Vice President Harris on Friday blasted Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s possible role as a public health authority in a second Donald Trump administration, calling him the “last person” who should be considered for such a position.
“He [Trump] has indicated that the person who would be in charge of health care for the American people is someone who has routinely promoted junk science and crazy conspiracy theories, who once expressed support for a national abortion ban. And who is the exact last person in America who should be setting health care policy for America’s families and children,” Harris told reporters Friday afternoon.
In recent weeks, Kennedy and the Trump campaign have indicated he would have outsized influence over public health policy should former President Trump retake the Oval Office.
Harris has previously cited Trump’s embrace of Kennedy as evidence of him being unfit for office.
“Putting an anti-abortion conspiracy theorist in charge of our public health agencies says everything you need to know about how Donald Trump would govern,” Harris said in a post on social platform X.
Kennedy said Monday that Trump has promised him “control” of public health agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Trump has said he would let Kennedy “go wild on food” and “go wild on medicines” if reelected.
“The key that … President Trump has promised me is — is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its subagencies, CDC, FDA, NIH and a few others, and then also the USDA, which is … key to making America healthy,” Kennedy said in a video viewed by The Hill, referencing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. “Because we’ve got to get off of seed oils, and we’ve got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture.”
Health experts have expressed concerns over the harmful impact Kennedy could have on public health if Trump wins a second term, citing his long-held beliefs in debunked conspiracy theories.
Kennedy is a leading voice among anti-vaccine proponents, having long pushed the debunked claims linking vaccinations to autism. Though he has at times rejected being called anti-vaccine, he has also claimed there is no such thing as a “safe and effective” vaccine.
Critics of Kennedy have cited his actions in Samoa as an example of the harm his influence can have on public health. In the months before a 2019 outbreak of measles in the country that killed 83 people, Kennedy and the nonprofit he leads, the Children’s Health Defense, visited Samoa and publicly supported prominent vaccine opponents.
Kennedy has denied any involvement, saying in a 2023 film, “I never told anybody not to vaccinate.”
Howard Lutnick, co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, said in an interview on CNN that Kennedy is seeking federal data to force vaccines off the market.