MSNBC host Nicole Wallace and former Obama administration official Kavita Patel on Thursday lamented the nomination of former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services.
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday afternoon that he would nominate Kennedy as a Cabinet candidate. Patel said he has received text messages from Republicans and Democrats expressing disbelief in the nomination. (Related: ‘It’s crazy on the other side’: John Kennedy explains the ‘message’ voters sent to ‘experts’ in Washington)
“My emails are going off, and Democrats and Republicans are saying, ‘This can’t be real.’ Someone must have misunderstood this. It can’t be true,” Patel told Wallace. Ta. “And now there are signs of hope in the second underlying chain. My second thought was, ‘He can’t confirm, can he?'” I’m hearing you talk about the DNI and other roles that require some sort of White House confirmation or some combination, and here we are. ”
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“It’s really incredible to have career staff message me and say this was the push I needed to quit,” Patel continued. “They were already in crisis and worried. Not only are we witnessing this incredible ideological consolidation that has no basis in science behind it, but Nicole, I We’re going to see some of our best career staff leave.”
Mr. Kennedy announced on August 23 that he was suspending his presidential campaign, supporting Mr. Trump and saying that Mr. Kennedy would play a “big role” in his administration.
“So, as you mentioned, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has jurisdiction over many agencies that touch our lives, including the Food and Drug Administration, the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to name a few. You may know about these things because we talked about vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic, but we touch on all of them,” Patel said. “Using our food supply chain as an example, there was a shortage in the infant formula supply chain. This affected many families as we were unable to keep formula stocked on every shelf. The HHS secretary pulled everything together and worked with other departments to get Americans to feed their children with formula.” (Related: ‘I’m in deep despair’: Late-night host melts down after Trump wins second term)
“Add to this all the research, Nicole, think about the National Institutes of Health, which is also under HHS and does drug development research. And I actually remind myself, “I pulled out a tweet from RFK Jr. when he ran for president,” he said.If he were president, he would happily spend eight years researching the development of drugs to treat infectious diseases. It has said it will be cancelled,” Patel said.
Mr Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, was banned from posting his views on vaccines on Instagram after the social media site deemed it “misinformation”. ABC News also censored his views during an interview on April 27, 2023.
“RFK has criticized research that links childhood vaccination schedules to autism and other health problems,” Wallace said. “CDC Director Rochelle Walensky warned in 2022 that vaccine misinformation is one of the biggest threats to children’s health.”
“In a community steeped in anti-vaccine misinformation, people refuse vaccines, and the country is experiencing outbreaks of polio and measles, diseases once thought to have been eradicated. ” said Wallace.
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