President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters are pushing back on the outrage over Robert Kennedy Jr. being nominated as Health and Human Services Secretary by pointing out he was once up for a role in the Obama administration.
Kennedy, a known vaccine skeptic who has pushed conspiracy theories in recent years, was announced Trump’s pick to help ‘Make America Great and Healthy Again’ on Thursday.
Critics have called the 70-year-old former Democrat dangerous, an unqualified extremist and unfit for the role as the Senate prepares to take up his nomination in the new year.
But Trump allies have pointed out the member of the prominent political family was once under consideration years ago to serve under President Obama in a different cabinet level position.
According to the old report by Politico, President-elect Obama’s team in 2008 was considering Kennedy as administrator to the Environmental Protection Agency where he would have been tasked with enforcing clear air and water laws.
According to the report, Obama advisers ‘said the nomination would please both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.’
Kennedy practiced environmental law throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but in the end, he never got a nomination with an almost ironic twist.
Ultimately it was not concerns by environmental experts that doomed Kennedy joining the Obama administration as health experts are raising concerns over his HHS nomination now.
In the end, Obama believed his controversial statements and past arrest for heroin in the 1980s made his confirmation in the Senate unlikely with the expectation Republicans would block it.
Now with the tables turned, it is a Republican president with a GOP Senate majority considering Kennedy for a completely different role.
While it appears unlikely Republican senators will be willing to go against Trump despite health experts’ concerns over Kennedy’s record, his nomination for some health position in the administration was not unexpected.
Kennedy dropped his independent bid for president and endorsed Trump in August. Since then he hit the campaign trail for Trump who has said he will let Kennedy ‘go wild’ on health.
But health experts are sounding the alarms on some of Kennedy’s controversial stances as he would wield considerable power as HHS Secretary.
Kennedy, who does not have a medical background but founded a prominent anti-vaccine group, declared this summer ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective’ in a podcast interview.
He also told Fox News last summer ‘I do believe that autism does come from vaccines’ despite the Institute of Medicine concluded in a 2004 report that there is no link between autism and vaccination.
In 2015, Kennedy also equated the use of vaccines to the Holocaust during remarks at a film screening.
At a 2021 hearing, he declared the coronavirus vaccine was the ‘deadliest vaccine ever made.’ Health officials credit the vaccine with saving millions of lives and accuse him of spreading health disinformation.
Last month, Kennedy declared in a tweet the ‘FDA’s war on public health is about to end.’
‘This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma,’ he posted no X.
Both the FDA and CDC strongly advise against consuming raw milk due to the threat it can contain dangerous bacteria including Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria.
Kennedy also falsely linked anti-depressants to mass shootings earlier this year and has questioned whether AIDS is caused by HIV despite the established science.
He also has seized on claims also spread by conspiracy theorists that chemicals in water cause gender identify confusion in children.