Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Thursday said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., former president Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is right about the food industry’s role in creating America’s unhealthy society.
“I think what he’s saying about the food industry is exactly correct,” Sanders told CBS News. “I think you have a food industry concerned about their profits, could care less about the health of the American people. I think they have to be taken on.”
In several interviews this week, Sanders, a co-chair of the Senate health committee, has found common ground with Kennedy over their shared criticism of processed food and corporate greed in the food industry.
“When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he’s right,” Sanders told Business Insider in an interview published Thursday. “The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary.”
“We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That’s what we want,” he said. “And if the industry is giving our kids food that’s making them overweight, leading to diabetes and other illnesses, clearly that’s an issue that we’ve got to deal with.”
Still, Sanders said some of Kennedy’s other stances — including his outspoken position against vaccines and his desire to remove fluoride from public water — are “kind of crazy” and “extremely dangerous.”
But overall, Sanders acknowledged “some of what he’s saying is not crazy.”
Kennedy is likely to face an uphill battle in trying to get confirmed for HHS secretary in the Senate. He has criticized federal health regulators as “sock puppets” who are held captive by industry special interests and has vowed to shut down departments within the Food and Drug Administration that he claims are plagued by corruption.
But despite his false claims about the safety and efficacy of vaccines, Kennedy said during an interview with NBC News last month that he has no plans to take the jabs away from Americans who want them.
“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away. People ought to have [a] choice, and that choice ought to be informed by the best information,” he said.
“So I’m going to make sure scientific safety studies and efficacy are out there, and people can make individual assessments about whether that product is going to be good for them,” Kennedy added.
Sanders, meanwhile, also offered rare praise for billionaire Elon Musk, calling him a “smart guy,” despite having previously criticized him as a threat to democracy.
“If somebody on the other side has a good idea, sure, I’ll work with them,” Sanders told Business Insider.
Sanders was particularly receptive to Musk’s call for an independent audit of the Defense Department.
Trump tapped Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to co-lead the largely-ceremonial, newly-minted “Department of Government Efficiency.”