Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., facing accusations that he’s thoroughly disengaged from his day job, has devoted much of his time recently to making partisan campaign appearances and launching a celebrity cooking show. But that’s not all he’s doing.

As MS NOW’s Brandy Zadrozny reported, Kennedy also took some time Thursday to appear before the anti-vaccine group he helped lead:

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. opened by acknowledging the frustration of the anti-vaccine activists in the audience that he was moving too slowly in changing the federal vaccine program. He detailed the ways his administration had slashed vaccine advisory panels, overhauled recommendations for the childhood immunization schedule and ordered more research on vaccine safety. But he urged patience as he works to upend the federal vaccine schedule.

“You have friends in the White House,” Kennedy told them.

Those who expected the conference for Children’s Health Defense, the world’s largest anti-vaccine organization, to be filled with radical nonsense were entirely correct. Kennedy was preceded by Mark Gorton, who leads something called the MAHA Institute, and who told attendees that “the success of the polio vaccine was a massive medical fraud” and that widespread vaccination was a “public health disaster.” (He received a standing ovation.)

After Kennedy came Andrew Wakefield, whom Zadrozny described as a “disgraced researcher whose medical license was stripped after regulators found that he had fabricated the data for a since-retracted study falsely linking the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine to autism.”

But Kennedy’s remarks were themselves remarkable — and not in a good way. The health secretary went so far as to claim that federal agencies were advancing investigations into, among other things, “chemtrails.”

For those unfamiliar with the concept, fringe conspiracy theorists have long claimed that nefarious government agents are secretly spraying chemical agents on the public by way of commercial airplanes. The claim is plainly bonkers — the white streaks we see from planes are water condensation trails, and even the Trump administration has said chemtrails are not real — which made it all the more head-spinning to see the nation’s HHS secretary lend credence to the idea that this is worthy of federal scrutiny.

But while Kennedy’s remarks were absurd, and the fact that he was even in attendance at such a gathering was indefensible, there’s a broader point that shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle: None of this was especially surprising. On the contrary, that an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is behaving like an unqualified, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is painfully predictable.

What matters at least as much, if not more, is the fact that 52 Senate Republicans — including alleged “moderates,” such as Maine’s Susan Collins — were given an opportunity to protect Americans from Kennedy, and they failed spectacularly, voting to confirm him despite an avalanche of evidence suggesting he had no business joining the White House Cabinet.

These 52 GOP senators knew exactly who Kennedy was. His anti-science reputation was well established long before Donald Trump nominated him, and they made a conscious decision to overlook it. A year and a half later, it is these same Senate Republicans who bear responsibility for his radical antics and dangerous decisions.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Following RFK Jr.’s latest bizarre performance, 52 GOP senators have some explaining to do appeared first on MS NOW.

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