Former President Donald Trump said this weekend that he would allow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “take a keen interest in health.”
But exactly what he means by that is unclear.
“I’m going to let him take great care of his health,” Trump said at his Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday. “I’ll let him go to food. I’ll let him go to meds.”
Kennedy told supporters during Monday’s event that Trump promised him “control” of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture if Trump is elected. If Kennedy were nominated to be secretary of either department, that nomination would require Senate confirmation—a prospect that was not necessarily certain.
But during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins about vaccine safety on Wednesday evening, Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, said Kennedy would not have a job within the Department of Health and Human Services. He said Kennedy wanted “data” on vaccines and stressed that current vaccine data is not reliable.
“He’s not getting a job at the Department of Health and Human Services,” he said. “What he’s trying to do, that’s what he wants to do. He said, ‘I want data. I just want data’ because they’re blocking data.”
In a statement to CQ Roll Call Thursday morning, Carolyn Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, said no Cabinet position has been formally selected yet.
“No formal Cabinet and staffing decisions have been made, however, President Trump said he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr. to make America healthy again by providing families with safe food and ending the epidemic of chronic disease plaguing our children.” “. I wrote. “President Trump will also create a special presidential commission of independent minds and task it with investigating the cause of the decades-long increase in chronic disease.”
Kennedy, a former presidential candidate who dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump last summer, has described himself as a champion of health care through the political action committee Make America Healthy Again.
Over the past two months, he has appeared around the country to share his story of the state of Americans’ health, a condition he says is marked by corrupt regulatory agencies, children getting sick from “ultra-processed” foods, and Americans burdened by chronic diseases. .
His plan to address these challenges appears to start with the Department of Health and Human Services and its agencies.
In an October 25 tweet, Kennedy declared that the FDA’s “war” on public health was “about to end,” and hinted at plans to revoke the agency of employees who did not agree with his vision.
He accused the agency of “aggressive suppression of drugs, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelators, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunlight, exercise, nutrients, and anything else that enhances human health but cannot improve it.” Patented by Pharma. If you work at the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Keep your records, and 2. Pack your bags.
Speaking at a roundtable last month hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Kennedy criticized the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, saying the industry had turned the agencies into “sock puppets” for its efforts. interests.
“If America fails, it will be mainly because we have let our country become sicker, more depressed, more obese, and more infertile at an increasing rate, while crippling our national security and bankrupting our national budget with health care costs,” Kennedy said. It happened.
Kennedy also asserted that the health care law signed by former President Barack Obama incentivized insurance companies to raise premiums by capping the amount of money they could receive from premiums at 15 percent.
A look at Trump’s past dealings with his health agencies could offer a glimpse of what a health care portfolio influenced by Kennedy’s politics could look like.
The FDA under Trump also took fewer enforcement actions against companies than the Obama administration, according to a 2019 analysis by the journal Science. The Trump administration’s FDA distributed 1,033 warning letters between his inauguration and May 2019, compared to 1,532 letters for the Obama administration during Same time period.
Medical experts have expressed concern that a Kennedy-influenced Department of Health and Human Services could lead to a rise in anti-vaccine rhetoric.
Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense in 2018, a group that has been publicly skeptical about childhood vaccination and has shared information that experts have called medical misinformation.
Kennedy has also made anti-vaccine comments during the pandemic, calling childhood vaccination “criminal medical malpractice” at a 2021 event in Southern California, though he has since denied he is anti-vaxxer.
Under the Trump administration, the White House has tried to speed up development of a COVID-19 vaccine, a controversial move that has raised concerns among some and appeared politically motivated. But Trump distanced himself from touting the achievement on the campaign trail and promised cuts to schools mandating vaccinations, KFF Health News reported last month.
Jerome Adams, who served as surgeon general in the Trump administration, expressed concern earlier this week that Kennedy’s influence might prevent people from getting vaccinated.
“If RFK has a significant impact on the next administration, it could further erode people’s desire to get the most recently recommended vaccines, and I’m concerned about the impact that could have on our nation’s health, on our country’s economy, and on our global community,” Adams said in a statement. American Public Health Association conference on Monday, according to The New York Times.
Asked if he thought Kennedy would be a potential head of the health agencies if Trump was elected on Thursday, Adams expressed skepticism.
“Robert Kennedy is unlikely to be appointed to lead major health agencies like HHS, FDA, or CDC because of his lack of medical experience, likely difficulty passing a background check (top secret clearance is necessary for these roles), and his controversial views,” he said.
