After all the votes are counted, no matter who wins, the empowering of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by Donald Trump will be one of the sorriest legacies of the 2024 election cycle.
I had hoped that Trump was merely humoring Kennedy to get the votes of his supporters. As a third-party candidate, Kennedy may not have had a very big slice of the pie, but in a squeaky tight race, every crumb counts.
Yet after Kennedy dropped out and endorsed Trump, the former president has said that Kennedy would have an important role in his potential new administration.
“I’m gonna let him go wild on health,” Trump told the crowd at his recent Madison Square Garden hatefest. “I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines.”
The Washington Post reported that Kennedy could be given “significant control over health and food safety … with discussions about some Cabinet and agency officials reporting to him.”
What a joke. Kennedy is an antivax conspiracy theorist who promotes far-fetched health claims. He once wrote that “COVID shots are a crime against humanity.”
My friend and fellow journalist Roy Rivenburg says that putting Kennedy in charge of American public health would be like putting Fox News in charge of a journalism school, Exxon in charge of the Sierra Club or PETA in charge of McDonald’s.
In addition to promoting loony medical theories, Kennedy rails against the poor eating habits of Americans and the links between diet and chronic disease. I can’t disagree with him there. But I do remember a certain first lady who was savaged by Republicans for planting a White House vegetable garden and urging children to eat healthy and move more.
Kennedy’s post last weekend on X is more in keeping with his crackpot ideas. He stated that fluoride, which strengthens teeth and reduces cavities, should be removed from public water supplies. When I was a child, the right-wing extremist John Birch Society, which saw Communist threats around every corner, propounded the lie that fluoridating the water supply was a pinko plot to poison American brains.
Trump’s response to Kennedy’s suggestion? “It sounds OK to me.”
Kennedy has repeatedly suggested that vaccines, which some experts consider the most significant public health achievement of the 20th century — more important than the discovery of antibiotics — should be yanked off the market. Though he has denied it, Kennedy was responsible for helping push antivax theories that contributed to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa. Most of the 83 deaths there were of children.
Despite the millions of lives that have been saved over the decades by vaccines that prevent all manner of once-rampant childhood diseases — polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, chicken pox, whooping cough — Kennedy has suggested that the government is withholding data showing vaccines are unsafe.
“Why do you think vaccines are safe?” Trump transition team co-chair Howard Lutnick asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week. “They’re not proven.”
Lutnick arrived at his unscientific view of vaccines after spending a couple of hours with Kennedy, who undoubtedly spewed a boatload of unscientific, ahistorical garbage at him.
“He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe,’ ” said Lutnick. “‘And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off, off of the market.’”
The data will show that vaccines are safe. However, if vaccine makers are no longer immune from liability suits, they will indeed pull their products off the market, because they will be sued into oblivion. They would have no financial incentive to continue making vaccines.
This is exactly why Congress passed, and President Reagan signed into law, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The law, which limits manufacturers’ liability in such lawsuits, also created the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which provides money to people who claim to have experienced injuries such as allergic reactions. Since its inception, the program has paid out about $5.3 billion for 11,399 cases.
As is the case with any medicine, including aspirin, a vanishingly small number of children are adversely affected by vaccines. But certainly not enough to sacrifice the lives of so many who have been spared from needless illness and suffering. Also, I can’t believe I need to say this: Vaccines do not cause autism.
Lutnick, chairman and chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, is one more arrogant billionaire swept into Trump’s slipstream of conspiracy theories, grievances and mistrust. If he had spent two minutes on Wikipedia, he’d have realized how lucky we are to have vaccines.
In what other ways might a Trump administration and Kennedy health czar endanger the lives of Americans?
In addition to botching the country’s response to COVID-19 in 2020, Trump is responsible for one of the country’s current indefensible health crises: the lack of access to reproductive healthcare, which is killing women in states with abortion bans. He also presides over a party that has launched a war against gender-affirming medical care for trans people. Kennedy has been inconsistent in his support for abortion, and he opposes gender-affirming care for minors.
Last month, at one of his rallies, Trump called on Kennedy to “Make America healthy again.” Slurring slightly, Trump said, “Come on Bobby. Bobby is gonna do it. Bobby. Let’s go Bobby. Ya gonna make us healthy, Bobby?”
The only possible answer is a resounding no.
Threads: @rabcarian