‘This Can’t Be Possible’: Nicolle Wallace And MSNBC Guest Go Off The Rails After Trump Nominates RFK Jr. For HHS

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace and former Obama administration official Kavita Patel on Thursday bemoaned the nomination of former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services.

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday afternoon that Kennedy would be his nominee for the cabinet post. Patel revealed she was receiving texts from Republicans and Democrats expressing disbelief at the nomination.

“My texts are flying off the chain, Democrats and Republicans saying, ‘This can’t be real. Someone must have gotten this wrong. This can’t be possible,’” Patel said to Wallace. “And now the second underlying chain, there’s some silver lining, the second thought I had was ‘He can’t get confirmed, can he?’ But I’m listening to you speak about the DNI and other roles that require some sort of White House confirmation, some combination, and here we are.”

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“It is really hard to believe there are career staff texting me saying this was just the push they needed to try to get out,” Patel continued. “They were already on the fence and worried. We’re not just going to see this incredible kind of integration of ideology that has no science behind it, but, Nicolle, we’re going to see the best of the best career staff leave.”

Kennedy announced he was suspending his presidential campaign Aug. 23, endorsing Trump, who said Kennedy would have a “big role” in his administration.

“So the Secretary of Health and Human Services, as you mentioned, has a purview over many agencies that touch our lives. You touched on a couple of them, Food and Drug Administration, the CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you may know these matters as we talked about vaccines during Covid, it touches everything,” Patel said. “Our food supply chain, I’ll give you an example, we had a supply chain shortage of baby formula. This hits a lot of people at home because none of the shelves could keep the formula stocked. The HHS secretary kind of pulled it all together and worked with other departments to try to make sure that we could get Americans formula to feed their children.”