Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough asked President Donald Trump if he was truly comfortable with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismantling his legacy after the health secretary announced plans to ban the COVID-19 vaccine.
Trump admitted last week that his administration is being “ripped apart” by the health secretary’s hardline anti-vax agenda, which has seen a slew of resignations from top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the ousting of its newly-appointed director.
Both current and former health officials have accused the health secretary, a conspiracy theorist who has no background in science, of “weaponizing public health for political gain,” and warned that his reckless approach to vaccinations could lead the country into a major public health crisis.
The president embraced Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement on the 2024 campaign trail, bringing a range of anti-vax constituents into the fold with him. However, by following RFK Jr.’s lead in publicly attacking pharmaceutical companies, the president risks undermining what many people, including his fiercest critics and even Trump himself, consider to be his greatest accomplishment during his first term—the swift and effective rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Scarborough wondered if Trump was comfortable with this aspect of his legacy being tarnished. “The crazy thing is, are you really going to let this guy who’s been engaging in pseudoscience for the past 20 years undermine what really should be seen as his greatest accomplishment?” he asked.
“I mean, in terms of opening up business, opening up society, opening up the world, saving millions of lives, saving billions and billions of dollars. I mean, and he’s going to—I find it hard to believe he’s going to let Bobby Kennedy Jr. trash the legacy as much as Bobby Kennedy Jr. is trying to trash that legacy right now.”
Scarborough co-host Willie Geist agreed with him. “He has now packed that panel of vaccine experts who aren’t necessarily experts and don’t have any medical experience, but are skeptics along with Bobby Kennedy. They make up that panel so they can make these outlandish claims about vaccines, including the COVID vaccine, and, as you say, tarnish the legacy of President Trump.”
Despite publicly supporting Kennedy, Trump privately admitted to donors last month that he considered the COVID vaccine rollout (known internally as ‘Operation Warp Speed’) to be one of his most significant accomplishments—but that he couldn’t take credit for it over concerns it would upset his voter base.
Addressing a crowd of donors at his golf club in New Jersey in August, Trump said: “Operation Warp Speed, people say, was one of the greatest achievements ever in politics or in the military, because it was almost a military procedure.”
“We did a great job with [COVID]. Never got the credit for the job we did,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
“Everybody, including Putin, said that Operation Warp Speed—what you did with that, nobody can believe it.”
“We did a good job with that—as good as you could possibly do.”
Yet in a social media outburst on Monday, Trump appeared to turn on the drug companies that spearheaded the rollout, claiming to have been “shown information from Pfizer, and others, that is extraordinary,” and demanded that drug companies “show them NOW, to CDC and the public, and clear up this MESS.”
He added: “I hope OPERATION WARP SPEED was as ‘BRILLIANT’ as many say it was. If not, we all want to know about it, and why???”
He then admitted: “With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW.”
Kennedy stunned the world last month when he announced plans to withdraw $500 million in funding to develop mRNA vaccines that help counter COVID-19 and other diseases, such as bird flu, after claiming that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.”
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned from his position as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases last month, said health experts had never briefed the health secretary before making his announcement, and that his views were not grounded in science.
When asked by CNN’s Kaitlin Collins if CDC experts had ever briefed the health secretary, Daskalakis replied: “The answer is, ‘No.’ No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics… He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts.”
However, by following Kennedy’s lead in publicly attacking pharmaceutical companies, the president risks undermining what many people, including his fiercest critics and even Trump himself.
The post ‘Morning Joe’ Asks If Trump Is Comfortable With RFK Jr. Dismantling His Legacy appeared first on The Daily Beast.
