(The Hill) — Former independent presidential candidate and antivaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that former President Donald Trump wants him to choose leaders for key public health agencies if he wins the election in November.
Kennedy told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson that under a second Trump term, he would be responsible for eliminating “corrupt influences” from agencies, Mediaite first reported.
“President Trump has asked me specifically to do two things. One, to help unravel the capture of the agencies by corrupt influence. In other words, to drain the swamp. And, you know, I had to say something about President Trump,” Kennedy told Carlson.
Kennedy named the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as potential agencies during a Tuesday stop in Wisconsin on Carlson’s live tour.
Kennedy and Trump previously talked about conspiracy theories related to the toxicity of childhood vaccines in a video posted to social media earlier this year, The Hill reported.
In a separate interview with Carlson last month, Kennedy said that Trump asked him to serve on his transition team if the former president serves a second term.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called discussions about who will serve in a second Trump administration “premature.”
“President Trump announced a Trump Vance transition leadership group to initiate the process of preparing for what comes after the election. But formal discussions of who will serve in a second Trump Administration is premature. President Trump will choose the best people for his Cabinet to undo all the damage that Kamala Harris has done to our country,” she said.
Democrats and the public health community sounded the alarm earlier this month about the possibility of Kennedy becoming the Health and Human Services secretary in a second Trump term. At the time, The Hill reported that Trump had not said what, if any, Cabinet position he would offer Kennedy.