A former aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr was reportedly so upset at being fired earlier this summer that she accidentally backed her car into his.
Hannah Anderson, who served as Kennedy’s deputy chief of staff for policy, was dismissed along with then-chief of staff Heather Flick Melanson on July 16 after just six months in the role.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Anderson was so distraught at her removal that she subsequently suffered the embarrassing auto mishap.
CNN reported at the time that Flick Melanson had moved to fire Anderson over dissatisfaction with her job performance but did not go about it through the proper channels, “taking the White House by surprise” and “angering” Kennedy, who dismissed her in turn. But Flick Melanson disputed that version of events, telling the network instead: “It’s simple. I was not fired. I resigned.”
Prior to her stint at HHS, Anderson had previously been a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill and had advised first the Senate GOP and then the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute think-tank on healthcare.
The detail about her subsequent car accident was revealed in the WSJ’s report into the state of “turmoil” within Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which it characterizes as a fractious coalition of vaccine skeptics – or “medical freedom” activists – healthy eating advocates, and critics of “pesticides, microplastics and corporate power.”
The movement consists of many Kennedy supporters who backed him long before he rose to power as an associate of President Donald Trump, many of whom have differing views or were attracted by different aspects of his messaging and all of whom expect results now that he is in a position of real authority.
The WSJ offers the forced resignation of Dr Vinay Prasad as the top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration on July 29 as an example of departmental chaos, saying his ousting came about in part because of a pressure campaign orchestrated by far-right activist Laura Loomer, who was opposed to his progressive background and past support for Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Prasad had also clashed with different factions within the movement over his opposition to biotech firm Sarepta Therapeutics and decision to stop the shipment of one of its drugs used to treat muscular dystrophy.
Kennedy had reportedly fought to save Prasad and eventually succeeded, with the help of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, in persuading Trump’s formidable White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles that he should be allowed to return, which was duly announced on August 9.
The state of upheaval within Kennedy’s HHS came to public attention much more dramatically last week when Susan Monarez stepped down as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after less than a month in the job following a clash with the secretary over vaccine policy, prompting a number of other officials to follow her through the door issuing stark warnings about the CDC’s future.
But vaccines are not the only point of contention within the HHS, according to the newspaper.
The secretary’s anti-pesticide drive has also placed him at odds with the administration over its priorities for the agricultural sector and his claim that glyphosate, the key ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup, causes cancer has been met with alarm within the White House, which earlier this year reportedly asked him not to mention it in public again.
