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Can RFK Jr. make America healthy again?
00:26:49
Today on “Post Reports,” we unpack President-elect Donald Trump’s seemingly contradictory picks for the top positions in public health – in particular, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
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- [00:03]
Martine Powers
Over the last couple of days, we've heard more about the team that President elect Donald Trump has chosen to lead public health.
- [00:10]
Lauren Weber
He's been rolling out a bunch of folks that he says will help him in his agenda to make America healthy again. That's the big slogan that they're using. One that a lot of listeners probably have heard of is Mehmet Oz. He would be in charge of Dr. Oz, Dr. Oz. He would be in charge of CMS, which runs Medicaid and Medicare services. And and then you also have the announcement of a flurry of picks that happened on Friday night. You have Dave Walden, who was chose to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He's a former GOP congressman who's pushed debunked claims about vaccines and their safety. You also have Marty Macri, he's a Johns Hopkins surgeon and writer who will lead the FDA or Food and Drug Administration. He's been one of the agency's most prominent critics and has also argued that the response to the COVID pandemic was too heavy handed. And then there's also Jeanette Neshawat for Surgeon General and she's a physician who's best known as a Fox News commentator.
- [01:04]
Martine Powers
And then last but not least, you.
- [01:05]
Lauren Weber
Have their boss, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Who would be, if confirmed by the Senate, would be Trump's pick for head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
- [01:15]
Martine Powers
Lauren Weber is an accountability reporter at the Post covering medical misinformation and she has reported on the many conspiracy theories that RFK Jr believes.
- [01:26]
Lauren Weber
RFK has suggested that AIDS may not be caused by HIV. That is false. He's argued that children's gender identity can be impacted by water. Also not true. He has said that COVID 19 was, quote, ethnically targeted and quote, to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. There is no evidence of that.
- [01:45]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
COVID 19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and black people.
- [01:54]
Lauren Weber
And he also has argued that 5G high speed wireless networks are used to, quote, control our behavior. And of course, his biggest arguments of all are against vaccines.
- [02:04]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.
- [02:08]
Martine Powers
Those anti vax beliefs have a lot of people really concerned. But what Lauren finds so interesting about RFK Jr is that he's also saying a lot of things that are true about nutrition in the US and how it affects public health.
- [02:24]
Lauren Weber
I mean, look, RFK has tapped into some real populist anger around America's food supply system. He talks a lot, very vividly around what our children are eating, what you know what ultra processed foods are doing to everyone's health, how chronic illness is racking the U.S. government, the U.S. budget. And let's be clear. I mean, the last time, Martine, you and I talked on this podcast was about ultra processed foods and how the U.S. government was, you know, some experts were arguing was not doing enough to potentially warn the public about them. RFK is able to say, look, I'm trying to make America healthy again, and point to specific things that parents and people have a lot of strong feelings about.
- [03:07]
Martine Powers
From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Martine powers. It's Monday, November 25th. Today we dig into what RFK Jr believes. If he's confirmed as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, he could reshape American public health. But that's a big if. His confirmation is not a sure thing at all. And we'll get into why. So, Lauren, can you tell me a little bit more about this department, Health and Human Services, that RFK has been tapped to run? Like, what does HHS actually do? How does it work?
- [03:50]
Lauren Weber
I think the American public has no idea how much money HHS spends and how large of a department it is. I mean, it's nearly $2 trillion that we're talking about. It's one of the biggest departments that the US Government has, and that's because it regulates medicine, food, our insurance, and is in charge of infectious disease outbreaks. I mean, it is a massive undertaking. You know, HHS sets regulations for hospitals, physicians, other healthcare providers. It touches so many parts of our lives and is a huge part of the federal budget.
- [04:24]
Martine Powers
And so what do we know about how Kennedy would want to run Health and Human Services?
- [04:32]
Lauren Weber
Well, he has said very clearly that he wants to clean the agency up. He has a lot of issues with how the COVID response was run. He has a very noted history of anti vaccine activism. So there are some questions on if he wants to deal with some sort of movement on vaccines as well. But in general, he has said he wants to focus on combating the chronic disease problem that the US Faces. And the US does face a very large chronic disease life expectancy problem.
- [05:00]
Martine Powers
I want to get more into that in a second, but I want to stick with the vaccines for a minute because I think that is what is frankly scary to a lot of people, this idea that someone who has espoused anti vaccine beliefs would be in a position of power where he could influence the way the public health community in the US Is thinking about and working on Vaccines. Can you tell me a little bit more about how he became an anti vaxxer and like what he's done that has been arguably so harmful when it comes to vaccines?
- [05:35]
Lauren Weber
I mean, you gotta start from the fact that he is the founder of an anti vaccine group that has also profited off of misinformation during the COVID pandemic. You know, for years he has falsely linked vaccines to autism repeatedly.
- [05:48]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.
- [05:52]
Lauren Weber
He's also compared vaccination to the Holocaust.
- [05:56]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Unwanted medical interventions on us. We, you know, the Nazis did that in the camps in World War II.
- [06:04]
Lauren Weber
He's had a history of making repeated statements that are false, that are not supported by medical evidence, that are not supported by any sort of science, and then saying, look, I'm just asking questions, I want more science to this. But when confronted with the science does not appear to change his opinion.
- [06:20]
Martine Powers
I know there was reporting specifically on a measles outbreak in Samoa where RFK Jr had become someone involved in sending an anti vaccine message there. Can you talk a little bit about that episode?
- [06:36]
Lauren Weber
Yeah, there was a horrific measles outbreak in Samoa back in 2019. And essentially what had happened is that two nurses had a medical error where they improperly mixed the vaccine with a wrong liquid and it resulted tragically in the death of two infants. And so the country, you saw a massive drop off on vaccination numbers. And after that, RFK did visit the country, met with anti vaccine activists, shared his anti vaccine message. And shortly after that, there was a massive measles outbreak that saw thousands of people infected and 83 people died, many of them young children. And the Director General of Health for Samoa's health ministry told the Post that Kennedy will, quote, be directly responsible for killing thousands of children around the world by allowing preventable infectious disease to run rampant, end quote. So, you know, you have these health leaders who are horrified, not only in the US but abroad, that someone who has really promoted an anti vaccine message could be in such a position of power in the US and there are.
- [07:39]
Martine Powers
Other similar issues that RFK Jr has been outspoken on that the public health community has concerns about in terms of his denial of science, of scientific evidence, of his ability to kind of fan the flames of conspiracy theories. Can you talk about some of these other issues that have come up?
- [07:56]
Lauren Weber
Yeah, I mean, RFK went down to the Louisiana State House and said in a hearing that the COVID vaccine is the deadliest vaccine ever made. That is false. The COVID vaccine is safe and effective and has been given billions of times, but that kind of gets into some of what he's willing to promote. He's not backed down from that statement. When the Post, when I asked him about his team, about that last year, they did not walk it back. I mean, he has a wide variety of statements on vaccines and their effects that are not true. And in his campaign for president, he consistently would say, look, I'm not anti vaccine. He's told the Post he's not anti vaccine, he's just asking questions. And since he's been announced as being Trump's pick for hhs, he said, I don't wanna take away vaccines. I wanna just make sure that they are safe and have everybody be making informed consent. And I think every medical expert would say, look, we want people to be making informed consent, vaccines to be safe. But this man in general has consistently come back to unscientific, unfounded, debunked claims that falsely disparage some of these vaccines.
- [09:02]
Martine Powers
Okay, so then in this role as the head of hhs, what power would Kennedy have to actually affect vaccines?
- [09:11]
Lauren Weber
So first off, obviously most powerfully, he would have the bully pulpit so he could continue to sow distrust in them, which is a problem as we are seeing rising vaccine hesitancy here in the US but on top of that, he could appoint different people to different commissions and his various agencies that could slow walk vaccine approvals. He could, theoretically, the CDC could decide they no longer want to recommend a slate of childhood vaccinations that would have monster implications for insurance coverage as well as likely would have implications where you could see red and blue states choosing different routes on child vaccination. He could also appoint different folks to acip, which is a committee that evaluates vaccines and vaccine safety. There's a lot of ways that he could potentially fiddle with the process at different points.
- [10:03]
Martine Powers
And that's true too for him, touting treatments like Ivermectin for Covid, which scientists do not believe to be effective. In treating Covid, he's promoted raw milk, unpasteurized milk, even though there's evidence now that unpasteurized milk might be carrying bird flu and that that is a real public health risk. So there are lots of questions along those lines. But what I found interesting, and you pointed this out earlier, is that there's this whole other category of stuff that Kennedy believes that in some ways is like totally in line with the public health community in terms of thinking about processed food and the harms of that and pharmaceutical companies and their influence in health care.
- [10:46]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In our country, natural flavors are aren't chemical products. You can't trust what's on the ingredient label. And the reason for that, again, is government corruption. It's that the agency, the usda, the fda, have been captured by the industries they're supposed to regulate.
- [11:04]
Martine Powers
Talk a little bit about how some of this has gotten a little bit more complex.
- [11:09]
Lauren Weber
I think what's fascinating is I've talked to a bunch of nutrition experts who say, look what Kennedy's saying, that he wants to get ultra processed food out of school lunches. Sign me up. There are a lot of folks that are looking for more dramatic action for America's diet and how that impacts the chronic disease problem. I also have other folks that have said, look, he wants to spend more NIH money on studying obesity and ways to reduce chronic disease. That sounds great. I mean, there are people on the far left that I think agree with a lot of what he has to say about some food and agriculture and chronic disease. But those people are very nervous because they also are curious if it's based on science, because some of these other positions that he's held for much longer and that he's really advocated for are not. You know, Peter Lurie, who's the head of the center for Science and the Public Interest, said to me, look, like he'd love to get food dyes out of food. You know, he would love to regulate ultra processed food. He would love to kind of do some of these things that RFK is saying. But what gives him pause is he's not sure if RFK understands the science underneath those things. And what he said to me is he's like, look, you know, a broken clock is right twice a day. So, you know, the concern that he has is that RFK is tapped into something, but maybe doesn't understand how to go about fixing it because he doesn't have his grasp of the science as a whole.
- [12:28]
Martine Powers
Well, and one thing that I find so interesting about Kennedy's stance on this, about his, you know, being really interested in tackling America's obesity problem and getting rid of processed foods, is that he's also come out very strongly against Ozempic. I don't know, like, in some ways it seems like a real irony that this is like one of his big problems that he wants to tackle, and yet this drug that is basically one of the most promising developments in obesity treatment in decades, and he is, like, adamantly against it.
- [12:58]
Lauren Weber
I think what he's trying to get at is he wants to incentivize the medical system to stop obesity before it happens to where it needs this kind of medication that does cost a lot of money to effectively be on it for quite some time. He's adamantly gets that because he wants to set people up for success in the preventative sense. But yes, I mean, that's a big question that this administration is going to confront. It's going to be something we have to pay attention to.
- [13:22]
Martine Powers
After the break, we'll get into what exactly Kennedy wants to do on Big Food and some of the barriers that he might run into from within the administration. We'll be right back. Well, let's talk a little bit more about, you know, if this is something that Kennedy is passionate about and if he does, in fact, become the head of hhs, like, what could he do about big food? How could he influence the way that our country makes and sells food to people?
- [13:57]
Lauren Weber
Well, I mean, first off, he does have to get confirmed. Key point also, I think we gotta talk about the fascinating dynamic of his political patron in Donald Trump. I mean, Donald Trump, there's a famous now photo of him eating McDonald's with RFK on the plane that everyone's seen and commented on Twitter. But the bottom line, the idea is.
- [14:15]
Martine Powers
That there's like a little bit of irony there that this guy is all about healthy food, but that when it's sitting down with Donald TRUMP that McDonald's is okay.
- [14:22]
Lauren Weber
Well, yeah. I mean, Donald Trump is a president who has served McDonald's in the White House. I mean, he's a man who's notoriously loves fast food and has repeatedly talked about it. I mean, Kennedy has called Trump's food habits poison.
- [14:34]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The stuff that he eats is really like campaign food is always bad. The food that goes onto that airplane is like just poison.
- [14:50]
Lauren Weber
And there is some tension there. You know, typically Republican administrations are anti regulation. And this idea, some of these ideas that Kennedy is pushing forward on food very much run into some political realities that I think are important to note. The food industry has been very concerned about Kennedy's proposals. A top food industry lawyer basically said he felt like it would be the Biden administration on steroids if some of what he said went through. I mean, Bernie Sanders, who obviously big on the left in terms of food policy and kind of wanting to have aggressive action. There is some similarity between what he has said on food labels and what RFK is saying about food. Will that come to pass? I don't know. Who knows?
- [15:33]
Martine Powers
Yeah. Well, and that gets into the question of if his views do not align with what Republicans are on board with right now. What does that mean for his confirmation? And I want to point out that this isn't just big food, right? He's talked about reducing the influence of pharmaceutical companies and healthcare as well as US Agriculture, that he wants to get rid of pesticides in farming and get rid of the use of genetically modified organisms, GMOs and food, and that those are things that Republicans who represent big farms are not excited about. So I wonder, like, how is all of this going to affect the prospects of him actually being confirmed for this job?
- [16:13]
Lauren Weber
I think that's a great question. And I think there is something notable about the fact that he is really going up against some of the top lobbying dollars in Washington. I mean, Big Ag is a lot of money behind it. And there's a lot of senators who my colleagues Dan Dimon and Rachel Rubin interviewed last week who didn't necessarily have as many questions about vaccines in rfk, but did have questions about agriculture and RFK on the Republican because that's the money in their districts. That's who's electing them. That's the bottom line.
- [16:43]
Martine Powers
Well, it seems like if the Republicans are concerned about your big ag stances and the Democrats are concerned about your vaccine stances and you really can't stand to lose that many votes, it seems like he's in for a very tight vote if people are kind of falling off on either side.
- [17:01]
Lauren Weber
I think, yes, I think it could be a tight vote. But at the end of the day, I think Donald Trump was elected in so clear a fashion that I think he feels like the Republican senators will.
- [17:10]
Martine Powers
Fall into line if Kennedy is confirmed. What kinds of barriers might he face in trying to implement his agenda in health and human services?
- [17:20]
Lauren Weber
I mean, I think one of the top barriers is that what Donald Trump wants? I'm very curious to see how his push for some of this regulation around food could run into a president known not for regulation. I also think we didn't talk about this, but Kennedy has certainly had some stances on abortion that are not supported by hardline anti abortion forces.
- [17:43]
Martine Powers
I mean, he's pretty adamantly pro abortion access, has talked about how like this is a decision that needs to be made with women and their doctors, not judges.
- [17:52]
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I've been a medical freedom activist for my entire life. My inclination is that government should stay out of medical procedures and that with abortions that we should trust women, we should trust the judgment of a mother.
- [18:08]
Martine Powers
I mean, that is not the Republican talking point right now.
- [18:11]
Lauren Weber
I mean, Mike Pence, the former Vice president came out and said he doesn't support Kennedy's nomination, not for his vaccine beliefs, but for his stances on abortion. And again, we have to remind ourselves that RFK Jr. Is from a Democratic sign of a family known for health policy. He just, just has certainly gone a different path than many of the other Kennedys that he's related to.
- [18:35]
Martine Powers
Well, then that leaves me with a question of what happens if he is confirmed and where does that leave Democrats? I guess, are they willing to play ball with him and to kind of like look past the vaccine stuff, the conspiracy theories, a lot of his kind of aggressive ignorance of scientific conclusions to at least be able to work with him on some of the food stuff, abortion access, like, just play ball on the places where they align.
- [19:07]
Lauren Weber
From my conversations from folks on the Hill, that seems like that would be the case. I think they're all still in a wait and see. Again, this could be a tough confirmation fight. Also, again, we could be in for some interesting times with RFK's popularity and Trump himself. I mean, Trump, when he introduced rfk, said, now, Bobby, don't get too popular. Don't get too popular on me. And I just looked at the news reports. People like you, Bobby, don't get too popular, Bobby. So, I mean, I think that there will be some interesting tensions not only in the potential confirmation, but also within the administration. If he is confirmed, that'll play out.
- [19:47]
Martine Powers
And Lauren, you mentioned earlier some of the other names of picks that Trump seems to be making in terms of health policy and health leaders going forward. As you said, Dave Walden, leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Jeanette Neshawat, the Next Surgeon General. Dr. Oz, what do these choices tell you about where Trump's thinking is at in terms of what he wants to achieve on public health?
- [20:13]
Lauren Weber
They're a bit of a mixed bag. I mean, I think the Dr. Oz pick is very Trumpian in the sense of, I mean, look, this is a television doctor who is famous. People know who he is. He's good at marketing. He's also famous for promoting treatments and alternative medicine that are not based in science. So, you know, kind of a fascinating play there with the RFK side of things. Dave Weldon really seems to have come out of nowhere to some extent, but seems to have really energized some of the Maha, the Make America Healthy Again community over his positions on vaccines. So that's gonna be quite something to play out on the CDC front if confirmed. And the Surgeon General pick, you know, I don't think a lot of people saw that coming. So I think, you know, we'll see how this continues to play out. But it's an interesting cast of characters.
- [21:03]
Martine Powers
And Lauren, what are your questions going forward about how all of this is gonna play out?
- [21:07]
Lauren Weber
Well, first off, are these people gonna get confirmed, you know, and then what are they gonna do with their platform? I mean, they are controlling again, the food, drugs, medicine, insurance for the American public. How are they gonna tackle those things? These are also massive, massive bureaucracies. You know, every day, you know, these folks are used to being on TV or in the political limelight. This is a very different role. So I'm very curious how they adjust to that and how they either work within or blow up the system to bend it to their will.
- [21:38]
Martine Powers
Lauren, thank you so much.
- [21:40]
Lauren Weber
Thanks so much for having me.
- [21:41]
Martine Powers
Lauren Weber is an accountability reporter at the Post covering medical misinformation. The Post is reporting on so many other stories today. So before we go, here are a few more that we wanted to share with you. First, Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday asked permission from US Courts to abandon two federal cases against Trump. These are the classified documents case in Florida and the election obstruction case in D.C. neither ever made it to trial. In a statement to a federal judge in D.C. smith said that he stands fully behind the allegations in the investigation indictment. But he added Justice Department guidelines make it clear he cannot prosecute a sitting president. In the world of science, there's new research showing that inside your body, different parts of you could be aging at different rates.
- [22:37]
Tony Weiss Coray
So we looked from very young to very old mice across all major tissues in an unbiased fashion. And that showed that if you look sort of at the trajectory of aging, it's very different across different organs and across different cell types.
- [22:53]
Martine Powers
That's Tony Weiss Corre, a Stanford scientist who led several recent studies looking at organ aging. He spoke to Post Health columnist Gretchen Reynolds about how organ aging could have major implications for what diseases we develop and how long we live. Scientists can tell that some of us are brain agers or heart agers, and there are serious consequences to this. In one study, Stanford scientists found that heart agers are far more likely to develop heart failure than other people. Then there are brain youthers, people with a brain relatively younger than any other organ they possess. They are about 80% less likely to develop dementia in later years than people with average or old brains. So what is causing this aging? It could be a lot of factors, genetics, your environment, your lifestyle, and also chance. Here's Weiss Coray again.
- [23:50]
Tony Weiss Coray
You know you build 10,000 cars with the exact same blueprint, the exact same material. You even have the same shift that builds them. But some of these cars last longer than others, not necessarily because they're driven in a different way or in a different environment, but simply because randomly a piece fails and that triggers then an effect. Because that piece starts to fail, it will put pressure on other parts of that car, and so then other parts may fail.
- [24:26]
Martine Powers
The exciting part about this research is that it shows that the age of our insides might actually be malleable, that we might be able to change how we age with medications, exercise, or even a different diet. Alright, so speaking of things that will age you prematurely, it's just a few days until Thanksgiving, and if you're hosting but haven't yet figured out what exactly you're going to make, do not panic. The Post has a whole slew of resources to help steer you through your darkest hour of Thanksgiving preparation prep, including an interactive guide for building your ultimate Thanksgiving menu. You put in some basic info, the number of people you're feeding, the dietary restrictions of your guests, and it'll tell you exactly the right amount of dishes to serve and some recipes that will meet all of your needs. It even generates a grocery list. It's so easy we'll put a link in our show notes and ostreports.com that's it for Post reports. Thanks for listening. If you are a subscriber to the Post, don't forget about a convenient way to experience Post journalism. For almost all the articles on our website, you can read them or you can listen to them. When you're checking out a story, you can click a little headphone icon near the top of the page and you'll hear the story told to you out loud, either by a reporter or a very convincing AI generated voice. If you're on the go or perhaps stuck in traffic on the way to your in laws for the holiday, it's a great way to catch up on the news. And it's one of many reasons why it's worth it to be a subscriber to the Washington Post. If you're not yet a subscriber, now is the perfect time to fix that. Go to washingtonpost.com subscribe Today's show was produced by Rennie Srinavsky with help from Emma Talka. It was mixed by Justin Gerrish and edited by Maggie Penman with help from Rena Flores. Thanks also to Tracy, Jan and Gretchen Reynolds. I'm Martine Powers. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from the Washington Post.