In a recent appearance with Tucker Carlson, anti-vax Trump surrogate RFK Jr. proudly claimed, “I’m going to be deeply involved in helping to choose the people who run FDA, NIH, and CDC.” Even Carlson acknowledged that people will have “nightmares” about that prospect. 

RFK Jr. has a long history of pushing dangerous rhetoric and views on healthcare — including advocacy that led to a deadly measles outbreak. Now, new reporting from the New York Times unpacks what experts call a “worrisome” history of public health policy positions as RFK Jr. further embeds himself with Trump’s inner circle.  

In response, DNC Senior Advisor Mary Beth Cahill released the following statement: 

“The prospect of RFK Jr. choosing personnel for the FDA, NIH, and CDC should scare the daylights out of anyone who cares about public health. His dangerous rhetoric helped stoke a deadly measles outbreak that killed dozens of children — an incident that he still refuses to accept any responsibility for. He’s the last person who should be anywhere near the agencies charged with keeping Americans safe and healthy. Trump embracing RFK Jr. — with his erratic behavior and harmful policies — further illustrates how disastrous it would be to have him back in the White House.” 

ICYMI: New York Times: What R.F.K. Jr.’s Alliance With Trump Could Mean for Public Health

By: Emily Baumgaertner

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. looked out into the crowd in Glendale, Ariz., on Saturday at his first major campaign event for his onetime rival, former President Donald J. Trump, and talked up their future together — one he hopes will finally bring his long-held agenda for public health to fruition.
• As a candidate polling in the single digits, Mr. Kennedy had no path to the White House. But now, as an ally of Mr. Trump’s who has already been named to the transition team that would advise on personnel and policy priorities, he has very real opportunities to exert influence and gain power in a field where he has long been considered a fringe voice.
• Historically, members of a winning candidate’s transition team often end up in prestigious positions themselves. Mr. Trump said in an interview with CNN that he “probably would” appoint Mr. Kennedy to a role in a second Trump administration.
• In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Kennedy confirmed that Mr. Trump “asked me to be involved in the administration at a high level.” He said they had not discussed the specific role yet, given the “legal constraints” of doing so before the election.
• “We’ve talked about the sort of general role in looking at corruption across the agencies, having some kind of portfolio that would look at unraveling corruption — and particularly in the agencies that I’ve had a lot of litigation experience with,” Mr. Kennedy said, citing several federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency and C.D.C. “And public health: in doing what needs to be done to end the chronic disease epidemic. So those are the two areas that he’s asked me to be involved with.”
• Mr. Kennedy would likely struggle to achieve Senate confirmation for a cabinet post, like secretary of health and human services, or to head an agency, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Mr. Trump could appoint him to a White House position, such as a seat on the domestic policy council, with no obstacles. The former president has already indicated that he would establish a panel of experts to work with Mr. Kennedy to investigate the “toxins” behind chronic health issues in children.
• That prospect concerns many public health officials who are not themselves overtly political.
• “For elected officials — or the people who are advising or are appointed by elected officials — we want to make sure they have the best interest of families and children at heart,” said Dr. James Campbell, an infectious disease physician and pediatric vaccine expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “My knowledge of statements made in the past — they make me concerned.”
• Mr. Kennedy has promoted theories that suggest H.I.V. is not the true cause of AIDS, that 5G networks are being used for mass surveillance and that Black Americans in particular should avoid being vaccinated.
• Mr. Kennedy has also likened some Covid policies to conditions experienced by Jewish people during the Holocaust and wrote a book arguing that Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci conspired with vaccine manufacturers for their own profit. These were among a multitude of other theories so robust that a social media research nonprofit called Mr. Kennedy one of the top 12 superspreaders of misinformation about Covid on the internet.
• In a time when an array of pathogens — bird flu, mpox and new variants of Covid, among others — could potentially cause major disease outbreaks, health experts say confidence in vaccines and the agencies that oversee their approval is more important than ever.
• But at the Saturday rally, Mr. Kennedy denounced the “corrupt murderous state of corporate power” that he said had given major pharmaceutical companies and other groups “control of the F.D.A.” He promised to “eliminate” the corruption inside the agencies.
• Dr. David Gorski, a cancer surgeon at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Michigan and Ohio who has tracked Mr. Kennedy’s health statements for nearly 20 years, said the narratives had been destructive.
• When public health officials worried in 2019 that the anti-vaccine movement was driving a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa, for example, Mr. Kennedy wrote to the nation’s prime minister on Children’s Health Defense letterhead, suggesting that the failure of vaccines given to pregnant women and children was the true culprit.
• “It is a regrettable possibility that these children are casualties” of the vaccine, Mr. Kennedy wrote. More than 50 children were killed in the outbreak.
• “He is quite a magician, from the standpoint of being able to pull the wool over people’s eyes,” said Dr. Richard Allen Williams, a cardiologist and the president of the Minority Health Institute. Dr. Williams worries that certain marginalized groups could be more susceptible to Mr. Kennedy’s claims. “Many people will not be not see what he’s aiming to do. Therein lies the danger,” he said.
• “The public is what I would call the proverbial chicken house, and I look at R.F.K. Jr. as a fox,” Dr. Williams added. “He’s looking for a way in — to gain control. That would be disastrous.”
• In the Tuesday interview, Mr. Kennedy said that in a federal government role, he would not do away with all vaccine research funding, but he emphasized the need to prioritize chronic disease over infectious disease.
• “I think we need to reallocate a lot of energy and resources toward eliminating the causes of chronic disease and studying the causes — identifying the etiology and the origins of chronic diseases — rather than focusing on cures and treatments which benefit the pharmaceutical industry. They may alleviate some suffering in people, but wouldn’t it be better to eliminate the disease altogether, rather than having them be dependent on pharmaceutical products for the rest of their lives?”
• Mr. Kennedy has also claimed that Covid was engineered to target Caucasian and Black people and spare those of Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. And he has said he would fight the next pandemic not by prioritizing the research and development of defenses, but instead by “building people’s immune systems.”
• To many public health experts, that mission — laid out in no uncertain terms — is most worrisome.