RFK Jr. Showing Commitment To HHS Job By Skipping Important Meetings About It
The wannabe HHS secretary skipped an exercise on managing health emergencies to hobnob on Capitol Hill.
Let’s check in on ursine carcass aficionado Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he steams towards his confirmation hearing Wednesday for the position of secretary of Health and Human Services in Donald Trump’s Cabinet of Monstrosities. RFK Jr. is the scion of a political family, the nephew of a man once nicknamed the “Lion of the Senate,” a person who has been ensconced in the world of high-level politics since sperm met egg. Yeah, he’s also a crackpot who should not be running so much as a taco truck, let alone a huge federal bureaucracy responsible for the health and well-being of 340 million people. But surely he wants to show wavering senators that he is taking his possible new position seriously.
Ha ha ha, no, he does not. At least not according to The Washington Post, which has a story about how this weirdo skipped an important meeting with Biden officials and Trump’s other Cabinet nominees days before the inauguration so he could wander around Capitol Hill trying to convince Republican senators that he is really up for the awesome responsibilities of the job he’s pursuing. Responsibilities such as what his role would be in the case of a major national crisis, which is what he was would have been learning in the meeting he was busy missing.
The Washington Post reports that one of the potential emergencies discussed in the meeting was the bird flu, which is floating around and making public health officials nervous, but why would that concern the potential secretary of Health and Human Services:
For two hours, incoming Secretary of State Marco Rubio, South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem and other intended members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet hashed out their roles and responsibilities in the event of a crisis — splitting their time between a hypothetical avian flu outbreak and a hypothetical terrorist attack in New Orleans — as outgoing Biden officials shared lessons and guidance from their real-world experience. National security officials in previous administrations have characterized the exercise, which is a required part of the presidential transition, as essential preparation to ensure that a new government is ready for an emergency on Day 1.
Even newly crowned Defense Secretary Pete “(Hic)” Hegseth managed grace the meeting with his presence, if not his expertise.
It gets better, and by better we mean funnier in that sort of darkly comedic way that isn’t really funny but at least beats curling into the fetal position and never getting out of bed. It seems Kennedy “deeply rattled” various lawmakers by spending meeting time repeating conspiracy theories about vaccines and making other “questionable assertions.”
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) in particular was very, very alarmed. And that was before she knew what meeting Kennedy was skipping to schmooze with her:
“I came out of my meeting with RFK Jr. stunned,” she told The Washington Post this week. “I have never left a meeting with a Cabinet nominee as disconcerted and troubled by their words in my entire career.”
Murray has been a Senator since 1993. She has met with more than a few dipshits in her time.
Meanwhile, Trump is busy burning down the organizations and programs that Kennedy would oversee, should the Senate confirm him, and why wouldn’t it, they have all lost their damn minds. He has frozen pretty much everything the National Institutes of Health does, leaving possibly billions of dollars of disease research in limbo. Rumor has it that since all purchasing has been canceled, NIH medical facilities can’t order food and bandages. Which is kind of a bad thing to not be able to order when you are a hospital or clinic that fucking admits patients for treatment.
Several moments subtly pointed up the difference between the administrations, two attendees noted, such as when Rubio asked about how the United States tracks the threat of emerging flu viruses abroad. That capability partly relies on the World Health Organization.
Would anyone care to guess what organization Trump announced he is pulling America out of immediately? Go on, guess! (Spoiler: It is the World Health Organization.)
But even with all this, we’re not sure anything tops the conflagration that the new administration has been busy setting all week. Though it is so hard to say, because they have already fucked up so much stuff.
On Friday, new Secretary of State Rubio clarified that the 90-day suspension of all foreign aid Trump announced earlier in the week includes existing as well as new funding. One program affected by this is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is the only good goddamn thing that emerged from the presidency of George W. Bush besides its ending.
PEPFAR is led by the State Department. The program sends billions of dollars every year to countries around the world to fight HIV. This includes purchasing the drug cocktails that allow people to live full lives even if they have the virus. Not being able to get those drugs for 90 days seems like it could have an adverse effect, to put it mildly, on HIV patients. And that’s assuming funding resumes after this 90-day pause, of which there is no guarantee.
The Washington Post notes that PEPFAR is credited with saving an estimated 25 million lives since 2003. This, for those of us old enough to remember the emergence of AIDS some 40 years ago, is a freaking miracle.
Naturally Republicans hate the program, since it eases suffering.
PEPFAR might be run by the State Department, but HHS is one government agency that plays a significant role in implementing anti-HIV programs through its own agencies like NIH. So how do we think RFK Jr. might feel about this latest move? Amanda Marcotte at Salon has some ideas:
He and his organizing partners have fought WHO's efforts to prevent the spread of HIV, improve birth control access, or protect health care access for gay people. Kennedy refuses to accept that HIV causes AIDS, instead blaming it on what he imagines are "lifestyle" choices among gay men, even though, globally, most HIV-positive people are women and girls.
Christ, that “HIV is a gay disease” trope was already worn out by the end of the 1980s. We are maybe going to install as HHS secretary a man who stopped learning anything about HIV and AIDS when Rock Hudson was still alive.
We can’t wait for the second week of the new Trump administration, if only because they will have destroyed everything good in the first. So, bright side: there might be fewer surprises!
[Washington Post / Washington Post / Salon]
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Oh, fuck off, you decrepit moron.
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DO NOT FORGET THIS
What Kennedy did in Samoa was a test run for what he wants to happen here. He wants to cull the herd and let the weak die off.