RFK Jr. Is Very Mad About Reports That He’s Checked Out Of Most Of HHS’ Work

from the hiding-in-public dept

We should all know at this point that RFK Jr. is bad at his job as Secretary of HHS. But that simplistic statement apparently needs something of a qualifier. Instead, it appears we should say that RFK Jr. is bad at the parts of his job that he chooses to do. Because, according to a New York Times report, he doesn’t really pay all that much attention to most of HHS’ work.

The Times begins the piece by pointing out that as the Ebola crisis in Africa continues to rage on, already infecting several Americans who were traveling abroad, Kennedy has been mostly absent from briefings on the outbreak. He talks to the very people who could inform him of the goings on there, but he just doesn’t get many briefings on the topic. And that led the Times to try to find out what else Kennedy isn’t bothering to pay attention to. The answer, according to insiders at HHS, is pretty much everything that isn’t one of his pet agenda items.

Mr. Kennedy’s approach to the crisis reflects his broader management of the Department of Health and Human Services, which affects the health of 340 million Americans and provides health care to 40 percent of the population through Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.

Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.

Now, all of this by itself would be some combination of interesting, damning, and explanatory of why so much negative health shit is occurring in America these days. Measles outbreaks, a spate of whooping cough surging, unfilled positions, an ACIP panel that is not allowed to operate because the courts said so, and so on. Having an HHS leader completely out to lunch while we have all of these health threats around us, all so he can go chase vaccine conspiracies, chem-trails, and snakes is not exactly a recipe for good health outcomes in the country. That he’s selfishly saving all of his time for his own personal interests may not be surprising, but it does need correcting.

Kennedy took to ExTwitter to defend himself from the report, which he claimed was very wrong, because he only misses some meetings.

“You fault me for missing a couple of monthly counselor meetings. However, I meet one-on-one with my counselors every day to decide policy and strategy. We schedule the monthly meetings to give the divisions a chance to keep each other informed about HHS-wide policies with which I’m already intimately familiar.”

RFK Jr. questioned the outlet on whether they bothered to check his public calendar, which is filled with back-to-back meetings that concern his role. He revealed that he’s actively involved in addressing issues and making final decisions, as he summarized his schedule, stating that he works until 11:00 pm. Additionally, he touched on how the outlet used quotes from those employees, some of whom he had fired in the past, further calling into question their credibility and fact-checking skills.

Now, if you want to understand just how completely, pathologically wrong and false Kennedy is willing to be, let’s zero right the hell in on that whole “did you bother to check my public calendar” retort. Why? Well, because by all accounts, Kennedy’s calendar is not in any way public. Multiple groups have filed FOIA requests that have gone unaddressed for years, or else filed lawsuits, in order to get access to his calendar. They can’t get it. The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit over this a year ago. Statnews.com has been after it via FOIA requests for over a year, as well.

But no such calendar, detailing who Kennedy meets with or how he spends his time, has been released by the administration. STAT has been asking the Department of Health and Human Services for Kennedy’s calendar for more than a year, via Freedom of Information Act requests and emails to the press office.

Since last year, STAT reporters have requested the calendars of Kennedy and his principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, multiple times. That has included a request last February for a calendar from Kennedy’s first two weeks on the job and then a request last June for Spear’s calendars since she started in her role. Spear, whose personal office is attached to Kennedy’s, is known to attend nearly every meeting with the secretary. 

The HHS press office did not respond to questions about the public calendar Kennedy described, the number of staffers currently in FOIA offices across the agency, the response times to requests compared to earlier administrations, or which outlets were being restricted by the administration.

It’s one thing to hide your calendar while you’re not fulfilling your obligations as a cabinet member. It’s an entirely different thing to do all of that and try to admonish the press for not checking a public calendar that has never been made public.

Either Kennedy thinks his calendar is public when it isn’t, which is a terrible look for him and his understanding of how his own agencies are operating, or he does know it’s not public, is lying about it, and somehow thinks that nobody will bother to point it out.

So, the open question appears to be whether RFK Jr. is a bumbling fool who isn’t in full command of HHS…or a bad and fairly dumb liar.

So, Secretary Kennedy, once you’re back from an extended lunch and nap session, which is it?

Filed Under: ebola, health & human services, measles, rfk jr., vaccines