The real reason Trump will never fire RFK Jr.

Every member of Donald Trump‘s Cabinet is a disaster, but even by those standards, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stands out as especially monstrous. During his Senate confirmation hearing, the Health and Human Services secretary lied repeatedly during his Senate confirmation hearing, insisting he is not “anti-vaccine” and would do nothing that “makes it difficult or discourages people” from taking vaccines. He has since waged an all-out war on vaccine access by cutting research funding, spreading disinformation, restricting access to the COVID-19 vaccine and firing health officials who get in his way.

Last week, Kennedy lied even more during a combative Senate hearing when he was called out — sometimes even by Republicans — for these actions. He lied about COVID-19 deaths, vaccine access and even Medicaid cuts. Even Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. — a former physician who “struggled” with the secretary’s nomination and went on to play a key role in his confirmation after promises from Kennedy and pressure from Trump — became frustrated at his contradictory statements, which included suggesting the COVID-19 vaccine killed more people than the disease one minute, only to feign belief that it was a miracle of science the next.

The whole display was so disgraceful that it provoked rumblings that Trump might fire his Kennedy. “GOP discontent with RFK Jr. is growing,” declared a POLITICO headline after the hearing. “GOP unease with RFK Jr. builds,” Axios blared. Multiple outlets noted that polls show broad support for vaccines, even among Republican voters. Multiple Kennedy family members — including the secretary’s nephew, former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III, and his own sister, human rights advocate Kerry Kennedy — called on him to resign. Sensing the political winds were blowing against Kennedy, Trump told reporters on Friday he believes it’s “pure and simple” that vaccines “work,” adding, “They’re not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used.”

The president typically has no loyalty to his underlings. He will cut them loose the second he thinks their presence no longer benefits him, so hopes started to rise that Trump might just be done with Kennedy wreaking havoc on public health policies and programs that enjoy widespread support. But a mere two days after he rejected Kennedy’s anti-vaccination ideology, Trump was back to defending him.

“He’s a different kind of a guy. He’s got a lot of good ideas,” Trump told reporters. He then praised Kennedy for “coming up with the answers for autism,” backing the secretary’s long-standing view that just making stuff up is a superior approach to medicine than following the science.

Anyone who listens to Trump speak about Kennedy could have predicted this. I remember the moment I realized that Trump would fire everyone in his Cabinet before he dared say a cross word to Kennedy. It was during his election night victory speech, when Trump called Kennedy “Bobby.” After threatening to unleash Kennedy on American health care, he said, “Go have a good time, Bobby.”

Being able to publicly call a bona fide Kennedy by their familial nickname is, for someone as narcissistic as Trump, a substance with heroin-levels of addictiveness. Sure, we can consult the checklists for narcissistic personality disorder — Trump seems to meet every one — but no diagnostic tools are necessary here. His belief that he can prove his superiority by aligning himself with those he views as high-status is evident every time he talks for more than two or three minutes. He’s a compulsive name-dropper, peppering his speeches with boring stories whose only point is to exaggerate his relationship to famous people. This is how he ended up telling a crowd of Boy Scouts that he used to know William Levitt, a prominent 20th century real estate developer none of them know about. Or bragging to a rally about how he knew so much about Arnold Palmer’s genitalia. Or how he pretended that Princess Diana liked him, thinking she was too dead to correct him, but not realized her brother remembered that she hated Trump.

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For someone so status-obsessed, collecting a Kennedy is a very big deal. Trump doesn’t hide his fixation on the Kennedys, who have achieved the quasi-royal status Trump desperately wants his family to have. It’s almost certainly why he’s made abusing the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts a major priority for his new administration. The Kennedy Center is a symbol of the family’s reputation for being classy, cultured and widely beloved — all qualities that Trump will never have, no matter how much fake gold he plasters all over the Oval Office. (Indeed, his love of gold paint is an early warning symbol of why he could never be like the Kennedys, not that he’ll ever be smart enough to see that.) His obsession comes down to envy, which also appears on that narcissist checklist, and is one of Trump’s dominant personality traits, along with sadism, cowardice and racism.

Many commentators, seeing Trump defend Kennedy, have reached for a “rational” reason the president would stick by a guy who is probably only going to hurt him politically. Some have theorized that Trump is afraid to alienate the “MAHA moms,” a small group of RFK Jr. superfans who helped push the president across the finish line in a tight election. Others have noted that, while most Americans dislike Kennedy, he’s slightly less hated than other Cabinet officials, a finding that is likely due to low information voters wanting to extend grace to a member of the beloved Kennedy clan. Still others have argues that, in his second term, Trump has a  “no scalps” policy, refusing to fire anyone due to scandal out of concerns that it will be seen as a win for the loathsome liberals.

Perhaps these are small factors, but ultimately any effort to see strategy in the White House’s actions underestimates how Trump is really just winging it hour-by-hour. (Just see the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal for proof they can never see past the next cable news hit.)

Trump’s last term was defined by a devastating worldwide pandemic, and it would have been much worse for him politically — and for everyone else — if he hadn’t had an HHS manned by competent people. And yet he can’t think past the next few seconds in time to consider what a political disaster he’s courting by turning health agencies over to a man who rejects the basic scientific facts necessary to containing infectious disease.

There’s no strategy here. Trump just likes being able to ring a Kennedy on the phone and call him “Bobby.”