Jennifer Rubin, an opinion columnist for The Washington Post, criticized President-elect Donald Trump's recent Cabinet nominations on her podcast yesterday, saying: "Republicans want to kill your kids."
Rubin, who writes opinion columns on foreign and domestic policy and politics for The Post and is a contributor to MSNBC, told viewers that when producing accessible, digestible political news: "You can't talk broad themes, you have to boil it down to nuts and bolts, and you have to be pithy."
"Republicans want to kill your kids. It's actually true," she said on a Tuesday episode of her show, Jen Rubin's Green Room Podcast.
Rubin continued: "If you're going to oppose vaccinations, if you're going to stop breakthrough medical research, if you're going to allow minors and all sorts of people get semi-automatic weapons which they use to shoot up schools, well then you are responsible for kids' health and death unfortunately."
Newsweek has reached out to Trump's press team for comment via email on Wednesday.
Her comments came after she criticized some of Trump's recent nominations, describing them as the "most unfit, immoral, unqualified, reckless Cabinet nominations in the history of America."
She specifically alluded to Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last week, Trump announced that they would serve as attorney general, director of national intelligence, and secretary of Health and Human Services, respectively.
Concerns, primarily from Democrats but also from some Republicans, have arisen regarding the picks, particularly Gaetz, who was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee until his resignation from the House of Representatives, and Kennedy Jr., who is known as being skeptical of vaccines.
Kennedy, who is on leave as the chair of the anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense, has long repeated the debunked claim that childhood vaccines cause autism and when asked if there were any safe and effective vaccines on the market, Kennedy told podcaster Lex Fridman, there are "no" vaccines in that category.
The U.S. Health Secretary oversees the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), managing programs that promote public health, medical research, and social services, including Medicare and Medicaid. They are responsible for shaping national health policy, responding to health crises, and ensuring the well-being of all Americans.
"It's not simply that Trump is shaking up the system, its not simply that Trump is trying to undermine the deep state, it is that he is trying to undermine America," Rubin said.
At one point, she raised questions about the potential consequences of Kennedy Jr. leading health agencies, saying, "What happens to children who may be susceptible to communicable diseases?" and "What happens when polio comes back? People will die, people will get hurt."
She noted that the U.S. Senate is supposed to be responsible for confirming or rejecting the nominees, but said in the past, Republicans have been "infamous for their spinelessness."
The Senate is responsible for confirming appointees via majority vote. However, recess appointments, which take place when the Senate is out of session, allow appointees to bypass Senate confirmation hearings, temporarily putting them in their positions.
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