Flooding the Zone with Inexperience

Confession:  I first heard the term “flooding the zone” from Alex Wagner on her nightly TV show. I like the term. Thus, it serves as the title of this blog.  

There is one mark of the Trump era. There is one strategy that he learned from Steve Bannon in 2018. Bannon said this: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh–.”

Democrats Do Matter and the Press is Not the Enemy

Trump views the press as his enemy and that the Democrats do not matter. Both views are incorrect. The Democrats do matter and the media is important. Were it not for the media, we would not know what is happening. That’s why Trump views them as the enemy. He does not want to be held accountable by anyone.     

However, he has flooded the zone with “sh–.”  

His flood of recent picks for his cabinet and other important positons reflects that.  

Trump Does Not Have a Mandate From Americans  

It is important to realize that Trump did not win big and does not have a mandate from Americans. 

In terms of the popular vote (Cook Political Report, 2024), Trump won 49.9% of the popular vote and Harris won 48.3%, a 1.6% margin of victory. The race was very close. More Americans voted against Trump than for him. 

This is not fake news! There is nothing “fake” about actual election results, whether Republicans approve of them or not. Using the word “mandate” over and over again will not change the outcome. Trump has no mandate from the people.  

The Electoral College is not a good measure of how close a political race is because of its “winner take all” nature. For example, imagine an election where one candidate wins every state and district by 50.1% to 49.9%. A very close race, yes? Yet the candidate with 50.1% of the vote would romp to a 538-0 victory in the Electoral College.  

The same principle was at play in the 2024 election: Trump won six of the seven  swing states (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) by 3.2 points or less. And he won Wisconsin by just 0.9 points, Michigan by just 1.4 points and Pennsylvania by just 1.7 points.

That is important because if Harris had won those three states (plus all the states and districts she actually did win), she would have gotten exactly 270 Electoral College votes. 

The Problem 

The problem is that Trump is flooding the zone with “sh–.”  

By that, I mean inexperience and the number of his selections. Some of Trump’s picks for important positions have been controversial. I will mention just a few: Matt Gaetz, as U.S. Attoreny General who withdrew due to allegedly paying minors for sex, Linda McMahon, a former wrestling executive of the WWE as Education Secretary, Pete Hegseth, Fox News anchor for defense secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., attorney, as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Mehmet Oz, discredited surgeon by his peers to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and Kash Patel, attorney, former federal prosecutor, and conspiracy theoriest as the FBI Director.  

Look at the list below and prove to me that all of these people have the experience and skills to run their areas.  

Conspiracy Theorists and Tear Down the Government Fans 

It is a proven fact that Trump lost the 2020 election to President Biden. Trump’s own officials say that the 2020 electon was the most secure in history. This directly contradicts Donald Trump, many Republicans, and many on the list above. 

Trump, most of his appointees, and many Republicans believe in unfounded allegations of widespread voting irregularities and fraud. This is simply not true.  

Trump, his loyalists above, and many of his followers have also been led to believe that there is a “deep state” that has weaponized the government to be used against Trump. Again, simply not true. As a result of their erroneous beliefs, they vow to tear down the government. Useful? I think not. 

Kash Patel for example, has written down his own list of “government gangsters” that includes Christopher Wray, the Director of the FBI, Attorney General Merrick Garland and former CIA Director Gina Haspel. Patel has called for using the power of the FBI and the Justice Department to even prosecute journalists! He said publicly that, “We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminally or civilly — we’ll figure that out,” he said during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Birds of a feather!  

Trump did These Things to Himself

Always remember that Donald Trump did these things to himself:   

1. He stole secret, confidential, national documents, some which detailed our military plans and lied to the FBI about their whereabouts, while moving them and hiding them from the FBI in his Florida estate. 

2. He tried to to overturn legitimate election results by instigating a violent riot on January 6, 2021 in which 140 police officers were assaulted by a mob. I watched the video! I know what he said. 

3. Trump had sex with a women that was not his wife and then paid her “hush money” to bury allegations against him prior to the 2016 election. 

4. In Georgia, Trump suggested that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” enough votes for him to win the battleground state; of harassing an election worker who faced false claims of fraud; an, attempting to persuade Georgia lawmakers to ignore the will of voters and appoint a new slate of Electoral College electors favorable to Trump. 

5. Trump was ordered by a court to pay $5 million to E. Jean Carrol by a jury for sexual assault and defamation verdict last in 2023.   

6. Because he cannot keep quiet, Trump was ordered by the court to pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll in January for his continued social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store. 

7. New York state’s attorney general reported that Trump and his companies engaged in a scheme to dupe banks and others with financial statements that inflated his wealth. A judge has ordered Trump and his companies to pay $355 million as a penalty in that case. 

Innocent?  Great business man?  I think not. He did these things himself. He wanted to be President of the United States again to delay judgments, to not be prosecuted of the crimes that he committed, or to not pay the penalities above.  

Let’s Talk About Trump’s Health Appointees  

As far as I can tell, all of them are critical of how we handled the COVID-19 epidemic. Many are also conspiracy theorists about COVID, the vaccine, and about health. 

I am not critical of how we handled things. We did not know what we were dealing with. Under such conditions, I am in favor of lock downs and vaccines. Plus, I always believe in science! You? 

Research was coming out daily. That is how fast things were changing. I know. I published several papers during this time. Here is one:  https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/9/3171

COVID-19 is worse than influenza and it is going to be here for a long time. Since 2020, over 1.2 million Americans have died of COVID-19. The people that have died are your friends, grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters, children, aunts, uncles, or  cousins. The ones that have died matter!   

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  

Just because someone sounds smart does not make them smart. Let’s take Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for example. He may sound smart, but he is not smart. Trump nominated Kennedy to head the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees NIH and other federal health agencies. 

I think the choice of Kennedy is wrong and that Kennedy will put millions of Americans at risk. 

I am with Dr. Francis Collins, the former NIH director on this one. (Look it up!)  

In the weeks leading up to his appointment as Secretary of Health, Kennedy Jr. repeated that he aimed to work with Trump’s administration to stop including fluoride in U.S. public water systems, tweeting on Nov. 2 the baseless claims that “fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.” The truth is that limited amounts of fluoride in water reduces dental decay.

Kennedy Jr. blamed mass school shootings on drugs like the antidepressant Prozac in a recent X Spaces discussion, telling owner Elon Musk, “Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost none of these events.” The truth is that there is no scientifically established correlation between psychiatric drugs and mass violence.

Kennedy is a divisive denier of vaccine efficacy and a purveyor of misinformation. In fact Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic because of his strident opposition to vaccines. Yet, he insists he’s not anti-vaccine. 

The COVID-19 pandemic gave Kennedy a new base to share a mistrust in health and governmental institutions. He was caught on camera in July of 2023 telling fellow diners that “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”  In other words, Kennedy apparently believes that the pandemic was engineered by a shadowy cabal to spare Chinese and Jewish people (New York Post). The video also also shows him saying the U.S. “put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes” and labs in Ukraine collected Russian and Chinese DNA “so we can target people by race.”  If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. 

In Kennedy’s 2021 book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” he presents the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as a villain, carrying out a Machiavellian plan in partnership with pharmaceutical companies to profit from vaccines, while describing a list of prominent anti-vaccine figures to whom the book is dedicated as “heroic.” 

In December 2021, Kennedy falsely called the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” citing deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which is part of the nation’s vaccine safety monitoring systems. I have had six shots of COVID-19 vaccine and I am fine. Maybe I am writing this from the dead. 

Kennedy has made his opposition to vaccines clear. In July 2023, Kennedy said in a podcast interview that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective” and told FOX News that he still believes in the long-ago debunked idea that vaccines can cause autism. 

Even the Autism Science Foundation, who has an ulterior motive to say that vaccines cause autism, says that they do not (Autism Science Foundation, 2023).

Regarding CDC guidelines on when kids should get vaccines, Kennedy said this: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, better not get them vaccinated.”  

In a video promoting an anti-vaccine sticker campaign by his nonprofit, Kennedy appeared onscreen next to one sticker that declared “IF YOU’RE NOT AN ANTI-VAXXER YOU AREN’T PAYING ATTENTION.”  

Follow the money!  A close examination of Kennedy’s campaign finance filings shows that the anti-vaccine movement lies at the heart of his campaign. Several of his campaign staff and consultants have worked for his anti-vaccine group Children’s Health Defense, which Kennedy founded and is the Chairman. This includes Mary Holland, the group’s president on leave, campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear, and Zen Honeycutt, who hosted a show for the group’s TV channel, CHD TV.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) currently has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press (AP), accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Really?  I believe that we have a obligation to identify mis/disinformation!   

Again, follow the money!  Kennedy’s campaign paid KFP Consulting, a Texas-based company run by Del Bigtree, head of the anti-vaccine group ICAN, and a leading voice in the movement, raised more than $13,000 for communications consulting, the AP found. Bigtree appeared to still be working for Kennedy recently, when an AP reporter saw him helping facilitate a Kennedy event in New York.

Kennedy also has received substantial support from activists who have spread misinformation about the coronavirus and vaccines, including Steve Kirsch, an entrepreneur who has falsely claimed COVID-19 vaccines kill more people than they save and Patrick Flynn and Kevin Stillwagon, and others.

Ty and Charlene Bollinger, who run an anti-vaccine business and who the AP has previously reported have had a financial relationship with Kennedy, gave more than $6,000 to Kennedy. The couple, along with Kennedy’s communication consultant Bigtree, were involved in hosting a rally near the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Ty Bollinger has said he was among the people who pushed on the Capitol doors in an attempt to get inside, though he said he did not enter. The couple is a part of the Children’s Health Defense lawsuit against AP and other media outlets.

American Values 2024, a super PAC supporting Kennedy, is run by close associates to Kennedy who have propped up anti-vaccine ideas — the former head of the New York chapter of Children’s Health Defense John Gilmore is its CEO and Kennedy’s publisher Tony Lyons is its co-chair.

Further, Kennedy has associated with influential people on the far right to raise his profile including digraced Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn. During the past several years, Kennedy cultivated his ties to the far right. He appeared on Infowars, the channel run by Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist and disgraced, Alex Jones. He has granted interviews to Trump ally Steve Bannon and the disgraced, Tucker Carlson. On a video tape he claimed that Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was his good friend. Senator Johnson is a well-known purveyor of conspiracy theories.  

After he headlined a stop on the ReAwaken America Tour, the Christian nationalist road show put together by former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, he was photographed backstage with Flynn, Charlene Bollinger and Trump ally Roger Stone. Those appearances have led to goodwill on the right, and he has found enthusiastic support among a segment of Trump’s base Yet, he portrays himself as a true Democrat inheriting the mantle of the Kennedy family. He is not. 

As a presidential candiate, the stories that he told on the campaign trail about himself, his life’s work and what he stands for are often the opposite of what his record actually shows. Why is this not surprising?   

Though he peppers his speeches, podcast appearances, and his outdated campaign materials with invocations of the Democratic Party legacies of his uncle President John F. Kennedy and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, his relatives have distanced themselves from him and even denounced him. He is simply using his last name. 

Here is what his relatives have said about him: “Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same vision, values or judgment,” they wrote. The rebuke marked one of many efforts by members of his family to publicly distance themselves from his controversial views. His sister, Kerry Kennedy called his comments about a genetically engineered Covid-19 virus “deplorable and untruthful.”  His brother, Joseph Kennedy II, told the The Boston Globe the statements were “morally and factually wrong” and a “play on antisemitic myths and stoke mistrust of the Chinese that in no way reflect the words and actions of our father, Robert F. Kennedy.” His nephew, Joe Kennedy III, called the statements were “hurtful and wrong,” tweeting “I unequivocally condemn what he said.”  When he compared vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany, his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, said that his “opinions are not a reflection of [her] own.

Again follow the money!  Kennedy’s presidential run also got plenty of financial support from the right. A super PAC supporting Kennedy’s presidential run, called Heal the Divide PAC, has deep ties to Republicans, Federal Election Commission records show. We know what happened due to his ties to the far right.

The committee’s address is listed in the care of RTA Strategy, a campaign consulting firm that has been paid for its work to help elect Republicans including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the former Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker.

The PAC’s treasurer, who works for RTA Strategy, is Jason Boles, a past donor to Trump and many other Republicans who includes “MAGA” and “AmericaFirst” in his bio on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Kennedy denied knowing Boles or the Heal the Divide PAC when it came up at the congressional hearing, saying, “I’ve never heard of Mr. Boles, and I’ve never heard of that super PAC.”  Uh huh!  

But a video available online shows he was a guest speaker at a Heal the Divide event just two days earlier. The video features a “Heal the Divide 2024” logo with clips of him speaking at length about plans to back the U.S. dollar with bitcoin and precious metals. 

His financial disclosure documents show he has already personally invested between $100,001 and $250,000 in bitcoin, and he promised at Bitcoin 2023 that he wouldn’t let the environmental argument hinder the currency’s use.

I don’t buy the Kennedy mystique. As I told my grandson recently, “I would not trust him as far as I can throw him,” and that is not very far. I do not trust anyone who spreads mis/disformation about vaccines and uses his family name to gain favor with the far right. 

Here is the truth: Vaccines are one of the greatest achievements of biomedical science and public health. They have led to remarkable improvements in morbidty and mortality.    

The 1795 Group Can Help

The 1795 Group is trying to leave this little blue planet a better place for all who live on it. We have a moral obligation to those that follow in our footsteps to inform them, warn them, and to educate them. That’s why I write and share this blog. 

The 1795 Group believes in being part of solutions. Let’s work together at the grass roots level to help solve this problem! 

Perhaps you would like a guest speaker or a presentation on this topic. Perhaps you would like to have your students, learners, or employees enjoy an in-person or virtual professional development workshop in this topical area. Perhaps you need a course to be written for your learners. Whatever your need, the 1795 Group can help. Call us and let’s brainstorm ways to work together. 

Contact Me Today: 

Phone: (440) 296-9709 (text first)

Email: tjordan@1795group.com

Website: www.1795group.com

Blogs: https://1795group.com/blog/

Podcasts: https://1795group.com/podcast/ 

References and Resources:  

1. Autism Science Foundation, (2023). https://autismsciencefoundation.org/

2. The Cook Political Report, (2024).  https://www.cookpolitical.com/

3. Podcast, Episode # 9:  “How Social Media Has Changed Us – An Interview with Dr. Jeff Blevins.” https://1795group.com/episode/episode-9-how-social-media-has-changed-us-an-interview-with-dr-jeff-blevins/

4. Podcast, Episode # 10: “The Impact of Mis/Disinformation – An Interview with Yotam Ophir, Ph.D.” https://1795group.com/episode/episode-10-the-impact-of-mis-disinformation-an-interview-with-yotam-ophir-ph-d/

5. Blog: “Why We Should Talk About Politics.” (December 26, 2022). https://1795group.com/why-we-should-talk-about-politics/

6. Blog: “Are You Awake?” (June 6, 2023). https://1795group.com/are-you-awake/

7. Blog: “Lies Have Consequences.” (July 19, 2023).  https://1795group.com/lies-have-consequences/

8. Blog: “The Problem of Christian Nationalism.” (April 10, 2024). https://1795group.com/the-problem-of-christian-nationalism/