Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sat across from Tucker Carlson back in June and let out a line that should have made everyone pause in horror:
“We need to stop trusting the experts.”
He went on to say that trusting experts isn’t a feature of science and democracy, but of religion and totalitarianism.
I need you to stop and really sit with that. Because that’s not just wrong. That’s not just sloppy. That’s batshit crazy.
It’s also dangerous.
What Trusting Experts Really Means
Let’s start with the basics. Trusting experts does not mean blind faith. It means recognizing that some people spend their lives studying complex things so the rest of us don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
When I get on a plane, I “trust” the pilot. That doesn’t mean I worship her or hang on her every word. It means I know she’s logged thousands of hours in the cockpit, passed rigorous tests, and understands how to get a 200-ton steel bird into the sky without it falling back down.
Nobody calls that religion. Nobody calls it dictatorship. We call it competence.
Same with doctors. According to Gallup polling, 79% of Americans say they trust their personal physician. Only 23% say the same about Congress.12 You can yell “don’t trust the experts” all you want, but when your kid breaks an arm, you’re not taking them to your local conspiracy theorist. You’re heading straight to the ER.
Science Is the Opposite of Religion and Dictatorship
RFK Jr.’s analogy is worse than bad. It’s upside down.
Religion, at least in its fundamentalist forms, is about revelation and faith. The answer comes down from the mountaintop, and your job is to obey. Questioning can get you cast out.
Totalitarianism is about the same thing: obedience. You don’t question. You don’t debate. You salute. It maybe has its loyalist put a picture of themselves up on government buildings, in the halls of its residence?
But science? Science lives and dies on questions. Hypotheses get tested, tested again, and ripped apart by peer review. Evidence wins. When new evidence comes, the theory changes. That’s not blind faith — that’s humility in action.
And democracy? Democracy depends on accountability and participation. You don’t elect experts to rule over you like high priests. You elect leaders who can listen to experts and then make decisions in the public’s interest.
Trusting experts is not about worship. It’s about using the best information available, while keeping it subject to challenge and correction.
That’s the opposite of both religion and dictatorship.
What Happens When You Stop Trusting Experts
Let’s be clear about where this road leads.
During COVID, the war cry of “do your own research” became a death sentence. In July 2021, 99.5% of COVID deaths were among the unvaccinated, according to the CDC.3 Thousands of Americans chose YouTube and Facebook memes over epidemiologists, and the death count sadly reflected that.
On climate change—decades of delay and denial have cost us time we don’t have. NASA scientists have been sounding the alarm since the 1980s. Instead of trusting the experts, we trusted oil companies and politicians, and now we’re breaking heat records year after year.
Distrusting expertise doesn’t save democracy. It sabotages it. A society without experts is a society where the loudest voices win—not the wisest ones. That’s not democracy. That’s mob rule.
Why “Don’t Trust the Experts” Plays So Well
I’ll give RFK Jr. this much: it’s an applause line.
It taps into a deep frustration with elites and institutions that have failed people in real ways. Politicians who lie. Banks that collapse. Big Pharma companies that hide side effects to protect their profits.
People get burned, and when they do, it’s easy to lump scientists and doctors into the same pot with CEOs and politicians.
But here’s the problem: rejecting expertise because some institutions failed you is like swearing off food because you once got food poisoning. It feels righteous, but it’s suicidal.
And here’s the dry humor of it all: Kennedy himself leans on “experts” constantly—he just cherry-picks the fringe ones who tell him what he wants to hear. His entire anti-vax crusade is built on quoting a handful of discredited doctors while ignoring mountains of data from the global scientific community. He doesn’t reject experts. He rejects consensus.
The Preacher’s Word
Let me talk plain: you don’t save democracy by silencing scientists. You don’t strengthen freedom by gutting knowledge. You don’t build a better world by telling people to trust their gut over gravity.
The book of Proverbs says, “The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.” (Proverbs 12:15).
There it is. Wisdom listens. Arrogance refuses.
RFK Jr. has built a career on arrogance, pretending it’s courage. But courage doesn’t come from rejecting expertise. Courage comes from facing the evidence even when it’s uncomfortable.
I need to stop here and tell you why this particular analogy—comparing “trusting experts” to religion—makes my blood boil.
Because I came from fundamentalist religion. I know what it looks like to be told not to question. I know what it feels like to have doubt treated as rebellion. In church, blind obedience was the gold standard. You didn’t push back, you didn’t probe, you didn’t ask if it made sense. You sat down, shut up, and believed what you were told.
We were told—God said it, so that settles it.
That’s not how science works. That’s not how democracy works.
Religion demanded I close my eyes. Science demanded I open them wider. Religion said, “because I said so.” Science says, “show me the evidence.”
So when RFK Jr. calls trusting experts “religion,” it isn’t just sloppy. It’s insulting to people like me who had to claw our way out of actual blind faith. It erases the pain of those who’ve lived under real authoritarian systems, whether political or religious.
And the irony? Kennedy himself sounds more like a preacher than a scientist. He thunders against “the experts” with the same certainty I used to hear from the pulpit. He doesn’t invite debate. He doesn’t welcome dissent. He wants disciples.
I left fundamentalism because I refused to trade my brain for someone else’s certainty. I won’t let him repackage that kind of obedience as “freedom.”
That’s why I can’t stomach his analogy. Because I’ve lived it. I’ve felt the scars of it. And I’ll be damned if I let him confuse that with science.
The Final Word
Here’s what we ought to say back to RFK Jr.:
Trusting experts is not religion. It’s not dictatorship. It’s survival.
I was a heavy equipment operator and pavements repair technician in the military. That was my expertise. When we were planning out a construction project we would have engineers determining the slope of the grade, structures troops figuring out the material for the building, HVAC technicians running the ductwork, and plumbers handling the plumbing.
It took a lot of us to build a building, but we let each expert handle their individual field.
When your lungs fill with fluid, you call the doctor. When the planet is burning, you call the climatologist.
That isn’t worship. That isn’t tyranny. That’s common sense.
And when someone tells you “stop trusting the experts,” what they’re really saying is, “trust me instead.”
That’s not democracy. That’s the oldest con in the book.
https://www.chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/nurses-maintain-top-spot-among-trusted-professions-but-doctors-see-slippage
https://news.gallup.com/poll/608903/ethics-ratings-nearly-professions-down.aspx
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-coronavirus-deaths-nearly-all-among-unvaccinated-cdc-head-2021-7