Another Cabinet appointment by President-elect Donald Trump is facing significant scrutiny. On Thursday, the former president announced that he had selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy, a former presidential candidate who initially sought the Democratic nomination before becoming an independent, is widely recognized as a vaccine skeptic.
Critics are raising alarms that his appointment could have severe implications for public health. Democratic Congresswoman Yvette Clarke from New York expressed her concerns on X, stating, “In Donald Trump’s America, an unscrupulous, unserious, and unqualified anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist will control millions of families’ healthcare choices.
These decisions will cost lives.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, echoed these sentiments in a post on X, asserting, “RFK Jr. poses a danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions. He wants to prevent parents from protecting their babies from measles, and his ideas would welcome the return of polio. I have many questions for his Senate hearing.”
Kennedy maintains that he is not against vaccines, despite frequently promoting debunked claims, such as the notion that childhood vaccines cause autism. When asked by podcaster Lex Fridman in July 2023 if there were any safe and effective vaccines available, Kennedy responded with a definitive “No.” Meanwhile, Trump has sent mixed signals regarding vaccines and disease outbreaks.
His administration spearheaded Operation Warp Speed during the COVID pandemic, facilitating the rapid creation and distribution of vaccines. However, he also downplayed the severity of the virus and ridiculed mask-wearing to mitigate its spread. Additionally, he has propagated misinformation about the COVID vaccine distribution, claiming during a January 2022 rally in Arizona that white individuals were being denied access to the vaccine.
“The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating…white people to determine who lives and who dies,” Trump stated, according to a report from the Associated Press. “If you’re white, you don’t get the vaccine, or if you’re white, you don’t get therapeutics…In New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line for medical care.”
In 2009, during the swine flu outbreak, Trump, then hosting The Apprentice, remarked on Fox News that he believed “vaccines can be very dangerous.” He added, “And obviously, you know, a lot of people are talking about vaccines for children with respect to autism. And every report comes out like, you know, that doesn’t happen.
But a lot of people feel that the vaccines are what causes autism in children.” In an August 2012 post on X (then Twitter), Trump claimed, “Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism.” During a 2016 GOP presidential debate, he continued to assert false connections between childhood vaccines and autism, stating, “Autism has become an epidemic.”
He claimed to support vaccines but advocated for smaller doses over an extended period, saying, “I think you’re going to see a big impact on autism.”
By 2019, however, Trump was urging Americans to get vaccinated after measles outbreaks occurred in various regions while he was in office. “They have to get the shot,” he told reporters in April 2019 from the White House driveway. “The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now. They have to get their shot.” Newsweek reached out to Trump’s transition team via email for comments on Thursday.
In his statement announcing Kennedy’s appointment, Trump expressed his excitement, stating he was “thrilled” to have Kennedy join his Cabinet.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation regarding Public Health,” Trump said, adding that Kennedy would “restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”
