Littwin: Is Jared Polis crazy for praising RFK Jr. pick as health secretary?

It’s no secret that Jared Polis enjoys being unconventional, quirky and, on occasion, downright eccentric. 

He’s a Democratic governor who wants to get rid of the state income tax, for example. Who annually stops the state legislature from banning assault-style weapons, even though as a congressperson he voted for such a life-saving ban. A pro-vaxxer who nevertheless killed a bill that would have made it harder for parents to avoid school-mandated vaccines for their children — apparently believing more in a parent’s right to ignore science than a baby’s right not to get measles.

But now.

But now Polis has finally gone from idiosyncrasy to, well, something closer to insanity.

But now Polis has publicly announced his “excited” support for the anti-vaxxer and dead-bear-dumping, dead-whale-beheading gadfly (and worse) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Donald Trump’s thumb-in-the-eye pick as secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).

But now Polis — who just the day before his Kennedy endorsement had helped launch a national coalition of governors to defend democracy at the state level from Trumpian authoritarianism — has become, as far as I can tell, the lone Democrat of any standing to endorse Kennedy.

The only explanation I can think of is that the parasitic worm RFK Jr. says ate part of his brain has somehow ended up inside Polis’ skull.

I mean, Polis announced the pro-democracy coalition along with Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker. It may be no coincidence that both have been mentioned as possible presidential contenders in 2028.

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And yet, how many political consultants do you think just scratched Polis’ name from their list of potential clients? Kennedy, who ran for president this year first as a Democrat and then as an independent before dropping out to support Trump, is not just a pariah to much of the Democratic Party, but also a political outcast in his own famously Democratic family.

As you might have noticed, Kennedy’s appointment is in line with Trump’s Make America Gape Again picks for high office, including ethics-challenged Matt Gaetz as attorney general, Putin-apologist Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, gazillionaire Elon Musk as the incoming president’s BFF.

This is not you father’s, or anyone’s father’s, cabinet. It’s the cabinet as clown car, the cabinet as Onion article, the cabinet as cold open for a Saturday Night Live episode.

To summarize: Gaetz might be the worst cabinet pick of all time. If Gabbard isn’t a Russian asset — and let’s not really go there — she is at least a Russian dupe. Hegseth hates woke generals and loves war criminals. And Kennedy, the anti-science guy, has spent years falsely linking childhood vaccines to autism and declaring COVID vaccines to be “the most deadly vaccines ever made,” while advocating for the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine in treating the disease. 

We expect the weirdest and the worst from Trump, who, in making these appointments, is daring his Republican enablers in the Senate to defy him. As you may have heard, Trump is demanding that the Senate simply adjourn so he can appoint his basket of deplorables without any, you know, hearings or a vote or whatever other advise-and-consent constitutional responsibilities GOP senators claim to believe in.

This isn’t just an expected MAGA exercise in owning the libs. This is an exercise in humiliating what’s left of the Republican establishment.

OK, Trump’s picks, however toxic, can’t be a surprise. This is what many of us said an unleashed Trump would look like.

But Polis endorsing Kennedy? What could he possibly be thinking? As of Friday afternoon, Polis’ approving tweet had 8.5 million views and I don’t know how many complaints from Colorado Democrats.

It was just a few months ago that Polis ripped Kennedy’s support for Trump and a tweet announcing that Kennedy wanted to make America healthy again. Polis tweeted, “Not sure how bringing back Measles and bringing back Polio makes anyone more healthy…”

Many state Democrats and health experts are now wondering if Polis has, I don’t know, lost his marbles. When 9News asked the governor’s office how Polis reconciles his support for Kennedy today with his anti-Kennedy tweet during the summer, it got a reply saying that Polis was, of course, concerned by many of Kennedy’s stances and that he opposes “unscientific propaganda that undermines confidence in the lifesaving impact of vaccines.”

And yet, Kennedy is probably the nation’s foremost underminer of confidence in vaccines and now, if as Polis hopes, he’s the new HHS secretary, Kennedy would be doing the undermining with the imprimatur of the president’s office and presumably a majority of the Senate. 

In fairness to Polis — not that he deserves too much fairness here — the governor said his excitement was due, in large part, to Kennedy’s advocacy for lowering the price that Americans pay for drugs to at least the same levels that many Europeans are paying, to Kennedy’s opposition to the questionable acts of the FDA’s nutrition department, which is controlled by what Polis calls the “corporate ag oligopoly,” to Kennedy’s concerns about the use of pesticides.

I would agree with Polis’ points here, especially on Big Pharma and Big Ag. But let’s think how they compare to the damage that Kennedy could do as the nation’s health secretary.

On Friday, the Washington Post published a helpful list of 10 conspiracy theories and unscientific mumbo jumbo Kennedy embraces, including his charge that antidepressants are linked to mass shootings, that COVID-19 was “ethnically targeted” to avoid infecting Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews, that chemicals in the water are changing children’s gender identity, that HIV and AIDS might not be connected, and on and on.

When a backlash to Polis’ support for Kennedy began, Polis sent another tweet, saying, in part, that science “must remain THE cornerstone of our nation’s health policy and the science-backed decision to get vaccinated improves public health and safety.”

Polis went on to say that he and his family have been vaccinated, but that we should also be concerned about things like promoting healthy food choices and lowering the high cost of drugs.

Yes, we should be concerned about those things.

But maybe we should be even more concerned that our state’s chief executive thinks it’s appropriate to celebrate the choice of a dangerous anti-vaxxer and serial propagator of deranged conspiracy theories to be the guardian of our nation’s health.

Like the governor, I’m no health expert. But  it doesn’t take one to diagnose anyone supporting Kennedy for this role.

You’ve got to be — and I hope this isn’t too jargony — more than a little nuts. 

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

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