By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who backed President-elect Donald Trump, said Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration 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 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 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 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.”
Kennedy and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, are also part of the president-elect’s transition team, along with Trump’s two sons Eric and Donald Jr., businessman Howard Lutnick, and former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon.
Speaking to CNN last week, Lutnick was asked about Kennedy and whether he would be appointed as HHS secretary.
Lutnick, however, said that Kennedy would not be “getting a job” at HHS and instead would be seeking federal health data on vaccines.
“He says, ‘If you give me the data, all I want is the data, and I’ll take on the data and show that it’s not safe.’ And then if you pull the product liability [protections], the companies will yank these vaccines right off, off of the market,” Lutnick told the outlet.
Over the past weekend, Kennedy drew headlines when he floated the idea that Trump may seek to ban the addition of fluoride to drinking water, coming after a federal judge ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should look at recent data and studies showing that fluoridation may lower children’s IQ.
“On Jan. 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote on X.
Trump and his wife Melania Trump “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”
Kennedy was running as an independent presidential candidate before he suspended his bid over the summer and endorsed Trump.
He appeared at multiple Trump rallies, including the recent Madison Square Garden event.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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