In the closing days of the presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump and some of his top allies have increasingly embraced and spread anti-vaccine rhetoric typically linked to former independent presidential candidate and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Misinformation about vaccines has not been a focal point of Trump's 2024 campaign, but recently, Kennedy's influence — and the large role he could play in a Trump administration — have come to the forefront.
During an event with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Kennedy in Arizona Thursday night, Trump said that Kennedy wants to "look" at pesticides and vaccines in a potential Trump administration — and he was more than happy to give him carte blanche.
"He can do anything he wants," Trump said.
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“He really wants to with the pesticides and the, you know, all the different things. I said, he can do it," Trump told Carlson. "He can do anything he wants. He wants to look at the vaccines. He wants —everything. I think it’s great. I think it’s great."
He also said Kennedy was “going to work on health and women’s health.”
During an interview with popular podcast host Joe Rogan that was released Thursday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance expressed skepticism about the Covid vaccine, saying, he'd been "red-pilled," a term nabbed from "The Matrix" and used by some to explain that they've become aware of conspiracies throughout society.
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“I took the vax, and you know, I haven’t been boosted or anything, but the moment where I really started to get red-pilled on the whole vax thing was the sickest that I have been in the last 15 years by far was when I took the vaccine," Vance said.
"I’ve had Covid at this point five times. I was in bed for two days, my heart was racing, I was like, the fact that we’re not even allowed to talk about that. Even, you know — no like, serious injury, but even the fact that we’re not even allowed to talk about the fact that I was as sick as I’ve ever been for two days and the worst Covid experience I had was like a sinus infection, I’m not really willing to trade that," the senator added.
It’s unclear when Vance was vaccinated and whether it was before he had a Covid infection. His spokesperson did not return a request for clarification.
Vance is a young, healthy adult and, if he were vaccinated prior to infection, his immune system would have primed to fight the virus, doctors say. Common side effects of the vaccines can include flu-like symptoms for a day or so and then typically go away.
While virtually all Americans now have some protection against Covid, either through vaccination or infection or both, in the first year after the vaccines were introduced, unvaccinated people were over 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with the virus. In July 2021, as Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths were rising, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called it a "pandemic of the unvaccinated."
The notion that the effects of the Covid vaccine are worse than the effects of the actual virus is something Kennedy has said, too, and it's a theory that's been widely debunked.
The CDC has routinely said that the worst side effects from Covid vaccines are not worse than the potential effects of the Covid virus. And, Covid vaccines do not increase the risk of death, while the Covid virus does.
In a February interview with NBC News, Kennedy wouldn't say whether he would have allowed the Food and Drug Administration's emergency approval of certain Covid vaccines to move forward.
"I would have said that they need to do science to show that the vaccine is actually going to avert more problems than it’s uh, than it’s causing," Kennedy said at the time.
Trump and Vance's remarks this week come as the two have publicly embraced Kennedy himself for months. In August, he suspended his own independent presidential campaign and endorsed Trump.
Since then, he's hit the campaign trail alongside other fringe members of the political scene, like former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, to urge his supporters to vote for Trump.
And earlier this week, Kennedy told attendees at an event that Trump had promised him "control" of public health agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture if the former president is elected.
It was a claim that Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of the Trump-Vance transition team, did not deny when asked by CNN Wednesday whether Kennedy was right to say he would lead public health agencies in a potential Trump administration. Lutnick also embraced Kennedy's vaccine skepticism.
"I spent two-and-a-half hours this week with Bobby Kennedy Jr. and it was the most extraordinary thing," Lutnick told CNN. "I said, 'So, tell me. How's it going to go?' And he said, 'Why don't you just listen to me explain things.'"
Lutnick went on to discuss debunked conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism and blaming the National Institutes of Health for taking money from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for pushing vaccines on babies.
Kennedy has linked autism to vaccines for years, though multiple reputable studies over the last few decades have shown that vaccines are not linked with autism and that not vaccinating children can cause harm.
In a statement to NBC News on Thursday, Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt emphasized that there still are “no formal decisions” about positions in a potential administration, but that Trump “has said he will work alongside passionate voices like RFK Jr. to make America healthy again by providing families with safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic plaguing our children,” referring to Type 2 diabetes.
“President Trump will also establish a special presidential commission of independent minds and will charge them with investigating what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic illnesses,” she added.
“The only thing President Trump and his campaign team are focused on is winning on November 5th," Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said in a statement Friday. "Everything after that is after that, and President Trump has made clear that Bobby Kennedy will play an important role.”
As president, Trump touted "Operation Warp Speed," a public-private partnership to get Covid vaccines to Americans faster than a normal vaccine approval process would.
"Before Operation Warp Speed, the typical timeframe for development and approval, as you know, could be infinity. And we were very, very happy that we were able to get things done at a level that nobody has ever seen before. The gold standard vaccine has been done in less than nine months," Trump said in 2020 at an event celebrating the forthcoming emergency approval of the vaccine.
Two people close to the Trump campaign told NBC News this week that Kennedy could spearhead an “Operation Warp Speed for childhood chronic disease.”
At his event with Trump on Thursday, Kennedy said Trump "doesn’t want me to take vaccines away from people."
"If you want to take a vaccine, you ought to be able to take it," Kennedy said. "We believe in free choice in this country, but you ought to know the risk and benefits of everything you take.”
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