President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Thursday that he had chosen anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services was met with alarm from doctors and public health advocates.
“Concerned,” said Dr. Mandy Cohen, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “I don’t want to go backwards and see children or adults suffer or lose their lives to remind us that vaccines work.”
“Speechless,” said Dr. Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC, adding that Kennedy “would imperil the health of people across the country.”
“Shocked,” said Dr. Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine. “It’s like Typhoid Mary being in charge of food safety.”
But another group was celebrating Trump’s pick: the anti-vaccine movement Kennedy leads.
On Friday, Mary Holland, CEO of the Kennedy-founded anti-vaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense, shared her elation on the group’s online TV morning show. She and Polly Tommey, director of CHD.TV and a longtime anti-vaccine activist, reflected on Kennedy’s power within their campaign.
“Bobby Kennedy was the first prominent citizen, the first prominent American, to really take up our banner and to join us,” Holland said of Trump’s pick.
“To parents around the world with vaccine-injured children that either were killed or are very injured, I want to thank you for all your bravery. This day is for you. This news is for you,” Tommey said.
Kennedy did not return a request for comment.
As a presidential candidate, Kennedy tried to distance himself from the anti-vaccine movement he helped build, while remaining a mainstay in the community, appearing on podcasts and at events supporting the cause. Now the movement’s most vocal activists, many of whom worked for Kennedy’s campaign and his nonprofit, are reveling in the legitimacy a Trump endorsement brings and hoping Kennedy has a chance at confirmation.
Holland urged viewers to “educate” the public and Congress that Kennedy’s anti-vaccine claims were accurate, aiming to boost his support among senators who would vote on his confirmation. Republicans will control the Senate by a slim margin, and he has drawn a mixed reaction so far.
Holland pleaded for those “that care about the truth that vaccines do cause autism, vaccines do cause chronic disease and harms, they do cause death, we need to align with Bobby Kennedy.” She added, “We will have a big job as citizens, reaching out to our senators to really insist that this go through.”
Vaccines are safe and an essential piece of public health; repeated studies have disproved the claim that they cause autism or chronic disease.
Holland finished the show with a comment on the symbiotic relationship between Kennedy and the anti-vaccine effort.
“He wouldn’t be able to do this, but for the grassroots support that he’s had from all of us for the last 20 years,” Holland said. “He is really a reflection of us. He is aligned with us, and he has taken on our battle.”
Kennedy’s activism started in the early aughts, when women began appearing at his environmental talks, ultimately convincing him of their cause: that their children were being harmed by vaccines. He quickly became the face of the movement, protesting, often controversially, against childhood vaccine mandates.
Kennedy now has a chance to bring that advocacy into the top public health office in the country.
“WE DID IT!!!!” posted Del Bigtree, leader of the country’s second-best-funded anti-vaccine organization, Informed Consent Action Network. Bigtree, who served as the Kennedy campaign’s communications director, now leads a super PAC (MAHA Alliance) and a nonprofit organization (MAHA Action), both named for Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again slogan.
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a self-described “doctor who speaks out about vaccines,” known for her false claims that Covid vaccines made people magnetic, also praised Trump. “Finally, America’s children are going to have a fighting chance to be healthy,” she posted to X.
“Totally game-changing,” said Steve Kirsch, a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur who during the pandemic became a major funder of anti-vaccine propaganda and events. On the podcast from his anti-vaccine organization, the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, Kirsch called the possible HHS job “better than if RFK had won for president,” as it would allow Kennedy to focus only on health.
“This is like a dream come true,” he said.
In numerous interviews, Kennedy has laid out what he would do as head of a department with a more than $1.5 trillion budget, a position former HHS Secretary Alex Azar once described as having “a shocking amount of power by the stroke of a pen.”
Kennedy sees the role as an opportunity to disrupt a government conspiracy, one he believes without evidence has been engineered by officials, doctors, scientists, and drug and food companies to keep America sick.
Kennedy has said he would overhaul agencies like the CDC, National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration and replace “corrupt” officials with “honest public servants.” He has said he would investigate and “in a couple of months” would find the cause of autism in children, which he has repeatedly and falsely linked to childhood vaccines.
Kennedy has said he would gut some agencies and refocus others, including the NIH. “We’re going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years,” he said at an anti-vaccine conference last year.
Those in the anti-vaccine movement weren’t the only ones celebrating Trump’s pick. Those on the far right who had taken up the anti-vaccine mantle during the pandemic seemed equally pleased.
“I actually just got dizzy, this is so good,” conspiracy theorist host Alex Jones said on his show to political operative and Trump ally Roger Stone, reacting to the appointment. Stone replied, “I am over the moon about the appointment.”
Others relished how Kennedy might bring a dreamed-about reckoning in public health agencies and retribution against former public health officials.
“Can I say now, Fauci, we put his head on a pike?” Steve Bannon said on his show Thursday. “No, no, no, no,” he continued, “Dr. Fauci, I didn’t mean it. I know you’re all worried about your security.”
During the pandemic, Kennedy was one of the loudest voices villainizing Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and he has said Fauci should be prosecuted if he committed crimes. Fauci, who has described being the target of death threats and harassment, has called Kennedy a “very disturbed individual.”
Author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf, who joined Bannon’s Thursday show, focused on the myriad crimes she imagined had been committed by Fauci and drug companies, offering to advise the future HHS secretary while acknowledging hurdles to Kennedy’s appointment, including confirmation.
“Don’t celebrate till you’re over the finish line,” she said.
