Ardent anti-vaccine activist and current US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly on thin ice with Trump for not being anti-vaccine enough for the president’s liking, according to a report late Monday from the Wall Street Journal.
Trump has become fixated on the completely false, thoroughly debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, the Journal reported. People familiar with the president’s scattered thinking say Trump wants an autism remedy to be part of his legacy and thinks scaling back childhood vaccinations is a way to secure that achievement. As such, he has grown frustrated and disappointed that Kennedy hasn’t done more to cut back federal childhood vaccine recommendations or confirm a link to the neurodevelopmental disorder.
In May, the president reportedly aired his disappointment, calling out Kennedy for having “the yips” that were preventing him from acting on his zealous anti-vaccine agenda while holding the highest health position in the country. In June, Trump reportedly vented in the Oval Office to Kennedy that wasn’t doing enough.
Kennedy has reportedly been taken aback by the criticism—and it’s likely that outside public health and medical experts would have been, too, if they were present. To experts, Kennedy has been diligently working to undermine life-saving vaccines, endangering public health in the process.
Some notable examples include Kennedy’s overhaul of a key vaccine advisory committee, which he stacked with like-minded anti-vaccine allies. Those allies then arbitrarily ditched evidence-based recommendations for the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine and a combination shot against measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (chickenpox) called MMRV. Kennedy also single-handedly trimmed the US childhood vaccine schedule to resemble that of Denmark’s, a small country with universal healthcare. He directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to stop promoting seasonal flu vaccines with prepaid advertisements during a particularly deadly flu season. And he edited a CDC website to falsely link vaccines to autism.
Political risks
Some of Kennedy’s efforts to trash vaccines have been blocked in court—namely, the changes to the advisory committee and the childhood vaccine schedule. But Kennedy is now laying the regulatory groundwork to sabotage vaccination rates in ways that can’t be undone so easily.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine meddling in federal policy has been so apparent that polling in December found that Kennedy’s efforts to cut vaccines were broadly unpopular and “politically risky.” As such, White House political advisors have urged Trump and Kennedy to tone down the anti-vaccine rhetoric, which Kennedy appeared to be doing—publicly at least. In recent public appearances, Kennedy has avoided the topic of vaccines.
But it seems Trump has not aligned with his advisors and still wants Kennedy to demolish vaccination policy with wild abandon, despite the health and political dangers. With Kennedy apparently not working fast enough, the Journal reported speculation that Kennedy could be sidelined or replaced. Already, Kennedy’s Medicare chief, Chris Klomp, has been “empowered to run every corner” of the Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of the Secretary, the paper reported. There are also rumors that Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, could become health secretary after the midterm elections.
