2026-08-11T04:00:29.182Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/11/politics/trump-vaccines-executive-order-measles-justice-department
仅周一一天，唐纳德·特朗普的疯狂行径和言论中的一件，就足以跻身其他美国总统曾做出的最臭名昭著的事件之列。
截至当日收盘，特朗普已朝着他一直梦寐以求的总统职位迈出了步伐：无需过滤的总统权威从白宫标志性的马克笔中倾泻而出，传统制度被摧毁，为煽动主义提供了平台。
通常情况下，白宫全天候的嘈杂喧嚣似乎是刻意设计出来的，目的是阻碍公众理解每一项旨在不可逆转地改变国家和世界的计划举措。
周一的情况无疑就是如此——这一天既实现了特朗普基础选民的一些核心目标，也有助于解释总统支持率持续下滑的现状，这让共和党人对中期选举感到恐惧。
一切始于总统的前私人律师、如今的上诉法院法官埃米尔·博夫，为另一位总统前私人律师托德·布兰奇宣誓就任司法部长。
这堪称特朗普式风格的巅峰。就在被解雇的前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米所述的、总统向他索要忠诚的九年之后，这位总统最铁杆的支持者之一于周一通过参议院确认，就任美国司法部这一最高司法职位。
在赢得白宫连任之前，布兰奇曾陪伴特朗普度过了他面临多项刑事和民事指控的至暗时刻。特朗普的一些下属，比如前司法部长帕姆·邦迪，在竭力证明自己的忠诚时曾手足无措。但布兰奇早已展现出十足的效忠——这也是他的批评者担忧他会成为特朗普那麦卡锡主义风格的律师罗伊·科恩精神继任者的原因之一。
就在布兰奇在司法部工作人员的掌声中走回办公室时，更多总统的亲信聚集在了坚毅办公桌旁。特朗普即将采取一项他酝酿已久的行动，甚至比他将司法部打造成自家精品律所的想法还要早。
随后，特朗普签署了一项旨在减少儿童疫苗接种数量的行政命令。他还再次抛出了毫无科学依据的谎言，毫无根据地声称疫苗会导致自闭症，并称给幼儿接种的疫苗剂量“像倒进他们体内的汽水瓶那么大”。有一次，他暗示麻疹、腮腺炎和风疹疫苗“可能极具致命性”——而就在这一年，美国报告的麻疹病例数达到了25年多来的最高水平。人们不禁回想起他在新冠疫情期间那些反复无常的新闻发布会。
但美国最高级别的公共卫生官员、疫苗怀疑论者、卫生与公众服务部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪坚称：“这就是黄金标准科学的意义所在。”
特朗普证实他最近与新任美联储主席凯文·沃什进行了交谈，但否认了《华尔街日报》关于他们进行了多次对话的报道。总统无疑希望沃什下调利率。“如果由他说了算，情况会不一样，但他有董事会，”特朗普说道，这让人对美联储的独立性产生了质疑。
总统还就中期选举前民主党初选中进步派和民主社会主义候选人的胜利发表了看法：“我们到处都能看到圣战分子当选。”
总统针对穆斯林候选人的最新煽动性言论似乎预示着一场恶毒的负面秋季竞选活动。他没有具体说明所指对象，但这番言论发表在阿卜杜勒·赛义德赢得密歇根州民主党参议院初选一周后。
当谈及伊朗时，特朗普展现出美国曾经错综复杂的外交政策进程，如今已让位于这位总司令的一厢情愿——他曾在开战数日后就宣称战争已经结束，而如今这场战争已进入第六个月。他还声称霍尔木兹海峡——这个由伊朗实际控制的石油出口咽喉要道——“如今已经畅通无阻”。温沃德海事情报行动中心周一表示，过去24小时内仅有7艘船只通过该海峡。而在战争爆发前，这条航道每天通常有超过100艘船只通行。
上述每一个例子都表明，特朗普如何削弱了美国政府的机构，并清除了那些不认同他独特世界观的专家、官僚和官员。
许多特朗普的支持者认为，他正在兑现自己的誓言，要摧毁长期以来阻碍保守派总统的腐败行政国家。还有人推崇“大权在握的总统制”理念，认同所有政府机构都必须服从首席执行官愿景的法律理论。
从某些方面来看，周一椭圆形办公室办公桌前的混乱业务，与这位未来总统多年来在特朗普集团形成的高度集中的决策流程如出一辙——在那里他是唯一的权威来源。但特朗普的批评者将他的亲力亲为视为 wannabe 独裁者的行为，并认为他凭直觉行事的领导风格是灾难的前兆。
很难证明特朗普的做法对除了最忠诚的支持基础之外的任何人都有效，尽管他上周在接受《Punchbowl News》采访时声称“很多人都说我是有史以来最伟大的总统之一”。
在最近的CNN/SSRS民调中，仅有21%的美国人表示特朗普对伊朗的军事行动对美国有利。许多分析人士认为，他带领美国陷入了与一个弱得多的国家的僵持局面。
他掌控司法部的运动，以及他的纪念碑建造计划，都是他个人执念之一——这也有助于解释为什么在同一项CNN民调中，创纪录的73%的美国成年人表示他没有充分关注国家最重要的问题。
根据健康政策非营利组织KFF的民调，81%的美国成年人表示他们相信麻疹、腮腺炎和风疹疫苗对儿童是安全的。然而，特朗普基础选民中的一小部分人长期以来一直认同反疫苗运动。
一些特朗普所鄙视的制度主义者在周一晚间警告称，他日益不受制约的总统任期是危险的。
“令人震惊的是，在麻疹疫情持续暴发以及其他疫苗可预防疾病卷土重来之际，本届政府竟继续拿儿童的生命玩政治，”罗伯特·伍德·约翰逊基金会主席兼首席执行官、前美国疾病控制与预防中心代理主任理查德·贝瑟博士说道。
曾担任巴拉克·奥巴马顾问的大卫·阿克塞尔罗德告诉CNN的艾琳·伯内特，总统的言论“可以让军队出征，让市场暴跌”。但它们“也会危及人们的健康，因为总统拥有巨大的影响力……这真的非常、非常危险”。
但特朗普早已听不进去。在解释他的疫苗政策时，他似乎既概括了自己对不受制约的权力的态度，也在赌运气。
“我们正在做的事情不会有任何坏事发生，”他说道。“不会有任何坏事发生。”
All-powerful Trump tells America, ‘Nothing bad can happen’
2026-08-11T04:00:29.182Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/11/politics/trump-vaccines-executive-order-measles-justice-department
Just one of the wild actions and comments on Donald Trump’s manic Monday would rank among the most notorious things another president ever did.
By close of business, Trump had taken strides toward the presidency he’s always wanted: one of unfiltered authority flowing from the presidential Sharpie, shredding traditional institutions and providing a platform for demagoguery.
Often, the round-the-clock cacophony from the White House seems expressly designed to stifle public comprehension of each individual act planned to irrevocably change the country and the world.
This was certainly the case on a day that fulfilled some core goals of the Trump base but also helped to explain the plunging presidential approval ratings that have Republicans looking with dread toward the midterm elections.
It all started when one of the president’s former personal lawyers, now Appeals Court Judge Emil Bove, swore in another of the president’s former personal lawyers, Todd Blanche, as attorney general.
This was peak Trump. Nine years after the president asked James Comey for loyalty — as the fired former FBI chief told it — one of his ultimate loyalists was on Monday installed in a Senate-confirmed position at the pinnacle of US justice.
Blanche was with Trump in some of his darkest moments as he faced multiple criminal and civil charges before winning back the White House. Some Trump subordinates, like former Attorney General Pam Bondi, stumbled when striving to prove their loyalty. But Blanche has already demonstrated fealty — one reason his critics fear him and wonder whether he’ll act a spiritual successor to Trump’s McCarthyite lawyer Roy Cohn.
As Blanche was clapped by staff back into his agency, more of the president’s men gathered by the Resolute Desk. He was about to act on a feeling he’s harbored even longer than his quest to make the DOJ his boutique law firm.
Trump then signed an executive order aimed at reducing the number of childhood vaccines. And he administered a fresh dose of unscientific falsehoods, baselessly claiming vaccines cause autism and that little children had had inoculations the size of soda bottles poured into their bodies. At one point, he suggested that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine could be “quite lethal” — amid a year when the US has recorded the most measles cases in more than a quarter-century. It was hard not to get flashbacks to his erratic Covid-19 pandemic news conferences.
But America’s most powerful public health official and vaccine skeptic, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., insisted: “This is what gold-standard science means.”
Trump confirmed he’d recently spoken to new Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, but denied a Wall Street Journal report they’d had multiple conversations. The president has left no doubt he wants Warsh to lower interest rates. “If it was up to him, it would be different, but he has a board,” Trump said, raising doubts about the central bank’s independence.
The president also weighed in on the triumph of progressive and democratic socialist candidates in Democratic primaries ahead of the midterm elections: “We have jihadists being elected all over the place.”
The president’s latest inflammatory comment about Muslim candidates appears to herald a viciously negative fall campaign. He didn’t specify who he was talking about, but his remark came a week after Abdul El-Sayed won the Michigan Democratic Senate primary.
When he turned to Iran, the president showed how the once-intricate US foreign policy process has ceded to the wish-casting of the commander in chief who declared a war won after a few days that is now in its sixth month. And he claimed the Strait of Hormuz, an oil exporting choke point effectively controlled by Iran, is “opened now.” The Windward Maritime Intelligence Operations Center said Monday that only seven vessels had crossed the strait in the previous 24 hours. Before the war, the waterway often saw more than 100 ships a day.
Each of these examples show how Trump has degraded the institutions of US government and purged them of experts, bureaucrats and officials who don’t share his idiosyncratic worldview.
Many Trump supporters argue that he’s making good on his vow to dismantle a corrupt administrative state that has long thwarted conservative presidents. Others promote the idea of an all-powerful presidency and subscribe to legal theories that every government agency must bow to the chief executive’s vision.
In some ways, the maelstrom of business across the Oval Office desk Monday mirrors the deeply centralized decision-making process developed for years by the future president at the Trump Organization, where he was the sole source of authority. But Trump’s critics see his hands-on style as the behavior of a wannabe authoritarian and argue his hunch-driven style of leadership is a recipe for disaster.
It’s hard to make a case that Trump’s approach is working for anyone outside his most loyal support base, despite his claim in an interview with Punchbowl News last week that “a lot of people are saying I’m one of the greatest presidents ever.”
In a recent CNN/SSRS poll, only 21% of Americans said Trump’s military action in Iran had helped the US. Many analysts believe he’s led the US into a stalemate against a much weaker nation.
His crusade to dominate the Justice Department is one of the personal fixations — along with his monument-building program — that help explain why a record-high 73% of US adults said in that same CNN survey that he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.
And according to polling from the health policy nonprofit KFF, an 81% majority of US adults say they are confident that MMR vaccines are safe for children. A small sector of Trump’s base, however, has long bought into the anti-vaccine movement.
Some of the institutionalists who Trump disdains warned on Monday evening that his increasingly unchecked presidency is dangerous.
“It is simply astonishing that this administration would continue to respond to ongoing measles outbreaks and the return of other vaccine-preventable diseases by playing politics with children’s lives,” said Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
David Axelrod, who served as a counselor to Barack Obama, told CNN’s Erin Burnett that a president’s words “can send armies marching and markets tumbling.” But they can “also jeopardize people’s health because the president has enormous sway. … It’s really, really dangerous.”
But Trump is beyond listening. Explaining his vaccine policy, he seemed both to encapsulate his attitude to unchecked power and to tempt fate.
“Nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” he said. “Nothing bad can happen.”