From the inbox: Republicans force us to think about their odd relationships with dogs

It’s not exactly news that up is down and black is white in Trump’s America. Ten years into this heinous MAGA experiment, most of us have gotten pretty good at putting the constant outrages and oxymorons aside so that we’re able to go about our days.

But sometimes? Sometimes D.C. Republicans do things so outrageous that we have to stop what we’re doing, confer amongst our peers and make sure they’re seeing it, too.

Take, for instance, an email that arrived in the Arkansas Times inboxes this morning that has the U.S. Department of Agriculture touting U.S. Health Secretary ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. of all people for his participation in a roundtable discussion about animal welfare, specifically dogs.

RFK Jr. is infamous for a bunch of things: his family name and black sheep status among his fellow Kennedys, dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park, hauling a putrefying whale head atop his minivan, having an affair with New York Magazine political correspondent Olivia Nuzzi. We could go on all day with these bizarro tidbits.

RFK Jr. is also famous for having a worm eat through a chunk of his brain. While our country’s secretary of health and human services has said the worm likely came from eating infected pork, a lingering rumor that the worm came from eating dog meat persists. Don’t feel bad for RFK Jr. here! He is the originator of said rumor, having sent a photo of himself gnawing on an unidentified roast beast alongside a message encouraging a friend to sample some dog meat on his Asian travels.

Whether it was dog meat or something else that gave RFK Jr. the tapeworm that ate his brain is beside the point when you consider his love for collecting, dismembering and transporting roadkill. If this man has respect for the animal kingdom, he sure has an odd way of showing it.

Of course, Republicans’ relationships with dogs have been much in the news lately. Kristi Noem shooting the family pet won headlines for a while, but FBI Director Kash Patel stole the limelight recently by pushing for a policy change to allow people who’d engaged in sex acts with animals to remain eligible for hire at the nation’s top intelligence agency.

Never before have we felt much gratitude for the badgering of Louisiana’s Sen. John Kennedy, but we thought he asked some pretty important questions earlier this month about Patel’s bestiality proposal.

Anyhoo. Back to that email we got today. The roundtable being shouted by the USDA, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice was held in conjunction with Big Dog Ranch Rescue, whose director just happens to be a Trump! Lara Trump, wife of Eric, calls herself “a crazy dog lady.”

Congratulations, by the way, to Arkansas’ first family on their new pet, Cash. Be careful out there, little buddy.