knows about the value of ivermectin, because he wrote a paper on it in 2007 that was published in New England Journal of Medicine that discussed the history of the drug’s effectiveness. But rather than engaging in the challenge to debate RFK and “bury him once and for all,” Hotez took to Twitter. He promptly asked for a $50 million endowment because Rogan and Kennedy are so stinkin’ rich. He tried to get money from them to continue his work “making low-cost patent-free vaccines for the world’s poor.”
Hotez also asked for a public apology from RFK Jr.
Mostly, Hotez is pissed about RFK Jr’s anti-vax status, challenging his work and making him non-essential. Hotez has too good of a gig, actually, and doesn’t want anyone interfering with his gravy train. Let’s explore that gravy train…
Pfizer
Hotez has been in lock step with Pfizer for decades. Redacted News reporter Dan Cohen did a two part deep dive into Hotez and his past; I highly recommend watching it. Cohen reveals that Hotez started receiving money from Pfizer straight out of college, and he hasn’t stopped. And Hotez seems to only appear on Pfizer-backed channels, such as MSNBC.
This explains why Hotez praised Pfizer’s Covid-19 clinical trial results for children aged 12 to 15 as “pretty impressive”. The trial showed 100% efficacy, but we now know that Pfizer lied.
Lofty Colleagues: Gates and Fauci
Hotez also has an international status to protect. In 2022, he and colleague Dr. Maria Elena Bottazzi were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their work to develop and distribute a low-cost COVID-19 vaccine “to people of the world without patent limitation.”
According to his personal bio, Hotez has been developing recombinant protein coronavirus vaccines for SARS and MERS for more than a decade at Texas Children’s Hospital.
In 2020, he developed the first recombinant protein COVID-19 through microbial fermentation in yeast. Hotez has a connection to researcher Zhengli Shi, more commonly known as the Wuhan Institute of Virology “bat lady.” They worked together to develop a lab-generated (i.e. man-made) chimeric SARS-related coronavirus. Their work was was funded through an NIH grant, a grant that also provided funding for two of Shi’s staff.
Hmmm. Is this gain of function research? How about this hot new revelation from Kanekoa News :
In a groundbreaking revelation, it has come to light that Dr. Peter Hotez has been entangled in a web of funding, collaboration, and research with Chinese military scientists potentially involved in the development of COVID-19. The intricate tale weaves together key Chinese military virologists and culminates in the smoking gun evidence surrounding COVID-19’s notorious furin cleavage site.
So far, Hotez’s jab technology has been sent to four countries:
- India (Biological E, CORBEVAX),
- Indonesia (BioFarma, CORONAVAC),
- Bangladesh (Incepta) and
- Botswana (ImmunityBio).
More than 100 million doses have been administered in India and Indonesia. Gosh, he sounds like Bill Gates, doesn’t he? Maybe that’s because they also work together.
Here is an article from 2021 that starts,
“The Bill Gates-funded doctor is very displeased that you aren’t blindly genuflecting before his unassailable brilliance.” This is another article that is definitely worth reading.
There are many videos on the internet where Bill Gates is singing Hotez’s praises. This is blatant propaganda: Hotez is a salesman, not a scientist.
Lately, Hotez’s messaging has turned militant. What is he militant about? Anti-vaxxers. And anti-science promoted by anti-vaxxers, people like RFK Jr. You would think he would be chomping at the bit at the chance to debate him. He sticks to Twitter.
For example, his December 2022 Tweet where the WHO prominently features his militant attitude: Hotez says that anti-vaxxers have become a global killing force, and that anti-science kills more people than “gun violence, global terrorism, nuclear proliferation and cyberattacks.”
Wow, just wow.
He is particularly militant about, and protective of, Dr. Anthony Fauci. After Fauci stepped down from NIH late last year, Hotez was on the short list as a likely successor. In fact, Children’s Health Defense re-published an article, originally written by Dr. Joseph Mercola, wondering if he would assume Fauci’s role. Mercola’s article is a deep dive into Hotez’s world, and highly recommended reading.
In 2021, Hotez actually said it should be a federal hate crime to criticize Fauci and other government-funded scientists. Yes, he really said that. But we know that name-calling is the last resort for those who have no grounds for an argument.
The Clintons and Obama
It is actually perplexing that Hotez didn’t take Rogan up on a chance at a large charity donation, particularly since Hotez has such a penchant for nonprofit work. After all, he worked for the Clinton Global Health Initiative and, in 2006, that helped him found the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases to “provide access to essential medicines for hundreds of millions of people.” This is not anti-science; it comes from his own bio, linked above.
Take a gander at the rest of Hotez’s resume. From 2014 to 2016, he served in the Obama Administration as a US envoy to focus on vaccine diplomacy between the US government and North Africa and countries in the Middle East.
I literally could go on and on and write an 8,000-word expose on Hotez, but I won’t.
Hotez is a self-proclaimed saint who ‘toils tirelessly’ to develop vaccines for the world’s poor. At the same time, he wants to criminalize the questioning of vaccine safety and use cyberwarfare against anti-vaxxers to literally snuff them out. Journalist Paul Thacker wrote a great piece (2022) entitled, “Peter Hotez Sees Aggression Everywhere But in the Mirror.”
Hotez is a paradox, but many see his true colors. Is Hotez a scientist or a salesman? Is he a prominent physician or a political operative peddling propaganda? Is he a Mother-Theresa-like figure helping the world’s poor, or is he one of the most hateful and dangerous people in medicine today?
You be the judge.
Fed Up Texas Chick is a contributing writer for The Tenpenny Report (at http://www.Vaxxter.com) She’s a rocket scientist turned writer, having worked in the space program for many years. She is a seasoned medical writer and researcher who is fighting for medical freedom for all of us through her work.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Could Follow His Own Advice and Not Call Vladimir Putin a Gangster and Thug

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | June 24, 2023
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. posted at Twitter on Friday some advice for President Joe Biden: Don’t refer to the leader of China’s government with the insulting descriptor of “dictator.” And the advice went further, indicating Biden should avoid using similar language to describe leaders of other nations as well.
In the first of a series of Friday tweets, Kennedy commented, “It’s Diplomacy 101 that a President doesn’t send his senior diplomat to speak to a foreign leader, then insult that leader the next day.” In this tweet Kennedy linked an article regarding Biden having in a recent speech called China leader Xi Jinping a “dictator.”
In the second of his series of tweets, Kennedy further stated:
Maybe Biden is trying to appear ‘tough on China.’ But absurd, unhinged, and personally insulting remarks don’t make you tough. There is a level of unavoidable tension between great powers like China and the U.S. that doesn’t need to be artificially aggravated by antagonistic rhetoric.
Kennedy, however, does not appear to have followed this advice in his own presidential campaign.
In his campaign that began on April 19, Kennedy has volunteered his assessment that Russia President Vladimir Putin is a “gangster” and a “thug” at least two times. You can hear Kennedy make such comments six minutes and 19 seconds into a report on Kennedy’s interview with Noel Phillips and 41 minutes and 8 seconds into Kennedy’s interview with Freddie Sayers at UnHerd.
If Biden calling Xi a dictator is unacceptable under Kennedy’s take, why would Kennedy’s use of these other descriptors for the leader of Russia’s government — another great power — be acceptable?
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute
Biden Crashes Down the Stairs of U.S.-China Reset
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 21, 2023
Joe Biden’s penchant for tripping over his feet – and verbally – couldn’t have happened at a most unfortunate moment. Mocking China’s president as a “dictator” just when his administration attempted a big reset in U.S.-China relations has to rank as one of Biden’s clumsiest gaffes.
A day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China in a high-profile attempt to mend frayed relations, Biden kicked those efforts in the teeth by telling a crowd in California that Chinese President Xi was a dictator.
Beijing responded furiously, denouncing the American president’s “extreme” disrespect and lack of etiquette. China’s anger is no doubt reinforced because it showed magnanimity in receiving Blinken and affording him a top-level diplomatic meeting with President Xi Jinping.
Biden’s latest gaffe is made all the more absurd because he was referring to the incident of a Chinese weather balloon that had strayed over U.S. territory in February, which Biden ordered an F-16 fighter jet to shoot down with a sidewinder missile. Biden is still claiming that it was a Chinese spy balloon even though the Washington Post had reported earlier that it was a meteorological aircraft blown off course whose errant trans-Pacific course was being monitored in real-time by the Americans.
That crass overreaction by Biden resorting to a military attack over a balloon sent U.S.-China relations into a further tailspin. Blinken canceled a visit to Beijing in February in what was a cheap protest stunt against an alleged Chinese breach of U.S. national security. His trip last weekend was meant to signal a new reset in relations. There was much talk during the U.S. diplomat’s visit about improving communications between Washington and Beijing to avoid a military confrontation.
Then there came the crash, bang, wallop from Biden’s strange outburst insulting his Chinese counterpart.
During the California fundraising foray this week, Biden claimed that Xi knew nothing about the “spy balloon”, implying that he was being kept in the dark by Chinese intelligence officials as befitting a hapless “dictator”.
In reality, it looks like Biden is the one who is hopelessly benighted. Ordering the shoot-down of an errant balloon with million-dollar air-to-air missiles and to continue insisting that it was a spy vehicle shows an abject lack of judgment. Could anyone trust a balloon-popping commander-in-chief who has access to grabbing the nuclear football? This is Doctor Strangelove’s twilight stuff. All the more frightening because it’s real life, not a movie.
But on top of that, Biden then goes on to gratuitously insult the Chinese leader.
Biden’s loose tongue and legs at this frail stage in his half-century political career are beyond parody. Falling on the stairs of Air Force One and tripping over podiums is an embarrassing routine spectacle for this president.
His congenital bad manners of referring to Russian and Chinese leaders as “thugs”, “killers” and “dictators” shows Biden’s low class as a person, as well as extreme hypocrisy for a politician who is responsible for causing millions of deaths from promoting U.S. criminal wars down through the decades.
One good thing, however, is the impeccable clarity that all this provides (if that were needed).
China – and Russia– by now know beyond doubt that Washington cannot be trusted in anything it says. Biden is just the decrepit embodiment of the treacherous and duplicitous politics inherent in Washington. It is blinded and stupefied, incapable of meaningful dialogue because of Washington’s insufferable delusions, its arrogance, hubris, and self-righteous propaganda. And its total addiction to war for fixing its corporate capitalist junkie economy.
Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken went on a mission to appease China with ostensible declarations of wanting to normalize relations, avoid confrontation and professing adherence to the One China policy with regard to abjuring Taiwan’s independence and recognizing the island territory as being under China’s sovereign control. In other words, respecting international law.
China’s leadership warily shook hands with Blinken and appeared to give him the benefit of doubt for a public reset in U.S. bilateral relations.
Biden’s subsequent rush to the brain and his rash, churlish words demonstrate that Washington is not capable of adhering to decorum, decency and diplomacy, or anything for that matter, apart from a handrail on a staircase. And even that’s unreliable.
After Blinken’s smarmy visit to China, one can bet the farm that in the coming weeks there will be more provocative U.S. naval maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait; there will be more provocative U.S. multi-billion-dollar arms sales to Taiwan; and there will be more provocative U.S. political delegations ostentatiously traveling to Taipei in order to foment instability and the offensive notion of independence from China.
Thus, it’s altogether better that Beijing does not waste time by engaging Washington with disingenuous diplomacy. Forget smarmy, florid rhetoric about improving relations, and smiley handshakes. The only proof needed is deeds and practical compliance with already established legal treaties.
Washington says it respects the One China policy and three legally binding treaties that it has signed with Beijing since 1979 on that. That should mean the United States ending all interference in China’s sovereignty. No more arms sales to Taiwan and no more “freedom of navigation” maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait by U.S. warships.
It’s a rather straightforward obligation that avoids ambiguity and equivocation. It’s almost incredible that this has to be spelled out which illustrates just how rogue the United States is.
Moscow can make the same arguments and conclusions with regard to the U.S.-led NATO expansion up to its borders and the infiltration of Ukraine with NeoNazi proxies.
But here’s the deplorable rub: the United States is agreement incapable, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has caustically noted. Russian President Vladimir Putin has also recently lamented the complete dearth of American political integrity, at least for the past few generations.
Joe Biden figuratively falling down the stairs of the U.S.-China reset attempts is the latest confirmation that forked-tongued American politicians should be repudiated until Washington actually begins to behave as a law-abiding entity.
China hits back at Biden over ‘dictator Xi’ comments

RT | June 21, 2023
Beijing has pushed back against remarks by US President Joe Biden referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “a dictator,” claiming that the statements are outright offensive.
Speaking on Tuesday at a fundraiser in California, Biden addressed the controversy surrounding a Chinese balloon that entered US airspace earlier this year, suggesting that Xi did not know the vessel was even there.
“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened. That [balloon] wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course,” he said at the time.
On Wednesday, speaking at a regular press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning described the remarks as “extremely absurd,” adding that they “seriously violated China’s political dignity.” She said that such statements also violate diplomatic etiquette and contradict basic facts.
“It is an open political provocation,” Mao stressed.
The spokeswoman also reiterated China’s position that the balloon – which Washington has insisted was seeking to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States – strayed into US airspace due to “force majeure factors.”
“The US side distorted the facts and abused force, fully reflecting the US’ bullying and hegemonic nature,” she said.
The back-and-forth between China and the US comes shortly after a landmark visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing, where he met with Xi and other senior Chinese officials.
On Monday, the top US diplomat stated that both countries had achieved “progress” towards putting their bilateral relations back on track. Blinken also vowed that the US would “responsibly manage” competition with China so that their relationship “does not veer into conflict,” according to the State Department.
During the meeting with Blinken, Xi said that Beijing “respects US interests and does not seek to challenge or displace the United States,” adding that Washington also “needs to respect China” and not hurt its legitimate rights and interests.
In recent months, Sino-US relations have been marred by a number of disagreements, with Taiwan being one of the most divisive. China considers the self-governing island a part of its sovereign territory and has repeatedly protested against Washington selling military equipment to Taipei.
Is China reciprocating US aggression?
By Drago Bosnic | June 21, 2023
When the Soviet Union placed its nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the United States threatened to attack if the R-12 “Dvina” and R-14 “Chusovaya” nuclear-tipped missiles deployed on the Caribbean island country weren’t removed. After most of October that year was spent in strenuous talks and strategic military maneuvers that nearly escalated into full-scale confrontation barely 17 years after WW2, Washington DC and Moscow finally negotiated a mutually beneficial (albeit last-minute) agreement that moved the world away from the thermonuclear abyss that threatened to destroy it.
For decades, much of the world was convinced that what today is (unjustly) called the Cuban Missile Crisis was initiated by Russia. And even nowadays, when we all know that it was started by the US and its 1961 deployment of the PGM-19 “Jupiter” nuclear-tipped missiles in Turkey and Italy, Washington DC still insists that Moscow was responsible for the crisis. Something eerily similar is unfolding as we speak. However, instead of Russia, the other party involved in this case is China. Namely, according to the Wall Street Journal, Beijing is currently in talks with Havana to establish new military facilities in Cuba.
The report, published on June 20, states that the two socialist allies are working out the final arrangements of the deal that would reportedly secure a military base for the PLA (People Liberation Army) in northern Cuba. The WSJ reports that this has “sparked fears among US officials that [Cuba] could eventually host a permanent Chinese troop presence”, prompting the troubled Biden administration to intervene with Cuban officials, seeking to block the establishment of permanent military installations. This will reportedly also include the expansion of ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities of the PLA’s existing military facility.
The claims about China’s supposed military bases in Cuba are based on anonymous sources from unnamed US intelligence services. However, the authors admit that the aforementioned services are not exactly certain about the possibility of a full-blown joint Chinese-Cuban military base, stating that “the reference to the proposed new training facility in Cuba is contained in the highly classified new US intelligence, which State Department officials described as convincing but fragmentary”. The report further adds that “it’s being interpreted with different levels of alarm among policymakers and intelligence analysts”.
“Most worrying for the US: The planned facility is part of China’s ‘Project 141’, an initiative by the People’s Liberation Army to expand its global military base and logistical support network, one current and one former US official said. China and Cuba already jointly run four eavesdropping stations on the island, according to US officials. That network underwent a significant upgrade around 2019, when a single station expanded to a network of four sites that are operated jointly, and Chinese involvement deepened, according to the officials,” the WSJ authors detail.
It’s quite difficult to measure the sheer magnitude of Washington DC’s hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to this issue. Considering not only the outright hostile and oftentimes openly Sinophobic rhetoric, but also the numerous concrete moves aimed against China, could anyone honestly blame Beijing for anything except reciprocity? Apart from the trade war initiated under former president Donald Trump, the US has been conducting a comprehensive crawling aggression against China, openly seeking to contain the Asian giant with a massive network of military bases and other installations across Asia-Pacific.
Most alarmingly for Beijing, the US is aiming to push its military infrastructure ever closer to China’s shores, particularly by exerting greater control over the Asian giant’s breakaway island province of Taiwan. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of resurgent Neo-McCarthyism in US foreign policy that involves the sending of entire delegations of Washington DC warhawks to Taipei, in addition to the massive shipments of weapons and equipment (that now includes F-16 Block 70/72 fighter jets and hundreds of anti-ship missiles), amounting to approximately $20 billion, albeit mostly backlogged due to US (over)focus on the Kiev regime.
Taking into account such unadulterated hostility, can anyone blame Beijing for wanting to strengthen its ties with Havana? Worse yet, Cuba is an independent country, while Taiwan is internationally recognized as part of China (including by the US itself), meaning that the expansion of America’s military infrastructure to the island directly threatens Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, in its endless hypocrisy and double standards, Washington DC wants to maintain the Monroe Doctrine by exerting additional pressure on Latin America while encroaching on other superpowers’ geopolitical backyards.
“Some intelligence officials say that Beijing sees its actions in Cuba as a geographical response to the US relationship with Taiwan: The US invests heavily in arming and training the self-governing island that sits off mainland China and that Beijing sees as its own,” the WSJ admitted begrudgingly, adding: “The Journal reported that the US has deployed more than 100 troops to Taiwan to train its defense forces.”
In addition, the authors also acknowledged that “Taiwan is roughly 100 miles from mainland China, about the same distance Cuba is from Florida”, effectively conceding that there’s strategic equivalency between the two.
“China has no combat forces in Latin America, according to US officials. Meanwhile, the US has dozens of military bases throughout the Pacific, where it stations more than 350,000 troops. Chinese officials have pointed this out when they push back on American efforts to counter their military expansion outside of the Indo-Pacific,” the WSJ report concludes.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Defining Dictator Down Won’t Make Us Free
By James Bovard | Brownstone Institute | June 20, 2023
For 27 seconds on Tuesday night, Fox News posted a chyiron beneath a video of President Biden: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.” That sparked a media uproar over what was portrayed as the biggest breach of decorum since the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theater.

The Washington Post howled that Fox News “shocks with ‘wannabe dictator’ graphic.” A Daily Beast columnist shrieked that the chyron “spreads dangerous lies.” Liberal zealots called for completely shutting down Fox News – as if the network had committed a sin that could never be expunged.
But rather than razing a network headquarters, Americans must recognize the disputed terminology that spurred this fracas.
Biden’s critics are using an archaic definition of dictatorship, one that focuses myopically on whether a president obeys the law and the Constitution. Under the new definition, “dictatorship” only refers to rulers who do bad things to good people. (Maybe the National Security Agency can automatically “correct” all dictionaries on the Internet.)
As Biden explained last year, Republicans are guilty of “semi-fascism.” So, nothing Biden does to his political opponents can be “dictatorial” because they deserve whatever the feds inflict.
It is true that Biden dictated that 84 million Americans working for large companies must get injected with the Covid vaccine. But that wasn’t dictatorial because, as Biden explained, vaccine skeptics were murderers who only wanted “the freedom to kill you” with Covid. (The Supreme Court nullified that dictate early last year.)
It is true that the Biden White House dictated that social media companies suppress billions of posts, including true information from critics of the administration’s Covid policies. But that didn’t count because, as top Biden advisor Andrew Slavitt declared, “People with murderously selfish ideas— driven by an unwillingness to sacrifice & wrapped in phony intellectualism— entered” the debate over Covid policies. (A federal appeals court is exposing the vast sweep of Biden’s Covid censorship.)
It is true that Biden issued a dictate extending the national moratorium on evictions of deadbeat renters. The Supreme Court torpedoed Biden’s policy. But he was blameless because the Court decision relied on an archaic standard: “Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.”
It is true that Biden appointees dictated that two-year-old children in Head Start must wear masks all day. But that wasn’t dictatorial because children were permitted to briefly remove the masks when they ate meals. (A federal judge torpedoed that mandate in late 2022.)
It is true that Biden revived dictatorial policies that entitled federal bureaucrats to ban landowners from farming or building on any land with puddles, ditches, or other purported wet spots. But Biden had no choice but to take drastic action to rescue his environmentalist supporters from hopeless depressions. (The Supreme Court nullified Biden’s wetlands policies last month).
It is true that Biden dictated that taxpayers must shoulder the cost of $300+ billion in federal student loans that he canceled to buy political support. But that didn’t count because God wanted Democratic candidates to do well in last November’s midterm election. (The Supreme Court is expected to nullify Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme in the coming weeks.)
It is true that the Biden White House dictated that the FBI target and investigate parents who protested at school board meetings. But the feds were justified in classifying mothers and fathers as terrorist threats because they committed verbal micro-aggressions against liberal sacred cows including the teachers’ union.
It is true that Biden appointees are arbitrarily dictating sweeping prohibitions of firearms parts that could turn tens of millions of peaceful gun owners into federal felons. But that is not dictatorial because “C’mon, man!” Or maybe, “Why’d you ask such a dumb question?”
It is true that Biden dictated… actually, we probably have not heard or seen his most arbitrary or dangerous dictates. The Biden administration is stonewalling congressional investigations and dropping a cloak of secrecy around its most controversial policies. But this is not a dictatorial abuse because Biden needs a second term to “literally redeem the soul of America” (as he promised on Wednesday).
The hypersensitivity over tagging Uncle Joe with the D-word is ludicrous after activists spent four years howling that Donald Trump was literally Hitler, or maybe only Stalin. Many protestors who vehemently denounced Trump were not opposed to dictators per se; they simply wanted different dictates. Now that Biden is dictating at full speed, Biden’s allies seek to rewrite the English language. As usual, the Washington media devotes far more attention to political labels than to the realities of government power.
Perhaps Biden could satisfy his gender-fluid supporters by coming out publicly and personally identifying as “non-dictator.” But other Americans will continue wryly watching the political rascality, laughing at the media’s snit-fits, and awaiting the next judicial demolition of Biden’s decrees.
James Bovard, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is author and lecturer whose commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government.
Media Attacks Spotify For Allowing Robert F Kennedy Jr. Joe Rogan Episode
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 18, 2023
Spotify, the audio streaming giant, is once again in the crosshairs of media critics for allowing an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that featured Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The episode is accused of spreading vaccine “misinformation” and “conspiracy theories” without sufficient censorship by the platform, and the media is questioning Spotify’s decision to host it.
Joe Rogan, a major podcasting force in the US, hosted the three-hour long show that touched on vaccine skepticism, 5G technology, and alternative COVID-19 treatments. This comes as part of a broader scrutiny from media outlets urging platforms to put a lid on content that challenges mainstream narratives and contradicts the stances of global health organizations.
Media outlets including Vice and The Verge point fingers at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., known for his criticism of vaccines and pharmaceutical companies, for allegedly making several false claims during the podcast. These include the claim linking vaccines to autism and an assertion regarding vaccines containing harmful forms of mercury. The media’s bone to pick with Spotify is its decision to not clamp down on Kennedy’s suggestion that “Wi-Fi radiation” could play a role in various chronic illnesses.
Peter Hotez, Baylor microbiology professor and public health advocate, threw the spotlight on the issue by sharing a critical article via Twitter. Not one to back down, Rogan threw down the gauntlet to Hotez for a debate with Kennedy, sweetening the pot with a $100,000 donation to charity if Hotez agreed. He didn’t.
Despite the uproar and calls for censorship, Spotify defended its position. A spokesperson from the company maintained that neither Rogan nor Kennedy crossed the line in terms of the platform’s policies.
Spotify’s history with attacks from the media is somewhat checkered. Flashback to early 2022, when artists including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell yanked their music from Spotify as a show of protest against Rogan’s questioning of Covid vaccine efficacy, including his statement that vaccines don’t halt infection spread.
The Great Debate that won’t happen
Kennedy vs. Hotez might be a narrative-changer.
BY BILL RICE, JR. | JUNE 18, 2023
In south Alabama we have an expression: “If you’re scared, say you’re scared.”
Well, Dr. Peter Hotez – one of the best-known vaccine advocates and defenders of all the Covid mitigation measures – is obviously scared to death. He just needs to come out and admit it.
What scares Dr. Hotez is an invitation for him (Hotez) to debate presidential candidate and contrarian Covid expert Robert Kennedy, Jr. on Joe Rogan’s ultra-popular podcast show.
Apparently, Hotez kept bad-mouthing “disinformation super-spreader” Kennedy and Rogan finally had enough.
Rogan offered to donate $100,000 to Hotez’s favorite charity if Hotez would just come on his show and, in a debate with no time-table, debate Kennedy on vaccine effectiveness, safety and all the other allegedly “settled” Covid science.
As I write, the debate invitation has gone viral on Twitter with plenty of other wealthy people (like Steve Kirsch) ponying up money to make the debate happen. At last look, Dr. Hotez could net $1.5 million for his favorite charity by simply talking to Kennedy and Rogan for two or so hours.
Talk about easy money.
Needless to say, Kennedy is game for a “cordial” debate and, needless to say, he doesn’t need to be bribed to participate. He’ll do it for free and pay his own expenses to show up in the studio.
Truth be told (there’s that word – “truth”) … Nobody is surprised that Dr. Hotez is running from a genuine debate on Covid topics. This is because no expert in America has participated in a genuine debate on Covid topics in 40 months.
Apparently, one new feature of our “New Normal” “scientific method” is that real debates are no longer necessary.
In fact, they are strongly discouraged, which is exactly why Facebook, Google, YouTube, the CDC, “Joe Biden’s” White House and the corporate press have been pushing for censorship on steroids for so long.
For those who haven’t picked up on this yet, censorship also precludes real debates.
Hotez and every “expert” and authority of his ilk has been saying for almost four years that people like Kennedy who are spreading “disinformation” and “misinformation” are potentially killing and harming massive numbers of people with their false Covid claims.
According to the experts, the claims made by Kennedy, Kirsch (and Bill Rice Jr.!) are ridiculous, preposterous, obviously false, easily discredited, etc.
Such claims are interesting as they suggest that any debate with a Covid skeptic would be a lay-up or gimme to win. Even a cave man could humiliate RFK, Jr. in a debate about real science.
So, if victory would be so easy – and if one can make a couple million for his favorite charity – why not do this?
Speaking for myself, I’m tired of acting like I’m obtuse when I’m not. We all know the answer: The Dr. Hotez’s of the world are scared to death of a real debate.
If this isn’t a giant “tell” about these frauds and charlatans nothing is.
Also, every one of them are pro-censorship.
Facebook has been censoring content left and right for three-plus years, but Hotez’s cabal of “influencers” are demanding that Congress and the White House make social media companies censor even more content/speech that they don’t like.
The entire justification for North Korea-style censorship is that the disinformation spreaders are harming people. Presumably, Hotez’s noble goal is to save lives and shut up all the “disinformation” spreaders.
Well, what would shut them up more than a pay-per-view prize fight between one of the leading advocates of the Status-Quo narrative and the best known Covid skeptic in the world?
Once Dr. Hotez wipes the floor with Kennedy, every other vaccine super spreader will crawl back into a cave and keep his mouth shut from here on out.
My side will be disgraced and humiliated … and every neutral person will now know this.
In one fell swoop, the “disinformation” movement will suffer a lethal blow. Millions of lives will be saved because, in the future, everyone will know that Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Anthony Fauci were exactly right with everything they said about Covid.
Not only will Kennedy lose this “science” debate, his hopes of pulling an upset and winning the White House will also go down the toilet.
Dr. Hotez would be THE hero to all the groups, companies and bureaucracies who are having nightmares about Kennedy beating their chosen candidate, “Joe Biden.”
Kennedy’s Children Health Defense non-profit, which has been growing by leaps and bounds, would wither up and die.
Everyone would know that not only did the Covid vaccines save millions of lives, they’d also know that the massive spike in autism cases in recent decades had nothing to do with vaccines and the flu vaccine – which is now being questioned by more and more Americans – would once again be perceived as a must-get annual shot.
Hotez could also put to bed the claim that his side is anti-free speech because they would be allowing Kennedy and Rogan to deploy their dad-blasted free speech in said “debate.”
“See, we are NOT censors and we do believe in free speech and genuine debates in our democracy,” Hotez could show the world in this debate.
For all these reasons, it would seem Dr. Hotez and his side would achieve a panoply of positive, life-saving results, with no down-side whatsoever.
The only downside might be if, Hotez, in fact got annihilated in this debate and every American who witnessed the event started questioning all the claims the experts had made in the last four years (or decades for that matter).
But this scenario can’t be a possibility because the science is so “settled” and Kennedy is such a “wacko” and conspiracy theorist that he would have no chance of prevailing in any debate … right?
Of course, we all know Dr. Hotez knows he’d get his ass whipped in any debate with Kennedy. Fauci knows this, The New York Times knows this, Bill Gates knows this, every commentator at MSNBC and CNN knows this.
“Whatever you do, do NOT debate Robert Kennedy on Covid topics!” they are all now screaming at Dr. Hotez.
If the debate is held, it will set Internet ratings records. The fact that Hotez is running from said debate is already giving another huge boost to the presidential campaign of RFK, Jr, who is having no trouble going around the MSM “gatekeepers of the news,” who all despise and fear him.
In fact, that’s another reason the debate can’t be allowed. It’s almost a given that RFK, Jr. would go off on the captured mainstream press in said debate.
Dr. Hotez would be the one defending the credibility of The New York Times and singing the praises of Big Pharma, which has of course always been as honest as the day is long.
If enough Americans keep calling Dr. Hotez a sissy, maybe this will goad the previously cocky doctor into taking the bait and actually debating Kennedy.
If so, this might qualify as a game-changer and give the world it’s very first honest discussion of Covid policies. It might also help elect a president who genuinely wants to dismantle the Military Industrial Complex and the Science/Medicine Industrial Complex.
But my bet is Dr. Hotez won’t debate.
There’s another expression we’ve all heard: “You can run, but you can’t hide.” Well, in our surreal New-Normal times, apparently the experts and authorities CAN run and they can hide. That’s what they’ve been doing for 40 months and, as far as I can tell, they are still in power. So that strategy is working perfectly.

