Why are we at a point where the idea of appointing someone to head the CDC who supports vaccines is newsworthy?
If that was true, RFK Jr would join Bondi and Noem in being fired.
Many Americans mistrust what they see as the medical establishment and are aligned with MAHA. Trump cannot afford to alienate them. But it is hard to find people crazy enough to please the MAHA base and who can still get confirmed for jobs that traditionally require being a physician, as is the case with the CDC Director.
This is why a Schwartz confirmation followed by her being fired, months later, for failure to follow some RFK Jr. order seems to me the most likely scenario. Then RFK Jr can put in someone more MAHA, without senate confirmation, as yet another 210 day acting leader.
P.S. Here’s what normie medicine is up against:
She probably won’t be fired until after the mid-terms. Trump or someone in his circle has gotten the idea that RFK Junior’s ravings are a liability with sane voters. Reassuring MAHAnians will come in some other form, for now.
"RFK Jr. is taking heat for calling for black children to be “re-parented”.
Just when I thought I couldn’t be more repulsed by this asshole. When we finally start the American Nuremburg trials, he is #2 defendant in my listing, just behind Trump and tied with Hegseth.
I think this is a very unfair criticism of RFK Jr. I don’t think he’s racist, he just phrased his statement poorly. I think what he really meant to say is that ALL children whose parents have them treated for ADD or depression have to be taken from their homes and put in MAGA re-education camps. So that’s not as bad, right? ////////s
I want to reply to this but I’m having a hard time defining sane. If we are talking psychotic, I think those folks have low voter turnout.
I cannot prove it, but Kennedy Jr. is a net positive for an unpopular administration. Here a tea leaf:
In the latest mainstream survey I can find (Pew Research, February 2026), RFK Jr is significantly less unpopular (-4%) compared to other well-known Trump administration figures (Trump -18%, Hegseth -15%, Vance -14%, Rubio -10%).
What’s not captured in the polls: Hardly anyone is going to vote Republican because of Rubio and Hegseth. A more substantial number are going to vote Republican because they like MAHA and Kennedy more than they dislike the administration military/foreign policy team.
As for Erica Schwartz, Trump believes in periodically dashing and then raising up the hopes of fervent supporters. The Schwartz nomination is one of the dashings.
It happened more in Trump 45, but Trump 47 still sometimes brings into his administration an easily confirmable appointee like Schwartz. Maybe she will, like Rubio, turn out to be team player. If so, the MAHA crowd will accept her. If not, he’ll let RFK Jr discard her.
We’re at a point where the president appointing anyone qualified for the position they’re being nominated for is newsworthy.
To be fair, drug companies do actually conspire to make money at people’s expense, and even if the FDA isn’t totally complicit, they have dropped the ball in the recent past, so I can understand how people might be skeptical.
And let’s be honest, how unlikely would the idea be that the FDA, under Trump, might be involved in shenanigans with drug companies? Maybe not to the extent of deliberately hiding a cure for cancer, but in other (smaller) ways that enrich the POTUS and his cronies?
Which is yet another danger of politicizing public health, the way Trump and RFK Jr have. People on both sides lose faith.
Sure, there are very real problems with the development and marketing of new drugs being done by for-profit companies. But you’d have to have a total unawareness of how science actually works to think it would be possible to completely cover up the existence of a major medical breakthrough. It’s…well, it’s about as stupid as claiming that thousands of local Democratic election officials conspired to steal the 2020 election, without even one of them snitching and without leaving any evidence whatsoever.
True skepticism involves a demand for evidence to back up claims.
What we get from MAHAians and their crank influencers is not skepticism, but a one-sided conspiracy mindset that exempts the people and corporations who sell them bogus supplements and repurposed pharma drugs like ivermectin and other antiparasitics, which are ineffective/unproven for the conditions they’re touted for.
Anyone who thinks They are suppressing cancer cures is an utter moron who hasn’t comprehended that “They” comprise millions of researchers, physicians, pharma execs etc. who are just as susceptible to cancer as the general public, and who have millions more family members and relatives they’d like to save from cancer in addition to saving themselves.*
*all except for me and a secret cadre of shills, of course. The millions that Pharma delivers to our homes in giant sacks every month is ample incentive to denigrate and cover up “natural” cures, regardless of the impact on our health.
Agreed. It’s a big leap to get there from what has actually happened. But it’s easy to see how people make that leap. And I still say that someone like RFK Jr makes it so much worse.