RFK Jr. Hasn’t Restored Trust in Public Health, Cassidy Says

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hasn’t restored trust in public health, Sen. Bill Cassidy, MD (R-La.), said in a nearly hour-long interview on “Face the Nation” this weekend.

“If you build public health upon a foundation of lies, then you’re going to have an absence of adequate public health,” said Cassidy, who lost a primary election after President Donald Trump endorsed his challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.).

The Trump administration appears to be “limiting [Kennedy’s] range of activity,” Cassidy noted in the interview, which was wide-ranging and started off with the outcomes of Cassidy’s shouting match with Trump from last week. (That disagreement won Cassidy a briefing on the Iran war, which shifted his vote on a war powers resolution.)

“Polling shows that the American people understand that vaccines are important,” Cassidy said, pointing to widespread recognition of the dangers of the U.S. measles outbreak, which has involved thousands of cases and some deaths in children.

“I think you can see the administration responding to the American people’s awareness that folks should be vaccinated,” he said. “They see the measles outbreaks and understand … we’re not getting immunized and now we’re having children die of measles.”

“The administration clearly has gotten off the anti-vaccine message into something more positive,” he added.

Cassidy acknowledged that Kennedy broke numerous promises he had made when Cassidy was considering whether to confirm Kennedy as HHS secretary. That included placing an asterisk on a headline on a CDC website that said vaccines do not cause autism.

“I can tell you, that broke an agreement I had with the secretary. That was not supposed to happen,” Cassidy said. “Once you lose trust in somebody, you’re not sure what to trust going forward. In fact, you don’t trust anything.”

When asked if he regretted his vote to confirm Kennedy, Cassidy explained that he saw two choices. He knew Kennedy had the president’s ear, so he was either “going to be in a position with guardrails … or he was going to be appointed White House health czar, in which case he’d have the president’s ear without guardrails.”

“You can criticize it, but I chose to have the one with guardrails,” Cassidy said.

When asked if he felt his strategy reined in Kennedy, Cassidy noted, “That is something you cannot know. We can’t go back in time.”

As for Kennedy’s future, Cassidy said that he “serves at the pleasure of the president,” and he couldn’t say whether Kennedy would be impeached if Democrats flip the House of Representatives in January and what the impeachable offense would be.

Cassidy was also asked about delays in confirmation hearings for federal health leadership appointments, including the CDC director and the Surgeon General.

He attributed these delays to a “paperwork” problem. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), which Cassidy chairs, will process those nominations “as soon as we get the paperwork. That’s something we have to have, there is a process you go through.”

Cassidy said he’s met with both nominees and was “very favorably impressed. I can’t speak for everybody [on the Senate HELP Committee] but I imagine they will be approved.”

“So, progress is being made,” he noted. “But to be this far into an administration with that much turnover is not a good thing.”

“It is a problem that reflects a wider problem at HHS, that goes without saying,” he added. “The lack of stability is a problem.”