Sen. Cory Booker has been talking about his common ground with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lately, which seems to signal he might vote to confirm the guy as Donald Trump's health and human services secretary. That would be a serious mistake: The man is a complete kook who could put the country in grave danger.
This is not about lowering the bar and finding the one thing RFK says that is mildly sensible, like their mutual disgust for high fructose corn syrup. The man is not even remotely qualified for the job, he is a menace to the country's health, and Booker shouldn't flirt with the idea of approving him just because he doesn't like federally subsidized junk food.
Granted, our food policies have fueled an epidemic of obesity and chronic disease in this country, a real problem Booker has rightly been banging alarms about. But RFK is not the guy to solve it. He's a certified wackjob who will trumpet any conspiracy theory he finds on the Internet - not a good pick to lead a post that oversees everything from medical research to food safety.
Take it from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, another longtime foe of the junk food industry: Anointing RFK health secretary is "beyond dangerous" and "tantamount to "medical malpractice on a mass scale."
Yet Booker seems to be considering it. While the New Jersey senator published an opinion piece the day before the election, dismissing Trump and Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" gambit and warning anyone who wants to reform our food system, "Don't be fooled," he's since changed his tone.
"I'm ready for a food fight," he recently told reporters, after releasing his own video decrying the junk food industry. "And I'm going to look to the Trump administration and say, 'Put up or shut up.'"
Bernie Sanders, who heads the Senate health committee, agreed: "They have to be taken on," he said of junk food profiteers. Even Daily Show host Jon Stewart recently griped to Sanders about a "gag reflex" from both parties if you agree with RFK Jr. about anything - can't we even talk about this stuff, he said?
Absolutely. Let's talk about it. The first thing to consider is this: There's plenty of reason to be skeptical that RFK could get anything done on junk food anyway, with President Ronald McDonald in office. Already, he's being force-fed fast food on Trump's plane.
And when Trump's own donors and core supporters depend on jobs in this industry, producing the junk food that he loves so dearly, how likely is his administration to take them on, really?
Even if RFK did achieve something, against all odds, that's still no reason to approve him to lead the nearly $2 trillion federal agency that administers the nation's vast public health apparatus. He's completely unqualified and would do far more harm than good. Here's a recap of the case against him, if any vegan senator from New Jersey is still on the fence:
Start with the bird flu, which is scary. It's been found in the raw milk of infected cows, which RFK Jr. promotes drinking on the regular. Telling everyone to ignore that obvious danger of illness and outbreaks is "a really stupid, bad idea," as John Lucey, the director of the Center for Dairy Research at University of Wisconsin at Madison, put it.
As are the vast majority of Kennedy's ideas, like ending scientific research to prevent the next deadly pandemic. The availability of COVID vaccines less than a year into this pandemic saved countless lives, and was only possible because government researchers had already laid the scientific groundwork. Yet instead of prepping for the next big threat, RFK has said he'll "give infectious disease a break."
That could set us back years. In the next pandemic, we'd be screwed.
Kennedy has also suggested that he'll fire 600 employees of the National Institutes of Health - which oversees vaccine development and the crucial research that lays the groundwork for most of Big Pharma's new therapies - and replace them with his own picks. Imagine that tin foil hat brigade.
Then there's his soapboxing against vaccines, which is also incredibly dangerous. While RFK says he vaccinated his own children, he's known for spouting paranoid theories that have fueled outbreaks of diseases that are entirely preventable, sickening and killing other people's kids. In 2019, for instance, his nonsense stoked a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa that killed so many children and babies that they ran out of tiny coffins and had to start importing them.
That's quite the resume. And he could do the same here, on a grander scale, in this vastly more powerful position. As recently as July, Kennedy declared, "There's no vaccine that is safe and effective." Imagine the reach he'd have as health secretary: He could incite new outbreaks, delay FDA approvals for life-saving vaccines or try to block longstanding shots from being covered by insurance or required for schoolkids. Like the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine that's been safe and effective since 1971, a favorite target of the anti-vaxxer crowd.
Above all, though, a vote for RFK Jr would award him a massive platform to spread his hokum worldwide - like rejecting the established science showing that H.I.V. causes AIDS, or claiming the COVID shot was the "deadliest vaccine ever made," or that the virus itself was designed to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. Or whatever quackery he dreams up next.
So Sen. Booker, we beg you, don't do it: Do not approve this lunatic.