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Anti-Vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. he posted a long, angry response on social media New York Times article reports that health department insiders think Kennedy has resigned from his growing agency. His response, however, seems to be consistent with what the Times reported.
The report, published on Sunday, June 7, relied on accounts from a dozen people who had direct contact with Kennedy during his tenure as health secretary. Together, the sources show Kennedy’s lack of interest in the details of the health department’s work and lack of cooperation with staff. Kennedy misses critical meetings, which are regularly organized by the leaders of the organization, is sometimes “investigated” in the meetings he attends, and is not present at important decisions, such as the dismissal of Tracy Beth Høeg, a political appointee promoted to the director of narcotics at the Food and Drug Administration. Instead, Kennedy often points people to his protégé, longtime aide Stefanie Spear, who colleagues say has reduced the department’s workload and made the administration more efficient.
On Wednesday night, Kennedy responded to the report with 871 word diatribe on social media against the reporter, former reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and the Times. His main argument was that much of the story could be refuted by looking at his busy calendar.
“What should refute your argument is a look at my publicly available calendar,” he wrote in his first paragraph. At one point, he explained, writing that “If you had read my calendar, you would have seen that I have repeated meetings every day, every day, with workers and politicians…”
The problem with Kennedy’s argument is that he does not have a publicly available calendar. This reporter is not aware of such a calendar. On Thursday, reporters at Stat News reported this Kennedy’s public calendar was an issue for them as well. Over the past year, he has made several requests for his calendar through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) press office and by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
