Famous Liar RFK Jr. Accuses Ousted CDC Director of Lying

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that Susan Monarez, the ousted head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was lying about being threatened into rubber-stamping policies she didn’t agree with.

Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee Thursday, Kennedy was asked by Senator Rob Wyden to respond to allegations that he had told Monarez to “just go along with vaccine recommendations,” even though “she didn’t think such recommendations aligned with scientific evidence.”

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed Thursday, Monarez claimed that Kennedy had directed her to preapprove recommendations made by a “vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric.” She wrote that she’d refused, and in a meeting on August 25, Kennedy had pressured her to resign or “face termination.” Days later, she was removed. 

Kennedy, who has lied before Congress multiple times, claimed that this time, Monarez was lying. 

“No, I did not say that to her,” Kennedy said. “And I never had a private meeting with her. There are witnesses to every meeting that we have, and all of those witnesses will say that I never said that.” 

“So she’s lying today to the American people, The Wall Street Journal?” Wyden pressed. 

“Yes, sir,” Kennedy replied. 

But Monarez’s allegations don’t exactly sound outlandish. Kennedy has spent much of his career peddling dangerous misinformation about vaccines. On Wednesday, more than 1,000 current and former HHS employees wrote a letter demanding that he step down, citing his appointment of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts,” his refusal to be briefed by CDC experts, and his rescinding of the FDA’s emergency use authorization for the Covid vaccine. 

In her op-ed, Monarez claimed that she had attempted to defend scientific review in the face of Kennedy’s overhaul of the nation’s vaccine policy.

“Those seeking to undermine vaccines use a familiar playbook: discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay,” Monarez wrote.  

“Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn’t reform,” she added. “It’s sabotage.”  

President Trump’s Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook in an attempt to pressure her into dropping her lawsuit against the administration, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The department has already issued grand jury subpoenas in Georgia and Michigan, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Last month, Trump fired Cook, claiming she committed mortgage fraud by listing two of her homes as primary residences. In reality, it’s most likely that Trump was upset at her for maintaining the Fed’s independence and refusing to raise interest rates to the level Trump requested.

Cook in turn sued Trump for trying to fire her, and a judge is considering her emergency request to stop her dismissal while her lawsuit continues. The Fed’s next meeting is September 16. Her lawsuit noted that the allegations against her are “pretextual, in order to effectuate her prompt removal and vacate a seat for President Trump to fill and forward his agenda to undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve.”

“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” her lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement. “His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis. We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this illegal action.”

The DOJ’s criminal probe is a clear intimidation campaign that reflects Trump’s greater takeover of federal agencies, turning them from politically neutral entities that transcend politics to faceless organizations that do his bidding and his bidding only. Cook and some of her colleagues—like CDC Director Susan Monarez—haven’t caved yet. We’ll see if the criminal investigation changes that.

As President Donald Trump escalates his threats to take over Chicago, Senator Ted Cruz, ever the president’s loyal attack dog, has joined in.

The senator spoke on Newsmax Wednesday, calling Chicago Governor JB Pritzker a “disgusting, racist bigot” in response to comments Pritzker made about ICE targeting Latino Chicagoans.

Not content to merely smear the governor’s policies, Cruz turned his ire to Pritzker’s body.

“I don’t wanna get between JB Pritzker and the Domino’s pizza line, but I’ll tell you what I am willing to get between, it is him and his open doors for every human trafficker …”

Pritzker then fired back on X: “And I would never want to get between Ted and a trip to Cancun when there’s an emergency in Texas,” referencing the infamous Cancún vacation that Cruz took while his state was battered by a winter storm that killed hundreds.

Unfortunately for Cruz, the internet took Pritzker’s side and piled more insults onto the Texas senator.

Pritzker has loudly opposed Trump’s authoritarian proposals, especially as the president has continued to drag Chicago’s crime rates through the mud—despite a “historic drop in homicides” in the city that mirrors nationwide trends.

Thomas Massie, a libertarian Republican representative from Kentucky, says he is facing an “immense pressure campaign” for spearheading a bipartisan bill for transparency on the notorious late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.

Massie has garnered 11 other Republican co-sponsors on his and Democratic Representative Ro Khanna’s bill to force the DOJ to release the so-called Epstein files in full. They have garnered just three Republicans, plus Massie, on a discharge petition to force the bill to a vote—which President Donald Trump deemed a “hostile act.”

Meanwhile, Massie has vowed to use immunity afforded to members of Congress under the speech and debate clause to publicly read a list of Epstein’s clients being privately compiled by his victims.

Appearing on CNN Wednesday evening, the Kentucky Republican described the pressure he and the handful of other GOP lawmakers are facing by taking Trump to task on Epstein.

“There’s an immense pressure campaign from the White House on Republican members right now,” he said. In his own district, he explained, “there’s been $2.5 million of ads run against me by three billionaires who are mega-donors to the Republican Party. And one of them is actually, I’m not going to say on Epstein’s list, but he’s in Epstein’s black book.”

Massie believes the powers that be are hoping to make an example of him to dissuade any other potential Republican dissenters on Epstein.

“I think what’s being run against me is a threat to other Republicans to try to keep them from doing what I’m doing,” he said.

But he remains unfazed—citing his resounding win in his 2020 Republican primary despite Trump then calling to “throw Massie out of Republican Party!” during one of their many spats. “So in some sense, I have the Trump antibodies,” Massie said. “But I’m definitely going to get a booster shot here.”

In a conversation with a White House official, Massie said, he confessed it was a mistake to announce there were 12 Republican co-sponsors on the bill to force DOJ disclosure of the files before seeking signatures on the discharge petition, “because I just telegraphed to you the 12 people that you needed to whip.” In response, Massie said, the official “kind of laughed, and he said, ‘Yeah.’”

But he expressed confidence that he and Khanna would secure the 218 votes to force a floor vote nonetheless.

President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be changing its story to help justify an unprecedented military strike on a boat officials claim was carrying drugs.

The New York Times reported Thursday that some officials at the Department of Defense had privately expressed concerns that the government had changed details of its story about the deadly strike earlier this week, which killed 11 people.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Tuesday that the ship was traveling to Trinidad, Tobago, or “some other country in the Caribbean.” But after President Donald Trump claimed the ship was on course for the United States, Rubio changed his tune.

International drug traffickers “pose an immediate threat to the United States, period,” Rubio said Wednesday at a joint press conference in Mexico City. “If you’re on a boat full of cocaine or fentanyl or whatever headed to the United States, you’re an immediate threat to the United States.”

Shifting the narrative to center the United States is particularly concerning, considering the fact that the Trump administration has yet to produce a legal authority for the use of military force against cartels.

Trump claimed Tuesday that the 11 crew members were “narco terrorists” who belonged to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, which the executive branch has labeled a terrorist organization. But such a designation does not serve as any legal basis for a combat strike.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed Wednesday that administration officials “knew exactly who was in that boat” and “exactly what they were doing.” But the government has offered no evidence to support its claim that the individuals on the boat were in fact drug traffickers.

Despite Trump posting a video of the incident to Truth Social, the actual details still remain murky beneath the Trump administration’s shifting narratives, and the government has been anything but transparent about the military strike, which may prove to have been illegal.