After all of the votes are counted, irrespective of who wins, the empowering of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by Donald Trump shall be one of many sorriest legacies of the 2024 election cycle.
I had hoped that Trump was merely humoring Kennedy to get the votes of his supporters. As a third-party candidate, Kennedy might not have had a really huge slice of the pie, however in a squeaky tight race, each crumb counts.
But after Kennedy dropped out and endorsed Trump, the previous president has mentioned that Kennedy would have an important role in his potential new administration.
“I’m gonna let him go wild on well being,” Trump informed the gang at his current Madison Sq. Backyard hatefest. “I’m gonna let him go wild on the meals. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines.”
The Washington Publish reported that Kennedy may very well be given “important management over well being and meals security … with discussions about some Cupboard and company officers reporting to him.”
What a joke. Kennedy is an antivax conspiracy theorist who promotes far-fetched well being claims. He once wrote that “COVID pictures are a criminal offense towards humanity.”
My good friend and fellow journalist Roy Rivenburg says that placing Kennedy accountable for American public well being could be like placing Fox Information accountable for a journalism college, Exxon accountable for the Sierra Membership or PETA accountable for McDonald’s.
Along with selling loony medical theories, Kennedy rails towards the poor consuming habits of People and the hyperlinks between food plan and persistent illness. I can’t disagree with him there. However I do keep in mind a sure first woman who was savaged by Republicans for planting a White Home vegetable backyard and urging youngsters to eat wholesome and transfer extra.
Kennedy’s put up final weekend on X is extra in line with his crackpot concepts. He said that fluoride, which strengthens teeth and reduces cavities, ought to be faraway from public water provides. After I was a toddler, the right-wing extremist John Birch Society, which noticed Communist threats round each nook, propounded the lie that fluoridating the water provide was a pinko plot to poison American brains.
Trump’s response to Kennedy’s suggestion? “It sounds OK to me.”
Kennedy has repeatedly prompt that vaccines, which some specialists contemplate probably the most important public well being achievement of the twentieth century — extra essential than the invention of antibiotics — ought to be yanked off the market. Although he has denied it, Kennedy was accountable for helping push antivax theories that contributed to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa. Many of the 83 deaths there have been of youngsters.
Regardless of the thousands and thousands of lives which were saved over the a long time by vaccines that stop all method of once-rampant childhood ailments — polio, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, hen pox, whooping cough — Kennedy has prompt that the federal government is withholding knowledge displaying vaccines are unsafe.
“Why do you assume vaccines are protected?” Trump transition group co-chair Howard Lutnick asked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins final week. “They’re not proven.”
Lutnick arrived at his unscientific view of vaccines after spending a few hours with Kennedy, who undoubtedly spewed a boatload of unscientific, ahistorical rubbish at him.
“He says, ‘In the event you give me the information, all I need is the information, and I’ll tackle the information and present that it’s not protected,’ ” mentioned Lutnick. “‘After which when you pull the product legal responsibility, the businesses will yank these vaccines proper off, off of the market.’”
The information will present that vaccines are safe. Nonetheless, if vaccine makers are not immune from legal responsibility fits, they’ll certainly pull their merchandise off the market, as a result of they are going to be sued into oblivion. They might don’t have any monetary incentive to proceed making vaccines.
That is precisely why Congress handed, and President Reagan signed into law, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. The legislation, which limits producers’ legal responsibility in such lawsuits, additionally created the Nationwide Vaccine Damage Compensation Program, which supplies cash to individuals who declare to have skilled accidents comparable to allergic reactions. Since its inception, the program has paid out about $5.3 billion for 11,399 instances.
As is the case with any medication, including aspirin, a vanishingly small variety of youngsters are adversely affected by vaccines. However definitely not sufficient to sacrifice the lives of so many who’ve been spared from useless sickness and struggling. Additionally, I can’t consider I must say this: Vaccines don’t trigger autism.
Lutnick, chairman and chief govt of Cantor Fitzgerald, is one more arrogant billionaire swept into Trump’s slipstream of conspiracy theories, grievances and distrust. If he had spent two minutes on Wikipedia, he’d have realized how fortunate we’re to have vaccines.
In what different methods would possibly a Trump administration and Kennedy well being czar endanger the lives of People?
Along with botching the country’s response to COVID-19 in 2020, Trump is accountable for one of many nation’s present indefensible well being crises: the dearth of entry to reproductive healthcare, which is killing ladies in states with abortion bans. He additionally presides over a celebration that has launched a conflict towards gender-affirming medical look after trans individuals. Kennedy has been inconsistent in his assist for abortion, and he opposes gender-affirming care for minors.
Final month, at considered one of his rallies, Trump referred to as on Kennedy to “Make America wholesome once more.” Slurring slightly, Trump mentioned, “Come on Bobby. Bobby is gonna do it. Bobby. Let’s go Bobby. Ya gonna make us wholesome, Bobby?”
The one attainable reply is a convincing no.
Threads: @rabcarian
