Trump picks vaccine skeptic RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary

President-elect Donald Trump said Thursday that he will nominate vaccine skeptic and conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Health and Human Services Department.

If the Senate approves Kennedy, the former independent presidential candidate will lead a sprawling department responsible for the huge Medicare and Medicaid health coverage programs, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Kennedy, 70, is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, the late U.S. attorney general and Democratic senator from New York who was assassinated in 1968 by a gunman in Los Angeles as he ran for president. He is the nephew of former President John Kennedy who was assassinated in 1963.

Kennedy told NBC News in a recent interview that Trump has said he wants Kennedy to "clean up corruption" at federal health agencies, return those agencies to science-based policies and "make America healthy again." Kennedy said that "there are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA, that have to go."

Kennedy last year suggested that the Covid-19 virus, which CDC played a major role in combatting, was engineered to "attack Caucasians and Black people," and to be less likely to harm "Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese" people.

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