The latest MAGA target: PEPFAR

Dirty Moderate with Adam Epstein

This year marks the 20th anniversary of George W. Bush’s transformative program to combat H.I.V. and AIDS in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The left’s villain of yesteryear, who was (somewhat) rehabilitated in the Trump era, and rightly maligned for the disaster that was the invasion of Iraq, Bush also waged a noble war against an epidemic. This ongoing battle is now two decades old, and it has saved 25 million lives.

But nothing is sacred in the MAGA tainted GOP. Even the life changing achievement of one of this era’s most conservative presidents is apparently now on the chopping block and threatening to be defunded, woefully swept up in the maelstrom of the “own the libs,” anti-“woke” culture wars.

Bush’s initiative, which is called the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR has funded antiretroviral medicines for people with AIDS and provided substantial resources to prevent the spread of the virus among newborn babies. It’s been a heroic success by any reasonable metric. Except if you are a MAGA flame thrower.

For those among today’s far right saber rattlers, it is believed that the Biden administration has a secret plan to use PEPFAR to promote abortions overseas. Yes, a law which was originally midwifed by evangelical Christians and devout Catholics, and championed by the deeply pro-life George W. Bush is now a clandestine pro -abortion plot.

But this is where we are folks. Have a listen to Adam’s takedown of this deeply misguided but also life threatening fuckwaddery.

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