Littwin: Polis has tripled down on enthusiasm for RFK Jr. as HHS secretary for reasons that remain, well, unclear

I know I just wrote a column about Jared Polis and his dangerous endorsement of Robert Kennedy Jr. — the nation’s most prominent anti-vaxxer and also a prominent conspiracy theorist, not to mention an infamous dead-bear dumper — as secretary of Health and Human Services.

But since my column — and I’m not taking this personally — Polis has tripled down on his support for Kennedy.

I’m not sure if this is naïveté, stubbornness, willful ignorance — I mean, all the other cool kids think a Kennedy appointment would be a disaster — or, most likely, a belief that this would somehow help him politically.

But whatever Polis’ reasoning, I get angrier every time I think about it.

Ezra Klein’s post-endorsement New York Times column on Polis — which started out to be a look at why Colorado stayed so blue in the presidential race and what role Polis might have played in that — ended up with this headline: “Jared Polis Wants to Win Back the Hippies.”

That isn’t quite right. I don’t think hippies play a huge role in Colorado politics, and whatever crunchy role they do play, it probably isn’t in praising Polis for supporting an unqualified kook to — in Trump’s words — “go wild” as the head of HHS. And besides, what Polis wants to be is president, and I’m not sure the hippie vote would put him over the top.

Politically, as well as medically, this seems like a large blunder for Polis. Democrats are furious. And I doubt he thinks this would win him any MAGA votes, particularly in a Democratic primary for one job or another. You’d think he’d stop talking about it, but he’s out there praising Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, for saying he would have an “open mind” on Kennedy’s nomination.

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There are a few questions I’d like to see Polis answer, starting with: Why does he think Trump is nominating Kennedy?

How does he think the Kennedy nomination is any different, in Trump’s view, from his other finger-in-the-eye nominations like Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth? Polis must realize that Trump isn’t looking to make anyone more healthy or government any better with these picks. These are all anti-government, anti-institution, anti-security, anti-science, pro-retribution selections — made, in large part, to force the Republican Senate to bend to his will.

And Polis is “excited” about that?

Is Polis, the self-described balding gay Jew, really excited to support someone who thinks chemicals in the water make kids gay or who thinks that the COVID virus was engineered to spare Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews?

More importantly, does Polis really think Trump wants to go after Big Pharma and Big Ag — two big financial supporters of Trump and of the GOP?

Does he really think Trump wants the FDA to put the brakes on Big Pharma? Did he not see where Vivek Ramaswamy, who along with Elon Musk has been appointed official Trump whisperer, has tweeted that his problem with the FDA is that it erects too many barriers to, uh, innovation. It’s not a coincidence that Ramaswamy made his money as a biotech investor.

I wonder if Polis saw the tweet from Donald Trump Jr., showing a group of Trumpists, including Kennedy and the Big Orange One himself, eating a Big Mac and fries on the Trump plane. I’d guess this was Trump hazing Kennedy, who didn’t seem happy posing with his happy meal, as a newbie Trumpist. Trump Jr. wrote: “Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW.”

Funny? Of course, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) is the Kennedy slogan. And, of course, putting a leading anti-vaxxer in charge of the nation’s health is not exactly the best way to make America anything but sicker again.

In fairness, Polis does agree that Kennedy has some wacky theories and is plain wrong on many of his more bizarre beliefs — including that childhood vaccines cause autism or that the COVID vaccine is the deadliest vaccine ever made or that fluoridation is unhealthy — but apparently he doesn’t worry that Kennedy would bring his fringe ideas into the mainstream.

What does he think would happen if RFK Jr. does get the job?

The first thing we’d see is HHS experts in medical care quitting in large numbers and the second thing would be Kennedy appointing anti-science, pro-conspiracy people to take their place. 

Kennedy has already said he wouldn’t do away with vaccines, but that he would “make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them.”

In other words, he would pick which studies to share with the public. 

In other words, he would discourage the use of COVID vaccines, which an overwhelming majority of Americans already no longer take.

In other words, he would discourage any school mandate on childhood MMR and DTaP vaccines, which are already dangerously low. For those vaccines to reach herd immunity, they require 95% compliance. They’re both already under that mark and falling. Of course, the libertarian-minded Polis has already made clear his opposition to vaccine mandates.

In other words, while Kennedy says he wouldn’t take vaccines off the market, he could very well slow down, or even stop in some cases, new vaccines from being approved.

In other words, he could add to the growing skepticism about vaccines, which might be an existential issue come the next pandemic. Which might lead, as Polis tweeted last summer, to a measles or polio outbreak. 

Polis says he is excited about Kennedy because of his stances for healthier food standards and against pesticides and for lowering, and in some cases capping, drug prices.

I don’t know if Kennedy would be able to do any of those things that might, in fact, improve the health of Americans.

But I fear what he might do. And I don’t understand how Polis wouldn’t fear that, too. Any thinking person would.

A video was recently uncovered showing Kennedy, in a 2020 speech in Germany, saying that he was open to the idea of the conspiracy theory that the pandemic was a “plandemic,” meaning that the U.S. government planned the COVID pandemic that killed more than a million Americans. 

And, he went on to say, that the effort to combat the pandemic was “a pharmaceutical-driven, bio-security agenda that will enslave the entire human race and plunge us into a dystopian nightmare.”

That’s Polis’ guy. And I’m not excited about it at all. 

Just plain dumbfounded.

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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