Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has claimed former President Trump has promised to give him control of several agencies overseeing health in a future administration, but a campaign spokesman demurred Wednesday and said nothing has been decided.
The anti-vaccine activist, who ended his independent presidential campaign and endorsed Trump in August, said in a newly unearthed video that Trump has vowed to give him oversight of the Health and Human Services and Agriculture departments.
“Trump has promised me … control of the public health agencies… which, you know, is key to making America healthy,” Kennedy said in a video sent to his supporters.
“I stand ready to help him rid the public health agencies of their pervasive conflicts and corruption and restore their tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science,” Kennedy added in a statement.
RFK Jr. ticked off the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration as organizations that he would oversee if Trump beats Vice President Kamala Harris in the hotly contested race for the White House.
Trump told his rally at Madison Square that he intended to let RFK Jr. “go wild on medicines” if he wins back power.
RFK Jr. has also been named to a slot on the Trump transition team, although it’s not really clear how much power that would give him.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Wednesday that no promises have been made about cabinet positions or agency heads.
“Discussions of who will serve in a second Trump Administration is premature,” Cheung said.
Kennedy, the son of slain presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, is perhaps the nation’s most prominent vaccine skeptic.
He has spread outlandish conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 vaccines which most public health experts credit with saving the lives of millions of people worldwide.
Kennedy, who has been ostracized by several members of his storied Democratic family, is a leader of the so-called “medical freedom movement,” which broadly opposes vaccine mandates like the ones that require school children to be immunized.
Trump championed the COVID vaccines and once bragged that his Operation Warp Speed vaccine development program saved millions of lives. But he has changed his tune to reflect the widespread anti-vaxxer sentiment among his right-wing MAGA supporters.
Public health experts say Kennedy would be a disastrous choice to lead any federal agency but particularly ones that oversee life-saving vaccines.
Even Dr. Jerome Adams, Trump’s former surgeon general, warned against giving RFK Jr. any significant public health role, especially one related to vaccines.
“I would advise Republicans (against going) backwards on one of the number one public health achievements made in the last 50 to 75 years in this country,” Adams said Monday at a conference of the American Public Health Association
