The Senate Finance Committee is expected to weigh in on President Donald Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s, nomination tomorrow — and his confirmation remains very uncertain.
RFK, Jr. stumped for Trump during his presidential campaign, and was one of Trump’s first cabinet picks, but experts say that RFK, Jr. nomination is not a guarantee even amongst Republicans.
In fact, former Fox News star Bill O’Reilly went so far as to predict that RFK, Jr.s confirmation is dead on arrival.
Yesterday, O’Reilly said he believes RFK, Jr. will not get U.S. Senate approval, comments he made during an interview with on NewsNation’s “On Balance.”
“RFK, he’ll go down,” O’Reilly said.
O’Reilly did not give specifics, or name sources within the Senate to validate his prediction. He said his prediction was simply made in over the limits of Trump’s control over Republicans in Congress.
According to O’Reilly, President Trump can more easily keep House GOP members in lockstep behind him. But he said he is likely to encounter resistance in the Republican-controlled Senate, despite his party having a 53-47 edge over Democrats.
“The Senate is six years,” O’Reilly said, referring to the length of senators’ terms. “Most of those people will still be in office when Donald Trump leaves.”
“So, he doesn’t have the cudgel there that he has on a two-year term in the House,” he added.
Trump’s picks have started running into rough confirmation hearings already.
Late last week, Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth survived a close call in the Senate, particularly with high-ranking Republicans.
Three Republican senators — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine — voted against Hegseth.
But he was confirmed with the tiebreaking vote of Vice President J.D. Vance.
“Hegseth was lucky. That was really close,” O’Reilly said.
Despite some outside skepticism, RFK, Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative has already made waves in the federal ranks in D.C., leading the widespread belief that Kennedy’s nomination was a foregone conclusion.
This month, the FDA announced it will ban Red No. 3 from food and drugs, a move that aligns with years of warnings from RFK, Jr. about artificial food dyes.
It was RFK, Jr.’s first big win since being announced as the Health Secretary… and he hasn’t even gone for his Senate confirmation hearing yet.
If confirmed, Kennedy has vowed to lead efforts to regulate controversial food additives and ingredients currently labeled as “generally regarded as safe.”