President-elect Donald Trump announced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services Thursday via his Truth Social account.
“Mr. Kennedy will 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!” Trump said about the former Independent presidential candidate, who recently told marketing industry podcaster Joe Polish that Trump’s diet “is really, like, bad” and characterized a lot of the food Trump eats as “poison.”
None of that seems to matter to Trump, who chose the brain worm victim, whale decapitator, and serial adulterer to lead public health. Kennedy's history of pushing pseudoscience and debunked claims about vaccines is long and distressing, and his ideas to “Make America Healthy Again” are dubious at best.
Kennedy wrote in a Nov. 2 post on X that on inauguration day, the “Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” Most experts agree that adding fluoride to water helps reduce childhood cavities and tooth infections in young children. Kennedy’s belief that fluoridation has led to worse public health outcomes is not supported by most of the research that has been done.
The infamous “vaccine skeptic” has vaguely promised to "investigate" vaccine research once he’s in a position of power. Kennedy and the anti-vaxxer movement’s unwillingness to believe even their own research debunking myths about vaccines causing autism does not build much confidence that he will do anything productive in that regard.
Kennedy’s one halfway-decent public health idea is to promote healthier diets with less processed food for Americans. The Democrat-turned-Independent-turned-Trump toady will now be working for the same GOP that lost their collective minds when former first lady Michelle Obama attempted to improve the dietary standards of children's school lunches.
And considering that it was Trump’s first administration that rolled back Obama-era nutrition regulations on school lunches, it will be interesting to see if Kennedy is even allowed to bring carrots into the White House.
The two men make a strange duo—until you realize that they're both narcissistic rich kids with bad ideas, underdeveloped emotions, and outsized egos.
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