Kennedy to head Health Department under Trump

WASHINGTON: United States President-elect Donald Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr to be the head of the department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday.

The announcement was the latest in shocking appointments to Trump’s administration, and contradicts an earlier statement from Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of Trump’s transition team. Lutnick had told CNN before the election that RFK Jr. was “not getting a job for HHS.”

Kennedy is a known anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, who has been voicing false, baseless claims that vaccines cause autism since as early as 2005. In more recent times, he has advocated for additional research on the links between vaccines and neurodevelopmental disorders, completely ignoring the countless peer reviewed studies that disprove his theories.

Trump and Kennedy: An anti-vax alliance

RFK Jr. has also been critical of the heavy restrictions put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that there was more freedom in Nazi Germany than in America. “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Franke did,” Kennedy said.

Trump Promising Kennedy control of the HHS and its various sub agencies, including the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and others, was part of the reason RFK Jr ended his own presidential bid.  

After RFK Jr. began endorsing Trump, the 45th President, and soon to be 47th president of the US, stated that he would let Kennedy “go wild on health,” “go wild on the food,” and “go wild on the medicines. “

Earlier in November, sources revealed that Kennedy was already reviewing candidate resumes for top jobs in the various health agencies under the HHS.

Kennedy reviewing resumes for top Trump health jobs, sources say