On Wednesday, during a signing ceremony for some Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiatives in Texas, a visiting Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said, "I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like. I'm looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation. You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection. And I know that that's not how our children are supposed to look."
The corresponding C-SPAN clip went viral, triggering a fresh round of Wait, THIS guy is in charge of the federal government's public health apparatus? "He literally makes zero sense," opined radiologist, pandemic-policy critic, and National Review contributor Pradheep Shanker. "Wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff," added Biden-administration Covid-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha. The Bulwark's culture editor went with "dumbass fucking witch doctor charlatan."
Such exasperated vitriol is common among RFK Jr.'s critics, and has so far produced about the same real-world political results as 10 years' worth of sputtering in the general direction of President Donald Trump. Kennedy remains the second Trump administration's most popular Cabinet member, and the president definitively has his secretary's back in the face of high-level Centers for Disease Control (CDC) firings, COVID vaccine restrictions, mass-shooting hypotheticals, medical-school MAHA retrofits, plus 750 HHS employees jointly accusing their boss of "repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information."
