Donald Trump announced Friday that Kennedy family scion and notorious vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will play a “large role” in his administration if the Republican former president wins next week’s election.
Speaking to reporters outside an upscale halal restaurant in Dearborn, Michigan, Trump expressed confidence in Kennedy, who has spent two decades promoting disinformation about the vaccine, claiming he has what it takes to get the high-level job. Have the right qualifications.
“They will have a big role in health care,” Trump declared. “He knows about it better than anyone,” he said with trademark flourish.
Trump said Kennedy had “some ideas that I agree with very strongly and I have agreed with for a long time,” but he dodged the question of whether he specifically supported Kennedy’s vaccine rhetoric.
Kennedy, a 70-year-old former Democrat, ran as an independent candidate this election cycle before abandoning his campaign in August to support the 78-year-old Republican tycoon.
She is widely rumored to be a contender for a Cabinet post, with speculation focusing on the role of Secretary of Health and Human Services.
“For 19 years, I have prayed every morning without exception that God would put me in a position to end this chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said at a rally with Trump in Michigan on Friday.
During a raucous rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Trump teased without specifying that he would allow Kennedy to “do anything in terms of health.”
And Thursday night, he suggested to a Nevada crowd that Kennedy’s portfolio would extend to “women’s health,” adding to Democrats already angry over Republican-led rollbacks of abortion rights in more than 20 states.
Trump doubled down on that idea on Friday.
“He is very interested in health and everything, he will take care of women’s health, men’s health and your children’s health,” the candidate said.
Kennedy said: “We are the sickest country in the world, and this is the sickest generation of children. And if you elect Kamala Harris, you’ll get even more of that.”
Cabinet appointments require Senate confirmation by a simple majority of 51 votes, with the Vice President breaking the tie if necessary.
Since the mid-2000s, Kennedy – whose father was assassinated while competing for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 – has become a leading figure in the global anti-vaccine movement.
His claims included calling the COVID-19 vaccines “the deadliest ever” and suggesting that the virus was “ethnically targeted” to harm black and white people while sparing “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese”. Can be delivered.
He was once a prominent climate advocate and was reported as a leading candidate to head the Environmental Protection Agency under former Democratic President Barack Obama, before ultimately being passed over.
His five siblings condemned his decision to support Trump, calling it “a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear.”
Kennedy’s presidential run this year included some bizarre moments – including his claim to have recovered from a parasitic brain worm and his admission that he had left a dead bear cub in Central Park after initially “skinning” it. Had thrown away.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
