Conspiracy theorist and former independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was rewarded by Donald Trump for campaigning alongside him with a nomination to head up the Department of Health and Human Services. But cracks are already starting to form in their relationship, Politico reported on Friday.
In particular, reported Meredith Lee Hill and Adam Cancryn, Kennedy's demands for how Trump staff the U.S. Department of Agriculture have gone ignored and he has been "bitterly warring" with Trump allies over the appointments.
Kennedy, according to the report, "meticulously vetted and put forward his own list of candidates to run the massive agency responsible for the country’s farm and food policy ... But Trump went a different direction. Instead, the president-elect made a wild-card pick — a former White House aide with little formal experience in agriculture policy and no record on the public health concerns driving Kennedy’s agenda. Trump’s choice of Brooke Rollins, who co-founded the Trump-aligned think tank America First Policy Institute, to lead the Agriculture Department represents something of a victory for the entrenched agriculture interests that view Kennedy as a foe."
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Trump and Kennedy were brought together on the campaign trail largely due to their shared courting of conspiracy theorists on vaccines; while Trump oversaw development of the first COVID-19 immunizations through Operation Warp Speed, he publicly became outspoken against the vaccine mandates necessary to bring the pandemic under control. Kennedy, who has been pushing conspiracy theories linking vaccines to autism for decades, found common ground over the issue.
But, as a former Democrat, some of Kennedy's other ideas run counter to GOP orthodoxy on supporting big business interests.
For example, he wants to overhaul the Medicare billing system and overhaul the American Medical Association's influence over the process, an idea many Democrats support. His "Make America Healthy Again" agenda also calls for a broad range of bans on pesticides, preservatives, and artificial dyes commonly used throughout the U.S. agricultural system, which has raised alarms among some Republican senators representing agriculture-intensive states.
