President-elect Trump on Monday sought to downplay concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., telling reporters that his nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services would not be “radical.”
“I don't think he's as radical as you think he is,” Trump said at a wide-ranging press conference at Mar-a-Lago. “He'll have an open mind, otherwise I wouldn't have put him there.”
President Trump's comments came as President Kennedy began a week of meetings with Republican senators to shore up support for his nomination. Some Republican senators have expressed concern about Kennedy's history of vaccine skepticism and want to hear directly from the former Democrat about his beliefs.
Opposition to Kennedy centers primarily on his policy stances, many of which run counter to traditional Republican orthodoxy. He has a long history of questioning vaccines and promoting the debunked idea that vaccines cause autism.
Kennedy argues that ultra-processed foods, environmental toxins, and chemical additives are to blame for the rise in chronic disease in America. He wants to ban fluoridated water and increase access to raw milk.
President Kennedy claims he is not anti-vaccine, but that he believes childhood vaccinations are unsafe and that the government has not done enough research to prove otherwise. are.
But at the same time, President Trump on Monday signaled acceptance of some of Kennedy's most controversial views.
During the press conference, President Trump indicated that his administration would investigate the debunked link between vaccines and autism.
This is a position that President Trump has stuck to for years, but has recently come to the forefront with the president-elect's alliance with Kennedy.
“If you look at autism, 30 years ago you heard numbers like 1 in 200,000, 1 in 100,000. Now you're hearing numbers like 1 in 100. There's something wrong. And we're going to figure it out.”
President Trump also sought to reassure the pharmaceutical industry, despite President Kennedy's previous statements slamming the industry. President Trump said he made similar remarks at a recent dinner he hosted at Mar-a-Lago for industry executives.
Kennedy, first as an independent presidential candidate and then as a surrogate candidate for President Trump, said federal health regulators were “sock puppets” in thrall to industry special interests.
Trump told executives he wanted to work with industry to stop “middlemen” in the prescription drug supply chain known as pharmacy benefit managers.
“We spent more time talking about that than anything else,” Trump said. “We're going to knock out the middlemen. I don't know who the middlemen are, but they're incredibly rich.”
