Trump says RFK Jr. can do “pretty much what he wants” on public health in another term

From mass deportations to the total erosion of reproductive rights, there are dozens of reasons for deep fear Donald Trump returns to the White House. Another one to add to the list? The fact that he apparently wants to give notorious anti-vaxxers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. power over the nation’s health.

Speaking to reporters on Election Day, Trump said of the former third-party candidate: “Let me tell you, he’s a great guy, RFK. He’ll do pretty much whatever he wants, as far as I know. He wants women’s health, because men, for children. I happen to agree with many of the things he says.”

Trump’s comments come days after Kennedy said during a live stream that Trump had promised to give him “control” of several federal health agencies for a second term, telling viewers: “The key that I think — you know President Trump has promised me — is control of the public health agencies, which is HHS and its subsidiaries — CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others — and then also USDA, which is — which, you know, is the key to making America healthy. Because we have to to get rid of seed oils, and we need to get rid of pesticide-intensive agriculture.”

If you’re not familiar with Kennedy’s oeuvre on “health,” you might not understand why putting him in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services would arguably be one of the scariest things Trump has ever done. Among other things, Kennedy is one of the biggest anti-vaxxers on the planet and has been accused of raising fears about vaccines in the run-up to a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 people; to that end, he once suggested that Anne Frank, of Holocaust fame, had it easy compared to what anti-vaxxers go through. Kennedy has also, on more than one occasion, proposed that chemicals in the environment can turn children gay and trans; crazy claimed that HIV does not cause AIDS; and declared last year: “Covid-19 is targeting Caucasians and black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

In addition to his dangerous misinformation about public health, Kennedy had also admitted to staging an elaborate bear-killing scene in Central Park because he didn’t have time to eat the bear’s meat, saying in a 2012 divorce filing that a worm “got into my brain and ate part of it and then died.”

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