Imagine you are the brand-new chief technology officer of a large company. The CEO has asked you to lead a portion of the company, one of the largest. Now, you are taking the helm of a department that you are passionate about, which needs change from its leadership after decades of mismanagement.
Then, when you get to your job, a departing employee who didn’t like what you did at a previous firm decides that you shouldn’t be able to do your job. That employee, in a final middle finger to you, your company and its shareholders, prevents you from accessing the company’s files on information you said you wanted to review.
This exact scenario happened to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he took the reins of the department President Trump asked him to lead.
In an act of defiance against the American people’s will, Dr. Peter Marks decided that the man asked by the duly elected president of the United States to helm HHS was not qualified enough to have unrestricted access to a federal vaccine database. Worse, Dr. Marks — the now-former head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, who was ousted from his position in March — was helped by a political smokescreen from The Associated Press after inhibiting the American people’s demand for change.
AP’s framing of a deliberate act of defiance against a sitting president and the people who elected him as heroic is wrong and dangerous for the future of our country.
This action by Dr. Marks and the subsequent pass by AP, a legacy media outlet that claims to be a fair arbiter, illustrate the accountability problem facing the American people.