Kamala Harris gave a short but clear response after Donald Trump suggested that he will put Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of “women’s health” if elected on Tuesday.
“No,” the vice president wrote from her personal X account Thursday night, attaching a red heart emoji. In the clip she re-posted, Trump told his supporters in Nevada that Kennedy will work on “health and women’s health” if he regains the White House.
“He’s going to work on health and women’s health, and all of the different reasons because we’re not really a wealthy—or a healthy country,” Trump said on Thursday night.
Kennedy also claimed earlier this week that Trump promised him “control” over multiple health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Trump campaign called his claims premature, according to the New York Times.
“President Trump has promised me … control of the public health agencies, which are HHS and its sub-agencies, CDC, FDA, NIH, and a few others, and then also the USDA, which … is key to making America healthy,” he said. “Because we’ve got to get off of seed oils, and we’ve got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture.”
Kennedy ran alongside Nicole Shanahan as an independent candidate for the presidency before suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump in August.
Before leaving the race, the 70-year-old said he supports restricting access to abortion at “fetal viability,” CNN reported.
In addition to his stance on abortion, Kennedy is a staunch opponent of the COVID-19 vaccine and has spread misinformation about its safety and efficacy.
Kennedy’s organization, Children’s Health Defense, has advocated against vaccinations, including by spreading the unfounded claim that vaccines cause autism.
Kennedy also falsely claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci colluded with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to exaggerate the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic in his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, Forbes reported.
Spreading COVID-19 misinformation resulted in Meta deactivating his Instagram account in 2021.
He also spread a baseless conspiracy theory about COVID-19 last year, claiming the virus targets “Caucasians and Black people” while “Ashkenazi Jews and [Chinese people]” are the most immune.
“The claim that COVID-19 was a bioweapon created by the Chinese or Jews to attack Caucasians and Black people is deeply offensive and feeds into sinophobic and antisemitic conspiracy theories,” according to a statement from the Anti-Defamation League at the time.
The Independent has contacted Kennedy for comment.
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