Team Trump Is Buying Into RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Nonsense

Donald Trump has been fairly explicit regarding his plans to reward his most ardent sycophants with high-level administration positions should he win another term in office. Independent presidential candidate and vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance, is expected to take over a major national health role. His affinity for medical misinformation and false claims about vaccines are apparently part of the appeal. 

According to a Monday report from Politico, Kennedy told attendees at a virtual event that “the key” to his plans is “that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others … and then also the USDA.”

While the Trump campaign denied this, telling Politico that “formal discussions of who will serve” under Trump are “premature,” others on Trump’s team seem thrilled to have Kennedy dictate national health policy. 

On Wednesday night, Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team, appeared on CNN to discuss potential appointments the former president might make during a second term. Host Kaitlan Collins asked him point blank if Kennedy had been promised control of the nation’s public health agencies. 

Lutnick dodged the question, instead lauding Kennedy’s false claims that vaccines cause autism as a qualification to head the national health apparatus. 

“I spent two-and-a-half hours this week with Bobby Kennedy Jr.,” he said. “What he explained was [that] when he was born we had three vaccines, and autism was one in 10,000. Now a baby is born with 76 vaccines because — in 1986 — they waved product liability for vaccines. And here’s the best one, they started paying the people at the NIH, right? They pay them a piece of the money for the vaccine companies.” 

Collins attempted to interject, but Lutnick barreled on, suggesting that vaccines were responsible for the presence of autism in “one in thirty four” births. 
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“Hang on,” Collins said. “Neither of us are doctors. Vaccines are safe.”

Lutnick would not back down. “Why do you think vaccines are safe? There’s no product liability anymore. They’re not proven,” he went on, as Collins pointed out that vaccines go through extensive testing and trials before being made available to the public. “There was 1-in-10,000 people with autism,” Lutnick continued. “We all know so many more people with autism than had it when we were young.” 

The CNN host then attempted to draw the conversation back to Kennedy, noting that his fear-mongering over vaccines was a point of concern should he become head of the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Lutnick claimed that Kennedy just wanted to personally review “the data” on vaccines to prove that they were actually safe. “He says, ‘If you give me the data — all I want is the data — I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe and that if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the market.’” 

For more than a decade, Kennedy has been one of the most prominent vaccine skeptics in the United States. Over the course of his campaign, he claimed that vaccine research was responsible for the existence of diseases like HIV, the Spanish flu, and Lyme disease. 

“I will end all gain-of-function research [as president],” Kennedy said in June of last year. “It’s just a disaster, it’s given us no benefits. It’s given us everything from Lyme disease to Covid, and many many other diseases. RSV, which is now one of the biggest killers of children, came out of a vaccine lab.” 
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Kennedy has no (rational) hope of becoming president at this point, but it seems like he was perfectly willing to trade his endorsement of Trump for a position influencing national health care policy. In July, Kennedy’s son leaked a portion of a phone call between his father and the former president, in which Trump spewed nonsense about vaccines, and told Kennedy that he wants “to do small doses” for babies. 

“I agree with you, man,” Trump says. “Something’s wrong with that whole system, and it’s the doctors you find.” 
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Trump added that he would “love” for Kennedy to “serve.” 

“I think it would be so good for you and so big for you,” he said. “And we’re gonna win.”