Trump Picks Anti-Vax Nut RFK Jr. to Run Health Department
What could possibly go wrong.
NOBODY’S COMPLETELY SURPRISED by this week’s news, right? No one ever thought that a Trump 2.0 cabinet would be a klatch of normies.
Still: Sheesh.
And Thursday afternoon brought the news that Trump wants Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be the secretary of health and human services.
I admit that when I wrote about the likely rogue’s gallery of a new Trump administration in September and devoted an entry to RFK Jr.—who had told Tucker Carlson he would be “deeply involved” in choosing people to would run the health-related agencies—I didn’t think he would get an actual cabinet post. I figured he’d be named a “health czar”—although even without real powers, he might still do real damage.
Then, at the Madison Square Garden rally, Trump promised to let Kennedy “go wild” on health. And it looks like he’s keeping his word.
Let’s recap why this is scary.
RFK Jr. has been a kook for many years. Before his MAGA incarnation, he was a left-wing loon who, among other things, wanted climate change skeptics tried for crimes against humanity. (He has refused to retract that position even as he has become a free-speech hero to the right.) One particular form of crazy he’s been pushing for years—about twenty years—is the debunked link between autism and childhood vaccination and its supposed coverup by the evil establishment.
RFK Jr.’s vaccine skepticism is deadly—as in, it has literally already been linked to some deaths. In 2018 in Samoa, two infants died after receiving measles shots—due to nursing error, it turned out. Misplaced outrage sparked a Samoan anti-vaccination movement. RFK Jr. visited Samoa in June 2019, meeting with the anti-vaxers there. It’s hardly surprising that by November 2019, the island nation saw a widespread measles outbreak, with thousands infected and more than eighty dead by the end of the year, mostly children. When the Samoan government instituted a mandatory vaccination effort to try to contain the outbreak, RFK Jr. and his anti-vax nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, sought to sabotage the vaccination effort.
Now imagine what a guy like this could do with real power.
The secretary of health and human services leads the huge government department that includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and other health-related agencies.
RFK Jr. and his fans claim that he has been unfairly maligned by the media and that he’s not anti-vaccine but rather just pro-“safe vaccines.” (Among those making this claim: tech tycoon-turned-MAGA crusader and conspiracy theorist Bill Ackman.) But that’s a “just asking questions” red herring. In a podcast last year where he purported to rebut the supposed slanders, RFK stated point blank that “there is no vaccine that is both safe and effective” and claimed that the polio vaccine caused rampant deadly cancers.
And his medical loopiness extends a lot further. During his presidential campaign, RFK Jr. said that if elected, he would promptly direct the NIH to “give drug development and infectious disease a break . . . for about eight years” and focus on chronic disease. He has questioned whether HIV causes AIDS. He has famously speculated that the coronavirus may have been designed to be “ethnically targeted” against “Caucasians and black people” while sparing “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
The fact that RFK Jr. is right about a few things, such as the need to address childhood obesity—remember when the right practically called Michelle Obama a Nazi for her advocacy on this issue?—doesn’t change how overall batshit he is. One might think that Senate Republicans would draw a line and join the Democrats in a resounding “Nay”—especially when so many of the nominee’s positions, like the rants against “Big Pharma,” are classic far-left fare. His support for abortion rights is also causing dismay in some generally pro-Trump conservative quarters.
But, of course, this is the new Trumpified GOP where the president is king. Already, Senator-elect Jim Banks of Indiana is saying that “Trump won the popular vote,” that “mandatory vaccines is a topic that a lot of American voters want us to tackle,” and that RFK Jr. is “eminently more qualified” for the post than its current holder, Xavier Becerra. Will there be enough Senate Republicans with enough of a spine left to block the RFK Jr. nomination? Maybe. But don’t hold your breath.
Correction (November 15, 2024, 2:20 p.m. EST): An earlier version of this article misidentified the name of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine nonprofit organization, Children’s Health Defense.