Topline
Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in an interview Wednesday morning that, if elected, he would consider appointing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—who is running against DeSantis as a Democrat—to lead either the Food and Drug Administration or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES – JULY 20: Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. … [+]
Key Facts
DeSantis made the comment in an interview with Clay Travis on Outkick in response to Travis asking if he’d select Kennedy Jr. as his running mate.
DeSantis said he likely wouldn’t name Kennedy Jr. as his vice president because there’s “70% of the issues that he may be averse to our base on,” but that their views on COVID-19 policies and “corruption” in federal health officials align.
Kennedy Jr.—who has a history of being anti-vaccine and is a vocal critic of the government’s handling of COVID-19—entered the presidential race in April and has not been welcomed by the Democratic party, in part due to his Covid-19 stances and other conspiracy theories he has promoted.
In recent weeks, Kennedy Jr. was criticized by Democrats who called him “racist” and “antisemitic” after he suggested Covid-19 was genetically engineered to target “Caucasians and Black people,” while “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”
Key Background
Kennedy Jr. is the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and he has a long history of spreading conspiracy theories in the last 20 years. His nonprofit—Children’s Health Defense—was prominently anti-vaccination during the Covid-19 pandemic, and he’s since made a number of unsubstantiated claims about the pandemic, including that the U.S. “put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes” and labs in Ukraine collected Russian and Chinese DNA to target people by race. Kennedy Jr. has also pushed conspiracies suggesting that Democrat John Kerry was the true winner of the 2004 presidential election and that mass shootings are linked to prescription drugs.
Big Number
16%. Kennedy Jr. was polling at 16% in the latest Harvard-Harris poll ending July 22, according to RealClearPolitics. Biden had 62%, while Marianne Williamson—the other long-shot candidate for Democrats—had 5%.
Contra
Kennedy Jr. has denied that he is “anti-vaxx,” saying his children are vaccinated and that he is up to date on his vaccines, with the exception of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Further Reading
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/07/26/desantis-indicates-he-may-appoint-rfk-jr-to-lead-the-fda-or-cdc-if-elected/