‘They’re not protecting our kids,’ the former presidential candidate and Big Pharma critic says.
Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who backed President-elect Donald Trump, said Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bureaucracy should be winnowed down.
Before the election, Trump had floated Kennedy as having a role in his administration, namely targeting federal agencies that oversee health care, food, and drugs.
“There are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA … that have to go—that are not doing their job. They’re not protecting our kids,” Kennedy told MSNBC on Wednesday.
When he was asked if he would remove any health agencies, Kennedy said, “to eliminate the agencies, as long as it requires congressional approval, I wouldn’t be doing that.”
“I can get the corruption out of the agencies,” he added.
Kennedy added in a separate interview with Fox News earlier this week that “we don’t know what I’m going to do. I talked to the president about it yesterday, and he asked me what I wanted, and I said, we’re developing a proposal now.”
He was asked whether he would be appointed as Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, a position that requires Senate confirmation.
At a Madison Square Garden rally last month, Trump reiterated that he would have Kennedy join his administration and “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.
During the Al Smith dinner that Trump attended last month, he again floated Kennedy as leading his administration’s efforts around food and health.
“We’re going to let him go wild for a little while, then I’m going to have to maybe reign him back, because he’s got some pretty wild ideas, but most of them are really good,” Trump said during the New York City dinner.
“I think he’s a he’s a good man, and he believes, he believes the environment, the healthy people. He wants healthy people, he wants healthy food. And he’s going to do it. He’s going to have a big chance to do it, because we do need that.”
