Trump pick to head CDC sparks Maga backlash among conspiracy theorists

The Guardian

28-03-2025

Donald Trump's appointment of a career health researcher to head the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provoked a serious rightwing backlash for the new administration.
Dozens of Maga influencers, along with many rank-and-file Trump supporters, have taken to social media to denounce Susan Monarez to spin false conspiracy theories about her connections to the CIA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).
On X, Truth Social, across rightwing 'alt-tech' sites and in segments of rightwing media, there was a vociferous response to the announcement this week that Monarez would continue in the position she has been acting in at the CDC, following the withdrawal of Trump's initial nominee, David Weldon, who unlike Monarez has a history of supporting fringe theories which oppose vaccination.
The firestorm among the conspiracy theorists and science deniers of the anti-vaccine set shows the power of that constituency among Trump's circle as it quickly forced Trump's Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy, to defend the hire in a post on X.
Kennedy wrote: 'X posts that erroneously attribute Biden-era tweets supporting masks, lockdowns, vaccine mandates, etc. to my @CDCgov Director nominee, Susan Monarez, have understandably provoked agita within the MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] movement.'
He continued, 'I handpicked Susan for this job because she is a longtime champion of MAHA values, and a caring, compassionate and brilliant microbiologist and a tech wizard who will reorient CDC toward public health and gold-standard science.'
The opposition to Monarez – an immunologist with decades of government service – has so far been couched entirely in terms of the anti-vaccine beliefs that have consumed a segment of Trump's base in the years since the Covid-19 pandemic. Kennedy himself is also well known for holding fringe beliefs around vaccines and other health matters and has called his agenda Make America Healthy Again (Maha).
On Monday John Sabal, who on social media goes by the Patriot Voice, told his 150,000 X followers that Monarez was 'a DARPA stooge' and 'quite literally the OPPOSITE of the MAHA agenda'.
Sabal – a sometime guest of far-right media personality Alex Jones – folded Monarez's appointment into a conspiracy narrative which encompassed Elon Musk's Starlink, mRNA vaccines and the Trump-backed 'Project Stargate' AI initiative.
He concluded: 'We are heading towards AI Governance Technocracy at WARP SPEED.'
Like hundreds of other critics on X, Sabal had conflated the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a HHS agency created in 2022 where Monarez was previously deputy director, with Darpa, an agency of the Department of Defense.
On Tuesday, Margo Montez-Lind, who posts on X to over half a million followers as '@ProudArmyBrat', posted about Monarez: 'She worked for Biden & Obama. She supports all of Fauci's policies, and is a huge proponent of Big Pharma. She pushes the dangerous Mrna covid jab for babies. Loves boosters. Loves masks. This is an absolute nightmare!'
Many other posters interpreted the appointment as a sign of the Trump administration's hostility to anti-vaxxers, and even as evidence of a broader conspiracy in which Kennedy himself may be a mere pawn.
'Trump picked RFK to keep MAHA people quiet,' wrote one. 'He had no intention of stopping anything.'
The revolt was also visible on Trump's own Truth Social platform. Users responding to Trump's announcement of the nomination connected Monarez to the 'chemtrails' conspiracy theory and railed against Monarez's expressions of support for research funded by Bill Gates's philanthropic foundation.
The X posters haranguing Kennedy were amplified across a galaxy of anti-vax outlets, many of them on the newsletter platform Substack.
The outrage soon spread to rightwing media. Grant Stinchfield of Real America's Voice headlined the nomination as a 'Maha Betrayal'. Former Infowars broadcaster David Knight said that Monarez was 'same as old boss but now with AI genetic injection'.
The appointment may indeed reflect Trump's own historic inconsistencies on vaccines. Over time, Trump has alternated between welcoming the support, donations and votes of anti-vaxxers, and claiming credit for the mRNA vaccines developed in response to the Covid-19 epidemic under the auspices of Operation Warp Speed during his first administration.
The Guardian contacted Monarez and the CDC but received no response.
Weeks before Monarez's nomination, the CDC announced plans to study any links between vaccines and autism. The belief that such a link exists is a core commitment for many anti-vaxxers, even though it is founded on discredited pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
Monarez's nomination comes as Trump and billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk's assault on federal agencies roils the CDC.
The day after Trump's announcement, five senior officials reportedly left the agency, including the heads of the agency's Office of Science, the Public Health Infrastructure Center, and the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. Also out: CDC communications director Kevin Griffis.
Kennedy's attempts to defend Monarez had little impact with outraged Maha figures.
Stella Immanuel, a Cameroonian American physician and pastor who came to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic as an advocate for treating coronavirus with hydroxychloroquine, which has been repeatedly proved to be ineffective, posted in response: 'That's all great Secretary, but it's time to ban mRNA injections! It's time to prosecute Anthony Fauci. It's time to remove vaccine mandates from our schools.'