Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sister Kerry Kennedy agrees with John Oliver that her anti-vaccine brother isn’t fit to oversee the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Sunday’s episode of Oliver’s Last Week Tonight went viral after the late-night host and comedian dedicated more than 35 minutes to making the case against President Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human services.
“RFK needs to go, and by impeachment if necessary,” he said. “Too much damage has already been done. This is a man who is clearly in way over his worm-riddled head. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know who he’s fired… and if that’s wasn’t bad enough he’s currently spreading dangerous nonsense and gutting life-saving research.”
Asked by CNN’s Erin Burnett if she agreed with Oliver that her brother should be impeached, Kerry Kennedy said, “I think he is not an appropriate HHS secretary.”
The human-rights lawyer was speaking from El Salvador, where she has been trying unsuccessfully to meet with 10 Venezuelan men she’s representing after Trump administration officials sent them to the notorious CECOT mega prison without any warning.
“I love Bobby and I find him incredibly charismatic. But I have said—and my other family members have been super clear about this—that we disagree again and again and again on the things that he’s said,” she added.
Kennedy’s short tenure has already been marred by numerous scandals.
During his segment, Oliver shouted, “F— you!” at an image of Kennedy, after showing a video of the secretary called autism an “epidemic” that is worse than COVID-19, which killed millions of people.
“These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,” Kennedy said earlier this month, despite the fact that autism is a spectrum and many people with autism manage to do all of those things.
After his comments sparked a major backlash, he claimed he was talking about children with “profound autism.”
In the meantime, vaccine hesitancy—which Kennedy has long encouraged—has led to a deadly nationwide measles outbreak. Kennedy has been reluctant to advise people to get the MMR vaccine, and has claimed it’s better for everyone to get measles and develop natural immunity—even though the disease can cause permanent brain damage in children.
Top officials at the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health have quit, citing censorship, “misinformation and lies,” and interference with their research. Stunned FDA staff have been subjected to Kennedy’s tirades about the “deep state,” and accusations that they are shills for the industries they regulate.
In addition, about 10,000 HHS employees have been fired, gutting key public health offices and purging prominent senior scientists. Thanks to mistakes made by Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting initiative DOGE, some of those people were rehired, but most were let go permanently.
That’s on top of countless scientists and academics whose funding has been cut, positions eliminated, and research halted after the NIH terminated grants worth millions of dollars.
During Monday’s interview, Kerry Kennedy ran through a list of prejudices and conspiracy theories her brother has promoted: That people shouldn’t get vaccinated; that HIV does not cause AIDS; that people are transgender because of pollutants in the water; that autistic people are a burden on society.
“This is insanity. Just look at the science,” she said. “This goes on and on and on. I love my brother. [But] I think he’s dead wrong.”
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