ArcaMax

For anyone doubting whether America is ailing and headed for an unhealthy next four years, President Donald Trump's exquisitely characteristic blaming of a midair collision of an airplane and a helicopter over the Potomac River on the promotion of racial diversity should be a wake-up call. Unfortunately, it won't be; Americans decided fair and square that they were fine having a narcissistic con man run the country. As the Bible teaches, we reap what we sow.

Two weeks into another Trump presidency, what we are sowing is pretty chilling. We've got a Defense Secretary in command of our armed services with no qualifications and a demonstrable history of intoxication, an incoming Director of National Intelligence who has praised the felonious leaker of classified intelligence who has damaged our national security, and an FBI director-in-waiting who has published an enemies list of those who have crossed Trump and against whom he's pledged revenge.

But shucks: everything's fine.

Then there's Trump's selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, in charge of Americans' health care -- overseeing Medicare and Medicaid, the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. He'll be responsible for administering a $2 trillion budget. With a "T."

Kennedy describes himself as having been a longtime heroin addict. Asked about allegations of sexual assault, Kennedy allows that he has "so many skeletons in my closet." He once testified that he suffered memory problems because of "a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died," and that "I have cognitive problems, clearly. I have short term memory loss, and I have longer term memory loss that affects me."

Kennedy's cousin, Caroline Kennedy, sent a letter to the Senate detailing problems of a different variety. On the basis of a lifetime observing him, Caroline Kennedy said, she'd concluded that her cousin was a "predator," who exploited and manipulated others, relished doing so and was "addicted to attention and power." She wrote: "Siblings and cousins who Bobby encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death while Bobby has gone on to misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life."

Excellent choice.

Sen. Ron Wyden, ranking member of the Senate committee that held hearings on Kennedy's nomination, skipped over the predation part entirely in summarizing Kennedy's unfitness to be the federal government's guardian of our well-being. Thousands of pages of the nominee's past statements, Wyden said, "show that Mr. Kennedy has embraced conspiracy theories, quacks (and) charlatans, especially when it comes to the safety and efficacy of vaccines. He has made it his life's work to sow doubt and discourage parents from getting their kids lifesaving vaccines. It has been lucrative for him." As if being unhinged weren't enough to disqualify him from being HHS Secretary, Kennedy added mendacity to the litany of reasons. Despite years of publicly declaring vaccines dangerous and a sham, Kennedy told the Senate that he believed the opposite of what he had repeatedly said he believed. "I believe that vaccines play a critical role in health care," he testified. "All of my kids are vaccinated."

In Trump World, steamrolling-by-balderdash is considered a gift. Asked a few years ago what he would do if he could do things differently, he told a podcaster: "What I would do if I could go back in time, and I could avoid giving my children the vaccines that I gave them. I would do anything for that. I would pay anything to be able to do that." In 2021, when the COVID vaccine was already saving lives, Kennedy petitioned the government to block Americans from having access to it.

There's an old joke about two old friends in a restaurant in a faded resort. One says, "The food here is terrible." Her friend replies, "I know. And such small portions." They may as well have been talking about Bobby Kennedy Jr.

========

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment, he is a longtime columnist for the Boston Herald, writing on politics, national security, human rights and the Mideast.

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate Inc.