Drain the swamp yet?

Recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was spotted swimming in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park. As every Washingtonian knows, Rock Creek is not a recreational swimming hole, it’s where storm runoff, sewage overflow, and every imaginable urban contaminant end up (the poops and the pee). That’s why the District has banned swimming in the creek and its tributaries for decades.

You’d think the nation’s top public health official might be aware of that fact. Or at least curious enough to ask. Instead, Kennedy plunged in, seemingly unbothered by the very real health risks, while continuing to fixate on imagined threats like fluoridation in drinking water.

The irony is hard to miss. A man obsessed with speculative toxins willingly immersed himself in water the city explicitly warns residents to avoid. If this were just a private citizen making a poor decision, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning. People do dumb things all the time.

But this isn’t just anyone. This is an official actively reshaping, and in many cases dismantling, public health policy. When the person charged with protecting the public can’t distinguish between genuine hazards and conspiracy bait, it stops being amusing and starts being alarming.