Good morning. It's November 15th. It is a sunny, windy morning in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. The lead column on the front of the New York Times is “Trump to select Kennedy as head of health agency, a skeptic of vaccines, unclear if senators will confirm unorthodox HHS nominee.” Great mix of times in understatement with meaning obscuring jargon to describe the nomination of omnidirectional health science crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by Donald Trump to run the federal health apparatus. With “unorthodox” the Times is gesturing toward the fact that Kennedy rejects the basic underpinnings of the entire field of public health, in favor of a dramatic and self-contradictory melange of pseudoscientific conspiracy theories and by “skeptic of vaccines” or possessor of “vaccine skepticism,” as the article proper puts it, the Times is using the dishonest label that anti-vaxxers use to avoid being identified as anti-vaxxers. As Albert Burneko wrote over at Defector, “in my lifetime as a word nerd, I have known ‘skepticism’ to refer to a sort of stubborn insistence upon rigor and evidence, in place of things like ‘dogma’ and ‘common sense.’ A skeptic, by those terms, is someone who questions what they are told. Crucially,” he adds, “a skeptic actually questions, as in seeks answers. A person who merely refuses to learn what can be known is not a skeptic, but rather an ignoramus. A person who raises questions but does not seek their answers is not a skeptic, but a bullshitter. A person who rejects empirical knowledge, who refuses the answers that exist, while requesting ones more to their liking that flatter their preference for unfounded contrarian gibberish and conspiratorial paranoia is not a skeptic, they're the exact opposite of that. A mark. A sucker. A credulous boob. You could,” Burneko notes, “just call him a denier of vaccines,” which should have fit just fine in the same headline slot.”

The Times' second news column this morning is News Analysis. “Trump's picks send message to the Senate. A warning to confirm or be elbowed aside.” Contemplating the parade of absolutely unqualified lunatics that Trump has put forward so far for his cabinet. The Times writes that it is “Mr. Trump's first show of force to Senate Republicans who will be under immediate pressure to either confirm his nominees or sidestep that process altogether.” 

Which way that choice is going to go is illuminated by another piece inside the paper on A16. “Trump's choices present quandary for the GOP. Fealty, or fitness to serve,” and really salute to whichever photo editor at the Times concisely answered both questions by choosing a photo of Susan Collins to illustrate the piece. As that story says, “Senator Susan Collins, a main Republican who was outspoken on Wednesday about her shock at Trump's nomination of Matt Gaetz to be attorney general and her alarm at the possibility that Mr. Trump would go around the Senate to install him, adopted a more conciliatory tone by Thursday. ‘There may be cases where the Democrats have proposed unreasonable roadblocks and are slow-walking nominees that are not controversial,’ she told reporters in those cases maybe you can make a justification for having recessed appointments.” A perfect Susan Collins moment imagining a different version of an abusive power in which the power wouldn't really be being abused at all, in which in fact what seemed like a structural abuse of power would simply be necessary to deal with imaginary potential abuses by the Democrats. Just imagine the Democrats unreasonably blocking Trump's non-controversial nominees. Then keep on imagining it, even when the objections are reasonable and the nominees are dangerous lunatics who've been accused of sex crimes. 

That's not a sneaky journalistic false plural, by the way, Vanity Fair reported yesterday on the existence of allegations against Pete Hegseth, the Fox News commentator who Trump wants to put in charge of the Defense Department. Vanity Fair's write up of that disclosure contains a response from Trump World. “Trump's communications director, Steven Chung, said, ‘President Trump is nominating high caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration. Mr. Hegseth has vigorously denied any and all accusations and no charges were filed. We look forward to his confirmation as United States Secretary of Defense so he can get started on day one to make America safe and great again.’” Coming from Stephen Chung, whose usual approach to communications is basically borrowed from pro wrestling and involves castigating whoever has criticized Trump as a deviant and liar bent on destroying the nation. This extremely ordinary proceduralist spokesperson boilerplate about “no charges having been filed” sounds like it might be pretty grim for Hegseth if anyone has enough of an attention span to follow up. The accusations that Matt Gaetz was involved in trafficking a teen to drug orgies are common knowledge by now, and RFK Jr. has been accused of forcibly groping the family nanny, all of which would surely be a grave concern for Susan Collins if she had to reckon with it in public. But luckily for her, she just discerned a legitimate presidential power that could save her from that happening. 

On page A14, the tasteful headline challenge is describing Matt Gaetz. The Times settled on “a fiery nominee who takes glee in causing heartburn.” On page A15, the subhead, Tulsi Gabbard, is “an ex-democrat who is skeptical of military intervention abroad.” Under the headline, “Gabbard is chosen to oversee 18 spy agencies.” The most informative paragraph in that piece might be “The news of Ms. Gabbard's appointment was first revealed by Roger Stone on his ex-account. Mr. Stone, a longtime friend and advisor to Mr. Trump, who was pardoned by the president in 2020, posted the statement about Ms. Gabbard and said Mr. Trump had just sent it to him.” 

Another illuminating standalone paragraph on page A14 under the headline, “After Trump Picks Gates, Justice Department Shudders Fearing Retribution” is down in the second column. At a white shoe law firm in Washington,” the Times writes, “at a white-shoe law firm in Washington, an administrator estimated that partners had received two dozen resumes from department lawyers since election day, then quickly called back to say it was closer to three dozen. A former prosecutor working at another firm said he received three calls on Wednesday afternoon from current officials hoping to get out fast.” 

The swift de facto restructuring of the executive branch continues on page A9 with “Musk said to meet with Iranian envoy to UN, Elon Musk,” the Times reports “a close advisor to President-elect Donald J. Trump met with Iran's ambassador to the United Nations on Monday in New York in a session the two Iranian officials described as a discussion of how to diffuse tensions between Iran and the United States.” Who needs diplomats when you have oligarchs ready to do the work? 

Facing that on the War in the Middle East page, A8, the left-hand story is, “as the Israeli military intensified a days-long barrage of strikes south of Beirut, the Lebanese capital, at least 12 emergency rescue workers were killed on Thursday in a strike on a civil defense center.” When Israel started attacking rescue workers and humanitarian facilities in Gaza, the excuse was that all aspects of civil activity in Gaza were hopelessly intertwined with Hamas, here, the Times notes “Lebanon's civil defense agency, which performs emergency and medical services, is an arm of the Lebanese state and is not controlled by or affiliated with Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran.” 

And speaking of Gaza, the right hand story is “Child reported dead in strike on ‘safe zone.’” Quote marks around safe. “The Israeli military has bombed a densely populated tent encampment in southern Gaza, designated as a humanitarian zone for thousands of displaced Palestinians, saying the airstrike targeted a loaded weapons launcher in the area.” Remember when people still talked about the concept of proportionality? Those were the days. 

And in other international news, on page A10, “A teenager was hospitalized and in critical condition after contracting bird flu, in what Canadian officials said this week was the country's first known case of the virus being transmitted to a human. Health officials in British Columbia,” the Times writes, “were investigating how the teenager came down with the disease despite having no known links to poultry farms, the most common sites where bird flu has been detected in Canada.” Can't wait to see what RFK junior comes up with in response to that one, but it definitely won't involve a vaccine. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The indignity morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. Our ongoing pursuit of Podcasting Adequacy™ is underwritten by the donations and subscriptions of you, the listeners. So please subscribe and or tip with the handy buttons. Have a relaxing and non-infectious weekend if you can. And barring something unforeseen, we will talk again on Monday.