Opinion | The Hearing Confirmed That R.F.K. Jr. Is Trump’s Kind of Guy

The final push from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. toward becoming overseer of America’s health care system got off to a spicy start on Wednesday in his opening hour before the Senate Finance Committee. There were protesters. A threat to bring in the police. A fiery performance from the usually low-key Michael Bennet!

Dramatic value aside, the early back-and-forth also supported the widespread assumption heading into this confirmation: Regardless of how rough the confirmation questioning gets or how squirrelly Kennedy’s answers, the Republican majority will jam him on through.

The panel’s Democratic members came out swinging, confronting Kennedy with his controversial, at times contradictory, statements on everything from vaccines to abortion access. Republicans, in turn, mostly steered hard toward issues that were more generic — or at least far afield of Kennedy’s trouble spots: department transparency, pharmacy benefit managers and, somewhat peculiarly, children inappropriately placed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Kennedy’s performance was notably unsteady. Yes, he has a neurological condition that makes his voice raspy, but he also seemed a little shaky and decidedly nervous. He got some stuff wrong. And he repeatedly let himself get sucked into trying to deny or explain away questionable statements for which the Democrats had brought the receipts. As this process rolls on, someone might want to remind him of Ronald Reagan’s observation that “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.” The periodic outbursts from the audience weren’t helping his flow.

But at this point, whether Kennedy can explain himself coherently, much less convincingly, may not matter. If the president is thinking of his cabinet secretaries more as entertaining front men and women than as top-tier leaders or managers, then Kennedy fits the bill better than most: He’s a celebrity, he’s generally pretty charismatic, he’s into performative masculinity, he is thirsty for attention, he’ll say pretty much anything …

As for the weirder elements of Kennedy’s record, it’s hard to see Republican senators getting all that worked up about the things like the bear carcass or the conspiracy theories involving the C.I.A. or his disrespectful treatment of women or his youthful delight (per his cousin) in puréeing small creatures to feed his pet falcon. If anything, those tendencies just make him seem more on brand for Trump world. And, as Pete Hegseth’s confirmation showed, Trump world is eager to steamroller over the concerns and objections of even Republican senators.

Kennedy is a first-class disrupter — and one willing to change his shape as Trump sees fit. He could have 30 bear heads in his freezer and a dozen manifestoes denouncing modern medicine, and my money would still be on his getting confirmed.