'Shut Up... You Should Be Fired': RFK Jr. Sparks Backlash With CDC Purge, School Shooting Remarks
"He is a dangerous man who is determined to abuse his authority to act on truly terrifying conspiracy theories and disinformation," said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.
Some US elected officials are now calling for the firing of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. amid mass resignations at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and comments he made about Wednesday's mass shooting at a Catholic school.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) was the first Democratic lawmaker to call for Kennedy's firing on Wednesday night, shortly after news broke that he had ousted Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez, who had just been confirmed by the US Senate weeks ago. Monarez's firing subsequently triggered several other high-profile resignations at the agency.
"If there are any adults left in the White House, it's well past time they face reality and fire RFK Jr.," she said. "He is a dangerous man who is determined to abuse his authority to act on truly terrifying conspiracy theories and disinformation—leaving us unprepared for the next deadly pandemic and snuffing out potential cures while he's at it."
Kennedy further angered his critics when he appeared on Fox News Thursday morning and not only defended the purge of the CDC, but also baselessly linked this week's mass shooting at the Annunciation Church in Minneapolis with the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), a class of drugs commonly used to treat clinical depression.
While speaking with the hosts of "Fox & Friends," Kennedy said that "we're launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence" such as the shooting in Minneapolis on Wednesday that left two children dead and 17 other people wounded.
This drew the ire of Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who profanely called out Kennedy for peddling misinformation.
"I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don't kill kids, antidepressants do," she wrote in a social media post. "Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired."
She then wrote a follow-up post in which she noted that "there are 400 million guns in this country," which is larger than the entire population of the US.
"In America, we are 10 times more likely to be shot in a school or playground than any other developed nation," she said.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) didn't explicitly call for Kennedy to be fired, although he labeled the HHS secretary's actions "disgraceful."
"What is happening at the CDC is truly a five-alarm fire and not receiving nearly enough attention," he wrote. "RFK Jr.'s undermining of our public health institutions will have disastrous consequences for generations."
Democratic lawmakers weren't the only ones calling for Kennedy's firing. Pradheep Shanker, a radiologist who regularly writes for the conservative National Review, also said he'd seen enough of US President Donald Trump's HHS Chief.
"RFK is a complete failure, and is making Trump's health policy look like a complete circus," he said. "If Trump has any credibility, he'll fire RFK."
