Trump selects people based on their preparedness to do his will whether they’re in his cabinet, staff or key Federal positions.  Good looks also play a large part in this – think Kristi Noem, Karoline Leavitt, Pam Bondi and, most recently, Lindsey Halligan.  Competence is not a key requirement, in fact, it is not a requirement at all.  Witness the case of Halligan who was appointed to the high position of interim US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia but has no prosecutorial experience – nil, zero, nada, zilch.  At least she can do no damage.  She can only irk Trump’s perceived enemies by executing his retributive legal attacks.  Other credentials for appointment to high office is to have been employed at His Master’s Voice, Faux News, where they graduate in the art of arse kissing – 23 so far this year.

Trump was elected by choosing hot button issues for the conservative Americans and inflaming the hell out of them with his freewheeling and fact-free style to the point that each group with a grievance was prepared to overlook his personal factory defects and the other issues that they didn’t believe in.  Pursuing this strategy, he surpassed himself by appointing a person who is unqualified in a job that affects the lives of every American, is a conspiracy theorist and, to top it all, a clown – Robert F Kennedy, or RFK, of the Kennedy political dynasty. 

RFK copied Trump’s signature MAGA movement with the slogan of MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) when he was appointed Health Secretary.  This is a man who claimed he had a parasitic worm that ate part of his brain and then died – probably of indigestion.  He loves eating roadkill and has swum in water known to be contaminated with sewerage.  Like Halligan, his credentials for the job could be listed on a fridge magnet – none.  However, he did bring along all the medical conspiracy kooks into Trump’s camp.  Although he vaccinated his own children, he has since changed his stance.  Even before Covid and the mRNA-based vaccines came along, he bought into the concept that the MMR (mumps, measles and rubella) vaccine causes autism.  That whole movement was based on a statistically insignificant study that has been comprehensively debunked.  As Health Secretary, he has had to backtrack on his opinions and has weaseled out by saying that the state should not be telling people what to do.  He is not even prepared to state that it is recommended to vaccinate. 

Ever since Louis Pasteur discovered the principles of vaccination in the 1860s, it has been the most successful medical intervention ever developed.  Only the discovery of penicillin comes close.  Gone are the scourges of smallpox which wiped out swathes of people particularly in parts of the ‘new world’ when the Europeans introduced their culture with a side order of smallpox  Gone too is polio which saw rows of children in wards filled with iron lung machines and people, like my father with a withered leg, or rubella which can cause blindness and deafness in foetuses.  Pasteur’s other great contribution to society’s health was the discovery of germs and how pasteurisation of milk can eliminate the many possible infections caused by drinking untreated milk.  RFK is passionate about this too.

Having started worrying about vaccination and autism, his latest mission is to find the causes of autism.  This has been studied for years without any answers yet he reckons he can nail it down in a few months.  Pressure from Trump, obviously desperate to deflect from a reputation infected by the Epstein virus, led to premature ejaculation by RFK.  In a hard-on press briefing on 22 September, he announced that his study group had found a link between acetaminophen (paracetamol) and autism.  Trump in a stable genius moment doubled down and then repeatedly directed pregnant women not to take Tylenol (because he couldn’t pronounce the chemical name) which could make him liable to a law suit.  In the latest televised cabinet meeting on 10 October, RFK contradicted his premature ejaculation without an apology about the mess he created and said, “It is not proof.  We’re doing studies to make proof.”