Trump SOTU Makes No Mention of Public Health for Good Reason: Public Health Watch Newsletter

Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech on Tuesday was the longest on record and chock-full of bald-faced lies about the Trump-GOP’s cost-exploding, coverage-denying health care cuts.

But noticeably absent in the 10,599-word address was any mention of his Health Secretary RFK Jr. or his hugely publicized anti-vax-and-science efforts over the last year, like the dangerous child vaccine schedule downgrade.

Or any public health issue, for that matter. After all, why would Trump draw any more attention to his massive betrayal of the MAHA movement last week when he ordered a full-scale return of the likely-cancer-causing ingredient in Roundup weedkiller – because profits of the GOP’s big chemical industry donors are more important to Trump than public health.

Why would Trump mention the historic measles crisis now impacting 26 states – almost exclusively among the unvaccinated — when there’s now evidence vaccination rates likely declined as a direct result of RFK Jr. using his celebrity power to fear monger against proven safe and effective vaccines. Few doctors have ever even seen a case of measles in their careers, until now.

The decision to omit RFK Jr.’s dangerous antics tracks with reporting that “Trump administration officials are downplaying their push to overhaul vaccine policy” and carrying out performative HHS staff “shakeups,” while a strong bipartisan majority of Americans are still not buying the anti-vax propaganda that RFK Jr. and Trump are selling.

Not to mention the fact that the administration’s anti-vax agenda, bound to skyrocket health costs further, would not have fit in well with Trump’s SOTU overarching message that he totally fixed the affordability crisis that he recently deemed a ‘hoax’ (news to 80 percent of Americans who say costs have not come down on his watch).

But here’s the thing. Absolutely nothing has changed with the Trump administration’s harmful anti-vax policy priorities:

The administration’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — packed with RFK Jr.’s handpicked fellow anti-vaccine skeptics including the Chairman who sees no need for the Polio vaccine – are pressing forward with another regressive meeting next month after helping gut the child vaccine schedule, now with their claws out for the COVID-19 vaccine credited with saving over 2.5 million American lives.
As the Washington Post reports, RFK Jr. continues to turn unfounded anti-vax skepticism into policy: “Federal guidance revised under Kennedy last month, while the United States is experiencing a hard-hitting flu season, no longer recommends routine flu vaccines for children and adolescents.”
There’s no sign Donald Trump intends to withdraw his nomination of wellness grifter and IVF opponent Casey Means for Surgeon General, who during her Senate hearing yesterday confirmed every warning about her anti-vax views and glaring lack of a medical license. Means disqualified herself by refusing to commit to advocating for vaccines for measles, flu, or whooping cough if she becomes the nation’s top health educator, and bizarrely ducked and dodged on a simple question of whether the flu vaccine cuts childhood risk of hospitalization despite the overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that it does. Even Trump’s former Surgeon General Jerome Adams is baffled that someone so unqualified is under consideration.

And RFK Jr. himself is certainly not acting as if he’s been “reined in” one bit, as he pisses away tax dollars playing with action figures while defending the worst GOP health care cuts in U.S. history.

As with almost everything that comes out of the mouths of the Trump administration, watch what they do, not what they say, especially when public health is on the line.

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