Confronting a Disinformationist

Anti-vaxxer Del Bigtree and David Corn outside the Senate confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday. Laura Brett

In the era of Trump, it seems rather easy to get away with pushing lies and disinformation. Fox News hosts, Donald Trump’s top appointees, MAGA leaders—they constantly sling falsehoods, and there are no consequences. That’s no shocker. Look at their emperor. Disinformation fueled the campaign that landed him back in the White House. It’s the currency of the MAGA realm. Accountability is in short supply. Say whatever it takes to obtain influence, power, or wealth, and there’s rarely any cost. And even when there is—remember the $787 million settlement Fox had to pay because it supported Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election?—that doesn’t do much to impede the purveyors of propaganda.

I was thinking about this Wednesday morning when I was at the confirmation hearing for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a key propagator of dangerous misinformation about vaccines and other matters whom Trump has selected to run the Department of Health and Human Services. He has peddled lies about public health issues and has been rewarded with money and political sway. He’s made millions as the nation’s No. 1 opponent of vaccines. And in the audience in the hearing room was a top ally of his: Del Bigtree.

A former daytime television producer, Bigtree is the founder the nation’s second-best-funded anti-vaccine organization (after the group RFK Jr. led before running for president) and hosts what NBC News has called “an anti-vaccine and conspiracism internet show.” He has long claimed that the the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism—it doesn’t—and that the government, in league with Big Pharma, has covered up this supposed scandal. He was a spokesperson for Kennedy’s failed 2024 presidential campaign, earning a hefty salary and consulting fee. He has also been an election denier. On January 6, 2021, he spoke at a “MAGA Freedom Rally DC,” a block from the Capitol, and declared election machines did not work. He has reportedly continued to advise Kennedy.

Recently, while working on a piece with my colleague Dan Friedman about Kennedy’s relationship with Alex Jones, the kingpin of conspiracy-kooks, I had to watch several appearances of Bigtree on Jones’ Infowars website. Bigtree used these hits to plug his nonprofit and to spew a torrent of bizarre and bogus claims.

In a December 2020 appearance, he called the Covid vaccine "one of the most dangerous experiments in world history” and said that “the world is about to eradicate itself." He made harrowing predictions such as, “Next year you will drop dead in the street because [the vaccine] made the coronavirus deadly." And this: “No one will be able to get pregnant." He added, “"It could be literally the end of our species." The vaccine, he said, “could mutate the genes inside your sperm.” He also suggested the Covid pandemic was orchestrated and part of a larger diabolical plot, “some sort of communist takeover of the world, where we're going to watch our borders destroyed and all of this is about controlling our lives.”

A little over a year later, back on Infowars, Bigtree compared public health measures to counter Covid to the Holocaust. “I don’t lose any sleep when they attack me for making a comparison to the Holocaust,” he declared. “I know at the end of this, I’m going to stand by that.” He again maintained the Covid crisis was part of a wider and evil scheme: “They need this pandemic to be brutal. They needed it to be deadly so they can take away all of our rights. This is a sick and twisted moment.” He proclaimed, “We’ve been right the entire time.”

Well, has he been right the entire time? He predicted that people who received the vaccine would drop dead within a year and that human procreation would cease.

With the hearing not yet started, I approached Bigtree, introduced myself, and asked if I could pose him a question. Sure, he said. Can if I record this? I said, holding up my phone. No, he said. I went ahead: You said in late 2020 that within a year people who received the Covid vaccine would “drop dead in the street.” That didn’t happen. Did you ever acknowledge that you were wrong?

“I don’t think I said in a year,” he replied. A woman sitting with him interrupted and shouted, “Millions have died!” Bigtree added, “It’s increasing disease,” and he noted it will take time to see the impact. But, I reiterated, you said a year. He insisted he hadn’t. I’ll find the quote, I said, and get back to you. You do that, he said smugly.

I went back to my seat at the press table and did my homework. Later, during a break in the hearing, I encountered Bigtree in the hallway outside the hearing room. I told him I had looked up the quote and he had indeed said that within a year people would be collapsing dead due to the vaccine. I noted he had also said there would be no pregnancies. Well, I continued, we’re not dropping in the streets and plenty of babies are being born. You were wrong.

Bigtree conceded nothing. He replied that he didn’t “know the context” of the remark and maybe he had merely been quoting a “scientist.” (He hadn’t.) He said that mortality rates for 2024 were not yet available—as if that had any bearing on the one-year-and-we’re-done prediction he made in 2020.

I pressed him on why he couldn’t admit he had been mistaken. He claimed there had been an increase in overall mortality after the introduction of the Covid vaccine that could not be explained and implied it was because of the vaccine. (That’s not true.) He maintained young people have been “dropping dead of heart attacks.” (The CDC says there’s no link between the vaccines and such sudden deaths.) Bigtree couldn’t say the obvious: He had misled people with his hyperbolic fear-mongering. He kept trying to change the subject or excuse himself. “You just can’t say you got it wrong,” I said, probably more than once.

By now, we were getting a bit loud, and a crowd of onlookers had gathered around us. Two Capitol Hill cops asked us to take it outside. But it was clear that this conversation had gone as far is it could go. The hearing was about to reconvene. We returned to our seats.

Bigtree reminded me of a doomsday cult leader. The end of the world will happen on March 31! Then when the catastrophe doesn’t occur, just change the date and move on—and continue hornswoggling people. He and Kennedy, his partner-in-conspiracism, have been hawking paranoia and nefarious global plots for years. They don’t need to be right to keep their game going and the funds coming in. Who's going to blow the whistle on them? Later that day, Tony Lyons, who founded and runs Skyhorse Publishing, which has published Kennedy’s anti-vax books, told me he gladly paid Kennedy $451,000 as a consultant last year in addition to handing him two advances each over a million dollars, noting RFK Jr.’s last book sold more than a million copies.

At the end of the hearing, it looked as if Kennedy—despite his lies or because of them—had a good shot at being confirmed. If he does end up running HHS, that could be quite beneficial and even profitable for Bigtree. As people were filing out of the hearing room, I spotted him with a big grin on his face.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

I hate complaining so much about the New York Times. It regularly produces great journalism, but, damn, it has pulled some cringing flubs in the opening days of the Trump’s second term. Look at its front page for Trump’s inauguration.

This context fully accepts Trump’s false narrative that he’s become president to rescue America. Why not a headline saying, “Trump Returns to Power with Speech Full of Falsehoods and Vengeance”? Would that not be equally true, if not more so?

And then there was this:

It’s more like fascism than a “muscular vision.” He is violating laws and norms and implementing an authoritarian agenda. “Muscular” tends to be a positive term and makes him sound strong and bold, which tend to be good traits.

In similar fashion:

“Steely” and “unflinching” are mostly positive descriptions. At that press briefing, Leavitt told several demonstrable lies. But that was not the focus of the headline or the story below it, which read like a theater review, concentrating on her style, sass, and delivery. Democracy dies in frivolity.

As I noted in last issue, there’s almost too much troubling material in the public record about RFK Jr. and his assorted extremist and bonkers views. It can be hard to plow through all of it. And I added to the pile last week by publishing a scoop revealing that when Kennedy was going through a bitter divorce with his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, he secretly recorded conversations with her. I obtained scores of recordings. In one, he told her that he wanted to be monogamous but engaged in extramarital affairs—that is, he, said, he was “polygamous”—because he was “being abused at home.”

The article also revealed the existence of a draft document Richardson was preparing shortly before she committed suicide in May 2012 in which she leveled serious allegations of misconduct against Kennedy and criticized him harshly as a fabricator and gaslighter. It was tough to listen to all those audio files, and I did not publish them because they contained many unconfirmed allegations and raised privacy concerns for third parties. Moreover, Kennedy knew these conversations were being recorded but Richardson did not. While he was usually calm and collected in these interactions, she often was upset and angry. Had she known she was being recorded, she might have expressed herself differently. You can read the piece here.

And another RFK Jr. scoop: As I was finishing up this issue, I broke the news that Kennedy, in response to written questions submitted to him by senators after the Wednesday hearing, admitted that he had settled at least one case in which he was accused of “misconduct or inappropriate behavior.” He did not disclose any details. He also reported he had been a party to at least one non-disclosure agreement but provided no specifics about that. Would Republican or Democratic senators press him to explain this? As of early Friday afternoon, it was not clear how senators would react to this news.

This week there were confirmation hearings for some of the worst Trump appointees—including Kennedy, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard. Thus, there were plenty of imbecilic remarks. GOP senators accepted Kennedy’s phony assertion that he is “pro-vaccine” and didn’t blanche at his other lies, and they praised Patel, an election-denying, QAnon-supporting Trump extremist who has hailed violent January 6 rioters as “political prisoners” and called for revenge against Trump’s critics, as a great pick to head the FBI and a fellow who could be counted on to abide by the rule of law. When it came to his past as a reckless MAGA provocateur, Patel seemed to have amnesia. (At the hearing for Gabbard, whom Trump has tapped to be director of national intelligence, some Republicans gave her a hard time for having once championed Edward Snowden.) The DCotW Division at Our Land World Headquarters did not have enough judges available to process all the possible nominations from the hearings. So these Republican senators get a pass.

Responding to criticism the Trump administration received for taking down a portrait in the Pentagon of retired Gen. Mark Milley, who had called Trump a “fascist,” Vice President JD Vance posted this snotty comment: “Imagine having lived through the last 10 years—the desecration of Washington, Jefferson, Lee, Roosevelt, and even Lincoln—and then drawing the line at…Mark Milley.”

Yes, the veep put Robert E. Lee in the same category of the greatest American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, who Lee’s side tried to defeat and kill.

Lindsey Graham said it was okay for Trump to violate the law. On Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked him about Trump’s unprecedented firing of inspectors general at federal agencies. "The law says he's supposed to do a 30 days' notice," Welker pointed out. "He didn't do that. Do you think he violated the law?" Graham answered, "Technically, yeah, but he has the authority to do it. So I'm not, you know, losing a whole lot of sleep."

It’s not surprising that at this point Graham slumbers while Trump trashes the rule of law.

Also not surprising was that Trump had one of the most odious comments of the week. While discussing the tragic plane crash that occurred in Washington, DC, when a military helicopter collided with a commercial airliner, Trump exploited the tragedy to push his war on DEI, saying he wanted to “point out” the Federal Aviation Administration’s “diversity push…includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.” When a reporter asked Trump how he could cite diversity as a possible cause of the accident, he snarled, “Because I have common sense.”

This was gross, and the judges were tempted to hand Trump the trophy. But there’s no room on his shelf.  Instead, they opted to bestow the honor upon a Trumper who made a similar remark: Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.). On Fox, he opined, “At this time you hate to jump to any conclusions…You have to look at this with eyes wide open. See what happened. Human error? Was it some sort of equipment failure. Did DEI play a role in this type of thing?”

Once caught lying about his résumé, Ogles has been under investigation for falsifying his campaign finance reports. Perhaps looking for a pardon down the road, he recently proposed amending the Constitution to allow Trump to serve a third term. With this probe underway, he has good reason for echoing Trump’s bigotry.

The mail was full of notes from people who appreciated the report of my field trip to Trumpland during the inauguration.

Barbara Holcomb shared this observation about her own interactions with Trump fans:

I’m 75, just a high school grad. My children are in their 50s. My nieces and nephews are in their mid-50s to their early 60s. The majority have one or more degrees. Majority are MAGA. I am definitely not. Political discussions go nowhere. It’s as if their common sense and reasoning abilities have short circuited. A mental health virus has infected them. I am by far not an aggressive person, but I keep looking for a way to save them from themselves. I do not argue. I do not allow them to brow beat me. Two of them worked out of Washington, DC. I did not question them, as she was most angry when I mentioned price of groceries will rise with deportations. I believe the practical problems arising from Trump will change many minds. If they still have any reasoning ability left.

Edward Hackett wrote:

I don't believe there is any solution to the present situation of people believing the lies told by many politicians, especially those told by Dear Leader. As the saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink." Without sugarcoating my words, many in Trump's cult are racists and white Christian nationalists who believe that he was sent to save our country from liberal Democrats and brown and black people. The sooner the Democratic Party swallows this bitter pill, the sooner they can stop working across the aisle. Unless a compromise benefits Democrats or the country at large, they should fight the Republicans every step of the way. You cannot negotiate with people who do not meet you halfway.

Rather than pointing out all of Trump's lies, which no Trump supporter will believe, they should do the following: 1.) Learn from their adversaries and develop a strong radio and TV presence. 2.) Remove the old, dead wood from the DNC and replace them with younger people who appeal to other younger people and who understand how to use today's forms of communication, including games and AI. 3.) Develop a vision for America in the next few years. 4.) Bring in more minorities to run for office to overcome the image of an old, white man's party. 5.) Let Trump's lies speak for themselves—when we cannot harvest our produce, the prices of consumer goods rise due to his tariffs, and inflation starts to increase. 6.) Be patient. As natural disasters strike and we lack an adequate federal response due to the incompetent managers he appointed, many people will start to understand that he is a lousy leader.

Trump will not remain healthy or reasonably mentally competent forever. He has destroyed the Republican Party, and he has no successor in sight. Those who believe in liberal democracy must stand ready to step in and fill the void his passing will create. Please give Moxie a doggie biscuit and a belly rub for me.

Niki Sebastian had an objection:

Why aren't you highlighting Michael Bloomberg's stated intention to pay for the US membership in the Paris Climate Accords, giving credit and attention to a positive act of resistance? Every such step— whether big like this one, or smaller, like the statement signed by many faith leaders opposing the punitive vengeance of the MAGA leader—must be searched out, echoed, and covered repeatedly. You run through the litany of outrage we keep seeing over and over. There is already a list of pushback actions, but I don't see anyone publishing and reiterating it.

I think this is the list of faith leaders Niki is referring to. For more on Bloomberg’s philanthropy picking up the tab for the US funding of the Paris Climate Accord, see this announcement. I missed that news in the firehose of crap that Trump unleashed once he hit the Oval Office. And I agree with the larger point here. There has been much jaw-flapping about the lack of vigorous opposition to Trump and his blitzkrieg, and, indeed, the Democrats do not appear to be fighting as fiercely or smartly as they could. But as others rush to the fore, they deserve notice and support. Let’s all keep a watch for that.

“You’re working too hard.”
“How can you tell, Moxie?”
“You haven’t played with me in days.”
“It’s just one of those weeks.”
“Seems like it might be just one of those years.”
“Time for a walk!”