Robert Kennedy, Jr. is one of President Trump’s nominees for his Cabinet that I would not be disappointed to see rejected. His nomination is transparently the fulfillment of a political quid pro quo between him and Trump. There is nothing shocking about that: it is a standard tactic in a strange arena that often embraces Bizarro World ethics. Kennedy’s crusade against vaccines in general has exploded the number of anti-vaxxers in the U.S. and undoubtedly caused unnecessary deaths. Democrats won’t mention his extreme climate change positions, including RFKJ’s advocacy of criminal penalties for “climate change deniers,” but that is also, in my view, a disqualifying feature of his career in the public eye. I would not be surprised if Trump himself is hoping Kennedy’s nomination is rejected. I would not be surprised if he has taken steps behind the scenes to ensure that it is. I hope he has.

Nonetheless, Caroline Kennedy’s public letter to four ranking Democratic Senators condemning her cousin and attacking his character as well as his positions is a particularly odious betrayal and Machiavellian political shiv in the kidney. The letter is also spectacularly hypocritical, and an excellent, if nauseating, example of abuse of celebrity and influence as well as a stunning lack of self-awareness.

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This rates a Nelson. Mr. Muntz has been getting a work-out on Ethics Alarms lately. The Nelson, as frequent readers here know, is used when condign justice arrives for some ethics miscreant of note, or when such an individual beclowns himself or herself. Nelson Muntz, for the culturally ignorant, has been a regular character on “The Simpsons” for more than two decades. His function is to issue a mocking laugh when he encounters the misfortunes or witnesses the embarrassments of other Springfield residents.

Jim Acosta is a long-time CNN reporter with delusions of grandeur. He is an “advocacy journalist” (which means, ironically, that he’s not a journalist at all) who fashioned himself as Dan Rather to Donald Trump’s Richard Nixon, or Sam Donaldson to Trump’s Ronald Reagan, the dogged liberal reporter knight pledged to slaying the conservative President dragon. Unfortunately for Jim and the rest of us, Acosta isn’t as smart as Rather or as careful as Sam, and is more unethical than either.

Though Acosta led the broadcast media siege of fake and spun news along with Big Lies and double standards to cripple Trump’s first occupation of the White House, CNN figured out that his act was not going to play this time around. Trump 2.0 took over after a decisive electoral win and a higher approval rating from the public than he had at any time in his first term. CNN, seeing its ratings sinking and trying to tack to the center after thoroughly discrediting itself in 2024 (along with the rest of the mainstream media that insisted Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, Kamala Harris ran a perfect campaign, Tim Walz wasn’t a boob and Donald Trump was an insurrectionist) decided that Acosta was a liability (“Welcome to the party, pal!“) so they moved his show to the midnight slot, which is the CNN equivalent of Hitler sending an officer to the Russian front.

So Acosta, laboring under the delusion that he deserves better, quit. Here was his astoundingly pompous farewell:

I just wanted to end today’s show by thanking all of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at this network.

You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing in alternative timeslots CNN offered me, I’ve decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly 18 years I’ve spent here doing the news.

People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump.

Actually, no. That moment came here when I covered former President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island’s political prisoners.

As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.

I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I’ve always tried to do that here at CNN, and I plan on doing all of that in the future.

One final message. Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope.

Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give in to the lies. “I will not give in to the fear!”

Post it on your social media so people can hear from you, too.

I’ll have more to say about my plans in the coming days. But until then, I want to thank all of you for tuning in. It has been an honor to be welcomed into your home for all these years.

That’s the news. Reporting from Washington. I’m Jim Acosta.

Bye! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, you self-righteous, arrogant hack.

I know that the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome describes people who are so stupid that they don’t know they are stupid, but what do you call the syndrome when you think you are brilliant at your job when you really stink at it? That’s Acosta. Reading his nauseating statement from last night, I took a tour of the Ethics Alarms dossier on Jim. It is necessarily much thinner than it could be: Acosta quickly identified himself as belonging in the same group with Joy Reid, Don Lemon, Charles M. Blow, Courtland Malloy, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and others, openly biased pundits and broadcast journalists who viewed bringing down Donald Trump by any means necessary as their Holy Grail. I ignored his predictable dishonesty and lack of professionalism except when it was too egregious to let stand (or when I was short on topics).

Let’s see:

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1. A norm is born! In November, I wrote again about Harvard’s unethical and dishonest propagandists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt after earlier pronouncing them Academic Ethics Villains. “These two favorites of the New York Times are substantially responsible for the Axis of Unethical Conduct‘s Big Lie #6: “Trump’s Defiance Of Norms Is A Threat To Democracy,” a cornerstone of the Harris Campaign’s desperate “Trump is Hitler” strategy. They had just issued another one of their fear-mongering and academically indefensible Times op-eds, banging that same metaphorical drum with their (profitable!) argument that any genuine student of Presidential history (like they claim to be) knows is 100% hooey, and using the beat to argue for Democrats taking unprecedented measures to block Trump from the presidency….all of which defy previous democratic norms! The Levitsky and  Ziblatt hypocrisy has nonetheless become, apparently, a standard weapon for the Axis to use against Trump, as increasingly absurd as it.”

Trump, like all functioning Presidents who understand the office, creates new “norms.” (Fortunately, the Joe Biden innovation of the President being a hollow shell maneuvered by hidden hands does not look like it will become a norm.) During Trump’s first term, he created a norm by using social media to make the case for his own leadership while competing with the Axis news media’s efforts to debase him. Such direct contact with the public hearkened back to the days of FDR’s “fireside chats” on the radio. Trump is no Roosevelt, and his often hasty tweets in ALL CAPS often did more damage than good. Still, the use of social media as an unfiltered means of reaching the public without the spin of media partisans is destined to become standard operating procedure, at least for President bold enough to do it, and not delegate their social media accounst to 20-something nerds. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence bots. Trump, or any President, can create his (or her) own political cartoons via the meme-maker function, and get more circulation via social media than most news sources can give to outdated hacks like the self-righteous ex-WaPo cartoonist discussed here.

The viral “Trump as bad-ass gangster” meme above, following nicely on the “Melania as gangster” talk around her flashy Inauguration fashion statement, also guarantees that “FAFO” will enter the lexicon beyond its Gen X origins. FAFO is short for “Fuck around and find out,” or, in Tony Barretta’s words, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”…. or, in my father’s generation’s words, “Actions have consequences.”

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Tim Levier, tied for the title of the longest-running reader on my ethics posts, recommended this sordid tale for a post, and I concur.

Jackson Reffitt told authorities about his dad’s involvement in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and then testified against him. Guy Reffitt was sentenced to more than seven years in prison in 2022 on charges of civil disorder, obstruction of justice and other offenses, though he never entered the Capitol. His son testified for more than three hours for the prosecution in his father’s trial, revealing text messages his dad had sent after the 2020 election, promising that he and like-minded patriots would “rise up” and “shock the world” on January 6. Jackson tipped off authorities before the riot, then recorded his father’s comments about the riot after he returned home. The surreptitiously recorded tapes were crucial evidence in sending Guy to prison, along with videos recorded by Guy in which he talked about “taking the Capitol” and dragging Nancy Pelosi out of the building.

Now, thanks to President Trump’s pardons, Daddy’s coming home, and Sonny Boy is terrified. He told CNN his father was still involved in the militias and had no regrets about his actions on that fateful day. “I’m honestly flabbergasted that we’ve gotten to this point. I mean, I’m terrified. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” his son told CNN. “I’ve got as many precautions as I could recently …I’ve got a gun, I’ve moved and I’ve gotten myself away from what I thought would be a dangerous situation, and staying where I thought my dad could find me or other people that are going to feel so validated by these actions, by this pardon.”

“My dad once called me a traitor, and he said ’traitors get shot,’” he said.

Huh. I can’t imagine why he would say that.

If there ever was a case where the entry question for ethics analysis is critical, this is it: What’s going on here? It sure sounds like there is a long-running father vs. son conflict that the son chose to resolve by exploiting his father’s January 6 activities. Warning authorities that his father and presumably others were on their way to D.C. with possibly violent intentions is an ethics easy call: doing that was admirable, ethical, and the son’s civic duty. Actively gathering evidence against his father and ensuring his arrest, however, is very close to the line, and I am inclined to say crosses it into settling scores, getting revenge, and eliminating an unwelcome presence in Jackson’ life.

I was a featured ethicist on the Montel Williams Show years ago when the featured topic was whether a parent had an obligation to “rat out” a criminal child. I argued that there was such an obligation, both as a citizen and as a parent. Montel, amusingly, disagreed with me during the show but when the cameras weren’t rolling he told me he’d turn in his own son “in a heartbeat.”

However, the reverse scenario never came up: is it equally ethical for a child to turn in his parent? Certainly it is when the parent is a genuine threat to harm someone, including family members. Yet a parent’s obligations to a child are materially different from a child’s obligations to a parent. The enthusiasm with which Jackson sought to have his father locked up makes me wonder if this wasn’t an unusually ugly real life episode of “Family Ties,” the Eighties TV sitcom starring Michael J. Fox as a Reagan-supporting, Republican, capitalist teenage son of two former Sixties radicals.

oward the government.

1. CNN seems determined to charge into oblivion. Yesterday, I had a CNN website anti-Trump news piece ready to fisk, then was so happy to find some non-political topics to write about that I didn’t, and now its outdated. Never mind, though! There are more “Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias!” pieces up today. Look: here’s “news analysis”: In a flurry of activity happening almost too swiftly to follow, Trump is giving critics every reason to think their worst fears will be realized. Click on that, and you get “Trump is imposing MAGA rule on the government hour-by-hour.” The whole website is littered with apocalyptic headlines, as if every President doesn’t arrive prepared to make sure the government carries out his policies and beliefs. The language CNN (and others) are using is calculated to create fear and dread, following up on the “Trump is Hitler” smear, which worked so well.

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I can honestly say that I have greeted every inauguration of a newly-elected President with hope, respect, optimism and good will, every one of them, with no exceptions. I fervently believe that this is how all Americans should regard Inauguration Day, and for most of our history, that was how the vast majority of the nation did treat the swearing in of a new President. A major kick to the solar plexus of that tradition was delivered by former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell when he said, though well after Barack Obama was sworn in, that he saw his party’s mission as making sure Obama was a one-term President. In this he was tracking the rhetoric of the late Rush Limbaugh, whose similar sentiments about Democratic Presidents were routine during the Clinton Presidency.

There is hope: the Democratic and progressive demonization of President Trump pales compared to what he was subjected to in 2016, but the Trump Deranged are probably more vocal and more numerous than they were then. It is only that there are more open-minded, reasonable Americans now willing to welcome a new President, even Trump, since the Democrats have left such chaos in their wake.

As I noted in a post yesterday, Joe Biden’s unethical prospective pardons got Inauguration Day off to an ugly, deplorable start. The anti-Trump press, that is, most of the news media, certainly were not in a patriotic or generous mood. “Trump Celebrates in Washington at Rally Laced With Exaggerations and Falsehoods,” said the Times on its front page. On my Facebook feed, most of my friends were behaving like petulant children rather than informed citizens interested in giving a new leader a chance. “Buckle up, y’all. They’re likely to overplay their hand. But that is going to suck even if we can turn them back.They’re also going to use every story, algorithm, and lever they can to divide the resistance. It’s how they got just over the line last November. Let’s not be played like the MAGA marks got played,” wrote one. “A lot of dystopian fantasy literature with evil rulers I have loved for many years has been resonating very differently with me since 2016,” wrote another. “Someone like Trump, an amoral, power-hungry demagogue, is what the founders feared most when they created the presidency,” was another friend’s unbiased analysis. This post was wildly liked: “I will be employing the ‘unfollow’ and ‘unfriend’ buttons with ruthless precision. Some of you… I love you, but you backed the bad guys, and your boasting about it when it’ll directly harm my family and my community and my neighbors… is indefensible. Yours is a door I won’t be knocking on for refuge if I ever need it. ”

Nice.

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