Trump Is at Odds With RFK Jr. Over Vaccines—But Not Why You’d Think

Despite the White House’s myriad attempts to rein in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s conspiratorial rhetoric, Donald Trump himself is still expecting anti-vaxx results.

The president is reportedly losing faith in his health secretary’s abilities to slash childhood vaccines. The issue came to a head during a May lunch at Trump’s National Golf Club in northern Virginia, when Trump pressed Kennedy as to why he wasn’t doing more to probe into the (widely debunked) tie between vaccines and autism. At the time, Trump told Kennedy point blank that he believed the secretary “had the yips,” The Wall Street Journal wrote Monday night, citing sources familiar with the conversation.

The topic reared its head again at a mid-June meeting between the two men in the Oval Office, during which Trump lamented that Kennedy simply wasn’t doing enough.

Trump reportedly believes he has given Kennedy ample time to prove himself, and is disappointed that Kennedy hasn’t made more progress.

Practically every conversation between Trump and his health secretary circles back to the vaccine conspiracy, reported the Journal. The president has shared with his aides that he believes Kennedy will be a failure if he fails to produce results.

In fact, lobbyists and Department of Health and Human Services staffers suspect that Trump will replace Kennedy with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services chief Dr. Mehmet Oz, likely after the midterms, the Journal reported.

Trump regularly turns to Oz for health policy advice, even on issues that have nothing to do with Oz’s agency. Oz, in turn, makes sure Trump gets his way every time.

The president’s priorities on the matter have since been made clear: HHS must do more to peel back the federal guidelines for the childhood vaccine schedule, reducing the number of shots given to children.

Sources who spoke with the Journal suggested that the president is all-in on the anti-vaxx conspiracy, sharing that Trump expects to see autism rates drop as a result of the decreased inoculations.

Limiting vaccine access was a core tenant of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—until White House advisers pressured him to lay low, fearing that his rabble-rousing, anti-science ideology could further harm Republican odds come November.

Already at issue at the ballot box: the price of food, the price of oil, the price of water, the price of energy. Yet Republicans have failed to offer a resonant message to keep their party in power. Instead, Trump started an inexplicable war with Iran that has exacerbated the already astronomical cost of living. He has also slashed taxes for the wealthy and stalled the mechanics of Congress by strong-arming his allies into supporting his wildly unpopular voter suppression bill, the SAVE Act.

Meanwhile, Kennedy is running HHS with practically zero relevant experience. He has not worked in medicine, public health, or the government—rather, he is guided only by a pocketful of conspiracies that America’s foremost health experts have already thoroughly debunked, and his off-the-wall notions about health have thus far proved disastrous for the agency.

Kennedy has transformed HHS, replacing independent medical experts on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with a hodgepodge of vaccine skeptics. He also overhauled the child vaccination schedule without notifying his staffers, a decision that could potentially affect vaccine access and insurance coverage for millions of American families in the coming years.

As a reminder: Since their invention, vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The medical shots are so effective at preventing illness that they have effectively eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox—a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat to the average, health-conscious individual.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is crashing out on social media over the latest development in Kash Patel’s $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic. 

The Atlantic filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit Monday, arguing that Patel’s suit did not  “plausibly allege” that the magazine had published any of the challenged statements with actual malice. 

“Complaint fails to state a viable defamation claim against Defendants,” the filing said.

Journalist Sarah Fitzpatrick had reported in April that Patel was known to drink to excess, delay time-sensitive operations, behave erratically, and was often unreachable, raising concerns about whether he was a national security risk. Patel filed the lawsuit alleging the article was “replete with false and obviously fabricated allegations designed to destroy Director Patel’s reputation and drive him from office.”

In response to the latest filing, the FBI’s Rapid Response account on X posted its own rant Monday night against the publication, seemingly on behalf of its director. 

“The Atlantic spends its days propagating false narratives because it has zero interest in any form of real journalism. It adds no value to society except as the leading slop rag of the day,” the FBI wrote. The account then proceeded to rant about several of the FBI’s recent “historic wins.”

Is it normal for a government agency to get down in the mud for its beleaguered director? In Trumpworld, maybe. 

The Atlantic also filed a motion to stay discovery, except for Touhy requests, allowing the publication to seek factual discovery—documents and depositions from key individuals—from the FBI and Department of Justice.

“If Director Patel did not want to face this process, he should not have filed this suit,” editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg said in a statement.

Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, is opposing the Trump administration’s move to arrest and deport Haitians following its decision to end their Temporary Protected Status this week, calling it a “mistake” and “a blow to the state of Ohio.”

DeWine said in an interview with CBS Monday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations against the Haitian community would be bad for Ohio’s economy and that of Springfield in particular, where many Haitians have settled. 

“These are people who have helped Springfield really come back,” DeWine said to CBS, explaining that Haitians have filled jobs and opened businesses where the economy once struggled. “The Haitians who are living there and employed there, they came there to work, and they came there because there were jobs that were not being filled by other people.”

DeWine also noted that Haiti’s security and political situation is still unstable, with gangs controlling large parts of the country and the capital, Port-au-Prince. The State Department has warned Americans not to travel there, and DeWine described the country as being in “virtual chaos” with “no semblance of government.”  

“Haiti is hell today. So you’d be sending people … back to hell,” DeWine said. “Very few of these Haitians will voluntarily go back to Haiti. If they have to leave, they’ll go someplace else. They want to work. They want to support their family. They don’t want to go back to Haiti.”

To the Trump administration, none of this matters. White House adviser Stephen Miller is excited about the prospect of deporting Haitians. He has claimed that Haiti is safe “for Haitians” and celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the administration to end Temporary Protected Status.

“We can finally remove these Haitian illegal migrants,” Miller said.

More than 300,000 people are set to lose those protections this week, and many of them are among the 12,000 to 15,000 Haitians that live in and around Springfield. Back in 2024, President Trump spread a racist rumor that the community was “eating cats and dogs.” Now, Ohio’s economy could suffer a $400 million loss, and people are in danger of being sent to a war zone because of Trump and his administration’s racist deportation policy. 

Donald Trump’s allies are concerned that the president is about to get dragged into more fighting by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu is meeting with Trump at the White House on Tuesday for the first time since February, when he ensured the U.S. was ready to go to war with Iran. The Israeli prime minister had spent months lobbying the White House, and Trump’s aides did little to dissuade the U.S. president from joining in on the attack. Now Netanyahu may ask for more.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told Politico that the anti-interventionist sect of Trump’s allies, who brand themselves as “America First,” aren’t happy.

“I think all of President Trump’s most ardent non-‘Israel First’ supporters are furious,” Bannon said. “Netanyahu has had twice as many visits to the White House in 18 months as Churchill had in all of World War II—with every one of them a disaster for America First.”

Netanyahu is visiting the U.S. for the seventh time since the beginning of Trump’s second term.

The meeting comes amid growing frustration between the two allies, as Trump and Vice President JD Vance have become more publicly critical of Israel and its continued aggression in Lebanon.

The meeting also follows Trump’s nascent nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, which he has claimed is contingent on the country signing onto the Abraham Accords in order to normalize relations with Israel. Only it seems that the Trump administration has no idea how to enforce that, given that the deal is already signed.

Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear is demanding that Senator Mitch McConnell justify his weeks-long unexplained absence from Congress—or resign.

“I am addressing this letter to Senator McConnell under the assumption that he is capable of reading and responding verbally, and not incapacitated by means of consciousness or cognition. If the Senator is unable to respond for either of those or other conditions, consider this letter a demand for his Senate staff to be honest and transparent with the people of Kentucky,” Beshear wrote Monday in a letter to McConnell obtained by CNN.

McConnell has been in the hospital for a whopping 43 days with no explanation. He has not said what exactly is ailing him or when he will return. He hasn’t even spoken directly on camera, leading to speculation that he is verbally incapacitated after being found unconscious in his Washington, D.C., home. All he’s done is post two very unconvincing photos in which he is sitting and smiling blankly with his wife, Elaine Chao.

His office last released an update on Monday, writing in a statement (first person, in McConnell’s voice) that he wouldn’t return to Congress anytime soon, but was “looking forward to getting back to the Senate and to Kentucky.”

In an accompanying statement, the Office of the Attending Physician noted that doctors were meeting with McConnell every day. That wasn’t enough for Beshear.

“Even the attending physician’s written statement does not discuss your actual condition, including whether you can speak, reason, or carry out your duties as a senator. I understand anyone’s desire for privacy, but when you run for office and serve as one of a state’s two US senators, you willingly abdicate much of your personal privacy,” Beshear wrote. “As Governor of the state you serve, I am calling on you to directly and verbally address the people of Kentucky and provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.”

Beshear also urged Senate Majority Leader John Thune to press McConnell’s office for some real information in an effort to “be honest and transparent with the people of Kentucky.”

While the language in Beshear’s letter is strong, it likely won’t do anything. McConnell, like every member of Congress, can essentially go on paid medical leave for as long as he wants. The fact that our elected officials don’t really have to prove that they can walk, talk, and think coherently—while we still pay them—is disgraceful. Maybe Beshear should just pay McConnell a visit himself, and bring a camera crew with him.