President Donald Trump's most popular cabinet official has been plummeting in public approval as he takes aim at a broadly accepted policy.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will conduct a new review of abortion pills, the latest move taking aim at health care matters that has included vaccine mandates and Tylenol use by pregnant women that Americans had come to take for granted as uncontroversial.
And CNN data analyst Harry Enten said his actions have his approval ratings plunging.
"Down it goes," Enten said. "What are we talking about here? Well, let's take a look. Net approval rating in March, according to Quinnipiac it was minus-11. You go to June, down it goes to minus-15, and now, data that's just out this week, minus-21 points. We've seen a drop of 10 points since March. The more RFK Jr. Is implementing or trying to implement his policies, the further down his net approval rating goes, and at this particular point, 21 points underwater is not a place you want to be."
Kennedy had been the most popular Trump official at the start of this month, with a net approval rating of minus-7 points, but the more the public sees from him the less they agree with his policies, Enten said.
"What is going on here?" Enten added. "Well, I think, you know, RFK is sort of a two-faced guy when it comes to the American public. What do they like about RFK Jr.? Well, Americans who support restricting artificial food dyes. Look at this: It's 60 percent. That, of course, is something that RFK Jr. has been trying to implement, right? They like RFK Jr. when it comes to food dyes and stuff in food.
"But look at this: Trust RFK Jr. on vaccine information, he's significantly lower. He's down at 37 percent, and obviously, RFK Jr. has been trying to change some of the advice that's going on from the federal government when it comes to vaccines. Americans do not trust RFK Jr., they do not like him on vaccines. They like him when it comes to food dyes, they don't like him on vaccines, and this has been the number that has been far more in the news recently. If I were advising RFK in terms of if he wanted to be more popular, I'd be focusing on this."
"I think that this is the real worry, right, because they don't trust RFK Jr., right, on vaccine information, and take a look here," Enten added. "Gives trustworthy info on public health? The CDC, it was 72 percent last year. Look at this: It's 64 percent now. How about the FDA? It was 73 percent last year, it's 63 percent now. Most of this decline is coming from Democrats, who all of a sudden are wondering, can I actually trust the information that's coming out of the federal government, whether or not it is coming out of RFK Jr.'s mouth? Because obviously, as you said, all those agencies that he's overlooking, those are very important.
"If the public doesn't trust them, we've got major problems, and at this particular point, when you look at these numbers, the flip side is now more than a third of Americans are not confident in the information that they are getting at either the CDC or the FDA, which I think a lot of public health officials are quite worried about."
