How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Medical Freedom’ Rose to Power

Summary

Summary of "The Daily" Episode: How R.F.K. Jr. and ‘Health Freedom’ Rose to Power

Release Date: January 30, 2025

Introduction

In this episode of The Daily, hosted by Sabrina Tavernise and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, the focus centers on the controversial rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) within the "Health Freedom" movement and his pivotal nomination to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The discussion delves into RFK Jr.'s journey from a traditional environmental lawyer to a leading figure in a movement that challenges the established medical and political systems.

RFK Jr.'s Nomination and Hearing

The episode opens with RFK Jr.'s nomination hearing, where he faced intense scrutiny from a panel of skeptical senators. RFK Jr. succinctly stated, “In my advocacy, I've often disturbed the status quo by asking uncomfortable questions” (00:50). The hearing probed his controversial statements regarding vaccines, antidepressants, and Lyme disease, highlighting his polarizing viewpoints. For instance, RFK Jr. remarked, “Pay anything, to go back in time and not vaccinate your kids” (01:14), signaling his deep skepticism toward mainstream medical practices.

RFK Jr.'s Views on Vaccines and Medical Freedom

Sheryl Gay Stolberg provides a comprehensive background on RFK Jr., describing him as both a member of the illustrious Kennedy family and a "black sheep" due to his anti-establishment views (02:44). RFK Jr.'s stance includes strong opposition to vaccines, labeling himself a "vaccine skeptic," and questioning the pharmaceutical industry's motives. He asserts, “The criminal gang leaders, Pfizerhead, Fauci, all of them, they all need to go to prison for the rest of their lives” (13:56), illustrating his confrontational approach.

The Rise of the Health Freedom Movement

Stolberg traces the roots of the modern anti-vaccine movement back to the late 1990s with Andrew Wakefield's debunked study linking the MMR vaccine to autism (05:49). This movement gained momentum through high-profile figures like Jenny McCarthy and transformed over time, encompassing a broad coalition that includes wellness influencers, environmentalists, and libertarian-leaning individuals (03:49). The movement's core centers on "medical freedom," advocating for individuals' rights to make their own medical decisions without government interference.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic acted as a catalyst, exponentially expanding anti-vaccine sentiments from a fringe group to a significant portion of the population. Stolberg notes that approximately a third of Americans were hesitant or opposed to the COVID-19 vaccine (11:29). The pandemic environment, characterized by economic shutdowns and a polarized presidency under Donald Trump, amplified distrust in public health institutions. RFK Jr. capitalized on this, stating, “Our country was built to get back to work” (12:03, 12:16), resonating with those opposed to vaccine mandates and lockdown measures.

RFK Jr.'s Political Ambitions and Alliance with Trump

Initially running as a Democrat challenging President Joe Biden, RFK Jr. struggled to gain traction and subsequently switched to an independent candidacy (26:05). Recognizing limited success, he allied with Donald Trump, despite stark differences in their backgrounds. This partnership was strategic, leveraging Trump's substantial voter base to amplify RFK Jr.'s "medical freedom" agenda. Stolberg describes their collaboration as highly transactional, with Kennedy seeing Trump as the conduit to national power (27:48).

Implications of RFK Jr.'s Nomination to HHS

If confirmed, RFK Jr. would oversee major federal health agencies, including the CDC, FDA, and NIH, which are pivotal in public health policy and vaccine distribution. Experts express deep concern over his appointment, fearing a potential rollback of vaccination programs and a resurgence of preventable diseases. Stolberg highlights the terror among public health professionals, who worry that RFK Jr.'s leadership could undermine efforts to manage current and future health crises (30:50).

Broader Societal Context: Mistrust in Institutions

The episode underscores a pervasive mistrust in government, media, and pharmaceutical industries, epitomized by RFK Jr.'s ascent. Stolberg explains that RFK Jr.'s mission to "sow distrust in these federal agencies" has resonated widely, reflecting a cultural moment rife with skepticism towards authority. This widespread distrust is seen as the "apotheosis of mistrust," affecting various aspects of American society and leading to significant shifts in public opinion and policy (32:20).

Conclusion

RFK Jr.'s rise to prominence within the Health Freedom movement and his nomination to a key governmental position signify a profound shift in American socio-political dynamics. The episode highlights the intersection of health skepticism, political strategy, and institutional distrust, painting a complex picture of contemporary America's challenges in managing public health and maintaining trust in its institutions.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• RFK Jr.: “In my advocacy, I've often disturbed the status quo by asking uncomfortable questions.” (00:50)
• RFK Jr.: “Pay anything, to go back in time and not vaccinate your kids.” (01:14)
• RFK Jr.: “The criminal gang leaders, Pfizerhead, Fauci, all of them, they all need to go to prison for the rest of their lives.” (13:56)
• RFK Jr.: “Our country was built to get back to work.” (12:03)
• RFK Jr.: “They’re putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior.” (24:18)
• Stolberg: “RFK Jr. Is emblematic of the mistrust that we are seeing across society.” (32:20)

Implications for the Future

The confirmation of RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary could have far-reaching consequences for U.S. public health policy, particularly in areas of vaccine regulation and chronic disease management. His leadership could either bridge or further widen the existing divides within American society regarding health and governance.

---

This summary captures the essence of the episode by highlighting the key discussions, insights, and concerns surrounding RFK Jr.'s rise within the Health Freedom movement and his potential impact on U.S. public health policy.

Transcript

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

This is an advertisement from the American Petroleum Institute. America's energy future begins now. We have the opportunity to strengthen our economy and reduce inflation. And with this opportunity comes great responsibility. Working together, we can harness our energy advantage and improve the lives of every American. More American energy means more jobs, more security and more innovation. That's the promise of America's oil and natural gas. America's moment is now. Learn [e-mail] from the new York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is the daily of all President Trump's cabinet picks, perhaps none is more familiar to more Americans than Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

In my advocacy, I've often disturbed the status quo by asking uncomfortable questions.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

On Wednesday, he faced a crucial nomination hearing where a panel of skeptical senators probed his past, often controversial remarks.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

In a podcast in 2020, you said.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

And I quote, you would do anything.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Pay anything, to go back in time and not vaccinate your kids.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Do you think that people who take antidepressants are dangerous? Did you say Lyme disease is a.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Highly likely militarily engineered bioweapon?

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I probably did say that.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Today, my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg on how Kennedy became the face of a movement that has railed against the very system he could soon oversee. It's the Thursday, January 30th. So, Cheryl, I'm so glad you're here today because you are the perfect person for this. You cover both health and politics, which yesterday and today have come together in a very interesting way with this confirmation hearing of RFK Jr. If he gets confirmed, and that's a big if, he would be leading this vast government agency that's responsible in many ways for the health of Americans. It's called the Department of Health and Human Services. And I think the first thing I really want to Understand is how RFK Jr. Who's someone who is widely understood to be pretty fringe in a lot of his beliefs and really almost, you know, a conspiracy theorist, how he came to be up for that nomination to begin with.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

So he's had a remarkable journey, Sabrina. You know, he comes from this storied American family, the Kennedy political dynasty, but he's also a black sheep kind of within his own family. He's had a lot of disagreements with his relatives, most recently his cousin Caroline Kennedy. And he holds these extremely anti establishment views that you talked about. He's anti pharma. He wouldn't say. He's anti vaccine. He's a vaccine skeptic. And he's skeptical of a lot of things. Everything from vaccines to ultra processed foods. And it might be surprising that these views could be held by the future health secretary of the United States. But they're kind of seeping into the mainstream, and they've coalesced around this movement, Make America healthy again, which obviously is.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

A play on maga. Right, Make America great again. So is this just really a subset of the MAGA movement? A subset of the Trump movement?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

No, I think it's its own movement. It's a movement that really Kennedy himself embodies and brought to the fore. This is where the crunchy granola left meets the libertarian right. It's a very broad coalition. It includes wellness influencers and new age environmentalists and also right wing podcasters. And they come together in this skepticism and antipathy toward the pharmaceutical industry and the scientific establishment. And they embrace everything from, like, raw milk to don't vaccinate your kids. And they've amassed a considerable amount of political capital.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Tell me how that happened. How'd they get to the point of having so much power?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Well, the concept that Kennedy espouses, he calls it medical freedom. That concept has very deep roots in the United States. As far back as the 1700s during a smallpox outbreak in Boston, when the Reverend Cotton Mather was promoting inoculation, which was the precursor to vaccination. And someone literally in 1721, threw a bomb through his window and said, cotton Mather, you dog. Damn you. I'll inoculate you with this.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Wow.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

And in the early 19th and 20th centuries, there were these health freedom advocates. They were homeopaths and naturalists, and they wanted recognition for their way of doing medicine. So there's always been this kind of deep sort of fringe suspicion of medical practitioners in this country. But there's one place that we often see this, and that's around vaccines. I started getting calls from parents who said my child was developing perfectly normally, and then they had their MMR vaccine.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

In many cases, and then they just disappeared.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

So most people would date the modern anti vaccine movement to 1998. And a British doctor named Andrew Wakefield.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Our duty was not only to investigate those children, to see if we could get to the root of their symptoms, but also to report their history.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Who published a paper that later got retracted and was debunked many times that asserted the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine caused autism. And there are thousands of parents who are all saying the same thing, that the triple antigen MMR is to blame for their children's autism. It created a big flurry. Parents were worrying about Rising autism rates and the whole issue of vaccine safety kind of spilled out into the public.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I became aware of the autism crisis in America when my grandson Christian became autistic shortly after getting about nine shots.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

And we had hearings on Capitol Hill with a congressman whose grandson had autism and was convinced vaccines were to blame.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

And without a doubt, in my mind, I believe vaccinations triggered Evan's autism.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

We had Hollywood actors like Jenny McCarthy who had a child with autism.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

I don't know what happened in 1990. There was no plague that was killing children, that we had to triple the amount of vaccines. What happened after 1989? Why did they kill 26 more vaccines?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Greed. She and her partner at the time, Jim Carrey, led a march Green R vaccines, trying to rally Congress.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Danny. Danny. So there were a lot of people that were really concerned about this, but fundamentally it was debunked, right?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Well, it was debunked, but it took some time to do studies. And the Lancet, which published the original Wakefield study, didn't retract it for 12 years.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Oh, wow. It's a long time.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

A long time. And so the movement, the anti vaccine movement starts to gain steam around the late 1990s and the early 2000s. And over time, we see parents starting to apply for exemptions to vaccination, religious exemptions. In California, they had a philosophical exemption. It was pretty loose. Pretty much anybody could apply. And as more and more parents applied for exemptions for their children, fewer kids got vaccinated. It's still pretty small numbers, though. It tended to happen in pockets in, like, small communities, maybe in New York or California. And because of that, those pockets began to be vulnerable.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Eye fever, aching eyes, hacking cough. And after a week, every square inch of you covered by red dots.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Measles.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Tonight, the CDC warns it's back and it's spreading.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

We started seeing, predictably, measles. Tonight we're tracking a surge of cases.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Outbreaks now in 13 states.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

The number of cases growing at a pace not seen seen in nearly 20 years. Any public health expert or vaccine expert will tell you that when vaccination rates go down, the first disease to come back is measles.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Disneyland has been ground zero for a measles outbreak that started in December and has since spread to numerous states.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

The big moment was an outbreak that happened in Disneyland. In California in late 2014 and 2015.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

More than half of those who have contracted the disease were not vaccinated.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

And after that happened, states started cracking down on vaccine exemptions. California, Oregon, Washington all tried to Enact legislation making it harder for parents to opt out of vaccination.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So that probably made people pretty mad. Like, that would have been a galvanizing force for people who really didn't like the idea of being forced to take vaccines.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Well, it certainly made parents who didn't want to vaccinate their kids mad. What it also did, though, we started to see a turn, a shift in the rhetoric around vaccination. And it wasn't just the kind of crunchy granola. I don't want to put any toxins in my child's body. I want my child to have everything natural shifted a little bit to include, basically, get the government off my back, don't tell me what to do. It's a liberty argument, a civil liberties, a medical freedom argument. I should have the freedom to make my own medical choices.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Interesting. So it's bringing in this kind of sort of libertarian sensibility to the thing that had been the earthy, crunchy, lefty mom thing.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Right. And you know, the whole argument for vaccines has always been that it's a community wide activity. It's something that you do to protect yourself against infectious disease, but also to protect your community. And suddenly that argument wasn't flying anymore. Instead of being about the community, it was about me and my kid and what I have the right to do.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Okay, so bring us to the pandemic where all of this language, you know, now we're quite familiar with starts to really happen more and more. And not just with a fringe group of people, but a lot of people. Like, this was the moment when I first understood just how big a portion of the population had skepticism about the medical establishment.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Yeah, I mean, I think the pandemic was a perfect storm to allow this anti vaccine sentiment to flourish. A recent poll reveals about a third.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Of Americans won't get the COVID 19 vaccine or are undecided about getting it.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

First of all, you had the worst public health crisis in a century. You know, people were dying, everyone was frantic, the economy was shut down. You layer over that Donald Trump, the.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Country wants to get back to work.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

A mercurial, chaotic president who doesn't really want to listen to the experts.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Our country was built to get back to work.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

We don't have a country where they.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Say, hey, let's close it down for two years.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

We can't do that.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

And you've got this political climate that is erupting around the pandemic. We don't want no shots, we don't want no cards, no tyranny.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Otherwise, take The Statue of Liberty back to France.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

The distrust among skeptics isn't just about the vaccine. With resistance to lockdown orders, you won't.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Be able to go into a gym or a ball game or a theater or a restaurant.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

This is blatant, irrational discrimination. Resistance to masks. And vaccination becomes part of that bigger hole.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

We will not comply. We will not comply. Right. It was like such a chaotic time in that felt like that was the thing that people could actually control. Right. It's like, I can tell you what you can't put in my body. It was like the last act of agency in some way that people had.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Exactly. And I should add that you've also got social media.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Last week, comedian Joe Rogan gave his 13 million Instagram followers an update on his health and how he was being treated.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Where other kinds of misinformation was flourishing about drugs like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, all.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Kinds of meds, monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

All of this was brewing in this kind of stew. This anti establishment, anti public health, kind of anti science, anti pharma soup.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

The criminal gang leaders, Pfizerhead, Fauci, all of them, they all need to go to prison for the rest of their lives.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

I remember the Biden administration asking or telling the tech companies to take down some of this stuff, that there was this profusion of misinformation.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Right. Biden was really worried about it. He thought this misinformation was costing Americans their lives.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

This protest at Michigan State House is protected by the First Amendment. But posts encouraging people to participate were silenced by Facebook.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

But people start feeling like they're being censored.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Well, it's official. YouTube has just now banned anything related to health that doesn't align with the.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

General medical consensus, and that breeds further suspicion.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So we're. We're now we're in 1984 Orwell territory. So that's sort of mal information. Malinformation is what they call it. True information that's inconvenient. Exactly.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

That results like, what is big Pharma hiding from me? They're making all this money with these vaccines. They have government contracts to sell 300 million doses, you know, for one for every American citizen. And what do they know that we don't know? And why are they shutting us up? These conversations start to go out into the broader culture. On conservative podcasts, people want me to get vaccinated, and like my friends who've.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Been vaccinated want me to join the.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Team, like, go ahead, get the tattoo.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Like, what are you saying?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Joe Rogan and a whole core of kind of conservative doctors grew up. Robert Malone.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

It puts you at higher risk, okay? They're asking you to take more risk for your health in order to join their club.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

And suddenly this mistrust started to spill over into other topics beyond vaccines.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

We have a massive health crisis in this country. The obesity crisis is really legitimate and it's. It's terrifying.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

People worrying about obesity fueled by ultra processed foods and God forbid, no wonder.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Why cancer and all the things are.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Running rampant nowadays because a lot of.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

People don't know 90% of what you're finding in the grocery store is pure poison.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

People promoting clean living and holistic health and vitamins.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

I think every single person should be at a minimum on a methylated multivitamin.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Not that vitamins are bad, but, you know, it's this whole kind of return to nature, natural, holistic feeling and the whole kind of I did my own research crowd.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Big Pharma made a whopping $1.7 trillion profit last year. Not a penny went towards making anybody understand how to live a healthier life.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Merged with a conservative anger at the liberal elites telling people what to do.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

We want a healthy country. The good news is that we can change all this. America can get healthy again.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

And there's one person who is a natural fit to lead this movement. He's been making these claims for years, and he's a big name.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

To do that, we need to do three things. First, we need to root out the corruption in our health agencies. Second, we need to change incentives in our healthcare system. And third, we need to inspire Americans to get healthy again.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

And that's Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

We'll be right back. This podcast is supported by Sierra. Your customers are important to you, but they won't feel that way if they're messaging a clunky chatbot or. Waiting on hold. Please hold. Estimated wait time is 25 minutes. Now you can deploy a Sierra AI agent to delight customers and solve tough problems. Always friendly, always helpful, always ready. Visit Sierra AI to learn more. That's Sierra AI. I'm Julie Turkowitz. I'm a reporter at the New York Times. To understand changes in migration, I traveled to the Darien Gap. Thousands have been risking their lives to pass through the border of Colombia and Panama in the hopes of making it to the United States. We interviewed hundreds of people to try and grasp what's making them go to these lengths. New York Times journalists spend time in these Places to help you understand what's really happening there. You can support this kind of journalism by subscribing to the New York Times. So, Cheryl, you said that RFK was in a lot of ways a natural leader for this movement because he'd been saying a lot of these things for years. But how did he come to be involved in the anti vax medical freedom movement to begin with?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

So for much of his career, RFK Jr. Had a pretty kind of unfringy, traditional existence. He was a district attorney in Manhattan. And then he really made a name for himself as an environmental lawyer. And he worked on a number of cases cleaning up waterways, including mercury in waterways. And Kennedy talks about how he would be going out and giving speeches, and these moms of kids with autism would say to him, you have to start looking at mercury and vaccines. And he would be like, no, no, no, that's not what I do. I'm an environmental lawyer. And then finally, in the early 2000s, someone who was a college classmate of a sister in law of Kennedy wanted to get in touch with him. And she showed up at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts with a big stack of documents. And Kennedy comes to the door and she's like, I want you to look at this. And he says, I have houseguests and we're going sailing. And he left. So she waited him out, and he finally said to her, if I look at these things, will you leave? And she said, yes. So he starts reading the scientific studies in the abstracts, and he says that he was just struck by this kind of delta between what the public health agencies were saying and what he was reading. Now, what exactly this delta is is not really clear. But he starts to use his name to open doors. And he gets a meeting with Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease specialist. And he goes to see Francis Collins, the head of the nih. And none of these meetings go anywhere, which gives Kennedy the impression that these people are trying to hide something. And he concludes that they're all in the pocket of big pharma. And he starts feeling like, in his words, this is regulatory capture on steroids. And some of the things he points to, you know, have some truth in them. Like, for example, the NIH does partner with pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs. We saw this in the pandemic, right? The Moderna and NIH partnered together to make the COVID vaccine. And then of course, Moderna made some profit when it went to market. That doesn't necessarily mean that you cannot trust the efficacy of these drugs or vaccines just because they made a profit. But in RFK's view, this casts a shadow over the whole enterprise. And this is the thing about he often says stuff that has kind of like a kernel or a basis of truth, and there might be a good non nefarious explanation for it. But Kennedy's not really interested in that explanation. In the case of vaccines, he decides something suspicious is afoot.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So what does he do with this suspicion?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

So what he does is he starts an advocacy organization and he names it Children's Health Defense. And he's gung ho, examining every aspect of vaccine safety. And over the years, he and Children's Health Defense file More than 30 lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers and various public health measures. And he really embraces this crusade against vaccines.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So take us back to the pandemic. You said that it really crystallized this moment of anti vax, anti big pharma, anti establishment. How did RFK plug into that?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

It is an absolute honor to welcome.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

ROBERT F. Kennedy jr.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

So the pandemic gives Bobby Kennedy an opportunity to bring his ideas to a wider audience. And remember how I said that Biden's vaccine mandates just really triggered this incredible backlash.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

We are watching something now that I never believed that I would see in my lifetime.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Well, who do you think was leading the backlash? It was Kennedy.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Ashes are meant to find as a merger of state and corporate power orchestrated by Tony Fauci.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

We had this defeat the mandates rally in Washington in 2022.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

And what we're seeing today is what I call turnkey totalitarianism.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

He made some pretty controversial statements there. He basically compared vaccine mandates to Hitler's Germany.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Even in Hitler's Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

He said that. Well, at least, you know, back in Germany, you know, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Today, the mechanisms are being put in place that will make it so none of us can run and none of us can hide.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

In essence, saying that there was no escaping Joe Biden's vaccine mandates.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

They're putting in 5G to harvest our data and control our behavior. Digital currency that will allow them to punish us from a distance and cut off our food supply.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So pretty wild stuff, in other words.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Well, certainly stuff that made a lot of people think that he was a conspiracy theorist.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Yeah, but we have the six people in the world. There's nobody else who has a chronic disease burden.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Kennedy is tapping into something.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

When I was a kid, the typical pediatrician would see one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime. Today, one out of every three kids who walks through his office door is.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Pre diabetic or diabetic in people who feel marginalized and people who feel unseen.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

My brother had asthma and he was told by his doctor there'll never be a cure for asthma because it's so rare nobody will ever study it. Today, one out of every eight black children has asthma. What happened?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Kennedy starts talking also about chronic disease.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Neurological diseases, add, adhd, speech delay, language, late tics, Tourett syndrome, narcolepsy, asd.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

The things he says kinda make sense.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

They're making tons of money on our illness and they have very little incentive to make us better.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

The answers he offers are often cherry picking the science in a way that takes it out of context. But he's speaking to something that people are feeling. That anger that we talked about earlier and that sense that, like, something is wrong. And he finds himself the leader of this very diverse and very large movement.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So at what point does he decide to run for president?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

So he announces he's going to run for president in April of 2023, goes to Boston to make the announcement against the Kennedy backdrop. And he's going to challenge Joe Biden. And not surprisingly, he's a Kennedy. He's doing it as a Democrat. He's going to wage a primary challenge to an incumbent president. And that's a pretty tough task. And eventually he realizes that he can't do it. And about six months later, in October, he announces he's going to run as an independent. But eventually it becomes clear that he's not going to win. And he became convinced that the best way to present and bring forward the issues he really cared about would be to partner up with Donald Trump. And you can imagine what a shock this is certainly to his family, who are aghast. I mean, they've all come out for Biden and now to see that he's partnering with Trump. But Kennedy is convinced that Trump will give him the power, the platform, the latitude that he needs to, to advance this medical freedom agenda.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

It was pretty crazy when that happened. I mean, I remember him as kind of the spoiler for both parties. And then signing up with Trump, which didn't entirely make sense to me from an RFK perspective. I mean, Trump is this guy who's, you know, famous for fast food and doesn't really seem that concerned about environmental regulation.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Exactly. And Kennedy famously like, says, oh my God, his diet.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

But you're saying it was just as simple as rfk. Saw a route to power and Trump wanted his voters.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Yeah, I think it was very transactional.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

With us tonight is the man who's.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Going to help us get it all straightened out, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. I went to a Trump rally in Georgia a few weeks before the election, and Kennedy was there, and they were very simpatico. And Kennedy just got wild applause from the Trump crowd. I mean, he was really a showstopper.

[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]

Nobody gets a standing ovation like that. What's going on over here?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

That's great, Bobby.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Great. Thank you. Thank you. So in other words, Maha is born.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Maha is born, yes, exactly. And suddenly you started hearing conservatives talking about ultra processed foods and, you know, big pharma and regulatory capture and all of these catchphrases that were part of Kennedy's rhetoric.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So, Cheryl, that brings us to his nomination as HHS secretary. And, you know, I guess given his whole rise to power and his rhetoric of the past, it makes me wonder, assuming he's confirmed, what do we think he would actually do or be able to do in this new role?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

So this is a $64,000 question, right? You know, we saw on the first day of his hearings, Kennedy is kind of reeling back in on the vaccines. When he was asked about vaccines, he insisted he supports them. And he names in particular the measles and the polio vaccines. And he tries to steer the focus towards addressing things like obesity and chronic diseases, which are issues that have a broader base of support. But should he be confirmed, he would have broad latitude over a huge sprawling agency that is responsible for Medicare and children's health and the Food and Drug Administration, which approves medicines. The cdc, the nation's public health agency, the nih, the biomedical research enterprise.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

God, it's vast.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

It's vast. He would, for instance, oversee the Vaccine for Children program, an $8 billion program that provides vaccines for more than half the nation's children, kids in low income and working class families.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

And would he be able, Cheryl, to just cancel that, for example?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

No, it's a legislatively created program. But he would have authority as secretary over the contracts that that program signs with drug makers. He would be able to decline to enter contracts or amend contracts so he could exercise his authority in that way.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Cheryl, what do public health folks think? What are they saying to you?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

They're terrified. I can't even begin to tell you the terror that I'm hearing. They are worried that Americans will stop vaccinating their children, that there will be a resurgence of vaccine, preventable diseases, and they're worried about a bird flu epidemic. The CDC says right now that the risk to humans is low. There's a lot of fear that that virus could shift and suddenly jump from person to person. And would we be prepared? And is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. A staunch critic of MRNA vaccines, the right person to lead the nation through a public health crisis?

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

And what about the people in the movement, Cheryl, the make America healthy again folks, what do they think?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

They're thrilled. They cannot believe that after decades of being on the fringes of American society, suddenly they have power in Washington.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

So, Cheryl, thinking about the arc of RFK story, where he came from, you know, from this kind of obscure environmentalist fringe all the way to controlling one of the biggest, if not the biggest, budget in the entire federal government and lifted by a movement that, like him, started out fringe and is now very mainstream. What does that say about where we are right now in America?

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

You know, Sabrina, I think this is the apotheosis of mistrust. Think about what Kennedy's life work has been, his whole life's work, or at least the last 10 or more years, has been to sow distrust in these federal agencies, in the CDC and the FDA and the nih. And now that work has catapulted him to a place where he is poised to oversee the very agencies that he is telling Americans do not deserve their trust. So I think that really speaks to something broader in our society. Sort of a cultural moment that we're in. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Is emblematic of the mistrust that we are seeing across society. A mistrust in government, in the media, in the pharmaceutical industry, in all manner of authority. This crisis of mistrust has seeped into every corner of American society.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Cheryl, thank you for helping us understand this.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Thank you, Sabrina.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

The debate over Kennedy's candidacy will continue today. The Senate Finance Committee is likely to vote next week on whether to send his nomination to the full Senate for a final vote. We'll be right back. The New York Times app has all this stuff that you may not have seen. The way the tabs are at the top with all of the different sections, I can immediately navigate to something that matches what I'm feeling.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

Play wordle or connections and then swipe over to read today's headlines. There's an article next to a recipe next to to games and it's just easy to get everything in one place.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

This app is essential.

[Sheryl Gay Stolberg]

The New York Times app, all of the times all in one place. Download it [e-mail] app.

[Sabrina Tavernisi]

Here'S what else you should know today. On Wednesday, the former senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, was sentenced to 11 years in prison after being convicted of being at the center of an audacious international bribery scheme. It was one of the longest sentences ever issued for a federal official in the United States. Menendez resigned from the Senate last summer after a jury convicted him of trading his political clout for stacks of cash, bricks of gold and a Mercedes Benz convertible. Previously, he had served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one of the most powerful perches in Washington. Washington and the White House rescinded an order that froze trillions of dollars in grants and loans after it faced legal challenges and prompted mass confusion among places like schools and hospitals that didn't know if they had lost all federal support. The reversal was the first setback in Trump's aggressive use of executive power to reshape the government in his image. Orders directing agencies to review and cut spending on so called woke ideology remained in place. Today's episode was produced by Alex Stern, Nina Feldman and Eric Krupke. It was was edited by Devin Taylor with help from Patricia Willins. Contains original music by Marian Lozano, Pat McCusker and Elisheba Itup, fact checked by Will Peichel and engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.