RFK Jr. is a grifter and a crank.  Unfortunately, Sens. Sanders and Fetterman are apparently open to supporting him for HHS Secretary.  Many will die if he is empowered to put his malevolent ideology into practice.  He must be stopped.  It would be depraved indifference for them to vote to confirm.

RFK Jr. has apologists beyond Sanders and Fetterman.  Give them no quarter.  From Dr. Benjamin Mazer, The Sanewashing of RFK Jr.:

Let’s be clear: Many scientists consider Kennedy to be a fool, and a ludicrous pick to run HHS, because the evidence supports that assessment. [Former Baltimore Public Health Commission and former Planned Parenthood President Leana] Wen nods to this in passing—Kennedy has a “long history of antiscience propagandism,” she writes—but otherwise she’s focused on the nitty-gritty of one particular public-health debate. So allow me to fill in some gaps: According to his 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, RFK Jr. believes that Fauci and Gates are members of a “vaccine cartel” trying to kill patients by denying them hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. He argues that this cartel secretly funded doctors to produce fraudulent studies showing that the drugs were ineffective against COVID—and that it did so in order to orchestrate global lockdowns and accelerate the construction of 5G cellular networks, which, in Kennedy’s understanding, are very, very bad.

From Gabriel Schoenfeld, Before Crackpot RFKism There Was Crackpot Lysenkoism:

Rather than oppose Donald Trump’s dangerous nominee for secretary of health and human services, some liberal commentators have suggested that the critics of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should find ways to accommodate him.

Writing in the New York Times in November, physician Rachael Bedard argued for finding “common ground” with the anti-vaccine ideologue. “We can’t spend four years simply fighting his agenda,” she wrote. Instead, RFK Jr.’s critics should try to “turn his most valid criticisms of the American health care system into constructive reforms.” In a follow-up interview this week, Bedard insists she isn’t “sane-washing” RFK Jr., she just wants to be realistic about recognizing “that he has a growing movement of people behind him, who aren’t just going to go away because we yell at them.”

Meanwhile, Adam Jentleson, a former Democratic congressional staffer—he held prominent jobs under Sens. John Fetterman and Harry Reid—has called for an effort to get RFK Jr. to “bless the next wave of vaccines.” How Jentleson thinks the notorious antivaxxer might be persuaded to perform an about-face is left unstated.

You can hear more from Bedard here.  She’s a thoughtful physician.  Unfortunately, her politics make her a useful idiot for Trump and RFK Jr.  Trump and his people are not acting in good faith.  There is nothing that will appease them and no evidence will convince them to change their views.  It is pathological to engage them.

Schoenfeld continues:

[The Soviet Union’s] history of massive state-sponsored scientific fraud is pertinent to Trump’s attempt to install Kennedy to the highest-ranking healthcare position in the U.S. government. The secretary of health and human services has oversight of everything from food safety to medical research to private health insurance to epidemiology to Medicare and Medicaid and much, much more.

Like Lysenko, RFK Jr. has departed from science even as he claims its mantle. He is a proponent of consuming raw milk despite the proven safety benefits of pasteurization (just last month raw milk in California was found to contain bird flu). He opposes the fluoridation of water despite the proven benefits to dental health. But it is for his opposition to vaccines—and his lies about them—that he is most notorious and most dangerous….

Kennedy’s position atop HHS would put him in charge of the Vaccines for Children program. It has saved millions of lives by immunizing children against diseases like polio and measles that, thanks to the vaccines, are now rare. He would also oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has as one of its most important roles deciding which vaccines health insurers are required to cover….

On social media, Kennedy has called COVID shots “a crime against humanity.” Estimates are that COVID vaccines have prevented 3.2 million deaths in the United States alone through 2022.

A person with no medical or scientific training, RFK Jr. is evidently unaware that vaccines are one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. Smallpox, the deadliest disease in human history, has been wiped from the face of the earth. Polio, a scourge that terrified generations of Americans and struck down an American president, has been largely consigned to the dustbin of history, at least in the developed world. Rabies, an invariably fatal disease, is preventable by vaccination (does RFK Jr. want to stop vaccinating Fido as well?).

There are very legitimate criticisms of our healthcare system, Big Pharma, and our food system.  RFK Jr. is not offering criticism in the interest of encouraging a better path forward.  He is sowing fear and mistrust that will get many people killed.  Everyone in a position to prevent him from becoming HHS Secretary needs to fight his nomination tooth and nail.  Call your Senator and tell them to vote “No.” on his nomination.