CDC nominee doesn’t recall Office on Smoking and Health that just, somehow, disappeared

Susan Monarez, the nominee to be the new director of the CDC, is apparently OK that Bobby Kennedy’s failson and Elon Musk eliminated the Office on Smoking and Health.

This came out as U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., grilled Monarez during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.

Monarez tried to deflect on the elimination of the Office on Smoking and Health, telling Kaine that she wasn’t involved in any of the personnel decision-making during her brief tenure as the interim director at the CDC, ahead of Donald Trump nominating her to take on that job on a full-time basis on March 24.

“When we were given the tasking to return CDC to its core functions related to preventing, detecting and responding to infectious diseases and emerging threats, I worked with the career staff there to make sure that we did both. I don’t recall that specific office,” said Monarez, who would be the first director of the CDC without a medical degree since the Eisenhower administration, assuming she is confirmed.

She did, at least, agree with Kaine’s observation that smoking is a public health issue, for whatever that’s worth.

“Smoking prevention and mitigation is a very important public health strategy to mitigate the risks associated with tobacco use and cancer,” Monarez said.

The hard part to buy here: if smoking prevention and mitigation is so important, how do we get there without the people who were actually working toward smoking prevention and mitigation?

“You’re a career public health professional,” Kaine said. “If public health saves lives and this is an office that’s been going for decades that’s shown real effectiveness in reducing smoking, isn’t it a bad idea to completely shutter the Office on Smoking and Health and lay off all the employees and contractors?”

“These issues are still public health priorities,” Monarez said. “They’re public health priorities for the Secretary.”

The “Secretary” – that is, the guy who oversaw laying off the folks in the Office on Smoking and Health, before he put the kibosh on the vaccine panel so that he could replace those folks with vaccine skeptics.