Trump official Stephen Miller just called RFK Jr the one thing he said we shouldn’t trust

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary who has previously pushed the discredited and widely debunked claim that autism is caused by vaccines, told ex-Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson back in June that “we need to stop trusting the experts”.

“Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy – it’s a feature of religion or totalitarianism,” he said.

Fast forward two months later, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has this week used that very same word to praise RFK Jr’s work within Donald Trump’s administration, describing the vaccine critic as “one of the world’s foremost experts on public health”.

Miller said: “[RFK Jr] is working hard to restore the credibility and the integrity of [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] as a scientific organisation committed to the scientific method, and getting to the root causes of the public health epidemic in this country.”

The official’s comments come days after CDC chief Susan Monarez was fired by Donald Trump, with his press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters a day later that the US president “has every right” to fire officials who are “not aligned with his mission”.

Jim O’Neill, currently RFK Jr’s deputy, has since been announced as the acting head of the CDC.

Monarez’s sacking on Wednesday sparked resignations from four top CDC officials the same day: chief medical officer Debra Houry, respiratory diseases director Dr Demetre Daskalakis, zoonotic infectious diseases director Daniel Jernigan and public health data chief Jennifer Layden.

In his resignation letter, shared to Twitter/X, Dr Daskalakis slammed the “radical non-transparency” and “unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end” from the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

He wrote: “I am not sure who the Secretary is listening to, but it is quite certainly not to us. Unvetted and conflicted outside organizations seem to be the sources HHS use over the gold standard science of CDC and other reputable sources.

“At a hearing, Secretary Kennedy said that Americans should not take medical advice from him. To the contrary, an appropriately briefed and inquisitive Secretary should be a source of health information for the people he serves.

“As it stands now, I must agree with him, that he should not be considered a source of accurate information.

“Public health is not merely about the health of the individual, but it is about the health of the community, the nation, the world. The nation’s health security is at risk and is in the hands of people focusing on ideological self-interest.”

HHS has been approached by The Independent for comment.

Meanwhile, Miller’s remarks have been ridiculed on social media, with the anti-Trumpism organisation The Lincoln Project writing that it is “crazy” the Trump official said it “with a straight face”:

News organisation MeidasTouch also expressed disbelief:

Another user compared it to “letting a conspiracy theorist captain the Titanic”:

And several contrasted Miller’s comments with the aforementioned remarks by RFK Jr. to Carlson earlier this year:

Awkward.

Why not read…

• Physicians slam RFK Jr for 'wacky' disinformation about kids' health
• RFK Jr admits people 'shouldn't be taking medical advice' from him

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