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OPINION

‘No ObamaCare’: Here’s How Trump, Johnson, RFK Jr. Plan to Destroy Americans’ Health Care

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Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly named “JFK Jr.” instead of RFK Jr. in the headline. 

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson say they have big plans to implement “massive” changes to the entire U.S. food, drug, and health care system—from killing ObamaCare and all its protections, to handing over control of all health, food, and drug policies and agencies to conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—and they’re openly bragging about it just days before Election Day.

Republicans conspired to block every one of Barack Obama’s initiatives even before the 44th President was sworn in to office in January, 2009. They have spent years promising to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare, or just end the Affordable Care Act entirely. Donald Trump for over a decade has repeatedly vowed to kill ObamaCare, and repeatedly said he would end it and unveil his new health care plan soon, before admitting during the presidential debate all he had were mere “concepts of a plan.”

In September, The Washington Post reported Donald Trump “has spent 13 years promising a health-care plan” (video below).

On Monday in Pennsylvania, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson vowed to kill the Affordable Care Act, which covers tens of millions of Americans, has dramatically slashed the number of uninsured Americans, and offers widespread protections to over 133 million people in America.

READ MORE: ‘Confident’ Harris Campaign Says All Swing States ‘In Play’ in ‘Extremely Close’ Race

“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda. When I say we’re going to have a very aggressive first 100 days agenda, we got a lot of things still on the table,” Speaker Johnson told an attendee at a GOP candidate’s meeting, NBC News reported.

“No Obamacare?” an attendee asked.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson responded, before explaining how Donald Trump wants to “go big” in removing regulations.

“We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state,” Johnson said, per NBC. “These agencies have been weaponized against the people, it’s crushing the free market; it’s like a boot on the neck of job creators and entrepreneurs and risk takers. And so health care is one of the sectors and we need this across the board.”

“And Trump’s going to go big. I mean, he’s only going to have one more term. Can’t run for re-election. And so he’s going to be thinking about legacy and we’re going to fix these things.”

Sunday night at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, the ex-president promised to let RFK Jr. “go wild.”

“I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on the medicines.”

On Tuesday, RFK Jr. announced Donald Trump had “promised” to put him in charge of the entire federal public health system.

“The key that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others, and then also the USDA.”

READ MORE: ‘Maybe’ It’s Racist: JD Vance Tries to Whitewash Trump Rally Attack on Puerto Rico

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday remarked, “House Republicans plan to kill the Affordable Care Act, impose a nationwide abortion ban and implement Trump’s Project 2025. These extremists cannot be trusted with the health, safety and economic well-being of the American people.”

Last year, Forbes published what it described as “all the conspiracies” RFK Jr. promotes. Among them (quotes are Forbes’s, not RFK Jr.’s):

“Covid-19 targets certain races and gives others immunity,” “Mass shootings are linked to prescription drugs,” “The 2004 presidential election was stolen,” “The pharmaceutical industry is throwing money at Democrats,” “The Covid-19 virus was genetically engineered,” “Vaccines can cause autism,” and, “Former White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates sought to exaggerate the pandemic, in part, to promote vaccines.”

New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” columnist Ed Kilgore reports that Speaker Johnson “plans to make repealing Obamacare an immediate priority if Trump wins and Republicans control Congress, which likely means it would be rolled into a gigantic budget-reconciliation bill and steamrolled through to passage if possible.”

Kilgore adds, Johnson’s “party’s designs on health-care policy are radical, meant to replace the regulations central to Obamacare’s coverage guarantees with ‘free market’ provisions almost certain to return the health-care system to the days when insurers aggressively discriminated against anyone old, sick, or poor. Johnson’s rhetoric will also give Democrats an opportunity to remind voters that the last ‘repeal Obamacare’ package aimed to decimate Medicaid, the federal-state health-care program for poor people and a key part of the country’s social safety net. Beyond that, Johnson seemed to to be telling Pennsylvanians a reelected Trump wouldn’t care if his health-care plans made Americans unhappy.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Former Top Trump White House Official Called for ‘Male Only’ Voting

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OPINION

‘Nauseous’: Trump’s Refusal to Grasp ‘Consent’ Revives ‘Access Hollywood’ Scandal

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As Election Day fast approaches, Donald Trump is suffering yet another self-inflicted wound. The Republican presidential nominee’s vow to “protect” women, “whether the women like it or not,” is leading critics to say it reminds them of his 2016 Access Hollywood tape comments and showcases his refusal to understand the concept of consent.

Trump is an adjudicated rapist, and a has been convicted of 34 felony charges in a “scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.” He is awaiting sentencing and additional trials in both state and federal courts—which may never come if he wins re-election.

On Wednesday he stood before supporters in Green Bay, Wisconsin, wearing a safety vest after being driven around a parking lot in a white garbage truck with the “TRUMP” logo on it. He told a story describing himself from “about four weeks ago,” arguing with his advisors, saying, “I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country”:

“And my people told me about four weeks ago, I would say, ‘no, I want to protect the people. I want to protect the women of our country. I want to protect the women.’ ‘Sir, please don’t say that.’ ‘Why?’ They said, ‘we think it’s, we think it’s very inappropriate for you to say.’ ‘Why? I’m president. I want to protect the women of our country.’ They said, They said, ‘sure, I just think it’s inappropriate for you to say’ — I pay these guys a lot of money. Can you believe it?”

READ MORE: ‘I’m Not Hitler’: Trump Insists He’s Being ‘Demonized’ Despite Remarks

“I said, ‘well, I’m gonna do it whether the women like it or not. I’m gonna protect them. I’m gonna protect them from migrants coming in. I’m gonna protect them from foreign countries that wanna hit a hit us with missiles and lots of other things.'”

Backlash was swift.

Daily Kos chief content officer Kaili Joy Gray responded to a clip of Trump’s remarks and invoked his infamous words from the “Access Hollywood” tape. She wrote:

“I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

She continued, writing, “That nauseous feeling so many of us had in 2016 when we heard the tape of Trump bragging about assaulting women … Listening to him threaten to ‘protect’ us against our will REALLY brings it all back.”

“The women do not like it,” she added. “They never have. And on Tuesday, they have their greatest chance to tell him no. No, he can’t do whatever he wants. No, he cannot get away with it. Not anymore. It’s over. For good.”

“This is Donald Trump’s sick, sadistic closing argument in the final days of his third presidential run,” she wrote at Daily Kos, “a threat against the women of America.”

Others also saw a similarity.

Calling it, “a pithy encapsulation of the concerns that are spurring a lot of women’s votes,” Washington Post columnist Philip Bump also invoked the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape. He noted that Trump’s promise to “protect” women “sounds an awful lot like the audio recording that nearly doomed Trump’s presidential campaign eight years ago.”

But Bump told readers it would be “too crass to articulate exactly how groping or assaulting a woman comports with the phrase Trump used at his rally in Wisconsin.”

Also responding to Trump’s remarks from Wednesday, David Simon, the author, journalist and TV writer/producer known for “The Wire,” observed: “Women are today dying of sepsis explicitly because he ended Roe, for which he proudly credits himself. Consent remains an elusive concept for this fellow.”

MSNBC legal contributor and correspondent Katie Phang wrote, “Trump’s nonconsensual ‘protection’ is a hard pass.”

Dr. Jennifer Mercieca, professor and historian of American political rhetoric, wrote simply, “Trump‘s kinda rapey.” 

Back in September, Trump had made similar remarks, vowing: “I will protect women at a level never seen before.”

“Women are poorer than they were four years ago, are less healthy than they were four years ago, are less safe on the streets than they were four years ago, are more depressed and unhappy than they were four years ago, and are less optimistic and confident in the future than they were four years ago!” claimed Trump via social media, in a single all-caps paragraph.

“I will fix all of that, and fast, and at long last this national nightmare will be over. Women will be happy, healthy, confident and free! You will no longer be thinking about abortion, because it is now where it always had to be, with the states, and a vote of the people – and with powerful exceptions, like those that Ronald Reagan insisted on, for rape, incest, and the life of the mother – but not allowing for Democrat demanded late term abortion in the 7th, 8th, or 9th month, or even execution of a baby after birth. I will protect women at a level never seen before. They will finally be healthy, hopeful, safe, and secure. their lives will be happy, beautiful, and great again!”

READ MORE: ‘I Don’t Know Anything About the Comedian’: Trump Pleads Ignorance as Backlash Grows

Professor of public policy and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, at the time responded to Trump’s remarks: “Donald Trump posted this unhinged, all-caps rant about how only he can make women happy and ‘PROTECT’ them. Remember, he’s an adjudicated rapist, accused of sexual assault or misconduct by more than 20 women, and he’s the reason that one-in-three adult women now live under a Trump abortion ban that puts their lives at risk.”

Also last month, in a New York Times opinion piece, contributing editor Jessica Bennett wrote: “Depending on how you count them, 19 or 26 or 67 women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct. Women who have said he ‘squeezed my butt,’ ‘eyed me like a piece of meat,’ ‘stuck his hand up my skirt,’ ‘thrust his genitals,’ ‘forced his tongue in my mouth,’ was ‘rummaging around my vagina,’ and so on.”

“So about five years ago, toward the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency, 10 of these women formed a little club of sorts, a sisterhood meets therapy circle meets support group — one with a hideous initiation.”

As for Trump’s vow—or threat—to protect women, “whether the women like it or not,” media critic Jennifer Schulze declared, “Quite a closing argument from an adjudicated rapist.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Former Top Trump White House Official Called for ‘Male Only’ Voting

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OPINION

‘I’m Not Hitler’: Trump Insists He’s Being ‘Demonized’ Despite Remarks

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At a rally in the battleground state of North Carolina Wednesday afternoon, Donald Trump declared he is “not Hitler,” and complained he’s being “demonized” by Democrats, including by his Democratic presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

North Carolina is a must-win state for Trump, according to Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper, who told WRAL last month, “He just doesn’t get there without North Carolina.”

“You know,” Trump told supporters (video below), “many years ago I had a father who was a great guy, he was a strong guy, a legitimate guy, a strong, but you know he always used to tell me, never use the word ‘Nazi’ and never used the word ‘Hitler.'”

“Now we’re called Nazis, and I’m called Hitler. I’m not Hitler,” Trump insisted.

“For the past nine years, Kamala and her party have called us racists, bigots, fascists, deplorables, irredeemables, Nazis and they’ve called me Hitler,” Trump said. “They’ve demeaned us. They’ve demonized us and censored us.”

“Mr. Trump,” The New York Times reports Wednesday, “has repeatedly demonized Democrats, describing them at times as ‘the enemy within,’ ‘communists,’ ‘these lunatics’ and ‘radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.’ But on Wednesday, he insisted that it was the rhetoric from the Democratic side that was the problem.”

Trump has reason to be worried.

READ MORE: ‘No ObamaCare’: Here’s How Trump, Johnson, RFK Jr. Plan to Destroy Americans’ Health Care

In North Carolina he’s beating Vice President Kamala Harris by just 1.1 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight.

But the ex-president’s remarks about Hitler came back to haunt him last week, when not only did his former White House chief of staff John Kelly reveal that as Commander-in-Chief Trump complained about his generals and declared he wanted “Hitler’s generals,” but thirteen of Trump’s former aides recently signed a letter supporting General Kelly and his criticisms.

“More than a dozen former Trump administration officials on Friday,” Politico had reported, “came out in support of former chief of staff John Kelly, who went on the record this week to say the former president fits the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator and has no concept of the Constitution.”

The group say they are “all lifelong Republicans who served our country.”

Also last week, The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg reported that a “desire to force U.S. military leaders to be obedient to him and not the Constitution is one of the constant themes of Trump’s military-related discourse. Former officials have also cited other recurring themes: his denigration of military service, his ignorance of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, his admiration for brutality and anti-democratic norms of behavior, and his contempt for wounded veterans and for soldiers who fell in battle.”

“Retired General Barry McCaffrey, a decorated Vietnam veteran, told me that Trump does not comprehend such traditional military virtues as honor and self-sacrifice. ‘The military is a foreign country to him. He doesn’t understand the customs or codes,’ McCaffrey said. ‘It doesn’t penetrate. It starts with the fact that he thinks it’s foolish to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit himself.'”

The Atlantic also revealed Trump’s praise of Hitler, including that the genocidal Nazi leader “did some good things.”

“Kelly—a retired Marine general who, as a young man, had volunteered to serve in Vietnam despite actually suffering from bone spurs—said in an interview for the CNN reporter Jim Sciutto’s book, The Return of Great Powers, that Trump praised aspects of Hitler’s leadership. ‘He said, ‘Well, but Hitler did some good things,’ ‘ Kelly recalled. ‘I said, ‘Well, what?’ And he said, ‘Well, (Hitler) rebuilt the economy.’ But what did he do with that rebuilt economy? He turned it against his own people and against the world.’ Kelly admonished Trump: ‘I said, ‘Sir, you can never say anything good about the guy. Nothing.’”

READ MORE: MAGA Man Allegedly ‘Brandished’ Machete at Polling Place — GOP Cites ‘Political Tension’

Goldberg also noted another Hitler comparison.

“In their book, The Divider: Trump in the White House,” Goldberg wrote, “Peter Baker and Susan Glasser reported that Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, feared that Trump’s ‘Hitler-like’ embrace of the big lie about the election would prompt the president to seek out a ‘Reichstag moment.’”

Also in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum this month reported, “Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.”

“The former president has brought dehumanizing language into American presidential politics,” she wrote.

Trump “has claimed that many [immigrants] have ‘bad genes.’ He has also been more explicit: ‘They’re not humans; they’re animals’; they are ‘cold-blooded killers.’ He refers more broadly to his opponents—American citizens, some of whom are elected officials—as ‘the enemy from within … sick people, radical-left lunatics.’ Not only do they have no rights; they should be ‘handled by,’ he has said, ‘if necessary, National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.'”

“In using this language,” Applebaum said, “Trump knows exactly what he is doing.”

“He understands which era and what kind of politics this language evokes.”

It does not help that on Sunday he held a rally at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, one that quickly drew comparisons to the American Nazi party’s pro-Hitler rally in that same venue 85 years ago, in 1939.

On Monday, The Washington Post‘s Phillip Bump reported: “The Trump campaign’s rally in New York mirrored one in the 1930s that was openly supportive of Adolf Hitler.”

“As detailed in Arnie Bernstein’s 2013 book ‘Swastika Nation,'” Bump noted, “the 1939 event, centered on overlaying German fascism onto American patriotism, began with the singing of the national anthem — as did Trump’s rally on Sunday (and as do many Garden events). Then and now, the arena was also bedecked in red, white and blue.

“Speakers in 1939 lamented government spending, railed against Marxism and complained about how information negative to their allies was ‘played up and twisted to fan the flames of hate in the hearts of Americans’ by the news media. Similar arguments were raised at Trump’s rally as well. ‘Free America!’ the crowd chanted in 1939, while Trump speakers pledged that he would ‘save America,’ with the 2024 crowd chanting ‘U-S-A!'”

“Sunday’s event was similarly focused on a purported threat to the nation: immigrants and foreign actors bent on tearing the country apart.”

Last December, ABC News‘ Jonathan Karl reported that at a rally in Iowa, Trump “once again broke new ground, becoming the first leading presidential candidate to find it necessary to insist he had never read the most infamous book of the 20th century.”

“I never read ‘Mein Kampf,'” Trump said, Karl wrote, “referring to Adolf Hitler’s manifesto (‘My Struggle’) that provided the philosophical basis for Nazi Germany and, ultimately, the murder of more than 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.”

“This was the first time Trump had invoked Hitler’s name and the title of his memoir at a political rally, but there have been multiple reports over the years of Trump expressing a keen interest in, even admiration for, Hitler’s rule over Nazi Germany.”

“In the past, he’s actually acknowledged owning a copy of the book,” Karl added. “Trump’s denial that he had read Hitler’s memoir came after he has made a series of incendiary remarks in recent weeks referring to his political opponents as ‘vermin’ and saying illegal immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country.'”

Axios earlier this month reported, “Four times last year, Trump referred to immigrants as ‘poisoning the blood’ of the nation, including “during an interview with a right-leaning website,” and “at a rally in December in New Hampshire.” He then “repeated it in a Truth Social post in December, then again at a campaign stop in Iowa.”

“Since then, Trump has falsely accused immigrants of eating house pets, erroneously said violent undocumented criminal gangs had taken over Aurora, Colo., and said that some have ‘bad genes’ that lead them to murder.”

Watch the video of Trump below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘We Know How to Take the Trash Out’: Influential Latino Stars Blast Trump’s Racist Rally

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OPINION

‘Charlatan’ Pastor at Latino Event Lays Hands on Trump, Prays God Makes Him President

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At the close of a Latino Americans for Trump town hall at Donald Trump’s Miami golf club on Tuesday, MAGA pastors, including one whose “messy” divorce led him to be labeled a “charlatan,” laid hands on the criminally convicted ex-president, described the election as a “war between good and evil,” fervently prayed for God to return Trump to the White House, and asked Him to “Make America Godly again.”

Trump’s return to embracing Christianity and invoking religion comes amid debunked reports, including from top Trump activist Charlie Kirk, that Vice President Kamala Harris last week kicked out “Christians” for shouting “Jesus is lord” at a recent campaign event.

Harris at a Wisconsin rally had told supporters, “Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade, and they did as he intended.”

Hecklers interrupted, shouting “That’s a lie,” or “lies.”

“Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally,” Harris responded, to applause. “No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street.”

READ MORE: ‘Fascist’ Trump’s Rhetoric Fits ‘Textbook Definition of Fascism’: Journalist

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that as the hecklers were escorted out they shouted “Jesus is Lord.”

Not according to Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA and a member of the highly-secretive far-right organization Council for National Policy.

So when a pro-Trump pastor laid hands on the ex-president Tuesday afternoon, the roomful of conservative Latinos likely understood what he meant when he prayed, “today where we lift up the man that we believe you’ve put your hand upon, to help restore America, and bring America back to the place that honors you. To a place where we will not be kicked out for saying ‘Christ the king.’ Or, ‘Jesus is Lord.'”

The Harris hecklers were not kicked out for saying, “Jesus is Lord,” but that is now what many MAGA Republicans now believe — or at least are willing to say.

Another pastor at Trump’s Latinos for Trump town hall in his prayer described the 2024 presidential election as a “war.”

“As I was talking yesterday to the, uh, in North Carolina,” Miami MAGA megachurch pastor and televangelist Guillermo Maldonado said, “I mentioned the people the fact that this is not a war between the left and the right. This is a war between good and evil.”

READ MORE: ‘Endorsing a Coup’: 3 in 10 Republicans Support ‘Patriot’ Violence to ‘Save Our Country’

Pastor Maldonado was the subject of a 2021 Miami Herald opinion piece titled: “Pastor was a charlatan, but few cared as long as he hosted Trump, pushed GOP agenda.”

“Long before divorce documents spilled tantalizing secrets about the wealth of Miami megachurch pastor Guillermo Maldonado — and his wife’s accusations of emotional abuse — there were signs he was a charlatan. ‘The presence of the living God,’ the evangelical preacher called President Trump, who, on the campaign trail, stood steps away from him looking like he was trying to stifle a good laugh, while beaming at the obsequious praise.”

A separate Miami Herald article reports, “The booming business of Miami pastor Guillermo Maldonado, which helps him pay for what court records describe as a half-dozen properties, at least three cars and a nine-seat jet, depends entirely on whether he can speak to God.”

Maldonado’s wife’s divorce attorneys, the Herald reported, “said there could be as much as $120 million at stake.”

In December of 2020 Pastor Maldonado urged his congregation to refuse the COVID vaccine, The Christian Post reported, saying the shot was “the structure for the Antichrist.”

“They’re going to demand for you to have the vaccine in your passport. Otherwise you will not be able to travel because they are preparing the way. And the vaccines, they are made to alter your DNA,” he said. “Believe in the blood of Jesus. Believe in divine immunity.”

Maldonado also “said the Lord spoke to him and told him that there is a ‘satanic agenda, a global agenda, specifically preparing the way for the Antichrist.'”

On Tuesday, Pastor Maldonado, laying hands on Trump, ended his prayer saying, “the Bible says that let’s pray for the will of God to come. Meaning, what’s the will of God, the Bible says, God sets up kings. He removes kings.”

“We’re gonna bring the will of God and we’re gonna pray for the president for President Trump to be the next 47th president.”

After the pastors laid hands on Trump and prayed over him, he appeared to say nothing as “YMCA” played and he began signing autographs.

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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