Team Trump Is Falling For RFK Jr.'s Vaccine Nonsense

Donald Trump has made quite clear his plans to reward his most ardent sycophants with senior administration positions if he wins another term in office. Independent presidential candidate and vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for example, is expected to take on a major role in national health. His interest in medical misinformation and false claims about vaccines is apparently part of that appeal.

compared to monday incoming report PolicyThe “key” to their plan, Kennedy told attendees at a virtual event, was that President Trump promised me control of the public health agencies — HHS and its subsidiaries, the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, to name a few. others…and then the USDA.”

While Trump’s campaign denied this, Policy Others on the Trump team appear to be excited about Kennedy dictating national health policy, considering it’s still “premature” for “formal discussions about who will serve” under the Trump administration.

On Wednesday night, Howard Lutnick, co-chairman of Trump’s transition team, Appeared on CNN to discuss possible appointments that the former president could make in his second term. Host Kaitlan Collins asked him if Kennedy had been promised control of the nation’s public health agencies.

Lutnick dodged the question and instead praised Kennedy’s false claims that vaccines cause autism as qualifications for him to head the national health apparatus.

“I spent two and a half hours with Bobby Kennedy Jr. this week,” he said. “When he was born we had three vaccines and autism was one in 10,000. Now a baby is born with 76 vaccines because they abolished product liability for vaccines in 1986. And here’s the best part, they started paying people at NIH, right? “They pay some of the money to the vaccine companies.”

Collins tried to intervene, but Lutnick persisted, claiming that vaccines were responsible for the occurrence of autism in “one in thirty-four births.”

“Wait,” said Collins. “None of us are doctors. Vaccines are safe.”

Lutnick won’t back down. “Why do you think vaccines are safe? No more product liability. “They are unproven,” Collins continued, noting that the vaccines undergo extensive testing and trials before being released to the public. “1 in 10,000 people have autism,” Lutnick continued. “We all know many more people with autism than we did when we were younger.”

The CNN host then tried to steer the conversation back to Kennedy, noting that her fear-mongering about vaccines is a matter of concern if she becomes head of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Lutnick claimed that Kennedy wanted to personally review “data” on the vaccines to prove that they were indeed safe. “He says, ‘If you give me the data – all I want is the data – I will take the data and show that this is not safe and if you take product liability, companies will immediately withdraw these vaccines. Sunday.”

For more than a decade, Kennedy has been one of the most prominent vaccine skeptics in the United States. Throughout his campaign, requested He said vaccine research is responsible for the existence of diseases such as HIV, Spanish flu and Lyme disease.

“As president, I will end all gain-of-function research,” Kennedy said in June of last year. “This is just a disaster, it did us no good. It has given us everything from Lyme disease to Covid and many more diseases. RSV, now one of the biggest killers of children, originated in a vaccine laboratory.”

Kennedy has no (rational) hope of becoming president at this point, but he seems perfectly willing to trade his support for Trump for a position influencing national health policy. In July, Kennedy’s son leaked information. part of the phone conversation The incident between his father and the former president, in which Trump rambled on about vaccines and told Kennedy he wanted to “make small doses” for babies.

“I agree with you, man,” Trump said. “There’s something wrong with this whole system, and it’s the doctors you find.”

Trump added that he would “love” to have Kennedy “serve.”

“I think this will be very good and very big for you,” he said. “And we will win.”

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