RFK Jr. Campaign’s Crazy New Low: Strategic Farting by Climate Denialist

Turns out Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is just full of hot air.

On Tuesday, the presidential candidate attended a press dinner on the Upper East Side of New York. But as Page Six reported, what began as an attempt to boost RFK Jr.’s campaign “descended into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting.”

The magazine writes that an event guest had asked Kennedy about the environment. And that’s all it took to provoke “apparently drunk gossip columnist-turned-flack Doug Dechert, the host of the event,” who in a spurt of fury screamed: “The climate hoax!”

And that was then enough to wake up apparently “sleeping happily” art critic Anthony Haden-Guest, who all of a sudden opened his eyes and called Dechert a “miserable blob.”

“Shut up!” he barked at Dechert.

And chaos ensued. The duo rallied back and forth; Dechert continued on his soused rant, while Haden-Guest berated him as “f–king insane,” and “insignificant.”

Throughout it all, Page Six notes, Kenndy sat back and watched calmly—perhaps seeing value to both sides of the discourse.

But the stalemate apparently was unsatisfactory for Dechert. Page Six writes that “Dechert sensed the need for a new rhetorical tack, and let rip a loud, prolonged fart while yelling, as if to underscore his point, ‘I’m farting!’”

The whole room was stunned, unsure about what to do, and whether the plastered host was letting one loose at Haden-Guest, or at the concept of global warming generally.

“Regrettably, we may assure readers that there was no room for doubt that the climate changed in the immediate environs of the dinner table,” Page Six noted.

Kennedy kept his about-face, as another guest soon tried to change the subject. Nevertheless, another round of yelling was sparked right after, the longtime contemporaries going at each other once again.

On Wednesday, Dechert told Page Six “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence,” adding that he wished to be referred to as either a “gallivanting boulevardier” or a “beer-fueled sex rocket.”

Even then, the gallivanting boulevardier told the magazine that he has “zero tolerance for the climate hoax scam nonsense in any venue that I am personally funding.”

Kennedy—former member of Riverkeeper and the National Resources Defense Council, and founder of the Waterkeeper Alliance—has positioned himself as a climate change man-in-arms, but the evening embodied the incoherencies of his campaign. While previously throwing his support behind much-needed mass action like the Green New Deal, Kennedy posted a video just this week saying that “free markets are a much better way to stop pollution,” advancing the claim that climate change is “being used to control us through fear.”

Meanwhile, people across the nation remain in justifiable despair at the continued inaction on climate change. Just ask Vermonters or New Yorkers who lost their homes and livelihoods to this week’s disastrous flooding, or Texans and Floridians who have fallen ill or even lost loved ones to the sweltering heat, what they’re more afraid of: everything they’ve lost from climate destruction, or the government actually doing something about it.

Is Jim Jordan OK?

The Ohio representative was at a total loss for words Wednesday night while trying to explain his ridiculous investigation into the supposed politicization of the FBI.

The powerful House Judiciary Committee, which Jordan chairs, held a hearing on Wednesday during which angry Republicans grilled FBI Director Christopher Wray on a variety of pressing issues, including Hunter Biden’s laptop, if the bureau is shielding the Biden family, and whether the FBI is specifically targeting Donald Trump. Wray categorically denied all of their accusations.

Jordan appeared on Fox News to discuss the hearing. But when trying to push back on Wray’s claims to host Sean Hannity, Jordan suddenly was unable to string a sentence together.

He blamed his stumbling on feedback interference from his earpiece. But another reason could be that Jordan simply had nothing of actual value to say.

Republicans have repeatedly insisted that the FBI has become far too politicized, and that it unfairly targets Trump while failing to investigate President Joe Biden. Some lawmakers have even called to defund the FBI and the Department of Justice for their supposed bias. But the House GOP’s investigation into Biden, spearheaded by Jordan ally James Comer, has yet to produce any actual proof of wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, Trump has been charged with business fraud for his alleged role in making hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. He also has been charged with keeping national defense information without authorization, making false statements, and conspiring to obstruct justice. And he is still under investigation in Washington, D.C., and Georgia for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

As California Representative Ted Lieu pointed out during the hearing, “We don’t have a two-tiered system of justice. We have one Department of Justice that goes after criminals regardless of party ideology.”

A Wisconsin first-grade teacher is being fired for speaking out against her school district for banning her kids from singing a song about rainbows and togetherness.

On Wednesday, the Waukesha School District voted 9-0 to fire Heyer Elementary teacher Melissa Tempel, who was first put on leave in April and has been in limbo ever since.

The drama first began in March, after Tempel’s students were barred from singing “Rainbowland”—a Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton hit collaboration about hope, positivity, and love—at their first-grade concert. Administrators cited a district-wide policy on items “that may be considered political, controversial, or divisive,” as grounds to ban the song from being sung at the concert.

The administrators applied the policy to a song whose lyrics go like this:

All the hurt and the hate going on here (It needs to stop here)

We are rainbows, me and you

Every color, every hue

Let’s shine through (through)

Together, we can

Start livin’ in a rainbowland

Tempel tweeted about the ban, which brought massive public attention to the Waukesha School District. Shortly thereafter, Tempel was placed on administrative leave, with very little information made available to the public. Administrators have cited her initial public complaints about the ban as against school policy, which apparently prevents teachers from saying anything about administrators mysteriously censoring kids from singing about love and hope.

“I am deeply concerned that Ms. Tempel was removed from her classroom for standing up for them and what she knows is right,” a parent from Tempel’s class said at the time.

The issue all stems from Waukesha’s Board Policy 2240, “Controversial Issues in the Classroom,” which set guidelines for when the district would “permit” a so-called “controversial issue” to be introduced in the classroom. Along with the innocent Cyrus and Parton song, the policy has also been applied to bar students, teachers, and even classroom walls from donning rainbow designs, because of their association with the LGBTQ community. The over-policing has stirred up concern among parents and teachers alike who have found the policy to be repressive.

Officials may have set off claims for a First Amendment case. Tempel had previously said she would pursue such a claim against the district, after Superintendent Dr. Jim Sebert first recommended her termination back in May.

“I cannot allow others to be intimidated into silence,” she said at the time. “These are matters of public concern that the Waukesha Community has a right to know about and I stand by my decision to share the impact of Policy 2240 with the public. I will rest easy every night knowing that I did what was right for children.”

Despite initially crowning Ron DeSantis as the next Republican presidential nominee, Fox News emperor Rupert Murdoch has started to sour on the Florida governor. In fact, he may have already moved on to someone new.

In a weird twist, Murdoch reportedly backs Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin for 2024, according to a New York Times report published Wednesday. Youngkin, meanwhile, has publicly said he has no intention of running.

When DeSantis first unveiled his campaign two months ago, Fox News led the charge in painting him as the successor to Donald Trump. It would make sense why Fox News had gone off Trump, considering that spreading his lies about the 2020 election has already cost them nearly $800 million in lawsuits—with more on the way.

But DeSantis hasn’t really taken off. Although he’s technically the runner-up to Trump, the two candidates are miles apart in terms of actual poll numbers. Murdoch has begun to voice doubts in private conversations that DeSantis can pull off a win, Rolling Stone reported Tuesday.

Coverage of DeSantis on Fox News and in the newspapers that Murdoch owns has shifted. Where there were once softball questions, now there is Maria Bartiromo straight up asking DeSantis, “What’s going on with your campaign?”

“They are transactional and can smell a loser a mile away,” a Fox insider anonymously told Rolling Stone, referring to the Murdoch family and other Fox executives.

Youngkin, however, is perhaps exactly what people like Murdoch hoped DeSantis would be.

Both men are just as conservative as Trump. In some ways, they’re even further right. But where DeSantis is awkward and robotic, Youngkin won the gubernatorial race in a Democratic leaning state. He is less cringey and flagrant in his embrace of the right-wing agenda, such as fighting “wokeness” and opposing abortion and LGBTQ rights. But he’s still dangerous.

But Youngkin said in April that he is “wholly focused on the Commonwealth of Virginia.” So the Murdochs may be stuck with DeSantis after all.

Fox already shelled out $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit to avoid further interrogation into its ranks—and now it’s being sued for defamation once again.

Ray Epps, a Trump supporter who has been bizarrely propped up by conspiracy theorists as being the leader of an FBI plot to incite the January 6 insurrection, filed a lawsuit against Fox on Wednesday, accusing the company and former host Tucker Carlson of defamation.

Figureheads on the right—including Carlson—have long been propagating the unfounded notion that the January 6 attack was essentially an “op” put on by federal agencies. Epps has been a central victim to the conspiracy.

The two-time Trump voter did take part in demonstrations in the nation’s capital on January 5 and 6. He was even seen on camera urging a crowd to march and enter the Capitol with him, though he apparently never got inside. At other points, he was seen urging for calm as things turned violent. Not the kind of behavior of someone looking to cleanly incite and entrap rioters.

Nevertheless, Epps has become a target in the years since. On numerous occasions, Carlson whipped up the focus on Epps, directing the ire of his millions of viewers to the Arizona man.

“Fox’s lies about Epps reached hundreds of millions of people and caused enormous harm to Epps,” the lawsuit reads, accusing Fox of running a “years-long campaign spreading falsehoods” about Epps that “destroyed” his life.

Epps is described as a formerly “avid and loyal Fox viewer and fan of Mr. Carlson’s,” whose presence at the January 6 attack at all was inspired “by the lies broadcast by Fox asserting the election had been stolen.”

The conspiracy theory has become popular among Republican lawmakers, some of whom even cited it in a House judiciary hearing just hours before the lawsuit was announced.

The new lawsuit follows Fox’s whopping $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, after the network was sued for its lies surrounding the 2020 election and voting systems like Dominion’s. It also comes after the network also reached a $12 million settlement with former producer Abby Grossberg, who accused Fox of hosting a workplace environment rife with discrimination and rampant sexism, and of coercing her into providing false testimony in the Dominion case.

Meanwhile, the network still faces a gargantuan $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit from Smartmatic USA, another voting systems company that alleges Fox made “over 100 false statements and implications about the company.”

“Dominion’s litigation exposed some of the misconduct and damage caused by Fox’s disinformation campaign. Smartmatic will expose the rest,” Smartmatic attorney J. Erik Connolly said in April. “Smartmatic remains committed to clearing its name, recouping the significant damage done to the company, and holding Fox accountable for undermining democracy.”