When the Patient Appoints the Quack

Donald Trump recently explained his daily aspirin routine: “They say aspirin is good for thinning out the blood, and I don’t want thick blood pouring through my heart. I want nice, thin blood pouring through my heart.”

That’s not how aspirin works. That’s not how blood works. That’s not how hearts work. And this man just appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a lawyer with no medical training who has spent years spreading vaccine conspiracy theories, to control America’s entire health infrastructure.

This isn’t politics. This is a public health crisis waiting to happen.

Trump’s confusion about aspirin would be funny if it weren’t so revealing. Aspirin doesn’t make blood physically thinner. It prevents platelets from clumping, reducing clot formation. Blood doesn’t pour through your heart like sludge through a pipe that needs thinning. This is eighth-grade biology, and the president of the United States, at 79 years old and taking medication he fundamentally doesn’t understand, is making decisions that will determine whether children get vaccinated, whether drugs get approved, and whether disease outbreaks get controlled.

Here’s what Trump actually has: chronic venous insufficiency where his leg veins struggle to return blood to his heart, causing visible swelling and bruising. He has diverticulosis, COVID-19 lung scarring, high cholesterol, and rosacea. He takes more aspirin than his doctors recommend, causing hand bruising he can’t properly explain. He’s been deliberately dishonest about his health throughout his career, refusing to release actual medical records and instead offering laughable claims about being “the healthiest individual ever elected.”

This is the man who looked at the Department of Health and Human Services, a $2 trillion agency overseeing the NIH, CDC, FDA, Medicare, and Medicaid, and decided the right person to run it was someone who has spent eight years leading an organization identified as a primary source of vaccine misinformation in America.

Kennedy has no medical degree. No public health training. No scientific credentials. What he does have is a track record of claiming vaccines cause autism (they don’t), antidepressants cause school shootings (they don’t), and chemicals are making children transgender (they aren’t). During his confirmation hearings, he refused to reject the vaccine-autism link and appeared confused about how the programs he now oversees actually function. Senator Raphael Warnock called him “manifestly unqualified.” Even Republican physician-senator Bill Cassidy had serious reservations before voting to confirm him anyway.

Let’s be clear about what this means. Kennedy now influences vaccine policy for millions of children. He oversees pharmaceutical approvals that determine which medications reach dying patients. He controls disease surveillance systems that detect outbreaks. He manages food safety regulations that prevent poisoning. He administers health insurance for over 150 million Americans.

And he thinks vaccines cause autism.

The danger isn’t abstract. We’re not talking about tax policy or trade agreements where reasonable people can disagree. We’re talking about measles, pertussis, polio, diseases that were nearly eliminated and are now resurging because of exactly the kind of anti-vaccine rhetoric Kennedy has built his career promoting. We’re talking about children who will suffer preventable diseases. People who will die from treatable conditions because someone in power doesn’t understand or doesn’t trust the science that could save them.

Trump takes medication daily without understanding it. Kennedy rejects medicine he’s never studied. Together, they now control American healthcare policy. This isn’t incompetence. It’s negligence on a scale that will kill people.

Most presidents aren’t doctors, but competent ones know their limitations. They defer to CDC scientists during pandemics. They trust FDA researchers evaluating drugs. They listen when public health officials warn about disease outbreaks. Trump has done the opposite: he’s elevated a man whose entire public profile is built on rejecting medical expertise.

The cruelty is that the people who will suffer most are the ones who can’t opt out. Poor children whose parents rely on public health clinics for vaccines. Elderly Americans dependent on Medicare. People with rare diseases waiting for FDA drug approvals. They don’t get to choose different leadership when the CDC mishandles an outbreak because Kennedy thinks natural immunity is superior, or when vaccine-preventable diseases spread because official guidance has been compromised by conspiracy theories dressed up as “health freedom.”

Trump’s blood isn’t thick. His understanding is. And he’s put someone equally divorced from scientific reality in charge of keeping 330 million Americans healthy. When the next pandemic hits, when the next drug crisis emerges, when the next vaccine-preventable outbreak occurs, we will pay for this decision in lives lost.

This isn’t about politics. It’s about whether American health policy is based on evidence or ideology, science or conspiracy, expertise or ego. Right now, ego is winning, and the nation’s health is losing.

The combination of Trump's medical ignorance and Kennedy's active rejection of medical science isn't just a failure of leadership. It's a abdication of responsibility to the American people who depend on their government to make sound, evidence-based health policy. As Trump himself might say: Does that make sense?

Unfortunately, it makes perfect, terrible sense.

FTS

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