Louisiana Rep. Sen. Bill Cassidy is still out there trying to defend the indefensible. He knew better than to confirm Kennedy, but he caved to this administration and did it anyway, and has been twisting himself in knots ever since.
He was at it again during an extended interview on this Sunday's Face the Nation on CBS, and now he's come up with a new excuse for allowing the anti-vaxx whackaloon to become the head of HHS -- it would have been worse if they hadn't because Trump would have just made Kennedy a health "czar" and then there wouldn't have been any guardrails in place around Kennedy.
The notion that there are any Republican "guardrails" around a single person in this administration is laughable:
Sen. Bill Cassidy strongly criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his vaccine skepticism and handling of the nation's public health, despite having delivered the key vote to advance Kennedy's nomination last year.
Cassidy, a medical doctor who chairs the Senate health committee, said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" that it's "easy to surmise" that Kennedy made promises to him to win his vote, and since then, the commitments that the HHS secretary made to him and the country "have been violated."
"If you build public health upon a foundation of lies, then you're going to have the absence of adequate public health," he said. Brennan's interview with Cassidy was conducted on June 25.
Cassidy explained that he cast the vote to help confirm Kennedy because the alternate scenario was having him installed in a czar-type role without any congressional oversight.
"Bobby Kennedy was going to have the ear of the President. The President seems to be fascinated with the Kennedys," Cassidy remarked.
"Either he was going to be in a position where there were guardrails, and I did have commitments made as to kind of guardrails. Or he was going to be appointed White House health czar, in which case he would have the president's ear without the guardrails," Cassidy said. "You can criticize it, but I chose to have the one with the guardrails."
Having Kennedy show up at some hearings so he can lie and scream at people in Congress isn't accountability or any type of "guardrail" Senator, especially when your party refuses to impeach him.
Cassidy is well aware of the damage this guy has done and the fact that a lot of it wouldn't be possible if he was not confirmed, yet he continues to justify what he's done. Shameful, but they're all incapable of shame.
