Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime conspiracy theorist and vaccine opponent, now has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump to promote what he’s calling the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
It’s an unlikely alliance between the Kennedy family scion, once a celebrated environmental champion who called for prosecuting climate change deniers, and the returning Republican leader.
What they share, however, is a profound distrust of institutions.
Trump announced Thursday he would nominate Kennedy to become the next secretary of Health and Human Services, fulfilling a campaign promise to award the 70-year-old a “big role in healthcare” that raised alarm in public health circles.
Not long ago Kennedy was a high-powered climate attorney and was even in the mix to become former president Barack Obama’s first environment chief.
This makes him a complex figure, some experts say.
In recent days, he’s tried to allay fears, telling NPR, “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody,” while adding, “We are going to make sure that Americans have good information.”
A whale, a worm and a bear cub
But Kennedy has spent two decades promoting vaccine conspiracy theories, especially around Covid-19 shots — the vaccines developed in record time under Trump’s first administration.
He also suggested the coronavirus itself was “ethnically targeted” to harm Black and white people while sparing “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Running initially as an independent candidate, the nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy set the campaign ablaze with a string of bizarre revelations.
His claim to have recovered from a parasitic brain worm, made during a divorce deposition, was resurfaced by the New York Times.
He released a video admitting that a decade earlier he had placed a dead six-month-old bear cub in Central Park after initially planning to skin it for meat.
And the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reportedly opened an investigation that Kennedy used a chainsaw to decapitate a dead whale two decades ago to take to his home, as recounted by his daughter Kathleen to Town and Country magazine in 2012.
In August, he withdrew to endorse Trump, a decision denounced by five of his siblings who called it a “betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear.”
MAHA
The pair then hit the trail together to promote the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement, a play on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) slogan.
“Our big priority will be to clean up the public health agencies,” he declared in a video, echoing progressive critiques that these agencies have become entangled with the very industries they are meant to regulate.
He has also stirred controversy by suggesting he would stop the addition of fluoride to tap water — a practice aimed at preventing cavities that the CDC considers one of the top 10 health achievements of the 20th century.
But some experts saw merit. “It’s not an entirely crazy idea,” physician Leana Wen wrote in the Washington Post, noting that, since more and more fluoride comes from toothpaste, the Public Health Service in 2015 recommended lowering its levels in water.
Some studies have linked it to interfering with early brain development and the CDC urges parents of young children to guard against excessive toothpaste use.
Reproductive rights and more
If confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy could face pressure from conservative quarters to undo stringent privacy protections for women seeking abortions out-of-state put in place by President Joe Biden’s health secretary, Xavier Becerra.
Yet RFK Jr.’s stance on reproductive rights defies easy categorization. Earlier this year, he defended a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy at any stage, saying, “Ultimately, I don’t trust government to have jurisdiction over people’s bodies.”
He later revised his position, favoring a ban after fetal viability, around 24 weeks — the limit set by a Supreme Court ruling that held sway for half a century before it was overturned in 2022, thanks to Trump-appointed justices.
Kennedy will also tackle the nation’s food health, a curious task considering Trump’s well-known affection for McDonald’s.
He also insists America must curb its chronic disease epidemic, with a particular focus on obesity. But he’s also a fan of raw milk, a practice health experts strongly discourage.