Plenty of people are freaked out about the fact that anti-vaccines activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Trump’s pick to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. And for good reason — as CNN’s Jake Tapper put it on Thursday, “I hope you like measles, America.”
But on “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert was a picture of fake-philosophical calm as he urged people to to “Keep an open mind” about it. “Because that’s how the worm gets in.”
“There’s no denying it is a weird time. But today is not the worst day since Trump was elected,” Colbert said during his monologue. “That was yesterday, maybe tomorrow, and also today, because just moments before this taping, Donald Trump continued his exhaustive search for the most qualified people in his line of sight, and he has chosen antivax nepo-maniac, Robert F Kennedy Jr as Secretary of Health and Human Services.”
“I know, I know. No, I know,” Colbert said as his audience reacted negatively. “I know that sounds insane, but we should all keep an open mind, because that’s how the worm gets in.” This is of course a reference to the bizarre story Kennedy tells about having had a brain worm at one time (apparently part of his argument to get out of paying alimony to his second wife).
“So RFK Jr is now in charge of our health. Exactly what everyone voted for. Surely this will lower the price of eggs,” Colbert said, sarcastically.
“Now we we don’t have a lot of information yet, but what we have is already too much. Besides being a vaccine denier,” Colbert said, accurately, “RFK Jr spread a racist conspiracy that COVID 19 was ethnically targeted. to spare, Jewish, and Chinese people. So good news to everyone of Chinese, or Jewish descent who got COVID 19 No, you didn’t.”
Watch the whole monologue below: