Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced some bipartisan skepticism during his Senate confirmation hearings, but the conspiracy theorist did his best to put members’ minds at ease. In fact, the then-nominee assured senators that he wouldn’t change the nation’s current vaccination schedule.
“I recommend that children follow the CDC schedule, and I will support the CDC schedule when I get in there if I’m fortunate enough to be confirmed,” Kennedy told senators late last month.
As The Associated Press reported, soon after his confirmation, Kennedy addressed the workforce at the Department of Health and Human Services and he quickly announced plans to investigate the vaccine schedule. “Nothing is going to be off limits,” he said.
It was a timely reminder to the public: Kennedy’s tenure as a powerful Cabinet secretary would likely be challenging.
With this in mind, at the first White House Cabinet meeting of Donald Trump’s second term, a reporter asked about the intensifying measles outbreak in Texas, which has already claimed the life of an unvaccinated child. The president referred the question to Kennedy, seated nearby. He responded:
We are following the measles epidemic every day. I think there’s 124 people who have contracted measles at this point, mainly in Gaines County, Texas; mainly, we’re told, in the Mennonite community. There are two people who have died, but we’re watching it. And there are about 20 people hospitalized, mainly for quarantine. … Incidentally, there have been four measles outbreaks this year in this country. Last year, there were 16. So, it’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.
Those hoping they could count on the HHS secretary for accurate and reliable information quickly learned otherwise. In fact, as part of this relatively brief summary, Kennedy misstated the number of deaths, mischaracterized the nature of the quarantine, and downplayed the significance of the Texas outbreak in ways that didn’t make a lot of sense.
Charitable observers might be inclined to cut Kennedy some slack. After all, this was his first White House Cabinet meeting; he has no real experience in addressing a public health emergency effectively; and he’s certainly never led anything on par with the Department of Health and Human Services. Maybe he flubbed a variety of relevant facts about Texas because his nerves got the better of him?
Perhaps, but his errors about Texas were not the only unsettling incident of note from Kennedy’s brief tenure leading a massive federal agency.
For example, after Kennedy reportedly moved forward with plans to oust the members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been Health and Human Services secretary for all of a week, but he’s already pressing what looks like an anti-vaccine agenda.” Around the same time, The Washington Post reported that a CDC vaccine safety panel — a frequent target of Kennedy criticisms — was directed to postpone a scheduled meeting. This week, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee was prepared to select the strains to be included in next season’s flu shot, right up until the panel’s meeting was also canceled without explanation. A couple of days earlier, Kennedy confirmed to Fox News Digital that his office had “paused” a multimillion-dollar contract to create a new Covid vaccine. To be sure, a great many members of the Trump administration’s Cabinet have struggled mightily of late — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Attorney General Pam Bondi, et al. — but no one’s start has been quite as scary as Kennedy’s.
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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