The ball is now in Trump’s court': Will president stand by RFK Jr. in firing of CDC director

The White House says it has fired CDC Director Susan Monterez less than one month after she was confirmed by the Senate. One month. That was quick. It follows a dramatic back and forth in which Monterez was pressured to leave the agency after reportedly clashing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy, but she refused to resign. The Washington Post reports Monterez was pressed for days over whether she would support rescinding certain approvals for coronavirus vaccines. Then in a social media post last night, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Monterez was no longer the director of the CDC. But just hours later, her lawyers responded, saying she had not resigned or been fired, writing in part, quote, When she refused to rubber stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she has been targeted. She will not resign. The White House responded with a statement formally terminating Monterez, arguing she is not aligned with the president's agenda of making America healthy again. So wait, I'm confused because he loved his warp speed. Donald Trump's agenda is to undermine Donald Trump's. Donald Trump's one of his greatest achievements. He took responsibility for making the vaccine available to America and opening up America again. And the world. Making it safe. But wait, so the White House is now against that? He was touting it two days ago at that cabinet meeting. He went on the wall and people getting fired for agreeing with the president. I don't get it. That's like that's chaos. Wow. So lawyers for Monterez say this is legally deficient that she remains as CDC director. At least four top officials at the agency have announced their resignations, one saying he no longer can serve in the role because of the ongoing weaponization of public health by Bobby Kennedy Jr. Joining us now, Washington correspondent for the New York Times covering the intersection of health policy and politics, Cheryl Gay Stolberg. Cheryl, good morning. So this is all a little bit confusing. Can you kind of take us back through this and remind our viewers that yes, the CDC director was confirmed by this Republican Senate that this was not a Biden hold over. This isn't some somebody that they opposed a minute ago and now do. So what's going on here? Well, a lot of chaos, as I think Mika said. Yes, this CDC director, Dr. Susan Menardis, was confirmed by a Republican Senate. She's an appointee of President Trump. She serves at the pleasure of the president. Kennedy obviously wants her out. They've been tussling back and forth for days. My sources tell me that Kennedy summoned her to his office on Monday and said either she had to clear out the top ranks of CDC leadership and accept their advisory committee's recommendations on vaccines or she was going to be fired. She refused to go. She called Senator Bill Cassidy, the chairman of the Senate Health Committee. He, in turn, called Kennedy. Kennedy was angry. Kennedy summoned her back on Tuesday and said, you've got to go. And the long and the short of it is the White House now says she's been fired. I just updated my story because shortly after midnight, her lawyers said that the firing is, quote, legally deficient, that she serves at the pleasure of the president. Only President Trump can fire her. He hasn't made an announcement. So I think the ball is now in President Trump's court. I'm going to be interested in seeing what is he going to say today? Is he going to come out and fire this woman that he picked and stand with Bobby Kennedy or not? So, Cheryl, let's be specific about this point of conflict and the vaccines that that Bobby Kennedy Jr. and others want to get rid of. And Dr. the CDC director appears to be defending. What are we talking about here? Which vaccines? Well, I think we're talking certainly about coronavirus vaccines, which we saw yesterday, the FDA limited recommendations on they approved the new vaccine, but they narrowed down who who can take it. It's unclear what other vaccines we might be talking about. And I say that because we also know that the secretary has said there will be a forthcoming report on the causes of autism. And as you and I know, the secretary has embraced the theory which has been discredited that autism is caused by vaccines. We're all waiting for that report. It's being written by someone who has also embraced the vaccine autism theory. And so who knows what is what is coming next? And it may well be that their clash, his clash with Susan Menard's is in anticipation of that forthcoming report. Cheryl, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the relationship between Trump and Bobby Kennedy. I mean, we shouldn't be surprised here. RFK has dedicated his life to medical misinformation and propagated a lot of false information with regards to vaccines and autism. But we know that Trump, at least in the last presidency, was pro vaccine, according to some of his advisers, and did get behind Operation Warp Speed. Why has he sort of allowed RFK to stomp all over this this legacy and push forward with this with this mandate? So a couple of things about that. President Trump has actually long expressed the view that vaccines cause autism. As far back as 2007, he had a fundraiser for an autism awareness groups. He has said repeatedly on social media and in a 2015 presidential debate that he thinks that kids are getting too many vaccines, you know, and that, you know, autism is the result. But separate from that, he has a very unique relationship with Bobby Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy is a very unique cabinet member, right? First of all, he's a Kennedy. Trump is enamored with, you know, the Kennedy name. And Kennedy also brings his own following to Trump. Kennedy helped Trump get elected. He merged his campaign with Trump's and he brought a whole movement, his so-called Maha movement. And I think Trump is very well aware of that and that a part of his base, a distinct part of his base, is the Maha base. And that is different from the MAGA base. And so I think that's why we see Trump give Kennedy, you know, a fair amount of leeway. He said he was going to let Kennedy go wild on health. Trump doesn't really care that much about health. And so he'd just as soon have Kennedy take it over. So, you know, we'll see. All right. New York Times Washington correspondent, Cheryl Gay Solberg, thank you as always for reporting. Greatly appreciate it. It's fascinating. So as you said, I guess Kennedy thinks he helped get Donald Trump elected much in the same way Elon Musk thinks he helped get Trump elected. So I suppose Bobby Kennedy's totally fine with trashing what a lot of people say may be Donald Trump's top legacy. That is Operation Warp Speed. So he's trashing it. We'll see if Donald Trump's fine with him trashing his top legacy. We'll be following this. Transcribed by https://otter.ai