Littwin: Now that we know RFK Jr.’s top aide asked FDA to ban polio vaccine, isn’t it time for Polis to admit his mistake?

I keep waiting for Jared Polis to admit that he made a mistake — a rather large one — when enthusiastically (or any other way) endorsing Robert Kennedy Jr. as Health secretary.

And maybe apologizing for his, uh, poor judgment.

Well, this just in: It seems Polis is not revoking his endorsement. He’s definitely not apologizing. But, it turns out, he says he is very much against polio returning, which is your basic non-response response.

I wasn’t going to write about this today, but maybe you saw the New York Times story Friday that RFK Jr.’s lawyer and top adviser, Aaron Siri, had petitioned the FDA a few years ago to revoke its approval of — wait for it — the polio vaccine.

No, seriously. He wants the FDA to ban what is considered one of the great lifesaving achievements in history. And now he’s helping Kennedy pick federal health officials while asking candidates their views on vaccines. 

If you’re too young to understand how devastating polio was before the vaccine and how different, for the better, the world is with the vaccine, here’s a brief primer for you. If you don’t know anything about the vaccine except needing to take a series of shots, please read it. It may save lives. The vaccine has saved millions of them.

I’m sure that Polis knows about polio and about the remarkable success of vaccines in nearly eradicating the disease, which now threatens to make a comeback. He tweeted about it at the end of  RFK Jr.’s abortive run for president and his stomach-turning endorsement of Trump. Polis wrote that he didn’t know how bringing back measles and polio — as RFK Jr.’s anti-vaccine positions might well do — would make anyone healthier.

Want early access to
Mike’s columns?

Subscribe to get an
exclusive first look at
his columns twice a week.

SUBSCRIBE

I asked Polis’ press office to see if he had, in fact, done some soul searching on the subject. Polis has admitted that RFK Jr.’s anti-vax craziness — including his belief that childhood vaccines cause autism — is pretty crazy. But libertarian that he is, Polis praised Trump’s choice for Health secretary for his objection to vaccine mandates. He also praised RFK Jr.’s plan to take on Big Ag and Big Pharma, but at what cost?  

I reached out to the governor, and a Polis spokesperson sent this reply: “The governor still doesn’t want polio to return and would strongly oppose any efforts to limit the availability or use of the highly effective polio vaccine.”

No mention of an endorsement change. Or a concern that Kennedy has gone even further off the rails. Not even after hearing more details about Kennedy’s contributions to a deadly Samoan measles outbreak, for which Kennedy told Samoa’s prime minister that the vaccines were probably to blame. Meaning Polis apparently just doesn’t mind that Kennedy is neck deep in misinformation, including the kind that eventually led to 80 deaths.

Don’t leading Democrats, like Polis, need to make the horror stories about Kennedy and other Trump would-be cabinet nominees an every-day conversation? Instead, according to Kyle Clark on 9News, it appears that what Polis wants is for Elon Musk to listen to his ideas on trimming the government. He’s got ideas. You might have seen the ideas in his latest photo-op, taking a table saw to outdated executive orders.

Is Polis just trying to make inroads with the Trump administration? Wouldn’t count on that working.

As you might have heard, Trump has been named Time’s Person of the Year — do you hear one hand clapping? — but, of course, so were Vladimir Putin and many other loathsome tyrants before him, including a guy named Hitler.

When asked in the accompanying Time interview about vaccines, Trump said he would consider Kennedy’s recommendations, conceding he might ban some vaccines if he thought they were “dangerous.” He added: “I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end.”

Whatever happens, I’d bet on controversy. Big-time controversy. Trump loves big-time controversy. In a “Meet the Press” interview, he said thought members of the House January 6 committee should be imprisoned. You think that would be controversial in the end?

I don’t expect anything different from Trump. I did expect something much different from Polis, who must know that it is long past time to revoke his endorsement of RFK Jr.

It just doesn’t seem that Polis, a politician after all, will ever summon the nerve to say he made a mistake.

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.

The Colorado Sun is a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinions of columnists and editorial writers do not reflect the opinions of the newsroom. Read our ethics policy for more on The Sun’s opinion policy. Learn how to submit a column. Reach the opinion editor at opinion@coloradosun.com.

Follow Colorado Sun Opinion on Facebook.