MAHA’s “Crown Jewel” is a “Dangerous Crank”*
On Friday, Senior White House Propaganda Minister for Ethnic Cleansing and echolocation[i] expert Stephen Miller described[ii] RFK Jr. as the “crown jewel of this administration.” Miller’s praise for the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not unfounded. With no medical training or experience and an expired parasitic worm entombed inside his brain — after having eaten a section of it — Mr. Kennedy and what’s left of his brain have the ability to diagnose mitochondrial disorders[iii] in children by glancing at them as he walks through airports.[iv]
Just the day before, Chris Hayes described Kennedy as a “dangerous crank,” adding, “I’m not saying that as an insult or as hyperbole, but honestly as the most economical way of describing the man’s views.”
A subset of dangerous crankness in this arena must be medical charlatanism — quackery — which is the fraudulent or ignorant promotion of medical practices and cures that lack any scientific basis. Quacks advance ineffective treatments and cures, offering remedies that haven’t been scientifically proven to work and preying on the fears and hopes of the desperately ill and, as Messrs. Trump and Kennedy have proven, the imbecilic.
The circles in the Venn diagram are not concentric, but the overlap is significant. Crankness has an expansive set of meanings, most of which provide a more complete picture of the all-discerning, near clairvoyant Secretary who, in one commentator’s assessment, is not about improving anything but is intent on destroying everything.
“Crank” describes a ship that is unstable and easily capsizes due to poorly stowed cargo or insufficient ballast (the sinking ship of state). It describes someone who is difficult or hard to work or deal with (an asshole). It can be used to define a thing that is crooked, distorted, or broken (a corruptee). And, of course, it applies to an unbalanced or overzealous person (an aggressive lunatic).
“Crank” is also slang for methamphetamine, aka speed or crystal meth, the highly addictive drug that often leads to a multitude of health problems including death. I’m just spit balling here, but it’s probably easier to diagnose someone as a meth addict with a quick glance than it is children who suffer from mitochondrial disorders. Kennedy’s admitted history of drug abuse includes crank, acid, weed, and blow, topped off with a 14-year addiction to smack. He contracted Hep C from sharing needles. I compliment him for his continuing recovery from substance abuse disorders.
My praise ends there.
The rest is condemnation.
Other than every sign flashing bright red and deafening alarms going off, how could U.S. senators possibly have known that RFK Jr. was eminently unqualified to serve as secretary of Health and Human Services (“HHS”)?
That he was a wildly dangerous conspiracy theorist?
That placing world-class agencies dedicated to life-saving research in the hands of a medical charlatan, a fraud who used his family name and dynasty to make millions off quackery, presented acute, terminal threats to the scientific and medical communities within the HHS agencies — and Americans’ health and safety?
The four M.D. senators who took oaths to the Constitution and swore the Hippocratic Oath to uphold the principle of non-maleficence — Cassidy, Barrasso, Paul, and Marshall — expressly violated both in their vote to confirm a quack whose goal was to “replace medical/scientific institutions of immense value and prestige with medieval peasant superstitions.”[v]
Kennedy’s qualifications included:
He falsely linked vaccines to a number of medical conditions, most notably the discredited theory that childhood vaccines cause autism.
He claimed “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
He said COVID-19 was “targeted to spare Jews.”
He said the COVID-19 vaccine was the “deadliest” ever made, despite it saving millions of lives throughout the world.
He queried whether the polio vaccine killed more people than the disease itself, again, despite it having saved millions of lives and prevented many more millions from paralysis.
He claimed, “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
He claimed Black people should be on different vaccine schedules than others because their immune system is stronger, “twisting the data far beyond what they actually demonstrate,” and “taking it to a very unsafe place.” Vaccine rates are already lower among Black children, according to the author of the study RFK Jr. cites as authority.
He rejected established science that H.I.V. causes AIDS.
He made baseless claims connecting chemical exposure and gender dysphoria.
School shootings, according to Kennedy, are linked to heightened use of antidepressants. More people take antidepressants, the number of school shootings has increased, so simple math turns correlation into causation, the same as the obvious link between increased ice cream sales and shark attacks during summer months.[vi]
Kennedy placed a dead bear in Central Park, saying he’d seen someone run it over, and picked it up to take home, skin, and possibly eat.
He chain-sawed the head off a dead whale in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, bungeed it to the roof of his car, and drove the five hours to his home in New York, as “whale juice” streamed down the side of the minivan.[vii]
His memory problems were caused by a parasitic “worm that got into [his] brain and ate a portion of it and then died.’” Tragic Details About RFK Jr. (Shreya Mali, The List, January 4, 2025).
Since his confirmation, Kennedy has set about to advance the administration’s fascist agenda and undermine confidence in the proven science of vaccines. Perfecting projection into an art-form, he said, “We need to stop trusting experts. . . . Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it’s a feature of religion and totalitarianism.”[viii]
In her piece in The New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli highlighted examples of The Many Ways Kennedy Is Already Undermining Vaccines:
“Even as cases of measles in the United States have surged past 600 in 22 jurisdictions, Mr. Kennedy has claimed in a recent interview that the measles vaccine causes deaths every year (untrue); that it causes encephalitis, blindness and ‘all the illnesses that measles itself causes’ (untrue); and that the vaccine’s effect wanes so dramatically that older adults are ‘essentially unvaccinated’ (untrue).”
In the immediate aftermath of last week’s firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez, three of CDC’s top scientists resigned in protest, and hundreds of staffers staged a “walkout in support of their outgoing colleagues and opposition to HHS leadership.” See Bonfire of expertise: Trump drives scientists, spies and soldiers out of government (Dave Lawler, Axios, August 30, 2025) (“Centuries’ worth of experience walked out of key government agencies this summer,[ix] including high-level departures from the CDC, Pentagon and intelligence community just in the past week.”).[x]
The White House says, good riddance. It’s all part of the plan to purge government agencies of expertise and undermine public trust in science.
Senator Patty Murray called “for the immediate firing of JFK Jr.” Likewise, in an urgent gesture that will go nowhere, Bernie Sanders called for Kennedy’s resignation, explaining in his August 30, 2025 opinion in The New York Times:
“Despite the overwhelming opposition of the medical community, Secretary Kennedy has continued his longstanding crusade against vaccines and his advocacy of conspiracy theories that have been rejected repeatedly by scientific experts. . . .
“Who supports Secretary Kennedy’s views? Not credible scientists and doctors. One of his leading ‘experts’ that he cites to back up his bogus claims on autism and vaccines had his medical license revoked and his study retracted from the medical journal that published it. . . .
“The reality is that Secretary Kennedy has profited from and built a career on sowing mistrust in vaccines. Now, as head of H.H.S., he is using his authority to launch a full-blown war on science, on public health and on truth itself.”
Speaking of quackery, the administration chose Jim O’Neill to serve as “acting” director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “During the Covid pandemic, he indicated support for a number of unproven coronavirus treatments and preventives, including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin D.” O’Neill “carved out a career in Silicon Valley, working closely with Peter Thiel, the billionaire and Republican megadonor.” The selection “leaves the nation’s premier public health agency under the leadership of an official without medical or scientific training, and seems likely to tighten political control of the agency . . . .”[xi]
Will the CDC survive?[xii]
Will we?[xiii]
*Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, the talented fiction writer and novelist, is my brother. He deserves considerable credit for offering both substantive and technical suggestions to my blog. His second novel, The Contortionists, which Rob himself narrates for the audio version, is a psychological page-turner about a missing child in a predominantly Mormon community. It is a literary masterpiece.
[i] Jordan Klepper, The Daily Show.
[ii] White House defends Robert F Kennedy Jr amid CDC turmoil (Ali Abbas Ahmadi, BBC News, August 29. 2025).
[iii] Mitochondrial Disorders (National Institute of Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke).
[iv] ‘What the Hell?!’ Chris Hayes Incredulous After RFK Jr. Claims Ability to Diagnose Kids With Health Issues by Looking at Them (Michael Luciano, Mediaite, August 28, 2025). In response, Hayes said:
“What on Earth are you on about?! You can see the kids have mitochondrial problems? Their lack of social connection? You can see that? Their faces aren’t healthy, to you, RFK Jr.
“Should you bring your kid to RFK Jr. with their face and say, ‘What do you think, Bobby? Healthy or not?’
“I know it’s kind of a cliche at this point, but imagine if the guy sitting next to you at the bar, or at a PTA meeting, or at your kid’s basketball game, started opining about the mitochondrial inflammation in the kids in front of you. You would move away because the guy seems nuts. Well, that guy is in charge of our entire public health infrastructure, influencing policy that impacts your health, your family’s health, whether your kids are gonna be able to get vaccines.”
[v] From a social media post by Phillip Gourevitch reposted by David Corn of Mother Jones. The full quote is, “That Trump and Trumpism are fascist doesn’t explain the sheer vandalism of unleashing mass murdering mayhem via RFK to replace medical/scientific institutions of immense value and prestige with medieval peasant superstitions. That is a criminal madness facilitated by but above and beyond fascism.”
[vi] Correlation does not equal causation: classic examples & tips (STATSIG, March 20, 2025). “Another head-scratcher is the correlation between the number of master’s degrees awarded and box office revenue. At first glance, it might seem like more people getting degrees boosts movie sales. In reality, this is likely due to population growth, which independently affects both numbers.
“Then there’s the odd link between pool drownings and nuclear energy production. This is another spurious correlation, probably reflecting how a growing population increases both energy needs and the number of pools. These examples highlight why we shouldn’t assume causation just because two things correlate.”
[vii] Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Sawed the Head Off a Whale and Drove It Home, Daughter Says (Rebecca Davis O’Brien, The New York Times, August 27, 2024).
[viii] Trump official Stephen Miller just called RFK Jr the one thing he said we shouldn’t trust (Liam O’Dell, Indy100, August 30, 2025).
[ix] The same is true of many other federal agencies, the Department of Justice among the most important examples as the administration decimates the rule of law and uses the DOJ to meet out retribution and retaliate against Trump’s perceived enemies.
[x] “Around 3,000 CDC staffers have resigned or been fired since January. Agencies like the FDA and National Institutes of Health have also shed thousands of staff, including many highly trained scientists. . . .
“Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned as the CDC’s vaccine chief, claimed Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team were manipulating data ‘to achieve a political end.’ He also warned that the hollowing out of agencies like his would leave the U.S. ill prepared for future public health emergencies, telling the NYT: ‘We really are losing the people who know how to do this.’ Kennedy, who once called the CDC a ‘cesspool of corruption,’ said Thursday that ‘there’s a lot of trouble at CDC, and it’s going to require getting rid of some people over the long term . . . to change the institutional culture.’”
[xi] Who Is the New Acting C.D.C. Director? (Emily Anthes, The New York Times, August 29, 2025).
[xii] Will the C.D.C. Survive? (Apoorva Mandavilli, The New York Times, August 29, 2025):
“In the six months since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took office as the health secretary, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has withered, losing thousands of employees, about half of its budget and contracts, and much of its authority over the nation’s vaccine policies.
“This week, as Mr. Kennedy ousted the agency’s new director and precipitated the resignation of four other leaders, experts in public health began asking questions unthinkable just a few months ago: Is the C.D.C. dying? And if so, what does that mean for Americans?
“In interviews, a dozen public health experts, along with seven former high-ranking officials, described the C.D.C. as badly wounded and fast losing its legitimacy. It can still be salvaged, they said, but only if Mr. Kennedy listens to scientists and restores some of its crucial functions.
‘It’s got, like, a heart rhythm that’s not viable at the moment,’ said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the C.D.C.’s center for respiratory diseases until he resigned this week. ‘If it’s not shocked out of it now, it may not survive.’”
I’m not holding my breath.
[xiii] As CDC crumbles, fears grow about vaccines, pandemics and health crises (Lena H. Sun, Lauren Weber, and David Ovalle, The Washington Post, August 30, 2025).