Why RFK Doesn’t Matter

He's a terrible pick but only part of a bigger problem

The scientific community has drawn its line in the sand. RFK Jr.’s rejection of the collective wisdom of subject matter experts on critical issues is intolerable. That outrage is encapsulated in a recent letter from 77 Nobel Prize winners, which raised the alarm that Kennedy would “put the public's health in jeopardy and undermine America's global leadership in the health sciences”. Unfortunately, this and other efforts to derail his nomination simply play into the hands of the President elect, who expects to own the playing board and make the rules in a game in which truth is malleable, morality is an annoyance, and the public interest is irrelevant.

Chaos is Trump’s Game Plan

To understand how the medical science community should respond to Donald Trump, we must first understand Donald Trump. Only three things mattered to Trump in this election:

1. Staying out of prison.

2. Making money.

3. Wreaking revenge on anyone and everyone who challenged him.

RFK Jr. only mattered to Donald Trump for two reasons. First and foremost, because he could deliver votes to help make his three wishes come true. The promise of the HHS appointment seemed like the obvious quid pro quo from the moment Kennedy signed on with Trump. The other use for RFK Jr. is as ammunition for one of Trump’s key strategic weapons.

Reflect for a moment on Trump’s debate with Joe Biden. If Trump had simply told one lie, or even two, Biden might have been able to refute them and show Trump to be a liar. Trump told more than 30 lies and we all watched Biden’s mind turn to mush. Look at Trump’s nominees. From Gaetz to Hegseth to Gabbard to Musk, each one worse than the last. So many wildly bad nominees, that no one knows where to begin. The very intentional result is chaos, because chaos creates cover for him to grift and wreak revenge. And RFK Jr. is, above all, a chaos generator.

The Replacement Will Be No Better

In other words, the response of the scientific, medical, and public health communities to RFK’s nomination is exactly what Trump wants. When I say he only cared about three things in this election, I meant only. He doesn’t give a damn about the public or their health. What he cares about is that we are expending endless energy fighting RFK, when it will take him a matter of minutes to come up with a replacement. Think Ladapo. Or Rand Paul. Or any of the other lunatics that COVID brought out of the woodwork.

Meanwhile, the dismal choices for major agencies in HHS, such as Jay Bhattacharya or Marty Makary or Mehmet Oz may seem sane by comparison, but, with their knowledge of medicine, ability to appear credible, and greater understanding of the system, they could well do even more harm. And the reality is that the appointments Trump really cares about are those that allow him to project power. Think Justice, the FBI, the military, ICE, and the intelligence agencies.

He seems to understand that public outrage is finite. If he can get us to expend it reactively each time he triggers us, he wins. He controls the game, forcing us to be responsive rather than take the initiative and implement long term strategies.

The Long Game

To be clear, RFK is a horrible choice to run HHS. He has no understanding of science or of his own ignorance, but the time to oppose him was before the election when pointing out his lunacy could have helped prevent a Trump victory. Now we need to think strategically. There is a long game to be played. The scientific community needs to prepare for it and play to win.

Science is, at its core, a relentless, systematic, search for the truth. We are constantly seeking to measure reality, gather data, and find the version of the truth most consistent with those data. Trump and many of his appointees tend to reverse the process, identifying a version of the truth most consistent with their interests and/or prior beliefs and filtering data through that lens.

In Trump’s post truth world, scientists have a unique and critical role to play. As truth seekers by profession, over the next four years we must:

1. Work collaboratively to disseminate, weigh and assess the scientific evidence at a pace compatible with modern communication systems and social media,

2. Coordinate with science writers and communicators to share that evidence with the public in the most effective way possible, and

3. Collectively shine a bright light on the bad science that will inevitably emerge from this administration,

Not engaging in this way is already a political act, because it is a form of acquiescence to a profoundly anti-scientific administration. Scientists tend to avoid politics, but over the next four years that will be impossible. Trump has made pursuing the truth a radical act of political defiance.