Donald Trump has spent a considerable amount of time in recent weeks boasting about plans to give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. an influential position in a possible second term. The former president hasn’t offered specific details, but he’s suggested that Kennedy — a lawyer with no professional background in medicine, science or public health — would work on health care policy in some capacity.
At one rally last week, Trump said he was committed to making America healthy again, adding, “Come on, Bobby. Bobby’s gonna do it. Bobby. Let’s go, Bobby. You gonna make us healthy, Bobby?”
At his highly controversial rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, the Republican nominee assured his audience he’d let Kennedy “go wild on health.”
Oddly enough, Trump’s own former surgeon general appears to have some concerns about this idea. Mother Jones reported:
Trump’s pledge alarmed public health professionals, including Dr. Jerome Adams, his own surgeon general. Unlike many other top officials appointed by Trump, Adams was actually qualified: he was praised by colleagues for successfully limiting an HIV outbreak in Indiana by establishing a needle exchange program, among other public health successes. On Monday, Adams spoke at a conference of the American Public Health Association — which endorsed his 2017 nomination as Surgeon General — on his concerns about Kennedy, especially his anti-vaccine stances.
The New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from the conference, and quoted Trump’s former surgeon general warning attendees about the adverse impact Kennedy would have.
“If [Kennedy] has a significant influence on the next administration, that could further erode people’s willingness to get up to date with recommended vaccines, and I am worried about the impact that could have on our nation’s health, on our nation’s economy, on our global security,” Adams said.
The former surgeon general, who served nearly four years on Trump’s team after having worked with then-Gov. Mike Pence in Indiana, went on to say, “I would advise Republicans to tread very carefully in this world of allowing vaccine confidence to continue to be eroded and for us to go backwards on one of the number one public health achievements made in the last 50 to 75 years in this country.”
Public comments like these will very likely do lasting harm to Adams’ influence in the Trumpified GOP, but the former surgeon general offered sound advice.
As we recently discussed, the idea that Kennedy should be allowed to “go wild on health” in a Republican administration is more than a little bizarre.
As my MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem recently explained, RFK Jr. “is best known for fringe conspiracy theories tied to vaccines and other medical interventions, such as the belief that antidepressants cause school shootings.”
NPR had a related report last year, noting, “Wi-Fi causes cancer and ‘leaky brain,’ Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan. … Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings, he mused during an appearance with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender, he told right-wing Canadian psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson, echoing a false assertion made by serial fabulist Alex Jones. AIDS may not be caused by HIV, he has suggested multiple times.”
To be sure, this is just scratching the surface.
Not to put too fine a point on this, but if his name were Robert F. Smith Jr., there’s obviously no way he’d be considered for a position of authority in the federal government. He’d be dismissed by the American mainstream as a fringe figure, better left ignored by serious people.
But in 2024, the Republican Party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office is nevertheless letting the public know — indeed, he’s boasting to voters — that this fringe figure with ridiculous ideas is “going to be a part” of his team in a second term, even as the former president’s surgeon general makes it clear just how unwise that would be.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
