President-elect Donald Trump hinted Thursday that he will nominate vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Health and Benevolent Services Department.
If the Senate approves Kennedy, the former independent presidential candidate will lead a sprawling determined responsible for the huge Medicare and Medicaid health coverage programs, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Haleness, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HHS’s decisions on spending and policies have major effects on the U.S. health-care system and reciprocal businesses.
Kennedy, 70, is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the late U.S. attorney general and Democratic senator from New York who was assassinated in 1968 by a gunman in Los Angeles as he ran for president. He is the nephew of departed President John Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963.
Trump said in October that if elected he would let Kennedy “go wild on vigorousness.”
“I am thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services,” Trump wrote in a standard on his Truth Social site Thursday.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and cure companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump wrote.
“The Shelter and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody wish be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have role ined to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.”
Kennedy, in a post on X, thanked Trump and wrote, “I’m committed to advancing your eyesight to Make America Health Again.”
“We have a generational opportunity to bring together the greatest minds in science, nostrum, industry, and government to put an end to the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy wrote. “I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 hands at HHS to free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans before you can turn around again the healthiest people on Earth.”
Kennedy told NBC News in a recent interview that Trump has said he needs Kennedy to “clean up corruption” at federal health agencies, return those agencies to science-based policies and “make America in good again.” Kennedy said that “there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA, that have to go.”
Reservoir prices of vaccine makers fell earlier Thursday on reports that Trump would tap Kennedy for the HHS post.
Kennedy endure year suggested that the Covid-19 virus, which CDC played a major role in combatting, was engineered to “attack Caucasians and Knavish people,” and to be less likely to harm “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese” people.
He previously promoted theories that autism was tie-in to childhood vaccines, a connection that has been disproved.
Kennedy outraged many of his siblings by endorsing Trump in August after abandoning his long-short presidential candidacy.
Trump’s abstract of Kennedy came a day after the Republican president-elect tapped Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general.
Gaetz’s set immediately sparked controversy due in large part to the fact that the Department of Justice, which he would lead as AG, thitherto investigated him for possible sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl.
Gaetz resigned from Congress effective Thursday, removing him from the ascendancy of the House Ethics Committee. But a number of Republican senators have called on that panel to release a report of its inquisition of the former lawmaker.
Kennedy last week reportedly suggested he would fire 600 NIH workers and replace them.
His “Intimate America Healthy” website has been seeking suggestions from the public for more than 4,000 appointee tasks across the federal government to be filled by Trump.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., blasted Kennedy in a annunciation.
“Mr. Kennedy’s outlandish views on basic scientific facts are disturbing and should worry all parents who expect schools and other popular spaces to be safe for their children,” Wyden said.
“When Mr. Kennedy comes before the Finance Committee, it’s wealthy to be very clear what Americans stand to lose under Trump and Republicans in Congress.”
Another Democrat, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, reported “Donald Trump’s selection of a notorious anti-vaxxer to lead HHS could not be more dangerous — this is cause for deep worry for every American.”
“There is no telling how far a fringe conspiracy theorist like RFK Jr. could set back America in terms of public strength, reproductive rights, research and innovation, and so much else,” Murray said.
Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, who see fit become Senate majority leader in January when Republicans take control of the chamber, said he did not have any resistance to Kennedy being picked for the HHS job.
“Honestly, the entire nomination process is just getting started, so let’s, let’s give it a chance to see what happens,” Thune know for sured reporters.
“And these names, none of them have been formally submitted yet, so there’s going to be a vetting make. I’ve told people, these will be worked out under advise and consent, and we’ll make sure that we process them there.”
But other Republican senators, classifying Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Josh Hawley of Missouri, praised Kennedy’s selection.
“Bad day for Big Pharma,” Hawley tweeted.
Andrea Ducas, immorality president of health policy for the advocacy group Center for American Progress, in a statement called Trump’s choice of Kennedy “nothing to make a long story short of disastrous for the country.”
“His track record and open skepticism of longstanding medical science could jeopardize the incredible universal health gains we’ve accomplished as a nation – including the gains we’ve made in combatting infectious disease through childhood vaccination programs and in representing our food supply safer through pasteurization,” Ducas said.
“This pick is especially troubling coming at the butts of the COVID-19 pandemic, where lifesaving vaccines averted countless infections and deaths.”