Trump picks RFK Jr to lead Health and Human Services as they vow to make America healthy: report
Donald Trump will nominate vaccine skeptic and conspiracy-spreader Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead America’s largest public health body, the Department of Health and Human Services, according to reports.
Politico first reported the nomination on Thursday shortly followed by CNN; it was not something that came as a surprise, as Trump’s own press secretary Karoline Leavitt had referred to RFK Jr as qualified and mentioned him as someone who would likely be nominated to join the incoming administration in a Fox News interview the same day.
Of course, the head of Donald Trump’s White House transition team — the man supposedly leading the staff search for the incoming president — had assured CNN as recently as October 30 that RFK Jr would specifically not be nominated to lead HHS. But Thursday’s news would be in line with reporting from The Independent and other outlets pointing to one reality: the breakneck pace at which these decisions are being made by Trump himself, in some cases while his top staff are not part of the conversation.
It also had somewhat of a muted reaction on Capitol Hill, though that was only likely due to the stream of controversial Cabinet nominees which Trump has named in the past several days. Wednesday came with the news that onetime sex-trafficking probe target Matt Gaetz would be chosen to lead the department that once investigated him, a move that shocked even Trump’s own loyal Republican allies in Congress.
The onetime presidential candidate is likely to face unified resistance from Democrats in the Senate and may well pick up more than a handful of GOP defections as well. Kennedy’s stances on vaccines, including the Covid jabs produced by various pharmaceutical companies under the first Trump administration, have terrified public health experts who worry that as secretary Kennedy could endanger funding for development and distribution of vaccines that save the lives of millions of people and have contributed to the eradication of deadly diseases in the US.
How many defections Kennedy will pick up is the real question; Republicans are due to head into January with a majority of several votes, meaning that Kennedy would need to lose more than just the GOP’s erstwhile centrists, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Other Republicans have signalled that they are open to Kennedy’s nomination, in some cases complaining that Democratic nominees supposedly were not held to the same standards in the press.
“I don’t have any preconceived notions about it. I think we just ought to be open to doing our job,” John Cornyn, who narrowly lost the battle for majority leader on Wednesday, told Politico.
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