‘I don’t even think he’s getting the job for HHS,’ Trump team co-chair Howard Lutnick said.
Robert F. Kennedy wants access to federal health data under a potential second Trump administration to assess vaccine safety, the co-chair of former President Donald Trump’s transition team has said.
During a CNN interview published on Oct. 30, Howard Lutnick, who is also the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, said that he did not think Kennedy would be chosen as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Earlier this week, Kennedy said in a Zoom call that Trump had promised to give him “control of the public health agencies,” over the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services. Lutnick was responding to a question regarding that comment.
“I don’t even think he’s getting the job for HHS,” Lutnick said in response to CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins’s statement that “people are concerned” that he could be put in charge of the sprawling federal agency. “He said, ‘I want data. I just want data’ because they block the data.”
Kennedy has long criticized childhood vaccines and COVID-19 shots. He recently wrote on social media that he believes U.S. health agencies need an overhaul and that action is needed to combat America’s longstanding “chronic illness epidemic.”
His organization, Children’s Health Defense, has also long advocated against certain vaccinations and has suggested there’s a link between childhood shots and autism.
“He says, if you give me the data, all I want is the data and I’ll take the data and show that it’s not safe. And then if you pull the product liability, the companies will yank these vaccines right off of the market. So that’s his point,” Lutnick told Collins.
Kennedy ran for president in 2024 as an independent before suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump. The former president has said that Kennedy would be given a role in his administration if elected on Nov. 5.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health, I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.” Trump said at his Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27, referring to Kennedy.
Asked about Kennedy’s comments and his role in a future Trump administration, Jason Miller, a senior adviser for the campaign, said the only thing Trump and his campaign are focused on right now is winning on Nov. 5.
“Everything after that is after that, and President Trump has made clear that Bobby Kennedy will play an important role,” Miller wrote on Thursday.
On Thursday evening, Trump also floated the idea of giving Kennedy a role working “on health and women’s health, and all of the different reasons because we’re not really a wealthy or a healthy country,” according to an interview he gave with Tucker Carlson that was posted on X.
In response, Vice President Kamala Harris’s official campaign account wrote, “No,” alongside a heart emoji.
The Epoch Times contacted the Harris campaign for comment on Friday but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.
Kennedy has hinted at plans to reorganize the FDA if Trump is elected. In an Oct. 25 post on social media platform X, he said the agency’s “war” on public health is “about to end.”
“This includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma,” he wrote. “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
It would be “extremely dangerous” to put Kennedy in a position of power where he could make decisions or have the ability to change regulatory policy, Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former FDA deputy commissioner, said on Thursday. “Removing vaccines from the market would lead to severe health consequences for America.”
He added, “We go about our daily lives in the United States not worrying about a lot of preventable diseases like measles because of the protection that the vaccines provide. But if there were to be a systematic effort to use the tools of the federal government to undermine vaccination, children won’t be safe. Full stop.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Kennedy for comment but did not receive a reply by publication time.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.