Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been angling for a Cabinet post in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration despite conflicting ideas of where his contribution is best served, the New York Post reported Wednesday.
According to a source who spoke to the outlet, Kennedy is being “stubborn” in his role as an honory chair in Trump’s transition team with another source adding that he has become challenging to deal with in the discussions. Kennedy has been advocating for the role of Health and Human Services secretary, a Cabinet position in which Dr. Ben Carson has also expressed interest.
Howard Lutnick, Trump transition co-chair and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO, has indicated Kennedy would not be getting an official position and would be instead tasked with focusing on health data.
“No, of course not,” Lutnick told CNN last month. “He’s not going to be the secretary, no.
“That’s not what he wants to do. He just wants data, and he wants to prove things [about vaccines] are wrong.
“And he says, ‘If I can’t prove they’re wrong, that’s fine. But if I can, I can save millions of Americans’ lives and make their lives better,'” Lutnick said.
Yet the former independent president candidate has previously stated that Trump had offered some form of official role within the government.
In a video obtained by CNN last month Kennedy said, “[What] Trump has promised me … is control of the public health agencies, which are HHS [Health and Human Services] and its subagencies: CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], FDA [Food and Drug Administration], NIH [National Institutes of Health] and a few others, and then also the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture]. We’ve got to get off of seed oils, and we’ve got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture.”
It remains to be seen what kind of authority Kennedy will have in Trump’s administration. But if given the authority, he plans to replace many of those working in the health field for the government.
Speaking at the Genius Network Annual Event in Scottsdale, Arizona, this past weekend, Kennedy responded to a question about what his “magic wand” would be to fix the NIH.
“We need to act fast. And we want to have those people in place on Jan. 20 so that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH, and 600 people are going to leave.”
