President-elect Donald Trump mentioned Thursday that he’ll nominate vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Well being and Human Companies Division.
If the Senate approves Kennedy, the previous impartial presidential candidate will lead a sprawling division answerable for the massive Medicare and Medicaid well being protection applications, the Meals and Drug Administration, the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, and the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
HHS’s choices on spending and insurance policies have main results on the U.S. health-care system and associated companies.
Kennedy, 70, is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the late U.S. legal professional common and Democratic senator from New York who was assassinated in 1968 by a gunman in Los Angeles as he ran for president. He’s the nephew of former President John Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963.
Trump mentioned in October that if elected he would let Kennedy “go wild on well being.”
“I’m thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The US Secretary of Well being and Human Companies,” Trump wrote in a put up on his Reality Social website Thursday.
“For too lengthy, People have been crushed by the commercial meals complicated and drug firms who’ve engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation on the subject of Public Well being,” Trump wrote.
“The Security and Well being of all People is a very powerful position of any Administration, and HHS will play a giant position in serving to be sure that everyone can be shielded from dangerous chemical substances, pollution, pesticides, pharmaceutical merchandise, and meals components which have contributed to the overwhelming Well being Disaster on this Nation.”
Kennedy informed NBC Information in a latest interview that Trump has mentioned he desires Kennedy to “clear up corruption” at federal well being companies, return these companies to science-based insurance policies and “make America wholesome once more.” Kennedy mentioned that “there are whole departments, just like the vitamin division on the FDA, that need to go.”
Inventory costs of vaccine makers fell earlier Thursday on reviews that Trump would faucet Kennedy for the HHS put up.
Kennedy final yr steered that the Covid-19 virus, which CDC performed a serious position in combatting, was engineered to “assault Caucasians and Black folks,” and to be much less prone to hurt “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese language” folks.
He beforehand promoted theories that autism was linked to childhood vaccines, a connection that has been disproved.
Kennedy outraged a lot of his siblings by endorsing Trump in August after abandoning his long-short presidential candidacy.
Trump’s collection of Kennedy got here a day after the Republican president-elect tapped Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as legal professional common.
Gaetz’s choice instantly sparked controversy due largely to the truth that the Division of Justice, which he would lead as AG, beforehand investigated him for potential intercourse trafficking of a 17-year-old woman. Gaetz resigned from Congress efficient Thursday, eradicating him from the jurisdiction of the Home Ethics Committee, however a lot of Republican senators have referred to as on that panel to launch a report of its investigation of the previous lawmaker.
Kennedy final week reportedly steered he would hearth 600 NIH employees and exchange them.
His “Make America Wholesome” web site has been in search of recommendations from the general public for greater than 4,000 appointee posts throughout the federal authorities to be stuffed by Trump.
Andrea Ducas, vp of well being coverage for the advocacy group Heart for American Progress, in an announcement referred to as Trump’s alternative of Kennedy “can be nothing in need of disastrous for the nation.”
“His monitor file and open skepticism of longstanding medical science might jeopardize the unimaginable public well being positive aspects we have achieved as a nation – together with the positive aspects we have made in combatting infectious illness by childhood vaccination applications and in making our meals provide safer by pasteurization,” Ducas mentioned. This choose is very troubling coming on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, the place lifesaving vaccines averted numerous infections and deaths.”
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