Raw Story's Tom Boggioni wrote up a Politico interview in which Dasha Burns asked Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican and physician who cast the deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary, about the measles outbreaks that have followed.12 The article correctly quotes Cassidy's sharpest line:
"If the way that you, quote unquote, 'are serving the American people,' is by confusing them as to the safety and benefits of vaccines, so much so that we have people dying from vaccine-preventable diseases like they haven't died for decades, that's not serving the American people."12
He finished the thought by saying that what Kennedy is doing is "doing wrong to the American people."12
Asked whether he regrets his vote, Cassidy answered: "You can't wallow. You gotta move on."12 Asked about impeachment, he said it does not have "a snowball's chance."12 And he described what he is doing instead:
"I'm just trying to take that passion I feel and put it into a positive way, as a physician more than a senator, to advise people: 'Speak to your child's pediatrician. Your child can die from measles if your child is not vaccinated.'"2
"Forgives himself" is not something Cassidy said. It is the outlet's characterization of a refusal to call the vote a mistake, and the body itself describes the remark as a "breezy dismissal" rather than quoting any act of self-forgiveness.1 "Admits Americans are dying" is true only in the sense that he stated a fact about measles deaths; the word "admits" implies a reluctant concession of guilt, when Cassidy raised the deaths himself as an indictment of Kennedy.2
The interview is a Republican senator publicly blaming the sitting HHS secretary for deaths from vaccine-preventable disease.2 That is the actual news in the piece, and the headline buries it under a framing in which the senator is the one on trial.
There is a fair criticism to make of Cassidy: he had Kennedy's vaccine record in front of him and voted yes anyway, and "you can't wallow" is a thin answer. The body of the article makes that criticism and lets readers judge. The headline instead manufactures a quote-shaped phrase, "forgives himself," and attaches it to a senator who spent the interview urging people to vaccinate their children. Readers who share the headline without reading further will believe Cassidy shrugged off the deaths, when the interview shows him doing the opposite.