White House Torches Latest MAGA Biden Conspiracy

The White House has shut down the burgeoning conspiracy that President Joe Biden has Parkinson’s disease, releasing the job specifics for Dr. Kevin Cannard, a neurology consultant that Fox News and Republican lawmakers irresponsibly and incorrectly pinned as a Parkinson’s expert.

In a news release Monday night, White House medical experts outlined that Cannard, who has reportedly visited the White House eight times since last summer, has been a member of the White House medical unit since 2012 and is the “longest serving Neurologist at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and in the Military Healthcare System.”

His routine visits in the last year were a part of neurology clinics for active-duty members working in the White House, wrote Dr. Kevin O’Connor, physician to the president.

“Many military personnel experience neurological issues related to their service, and Dr. Cannard regularly visits the WHMU as part of this General Neurology practice,” the letter read.

Aside from that, Cannard’s other duties in the White House—which include examining Biden’s neurological condition during his annual physical—have been nothing out of the ordinary, per the letter.

“As I have written in each of the President’s medical reports, as part of the President’s annual physical, he sees a team of specialists that have included Optometry, Dentistry, Orthopedics (Foot and Ankle), Orthopedics (Spine), Physical Therapy, Neurology, Sleep Medicine, Cardiology, Radiology, and Dermatology,” O’Connor wrote in the release. “Dr. Cannard was the neurological specialist that examined President Biden for each of his annual physicals. His findings have been made public each time I have released the results of the President’s annual physical. President Biden has not seen a neurologist outside of his annual physical.”

O’Connor further cited his February examination of the president, which made mention of Cannard’s “extremely detailed neurological exam.”

“This exam did again support a finding of peripheral neuropathy in both feet,” O’Connor wrote at the time, referring to the results of the neurological exam that found no signs of neurological disorder. “No motor weakness was detected. He exhibits no tremor, either at rest or with activity. He demonstrates excellent fine motor dexterity.”

Cannard’s visits were reported breathlessly by multiple outlets over the weekend and into Monday, amid concerns that the White House press team isn’t being transparent about Biden’s health condition. But his visits have also been seized just as breathlessly by the far right to push factless conspiracies about Biden’s fitness for office.

Bankrupted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones turned on Donald Trump on Monday over the former president recently distancing himself from Project 2025. Jones suggested that Trump is being controlled by his advisers as part of a power struggle—echoing the same criticism as white supremacist livestreamer Nick Fuentes.

“Trump gets told by his advisers and people who really just don’t want competition in his new White House.… ‘Oh God, these are radicals, sir. You’ve got to come out and distance yourself,’” Jones said, according to Newsweek. “It’s the Heritage Foundation, Trump. And again, Trump’s really smart; he’s got good instincts. He doesn’t understand Republican machinery,” Jones continued.

After Trump publicly denied association with Project 2025 on Friday, claiming to have no idea what it is, white supremacist livestreamer Nick Fuentes claimed Trump’s disavowal was proof of Trump’s “assimilation into the establishment” and that his campaign is “controlled by billionaires”—which for Fuentes and his white supremacist followers is a not-so-subtle antisemitic dog whistle raising the specter of Jewish billionaires.

Project 2025 is a 900-page document crafted by conservative think tanks, led by the Heritage Foundation, as a sort of Trumpian wish list, with detailed tactics for how Trump can manifest various extreme policies once he’s in office. Trump has claimed it’s been a thorn in his side for a while, with his campaign spokespeople repeatedly insisting it isn’t affiliated with Trump. Despite those efforts, Project 2025 exists with the intention of being used by Trump, is based on Trump’s desired policies, and was created by Trump’s former and current associates. Project 2025 has claimed it’s intended for any incoming conservative president, not just Trump, but Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.

The criticism among the right wing is an ultra-niche split between the belief among white supremacists like Fuentes that Project 2025 is a purist white supremacist effort in line with “America First” policies, and Trump’s “Make America Great Again” posture itself as more open to a wider variety of conservatives and less inclined toward explicit virulent racism. It’s the difference that all comes out in the wash: Project 2025 is modeled after Trump’s aspirations, and a Trump presidency would end up ticking off boxes on its wish list, regardless of whether Trump follows Project 2025’s step-by-step directions on how to get there.

Donald Trump has been flying high since his first matchup with President Joe Biden last month. In the weeks since, the 78-year-old has elevated calls for show trials and all-out revenge against his political rivals, including Biden, and hasn’t shied away from sycophantic fans likening his candidacy to divine ordainment. But now, Trump has done something that had been previously thought unconscionable for the former president: He complimented CNN.

“I do have to say, the CNN, Jake [Tapper] and Dana [Bash], were really, they were pretty good,” Trump told Fox News Monday night. “I thought they were fair. I thought they were fair, in the questions I thought from him to me.”

Ahead of the debate, Trump and his team repeatedly accused Tapper and Bash of being biased against him. But after the debate, Tapper and Bash came under heavy fire for letting Trump lie pretty much the entire time. He spewed falsehoods and misinformation, and neither the moderators nor Biden made any effort to fact-check him.

In the same Fox interview, Trump suggested that a terror attack was imminent and “100 percent certain” and that he intends to “have the largest deportation in our history” if elected because migrants are “poisoning the country.” He also claimed that Jimmy Carter—the 99-year-old former president currently in hospice—is “the happiest guy around” since Biden’s disastrous performance in the first debate.

Against the background of debate reactions, Trump has been leveraging his social media accounts to say what he really thinks. Over the last few days, Trump has shared an image of himself and Melania Trump at the White House, superimposed with the QAnon catchphrase, “Where We Go One We Go All.” He also used his social media platform to amplify an attack against billionaire financier George Soros and his family, vaguely accusing the investor and his connections of being “treasonous traitors.”

On top of all that, he shared an image of several prominent lawmakers that he believed should be headed to prison instead of his far-right ally Steve Bannon, who began his federal sentence last week for defying a congressional subpoena. Those politicians include former Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who all committed the egregious crime—according to Trump—of hiding “the January 6 footage.”

Republicans are pushing a new policy platform to better align with Donald Trump, but not all party members are happy about aspects of it.

The Republican Party approved a new platform Monday, ahead of next week’s national convention, where it will be officially voted in, and notably missing from the list is a federal ban on abortion.

The absence represents a policy shift for the party as it cowers behind its champion, Trump, who stopped advocating for a federal ban shortly after the midterms, when he realized it was an insanely unpopular policy with voters.

But not everyone is on board with the change, or how it happened.

WISN12 News’s political director Matt Smith spoke with Gayle Ruzicka, a disgruntled member of the Republican National Committee platform committee from Utah. Ruzicka is also the president of the Utah Eagle Forum, the conservative lobbying group founded by Phyllis Schafly, who opposed the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment.

“It’s never happened before. I mean, I guess I’ve done this several times. There was no committees. We always had subcommittees, where we can go in and rework … a section of the platform; we can propose amendments, debate them, add them. It always happens,” said Ruzicka. “They didn’t allow any amendments. They didn’t allow any discussion.

“They rolled us. That’s what they did.

“You know, we spent thousands of dollars to be here, and everything they told us they were going to do isn’t what happened. None of it happened. I’ve never seen this happen before. I don’t understand why they did it. And I’m extremely disappointed that we do not have any pro-life language,” she said.

Buried on page 15, the new policy platform gives a new spin for Republicans’ tireless efforts to ban abortion across the nation. It reads, “After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”

That wasn’t good enough for Ruzicka. “The platform simply says that we oppose late-term abortion. Well, what about before that?” she said. So why did she vote for it?

She also said she was bamboozled by the voting process.

“I’ve never been treated so badly, to have them force this vote on us, before we even have a chance to read the platform,” Ruzicka said, explaining that it was passed out shortly before a meeting that required the members’ attention.

“We glanced through it, but we didn’t have the time to study it and read it. And then all of a sudden somebody made a motion to vote on the platform. And that was it. And then they sent us home.”

It seems that the Republican Party was anxious to pass Trump’s slightly unorthodox platform through, even if the policies don’t represent the opinions of its committee members, let alone the position the GOP has had for the past 50 years. Uniformly adopting Trump’s policy platform goes to show how far the Trump takeover of the GOP has come: He’s in the party’s bloodstream now, changing its very DNA.

In 2020, the Republican Party didn’t even deign to write a platform, amid rumors that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner planned to shorten it significantly and streamline (upend) the drafting process, according to Vox. Perhaps some of Kushner’s plans are latent within the party, intent on making decisions that align with the candidate, rather than the people.

During an appearance at conservative think-tank the Hudson Institute on Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson endorsed Trump’s nightmarish desire to deport 15 to 20 million undocumented immigrants from the United States, saying it’s “needed.”

“We will be dealing with this for decades to come. President Trump has said we want to start the largest deportation effort in history,” said Johnson. “It’s needed. We need to find all these dangerous people, criminals. They’ve emptied out prisons in Central America and sent them all over the border.”

Beyond endorsing Trump’s horrific anti-immigration policy, Johnson called for an isolationist approach to U.S. foreign policy, saying, “The Republican Party is not one of nation builders or careless interventionists. We don’t believe we should be the world’s policemen.” Johnson also called to cut costs on “overall spending” to prioritize funding the country’s defense budget, describing the cuts “essential for our long-term survival.”

The Hudson Institute advertised Johnson’s appearance ahead of time as a discussion about “threats to the U.S.-led world order,” specifically from China, Russia, and Iran, and a conversation that would detail “the speaker’s agenda to bolster the credibility of US deterrence, strengthen alliances, improve America’s hard power, and maintain freedom, security, and prosperity for the American people.”

“We are realists,” claimed Johnson about the Republican Party and his endorsement of the largest deportation in U.S. history, despite Pew Research data suggesting the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as of 2021 was roughly half of the 20 million Trump wants to deport. “We don’t seek out a fight. But we know we have to be prepared. We have to be prepared to fight, and if we must fight, we fight with the gloves off.”