(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stars in another Republican 'weaponization' hearing, it's again a shit show [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2023-07-20 House Republicans are holding another hearing today premised on the alleged "weaponization" of government by non-Republicans, and it's once again mainly an excuse for Republicans to put sexual abuse enabler Rep. Jim Jordan in front of some cameras so he can spread conspiracy theories and yell things. Today's featured attraction was the anti-vaxxer and neo-Nazi-boosting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who continues to appear on countless television screens while whining that he is being censored, because some private companies have decided they don't want him contributing to the death of their customers with his crank anti-vaxx lies. As usual, the whole thing was a shit show from the moment Jordan flicked on his microphone. Again. Still. Here's Jordan kicking things off with a loopy conspiracy theory blaming the COVID-19 vaccine for the death of ... Hank Aaron? x Jim Jordan begins the hearing by amplifying right-wing claims that Hank Aaron, who was 86, died because of the Covid vaccine pic.twitter.com/uyXSt8nLxx — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 20, 2023 Kennedy latched onto Aaron’s death because he died 17 days after publicly proclaiming he’d gotten the vaccine. Experts said that was "pure coincidence." The mood of the day was Republican dorks being dorks, a sort of, "What if the movie ‘12 Angry Men’ were recast with the worst people you went to high school with, and they're all into multilevel marketing now and will not shut up for even five damn minutes about it?” This is our actual Congress, you realize. You can tell because they've got nicer chairs than you. x JORDAN: If you want to cut him off and censor him some more, you're welcome to PLASKETT: That's not my job. That's your job. Why don't you threaten the witness, so that they can not want to be a witness pic.twitter.com/jkYhXf7EoF — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 20, 2023 Much of the hearing consisted of a sick-sounding Kennedy Jr. angrily defending himself from the things that have come out of his own word-hole, including the utterly unhinged far-right claim that the COVID-19 virus may be an "ethnically targeted" bioweapon "targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people" but leaving "Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese" as the "most immune." x RFK Jr: While I'm under oath, in my entire life I have never uttered a phrase that was either racist or anti-semitic. pic.twitter.com/755cC1yvTn — Acyn (@Acyn) July 20, 2023 "And if I'm lying, may I cough up a bloody lung on this very table!" he did not say afterwards. But really, this was his whole schtick. “Poor, poor me, I just want to have a debate with the 'merican people where I get to say completely false and delusional things and everybody should applaud me for doing it.” x RFK Jr: I have never been anti-vax. I have never told the public avoid vaccination pic.twitter.com/zFkYlBTbo0 — Acyn (@Acyn) July 20, 2023 The biggest Republican problem in this hearing remains the inability of all the conspiracy theorists to get on the same page, which means that each episode of the Jim Jordan Funtime Shoutfest is a blur of conspiracies all lumped together according to who has the microphone and a bee up their butt on any given day. "Hunter Biden's laptop" again made its angry appearance because of course it did. x Republicans are talking again about the biggest crisis facing the American people -- Hunter Biden's laptop pic.twitter.com/RoVpgqUOZQ — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 20, 2023 I swear this whole thing is a class reunion, possibly for all the background characters who survived one of the high school slasher flicks of the 1980s because they were too boring for the killer to even bother with. The whole thing has a "slightly drunken afterparty down at the Applebee's" vibe to it. For the record, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the alleged Hunter Biden laptop does not exist, that it's a fake created by politically motivated hackers who compromised his online accounts and pieced together a "new" version containing both real and edited data. While this angry middle school principal is wondering why the FBI has been so cagey about confirming that the hard drive in their possession is "real," he's omitting the most obvious explanation: It's the subject of an ongoing investigation, emphasis on ongoing. They've confirmed that it has "real" data on it, as in data from Hunter Biden's online accounts, but the chain of custody is so bizarre that confirming that data is only from him is difficult. So we get a helping of that, but afterwards we're off on some other completely unrelated conspiracy tangent, this time from Rep. Chip Roy just lying through his effin' teeth. x Chip Roy parrots the antivax lie that no safety testing was done on the COVID vaccines. The truth is that all of the vaccines underwent placebo controlled randomized trials. Here’s the 45k patient safety and efficacy trial for the Moderna vaccine. https://t.co/0OAds3QLxH https://t.co/VhuEgLywQ4 — Jonathan Reiner (@JReinerMD) July 20, 2023 And more of RFK Jr. being super mad that people listen to what he says and remember it, which is what I thought he was demanding we do all along. x RFK Jr: You're misstating ... Wasserman Schultz: No, no no no. I quoted what you said RFK Jr: I was describing an NHS-funded study Wasserman Schultz: You did not cite any study pic.twitter.com/E1gYZdqByE — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 20, 2023 From the moment the Republican Party gave Jordan his very own subcommittee to be in charge of, this thing was destined to be a shit show of epic proportions. It's transparently been constructed as a venue for the most conspiracy-obsessed House Republicans to promote their own hoaxes and misinformation while bellowing about how unfair it all is when other Americans either correct them or condemn them for spreading lies. That's the whole schtick. It manages to be both a circus and so, so boring, because the whole premise is that some of the most famous people in the land are being oppressed by you treating them rudely. RELATED STORIES: A dangerous RFK Jr. warns "they" have developed Jew-sparing bioweapons Neo-Nazis are giddy over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s antisemitic COVID-19 conspiracy theory House Republicans now own Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s antisemitism [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/20/2182403/-Robert-F-Kennedy-Jr-stars-in-another-Republican-weaponization-hearing-it-s-again-a-shit-show Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/