President Donald Trump has privately concluded that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine conspiracies and radical health policies have crossed into absurdity, according to journalist Michael Wolff speaking on The Daily Beast’s “Inside Trump’s Head” podcast.
The reported presidential rebuke comes as Kennedy’s assault on established medical science continues to generate mounting controversies—from spreading debunked vaccine theories to purging career scientists from federal health agencies. His tenure has coincided with measles cases reaching their highest rate in more than three decades, while the U.S. recorded over 2,285 confirmed cases in 2025, the most since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000. As of late March 2026, the CDC reported more than 1,575 additional confirmed cases.
Kennedy has systematically dismantled key components of America’s public health infrastructure since taking office. In June 2025, he fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, claiming a “clean sweep” was needed to “reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.” He ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez in late August after she refused to rubber-stamp vaccine policy changes and fire senior staff. Monarez’ lawyers called the termination politically motivated, saying she “chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda.”
The health secretary has promoted increasingly bizarre medical theories during his tenure. Kennedy claimed without evidence that countries using the most acetaminophen have the highest levels of autism. He also claimed to have seen a TikTok video of a woman “gobbling Tylenol” who had a “baby in her placenta.” Trump himself subsequently told pregnant women and parents not to take acetaminophen based on these unsubstantiated claims.
Under Kennedy’s direction, the CDC changed its website to contradict the overwhelming scientific conclusion that vaccines do not cause autism. His handpicked vaccine advisers have questioned vaccinating babies against hepatitis B, while Kennedy cast doubt on the measles vaccine and championed unproven treatments. “This was everybody’s fear about having RFK Jr. as our HHS secretary,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at the Pandemic Center at Brown University.
More than 1,000 current and former HHS employees signed an open letter stating Kennedy is “compromising the health of this nation” and demanding his resignation. Public trust in the CDC has dropped to its lowest point since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A shooting attack at the CDC’s Atlanta campus on August 8, 2025, killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose. The gunman, motivated by distrust in vaccines, fired more than 180 shots into CDC buildings. Former CDC employees blamed Kennedy’s inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation for helping stoke the violence.
The friction between Trump and Kennedy reportedly intensified after Trump signed an executive order on February 18, 2026, invoking the Defense Production Act to compel domestic production of glyphosate-based herbicides. The move stunned Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again supporters, given that Kennedy previously won nearly $289 million in a case against Monsanto for a man who claimed his cancer was caused by Roundup, the brand name for glyphosate products.
A May 2025 report from Kennedy’s own MAHA Commission noted glyphosate and atrazine present in the blood of children and pregnant women at “alarming levels.” Yet the subsequent strategy report made no mention of glyphosate, and the Trump administration sided with Bayer in a pending Supreme Court case that could eliminate thousands of lawsuits alleging Roundup causes cancer. Oral arguments are scheduled for April 27, 2026.
Kennedy was reportedly unaware the glyphosate executive order was coming, according to CNBC. MAHA supporters erupted in fury, viewing the move as a betrayal of Kennedy’s stated principles heading into the 2026 midterm elections. Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, called the order “a big middle finger to every MAHA mom.”
In May 2025, Kennedy announced that the federal CDC would stop recommending COVID-19 booster shots for healthy children and pregnant women, prompting major medical associations to oppose the change. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists continue to recommend vaccination for these groups despite the CDC’s altered guidance. Kennedy also announced newly appointed members of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, continuing his focus on the developmental disorder despite the lack of scientific evidence supporting his theories about its causes.
The reported presidential frustration with Kennedy suggests potential limits to how far Trump will allow his health secretary’s agenda to proceed. Meanwhile, Republican resistance to Kennedy’s nominees has grown. Senator Bill Cassidy, who cast a key vote to confirm Kennedy, has publicly rebuked him over mRNA vaccine funding cuts. Yet Kennedy has escaped the wave of firings that recently swept through the Department of Homeland Security, leaving his future in the administration uncertain as Republican resistance grows.