Summary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused Bernie Sanders of taking millions from Big Pharma during a heated exchange, but Sanders refuted the claim, stating his donations came from workers, not corporate PACs.
Kennedy repeatedly insisted Sanders was the top recipient of pharmaceutical money in 2020, but financial data shows no corporate PAC contributions to Sanders.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has profited from anti-vaccine activism, earning millions from lawsuits and speaking fees.
The debate ended without Kennedy answering whether he would guarantee health care for all as HHS secretary.
the term rigged is bullshit. What people have answered before is more accurate which I would describe as pushing other candidates to endorse and play ball and they would be rewarded. Your article uses the term rigged a lot but gives no explanation for the actions its considers to have rigged it.
We don’t know if it was rigged because that was never actually addressed in court.
The DNC came in and said:
Their argument in court was that, as a private organization, they have a right to do that, and since they have that right, the lawsuit should be dismissed. Their argument was that as a private group, they can rig it if they want to and it’s only their own rules that they are breaking so nobody can stop them. How can anyone take such an argument at face value? “We totally didn’t rig it, but if we did, it was totally legal to do.”
Have you heard that old saying?
This is the DNC pounding the law (“we’re a private organization, that’s not how this works”) to be able to avoid fact-finding discovery.
People always focus on “pound the table” but I think “pound the law” should also be considered. Because there’s a lot of bullshit ass law out there.
The DNC went well out of their way to avoid talking about the facts and to focus on the legal mechanisms protecting them from having to admit facts. They also flat out admitted that if they wanted to choose the candidate, they could, and nobody could stop them. It was literally their argument for why the lawsuit should be dismissed, that it was legal for them to choose the candidate without input from the party.
no because the accusation does not really fit what I would call rigged. which would be like changing votes or something. what they did was basically influence influencers.
Anything where an election is manipulated is “rigging” an election. You’re just splitting hairs.
https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/scale_super/3/33013/2638039-election rigging.jpg
Notice that the image I just showed is named “election rigging.jpg”?
The Definition for “rig”:
rig: manage or conduct (something) fraudulently so as to produce a result or situation that is advantageous to a particular person.
Having literal media organizations promoting the idea that the Super Delegates were all in the bag for Clinton and emails that showed they actively tried to hamstring him all falls under “rigging.”
Are you suggesting a video game as a source for a definition of election rigging? Was there a better quality source you could use?
but influencing is not really manipulating or if you believe it is then any promotion or advertising becomes rigging. I think again the big thing here is fraudulently and what that means to folks. For me again its like changing votes, disenfranchisement, and jerry mandering would fit but getting one guy to be on your side publically over another with promises. Thats always gonna be a thing.
It’s funny that they don’t actually have a proper response to this. All tropical ding dong can do is quote Trump. Pretty ironic don’t you think?
Rigged is the correct term, in spite of you lack of curiosity.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/07/23/487179496/leaked-democratic-party-emails-show-members-tried-to-undercut-sanders
No it is not. Rigged implies making it impossible for the result. Like changing votes or otherwise just messing with the system like that. What was done was basically cajoling influential people. The voters could have still voted bernie in by giving him the majority of votes. Heck even trumps win is more rigged because of voter disenfranchisment and jerrry mandoring which is directly mucking with the process. Encouraging heavy hitters or influential folks to be negative about him or positive about clinton while being bs just does not fit with rigged. man its just like both sides kind of thing. its like yeah in the broadest terms, yes but folks take it way down to be like literally exactly the same and its like. no. by no means. in the details there is a massive gulf between them. details being things like no surprise billing or funding renewables and such. pretty big deal items. calling it rigged is disingenuous.
Since you are trying to rewrite history, I’m at least going to post this here so people understand the context of why we say, with out mixed words or a lack of emphasis, that the DNC rigged the primary against bernie.
This wasn’t incompetence—it was outright election interference. The DNC didn’t just favor Clinton; they actively sabotaged Bernie Sanders while pretending to be fair. The leaks confirmed everything.
No sources for anything and up to this point your only quoted source explains the flaws in your claim.
Maybe hold back on commenting about this further.
im not rewriting history I just have a problem with the term. I voted for sanders in the primary and what the party did was dick moves and shit. The reason I have a problem with terminology is see so much of slipperly slope kind of thing. This especially with politicians are the same, dems/rep same, so might as well not vote or vote for rep. and its like. yeah same but really not. this thing with sanders. its not something that could really be changed much. The funding thing gets there and I can see making the argument with it. Also the data maybe but scheduling gets some weak sauce and the rest is even less. A big question is how do you fix this in the setup of the party? I can’t see anything outside of vote for better people so that party leadership which comes out of that are better. People can donate directly to bernie instead of the party and only answer poles for bernie if they want. Now I would like to see super delegates eliminated as that is just straight out (ironically) anti democratic. Don’t get me wrong as I do get frustrated and bernie really represents what I want. To many issues that just are not worth it to me and not enough emphasis on universal healthcare and regulation and taxing those of means.
NPR didn’t call it rigged. They quoted a tweet from Donald Trump calling about. Why are you spreading Trump lies?
Says the revisionist historian. What a crackup.
All right quote any revisionist history you like. Give me an example just for fun. Whether I ever did or didn’t. At least I’m not quoting a fascist to be divisive.
You offer only negative value in these discussions.
Put your projection aside. Take Trump’s words out of your mouth. And quote a single instance.
You are just a toxic, toxic troll kid. An apologist who is as much to blame for Trumps rise as Trump himself.
Lmao. Your projection is hilarious.
Those were the rules. Those have always been the rules. So you’re saying an organization has no right to have a say in its leadership?
Try reading your own source as there is a whole explanation about why the case was dismissed that you need to read.
Oh, oh. It gets soooooo much better. Search the article for the word rigged. There’s one instance. Where they literally link to a trump tweet or truth calling it that. And I dunno about you. But if the only sources I can find to support my opinions are DT. I’m changing my opinion fast! 🤗
Don’t forget they were DKIM verified to be real and unaltered.
But Assange was turned into the villain in this story because he didn’t personally hack the Republicans and get dirt on them too, and because nobody did it for him, that’s all his fault somehow. I’m still not entirely convinced of the story that he somehow had similar access to similarly compromising material on the Republicans and just chose not to release it.
Yet somehow…
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/media/trump-campaign-hack-news-media-report-iran-wikileaks/index.html
Huh. Hmm. Interesting. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, there’s a thing called “editorial discretion” something no one seemed to think Assange deserved. Let alone once again that I have never seen definitive proof that Wikileaks had documents on Trump in 2016 that they refused to release. We even had a massive internal leak of their chats and nothing about having Trump info that they were sitting on and not releasing.
Note: Assange is shown in the chat logs to be quite the sexist and to in particular have an overly glaring hate for Hillary Clinton. I’m not saying Assange is a good dude, I’m pretty sure he’s a sex pest, and he has the sexist attitude to support it. But in this instance, regarding the DNC emails, I think he was unfairly maligned.
To quote Orwell apocryphally: “The truth is the truth, even if it comes from a scoundrel.”
Assange is no hero here and clearly has/ had an agenda of his own. I think if anything it shows we shouldn’t rely on personalities or tribes of one for necessary acts of public good. Its a good thing that the DNC emails were leaked, and more importantly, found to be unaltered. Anything about Trump also should have just been fully released. Its a bad thing that didn’t happen. It would be better if Assange had no editorial hand in what did or didn’t get leaked, but thats not what happened.
Ooh fancy. Quoting Orwell and Trump now.