Say what you will about him, but President Donald Trump is a man who expects results. This includes carrying out his most outlandish demands, even when they clash with common sense of both the regular and political varieties. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is apparently learning this lesson the hard way. According to The Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter,” Kennedy is facing his boss’ ire for not “doing more to probe the alleged connection between vaccines and autism.”
It’s a surprising accusation, given the centrality of vaccine skepticism to Kennedy’s political brand and the Make America Healthy Again movement he is spearheading. It also cuts against the advice that the White House itself reportedly delivered earlier this year, to have HHS downplay the focus on vaccines ahead of the midterm elections. But, per the Journal, Trump has his own ideas about what Kennedy needs to be focused on:
Chief among the president’s desires: Do more to reduce the number of shots that federal guidelines recommend for children, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the president hopes to then see autism rates drop, even if any such effect could take years.
The issue has been an ongoing point of tension between the two men. In a mid-June meeting in the Oval Office, the president vented to Kennedy that he wasn’t doing enough, people familiar with the matter said.
The president has made clear he thinks he has given Kennedy enough time and is disappointed the health secretary hasn’t accomplished more in the past year and a half, the people said.
While the White House and HHS told the Journal any vaccine skepticism was about advocating “gold-standard science,” it is clearly worth repeating: There is no proven link between autism and any vaccine. The original study making that claim, first published in 1998, was retracted in 2010, the author discredited, and no other credible research has duplicated its results. As Dr. Martha Edwards and Dr. Deborah Greenhouse wrote in MS NOW this week, “study after study, conducted by different investigators using different methodologies in different populations, has reached the same conclusion.”
Kennedy has claimed that he is not opposed to all vaccines, merely that his department is focused on “restoring public trust” in their safety. His actions have said otherwise though as he has boosted deniers and helped prompt a new wave of hesitancy from parents about vaccinating their children. Despite the clear scientific consensus, the HHS department under Kennedy has already launched several new studies on vaccine safety and attempted to recommend a reduction in the number of immunization shots that children receive.
But that isn’t enough for Trump, who has shown that he doesn’t care about backing his own wild claims with solid proof. For example, there was joint declaration last year from Trump and Kennedy claiming a link between pregnant women taking Tylenol and autism with zero proof. The president also has his own long history of pushing the false link between vaccines and autism and, per the Journal, “hopes alleviating autism could be part of his legacy.”
In a way, Kennedy and HHS are now facing a problem similar to the one facing FBI Director Kash Patel and the broader Justice Department. Patel and others in the MAGA infosphere spent years claiming that there was a vast cover-up surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted child sex abuser, only to find themselves holding the bag once they’d joined the administration. Having stoked the flames and unable to find evidence of their claims, the crisis spiraled out of their control, dealing self-inflicted political damage to Trump and his allies. Trump has likewise pressed the Justice Department to find evidence that doesn’t exist to prove the 2020 election was stolen from him.
In a way, Kennedy and HHS are now facing a similar problem as FBI Director Kash Patel and the broader Justice Department.
Working for the federal government now requires a willingness to share in the president’s delusions. But providing evidence sufficient to convince people outside of the MAGA cult of personality, including federal judges and grand juries, has hampered efforts to deal out the vengeance that Trump has demanded. He’s already canned one attorney general for not being able to deliver on his revenge fantasies, so it’s not a stretch to see Kennedy following a similar path out the door.
There are plenty of people in the world who are willing to say obviously untrue things in public for attention, money or both, but in private acknowledge the limits of their claims. But when Trump has decided something is true, there’s little that can shake his conviction. There’s even less to be done to safeguard someone unable to sufficiently alter reality to reflect his misguided beliefs. From Trump’s point of view, then, Kennedy being unable to deliver isn’t because the task is impossible — it’s a skill issue on the secretary’s part. Kennedy, in Trump’s view, isn’t bringing the desired results, which matter more to the president than provable facts themselves.
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