The Kennedy Experiment

Inside the surreal Texas dinner where Secretary Kennedy ignored a deadly outbreak to discuss Mennonite culture with a father who just buried his daughter.

[Speaker 2]: So I want to start today in a small dining room in Seminole, Texas. It’s April 6th, 2025. [Speaker 1]: This is right in the middle of the outbreak. [Speaker 2]: Right. The West Texas measles outbreak is peaking. And at this table, you have two men eating dinner. On one side, you have Pete Hildebrand. He’s a local father. He has just buried his eight-year-old daughter, Daisy, three days earlier. [Speaker 1]: [quietly] God. [Speaker 2]: And sitting across from him, eating at his table, is the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [Speaker 1]: Which is... that is a surreal image to begin with. You have a Cabinet member sitting in the home of a grieving father in rural Texas. [Speaker 2]: Exactly. And the entire nation is watching this visit. The CDC is watching. The White House is watching. And the expectation is that the Secretary of Health is there to say the one thing that stops a measles outbreak. He’s expected to look at this father, and look at the cameras, and say, "Vaccines work. Please protect your children." [Speaker 1]: Right. Because whatever his past activism, he’s the head of federal health now. That’s the job. [Speaker 2]: But here’s the thing. And this is the detail I can’t get out of my head. According to Hildebrand, they talked for hours. They talked about Mennonite culture. They talked about medical freedom. But when it came to the vaccine that could have saved Daisy? [Speaker 1]: Let me guess. [Speaker 2]: Silence. He never mentioned it. Not once. [Speaker 1]: And that silence? That isn't just an awkward dinner moment. That is the defining sound of the last twelve months. [Speaker 2]: It really is. [Speaker 1]: Because when you look at the last year-the "Make America Healthy Again" experiment-we’ve seen this incredible split screen. On one side, you have the most aggressive action on food safety in forty years. And on the other, you have this deafening, strategic silence on infectious disease. [Speaker 2]: Today on Angle: We’re looking at the scorecard of the most controversial cabinet member in modern history. The food dyes he banned, the outbreaks he ignored, and the AI scandal that made scientists ask... is America actually getting healthy, or are we just hallucinating? [Speaker 1]: So let’s back up. Because to understand how we got to that dinner table in Texas, we have to look at how Kennedy got into the building. And I think there’s still this lingering confusion for some people about who exactly is running the show. [Speaker 2]: [laughs] You mean the "JFK Jr." thing. [Speaker 1]: Yeah. I mean, we have to address it because it keeps coming up in the polling. There is a chunk of the electorate that believes this is John F. Kennedy Jr., the President's son, who died in 1999. [Speaker 2]: Right. So just for the record, before we go deeper: This is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is the nephew. He is very much alive, obviously. But that confusion is actually important context, because it shows the conspiratorial air that surrounded this appointment from day one. [Speaker 1]: And the politics of his confirmation were... weird. [Speaker 2]: Extremely weird. He was confirmed 52 to 48 back in February. But look at who voted *against* him. It wasn't just Democrats. You had Mitch McConnell voting no. [Speaker 1]: Which is telling. [Speaker 2]: It’s hugely telling. McConnell had polio as a child. He walks with a limp because of it. So…