President-Elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he will appoint environmental lawyer and vaccine safety activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS).
“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 in a statement posted on Truth Social.
“The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country,” he added.
The appointment is sure to put many U.S. public health officials on edge as Kennedy has vowed he would root out the “corporate capture” and corruption within the health agencies.
Kennedy entered the 2024 presidential race in April 2023 initially as a Democrat and later switching to Independent to “reverse the chronic disease epidemic, end the war machine, clean corporate influence out of government and toxic pollution out of the environment, protect freedom of speech, and end politicization of enforcement agencies.”
RFK r. announced in March of 2024 that he had chosen Nicole Shanahan, a wealthy attorney and tech entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay Area, to be his vice president.
During the announcement event in Oakland, California, Kennedy described Shanahan, 38, as a kindred spirit who, like him, has become disaffected with a Democrat party that no longer looks out for the middle class or defends the right to free speech.
Amid dwindling poll numbers, Kennedy announced on August 23, 2024 that he was suspending his campaign and throwing his support behind Trump.
“I promised the American people that I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler—someone who would alter the outcome of the election, but had no chance of winning,” he explained at the time. “In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systematic censorship and media control so I cannot in good conscience ask my staff and volunteers to keep working their long hours and ask my donors to keep giving when I cannot honestly tell them that I have a real path to the White House.”
He said he met with Trump the day after the assassination attempt and later at Mar-a-lago with his family and was “surprised” to learn that they are aligned on many key issues.
“At those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party,” Kennedy revealed, adding that they would continue to disagree in public on other issues if they came up, “while working together on existential issues upon which we are in concordance.”
In particular, Trump heartily agrees with Kennedy’s Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda.
“Mr. 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!” Trump said in his statement.