Trump picks RFK Jr. to Secretary of Health and Human Services

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that he will nominate vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Resources Department.

If the Senate confirms Kennedy, the former independent presidential candidate will head a sprawling department responsible for the massive Medicare and Medicaid health coverage programs, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HHS’s speed decisions have a major effect on the US health care system.

Kennedy, 70, is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the late US attorney general and Democratic senator from New York, who was assassinated in 1968 by a gunman in Los Angeles while running for president. He is the nephew of former President John Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.

Trump said in October that if elected, he would let Kennedy “lose health.”

“I am thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as United States Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social website Thursday.

“For far too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and pharmaceutical companies that have engaged in deception, misinformation and disinformation when it comes to public health,” Trump wrote.

“The safety and health of all Americans is the most important role of any administration, and HHS will play a major role in helping to ensure that everyone is protected from the harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis in this country.”

Kennedy told NBC News in a recent interview that Trump has said he wants Kennedy to “clean up corruption” at federal health agencies, return those agencies to science-based policies and “make America healthy again.” Kennedy said that “there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA, that are going to go away.”

Share prices of vaccine makers fell earlier Thursday on reports that Trump would pick Kennedy for the HHS post.

Kennedy suggested last year that the Covid-19 virus, which the CDC played a major role in combating, was engineered to “attack Caucasians and black people” and be less likely to harm “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese”.

He previously promoted theories that autism was linked to childhood vaccines, a link that has been disproved.

Kennedy angered many of his siblings by endorsing Trump in August after abandoning his long-brief presidential bid.

Trump’s selection of Kennedy came the day after the Republican president-elect chose Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as Attorney General.

Gaetz’s selection sparked immediate controversy largely due to the fact that the Justice Department, which he would lead as AG, previously investigated him for possible sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl. Gaetz resigned from Congress effective Thursday, removing him from the jurisdiction of the House Ethics Committee, but a number of Republican senators have called on that panel to release a report on its investigation into the former lawmaker.

Kennedy last week reportedly suggested he would fire 600 NIH workers and replace them.

His “Make America Healthy“the website has solicited suggestions from the public for more than 4,000 appointed positions across the federal government to be filled by Trump.

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