CNN’s Jake Tapper gave a blunt assessment of President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the next secretary of health — deadpanning on air as the news broke, “Well, America, I hope you like measles.”
The longtime Kennedy critic made the jibe during Thursday’s show as Tapper discussed Trump’s other cabinet picks, including scandal-scarred Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for attorney general, with guest Kate Bedingfield, a former White House communications chief under President Biden.
Kennedy, who had suspended his presidential campaign as an independent in August and endorsed Trump shortly after, has been vocal about his belief in the lack of effectiveness of vaccines, especially the COVID jab.
Ahead of Kennedy’s expected appointment, a video recirculated in which he proposed a theory that COVID “attacks certain races disproportionately” and “the people most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and the Chinese.”
Kennedy said last year that the comments were taken out of context, clarifying that he was expressing his belief that the US was making “ethnically targeted” bioweapons.
Tapper has feuded with Kennedy for years over vaccines, which includes the politician’s long-held claim that they cause autism.
When challenged to a debate by Kennedy in 2021, the CNN anchor called the invitation “truly embarrassing” and continued, “I’m not going to lend credence to a conspiracy theorist whose views are so false, unhinged, and dangerous to public health, his own siblings feel the need publish op-eds against him.”
Trump vowed on the campaign trail that Kennedy would “go wild on medicines” in his administration if he was elected.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump wrote in a statement Thursday, announcing Kennedy had been tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
He continued: “The safety and health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.”
Critics have slammed Trump’s decision, including the New York Post’s editorial board, which wrote in a scathing op-ed that installing Kennedy “breaks the first rule of medicine” to “do no harm.”
