RFK Jr.’s quest to prove himself Trump’s most – Latest News
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s quest to prove himself President Donald Trump’s most harmful Cabinet member continues apace.
On Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services abruptly introduced that “Susan Monarez is no longer director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” She had been nominated to the important thing post in March, and really served in it for much less than a month. Shortly after that, Monarez’s legal professionals issued a fiery assertion asserting that she had neither been fired, nor resigned, and was being focused by Kennedy for refusing to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives,” and help him weaponize “public health for political gain.”
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attends a press convention with Texas Governor Greg Abbott (not pictured) on the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, August 28, 2025. REUTERS
Shortly after that, the White House introduced that Monarez had formally been relieved of her duties. Several different high CDC officers — together with its chief medical officer — subsequently resigned in protest.
Confirmation lie
The proximate trigger of the Kennedy-Monarez showdown was reportedly the latter’s refusal to help the previous’s push to rescind approvals for coronavirus vaccines. According to The Washington Post, Kennedy and his crew grilled the short-lived director on Monday over her alignment — or lack thereof — together with his effort “to change vaccine policy.”
That is, of course, fairly the euphemism. Kennedy has spent a long time advancing a novel’s value of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.
The founder and former chief of “Children’s Health Defense,” the group behind the moment traditional “Vaxxed III: Authorized to Kill,” Kennedy as soon as boasted that, “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, ‘Better not get them vaccinated.’ ”
Samoan authorities blame him for a 2019 measles outbreak that claimed the lives of more than 80 people. As the households of the victims picked up the items, Kennedy urged that a “defective vaccine” might have been to blame.
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To win a fraught affirmation battle earlier this yr, Kennedy adopted a easy, time-honored strategy: he lied.
“All of my kids are vaccinated, I’ve written many books on vaccines, my first book in 2014, the first line of it is ‘I am not anti-vaccine’ and the last line is ‘I am not anti-vaccine,’ ” he insisted on the outset of his listening to earlier than the Senate Finance Committee. The lacking context is that he had mentioned he would “do anything” and “pay anything” to go back in time and change his own youngsters’ vaccination standing. Asked about his incendiary previous claims in regards to the CDC, he denied having ever in contrast the company’s actions to “Nazi death camps” and the Catholic Church’s “pedophile scandal.” It’s public document that he did precisely that.
The Kennedy now working the federal authorities’s largest Cabinet division has — shock, shock — higher resembled the kook who walked into his affirmation listening to somewhat than the average sufferer of a smear marketing campaign he portrayed himself as during it. Despite the empty promise to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a medical physician and stalwart vaccine advocate, during the affirmation course of, Kennedy has labored tirelessly to undermine public trust in vaccines during his short tenure on the high of HHS. In June, he fired each member of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, decrying the federal panel as a “rubber stamp” for vaccines, and introduced that the administration would deny Gavi, an worldwide vaccine company, funding. Then, earlier this month, Kennedy introduced that the second Trump administration would both cancel or alter all of its present mRNA vaccine tasks.
The first Trump administration, of course, championed Operation Warp Speed, the expedited analysis and approval course of that led to the development of a number of protected and efficient coronavirus vaccines in a matter of solely a few months. Trump himself hailed that effort as “one of the greatest achievements ever” solely a few days in the past.
By now, Kennedy’s playbook is no thriller. Surely, if not so slowly, Kennedy is purging HHS of those that would forthrightly push back on his anti-vaccine agenda. He complains of rubber stamps for vaccines, however calls for a rubber stamp for his each effort to undermine them.
The president and his allies ought to be alarmed. While Trump has cornered the Democrats on any quantity of points — crime, gender ideology, immigration, and many others. — by presenting himself because the average various to a get together with concepts so excessive that they’re unrecognizable to most Americans, Kennedy’s actions put his boss in peril of being on the other finish of this equation.
Loyalty above all else
Trump misplaced the 2020 presidential election largely as a result of of the notion that he was not taking the COVID-19 pandemic significantly enough. Imagine the fallout if any important quantity of American kids die in an outbreak that could possibly be moderately attributed to Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism. Or the pandemonium that will ensue if Kennedy greeted one other pandemic with inaction and a refusal to pursue a vaccine. Besides costing some untold quantity of lives, it will totally destroy Trump’s presidency — and his legacy.
Kennedy’s appointment was a reward for his endorsement of the president final yr. Trump rewards loyalty above all else, and views Kennedy as a reliable ally.
But if he should undergo the embarrassment that’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his crew, he should not permit him free rein to proceed to wreak havoc. To accomplish that is to court docket a catastrophe so great as to dwarf each different controversy, mistake, and scandal Trump has survived to date.
This article first ran in The Spectator World.
