None of President-elect Donald Trump’s appointees will face opposition from West Virginia’s newest U.S. Senator. Republican Governor Jim Justice, who won election to the Senate earlier this month, said during a media briefing Tuesday, “Absolutely I am supportive of his choices because I’ve got that level of faith in him. I’ll support all the choices.”
Our Brad McElhinny asked Justice specifically about Trump’s pick of Robert Kennedy, Jr., to become the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and Justice has been a strong advocate for vaccinations during his tenure as Governor.
Justice equivocated in his answer.
On one hand, Justice stood by the state’s Covid vaccination efforts. “Donald Trump and his administration promoted those vaccines like crazy and we all jumped behind it and I was 100 percent on board,” he said.
And he is correct.
Justice listened to the best medical advice available during the pandemic while providing practical leadership and emotional support. At one point, West Virginia even led the nation in Covid vaccinations.
“God knows we saved a pot full of lives,” Justice said. “And we saved an awful lot of lives because they were vaccinated, and I was a proponent of that, and I do think we did the right thing there.”
Justice, his top advisers and West Virginia’s medical community did do the right thing and that did save lives.
However, Justice’s answer yesterday then seemed to hedge.
“Now we learn more, don’t we,” he said. “Now we learn really and truly in many ways there are people, there is medical knowledge that maybe, just maybe they (the vaccines) didn’t help much.”
That runs counter to the science. There is tons of research that quantifies the success of the vaccine, while acknowledging the slight risk. Research by The Commonwealth Fund released in December 2022 calculated that during a two year period the vaccine was administered, three million deaths and more than 18 million hospitalizations were prevented.
Earlier this year, Justice vetoed a bill that would have removed vaccination requirements for students in private and parochial schools. Justice said he listened to the medical community’s advice that the legislation would have done “irreparable harm by crippling childhood immunity to diseases such as mumps and measles.”
Again, good call by the Governor.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that for children born between 1994 and 2023, those vaccines have prevented more than 500 million lifetime cases of illness and more than one million deaths in the United States.
But now, Justice sounds as though he has switched from putting his faith in the medical community and instead is following Trump’s lead on appointees. That means backing Kennedy even though he has consistently advocated medically questionable positions that run counter to the science-based and informed decisions Justice has made as Governor.
I’ll support all the choices,” Justice said.
As a newly-elected Senator, Justice can bring his considerable experience to bear with constitutionally-prescribed advice and consent on the Trump nominees. Justice already seems ready to lay down his own discernment, though, to just take a ride with Trump.