walkerbragman.bsky.social
He/Him. Dad. Journo tracking dark money influence in public health. JD, ADHD, occasional cartoonist.
Co-founder of Accountability Journalism Institute. Accountabilityjournalism.org
Signal: walkerbragman.44
Reporting: https://www.importantcontext.news
5,260 posts
27,511 followers
756 following
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My complaint with legacy media isn’t that it doesn’t use the word “lie.” It’s that it gives right-wing political operatives the benefit of the doubt. Calls them activists. Or fails to note their affiliations. Or if it does, it spends no time providing real context about what those affiliations mean.
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Speakers who have been repeatedly fact checked but persist in spewing misinformation should be called out for doing so.
I don’t think libel-proof language ought to hinder us in getting the truth out.
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One way around this is to indicate the speaker’s potential motivations.
For example, if someone from the Hoover Institution advocates for X policy, it’s important for journalists to note what the Hoover Institution is (a business-aligned think tank) and explain who is funding it.
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You may find that being “unreasonable” works.
We’ve got a fascist government. Their ideology was summed up by that rat bastard Barry Goldwater:
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
You have to match that energy to beat it.
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Stop chastising protest tactics and instead call for investigations into ICE and police violence.
Stop with the “bipartisanship” bullshit.
Stop equating the “far left” with Nazis.
Stop negotiating your strongest positions down before you even try to fight for them.
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Stop assuming people aren’t smart enough to see you’re not fighting.
Stop shouting it’s the end of democracy and govern like it.
Stop trying to meet the other side half way on issues like trans rights at the expense of your own base.
Stop trying to also represent big corporate interests.
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The party of law and order breaking laws and destroying order, because they are actually just fascists
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This will get at incentives. If the answer is yes (it is undoubtedly), then he has no reason to do anything good for vaccines. His money depends on attacking them.
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Ask him if he plans to return to Children’s Health Defense after leaving government.
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100%
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🙏🙏
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Even so, it was so disheartening watching their large audiences get shepherded into the Great Barrington Declaration/Brownstone Institute bullshit.
Of course, all this led to MAHA.
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The work I’m doing now feels so much more important and impactful than anything I did before COVID.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything. There’s no human progress without science.
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I suppose, in a way, I should thank folks like Dore and Blumenthal.
Had they not been so enamored with an obvious right-wing operative, I might not have found my beat—might not have developed the kind of niche expertise I have now, or connected with so many brilliant scientists and doctors.
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Jay Bhattacharya has made himself a willing agent in a right-wing war on science. I’m not exaggerating. The cuts he’s presiding over at NIH are devastating. His anti-vax gesturing is also just so harmful.
Who benefits from Jay’s prescriptions? Big money. Big business.
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“Lockdowns hurt the poor,” they said. Jay is a truth-teller, they insisted.
All while the virus ripped through our population, as he wanted, killing primarily poor and working class people of color doing essential work.
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Do you have any time to speak? My DMs are open. Signal in bio.
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Let's be clear: the absolute destruction of American public health, biomedical research is a priority policy goal for Russell Vought, the director of OMB. Everyone else is a doddering accomplice (the president), deranged zealots (RFK Jr.)...2/
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Read about the declaration here. This is the first time federal workers done something like this, signing their names to make their grievances public.
www.importantcontext.news/p/nih-worker...
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By the way, I’m a little jealous I wasn’t included in this article at all.
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I’d say so
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Jay always cites that email from Collins to Fauci about the declaration as evidence that the govt censored him—but he neglects to note that 3 days before that, he was meeting with Azar!
We should all be so lucky to be as “censored” as he was…
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The administration’s hand in making the Great Barrington Declaration possible and then amplifying it after the fact is overlooked.
I keep reminding folks that Scott Atlas was involved in organizing the AIER conference. He got Gupta’s travel to the US cleared by setting up a meeting with Azar.
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It’s important to note that despite his mainstream rejection, he was embraced by the political right.
He met with Trump to discuss his pandemic response. He met with Pence. HHS Secretary Alex Azar. He had an ally in Trump COVID adviser Scott Atlas.
He also advised state governments (DeSantis).
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He’s the same guy who was liking tweets suggesting MoJo reporter Kiera Butler was corrupted by big pharma after she wrote an article calling him out for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 boosters.
He’s the same guy who refused to be transparent about his ties to right-wing dark money groups.
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Bhattacharya is the same person who embraced the lab leak conspiracy theory after emails leaked showing fmr NIH Dir. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci didn’t like his Great Barrington Declaration.
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Overall a rough hearing for Bhattacharya, but not devastating.
Again, he’s a slick political operative. Very good at maintaining composure—even while bullshitting.
That said, the senators largely focused on policy. He’s thin skinned. Calling him out for bullshit and hypocrisy could go a long way.