The Unraveling of RFK Jr.
The HHS Secretary’s disastrous CNN interview spotlights the risks of a presidency that refuses to admit mistakes.
Note: Video for paid subsribers follows article.
On Sunday, the secretary of Health and Human Services ranted like a madman on national television during the country’s worst measles outbreak in 35 years. Was he furious about the children suffering from a virus whose spread is largely preventable? Of course not.
Instead, what drew HHS Secretary Kennedy’s ire was CNN’s Dana Bash asking whether Donald Trump deserved any blame for how he handled COVID.
Kennedy refused to say yes. Instead, he blamed Anthony Fauci, governors, and the press. Bash reminded him that Trump was the president at the time and that Kennedy wrote in 2024 that Trump had “let bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci shut down the entire country.” Kennedy went back to blaming Fauci.
That was the least alarming part of the interview.
A few minutes later, Bash asked whether Trump wanted Kennedy to pursue studies linking vaccines to autism. “He certainly does,” Kennedy said. When Bash noted that study after study had found no link between vaccines and autism, Kennedy went berserk. “You’re repeating it like a parrot,” he repeated twice. He told Bash she had been “fooled,” challenged her to debate him and accused Anthony Fauci of “lying about everything.”
Kennedy had no new evidence to offer. Each time Bash cited a study, he treated it as proof that she had been deceived. Every expert who disagreed with him was a liar. The interview showed what happens when a conspiracy theorist runs the health department for a president who wants the government to confirm his delusional beliefs and refuses to accept blame when those beliefs cause harm.
But Kennedy’s belligerence had a limit. He gladly insulted Bash, accused scientists of dishonesty and blamed Fauci for virtually everything that happened during the pandemic. But when Bash asked if Trump deserved any responsibility, Kennedy dodged and evaded. He’ll fight anyone before he will tell Trump that Trump was wrong—and not only because listing all the times Trump has been wrong would take too long.
Let’s be clear about how this works. Advisors advise. The president decides. Kennedy understood that before Trump hired him. “President Trump had his chance. He failed,” Kennedy wrote in April 2024, accusing Trump of letting Fauci “shut down the entire country.” Now Kennedy talks as though Fauci ran the government and the president couldn’t do anything about it.
Now Trump is pressuring Kennedy to act on another bad idea. He has pushed Kennedy to reduce the number of childhood vaccinations and investigate a supposed connection between vaccines and autism. Kennedy proposed spending as much as $5 billion on research into this debunked theory and considered major changes to the childhood immunization schedule.
Researchers have rigorously studied the alleged vaccine-autism connection for decades. It’s bogus. Studies involving millions of people have found no connection. But Trump thinks the scientists are wrong. He wants the federal government to keep investigating the matter until it produces an answer he likes.
Kennedy has already put his conspiracy theory on the CDC’s website. Last November, he ordered the agency to change its website and declare that the statement “vaccines do not cause autism” was unsupported by evidence. No new study prompted the change. Kennedy changed the government’s language because he rejected what decades of research had found.
The real tragedy is that the money Kennedy wants to spend chasing conspiracy theories could support work that would actually help autistic people and their families.
But Kennedy doesn’t have to wait for more kids to get sick from the vaccines he hates. Children are sick right now. The United States has reached its highest measles count in 35 years. By July 30, the CDC had recorded 2,371 confirmed cases. The overwhelming majority involve people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown.
When Bash asked whether Kennedy’s years of vaccine skepticism had contributed to the outbreak, he said, “Absolutely not.” But the truth is that Kennedy spent two decades spreading the claims now driving federal policy. He does not get to frighten parents about vaccines and then deny any responsibility when vaccination rates fall and children get sick.
Not all leaders refuse to accept reality. For months of his second term, Ronald Reagan consistently denied that his administration had traded arms for hostages. Then the Tower Commission found otherwise. In March 1987, Reagan addressed the nation and admitted that his earlier account was wrong. “My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true,” he said, “but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.” He called the policy a mistake and took responsibility.
Trump can’t do that. When the facts contradict him, he doesn’t change his story. He demands that the people around him change the facts. Kennedy did exactly what Trump wants him to do. Before Trump hired him, he blamed Trump for giving Fauci too much power. Now he blames Fauci and protects Trump.
What makes this particularly gruesome is that Kennedy is tasked with protecting the public. But he is using his office to promote a conspiracy that puts the public at needless risk.
Trump has built a government in which he decides what is true and everyone beneath him is expected to repeat it. Kennedy used to blame Trump for the pandemic response. Now he blames Fauci. Decades of research show that vaccines do not cause autism, so Trump and Kennedy are trying to change what the government says about the research. Each of these examples is harmful enough on its own. But the bigger threat is an administration that can’t correct its mistakes as long as its officials aren’t allowed to admit that the president ever made one.
Video discussion for paid subscribers:
