Trump to Let RFK Jr. & His Brain Worm ‘Go Wild on Health’
The hits (or existential threats to humanity, whatever you choose to call all of this!) just keep coming as Donald Trump continues to build his cabinet from hell.
Photo: Getty Images Politics
For his second presidency, Donald Trump seems determined to staff his cabinet by assembling the Avengers of sex pests, conspiracy theorists, or, in the case of one decrepit, brain worm-ridden, shriveled-up corpse of a body, both. That’s right: Trump has kept his campaign promise to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “do what he wants” to Americans’ health by tapping the failed, Independent presidential candidate-turned-Trump-surrogate for secretary of Health and Human Services. I wish I could offer a word of comfort, but sadly, this is, indeed, as bad as it sounds! We’re talking about a man whose extreme anti-vaccine advocacy led to a 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people—mostly children.
In recent months, as a surrogate for Trump, Kennedy has made one stop after another trying to assuage fears that he’s an anti-vax extremist, but only repeatedly affirmed that he is. In an interview with NBC News last week, Kennedy said he doesn’t plan to “take away anybody’s vaccines,” but that “people ought to have choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information.” Of course, vaccine mandates save lives, while lax vaccine policies can lead to outbreaks and epidemics that carry disproportionate, deadly danger for children.
Vaccination rates are already plummeting: In October, the CDC revealed the percentage of U.S. children receiving vaccine exemptions is at an all-time high, driving up rates of preventable and sometimes fatal childhood diseases like measles. The national kindergarten vaccination rate is slowly dipping from the 95% threshold that protects children from said preventable, deadly diseases, while in Idaho, the state vaccination rate has dropped to 81%. Suffice it to say, I have my doubts that appointing Kennedy to be the nation’s top health czar will help with this.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump said of Kennedy at an October campaign rally. At his closing rally before Election Day, he pitched RFK Jr. running his health policy yet again: “He’s gonna do pretty much what he wants as far as I’m concerned. He wants health for women, for men, for children.”