Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general under President Donald Trump during his first administration, went on “Face the Nation” to say what everyone is thinking: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. could not have bungled the response to Friday’s shootings at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worse if he had tried.
Adams slammed Kennedy for taking “over 18 hours to issue a tepid response to these horrific shootings,” which were carried out by an anti-vaccine conspiracist who opened fire on four buildings, killing a police officer and injuring another. All Kennedy could muster Friday night in the aftermath of the attack was to repost a social media statement from CDC Director Susan Monarez. On Saturday morning, Kennedy decided that his first order of business should be hopping over to his personal X account to post pictures of his fishing trip. Only after that did he post a mealy-mouthed, vague statement on his official X account.
A bullet hole is visible in the door of a CVS pharmacy on Saturday, near where police say a man was shooting at the headquarters Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Whether it was because Adams’ comments hit the news or because the CDC’s union called for “a clear and unequivocal stance in condemning vaccine disinformation,” an agency spokesperson finally came forward on Monday—not to condemn anti-vaccine lies, but instead just say that Kennedy “unequivocally condemned the horrific attack” and that he was “fully committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of CDC employees.”
Apparently, what that means in practice is HHS’s official X account giving CDC workers information on how to call 988, the suicide and crisis hotline. Big help there. However, they’d better not be experiencing too much of a crisis, because the workers aren’t being given any time off.
The HHS spokesperson went on to acknowledge the sacrifice of Officer David Rose, who died trying to protect CDC workers, thereby doing more to help workers with that one sacrifice than Kennedy has done since taking the reins at HHS. But of course, the Trump administration can never acknowledge the harm of the violence it engenders. No, it must be the fault of the people calling out the violence:
“Officer Rose’s sacrifice to protect the CDC on its darkest day will never be forgotten,” the statement read. “This is a time to stand in solidarity with our public health workforce, not a moment for the media to exploit a tragedy for political gain.”
Yeah, nothing says “stand in solidarity with our public health workforce” like “installing a gibbering anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist with no medical background to oversee the nation’s public health agency.” On Sunday, Adams didn’t mince words about Kennedy’s role in all of this, saying that “his inflammatory rhetoric in the past has actually contributed to a lot of what’s been going on.”
It’s precisely that rhetoric that makes it impossible for Kennedy to genuinely condemn the shooter. After decades of anti-vaccine conspiracy theorizing, Kennedy hit his stride during the COVID-19 pandemic, making bank writing anti-vax books and whipping his fellow anti-vaxxers into a frenzy. He said it was “criminal malpractice” to give children the COVID-19 shot and promoted the claim that the government was secretly experimenting on Black people.
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Not that you ever have to hand it to Kennedy, but at least he managed to issue an official response and mention Rose, the police officer who was killed protecting the CDC workers. As of Monday, there was no official statement on the White House’s website. There’s no statement from Trump over at Truth Social. There’s no cry for vengeance that a police officer was murdered, despite all the back-the-blue rhetoric Trump loves to spew. All of this is a far cry from “strengthening and unleashing law enforcement” like Trump promised. Instead, he has reassigned FBI agents to investigate minor traffic accidents in Washington, D.C.
Ultimately, the shooting highlights just how bad things are in the second Trump administration, even in comparison to Trump’s first term. Kennedy is an appointee who is so simultaneously tone deaf and evil that he can’t even muster the normal words of condemnation. Trump is a president who can’t even muster a statement to back the blue here, continuing his familiar pattern of being just fine with violence against law enforcement when it is committed by his supporters. No wonder his former surgeon general felt compelled to head to the Sunday shows to call this out.
