Hey! Hey! RFK! How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-09-04-hey-hey-rfk-how-many-kids-did-you-kill-today/



The original—Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?—began popping up at anti–Vietnam War rallies in 1966, as nightly newscasts showing villages leveled and villagers killed turned increasing numbers of Americans against our war. By then, the original RFK—New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, father of the boy who was to become Donald Trump’s destroyer of science-based medicine—was himself turning against the war, eventually to challenge Lyndon Johnson for the presidency on an anti-war platform.

Junior Kennedy now appears determined to see if his own war against vaccines, fluoridation, the biological sciences, and empiricism generally can produce an American death toll comparable to our losses in Vietnam. He’s canned every expert virologist, pediatrician, and public-health expert from policy-setting boards, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration, replacing them with conspiracy theorists and the occasional snake-oil salesman. Susan Monarez lasted 29 days as CDC director before Kennedy fired her because she “insisted on rigorous scientific review” of agency policies. His underlings have called for restricting the next tranche of COVID vaccinations to seniors and the seriously ill.

Nor is Kennedy alone in his quest: Yesterday, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced that his state would no longer require vaccines for schoolchildren, noting that every vaccine mandate “drips with disdain and slavery.” Today, in a three-hour hearing before a Senate committee, Kennedy was challenged by a bipartisan group of understandably angry senators. Led by Bernie Sanders, the Democrats now are calling for Kennedy’s resignation. Their Republican counterparts voiced their fears that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine jihad could lead to untreated illnesses and avoidable deaths.

But every one of the 53 Republican senators save one—Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell—had voted to confirm Kennedy’s nomination despite his decades of opposition to vaccines and health science, and today, not one of them joined the Democrats in seeking his ouster. In the course of the hearing, for instance, Wyoming’s John Barrasso, the Senate Republican whip, told Kennedy, “I’m a doctor. Vaccines work. Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearings, you promised to uphold the highest standards for vaccines. Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned.” Despite that, when reporters asked him after the hearing if he still had confidence in Kennedy, Barrasso responded, “I have confidence in what the president of the United States is doing, and I will not second-guess.”

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