Another one of President-elect Donald Trump‘s Cabinet appointments is under intense scrutiny.
The former president announced on Thursday that he had picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his next Department of Health and Human Services secretary. The former presidential candidate—who first ran for the Democratic nomination before switching to an independent—is a well-known vaccine skeptic, and critics warn that his appointment could have dire consequences for public health.
“In Donald Trump’s America, an unscrupulous, unserious, and unqualified anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist will control millions of families’ healthcare choices,” Democratic Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, of New York, posted to X following Kennedy’s nomination. “These decisions will cost lives.”
“RFK Jr. poses a danger to public health, scientific research, medicine, and health care coverage for millions,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, added in a post to X Thursday. “He wants to stop parents from protecting their babies from measles and his ideas would welcome the return of polio. I have a lot of questions for his Senate hearing.”
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Kennedy has insisted that he is not anti-vax, although he has repeatedly pushed debunked claims about vaccines, including that childhood vaccines lead to autism. When asked in July 2023 by podcaster Lex Fridman whether there were any safe and effective vaccines on the market, Kennedy said, “No.”
Trump, meanwhile, has also given mixed messages about vaccines and disease outbreaks. During the height of the COVID pandemic, the former president’s administration led Operation Warp Speed, which led to the creation and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines at a record speed.
At the same time, Trump downplayed the COVID-19 virus and repeatedly mocked people who wore masks to prevent the virus’ spread. He’s also pushed misinformation about the distribution of the COVID vaccine—During a rally in January 2022 in Arizona, the former president falsely claimed that white people were not being offered the vaccine.
“The left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, discriminating against and denigrating…white people to determine who lives and who dies,” Trump said in part, per a report from the Associated Press. “If you’re white you don’t get the vaccine or if you’re white you don’t get therapeutics…In New York state, if you’re white, you have to go to the back of the line to get medical health.”
During the rise of the swine flu outbreak in 2009, Trump, who at the time was the host of the hit reality show The Apprentice, said during an appearance on Fox News that he thought “vaccines can be very dangerous.”
“And obviously, you know, a lot of people are talking about vaccines for children with respect to autism,” Trump added. “And every report comes out like, you know, that doesn’t happen. But a lot of people feel that the vaccines are what causes autism in children.”
In a post to X (then known as Twitter) in August 2012, Trump wrote, “Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism….”
During a presidential debate for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, Trump continued to push false claims that childhood vaccines are linked to autism.
“Autism has become an epidemic,” Trump said.
“I am totally in favor of vaccines,” he added in his answer. “But I want smaller doses over a longer period of time. Because, you take a baby in, and I’ve seen it … You take this little, beautiful baby, and you pump, I mean it looks like it’s meant for a horse, not for a child.”
“I’m in favor of vaccines. Do them over a longer period of time, same amount, but just in little sections. And I think you’re going to have, I think you’re going to see a big impact on autism.”
By 2019, however, Trump was encouraging Americans to get their vaccinations after measles outbreaks popped up in pockets across the country while he was in office.
“They have to get the shot,” Trump told reporters in April 2019 from the White House driveway. “The vaccinations are so important. This is really going around now. They have to get their shot.”
Newsweek reached out to Trump’s transition team via email for comment on Thursday.
Trump said in his statement announcing Kenndy’s appointment that he was “thrilled” to have Kennedy join his Cabinet.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump said, adding that Kennedy will “restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”