The surgeon general from the first Trump administration on Saturday said that the US president should “absolutely” fire health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr over his “dangerous” policies on vaccines and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Jerome Adams, who has become a pointed critic of the controversial public health decisions being swiftly rolled out in the second Trump administration, made his most fierce attack yet on what has been unfolding.
“He’s putting us at risk,” Adams said of RFK Jr, and is “endangering America at large” with moves to limit access to vaccines, such as shots to protect against the deadly Covid-19 virus.
In an interview with CNN on Saturday morning, anchor Victor Blackwell asked Adams, who served as Donald Trump’s surgeon general from 2017 to 2021, including through the height of the coronavirus pandemic, if Kennedy should resign.
“Well, he’s not going to resign,” Adams said.
Asked if, therefore, Trump should fire his health secretary, Adams said: “I absolutely believe that he should, for the sake of the nation.”
Kennedy was praised by the president after a stormy committee hearing in the US Senate on Thursday where Democrats called for his resignation or firing and accused him of ignorance and “reckless disregard for science and the truth”.
Although more muted, a select few Republicans were critical, including Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who had been a crucial vote to confirm Kennedy to his post, who said the secretary was “effectively denying people the vaccine” with his policy positions. Kennedy had snapped back: “You’re wrong.”
Adams said he was “flabbergasted” by new restrictions from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month on who is eligible to receive the latest version of the Covid-19 vaccination and hoped that “President Trump will begin to see the danger … to America” of Kennedy’s leanings and not be “in thrall” to his health secretary.
On Friday, Adams was a co-author of a bipartisan opinion piece published in USA Today from three former surgeons general that said that Kennedy’s actions to shake up the CDC were actions that “jeopardize not only the institution’s integrity but also the health and well-being of millions of Americans”.
The other authors were Jocelyn Elders, surgeon general in Democrat Bill Clinton’s administration, and Richard Carmona, surgeon general under Republican George W Bush’s presidency.
The CDC erupted in chaos in late August when the Trump administration fired the center’s director Susan Monarez, who had been in post for mere weeks, in an apparent divide over vaccine policy – although she is refusing to leave. Several senior CDC leaders quit in protest at Kennedy’s move to oust her. This followed his June firing of all 17 members of the CDC’s advisory committee on immunization practices (ACIP) and replacement with some who publicly hold anti-vaccine views.
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The three former surgeons general wrote that they were “gravely concerned” for the CDC as a “cornerstone of public health in America and across the world” that had saved countless lives through its science-driven approach, earning public trust.
“The recent turbulence at the CDC threatens to undermine this legacy, and we feel this is not just a bureaucratic or political issue. It’s truly a matter of life and death,” the article said.
Adams said in the CNN interview that organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association have lost trust in the CDC under Kennedy’s leadership.
He warned that Kennedy could effectively destroy the CDC and was “putting lives at risk by doing so”.
Adams at times clashed with Trump when he was his surgeon general, including over policies over public masking during the pandemic.
On Saturday he warned that Kennedy’s policies threatened public health in general but that Covid vaccine restrictions were “specifically endangering Black, Hispanic and Native American communities, who experienced death rates during the pandemic that were twice as high as white Americans.”
