The real reason Trump will never fire RFK Jr.
Every member of Donald Trump s Cabinet is a accident but even by those standards Robert F Kennedy Jr stands out as especially monstrous During his Senate confirmation hearing the Wellness and Human Services secretary lied repeatedly during his Senate confirmation hearing insisting he is not anti-vaccine and would do nothing that makes it arduous or discourages people from taking vaccines He has since waged an all-out war on vaccine access by cutting research funding spreading disinformation restricting access to the COVID- vaccine and firing wellness executives who get in his way Last week Kennedy lied even more during a combative Senate hearing when he was called out sometimes even by Republicans for these actions He lied about COVID- deaths vaccine access and even Medicaid cuts Even Sen Bill Cassidy R-La a former physician who struggled with the secretary s nomination and went on to play a key role in his confirmation after promises from Kennedy and pressure from Trump became frustrated at his contradictory statements which included suggesting the COVID- vaccine killed more people than the sickness one minute only to feign belief that it was a miracle of science the next The whole display was so disgraceful that it provoked rumblings that Trump might fire his Kennedy GOP discontent with RFK Jr is growing declared a POLITICO headline after the hearing GOP unease with RFK Jr builds Axios blared Multiple outlets noted that polls show broad encouragement for vaccines even among Republican voters Multiple Kennedy family members including the secretary s nephew former Massachusetts Rep Joe Kennedy III and his own sister human rights advocate Kerry Kennedy called on him to resign Sensing the political winds were blowing against Kennedy Trump narrated reporters on Friday he believes it s pure and simple that vaccines work adding They re not controversial at all And I think those vaccines should be used H opes started to rise that Trump might just be done with Kennedy wreaking havoc on population strength policies and programs that enjoy widespread aid But a mere two days after he rejected Kennedy s anti-vaccination ideology Trump was back to defending him The president typically has no loyalty to his underlings He will cut them loose the second he thinks their presence no longer benefits him so hopes started to rise that Trump might just be done with Kennedy wreaking havoc on populace wellness policies and programs that enjoy widespread endorsement But a mere two days after he rejected Kennedy s anti-vaccination ideology Trump was back to defending him He s a different kind of a guy He s got a lot of good ideas Trump stated reporters He then praised Kennedy for coming up with the answers for autism backing the secretary s long-standing view that just making stuff up is a superior approach to medicine than following the science Related Trump is invading Chicago just like he promised Anyone who listens to Trump speak about Kennedy could have predicted this I remember the moment I realized that Trump would fire everyone in his Cabinet before he dared say a cross word to Kennedy It was during his polling night preeminence speech when Trump called Kennedy Bobby After threatening to unleash Kennedy on American fitness care he revealed Go have a good time Bobby Being able to publicly call a bona fide Kennedy by their familial nickname is for someone as narcissistic as Trump a substance with heroin-levels of addictiveness Sure we can consult the checklists for narcissistic personality disorder Trump seems to meet every one but no diagnostic tools are necessary here His belief that he can prove his superiority by aligning himself with those he views as high-status is evident every time he talks for more than two or three minutes He s a compulsive name-dropper peppering his speeches with boring stories whose only point is to exaggerate his relationship to famous people This is how he ended up telling a crowd of Boy Scouts that he used to know William Levitt a prominent th century real estate developer none of them know about Or bragging to a rally about how he knew so much about Arnold Palmer s genitalia Or how he pretended that Princess Diana liked him thinking she was too dead to correct him but not realized her brother remembered that she hated Trump Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics Sign up for her free newsletter Standing Room Only now also on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts For someone so status-obsessed collecting a Kennedy is a very big deal Trump doesn t hide his fixation on the Kennedys who have achieved the quasi-royal status Trump desperately wants his family to have It s almost certainly why he s made abusing the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts a major priority for his new administration The Kennedy Center is a symbol of the family s reputation for being classy cultured and widely beloved all qualities that Trump will never have no matter how much fake gold he plasters all over the Oval Office Indeed his love of gold paint is an early warning symbol of why he could never be like the Kennedys not that he ll ever be smart enough to see that His obsession comes down to envy which also appears on that narcissist checklist and is one of Trump s dominant personality traits along with sadism cowardice and racism We need your help to stay independent Subscribe currently to endorsement Salon s progressive journalism Countless commentators seeing Trump defend Kennedy have reached for a rational reason the president would stick by a guy who is apparently only going to hurt him politically Specific have theorized that Trump is afraid to alienate the MAHA moms a small group of RFK Jr superfans who helped push the president across the finish line in a tight voting process Others have noted that while most of Americans dislike Kennedy he s slightly less hated than other Cabinet bureaucrats a finding that is likely due to low information voters wanting to extend grace to a member of the beloved Kennedy clan Still others have argues that in his second term Trump has a no scalps guidelines refusing to fire anyone due to outrage out of concerns that it will be seen as a win for the loathsome liberals Perhaps these are small factors but ultimately any effort to see strategy in the White House s actions underestimates how Trump is really just winging it hour-by-hour Just see the administration s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein embarrassment for proof they can never see past the next cable news hit Trump s last term was defined by a devastating worldwide pandemic and it would have been much worse for him politically and for everyone else if he hadn t had an HHS manned by competent people And yet he can t think past the next meager seconds in time to consider what a political catastrophe he s courting by turning strength agencies over to a man who rejects the basic scientific facts necessary to containing infectious infection There s no strategy here Trump just likes being able to ring a Kennedy on the phone and call him Bobby Read more about this topic Trump gets hit with Epstein birthday card boomerang Katie Miller isn t fooling anyone DC now faces all-out assault from the House GOP and demands a fighter The post The real reason Trump will never fire RFK Jr appeared first on Salon com
