JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I want to read something and get your comment, Michael.

This is from a piece written by Tatiana Schlossberg, who is the granddaughter of JFK, was suffering, unfortunately, from a terminal cancer.

And she wrote in The New Yorker this week, as I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to prove the lives of others, I watched as Bobby, her cousin, cut nearly a half billion dollars research into mRNA vaccines technology that could be used against certain cancers, slash billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research, and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings.

Hundreds of NIH grants and clinical trials were canceled, affecting thousands of patients.

I want to talk about the specific charge that Schlossberg is making here, but, Michael, start with this what I think of as an incredibly obvious question.

Bobby Kennedy is protege of the country's most famous Democratic family.

His uncle, his father, the two most prominent Kennedys are both associated with good government, government as an ameliorating force in society, government doing the things that private industry can't or won't, obviously, his uncle, huge backer of science.

How did it come to pass that -- I mean, this is his cousin who's suffering right now.

She's not alone in that family, in saying that he is not just off the farm, he's completely off the rails.

What happened in his life that led to this situation in America's most famous family?

MICHAEL SCHERER: I'll start with what -- how he explains it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

MICHAEL SCHERER: He explains it by saying that the party left me, that what my uncle and my father stood for is what Donald Trump and Republicans stand for today, which is a remarkable statement.

I mean, he's serving with a energy secretary who's from industry, and he is saying that this is very different from the Republican Party of the past.

Why does he feel that way?

He's on a mission.

And there is -- I mean, there was a point where I asked him how much of his own personal recovery journey.

He is recovering heroin addict, his other addiction issues, he goes to a meeting every single day somewhere.

He mentors other people had to do with the work he does now.

He said everything that he does is informed by his recovery.

There is a journey he is on.

You know, when I asked him how he explained going from being on the outside of the Democratic Party to HHS secretary, his answer was that it was providential.

So, he has caught onto this idea that he has an insight from his own reading of studies, from his own research into the way the medical establishment has missed something serious that is hurting American children, if you're talking about the vaccine issue, or hurting American health writ large, if you're talking about chronic disease issue.

And when he faced a choice in the summer of 2024 when his campaign was ending, he wasn't going to win, Trump came along and said, join my effort.

And what he was saying to people he was close to is, I have a chance to save a lot of children.

I'm going to make the switch.

He was doing it -- he was a mission-driven decision, and then he had to intellectually like flip this idea that the Republican Party is not a liberal party.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: How do you save children by cutting the funding for vaccine and cancer research?

What would he say to that question?

MICHAEL SCHERER: He would say that the cuts that have happened at HHS are returning HHS's budget to, you know, back five to ten years.

It's not a decimation.

There was enormous increases in the budget on returning the budget down.

He would say that the bureaucracy was resistant to change and we had to clean out.

He talked about speaking with Elon Musk early on in the administration.

He bought into the idea of shock and awe.

You have to have momentum.

You have to disrupt the bureaucracy.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Elon Musk, whose DOGE was just closed by the federal government as a cost saving measure.

MICHAEL SCHERER: Correct.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Noting.

MICHAEL SCHERER: And then I think the other part that he, he doesn't say as loudly is some of these cuts are not his choice.

Some of these cuts are being imposed on him by the White House.

Some of the cuts, the firings happened before he was even confirmed as HHS secretary.

He wasn't responsible for them.

He said that the firing of probationary employees wasn't ideal.

He would rather have kept the probationary employees.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But, Julie, he's pushing on an open door for a lot of people for a reason.

The health establishment, medical establishment is far from perfect.

Is that -- do you agree with -- and you've covered this for a long time.

Do you agree that they set themselves up to some degree?

JULIE ROVNER: I've certainly never seen a Republican administration go this hard after sort of the healthcare infrastructure, the industry, you know, for decades.

One of the reasons that the U.S.

couldn't get anywhere on health reform is that the Republicans were busy protecting the healthcare stakeholders, the hospitals and the drug companies and the insurers.

Obviously, Donald Trump, not a traditional Republican in that sense.

So, it does look very different than it used to.

And as I said, you know, Congress has mostly been quiet on all of these things.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

Dan from like a pandemic perspective, would any of what we're seeing now, the distrust, the rise of Kennedy, would this have happened without the pandemic and a response that is going to be -- a response to the pandemic on the part of the federal government that's going to be argued about forever?

DAN DIAMOND: I think the pandemic supercharged, the Kennedy movement.

I mean, there were tensions that already existed.

People have questions about the bad things that happened to them.

They're looking for answers.

RFK Jr.

and his allies sometimes offer those answers.

Now, we know from whether him or ChatGPT, sometimes the answers you get and what you want to hear, they're not the right answer.

But Kennedy did identify, I think, some real problems in our healthcare system.

We know that there's too much money sometimes going to industry, too much influence on life expectancy.

He was one of the only politicians who talked to me several years ago during a big project about the trends in America.

He was willing to identify that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Michael, last word to you.

Is he set up for success?

Do you think he's going to have a permanent influence on American health?

MICHAEL SCHERER: Well, permanent is a long time.

But, yes, he's going to have a lasting -- I mean, the changes that have already happened are having a lasting impact.

For a Democratic administration winning in 2029 to unwind all this will take years, if that's what they want.

And, you know, as Dan said, a lot of these initiatives are bipartisan.

You know, Democrats want to regulate drug advertising and things like that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, thank you.

It's a fascinating conversation and it's not going to end anytime soon, but it's all the time we have tonight, unfortunately.

I want to thank our guests for joining me