(NewsNation) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is his choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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!”
The secretary of Department of Health and Human Services position is one that would need Senate confirmation.
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Kennedy ran in the presidential election as a Democrat, and then an independent before dropping out and endorsing Trump.
Before Trump was elected, Kennedy said he was asked by the former president to reorganize federal health agencies including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention if he wins the 2024 presidential election.
“He’s asked me to clean up the corruption, number one,” Kennedy said during a town hall with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo. “Number two, end the conflicts of interest, return those agencies to their rich tradition of gold standard, empirically based, evidence-based science, evidence-based medicine, and to end the chronic disease epidemic in this country.”
Because he’s disseminated false information about health topics such as vaccines and is known for spreading conspiracy theories, health medical experts have raised concerns about Kennedy’s potential influence in a future Trump administration, NewsNation partner “The Hill” reports.
Cuomo asked about those who would call Kennedy an “extremist” when the politician was on his show. To that, Kennedy answered: “I’m not a doctor, I’m not a scientist,” adding that his job for the Trump administration would be to address corruption, not impose his personal beliefs on the American people.
RFK Jr.’s plans for position
Kennedy has previously said there are “entire departments” within the Food and Drug Administration that could be eliminated.
“In some categories … there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA … that have to go, that are not doing their job. They’re not protecting our kids,” Kennedy said during an interview on MSNBC.
In addition, Kennedy said that if given a position in the Trump administration, he would advise water systems in the United States to remove fluoride, despite experts and officials saying the mineral is both safe and beneficial to people’s dental health.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services has a discretionary budget of more than $130 billion annually and a mandatory budget of nearly $2 trillion.
Along with the FDA, if confirmed as HHS secretary, Kennedy would also oversee the Centers for Disease Control and Preventio,; the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the National Institutes of Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, among others.
Trump said during an October campaign rally he would let Kennedy “go wild” in dealing with issues related to food, medicine and health in his second administration.
Reactions RFK Jr. pick
House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., who has been a practicing surgeon for 35 years, said he’s looking forward to working with Kennedy.
“Our American system is broken, and it gets worse and worse and worse,” Murphy said on NewsNation’s “The Hill.” “With every facet of American medicine taking off in wrong directions, it’s OK for a disrupter to come in.”
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Congressman Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., fears Kennedy is a “conspiracist” who has “no place near Health and Human Services.” “RFK is a threat to the trust that Americans can place in what they’re putting into their bodies,” Auchincloss said on “The Hill.”
NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer and The Hill contributed to this article.