Comedian Bill Maher on Friday echoed calls for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign.
“It’s just – he’s got to go,” Maher told viewers during the Friday episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Maher described Kennedy as “nutty” after a series of removals of top advisers and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez.
Sharp criticism for Kennedy’s leadership arose after his Thursday testimony before the Senate Committee on Finance, during which he skirted questions about deaths tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and made false claims about access to vaccines.
The secretary’s nephew, former Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.), said his uncle used the hearing to “dismiss science, mislead the public, sideline experts and sow confusion.”
“Robert Kennedy Jr. is a threat to the health and wellbeing of every American. A United States Secretary of Health and Human Services is tasked with protecting the public health of our country and its people,” he added in a Friday post on X.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sister Kerry Kennedy also chimed in, urging her brother to resign over poor public health advice.
“Medical decisions belong in the hands of trained and licensed professionals, not incompetent and misguided leadership. The decimation of critical institutions, like the NIH [National Institutes of Health] and the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], will lead to the loss of innocent lives. This means that children, mothers, fathers, and those you love are at risk now, like never before,” she wrote in a post on X.
Maher said at first he was “sympathetic” towards the secretary and his “Make America Healthy Again Agenda.”
However, the comedian on Friday said, “He’s just too nutty. He just does not listen. I mean, he just is. And nothing ever – I call it ‘pendulumism’ –- nothing ever stops in the middle.”
“The knives are out for Bobby Kennedy, and I gotta say, I’m with the knives,” Maher added.
Despite concerns, President Trump told reporters that Kennedy’s “got a different take, and we want to listen to all of those takes.”
“But it’s not your standard talk, I would say. And that has to do with medical and vaccines. But if you look at what’s going on in the world with health, and look at this country also with regard to health, I like the fact that he’s different,” he added.
