When President-elect Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services it was largely understood as payback for dropping out of the presidential race and tossing his support to Mr. Trump. In return, at an October rally in New York City, Mr. Trump said he would let Kennedy “go wild on health,” “go wild on food” and “go wild on medicines.”
This week the president’s nominee starts on his confirmation journey when he meets with key Republican senators to explain his long and detailed history of anti-vaccine rhetoric, his promise to recommend states and municipalities remove fluoride from public water, that 5G broadband’s purpose is to “control our behavior” and that it’s best to drink raw milk, among many other unsupported health care claims.
It’s understood that a president has the right to nominate whomever for whatever position. It’s also understood that the Senate’s place is to offer its advice and consent for those nominations, as outlined in Section II of the Constitution.
In normal times we would not be threatened by a nominee of Mr. Kennedy’s ilk, someone who has managed to generate opposition from 77 Nobel Prize winners who are openly worried about a nominee whose hostility toward science threatens the nation’s public health. They make note of Mr. Kennedy’s quote that vaccine scientists “should be in jail and the key should be thrown away.”
But these are anything but normal times. The president-elect’s well-established vengeance toward those who oppose him has cowed most of the Senate’s Republicans. He’s a bully with a long memory for those who have not shown complete fealty. It’s easier to get along and, in Mr. Kennedy’s case, to believe Mr. Trump will blunt any of Mr. Kennedy’s more egregious moves to dismantle the agencies he would oversee.
But there is such a thing as saving someone from themselves. Before Mr. Kennedy abdicated Mr. Trump characterized him as a “Radical Left Liberal” and someone who would cause the country to “collapse immediately.” He said the country would be better off with Joe Biden as president. With little effort, Republicans could remind themselves of the decades Mr. Kennedy took aim at the Republican’s base, claiming, for example, that the National Rifle Association was a “terror group.” It was Mr. Kennedy who said those who deny climate change should be jailed or given “the death penalty.” He’s long been championed by the environmental movement as a true believer.
So Senate Republicans feel obliged to forgive and forget? For perspective, do they think Democrats would have let Kamala Harris nominate Vermont’s Bernie Sanders to be Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the Treasury?
No, of course not. It’s the job of the Senate not only to advise the president of the wisdom of his or her choice but to protect the American people as well. The person who heads the Department of Health and Human Services and its 80,000 employees is responsible for the health and welfare of 335 million Americans. It’s no place for a conspiracist.
The Republicans have a 53-vote Senate majority. If the Democrats hold together the defection of four Republican senators rids us of Mr. Kennedy’s threat to the nation’s well-being.
One would hope that happens. This is one instance in which Republicans can protect themselves, the American public, and the president-elect by summoning the necessary moxie to say no to Mr. Kennedy’s nomination.
By Emerson Lynn