The more Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does things, the less Americans like him.
CNN statistician Harry Enten on Thursday morning revealed that the health secretary scored an alarming -21 approval rating in a new poll taken as he faces backlash over his massive cuts to medical research and moves to limit vaccine access.
“The more RFK Jr. is implementing or trying to implement his policies, the further down his net approval rating goes,” Enten said.
The Quinnipiac poll conducted from Sept. 18-21 showed Kennedy down ten points from March.
“I think RFK is sort of a two-faced guy when it comes to the American public,” said Enten, adding that Americans do not trust him when it comes to vaccine information.
Kennedy overtakes Attorney General Pam Bondi for the title of “Least Liked Trump Cabinet Member” with her scoring -18, one point better than the -19 she registered the previous week.
The dramatic free fall in Kennedy’s approval rating reflects the secretary’s disastrous month—and doesn’t take into account the American reaction to his “Autism Announcement.”
The poll was conducted just before Kennedy and President Trump began officially pushing a widely lambasted and scientifically dubious theory stating that pregnant women taking Tylenol increases the risk that their child will be autistic. The Wall Street Journal reported that Kennedy was going to blame autism on Tylenol earlier in September.
Kennedy started September with a calamitous congressional hearing in which he clashed with senators from both sides of the aisle over his contentious decision to fire CDC director Susan Monarez. Monarez said she was fired for refusing to advance immunization recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) without scientific evidence and for refusing to fire longtime CDC staffers without cause.
The hearings also found senators fighting with Kennedy over his anti-vax stances. The secretary slammed the United States’ Covid-19 response as “the worst in the world” and repeated dubious claims that Covid vaccines cause heart attacks, but also claimed Trump deserves the Nobel Prize for approving Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that accelerated the production of Covid vaccines at the height of the pandemic.
Kennedy also made headlines for saying he was going to look into whether video games cause mass shootings, revisiting a widely-disproven link that has been kicked around by politicians since the 1990s.
The poll found that 71% of Republicans view Kennedy favorably, while 91% of Democrats and 61% of independents disapprove. On vaccines, 67% of respondents backed school immunization requirements, compared to just 26% who opposed them.
While Kennedy’s -21 approval rating makes him the least-liked member of Trump’s cabinet, the Quinnipiac poll found he actually shares that rating another big name in the government. FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who spent the last week threatening Jimmy Kimmel and other shows the president doesn’t like, also scored a -21 in the poll.
