RFK Jr., American Psycho | The Nation

Who knows you better than the family you grew up with?

You might not remember the letter Caroline Kennedy wrote to the US Senate in January about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—or “Bobby,” as she called him. But it was vitally important then, and it remains so now—because she was speaking not as a political actor but as RFK Jr.’s cousin, someone she grew up with and has known all her life.

Here’s Caroline Kennedy’s stark conclusion:

The American healthcare system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world. Its doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists, and caregivers are the most dedicated people I know. Every day, they give their lives to heal and save others. They deserve a knowledgeable leader who is committed to evidence and excellence. They deserve a Secretary committed to advancing cutting-edge medicine to save lives, not rejecting the advances we have already made. They deserve a stable, moral, and ethical person at the helm of this crucial agency. They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy—and so do the rest of us.

Earlier in her letter, Kennedy said, “I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together. It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets, because he himself is a predator.” These words are shocking; all the more so because this is one family member rendering this judgment about another family member. Imagine what it would take to talk like this, so publicly, about someone you have known forever.

We can’t say we weren’t warned—and the truth of Caroline Kennedy’s words rings louder with each passing day.

Last week at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we saw this predator in action.

Over the past few months, RFK Jr. has brought the internationally renowned agency to its knees. He has proposed cutting the agency’s budget by close to 50 percent, destroyed programs responsible for monitoring maternal health and lead poisoning of children in the US at CDC, disbanded the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics and the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice within the National Center for Environmental Health, which is meant to keep our water safe to drink and address environmental causes of childhood asthma. In an article in April, reporters at Wired documented the thousands of CDC employees who had been laid off, endangering these programs and others serving millions of Americans.

But all of this was a mere prologue to the Wednesday Night Massacre at CDC last week, in which RFK Jr. tried to fire the new CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez, whom he had selected to run the agency and had just been confirmed by the Senate earlier this summer.

The precipitating events here concern vaccines. Kennedy has been waging a full-scale campaign to destroy vaccination in the United States. Many who follow these issues will know about his purge of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and the installation of his cronies to take over the key body; the unilateral decision by RFK and his puppets, FDA’s Marty Makary and NIH’s Jay Bhattacharya, to yank Covid vaccines from children and pregnant women; and his cancellation of research on mRNA vaccines (including those targeted at preventing cancer).

But when Kennedy told CDC director Monarez she had to rubber-stamp the recommendations coming out of the upcoming September ACIP meeting—which would likely restrict access to Covid vaccines and subject a host of other important vaccines to the scrutiny of his new handpicked committee of incompetents and ideologues, as well as fire senior CDC staff with responsibility over vaccines—she said no. She also called Senate majority leader John Thune and Senators Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Shelley Moore Capito to enlist their support.

This set in motion her dismissal by RFK Jr. However, Monarez rejected his authority to do this and hired two of the biggest lawyers in DC to fight for her. Many outside of CDC didn’t and don’t know Monarez, but in this moment, she has shown more courage and guts than anyone in the Trump administration to date.