Latching onto RFK Jr. is Donald Trump’s way of edging back into the news cycle after weeks of being sidelined by the Democrats. Never mind that Kennedy is a fringe player whose polls cratered before he allegedly traded his endorsement for a Cabinet post should Trump win.
Now Trump has put him on his transition team “to help pick the people who will be running the government,” Kennedy said in an interview posted on X. He joins another presidential wannabe, former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard, as honorary co-chairs.
These odd bedfellows go back to at least 2016 when, according to RFK Jr., Trump promised to create a “vaccine commission” to study the safety and efficacy of vaccines and appoint him as the chair. This was long before COVID-19 when the animating concern was the link between childhood vaccines and autism, which has since been debunked while remaining core to anti-vaxxers like Kennedy.