United States President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he will nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former presidential candidate known for his conspiracy theories about vaccines, as the new Secretary of Health.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the food industry and pharmaceutical companies who have engaged in deception and misinformation when it comes to public health,” Trump said, via his social network Truth Social.
The Republican tycoon promised that the Department of Health will play an important role in ensuring that the population is protected “from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming health crisis” in the country.
According to Trump, Kennedy Jr. will ensure that these agencies return to fulfilling the mandates of science “to end the epidemic of chronic disease and make America great and healthy again.”
At a rally in New York at the end of the election campaign, Trump had already said that if he defeated the vice president and Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, in the November 5 presidential election, he would allow Kennedy Jr. take over the health department.
The son of former US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, both assassinated in the 1960s, is, in Trump’s opinion, “a fantastic guy” with good knowledge about pesticides and environment.
Before supporting Trump, Kennedy Jr. had begun his unsuccessful candidacy for president on the Democratic side.
In April of last year he presented himself as an alternative to President Joe Biden and announced his aspirations to be that party’s candidate, but in October he announced that he was going to leave that party, to run as an independent, something he ended up suspending as well.
Much of the Kennedy clan turned its back on him because of the conspiracy theories he began spreading during the Covid-19 pandemic about vaccines, such as that this virus was aimed at attacking Caucasians and black people and that the people most immune are the Chinese. and Ashkenazi Jews.
Kennedy Jr. also linked mass shootings in schools with antidepressants such as Prozac, denounced that Democrats receive much more money from pharmaceutical companies than Republicans and is convinced that vaccines cause autism.
Trump had assured him that he would have a position related to Health in his future executive: “Promise fulfilled”, he stressed today on the social network
Kennedy Jr.’s nomination joins the controversial list with which Trump is preparing his second term, which includes as attorney general the congressman known for polarizing political positions Matt Gaetz, accused of sex trafficking of minors, the owner of X, Elon Musk, as responsible for government efficiency , or Fox News host Pete Hegseth as head of the Pentagon (Department of Defense).
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
