Kennedy vows to be an “honest public servant” as head of HHS
President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his next secretary at the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) despite his anti-vaccine stance and having fueled misinformation related to the origin of AIDS.
The next White House occupant has lamented that “for too long Americans have been crushed by the food industrial complex and pharmaceutical companies,” which he has accused of participating in “the deception, disinformation and misinformation” of society.
Trump has thus asserted that, with Kennedy Jr. at the helm, the HHS will serve to “help ensure that everyone is protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis” in the United States.
“Mr. Kennedy will restore these agencies to the traditions of benchmark scientific research and beacons of transparency, to end the epidemic of chronic diseases and make America great and healthy again,” Trump has reiterated on his social networks.
HE PROMISES TO BE AN “HONEST” SERVANT
For his part, Kennedy has promised to be an “honest public servant” in the event that he is confirmed as head of the HHS: “Together we will end corruption, the revolving door between industry and government, and we will return to our health agencies their rich tradition of evidence-based and benchmark science.”
“I will give Americans transparency and access to all the data so they can make informed decisions for themselves and their families. My commitment to the American people is to be an honest public servant. Here we go,” he said through his profile on the social network X.
He also thanked Trump for his “leadership and courage” and said he was “committed to promoting” the former president’s vision “of making America healthy again,” making a comparison with the MAGA slogan (Make America great again).
“I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 HHS employees to free agencies from the suffocating cloud of corporate control so they can continue their mission of making Americans the healthiest people on Earth again,” he said.
Kennedy Jr., son of US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, was a member of the Democratic Party until 2023, when he left the party and began his career as an independent politician, even running for the White House.
However, he ended up withdrawing his candidacy and calling for a vote for Trump, thus radically changing his political positions that have led a large part of his family to distance themselves from him, also because of his defense of all kinds of false conjectures about vaccines, even linking them to Nazi Germany.
Kennedy Jr. went so far as to call vaccines “a crime against humanity” and said he would work with Trump to eliminate fluoride from US water systems, which would be a setback for 80 years of consensus on public health, according to Bloomberg.
These positions are likely to expose him to an exhaustive investiture session in the Senate, where it is foreseeable that the Democrats will put his convictions to the test. If he takes over the Department, he would have control over the country’s public health, medicines, food and nutrition.
HHS was on the front line of the response to the coronavirus pandemic, the first impacts of which came with Trump still in the White House. In fact, the tycoon’s management was harshly criticized, even being accused of downplaying the health emergency.
TODD BLANCHE, NOMINATED FOR DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL
On the other hand, Trump has made public other new appointments this Thursday, among which he has highlighted that of his lawyer Todd Blanche, who represented him in several criminal cases, for the position of deputy attorney general, who is tasked with managing the daily functions of the department while advising the attorney general on the priorities of the office.
Blanche, who spent several years as a federal prosecutor before entering private practice a decade ago, defended Trump in the case over the falsification of documents to conceal the payment of $130,000 to former porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged extramarital affair, for which he was convicted earlier this year.
He also worked on the defense of the now president-elect in the case over the classified documents, which was dismissed this summer, and was involved in the federal case over the Republican’s role in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
