Bulwark Takes - GOP Senators Embarrassed AGAIN

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

RFK Jr. fired the entire CDC vaccine committee, breaking his promise to GOP senators. Andrew Egger and Joe Perticone discuss how senators like Bill Cassidy and Joni Ernst traded integrity for empty assurances, exposing their desperation to avoid Trump-driven primary challenges.

Hi, this is Andrew Egger with the Bullwork. I'm joined here by our congressional reporter, Joe Perticone, to talk cabinet secretaries and the senators who extract promises from them. Yesterday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. very abruptly announced that he was firing every member of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, ACIP, which is basically just a brain trust of vaccine scientists and just kind of the top minds in the field, all of whom are there to give CDC best practices type advice for immunization schedules for when kids should get various shots, in what doses. RFK Jr., not so happy about it, fired the whole committee yesterday. He's going to replace them with a bunch of his own kind of hand-selected mooks ahead of that committee's meeting in a couple of weeks here.

What's interesting about this is that this is something he had explicitly pledged not to do when he was going through his gauntlet on Capitol Hill trying to get confirmed for this post. Joe, take us back. Take us back to, you know, RFK Jr.'s path to being confirmed for this post. Joe, take us back. Take us back to RFK Jr.'s path to being confirmed for this position and how this all went down a few months ago. So with some of the nominees at the time in January, each one kind of had a few senators who were on the fence. And in order to get them over the finish line, they either had to like get scared and get with the program or they had to extract promises from these nominees. Cassidy's was like a long list of things, not removing information on the CDC's website that says vaccines don't cause

autism, stuff like that. One of his explicit things was, do not make changes to ASIP, this board where he just fired everybody. That's what he said in his floor speech. Yesterday when he came into the Capitol, he kind of retconned that a little bit and said, well, actually, I meant is an actual medical doctor, chairman of the help committee, which held confirmations, hearings for Kennedy, but the ultimately the committee that voted on it, they didn't vote on it. So it was kind of a question of how, you know, how can we make sure that we're not going to be a victim of that?

And so, you know, I think that's a really important question. Doctor, Chairman of the Help Committee, which held confirmation hearings for Kennedy, but ultimately the committee that voted on it was the Finance Committee, just the way that works out. But Cassidy signing off was an important moment because he's very trusted on medical issues. And the fact that he got on board, he got these promises, and then these promises were very clearly and abruptly broken, kind of makes him look like a fool

because it's like, what are his two excuses here? Either he was dumb and got duped, which isn't good in a Senator, or he did it as like an effort to save face and doesn't really care that it's broken. You know, it makes the whole thing look very, I hate this term so much, swampy. Yeah, I mean, you really have to kind of hand it to RFK in at least one respect, which is

that he really did this in a way that leaves Cassidy with really no excuse or no leg to stand on here. I mean, you could hardly imagine he said RFK that leaves Cassidy with really no excuse or no leg to stand on here. I mean, you could hardly imagine he said RFK Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy gets up, you know, ahead of this confirmation vote and says, good news, everybody. You might think that RFK is a big time anti-vaxxer, but I have actually extracted a promise from him that he will not make changes to this board without, you know, giving the Senate lots of advance notice and soliciting our advice on these sorts of things.

And then he gets up yesterday with no notice to anybody at all and fires literally every member of the entire panel. Like everybody's gone. He's going to restock the entire thing with his people. And what's particularly amazing about this, this is not even the first instance of this type of story, right? I mean, Cassidy was kind of the main guy who was a will he

or won't he about RFK. And he was kind of, again, the main figure whose eventual assent for this and other reasons kind of smoothed his way to confirmation. A couple of weeks ago, you wrote about a very comparable situation with Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who played a very similar role when it came to the question of whether Pete Hegseth would ultimately be confirmed as defense secretary. Can you just walk us through,

kind of roll back the clock, what happened in that case? So with that one, Joni Ernst, one of her biggest issues she cares about is sexual assault in the military. Pete Hegseth was accused of sexually assaulting people and was up for leading the Department of Defense. Not a great combination. And so what she did is she got a promise from him that she brought it up again in the hearing. They made the promise in private and then she brought it up publicly that he would appoint a senior official explicitly to handle sexual assault prevention in the

military. And then he just never did, never made that hire. When we inquired with the Defense Department last week, they said, well, there is this guy who's been there since 2019 and it's in a position that was created in 2011. And it's like, okay, so that has literally nothing to do with anything that was promised to Ernst. This was a new thing.

And this group called Sapro has existed for more than a decade. And so that's really nothing. The issue reports, they're not engaged in the way that Ernst was demanding. And then when we inquired with Ernst about whether or not, you know, she's been satisfied with, you know, the current status quo where there's this old position there and the promise hasn't been fulfilled, she said,

that same day she met with the leader of Sapro, which you can read as maybe she did it via Zoom right after we inquired, or maybe she did it miraculously the morning before. Who knows? And basically she was caught by us, you know, realizing that she dropped the ball on this, she didn't keep Hegseth, uh, keep his feet to the fire to actually make this higher. Um, Hegseth fully forgot about it by not doing it or doesn't care. Um, and so now he's testifying on the Hill this week.

And so we're going to find out like is there going to be any progress here or are they just going to keep kicking the can down the road and not actually making this hire another broken promise? In a lot of ways, that's like a much smaller ball story, right? It's just like one random additional staffer at DOD as opposed to this massive, you know, shift in institutional policy around vaccines. It's a hugely controversial thing they're doing over HHS. But in some respects, that makes it like sadder, right? Like that this was like the one extraction that Ernst took out of Hegsath as kind of a face saving move, where she's like, I'm not being bullied into submission. I'm not, you know, being pressured by all these MAGA voters who say they're going to primary primary me if I block your nomination. No, I'm just really concerned about this particular issue. And I really think that that if I'm gonna if I'm gonna let you go be the Secretary of Defense, I'm really gonna make sure that you do this one thing again, it's just bringing on one

staffer like it's a pretty, even in the moment, it was kind of like a fig leaf sort of thing. And then the fact that he hasn't done it, and the fact that she apparently only cares that he hasn't done it when she's reminded, isn't it interesting that he hasn't done this thing, that you supposedly, this was like the make or break thing for you?

I mean, it's all just so transparently transactional, right? The way that Ernst and Cassidy have both handled this, first of all, the two of them are both are up for reelection in 2026. There's a common thread there. Both of them shouldn't be too worried about their statewide races. What they should be worried about

is Republican primary challenges. That's the most concerning thing for them. And to vote against Trump's nominees in January, that was like the first litmus test where they had to get behind everyone or they are directly obstructing Trump's agenda. And so for them to present themselves as like concerned and needing to get promises right based on their existing personas in the Senate or based on whatever semblance of moderation they want to maintain, they got these promises.

And the fact that they have been broken or haven't been fulfilled just shows how little it actually mattered. What mattered was them getting into a comfortable position where they could say yes on these nominees. Yeah, yeah. And you were about to, before I so rudely interrupted you, you were gonna mention a third way that some of these senators on the bubble

have tried to handle, or I guess a second way, another way that it's possible to go about this. So early on, like in December, after Trump had been elected, Tom Tillis was concerned about Republicans getting primary challengers. He's another person up for reelection who's very scared of a primary challenge and having outside groups fuel or fund primary challengers against people who vote against the nominees. He was concerned about that. And then all of a sudden he turned on a dime and he became Cash Patel's best friend and kind of shepherded him through the Senate and kind of went the

officer route where he was just like, Cash rules, like, not moderate, don't care, not concerned about politicization or weaponization at the Justice Department. Who cares? Cash is great. Let's get him on board. Cash, they'll do confirmation. And it worked out a lot better for him, I guess, because he still hasn't gotten that like heavy duty primary challenger. He has won, but it's not a big threat. He's not getting the, you know, shame of getting that broken promise, which is other colleagues have. So I guess, you know, someone's happy in this whole situation. Yeah, yeah. The incentives are what are just so perverse here, right? Because if you're

in a situation where like, the best move, like from a purely self-centered like crow, like eat the least amount of crow standpoint, then it probably is true. Like that, that the move is to do the Tom Tillis thing and just eat the crow upfront and do the embarrassing thing upfront and just get behind the guy right away. You know, let people beat on you for a little while, but then like, just like whatever your team player, everyone expects it in the end and that's just what you do. Versus this thing where you make this big public stand and you think that Donald Trump and his mooks are gonna let you keep like some semblance of your dignity

by honoring the pledges that they made to you over there. And then again, when they don't, I mean, it's not like these people are heading to battle stations. It's not like they're feeling scandalized or feeling like betrayed or lied to. I mean, like, I don't know. I feel like I'd feel I feel like I'd go on the warpath to a certain extent. Right. I mean, like, especially if you're Cassidy. Right. I mean, like, in theory, this is like such a deeply important issue to you.

Continued health of the U.S. vaccine apparatus that everybody can go get their shots and does extinct diseases stay extinct and people don't die of measles or rubella. But no, they're just looking for a way to save a little face before they, before they ultimately. I think we, the both of us, the majority of our conversations with elected officials are about politics because we write about politics. And when you do that, they all kind of fall into this like, oh, I don't care much for politics. You know, I'm more about policy. They care about that. And none of them do. Their first instinct is always politics. And this is like a perfect example of that where the political path was the one they took

and it backfired and they're full steam ahead. Got to remain on that like political right path. Otherwise, it all falls apart. Yeah, yeah. Well, we can leave it there. I was not anticipating getting a good old boy vocal impression out of Joe during this video. You should roll that out way more often because that was great. And yeah, that's what we'll leave you with. So thanks, Joe, for coming on to talk about all this stuff. Obviously he will continue to pester all these senators on behalf of all you readers out

there, watchers out there. And thanks to you all who are out there for watching and listening. And we'll keep following it. So thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.