September 9, 2025 - 6:30pm
Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s enemies smell blood in the water.
When Kennedy endorsed Donald Trump for president just over a year ago, Republicans in the midst of a tough election season rejoiced. The emergent “Make America Healthy Again” coalition could tip the scales for Trump and deliver a new GOP. But as a contentious Senate hearing last Thursday confirmed, after just six months of Kennedy’s tenure atop the Department of Health and Human Services the coalition is facing a major stress test.
A new Washington Post report notes that a handful of Republican senators and pharmaceutical lobbyists sense Kennedy is newly vulnerable, having played a role in the high-profile ouster of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Susan Monarez last week, cut mRNA research funding, and limited Covid vaccine access. The Post noted obvious scepticism from key Senate Republicans during Kennedy’s testimony last week, including from John Barrasso, Bill Cassidy, and Thom Tillis.
Cassidy only agreed to confirm Kennedy in February after the Secretary essentially agreed to carry on an “unprecedentedly close” relationship with the senator, who is a doctor and clearly reluctant about letting the fox into the henhouse. The rolling reports of personnel drama at HHS are undeniably reflective of this dynamic. Kennedy is having exactly the effect on entrenched bureaucracy one would expect, whether you hold him in high regard or not.
And that may actually be to his advantage — at least for now. So long as Kennedy’s detractors appear breathlessly defensive of the tragic status quo, which he correctly diagnoses as a disaster, he’ll have the upper hand with Trump.
But Big Pharma, according to the Post, is rolling out a new strategy to drive a wedge between Kennedy and the President, working with Republican senators to “[mount] a push to belatedly recognize Trump for his first administration’s coronavirus vaccine program — identifying it as a way to drive a wedge between the president and Kennedy, who has previously claimed that the shots are ‘the deadliest vaccine ever made’.”
Kennedy, of course, has a long history of accusing the government, corporations, and the medical establishment of prioritising profit and power over health. He’s perhaps best known for making this case about vaccines. Though Kennedy insists he’s not categorically against vaccines, he’s made comments including “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” that put him at odds with the expert class and many voters.
Representatives from the firm of Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio reportedly “warned GOP lawmakers last week that overhauling vaccine policies is politically dangerous, citing data that nearly three-quarters of Trump voters believe vaccines save lives”. However that briefing came about, you can rest assured it was organised strategically by Kennedy’s critics.
Those critics are hoping the reality of chaos and cabinet-level vaccine scepticism shocks top Republicans, including Trump, in ways the mere expectation of Kennedy’s beliefs didn’t quite terrify them. But, just as in Kennedy’s confirmation hearing, Republicans are caught between a rock and a hard place, either upsetting dedicated, low-trust MAGA populists by undermining Kennedy or upsetting others closer to the centre who worry about outbreaks and the powerful interests which will lay any such cases directly at the Secretary’s feet.
A measles outbreak has produced 1,431 cases in 41 states and claimed the lives of two children in west Texas this year. According to Harvard, “this is the largest number of cases in a year since 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated in the U.S.” It’s easy to see Kennedy’s position becoming harder for Trump to defend if the outbreak continues and claims more lives around the country, giving serious ammunition to the Health Secretary’s enemies who can blame him for decreasing popular trust in these treatments.
On the other hand, firing Kennedy wouldn’t make Trump’s problems go away because Americans are increasingly aware that the expert class has failed on public health for decades. Hardcore MAHA influencers would likely be enraged, and it would be difficult for the President to find a trustworthy replacement who strikes a balance between Cassidy and Kennedy. Turning on RFK Jr is hardly an easy political solution for Republicans, as much as lobbyists may say it is. In fact, it could create just as many problems as they argue it would solve.
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