Michael Shearer

don't take it, do whatever you can not to take it, which is just not the medical advice.

He was not interested in our conversations and criticizing the president directly like that.

You know, one of the things I found during the reporting was that they do have actually a very close relationship.

They talk regularly.

Trump is sort of hot and cold on vaccines.

He's a big fan of the COVID vaccine, which he developed.

He's a big fan of other vaccinations.

He also seems to be convinced there is some autism connection that's worth finding.

And so I think they have a very warm personal relationship that is based on some give and take here.

Yeah, it's not in a great place.

I mean, the Kennedy family is a very large family.

There are a lot of cousins.

And so I think he still has relationships with a number of them.

But a number of them, including some of his siblings, are publicly outspoken, very critical of him, including most recently the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, who's sadly suffering from terminal cancer, who wrote a rather blistering appraisal of his HHS leadership in The New Yorker.

And his relationship with Democrats is similarly very strained.

I mean, I wrote about Sheldon Whitehouse, who's a senator from...

Rhode Island, you know, they went to law school together.

They were friends.

They were in each other's weddings.

And I've been to a couple of these hearings where White House questions Kennedy, and it is vicious.