BREAKING: Top HHS Spokesperson Quits After Reported Clash with RFK Jr.
Tom Corry, Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, who had served in the same role during the first Trump administration, on March 3 abruptly announced he had resigned from the role reportedly following a clash with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“I want to announce to my friends and colleagues that last Friday I announced my resignation effective immediately. To my colleagues at HHS, I wish you the best and great success,” Corry wrote to colleagues on Monday. As The Hill’s Joseph Choi reported on Monday, “Corry served in the first Trump administration in a similar role, that of senior adviser and director of communications at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He resigned less than two weeks after announcing he had been appointed and sworn in, writing at the time on LinkedIn he was ‘thankful that I’ll be part of the team that is going to work to make America healthy again, and on making healthcare more affordable and accessible.’ HHS did not immediately respond when reached by The Hill for comment on Corry’s abrupt departure,” Choi added.
Meanwhile, POLITICO’s Adam Cancryn reported on Monday that “Thomas Corry announced on Monday that he had resigned ‘effective immediately,’ just two weeks after joining the department as its assistant secretary for public affairs. ‘I want to announce to my friends and colleagues that last Friday I announced my resignation effective immediately. To my colleagues at HHS, I wish you the best and great success,’” Cancryn wrote that Corry had stated. The sudden departure was prompted by growing disagreement with Kennedy and his principal deputy chief of staff, Stefanie Spear, over their management of the health department, said the two people, who were granted anonymity to speak candidly. Corry had also grown uneasy with Kennedy’s muted response to the intensifying outbreak of measles in Texas, the people said. The outbreak has infected at least 146 people and resulted in the nation’s first death from the disease in a decade,” Cancryn wrote.
And, Cancryn added, “A longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy, during a Cabinet meeting last week, said measles outbreaks are ‘not unusual.’ However, measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy has since emphasized that HHS is aiding Texas health officials with their measles response, but declined so far to explicitly call for people to get vaccinated.”
Also on Monday, Mediaite’s Tom Durante noted that “Corry’s announcement came hours after Kennedy penned a ‘call to action’ in the form of an op-ed on Fox News Digital on Sunday to voice his ‘deep concern’ over the spread of the disease in the Lone Star State, marking a stark departure from his downplaying of outbreaks as ‘not unusual’ just last week. Texas health officials have reported 146 infections since late January, including the country’s first measles-related death in a decade. Kennedy, who has previously promoted widely circulated theories linking vaccines to autism, struck a different tone in the Fox News piece, writing: ‘Vaccines not only protect individual children from measles, but also contribute to community immunity, protecting those who are unable to be vaccinated due to medical reasons,’” Durante quoted Kennedy as writing.
