ANALYSIS || President-elect chose a vaccine skeptic to lead the country’s health. And this could put lives at risk if Kennedy implements certain ideas that he has been defending
Trump’s latest controversial choice for governor could have a huge impact on the health and lives of Americans
analysis of Stephen CollinsonCNN
Each of Donald Trump’s most provocative cabinet picks has been a calculated punch in the mouth of pundits, elites and bureaucrats in Washington government agencies.
But his decision to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist, “turn around” health and medicine as secretary of Health and Human Services is his most shocking attempt to upend the establishment.
The president-elect’s past choices for director of national intelligence, attorney general and secretary of defense could change the country and the world in the long term. Its effect, however, would be distant for most Americans.
If Kennedy has the opportunity to promote his previous claims that vaccines are not safe and effective or to act on his desire to fire 600 people at the National Institutes of Health, which oversee many facets of health research, including vaccines , could have a more immediate impact on the lives of millions of Americans. If, for example, your advice or ideas led to a decrease in vaccine penetration in the US population, a significant number of lives could be at risk.
Kennedy has some views that are welcomed by front-line doctors, including his calls for processed foods to be removed from school lunches and his warnings that the food industry is marketing products that add to the chronic disease crisis. But the President-elect’s decision to place RFK Jr. At the forefront of the health of 350 million Americans, who has positions on vaccines that contradict the scientific research of most scientists and medical experts, is likely to spark a new debate about the potential real-world implications of Trump’s second term, which starts in January.
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Part of the MAGA dream team can be explained by the fact that Trump opposes agencies and institutions that he believes thwarted his first term. But Kennedy’s ascendancy and his apparently long political reign go far beyond a Trumpian revenge quest. It could impact the medicines Americans use, the drug treatments and therapies that are approved, the vaccines used to protect children in schools from diseases like measles, and the foods everyone eats.
The US Secretary of Health and Human Services has a huge platform and enormous power to influence the information Americans have and the choices they make. If Kennedy is confirmed and another pathogen emerges that causes a pandemic in the next four years, he will be responsible for the fight.
People like you, Bobby
Kennedy was seen at Trump’s resort in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, in black tie on Thursday night, hours after an announcement that sparked despair and concern in the medical community.
During a speech, the President-elect praised the choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “I think if we like health care and people who live a long time, this is the most important job,” said Trump. “I just watched the news. People like you, Bobby. We want you to present things and ideas and what you’ve been talking about for a long time.”
Kennedy’s selection came after the President-elect chose controversial congressman Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, aiming a blow to the institutions that tried to hold Trump accountable for trying to steal the 2020 election. First term could end up working for Fox News star Pete Hegseth, who believes there is a “woke” war against American warriors – Hegseth is in line to be Secretary of Defense. And Trump vented his fury against the “deep state” intelligence service by naming Tulsi Gabbard, who met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and is a favorite on Russian propaganda television, as America’s top spy.
These appointments caused an uproar in Washington.
But they are seen very differently by millions of Trump voters who think the D.C. establishment is rotten and has let them down. And they are symptomatic of a President-elect who is returning to power with very few restrictions and who is showing that he plans to behave aggressively in a term that he said on the campaign trail would be dedicated to retaliating against his adversaries.
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So far, Republicans have responded to critics of Trump’s approach to burning Washington with a simple argument: He has a mandate.
For example, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Indiana Senator-elect Jim Banks if he was concerned about Kennedy’s false claims that vaccines can cause autism. “Look, Jake, Donald Trump won the popular vote in the election,” Banks responded. “And one of the things he promised on the campaign trail was to have a serious, thoughtful conversation about vaccines, especially after the pandemic.”
It is true that Trump made no secret, during the campaign, of his intention to give Kennedy significant powers to reform healthcare institutions. And the entire subtext of his campaign was a promise to explode the Washington consensus.
The President-elect has long resented the scientific and expert class of the United States government, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic – an emergency that Trump has repeatedly downplayed. The experts’ advice conflicted with Trump’s desire to reopen the economy in what would be his presidential re-election year. Other Americans have disliked mask-wearing, and many conservative states have resisted the federal government’s pandemic advice on issues such as school closures and lockdowns.
But despite Trump’s victory this year, in which he won all seven battleground states, the US remains largely a 50-50 nation, and it is debatable whether the president-elect truly has a mandate to destroy generations of policies and orthodoxy. institutional – especially in areas such as Health.
“An extraordinarily bad choice”
Kennedy has some views that would be favorable to the medical profession, especially with regard to its efforts to combat unhealthy dietary regimes in the US that cause chronic, non-communicable diseases that, for the most part, could be prevented. . He said he would “immediately” begin studying the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, but promised not to “take the vaccines away from anyone.” He also committed to formally recommending that states and municipalities remove fluoride from public water.
Kennedy also says he wants to return a gold standard of science to a healthcare sector that he believes is biased by big pharmaceutical companies. But its long history of misinformation and selective use of vaccine data is directly at odds with the consensus among scientists and medical experts.
“I think this is an extraordinarily bad choice,” Ashish Jha — former Biden administration Covid-19 coordinator and dean of the Brown University School of Public Health — tells CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Previous experts in Republican and Democratic administrations have allowed scientists in agencies under their supervision to make decisions, Jha points out. “RFK Jr. He gave us every sign that he doesn’t plan to do that, he doesn’t plan to rely on evidence and rigorous analysis to make decisions, but rather to use his own ideas.”
Another health expert and former acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) condemned the choice. “Frankly, I find it chilling,” says Richard Besser. Besser, who practiced pediatrics, warns that Kennedy’s views on childhood vaccines are dangerous – statements given to CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “He has done a lot to undermine the confidence that people have in this incredible intervention.”
Kennedy’s selection was made public on the same day that the World Health Organization and the CDC – an agency that will fall under RFK Jr. – said that measles cases worldwide had increased by more than 20%, to a estimated number of 10.3 million last year. The highly contagious disease can be prevented with two doses of the vaccine — which most Americans receive as children.
In the United States, the decline in vaccination rates among kindergarten students coincided with a period in which some conservative politicians, particularly these, fueled skepticism towards vaccines in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. As of November, 266 cases of measles had been recorded this year, with 16 outbreaks.
CDC Director Mandy Cohen told CNN’s Meg Tirrell on Wednesday that childhood vaccines are the way to make the country as healthy as possible. “I think we have a very short memory of what it’s like to hold a child who has been paralyzed by polio or comfort a mother who has lost her child to measles,” Cohen recalled at the Milken Institute’s Future of Health Summit.
Kennedy denied that he is a vaccine skeptic. But on Lex Fridman’s podcast last year he said that “there is no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective,” and in December 2023 he told CNN’s Kasie Hunt that he “would be against mandates” for children in public schools.
Another choice comes to join the growing pressure on Republicans in the Senate
The latest controversial choice for the next Trump Administration exacerbates one of the first dramas of the second term – the question of whether they will all be confirmed by the Senate.
There were already serious doubts surrounding Gaetz, who was being investigated by the FBI and was the subject of a House Ethics Committee investigation before officially resigning from the House of Representatives on Wednesday. And Kennedy’s entry into the game represents yet another challenge for Republican senators, who do not have a great history of opposing the President-elect.
It would take a handful of Republican lawmakers to defect to jeopardize the confirmation of a Trump pick — and his grip on the Republican Party has never been stronger after he mounted the biggest upset in U.S. political history and took back the White House.
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The President-elect, before selecting some of his most controversial choices for government positions, warned Republicans that he would resort to extraordinary appointments if they were blocked, which would circumvent the Senate’s advisory and consent function provided for in the Constitution.
Like other nominees, RFK Jr.’s hopes are high. may depend on the attitude of several more moderate senators in the Republican Party coalition. They may be influenced by members who plan to retire in the midterms and who may be less dependent on Trump or by the new influx of newly elected senators who do not have to run for re-election until two years after their term ends.
And then there’s the vote that belongs to the Senate’s outgoing Republican leader, Mitch McConnell — a polio survivor.
