With RFK Jr. still on campaign trail, voters revisit Democrats' COVID restrictions and censorship

Presidential campaign dropout Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is not going away in the final 10 weeks of election season, and his ongoing presence could remind voters what they don't like about both major party tickets: their role in COVID-19 lockdowns.

While formally endorsing former GOP President Donald Trump and joining his 2024 presidential transition team, and RFK Jr.'s onetime running-mate Nicole Shanahan publishing a viral parody of a pharmaceutical commercial on sufferers of "Trump Derangement Syndrome," the black sheep of Camelot earlier waged high-profile fights with Trump's COVID-19 lockdown architects, especially Dr. Anthony Fauci.

But ripped Rob poses bigger problems for Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris by virtue of her administration's fast and furious about-face on COVID vaccines, squelching of alternative treatments, scientifically unfounded standards for school reopening, and executive orders mandating masks on interstate travel and vaccines on 100 million workers.

Harris when running in 2020 for vice president with then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden trashed the integrity of Operation Warp Speed, and even suggested they wouldn't take a COVID vaccine, because it was under incumbent Trump's aegis.

The new administration then repeatedly made false statements on the protective abilities of the vaccines developed under their predecessor, who continued taking credit for them even after their higher risk to young people at minimal risk from COVID itself – known to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before their approval – became undeniable.

There has been no rethinking of what went wrong during the pandemic "because the people who carried out the management of the pandemic are entrenched," starting when Trump "handed off management of the pandemic to the National Security Council," Yale School of Public Health epidemiologist Harvey Risch told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

That management "strove to protect the bioweapons industry" while ignoring the "established public health principles that were laid out for respiratory viruses in 2007," said Risch, coauthor of the new book "Toxic Shot," whose analysis of the structure of mRNA vaccines concludes they "fail to qualify as real vaccines by any measure."

Large health maintenance organizations could analyze their reams of "data on the vaccination status of everybody who dies in our national statistical records" to determine what role COVID vaccines might be playing in the surge of excess mortality since the pandemic, he said. "And if the large HMOs aren't doing this, then they know there's something wrong."

Kennedy's support for Trump's election is "one of the most remarkable things" politically in recent years and a hopeful sign that a national conversation on the consequences of COVID policy can prevail over censorship, Risch said.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty gave Kennedy the green light to continue his social media censorship lawsuit against the Biden administration right before he dropped out of the race in late August, reviewing his legal standing to sue in light of the Supreme Court denying standing to plaintiffs in a related case. A bicameral GOP bill would ban federal pressure to censor protected speech.

Kennedy and his nonprofit Children's Health Defense "were in positions contrary to Government positions on COVID-19, including mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine injuries, lockdowns, etc.," and White House officials directly asked platforms to remove their posts starting soon after inauguration, Doughty wrote.

Facebook repeatedly told officials the posts didn't violate its policies but agreed to limit their distribution, apply "strong warning labels" and prevent recommendations for "content discouraging vaccines," the ruling said. Founder Mark Zuckerberg belatedly admitted the administration "repeatedly pressured" it to censor COVID posts "including humor and satire."

Officials escalated when Kennedy appeared on the Center for Countering Digital Hate's "Disinformation Dozen." The CDC targeted him for suppression in tandem with the Virality Project, which targeted even "true content" that may increase vaccine hesitancy, and its "key stakeholders" include State and Homeland Security departments, Doughty wrote.

"There is not much dispute" Kennedy and CHD were suppressed after being "specifically targeted" by the White House and other feds, the judge said. He still faces a "substantial risk" of suppression as a presidential candidate, since an FBI agent admitted the agency "made no attempt to distinguish" between foreign and American election disinformation when seeking suppression.

A critic of Harris on Friday posted a supercut of her interviews and debates since the 2020 Democratic primaries in which she calls for Trump's removal from social media even before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, portraying his musings as a font of "threats to the safety of other human beings."

Journalist Nancy Rommelmann, who in 2021 chronicled how Portland, Oregon, was "destroyed from within by radical activism and political ineptitude," reviewed Harris's record on COVID and her party's related "amnesia" for The Atlantic on Aug. 22.

While "Trump was in charge when schools closed" and his Centers for Disease Control and Prevention devised widely adopted six-foot distancing and mask guidance, Biden recently falsely claimed "Kamala helped states and cities get their schools back open," Rommelmann wrote.

"We were captive to decisions sold in the name of science but created more crudely by teachers’ unions and political appointees," and the Biden administration "decided to try buying their cooperation" rather than facing them down, she wrote.

"In fact, America’s public schools were kept closed in Democratic-run cities and states well into the Biden administration, as a direct result of Biden-administration policies," according to Rommelmann, warning Democrats that voters are "not stupid."

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson's forthcoming book "Follow the Science" details both disclosed and hidden financial conflicts of interest on the government's COVID treatment advisory panel in 2020, which help explain why it "dialed back hydroxychloroquine use and promoted newer, more costly remdesivir."

Hydroxychloroquine benefitted patients of a "world-renowned leader in interventional cardiology" and clinician, the Henry Ford Health System's William O’Neill, but the media's denunciation based on Trump's support of the drug is "very harmful," he told her in late spring 2020.

His own HCQ study was soon after "halted by unnamed authorities above his pay grade" but the Food and Drug Administration's criticism of the drug had already "made it impossible to get enough volunteers for the study to move forward," Attkisson reported. 

"We’ve treated four hundred patients and haven’t seen a single adverse event" between his team and colleagues doing similar studies at the University of Minnesota and University of Washington, O'Neill said. "And what’s happening is [that] because of this fake news and fake science, the true scientific efforts are being harmed."