Trump’s pick for health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr once called US vaccine rollout agency a ‘fascist’ enterprise
Donald Trump’s pick for health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr once labelled the agency responsible for vaccine rollouts in the US a “fascist” enterprise and accused it of knowingly hurting children.
Mr Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic, also compared what he saw as a widespread conspiracy to hide harms from the US’ child vaccination programme to the cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
The comments were made from 2013 onwards to private audiences of AutismOne, a conference for parents of autistic children. Recordings of the remarks have recently been shared with NBC News, the US sister network of Sky News.
In other comments, he also claimed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was a “cesspool of corruption”, filled with profiteers, and was harming children in a way he likened to “Nazi death camps”.
Mr Kennedy, the son of the late Robert Kennedy and nephew of the late former president John F Kennedy, is poised to run the US Health Department when president-elect Mr Trump enters the White House in January.
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In previously unreported comments from 2019, Mr Kennedy compared the CDC and its vaccine programme to “fascism”.
“The word ‘fascism’ in Italian means a bundle of sticks, and what it means is the bundle is more important than the sticks,” he said.
“The institution, CDC and the vaccine programme is more important than the children that it’s supposed to protect.
“It’s the same reason we had a paedophile scandal in the Catholic Church,” he added.
“Because people were able to convince themselves that the institution, the church, was more important than these little boys and girls who were being raped. And everybody kept their mouth shut.
“The press, the prosecutors, the priests, the bishops, the Vatican, and even the parents of the kids who just didn’t want to believe it was happening, or believed so much in the church they were unwilling to criticise it.
“And you know, that is the perfect metaphor for what’s happening to us.”
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In comments made in 2013 at AutismOne, he criticised a group of experts, including vaccine scientists, involved in what he falsely claimed was a conspiracy to hide vaccines as the cause of autism.
Links between autism and vaccines, which originate from a discredited and fraudulent research paper, have long been debunked and been described as “perhaps, the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years”.
Mr Kennedy also said vaccine scientists “should be in jail and the key should be thrown away”.
At the 2013 AutismOne conference question-and-answer session, when asked about the CDC’s motives for failing to acknowledge autism as an epidemic, Mr Kennedy made a comparison to the Holocaust.
“To me, this is like Nazi death camps, what happened to these kids,” he said.
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Mr Kennedy said of the rising number of children diagnosed with autism and what he described as a link to vaccines: “I can’t tell you why somebody would do something like that. I can’t tell you why ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust.”
Over the weekend, Mr Trump picked former congressman Dr Dave Weldon to lead the CDC.
Dr Weldon has also spoken at AutismOne conferences and in remarks made in 2004 suggested vaccines caused neurological problems and said parents of autistic children were “the 900-pound gorilla that has not had its voice heard adequately on Capitol Hill”.
Mr Kennedy and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment when asked by NBC. The CDC also declined to comment.
Several people nominated to roles in Donald Trump’s incoming cabinet and administration have been targeted by bomb threats and “swatting,” a spokesperson for the US president-elect has said.
The threats were made on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those targeted, Karoline Leavitt said.
In a statement, she said the incidents “ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting'”, which is when a false crime is reported to bring an armed police response to someone’s home.
The statement said: “Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them.”
Ms Leavitt added: “With President Trump as our example, dangerous acts of intimidation and violence will not deter us.”
Elise Stefanik, who represents New York in the House and has been picked by Mr Trump to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations, said her family home had been the target of a bomb threat.
In a statement she said she, her husband and their three-year-old son were driving from Washington DC to Saratoga County in New York for Thanksgiving when they were informed of the threat, with police responding “immediately with the highest levels of professionalism”.
Elise Stefanik, Mr Trump’s pick to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations. Pic: AP
Three senior law enforcement officials briefed on the swatting incident told Sky’s US partner network NBC News the threats were “not credible” and no devices or physical threats were found.
They did not involve VIPs protected by the US Secret Service such as Mr Trump or his vice president-elect JD Vance.
The FBI said it was aware of “numerous bomb threats and swatting incidents” targeting Mr Trump’s cabinet and administration nominees and was working with its law enforcement partners.
In a statement it said: “We take all potential threats seriously and, as always, encourage members of the public to immediately report anything they consider suspicious to law enforcement.”
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Mr Trump has been announcing his picks for his cabinet and other high-ranking positions in his administration since his election victory on 5 November.
The threats come months after Mr Trump suffered a wound to his ear during an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in July, which killed a spectator and left two others seriously injured.
In September a man was charged with attempted assassination after allegedly positioning himself with a rifle outside one of Mr Trump’s golf courses in Florida as Mr Trump played golf.
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China has warned Donald Trump a new trade war “will leave no party unscathed” as the incoming US president’s new tariff threats provoke an angry reaction.
The response by the world’s second-largest economy to Mr Trump’s promise of additional 10% tariffs on all goods from China into the US, came via state media.
“There are no winners in tariff wars. If the US continues to politicise economic and trade issues by weaponising tariffs, it will leave no party unscathed,” the China Daily said in an editorial.
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Mr Trump announced late on Monday that he would also target neighbours Mexico and Canada.
He pledged 25% tariffs on goods coming from both nations due to excessive migration.
Mexico and China, however, are also in his sights for another reason.
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Mr Trump has said both are responsible for “attacking” the US with fentanyl – a drug widely blamed for the opioid crisis in the country that has seen more than 100,000 people die from overdoses alone in recent years.
China, his camp has argued, is the dominant source of chemical precursors used by Mexican cartels to produce the deadly drug.
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The China Daily editorial continued: “The excuse the president-elect has given to justify his threat of additional tariffs on imports from China is farfetched.
“The world sees clearly that the root cause of the fentanyl crisis in the US lies with the US itself.”
Mr Trump wants both Mexico and China to clamp down on the drugs.
Mexico has long been in his sights over migration, with the volume of illegal border crossings prompting a crackdown during his first term in office.
That did, however, fall short of his 2016 threat of a “big, beautiful” border wall though the existing barrier was extended and bolstered in places.
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This is a big deal for both Canada and Mexico especially.
More than 83% of exports from Mexico went to the US in 2023 and 75% of Canadian exports go to the country.
Mexico has pledged to react to any US tariffs by responding in kind.
Canada’s government has spoken of working together but provincial leaders have voiced anger and shock.
Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, expected retaliation against its closest trading partner.
He said of Mr Trump’s threat: “I found his comments unfair. I found them insulting. It’s like a family member stabbing you right in the heart.”
If tariffs were to be implemented, as Mr Trump has threatened, the aim would be to hurt exports in each of the countries’ targeted in a bid to shrink the US trade deficit.
The country imports far more than it sends abroad.
However, by raising the cost of imported goods, Mr Trump would risk raising US inflation; the pace of price increases in his own domestic economy as the cost is passed on down supply chains to consumers.
Analysis by Goldman Sachs estimated they would raise consumer prices inflation by 1%, if carried through.
They would also hurt profit margins for US companies, while raising the threat of retaliatory tariffs by other countries, the US bank projected.
The prospect of a trade war has not spooked financial markets, with European and Asian equities seeing only limited losses while the broad S&P 500 on Wall Street is at record levels.
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However, the spectre of a wider Trump-led crackdown on imports has been felt elsewhere, with shares of carmakers coming under pressure on Tuesday.
AJ Bell head of financial analysis, Danni Hewson, wrote: “Proving his love of tariffs wasn’t just a campaign stunt, Trump has pledged he will immediately target Mexico, Canada and China before the last bit of confetti has fallen on his inauguration.”
“For European car makers already struggling to make the shift to EVs profitable, it will have sounded an alarm and shares in Stellantis and Volkswagen both took a hit as did US automakers which import a large number of vehicles from both Canada and Mexico.”
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