Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been called out by a former surgeon general who claimed he “failed” in his slow response to a deadly shooting at the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters.
Former U.S. surgeon general Dr. Jerome Adams, who served during Trump’s first term, said as Health and Human Services Secretary, Kennedy’s response to the crime at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was “tepid.”
“How you respond to a crisis defines a leader, and quite frankly Secretary Kennedy has failed in his first major test in this regard,” Adams, a former inner city trauma doctor, told Margaret Brennan on CBS’ Face the Nation.
“It took him over 18 hours to issue a tepid response to these horrific shootings, and that’s not even considering how his inflammatory rhetoric in the past have actually contributed to a lot of what’s been going on,” Adams said.
The Daily Beast has contacted the HHS for comment.
A 30-year-old shooter killed police officer David Rose during Friday’s incident at the CDC, a public health agency that plays a key role in tackling the health crises that hit America.
The gunman, who also died during the incident, tried to break into the CDC’s headquarters before being stopped by guards. He instead opened fire on the building from across the street.
The attacker was identified by law enforcement as Patrick Joseph White, a man who had blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him depressed and suicidal.
A neighbor in Kennesaw, Georgia, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that White “seemed like a good guy” but spoke with her multiple times about his distrust of COVID-19 vaccines.
Last week, Kennedy canceled research into mRNA vaccines that would have cost $500 million, citing unproven concerns about their safety. In a statement, he said, “The data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”
Speaking on Sunday, Adams said Kennedy had yet to “unequivocally” condemn the violence at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I want to be clear, because our secretary of HHS has not been,” Adams said. “Violence is never the answer, no matter your level of frustration or anger with the system. We have to find better, more peaceful ways to express our concerns and work towards solutions.”
The former surgeon general was also critical of the contents of Kennedy’s statement, released on Saturday, in which the secretary said “no one should face violence while working to protect the health of others.”
Adams said, “He said no one should be harmed while working to protect the public. There’s an out there… If you don’t believe that people are working to protect the public, then that means it’s okay to commit violence, at least in some people’s eyes.”
In the past, Kennedy has incorrectly linked vaccines for measles and mumps to autism and called the COVID-19 vaccine “the deadliest ever made.”
Kennedy’s comment on Saturday honored the service of the staff he has so often slammed.
“We are deeply saddened by the tragic shooting at CDC’s Atlanta campus that took the life of officer David Rose. We stand with his wife and three children and the entire CDC family,” he said.
“We know how shaken our public health colleagues feel today. No one should face violence while working to protect the health of others.”
A union representing workers at the CDC said the incident “compounds months of mistreatment, neglect, and vilification that CDC staff have endured,” CBS reported.
Fired But Fighting, a group of former CDC staff, blamed Kennedy for the villainization of the CDC’s workforce through “his continuous lies about science and vaccine safety, which have fueled a climate of hostility and mistrust.”
