Dr. Joseph Ladapo is a physician with an unfortunate background. His professional colleagues have characterized him as dishonest and embarrassing. His weird views on vaccines and matters related to public health have been derided as ridiculous. The editorial board of The Orlando Sentinel described Ladapo as a “COVID crank” who’s been “associated with a right-wing group of physicians whose members include a physician who believes infertility and miscarriages are the result of having sex with demons and witches during dreams.”
Despite — or perhaps, because of — this record, Gov. Ron DeSantis thought it’d be a good idea to nominate Ladapo, during a pandemic, to serve as surgeon general for the state of Florida.
With this recent history in mind, perhaps it shouldn’t have been too surprising to see the Republican governor have an even more outlandish figure in mind for major public health roles in his prospective presidential administration. NBC News reported:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that if he’s elected president, he’d be open to considering Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for a position in his administration with either the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In context, Clay Travis, a conservative media personality, asked the GOP presidential hopeful about whether he’d consider Kennedy as a running mate. DeSantis ruled out that possibility, pointing to Kennedy’s other positions that are at odds with party orthodoxy, before suggesting other possible roles in the executive branch.
DeSantis said he’d prefer to sic Kennedy “on the FDA if he’d be willing to serve, or sic him on CDC.”
Right off the bat, let’s take a moment to talk about qualifications. The current director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Mandy Cohen, is a highly experienced physician and public health expert. She succeeded Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who had impeccable credentials as one of the nation’s most respected physicians and scientists. The current commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration is Dr. Robert Califf, a highly accomplished cardiologist. He succeed Dr. Stephen Hahn, an experienced oncologist.
In contrast, Kennedy is an environmental lawyer with no background in medicine or public health. The idea that he’s prepared to lead a major federal public health agency is obviously not to be taken seriously.
What’s more, to know anything about Kennedy is to realize that his bizarre conspiracy theories and ridiculous ideas about health threats have left him derided as a proponent of “kook science.”
There might be value in letting him join a public tour of the CDC or the FDA, but no responsible official would consider such a person for a leadership role at one of these major public health departments. It’s one of the reasons even many prominent conservatives denounced the Florida Republican’s comments, using phrases such as “flat-out insanity” and “embarrassingly bad.”
All of which leaves us with the question of why in the world DeSantis would say something so absurd, out loud, on the record, in the midst of his campaign “reboot.”
It’s possible, of course, that the governor, a highly educated graduate of Yale and Harvard, actually embraces weird ideas about science and public health. It’s also possible he’s convinced his party’s radicalized base agrees with Kennedy’s bonkers claims, and such comments will help his struggling candidacy. With the Ladapo appointment in mind, it’s also possible that DeSantis is just really bad at applying critical thinking skills to personnel matters, especially in matters related to science and health care. But there’s also a less benign explanation. New York magazine’s Jon Chait wrote an interesting piece yesterday making the case that the Florida Republican has been a little too eager to “signal tribal solidarity” with right-wing extremists. As DeSantis parted ways with a campaign staffer who included a Nazi symbol in a campaign video, Chait argued something more sinister has unfolded. “It would be easy to understand this development as simply more campaign dysfunction, perhaps poor vetting, or even a symptom of the campaign being ‘too online,’” Chait wrote. “It is better understood as the result of a fundamental strategic decision by DeSantis to actively court the far right.” Hours later, DeSantis talked up the idea of putting Kennedy in the CDC or FDA — a week after the public saw a video of Kennedy claiming that Covid-19 was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people,” while “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Those comments were quickly embraced by right-wing extremists. This might be a coincidence. Ideally, the GOP governor would take a moment sometime soon to elaborate on why, exactly, he’d want to “sic” the conspiracy theorist on the CDC or FDA.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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