Duty to Report on Trump & Kennedy to Protect the Health of the United States
The physical and mental health of any nation depends on the trust of its people in the institutions created to protect them. It depends on the quality of the officials who lead and staff these institutions. It depends on the rigor and experience of its researchers, technicians, and healthcare professionals.
Like the world’s greatest symphony orchestras or big-league sports teams, it depends on the conductor or coach who is tasked with taking all of its constituent parts and transforming them into a smoothly functioning and effective unit. This conductor/coach position, by analogy, represents the job description of any US cabinet Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
In terms of the nation’s health, this falls squarely on the individual’s background, professionalism, knowledge, and ability to run a $1.7 trillion department that oversees several agencies, which conduct medical research and make informed recommendations including on vaccines. In addition, HHS is in charge of providing food inspections, hospital oversight, and funding hundreds of community health centers. HHS also runs the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Trump has placed the name of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS. His past statements and actions in the area of health policy have made him a very controversial nominee related to stands where he considered the dangers of vaccines to wipe out several infectious diseases such as polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, and others. He has questioned whether HIV actually is responsible for AIDS.
In addition, Kennedy spread misinformation about vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic including claims that Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were endeavoring to profit from a COVID-19 vaccine.
Also, RFK Jr. circulated groundless arguments about a supposed link between school shootings and antidepressants, which have been disproved in countless studies.
In legal terms, a “duty to report” is a responsibility to report suspected or known abuse or neglect. Though laws are different in each state, some professionals are required to report. But one does not have to be a professional, like a teacher or social worker, to act.
In a scalding video letter released one day before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was to testify at his Senate confirmation hearing, Caroline Kennedy warned senators about her cousin, calling him a “predator.”
Caroline Kennedy – a former US ambassador to both Australia and Japan and the last living child of former President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s uncle – called the role “an enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill,” she said in a true Profile in Courage.
Caroline Kennedy stated that she feels “an obligation to speak out” since her cousin has been nominated for “a position that would put him in charge of the health of the American people.”
“I have known Bobby my whole life; we grew up together,” she said. “It’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator.”
She continued by asserting that she watched family members follow her cousin “down the path of drug addiction,” and shared disturbing details of his alleged behavior with animals.
“His basement, his garage, and his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence,” she said.
She also accused Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of being “addicted to attention and power,” and said he “preys on the desperation of parents of sick children – vaccinating his own children while building a following by hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.”
Caroline Kennedy argued that Bobby is “[continuing] to grandstand off my father’s assassination, and that of his own father,” saying former President Kennedy “would be disgusted” by his actions.
“The American health care system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world,” Caroline Kennedy wrote. “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 better than Bobby Kennedy – and so do the rest of us. I urge the Senate to reject his nomination,” she concluded.
In addition to Carolyn Kennedy’s important testimony, more than 15,000 doctors signed a letter urging senators to vote against confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“The health and well-being of 336 million Americans depend on leadership at HHS that prioritizes science, evidence-based medicine, and strengthening the integrity of our public health system,” the letter reads. “RFK Jr. is not only unqualified to lead this essential agency — he is actively dangerous.”
The letter was posted online by the Committee to Protect Health Care, a physicians advocacy group.
“This appointment is a slap in the face to every health care professional who has spent their lives working to protect patients from preventable illness and death,” the letter said.
What About Those Who Hire the Conductor/Coach?
Similar to the conductor/coach analogy, we have to look into the expertise of the committee, board, or individual who is in charge of hiring.
While running for president in 2024, Donald Trump threatened to withdraw the United States from membership in the United Nations’ World Health Organization, which he did on day one of his administration just as Bird Flu has broken out across the US killing millions of birds and infecting other animals including several humans.
He also froze most disease research funding. Trump initially stopped funding PEPFAR — a US government program that funds global efforts to fight HIV/AIDS launched in 2003 by President George W. Bush, but Trump walked his ban back due to intense pushback.
A distinguished group of leading mental health clinicians, researchers, and practitioners originally broke the glass and pulled the alarm in what they considered was their duty to report the clear and present dangers to the body politic posed by the personality disorders of Donald J. Trump two years into his presidency.
The group published a book titled The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President about the dangers posed and enacted by this President. Instead of retaining extreme power, Trump requires care and treatment so that he no longer poses so much danger to himself and the world, they concluded.
Throughout this crisis, Donald Trump blamed others for the initial outbreak in his use of the term “Chinese Virus,” and its rapid spread across the United States. RFK Jr. continued and expanded racist tropes by claimed that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jews and Chinese people.
In a recorded interview with legendary journalist Bob Woodward, Trump admitted that he knew by February 2020 that COVID-19 was “deadly stuff,” but he said that he wanted to “play it down.”
“Now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob,” admitted Trump to Woodward, who printed this in his book Rage. “I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down because I don’t want to create a panic,” Trump said in a March 19, 2020, call with Woodward.
“We have to show calm,” he said. “Certainly, I’m not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We have to show strength.”
Unfortunately, “strength” to Trump was hiding the degree of danger this virus posed to the public behind his toxic masculine veneer.
We all remember his absurd suggestions for so-called COVID-19 cures, such as injecting disinfectants like bleach into one’s veins, exposing the virus within the body to ultraviolet light, or taking medicines designed to clear worms from animals, especially hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine.
Results of a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health discovered that “Trump made 11 tweets about unproven therapies [for COVID-19] and mentioned these therapies 65 times in White House briefings,” the report stated.
These announcements increased exponentially on conservative media like Fox News, and they were widely requested through clicks on the internet.
The study concluded:
“Individuals in positions of power can sway public purchasing, resulting in undesired effects when the individuals’ claims are unverified. Public health officials must work to dissuade the use of unproven treatments for COVID-19.”
During the incredible unprecedented year of 2020 into 2021, we reached a massive loss of over one million souls to a novel virus initially under a national government unwilling and unable to mobilize a defensive strategy, and as millions of our residents remained obstinate and hostile in their unwillingness to take preventative actions.
Because of unqualified, inept, and yes, uncaring lack of leadership by Donald Trump, the symphony orchestra performed out of tune and out of tempo and the sports team suffered a massive loss due to dozens of fumbles and incompletions.
We cannot allow Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to determine and control the nation’s health policies and to run its health agencies. We must find creative ways to protect the body politic in protecting the bodies and minds of our people.