The two most influential anti-vaxxers in the U.S.—Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump—are teaming up, which could give Kennedy control over health agencies.

At his Madison Square Garden rally last week, Donald Trump talked about his new (or, at least, newly public) partnership with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., one of the most powerful anti-vaxxers in the nation: “I’m gonna let him go wild on health. I’m gonna let him go wild on the food. I’m gonna let him go wild on medicines,” Trump said.

Kennedy said a week ago that a Trump win would give him “control of the public health agencies,” including the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, FDA, NIH, and other agencies.

On Friday, I wrote for The New Republic about what a catastrophe this would be for public health.

Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnik has said Kennedy wouldn’t have a job with HHS. But here’s the thing: RFK Jr. could still be incredibly influential without an official position.

First of all, Kennedy is already an honorary co-chair on the Trump transition team, where he says he’s “deeply involved in helping to choose the people who can run FDA, NIH, and CDC.”

And second, RFK Jr. doesn’t need a job. He’s a Kennedy, after all. And he likely makes significantly more money as an anti-vax grifter.

Kennedy led an organization called the Children’s Health Defense, a major anti-vaccine organization in the U.S., until he stepped down to run for president. It seems likely he could return to leading it once he’s done campaigning.

CHD has been around for years, but the organization seemed to see Covid as an opportunity to move from the fringes to the mainstream, doing things like training people to push anti-vaccine messages around the algorithm on Facebook, as I reported for The Guardian in 2022.

It worked. Prior to the pandemic, CHD’s website would get maybe 150,000 monthly views; by 2021, it was hitting nearly 4.7 million a month.

Money followed. CHD revenue more than doubled in 2020 to $6.8 million. Some of the money comes from donations, like thousands of dollars through AmazonSmile, as I reported for The Guardian in 2021. Other income comes from book deals between CHD and a publishing company.

One of Kennedy’s books, A Letter to Liberals, came to my attention while I researched my most recent TNR article. Here’s what I found:

It deliberately mischaracterized the astonishingly high rates of deaths among working-age people during the early years of the pandemic as “non-Covid deaths,” inaccurately blaming vaccines instead of the virus and the massive health disruption it brought. I know it was a mischaracterization—an outright flip of the truth—because the article it cited was written by me.

It is surreal to see my own work twisted like this—and it’s painful to know something I wrote could be lining the coffers of an organization that actively harms children.

With an apparatus like this, churning out misinformation and bringing in profits, Kennedy doesn’t need a government job. But it seems what he’s really after is the power and the megaphone to bring his anti-science messages to more people than ever.

Even if Trump is defeated in the polls tomorrow, RFK Jr. will continue to capitalize on platforms like this. He’s not going anywhere—but neither am I. Misinformation about health science—particularly with the rise of generative AI—will continue to be a major issue to cover, no matter who wins the election.

(Photo at the top: Gage Skidmore)