With Donald Trump set to take office in less than 3 months, it is still unclear what role Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will play in his administration, although statements from both men indicate Trump would give him a sweeping mandate across a range of issues. At his rally in Madison Square Garden a week before the election, Donald Trump told the crowd of supporters that he intended to let Kennedy “go wild” on “health,” “the food,” and “the medicines.” (Trump then qualified that he would not “let him even get near is the liquid gold that we have under our feet.”)
The statement was as vague as it was broad, and on his end, RFK Jr. also shared claims of extensive authorities in a Trump administration. According to a virtual meeting with supporters prior to the election first uncovered by Politico, RFK Jr. stated that “the key that President Trump has promised me is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others … and then also the USDA.” The post of HHS secretary is a cabinet-level position which would require overcoming the challenging hurdle of a Senate confirmation, and that role would not give him power over the USDA as well.
Senate confirmation might not be straightforward for the former environmental lawyer, as his lack of credentials in the fields related to these agencies could mean stiff resistance from Democrats. That said, Trump already circumvented this process to a certain extent in his first term when he appointed “acting officials” after his chosen candidates did not get congressional approval. Others have raised concerns that RFK Jr. would not pass a background check required to receive security clearance for a Cabinet-level position. The incoming president does still have wiggle-room to circumvent this as well, as Kennedy could be brought on in an advisory role and influence the president’s perspective on consequential policy questions, even if he is not the head of any particular agency.
In either case, Kennedy is poorly suited for these tasks even if he makes it past these hurdles. He promises to “clean up” health agencies he has deemed corrupt and push them back to “evidence-based science,” but he totally lacks the expertise to ensure these, having no academic or professional background in any kind of scientific discipline. His forays thus far into discussions on health and science have been at odds with the consensus of experts, and the weight of his advocacy on those issues has even provoked negative outcomes in the real world. A notable longtime vaccine skeptic, Kennedy was part of a push against vaccines in American Samoa, which contributed to a measles outbreak on the Pacific Island that left over 80 people dead. Just recently, he also came out against the fluoridation of drinking water, which health experts broadly agree has been one of the greatest long-running public health initiatives in the country’s history, protecting Americans (and children in particular) against tooth decay.
