Senate Republicans confirm President Donald Trump’s advisers. Then he takes their advice. Then the Senate Republicans complain about the advice Trump took from the advisers whom they confirmed.
Trump signs executive order reducing recommended childhood vaccines
President Trump signed an order reducing recommended childhood vaccines.
We’re getting another glaring example of the cynical circle of unaccountability that is Donald Trump’s second term as president.
Trump issued a terrible new executive order on Aug. 10, a toxic stew of disinformation and fearmongering about vaccines. A Republican in the U.S. Senate, who, like his colleagues, often blames Trump’s awful decisions on bad advice, decried the action. But Senate Republicans keep confirming for Trump’s Cabinet the advisers who provide the bad advice.
They treat Trump as if he has no agency as an American president. It’s always “bad advice,” because Trump can’t ever be accountable for listening to the advisers he picked and got confirmed in the Senate.
Maybe that’s because Trump clearly could not stay awake while sitting at his desk as he announced his order to split up the childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). Maybe they just lack the courage to rebuff Trump’s wrath when he is confronted with his own disastrous decisions.
Do senators know they’re the ones who confirmed RFK Jr.?
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor and Louisiana Republican, insisted after the announcement that Trump lacked the expertise to make a call that will “make children less safe.” But Cassidy cast a key vote in 2025 in favor of confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Cassidy did that with the full knowledge that Kennedy was then and still is a vaccine conspiracy theorist with no medical training in the field. Guess who was praising Trump’s order as the president dozed in his office on Aug. 10?
It was Kennedy himself, cheering on the disinformation he fed Trump, after seeing it regurgitated in the Oval Office.
Trump, when he was awake, sounded very much like Kennedy’s puppet, declaring that the MMR vaccines together could be “quite lethal.” Asked later for evidence, Trump meekly offered this: “There are some people that say it is that way.”
Yes, some people, like Kennedy, who give Trump terrible advice that will likely drive vaccine hesitancy among parents at the very same time America is seeing measles cases spike to a 35-year record.
And, to be clear – as CNN’s excellent fact-checker Daniel Dale noted – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website says that the MMR vaccine “is very safe,” and that “no published scientific evidence shows any benefit in separating” those vaccines.
Trump’s pattern of getting ‘bad advice’ starts with GOP senators
Cassidy is just the latest example of Senate Republicans empowering and then rebuking Trump’s advisers, while treating the president like some kind of passive observer in his own administration.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, complained that Trump was getting “bad advice” about his controversial settlement of a lawsuit against the IRS, with a stunningly corrupt $1.8 billion slush fund for MAGA rioters who trashed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Tillis, with Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, threatened to derail Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general but then caved after Blanche gave them a pair of unenforceable memos that apparently cured their concerns.
Trump was asked about the slush fund at his vaccine announcement.
“Well, that’ll be up to Todd Blanche,” said Trump, making clear what everyone but Tillis and Cornyn could already see – the slush fund is very much alive if the attorney general and the president want it to be alive.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, leaned on the “bad advice” crutch in June when Trump signed a now-failed memorandum of understanding with Iran about America’s ongoing war in that country.
“I think the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice on this deal,” Cruz told Fox News.
Tillis, in an April interview with NBC News about the war in Iran, blamed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for giving Trump bad advice about Iran.
Tillis also trotted out the “bad advice” excuse for NBC News in January when asked about Trump’s unhinged claim that he would seize control of Greenland, a self-governing, autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, an American ally.
NBC News found plenty of Senate Republicans eager to blame Trump’s actions on bad advice for that story:
And it’s not just Senate Republicans. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who chairs the National Governors Association, told CNN in a January interview that Trump was “getting bad advice right now” about immigration after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.
The pattern keeps repeating. The circle of unaccountability goes ’round and ’round.
Senate Republicans confirm Trump’s advisers, and then he takes their advice, and then the Senate Republicans complain about the advice Trump took from the advisers whom they confirmed. The circle has one purpose – Trump alone can never be held accountable for his actions.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on Bluesky, @bychrisbrennan.bsky.social, and on X, @ByChrisBrennan. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, Translating Politics, here.