RFK Jr. May Not Be Able to Join Trump’s Cabinet for Funniest Reason
Donald Trump’s team may already be having doubts about one of the most recent additions to its ranks: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Ahead of Trump’s victory in the presidential race Tuesday, Kennedy was already talking about his plans as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, including removing fluoride from the U.S. supply of drinking water. Trump has signaled that he would be open to the idea, even though experts say that fluoridation prevents people from getting life-threatening infections.
After Trump won, Kennedy did an ominous interview on MSNBC, where he was pressed about his personal skepticism about vaccines and how that might factor into his future role overseeing the Food and Drug Administration. Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick had previously claimed that Kennedy had plans to strip even long-standing vaccines from the market.
When backed into a corner, Kennedy claimed that he was “not going to take away anybody’s vaccines,” but, apparently, some in the Trump camp weren’t thrilled by the optics of the conversation.
“That is not what we want people focused on today,” a source close to Trump told CNN.
Inside Trump’s camp, it seems concerns reach much further than bad press. There have been discussions that Kennedy would not pass a background check to obtain security clearance for his Cabinet-level position.
“If you dump a bear in Central Park and think you’re above the law, you don’t want to have to go through that gauntlet of political correctness,” one former Trump official who’d been briefed on those discussions told CNN.
In August, it was revealed that Kennedy had found a baby bear carcass in upstate New York and then dumped the carcass in Central Park because he ran out of time to dispose of it before going to the airport and thought staging it was funny. Kennedy has also gotten into trouble for chain-sawing the head off a beached whale.