Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended top Trump administration aides Susie Wiles and Stefanie Spear Friday after some of his supporters accused them of working against Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement.
“The MAHA movement has no better friend in Washington than @SusieWiles, who has supported every effort to end the chronic disease epidemic and restore health freedom to every American,” Kennedy wrote in an X post about President Donald Trump’s chief of staff.
Kennedy’s post in support of Wiles came after one recently fired Department of Health and Human Service employee said that he believes Wiles is behind a plan to destroy Kennedy and his MAHA movement.
“They didn’t want the status quo changed, and they’ve jumped into bed with Big Pharma,” Steve Hatfill said in an interview posted on X Wednesday, referring to Wiles and other aides who he believes are getting in Kennedy’s way.
Hatfill, a longtime government biodefense expert, was fired last month because he was overstating his authority at HHS, according to one senior HHS official. Hatfill has denied that was the case and argued that his firing was in retaliation for his actions to push Kennedy’s agenda.
Why it matters: Turnover at high levels has marked Kennedy’s tenure at HHS. The health secretary this summer fired his first chief of staff, Heather Flick Melanson, and Hannah Anderson, the deputy chief of staff for policy.
A month later, he ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez, whom he had picked and the Senate had confirmed just a month before. Monarez said it stemmed from disagreements about potential changes to the childhood vaccination schedule. Kennedy said he asked her to resign because Monarez told him she wasn’t trustworthy.
Some of Kennedy’s supporters, who believe Covid shots are dangerous, have grown frustrated that the health secretary, also a critic of the shots, hasn’t yet banned them. Some of them think Kennedy aides like Spear or White House aides like Wiles have stood in the way.
Some Kennedy supporters have lately amplified Hatfill’s criticism, pointing to Wiles’ past work for the lobbying firm Mercury, which counts Pfizer among its clients, as proof that she didn’t buy into Kennedy’s agenda. Kennedy has long criticized pharmaceutical companies.
In his X post Friday, Kennedy said that “a small number of chaos agents are now targeting Susie out of ignorance or malice.”
Mary Talley Bowden, a physician known for promoting ivermectin to treat Covid-19 despite FDA warnings that the drug is ineffective against the disease and can cause harm, responded to Kennedy: “Calling dissenters “chaos agents” is a CIA tactic,” she wrote in an X post.
Bowden hosted the interview with Hatfill in which he criticized Wiles, and another former HHS adviser, Gray Delany, who criticized Spear. Delany was fired in August.
Bowden claimed Spear controls Kennedy and accused her of hating Trump, posting old Spear tweets in which she was critical of the president.
Kennedy responded to that criticism by saying that Spear, whom he called a long-time friend, “like many former Democrats — myself included — drank the Kool-Aid of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Kennedy argued on X Friday that Spear had a “come-to-Jesus moment during the 2024 presidential campaign when we got to see the campaigns in action from front row seats and realized the real threat of dictatorship in America wasn’t President Trump, but a heartless technocracy controlled by the Deep State DNC.”
Kennedy added that Trump had a committed loyalist in Spear.
An HHS spokesperson pointed to Kennedy’s X post defending Spear when asked for comment.
In his post defending Wiles, Kennedy called for unity. “I refuse to be distracted. Let’s build our coalition instead of splintering it,” he wrote.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement that “there is no better champion for President Trump and the Make America Healthy Again movement than Susie Wiles.”
He added that “those who are complaining aren’t doing it in good faith and they clearly are not aligned with the historic MAGA agenda she has helped President Trump build since 2016.”
