Former President Donald Trump is promising that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will “work on” women’s health issues if Vice President Kamala Harris is defeated in next week’s presidential election.
Kennedy, who suspended his independent presidential campaign and endorsed Trump in August, has a long history of promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and misinformation concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regardless of Kennedy’s lack of medical training or expertise, it is widely believed that he would take a prominent position regarding health or medicine in a potential second Trump administration.
Trump hinted during a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Thursday that he would allow Kennedy to play a key role in women’s health care if the former president wins a second term in the White House.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. we have,” Trump said. “And he’s gonna work on health, and women’s health. And all of the different reasons. Because we’re not really a wealthy or a healthy country. We’re not.”
“I told Bobby, ‘Bobby, I want you to take care of health, I want you to look at the food and the food supply and all sorts,'” he added.
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump campaign via email on Thursday night.
The Harris campaign quickly pounced on the remarks, sharing a video clip alongside a caption saying that Trump had announced he would put Kennedy “in charge of” women’s health in a post to X, formerly Twitter. The vice president re-shared the post and commented “no [heart emoji]” in response.
The Harris campaign also shared to X a video clip of Kennedy saying that he would be willing to sign into law a national ban on all abortions after three months.
Trump’s remarks regarding Kennedy came one day after he faced furious backlash for vowing to “protect” women “whether the women like it or not” during a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Harris slammed Trump for the remarks during a rally in Phoenix on Thursday, saying that the former president “simply does not respect the freedom of women or the intelligence of women to know what’s in their own best interests and make decisions accordingly.”
The Harris campaign tied Trump’s “like it or not” comment to abortion rights. Federal abortion rights were eliminated by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, including three of Trump’s appointees, overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Trump, who has walked back his anti-abortion stance amid this year’s election and says that he supports several exceptions, has also boasted that he was “able to kill Roe v. Wade” and falsely claimed that “every legal scholar” wanted federal abortion rights eliminated by the Supreme Court.
While Trump’s promise to “protect” women on Wednesday was specifically focused on protection from “criminal migrants” rather than abortion rights, the former president has previously tied his “protector” rhetoric to the issue.
In an all-caps post to Truth Social on September 20, Trump predicted that women would “NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION” due to his ability to “PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE.”
Update 10/31/24, 11:16 p.m.: This article has been updated with further context and new information.