RFK Jr., Whose Misinformation Helped Cause a Measles Outbreak That Killed 83 People, Says Trump Has Promised Him “Control” of “Public Health Agencies”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters at an event on Monday that Donald Trump has pledged to give him “control” of multiple federal health agencies in a second term, a move that would be not unlike putting a mass murderer in charge of the Justice Department.

Speaking via livestream, the former third-party candidate said, “The key that I think—you know, that President Trump has promised me—is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its subagencies—CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others—and then also the USDA, which is—which, you know, is key to making America healthy. Because we’ve got to get off of seed oils, and we’ve got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture.”

HHS is the Department of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of protecting the health of all Americans. Among other things, it includes the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid; oversees the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; and works to prevent disease outbreaks and ensure food and drug safety. So the idea of letting Kennedy “control” such a department is actually insane, and if you’re wondering why, a quick reminder that Kennedy:

Is a huge anti-vaxxerPenned an article titled “Deadly Immunity,” published in Rolling Stone and Salon in 2005, in which he alleged that the government had covered up a link between vaccines and autism. (Both outlets later retracted the piece, and the Salon editor who worked on it said that after it went up, “we were besieged by scientists and advocates showing how Kennedy had misunderstood, incorrectly cited, and perhaps even falsified data…. It was the worst mistake of my career. I probably should have been fired.”)Wrote a foreword for a book that claimed COVID-19 vaccines caused sudden deaths among healthy young people; the book featured on its cover a 12-year-old who’d never received the COVID-19 vaccine and had died as a result of a malformed blood vessel in his brainHas been accused of stoking fears about vaccines in the run-up to a measles outbreak in Samoa that killed 83 peopleOnce implied that Anne Frank, she of Holocaust fame, had it easy compared to what anti-vaxxers go throughHas more than once suggested that chemicals in the environment can make children gay and transDeclared, “I am not a church boy,” following a sexual assault allegationAdmitted to staging an elaborate bear-murder scene in Central Park because he didn’t have time to eat said bear’s fleshSawed a dead whale’s head off, according to one of his daughters, and strapped it to the roof of the family’s car, causing his children to have to wear plastic bags on their heads to avoid the “whale juice” that was “pour[ing] into the windows”Said in a 2012 divorce deposition that a worm “got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”During a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, Trump told the crowd that he would let Kennedy “go wild on the food” and “go wild on the medicines” if given a second term in November.

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