About a week before Election Day 2024, Dr. Jerome Adams, who served nearly four years as Donald Trump’s surgeon general, spoke at a conference and expressed some unexpected concerns — not about his former boss, per se, but about a man who had his former boss’ ear.
If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “has a significant influence on the next administration,” the physician said, it could have an adverse effect on “our nation’s health, on our nation’s economy [and] on our global security.”
The former surgeon general added that he would “advise Republicans to tread very carefully.”
But what if Republicans aren’t the only ones who need to heed Adams’ warning? The Hill reported:
A handful of Senate Democrats are said to be leaving the door open to voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become the next Health and Human Services secretary. As preparations for confirmation hearings begin to take shape, multiple sources say Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.), in particular, are at least considering voting for Kennedy, noting shared critiques on heavy corporate influence over food and a desire to promote a less chemical-laden country.
While The Hill’s report hasn’t been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, some Democratic senators have said publicly that they’re concerned about the support Kennedy might yet receive from some of their intraparty colleagues.
To the extent that readers might benefit from a refresher, my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem explained last year that RFK Jr. “is best known for fringe conspiracy theories tied to vaccines and other medical interventions, such as the belief that antidepressants cause school shootings.”
NPR had a related report last year, noting, “Wi-Fi causes cancer and ‘leaky brain,’ Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan … Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender, he told right-wing Canadian psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson, echoing a false assertion made by serial fabulist Alex Jones. AIDS may not be caused by HIV, he has suggested multiple times.”
Kennedy’s views on Covid are every bit as bizarre and unserious, and he’s already demonstrated a capacity for having a disastrous impact on public health policy. By any fair measure, RFK Jr. is among the most indefensible and potentially dangerous personnel choices that Trump has made since winning a second term.
And he might very well be confirmed anyway.
To be sure, even if the Senate Democratic minority was united in its opposition, Democrats couldn’t derail this prospective nomination on their own. Some of Kennedy’s reality-based opponents have indicated that they’re hoping that a handful of on-the-fence Senate Republicans will hear from so many physicians, medical professionals, hospital administrators and public health officials in their own states it might put his confirmation in doubt. That strategy, however, is predicated on unanimous Democratic opposition to arguably the worst HHS nominee in history — and that is by no means a certainty. “Why are we giving RFK Jr. a pass?” Sen. Chris Murphy asked during an interview on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.” The Connecticut Democrat added, “Okay, he wants to ban pharmaceutical advertising. That’s nice. He also wants to kill our kids by withdrawing vaccines from our schools and taking fluoride out of our drinking water. Democrats have to fight these nominees.” Murphy made related comments to The New Republic’s Greg Sargent a few weeks earlier. “If we just accept that RFK Jr. is a mainstream nominee to head the health agency when he just finished telling us that he thinks maybe Covid was a genetically engineered virus to protect Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews, we’re cooked,” the senator said. “We’re cooked if that, all of a sudden, is a normal thing — to nominate somebody like that, who thinks things like that, to head up the biggest health agency in the world.” Whether Murphy can convince his Democratic colleagues — and perhaps four or more of his Republican colleagues — remains to be seen. Watch this space.
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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