It was less than a year ago, in April of 2024, that then-candidate Donald Trump went on a late-night tear against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“I lived with RFK Jr. in New York and watched him convince Governor Cuomo to make Environmental moves that were outright NASTY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“Upstate New York was not allowed to drill or frack as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and others ripped off New York Energy. Because of this, prices have skyrocketed all over that part of the Country.”
“I’d even take Biden over Junior’, because our Country would last a year or two longer prior to collapse.”
Referring to him as a Democratic plant, Trump added that RFK is “an Extreme Environmentalist who makes the Green New Scammers look Conservative, a Big Time Taxer and Open Border Advocate, and Anti-Military/Vet . . .”
RFK Jr. called himself an independent, “but he’s not,” Trump wrote. “He’s a Radical Left Lunatic.”
“No Republican can vote for this guy.”
Mr. President, you were right.
On Thursday, Senate hearings begin on RFK Jr.’s nomination as secretary for Health and Human Services.
But nothing has changed about Kennedy from last spring. He’s still a radical left lunatic who is anti-energy, a “big time” taxer and completely incoherent about our nation’s health.
No Republican can vote for this guy. No senator should.
The president and his team insist that RFK Jr. has been fitted with a policy straitjacket — that certain areas such as vaccines and objecting to energy strategy are off-limits.
But in truth, the only straitjacket suitable for RFK Jr. is a real one.
Trump has built an administration that will shake the establishment out of its complacency.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are taking over departments that have spent the last four years prioritizing virtue signaling over victories. They will stop settling for the way things have always been, and instead pursue what is best for the United States.
Border czar Tom Homan and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem will clean up the Biden administration’s border disaster by enforcing our immigration laws and deporting criminals. They must stop the abuse of the asylum system, and cut off the flow of drugs and human trafficking by the cartels.
The picks for energy and interior secretaries, Chris Wright and Doug Burgum, will rip down the regulatory roadblocks set up by Democrats to prevent the US from being energy independent. They realize that the false promises of a “Green New Deal” are bankrupt illusions, and we must restore common sense as we face the energy challenges of AI and other technological innovations.
In these departments and others, the mission is clear, and Donald Trump specifically chose the official who could best accomplish it.
Not Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
RFK Jr. was a political deal. For a brief moment, Kennedy looked like he might be a tipping point in the election. He didn’t poll spectacularly well, and he wasn’t even on every state ballot, but considering how close swing-state races had been in the previous two elections, Trump wasn’t taking any chances. He convinced the radical left lunatic to drop out and endorse him.
But Health and Human Services secretary is too great a reward for Kennedy’s capitulation. He is an unserious, dangerous official who will be at odds with Trump on many key issues.
Other Trump choices in HHS will bring the expertise needed after the pandemic fiascos. Jay Bhattacharya, nominee for director of the National Institutes of Health, rightly railed against HHS pushing misinformation on the American public, when it denied COVID-19 was made in a Chinese lab and censored anyone who suggested that it was. He criticized the damaging lockdowns that hurt our children. Bhattacharya will help restore trust.
RFK Jr. doesn’t want to restore trust. He wants to burn the whole thing to the ground to benefit himself.
What’s so objectionable about RFK Jr.? Let us count some of the ways.
He led the campaign to shut down the Indian Point nuclear facility in New York, thinking it could all be replaced by “green” energy despite nuclear being better for the environment than oil and gas. After its closure, energy costs skyrocketed — and so did carbon emissions.
Yet, hypocrite that he is, he opposed a wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod. Wouldn’t want to spoil the views from the Kennedy compound.
He’s a deeply damaged serial womanizer who once had a brain worm, left a dead bear in Central Park and hasn’t met a conspiracy theory he didn’t love.
He thinks water vapor trails from commercial airplanes are spewing chemicals to control Americans. He told The Post that COVID was designed to spare Jews. Fluoride in water, which has reduced tooth decay and cavities, is an “industrial waste.”
As recently as 2023, he declared that “There’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.”
No? Not polio? Not smallpox? Not any of the dozens of vaccines that had infant mortality fall from 165 per 1,000 births in 1900 to 7 per 1,000 in 1990?
He has pushed the pernicious lie that vaccines cause autism, and his campaigning has been tied to measles outbreaks in Samoa that took the lives of children.
On the eve of his hearings, Kennedy now claims he’s not “anti-vaccine,” that he simply wants there to be more “transparency.” But RFK Jr.’s idea of transparency is whatever helps his trial lawyer friends.
He has made a career in litigation out of pointing out a rare side effect, which there often are, then claiming the whole thing is faulty for profit.
The job of the health secretary and the Federal Drug Administration is to put the many first — how do we help the most people with a treatment? RFK exploits the rarity. All it takes is one person with a symptom — that maybe isn’t even associated with the drug or vaccine — and you have a lawsuit. He wants to give conspiracy theorists and legal opportunists material to twist to his own ends.
And RFK Jr. will continue to make money off this, having stated he won’t stop taking payments from his ambulance-chasing lawyer friends even as health secretary.
Trump’s Warp Speed program to develop a COVID vaccine was one of the triumphs of his first term. It saved countless lives by lessening the dangers of the virus, particularly among elderly people.
The mistake made by the Biden administration and others was forcing people to take it, the mandates that fueled distrust.
Yet Kennedy falsely claimed the vaccine itself was more dangerous than the disease, based on nothing more than the darkest corners of the Internet. He petitioned the government to stop producing the vaccine and instead pursue treatments that didn’t work.
Under a Secretary Kennedy, we worry our health departments will become paralyzed — treatments and innovations that already take too long to come to market will be slow-walked further or nixed, scientists ignored, all while an explosion of lawsuits saps our tax dollars.
RFK Jr. has undermined Trump before, and there is every indication he would do it again.
The president brags that he introduced the Right to Try in his first term. It allows terminally ill patients to use experimental drugs not authorized by the government. But will they be able to get them with RFK campaigning against mysterious “Pharma corruption?”
Kennedy sued the Trump administration during his first term. Will he oppose medical innovation in the second?
Make our farmers less competitive because of his crackpot ideas about genetically modified crops?
Try to halt gas and oil exploration?
Try to shut down McDonald’s?
The Senate can save President Trump here from someone who will become a millstone around him and his agenda. This is a choice born of a political pact of which they were not a part.
We sincerely believe Trump would live to regret a Secretary Kennedy. We know the United States would.
So senators, listen to Donald Trump — from April 2024. This is the wrong man in the wrong job. Send him packing.
