Marble Falls This maybe just me, but if Robert Kennedy, Jr. were a woman, the odds are that Trump would have already bounced him out as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, just as he did Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and, effectively Tulsi Gabbard. I’d put him on the exit ramp over the next six to nine months, if not before.
What has saved him in the past, as he has stumbled from one controversy to another, is that he had something of an independent base in the diverse group of largely women and mothers who made up the MAHA, Make America Healthy Again, constituency. In recent months, some of that love has been lost, as he has been silent against the Trump administration’s rollback of protections against forever chemicals, moderation around microplastic pollution, and wavering on vaccines. Some leaders of this faction, which had been an interesting, if curious, amalgamation of hippie, new age women and home-schooling moms, have expressed open disappointment with Kennedy and DHS politics and threatened to look more widely at candidates that they might support.
Reports have indicated that Kennedy has been asked to tone down some of his rhetoric by the White House and has had to walk back some of his restrictions on vaccines and other hot button issues for that base. Measles outbreaks in some red states and flu epidemics on military bases also call his policies into question. Other reports have focused on Kennedy’s inattention to the huge staff and portfolio of DHHS, because he continues to be obsessed with his personal anti-vax and food agendas to the exclusion of anything else. The White House seems to have put him on the road to see if he can revive his MAHA food program, but on the hustings, he is running into the reality that inflation and Trump’s Iranian war have make healthier diets much more expensive and his advocacy more of a niche appeal outside of the traditional Trump base. The fact that his tour in Michigan and elsewhere also seems focused on lending some star appeal to Republican congressional candidates in contested districts also might be crossing the line on Hatch Act restrictions for partisan politicking by federal employees.
The recent transfer of special needs programs from the Education Department to Kennedy’s DHHS health empire has also kicked up a hornet’s nest. Disability groups and advocates are up in arms in opposition to the move. Families and groups concerned about autism have claimed that Kennedy’s past comments made him unfit to oversee programs that have sought to help autistic individuals.
To the degree that he still seems to have presidential ambitions, that he renounced temporarily by changing his spots to become a Trumper, it is also likely an increasingly problem, as Trump’s lame duck status kicks in and Republican hopefuls become more brazen. Speculation is already rife about the prospects of both Vice-President Vance and Secretary of State Rubio and whether they will be anointed. Rubio in fact publicly undercut Kennedy and his anti-vax efforts by saying he was going to take the global vaccine support program back into the State Department after Kennedy had pulled the US out of the effort. It’s hard to believe that behind the scenes both of them would not be too glad to exploit Kennedy’s foibles and weaknesses way before the 2028 cycle is in full swing. The knives are out.
As the administration goes into the midterms, it’s hard for me to believe that they want to keep running firefighting operations over Kennedy’s programs and the DHHS messes. The last kicker in my mind is that he will also be at the frontlines when the impacts of Trump’s budget take full affect with draconian cuts in Medicaid along with health impacts around food security that come from food stamp cuts for working families. There’s no empathy in Kennedy and that’s an Achilles heel. Furthermore, whether with the Affordable Care Act or the Dobbs decision about abortion, polls have established that when such programs are attacked, support for them increases. The human face of children and families on the verge of death and starvation can’t be hidden that long, and the responsibility of the administration and DHHS will make any MAHA support marginal to nonexistent.
Kennedy can’t last, especially when the public won’t be interested in looking at someone working out in jeans, and the administration will be desperate for some kinder and gentler administrator to blunt the horror in millions of family’s daily lives.