President-elect Donald Trump dismissed concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism endangering children, saying Monday that his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services will be less extreme than critics have warned.
“I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he’s got a very open mind, or I wouldn’t have put him there,” Trump said of Kennedy when speaking to reporters.
As recently as last year, Kennedy repeated the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism.
Trump then seemed to suggest that countries with fewer vaccine requirements are better off.
“But there are problems,” he said.” We don’t do as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations use nothing.”
Spokespeople for Trump and his presidential transition team did not immediately respond when asked to clarify what Trump meant and to which countries he was referring.
He also said he’s a “believer” in the polio vaccine ― despite the recent media finding Kennedy has been working with a lawyer who’s trying to get the Food and Drug Administration to suspend its use for children.
“Well, I’m a big believer in it. And I think everything should be looked at, but I’m a big believer in the polio vaccine,” Trump said of nearly 70-year-old polio preventative, which has nearly eradicated a deadly, paralyzing disease in the U.S. that once infected some 16,000 Americans a year.
His comments Monday suggest more willingness to put the polio vaccine under some type of review. Earlier this month, when asked about vaccines during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump described the polio vaccine as “the greatest thing,” saying: “If somebody told me to get rid of the polio vaccine, they’re going to have to work real hard to convince me.”
As for schools mandating vaccines, Trump said Monday: “I don’t like mandates. I’m not a big mandate person. So you know, I was against mandates, mostly Democrat governors did the mandates, and they did a very poor thing. You know in retrospect they made a big mistake, having to do with the education of children.”