In the final days of the presidential campaign, former President Donald Trump and some of his key allies have increasingly embraced and spread anti-vaccine rhetoric, generally associated with former independent presidential candidate and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Vaccine misinformation has not been a central issue in Trump’s 2024 campaign, but recently Kennedy’s influence — and the major role he could play in a Trump administration — has come to the fore.
At an event with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Kennedy Thursday evening in Arizona, Trump said Kennedy wants to “look” at pesticides and vaccines in a potential Trump administration — and he was happy to give him carte blanche.
“He can do anything he wants,” Trump said.
“He really wants to get into the pesticides and the, you know, all these 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 love it. I love it.”
He also said Kennedy “went to work on women’s health and health.”
During an interview with popular podcast host Joe Rogan released Thursday morning, Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance expressed skepticism about the Covid vaccine, saying he had been “red-pilled,” a term lifted from “The Matrix” and was used. by some to explain that they have become aware of conspiracies throughout society.
“I had the vaccine, and you know, I didn’t get a boost or anything, but the moment I really started turning red from the whole vaccination thing was by far the sickest I’ve been in the last 15 years was when I got the vaccine took,” Vance said.
“I’ve had Covid five times at this point. I lay in bed for two days, my heart was pounding, I was like, we’re not even allowed to talk about that. Even, you know – not 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 I’m not really willing to trade that,” the senator added.
It is unclear when Vance was vaccinated and whether it was before he developed a Covid infection. His spokesperson did not return a request for clarification.
Vance is a young, healthy adult and if he had been vaccinated before the infection, his immune system would have been ready to fight the virus, doctors say. Common side effects of the vaccines can include flu-like symptoms that last about a day and then usually go away.
Although virtually all Americans now have some protection against Covid, either through vaccination or infection or both, unvaccinated people were more than 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with the virus in the first year after the vaccines were rolled out. In July 2021, as Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths increased, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called it a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
The idea that the effects of the Covid vaccine are worse than the effects of the actual virus is something Kennedy has also said, and it is a theory that has been widely debunked.
The CDC has routinely said that the worst side effects of Covid vaccines are no 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 declined to say whether he would have allowed emergency approval of certain Covid vaccines by the Food and Drug Administration.
“I would have said they need to do the science to show that the vaccine is actually going to prevent more problems than it causes,” Kennedy said at the time.
Trump and Vance’s comments this week come as the two have publicly embraced Kennedy themselves for months. In August, he suspended his own independent presidential campaign and endorsed Trump.
Since then, he has joined other fringe members of the political scene, such as former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, took to the campaign trail 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 such as 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 on Wednesday whether Kennedy was right when he said 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 with Bobby Kennedy Jr. this week and it was the most special,” Lutnick told CNN. “I said, ‘Tell me. How’s it going?’ 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 accused the National Institutes of Health of taking money from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for pushing vaccines on babies.
Kennedy has been linking autism to vaccines for years, even though several reputable studies over the past few decades have shown that vaccines are not linked to 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 are still “no formal decisions” on positions in a potential administration, but that Trump “has said he will work with passionate voices like RFK Jr. will work 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 create a special presidential commission of independent minds and charge them with investigating the cause of the decades-long increase in chronic diseases,” she added.
“The only thing President Trump and his campaign team are focused on is winning on November 5,” Jason Miller, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, said in a statement Friday. “Everything after that comes after that, and President Trump has made it clear that Bobby Kennedy will do that. 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 time frame for development and approval, as you know, could be infinite. And we were thrilled that we could get things done at a level that no one has ever seen before. The gold standard It vaccine will be ready in less than nine months,” Trump said in 2020 at an event celebrating the vaccine’s upcoming emergency approval.
Two people close to the Trump campaign told NBC News this week that Kennedy could spearhead an “Operation Warp Speed for Chronic Childhood Disease.”
During 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 should be able to take it,” Kennedy said. “We believe in free choice in this country, but you have to know the risks and benefits of everything you take.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
